skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your comment is spot on, except the first paragraph. Apple's dev tools may not be used by the majority of developers, but they have influenced the industry.

One such example is Obj-C and NeXTStep's influence on Java (http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html). Of course it was really NeXT's influence, but it was still Steve Jobs and company behind the scenes.
Here is the press release by the plaintiff's lawyers:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=ne...

They are seeking $1 billion in damages for stealing their trade secrets.
As memory and bulk storage become faster and faster and gain more and more capacity I think that the idea of losing application state just because your PC shut off will become a horror story to tell our children. Eventually it will become one large memory space backed by a variety of local and network stores.
I didn't mean to provoke an off-topic, but thank you anyway :-)
FlXHR: Flash based XHR from Flensed
I live in Germany. I don't think we have the kind of problems you have in India, but of course there are plenty of problems to solve in Germany, too. We do have some homeless people, for example, but I think the cause is usually physical and mental illness, nothing I could help with (I think).

Another problem is that just because I have some money on the bank, doesn't mean I am not still struggling for survival myself. I have wanted for a while to dedicate part of my time to helping the needy, but atm I don't even find the time for my startup aspirations while I work to pay the bills.

Also, I think if an Indian entrepreneur is successful with a web 2.0 startup, it might still improve lots of people's lives, as it strengthens the economy.
It seems to me the real value in places like OpenCoffee (atleast in London) is in meeting the early adopters/investors and people who are interested in building things (potential co-founders/employees).

Unfortunately, as it has started to get more media coverage, the event seems to attract (random) people who are not so interested/committed. These people generally go just because the event was in the paper. This seems to dilute things. Things don’t seem to happen as fast now. I know of several startups/groups that formed in a few meetings in the early days but now it seems more people are just interested in talking/observing than doing, and startups/groups do not form as easily/quickly.

Perhaps this due to the (required?) increase in cross communication and signal to noise now present.

This is based on anecdotal evidence and my own experience, but I would be surprised if it is too far from the truth.
Why is Mac's answer always to buy more? I want my monitor, so I should buy a laptop at a premium and -then- I can use my monitor? Never you mind that, of course, the Macbook & Macbook Pro have no docking station, so that's a minimum of manual connections every time I disconnect/reconnect. If I never use the laptop as a laptop, I've way overspent.

I had a similar conversation at WWDC about the 'no docking station' issue. Apple's response: buy everyone a laptop AND a desktop, and use roaming profiles.

Yeah.
problepedia.com ?
Maybe, we are just deluding ourselves all the way when we should doing stuff that matters.

You know what the irony is. Even if some bioengineer makes a more plague resistant wheat crop, it wont solve world's hunger problem. India produces surplus crops. Even then it imports crops from outside. Even then people are dying here from hunger. So, part of the solution is to come up with right supply channels. This is just an example. We can always find ways where we could contribute more directly instead of waiting for things to get lucky so that we could fund other people.
For people who don't want to get out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off, but who also don't want to risk sleeping for another hour, a snooze button is perfectly sensible.
40 Web Applications You Might Actually Find Useful
Of course. I am saying there is an argument in the book, which I don't want to type in (it's too long).
yes, something like that. Or maybe, something like open source InnoCentive?
Wow, 50 for $22. You can get 1,000 full color, double sided, 14 pt UV gloss for about $30.

http://smartlevels.com/prodfeature.aspx?ProdSubCatId=PS119&#...
HN:If you could go to any conference/class/training...
My boss just stopped by and said, "Hey, we're in kind of a lull, so find some relevant training or soemthing you want to do and send me a link. Think big."

What would you guys go to or do? We do a lot of .NET development (mostly ASP.NET, some C# desktop stuff), and some front-end AJAX work with ExtJS. I'm not just looking for ideas for myself, though, so post whatever. :)

I went to VSLive last spring as my first conference, and wasn't totally impressed with the amount I learned. Yeah, you get out what you put in, but the 3 days full of 2 hour lectures format didn't seem to be the best way to learn.

Anyway, I'll shut up now. Have you guys had any great experiences with conferences or classes?
Artistic fork() bomb implementation
If you're impatient, scroll down to the "Chaos" section and follow the instructions. Don't do it on your critical production machine. :)
Ask HN: suppose I parachute into mainland Africa, could I help the people with my Hacker skills?
In reaction to the "are you helping the world" thread, I really wonder what good could we do with hacker skills, on location? Like there are physicians who spend some months a year traveling poor countries and curing people.

Could we as programmers do something similar?
Exactly, you can't just jet at the end of a day if you want your 20% of the company to be worth something when you're gone.
Silicon Valley ranks highest in high-tech concentration, pay
I don't really think web apps have to look like desktop apps. But I think any such discussion also required a bit of consideration of what counts as a web application, and what is just a web site.

Objective-J and Cappuccino (and SproutCore) are really designed to build applications. Long running applications that exist in the context of the browser. By my definition, this is far from the realm of web pages, so why should they have to look like a web page?

Google's Presentation app is an apt tool for comparison. It was designed to look very much like the rest of Google's web pages. In my opinion, its not a very good design. Admittedly I'm biased, but the UI in 280 Slides is just light years ahead of Google Docs.

As far as using "more JS than needed", what makes it unnecessary? If it were really the case that you could build UIs like 280 Slides without using a pretty advanced JS framework, than why haven't people been doing it?
So! I agree with you about your limitations, and agree that they suck. Where we disagree is on the valuation of those limitations.

The benefits of web apps in consistency of interface elements, interoperability (hyperlinks!), customizability (greasemonkey!), toolset (FF, IE, Opera, Safari, Lynx, Emacs, mostly use whichever floats your boat), and portability (use the same app at work as you use at home) far outweigh the drawbacks.

Which is not to say that we should not attack those drawbacks, we should, but we should do it in a way that we maintain the benefits we've gotten from web applications.
I think it's a bit early to tell if it's worked yet or not.
You are Your Web Site
The classic paradox is 'When I win the lottery, I'll build a hospital, school, homeless shelter'. Of course, you can always start small - volunteer to help the homeless before you have the means to build a shelter. I am already doing that. You can, too.
On robots, URL design, and bad optimization
Thank you for pointing out the key difference between millionaires and billionaires. Billg, Larry + Sergey, Jobs, Yang, Ellison, etc, would still have no doubt been successful if they had been born +-5 years from when they were, but they would have missed the window where there was a multi-billion dollar revolution waiting to happen.
General Motors Plans to Raise Prices, Cut Production
1) Many corporate environments are built around a lack of trust. Generally this parades as "quality assurance" or "change management". There's certainly a place for QA and change management - the problem is that those processes often intervene -before- a change takes place. Beneficial change, however, is not always obvious prior to implementation. So say some plebe in app management has an idea for restructuring the UI of a particular sub-section, but it gets nixed because "The users won't understand" or "We'll have to retrain." A) This could be the change that would make life easier for the people who interact with that screen, they just didn't know it; B) Even if there's a mock-up, it's not the same as using the system. Now certainly there's a real cost to change, but most organizations are restrictive rather than permissive. This makes the "fight for change" really hard.

2) Bad corporate managers view ideas as a threat, if they didn't buy in. Say you have an idea that could alter your company for the better. If your manager rejects it and you push the issue, you better watch your back. (As a manager this is a hard impulse to overcome if you let yourself get 'sucked into' the corporate environment. Instead of being angry that someone "went around you", realize you missed a good idea (it's ok!) and try and figure out how to make it the best implementation possible.)

3) People are delusional. The linked post talks about people who think they have good ideas. In 'bitch and moan' sessions I've witnessed at conferences, eating with colleagues at lunch or whatever, I hear about how their great ideas are being ignored. Their ideas aren't great. They've come to be ignored because they're the Dwight Schrute of their office. So telling people to 'take leadership' is actually really bad advice.
IRS to Change Rate of Mileage Deduction Limits
I generally want to buy the cheapest version of the OS possible because the laptop will ultimately run Linux.
Cocoa was designed from the ground up to build GUI applications. Java certainly can't claim that. Cocoa was designed 20 years ago at NeXT, and in all that time, it has barely changed. Interface Builder is an incredibly powerful tool.

Cocoa has also enabled very small teams at Apple (and outside of Apple) to build really world class consumer products in incredibly short time frames, something you don't see in the Java world. GUI's are definitely Java's weakest point.
Google Cache, as the page seems to be YCed:

http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:1xPHjZ8_5w0J:www.conser...
Some stuff I've seen before, but a few good additions. Voxant is actually pretty cool.
Apple is not that important. Seriously.

Even with a mere 10% market share, Apple is so incredibly important. Since 2000, they have continually set the standard in industrial design across the electronics industry (and even beyond it). Beyond that, they've also completely changed the music industry. They went from zero music presence to 80% market share in music players, and the number one music store (not just online music store). The iPhone is already redefining the cell phone industry.

Sure, they may be small, and maybe they'll never get bigger, but you can't for a second claim they aren't important.
I'm not sure who this Oleg person is, but he sure has some cool links on his site.
As they should. The company did not add any value.
much much better - exactly what people were looking for :]
To tell, you the truth, i don't think that your skills will really matter here, and this is from the horses mouth. I live in west africa, which is one of the most stable parts and i am itching to leave to a place where my skill swill be appreciated.
You might not be able to provide medical help, but you could teach for free and help others to gain jobs. You could set up a website to help aid those in need (like Kiva, a donation site, or a blog that tells the world about conditions).
The most stupid thing for a company to do is to get in the way of a giant, or for a consultancy to have a single customer.

Wasn't this predictable?

How many startups are out there that "do X like Y company, except our pricing model is better"? With such a subtle difference, really, shame on those who are taken by surprise when the giant pounces.
I love the hypothetical and how you've asked it.

But to be serious, your programming skills are going to be of almost no use to them. Hell, go look at the Zimbabwe government's website to see how much they care - http://www.gta.gov.zw/ (prepare to cringe).

What skills you DO have are compassion, finances, and the ability to get awareness up HERE. Tons of charities need better and more functional websites that come up more often in SEO. They need more prominent donation tabs, they need websites that better explain their mission and better recruit. You can create a site to promote a cause, you can team up with someone and start your own charity (I intend to).

There's tons you can do. Just because you're not on location doesn't mean you're not making an impact.
Zimbra's webmail client is definitely worse than the gmail interface, but as Om's IMAP reference should have suggested to you, there are more ways to get to email than through your browser. Those of us who sometimes need to do email work while disconnected or who prefer a richer client interface can use IMAP or even (shudder) Exchange interfaces to get to the Zimbra mailboxes. On this particular facet gmail really, really sucks.
Google-based revenues can stop with the tweak of a Google TOS.

This company's "business model" was even worse than Netscape's once Microsoft Internet Explorer forced Netscape to make their browser free to general public starting in January '98

Netscape revenues (browser only)

1995: $44.3M

1996: $181.2M

1997: $105.5M

1998: N/A

[http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f1900/1999/4.htm]
Prior existence is only one of the tests for trademark validity, although I certainly can't claim any special knowledge of this case or German trademark law. It's fairly common in a dispute like this for both sides to make various arguments about the other sides claims. It's certainly not "sneaky".
"The Non-Designers Design Book" by Robin Willaims.

Absolute classic. The original version was all about design for letterheads, posters, etc. but all the principles apply suprisingly well to web design.

I believe its out of print but you might be able to find it on amazon.
Grameen (http://www.grameen-info.org) founded by Muhammad Yunus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus) was/is not a scam.
What is a good way to find an appropriate organization to help, with an office where I live?
So the big lesson here is that you can make $100 million a year (for at least a few years) without adding any value.
http://sexpr.sourceforge.net/

That's for C, but since all languages have a C function interface, it shouldn't be impossible to hook it up to your dynamic or static language of choice.
The decline in computer science students (part 2)
Embedded Web Services [Ajax/Json,GPS Maps and more]
Rather than parachuting in, you could simply book a flight to one of the international airports located on the continent.

Teaching would be the obvious useful occupation. However, everywhere needs good teachers, not just Africa.
MPAA argues against providing proof in piracy lawsuits
"And much of it revolves not around its plans for a content powerhouse, but the story of how the Guelph startup found a loophole in Google's vaunted advertising model, enabling it to make boatloads of cash - until Google decided enough was enough."

[...]

"What's more, he envisioned a network of thousands of websites all automated by software linking keywords to pages filled with ads, returning millions in cash in the process.

By 2005 that was exactly what was happening. Nye crafted a maze of Internet sites that included tens of thousands of Web pages and bought up even more keywords from Google. By connecting the keywords and the websites, Geosign was indeed generating more than $100 million in annual revenue and was extremely profitable."

Well, no sympathy there.

I liked this quote though:

"There's a tendency in the press to make everyone either a dog or a god. The truth is most people are somewhere in between. Tim is no different. He has shortcomings, but he's also a highly creative guy."
Grab a conference where you can get in additional networking as well as learn about these types as well, or at least how they impact. Go to a conference like the Web 2.0 Expo (http://en.oreilly.com/webexny2008/public/content/home) or the New Media Expo (http://www.newmediaexpo.com/) so you can gain a better understanding of your industry and gain contacts in that industry. You'll also meet some of the greats in the industry.

Conferences aren't all that much for direct learning, but more for ideas and people. Do a class if you want to learn a new language.

All depends on your job responsibilities and what you want for your future.

(And yeah, I'll be at New Media in August)
You could probably help transferring an unclaimed fund of $25,000 from which I am in dire need of immediate assistance.
I'd have to say I think you'll end up using your nunchuku skills and bow hunting skills more than your hacker skills.
Charity Guide (http://www.charity-charities.org) is a place to start, though it mostly lists local branches of larger charities.
So wait - a scuzzy company got found out and shut down? Hard to be upset about that.
So where do I sign up?

Seriously, I was concerned about it until I read the word "loophole" used. The only impressive thing the company did was bend/break the rules for so long and on such a grand scale without getting caught.

So when will they turn off the funds to the domain name squatters?
BlogTalkRadio raises $4.6 million from Kraft Group
Thats a good plan! By helping ourselves we become in the best position(s) to help others? ...but what if you never get past step 1?
I hope with access to internet technology and cheap hardware people in poorer countries are able to increase thier standard of living.

In India, people are focused on web2.0/internet as they know the benefits of being in a global market are much greater and compared to the localised costs (of living, hardware, currency), they only need to make a small impact to create a large dividend.

Also, after years of tech outsourcing, many are most skilled in this area. If they had been involved in years of finance or legal outsourcing (or any other service-based model) then they would do things in those fields. Essentially as humans, we as a whole tend to stick with what we know?
Ok, so I realize that rallying against evil oppressive management is all the rage here on Slashdot, I mean HN, but let me offer an alternative view.

It's certainly not true at my day job (Microsoft SQL Server - you decide if its a big or a small org). Enough power is distributed throughout so you don't have to go to jump on Bill's desk. When one can get fellow engineers on board (which is the difficult part, really) one can always get management to accept their agenda and it doesn't rise even to VP level to get things sorted out. I've done it myself and I have seen others doing it.

So. Chose your work not based on org size, but on actual people you get to work with.
When tech product placements go bad
"most everybody has abondoned Hotmail in the last few years"

You should tell that to our users... about 80% of them (unfortunately) still use Hotmail.
RE Problem:

I actually come from, and worked in, Bangladesh where the first micro-finance schemes really evolved and took off i.e. Grameen (http://www.grameen-info.org) founded by Muhammad Yunus.

The solution is by no means simple or even scalable with ease (hence the Noble Prize he won), and each country really has its own set of issues/culture/ politics/other that play big factors.

Taking micro-finance and Bangladesh as an example, you have remember most parts of the country (and in most countries where poverty and hunger and such related issues are rife) is very rural and most people have much difficulty even understanding banking let alone going to banks, which are few and far between (would you travel for one day to go to a bank or work to feed your family?), and even then there are so many sub-issues that need to be addressed.

Ultimately solutions (in any scenario) work when those people affected take ownership and become actively involved.

RE Sanity:

Sometimes big problems are overwhelming and it is actually easier/better to solve smaller problems first that solve specific needs (just like in startup mantra).

My thoughts came down to doing what was feasible within my constraints (I wish I was like Dr. Yunus, but alas). For those that care, this was to setup some mills to help farmer in local village area process their grain for almost free, and fisheries to help provide an alternate source of income/food for poor communities that was sustainable and required little/no effort.

The network effect has been others have now started doing similar community-based things which is helping to raise standard of living of all concerned and in the (localised) wider area.
Thanks. What I would most like is some organization that really looks into the economics side of things. That is, I would like to be able to help with my maths skills, and, perhaps selfishly, pick up some knowledge about economics along the way. Still, helping with web sites would be a start.
This arrangement properly demonstrates the power of sudo. :)
Am I the only one who can't stand that horrible spelling? "TO THA HATERZ" indeed.
On the last point, I often wonder if I am delusional or not. It helps to find a few fellow engineers who are willing to listen, understand and tell you when you're smoking crack. Of course you should be ready to extend the favor yourself.
Structural Change Is Always a Good Theme to Invest In
Nope, according to the article, the dog is quite happy to turn options down.

Cat: Hmm, let's eat something tonight.

Dog: Sure.

Cat: Why don't you cook something?

Dog: Nah.

Cat: Hmm... how about if we just eat sandwiches?

Dog: Sure.

Cat: Well, you gonna make a sandwich or what?

Dog: Nah.

Cat: Sudo make me a sandwich.

...
Unfortunately for me, I agree..

Of course the reasons why it works so well as "an escape" are what people have listed in this thread already.
Oleg Kiselyov, a big name in functional programming.

http://library.readscheme.org/servlets/search.ss?pattern=Kis...

http://portal.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100177557&col...
Yeah, exactly. The tone of the article is a little off. Fundamentally, these guys were advertisement parasites. They added almost no value to the internet, offered no meaningful products, and the world is frankly better off without them.

And yet I get the idea that we're supposed to be sorry for them because they're just a poor canadian company unfairly crushed by the american giant.

I especially like the use of the euphemism "search arbitrage" to describe their business model. :)
I think you misunderstood the article. Video is not king - it's important, but it has it's place. HN wouldn't be better if all comments were videos.

In general, you seem to have missed the point of this article - it isn't comparing RIA's and JS, it's comparing 'old' JS frameworks and new ones, and the new ones are making big progress to being desktop apps.

I admit to knowing little about how people are developing these apps...

I don't mean this personally, but then why are you talking about this? Can we all agree to talk about things that we know about? I think that heuristic will benefit this community most.
I'm not sure how the "Runner Ups" in this piece work. Digg is a runner up to Stumble Upon when it should probably be compared to Reddit. And then the whole thing is numbered, but not ranked and then grouped, which is easy enough to figure out, but weird for a list like this.
30+ Apps For Jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches
Live Coverage of Structure 08