skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Honestly? What echo chamber do you live in? I don't know anyone who owns or is even considering buying an iPhone.
The iPhone is the future of UI.

Almost anything we need to interact with to use could beneficially offload UI and display features to the iPhone and be better for it. The internet is a piece of the puzzle, but the UI innovation allows it's reach to transcend the internet in the future.
What about soldering irons and relays?
Three words: Safari trojan horse.
Maybe you can afford to offer IE6 users stripped down functionality? Even some of Microsoft's sites don't fully support IE6 anymore. There's a bunch of functionality disabled under IE6 in the MS map offering (Live Maps, or whatever it's called), for example.
It's also interesting how small a part (though they did participate) AT&T had in all of that innovation.
LOL. You're a quick one. Good luck with that.
Depends if I'm taking the perspective of a start-up founder or a developer.

As a founder I would understand the business strategy taken by Apple who naturally aims to keep a maintainable standard in it's softwares components.

Keeping technical standards is pretty common for any company acting as a platform. In this scenario the end goal seems to be ensuring a level of performance.

A company who decides to create an innovative app should of considered whether or not it can meet those standards.
Otherwise their time creating something innovative should of been applied to a better market or when the platform in place can handle the innovation.

By the way, the smart phone market is far from monopolistic so I'm not really worried.
I actually think this is going to be a fantastic opportunity for startups.. even though Apple has built some pretty high walls for developers

I'm from Australia and mobile internet is currently just way too expensive and so nobody uses it.
If the iPhone (and competitors) can drive demand and push prices down, it could really open up some opportunities for developers working on applications for mobiles.
Google And Salesforce Cooking Up Something New Together
take a list of 1 million people. tell half that a particular stock will go up and half that a particular stock will go down. discard the 500,000 that you were wrong to and do it again, tell 250,000 that a particular stock will go up and the other half that it will go down. Repeat a few times until you have only a few thousand people left whom think you have been right 7 or 8 times in a row. Tell them you are a stock guru and will teach them your system for $10,000. Profit.
I only know one person who owns a Nokia smartphone (and at least eight who have iPhones). He bought it last summer (when the cheapest iPhone was $499) for $200.

Since he wanted cheap email on the go, the iPhone was too expensive for him. I have read a lot of articles about the fact that the iPhone now includes GPS is a game-changer, but I think that the price cut to $199 is more important.
> will have their existing 2-year commitment restarted when buying a new iPhone.

Cellphone companies are the ultimate evil.
"I absolutely loathe the kind of coding standards she is trying to enforce. It sounds like micromanagement bullshit, forcing developers to do stuff they resent."

Unless you work for her, or know her personally, you have no idea what kind of coding standards she's trying to enforce. You've referenced her management and called it bullshit, because you've assumed that she's doing absurd things that you've experienced on bad projects in the past.
Google wants you to test its apps
Google and Theory of Mind
http://www.wireless.att.com/about/disability-resources/text-...

"Customers will need to qualify for this plan by completing the disability certification forms."

Visual Voice mail:
"The visual voice mail interface allows a user to see who called without having to navigate a phone tree. This means a deaf or hard of hearing user wouldn't have to use a relay or other type of service to see who called and subsequently call them back."
http://www.i711.com/my711.php?tab=2&article=245
Why didn't you run the program on a jailbroken iphone? The performance characteristics/quirks/etc would be far more similar to the "official iphone" vs. the simulator
Google delayed their handset. No word about other carriers.

Problem is that many carriers are backtracking on their support for Android. Google hoped that the newly opened spectrum would be a fertile ground for Android and now it looks like Verizon will fight Google over that agreement with FCC. It will be a mess in any case.

If I were betting money on mobile market, I'd bet on Apple.
I've no idea how old 6th grade is (didn't go to US highschool), but wouldn't the OLPC, http://laptop.org , be ideal for a kid to learn programming? They looks at the code of all the applications running on the OLPC and change them on the fly.
[ Graphic Design ] - A Brief History of Grids
thanks everyone!
actually, I think this could work well but mysql doesn't seem to support it. Is there a way to manually create them? Thank you.
Marijuana Hotbed Retreats on Medicinal Use
This is one the biggest PR scores you can achieve in Canada. The Globe and Mail is one of the most reputable newspapers in the region.

That said, I have personal antipathy towards this particular newspaper for some shoddy political pieces and I look forward to the day old media is transformed with social attributes.
It seems to be the best option available to keep control over background processes... Let's just hope there is no notification limit or price to pay to notify...
Now, let's not quibble over minor missing features like "physical existence". Surely they can patch that after the initial release.

Instead, we should think about all the great things we can do with the imaginary Android phones that are available today. My older model is relatively limited, but I'm told that the new Android 3e^i, shipping in July, will cure cancer!
Causes Of Hair Loss: Why Some People Are More Prone To Hair Loss
Some of the major causes of hair loss among men are genetic predisposition towards balding, stress, hormonal imbalance, disease and advanced age. Genetic causes of hair loss and advanced age often lead to permanent balding while stress, disease and hormonal imbalance often cause temporary hair loss.
We needed a leader in cell phones. Until now, it was such a completely disjointed landscape that developing an app for phones was a walk in a field of mines. Companies were busy grabbing for land, but weren't working hard to create a great device. Maybe this is that start of focusing how to create awesome mobile applications for the masses.

I think we are witnessing a pivotable moment in history.
nginx seems to be the "in" server with the Rails crowd.

For some things lighttpd is easier to configure than Apache and if you're running a recent version there are neat things you can do with it's lua support, e.g. http://blog.innerfence.com/2008/05/31/presto-move-content-to...

Apache is probably better for people who want to worry about their app first and their infrastructure second. After your app is under control and you have time to worry about performance and configuration then you may want to look at the others.

Then there's also other servers like Squid and thttpd. If you don't know why you would want one of them then you're probably better off not thinking about them for now. To be honest I don't know what thttpd has going for it these days. A previous company I worked for standardized on it early on and then ended up adding so much to it they would have probably been better going with Apache.

Anyone here have any good reasons to go thttpd?
OTOH I appreciate what Wil is doing, have you every heard of the Stockdale Paradox? You might want to give it a quick read but here's a snippet for you just to give you an idea

"This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." The Stockdale Paradox, coined by Jim Collins in Good to Great (Collins, 2001).

nuff said.
Actually I thought this was a very un-evil thing for them to do, considering my experience with cell phone companies in the past. They could have said that you can't upgrade, or that upgrading would tack on two additional years. Instead they said your 2-year commitment will restart, which is pretty awesome I think.
No. The "inverse square root function" is the "square function."

What you want is a function that gives the inverse of a square root.

Mathematical terminology sucks.
Blogging--It's Good for You
"Buffett" is a brand name for financial media. This is a meaningless ploy to sell more Buffet-branded media, and it doesn't merit any rigorous scrutiny.
I want Apple pie.

Nothing to be "depressed" about. Happens all the time.

"Happens all the time" is a reason not to be depressed? I think "landscape changes" take place because someone/some group got tired of being depressed and actively sought some sort of change.

OTOH, this is an excellent example of the advantages of being small and nimble - you can adapt quickly while the big boys are stuck struggling.

What? The big boys are eating Apple pie because they, I assume, had an easier time getting to the table than the small and nimble.
Cool! I sat/stood next to Mike for much of Startup School. Very glad to hear the YC interview was successful for him!
This article may be interesting and all, but I can't figure out why the link is to:

http://cs6c.clearspring.com/r/484dbc934177dc66

with a url argument pointing to the newsweek article.
I personally have no problem (okay, some problem) with apple cornering the hardware market for smart phones. My bigger concern is if they corner the software market as well. The software from apple is more suited to the non-technical user (as most of their users are non-technical) and I would like to have my own software on the iPhone. That is why we have competition in the first place. To serve the market in the most efficient way possible. If a single company controlled the entire software space (not just OS), would we have software like emacs which is completely useless for anybody outside a technical field but a godsend to hackers?

Likewise, eventually apple will corner the hardware market in some platform and sell hardware that I do not like at which I will just have a problem with all parts of their products. Better not to let them monopolize the marketplace in the first place.
I don't think that's correct. I believe the first map is percent of total income in the county spent on gas. There's no median involved in that one.
You might try the "Professor and Pat" programmer newbies books:

http://professorandpat.org

I have had students as young as 10 make it through the programming newbies series of books on this site with a little help.
Yikes. The second one sounds like a passive-aggressive jab more than anything.
If you just want the big picture, this link is easier to skim:

http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-quakes-fas...
It's a little misleading to say bug fixes only--they're introducing a bunch of new core technologies (can't say anything else, since it's all under NDA).

And focussing on performance is a great idea--when has any company ever had the backbone to do that before, in a major software release?
Sun Pranks From the Past
It's the abundant use of Closures is what brought me to jQuery in the first place. Like you I favor this approach

$('div').draggable().create({Object hash}).draggableDestroy();

It may look awkward at first but I think it will a result into a new win in the long run. I'm having alot of trouble downloading the new library for some reason but can you do something like this?

$('div').draggable().create({Object hash},function(){ alert(Object Creation confirmed}; ).draggableDestroy();

I think the ability to launch a callback function on the creation of a object could open oppurtunities for better UI feel and responsiveness.
Veeery interesting. Clearspring appears to be a "widget network". The homepage suggests that I "use Clearspring widgets to Enhance SEO".

Is this a really transparent attempt to measure the clickthroughs from a news.YC link?

Original article link is: http://www.newsweek.com/id/140457
I learned to program around 5th grade (age nine) in Turbo Pascal. I found writing command line oriented programs pretty easy and straightforward. It wasn't hard to learn the concepts and write the code. If the girl is anything like I was, I'd suggest teaching a basic scripting language, (Perl, Python) on a CLI.

Personally, I'm against insulting a child's intelligence with a toy meant to baby them. When I learned to program, I built practical things I could use. When I hit toy languages, I got very frustrated by their limitedness.
In the US, children usually enter 1st grade at age 6. She should be about 11 or 12.
What about HTML + javascript? Very visual with instant feedback. You get the programming stuff with javascript (an under appreciated language) and introduce the concept of a structured document with HTML. You can use firebug as an intro to debuggers too.
Honestly, the beard thing has nothing to do with religion. Immigration officials, like all minimum wage dictators (and most people generally, unfortunately) still often have the mistaken impression that suit and tie = money, bearded and scruffy = poor. It is a whole other question why some of the worst paid people feel such a need to look down on others.
It's wrong to say technology is making thought more shallow. What's happening is the digestion of information is becoming a heavily collaborative process instead of a strictly personal one.
Martin Fowler on Syntactic Noise
No, it was reading that made people stupid. We just can't memorize epic poems the way we used to.
Major ISPs Agree to Block Sites/Usenet Groups Which Have Carried Child Pornography
PBwiki's hiring gimmick: "ITS [sic] PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME"
I wrote a page scraper for google some time back. Its actually easier to parse their pages than yahoo's imo. You will get blocked for hours if you intend to post hundreds of times a minute though.
Free Rails 2.1 Book
Is that a map of population density I see?
I'm of two minds.

On the one hand, the OP reminds me of the people who were complaining about Microsoft killing firewall vendors by including basic security features in the OS -- you should expect to be destroyed if your entire business model is dependent on the elephant sleeping peacefully on one side of the cage.

On the other hand, Apple isn't creating an ecosystem with the iPhone, so much as a different type of cage. If you play by their rules, you're extremely susceptible to being squished when the elephant gets restless.
Who owns your comments?
Brilliant evil really. Business genius I guess it could be.

How else can they convince people that < 100 bytes is worth 20cents? (SMS)
My editor of choice right now is gedit, and it's not meeting my needs

Well, there's your answer.

I'm an emacs user so I recommend emacs. I know of many smart vi users so I recommend vi. I'm a Mac user so I recommend Textmate, but only if you really prefer it over emacs or vi (which are open source and ubiquitous -- you'll probably never need to learn another text editor ever again).

Learn one of those. Whichever one you like best. O'Reilly's Learning GNU Emacs was a very good book for me when I was a beginner; there's probably a similar book for vi.
Another vote for Turbo Pascal! It was my first language as well and it really set a foundation for me. It was easy to pick C/C++, Java, etc. afterwards.

I think the kids must have genuine interest of computers in order to learn programming, or you have to somehow generate that interest. I picked up programming in high school, and I thought it was fascinating because I was already very familiar with computers. However, if I were to learn programming in 6th grade when I know nothing about it... I think I would be both confused and bored.

It may be a challenge for you if the kids aren't too familiar with computers (I guess it's doubtful in this age...)
I had a post on this same topic. Lots of good suggestions in the post... especially if you want to start from the perspective of making video games.

http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2007/08/28/programming-for-k...
They even teach about the Y combinator

This is great news. In his essays, pg has repeatedly expressed interest in the Y Combinator enabling younger people to start startups - why not 11 or 12 year olds? They can grow their service functionality and user base after school, present their software to investors on the weekends, pursue rounds of funding during school vacations, and either IPO or get acquired by the time they graduate high school. ;)

I jest, of course, but it's an interesting idea. Sort of a high-powered lemonade stand for entrepreneur youth. With respect to the real Y combinator, it may be a little challenging for those without a foothold in the field (such as children) because if you don't know what recursion is it can be hard to see what's so special about it.
Haha.. I actually LOL'ed at that.

.. I hope you're not being serious.
Louisgray.com Experiences 100% Uptime During WWDC Keynote
Read the whole thing... if you still can.
How can you assess that the epic poem was memorized (correctly) if you don't have a written record of the original version (I'll assume where there's reading there's writing)? Maybe it wasn't even epic at first.
Ask YC: Bitmap index on mysql?
I have a huge database of 10 million+ rows that I need to select from. I can fit the selection criteria and format the data into about 40 columns each with a small number of distinct values. In this way, complex selection queries would work great with a bitmap index. The only problem is that mysql doesn't seem to support them. Has anyone else had this problem? If so, what have you done? Do I need to get a new DBMS - or is there another way?
How about taking 60% of existing military budget and allocating that towards health care?

How about forcing hospitals to buy directly from manufacturers avoiding multi-tier nets of middlemen?

I am not even talking about private medical insurance companies and lawyers...
But they are tacking on an additional two years?
This will only teach them how ugly hacks were made, not how proper software should be.

Even now, when we have strict HTML and CSS2 and some decent browsers, I still get chills sometimes at how fugly this whole "web-development" is... These "technologies" weren't meant to be what we use them for.
There goes Apple's main motivation to try and prevent iPhones from being unlocked.
Open AIM Developers Can Now Make Money on their Applications
That article discussing the new company to which the founders of Versionate have gone. That is _not_ an article about Versionate, the company, nor their product. On the Internet, if you do nothing for your product, say nothing about the product or company for almost a year, that is effectively a dead company.
Two words: "Bell Labs".

I think the transistor might have had something to do with all of this innovation. Not to mention C++, wireless networking, and a sizeable fraction of the semiconductor process technology that makes modern electronics possible.
Not on top of the remainder of the 2 year contract from the last iPhone. (i.e. rather than extending your contract to 3 years, they just delete the old contract and create a new one that is 2 years)
UX Rule #2 - Always Link Your Header Logo
AT&T's Bet on the iPhone - Why $199?
Rating The Top 25 Newspaper Websites
No different than "giving away" phones for free if you get a 2-year plan. It's all a long term forecast. They'll make a lot off of the $200 down.
You're throwing all sorts of wrenches into the gears of capitalism there. Defense spending isn't us taking money and burning it. It's the government buying things from private enterprise (largely American) and employing troops (also American). Same with regulating hospital purchasing procedures, which the market should regulate itself. You can't know what would happen if you stop that cash flow or force it to go somewhere else, but you can be pretty certain it won't be good.

It's clear we can do more to help the poor get health care. Taking money from the rich and our corporations and paying for it is not the easy solution that a lot of people like to daydream about.
After domain squatting, here comes online identity squatting
It's a shame about the lack of Java support. I know Java gets a lot of criticism here, but it's still the only way to build cross-platform applications for mobile devices.
(I know you can build web apps and access them through the browser, but for certain use cases those just aren't adequate.)
This says a lot about American society -- that we no longer have enough of a civic life to promulgate manners. If there were more "real communities" with a sense of both tolerance and manners, there wouldn't be any need to avoid the "average" American. Such places exist in Europe. That they don't exist here indicates that it's a peculiarity of the US, and not of "real communities" in general.
They're not necessarily in opposition, but the only payment method that the universal health care supporters ever seem to come up with is "take it from the rich".
Specifically, he's claiming to know about the "smart lazy" type of people in the Smalltalk community. This makes me wonder about how many Smalltalk programmers he's actually met, and to what depth he spoke with them.
I think it really depends on just how gifted and motivated the student and teacher happen to be. I admit it probably would not work for most student/teacher combinations. But imagine understanding the Y combinator before the age of twelve! It would be beautiful. Lots of little kids can handle much more math and rigor than they get in traditional schooling.
Why users should be scared of Apple's new notification system
this is clearly dead on. yet one more way that apple knows all and will find a way to profit from it.
While I'm rarely accused of humility, I'm afraid that in this case I am too humble to imagine that by staying in Austin (or Houston, or Greenville, SC, or any other place I've lived) that I could have turned their economy and culture into one that is more friendly to entrepreneurs given my existing resources.

It sounds as though you are not hindered by any such weakness. Best of luck to you.
I was thinking the same thing.

int inverse_square_root(int x) { return x * x; } // patent pending
Yes, but the idea seems to be to introduce them to programming concepts: variables, if/else, do/while, etc. The advantage of HTML and javascript is that it's very easy to see how a button click causes some logic to execute. It also shows them that programming can be done in a simple text editor using only tools you already have at your disposal, by virtue of having nothing but a computer.
Ah good! my faith is restored. Good quote :)
bah. more hoops to jump through.

hey , here is another idea... how about an iphone api that 3rd party apps can call/write to, perhaps an internal message queue, that would schedule outgoing requests. kind of what apple is doing but in reverse.
ycombinator complies.