skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Microsoft Stupidity or: Why I learned to stop worrying and love the GPL
I recently was asked to upgrade some machines for a Medical Center I do some consulting for.

I bought a few Dell Power Edges - that came preloaded with Windows Server 2003 Small Business - because I needed the uptime/reliability of server hardware and they needed some proprietary Windows only apps.

When I was setting the computers up I had removed all the extraneous services (Active Directory, DNS Server, Exchange Server, etc), for security and performance reasons - and all was good.

Well, a week later I get frantic calls that all the servers mysteriously shutdown. After examining the event log I see a notice that:
"The server was shut down because it did not comply with the EULA. For more information, contact Microsoft."

In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft decided to shutdown my servers, with no notice, a week later because I had uninstalled the Active Directory server.
See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555087 for details. In what possible world did someone think this was a good idea?

And that is why I now only use open source software whenever possible. I'll gladly pay for it - I just don't want this kind of stupidity and user antagonism in my software.

This is exactly like me buying a car and then it shutting down on the highway after a week, because I haven't been using the cup holders enough.
Hackers have always tended to be interested in the affairs of our government, at least in my observation. At the very least, it's nice to have a heads up that America may be a bit late paying the rent next month. ;-)
Does the new spending that he has proposed exceed the cuts that he's proposed plus the expected revenue from any tax increases? (He's on record supporting a rate increase that he admits leads to lower revenues.)
Icahn Sends Yahoo Another Love Letter.  Yahoo Says, Keep Dreaming.
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/amazon.com
Still down.

https://amazon.com still works.
Something was going on yesterday I was getting error screens all over the site.
I attended Startup Weekend in West Lafayette (we were the first team to actually launch within the weekend) and San Francisco (we were the only team to do a non-profit app), and I can't recommend it enough.

The actual startups created were worthless, but fun. And above all, it was an amazing networking opportunity: I lined up work for over six months now on two different (good) startups based on the contacts I made at Startup Weekend.

One thing though -- the original organizer who set up the SWs I went to (Andrew Hyde) is no longer the organizer. He's started working for TechStars and has handed the reigns over to a guy named Raymond.
Thank you, you are correct
"Summary: You should stop listening to your customers if there is a new, bigger market of new customers out there who want something different from the customers you already have."

I didn't read this article, but the HBS version had the point that the time to switch over to the new process is when the trajectory of the new process along the original variable puts it above the level that the satisficers want, not above the old process. So in other words you should adopt the new hard drive process when the trajectory puts the storage capacity ahead of what the satisficers want, not ahead of where the storage capacity of the old HD process will be. That is the point where the customers will switch over to the new process for the other benefits it provides.

This graph and the paragraph underneath explains it better: http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/teradyne/clay.html
"I prefer cubicles to open space."

You'd think so.

I'm just remembering the projects where we got the most done. Which were also the most fun (go figure).

One was a 20 x 15 room with 4 desks and a white board.

Another was one big table with 4 of us facing each other. (When I had to be alone, I went out to my RV in the parking lot.)

Another was a conference room with a long table and a bunch of laptops.

We used to call these "war rooms".

(Why is it when we really have to get something done, we throw each other together in a "war room". The rest of the time, we sit in soulless offices and cubicles?)
I wonder what the % increase was?
You missed Leo Laporte!
I went on a bit of a Keyboard Quest earlier this year...

1) Started with a Microsoft Natural USB keyboard - one of the split ones. Good, but not great keyfeel, and lots of typing on my MBP 17" got me used to typing on a standard keyboard again... I felt like going back to mechanical keyswitches, so...

2) Moved to an original IBM Model M and a PS/2 adapter.. Great, except for the immediately apparent fact that there was no Windows/Command key, thereby making it incredibly useless for a Mac power user.

3) Moved to a Griffin iMate and Apple Extended Keyboard II - The Nimitz. Worked fine, but the key feel was a little flimsy compared to the Model M.

4) Moved to a Griffin iMate and Apple Extended Keyboard I - The USS Enterprise. Liked the key feel a little better, but still didn't have that Model M feel to it.

5) Bought a USB Unicomp Customizer. Key feel of the Model M, with the Windows/Command key to keep me happy. It doesn't have the same internal metal frame, which does make it feel rather lighter when picking it up and perhaps slightly flimsier, but nothing you'd notice when actually typing on it... as near as I can tell, the keyswitches themselves are identical.

Thumbs up on the Unicomp Customizer, but the old-fashioned Apple keyboards are very nice as well... anything with mechanical keyswitches will feel far better than a new-fangled membrane keyboard. Well worth the $60 IMHO.
snake! they just need a way to pause it...
Move Over, AJAX, ARAX Is Here - Asynchronous Ruby and XML
AWS services are all up. Just checked.
Although it's not super-high, they have been paying 10-11 cents for the past few quarters:

http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chd...;
A YC startup: http://insoshi.com/
It's back down.
yes it would be interesting to live in house shaped like a banana
"Forever" referring in this case to the length of the development cycle.
Should Digg Take Microsoft's Money?
i think the criticism on techcrunch is valid and its something i hate about url shrinkers. it hides what i'm clicking through to, and thats the #1 reason i don't use them and as a rule, don't click on them if i can help it.

clever idea though.
I used Google Docs and Zoho extensively, and both are very fun, but they still are so dang slow it is really unbearable. For example, copy/paste & undo/redo are just tedious. Why is having a nice (and much faster) piece of software running as a binary on your own machine seen as becoming obsolete? It is a much better experience in terms of word processing and especially spreadsheets.
It looks as if they're done with it if they're satisfied at this point.

What would they announce in the future, that it made its first complete working replicated copy, oh, but more complete than last time?
I was thinking more of the semi-circle rooms that are much more difficult to make with traditional (and straight) wooden beams.
S3 is still working. I don't know what's up with Amazon, but it seems to be just their storefront.
My EC2 instances are all up. It's specific to Amazon's main site.
I'm using a dell AT101W that I found deep within my organizations storage...It's not quite a model M but it has the buckling springs and that distinctive clacking when i type. everyone in my office knows when i'm typing, don't know whether or not that is good...
I see your point. However, even if a URL seems innocent it might still lead you to unwanted material.

The service is geared for the 100s of thousands of people that currently use shrinkers.

Our site still provides a benefit to a visitor even if they don't actively participate in promoting a story. Much like reddit or digg.

Hope that helps.
This is true but you have to differentiate yourself from the incumbents pretty significantly to gain any traction. A YouTube clone isn't going to get anywhere, but a video sharing site that managed to solve a major problem of YouTube might.

Facebook first became popular by managing to be less tacky than MySpace. It has since caught up and we now know better than to trust a social networking site to show anything like dignity.
"as long as you have a nice bathroom, canteen, etc."

Screwed.
Top advice from an outside perspective. Would you listen to my advice about how to live your life?
The mistake people make is thinking that Microsoft needs to be the dominant player in a market to make their participation in it worthwhile. They're perfectly happy to have their hand in any cookie jar that poses massive future revenue, even if they're late to the party (as they generally are).
Amazing how long it's been down for, I would figure this to be something that they'd work to resolve nearly immediately.
Exactly what I was thinking...

I looked at the list of materials and there was no way they were making half the parts (chips, transistors, metal rods).
Hmm, not the error message you want to see.
Http/1.1 Service Unavailable
for
http://www.amazon.com/
Same DOM errors, different browser interpretations
I went to a recent AWS talk by one of their evangelists, where they mentioned that AWS is separate from amazon.com, in terms of the hardware used.
Richard Feynman a h4x0r? He's one of the greatest physicist but I didn't think he knew anything about computer hackers.
My ec2 instances are up.
Not showing my comment on submission but amazon.com showing up as:

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

Edit: ops see> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=210986
It would be interesting to know what kind of failover mechanisms they follow and the reasons for the outage, and how much money they lost due to this?
With the use of a few patterns and the use of specialized components, only the structure of a building need be printed out. Wiring, upstream plumbing, and ventilation can be handled using centralized units and robots that can crawl passageways while stringing tubing or cabling. Already centralized units are used with single family homes and the upstream plumbing. All hot and cold water is distributed by directly from a central unit connected to all of the taps by a single branchless synthetic hose.
yeah, its being worked on as we speak.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=210986
Hey Firefox - Let Us Pick Our Own Search Engine
he did, look here.
http://www.longnow.org/views/essays/articles/ArtFeynman.php
The Monolithic Dome folks will manufacture a custom-designed 'airform' which can then be sprayed with urethane insulation, hung with rebar, and then sprayed with gunnite concrete.

http://static.monolithic.com/

The building's shell can be just about any shape that can be inflated.
Well according to returns last year, about $503/revenue per second. $15.9 billion last year.
Feynman worked for Thinking Machines on the hardware design for the Connection Machine, as well as how to use the machine to solve some problems in scientific computing.
Apple pushing iPhone developers to charge for would-be free apps
AWS status updates here:

http://status.aws.amazon.com/
Flash sucks balls because it only works well where Adobe wants it to work well, as opposed to openly accepted standards like HTML/CSS that work good enough on nearly every computer in operation.
Looking for cofounder/hacker for MMO
I have a growing space MMORPG with paying users and positive cash flow. Last year I decided to really go all out on it and refocused my efforts more on marketing which has worked wonders. I now have way more paying users than I can handle and need another programmer who is expert in networking/DB/back end C++ programming to take the lead in scaling things up. I have a gorgeous new graphics engine that will be ready to launch in a couple months and I would love to be able to handle the accompanying influx of new players. I would prefer someone looking for mostly equity and a cofounder mentality to help me grow this thing.

Please email me at Jeff at StarSonata dot com if you have any interest.
Ask YC: Mobile application developers- use GetJar?
I'm trying to better understand the mobile application distribution ecosystem, which GetJar.com and other sites play in. It seems to me like GetJar is the leader of this space (any opinions about that?) and I'm hoping to find some more information about it.

Do any mobile application developers on the Java, Flash Lite, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, or Palm platforms have experience using this site to distribute and test beta versions of your application?
If so, what type of experience have you had with this site, and have you paid for premium spots or used their Pay Per Download program? How valuable is the beta testing community, and is the feedback they offer any good?

Are there any other mobile app distribution sites you would recommend, that have either similar or superior download rates to GetJar?

Thanks a lot, I've been digging but haven't been able to find too much information about this topic.
I'm not it's accurate to give a $ revenue for second. For me personally, if I wanted to buy something and the site didn't work. I would just come back in an hour; not sure how others would change their behavior.
Oh certainly, that was just a figure. I suspect people will just come back. Still a fascinating number (btw, pulled from Reddit.com, forgot to credit originally).
It's time to put Amazon on AWS then?!?
I get "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable", but if I refresh the page in my browser it comes right up. Click on a link? "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable". Weird.
http://amazon.ca also works. It's only the .com that's down.
"he strongest day of holiday sales for Amazon was December 10th, on which customers ordered 62.5 items pers second for a total of 5.4 million items. On its peak shipping day, the retailer shipped products internationally to more than 200 countries, moving more than 3.9 million shipments."
from:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16762

- although its from the same spam article that said they sold 17 wiis a second (when they were in stock) in 2007 ...

I would say every 10 minutes cost ...

78mm for a quarter in 07, (4 months = 120 day) 78mm/120 = 650k/day = 27k/hour = $450/sec ... they are losing big would love to hear the story behind it.
Even if you can't fully build a RepRap with itself, the ability to quickly and inexpensively prototype custom plastic moulds is a huge breakthrough for the garage hobbyist.
Ballmer Tells the Washington Post That Print is Toast
Maybe you shouldn't have had Small Business Server preinstalled on them if you didn't want all the features it comes with. You know they sell Windows Server 2003 Standard with none of those features you mentioned installed by default, right? Pretty sure it's cheaper than SBS too.
on that page it says "we are having issues with aws.amazon.com" so the domain itself (including subdomains) are in trouble...

- Im predicting the https: will break soon (Currently working) as people find out that it is working ...

TC just said its been down for over an hour ...huge, huge money...
To be honest, the only mobile application distribution site which will likely matter in a year will be the iPhone AppStore. Its likely to go live this month. Google has mentioned they will come out with their own app distribution site for Android but it is unclear when this will be or how much impact it will have.

The iPhone is going global and with the carrier subsidies, it will be cheap. My suggestion is to focus your efforts there.
This blog reminds me of why I've overlooked a lot of new technologies. Most people miss the relevance of new things because they don't understand the technology, but sometimes too much background can work against you as well.

Browsers: Browsers didn't seem like a big deal to me when the first hit the scene. Ok, yeah, so you download a file over a network and display it in a client program. Ok, so it has a markup language. Ok, there's a way to send commands (cgi) to influence which file is sent. Nothing new so far.

Blogs: OK, RSS is cool, but what else is new here? It's a way to post to a website, right?

Facebook: Ok, so you can search a bunch of web pages and create connections. Sounds nice. Didn't those guys from "the globe" fail at this during the first boom?

Humans: Ok, you have an idea for a really smart primate.? They use tools? Ok, you mean like using a twig to eat ants. Oh, they make tools, you mean like a crow? I just don't see where you're going with this ;)

etc, etc. Gotta keep an open mind.
Our AWS web app (EC2 + S3) has been running fine without interruption or delay.
I feel embarrassed to say that I didn't actually realize that labels automatically associated with form elements such that you could click on them...

I usually used labels anyway, but mainly because they were semantically correct.
As the article says, true open source hardware (like OGP) is pointless, so they're using the term to mean "documented hardware".
http://gizmodo.com/5012983/security-cam-footage-of-cubicle-r...
I wouldn't trust that.

http://www.reddit.com/info/6mbec/comments/c049fo7
Wasn't Stross the one who wrote about using Python scripts to generate mazes of shell companies? I suspect you need some pretty interesting fraud to impress him.
For me the quality of a keyboard is based entirely on how well my wrists and fingers deal with typing on it. I have been using a Kinesis keyboard for nearly a year and it makes my finger pain nearly go away. When I use my laptop keyboard instead, it comes back within a few days -- it's just immensely more comfortable on the Kinesis.

It's $300, but the cost-benefit analysis was easy for me to make: if I don't buy it, I either can't type (not really an option for me), or I end up spending much more than that on surgery or something insane.

I don't know what technology is behind the springs in the keys, but it has two important characteristics for my fingers -- it doesn't require much force to press, and I can type without my fingers "hitting bottom" (the keys travel quite far, 4mm according to their website, and they activate at 2mm). Furthermore, the keyboard makes a little electronic 'click' when the key activates, providing that auditory feedback.
I have and have continued working on it with three others. Skribit - SW Atlanta November 2007. Things are going well and we served 3.9M pviews this past month (granted most are widget serves..)

http://skribit.com
As much as choice is a good thing, I don't think that the default should change from being Google. Mozilla gets a huge amount of money from Google for directing searches there. The money they make by doing this lets this great open source browser keep making headway.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/23/google-continues-to-ban...

If you want a default search other than Google, you can certainly change it. Just a quick trip to about:config.

http://www.firefoxfacts.com/2008/01/13/change-default-search...
Alternate title:

"Balmer to Post: You're Toast"
This is unbelievably creepy.
First, i wonder about the ethics of scientists that do the study overseas because it's illegal here... It seems like the moral equivalent of waterboarding.

Second, no data... this is no better than someone saying jesus loves you. Maybe true, maybe not, but no actual knowledge is produced.

This article is the opposite of hacker news.
I'm going to have to say I agree with the author, Mozilla should take the moral high ground here and not default to Google but ask the user during install or the first time they use the search box.

Not including Live.com seems somewhat petty on their part (or greedy if they have deals with Y! too)
Why don't they go the full distance and build their own Amazon affiliate ID into Amazon searches? I'm sure that will help fund their open source browser project even better.

/sarcasm
Twitter Integration for your Website
he is really a smart man, but reminds me too much of my old GM that had me write a paper for 6 hours to spend $130 on advertising. (seems like a microsoft kind of issue)...

media as we know it is always changing; but so is everything else cars, tv's, change is constant. of course its going to change and perhaps even turn upside down.. but to say there will be no print media - will our computers not have printers? of any sort? ... will graffiti artist no longer tag walls?
Disqus explains what happened this morning (or how to handle an outage)
My 2 cents:

Scott Gu, Silverlight, Mesh, MVC, the DLR - if MS can get wide developer adoption (I don't see any reason why they won't..all are quite compelling technologies) they will still be a force to be reckon with.

MS's problem is they are battling on soo many fronts - it's all about market share these days since the web game is moving towards a commodity play now and will be with the "cloud" services in the next few years.

What will happen is the classic coke vs pepsi, molson vs labatt battles we've seen - each just fighting for a few percantage of market share more (which translates into billions).

MS will never die, neither will IBM. They will continue to morph in new ways to increase shareholder value. Google will face the same challenges once the web advertising game slows down (which won't happen for at least 5 years IMO but there is still weakness).

Pick your poison, MS has a massive warchest of cash and is dying to spend it, they if anything, will be a major disruptor in the web game.
Why a Keynote clone? The implementation is beautiful, but I don't see why you'd choose an app that relies on full screen mode and control via remotes.
FTA:

"If this is about using Silverlight to host client-side browser scripting in Ruby, it's definitely an appealing notion, but the problem will always be about Silverlight being a Microsoft technology."

I couldn't agree more.
Jesus christ what's the key travel there? 1cm or so?
Despite the economic downturn ... student entrepreneurship is in rude health
Ok, its hard to resist posting this here:
http://www.breitbart.tv/html/108653.html

Its a cubicle working going beserk, caught on tape, destroying part of the office.
That's OK if you trust the site as much as you trust your email provider. There's still a mild risk that they'll store data that they obtained when they logged in to screen-scrape for contacts and that data will leak. It's probably worse in gmail and other services that show potentially confidential snippets of emails as soon as you log in.
Why sarcasm? Who is anyone to tell an OSS project how to raise money with the software they are giving away free?
I've been using it since the 2.5 days as well, when it came on two floppies and a stone tablet. I agree, mostly, but 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 Win were crap.
Sometimes I come to buy.com and it's closed, so I turn away and go to amazon. Eventually, I stopped going to buy.com altogether.
let nth = Nothing in
whatStringPlease js

shouldn't that be:

let nth = Nothing in
whatStringPlease nth

Otherwise, it's a fascinating read.
The Evolution of Pre-Launch Gmail In Screenshots
I know a bit about this.

The hard part about construction is that there are around 300 semi-tiny tasks involved in building a house. You either need a very general purpose robot or many specialized bots. The former doesn't exist and the latter is too expensive. Humans are just too good.

This technology makes sense, but doesn't do everything. You still need plumbing, wiring, fixtures, flooring, etc.

This probably solves 100 of the 300 tasks. It's a really interesting problem though.
These Boxes May Hold a New Apple Product
Mozilla make tens of millions of dollars out of that Google search box every year. That's some expensive moral high ground you're asking for there!
I think it's easy to justify only including the top two search engines, or at least the search engines with >10% market share (1), for the sake of keeping the choices uncluttered.

By this article's logic, should they also include barnesandnoble.com, since they include amazon, and ubid.com since they include ebay?

1. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156451
That's why it's called "moral high ground" instead of "most profitable way to sell out".
How to Comment About Your Company on Blog Posts Without Being Spammy