skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"""Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?"""

Haha

% uname -a

Darwin Galactica.local 9.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.3.0: Fri May 23 00:49:16 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.5.18~1/RELEASE_I386 i386

% uptime

19:08 up 23 days, 6 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.87 1.02 1.07
It's surprising because you might think Bill Gates would have some pull at his own company. Most of these issues he raises have been problems for years, and have gotten even worse in some cases!
My favorite lines:

"Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess."
Write software to help people communicate without being spied on by their government.
Write software to help people protect their privacy online.
Anybody played with SproutCore yet? First thoughts? Impressions?
Phil Greenspun's writings (e.g. http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/better-living) make me think that if you want your software to "make a difference" you should keep your mind focused on the actual difference you want to make instead of trying to just outdo whatever technical or business competition you may think you have.
UPS Figures out the "Right" way to make money
"Objective-J and SproutCore change all that. They allow you to create true desktop-like apps right inside the browser. "

Why would I not prefer a true desktop app right on my desktop?

Using Java and JNLP I can get an app the can be auto-updated (as a Web app would be) but takes advantage of an arguably more robust and speedier language (Java, perhaps by way of JRuby or Scala or Jython) with true desktop features.

It seems that the "Build Apps in a Browser with JavaScript" pitch is mainly a win for Web developers who only know JavaScript. It isn't clear what the benefits are to the end user.
Ask YC: Missed Opportunites at YC
Everyone knows that Reddit was a really successful Y Combinator Start Up.

Does anyone know of any companies that are really successful that applied, but were not accepted to Y Combinator?

It seems every VC has one, since Y Combinator makes its decisions before the product is built, one would imagine their job would be tougher.

Any insight?
My Name Is Google! Look Upon My AdPlanner, Ye Mighty, and Despair!
That's a good point; he shouldn't have to point things like this out. It should be obvious that you shouldn't clutter add/remove programs with "tests" and so on. (etc.)
Its good that these sort of issues are exposed, even if by Bill. The scary thing is that MS QA does not pick this stuff up.

As more of this stuff gets exposed this will hopefully make MS work harder. And as Apple is becoming a REAL contender, hopefully MS will pull their head out of their ass.
Looks like Bill Gates knows how to communicate his thoughts easily for the reader.

Neither I nor the recipient of the email would have read that entire thing if it was in a large paragraph block.
One quick question: the article said this project is from the same guys that started 8aweek (garbowza). Is this a second startup by a same person that was approved by YC, like kiko and justin.TV, or has it received the "Y Combinator Startup" brand because of the founder?

What I'm trying to say is: is this something that the YC guys have in mind when investing?
What about PageRank fraud? Are the links nofollow?
What about other places such as TechCrunch 40?
Confirmed, 22:23. Site is down.
I consistently see posts like this touting 'new web-app frameworks' and such, and always find a few important concepts about web apps mysteriously unmentioned:

1) Video.

Video on the web is king. Streaming video. Live video. Video comments. Video video video. None of these javascript-based solutions have an inherent solution for incorporating video into your web app, and therefore will always need to be augmented with a video technology for web-apps that require video.

2) Cross-browser compatibility

We're getting closer with javascript compatibility, but not there yet. Yes, many of these frameworks claim to hide the issue, but what about developers that want to develop components for the framework? A virtual machine that is consistent across all browsers (well, supported browsers) makes development much cleaner.

3) Flash IS Open-source.

Flash may not be truly 'open-source', but rarely is there a mention that Adobe has released the specifications for the specifications for both the .swf file format and the actionscript virtual machine, and are accepting feedback on both.

4) Rapid Development Environments

I admit to knowing little about how people are developing these apps in these languages, but doubt that the IDE's contain the feature-rich capabilities required for complex RIAs - things like code hinting across libraries, a walk-through debugger, visual drag & drop component interface, etc etc.

---

I am in no way suggesting that these new technologies are not exciting or an improvement - I just think the hype around them (http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/14/cocoa-for-windows-f...) is somewhat unsubstantiated. They still have a long way to go. But it's great to see some new competition creeping in on the big guys - good for the consumer!
Well... BG isn't the only one who get's frustrated with windows.

I gave up on that crap environment a long time ago and started using Mac's...... the only way to go. Definitely worth the extra money.
It really is Twitter for links, they even have the uptime record!
PG is right when he says your ideas change as you implement them! This started as an offshoot to 8aweek, believe it or not. We switched gears and started working on it exclusively near the end of our YC session.
You should probably detect browsers because the .xpi I just downloaded does nothing for Safari. There's nothing about the page that says you need FireFox.
Maybe because web-sites are actually software, and are capable of delivering magnitudes more value than any magazine/newspaper is capable of?
Many of these problems are still prevalent in Microsoft. Confusing processes and the like.

So, it's not Gates. Gates is a good guy and he sounds like he gets it. Is it the corporate structure then?
UPDATE: Posted Yet is now using the Digg api to find stories that it hasn't encountered using it's crawler. It caches to limit hits to the digg api.
Fairly weak article, details please?
Well, I'd try again.. if it was up ;)
It also cures cluster headaches.
It just so happens, this is my playground. I'm working on a suite of business tools for independent musicians and small labels to manage their online presence, marketing efforts and digital distribution.

It will eventually be here: www.kinimat.com, but I'm in the early stages at the moment. Hope to launch a beta sometime in September, if all goes well. I'm working on this full-time so it should be do-able.

I'm a little rusty on the tech side of things (c/c++ ten years ago! yikes.) but Python and Django are now my friends.

Fortunately, I won't be short of beta testers; my entire extended family are independent musicians. I've already got a huge network of potential customers, hopefully that will give me a leg up.

I'm an electronic musician/dj myself, designer by education, and hacker by hobby. This project is tailor made for me. Now I just need to get'er done.

-Peter
I don't know of any so far. There are bound to be eventually, though.
2 days ago, I was behind the worst passenger ever in the expert line. It took him 2 minutes to dump all his crap into 5 trays and then 6 attempts to make it through the xray machine. I think he's still looking for his shoes.

Security theater. They named that right.
Nope, you're not alone. The only way I'll ever do this is if I run my own server and am fully responsible for _my_ information. That way any loss / snoops are entirely my own fault.

As far as the O/S transitioning to the web in 5 years, it's simply not going to happen, so I wouldn't worry about it =).

Oh, and desktop PCs are not on the way out, this "laptop taking over the desktop" claim has been around for as long as I can remember. Desktops will continue to get smaller and more efficient, but they'll never lose their price to performance edge over laptops.
Duh, Bill:

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=download+moviemaker

I thought I'd try to install it to see if they streamlined it, but it turns out it was part of SP2. I guess I never needed to know about it...
Yeah, on reflection it is a bit much to have the flag link appear everywhere, so I made it appear only on that item's page.
> Is it the corporate structure then?

Yeah, probably. However, it's hard to keep a big company like Microsoft under one person's control. Look at Apple's success; they have a tiny product line (compared to Microsoft), and so Jobs can make sure everything is good.
I don't think "voting permanency == more thought before voting" is true for most people. I was saying it was true in my case and even so, it was a (relatively) long time before I noticed that unvoting was missing and that I still use votes as bookmarks, just less often than before. Plus it seems like an inefficient way to cut down on votes for bad links compared to being able to take back a mistaken vote.

More importantly, although I've reduced my usage of votes as bookmarking, I don't see why that's a good thing. The implied counter example is that if people could unvote, it would be a giant safety net and unleash a tidal wave of spurious votes, with people clicking on stories willy nilly because their actions were reversable. This doesn't sound true - more realistic scenarios are that there'd be a slight bump in votes overall or even a reduction of "bad" votes by allowing people to correct misclicks.

Thinking about my usage patterns, I bet a lot of people realize they can't take back their votes, use votes as bookmarks anyway and are simply annoyed at not being able to trim down their "saved" list by removing outdated/mistaken/irrelevant links. The lack of an undo feature doesn't change most people's actions unless they notice in advance that it's missing because the action they're about to perform is something really important, like paying for something or deleting their writing.

A big chunk of the problem may simply be the verbiage and language of the profile page. I can see how newish people (like myself) misunderstand voting for saving because votes are displayed as "Saved: ##" rather than "Votes: ##" instead. Saving implies bookmarking, as well as unsaving. Being able to "unvote" sounds unnatural, it sounds like what happened to Gore in Florida and nobody would expect to take back their participation in a poll. Whereas "unsaving" doesn't sound weird and is a routine operation.
The question is, what does that take away?

Simplicity.
Ahh, finally.

And wow, yes. Very nice! A few suggestions: It'd be nice if I could, y'know.. collapse the sidebar.
Equivalent macs don't really cost extra money.
Have you found a way to write software that has a real, tangible, positive net effect on society?

Yes. Everything I do.

I (along with many others) write lots of software to help small and midsize businesses compete more effectively. They, in turn, provide value to their customers, jobs for their employees, and pay taxes to their communities. If that's not a "real, tangible, positive net effect on society", I don't know what is.

Not everyone has to find a cure for disease or discover how to provide clean air and water for the masses. You don't have to change the whole world, just a little piece of it.

A mentor once suggested I think of it like a football team. Some pass, some catch, some run, some block, and some tackle. All you have to do is "your job" well, for the team "the rest of us" to succeed.

Please don't be such an "idealist" that you never find your calling. Just pick something close enough and go for it.

The real heroes are in the pits every day, helping others do their thing. You oughta join them.
How To Write An Ebook And Make MASSIVE Money Fast Doing It
Okay, yesterday I mentioned I would be revealing a killer new resource to you that would show you the secrets to making MASSIVE money with your own ebook fast, whether you wrote it or not. Well I’m here today to deliver on that promise and am sure you’ll love the NEW information within this ebook.
I'm not sure Steve Jobs uses email. I think he uses ninjas.
Because of the extra value of the system just working?
Some heavy usage on a new app. Sorry about that :). Should be good now.
I hope they get this right. I've been waiting for this for years.
Guy Kawasaki Answers The Proust Questionnaire
I thought you folks would like this interview we did of Guy Kawasaki.
I Want A Programmable Sky, But Without The Sky Part
World is home to more than 10 million millionaires
Galaxy map hints at fractal universe
Easy. Hit the X in the upper right of the sidebar or the green icon we put in the toolbar.

If the sidebar's close you'll still get notifications in the form of growls. If you don't like the growls those can be disabled. Toggle Tools->Socialbrowse->Receive Message Popups

Thanks for trying us out!
Does Your Gmail Suck Too?
Should be good now. Sorry about that.
no, they just plain don't. they all come with isights and firewire and DVD burners and such. comparisons i've seen with equivalent PCs are roughly equal.

if you want lots of RAM or a larger harddrive, you probably have to buy that separately to not get overcharged, though.
Modding this up.

From the original post:

working in business software typically means writing code to line a few peoples' pockets...

You're talking like a person for whom earning money is some kind of option. In most of the world, "lining your pockets" is a necessary precondition for things like "eating" and "paying rent".

Perhaps you need to get a job in a factory. (Not that this is always an easy thing to do, in the 21st-century USA.) I used to work in a factory, as part of an engineering team that was desperately trying to get a brand-new class of product to market. We were acutely aware that, if our product turned out to be unmanufacturable, everyone in our division -- from the local senior management to the hundreds of hard-working blue-collar folks who ran, fixed, and cleaned the equipment on the night shift -- was at risk of being laid off. In fact, just to inspire us, many of the folks at our local site got laid off anyway, thanks to the dotcom bust and the resulting slump in telecom.

I'm proud of the software I wrote for that project. Not because it was particularly elegant -- which it was not -- but because it helped keep the fabs alive, the products alive, the company alive, and hundreds of American and Malaysian workers alive.
Can Twitter become ubiquitous?
I submitted this earlier today, but I think software like the package mentioned in this article meets your criteria: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226883
That made a huge difference. This looks much better now.
too many cooks in the kitchen. MS needs a strong product management voice ala Jobs/Schiller to cut through the crap and insist on a coherent, consistent, and comprehensible product vision and user experience.
There's also a huge install base in Internet cafes in China and Korea. College kids spend a huge amount of time socializing online there, which is where the major marketing push is made.
Arch Linux 2008.06: Overlord
Google Maps Easter Egg
Sometimes I can't help but wonder if Gates saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to preserve his legacy.
OK -- I spec'd a Dell XPS M150 just now to be equivalent to the $2500 Macbook Pro. I got a better than equivalent config for $1678 -- it has 4GB of RAM, would be $1578 with 2GB of RAM.

It comes with a built-in 2MP webcam and bluetooth and N-wireless. It has HDMI rather than DVI out. A bluray burner is an option, as is a 1920x1080 screen. The only thing it is missing is firewire and I don't think anyone can argue that Firefire is worth $900, except people that need Firewire. The backlit keyboard is nice and generally indicative of the Apple touch, I guess, but that adds $900.

At one point, it was definitely true that you couldn't get a laptop with all the extras in a Mac. But this Dell Computer really seems equivalent. Perhaps not in build quality.
Seems neat at first try.

I'd be more likely to keep it installed if it didn't uglify (for example) the news.yc main page. Can you make the icons detect what they're next to so that the text doesn't get all mis-spaced? (FF3, Vista, in case it's not-always).
I guess it varies by when and what you compare. e.g.

http://www.macworld.com/article/49403/2006/02/pricecompariso...

has the macbook pro doing well.

or this

http://kb.wisc.edu/showroom/page.php?id=3045

has 150 more for macbook (not pro). they seem to have firewire and isight missing on the pc, and a modem missing on the mac.

-------

i just did a comparison of imac vs dell all-in-one.

imac = 1300 (add 1gig of ram)

the dell is 1300, but i need to change stuff like including a video card, which it doesn't look like i can do (dell's customization page sucks). anyway, apple seems to win.

the macbook pro isn't really for price-sensitive people, anyway. it's the imac, macbook, or maybe mini that i'd expect to price compare OK or well.
That popup that comes up every time somebody shares a link is annoying and I can't figure out how to turn it off.
What's up with all the negative reaction here, hackers? Of all people we should be giving the benenfit of the doubt, not denying it. Eh?
You can open Hacker News in firefox sidebar for the same functionality :)
I agree, it was a nice user story.

But, I'm damn sure that all the recipients would have carefully read every word of that email, even if it had been written in one large leetspeek paragraph.
Really? I've got no interest in counting them all up, but I thought Apple would have more products than Microsoft.
I love configuring things and messing with hardware options and such in my free time! How is this better than Ubuntu? (Other than the incredible learning experience you'd get from installing this a few times)
Ask YC: Recommend a good Managed Host
We are Coders not System Admins, and all we need is a basic PHP/Apache/Sendmail server. We went with a Fully Managed VPS, because we figured it was worth the extra dough for the Managed option so an expert Admin could do the initial setup and most importantly fix things when they break.

We went with Acunett's Managed VPS based on recommendations from WebHostingTalk. Unfortunately, their service can be agonizingly slow at times ( > 48 hours for simple issues), and they have a frustrating habit of fixing things without telling us: a) why X suddenly went down after months of uptime, and b) what they're going to do to prevent X from occurring again.

We're in Alpha now but I cannot imagine having to put up with this poor response-time with paying customers. Surely there's a way to get better service than this without hiring our own sysadmin? Any advice or recommendations?
It comes down to the priorities.

Microsoft enjoys near monopoly hold on the end-user market (give or take) and they didn't arrive at this position by providing great end-user experience. So there's basically no need for them to improve it -> low priority.

Don't fix what's ain't broken (what's sort of working) approach.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227122
The endowment effect was controversial for years. The idea that a squishy, irrational bit of human behaviour could affect the cold, clean and rational world of markets was a challenge to neoclassical economists. Their assumption had always been that individuals act to maximise their welfare (the defining characteristic of economic man, or Homo economicus).

I see this kind of thing over and over again, but I don't believe it.

What I don't believe is that anyone really ever thought that Homo Economicus was really the way that humans behave, rather than a massive simplification of the spherical-cow variety aimed at making economics tractable.

To a first approximation, people will act to maximise their own benefit. To a second approximation, they're blithering idiots.
Django quotes the user input by default, but definitely still worth running. Good Find.

Another for you. http://www.cirt.net/nikto2
I just realized something. When first using 8aweek, I noticed that it would track my restricted sites (say, Hacker News), but not the sites linked from my restricted sites (which, with sites like HN, are the real time-sucks). I remember asking about this, and the 8aweek guys said they were working on tracking those links, too. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that's how they got started on Socialbrowse.
Symbian is a spin-off off Psion, a British company founded by Brit Potter.
Evri Launches Semantic Content Discovery Engine In Private Beta
Actually you're right about meebo. But I've used several other "Desktop on the web" websites or sites that use this paradigm and generally I think there must be another way because that doesn't really work for me.

Now imagine if those kinds of idea of decentralization were used in a modern OS for certain configurations and stuff...
I had the same thought when I read this. I used to turn off my computer every night, until I switched from Windows (98) to Linux. In grad school, my roommate and I had uptime contests with our Linux boxes, which he won with something like 6 months of uptime. The most common causes of lost uptime were electrical power outages and moving apartments.

Now, like you, I mainly run OS X, but it's on a laptop, which wreaks havoc with my uptime. Ah, well. I guess you can't have it all.
Dog: make me a sandwich

Cat: what? make it yourself.

Dog: sudo make me a sandwich

Cat: ok.
im not sure I dig the little pop-ups and want them to go away.
after I turn off the popups I can focus on trying this out.
Here we go again. Idiots that are downmodding because they don't agree, while the parent has taken time to present useful information.

I use a Mac, I love my Mac, but I get that some people dig Windows. Woot! It's just a damn operating system, be glad you didn't lose an arm today.
I recommend listening to Ajaxian's podcast with SproutCore's creator

http://ajaxian.com/archives/audible-ajax-episode-27-sproutco...

it's good (though technical) listen.
It makes me nervous that I didn't see it as a rant as all. Am I that callous?

To me, it looks like something constructive that every CEO should do -- spend time dealing with their product like their customers do, and make sure the troops know when it isn't up to standards.
Microsoft manages interns better than Google
Interview with a (very) young leader
Gates' big send-off - shares surprises, letdowns, morsels from early Microsoft days
Up-to-date news on everything business
There's a startup Nimbit ( http://www.nimbit.com ) that's doing something similar.
Charging Your Phone… Forget It
All those days of batteries running out, frantically trying to find a charger, worse, no charger at all…. Are passé. Meet the new-gen water-powered phones. Samsung has been the first company so far to introduce a micro-fuel powered phone.
It is kind of suprising how much disconnected he is with the flagship product of his company.

He should have been able to be a lot more specific and detalied about what was going on, and not complain in generic terms "downloaded more stuff, this popup here, that thing there".

It seems that back then he was not involved at all with the development of windows. It feels like comming from somebody that just started using it, and not somebody that build it (or gave guidance on building it).
And this was in 2003, so Windows XP had been out for about two years.
Ahhh... I was referring to the painting on the left, the image of the library. Methinks you were referring to the painting on the right?