skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Having three different IM clients on a phone pre-installed and unremovable? Yeah, that's the kind of shit Apple doesn't do.

Because Apple wants you to use SMS instead of IM, making the carriers a boatload of money for no reason.

That is exactly the kind of shit Apple does.
Yes. If you opt-in to YouTube HTML5 beta you can watch many videos in WebM already.
And Polish has the added benefit of being completely impossible to pronounce for stupid foreigners. I remember practicing to say Hello ("Cześć") for half an evening...
Norton Disk Doctor to the rescue! Even if it couldn't save the data, you could reuse the floppy. They were expensive at the time.

Out of curiosity, I just googled for prices and it seems prices stayed about the same since I bought the last pack.
A few years back an ex-girlfriend of mine did an erasmus year over in Spain and I ended up making friends with a whole bunch of people that I could barely converse with. They've always been very impressed at far my Spanish has come in IM, thank you babel fish.
This reminds me that even us twenty-somethings may one day be made every bit as clumsy and baffled by whatever comes up 30 years from now as our own proverbial mothers are today...
Ask HN: Your Ideal Day?
What would your ideal average day look like?

Like what would you do when you didn't have to do anything at all?

p.s. why put off solving till tomorrow what can be solved today?
printf("Directories scanned: %g", $directory_count);

That's precisely the problem the article addresses :) You could just about get away with it in English where the only number that won't work is 1, but what about Polish where "Directories" will take a different form if the number ends in a 2, 3 or a 4 but isn't 12, 13 or 14?
Quite fascinating how some design decisions tend to stick due to technical or other reasons. We will probably still run Windows 2020 on the C-drive. Sometimes the reason is backwards compatiblity, other times it's something that requires a huge redesign of an entire system.

But, most of the time I think it's because people simply think that this is the way things are supposed to be. One example is how long it took before Auto-ISO became an option on DSLRs.

In all cases there are opportunities for a startup to be disruptive. So, keep looking for those C-drives!
They had something similair for 5 1/4" floppies to go from 360k to 720k.

Get off my lawn.
Wish list for AppleTV 3
In Java, I would use FreeMarker as template language for all sorts of things, including i18n, rather than the typical sprintf-like syntax, because FM templates can contain arbitrary complex code, but the simple template cases work too.
In 2008, Pixar's creative director John Lasseter explained the secret of their success: "The people who work here are doing what they've wanted to do their whole lives." [1]

This is great advice that can be applied to any type of work, particularly entrepreneurial start-up activity. If you're in it just for the money and don't enjoy what you do, chances are your little start-up venture will not succeed.

It also didn't hurt that Ed and Alvy could stand up to their bosses. In my experience, one feature that separates good manages from bad is the willingness to shield their team from the crap thrown by upper management.

[1] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1813964,00....
Maybe it was a viagra reference instead? :-)
Apple fought a bitter, public battle with the MPEG-LA over MPEG 4 part 2 video and the crazy licence fees they were planning to charge for it (and AAC) a good few years back. They refused to release Quicktime 6 until the licence fee structure was changed to allow more cost free usage. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because uneconomical fees could (and did) open the door to competitors like VP6 which, via Flash, become the dominant web format for a while. Could have been pre-Daring Fireball though. (edit: I checked, the argument was summer 2002, DF started that fall).
And Polish has the added benefit of being completely impossible to pronounce for stupid foreigners

Hrm, not sure I entirely agree with you there, and I'm both stupid and living as a foreigner in Poland :) The writing system is fantastic in that regard, you can look at a word and have a very good idea of how it should sound.

For me, there's only one really difficult sound and that's ń: the best description I've heard of it is the first N in onion. But it's still a bugger to pronounce and hear the difference between, say, koń (horse) and koni (horses).
But there is this social element to designing an app on OS X that you don't get elsewhere. People will critcise you if your app 'feels wrong' or 'feels un-mac-like'.

This is why writing software for the mac is harder than the PC. On the PC (or especially Linux) you can just do whatever you like, whatever makes sense to you.

But here's the thing, the reason that the Mac feels so 'intuitive' is because - if you're doing it right - you have to implement six different ways to do anything. That means that the second or third way someone tries to do something will work, so it feels instant. On the PC if you try 20 ways to do something, and it doesn't work, you feel frustrated.

This is a lot more work. It is much easier on the PC because if you can't be arsed supporting say... drag and drop, no one is going to call you on it. On the Mac, you will be pilloried. Saying it's not fair on people because of their hard work is to commit two errors:

(1) to not understand Mac culture, where developers are expected to put in the extra effort

(2) to falsely label something as hard work when they clearly haven't done their homework, and have taken shortcuts to avoid putting in the real hard work

If I ask someone to cut my lawn, and they go over it with a roller in order to flatten it because they can't be arsed and it's just the same... I will not praise them for their ingenuity or hard work.

They haven't finished the task.

Also, there is a third point

(3) to commit the error of thinking that the software is finished and set in stone forever

Software is change. But how will they know to change if no one points out to them the error of their ways?
Just as an interesting datapoint, SanDisk (the number two "mp3" player manufacturer the last time I checked) has dropped AAC support from some of their recent models, while still supporting free formats like Vorbis and FLAC, as well patented ones like as mp3 and WMA. Obviously the fees can have an impact even on big names.
One might wonder why the first two letters are for floppy and not HDD. If you follow the drive letters, going from A to higher alphabets generally give you evolution of technology (ignoring network map Z:).

A: - floppy
C:/D: - HDD
E: - CD/DVD
F: - External Storage
My first stab at being an entrepreneur was buying normal 3.5" disks, stamping holes in them and selling them as pristine 3.5" HD disks. Let's just say it was less successful than I'd hoped.
You're belittling RTFHIG like a "WASP mom" for belittling app authors like a "Chinese mom".

There's more than one way to show attitude, and politeness is one of them. It's an affectation, no different from RTFHIG's all-lowercase ironic outrage.
Beautiful History Of Amritsar Golden Temple Photos And Pictures Collections
This is why I'm scared to localize any of my applications. I'm in a good position where one of my web apps is used by lots of South Americans and Spanish people, and a couple of users have offered to translate it for free into their local tongue. Which is great... but I'm terrified about the potential amount of work when it comes to "You have X [nouns] set up" in table headings and the like.
I've never heard of this band before, but I like what I hear.
GNU gettext has something like this, see http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/gettext/Plural-form... for instance. Not sure if the article referenced this, I got the feeling it didn't since it started talking about replacing gettext pretty early on.
FLV is a container format, not a codec.
My aunt did one better: she used a scissors to reformat a 5.25" disk as a 3.5" one. (Lesson learned: be excessively cautious when giving instructions.)
Actually, programming isn't the only thing with the innocence problem. I think he same thing happens with almost every creative work. From playing music to writing to designing sites, most have experienced similar feelings in other projects. The only solution is to Press on, keep working, and realize that your only way to create great stuff is to keep creating. That's what I keep having to tell myself lately.

Press on ... Don't give up! And try to keep the innocent excitement as long as possible ;)
Ask HN: Please review my idea and holding page
I'm looking to launch http://www.birthdaysudoku.com/ in a couple of weeks.

I've learned a lot from this community and I'd be very grateful for comments on my holding page, and any other thoughts you may have.

I'm also hoping that posting this will force me into launching this month.
It's a great method for start using HTML5 <video>, cross platform - http://videojs.com/
Google are not making the iPhone YouTube app, Apple are.
Clickable link: http://www.birthdaysudoku.com/
I think we, engineers, can help HR folks ask important questions that would prevent bad candidates from wasting our time as well as thinking up crazy ideas that could help lure good candidates.

Yesterday, I suggested going EA-style and hand out laptop stickers on an upcoming hacker-ish convention with things like

''.join([chr(c) for c in [119, 101, 39, 114, 101, 32, 104, 105, 114, 105, 110, 103]])

and

(dolist (x (mapcar #'code-char '(119 101 39 114 101 32 104 105 114 105 110 103))) (princ x))

I am somewhat unsure about the Lisp thing, so I asked it to be passed through a real lisper before hitting the printer.
Square hole punches cost money. Scissors are already lying around the house. Sure, the results weren't pretty, but then pretty was not the stated goal.

This was for 5 1/4" floppies, naturally. By the time 3 1/2" was the standard, I had a job and could simply requisition them as needed.
Hope you caught the Tom Rossi interview on Mixergy :)
I started out with an Amiga before moving to the PC. The Amiga (while still dealing with device-roots) at least had a more flexible system.

fd0: was floppy 1. If you had an additional drive, that would be fd1: etc. The best part was that you could also access devices by file-system label, so if you needed to make sure you were accessing not only a floppy, but the device labelled "WorkbenchExtras" you would simply do WorkbenchExtras:

Needless to say, this made multi-disk tasks & scripting rather pleasant, easy and cut out lots of boilerplate and checking.

It was a nice system and I kinda miss it.

Edit: df0: was floppy 1. dh0: was first harddrive, etc. Not that in changes much.
You can teach art. They have schools for it. Hitler went to one...
Similar immediate click, I think it's a good choice of images.
Re: Third, nobody knows if anything is immune from unknown-by-definition patents, and MPEG-LA does not protect against them either:

> Q: Are all AVC essential patents included?

> A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx

However, as far as known patents go, VP8 is clean. I'm pretty sure Google put incredible effort in analysing the risk before making themselves troll target.

The codec is very close to violating many patents, but with "strange omissions" (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377) that make it non-infringing. IANAL, but that sounds like great strategy — there are unlikely to be two different 99% overlapping patents (that would survive re-examination and apply to VP8 only), and you can be sure you're not infringing the known one.

If you look at list of supporters:

http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/

That's patent troll dream. Everyone to sue, from small fish to test claims on to biggest pockets to drain. And yet, no trolls appeared.
Yep, or vice versa, put a bit of tape over the hole to make disks writable that weren't intended to be. Good times!
Look, you asked for a citation and I spent, apparently wasted, my time getting you two. Looking at income, education, percentage of children born out of wedlock, incarceration rates, and a number of other metrics, those of asian are doing very well compared to whites, blacks, and latinos.

If you want to pick your pet metric and explain why asians actually aren't doing so well, then you should provide citations and make your case.
You're simplifying things. Please remember that in many languages the form of the numeral depends not only on the number, but also on what it is you're counting. And you don't always know that if you're deep inside a library.

In general, there is no easy way out — and you have to allow for exceptions. Please see my other comment, about an architectural takeaway.
How long before a question like "My DVD wont play in this old computers DVD player?"?
Fink, MacPorts, Homebrew, etc.

That's part of the problem IME. I want to install something, OK, I have to check Fink, it's not there, let's check macports, ah it's there. But it depends on something else, so it needs to download that. I have that installed with fink, but it needs its own version in it's own place (/usr/local, vs. /opt IIRC). It's not as easy and seamless as having one place you can get all your software.

Apt also has a much larger number of software available than fink and macports.
The whole point of that workaround is that I'm making it obviously computer-lingo. "Directories scanned: 0" and "Directories scanned: 1" are not grammatically correct, but they sound OK and get the point across without sounding broken like "I found 1 directories".
Like this, linked from the article: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/12/
This makes me remember elementary school and saving stuff on floppies, and that i have Sango fighter on floppies in a drawer somewhere. They really do not make games as good as they were before!
Russian Founded Qik Bought by Skype for $150 Million
There are too many "this makes me feel old" in here. And in SO, for that matter. You snob folks...
Well, it does get quite a lot of international traffic. For example, a lot of my colleages (here in the Netherlands) are using it. The site is very famous with programmers.

I think that the uptake from the large, non-English countries is less because, for example, in my experience, Russians usually prefer Russian sites to ask their questions,
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Thug life!

Pump and dump. No excuse.
Aw, man. I turned 32 on Friday, which is 224 in developer years, and have spent the last couple of days consoling myself that everything's fine, I'm not past it, etc etc. And now this. Thank you, Hacker News. Thank you so much. I am as old as dust and time and the fabric of the universe. Now I know how all those COBOL programmers felt.
Same here and I'm not much older than you.

Worse, my current computer has an A:\ drive. I don't know why I keep a 3.5" floppy drive around, exactly, because I haven't actually put a floppy in there in years, but I do have one.

And that's nothing compared to the 8088 that's collecting dust. It has two floppy drives, a 10 MB (yes, MB, not GB) hard drive, a CGA card & monitor, a math coprocessor and as much RAM as it can hold.

I don't know if it still works, though. It did work roughly a decade ago, which is the last time it was actually turned on.

Pity we got rid of the Apple ][ GS back in the 90s. It might be a collector's item by now.
The whole point of that workaround is that I'm making it obviously computer-lingo

Thanks for the clarification. My point was that a workaround in English may not be a workaround in every other language in the world.
Mashape ou l’histoire d’un jeune Italien
That could become the single most important thing Twitter has caused to change.
If its any consolation I am only 24 and felt a bit old as well knowing entirely what was coming after clicking the link.

Lets just say whoever posted the question is a newb :)
For work I have weekly text files, where I write down what I'm doing.

Originally this was to help me compile the weekly timesheets that my (then) employer required.

But the notes saved me from a lawsuit and I know find it useful for keeping notes on why I'm building things a particular way (especially when coupled with grep/ack/Spotlight).

For personal stuff, I have an A5 hardback book and a fountain pen - nothing beats it.
There is a saying which summarizes everything- "Best employment is self employment"
Norton Disk Doctor to the rescue! Even if it couldn't save the data, you could reuse the floppy.

Not only reuse but be pleasantly surprised yet irritated at the same time because suddenly the disk was magically usable again!
Seriously, why does anyone care what this Apple fanboy thinks?
The past ain't what it used to be.
In 20 years people won't understand CDs either, or why people would carry around plastic as big as 3 iPods to play 12 songs.
HN isn't just a Californian site. Many of us live in Australia, or have lived.
Descriptivists and Prescriptivists

http://jacobian.org/writing/descriptivists-and-prescriptivis...
In 20 years, people won't understand iPods, or why you would have to physically carry around data anyway.
Very interesting take. I think I might have been creepy, not in the sense that I was clingy or nagging (I have no interest in joining another marketing shit-hole anyway) but because I might have come off as a know it all.

The whole time I was looking at their sites I was making mental notes of what is broken, and tallying up all the ways they're doing something wrong. I think some of that contempt must have come out in my correspondence, however brief (just 2 emails from me.)
I have become very suspicious of caffeine as a stimulant.

For starters, with coffee there is the one-two punch that you get a sugar rush and then later on the caffeine kicks in. (I've read somewhere that caffeine takes about 6 hours to kick in, so if you're perking up straight away it is perhaps not the caffeine per se)

If you don't take sugar and it is the caffeine kicking in, it may be doing so in a particularly horrible and insidious way, that it is (mildly) addictive, and the perking up is simply the absence of the withdrawal symptoms (that old story about banging your head on a brick wall - it feels so good when you stop).

Anecdotally, something I found really interesting is that I play much better chess when I'm off caffeine than when I'm on.

Oh sure, on caffeine you feel all perky and smart and as if your brain is running ten times faster (or whatever), but I think what is actually happening is that we just get bored faster. On caffeine I might only think one or two moves ahead and then pick the moves that my intuition tells me. But off caffeine I can actually 'slow down' enough to play noticeably better, I can think an extra couple of moves ahead over and above the "do something now!!!" mode that caffeine puts me in.

If this is right, then caffeine makes me stupider, because I rush in, and can't sit still to do the deep thinking that really high quality thought and software design require.
Obligatory:

http://thejokeshop.org/2008/12/as-useful-as-a-cobol-programm...
I must be a ancient, because I remember having to identify which side of the floppy I wanted to use!

On the BBC Micro, the first drive had sides 0 and 2; the second drive had sides 1 and 3. And I was lucky to have two drives. I only saw HDs on magazines.
Last time I checked it was capped at roughly $5million per year and had been increasing by 10% (the maximum allowed) per year, every year since the licensing began (though in two-year steps, i.e. just over 20% each two years).

I have seen multiple people claim that it's only allowed to go up by 10% every five years. You obviously are claiming a different scheme again. Just the fact that there's so much confusion about price is in itself a mark against this method of creating (so-called) RAND standards.
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And yet the rate of innovation was glacial. Hours aren't always the answer, they might be the problem.
If someone told me they worked for my major, and very successful competitor, I would pause to ask them "doing what".

The guys didn't even bother.
Fear of errors (especially compiler errors)

That programmer should be really innocent. ;)
Pretty good. Did they do an analysis of the NYT archives to ensure that their First Three Words Last Three Words technique is "good enough"?
I have to agree with you. Only now I got to play with an Amiga (a 500 became part of my collection) and it's really very sophisticated for the time it was released.

Just to imagine most today's PCs deal with cruft that dates back to the CP/M days is... disgusting.

Apple's ProDOS also had something like that - the volumes were named and you accessed files with /VOLUMENAME/FILE.DAT paths.
The Colossal Cave Adventure as a literate program by Don Knuth
One of my friends who teaches 11-16 year-olds recently had to explain to one of her classes what camera film was, and how it was used.
If you ever get the money to advertise, get this on the Dave Ramsey show. I believe he costs a pretty penny to hawk things, but this is right up his street (especially if you have a mode for 'no allowance' and go 'straight commission'). Clark Howard would love this too.
Because MsDos, at least in its early versions, could not dynamically assign new drive letters to newly inserted disks. So the workaround, which is still with us years later in Windows 7, was to reserve at boot time the first two letters (A/B) for drives with removable media (i.e., floppy drives, there were no usb flash dongles in those days).
Adobe announced that Flash is going to support WebM. When that happens, landscape will look like this:

1) All desktop browsers play WebM natively or via Flash/OS codec.
2) (perhaps no change, as I don't expect GoogleTV to go anywhere)
3) Majority of HTML5 implementations, and also market-share wise, support only VP8/Theora (with Google flipping the switch it's already the case)

In that landscape it might make sense to encode WebM for desktop and low-res H.264 for mobiles.
I finally threw away my Model II 8-inch floppies a few years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Okona-GfhR-TRS-80.jpg

One day you'll have to take your kids to a museum to show them a CRT monitor (and they will have to take their kids to a museum to show them an incandescent light bulb).
If you find this concept interesting there is a related short story by Jorge Luis Borges called "The Library of Babel" written in 1941.
You can read it here:

http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.htm...

It doesn't deal with the generation of all the books/data, but with a fictional scenario where they are available to human beings (plus the universe is practically a giant library). I found it a fun and intriguing thought experiment/narration.

(edit) The mathematics behind the story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel#Value_as_a...
If its any consolation I am only 22 and felt a bit old as well knowing entirely what was coming after clicking the link.
Like I said, I understand and appreciate that arbitrary functions are required for a complete solution. I just think that this kind of matching would be a solution for a subset of problems (languages) large enough to make it useful.