skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I see little that is unique or insightful in this essay.

"Google builds services like Google Maps, Gmail and Docs and gives them away for free"...

...because they entered a market where maps, email, and "docs" were free. Google didn't blaze a trail of free services, but they were bound to continue it.

Nonetheless, they've managed to get lots of businesses to subscribe to the pay services though.

"This is important for Google because while Google isn’t licensing Android"

Aside from the fact that while the core Android image -- which is GPLd btw -- is free, Google's premium applications are not. Note that many low end devices don't have Google's applications. Google is also trying to monetize their leading edge advantage with the Nexus One originally, and now the Nexus S.

"And Google conveniently owns one of the largest mobile advertising providers, Admob. "

Yeah, so does Apple. How do you like them Apples? Apple is very heavily invested and involved in the advertising and the media sales market. Any illusion that Apple is a pure player just trying to honestly sell an electronic device and that's the conclusion of the transaction should be demolished the moment you hook it up to iTunes. The original purchase is merely the first of many monetizations of the customer.

"Google is building Android not so they can make great mobile devices"

Oh well if you say so.

"For example, Android’s market may not be terrible in comparison to Apple’s App Store for paid applications just because Google hasn’t yet finished it; rather, discouraging paid applications on the Android platform is in Google’s interest. "

Conspiracy theory. Google is simply really bad at some things. See Google Checkout -- which was actually a major contributor to the Market's problems -- and Google's retail efforts with the Nexus One. The Android Market is not great, but neither is it particularly terrible, and it has been rapidly improving.

"This would squeeze out space for Apple in the mass market, forcing them into the high-end of the market, where people are willing to pay higher prices for a better device and experience."

This is my favorite bit. Apple is a mass consumer electronics company, with products at every price point, usually representing the value option. This sort of casual allusion that it is the premium option is utter bunk, and instantly reveals the bias of the speaker. If Android succeeds, via competition, in putting price pressure on smartphones, you can be certain that Apple will be pushing down to the lower options just as quickly. Anyone who thinks otherwise has absolutely no business sense.

Android is really a story about Linux. When people miss the Linux part of the equation -- and the decisions that are bound by it -- they instantly lose focus on some of the givens of the platform.
Don't quote me on the exact syntax (I do know the syntax for iptables):

ipfw add allow tcp from site-a.com to any http;
ipfw add allow tcp from site-b.com to any http;
ipfw add allow tcp from site-c.com to any http;
ipfw add deny ip from any to any;
sleep $HOWEVERLONG;
ipfw flush;

I guess the other way would be simply to do ifconfig up when you need a site and take it down again. I don't tend to use such methods because if I'm really susceptible to distraction something else will distract me anyway. I think that self-discipline could be better (when the urge comes to load twitter, just don't do it).
Nobody promised to write drivers for hardware that's not released. If you are a big corporation deploying Sandy Bridge servers (highly unlikely - nobody is in a big hurry to deploy on servers with chips launched yesterday) you certainly have the human resources required to grab a kernel, grab the pieces and assemble it all together. Unless I misread the announcements, everything will be available by next Monday.
Herbie Hancock jams with his Fairlight CMI while Quincy Jones looks on
3 Tips to Improve Your Blog’s Usability
I think part of having the academic background is that it gives you the confidence to be casual about certain problems. When Google first demonstrated search suggestions, someone I know who is definitely a good programmer was very amazed that that it was possible to make something like that run fast enough, across the internet, no less.

But, if you have learned a little about indexing and data structures, you'll think "Yeah, you can probably generate k suggestions in something like O(k log n), and you can probably predict the next few characters that will be typed in, so that a lot of data could be cached on the client. This doesn't seem impossible", even if you can't come up with the exact algorithm right then and there.

That means you can design something like suggest or instant without getting stuck on whether it would run fast enough.

Or, conversely if the problem calls for solving an NP-hard problem, then you should get stuck on whether it can run fast enough and whether there is some way to approximate the answer instead. (Did anyone else check to see if you could get Google Maps to solve Traveling Salesman when they first added intermediate destinations?)
You pose the question as if those two things were contradictory, but aren't they really synonymous? I think everyone expects that the majority of computers sold in the next few years will be sold in the form of smartphones and tablets, and ARM dominates those markets.
Very relevant: http://crushingbastards.org/blog/2011/01/04/i-am-a-us-air-fo...
GA becomes much closer to realtime once you realize that you do not see data for today simply because it is not selected by default. Select today and you'll see data with 2-4 hour lag only.
You can smell their fear.

As long as I can buy an ARM-based netbook subsidized by crapware/adware on Windows 8 and replace the thing with a decent OS, I'll be happy.

Sadly, I won't be able to brag about using a Windows-proof computer anymore...

Now, seriously, Windows failed once on RISC platforms because software vendors were not interested in supporting them. Can an ARM-based Windows desktop function when the only software it runs is Windows? And, perhaps, Office? Would a Windows user live without 3rd-party software? Would all 3rd-parties rush to support Windows on ARM? I doubt it.

And, of course, it reminds me of FUD maneuvers of the past, like Windows for Pen Computing. It may well be designed to prevent people from seriously considering moving to Android (or classic Linux) on ARM-based platforms "because Windows 8 will support ARM and is just around the corner". Seen it before. And it worked, BTW.
There is a lot of room for internal growth. For example:

"Places is currently available in a few select countries with many more on the way."

I'm sure this isn't the only significant new development that is not rolled out around the world. With Facebook rolling out Places, they are also building out their global sales team.

However growth isn't everything. The cost of growth is important too! And we don't know what that is.
If they expect mobile platforms keep growing and to keep not using x86, they can expect both of those by the same token.
Show HN: my latest project, a webapp for coaches
After several failed projects, I finally have decided to work in a niche where I have some domain knowledge. It's a web app for coaches to organize and track their athletes' training schedules.

The site is http://www.coachulous.com

I'm psyched about having gotten an MVP out the door in about two weeks of evening and weekend work, but I'm still very much groping in terms of market focus. The app is meant to be flexible enough that it could be used by life coaches, personal trainers, etc. as well as freelance triathlon coaches. However, I'm not sure that trying to address the market of "people who do coach-like things" is 1. feasible or 2. a good idea. I'm tempted to focus on triathlon coaches, because that's an area I know.

I'd love your feedback!
While we're on the topic, you shouldn't have a semicolon in that last sentence; the right side is not an independent clause.
Bob Moog Intros the Fairlight CMI
Does anything like this exist for Windows?
Maybe not country specific but at least culture specific. There has to be some sense of shared experience for a generation or else its a pointless term.
Attack of the Mobile Browsers
I was running a dynamic dns updater with some settings on my router and everything, and you can definitely do that. ProxyLocal is just so easy though - you just type "proxylocal" and it gives you a url that works, regardless of your ip address, router settings, etc. The other advantage is then you don't have to permanently open a route to your dev box just to let people check something out.
This shouldn't be an issue, but I'm afraid it is: it still looks like a late-90s OS. That should be a top priority for the Haiku project.
If this is just so that you can generate a small income on the side, I suggest you take a look at some CMS packages. Basically, they allow you to create a site without needing to know any programming. Here are a few good, simple to use CMS's: Umbraco, Movable Type, TYPO3, Plone, Radiant, Symphony. And there are many more to choose from.

If you are really interested in learning how to code however, I second the other suggestions made in the thread. Figure out what you want to build and build it using Google and other web-based tutorials.
Yeah, and I'd be willing to bet their lawyers don't even know how the back-end software works. Idiots.
Yeah, get some lens flare and transparent windows in there!
Crushing levels of skepticism and a poor impression of their rancid consumer software?
Parts one [1], two [2], three [3], and four [4]. And the whole story [5].

----

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf3Ich9lT2w&feature=relat...

[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydxFc6o64WA&feature=relat...

[3]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO8bwRd64_g&feature=relat...

[4]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOwNncaGH4c&feature=relat...

[5]: http://www.anerd.com/fairlight/fairlightstory.htm
According to Wikipedia, it is made from starch, sugar beets, sugar cane, and molasses.

And starch quite often is corn starch.

As for the chemically pure aspect, I don't know enough to comment. No one really understands what causes allergies and no one can point out what aspect of corn causes it. For example, she also has a milk allergy (not intolerance), but does not have issues with milk that has been cooked, such as creme anglaise for making ice cream. Something with cooking the milk changes it. As for how this is related to corn, who knows. What part of corn caused the allergy? If you don't know, how do you know it was removed in the process of making MSG?
I would add wordpress to your CMS list. It's more than just a blogging platform and has a ton of plugins and themes available.

It might even be possible to build what the OP is looking to build in wordpress using themes + plugins.
IWatchedYourHack.org - honeypot logs, etc
I wrote this "service" and the answer to why I did it is three-fold. 1. I had used 2 services, blogger and shopify, which didn't support pointing naked domain names. 2. It took all of 10 minutes and 3. I somehow landed on an epic domain name.

The long answer is that I run a platform for high-availability sites. I don't want to manage the client's DNS and I want to have the flexibility to instantly move sites from server to server. The answer, is to setup a CNAME and have the clients point their primary CNAME (www) to a host where you control the DNS.

www.example.com CNAME to example.myhostingservice.com. example.myhostingservice.com would then either point to an IP address or a round-robin DNS setup.

That leaves the problem of the naked domain. Traditionally you'd point the naked domain to the Primary IP address and then do some httpd.conf magic to redirect the naked to the www (or vice versa). However this does not solve the problem of what happens if the underlying IP address changes.

Pointing the naked domain to a dedicated IP address which is not associated with where the site is hosted removes the problem of what would happen if you change IPs quickly.
If they power it off, using the same exploits as the iPhone jailbreaks (and using forensic tools by Jonathan Zdziarski; http://twitter.com/JZDZIARSKI) they can easily recover the data.

Before the boot-up ROM used on the iPhone was exploited, though, this was much more difficult (if not impossible).
Two Borders Execs (CIO & General Counsel) Resign
I couldn't fit it into the title, but B&N (major Borders Bookstore competitor) issued a statement as well, pointing out that if Borders is offered special terms, those same terms should be available to other bookstores as well.
actually you ought to have selected n number of tests beforehand, rather than see the fluke and, after the fact, "continue testing" until it goes away.

the very moment you peek, your data is tainted from future testing.
Or, you know, text smoothing. Antialiasing. Silly stuff like that ;)
How to Add Bookmarks to PDF on Mac OS X?
Bookmarks help you remember where to read, highlight and review in a PDF file. AnyBizSoft PDF Editor for Mac helps you easily add PDF bookmarks to PDF on Mac OS X.
How does the Android app store suck? And how is it amazing that there's an Android market at all--?

Maybe this used to be the case. Speaking as a user of and developer for both iOS and Android devices, I think this argument is a little outdated. It just doesn't bear out in practice. I think this has become a mantra that iOS developers and users tell themselves because they think, wrongly, that Android poses a threat to them. It does not. Not to them.

Anyway, it's usually easier to get an app released for Android, by far, than to release the equivalent app for iOS. Everything from the development language to the approval process conspires to make this so. (If you think you can get an Objective C app to market quicker than an equivalent programmer can get a Java app to market, you're either a genius or you're in for a rude awakening. Add App Store woes on top of that. Arbitrary bannings. And the like. These things matter. They cost you time and energy. And they're much more prevalent on iOS than Android.)

What about the user being able to find, purchase, and download apps? It's painless on Android, and it's painless on iOS.

Number of apps? There you may have a point. Android doesn't have the number of apps that iPhone has - merely tens of thousands rather than a hundred or two. And counting.

Fragmentation. Eh. There's less of this than you might think. Developing for Android is very similar to developing for a PC. You're never 100% sure about the hardware you're running on, and yet, most PC applications manage to run just fine. This is what hardware abstraction is all about. Android does an excellent job of it, and most of the time, you program without worrying about the hardware.

So while I think the author has some interesting observations about Google's larger strategy, the "Android app store is broken" argument doesn't really hold water anymore, at least not for me. If anything, Android apps are a breath of fresh air.
You would need to know how to code =)
Just as an additional comment; we just started sponsoring very small Starcraft2 tournaments and we are seeing excellent returns in clicks but also and hopefully in brand and loyalty.

There really is something to say for finding, building and participating in community.
We're using ElasticSearch [1] and finding it really nice to work with.

It's basically Lucene with a nice JSON/RESTful interface and distributed out of the box.

Unlike most other Lucene based systems that I've played with it allows you to get started without having to define your schema upfront, so you can just chuck data at it and worry about field types later.

It's under constant development and the community is really helpful.

[1] - http://www.elasticsearch.com/
Apocryphal.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/where.asp
Keep an eye on HN Jobs - there will be a flood of listings in the coming weeks/months (there's already one).

And Quora as well - here's one to start with - http://www.quora.com/Startup-Internships/Which-startups-will...

If you are looking for startup internships, you can pretty much find one at almost all of them these days (in the Bay Area and probably NYC). Hit up www.startuply.com for a huge list of startups. Find ones you like, look into their jobs page or email someone there. The more proactive you are, the better your chances.

I assume you are complaining about ATL? Even then, I find it hard to believe it's difficult to find companies here. Go to some networking events, I am sure you will find plenty of them in Tech Square :-)
I agree with this 100% If anyone wants to implement something like this on a server which you have control over, here is the mod_rewrite line which enables this "service":

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
Almost certainly a response to the 600 gigabyte Intel SSDs that should be on sale any day now.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3965/intels-3rd-generation-x25...
ha, it looked wrong at the time, thank you :)
I marked yes & no, because the best way to avoid the truth is to be ambiguous. I'd rather be described as unclear than dishonest.
No it's not. If you don't know about magic numbers you don't know how the BIOS loads the kernel into memory. Period.
No actual information about how they're going to do it. Or, for that matter, what they're going to do (something involving community-owned last-mile infrastructure?). On the other hand, a very large number of buzzwords.
Having tried Haiku, I like it a lot. I stopped using it, though, because it's really hard to program in it: most languages aren't supported, and others have large math errors.
Show me a parent that sets up complicated rules for themselves and I'll show you a parent that's trying to rationalize.

Who said anything about complex rules?

My opinion is that there are a lot of factors, a lot of subtle trade-offs, and figuring out how you actually want to raise your children is not at all simple. Anyone who thinks it is is just repeating what their parents did. (This is not necessarily bad if you like the way that you were raised.)

However in daily life the rules you wind up with should be pretty simple - simple enough that your children readily understand them. But the reasoning behind those rules is another matter entirely.
UDP does not guarantee connections. I wonder why it was done with this instead of a reliable multicast protocol (0mq comes to mind).
Facebook Deal Spurs Inquiry
Re: "other example" - SQLite is a pretty good example of an OpenSource (Hell, public domain) project requiring a CA: http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

And, if you work for a company, they, too require a snail mail copyright release.
I agree. Get Michael Bay to add the explosions, and everyone bring out your 3D glasses.
Ask HN: How to step up my coding skills?
My current job is lucrative but very unsatisfying, so I want to change careers and become a software developer. I understand that skilled developers are in high demand, but I have never written a program longer than about 1000 lines. What should I do over the next 6-12 months to become a "skilled developer"? Would it be possible to learn enough in that time so that I could pass a coding interview? I've been running Linux for years and know it inside and out, and I double majored in math and physics. I would love to work for a tech startup, or an established company like Google.
I believe this article presents a biased and misleading interpretation of the events in question. In particular, attributing any action to "Google" as a corporate entity is inaccurate, and apparently Microsoft had access to the tool and bug reports for six months prior to its public release.
Define enough? Also what's your $/GB ratio threshold? You can already get ssd's for $1-2/GB. That's the same price as platter based storage was around 8 years ago. At this point I'd say that SSD's are reasonable enough for a boot disk or mobile use at least.
Apache HTTP Server widens market-share lead over Microsoft IIS
I'm using sphinx. Works a treat.
Latest market share stats:

Apache - 59.4%
Microsoft - 22.2%
Nginx - 7.0%
Google web server (mostly Blogger) - 5.9%
Lighttpd - 0.5%
Krulwich is also the clown who had his ass handed to him by none other than Neil Armstrong last month:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/12/08/131910930/neil-...
Not in the grand scheme of things.

Yahoo! Market Cap: 22B. Revenue: 6.5B. Employees: 13,900
Facebook valuation: 50B. Revenue: 2B. Employees: > 1,300

OK, so the costs of running Facebook from a pure employee point of view are smaller than Yahoo. And their cost for traffic is certainly lower (as the YHOO numbers include revenue distributed to ad carriers).

But does the 2B revenue really justify a 50B valuation?
Mac Desktop Apps Said To Price At Low Cost, High Volume Model
Oops, yeah, meant to say "chicken-fried steak" (also "country-fried steak")
Awww, hackers who hate what they call “eye candy”. It warms my heart!
while you may not support the company and it's methods, the point they are trying to make is more honorable: making the dmca more complicated is pointless.
Yes, but until both parties initial the changes, a modified contract is still just a counter-offer, right?
Can an ARM-based Windows desktop function when the only software it runs is Windows?

They've done a half-decent enough job with Windows 7 to get people to move from XP, even when app support is patchy. Offer some compatibility, so that people don't rule out switching, but not enough compatibility to allow the software makers to remain complacent... That's the trick.

They have a ton of resources, and some half-decent developers, maybe they'll introduce an x86 compatibility layer.
> Windows failed on RISC because when x86 proved too competitive

I remember distinctly how much faster Alpha-based workstations were in comparison to its Pentium Pro cousins. Unfortunately, I couldn't run many programs I had to (Office, for instance, ran under emulation, at Pentium-like speeds). I could run SQL Server and pretty much that was it. And notepad. And Minesweeper.

I can imagine a niche for high-density ARM-based servers running IIS, but, unless licensing is very cheap, I cannot imagine someone paying for Windows on four ARM blades when the same Windows on one x86 blade could do the same work. When licensing is a big part of the whole stack, the hardware evolves in weird, sometimes unpractical, ways.

That happened before too. When the most common Windows version (because it could run lots of popular software), was the 9x series, x86 processors were under specific evolutionary pressures and ended up with deep pipelines and insanely high clocks to remain acceptably fast until past 2000 (and entered an evolutionary dead-end). At the same time, RISC-based boxes that ran Unix routinely had more than one processor since the low 90's. I always thought it interesting that by the time AMD64 was announced, I was retiring our 5-year-old 64-bit mail server.
Khan Academy, On Your Mobile Device
One step closer to a Bladerunner future!
This is really only one part of the problem. There are two far bigger problems:

1. Content owners are stifling innovation in the industry as they try and bolster dying business models. This applies to content including music, TV, movies and books; and

2. Intellectual property, particularly in the US, is a complete mess (which this is but a part of).

(2) is important but let's not lose sight of the fact that if the industries themselves were forward thinking, this wouldn't even be a problem. (2) simply allows them to be somewhat more of a problem than they would be otherwise.
most of my github account is filled with trash that i start for one day, barely learn something completely new to me, sometime a new language, then forget and move on.

if I find said thing promising, i'd usually came back some weekends later and do something more complex, but again, basically junk.

oh, and did i mention nothing looks finished?

Now, take anything i code behind the closed doors at my employer or i contribute to some open source projects. It will shine like nothing you will ever see in my github or googlecode or such.