skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At first I was going to answer with "the better part of Steve Jobs' absence from the company". However, thinking about it a bit longer, I think Apple started getting into actual trouble after the launch of Windows 95. They had absolutely nothing to fight back with except marketing, which consisted mostly of cheap attack ads like these ones:

- http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/08/congrtlnsw95_yo.html

- http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_n-JrcfOL7Y8/SKHqBnwaUWI/AAAAAAAAAB...

Windows 95 was launched in late August of 1995. Prior to Windows 95, Apple wasn't exactly the best run company in the world. Their product line-up was an absolute mess. The Newton was acknowledged by everybody as pretty cool but it wasn't a resounding business success. However, most people still considered their products to be the best for desktop publishing and education which were huge markets at the time. Once Windows 95 was launched however, Apple's act as the only serious solution for desktop publishing and education was rightfully ended.

Skip ahead two years and Apple is in serious trouble. People looked at them the same way they look at RIM today. They were has-beens living on borrowed time. They were in really really really big trouble as a company. Steve Jobs took the reigns of Apple as interim CEO in September of 1997 (http://www.apple.com/ca/press/1997/09/InterimCEO.html). Roughly 8 months later in May of 1998, the iMac is announced, and Apple's second act -- one in which it is an industrial design leader -- begins.

So existence by sheer momentum lasted approximately two years for Apple. I would say that the iPhone was RIM's Windows 95. Hell, Microsoft has pivoted and Windows Phone 7 is a great competitor to iPhone. Google's first shot at an iPhone competitor was also pretty good and took them a little over a year to match. But RIM? They've let the better part of 4 years pass without matching, let alone one-upping, the iPhone (and now Android/Windows Phone 7). Momentum does not last that long.

* edited to fix Win 95 launch date (thanks meric)
a) "Are not related" to what?

b) Really? You have never heard of a programming culture, and how that could differ in Mac vs Windows vs UNIX programmers?
But to the question of whether a language can be intrinsically "illegible", I'd say that it is easier to write "hard-to-read" code in some languages than others.

The conventions that a language community shares often lead to easier or harder to read code. In the Perl community, clever code which solves a problem is highly valued. In the Python community (as the Python Cookbook famously says) "To describe something as clever is NOT considered a compliment in the Python culture." A Pythonista is more likely to compliment your clean code, to say that it is pythonic.

I don't know enough about Ruby's community to say whether they have their own view about the relative merits of the clever/clean approaches or if they value something else entirely.
Fearless Creativity
Easy Now
Mainstream Economics assumes the monetary system and government policy are some abstract and perfect continuous function. As perfect example the IS/LM curve. They aren't though, they can radically change the rules anytime they want to throwing years of equations out the window. Imagine the utter theoretical chaos that would be caused if the U.S defaulted on its bonds because Treasuries represent the "Risk free rate of interests" variable present in perhaps thousands of economic models.
"EDIT: There were lots of people just like him that weren't crazy-successful."

I'd be curious to hear examples of people who spent a day wearing a sandwich board with their resume in the financial district, and did all the other things this guy did, and did not end up achieving some level of success.

He reminds me of Chris Gardner, who inspired the movie Pursuit of Happyness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pursuit_of_Happyness
Remember the source:

The Transnational Institute (TNI) of Policy Studies:

carries out radical informed analysis on critical global issues

builds alliances with social movements

develops proposals for a more sustainable, just and democratic world. More
Tagline ideas:
Update your life.
Never miss a thing!
Link to your world.

Rrewind let's you save the most popular links from all around the social web.

I'm a professional copywriter, let me know if you need more specific suggestions or work done.
Does it fix floats and margins?
Frequently Asked Questions About Quora
This article is very poorly researched. For example, it refers to high-frequency traders as "flash traders". I have never heard that term before. The cited Wikipedia article discusses flash orders, which was a quoting mechanism that DirectEdge experimented with in 2009. Flash orders are not some most automated market markers even care about.

Also, the article mentions Harold Bradley as "among the first traders to explore the power of algorithms in the late '90s", completely omitting much earlier pioneers such as Peter Muller and David E. Shaw.

And of course it goes into depth about the Flash Crash without once mentioning Waddell & Reed, a discretionary (non-quant) fund whose errant trade started the crash to begin with.

Reading this was like watching the 11-o'clock news discuss a medical discovery.
Book one
The coming evolution of the desktop will be revolutionary
I also recommend A.K. Dewdney's The Planiverse, published in 1984. It tells the story of computer science students who communicate with denizens of a 2D world. The diagrams and graphics are delightful.

I read it when it came out (I was 13) and it's one of the reasons I entered computing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse
Hahahaha "It's lisp, paul graham, lisp, paul graham, all the way down."
Be careful with this. We've used it on a number of sites, and whilst overall it's beneficial, there are a number of weird things to watch out for.

For instance:

- Don't add rounded corners to a <table> element - this will crash at least IE7 on XP
- Don't try to rounded corners an element you've hidden with the "left offset" technique (position: absolute; left: -9999px;). This will crash at least IE7 on XP.

I think there a few others I have since erased from my brain due to IE-induced PTSD. YMMV.
Perl is kind of the "C of scripting languages". It's been around for a very long time (late-eighties/early-nineties). The fact that modern languages, like Ruby, borrow from a language that was invented in the late-eighties says a lot about that language.

Perl seems like such an old language...it's hard to believe it's only been around 23 years. It goes to show you how quickly things change in the tech world.
The neural network that Bradley was working on sounds interesting.
The key to happiness is setting goals that are recognizably stretch goals for oneself (but not so stretch that they are unachievable), then achieving them, and then taking pause to reflect on the successful achievement of those goals.
In a few years time, the government will block your access to the internet for not doing as you're told.

As all services become digital eventually, the guy controlling the central ID system will be able to literally let you starve to death.

The fight for internet freedom is really the most important one in human history. If we don't win, we'll end up with a government that can actually enforce ALL its laws ALL the time.
The ends are the only way to justify the means; what the sloppy thinkers who recite "The ends don't justify the means" really seem to mean is that some means are not justifiable. Which is undeniably true, but because they don't really think their position/slogan through, they often end up gathering a bunch of nonsense along with it.
Reading through http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2010-March/0...

Managing a site through a DVCS is, IMO, a good idea. (I do it for my own site, http://www.gwern.net/ ). But I think your worries are somewhat groundless. If you are interested in preventing patent problems years down the line, there's no need for fancy cryptographic commitment schemes; you could probably just appeal to archive sites like the Internet Archive or WebCitation. When you access their archived pages, the pages come with timestamps in the frame or as part of the URL.

To some extent, you are already doing this: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://lists.canonical.org/pipe...

(I know that the Internet Archive has been used by some courts for one purpose or another, though I don't know that it has been employed for demonstrating prior art.)

That said, if you investigated existing cryptographic time-stamping services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping#External_l...) and figured out how to integrate them into a DVCS (a shell script called from cron?), I would certainly find that an interesting thing to read on Hacker News.
Social Media and Tech Wrap-up from social media nz [10/01/2011]
I just take it as a sign that the Singularity is still coming.

It's like when the rumors were going around about AT&T offering $0 iPhone 3G units this past Christmas and the cry went up near and far: "OMG! Why would anyone want to buy something so useless?!?"

Really?
With the common complaints about the various dynamic languages of choice being slow, I don't understand why Lua hasn't gotten more attention. The standard interpreter is many times faster than Ruby and Python, and LuaJIT is several times faster still. It's also an elegant language with a tiny core. I wish it had implicit returns, but nothing's perfect.
Instead of envisioning yourself as this guy, envision yourself as Larry or Sergey in the story.

Sure, they needed to learn to hustle, too, but knowing algorithms sure did help them a lot getting to where they are now.
Why is this difficult to understand?
my @foo = qw(1 2 3);
$foo[0] = 1;

you are referencing an array and returning a scalar. the sigil represents a scalar which is what is returned. A list isn't being returned, so why should the sigil represent that?
A developer mate got a CnD based on registering "whiteboard-app", which had NOTHING to do with education whatsoever.
IIRC, this is actually invalid Javascript syntax that Chrome/Firefox/Safari choose to ignore.

JSLint picks it up:

Error:
Problem at line 1 character 22: Extra comma.

var x = { foo : "bar", };
Absolutely, a poorly written/unmaintainable/or inaccurate test can have a negative net worth.
I stopped hosting my own email because I didn't want to navigate the maze of corporate spam filters necessary to make sure I could reach anyone I needed to contact.
Why do so many people dislike C++?
"Windows 95 was launched in late August of 2005."... 1995
Why because programs aren't quoted ?
Even 3 years later, this is still true. The only thing MS has is Windows and Office (the only MS product, in my opinion that is real quality). MS will not die but will become irrelevant. The way they kept jacking up PC hardware requirements for Windows, Internet bandwidths will keep becoming bigger and better and "thick" clients will become irrelevant. Everything eventually will be on the web and that day is sooner than we think it is. (For some its already here)
As VLC for iPhone, iPad Pulled from App Store, What's the Future for GPL Apps?
Sounds like someone that only looked at successful people.

It's human nature to pant simplified story's about how something came to be, but the reality is a lot of things have to go right to make a successful person. First off Don't get hit by a bus etc.
Verizon Will Use Unlimited Data Plans Against AT&T
Another great book from a similar period: The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Pierce - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/972 - Definitely one to have in the toilet.
Doing things I couldn't imagine I'do some time ago.

It requires constantly checking and crossing your comfort zone, but it's sooo worth!!
People naturally compare Ruby and Perl because of the well-known similarities and influence that Perl had on the development of Ruby.

Ruby followers can rightly claim advantages over Perl (for me, the fact that you can do OO in Ruby without feeling that you're doing some kind of black magic is the big one).

But Perl devs could be justified in feeling that Ruby is doing nothing new - many of the libraries that make Ruby so useful have equivalents (predecessors in some cases) in Perl.
I found this looking for the source of "climbing higher and higher trees to reach the moon" It's Mo's Law (#31 on Akin's list)
31. (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.

Some other good ones for software products:

1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.
7. At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader
is least likely to be capable of it.
9. Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not
starting the analysis.
23. The schedule you develop will seem like a complete work of fiction up until
the time your customer fires you for not meeting it.
Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. -- Keynes.
The 'because' refers not to them seeming dangerous, but to his knowing, in 2007, that they did seem dangerous in 2001.
I'd take out some insurance, too, in case accident victims decide to sue you. Maybe I am just too paranoid, though.
> I don't know enough about Ruby's community to say whether they have their own view about the relative merits of the clever/clean approaches or if they value something else entirely.

Although I think some groups are starting to pick up an anti-clever view of these (the Merb movement probably helped), but you can almost pick any random ruby github project and there will be some custom magic under the hood.

Not saying that's good or bad, just sayin.
HAHAHA! Best thing on Amazon I ever read. I love the Japanese.
It's not a troll, it's a satire. Like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ez2he/this_flash_rpg.... The point of any satire is to get you to notice that the comments you're making about the satire, could equally be applied to the thing it satirizes. In this case:

> [Most articles about Lisp] start with a grand puprose namely "In which the truth about lisp is revealed, and some alternatives are enumerated."

> But [they] end up being one big collection of headlines and popular opinions people have about the language.

> Why would anyone without any amount of research choose to write on a subject?

(Also, on a completely separate tangent: XSLT can transform XML, and XSLT is XML, so XSLT can transform XSLT. Thus, you could have "XSLT macros" that work in the same way Lisp macros do.)
In general, if someone wants to feed me a low dose poison, I'd want to see some bullet-proof safety and efficacy data.

In this case, if the cavity rates between cities with and without fluoride are similar as the article states, I would pass.

The US just lowered the recommended fluoride level. My own view is that this is a good thing, but I think everyone should do some research for themselves and not just accept that the government always makes the right choice.

There are many serious scientists who question the fluoride risk/reward equation.
Why require context-dependent sigils when you don't need to?

Eliminate the unnecessary.
Well Lisp doesn't meet this definition:

> "a language in which the source code and the corresponding abstract parse tree have identical representations"

As the representation of code is still strings in Lisp, but the AST cons cells.
We switched an entire team of about 10 people to Ubuntu just because we couldnt afford to buy any more Windows licenses. The only thing the team missed was Office and had a few issues with audio/video plugins for the browser which we solved mostly without any headaches. They re now happily using Google docs and Open Office.

Unfortunately, we are a race of habit and being served tea instead of coffee every morning is gonna piss us off but eventually we ll get over it.
never trust the client. but let it do its thing and set it straight if it tries to stray.
Also, they'd simply become another android manufacturer, and all of the uniqueness of their products would be lost. They'd be forced to have every phone with the three buttons and a touchscreen, and would be indistinguishable from Samsung. That may be a profitable path, but I don't see it happening if only because of pride. I think it's more likely we'll see Nokia take that route.
[What Do You Get in Return for the] App Store 30% cut
Ask HN: What makes a good meet up?
A while back I undertook a project where I met up with people to teach them something and, in return, they taught me something (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1883294).

The project received a great response and now I'd like to turn this into an event (or "meetup", if you will). Initially I'm envisioning a bunch of people gathering at a bar, everybody telling the group what they would be willing to teach, and then people pairing up to teach each other. Then depending on the response, I'd love for it to continue on a bi-monthly basis.

I've never put one of these things together before, so I'd appreciate any advice you have to offer. Some questions I have initially are:

How/where would I market this?
What are some meetup formats that work?
How much should I play with the format?
How often should something like this convene?
What is a good method for collecting feed back about the session?

Then there are obviously questions I don't know I should be asking. So really I'd be grateful for any advice :)

Thanks!
If you were ever familiar with the history of IP, then of course you would know that it is a special privilege.

You have James Watt extending his patent 20 years longer, delaying the industrial revolution quite bit. Then you have American writers fighting for copyright recognition of British author just so they stop British competition.

The manipulation and abuse of law not only took place in modern time but throughout the existence of IP history. Not only that, you have scant evidence to prove that IP are beneficial.
Poll: Do the ends justify the means?
For example, is it fine to kill 1 person in order to save 10 others?

Is it fine to kill 2 people in order to save 10 others?

Is it black-and-white, or does depend on the particular case?

Why?
I'm an old Perl hacker but do most of my work in Ruby these days -- and love it. I'll always have a soft spot for Perl, and will never forget how it helped build the Internet. But to me, Ruby makes Perl look like Java.
I have a copy, nicely weird book.
Except that this webapp is absolutely built with an MVC framework — it's just that the M, V, and C are in different places than they are in the dogmatic arrangement.

MVC is not a fixed design, it's a legitimate universal Design Pattern (unlike most of the GoF book). It's a shared nomenclature for describing the arrangement of concerns, not a prescriptive blueprint.
Contract enforcement happened long before gov't mandated ID.

Also, contract enforcement can occur with out ID, look at bringing suit under a John Doe or Richard Roe.

In the real world we have drivers licenses yet fraud still happens.
Is it snowing?  App provides simple yes/no answer.
This article should have read backwards starting with

"The Briefing Kit had been a premature release of the summary results, before the full research outcomes
had gone through the usual thorough review and editing process."

EG - no peer reviewed study exists, this link itself is based on a non-peer edited summary of the actual study.
Yes, that's the same thing. It's always fun to realize that $HOT_FEATURE in $LANGUAGE is several decades old, instead of several years.
Sometimes
Interesting stats!

14k sales in 6 weeks is great for a tech book (~5k lifetime being the norm), but on the back of 2 million visitors to the web site, and Mark Pilgrim's reputation, it illustrates why publishing is a tough biz.

O'Reilly pays authors 10% of net income, which is usually 50% of retail. Given Mark's book is going for $30 retail and $17.72 at Amazon, that's about ~$0.88 - $1.50 per book for print (for the sake of the argument, let's assume digital is in the same ballpark). Mark's royalty check for $9225, + whatever advance Mark got (say $5k?) equals roughly $1/book sale for the author (assuming that payment was for 14k sales to date). Given it takes 100s of hours to write a book (and hundreds more to write a good one), making $1 per sale, on average sales of 5k lifetime, or 14k sales in 6 weeks for a top tier author like Mark... let's just say technical writing is not exactly something you do for profit :)

Also of note is the 75%/25% print/digital sales ratio. This would suggest that the free online version is cannibalizing digital sales, given O'Reilly usually sells ebooks 2:1 (http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/does-digital-cannibalize-pr...), but I guess you could make a case that the loss in digital sales is made up in extra print sales from the book's exposure online.
agree.. as theres something to be said about inspirational stories, I think the real lesson should be about taking calculated risks. I mean the same could be said about many actors giving up everything and coming to Hollywood looking for fame. There are many success stories, but probably a lot more failure stories.
TL;DR for football coaches: If you have a 4th & 2 from your own 10 in the first quarter, go for it!

TL;DR for football fans: The take-away graph is Fig. 4 on pg. 353. The solid line represents when a team SHOULD go for it on 4th down to maximize expected points. The dashed line represents when teams DO go for it. Bottom line is that teams go for it MUCH less often than would maximize their expected points.

TL;DR for economists: NFL coaching could be assumed to be a case where (a) a lot of objective data is available to base decisions on (b) the result to be maximized (wins) would appear to be fairly obvious (c) decision makers (coaches) are highly qualified and highly motivated. Yet in practice, coaches systematically deviate from the strategy that would maximize wins. It's not clear whether this is due to (I) the "true" result coaches are trying to maximize is NOT wins or (II) coaches not making strictly rational decisions.

TL;DR for hackers: I found the analytical reasoning (opportunity cost; etc) interesting, and found it worth reading the whole thing for that.
Haha, recently used a DTS Support Incident for an issue I would have liked to overcome in the UI.... and even after stating that my plan was to make it into the MAS, the two responses I got were basically "you need to override these private methods however Apple recommends against using private APIs, blah, blah."

My app isn't ready yet, and so I haven't submitted it to see what happens, but to this day, I still don't know what he was recommending me to do or if he was trying to say they would ignore the private API usage?

For a potential 30% cut, I agree with the OP that you should be able to get a straight answer.
The Best Product Person of 2010 Announced
Not true. I'm not sure why it's not on that page but you can get a $30 unlimited plan that should be under "For Smartphones & Feature Phones".

It's only for phones and can't be used for tethering. Otherwise, there isn't any sort of 5GB cap like mentioned above.
I don't see why she's being singled out; blogs on the left were using target graphics as well.
This is excellent. Thank you for contributing this code. I can't wait to get a Kinect and try it out. There are quite a few possibilities with this.
You were arguing from an absolute, government should stay out, free markets.

If disbanding the FCC is silly, then the absolute doesn't hold. That means we should evaluate on a case by case basis -- free markets are of course a good default position to deviate from depending on the exception, of course.

1929-1932 was most noteworthy for Hoover not trying a whole lot of new approaches. Then this FDR guy started, his whole thing was called "New Deal".
Samsung’s Tweeting Refrigerator Could be Overkill