skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
According the article, and assuming Evergreen and China are honest about environmental regulations, the labor prices are not the real issue here. It's grants and loans made by the Chinese banks and local governments that are making up the bulk of the savings.

Still, $300 per month per employee in China vs $5400 in Massachusetts is going to turn some attention to China regardless of other costs.
Our threshold to terrifying situations grows with exposure
It probably doesnt help my case that I never really used RSS, but I do appreciate Mozilla's effort towards stripping down the the core of the UI (and entire application)

A browser that lacked unessential features was the original appeal for firefox and if anything chromes popularity is in a large part because people see it as a speedy lean alternative to an ever bloating firefox.

I dont see why a plugin is less user friendly than yet another neglected preference feature, optional value added features is exactly what plugins are for
> ... why are we in Javascript at all?

It runs in browsers and on V8, and it can access the CommonJS library ecosystem, and it's a nice language in a lot of other ways.

> This is why the Node.js hype was such a bad idea.

Except that the hype wasn't a bad idea. A lot of programmers are playing with something new and interesting, being exposed to new techniques and philosophies, and creating cool things. That sounds like a good idea to me.

> ... it makes hard things effectively impossible.

Seriously? That's hyperbole.
I have -- thanks :)

However, the point still stands: unfortunately this is an industry where being able to adequately perform the tasks is not a job requirement, therefore holding down a job is not a good measure of skill.
While I agree that feeds are a simple concept, the vast majority doesn't care. Feeds have been available since the early 00s and its adoption hasn't grown outside the geek circles. People just don't like to be bothered with the simplest complexity.

I bet less than 80% of ordinary people even use bookmarks, being way simpler than feeds in concept.
Vimperator.

Though a comment here informed that there's a fork called Pentadactyl, so I'm going to try that out:

http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/
I'm not arguing that Tumblr isn't successful or that Tumblr doesn't have more traffic (that would be a stupid argument!). What I am arguing against is this suggestion that somehow Posterous has "lost" and it's time for them to throw in the towel or something. Posterous is a fairly young service that's seen great growth and is, as far as I can tell, going places, and fast.

The suggestion that Garry Tan is leaving because Posterous isn't working out is unsubstantiated, and that's what I'm arguing about. This is like pointing at Facebook when they were much smaller than MySpace, showing that such-and-such person just left, and saying it's because Facebook has lost the battle. It hasn't. The battle is still raging, and who will win is definitely up for grabs.
Homeopaths Without Borders makes trip number 5 to Haiti
The preferences in Firefox are already cluttered. Using about:config seems appropriate.

Edit: Some are claiming that you can still add the button to the toolbar, it’s just off by default. That sounds extremely reasonable and confuses me at the same time because I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
Well, you don't know. It all depends on what kind of data was on the target drive.

If it's schoolwork or unimportant business data, a format is good enough. If we're talking CC and SSN numbers, the ATA command with writing 0's is good. If it's sensitive, a sledgehammer and an anvil is suitable.

I inherited a junk 1G hard drive, and just 'filed it away' in my junk drawer. After years, I actually checked the contents. Lo and behold: a flat database full of medical data, including SSN's and other revealing data. It was only 1G so it got the sledge (I use a small section of railroad tie instead of a blacksmiths anvil).
FF4 did not remove the Feed icon entirely, it's been removed from the awesome bar, and defaulted to off, but it exists as a positionable toolbar icon, you just have to configure your toolbar, and add the icon whereever you want to regain access to it. My recommendation for the position is the very right end of the awesome bar, for familiarity's sake.
+1 for official Hacker News iPhone app. All the 3rd party apps I've tried are frustratingly buggy.
Looks like everyone (and their dog) knows what facebook should do, except facebook.
I submitted answers to user surveys on Yale and MIT Open CourseWare, glad to see that they're resulting in great improvements.

I have to say I'm more inclined to detailed textbook-style information than the social aspect. OpenStudy didn't quite manage to deliver any greater value to me, just kept me occupied. Maybe I'll revisit now that it's out of beta and the community had probably grown substantially.
Even more than that, there's the whole hustle element to good hacking. That hustler + hacker combination is how you get amazing things done. (Shall we call them... the haxlers?)
> FF4 is removing the RSS icon and also the bottom status bar

Wait so there's no way to see where links are pointed now?
Is there any reason why 10 PB was split in that particular combination of 2, 1.5 and 1TB drives?

EDIT: And, just a comparison: Google processes over 20PB of data per day!
It isn't a new trend, when it came out Firefox was great because it was a cut down Mozilla.
I'm quite surprised by that because that would seem to be pretty counterproductive and is not going to help those companies one bit. Most companies have a profit motive and would not be able to achieve their goals if they went about hiring people like that. I also honestly do not know of a single place where the programmers are not able to actually produce working code, though I definitely have seen various levels of expertise on display.

The most interesting little group of people are three friends that I know, one started out doing electronics, I taught him how to code, he taught one of his friends and they together taught a third guy (who was a pizza courier at the time!) and together they now run a very profitable software company.

And they're all pretty good at what they do, and they would never hire someone that was not able to hold their own.

I've worked at a bank long ago, and definitely the number of people working there that were 'adequate' but not 'great' was larger than elsewhere but there were a couple of guys there that would definitely give you a run for your money.

Typically they'd gravitate to 'systems programming' and the others would be 'application programmers'.

In an symphony orchestra I guess there would have to be a first violinist and 'others', and in carpentry there are cabinet makers and 'general' carpenters. Not everybody will end up being equally good at their job.
Marvin Minsky on Education and Reprogramming One's Mind
Startup Digest's Startup Waffles - http://www.meetup.com/startupdigest/
Yeah, they over-lay it on the URL bar now, doesn't work well IMO. There is however no way to monitor individual requests while a page is loading. I.e. you can't see that your favourite website isn't loading because their Ad provider is down.
I'm using FF4b8 and the status bar is in "off", but you can easily turn it on.

It's not removed entirely, it's just hidden. And that's what I love about Mozilla. Even if they remove it entirely, there will always be an extension to put it back.
And that's a thing Google will never let you do with Chrome because they thing they know better about how you use your browser than you.
Late Night Blog Fight: Enterprise 2.0 vs. Social Business
I agree, and I should have formulated my answer better. What I mean by sufficiently smart is a person that will be recognized as smart enough to be functional in any other field that requires thinking, from the arts to the humanities.
Very nice indeed. From the begining I felt it sounded like Feynman - he was an interesting guy.
Also, I have no doubt that GLS is influenced by APL - he mentions in an interview (it was either in _Coders at Work_ or on SE Radio (http://www.se-radio.net/2006/11/episode-36-interview-guy-ste...); I recommend both) that APL was one of the first programming languages he learned.
Most text books are riddled with errors. So I guess as far as content goes the value of groups will be in correcting such errors.

(And perhaps also in better explaining the material by adding notes and linking to external content.)
But not, apparently, our command of grammar.
I'll be impressed if you can find a status bar in Beta 8 since it was removed in Beta 7 ;) There is now an Add-ons bar under tool bars that is used to contain plug-ins that used to sit on the status bar. But the new bar doesn't have the actual status label anymore that shows you what the browser is doing.

Status-4-Evar plugin restores the functionality in the way it should have been done from the start. Make the Status bar a full toolbar, and make the Status Label an element you can drag in and out like every other toolbar element. No functionality lost, no plugins required, native code, and lots of choice for the user.

Anyhow, I've digressed enough off the OT.
This is a terrible article in my opinion. He says the app eco system on facebook is not thriving. Is there any data behind this statement? Has facebook seen a drop off in facebook games or facebook game activity?

He talks about news feeds and gaming activity in there - fb explicity moved away from this because everyone was complaining about fb games in news feeds, but I think that people are playing the games?

In local supermarkets here in the UK, they are selling fb gift cards, specifically branded by game, so things must be going ok?

This article is mere speculation
The value of the equity is the value when you dispose of it. That is more likely to be zero than $1,000,000.

The the information needed to estimate its disposal value includes: the company's plans for future VC rounds, the terms of the 'A' round and prior investments, and the track record of the VC on the board. My opinion is that asking about the finances should not be an issue, since you are being asked to become a shareholder.

My concern is that 1% seems low for the primary technical person in a business which relies on code (assuming that this is) even if it is market rate.

On the other hand, you might want to this from Suster: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/04/is-it-time-for...
IPython as a Replacement for Bash (on a Mac)
If they are paying you a salary that changes the equation, to reveal the true equity amount you'd have to convert your salary (times the number of vesting years) into stock at the current valuation. The 'real' number in this case is probably more like 10-20%.
Airbnb Is Soaring Into 2011
contact carlton at buy on tv dot com if you are in North America and this is a serious endeavor.
One of the fathers of AI discusses education in a series of essays for the One Laptop per Child project. This last essay about psychology and learning to think is especially interesting, in my opinion.

The last section on "How it can help to think of oneself as a Machine" could really make a difference if we find ways to deploy the ideas to the mass. For now, applying the ideas to oneself can potentially change our own productivity significantly.

For other essays in the series, see http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/
My first 'successful' open-source project (js continuous integration) hits 1.0.0
I don’t really understand why removing the bottom status bar is a problem for you. Firefox will still display where hovered links are pointing to. (I would argue that displaying that information in the address bar is a great solution that’s much easier to understand.)

I also don’t understand why you have a problem with turning the RSS button into a toolbar button that’s not on the default toolbar.

And I don’t understand how you go from that to the conclusion that removing features is always a bad idea.
I think the ability to abstract problems is fundamental for any good programmer. However I don't think this is a unique requirement for programmers - physicists, chemists and mathematicians alike need high skills in abstraction. In all of those sciences you need to break down an arbitrarily complex problem down into simpler ones and this requires a way of thinking that might be quite different from other people.
When considering programmer to be "anyone who writes some code", I agree.

But when considering programmer to be someone who is comfortable:

- operating on multiple planes of abstraction

- using recursion/pointers

- 'seeing' the concepts embodied under computer languages

- 'seeing' the code flow

Then, yes, the programmer does think differently. Because it's his job to think this way to communicate correctly to the computer. Not that it's unattainable by someone outside of the field, but by the act of becoming competent, it changes the one coming in.
6.8 megabytes of downloaded data to read a single article.

That is my entire daily bandwidth budget on my wireless plan.
But it's quite a difference what happens with such 'fichen' info to a citizen/politician in Belarus and in Switzerland (or Germany or (probably) US).
It looks like that is their actual inventory of drives. At that scale, when 2TB drives become the most economical to buy that does not mean one immediately dives in and replaces all the 1.5TB drives. You have to do a bit more math than that.

It's also hard to tell whether they're actively decommissioning their 1TB drives or if they've just on a growth curve and they've done significantly more business while 1.5TB and 2TB drives were the more economical choice, but sooner or later the cost/benefit curves do cross and you do want to start decommissioning the smaller drives, it's only a matter of time.
It'd be really cool if the title would tell us what the project is, not that it hit 1.0.0. I don't care about the version particularly, but I might care about it if I know what it does...
Is it OK to be a Luddite? (1984)
This is how their iPad app looks.
"This article is mere speculation"...."so things must be going ok?"

"This is a terrible article in my opinion"..."Has facebook seen a drop off in facebook games or facebook game activity?"

I must make absolute statement. I must also follow up with wishy-washiness.
If WebM takes off Apple will have to add support. Otherwise the ipad will be "that thing that doesn't play videos"
I'm respecting Fred Wilson more and more with each article I read from him. But I think this article really has some deep thoughts that are expressed in clear ways.

1. Not "web apps" but "Internet services". It's a bigger world than just websites or backend services. iOS, Android, Desktop native, Web App, cloud, etc. Developers need to think broader in not just what website or app do I want to make but what kind of Internet service do I want to provide.

2. The irresistible economics of large networks. In other words, large networks make sense economically. They will find a way to be profitable. And they will transform the world, relationships, business, culture, worldview. Large networks might just be the most transformative force in today's world.

3. User experience rules. It's not about how techy or complex your project is, but rather what's the experience of the user. How does it add value to them? And do they LOVE it? This is what differentiates various Internet services and allows them to gain traction until they can fully utilize network effects to make their site better than anything else out there.

4. Launching new large networks is more challenging. People are already on FB, Twitter, Tumblr, etc... and to create new large networks can be difficult because people already have their loyalities, and the current large networks are just getting better and better. Those that can start large new networks are doing it in a way that's a different approach than what's out there.
TechCrunch had a good guest article arguing that Hulu's poor targeting is intentional: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/hulu-opec/
Hulu has enough information on its users to target ads very narrowly, but since it's run by a conglomerate of media companies, it intentionally does not do this in order to avoid competing with traditional (untargeted but highly profitable) television advertising.
Would be interesting to know how polluting these factories are. I visited a solar panel factory in China and it was pretty much as described here: clean, white rooms, automated machines, protective clothing for staff. Didn't look like there was much sign of pollution.

The other question is the long term effect of this export of work to China. Can they really make a profit at this rate, or are they hoping that by selling below cost and concentrating manufacturing within China they will eventually be able to invest in research at a better return and one day start extracting economic rents on their monopoly in manufacturing knowledge.
upvoted this
I've had the experience where people agree to buy my broken computers for parts and the deal is done, until I mention that the "drives are wiped and ready to go". Then I never hear from them again.

Granted, somehow visiting the craigslist site turns ordinary people into flakes, but the "wiped" statement correlates a bit too well with the vanishing interest.
Why is the Wattvision system $249? What are the big pieces that make the cost so high? I'm wondering if it can be done cheaper.
I am not american, nor do we use inches here in germany but when looking at #3 it should be noted that 5.75 inches is actually the drive length, not height as they state. Well depends on how you look at it but it confused me in the beginning.
This is the truly frustrating part of the article. It's so disheartening to hear that in spite of bailouts that we've made to the major financial institutions in the US, they won't lend to restart the economy and keep people employed.
How is ready.js a first successful project? Are you defining 'first' in a nonstandard way or 'successful' has a special meaning?
I had similar experiences.

The one thing that I wish I had was basically, "Pick a language and learn Computer Science" course list. So you'd start with learning the language, then do algorithms and data structures, then do software design and you could work your way through all that.
Childish. Also, proving my point that not all programmers are logicians.
Thanks!

Also,

> mplayer -dumpstream "mmsh://proedvid.stanford.edu/knuth/musings/101206/101206-knuth-500.wmv?MSWMExt=.asf"

for for those you who'd like to download the video for later viewing.
well, the other thing to consider is whether China is basically trying to do what Walmart did to it's competitors.

If you can undercut competition to the point where your competitors drop out, then you have free reign to do whatever you wish in the market, since you have a monopoly.
Yeah, that's been happening on Curious Reef a lot (Curious Reef is my website which is similar to OpenStudy).

Here's an example of people working through an issue in a C programming class: http://curiousreef.com/class/programming-in-c/lesson/1/assgn.... There wasn't any issue with the actual book itself, but the discussion is adding value to others who might come across the same problems.
Who else can you buy this from?
I really like that the status bar has moved to the address bar. The extra screen space is great. I still have Firefox 3 on my laptop and it feels like there is too much in the way now.

I even like that the menu bar has been rolled up into the Firefox button. There is no reason to display those menus all of the time.
I think the point is that pi, a constant defined by properties of circles, is also useful in an approximation of factorials, and there was no obvious reason for the circle-specific constant to show up in anything related to factorials.
I think this viewpoint can't be stressed enough. Evaluating schools based on what percentage of their students do well is a very slippery slope to encouraging schools to lower their standards to the lowest common denominator.
Yes, a social networking site is now worth $50 Billion Dollars. With a B.

Many of the same points could be made about Google (yes, a mere search engine is now worth $200 Billion Dollars. With a B too!).

A lot of talk about Facebook recently seems to be incredulous or disparaging but social networks are now no lesser an application or business model than anything else.

I could be wrong but I think Facebook has "pulled a Google" and turned a previously flaky app model into a serious, sustainable industry (Remember search pre-Google? It was hideous..). I think Facebook is as "temporary" as Google now.
No, actually. Nothing has changed at Posterous. Garry was just feeling burned out.
Google reaffirms intent to derail HTML5 H.264 video with WebM browser plugins
>"Yet social media is itself as temporary as any social gathering, nightclub or party."

Five years ago, that was as true as "The internet is for computer geeks" was more or less true 12 years ago.

Facebook was a special place years ago when only college students could be there. Facebook's timing was such that today, there's a good chance your parents have an account. There's more planning of high-school reunions, than keg parties on Facebook these days. Yes, the cool kids may leave but Facebook no longer relies on the cool kids any more than Linkedin(even if Linkedin is relegated to the same scrap heap as Compuserve by the author).
So come out with a new browser that's a stripped down version of Firefox, but leave Firefox where it is (and keep updating it for security fixes).
So what are you doing now? Making apps?

Would you say its more lucrative to sell apps on apple store or build web sites?
Killing off ID card scheme leaves hardware casualties
Nice. Looks good.

But that's not how the facial nerve works. That wouldn't even be the right location to trigger the eye lids. This could possibly work if he put the stimulants on his eye lids. But even then other parts of his face would gringe.

No way to get that kind of specific control over one part of the face without surgery. Certainly not by just sticking something at your temple.
Has your spouse seen this video? If not please watch it. I would be curious if you could debunk/shed more light on some of the issues it raises:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/

My concern about for-profit education is that its interest is focused more on the investor and less on the student outcomes. Students are admitted fairly easily and loans from for-profit banks in addition to any federal funding create what looks like a ponzi scheme taking advantage of people's aspirations. Once the pool of gullible students are dried up the scheme busts and the tax payers are the ones holding the bag.
We're considering a scheme for this now as a matter of fact.
Everything's temporary. The question is the timeframe. The peak for facebook doesn't come until kids move to something cooler, and even then it can be a pretty long slide into irrelevancy.

What's the next cool thing that's going to draw people away?
I'll give you a much more compact way to envision 10 Pb:

10 Petabytes is 10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes or 80,000,000,000,000,000 bits, divided by 8,000,000,000 bits per full human genome (2 bits per base-pair) that's about 10,000,000 cells (not red blood cells because they don't contain DNA), or about 5 milliliters! (10 um diameter on average so about 500 cubic um, so 2 million or so per ml), and that includes all the stuff besides the DNA in the cells.

Hard disk storage certainly is impressively compact but it still has a long way to go before we beat mother nature.

-1 already eh? Downmodders please correct my math or say what you think is wrong with the comparison, I note the article ends on: "How would you visualize ten petabytes of storage?".
"We chose node.js for a few reasons. The first was, we simply wanted to play with a new technology."

Well at least he's honest, but this seems like an exceedingly bad reason to choose a technology stack.