skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While I share your pain as a sysadmin. Exceedingly few people will pay for this, and the ones that do pay won't want to pay very much.

Automated training/guides have been around for a long time, but every shop I've ever been to just has one guy/gal that everyone asks for help regardless of documentation.
Abandon Your Desktop for iPhone’s Free Mobile Twitter Clients
If your code isn't readable right off the bat, you're doing it wrong.

At one place I worked I had a BA who was nosey and came and tried looking over my shoulder at one point at some file manipulation code I'd written. Now I used to put a lot of time and effort into writing nice neat code, but this was something for me alone, so I hadn't bothered putting in the comments that I normally would.

Anyway, because I wanted him to take a hike, I thought, "right, let's call his bluff". So I asked him whether he understood what the code was doing. And he said yes. Frankly, I didn't believe him, so I asked him to say what it was that the code was doing, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when he was able to run down the page of code and say pretty much what everything there did.

Another example: I often hear people say that they can't read the code they wrote 6 weeks ago let alone 6 months ago. I can.

Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone has to go out and start writing code that even non-programmers can read, but there are a couple of guidelines:

(a) pick good variable names

(b) pick good method names

(c) pick good class names

(d) whitespace is more important than you think (as is indentation)

(e) only do one thing per line if you can help it

(f) the one line of super-cunning code that replaces two lines of boring mundane code that does exactly the same thing may actually run slower after the JIT and other optimisations

(g) the easier it is to read, the easier it is to debug

(h) debugging is expensive, really expensive, much more expensive than writing the code in the first place, hence any investment in readability will almost immediately pay dividends

(i) code unto others as you would have them code unto you
The leak that blows the sockpuppets/trolls wide open!

Could you elaborate on this? The article only talks about ideas contained in Word documents.
The problem of designing and manufacturing a new product is harder than you think.
Samsung makes their processor.
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26

You may be right, if so, my info is going on 8 months old ;).

I read yesterday that Apple is now blocking use of their store (books was the example) if they detected your phone was unlocked. So now, they're on tack 2. We'll see who has enough money to sue them to stop doing this.
Isn't this what FB is doing now with their "One Inbox to Rule them All"
Meet QualiThemes – The WorPress Themes Search Engine
In the last few months we’ve been working pretty hard to bring a new site to life: a neat WordPress themes search engine that will help you each time you need a new template for the next killer project. Ladies and gentleman please give a big hand to QualiThemes!!!
I missed that when I copied the link. I can't edit it now.
HTC Design Chief Talks About Its First Tablet, the Flyer
They also seem to have spam under control (Unlike Mechanical Turk).
They have the market cornered on mobile app sales AFAIK.
Samsung manufactures their processor. But the design of the A4 was done in-house by Apple.

Edit: It does appear that Samsung helped design it, thanks for the correction HN :) I think my overall point still stands though
Yeah, the type of shares generally given to employees are what's called common stock. Common stock can only be turned into money in a liquidity event, these days. Your common stock is not worthless, though, as each type of stock has a set of rights associated with it.

Your investors, however, and probably your founders are issued Preffered stock, which allows them to get liquidity from things other than IPO or M/A.
most of the standards have simply codified what was already in common usage.

But there's a BIG difference between saying, "OK, pretty much all of the top 5 browser manufacturers have implemented feature XYZ, and it is commonly used today by many popular sites in a standard way. Lets codify this."

vs

"WebKit just added this cool new feature. Opera implemented it two weeks after it shows up in WebKit. No one is really using it yet, but it's really cool. Write up a draft of it and now lets say its part of the standard (in-progress)".

That's not codifying common usage. That is some vendors in key positions in the standards body taking advantange of their positions.
For those of you interested in blocking by country ipaddress, you can take a peek at iptables -m geoip --help

For debian(ubuntu) users, sudo apt-get install
xtables-addons-common , beforehand.

Although ineffective against committed intruders, it can clean your firewall logs a bit.
Anonymity seemed to work pretty well for the founding fathers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers
> I don't know of any framework that's truly nailed developer-designer interaction, though.

Never 'appen, icky hoomans are involved.

That's like saying engineers and management will stop fighting over budgets and specifications.
Intimidation cut off Egypt from the Internet, not a 'kill switch'
Coca-Cola: Descubren receta secreta después de 125 años
I suspect this has something to do with it, too:

"Apple secures 60% of global touch panel capacity, causing tight supply"

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110216PD219.html
I like how he uses CSS transforms on the :before and :after pseudo element to give it that "lifted" effect. That's something I never thought to try before.
Registering to place applications in the android market is not free.
Beyond a superficial "touchable screen", most of Apple's tablet competitors have been heavily influenced WebOS - watch the PlayBook and TouchPad in action and you'll see navigation and multitasking are almost identical, as is the gestures used to control the device (swiping a card up to close the app). Meanwhile, the guy behind WebOS is the same guy behind Honeycomb, which also borrows the task manager and (don't know which came first) notifications.
Sony is almost exactly 1/10th the size of Apple (in terms of Market Cap). Don't underestimate just how much weight Apple is throwing around these days.

Sonly also doesn't fab their own processors for mobile devices like Apple now does.
Agree. It's harder than it seems.

There's tons of things to consider with hardware related products. Imagine all the conditions: from software, to users, people with disabilities, hardware conditions, if it heats up, if the environment is too humid, too cold, if it gets dropped, and so on.

This things take time. If a tablet pops up today it doesn't mean it was built in 3 months by a handfull of hackers and redbull, there's tons of work behind. Apple just happend to execute really, really well on it.
Typical website failures - and how to detect them
No, it is neither easy nor straightforward. And if you think of it as "forcing", then you have already lost.

The key factor is good people (this itself makes it not easy, sorry to disappoint.) If you have a competent team you don't need a dumbed down language to keep them in check.

If you have incompetent people, then you may use a restrictive language as a crutch. But don't expect good results.
To beat Google publishers must become Google or: The secret of Boutiques.com
F*** Facebook: Decentralize social sharing with listservs
There is a big difference between open source and the GPL. Open source is loosely defined as allowing access to the source. GPL is a license designed to force openness in a viral fashion. I'm not opposed to the GPL philosophy, but anyone who is surprised that someone like Microsoft would want to avoid GPL'd software on their platform is kidding themselves. This is especially true with regard to the GPL v3. The goal of the GPL is to aggressively expand the protection of "free" software. We're talking the RMS definition of free, which is threatening to lots of companies; not just Microsoft.
I'm not so sure that nobody was calling it a bubble. I sure felt it was, but didn't have a lot of money in the stock market then, so I wasn't personally concerned. I just billed my skills out at crazy rates and loved every minute of it.

For example, people knew there was a real estate bubble and were trying to flip houses to make as much as they could before it popped. My mom has a neighbor that didn't plan on being her neighbor, but he bought right before the real estate crash and couldn't sell in time.

It's a mix of exuberance, ignorance and hubris that seems to lead to this sort of fall.

But what if this is a "bubble" Who will get hurt when it pops, especially if it pops before major IPOs happen. Lots of private investors will lose out, but will the general public get hurt?
This is marketing 101: create an original position, a USP. [1] What's going on now, is a bunch of suits and managers who want to ride on Jobs' coattails and build me-too products for a market they don't actually understand one bit.

The fervor over subscriptions should be a key to these idiots that there is a strong market for an actually open device: instead they're taking the main competitor, an open source project even, and making it functionally more closed than iOS to an average user. Apple is hammering away at the middle-road consumer, and Google's OS is not only positioned as "me too, but also everything!", it's being filtered through handset manufacturers who have their own agendas, which run counter to what Android suggests to be.

My suggestion? Google builds a durable tablet for academics and scientists to research in the field with. Because of Android's open nature, it would be trivial to open up an entire ecosystem of sensors and data loggers that would integrate. The best gift I ever got for my father was a kill-a-watt, there's a huge, untapped consumer market for data collection and processing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_(marketing)#Product...
Never forward email to GMail. Ever. Google ’causes’ backscatter.
Could Watson parse a snowclone?
I suppose, but any physicist worth anything should be able to remember enough high school chemistry to deduce the answer.
What if the money allocated by the gov ends up creating more wealth than it would have previously? This is important to consider I think. This kind of program in my view can be a good idea if it creates more wealth than taken from the economy. I know it's unpopular to say this but government can create wealth (internet, space, health research...) that I don't think would have happened without.
They are big, no doubt. But they aren't as innovative as they once were. Palm is HP now, and HP is squarely in the commodity hardware business. You can't outstyle a boutique marketing haute couture when you sell K-mart seconds.

I mean, even Nokia had to capitulate to stay competitive in the smartphone market, ceding control to a not-even-second-place Phone 7 software stack with an app store ecosystem that literally has to bribe hot developers to port over their stuff let alone have a fiercely competitive market like App Store or Android Marketplace.
I don't think so, I've developed a number of apps with Django on App Engine and, as long as you've developed a bit at the lower level and know the limitations, Django is a very good fit. The guys who wrote Django-nonrel did a very good job, pretty much everything that doesn't do any wild joins will work out of the box.

Overall, I am very very happy with Django on GAE and develop with it, even though I've developed with Flask as well. With microframeworks I generally find that you need to reinvent many of the things that Django already provides.

Your only objection that I can see is really the fact that the ORM joins, so don't. As long as you keep that in mind, everything else is transparent because it's really the same as what other hosts offer (memcache, email, tasks, etc).
Well, I wonder how much Samsung actually cares. There are no high-tech devices that already isn't chock-a-block full of their components, and they're crazy profitable.
I think this illustrates a need for an HN-like internet-global karma system. That is, unless some of you have sockpuppet armies upvoting your comments.

Say it isn't so!
China Flexes Muscles With US As Biggest Creditor
don't whine or fight. create the world you want to live in.

the internet doesn't work one way or another. people on the internet work one way or another. you don't like how some groups are working, don't work with them. work another way. everyone has a choice. i know it can seem overwhelming when a lot of people choose to work one way that doesn't seem right, but don't let it get you down. you have a choice too, and you don't have to work the same way they do. work a different way.
Precisely: the people insisting that we're in yet another bubble cannot make the distinction between anecdotal and representative companies. Yes, there a handful of companies that may be overvalued. That is not going to take down the economy, no matter what happens. If you think it is: you either weren't around for the real bubble, or you weren't paying attention.
A4 is just a customized version of the latest ARM.
"The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is thought to use performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by Apple)[10] in collaboration with Samsung.[11] The resulting core, dubbed "Hummingbird".. is also used in Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4

The Samsung Galaxy S has the S5PC110 processor. This processor combines a 45 nm 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 based CPU core with a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU made by Imagination Technologies which supports OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0[21] and is capable of up to 20 million triangles per second.[3] The CPU core, code-named "Hummingbird", was co-developed by Samsung and Intrinsity.[22]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S#Processor

I guess you also consider added a wing and a skirt to a Civic "original design", with the car merely "manufactured" by Honda.
I need help with my launchpad booth, if students just can't quite afford things I may be able to help. Tell me costs you can't afford. simon@rhinocloud.com
I am also surprised why MS at least doesn't talk about WP7 tablet. Nobody wants Win7 tablet with desktop software, so the only option left is that Win8 will natively support tablets, but then, what about apps?
Well that was fast.

This actually reminds me of something that's been bugging me for a while.

If you're Mark Zuckerberg, or Paul Graham, one of the google execs, or basically any high-profile tech person...do you still get to sit at the lunch table with everybody else?

I love talking to people here on HN, or joking around on reddit. I used to be very active on slashdot, and had a lot of really interesting discussions with people there. I can do this because nobody really cares who I am. If I say that I think the iPad is stupid, it doesn't make the news.

So if you're Paul Graham, and you just want to jump into a discussion and "shoot the shit" with people, how do you do it?

Especially if you're Mark Zuckerberg, do you not even get to use the product that you're in charge of because everything you say is going to be dissected by thousands of bloggers and tech journalists? Do you still get to post to slashdot without people thinking that it's an indicator of where facebook is heading?
Hey Max,

You bring up a good point. Maybe the language should be changed. Happy to chat email me anytime amachado@gmail.com

Andrew
The FreeBSD and CC licenses are still very well available. Personally, for most things, I would open source via the FreeBSD license, anyway. The GPL may be the most well known, but there are plenty others.
Right-sizing Government
>"Microsoft has a deep history of trying to undermine open source software, and companies that use open source software"

Some examples would make for a better argument.

>"I would only have to assume that Microsoft extends these same feelings to their Windows operating systems on PC hardware as well."

Why would the author have to assume that?
The agenda kills your Partner Summit
That really isn't true at all, it was a common topic of conversation well before the markets peaked.
Based on this article, I have one piece of advice to anyone entreprenurially minded in North Carolina: Leave.

If you have a tech startup idea, build a skeleton of it and come to San Francisco. Raise an angel round. Get connected to people who can actually make things happen. Don't take money from people who are undervaluing your company and can't contribute to improving your prospects.

If you can't stand SF, try Boston, Seattle, Atlanta, Austin, etc. Valuations will still be much better and people will be connected to your industry. I don't want to take anything away from Mr. Vernon, who clearly understands the core elements here, but this feels like 1995 era advice and doesn't really reflect what people can and are doing today.

My other advice, if you simply cannot leave: wait. Valley money and valuations will spread, and VCs and other investors will start chasing deals and being willing to pay more instead of the cited "VC takes 66% of your firm for $1M". (Seriously? WTF. Let me know who that VC is so that I can NEVER LET THEM HANDLE MY MONEY. Way to convince the entrepreneur to NOT hang in there.)
I suspect his reply may have been an attempt at levity.
Presumably it gets easier with practice. But I think you have to write it, and there are some idioms and shortcuts that people use, and if you're unfamiliar with the shortcut then it can be hard to figure out.

I had a similar problem with Objective-C. Everyone was saying how easy it would be for someone who knew Java to pick up, but for the first couple of years I found the message passing syntax to be incredibly jarring. Note that I'm not stupid, of course I understand what messages are etc. It wasn't that I didn't understand the concepts, it was that the syntax of the language kept tripping my "that looks wrong" buttons.

I think that with programming languages there can be an 'uncanny valley' effect. Something that looks too close to something else but isn't quite the same. Java and JavaFX were an example of that for me. I thought they made the JavaFX too close to Java. Someone who knew Java would keep getting tripped up on the subtle (and not so subtle differences) - but because it was too close to Java you couldn't easily tell where the Java ended and the JavaFX started. You might have a class where halfway down your page of code the rules of syntax and grammar shift slightly, and then a little bit further on they shift back...

When I'm mixing two languages I find it easier if they are distinctly different, it makes the cognitive burden easier. Nobody complains about having to mix Java and SQL on the back end with HTML and Javascript on the front end for instance. There's four languages right there, and the wuss that wrote the original article thinks two is too scary for most programmers? I know most programmers are like insects to the giant intellects of those of us at HN, but even so I think he doesn't give them enough credit.
Oh, it's not really that hard. Just eradicate drugs and gangs, fix the educational system, and create jobs. Then go back in time and grow up again.
all this is lame, show me the money or revenue stream!

Posterous is the first one to pop once the bubble bursts.
It is nothing but stupidity exemplified!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Um, no. I am looking to participate in creating this either as an open-source thing (with initial funding by me) or to be a "first customer". I would rather not have to hire someone to do this; but I'd happily kick in money to get it started. It seems like a problem that 1000's of people have that is perfect for an open-source solution.

So I thought people here might also have this problem and like to participate/collaborate, or know of such a solution, or want to build it with me as a first customer.

Doing this myself would be a last-resort.
Regarding 1, there are languages that do not have a clear, unambiguous (to my reading, formalized) grammar yet possess compilers. Examples include classical FORTRAN, Forth and (if I'm feeling particularly trollish today) C++.
Great book about software engineering
I'm seeing an interesting effect on OS X Leopard with Safari 5. If I bring another program to the foreground on top of the Safari window, and then switch back to Safari, only the shadows and background color appear. It takes a second or so for the white boxes and text to appear, as well as the chrome around the top portion of the window.

This was repeatable several times at first, but now it's become intermittent. It takes me back to the days of tweaking settings in X-Windows, when there was a "saveunder" setting that would specify whether to retain the contents of a window in memory when it became obscured by another window.
Oh gawd yes. There seems to be some conception that Apple has nailed it with the iPad and competition is impossible. Gang, the devices we're going to be able to get in three years will make today's iPad look as useful as a brushed-metal frisbee. There's a lot of innovation left to come.
Yes, but isn't it a horrible waste of time? Wouldn't people much rather prefer to tell a client "I've created a personalized walkthrough for setting up your account on your device" -- try that and if you still need help, please feel free to call back.

Self-service FTW?
What Damoncali is saying is that the hysteria wasn't focused on particular companies or business models really, it was that people believed we were in the middle of a one of a kind economic paradigm shift rendering valuation concepts like 'profitability' obsolete.

"[There is] an increasing conceptualization of our Gross Domestic Product – the substitution, in effect, of ideas for physical value."

-Alan Greenspan

When you start hearing quotes like that from people in charge, then you know we're really in big trouble.
But it just isn't cool to say the tablet makers are copying webOS or have their own guts (Android notification system, while nothing like webOS is still distinct and lot better designed for example) - people just love being told that everything interesting in the universe is copied from Apple :)
Depends where you live. If you're in California, ignore it. State law protects you pretty well.
Thanks for the post. We don't want investors running away.
How I (easily) motivated myself
Strongly encourage you to check out YouTern (www.YouTern.com) -- great mentor-based internships at small-team environments... start-ups, smallbiz and non-profits.
Official list of tech industry leaders meeting with Obama tonight
I used to see sock puppets on yahoo finance message boards for small energy companies. The sock puppet would repeat the same five or six canned messages several times a day under multiple aliases. They would never reply to criticism or anyone responding to their posts. I would come back weeks later and the same sock puppets would still be there with the same repetitive slightly varying messages posted in enormous quantities.

my suspicion is that this was some bigger energy companies paying some black PR to pay people (probably in a business process outsourcing sweat shop somewhere in a developing country) to repetitively post these things, or write scripts to do so, in order to drive down the price of these small energy companies so they could be acquired.

The hallmark of a sockpuppet is not responding with anything but a canned ad-hominem response, and posting the same set of talking points in enormous volume.