skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I expect that by "communism" the poster means "a belief system I don't agree with"[0]. (In fairness, given that there are probably dozens of mutually-incompatible Marxist/socialist/communist philosophies, combined with the poster's use of the prefix "pseudo", means that pretty much any belief can, with sufficient effort, be described as "pseudo-communist".)

[0] (My understanding (I'm Canadian) is that this use of the word is a rather quaint Americanism, and has, fortunately, mostly failed to propagate into other dialects of English.)
IPad 2 vs. Motorola Xoom vs. HP TouchPad vs. BlackBerry PlayBook
I see it as "iterative improvement." Apple released the iPad, watched the public's response, and fixed a major problem with a high-margin accessory.

A bit greedy? Yes. A step forward for tablets? Absolutely. You'd better believe Apple's competition will copy this idea in no time.
I resent the name of this article. It should be titled: How WE launched a startup for $42.15
Ask HN: Do you "grandfather" beta users into a free plan?
Hey HN,

Working on a freemium product and hope to be launching a beta soon. I was wondering what is the general practice with beta users when the product goes live. Do you give them a "free forever" account? Do you give them any significant discount? Or do you simply make them pay like everyone else from that point on?
"Everything must be shared" sounds like a reasonable (if simplified) definition for both communism and FSF's goals.
The Next Generation of Online Dating?
A New Service for Video Chatting on Facebook (SocialEyes)
I tried to make a joke playing off the stereotype of what some people think those working for the FSF look like. In short that they're all typical unix grey beards and are professional internet curmudgeons. It didn't work. Sorry.
I seem to recall the last set of updates before this speech didn't work perfectly. People were seeing the results of mixed stylesheets and had to do forced refreshes to clear it.
True, but most people won't have to set up an Appleseed server. Most people will just join an existing one, much like email services.

And the potential for decentralized alternatives in places like Tunisia and Egypt are much greater than Facebook.

Centralized services are much easier to block or shut down than decentralization.
User-mode Linux Kernel
It's not easy, and that's the point. You can take the easy road, which is to get a job and work for someone, hoping that you haven't wasted your life away, or you can take the hard road and build something.

Both have benefits, and both have risks. There's no easy ticket, at least in this life, so employer and employee have to meet in the middle. The market helps that happen.

You had me until your last point, which was when you used the term exploit. I think that tells the tale right there.
I'm speculating that the CDN servers are running stripped-down, static-file-only HTTP servers that don't integrate with a more complex user-identification and logging infrastructure to help with throughput.

I could be completely wrong.
After watching my 8 month old nephew beat on the iPad playing Baby Piano HD, I would have to disagree on the damage part.
No, what I'm saying is that you can get exactly the same paper through CiteseerX, modulo the copyright (which is all that changes between the preprint and final).
Hi Matt

I agree that they screwed up re: backwards compatibility (in fact, michael koz said as much in the comments), so that's inexcusable.

However, the new change makes the URL name functions more consistent, because the new behavior for custom actions was always true for default actions

Before:

comment_like GET ...
products_comments GET ...

After:

products_comment_like GET ...
products_comments GET ...
Small quibble, they're using the wrong url for Appleseed. It's actually:

http://opensource.appleseedproject.org
Wait, I get it now. This as an ad hominem attack against the FSF that assumed the reader would hold "UNIX pipes" and command lines as bad things.

I think you're on the wrong forum.
Lets crunch some simple numbers.

Suppose 1 in 100 children is sexually abused for the first time in any given semester [1], and a teacher has 4 classes of 30 students each. Then in 2.5% of classes, a teacher will have 4 sexually abused children (vs an average of 1.2). When this occurs, the percentage of children failing will increase by 2.3%.

So lets say on average, a teacher is expected to have a failure rate of 20%. 2.5% of the time (roughly once in their career) they get unlucky and have a failure rate of 22.3% instead of 20%. This will occur 2 semesters in a row about one time in 1500, i.e. it will happen to 1 in 50 teachers (assuming a 30 year teaching career).

Alternative numbers, to show that I'm not using cherry picked numbers: P(abuse)=0.001, P(4 abuses in class of 120) = 2.56e-6, slightly greater impact (failure rate goes up to 23.3% over 20%). If sexual abuse happens at a higher rate (e.g. 2%), then we get into the rather implausible situation that 48% of children are sexually abused, resulting in them failing school.

[1] I don't know the relative proportions, but this seems like a high number. Among other things, it would imply that at least 24% of children are sexually abused, resulting in them failing school. We are also assuming the child has a good upbringing and good grades until the sexual abuse, which I imagine is not the most common situation. The assumption that it is the first instance of sexual abuse is important, because if it occurred in the prior year, it would likely affect their prior year grades and hence their current predicted grades.
For me, the most interesting announcement was that $2 Billion had been paid out to App Store developers to date.

That means Apple's 30% of App Store purchases is currently $857MM and change.

I also find myself wondering what portion of that $2B went to Angry Birds. I wouldn't be surprised if Angry Birds turns out to be the first >$100MM business on the App Store.
USB? What, exactly, do you want to plug into it?

It will run iOS 5 when it's ready (good luck getting the latest Android releases on non-Google hardware).
This is an awesome suggestion. Except for very small companies there's usually a place to move someone where they will excel, if management is willing to take the time to think about it for a moment. Once in a while you have someone who doesn't work out at all, but at least as often you can go for the win-win of moving them somewhere they like and perform well.
Apple even like to "cheats" the thinness, by making the edges thinner than the rest, so it seems thinner in photos and is just hovering over the desktop.
People like to point out that the early 20s is the best time to take these risks because you have no commitments. The same is also often true for those at or nearing retirement age: your family is gone, your mortgage is paid, and you already have your retirement saved for.

My mother recently decided to retire, but shortly after decided to start her own business instead.
"addressing the problems of capitalism as suggested by the author of the article?"

and what problems are those?

That not everyone comes out on top? Of course this is the case. I am interested in alternatives that don't involve limiting the success of the people that are actually creating wealth or taking exorbitant amounts of money through taxes.

When you've lived long enough, you realize that there aren't many ideas that are truly unique. Most "new" ideas are just old ideas that have been sugar-coated to make them more palatable. So I'm waiting for your new and unique idea that will somehow give people a better chance at life, success, an freedom than capitalism.
I've never heard of that (whittling 10 prototypes to 3, then picking 1) - source?
Why do scientists tend to have liberal (progressive) views?
Ask HN: Successful startup publicity stunts?
Hi there,

Loved reading about the wepay's publicity stunt with the icecube, as well as paypal's stunt with the t-shirts. (http://www.wepay.com/blog/)

Airbnb's "Obama O's" episode doesn't quite fit into the same category, but is still very cool so worth mentioning!

Can anyone remember any other successful publicity stunts that startups have pulled???

Dave
Not to mention $130 for a 3G chip and antenna. But that is the Apple way. The only good deal is the lowest end model.
Top Photography Apps For Your iPhone
Make your own scientific experiment to be sent to space (NASA's Make Challenge)
Legally, freedom of speech is not absolute. Alito invoked the fighting words doctrine, which has been upheld (though in narrowing interpretation) by the Supreme Court on numerous occasions. I'm not saying it would quite apply in this case, or that I disagree with your sentiment, but there are limits established by precedent to the freedoms defined in the Constitution. Whether we agree they are valid is another matter.
As a developer of a decentralized social networking project (Appleseed), I think you have a misconception of how these projects work. Your mother will never have to manage any of that stuff. She'll just log in to socialsite.com and interact with your aunt, who's on othersite.org.

If there's an issue with communication between them, the administrators of respective sites will deal with them. Your mom won't notice it anymore than when she notices Facebook's internal servers are experiencing a glitch.

And honestly, people don't "want" centralization of social networking any more than they "wanted" the centralization that AOL featured over the decentralization of the web.
A fantastic overview of logic, set theory, combinators, types, etc..
I think you have some problem connecting with his view of the society how-it-should-be. You move in a given universe and you accept the rules: you by the way want to use that rules and accept the consequences on society and mankind of those rules. He think differently. He, among many others, think rules are wrong and the outcome is a wrong society.

Dismissing what he says is dismissing philosophy or sociology, disciplines that for their very nature do not accept the status quo and want to test the rules our world is based on.

By the way, after reading some of his writing, I can say that he writes really damn well.
>"He has created a network that is first and foremost a gold mine for government surveillance and advertisers."

It would be nice for more people to realize this. Really, they're lining up like sheep for government monitoring, and Zuckerberg and Co. are happy to comply. FB seems thrilled with the prospect of being the eyes and ears of Big Brother, actually.
Only if you understand neither.
I have recently rediscovered the book. (Well, mostly eBooks via Kindle apps...)

I read a lot when I was younger, but for some reason kind of stopped for a while. Now I read quite often again, and I love it. eBooks make it easy too. Click, boom, done, and if the author publishes directly or has a decent contract they get 50-70% of my purchase price.

There is a ton of very good literature out there: smart dramas, mysteries, sci-fi, quirky stuff like Gaiman's American Gods, classics I've never bothered to read, etc. The field is a lot larger, due in part to the fact that the capital requirements are essentially nonexistent. Anyone can write a book.

I'm not holding my breath on Hollywood. If movies have hope, it's from the indy scene doing interesting things on small budgets.
Ah, so all you have to do is be willing to live like a scavenger and adjust to a third-world standard of living.

Well that seems reasonable.
It seems like nearly all of today's pop culture is based on earlier works. We are doing almost nothing original, at least in the pop field.

You can find original in the indy world though, but you have to dig a lot.
I currently have the first generation iPad. The thing that tempts me about the iPad 2 is the front facing camera for video conferencing. I think I'll wait and see what the reviews are like first...
"I assume you think that the bailouts of the financial system were earned"

Of course they weren't earned.

"that school is optional for kids who don't like following silly or time-wasting instructions."

No, but I do have a problem with the teacher's unions. It's the reason shitty teachers continue to stay employed in our school systems.

I actually wish that parents had the option of taking their tax dollars and using it toward a private school. It might force school systems to actually improve, or lose funding. People sure hate monopolies, but don't mind when the government essentially does the same exact thing.
For the general public, it doesn't have to keep up with hardware specs when the experience already out-paces it.
“Either use Value Added Modeling or ignore all data” is a false dichotomy.
It's doubtful that the iPad is going to refresh that dramatically by September. It's even more doubtful that Thunderbolt would be in such a refresh – they would have to add PCIe support to their ARM SOC and that doesn't seem trivial.

(Though it's entirely possible it's in the new A5 and they said nothing about it)
Top Dumbest Criminals in the world
Weird, last I checked my "command line" browser had tabs.

looks down

Yup, still does.
> and now look who's running the market just a short time later.

Can we stop with the "market share" talk? No one is "running" the smartphone market. What is this, Engadget?

Android benefits from mass adoption, since Google makes money on ads. So they license their OS for free to a bunch of manufacturers. They're doing pretty well.

Apple benefits from a simple, walled-off platform because that's their design philosophy. So they update a few products a year. They, too, are doing pretty well.
How DuckDuckGo is fighting an 800 lb gorilla (Video interview with Founder)
"Well, it's obviously not working for the guy. He has clearly voiced his dissatisfaction with his life, which includes the jobs that he has taken."

Yes, but it does not follow that he is therefore directionless or lacks ambition. Plenty of successful doctors and lawyers have the same problem.

"Someone that is doing what they love, even if it isn't making that much money, will be happy."

Over simplification. I have known numerous people who loved what they where doing without being very happy about the things that came along with that. Artists, musicians, teachers. Just because you love what you do doesn't automatically make you happy, believe it or not.
So movie-making is becoming more geographically and capital diverse, good for us! Note how little Monsters costed (under half a mil), or District 9 in 2009, for that matter. Some cool movies made outside of Hollywood and released last year: http://www.dailytitan.com/2011/01/01/the-best-little-movies-...
Only if you get it right: http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/are-you-one-of-the-10...
Why Twitter Suspended the Fake Steve Jobs Account (& Why It's Back)
Check out ours: http://loggly.com/404
The thin profile is actually what amazed me reading the specs. I have a new-ish iPod Touch and the form factor is one-of-a-kind. Even the iPhone is thicker than the Touch, with identical processing capabilities. Something like an iPad being about as thick as the Touch makes me more excited about buying one because it seems so darn futuristic.
The rip off level pricing on storage and the obvious, purposeful omission of a card slot is one thing that really turns me off from buying an iPad or iPhone.
Top Most Powerful Businessman Of World
Seems like a pretty misguided point of view. Something tells me a sizable amount of the facebook crowd is comfortable downloading torrents, I'm pretty sure that counts as distributed/decentralized. As far as free software, is your mom unable to use any website that uses apache, ngix, php or ruby? Almost everyone has a broadband router that is almost entirely open source. My Mom and Dad both use an open source browser, what do yours use?

Is your point that only companies worth $50bn can build usable web apps, or that anyone that doesn't want to sell your data can't do UX?
This is Facebook we're talking about, right? Of course they're tracking.
If no other reason than for ad retargetting.
Diversify. The mobile app market is very volatile, and you don't want to put your eggs in one basket. As many others suggest here you probably want to make a few other apps which have traction just in case your big one fails.

There's a lot going against you as time goes on. Other people roll out apps, technology changes which could suddenly cut your income -- so yea, highly recommend you diversify.
NoSQL - Maslow's Hierarchy of Reads (and Writes) by Adrian Cockcroft
And have you noticed the changes to Docs? Their list display is finally useful!
Rails 3.0.5 did nothing wrong.

The correct code for this:

namespace :products do
resources :comments do
member do
get :like
end
end
end

Using a `get` without a `member` block leads to the misbehaviour as seen here, and it's also non-standard.

When defining additional actions for a resource one should always use a `member` block for actions that work on a single object or `collection` for those actions that work on many.
Some people choose to do so, because it makes them happy. Does that make them foolish? If so, what does that say about our economic relationship with the people who actually live in the third world?
Beautiful Minds: Stephen Wiltshire - StumbleUpon
It's not entirely dead. I grew up with adventure games and the best one I've played to date was actually a platformer. Highly recommend Psychonauts to anyone mourning the death of the genre.
Standing is the bar we set for healthy now.
That's simple to explain. The graphics subsystem easily supports outputting 1080p video. However, the iPad 2 has the same screen resolution as the original iPad, 1024x768. This means that the device itself only supports up to 720p, since 1080p is 1920x1080.
Ask HN: Question about salary expectations, raises, and bonuses
Howdy,

What can one expect as a raise/bonus if you are happy with your employer and prefer not to hop between companies?

I work at a largish (200+ programmers) Canadian company as a software developer and it's nearly that time of the year for performance review and the accompanying raises.

Where do you turn to for accurate salary information? The rumor mill says that in recent years we can expect a 0-5% raise in salary depending on job performance and how well the company did that year. Does being a new graduate with less than a year of experience change anything? I haven't been working here for very long (~10 months) but become significantly more productive each week. For tasks which do not require intimate knowledge of the legacy codebase I feel I am at least as productive as most of the more senior developers on the team but my salary is below the industry average.

According to the 2009 Alberta Wage and Salary Survey, (best resource I've found but still fairly vague) Albertans in the Computer Programmers and Interactive Media Developers occupational group earned from $16.83 to $113.22 an hour. The average wage was $38.17 an hour. Say I start at ~$25/hour. How much experience will I need before I can start to expect making the 'average salary'?

Another question: Word on the web is that companies like Google and Apple don't compensate well, but all evidence I've seen points otherwise. How to explain this discrepancy? It was only last week that a very large number of people on Reddit and HN were discussing how challenging it is to break 6 figures as a developer. Based on what I've seen the tech giants (Google, Microsoft, Apple et al) actually seem to offer the highest compensation in the industry. A handful of companies like Netflix do pay better, but they're not based in Canada and the work environment seems to be much less relaxed.

I have no plans to leave but more information is better than less.
Stallman supports the free market, he's just anti intellectual property.
hence "to ever be executable", they don't need to be writable and executable, as long as at one point they are writable (for you to dump your code in), then at some point they're executable (writable or otherwise).

as for dlopen(), you could just compile that directly into your app rather than using it from libc/libdl, bypassing that limitation entirely.
Komodo Island is the New 7 Wonders of The World
The most interesting thing about this link is how often it comes up on hacker news.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1421698
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670218
One thing unrelated to your app, but the design of your pricing table.

You point out the recommended plan - which jumps out - but it's very difficult to easily compare the plans. My two cents: use graphics (checks or bullets) for included features, leave out features that are the same across the board (like no setup fee), and reduce it to critical features only.

The rest of the site looks great, I love the design/UI.
because it gives my rant a nice tinge of political edginess.

I view the FSF as software socialists, as in they have a utopian view of how things should be and everyone should buy in and give all of their stuff to everyone else for the good of the community. I also view socialism as an impossible ideal to achieve. In my opinion, all attempts at socialism have ended in communism, where the ruling class tells the people they have socialism but in reality the people at the top of the chain don't buy into it and live much better lives.

Finally, I used the prefix "pseudo" because obviously we're talking about software and not the rise and fall of empires (although Facebook is sort of a digital empire) so I didn't want to attach a full-on label of "communism" to it.

edit: I'm sure someone who has studied politics way more than I have will come in here and point out that I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, and that's fine. I bitched about the FSF and I feel better so my mission was accomplished.

Yes, vote me down further! PUNISH ME FOR USING WORDS YOU DO NOT LIKE.
Perhaps they'll be back soon. Point and click would work well on the iPad...
The best to-do app is...gmail?
You might be interested in this book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_(book)
Lawyers use Facebook to weed out jury members
Lisp in Lisp with a different default data structure
Aww, typing "skedaddle" doesn't skedaddle :(
Newport Beach Houses
Here's hoping the same support comes to the iPhone 5. As an app developer one persistently annoying thing is my inability to demo an app to an audience in anything but the Simulator.

I've been working on apps related to camera functionality, and the inability to show these apps on a projector is shitty. If I can mirror the display I'd be exceedingly happy.
I hope you realize that the Cardpool marketplace requires sellers who aren't happy (or aren't wanting to redeem) the gift cards they have in hand. And they take a loss, of sorts, for you to get your discount. That doesn't happen with cash.

I'll also say that I'm glad Carpool exists to limit breakage to some extent, but I'd be much happier if gift cards were gone altogether. Your discount notwithstanding...
Yet they still manage to make the iPad cheaper than every other tablet out there. Weird, huh?
>> I prefer the idea of a more intelligent 404 page

There's a script for that: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/make-your...

Example:

<script type="text/javascript">
var GOOG_FIXURL_LANG = 'en';
var GOOG_FIXURL_SITE = 'http://www.example.com
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://linkhelp.clients.google.com/tbproxy/lh/wm/fixurl.js>
</script>