skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Also fascinating to see how the free market will settle on the price of the content writers' services. Historically, one could argue that digital ecosystems have placed a clear value on timeliness over quality and depth, with some notable exceptions.

Unfortunately, I just don't see much of a future for long-form, written journalism on the web as a viable profession, unless you are the owner-operator of the content shop or blog. When people want timeliness, they'll go to timely sources. When they want depth, they'll go to message boards or social media channels. The latter are much more dynamic and "living" sources of deep information than static articles are.

Finally, the HuffPo contributors need to keep in mind that they tied their own bonds here. They volunteered their services for free in the first place. If you place such a low value on your own work, what do you expect you're going to get paid for it?

I have sympathy for the writers in this situation, and for writers in general. In many respects, though not professionally, I count myself among their ranks. But the way people consume information is changing fundamentally, and journalism gigs as they've traditionally existed are anachronisms.

Best way to get paid, if you're determined to be an individual content writer/contributor? Build your brand, market the hell out of yourself, and build a following. The size of your following is your most tangible indicator of worth on the market for your services.
Cognitive load and the importance of naming | Plataforma Tecnologia Blog
I was thinking of making this a little more general purpose (instead of being rails specific), as this could be a useful resource for other technologies as well. Maybe each technology could get a top level url? Like whatever.com/rails and whatever.com/django?

At that point, however, would a wiki be a better format?
If you try once and succeed, you're lucky.

If you try 10 times and succeed, that's called hard work.
Yet when a bond measure is passed no one spells out the terms. No one makes sure they know how much they'll pay in taxes each month after that to pay off the bond or how much total interest will be paid.

Why do you say that? Every time I see a bond measure on the ballot, there's an estimate of the fiscal impact from the Legislative Analyst's Office in the voter information pamphlet, showing the relative costs of principal and interest payments, and the annual cost of paying off the bond. I suppose a lot of people don't bother to read that and just vote based on TV ads or signs instead, but it's not as if the information is hidden from them. For that matter, private interests can and do put bond measures onto the ballot as well. In 2008 there was one proposing the state issue about $2 billion in bonds to build children's hospital facilities, which passed. All the major campaign donors were hospitals, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
wow, what a terrible idea. my only blackberry wielding friends do so only because of their BBM addiction.
He's too consistent to still be freelance.
Interesting, thanks for the idea.
A consumer product should be classified by what it does, not what's under the hood. I don't think your average end user would put the Nook and the iPad in the same class.

A Toyota and a Lexus might have the same engine and HP but that doesn't mean they're necessarily competing for share of the same market. Yes, much of that is marketing - but that's the point of marketing.
Are you including sales to businesses in those numbers?
You mean Apple, Microsoft, Google, RIM et al?

Yes, I think it's a pretty fair assessment to say that they are all losing steam. Their basic problem is that smartphones and tablets have gone from being the cool new toys of yesteryear to being mainstream, expensive tools, with just a soupçon of "too clever for your own good".

I saw an interesting debate a few weeks ago on HN. Some people saw these generic tools as the future and specialised tools increasingly becoming obsolete. Other people saw the generic tools as Jacks-of-all-trades whose weaknesses next to dedicated mobile phones, music players, e-book readers, satnavs, etc. were becoming increasingly apparent as practical experience starts to trump the hype.

If I were brave enough to invest in hi-tech companies, I imagine I would be shorting all of the stocks I mentioned above right now. They are making a staggering amount of money today, to be sure. I'm just not sure how much all these new technologies they have been coming out with recently actually help real people to do things they care about, and I think they are highly vulnerable to indirect competition as consumers become more aware of what they actually care about and which gadgets help them do those things.

[Edit: Would the downvoter(s) care to explain why? Apple have or have recently had significant problems with the reliability of the iPhone 4, the spec for the iPad, and their reputation among the communities of app and content developers who support their entire infrastructure. Google have released a string of flops, many of which have been killed within a year, and are starting to look vulnerable even in their main playgrounds of search and on-line advertising, so unless something is fundamentally different in Android world there are probably similar difficulties there as well. RIM's last two big product launches have made Microsoft's handling of Vista look professional. Microsoft themselves have released a string of Windows Mobile platforms that have horrible reliability, functionality and performance compared to other major mobile operating systems. How are any of these companies not losing steam?]
> Steve said he's not trying to get a chunk of SaaS.

Yet. He can change his mind at any time. If SaaS looks as promising as publishing does, who's to say he won't?
'Zombie' Fungus Takes Control of Ants Brains - be afraid?
I don't disagree, but that's also how you get sued/investigated for anti-competitive behavior.
The featured comment is way more insightful than the actual article:

The NETWORK is the computer, remember? Sun lost track of this reality. They were a systems company, yes, with emphasis on the hardware devices business rather than software. Lack of focus on software was not the cause of Sun's downfall. It was that they lost the vision of systems evolution in the NETWORK. Systems are now on a chip, in a hand held smart device that is mobile with access to apps. in the data center or cloud over the NETWORK. Sun understood this in its early years, but lost track of the trend later on, lured into selling "big iron" and mired in the status quo. Furthermore, Sun was a bloated company that refused to make staffing cuts when necessary. Sun was blinded by Sun. [sseiden920]
It's funny to think of the app comparison Jobs did at his keynote presentation.

Let's see the numbers for books on Kindle and compare notes.
can you link to the numbers
The biggest takeaway for me from the event was Steve Jobs
This could be a super-no-procrast feature where you disable login for an account for N days.
WordPress redirect home page to first blog post
Four New Types of CIO for the Future
Innovation and model boundaries
They have 10 web servers. If they could replace all that with a VPS or two, they would.
You could pick a relevant affiliate program (check out Commission Junction) and promote it.
Kindle supports a number of formats (though notably not ePub), so if you can buy a DRM-free ebook then you can get it onto your Kindle. There are plenty of stores out there[1] which are happy to sell you such ebooks, as well... though there's certainly some titles which are only available DRM-encumbered.

[1] http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_stores#Dealers_and_Pu...
> You mean aside from bandwidth, a marketplace of literally hundreds of millions of ready buyers for your chosen platform, all with credit cards conveniently stored for ease of purchasing your product?

For subscriptions at least the bandwidth is funded by the publisher. Yes you get access to lots of customers, but you have to charge them the same as ones you sell yourself and if you want to have an app you are required to let your users purchase from within it. It adds up to 30% being ridiculously high. If it was opt-in and/or non price matching I don't think many would care, but as it stands it's a huge tax that if enforced will mean the end to many of the killer apps of iOS.
Computerless Arduino (via Teague Labs)
You got to take away Steve Jobs?!? :O :D
The key to reddit is creating an account and subscribing to the right subreddits (programming, science, compsci, ...). Equally importantly, unsubscribe from the main "reddit.com" reddit, pics, wtf, etc. Suddenly reddit becomes an informative, useful site.
How to Live in New York City
How strong is the weak force?
Isn’t that equally true for iOS devices?

What can you do with a Kindle except buying books from Amazon? As far as I know, you can read books without DRM and you can surf the web. That’s equally true for all iOS devices. What else does a Kindle allow you to do that you cannot do on an iOS device sans apps?
We're talking 30% here. You think 30% is a just price for that service? Lets not forget that you still have to pay taxes on the remaining income. If there was a startup here on HN whose business model was 30% of your revenues for hosting of your app + credit card information storage (usually done via 3rd party PCI compliant service) it wouldn't be taken very seriously.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but 30% of your revenue for that service is absurd.
That is assuming the definition for exercise is any level of activity above the standard and expected activity level of a species.

Put into context, your reasoning implies that a rat running around all day looking for food is not exercise.
I've never actually been to techmeme, so I went there. That's one ugly website.

This should be taken as constructive criticism: if the first thing that pops into a new user's head is "wow, that's ugly", it's probably time for a redesign.
Look at SJ's talk as "entertainment" .. which is what practically all of Apple's products are about :)

Rgd Samsung tabs, I believe the writer's choice of "last quarter" itself shows bias, 'cos the debate on what "smooth" means seems to be about post-Christmas sales. It is indeed a vague word which can be interpreted as "slow" in comparison to "faster than expected". Bottom line is that we don't know what the sales figures are with any degree of accuracy if Samsung can say "2 million sold" .. and later on add quietly "to retailers".

The real bottom line is, do you care about these numbers when making your decision to get one of these things?
Show HN: Does anyone have any glor.io/us ideas?
I just registered the domain glor.io so I could make the domain hack glor.io/us . I thought it was pretty glorious, but now I wonder, does anyone have any ideas for how this domain could be used?
Not a fan. I usually like "clean" designs but it doesn't automatically make it good.

Project homepages are the worst pages I've seen so far. Example: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/. The details aren't well layed out and there's a lot of wasted space.
Hostage? You can't use that word

You're entitled to your opinion. It works like this: certain of our friends are afraid that if we started another session, they'd never get another gig again or soundboard job again, which would be a significant chunk of their income.

Also, to use the phrase "political fallout" when you're not talking about the government is confusing as hell.

That's either crazy talk, or a deliberate troll. There's definitely workplace politics in groups of musicians. Somehow, I am unconcerned about you in particular being confused.
He was just reading over the guy's shoulder. Nothing weird there.
Tuplespace is all about lookups/publish/subscribe on filters on the tuples. For the vast majority of the time, filters are of the form of (<string>, <type>, ...) or (<string>, <value>, ...) . You don't need to use skip lists (or binary trees generally) for that, you can use nested hash tables on the prefix/suffix of the tuples. Then you get O(len(filters)) instead of O(log(size of tuple space)). Trust me when I say that using hashes of filters is a lot faster.

Also, see my higher-ranked post about why I stopped using tuple spaces.
Raven DB (http://ravendb.net/) is a pretty good NoSQL option for the .NET/Windows platform.
One thing I've learned is how much surface quality of presentation matters. As much as we might pretend to be perfectly logical rational beings, psychology, aesthetics, and emotion are always part of our decision-making process. So when I present something, I try to have great material, but I also try to make it visually appealing, clearly-written, friendly, and warm. Makes a huge difference.
As you continue your plunge into PHP, consider a super lightweight framework like CodeIgniter. Moving to a Model-View-Controller pattern early will turn you into a good developer a lot quicker.
You need some type of categorization for this to be valuable to someone looking for a newsletter.
I'm in your target market, and I honestly couldn't figure out the site at first glance.
Eventually I found the search section, but nothing I typed was even initialized in the db. I'm talking simple part names like caliper and clutch.

I've always found that Craigslist and regular forums were the best way to go besides U-Pull-It yards, though if I were buying parts for a wide variety of brands of cars it might be more useful so I didn't have to register on a bunch of different boards. You haven't convinced me that your approach is any better, in fact it seems like more work because I have to fill in your db what a clutch is!
The Chinese coastal cities got rich in part by emulating Hong Kong, providing much of the capital required to further develop the interior (much of which remains quite poor, however). There was a news story recently which illustrated how Shanghai had changed over the last 20 years with two photos taken from the same vantage point in 1990 and 2010. Even as recently as 1990, Shanghai just looks like a low-rise town, nothing special. The 2010 photo looks like a spaceport. This was in large part the result of Deng Xiaoping saying that the government was OK with people getting rich and would no longer treat it as an economic crime.
Justice Department Looking Into MPEG LA's WebM Patent Pool
Absolutely spot on! Around the time the iPad1 launched, I told one of my close friends "imagine GarageBand on this!" and it is absolutely thrilling to see such a lovely implementation come to the iPad2. Using the accelerometer to detect the force with which you hit the piano keys is really clever!
Great article with a unique viewpoint. Tech blogs, geeks like us and pundits are obsessing over RAM and minute details of the spec sheet while consumers will be playing with the new software, trying on Smart Covers and imagining an iPad 2 as a fashion accessory.
Viz must use Apple's sub service and charge monthly fee for formerly free app.
Test apps wirelessly in an elegant way. Better than TestFlight in some cases
got links to what models you're using? I used to analyze such data.
The Cloud: Battle of the Tech Titans
Choice quote: "Each day, [Amazon] adds enough computing muscle to power one whole Amazon.com circa 2000, when it was a $2.8 billion business"
Excellent thoughts -- I'll plan to include placeholders for simple ad placements that can be sold directly, and will definitely have contact info in the footer.

The Facebook page is also a great idea; I'll get it created and try to auto-post user creations to the page.

Thanks!
So are you going to answer his question? Since 'fanboys' is taboo or insulting, what are we supposed to collectively refer to these people as?
"We’re lucky to have the criticism, because that means people care enough to tell us what they want."

That's a winning attitude in a competitive business. Because the Google team mentioned search results for medical terms in the interview, I tried out a few searches on medical terms that a few months put appallingly bad sites at or near the top of the results page. Now Google is serving up much better sites on medical topics, so I'm glad that algorithm change was made.
Push the cork into the jar.
Stay away from the Twitter Profile Views App
Ford Focus Is #WINNING
This is an interesting article, but the twenty reasons could use an edit down to, say three. For example, #11 belies #1's claim of a 'new sociological type':

1.At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future

11.To amplify: I can't find the quote but one of the historians of the French Revolution of 1789 wrote that it was not the product of poor people but of poor lawyers. You can have political/economic setups that disappoint the poor for generations - but if lawyers, teachers and doctors are sitting in their garrets freezing and starving you get revolution. Now, in their garrets, they have a laptop and broadband connection.

Other reasons are redundant, or not really reasons, etc. The three I would consolidate things down to:

* The livelihoods of the bourgeoisie being affected (cf. Emmanuel Goldstein's immortal tome)

* Modern connectivity

* A domino effect exacerbated by the above two.
I just watched the video from the event, and as someone who likes to record music once in a while, Garageband looks completely amazing. As it is, most of the time when I have spare time to spend on making songs I'm not around all the equipment that I need to do that. If it holds up to the promise of the video, it looks like I can go on vacation and just bring the ipad and a guitar, and I can record full song ideas with basic drumming, chords and singing parts, arrange different parts etc.

This looks like it'll be huge for song writers, really. Sure, an acoustic guitar and a simple four-track recorder does the same basic thing, but this is like a mini pro tools. Can't wait to play with it.
I wish they would respond to my numerous password recovery requests (which were due to them getting hacked few months ago and subsequently resetting all user passwords) instead of spending time on shiny stuff. And that's not even considering the existence of GitHub that's pretty much "SourceForge done right".

So, yeah, I don't know. I have few projects hosted on SF back from 5-6 years ago, but I think SF's time has passed, new look or not.
Ask HN: Google just started putting image ads to Gmail?
Whereas if you've developed an iOS app, transitioning that to another platform is often going to be a large amount of work where you're basically starting over from the spec and not bringing over any code.

It's much harder to find a substitute for the App Store ecosystem than it is to replace the code. The proverbial rock and hard place.
Good god, why on earth did that get downvoted? It's an intelligent opinion, and he's not the only one who thinks it.

That said, I strongly disagree. iPad class tablets are a portable window into the digital world. Apple's video did a pretty good job of showing how that could help people do things they care about, and we're only just getting started.
Can you clarify? Do you mean Fried's page as-is is already 'SEOactive' meaning good? Or that every bullet needs links to another page (which would seem to derail the original effect)?
Show HN: My first mac app hits the app store (quick url shortener)
What To Do With Your To-Do List - Peter Bregman - Harvard Business Review
"Unfortunately, I just don't see much of a future for long-form, written journalism on the web as a viable profession, unless you are the owner-operator of the content shop or blog. When people want timeliness, they'll go to timely sources. When they want depth, they'll go to message boards or social media channels. The latter are much more dynamic and "living" sources of deep information than static articles are."

I think the Jury is still out on this. I subscribe to the Economist and read it primarily digitally on my iPad. I suspect a lower priced 'digital only' Economist will bring in some additional revenue there. And I don't think we have yet seen a 'long form' journalism vehicle which is digital only so its still very hard to tease apart the costs vs revenue. (if there is one then I'm not yet aware of it)

Would love to hear about such a project if one exists.
Great point. Right now it's only Wordpress Tagged Categories, but I'll be changing the home page to a categorized landing page when there's more than 10-15 newsletters in total.
Amazon RDS Backup and Maintenance Windows Shortened
While the initial idea of the word "reservation" may be true, usually the US government reneged on their promises and continued to move the Indians around to smaller and less desirable lands, while still maintaining the name "reservation". Also the idea of signing a contract, with the only alternative being annihilation doesn't really bode well for the idea that the Indians had a whole lot of choice in the matter.
awaiting the haskell platform release to get the next GHC ..
I thought it was a matter of licensing, not a matter of 'something that can run code.'
Wow, that's very kind of you. I'm just learning Rails so would appreciate the help with my mvp.

I designed and prototyped a text-to-speech service - http://audiothink.com - and need help making it work.

It's on heroku. If you provide me your email address I will add you as a collaborator to git@heroku.com:seirt.git

Otherwise here is the identical repo on github: git@github.com:ryanm/audiothink.git

I was thinking of using Wufoo to handle payments. That may be out-of-scope for an mvp, but if it isn't I can add you as a collaborator on Wufoo as well.

My email address is systemtrig@gmail.com if you want to discuss. To anyone else reading this, I could sure use a co-founder with some Rails skills - please reach out to me if you're interested in partnering.
If you look at buying a non-used car, you might get a wide choice of colours in the brochure, but in all honestly, how many garages will sell you the exact colour you want (with the spec you want) there & then? People I know who have tried this, generally wait around two weeks or more from order to delivery, or settle for a slightly different spec.

I don't see how you can easily scale consumer electronics manufacturing to allow for a range of different colours (certainly not in the case of the iPad anyway), one key factor being that I don't think you can predict demand of individual colours reliably enough.

Then you have the issue of handling returns etc. People would get annoyed walking into an Apple store to swap a broken device, only to be told they've run out of that colour/spec combination. They can probably get away with it on the nano due to small product size, low manufacturing cost and limited spec difference (2 base models). If they made the iPad in five colours, you've suddenly upped the variation from 6 models to 30. That's a big leap and a big complication to many otherwise simpler business processes.

My TV comes in one colour, my toaster two, my SLR one, my printer one, heck even mass market clothing/fashion items rarely come in more than a couple of base colours these days. The majority of consumers are not bothered by purchasing something in a generic colour if the product is good enough, companies want to sell to this majority (not the minority of people that refuse to purchase something based on colour) to maximize profit.