skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't indulge in the SUNW autopsy parlor game often, but coincidentally, I've already played it twice today (for the first time in many months), and I'm waiting on a build -- so perhaps the third time's a charm...

Disclaimer: I was one of the ones who tried like hell to right the ship. So I am not only suffering from the same hindsight bias that everyone else will inevitably suffer from, I am further biased by the lens of my own actions and experience.

That said, I think Sun's problem was pretty simple: we thought we were a hardware company long after it should have been clear that we were a systems company. As a result, we made overpriced, underperforming (and, it kills me to say, unreliable) hardware. And because we were hardware-fixated, we did not understand the economic disruptive force of either Intel or open source until it was too late. (Believe me that some of us understood this: I worked extensively on both Solaris x86 and with the SPARC microprocessor teams -- and I never hesitated to tell anyone that was listening that our x86 boxes were starting to smoke the hell out of UltraSPARC.)

Now to be honest, I (and others on the software side) played a role in enabling bad hardware behavior: we spent too much time trying to help save microprocessor management from an unmitigated disaster of their own creation (UltraSPARC-III, cruelly code named "Cheetah") when we should have been more forcefully advocating cutting them off. Personally, I feel I only started to really help the company turnaround when I refused to continue to enable it: I (and we, really) stopped trying to save the hardware teams from themselves, and focussed on delivering innovative systems software. And indeed, the software that resulted from that focus bought the company time and (I believed) an opportunity for renaissance: when coupled with the return of Andy and the open sourcing of Solaris, there was reason for great optimism around 2005 or so...

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. One could argue that our technological pivots were too late, and they may well have been, but I think that the urgency and focus that we felt in the engine room (aided by the bone-cold water that was at our knees and rising) was simply not felt or appreciated in the wheelhouse: I feel that we could have made it had there been more interest at the top of Sun in the mechanics of running and managing a multi-billion dollar business...

Or maybe it's not so unfortunate: thanks to the fact that we open sourced the system, I still get to work everyday on the technology that I devoted my career to -- and I'm loving it more than ever, and having more fun developing it than I have in a long, long time. (And, it must be said, I'm working with many of the same engineers that made working at Sun great.)

So when I look back on those years, I believe it will ultimately be with fondness, not regret; for me personally, Scott nailed it: "Kicked Butt, Had Fun, Didn’t Cheat, Loved Our Customers, Changed Computing Forever."
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The Future?: Using Light to Power our Devices
Yes, we'll be adding SSL to the account create / login soon. It's very high on our current list of things to do. :)
Rush hour in major cities would be an entirely different experience with automated cars.

In my observation, the vast majority of congestion is caused by drivers either overcompensating for changes in conditions (ie slowing down even more than the car in front of you slowed down) or otherwise reacting slowly.

I believe highways could handle considerably more traffic if all the traffic were automated.

I think it's possible to see significant gains if only some of the cars were automated, actually.
That's a really good point.

I suppose my initial idea was to do something that gave people the feeling of belonging to a team, which I implemented through competitions, and then I felt the need to reward winners of the competition somehow.

Do you (or anyone) have any ideas for socially meaningful rewards for participation? I feel like I see badges all over the place nowadays, so that seems kind of overused...
In addition to what others have said, I'll add r/depthhub. It's similar to r/bestof, but it serves to collect all of the interesting and deep discussions that happen on Reddit. r/theagora is also great if you have a philosophical bent. It's an attempt to recreate the dialectic of the Socratics. Emphasis is placed on focussed rhetoric and honest argument, and to avoid logical fallacies.
I think you're overlooking the idea that tablets only have to be better at one or two things in order for people to adopt them. Once you have one, the additional functions don't have to be objectively better in order to displace single function devices because they have two unassailable advantages - zero additional hardware cost, and zero mass.

For example - just being able to browser, keep up with light email, and read ebooks is enough for me to carry my iPad in a lot of situations. I used to carry a backpack full of books and a laptop to get the same functionality. Once I'm carrying the iPad, the fact that it can become a music keyboard for another $5 is just a bonus. I was never going to buy and carry a small portable keyboard. Likewise the GPS and maps. I wouldn't have bought and carried an independent device for that. For specialists, dedicated devices will better for some time to come, but for most people that doesn't matter - the tablet is enabling activities that were simply not practical before.

As far as UI conventions go, most non-geeks just aren't very good with the desktop metaphor anyway. Sure there are experts and for programmers or digital content creators by profession it pays to become one, but most people just aren't.

My 87 year old father (who's last computer was analog!) was able to take my iPad out of my hands and operate the browser without me even telling him what the device was let alone explaining UI metaphors.

I think the key is that tablets can work in situations where netbooks etc. simply can't, and they can make functionality ubiquitous where a collection of special purpose devices would be too much overhead.

And then it's not going to take long for them to evolve to outpace the development of independent specialist hardware because all those separate makers don't stand a chance of putting the same level of resources into the development.

And for all the things that need custom sensors, why not simply have them be extensions of a tablet?

Take something really specialized - e.g. a metal detector. Why not make that into just a Bluetooth sensor that communicated with an iPhone? Setting could be adjusted on the touch screen, but more importantly the phone could log the output, put it on the map with GPS, and upload it to the cloud. All this extra capability, and the sensor could probably be lower cost than a standalone device.

So once tablets enter the equation, previously devices can become cheaper and more capable.

We aren't going to see tablets fall to standalone devices, altough other hardware isn't necessarily going away either.
Yup, it was Andy - according to Andy, according to BusinessWeek :-)

Care to share that thread here?
I think your 20% figure might be low, but that doesn't mean that we won't see specific applications for autonomous cars earlier.

Autonomy is going to creep into autos slowly, things like: anti-lock brakes, adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance are all small pieces of an "autonomous" automobile.
Convert shortcomings into advantages without lying
Not sure why the gp got down voted, I think his point is valid, albeit wrong. Student bookstores sell computers, hardware and software at a student discount - my uni sold macbooks at a $100 discount from retail price. This stuff is sold (or sometimes even given away) for the purpose of locking students into a platform.

For example, my uni gave away ms software, like visual studio, to try to encourage adoption, train the students to use ms tools (so when they graduate, they are more likely to find a job using ms tools), and to thereby lock us into their platform. It used to be Sun, then MS. Apple is now doing it, and whoever comes after Apple will do it...
This view seems deeply flawed. One of the upsides of public transportation is that I can read / sleep / work / talk with people with 0 distractions. The downside is that the commute is 3-5 times longer.

If I can get the shorter commute time of my car AND have the benefits of not having to pay attention, that's a huge gain even if my travel time isn't any faster.

Additionally, there are plenty of use cases that don't rely on interaction. Ideally, my car can drop me off at the door to the grocery store and go park itself and then come pick me up when I text it that I'm ready to go home.
A recommendation is much more valuable than Google.
Bungie's Next Game Is An MMO
Tax breaks vs Budget Cuts: an infographic
Sweet!

I noticed you are using Woopra, how is that working out?
Awesome, thanks, please do.
We started with remembering things about people, and found that the simple way to do that was to take notes.

However, note taking has such a high barrier to entry, that we ended up pivoting here. However, I think there's different ways about it that we'll play with down the line if we revisit the topic.
Interesting, but this doesn't address the fundamental problem. The main reason that companies make you wait on the line is to differentiate the customers who care a lot about their problem from those who don't. By making the cost of waiting, for the customer, practically negligible, you are sidestepping this protection mechanism; your success would flood companies with less important support calls, thus giving them a powerful incentive to shut you out. At first, they'll just instruct their customer service representatives to immediately hang up on anything that sounds like your service. Next they'll ask the legal department for ammo, and do their best to implement technical counter-measures.

It's an interesting idea, but it's IMHO doomed long term, unless you find a way to take the companies' interest into account as well. For instance, in order to maintain the same system of customer disincentives you should probably charge per each minute your service is used.
#2 depends on your definition of volume, and it's pretty clear that nobody is close to Apple there, so it's hardly even an exaggeration let alone a lie.

#3 isn't a fabrication either. For it to be false, you either have to include e-readers, or assume that Samsung sold over 1.6m Tabs, which seems extremely unlikely given the evidence.

#1 is the most dishonest looking one, but none of it really justifies the "You Lie!" outrage, given the general tone of industry commentary.
Sounds like they learned their release numbering skills from the KDE folks.
Every time someone loads a page, a circle explodes out of where the person's located.

It makes the world look like an earthquake zone.

Beyond that, it's pretty good. I can things coming in live, which is nice.
I do! Oh wait, and then I woke up.
I think it's possible to see significant gains if only some of the cars were automated, actually.

I've thought about this as well many times.
For HN: A good laugh at PI (pie)
That idea sounds too simple to be true, but I'd file that under "crazy enough to work"
Freeman Dyson: No Heat Death
don't forget the TI84
Not exactly real-world conditions, but a nice demo nonetheless. Maybe this is how they've been able to Street View so much of the world?

I wonder how long until we see the iDrive. I'd love to not-drive myself everywhere, it's a massive time-sink IMO, I could be doing better things in the same time period. I understand some people enjoy it, but I don't.
Joyent Relaunches Node.js Service, Announces Cloud Analytics
If Google plays their cards right over the next several years, this could easily produce more revenue for them than ads do.
This is wrong of course. Imagine you could hire a driver, now imagine he worked for free and was always at his best driving ability.

The things that self driving cars will do first, really really well, are:
1) Drive people around who currently use chauffers because they can use the driving time productively.
2) Lower the barrier to attending events, restaurants, etc in urban areas where parking is an issue. (if you car can go park itself a couple of miles away and you can phone it up when you want to go home, win)
3) Reduce the number of DUI accidents as people go out, have a good time, and their car drives them home.

Self driving cars that can drive amongst human driven cars will be a huge win. Now why a search company would do with that, who knows.
I think the original poster is referring to the fact that people may search for those questions, possibly (or questions that relate).
The tech press needs to play up the competition to the iPad as much as possible, because drama drives clicks. But the reality is that Apple's iPad is so far ahead of everything else that it's almost out of sight. Have you used one of the 'iPad killers'? That is not competition. It's a joke. You can't even buy any of them, except for Samsung's Galaxy Tab. [And the Motorola Xoom, but only at retail Best Buy in America, from what I can tell.]

I applaud Samsung [and Motorola] for giving it a real try, but I think they fall short of the iPad. Few people are buying those things. I wouldn't, myself. I have some Android phones, but I probably won't get an Android tablet, if Honeycomb indicates where the platform is heading.

The lack of competition is allowing Apple to, rightfully, do whatever it wants to with the App Store. And I don't see the situation changing anytime soon. Apple is making the rest of the consumer tech industry look incompetent.

edit: Updated with Xoom.
Have a link or email address?
AFAIK, these cars are still being manned by the engineers, they're not used in any official capacity.

I have seen one on the 101. They are very weird looking things when you look in and see that the "driver" is on a laptop. It's pretty freaky.
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Well the Xoom has now been released as well, so in theory it's competition as well.

But you are right, in reality there is no competition. There are a lot of people out there who think competition is on specs alone - #slots, ports, ram, memory, etc. Because that's how it was in the PC era.
They are wrong.
I'm running a project right now where the main stakeholder contact wanted me to call some meetings so we could brainstorm the use case scenarios, functions, etc. Thing was, she didn't want to relinquish the lead creative role for the project. So I'd be running meetings being a facilitator. The way she explained it, I felt like I would be babysitting people unnecessarily.

Me: OK, I can do that, but I'll just send a note out to everyone to brainstorm their ideas first, and then we can have items on the table to discuss.

Her: No, nobody has the same ideas or same vision, so we need to have a session first to brainstorm all the ideas.

Me: Well, I find in my experience that discussions can be much more productive if a lot of the thinking has been done beforehand. How about I'll just get everyone to think of a few items to suggest/discuss before we meet, and then our discussion will be able to really get into it?

Her: No, that's a waste of time. You'll be duplicating work. Besides, people won't know what to write beforehand. They need someone there who can help pull the ideas out of each person. Everyone already has the ideas, it just needs to be pulled out.

Me: Judging from my conversations with everyone else so far, I think this team is quite capable and intelligent. I really do believe we'll be more productive if everyone contributes some ideas beforehand so we can assemble an agenda of sorts. This won't restrict us from brainstorming new ideas either.

Her: No, they need someone there to guide their discussion and help them to articulate what it is they're thinking.

Me: That may be the case with many people, but that's really not the sense I'm getting from these folks. To be frank, I think it may even be insulting to think they need that kind of help.

Her: I'm not going to argue about this anymore. We can agree to disagree. Just organize the meetings.

Me (in my head): You're just too lazy to do your own work to figure out what you want, even though you claim to already know what you want.

End of story, there was no way getting around it. This was escalated to senior management, and while senior management agreed with my perspective, they told me to essentially take just care of her. So I scheduled the weekly meetings. The very first meeting, as I tried to lead the discussion, one of the senior customer folks involved suggested that they take away this discussion and come up with some documents and lists, and they'll come back to me when they're ready. I thanked God that competent people still existed.
you see a lot of this wailing and gnashing in the media blog echo chamber, but since this is HN I'd like to point out how blatantly off base it is.

one, contributors to "the blog" (the left column on the homepage) are the internet equivalent of a "letters to the editor" page or a cable news guest brought on to have their (employers) say.[1]

two, the traffic generated by those posts is a small fraction of overall traffic. Nate Silver did some spitball math on it a week or two ago and came away with the right understanding.[2]

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/10/huffington-post-blo...

[2] http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/the-econ...
Microsoft tablet OS not coming until fall 2012?
"It’s incorrect to expect iOS to be as “open” to developers and their businesses as Mac or Windows"... Unless there are fundamental limitations, why shouldn't it be as open as Mac OS X? I should be able to download apps directly and purchase them through a curated app store. I should be able to download apps through somebody else's app store. If people value the benefits of a curated app store over the looser conventional OS model, they'll vote with their dollars and only then will developers follow. But I don't buy the notion that iOS should be less free because of arbitrary market conditions and rent-seeking Quasi-monopolies, or that that's just the way it is, and we should just grin and bear it.
You can't even buy any of them, except for Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

The Xoom is available now.
Interestingly enough, a car which simply refuses to drive in hurricanes, hailstorms, white-out snow, and so forth would be rather more than 20% superior to the average driver. So that's easily dealt with - if insufficient sensory data is available, either hand control over to the driver or, if possible, pull to the side of the road. The average driver likely does really horrible in large crashes and pileups, so merely the lowered reaction time might allow a huge improvement there (humans take a really long time to react, compared to computers). The average driver doesn't need to do evasive driving (as well as likely being horrible at it), so that's an unnecessary criteria. Similarly with tire eating potholes; even a tiny improvement would meet the 20% requirement you propose.

Ambiguous/contradictory road signs and unmarked roads are a navigation problem; given a sufficiently accurate database, as is likely to be present in most cities, they would be irrelevant (I expect that initial roll-out of driverless cars would occur in cities, where most traffic would be low-speed and highly structured. I may be wrong).

Unexpected car movements (due to snow, mud, or whatever else) I would agree to be fair things that need to be targeted, but I very much disagree with strong AI being needed for all of this. However, it's probably going to be quite a long while until the equipment is less expensive than hiring someone else to drive (which is a barrier for some group behaviors and sharing of data between cars). On the other hand, that's not necessarily a consideration which people factor in when buying extremely expensive cars.
It may depend on the project, but here's one positive example. I went to the home page, then clicked on one of the featured projects. I've used Chicken of the VNC before, so there I went: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

Next, click on 'Develop.' On the new page under Repositories > CVS, there is a link to 'browse code': http://cotvnc.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cotvnc/

Agreed, it is definitely not GitHub.
A car dealer at the Ford dealership told me Ford is demoing cars that parallel park themselves.
Doesn't blow up my system with Chromium 9.0.597.107 (75357) Ubuntu 10.10 x86_64. (That's the version in the Maverick repos.) The WebGL stuff doesn't work right, but the underlying video and audio play fine, and the 'alien invasion' video played without skipping or any bad behavior as well.
For most of those conditions, safely pulling off the road and telling the human to take over would be satisfactory.
There are gaping and blindingly obvious holes in that summary, such as the one observed in the comments that suns are burning mass to be that hot and can not continue that way forever. Part of the heat death idea is the universe consisting of nothing but iron, black holes, and radiation, with the former eventually transitioning to radiation on sufficiently large scales through either proton decay or Hawking radiation, and a relatively brief burst of stars in the universe's youth doesn't do anything to remove that. But I do see an inkling of what could be a more robust idea in there, and Dyson is known to be a smart person who could not possibly have missed this, so I assume there's a more complete and sensible version of this argument somewhere. I'd love a link, if anyone knows where to find it.
So what OS does it run?
I do like apple hardware (until mac os x became good enough for me, around 10.4/10.5 I used linux on a intel macbook), and it is well designed, but IBM thinkpad are much more solid.

Actually, the Intel plastic macbook were pretty crappy quality-wise: the magnet stuff which kept breaking for many people, etc... I bought the alu one for that reason alone. Also, ipods are not super strong, and the recent ones rarely last more than 2 years for me.

Maybe I am just careless, but the IBM thinkpad I got lasted for years and were built like tanks (and unfortunately looked like as well...).
Congratulations Wil! I love the pivot.
Possibly because the necessary switching apparatus would be a nightmare with modern technology, and would have been entirely unworkable even 20 years ago. That said, it's a really good idea, and one which I would like to see attempted - or at least a good explanation of why it would be completely crazy on a technological level.
I'm confused how charging $0.99 will solve the problem. If they're forced to charge anything through in-app purchasing, wouldn't it be the same prices they are charging on their pricing page on their website?
Many of the companies in the consumer electronics spent the last decade wasting energy trying to screw each other over interoperability and standards issues - failing to agree because none of them wanted one of the others to gain an advantage.

Meanwhile Apple just ignored the silly games and built their own end-to-end ecosystem.

It's not lack of competition that's killing the rest of the industry - it's lack of cooperation.
CrackerCast Episode 26 - Proxies
If you don't enjoy driving, there are alternatives such as public transportation for short surfaces, and trains/airplanes for longer. And I don't mean this in a bad way, I'm just saying.