skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very good point. If you want the interaction, you could get together with your friends (assuming they telecommute too) and code where ever you want, instead of just with the people that were for some reason assigned to the same box X in building Y.

The flexibility will make social life more interesting instead of less.

Another good thing would be that you can move to any nice place you want, instead of being bound geographically to the (usually expensive and small) homes in the area around your workplace.
Startup School:Paul Graham of Y Combinator
It would be interesting to see if they expand the scope of Cloud Drive to include Dropbox-like syncing.
wow. I think I might start a blog too... This really motivates me. I kind of wish I started 9 months back, but I haven't really joined the workforce yet...still in college. So I guess i still have some time?
"Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history."
Yeah, everything was browser based, except for the small app that ran on the desktop. We handled all the queues and the download scheduling on the server though -- no need for the client to open anything.
... and Simon Peyton-Jones (Haskell)
Also, do you have any recommendations on whether I should have a end target to build mobile apps or web apps? I know the mobile app industry is growing,but I'm not sure which path to take. Is there a specific language targeted towards mobile app vs. web development? or is it the same background?
Considering Dropbox is probably one of the biggest users of S3, it's not entirely impossible that they were in the know.
Most mainstream OO languages with a type system to speak of actually get in the way of correctly classifying data by confusing the separate issues of reusing implementation artefacts (aka subclassing) and classifying data into a hierarchy of concepts (aka subtyping). The only widely used OO language (for sufficiently narrow values of wide and wide values of OO) to get that right used to be Objective Caml, and recently its stepchildren F# and scala.
So it is actually FP that helps you with the classification.
Tcl didn't play in that space, and to their credit I don't think the Tcl folks were willing to go there just to ride the buzz.

That's not entirely true. I don't recall the exact timeline, but there was a Tcl plugin for Netscape which could be viewed as playing in much the same space as Java or Flash. A bit of work on media display and animation, and it might well have taken the space that Flash came to dominate.

Unlike browser Java of the time, the Tcl plugin didn't try to bury itself deep within the roots of the browser, was fast, and worked. :>
Obama is getting shittier by the day. And I used to think he was OK.
As a non-US there is no way for me to use this.

I don't understand these types of comments. I have the same problem with Spotify in the US, but I don't feel the need to share that I can't use Spotify whenever a Spotify discussion comes up -- everyone is well aware of country restrictions already.
Amazon is not looking to dominate the Android app marketplace (I doubt that either google or the carriers/phone manufacturers would allow that to happen) but is positioning itself as a viable alternative to iTunes. The free 20gb offer with the purchase of an album is clearly intended to get users in the habit of buying media content from Amazon. This is especially interesting because of what it may mean for the kindle. Apple was able to launch its impressive media empire because of the synergy of iTunes and the iPod (and eventually iPhone and iPad). With a viable media store and content locker, we may see music and video on kindles or new kindle-related devices soon. Cheap kindles w/ video playback + a legitimate media store and locker service may be just the recipe to challenge not only the iPad but the Apple eco-system. Because I am a fanboy and just can't help myself, my money is on Apple =)
Horses for courses, and all that.
Flamebait title. Read the article and it clearly states that this is part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
RIAA lobbyist becomes federal judge, rules on file-sharing cases
Apple beats Amazon to a useful media distribution store by a decade.
You gotta wonder, where do we go from here? You can't pick a Republican next election in retaliation, because the reasons people are upset with Obama seems to be, because the Democrat is too Republican...

Maybe a 3rd party will finally find an inroad?
Thanks for the recommendations! Do you have any recommendations on where to start. I'm currently in college and trying to take this on as a hobby. I wish there were ways to learn these languages a lot faster (like matrix, just plug it in), but I realize I need to spend a decent amount of time to actually pick it up.

Also, any recommendations on whether I should try to be building mobile apps or web apps as my end goal?
You can hardly say that Amazon has 'beaten Apple to the punch".

Amazon's cloud product is aimed at Android

Apple's cloud product will almost certainly ignore Android users because they'll use it to bolster the iPhone/iOS stack (+ enticement to switch to).

They're aimed at two different markets.
Well personally, I'd prefer the latter, but if it really was going to crash the economy completely, then the former might be necessary. But the only point in forcing them into smaller entities would be so that in future they would be allowed to fail.
Their prices are pretty close to the base level s3 prices, except for transfer.
In case you missed it in Amazon's terms, the free upgrade is temporary. It expires in a year, at which point you can start paying or be bumped back down to the free level.

...you will be automatically eligible for the 20 GB plan for one year from
the date of your MP3 album purchase. Unless you set your account to auto-renew
to a paid plan, the 20 GB plan will revert to a free plan one year from the
date of your MP3 album purchase.

From http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?ie=UTF8&docId=100...
Amazon's pricing here is the same as SpiderOak's, and Dropbox has been competing with us in the backup/sync space this whole time.

The industry has seen many of these these simple "cloud drive" products fail. I think the first was Xdrive. They just don't have the local response speed that users expect. I doubt Amazon will fail here, but as it is, this is not much in the way of competition for Dropbox or the rest of the sync industry. It's a different product all together.
i would guess that this guarantees that they will have someone on a there team that is actually capable of building something. hobbyists are nice and often extremely capable, but the CS student qualification basically ensures that they aren't investing in a bunch of kids using iWeb.
Eh, if it makes you feel any better, [many of] the servers themselves have wonderful names.

Plus, you have to love going to a three o'clock meeting in the Spawning Pool.
The difference is that this is a new product. You are comparing one that came out long before. This could lead to people verifying this claim and hey, people have tried to make it work out of US.

Besides that, I also try to attract people with the backgrounds of the legal side in US, to explain the ground for making this service legal and the issues on fair-use particularly in US.
It is from the Stanford daily... the headline is justified
The music aspect of this makes a great headline - and also great case for why the avg joe consumer should want all this cloud storage.

But for me the real story here is the ability to store any file or document, and aggressive prices of bigger storage tiers.

Dropbox's prices have always seemed unreasonably high to me - and I'm tempted to move all my personal docs over to Amazon and use DropBox just for social sharing.
SpiderOak handles most of the above. So does Tarsnap, aside from the sharing. Neither do key recovery for lost passwords, as that defeats the entire purpose of having the key to begin with.
The thing is, those are not really independent artists and only sell CDs on their domestic regions, or only on their local iTunes store.
Image of the Day: One Trillion Stars Andromedea Galaxy in Infrared & X Ray
Can I suggest you announce loudly and publicly when you're ready to roll out in non-US countries (in my case, Australia), remembering that many of us will have already written you off as "US only" in our heads and will skip straight past future mentions of you, expecting to be disappointed.
Go look at all the complaining from when the iPhone original was announced and came out. It didn't have a number of features that were considered at the time required:

The original release of the operating system included Visual Voicemail, multi-touch gestures, HTML email, Safari web browser, threaded text messaging, and YouTube. However, many features like MMS, third-party apps, and copy and paste were not supported at release. These missing features led to hackers "jailbreaking" their phones which added these missing features. Official software updates slowly added these features.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(original)#Software_Hist...

Looking back now they clearly did the right thing. In articles at the time when journalists did a feature comparisons it lost. But when people and journalists actually used it - it was awesome. I argue a product can be both a MVC and have simple, powerful, useful, polished features. Just look at the ipod and iphone (yeah similar reviews happened for ipod. See the infamous Slashdot quote).
Not really, they just have a higher bar for their minimal viability.
Sugar Sync Manager – synchronize backup data
Sugar Sync Manager allows you to synchronize and backup the data available in your personal computer and also from your mobile device. You can remotely access Sugar Sync Manager and also you can have multi synchronizing privilege with built in online sharing. To use this service you need to...
Not going to happen. A lack of IP and patent protections along with an educational culture that discourages innovation and "standing out" is a significant barrier to improvements. Plaigarism and outright theivery is commonplace among academics, students and researchers -- there's little incentive for scientific discovery. Also, the basic sciences are also lacking in many areas as well. Scientists know that basic science drives future innovation. Until China has a paradigm shift in IP attitudes, we'll continue to find that they will lag behind in innovation. I can't think of any significant Chinese scientific innovation in the recent past. (Despite patent filings to the contrary.) Much of their "research" is simply reverse engineering of others' work. I may be a little inflamatory with this comment, but I live in Shanghai and see the reality every day. For China to overtake the US in two years would be like suggesting that Google will declare bankruptcy next week. It's theoretically possible, but with a micro-probability.
CloudDrive is more overcast.
The sheets you bought may feel like a luxury good, but that's not necessarily correlated with the thread count.

Thread count is much less important than the quality of the cotton/fiber and the quality of the weaving. Even shops that sell sheets admit to this, saying that thread count is a metric, but is primarily a marketing tool.

More: http://www.lonegunman.co.uk/2010/01/22/buying-linen-thread-c...
Note to web-devs. The iPad does not require a m.foo.com site. It looks like crap, and is completely unnecessary.
Why Facebook’s Political Moves Should Terrify Us All
Really interesting idea. While I know nothing about robotics, this makes me wish I did.

Does anyone know the startup costs of building a robot vs. making a computer in the 70s? My guess is the cost and complexity of building a robot far exceeds that of building your own computer (even from just a # of required parts perspective). Then again, a walking robot like the one Honda has dumped millions into may just be the wrong way of thinking about it. Perhaps a rumba-esque creature is a better indicator of what the first PR (personal robot) will look like.
The fatal flaw of this project, methinks and is especially relevant here on Startup (sorry, Hacker) News, is mixed interpretations about what a 'Startup' is.

On HN and in the broader tech community, a Startup is almost exclusively a tech-based, scalable, early stage business. It requires entrepreneurial skills.

In the broader business community, a startup is just an early stage business. That cafe around the corner from your server-filled garage? It's a startup. The guy who washes Zuckerburg's porsche? Startup.

So we see a site like 'Startup Britain' and, combined with the whole Silicon Roundabout push, think it's exclusively about our type of startup - tech entrepreneurs, and no doubt the government here wants more tech startups. But the government will gain maximum roi from this project by targeting the broader definitions of startups - ie, all, early business.

By going after all early businesses, unemployment is reduced (at least by the founders, and some of them will hire staff), tax bases will rise etc. I still feel this project has been a waste of time and money so far BUT claiming that 'startups' don't need advice on logos and renting offices and buying MSFT software until they've developed an MVP and a revenue stream misunderstands the fact that a vast majority of startups are the local hairdresser, estate agent, or handyman, not the next Google.

(See also the E-Myth for a basic explanation of how this confusion affects businesses down the track.)
The great Carl Sagan was at times mocked for his seemingly outrageous claims that "we live on this pale blue dot, amongst a billion other solar systems, amongst a billion other galaxies." If anybody remembers him standing on the beach in the opening episode of Cosmos -- or read the book, my childhood favorite, still have it in hardback! -- you'll know the scene I'm thinking of.

It appears even he had underestimated the vastness of the amazing universe around us.
> The word "justice" is never used in law school.

What about when referring to judges?
Related: Things to Say When You're Losing a Technical Argument http://www.pigdog.org/auto/mr_bads_list/shortcolumn/1914.htm...

There are some interesting points in that list, some can be used against theorists, others can be used against experimentalists.

(I'm not sure if that article has been ever submitted to HN)
The command, including password, is also visible in the process table. Some unices limit visibility of other users' processes but many do not.
can you export from their cloud drive?
""But the potential for China to match American output in terms of sheer numbers in the near to medium term is clear.""

"However the report points out that a growing volume of research publications does not necessarily mean in increase in quality."

"A sociologist originally from Shanghai, Dr Cao told the BBC: "There are many millions of graduates but they are mandated to publish so the numbers are high.

"It will take many years for some of the research to catch up to Western standards.""

China has a quality issue in plagiarism (sometimes (many would argue)) in publishing / pushing and borrowing works or undiclosing proper citations for previous studies.

Quality issues will hold back China, which is more an institution / systemic top-down problem (several HN discussions on this).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1732000

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
There's a huge difference between an MVP and cutting features to reach perfection.
so long and thanks for all the sludge
Also the fantastic Microsoft Pex: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pex/
Not only is it not a surprise but I think Amazon.com are also well aware that Dropbox is likely developing their own storage back-end to move away from S3.
Well, it remains to be seen if it is successful, as being the first to market doesn't translate in being the most successful one or that the market is worth pursuing.

That said, I love it how Amazon gets shit done.

I wouldn't be surprised to see them launch a credible Facebook alternative either, were integration with Amazon reviews would be their killer feature.
Browserify: browser-side require() for your node.js
It actually looks like they could make the web-based UI work in Mobile Safari without too much work. (Easy for me to say.) The UI renders perfectly already. As far as I can tell, playback is the only thing that doesn't work. (But if you "download" a track it'll open in the built-in quicktime player and start playing.)

Despite the Flash requirement for uploading, they're already doing non-Flash playback. I don't have Flash installed on my desktop and playback works great.

Seeing as Safari has had background audio support since before it was granted to third-party apps, the web UI would be a decent stopgap in lieu if a native iOS app.

Here's hoping it's just a bug!
Not for long I would bet.

S3 is a great service don't get me wrong. But for relatively low transaction data like backup and sync not only is the pricing high but Dropbox also have a vested interest that as they grow they do not depend on a 3rd party for what is no doubt the largest single cost of providing their service.
I mean I'd hardly consider the original iPhone a minimum viable product. Smart phones had been around for years, and what the iPhone did was redefine the smart phone. I guess in some weird sense you could say that it was a minimum viable product for the future of other products that were like it, but you could say that for any product. In general, I would definitely not typify Apple as a company that gets to the fight first, but rather one that changes the fight when it gets there. That was true of the iPhone in the smart phone market, true of the iPod in the mp3 market, true of the iPad in the tablet market, and will likely be true of whatever special sauce Apple is planning for mobileme in the virtual locker market. My point is that Apple is not a company that throws out a product into consumer space with the knowledge that it is incomplete and seeking tons of consumer feedback. They release extremely polished products to a market, often with what I would argue is an unparalleled mastery of minimalism in their features (in terms of leaving a lot out of their products and only keeping in what they deem absolutely necessary to most users), which could be confused for minimum viability if you didn't know better. I would suggest Google as a better example of a big company that often releases products with the intention of quickly updating them once they start getting feedback. Facebook might be another less convincing example.
Thank you, ankeshk.
I have a great many concerns, and your FAQ does very little to address them. Mostly they concern the absence of recurring costs.

* How do you intend to pay for hangar space?

* What is the time between overhaul for the engine? My uneducated guess would put it at not more than 1000 hours, and quite possibly much less. When this is needed, how do you plan to pay for it?

* Generally, when something breaks (and it will) how will you pay to repair it?

* How do you plan to insure it? How much will this cost?

* How do you plan to hire mechanics to check the airworthiness of the plane? How frequently will this need to happen, and what will it cost?

These are all things that should be addressed from the start. As you do not address them, I get the sense that you have not properly considered just how staggeringly large these costs will be. Or are you just counting on nobody being able to get certification for it?

That said, I think it's vaguely doable if all you want is a non-flying display piece, though hangar costs still need to be addressed. Additionally, I personally am more inclined to give $10 to any of my local air museums which have more planes, now, than to give $10 so that I may someday be able to share a plane in Denver with 4999 other people.

P.S: If you do plan to pull it off, what variant are you planning to get? One of the twin-seat U variants to make training easier?
At least for me, commuting by bike is just routine. Now that my current gig is within walking distance, these about 5 hours of biking per week just disappeared. I think that's because I find biking, running, swimming, actually anything stressing endurance an utter chore after a few weeks. Whereas while commuting a can use the time to spin up my brain and preload the working context. And in the evening it's a nice way to cool down and put everything aside.

I'm trying to compensate by going for a longer walk after-office, but because it's not a necessity I'll drop that far more often than not. I'm a lazy bastard, after all ...
Except dividends are double taxed - first on company profit, and then again as earnings.
Look at the Pretty Seagu… Wait. Wut?
Would be great if it wasn't illegal to actually upload your music collection on there. I doubt that when you bought your music you got the right to distribute it to a third party which means uploading it onto Amazon's servers would constitute copyright infringement. Songs bought from Amazon probably come with a license that allows you to upload it to Amazon Cloud Player now, but with the music you already own and Music you buy somewhere else you're out of luck.
It is justified in the context of the Stanford Daily. HN is in a totally different context, so this headline, copied verbatim, is misleading.
I agree in general, but maybe not with the timeline. It will take some time to build all the infrastructure - things like this service, on the other hand it should not be too difficult for them to switch to bitcoin once it gets more traction.
Storage price still 12x more then traditional harddrive backup(1TB=1000$). That 12x is what you are paying for cloud value added service. Prices should be at least half in order for consumer market to take off.It will come.

In the mean time, still waiting for revamped MobileMe. An O/S integrated cloud service seems to me much way better than any others. Airdrop might be the interface for all filesharing solutions in MAC devices.
I had never heard of Airbnb before. Once I got on your site, I went to their site, clicked around for a while, tried to get the gist of it. Then came back here to comment because I still don't get housefed.

I don't think I should have to go learn a totally different site in order to understand the tagline of your site.
small sold out events look and sound better than big empty events. also the 4:1 dev to engineer ratio is a major selling point.
Absolutely - which is why I say they need each other. They need to be merged intelligently, and purists of either camp should be taken with a grain of salt.

Thanks for the links!
the health care reform isn't a Republican thing
If that's the payment/billing API, I hope it goes over https and not http...
These young whippersnapper roboticists have it so easy these days, what with their new fangled flying robots. Back in my day, we were happy if we could get our robots to walk. In the snow. Up hill. Both ways.
MongoDB: PHP 1 / Perl 0
Hey, I just wanna say thank you for such a quick reply so late. I found a way to make this work, so I no longer need any help with this. But thank you so much for your help.
Much appreciated, Sean
New York City is home to more than 626,000 post-secondary students
Resolution on the big screen isn't such a big deal - Avatar was only HD (1080). Sure 2K looks better but people weren't noticing the resolution. Increasing the frame rate has a bigger impact than increasing the resolution.
Revenue != profit.
Actually, the Health Care Reform bill that passed is, in all of its essentials, the same as the Republican counter-proposal to Clinton's proposed Health Care Reform.
Not necessarily true, really. When you save your current location on a Kindle, that's handled by an app running on EC2. That's just an example: I am sure pretty much all of Amazon's products use the AWS infrastructure.