skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In addition to the comments re: Microsoft below, it's also worth remembering that for google you are the product (clicks) as well as the customer. Their loyalties are thus divided, and hence the shilly-shallying around with sort of but not quite banning link farms.
"working for themselves"

Maybe I'm reading too much into that, but if you're thinking of going it alone, you might not get very far. Gates, Zuckerberg and most of the rest had others they teamed with from the start. Pg is very big on co-founders for that reason. Smart hackers have made 3 million a year (and up) by teaming with other smart hackers.

There's a difference between a freelancer and a startup, and in the "How to Make Wealth" I've always assumed pg is referring to small teams making things many people want (startups), because that's the theme of so much of his writing.
> If the single search box "worked", the search would provide the results the user wanted without having to use arcane search techniques.

What if my definition of "works" includes the ability to use "arcane" search techniques? For example, I wish I could use quotes around my search terms everywhere, to get exact matches. Google now often insists that I need stemming applied in such queries, which I find to be the opposite of "works".
As someone who uses Chrome under Mac, Windows and Linux I applaud this move.

The Quicktime plugin on Windows is HORRID. It is a prime example of how to make a user experience complete shit. And to be honest I'd prefer the Mac version not pull it in automatically either. Weither it's the crashing, slow startup times, bazaar buffering behavior or taking over way too many MIME types I hate it.

I strongly prefer that Chrome asked my permission before executing either the Quicktime or Java plugins just like it prompts for popups. All are annoying, buggy, laggy and crashy.

Both Quicktime and Java were manually disabled globally on every browser I use and now I can feel safe leaving them on. This change makes my web browsing experience SAFER and less frustrating.

Of course my dream is never to have to touch QuickTime or that horrid Apple Update garbage on Windows ever again. I'm not buying a Mac for home because Apple can't be trusted around VisualStudio.

Flash gets the pass because Adobe lets Google worry about making sure updates are available on day 1. Odds of Google and Apple working together on Quicktime... Haha... haha... ha.
Surprise, the international pricing's a total rip-off.

Illustrator, month-to-month: $45. UK: $65 pre-tax, $77 after tax.
The "laws" of scarcity don't have to apply here.

The laws don't necessarily apply to digital goods, because we can make infinite copies. However, Space, time, hospitals, and doctors are limited...so these laws apply.
Taking everything this article says at 100% face value:

1. You will get expensively sick when you get old

2. Insurance carrier will try to kick you out and not pay for hospital stays.

If getting old and having $500k operations are certain for
everyone, then wouldn't a better bet be for everyone to save their money? If all of this is a certainty why have the insurance as the middle man? Save your own money, and then don't deny yourself coverage.

More realistically, what alternatives exist? There is nothing that changes the cost of the expensive operation. A single payer NHS doesn't change the amount of money operations cost.
Its cheaper to buy it when you start than after you've turned a profit and someone else has picked up the names you want.
Of course! If it's just a "talking head" then two-pass is useless. But for anything that changes between action and static content (like movies), two-pass is necessary to get useful VBR: extra data overhead from the low-action can be passed on to the action sequences while maintaining the same average data rate.

Generally, the first pass is to determine which sections are static vs. which are busy. The second pass then takes advantage and can adjust the rate. So for long talking head scenes, it may drop the data rate to 1.2 Mbps, and action scenes can be ramped up to 3Mbps+ so the action doesn't look blocky.
If I boiled down Google's statement: If we didn't do shit, one company could run shit. We think that is bad and we believe that you agree.

And if I were to quote Steve directly: "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers. [...] We cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms [...] Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications."

It cuts both ways.
> Do you think I or anyone else don't know about that?

Kinda.

> Many Microsoft boosters used the identical "for the consumer" arguments in defending Microsoft activities.

I think the big difference here is that Apple is actually right. Flash on mobile is terrible for battery life and its implementations, so far, are shoddy.

There's a big difference on imposing your will over 25% of the market of rich people with fancy phones versus 96% of the market of everyone who needed a computer to get anything useful done. Apple has nowhere near the power Microsoft did.
Obviously I underestimated the huge importance of being purely functional.

What other purely functional languages compete for Haskell's attention share?
Anyone who bills himself as "the father of blogging" really ought to figure out how to make their blog available under high load.
I'm notorious for never returning voice mails for the exact reasons expressed in this post. But two months ago I signed up for Google voice it largely fixed the problem. The text recognition is bad, but I can usually figure out who called me and that's all I need. The only outstanding issue is that my phone (WP7) doesn't always update the Google Voice tile that lets me know I have new messages. Not sure if that's an issue on other phones.
Meeuws says a building of 100 sq meters (1,075 sq. feet) and 14 layers of plants could provide a daily diet of 200 grams (7 ounces) of fresh fruit and vegetables to the entire population of Den Bosch, about 140,000 people.

So that comes out to 280 kg/m^2, or 57 lb/ft^2? Sounds really high to me... AeroFarms claim 30 lbs/ft^2 (http://aerofarms.com/why/comparison/). Color me skeptical.
it's also worth remembering that for google you are the product (clicks) as well as the customer.

There aren't many exceptions to this. It is certainly true of Apple, where you are a consumer of their platform, and a conduit of their payment system, as much as you're a consumer of a specific product.

There's a reason Apple locks down their platform, and it isn't because they're looking out for your financial or competitive choice interests.

That you bought an iPhone is simply the first step, and that consumer-capture will be exploited for years. Apple wants to be your conduit of music and movies, applications, information and subscriptions, etc. They have no interest in selling you a device just to bid you adieu.
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You lost me with the first line: "Leaving someone a voicemail message on someone’s cell phone in 2011 is not only misguided, it’s selfish."

If you don't want to get voicemail, don't offer it as an option to your callers.

I get really bent out of shape by people who expect that everyone trying to reach them by <insert communication medium here> will follow their personal, and unpublished, rules.

We all use <insert communication medium here> in different ways, and most of the mediums are designed to be flexible, thus appealing to more users. Don't attribute malice, or selfishness, to other users of the medium who are using it in the way it was designed.

If you don't want people to leave a VM, say so. If you don't listen to your VMs, say so. If you don't want people to leave a long VM, say so.
I wonder if there's a way to deconfigure voicemail completely. Someone noticed that on a friend's phone & sort of envied them having "one less inbox." [1]

[1] http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2011/04/three-phone-tips-for-...
Be nice if this was a plugin for Jenkins
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> In descending order, the top browsers used by readers were:

Chrome (52.97%)
Firefox or Mozilla Compatible Agent (25.18%)
Safari (23.71%)
Internet Explorer (3.89%)
Opera (2.79%)

Wow, that's pretty crazy - I didn't know Chrome had such a high market share. Is this an accurate reflection of the browser market share on HN in general?
In the "SEO Analyst" requirements:

> Understanding of link building and content syndication are required
> Bachelors degree in a related field

Did universities start selling SEO(-related) degrees already?
The south isn't all small towns though. The "Research Triangle" area alone has a total population of around 1.7 million[1] people, which would rank it the 5th largest city in the US if it were one city[2], instead of several loosely connected independent cities and towns. Charlotte, NC, is the 17th largest city in the US with a population of
just over 731,000 [3].

Really, there's a lot more to the southern states than people realize. Andy Griffith was NOT an accurate depiction of what the modern south is like. :-)

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by...

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte,_North_Carolina
Four Reasons Why The hackNY Kids Are Really Smart
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I find that the people that attribute success to "luck" aren't willing to through the sacrifice and hard work to make it happen.
I fell on this path by accident. I started hacking when I was young. I always loved tech and programming. Between 18-20 I went through two jobs as a software developer while still going to school but this was circa 2000 and the market tanked. I got into real estate because I didn't want to depend on someone else to give me a job. Along the way realized I hated doing real estate sales everyday and the technology really annoyed me so now I'm creating the software I always wish I had as an agent. If it weren't for the experience of being an agent I would have never understood the pain.
You mean anything that wears a t-shirt, right?
Are you sure every codec on your system is kept up to date against the latest exploits? Every single one?

Which is updated more often... Your browser or your codecs?

Browsers are taking over certain functions because the OS side (both OS X and Windows) are a mess. I imagine it makes browsers easier to test too not having even more dependencies over the quirks of whatever dot release of the OS you are running.
Just as an alternative point of view: I probably won't call you back just because of a missed call if you don't leave a voicemail as I'll think whatever you were calling about wasn't important or if it was you will call back later.

I use Google Voice on my android phone and though it doesn't always update right away it does mean I don't have to call a voicemail number and log in to hear my messages I just press play.
So they don't have to deal with inconsistent behaviors on different platforms. You can pretty much mess up your os installation anyway you would like, but bundling ffmpeg, libtheora or libvpx and you no longer need to worry about different platforms or configs
QuickTime is terribly obsolete, joining the ranks of products like RealPlayer. It has no reason to exist in the modern platform.

http://www.apple.com/ipad/guided-tours/

On h264/Ogg/webM capable browsers, I'm told to download and install QuickTime. If we want to talk about hypocrisy, it starts there.
A failed purchase of a social network only proves my point, if anything. When google really believes in a company, they go to great extremes to grab it. See YouTube.
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I just realized looking at these numbers that I used the # pageviews per browser / total UVs to calculate those percentages. So if you're wondering why they add up to > 100%, that's why. Just understand that the actual numbers are roughly proportional to those I provided in the article.
Kiip, Ads that reward gamers with free stuff
Pretty interesting new service that rewards gamers with free stuff when they achieve something in a game. E.g. Finish a level on Angry Birds, get a free bag of chips.
> I trust the guy who is honest about his self-interest a whole lot more than phony altruists.

You must love the startup scene then...
What is relevant and irrelevant in your view?
no java love from HN. expected
OT, but

> ... bazaar buffering behavior ...

should read "... bizarre buffering behavior ...". Bazaar is a word with a Persian etymology that refers to a market.
I'm afraid, Kyle, it's not even remotely the same.

The paragraph you quoted is 100% self-interest, not morality. No loaded words making value judgments about others ("draconian").

Their concern is that they will lose control of their platform to a party that doesn't care about its future. Apple has already been down that road with Adobe on the Mac and they're making clear it sucks for their goals. Making the best apps the world has ever seen isn't idealism – it's a bunch of cash in Apple's pocket. This strikes me as pragmatic, not moralizing. They're worried for themselves, not for you or me, except inasmuch as we might be users who will cease giving them money if they ship crap.

That's just not the same as FUDding about "one man" and all this, I'm sorry.
As pleased as I am that Cloudspace (my company) is sponsoring it, I'm equally sad that I'm out of town for this one and can't make it. Rock it hard, y'all!
I disagree. The majority of the really good, well written episodes are about either Picard or Data. Picard and Data stories seriously advanced the plot of the TNG series, and had a greater influence on later episodes.

Although, I do really like your comparison to Scooby Doo and Scrappy.
I have the low-end (cheapest) 11" MacBook Air with a 64 GB SSD, and it's probably the fastest computer I've ever owned due to the SSD. Boot-up time is 14 seconds, and applications start really fast.
Because it is very hard to remain static. So your options are to grow or shrink. Understandably, most go for the former.
QuickTime is much more closely tied with the OS than flash is and probably nigh impossible to sandbox and ensure it's on the latest version
Not really - that is only if you buy for an entire year.

So it is really a year at $35*12= $370.

Which doesn't seem so good anymore.
the tone, at least, seems to assume that if people didn't use search engines they would do better. am i reading it wrong? i don't see the argument for that at all - if you asked someone what was the most populous city in the world, and they didn't have google handy, i think they would simply guess...
I'm not sure I'd laud startups for 'career security'. Outside the valley echo-chamber, few companies have any respect for startup experience. ('startup' sounds a lot like 'small company' if you aren't a hacker...)

Also, for every startup where young employees get a chance to punch above their weight, there's another where the devs grind all day long on customer support issues and maintenance.

On the whole I'm personally more inclined toward startups than large companies, but I've been around long enough to be wary of mythologizing them. They have their own set of dysfunctions that can be as stressful as anything you'll find in a bigcorp.
Haha, yeah, thanks. I'd correct that typo but I've already been nailed for it. ;)
Don't agree. If access is free then a lot of preventative care can be done in order to not have to conduct expensive critical and emergency procedures.

Preventative care also consumes resources. A doctor can only perform 8-10 hours worked / (duration of preventative procedure) preventative procedures per day. The number of doctors is limited. Thus, the number of preventative procedures is limited.

You might be right that the US is currently not at the optimum. Insurance companies try very hard to find a better optimum - they stand to gain millions if they can find it. But that doesn't change the fact that doctor hours are limited.

The OP didn't say that the US had a suboptimal system relative to some other. He merely criticized the fact that medical care is a scarce resource and we can't all have as much as we want.

But how come Scandinavian and many European countries manage do provide it?

Scandinavian and European countries provide unlimited medicine to whoever wants it? That's news to me. Do you have evidence for this?

Also, if Scandinavia and Europe have reached the singularity, and now live in a post-scarcity world, how come they are still poorer than the US? How is it possible that their singularity only works for medicine?

...it has been done in other countries, and it is currently better than here.

Do you have evidence for this? So far, in spite of asking this many times, I see very little that is convincing. All I see are life expectancy gaps comparable to the life expectancy gap between people who eat leafy green vegetables and those who don't, and studies from the WHO that give more weight to inequality of marginal costs than to actual medical care provided.
Do you want to create a product to serve a market, or do you want to learn to code? These, while related, are very disparate problems.

I would suggest you find a technical founder that shares your vision for wanting to help make people's (hopefully the niche you're aiming at) lives easier.

You have experience that many (almost all) hackers lack: you have real experience working in a field and have identified a product/market that people want/need. Focus on that. Build user stories on what you want to create. Make diagrams of the interactions. Feed your vision to someone you respect that can make it real.

Unless you are extremely interested in the core of technology, you will likely find writing up a completed product exceptionally difficult. Writing code can be difficult, but it can be even more tedious. I'm not sure I have any way to express exactly how tedious many of the tasks that go into a release really are. This is why shipping a title is so important in some fields (eg: games). It is also why it is so important to find a technical founder who deeply cares about the market segment you're after.
But QuickTime doesn't work better for users. The technology is dated and does nothing that HTML5 doesn't do better. In fact, Flash is actually far better for consumers than QuickTime; at least it's updated regularly, unlike QT.

This cuts both ways. Why doesn't Apple discontinue and disable the QuickTime plugin, if they really have the users' interests at heart?
Tablets: The Next Generation Console Has Already Arrived
Simples. Charge less than $1000 multiple times ;) aka, saas.

Another way. Start a relationship cheaply or for free, and then afterwards it's much cheaper to sell to your customers. No $50k salesperson then.

There are lots of other ways to do it. You just need to be inventive.
do you use that as your primary machine ?
i have a 15in and and considering going to a smaller screen size, but am not really sure. would love to hear your thoughts
I know some people like the author, people who never listen to their voicemail. I call and leave them a message and they call me back without listening to it. When they do this, they are communicating to me that their time is more important than mine. I am often just conveying information and I have to say it twice if they don't listen to the message. That's fine if it's a salesman cold-calling you. If it's a friend or family member, that's insulting.

There are a number of other reasons to use voicemail:

1) Everyone can speak faster than they can text. If you have a significant amount of information to convey, texting sucks. Voicemail can be very efficient.

2) Many people don't have unlimited texting plans and texting can get expensive quickly.

3) Texting is dangerous and illegal while driving in many places, while speaking and listening on the phone are often not illegal and definitely less dangerous.
This. So incredibly this.

I love this damn feature and now that it's here I'm going to be impatient with any browser that doesn't. I can now feel safe leaving Java turned on.
Twitter Search is Now 3x Faster After Switching to Java
Ask HN: Review my start-up
Flatter Me has been running for 6 months now http://www.flattermecalls.com. I am presented with a few key challenges right now.

Sales range from women of all ages, men of all ages, corporate accounts etc...The data is so diverse and spread out that I am working at figuring out the best ways to reach such a mass audience and building a consistent traffic flow.

Currently, I am relying on word of mouth and PR. I've had success with tradional media (TV, radio, newspapers)etc...

What other methods of building awareness have worked for you?
I am negative on advertising. Should I be? Which channels have been successful for you? Any recommendations for gaining more online exposure?

Those are some questions I am facing, but please feel free to contribute any and all feedback.

Thank you!

http://www.flattermecalls.com
Deploying node.js apps
Better yet, why do my codecs have access to anything on my computer other than their input stream and output stream. They probably want to run on their own core anyway, isolate them and forget about them.

(Ok, I'll give you an H.264 or MPEG-2 being tied into my video hardware for great performance and low power consumption, but the rest of them…)
Was a jury involved with this decision?
>I think the big difference here is that Apple is actually right. Flash on mobile is terrible for battery life and its implementations, so far, are shoddy.

What about HTML5 and Apple's promises? It's been a while since Jobs wrote that and still Apple's HTML5 implementation is not up to par. http://blog.millermedeiros.com/2011/01/ipad-is-the-new-ie6/

On top of that, Apple is in no hurry to bring the speed improvements of their Nitro JS engine to apps pinned to the homescreen. After all, they prefer devs to make native apps so that there is a lockin.

>There's a big difference on imposing your will over 25% of the market versus 96% of the market. Apple has nowhere near the power Microsoft did

What about tablets where Apple is deemed to have 94% of the market?
I live in San Jose, and I am debating whether or not to spend the $100 on this event. Any past participants have advice or praise? Thanks!
>>__whether doing such a thing would be feasible at my age (learning to code, etc), and whether my current educational background and training would be sufficient a contribution to a founding team__

Last time I checked, this field had no age bar. Honestly, you're most welcome to shake things up. If you have the vigor, which your post says you do, you can do it. Also, the support from communities like HN is amazing and worth giving a try.

HN also has a contractor list https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlD_6iEb8Ed9dGs3clV...
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