skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I created a universal framework template for iPhone/iOS (lets you build static frameworks that work on device and simulator): https://github.com/kstenerud/iOS-Universal-Framework

Also, a nicer interface to iPhone audio: https://github.com/kstenerud/ObjectAL-for-iPhone

I also put out my Objective-C programmer's toolbox: https://github.com/kstenerud/Objective-Gems
Are competitions for these fair game for anyone? I would think there are people[0] who naturally have Rainman-like recall abilities which occurs subconsciously. The rest of us would have to employ an ever-expanding bag of tricks just to try and keep up.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek
Cringely is wrong again.. read Steve Levy's GooglePlex take on it..Google Passed on buying Skype not once but twice..
Why not? Americans, like most humans, are dumb enough to keep doing a long list of stupid things that would exceed a reasonable comment length if listed here. Usually the only time they stop a stupid activity is when it's impossible to continue.
Thanks for the link and suggestions!
She might not take it well. You might then say he's better off without that kind of friendship, but that's not the outcome he wanted.
Every time I hear about rejection therapy, I think of the person I know who excels the most at it:

The local homeless guy.
MS v. Google? v. Apple? After reading this, and the comments, and a little thinking about it, the more this makes sense.

MS has a clear weakness in its lineup. Skype brings a bunch of existing technology and know-how, not to mention all those sweet, sweet users.

Multiply by some factor of Ballmer being an idiot, and 8.5 is almost reasonable.

Part of what convinced me - and I realize HN comments are anectdotal - was people's impressions of Skype and Google Voice (I've done no more than played with each).

From the sounds of it, Skype's biggest issue is its UI. MS has plenty of experience (and some success ;) with good UIs and backend work.

Other than that, it satisfies its basic function well: it makes the calls. It sounds like Google Voice, at least internationally, isn't as straightforward.

So, they get the users, and a jump on the tech. Okay, decent, but not great, business decision.

Will they turn it into something successful? Ehhhh, I have my doubts. Who knows? Ballmer isn't actually an idiot; maybe he's learned something by now.

*Edit - spelling
Never heard of that site. I gave it a look and realized that your comment is ironic, but still I'll reply: Our content is heavily moderated, so the obvious crap that 4Chan shows has no possibility of being published. Yet, if somebody has something interesting to say about pornography, we provide the anonymous channel, as long as the idea meets common sense standards of civility and good taste.
And yet you left out one of the solutions to that equation.

It's not always helpful to increase the density of information. In general, you only want to do that once you have everything worked out. We rarely have everything worked out in programming. But it's great to simplify the proofs and equations once we've worked things out in mathematics.
Why don't electrons crash into the nucleus?
PARC sees itself as a very different place today from the one depicted in the Apple legend

It sees this as a good thing? I mean, say what you will, but most of modern personal computing came from PARC. I don't think PARC's problem was lack of innovation. Rather, it was short-sighted decisions made by Xerox execs who were scared of PARC's idea of a paper-free office (Xerox of course making most of its money off of paper).
They all point to different URLs.
I wrote a program called daemon-manager to scratch an itch of mine (http://porkrind.org/daemon-manager/). It lets you manage non-root daemons from your user directory without requiring root permissions to start and stop them. I've been dogfooding it for about 6 months and just can't live without it any more. I think other people would be interested in using it but I'm not very good at marketing.

I also co-wrote and maintain commit-patch (http://porkrind.org/commit-patch/) and it's another that I can't imagine living without. I've been using it for about 8 years and it has slightly more recognition--but not much.
What I would really want is a "Mark all as read" and to never see the same tweet again.
Here: http://www.gnutelephony.org/index.php/GNU_SIP_Witch I found this by following two links from the article. But it was random luck, I agree with you that the article lack of some important informations.
Unlikely. The company is still under intense scrutiny from the EU to publish API documentation.

It's actually kind of sad, because the company burns thousands of man years writing API docs for things no one actually uses. It's certainly not the only reason, but it's another factor in why they ship so infrequently.
Why Marketing Is A Numbers Game You Need To Win
Looks cool. Let me try it out!
Short Hair Styles|Short Hair Styles
Short hairstyles picture gallery. Short hair cuts with advice, accessories and a celebrity section.
In the interest of correctness CFML(ColdFusion) also runs on the GAE in the form of the open source Open Blue Dragon http://www.openbluedragon.org/ More details specifically about the GAE here: http://wiki.openbluedragon.org/wiki/index.php/GoogleAppEngin...

They recently added a nice installer that lets you choose whether to deploy to a conventional server of the GAE.
Emacs, yea.

Also, perhaps one can modify the program, so that it ignores characters other than period and X.

Then you can run it on regular text files or, alternatively, source code, to get cross-domain puns (text domain, rhythm domain, code domain).
It is certainly achievable. My worry is being able to do it once (along with a full-time job) but not being able to sustain multiple such projects.
How Blogging Helped Me Find My Co-founder
Original from PARC: http://blogs.parc.com/blog/2011/05/from-creation-myth-to-the...

For myself, this is part of why I'm not a big Malcolm Gladwell fan. Whether it's his articles, his TED talks, or his books, I always feel like he's abusing data rather than using data. It's like he flings a bunch of factual snippets at the reader and then quickly segues into his conclusion like a magician performing sleight of hand. There's no logical argument, just here's some stuff and therefore the end. He's a great historian and storyteller; I just could go without his analysis sometimes.
There's that word again -- "guaranteed". Not that making assumptions is a bad thing as the worst case scenario is bankruptcy along with everyone else, but never assume the market is going to remain where it is. $1k-1,500 a month when your neighbor is renting out at a discount is not going to fair well.
In my area at least, buying makes a lot of sense. Prices are at an all-time low, but rent hasn't gone down at all. The same type of house renting for $900/month can be had with a mortgage of $350/month. As long as you are comfortable with renting the place out when you want to move, it's had to imagine why buying would be 'stupid' right now.
I would go to local tech networking events, like meetups, and ask around.
I got more out of this comment than the original website. You should just say this in the first paragraph even before you refer to 'the paper'.
Sony: The Company That Kicked the Hornet's Nest
> And yet you left out one of the solutions to that equation.

Well, I left it out because I didn't have the +/- sign on the keyboard, and I didn't want to repeat the whole thing twice.

> It's not always helpful to increase the density of information. In general, you only want to do that once you have everything worked out.

I agree with this (and the original post), but not with the grandparent. In general I prefer a dense statement readable to someone "skilled in the art", with a textual description for those who don't.

However, most programming lore equates the "full description" with a "good solution", leaving the mathematical conciseness an impossibility with few exceptions; notable exceptions are the APL (A+, J, K, Q) family.
Energy costs will be the main concern. We need to cool or warm our air, heat our water, refrigerate our food, and mechanically dry our clothing.

Housing around here is not particularly expensive, but the house's gas bill peaks a little over a tenth of the rent in an Upper Michigan winter, and the electric bill doesn't really get near that peak. There would have to be some pretty significant change before energy costs were that much of a concern.
The 'Idea' page mentions this clearly. The third line in fact.
You might have something there! A few years back I wondered if enterprise software was experiencing a disruption because of the way user expectations were being set outside of the company:

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/09/we-have-lost-control-of-...

Maybe Microsoft sees this they way you suggest and believes that by controlling the consumer experience, they will also control the enterprise experience. For example, if they control the dominant VOIP consumer application, their tools can dominate enterprise-VOIP integration.

I don't know if they have the management moxie to pull it off, but I think you may be right about what they're trying to do.
جلبريك 4.3.3
Ask HN: Anyone going to Silicon Milkroundabout event tomorrow?
Just wondered
Between a reader and that 'third line' lie 5 lines, a click, and 8 more lines. Put the punchline first, it'll keep the reader reading longer.

It's a good idea; I just want more people to get it before they hit the back button.
XAPFest for 250 developers: Microsoft’s massive Windows Phone 7 hackathon
XAPFest is a contest to create applications for Windows Phone 7.XAPFest occurs on June 4th from 9:00am to 10:00pm, at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in Santa Monica, California. XAPFest is limited to 250 developers, so make sure you register early in order to reserve your space! The goal is to build complete apps and ship them to the Windows Phone 7 marketplace, so get started early and register for XAPFest.
Even if they were explicit it wouldn't have "solved" his issue. Since he is using them in an if statement the C++ compiler would have considered that an explicit conversion anyway in C++0x mode.

I don't have a C++0x compiler handy, or I would test it, but I do believe explicit is only meant for cases such as this:

a + 1;

where a has a bool() operator that returns 1 or 0, in the old mode if there was no way to get a to be a number it would look at the operator bool() see that it returns a number and use that. Using explicit on the bool() operator would make that illegal and most likely a compiler error.
But if the overseas pipes are the bottleneck, improved local infrastructure would mean more are fighting to use them.
> And yet you left out one of the solutions to that equation. It's not always helpful to increase the density of information.

This mistake (forgotten second solution) demonstrates quite the opposite: It is very visible in the compact version, but would be almost hidden in the full-blown text.

(Note that the text is in fact correct because it differs slightly from the formula. Nevertheless, if the text had the same mistake, it wouldn't be nearly as obvious as in the formula.)
The Dark Side of C++ (2007)
The size of a single module with say 50,000 automatically generated functions 3 to 10 lines each. You want to try it? ;)
Decades of personal experience shows that unless you can switch jobs without moving owning a house is a good way to lose money. It can also act as an anchor, preventing or delaying job changes that should be made.
Right, thanks for the feedback. I have updated it to better reflect the idea.
Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse
Kind of off topic, but I am curious: is this one of the advantages of functional programming - the notion that you can prove or disprove certain things about the code and therefore optimize the compiler, based on such proofs, to your heart's content?
This already exists: http://www.midi.org/dtds/midi_xml.php
I'm totally illiterate when it comes to music, but I do like electronic music. If you do end up creating something you really like with Beats, please do share the source code. Thanks!
Black Swan Technology
Investigated or reinvestigated?

The guidance systems on the Apollo missions 40 years ago used core memory, woven into "ropes".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory
Great idea, that's an interesting approach. Lay down a score, and play it - truly a 21st century player piano. There's plenty of programs that will do this with confusing graphical interfaces and binary formats, of course. The yaml interface is the best touch.

I'm a musician as well as a programmer, and my favorite mobile/touch apps are the instruments. Now there's one I can play from the command line, too! To the tune of 'scrathing your own itch', my goal is to make an iOS music app or two. I'll definitely be reading the sources for this.
Yeah, lemme make the repo for it right now. You can watch it if you're interested.

https://github.com/simonsarris/canvas-adventure
> Well, I left it out because I didn't have the +/- sign on the keyboard

HN supports unicode characters. You could have simply copied it from somewhere else, e.g. the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus-minus_sign):

±

However, simply writing "+/-" would also have been good enough for this purpose. Ugly formulas are preferable to wrong formulas.
Do you mean IaaS?

I don't know of any clouds that allow direct hardware access besides perhaps the EC2 GPU instances.
IFlowReader, Apple doesn’t owe you shit. Stop whining.
I don't have any Macs at my house, so I hadn't experienced Plex before a few weeks ago when I installed the media server on my Windows Box to serve to our Roku. It was already the best local media app for the Roku, and this just makes it even better since I can run it on my Unraid box and only keep one machine running 24/7.
I propose an enhancement (stolen from Roland MRC operating system of yore): instead of a x to mark a note, use numbers from 0 to 9, to allow for varying velocity (0 sending a note-off, useful for many drum effects)
Solid state mechanisms, how quaint. How about torsion delay line memory?

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/calculator_memory_tec...
I agree. The network (assuming the event is decent enough) will surely lead to one person that would be able to help you. Just make sure you connect to as many people as possible.
Returning Data From A Form in Visual Basic and C#
Nice idea. I have to say though, that with my extreme browsing laziness, clicking on those links is an incredible effort―why not make it all one page?
Sukbir, you should post on forrst.com and/or find a designer buddy to help out. This would help a lot with popularity / catching on.
Hi. I did that so that people could go through the link they wanted, rather than going through a single long page. I will find a way to fix that.
Hi. Given the feedback on the UI, I think my designer skills leave a lot to be desired! Thanks for the suggestion, I will work on improving this.
> memorizing the character for "man" by associating it with a picture of a man is not efficient for learning more than the most basic characters.

You're dead right - most Chinese characters are combinatorial, so it would be crazy to try and come up with an image for each. We combine a number of different techniques, including weaving the components into stories. See e.g. the first mem for 'meat' here:

http://www.memrise.com/item/14684/meat/

I don't know if this gets to the heart of your concern... I'm just trying to highlight that the simple animation from 'man' to an image of a man is just one of the approaches we employ.

Thanks for taking a look.
>"Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?"

Yes.
The meaning of the word, "hack"
Contributing to an open source project that you admire will do wonders. Any contribution you do will be scrutinized and you will get some good advice on your works.

Also remember to also hang out and become a regular with the developers on the corresponding freenode irc #channel.
Huh, actually the Old River Control Structure being damaged and creating a massive disaster was the premise of an xkcd post, and the alt-text is about Jeff Masters having read good analysis on disaster scenarios

http://xkcd.com/748/
Ask HN: How to reverse my entertainment app's demoralizing downward trend
http://akhun.com/seo/skitch/Dashboard_-_Google_Analytics-20110514-133827.png

See above the usage trend for my iPhone entertainment app. Traffic has slowly but surly slowed and shrinked over the past year, and nothing I've tried has been able to put a dent in this trend.

For the past two years, my ability to pay for my (admittedly way overpriced) college has been largely dependent on this app. Summer break having just started, I want to see if I can find a new strategy for this app.

Does the HN community have any tips or advice for me?

PS: the app is http://ilaughapp.com/
Wave your hands really rapidly and then say: "it's a multi-billion dollar market".

One way to do it is to see how much money people are spending today to address the pain you are going to fix. Divide by 10 or 100. (You'll be cheaper, right?)
Well, I don't speak for everybody, but I for one would be stuck.

But what you suggest didn't happen, so I'm not sure that it makes any difference.

Besides, there are two sides to this, and each side can feel that the other is losing out when in fact both sides are getting exactly what they want.

(In fact, that's often the ideal outcome...)
Refynr is a much better tool http://refynr.com/. It works on Twitter as well as Facebook and you have much more granular control of what to include or not include.

Apologize in advance for the autorun video he has added to his home page ;<(.
Break down exactly why you think that that isn't sustainable, then engineer those worries away.

Do you think your project will need new features regularly? Pick a project whose problem domain changes rarely, and get out of the features = value mindset because it is outrageously false.

Do you think you will have to be constantly selling? Don't pick something with high touch sales processes for a side project.

Do you think your project will require support regularly? Do something less critical, so you have less time pressure on support. Do something simpler. Give people self-help resources and push them. Automate as much of your support burden as reasonably possible. (e.g. "Hey Patrick I need a receipt" takes me about 10 seconds to answer. It used to take a few minutes, but I get asked it frequently enough to justify 30 minutes of dev to make it quick.)

Do you think you will need to play sysadmin frequently? Become a better engineer. (I have a couple articles about this.)

I am not the sharpest knife in the HN drawer by a long shot. Currently I'm travelling internationally doing some networking at a Silicon Valley startup and, on the weekdays, consulting in NYC. I profoundly hate flying right now. I also have two software businesses and, from their perspective, this state of affairs is exactly identical to me just sleeping in back at my house. It is rather unlikely the businesses will cause significant work for me.
Moonwalking with Einstein (the book by the article's author) is a really interesting read. I recommend anyone who liked the article to check it out.

There are some interesting ideas related to Joshua's 'deliberate practice' that can be applied to software engineering as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...
Single page with anchor on titles + table of content at the top. As Wikipedia do for instance :-).
And a followup blog post recently: http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/05/08/michael-bays-scenario/
Wow! I really liked Moonwalking with Einstein and thought Ed sounded awesome.

He seemed like a great hustler in the book so I bet he is a fun co-founder to be around.
Why Innovation Is Under Attack
Can you elaborate on your question?

I don't think what you're saying is intrinsic to FP. There are static analysis tools for non-functional languages. At the end of the day, everything is getting turned into an abstract syntax tree, so style should be irrelevant.

Do you mean pure (side-effect free) functional languages?
How many people have learned Chinese using you method?
Yes, several people have already piled on. But if the compiler didn't say "Equal", then I would be claim it's confusing/inconsistent.

Are you saying that the funtion YOU wrote to convert C/D to a bool shouldn't be invoked when YOU are using C/D as booleans?
Thank you!

I will briefly note that my best audience has proven to be people interested in alternative health stuff rather than people with my diagnosis per se.
Do you also get kind of sick when you notice that food and clothing and flowers and education and entertainment cost money also? If no, why is housing different? If yes, what do you think income should be used for?
Do Schlage or Assa Abloy have standalone battery-powered locks like the Lockitron that uses FeliCa or MIFARE cards?
> "Some occupations clearly need to be licensed. Nobody wants to unleash amateur doctors and dentists on the public."

Actually, Milton Friedman famously (and impressively persuasively) did oppose mandatory licensure of doctors.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0194e.asp

A lot of the trouble with licensure is that it tends to ratchet upwards. If I'd been forced to spend $20,000 getting licensed as a barber, I'd be mad if a competitor opened across the street without having spent all that money. Repealing licensure requirements benefits everybody except the people who've already gotten licenses.
Haha I really had fun reading this :-). In particular because I read this just after watching this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2548484.
Asterisk not open enough for GNU?
> since BitTorrent speeds usually are not amazing

What? Most of the things I torrent these days, I torrent specifically because I can download faster than any FTP/HTTP site will ever let me download.
Erlang Is Our Superpower: How Collecta Uses Erlang
If they were written by Apple employees, then Apple likely owns the copyright on them, and the claim that Apple is required by some license to release their source is then in doubt.
"I don't think PARC's problem was lack of innovation."

The way the terms are used in the article, I think you mean, "lack of invention."

Both of you are in agreement that PARC of old was great at invention (building new things), not so good at innovation (bringing ideas to market). PARC now claims they're better at innovation. The external consensus is that they're not nearly as good at invention as they used to be. I'm not holding my breath to see what they come up with.
Execution is everything.
For everything Microsoft copied from someone you know about, five things you know about were copied from someone you do not know about.
The case for iOS background sync
Yeah, that works great.
Patrick, yes it's a regular selling problem as my membership peaked a couple of months ago and I'm trying to keep current members during this plateau.

Perhaps I have fallen for the features mistake to make more value for those members, but I've not implemented much to start with.

Doing email marketing, email replies to customers, adding testimonials, adding features, creating new info products... this one project takes all the time, but it's multiple times too small to sustain me.
I learned some new things from the video! Thx!!