skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for the link. I had wondered how multiple devices would work. (Plus, it's nice to see that I'm not the only one who came to the same conclusion - just add support for USB OTG.)

This whole ADK thing reeks of hardware-done-by-software guys. (Which is just as bad as software-done-by-hardware guys.) (I also hesitate to use the word engineer in this case.)

The AT90USB micro-controller has the same AVR core as the Ardunio which they're leveraging, and with LUFA, does fine in OTG or USB slave mode, and there are PICs that do USB if that's more your thing.

Electrically speaking, there is very little difference between a USB slave and a USB master, but unfortunately that's not something that's correctable in software.

Android is running Linux (specifically the kernel), which has drivers for a number of things, including USB card readers, printers, numerous USB-serial converters including FTDI, and other, more esoteric hardware too. Why re-invent the wheel, or in this case, drivers?
Crab Nebula's gamma-ray flare mystifies astronomers
Or at least include a transcript at the bottom so people can parse out the useful info without sitting through the video or trying to skip through and (likely) skipping right past the relevant nuggets.
Mine are a few months older than gacba's, and yeah, it's a 110% job to keep them occupied. There's some home schooling, there's a yard for them to run around in, and other kid stuff to play with, but I get interrupted from time to time. If I've got to take care of them for some reason, it's about all I can do to keep an eye on email and respond if I have to.

Though, by now, it's mostly the little guy (21 mo) who needs the completely constant attention. He's still at the age that when he is quiet, that's when you need to be worried about what he's gotten into. The older two can pretty much self entertain for an hour or two, unless they get into some project that needs a bunch of help for finding materials. Or they 'accidentally' hurt each other with sticks.

I don't see Caregiver + programmer working for an 18mo old, other than for a random slice of time here and there. I am the primary care person for him from bedtime on -- sometimes I get a couple hours to program at night, sometimes I get an hour, and sometimes, I'm laying down with him awake, he's flopping about, and I'm >< this close to getting something working and it's damn frustrating because every time I think he's asleep, there's another flop and a hand to keep me from escaping. I've been known to tell him that he doesn't need to respond to awakeFromNib, but he doesn't listen as well as a compiler.
Windows 2008 and broken ARP
I'm surprised blogging wasn't mentioned. Regularly writing about the topic(s) your users are interested in has some great benefits:

- Lends credibility to you and your site

- Outbound links to your product's site can help SEO

- Makes it possible to grab some of the long tail searches

- Blog readers can be an instant marketing target when launching new features

It's especially great for bootstrapped or small startups. The large competitors simply won't dedicate time or resources to the task. It's typically difficult for them to draw a direct connection to profits. For small startups it's a genuine way to connect with your customers without making them jump through hoops.
Actually, any comparison between dynamic and static typing is prone to bias, only because such comparisons are focusing on features -- whereas what's important really is style / use-cases.

And all the articles about Scala are missing one important detail -- structural typing and type inference are not a replacement for dynamic typing and all evidence to the contrary I've seen are extremely shallow.

Truth of the matter is the choice between static and dynamic comes down to personal style and individual use-cases for which one or the other is better.
I am a firm believer that customer service is the best marketing function that a startup can invest in. With good customer service, customers who have problems turn into the best beta testers, your strongest word of mouth marketers, and really good friends.

I'd even go so far as to say that the key to success is to treat your customers like gold, and treat your employees like customers.
There's a chicken and egg problem. You can't get buyers to use it till merchants accept it, and vice versa.

This could be a good end goal of a startup, but it can't be what they do initially.
So you're against the requirement to carry car insurance?

What happens when someone runs over you with a car and they have no liability or personal injury protection with which to compensate you for your medical bills and they have no money and therefore are judgment proof? Too bad, so sad? Shouldn't have been walking down the street?

Yes, this happens now, but now it's a criminal act to drive a car without insurance so you're breaking the law by potentially putting other people at risk.
Do Consumers Really Care About Security?
Being able to turn off your brain for an hour a day definitely boosts productivity.
No, there will be complaints about how slow they drive because, without a doubt, there will be legislation requiring these cars not exceed the maximum posted speed limit.
Cost of storing data:

S3: $0.140 per GB (at the most expensive rate)
vs.
Google: $0.17 per GB (at their only listed rate)

The rest seems to be the same though.
CAs suck and are unaccountable. Any of them can (and many of them have) issue a certificate for a site to an attacker.

eBay feedbacks can be gamed and I generally don't trust them.

Escrow services work, but they are generally regulated.

Your retail store example is laughable. I'm sure Walmart really cares about the quality of its products.
Security by obscurity works, if you're willing to respond with resources, and the economics do not motivate an overwhelming horde of opponents. There are definite economic reasons why Skype can make it work with just software and Sony can't even with help in hardware.
Vintage Apple-1 up and running
Safari Books Online takes Safari to Go to the iPad
I believe that currently the rules apply to content you can access directly on the iOS device. Specifically, SAAS is not (currently) affected.

Since Redbox is NOT actually providing content to your device, there wouldn't be a problem there.

Still, the 3rd party seller argument is a mystery in cases where these rules would normally apply.
Mixergy always has transcripts; this one just isn't ready yet.
A key point made that's relevant to a many other parts of a startup is this: It depends.

People want simple answers to questions that are actually complex. In this case, it's not that it's incredibly complex but that there is no ONE right answer (50/50 or not 50/50). (At least, this is my humble first-time-entrepreneur take on the matter.)

Furthermore, everyone has their own bias and point to their own anecdotal situations as proof that either 1) they are right or 2) the other person is wrong. And yet they don't realize that that both cases can be true (that is, their solution was right for their situation and the other persons solution would've been wrong for their solution but right for someone else's).

In my case, 50/50 (or even split) would've made sense early one when I first started. And this is what I was aiming for. But, as time went on, it became apparent that I would be leading this startup by myself. As time went on, 50/50 just made no sense since I was putting all my time/effort/ideas into the project, full-time.

These days, I would never accept 50/50 even if that other person is a friend (mind you, I've been working on my startup for over a year and have a live product and users). Fairness, in my case, isn't about 50/50 but giving a fair share.
My guess is that this was done mostly by hand during Google 20% time. That said, I know there are a number of javascript/jQuery animation frameworks (http://bit.ly/FpVAM)
I understand what you're saying, but fairness is a poor word to use for what you're describing. Especially when you use it in contradicting ways.

In your first example equality is "fair and equal." Removing the "equal" as redundant, you end up with equality being fairness. In your second example inequality is fairness. But somehow the second example is not "fairness" according to your article; it is "self interest."

I guess my argument is that in any relationship self interest and fairness are the same thing. To long time friends, 0/100 could be considered fair because it's not really 0/100. There's a lot more equity there than the company. Maybe the guy's a great fishing buddy and some tiny venture is worth so little compared to that you'd just as well give it all to your friend so he can spend more time fishing. Also, because your investment with the person is so much more than the size of the venture, the total cost of walking away may be much more than you are currently losing on the venture.

Contrastingly you might not know a cofounder at all. Your relationship with him is worth virtually nothing going in. All you've got is the value of the venture. So as the disparity of initial contributions grows, so grows the desire to find a more accurate equity split. Likewise, because the value of the relationship is only the value of the venture, the cost of walking away is much lower so it is easier to reach that point.
I think it's more about the relative ease or difficulty of expressing a concept in that language. If a concept is missing or unnatural, it's going to be harder to deal with that concept. Common examples of languages with more expressiveness than English are the multiple Russian words for blue, or the many Eskimo words for ice.

A thought experiment that I think works better is to imagine a language where people describe facial features extensively, to where a description in that language can easily be used to reconstruct an image of a person's face. Imagine how crippled a native speaker of that language would feel trying to speak in English, or the derision they would have towards the police sketch-artist process that took trained artists/interpreters quite a bit of time to extract a description from a witness that would sound like a 4 year old trying to describe a face. That's what linguistic differences are more like.
I'm wondering why you didn't use a scripting language like Python?
AndroidHome is the best worst thing that could happen to home automation
Exactly. Hence my now defunct '(Hint don't)' abbreviation of the tone/conclusion of the article.
I thought of something similar, though less surreptitious. I run a website that relies on a fairly enormous quantity of scraped data. To keep its dataset current I need a huge, continuous scraping cluster. I thought about letting people run a little thing in their system tray so that when the network interface on their computer is idle, it becomes part of my scraping cluster. I would be completely upfront with them about what it is doing - it would serve as a non-monetary way for them to contribute meaningfully to the operation of my site.
what do we do with this..
Even transcripts are a problem for me though. A written piece flows like a book, a transcript doesn't. It's like reading a play.
How do you quote a passage that has used '[sic]' mistakenly?
I'm using software that launched here on Hacker News.

Where possible, I want to be your beta tester.

So, how can TweetPerView be improved?
From the title I was really expecting a thesis on long hours, crunch times, and no overtime pay. The title is way too snarky, even besides the games/graphics switcharoo.

I used to want to be a games programmer, and even got my name in the thanks section of a well-received published game programming book. Now I think it looks like an awful career.
Adding metadata to iOS images the easy way
Latest Treasure Is Location Data
This was already discussed here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2533135

The original post (which is quoted in this article) is here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/usb/adk.html
It takes a couple of days for the transcript to be up, but I always have one. (Unless the interviewee specifically asks me not to because he/she doesn't want what he says to be google-able.
So wait, I don't just go to one of those community colleges and tighten up the graphics on level 3?
Core Tasks vs. Periphery Tasks And The Work Most Critical To Your Success
Cloud Architect for Microsoft doing IAMA at Reddit
What's More Expensive: Farmers' Markets or Grocery Stores?
Yeah! Thanks for remembering.

I really like the guy who made this.
For you, is 2.12 seconds nearly as fast as 1.77 seconds?

For 5 of those 10 tasks, the measurements on x64 show a C program less than twice as fast as a Go program.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=go

Could it be that those C programs were more highly optimised by the C programmers?

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=spec...

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=spec...
Well, they're not pushing it out, just demanding a 30% share. The fact that most of the publishers want a 70% share is the icing on the cake, but no reason you couldn't still deal with a minor publisher, or be your own publisher.
iFlow's plan was to be a middleman buying zero marginal cost goods from a wholesalers (WTF) selling in another middleman's store.

Please don't lose sleep shedding tears for the failure of this great innovation to catch fire.
Suffering? Buying Skype would've been a bad move for the company, and the forces of rationality won out.
Yes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7776127.stm
HTML5 3D Audio Waveform
An API for everybody elses APIs
Is it possible for 3rd party ebook readers to display books bought through the iBook store? If the answer is "no" then this seems like a great way to ensure bad ebook software on your platform.

Case in point: no one seems to really like the iBook app very much.
I specifically wanted to write about "non obvious" things.

Note this sentence from the introduction: "They're outdated and uninformative — full of obvious suggestions such as: 'you should blog' and 'use Twitter to get the word out.'"
The closest example I can think of is Square and look how long it took them.
did not know about this... this is official awesome
Post author here. You're dead on about this. I could try to turn this into another reason why git + pathogen is lacking as a plugin management system (you have to know a lot about git!), but that is weak, so a better tack is to just agree.

Question: is there an equally easy way to delete submodules? They're easy as pie to add, and you rightly point out that they are easy to update, but I never figured out an easy way to remove them. I was likely missing something, though.
Sorry, I should have said "channel some of that concentration into productive endeavors"
What I Want From a Bibliography System
Exactly. I'm a huge fan. He's tackling complex problems and trying his best to do something about it. Working at Apple you'd think would be a good approach. But his work for Al Gore is likely a better starting point to evangelizing his points. Especially when he's unconstrained by NDAs.
Liveblog: Google I/O Day 2
Sign up for free Amazon Prime with a .edu email, it changes everything.
My business plan was to insert myself as a middle-middle-middleman between iFlow and the wholesalers.

Then I was gonna complain that they didn't leave me any profit margin.
I'm surprised how many people are strongly against my conclusion in my title. He is saying pretty clearly that it was a mistake.
I've used it on one site and it worked fine there, but admittedly that's a tiny sample size.
Palantir Valued at More than $2 Billion
The plugin author discusses that here: https://github.com/gmarik/vundle/wiki/Vundle-for-Windows.
Most companies that will hire you already know how the rules of the game are going to go. You just have to implement them.

You are not going to be hired out of the gate as a "game designer". You will be a "game programmer". The designer is going to tell you want needs to happen and you just make sure it works.
This is incorrect. Shareholder votes are only one control provision; board seats are another. If you both have board seats, your cofounder has an effective veto on major transactions.

Don't get clever with "revenue sharing agreements" etc. You want to innovate in your core business, not in financial instruments. The alternative is a world of unintended legal and tax consequences.
You mean strcpy_s?
While we're at it, why have contract law? People should be able to figure out on their own who's likely to keep their word, and the market will punish those who break it.
Speaking of bad analogies, iOS is not a town that Apple just happened to get elected mayor of. It's more like Disney World and Apple is Disney. Good luck starting your business inside Disney World without living by their rules.
UI Elements Pack (Photoshop PSD)
I'm trying to hire a writer to help pull out the key points for you.

Hit me up by email if you want to tell me what your ideal version would be.
Blog post now updated with HTML/javascript implementation example.
infoedge invested a huge amount in another firm couple of weeks back, seems like they are heading towards an expansion
The whole point of this thread is about whether bonding should be required by threat of force (or torture) by government. Advocates of government regulation claim yes. Opponents claim that there are better, non-violent ways in which consumers are protected. The issue is precisely the use of force. Nobody is saying that bonding is bad or that private rating agencies could not require bonding as a condition of endorsement.
In that the owners of IFlow Reader tried to monetize by getting a piece of every ebook sale, and when that strategy failed, they decided to stop selling iFlow Reader.
Erm... "Lynx"

whistles innocently
> "Wouldn't an architecture that allows the distribution to define and replace Z on its own be valuable?"

In theory, sure. But how many more years of practice do we need before we accept that it doesn't work that way in reality? That any change in Z is as likely to break apps that use it, as save them some hassle?
Angry Birds Coming to Chrome Web Store
"It follows that the founders' relationship is the next most important determinant of success." -- Words to live by for early stage start-ups.
FUD. Dynamic linking is about saving on RAM. Nobody ever said it's faster or "secure" therefore the entire post is mostly about made up agruments.

And dynamic linking does save a lot of memory. That's one of big wins for Google's Dalvik: standard JVM is unable to share code - that's why all JVM processes are memory hogs.

Looking at my process map right now. Gnome-panel has 20MB in resident memory (not all of it is code, mind you) - and 13 of them are shared with other processes. Unity-window-decorator shares over half of its code with others. Just for the kicks open your process monitor, have "shared memory" column open, and sum up all those numbers - those are megabytes you would have lost without the shared code.

It is also about CPU as well. Moving sort() implementation in and out of L2 cache is expensive, better to have a single instance of those opcodes do sorting for multiple processes.

Sorry, but our operating systems and programs we run on them are mostly composed of shared libraries. The debate of either they're good or not is largely pointless unless we migrate to different OS designs.
Holy baloney. I'm just blown away, this is amazing. As a current state employee, I've seen the insane bureaucracy we have to battle just to redesign one internal site.

I would love to know how they did this. Are these contractors? Is it a seperate team? Is the redesign rolling out across all government departments? What is their CMS?

Oh man, I need details. If you were involved with this at all, please contact me...
Not only do managers like being apprised of what's going on, but all those things you're doing to help the company also help your manager look good in meetings with his or her boss — and making the person who writes your paychecks look good is just about the best thing you can do in business, in my experience.
The Houston Chronicle's Unicahome Sweepstakes
Google I/O announcements (updating)
Wow, that was a good interview. I haven't seen Jason talk so openly about things before. He was really relaxed in the video. I came away very impressed with him.

He seems like a great guy.
do you really think its a co-incidence apple is demanding exactly the same amount that publishers designate as "allowed margin"?
Three Traits Every CEO Needs
Holy shit, Google may not Be Evil, but Wesley Chan surely is:

"As Chan helped with due diligence, even going to Europe to see Skype firsthand, he became convinced that the purchase was a bad idea for Google. He concluded that one of Skype's key assets -- its peer-to-peer technology -- was a mismatch for Google, which worked on the newer paradigm of cloud computing.

"'The worst thing about peer-to-peer is that it doesn't work well with Google,' Chan told me during an amazing interview for 'In the Plex' in February 2010. 'Peer-to-peer just eats up your bandwidth, right, it's like the old technology.'"
Are your parents and/or in-laws retired? Maybe you can get them to take more time if you explained the situation. If they're not already committed to something else, they'd hopefully be glad to help out in your situation.

My wife and I are pretty much on our own in a different country than our parents, and on retrospection it would have been easier on us if we were able to get our parents to babysit every now-and-then. We're fortunate that I make enough that my wife is able to stay at home and watch our kids, but she misses her career and we also miss having one-on-one time together. Things are going well for us right now but we lack flexibility in our schedules.
As a software engineer I object to that! At least software engineers would have thought their design through, instead this this whole thing looks thrown together by a bunch of amateurs over the weekend. I think it's more a testament of the 'there I fixed it!' attitude that's the cause of so much Android-related WTFs in general.

As for LUFA, I'm working on a port of MicroBridge to AT90USB. I'll get working on it as soon as I receive the dev board.
This is a _good_ thing. Graphics drivers are so ridiculously terrible that the pressure to fix them needs to come from somewhere. IMVU's top reported crash is access violations inside of Direct3D. Mass-market 3D is a pain in the ass because of this situation, and Intel, Microsoft, nvidia, and amd aren't doing anything about it.
Are Quantum Impossibility Proofs Possible?
If a company does a good job for a good price, its fame will quickly spread.

So what happens when that company is bought out by new owners, starts skimping on product safety, and 1,000 people die before the market notices?

If 1,000 people die, is the company held liable by the government?

If people band together to enforce preventative measures in the community (even through private means), such that such a thing doesn't happen again, have they created a regulatory government?
Watch South Park Season 15 Episode 3: Royal Pudding Online
South Park goes Royal! The South Park will join the bandwagon of the Royal Wedding gaga by making a parody out of it. This coming Wednesday, May 11, 2011 the South Park Season 15 Episode 3: Royal Pudding will air its premiere broadcast.
World's servers process 9.57ZB of data a year
Garbage collection needs to go into the kernel. Providing fast, fine-grained control over virtual memory mappings gets you a read barrier on any system with virtual memory, which lets you build real-time GCs. Azul's patches to Linux show how this can be done:

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4165

They're using the VT-x for the virtualized page tables and still run the GC in userspace, but if you move the GC into the kernel you won't even need virtualized page tables.
Besides the issue pg mentioned, this space is highly regulated (and perhaps likely to become more regulated), so regulatory compliance as much as meeting technical requirements is a big part of the problem for any new startup.