skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'll point out that it is now possible to buy laptops, from several vendors, pre-installed with Linux. Lenovo makes several ThinkPad models with Linux, Dell has three or four models, as well. And they cost less than their Windows-running twins, generally. So, you have the power of Linux, and it just works.

The biggest source of trouble for me with Linux has always been wireless drivers, because manufacturers are so tight with their specs...Intel has a fully open WiFi chipset, and it's the one included in all of these "for Linux" systems, and it works really well.

I remember spending a day fixing the crap the linux devs piled on me when they decided to replace /dev with the udev system or something.

Yeah, I remember that day, too, but only because I was interested in it. My distribution upgraded without a hitch, and I wouldn't have even noticed the difference if I weren't specifically doing development work on a kernel driver that had a device interface.

Then there was some update to libc which broke everything on my system.

Never happened. Unless you're using some oddball build-your-own Linux, libc is not going to be upgraded in an incompatible way. No distro worth a damn would do that, and I'm absolutely certain that Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, Debian, and Ubuntu have never broken everything on your system by providing an incompatible libc version. You did that to yourself, either by using a crazytown distro without proper dependency management (though I can't think of one that has ever broken libc in the way you describe) or by replacing libc manually and against the better judgment of your package management tools.

I'm not saying Linux is foolproof (obviously, it isn't), but if you choose a well-supported distribution, and follow its recommended upgrade processes, you will simply never see the problems you're describing. I've managed Macs, and I can say with confidence that they are no friendlier after an upgrade than a Linux system. You know they've changed their user management system in pretty dramatically incompatible ways several times since OS X was released? Even recently, one user related weirdness led to a friends laptop becoming completely unusable (it was in a sort of death loop seemingly trying to start the login process)...the only advice we could find on the web was to restore from backups--I poked around in single user mode, but couldn't make much sense of it, so I didn't touch anything. She handed it off to the Google techstop folks, who worked on it all day, and finally wiped it and reinstalled the OS. Perhaps all parties involved are just idiots...but it seems to me that things can go wrong with Macs, as well, and you've just not had time to run into it.
Here's the quick summary of a totally shit article: Sometimes endorsements work.
without resorting to the infomercial style of ads

Infomercials sell. You're right at the variety of sales techniques you can use to push product, but infomercials are one of the most effective mediums. It's like direct mail: we hate it, but from a business end, a well-crafted creative can produce a 20% conversion rate.
When I hear this, I suspect that the professors are defining student quality as whether or not students have the personality traits typically imparted by high-SES parents (such as intellectual curiosity), not whether students are able to ace their final exams.

Honestly, though, I don't believe that it's easier for low-SES students to get into Harvard now than it was in 1993. It might be easier for them to attend, because of more generous aid packages, but I think that it's a lot harder for them to clear admissions. It's probably easier for them to be admitted than it was in 1950, but tougher than it was in 1993.

Perfect SATs and high school grades are no longer enough to get into a top college. Extracurriculars and internships (during high school) are much more essential now than in '93, because everyone has near-perfect numbers, and these factors break the tie. These "soft factors" are obviously much more SES-loaded, in favor of the rich, than grades or test scores. Very rich parents can buy a resume that makes Ivy League rejection improbable, assuming the kid takes his prep high school courses, and his SAT tutor, seriously.

Professors who complain about student quality are not comparing 2008 to 1950, but to the 1990s and possibly '80s, so the stretch over which the comparison is made is one in which the barriers to entry, for hard-working low-SES students, became higher due to all the soft-factor garbage that Ivy League colleges now require, all of which is much easier for the well-off to game.

Incidentally, the complaint often heard from these professors is not that students have become stupider, but that their minds are narrower and that they tend to be strivers and game-players rather than aspiring scholars. It seems like this change in student body character would result, at least in part, from the increased focus on so-called "leadership" and ticket-punching garbage between 1993 and 2008.

One point I will concede to you is that it's nearly impossible 4 years of one's life, in earnest, to intellectual development, as opposed to mere career training, if one doesn't have an assured sunny future, and that fewer students at elite colleges have such futures. This might explain the rise of the pre-professional college student. You might want to correlate this with SES: In the golden era of undergraduate education, elite college students had awesome futures locked up and could devote serious time to intellectual development, for its own sake. Now that they're insecure strivers without assured good futures, they've turned into pre-banker douchebags who ask what will be on the test, cram and forget everything they learn. I'd counter this argument by noting that the social change is not in the SES of those who attend elite schools (there's no data to support a downward shift) but rather is the fact that, due to the past three decades' sociological contraction-- in spite of economic expansion-- upper-middle-class college students no longer have nice futures locked up to the extent that they would have had in previous generations.
X200 or X300
This looks suspiciously like an astro-turfing campaign to me.
Better yet, let's sell anyone in the general populace a two-ton box of metal they can propel in any given direction at speeds up to 120 mph.

Wait, nevermind. That'll never take off.
I believe he meant that Mac is the first company to make computers and devices fashionable to everyone who isn't a nerd. There's a big difference. It's now "cool" and "hip" for any set of mainstream consumers to own a Mac/iPod/iPhone, while it's never really been "cool" to own any sort of Windows machine, except in tiny little crowds of geeks and nerds.
If it's a hoax, it's an elaborate, insider one - the people listed on the site appear to be "real" (e.g. Pete shows up on LANL's official website).
Only Google has it shit-listed, therefore Firefox does too by extension.

Opera 9.5 and IE 7 (both w/ phishing detection as well) don't flag it. Google's malware detection engine has been known to be off plenty of times before - lost a startup I know a month's income because some bad sites were linking to them, before they apologized and undid their blacklisting.
OSX and Xcode? ;-)
Back to the big J: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Surely people can get at the electricity powerlines "just by digging" too?
> On the other hand, if you want, say, a sub-$1000 laptop (just something for email and net browsing on the go), Apple can't help you at all

store.apple.com -> Refurbished Mac -> Apple Certified Refurbished MacBook -> $899.00, free shipping. Judging by the graphics chip and CPU, it's the latest revision, released in February.

How much is it worth to you to have a machine that comes in a white box (instead of the brown refurb one)? For most Mac users, the answer is "a couple hundred dollars" and those are the people new Macs are for.
As much as I prefer discrete graphics, the X3100 is actually quite good. Good enough to be the only video option for the Macbook Air, Macbook, Thinkpad X300 and Thinkpad 61s all well received laptops.
I don't think the creator of an interface can ever objectively measure the usability of the interface, no matter how much they use it; they don't ever have to learn it, because they created it in the first place.
out of curiosity what was the idea? and what happened to it?
That's still not bad.
A Ferrari can be four times as expensive as a Corvette. News at 11.

It's an apples to oranges comparison. Average selling price is a terrible comparison tool - it only works for very similar products that cater to the same public. While I am not a Mac user (I am, but my main computer is a PC running Linux and the Mac is used mostly at home), I have the deepest respect for the product and I understand fully it's not the same as a more mundane Dell PC.
A great artists knows when his painting is ugly, a great musician can tell when his song sucks.
Interesting that Dell is outpacing Apple in this space.

I'm not a huge Dell fan, but the way Dell has embraced their customers desires is something pretty awesome to behold. When "Linux laptops" was the most requested item in their first user poll, they announced a range of Ubuntu laptops soon after. Going green was another high ranking request...and it seems that while it took them a little longer to bring it to fruition, they've done it.

I may end up with yet another Dell next time I buy a laptop, and not just because they're cheap...I might even buy my next desktop from them (and I've never bought a pre-built desktop PC...the last brand name desktop machine I bought was an Amiga).
The Art of Pricing Great Art
I'll add a quick rebut: my wife exclusively used Dyson vacuums in her housecleaning business. Sure they cost more, but they were so much faster than standard vacuums, (and still much cheaper than say the Hoover industrial vacs) that the cleaning crew could get out of a house and on to the next job that much quicker. On average they lasted about a year before needing to be replaced. That's a year of heavy daily use, being wrestled in and out of vehicles and used by people who didn't pay for them.

We use a Dyson Animal at home (2 large, shedding dogs and 2 cats) -- the only remaining one from the business and the thing is phenomenal!
I meant to downvote it and missed. Wish there was an undo arrow. Bragging about apathy is sad. Upvoting it is worse.
WiFi is the tricky bit. Just be sure to check that the wireless adapter is detected. Intel wireless chipsets are open, and so have excellent support in Linux. All of the "includes Linux" laptops from Lenovo and Dell have an Intel WiFi card rather than one of the lesser models (thus, the same model from Dell or Lenovo running Windows will not necessarily provide "drop Linux on it later" capability, unless you plan to replace the WiFi adapter with the Intel version--it does seem to be a replaceable component in the Dell and Lenovo models in question, though).
I'm not sure what astro-turfing is, but I'm pretty sure its not. I don't have a blog, but I figured that I'd share this with you guys anyways. Hence the first post on a new blog.
Lastly, I might note that one of Apple's criteria for getting accepted to the App Store was HIG compliance. This guy was far from it and still is. I guess they're just ignoring that right now.

FWIW, most of Apple's apps don't conform to their HIG either.
Facebook employee stock sale: 'Dozens' selling, 'investment firms' buying
the only problem I have is in my head (maybe I'm wrong?) my product idea is to sell to consumers... but in a sense I have to get the publishers on board because it's their product I'm selling... as far as signing them up should I just take emails? more? should I rush order some business cards with the businesses current name? should I try to get a place holder site up somewhere?
Yeah, those are definitely reasons why they don't. But part of me would hope that a scientist's zeal for objectivity would compel them to address this question honestly.

By the way, a professor name William Zumeta wrote a very good paper on this subject.

http://evans.washington.edu/files/zumeta-attracting-the-best...

It's not a rant - it's a very thoughtful piece.
Visiting Silicon Valley
I'll be in the Valley on Aug. 11th and 12th. Any suggestions about what or who to visit and see?
I agree that a flamewar would be sad, but I don't think this conversation has devolved to one yet. Many of the comments cite facts, give both pros and cons of Mac/PC, and are related to the claims in the article.
The term comes by analogy to "grassroots". Astroturfing is marketing that pretends to be grassroots but isn't.
I wud advice to look for "Centrino" branded stuff. That usually works out of the box. But YMMV.

The primary concern is the WiFi drivers (thought graphics can also be an issue). If it has the "Centrino" label, it's probably running an Intel WiFi and graphics chipset...both of which are documented fully and thus are very well supported in all modern Linux distributions. I have one of the first generation Dell's that included the then-freshly opened Intel WiFi and graphics chipsets, and it has always worked great, through numerous distros and versions.
I disagree a lot on the relevancy of prices. When you're a startup or a family looking to buy a handful of machines, the extra $800 adds up quickly to cut in half (roughly) the number of machines you can afford.

Do I get a Mac for me or do I get a PC for both my wife and myself? Do I put off upgrading some employees to more modern hardware or buy fewer of them Macs?

I really do want to use more Macs around here, but the economics don't make sense at the current price points. I welcome a drop in price which could get Mac a great deal of marketshare.
Out of curiosity, what would this list have looked like before Sarbanes-Oxley? Everyone always says about how that made it more difficult to go public.
Which makes me wonder if we're going to see something crazy:

What if Apple's new announcement this year will be a lower-priced Mac notebook with built-in 3G-- price-subsidized by carriers to make it feel more competitive?

How many of you would buy the Macbook 3G?
Does the author think we are so boring as a community that all we ever want to read are purely factual and though-provoking articles that we must sit down for a half hour and read? Don't get me wrong, I love these kinds of articles, but hackers in general are not 100% serious people who want to seriously discuss hacking 100% of the time. Cartoons can be relevant and they might actually make me laugh too.
That sounds like something Tom would do on purpose, but yes we'll fix that.

NBA schedule is released today so we'll be adding the NBA shortly thereafter.
Good comment. These extracurricular activities really only matter though if you are a high-SES white or Asian student, only because there are a surplus of these with good credentials so the other factors end up being the tie-breaker. If you are a low-SES or minority student then decent grades and SATs are generally enough, especially if you have an after-school job. I think therefore that any decline in student quality (by the definition I used) is probably a combination between high-SES kids being over scheduled, and also more low-SES kids attending because better financial aid and a stronger commitment to diversity. I haven't seen the long-term data on SES or affirmative action at top colleges though, so I don't know how much has changed since the early 90's. I still maintain though that student quality is higher during summer classes, and while I suspect that SES plays a large role in this I'm sure there are other important factors as well.
I've been using linux exclusively for about 10 years and I can sympathize with your experiences.

However, in the last three years I've installed linux on two laptops for work - a Dell Inspiron at my previous job and a Lenovo T60 at my current job. In both cases, installation was flawless, hardware was autodetected correctly, and everything "Just Worked". That includes OpenGL, audio, and wireless. For reference, I'm using Ubuntu.

In the last couple of years, linux installations have become much, much better in this respect. I'm sure that people running bleeding edge hardware or using certain components still struggle to make it work with linux. However, the need to compile drivers and fix issues caused by updates is no longer a guarantee when runnig linux.
Best advice I ever received
Ok guys, following all the comments I received here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231407, for my new website foobets.com, I can happily say it helped crystallise my thoughts regarding the site and helped me to avoid some blind alleys. I would recommend everyone who has the germ of a start-up idea throw it out to the Hackers here for their feedback
ProjectPlus for TextMate
They'd lessen list integrity as well as they'd show up as the "cheapest" every time due to their auction format.
The transcript of Malcolm Gladwell's talk (http://www.davidgalenson.com/malcolmgladwell-lecture.pdf) is a lot more interesting than the blog entry that's discussing it. It's not so much about age (i.e. you must be either 20 or 60 to make something great), but that there are two fundamentally different approaches to creation.

The first is immediate and ex nihilo, the execution of a clearly defined idea that is fundamental to the artist's way of thinking. The second is slow and incremental, a blind walk through an enormous search space, until the artist finds something that resonates with them for reasons they can't properly explain.

I could probably make some sort of startup vs. 37Signals analogy here, but my heart's not in it, so I'll leave it to someone else.
Relying on a third party to "do the right thing" is a dangerous path to take. It's like putting up a robots.txt and saying it's up to the crawler programmers/users to respect the rules.
Not sure but he did mention that it costs a public company $2M a year in legal and other bills just for SO.
each being able to generate 70 megawatts of
heat energy, or 27 megawatts of electricity
from a steam turbine

So we will have 43 Megawatts of excess heat dissipated by a device size of a hot tub. That'll work. Not.
The Caldecott Tunnel Problem
Oh, be creative. Just off the top of my head: Feedburner could separate out aggregator reported counts, or show two numbers, one with aggregators and one without.
I personally think a missing ‘e’ is among the least problem in domain naming these days, it may actually help engrave the name in someone memory.

How about flikr.com, scribd.com, tumblr.com and lately karatr.com? Not that bad as compare to all the strange names I’m not going to mention here so I don’t offend anyone.
I'd second the XPS M1330. My flatmate has one and it's pretty good (especially for the money).

The Eee 1000 Linux is very well built too, although the low screen resolution would probably make it unsuitable for a main dev box.
I like WTFPL better. http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
There's plenty of evidence that social proof works, it's just a questions of whether there's something special about FeedBurner that would invalidate social proof mechanics.
Good! If you cannot be a genius at 20 you still have 40 years to become a master.
5 Technologies that make internal combustion engines better (but...)
Zoho reaches 1 Million Users
Scientists mimic eye with curved electronic camera
if its not bad form to quote wikipedia, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China where it mentions the fall of the Gang of Four. I think what happened was that China was pretty unstable what with the Wars and then the Communist takeover in 1950, and the Great Leap Forward (exercise in Irony) crippled the country until the economic reforms around the same time as 1984.
No, my point was that age is a red herring. The only binary distinction being posited here is that some people know what they're looking for, and other people find it.
Um, will consumers buy it? Thats a problem you need to ask about. Didn't you say your target audeience is going to be there? Thats what market research is about, standing in front of someone and asking them, "would you buy this?" Usually, people are nice and say yes, so you always have to discount that, but if they say no, then you really need to start thinking about your business.

Ask people how much they would pay for it, what they think of the idea, get any suggestions, ask people what other problems they have. Ask publishers if they are interested in your idea. Don't treat the publishers like consumers. Treat them like businees contacts, because they will be. Network among the publishers, ask them if they would be interested in hearing from you when you get your site up, and get their bsuiness card (Purposely ask for it, they'll all have one). Write down on the back who they are and what you talked to them about, cause in a few months you'll totally have forgotten.

When you're talking to gamers, and if they seem interested, ask them if they would want to sign up to be notified when your site goes live or if they want to be a beta tester, that sort of thing. Don't send them emails before then, and let them know this. Just have a clipboard with a piece of paper on it. I wouldn't ask consumers for a business card, thats kind of awkward, like you might actually call them. It helps not to be pushy, so if people show a real interest, you can always email them. Accept a card if they give it to you.

I wouldn't worry about a placeholder site or business cards, although they are cheap. If you don't have a site yet, its not like too many people are going to be seeking you out. You need their cards. If someone wants your contact info, you can always ask for their card and send them an email that night, or write it on the back of theirs. I mean, cards are cheap, but it won't kill you not to have them.
Note that this follows a standard fallacy: comparing circuitry alone. You're not buying a motherboard, RAM, and disk, you're buying a whole machine.

For example, the Inspiron 518 that they mentioned was a cheap plastic tower, and they compare it to the integrated iMac. The integration is going to add cost, no matter who builds it.

Apples to apples folks, apples to apples.

When I do comparisons, here's what I usually find:

1. When you find the same build quality (e.g. a macbook pro versus upper-end thinkpads or dells (I don't remember their naems)), the prices get pretty close

2. At an update, the macs are slightly cheaper. But the PC vendors quickly adapt. Then the macs are more expensive (usually ~$100).

3. To do fair comparisons, you have to also match in the software/accessories included. Lots of stuff free on either platform has to either be given credit or be matched.

4. You usually don't want everything included. But, for the sake of intellectual honesty, you have to make the comparisons fair.

5. Complaining that Apple offers poor selection or customization options are perfectly fair.
Porting Stuff to Google Apps
I wish I had time to read this, but I have stuff to do. :(
Frankly I buy macs b/c they're vendor-supported unix boxes.

Outside of my personal gripes with Mach-O, it's a pretty good unix.
Ask HN: Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content?
Is it legal to scrape another website for user submitted content? For example, if there was a news site that got its news solely from users submitting their own personally-written articles and stories -- who owns that content? Does the end user relinquish ownership once they submit that content?

Is it legal for another company to "scrape" that content and use it on their site, only removing it if the user who submitted it in the first place asks them to, either directly or via legal means?

Thoughts and insight would be appreciated!