skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A deal with Microsoft wouldn't make sense and Amazon would shoot itself in the foot if it did that, simply because most users are expecting to see Google's logo and when searches won't work so well on Bing, they'll assume that's because they are using a Google-clone (regardless of the technical merits of Bing versus Google).

I'm seeing a company like Amazon switching to Microsoft alternatives only in the case of a total war, in which Amazon would want to hurt Google by any means necessary, even if it compromises their own products.

I'm pretty sure Apple thought about replacing Google's services by now, switching to Microsoft. There have been rumors about it too. They haven't done so yet, even though they are pretty upset about the existence of Android. Google's lock-in is better than one would think.

IMHO, I'm seeing Amazon approaching Google in the interest of collaboration, especially since they can complement each-other nicely.
well, it requires some independence
Does Anybody Use New Programming Language Features?
If the idea can't be implemented with the kind of patent examiners we are likely to get, or with the resources one could reasonably expect, then there's a problem with the idea.
The Wall Machine: A Dead Simple Tool for Creating Fake Facebook Walls (WYSIWYG)
...or replace the worms with birds and call it "Birds".
Yes many. The problem is that you will never hear about them because there does not seem to be any attractive forum for tech startups in Norway free of dull business types.

Herein lies an opportunity: to create a YC/"Hacker News"-like focal point for entrepreneurs minus the boring "first tuesday"-segment that are only interested in talking about stock options and exit strategies.

If you have some spare time and want to do something about this I can put you in contact with some people in the "incubator" business who might be able to introduce you to useful people.
Works wonderfully for me =]
will the source be forthcoming?
Sorry, I had some issues with the traffic.. but that's now fixed. Spotify is updating right now, so that might explain the error.
Sorry, there were some traffic issues. Fixed now!
Philadelphia University Commencement Speech – May 15th 2011
A Computer Science degree is not tangible proof that you have 'technical skills'.
WordPress Restricting authors to view only posts they created
Philadelphia University Commencement Speech by Steve Blank
HTML5 isn't solving mobile dev issues yet
this half worked for me on the first attempt, not on the second, I pray to god that spotify pay you lots of money and you go make this official because it would be an awesome addition to spotify
This is a nonexistent battle as a developer, isn't it? Applications that sell on one platform will sell on the other, and Amazon's licensing agreement is non-exclusive. This is like Coke vs. Pepsi and we're selling the ice cubes.
They've had this for many years: http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/
Your ignoring the obvious case where someone got a patent for an obvious solution. The US patent office has long ignored that test and billions have been wasted as a direct result of this. If you patent pushing email to a portable device and I patent pulling email from a portable device there are not a lot of options left to auto populate email on a cellphone.

The basic issue is computing is a rapidly evolving filed and while the obvious mouse traps have been patented the obvious ways of using a database or the internet have not.
~ # cat over.c
main () {
int i = 0x00ffffff;
while (i > 0) i--;
}
~ # tcc over.c -o out
~ # time ./out
real 0m 13.58s
user 0m 13.57s
sys 0m 0.01s

I love this stuff.
Advanced MVC in .NET : FubuMVC goes into Beta. Check it out
Netflix now the biggest source of Web traffic
This is hot! Needs logging facility too but otherwise I'm blown away!
CS-Cart Manual
Bug statistics are a waste of time
Chrome 11.0.696.68 (0) seems to have some objections to the drag & drop functionality. Dragging a .mcr file onto the appropriate region on the page has Chrome download the file.
In Kirkland, a rich suburb near Redmond, a Microsoft millionaire has had a pay-what-you-want coffee shop for a while. I don't think it would work outside areas with significant social pressure on most patrons in the direction of not appearing cheap.
Links Don’t Open Apps
Ask HN: Domain registrar with API and no shady fees?
I want to offer domain name registration for mini-sites inside my app.

Is there any registrar where I can programmatically register domains and assign DNS parameters on behalf of other people?

Hopefully this registrar will not have shady fees like $250 "restore fees" (eNom) or $120 "redemption fees" (name.com).
You apparently aren't very familiar with how business works...
Not another craigslist clone
This is demonstrative of the advantages of the new low-level APIs being added to JavaScript to work efficiently with binary data.

Fabrice uses this to implement an x86 interpreter -- it could not be done efficiently without typed arrays. However, it is still slow -- imagine what kind of advances could be made if a common bytecode was established that would be JIT'd by the JavaScript VM, and could be output directly by the emulator.

This is why so many people want to see the browser execution environment offer more complete, low-level APIs instead of high-level APIs locked to HTML/CSS and legacy browser technology. Efficiently supporting high-performance, high-complexity systems such as an x86 emulator (or a video game, or custom font rendering, or even an application framework) absolutely require efficient low-level APIs.
Yeah, basically there is one shortcoming of the "Modernizr approach" to front-end development -- namely that you will end up treating clients who have JS disabled as though their browsers do not support a number of CSS features.

So with the old browser sniffing way, your Firefox 4 user will still get the shiny buttons and rounded corners even if he has no JS. With Modernizr, he'll (at best) get the watered down IE6 version with flat buttons and sharp corners, etc. At worst, if you're not doing progressive enhancement right and you've based critical functionality on one of the injected classes, you might cause some real problems for this user.

I guess I just see this as a limitation of Modernizr, and not a reason to throw out the baby with the bath water. I still love it and use it in all of my projects.
There is this constant tug-of-war going on for developers. On the one hand we want to provide the best possible experience to the end-user, and on the other hand we want to include as many people as possible.

The two forces are in competition with each other though, because very often the largest group of people are running older technology.

We can broadly divide the potential user base into 3 groups. Those "ahead" with a cutting-edge browser, those with a "modern browser" and those "left behind". Today we'd consider IE6 users and Windows Mobile 6 users as "left behind". We'd consider HTML5 in a late-version of Chrome to be "ahead". Not surprisingly though the vast majority of people are in the middle.

The key question seems to be "Is JavaScript in the mainstream?". I think the answer to that is yes. Even IE6 has Ajaxian capable JavaScript. So therefore is the user-experience, of the many, improved by using JavaScript, to the point where the "few" are sacrificed? In my opinion, yes.

Certainly the user experience is improved immensely with the use of JavaScript. The question then becomes whether it is better to service say 95% () of the market really well, or 100% of the market in a mediocre fashion? I would argue that the market does not reward mediocrity - and the 5% you have gained are the least likely to appreciate your effort anyway.

() pick whichever number here you prefer.

Take an average hotel website for example? It's certainly all-inclusive, but at the same time is horribly unusable. It has evolved since 1995, and it's still as awful as it was then. Does a hotel gain 5% more occupancy for making it all inclusive, or do they lose more than 5% for having a horrible interface?

Personally I don't believe any site is "all inclusive". Those primitive enough to include the bottom end, are too dull for the folk on the top end. So the real question becomes, would you rather have the top, or bottom demographic?

Bearing in mind that for the vast majority the decision to not have JavaScript support is completely their own?

Now of course every site has different considerations. But in my opinion the starting point for the discussion is "how much is that 5% worth?"

Will Modernizr make everyone happy all the time? Well, no. Then again, nothing will.
Carcassonne (http://carcassonneapp.com/) provides exactly this play-by-mail feature (though it uses iOS push notifications to inform the players). It's really fun if you like being distracted the whole day long.
Rails 3.1beta deployed to Heroku from your iPhone
Act as if we will never hire anyone, ever.

We have been running on 'don't hire anyone' mode for a while. But this engaged us in maintenance tasks rather than focusing on growth. I am still reluctant to hire full time employees, I prefer to hire freelancers and contractors than full time employees.

For certain tasks like web designing and copywriting, freelancers usually perform better than full time employees.
Video: Better Ruby through Functional Programming
How exactly can you tell what the performance is, given that its been screencapped at a certain fps, transcoded at a certain fps, likely downsampled along the way, etc...?
Big companies tell all new employees: DO NOT GO LOOKING AT PANTENTS. Because if you read a patent, and you knowingly infringe, it's triple damages.

The system is broken. You can't know what is patented because it's too bleeping risky to even look.

There is no "teaching." All you can do is build up a war chest and rattle paper at people who try to come after you.
@bmelton Thanks for your detailed response.

What is your SW startup?

Have you ever consider kickstarter.com for funding your SW startup?

What's the best 3 ways you've found to keep everyone focused (project management system, group chat, weekly meetings, etc)?

How were you able to get national press?

What lawyer did you use?
Writes large correct programs
DHH’s RailsConf 2011 Keynote Live-Blogged
The CoffeeScript compiler is very fast (takes <100ms for a typical file), so this is a fairly good approach for most development.

However, it's worth noting that there are other projects that let you stop thinking about compilation altogether. If you're developing for Rails or Python, for instance, you can just use a plugin. (And as of Rails 3.1, you don't even need one.) If you're just developing a static site, I like The Middleman (http://middlemanapp.com/), which does on-demand Haml, Sass/Less, and CoffeeScript compilation, then lets you bundle it all up (minified) for deployment with a single command.
I wish all maths books would have their formulas illustrated like this: http://altdevblogaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Derived...

That is beautiful.
To really understand the discrete fourier transform properly you need to understand the mathematical concept of a group. Fortunately, you only need to understand one particular group G, namely the integers mod n. Once one thinks of the input to the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) as a function on G (i.e. the input to the function is an element of G and the output is a complex number), then it is possible to frame the DFT in terms of a map between functions on G to functions on the dual of G (using something called Pontryagin duality). The thing is, functions on the dual of G multiply pointwise whereas functions on G itself multiply like polynomials mod x^n - 1.

Therefore to multiply polynomials, one thinks of them as functions on G, uses the DFT to take you to functions on the dual of G, multiplies pointwise, then does an inverse transform to get you back to functions on G again. I'm skimming over lots of details and oversimplifying a bit, but what I just described is the process of using a convolution to multiply polynomials.

The really great thing is if n is a power of 2. Then you have this cool Cooley-Tukey algorithm called the Fast Fourier Transform to do the DFT (and IFFT) really fast (in time O(n log n) instead of O(n^2)). It works by recognising that computing an FFT is precisely the same thing as evaluating a polynomial at the n-th roots of unity. This can be done by repeatedly breaking the problem into halves and recognising that the same pattern of roots of unity occurs in the first half as in the second. By factoring that out, you can (recursively) save yourself half the work.

Again, oversimplified, but that's the nub of it.
Ask HN: Any JS activities in San Francisco?
I'll be in San Francisco area between May 21st and Jun 9th. Is there anything interesting happening in the JavaScript / CoffeeScript / Node.js space there during that time?

You can find some of the stuff I work on from https://github.com/bergie

During the time I'll attend the MeeGo Conference and the Aloha Editor developer event (http://aloha-editor.org/), but other JS activities between them would be interesting.
"Dan Abelow is an independent inventor who visualized/created metaphors, documented for the world to see (in exchange for exclusivity) and created value for doing so."

Dan Abelow sounds like a self-aggrandizing jerk when he talks about himself in the third person.
A more advanced version would allow to use old DOS PC software such as games.

well I'm sold.
Yes. It is quite possible that Apple's patent lawyers are scrambling. It's just that scramble-speed in legal land is weeks, not hours.

Lawyers can read and write at superhuman speed, but it still takes time to prepare all that material and do all that research. It's not a field that rewards those who shoot from the hip.
Android: Paparazzi, an Amazing Augmented Reality Game for Android, is out now
Maybe the rankings are measuring the wrong things.
How Not To Suck
What is the Best Product for Hair Loss?
Get to know the best product for hair loss. How do hair loss occur? What should a hair loss product contain to be effective and efficient.
Interesting, it's so perfectly round. Thank you.
TechCrunch Disrupt NYC Agenda
I heard on some podcast or other that there is a clause in the iOS developer term that expressly forbids developers from acknowledging that any of the IP they use ISNT Apples? If that is the case then the iOS terms are preventing the developers from settling and the ball is surely in Apple's court.

Any devs got the terms handy?
ok so where is the "hello world" program for this type of system? .. wonders if it could figure out the HTML5 specs before we do?
Google plays the yield curve
Like Tyrannosaurs said ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2555785 ), it depends on the nature of the start-up. "thinking in the shower" might work when it is about finding solutions to problems (although kids are rarely that demanding as the shower is)! ...but for the technical part, where those solutions have to be implemented, well, 6 hours per day would be either "employee thinking" or just a "lucky"/"very well designed" model of entrepreneurship.
I look forward to read the answer
Can you explain the steps necessary to combine a JS x86 interpreter with a binary Linux disk image into a running VM?

The part I don't understand is, what environment does the Kernel need to think is there, and how is that done in JS?
How YouTube is popularising science
Fail often, fail well
"marketing and advertising" also means informing doctors about new drugs and therapies. Outside of "miracle" drugs or new drug categories (e.g. ED or the low side effecting SSRIs like Prozac) that get "promoted" by the media etc. a new drug will do few any good if doctors don't know enough about it.

This is especially true for cancer drugs marketed to oncologists (which I suspect are never marketed directly to consumers...). The field is very complex ... and I recall that one of the major factors in the difference in outcomes between your local medical system and the major cancer centers is the better current knowledge of the practitioners in the latter.
Bitcoin – the cryptographic currency that won’t take off (but really should)
"He seems to leave virtually no trace (other than awesome software) on the Internet."

Probably because he spends his time writing awesome software.
Crowd-sourcing patent examination: Peer To Patent UK
Color it red or something (the GMT data entry/line itself, I mean) (qualification: I haven't looked at the application, yet -- much.)
Whatever happened to IOCCC? Last update was they announced an announcement due a year ago; nothing since.
Well of course since you work for Google, I wouldn't expect any other answer ;p
Journalist questioned by police after reporting Facebook security flaw
I've come across a couple of very cool French research/open source projects that haven't gone anywhere. eg http://old.koalateam.com/XML/serialization/ (I know it's Java and XML, but consider the date: 1999. And it was just an incidental part of a larger project).

They seem very insular, doing everything themselves and eventually running out of steam/funding - which reminds me of lisp projects (or... academic projects in general). I get the impression that the French academic culture emphasizes beautiful theory over pragmatism (e.g. Laplace vs. Lord Kelvin, IIRC).

A great ideal, worked for Einstein.. but for few others.
Is this the beginning of the end of Skype on PostgreSQL?
It's IOCCC. He's Bellard.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:ioccc.org+bellard
Obviously, it was auto-killed for the sex references. Because then it must be drivel.
90% of Startups Fail Within 1 Year? Think Again.
Oakley Design Tuning Programme for Lamborghini LP700-4 Aventador | Auto Car Expo
Oakley Design Announce Tuning Programme for the Lamborghini LP700-4 Aventador, Oakley Design Lamborghini LP700-4 aventador, new aventador design, lambo oakley design
Show HN: ComicsInventory.com
This is my first mini startup. Lets you upload cover images and track values and inventory your comics. Its built using asp.net mvc and Amazon services. Over 1,100 users so far and just got my first 3 paying customers!
What is your SW startup?

- I'll keep that one under my hat for the moment. We'll be announcing something in about a week, so if you add your email to your profile, I'll let you know when we do.

Have you ever consider kickstarter.com for funding your SW startup?

- We're bootstrapping, and don't really have a way to make use of funds other than hosting, but it's immediately profitable after the first sale, and hosting isn't a huge part of the cost.

What's the best 3 ways you've found to keep everyone focused (project management system, group chat, weekly meetings, etc)?

- We're on Skype always, and aside from a recent hospital trip of mine, we're in pretty constant contact. We use pivotaltracker for bug-spotting, Skype for general chat, Group.Me for mobile contact or finding people who aren't on Skype, Google docs and GoToMeeting for collaboration. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but those are the main things.

How were you able to get national press?
- We put some of the non-developers on buzz-building during the StartupWeekend. By the end of the weekend, we had over 100 Facebook likes, 900 Twitter followers, some blog coverage and a phone call + a couple of mentions on Twitter by Robert Scoble.

What lawyer did you use?
- Steve Kaplan of Pillsbury Law is who we consulted with, and whose insight proved to be invaluable. Like I said, we were able to exploit his wisdom at a conference, so we aren't regular customers of his (yet), but he was extremely savvy in answering our questions and even provided follow-up answers via email for some questions we had that were outside of his focus.
- http://www.pillsburylaw.com/
- If you'd like his contact info, email me, and I'll be happy to provide it for you.
Lack of ogg support would rule out Safari. Not sure what Opera and Firefox are missing.
I'm not sure it's written by Dan Abelow - http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/05/13/honan-lodsys and http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/q-what-is-dan-abelows-i...
enjoyed this post a lot. great tips on what's worth your time & resources using the lean startup methodology.
Looks like finally we can have a real C3PO
They're getting cash to buy Twitter?
The Deadly Impact Of Malnutrition
there's naclbox: http://www.naclbox.com/
for google's native client.
I have Spotify Premium and this works for me. Well done! Also just wrote feedback to Spotify to hire the maker and expand the web-client.
>but it's important to recognize the adaptability of our sensory systems to fundamentally 'new' ways of interacting with the world.

I'd say in most cases, good design asks us to adapt less, rather than more. Keyboards have finger-sized keys, arranged in a heuristic manner informed by linguistics. The keyboard minimizes effort between the brain and text.

I agree that Planetary is not effective, and here's why: Planetary arrangements don't map onto music collections naturally, and they do little to inform the organization. Planetary asks us to learn more, to do less. A better music collection interface IMO, would be one where dimensions were informed by music and song information, not planetary physics.
Great hackers can use whatever languages/tools they like. The fact that they're being great is not the consequence of the tools they chose, but of the masterpiece work they achieved.

I am always fond of such an analogy: in terms of efficiency, the greatest hackers has an algorithmic complexity of O(1); meanwhile, the majority of us may be O(n), if you can manage to get a O(log n) you can make into the club of good hackers. The tools, be it OS, programming languages, etc, are only a constant coefficient to that complexity, i.e., they can make you noticeably more efficient, but they won't improve your "greatness".
In this case, I don't see what the visualisation tells us that simple tabular playlists don't.

To extend your theme with an example-- with a tabular interface, one could sort by song title, in order to listen to covers of a favorite tune. This star-planet-moon interface apparently locks the viewer into sorting only by artist, then by album. That, even more than the wasted opportunity, makes it actively counterproductive.
whenever I hear about robots or software agents "inventing" or "evolving" some aspect of human intelligence, I'm always skeptical because it sounds like they were programmed such that this outcome is almost pre-ordained. for example, evolutionary "art" that "draws" the mona lisa - I saw an example of this, but the actual mona lisa was essentially the objective function of an optimization, so why wouldn't it draw it after enough steps? granted this article doesn't say much about implementation, but it sounds like they were programmed with the interpretation of words being associated with locations as a given.

I admit I'm a novice in this particular domain so I can't speak too intelligently about it, but am I missing something?
"It's really difficult to let someone get away with stealing from you."

While that is true, "feeling" slighted is no excuse for the colossal waste of time they're afflicting upon our court system and Facebook as a company.

I have personal experience sitting across the table from a plaintiff who refuses to come to grips with reality. They "believe" they were wronged, despite the evidence, despite the rulings, and despite common sense.

Litigation expenses have become a tax that we have to pay in order to conduct business. It's maddeningly frustrating to write checks to lawyers for tens of thousands of dollars, knowing that the time, energy, and money could have gone in to your product.

What I'm getting at is, it is equally, if not more, frustrating to sit where Mark Zuckerberg's is. The Winkelvoss twins don't get a pass from me for being complete douchebags, just because they "feel" wronged.
which he has probably never seen because he lives in the US :)

Great work though, it would be awesome to have a browser based spotify client!
I am sure Amazon are pretty good at mining data.