skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Slaves can build tractors.

I doubt they can do it well. Machinery is hard enough for enthusiastic people who are being showered in money.

> It's my contention that had the South been able to hang on to slavery, it would have found ways to work it into niches it never filled in the real world.

Perhaps. My experience is that skilled industrial jobs are hard. Even in the time of Henry Ford, high wages had to be paid to attract good enough people. If slaves could get the job done, then auto workers at minimum wage could do it, which seems absurd to me.

> In a Christian nation, slavery either doesn't exist or is infinitely gentler than what actually occurred.

Southern slaves were not treated nicely (slavery, duh), but they were treated well in comparison to many other examples of slavery. Elderly, worn-out slaves were a reasonably common sight, despite the fact that their economic output was near zero. Slaves were given the very important job of child care (creating the Southern accent in the process), which is not a job given to a sullen, mistreated drudge. Compare this to the Arabs, who use slaves completely up and plow the bodies under as fertilizer. (See Dubai for a modern example.)

> This is an interesting idea. Who argues that?

TVA, Oak Ridge, Huntsville, and so forth. Huge amounts of resources were poured into creating technology projects from scratch. By the time of Apollo, Southern senators were good at bringing home the money and economic development.
No Streaming? Is that true?
I get the impression that Marco is putting a brave face on what is an awful realization.

I use the 'reading list' functionality of Instapaper. I have only used the social and editorial aspects to see what they were about and nothing more.
I did something similar a while back. Called it "What I'd Change" or whatidchange.com. Here's a post from a local magazine about the launch: http://m.edmondoutlook.com/archives/m.blog/27/power-to-the-p.... And my original post announcing WIC on my blog: http://www.briggsly.com/2009/11/anyone-can-change-world-here...
(Note: posting those links for informational purposes, not shameless promotion; the WIC site is no longer live)
It originally started out hoping to be "a place to talk about ideas to change the world." We had some cool ideas posted, but I couldn't code or design at the time and we'd spent all our money on launching version 1.0 so we wanted to get revenue before we added any new features, but we realized quickly they were badly needed. FAIL.
Our problem was users didn't want to talk about ways to cure cancer or end poverty. What it became, much to my chagrin, was a bitch&moan-fest. Made the mistake of "testing" adsense ads and then getting my account disabled by Google for clickfraud (right before we would have received our first payout, no less). OpenX ad exchange was crap, and after 9 months of decent traffic but no ad revenue, I shut it down. Part of me wants to relaunch since I'm not as cash-strapped as I was back then, but I've got other projects that I'm focusing my time on.
Tldr: People love to bitch about tech (most of the posts were either about tech or "people"). You'll want to focus on stupid-simple social aspects because most people do their whining on FB/twitter. Make it gorgeous, organized, tag-friendly, and ad-optimized (if you want ad revenue).
I'd say go for it, but have realistic expectations of the quality of UGC you'll get. Much of tech journalism is just bitching about companies anyway, so you need to find a niche or way to differentiate yourself.
If you want to chat about what what worked/didn't work for us, feel free to message me on twitter. @briggsly
I'm biased, insofar as I'm the author of the CoffeeScript book published by PragProg (http://pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript), but I'd say "yes, with slight reservations."

If your team consists of three John Resig-like JS ninjas, then the benefits of using CoffeeScript may be slight, or even cancelled out entirely by the extra step of compilation or the concern that future versions of CoffeeScript may break your code. But if your JS skills are beginner-to-intermediate, then I'm quite confident that you'll be more productive after a week or two of using CoffeeScript. That's based on my own experience, and the experience of many developers I've talked to.

CoffeeScript is an improvement in a lot of ways, and makes some of the most common JS mistakes (polluting the global scope by omitting `var`, relying on `==` to coerce types) impossible, while making many (`this` not being what you want it to be) easier to fix. Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, is on record as being a fan.

It's not a magic bullet, and there are certainly tradeoffs, but all in all, I'm of the opinion that CoffeeScript is what most devs should be using. And the benefits are especially pronounced in a team setting, where having shorter, more readable, more modularized code makes communication much, much easier. In pg's words: "Succinctness is power."

(By the way, I've also waxed about this subject at the Programmers Stack Exchange: See http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72569/what-ar... and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72699/should-...)
Is it a subjective critique or a know bug? The name doesn't really communicate which one. If it's a subjective critique I don't see the value — but if it's a "known issue" that might have some value, but only if there's some sort of form of support.
I recommend that people set up their iDevices to sync (via the exchange protocol) to GMail. Your calendar/contacts will stay there.
Will Apple's solution be limited to Safari? I would think Marco's customers are rather a tech-savvy crowd who wouldn't tie themselves to just one particular browser.

I use Instapaper for the multi-browser support (mostly in Firefox), but also for the Kindle support, both for reading in Kindle Webkit browser and as downloads.

I think Marco has a big chance to catch the long tail of read-later'ing.

If you look at desktop Safari's Reader Mode… It is a fantastic feature but I don't think I ever heard of anyone I know using it.

It should've been implemented in iOS Safari long time ago, btw, this is where it's been missing.
Maybe playing this link will work?

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/11piubpwiqubf06/11piu...
The downside of Apple's new messaging app is that anyone who hasn't got an Apple device can't participate (I think).

I hope this tips SMS/MMS into some competing app that is platform independent so that SMS/MMS can disappear for ever!
Would you guys outsource the development of your startup? If no, why?
Show HN: GosuWay - A social hub for eSports fans, players, and casters
Here's a project I've started as a company, but now became a side project for various reasons. It's a social network for gamers, particularly starcraft gamers. It's based on the Twitter model (it makes more sense for gamers to follow a professional gamer rather than be friend with him).

The difference with twitter is mainly that you can customize your profile as a gamer, post files (starcraft replays get automatically parsed and shown as replay files with the players name, etc.), and that you can also comments on posts.

In the mid term, I'd like to include support for teams (where you can chat only with your teammates and have a profile page) and also include a way for pro-gamers (professional gamers) to sell replays and lessons. Additionally, I'd like to make it more "real-time chat".

Any comments or suggestions?

Also, for any sc2 fans out there interested in working on it, I'd love to hear from you :) (It's written in django.)
Apple’s iCloud: Another offshore regulatory headache?
Oh hi, Tiobe. Hmmm. You have some plaintext content for me to read, but you don't want to let me see if I won't let you run JavaScript? Hmmm. Hey, fuck you, Tiobe.

I hate it when sites do that. Here's a Google Cache link for anyone else who hates that bullshit: http://is.gd/bLdB5b
Sure, you can argue that iMessages is limited due to the iOS requirement.

That isn't a small weakness - that's a killer. A replacement that isn't device independent isn't a replacement.
Isn't this bbm for the ios?
Not everyone can afford an iOS or OSX device.
For the rest who aren't tied to windows, the Chromebook might fit their needs.

Perhaps this will result in the same "vice-grip" effect as on mobile OS's: Apple on the high end and Google (with HW manufacturers) on the low end, except this time, it's going to be Microsoft rather than Nokia that's squeezed.
Clickable http://www.gosuway.com
check this out: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_frau...
You can educate, without expressing specific details of the attackers.

The usual practice is to warn of potential issues, not publicise a specific attack, and then say "beware!" -- In fact the article didn't even give the common advice of 'check url, https, etc' to avoid phishing.
But it’s not just that iMessages kills SMS because it’s free. It kills it because it’s better. While the sending of photos, videos, and text matches SMS (and MMS), it’s better with iMessage because it’s streamlined and simplified.

This just seems like he's throwing buzzwords around, but I haven't seen iMessages in action. What about them is more streamlined and simplified than SMS?
Not even close: http://langpop.com/
This worked, thanks!
Take this with a grain of salt. Of course he is going to say it only helps him. That is just entrepreneurship 101. You must always be positive and incredibly self assured in public. Executives always assure you that their business is going great and everything is good news up to the moment they file the bankruptcy papers (and in the case of chapter 11 bankruptcies even for some time afterwards).

But I doubt he is that optimistic on the inside. This is for reasons other people have already properly identified in this discussion (e.g., the Apple product will always have the better integration).

So Apple just went out and ate this guy's lunch. That's pretty much it. You may argue it is ok, you may argue they have a right to do that, but let's not pretend it did not happen.
You're probably right that "app files" they way steve mentioned is does refer to the data of the apps themselves which isn't a lot of data.

I was more curious about data files that are used by an app (I'm assuming we can use the iCloud API to synch those between devices) - how is that paid for? does that count towards the 5GB limit? If so, can you get more space? at what cost?

For example, right now GoodReader uses the dropbox API to allow cloud access to whatever documents you have, and I have several gigs of various .pdfs that I store there. With the iCloud API, can Goodreader abandon dropbox and let apple host them?
I'd phrase it as "Apple 's frame is their screen" - those native apps run in a lot of places, but they don't run everywhere.
It's really a shame this isn't XMPP.

I don't get what the motivation is for having another closed system when they could have added interoperability with their desktop client + aol + gmail at a very minimal cost.

Edit: I'm basing this on the keynote comment that it is based on the push notifications stack.
"To rotate the canvas in 3D, you need to hold down
SPACE and then DRAG horizontally with your cursor."

Move your cursor over the heading so you get a little help (not really intuitive, but I liked it once I found it)
Google’s frame is the browser window. Apple’s frame is the screen. That’s what we’ll remember about today’s keynote ten years from now.

Yes, but for some reason I don't interpret that as an advantage for Apple. There will always be more ways to access a web page or web app, than devices/form factors that Apple will produce.
Incidentally, pretty much any Linux distribution will support your slightly-older Mac Mini as though it were brand new.
I sure wouldn't want to be Marco. I think "nice while it lasted" might be the best spin to put on this.
For people planning to use this (or any other messaging service): please be aware that this encryption doesn't mean that your chats are private. Apple still has access to the data, and so the US can probably request access to your chats from Apple, even if you don't live in the US. Your local government probably also can make a claim on this data.
that was my first thought too - i was going to buy one of these today, now I think I'll wait until ios5 and see if i still want it.
It's virtually impossible for somebody to get charged an unexpected amount. Sure, there are lots of fine print to the service that Apple drew out for the benefit of developers, but as far as an end consumer is concerned, the value proposition is very simple:

iCloud keeps all of my devices in sync for free. That's it. Very rarely, if ever, will somebody actually hit one of the edge cases where the syncing does not work as expected due to one of the above limitations. Even if this does happen, they won't be charged for it.

If I want to backup my own pirated music, it'll cost me $25/year. That's pretty simple to understand. If I agree, then I will be charged a flat annual rate. There's no way for an unexpected charge to show up with this sort of pricing model.
I'm doing the same thing now with non-core stuff. It actually makes things move faster, which is the desired outcome.
ZStack: Heroku for mobile
Wow, I stand corrected.

Not quite the same as China's Propaganda Department, which vetts all media (great firewall is under it's control).

Wow.
Apple gives Twitter a big boost with iOS integration
I'll see your 7 minutes of TED and raise you 60 minutes of Google TechTalks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GjmRwfkRXY

Electronic and Internet Voting (The Threat of Internet Voting in Public Elections)

It goes into all sorts of electoral fraud, the finer points of designing elections from a hacker perspective, the diebold hacks, and that awful rails app that those students (?) wrote in the hopes of using it in some US local elections a while back.

In brief, that system isn't safe because someone can obtain your reciept and therefore your voting rights from you by coercion/incentives. Votes should never be verifiable, because then they can be bought. Vote reciepts would be pretty valuable...
How do you know it isn't XMPP? It probably is (though it isn't a public jabber service, if that's what you mean)
Facetime was supposed to be a cross platform protocol. Remember? The reason it's marginally used now is because it's restricted to iOS devices. This feature will be equally marginal.

Complaining about an MG headline being sensationalized is redundant but this one is way out there.

Apple has stuck zero daggers into anything. This is just a nice iOS to iOS messenger app. You could say the same thing about GTalk, Kik, Whatsapp, heck... even BlackBerry messenger. None have replaced SMS and none have any pointy objects covered in blood.
I love the Apple hype cycle: an incremental OS update for $29, and it's one of the most-commented HN articles of the day.

I get an incremental OS update every day for free. It's called apt-get. After you've done it every day for nearly 15 years, it gets a little old...

What's next, a central Mac software repository? (Oh yeah, "the Mac app store". Innovation!)
"This." is shorthand for "This is how:"
Excellent choice, but twitter is very unreliable as an authentication provider. Maybe apple should have bought them first
What if a visitor on your network is using a new service with different ports from your standard? What if you're looking at a sync service that runs within the web browser or otherwise uses shared ports?

Or perhaps you're (shock, horror) a mainstream user who has no idea what any of the words in your comment mean, starting with "router"?

Sure, a power user can prioritise traffic and deal with this, but I think the original point is valid for the average user. Perhaps the onus should be on backup software writers (and anything that syncs in large enough chunks) to ensure their traffic is smooth and not bursty, in effect enforcing their own QoS.
You may dismiss how savvy your parents are, but they probably won't make TWO spelling mistakes while trying to reference Jimi Hendrix.
Why I still program
Has anyone actually seen or played with the group messaging feature? Do GroupMe et. al. have legitimate cause for concern?
Ask HN: I need data, lots of data
I have a little pet project of mine that deals with technical matters of web fonts, and I am currently in need of a large sample set to understand what types of font anti-aliasing are used by which platform/browser combinations. Detailed description is here -

http://swapped.cc/font-smoothing

The page includes small JavaScript that detects the font anti-aliasing type and posts the result back to my site. So far I have gathered about 6000 samples, but these came from my own traffic.

--

I am in need of a diversity, so please click that link and let my script test your rasterizer :)

--

For an extra karma bonus, if you are up to helping quirky, but otherwise wonderful people of typographic community, do consider embedding a test script in your own sites. Just for a short run, a week or two.

Thanks a bunch.
>And for what I remember from Control Theory course, feedback is essential to control a system we don't have full knowledge about.

it works both ways - incorrectly designed feedback control loop (remember the classical example of overly sensitive steam engine control?) may make the system less stable
This just seems like Beluga or GroupMe or something similar. But of course it comes from Apple, so it's somehow "better", when in reality the iOS requirement makes it useless for the majority of smartphone users, and all non-smartphone users.
Clickable - http://swapped.cc/font-smoothing
We Need Passcode-protected Apps and Folders for iOS
Economist IMHO not a credible source for any kind of judgment.
It is increasingly becoming more like People magazine.
Don't you still need a data plan to send and receive messages? Not sure how this is more free than any other chat client such as gtalk that comes with android.
I do wonder if she is just trolling us as a way to keep in the media to fund raise.
There's no bill at the end of the month.
My partner and I created an iPad game for cats.

I have to derail here. What inspired you to do this? Sounds like a fascinating idea.
What about them is more streamlined and simplified than SMS?

The pricing.
We're agreeing, actually. This is exactly the point I was trying to make. Yes, it's the same idea in the sense that specific words/language is banned. But the reasoning behind it is very different, and that's what matters. I don't agree with banning words like "fuck" from American airwaves, but I'm somewhat ok with it because it's done because collectively the people don't like them. France's ban on "Facebook" and "Twitter" is for weakly-supported economic "fairness" reasons.
With over 200 million iOS devices in the wild now, Apple is taking a clear shot at the carriers in an attempt to unleash users from lockin to grossly over-priced and antiquated SMS plans.

Yes, iMessages will not work cross-platform, but it is a step, a much needed and large one.
I knew the guy who made the original faux-MMS app. When Apple added MMS to iPhone, his app died swiftly.

I also knew the guy who made the original, best voice recorder app too. He made a mint, but then Apple made it a native app, and his app pretty much died too.

Never underestimate the potential of the platform-owner to take what he wants from your business.
Isn't this just as fail as BlackBerry Messenger was? A lock-in iOS only service will be about as useful as BBM was, pretty useful if you and all your friends have the same phone, but not as useful as SMS because everyone else can get that too.

It's the network effect all over again, any network's value is exponentially proportional to the number of users it has and SMS has more users.

A better approach would be to work better with IM like jabber/gTalk and MSN because as we move into the smart phone era nearly all cell phone users can send/receive those so your cell phone user overlay will be much closer to that of SMS, but where it will really kick SMS is that it will also cover all your friends at a computer not on their cell.

This is useless for anyone with friends with Android phones because you'll be back to SMS for them. Special clubs are no fun if all your friends and family aren't in them.
It seems like the music part of this offering amounts to Apple cutting a deal with the music labels that, in part, allows billions of bad old BladeEnc rips downloaded from Napster to be "laundered" into legitimate AAC tracks. Apple pays the music labels a hundred million or two, so the labels have retroactively turned the old downloaders into paying customers, of a sort. And for these laundering services, each of them reimburses Apple to the tune of $25 per year (storage and sync notwithstanding).
We're working through this now. I expect that we'll only charge for the functionality that really advanced customers need (multidatacenter support, multitenancy, resource quotas, etc.) but we haven't finalized this yet.
it is subjective critique ..the articles on the site would be such as criticise x company for data breach for example ... criticise for better service only .. dirty articles wont be accepted ..something like this :)
The question remains if you are only "gold" as long as you pay your $25/year. Once you stop, does your newly acquired goldness go away?
Exactly. Also what is wrong with SMS? In the UK, and I'm sure most of Europe, you can get plans with hundreds, thousands or unlimited number of SMS - can you get the same in US? SMS is essentially free anyway.

Secondly, and I raised this again - data is not cheap when roaming and that's probably when I most use SMS.
And by just as fail I mean medicinally successful for Blackberry and it's users for a while, but completely useless at actually killing SMS which the title purports this will somehow do. With ~75% of people using non iOS devices this will never kill SMS. period.
That really depends. Everyone I SMS right now has an iPhone. So, for my purposes it isn't limited at all. And since it's free, the iOS requirement doesn't hurt me as a user anyway. The moment this switches on, 99% of my texting stops costing me money. A network of 200 million users isn't a bad starting point.
Yes, but you don't need to sell your BitCoins, the people you are buying goods from are the ones that do that. It's similar to how you can't directly accept credit cards, but Amazon can, so they are still very useful.

When the governments decide to shut down Bitcoin, it will probably be in the "exchanging bitcoins for money" area, since that's relatively easy to regulate. But it's hard to convince Offshore Bank Of Unfriendly Country to not exchange Bitcoins for money in person, so big "dealers" will have no trouble making the trip and getting their cash. This will involve more effort, so prices for goods sold in Bitcoins will increase.

Similarly, if everyone could grow and sell their own pot, prices would come down. Make that illegal, and people want more money for their work. The same effect will occur if cashing out Bitcoins becomes difficult.
Interesting, but pretty sparse on information ... what exactly does zStack offer that's unique and helpful for mobile apps?
The Bible: Ecclesiastes - For Humans

Starting From Scratch by Wes Moss - For Entrepreneurs
> (or does someone want to tell me that the differences between Windows 1.0 and Windows 7 hasn't impacted on any developers anywhere?)

Actually I think Microsoft is partly responsible for the sense of self-righteous indignation that developers have when they get displaced. They deliberately held back on introducing even basic features into Windows for a remarkably long time. Things like anti-virus, paint programs, text editors, photo management - even opening zip files - were left with token or no support for 5 to 10 years after they were no brainers in terms of expected or useful functionality. Of course, MS had (and still has, though less so) a regulatory threat to worry about that nobody else does.
You mean like XMPP?