skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A combination of the ever-lower barriers-to-entry for software development and increasing adoption of open standards.

Nearly all my friends (many non-techie) have switched to mac without a hitch. Some use Office for Mac, some use iWork.

The only users that are tied to Windows/Office are probably corporate/business users and that's certainly Microsoft's last stronghold.

The I.T. workforce has been programmed into the Microsoft ecosystem with a technical education of proprietary standards BUT what happens when it's developers who run the show? As the cloud decreases the need for much of the I.T. staff of your average company the leverage is shifted to web technology companies (and there developer ecosystems).

As we speak, somewhere in the world, an I.T. guy who used to maintain the email servers looses his job and in place Google offers the company hosted Google apps for a fraction of the cost. Google develops it's suite of office apps to be adequate MS office replacements within 3 years and easily convinces the company not to renew it's Microsoft Office licensing. Google Apps marketplace offers web-based alternatives to many legacy Windows software like the tightly integrated Salesforce Suite (with it's own web developer ecosystem). Without the need for Windows applications the company switches to a managed enterprise linux OS.

All the ducks are lined up, now hundreds of capable tech companies are beginning to execute their to-market strategies.

I'm not saying there is no Windows lock-in, what i am saying is that the Windows/Office lock-in strategy is becoming ever less defensible in a highly competitive market with lower barriers to entry.

When you realize that more and more VC capital is going into non-consumer web technologies, once you see that pool of dispersed rapid research and development you begin to see the force Microsoft is up against.
The thumbs keyboard is similar to 'dialkeys' from Origami UMPC circa 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2006/mar/12/origam... but with a more metro layout.
The big problem with Windows CE is that it looked like Windows but it wasn't; you couldn't take a Windows 95 app and run on it CE. If you could have done that, it may have been much more successful.
Reddit's way of solving the chicken-n-egg problem looks relatively much OK to me. It's tolerable even if it's deceiving. It's an acceptable way of kickstarting a community, IMO.
That would be Google Profiles, but only time will tell if it's going to take off.
I followed a similar path to you (OS 8 was where I joined Apple), and I am also intrigued by some of the ideas presented here (split keyboard for thumbs, good job!). I am a little disappointed that I didn't see any examples of touch interaction on what are traditionally desktop applications though. It's all well and good to champion how tiles improve a weather application, but how will they improve Photoshop or Visual Studio?

The premise of an HTML5 and JS based desktop is simultaneously promising and terrifying due to bad memories of the Active Desktop days (and the exploits that brought...).
I'd say that it's a definitely interesting concept- There could be a potential market for it since most people need a way to see what users think of the site. Depending on who those users are, they could even like it enough to market to their friends for you.

Perhaps I'm slightly biased towards design, but the first few seconds I saw the site- I felt it was like one of those promotional scam no risk money back guarantee how to make money etc etc schemes online. It might be because it's too template-like, but it doesn't reach out to me at all.

Also, I understand that there is a money back guarantee- but how do I know that 50 reviews at $450 isn't just outsourced by a copywriter in India? How do I know that I will get paid for each website and app job completed? Is there a quality standard that users must abide by to write a review?
I understand that there's no real way to prove any of this, but what really helps me would be seeing testimonials, (I know, even these can be fake) or even better- give reputable companies a free trial and have them write a testimonial.

It's really a cool idea, but the above would be questions I'd ask myself the first time to your site.
The new touch interface looks interesting, but backwards compatability is baggage that threatens to make the Windows 8 user experience an ugly inconsistent mess.

Touch is great for mobile apps, but it doesn't beat the old mouse + keyboard when it comes to desktop productivity.

This discussion reminds me of arguments from the "Raymond Chen Camp" [1]. Backwards compatibility is of huge value and importance to Microsoft, but it's a big burden to carry as well. Throwing away all the code that has been developed to date for Windows would be a fatally stupid mistake.

Microsoft would be better served by keeping their touch based phone / mobile platform seperate from the desktop. I don't think it's possible to build a platform that nicely mixes UI metaphores.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
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Vista and Windows 7 had sidebar widgets that were/are also HTML + CSS. Before that (Win XP) you could put arbitrary HTML widgets anywhere on the desktop using activedesktop.
So did Microsoft sell 350 million copies of Windows 7 in a year, or are desktops "increasingly niche devices"? I'm not sure the two positions are compatible.

Of course they're compatible. Laptops outsold desktops for the first time in 2005. See the attached chart for the US, which actually tends to lag the world in laptop vs desktop ratios:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/17/forrester-tablets-outsell-n...

Desktops are becoming a niche device. I do friends/family tech support on about 50 PCs. Of those about 10 are desktops. The other 40 are laptops (not saying my anecdote is data, but I don't think its unusual, and the actual data does suggest the same).
Perhaps the authorities in such a case would also seize the suspect's computer and look for evidence that he had been using Bitcoin and Tor?
I'd say "no, no, no" too, because prolonged use of a vertical touch surface is ergonomically unfeasible.
Protecting a directory from being accidentally erased by rm -rf *
This is from 9 months ago

"OK, I've finally had it with this company. I post some properties on craigslist from time to time, and I get tons of spam and scammers, but one that really sticks in my craw is airbnb.com

I have emailed them more than a few times asking them to cut it out, and that soliciting clients who post properties on craigslist is not the best way to do things.

Yet, here we go with the latest round of email solicitations from airbnb.com. I really hope someone from the company reads this. I know they are well funded by Y-combinator venture capital, so why outsource this type of work and spam?"
http://www.vacationrentalscommunity.com/forums/t/2767.aspx

Interesting. Anybody know when this spamming actually stopped?
YouTube - Martin Jet Pack Amazing Record‐Breaking 5,000ft Flight May 29th 2011
I'm sure they would, and while they might find enough evidence of the purchase to convict, surely just having used Bitcoin and Tor wouldn't be enough. Either way, again all it takes is to not use your home computer to purchase.
50M machines running Win8 in the first month? Not touch devices, that's for sure.

No, I agree. Some subset. But I think it will be substantial. Will it be 25M? 10M? Not sure, but it will be a lot.

The default OS for all tablets?

I meant the default UI for Windows tablets.

Microsoft will have to beat them in the marketplace. What is there about Win8 that is going to do that? I can't see anything.

While I can see the future pretty well, I'm not an opthamologist.

(Edited typo: OS => UI)
> A tablet shouldn't have to do everything that a PC can, because it will end up doing most of them poorly.

Yes, but that's ok. It might be a less than stellar experience to pull up a complex work spreadsheet that was emailed to me on my tablet while I'm on vacation but at least it's possible. I can get my work done and get back to sipping mai tais.

It's amazing how many people are down on the idea of having access to their apps simply because the experience is slightly degraded.
I agree. Likening this to spammers sending out millions of wholly untargeted emails is incorrect. These were extremely well-targeted communications likely sent out one-by-one by humans who had done some research.
Ok to contact you directly about these positions? I'm new to the whole Who's Hiring thing, so I'm not sure what the proper etiquette is.
Chinese hacker breaks into 100's of Gmail accounts
Why is it part of the OS then?
The original Mac did not have arrow keys on its keyboard. This was to encourage programmers to write programs that use the mouse. I'm pretty sure I read this originally on http://www.folklore.org, but I can't find that particular story right now.
I LOVE podio.com .
Been through Goplan, Basecamp, Outlook, etc.

I like podio for the fact that it provides a user friendly interface and the plugin ability to easily add precisely the tools you're looking for.

I use a combination of google docs and podio. I'd brainstorm everything onto my google docs as an overview of entire project and steps, while each person on team responds to their respective tasks on podio.
To me this seems very misguided. If Win8 has a tablet-touch mode that is well suited for operation at casual usage and the ability to drill down into a power user full Windows UI, that strikes me as ideal. And from what I'm seeing in these vids, it's pretty well done.

Or to put it another way, this seems to be the proverbial 3.0 version of MS software - if WinCE was 1.0 and TabletXP/Origamiproject was 2.0, this looks like the one that'll get it right. (So far, and from what we see, etc.)
I'd recommend a keyboard with mechanical switches that activate without bottoming out (e.g. Cherry MX Brown, Cherry MX Red, Topre Capacitive Switch).

For options, I'd suggest visiting the Geekhack WorldWide Shopping Links wiki: http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Geekhack+WorldWide+Sh...
sure... if you want an equally shitty experience across all platforms
And how is a government going to do that ??? Bitcoin is decentralized is the government going to go to everybody's house and take their computers away, and do this on a worldwide scale ?
I find launchpad a very confusing experience. I'm sure I would get used to it if I used it more but every time I visit it, I am at almost a total loss on where to click and what everything means. Just taking one example, on github, there are very few labels. The content mostly speaks for itself. Whereas on launchpad the labels dominate. I like Bibucket much more than launchpad as well.

But the reason github is more popular probably has more to do with git being more popular.
Miami in early October? That's still Hurricane season, ya' big dummies.

http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/38555/rememberin...
Nexmo SMS API - SMPP server in a glance
Some trial and error... But critically... I am 30 now and I believe I am doing my passion. I hit an "inflection point." that point had some key parts... I got intensely focused for several weeks, studied like crazy, to earn a position at google. I didn't get in, though they are constantly recruiting me.. Strange indeed. But... That focus and subsequent denial caused me to consider my future path in life... Very, very seriously... And I decided that in fact all life experiences of all people are NOT the same. I wanted a better life for myself despite my rejection, and I wanted to be happy on that path. No more bullshit anymore. And so by stripping away all my future path options that consisted of varying degrees of bullshit, I was left with paths that constituted things I was passionate about. Things I really cared about.
And so the problem reduced to me instantly growing up and seeing all the nonsense around me. And opting out of it.
If you are having problems finding your passion, you either need more different life experiences to push you one way or another... Or you need to be more critical of the experiences you have already had.
Finally, once I realized what it was that I was "passionate" about, I committed to it, prioritized it very highly and focused on it. And I had no problem doing that. It made me happier to do that.. That was the positive feedback I needed to confirm that in fact it was my passion. ;)
I think the biggest thing that Apple got right that Microsoft is in danger of not getting right is that people should have different expectations for a tablet.

I agree. Managing the expectations of what people should be doing on the different form factors is going to be important.

If all you need to do is update one small item on the iPad, it's doable. I certainly wouldn't want to use a version of Excel that was designed for a PC on a tablet. It would be a horrible user experience. The only way to make it workable is to write something from scratch. Sure, it could read and write .xlsx files, but under the hood, it would need to be very different.

Again, you're making the assumption that it was designed for a PC. I think they'll think through both use cases and expose the right functionality at the right times. (Yes, this is an assumption that gives MS the benefit of the doubt but given how important Office is to their profitability, I'm comfortable with this assumption.) Also, it wouldn't need to be very different under the hood. It would just need to be different UI. Yes, bigger buttons isn't going to cut it but UI is so much more than just 'bigger buttons'.

One of Microsoft's problems with Tablet PCs in the early 2000s was that they were PCs. Because of this, they needed to have all of the horsepower to run Windows and still be portable enough to use as a tablet. This meant that they were always expensive. iPads on the other hand don't need to run a full copy of OSX, so they can be much lighter, smaller, and cheaper (than a Mac).

You've definitely got a point there. They'll need to address this head-on.

The best line in the Gruber piece is this: You can’t make something conceptually lightweight if it’s carrying 25 years of Windows baggage

Agreed, though not completely. Making selective cuts would allow them to maintain the same code base for tablets and desktops. It might actually result in a better desktop experience.

Microsoft may be primarily selling to corporate clients and OEMs, but they will still be competing with iOS and Android tablets in terms of mindshare and expectations.

Agreed, which is why I'm excited to see the new UI. Not sure how far they are going to be willing to push things in order to compete on the excitement factor and winning consumers over.
It's just a reality distortion field, typical for developers. A couple of years ago I also thought desktop-Linux will completely replace Windows.

Truth of the matter is desktops still represent the largest market of devices consumers are buying and at least 90% of them run Windows. This whole post-PC notion is crappy and doesn't hold water - tables and smartphones are complementary products to desktops, and won't replace desktops until you'll be able to attach to them a 21 inch monitor, a keyboard and a mouse/trackball.
You could look at a http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/releases.ubuntu.... or something of the kind.
...go to Home Depot and buy one then? They make nice, even potentially livable drop-in outbuildings.

No solar panel for tablet computer charging, but really now.
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> On the other hand, what is this io.Source.fromFile mess? I don't understand the alternating capitalization, or the need for deep namespacing of an incredibly common type

Not at all necessary, just convenient for demos since it saves you an import.

"io" : The package is scala.io (the scala part is already imported by default). Following java, package names are always lower case.

"Source": There is a singleton object in the io package called 'Source'. Again, like java, classes and constants (including singleton objects) are capitalized.

"fromFile": A method on the Source singleton. Methods are camelCase.

In 'real' scala code the line would look like:

import io.Source
(...)
val fileText = Source.fromFile("data.txt").mkString

or, even more concisely

import io.Source.fromFile
(...)
val fileText = fromFile("data.txt").mkString

Since methods are just functions (a first class data type), there's no problem importing methods directly.

(edit: I also note that you didn't include all your imports, such as nokogiri, so it's not entirely a level playing filed)
> "While businessmen and professors applaud the $300 house, the urban poor are silent, busy building a future for themselves."

That's for me the most telling sentence of the article. As someone familiar with the realities of developing countries, I am frankly tired of seeing those kind of "feel-good" type of projects that helps only the ego of those who are "giving".

What is fundamentally missing in those kinds of projects is the SACRIFICE aspect of it. The willingness to get out of your bubble, put your career (or life) on the line and go live the harsh reality of those who you (supposedly) want to help.

* Lack of understanding: Poverty is a deep, complex social, historic and economical problem, and very often the solution is not technical at all (example: OLPC, and the project mentioned in the article). Unfortunately people think they can learn remotely, or with a simple two-week slum tour (more like a vacation).

* Lack of commitment (again connected to sacrifice): "Good-heart" people come, work on the "world-changing" thing for 3 months, get some international awards and then leave. As a result, the community is left feeling manipulated and tired, and that ruins for any other serious projects in the future.

* Lack of respect: Often people approach these projects from a stance of privilege (like Dr. Cornel West likes to say). What I mean by that is that they may demonstrate humbleness with their choice of words, but the general attitude is actually very elitist. Something like: "oh, poor them, they don't know any better". Getting the community buy-in is VERY HARD, and it involves you first showing that you are 100% committed to them (i. e.: sacrifice).

Interestingly, the willingness to sacrifice is also true for start-ups.
I used to remap CapsLock to Backspace, but gave up because I had one machine -- a 1998 PowerBook (this was obviously before OSX) -- on which I didn't know how to remap it, and changing back and forth was a pain. Once I got used to Backspace in the upper right corner, I no longer had much motivation to change back again. And I don't bother remapping CapsLock to Control because I already have two Control keys.

Also, on most full-size keyboards, I swap around the modifiers so that I can press the Control and Alt keys with the sides of my palms. This works very well. (I put Control on the inside and Alt on the outside, the reverse of the usual PC layout.)

So while I don't consider the standard position of CapsLock to be ideal, in the end it hasn't proven worth the trouble to move it.
The western Ruby community is well observed phenomenon and opinions abound, but does anyone know if it's been formally studied? Anyone on HN with a strong psychology background have any insights?
They've shown a couple minutes of software for a product that is atleast a year away. This article is completely pointless and is sensational to attract traffic of fanboys.
I loved that game. I tried to make a clone with Unity a few years ago but gave up pretty early on. If you ever get something started let me know.
I can totally see that "X is great, but can we have Y?" question being asked, and it makes my skin crawl. Why? Because it signals - in the clearest way possible - that the product vision is NOT being set at the top, meaning the "leaders" are leading in name only.

When you say "they lack the discipline", I suspect you're being too kind. After all, discipline means being firm in hewing to your vision - which assumes you HAVE a vision to hew to in the first place.
Often they have a number of in-house intranet applications that rely on IE6 quirks. So there is a large cost associated with testing and upgrading their legacy applications.

This is definitely the case in a large number of the major UK banks.

As someone building software used by these places- it is frustrating to have to support IE6, but there is a lot of opportunity here, because a lot of developers/companies can't be bothered to make their products IE6 compatible.
I would consult an attorney. If I remember correctly, the actual date that your product has been known publicly (the day that you do business basically) by others, is an important factor to patents as well. If basically you can prove that your invention was out their before theirs even if they file a patent for it, and your idea was publicly known and used, I remember my attorney saying something that you can argue your case.

I'd also place my money on empty threat- but you should seriously look into filing your own patent. I'd also email the guy to ask him what his online service is for some more background information.
What's New in Google Analytics v5 [video]
This annoys me too, for example, Windows 7 has this flashy 'aero' GUI on the top, but as soon as you descend below that, for example when setting environment variables or adjusting TCP/IP settings, you're back into Win3.1 prehistory and those cramped windows aren't even sizable so you have to scroll a square inch of visible space around with both horizontal and vertical scrollbars on a friggin 30" screen to find that specific network adapter.
Saw that too, surely they'll make a toggle or something to switch x/y-axis, maybe it's already in Windows?
Don't forget laptops, though.
Did you read the way that issue was worded? Whether you agree with what that issue reported or not is irrelevant: it was intentionally written in a way to be "inflammatory", and I have nothing but respect for someone (the developer) that will call people (the reporter) out like that (although part of me wants to say "don't feed trolls").

(Note: I read your message, know nothing of these people involved, and simply searched to find the issue as I wanted to actually see what had "gone down" for myself: that bug report, despite the fact that I don't even /use/ Ruby, "riled me up", which says something pretty bad about its intent.)
Atari Programing Introduction circa 1979
This Guy Has My MacBook, Caught by Police
A whiteboard would be seriously the most practical. As a college student myself, I'd say that most textbook gifts given to you relating to your major usually collects dust in the corner of the room. A whiteboard though would be useful, for math classes or even GE classes that she'll need to take.

Blackboard is nice, but your roommate will hate you if you keep chalking away in the middle of night cramming for a final.
Great. Microsoft is going down the same rabbit hole Ubuntu and Gnome went down in by assuming that a mouse driven desktop should have the same UI as a touchpad. I was worried that Ubuntu made a step backward with the Unity failure, but now Microsoft will eagerly follow them, so Ubuntu's failure will not be that bad. In fact if the folks in Canonical overcome their egos and realize their failure soon enough, perhaps they can get ahead of MS.
if your on a Mac, check out my new app, Twit Justice. It uses OS X Speech Synthesis to say tweets that you follow.
It's like verbalize(http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/verbalize.html) but for twitter.

grab it here: http://twitjustice.org
Bradley Kuhn's take on this is that "relicensing part of the codebase out from under LibreOffice may actually be the most insidious attack Oracle and IBM could make on the project"

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/01/open-office.html