skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Moby-Duck: Or, the synthetic wilderness of childhood
> Having an opinion about the miserable state of the Linux desktop has nothing to do with open-source advocacy

You are right, and my comment wasn't very clear on this part.

It was just to avoid the comments saying that I am an open-source hater.
I've been there. I lasted two years with Linux and went through the same progression - hacker bliss to "dammit, I just want to get something done besides shaving yaks!" I would still take it over Windows, but not over OSX.

But in defense of Linux, it has come a long way over the last decade, due to a few earth-moving forces:

- The rise of the web and end of the Windows native app lock-in

- The mainstream acceptance of open source and platform independent software engineering

- Canonical's aggressive, financially backed push to make Linux a viable mainstream desktop OS

It's easy to forget how many classic pain points have been more or less cured: building everything from source, recompiling the kernel, font rendering, working with office documents, configuring everything manually by editing text files, complete absense of tasteful design, no cross-platform apps or games whatsoever, and nobody having ever heard of your OS.

Linux is not there yet. It's still perfectly reasonable to throw your arms up and switch. But at this point, the historical trend suggests that it will get there eventually. It has never really stopped inching forward and we haven't yet seen anything that could stop it.

The Linux ecosystem doesn't burn through capital, so it can't collapse overnight like a commercial platform can. All it needs to sustain it is interest. The interest could dry up, for example if everybody starts caring only about data and not code. But if nobody's interested in it anymore, then it probably doesn't matter if it goes away.
The point of the EOS video is that trying to make it "easy to think" results in students retaining prior misconceptions, and therefore thinking they have learned when they actually haven't. Learning is hard.

I have seen some of Khan's physics videos. I can tell you from years in the classroom, students exposed to those videos as an initial learning experience will change absolutely none of their misconceptions. None. Not one, no learning, just a warm feeling of thinking that they agree with what's been said (even though they don't agree with it at all).

Now can a student who has already addressed her misconceptions (in a classroom, by doing experiments, then discussing, arguing, trying to predict new situations and then trying those situations) gain some advantage by using the videos as review? Perhaps so, and I wouldn't fault a student for making this part of her review. It's more likely my students would end up gleefully eviscerating the video.
That's brilliant. Did anybody try any loctite on those screws?
This is actually what I was looking to gain from posting the link. I wanted to know the advantages and disadvantages to compiling c into bytecode that could run on the jvm. I'm curious to know how closely the bytecode would match.
Google Chromebooks Now Available for Pre-Order
Google Chromebooks from Acer and Samsung are now available for pre-order via Amazon and Best Buy.
Thanks for the link; I'll add that to the post.

Have you tried getting a genius bar appointment at the weekend in London? It's not easy. Also, it's still work if you're self employed, and your time has a value.
I was hoping to hear why the pickup and bridge on the doodle looked the way it did - doesn't really look like Les Paul hardware to me. Does anyone know?
It is, if not only because Windows (NT) also matured during the same timeframe and doesn't run only on a limited set of hardware choices. If Microsoft could do it, Linux could have done it as well. In fact, Linux supports a vast number of hardware component choices and platforms, even obscure stuff. It basically runs on everything, except if that happens to be a laptop or any kind of standard desktop PC hardware components.

In 1998, with a much more immature Linux and X11, it was in some ways ahead of the competition. I remember looking for a free computer in my universities' computer labs and when I had to settle for one of the old and slow 486DX machines, being able to run Netscape remotely on one of the Pentiums being used by another student just fine, fast for me and unoticeable for the other guy.

Windows NT was a joke back then. It has almost no hardware support. When Windows 2000 came out there were even graphics cards better supported on Linux.

But from the Windows 2000 lineage we now have Windows 7, even though Microsoft stood still for so many years with Windows XP.

Meanwhile, Linux gained eye candy, when you are lucky enough to get it to work. The desktop evolved, but Linux did not, and the gap is widening.

BTW: today the decent graphics card marked is mostly ATI/AMD and Nvidia. OS X supports a large number models from both vendors (even those that were never shipped by Apple). How does that fit with the notion that Apple has a more limited set of hardware to support than Linux does?
Exactly. The "linux community" doesn't really care if you use it or not, and manufacturers haven't really wised up to the fact that they could possibly sell more if they focused on supporting, say, Fedora X on a limited range of hardware. I suspect that the testing and licensing issues might end up costing them more in the short term than they'd make in increased sales, but I also suspect they'd garner a loyal fanbase and make more $ in the long run.
http://video.linux.com/sites/all/files/videos_local/lcj11_li...

direct link to the video file for anyone else that is having issues with the embedded flash player.
1Gbps fiber for $70&mdash;in America? Yup.
The author made mention of Mac OSX. I thought I would quickly mention that the sole reason OSX is such a smooth *nix desktop experience is that they've only developed it for an EXTREMELY limited selection of hardware. That's the key to getting a good Linux desktop experience: very heavy pre-purchase research. There are machines and configurations with near-seamless out of the box experiences for your favorite Linux distro.

That said, OSX still has better application experience. I've used it for the first time as my primary machine at work for the past few months, and coming from a traditional Linux background, I'm sold. Strongly considering a MBP as my next hardware purchase. Idealistically I'd prefer to go the OSS route, throwing Arch or Ubuntu on a Lenovo, but it's really just not there yet.
The comparison being made was between Apples Unix-like OS X and Linux. In any case, Linux is formed through community - while Windows is formed by a commercial entity.

Which features of the 'evolved desktop' does Linux currently lack?

EDIT: it seems you've edited your text, and no longer speak of an 'evolved desktop', so perhaps my question isn't relevant anymore.
All I can say is that I can watch tear-free video under Linux with Intel and nvidia drivers. I've had many machines with Intel GPUs, and they all Just Work. I have an Atom machine that I use to watch 720p H.264: it works because the video decoding can be offloaded to the Ion GPU. And it all works beautifully under Linux.

As for Skype and Flash, what is the Linux community expected to do? They are both proprietary: there is nothing "Linux" can do to make them work better.
The Official Microsoft Download Manager
> how many legitimate content providers use analytics as anything other than a rough barometer for trends?

Nowadays it's built into Adwords, so the answer is anybody that sets up conversion tracking in his Adwords account.

More details: Google provides a tool called conversion optimizer[1]: it's enough to put a tracking code on one of your objective pages (the purchase page, the signup page etc) and Adwords will use machine learning to see the analytics for ads that convert well to your objective (what keywords did they use in Google, what locations are they coming from etc). This way, you can stop paying money for keywords with 20 clicks and 0 conversions, and instead you can raise your ad bids on those keywords performing well (i.e. 5 clicks and 3 conversions). The publisher is happy (more conversions, less clicks, less money), Google is happy (better targetting means less impressions used means more impressions remaining in the inventory to be sold to others for additional income), the customers are happy (publishers with lower customer acquisition costs can pour more money into the actual content/product).

[1] http://www.google.com/adwords/conversionoptimizer/howitworks...
Why should you go for Linux?
In most Linux forums, user stories like this appear time and again. In most cases it turns out that the problems are unique for that particular person.

Have been a happy Ubuntu user (desktop + netbook) for the last 5 years without a single glitch.
This guy hasn't heard about Ubuntu?
One fundamental problem, I just don't understand in these distributed social network systems is what happens when youur "social box" goes down, electricity cut, or in the case where someone doesn't want their PC running a power bill all day long. In houses where people don't use a local server or don't need anything on all the time (this is a realistic scenario in my experience), how does this work in the context of the freedom box.

Does that mean my social presence is offline when I am ??

Seems fundamentally flawed.
OS X runs on multiple architectures with a wide variety of hardware. You can build a PC out of parts and run OS X on it. Just because the drivers are limited doesn't mean it isn't portable. The thing about OS X is that when the drivers are there, it works reliably and with a minimum of fuss. You can't say that about Linux.
ThinkUp - Web Application To Monitor Your Social Network Activities
The issues are not technical they have been business issues that caused Linux never to "Cross the Chasm".

Blame falls on Intel and AMD who use Linux really just as leverage against MSFT and never have given 100% commitment to it (e.g. Intel GMA500) except on severs.

The world has moved to laptops - Microsoft still gets money for every Linux machine sold and almost none are bundled with a Linux OS that works(I once bought a MSI Wind with Suse that hand an incompatible wifi card!!). Even Dell has back-peddled.

The main failure I believe has been Taiwanese hardware companies in their fear of Microsoft or their greed almost never advertise "Works with Linux".

I agree with the other poster - you would never buy Apple equipment without looking at compatibility beforehand - why not Linux.

I watch kids using Linux desktop and it is all about using browsers. Chrome and opera work very well under Linux. Tablets - are they the future of the linux desktop?

The poster neglects to mention that that the Linux desktop has moved to the hand held - android, meego maemo etc. Where the user experience was actually very good. Driver support is better than windows.
Look into Lenovo. The Thinkpad T61 works very well with Linux from what I know.
"Which features of the 'evolved desktop' does Linux currently lack?"

Reliability and usability. Pretty important features, IMHO.
I feel the opposite way. I recently bought a Thinkpad T410 with Windows 7. It came with a lot of useless stuff and was impossible to run our Rails app on it (RMagick does not play well with Windows). I first switched to OSX and the driver situation was abysmal. The thing never went to sleep, even with the laptop lid closed. Wifi never worked. All this can be expected when running on non-Apple hardware. But what's worse and inherent to OSX is the terribly inconsistent key bindings. Each application behaves differently with respect to the Apple, option, and control keys. I could never configure the key bindings to my liking, no matter how many 3rd party apps I tried.

Finally I installed Ubuntu and I've never looked back. Nearly everything just worked, with the exception of plugging in an external monitor. The experience was much smoother than on Windows or Mac. I'm very happy with the Unity desktop.

One thing that has me fed up with proprietary software was that although I had purchased Photoshop CS5 for Mac, it was nearly impossible to activate. I had to call Adobe because I was upgrading from a Windows CS2 to a Mac CS5. Once I had to reinstall everything and the installer asked me to go through the whole process again. With Ubuntu I can download and install software almost effortlessly. It's not worth the hassle to spend lots of money and not even be able to use a piece of software. I'd rather use Gimp, despite some UI weaknesses. The only thing that made me want Photoshop in the first place was better compatibility with other Photoshop users' files. For myself, Gimp is more than adequate.
Can't say I know too much about Loctite (as far as I know they don't sell it in the UK where I'm from), but they did point out that each of the screws had a small amount of blue substance on their bottom half. Supposedly this was meant to stop them coming loose, although clearly it wasn't much use...
> is a trial and will reach about 700 homes when complete

Don't get your hopes up just yet.
Top 3 CMS's powering most sites out there use PHP
I don't know about the "light gaming" aspect. Is the default Sandy Bridge GPU good enough? If so, how about the Thinkpad X220? I got one and it's wonderful. The Wifi reception is stunning, WiMax works, it suspends/resumes instantly, and it lasts for 10 hours on a charge. As for fit and finish, it has the magnesium roll cage, so you can run it over with your car and it probably won't break.

Edit: Installed neverputt on this machine. Works fine with the settings maxed out and the resolution at full screen.
For me, you are still a startup when the founders are "required" to be in the business for it to stay alive
With respect, I don't think those are features. They're attributes.

I have no issues with reliability or usability on my current Linux desktop.
"but they're still stuck with GTK..argh"

I don't think so. Unity is not GTK. They mainly use OpenGL code, that they could show using a little GTK or Qt code.
Yeah, that is the point. Just a decent system. At some point, even somewhat higher prices are not too much of a problem provided it works.

Two months ago, me and my father spent two weeks to find one decent laptop for my sister member that was not crippled by a crappy screen, poor battery life, atrocious build quality or weight. And that was meant for a Windows system. We both have jobs, so if we had billed these hours, we could have easily got some really expensive gear just for that.

Adding to that the effort spent for researching hardware compatibility and configuration... This is just nuts.

To come back to the point, I want something that just works. I used to use Linux for several years. Like many others, I ended up with Apple at some point. I simply found out that I preferred to spend money on something decent over wasting time to find a cheap deal.
I find this assertion very suspect, as the X220 I have has nearly identical hardware, and suspend/resume works perfectly. But I use Debian with a 2.3.39 kernel; not sure what version F15 is at.
I don't even know what channels are. I've been using image editors for basic stuff for years, so I don't think that's what you'd call a "basic feature."
"people who were going to buy books, music, etc. would have bought them regardless"

Yes, but they'll buy them with you.
> I want an OS that starts up and becomes invisible until shutdown, and I never want to touch the mouse.

This.

That's the same reason why I love Ubuntu as my desktop. I'm hardly doing anything outside of the browser, except for coding and writing with Vim.

> I lose a few hours of productivity every few months in exchange for massive productivity gains while working.

Even though upgrades aren't that frequent on other platforms, they do exist. Every two or three releases I take the chance to make a fresh start and it's incredible how fast I can set up the desktop to fit my needs. Ubuntu's/Debian's excellent package management is a huge time saver.
Apple gear is suitable for me. It might not be for him. But it sounds like he didn't consider all of his repair options:

a) Every Apple store has a dedicated small business contact. If you call the store, you can get to this person through the phone tree. They can make special arrangements for businesses, up to a point.

b) According to http://www.apple.com/support/products/mac.html, if you have AppleCare, you can request on-site or even mail-in service. I've used the mail-in service a half-dozen times over the years.

c) Even in a world filled with Apple Stores, there still are third-party retailers. A local shop (closest to me is http://tenplus.com) is likely to give you better service.
Interesting story: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
"The thing about OS X is that when the drivers are there, it works reliably and with a minimum of fuss. You can't say that about Linux."

I think you're either trolling or are genuinely misinformed. If it's the latter, please accept my apologies.
I've been using Gnome classic which is pain free. Unity I believe should have been bundled - but not default. It feels like beta.
What's the replacement for PulseAudio for the average user? I personally have a sound card with hardware mixing, and I don't have anything playing sounds other than xmms2 and mplayer, so raw ALSA works for me. But if you want features like "move this audio stream to my Bluetooth headset", you need what PulseAudio offers.

(And yes, on my video-playing box, I use PulseAudio, and listen to stuff with Bluetooth headphones. Turn them on, audio switches to Bluetooth without the mplayer session even being affected. Turn them off, back to the TV's speakers. It just works. And I set this up by clicking pretty things in a GUI.)
I don't want to pile on here but as Linux desktop / server user since '92 I'll add my two cents:

My main Linux workstations are a three year old QUAD core Shuttle XPC and a Dell business workstation. I religiously upgrade to each Ubuntu distro release every six months. Some things have gotten a lot better (like sound), then other stuff breaks. In particular, the Intel graphics drivers (like mentioned in this article) still are not quite right.

It's a little depressing how the fundamentals still are still not solid.

ZOMG, I forgot about my ASUS 1000 netbook.. The wireless get WORSE and WORSE every release. The wireless driver with 9.10 were awesome and now I can barely connect anywhere.

DE-PRESS-ING..
I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm a dirty hack
Chinese Twitter Clone
Did they mean something?
OK, I'm a Linux Desktop user on a daily basis, I use Linux Mint KDE at the moment, before that I was using Fedora KDE Spin, before that Kubuntu, ...

I've been using Linux for 6 years, the first year I was dual-booting with Windows because I had a project in asp.net, but when It was finished I formatted that partition and use it as a backup storage now.

I have a HP laptop with everything Intel on it, from WiFi card to Graphics card, and everything is supproted out-of-the-box. With plain Ubuntu Live CD I can have 3D desktops and connect to WiFi networks without a problem. For multimedia Linux is strong, Flash works without problem, although if you're on 64bit it may use your CPU more than it should.

The only problem which I have and the blog post author has is Skype and Office Suites. Skype works OK but it's not up-to-date as in Windows or OS X, and LibreOffice (or it's older dying daddy, OpenOffice.org) is OK but not perfect.

As for "Poor quality of desktop apps" point, I don't use Nautilus but Dolphin, and not Firefox but Opera, and I'm happy with it.

The point in the Linux Desktop is that you don't have to stay on the default Linux distributions choice, but you can customize/change/mix everything.

And for hardware, before buying a new machine, check if everything will work out of the box on the distribution you desire to install on it later.

bye bye past 'hardcore Linux user'

P.S. There are numerous posts where the author recalls on past problems, so, they aren't really problems now.
I think TechCrunch Disrupt SF is in Early Sept... definitely lots of events to meet lots of people...

Im flying in from Sydney to be there so happy to catch up and introduce you to some startup people
I was actually going to make something similar for the NYT. Their lawyers contacted me though and I was forced to stop.
Um, check if your hardware is supported by Linux before you buy it?
> when the drivers are there...

That's a big qualification.
It's a buggy mess IMO. I'm running 11.04 on recently purchased Lenovo X220 (replaced my 3 year old MBP) and I've had frequent hard locks in X, windowing glitches (windows doing weird things, scroll bars acting up), and issues with cleanly shutting down and rebooting.

I blame the lockup/windowing issues completely on Unity and I've had more success with the system since I've switched to the classic Ubuntu desktop. My current Linux desktop is running 10.10 and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future (perhaps until 11.10). I have a new sandy bridge desktop coming in next week and I'm undecided as to what I will be installing on that system.
For people who like free software, Linux is a win no matter what. Sure it can be improved and it's nice that someone points out flaws now it's time to actually improve it instead of continuing to ignore those flaws and hope for the best. If some of the major companies funded development for those items, I'm sure we'd see some improvement rather than the current situation where they're rewriting X as Unity or whatever? Kinda dumb to do that when video card drivers are still a bit shitty.
It's kind of sad that the skill demonstrated here is often the most important skill of a programmer: solving problems with the simplest approach possible. unfortunately, many companies fail to acknowledge that the real superstars are these people, and not the people who'd say "ok, but i'll need a 3 person team and 2 months".
Watch,Sanctum,Online,Free,Megavideo
Watch,Sanctum,Online,Free,Megavideo
highlight the unexplored parts of Esa'ala and find a path through previously unknown Esa'ala and back to sea . Frank and his team are using the rebreathing system,
And this is how NYC is slowly becoming the startup capital of the world!
Retailing in a Social Media World
2.6.38:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/15/html/Release_N...
Ten Tips for Making Your Business More Efficient
How to create Twitter bots without programming
I can see how you would connect it to a campground, but actually, in danish and swedish, its the sign for a Historic site.

Thats also the reason why ppl find it very very wierd in scandinavia.. why to copy a file, do i press "historic site" + c???

evidence
http://www.kulturarv.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/kulturarv/fort...
The symbol is used in Finnish traffic signs as well, with the same meaning as in Sweden - place of interest.
running audio from 4 different apps simultaneously all mixed together

honestly, this just works out of the box for several years now (on ubuntu, debian and arch linux at least).