skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I will agree that this is the best advice on this thread:

- Icon looks really bad, needs to look hot.

- The gray graphics make it look unfinished.

- The balls should be nice and round. You have some pretty powerful hardware to work with now, I don't see why they look like they have only 20 faces...

- Fonts don't seem right.

I would also like to add:

- Most iPhone 4 owners didn't buy their device for a "gyroscope" and I'd go as far to say they don't know what it is.

- Are there any other tilt-controls you can add to open the doors for 3GS owners?

- The screenshots don't really paint a picture of what the objective of the game is. Why is it fun? Just a bunch of balls in a gray world does not look fun.

Anyway, I hope you get a lot of good advice and can start selling some copies.
Is Hipmunk's information on flights to Australia actually decent? I took a look at it a while back for Canada-Europe flights and the results were less than inspiring.
Do people trust Google more than Facebook? and could that be a factor in adoption? My gut says probably not to both questions.
require is currently not working in WeScheme. We'll revisit the design of this in a few weeks. In the context of WeScheme, it would be very cool to be able to treat other people's programs as libraries and be able to require them.
Most math concepts -are- fairly easy to explain and, from the sounds of it, you don't actually want a math book. You want a book that gives you the executive summary or a run-down of specific tools for specific situations. The flaw is not in the books or the teaching, it is what you are expecting from mathematicians.

Math is, in a very general sense, about understanding and reasoning about highly structured objects. Mathematicians have developed methods and notation to achieve that end, not to make it easily digestible by the uninitiated. Rigor is an important part of this. It is what allows mathematicians to be so sure their work is correct and it is often what makes math seem so arcane. It is not always necessary for teaching, but professional mathematicians are often the teachers and the ideas are intimately tied to their rigorous formulations in their head.

For example, continuity is a fairly intuitive concept in calculus, but the rigorous epsilon-delta definition is necessary in proofs. The basic concept, while easy to explain and understand is useless, while the precise formulation, though much more opaque, is ubiquitous in analysis simply because it is an incredible tool... for mathematicians.

An engineer likely just needs the machinery built on top of the analysis: the derivative and integral. If that's all you need, then pick a book that is focused on applications and a development of general intuition, not a book designed for mathematicians-in-the-making.
Men are already the majority of programmers so this wouldn't be necessary, just reactionary (and you know it, too). I have no problem with workshops for men for skills which are traditionally dominated by women, since in many cases it makes for a more comfortable environment for men to start out in. I've seen men-only parenting classes and craft groups; there are probably others. Why is it so horrible to encourage people to try nontraditional hobbies and skills?
That is a terrible font.
gives a 500 error
To find the maximum of a function on a closed interval it suffices to look for places where the derivative is 0, undefined, or at the boundary of the interval.

Proof, Suppose that x in the middle of the interval has a derivative > 0. Then from the definition of the derivative there exists h > 0 such that x+h is in the interval and 0 < (f(x+h) - f(x))/h. Multiply by h and rearrange to see that f(x+h) > f(x) and therefore x is not where the maximum is achieved. The argument for f'(x) < 0 is similar except that f(x) is exceeded by f(x-h) instead.

Therefore if f achieves a maximum at x, then x is either a boundary point, or a spot where the derivative is 0 or undefined.
isn't a lot of the future of search potentially tied into social?
My experience is that your anecdotal experience is flawed and that Flash has a better workflow AND performance AND battery conservation on both desktops and mobile platforms (where it's allowed).

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/html5-still-lagging-behind-flas...

http://iq12.com/blog/as3-benchmark/

http://workflowed.blogspot.com/2011/02/flash-player-101-for-...

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar...

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/testing-videos-on-...

http://www.androidtabletnows.com/android-devices-news/2011/n...

http://themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/

http://vimeo.com/10553088

http://www.blackcj.com/blog/2010/09/17/flash-outperforms-htm...

http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/

http://www.craftymind.com/guimark2/

But hey, let's complain about it because "Adobe is evil" or whatever! (and note: I'm an Ubuntu x64 user).
At this point I'm beginning to doubt we'll ever actually get to a fully cross-browser web. We've had two broad reboot attempts (first to "XHTML+CSS", the current one to "HTML5") and both times we ended up largely with a limited list of browsers and engines supported just as we had in the days of Netscape 4.x/IE4. The supported browsers are the cool browsers/engines of the day, which we then proceed to curse in three-four years. Only the names of the browsers change.

Edit: heh, didn't even notice who I was replying to.
The One “Process” Every Startup Should Have
I don't think many (if any?) carriers are offering WiFi on trans-atlantic or trans-pacific flights
I still don't know why but I get more things done using my MacBook for few hours in the evening than with a Windows machine the whole daytime...again, don't ask me why, but that's the reality and I'm happy for that.
https://profiles.google.com/+1/personalization/

you can disable +1 to prevent the ad personalization.
Microsoft Takes to Cloud to Ward Off Competition
From the demo you have to choose one and only one circle for each person. To me this is a huge problem. A lot of people hang out with some coworkers off-hours and they should be able to put these people into more than 1 bucket.
outside referrers are blocked, copy and paste the url
Anyone want to wager when Google Mindmaps will debut?
I personally trust Google way more than Facebook (and most of my friends do as well).
> I'm afraid it might not be

What leads you to that conclusion? Any article I've seen hints at the opposite.

I'd be shocked if, as you note, they intentionally cripple one of the core components of this site.
Wave died because no one (not even developers) understood what it is or what applications could it have outside of mail.
That probably should say: "joined the mobile advertising team to explore how we could display Flash advertisements on devices that don’t support Adobe Flash player"

Which is not really the cool HTML5 future anyone is looking for.
Ok, I didn't actually buy the game, instead I had a look at what all your potential customers see. Your screenshots are too gray and muddled, the game doesn't look exciting on these shots. Have a look at top selling games (i.e. Angry Birds), and how colorful their screenshots are.
Your icon is not good. It doesn't tell a story, it doesn't look fancy, it is not colorful.
I'm selling a couple of apps, and one think I'm sure of is that customers never, ever, read the text description. They just have a look at the screenshots. And they decide which apps / screenshots to check by your icon. I've, accidentally, had a non working app (there was a huge bug in there for the first 2 weeks which made it basically dysfunctional) reach huge sales (150+ sales a day) just because the icon was really, really beautiful.

The problem with the screenshots, of course, is that the in game content looks to dull. I can't really say how you can improve it, but have a look at top selling games.
BeOS or NeXT: Did Apple Make the Wrong Choice? (2001)
A Verified Email Protocol for the Browser
Developers should already know this. Is computational theory an elective in some colleges, or have some developers not gone to college? Both seem unlikely.
I agree.
It is somewhat ironic that Paul Adams who promoted this idea so forcibly whilst at google now works for...facebook.
That's a nice demo, beats a video that I have to sit through.

Also, I'm liking the features; it also adds a few points in the 'pro' column for Android phones when I decide on a replacement. (I currently have an iPhone, and while the web version of this stuff might still work, I'm guessing it'll be even neater on Android.)
It'd just be a pipe dream. There's so much involved. This SWF->whatever converters won't work with anything more than extremely simple animation SWFs.

If the idea is proving an HTML equivalent, it's better to just develop something in HTML5 from the ground up.
I just purchased this book in both formats and I am giddy with excitement to read it. But I just have to ask... does anyone else think the swiss army knife on the cover looks like some kind of horrifying insect?

SWEET JESUS GET IT OFF ME
> one quarter of a circle is tau/4, or pi / 8

I am not particularly well versed in mathematics but isn't 1/4 of a circle pi/2 radians?
I personally think the "circles" concept is going to be the killer feature, at least for me and my wife. Being able to easily post things that not everybody on your list will be able to see is something I wish Facebook had, especially for those of us unable to resist the guilt-pressure to accept family members into our friend list...
I do understand the difference between engineering in the "real world" and the "software world". There is no doubt that the latter is immensely more complex (see Fred Brooks).

Nonetheless, in cases where somebody may get hurt (physically, emotionally, financially, etc) we have to make a greater effort. All I was saying is that we have to either lower our expectations of how good affordable software can be or accept much higher costs for it.

Dropbox love to advertise that they are an extremely safe solution to data storage, thus leading people to believe that their data is safe. Unless every line of code in the authentication module is reviewed and checked and tested, that statement cannot be true. So there is a paradox there.

I guess I may have positioned Dropbox too extremely, but Dropbox breaking is much worse than say a music application, some game or other non-critical software. And with Dropbox I believe that development should be approached more like NASA would do it than EA would. People can get hurt!

"As for Dropbox, when I see programmers jump all over other programmers for making a mistake, even a big mistake (or series of mistakes compounded), I think schadenfreude. People who engage in such gleeful condemnation are making an implicit claim to their own perfection. I'd think twice about doing that."

Believe me that that was not my intention. I am without not as good a programmer as anybody at Dropbox!
JDoctest: Test library for JavaScript that was inspired by Python‘s doctest
The demo example doesn't allow multiple buckets, but in fairness the demo is presented as a puzzle with one correct answer.
The best way I've found to read math texts is to take it concept by concept. Line by line is too mechanical. Approach each concept and get a "gist" for what is trying to be accomplished. Once you understand where they are starting from for a given concept, where they are going with it, and have a rough idea of how they'll get there, then you read the details. The details are essentially meaningless if you don't know the bigger picture.
While I don't fully trust either, I rather give away limited data to Google rather than Facebook.
It also gives an insecure script warning in the latest version of Chrome unstable, which made me laugh since I just started seeing those today.
The problem with this is going to be convincing all those people you care about to join Google+, and/or posting their interesting content there instead of on Facebook.
I played to level 10 and enjoyed the game. I laughed a bit when I saw "You were touched by a priest!" ...
The LeapPad -- a tablet for kids
I think I just found my next project. Scraping HN (I'll be gentle) and letting people tag submissions.
The problem with both converting SWF and PDF into more 'open' formats is not that they're proprietary (SWF specs are freely available no anyone; not sure about PDF) but that they're final formats. PDFs, for example, retain information about how something should be rendered, not edited; hence why blocks of text get cut when trying to convert it to anything (there's no text flow information). In the same way, images are downscaled, transparencies are flattened or rasterized, fonts are broken down... there's too much lost. A SWF is the same; it'd be better to work from original files and projects (similar to what Wallaby is trying, and maybe Hype?) to 'compile' everything to HTML5 (or whatever output format) than trying to transcode something from a format that was optimized for one specific kind of player.
A few details on minecraft 1.8
that's like removing a guy from the circle in real life. not always easy
I think it does.
I for example are somewhat attached to my decision of using git and would probably dismiss someone telling me how much it sucks. On the other hand I am not a power user, it intimidates me at times.

If I read a post explaining a mercurial workflow that looked easier then what I do now I might check it out. Yeah you read correctly, I didn't even install mercurial.
I just moved from svn to git once rails and most gems did. I guess I am not the only one so there are people youcould convince.
I'm hoping this is just a limitation of the demo.
Circles is not well thought out if the demo is accurate in only allowing one circle per friend.
How so? How will knowing what my friends and contacts "like" help Google not respond to my searches with content farm-ed crap?
So...iPhone app?
Circles looks really interesting, it's something Facebook has never managed to get right. And Larry Page changing his views on UI design demonstrates a willingness to really push out the boat on this one. They will have a tough time fighting the network effects of Facebook's social graph but I think it's time to put the meme about Google not understanding social to rest.
Who's Melissa?
I will definitely buy the book, but I find that the (blog article) title "I've written a book" doesn't help to sell it, unless you know the author...
Shopify donate's 100k to acumen fund to start even more businesses
Then why does anyone buy IPO stock? (selling I can understand)
Same here. Although I don't necessarily envy them; Facebook has a huge advantage by virtue of network effects.

I don't know anyone who really likes Facebook; they've alienated users with privacy missteps and stupid interface changes over and over and over. But everyone keeps using it because that's where everyone else is. Somehow you have to break that cycle.

If anyone can do it though, it's probably Google. They effectively broke the back of the fat-and-lazy AOL Instant Messenger (at least in my experience) when they built chat into Gmail. Once they did that, AIM went from a "must-have" on most of my friends' computers to something they barely remember their login information to anymore.

Here's hoping they can find some leverage to get a critical mass of users over from Facebook.
Doesn't that mean they're going to be more trustworthy than anyone else? They've got direct supervision from the federal government.
Ok, I'm already sold. My 3 year old has the Leapfrog Explorer and loves it. I'm amazed at the things she learns form the games. There's only one thing she loves more than that and its my wife's iPad.
I'm glad you liked it :D
It's because it's a colossal waste of time. Instead of Mozilla using a rational versioning policy, whereby major versions mean major changes, you're wasting everyone in the ecosystem's time instead (thousands of people's time, as opposed to a handful).
It's 2011... how wide should my websites be?
I build mostly blogs and news sites mostly on wordpress cms. nytimes is 970px, economist is 991px huffpo is 971px ...
The exclusivity was also emphasized by everyone knowing it had come out of Harvard at the very beginning, which had and has a social cachet that Google Plus won't.
I think one of main Google problem is Brand Fatigue, people are tired of Google this and Google that. Why not call it friend something or give it a generic name like Baboo, Facebook or something fresh that will give the impression that it is something new.
G+ looks interesting but I expect Google Docs to support mindmaps soon based on the tour
BETSCHKAIL MA COMPILE 2011 - FENGERHTF
Here's another link with videos of the product:

http://www.leapfrog.com/leappadtease/index.html

Their tagline is quite good -- an iPad for you, a LeapPad for them. Given the physical condition I've seen some of my neighbors iPads are in -- at $100 this is the best investment they can make.
Unlike net neutrality however, google is not a state granted monopoly, they're just the most used. and no one can prevent someone from using another search engine. You can use gmail for your mail and still search with bing.
Well, Facebook does allow you to download your profile[1], so Google could just write an importer for that.

[1]: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10/07/1250242/Facebook-Imp...
Hm, maybe you're right. Certainly Starship Titanic, which he also helped write, turned out to be a much better adventure game.
Well, Harvard's UG enrollment is about 7k.
Strip HTML into Text using JavaScript
I went and looked back at the Techcrunch article and it appears that some of the people in their "bike geeks" circle still appear in the top dragable area of people, so maybe they didn't screw this up after all. It seems really bizarre for them to miss something like this in the demo. It is a demo, after all.
Thanks :).

I've (mistakenly) assumed that you need to see the list of downvoters to make a statement such as edw's, whereas I now see how, having information you and edw provided, you can just infer this statement.

A lesson to learn for me here :).
That's actually what sold me on the cover image :-)
It's one of the things that dissuaded me from getting an HTC Android phone two years ago (got an iPhone with 32GB instead). I'm glad they're moving towards fixing it.
Encountered Google Oops.
"Internal server error – 500

The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.

Please go back and try again."

Can anybody invite me?
Sure, like a drug dealer is more trustworthy because he's on parole and has to meet with a parole officer once a month.
It worked pretty well for Gmail.
Ask HN: Thinking about sharing a web server with friends. Any advice please?
Hi everyone. I'm thinking about clubbing together with some friends to rent a VM based Windows server to use as a web host.

I like this idea over getting a much cheaper account on a shared web host, as we'd have admin access, our own public IP and could use remote-desktop. With a shared host, we would only get to use some web-based control panel.

The downside is that we'd all have to share and be nice, but since we're friends that shouldn't really be a problem. (!)

Has anyone joined a club like this to rent a server? Would you like to please share your experiences or share some advice?

Many thanks, billpg.
This is a solid move on Google's part. Not half-baked like Wave was. Its more evolutionary than revolutionary but it makes the 'package' of Google services a bit more valuable as well.

It will be interested to see if this impacts the IPO plans of Facebook. This does seem to be a direct assault on their home turf.
No question. But part of why a lot of searches & recommendations are happening through social to begin with is because there are still so many algorithmic flaws in organic search. Issues that have plagued search for the better part of 15 years that are just now are starting to be addressed at a high level, I.E. content farms, differentiation between content owners & borrowers/duplicators, etc.
Same width as the user's browser window.
Google Developer Day coming to a city near you in 2011
> How will knowing what my friends and contacts "like" help Google not respond to my searches with content farm-ed crap?

If your friends "like" a Stack Exchange post but not Experts Exchange, isn't it obvious how this would help them filter out the bad ones?
Google Removes Paid-Apps Section From Android Market In Taiwan
promo video: http://vimeo.com/25448878
The story of a cheap melanoma diagnosing technology banned by the FDA
re #2: on the subject of 'correct' results. if I search for 'cat' whos to say what's 'correct' maybe i was looking for lol cat images, in which case returning information about care and feeding of a pet cat would be wrong. way too subjective.

also re#4, i'm a 'bad guy' i DEPEND on a stream of traffic from google to hack my victims computers so they join my botnet. how dare google shut me down! or: i'm a content farm with content so low quality no one stays on the page longer than 0:01. yet that nets me ad revenues, so i depend on traffic from google! how dare they shut me down even though my page is useless to searchers.
Write only your first name on the "First name" field.

I don't know if this is the bug, but after trying three times with my full name, when I did this the 500 went away.
I like how 'npc villages' sneaks in there at the end of the post... I automatically prefixed it with 'one more thing' when reading it.
Tangential question - has the original unsplit version of Zork ever been rereleased anywhere?
> Plus Tau Day's a fun excuse to eat two pies.

One could always celebrate 2\pi day. ;)
Your friends didn't need Gmail for you to be able to use it. But they did need Wave. And they do need +. There's a big difference between open protocols and closed systems.
Rapid7 backs John the Ripper password cracker
Configuring a SAMBA Print Server
Their group chat is called Huddle. I think this will have a negative impact on project management startup huddle (www.huddle.com).
I try to read authors that I disagree with but respect. A certain amount of bias filtering is inevitable, but I like to think that I at least try to listen to opposing viewpoints. Especially about issues that matter.

When dealing with issues that don't matter, like Apple fanboys, I find it easier just to ignore them.
Eight Google+ articles on the front page. Is that a record?
Web FWD from Mozilla
wait. so these ARE search engines themselves? doesnt that mean they're competition? i'm sure google can argue that no law could possibly require preferential treatment of competitors? or something like that?
The problem is that the mathematical notation, while not perfect, works really well for those adept with its use. It's an efficient shorthand. For explaining things in depth we have pictures and and natural language. I fail to see how creating a new set of symbols would do anything but hinder communication within the math community. If you have any deeper argument to support your position, I'd be interested to hear it.
The problem I see with user-defined groups implementation is conversations. If I share an item with my "work friends" group, and someone replies to it, who can see the reply? Is it only my work friends, or can the replier choose others to expose her reply to? What about people in my work friends list that she doesn't know or follow or is followed by?

This already sort of happens in Google Reader. Sometimes I comment on something a friend shares, and some random person I don't know will reply to my comment. It's not terrible, but it is unclear and kind of destroys the sense of a private place/conversation.

I think the solution is have discrete "places" instead of multiple lists that interact in increasingly complex and unclear ways.
people are looking for reasons to leave facebook, im sure it will put a huge dent into it
Tried to add myself to the waitlist, and got a 500 server error. When the waitlist fails, it doesn't inspire confidence.