skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>No. I don't think Elop is an idiot

I was talking about the board decision to replace their current CEO. If things were all going to be hunky-dory as you claim, that would be an idiotic decision.

>the transition from MeeGo to Android would be much easier and that Nokia would have a competitive Android phone (and a very good one) now instead of a WP7 phone in September or October.

You have no idea about how fast a company like Nokia would move. Even carriers take months to test devices and look at how fast OEMs are able to release updates to Android.

To come to the bigger picture, Nokia just didn't want to be another Android OEM, they tried to pitch to Google, Google declined to play ball, but MS agreed. They made deals with MS for funding for ads, also some 'synergy' deals like Navteq maps etc. that MS needs for Bing(which is weak in Europe/Asia) and got a cash infusion of upwards of a billion for that. All this was needed for survival interim while they rush out new devices. Android would've provided none of that.

> What I don't think is that it will lead to Nokia making great phones as this is not a precondition to making a profit and Nokia has demonstrated, over and over again, this wouldn't be the safest bet.

Why not? What's inherently wrong with WP7 that's right with Android? Atleast with WP7, Nokia is not competing with bargain basement Chinese phones running the exact same OS and software as them as they would do with Android.
I like how this meshes with Cal Newport's ideas on procrastination. As I understand it, he views procrastination as the mind's natural tendency to avoid things it doesn't trust: that crappy plan you came up with for getting that project done? Yeah, you don't trust it, so why would you actually try to implement it?
This is really great. Joyent has been running this internally for years. The combination is just great: ZFS, DTrace and KVM speak for themselves, but another great ingredient is their use of the NetBSD userland (in place of legacy Solaris one).

Linux is great, but a monoculture benefits no one.
Adobe does get it. That's not to say that Muse isn't a POS, because that's what it's designed to be. Adobe is selling the fantasy of not having to write any code to build a website, not the harder, more complex reality of development that scares many people away.

For Adobe to be all-dominant in its field, it need to dominate all aspects of desktop production and over the past fifteen years has acquired disparate technologies like Fontographer, Flash, Dreamweaver and [gradually] weaved them into their proprietary web of low-priced/high-result products that enable or at least promise to enable even the least technical people to get their foot in the door all the while having an understanding of the unified Adobe UX that can easily be learned and ported between products.

In most cases they target the prosumer market even though some of their products like Photoshop and Illustrator have become industry standard, and are price, bundled and designed so that someone who's not a layout designer can easily switch to InDesign and produce a print-ready layout without having to acquire Quark Express and/or pay someone with advanced skills to produce the same work. That person will never become a professional layout designer using Adobe's products but they'll have a versatile toolkit to turn to and that translates into money for someone working in an agency/freelance web production role.
Click here for an invite :) https://plus.google.com/_/notifications/ngemlink?path=%2F%3F...
Google is in a unique position that makes a rental phone model more attractive to them than to other OEMs. They should do it. It would make a huge difference environmentally and socially, nnd I would bet it would be the more profitable long term strategy.
Maybe no one added this Forbes writer to their Circles? =)
Buffett pays a lower percentage of income by choice. Meaning, he derives his income from investments that get taxed at the capital gains rate. Everyone else is free to make the same decision, but they don't. They "invest" in houses, cars and other lifestyle purchases and then rely on their daily job to provide their income...hence their tax rate being so high.

Rather than punishing the rich for making smart decisions, let's instead educate the other people so they can make the same good decisions.
This is simply amazing. Tracing KVM using Dtrace is going to throw up some pretty useful and surprising results.
And add ZFS on top that as well - with all its features (sp. dedup+COW) useful for virtualized hosting.

Anyone know if linux has any variant/clone of dtrace yet? (and no, not systemtap)
I agree it sounds unlike Jobs, or at least my preconceived notions about Jobs.

Maybe it's because he specifically wanted Walter Isaacson to write it, based on admiration of his previous work?
Facebook provides standalone mobile chat application
This could be huge! ST2 looks pretty flexible, but so far it doesn't match what I get through TextMate or emacs with their package managers. Both have pretty straightforward package managers that let me pick from a huge list of plugins.

Glad to know that ST2 is on the way to offering similar functionality. Hopefully this will fuel even more community contributed code, which seems to be the real secret sauce of a good editor. Certainly the ST2 developer is outrageously responsive, so the situation should be ripe for contributions.
Use LiveReload with Rails for faster development
Why Gang Members Make Wicked Entrepreneurs
It's already available for preorder on the iBooks store and as a Kindle ebook.
Just applied, I hope I can attend. I got an error message when submitting the resume text, though.

Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): The server closed the connection without sending any data.
The Seven Subjects I learnt at Marwari Business School
Suppose a large group of your friends a pizza and half the people just hadn't paid.

You forgot a verb in there. Presuming a) the intended verb was bought or ordered and b) this isn't an indicator of you being complete moron:

Assume we all paid our 1/n of the price. Then assume I eat 1/n + m (where m >= 1) pieces of pizza. My friends suggest I pay more. Do I accuse them of being communist scum? Should I pay more because I got more? Or do I do what you seem to be suggesting and try to pay less and argue it is because I got more?
Sure, it's all possible, but evolution isn't an optimum-finding strategy; it's just a "good enough to be better than the last one". And, it's random, so even if a "6" on a dice roll is better than a "5", it's still possible to roll 1 through 5 ten-billion times in a row. And even if I do roll a 6, it's possible no one would see it, or I die immediately afterwords and can't take whatever advantage such a roll would invoke.

So the question of "Why didn't evolution come up with this?" is, to me, somewhat nonsensical.

But reasonable people disagree, and I'm no expert.
So even if you had 200,000 users, that would not necessarily make the business a great candidate for funding, but that is neither here nor there.

Education is quirky. Who is your customer for this? Is it school districts, teachers, students, parents, etc?

If it's school districts, you lose. Selling into them largely requires enterprise sales skills and credibility, which (unfortunately) you don't have. They also have sales cycles which last 12 ~ 18 months, require getting about ~5 different approvals (sometimes more), and can be torpedoed by a single recalcitrant decisionmaker, including at least 1 to 2 whose job it is to torpedo your deal.

Teachers: do teachers have a pre-existing slot in their book for the exact problem you solve? If so, you can use demand harvesting techniques like e.g. SEO. It's fairly slow going, but it will work. (This is how I got about 200k or so users: building a better mousetrap for people who absolutely, positively know they have a particular flavor of mouse to catch tomorrow.) If you have to create the demand for your product, well, godspeed. A lot of teachers are going to feel actively threatened by the introduction of one more scary computer thing into their day.

Parents: Like teachers, except with less attention and less money. (Homeschoolers excepted.) The overwhelming majority of software sold to parents comes in boxes and is either sold on brand name (Kaplan, etc) or box art. They find users by giving WalMart a bigger discount than their competing box did. Run screaming from this opportunity.

Students: I would run screaming from pitching educational software directly to students below undergraduate. Do they spend any appreciable amount of money on educational software directly in the status quo? No. Undergrad is also not a walk in the park, either.

P.S. Rather than selling Spaced Repetition done for the 473234th time, you might consider selling Spaced Repetition for $HIGH_STAKES_EXAM_TAKEN_BY_RICH_PEOPLE. Spaced Repetition for passing the bar, for example, would command a price about ~50 times higher than spaced repetition which looks like it would help a fourth grader on their vocabulary tests, even if it is the same software in the box.
I think, for me, procrastination has to do with projecting complication into things. So, if I want to cook something new, I imagine needing to find the perfect recipe with the perfect ingredients, for example.

But, then, there are times when I just decide to do it even if I'm missing ingredients or have not come across a recipe which makes sense to me. Powering thru.

I think for the video game tester, if I were them, I'd project difficulty onto it. Finding the bugs, etc. Feeling like I might not be up to finding anything interesting. It's a bit of a fear of failing, in a way, till I felt, "I'm up to the task now."
A few reasons:

1) Trust. Jobs trusts this author. Many have wanted to write this book, this is the man Jobs trusted to do it.

2) Jobs isn't going to live forever. In some sense I think he rightfully understands that this book will partially define his legacy and he wants the record to understand that it isn't filtered through his lens.

In 100 years he may well be the only technologist of our era people readily remember. He's our modern Edison. I'm glad he's taken this book seriously.
Firefox 6 Released Early
>>Google doesn't (directly) make any money off of any Android handset

And if the info in the follow piece is true, there is an example where money is being 'lost.' This July 19 Computer World article states an interesting piece of info (http://tinyurl.com/3k7mmlq):

"HTC last year entered into a licensing agreement with Microsoft that, according to a report by Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, essentially sends Microsoft $5 every time HTC ships an Android-based device. Asymco analyst Horace Dediu has estimated that Microsoft is now generating $150 million in revenue just from shipments of Android phones, or more than five times the estimated revenue Microsoft has made from selling Windows Phone licenses.."
El Reg should've thrown in something about '... and the kernel from Linux' in there as well, to complete the troll.
Writing for Robots (& Other Cloud Tyrants)
This is a man who is staring his mortality in the face. A man with a truly fascinating story – which can be seen in many, many lights, not all of them positive.

I think he knows he won't live forever and wanted the opportunity to have his story told with his input, instead of it leaving it to chance once his voice was silenced by human impermanence.
Maybe Steve realized when you give up control, you can let someone else shine (Walter) as the artiste.

Steve probably believes Walter was the best writer to tell his story, and you can't discount the fact that he is thinking about his legacy. In fact, I think the interviews may become part of some Apple internal library.
More wrapping up loose ends.
Uhm, isn't that a violation of the GPL given that you're mixing the complete work with non-compatible (by design) CDDL code? Did you ask for KVM to be relicensed for the port or something?
Major C++ revision, approved.
Reading all these comments, I'm starting to believe that something like Alcohol Anonymous would not be a bad idea for chronic procrastinators... Procrastinators Anonymous?
Ask HN: Quit my job to freelance web development. What do I do know?
I'm outside of the United States. I have a computer science degree and just love programming. I worked for a company that does software development for clients all over the world. We used Scrum and tried to follow Agile practices to the best of our abilities.

I have experience in web development (mostly using C# and ASP.NET MVC, but also some PHP) and Android development. I also have experience with TDD, Ruby, Python and a range of stuff from Facebook's API to Sitecore, Brightcove and Drupal.

The point is I can code websites. I'm not the best programmer and I definitely have some weak points that I need to address in the front end department especially (css, javascript), but I'm not the worst either.

I've been looking for work in some freelance websites and haven't been able to win a bid on any of them. This is even after lots of Googling and reading extensively about experiences, tips, tricks, what to do and what not to do, etc.

The issue that I have encountered the most is that people always want to see the work you've done. I completely understand that, since I probably wouldn't hire a graphic designer (for example) that I don't know personally or somebody I trust has not recommended without first looking at some of their work.

Even though I have experience, it was all working for my previous employer and I have NDA's saying I can't disclose the work I did there and even if I could, it is not under my name.

I've decided to follow some advice I've gotten which is to build my own portfolio doing some work for either really cheap or free if they can't pay. The issue is I can't find any or don't know where to look probably. I thought it would be way simpler.

Here I am trying to offer quality work for very cheap or free if necessary and I can't find anyone interested. I say quality work not because I'm that good but because I care about my craft and building a business and it is definitely in my best interest to do a good job since I'm trying to build something I can show off later and get more clients.

I must not know where to look or have the right contacts, since I thought these days there should be lots of people looking to get some website done and I could be of help.

Where do I find somebody interested in quality web development work for a very good price?

Is this the wrong approach, what should I do instead?
I like it but maybe add an undo button?
Sorry. The server is a bit overloaded today. Try http://news.ycombinator.com/resume?id=klbarry
Free Speech vs. The Right for Privacy (Part 1)
All of this is nice, but as someone who has flat feet, walking without (orthotic enhanced) shoes on pavement for any extended period results in pain at the end of the day.
Taking code from the Linux kernel and porting it to Solaris is solving exciting new problems and not re-implementing solutions?
Most people do move to better housing, buy more expensive food/clothes and use more electricity when they double their income. And as that doubled income doubles, the amount they are willing to pay for/use those items also goes up. Just as the amount they are willing to haggle for these items goes down (note: I'm talking about majority, I know there are exceptions).

So yes, your tax should go up with it as well.
Force is unethical. The government's fundamental tool--which distinguishes it from most other organizations--is that it forces people to do stuff under the threat of violence (and it often actually employs violence to demonstrate that it is serious). The government is therefore unethical. Taxes shouldn't exist at all, because it just a protection racket from a scaled up version of the mafia. The answer is not to scale the taxes on the rich up, but to scale the taxes on everyone down to zero. Exchanges between people should be voluntary only. This is the only ethical solution. This will require a cultural change where everyone realizes how unethical it is to employ force to get things done.

/controversial view
Doesn't this create a huge channel conflict with all the other phone hardware producers using Android?
That's exactly why I said Google's priority needs to be keeping those employees with those skills and talents. As with any acquisition of this nature, people are going to leave Motorola because of this. Google needs to make a lot of effort to identify and keep the key people.

It's important to note that this isn't anything like any of Google's previous acquisitions, both in scale and the nature of the company being acquired. Google usually has absorbed the entire startup that they bought, and ran it as just a new team. They can't do that here. It's too big, and too complex to just do that.

EDIT: I think I'm giving off too negative a vibe here. I do think that this is a very good merger for Google and Motorola, and I think that Google will handle this merger in the best way they can.

I just believe that there are a lot of potential "gotchas" that can(and probably will) snag the companies in the short term.
I know that, for some reason that I don't get, people in tech want Google+ to succeed. However, I see the same issues that the author present here. Moreover, Google has a big problem: it has to succeed fast. If within a few weeks Google+ doesn't become a clear competitor to facebook, everybody will label it as a failure, and then the result will be a self fulfilling prophecy.
Pointing out the ridiculousness of a system isn't the same thing as crying. Neither is making a serious play in the space with the purchase of MMI. Google can simultaneously believe the system is broken and play the system until it is changed.
I own 16, but most of them are custom ones for myself - e.g., lishin.org or my mom's name - and some are just jokes, like cannedgoat.com that I don't really expect anyone to want.
I would love to see Google acquire Sprint and offer a package phone, tablet, Chromebook deal with unlimited 4G data.
I have a few friends that are in it - I can probably intro you, they might be able to give you some good advice since they're in the trenches with this stuff. E-mail me if you're interested (nbashaw at gmail.com).
It's frustrating that you see me as complaining, because my original goals were to (constructively!) get people to 1) remember to check the evidence for a claim before accepting it and 2) remember to either present evidence for your claims or label them as hypotheses. Pointing these things out is definitely helpful because humans have a whole bunch of biases that make us fail to notice a lack of justification and believe things before they are justified. I've been saved from making this mistake a number of times by "[citation needed]".

(Perhaps "[citation needed]" came across as snarky? Next time I'll write "What's your evidence?".)

The rest of my posts weren't complaining, either; mainly, I was arguing for the importance of getting people to do 1 and 2 above, and against the notion that it wouldn't be better for opinions (of the "claims you believe to be true" variety, not preferences) to be either supported or marked as hypotheses when they are expressed (at least in this sort of context).

I was definitely not dissenting; my criticism would be exactly the same even if I agreed with the expressed claims 100%.
Why isn't this at the top of the front page yet?
In hindsight, it's easy to imagine the Google executives bidding fancy numbers while rubbing their hands in glee saying "Haha, lets drive up the costs for Apple/MS and waste their cash while we're anyway going to complain to the DoJ like we did with the Novell patents and the deal to buy Motorola is almost closed. Haha. What next, Planck's constant or the Avogadro number?".

Not that it actually happened, but certainly plausible given what we know.

Edit: New article supporting this theory:

Larry Page Just Made Apple And Microsoft Look Like Fools
http://www.businessinsider.com/suck-it-applesoft-2011-8
This was going to be C++0x, so is it now C++11, C++0B, or C++011?
Nice move, really. Now it is time for Apple Samsung pair? ^_^
I had moved away from ST2 and back to e for a while, but I'll give ST2 another whirl.
Seems like something I'd buy on fiverr for $5
Have you contacted local non-profits, NGO's, clubs, etc? I'm sure they'd love to have a website developed for free/almost free.

Do five of these and you have a portfolio.
Buying Sun would only have helped Google in one of their current court cases (and not one that buying Motorola was intended to help). Hindsight would have dictated buying both.
What?

Tell me how people should choose to not to get born into poverty or a family that can't afford college.

You seem to think people should make their money from investment rather than production, which has little value for a society. We should encourage people to make money from actual productive work, rather than shuffling paper around. Having higher taxes on wages (actual work) rather than capital (shuffling paper) doesn't do it.
You picked the least interesting point of Markham's to disagree with.

These two were more interesting:

> Ok, I'm calling bullshit. What does "sensible investment" mean? Does it mean the amount invested, the risk, and the amount expected in return? Because last I checked, you'd take the amount you're getting in return and decrease it by your tax rate.

He then goes on to note tax-deferred and tax-advantaged investments will see capital move to them if tax rates are changed.

Which is a good point. And yes, every serious investor calculates their after-tax return and makes it one of their decisionmaking criteria. That's a crucial point that's obvious when written out, but many people miss it.

> The rest of the blog is well characterized as Dunning Kruger in action.

This should be Godwin's Law II: Whoever accuses someone else of Dunning Kruger loses the argument. There were interesting points in there. You apparently disagree, but that's not a good reason to be flippant. Just address the points you disagree with. Changing tax laws changes the suitability of investments and changes the allocation of investments made and legal structures used. Those are good points and seem correct on a glance.
I beg to differ on the amount NYC has to offer compared to Wash DC. I personally believe there are more start up ready folks in and around the district compared to NYC...

I say you look into DC.
I don't see how Bada is relevant. First, is it available to non-Samsung OEMs? Second, Bada is in the same situation as Symbian/Android is in now, a major h/w manufacturer leading the development, unlike WP7.
I generally look for contractors at oDesk.com; agreed that it is tough to get work without a portfolio. You could build some "dev" sites and host it on your website. I'm currently looking for someone to build me a simple small biz website. If you are interested contact me at shravan.samhita@gmail.com
I'd be interested in what data there is to back this up? I'm admittedly biased (as a NYC resident), but I just don't see DC carrying the same kind of weight as NYC.
Chapter 1.

On February 24, 1955, a strange star appeared over San Francisco...
If I recall, they assumed the solar panels would end up fully covered in dust after 3 months, but the wind just keeps clearing them off.
The Evolution of Apple Ads
I like the juxtaposition of these Vibram shoes as a fashion fad and the old Doc Martens boot fad (which seems about as opposite a direction as you can get, perhaps you could go all out and get steel toed but still)

My feeling is that we cut of sensory inputs as a defensive mechanism, fewer sensor inputs, more cycles to focus on our thinking. And yet when we're 'not' thinking we don't necessarily un-block those inputs. One of the engineers at NetApp was well known for walking around in socks all the time. I always attributed it to his scottish ancestry and not wanting to put excess wear on a perfectly good pair of shoes, but perhaps he was ahead of his tims in this foot thing :-)
Larry Page Just Made Apple And Microsoft Look Like Fools