skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For those not willing to launch iTunes, the review breakdown is as follows:

★★★★★ [============= ] 354
★★★★ [== ] 26
★★★ [= ] 12
★★ [= ] 10
★ [==============] 384

And the "most helpful" review (15 of 17 people said it was helpful) looks like this:

Great App ★★★★★
by Bondfan200
Great App!! Let's you be more creative with your iPhone.

You are probably capable of imagining what the rest of the first-page reviews are.

----

Now would probably be a good time to complain about how horrible the App Store is. There are good things on it, but it's horrendous - finding good ones is hard, there's no way to demo paid apps (why not?! they control the whole system, they could enforce rules!), no way to review without paying, and no way to view or rate "+/- helpful" from the iPod/Phone (don't know about ipad). That last one in particular seems the greatest oversight for preventing this kind of thing.

It's almost an ideal system for exploitation. I simply can't comprehend why it has stood this way for this long. Has Jobs even looked at this thing? I would think he'd be livid, it's total crap.
That was a very interesting read, thank you yarapavan.

(If anyone else gets hit with a registration page, the print article link will let you read the whole thing.)
I liked virtualenvwrapper, but it added considerable (noticable) latency to my terminal startups. I ended up removing it and went back to manual virtualenv activation (with a couple of small helper bash functions of course).
Singapore reminded me of a Tropical Vancouver. It's a great base to explore the rest of south east asia, a Beautiful Place.

If your already willing to pay $50k annually (and I complain about my $30k student debt), why don't you just go to college in Europe, Singapore, Australia or Canada? A Math PhD at Stanford that I talked to said that his University of Toronto engineering undergrad was pretty similar to the Stanford undergrad. It would probably be cheaper, and nicer.
Interesting. I wonder how much of their operating expense is due to administrator salaries. A breakdown of expenses throughout hospitals and the health system would be really fascinating to see, and could probably shed light on potential solutions.
There's a night & day difference between my old Droid 1 and the current crop of Android phones. I recently tried a friend's Galaxy S II and was shocked at how responsive it was, even compared to the iPhone 4.
I use a WP7 device. I got it because the closest ATT store to where I live is the store on the Microsoft campus and they carry just the WP7 lineup (duh) so I got that.

My interest in WP7 was piqued once I saw the efforts to provide interesting APIs for phones : http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hawa...

Also, I am not a phone dev and I could build a working app without going through whatever the Hello World version is (I have never used silverlight before and had to do very minor googling) in approx 7 hours.
There is a huge difference between Cherry MX Blues and Cherry MX Browns. [1] The amount of sound they make drastically differ, and they have very different amounts of tactile feedback. Even if you gave somebody who knew nothing about mechanical keyboards a Filco Blue and a Filco Brown, they would definitely be able to tell the difference.

------------------------

1. http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Cherry+switches+and+b...
Yeah, http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/how-much-should-you-pa...
As I see it - my iPod Touch has wireless and more space than a nomad. I think CmdrTaco must be a genius.
As far as I know, no, you can not longer write reviews from apps downloaded with promo codes. It seems that the change was recent (couple of months ago). A google search showed lots of articles about but I couldn't find an official Apple statement about it.
I believe I had even read somewhere in an interview that the reason Netflix had "Net" in it was because of their long term plans to move towards streaming, not because users selected movies on a website. In other words, it sounded like the founders had originally planned to focus on a streaming service.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. My point is more that the problem is systemic. You also can't patent something that has prior art, but it happens all the time.
Groupon is the next Madoff, except big iBanks helped it rob investors
You missed the (2006)
Rio Theme For Windows 7 
Rio is the latest movie done by the man behind the success of Ice Age franchise, Carlos Saldanha. The movie has everything on offer – fabulous voice acting, beautiful animation and a sense of humor that will set you off.
Anyone want to deconstruct this article. These are 10 people who "you can safely snub at conferences". But by doing so you are also submitting to CNN's authority.
Not that it matters in all the noise here, but here's my comments on their picks:

Steve Ballmer: He got where he is entirely by riding on Bill Gate's coattails. He did and still does belong on this list.

Jeffrey Citron: Obviously a correct call now. I don't know enough to say whether I could have called this one correctly at the time.

Reed Hastings: Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but it seems like from the very minute on-demand media became really feasible, Netflix was dragging Hollywood along kicking and screaming. I'd say he should never have been on this list.

Ken Kutaragi: You can argue now about whether or not he has been influential in the last five years, but I know that at the time I definitely would have agreed with CNN on this one.

Warren Lieberfarb: CNN and I would have agreed and we would have both been correct.

Rob Malda: CNN called this one correctly. I probably would have disagreed with them at the time, and I would have been wrong.

Arun Sarin: Same as with Citron--obviously correct in hindsight, but I couldn't have called it one way or the other at the time.

Jonathon Shwartz: Obviously, in hindsight CNN called it correctly. At the time, though, I had really high hopes for Jonathan Shwartz. Regardless of how talented he may be, he was put in an almost impossible situation as CEO of Sun--too much damage had already been done.

Linus Torvalds: First, a personal disclosure--I am a huge Torvalds fanboy, and would certainly have disagreed with CNN on this one. That said, you could now make a good case that CNN got this one right. In the last five years, Linus really hasn't done anything big from a business perspective. Absolutely he has been busy creating software that people use and care about (Git and continuing Linux development). However, none of has recent activity has had a major economic impact. (Can you name an industry that's been disrupted by Git?) Even the major things that Linux has done in the last five years (Android, for example) happened without being driven by Linus. I'm going to say I was wrong and CNN was right on this one.

Mark Zuckerberg: Obviously wrong in hindsight. I'm not sure whether I could have done any better, though. In 2004 I definitely would have accepted the notion that Facebook was unlikely to be worth more than Myspace. I'm not sure whether I would have still thought that in 2006.
I'm here, and easy to reach. http://sivers.org/about

But you'd be better off reaching people through Hackerspace http://hackerspace.sg/

More specifically, the Google Groups discussion board for Hackerspace: http://groups.google.com/group/hackerspacesg/

Also get involved with Startup Roots : http://sg.startuproots.org/

And of course e27 : http://e27.sg/

You probably know all this already, but there it is, just in case.
This is a very important point. With iPhone and Android neck & neck in the marketplace there's a tremendous incentive for both companies to make the best products they can and to make their users happy. Let's not forget how stagnant desktop computing became in the years of the Microsoft monopoly.
Also relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI9ImScQGAo&feature=youtu...
I think there's the same dichotomy in tech journalism as there is in science journalism, perhaps other journalism as well but I'm not qualified to comment on other topic's veracity, namely, that the people who in fact understand the topics and are qualified to talk about them much more often actually work in the field and don't merely report about it.

From that nature, I am more inclined to rely on journalism for facts and overview alone, and less inclined to rely on them for their opinion than I am actual professionals in the field.
In the grand scheme of things Git is unimportant. It’s niche technology. Version control is always going to be that and that’s alright†. (This is not a dig at Git. Git is pretty much all it can be and wildly successful at that.)

—

† Apple is currently trying to bring version control (imagine quotes around that if you will) to the masses and I’m fairly certain that others will follow. I’m not sure what, if any, influence Git can have there, I really don’t think it’s going to change much.
What the author is trying to say is Dunning-Kruger effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I did, it was fine but I totally forgot about it.

He gives the example of _nmh_ for email reading. I've been trying it out all morning. I think the stock _mail_ program seems to be better (although I use alpine on the CL). I need to do extra work to see gmail messages with _nmh_ (not with mail).

>mhshow: don't know how to display any of the contents
> (content multipart/alternative in message 2)

Also, the _comp_ command for composing a mail launches vim (unable to stop that) which gives an error on what_next. I tried pico, that works.

Not sure _nmh_ is the way to go today. If I had to use the CL, I'd use _mail_ instead.
Oh my...I had no idea! Fascinating...but yeah, you're right...it'll never catch on. Just cool to know something that only the relative minority of people will ever know...
Biology Coursework: Ideas
If you are finding it heavy going on your biology coursework then you have come to the right place.
Natural science assignments require an intensive effort from the student to use both theoretical knowledge as well as practical implementation.
This is getting insane. The app is now sitting at number 4 in the Top 100 paid apps, and he also just jacked the price up from $1.99 to $2.99.

Surely staying off Apple's radar was his best bet? Instead he's decided to make a relatively quick buck selling 50,000 copies per day. I seriously hope Apple withholds his pay check when it is inevitably taken down.
Auction patent extensions in blocks. First, you start with a free, though much shorter than present, initial period. After that, however, you must purchase the next extension at auction. At period2, there will be X2% as many extensions as there are expiring patents. At period3, you must buy another extension out of that tranche, which has X3% as many extensions as period2. And so on.

Extensions could be sold to any party before their "apply on" date, they are not specific to a particular patent until it has been attached to it. Once a patent passes its expiration date, it can never be recovered and is now public domain forever.

I think this would work best if the sum of the extensions was less than currently available. The basic idea is that a company who felt a patent really was central to their business could pay a potentially very hefty price for the privilege, so the number of extensions for sale should be kept quite small.
House republicans threatened to force a default, which is clearly the reason for the downgrade. Read the quote in the first post of the thread.
This is exactly the mindset that leads to the patent system we have today. You are thinking of intellectual property as an idea - its not. Meaningful intellectual property is a functioning method or product that delivers value to people (is this all IP? no, but this the scope of IP I am suggesting protecting). It takes, research, communication, testing, experimentation, failure, and repetition to truly build something that works. And yes, forensics will show the hard drive state and web history logs before, and after you were in the shower and then all the way along the long road to you building something that people actually want.

You hear of an existing product? Who cares? If you can invent something similar without referencing related documentation or code during the actual process of invention keep it out of the legal system.
My first thought was to recommend the double major because I believe that a stronger math background opens a lot of doors, specially in the software industry. Now, considering your last statement and the fact that you also have a minor in economics I'd say you're better off saving those 50K and extra year. Getting involve in open source projects it's a much better strategy to differentiate yourself that getting a minor/major, at least in the software industry.

Good luck!
Calm down, all. We can be friends. Let's go down to the soda fountain and get ourselves some milkshakes.
I can only imagine the dickbag who came up with this idea at the editorial meeting.
Compared to a single 1080p, yes. I got a 30" and it's been a great improvement. The ability to put 2 full size windows next to each other is fantastic (a utility like SizeUp helps). Having the freedom to have a bunch scattered around while seeing bits of each is great too. The productivity boost is almost certainly worth the money.
The only point I would see for this scheme is to make money for the patent office.

> The basic idea is that a company who felt a patent really was central to their business could pay a potentially very hefty price for the privilege, so the number of extensions for sale should be kept quite small.

It won't be. There's too much money to be made and too much lobbying involved.
Or may be it's not meant to be used on a 15" screen
I really hope the Groupon IPO fails, because if it pops like the Linkedin one the bubble becomes undeniable IMO.

With all the free freshly printed money floating around on Wall Street, I am not holding my breath though.
Exactly. But the thing is, the Valley is just the newest crowd in that row. Activists of various kinds a creeped out by Googles data hording for a long time now. Even regular people opted out of StreetView. I am not saying all this paranoia is straight out justified in every respect, but the problem of Google in terms of personal rights etc is hardly a new one.
Excellent reads, thank you.
Why Firewall When You Have Antivirus?
Windows 7 sold 300 million copies in less than 2 years. There's no reason to think that Windows 8 won't match it. That's a huge potential market.

Apple proved that you don't need the largest installed user base to become a success. You just need a user base that's large enough to be sustainable, coupled with decent developer tools and, preferably, a sales channel.

That also presumes there's no backporting, which is another possibility.
I've accepted a student for this offer now.
I find that while I like trying out apps, I only have a few that I actually end up using. So I have a cheap iPod touch for trying out apps and doing dev work, and then I use an Android phone daily.
The vast majority of candidates I've personally rejected did manage to sound like they knew what they were talking about … until I asked for simple pseudocode. Most every coworker who's done interviewing has said the same, as have many commenters here. It's just too easy to talk a good game, so I can't see a basis for recommending anyone I haven't actually worked with.

> They seem to not have face to face interactions with other people in their field.

That has very much been my experience, and the whole meeting-strangers-at-trade-shows thing seems similarly atypical to me. I've never known anyone who does that who wasn't dedicated to sales or marketing or biz dev full-time. I've been looped into maybe a dozen phone conferences and three in-person meetings with customers and partners in the last four years, and there's one guy (from our first API integration) who I could reasonably expect remembers my name without a CRM search. Dunbar's number doesn't leave room for very many of the semi-celebrities you're describing, and they're all going to be extroverts anyway, so I just get recruited by former coworkers (and the obligatory headhunters).
When a non-android smartphone adds support for Mobile Suica and 1seg, then I'll be glad to entertain switching.
Here's an interesting if only tangentially related bit of information. Every year on Hiroshima bombing anniversary Japanese activists (of some faction) hold a protest next to an embassy. This includes anger tantrums, shouting, throwing empty bottles into the wall and some such.

Here's the fun part. The embassy is Russian.

Apparently the logic behind their anger is that it was Soviet Union who caused the bombings by silently agreeing to it when they had a chance to stop them. Americans however did nothing wrong, they merely showed Japanese how caught up in the war they were and helped them to see the light. This is clearly not a widely shared opinion, but it just goes on to show how really contrived the subjective part of the issue is.
I'm not educated well in economics, but I don't think there will be a bubble until massive amounts of people start investing in ideas for websites.
Also worth mentioning pythonbrew which goes a step further and allows you to manage separate Python builds.
Existing maintenance and filing fees clearly have not been enough to prevent large numbers of frivolous patents. Any IP tax would have to be quite a bit larger than fees existing now to be effective.

I read somewhere that although Russia has serious problems with alcoholism, public programs trying to fight it have been handicapped because a large part of govt. revenues come from a liqour tax. I think it is at least worth considering this outcome before creating any kind of 'sin tax'.
I have a 27" 1920x1200 Dell and what I wouldn't give to have a higher resolution on it...
How on earth is it an example of mind over matter? Getting irradiated is not hard. It requires no willpower to endure. The only "suffering" you feel while receiving a lethal dose (not counting the part where you die later) is the taste of pennies and prickling on your face.

Nor is he demonstrating cleverness that allows him to escape the radiation- indeed, while stubbornness may be on display here, it has absolutely nothing to do with "mind over matter".
I think my experience exemplifies this: I bought a WP7 two days ago. WP7 phones are very cheap now. Sure, there are cheap Android phones too, but those run very old versions of Android that I can't upgrade. That doesn't exactly sound like 'open' to me, I'd immediately buy an outdated phone. And laying out hundreds of euros for a phone is beyond reason in my opinion. Mine cost 150€, the LG E900. I think Windows will grow in marketshare simply because it's the best, high quality option for its price.
(I'm actually opposed to most software patents, so take this outlier as I do: a strange case that bears further consideration.)

This patent is definitely the kind of novel, amazing discovery that we want to reward.

Yes, the authors filed for a patent after their work was originally published [0], so they lost their international patents on a technicality. Yes, another scientist may [1] have secretly discovered the same thing, filing it away in classified documents, but by definition, "prior art" has been "made available to the public" [2].

Nonetheless, here are some important facts: first, if it weren't for this work, ecommerce would have been delayed for an unknowable amount of time. Second, if it weren't for this kind of fantastically profitable outcome, MIT (the original patent holder) would be hundreds of millions of dollars poorer.

[0] The wiki is misleading. It says "Since a paper describing the algorithm had been published in August 1977..." but it turns out that the referenced paper was on RSA itself, written by a pop science author. From the reference: "RSA was first presented to the public by Martin Gardner, in an article in Scientific American in August 1977."

[1] The wiki cites no source for this fact, so I can't compare the algorithms.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art
That memo of things to do/not do, is a great list for everywhere 24/7, not just def con.

If you can be hacked there, you can be hacked anywhere, and some damage cannot be recovered from (ie. losing google account).
There is no evidence to suggest that these coins have been sold? Has either party divulged the wallet address for the stolen coins?
With iPhone and Android neck & neck in the marketplace there's a tremendous incentive for both companies to make the best products they can and to make their users happy. Let's not forget how stagnant desktop computing became in the years of the Microsoft monopoly.

I agree that that monopolistic era was especially pernicious. It wasn't just that Microsoft controlled a huge share of the desktop market; it was that this made them a de facto gatekeeper with regard to technology before the Web. Also, there were a lot of startups that couldn't get fair acquisition prices because there was only one buyer. The only good thing that comes out of monopolies is R&D (e.g. Bell Labs)... but I'd rather see R&D propelled by employee demands for autonomy (when there's lots of competition for talent) than by executive largess within a monopoly. One of the most exciting things to come out of Microsoft's research department is F#, and that emerged after the monopoly era was over.

Apple and Google both make excellent products, with completely different approaches but an end result that's great for users. Competition is good for products and also good for employees within companies (competition for talent).
This doesn't directly answer your question, but I'd assume the larger question is "Will adding more or bigger monitors make me more productive?"

The answer is yes. I can guarantee it. I wouldn't recommend spending a bunch of money on a single monitor though. Buy two ~22" monitors off of NewEgg. It won't feel the same as a 27" monitor, but you'll have considerably more space, pay at least half the price, and have some explicit compartmentalization going. The downside is that it's not all the same monitor, and you need hte deskspace. As well as having to buy a cable for having multiple external monitors with a Macbook Pro.

I say give it a try, and return it if isn't as comfortable as you want it to be. You'll still be able to get your money back (assuming you return the stuff in the same condition you bought it), and you can go and try the 27" monitor too.
> Can you name an industry that's been disrupted by Git?

Well, it's certainly decreased the significance of commercial and closed-source development tools & support. It's also made the market for programer talent more transparent and meritocratic, thus potentially increasing compensation for talented developers. One would expect this to lead to shifts in the employment from other sectors into programming.

Doesn't that count as disruptive? Sure he didn't make a bundle in the process, but he did make the world a better place.
If true, it makes the fact of not one but two large cities vaporized and thousands of civilians including many, many children made to slowly die in agony from radiation poisoning even more vile of an act, no?
Hackers strike at 70 US law enforcement websites
Actually, the demonstrations are usually held by right wing Japanese organizations on August 9th, the day of the bombing of Nagasaki.

This was also the day that the Soviet Union broke the neutrality pact with Imperialist Japan and invaded Manchuria and other parts of the Japanese Empire. The protests are usually against this invasion and consist of calls to get the Northern Territories of Japan returned.

Also, there are angry tantrums and shouting, but there are no throwing of empty bottles at the walls of the embassy because the riot police do quite an impressive job not letting any of the protestors through. It's a bit of a charade and an annoyance when you're trying to conduct business in the area, but the reality is different from the story you're sharing.