skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Apple's ideas did spread. Every android phone is an iPhone counterfeit.... it is a copy of the iPhone. Like the GUI, which Linux and Windows copied, Apple's ideas do spread... the problem is the people who steal them get away with the theft.
Oh come on! "Zappos did change how we buy shoes, so what?" really? No it didn't. Maybe for you in the USA but in Europe it didn't. But the iPod and iTunes store changed how we buy music in the whole world. See the difference? Changing something in the whole world is a way bigger challenge than just establishing a new shop with convenient shopping methods in the USA.

I'm sorry if this sounds like fanboism but you shouldn't underestimate the change and the hard work here. Apple is the most innovative company in the world and so it should get credit for that. Even if you don't buy Apple products you should be happy that Apple is pushing the bars for simplicity and innovative products!
In my experience, files have mixed formats far less often than you might suspect. Generally they were kicked out by another script some other bored bloke who just wants to get home wrote himself. If I don't get the results I'm expecting then I'll investigate but the time I save myself by assuming things will work more than offsets that.

Usually the issues I find are things that invalidate the entire file, and indicate a problem further up the stream. In those cases I'm actually glad my script was not robust.
...and on every desk, all running Microsoft software. For some time in the 90's that was reality. Even if you owned a Mac.
The point is that they grossly underestimated the impact of the power wall. They were aware of the power issue and you can find early papers by Pentium 4 architects like Doug Carmean which address that concern and make it seem like they have it under control. Many engineers at Intel (including the main Pentium 4 architects) must have known the problem was more dire than that. But everyone falls prey to wishful thinking, and changing the bearing of a mammoth ship is not something easily accomplished.

> Pentium 4 was absolutely the right design to take advantage of faster transistors

No, it was a horrible design in many ways, irrespective of those constraints and any wishful thinking about the power wall, and it gave the advantage to AMD for years. Not a big surprise as it was designed by Intel's B team. The Pentium M which has been the microarchitectural basis for their subsequent desktop processors was designed by the A team.
Check each project's bug tracker and see what you can fix.
It will make HN worse if there is no corrective, but a corrective could be to further devalue the upvotes of people with little or no karma. To implement this you would need to further differentiate between displayed points and true points or change displayed points to one of the suggestions received before for the point display on comments (e.g. gradations of color/hue instead of numbers).

This hidden valuation will probably also have to exist for user karma. Curiously, this is what is claimed in many esoteric schools concerning karma itself. The mechanisms are deliberately hidden "by the gods" so that one does good for the sake of good and not with any intent of gaming the system.
ClojureScript does indeed have macros. They are compiler macros. You can't define macros in your ClojureScript file (because ClojureScript doesn't itself have access to the compiler) but you can refer to macros defined in a Clojure file and the ClojureScript compiler will use this to expand your ClojureScript. That's what refer-macros is for. I'm looking forward to getting my pattern matching library, https://github.com/swannodette/match, working with ClojureScript.

As far as the compile times you should checkout Chris Granger's https://github.com/ibdknox/cljs-watch. This is analogous to "coffee -wc *.coffee".

Nice writeup.
Actually, 3D games are a GREAT test-bed for AI research. Some of the best AI algorithm competitions in academia are possible solely because of the game industry's awesome killing simulators.
August Extra Issue of Hakin9 Magazine: Forensics
Unfortunately not anytime soon.

Last year I released two simple story apps (just one story, not animated), but the android version got 3-4 times less downloads. Both were free, and I all attribute to the poor discoverability on the Android market. (The Android app got better reviews).

Also it is tough to keep up with all the devices/screen sizes and compability issues. This is just a side project, and I don't have the time to deal with it.

Just in case, the rough android version of Billy the SpaceCat is here. I am not sure it would work on the Nook though.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.storyfun.spacecat
Xerox is known to be the inventor of GUI. Apple made it popular. There is a difference.

It's very much like how Apple invented PC but MS revolutionized and captured the market. I am giving due credit to all parties; you are omitting/trivializing all the conceptualization that went into an earlier concept - the ones that Apple's products were based upon.
I'd love to know what you base this opinion on.

Every game I've shipped has been far more stable than the majority of applications I use on a daily basis today. Most of those codebases where then used in other titles, aside from the very game-specific parts.

Sony/Nintendo etc require that your game runs for 1-3 days without a crash, on a platform without virtual memory, before they'll put it on a disc that cannot be patched (well, until this-gen of consoles. Now it's just expensive to patch).

Quite a bit different from platforms such as iOS where developers get upset that Apple take five days to approve updates for for free (fail a Sony submission and you'll be paying $$$$$)
Exactly. The author's argument with "It would happen anyway" can directly be applied to Google, too.
Kernel Comparison: Linux (2.6.28) versus Windows (Vista SP1)
Yeah Microsoft definitely revolutionized graphical interfaces... Come on! Microsoft never revolutionized anything!
That's partly why I bought it. My university didn't have a statistics department, so I never had the chance to take a statistics course that was worthwhile.

Statistics and linear algebra really should be required by all CS programs. It's funny that at many schools those courses are not, yet Calculus is. First, Calculus should have been handled in HS. Second, I've never had a use for Calculus professionally or for anything I've worked on in my free time.
And on that note, does anyone have any other good book suggestions regarding ML?
No, people denigrate Apple because they are invested, emotionally, in a competing product and they do not want to believe that Apple did innovate as much as they have.

You're right that there are a lot of serious misconceptions about the history of computing, but they are all on the side of the people who claim that products that came after Apple's products are proof that Apple didn't invent the category, etc.

As for companies that lacked the "desire", or "resources" to invent these things, well, they don't deserve any credit because they didn't invent them.

You seem to be operating under the misconception that inventions are just ideas... and you would do well to read the ragenwald comment you link to, where he notes that ideas without execution are nothing. Apple did invent these things because they took them from ideas-- which are easy-- thru the hard part of solving all the problems with the idea-- to fruition. All those people who didn't bring anything to fruition didn't earn any credit.

Just as those people who copied Apple's products didn't invent them either.

Frankly, I find it kind of amazing that people who clearly have very little knowledge of this history of computing will repeat these myths-- myths debunked over 30 years ago!-- and patronizingly claim that people who are debunking the myths are operating under "misconceptions".

It's like trying to talk to a non-technical person who heard someone from some pimply kid over at Best Buy and therefore they think he's an expert and you, with the CS degree don't know nearly as much about computers... but of course, they don't know anything either, so they just see him as an authority figure because hell, he's 17, and he works at Best Buy, right? Sigh.
I'm a bit confused... why would that function be faster than `return key1 != key2` ?

Not sure how to compile this function to a 16b target, otherwise I'd check myself :(
IMHO, "no individual has made as much of a difference" is clearly local to the thoughtspace defined by "what Jobs has meant to the world of technology", so refutations comparing Jobs to bin Laden should probably throw a compiler error.

And I suppose we'd eventually have music players and smartphones without Apple. But the schedule of their appearance, and the elegance of their demonstration of possibilities, seem pretty important to the shape of those eventualities. We can learn a lot figuring out why the Wright Brothers were the first to "just" figure out pitch and yaw -- or we can ignore them and focus on aerodynamics, knowing that all breakthroughs happen eventually.
I don't think "stagnate" is fair.
You're right that the execution, which involves taking an idea thru the difficulty of solving all of its problems to fruition is what really matters.

However, the problem is that after Apple does this, and then everyone and their dog copies it, a few years later, people pretend like it wasn't Apple who actually had the idea, developed it, solved all the problems and then brought it to market!

Its as if, because there's an android phone on the shelf, there was nothing new in the iPhone.

This is some form of post hoc ergo proctor hoc history!
This response is inevitable because you are sharing this opinion with people who can see through your biases. I'm happy enough that someone programming games isn't hacking my bank account. Does that register on your personal Richter scale for a valuable use of one's time?
FWIW I think "Why I do not want to work at Google" originally composed in HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2728174

These older posts are also fun http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/1999-January... http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2006-Novembe...

Doing many things, including filtering spam, is more difficult in a decentralized environment. (It is curious that email, itself decentralized, has come to be dominated by several large service providers; I wonder how much of this is due to economies of scale for fighting spam and other attacks relative to other economies of scale relative to things not characterizable as an economy of scale? Search of documents published in a decentralized manner on the web is another example.) Many things are even easier in a completely centralized manner, thus G+, Facebook, Twitter, and their morbid predecessors. For all their issues, architecturally decentralized email, web, and internet are much more valuable than the 2011 versions of AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy silos. So thank you to all working on making the next bits of decentralized architecture work. I imagine it is possible to do a bit of this work at Google et al, but it is clearly way, way down the priority list of any such companies.
If you follow me on twitter, when I start the blog (which is on the todo list, coming soon) you'll find out about it. Details of my project and the twitter id are in my profile here.
The interested reader should not assume hastily, however, that tr -s is enough to make cut behave exactly like awk. Hint: leading spaces.

pi:~$ echo ' foo' | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 1

pi:~$ echo ' foo' | awk '{print $1}'
foo
Just FYI, and maybe it's just me, but CLNT.ME looks way too close to an inappropriate word.
Hi, welcome to the 90s, when patents were already "bogus and a bad idea." Remember GIF? JPEG? LZW? RAR? S3TC? MP3? MPEG-2? AAC? MPEG-4? h.264?

I'll understand if you've forgotten all of these. After all, when a software patent only inconveniences people making Free Software, it doesn't really count as "bogus and a bad idea," right?
ClickThatLike.com
>consumers who genuinely think they are getting iPhones.

Are you delusional or just trolling? If the latter, I'd suggest a more subtle approach in the future.
So true! I've just bought a Thinkpad T420 and the nipple was key in the decission. Once you get used it can't be beaten and not having it is terrible.

And the new Lenovo trackpads are also multitouch, not as good as Apple's tough.
Yes, and so does Protovis. But you don't interface with SVG directly. To draw a circle in Raphaël, you use Raphaël.circle. In Protovis, you use pv.Dot.

To draw a circle in D3? svg:circle.
Linking to particular songs is live.
You might be interested by recutils: https://www.gnu.org/s/recutils/
Where's the contradiction? Google didn't spend 7 years working out the kinks to get the usability right. Also, since they license to anyone, most of the hardware is crap hardware, thus the pointing accuracy is way off. Also, Apple takes a 72 pixel, roughly, finger contact area and turns it into a touch point with pixel level accuracy. That's not easy and that's not easy for Google to copy (probably because Apple hasn't patented it, or the patent didn't give enough away.) That right there is probably a large reason why they don't work as well.
The original question posed was, "any good Macbook Air alternatives?" To me, that implies lightweight, compact, and, yes, elegant. The Thinkpad doesn't appear to be any of those.
Actually, I feel that the group that should get the most credit for changing how we buy music, worldwide, is Napster, for the remarkable idea that we can change how we buy music by not buying it.
Alcubierre Warp Drive Time Travel
I'm always at a loss as to whether I should try to parse thru these snide comments to try and figure out what the argument you're trying to make is, or if I should just ignore them.

At the very least, your putting words in my mouth so I don't have to defend them.
Linking to songs or search results is live now
This is not CSRF. It uses an iframe containing a pre-filled hacker news submission form effectively causing the user to upvote the already existing story.

It could be argued that hacker news should implement frame busting for additional security, but I don't think it is a huge concern for this site.
Hey, this is cool..I was attempting to create a local chat web application (mobile and regular versions) several months ago, but the reason why I had stopped was the fact that it's hard to make the app seem like it's used if you can only chat with people in your area...So I like the fact that you allow the user to select a location and talk with people other than people just located in your vicinity..it means that a user won't be turned off when no one is available to chat in their area..
Thanks. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and I feel pretty confident that I know the niche I need to pursue and that it can and does make money for some people. Still, well-meaning folks sometimes try to discourage me and tell me "it's not a real business" and stuff like that. Actual figures are helpful. I do still have a day job, so I don't have to be some overnight success or something.

Take care. And best of luck with your endeavors.
The biggest problem I have is that Apple and Jobs have become synonymous, but who designed the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iMac, Powerbook, G4?

Oh yeah, Jonathan Ive. Damn.
Patents were reviled by geeks even in a pre-9/11 world. ;)

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
I agree somewhat. Yes, a lead has more responsibility, and will work as hard as the other team members. Sometimes they may have to push to get the product shipped.

That is a completely different thing than four hours of sleep a night for years.
Hunter Wellington Boot
Gest�o Link Patrocinado
Remember when ReadWriteWeb was the first hit on Google for the term "Facebook" for a few days and they got thousands of people hitting their page posting comments about how they couldn't log into google? Because they were goggling for Facebook in order to get on Facebook, and the first result was no longer Facebook for that period.

That's something you'd probably never do, but for millions of people, that's how they know how to get to Facebook.

I'm neither delusional, nor am I trolling. I'm just making an argument you don't like. I don't think its appropriate that you would characterize me in a derogatory way like that, because you're engaging in attacks to the person, rather than to the point, and I think that Hacker News should have a higher level of debate than that.
Writing Better Shell Scripts
What foreign words are difficult to translate into English?
Is there a good reason why the lyrics text is not right-aligned? I understand symmetry looks better in such a design, but it's much easier to follow along with a song when you don't have to consciously look for the beginning of the next line.
HN Dynamics - I just do not understand
Yes but there is still the problem of usage though. Getting people to visit and comeback to any social site is tough these days with the likes of FB and Twitter especially if the ui is ugly like the one I have now atm heh.
There's an unreasonable amount of emotionally charged language in your post. This is Hacker News, not "call people uninformed barely-computer literate consumers and haters because they don't share your viewpoint news". Make your arguments in a civil manner, please.

--------

The Altair 8800 was a kit computer, which could also be ordered preassembled. The Apple I had a fully assembled circuit board, but still required assembly of other components. The TRS-80 and Apple II were both fully preassembled, and contemporary with each other. It's fair to say that Apple was an important player in the move toward personal computers, but I don't think it's fair to say they invented them.

AFAIK, Xerox was the first company to use an actual GUI, on the Alto (none of what Stanford did before would qualify as a "GUI", IMO.) Apple's Lisa was a big step forward for the GUI, adding things like window controls and menus. Again, Apple was an important player in the move to GUIs, and pioneered several specific GUI elements, but it's not fair to say they invented the GUI.

And, of course, both of these inventions are well over a decade old; when speaking about companies that "changed everything" between 2000 and 2010, they're not relevant.

Your references to "the touch UI" are confusing. I'm not aware of any product with that name. My best guess is that you're referring to some specific detail of iOS -- multitouch, perhaps? Without clarification, I don't really know how to respond to this particular point, or even if it needs responded to. Apple certainly put together a nice UI, and probably invented several specific conventions in doing so; I'm just not sure what in particular you think is revolutionary or needs to be acknowledged.
Font Smoothing Detection in Browsers
"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Definitely worth overclocking it; it regresses to ~4469ms post 3.0.2 upgrade without overclocking.
My favorite quote from this well written article

If you are a geologist, at this point what runs through your mind is, Holy shit.
Lenovo Thinkpad X1 has 13,3" and a full powered processor. If you want even bigger you can go with a T420 (14"), which is more similar to the X220 but with a media unit.
Wanting to reciprocate in some way to the open source projects you
benefit from is natural, but the reality of the matter is far from
obvious. Unless you are truly interested and fascinated by the code, you
won't keep at it. The time and effort invested by the other project
developers in your education will eventually be wasted when you lose
interest. It might not be a complete waste since you might actually make
some useful contributions, but all healthy projects are looking for long
term contributors.

I hate to say it, but if you knew of a project with code that fascinates
you, then you would not be asking this question, instead, you'd be
working on it right now because it's fun.

With that said, the easiest way to get started in any project is just
start fixing bugs and submitting your patches. Everyone loves bug fixes,
even if you do them wrong the first time and need to redo them. In other
words, it's your effort and dedication that shows through and is
important. You don't need to be the world's greatest programmer or the
resident expert of a codebase, but you do need to keep trying, and you
need to be able to listen to feedback and learn from it (even if harsh).

Lastly, there's always more things to do to help a project than people
to do them. Though a project IS code, you can always find other ways
to contribute if you use your imagination and put in some effort.
>Xerox is known to be the inventor of GUI.

This is a lie that you really shouldn't be perpetuating. This isn't a question of opinion, but of historical fact, an you are telling a falsehood. There's no debating it.
Not to argue but you can imitate something poorly. I'll leave it up to others to argue which OS is better.
Two-factor auth certainly lifts general security -- but I'd also be running http://www.openwall.com/john/ to prevent poor primary passwords in the first place.

Why isn't http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/ the go-to solution? Open source codebase, ports for iOS, Android, and Blackberry, and it's easy to integrate with...?
I fully agree video games are an important form of expression and art. They tell stories and evoke emotion and deserve to be treated like art.

Having said that, typically those "sucked in programmers" are not the ones working on the "art" side of things, like the story, for example.

I think the "sucking in" of talent is referring more to those whose talents are in development, and not so much in expression of art.
I was thinking exactly the same. For those who haven't heard of it before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Manifesto
> "I don't think its appropriate that you would characterize me in a derogatory way like that"

I'm not sure how you can say that with a straight face immediately after characterizing me in such a derogatory way in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2934973
Oookay... and how is me sending out spam with my competitor's website in it handled?