skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "You're forgetting that those 10 million iPads were sold over many quarters."

"Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter" -- http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/19Apple-Reports-Thir...

My math is fine.

> "there isn't room for the HP Touchpad at HP"

There, I agree. The HP TouchPad is trying to be direct competition for the iPad, and that's why it was a total disaster.

If instead HP made the WeakerPad, with higher capability than the kindle but lower than the iPad, and targeted the $200 price point (where their main competition is a bunch of 7" Android 1.5 tablets with resistive touchscreens), they might find a sweet spot in the market.
The screens are always going to be black. Is having a black surround to match exclusive to Apple?

The device is always going to have corners; are Apple the only ones who are allowed to evenly round the corners? I'm viewing this on a Samsung monitor, which has evenly rounded corners...

I don't deny the Samsung device has similarities, but... Apple have gone out of their way to make the iPhone look very, very generic quite frankly. Call it minimalist if you want, but it has so few visible features as a piece of hardware that if you're going to produce a competing device then there really aren't very many ways to make sure it doesn't look at least slightly like one or other design generation of iPhone.
Your first month as a UX Manager
Actually it's not. Name calling would be if I called you an entitled whiner. There's a difference between attacking your argument and attacking you.
The difference is very minor.

Median programmers write intellectually trivial code that solves uninteresting problems. Training is optional and there are virtually no systematic hurdles to cross to enter the trade.
A median programmer has BS in computer science, understands basics of computer hardware architecture, OS administration, networking and database management. Keeps current with the latest industry trends, has familiarity with a number of complex development tools and, in addition to all that, specializes in some area of programming.

What I listed above are the implied prerequisites for almost any mid-level developer position out there.
"the message to Asian companies that the Western markets are stacked against them no matter what they do"

Given how successful they are, that's very unlikely. However, the converse is actually true, China is quite hostile to Western business, you can read up on this on the many articles published, e.g. on the Economist. If you want to be treated fairly, you have to treat others so, too, isn't this the golden rule?
Is my wanting to stay with family a rare thing?
NPR tried Google's 20%-time with their developers
"Fast Data" - Topic Tracking in Tweet Streams
Its a nice idea, but I think would be better as an app than a website.
I'm also curious.

They said the same thing about the human genome, but once it was mapped nothing really happened. If anything, we realised that we knew even LESS about the human body than before because the genome didn't provide a magical blueprint to fix all our biological ills. We got a list of ingredients, but still don't know how to put it all together. Answers to questions about gene expression and protein folding still remain, and the research for them continues as they did before using the same old wet lab techniques.

One thing biologists did learn from the HGP was how useful computers were. That was actually what I studied in university: computational biology.
This has nothing to do with cowboys and everything to do with being a narcissist. I wish more people would recognize this.
Introduction to Design Studio Methodology
Only happens if OpenLDAP is not secured by Kerberos or SSL... I don't see this as very common in the first place (ie, cleartext over the wire for auth?!).
Sounds like a confidence issue. With more experience under your belt, you can go into an interview feeling in command of the situation.

When you feel truly confident in your skills, in interview situations you'll make it sound like the only rational thing they can do is hire you. That kind of confidence will come with time.

Good luck. You're on your way.
Dealing with encodings in Ruby is a pain in the ass, let us help you
Android dev making 2k a month? Come to the Bay, you'll make 5x that.
What the hell am I doing? Take the good job or try for gusto
What the hell am I doing?

I suffer from blue skies. An absolute abundance of ever growing ideas. I have no idea where they come from, how to manage them, or what specific idea to run with. I've tried a number of different approaches, but as soon as i'm set, a new better idea with less obstacles or barriers to entry pops into my head. It's a never ending story.

The second struggle lies with job opportunities - Do I take the sweet ass job or try to launch the kick ass startup? Sweet for my resume and working with cool peeps VS hustling day and night to make cool shit.

A few months back, the startup I was working with folded shop. My heart was set on launching my own startup. A few people I admire recommended contract work and building my local network. I took their advice and started to offer my services to other local companies and agencies. Over the last few weeks, these small contracts have led to some interesting conversations with companies I used to dream about working for. It feels like a huge cross road, and each door could lead to a different place.

A lot of close friends think I'm a complete asshole (the ones with creative burnout or the ones that apply year after year to become an intern would die to work for one of these companies), stating with no direction and discipline I'm destined to fail...

Question 1 - do you have any advice or personal stories on how to navigate the deep never ending blue skies. How to focus on one or two ideas? Do I just need to suck it up and never talk about the deep sea of blue skies. There must be people out there suffering the same problem... yet people don't like to talk about it as if everyone has it figured out, understands the value of each idea they discover.

Question 2 - how on earth did you decide between the really good job at a really good company VS going balls deep trying to launch a startup with no money and too many ideas.

I sound like pompous 18 year old... Any help with my predicament is appreciated.
There is also AlmostTI for those rare N900 owners, http://fms.komkon.org/ATI85/

hmm.. there is a link to an Android port.. installing now.
This solves absolutely no problem that I have ever had in my life.
From anecdotal experience, it does seem like Portland is drawing a lot of talented folks. It is definitely a "bike to work, complain at city hall and drink obscure beer" crowd, but is that such a bad thing?
Oh, I'd hoped the pun would save it. Alas!
Remember Sun’s ROCK? IBM Delivers First Transactional Memory
I had to upgrade to continue using the latest Xcode, although I'm not running that on Server.
Real Engineers use Curtas!
Why do you care about this local stuff? Is there anything special about the particular part of the earth you are living in?
LOL, no
Intel predicts 10GHz chips by 2011
Thanks,

Yes i agree, we would have it as an app and a website.
A Different Kind of GUI
It really should be logical implication '⇒', shouldn't it.
Where to Find Out Ladies Armani Sunglasses?
This is the second Russian rocket failure in a week. On 18 August, a Proton vehicle put a telecommunications satellite in the wrong orbit. In December, another Proton failure resulted in top Russian space agency officials losing their jobs.

Here's hoping that SpaceX can fill the gap - they're due to do the first delivery in November: http://www.spacex.com/updates.php
flip into a mobile app for stock photos and live coverage

Useful for bloggers and news outlets looking for recent pictures of a location or event.. get paid per use
It's sort of disappointing to see the company that has by far the highest standards for ads be the one targeted. There are still so many terrible and scammy ads and ad networks out there, that making an example of Google just because they're the biggest seems too bad.

Also, wow, that's a lot of money. Does anyone know where money generated by lawsuits and fines goes?
There's definitely increased activity, but I think it falls short of being a scene (I say this as someone looking on from Hillsboro). I guess I'm looking for a larger VC to set up shop, rather than visit from somewhere else.
hi, one of the guys behind Messagify here. we're trying to make it easier to to build messaging apps, starting with commenting. much like what Disqus did for blog comments, we want to do for web apps in general. i'll be happy to answer any questions.
I'll repost the comment I left on the article:

I used a TI-66 as an undergrad (Purdue - Computer Technology), but I graduated from college(the first time) in 1988. Was great that I could program in frequently used equations. Later as an MBA student I picked up an HP 19Bii Business Consultant Calculator for all the financial functionality.

They let you use a calculator on the SAT now? That is my "You kids get off my lawn" moment of the story.

Oh, and https://www.xkcd.com/768/
It would be nicer to see people purchasing raw
ingredients and cooking food at home

I'm trying to do that, but it's pretty hard and time consuming.

I don't know how people do it -- I mean, I can cook and sometimes it is delicious, but it's nothing worst than waisting 2 hours on something and then at the end to find out that I blew the dish for some reason.

I also cannot eat the same food for more than 2 days in a row.

So if anybody knows some book on food recipes that are easy to cook, I'd be grateful -- keep in mind though that I'm a carnivore that hates pizza/pasta (love grilled stuff :)).
I'm well aware that 0.13% is for the next year. The survival probability on Wolfram Alpha, however, doesn't take more specific statistics into account. The only things the data have are race, age, and sex. My supposition is if it took more interesting things into account (socioeconomic class, general health, commute patterns, drug use, etc) my actual probability of death before age 30 is no more than 0.1%. I'm not worried.
Show me a $70 smartphone that can run for months on a single charge, looks fine without a backlight, and has instant response time, and I'll use it to replace my TI-83.

Maybe. I'm not sure I want my calculator showing an alert about what my friends are doing tonight when I'm trying to focus.
Actually, I started working on something like this last week, as a pet project to keep me busy. In essence, what you need is a basic programming language that's geared a little bit more towards mathematics (so you can do little things like 2log(n) instead of 2 * log(n) and actually use π as a constant instead of something like Math.PI), a REPL and a way to graph functions. That's feature equivalence, and that's easy.

The cool part is when you start thinking about how to innovate on top of that. Then you can add things like:

* the ability to display and remember the results of a whole range of calculations on a single screen instead of always having to write stuff down or bring back old calculations, e.g. http://stuff.stdout.be/graphcalc.png (think iPad app)

* the ability for teachers to follow along on their own screen as you're doing calculations, to help out, maybe even allow teachers to take over control (remotely) to show stuff

* save calculations and make little reports, which could serve as homework

* slowly learn general-purpose programming along the way, simply by having the thing based off a language like CoffeeScript instead of Texas Instruments' own half-assed TI-BASIC.

* extensions for physics and chemistry, so it's not just about math

I don't know if it'd really make sense as a startup (tablets are still too expensive and the nice thing about graphing calculators is that they're small and people can't browse the internet on them) but the whole "let's try to reinvent some ancient technology using modern tools" thing is pretty fun.

If anybody else is looking for a weekend hack project, I'd gladly open-source what I have thus far.
I think that was the intention: (tech == man revived) returns true :)
This got downvoted but is a perfectly valid question, since LDAP->OSX authentication is used virtually exclusively on internal networks where the assumption needs to be that attackers can see network traffic anyways.
And what % of people writing software write that kind of software? It's a really small number.

What % of doctors have an impact on the health of their patients? Almost all.

We are dealing with statistics here.
Might want to add that the soyuz rocket was carring a progress spacecraft, not a manned soyuz craft.
It's been known for just under a month, since five days after OS X Lion was released, so that interpretation of his statement seems incorrect.
I was referring to not selling fake Cisco gear but the theft of Cisco router code and using it on Huawei's routers. According to some estimates 40% of the code on those routers were Cisco's. This was a famous case and everybody knew about it but Cisco couldn't do anything!
You have to use VBScript - that's what Hyperion expects.

I think the main barrier is that you need to be a competent developer (mod working in VBScript) and know a hell of a lot about financial consolidation and know about how Hyperion is typically implemented in organisations.

It's those combination of skills that I suspect is pretty rare and if you don't have the domain and application knowledge then no amount of technical skills is likely to compensate.

Believe me - my respect for accountants has gone way up since I've been involved in integrating with HFM. I wouldn't dream of working on the guts of it - although we did build a reporting engine on top of the beast that is orders of magnitude better than what it comes with!
But he's in Poland. What about his expenses? I wonder if that would be multiplied by a number less or more than 5? (see other subthread here)
Does this have anything at all to do with the new California money transmission laws?
Not only higher sales, but probably also higher margins.
Thanks for your opinion ,

This is sort of a game, it is suppose to be a more social and fun way to share pictures with your friends
I kinda boggles my mind that they allow calculators on the SAT now. Some googling indicates that they are still prohibited on the GMAT.
FYI, that "marketing savvy" involved going to door to door and giving homeowners a free appraisal of the state of their chimneys, which would invariably collapse. Because apparently it's a lot easier to push over a chimney than it looks, especially if you are a bodybuilder. Schwarzenegger admitted this on the Johnny Carson show back in the 1980s.

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2007/04/your_multitask...
You cannot use general purpose device like tablet/smartphone in tests. I think more realistic market would be a integrated teaching and exam environment for desktop computers (yeah, those things still exist), with necessary math functionality built-in, but intentionally limited enough for educational purposes.

edit: I feel this is bit relevant: http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_m...
This makes me think of my first attempt at an iOS app.

I'd read about all the successes stories & decided to jump on the app store bandwagon.

After months of furiously working at learning Objective-C & Cocoa, development & testing, I released my creation on the app store and with high hopes and…

nothing.

It sank like a stone off the new releases page never to be seen again. I think it sold one copy in Egypt (thanks whoever you are!).

It was only as I sat scratching my head over why my crappy ill conceived app hadn't set the world on fire & made me instantly wealthy that it occurred to me that without some sort of business & marketing plan I was wasting my time.
Do you love your body?
The most popular ARM arduino boards do NOT have any operating system (mBed and LeafLabs Maple) and operate bare-metal style like Arduino. These are growing in popularity much faster than you might think. The user experience isnt quite as smooth as Arduino, the community is smaller but growing, and the products are 30-100% more expensive, but in return you get 5 times the processing power and lots of other feature goodies.

There are some other products out there running .NET runtimes and basic real time OSs as well, but these have not really caught on.

Add an operating system into the mix, and as you said its a whole different ball game. That said, 700MHz is a lot of room to try and add a real-time Arduino style layer with access to GPIOs and such. You probably wont get 1MHz real time, but you can probably get 100KHz real time, which is fine for MOST things. Plus you get a network stack, and a display driver, etc. etc. to boot. Of course it cant be done for $25 (that is silly unless the project is nonprofit AND subsidized with charity or advertising dollars), but I would believe $70.

The software for such a device would not be anywhere near trivial to get right, but there is a neat product in there somewhere that a team of 3 or 4 could probably get going rather swiftly.

Of course, on a Maple or an FPGA you can really get crazy - with output timings accurate into the 36MHz and 150MHz range (respectively).
OK, on reflection this is excessively snarky.

The background for my comment: I've been peripherally involved with SEO for a couple of years now, and although I cherish my white-as-the-driven-snow reputation I know some folks socially who, well, don't. It's an open secret that a huge amount of the internet advertising market is a hive of scum and villainy. We often refer to it as PPC, which in this context means "porn, pills, casino", although there are other industries which have varying levels of sketchiness associated with them -- Make Money Online, government grant scams, ringtones and other rebilling fraud, etc etc etc.

Google has, since the inception of AdWords, made billions of dollars off of these. No joke.

Now, the government is often slow on the uptake, but they're not unaware of this. So here's a conversation which has virtually certainly taken place before:

Government: I see you're advertising X.

Google: We are?

Government: See here.

Google: Oh we are.

Government: You can't advertise X.

Google: We'll get right on that.

12 months pass

Government: You're still advertising X. Did you "get on it?"

Google: Oh yeah, we put some new heuristics in place.

Government: What does a heuristic mean?

Google: The computers guess whether that text means X and if it does, we don't advertise it.

Government: The heuristics seem to be missing quite a bit of X.

Google: Yeah, that happens.

Government: What do you mean "that happens"?

Google: No heuristic is 100% perfect.

Government: OK then, you need to have a human review these to make sure they aren't X or Y or Z.

Google: We don't do that.

Government: ... excuse me?

Google: We prefer scalable methods to manage our advertising programs. After all, there are only about ten thousand of us and we only make tens of billions of dollars with 35% margins.

Government: ... what?

Google: So you see, we won't manually review ads.

Government: This account, how much money has it spent on your ads while not being manually reviewed?

Google: SQL query About a hundred thousand dollars.

Government: Your compliance is not optional. Do you know who we are?

Google: Do you know who we are?

Government: You might think that was a cunning retort but, well, not really.

Edit for P.S.

Speaking of which, take a look at Aaron Wall's screenshot of an AdSense interface which allows you to opt out of having various seedy industries on your website.

http://www.seobook.com/how-make-easy-money-google
Bit Literacy: The Elements of Style for the digital age.
I live in Houston, so it is more feasible for me than for most, but I tried to leave the location vague for discussion purposes.

Bringing some manufacturing capacity back to the regional level is exactly my objective. Specifically, product runs on the order of 5000 units, with a modest bill of materials, using open specs that lend themselves to lower cost redesign and re-purposing.
How we build Web 2.0 apps with just PL/SQL
> LLCs are pass through entities. No additional taxes.

Are they pass-through to foreign entities?
I live in Eugene OR. I am dying for a Ruby users group, or coworking spot, or anything! There is no sign of a tech scene at all here!
Meanwhile, over in Europe: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/

Geogebra is open source and funded with EU grants. They're about to launch version 4, I think, but I don't care because v5 has been in stable beta for the last 6 months.
The rates of £2k per day are most likely for finance workers in the front or middle office – these are not tech contractors.
Nowhere in the article does it state that they are anything to do with the technology department.
From that perspective, £2k per day is a less surprising figure given that the permanent staff in these areas can easily earn £300k - £500k + depending on the role.
What Every Computer Science Major Should Know
MarketBrief (YC S11) Shows Media's Future: More Automation, Fewer People
Cool reverse auction idea
Optimize Last is Wrong, Sort Of
We're glad you got out too. :)
I fork bombed it. This is the output:

result: time limit exceeded	time: ∞ memory: 2720 kB signal: 9 (SIGKILL)
> The place was filthy and dilapidated

I can't say it seems any more so than other large cities I've visited, like SF, Seattle, or LA. What are you comparing it to?

> Seeing people covered in tattoos and piercings gets old and tiresome for some reason.

Yeah, if this isn't your thing the Portland might be wrong for you ;) Still, there are suburbs and such where this isn't the norm.
Based on how long they took to upgrade the Galaxy S (Captivate) to 2.2, no. That may have been mostly due to AT&T's involvement, though.
Sorry to hi-jack the thread slightly. But where can i find out information about creating a shell company? I am in a country outside of the US. Thanks
It's not always obvious what the applications of advances in physics will be until long after they happen. Do you think that Maxwell could have possibly foreseen the depth of the impact that electricity and magnetism would have on mankind? Did Einstein expect that general relativity would allow for timing corrections in GPS satellites? Did Heisenberg realize the potential impact of a scanning tunneling microscope?

Basic physics research has a long history of leading the way for technological advances. I expect that, in one way or another, this trend will continue in the future.