skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This has such a competitive price point that I think it'll do relatively well. I know it can watch movies, play music, browse, etc., do all these tablet things, but I'd definitely like to see it A) execute on those things (especially the browser) and B) have the apps so I don't feel left out for owning a non-iOS device all the time. I'm hoping this gets a high enough market share that Android developers start porting more iOS-only apps over.
My definition of success is to work on doing what I like full time while keeping the bills paid. That's my goal.

I hope things work out for you. Keep us posted!
Humble Indie Bundle back with Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle
You don't need ;; to terminate an expression (except when using the REPL).
I just want to add that I found it very difficult to stay on the treadmill for any amount of time due to boredom. I bought a treadmill for home ( Sole F80 - very nice machine) and put a TV w/ cable and a dvd player in front of it. What really keeps me going though is the Xbox 360 with multiplayer matches of Call of Duty and a boom box w/ custom mixed CDs. I can get so immersed in that game that I don't notice the 40 minutes to an hour of running.
Can't you just accept that some people simply don't like the look?

I own a a single silk tie and one nice dress shirt. I never wear them unless business needs require it. I don't even have a suit that still fits. I'm normally dressed in a T-shirt/collared shirt and either jeans or slacks -- IIRC, that's what I got married in! My clothes fit properly, they're simple, (I usually only wear solid colors) clean and comfortable. As far as I'm concerned, I'm well dressed, if informal. What exactly is wrong with that?
We dress great. We just have different std of "better".
A programmer from a very large computer company went to a software conference and then returned to report to his manager, saying: ``What sort of programmers work for other companies? They behaved badly and were unconcerned with appearances. Their hair was long and unkempt and their clothes were wrinkled and old. They crashed our hospitality suite and they made rude noises during my presentation.''

The manager said: ``I should have never sent you to the conference. Those programmers live beyond the physical world. They consider life absurd, an accidental coincidence. They come and go without knowing limitations. Without a care, they live only for their programs. Why should they bother with social conventions?

``They are alive within the Tao.''

2.3 - http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to (not getting kicked out of) Coffee Shops
Agreed. This would be way cooler if it took total tweet density into consideration so that it wasn't always London, NY and LA.
I don't know what to say. But I believe they are up to something much bigger than just using the data for ads.
Can't we wait for reviews of the actual shipping product before making sweeping conclusions about its pros and cons?
Sam is one of the sharpest product guys I've ever met. YC office hours with him are always valuable.
As a former marketing manager I think you simply wrote the most wonderful product pitch I have ever read. You rock!!!
I wouldn't charge my laptop in anyone's office (or home) without asking them and receiving permission. I don't see what's absurd about this.
> Not everyone will buy an iPad but some will when they see it plays games, has a richer app experience, has a larger display and so on.

The kindle fire can play games and has a rich app experience thanks to android. The only thing the ipad has going for it is the larger display. Time will tell if people care about that.
I don't think he was trying to "feed into our culture's (literally) deadly skinny-worshipping obsession." When most people buy t-shirts, they don't buy well fitted t-shirts. That goes for both fat and really skinny and tall people (i was part of the skinny and tall). I found that once I started working out a few times a week, I was actually able to fit in my clothes better. They wouldn't be so frickin' loose on me anymore. So on the contrary, I think his argument applies to both fat and skinny, and his observation has dual intent: be more healthy and fit better in your clothes.
So it does! My bad.
Part of the problem is that it overrides extremely low-level things like cd. That can get in your way pretty badly if there's a bug, or just a feature you don't understand.
Interesting detail: an official-looking "Java TM Powered" swirly cup logo on the bottom right of the Quick Start guide for the new Kindle: http://kindle.s3.amazonaws.com/KindleQuickStartGuide.pdf

(also in that PDF, a figure that shows the bottom side with micro USB socket and power switch, which was what I was looking for)
It's not about respect. It's about taste.

Ira Glass was once asked about how he became a great radio host [1]. His response was that he continued to work on his craft even when he knew it was terrible. Knowing your work is terrible is crucial because it means that you have taste - you know what needs to be done, and you know what would fulfill it, even if you don't have the ability to execute it.

Style is about taste. And note, style is not equivalent to 'dressing up'. Style is knowing what pieces go together to create an aesthetically pleasing form. Style is knowing your body type, your personality, and your needs and putting together outfits that compliment and combine those strengths.

When developers get made fun of for not dressing up, it's not because you're wearing a t-shirt and jeans. It's because you've put no thought into which t-shirt with what jeans. There's no thought about how the pieces fit together. There's no taste.

Taste is critical for us because it's what makes or breaks a product. What makes Apple great? Taste. What let Instagram beat out the plethora of other photo apps? Taste. What allowed Facebook to take over MySpace? Taste. Taste is what will give me confidence that when you are on my team, you will do exactly what is necessary to make us win.

Taste is imperative. Take every chance to show that you have it.

[1] http://kottke.org/11/04/your-taste-is-why-your-own-work-disa...
My definition of success is to work on doing what I like full time while keeping the bills paid. Lots of people succeed in this. My hope is that a game company is a feasible route towards this goal.
A hybrid screen is a great idea, but the tech must just not be ready for mass production, especially in the sub-iPad price range.
Kindle uses 600x800 screen. eInk HD which is used on new Sony and iRiver readers would be better for pdf reading.
That would be great.

However, I'm afraid in this age we're condemned to our specific specialization for life. For every job, to get a job at all, years of experience ('XX years of YY specific recent buzzword experience') is generally required. Even for things a flexible, intelligent person could easily learn on the job given some time and hard work.

You could probably switch career once with a lot of hassle, but 'trying your hands at various jobs for a few months or years' sounds very optimistic...
And we want to prevent that. Just because it benefits ONE guy or one small group, does not mean its a good idea. It just means that one guy will suffer and have to actually work for a living while the rest of us have a chance.
Still no native epub support. What is Amazon waiting for?
Business Insider responds to Marco's complaints about scraping
If you live in Portland and are interested in working with him on it, there are short work sessions. http://pin13.net/2pj
Definitely something we've considered for a future enhancement. Our summer intern worked on this map over the last few days and we wanted to release it before he headed back to the UK later this week.
Nope, just make SMS an optional field, along side with your email marketing. SMS is all about the ROI, with a 97% open rate, it's hard NOT to do it.

If you're a spammer, yes you'll destroy a relationship. If you're an ethical marketer and find the correct opportunities to use SMS, you'll see some great results.

Not sure I understand "quit trying to destroy your customer relationships with sms marketing?" What do you mean by that?
>Also, I know a lot of hackers who do go to the gym or otherwise keep active and look just fine in a t-shirt.

The way i understood it, that was his point as well. Unless you mean to say "...who don't go to the gym..."
Thanks for the link and the encouragement!
I'm not surprised that they decided not to launch the Fire tablet outside the US. At $199 they have to be selling near cost in the US, hoping to make their profit on media sales. Amazon's media stores are minimal at best outside the US. They still don't sell music or video in Canada, for example. Amazon is going to have a hard time playing at the same level as Apple until they step up their legal game and treat the rest of the world as more than an afterthought.
Just be careful bouldering as a beginner. It's really easy to try something that you don't have the hand strength/tendon strength for yet and tweak something. Some gyms have autobelays which let you climb without a partner, so that might be an option.
If it fits well, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I'm just trying to get fellow developers to move beyond the T-shirt/hoodie uniform.
I'd presume that this is just to drain any stock of the K3 they have left.
Evolutionary algorithms are fun. I solved a laser ablation modeling problem with them. The idea was to improve the quality of the produced data, by applying what knowledge of the process we had.

Laser ablation measurements work something like this:
Sample -> Ablation -> Measurement -> Data

Since there are several distortions that happen in the middle two steps, you of course get a distorted measurement. You'd like to get the Sample from the Data.

Since we know pretty well what happens in the middle two steps, I evolved my theoretical Sample by starting with random data, running it through the model of the middle two steps (ablation and measurement) and then comparing the modeled random data to the experimental data. The fitness function was exactly this difference between experimental and modeled data.

I took the best ones of each generation and crossed them over. I then added some mutations and watched the magic happen. It ended up taking most of the night for a very simple set (our experimental sets are mostly orders of magnitude bigger). I took screenshots of every new generation, and made a movie of the whole process. When I played the movie in the morning I had one of those rare and special Eureka! moments, when all that work pays off and then some.

I presented that movie at a conference and stole the show :)

Long story short, evolutionary algorithms are fun, but I failed to apply them at the required scale.
Side-by-side OOP comparison: F# vs C#
Hmm, I suppose that's true - I never click them either, if only because my eyes skip them unconsciously - but on the other hand, accepting $20 from my aunt or taking it from her wallet are very different, despite her ending up with the same money.
This seems sort of like CloudFlare built directly into the browser. Essentially, using EC2 as an http optimizing and caching proxy through which requests are routed. They might also geo balance traffic to the closest EC2 region.
I very very rarely do a search where I don't timeframe limit it. This makes me wonder why Google insist on hiding that option every time I visit the search page. I guess they want me to go somewhere else unless I'm going to log in.
CNTV report on a gold vending machine/ATM that accepts deposits.
So did you guys save a bunch of money before quitting and are hoping it succeeds or do you have outside funding?

Also, what avenues of marketing are you using?
Negatively judging someone for dressing poorly is as bad as judging someone for dressing well. For that reason, I can't agree completely with either side of the argument expressed in this thread.

With that said, it would be nice to wear a jacket/tie over jeans without feeling overdressed and negatively judged as a "suit" among developers. I agree with the sentiment that developers should wear whatever the fuck they want, but does that not include dressing well?
an employee who insists that he be judged upon his technical abilities and otherwise left alone has an "attitude problem?"

i'll take someone with that attitude problem over a doormat any day.
You touch on this, but to be explicit we should note that between respect and disrespect there's indifference. I'm indifferent towards most people. It's when they cross into the "nuisance" range that I take offense.

Much the same way I would find it disrespectful if you were talking on your phone too loudly in close quarters or if I overheard you making a racist comment to your friend, I would take offense if you're clothes showed me too much of you or if they gave off some sort of smell. A lack of care of how one's behavior affects those around them is, by definition, disrespectful.
Daily Mobile Minute: Square ruffles the NFC bandwagon
I use the keyboard quite a lot, for writing notes. It's amazing how reading a non-fiction book is so much more rewarding if you make highlights and notes. If you're thorough, you can read just your highlights and notes and effectively re-read the same book a year down the line in about 10% of the time; and still refresh your memory well.
eBook prices were artificial to begin with. Amazon was known to take a loss when necessary to set the price ceiling at $9.99, which (as you can imagine) would hurt competitors who couldn't absorb losses like that.
Ok, thank you for trying that.
The requirements line has been there since the K1. Not an explicit jab at Apple as much as "this isn't complex technology, relax".
Multiple reasons:

* It gives you a convenient place to stash extra config options in your project. For example, instead of having to type (and remember!) -tag pkg_oUnit, it's just in the Makefile. You can't forget something that's been saved in a text file!

* It gives you a single point of entry for "other" tools which may be added later -- documentation generation, packaging, installing as a library or Debian package. I personally like all of that recorded in one file so I have to search around less.

* As an expository project, it's helpful to show off clear examples of ocamlbuild itself -- the syntax is different enough that someone just starting out in the language may not be able to grok the documentation enough to just get something running.
I like the new twist where you only get the extra games if you beat the average. It's always pained me a little bit to see how low the averages have been on these things for some quality games. I understand that the participants in these bundles are willing to accept those prices or they wouldn't do this so it's not as if they're unfair or anything, but I'd hope that people would have given better value judgments. I hope this new twist helps!
Re. "textual fingerprinting" -- this is a well-established field (decades old), especially in forensics. It more commonly goes under the name "authorship attribution".

For a taste, see e.g. http://www.ncfta.ca/papers/emailforensics.pdf or http://ai.arizona.edu/intranet/papers/isi_visualizing_author... .
> Now, it may be that stripping developers of power is the best way to create good software (we've all seen the god awful usability of some developer-created software). But let's not pretend that this is empowering for the developer, as the author suggests Scrum is.

That depends on what you mean by "empowering". Do you mean it in the sense that the developer has the final say on what a program does (i.e. feature set)? Do you mean that the developer has the final say on how it is implemented (i.e. architecture)? I would argue that the developer should NOT have the final say on what a product does, but SHOULD have the final say in how it does it. Product designers decide WHAT it does and how it should look to the customer. The developer's job is to turn that product design into a reality using intimate knowledge of technologies and architectures, and alerting designers to the reality of what developing according to their design involves (time + effort), and coming to a compromise if it's too heavy.

> But isn't Agile (of which scrum is part) partly about putting a product out there and seeing how users or customers respond. There is a built in acceptance that some new features are not going to work but you never know until they have been tested out by the end users.

Absolutely. If you build something and it doesn't work for your customers, throw it out. If you can't handle that, you're ego focused, not customer focused.

> That is kind of my point. Developers don't get the chance to write software for other people. They don't have any say how the software actually works, by which I mean the user journeys, the feature set etc because they have been reduced to simply turning the fickle ideas of product owners into a reality.

It seems to me that you want to be the product designer AND engineer. That's fine since you have the abilities of both, but that's not the common case. The ability to write code does not magically confer the ability to design good products.

And even then, scrum will help you because you can track the morphing of your designs into concrete products, do the estimation, prioritization, feature cutting, tracking, and do all the throwing out and redesigning of your own stuff as customers respond positively or negatively to your product refinements. And then at the end of it all you can decide how well the process is working in a retrospective, and refine it to work better for you. Scrum is a meta-process; It helps you BUILD a process that works for you, and provides a convenient starting point that works fairly well in general.
Except Amazon's CDN and hosting resources dwarfs wordpress.com

I mean they aren't even using an amazon subdomain or their own domain - it all looks like an afterthought someone had this week "oh yeah we should have a blog, where can I set one up in a few minutes".
http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

"But the most successful founder we've funded so far, Sam Altman, was 19 at the time."

"I realized these tests existed after meeting Sam Altman, actually. I noticed that I felt like I was talking to someone much older."
I'm going to slightly counter brildum's statements and point out that I was unable to stay on a bouldering climb for something like six months after I started top-rope climbing. I just didn't have the strength (less important) and skill (more important).

Admittedly, I have known a few people who've gone straight into bouldering and pulled it off. Give it a try. If you can, great.

By the way, one of the best things about rock climbing is the social aspect. You should look at partnering as an opportunity rather than a hindrance. I've made a lot of good friends at the gym over the years.
Equally unsettling is the potential of people tracking enabled by the government's increased use of surveillance cameras and large database of photo ids.
Advantages:

-cheap devices (the fire?) get to see complex websites

-server side webgl?

-server side java applets?

Disadvantages:

-you partially browse the web on Amazon's cloud so Amazon can track your behaviour (and your data)

-your site is part of an internal network that can only be accessed using a vpn from the outside world? bad luck.

-you have to buy a cheap device to see a real pageload speed,considered that you should get your data from amazon anyway

-if the world uses ec2 for browsing its performance will probably suffer

if you have the ipad you can test a lot of similar apps anyway,like puffin or skyfire,and see if you would like it,I prefer the native browser myself,yet I know that the infrastructure would be better in theory.
It's not as cut and dry as that. Google does try to determine if a hidden element is being used for wrong intentions but there are many valid uses of this. I've seen them mention this many times.

A number one, perfectly valid usage is for dropdown menus. Naturally you want them hidden until activated via hover.

There's also many, many other ways of hiding elements. You can make the position of the element absolute and move it off the page from site. I think you could also make any overflow hidden and then make element 1px in width and height. There's also the infamous 'same foreground and background colours' trick. The list can and does continue.

This isn't really considering JS which opens up even more avenues to hide content either.

I think to truly have an idea of what's maliciously hidden, the fully rendered page would have to be analysed. I think there are instances where this is being done but this is edging towards theory and away from concrete facts.
Samsung, Microsoft Patent Sharing Deal Strikes a Blow to Google
That's 100% of the same user base who have to deal with a more complex user interface with more usability snafus and one that evolves less well. If you make a couple of dozen such UI changes based on similarly narrow evidence of improvement, you will end up with a mess.
They don't. They told the tech blogs (512MB), but it's nowhere in their marketing materials.
"Can I ask you why?"

Sure! You're definitely right about jumping into bed with FB. What bothers me isn't just a cavalier attitude toward privacy—it's linking up everything I do online into one massive database trail. If company A is lousy with privacy, as are companies B and C, that's not great, but what feels worse is having all of them linking everything one does together.

Also, I realize this is already happening anyway—I recently installed Ghostery after seeing a Hacker News comment about it: http://www.ghostery.com/ . At least using it allows one to fight back to some limited extent by blocking a lot of trackers, sprites, and so forth.
Webmasters and developers of server-side software are extremely lazy, so that just isn't going to happen.

Also, that would require standardization which has a pretty high cost.
The Cisco Brand Identity Book and Guidelines
You managed to be pretty condescending about it:

* You used the language of "better", not "different", of "honest self-improvement" and "challenging yourself", leaving implications hanging about people who decide not to do these things

* You literally say you can't see an "excuse" for developers not to dress differently.

* "You're building the future, so dress like it" (also note that in addition to being condescending, this is also an ineffective rhetorical strategy, since it begs the answer "we are dressing like it, dude")

* You argue that most hackers can't wear their single most common article of clothing because of body type.

You reference _Put This On_ twice in your post. _Put This On_ is, not to put too fine a point on it, a hobbyist blog. These are people who spend their weekends at thrift shops hunting for specific brands of clothes. It's also a blog that routinely finds ways to write takedowns of celebs who clearly spend time and effort dressing themselves; the blog advocates a distinctive style. I read and enjoy _Put This On_ (they're great writers), but you might concern yourself with the fact that you're effectively inflicting your hobby on other people.
Ubuntu broke so now I use Windows
You can add a "+" before a quoted phrase to enforce a strict search, but share some of these same frustrations.
Please stop drinking 44oz sodas from Circle K. They're harming you.
The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle
I wanted to hear some opinions. Checking out his talk at Startup School 08 now. Any other recommendations?
Mobile Devs: Objective-C Cheat Sheet
I'm not sure citing Tim Ferriss' work while advocating for developers to change their habits, helps with the credibility of your argument.

His body of work is infamous for being poorly researched, counter to a quality that technical people, like software engineers, value.
I use kindle technical books, but read them on the iPad and Mac.

The small kindles aren't really appropriately sized for them, and the Kindle DX isn't cheap enough to me not just buy another iPad.
Sounds like a Kindle is then a no-no for tech books :(. Thanks for the words of wisdom, HN.