skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As someone who doesn't presently have TV in my lifestyle (we have a couple old CRTs in the basement that are unplugged, but nothing we use), I'm not sure how low prices would have to go to make me pick one up. I'm not sure that the quoted prices are low enough.

That said, it's pretty awesome that it's only a matter of time before plasmas are cheap enough to have in every room of your house, should you desire to do that.
Because in an economic down turn where lending is tight to non existent cash means flexibility that your competitors can't buy in the form of a cheap loan.
Very interesting. I would be interested in hearing more about this. Can you leave your email? Mine is yongqli@10gic.net
10 Tips for Building Revenue in the Ad Recession
The U.N. redux
Right, of course; in my case, I've got an EAD through my wife's company, so I've probably got more latitude than yourself.
Let me get this straight... You want to spend $700bn exploring and trying to settle on some rocks in space when our own economy is bleeding itself to death?

I'm not sure how you manage your priorities, but flushing $700bn down the space toilet when your country has a major economic crisis on its hands isn't quite the best use of $700bn either.
About the project (did you like the idea and the implementation?) and about the fact of opensourcing it. Any critics and thoughts in general are welcome.
It could be that our current plan ends up "pissing 700bn into deep space" regardless.
Apple doesn't pay a dividend...
To make the statement that arc has failed with credibility, you'd need the following:

1. A completed version of arc
2. 100 years since 1.
I will like to say that this is because of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai's Vision!
You can, but I can't think of any reason to do so, which is why I mentioned it.
The Artistic License
UPDATE: Found the site. I feel stupid now. Here's the full text though:
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/mobile.pdf

OLD:

I found that, but I still can't find the full text of the report. It looks like all they have is a link to FAS's main site, so I'm currently digging through their site. If anyone has the link to the report, they'd be much appreciated.
Does sunlight induce 'psychological well-being' only by its energy in the visible spectra, or are there components outside the range to which eyes are sensitive that have an effect?
Obviously I can't be sure, but I think the level of success had by nonproliferation of nuclear technologies is indicative of what we could expect from that, and I don't see any strong evidence of it.
Sure, you can contact me at bjasper@gmail.com

I'd be more than happy to go over in more detail some of the stuff I just mentioned. Getting into natural language processing gets difficult extremely fast, so I'm not sure how well I can explain that stuff.
If everyone regularly backed up their data, this would be less of an issue.
For what it's worth: I use OSX, L8inux (all sorts of distros), XP and Vista daily. And personally I find Vista WAY above XP in terms of compatibility and stability.

But then this is a circular argument - because it is totally dependant on individual preference & experience.

For me Linux and Vista are both not perfect and both have their (equally annoying) niggles. I use Vista for gaming and general use at home and Linux at work (& at home as servers and other uses).
Like which Lisp did?
Web Security Horror Stories: The Director's Cut
Why not just continue the good software that works theme, it seems enterprise is always code for big and bloated
generated code

to convert stuff to explicit true/false
Assuming it's some kind of a man-made aircraft, is there any aerodynamic advantage to the saucer shape?
http://sciencehack.com/
Not to defend the theater aspect, but my (rather limited) understanding of effective security interview involves a series of questions and evaluation of performance across the responses. A single question by itself may not have much inherent meaning, but the composite can be quite effective.

Can be. Not saying that's what they are doing in this instance.
Every day that I use OS X I become more infatuated with it. It isn't perfect, but it's as close to as I've come using any computer.

With Vista, I'm out of love the minute I see needless chrome on the windows. The same with the graphical Linux interfaces I've used. There's the first real biggie. The 1px border design from Apple is one that I absolutely love, and it makes every other design I've ever seen look stupid and outdated.

The menu bar up top and the dock makes for the second thing. Both of them are so incredibly utilitarian. You don't get menus cluttering up every window. The fact that every menu usually complies with HIG and has the exact same keyboard shortcuts is another absolute wow gee love situation. It shouldn't be, but it is. I love knowing that CMD-, opens up preferences for every single application. I love being able to find what I want easily, because the menus are so standardized. And the dock made me hate the taskbar, because it makes the taskbar seem so incredibly outdated and useless. OS X doesn't just provide visuals. It provides a visual interface. Things make logical sense with it: they attempt to simulate a real physical interaction. Like the one I mentioned before: when you have a window open, the fact that you can move whatever file that window represents just by moving the window. Or the ability to move things to and from the dock, to use the dock as a storage space. Little things that just make perfect sense.

Vista will not stop telling me to restart my computer. There is no "Fuck you, I'll install when I'm ready* option. It keeps popping up, and it keeps coming up as I'm hitting Enter for something else, and it keeps pissing me off.

The Zune looks pretty, I'll agree. I don't like its scroll mechanism. And what about the Zune software is better than iTunes? I'm not denying you: I've just never used the Zune software, and I love iTunes. I'd be curious as to what the Zune program does better.
the iphone has outlook integration, yes. But the /brand/ is overall, a luxury consumer brand. People pay (or used to pay, depending on which sites you read) the "apple tax" to use OSX and etc.

Apple uses style and design as key selling points and differentiators. Hence, the upscale nature of the brand. Apple will never sell anything that resembles an eMachine.
Physics Invader = Space Invader + Physics
If you'd been around in the Linux world 10 years ago, you would realize that, slowly but surely, open source developers are figuring this stuff out.
SUVs "may prove to be the industry’s undoing"
It was LHR->SFO. United also ask you where you're staying etc.

The other funny airport thing I had was just after the hand baggage restrictions got tightened. I had my hand luggage searched by hand, except I'd packed it so tightly with various gadgets, leads, electronics etc, the guy took one look when he opened it, and you could see his face/expression - "sod that, I'm not packing all that back in". And he closed it right up again.
My real problem with gnome the fact it is almost impossible to customize. They sacrifice customizability for usability, when I see no reason that some of the nicer customization features could be "hidden from plain view."

I recall Linus Torvalds complaining about GNOME for this exact reason. It seems that GNOME developers are making it less and lesss modifiable as time goes on.
I always thought that the founders had done it themselves (in fact I am SURE I read a book about the beginnings of Google that said so explicitly).

Actually it left me a bit disappointed to find that it had been "designed" :( Google always used to make me feel (as a crap graphic artist) that Home-brew logos COULD go a long way.
I think a lot of people are confusing "good UIs" with "pretty windows". When it comes to usability and general quality of the UI, Gnome has surpassed dumbed-down OSX UI long time ago, they just don't have pretty windows to win the masses.

I own a Mac and use it daily. I can't stand how poorly everything is made and how limited I am on a Mac compared to Ubuntu/Gnome. A few obvious examples:

- Non-resizeable windows (only one corner)

- Non-maximizale windows (the first lesson I learned on OSX - never click on a green "+" button: generally you never know what's going to happen)

- File open dialog doesn't have a edit field for me to type a file name, so I can't quickly open /etc/whaterver when I need to.

- Spaces are dysfunctional: applications aren't isolated in their virtual desktops, all mixed up together in a giant Alt+Tab list

- Finder is a joke: nearly impossible to use without a mouse and its list of limitations is well known

- Poor support for FTP/SFTP

- Poor keyboard support (users are unable to assign hot keys they want, generally limited to a pre-defined list), many functions aren't available for keyboard users (cut/paste files, resize/move windows and many more). Hey, I can't even get to a specific top-level menu item from a keyboard. That's something even Windows 3.0 could easily do. Fuck, even most confirmation dialogs on OSX have keyboard disabled: you're forced to use the mouse to pick Yes/No/Cancel. Jesus...

- Poor window/application management. The concept of "every app can be switched to and everybody shares a menu" doesn't work, and stop pretending that it does. On my Mac I have only Safari running yet my "Alt-Tab" list is HUGE: it includes background-running Audim, Skype, Performance Monitor and Finder - 6 apps total with only one (!) visible window.

- Mandatory iTunes for everything. Probably the worst application I ever had to deal with on a daily basis.

I could go on and on forever. For instance I've failed to find a working solution that allows me to use Spotlight to pull up links I saved on del.icio.us. Gnome has it built-in.

The main reason I use my Mac is Safari and multi-touch: super-fast browser coupled with finger gestures for zoom, scroll and page flipping is awesome: worth tolerating general dumbness and poor usability of Leopard and apps that are bundled with it.

For prolonged coding sessions I fire up Ubuntu: everything is a keystroke away there. The only drawbacks are slow&buggy Firefox and the pathetic LCD on my Thinkpad.
When nginx proxies a request to Varnish, the response probably gets copied at least twice. If you had Varnish in front it would be zero-copy.
two responses:

"But there's still a crapload of money, billions in fact, in funds that HAS to be invested in new startups because its part of those fund's charter."

Disagree with this slightly. Yes, they will always invest in startups, but if they're feeling really skittish, you can bet that they'll hang onto the cash a bit longer than anticipated and be much more selective about what they invest in which translates to fewer deals. Sure, they still have the money, but if they're nervous about spending it, then that, from a startup's perspective, is no different than if their funds were miniscule. Obviously stand-out startups will receive money, but the requirements for what constitutes a stand-out startup are changing daily.

"While it's entirely reasonable to fund fewer startups because times are bad. It does not follow that a company that is worth funding should receive a lower valuation because of a bad economy."

I don't think that's true. If, collectively, the VC industry resets the valuation equation, startups will receive a lower valuation in the same way that, during boom times, startups receive higher valuations. If they can go up, they can certainly go down.
This is complete bullshit as well: "For Apple and Linux users, it's not enough to like Apple or Linux, you have to hate Microsoft too."

Obviously, there are many people running all three. Where do you even get that idea from?
It was funny. They should pare it down to a minute so they can get it on TV.
I think Gnome have got it right - your correct, they are just lacking the pretties.

But I think Ubuntu (and other distro) teams haven't made use of the Window managers well at all. Menu's, applications and other bits and pieces are just too confusing for the average Joe user.

UI extends even beyond the windows themselves.

As someone commented I think Linux devs are waking up to how important UI and user interaction is. But

- It's a mess, and a hell of a job to fix

- No one with the proper expertise is involved in the projects

- It's not a glamorous thing to be doing (compare to "cutting edge" stuff

- There seems to be this ingrained anti-M$ vibe that means no one can take influence from them. ?? UI is one thing M$ tend to do really well in Windows. They spend a LOT of money researching it.....
The price cuts probably aren't targetted at people who don't use and don't want to use a TV.
If NASA were allowed to keep the profits from its patents, it would more than pay for itself. Space exploration is a good investment, and I hope we start turning our eyes upward again.
I don't understand the "creature of Congress" slight. China and India both have government-controlled space programs, and they use far less subcontracting than we do.
Yes, it's invention of invisibility.
http://xpud.org/ is working on good UI.
I'm not trying to be this guy: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694 -- it's not something I'm serious about avoiding, my wife would love to have a decent TV, and I used to install them professionally and love the geeky aspects of home theater. I just don't know where I stand on the demand curve.

I can say these big + cheap TVs would be a lot more appealing to me if they were higher resolution -- this way I could use it as a decent computer monitor as well. The size and picture quality of a 50" plasma would be great, but (for example) the Panasonic one is 1366x768. I have pretty decent eyesight, and at any distance where that panel would feel immersive I could see the individual dots.
For home and small business users, everything does just work and no one is stopping you from buying a Mac. But getting a Mac at a large company is oftentimes out of the question because nothing interoperates. The stuff they're using now _needs_ Windows or IE, so you either gotta port, move to the web, or virtualize.
Gnome is better than XP, though I can't say the same for every Linux app.
And APJ Abdul Kalam...
One could argue that our economy is in the state its in because we lost sight of real innovation like space exploration and focused instead on trading little pieces of paper with each other that had imaginary money scribbled on them.

Dollar for dollar, space exploration is some of the best money humanity has ever spent. I won't bore you guys again with teflon and velcro and rivet-less fuselages and all of the other wonders that manned space flight has brought to us. Google does that just fine, but have a think about it every once in a while.
It's too bad they couldn't have taken about half the population of northern pakistan with.
Slideshare, That's not right - Ninad's (lazy) Blog
Exactly.
People lose Passion, Potential and Patience as they grow old beyond 58
I heavily disagree with this article. While most of the predictions have come "true", few of them have come to pass in a massively accessible way that I'm sure was the dream.

"Prediction: Everyone from architects to dressmakers will be able to make simulations of products - in 3-D."

This hasn't come true. While we have the CAD software needed to design objects and simulations in 3D, most are too expensive and require far too much training for just anyone to pick up and use.

"Prediction: Any artist will be able to do super-sophisticated animation or create images that look real."

Not true either. Not any artist, our software is FAR too difficult to use for that. An artist with months, if not YEARS of training, working in a large, well-funded team, yes, but 3D animation tools are FAR from the reach of the average person. I believe they envisioned software that understood the needs of the user so well that it would be a no-brainer to use.

My main impression from this article is that while we have made many things possible in the last 20 years, very little of it is accessible to the layman, and that is the greatest tragedy of the software industry I believe, the fact that we have all of this capable still locked up in confusing command-line applications. Nobody cares about usability, nobody cares about putting together something Joe the Plumber can use.
I was looking at the Stanford videos (specifically the David Rothkopf) mentioned above ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=344141 ). I just noticed that the online video has a subtitle option

Edit: and have transcripts too.
> When Windows 7 comes along, the press will be exactly the same as it was for Vista: Why switch when your programs already work on the old OS?

Yeah, but remember, if you didn't switch to Vista, you'll still be running XP (which was released in 2001-ish). So you'll have to switch to something soon. Sure, some people will switch to Apple, but upgrading to Win 7 will almost be the default option.

And if you did switch to Vista, then you'll probably move to Win 7 as well when it comes out. People could afford to ignore Vista because they were happy with XP, but they won't continue to be happy with XP indefinitely.
The link is an interesting comparison of Apple and Microsoft, but I don't understand why cash on hand is very meaningful. Cash isn't terribly profitable, otherwise I as a market player would just keep cash around directly instead of buying apple or microsoft. Too much cash can mean that the company is having a hard time finding valuable things to invest that cash in.

If microsoft wanted to, it could easily raise more cash by issuing more shares (or stopping the dividend as others have pointed out). The cash comparison is thus not meaningful.

That said, the comparison of real revenues and profits is tremendously interesting - Apple is within spitting distance of Microsoft on revenue and has a similar profit margin. The profit margin is what interests me. Microsoft has always enjoyed a bigger profit margin as a software company than as a hardware company. Apple is more of a hybrid, but has still managed to come away with a high profit margin.
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." -- Einstein
419 scam: Purporting Paul Graham
Those types of comments aren't appropriate in this forum. Save that crap for reddit.
So get a theme that has a 1px border. I don't really see a problem here.

Everyday I use OSX I become more infuriated with it. The main reason is because it's tied to _one_ hardware manufacturer which makes it kinda useless really especially when that manufacturer doesn't like to give you a whole lot of choice.

Also, here's something interesting too about your favorite OS. There are no less than 20 Application Launchers (replacements for Spotlight). It seems that the dock isn't such a great replacement for the Start menu / task bar combo. See here:

http://www.usingmac.com/2008/10/25/mac-application-launchers

Besides the fact that it's fucking impossible to find anything in the Dock if you have hundreds of programs installed, you can't easily see what's running since the only indicator is a very small blue dot.

This is why you simply can't use it to switch programs and I bet you don't. You probably use Expose. Well, I don't know about you, but when I'm mousing around a lot it takes me a second to switch back into keyboard mode, especially if the keyboard shortcut is something stupid like F10, F11 or F12. On Windows all I do is click on the taskbar item for the program I want. It's much, much quicker.

The dock is simply a marketing gimmick.

Also, if Vista continually tells you to restart, you're doing it wrong. I have a Vista box in my living room which has an uptime of about 3 months now since the last reboot. And there is nothing better than Vista Media Center, it kills Front Row in so many ways.
Good enough article, especially for "one step before" entrepreneurs.

Fabian
http://cupofstartup.blogspot.com/
don't think the market cares about self-relative performance. The fact that it's not superior right now is the issue.
Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein
Tsunami UDP Protocol -  for transfer over very high speed long distance networks
You know you've made it when... :-)
If you're a government conducting covert surveillance, and you use a plane or helicopter, and you are seen, the jig is up. If your craft is ufo shaped, no one will believe the witnesses.
BTW, lhorn made a comment above that has a much better list of stupidity that exists in OSX.
This is definitely good advice.

We went to several VC's and received fairly unpractical offers (well not unpractical: but it felt like they were trying it on for as much %age as they could get).

Trouble is if you play hard ball with them they seem to lose interest fast (I guess it's easier to go with other people who'll just take the cash as it's offered).

In the end we went with private investment - and I;d advise others to do the same. Yeh there is a lot less money in that area BUT if you get a few people invested then it cuts the individual percentage any one investor might have (always useful) and also means (with the right investors) you'll have a more personal relationship with your "money"

:D
The grammar! Please, blind me now before I read more.
This looks great, but I'd be hard pressed to use it on anything other than occasional headers until someone figures out a hack for copy/paste support.
There's an interesting note about amazon in there: "if Amazon intends to gain lock-in and true competitive advantage. . .".

The thing that's missing is any history of Amazon going for lock-in. In fact, Amazon looks like the anti-lock-in company. They allow their competitors to sell in their site, used products to be sold alongside their new products, etc. The closest thing to lock-in that Amazon has tried is Amazon Prime in which you pay for 2-day shipping in a lump sum rather than as you go.

Amazon's business has always been about efficiency and high-volume, low-margin. I don't see why their hosting business would end up different. In fact, Amazon seems perfectly comfortable with companies like RightScale selling on top of them.
If the major "enterprise" software vendors would make their "web-based" applications work in Firefox most of the problem would be solved. I write "web-based" because many of the "enterprise" "web-based" applications are really just a Java applet or ActiveX control running in a browser. And yes, I realize that Java applets should work in Firefox but some of the "enterprise" vendors managed to mess that up.

Office and an Exchange client (Entourage) already exist for the Mac. Macs can connect to Windows file shares. There are RDP clients for the Mac. VMware exists for the Mac (and works quite well).

What is missing?
entrepreneurs are always bailing the govt out. Elon musk is building all of NASA's rockets now.
Let us hope no literate people ever get into the 419 racket.
Am I missing it here or is this just using the electricity from solar cells to split water with electrolysis and then burning the hydrogen as fuel? Fuel cell aside, we've been able to do this since the early 40's.