skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
PC-based grid computing has already been made profitable. The trick is to make it both profitable and legal. Perhaps some variant on fast-flux name resolution could help with a particular subset of content delivery. Perhaps some other legal-but-Russian Business Network-inspired maneuver. Botnets are naturally limited because they're stamped out with extra vigor when they get big and famous; this could have staying power to leverage for tasks even Storm would've find impractical.
There go my funding plans...
Agreed.. 23andme could maybe win "commercialization of the year"..? But that's still stretching it.
The natural language approach to the form is fantastic, I just wish he took other usability considerations into account like font color and line width
If you're using twitter to engage people and not just push content then your name shouldnt matter much as it will show up in your @replies...

If, like most corporations, you still see twitter as a push tool then yeah you're screwed because people wont be able to type your brand name and find you.

Twitter seems to be pretty good about turning over trademarks though
I don't think it ignores usability at all; it seems very focused on it.
It is now part of a standard server ISO image.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

press F4 on the first screen and select "Install a minimal virtual machine"
It's steampunk web usability design!
For someone so concerned about layout I've always wondered why Knuth's recent news never have a date attached.
Use BitTorrent to Upgrade to Ubuntu ‘Intrepid Ibex’
Yes. Also watch the movie, it was based on the book.
It's hard to have an instantiated and filled list with an undefined number of items.
Is there a good embeddable code widget out there?
I know things are check summed and relatively secure, but for some reason it makes me a little nervous to use p2p technology to upgrade binaries on a live system. It is a really good idea if it can be done well.
I'm still waiting on a response too...maybe it's some kind of YC startup challenge; none of the undecideds get notified, and the team that handles the pressure the best gets the final spot!
The Echo Nest -- Staying Aloft in the Turbulent Music-Recommendation Industry
Interview with Untangle CTO: 12 network gateway apps, all on 1 server, totally free
How about Xubuntu? I've set that up in QEMU vitual images, and it runs a lot faster than Ubuntu. Oh, wait, I see. It's for farms of VMWare images. Ever mind.
Netflix Partners with Tivo | TechJaws
I've noticed though that most iphone jobs are contract jobs, and the pay offered does not seem to be particularly high compared to other speciality fields like DirectShow.
New Ubuntu is out
I had a 3.5" LaCie 500gb drive. When it fell to the floor, it broke, so I sent it in for repair (Disklabs). I was told it was irrepairable because the platter gets too hot, it's the way LaCie drives are made. I lost some personal data (a Cubase song) but it was mostly on DVDs.

I'm now using a 3.5" Seagate 1TB FreeAgent. Seagate fixed a drive I had (made by them), so from my experience I'd say trust Seagate et al, and don't trust LaCie.

Oh, and I bought another FreeAgent (a duplicate of the first one) to put somewhere safe.
I like the idea. It seems to take up a lot of space though to get a lot of simple information.I think a little color contrast for the form fields will help. I would be interested to see how this for would compare to other forms. You should test it with Google optimizer to see which people are more likely to convert. Always test, the data won't lie. You got to go with what gets you more users.
WHAT? No confirm email address??????
Breaking expected flows makes things harder to understand. I needed to think to use that form.

Some changes over time can improve clarity, but the initial friction is costly.
C115 mic not working
c115 mic not working, c115 mic problem, c115 microphone not working, c115 microphone problem, c115 mircrophone problem, motorola c115 mic ways
Large Hadron Collider - what actually happened
This is totally untrue. I sat in a room with every one of the major players last week. There is discussion and there is a sense that everyone wants to be in the same place. We haven't reached the exact solution right now but believe me we are talking. Look at http://therealmccrea.com/2008/10/20/live-blogging-the-openid...

While Google are launching what they have that doesn't mean everyone doesn't want to move to the same place.
Google are just testing an approach called "federated login" which they think is the usability solution to the so called "URL problem" which is that Joe Average doesn't know what a URL is or how it should be formatted let alone what his or her URL is. Obviously MySpace users do, but there is also an implication from Google that all users are comfortable using an email address. Many of the younger demographic use FB messaging or YIM for communication and only use their email for "official things".

There was a lot of discussion about all these issue at http://therealmccrea.com/2008/10/20/live-blogging-the-openid... and all the interested parties want to resolve this. I should know I spent the day with them there.
It might not be conventional but if you stuck this form in front of someone that had never used a web based form before I think they'd find it quite usable.

I like the whimsicality of this form, but...

Do you think there's a chance that anyone, ever, will see this form before having successfully registered at more traditional forms dozens (if not hundreds) of times?

'Usable to someone who's never used another website' is not the most practical standard of usability. "Users spend most of their time on other sites," after all.

Huffduff may still for reasons of personality prefer this form, but I don't think it can be said to win on usability considerations.
Or is that a challenge of self-sufficiency in an ICFPC style? "Claiming you are a hacker but crying you haven't received a response? Come to our server and get your response yourself!"
Yeah. Crazy as it sounds, it's actually safer now to use a credit card than a check.
Well in defense of BT, it hashes everything and the good hashes of all the pieces are well known, so it shouldn't be too bad. I'm sure this can be done to work well and be of fairly high integrity.
Shh!...

... they don't know they're dead!

At the threshold I saw more than a thousand angels fallen from Heaven. Angrily they shouted: 'Who is this, who is not dead, yet passes through the kingdom of the dead?' ... Then they reined in their great disdain enough to say: 'Let him be gone, who has so boldly made his way into this kingdom. Let him retrace his reckless path alone -- let him see if he can, for you shall stay, you who have led him through this gloomy realm.'
This is something that is an absolute must if you're like me and hate the current huge button/label/tab/* trend in UIs.

http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/05/13/human-compact-gnome-them...

It just makes the default Human and Clearlooks themes much more compact, so its a good way to get more screen space without going all XMonad-crazy ;)

Edit: Also, the "Esco" and "Metabox" window borders are good companions to this, as they are the most compact ones shipping be default (at least on 8.04)
It's only one data point, but this site shows a median salary of $80k - could still be a pro-rata contract rate though, of course..

http://www.odinjobs.com/Odin/marketstatcompare?id=5445&q...
I am very uncomfortable typing in a passwsord without any security on the page. Why not secure the sign up page? So many sites makes this same mistake of not taking people's password security seriously. I like the approach of the form though.
I cashed the check Knuth sent me years ago.

I remember, at the time, thinking that Knuth might be offended if I didn't. I guess I was just young...
JeOS itself does not even include an X server. It's designed for farms of virtual machines. I think it would be a slick platform to run on ec2 but Amazon supplies their own kernel images. My guess is that the article poster just wants a small Ubuntu to run on their local box, but doesn't feel comfortable using a pure command-line interface.
Any list above 5 items signals that the writer hasn't done what is really valuable for the reader: Preselected and prioritized the material.

89 items is just camuflaged information overload.
"Account balances as of 31 October 2008:"

But it's the 30th today....
I know people complain when new Windows releases take 5 years, but is the opposite better. I mean I just got my official 8.04.1 CD last month.
Ask YC: Who is Nickb and what is his start-up?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99923

Just curious, really. Not really a part of the YC crowd so I haven't the slightest clue.
You can stick with the long term support releases if you don't want to do lots of upgrading.
It seemed fishy to me.
Is there any harm in installing the 64bit version? Will most programs be available for it? I have a core2duo processor, those are 64bit right?
Find your voting location with SMS
That fact that you had to think makes it memorable. If a website does the same thing like everyone else, then it will be forgotten like everyone else.
why doesn't he just paypal the money?
I've been using this program to update my Debian Lenny system for the past month or so, without problems. The status page says that the total number of users in the distributed hash table is still pretty low, but it's probably because the software is relatively new. The program mentioned in the article, apt-p2p, doesn't actually use bittorrent, although the author of apt-p2p, Cameron Dale (http://www.camrdale.org/), previously wrote a monolithic apt bittorrent plugin called DebTorrent (http://debtorrent.alioth.debian.org/). As far as I can tell, with both programs apt performs checksumming as it normally does, though it checks using hashes from the Packages.gz file downloaded via the programs.
That may well be the plan. I heard on NPR a few days ago that Time Corp. just initiated a large round of layoffs. Out with the old, in with the new?
Forgetting the signup form is just fine. Remembering the content or the activity on a site is more important.
The community is still in its infancy -- much like Ruby on Rails back in late 2004/early 2005. At that time, most of us were building apps for ourselves. A few months after that the contract market started to pickup. Then it progressed into more of a "full-time job" market, which has now eclipsed the contract market.

We'll probably see the same thing happen here.
SAMSUNG G400 SOUL (UNLOCKED)
Samsung G400 Soul throws a ton of features your way buy doesn’t leave you hanging. Instead it focuses on making the call making experience as easy as possible. Samsung has taken existing technologies and simplified.
The Ajax Revolution: From UI responsiveness to functionality and beyond
okay, we've got 1 spot left but i'm tired of sifting through these entries. let's cagematch the remaining 50 groups and see who's left standing...

should have done that from the beginning IMHO. i fight dirty
Knuth likes to play with alternate number bases. He really means 25 December.
I am afraid I have to agree with rodmaz's "findings" as for the criteria of selection.
Hmmm are people actually ok with giving out their twitter account password to a third party site?
"absolutely the current"?

is that like "i accidentally the whole..."?
I will second this. I write software that accepts both credit cards and EFT (Electronic fund transfer) transactions. Credit cards are much harder to spoof than EFT account data. A voided check has all of the data you need to initiate an EFT transaction.
Unless the whole page uses HTTPS, securing just the login might still leave you vulnerable to session hijacking and just gives you a false sense of security.

Don't use your gmail (ebay, paypal,...) password for test-driving a site you saw on HN.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=348629

But the transcripted list differs slightly.
Where are they now: Bolt.com
If nothing else this does provide a nice alternative for form design. The sign-up form might not be the best use-case, however.
It is absolutely idiotic to have 64-bit pointers when I compile a program that uses less than 4 gigabytes of RAM. When such pointer values appear inside a struct, they not only waste half the memory, they effectively throw away half of the cache.

Is that true? It's weird to hear Knuth complain about such a down-to-earth problem.
Given how news print publications are moving these days, I'd say it's probably just out with the old.
It is in this context. At least, it is if you look at "literature" as sort of the end-all compliment for a piece of writing. A lot of it, as I said below, has to do with the way you look at the terms.
Faced with a similar situation, what I did was buy an arduino board, design a wonderfully complex robot, and start working on it on the side. When I feel tired and bored, I picked up some paper and would start designing parts of the hardware. I'd get back home and implement it.

Doing one thing with absolute focus leads to boredom, and boredom leads to burn-out. You need to keep yourself mentally interested by having something that actually interests you. Something big, something impractical, but something revolutionary.

For some people it's fitness, for others it's robots. You need to find the side project otherwise you will just see this long dreary never ending hole.

What you can do is also find something that overlaps with part of your work, so you can do work for work, but take the stuff you learnt and apply them to your side project.
I'm still not convinced the 2.6.27 kernel is stable enough. Our .27 test cluster (various distros including U8.10) has numerous issues that just ARENT fixed yet.

I always hate Ubuntu .10 releases :( even when they call it "stable" is usually isn;t and we see a huge increase in (client) issues...
What do you consider an invention?

Is creating a new breed of cat an invention? What about a car that runs on water? What about a duck-horse? I think we want to reserve 'invention' for only the out-of-nowhere, bizarre creations.
while i appreciate this from an aesthetic perspective, this fails multiple usability tests:

1) "across the room" -- stand 10 feet away from your machine and see if you can tell what you're supposed to do

2) "don't make me think" -- i'm sure anyone who has ever used a website has to think about this one.

if you actually want people to sign up, make it easier, not harder. save your creativity for your content.
Like it was said many many times. Everyone who didn't make it, please, by all means, keep moving forward because this is not a death certificate.

This is an important point. I would hate to think that we might be discouraging any of the startups we didn't invite to interviews. It's not just to make people feel better that we talk in the "no" email about how bad we are at judging startups. It's really true. The single biggest topic of conversation within YC is how we can get better at it.

In fact, as we often find ourselves saying to YC-funded startups when they're looking for their next round, practically all investors suck at judging startups. But we probably do worse than most, because we have to judge so many based on so little information.
oops. I accidentally the verb while editing ;)
Just a note: linking to the print version is annoying. The print version is harder to read (in FF anyway) as the lines are longer and there is no border.

So yes I know you think you are being all cool and anti-corporate and stuff but you're not doing us any favors.
IE7 messes up the floating layout that I use for my site, same as IE6. I don't consider myself a dedicated programmer per se: I don't have tolerance for coding to browsers that don't at least meet Acid 2 compliance.
ICANN Lowers Boom On EstDomains
The Thrush (raganwald)
Every release brings buzz to Ubuntu. Frequent releases probably mean a larger userbase.
I think that, for the sake of memorability, I'd pick an approach like Vimeo's to something like this.

http://vimeo.com/log_in
I really don't get how America can be so advanced in so many things, but still use cheques. Why don't you have a bank transfer system? When I was in Texas last year, we went to a bank and they had these pneumatic tubes that suck in your cheques! Like a gas station. I felt like I had time travelled to some alternate reality.

The last time I received a cheque from the U.S in germany, it was one of the most annoying payment methods I've ever used. First of all, there was this massive fee, then they froze the cash for 6 weeks while the check was verified. This was back in 2002 or so when I was pretty poor, and I had just done a contract job for a guy for a few thousand US$. So I had all this money on my account, but I could not withdraw it because of the freeze.

It was like putting some roast turkey in a sealed glass box in the middle of a famine.
Why startup pitches fail
I believe NickB is one of the FriendFeed guys, though I could be wrong. I remember a FriendFeed staff member going by FirstnameL, anyway.
his life story

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99923
20 ways to delight your customers in 2009
Exploring Clojure (Lisp on the JVM) - Part 4: Not Your Daddy's Namespaces
I definitely see your point and by no means am I advocating for your typical "send it to China or India for $100" gig. My point is that if you are not a programmer and trying to enter this arena, it's not the end of the world. The value is in your idea, your ability to network, market yourself and create a solid team with well-rounded skills.

Ycombinator definitely has some diverse ideas many of which are fantastic. Like any start-up catalyst, sure, they have backed some ideas that have already been out there to some degree or are no longer around--but that is totally to be expected. There will always be some overlap and like any regular distribution bell curve will show us, some will fail, some will surpass our expectations and rest will be in the middle. I have a great deal of respect for all that Ycombinator does and the people involved. Good luck guys!
Please send me your CV, or link to a web-site, or an email that says more about your skills. I may be able to help you with an internship, or if not, at least give you some better advice.
Its Like Drug Dealers Saying Drugs Aren't Good For You
Is it that hard to Google your town name and find out where to go vote from your Government town website?

/devil's advocate
I did that. @WordPress was originally mine but I gave over the keys when I met up with Matt at some event.
This post is important and I think that your feelings echo those of many thousands of graduate students.

Let me talk a little bit as a rare case: I've worked now under 7 advisors on 7 different projects and now I'm finally almost done. Most of the projects have been as you describe: "after almost a year, it is fair to say that I have good view of the project and it is almost surely a giant failure."

That's how most projects are. I'm not sure why, but I think it has to do with the fact that the projects are "planned research." The process of getting funding requires planning something that is intrinsically impossible to plan. You write a grant on hope, with the large picture in mind and then you get down to the details and things don't work out. This is normal.* Especially on the time frame of a new graduate student, it seems terrible.

To some extent, though, the system works. It does so for the same reason that some startups work: because as you look at the details you find new things that you couldn't have predicted. Those new things are your research. I'm working on a "failed project." But after 1.5 years working on it I am ready to begin writing a dissertation that I am proud of. Why? Because I found neat things along the way. That's how it works.

If you are in a good lab and surrounded by good people, I would recommend that you don't focus as much on the larger project as on learning all you can from the people around you and on understanding the details that your project will lead you to focus on. It is in helping other people, tracking down details, and playing with interesting questions that you will find the great science, not directly through the success of the larger project.

By the time I finish, I will have learned a lot. But I will have spent almost 8 years in graduate school, 2 for a masters in one field and almost 6 for a PhD in another field. If I had had my current perspective from the beginning I would have been a little more patient and I might thereby have saved myself three years. So there is a cost to hopping around even if there are benefits in terms of perspective.

Best wishes.

*I know of one exception. He explained his system: he does the research, then he gets grants for his research. This gives him time to do new research and he writes new grants based on that. He delivers because he only proposes to do what he has already more or less done!
How Not To Get Caught Up In An Anti-Piracy Dragnet
I don't know how much things have improved with Ibex, but there are some (mostly resolvable) issues with 64bit on hardy.

You need to play around to find solutions for some bits of software you don't have the source to, e.g. flash plugin, ndiswrapper wifi drivers. Ubuntu forums are good for this.

The only unresolved 64bit issue I hit was that Java LiveConnect (accessing browser javascript from java applets) was broken in the 64-bit java available for Hardy. Haven't checked to see if it's fixed in Ibex yet.

(Hmm...I abbreviate Hardy Heron => Heron, but Intrepid Ibex => Ibex. I wonder why.)

Yes, core2 is 64-bit.
Nice idea but as everybody says, it breaks away from commonly expected usability standards.

But when compared to the linear form design. The linear form design seems much more suable since I can quickly recognise what I'm supposed to type in.

"Email address:" is quicker than "My email address is". The same applies to all the fields.
Startup Idea #2, Digitizing the Public Domain
When I was in Texas last year, we went to a bank and they had these pneumatic tubes that suck in your cheques! Like a gas station. I felt like I had time travelled to some alternate reality.

I've lived in the US my whole life, and using those things feels like I've stepped into an alternate reality, as well. They really feel like something from a 1950s sci-fi space comic. I don't believe I've used one in five years, at least.

The problems with checks are the same as the problems with credit cards -- the system is secure enough that the bank system is happier to buy down the losses/inefficiencies than to build an infrastructure secure and flexible enough to remove them. Since customers don't want to pay anything -- be it money or convenience -- to get additional security, the banks are on their own to improve things. I think Bruce Schneier had some articles on this a long time ago.
New high-tech instrument cluster 'rewards' you for efficient driving
This is a common complaint by games developers too. Blowing half your cache on unused bytes in pointers is really annoying.
The implication of division is also a really false one. Last week we had a summit about OpenID usability and Google as well as all the other major players in this space were there. People really want to find a good solution for users. This is not about division at all. People really want to find the same good solution for users to use everywhere.

I find the implication that tech companies are constantly at each other's throats and back stabbing each other like a bunch of Hollywood hussies tiresome. Google have talked about "federated login" for a while and this is them taking it out into the wild.

The exact implementation of Open ID that ends up being used by everyone is going to change over time as we learn what works for users and what doesn't.
It's very successful on the "get social media sites to link to us" standard.