skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Instead of auctioning the tickets outright, you could auction the option to buy the ticket at the price specified at auction. Set an expiry date 1-2 wks beforehand to lock in that person's name so you wouldn't have the security issues.
I agree that the UI in GIMP is pretty bad, but I really don't find Photoshop's UI to be so clever and easy to use that it blows away the GIMP.

I even prefer the keyboard shortcuts in GIMP better: "m" for move (it's "v" in Photoshop... what?), "r" for rectangular select (it's "m" in Photoshop).

If you've used one for a while, the other seems weird and clunky with an almost identical feature set. Having used the GIMP more lately, I'd say in response: Photoshop is an example of a user interface that has sucked for many many years, but because certain professionals are used to it being that way, it hasn't changed.
Upon uninstalling Firebug, the author suffered a mysterious but ultimately fatal heart attack due to an uncaught coronary exception.
Which brings up an interesting point. I think the number of dollars used outside the US complicates the issue. Because of fractional reserve banking we can't control how fast the rest of the world inflates or deflates the dollar. Also we export 15% of our GDP and import considerably more than that so I think the rate that the rest of the world tanks is going to be vary important to our economy.
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I would recommend picking up Django instead (GAE isn't really Django, just bits and mangled pieces of it IMO). 1.0 was recently released and its better than ever. Plus you can host your Django application anywhere :)
that's because 'm' is used for marquee, which allows both rectangular and elliptical as well as single pixel column (vertical and horizontal) selections.

'v' is used because 'm' is already taken and 'v' does make sense for the moVe command, especially if you stress the second syllable

There is a method to the madness!
[Unconfirmed] Steve Jobs rushed to ER following severe heart attack ?
BSA singles out eBay, online retailers in new piracy report
For the record, rectangular select is "m" in Photoshop because the Photoshop tool is called the "Marquee" tool (because the flashing dots around the selection look like a theater marquee). So move gets "v" instead.

"V" is actually a better key for move than "m" because it's more convenient to hit with the left hand; many experienced Photoshop users work with the left hand on the lower left corner of the keyboard and the right hand on the mouse/graphics tablet.
I'll bet some people working on the Atlas project (Official AJAX for ASP.NET) lost their jobs before this decision was made. What a mess.
Wow... and iPhone (or Android) app could be great for this! Start the app, snap a pic and send it in with details about location and everything. It would certainly put the site in front of a lot more people as well.
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Former EA CEO selected as US Olympics Chairman
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Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'
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The Phone and iPod apps are special, because at a fundamental level they perform tasks that cannot be duplicated in a web app. But there’s nothing any more special about Mail than there is about, say, Calendar.

He's wrong. The Mail app would be near and dear to Jobs because he wants to take over the market of Blackberry and similar devices also. Keeping a web browser open in order to receive mail pushed real-time from an Exchange server would be extremely awkward.
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That was my sign during last night's pre- and post-debate, on MSNBC. It got me a few new users, but not quite as many as I'd have hoped.
It should start filling up quite a bit more today...the word had just rolled over last night (from "debate" to "absurd") and my friends have not submitted new images quite yet. I do very much appreciate the input, though!
Apple Denies Steve Jobs Heart Attack Report
Is a year really long enough to grow a business to the point where it can support you? I think a lot of startup types don't realize that sometimes the hockey stick is a little less vertical than you planned for, and there may be nothing you can do to speed it up.

It's disheartening to have a business that's growing, but not fast enough to stop you from hitting the brick wall one year out where you're out of money.
B5media’s Changes to Blogger Pay: Right, Fair and Still a Sweet Deal
I thought some of the ALU's where double pumped in p4 and newer cpu's. If that's the case we are already running some part's of the CPU at 3.7 * 2 = 7.2Ghz.

Edit: Yea, the integer ALU's operate at twice clock speed. I think the move to 64bit CPU's slowed down the clock speed race as did adding more cores and insane amounts of L2 cache due to heat issues. As a side note when I picked up my quad core CPU at 2.4 GHz it crushed my old 1.8Ghz 32bit cpu so I think they are making some wise tadeoffs due to system buss limitations. Plus the old P4's seemed to trade off a lot of effective for pure clock speed. So after we get back on track we might see a new clock speed race when we have 8 - 32 cores.
Firebug is the best dev tool of this class I've ever met.
Thanks for the doc, it's interesting. However it complains mostly about Skype being opaque from an admin point of view.

I don't buy your view on software security (I know it is the prevalent one). I don't crash-test my Volvo in order to ensure it is (relatively) safe, I rely on public mechanisms for this: I trust the manufacturer to live up to his promises (or suffer reputation damage, lawsuis, etc) and NCAP tests as an objective external measure.

It's a pity an equivalent of NCAP does not exist for software. Perhaps a startup can fix this.
Not Hacker News. It was on reddit too, it's not interesting.
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While I agree the article is not very compelling (it sort of rambles on and sticks in a random political jab at the end) please don't say this isn't Hacker News.
The exponential curve is for number of transistors on a chip, and for processing power per $1000. That's holding. Mhz has never been exponential afaik.
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What a disaster of a website design. N

eat idea though, I think if more American's knew what was being said about them they would adjust their actions, or least attempt to counter with some good PR.
Being passionate about programming, and software development is great (be happy you've found your thing). Choosing your platform based on your desire for wealth is probably not a great idea.

Stick with what you love and you'll be happy. If the money comes than it makes it that much sweeter.
I think a lot of mac users (no, not me) would like to have a word with you about putting everything in one main window. This is completely anecdotal, but I remember hearing a few mac users enjoy the fact that its apps tend to follow the 'lots of windows' model versus the 'one large window with many sub-windows' model a la most Windows apps.
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Well I just meant to point out that there are other operating systems and other hardware.
The Innovators Club - Interest in TechShop's neighborhood workshops is growing
Where in the hell to you live? I can't imagine any police force in the US ignoring that call.

Maybe you're some sort of local hooligan who cries wolf?

You're obviously also pretty foolish to simply let yourself be passively robbed.
You put the carriage in front of the horse: we're moving to multiple cores because we can't increase the clock speed. The number of transistors we can fit on a chip is still following Moore's Law, we're just using them in a different way.

We were squeezing more and more performance out of single cores by lengthening the instruction pipeline, which increased the amount of instruction parallelism processor's could exploit at runtime. The difficulty is that as this pipeline is increased, it takes longer to send information across it. As we decrease cycle time (same as increasing the clock speed), it becomes harder and harder to communicate from one end of the pipeline to the other in a single clock cycle.
Those references don't seem to address my question about effort having an effect on intelligence. My question isn't about the heritability of intelligence, but whether effort (that is, training) can enhance one's intelligence. Let me explain with an analogous question:

Does athletic training increase athletic ability? In terms of strength, flexibility, aerobic fitness, speed, perception, assessment, reaction times, specific skills, strategy?

Do believe that mental exercise has no effect whatsoever on mental ability?

That would be contrary to everyday experience, and studies showing that a lack of stimulation (i.e. mental exercise) retards cognitive development. e.g. that the visual system does not develop without stimulus; that the speech centers do not develop unless exposed to speech within the window (closes at around 7yo).

EDIT interesting: "Breast feeding makes a huge difference, about 7 IQ points."
http://www.amazon.com/Factor-Science-Evolution-Behavior-Inte...
Although kratom is un-scheduled, and completely legal, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has become aware of kratom in recent months, and has added it to their list of "Drugs and Chemicals of Concern".

Thanks for spoiling it for us all David ;)
Yet another iPhone Emergency Call Security Bug
Yet another iPhone security bug related to the placing of emergency calls has been discovered. This one allows you to read SMS messages even though the phone is locked.
Mystery meat navigation at it's best. Whoever designed this mess thought they were pretty clever (fail).
1 year of total focus is plenty of time to find out of you should quit or go home. If you have positive cash flow and a solid company you can always borrow at below your growth rate and come out ahead. Take a part time job and keep living cheep. Or find some inverters.
10 ways the credit crunch will hit IT
I avoid anything I have to pay for as far as software goes, but just the other day I paid for a license of TextMate. Why? Because it was an excellent piece of software, and it saved me a TON of time.

My point is, it can be very hard to get people to pay, but if you've got something that really adds value, or helps get something done faster/better, people will pay.
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A classic, thanks for reminding me of that. I loved watching the video of it in action.
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Let the choice of platform depend on your idea, not the other way around. Especially if you already have an idea in mind.
Here's the rundown:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IntrepidIbex/TechnicalOverview

Not mentioned there: Finally, the themes are changing. The "New Human" look resembles the screenshot in the GIMP article currently on the front page:

http://howto.wired.com/mediawiki/images/Gimpscreen.jpg

And, most importantly for me, the Netbook Remix packages are making their way into the distribution:

http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/nbr

I'm running the beta on an Acer Aspire One. Right now there are a few weird kinks that need to be fixed before the end of the month, but it's usable -- only for the intrepid, though. If you didn't like the Edgy Eft beta, you should wait for the final release of this one.
It's an awful design, but a good idea, I think.

I've been watching for a while. It's always the same -- yes we are starving here, but look at those Americans! Yes we have no freedoms here, but those damn Americans are doing it again!

You'd think it would wear thin on local readers, but I imagine most local readers have no other sources of information. It would be good to see a reverse version of this.
Asking whether you can "make money" and whether you can become wealthy by developing shareware are two different questions.

Yes, you definitely can make money from developing shareware. You can make good money. But wealth? People define that in different ways, but I assume true "wealth" to be a, say, multi-million dollar net worth. Now, that's certainly possible, but still rare in the shareware business compared to the number of players.

The short answer is, yes. But you will need to be on top of your game, ready to redefine what you're doing, and be prepared to put in an absolutely insane amount of time (unless you manage to catch a certain wave or craze at the right time to milk it fast).
It's not scientific, but based on the seemingly sequential serial numbers and the dates of different serial numbers, a few of us in a Ruby IRC channel calculated the other day that approximately $1.5m worth of TextMate licenses are being sold each year.

That's a pretty inspiring number, even at half the amount.
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How the Credit Crisis Could Affect Young, Aspiring Entrepreneurs and Business Owners
I'd highly recommend Fareed Zakaria's "Post American World". Give gives good insight into how America rose to power. WWII helped, but it wasn't the defining moment. It was the huge industrial advances at the end of the 19th century that shaped our economic leadership in the world. Before even WWI, we were the top producing nation in the world, with double digit growth rates year after year.
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz

That is a forum for shareware developers.

One of the biggest posters there makes a bingo card creator app that does like 1.5k a month sales. If you do that 10 times you can make some pretty decent money.

The key is finding a niche I think.
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Now that this version exists, we need one that gives Photoshop a run for its money.
That's true, but his main idea is "I want to make money as well as write software". And some platforms are better for that than others.

Anyway, the submitter knows the answer already: The way to make money is to note where the customers are and go to them. Quite a few people are making money selling Mac and iPhone shareware, and that's not surprising. These platforms have a culture of paying for quality, and there's a limited variety of hardware and software that you have to support. Windows shareware also exists and makes money. Meanwhile, I've paid for exactly one piece of Linux software in my life (printer drivers) and AFAIK my experience there is typical. If I want to pay for quality Unix software I buy it for my Mac.

So: Choose the Mac or Windows, and go for it.

Android is a wild card. I'm a skeptic myself, but there's no sales data yet, so maybe it will be a big hit.
Hi Norman,
I had the similar idea as well - what I most like to program are standalone windows applications.

I think it is still possible to get rich on that space, but maybe harder as it was before, since there is a global trend of using standalone apps less and less. I remember, how in the past I was keen to download and play with shareware software, but I virtually stopped doint that. First, I try to minimize the number of software apps I depend on and try to move on the web, and secondly, I don't already trust the apps from unknown companies (that they don't contain spyware etc.).

So this I think is a disadvantage - the market is very saturated and at the same time there is a trend to move standalone apps to web. But of course there is still a room. As funny as it might sound, I still don't know any really great POP3 client, there is also no clear winner in RSS readers, etc.

In my opinion, if you don't like web applications, the biggest opportunity is in the mobile apps. First, not enough apps exists for mobile phones yet, and secondly, many kinds of apps which didn't have a point in desktop are very useful in a mobile phone.
Microsoft Opening Three-Headed Search Technology Center in Europe to Challenge Google
I would add that intelligent and successful people maintain a public religious affiliation even if privately they think it's all a bunch of hooey. If the community/customers believe you believe in a higher power, your are considered "one of them" and they simply trust you more. Knowing someone has the "fear of god" sits better with religious folk than someone who simply answers to their own morals and principles.

/ducks
than someone who simply answers to their own morals and principles.

So let me understand this correctly -- it's okay to lie and be two-faced with both yourself and others for the sake of gaining trust (on false premises) from others?

Nice system of morals you have there.
The World is not the United States. Thank God.
I just really like the concept. I am glad that someone is approaching the on-line dating scene in a more collaborate and, well, personal way. It would be interesting to take this slant toward meeting collaborators for projects, or just a group of friends, as well as someone that you like there personality.
Obama's iPhone app wins praise, but probably not votes
"A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence."

This is a correlation, not causation. If you study the period of Islamic Golden Age (comparable to the European Renaissance), you'll find people at that time were highly religious; more religious than the Muslims from this era.
It took a study to figure this out? Seems to me that it's been a growing trend since the late 90s and early 00's.
It's a selection bias. The ones who are willing to lie and be two-faced with others for the sake of gaining false trust, are the ones who will be successful. The ones who are willing to be open about their humanism (i despise the word atheist as it signals the lack of something) are pushed aside. (And apparently end up in academia?).
No need to duck - you're right. There is absolutely no way a presidential candidate at this time could be successful and be "out" as an atheist.

I don't think this is just a religious thing, but one of people voting for people like themselves. There are significantly more theists than atheists in America, so it makes sense.

We all "lie" in small talk, attempting to seek common ground with people, and the like - lying about religion might seem like a huge thing in some people's eyes, but if it serves a purpose without damage, why not?
Without going into the issue of whether or not it's okay to lie... there's nothing "false" about the trust it gains you. If I ask you to tell a lie that I specify in order to prove your loyalty to me, and you do it, I gain more trust in you than if I'd just asked you to tell the truth.

What does your loyalty to rational truth tell me? Only that you're smart, and paying attention, and that you don't necessarily care what I think. Your willingness to conform to my arbitrary set of "lies", on the other hand, speaks volumes about your loyalty to me.

That's why hazing rituals tend to involve pain, embarrassment, lawbreaking, or all of the above.
Could y'all go back to reddit? Please?
I'm glad to see that a completely Free Java stack will be present. Sun's packages have always been second-class citizens and have been a sore thumb for me in Linux for years.
Funny: After I visited the page and then clicked 'Back', I was expecting to see Reddit -- I had forgotten the link came from Hacker News.
The funniest outcome of research like this is the wannabes...who pick their position on religion not based on their own reflections and intellect, but in an attempt to be perceived as more intelligent by choosing atheism.
I wish I didn't have to register to vote for a picture... i was about to vote for deep fried candy bars on "absurd"
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Lunch time and other pauses are not added to working time in Europe... while they are in the USA.
I would agree that the trust is not "false" and is authentic, but all this other malarky about "loyalty" still ignores the underlying issue - and that is a complete failure in this system of "intelligent" morality that rationalizes being two-faced for the sake of winning over more people.

I know my system of morality values establishing trust in relationships by telling the truth, not through deception. If a little less success and loyalty is the result, I am more than willing to be "less successful".
This isn't Hacker News.
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Let me remind you that converse is not true. Being an atheist doesnt make you smart.
Seriously, why is this on hacker news? I understand it may be very relevant to a lot of people's personal habits, but christ... I can see the SAME crap on digg and reddit anytime I want, at least 2 or 3 times a week a medicinal marijuana article will appear. So please community, lets try to keep this site niche news and relevant.

I come here for intelligent discussion about programming, startups, movements in the web, etc...
No matter what, times are going to get very interesting... I just graduated (a little later in life but hey, I did it). I also have a startup and have been debating on moving across the country to the Bay area in order to give it a real shot or keep bootstrapping as long as possible and go back to school and wait it out. Decisions...
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I found this interesting page from a reddit comment :
http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html

edit : Its about Phil Katz from the original author of ARC which was the software Katz allegedly modified to produce PKARC.
It's very hard to make money in the desktop apps world. Most desktop apps have been commoditized. Piracy is rampant.

What could you reasonably sell your software for? $20? $50? How many copies would you need to sell per month, constantly to pay your bills? Does that number seem reasonable?

I come from the desktop software world. I love writing desktop software, but I'm glad that I'm not selling it.
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Good for them, but I don't understand how they waited until 2008 to get this in. It seems like such a basic UI concept to me.
The web is more fashionable than the desktop right now, but plenty of guys make a living writing desktop software.

Another guy mentioned Joel on Software /?biz, which is more desktop oriented than HN, and with a different tone to the conversation. You have truisms there like "picking a niche market is the key to success", and "25% of the work is coding and 75% is business management." You should stop by and see if it speaks to you.