skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I particularly agree with all of his reasons for a desktop client instead of web interface. It's just a better experience for music. And there's an edge use case I hope Spotify will support at some point:

I find a cool remix on Youtube, but it doesn't exist anywhere else. I use a flash downloader to get it, then another program to strip the audio out of it. Now I want to load it into Spotify (Ok so far) and add it to a playlist to share with my friends. So far it seems that sharing music like this (or say that I downloaded from Newgrounds.com) that's not in Spotify's catalog is not enabled. Hope it will be someday.

"Final thought: I'm glad that you guys resisted the temptation to build a web basedapp. I remain a strong believer in the desktop client approach in music for a numberof reasons.

1. Speed/responsiveness of interface, and optimized downloading and streaming

2. Bandwidth savings of P2P architecture

3. Easy integration with hardware devices such as the iPod (ultimately you want tocontrol the interface to the portable devices where you can monetize moreeffectively by charging for download…)

4. There are vast repositories of "grey" content on people's computers across theworld. This content is often forgotten by the labels and publishers. The fact that youhave a client and P2P capability will allow you to someday unlock all of thiscontent…this goes way beyond the master music catalog that is licensed to you bythe labels. A big part of Napster was the joy of discovering various remixes, liverecordings and other obscurities that copyright owners have literally lost track of.

5. While you could have built a "thin" client that runs in the background and powersweb based streaming, why go to all the trouble of building and distributing clientsoftware when you could build the real experience? There is tremendous value incontrolling the client software real estate and it allows for a much snappierexperience."
PHP is a nightmare, but only once you learn enough about programming or development to understand what you should really be doing, and only once you've seen how other languages do it.

After that comes PHP's special flavour of OOP. I'd prefer to call it 'Do Whatever The Fuck You Like Orientated Programming' given the abundance of 'magic methods' and other functions that try really hard to make sure you've got a cheeky workaround for something you can't be bothered doing properly (creating countless security issues in the process). And that's before you start using classes as pseudo-namespaces for collections of static functions.

The disappointing side is that someone who learns PHP before anything else will have a heart attack when they realise that very little of what they know applies the same to another language.

It's so loose and care-free that it doesn't care what you do or how you do it. (Not helped by the mountains of useless tutorials and documentation that teach awfully bad practices.)

So I guess the thing I dislike about PHP is that I learnt to use it but it didn't give me good programming skills.
This is really, really fantastic. Been a huge sf/f reader my whole life (collect 1sts of lots of favorite authors... hovering around 6000 now). I basically used to do this manually: end of the year check Locus, check SF Site lists, check Hugos... read them all.
I would add Heroku
Anyone ever laid hands on one of these ultra-cheap tablets?
I'm surprised at how helpful Sean Parker was trying to be in the email, and the open offer to help.
Wow. I've looked at parse a couple times, but I always hesitated to use it because of the price uncertainty. Once you've built a system on it you're locked in pretty hard.

I like the look of these prices though. Definitely makes it more attractive.
Did that. That was my first attempt at fixing this problem.

Doesn't work for me, since I can't get to it from the keyboard. If there's a keyboard shortcut to open it, then I never found it.
Heh, is that that terrible?

An article I'd love to see is something expounding on that analogy.
I expected the 5 but I really admire how Apple stuck to their guns. With the CEO change any other company would have rushed out a new design to keep analysts happy considering the hardware boost (it's a bigger jump than 3S was to 4). While I prefer a rounder design personally I also don't want a mediocre iPhone. Apple won't refresh a design until everything is right. Also people fail to realize that the 4S comes with an improved antenna so they did improve the things that matter.

The downfall of Japanese manufacturers was adding features for features sake and switching up design to manufacture demand for the "new" model. Sony would have some nice products with promise but they always managed to screw something up with every iteration, never quite getting it right or abandoning product lines with passionate fans altogether. They're all struggling to stay alive now. The Koreans are doing the same only a little better (more innovation and focus on technology but still the same frequent changes).

When the dust settles I think you'll see that people who purchase or upgrade to 4S will be more than satisfied with the end product.
That's what Taleb explained for his living in NYC: it buys him the option of a Postitive Black Swan to meet great people ("antidotes"?): This makes living in big cities [hubs] invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous exposure _ you gain exposure to the envelop of serendipity. p209, The Black Swan, 2007. /Taking maximum exposure to the positive Black Swan p207, Seize any opportunity, or anything that looks like an opportunity. They are rare, or much rarer than you think. Remember that Positive Black Swans have a necessary 1st step: you need to be exposed to them p208
Guilty but satisfied. :)
It could be a parody of a reasonable answer :-)
Youtube is awesome for discovery, but meh as a music player imho.

Youtube is like MTV for the web - your music gets served with a video of some sort, whether you want it or not. Most people seem fine with that, but I just want the music.
The philosophy is that everything "looks like" a file, and this achieved through the standard file API (open/read/write/close). AFAIK sockets can be used with this API, as well as directories under Linux. The abstraction leaks quite a little bit sometimes, though.
You're being far too generous. It's not just that the public administration was bad before the Euro - it got worse after 2001 when politicians used borrowed money to buy votes. Pay for Greek civil servants has doubled since 2001 in real terms.

The really sad part of all this is it represents a horribly squandered opportunity. If expenditures had been kept steady and the government just rolled over existing debt in 2001 into bonds with the new far lower interest rates it would have been a win for everyone.
Downvoted for spurious use of the word 'holocaust'.
You claim that deployment automations for Rails and Python exist because of the complexity? Have you ever worked with PHP apps that are larger than 1 single file and use the database? Things like Capistrano do a lot of things that even PHP would benefit from.

Deployments are rarely atomic actions. With Capistrano, apps are stored in versioned release directories. Apache points to a 'current' symlink which points to the latest release directory. Upon deployment, Capistrano creates a new app directory, runs database migrations or updates configurations or creates asset files or whatever is necessary to upgrade the app. Only after it's done will it update the 'current' symlink and instruct the app server to restart.

Consider what happens if you upload your new PHP app with FTP. If someone visits /some_page.php while you're uploading then he could access an old version of it. Suppose some_page.php depends on common_library.php which may have been updated to the latest version in the mean time. Then things blow up because the new common_library.php is not compatible with the old some_page.php. With Capistrano, the deployment is as good as atomic.

Capistrano also supports deploying to multiple servers at the same time, and even to servers that are behind a firewall and can only be accessed through a gateway server. It supports rolling back to a previous version. And much more.
I have been using Gnome 2 for a number of years, but recently decided to test a bunch of different wms: Gnome 3, Unity, awesome, xmonad, LXDE, and KDE. I gave each at least 2 weeks of use to get over the "change" hump.

I hadn't used KDE since Mandrake days in the late 90's, and had a negative impression from the KDE 4.0 issues. But have been pleasantly surprised at its utility and configurability while still looking good on both my 10" laptop and 24" desktop.
I agree... I think that is a great idea.
The problem is that he thought the "regular users" referred to people who use the operating system itself rather than your iPad users.

Do your regular iPad users understand Unix, iOS, BeOS, or OS/2? No, they don't. They understand point and click interfaces on top of them. The operating system is irrelevant to people who want to Play Angry birds. Users who can't turn on their printer are irrelevant to a discussion on the merits of one operating system over another. The user interface on top the system and its programs is a separate topic.
Mixed emotions:

KDE didn't win the world for the Linux / OSS desktop, but it did create what we know as Webkit, one of the major players in the app platform that's replacing the desktop.
I agree, but Apple may be coming as close to this as it can. Apple is offering a new extended AppleCare policy for $99 which covers two accidental damage incidents for $49 each. I'm guessing the 4S will be available for $649 without plan (given the iPhone 4 is now $549 without plan).
How so? I find out what I have to work with, work within the limitations set, deliver what the client asks for (if I feel it can be done in a reasonable way) and collect my paycheck.
> Everyone here is very helpful.

Which is also a stereotype. While I believe there are very many nice and helpful people in NYC, there is a still very much a "me-first" attitude. At the end of the day humans ultimately strive only to better themselves. Take that statement with a grain of salt, because enabling oneself can be manifested through social means. Hence why over time humans have evolved to understand that they can better themselves by social means. Either method is still a medium to which we can attain personal fulfillment.[1]

I think what pg is getting at is that the culture in SV leans much more towards this - that we can better ourselves by the help of others. Financial industries work better when individuals strive independently. I'm not narrowed minded enough to think that these are absolutes but more of leaning towards one medium over another.

[1] - paraphrased from Driven - http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Nature-Shapes-Choices-Warren/dp...
The SDK was around from the beginning, but planned for a curated channel of third parties that Apple selected itself. Apple wsa incredibly worried about security issues on the device, and initially tried to satisfy everyday developers with: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iPhone-to-Support-...

The outcry was so fierce and sustained that around 3 months later, Apple backpedaled on this strategy and Jobs himself announced that they would open the platform up.
Unfortunately, having seen "The Social Network", I can't help but read a lot between the lines here. And it's mainly in a voice that's both Machiavellian and threatening...

Maybe the level of enthusiasm is all positive and innocent: But reading the recent news, it seems that Spotify has tied itself closely to Facebook, but the monogamy only goes one way.
quality is terrible.
>I particularly agree with all of his reasons for a desktop client instead of web interface.

I have two arguments:

(1) Pandora is a great service (b) I also listen to Pandora on my phone a lot.
That's ridiculous. I've worked with people who could recite K&R C or Stroustrup's C++ Reference Manual line for line and who still couldn't program for shit.
It sort of should. Otherwise, one-trick candidates who really have no idea about economics or foreign policy can win, say, a presidential election on a campaign based on, say, pro-life vs pro-choice or prohibition or their stance on one particular social program.
DIGG Newsrooms Beta: Now Open to Everyone
Love at First Sight Just Got Easier with Help From A Google Chrome Extension
Is Airbnb bad news for hotels?
I just want something that doesn't make me feel like a menopausal housewife.
I agree completely. It's why I started using PHP and why I continue to use it.

I think the only thing around right now with a realistic shot of replacing PHP is JavaScript with node.js, but it will require widespread deployability. If and when node.js becomes easy to deploy on cheap hosts it has a huge number of wins over PHP (to begin with -- one less language to learn, and then even more importantly node.js understands the web page it's buildings and no other server-side language does this).
Serious question for everyone who prefers web-based players:

The main reason that doens't work for me is b/c I'm a browser tab-a-holic. Anytime I open Chrome, Chromium, or Firefox, it's usually two windows with 5 to 10 tabs each. Stuff I'm working on or reading during breaks or whatever.

But sometimes I don't want the browser open, when I'm working on something that doesn't immediately require it, but I do want my music. Eg, I want my music decoupled from the browser. Hence I prefer a native app for music players.

Is that just an edge case, or anyone else have same or similar issues with browser-based players?
Where does innovation comes from?
"Having people around you care about what you're doing is an extraordinarily
powerful force. Even the most willful people are susceptible to it."

Stupid idea, but may be, AA style support groups are needed. "Anonymous Entrepreneurs?"
I can't find a direct link to the unlocked 4, but it's still there, you have to go through the chooser and select an unlocked one there. It's still $549, same price as when I bought one this summer.
This part is strange to me:

> c) Only recently have they learned that a best-in-class product isn't enough to get investors excited without talking about the market.

Isn't the whole point of there existing a separate class of tech-oriented investors and investment managers, who get paid pretty well for their work, that they are knowledgeable and well-positioned to evaluate things like market prospects? If who they fund depends so heavily on social proof and slickness of the pitch to investors (as opposed to the actual product and market potential), seems like capital is being allocated pretty inefficiently...
I really don't see what that has to do with my argument.
A question for PG (or anybody willing to answer it):

Is there much difference between living in San Francisco and Palo Alto in terms of how much living/working there helps your startup?

And in these terms, is there any difference between Mountain View and Palo Alto?
20 of the Best Shots of Roger Federer’s Career - Part 2
Just filled out the survey.
This is pretty timely for me.

I just ported some code that performs probability computations from Ruby to C for performance reasons. While I'm really pleased with the runtime, I was pretty unhappy with the implementation time.

I need to extend this work for the next phase of the work I'm doing and have been contemplating moving to R, but have hesitated because I couldn't find any info on its performance.

Now I have!
Fantastic! I hope this happens more and more. Government IT is in the dark ages and it causes significant grief to the population. Can someone please fix the Cali DMV website next?
"Curated" had me expecting a much smaller and focused list of recommended startup tools. Hope to see something like that in the future.
The "zero defects culture" they promote is fixing bugs as soon as you find them; it should not be confused with the zero defects mentality which is "widely acknowledged to be ineffective in both military and corporate life".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-defects_mentality
Perka - Bringing Punch Cards Online
Even standard system calls are messily implemented. poll() is broken. kqueue is broken. See http://pod.tst.eu/http://cvs.schmorp.de/libev/ev.pod#OS_X_AN...

Last year I even discovered a kernel bug in their file descriptor passing implementation that, AFAIK, still isn't fixed. Various signal handling properties are more buggy than on Linux.
Muchos props to Pandora and their music genome project, glad to see it appears to be succeeding. However, I never really found it a particularly good music discovery service for my own tastes. I get more out of digging around Youtube, subreddits, Newgrounds, and other social music discovery sites. But clearly there's room for multiple approaches to the problem.

And yes, having a phone app that you can sync with your web-based playlists is a good workaround to the native desktop client issue. Just listen on your smartphone instead.
Agree with you SkyMarshal on this point. His comments on P2P based software are well put. Its interesting to see that while the push towards web/cloud based aps is strong, how many companies are creating successful client products. It seemed a bit arcane when I first downloaded it, but the functionality and speed far surpasses web based services such as deezer
Unicorns and wheels: Apple's two types of products
Get List Of All Siri Voice Commands On iPhone 4S
Why Apple's Siri will chip away at Google's mobile search business
I believe the writeup is misrepresenting how this works. It states that the system projects "on to" the object, however given that their example is an egg, which has a Lambertian (matte) surface, you would not be able to present different projections to viewers at different angles.

From the diagram, it looks like they're projecting onto a glass screen in front of the object, and it appears to be superimposed on the object using the same approach as the Pepper's ghost box [1].

Of course I may be mistaken. This is just an educated guess.

And regardless, this sounds like a really cool technology.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppers_ghost

EDIT: From the Google Translate of the Japanese press-release, this looks correct, they are using a half-silvered mirror so you can see the egg-through the mirror and also the projection reflected on the mirror

" Hitachi, respond to these needs, aiming to represent the object close to the actual images from nature, using a half mirror for combining multiple lenses and translucent, the image information captured in real-space projection of 24 units has enabled it to be displayed".
The expression is "minimum viable", not "minimally viable". They mean very different things.
I don't understand why he talks about web vs. desktop as it it's an either/or argument.

I agree with all the points he makes about a desktop client, but I still prefer Rdio- I can use the desktop client when I'm at my normal PC, but if I'm ever anywhere else, I can just fire up the web client. What possible argument is there against flexibility like that?
I was disappointed by the lack of an "a million dollars isn't cool..." pitch.

That being said, I think he did a fine job of endearing himself to the Spotify team by stroking their egos a bit and demonstrating that he's like minded. All you founders here on HN looking for co-founders or partnerships should take note.
this article is even more fascinating with the real implications of siri: http://5by5.tv/criticalpath/9
2011 Startup School Facebook Group
Having not used php for 12 years, I recently accepted a freelance job for a client who had been left in the lurch by his php developer who seemingly abandoned the project because she was out of her depth.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by some of the new language features that php has borrowed from elsewhere... eg: closures, anonymous functions, docstrings.

IMHO php is held back primarily by messy, inconsistent documentation and extremely ugly parts of the core library that are also riddled with inconsistencies that should have been deprecated years ago.

Not that I would consider starting a new project in php - I just love programming too much for that; but I believe php will evolve, benefiting from other languages.

Really, it needs it's own "Python 3" (out with the old, smarten up the new).
It might be that humans naturally possess superstitious minds that react strongly to elements of serendipity. Even the most scientific minds will have a hard time not having an emotional response to randomly getting into a conversation that shows potential of positively affecting their lives.
I really wonder if he speaks like this IRL too. I had a pretty high impression of Parker till now, but if he can't say a good thing about Spotify without talking about how he did or thought about doing everything in Napster first ..
Enlighted, Inc. Announces $14 Million in Funding from Tier I Investors
Also on Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2011/10/04/a-robot-for-controlling-your-office/
I think Siri is really cool. It seems Apple took a human-first design and brought a lot of user information together to make it easier for humans to get things done.

My biggest frustration having used voice recognition across multiple different platforms is still the machine in question clearly understanding what I'm saying. I feel like if I'm in a car I have to turn off the music, wind up the windows, and tell the passengers to be quiet. I also hope that there's minimal road noise.

I can't wait to see if Apple's cracked this problem for me.
Because it alleviates typing on an awkward keyboard in some situations.
I too think Siri can be ported to say... Mac OS X!

Deriving the meaning from words and previous context is beyond difficult and I can only imagine the processing power required for it. But if the A5 can pull it off, so too should an x86 CPU.
I think the real take away from this is not Desktop vs. Web Based its how Sean Parker conducts himself. This guy knows how to work the room, he's a great networker. I know very few that would have put the time and energy into writing a letter like that. It really shows what it takes to be a top notch entrepreneur. Fascinating stuff.
Nothing compares to C++ when it comes to sheer speed. If you want language X to do task Y as fast as C++, then you must use C++.

The reason language X is slow is because it's been made safe to use... it has lot's of checks and safety features to prevent accidents. It's not unlike an over-protective mother hovering around her child double-checking everything he picks up. And there's nothing wrong with that... unless you want to go fast.

The reason C++ is fast is because it allows programmers to do away with all the checks and safety features and just burn through CPU cycles. It doesn't hover over the programmer asking him if he really wants to do that... time and time again. It doesn't check behind every thing he does. It assumes that he's a big boy and that he understands the implications of his actions. C++ let's him run with scissors because sometimes it's OK (and even necessary) to do that.
Missed Redis in databases
Does anyone have any statistics on the success rate of startups in Silicon Valley versus elsewhere? It would be interesting to see some data that supports pg's claim.
Of course, it's not like a modern first person shooter or anything. My point was that on one and the same machine, PHP gets a whole lot more done per portion of computer power than Ruby does :)
Booklyt - Microsoft to team up with Comcast & Verizon on pay TV via Xbox
I have found that Grooveshark actually has much better content selection, as well. Most of my listening is through Pandora One, but when I want a specific song I have never failed to find it on Grooveshark, but frequently cannot find it on Spotify.
Lua, really? Could you provide some examples?
under Windows they perform really well, no noticeable difference between them and the main screen, on OSX they aren't quite as good in certain applications because their drivers aren't as solid for OpenGL but I barely notice it