skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What do you want to build? It seems like you want to work with embedded systems. So there are two design considerations: wireless or non-wireless. dummy non-wireless things are that interesting, so i guess you're going to want to design a wireless device.

GainSpan designs Wi-Fi modules and the whole software ecosystem. You could prototype things pretty quickly as they already design the whole chip-level firmware and application-level software that goes into building a prototype.

what's really neat about GainSpan chips/systems/software is that they built everything from ground up, so their software is optimized for the embedded space. Sure you could take an ARM-core and design the whole circuit board, and etc, but why would you want to do that?

once you get started, you will then probably realize that to differentiate your prototype is the software and not the hardware. if your wireless device can't perform the correct provisioning mechanism to communicate with the router, you're going to have to spend a lot of time on that too.

well, anyway, I have to disclose that I used to work for a Wi-Fi chip company before we got acquired and I still sometimes do consulting at GainSpan. check out the website and get an evaluation kit to start tinkering. the EVK is fairly inexpensive and it'll help you understand the design process.

best
lien
This has been done for the sake of creating an 'ethical' investment vehicle. There were a few index funds that were built around investing in ethical companies.

The problem was that over time almost every company in the S&P500 made it into the indices. The example I remember off the top of my head was a company with a terrible environmental record getting on the list of 'good' companies due to their generous maternity leave policy.

Gigantic companies are so gigantic that they have many examples of good and evil inside them, just like every other organization full of humans.
Google bought (among others) DoubleClick, which was a direct competitor and served google's competitors. Or the ITA acquisition.

Akamai has a large patent portfolio for streaming and content delivery and a long list of top-tier customers.
Your comment reminds me of a discussion I've had regarding hybrid vehicles. The argument against hybrid vehicles, the Prius in that case, was that for less money a more efficient vehicle (to operate and manufacture), such as a Honda Civic, could be purchased. The conclusion was therefore: it was a waste of money to pay for a Toyota Prius (the further conclusion was that the primary or sole rationale for purchasing a Prius was vanity). My argument was that by purchasing the Prius you would not be making a wise short-term personal financial decision, but you would be supporting the fledgling hybrid industry. The result would then be a faster growth cycle of the hybrid industry, decreasing costs and promotion of the industry beyond just the Prius line, affecting greater efficiency across multiple manufacturers and models.

If your goal is to support the open standards based social networking industry, financial support for Diaspora may not result in Diaspora becoming a credible Facebook competitor, but it will assist in the longer term development of open standards based social networking.
Glick2 ‒ application bundle system for linux done right
Paul Graham thinks Hacker News is going downhill
Unless you're constantly blocking ads, you're a google customer and you give them money. Don't be fooled by an apparently "free" service :)
"This 'voting with your dollars' thing is a bunch of bullshit."
At the risk of sounding overly stereotypical, the Jewish community seems to be pretty good at it, and they have built a very good community of support for themselves. Heck, I know people who still wont let anyone in their family buy German cars.
Are you saying bulldozer is "designed for high single-core performance"? Because that's exactly where it's failing to deliver, and what will continue to lead to market share.
The pretty obvious solution, which I expect the government will eventually luck into, would be for the Federal government to collect a, say, 5% sales tax on all inter-state commerce. Remit 2% to state A, 2% to state B, keep 1% for itself, and everyone is happy. Easy to administer, easy to collect. Lucrative!
Really? I'm guessing that you think a license (which can be revoked) would result in more accountability. But just imagine how that sort of system could be used to clamp down on free press and free speech.

I'd gladly keep the system we have now; I'll just get my news from credible sources and take _everything_ with a grain of salt.

EDIT: And also... what does “It’s mostly just a rumor,” mean?
I hate Monsanto. Who would not hate pure evil? When I say this I am not trying to be derogatory or anything, what Monsanto does is nothing but killing future of humanity. They are in the business of eradicating earth as we know it. Monsanto is the pinnacle of the dark side of corporate America. (Oh please, I am not anti-capitalist or anything.)

If you make some research about Monsanto you will find that the last thing you want is to have any association with that company. Those who know this fact is reacting, and probably reacting improperly. However I can't blame, but HN is not the place to express it. My sole purpose of hanging out at HN is finding inspiration, technical insight for building stuff, feel the excitement of people who achieved it, expand my understanding of business etc. I am upset that such commentary was even posted on HN.

PG should know that I did and will up-vote anything that speak against Monsanto, even if it is expressed at the wrong place and with wrong argument. On the other hand I am deeply saddened by being called dumb by someone I admire. Aren't we tired of binary logic? I expected more from him, he should not have said "you are either with us (smart) or against us (dumb)."
You can always quit.
Perhaps more interesting is that you see an equivalence between what Google does and what it is proposed Apple might do.

As you say, with Google, the proposition is clear: You get free email and other Google services; Google monetizes them with contextual advertising. With Apple, the proposition is also clear: You pay upfront; Apple supplies you with integrated hardware and software. This is a proposition that Apple upset that balance.
"Apparently he finds his own customers/supporters dumb."

An HN user is neither a customer or a supporter. In fact, they may even directly inhibit PG's goals.

From a business perspective, HN exists to draw the attention of smart hackers likely to build businesses which will make lots of money (for example, by making deals with companies like Monsanto).

I think in the past PG has actively tried to dissuade people from participating in HN when those people are dumb (e.g. Erlang). Although it's a losing battle, maintaining the focus and quality of an online community is a worthy task. Doing so certainly does not preclude expressing that people are dumb.
You're assuming it's bad PR. The people who are complaining about this aren't particularly likely to be potential Cloudant customers. On the other hand, the rest of the Fortune 500 is probably more likely to become a Cloudant customer as a result of the press release. In fact, the firestorm the press release caused only exposed it to more potential customers who are unlikely to share the same negative feelings.
Imo, it speaks well of Google’s culture that they have people like Yegge who like Google and also have the freedom to strongly criticize it.

Most companies (small or large) don’t appreciate dissent.
I found the "Londinium, London, UK" funny. It came from the londinum.com website, but is also a place in the sense that it's London's original name. So technically, it places the job in Roman London, which is the main banking/business district today (aka The City) and therefore a major IT area.
When I worked in retail my name and zip code was incorrect in the company records. When I asked who I should contact to fix this, my store manager told me I'd need to contact HR but to never ever do that. I'll always wonder what would've happened if I had contacted them.
This oversharing problem highlights the fundamental problem with private sharing Google+ was supposed to address: users make mistakes.
Who are you to speak on the behalf of the MAJORITY of hackers, developers and libertarians?
I agree, you definitely need a CEO. A startup is not a democracy and you need accountability. The CEO needs to set the vision and make executive decisions or veto bad ones. It's part of the job. If everyone is accountable, then no one is.
I don't think I've ever seen an open source project so roundly criticized for every little move they make. If people don't want to give them money then don't give them money, what's the point of all the hate?
Matt,

You are of course correct. The fault is mine for miscommunicating... I find myself becoming less self-editorial these days when I write on the web and tend to think everyone is on the same page as I am.

I was actually referring to an informal study I did earlier this year. I measured sites which were receiving an average of 50,000 or more visitors from Google US search (organic) per month over a six month period. Then I compared those with a similar set from a subsequent six month period to see which had significantly dropped off in traffic and rankings. The purpose of this was to estimate the number of significant sites which were penalized over that period of time. The final estimate came to about 700 sites/year which were penalized. There are lots of uncontrolled variables here of course... but I was looking for an "order of magnitude" answer simply for curiosity's sake.

The 1 million spam pages created per day were of course excluded from consideration as they never received much traffic from Google in the first place.

So just to clarify my earlier response, I am advocating for a policy that would apply to websites exceeding a certain threshold of organic traffic for a significant period of time.
So you don't have to put up with bureacratic bullshit that goes on in all companies or government departments. Once you have worked in organisations for long enough, you learn that often the people in management above you are often quite incompetent. Their ability to make decisions is hamstrung by the person above them, and those above them. Control freaks are everywhere, and drag down the independence of staff. Having your own start-up or working for one means you are either in control of the decision making, or very close to those that are, and you aren't stuck in committees and meetings to make even the smallest decisions. Freedom from these work practices is enough motivation for anyone. I make pretty good money now, I would like to make more through my start-up, but if my start-up made me the same I would be 5 times happier than in my current work environment.
That seems like a very small and somewhat flawed data point to be drawing any conclusions from.
It seems relevant to me! ;-)
You could see where Google would use ITA, and it made sense. Search engines are turning into more than just listing websites.

With Akamai, not so much.
And that just means keeping your GPS turned on the whole day. Sure, I always dreamed about losing all my battery charge to such an insanely great feature.
That's how it is on the MacBook Air so Asus had to copy it. On OSX there is accentual key press detection so hitting it by mistake is no big deal. Nothing happens.
Such as? A temporary token through email is a slight inconvenience but I've yet to see a better method.

A different password on each site is unacceptable. Being locked into lastpass and the like is also unacceptable.

BrowserID means I can't use different browsers easily. Pass.

An email/token based solution means 1) Users do not have to go through a tedious registration process. 2) Users do not have to remember a passphrase (or worse, a password), which by the way is the most arrogant thing a site can require of its users. By requiring passwords you are telling your users that you're super-duper important and worthy of the memory space. You're not. 3) Logging in and signing up are now indistinguishable from the user perspective.
A lot of people hate Facebook and would love to leave. The problem is that the network effect is very strong.
I believe there actually may be legal issues with having something where the user might accidentally dial 911 if the voice control interpreted their speech incorrectly.

(However, Android's voice actions seemed happy to call 911 for me, although of course I didn't let the call go through.)
Interview Question: Matrix Region Sum
I'm not deaf, but I share the sentiment. If we are not very close friends or related, I don't answer your call. And I've taken to giving my Google Voice number to some of the more persistent callers with it going straight to voicemail. I get what I want (an email with a mediocre speech-to-text version of the message) and they get what they want (to use a phone).
I think it is also difficult to remember all the victories of "voting with your money" because so many have been normalised. Hormones in meat? Dolphin-killing tuna fishing? Formula better than breast advertising? There are myriad examples where a minority voted with their dollars and shifted corporate practice.

Are you old enough to remember supermarkets with no organic/free-range products? No recycled products? No vegetarian versions of products? These are all things commonly available now that have been introduced in my lifetime as a supermarket shopper.

Yes, it sure would be better if the consumer did not have to fight evil with every purchasing decision (it leads to decision fatigue, if nothing else). It would be better if representational democracy (especially in the US) worked better at looking after collective interests. But voting with your money? It does work, and I would be surprised if the Internet has not amplified its effect even further.
Did I get this right? Can you launch rm with arguments for instance? If so, this is huge.
They're selling them data analysis. I cannot find in that a great moral question or hazard. I'm sure when Monsanto employees go about their daily lives they also are sold food, clothes, computers, cell phones...

Nick O'Niell's analysis of Paul Graham's comment is nonsensical:

"He’s actively suggesting the idea that because other people are doing it (people with big brand names), it’s ok for a YCombinator company to do it as well."

Putting aside the rape of the English language going on in that sentence --'actively suggesting'? --, it is false in its claims. Paul pointed out that if the moral standard is that companies who sell things to nasty companies are committing a moral offense, then we need to apply this standard massively, to essentially every company that exists. Targeting Cloudant specifically is unfair and seems arbitrary.
buy your milk in Canada - or anywhere else in the western world - where rBGH has been determined to be too dangerous to add to milk

rBGH isn't added to milk; it's injected into cows. The misconception that the milk itself necessarily contains rBGH is precisely the justification that Monsanto claims for restraining "rBGH free" labels. I don't think that's an adequate justification, though, and I agree with the thrust of your point.
Bug Powered Android Phone
Fix your broken iOS 5
Looks like the link is broken. This one works though: https://plus.google.com/u/0/101960720994009339267/posts/ENuE...
It's more about learning how to deal with git's error messages. They are very cryptic if you don't have a complete understanding of how the underlying system works.
Guess I'll set Safari aside until they address this. Wild implications!
Dennis Ritchie dead
news just appeared on G+..Rob Pike posted news that Denis Ritchie has died..

Can PG have the black flag again on the site for his passing?
Even if so, why should Apple give Android similar leverage over carriers?
I use a Galaxy S2 as my alarm clock and have never encountered this problem, even though I typically leave my phone on my bed by my pillow as I sleep.
It delivers very high single-core performance compared to smartphone processors, which was the subject under discussion. How it stacks up against other desktop/server processors is important within that market, but a distinguishing feature of desktop and server processors is that they all have high single-core performance.
This push for donations would have worked better if the team would have given the community a clear picture of what they've created so far -- and what they intend to do moving forward.

You have to create a story to survive. This is not a story -- it's not even really altogether clear. Diaspora just isn't "getting it". They had the spotlight and they've continued to drop the marketing ball every step of the way.

I hope some people see fit to contribute. But without creating something where I see value -- either in the people or the product, I'm gonna go buy some more iPhone games.
Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died
This seems wildly impractical, as the guy pulled the label out that still had a UPS label on it, which indicates that they sent it UPS to this facility which then put it in a locker.

If they're going to send it UPS anyway, why not just send it to your house? I can't imagine there are that many people who would rather have to make another trip to go pick packages up vs. having them left at your door (in most circumstances; there are some instances where it's more convenient to have something put somewhere you can access it 24/7 rather than dropped off, but I imagine those are limited.)
Most professional news organizations have style guides that govern how to reference companies, states, titles, measurements, etc. For some really common acronyms it seems like overkill (IBM, FBI, etc.) but the copy desk will still enforce it.
My iPhone 4 does.

"What time is it?"
"The time is 9:14 PM."
Its not technically ironic but certainly amusing that businessinsider's story about akamai was so popular that it crashed their site, which could have been avoided by using akamai (or any cdn).
As random as some of these seem, clearly Siri has amassed a ton of input data.

With the volume of people playing around with Siri I'll bet darn near every clever question has already been asked a dozen times.

Heck with that amount of data pouring in Apple could hire a team of comedy writers to just hit the daily top 1000 new questions.

Wonder how they are ranking the quality of the responses / satisfaction.
Or until you install today's update. It's fixed in 5.1.1, which is included in the OS X 10.7.2 software update: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5000
Doesn't seem to reproduce for me...

http://www.spleeyah.com/a/
I see. It would have been preferable for Cloudant to do business with Monsanto as long as they never talked about it.

What possible difference could that make in the moral calculus? They're a small company that has found financial security in their contract, that's why they are making it public it.
Also: White iPod Touch
Dennis was a friend. It is very sad to learn of his passing. We are all indebted to him for his many contributions to the field.
Siri is going to be a great marketing machine for Apple. People will love to show it to their friends. And it all happens on the servers, so there's no end to Siri's incremental 'intelligence'.
Sounds like you have a lot of negative influences in your life. You should cut them out asap if that is how they are going to treat you. You made a decision. It didn't work out. You should be commended for having the bravery to try it.

Seriously though, you are only 20. You have your whole life ahead of you. People are right here to say you need to stop sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself. Put that energy into getting a new job. Any job. Just get yourself out of the house. Work your ass off to build up your resume, hack projects on the side, contribute to open source, etc.

Don't commit suicide because that is just stupid and nobody is going to feel sorry for you.
Send your rss (Google reader) posts to Kindle
Out of curiosity, I wonder if it would be illegal for a journalist to falsely report a critical story about a company while buying short term puts to profit from the stock freefall. There are early stage biotech companies going through clinical trials where reporting failure could easily tank the stock 80% in a day.

While this is clearly ethically corrupt, this technically isn't insider trading since the journalist didn't have any insider info in the first place. Any thoughts?
VC roundtable on startup funding landscape
Note this appears to be fixed in the recent Safari 5.1.1 update, according to Apple's support page here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5000
Viewing ads makes you the product not the customer.
The article doesn't say that this was Josh's design decision, or that he was even involved in the project until the post-launch incident-handling.
OmniAuth 1.0 Developer Preview
It's very cool -- when I was working with microcontrollers, I would have loved to have eight independent cores -- but it's definitely meant more for embedded work, like industrial robotics, than for smartphones.
This is what I am taking home:

1) There IS no perfect product for everyone.

2) Making something a platform has some chance of addressing the above.

Me trying to make sense of it, but meanwhile let me say it aloud again. There IS no perfect product for everyone. Thanks, Stevey.
Maintaining a garbage collector requires overhead, hence why C++ does not implement one as part of the language.

From my experience at University, the JVM uses an indirect method of accessing and storing objects. So each reference to an object is effectively a handle, hence as big as a pointer. It points to a table that contains the actual pointer to the object in memory (or something to that effect), so that the garbage collector can move the object in memory.

Therefore an object that just has a single integer will require 2 pointers and an integers worth of memory (at least). Any less than that and it would be garbage collected since there are no live references in the code to the object.

Garbage collection isn't free.
Very sad. RIP, dmr.
The large-scale computational analysis of genomes both animal and vegetable is going to create an epoch in which it will be possible to cure or make chronic cancer, HIV, and some genetic disorders. Whether or not Monsanto's the devil, that large companies are adopting this technology and providing financial succor to the companies creating the technologies used in this analysis is of benefit to everyone.
Give us another 417 days of your silence.
very sad. I love the writing style of 'The C Programming Language'
Not even my parents have a real phone number for me, I'm sure as hell not going to give you one when asked by some 19 year old cashier! But, I no longer have to debate with these people about whether they really need my phone number or not, I just give them the google voice number.

As a programmer, I've found that interruptions are the most problematic thing that keeps me from being more productive, and nothing is more irritating than being interrupted by a pointless phone call. So, over a decade ago, I stopped having a landline, and only gave my cell number to a small number. Then I stopped carrying a cell completely.

I'm kinda amazed, in this day and age, how many organizations primary method of communication is the phone. I've had people, on multiple occasions, say "I can't do that for you via this forum, please call us at XXX".

The only reason I want an iPhone 4Steve (unlocked, of course) is because I want to have data access everywhere. The ability to make the occasional phone call for those people (usually government offices it seems) still stuck in the 19th century is a minor bonus.

If you require a phone number in order to do business with you, I simply will not do business with you.
Didn't know him personally, but his work has been an inspiration to me for nearly 20 years. RIP.
Can we please leave this type of thing in /r/politics?

I come to HN to avoid reading anything about "the 99%"