skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The curriculum hasn't changed towards 'we won't tell you what you need to score the marks'

I never said it did. It's perfectly possible to have a spec. that allows for more than one type of implementation. This is schoolwork, not NASA. The aim is to show that they understand the concepts and can produce results. Exact requirements aren't necessary for that.

From the spec. on the site you linked to - it seems Unit 4: Creating Digital Products is the relevant unit:

http://www.edexcel.com/migrationdocuments/GCSE2010/UG023092-...

It states:

> > They can choose what sort of product to design and make, but it must include an appropriate user interface and user input must determine the outputs that are produced.

It seems to me there's a lot of freedom for students to choose implementation platform and language. While your school in particular might have been more specific in what you should build (and really, given the limitations of teacher knowledge, that makes sense), it doesn't follow that his must have been similarly restrictive. Unless you were literally in the same class as him, you aren't in a position to know what was asked of him, and your assumptions directly contradict the article.

> > There's no indication of that in the article

> Because if there was, it would severely weaken his whole 'I'm surrounded by idiots' argument, wouldn't it?

My point is that without further information, you aren't in a position to say that he ignored the spec. The article's direct statements trump your assumptions.

> As far as I am concerned, there is one person making judgments with less information and that person is you.

The only thing I have stated in my comments thus far relates to what is directly stated in the article and what you are saying. I'm not making assumptions, all I'm doing is pointing out you are doing so.
I haven't finished listening to the podcast highlighted in this post but a point to note is that the book was rushed into print which may have affected the Isaacson's writing quality.
You cherry picked two minor quibbles – both of which the quibbler (John Siracusa, not Gruber) admitted were minor – which were part of a litany of complaints about the book. He has so many problems with it that he didn't even finish in a single sitting.

Clear, penetrating, insightful criticism, indeed.
awesome! great job
This is a totally fair complaint. Sometimes it is a mystery to me why HN-ers downvote things.
We're building an open source spectrometer
Hi all, this is my first post here... I hope its not considered off-topic.<p>My friends and I are building a photospectrometer, and we're open-sourcing code, design files, and parts lists.<p>We just got the CCD working, which companies sell as a line reader for a few hundred dollars alone. Its a $20 CCD chip, and while we think we'll use an ARM processor with USB and the ability to add ethernet, we are considering all platforms as viable (for instance, I've got a parallax propeller on the way to test with, as it can already talk directly to Android devices over a software ADB protocol, so would be a quick and easily hacked way to talk to the CCD as well as display and process data).<p>We've also been playing around with software ideas and spectral databases... big companies really sell their databases as far as we can tell... so we're starting one that's free and open too. The software will all be HTML and Javascript, so it will run in Python via webkit, or webkit on Android/iPhone, etc...

We're looking at optics from Newport Corp, Thor Labs, and Chinese suppliers (through Alibaba.com). We'll couple optics together with fiber optics, and will be looking into using commodity TOSlink cables if possible. We'll also put together some accessories to help actually taking different lab/field measurements (dip probe, cuvette holder, microvolume pedestal), and we've even done some microfluidic cuvettes using laser cut acrylic sandwiching double-sided clear tape.

Cheers!
FYI, I've submitted these ideas to Google. I'm hoping that one way or another they'll oppose SOPA in significant ways.
Why Science Majors Change Their Minds [single page]
I thought it was a bit too fawning. Isaacson's thesis is exactly the one Jobs wanted to build: that Steve was at the intersection of technology and humanity and succeeded. This theme is ever-present and is included at the end with Steve's own words. A more critical book might have investigated more whether that is true rather than rehashing a lot of stories that I had already read.

I loved the book anyway.
It's worse than that. The fact that credit is so easy means more people get themselves into debt. This means other services providers and lenders over rely on credit scores to determine whether they should accept new customers. It's cyclical.

I hear my friends talk about applying for multiple cards at the same time; cycling between cards so that a minimum spend is maintained and keeping and paying for cards that they don't need all so they can maintain a credit score. This is all guess work anyway, because no one really knows what contributes to this secret score.

The credit card companies must love the lack of transparency because instead of having to compete with each other and with other forms of payment we are now in a world where everyone believes they need to use multiple cards from multiple vendors. They use these cards even when they don't need or want to because of how much they fear their credit score dropping.
I think it is time to move on with the critique of Jobs' bio and life.I read the whole bio and the net net I got out of it is that

1)Awesome design not just has aesthetic value but also a lot of practical business value

2)Focus Focus Focus on a few things to make them as perfect as possible - may be expensive in the short run but generally pays off in the long run
Paul Stamatiou switched to Jekyll a while back and has hundreds of posts, I believe.

http://paulstamatiou.com
I outsourced my app http://finaltouchapp.com

Its so simply anyone with a little programming flair could do it.

It's never a real problem. People most of the times, don't see what you see. Worry less get more done.
5by5 doesn't have transcripts. However, here's the links to the two podcasts Gruber is referring to:

Hypercritical 42 - http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42
The Talk Show - http://5by5.tv/talkshow/66

Careful when you listen... the entire network of podcasts is highly addictive (if you're into podcasts).
Hey now don't hate on us Iowa startups.
Except that this is not a hacker solution, as you need to actually go to http://wpengine.com/contact/ , fill a form, and wait.

The hacker solution that the Chief Technology Officer of Amazon uses is much more a "power to the people" approach.
Hi Matt,

The problem is that, sometimes, even quoted queries don't guarantee that the word will be there.

I hope verbatim solves that.
Is that how it works, or do lots of people build lots of things, and when a tiny handful of them go big the creators are retroactivley deemed prescient?
Heh, I did the same thing. It took me much too long to figure out that I needed to call ilInit...
All it takes is little planning ahead.

For example, our business requires that I travel all over the US and I use a debit card exclusively. Never have a problem with the airlines, hotels, or renting cars, but that's because we've taken the time to know which businesses will accept debit cards without a hassle.

"Also most of the benefits from credit cards are travel related. Like rental car collision insurance, travel insurance, etc if you use the credit card."

I'm beginning to sound like a tin-foil-hatter here, I know, but things like travel insurance are fluff that the credit card companies throw out
to induce people to use them.
I listened to the podcast over the weekend.

In a nuthsell, Isaacson doesn't understand computing, or the computing industry, and so he let a lot of errors in (OS X contains no NEXT code) and spends a lot of time focussing on things that don't matter.

It's more important because he was the one and only guy that was given that much access and he blew it. He didn't ask hard questions, he didn't perform a lot of research; all the bits in the book that seem extensively well researched were cribbed from other sources (hello folklore.org!) and for everything else he takes people at their face value.
A very good point; what's good for the goose may not be good for the gander, so to speak. I would love to hear an Android developer's take on the usefulness of specs.
I love that not only does it not use pcap, it's practical for many purposes... Starbucks wifi too slow for you? Reset everyone's connections but your own =)
During the first few days the game was out I routinely received errors trying to get the server list at all but as I've said, they have been incrementally improving battlelog since release. My biggest complaint is that the server browser isn't available in game. The game completely closes when leaving a server from in game or closing a game from battlelog. Then it has to be relaunched when starting the next game. This is really slow for many of us and there doesn't seem to be a very good reason for it. The use of origin also doesn't add anything for the player. I also would prefer being able to launch the game directly without having to open three applications (origin, browser, bf3).
It's easy to steal a card, but the card companies do pretty good fraud analysis and in any case, the card owner is never responsible for the fraudulent charges. Of course the cost of the fraud monitoring and insurance system are passed on to merchants and those who carry a balance. But if you don't carry a balance, there is no question that a rewards card is the best available payment mechanism. If you use something else, you are subsidizing those who use rewards cards.
3D printers can now read CT scans and produce bone models
Thanks to surgeon Mark Frame, 3D printers can now read CT scans and produce bone models at a fraction of the previous cost. To accomplish this he used OsiriX, an image processing package specific for the kinds produced by imaging equipment, such as CT scanners. As OsiriX is open source software that runs on mac OS, Frame was able to use it free of charge. He then used a program called MeshLab – also open source, and free, for Mac – to clean up the image and make them medical quality. Finally, this image was sent for printing. Seven days later the model bone arrived in the mail. All for £77.

Frame and colleagues have started a company that makes the models for you. Just send 3D-OM your CT scan and they’ll send you back your model. Heck, it’s so cheap now, if you’ve got a CT scan you might just want to get the model for fun.
Would be cool if it can show comments page in a split view below article.

Maybe it is already possible but not visible in screenshots?
UDP flood on port 80? With a bit of cooperation from your upstream, this should be one of the easier attacks to mitigate.
Anonymous Vows Destruction of Facebook
Impressive for your age. (How teenagers will make a difference in the future.)
Well see (at least in Switzerland and other European Staats) we allready giving people money if the dont have a job and we make them do stuff like "send in 20 application" or force them to go into some stupid class where you have to learn something you don't like doing for a week and then you can go back home and chill.

I am pretty liberarian but just like Hayek I think one function of the state is help pure people. You could never get a law past that basiclly says "He who does not work, neither shall he eat". Here in Switzerland pretty much everybody agreeds that helping the pure threw the staat is a good thing.

The system im proposing would at least be (a) fair (b) be much much much less complicated does getting read of a lot of human workforce that is no bound up in stupid jobs pushing around papers.

I would say the insentives to work are still there, this is not sozialim, im not taling about a basic income of min. wage or something.
Excellent comment. Any appeal to Congress that disrespects the value of copyright will not fly because, as the general public sees it, it is a serious problem when people have the value of their creative efforts diminished as they are spread across the web without compensation. The DMCA was never intended to protect infringers. It was designed to ensure that ISPs did not get caught in the cross-fire as copyright holders sought to protect their interests against those who did infringe. To do that, the ISPs had to abide by certain rules aimed at protecting copyright holders and their reward for doing this was to get "safe harbor" protection that shielded them from liability for the infringements that did occur on their sites. SOPA seeks to rip those protections away by effectively removing that shield. It also allows for what amounts to the creation of blacklists that will force search engines to ban allegedly transgressing sites from public view. All in all, then, it gives to the copyright holders (and to the Justice Department) a set of tools that will enable them to attack the websites directly for the infringements of others. In essence, this flips the DMCA on its head. Whereas DMCA nurtured the growth of the web by shielding innocent conveyers of information from liability as long as they played by the rules, SOPA (should it pass) will inhibit any such growth going forward by giving lawsuits and legal proceedings a central place in the copyright enforcement scheme across the web. This is why fledgling startups will be vulnerable to getting killed off before they can realize their potential: the copyright police will be there to shut them down before they can even develop proper systems for SOPA-style compliance. In other words, the issues here concern primarily the burden of litigation and whether, as a matter of public policy, people who have legitimate rights (copyright holders) should be given broad latitude to sue intermediate parties over what usually are infringements or whether they should be restricted in their right to impose liability on such intermediate parties, thereby giving such parties the room to breathe and to grow as companies and to further the information goals of the web itself. This is an important policy debate, and the people on the other side of it are not innately evil in arguing their case. I think they are wrong, very wrong, and that the consequences of what they are trying to do will be highly detrimental, as a matter of policy, to the future growth of the web. But it is important that the opposition to this not be centered on ad hominem attacks. That only detracts from the strength of the case to be made for internet freedom and growth and does indeed allow the opposition to dismiss bona fide complaints by casting SOPA opponents as people who are not focused rightly on the serious issues involved in this debate.
An ode to Kickstarter and Kindle
I'd stay away from Kickstarter, then.
I'd suggest that the podcast is worth listening to.

It's slow moving, but once Siracusa gets rolling, you can taste his frustration with the crappy job that Isaacson did with it.

edit: typo.
Is Abstraction a Double Edged Sword?
If only they had a CPAN growth rate to measure.
MAD MEN
I got the opportunity to listen to Ben speak at Startup Weekend Des Moines and I have to say I'm really impressed with him. Regardless of Dwolla's future (personally I think they will transform the industry), Ben is a shining example of working hard and being a successful entrepreneur in a place that really isn't very supportive of people who think differently. There are now a few legitimate VCs, college courses, and frequent startup events in the Des Moines area and every single person I've talked to gives a lot of credit to Ben for helping that grow. Des Moines even just recently launched one of their first incubator programs (Startup City) and is seen as a legit player in the Silicon Prairie. My team at Startup Weekend Des Moines (Fundle.co) revolved does group payment systems and Ben brought his team from Dwolla to meet us and offer their expertise for coding the backend payment processing part of it. Even if they don't kill the credit card, Dwolla deserves a lot of respect for helping to jump start the entrepreneur community there.
Go and Erlang: A Tale of Two Concurrency Models
What I'm wondering is, how do more and smaller startups equate to eventual consolidation? His preference seems to be that engineers would elect to become agents or enablers of consolidation by joining the very companies that have the scale to consolidate a market.

His two points don't seem to have any intersection that I can see.
I'm completely with you on car loans (why pay so much interest for something that depreciates in value so quickly; you're losing out twice).

But for the majority of people it is simply not possible to buy a house without either making massive life changes or getting a loan. I don't think that becoming a life-long renter is a smart choice either.
It's not the PCB that's expensive. It's the components on it.
The tplink wr703n is a 400mhz MIPS computer with a USB port, an Ethernet port, and wireless networking which sells for about $20 (on volumerates.com, which is unfortunately down at the moment). It has a completely functional Linux port and is supported by OpenWRT. Not as fast, and fewer peripherals than the Raspberry Pi, but an indication that the $25 price point on the pi is doable, I think.
Zero, and thus zero. No more IPv4 addresses exist; anyone wanting a new block of them would have to get them on the secondary market like this.

Edit: I stand corrected; while the root IPv4 namespace has no more available addresses to distribute to the regional registries like ARIN, the regional registries themselves still have some addresses left.
This is one of the coolest presentations I've seen at Hack & Tell.
Chase QuickPay has nothing to do with credit cards. I'm under the impression its all ACH transfers linking my checking account (at bofa) to my landlords (at chase).
They're comparatively higher density...
This is artificial scarcity for you. Numbers. They're paying millions of dollars for a set of numbers.
5 depends on where you work :)
Tell HN: Please, don't send form letters in protest of SOPA
The EFF's heart is in the right place with their new campaign against SOPA[1], but sending form letters en masse is usually a bad idea.

Once the people reading the letters know where the language of a form letter came from, those letters are usually taken to represent the interest group rather than the individual who clicked "send".

If you want your letter to be read and taken seriously, edit both the subject and the the content of the message to reflect your personal feelings about the law. Personally addressing your congresscritters in the text doesn't hurt either.

I know something about this because I worked on a tool this summer to group public comments on regulations by similarity, which you can find here: http://anacostia.sunlightlabs.net:8080. You'll note that the vast majority of these letters are exactly the same, and don't really provide compelling reasons why individuals are affected.

This bill is bad enough that you should be able to find plenty of reasons to be outraged, rather than defaulting to someone else's. And contrary to popular opinion, congress really does read these things. Together, we can kill this thing.

[1]https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8173
I've heard the complaints about getting friends in game, and then on the same squads. I haven't run into this problem yet as none of my friends bought the game due to origin.
Nike Zoom Hyperfuse 2011 Shoes
What was the second one? I know you quit your job to focus on your startups. Was there a previous time you left school as well or was it something else?

(I agree with all you are saying in this thread, BTW - I dropped out of high school myself when I realized both that I could, and it was wasting precious hours I could use doing more useful things. I won't say I advocate this for everyone, but it's definitely the right choice for many kids who are learning on their own already and are just spinning their wheels with the sorts of shallow coverage of topics taught by non-experts that secondary schools offer.)
Yeah, this was my thought too. Since everyone else who uses a credit card pay no fee, and I have to pay 25c to Dwolla, I'm actually subsidizing everyone else's credit card fees.

If the credit card fees were passed through to the customer it would work, but with the current "socialized" model there is no customer incentive.
Google Health shutdown spurs debate over PHR viability
How many ISPs and consumers are set up to use it? I think it's still a while before IPv6 will be viable.
Why Apple’s iPhone market share actually matters
Looking forward to reading this book but thought the podcast was interesting.
Well education by itself creats value for you and the people you talk.

It not socialism, when you acctully learn something/do something you will be able to get more.
So his argument is that we should start building the consolidated Internet bureaucracy now?

The problem isn't overfunding small startups, it's going after markets that are all hype and have little to do with innovation.

Our smartest engineers should be working on ARPA-funded energy projects not how to create a new feature to keep Facebook relevant.
What do FB,GOOG,TW,MZ,YHOO,AOL & eBay agree on? That SOPA is a bad bill-MC
Subsidized cable subscription plans for Apple TV play?
Interesting new Apple television play speculation: commit to a 2 year cable subscription, get a new Apple TV set at a subsidized price (instead of Set-top box).
Please give us list of companies making these overpriced $7K+ devices. Any of them public?
This sounds clever but actually bespeaks a lack of understanding what an IP address is. Microsoft didn't buy a "set of numbers"; they bought the rights, previously secured by another company, to insert prefixes into hundreds of thousands of routers operated (at galactic levels of expense) by hundreds of companies around the world.