skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From MacBooks to many (most?) PCs they're using Synaptics chips, which implement hardware multitouch. It's impressive how PC manufacturers are able to absolutely screw up something as simple as two finger scrolling, which is in most part implemented in hardware (the remainder is tweaking a bunch of parameters). How many times have I encountered unusable trackpads under Windows, which only required a little synctl prod under Linux... It talks at length about the carelessness of manufacturers.

FWIW only Apple trackpads made me drop lugging a mouse around. This big-ass, ice-like sliding, smooth surface is a wonder to work on for hours. It seems PC manufacturers conspire to make the smallest, most post-10-min-of-use grinding surface ever: not only the size makes it a pain to aim, having to fight against the surface just kills it.
Edit: it's okay now!
No, it's what happens when the ecosystem doesn't give a shit about Windows.
The internals of the MacBook Air were designed by Intel, not by Apple. The same goes for the internals of the current ultrabooks. It's basically a reference design.
Rigid Stranding Machine Manufacturer
A well-written (by Michael Lewis) article that should invite people interested in economics and human or rational decision-making to get to know Kahneman's work, which won the Nobel prize, better.

Engineers try to make rational decisions but probably we don't realize the extent to which it's not really human nature to do so.

Teaser:

Amos [Tversky] and I once rigged a wheel of fortune. It was marked from 0 to 100, but we had it built so that it would stop only at 10 or 65 One of us would stand in front of a small group, spin the wheel, and ask them to write down the number on which the wheel stopped, which of course was either 10 or 65. We then asked them two questions:

Is the percentage of African nations among UN members larger or smaller than the number you just wrote?

What is your best guess of the percentage of African nations in the UN?

The spin of a wheel of fortune had nothing to do with the question and should have had no influence over the answer, but it did. “The average estimate of those who saw 10 and 65 were 25% and 45 respectively.”
I never used a mouse for the last 10 years. Reading the rant from the article made me wonder, what breakthrough Apple did, that after using their technology you can't use normal touchpad.
Surrogacy
Company directors generally have a fiduciary duty to creditors to ensure that a company is solvent.

Paying a dividend knowing that it would result in the company being unable to pay its liabilities is therefore a breach of that fiduciary duty.

However, even if there is a contract I bet it allows staff to be made redundant if the company decides not to do something without getting paid out, so that would be a possible loophole.
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Cheap flights to Prague
I am thinking of switching my distro (Ubuntu) atleast for a while till Unity is polished enough for my everyday use or get replaced with something that is easy to use. I am not happy with Unity when it comes to serious work

1. It is not easy for me to switch between instances of the same application immediately. I usually open code in 3 or 4 gedit windows and switch between them often using Alt+Tab when I am not using eclipse. This has become very hard with Unity, Most of the time my fingers starts aching after working for a while in Ubuntu.

2. Opening multiple instance of an application is also not that comfortable. Suppose I have opened a file manager to see the contents of the Downloads folder and when I click on the Home folder icon from the Unity menu it takes me to the Downloads folder which is already open. I have to select File -> New window to open another instance of the same application.

I had tried XFCE and KDE but I prefer GNOME. I did some searching and came up with two choices Fedora 16 or Linux Mint.

In these Linux Mint came as a winner and I decided to give it a try this weekend since it is debian based and it comes with GNOME2 and the promised support for GNOME2 when it switches to GNOME3.

Things that kept me away from Fedora 16 are GNOME3 (I have not tried but read some reviews on it, I read one post where Linus had expressed his distaste for GNOME3 and telling XFCE would be better) and unfamiliar package system (this is not a big excuse, rpm is also as matured as apt and I think I can learn that easily). If someone tried Fedora 16 and if they feel GNOME3 had improved plz leave a note.

I think I am not the only one and many people are thinking about migrating from Ubuntu to Linux Mint.
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I've found these types of reviews to be part of the charm of Yelp -- especially years ago during their ascent. Friendly, quirky reviews are more fun to read and to write.

A big difference now is on mobile devices. A long review isn't useful on-the-go, where quick judgements are desired.
This is a problem that needs solving, but the presentation needs more than words. We can all of think of what we would include in a product like this, but they would just be promises until its release. There's nothing to show what the interface, integration, or published content is like.

Also, should you be targeting small circulation publications instead of journalists? I don't think journalists have the power to make decisions regarding publishing tools.
The problem here is that these articles are very extremist. There are many native apps that can easily be done as web apps (cost and time effective), but not all of them. You can't choose one platform and just say it's the best choice overall.
SABC calls for new programming proposals
It's easy when you split the app in frontend and backend, but how to tackle an app that has to run disconnected and survive phone reboots?
What the hell does this even mean? He's 'asking' you to support the offending of a mythical "third person"? I have no idea what you are attempting to communicate.
Good artists copy, great artists steal
I was simply pointing out that an implementation exists. Whether it is complete or not I can't speak to because I haven't used it. Although, I do tend to trust the OpenBSD crew when it comes to implementing functioning code.
There is nothing about SEO (and SEO only) that isn't spammy.
looks like they fixed it
"Now whenever I use a PC trackpad, I'm astonished at just how bad they are, even on premium PCs."

Yesterday I had to install something on my old computer and I realized how bad the keyboard was, there it was , a piece of clunky , and cheap plastic. I have got used to mac keyboard so much.

I also use the magic track pad, OMG, using wacom trackpad was terrible.

"Why can't PC manufacturers get it right?"

Because it takes a lot of work and money. Apple products are patented and they can't just copy them(magic trackpad uses good quality glass and aluminium instead of plastic) so they need to design new ones, costing millions of dollars per device and this only makes sense if you could sell millions overnight like Apple does.
It is a function of tools. iPhone App have smooth animation because they run on Open GL accelerated graphics, yes. But so could Android apps. The difference is that the iOS SDK allows you to `pushViewController:animated` and that's it.

In the (pretty far I think, unfortunately) future, an SDK/Framework/Library à la jQuery will propose the same tool to run Web GL animations.

We need a UIKit/CoreAnimation for the web. The technology is not there yet, but it's going to be.
I agree with aphyr's response to you. This has never been a problem for me. I think your issue is that you consider an empty string to be a sensible default representing false or nil.
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Just as the internals of the iPhone were designed by Samsung?

No really, do you have any source for this? Because after reading about Steve Jobs obsession with the internal design of a device in his biography, I don't believe Apple would let another company do this.
Google Code Search is the only search engine that indexes GitHub repositories. I find that almost all open source projects are in GitHub in one way or another, and GH doesn't let you search the actual code

I use it, and I know other people do, to find software exploits. For eg. here is a search to find open source software that trusts the X-Forwarded-For HTTP request header:

http://www.google.com/codesearch#search/&q=%22X_FORWARDE...

http://koders.com/default.aspx?s=%22X_FORWARDED_FOR%22&s...

I hope GitHub implement their own code search now
> Why can't PC manufacturers get it right?

They do get it right. In fact I find Macs very limiting since they lack this:
http://notebook.pconline.com.cn/testing/0504/other/we1net_ib...

A laptop without this is not worth buying. See? Who knew than another guy's opinion can be so different...

I can type and operate "mouse" without moving my palms from the typing position. I can do all three types of mouse clicks with my thumbs! Moreover, Thinkpad's touchpad provides the most direct feel when moving the cursor [more on this later]. Having the central "pin" for quick cursor jumps (while typing) is absolutely invaluable.

Now, about the directness and precision of the touchpad. It's all about drivers. Early white Macbooks had a terrible lag of cursor movement but Apple fixed it later in software. My Thinkpad had somewhat inadequate "cursor feel" under windows 7 which came with it, but under Ubuntu it has the most satisfying "mouse" money can buy, called Ultranav.

Lenovo gets it right.
This is a total pain in Tumblr. I don't even think it's possible, or at least, haven't figured it out in 3 days of trying. So now I'm weighing whether the community/distribution of Tumblr is worth trading for a little bit of SEO. In our case, a social iPhone app, I think we're keeping Tumblr.
Yeah exactly, it's kinda like saying "62% more people open door once we add door handle"!
PC manufacturers did not acquire FingerWorks, Apple did. I agree with your opinion, PC notebook trackpads are rubish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks
Website Development, Web Designing SEO Forum, HTML Forum
Website Development, Web Designing SEO Forum, HTML Forum
Yes, reference designs are extremely common nowadays. With something as complex as a motherboard, designing it from scratch is a serious endeavor. There are probably a total of over 20,000 pages of documentation for all the parts on that board. I designed a cabled PCI Express output board for a piece of test equipment and there was over 3000 pages of documentation to sift through.

Also, didn't Apple get Intel to produce a small package, low-voltage processor just for the Air? Did anyone expect them to restrict its use solely for Apple? This is basically a campaign to sell more chips.
deducer33@workgold.33mail.com

Big Data is Useless Without Science. WRONG.
counterexample:
genetic algorithm - no rules - just results.

1.)traditional scientific method. hypothesis, then

prediction test. Deduction using BIG DATA.
I call this quantitative deduction and classify it in
the class of brute force.
2.)induction using quality DATA.
I call this QUALITATIVE induction and classify it in
the class of 'elegance.'
3.)ABduction using quality/quantity DATA.
WTF? Oversimplified explanation:
Black swan - counter-examples or FALSIFY occurs only rarely - need BIG DATA to find the elusive black swan.

example:
Physics: Newton's law works 99% of the time. Need
QUANTITATIVE BIG DATA to get to 'corner cases' and 'quantum
mechanics.'
So, 'BIG DATA' useful in finding COUNTEREXAMPLES.
So, 'Small Quality Data useful for 'testing predictions' - abduction is a mixture.

http://ultimavi.arc.net.my/ave/integra-j.html
key question: does MORE and BIG mean BETTER?
induction involves the classification or generalization of examples for explaining tendencies in observations. - YES?
Abduction involves the adoption of existing or non-existing hypotheses for a given observation explanation. - NO?

PS.due to FLEXIBILITY of human mind versus AI, I prefer
ABDUCTION.

Thought test: IBM Watson.
Method Winner Big or Quantitative DATA
deduction AI sometimes or TRUE/FALSE
induction AI TRUE
abduction Human FALSE

the next post is 'fuzzy logic' Zadeh and 'fuzzy data'?
We don't have anything like that here - we don't do top secret stuff - but, in that case, the machine wouldn't be on the network.
Then why does the Asus version look so much cheaper?

That may explain the similar layout, honestly. But what strikes me the most about those pics is that the Asus internals look like a cheap toy version of the Air.
Apple got the grain of the glass just right. Using an old plastic trackpad sucks. Either the grain is too course and you rub your finger raw or the grain is too fine. Then your finger sticks to the trackpad.

Most laptop users I've observed only use the trackpad when there is no alternative. If they have 5 minutes to put the laptop down on a desk (or any flat surface) they'll break out a mouse.

I think IBM had a good idea with the trackpoint nub but most users (unless they were really ardent Thinkpad users) couldn't get the hang of it and went back to the crummy pad or USB mouse.
Thank you for the helpful reply. I might show up on IRC sometime or ask my questions on the users mailing list.
I'd agree. I'd also add that well written stored procs are often more readable than well written ad hoc queries.

The longest query I have ever written I thought was approaching unmaintainability at about 100 lines, but I can sit down and digest it without too much effort. I have however spent a week debugging a query that was three times that long. I think the time to understand starts increasing with the square of query length...... 100 lines may not take too long to understand, but 200 lines takes 4 times as long, 1000 lines takes 100 times as long, etc.....

At least my experience is that even well written SQL starts becoming a bear really fast when over 100 lines ling.
Why aren't there more Urinals in homes?
I think the reasoning is that a link in a blog is better because it's one link with lots of text. Links on Twitter are links next to lots of links. Google doesn't value pages full of links as much as content with a few links. (It feels so backward)

By the same reasoning, Hacker News front page doesn't help you with page rank, but it's great for exposure.
I fully agree that those sane defaults indeed aren't right for representing false or nil. What I'm arguing is rather the reverse: nil is often initially used as an (insane?) default and that is later changed without updating all related checks (because they don't stick out and demand attention, which makes them easy to overlook or 'overthink'), which causes bugs.
i am currently using a dell and a sony vaio as a developer machine (ubuntu), if i had a chance to buy a powerful ubuntu machine (just like google nexus), it would solve all my problems. tegra 4 looks very promising.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Intel-Touts-...

You can pretty much guarantee that Intel designed most of that ASUS motherboard. Do you really think they copied Apple? Apple (or anyone else) couldn't make a motherboard without Intel's help.
Off topic, but that site really is amazingly ugly. In Chrome on Windows the lower section is unreadable.
My Grand Experiment: Turning Off AdWords
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Not all trackpads are created equal. I was playing around with the Acer Aspire S3 (another one of those MacBook Air wannabes) and it had a pretty decent trackpad. Not quite what you get with Macs and by the looks of it also a bit smaller – but at least competent.

Looking down the row of laptops left and right to the S3 I was, however, struck by how tiny all the other trackpads were. This seems like such a simple fix.

My old 2007 MBP has a larger trackpad than all those Windows laptops.

(The S3 actually looks like a pretty nice laptop. It feels nice and stable. The Acer logo also isn’t quite as ugly as the Asus logo. Still, it does many of the usual crappy things Windows laptops tend to do: there are too many damn LEDs and too many damn letters and logos on that thing – and I’m not talking about the removable ones. Those are bad enough but at least removable. And now: monochrome. I guess that’s progress.

Specs are a wash – as usual. The S3 has a crappier screen and a worse CPU (not that it matters) but you get more SSD for your money. I’m still not entirely sure why anyone would buy the S3 over the MacBook Air, though. The difference in price is actually pretty small. The only model that is worth considering is the base model with HDD since Apple doesn’t have anything in that price segment.)
One of our basic interview questions is doing schema modeling on a white board from business concepts we lob at them.
I proposed a not-dissimilar idea on ruby-core recently. It got a little support, but was mostly ignored. It can be remarkably difficult to get meaningful changes adopted.
Amazon finds startup investments in the 'cloud'
Lenovo has pretty good trackpads but they are tiny. The trackpoint is nice but not for everyone. If you want one you obviously have to buy a Lenovo laptop.

I’m not exactly sure, though, why you seem to be so outraged about someone else’s opinion.
I wish I could upvote this twice. Best analysis & explanation in the thread. By far.
Asus may not have "done it right", but that doesn't mean there aren't good lightweight laptops to rival the air.

I have a Sony Vaio Z. It weighs less than the corresponding 13" Macbook Air (carbon fiber! Like a Ferrari!), has better specs and an innovative design. For one, it does not look like an Air--it does not taper to a point, which is something that annoys me in both the Asus and the Air. It has an actually minimalistic design and looks gorgeous in black.

However, the real innovation is in the "Power Media Dock" which--despite the silly marketing name--is actually a brilliant piece of hardware. The laptop itself does not have a DVD drive and uses an Intel HD 3000 graphics chipset. However, it comes with a dock using Intel's LightPeak protocol that contains a discrete ATI graphics card and DVD drive. This lets you have a meaty graphics card at home and a mobile one on the go--very useful. I can also plug my extra monitor and various peripherals into it so that I only need to plug one thing into my laptop when I come home.

There are a couple of problems: the keyboard is "not brilliant" at best, although I've gotten used to it. I've tried the Air's keyboard and, while it was better, it was also not brilliant. Additionally, the Linux support on the laptop is spotty. However, from what I've heard, this is also true of MacBooks, so it isn't a differentiating factor.

The last issue, of course, is the cost--it is closest to a 15" MacBook pro rather than the Air. However, for this, you get specs equal to a MacBook pro--including either a 1600x900 or 1920x1080 resolution. Even the lower-resolution screen--the one I have--looks fantastic.

Overall, the Vaio Z is exactly what the poster is deriding the Asus for not being--innovative, capable and well-built. It is "radically better" than an Air and the only really significant downside is that it's correspondingly more expensive. It even has a rather good touchpad. Oh, and raid-0 ssds. Oh yeah. I do not regret splurging on it at all.
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Technopreneur: Why you should Start a Cloud Business
Apple actually acquired FingerWorks, which made flat touchpad keyboards. The quality is much higher than what most companies are able to use (Synaptics or whatever?)
sadly, it is a sony. i have heard far, far too many horror stories about sony computers at this point.
As much as we all like Steve, I kinda doubt he was the only one with that insight.
Depends who the alternative is, startups are generally far worse when asking this question.
Isn't this a flaw in Ruby, though? It also means that you can't create a delegate/decorator/proxy object for a false object and have it be false as well, which goes against the general "everything is determined by sending messages" vibe Ruby has going on.

I know the reasoning (it's much faster to do math on object IDs than it is to call a method), but there are workarounds for this (e.g. only allowing frozen objects to be boolean-false, and having the object's truth-ness/false-ness represented by the return value of its #false? method at the time of freezing—thus allowing the interpreter to locate it in a semantically-meaningful part of object-ID space that can later be masked for in a TEST instruction.)
because they want it to be cheaper. if they went with aluminium unibody it would have ended up costing at retail more than the Air, which doesn't make sense, does it?
I've said this in a comment at rosania.org, but I think it bears repeating here: this is why we need a #blank? or #null? protocol that user classes can participate in as part of core. #nil? and an inextensible FalseClass just aren't enough to do the sorts of thing that Avdi was trying to do in his original post. My tentative proposal is languishing here: http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/5372
This is how it works with all the chip manufacturers and all the ODMs (from Intel Atom and Snapdragon etc. through to desktop PC's). They will announce that they have a new range of boards and chips and the marketing people will go out with some engineering people to every single consumer co and pitch the new hardware to them.

Apple fanboys live in a fantasy world where every single good innovation (such as the trackpad, the A5, the touchscreen - all acquired) comes out of Cupertino, and all the crappy stuff is what other companies do - not realizing that the iphone, ipad, macbooks etc. are built around dozens of different companies - all of who work with more than just apple.
the best non-Mac laptops are the X300 thinkPad series. you probably have at least one friend who is a secret fan of them.
I guess that overriding the behavior of any built-in classes in Ruby is not a great idea, as most gems rely on that unmodified behavior.
The Zenbooks ARE unibody aluminium.
a while ago I did a mechanical turk experiment that shows experimentally a bit of how kahneman/tversky prospect theory ends up working: http://joshua.schachter.org/2008/09/amateur-economist.html
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I've bought few stocks, what should I do next? I don't see when the market changes next time (or how often) It seems to static.
That's not the same thing as peaceful protests by students and professionals. Noam Chomsky (!) is on the record saying the US is a very free country. Politically, that is, by which he means the scope of permissible political action is wide not, that it's rate of success is high. He's right.