skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The claim in the article is false. Apple doesn't want high ebook pricing, because Apple is a hardware manufacturer. iTunes and all the content it sells, was created as a loss leader to generate demand for their hardware. Apple historically has fought very hard to keep content prices down.

At the time that iBooks was announced, there were many stories on this issue, and I read that the agreement Apple entered into with the book publishers was that they could set their prices however they wanted, they just couldn't charge more on the iBookstore than they charged elsewhere.[1]

Apple gave them pricing flexibility, provided that they didn't do what you point out the record companies did.

The book publishers liked this, and wanted the same terms from Amazon. They figured they could just go with Apple if Amazon didn't comply. Amazon rolled over, and ever since their PR agency has been floating stories like this one to make out like Apple is behind the rise in ebook prices.

Apple isn't. Apple just wanted the iBookstore to be competitive and offer low prices.

[1] The reason Apple lets publishers set prices is the same reason Apple lets app developers set prices. The iBookstore is open to just about anyone, even very small publishers. Apple isn't in the business of pricing retail products like this, and figures if the producer of the product sets the pricing, then the market will be more efficient. The notable exception to this, of course, is the music industry, which was the first part of the iTunes store, and which Apple had to work to keep prices down. Also in the TV and movies section they work to keep prices down. Maybe they could have dictated pricing for books, but if they had, it would have been to keep prices down, not up, like they did for the other categories. The "price it whatever you want" model worked on the appstore to provide a vibrant community where great apps can be had for $0.99. Its not unreasonable to expect Apple expected something similar in the iBookstore.
Yes, sadly Microsoft (and to a certain extent Apple) have done an excellent job convincing people that the CLI is both dangerous and antiquated. So when they come to my other books and I tell them to use the CLI they have major problems. I'm writing this mostly as a quick way to get them over that speed bump then on to more useful programming topics.
Megaupload Video Reinstated, Universal Says “You Can’t Touch Us”
How would you evoke such code? Squeezing it into an http reply? Calling it from PHP CLI?

If doing it on your webapp, don't! You're doing it wrong. Otherwise why would you need php specifically? I mean I guess you could, but what advantage does it poses comparing to other languages available in pretty much every *nix system nowadays (perl, python)?

For the record, I have a nice collection of downvotes for defending PHP on point-and-laugh-at-PHP threads here at HN. I just don't see how the use case you're presnting is realistic.
I see your point. I'm still not sure how it would be implemented in a way that the signal/noise was high, that the associated articles were relevant.

I run http://hubski.com that was built on top of news.arc. One of the things that I did to help tie posts together was to add tags. It's not perfect, but it does help pull up similar articles. You can follow tags too. EX: http://hubski.com/tag?id=architecture

It's a tough call. HN does work for most people, I think. The maybe the potential blowback is not be worth experimentation at this point? PG seems willing to make changes, but he's conservative about it. Maybe from lessons learned?
I don't see how that could be the only reason for ditching your kindle. Stripping the DRM is trivial, and for convenience of sharing, ebooks win hands down. If you want to share a book with friends it's much easier to send an email attachment than go to the post office.
Like many philosophical puzzles, this one is based on mapping [torturing] ordinary language into a formally logical model.

In this case "surprise" seems suspect since it is an emotional and physical response - things which are likely to be difficult to predict using formal systems.

Then of course, there is the fact that the surprise is announced before hand rather than exclaimed - "Surprise!" - at the actual event as is the case with a surprise party...and of course surprise parties often do not surprise the person for which they are planned - indeed, sometimes forewarning is a necessary part of the surprise party plan.

Just as a surprise party is rated a success based upon the general standards for parties even when the person for whom it is thrown is not actually surprised (though acting surprised is often helpful), a surprise exam is successful based upon the relevant academic criteria. One simply does not fail a surprise exam because they were expecting it.

What the professor announced was essentially, "On one day next week, there will be an exam. I am not telling you which day that will be." Whatever paradox we imagine finding is dependent on us deeming the purpose of the exam to be to cause surprise among the students, rather than getting them to study or measuring their knowledge or any of the legitimate purposes of the context.

Of course this does not make as interesting a story.

But it is hardly news that a flawed algorithm may produce flawed results.

The problem is that we are trying to treat ordinary language as if it was psuedocode.

For i = 5 to 1
i = i - 1
if i = 1
then "No Exam"
else next i
Referencing things by number is pretty common, I think, a lot of places use a Jira system where each ticket has a number and its often used for all development related tasks.
You are working at the wrong company. Quit.

EDIT: "I find that managers have come from no background to instruct people on a technological level and are taken on for simply their management ability."

If true, that is a sign of a very unhealthy company.
I dun understand your point?
Perhaps an announced 'surprise' ceases to be one, but none the less, what the teacher ought to have said is that there will be a test in a randomly picked day next week. All that's left for the students to guess is how many days they have to study.
It's not meant to be insulting, it's meant to be a method of learning the basics of a language that works. If you're insulted by it then just don't read it.
Interesting. Years ago I noticed a clause on the MLB all-star ballot that Canadian residents would have to pass a time-limited math-based test in order to qualify for some drawing related to the ballot. I wonder if this was related.

In fact, a quick google search reveals an almost identical clause in the 2012 NHL ballot:

If the potential winner is a Canadian resident he/she will be required to correctly
answer a mathematical skill-testing question without assistance of any kind, whether
mechanical, electronic or otherwise, in order to be eligible to receive the prize.

http://vote.nhl.com/public/fulfillment/rules.pdf
Forgot to link the comparison screenshot - https://img.skitch.com/20111216-d3fajpw313y3e4f3cgs74einr1.j...

As an open source user, I appreciate that you have improved the tools. But as a potential reader of your book, I want you to use whatever tools necessary to get it to look good.

Even when compared against a non-professionally converted pro Git PDF, this books does not fare that well. https://img.skitch.com/20111216-enxfwjcgkgsu2pcndkcaimd3q.jp... The code block has no padding. In general the typography is not pleasant. If you look at the git book, the italics do not stand out as much as in this book.

Backbone documentation is presented beautifully. So when you are aiming to compliment it, the bar is also a bit high :) (Granted it is HTML but I do think a lot can be done to make this book more pleasant to look at)
I know this isn't a movie forum, but typically, when discussing movies, one doesn't start off with a spoiler of the ending.

Thanks a ton. :-\
Because you didn't just "put positive energy into the universe". You hyped something in a way that was divisive.
A Wayback Machine journey with BeOS R4, Zeta 1.0, and Haiku
"Me: You've been invited to a meeting with 3 department heads to hash out their differences on Project 249.

Boss: I hate meetings."

A couple of the boss responses listed here are totally reasonable and their head-scratch-inducing inclusion weakens the piece.

Meetings are a (sometimes) necessary evil, but I'm pretty skeptical of anyone who doesn't, at some level, hate them.

I mean, fuck, who wouldn't hate the idea of going to a meeting of 3 department heads to hash out differences? Sounds DREADFUL.
I had never heard of Pomplamoose before stumbling upon them on YouTube. They seem to do well. Jonathan Coulton has been mentioned, who I knew before Portal came into existence and made him even more famous. Can't remember how I found out about MC Frontalot, but I bet I never would have heard about him at all in times before music production and distribution became virtually free.

Novelty acts? Sure. But they're proof that it's possible to become reasonably successful without the help of traditional media outlets if there's an audience for your work out there (I think most artists are–understandably–delusional about this one).

Anyway, I think curation is becoming more important and influental nowadays. And curators used to be much more (totally?) dependent on what the industry decided to provide them with.

It is no more so. I see no reason to worry about that (being a recording and performing artist myself).
There was a Munk Debate last year where Hitchens debated Tony Blair on whether religion was a force for good in the world. I highly recommend it: http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/Religion

Everyone knew Hitchens didn't have much time left, so it was great to see him doing what he does best against someone as high-profile as Blair.
40th anniversary of video games: From Computer Space to Skyrim
How 3-D Photovoltaics Could Revolutionize Solar Power
It depends. I started on my startup with my father (a startup founder in the 90s and a interim CEO for a failing startup. Neither were tech businesses) and the ~35 or so year gap proved to be a burden given the business model and culture I and my other co-founder wanted to establish. Tech startup business models and cultures can be very different from established business models and cultures. This can be very stressful if your older partner isn't psychologically ready to adapt their experience, because the truth is that they may have to be very flexible. Expectations became a huge source of conflict for use. If you want to discuss this personally, shoot me an email.
Original link has gone to link heaven. Alternative is http://ompldr.org/vYmV5bQ
Is it the word "hell" you disagree with or being told to do something? If it's "hell" I can remove that. If it's just because you don't want to be told to do something then don't read my book. You won't learn anything from it since the entire book is me telling you to do repetitive boring tasks.

As for why I wrote it: You may not have an irrational fear but a huge number of Windows and OSX users do. They've been told that the CLI is dangerous and antiquated so they avoid it and panic over it. Having someone like me just push them through actually gets them past that and on to learning how to use it.
This is already happening. Many ebooks published in the last year, I noticed, started at one price, and have been coming down.

It seems in the first year, the price is usually $12.99-$15.99, but after a year or so, the price drops to $9.99.

I figure in 5 years we'll see several pricing tiers:
$22.99- premium new book from a big name author

$17.99- premium book with a following (Eg: the next Twilight book in a series.)

$15.99- regular "hardcover" price for a new book.

$13.99- Discount hardcover price for a new book.

$9.99- The standard back catalog price for books published
in the last 10 years, or which still have strong sales.

$7.99- Discount, pulp or paper back price (this is currently the common price on sci-fi paperbacks, or at least used to be, I suspect its higher now with inflation.)

$5.99- Discount book or pamphlets, like guides and introductions, or older less popular paperback type books.

$3.99- premium articles.

$0.99- Short articles

If the market is allowed to sort itself out, and ebooks become popular, this is the type of pricing we can expect, and this is the type of pricing you currently have in bookstores. A spectrum of prices to fit a spectrum of products.

This is good. It allows for experimentation with low prices, or high prices to try and make a viable business.

It would be really sad for book publishers to be locked into a pricing model that makes them increasingly irrelevant, and thus to have the book industry die the way the newspaper industry is dying.

But maybe its just that I don't mind waiting a year for books to get them for $9.99. And if I really want the book, I don't mind paying $22.99.

The convenience of having my whole library on my phone far outweighs any difference in pricing between physical and ebooks. Even if they're the same price, I'll still buy the ebook, though I think on the balance ebooks will be mostly cheaper.
None of which are ever finished, most likely.

I've got 896 "urgent" tasks right now.

I'm quitting in 3 months' time (If I manage to get my nest egg to a non-scared-to-quit amount by then).
> Put simply, whenever I see a link to daring fireball on HN, I can say with ~ 2σ confidence that it will a) be about Apple or one of its competitors, b) argue that, whatever the issue, Apple Does It Better, and c) have its arguments picked apart in the comments. This has been such a long term trend that it has become thoroughly predictable.

This is not the fault of Gruber. It's a result of the selection bias applied by Hacker News as a whole. If you read Daring Fireball regularly, and not just the excerpts that make it to HN, you'll see that he frequently chastises Apple for what he believes are missteps. Here's a recent example:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/26/against-skeuomorphism

You can't hold the guy responsible for the fact that only a certain subset of his articles ever makes it to the front page of HN.
Feel free to read the PDF, and I'll be putting it up for free since it's a huge benefit to my students if they know the CLI.

But, PLEASE, do not pass the PDF around to newbies until I say it's ready. Having old versions with potential errors floating around or that are half-done is really bad for them.
Vim for developers that use other software, too
My main issue here is with exalting "design" as if it were a separable activity from the rest of making something. Everybody at a startup should feel that they're a designer first. Because they are: each person's work should have a significant impact on the user experience.
The solution is not to average flight stick data. Had it not, then non panicking pilot 2 would say why the bleep are you yanking back on the stick (fleeing the scary bear) when we are losing altitude fast and stalling.

Human panicking error. he thought the 75 stall warnings were due to loss of flight speed indicators.
What's different about it is its circularity. The students' anticipations of the exam are based on their anticipations of the exam. Sort of like "this statement is false".
Given enough users, all bugs become features, to someone. This kind of user/product interlocking happens a lot in Microsoft software (document formats, ie6, sql, etc).
The way to put the problem of surprise into logic is more like "On one day next week there will be an exam. It will not be possible to logically determine which day the exam is on." It's a very interesting story, you just have to preserve the core of the problem.
Boss: You did great this year. I'm giving you a 2% increase.
Me: I hate you. I quit.
Boss: Then I'll give you a 4% increase.
Me: I still hate you. I still quit.

Had the same situation years ago - fought tooth and nail to even get a review - by the time they gave me one I was accepting a position elsewhere and the 2% they offered was a joke.
Oh man, these almost hit too close to home to be funny. True story below.

Me: So, just to remind you, I'm going in for surgery on Saturday. They're removing a gland from the side of my neck, so the recovery time will probably be three or four days.

Boss: Will you be back in the office on Monday?

Me: Probably not. Like I said--

Boss: --When will you be back?

Me: The recovery time is three or four days, so hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday.

Boss: Will you be taking any meetings on Monday?

Me: I will probably be bed-ridden, and I won't be able to speak.

Boss: That's not what I asked.
One of them mentions a shutdown from Amazon because they ship too many orders late. That rang lots of bells for me, because it sounds like IT at an independent fulfillment company, which will usually have its own web store and sell through many other companies besides Amazon.

432 projects are a lot to you? Imagine your boss is someone who reacts to every business challenge and opportunity by creating a new project. Imagine that every vendor you ship for has re-invented EDI, without ever having heard of EDI, and it was designed by one of:

A) Someone they found on Craigslist

B) A kid they hired who doesn't comprehend how you can write a program without wrapping it between <% and %> and loading it in a browser

C) A guy who thinks he's a programmer because he once wrote an Excel macro

Their mechanisms can be so bizarre that you can't really support them by configuring an existing fetch-n-post, or Extract-Transform-Load system. You just have to fire up Visual Studio and write Project 433, AKA "Overstock.com Is Tripping On Acid And Now Requires That We Convey Order Status Via Modulated Carrier Pigeons".

Some of the weirdest I've been asked to support:

* Moving the order file between different subdirectories on their FTP server to convey status (ie: we log into their FTP site and issue a MOVE command on the file to put it in the /shipped folder). Did I mention that each file contains multiple orders?

* We have to implement a SOAP API to _their_ spec and expose it on the public internet for them to call at-will to send orders and query for status.

* CSV wrapped in XML, but it's CSV with a sub-delimiter because one of the columns has to be treated like an array to convey the status of each line-item.

* Orders that come in an Excel file, but they never order or name the columns consistently from file-to-file.

And that's just for fulfillment services.
> the "law' in "international law" does not mean the same meaning as the "domestic law" within a country's borders.

That's true. And also, the "law" in "domestic law" doesn't apply equally as people assume it does. Really, it's a huge fairy tale that "everyone is equivalent in the face of the [domestic] law", which for some reason many grown ups believe.

It's really a sad choice of words that the word "law" is used for both physical phenomena, where it i absolutely applied, and legal situations, where it applies mostly when it isn't inconvenient to the rulers (which is a word that better described what's usually called "leaders")
Spy drone 'tricked' into Iran landing by GPS spoofing
Drone-Ethics Briefing: What a Leading Robot Expert Told the CIA
"So you're just dismissing all the things you could learn in an early stage startup?"

If you want to break your back for little to no payout and high risk, go for it. However, I feel you can learn just as much if you own your own startup and the risk/reward ratio is much better.
SOPA Day 1: We Don't Understand This Bill, But Dammit, We're Passing It Now
> as you can only put other literals in them

What? That's not even close to true. You are misunderstanding something. Actually, I see I think the issue... most Smalltalks have progressed a bit since Smalltalk 80 and now have a fully functional array literal syntax whereas you're talking about the very restrictive original syntax from decades ago.
I don't think you've addressed his criticism. A usable interface that works and converts still may solve no actual problem.

His concern isn't unreasonable. Look at the output of a lot of design schools and design agencies. The primary skills seem to be making things that look beautiful and appealing, without a whole lot of concern about end-user value.

That's unsurprising when you consider how many design-school people end up in advertising and marketing, the purpose of which is to manipulate consumer behavior without regard to actual value delivered. Indeed, a concern for end-user value is a positive handicap in that environment; I have friends who have had to eventually change careers because they started to think too much about the impact of what they did.
GPL, copyleft use declining faster than ever
Our projects do carry a reference, it is usually prefixed by the department handling it and a number but when we have production meetings they are all referenced by the client and the job in hand.

I don't think I would like to work at a company where it was just a number, I like it being personal, it would feel more like a machine with just numbers or references
I highly recommend Poundstone's Labyrinths of Reason for an entertaining coverage of this and other similar problems.
Samsung will double your Galaxy Nexus battery life for $50
This reminds me of Iwatani's sketches for Pac-Man: http://www.control-online.nl/gamesindustrie/2010/06/22/iwata...
1.15 * 100 = 149.99999999999999 except in Ruby
All I've tried (Haskell (GHC), Python, Erlang, Clojure, Ruby) except Ruby give 149.99999999999999. What IEEE floating point (double/single precision) standard is causing this :) and why doesn't it happen in Ruby?

$ ghic
Prelude> 1.15 * 100
114.99999999999999

$ python
>>> 1.15 * 100
114.99999999999999

$ erl
1> 1.15 * 100.
114.99999999999999

$ irb
>> 1.15 * 100
=> 115.0
Biomedical company creates muscle sensor based game controller
I used to travel a lot for work. My "Master Packing List", has meant I no longer find myself meeting clients without, say, a belt, or socks, or laptop charger, etc.
Ask HN: Best places to find freelance Front-End devs?
So, title says it all. Anyone post to job boards for front-end dev freelance work with good result? Current project is about 3 months work, could segue to fulltime. On-site, NYC. Not a startup, working on start up esque web applications, though.
I think parfe is doing the right thing by putting his money where his mouth is.

If I lived someplace like Portland, with Powells, I'd probably be less enthusiastic about my Kindle. But English language books delivered instantly to Italy at US prices is a dream come true.
Zynga debuts at $11 a share, 10% higher than IPO price
I've read a few of Scott Adams' books, and he's mentioned that he has intentionally tried to put some absolutely ridiculous scenarios in his comics that could never happen... only to have readers e-mailing him and asking if he'd worked at Company X, because the exact thing had happened to them.
Interesting. Is the job market different from the US, where there is a core group of actual programmers that want real money, and then a group of people that could theoretically pretend to be programmers, and will work for free?

(My first thought was, "well, the schools are better", but I went to high school for a year in Tokyo, and I did not touch a computer once. I has a scheme interpreter on a PalmOS device that I played with, and that was it.)