skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seth should pick his examples more carefully, he obviously doesn't know anything about science.

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Seth: They say he discovered gravity. Nonsense. He just named it.

Fact: He didn't discover gravity, and has never been accredited for doing so. The famous story of Gallileo dropping balls from the tower of Pisa to measure gravity happened in the 17'th century, so obviously the idea of gravity was around for a while before Newton. What he did do, however, was to publish the Principia Mathematica in 1687 that gives an in-depth explanation of gravity, including the famous inverse square law. In the book he theorised his three laws of motion, invented calculus and basically lay the whoole foundation for classical mechanics. This is what we remember him for, not for having named gravity.

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Seth: Everyone 'believes' in gravity. And yet, we know virtually nothing about it

fact: Seth should read up on his physics, starting with Einstein.

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seth: There are very few people doing serious gravity research

Fact: One of the major goals of modern physics is a theory of everything where the four natural forces (weak force, strong force, electromagnetic force and gravity) are combined into one. Gravity has always been the odd one out and hard to explain, thus spawning massive research into gravity. One of the reasone the LHC, the most expensive physical experiment to date, was conceived was to learn more about gravity. Oh, and there's this guy called Einstein that apparently did some work in this area too.

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Seth: There are evolution skeptics who would prefer a different story, but no gravity skeptics, even though there's a lot less science there.

Fact: Religion always tries to put down science that reaches contradictory conclusions than scripture, and gravity is no exception since it implies that the earth is not at the center of the universe. Seth doesn't seem to get this though, since the battle was lost by the church long ago. Take Gallileo who was on trial on the suspicion of heresy in 1633 because of his theories of gravity. If found guilty he would have paid with his life. The laws of gravity were much more opposed by the church than evolution is today.
Newton's cheap trick to get famous is not giving a name to something everybody knows. It's standing on the shoulder of giants.
While that looks to be a blatant troll, I really have to ask if you seriously see MS Windows and Apple OS X as being equally closed? Where are MS's versions of Darwin, Webkit, etc...?

While Apple isn't 100% open source, they are the closest among commercial end-user targeted OSes. Apple obviously feels, and honestly I think they're probably right, that fully open sourcing their OS would negatively impact their ability to run a profitable hardware/software business. That's absolutely their right.

I'd also argue that for mass consumer end users, there is no open source revolution. While I love and use Linux all the time, I'd never put my mother or my sister or my wife on it. Likewise with software, it needs to come with a nice printed or online manual that's easy to use, and a 1-800 number for the support department. Fixing an issue needs to not involve steps like "use vi to edit giant.xml which depending on your distro could be in one of these 10 long path locations".

goes to get coffee
No, from India. But the scene is no different. And I as an individual however hard I stand for no-corruption, total fairness would have to succumb to the majority else survival is hard. The other option move out of this system.

My latest status msg on IM was "opt brain drain than have brain in drain". That is how bad it gets here.
Nokia N97 Release
improve the application itself, first. before you start charging for anything, it at the very least needs some polish.

as for development vs promotion, most of the work you'll do to promote your app will probably not generate much attention. figure out what will be most effective and go do that. you're on your own right now, so you don't want to waste a lot of time on things that may or may not work out.
If you want an in depth exploration of this I recommend
"The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" by Hernando de Soto (the economist, not the explorer)

The basics: Corruption and lack of property rights lead to poverty.
Is there really a disconnect?

The only Mac OS virii out there have been ones that require the user to run something and/or confirm an obviously unsafe action.

And there have only been 2-3-4 that have made the news, vs. thousands for Windows.

So it's not really a very dire situation, and Apple is right to feature it.

I'd certainly rather have a family member use a Mac than a Windows machine, if only for this reason.
Managing OpenVZ With The Vtonf Control Panel On CentOS 5.2
Dito and that they come up with a hardware/feature monster instead of fixing their broken ecosystem shows that they really don't know how they should compete in the future with all the Android phones and the iPhone.
Exactly. A theory has been vetted by both experimentalists and theorists multiple times until they are all so convinced a hypothesis works that it moves into theory land. In the vernacular, a theory is just an idea, which isn't the way its used in science.
I read it and your last sentence between the () is the reason why I posted the quote.
Those kb articles on the apple site are meant for all customers, not only the enterprise ones. And regarding the lack of viruses as a selling point;
last get a mac ad regarding viruses is from 2006, and in that they don't explicitly say mac systems are virus-free: http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac_ads1/viruses...
Windows would be just more vulnerable. And that is still true.
There is some good advice coming up in this thread.

A few people are suggesting email is not the correct medium, so I need to explain more what it is I am trying to achieve. My app is sort of like 'I Want Sandy' (I started working on this before I even heard about I Want Sandy, as I only came to know of it now that its about to be shut down).

Basically, I want to be able to take an email sent to me, and forward it to a drop box. I can either just send the email in as is (received emails have certain information extracted from them and displayed on a dash board), or I can send it in with a command on it, or several commands.

So I can fire in an email saying followup in 2 days/on Dec 12th etc, and in two days time, the app will send me an email along with the original email attached.

If I add a command as TODO, then it will add it to the TODO list attached to that drop box etc.

There will of course be a non-ambiguous web front end to all this to manage all the items, and add followups, todo's etc without an email, but my goal is to be able to add items from your inbox.
Makes perfect sense. Somebody will be providing an ad blocker no matter what. If it is Google then they get to control how it works, why it works and when it works.
The use of the @ symbol may well be a good idea to split out the dates and separate remindable things from non-remindable.
Ask HN: Best practices for PHP
I've been asked to do a rather large project, which is fine, but I have to use PHP.

My experience with PHP is limited (I'm a Python and .NET-guy), so I don't know the pitfalls there might be.

I read a recently submitted link [1], and thought it was a good place to start, but I was wondering what other best practices or hints/common pitfalls you could mention?

Thanks! :)

[1]: http://www.justincarmony.com/blog/2008/10/25/php-design-biggest-database-oversights/
Ning kicks out adult-themed social networks
Entirely agree - natural language processing has been a holy grail for decades, and nobody has ever gotten it quite right.

You're also right on the money with the notion that from a user perspective if there is a small chance of failure users will tend to distrust and ultimately discard the interface.
We already do that at ShareMeme - http://sharememe.com/welcome/quickmode. You have to a be registered user to use this, and we also offer up the simple forms as well.
I would argue the default behaviour isn't corruption, it's self-preservation. Corruption is only the symptom of a deeper instinctual imperative. When the benefit of individual self-interest outweighs the benefit of communal self-interest, the individual will more often than not act selfishly.
Unless you're praying for a $$$ acquisition it doesn't NEED to be extremely compelling vs. the other sites out there. If you just want some good user base, and you want to make a few bucks with ads or premium features, having a great UI (which you have) and adding new features is enough.

When I wrote 10MinuteMail.com, it was just to learn Seam. If I'd bothered Googling around, I would have found a dozen existing sites that did the same thing, and I wouldn't have released it. However, the market size for the problem is apparently larger than the existing dozen sites, and I do some pretty solid traffic/ad revenue on there. It's not a million dollar sale kind of thing, but if I wanted to I could be leasing a very nice german sports car on the ad revenue. It really depends on your metrics for success.

The to-do list potential user base is enormous, and having an easy to use, pretty looking site, that has good integrations with other systems (e-mail, rss, ical events, gcal, etc...) could do very well, even amongst many existing competitors.

I agree with the comments that you should making signing up as easy as possible. Especially with a free service, the barrier to entry needs to be as low as possible.
I disagree. While its true that poverty and desperation drives people to contemplate things they may not have otherwise, I don't believe it as simple as saying that poverty automatically means more people will turn to corruption. There's a basic cultural element to it as well.

Living in an African country, there's a far more casual and accepting approach to corruption than there is in Europe and the US. Most people here, including cops, earn enough to get by as it's far from a poor country but corruption is still endemic. Dirty cops are seldom fired when caught and are not ostracised from their families and social groups. As a result, much of the police force is corrupt, to the point where when you're pulled over for a traffic violation you expect to be asked to pay a bribe. And most people, however wealthy, are more than happy to pay one in order to avoid the admin hassle of an official fine.

Oddly enough, there seems to be an attitude that corruption is your right if you've managed to get employed in certain jobs. There is no big outcry when politicians are found to have been hugely corrupt, instead the attitude amongst most of my fellow Africans who I've spoken on such occasions is that the guy was 'just taking care of himself', an action considered to be perfectly ok. The real anger usually only happens when people perceive that not enough of the public coffers is being directed their way.

So there is a cultural aspect to this, and I've come to believe that the culture of many African countries, with a tolerance for corruption, bad governance and the like, is largely responsible for the continent's poor economic condition. Humans the world over may be the same, but cultures are not. Africa will not develop until its people truly decide they want development and make the necessary cultural shifts and changes to achieve it.
How are these two ideas even in conflict? The first thing Jeremy and I did when we started our company was to hire Dave as our boss. Easily our best decision.
ui is a bit messy and hard to navigate, but overall awesome. I could see this useful for foreign language classes.
Actually I started this before I heard about iwantsandy.com, which I only heard about last week when it was shutting down. At that point I simultaneously thought 'damit, there is a tool to do what I wanted and here is me wasting time writing one to scratch my own itch' and 'interesting, outrage at this shutting down and I am working on something similar'.

I have started taking a bit of a different approach to the problem though, in that I want to create a drop box per work area (in my day job, I tend to have many mini-projects to manage at once, each lasting only a month or two) to help me keep track of things without excel.

I guess Basecamp or Highrise may get me what I wanted too, but I wanted a small project that is achievable in a reasonable time working 10 hours a week on it, so I am giving it a go!
Exactly what I always say. I suspect the damage done by AV software is greater than the damage done by viri.

It get's really funny when the AV software comes with security holes. Better to just reduce the number of unnecessary software installed on the computers. No software == no security holes.
You are focussing too much on the language and scalability rather than focusing on just building something.

Every major language/framework out there has been used and scaled for large websites. Pick one that you would like to learn, provides you with the flexibility you are looking for, and run with it.

Worrying about how you will scale an app that you have not built yet will be a major drawback. Also keep in mind performance and scalability as you're building the site, but do not spend much time worrying about it before hand. Just take an idea and run with it, tweak the app to scale as you go.
As I improve the application, would it be reasonable to mark some features as "pro", but not charge for them yet? The idea is to let users know that these particular features are free for now, but will eventually require a subscription.

I suppose I could include a checkbox to "enable" pro features rather than label them directly.
well, yes and no. They aren't writing it but inviting (urging?) other developers to come up with one. That kind of surprised me...
What are some examples of companies cannibalizing their own business and suffering because of that? Has it ever happened?
"A Farewell to Alms" convinced me. But you're not going to see its conclusions widely repeated because it basically boils down to eugenic and dysgenic forces.
I have seen a few places that do these things, but how is the question. Care to elaborate on how you go about it? What tools/libraries you use etc and how successful it has been?
As he says in the article, programmers were having trouble working because the window treatments they had weren't effective.
Linux Evolution Reveals Origins of Curious Mathematical Phenomenon
wow what great free advertising - before that video was even over I had purchased the game via paypal. Reminds me of a combination of lemmings and fantastic contraption but with much lusher graphics and music.
Ask HN: Review my $1.99 iPhone app
Have you ever wanted to have an online address book on your iPhone or iPod touch? Would you like to be able to share contacts across your whole company or group of friends without the need to sync your device? hContacts for Highrise can do just that.

hContacts provides instant access to your Highrise contacts no matter where you are. hContacts features the look and feel of iPhone Contacts application yet it allows you to keep your Highrise contacts separate from iPhone contacts. With hContacts, you can search contacts, view contact information and contact's photo, it also lets you call, email or text a contact right from the contact info screen.
"But I will, and I found that is very excited to eat icecream in winter."

There needs to be some kind of quality control. I don't want to be the Hungarian in Monty Python's dirty phrasebook sketch.
Scalability isn't a magic pixie dust you find in some boxes of cereals and not others.

Scalability is extremely application specific. As your application grows, what will be the bottleneck? Maybe it's page-serving performance. Maybe it's the database. Maybe it's disk storage. Maybe it's synchronization of data. Maybe it's raw bandwidth. With no specific knowledge of your constraints, any specific advice is worthless and potentially harmful.

The question you need to ask yourself is not "which framework should I use?" but "how should I architect my application to ensure that the most likely bottlenecks can be resolved simply when I get there?"

If your likely bottleneck is bandwidth, for example, building your application with eventual use of a CDN in mind is probably very smart. If your likely bottleneck is disk storage, make sure you choose a host/infrastructure that allows you to scale that up practically indefinitely. If your likely bottleneck is page rendering performance, make sure you write very clean, unoptimised code, so that when the bottlenecks show up it's a simple matter to boost them without impacting the rest of the application.
I'm doing it now... Google App cookies and GMail cookies are different.

Granted when I attempt to log in to a Google application other than GMail the cookies do collide.... but that's the point of multiple web browsers :)
zealog, this is the first time I've heard of anyone complaining about Air. What would you consider as a better option? Thanks!
I have no idea what this means, what is wrong?
If you want a framework with scalability "baked in", so to speak, you should take a look at GigaSpaces XAP (http://www.gigaspaces.com/). Its not the same model as the others mentioned on this thread but will prevent that "big rewrite" in the event that you do indeed become successful enough to need it.
Okay, I'll bite. Your supposed refutations don't work because you're missing the point of many of the jokes. I'll highlight a few:

The names: myPod just sounds dumb. So did iPod when we hadn't had it marketed to us a million times, so in the show we get that fresh stupid marketing name experience again. Steve Mobs is a joke about Jobs' charisma.

The Genius Bar: it's not parodying the attitudes of the actual Apple Geniuses, it's making fun of the ludicrous idea of calling your tech support guys geniuses.

Powered by dreams and imagination: it's mostly parodying the way Apple users talk about their Apple products (I know Mac users that gush about how beautiful they are). It's also mocking Apple's marketing, like the iPod dance commercials, which are all style and no substance.

Glowing computer being turned off: it's parodying the glowing/pulsing light on Apple notebooks when they're in sleep mode.

iPhonies: it's parodying the white headphones being associated with iPods, not only in all of the iPod marketing, but in the minds of the public as well. For a discussion of the significance of the white headphones, see "The Perfect Thing" by Steven Levy.

iPhonies are expensive: it's parodying the perception that you pay more for Apple products and all you get for the price premium is the status associated with having the products.

Steve Mobs calls himself "insanely great.": it's parodying the Steve Jobs is the Savior of the Computing World attitude some Apple Fanboys have, not how he sees himself.

People don't get Mac products to look cool: this directly contradicts my anecdotal experience with an Apple fan. But, it doesn't matter. The show isn't parodying individual people's attitudes, but rather a certain perception of Apple users, whether it's true or not.

Finally, just naming something and calling it "not funny" doesn't make it not funny, and isn't a critique of it.

I can't believe I just responded to all of that silliness.
You need a dedicated audience first before you can begin charging money. You need to just build the app and make this app something the users come to rely on. Twitter is a service designed on simplicity of use and so it isn't exactly prohibitive for them to just not use your app. Charging money might see a few conversions but on the whole, you're not ready for it.
I think the right way to handle that crisis would be to support them in their decision, but make sure they aren't directly competing with Fog Creek. Maintain contact, and make a gentleman's agreement that they won't poach people from Fog Creek. Keeping things friendly would be far more beneficial in the long run.

A lot depends on how many people would be leaving, too. If it's 2 or 3 people, it's not a huge deal, but if it's half the company, and if they are going to be making bug-tracking software, I think they might have to try to take a harder line.
I might be going on a limb here but do we really need to have every single Seth Godin post on Hacker News? Every few days there's a new one that somehow reaches the top, doesn't offer much value and even has significant issues (like this one).. I didn't really think this comment through but I know I have become slightly annoyed with his posts flooding HN as of late.
Sun, perhaps, with Java. Business-wise, it makes very little sense for a company that makes expensive proprietary hardware to develop a programming language that lets you write once and run anywhere.

The connection is pretty tenuous though - Linux may've eaten Sun's lunch anyway. But it would've been a little harder if we had to port all our #ifdef'd C++ software from Sun servers to commodity Linux Dell boxes, instead of just moving a few JAR files over.
What's with this trend of people blaming things on 'culture'. It's just a way of pushing a problem to an abstract hole. Culture is very fluid and changes very quickly. Is it African to wear jeans? To visit nightclubs? It was not, but now in many parts of the continent, it is.

The guy a few comments away on this thread was complaining about the corruption in India. Is that the culture too? When I was in China, the people would complain about the corruption in the government. Is that the culture too? Is it only the richest countries in the world that have the culture to avoid corruption?

What you're saying is this:

- Richest countries in the world like in Europe and the U.S accept corruption less

- Poorest countries in the world accept corruption more

And from that, you are drawing a causal relationship, when a correlation relationship seems to be a lot more likely.

There is no inherent African tendency towards corruption. Since you live in Africa, go to a village, or some other non-urban and traditional area, and see how much corruption there is there. You'll find that there will be almost none.
If they were bought by some company other than SixApart, do you think that they would have shut them down as well?
As much as I like to push the envelope, I'm going to go out on a leg here and suggest Ruby on Rails. I love it, a lot of people love it, that makes it easy to learn and deploy.

Also with Passenger, it scales out just as easily as any framework or language out there. And if you need to jump to multiple servers, you ought to be making enough money to support Engine Yard which solves your scaling problems for you.
I've meaning to ask HN this. I remember an article a while ago where somebody recommended not using anti-virus software. His recommendations was to have a separate administrative user that you only use when you install something. That is the standard practice in Unix. I recently asked my friends and they told me that you wouldn't be able to run a lot of software without the administrative privileges.

It does make a lot of sense, we are basically running our PC and everything is run as root. What do you guys think?
Start work on your next project, or apply for a better job with this as a portfolio piece. To be honest, it's probably much easier to get a 5-10k raise somewhere else with this extra experience than it will be to get people to pay.
Do you debug your website? A small unimportant bug can have huge consequences.
Nokia N97
Todo lists are becoming the web application version of Hello World.
I'm still not seeing that connection, as it lowered the barriers to entry of using their product and gave them the platform to say "we have the best hardware for running Java".