skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How will this “change everything?” What markets could this disrupt?

Not change so much, but if 'touch' refers to some sort of localized haptic feedback mechanism (eg you can close your eyes and feel the position of individual icons/controls as if the screen were slightly bumpy) then it will cement the iPad's dominance as a musical performance tool. Imagine, for example, being able to strum a virtual guitar and feel approximately where the strings are, rather than receiving different messages from your fingers and your eyes. It doesn't have to be perfect, just suggestive and consistent, which will provide enough novelty to keep people busy until the iPad 4 appears :-)

I have a strong hunch that that Apple has stolen a march on the competition here. When I first picked up an iPad, one thing I looked at was some sort of space shooter game (Galaxy on Fire or something). I played for 2 or 3 minutes, and was impressed by both the graphics and the vibration every time my ship took a hit, like the controller for a videogame console. Later I got an Android Honeycomb tablet, and one day I noticed the same game was available, so I installed it. Everything was fine, except that there was no vibration. It seems that since large tablets are not phones, few, if any, manufacturers saw a need to include a vibration feature and so Apple has had several years to develop both the technology and a coherent set of UI conventions to employ it.

I know virtually nothing about haptic technology, but I have a guess about how it might work. Imagine two vibrating motors at right angles to each other, whose periods are fixed and proportional to the ratio of the device's width:height. Now imagine a second motor for each of the pair, which vibrates at up to double the speed of the first; by varying the speed of the second motor in each of 2 dimensions, interference patterns are created in similar fashion to the beating that occurs between two sine waves of different frequencies. Where the periods of sinusoidal sound waves stand in neat integer relationships to each other, you get the familiar notes of the musical scale (warning: drastic oversimplification of musical tuning theory). I speculate that people are so intuitively used to this - sound being just a more sensitive version of touch - that it may allow a tactile illusion of up to 12 identifiable 'zones' in each screen dimension, resulting in a grid of up to 144 'touxels'.

If I turn out to be more than half-right about this, then I feel it ought to be worth some sort of nominally compensated blue-sky consulting gig :-)

EDIT: of course you could go on and on with the other applications. A lightweight keyboard for blind people, new models of games interaction, interactive multidimensional graphing/modelling tools where constraints are proxied by 'resistance' and so on.
Say what you will about Apple polluting the landscape with marketing speak, but I think there's semantic value in thinking of it as a simple high-res display instead of a "300dpi LCD". Talking about it as a 300dpi display focuses on the technical implementation; calling it "retina" shifts the focus to the practical advantage, which is "it looks a lot better".

Unless you're a developer, it doesn't make a lick of difference to you whether it's 300dpi or 302dpi. What matters is that the display is either "pixelly" or "not pixelly". "Retina" may be a silly-sounding name, but I think the idea is just fine.
Skrittle
Thank you for understanding. I know things will pick up and I promise to buy a copy when they do. I hope one day I can repay the favor. Of course you didn't set out to really do anyone Any favors here but it certainly feels like it. Thanks for the book. I am reading right now and I'm glad I got it.
Bing Maps and Nokia Release Unified Map Design
Senseg - Make touch screens come alive with textures, contours and edges
My response to the dilemma would be, are we trying to maximize conversions or page views?
While the announcement may not belong here the interesting, informed discussion that will hopefully accompany it surely does.

I certainly have nowhere else to discuss this announcement sensibly and in depth.
Schmidt: If Google Gets It Right, There Will Be An Android In Every Pocket
Not mentioning names, but I used to be involved in a project that used this method to track users. From my observations, it was very useful as filter for further analysis. It's not perfect, but really quite good.
No, we reached the point where companies might lie to you in order to make you play.
Twitter client made by 12 year old
Show HN: Using quirky to help develop/launch product.
The Founders Dictionary
Hi my name is Mo,

I am a full time web developer and part time dreamer. I am constantly tinkering with side projects after normal business hours.

This is my first attempt to raise funding, so I would love some constructive criticism of my post on www.quirky.com. I have had many ideas but judging if your idea is good based upon colleague feedback is always a problem. They tend to be very encouraging because they are protecting your emotions. But this idea is different, my friends actually wanted to be involved in the project. Which makes me believe that they have true faith in the product.

I have posted my idea here http://www.quirky.com/ideations/183961. If you like it please vote for it. If you don't like it, I would love to know why.

Looking forward to your thoughts,

Mo
Peter Weyland at TED2023: I will change the world
Crunchpad anyone? I found him too infrequent to be a major reason to visit the site. I suspect that most of the traffic hit techcrunch thanks to the endless link baiting of MG or popularity contest blather like their Twitter "coverage". Twitter used to be every other feature.

Other big winners were Sarah Lacy saying that old media is dead and no one wants to be a journalist at WSJ (how did that turn out btw) or other random bouts of idiocy (RSS is dead!)

Frankly, Techcrunch has long been a source of tech trolling. For trolls, by trolls. Its no wonder it went under - the sugar high simply ran out.
How to Get Rid of Chiggers?
I'm not too surprised. These days it seems that TechCrunch is little more than a dumping ground for startup press releases, with a slight dose of embellishment around the edges.

Still, a new editor may changes things up a lot. At least all of the old blood is gone now. They can try to make a fresh start.
Open and Social Innovation: Techolab determined to bring ‘just this’ for all
Thanks so much for the note! We are working on a redesign to the homepage/ site that will do better both in highlighting the site benefits/ features before you decide to login, and then in onboarding new users. We've also crafted some scenario stories for the How it Works page that we'll add soon.

On your question - the problem is a bit different for different people, but basically we found through talking to pet owners that while they prefer asking friends/ family for help, they don't usually. Asking for help is awkward, intimidating, and coordination with said friends/ family is often difficult. On the other hand, we found the non-pet-owners actually want to help more - they want to be asked for help, so we try to make that whole affair less 'awkward,' and simplify the coordination bit. We believe asking for help should be as easy as picking up the phone to call a kennel.

We want you to be covered for all situations, but for now, we started with your direct friends because you already trust them, and if we can make going to them as easy as going to a professional, we feel it's a win-win for all.
I think Microsoft is pretty poor at product development.
>"Once you break even, to me, that's the best point," he says, "because at that point, you have complete control over your own life."

My favorite line.
No-deal for me; keyboard looks like a piece of plastic: http://www.engadget.com/photos/dell-xps-13-hands-on/#4704588
A few steps not to get screwed:

1. Perform your own due diligence. Just like investorscheck companies, you should check your investors. Talk to other companies he's invested in. Ask him for references. If he's reluctant to introduce you to other startups he's worked with, that's a big red flag.

2. Have a valuation in mind. 4-5% can be great depending on how much he's putting on the table. If it's hard to think in those terms, think if someone gave you $1M today, how much equity would you be willing to give in exchange? Reverse engineer that to the 4-5% he's offering you and see if that's worth the value he's offering.

3. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. A corollary of the previous point. Do not go into your next meeting without a valuation in mind. Investors might offer different versions of a deal and you'll need that value as reference otherwise you will get screwed.

4. Forget NDAs. Never disclose your secret sauce until the cash is in the bank. I don't know what stage you're at but investors will typically ask for references, financial statements (if you have any), metrics (if you have a product), business plan, and maybe an overview of the most relevant business challenges. Anything beyond that (especially if it's too technical) is a red flag.

5. Act as a partner. Be alert but don't assume the investor is trying to screw you up. Make sure you like to work with that person because you will have to for the coming years, and if the relationship is not good it can be a nightmare.

6. Find YOUR lawyer and don't sign anything just yet. Go look for an attorney who's done this in the past. They can be your best ally. Don't hire the attorney that a potential investor might try to recommend. Find YOUR guy. You don't have to do it before your next meeting but don't sign anything just yet. If the investor is in a rush, that's another red flag (or a great argument for you to negotiate better terms).

Hope this helps. Good luck!

PS. In my opinion equity for development is a bad deal. Go find a developer that will be involved in strategic decisions going forward. That adds long term value. A development company solves your short term problem but in a few months you'll still need an employee and you won't have money to pay him.
I'm in SF, I own a company that writes scripts to moderate internet access at mobile RV parks. We use some Python and sharepoint. I think you would be a great match to work well in the office with my other 2 guys. Keep an eye out for an email.
Keep an eye on Vizio.

The thin and lights they announced at CES are going to pack 1600x900 screens in the 14" model, and full 1080p screens in the 15.6" model.

Gorgeous industrial design, great screens, they're working with Microsoft to ship Windows 7 bloatware-free, and Vizio has a reputation for being absolutely ruthless in cutting prices while maintaining quality. They're supposed to hit market in June, and I'm holding off on buying a new notebook until then.

The Verge had a great interview with their CTO:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/13/2705064/vizio-cto-matt-mcr...

They seem to get it. If they mean half of what McRae says in that interview, Vizio stands to really turn the commodity PC market on its head. Given that we keep seeing the same mistakes made by the likes of Dell, HP, et al, I think it may just take an outsider like them to shake up the industry.
I wish there was a regular credit card payment option. As it stands, due to brain dead PayPal policies, I cannot use PayPal from the country I'm in, and I would really like to pay for the book.
My $0.02 - don't back down. Don't get emotional. Fight for what is owed you - even money that was due from 2009. Its not a black mark on your reputation to have your dispute brought before a court or mediator. Regardless of whether you recover your money, or not, it will be a good experience, and you'll be better informed and prepared in the future.
Dell: No longer a PC company
Thats right, a kid. its pretty cool too
Brandy Basic is pretty much that: http://sourceforge.net/projects/brandy/
On a Pro, it smokes (both win7 and Ubuntu). You'd probably be able to run Ubuntu without issues on an Air (vm'd) as well, I think I usually only give that VM 2gigs and it runs fine. I haven't tried running Win7 vm'd with less than 4gigs so I can't say. Probably rough though.
I want an ultrabook to throw Arch on. I'm real close to buying the Lenovo U300s, but I'm not a hardware geek, does it look reasonable to anyone in the know?
How do you avoid these pitfalls? Just assume and act like you're still poor (or not rich) until you sell your stock?
Minority Report would be terrible -- imagine having to hold your arms up for 8 hours a day
Slate Article : The Real Victims in the Patent Wars
Any plans to provide a version made available by a CDN like jQuery ?
This is where we are. We use Crucible/Fisheye as well which really just makes things painfully hard.
We don't want violent reactions of guilt; sorry about that :( There is enough guilt in life. Please don't feel any because of Leanpub.

What we were going for was more of a "little nudge", if you have the disposable income. That's why the slider goes from a pastel green to a neutral "meh" grey (instead of a red, which would make you feel bad) when you go lower, and to a nicer, darker green as you go higher.

On second thought, I guess if we wanted to be evil about this we could have some graphic where you have a dinner plate full of food, and as you lower the slider you're removing side dishes (and say if you go free then the entree goes too), and if you raise the slider you add say a glass of wine, a dessert, etc -- now that would be a fun design to A/B test :)
Downloaded for free. Read introduction. Beautiful. Paying now.
Tell President Obama to support the Federal Research Public Access Act
They're ditching the iPad name, this'll be the Newton.next.
Chile’s Startup Week in Review…
Why would you do that instead of just putting Ubuntu on the Air?
Why I Use PCLinuxOS
Amazing story! one has to experience this to know what it really means. Hats off to these 2 guys!
Good description of this: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-center-tent
This is in our queue. Unfortunately for us, since we're in Canada we can't use Stripe yet, or we may have already done this...
I'm even lazier. :) I used the pjscrape wrapper around phantomjs.

https://github.com/nrabinowitz/pjscrape
your term "it smokes" that would mean fast or slow? sorry, but I am not american
Here's a 1901 version of the map:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_East...

And somewhat related, a wonderful book called The Victorian Internet:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802716040/

If you ever wondered whether the Internet really is a "series of tubes", here are the tubes:

http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/f...

That photo is from an interesting article (by my namesake James Geary) about undersea cables:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/who-protects-i...

Enjoy! :-)
Siboney appears to be a good distance from Guantanamo Bay.
Hi JonoXia. I was already using collusion since quite a while, I guess I got the pointer here at HN some time ago: http://collusion.toolness.org/ So what is happening? is the "new" collusion somehow more "official", i.e. released by Mozilla?

EDIT: found the old HN post, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2741249
That only applies to organizations that have a presence in the EU (which probably includes most of the big ad networks, since they have international sales teams). Smaller players domestic to the US don't have the same constraints. Also, it's not just ad networks that do browser tracking.
> Is the developer segment really that uninteresting?

Yes. It's also much, much more fragmented than you make it out to be. It's not like all developers are waiting with bated breath for the perfect Linux laptop. Many are perfectly happy with what they currently use.

A machine targeted towards developers wouldn't even appeal to the majority of developers, which is already a niche market to begin with. It's quite obvious why nobody does this.
I would totally use this, and I think it's an excellent product name. The most painful thing for me and my dog has been finding reputable dog boarding, doggy daycare, vets, etc.

I just moved across the country, so there's not many people I know locally who would help out — so I think it would be a really good idea to partner with companies and individuals offering services like walking, sitting, boarding, etc. Yelp sucks. It would probably be the only realistic revenue stream too.

In terms of social connections, I'm not clear as to how the entire process would work on first glance.

Awesome job for an MVP.
Publishers are lacking control over who tracks what on their site. My full time project http://www.clarityad.com monitors third-party ad tags and reports pixels dropped.
Very well said, but it is important to point out that you are simplifying. Otherwise the ambitious ones who continue learning without you may feel betrayed or even question your competence when they begin seeing the problems in the model.
IMO it's because of MS' refusal (or inability?) to release products rapidly (unlike Google and others). When MS chooses to enter a market, they like to pour resources into it to DOMINATE within 1-3 years. If they aren't a top 2 or 3 player within those years, they pull out (e.g. silverlight, kin, etc). It's a valid strategy when done well, but it has been hurting their image as a tech leader since they've had many highly public failures.
Haha, sorry my bad, I should have been more careful on my choice of wording.

Smokes in this context means very fast.
I also use Perl for web scraping, never heard of pQuery though, I use HTML::TokeParser or HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath.
I would love to see a plugin that mimics the statistically normal setup. (all 3 of the browsers I currently have open read in as unique)
Not a new concept however it's awesome to see a working version of it! I don't expect to see Microsoft moving forward with it though. it seems that Microsoft likes to build prototypes that never make it into products, Google however is opposite they like to make products from prototypes. In the end I would be willing to wager that Apple is the first to implement this type of system in a consumer product.
... please just kill yourself now

I don't think someone who actually knows what it's like to experience suicidal thoughts would ever say something like that to people in a technical/professional context.

There is something to be said for the "tough love" Linux culture, but IMO, language as extreme as what I just quoted is just not acceptable.

For me, this is crossing the line from "Linus has an interesting and entertaining character" to "this person seems to be mentally disturbed."
I agree. I was hoping for some investigative reporting, but the entire story is an advertisement.
Android niceties
Kinda what Engadget is for gadgets...
> That is not the right way to load test.

False.

> You're not trying to determine how many pages a single client can request from a server.

True.

The reason you benchmark a server with a client from a thousand miles away is that you want to know what effect common Internet noise and delays will have on RAM and CPU consumption for the http daemon.

Conditions on a LAN are pretty close to ideal. Your router won't drop packets and will perform fairly well. That isn't anywhere close to true on the Internet as a whole. You do not want to push an http daemon to production that works like a champ on your LAN and has a meltdown in the real world.

You want to benchmark under as close to production conditions as you can. Period.
UChicago math undergrad? I have complete confidence you won’t be acting this role for long...

You should reach out to people from your class (and years around it) that ended up in SF. Check out RethinkDB for example - part of their team is UChicago. Lollihop is another one.
It's only a matter of time until John Gruber is alerted to this, and writes a Dell-bashing response.
I have begun to wonder why we don't have a regulatory authority, something along the lines of a national central bank but for working hours, dedicated to regulating the work-week. When unemployment and overemployment are low, work hours are kept stable. When there is a chronic over-demand in the economy, the work-week is lengthened. When there is a chronic over-supply in the economy, the work-week is shortened.

First World economies right now have an oversupply problem. Marx predicted the crises of capitalism due to overproduction and under-demand. We don't need a complete socialist revolution to deal with this issue (though I'm somewhat in favor of one), we just need to fine-tune the working week to productivity levels.
Our year and a half year old does the same thing. Constantly hits the home button and leaves whatever app he was in, then gets frustrated.

I never considered the home button a problem until I saw him using the iPad. Fascinating really.
I currently have a 17" MBP. I've been waiting for some sort of announcement about the next generation Macbook Air, but once it's out, I'm going to switch to a Macbook Air. My ideal setup right now would be a Macbook Air with the 27" external monitor.
LuzSec did not 'disappear'. They became Anti-Sec, and they are still around.
Pretty much. If I want to read gadget news I go to The Verge now. TechCrunch is lucky that no single large competitor is challenging it. Yet.
It would be fine if this was advertised as a way to discover new games that it thinks you might like, based in part upon what your friends have played (but also, presumably, upon what games people who like the games you like also like). But the fact that it's advertising that your friends are playing games that they simply are not, that's absolutely wrong.
>10K for 4 months of work?

I'm sorry if the story is unclear. In the spring, they paid me. They were later and later about paying me as the summer wore on, which caused me to grow suspicious. As I said, I was paid for June at the end of July (the last day of July) which left me feeling somewhat suspicious. I stopped working in mid August. It was about 6 weeks of unpaid work: July and part of August.

As to "far too long" I think a lot of contractors work on a 30 day cycle, billing at the end of the month. I used to use a standard contract that said they had 30 days to pay and then late fees applied. Nowadays I usually insist on being paid within 2 weeks.
It would be a lot easier to discuss the announcement after the announcement.
Great solution! Note to self: figure out how to do this in Windows
A mixed bag of lessons including hiring, funding and wrestling with inner demons. Enjoyed it.