skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good news for Linux then, right?

Linux has traditionally maintained support for older hardware - through driver support, forums to answer questions, and Linux installations that are snappy even on old hardware.

Actually, I see desktop computing (including laptops) hitting a plateau already just from being good enough (factor in Windows XP's decades-long lifetime).

Arguably if desktops are plateauing, embedded devices will follow a similar trajectory on a shorter time scale - all the hard-knock lessons are already known.

Ultimately the year of the Linux desktop won't happen - but businesses will face fast-shrinking margins for desktops, laptops, and per-seat software licenses.
Microsoft’s Vision Brought To Us By Apple
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Well, while we're throwing out anecdotal evidence, my accountant constantly uses his iPad. I've never seen him use a laptop for anything but he takes notes, sends email, and even creates and edits spreadsheets on his iPad.

When you stop insisting that iPads are toys and start just using them, it's pretty incredible what you can do. Can you do everything on an iPad? No. But that doesn't mean you can't do anything.

(And I bet something you've looked at online over the past week has been created on an iPad... hell, this comment has been created on an iPad.)
I think you're being disingenuous in not recognizing the spectrum of usages among different people, and even for a single person.
I've written briefly about this theme on my personal blog as well:
http://mikejarema.com/post/19592127057/a-tumblr-theme-built-...
Google Steps In To Defend Hotfile From MPAA Lawsuit
"But until the iPhone and iPad, near as I can tell, nobody else was even trying to improve resolution on computer displays"

The original Droid came out in Nov '09 and had a 265ppi screen (same as the new iPad). When I upgraded from my 1st gen iPhone to the Nexus One shortly after that and put the two side-by-side, I simply could not stop admiring how incredible the screen was.

Sorry, but it really was just simple economics and we would've gotten high-DPI displays regardless.
I think your definition is wrong. Post-pc is when most people do most of their computing on a tablet or phone. That time is near.
You are completely ignoring the MS Office market. Try typing an essay or a report on an iPad or making a good presentation. You certainly can, but its not even remotely efficient (or a good "user experience" or "magical").
People get themselves worked up over the silliest things.
What features does Firefox need to retain power users or even win back Chrome switchers?

This is a tough problem. Google's money and manpower enabled Chrome to quickly reached feature parity with Firefox. Google undoubtedly spends more developing and advertising Chrome than they pay Mozilla.

Short of some Google privacy scare, there may not be enough technical reasons for someone to switch back.
In a healthy free economy, talented people are quickly recognized and quickly brought into the loop. In an unhealthy controlled economy, you must know the right people to be allowed into the loop and the people allowed into the loop are rarely talented.

The human tendency toward cronyism is universal. One could just as persuasively argue that FTC regulations and 'market-warping' affirmative action have made the economy healthier and freer for all.
Is Node a Fad?
Is it safe to assume that Node is here to stay and not just a fad? Some clients have it in their requirements and is configuring a Node server a worthy skill to have?
Let me know when I can sync music and podcasts from my music library to my iPhone without a desktop then I might consider believing this post pc mumbo-jumbo.
What's your point?

Break down the budget categories enough, and you can say the exact same thing about anything. "If you remove tank spending from the budget, the total deficit remains the same out to something like 3 or 4 significant figures." Guess we should keep buying tanks, too.
No, I don't think Apple paid but I understand your point. This sort of fare is par for the course for Atwood. Honestly, it's pretty cliche stuff; people have been throwing "post-PC" around a lot lately.
Perhaps not you, or many HN readers, but for many the answers to all of those are "yes".

For example, my non-tech girlfriend has had an ipad for 6 months now and the only time I've ever seen her use the computer was for word processing and creating presentations. "Office" kind of stuff.

The iPad isn't designed for user like us. It's designed for casual, everyday uses: like your mom.
PCs will stick around, of course. The worry for me is that when PCs serve only engineers and content creators the production scales will diminish, and prices increase.
Something will dethrone the MT -- everything gets dethroned eventually. Besides what you mention, its algorithm is somewhat over-complex.

But it will be a long time before an alternative is better in a compelling way. And take a look at the list of implementations for the MT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_twister#Implementation...

That's not a single throne, it's a multifaceted empire.
...but you will see it on TV. And that is what will stop the industry on its tracks.

People are used to gasoline. They are comfortable with it, if you will. Electricity is another matter. People fear electricity. They don't understand it. If electric cars are seen as roving high-tension wires that can electrocute you and your family in a crash that will be the end of the industry. People don't care about statistics but they react very readily to anything that triggers fundamental fears.
I've been looking through EROS, CapROS, Coyotes, etc. for a bit - thanks for all the references.

Is there still any forward motion here? It seems like a lot of the sites haven't been updated for a good number of years. A notable exception was BitC, which was news from 2010 - still not that recent.
Apple and other companies offer a free engraving option, because you can not return them afterwards. Still, why would you return it anyway, it is a great machine.
Mozilla grudgingly adopts H.264
Pay your employees more
Great rhetoric by Tyson, but completely misses the point that innovation in space travel is now completely the domain of NewSpace companies like Armadillo Airspace, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic rather than governments.

NASA no longer innovates. It's coasting on past glories. If a fraction of the billions spent on NASA were left untaxed in the hands of individuals like Carmack, Musk, Thiel, and Branson -- and allowed to wend their way towards NewSpace investments rather than wasted on NASA boondoggles -- we'd all be much better off.

Also, it's not at all obvious that we want to keep focusing on manned missions, which Tyson mentions explicitly. You can iterate much more rapidly on unmanned drones as you need save nothing for the way back, and the costs of failure are far less. Tyson recognizes part of the human psychological factors at play (the motivation of wartime) but doesn't recognize that wanting humans in space instead of far more machines is emotional rather than practical right now.

Get the costs of putting things into orbit down with machines, and humans will follow. But let's not put the cart before the horse.
More info on the tech behind Cameron's submarine: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/121183-the-tech-that-will...
I think this is partly because there hasn't been a compelling reason to upgrade your PC for a while unless you are really into PC games or are doing some very intensive work.

If you bought a new PC 6 years ago it probably has a dual core CPU , 2GB+ of memory , a 100GB+ HDD and some hardware accelerated graphics.

In other words enough to comfortably run Windows 7, Office, Chrome and even Photoshop.

There are still plenty of workplaces around where computers are still predominately Pentium 4s.
Firefox forced me to learn how SVG works to do clipping and masking, which turned out to be pretty awesome, so I owe that to them.

This article was completely without any substance beyond a graph of browser share stats. That's not necessarily evidence of Firefox "dying", rather than of the market simply expanding outside of its target demographic. In any case, as a web developer, Firefox will remain a critical browser to support for the foreseeable future, and as a user, I still haven't found a better overall option to use in Windows or Linux (I've stuck with Safari in OS X mainly due to the increased performance, stability and vastly superior font rendering).
I know people who email from iPads. It's really pretty common.

And I think the "expensive toy" trope is pretty passe at this point. I have an IDE (AIDE) running on my phone, and since it's a Droid 4 with a keyboard, it's really pretty usable for projects of modest size. And the debug cycle is ridiculously easy, unlike running a phone emulator on a PC.

The fact that you have to jailbreak an iPad to be able to write code you can run locally seems like a defect to me, but that doesn't mean the tablet form factor is a waste of time, just that the iPad is not my particular cup of tea.

And iPhoto, iMovie, and the myriad of music applications provide the opportunity to do all sorts of creative work on a lightweight device that gets fantastic battery life.

I'd say that's more than enough to take it out of the toy category, and into the "very affordable PC substitute for many applications" category.
Node is a tool which is gaining in popularity because it's best suited for some projects/tasks. And setting Node.js on the server is easy. Even if it's behind nginx (which is often the case). I think it's here to stay.
Are you saying that trying to better understand a prospective employee's motivations for coming to work is "needless hoops"?
Most people have PC's at the office or in school's for that. And with the keyboard dock I found the iPad pretty good for wordprocessing (and I prefer doing presentations on it).
Work Ethic of an artist
Plancast Founder Mark Hendrickson Joins Obvious-Incubated Lift
I'm nitpicking, but they were never using bugzilla but their own system (which now lives here: http://git.php.net/?p=web/bugs.git;a=summary)

Also, github is just a mirror. The main repo is on git.php.net where they are continuing to use their karma based everyone-commits-to-a-central-repo system (see http://git.php.net/?p=karma.git;a=summary). This goes together with the rest of the infrastructure that they continue to self-host
If you can still get in, it might not be too late to catch up. Obviously, you can submit all of the homework on time, but if you're score on the final is greater than your homework score, than they just use the final as your grade.
Do you want to know when you can sync your music library/podcasts to your iPhone without a desktop?

Or do you want to know when the average user can sync her music library/podcasts to an iPhone without a desktop?

Spotify (or even just iCloud) + a podcast app like Downcast meet the needs of average users today.
Peter Sunde: You wouldn't buy controversial things in a cashless society
Seriously. And on a related note, I don't want to hear another word about how the "television" is going to be a big deal unless it's from somebody who's already thrown away all of their radios.
With iTunes match you can do this already.
Right, I am always skeptical of simple answers to problems when humans are involved. I like simplicity and elegance in solutions, but if there is one thing that I have realized in life is generally when humans become a variable in the equation, simplicity goes right out the window.

I really don't think simple solution like abolish religion are the answer when dealing with the complexities of human nature. I think a scientifically valid test for identifying psychopathy would do far more for ridding the world of inequality than abolishing religion and personally, I think even that would maybe fix 1% of the issues, the reality is it is layers and layers or personal, cultural and societal behaviors, cultures and norms that together build systems of inequality. Generally simple solutions like get rid of those guys are just schemes concocted by another psychopath trying to control one group against another. You can count me out of any solution that requires alienation or elimination of a group of people based on a common identity, because that only shift the equality onto another group and it opens up a dark, dark door.
I think that's completely possible if we change the model of our current infrastructure.

Here in Portugal, our main (wired) ISP has been putting Foneras[1] in every subscribers' home for a couple of years or so, which means that every subscriber they have can connect for free anywhere there's a home with their service. A couple of months ago they launched an iPhone app which can use their network of Wifi routers to make calls through them - they essentially became a mobile provider using Wifi.

I can see this approach taking place on a larger scale; not only related to connectivity, but to actual computing: imagine that each router was also a beefy server, particularly in terms of CPU and GPU capabilities; these would provide the computing needs for wireless devices connected to them.

Using existing ways of moving the "state" of an application between machines, you could have your wireless devices hopping from server to server as you moved around, without having a great impact on the rest of the network.

This would still mean hardware in each home, of course, but it'd be a black box hidden from sight and chosen, bought and managed by some company.

[1]: http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsfon
I have written a simple WebAudioPlayer around it. You give it an URL with some MP3 directory listing, it loads that and plays them all in queue.

https://github.com/albertz/WebAudioPlayer

E.g.: http://albertz.github.com/WebAudioPlayer/#http://28c3.ex23.d...
The open source movement enlarges its shield
Node is here to stay. I dare even to say that its going to take a flight and thrive to a similar level as ruby in the coming 2 years
I'm annoyed that Hacker News isn't as active as Reddit. We need more (good) content and discussion. How can we achieve this while... maintaining the culture?
Successful Single Employee Companies
It's been many years since I've used Windows, but that's one thing that always bugged me. In XP, you could (with the window in question in focus, using alt+tab if necessary) Alt+Space, M (move), then use the arrows to position the window where you'd like - no mouse needed.

Funny what we remember.
Given that when I started to use GIT, coming from an SVN background, and version control all over a sudden started to be fun for me again, I guess git's usability can't be that bad.

Upstream is a more sensible default and I agree with the change.
Apple already announced the Post-PC era. It'll be a slow transition for a couple of more years. We really better input options. Fingers are great but sometimes I want precision.

What's interesting about Jeff coming around is that he's a pretty hard-core Windows guy. It was funny to have Macs come up on the StackOverFlow podcast. Joel would recommend it for family, etc and you could hear it in Jeff's voice that he didn't see the need. We'll find out in 6 months if it's going to be a 3 horse race.

Now Jeff has a reason to learn C. Not to worry, ObjC on iOS is not your father's C. It's a lot more fun.
Are you correcting someone? I didn't see Jeff refer to DPI in the linked article.
That looks interesting, most of the visual programming tools I have seen or used thus far are unusable or inefficient compared to writing code but that actually looks like something I could see myself possibly using.

When I think about a program in my head I basically construct it as a huge mental diagram anyway and then translate it into code. Perhaps detailed visual design is the way to go.
Why Can't Apple BUY Anything With Its $100 Billion?
Doesn't iCloud do this now? (Not an iPhone user, so I can't confirm or deny.)

Personally I get my music onto my Android phone with a MOG subscription, and I sync a number of other things with Dropbox.
It's doubtful that you can, honestly.

I went on a fairly sizable rant last night about HN's decline into mediocrity lately.
> "Evil" is a silly term. Robert Rubin (citi), Henry Paulson (goldman), Tim Geithner (ny fed), these names aren't ringing a bell?

My brain parses that as: people whose roles will require experience and insight in dealing with huge sums of money and complex economic effects at the national level TURN OUT to also be the kind of people you'd want to hire for other roles that benefit from applying experience and insight in dealing with huge sums of money and complex economic effects at the national level.

Now, if they're corrupt, that would be a bad thing. But having prior relevant experience? A good thing.
Oh hey, I just wrote a comment that is also fitting here. Quoting myself:

Look at this graph: http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/index.cfm

More than one third of US households have more than one PC. It’s probably a good assumption that most US households with iPads will keep at least one PC, but it’s very possible that many households are replacing their second or third PCs with iPads. After getting an iPad many households might not replace their kitchen or living room PC once it breaks. Maybe kids will get an iPad instead of a cheap laptop.

It would actually be very interesting to look at that question more closely. I’m not sure whether there is already data out there.

I think it’s important to emphasize that for the iPad to supplant PCs, people don’t have to ditch every PC they own. Many own more than one.
False dichotomy. "Post PC era," at least as this article is using it, means "the time after PCs became commonplace in the vast majority of homes," not "the time when people started getting rid of their PCs." The rise of a new type of device does not require the extinction of an old type of device. No one would deny that automobile have replaced horses for transportation, yet plenty of people still own horses.
Free Universal Construction Kit: 3D-printed adapters to connect Lego, K'Nex, etc
This already happened for video games under similar circumstances with Internet cafes. These days the typical video game EULA prohibits use in Internet cafes without a special license, but as far as I know that has not been tested in court. The easier workaround from the developer and publisher's point of view is to just go online-only, which to a large extent has already happened, especially in Asia where gaming in Internet cafes is widespread.
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If you carry with you a lot of energy packed in a small volume, it will find a way to kill you one way or another, no matter how it's stored. Yes, not all storage methods are the same, and batteries are probably safer than gasoline, but the reality is - lots of energy means lots of ways things could go wrong.

I vividly remember my teenage stupid stunts with large capacitors charged at high voltage - those things can do a lot of damage when shorted. Also, a typical lead battery can do a number of nasty things, like release hydrogen, when mistreated; or throw a thick copper bar on a lead battery's contacts, and watch it melt down in seconds.

I'm sure you could install safeguards against the various failure modes, but again, you're still carrying a big chunk of lightning in your car.
[H]ow does one party being better off imply that some other party is worse off?

If you were a partner in a business growing at 5% a year, and your income grew only 1% while your partner's grew 10%, would you let him get away with pointing out that you're better off than last year?
Right. Your choices are a) sending a bunch of monkeys in a very expensive and uncomfortable loft to space or b) invest in a multi billion dollar kitten killing machine. Not a false dichotomy at all.

Seriously, there's tons of more pressing issues back here on Earth, ranging from real, social one like inequity and discrimination, technical/political ones like the ever growing piles of garbage all over the place, healthcare, climate change and mass extinctions, and say, taking care of that whole cycle of oppression and bloodshed that has been going on for a while now (not that it'll go away, but we're pretty fucking screwed if we don't come up with something which will leave most people content).

None of those problems will go away if we send little men on tin cans to space, and in fact, I can think of very little problems that will be solved by that. We're a long way from escaping the mess which we have created here on Earth, and wherever we go we'll do it again, and that's being optimistic in saying that we will actually get a self-sustaining Homo Sapiens population off the planet before our shit catches up with us and we're actually forced to do nothing but deal with the consequences.
It also means you don't have to change any code that makes assumptions about pixel positions. Like the retina phone, it just doubles the coordinates.
I think hacker news can provide you with enough mentions of new languages/ frameworks/ libraries and techniques that you can use it as a starting point for discovery over a long period of time. You can then do your own follow up on the mentions.

It is good for an overview to, lots of other sites and blogs are focusing on say one language or framework.
My point wasn't to encourage obfuscation or one-up-man-ship but to encourage communication. My point is to stand against formulaic questions that tell neither party anything of value.
It is very dangerous to be ignorant about critical computer science fields like cryptography and just go with the cult.

I'm not saying you should build your own cryptography, but a good hacker (or a good engineer how we call them in early 90s) should understand difference between bcrypt, PBKDF2, and scrypt. At least to understand why bcrypt is better than salt+SHA-1. And some other aspects of security.

However, if somebody has no clue about cryptography and security then she/he should go with bcrypt - but I'm not sure if that person should be responsible or in business of storing somebody's critical data at all.
Advertise, then advertise on communities within your niche, then become a contributor. If your product is excellent, and relieves users from a terrible experience, then word of mouth marketing will be there. You can do things to help word of mouth spread faster (ask users to recommend your product to friends/colleagues after you know they've had a great experience).

You have to nail your pitch, and your pricing strategy.
I write all my email on the iPad. I'm not really sure how you would know whether someone wrote you an email with an iPad or not.

(This comment was written on an iPad while relaxing on a comfy chair. You can tell because I'm not using typographically correct apostrophes.)
That system may be in Norway, but the technology is made by a company called Swisslog, which is located in Switzerland.
Energy usage within mobile applications
When faced with this frequent question, I give a simple answer: "people copy success, they don't copy ideas".

By the idea your [lousy] idea becomes a success, copycats are far behind. So go ahead and spread your idea now, you'll get more feedback and iterate faster toward something that actually might succeed.

(*) by now I probably have heard close to 1,000 pitches
Interesting. In the last two years my mother hasn't sent an email on anything but an iPad, and my dad does it entirely via his iPhone. Perhaps they're just unusual that way.
Ask HN: Anybody finished reading Startup owner's Manual? How is it?
I pre-ordered the book fro B&N and still waiting. I am just curious to know from people who are reading or already read it about the quality of the contents and meat of the book.
I'm pretty sure you could still do this up until at least Win2k+ if your mapped printer had a port associated.
Do any security experts recommend bcrypt for password storage?
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