skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Compared to pumping money into pointless wars I think pumping money into subsidized solar panels is an excellent use of money. Sure there are many other ways to spend that money, and some of them may even be better.

But this is definitely long term thinking on their part. Already Germany is the current world leader when it comes to renewables as a percentage of total generating power.

As the price of power goes up this 'stupid' strategy starts to look smarter by the day.
Some Notes on Clojure Performance
Looks like you have your Whittaker's straight: http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2009/06/james-whittaker-jo...
How We Work: Coping with Variability
The ongoing efforts of the MemShrink project keep finding memory leaks -- usually in Firefox addons. You can read more about it at http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/category/memshrink/
It's great, but I was thinking it was some weird way of using Native Client to create a real Virtual Machine in your browser, not just an interface. That would be really really cool.
Google should focus on their product- the search bar.

Google Plus Me should mean I can find anything of mine via the search bar. If I want to find a file on my computer, I should be able to search for it using google.com instead of spotlight. I should be able to do this even if I'm not on my normal machine.

It's not just desktop files. If I want to show my dad pictures of my trip to Cabo, I shouldn't have to log into Facebook, find the always moving Photos app button, find the album, find the picture.

I should be able to search 'My cabo pictures' in Google.

The omnibar should really become omnipotent. That would be compelling, cool, futuristic must-have UX. That's what Google Plus Me means to me.
Not sure about the logistics but when the IE team announced that P3P circumvention "story" through a PR agency, it got me thinking that it's PR initiated. They are in the habit of hiring these firms: http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money...
Matt Cutts & Co Publicly Discussing Search Improvements [video]
Line losses decrease as voltage increases. Also, using DC instead of AC can further decrease losses.
Of course the biggest fix to the Twitter UI would be to bring back old-school retweets as a button: clicking it would open a tweet box, copy the text of the original tweet, prefix it with " RT @username: " and position the cursor at the front.
He used to work at Microsoft before he joined Google, here's his farewell blog from MS:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/james_whittaker/archive/2009/05/21/t...

He used to work for the Developer Division, was Architect for "Visual Studio Team System – Test Edition", and Chair of the "Quality and Testing Experts Community at Microsoft", so going to MS isn't such a stretch.
There is jslinux, a linux vm running in js: http://bellard.org/jslinux/
Is it me or does several of his complaints about the overly-aggressive targeted marketing apply to Facebook as well? He must really hate Facebook then. Personally, I think all this targeted stuff is not as good as stated by the people selling it.

I can understand that he felt the need to leave because something changed for him and his attitude towards his employer. But I seem to remember the big statement someone made not too long ago that Google+ was the future of the company and if you didn't like it you were welcome to leave. I suppose he took their advice.

As for any meaning or message one could get out of this about the future of Google, Facebook or even Microsoft; I see very little substance. It's one guy explaining to anyone who wishes to know why he left Google. That's it, let's not make more of this than what it is.
This is a fantastic example of a company embracing technology (or more generally newer forms of business) and not holding on to the "old way" of doing business.

The fact that their printed volumes account for a negligible amount of their revenue shows that this wasn't even a spur of the moment decision, they saw the writing on the wall a long time ago and planned accordingly.
Web browsing in Windows 8
Pinterest's TOS vs Tumblr, Facebook and Youtube's TOS
I think he meant a solar plant in the middle of the desert, not a nuclear plant. Solar plants don't need staffs that large.
New: Apply to Y Combinator without an Idea
You want to be able to search the files on your computer from another computer over the internet using Google? If such a thing exists, what would you do with it? Are you willing to open your entire hard drive to Google to transfer the found files to the second computer? Really?
It's weird, but I kinda wouldn't mind having a set of the last Encyclopaedia Britannica. The zenith of 244 years of tradition, an emblem of the transition of our knowledge to an online space, and still very functional in a quaint way...
TED is thrilled to issue an Open Call to developers...
I agree with your points. I categorize them under growing pains. Good UX is not easy - especially when you have such a large number of users and products.

If you look into the reasoning for many of the cluttered items, you will see things like "doing X would make it more readable/useful/etc for the general population".

Perhaps I am just an optimist. My fingers are crossed.
We're proud to be part of the Python community. You guys rock.
Well, say what you will about Microsoft, but their business model is primarily to sell technology. Google's business model is to use technology to sell ads.
Before he got too far into it, I think he might be talking about 0install: http://0install.net/

Close, but 0install runs the apps on your local machine.
$1,400 to buy it in book form. That may be part of the reason it's not being printed anymore.
“Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

The future is clearly http://www.britannica.com
You can't really do sums of top columns, because some memory is shared and you'll end up double-counting it.

And you can't just subtract the shared memory numbers, because different sets of pages are shared between different sets of processes, and top doesn't give enough information to figure out what's actually happening where.

Running the pmaps tool on all pids and summing the Pss number is perhaps the closest you can get to the actual memory use.
Doesn't seem that genuine posted on a corporate blog.
Online Courses for Programming the GA144
They have that: Google Desktop. If I recall correctly, it even lets you do it from your other machines. Admittedly, it's been a while since I've used it, so I might be wrong there.

(Methinks that it would be vastly improved if they got simply got rid of the big clunky desktop widget engine. Possibly even got rid of the search box and just let you use a web view -- as you described above.)
Google's recent behavior was central in our decision not to embrace their technologies and APIs. If they're going to either be suddenly shut down or have prohibitive, anti-startup pricing applied to them then why should we hitch our wagon to their horse?
To be fair, the use of this 'dumb gimmick' makes both sides look bad - is it really the only way to unlock a phone?

Couldn't HTC et al have worked around it?
> Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000 have been stored in a warehouse until they can be purchased.

I suspect it won't take them very long to sell those copies after this announcement.
It's a terrible example (or perhaps a "fantastic" example of a company avoiding reality for eons). The writing has been on the wall for EB for at least 15 years, in fact there was even a book written about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Blown-Bits-Economics-Information-Trans...

How do we know they're even going to make money now?
Start-ups are not judged by the same metrics as brick-and-mortar companies or established service companies.

When you're starting out everybody knows that the first couple of years will likely (but not always!) be a time when money is tight if you want to maximize your growth and hence profits will likely be depressed. You can reduce your growth to increase your profits but most parties would rather aquire a much larger company with an amazing growth track-record than something that earns a few thousand $ / month on a much more flat growth curve.
I agree the responses seem a bit harsh.

Also as someone who never worked at Google but has been a pretty big Google "fanboy" (of the search, Google Apps, Android, etc) his waning enthusiasm for the brand as an employee seems to have taken a very similar dip to my waning enthusiasm for them as a user, though due to personal investment his dip was probably faster and deeper than my own.

I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they weren't Facebook. It seems increasingly like they are trying to be Apple and Facebook rolled up into one, which (most importantly for me) sucks because I'm not a fan of Apple or Facebook and (most importantly for them) sucks because they aren't a very good Apple nor a very good Facebook, so they're trading in their old fans for the hope of new fans that probably aren't interested anyway.

Larry Page, I am disppoint.
Survivor Bias.
If you are partnering up, you may want to take a look at doing work through a site such as grouptalent.com. I've only just started with it by partnering up with a development team outside of the country, but one of the nice things is that it helps eliminate the source of the most tedious and least enjoyable part of freelancing/consulting: getting clients.
Much better than Microserfs, check out "Press Send" http://www.amazon.com/Press-Send-John-McLaren/dp/0671015702, very hard to find in the US, but worth every penny.
While not climax: Insert, remove
That wouldn't be necessary. The indexing service could reside on your computer with the "omnibar" able to access it to find results (either built into Chrome or via extensions to other browsers).

But since Google would probably want to know the content of your documents to better target ads, the omnibar would eventually, probably, become the nightmare you speak of.
I think Google+ 's mistake, like the author, has to do with a changing doctrine, but i think it has more to do with a branding issue than an innovation or technology issue. (it could be both, but i would argue perception comes before reality when it comes to success)

I think "Google+ is a dud," has less to do with whether social is broken, but rather with human perception and branding.
Much the way Google owned the category search in peoples minds, Facebook owns the category social in peoples minds.

Google made two fundamental mistakes.
1. Using their brand that stands for Search on something else. The human mind is like wet cement, once a brand owns a category, that impressions is almost impossible to change. (Ever try to change someones mind from his political philosophies? almost impossible).

2. Building a product in a category that is already owned by another brand without positioning themselves opposite it.

This is classic... Burger King will never take over Mcdonalds market share because they are trying to convince people that they are better. Since the category is owned already, they need to claim, "We are different"

When it comes to branding, its all about human perception. Like the authors daughter said, "Facebook is where the people are." Even if that statement weren't true, the perception is ingrained in peoples minds.

A good example of competing with an established brand is Coke vs. Pepsi... coke was the real thing, original coca cola, so pepsi came out and said were for the new generation. Why be old when you can be young and fresh.

Avis didnt say we are better than hertz, they said, sine we are number 2, we try harder.

Dominoes didn't say we have better pizza than pizza hut, they said, we will get it to you faster.

Listerine didnt say we taste better than scope, they said, "the taste you hate twice a day."

This is branding 101.
A brand can only stand for One Thing. (a brand that stands for everything, stands for nothing.)

If google wants to compete in the social game... They either need to create a niche of social like twitter, foursquare, and pinterest did, or they need to use a new brand name, and position themselves opposite facebook, not claim they are better...

Big executives always talk about convergence, but the Human perception just doesn't work that way. When you combine two things, people assume you are compromising on quality on both sides.
When you separate things, people assume you do that one thing much better than everyone else...

Google owned the search brand because that was all they did, Search. The new ways of trying to get into other businesses like Paul Graham said," is a chink in their armor."

Just my two cents.
Although I am not the CEO and not in this position, I am certain I will use my patents as a defensive weapon. I would certainly NOT strike Facebook at their weakest (the quiet period).

They knew of these patents since 2005 and obviously when they tried to buy them. but why now? it is shameful blackmail. Very sad and shameful.

I did not downvote you.
I liked old Google Search. I would pay to lose the omniscience and omnipotence for the same reason I pay for Google Apps, I'm tired of everything being a sales pitch.

Someday I may want to look up the stage Nietzsche's syphilis advanced to without that following me around as part of my advertising profile.

'People who enjoyed "Human all too Human" also bought Doxycycline 200 mg tablets' - that sort of stuff creeps me out.
Looks like Britannica got flushed down the public toilet:

http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2004/11/the-faith-b...
The future is so clearly not britannica.com. That site doesn't even work without javascript, and where the heck is the "Edit" button?
Salvatore on "What are the underlying data structures used for Redis?"
Assuming you kept your WordPress installation up-to-date, you probably ran into trouble thanks to an insecure plugin or theme.

I recently ran into exactly the same exploit because I had a deactivated, older version of the Thesis theme lying around in my themes folder, which contained an old, insecure copy of TimThumb. Restoring to a pre-exploit backup and then removing the offending, no-longer-needed theme seemed to do the trick.

While WordPress.com offers better security than Dreamhost, they do this by restricting your choice of plugins and themes - you'll be more secure there, but you'll have less freedom. I suspect any place that lets you run with arbitrary themes and plugins will have similar issues as Dreamhost.
Romance novels for developers? Hmm.
I'm pretty sure that has been shut down in one of the last few culling rounds. I agree that it was very useful, it also had a good sidebar that seemed to learn which rss feeds were likely to be interesting among other things, but I stopped using it quite a while ago...
I don't think Google /want/ you to have any files on your computer. They could have built Dropbox a long time ago, but that's not the direction they want the world to go. They chose Google Docs instead.

Whether they're correct or not is still up for debate. Dropbox are doing pretty well.
is it a corporate blog, or a personal blog part of the msdn developer community? I honestly don't know, but it doesn't look like a "Microsoft" blog.
Encyclopedia Britannica Print Edition Discontinued After 244 Years
Citable facts published by someone reputable are extremely important. Wikipedia is very much not that. britannica.com could very well be a citation for a wikipedia article but never the other way around.
The money needs to come from somewhere. I'd rather not have the costs concentrated on the sick. We do have plenty of money to fund everything we need if we pull our military out of most foreign countries. I believe that Nasa's annual budget, for example, is roughly the same cost as 1 day in Iraq [citation needed].
I really feel like this is a ploy to get a chunk of Facebook, just like they did to Google (http://cnet.co/w7IaUn). $50B? That equates to "X" amount of shares, which Y! would snap up in an instant.

For a company flailing in the water right now, this seems like a perfect play to get a good financial shot in the arm.
How in the hell is this just now happening if ENCARTA was discontinued over three years ago?

Seems like this should have taken place ten years ago or more.
That's great, studies and evidence suggest that patents and copyrights result in decreased innovation. Are we going to do away with patents and copyrights? No? Why not?

Cap-and-trade may or may not have other effects that make the resulting possible decrease in innovation worth it to society as a whole.
Britannica: An Infographic Profile | Britannica Blog
How do people living outside the US buy/get this book?

It is really annoying and frustrating.
I do miss the old Google. They had some good products. Search was search, and it was clearly designed to provide the very best search possible. Unadulterated and honest. Same story with Gmail, despite the ads. No lock in, no rent-seeking.

Too bad, really. The new Google is obnoxious in a "why-are-you-doing-this?", Facebook kind of way.
IMHO what's sad is that Google+ is not better than Facebook for average people. Better is, for them, more warm, where you may express more about you in a simpler way, and so forth. Google+ is clearly designed by people not exactly in touch (mentally speaking) with the average person using Facebook, that's why nobody of the non tech guys want to switch to it.

p.s. IMHO Google is going to lose in the email space soon as well, times are mature to beat it in simple ways, only protection they have in this space is that there is a big "optimization" part in email that is anti-spam and they are good at it.
Interesting, I've been toying with applying to grouptalent.com, what's your experience with them been like so far?
The poetry in your comment is making me want one too, really bad...
Sad that it isn't clear from the get-go that this is fictional. Points deducted.
I guess that's another benefit: you can more readily take on larger jobs, and that broadens your potential client base.
I am not sure if I am the only one, but having read some of Rands longer pieces I have found that I have identified certain traits in myself that I hadn't realised before. I couldn't list them off if I wanted to right now, and generally it was some sort of epiphany that I had after thinking about a certain essay of his for a little while, but it has made me a better person.

Using some of the ideas and knowledge in his essays has helped me understand people better, and as I said before myself a better person. Through understanding myself better I know what to ask of others around me to accomplish greatness. It allowed me to be more confident and self-assured.

His "Nerd Handbook"[1] is probably one of my favourite essays, if you haven't read it; I suggest it.

[1]: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_ha...
32 volumes x ~$45 a piece. Seems to make sense. They're hard cover and very beautiful, can be used as a decorative piece as well.
They're not irreplaceable. Suitable investments of time and money can lead to an ultimate net gain in time - which is a change over the past state of affairs. If, of course, you choose to take advantage of this. See:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/02/what-is-wealth.ph...

and

http://www.fightaging.org/take-action/
Bootstrap is a godsend for the corporate world and the vast majority of industry software shops that don't have huge levels public web exposure. Most of these places don't have the resources to hire dedicated UI specialists with the hottest CSS 3.0 skills, are still forced with IE6 somehow, and end up being designed by devs who liberally use nested tables and iframes like it's 1999.

I assume this dislike for bootstrap comes from those who believe it wants to compete as the de facto UI for anything of large scale or designed for instant sex appeal. Anything on that level will have their CSS highly customized and optimized by their specialized UI staff. I can also assure you, CSS and choice of UI framework is the absolute least of your priorities over business development, marketing, revenue generation, and security holes. Get the product out the door, and see if people actually want it before you worry about them inspecting your page source and find that you've used bootstrap.
Fail at step 1 because I cannot even get to the site (and more importantly, neither can Google), because Britannica does not understand how the web works ...

11 years after the web ate their expensive lunch meetings, they still don't get the web.
Or at the very least if there was a way to switch to an opensearch site as the default.
Back in the day, it was a great product. My family had an edition endorsed (in the first pages) by Queen Elizabeth II and Richard Nixon, and I can't calculate how many hours I spent leafing through the pages. I guess that's been replaced by Wikipedia's "Random article" link, but with EB you never got crap about Pokemon.
I spent almost 2 years trying to find investors for what some others guys in Cali launched as Gigwalk last May. Major bummer. But nobody executes "your idea" EXACTLY as you envision it so do it anyway. I have had the luxury of watching Gigwalk for almost a year - and it is a lot easier to describe what I'm doing now that I can point to another app and say, "like this, only with features x, y and z that it doesn't have". Also it's a lot easier to know how much capital you might need based on what a competitor has raised. Good Luck!
Welcoming Women to Wikipedia
Encyclopedia Britannica to stop printing books
Breaking the Myth of Megapixels (2007)
Yahoo sued Google over GoTo / Overture in 2004, picking up a cool billion dollars in the process.

This guy wasn't already seriously skeptical about their intentions by 2005 when he joined Yahoo? Yeah OK.

And this: "I thought I was giving them a shield, but turns out I gave them a missile with my name permanently engraved on it."

Uhm. What? They had just sued Google for a billion dollars. On what planet does that sound like a shield that you're giving them?

This entire article is a lame attempt by the guy to wash off some guilt he's apparently feeling. It's ridiculous.

Own it big boy, you sold, enough with the excuses.
Yes, the value here is in 'where I've set up ImageMagick'.

If I have a task that could be made easier by having ImageMagick, but I don't have it on any machine I have easy access to, then I have to deal with the overhead of getting the package, installing the package, configuring the package, and possibly removing the package when I'm done.

Even though I know how to do all things, it would take me some time to get it all done, and then I'd have to waste brainpower in those things, and not the real problem I'm trying to solve.

A lot of that is solved by the "better" distributions, e.g. Debian has nearly everything under the sun.

But not everything. That's where the opportunity might be.

I probably wouldn't pay a dollar a month just for ImageMagick, but I might pay a few for shell access to a machine that has all of the new and shiny things available, things too new to get into the main repositories, and keeps them up-to-date and keeps adding new stuff, so I don't have to handle the sysadmin tasks for yet-another-box.
I started to bookmark it because of the idea, but once I started reading the descriptions, I cannot agree more. I would be offended if someone sent this to me.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1493458/Pokemon
I think it's problematic to find this kind of story on Hacker News. The biggest problem I have with it is that it's very difficult to write an automated filter which rejects stories for being excessively corporate and insufficiently entrepreneurial, at least within the limits of my current skills. I can understand why people debate the strategies of very large corporations, it's kind of like discussing football teams, but it's not what I come here to read at all.