skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I worked at a CompUSA when I was in college, and I cannot disagree with you more. The specifications or other information available at retail just doesn't convey enough information to the customer in many cases.

People seem fickle sometimes, but why should they have to drop lots of money to take home a product that doesnt work for them? Example: back in the 90's, Packard Bell shipped a monitor with this massive bezel which didn't fit in most "computer furniture" of the era. No measurements were on the box. Result? 20% return rate. Packard Bell "fixed" this problem by offering a rebate that required you to remove stickers necessary for return.

The average US household makes less that $50k/year. Gadgets aren't cheap -- return policies give consumers the confidence to take a risk on a new product.
I agree that GIMP will always be a bizarre of features.

The thing is that, while Photoshop may not be the pinnacle of UX, it's familiar to everyone in the space. It has issues in the UI, but nothing that can't be overcome fairly quickly and nothing that is a gamebreaker.

For design wanks, yeah, you could probably improve it. You then lose the overtraining, though. You also might screw up. You end up trying to develop a moving target.

For a productivity tool, I don't want imagination. I want excellent execution of a proven design. Only in magical fairy pixie land does it pay to reinvent the wheel to be slightly rounder on a tool everyone already knows well.

As I mentioned elsewhere: don't let the best be the enemy of the good-enough.
tried it on lion and it will not load - just dies before even showing interface and says "report this error" etc.
How to Unleash Your Body's Inner Alpha Dog
Javatari - multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in Java with no external libs
So you wanna write StackOverflow in a weekend...
Hi mindhunter thanks for the feedback. I think we had put the same character limitation on the pw as we had on the username. Agree with you that shouldn't be the case and it will be changed in the next version. Welcome any other feedback if you have any.
I was forced to leave my home country at the age of 3 because of war and then after 6 years in Germany we were given no choice but to leave the country since the refugees were costing the German government too much money and various other reasons.

There's plenty of time to make a new life in 6 years only to be forced to throw it all away. We were given a choice between Australia, the US and Canada. We ended up in Quebec city where I've been for almost 14 years now (since September 98').

Even though the journey was hard for the 4 of us, harder for my parents than for me and my sister, I regret nothing. I'm fluent in 4 languages and functional in 2 others with a brain wired for learning to speak.

Upon arrival at 9 years old I was the best in French after only 1 year, in a school filled mostly with people raised on the language. Plus I was picking up English at an amazing rate thanks to the Simpsons playing 6x more often than in Germany. Add subtitles and the fact that I knew all the episodes anyways and you get an abnormal learning rate.

What I'm trying to say is, bullshit as to C1 fluency, I was under ideal conditions to get there (and C2) in a little less than a year with a brain that acts like a sponge at that age. His method may get him towards his objectives faster but I think he may overestimate his abilities.
Ah, I'm thinking along the lines of a layman sitting in the jury box, not as a software engineer. Presentation of potentially self-incriminating emails that clearly called out the need to license Java and the desire to cleanup the 'J word' work differently on the average person, compared to arguing about how ludicrous the expectation to not clone API is in the real world. Maybe I should have used evidence instead of arguments though - thanks for that.

I think there's enough merit in both sides' arguments, at least enough to make me unsure about which way the decision will go. It's sad that lawyers/judges and non-technical folks will decide, but maybe that is the fairest way to deal with such things?
we've tried utopian societies before. they have never worked. we've tried socialism and it mostly doesn't work that well. communism looks great on paper and it has been a failure. why do people still continue to believe this is the way things should be?
That's because if you guys just show up at the establishment, they have no idea who your "parents" are or where to contact them. If, however, your group arrived there through some arrangement (between grouper and the establishment in this case), they do have a place to complain if you do something they don't approve of.
I wondered about this. I've used Azure at multiple companies but ever really looked into at their marketplace. I did find this though: https://datamarket.azure.com/browse/Applications
Same, across a few browsers. :(
Yea I'll be in Cabo. Not sure what's better.... vacation or hackin.
If you need help deciding which language to learn, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_...
Article was written 3 years ago; perhaps things are better now?
This article is a great example of how to get press for your startup.

Dear reporter - My company is just like x in y way. Care to write a story about us?
Sorry, didn't see that the charts are in USD there. Anyway, thank you for sharing your insights with us.
There might be something to this. The site is #6 for "bingo cards" search on google for me.
Just as an aside (and you probably already know this) - Any Air bed that cost you less than $300 has an average lifespan of approx. six months, and 95% of them will experience some structural failures (such as a rib separating) within 18 months of continuous use. So, yes, that is an amazing return policy. :-)
I'm not a js guru, and am having trouble understanding the example code. Could you post a more thorough example?
"I like to joke sometimes that if the stereotype reflected reality more fully, it would say transwomen are mostly programmers."

So all the stuff about saving transwomen from a life of sex work was...bullshit?

"Further, it's strange to ask why we're so restricted, when investment funds already are seriously restricted to a fraction of the population. They...discriminate based on what gives the absolute highest return...."

Yes, that's the entire point of the business model. When you take that away, you can't claim it's the same proven business model.

I'm sorry, but none of this makes the slightest amount of sense.
Great article, Patrick, but I'm a little concerned about this line: "I will likely finalize the redesign and kill the old version in the coming weeks."

Please, please tell me that if you kill the old version you will have the numbers to show that that the old one is not, say, at least 5% better than the new one. At the moment you seem to be 'leaning' towards the new version even though sales from the old version are higher!

It doesn't matter how much time and money you spent on the new version, or how much better it looks, or how much easier it is to use. What matters at the end of the day is how much money it makes, so run the split test until you are (statistically) confident that you are not throwing money away when you kill one of the designs.
Just because you don't want anybody to remember your legacy when you die, doesn't hold true for everyone.
You hear about the outliers, not the common cases.

I tried to return a phone I bought at Target when it simply stopped working two months later. No, I didn't have the manual and box it came in (why the hell do they think anyone keeps that?) and I had thrown out my receipt long ago and couldn't remember which credit card I used and I was trying to return it to a different store than the one I bought it from.

Target took the phone back and gave me a new one without complaint.

It was well outside their return policy (should have some proof of purchase), and it took a manager to approve it, and someone to manually look through the stores databases for 2 months back to find my transaction, but they were professional and polite all the way and never questioned the return.

I don't expect to return stuff often, but I shop at Target a lot in part because I know I won't get hassled if I need to.

And yes, we do have customer protection laws, but that's a last resort.
Immersion is most powerful. ie living in the country, forcing you to live, eat, breath the language.

However as described, a mixture of techniques is needed. Writing, reading, talking, listening. Plus practice, practice, practice.

There are a few examples of people learning languages quickly... Like get fluent in 3 months. Once you understand the mechanics it is easier.

Also some languages are easier than others. Germanic languages 'should' be easier for English speakers.
How do they really perform valuation? I don't understand why Evernote and Instagram are worth virtually the same.
Breaking into a store and taking something is still wrong, even if you give it back later or leave the money on the counter.
I'm not a therapist. I just know myself well enough to know when I'm being lazy and I stop it.
Do the cable companies deal with NBC? I thought they only dealt with local broadcast affiliates. But I confess I haven't had cable in a long time.

Regardless, premium content like HBO is different than broadcast television. The cable companies never had US exclusives to Saturday Night Live. But they do for Game of Thrones, and I doubt they'll give that up willingly. Remember: they're monopolists, and to a monopolist there's no such thing as fair competition.
http://www.memrise.com is another spaced repetition alternative to Anki. You'd need another tool to practice your grammar, but for vocab alone it works great.
I thought so, too, at first, but rangeCheck is a private method. It's used in implementing a public API. Calling a non-API method "rangeCheck" and using the same variable names is clear evidence of a non-clean-room implementation, in my opinion. And in the next slide, the engineer even refers to referencing the Sun code.
To save on copy-pasting, check out our demo app, the source for the landing page: http://filepicker.io/static/js/demo-app.js

Make sure you put the imports in too. Hope you like it, and let us know if you need a hand
Building Highly Available Systems in Erlang
Human traders = past? You should see the floor that I work on. There are plenty, and they're doing very well. No algo has ivy league connections.

> You're not in business if you're looking at an average of 100ms.

You're not in business if your business is latency arb. Buffett doesn't care about your 50 ms.
I recently purchased an iPod Touch from a vending machine inside a Macy's store next to my office in downtown Seattle. I knew what the product was all about, and I knew that either Macy's or Apple would make things right if something went wrong. I trust Macy's and Apple, I don't trust Best Buy very much, and will trust their vending machines even less.

That said, other than the novelty of it, there's no reason to buy electronics this way.
Two things here,
1) I buy things online simply because of the distance selling act. I have 7 days no questions asked returns policy.

2) Amazon customer service is awesome, I experienced this first hand at xmas when my little boys 3DS wasn't charging properly, I emailed customer service to send a new charger and they just sent a whole new device and give me 28 days to return the other one.

That is what I call customer service
Comcast owns NBC now. Of course, they're probably required to keep playing ball with Hulu for a while to appease congress and the FCC.
I think GPS is ok, as long as you have access to your own data. Another good side effect is that the smartbox monitored cars also have a rear window sticker to say "I'm driving responsibly & saving money on my insurance" Initially it was a promotional tool but now it is actually helping stop car thefts as theives are less likely to target a car they know is GPS tracked!
> The world isn't an ethical place my friend.

99% of the time, people play by the rules and play fair by each other. If those things you listed were excuses for lying and cheating your way out of paying anything you wanted, there would be no modern society; it'd be chaos.

People that act as you described (who at any little upset, immediately turn to threatening the business with everything under the sun.. and in this case, are threatening a business that has nothing to do with the kiosk the purchase was made at) really grind my gears. Luckily, I've only encountered a few of the type out of tens of thousands of customers.
5000 vocabulary cards. It won't be enough.

You need (say) 5000 words, but you'd need a lot more idioms to be near native.
Why are 4 CS geniuses from MIT using their talents to build pretty file uploading UI? Pretty file upload UI is easy!
Yup, we're planning on supporting a whole bunch, including fancier things like gmail attachments, evernote, etc. Are their clients you'd like?

And yeah, you can use it on your site right now. Grab a key and you're good to go
If you're eager to try out MacRuby, please either download the 0.11 release from Github (https://github.com/MacRuby/MacRuby/downloads), or the latest nightly build (http://www.macruby.org/files/nightlies/). The nightlies are currently rather stable as we are nearing the 0.12 release.

If you use RVM, I believe the latest version they offer is 0.10, which contains a number of bugs that have since been fixed.
I don't think they're at particular risk of a death spiral. Atwood and Cringely were talking about product companies. Content companies work differently.

As long as HBO continues to make compelling content, various distributors will line up to buy it. For now, the US cable companies are the bulk of their revenue. But they already make $1bn or so annually from overseas sales of their programs, so it's not like they're unprepared to sell a show to somebody like Netflix, Amazon, or Apple.
Exploring Code Canvas
I am sure things will improve gradually. The new site design looks great. Wish you the best!
Some feedback – I went to the redesigned website and then clicked on the link at the bottom where it said go back to the old look. Now I am stuck on the old look because I can’t click the link to the new look in the section at the bottom. The link is not clickable. The same goes for the designer name’s link. Everything else on the site works fine. You may want to address this. I am on IE8 if that helps.
JACK: audio connection kit
Exactly, their business model is to drive Cable Channel subscription, which I gather is way more lucrative revenue stream than getting a slice of a bundled internet service like Netflix, or directly selling episodes at the going rate (already comparatively higher price) of iTunes.

Even their DVD sales of Game of Thrones occur until 1 month right before the 2nd tv season begins. All the more to goose interest in the show and channel subscription....
Right. But at the same time there was issues with paying (nothing major, but still an inconvenience) and on top of that, if it was at a store the difference would've been noticeable.

The problem here is that you are really at the mercy of the vending machine. While the company may want to prevent buyers remorse (or even taking advantage by buying a gadget just to use for a flight then try to return it), you can't expect people to be comfortable buying anything that costs a decent amount (for me that would be > $20) without being reassured that if it isn't what they thought it would be they wouldn't be charged.
while feeds definitely have a tough time in a world where all major players are trying to build their own ecosystems that expose as little information as possible to the outside, there are still many areas where feeds are being used. and even the walled garden players use them, when they serve their needs, such as apple building its whole podcast ecosystem on top of feeds. most users probably don’t know that podcasts are just feeds, but because they are, i don’t have to use itunes to consume them. if apple were doing it today, i am sure they would use a less open and somehow access-controlled approach, to make it harder for non-itunes clients to access podcasts.
Secondly, when building a simple fun tool to be used on websites, is a four-image team bio with MIT written in capital letters all over it necessary?
To your last point, there was an article in the Economist last summer about HBO and the economics around it. Here's an excerpt as to why they don't decouple from cable TV:

"In future HBO Go could allow the network to bypass the entire pay-TV system. For now, going “over the top” in this way makes no sense, says Bill Nelson, HBO’s chief executive. There are roughly 105m multichannel TV households in America, of which 77m do not subscribe to HBO. By contrast, he reckons, there are only about 3m households with broadband connections and reasonable amounts of money but no multichannel TV."

From http://www.economist.com/node/21526314.
I cannot understand why it is not acceptable to torrent then buy a DVD, but it is acceptable to buy from a different region.

Content providers think that buying from another region is "bad"; that's why they forced region controls onto DVD hardware producers. See ridiculous controls in some OSs restricting users to a certain number of region changes.

But thanks for not ranting!
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First Intel-powered smartphone to be launched in India
Because we're tired of not being able to live entirely online, and this is one small step in that direction
Yeah, I'm an owner of http://www.isotope11.com and our designer threw it together in a couple of days. He's awesome, and he's leaving shortly, and we'll miss him :(
I agree to some degree, i think most consumer prices are a decent proxy for value.

I don't think we disagree as much as it would seem from our debate on HN.
All these multi-billion valuations are making me nervous...
But he's not.
Reminds me of Dharmesh Shah's talk at SXSW where he shared the-one-metric-to-rule-them-all that they developed at HubSpot to measure success for everyone on the team (from sales people to developers): CHI (Customer Happiness Index).

The concept is that everything the business does should be focused around the goal of increasing customer happiness, and this single metric aligns everyone's motives around the goal.

You can learn more here: http://www.hubspot.com/agency-partners/partner-definition-pa...
Put 2 rats of the opposite sex in a cage and chances are they're gonna get it on. Same can be said for for humans. We just animals!
You know, back in my day, sharp signs preceded channel names, and at signs let you know who the channel ops were.

The encroachment of Twitterspeak and Twittersigils into everyday English is a bad moon rising.
I don't have a problem with it. It's a MVP so the people trying it out won't be using IE either.
But who for one second thinks that cable providers would drop HBO if they started going around them?

HBO has what cable companies need. The companies simply can't afford to cut them off.

HBO should call their bluff, honestly.
Take "best-case-scenario annual revenue" and multiply by 10?
Why can't you prove this by not having any moving violations in a given time period?

"Safe driving" is not a cut and dry thing, you may have to do things that, in a vacuum, appear unsafe in order to avoid an even less safe situation...
Systems Software Engineer for new Gaming Start Up
Our client is a start-up gaming company in Seattle, WA with a huge future ahead of it! It’s small and growing and building momentum. Our client’s product is cloud based and utilizes multiple different clouds. We are looking for a Systems Software Engineer to build next generation infrastructure. This is the chance for you to build server management infrastructure the right way. You’ll build scaling and automation that factors in security, failover, and quality/analytic tools to track stuff like packet loss, performance, latency, etc. Our client is tapping into things that are new in their industry. In the CIO’s words, “This is an amazing opportunity for someone who wants to go on an epic ride”.
Responsibilities:
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•	Create tools that reliably manage infrastructure. You must be able to write clean, re-usable OO code that is elegant and simple. There is more to this job than scripting and systems administration.
•	Write maintainable code with extensive test coverage
•	Most of the work will need to be done in ruby, but other platforms, languages and open source components may be appropriate for different pieces of the project.
•	Support and improve upon production systems.
•	Own server image configurations, while collaborating with server engineers to optimize for reliability, failover, scale and task performance.
Requirements:
•	Must have a distributed systems foundation and a service-oriented mindset.
•	First-hand experience with what happens when infrastructure tools fail.
•	Ideally you have worked at both a startup and a large infrastructure provider.
•	2-3 years of coding experience either professionally or academically, though more experience would be great. You have shipped and maintained mission-critical tools and infrastructure that many other people depend on.
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Even Better If:
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This is a full time opportunity with full medical, dental and vision insurance. This position is located in Seattle, WA. Our client strongly believes in good work-life balance. If you feel that you might be a good fit for this opportunity, please email me at jennifer@vitalsourcestaffing.com with a copy of your resume for immediate considerations!
Discuss link broken?
The discuss link in the story below is inactive. Is this a feature?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3585561
Well that'd be a nice thing about relativity: from the point of view of the beamer, of course they're receding at a constant distance and their surface area decays like 1/t^2. ^_^
We're in a bubble folks, plain and simple. The fact is no one knows how to price these things. These valuations are betting that being essentially a first mover in a new market that has endless possibilities is worth many billions. Eventually people will get tired of waiting for these expected profits to roll in and the crash will soon follow.
You're not thinking of this from the perspective of a cable company.

Cable companies are already losing subscribers. They will do everything they can to discourage people from defecting to broadband downloads. One of the most obvious things they can do is to have exclusive content. Which means they would be smart to put immense pressure on HBO to stay out of the distribution business.
Boy, both of you have led sheltered lives if you think either that one has to make up stuff like this, or that stuff like this is hard to believe!
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