skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My thoughts about the Air (though I don't really know) was that they sort of put it out there & let Moore's Law get to work.

It's not a very practical product as is.

I imagine the attractiveness of a netbok to Apple is that it is an addition. You can have a laptop or desktop (probably not both) & a netbook & an iphone.

If it is a non cannibalising category, then it's right up Apple's game. They know & love small. It's another opportunity to brag about OSX as Windows isn't right for these. Most importantly, they know & love out-of-the-box.

There's a real market for these. It's certainly not the giant hardware guys that created it. They're supplying happily enough, but it came out of the margins. Microsoft sure isn't pushing it, these are a nightmare for them. Linux isn't working out. Who's left?

Cheap is part of the job description here. Cheap, small & out of the box. Apples is very good at 2 out of those 3. It's also another in for selling full Macs.
On Business Model Changes and Consumer-Centric Approach
Not everything can be effectively outsourced.
FB Connect with Django
I personally like all the writers at TC having worked with most of them in the past. They never broke an embargo and we're quick to response to any requests i had. The same can't be said for #%@&*& (name redacted to protect the guilty).

You just have to be clever and give each blog a different angle to cover. You also have to approach different blogs every now and then rather hitting up the same source each time.
Click on the photos for high res versions on Flickr - some of these make great wallpapers.
Seems like the worst argument ever.
I make an app for the Mac which is doing pretty decent. Not enough to replace a full time job, but almost enough to cover rent.

* For distribution, I just have a website. I also put it up on the Apple downloads listing, which is where most of my traffic comes from.

* A bunch of other sites pull data from Apple's listings, so I get traffic from there too.

* More updates = more traffic = more sales, because each update gets you near the top of the download sites

* Sales are done through PayPal, which is really easy to setup

* Support email isn't bad at all, maybe 1 email every other day

* The free trial limits the amount of data you can enter, rather than a time trial. That way users can try out future updates too.

* When a major site did a post about it, sales AND feature request emails spiked. But after a week, it goes back to normal.
"The point of netbooks is that they are cheap; being small is just a side effect."

Precisely why Apple won't enter that market.
Whoa, sounds interesting.
I'm not so sure.

If it's a second machine that people buy for a specific purpose, I think it's got a chance.
I disagree. A netbook is not closer to an iphone then a laptop. I can't see too many carrying a netbook & a laptop. I can see many carying a netbook & an iphone.
Dani: There are a number of papers discussing the emergence of a "global superbrain". You might be interested in the work of Francis Heylighen and the ECCO group at the VUB (Brussels).
62 Hunter, here. What server are you on?

And I agree about playing with real-life friends vs. online people. I took a two-year break from the game just because all of my friends dropped out for various reasons. Only just got back into it a few months ago to play with the family.
Why Hg is better than X
NVIDIA's Ion Platform: Bringing High Def to Netbooks
A friend mentioned to me that the macbooks have gotten bigger over the years and there was on that was 12 inches (?) that they no longer make.

Part of the "increase in size" is just pretend. Modern notebooks are not as large as their quoted screen sizes might imply. As 4x3 and 5x4 aspect displays have given ground to widescreen displays, display sizes of given diagonal measurement have dropped.

To wit: a 14" widescreen (16:10 or 16:9) is not as large (does not have as much area) as an old-fashioned 14" 4x3 screen, which in turn is not as large as an old-fasioned 5x4 screen. A modern 15.4" widescreen is about the same size, overall, as an old-fashioned 14" screen. Apple's current 13.3" Macbook has about the same screen size as did its old 12" notebook. It is only effectively "larger" for widescreen content that would produce black bars on the old 12" squarer screen.

More comparisions: a modern 22" widescreen is about the same size as an old-fashioned 5x4 19" screen. A modern 19" widescreen is about the same size as an old-fashioned 5x4 17" screen.
In the language of economics, one could say that the market for programming talent in many non-profits is undeveloped, and so donating can maximize utility, despite other jobs paying better.

As another example, the market for the environment is hardly developed at all. And the market for programming talent within companies is quite underdeveloped too; that's the crux of PG's argument anyway, working at a startup gets you closer to market price.
Perhaps, but I still found that video painful to watch. :)
No, it just means that an OS that only allows you to install apps is going to be more reliable than an OS that allows app installers to overwrite parts of the OS itself.
I am qualified, but I happen to be majoring in Economics. Why do you care about the degree?
Python, then LISP and (SML or Ocaml), then C and assembly and compilers, then Python again.

Though I like what Norvig said in http://norvig.com/21-days.html

"Use your friends [...] Keep it simple. [...] Play. [...] Given these criteria, my recommendations for a first programming language would be Python or Scheme. But your circumstances may vary, and there are other good choices. If your age is a single-digit, you might prefer Alice or Squeak (older learners might also enjoy these). The important thing is that you choose and get started."
This seems like a bit of a fantasy to me.

The notion that a significant use of java in enterprises is to churn out large numbers of small CRUD applications on brand new database schemas (which is really the only place such huge productivity boost is possible) is naive. In fact, often it is about internal interfacing between legacy systems with horrible, gigantic and contorted schemas that are near impossible to map into such frameworks and thus might actually turn out less productive since things like ROR are built on a whole lot of "assumptions" about what the system looks like that explode on you all over the place when it doesn't.

If there's a turn around in outsourcing then I think it's more to do with the costs of prior projects coming home to roost and changing the perception of it and / or the cheaper USD.
Management Shakeup At LinkedIn
Let's just bid here.

I bid $0.50.
I can't imagine Apple producing a netbook. What I can imagine is Apple producing a foldable iPhone with a 7" screen and video chat capability: a small laptop with a 3G (and therefore ubiquitous) Internet connection, an App Store, and an in-facing camera. It would be a transitional step toward a hypothetically even more tumultuous change: an App Store for OSX itself.
i wouldnt say its better just different... certainly has a better distributed model than SVN and much easier to setup than GIT (but no where as efficient)...
That's exactly what I wanted to know, thanks carpo. And yes, despite the other comment I think that the name is creative, memorable and spelled logically. ie: If I pronounced the name to someone suggesting that (s)he should check it out, (s)he will likely have no problem remembering it or getting there.

Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to know thanks. And I like the answer as well - I'll be showing this to a few people I know as a possible solution, no question.

Last question(s) - is it possible for the form creator to omit "store" as an option when creating the form? How about an option to have each form submission automatically stored?
Get a hotter video woman?
The Exclusive, The Embargo and The Arrington
As someone who prefers C over C++, I agree with some of what Linus says here but I wouldn't call things like STL and Boost "total and utter crap".
why do the SCM's feel the need to compete... I'm getting really sick of this.
Great list and thanks for the additions in the comments!
"Linux isn't working out"
Why do you say that. Linux has the highest share of this market than any other place. More than 50% and Ubuntu is making a special Vendor only distribution just for Netbooks. Only recently is XP being offered and this as a direct response to Linux.
It doesn't take care of users not knowing where their default download folder is though.
Maybe… disclaimer: I'm a professional javascripter

1. Everyone knows it a little, but few actually use it for much, and hardly anyone really understands it.

2. A lot of the ideas came out of old tribal warfare, and was only standardized relatively recently.

3. People who do it full time are WAY overpaid. ;)
I've literally been talking about the same idea with friends for almost a month now! We'd met with quite a few non-profits with the intentions of providing some unique contributions using our technical/marketing skills, but soon realized that the barrier to entry for that kind of assistance was high and that we'd probably do better to reduce this barrier to entry and let anyone with design/marketing/programming/etc skills help for a few hours on an existing, managed project. Our plan is to reach out to non-profits to help them generate new ideas for promoting their cause, then break up tasks and provide an interface for those that want to contribute over the web - looks pretty close to what you're doing!

I think it's great that you've put this together. I'd love to speak with you directly about your experience and how we might be able to assist you or work together in the future. If you have a minute, could you contact me at ben @ widgetinvolved.org?

Again, great initiative and best of luck.
Valleywag does have more integrity than TC. At least they post honest reviews of companies, instead of fluffing up miserable companies. For an example of this, check out the coverage TC (and nearly every other tech blog) gave to Mahalo Answers. Lame service, yet they are out there touting like an innovation because Mike and JC are friends and business partners.
From my experience the cultural one is much worse then the distance one. Also timezone is another distance related factor - far away but similar timezone means more collaboration.
"Currently pursuing a BS, MS or PhD in computer science or a related technical field." is verbatim from the intern job listing (http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=1262...), and I suppose it is there because the target audience for Google Engineering internships is students who are aiming to work some place like Google Engineering after graduating - not exactly the same category as "technically qualified students". So if you'd consider working at some place Google Engineering post graduation, then you should definitely apply.

For the record, I would consider economics to be a related technical field
(cf. John von Neumann, cf. "Evolution of Cooperative Problem-Solving in an Artificial Economy" - http://www.whatisthought.com/hayek32000.pdf)...
Microformats vs. RDF
All the big tech blogs now suck. Except for Uncov.com, which rocks, and they aren't big. Actually I like Valleywag too, just because they're the only ones not circle jerking with the others.
Agree & Disagree.

I would even add that on top of the fact that lawyer in question is almost certainly more expensive then they would have hired otherwise they'd probably get more value from the cheaper because they'd be more picky about where & when. A similar example is aid tourism. People visit a country for 3 weeks & help to build a school at a cost of a couple of $k in countries where unskilled labour goes from $3 a day. The organizers generally end up with a small margin for helping with the project (building materials, salaries for the actual workers, etc.) & some tourist money gets spread around.

It's terribly inefficient. A tourist spends 3 weeks and (say) $3k. The organisation gets $500 cash, $200 worth of labour & the area has about $500 dropped on food, souvenirs & billets.

They'd be at least 2X -3X better off with just the cash. but...

But they wouldn't get the cash. The time & money would be spent on ordinary holidays, local charities, social activities or the likes. The lawyer might get a scheduled day off, 20% time or procrastinate. (I admit, it works worse when it's institutionalised)

The other issue is side effects. The aid tourists tell people about it, continue to contribute, influence politicians a certain way, educates his children, etc.

I'm not a programmer (though I might fall in the bacon cooker category), so I feel funny about taking a position here. But I think that the combination of free software, access to the web & the free web have a powerful equalising affect in this world. Connecting the right people with the right organizations, could have a profound effect. When I was in primary school, a substantial donation would be old (10, 20 years) encyclopaedias for developing countries. If you don't have access to much, an encyclopedia is an important learning/teaching resource. Practically no longer necessary if you have access to the web. Information is available free. Access to it still costs though.

Once we get to a point where online teaching materials are allow a person to achieve an education on par with Universities, we (as pg just discussed) get past credentials or find new ones & enough of the labour market is internationalised (it is happening pretty fast), the key out of poverty becomes web access, computer literacy, English literacy & above average intelligence (maybe). These are manageable hurdles. Far more manageable the current keys: competent government & lack of major conflict for prolonged periods.

The potential return is huge. Really huge. Any way you look at it. Economic growth. Utility. Health. Worrying about efficiencies at this end is like fretting about the price of servers when building a Google. Have a look at what East Timor's National University lists as it's needs:http://www.untl.labor.net.au/need/it.html

To give you an idea of potential ROI: an additional 10k graduates contributing 10k per annum to GDP would represent a 20% increase.
I just had a look at the programs submitted & I have to say, they're not exactly the kinds that have never had a programmer help out.
Eh, there's something to be said about web applications and the Uncanny Valley, but this isn't it.

Atwood, I think, is saying that web applications shouldn't be like desktop applications because it violates the user's expectation of how a webapp should be.

Applying the Uncanny Valley to this says that it's not bad for web apps to behave like desktop apps -- it's bad for webapps to signal that they have behave like desktop apps, and then fail to live up to that expectation.

This problem affects other products, too. For example, imagine a really awesome semantic search engine called CantorSet. You can throw all sorts of questions at it and it appears to come up with the answer. "What did Bush say at the last G8 meeting?" Wow! Amazing!

But then you ask questions like, "Why did my wife leave me?" No answer! Wow, this thing sucks.

It's less about what the webapp does or doesn't do, and more about the expectations it sets and whether or not it lives up to them.
Cheers, thanks zacharye.

Entry storage is always up to the doculicious member who embeds a template on their site, never the public person who fills it in (is that what you were getting at, or am I off the mark?). Setting a template to save entries will automatically save all entries by anyone who fills it in and submits it. If the doculicious member who embeds the template turns off auto entry saving, the person filling in the form just gets the PDF, and only stats like date downloaded, IP address etc are saved for the member to view. (We are in the process of writing a more advanced reporting system for this).

We use a concept of "activating" templates, allowing members to create multiple templates, but only have some active, and in the future, to activate a template created by someone else. When you activate a template you then get to define it's web form settings - things like automatically saving entries, disabling pdf download (making it work just like a standard web form), adding notification emails and stuff like that. Currently, only doculicious staff can create shareable templates - but I think I need to defined the term "form creator" better .. as later this could mean someone other than yourself or doculicious.
On Failure: How VC Rejection Made Me Remember Why I Fell in Love with Programming
I agreed with the point of the piece beforehand. And there was plenty of newness in it. I wanted to gauge how it was written. And the analysis is helpful.

A lecturely, authoritative voice seems inevitable as you move away from the excitement phase. But excitement may be more convincing.

And that's one advantage that blogs have over essays, that I hadn't considered. Being published so much quicker, it's easier to retain excitement. But I'm a bigger fan of essays. The medium still has steam left, even if you include it's other anachronisms.
Well Linux had the first mover advantage. But it seems to be losing ground. I was in two chain retailers recently & neither carried any linux netbooks (but 3-4 windows each). I've seen a couple of these recently:http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22362/53/

And Windows is gaining this ground with a 7 year old product that isn't suitable for this job. All the while cursing every sale they make. They're not exactly gung-ho excited about making brilliant netbooks. But they're still taking over.

If no one challenges & the demand persists, MS may eventually actually come out with some Windows that is suited to the job.
I will say that it is frustrating to see the "race" aspect to tech news. A concrete example: I was recently trying to decide whether to get a Roku streaming box to hook to my TV to stream Netflix. This is now old news; it's been out for months. I was looking for reviews.

The vast majority of news I got was "It's released! Looks good!", with hardly any more details, and even the "in-depth reviews" done by bloggers were clearly "I downloaded a movie and starting blathering on". I think I found a grand total of one review that came from someone actually living with it from some period of time, vs. tens of people racing to be the first to say something.

And for what? All the "firsts" put out the same content-free "reviews" within 24 hours of each other. Big whoop. Meanwhile, I still pretty much had to just order one and figure out whether I wanted one.

(My mini-review: Well done and competently-executed, but for $100 it's only worth while if you have no other useful way to get video from your laptop to your TV and you really need the video on your TV, and you find the Netflix selection OK, which is as thin as people say it is, although there's good stuff on it and it's a great way to branch out to things you've wanted to try but didn't want to spend money on. I'm sending the box back, keeping Netflix.)
4 Unique Apps for Tracking Time
Who should be Twitter's revenue czar?
Cappuccino is squarely in the "Uncanny Valley" according to Atwood, but I disagree with his analysis.

If you look at 280 slides, it doesn't behave quite like a mac, but it's still intuitive. People understand the WIMP.

I think he's conflating crappy Swing java apps with webapp UX.
BlackBerry Storm buyers returning phones en masse?
Open Thread: Bernie Madoff and Next-Gen Justice - Umair Haque
"The only hard and fast requirements for consideration are a strong programming background (any language(s)) and some experience in AI and/or machine learning."
What about Apathy?
AcademicRotation
Ask HN : Discussion sites for hardware geeks?
Which hardware sites do you follow? Any good discussion forums? One site I enjoy is the Beyond3d forums .. any others like it? Some place where you can have meaningful discussion on things like CPU architectures and GPUs? HN has never been a good forum for this (HN is mostly only good for business, web and science news). hardware.reddit doesnt seem active either.
Props on content-limited trial. Time-based trials suck. With time trials, half the time I download it, use it for a day, then want to try it again 3 months later but can't.
return(1);
I worked with cakephp, but because of the lack of documentation i'm turning to codeigniter. It just works.

Welcome to php! :)
What would you change about it?
5 Ways to Protect Yourself from Bankrupt Clients
There is a difference. The amount of money given is such that you have time to work on a product due to it.

That amount of 'scholarship' is not enough to develop something fulltime and if you're only doing it in your free time, then, you probably have enough incentive anyway.
Hmm, so your routes are "structural comments." Isn't this what XML is for?

Am I the only one here who finds this ugly?
I agree. It seems like you never get enough oomph from an engrossing session of WoW - never really satisified, always feeling empty after the latest chapter/quest.

It's kind of like reading a Robert Kiyosaki book - getting to the end and needing to buy the next book right away. The content makes you feel good but it always leaves you feeling a bit undernourished, hoping the next fix will finally complete you - leaving you whole.

The preceding was a bit of self-reflection, perhaps. :)
How to destroy a hard drive
I'm not sure how much value certificates have. I just see them as another revenue stream for Zend Corp. I think a quality portfolio (commercial, side-projects, open source) has much more value.
0:55
I would really love to have an iPhone app that allows me to read and comment on HN (as opposed to just browsing with Safari). Something similar to the SFNetNews app for reading Slashdot, etc. I was thinking of writing one for HN since I haven't been able to find one and I figure it will be a good first-iPhone-app for me. :)
We just released a second beta of our application which is a network security tool platform. Our distribution strategy is to release everything for free as open source and hope that people like it enough to tell other people about it. At the moment we're still not sure what we're going to sell.

I should probably make my own thread about this, but if anybody wants to check it out it's available here:
http://netifera.com/downloads/
Hey I am a bit sensitive about my name being "Michelle" in french - or at least pronounced that way ;)
Resonates with advice from David Patterson and Richard Hamming: http://www.cra.org/Activities/workshops/academic.careers/200... (see pages 22, 33, and 34).
sigh. can you imagine matz, guido, or bjarne having a rant like this? i can't.
if you are looking into Code Igniter, i suggest that you look into http://kohanaphp.org/home - it is a fork of CodeIgniter.

CodeIgniter does support PHP5. But you will have to turn off warnings, etc.
I too am curious as to why Yahoo is spending so much money on lavish parties/gatherings. A while back I attended a conference where Yahoo hosted an invitation only party with nice food and free stuff. Not to mention the conference was located at a ski resort where the condos sold for $400-500 a night. Oh, they were actively recruiting as well.
I am not saying its wrong, not at all, it just feels like a kind of arbitrage, and can't last. Well I guess that's one business reason why software is increasingly moving online.

Well said. Software is moving from "making computers do something" to "making computers do something together". This changes the economics of software completely.
I don't think that's true. There are certain ideologies that travel together, whose fortunes tend to wax and wane together. If you told me an ideology (say, environmentalism or unionism), then I could easily tell you whether it was on the right or left (in this case, both left).

There are exceptions in practice, but to say the labels are meaningless is silly.
Is anyone else tired of seeing the term "czar" used to describe someone who's job is in no way like that of an actual czar? This sounds as ridiculous as "revenue emperor" to me.