skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a game changer for MSFT.

For the last 25years they have let the OEMs take the risk, whether Dell/HP/IBM win or lose in the market - MSFT gets it's revenue.

But this led to them losing control of the experience - as we saw with them watering down the "Vista capable" requirements to give OEMs a break on their cheap machines.

In the consumer market this really hurt them: Windows + crap $300 Walmart laptop = Windows is crap. At least in the mind of the consumer looking at Apple's shiny toys. So even if Windows 7 is a better or more capable OS than iPad the overall experience of a Windows7 Starter edition on a netbook certainly isn't.

Whether MSFT build this, or make OEMs step up their quality - the new game is that users experience has to be a lot better. unless MSFT want to try and live on declining revenues from Office licenses and MS-Server CALS
There is something called Windows Phone 7.8.

http://www.wpcentral.com/microsoft-unveils-windows-phone-78-...

I don't know what is with the comments on tech sites, but I just read this story on Slashdot and the summary was misleading and omitted Windows Phone 7.8 completely. There were a whole bunch of comments like yours and many were modded up.

And not one comment pointing out the existence of version 7.8 was modded up. It's like the crowd wants Nokia to fail and wants to ignore the real news or something.
Seems like a rushed presentation perhaps to get enterprise markets to hold off on iPad acquisitions.

Balmer and Sinofsky underwhelmed - the other presenter was excellent I thought.

Design needs some work, looks more like a 3 month project rushed through ASUS or another manufacturer.

Smells like the XBox1 of tablets. They will build a big market because they will pour money into this whatever it takes. But buyer beware on the first version - this is a rush job.
I don't want it to look like I'm defending her position, because I'm not. I think artists need to be paid.
But I can't let that letter's maths go unscrutinised.

He starts off by saying "I’m gonna give you a break" and then ignores the record company's cut, which is about 80%. And then proceeds to use this drastically reduced value to lay a guilt trip.

It doesn't work that way, the record company isn't going to cut her a break, it's going to charge her the full 99c.
Which means instead of $17.82 a month, she would need to pay $89.10 a month, for 10 years between the ages of 10 and 20.
President Obama can fit his CV into his name, why would anyone need more ?

As you become more senior and you gain a public profile, the importance of your CV diminishes. This is true even of developers, many senior developers are hired because of their reputation and not their CV.
(French) BBS and Minitel Archives
Spoken like a true intellectual. Historically people have stolen photographs and graphics to use on their web pages. Is that cool? Image if someone just ripped off one of your client's advertising slogans and used the same design to sell their products. All's fair when digital right?

This "historical" argument is the same argument that people use to explain all manner of social ills. It's a cop out. It was wrong historically to steal and it's wrong now. People have a personal responsibility, it isn't societies fault that this girl is a thief.
Should be noted that they've raised $402m out of a planned $1b total fund size: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1552273/0001552273120...
No it would have helped if Microsoft had provided the WP8 update instead of just a UI tweak. Spiffing it up to look like WP8 solves only a cosmetic problem, it doesn't allow WP8 apps to run on older devices.

In a major update like WP8 or iOS 6, APIs are depreciated and new ones that are exclusive to the newer OS are introduced. Having everyone on the same version helps developers target much better.

If you think iOS 6 for the 3GS is just iOS 5 with UI tweaks applied, you're dead wrong. It's iOS 6 with features disabled so it will run better, not iOS 5 dressed up to look like iOS 6 which is what MS has chosen to do here.
Oh yes, I should be able to pick my own business model! What fun. I know: I'll just pay old investors with new investors' money. That may be completely idiotic, but it works. After all, nobody has to invest in my venture! There's always some risk in any investment, so it's only fair.

Now, I'm definitely being too glib. But I think you are as well: it's a complicated issue, and simplifying it down to your view while being almost unbearably condescending helps nobody.
On the other hand, it allows Thiel to stay involved in every stage of fundraising, coming in and leaving as early and as late as he wants. Really, sounds like a good way to hedge his bets, and open up a new arena for him.
>In a true free market, no one can obtain a harmful monopoly, unless the vast majority of human beings want the harm, in which case I can't see any sense in interfering with their free choices.

This sounds incredibly naive. Look at the most basic monopolies 101 example, Standard Oil: they kept gas prices uncompetitively high, harming customers. When a competitor opened a gas station they'd temporarily lower prices in neighbouring standard oil stations (subsidised by profits from the rest of the country), until that competitor went out of business.

You can argue that people should have paid more and bought from these competitors, but that undermines the whole economic argument for a free market (that it allows selfish actors who are interested only in their own profits to still allocate resources optimally). And no doubt you can pick some examples of standard oil being involved with government (any sufficiently large company in America does that one way or another), but there's no reason to believe they wouldn't have attained their monopoly position in a completely unregulated market.
"The computer is electronic cocaine for many people" says UCLA neuroscientist
This was announced a few months ago. They wanted to change to match their release cycle.
> All I was trying to say was that using the average suicide rate may be misleading when the population is so diverse, and urbanisation is concentrated in certain areas.

OK then, let's separate out the rural and urban suicide rates in China. Turns out that the rural suicide rate is 3 times higher than the urban suicide rate[0]. And this is mirrored in the reduction in the suicide rate when rural Chinese go to work at mega-factories like those run by Foxconn.

0: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/09/chinas-suicide-rate-a...

> Suicide in the rural population in India, for instance, is a major problem due to the ready availability of agricultural chemicals.

Actually, it has nothing to do with the presence of agricultural chemicals. There are a million ways of killing onself, and suicide occurred in India long before agricultural "chemicals" had been invented.

It's a common misconception that Indian farmer suicides are a result of the presence of multinational agricultural giants like Monsanto. However, if you look at the data (which I can't find right now, but it's probably available online), you'll see that Indian farmer suicides occur in spurts, usually when something happens that kills their crop (drought, bug infestation, etc.). The use of agricultural chemicals is just a misguided attempt on the part of the farmers to show the "cause" of their misfortunes. The real problem is the temperamental nature of Indian agriculture, which is unfortunately a much more complex target than big bad multinationals and thus conveniently ignored.

Another common misconception is that the sales of genetically modified crops have driven Indian farmer suicides. However, the last spike in suicides was in the late 90s, several years before Monsanto began selling GM crops in India.
Agile Story Writing Redux
My understanding is that the entire storage device is transparently encrypted/decrypted on the iPhone 3GS and up. Unfortunately all this means is that if someone pulls your phone apart they can't pull the data, but if they jailbreak it they can. If your phone is PIN-locked, you're secure.

This is why 'erase all content and settings' takes only a few seconds on newer devices, vs. hours on the iPhone and iPhone 3G - all it has to do is erase the decryption key and the entire partition is effectively garbage.
Indies can easily get on iTunes.
Just keep desperately trying to find something to complain about!
FCC 97.215 [0] makes it legal for a ham to transmit up to 1W in any band they're licensed for for the purpose of model aircraft control, without any callsign identification being necessary.

0: http://www.arrl.org/part-97-amateur-radio
To your question - yes: http://www.mithril.com/ (pulled from Ajay's LinkedIn)
The Future of Music Videos
Whoa calm your jimmies, I'm not saying she's not a thief. I'm just saying that in order to get that many songs you'd have to pay a shitload of money.

And it's very likely that she doesn't listen to all those songs. She does want to work in the music industry though, so I can kinda see how she might want to sample a wide variety of songs. She should probably have used streaming services instead I guess.
pg may well say that HN has not become Reddit, but it has.

(yes, my account is less than a year old but this is a fresh start, my other account is 6x older)
Another small factor at play is selection bias. They have lots of buns and lots of patties to choose from, and they choose the ones that look the best.
Yep, of course.

"Web desktop" is an awful UX idea and most of Sencha's UI components look they were designed by engineers.
I believe he means that revenue needs to come before you seek VC funding, in essence, he feels bootstrapping is a more sustainable business model. Though it doesn't have the glitz and glamour of YC or a large bank account, Dan is bright enough to realize that this funding climate won't always exist. If he figures out how to bootstrap effectively, VC funding is that much easier in the present, and he can keep going in the future when there aren't so many angels out there throwing down fairy dust from Sand Hill Road.
At least in the western world, $0.70-$1.29 for permanent, non-drm ownership of a track is within the norms of what people have been willing to pay for the last 60 years for music, inflation adjusted. I consider that historical precedent to suggest that those prices are "reasonable."

Itunes (or Amazon) downloading is convenient because I can download almost _any song I can conceive of_ in 30 seconds.

I've tried purchasing HBO at least four times over the last 3+ years on "Special" deals here in Redwood City - Each time, my absolute minimum monthly cost has been $85 (Digital Cable + Special HBO Offer) - and also required additional installation and hardware costs on the order of $200 or so.

I agree - that there is a grey line - but, for me, "30 seconds and $1.29 for a song" is reasonable, but "$1020 and $200 worth of hardware and wait 2 weeks for installation" is unreasonable.

It's subjective - but I feel music downloaders don't have much in the way of excuses, but those people torrenting GoT, especially if they _always_ purchase it on DVD when it's available, at least have a defensible moral (if not legal) position.
So in other words they give you both the option to retain current performance and the option to upgrade and reduce performance but have better app compatibility, and that's somehow a bad thing?

Software updates don't have the ability to give your device more RAM or a better processor, and the original iPhones were extremely underpowered. I don't know exactly what you would like for them to do.
This is a little off-topic but I would still like someone from ifttt to answer in more detail the method that they use to store passwords for 3rd party sites.

I think this is an important detail for an app like ifttt as they necessarily have to store the actual passwords in a form that they can reverse encryption (for websites that do not support something like OAuth) for in order to submit on the user's behalf. So it's important to get some transparency on the mechanism by which ifttt does this.

I also posed the question here a while ago:
http://www.quora.com/How-does-ifttt-securely-store-passwords...
Right. It was called "copy protection" back then, not DRM.
They're idiotic because they are not enforceable. It's their own fault for thinking they won't get copied.
The video isn't loading for me; is there a mirror kicking around?
No, I'm not saying there should be explicit text in the blog. I'm saying there should be a link somewhere on the page that takes you to the home page or "About Us" or "More about <product>". That's good design practice for any web site, because there's no telling how someone landed on your page. Finding a leaf node shouldn't leave you stranded.
A/B test: prominent price display increases leads generated by 100%
The thing about part-time citizen scientists is that they could exist, but don't. Or rather, they do exist, but nearly one hundred percent of them are crackpots. I don't think this kind of project can change that, because I don't think lack of funding is what's holding these people back.

What's the problem? Well, doing real scientific research is hard and time-consuming. Just trying to catch up with what's already known in your field of choice takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you're unplugged from the community, and then taking it to the next level by actually discovering something new is far harder. The average PhD student works for several years, full time, before they do their first piece of truly worthwhile work, and in 99 percent of cases we're still not talking about anything significant enough to satisfy your average hobbyist with dreams of scientific glory. Also the average PhD student has access to a zillion things which a hobbyist doesn't, most importantly an advisor who understands the field and knows what approaches are likely to be worthwhile. So for a hobbyist-scientist, we're talking four to five years of all your spare time spent trying to produce one or two papers that probably won't make a big impact. Doesn't sound enticing.

Crackpots, of course, get to take a short cut. Crackpots get the thrill of being a Great Scientist Who Discovered Something Important without the tedious mess involved with actually learning the field and doing science. Crackpots occur when you take the desire for scientific glory and subtract scientific understanding and self-awareness. They're inevitably extremely satisfied with their work, even if they're angry that nobody will take them seriously.

In short, though, anyone with the brains, the commitment and the love of science that you'd need to be a legitimate part-time citizen-scientist in this day and age has probably already found a way to be a full-time scientist instead.
I didn't even know Phone 7 was fully released. I hope Windows Phone 8 has a Professional-Home-Often-On-The-PATH-Train Edition-for-Workgroups. I couldn't live without that.
Why do I need another website to do Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Email, or Weather? I already have apps that do whatever it is those things are.

No, the page in question does have 1 really good example, the if Instagram then Dropbox example. I think the homepage of IFTT would benefit from a nice animation where the "this" and "then" options cycle through various options. It would show how any tigger can be combined with any action and highlight a few of the good use cases.
Thanks, will do something about it. I must.
What does having Erlang experience provide for you when using RabbitMQ? Unless your rendering nodes were written in Erlang... In which case you could have easily just used Erlang's built in node connection primitives and used RPC's instead of the much more complicated AMQP process.

I know this from personal experience. If you have a consumer based distributed worker pool, AMQP is overkill! My application is built in Erlang and the worker nodes are also built in Erlang - I initially went with using RabbitMQ to hand work out to the workers (and to receive processed results back from workers) but I quickly found it added a lot of message latency (vs. a straight RPC call) and I also had to write a lot of management code.

Switching over to straight RPC was a great decision and I essentially kept the "worker queue" logic in our Python application (where it is a "solved" problem).

Big topic, for sure - I should write a blog post on how my application is structured.
They do exactly that when they're showing the Photoshop workflow. The actual patty looks like it might be a hair thinner, but most of the difference is your perspective being thrown off by the collapsed bun and melted cheese from what I can see.
Academic papers also make terrible pornography. That's not what they're designed for either.
Google acquires meebo
AMQP is overkill in most cases (I found out from personal experience). The OP has a good point in using Celery.

See my comment above if your rendering clients are written in Erlang.
I read an article by an East Orthodox priest once - evidently the idea was the hermit life was popular for wrestling with the Self and for the pursuit of reflection and personal betterment.
It already got two major updates though. Hardly the same situation, Microsoft has just been neglecting their older phones for quite some time now. I wouldn't exactly cheer them for that.
You've completely lost me. That last sentence? That's what I meant.

The first bit is either a terrible mistake or a deliberate misreading. For the life of me I can't figure out how you think "it isn’t worth the non-trivial costs" (which, by the way, are not my words) and "not enough to justify the costs" mean different things.
How do you felt when your work infringed?
Alright, the purpose is to get the mood, actions/reactions of the author who spend enormous hours on making a work (video/audio/book/design) with passions & emotions well mixed, when their product is being
circulated by pirate or someone using it without credit or money.

I am working on technology that will help authors to send polite takedown notice (dmca like notice) (& much more) to infringers (websites) when the work is infringed.
I think the cleverest marketing bit from a cynic's perspective was the part where the hostess, the McDonald's Canada's Director of Marketing, confidently walks into the bright clean store, orders and obtains the burger from the pleasant staff, and pulls it out of its box in genuine anticipation and appears fully prepared to eat it when the camera cuts out.

That's the psychological button-pushing aspect of this video that's hard to duplicate in normal advertisements. In addition to the value of the realism in scenario itself, showing a Director of Marketing appear genuinely enthusiastic about the quality of the product is also a big win.

The rest of it is interesting, not really all that surprising, and undoubtedly simplified as much to fit into the desired time constraints as much as to present the issue in as positive a light as possible.
I'm admittedly ignorant of any type system newer than C++. In a modern static language, how would you design Query such that any SQL injection is caught at compile-time?

On the dynamic side, Rails (in Ruby) doesn't currently catch SQL injections, but it does catch HTML-escaping injections. It (roughly) tags all strings as tainted by default, and when you send them to the browser, it escapes them. If you want to send literal ampersands, angle brackets, etc., you have to mark them as explicitly safe. Since most of your literal HTML is generated by templates (which themselves distinguish variables from static HTML), you end up with run-time safety unless you actively try to break out of it.
I think the author is placing too much emphasis on the moral/ethical interpretation of free speech, and not enough on the legal implications, which are the only ones that really matter here. That concluding statement, that we are elevating machines above humans by "allowing" them free speech, seems to be intended to incite fears of some sort of AI robots demanding rights and liberties. In fact, the only reason questions of free speech for machines arise (at least until the singularity) is for reasons like the one in the Google case, in which it made perfect sense to classify the search results as free speech.
It's extremely unlikely, if it was the case WP7 devices would have just gotten WP8.

The opposite is possible because if Microsoft just immediately trashed all the work their far and few WP7 supporters have been doing to help the platform, literally nobody would be on their side at that point.

You can only throw out the drawing board so many times before people lose any trust that you will ever settle on something for any real length of time.
Exactly how to write your App Store (iTunes) description
Previous discussion with almost 200 comments:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4130949
Static Typing is not enough
I mean value semantics in the standard sense, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_semantics . You're correct that relatively few classes in the java standard library do so.

There is no convention that hashCode() should be stable across processes; the only thing that could reasonably define such a convention is the javadoc of Object#hashCode, which explicitly states otherwise. More pragmatically, there is an important set of objects, widely used in distributed systems, whose implementation of hashCode() is not stable across processes (namely protocol buffers objects). So distributed frameworks can't and shouldn't assume hashCode() is stable across processes.
>Why are Rails people so obsessed with accelerating the trivial?

That's easy. That's a false dichotomy. This isn't a deeply held cultural value.

>I've always felt the strength of the Python community is that it was able to let the idioms and cleanliness of Python stand for themselves while they advance of the state of the art for the work-a-day programmer.

It is a Ruby cultural value that There's More Than One Way To Do It, and that shiny things are worth chasing.

That said, I laugh in the face of your "Python cleanliness".
It makes me sort of wonder why they don't just own the appearance of the squished, lopsided version customers end up purchasing. I mean, it still looks pretty tasty.
Www.points24.com
I am an I :) There's introversion (the natural preference/energy focus) and then there's verging on sociopathy (lack of empathy, inability to relate to others). I think the author is closer to the 2nd, but I don't really know.

Just be aware that I fully understand introversion/extroversion and all the shades in-between. And still hold to my interpretation of the article...
Don't get musicians started on spotify, it's terrible for artists.
In her case, she doesn't seem to have any neuroses that couldn't be fixed with perspective. Instead of brooding about a perceived insult from some experimental poet guy she met at a bar, she could try volunteering in any number of capacities, from neutral social/cultural organizations to civil libertarian causes to overt partisan activism. You can't look closely at the lives and roles of others without seeing your own in more detail.

Somewhere in the Universe a supernova or a gamma-ray burst probably wiped out a dozen advanced civilizations between the time I typed 'Somewhere' and the time I typed 'typed.' Fretting over anything less is, by definition, sweating the small stuff.
How much less of an offense would it be if he took more time to just reword things, even if the same message was kept?
We're Not Censoring You, Just Your Computer