skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If General Motors aired a commercial showing a stationary car, and some bouncing objects, my default reaction is not to go to a Chevrolet dealer to ask further questions. My default reaction is probably a non-reaction, which is to quickly forget what I just saw -- or more accurately, what I didn't see.

Come to think of it, perhaps General Motors is using a similar ad agency?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_OfzaZcz9Q
The other cool thing is if "everyone did it" then you'd have some damned clean sidewalks. The potential for abuse or taking this too far is very limited.
This is perfect timing. I need a new router at home, and my experience with Tomato in the past has been excellent. The real-time bandwidth graph (and historical graphs) were my favorite feature. Well, that and it Just Worked!

Now to find the best place to buy one of these Asus routers in Australia...
"ridiculously simple" - Advertising copy like this just grates now. "Stunningly Beautiful". Meh.
Note from the author: this is still a work in progress, but I wanted to demonstrate that Tornado (and async I/O in general) is useful for more than just network servers.
After 5 minutes of scanning their site, I still cannot find the display resolution of their offering, but I have found:

"Coming Soon."

"Images are design renderings and not photographs."

"1, 2 Actual size and weight of the device may vary due to configuration and manufacturing process"

Anyone find a better spec sheet than this one?

http://www.microsoft.com/global/surface/en/us/renderingasset...

Why can't Microsoft present normal details in an accessible manner?
No such video exists.
Leaked documents reveal 'Xbox 720' plans
The charset is specified in the response header. Doctype omission is the major issue here.
On the flip side, as it runs full Windows, it's also your laptop.

For reference, I can get ~6hrs out of my 13" MBA, which packs a 50Wh battery. Going to guess the Surface Pro is running a lower-clocked part (as the 11" does, presumably for heat reasons), so with good power-management software at least 6-7hrs doing tablet-y things is definitely plausible. Obviously, opening Visual Studio or Photoshop will constrain that a bit, but these are things one can't do on an iPad.
Shut up and take my money ! live.theverge.com/microsoft-live-blog-tablet-announcement/
After you see the details, you can't but meditate.
"Sometimes you just came out of a screaming fight with your S.O. and dealing with a misogynist on top of that hurt just makes you want to crawl into a hole and die."

That's kinda overwrought. Personally I'm very happy people never assume I play video games (I'm a guy, and they're right, I don't).
This is why I'm very skeptical about this.

They probably won't ship until the end of this year.

HP & Microsoft announced the Windows Slate tablet back in 2010 & it never made it to market.

http://gizmodo.com/5442200/hps-windows-7-slate-device-reveal...
The new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is unfixable and un-upgradable
The 1986 Apple Clothing Collection
Leaked documents show a real threat to the international flow of information
While a horrible launch approach (no price, no availability, no info on cpu or ram) I will be keeping my eye on this, and looking for a chance to test drive in a brick/mortar.

This could become an amazing travel device, but not holding my breath.
Ah, I missed that the graph was only showing songs in C major.
All-in-all, it's a big, big play on Windows 8/RT. A kernel that can perform optimally on ARM/Intel on mobile devices and also support PC devices is a huge achievement - the entire thread-library would have to be one super-cool piece of software engineering. That and elsewhere within the OS, is where the innovation lies, in my opinion.

And now you can see why JavaScript was made a first-class language for the WinRT (not Windows RT) API - content-consumption via touch is now going to be a big feature for Win 8 and nothing serves this better than HTML5/JavaScript.

I'm kinda sad though, in a way, I always considered MS an engineering company - now it's gone the Apple way (which for all its merits is technologically ok-ish if not boring).
The previous MS Surface never became mainstream, or reached mass market. Therefore it doesn't matter.

IMO calling it "surface" instead of "tablet" is brilliant. It distinguishes it from tablets and conveys "touch".
Using the Surface name is a total sleazy Microsoft move. The table has nothing whatsoever to do with the "Surface" technology they developed unless the screen can magically detect the specially coded or shaped components that a Surface table can detect.

And if Apple released a new product with the joke of a website and spec sheet that MS just did they'd be scorn of anyone that knows how to type.
So they're not just going after the iPad, they're also going after the MacBook Air: The Intel version + Touch Cover was repeatedly shown with the regular desktop and apps on it, and generally spun as a sort of light laptop.

Ambitious, and finally makes sense of their Metro/desktop combo OS strategy to a degree. The hardware to go along with it was a missing puzzle piece, and I guess shows just how important it can be.
I missed that the graph was only showing songs in C major.
Someone doesn't get the joke... :D
From what I can recall, that's how many tech product launches go. Sometimes you get "3rd quarter" estimates, but I don't recall too many vendors outside of Apple giving exact shipping dates.
If it makes you feel better, ClearType was a brand Microsoft has used since the late 90's/early 00's. I know it as some weird pixel display thing designed to make text look sharper in WinXP. But, it was a hidden option that required third-party software to reveal to me.

In Microsoft's world, they assume themselves to be the sun and thereby everything revolves around them and their cheesy need to synergize jargony things. Too bad momentum isn't in Microsoft's favor these days.
The fields on their specs page are killer.

‎"OS, Light, Thin, Clear, Energized, Connected, Productive, Practical, Configurable" Fire your marketing department. All of it.
I've never seen quotes like that. Which is not to say they're not the opinion of the authors.
But it's not dogma, it's precision. Strong opinions weakly held as they say. Or more like working assumptions.
We actually agree with you. There is fine line between sending emails that are an annoyance and emails that hold value.

Email is an extremely effective tool for both marketing to and communicating with your users. Our aim is to make event-based emails as targeted and personal as possible. If a user receives an email pertinent to their personal situation it's much less likely to be received as an annoyance or spam.

You need to respect the inbox but that doesn't mean you can't use it at all!
Heh. Whatever nifty location rewriting javascript you're using makes it impossible for me to browse your site - eg. http://www.nutrivise.com/#terms/ just points to your homepage.

Also: the 'terms of use' on that page are bogus. "The most advanced nutrition system [evar!!1!]" vs. "NUTRIVISE MAKES NO WARRANTIES ABOUT THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE MATERIAL OR THE WEB SITE ... WHETHER BASED ON THIRD PARTY INFORMATION OR ON RATINGS GENERATED BY NUTRIVISE." Oh? So what are people paying you for then, if not expert advice that you're willing to stand behind?
The local currency rush: 'In the U.S. we don't trust'
I'd be very surprised if Microsoft sold these under their own brand. Perhaps they're more like the Intel proof of concepts and "the real thing" will be announced by Nokia?
Automating and Scaling Business Workflow Pipelines with Humans and Software
Definitely a teaser. I keep replaying it just for the music and I actually want one now, even though I don't have a use for a tablet. If anything can move me to buy a gadget I don't need it is a video like that. (especially if they guarantee kickstart on the back making that metallic sound :D)
I think the case is what is most interesting. Keyboard + trackpad.

Good bet by Microsoft. They are trying to shift the tablet market away from "a bigger smartphone" and back into their bread & butter desktop environment. They hope to leverage their ecosystem of apps on Windows and couldn't really do that with just a touch interface.

I'm excited to see what it feels like when it is released. I'll be honest, I'm not convinced that I'll be able to deal with the context switching between traditional and metro UI's (+ touch and trackpad input methods), but I'll certainly give it shot. Best of both worlds if Microsoft pulls it off.
As a loyal Microsoft user/apologist for decades now, I have to say that i'm cringing pretty hard after watching the coverage of this. This falls into pretty much the same form factor as the failed netbook, with no discernible distinction. Watching Microsoft throw itself off a cliff with everything from Win 8 to this tablet is very difficult to watch.
Unless you have a very short lap, why can't you do this?

+ +
|ta|
|kb|
----

Where the +s are your knees, "ta" is tablet, "kb" is keyboard, and the ---- is your waist.
is this a joke? their gallery page images link directly to the images in the most unprofessional way. could've at least lightboxed it.
On the about page:

http://www.microsoft.com/global/surface/en/us/renderingasset...
I got to play with a Surface some time in 2008 and, surprisingly, found myself a little more enchanted than I was upon using the iPhone, which had come out the year before. At the same time I remember doing the weighing of utility: "Well, they've got some really nifty tech underneath and cool demo apps to show it off, but what would I truly use it for?" Cue thoughts about doing anything productive without a keyboard, etc.

Then again, I'm one of those no-nonsense people whose smartphone is just used 90% for Email & Web Browser.
A lot of people praise VS - I just don't see it. It's so bloated, so slow, and so ugly. It takes 60 seconds to open on my high quality workstation and it crashes if you click the mouse when you're not supposed to.

Not my cup of tea.
The keyboard on the cover looks very cool. Definitely attacking iPad and Air at the same time.
HP went through 4 CEOs, bought and dismantled Palm for no reason and at great capital loss, announced and then rescinded their departure from the PC industry. It's well known HP doesn't know anything about anything.

Agreed that OEMs should go away.
Really surprised by the really clashing tones of their website (Apple, consumer, colors):
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/default.aspx

And that minute long video, which screams Dudes, Droids, and ferrofluids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpzu3HM2CIo&feature=playe...
Watched the video. It appears MS is making a magnetic keyboard! ...And you get some sort of a tablet with it.
It will look a bit odd in portrait, why put a logo in the front?
Border security bugging travelers' conversations in Canada makes TSA look mild
I have been burned by so many routers in the past few years. It is amazing how terrible the factory firmware is on these machines. For most of them I have had to install DD-WRT just to get them working. Thank the flying spaghetti monster for open source.

But what I dont understand is why hardware manufactures go out of there way to prevent external software from being installed.
Thats what made it so funny. I can see the Microsoft meeting:

-Hey so everyone talking about this Retina thing how are we going to compete?
-Let's make up our own word! Do we have anything lying around we can use?
-Developer: Well, we have this ClearType thing but it's really more about software...
-Marketing Guy: Software Hardware, what's the difference. ClearType Display it is!
-Developer: I quit
Don't forget Steve Jobs mocked tablets before iPad (and iPhone) was launched.
Vaporware.

They're trying to pre-empt anyone for capturing the tablet/mobile space by rushing their design concept out before anyone else has a chance to produce product, and force everyone to ape Microsoft's claimed, rather than actual, featureset.

Oh, wait, that was NT, 1992. Scratch all of that.
Maybe, just because it was "too expensive for tablets running it to be priced in a range to compete with the iPad", they put their own hardware (without charging themselves the OS license) at the same price of an iPad or Android tablet. That way, they would make the entire ecosystem bigger.
I have a "cover as a keyboard" too.

It's called the bottom half of my macbook air.
The title has been changed here on HN and doesn't reflect the article:

Unity 4 is also the first version of the engine to
offer support for "the estimated 10 percent of the
game-hungry PC market" that runs Linux, though the
feature will only be available in "preview" form
for the time being. Those that pre-order Unity 4
starting today will get access to a beta test for
the new engine, ahead of a full release that is
still undated.
-- from the article
Annoucing Archaius: Dynamic Properties in the Cloud
I think we can assume that either:

a) they haven't figured out the details,

b) the details are underwhelming, or

c) they just don't want us to know yet.

Retina-like resolution on something like this would be a powerful marketing play. I don't think this is a matter of omission.
Dear Tumblr, fix your damn RSS feed
I watched it and it did tell me one thing: it's a bit like an iPad but it comes with a cover that's also a keyboard.

And that's probably going to be the big selling point. "It's a bit like an iPad, but it comes with a cover that's also a keyboard".
'Coming soon'

Doesn't count unless you ship.
That Surface, the table thing, was based on multiple IR cameras tracking finger interactions. It was never miniaturizable to a portable device.

Not good tech, wrong market -- totally different tech, niche market.

(also it debuted 5 months after the original iPhone, for whatever that's worth)
I hope the tablet is more usable than the image gallery (http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/gallery.aspx). Maybe I'm just used to slide shows, but I cannot see a case where navigating to the jpg file and then back to the page creates a better user experience.
In fairness, they did need mocking at that stage.
Also don't forget that different time zones convert to DST at different offsets, and some places don't observe DST altogether. Oh, and some places go backwards.
In the same vein I can bet I have seen at last 5 implementation of date diffing using string representation.
I understand that. All the cool tech/UI aside, most of the people want to know price and availability. When iPhone was first released, it launched with $299. Price alone created so much buzz like "all this awesome things at just $299, I'm getting one". Now I'm definitely interested in this product but if they price it $1000 I may or may not buy. Why not declare price right away? I'm sure they have nailed down the price. So whats the point in holding onto that.
ClearType has been around for a very long time. It's basically subpixel-rendering that improves the visual quality of text (sort of effectively tripling the LCD resolution). Last I checked, Microsoft had patented the hell out of it (and I last checked a few years ago).

I think they're right about touting a technology that effectively triples text-display resolution.

And for your other observation about the whole enchilada, look around you-- do you see people that use external keyboards with their iPad? These would be willing customers for a tablet that is actually is pen+touch+type (ditto with people who try and augment their iPad with screen pens, even on a screen that has trouble with palm touches).

Lastly, I'm skeptical about "companies-with-taste". Steve Jobs certainly had good taste, but I'm not sure the whole of Apple is comparably good. I think, sans Jobs, Microsoft is doing the best they can-- prototyping for months and trying to understand where they fit into a market.
Courier: First Details of Microsoft’s Secret Tablet
You most certainly can put a tax on items coming from another state. The Constitution merely prohibits a discriminatory tax on items coming from other states (i.e., a tax that is not equal to the same items coming from sources in your state).
I think my overarching point might have gotten lost here. I'm not trying to excoriate Katie Williams. I'm saying that there are two separate issues here, and saying that she shares fault in one of them doesn't mean she shares fault in both of them.

She didn't really do much to make sure she played that game. Maybe she had a good excuse (fight with the SO or whatever), maybe she didn't — I don't really care. I think it's fair to say that she did less than she reasonably could have in that particular instance. If she did it differently in other cases, that would seem to support this hypothesis.

But that is a totally separate issue from the guy's behavior. Whatever fault you feel she may have had in not playing the game, that doesn't make his behavior any less his fault or any more OK. It's a separate issue.

Conflating the two leads people to this odd view of the situation where it's her fault the guy was a sexist. That just makes no sense at all. So we should not conflate the two. That was where I was trying to go with my comment.
They are letting Apple define what a tablet does, then adding "ps. it has a keyboard in cool colors".

MSFT should be able to do better and show the kinds of things we can do with this that would get us excited.
Can't imagine it being worse than typing on a glass plate where the virtual keyboard takes up screen real estate. However the real question is how well using the touchscreen works while in upright mode, perhaps it's not that stable and touching it will wobble/move it.
So, let me see if I got this right. From the live blog:

Surface for Windows RT coming in 32GB and 64GB models. Priced "like comparable tablets based on ARM."

This is the one that won't run Windows programs. Right now, there are little to no apps that are made for it. It's also the one without full HD screen. And they'll still try to sell them for $400-$600.

Pro coming in 64GB and 128GB models, will be priced on par with Ultrabook-class PCs.

That's the Intel Core tablet, which needs vents. Priced at $900-1100. More expensive than any other tablet on the market. Needs the thicker keyboard cover, but will run Windows programs.
You got more than I did. I got slugged in the face by a demand for a silverlight update and then my browser crashed and I lost all my open tabs. I hate that.
Jones Acura
Lancaster, PA New, Jones Acura sells and services Acura vehicles in the greater LancasterJones Acura, New, Acura, Lancaster, PA,17604
At first glance I thought it was a dual screen (MS Courier's big brother) with the lower screen as the keyboard.

I liked the Courier concept I wish Microsoft released it, the Courier would have be a perfect match with Windows 8.
The day before Saturday is always Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/world/asia/samoa-to-skip-f...
They said it's full HD at the conference. So I guess 1920x1080.
Or as I call it "BlurryType". The color fringing drives me nuts.
Pen+touch+type seems like a great idea. It is something no other manufacturer has tried to do. I think the devil will be in the details, but this sure is interesting, because Apple's strategy is "people should buy multiple devices-- iPad, Macbook Air, Mac Pro...". MSFT wants one device that is a lot more versatile.
"We heard you like tablets, so we took your tablet and made it a laptop so you can pretend it's a tablet while you're using Windows!"
I remember a time when mere camera surveillance in public places was considered unacceptable.
Please explain the downvote. I'm honestly not sure what the distinction between the two is.
There's a good reason for that. These are going to run Windows 8, they have to, but Windows 8 isn't coming out for months yet. If they announced these the day of Windows 8's release they'd lose out on a lot of business because people would have already made other purchasing decisions in the interim. Windows 8 ready ultrabooks, ipads, etc. Now they're giving people enough time to change their minds before they've pulled the trigger and spent their money.
I disagree with the router recommendation. The Asus RT-N16 uses a Broadcom chipset which isn't well-supported by OpenWRT. Better choices would be something with an Atheros chipset, like the Netgear WNDR3700v2 or WNDR3800. Buffalo also has some nice models. Even if you don't plan to use OpenWRT itself, it's a base used by other firmware projects, so you might want to run a derivative of it in the future.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start
I agree with your thoughts about originality, but people always saying Apple does everything original is wrong. For both Microsoft, Apple and others they'll rarely ever launch something that's truly original.

Apple's timeline was iPod > iPhone > iPad
(You could even argue that without the theft of millions of songs aka MP3's Apple wouldn't be bankrupt).

Microsoft's timeline was DOS > Windows > Server Products > Dynamics etc.

I would say it's very rare that doing something completely different than your baseline business is going to work. For that reason and the fact that the shareholders want you to be profitable is why you'll not see very many established companies pushing the edge.
Yes, Apple is more about "making the first one that doesn't suck" than "making the first one".
FuckItJS: Javascript Boilerplate for Error (Message) Free Code
Microsoft Surface Event Summary
Hacker News is not probably the best example of a good website, heh.
Wow that thing looks almost exactly like a iPad with a smartcover. I thought they would have at least tried something different.
On the homepage: "Images are design renderings and not photographs."

they are far from releasing it.
I find the stretched rectangle proportions awkward to hold in portrait mode which is how I usually want to use my Asus Transformer. But then I'm more of a reader than a movie/game person.
Not everything is clear yet. But take a look at this. Some of the specs:

http://www.microsoft.com/global/surface/en/us/renderingasset...
Are you really implying that Apple's end-to-end ownership of their product has little to do with their success?
Exactly. You sharecrop their API's, you play by their rules. Full Stop.
My weird guess: eventually Microsoft will end up buying Vizio.
>“Well, OK.” I sensed a disbelief in the guy’s voice. “But do you play shooters?”

I remember the silence that filled this space beyond this question. I was horrified that anyone could even ask such a thing. Here I was, sitting with my fingers spread across WASD, admiring a game world — and somehow, for some obtuse reason, being assumed to be someone who didn’t know anything about the world or how to interact with it.

“I think I better play it for you,” he said finally, prying my hands away and turning the keyboard towards himself.

If it had been me, I'd have said "Yeah" as I continued playing instead of refraining from both talk and play until the silence was uncomfortable and then going home and writing an article about how oppressed I was. The poor guy was very possibly just trying to do his job and be helpful.

On the other hand, the article she did write made the front page here and it's unlikely that any article about the game itself, however good, would have gotten this kind of circulation. I guess that's why she's a successful journalist and I'm just a gamer.
"This will only take a few minutes."
how-to-make-an-iphone-app.com
receiptapp.org
bettermindsaustralia.org
The QR code takes up enough space that context is precluded. With a short URL, there's at least the option. Mind: marketers providing context generally doesn't happen.

I suppose, client side, you've got the option of previewing the destination URL before going to it either way. Again, not that a naked URL tells you a whole lot, but at least I can see if it's a PDF, HTML doc, or EXE downloadable off the top.
"Unexpected error occured." ?
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If that is actually true, then you do not have a high quality workstation.