skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Which really does two things:

1) makes this drop completely meaningless as it could be 100% Windows mobile

2) makes you wonder just how low the WP7 numbers would be without Windows Mobile
I don't own or plan to own an iPad. So the locking of the iPad is not affecting me directly. It is sad and silly imho that people is buying locked machines, but that's their right to do.

Now ARM boot restrictions from Microsoft directly affects me, as soon i can't buy any ARM based machine, given the way the markets work. And in the future it is a big possibility that i can't buy any other PC and put any OS that i like without pay directly or indirectly money to Microsoft. And i can see some foreign governments to use this technology to control the OS that her citizens runs, and install backdoors.

So yes UEFI secure boot is a treat to my freedom and not only my freedom to run the OS of my choice.
Could you maybe explain some of those acronyms you used?
I don't know, I can't really take any of these companies seriously, except maybe Dollar Shave Club. Did these videos really result in good conversions? Who knows, probably not.
If you're getting into mobile phone development (likely Android), then you should start with Java. I think some people have managed to compile/run clojure to run on Android, but there are still some performance hurdles that will need to be overcome (true for dynamic languages running on Dalvik) before it becomes a viable language for mobile.
> The iPhone itself did not bring anything new except a slick interface coupled with multi-touch.

This is about as useful as saying "the space program brought nothing new except the ability to go to space."

> But the iPhone brought smartphones to the public's attention

Why?

Because the interface worked so much better than anything that came before it.

The market doesn't necessarily give points for trying. You win when you make something people want. People want things that work well. Until the iPhone, smartphones simply didn't.
I don't believe that chest x-rays are nearly so benign. For example, they've found even one x-ray for a toddler increases the chance of brain cancer.

Nor do I trust that those machines in a van are calibrated properly - they may be emitting far more x-rays than they're supposed to. Who'd know?
So you think MS padded Elop's resume to make him desirable to Nokia over other candidates? Like being the CEO of Macromedia?

What about the decisions after he became CEO? You think they were not done with the support of the board? Look what happened to Leo Apothekar, the board found a replacement for him within a month of him taking questionable decisions.

It seems very likely that Nokia wanted a partnership with Microsoft even before Elop was hired. Why else would they hire someone from outside Finland?
Now that's disingenuous. :) I am pretty sure you know what was meant.
Having a "Presence" in SF and NYC
More info on CDE (Code, Data, and Environment) without having to read the memoir: http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html
>I don't see why government should define marriage at all. If anything, it seems we could do with a little discouraging of heterosexual relationships.

Sure, this position can exist. It simply doesn't reflect the status quo or have much to do with whether the state should expand marital privileges to cover homosexuals. This is basically an entirely different and opposite campaign: "Stop encouraging permanent coupling all together" instead of "please give more people special encouragement to couple permanently". Also, this argument is what is sometimes meant by "gay marriage will destroy marriage" -- you're extrapolating that based on the contentious attitudes around the gay marriage debate, marriage should stop being a legal thing. This is pretty much as close as you can get to "destroying marriage" in an objective or technical sense.

>But if you want special privileges from the government (like tax breaks) for your religious status, then you need to accept everybody's definition of marriage.

wut. If religions only qualified as religious institutions if they accepted everything the government said, the only religion that would exist would be "nationalism".

Further, from the referenda that keep saying "no" to gay marriage, I think "everybody's definition of marriage" may be better aligned with the predominant religious view anyway...
Postmates has a lot of similarity with Uber: they are both moving toward the grail of an on-demand logistics platform.

Where I am really excited is to see these companies figure out all the logistic hurdles and then provide an API on top of it. By doing this they will abstract away all the crazy complexities of having to move a real world object to real world destination.

You could build entire companies off these platforms.
I have not finished it yet, but I think Pragmatic Thinking & Learning has a lot to offer in all three.

http://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learni...
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4179982
How accurate is the iPhone GPS?
When the Chinese pirates upgrade their system to pirated Windows 8, they will still have IE10 preinstalled, so it's even going to work for them.
This was written in 1991 though quite funny to read today for that reason.
Ask HN: Small open source project
I'm a programmer whose looking to jump on a small to medium open source project. Anyone know of anything really cool? Or how to find smaller projects?

Thanks!

Interest
C#/Java, Ruby/RoR, and maybe some front-end dev.
Not knowing how to code :)

Seriously - in my experience the biggest problem a programmer can have is having a manager that doesn't programming/programmers. The long-term effect of that alone is crippling.
I lived in Atlanta for about 10 years and had many encounters with homeless people. I've had them knock on my front door, approach me in the grocery store, come talk to me when my car broke down, etc. Most of the time, of course, they just approached me on the street.

The most successful homeless guys that were reasonably cognizant had a story. (Interesting note: the few female homeless people I encountered all had apparent mental problems.) Sometimes it was a story about their amazing life that took a turn for the worse through no fault of their own, sometimes it was about some tragedy that had recently befallen them or a family member, sometimes it was an "emergency" they needed help with, sometimes it was just a quick tale to build rapport...

This sounds a bit harsh but they are all con men. That's how you survive on the streets. I would not be surprised if literally every tale that I heard was completely fabricated.

That's not to say they are all liars or you shouldn't help the homeless, but the smart ones adapt to their situation quite well.
So if a user is going to do a fresh install, they need to back up their existing data, perform a fresh install, restore their data, find all the old install disks from their existing software, install those. Look for the license keys for this software, fail since they bought the software ages ago, or pirated it from a buddy. Then throw their hands up in the air and get mad at MS.

It's a fact of Windows in the consumer market that upgrades just don't happen. Consumers almost always run their computers into the ground, then get the latest version of Windows when they purchase a new PC. This is something you stated in your post, yet you seem to think that MS will magically change this behaviour with this price point. I see no evidence to support that.

Additionally, the MS Store is almost a direct response to Apple's App Store on OSX.
I have not developed for Android yet, but I would imagine they need said permissions in order to stop playing the audio/video when a phonecall is in progress.

I would imagine that it's a useful feature, and that many more people would complain if it was absent.
Also worth noting: http://www.knot-dns.cz/ authoritative-only DNS server by labs.nic.cz
I do appreciate what you mean about actionability and tbh it's hard for me to comment on this new mixpanel feature set as there's not too much information on the sales pages.

However I've been investing a lot of time and code in Analytics and in mixpanel recently and while I would definitely agree that not all data is actionable, it doesn't stop it being useful or worth investing in as long as I take the time to examine (and prune) it afterwards.

What I find exciting is that these new types of Analytics open up value in for product design in a way that just wasn't practical without a tonne of custom dev before.

However, just as a new boss taking time to talk to each employee in the company isn't predictably actionable but still has vast value, so these new Analytics tools allow us to understand users in way that is not always actionable but is invariably valuable. The only real question surely is "is it valuable enough"?
Personally, I would be interested to know if the whole Jack Thompson thjng made legal headlines outside of the tech/videogame world, and what the reactions were.
NASA: Comparing Python, NumPy, Matlab, Fortran, etc (2009)
Dr. Dre's Beats buys Berkeley music service MOG - Marin Independent Journal
I think Asana is a solid product. Their long-term vision seems similar to ours - new category of business software covering all employees who do project/task-oriented work (developers, operations, marketing, product management, legal, etc..), that individual contributors actually enjoy using.

Our strategy on how to get there is completely different. Unlike them we provide the vertical functionality individual groups (like software developers, product managers, IT, etc.) need in addition to common horizontal task management. And we expect to be best-of-breed in the verticals we cover.

One vertical they do cover much better than Acunote is personal productivity using GTD. We focus on groups.

For larger companies we also have a really strong focus on data-driven management - letting you manage the whole company using data not politics. I haven't seen Asana offer analytics, but that's probably just a question of time. It's a smart play to focus on getting basics just right first.
> There are plenty of people I see every day that I would consider, at best, an acquaintance.

Ditto, where did I say seeing someone every day made them a friend? If it's this "it's the people you hang out with and see on a regular basis" that wasn't meant to qualify everyone you see daily as a friend.

> There is also a very small group of people that I see maybe once or twice a year that I would consider friends.

But you see them, which is my point. If your only contact with them is on Facebook, and losing Facebook would end your contact with them; they aren't your friends.

> Your definition of friendship is outrageously shallow and is contrary to any other definition I have heard.

I don't think you've understand what I'm saying well enough to say what my definition is since you've gotten it so clearly wrong.
> it gets harder to dismiss for every day going by...

I'm amazed at how common this sentiment is. Turning a company around takes time. It's likely Nokia would be in the same boat as RIM if they would've stuck to their same path (ie. without much hope). However there's massive potential with this new plan for Nokia [if] WP7 succeeds (which IMO is fairly likely looking at current trends and quality of product). However again, it just depends on WP7 succeeding, (which Nokia is trying their hardest to make a reality).
>This is about as useful as saying "the space program brought nothing new except the ability to go to space."

But the point is that we had already, metaphorically, been to space. We just did it better this time and went to the moon, too.
This is awesome. So useful, thanks!
I believe you. I am just saying that it would have been a better article if he did not let you know he was doing this and applied as a regular person to get the real experience.
Er... so you can select "I am under [the legal drinking age]", and then you show me places to drink?
Yep, an easy way to look at it:

* The SoC + display is the unit of computing.

* The CPU + GPU is the unit of compute.

And storage is an opaque object storage device, with backup in the cloud.
Portland, OR. Full time or short term.

Galois is looking for functional programmers, formal methods practitioners, and project leads, interested in either short term or permanent employment. For more information, see: http://corp.galois.com/careers
Shareholders and long term investors (aka those who care most about management) look for long term stable growth in core businesses. Yes, you can argue that their performance compared to competitors has been dismal but MSFT is still a solid investment and has seen double digit growth rates for over 10 years - this is incredibly hard for a company this size. Most will argue that this good management.

For example, look at their revenue growth quarter-over-quarter:

http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/revenue_growth#series=type...

Also, GOOG and AAPL don't pay dividends (yet), which is a very good proxy for shareholder value:

http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/dividend_yield#series=type...

I'm not saying MSFT can't do better; OP asked why Ballmer is tolerated and I wanted to point out that there are plenty of reasons why.
In Closing Its Platform, Twitter Risks Destroying Its Community
OK, but don't forget those of us who either don't use FB/Twitter, or who want to keep separate online IDs for different things (eg if your Facebook identity is wrapped up with your day job and you'd rather your fellow librarians didn't know you were in an avant-garde industrial band named Earbleeder).

disclaimer: not a member or fan of any bands called Earbleeder
This is a really awesome idea. I'd love to see this spread out of Virginia, too.
Sure, Apple doesn't generate a lot of earnings or revenue directly from each of their app stores, but the indirect revenue is what matters. Apple is a hardware company first, a software company second. App store purchases reinforce user stickiness as well as improving the overall purchasing experience. The bottom line is what matters, not the line item profitability.
Kind of like Gas Buddy for beer? Not a bad idea...
Man. Is it jealousy or just blind hate?

When I first read their blog post I was quite interested. I mean, here was a profitable business built by a well known company.

The only really unanswered question was whether or not existing customers would need to re-enter their payment information. I asked the question and recieved a prompt response.

I'm sure I would have had more questions if I could have convinced my partners to pony up their share of cash. But in the end, the deal wasn't for us.

Congratulations on the sale and congratulations to the new buyers!
HATOES says that your XML/JSON/whatever needs to have those same links. What is the difference between an <a href=""> link in HTML and a { action_url: "" } property in JSON?
Presumably by "all" you mean everyone except the poster who specifically asked for this post?

I agree the post is hardly relevant to the discussion, but for some reason the user posting actual content gets downvoted to oblivion while the user who sidetracks the discussion and adds nothing gets upvotes.

Well done HN.
Airbus to Assemble Jets in Mobile, Alabama; Start of a Global Labor War?
The less the code, the better
We're working on a log-in after we get twitter up. Will stay in touch and let you know!
If anybody says they can predict the future, they are lying. So I can only that we've never charged small teams and right now we have no plans to start. We accept VISA/MC/AMEX (and standard enterprise billing terms for large customers).
> different way than promised

Once the originally-planned $20k had been exceeded, Inman suggested that he would find some more charities that might benefit from the cash. This thought was abandoned shortly after Carreon cried foul about the "different way than promised". So, good-good for the bears, they'll get a bigger money pit to roll around in.
And whose tolerance is the right tolerance? Shall we defend against the "intolerant" who attempt to force their sexual-interpersonal ideals upon the public despite repeated referenda that demonstrate the public rejects those concepts, or did you mean the "intolerant" who do not believe that new types of relationships are necessarily automatically entitled to hetero-identical encouragement from the state?

It seems "intolerant" is basically an empty ad hominem, usable by any side.
Would you mind saying how you get the price lists for your stocking up section?

Is there a public data source?
Web development is somewhat different these days. OldIE support is being gradually dropped, primarily due to schedule and/or financial pressure or just web developers being more transparent about costs (eg. "IE6-7 support and testing will be an extra $X, and take an additional two-three weeks")

Most IE6 users that I've spoken to are accustomed to sites looking bad anyway, since most places do only cursory testing on old browsers.
Given several potential dates, you don't court them all equally.
I agree that it would affect the final number, and probably adjust short term revenue (and thus value). However, I also think it's a misplaced (but common) mindset that short term revenue determines valuation.

If Sortfolio provides significant value to its paying users (customers), they won't lose a great proportion of their revenue on CC re-entry. Those who don't re-enter billing info are the people no longer getting regular value from the product.

Folks, this is a huge success! It's a company that bootstrapped themselves (and get some credit for many other bootstrappers, myself included) and found an exit strategy that's a win for all parties: they make money. The buyer has a business that provides real world value to its customers. And the customers will continue to receive their value for dollars spent. (How many articles bemoan buyouts that are "bad for original customers/early adopters/etc."?)

Let's just take a moment and appreciate a successful exit. Everyone wins -- the founders, the buyers, AND the customers.
If I subscribe to this can I get all the magazines on my iphone somehow? (I'm not sure what formats are required for iBooks or if you can add custom links to the app?
Thank you for this comment. I was slowly losing my faith in HN developers knowledge.

Server MVC (Model2) is not the same as client MVC (the classic one). They are totally different architectures. Patterns that apply to one, don't apply to the other.

You can't get MVC with Rails/Django/Struts. You can get a nice MVC with a Single Page Application or with a desktop app.

A similar discussion was already here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3035549
Razorfish pitched to our marketing department (I was the token tec on the panel).

Being a Microsoft appendage was a big negative from my point of view... as was the giant Silverlight logo in their pitch docs.

> MS could have leveraged this team as a focus group and to enroll these clients to test innovative ways

Don't do that! If we hire you to do work for us and you sucker someone in our org in to some shit like this, we will very quickly question your motives and ultimately the value of our relationship.

In the end the the marketing wonks went with the agency with the best creative (again).
Top Hackers, we need you for Operations Research
Didn't this happen with Escient CDDB and FreeDB? You can't assume the community will keep providing you data when there's a plug-in replacement.
Second that about Lift too. It's basically server-side jQuery. Instead of parsing templates as one big string, it does DOM transforms on sub-trees. Parallel, independent, lazy-loading transforms using an Actor for each for each Snippet/subtree. Really awesome model.

Also, Twitter's recent 180 on shifting some processing from the client back to the server [1] suggests a server-oriented framework like Lift's is worth considering, despite the hype and excitement around client-heavy Rich Web Apps. Lift does the API-consuming rich client model as well, but its uniqueness is the DOM transform stuff.

Very different mental model than MVC and hard to get started with for some because of that, but here's a great bit of advice on best practices I came across recently (especially the part about pretty everything being done via either LiftRules or the S object) [2].

1. http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/05/improving-performance...

2. http://www.quora.com/Lift-web-framework/What-are-the-best-pr...
>I think iPad owners should be able to run whatever they want, but that's Apple hardware running Apple software, much like my Sony TV is Sony hardware running Sony spin of Linux

How does this distinction matter to the user of the iPad? They buy a tablet, they're able to run only what it came with. How is it better for them because Apple sells the hardware too?

>That's why I don't own an iPad.

Then don't buy a Windows RT tablet. It's not like they forced the OEMs to cancel their Android tablets. LG and HTC did that themselves without even making Windows RT tablets.

>UEFI secure-boot is Microsoft pressuring other companies, companies that have no reason to restrict their users (thus reducing the perceived value of their devices) into making their devices tied to Microsoft software. That'll result in thin margins for hardware makers because they won't be able to differentiate and will have to compete in price

Is dual booting phones and tablets such a big differentiator that people will pay a premium for them? Why do many Android tablets and phones come with locked bootloaders? Why doesn't Apple unlock the bootloader and sell more or sell for a higher price then? Hint: 99% of users don't care

>In the 80's, PC makers were dumb enough to commoditize the hardware while Microsoft reaped the benefits of fierce competition. I wonder if tablet makers will be stupid enough to make that same mistake

This really shows off your inexperience and lack of knowledge. It's the other way around, Dell and Compaq wouldn't exist today if not for MS licensing them MS-DOS when they didn't have to. Because of MS, Dell became a fortune 500 company in just 6 years. Go read about how they started.

>I wonder if tablet makers will be stupid enough to make that same mistake.

You mean they just continue to sell only Android tablets(which seem to be low margin by the way, so blame Google?)) and it's not really making them any good money. LG and HTC already dropped out.

Also you're ignoring how users reaped the benefits of commodotization of the hardware leading to the PC and internet revolution and are focusing on just MS' profits.
#55 paid app is not at all impressive given how much they paid for it. For that price Draw Something would have had to stick around the top ten, probably the top five, for quite awhile to make it worthwhile.
> over and over again referenda have shown that majorities in most states DO NOT want this to happen.

Millions of Americans agreed with slavery - that does not make slavery right.

Treating human beings equally, when there is no valid reason not to, isn't something that you get to have an opinion on.
Google owns mobile advertisement, as well as mobile search. They are in an excellent position for the future.
I don't know why everyone thinks the company was overvalued. $480k seemed like a steal to me and if we weren't in the process of purchasing another business when I saw this deal come across the Internet, we would've submitted an offer too.
Features that all mailing lists software should have