skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're operating on the flawed assumption that the sole endeavor here is to extract as much money from consumers as possible. If $45 a ticket allows Louis C.K. to make a tidy profit while still being affordable for his fans, but a third party buys all the tickets and resells them for $55... sure, some of his fans may shrug and say, "Well, I guess $55 isn't too bad" (price elasticity, etc, etc)... but why would Louis C.K. enable that behavior?
Not if people who have no plan to attend buy significant amounts of tickets to corner the market.
Thanks for your thoughts here.

This seems consistent with the personalities for both Gates and Bezos in that they are competitive people. They know it is difficult to compare people across disciplines, so they punt on the problem and just make it a contest.

I have to wonder if this is a case of applied fundamental attribution errors, where they see their own success not as a natural outcome of their own privileged circumstances, but as a contest they won due to their skills, knowledge, and ability to beat their competitors at their own game. This then becomes the organizing principle of their companies.
very interesting. hopefully someone at msft is listening.

btw, would love to know what you used to put this presentation together.
... in order to facilitate the shift away from other ticketing systems that probably cost him 10x?
Fantastic animation, but doesn't give any indication as to why it's such an important search!
If the only factor in your market's efficiency is price charged, then this is true. The real market has other factors like satisfaction/willingness to repeat a transaction (for both sides of the party), opportunities for disruption of your market (exacerbated by said dissatisfaction), and (gasp!) goodwill of parties in a transaction. If you're optimizing just the ledger numbers in your industry, you might make a buck, but you're setting yourself up for hatred and being toppled by a newcomer who customers actually like.
I don't know gte910h's reasons, but I'm also curious to know how many executives are excellent poker players. Poker has elements of chance, betting, and partial-information that make it a great environment for exploring game theory and information theory. Optimal strategies have to have a solid mathematical foundation, but must still be flexible depending on opponent's experience and demeanor. Good players know when to fold and when to bet, even if it hurts to think about the risk. They have to become comfortable losing money occasionally, knowing that if they continue to make good decisions, they'll come out ahead in the long run.

Chess is perfect for a world where we make our decisions with full information in a deterministic environment. For the partially informative, stochastic world that we live in, I'll choose poker.
You're glossing over the fact that for mobile apps you need to develop a separate app for each of the major mobile platforms out there, using a different toolset, process, and language for each one. Surely that's no less daunting than dealing with browser compatibility as a web developer.
Have you seen the sales of SharePoint?

Engineers always think that companies are engineering driven, when in fact mostly they are sales driven. If SharePoint sells well, then its not substandard, even if you don't like its architecture.
I have to agree.

The article started with stack ranking, but clearly there were much bigger issues looming.

>“He didn’t like the user interface, because it didn’t look like Windows,” a programmer involved in the project recalls...
“Windows was the god—everything had to work with Windows,” Stone tells Eichenwald. “Ideas about mobile computing with a user experience that was cleaner than with a P.C. were deemed unimportant by a few powerful people in that division, and they managed to kill the effort.”

They could have been years ahead on phones, tablets, and e-readers. But instead they had a culture that tried to shoehorn a standard Windows experience into every device (I imagine for marketing reasons). They are only now getting over it a decade later, though it's probably more accurate to say they have the same philosophy but in reverse: shoehorn a mobile experience into the desktop in Windows 8.

What difference does it make if you have the greatest engineers in the world but management is blocking them at every turn?
Higgs stuff is not the only event happening at LHC.
Quicklisp news: July 2012 update now available
> I think this whats really at work here. For the same reason they won't let Mozilla, Opera, or Google make their own web browsers. Apple is affraid of people building their own HTML5 apps and subsequent app stores. This would cut into Apple's app store monopoly and cost them their 30% on every app that is sold.

> Apple only cares about what makes it money, not delivering the best experience to consumers.

I disagree here, mainly because the amount of money Apple makes from the App Store is tiny, relative to their overall revenues. This year at WWDC, Tim Cook announced that Apple had paid $5 billion to developers on the App Store, which translates into a little over $7.1 billion in apps sold, or $2.1 billion in revenue for Apple since 2008. That's about $130 million per quarter, against revenue of between $7 billion and $30 billion per quarter. That's without considering hosting costs and credit card fees.

$130 million is certainly no small change. But for Apple, in the big scope, it isn't printing money for them.
Hi, Adam from &yet here. We're organizing redisconf. We also organize krtconf (http://2012.krtconf.com).

We're putting together the Redis event for the same reason we organized krtconf: we wanted to go to something like it and it didn't exist yet. We're developers first, so we're curating the content we most want to hear.

We worked hard for months proactively putting together the content for krtconf and here's the schedule as it ended up for last year: http://2011.krtconf.com/schedule/

We're still early in the content planning process, but just so you have an idea of the kind of effort we intend to put into the first RedisConf, here's what some folks said about the first krtconf:

"The quality of the talks is going to influence the quality of the conversations. The talks here have been great and the conversations have been even better." - Mikeal Rogers, Nodeconf / Pouch

"krtconf has been amazing. It’s a melding of the minds." - Kyle Drake, Geoloqi

"krtconf 2011 was impressively polished. Thanks so much for putting on the conference. I had a great time and would love to attend again. the conference was excellent, and I really appreciated how much work you guys put in." - Nate Smith, Derby.js

"Seriously awesome conference." - Pradeep Elankumarn, Kicksend

"Just wanted to say thanks for an awesome time. Really enjoyed the conference, the speakers and giving my talk. I have no doubt this will be the first of many Krtconfs." - Owen Barnes, Socketstream

"The conference has exceeded my expectations." - Astro (github.com/astro)
Awesome idea, Arduino adapter
As a long time Opera user, I like to say that I am proudly part of the 1%!
I'll have to try that - I was able to use the Wireless SD shield to have a direct connection to the WiFly, but once I switched it back I was unable to use the Serial Monitor - looks like SoftwareSerial might solve that
Thanks. I've got a friend who moved across the country. I've been looking for something like this for a long time. Recently we've been using synchtube (http://www.synchtube.com/) which works really well. Now if there were only a way to do this with netflix.
This is exactly what I was searching for this morning! Thanks :)

Edit: also, the slanted screenshots above the steps (1, 2, 3) create an uncomfortable optical illusion that the whole page is slanted.
Scalping confuses demand.

If 1000 people want to see a show in a theatre with 1000 seats, that would be an ideal market. But in reality you get 2000 people trying to buy tickets for that show. 1000 are the fans and 1000 are people trying to buy the tickets to flip them for a profit.

The artificial demand creates a market that benefits nobody except the scalpers. The fan loses by paying higher prices, and the artist loses (sometimes) by leaving money on the table. This is why Madonna and the Eagles are charging $750 for front row seats.
EU rules publishers cannot stop you reselling your downloaded games
While I think it's cool that designers show off their creativity in thinking up new ideas for old products, I could never shake the feeling that this was design's answer to fanfiction. The original creators have to look back and go "okay...?"

Related: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=is+this+the+iphone...
It's certainly not worse.
This is correct only to a point. If all your site is only serving up fairly static content then yes, you should not need JS to view it and it should degrade nicely.

However by not using JS to it full extent, the website developer would actually be hurting the consumer experience. If you disable JS I have no sympathy for you, I'll try to make the site work as well as I can but I will not spend much extra time re-coding things so they work for a tiny percentage of people.

Developing for disabled JS is developing for IE6 as in I don't do it. It's a waste of time that could be spend giving the rest of your customers or users a better experience.

It is because of all of this that I find your post unhelpful and useless. Would you rather us all go back to the dark ages? Some of us are actually trying to build something awesome instead of supporting people who have made their choice to have a bad web experience by disabling JS.
No, the goal is to make money. If a business can make money without customers, then it's still a successful business. (Though it may be a racket). Making a business with lots of customers, but no money, at best is called a startup... ;)
The more prevalent variant on this is managers would leave "room" in their review model for themselves. Come in under the curve and you leave room that makes it that much easier for your manager to reward you.
Twirc - Twitter+irc
Very nicely done!! When I first looked at the logo it reminded me of Accenture, so I don't know if the font would work, but it is a step in the right direction.

I really liked the metaphor of seeing different things through the windows (slates). This could be leveraged by Microsoft as a play on "this is your Windows" or "what do you see through your Windows".
The article is completely wrong on this point. In 99% of cases, people are stacked in a sufficiently large group that everyone on your immediate team could hypothetically get a great review.
It works the same way as Voice Search has always worked (at least since Froyo): The found action is shown to you for about 3 seconds along with a timed progress meter (3 seconds?) and buttons to proceed or cancel. When the timer ends, the action proceeds.

This is the correct solution, IMO. It would be quite frustrating to have the wrong phone number instantly begin to dial, for instance. One time when I said "call <name of restaurant>", it came up with "Call <name of restaurant>" with the address of the location I didn't want shown beneath. This gave me time to tap Cancel, which then showed me a list of the alternative results/locations.
I thought it added a nice "at the scene" ambience, as if you were in the cafeteria yourself overhearing a great explanation between two researchers. It gave it a great university feel to it.
Whether or not the person behind that post is personally bigoted, their post is a valuable contribution to the conversation that was happening* because it represents, with relatively solid reasoning and in uncommon depth, a viewpoint that was otherwise absent. A viewpoint that is absolutely relevant to the wider public conversation on the subject, and one that, even/especially if one happens to be on the other side of the issue, it is very valuable to understand.

It was, frankly, the most cogently I've ever seen that "side" of the issue presented, and (this is the most important heuristic) my understanding of the debate would be impoverished had it been censored or self-censored, as you've suggested. That is why YOURS is the unwelcome attitude to have, and one that, as far as I have noticed, has not been historically cultivated on Hacker News.

I wouldn't care if this was a "stormfront guy". If an argument is well-formed and wrong, and not directly an incitement to harm, it is in the best interests of the truth and the people on its side to have it come to light and be publicly exposed in the discussion forum... which is exactly what's ended up happening here.

More personally: I WOULD dream of entertaining a "stormfront guy" (in fact it's a personal hobby of mine), so I can enjoy, or enjoy others enjoying, the dismantling of an argument I dislike. And if it weren't dismantled, if it held up, then I would have something to think about. But I can't see any reason why someone should tell a civil and reasonable representative of any contentious viewpoint to just shut up and go away, other than either for their own comfort, or for validation for having publicly upheld a taboo.

-----

* I say "the conversation that was happening", because the whole conversation is off-topic, which is a legitimate reason to complain.
The web rabbit hole.
I suspect many of the people reading HN these days aren't old enough to remember the "golden age" of Microsoft (or simply of "of age" at the time). Back in the 80s and 90s Microsoft was an unstoppable behemoth that people would describe as a battleship that could turn on a dime (IIRC this referred to Microsoft reinventing itself in the mid-90s so that everything was about the Internet).

Three things happened to Microsoft (IMHO):

1. The DoJ suit in 1997 was a serious blow to Microsoft inertia. Speaking as nothing more than an observer, it seemed that Gates lost his way. He simply didn't know what to do. From this I get the distinct impression he really believed Microsoft wasn't doing anything wrong and things like bundling a browser with the OS were just "innovations";

2. Microsoft became too hierarchical combined with more B and C managers. Once you don't have A managers in a software (or any tech) business it seems like it's all over. Nothing rots from within so deeply and completely as poor management; and

3. Ballmer had and has no business being CEO of a software business. This isn't simply due to him being a manager rather than an engineer but that certainly doesn't help. Gates was a programmer and actively participated in tech reviews in his heyday. Ballmer is the Carol Bartz of Microsoft. It's simply taking longer to kill Microsoft from within than it took Yahoo.

As far as stack ranking and these other things go: on the face of it I consider them symptoms rather than the root problem. The root problems are:

1. Microsoft, as an organization, is deathly afraid something will kill the Windows/Office golden goose;

2. Everything Microsoft does is done from the perspective of furthering the Windows/Office cash cow. It's why you hear Ballmer describe tablets as "just another PC form factor". He sees them as simply a means to an end and that end is selling licenses;

3. Microsoft is at the mercy of hardware OEMs that are shortsighted enough to run themselves into the ground taking Microsoft with them;

4. There doesn't seem to be any central strategy (beyond sell more Windows/Office licenses) or innovation; and

5. The "backwards compatibility" crowd lost out to the "breaking changes" crowd, which hastened the switch to Web-based applications.
Well said, good sir, well said. However it still goes to show that there is a disconnect between "popular" and "up and coming". The rules for Louis C.K. and up-and-coming comedians are quite different. He is a gorilla and can use his momentum to do interesting things, others cannot.

Disruption is possible IF the seller company choses to take a multi-year hit while de-throning ticketmaster. If that happens with the backing of big names like Louis it may be a possibility.
As far as products go, that's about the only thing he changed at all. I think it just is a way to differentiate between the "old" MS and the "new" MS in branding.
As a long time Opera user, I have always seen Google treat Opera badly. When Google+ came, I didn't realise there was the notifications bar until I logged into Chrome. It never came on Opera.
The problem with outsourcing
Except I do not think the designer is a fan of Microsoft's existing brand image.
Well, given that they can't monetize mobile usage and they can monetize desktop usage (if somewhat poorly), technically driving users back to desktop usage from mobile would be good for them.
Weak.
Your first two paragraphs are not mutually exclusive. My former employer had a wealth of talented engineers who were overridden or ignored on key architecture decisions, either by semi-technical upper management or customers. Things had to be done a certain way because X wants them done that way, and by the time the bad decisions get highlighted the technical debt is too high for management to justify changing direction, and the program is forced to limp along with the crap they have.

My impression of Microsoft (entirely from the outside) is that they have this same problem.
That would make the most sense and is how I read the language. You're free to go buy an $80 scalped ticket if you want. But if they can figure out it was scalped, they'll just cancel the ticket and refund your $45 ticket price right at the show.
تحميل برامج مجانية
تحميل برامج مجانية براوبط مباشرة وسريعة اجدد برامج الكمبيوتر والموبايل مع شرح كامل لها تنزيل البرامج الاساسية التي يحتاجها جهازك Free Software Download
And big pockets too, it seems!
Zendesk Support is Down
Per @ZendeskOps on Twitter, there is a network issue and there is no ETA on when it is coming back up yet.

This is affecting a lot of customers (if not all) who use Zendesk.
Nice graph from Hetzner showing the spike:

http://imgur.com/a/ykoup
I thought this was really great design work. I could definitely see getting behind this because it points out most of what I see that is wrong with MS' Windows strategy. Metro doesn't need to be on the desktop, but it's totally applicable to tablet-like devices, a la WP7/8 and Surface.

If they went this route and did something like this, there would be serious impact to core Microsoft itself. But, it's definitely time for them to come into the new era, so to speak.
Great insights and feedback. Thank you.
I'm curious if you've ever done any mobile app development; You most certainly have to think about frameworks, design, different devices (especially on Android, where your app may be launched on any of a myriad of varying screen resolutions and sizes and densities). You still have to do quite a bit of non-straightforward work in order to create an app that is "responsive" to the device's size.
Per @ZendeskOps on Twitter, there is a network issue and there is no ETA on when it is coming back up yet.

This is affecting a lot of customers (if not all) who use Zendesk.
This whole "supporting browsers" thing should be gone, and very soon. There are specifications that browser makers should follow, and if they are all supporting those specifications, then they well be well-supported.

The only differentiator between page rendering among browsers should really be speed.

(I believe Opera is actually one of the browsers that adheres most closely to the specs.)
I have used both the state machine pattern and MVC in large projects and in some cases used both together. There is no problem with MVC. It can work with any number of supporting patters. If your problem is your controller doing too much work.. you're just doing MVC wrong! MVC is not the answer to life, the universe and everything. As long as you use it with that understanding you'll be fine. MOVE with its operations concept seems very similar to MVC with command pattern which is a perfectly viable solution which I have used in a project which involved making our own document editor and we had no issues with it. So, I really don't get what all the fuss is about. STFU and use what supports your requirements. Design patterns are evil themselves. Design according to your requirements and empower your models. That's all you need to do!
It's not completely irreversible, but the fix involves deleting your other search engines. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=84679#c4...
Yes, I realized by "finite number of waveforms" I actually meant "finite number of waveform-generating functions parameterized over momentum/energy and number of particles". But I think you and lmm have answered my question, thanks!
Just bought this app and I love it! It doesn't give you everything available in GA but it provides me with EXACTLY what I want when I open the app: A quick look at my sites and recent stats on them.

The design is beautiful and I would have easily paid $3+ for it.

It's only $1 in the app store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/analytiks/id427268553?mt=8...
SEEKING WORK - Remote / Czech Republic, can travel

Java, Scala, RDBMS, PostgreSQL, Datalog, Neo4j, JavaScript, jQuery, AWS, LinkedData, RDF/S, ontologies

PhD (2011) in knowledge representation and reasoning from Germany. Implemented a forward chaining reasoner for a semantic wiki (http://www.kiwi-project.eu/, now the LMF http://code.google.com/p/lmf/)

I'm currently trying to found a startup but in the meantime I'd love to also help others and get more connected to the startup world (I'm most used to the academia and to large IT companies - I worked at HP and before that at Sun).
"they are making Opera untenable"

I disagree. Opera's desktop marketshare is making Opera untenable. Even though Google is a major corporation, I doubt they can afford to spend the time fixing issues in a browser that gets lower single digit uses. Its not economically viable. No one will argue that Opera is a better browser than IE8, but IE8's marketshare dictates it should be supported.

Google is no more forcing users to use chrome than they are forcing them to use firefox or IE
This is actually untrue. I had a follow up post regarding the criticisms I had. The only negative attribute to the namespace substitute was that functions weren't being inlined.

http://blog.808inorganic.com/2012/07/bad-coders-doing-bad-th...
The Leanest Startup in Silicon Valley
Pros/Cons of non-financial crowdsourcing
I'm using ThunderClap to launch my startup. Good idea? What are some of the pitfalls and benefits of crowdsourcing from a NON-financial standpoint?

https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/42-get-things-centup
Higher prices dont necessarily breed hate in your customers. As long as people see that they are getting what they are paying for, they come out happy. It's the situations where they feel like they are getting screwed, or have too many restrictions, etc. Those generally come about because the market is not efficient, eg ticketmaster.
Followed it as far as Facebook, where I was told I needed to login to continue this interesting chain.

And thats where it lost me. No FB account, no way to continue.

The next time you do something like this, consider doing it in a way that everyone can actually participate in. Interesting idea, but fails at the end for people like me who are unable to get past a certain part.
How do you save post in hackernews?
The Amazons don't talk to each other
Wow. Do recruiters really get bonuses just for shoehorning a candidate and hiring manager into agreeing to meet each other for an interview? Even if that interview ends up being not only a waste of time, but a pointless exercise in awkwardness for both sides?

If so, then their profession is even more dysfunctional than I thought.
What was Apple's reason for it?
Leaked CERN video shows glimpse of the Higgs
Great work. But you know what they say about lipstick and pigs.

Microsoft's problem is not their lack of spending on advertising, branding, marketing, PR, etc. They spend colossal amounts of money in these departments.

Their problem is that they no longer know who they are. Worse, they no longer know who they want to be.

In that respect, they are very close to Sony.