skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Am I the only one who sees a clear, functional difference between "todo" and "list" apps?

Todo apps: Any.do, Orchestra, 2Do, Do It Tomorrow, TeuxDeux

List apps: Clear, Cheddar, Listary

I always keep one of each one my phone, because they serve entirely different purposes. While they both work by storing lists, there's a big difference for me between tasks and items in a list. When I'm tracking tasks, I want things organized based on timeframes (maybe also assigning priorities, due dates, or categories), and an interface designed around that principle is always going to do that better; you could use Clear or Cheddar to store "Today", "Tomorrow", and "Soon" lists, but that's a poor hack. When I'm simply maintaining a list of things to remember (e.g., grocery list, debts to friends, items I need to buy after moving, songs to buy, 100 push-ups program), all I want is several (separate) lists with items I can add, edit, rearrange, and delete.

I currently use Any.do as my tasks app and Clear as my list app. I really like the design of both of them, but I have reservations of both. Any.do takes a very nice approach of sorting tasks into bins of Today, Tomorrow, This Week, and Later, but aggressively bubbles tasks up (the idea is nice if Tomorrow tasks moved into Today after a day, and This Week into Tomorrow after 6 days, and Later always stayed in Later, but I've had to push the same tasks back into Later and This Week 4+ times per week). Clear lacks syncing of any kind -- this is extremely frustrating because it could easily hook into something like SimpleNote. I really like the focus on syncing from Cheddar, but I have major reservations about the subscription concept (even though experience shows that I move between these apps frequently and will likely not need to pay for many months, a subscription feels like a significant investment whereas a <$5 app doesn't), and I find myself missing Any.do and Clear's gestures.
I don't understand the hate in the comments. Two things:

1) The simplest applications are still hard to polish this much. In fact, simple things can often hide some of the hardest design choices.

2) Three years ago, Twitter apps were the UI design playground of choice. Now that they've told everyone not to write new clients, UI experimentation has shifted to other applications. Compare Cheddar to Clear, for example. Both are nominally to-do lists, both have carefully thought out custom interfaces, but they express very different philosophies about software design.
I think the point was that there would be some obvious differences in systems. That doesn't mean that they aren't improving their system - it just isn't at the same place as Estonia yet. Not so hard to understand - right ?
Also perhaps, make integral calculus make more sense?
Not sure about T-Mobile, but with AT&T, you can walk into a store, buy a SIM in cash, pay-as-you-go, and pick what data options you want. They aren't great offerings (I think $15 for 1GB?) but it's certainly not hard or uncommon.
I don't know how GP feels about this, but web development is almost commoditized at this point. The barrier to entry is pretty low, and supply has grown sharply as more people learn how to code.

I think GP means something less specific, like "become an expert in distributed database systems" or "learn to develop infrastructure for distributed machine learning." Those problems are complementary to some of the biggest areas in tech now (machine learning, distributed computing) and will not go away for a long time.
It is not a book because...?
Many/most of the occupations you list are a lot closer to highly skilled labour than they are to manual labour.

For example, an electrician's ticket around here requires a grade 12 education, 2 years of college and 4 years of apprenticeship.

The first year of college includes math and physics courses that are very similar to those seen in the first year of an engineering course at University. The biggest difference is that the exams are easier and they make it easier to make up failures. In consequence, the failure/dropout rate is lower than the university engineering drop out rate, but is still significant.
> a πle of cases

τché!
Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk for A/B Testing
I may be biased because I'm a technical male, but From reading thisI got the impression that she was really just mad that she felt left out of the fun the technical people were having. The fact that they were white or male may been a side effect of that, but it was really a stretch for her to say that because they referred to the marketing and hr people as dumb as somehow being a sexist or race thing.

The line "whilst everyone else (particularly the nontechnical employees on the customer support team who were mostly female and sometime, unlike the white and Asian engineering team, black) were assumed to be duller..." seems to be trying to get you to believe that the white/asian engineering people hate black people. I find that hard to believe

. This reads more like bad gossip than anything else.
Yeah, the Compute Engine offerings are clearly lined up against EC2, and the pricing is a bit cheaper.

Still, it seems like a fairly niche product; Google suggests workloads like video encoding or scientific computing. By cutting out that lower ~$60/month tier, it's less attractive for many things people have used EC2 for.
Install gcc onto your Playbook over the air. No root required.
This is a dangerous argument—sure, if (I did say 'if'!) it's a win for the beginners, then why not expose them to it when there's no baggage dragging them back?; but, on the other hand, in that case, in exchange for short-term gains you're giving them a long-term loss of ability to communicate with others who weren't taught that way.

(Essentially the same argument can apply to innovation; it doesn't mean that innovation is bad, just that it is rarely without cost.)
The trajectories of adaptation then become second-and-beyond-order problems that in turn fall out of sync with reality.
Seriously? So you think Backbone.js and the like are just a fad?
> APOSTROPHE MEANS DERIVATIVE!!!!1!!!11!!!

Prime means derivative; fʹ is the derivative of f, whereas either of f' or f’ is an abomination. (TeX permits the former abomination by, essentially, translating f' into f^\prime.)
I, as well as HN user 'HorizonXP' have commented extensively on RIM, so I suppose I need to give a statement.

I tried and failed to compose a meaningful comment, so, quite simply: I'm switching to Android later this year. Probably a Galaxy SIII.

My current BB is my first smartphone, which I suspect is why I have such a fondness toward it. The fact that Blackberry data plans are dirt cheap and unlimited also didn't hurt.

But features are lacking. For example: If I create a playlist, I cannot change the playlist order. So I was looking forward to BB10 to hopefully achieve something resembling feature parity with iOS and Android. I was checking Crackberry.com twice per day just to hear the latest on BB10. I eagerly digested the reheated leaks of the 2 models and the new BBM interface.

But I can't wait any longer.

Digicel, the dominant carrier in Jamaica, just launched 4G yesterday. Hell, the ad's playing on the radio right now! Prices aren't too shabby (USD17 for a 1GB plan). I can afford it.

It makes sense for me to switch, too. My many domains are all hosted on Google Apps. I use Postbox as my email client because of how well it supports Gmail. Might as well complete the last mile.

Goodbye, RIM. I'll always remember you.

Love,
Oz
Weird, I can't see anything if Adblock is on. Make sure yours is whitelisting microsoft.com (at least temporarily).
Graphene is simply a single layer of carbon atoms. If you roll one up, voila, you have a carbon nanotube you've been hearing about for the past 10 years. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have similar properties as graphene (act as a metal or a semiconductor, are the "strongest materials known, etc.[1]).

From what I understand, it is very difficult to make large sections of pure graphene or long CNTs. As long as they're pure, they remain strong, and therein lies the difficulty of graphene and CNT production. Like you said, the impurities do weaken CNTs and graphene. The impurities can be contaminants which occupy a carbon location, or missing carbon atoms, forcing the lattice to reconstruct. According to [1], this can lower the tensile strength of a carbon nanotube by up to 85%. The problem with manufacturing long CNTs and large areas of graphene is that it is thermodynamically impossible to, on a large scale, have a perfect lattice. The imperfections will weaken the entire structure. So yes, as you go up in scale, the incredible/fantastic properties will just become impressive.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube

*I currently study materials science and can produce literature upon request. Also this is from the top of my head so it may contain some errors.
I agree, although think if they had one not long after the iPhone launched, a lot of people would have bought them because of brand loyalty.

If you already had a Nokia your default choice was usually a new Nokia. And they had a pretty strong brand at the time (and 70-80% market share?).
That is something I really hope Apple fixes.

They have a generic mechanism to send files to other apps, but not for URLs, making it painful to pass a URL to Twitter or an instant messaging app.
Wiping Away Your Siri "Fingerprint"
>Blackberry's value is not in the core operating system.

I don't know. RIM gets high marks from governments around the world for its platform security, and it's the OS that is certified. Version 7.1, for example, was recently certified by the US, UK and New Zealand governments. So I'm not sure that switching OS would be such a good move.
Very modern, very metro, beautiful design.

I like it.
Same thing as Y! Axis as well.
Me again (Round 2) - I spent 2 days doing the first reimbursement (following instructions, taking advice from Round 1 people) and then 1 day or less for each subsequent monthly meeting (including having the meeting). Write-up from a few months back:
http://ianozsvald.com/2012/03/24/this-week-in-startups-stron...

All in I'd expect 1-2 days per reimbursement meeting (including meeting time), less as you get better at it, less if you reimburse just a few big things (rather than lots of small stuff). Cash payments require less proof (less paperwork) than debit or credit cards (CCs require most). That's about all there is to it.
That's why I hate where the industry is going. The modern mobile devices have so powerful hardware, yet are so limiting for doing any real hacking because of the so called "security concerns". The apps go through reviewing in the app stores anyway, which makes me think that restrictions come from the political/marketing considerations rather than worrying about security.
Hopefully competitive forces will sort that out. There will be an incentive for price per 'equivalent compute unit' to be lowered as the underlying infrastructure costs decrease.
I see everything fine here.

Using Linux with:

* Chrome 21.0.1180.4 dev with AdBlock

* Firefox 13.0.1 with AdBlock Plus and NoScript with all scripts blocked
As someone that lives a 1/2 hour or so from the Kitchener-Waterloo area I'm thinking it'll have a hard hitting effect on the K-W market, on par with Nortel's implosion in West Ottawa/Kanata. When I moved here I picked the location to be able to hit as many locations as possible for potential employment. With RIM going south, moving closer to Toronto is sounding like the way to go, to say nothing of the rise in competition there will be for Java/C coders
It's taken a long while, but Michaelsoft are finally getting their shit together. Well Done!
To turn tables round, not having to worry about my stuff left on the desk while working in a shared office is something unthinkable for me, as a Pole. Kinda envious.
Even if that's true, you are developing for one platform so the comparison is a bit disingenuous. Mobile development is made slower because of fragmentation, not the tools. Unless you've magically found a way to port your apps over to Android and Windows Mobile..
Running On Empty: WakeMate Finds Out What Happens When Partners Break Up
Looks neat, uncluttered and peppy! But what about the favicon? That is so 1990!
Nothing but unbridled pessimism.

The march of progress hasn't stopped just because we don't launch Saturn Vs anymore. It has progressed rapidly on other fronts. Anyone looking at the Apollo program should realize that it was a stunt more than a true exploratory endeavor. In the past 40 years we've been doing the real work of increasing our understanding of everything in the solar system. If I had to choose between a manned mars mission and knowing about Eris/Sedna, extra-solar planets, surface of Titan etc... I know which one I'd pick. Why not both? No thanks, I'd still rather have the JWST instead.

The author describes the unique dangers of space, but it's not that different than other frontiers. He describes it's uniqueness:

People have survived for months on the open ocean, subsisting on the elements around them. Running out of air is not a problem. Fresh water falls out of the sky as rain. Critters that are attracted to the cover of your life raft provide a source of food. I recommend the book 117 Days Adrift for a gripping account of a British couple who survived such an ordeal. Sometimes edible fish would actually jump into their dinghy. By contrast, a hamburger has never slammed into the side of the space shuttle in orbit

True, but hamburgers don't slam into the side of an airplane either. Yet we don't starve to death in airplanes despite many airlines attempts.

The voyages of Columbus were all expensive stunts and economic failures. It was 100 years before practical use of the new world was possible. Once the cost of a colony could be reasonably amortized and profitable they sprung up everywhere. Better technology made this possible, not larger government trips to farther off destinations.

Space is already being commercialized. We aren't mining asteroids yet, but we are seeing private launch companies sending private satellites into orbit. The costs of launches are going down, and the value in space is going up. We've already passed the break even point for some applications.
I'm not fond of the way Backbone.js works. It solves none of the hard problems of making an SPA. (AngularJS is guilty of this too, albeit from a different angle.)
Yea, that's what I had in mind while watching the video too. I remember that example as delete around paragraph, to match delete inside paragraph (dip), which differ in how they handle whitespace at the end of the paragraph. Delete inside quotes, di', and delete around quotes, da', work in the same way too.
At uni, decades ago, I was told that whenever a "mathematician" appeared up on the telly, it was to present their new idea of definining a new constant equal to 2pi...

Not the same now, of course, with shows like Numb3rs and Big Bang Theory, and a greater public awareness of the importance of numeracy.
Text editors are not standards, like sockets or protocols. They're programs.

The more competition, the better!
That's an apples to oranges comparison though. What is the minimum level of skill necessary to legally do work running wires and hooking up outlets for residential home construction?
Haha I thought this post was real, but when I read the other blog post I thought it must be satire... it's right on the line though.
I spent today (Thursday) talking with the Executive Director (Horacio) and a few of the senior staff members. I presented this morning on Lean Startup processes for the newly-arrived.

I'm in Round 2, I've been giving feedback for months to the staff. The feedback I got today about changes they're making during Round 4 (for those just arriving now) is pretty impressive. If they carry it all off then the programme will be improved by a fair margin for subsequent Rounds.

The improvements are still under discussion but ought to address many of the mentorship/fund raising/expectation issues that have been raised (at least - I have cautious optimism that that's the case).

Disclaimer - I don't work for SUP, I'm almost finished here in Round 2, I've had my complaints during the programme but generally they're reacting/improving to the significant issues. Things are improving for every new Round.
Great article.

note to svbtle: the typekit font css is returning a 403.
Satisfied Employees Vs. Engaged Employees
Looks like they're matching one of their main web properties' UI with their new OS IU.

In some ways that makes sense, they're going all out or bust, in other ways I'm not sure that searching thru Technet articles will be best experienced via this new UI --granted their previous IF to Technet was horrible.

Something else is that previously they had no uniform design. different teams had different designs for their domains. Once you entered a search term, all bets were off on what the page you got to would look like.
Looks good to me, digging it.
So if they lost 9 billion, who gained the 9 billion? Where did the cash go to?
Under New Zealand law, courts must consider whether evidence was collected illegally when deciding if it admissible in court, but that doesn't automatically prevent evidence from being admissible. If the breach was minor, technical, and unintentional, and doesn't significantly affect the rights of the defendant beyond if the law had been followed, then the evidence is usually considered admissible. If the courts decide that the police deliberately broke the law, they are far more likely to rule evidence inadmissible.

So this does not necessarily mean that he has won the extradition hearing.

The actual ruling (here http://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/cases/dotcom-ors-v-attorney-ge...) was based on the argument by Kim Dotcom's lawyers that the search warrants were too vague and broad (they didn't say they were for alleged breaches of US law, they allowed too much stuff to be seized beyond the alleged offending, they didn't say how seized property that turned out to be irrelevant or was no longer needed for the investigation should be dealt with, and they didn't say how property belonging to employees living at Kim Dotcom's house would be handled) and the fact that the NZ Police had allowed evidence to be transferred overseas without permission from the Attorney General as required by law.

The court ruled that because the search warrants were too broad, they were invalid, and therefore the seizure was illegal.

Under New Zealand law, people generally get property that was seized for investigation back, unless there is a law specifically allowing it to be kept.

They didn't rule that all seized property must be returned yet, but the ruling grants "an order requiring that all items identified as containing no relevant material be returned forthwith to the plaintiffs" and "an order that complete clones of those seized items which are found to contain any relevant and non-privileged material be provided to the plaintiffs as soon as possible, and in any case, not later than the disclosable clone of that item is provided to the United States authorities".

Disclaimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, it is a political discussion about seizure laws in relation to a high profile case.
It sounds like a problem that could be solved by proximity cards. Has this been suggested to the CMI personnel? Is it something that they'd implement?

I am starting Startup Chile at the end of July and I am seriously considering a shared office space, due to many reasons (security being one of them)
But what if someone is "dick" to you? How do you handle that? Ignore?
Unless you are Chrome for iOS.
https://www.cueup.com/ , for those of you who don't know what it is (it's really hard to google for, cue is not an especially unique name).
Google's own apps should really support 2-factor auth, and they should improve the flow for app-specific passwords.

The flow for getting an app-specifc password is awful. It takes a large number of clicks (I think 7, but I lost count), and several of the pages are confusing. Not only that, but you have to enter your password and a name of the app. Ideally, it would be a reduced number of clicks (like 2–3), entering your password, and that's it. Adding a name for the app should be optional. My apps all have names like “alsjdlajshd” or “9”, because I'm impatient, and the likelihood that I'll ever need to invalidate one is low enough that I would be okay with just invalidating them all.
Shouldn't the menu be all capitalized?
Hey, nice work. My daughters do Khan Academy at home in the mornings for a bit rather than their elementary school math class. They love it.

I wanted to tell you guys a story though, about your UI transition.

I walked in a few months ago to my 8 year old daughter slumped at the desk next to her computer, nonresponsive. When I was like "Oh my God, are you okay?" She told me, with many tears, that she was no longer to obtain I believe they were called "Master" badges in some future subjects, like Geometry.

She had earned one of the Master badges at great effort, and when the UI changed, you guys retired them for more granular badges. Overall, I'd say it was the right decision to make; gaining subject mastery is done on a smaller slice of content now, and feels more achievable.

That said, she was totally devastated that she wouldn't be able to earn those future badges. Oh man, it was tough. She recovered nicely and loves the new interface, but I was thinking what an impact a UI change had, and thinking that a) probably many adults feel the same way with a change, but don't communicate it as well, and b) some sort of way to notify / slowly introduce / help transition kids who use the tool intimately as changes happen would be pretty awesome.

Thanks for all the work! I wish I'd taken some video for your UI guys, she was really bummed, the sort of response you can't get out of a focus group. :)
A new 3D frontier in Google Earth for mobile
Health, Social Media, and Productivity.
There are a few niches where new code is written in assembler (numerical code, parts of standard libraries), but in general, I think 'maintained' is a better word to use.
It would be cool to be able to transition accounts to the new child accounts; is that possible?
Why I left consulting and joined a startup
My first real blog post... I hope you like it!
Google’s One-Gender-Fits-All T-Shirts Don’t Fit
That's the squarest site ever! I take it IE still doesn't support rounded corners?
Using design thinking to improve personal productivity
Knockout is great. I've been using it heavily for the last year.
The Gary Lescault Family Benefit
GuitarParty.com joins the StartUp Reykjavík (Global Accelerator Network)
The benefits of joining an accelerator network have been much debated. For us it's been more than great.
Really nice support of different browser sizes. Resize your browser from wide to really narrow to check it out.
JP Morgan didn't lose $2 billion... they lost $9 billion
I'm also opposed to reposting, but I mention this talk to people all the time and nearly none have seen it. Those who have, however, all agree that it is an amazing (and eye-opening) talk. I just saw it again today for the first time in half a year and realized how much it has actually changed how I develop software.
How Twitter Is Changing Politics
Over 130 Representatives Spell Out Their Concerns With TPP In Letter To Ron Kirk
Especially when an awesome fav seems easy for those guys. I guess they probably don't want to use the Windows one because it's only one of their products.
Cool, would appreciate one for Los Angeles. I think it would look better if the lines matched up.
I tried running some simple SELECT queries on the sample Wikipedia dataset of a few GBs. Most queries took 5 to 10 seconds, which is not exactly fast.

Moreover, it is super expensive with their 'data processed' based pricing. It actually costs more than $1 to run a single query on a database of 30 GB. So it will cost $300,000 to power my analytics app with 10,000 queries a day. This cost will further skyrocket if your database size is anywhere near a terabyte.