skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"we believe that the future of shopping is primarily mobile (particularly tablets), but we’ve consciously chosen a “web first” strategy. The reasoning behind this is simple, mobile development is still slower than web development by nearly an order of magnitude"

This makes absolutely no sense. Are you saying that though your customers are approachable via mobile, you are choosing web because it is easier? This reminds me of the guy looking for a lost ring under a streetlamp though he had lost it elsewhere because it is easier to see under the streetlamp
We've all known it for a while, but this redesign (which I think is quite nice compared to Microsoft's previous efforts) throws their logo into stark relief. It looks outdated. It doesn't match.

I'm speculating that we'll see an across-the-board Microsoft rebrand within the next two years, including a new logo for the company. They've rebranded their core software offering, they're now changing directions on their hardware/software philosophy, and trying to gain some mindshare for their new aesthetic (and their new appreciation for aesthetics more generally) is going to be a core part of that movement.

Thoughts?
Words in all caps are harder to read.
Ok. So, if I upgrade and someone does visit from an older IE browser what happens? :) I'll be back to testing browser differences.

I guess those are pretty old browsers, so oh well.
A contrary opinion. This blogger has repeatedly stated that these puff pieces about Gene Sharp (of which the CNN article is only the most recent example) are total BS.

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/06/oh-arab-influence-of-g...
It's pretty easy to stay out of this, so I don't see the problem. Google is really good about telling you what it does and generally lets you opt out (or gets you to opt in). So what is the problem?

I don't trust facebook and thus I don't use it. It's easy.
Teams, Managers, and IC: lessons from soccer video game
Now he can work on whatever he wishes to.. Why do you assume he will just sit on a couch?
Your Honda versus Acura muddies the comparison. Acura is a luxury brand. The consumer gets clear value-add through additional comfort, improved build quality, better customer service, etc. The differentiation is clear. The target customers are also different.

In the Google/AWS example, additional power/capacity can either be incremental (10% more RAM, etc), or class defining (web server versus super computer). There may be other attributes that stand apart, but everybody seems focused on price and cpu/ram. I don't know AWS well enough to honestly compare, but is Google's service incrementally different, or does it provide a capability that AWS doesn't offer?
It does seem a strange decision. They even address it in their post:

"jQuery was conceived specifically to address the differences in browsers, so we’re not going to abandon the essence of our philosophy and simply disregard the millions [still using] oldIE. Yet we also want to move ahead and take advantage of modern browsers, especially the growing mobile market."

The whole point of jQuery is that it's supposed to allow you to move ahead without losing backwards compatibility. Making this split -- especially with a version number, which implies a feature-freeze for 1.9 and new stuff only in 2.0 -- seems like they're just admitting defeat on their primary function.
What is the advantage of rounded corners?
So would the static compilation / type checking features have made a difference to you in your choice of language?

I'm sort of half in love with the idea, half in horror - I can pick and choose which parts of my code I want to be static and which parts dynamic - is it the best of all worlds or a dogs breakfast of incomprehensible and conflicting paradigms? I don't know, but I think it's one of the first popular and well established languages to offer this so I consider it really intriguing to see how it plays out.
Perhaps I'm reading that statement wrong... what does equity stake and team size have to do with your work producing value for the company? Maybe you're less motivated, but your work is either producing value or not -- regardless of equity stake. Awkward wording, I suppose...?
Surely all editors will have half-baked Vim unless the editor is actually Vim.
It looks like a scatter-gun approach: shoot out a bunch of products and see what sticks.
Apple is Limiting the New Google Chrome for iOS
There is no auto-complete in the search box. Should this not be expected?
I like that "rested racehorses" metaphor: have the ability to run fast when required, but not all the time to the point where you break down. Let's hope that doesn't turn into a cliche someplace!
Inode Entertainment from Mexico gets 100 million downloads
Great job!
It's Sergey's world and we're all just living in it
The immediate reaction here appears to be to pan the article as though it was written from a position of ignorance or as flamebait, but consider that Techstars, YC, etc are not the only incubators out there. Far from it. There are a plethora of copycats, few of which boast any bonafide credentials or success stories.

If you can get into one of the tier-1 incubators, then it's almost certainly a good idea if you're building a consumer app. For the lower-tier accelerators, however, it might just be a waste of time and equity.

Just as an incubator can offer great assistance to a startup, it can also be a hindrance or waste of time and resources. Pick your incubator like you pick your cofounder. If you can't find the right match, then be prepared to go it alone. It's better than making a poor choice.
"Mostly, I was growing tired of implementing <some old-school technology> to solve <some generic enterprise problem>. I’m a builder at heart, and I wanted to contribute to Creating a Thing"

Consulting offers a great balance between personal freedom, and cash flow, and that to me is one of its greatest strengths. You get the small team comraderie too, as you mentioned. With a startup, if you can build that product, yes, then a startup is ideal. But that's extremely tough.

For me, I'm willing to sacrifice a small piece of my freedom in exchange for that cash flow.
SwipeGood (YC W11) Is Now Elastic, A Sales-As-A-Service Platform For Startups
*she! Michelle. Sorry.
I love this product roadmap write up!

Explanations littered with reasoning and also a code-level solution for something that won't be an issue until one year down the road. Hopefully that 93KB (un-Gzipped) beast can be knocked down a bit with 2.X.
I think they just realized they can continue to support the old IE versions while other JS libraries advance in functionality, or they can stay competitive.
> Functional languages have been around for years and have never owned more than a niche market due to their complexity

I think the problem is that writing in a functional way almost requires a purist approach, so the only way in is to completely buy into the "dogma" of it. That makes adoption hard to impossible.

Groovy is almost completely the opposite - every practical whim is catered for, almost to a fault - there's all kinds of crazy stuff shoved into it. But boy is it easy to adopt. It's a quite stunning achievement how much is in Groovy and yet still - it remains almost source compatible with Java.
well they do provide 1.9 to handle that, this is is how they recommend you handle that

<!--[if lt IE 9]><script src="jquery-1.9.0.js"></script><![endif]-->
Zepto is already a popular option for those who want jQuery features in a lightweight library. The API is essentially identical to jQuery, making it a drop-in replacement at a fraction of the size.

zeptojs.com
It's pretty simple– if you want to support IE<9, don't upgrade to jQuery 2.x. A lot of people are already dropping support for IE<8.
I have taken about 2 weeks of Facebook fast. It was great. You are more peaceful. Their is no guilt about not being able to do all the things that you should to be doing. You save time. You have more intense face to face or phone conversation with your friends.

I am back on Facebook because it is easier to connect to future-to-be-friends. You connect on Facebook and may be become good friends.

I plan to slowly wind Facebook down and eventually leave it for good.
Kudos to the jQuery team for taking a risk.
We're working on it. Tweet us and I'll send you a link to sign-up for alpha access. http://twitter.com/whatscurrent
Ha! You need to sign up for the service to see the final animation. Bravo! Bravo Kicksend! Braaaavo!

You got a sign up coming your way.
What about 10Gb ethernet? 10Gb NICs can be bought for under $200 a piece these days, and 10Gb switches can be bought for under $100 per port. Yes, it's more expensive than 1Gb, but that doesn't mean you can exclude it as an option.
Zepto is not drop in. Not even close.
Until you click a link in an email or app.
Sorry, but this is a disaster.
Dropping support for IE6 may be OK, IE7 is a bit too soon, but IE8?

I haven't tested my stuff on IE6 and IE7 for a long time, but I still do it on IE8 everyday. It was released in 2009! And it's decent enough, PNG transparencies, etc.

jQuery's main raison d'être might have gone out the window.
Many different ways. For organic traffic theres links, search results, facebook posts and other social media. For the app store theres added friction bc users have to install the app on their phone and there will be a dropoff between viewing a listing and downloading (and also from downloading to launching). For paid traffic, its much easier to build a sustainable business on the web because the costs are, for the most part, cheaper.
You and the OP are comparing apples and oranges. VIM is an editor, Eclipse is an IDE. You can have your cake and eat it too [1]. Eclipse is a good cross platform IDE yes, but throwing more RAM at it won't make it feel natural and native to the platform.

[1]: http://eclim.org/
Speaking of precision, what will put you behind bars and what should put you behind bars are two different things.
Error on loading the elasticsales.com homepage:

GET https://ad.retargeter.com/seg?add=346584&t=2 The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “ad.retargeter.com” which could put your confidential information at risk.
ICANN follow-up
Google Prediction API: GMail Priority Inbox for Your Apps and more
Interesting to see 'former' enthusiasts react to this news. This type of negative feedback loop demonstrates how animal spirits can impact what might otherwise succeed in a vacuum. It's also a fascinating intersection where search algorithms and financial modeling meet.

Those able to reliably capture the impact of this negative publicity inside of a model will be very wealthy... but I can imagine Google expanding into deeply into investing, should they ever produce satisfactory results.

-----

Somewhat off-topic, but this caught my eye: USD17 for a 1GB plan [in Jamaica]

Verizon now charges USD50 for 1gb[0]. Have any insight as to why there is such a significant disparity? Does Jamaica have (i) more carrier competition, (ii) pricing regulations, (iii) lower spectrum demand relative to geographic area or (iv) are there other factors you're aware of?

[0] http://i.imgur.com/Q2xTv.png
They do the performance comparison with Drupal, is that a really good common measure for that? If you need 3 "gears" to do 15page/s, it kinda feels slow to me, or maybe I'm too naive and spoiled by Node?
"jQuery's main raison d'être might have gone out the window." - my thoughts, exactly!
Autocompletion in the omnibox is way more aggressive than in Safari. You typically only need to type one or two characters to get to the sites you visit most frequently. In a lot of cases, this will more than make up for any JS performance differences between Chrome and Safari.
How I define a startup:

In my mind, startup-ness is not about size, but about culture. You've got invaders and you've got occupiers. Invaders have to improvise, have to be agile, have to seek out a better way because they have no incentive to uphold the status quo. Occupiers just keep doing what they already do, optimizing it perhaps, but never truly innovating. There are 40-person companies out there who've already become occupiers, and there is one 400 billion dollar giant who is arguably still in invasion mode.

I also like Eric Ries' definition: a group of people operating under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
It's a shame it ended so early. Good-looking, fun and would have been great if it continued to get more challenging!
The premise is that jQuery 1.9 and 2.0 are API-compatible, so you can do something like:

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<script src="jquery-1.9.0.js"></script>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if gte IE 9]><!-->
<script src="jquery-2.0.0.js"><</script>
<!--<![endif]-->

New browsers will get a lighter download and a faster runtime. oldIE will still work with all the hacks required to make it work.
A big loss to Apple. I guess he'll see them through iPhone 5 (and maybe the other new thing that's coming for Q4) and then head into the sunset.

When I was at Apple a good friend asked Eddie Cue what it was like during the dark days (pre-Jobs return). He said it was still stocked with some bright people who were suffocated by crummy management. Bob joined in 1999 and set about changing that. Never met him, but I don't know anyone with a bad word to say about him.
I don't think that's it. That's what the UI on Windows Phone and Surface looks like, so I'm guessing it's intentional.

Personally, I am fucking sick of rounded corners, so seeing the right angles here really made me happy. I'm guessing their designers felt the same way.
I would place the black box somewhere else and make it non-movable, because right now it obscures everything under it and moves too quickly I think.
But it is a good job, could be helpful for me a year ago when I was looking for a place in DC )
It's two blocks of steel, which have been milled, then turned, then one of them is laser-etched (and possibly painted), and they are finally both finished. Oh, and there's the screw-in part at the top. And it's being done in a relatively small run, which factories hate. The tooling cost is spread across 5.5K pens, not 5M or more. And Kickstarter takes 5%, Amazon something like that as well.

Then you have to ship to yourself. And then re-package and ship out to your customers. And be ready to deal with people complaining about them. And some will get lost in the mail (not your fault, but if you want to be awesome, you treat it as if it is). And you have to pay yourself. And the person un-boxing and re-boxing the pens. And you worked on it before there was a Kickstarter for it, so you should probably pay yourself for that time.

And maybe, maybe, you want some money left over so that you can afford to front the cash for your next run, instead of always counting on Kickstarter projects. It's not always easy.
IE 7 and 8 are still a huge chunk of the market, and they dont support CSS3.
UT grad - Hook ’em Bob.
Thanks for your contributions to some great technologies.
~..~
It's really not that simple. Now you have to check to see if a plugins support 1.9 or 2.0, and plugin writers will have to support both or IE8 supporters will have to live without new plugins.
To be honest, even the guy at the store where I bought it told me that they tend to "brick themselves" and that he had to return his. I hope my luck continues.

Definitely agree on the battery life issue. But I don't mind since I'm never far from a USB port.
Is it just me or does the guy in the last slide look like hes using a photoshopped macbook air/pro?
Thanks! Working on increasing difficulty. I'm thinking about a level system to increase difficulty for players who do well.
(Shrug) If Oracle buys RIM, they will just wind down operations and start launching patent suits in every direction.

Hard to see how that's a win for anyone except Ellison and his army of patent lawyers.
Have you had that happen with an account that you were paying for (like google apps?)
Agreed. We stole it from Jim Franklin (TechStars mentor and SendGrid CEO), who gave a great talk at TechStars Cloud on leadership and company culture. This is just one of the many concepts he covered that we've since internalized :)
I'll play the cynic here and try to diagnose why this is even being considered.

jQuery is a very invasive API. Its goal is to steal all the work from the developer, and to "guarantee" what it deems to be "correct" input for a certain subset of browsers. This approach may ostensibly work, but inevitably falls apart, which leads to thousands of "bugs" being reported.

Because the API has grown to be so massive, goalposts "must" be moved in order to create a lighter API. Once again, this is because of a design flaw. Goalposts will continue to be moved in cyclical fashion unless an alternative design is used. Fellow developers may denigrate me for it, but I will explain how this problem can be avoided.

An API that tries to cater to everyone cannot and will not succeed. This is evidenced by the upcoming "fork". Conversely, an API that provides a set of tools to developers without catering can work in many environments. The burden is then placed upon the developer to choose which environments matter. As has been outlined by mobile developers, object inferences for IE 6 really are unnecessary for mobile Webkit environments. I have written here on this concept before, mostly on the topic of "graceful degradation". Browser specificity can and will kill a client-side API.
feature is crucial

A crucial feature for me would be password-manager support (lastpass, 1passwd). The (lack of) password management on the iPad is driving me nuts. The half-baked external apps that let you copy/paste don't cut it for me. Nor the awfully slow and constantly crashing "LastPass browser".

Does Chrome finally bring relief?
You do realize that IE 10 dropped conditional comments, right?
Everybody's different on that front. We all have to figure out how much we're willing to sacrifice something, be it "freedom", interest in work, happiness, time, etc. for our paycheck. I think the interesting thing is that people's view here definitely changes over time.

My corporate job for five and a half years after college offered amazing cash flow and other perks and I didn't feel like I was sacrificing anything. But eventually I felt like the pace at which I was learning slowed down too much and I knew I needed to make a change. With the nest egg I had built up over the years, I knew I could quit without sacrificing a ton.

Starting Keen was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Do you think your opinion will change in the next five years?
(rounded) square side = 114px = 2*57
tau=2pi
area:= tau*r*r/2
Chrome: margin: 16px; radius: 41px = 57-16; area:= 840.5*tau
Wordpress: margin: 12px; radius: 45px = 57-12; area:= 1012.5*tau
Clock: margin: 9px; radius: 48px = 57- 9; area:= 1152.0*tau
Circle: margin: 0px; radius: 57px = 57- 0; area:= 1624.5*tau

(Measurments taken from a screenshot on iPod touch "retina" resolution.)

So Chrome's circle area is 73% of Clock's and only 52% of the theoretical limit.

While I was playing with this I got inspired by Google+ for iOS and Metro and asked "What if it doesn't fit, but insead fills the (rounded) square?"

See for yourself. http://biserkov.com/pics/Chrome-on-iOS-icon-ideas.png

Blue circle radius: 21px; White circle radius: 25px

Disclaimer: I used the svg Chrome logo from Wikipedia. I'm no designer.
Oh, I agree totally on the paying-the-dev front; I'd buy this before boxed software for sure. This looks like a great tool if you don't have the time for vim's learning curve. Pathogen and git submodules take care of the configuration for me in vim, fwiw.
Like Michelle points out - once you make above a certain amount, money doesn't really move the happiness meter much. At least for certain people! You and I seem like we're among that bunch.
If you look at the second conditional comment, it will not be parsed as a comment in browsers without conditional comment support.

In other words, it will correctly use jQuery 2.0, like any other browser without conditional comment support.
> It's possible but I seriously doubt users would switch to Android because of a browser. [..] I also doubt any mainstream user will understand that Chrome on iOS is slower than it could be because of Apple's rules.

Yes, it seems more likely that the opposite of what GP said will happen: iOS users will try Chrome, and seeing it is 3-4x slower than the default Safari, will assume that Chrome would be slow on Android too - it has the exact same name after all - so they'll stick with iOS.
Seems to be on and off. I was able to order a 16GB not long after posting, but when I look on the site right now it's gone again.
In every company I know where there is a capable web programmer and a capable iOS programmer adding the same features to their apps (supported by a shared backend), the web programmer is an order of magnitude faster. There's no peer reviewed studies on this subject but my anecdotal evidence (from advising dozens of startups through YC) is all on one side.
Doctor's Day Sms & Text Messages 2012-Wishes & Greetings - Doctor sms
Blinded by the white. Inconsistency of design between child sites.
So does this mean that there will be ongoing development in the 1.9 line which will add new features available in the 2.0 line, or is this just the end of the line for IE <= 8? The blog seems to imply the latter, and that 1.9.x is only going to be used for bug/security updates, without new functionality.

If that's true, this seems like an odd line in the sand for them to draw. IE9 isn't available before Win7, so it can't die until users upgrade their OS.

According to StatCounter[1], IE8 still represents 13.78% of Worldwide visits (plus 1.4% for IE7; IE6 is just part of 'other' now), and 14.92% of North America (IE7; 1.79%).

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201206...
I don’t think I fully understand exactly what the FreedomBox does, but I hope it or something like it finds its way to market. Seems there would be an enormous demand for something that helps with online privacy if it is marketed well and is fairly easy to use for the average person.
I don't see why they would do that, it would be beyond stupid.
I found this

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Meditation/Meditation_Tech...
I guess some people here live in github but I really don't recommend it for publishing text documents this way.

Sure I can read it by scrolling back and forth or downloading it and opening it in something that will format it nicely and perhaps I missed the "make readable" button. But serious it is 2012, there are dozens of ways to publish things on the web that format them automatically for the browser to people can "just read" them.

</rant>
the background to the freedom box can be found in this talk "Freedom in The Cloud", by Eben Moglen at NYU 2010Feb05 ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEMv0S8AcA
> still native client is open source and could easily be integrated into every brother, just like chrome does it. This would eliminate the need for every other plugin.

First of all, being open source doesn't mean it is easy to integrate, either technically or otherwise (by otherwise, I mean that other browser makers have principles that determine what technology makes sense to put in their browser, and NaCl does not necessarily pass them).

Second, how would this eliminate the need for every other plugin? Chrome has NaCl but it still has Flash.
Forgive my ignorance, but what is the canvas still for? The given CoffeeScript code draws a small arc. But is this necessary if they're doing the final animation with CSS3?
For those wondering what they're talking about, it's this:

http://shop.cwandt.com/

And the Kickstarter is here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cwandt/pen-type-a-a-mini...
Challenge Yourself To Always Learn