skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> the procedure requires a module produced and sold by the manufacturer

So now the manufacturer has yet another method of extorting would-be mechanics. You'd have to regulate pricing or aggressively prosecute attempts at anticompetitive tactics.

> in case the manufacturer ceases to exist...

And who goes to jail when the company folds and, in the fire sale, the master key is on a system that gets wiped when being transferred to the new owner? Key escrow sounds like a better idea to me. Perhaps legislation should specify the creation of a public agency, or maybe we could leave it to private competition.

As for the remainder of your points, I believe you're thinking in the right direction.
I strongly suggest you communicate your pricing as $0.008 instead of 0.8 cents. Be consistent with your units and more importantly: how people think.
We've had open-source alternatives like http://identi.ca/ for years; and in my memory, these have always been faster to implement new features that Twitter itself has been. Yet Twitter, not identi.ca, caught on in the public.

So the question is really not whether there is an opening for a Twitter alternative and what features we would want it to have, but rather why the existing alternatives with strictly more features failed to catch on.

My take is that Twitter had already passed a threshold by the time these alternatives hit the scene, and their first-mover advantage carried them a long way in defending themselves against other similar-but-incompatible platforms.

Put another way, the reason Twitter is singular and email providers are not is that email providers communicate with each other over a common open protocol, whereas Twitter communicates only using its (closed) API.

The difficulty would not be in defining an open protocol to doing what Twitter does, naturally; existing ones could be tweaked slightly to achieve the same result. (Look at what Shortmail is doing while maintaining 100% backwards-compatibility with traditional email).

The problem is that Twitter has no incentive to turn its "open" (read: closed) API into an completely open means of communication like email, because doing so would squander the one huge asset it already has: a captive userbase.

(For the record, the same arguments could apply just as well to Facebook; people just don't think about Facebook that way, because we're all so used to them being a walled garden).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230455000457750...

It appears there is already a big demand for this sort of fun.
Nonsense. Why not simply design it so that it's difficult and dangerous to access the "reset button" unless you're a trained mechanic with a Rotary lift? Then it's more difficult to steal than an ordinary car, and you are done.

In light of history, the answer is probably a combination of laziness, inertia, and an attempt to steer customers to authorized BMW service centers. Or perhaps the threat model includes theft by tow truck? (not kidding; perhaps this is common in some places, at least for high-end vehicles?)
Did you seriously just point out all of the blue icons you could find? Regardless of the fact that they would seriously be confused with Sparrow's icon?
Is this the one that was banned/frowned upon by the government because of so called "terrorists" might use this to attack our freedoms?
Patent wars: this is just getting silly
I've used Qt a lot. In fact, I'm still a big fan and wasn't trying to sound negative about it in any way. I absolutely agree that Qt does a tremendous job at abstracting away the differences but still, it's the little details that matter and no toolkit could address them all. Things like ribbons on Windows. Multi touch support, cover flow and proper OS X-like multiple window management on Mac. Not to mention mobile. For big applications, these glitches add up and in no time you find yourself resorting to way too many native workarounds.

But my main point was to that cross-browser Web toolkits and cross-platform GUI toolkits are apples and oranges. On the Web there are no UI guidelines. It's essentially free for all. The chrome of the Web browser constitutes a clear separation point between the native experience and the Web experience, which makes it possible for things like Gmail not to feel hostile on Mac, Linux, Windows and any other Web-enabled environment. Whether or not that's good for UX is irrelevant, the fact remains is that Web apps have never tried to integrate seamlessly with the look and feel of the host environment and the users have grown accustomed to that.
While it's commonly biased towards more OSS, we have gladly accepted talks on a wide variety of software/topics including compelling closed-source solutions and services.

So yes, please submit a talk - just remember to be detailed and compelling!
Why didn't you go that route? There are so many phones and tablets out there now, you'd have accomplished almost as much public good with far less controversy.
I had multiple doctors refuse to perform an elective surgery on me because I was "too young" (over 18, then later over 21). That was beyond "questioning my decision" - that was refusing service for their own beliefs.
Was I the only one shocked by the $250 price tag? Shame -- at $25 I would have bought it straightaway.
True, though the factory's owners (its shareholders) assume that the factory will beat the return of the market as a whole, and the rate of any loans they have. Otherwise they'd just invest in the market, e.g. via an index tracker. So for them at least the opportunity cost is a little higher.
I think you have to play with loadkeys and a custom mapping.
The software which never should be written
Type parameters are invariant, unless explicitly specified to be covariant with a where clause.
Everything about undersea cabling is fascinating. Here's a video of powering up an undersea cables's repeaters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2zDrUz9lgY (it takes about 30 mins to fully ramp up an undersea cable).

And of course the obligatory video showing how they load a submarine cable onto a ship http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1JEuzBkOD8
Hubroid[1] has been an awesome github app for android for a long time. Considering that I get a force close when just trying to open the new app, it's still a viable option.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.idlesoft.a...
No I actually skipped a bunch, Rdio, Skype, Get Glue, Facebook, Stocks, Weather, Chase

I went with ones in the similar color palette with a white icon
Creating and using 100,000 goroutines in < 1 second is freakin' sweet indeed.
> I'm not sure why you wouldn't look into that

Probably because he assumed that it would work the way it's supposed to. Should he also have researched whether the power cable actually charges the batteries?
While there may not have been a lot of user-facing changes in iOS5, there were a LOT of development changes that has reduced the amount of hackery needed. For example, iOS5 included the ability to style many aspects (navbar, buttons,tabbar) that previously had to be hacked around and were unstable. Developers either gave up on the styling and used the new features in iOS5, or would have to maintain the hack + new appearance classes.
Yeah. And that's without supporting older versions of syntax. You might need another 2 or 3 lines if you're unlucky, or possibly worse.

Many people including myself think prefixes should be eliminated entirely[1], or replaced with a single prefix for the experimental[2].

[1] http://paulirish.com/2012/vendor-prefixes-are-not-developer-...

[2] http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/03/css_vendor_p...
Minimize vendor lock-in in The Cloud
Hey, thanks for your feedback. You're reading introductory blurb v0.1, so there's definitely room for improvement.

To answer your questions:

- The core library (Ox.js) is somewhat similar to underscore, while the UI module (Ox.UI) is more like YUI or Ext JS. Unlike backbone, OxJS comes with actual widgets, and it doesn't suggest a strict MVC model. Even though you may end up writing code that follows the MVC paradigm rather closely.

- So far, the only major project using OxJS is pan.do/ra (https://pan.do/ra). But then, OxJS has just been made public.

- In case the tools you're currently using give you the right abstractions and objects to build big applications (like pan.do/ra), then my suggestion would be to stick with them. Maybe try out OxJS for a small side project.

- Ox.UI wraps jQuery, but other than that, there are no dependencies. You can bring any third-party templating library, but the idea is that you won't need one. The UI widgets are your "views", and that's it.
Wow, Svalbard, with a population of 2932 has not just one but two cables!
Yes, but as far as I can tell, that gives them exactly bupkis on PadMapper.
I stopped reading once I hit "action every idea immediately."

This entire thing drips of the kind of marketing speak that he says he ripped out because YC demands it. Did he think that YC demands it just to be arbitrary and capricious? This style of presentation turns me (and likely many others) off immediately.

The real problem is that he's trying to sell a product that solves a problem that most people don't have. People have tons of ways to write down, organize, and sort ideas. They can stick it in a wiki, in a Google doc, in email, in a bugtracker. All of these have ways of sorting and labeling content. I have seen nothing, in either you original or "what you should have said" version, that answers the question of how what you are doing is better than all of these things that people already have access to.

What problem are you trying to solve? What does your tool do that other tools don't? If you can't answer these questions in 10 minutes, nor at your leisure afterwards when writing a blog post about what you should have said, nor in all the time you spent setting up a slick website with a "sign up to try us out" form, I have to ask whether you actually have a product or are just a bunch of empty marketing.
Nexus Available From the Play Store
Instagrille - Instagram for your computer
NodeNES
I agree on everything.

You didn't mention the fact that all of this becomes addicting rather quickly: going to a more "normal" editor or textarea can be extremelly frustrating some times.
Interesting but ultimately useless. I see something like this come around a couple of time per year. Always fades into oblivion within a year or two.

The C code will not be optimized C (like a seasoned C developer would write). Java is compiled to byte code which is compiled to machine language. This ugly, unoptimized, generated C is compiled into machine language too. The performance (both memory and CPU usage) of the JVM product will be far superior through.

Don't think that you will be writing for embedded devices or device drivers with something like this. it will be a mess. Use C for things that should to be done in C. For Desktop apps, Web apps, or services use Closure ETC.

I don't like seeing a square peg rammed into a round hole. It does not work well so don't get too exited lisp programmers. This is an interesting hobby - that is about it.
The most interesting aspect of this: What can be done with an area like that, in a way that involves maintaining the current aesthetics?

We've done that before, with old power stations and churches.
Getting Start with the Swiftype Heroku Add-on
Expedia should have little to do with it. Kayak's growth, revenue and profits are what matter.
I'd say a more accurate analogy is like this:

CL: Don't go into my house

You: But you let Mr. Google make an exact copy of everything in your house, how about if I use that?

Mr. Google: Help yourself.
Nice feedback. Will do.
Automatically Set Post Featured Image
Well, if List<T> is invariant on the T, then you cannot usefully have lists parameterized on interfaces, which is losing a useful ability. I'd say that classifies as a thorny edge case.

In Haskell, I can represent the type:

(Show a, Ord a) => [a]

It seems like the same is impossible in C# due to generics' interaction with inheritance.
As an objective fact Apples rate of tablet defects is well below Samsung's.
Ok, I'll be the one to say it: Canadians and cables don't mix. They chew on the insulation and short the thing out. Pretty soon you're looking at a broken cable and a fried Canuck.
A Startup Takes On The Super PACs
See the 8 levels of charity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzedakah#In_rabbinical_literatu...

Starting a business with someone is considered the highest level.
Fred Saberhagen used the concept of a map bunny as a plot device in one of his Berserker short stories.
I no longer fall into deep pits of yak shaving, but I'm not sure I agree with the opposite extreme either ("use the absolute vanilla defaults").

But I would expect that there's a natural progression (sort of like the many "evolution of a <language> programmer" posts[1]). You start using these programmer's tools, and at first you struggle to do basic things with default settings. Then, later, you learn that everything can be configured. You spend days (weeks? months?) getting very little real work done, but configuring everything. Then, later again, you calm down, find a set of reasonable and productive configurations, automate getting them onto new machines when necessary and go back to work.

[1]: Example for Python: https://gist.github.com/289467.
I meant: hurting their experience and wasting their time, not harming people.
Similarly, I was surprised that Grover Beach in San Luis Obispo Country was chosen as the west coast's terminal station. Seems a bit random, no?
Link: http://submarinenetworks.com/stations/north-america/usa-west...
It is very interesting to see how much cabling lies off the horn of Africa and around the Arabian peninsula. If ever this was a stable region it might have severed well to these nations.
You consequentialist morals then seem to be operating under multiple unfounded assumptions:

1) that the only thing that a company such as this could be doing with their value/income is building "an elegant UI" (it seems an insulting stretch to believe that their 30 employees are just sipping martinis at their office; one would imagine that there are complex social management problems that Craigslist has become experienced with and spends most of their time managing)

2) that "an elegant UI" provides positive value to this type of interaction (there have been reasonable arguments in previous PadMapper v. Craigslist posts that, in fact, the UI provided by CL is semantically more optimal than competitors providing fields; part of this argument hinged on the benefit of not requiring certain kinds of information, which makes some sense if you look at the low-key way people prefer to interact with it)

3) that there would be a long-term benefit to handing these keys to PadMapper <- this one is exceptionally bothersome due to your multiply-emphasized cry of "consequentialism"; please remember that the long-term goal of companies with this business model (I have consulted for multiple, and have multiple friends personally involved with them) is to become the portal and then marginalize the data sources as they become the new de-facto standard: in this case, PadMapper's service called PadLister.

4) that the result of this set of policies would not actually increase the number of "renter-hours" wasted, due to the (I will happily argue, but will not bother here as to me the mechanism is trivial and obvious) likely outcome that there would no longer be a centralized source for this kind of data, and renters would instead end up scouring numerous sites in the attempt to piece together who was renting what where, despite "elegant UIs". (I will point out, in case it isn't clear: I am not arguing that this is necessarily a net negative, but your position did make this assumption, so I am pointing it out)

There is absolutely no reason to believe that PadMapper would be a better long-term holder of that vision than Craigslist, and in fact numerous reasons to believe that they would actually suck at it (including, but certainly not limited to, the "this is a shady way to make this argument" comments in the parents of this part of the thread): you really have to ask yourself "who would I be happier with as ruler... Eric, Craig, or no one"?

Regardless, as I have others, I encourage you to read articles on the history of Craigslist. In this case, the article published by Wired a few years back "Why Craigslist is Such a Mess" comes to my mind as a rather key one to start with.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...
Source maps are the standardized way of defining the original source of CSS, JS and other compiled-to-the-deployed-web languages.

https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/820

In this thread I ended up proposing something very much like what Dan is saying here but realized (after Kevin Dangoor, product manager of Firefox's Developer Tools, chimed in) that indeed source maps were designed exactly for this situation, no authoring convention or filename guessing necessary.

Source maps not only can point to the original sources, but can translate between minified css and fully formatted Sass with comments, and developer tools can identify the mapping.

As for how ready this is, CSS source map plumbing is in both Firefox and WebKit, though they are not totally complete. I believe FF has a Google Summer of Code student working on the feature: https://wiki.mozilla.org/DevTools/Features/CSSSourceMap

Just because its relevant: all the source map projects: https://github.com/ryanseddon/source-map/wiki/Source-maps:-l...
I've been pumped about this since I first saw them at Disrupt. I wasn't able to get TC signed up, but maybe I can get MSNBC...
http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/t_vect...
http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/t_hash...
These articles are also helpful:

http://blog.carbonfive.com/2011/10/17/vim-text-objects-the-d...

http://yanpritzker.com/2011/12/16/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-n...
I made my editor choice over 20 years ago, before these things were even a glimmer in their creators eyes. The key sequences I use for editing are cast in stone into my muscle memory, and serve me in nearly every command-line tool I use, as well as every text entry widget in OSX. My editor is part of my hacker DNA.
The audacity of Udacity: Google's Sebastian Thrun vs. elite university diplomas
Ask HN: Does a Hacker-friendly CRM exist?
As far as I can tell everyone (esp. hackers) hate CRM systems. Can you find one we won't hate?

Here's what we're looking for:

1. A strong API and flexible data model that will let us:
- Create and update records with events and data from
our production system.
- Pull records, events, and aggregate statistics stored
in the CRM.
- Export all data and get out if we hate it.

2. A web-based interface that makes it a pleasure to
interact with the stored records, events, and aggregate
statistics.

3. Seamless integration with Gmail
- We use Gmail as our primary sales and support channel.
Without taking any explicit action, the CRM should
consume those messages so that emails become
associated with the appropriate customer & contact
records.
- We should also be able to forward email to the system
(e.g. from personal email accounts) and get those
emails associated as well.

4. Many-to-many associations between people and customers,
i.e.:
- I will correspond with multiple people at a given
company using our product; I should be able to see
those interactions in one place.
- Some people may be associated with multiple customers,
perhaps because they have changed jobs or because they
are consultants serving multiple clients.

5. Customizable deal stages
- Again, set a customer's stage via API.
- Aggregate view of sales pipeline.

6. MOST IMPORTANT: MINIMIZE FRUSTRATION
- Won't make an engineering-heavy team punch the walls
and demand to build their own.
- Won't require duplicate entry between CRM and other
systems.
- Won't require lots of time servicing the damn thing.

Thanks!
I can share notebooks in Evernote with people and it Just Works. Where's the pain?

I hope there's more to your app than "I see them type on my screen, and they see me type on their screen".
The most recursive thing about it is the pain in my ears.
Congrats on your launch. I like the idea and the UI design is slick. Can you share more details about "It reached 250K+ members with only viral". Some pointers for rest of us would be great.

Which suggestion you followed to reach 250K member mark? Also, most of your traffic seems to be coming from Turkey. Could you explain bit about that?
Wolfram Alpha Gets Fun New Interactive Front Page
it is hardly their responsibility to do so in this situation, and least of all the responsibility of the "medical folks" at any stage

It is always the responsibility of a doctor/nurse to ensure that a procedure is best for the recipient. That's the essence of the Hippocratic Oath.
What else would you like to see? (I write an iOS GitHub app and am curious what people find most helpful.)
"the obligatory video showing how they load a submarine cable onto a ship"

They have $57 million worth of fairleads going into the ship and they're still using the thing with the two old car tires like an old baseball pitching machine?
I think that a lot of these "Intro to Vim"-type posts do Vim beginners a disservice by recommending a whole bunch of plugins right off the bad. Instead of just learning the Vim basics now the reader needs to also learn how to use all those recommended plugins.

You can get awfully far with just the built-in application and maybe something like CommandT to help navigate projects, especially if using a GUI editor like MacVim to make tab navigation easiest.
I find it odd that he is using the new macro to create the record instances. I thought that it is meant to be used only in Java inter-op, as it requires that the class of the record is visible in the current namespace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines strikes again!
If I throw diamonds from the street onto your front yard, then I just walk away and leave forever, who owns those diamonds? Can your neighbors storm your yard and take them, or are they yours?

Can you now defend your property and keep people away from those diamonds?

If they get them, can you fight to get them back? They were taken from YOUR property after all.

What if I threw them right into your living room?
We have this long thread, in which you have lots of people asking "what does this product actually do?" No one can figure it out from your pitch, either the original or your rewrite. People have been guessing at what this is like, and yet you haven't really clarified, you've just made excuses.

You have the opportunity to get exposure to thousands of hackers, entrepreneurs, and investors, right here on Hacker News. And yet, you haven't yet provided a compelling story that anyone can actually understand.

What does your product do? What problems does it solve? How is it better or suited to a different niche than many other tools (wikis, bugtrackers, Google Docs, email) that people already use?
Twitter for iPhone 4.3 causes speculation
That's great news! Thanks. Looking forward to the conference.