skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Developer as well here - mainly server side Java and Node.js on my spare time.

I started looking into useful material to help improve my non-design skills, because well... they are non-existent.

I started with Twitter Bootstrap but I don't think it is the way forward if you want to learn design the proper way. I recently bought this book: The Non-Designer's Design Book (http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-The-Edition/...) and would warmly recommend it to anyone who wants to put one foot or their whole body into the design world.

I now try to spend more time analyzing the design of websites, brochures, menus, etc. It is very fun and I believe it is my observing and analyzing other peoples' work (mistakes included), then practising, that you can improve your eye(s) for design.
I'm just excited that I got a 4 character username!
Have you used other desktops?
Ok. Here you go.

http://maplebutter.com/getting-your-startup-ready-for-an-acq...
NewsBlur(YC S12) launches blurblogs: feed reading and sharing are back together
unity is what you get by default on ubuntu? if so, i really like it, fwiw (i don't normally bother with threads like this...)
When you comment, would you please add something constructive to the discussion that others may find useful? Your quick statement doesn't give any reasoning as to why it caught you off guard, what you expected instead, how you believe this may affect future acquisitions, etc. If you have that knowledge, please share (or hold these little surprises to yourself). Thank you!
Accidentally downvoted you, but I fully agree. Most of my computers running Linux are not laptops and don't even have screens/keyboards attached. I can't think of a single reason I would ever want windows on them even as just some sort of ghetto hypervisor.
GoSmart Stylus Duo: a Technical Leap Forward
Does it still do top quoting?
Broken on the - wait for it - Google Nexus 7.

What a sad joke..

I loved WildFire in the past, deployed a couple of servers (even before they changed the name to wildfire), but I refuse to read a crappy, broken, useless blog post. So no details for me - and a reminder to ignore links to a blogging platform that shows a couple of tools (screwdriver etc?) before it gives you misformatted content.
This has a really interesting discussion of "machine listening" starting about 13 minutes in.
I find multiple sign in a great way of ensuring you're always using the wrong account for each service.
> You know you pay $12/year or something and it just works. Nobody futzes with the UI, the amount of space you get/use is entirely a function of what you're willing to pay.

Id' argue Outlook UI changes with every version just as much as Gmail has. Gmail is also far less drastic, as updates are pushed regularly rather than a new version every 2 years or so. You can pay for GDrive and get 25GB for gmail.

E-Mail is a commodity and has been for quite some time. I don't see anyone disrupting the service side of it anytime soon.
Maybe so. I think your standard engineer would rather stay out of that sort of thing, but who knows.
TL;DL: Thumbs down.

"Unsatisfactory" would be the word I'd use for the new outlook.com. Slow, terrible UI and UX, and I see no improvements on the junkmail filter at all.

I really would like to see MSFT getting better at this (or at anything, really; they are the underdog in so many categories of tech now). But they are not. I'm a Mac/Apple fan by choice. But I like competition in the market. And I do wish MSFT the best in getting it right (or somewhat right). But this is so far out there that I just don't know what they are thinking. To use the words "We think the time is right to reimagine email" is simply disingenuous -- the site didn't reimagine anything -- it looked like a re-skinned old hotmail to me in every aspect.

I will check it out again in a couple of months. Maybe they'll have time to fix enough problems that I'll change my mind then. But until that point, thumbs down.
Facts No One Really Checks
I love that we expect and hold Apple to a high standard of advertising.

If they say we get the leaders we deserve (by the leaders we do, or don't demand), maybe the same is true of ad campaigns?
Show HN: Flour - cake build tools for the front-end
No, you didn't "made $10K". You basically sold records that you paid for previously. Not only that, but most likely you sold them at a loss. I doubt you paid $3 for them.
Are you so naive as to think that someone would create a Facebook ad analytics company for something other than money? Not exactly changing the world bettering humanity type of stuff.
We have three software engineering interns with us (travel startup, 20 employees) this summer from various parts of the country, we shatter most of these myths:

1) All of our interns are shipping live code and pushing to production. We assigned them real projects that our other engineers would have done and pair them with a mentor who has expertise in that area. Our intern standards are that we would hire them today if they weren't in school so they are ready to handle real projects.

2) At a startup, specs and scope are both subject to change without notice but that's the norm so not isolated to interns.

3) We rely on our mentors to find a schedule that works for them but we also throw a lot of team events on the calendar so interns feel like they're a part of the large company.

Many of our full time employees started with us as interns and we often keep them on part-time even after their internships if we really want to them to join us after they graduate.
I've wanted to do a project with Box2D for a while and have a few ideas for physics heavy games. However all the ideas I have involve pretty large game worlds with many objects so I am worried about the performance of this.

I read somewhere that collision detection in Box2D is O(N^2), is the answer to write custom collision detection and simply use box2d to process the effects of these?
Good points. A decision either way, to consciously got for it, or not, is much better than making no decision when you reach that fork in the road.
Hacking Facebook’s Corporate Network for Fun and Profit
It's important to have good skeptics critiquing your product visions. Particularly if they are knowledgable and well intentioned.

With a big vision like this, it'd be concerning if everyone was just cheerleading them on and being yes-men.

The realistic prospect for a product success is rarely heavily scrutinized. And success rates are always statistically quite low.

Mr Charles raises some valid doubts about launch time. They're most certainly not a stretch - considering the tons of horror stories about launching hardware products we've seen on HN.

Let alone attempting to create a whole new market segment in a highly competitive environment - where even with success - making money might be difficult.
2011 Mac Mini i5 2.3 with 8GB of RAM, as well as a custom built gaming PC. Both are connected to the same 22" LG monitor (via a switch), and I swap a wireless USB keyboard / mouse between them. I am a 16 year old freelance iOS developer, and as such, the Mac is my main use computer.
Complete, continuously updated medal count tables for the 2012 Summer games.
Complete, continuously updated medal count tables for the 2012 Summer games. Tables, graphs, and charts sortable by medal type, nation, and event.
Agree whole-heartedly. I'm a big fan of the AirPlay protocol, and I am by no means trying to downplay AirPlay or hype up Miracast. I was just pointing out that the technical points you were making seemed a little muddled since the implementation details are radically different.
You are right, as a prominent button/function, it should stand out among the others. This is extremely simple design.
> They also actively filter evil links out of your email. You know, like http://piratebay.se/.

They do? I was able to send myself several test messages containing this link.
Uh, no.

I'd like to not pay Microsoft just so I can use Linux.
Slightly OT - Office 365 is one of the worst services to setup I've ever tried. I couldn't recommend for my clients.
Social media marketing for medium-sized to enterprise businesses. Ex. Software subscription that a company like Pepsi would use to manage the social properties/promotions for all their beverages.
Attachments.Me - Better file sharing in Gmail
And then when you click on some Google service it always logs you in with a wrong account. Good luck trying to add something to calendar by clicking to a link.
And I made my choice. It's interesting to see how those doing the sifting care a lot about something that did or did not happen many, many, years ago, but in terms of actual job experience, only care about what you're doing in your most recent position. (This doubly applies to all of the "We don't hire the unemployed." companies)
Blind man shocks researchers with what he sees.
> There is nothing distinguishing Android from a conventional general-purpose computing OS

Except the expectations of the consumer, which was, you know, the whole point of my post. The touch interface has literally nothing to do with it.

To be totally clear, I agree that Android doesn't carry the same caveats as iOS and Windows RT, but in the eyes of the consumer, Windows and Android mean very different things.
It's interesting that Samsung's before and after poster has all the screens turned off, allowing black on black designs to look edge to edge, and dismissing the look of the backlit UI, suggesting similarities far greater than they were at the time.

The argument isn't about the devices on that poster. It's about Samsung's a posteriori "design" and marketing process. Their product guy's "can't design patent a black rectangle" comments are a bit disingenuous:

http://copyrightcommerceandculture.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

Also worth noting their tablet PR screenshots, like their boxes, have stopped using the iPad's portrait icon array and started featuring landscape TouchWiz widgets instead.

They were fully aware of what they were doing:

Boxes before: http://www.thegalaxytab.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/galax...

Boxes after: http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/9172/width...
How To Root  Micromax A73 Plus Clockwork Mod And Custom Rom
>But a lot of people are going to mistake an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy S.

As I've said before (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4244317).

Apple can't demonstrate 10, let alone any meaningful number of people who accidentally bought a Galaxy when they meant to pick up an iPad/iPhone.

It doesn't happen.
OpenVPN advertises LZO compression but it seems to be poorly documented (just an --comp-lzo argument in the manpage). Is OpenVPN considered "enterprise" enough for this sort of application, even disregarding the compression support?
I would drive for hours to find $3 vintage records, and I'm not alone -- he tapped into a cult. I'd need to see a control of posting an ad on craigslist for free to be able to conclude anything about the effectiveness of Facebook ads.
On the contrary, it seems the big Android manufacturers start to understand the advantages of letting users unlock the bootloader. There are official tools from HTC[1] and Sony[2], Motorola seems to follow suit[3] and Samsung's dragging its feet in the same direction with the Galaxy S3[4].

[1] http://htcdev.com/bootloader

[2] http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/

[3] http://www.motorola.com/blog/2012/07/26/unlock-the-bootloade...

[4] http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-offer-hacker-friendly-...
Is that good or bad? I personally don't mind Erlang syntax at all or the syntax overhead to you have to write a gen_server that does nothing. Elixir saves you some of that overhead. It's kind of like CoffeeScript for Erlang. It's fully compatible since it compiles to Erlang AST which compiles to BEAM. You can do "everything" with Elixir you can do with Erlang. Of course, you have to understand how to work with Erlang/OTP to actually benefit.
Happy 100th Birthday, Milton Friedman
So after using it for 24 hours, a couple thoughts:

1) Allow users to go back and add a note to a previous day

2) Maybe allow users to customize how often MoodTrack pushes a notification asking how the user is doing. (I'm thinking an option to choose 1, 2, 3 or 4 times per day)

3) I second the option to use a relative scale (how are you doing compared to yesterday? - = +), as I'm still having trouble deciding if I'm a 7 or 8.
Startup offers stake in company over Twitter
You certainly can. It works well except for 1) from time time you get an odd gmail error and the only way to get it working is to log out of all your accounts, and 2) it would be nice if there was an easier way to log into 8 gmail accounts at once. It's a pain setting up your 8 windows every time you get logged out.
I think it's hugely important to learn how to interact with VCS for software development. It makes backing up easier, it makes debugging easier, it makes releasing software easier. It is a necessary skill in the professional world.

Currently, it's also the way software developers talk to each other. Even if students don't come away intimately knowing a VCS, they should be aware they are out there, and the common usage patterns they enable.

It would be useful for the course to give a little background in VCS and DVCS concepts and then an introduction to the major types. From there both subversion and git/hg could be used hands on to practice the concepts.

The developer world seems to be leaning towards git, so perhaps spend the most time there. But again, the basic concepts and workflows should be stressed no matter what, because tools come and go.
There's a blogpost on HackerNews' "best" links right now that complains that "Apple's new ads look like Microsoft made them" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313614

Interestingly enough, the ads created by Microsoft touting Outlook.com don't have any of these problems the blogpost associates with Microsoft ads. In fact, the ads excites me and compels me to at least try the product.
This mirrors my (extremely limited) experience with Facebook ads. They really suck for driving traffic to your site, and you'll see an obscenely high bounce rate. But, if you're trying to drive traffic to something ON Facebook (like this event), they work pretty well.
It's hard to dress up something like:

1. We were over conservative in this case since it related to our business partner NBC, and we didn't want there to be sour grapes between our companies.

2. NBC pulled our strings due to the Olympics partnership, and we had to dance to the tune.
I was talking with a friend at work yesterday. He is a Windows/Android guy (Windows for gaming, Android because it's not an iPhone). He really liked the commercials (though he felt Basically was pretty close to douchebaggery).

The point: maybe these commercials aren't geared at patting the Apple elite (I am one of them!) on the back about how smart they are. Maybe they are about introducing a different audience to Apple and we elite are too close to it to see whether it is effective or not.
HPN-SSH patches -c none back into the server and client, among other patches that help if you have a long and fat pipe. [0]

[0]: http://www.psc.edu/index.php/hpn-ssh
Was BIN Contributor Colonel Sixx Murdered?
I had the exact same problem, tried about 10 times and failed each time, even though I was sure they were right.

When I created a new account though it worked first time, not sure if there is a problem with verifying existing accounts...
My favorite DE/WM is one where I don't have to click on a shortcut to launch an application. So in Gnome 2... well you can install Gnome-Do, but out of the box that fails. Gnome 3/Unity, just hit Super and type. Done. Windows Vista/7, hit Windows and type. Done. OSX has a similar feature from what I hear. There really is nothing more I need from a WM, everything else is value-add. The entire purpose of a desktop is to get me between applications.
I've used UNetbootin, and as far as I know, there is no way to do a netboot/install without any media.

I took a look at the site, and it doesn't appear to have any information about that. Are you aware of some functionality that isn't listed on the site?

For what it's worth, UNetbootin is a really nice way to create liveUSB drives that you can use to install Linux/BSD.
"do we need a dist'd protocol, not a central service?"

Short answer: yes.
The communication model/platform has viability, but implementation(s) would be what makes or breaks it.

Obvious I know, but it bears repeating.
New straighforward approach to teaching quantum mechanics
They definitely do sprite some of the icons:

https://secure.wlxrs.com/$live.controls.images/h/command2.pn...
The Heroes of Java: Bauke Scholtz
Why language isn't computer code
I like it. Bookmarked!
Last 5 Tips to be good at SEO
I haven't cruised .onion sites in a long while, but I just tried and I didn't come across anything bad by accident. I don't even understand your assertion that you can end up on any .onion site by mistake, since the URLs are impenetrable.
Dug up the link and...doh! It was Live Messenger[1]. Right company, wrong product; but I think the point holds.

1. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120326/04530718244/micros...
> Instead of spending hundreds or thousands to repair an old piano, you can buy a new one made in China that’s just as good

Has happened to a number of instruments.
http://amzn.com/B003UHLH0C

There should be an opportunity here for leasing non-digital pianos, given some technical solution that solves the transportation problem. (Perhaps something like a PODS transporter? Composite frame?) The size of the disposal problem is a big pain point.

Carbon fiber composite pianos might represent a significant advance. Such composites are stiff enough to avoid much of the "settling" of a metal and wood structure under such immense compression and cantilever loads. (Carbon fiber composites are so stiff, they caused Boeing some problems with their newest plane. Instead of tolerances resulting in the gradual bending and settling of metal parts into place, the slightly mismatched carbon fiber parts maintained their stresses.) This property would significantly reduce the labor costs of tuning.
There is a privacy notice in every book with Hiptype that allows readers to opt-out. We want to make sure that we make it easy for readers who do not want their anonymous usage statistics tracked to disable Hiptype.
Sadly, that's the price you pay for free speech. The only way to ensure that the world's whistleblowers can publish what they want without fear of reprisal is to ensure that the world's child pornographers can also do so.
Hah, yeah! My advice, unless you are a comic book expert and want to spend the time marking prices on everything, is to set a single price per item, such that on some items you'll be making more than you otherwise would, and on others you'd make a bit less.
If you want to know how effective terrorism really is, just try to take a U.S. domestic flight to anywhere. Terrorism is so effective even law enforcement now call drug dealers "narco-terrorists" in an attempt to incense the people against them. Right, wrong, or indifferent, these are the facts. Since Sept. 11, the U.S. has changed dramatically willfully giving over basic rights in the name of security. And terrorism doesn't work?
Sure... but the Newton came before that with the interface design and much of the device design itself. In such case, Samsung and many others stole their ideas from the Newton and Apple wins anyway.
Startup intern attempts marketing ploy over HN
Windows since 3.1 (though I was never an every day user of Vista and 7), OS X pre-Lion, GNOME 2, KDE 3.

OS X has a better combination of desktop quality and application support, but if Unity could magically run OS X apps, I don't think I'd ever use or recommend anything else.
Presumably, Apple is blocking tethering apps in the AppStore, which is different than Verizon doing the blocking.
It would indeed appear that since outlook is also a Live product, it follows the same code of conduct banning nudity. There's no reason to assume that they wouldn't scan the service similarly.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/code-of-cond...
You could have said the same thing about unix-like operating systems in 1991 - yet, somebody wrote one from scratch without a full-time team.

I'm not trying to put this little project here down, far from it. I think it's pretty neat. I can imagine even neater (if that's a word) things, though... :-)
The Last Stable Release of OS X Was Snow Leopard; Mountain Lion Changes This
No, but based on the windows phone store I guess that there will be.
Twitter Responds to Criticism on Account Suspensions
So, instead of "creepy ads" along the right of the window ("Welcome to Outlook.com", 0:12), we get the exact same creepy ads along the right of the window?
"The 'invention' of the GUI was a very long process, which, in my view, started with Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad (1st generation GUI), and ended with the work done at Xerox (3rd generation GUI)."

The article loses credibility when it suggests that the invention of the GUI stops at Xerox, when Apple invented (among many other things) drag and drop, overlapping windows, a practical mouse (that could track diagonally, didn't break down, and did more with one button than xerox did with three).

But what would I know?

"The Macintosh was the first computer worth criticizing." Alan Kay

I'm totally on board with apple not owning rounded rectangles, but Samsung's copying of Apple has extended to literally using Apple's UI graphics in store displays.
WindowMaker:

- Hit F2 to invoke run dialog, type command (I've substituted gmrun for the default WMaker run dialog which lacks history or command completion).

- Your defined hotkey. I have launchers for terminals, edtiors, web, and mail clients -- stuff I need frequently.

- Menus can be keyboard-driven. F12, and arrow-navigate to your desired item.
Heaphy - Crowdsourcing Robot Operators
In my experience Craigslist is great for capturing the older collector audience, or anyone looking to grip and flip, but Facebook Ads brought me the younger audience, who isn't otherwise dedicated enough to wake up early on a Saturday and hit 15 garage sales. There are a lot of folks that aren't willing to dedicate that kind of time to the hunt, but who still have money to spend.
Now here I've been calling someone a curmudgeon because they want their old WM back, and someone has to step in and out-neckbeard the parent.

Oh, what's that? You typed apt-get install solitaire? What are you, a fool? What you actually wanted to type was apt-get install xmividev_2_2.0.2.3.1-dev-final-release-source. It's totally more user-friendly than a GUI.
I'll bite.

In the OMG, think of the children case: A number of cases that went public (some even linked here) agreed that legally, child porn is 'i recognize it when I see it' kind of subjective. I'm obviously talking about teenagers here and different moralities or a missing context (such as those 'taken for fun' or 'sent to a friend, privately and deliberately' cases).

Api might, from his subjective view, decide that this as-yet-never-encountered image is bad/evil/perverse. How would you ever create an algorithm for that, other than 'api, please press a button that says "fine by me" or "no way hell", right next to the image in question'?
Great service and I am really looking forward to see where it goes. When I am ready to write a book, I am going to use Hiptype, no doubt. Will you let me do all the writing+publishing on Hiptype too? That would be really nice!
I'm a music producer, audio engineer, etc.

Mobile Rig:

- 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 15-inch MacBook Pro 2,2 with 3GB of RAM running OS X Lion 10.7.4

- 16GB original iPad running Air Display (acting as a second monitor)

- Bose QuietComfort 15 headphones

Studio Rig:

- 2.8 GHz Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Harpertown" Mac Pro 3,1 with 6GB of RAM running OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

- 24" Dell monitor

- 42" Vizio HDTV (acting as a second monitor)

- M-Audio Studiophile Q40 headphones
NBC Fail hurts Comcast more than GE
It's a fact of life. Some things are made for guys and some things are made for girls.