skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That seems to imply that the pleasure and beauty of mathematics is in the way one perceives symbolic manipulation. I actually think the pleasure and beauty of mathematics is in the stage before one gets to manipulating symbols; the stage where you have an idea about something and are thinking about ways to communicate it or prove it. People should be given problems ('how much of this box does this triangle take up?' to paraphrase Lockhart's example) and allowed to drum up their own solutions/syntax.

Admittedly, this is kind of idealistic.
One thing that I've noticed as pixel density is increasing, is many 3rd party UI elements aren't increasing in size relative to monitor improvements. I remember using Photoshop on my old LC475 in the 90's and not having to squint and hold the mouse steady to select the tool I wanted.

Please tell me someone else has noticed this? Or am I just getting old.
I find it quite surprising that the author is so passionate about typefaces, but serves his own blog in Verdana. Good thing it is not called JaringJireJall.net [1]

That being said, I really think the days of sans fonts are close to over. 10 years from now, we will all be reading on 300 dpi screens and taste in typography will return to being the dominate feature of design.

I can't wait until I can read the Economist online in the correct typeface. I can walk down an airplane isle and recognize that font in less than a second. The New Yorker also uses a font that seems to be unique. The Atlantic needs a custom typeface.

I am so excited that high DPI screens are going to be the norm. The web design world as we know it today is about shitty flourishing with artwork. 10 years from now it will be about designing beautiful glyphs that represent the brand.

[1] J is particularly gross in Verdana.
Interesting. Have people started offering cookbooks, recipe guides, and so forth, predicated on these principles? No gluten, wheat, and dairy would knock out quite a bit of my diet.
Pretty much.

However, I recently bought a few small and tiny VPSs and installed FreeBSD on some and Debian on others. For identical setups in terms of apps and daemons, FreeBSD is using only roughly 2/3rds the memory of Debian.

So there is a cost advantage since the tiny VPS running FreeBSD is cheaper than a small VPS running Debian. But a tiny VPS may not have the reserves to survive a slashdot. Swings and roundabouts.
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>For me, text is text is text.

You might get a majority of people to agree with you, but I've never met anyone for which this was actually true. It's just the first-order approximation, without having quantitatively studied the differences that can exist with text. Text is not interchangeable, and seemingly small differences severely impact readability both in speed and accuracy.

Displaying text is the primary function of my computer, and the most important aspect of my computer. I want that tiny subset of the human population who are finely attuned to text to get it right for me. It's far more important than doubling my RAM or doubling my CPU performance, these are commodity and trivial compared to the hard work of getting text right.

>No longer can one broken app go on a rampage and block you out.

Minor quibble, you don't need multi-core for that, since preemptive multitasking this has never happened to me.
emphatic agreement.

Assuming the goal is to have only technically sophisticated users who want to use the most durable data store known to man (S3) and have a rock solid & secure backup solution, the pricing structure being 3-6 times that of s3 pricing is a great value on all sides.

actually: colin, could you tell us perhaps what the total monthly storage and or bandwidth volume is? I don't think that if has ever been stated on the internet :)

caveat: i've been playing with tarsnap on/off since it was first launched, and now that i'm doing my own wee startup, i'm using it quite seriously and religiously to backup my working directories. Love it. (however much i email the tarsnap user list with some confusion thats easy to sort out every time i've resumed using tarsnap after some hiatus :) )
I started reading him in the mid-2010's but his utter lack of objectivity lost him a place in my RSS aggregator long ago.

If I want to read perceptive analysis of Apple products I prefer to read real, objective journalists like John Siracusa.
I agree with the title but not the article.

App.net is an API-centric twitter. The fact that it costs money or doesn't have advertising is secondary. Sure, it's probably a requirement for an API-centric twitter, but the API-centricity is the real actual key.

ps - Dalton, understand why reserved twitter names is for contributors only, but you might want a feature like _twittername as a sub-namespace for twitter reserved names that are aliases for real app.net names. Just sayin.
It's neat. It's basically a different take on forums or twitter. Where your twitter page is a jumble of comments about N different conversations, Branch separates them into threads.

It's a new way and it'll get a lot of attention, but it's really just a way to communicate and there are lots of them. If Branch succeeds, it'll do so in the adoption of its style into other communications media, including existing forums or twitter.
Maybe it was load at the time I tried.

Literally typing the following in the address field in Firefox 14.01, Lubuntu 12.04:

pythononwheels.org

403
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Apache/2.2.16 (Debian) Server at pythononwheels.org Port 80

Typing www.pythononwheels.org gets me to your home page.

"If Ajax works something will happen here if you click the Send Ajax Request button"

If I just click the button, without typing anything (because that's what the sentence above says, and I'm in QA and because I'm a dick), then I get this, so it was probably load yesterday:

Yeah! AJAX with python rocks totally now: 2012-08-14 04:44:41 type something here

And if I keep clicking then the time keeps updating, so yay.

If I type something and hit Enter, nothing happens. Usually/often that should be the same as clicking the button.

If I click in the text field I would expect your instructional text in that field to politely disappear, making way for my text, but your text stays there and my text is inserted wherever I clicked.

If I drag across the text in the orange button and then release (to select the text), it's the same as if I clicked. Not what I expected, but that's a nit.

If I drag from just above the orange button to just below it, and then either Ctrl-C or right-click-copy, then I get a copy of the text in the button. I guess that's OK, but I'm not used to being able to copy the text of a button.

If you go to https://www.google.com/ and try to similarly drag across the buttons below the search field, you don't get anything. Not holding that up as the "correct" way, but it is more like what I'd vaguely expect. I'm probably behind the times either way.

This is as much text as I'm allowed to type into the text field:

123456789012345678901234567890

Which is what you limited it to, so cool.
I'm interested in this. As someone who doesn't pay that much attention to typography (beyond the obvious 'Papyrus is bad' stuff) what makes individual typefaces preferable over a standard typeface for all similarly structured content?

(Besides branding, that is.)
I have to admit that rage was starting to burn inside of me until I read your last sentence– that's one of the reasons why I take so few jobs for the web these days. I always thought that web technologies would far surpass what we could do in print (which, as a lead type junkie, sounded pretty amazing) and then I grew up, started dealing with W3C &c;– now here we are, only in the last two years or so getting a reliable (and compliant) way of using more than just Times, Georgia, Helvetica, Arial, &c... It's slow, slow progress but it's great to see that while those issues are hashing themselves out that the pixel problem is practically resolved. (Though I should note that pixels or not, setting a spread to be displayed digitally was never that much of a problem if it didn't have to be displayed in the browser. Sure, some fonts have shitty hinting but the ball is at least in your court.)
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But couldn't part of the potential be that a 3rd party developer ecosystem that feels healthy and secure will focus on providing added value for users, thereby encouraging more users? More developers? More revenue? And assumedly proving the developers worth to the company as being greater than just their $100/year (or whatever it ends up being)? I'm not saying that all parties are always going to get along like a friendly gang-bang, but I don't think it is as simple as 'The developers still make up a minority of the user revenue.'
re: A terminal: probably fine, albeit small. Running at 2880x1800 without any scaling isn't terrible, but it would quickly drive your eyes to escape your skull. I can't say for sure what would happen under Linux given only a terminal, but I imagine things would be pretty small until you got it using a different resolution than the native resolution.

Terminal emulators are fine, but I assumed you meant the other kind. Terminal emulators look great, as does every text editor I've used (MacVim, vim in a terminal emulator, Sublime Text 2, TextMate 2, Xcode [looks great, but it's unfortunately still a lousy IDE], etc.).

re: Dual boot, also fine in my case, though I only keep Mac OS and Windows 7 installed right now. Windows 7 in particular is an issue, as DPI scaling only affects some programs (so where on Mac OS you'd get pixel-doubled views or text, on Windows you get windows that aren't scaled at all, such as Chrome). If you have dual monitors, Windows is particularly painful, as DPI scaling is system-wide rather than per-screen. I haven't tested Windows 8 and likely won't until after it's been released.

The best route I've found is to simply set the display to 1920x1200 or lower and scale it up on Windows. Windows 7 just doesn't handle high resolution stuff particularly well -- it's not bad, but things just aren't all there. I expect Windows 8 will be better.

I couldn't say what your options are on a desktopless Linux/BSD system, but I would imagine that there's something you could do, even if that something is just using a larger font.
Monitor pixel densities haven't increased that much, they've been limited by having to keep interface elements visible. It's only easy for apple because they just doubled the density in both directions. Any intermediate numbers of pixels would have impacted usability.
> So more pixels is great. Is it really that great?

If it reduces eyestrain, then it is worth every penny!

I don't know if there is any evidence that it does, but it certainly seems likely that sharper text would reduce eyestrain. I certainly can read tiny text on my Retina iPhone much more easily than I could on my previous iPhone.

Otherwise, it's worth it if it gives you enough more joy, and not if it doesn't.

Some people are fine with music played through stock earbuds, and other people find music more enjoyable played through hi-fidelity equipment. Some people prefer the food at McDonalds and some people prefer 3-star Michelin restaurants. Some people think their old SD CRT TV is fine, and other people prefer 1080p HD. The people who like the former things may never understand why other people will pay more for the latter things. YMMV.
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And instead of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR.
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It's a paralyzingly epidemic.
"sans fonts are close to over"

I'm curious as to why you believe this. Some of the most versatile fonts are sans-serif, i.e. Helvetica, Gotham, DIN, Gill Sans, Futura, and Franklin Gothic.
It's a shame Google Chrome still doesn't render CSS3 fonts correctly on Windows. The strangest thing about it is that they barely even seem to acknowledge that it's an issue.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8950164/horrible-renderin...

If you've noticed that web fonts look terrible on Windows / Chrome, please star these issues!

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=91899
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=102371
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Unfortunately, a laptop is still a laptop. Small keyboard, inferior mouse (or lack thereof), single display, performance constrained by battery life. The performance margins are getting slimmer, but for a little over the price of the high end MacBook Pro (about $3000 with tax), I could build you a 64-core AMD G34 with 64 gigabytes of RAM, that would utterly destroy the Macbook performance-wise. Obviously, to each their own. I don't think the author is protein-folding or raytraycing, so this computer probably suits his needs better. Alternately, I could build a six-screen Beowulf cluster using 6 Nexus 7 tablets for $1200 (Tegra 3 performance is getting close to Core-Duo performance).
The really annoying ones are probably accompanied, sadly, so this plan isn't going to work out.
ok replace 'the small joys' with 'some small joys' the point is still the same.

It's similar to what John Carmack said when he was testing out the Rift VR Headset with Rage.

He said he was fascinated in just looking at the bricks in the walls and being able to 'look around' objects in the world, which gave him a new appreciation for all of the art assets that are for 99% of people just a blur as they run past shooting monsters.
What if you weight it by dollars earned instead of just successful companies? Having google and maybe facebook on your side isn't so bad then.
It's pure marketing. There's no objective, measurable difference.
The main things I dislike about HN:

* Comments are allowed to get too wide for easy reading.

* OP text color is too uncontrasted from the background.

Other than that, I don't see a reason why it needs a revamp.
Sure. And? What’s your point? Apple met separately with loads of journalists. I don’t see anything special about how they treated Gruber.
..and from the very same article:

"It’s Phil Schiller, spending an entire week on the East Coast, repeating this presentation over and over to a series of audiences of one."

He wasn't the only one getting the special treatment, they were communicating to tech journalists.
This is just simply AMAZING. I wonder why we did not have something like this before :)
I like the concept, seems to work pretty solid but i've spotted a bug. Sometimes when you copy an image to paste it into a message, another different image gets copied to the pasteboard.

Still trying to figure out how to replicate it. Will let you know if I do. Btw not bad for a first timer!
> I don't think it's as simple as...

Is kinda the point I've been trying to make. :)

A big part of twitter's initial growth was due to 3rd party development. But the tides shifted there as well, not (just) because of advertisers but because of "normal people" joining as users.

I wonder if that's who we're actually excited to keep out? Not the advertisers, but all of those totally mediocre people who make our trending topics embarrassingly dull ;)
Some people focus on the substance rather than the style. Others do not. Much effort and attention is lost on the latter.
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So they have a runway before their maximum 10K paying users is only enough to keep a part-time operations team and servers up.</sarcasm>

I have to agree with you though. This may be more than <insert weekend project> we always hear about, but not _much_ more. I'd imagined the product would be mostly built already.

Maybe they wanted an injection of cash before getting a handful of servers, and we should see everything up and running within the week.

Maybe they think they need to be Twitter-sized day one, which would be a mistake on their judgement.
Great question. Maybe, maybe not. As I said, it just depends. Every test answers its own question.

Here's the thing about orders, they're like a sliding scale of similarity between source and generated text. Whether that scale is worth toggling for your data is up to you.
Serif fonts have been under-represented for years, because our displays just aren't good enough to do them justice. When the pendulum swings, it always swings too far - look for serif fonts to become the next big thing.

Personally I think this prediction is a little premature because the retina displays aren't widespread yet. I've got my eye on Open Sans for the near future.
Still, we're talking about a Xeon here, not your typical desktop-variant Core Something. It was a powerhouse.
Yes there is. Certain typefaces are objectively easier to read than others, and some work better for certain content than others. Some are best for body text, some are best for headlines, etc. Some are optimized for low resolution screens, some for print (and as such work well on high resolution screens).
I kind of had the same thought too, as I walked through the Apple Store today and took a gander at some of the Retina MBP's. I thought: in as soon as 5 years, people are going to look at the pre-Retina MBP's and wonder, how did we ever live with 160 DPI displays? All of these jaggedies, this unsharp text, these blurry textures in iCal -- all this ugliness that you have to squint your eyes to see. Who would want that?

And for a moment I regretted I'd gotten an Air instead of a rMBP. But then I realized... what I have is good enough. It is. It's great. And there will be better products to come. And I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

But it is interesting to think about a future world where pixels are antiquities, merely "remember when's".
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Choosing the best technology for my website
Don't blame Twitter - platforms are hard.
Display Wars: HD Super AMOLED vs. Retina Display
Ask HN: What % of beta testers might you expect to become paying customers?
Obviously there are many variables.. just wondering if there are any blog posts out there or if anyone would be willing to share their numbers? Is 10% a reasonable expectation? This is assuming a monthly subscription model with no free plan.
Nice little app, looks like gifs are indeed making a comeback. I could always do with some amusement like this in my waking hours...

I wonder though how you're going to manage scaling the collection of memes?
Nice post. WebRTC is great!
> who wants to pay you to mess around with new ideas and come up with something great.

My experience is that the only want to pay for the "coming up with something great" part, not the messing around with new ideas.

Worse still, they only want to pay for what they see, which is usually just the tip of the iceberg.

Give me a boring client over someone with lots of imagination, any day.
Possibly because at 11px Verdana renders nicely. I guess at the time he came up with the design, there was not really an alternative to use CoreFonts, and this was one of the types that rendered fine at that size. FWIW headings are in Gill at 17px, and I don't find the balance unpleasant.
> If we stop spending as much time on calculations we can
> move kids more quickly into advanced concepts

Sound like "if we stop spending so much time on foundation we can have a roof sooner".
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You have fallen for the Reddit caricature--you have no idea what you're talking about.

The closest thing you could get to a "pure" libertarian philosophy is that libertarians are against coercion.

Whether that coercion is public or private has no bearing. You seem to have distilled libertarians beliefs down to "government bad"--a clear caricature.

Many (in my experience most) libertarians support the existence of government to provide services they believe the private sector can't--some don't. And yes, Most libertarians want to limit government and supplement it with voluntary association, but only because they believe that is what's best for mankind, not because of some irrational hatred of government.

"Government bad" is not the central tenant of libertarian philosophy, that you think it is.

But you seem to know more about what libertarians think than libertarians themselves. Let's take a look at some of your wording.

>I just actually know what libertarianism is

> I think a libertarian should be...

>A true libertarian view is...

>I think that people that proclaim to be libertarians don't want to state their true beliefs...

The beliefs that fall under the term libertarianism are so varied that libertarians themselves can't agree on a definition--How can you possibly come here and decide what is and isn't a libertarian view? Libertarian beliefs range from anarcho-capitalists to libertarian socialists. Everyone from tea party protesters to Noam Chomsky call themselves libertarians.

Libertarians haven't been able to agree on these issues for decades, so it's very kind of you to come here and clear it up so nicely.
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> Otherwise, it's worth it if it gives you enough more joy, and not if it doesn't.

That's the point. For many people it just doesn't matter, they can't tell the difference without focusing on it.

I'm typing this on an HP dv6 laptop that I really like. It came with the hardware I wanted at a price I was willing and able to pay. Does it have a retina display? Hardly. But considering my eyes are shot: it's night-time now, my eyes are tired, and I've taken my glasses off to give them a rest and the text on the page is ever-so-slightly blurry at this distance, having a retina display wouldn't do me much help. I can't see the dots at it stands anyway.
Un-anti-aliased (aliased?) Verdana at a certain size (11 or 12 point? Can't recall) was the very best pixellated optimised font for the web when Gruber designed his blog.

He hasn't redesigned since.
I've been thinking about it. And my best guess so far is: App.net builds confidence because, if it succeeds, it will be an existence proof of itself.

Or, to be a bit more concrete: People are supporting App.net because they hope it's possible, as a business proposition, to successfully fork a subnetwork away from a major social network. Once we have confidence that this is possible, it feels like we can always do it again. We can fork it as many times as we need to. When the rug gets pulled out from under some of us, as it inevitably will, we'll weave another rug.

The money thing, which you believe is irrelevant, is actually part of the argument here: The more revenue each node in the network is worth, the smaller the size of the sub-network that can profitably be broken off and operated independently.

(Note that there's as yet no evidence that Twitter itself, let alone a subset of Twitter, can be run at a profit.)

By this interpretation, if App.net succeeds at all, Dalton's personal notions of how to run a network will rapidly diminish in relevance. Because, once one App.net succeeds, more will rapidly follow.