skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This isn't how I remember the 90s. I remember Microsoft shipping several versions of laughably bad browsers, while their operating system completely dominated the market. They finally shipped a better browser than NS with IE4, but that has just as much to do with shipping a usable product as it does with NS failing to ship a good product.

That said, in those days the web wasn't yet a big deal, and wouldn't be for another couple of years. I don't see how MS "boosted commerce" at all during this timeframe, either. By the time the web became accessible to the multitudes, and was being used for commerce MS already dominated the browser market.
On the upside - now I know where to find an actual record store, even if it's across town...
Being 31, growing up when I did, sometimes the things discussed in TED, and the wonderful future you allude to, seem like flying cars.

And not to be down on you, or the future in general. Maybe this is a side effect of growing not only when I did, but where, being in more rural Georgia. Or being "not an optimist".

That all aside, power storage really does seem key. Imagine if electric cars could be refueled by an easily accessible battery change out? And one imagines if everything is electric, then advances in any power generation tech transferable to electricity instantly gives advantage to everyone. Yeah, that future is a romantic one. But I just don't know.
I can relate to this article though I was even less smart than any of the people interviewed. I choose to give away BitKeeper because I wanted to help Linux. There was absolutely no business model, freemium or otherwise. We eventually stumbled upon the privacy costs money, out in the open is free model but it was always sort of so-so.

In retrospect, what I should have done is make 2 differentiated products, free and paid. Free is basic, no guis, just enough to get the job done for the kernel and paid has all the bells and whistles.

We actually thought of that at the time and I rejected it because at the time, before Linus was using BitKeeper, I felt like if he didn't get the good stuff he wouldn't use it.

Pretty stupid from a business point of view, kinda makes sense if you look at it from a help Linux not fragment point of view. Kinda.
Bigger utilities, bigger insurance costs, bigger property taxes, bigger maintenance bills, bigger repair costs. That's all lighting money on fire just like rent, but most people discount it.
They aren't, IMO. They don't weigh much more (and seriously what kind of commute do you have that weight matters that much? This isn't the tour de france...)

The ride of a decent steel bike is much softer (less harsh) than an aluminum bike. An old steel 10 speed with tension shifters (less fiddly/adjustment prone) is my idea of a perfect commuter bike...
Oops, you've gone and invoked Godwin's law:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law

A cold shower and a drive in a Volkswagen before you can post again.
> You do not stand in a theatre and shout "fire!" unless there is a fire.

Do you realize that that particular constructed example comes from an argument that protesting the draft should be illegal?

(Incidentally, Penn Jillette quite regularly stands in his theater and shouts "fire!" when there is no threat. Most people aren't idiots most of the time, so it's not a problem.)

> How many people need to be pulled off flights for people to understand that sometimes you just don't need to wear the t-shirt (that looks creepily white power) covered in BOMB DEATH KILL.

Maybe it needs to keep happening until our airport cops realize they're being idiots and return to dealing with actual security threats. Assuming they can find any.
A Custom Callout View for iOS
Interesting disparity between OS X users and Safari users.
Open-Source virtualization management coming for KVM, Xen and VMware
I think some of it's good, but that in the main it ignores the needs of the reader in favour of your personal needs.

A good cover letter answers 6 key questions. Within that, you can employ as much creativity as you like, as long as you keep things either A) succinct, or B) entertaining enough to pull the reader through.

The 6 key questions you need to answer for the reader are:

1. Which position you're applying for.
2. Can you do the job from a functional point of view?
3. Can you do the job from an organisational point of view? (human awareness, business awareness)
4. Are you motivated to do the job?
5. Are you the type of person they'd enjoy working with?
6. Should they actually get in touch with you?

Here's how I'd mark you on those:

1. 0/10.
2. 8/10.
3. 0/10.
4. 6/10.
5. Subjective, but I'd say 4/10.
6. 7/10.

Total: 21/50. Presumably you'd score better on '1' in a real-life situation, therefore 31/50.

Hopefully this feedback is useful to you.
Windows 8′s ‘dirty little secret

A dirty little secret which happens to be common knowledge and is mentioned in the tech press at least once a week for pretty much the last year. Yet somehow it still seems to provoke outrage from people who continue to insist that Microsoft is abusing a non-existent monopoly in a market they have no presence in.
Twitter needs cash? Aren't they profitable?
What incentive do we have then, to not forcibly extract that wealth from the previous generation? To me it seems that if we need to de-leverage, why on earth should we pay these people their pensions? All the intergenerational trust and good faith is already gone anyway.

Note: the views casually related above may or may not represent the actual considered opinions of the management.
Foundation Interview with Om Malik - gigaom.com founder
It's more like they're both similar to Frutiger. And Myriad is barely 2 years older than Segoe, and it was developed by Agfa not MS, so it's not likely that it was copied. While Arial was kind of a crappy font, MS's new stuff (Consolas, Calibri etc.) has been pretty nice.
I had to upgrade because of Mountain Lion (I have Fusion 3) but the only silver lining is that at least Digital River didn't tack on their sleazy "emergency download service" (completely unnecessary) on the shopping cart like they normally do.
Yup - and to be fair, there were, especially earlier on, some CDs that were mastered beautifully, and sound just fantastic on a half decent setup (no crazy stuff... just decent speakes and a plain old amp). I recall hearing some Pink Floyd at a friends place and saying "Holy crap! What are you listening to? That's an amazing recording" and he pops out a CD, from a regular old CD player and his homebuilt heathkit amp, and a pair of speakers that looked like he picked them up back in the 70s.... point being, the dynamic range was there.

You can generally tell it's there when you put the CD in your car and say "Hey that's too quiet"... that's a good candidate for some more serious listening.
You're in for a surprise if you ever look at their server products. In my environment the VMware licenses cost more than the hardware they run on.
> when for most PhoneGap apps, you really don't need to go much outside of what there are already plugins for

The operative word here being "most." You're right that for apps that meet those constraints, this is not especially compelling; the target here is for apps that are exceptions. We have produced cross-platform apps that require additional capabilities beyond what Phonegap includes, and have ended up writing a cross-platform UI, plus some native ObjC and Java glue for iOS and Android, respectively, to provide that capacity. The combination presented here would mean that at least on iOS, you could have a slightly more-pleasant glue-writing experience, particularly since anecdotally, ObjC is the hardest of the pieces of that kind of project for non-experts to get started with.
That's an Apple logo, not on OS X logo. OS X logo is the giant X, which you only see on OS X marketing material, not on iPods.
Take a look at Linear Tape File System (LTFS), which allows for ad-hoc file retrieval. CrossRoads Systems out of Austin has the leading implementation, and they did bid on this Amazon contract. I have no idea if they won it, though (next corp conference call is Aug 29th). They just closed a joint investment with Iron Mountain, so my money is on an LTFS solution with CrossRoads as a systems vendor.
Company Culture – Give and You Shall Receive (x10)
Ted Rheingold (Dogster, Say Media) gives a first hand account of how hard it was to prioritize company culture, but how it ultimately saved the company.
It is, however, much better than plain old UDP =)
I'm definitely not. I think your perception is warped by your social circles which is probably smart-phone oriented.

The overwhelming majority of the handsets getting shifted out are feature phones and below and they are mainly shipping with T9. Have a Google round for the stats - they are not hard to find.

These stats also only cover traceable sales. There are a lot of second hand sales.

T9 with some sort of tactile keyboard and some practice results in considerably less errors and corrections being made compared to a touch screen with a standard QWERTY keyboard.
You can't conclude that from his data. His audience is web developers, so obviously IE will be very low.
Actually I just tried to "fix" the favicon in Photoshop and even if I aliase the edges manually it still doesn't look right because of the different brightness levels.
That looks interesting enough that I sent a link to a friend. Sometimes making to HN front page does pay.

update: She bought it last week.
Because Google uses the same primary colors that MS Windows used.
The newer cars are far safer, it seems every 5 years we bump up the crash test standards.

If you've seen a modern ski helmet after a hard hit, it looks destroyed. You wonder how it helped at all. But the destruction of the helmet absorbs some of the energy. A 'sturdy' helmet would just pass that right through to the head. Helmets are now effectively single use.

Cars are almost the same way. It's seemingly silly how easily modern cars are totaled. But they are crumpling and absorbing energy - while maintaining the passenger compartment's integrity. Older cars simply folded up. Often times the passenger compartment was the weakest point - i.e. the first thing to crush. That makes modern cars fairly disposable after major accidents, but I'd vasty prefer the safety of a modern car.
But is it not true that the tools necesary for decent recording are only getting cheaper and more accessible?

I'm not suggesting a crappy mic and no brains is all it takes to produce a record, but your home PC these days can handle the mixing that it used to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in gear to do, and good recording gear can still cost a pretty penny, but it must be getting better and cheaper like everything else. We've seen more well-produced stuff by "amateurs" these days than any time in the past...
>Ironically, Windows 8's new logo is now single-colored.

While I don't enjoy the perspective on the Windows 8 logo, I at least respect the single color. As usual, it doesn't seem like the right hand is talking to the left hand. I actually like the previous logo. It feels like it has some character and I'm not surprised it lasted 25 years. This new logo feels so damn generic, like a generic brand you would pick up at the grocery store...

* Compare to the active ingredients in Apple.
I suddenly remembered how much I hated seeing Sony portable MD players for sale. They were all perfectly cuboid except for an obviously battery-sized lump in the posterior. Sony being the monsters they are, their packaging was deceptively designed to show just the front face and conceal the back inside the plastic bubble, so you wouldn't find out about their terrible shape until you got home.
A global trend amplified by us "Millenials" in the U.S. is a preference for urbanisation. Contrary to past generations, I don't plan on ever giving up the pace and energy of the metropolis.

Thus our (and my) psychological shift could be explained as simply as a preference for the hyper-connected urban lifestyle, with decreasing home and car ownership flowing from that change in preferences rather than a direct change in beliefs about cars or houses. Either way, the symptoms look set to persist.
Those are the Windows colors. They predate Google.
If you're hung up on the money, VirtualBox should do what you need, it has a seamless mode, and it's free.
6 Web Development Extensions You Should Be Using (But Aren’t)
I think the EU might get the nightstick out again if they pull this.

I wouldn't be surprised, but it would also be bullshit.

The same is not true for Apple, who built an ecosystem from nothing. They're not cutting anyone off.

Does WinRT have a history? I think it'd be pretty safe to say that WinRT is an ecosystem built from nothing in the same way iOS is a ecosystem built from nothing. It's using base technology from a much older system, but implemented in a completely different way. There is no current market or ecosystem for WinRT.
I have my father's and my grandfather's slide rules, but I have no idea how to work them. But they're great geek conversation pieces.
Any plans on adding Common Lisp? Do you just need someone to point you to some decent code?
Why did you need a loan to buy a car? I just waited a couple of months until I'd saved enough to buy a small, fairly old car for cash. It's not a fancy car, but it is reliable, cheap to run, cheap to insure, and costs me nothing in terms of financing now.
Simple Tips for Effectively Reporting Bugs and Issues
I was surprised to see that iOS is beating firefox. While this is just one website, I hadn't realized firefox had dropped so much in the ranks. It's still my browser of choice.
Singapore's Bubble Motion just raised $5 million from JAFCO
Living or working in the 'burbs is absolutely not an option for our household. The reason is quite directly that we don't want to be reliant on a car.

And wanting to not be reliant on a car is a big part of the reason I moved into the city in the first place. I did the calculation many years ago, and figured out that even from a purely financial perspective it's better - the rent's higher, but cars are impressively expensive to own, fuel, and maintain. And there are a bunch of other financial perks. Living within walking distance of numerous bars saves a mint in cab fares, for example. (Not to mention that suburban taxi service tends to be an enormous PITA.)
> Is that innovation? Some would say yes. I think that most of these only became innovative once they began to be available to larger audiences, which coincides with the rise of Firefox and later on Chrome.

This seems like a definition designed specifically to avoid giving IE any credit for innovation. How can a feature be innovative after it's copied but not when it's created?

If something is so valuable that competitors are compelled to copy it, that seems almost the very definition of innovation.
Make ONE sale, just ONE
If you can’t make one single sale of your product or idea, then tell me how you are going to make thousands of sales?
I've always said two things. Those who want to get real work done bring their Mack truck to work and not the family van. Mac OSX is Unix and the Mack truck. Windows is the family van.

I also say those who know the web best, don't use Internet Explorer.
Should developers be sued for security holes?
Ask HN: Why did the Diaspora crew create a Meme Generator?
I was wondering why the people behind Diaspora decided to create a social meme generator as part of Y Combinator?

http://allthingsd.com/20120816/diasporas-next-act-social-remixing-site-makr-io/

I would have thought that a pivot on the social network idea would have been on the cards?
>Vista's delays didn't do much to entrench IE6.

It did in that Microsoft did not originally plan to release an update to ie for Windows XP. The idea was that next gen OS would come with next gen browser.

>IE7 was available on XP, and companies just flat out didn't want to upgrade from XP or IE6 ...

Do you not think that that has something to do with the fact that there was a 5 year window, in a pivotal time for the internet (2001-2006), that allowed ie6 to build up massive mindshare and massive web-app dependency?

Worse, when ie6 came out it was the best browser out there, and the default choice on an operating system that dominated the industry. There was no Firefox, or Chrome or Safari or open source WebKit. So it easily became entrenched quickly. After that, inertia carried ie6.

The right thing for Microsoft to do was to NOT disband the ie team and release ie7, ie8, ie9, ie10 at reasonable release cycles (annually for example).
Oh.

I wonder why Google chose those colours then? There was a rumour about their first server being made of various colours of lego bricks, but maybe someone put more thought into it...
Devs are like artists moving into rundown neighborhoods.

"No one was here when we moved in. Windows were broken, it was dangerous after dark. But the rents were cheap and the architecture awesome so we all moved in."
"Soon good coffee shops and restaurants opened. Some buildings were fixed up. It was great!"
"Then the hipsters/wannabes/yuppies started moving in. They drove up rents and the price of a latte. Now we can't afford to live around here anymore. This SUCKS"

As someone below mentions Twitter is 6 years old. It's outgrown the early wave. Neighborhoods don't usually suddenly collapse back again. But new neighborhoods soon flourish in old rundown neighborhoods. Better to focus on the next neighborhood than lament the march of time.
I make high middle class money and I don't know anyone in my peer group who has "A 2500 sqft house, two (or three) cars, regular vacations to Europe or the warm south, maybe a summer house, boats, motorcycles AND other toys".

You are describing the upper echelon of lawyers and execs.
Discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4422345
The Nspire CAS is really more of a tool for students. I'd call the point-and-click interface clunky and intuitive--it's not hard to figure out how to do things, it's just going to take you a while to get there. :) I'd imagine if you have software you've written for the TI-86 and are inclined to do integrals and differentials on paper until you get stuck, it's probably not the right tool for you. :)
My Paleo Media Diet
Apple releases OS X 10.8.1 via Software Update.
Thanks for all of the help, everyone - HN is great for this sort of "real-world" feedback.

I'll update this thread later when I have a chance to make some changes.
Since IE10 isn't out yet, I question that statement. Of course, anyone who thinks IE9 is good to them, I question that statment, too.
Ugh. Title is wildly inaccurate.

Love the nonsensical barbecue photo.
The nav links render like crap in Firefox and Chrome. Of course, it looks fine in IE, which sums up a lot of Microsoft's problems.
Dear Content Creator, Your URL Shortener Is Pointless
IBM and Apple each have a more homogeneous audience.

IBM is a consulting company and courts mid- to upper-level manager types with purchasing authority. After few seconds on the page you are invited to speak with a sales consultant via a popup.

Apple is focused exclusively on the (premium) consumer space.

Both companies represent top-down totalitarianism (I say this without value-connotation): IBM suggest corporate command and control, Apple has a well-curated walled garden.

Microsoft's site reminds me of one of the more effective university websites.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with any of those companies except as a consumer. My iPhone is my favorite toy.
This is all fine and all, but I wonder if the average user cares?
Not to mention the URL… http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx, really? Have they not heard of internal/external URL mapping and Accept-Language?

Not to mention it won't even load for me; I guess they don't cache this stuff either.
Great point, Millennium. As Henry Ford said, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." If you can work through to the next level, though, and realize they wanted efficient, affordable transportation, your vision actually serves the customer's wants/needs better than a horse.

Another conclusion is that if customers want something too different from what you do, maybe you shouldn't pursue those kinds of customers.
There's a noscript fallback. If w3counter does it's job right, people without javascript should be counted.

Those who explicitely block w3counter wouldn't, but that's few people, unless it's in an adblock/ghostery/... blacklist.
Pretty sloppy reporting all around. They aren't even looking at the correct statistics to address the hypothesis.

The article cites the percent of new car sales that were from 21 to 34 year olds in 1985 versus 2010 and find that it falls. What they really want to look at is the percent of 21 to 34 year olds that buy cars. You could have an increasing percent of young people buying cars AND a fall in the percent of car sales driven by young people if young people are making up a smaller proportion of the car buying demographic. Indeed, 21 to 34 year olds make up a smaller proportion of the general U.S. population in 2010 than in 1990 (http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html). It probably isn't enough to reverse their result, but it soaks up some of the claimed behavior.

They make the same type of mistake looking at the percent of teens with a license. Well, 13-15 can't even have a license, so what is happening to the age distribution within "teens"?

Then you have all of the other causal effects that other commenters address. I've come to expect this type of thing from the Atlantic blog posts, so I was surprised to see that this was a magazine article.
Square being the operative word.
I don't think you understand. In this debate, it's only possible to take one of two positions: put another way, either you believe people should be controlled, or you believe people should be free.

I have a fundamental disagreement with the premise of 'positive' vs. 'negative' liberty, because it conflates separate, unrelated issues (as a corollary, I also reject the notion that anything someone else has to provide for you can be considered a 'human right').

And let's not forget that the Gilded Age also saw the rise of labor unions. See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmzZ8lCLhlk, especially the last 2.5 minutes.

In my opinion, the only acceptable definition of 'liberty' in a political context would be something like 'one's ability to live free of coercion and violence from others'.

Since this necessarily extends to everyone, not just me, a free society therefore requires a strong judicial system, not only to protect persons and property from physical harm, but to prevent things like fraud, collusion, or any other activity that deprives an individual of life, liberty, or property absent their informed, uncoerced consent.

Believe it or not, if such a society existed, providing equal protection under the law, it would certainly be superior to what we have in the US today (consider that no one went to jail during the banking crisis, despite the number of laws [especially fraud laws] broken).
's just the same with Parallels... I've bought v6 which isn't compatible with Mountain Lion now (worked with Lion just fine)

Faced with the decision to shell out 50€ to make it run with a 16€ OS upgrade after a little thinking, googling etc. i just went with Bootcamp & Windows 7.

While this doesn't have the convenience of just starting the VM (gotta reboot) it at least has native performance which in my use-case (3D CAD) is more desirable anyways.

And you can't beat the feeling of not being extorted anymore...