skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am conflicted about Apple. In one way, they are using their patents exactly as intended under the system: They innovated, disclosed their innovations in a patent (and I have looked at a few, the disclosures are pretty good, as patents go), and they are now using their patents to fend off "copycats" in the marketplace. I am much more sympathetic to Apple because they are actually bringing products embodying their innovations to market.

There are a couple of problems, though. First, note the quotes around copycats. I don't think that there was wholesale copying as Apple alleges. I am sure there was some ... "creative inspiration" that Samsung et al. picked up from Apple. In return, though, iOS has picked up a number of improvements directly from Android and/or competing phone manufacturers.

Second, Apple innovated - but their innovations, IMO, were mostly in the area of packaging. Packaging something better than anyone else is innovation. I am not sure that better packaging is invention, however, and I am not sure that it is (or should be) covered by the patent system.
I think you could only shrug the last 25 years off if you changed the word as well.
Challenge accepted, thanks for the answers.
It is awful by comparison to many continental cities though. Have you used the U-bahn in berlin? It's so clean, so efficient, so cheap!

That's what we get for inventing this stuff I suppose...
That's the reason young people aren't buying houses? Try again.
You know the greatest lesson I learned from the tv show The Wire? When your brand lacks credibility you make a change to the brand.[1][2] Good move by Microsoft.

On other hand, I'm still trying to grok why Twitter changed it's logo recently[3]? Was something inherently being tarnished about the Twitter brand? As far as I know, the answer is NO.

I'm going to make a major assumption here, but I think it had to do with it being driven by a Creative Director and not by a Marketing (i.e. Business) person. The blog post and title at least reads that way.

[1]- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertow_(The_Wire)#Barksdale_t...

[2]- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k

[3]- http://blog.twitter.com/2012/06/taking-flight-twitterbird.ht...
That's what we have done either (but with an Adwords campaign, to see how much traffic there is to be had from Google), but I think that's no commitment to cash, just "I'm interested". I once read here on HN that bootstrappers should actually ask people whether they would pay X$ for that - but now being in this situation, I wonder how to actually do that, knowing none of the future audience in person.
No, not really. But this is more an example of a product brand becoming the company brand, not the other way around. Apple is a rather poor example of this, as they are quite careful with their brand (for instance, changing the "Apple key" to the "command key" back in the day so as to not "abuse" the brand).

Sun changing their stock symbol to JAVA would be a better example.
How to Give a Killer Concept Presentation
User Experience Report: The 2012 Presidential Candidates’ Home Pages
I should send this comment to my parents and grandparents the next time they berate me about why I'm not planning on owning a home any time soon and would rather rent and/or mooch off them for as long as possible.
How does Microsoft lack credibility?
I agree. Imagine that time is used (instead of current balance), and A pays out if the current second is divisible by three, and B pays out if it is one more than a multiple of three. A and B are both losing games if played every second, but it's not hard to combine them to win. And few people would call this a paradox.
The web came to Microsoft after the IPO. At the time, there were a lot employees with "fuck you money" and the web was still the wild west not a corporate branding commodity. Thus Microsoft's approach has been generally hands off and the first priority has always been to get information out on the web.

The idea of a monolithic website like Apple's or Google's just doesn't apply. It's not part of Microsoft's DNA. Compare:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/home

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/default.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-ed...

http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc184874.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ms376608.aspx

Other than white backgrounds, it's not very consistent.
There is a solid way to add and remove custom words to the dictionary. You can also import a friend's(or a community's) dictionary.
Develop Your First Windows Phone App - Get a Free Nokia Phone
Jokingly: That logo cost them $50 [1]

My real questions are whether there will be a one-color variant, whether the symbol will be allowed to be displayed without the type, and how you could ever secure international trademark on four squares. My guess is that you'd have to be, well, Mircosoft. More than the logo designers, I'm really impressed by the legal team. My trademark lawyers would laugh at me.

[1] http://www.bestlookinglogos.com/2009/07/four-square-logo/

Edit: fixed to read 'international trademark'
Credibility's not the issue. Stagnation is.
What are some examples of these creative exercises you mentioned? I skimmed through most of the post so maybe I missed them..
One of my friends spent some time in California this year interning with Google and he said that while public transport around California was bearable, when he spent some time in New York he found it completely useless.

One of the qualms I have with English public transport is that over 55's get completely free transport, (I have no issue with them of course) whereas 15 - 21 year olds tend to pay extra in my area, so the people who are only just starting to work in their low paying jobs get charged so that people who have houses fully paid for and receive money every month on their pensions can have it for free.
Ahh I see. The thing is I picked an audience where I know some people in person and asked right away if some would pay.

In all cases, I would contact people (by email/phone/whatever) to engage a discussion and ask the "True Question" :)

I do agree that "I'm interested" is absolutely not the same as "I'm paying for this, here's my CC number".
The layout looks rational enough in the context of the tiled GUI layout they're trying to push.

But the top bar could be a few times thicker. It's too cramped. I tried a quick hack increasing the min-height attribute on hpHdr_PriRow to 50px, which gives much nicer proportions.
Sounds that way, but this article is clearly not telling the whole story. Whatever the policy really is, the Customs Department implemented the policy, and the Department of Commerce will review it later this year.
8 Ways Entrepreneurs Often Destroy Team Motivation
Exactly. But certain patents like you say shouldn't have been allotted in the first place - Rounded corners, Slide to unlock, and so on..

I'm reminded of this funny image that was trending on G+ recently:
http://phandroid.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10...
Send them the median income / home value ratios too.

I think the boomers qualify as the most irresponsible generation in history, especially in the USA. Now half of them have no retirement savings and are getting old, fast. Guess who's going to pay for it.
Working in infosec, I definitely see these mini, low power machines having a major impact (relatively). I've already seen one of our pentest auditors bring a plug computer to a meeting, plug it in while no one was looking, and present the results at the end of the day.

Having something like this that you can connect to wifi on battery and just drop in the bushes outside the building really changes the game of network/information security.
To be clear it's what HN Users that are interested in a web technology use.... and surprise surprise there are a lot of Macs in that sector.

If you posted something interesting to games developers I'd wager a lot more Windows PCs and a lot few Macs.
Exceptional Ruby is indeed fantastic. If you like it, you may be interested in Avdi's current book project "Confident Ruby": http://devblog.avdi.org/2012/06/05/confident-ruby-beta/
This reads like my life 10 years ago. Running BeOS with a zip drive sneaker net. Apple had the hot swappable bays much earlier than 2000, I remember using them as early as '98; compaq had the feature as well (floppy drive or LS120).

The one thing in that list that I'm sad to have missed was minidisc. It still sets off my nastolgia meter.

What about dial-up modems, IRQ settings, and serial ports?
Actually, touch typing on Fleksy is faster than on the standard keyboard. We reduced the lag time required to input letters from .5 seconds to .35. Plus, you only need to input those terms once.
>But it's just not the same. Even if it looks, feels, tastes, smells and acts the same. It's not.

Isn't it? Roller coasters give us the illusion of danger. Haunted houses the illusion of fear. Pornography the illusion of sex.

All of these are "fake" but continue to be popular because they create an experience in our minds. Maybe because all of these things appeal to baser, more automatic reponses they can defy rationality, but manipulating reality is already common practice.
VMware launches Fusion 5
I'm sorry that stats about what people actually consume disagree with your vague speculation about what stuff should cost.

If we "feel barely middle class", it's because our expectations and desires have grown faster than our means. It's not because we have less than some historical cohort.
Obviously you should get a fixed-rate mortgage. When interest rates "go" you will have insanely cheap mortgage while inflation drives up the price of your house.

That said, I suggested buying as much house as you can afford, not for how much they are willing to lend you. That will be different for everyone.
I'm unable to reproduce the results. Balance is always negative. What's wrong with my code?

// for a graph
var balances = [];

// constants
var winnings = 1,
losses = -1,
epsilon = 0.05;

function play(probOfWinning) {
return Math.random() < probOfWinning ? winnings : losses;
}

for (var experiment = 0; experiment < 100; experiment++) {
var balance = 0;
for (var flip = 0; flip < 1000000; flip++) {
if (flip % 3 == 0) { // game A
balance += play(0.5 - epsilon);
} else { // game B
balance += Math.round(balance) % 3 == 0 ? play(1/10 - epsilon)
: play(3/4 - epsilon)
}
}
balances.push(balance);
}
I'm assuming I don't have to explain to you the sentiment over Microsoft's product base (consumer mainly) in the past 5-10 years in comparison to it's biggest competitor, Apple, right?
CocoaPods and You: A Primer for the Uninformed
Unfortunately, the best response to realworld muggings is the same -- hand over your wallet.
I took a look but did not "get" what this is about.

Is it a blog building tool or does it create something you can ship to others?
Oh man. I went through like four MiniDisc portables and had that awful Sharp MD component that could dupe a CD to MD at 4x. I can't tell you how many hours I spent spinning a dial to choose alphabetic characters so all the tracks would be properly titled. My dream for years was to get an in-dash MD receiver. I wonder how much longer I would have used them if I had actually managed to do that. They were just so cool. A terrible waste of space and technology, but really damn cool. I actually thought about getting another one last year, just for nostalgia, but wound up not--even though they can be had for like $20-40 on eBay.

Around the same time I was trying to run BeOS as my desktop. I would have liked to have developed for it, but at the time I was just barely grasping Python and C++ with threading really wasn't within reach for me. I'm happy Haiku has been getting press and may try to run it in a VM (haven't had much luck with that in the past) but there was something really liberating about running an OS on the metal that booted in ten seconds. Everything was so snappy. Of course, you couldn't do much with it, but what you could do, you could do really well. :)
teamviewer : http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx And they got apps.
I prefer this to the standard cover letter, but make sure you don't come across too arrogant. e.g. this line is unnecessary in my opinion: "Do you remember your first CS class? How there were a few people who just couldn’t handle the obscure bugs and the hours upon hours of staring at the screen and they ended up dropping out?".
Full title is 'Our favorite "forgotten tech"—from BeOS to Zip Drives', much more descriptive than what sp332 submitted.
I own a beater car even though I could pay cash a new car if I wanted to. One reason is that cars are expenses, not assets, so there is no reason to spend more than you have to for the transportation it provides. Spending money on a nice car is just about one of the worst financial decisions you can make.

The other reason I own a beater is that I live near a major city and can take public transit to and from work. If my car is going to sit in front of my house most of the time, why pay for a nice one?

Public transportation is much better near cities, and the Millenial generation is the most city-bound American generation ever. Americans in general are migrating to cities, and young people more than most. I think the article grossly underplays the importance of this demographic trend.

I would bet this is a major factor in declining car ownership, AND home ownership--since it is so much easier to find reasonable rent near a city. In small towns and even many suburbs, there are typically few rentals, so you have to purchase if you want to live there. Real estate tends to be more affordable there too.
I don't think anyone misses IRQ settings :)
I think the EU might get the nightstick out again if they pull this. A lot of vendors are piggybacking on MS and this will mean anti-competitive behavior.

Also, WinRT is a pretty big land grab by Microsoft and it's pissed a large number of developers off. If they kill the current ecosystem or lock people into a narrow subset of it, there is no longer a market or ecosystem. Simple as.

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

Most of the MS-oriented development staff I know (100+ people) are starting to look at exit strategies from the MS ecosystem. Most of them have Apple machines and/or Linux native machines and VM's on the go. Quite a few have jumped ship to Java enterprise outfits already.

When the rats start leaving...
Your personal website is fascinating! Particularly the anti-psychology and Aspergers material. This piece was extremely well written and intructive:

http://arachnoid.com/psychology/aspergers.php
"Urban" is a euphemism for "black." See also "inner-city" & in reference to young people often "at-risk." Not saying commenter intended to be racist but that the term "urban" refers to black people (in the US, in this context) is indisputable.
>and arguably that isn't even Microsoft's fault.

Yes it is. Microsoft disbanded the ie team after the release of ie6. This coupled with Longhorn/Vista's delays entrenched Windows XP and by extension ie6 stronger than it otherwise would have.
I'd have preferred a thinner, longer variation of the font like they had in their win8 demos or Zune menus. This one looks a bit short and stocky imho.
The 1980-81 looks like Gates and Balmer were trying to start a Metal band.
HTML and CSS are not programming languages.
Meh, have some faith in the reader. Nothing you read will apply to your life/business 100%. You have to be smart enough to know what's relevant and what's not. Also, authors often use strong language, because no one wants to read a flaccid diatribe. If you're worked up about it, the author got what he wanted.
I wonder if that independent Microsoft re-design seen on HN a few weeks ago - http://www.minimallyminimal.com/journal/2012/7/3/the-next-mi... - had anything to do with this.
I use SwiftKey for Android for better prediction, I also use several languages and it predicts my words well. I wish there where a combination of Swype and SwiftKey however, as I agree that Swyping is a very fast way of inputting data.
I suspect that you are a minority (as you admit). My monthly student loan burden exceeds my rent burden by almost $200; my loan debt is far less than the median.

There may be a cultural factor to it as well. I don't find the need to drive everywhere like I did growing in the 90s, but I certainly don't have a ton of income left over for car and fuel (let alone even more debt for a mortgage and the other costs that entails).

My behavior is driven more by economics than culture.
>> Talib Kweli

hahahehe... you probably picked the worst example of a rapper's fans being primarily black. That or Mos Def :p
I was trying to start a discussion here on HN about our favorite forgotten tech. The examples in the article were just to get the conversation going.
Apple is a single, targeted competitor to a fraction of Microsoft's business.

The XBox 360 is a great console, MS hardware is still top notch, Office is still Office and Exchange is still Exchange. Windows 7 has been widely well received, and IE 10 is on track to be the most compliant browser in the IE line.
Something I noticed: beside the M, the rest of the font is very similar to the font Myriad (the font used by Apple in their logo).
Is an actual real product even required? A lesson on marketing.
This is exactly what both the left and the right are propagandizing the middle class to do: lower expectations. In some cases, it means lowering our expectations to below those of our parents.

Think about that for a minute.

Find me a corporation or an entrepreneur who thinks like this. Imagine a CEO saying this to shareholders and the board:

"We didn't make our goals this quarter, and many in our industry also showed reduced sales numbers. It is clear that we need to reduce our expectations. Next quarter's numbers will be lower, and shareholders are just going to have to take a loss."

He'd be out on his ass the next day.

Related to this is the idiotic garbage that the working class are fed by the media: that they should hate people who make good wages and agitate to cut those other peoples' wages down to be in line with their own.

Again, find me a corporation that thinks like this. Apple is currently worth more than Microsoft. Is Microsoft thinking "how can we make them make less money?!?" No. They're thinking "How can we grow? How can we make as much money as Apple is making?"

Unbelievable.

You realize that you're being sold into fiefdom on the feudal "lands" owned by the financial industry, right?

Edit: I'm not a socialist. I'm a capitalist.

Part of capitalism is negotiation. The American middle and working classes have been fed this ridiculous line of baloney that capitalism is a magical hands-free machine that will elevate their standard of living if they do nothing. It doesn't work that way, as every businessman and entrepreneur understands. You have to negotiate. You have to push. They push, and you push.

Studies have shown that the ideal point in negotiation is often precisely where both parties feel a bit, but not too, unhappy. Right now the rich and corporate interests are rolling in it, happy as clams, and everyone else is suffering. That's because one side is pushing and the other side is not.

So how do workers and professionals (whom I count as workers... the white/blue collar distinction is increasingly meaningless) push?

The old way was unions, but that's definitely shown its age. We need some new ideas.

Lowering our expectations is not a particularly productive idea.

Edit 2: I also think using government to push is fair game.

Why? Because the rich and corporations do it. They take corporate welfare, bailouts, special infrastructure investments, government contracts, and benefit hugely from publicly funded R&D.

But they want you to refuse to use the government as a lever because... it works!

So capitalists really ought to be socialists, at least for now. Only give up a lever in a negotiation if the other party on the other side of the table also gives up that lever. The rich want you to be principled libertarians while they munch at the government trough.
lets not forget the palm. combined with intellisync it was truly the best thing on earth.
I believe it's Segoe, which Microsoft owns and has been using everywhere lately.
Integration tests just mean you are testing the integration of multiple components, say view and controller, model and database, controller and model. Acceptance tests are tests from the end-user's perspective and touch the entire stack like a real user would. Acceptance tests are integration tests. It's alright for these tests to hit the database because part of what you are testing is the integration with the database.
From my Hacker Newsletter project (http://hackernewsletter.com) I can say that about 70% of HN users use Gmail.
Pretty sure it used to not work--glad to see that it does now. Thanks.
Extending Impress.js for Even More Impressive Presentations
It's also simple, but still utilitarian in that Microsoft style.

It actually reminds me very much of the Wii logo.
I hope the author realizes there is a difference between raising a kid (requires legitimate use authority != rules) and doing business.
While I would say that London's public transport is good (not exceptionally good, Germany, Switzerland and Japan are exceptionally good, London is merely good), I think:

> For many routes within London it's quicker and far cheaper to take public transport (or a bike!) than to use a private vehicle.

Is a rather poor way to look at it in the context of London, because walking is often quicker than using a private vehicle here!
I can see the anti-Apple mentality of this.

Apple icons are glossy this is flat. The icons on an iPad/iPod are small glossy "chicklets" but on Win8 they are flat and large tiles; no black space.

I like the look and the design it's a nice change, as for the inner workings of the OS I have no idea since I only used it briefly in a (non-touchscreen) VM.
Perhaps one should value the business idea and whether or not its sustainable over the possibility to raise money?

The number of people in the world who are "well-connected" enough to be funded regardless of the idea are smaller than you think.
My first thought wasn't Windows, it's Live Tiles. It seems to have the allusion of Windows (the past) and "the design style formerly known as Metro" (the future).

All in all, a big improvement!

Only one thing: I can't believe it doesn't render properly in mobile safari on MS home page! Bottom line gets clipped...
How is the TI-83 forgotten technology? Go to any college or high school classroom and you'll find plenty of them, albeit the 84 and 89 are becoming more common.
Apple vs. Samsung: inside a jury's nightmare
Descobrir flores selvagens em Paleochora - Creta
I work in central London and see a lot of people riding about on these bikes, clearly very expensive ones often too. This is a part of town where it's impossible to park, the traffic is terrible, and you have to pay[1] to drive there at all. I definitely see the fixie (or really the bike in general) taking over from the car as a status symbol for some people. Driving a car through Soho marks you out as either rich or stupid or both, a bike has a whole set of other connotations about fitness, ethics, intelligence. The expensive ones also carry wealth sat us of course.

I think the point is, that while it's true they are often status symbols, there is a practical motivation behind them too.

[1] Congestion Charge - http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/congestioncharging/
First SF Bay RubyMotion Meetup