skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Better and worse.

One thing I sorely miss is printed documentation -- especially the (unix) permuted index. Even today, I'm convinced that I understand and remember information better when I can hold an actual book in my hand as I read.

Long before internet access was available for what the NSF used to call "commercial traffic", we were already connected to each other through store and forward networks like uucpnet, FidoNet (fight-o-net), and WWIVnet.

Instead of an ISP, you'd connect by modem to a BBS (TAG BBS ftw!). And for most BBSs, only one person could connect at a time. If you were a user that meant you'd have your terminal program (Telix was my favorite) set to keep redialing across several BBSs till you connected to one. Sometimes you'd be redialing for most of the early evening before your modem squawked and squealed which meant you'd finally gotten in.

The BBS itself, was just some hobbyists computer. And the Sysop (system operator/owner) may or may not have participated in one of the aforementioned store and forward networks. If not, there would be local discussion boards, file download areas, and usually a few doors (games). Popular games I ran on my BBS were Tradewars and Geopolitics -- and like everything else, it was multiuser but only one person at any given time.

Being a Sysop had three main benefits: [1] it was fun; [2] US Robotics gave you a sweet deal on a high-speed modem; [3] whenever you were sitting there connecting to other BBSs (thus tying up the line) people just assumed the busy signal meant your board was more popular than it was.

For those of us who were writing software, there were usenet newsgroups like comp.lang.c and FidoNet echos like 'the c echo' where we could discuss and trade code with people around the world.

But honestly, I spent far more time reading talk.bizarre than doing useful C-related stuff.

That little edge though -- having easy access to other people from all over the world, made me seem far smarter at work than I really was. That, and being able to read a man page...

Can't believe that makes me an old-timer :-(
Restrictive in scope? Enable the mouse, press i and as long as you don't press
escape it will be the simplest text editor you could want.
It's true: roughly every other version of Windows is awful.

Windows 95: Bad.

Windows 98: Pretty good.

Windows ME: Awful.

Windows XP: Good.

Windows Vista: Errrrr. No.

Windows 7: Sweet!

Windows 8: ...
The OatMeal facebook page said that second $33,333 donation pushed it to the finish line.
In my case, items fulfilled by Amazon get my first look and a small price premium, due to convenience in shipping. Just another data point from the customer side.
Internet Radio Station, Free Online Music | 977 Music
You're forgetting Windows 2000. Regardless of how good you consider it to be, including Windows 2000 would break the alternating good/bad pattern.
It could definitely hit a huge sum of money, if people who weren't just Indigogo and Kickstarter lurkers got into a campaign for funding it. Celebrities, big names in all kinds of industries could come together for something that's so obviously compelling.

I mean, look at what Kony managed to get people to do, and that wasn't even a proper cause.
ASK HN: To all employers on HN
If you have a web-based tool that connects job applicant with potential employer by tapping into vast and trusted social network of the company’s current employees and alumni. Using in-built and customizable parameters it quickly narrows quality of potential match. Would you use it?
Way to rain on the parade of a great story by introducing some contradictory facts!
I love this. Congrats Kyle, Michelle and the whole team for:

a) Going through these types of negotiations with your loved ones (not just close friends) and trying not to water it down - or give favors. There are many people, that I imagine, might want to get an extra few pts of equity just because you both are going to be married soon. So Kudos on keeping it professional.

b) Making this entire transaction as transparent as you did. I am shocked at all the details you guys laid out.

The only thing I would have loved to know is what Michelle was being hired to do.

Is she a developer, business development, graphics person, what?
and windows ME
I'm trying to work out the best way to back-up my NAS to the cloud just in case my house burns down. It's really annoying how lots of cloud storage solutions dont cater for home users with a NAS. I agree that this could be a good, cheap way of backing stuff up.
No apology needed.

It was very well said and not at all inflammatory.
See also : http://wpremote.com
Interesting that most of this boils down to 'its different'. Learning a new window system is always taxing on the brain because our brains code repeated movements into our muscles so we don't have to think about them, when you change the rules and have to re-train muscle memory its harsh. I give the guy credit for giving it 8 months.

That said, on the 'preview' edition I loaded you could simply turn off the UI formerly known as Metro which gave you a kind of windows 7 plus experience. Nothing I tried forced me to use the Metro UX if it was disabled, now I'm curious if this is not true in the released version.
Y Combinator S12 Demo Day Batch 4
Announcing PrefixedJSONKit
I think technically Win2K lived in the branch known as 'NT' so there was Windows NT, W2K, and then merged back at the Vista point (and made usable by Win7) point. The timeline as presented would be accurate for a 'home' desktop user.
Well, there's this: http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/16/3246185/this-is-my-next-wi...
I think I see what you're saying. And that actually sounds right up my alley, truth be told. That characterization reminds me a little bit of Plan9.

I say it's up my alley because lately I've been paying particular attention to folks like Rob Pike and Rich Hickey. (I'm sure there are more.) I am not sure they'd agree with this characterization, but they're both part of a movement to simplify programming, especially by cutting out excess and complexity.

Go is an example of a more straightforward, modern C, complete with strong concurrency primitives, first class functions, duck-typed interfaces, abundant literals, etc. I'm still learning about Clojure but I started looking at it after watching Simple Made Easy and The Value of Values, both of which espouse a somewhat different form of simplicity. Still, I think it's animated by a similar line of thinking, that we as a profession are hurting ourselves unduly by building so many systems we struggle to understand and/or maintain, and one way in which we do it is through both the technology we use and the way in which we use it.

The JVM/JIT bit might go over my head, but I'll be sure to check that out, as well.
Do you have plans to cover university student systems? Ours has been "promising" API access to data for nearly 5 years...
Having extensively used Windows 8, I completely agree with every point raised in this article. Using Windows 8 on the desktop might actually be migraine inducing. All of these little pain points build-and-build to utter frustration.

What I find disappointing is that Microsoft has essentially stopped trying to innovate on the desktop. They built a tablet OS, slapped it on top of their desktop OS, and are forcing desktop users into it to ensure they get the eye balls they require build a new app ecosystem.
> anyone remember NetWare?

I was a CNE (which means I was a badass at at NetWars)... Btw, I still think syscon was amazing.
Oftentimes donation in support of museums would be tax deductible since the recipient in a 501(c)3 non-profit. I don't believe this is the case here.

Regardless of status, since the 'donor' is getting something in return it's a moot issue.

Edit: Thanks jaredsohn. I wondered as I typed that. One of those words I say, but rarely write.
I just have a website that sells people websites. What do we call that?
As much fun as Org/Arch is, I'm thinking we can leave most of that and ASM behind, as well.

Not totally behind, but committing a semester to them as a course is what hasn't been working.
If a company with the ability to make games as well as PopCap is being forced to lay people off, what does that say to the entire space?

Between news like this, Zynga's share-price plummet, and the general "tech bubble" sentiment out there, the social gaming world is in for some serious turbulence. Consider this the bellwether.
I'm not really sure but I guess you're right, posting again would not be really useful, because a Show HN would only show a "launchrock" page for the moment.
Maybe after improving the website or starting the kickstarter campaign you could come back here and ask for feedback ?
mute -> moot
I pretty much agree. Especially for power users it sucks. Here are some strange points:

- I can't run multiple instances of visual studio...

- IE in Metro doesn't share cookies/settings with IE in desktop mode...

- Closing apps is awkward... Drag them downwards (WTF) or use ALT+F4 (no, leaving the open in the background is not an option, it will clutter my alt+tab menu).

- Start menu gone, wtf? Yes I do use it, and yes I do still click on it with my mouse to find certain things. The new search is worse... If I want 'windows update' I first have to click where I want to search for 'windows update' (and if I can't remember the name of what I'm looking for, this doesn't even work).

- I want to leave windows partially open (not fullscreen) so I can see other things on my screen (download progress, file copy progress, etc.). Again: not possible in metro.

- I can't get rid of the mandatory password/pin.

These are just a few of the annoyances I encountered.
What a brilliantly original and scientific insight.
Trying to follow the logic here. Keep getting stuck. The problem appears to be that folks feel like the term "startup" is abused and watered down to the point of being meaningless. Admitting a self described content aggregator (from one source!) into the club helps out how?

I think it's awesome this individual displays the ability to generate $10K in free cash flow per month. (I edited this as it sounded snarky when I read it back) The more you widen the definition the weaker the definition becomes.
Interesting, but my reaction is, I'll just pick my favorite (if any) and not worry about getting the special. It's not worth buying one I don't really like just because it might turn out to be free.

On another note -- would really like to be able to pull up some much larger images of the shirts.
I tried really hard to do something like this for note-taking (outlining) with VIM-style keybindings, but it never made it off the ground. Kudos to you for finishing (or, depending on your perspective, maybe just starting) this :)

In fact, my recommendation is to take this interface and apply it to notes. There aren't any good modal outline/note-taking editors out there, as far as I'm aware.

While I do like the interface, I think it might be better off as a primarily JavaScript app that syncs to the server, instead of having separate server-rendered pages for the notes. Would feel much snappier (even on a server that isn't being hammered by HN traffic ;])
It's funny how frustrated the few Windows 8 boosters are starting to sound. Either Microsoft is recruiting astroturfers from YouTube comment threads, or their evangelists' vocabularies are regressing to that of a 7th-grader.

Guys, guys. Listen. Calling people "dumba$$" is not going to convince anyone to use your new OS. OK?

Nor will demanding that people learn new keyboard shortcuts in the year 2012.
It didn't need to be different.

My desktop PC is not a tablet.
The list provided focuses on consumer oriented OS's. Windows 2000 was a decidedly business only OS. They didn't merge as the user facing front of windows till XP.
I think you are over thinking, overreacting, and being excessively negative, and I don't at all agree with the logic that led you to interpret this as a scam. You're looking at it from the perspective of buying a design that you don't like in order to win one that you do, but it doesn't make any sense to buy something that you won't use (entirely negating its value) to win something of equal value. Why wouldn't you just buy the product that you want in the first place? You're paying for the shirt you want either way.

In reality, the concept is very simple. You are buying a shirt, with a chance of getting a shirt for free depending on how the sales go. That's all there is to it. Is it a perfectly designed and executed marketing gimmick? Probably not, but any perceived deception is a result of your personal paranoia.

You may feel that paranoia is too strong of a word, but I find it quite appropriate to describe a fear of "getting ripped off" by purchasing a product at its advertised price.

A few other things. The price is $19 not $25. The brands are listed. The sale is 3 days, not a week. There are no previous sales displayed on the site, so I'm not even sure how you came to the conclusion that there will only ever be 5 designs.
I've refined my method for learning new languages and it works really well for me.

1. Thumb through a basic book on the language. Skimming through syntax, language structure and other nuances that separate it from similar languages that you have experience with. Skim through examples but don't spend much time on them.

2. Pick a project and go.

Refining your knowledge in the language is, in my opinion, simply a matter of time. Use the language, learn the language and get better at the language.
> It is obvious that the government amassing all the more data for it's citizens impacts personal freedom, from privacy, to dissident control, to squashing protest movements etc etc.

It may be obvious to you, but that's a pretty handwavy dismissal. Once again, please explain how a government knowing biographical/demographical information about its population impacts personal freedom (or more importantly, how reliable identification impacts personal freedom in a way that unreliable identification does not).

>And a few decades ago, before prevalent credit cards, it was not a right someone would defend, it was what everybody assumed to be the normal situation, unlike nowadays where almost all financial transactions are tracked and catalogued.

Tracking and cataloging financial transactions is not just an integral function of a bank, it's the definition of a bank. The term "bank account" long predates credit cards, and for a reason: banks keep track of the money you've put in and taken out, and what they've done with that money inbetween.

Old school, small town banks identified people by gasp facial recognition; it's just that their facial recognition happened to be manual. And if the bank manager didn't know your family, you were probably out of luck. Reliable government-issued identification made credit available to people who don't have "roots" in any particular community.

It is never and was never good business to make a loan to someone (accept a "promise to pay") without a means of extracting that "promise to pay" should the debtor choose to break it. If you're going to make the outlandish claim that one could anonymously take out a loan before the advent of the database, you're going to need to prove it.
6 top tips to grow your business
I agree. Windows XP which is still floating around in so many places is actually not all that easy to grasp for someone who has not used a computer before.

I recently installed Ubuntu on a laptop for my grandmother who is in her 80's and has never used a computer before. All she wanted to do was to type up her memoirs. When I told people I was installing a linux distribution for her, everybody told me how difficult it would be for her to use.

In reality, this is for a person who constantly holds the mouse upside down, doesn't understand the concept of clicking and dragging to highlight text, etc. Now try to tell her to launch an application by:
- clicking on the little "Start" menu
- navigating through a menu of tiny items
- reading each one as she goes
- making sure to not accidentally click on something which will open up the wrong program
- click on the little "x" in the opposite corner when she accidentally opens up the wrong program
- etc...

Her Ubuntu machine automatically opens up gedit in full screen when she turns the computer on, autosaves every minute, commits to version control every five minutes (in case she accidentally deletes everything then it autosaves) and turns off when she closes the laptop lid.

Yes, you could do this in windows, yes, the default interaction paradigm of Gnome 2 is similar to windows, Gnome 3 is strange, unity is different, etc.

But the point is, if you have never seen any of them before, they are frustrating and difficult. I still don't know how to correctly navigate a save dialog in Windows 7 on the rare occasion I'm using Windows. I have been using Gnome3 for a while now, and I finally understand how it works and is meant to be used (for the most part). That doesn't mean I think its awesome, bit it gets the job done.

Now that I've been using it for a while, my brain doesn't have to work so hard to get stuff done.
Australia and Canada both offer a points based immigration system, which allows you to move to the country even without a job offer lined up.

For example Canada requires 67 points. You get 22 points for a university degree, 16 points for speaking perfect English (another 8 points if you're fluent in French), 21 points for four years of work experience, and 10 points for being between 21 and 49 years old. That's 69 points and enough to qualify for a visa, even without an employer.

Australia has a similar scheme. I'd say concentrate on your language skills, so your preparation for the TOEIC is the right path. I would try to find out which tests are accepted by the immigration authorities in these two countries and go for that.

The UK used to have a points based system, but that ended in 2010.

Good luck!
Are you using clone in a negative way? I don't think workflowy has a lock on outlines, One could say that workflowy is just an emacs org mode clone except on the web
I came expecting to see TaskWarrior ( http://taskwarrior.org/projects/show/taskwarrior ). I was disappointed.
And Windows 95 was most certainly not "Bad" compared to Windows 3.1x, unless you personally redefine the word "Bad" to mean "A godsend."
Google-sponsored free WiFi coming to US malls
The Interlopers
Running multiple instances of VS (or any other desktop app) should work the same as before (shift-click on taskbar), not sure what was happening there.
I seem to remember what appeared to be a relatively independent academic debunking a great deal of the pro Tesla/anti Edison Oatmeal discussion which resulted in a very animated rebuttal. I wonder if this is just an extension of that challenge in some ways.
To be a hacker? I can thoroughly recommend Steven Levy's book on the topic. Generally in the 'way back' times a computer is something you visited at work or a large university, once the notion of having some computation of your very own broke (mid to late 70's) those machines limited what you could do by the resources available. Once the PC sea change hit and machines with MMUs became practical for people to own it got a lot more interesting the things you could do at 'home'. The decade between 1985 and 1995 was one of 'oh wow, look at what I can do' and always buying a new machine every year because it was so much better than last years. When the world wide web became 'the thing' in 1995 it really was a sort of magical.

Better - you could know all there was to know about your machine / OS / App.

Worse - you knew all there was to know about your machine / OS / App.

Basically once you hit the information wall you had to stop, now it just keeps on going and going and going what you can learn.

EDIT: (added because its the way I think of these things)

The 'ages' of computers:

pre-1975 - Out of reach for everyone except people with a job or research project that could justify access.

1975 - 1985 - The 'microcomputer' era, like amateur radio, people getting wildly excited about building computers with fewer resources than a Atmel ATMega328P for under $1,000. But they could be programmed, and they could "do stuff"

1985 - 1995 - The 'PC' era, where the coolness shifted to software, and advances in hardware lead to more resources for more complicated code. Anyone could write a compiler or an OS or new data base.

1995 - 2005 - The 'Internet' era, and one of the first mass extinction events :-)

2005 - present - the 'Appliance' era, where the emergence of folks who don't care one whit about programming or technology have to have a computer to do daily tasks.
I was coding for my old Amstrad CPC 464 in my tween years. I distinctly remember not having access to a firmware manual, or the funds to purchase one.

So when I wanted to know how something worked (say, the cassette data interface) I'd write to Amstrad, asking for the relevant documentation. They'd then photocopy the wrong pages from the firmware manual, and return them to me in the enclosed S.A.E. I'd then write to them again, explaining what I wanted, and they'd send a different but still wrong set. We'd repeat this several times, with a lag of weeks between each iteration.

I also learned a lot from listings in magazines. Each monthly edition of Computing with the Amstrad would have program listings (games, utilities, lessons) in BASIC and Z80 Assembler. One could figure out a lot about how the machine worked by careful inspection of those listings.

Funnily enough, I remember spending entire evenings at the tender age of 9 and 10, coding away without any distractions like email, web, music etc. I might have been more productive then than I am now :-(
Hope it works better than the Google Wifi in Mountain View. That's become pretty unreliable...
This reply made me smile, and is such a great example of why it's so hard to trust anything we read on the Internet, anywhere. I don't know which response to believe, if either, and don't know why I care so much either way.

Edit: A little coverage in VentureBeat http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/19/health-tracking-app-needto... I just had to check. :)
Sometimes it's not a website. When you make an app, the App Store really plays a big role in both promoting and selling it. I just wrote about how to get your apps promoted there:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415473
I agree. Think we're going to see more and more winners among lean, bootstrapped developers with good profitable niche ideas, esp as this recession continues.

Sacks makes solid arguments though, as it relates to web startups. Trying to make it as the next big thing among venture-backed internet startups is becoming increasingly high-risk and extremely saturated, startup activity in non-internet tech sectors will probably be more interesting and rewarding over the coming years.
Disregard my questions. I just skimmed the section on windows management and it is as I feared. I don't really understand the Metro "intention(?)" for pcs(and I actually use and like Gnome 3 as my daily driver).

I haven't used Windows 8 yet so pardon my possible silly questions.

What's the experience of a Metro app on a large screen monitor...always fullscreen? The app is either running or not? Multiple Metro apps displayed/running simultaneously? Is Metro on by default for "pcs?"
The way the periodic table is arranged depends on choices made by humans. It could just as easily be a simple list (your first description was 'all elements nothing between') with no groupings. What distinguishes elements is the number of protons - the choice to then arrange the periodic table by other attributes is a human one, just like the choice to label creatures with six legs 'insects' is a human one.

and all your experience is with what they call "soft sciences"

Ah, the meat of the problem. You're prejudiced against disciplines outside of physics.