skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
RHT deserves some blame too.

As a result of Gnome, Linux was doomed to have two half-baked desktops which would make the Linux desktop, at best, the butt of jokes.

One of the biggest problems of Linux in the 1990's was that applications wrote directly to the sound device, so that only one application could play sound at a time.

The obvious userspace answer is to create an "X Windows" for sound, and it would have been OK if there has been an "X Windows" for sound, but there was also a Y, a Z, and some letters from Suess's "Alphabet beyond Z" as well.

This was unfair to app developers, commercial or open source, and it was unfair to users. Things are better now, but there was a long stretch when I just didn't bother to attach speakers to Linux machines because it wasn't worth the bother.

Finally, RHAT's worst problem is that it was so successful -- look at this chart!

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=RHT+Interactive#symbol=rh...;

RHT was successful because it sold to the corporate market, but that's a very dangerous market to aim for -- because a product that pleases corporate buyers typically causes endless misery for corporate users. There's just no reason for a company like RHT to do the slow and steady work to gradually improve a UI when it's selling lots of product to people who couldn't care less cause they'll never use it.
The article is not so much about unavailability of services as it is about lack of privacy.
Raspberry Pi meets Commodore C64 to create RaspCherry Pi
Watch a web-agency being robbed from all its iMacs in 2 minutes
Pousada da Terra – Serra da Bocaina
Wrong facts in the article:

"Torvalds switched to Xfce"

Wrong, he didn't switch to Xfce: "And for all the people wasting everybodys time with "Why don't you use Unity/KDE/xfce/xyz" - I've tried them. They are even worse"
https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/UkoAaLDp...

"GNOME 3.6 is out"

3.6 is not out. 3.5.90 is out, which is a beta version.
The opposite experience is also disappointing: once I bought a book with 1-click at Amazon (I was probably trying to find out how much the shipping cost would be) and was very surprised that it was really one "no confirmation, your money just went away" click. I'm very afraid of that button.
My friends use automated apps like Instagram, Foursquare, GetGlue ...... and many more. They are not spammy.
For you to have drawn this conclusion here, it seems you must have decided that either Tommy Morgan or mgkimsal (or both), specifically, are worse programmers than you. ;)
Great problem except there goes your leverage for the negotiation

Also shows the effect of patents on the market, the little guys either get bought for cheap or destroyed as soon as they have any sort of success
I think the argument here can be summed up as:

Don't shop at Home Depot, Amazon or Whole Foods. Shop at the neighborhood Hardware store, the corner Bookstore and the local Farmer's market (for tech.)
First Look: State, A Streams App Of The Future
The big question is: Is there a price point which will both see widespread adoption and make enough money to cover licensing.

I pay $70/month for cable, I would probably pay up to around the same amount for a free varient of usenet that could match the availability of new shows. Sports is a tough point, the main reason I got cable is for sports that weren't possible to get live on any other service. So if someone could nail on demand new shows and live sports there is a massive market opportunity there.
I'm sorry if I missed this, but why would you use make instead of bash?
It's the difference between being a temp and being a consultant.

Your friend thinks of himself as a temp, and thus is in a commoditized race to the bottom with with cheap labor overseas.

I'm an American freelancer, and so is everyone else I interviewed for my book (shameless plug, see my profile). We all make near-or-greater-than lawyer salaries freelancing for American companies. But we see ourselves as consultants, and are perceived as consultants. The value we provide goes well beyond being a warm body in a chair during office hours.
I agree it often seems crazy companies with no clear revenue model raising millions in funding but I'm not sure the approach of looking at each one individually and saying "it doesn't look like they could generate sufficient revenues to justify that investment" takes into account why they're getting the investment.

At such an early stage most startups are at best guessing what their main revenue source will be, the only thing they've demonstrated is that they're able to build something people want. My understanding is that the bet VC's are taking isn't that all or even most of them will work out a way to monetize this sufficiently to make a return on investment, it's that one or two of them will work it out in a big way and be successful to the point that they more than compensate for the majority of others which just about broke even or never cracked it at all.

If anything these investments are just an acceptance than no-one really knows what's going to work and one solution to this is to put money into teams which seem to be able to make something people want and hope that by allowing them what look like unrealistic costs to begin with, they'll come up with something game changing. Not suggesting that's the best approach to building companies but I don't think it's a completely unreasonable one.

The point's made a lot better than I can in this lecture (http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21869934240/peter-thiels...) from Peter Thiel's startup class (with Roelof Botha and pg).
Ugh, that's so weird, I've barely posted anything at all -- I'm not sure what to do in this case. Probably a mistake.

Thanks for letting me know.
Meaningful Play : getting gamification right
(german) Jon "Maddog" Hall about software patents, Microsoft and desktop linux
I did this in 1997 (!): http://home.wtal.de/ss/html/pnmtohtml/pnmtohtml.html
(Sample images and C source included).
"It's easier than stealing" is practically the Steam business model. This is also why iTunes and similar services "won" the music piracy race. Not to say that music piracy is gone, but it's been largely dwindled due to the low barrier of entry for obtaining music.
Wave Framework - an Open Source API-centric PHP Micro-framework
I believe the patent is for a specific implementation of identifying those intuitive gestures and generating corresponding user interface commands. That's what follows in the description of the algorithm and circuitry.
Why the GRE reading comprehension test is fatally flawed
It's both the first and second, and neither at the same time. It's Schrödinger's Pinch.

...
Making this comment pains me slightly. It's a comment I wouldn't have made on HN a year ago, pithy (I think) and slightly humorous, but I'm not bringing specific domain knowledge into the discussion to answer a question.

It's the sort of comment I would have refrained from making on reddit many years ago when I first visited, when I encountered great commentary from knowledgeable participants on the topic at had, and lurked.
Most of Usenet had nothing to do with files. It was a forum for discussion primarily, until it was overrun by spam. That and concerns over content in some "alt" groups led ISP's to drop the service.
congrat Sparsh

-- from Trung
iirc, for certain sellers you can cancel your order within a certain grace period. The 1-click could have an "undo" option to more easily revert if you didn't mean to click it.

But then they'd probably lose money from the people who impulsively click and regret.
> It costs about $20-35 US Dollars a month for Giganews usenet subscription

That's the only thing that keeps on confusing me when it comes to usenet. I don't get why people don't just use cheaper providers but flock to the ones with massive ads and referal links.
There are a lot of 10 USD / month providers without caps and the same retention.
I get that it might be easier just to pick the one that you're pointed at, but for a recurring 10-20 USD/month, it might be worth the 15 minutes or research.
I've said it before and I'll say it again (because Paras and his team deserve it): I tell people about VWO as the prime (and possibly, the only) example of an Indian startup with a truly global product.

Edit: Sorry, forgot Zoho.
I'm actually quite fed up with people portraying India negatively. Oprah Winfrey has done this and I am surprised at how this seems to be the consensus with the media.

Yes India has some issues with policy and infrastructure, however they are trying to sort this problem out. Have you heard of the 4g network that's a work in progress?

If you actually read the article you would know that non Indian wrote it.

"It’s a police state here in Delhi. Just finding a place with public Wi-Fi is a serious effort, and then they copy my passport."

Now hold on since when was India, Delhi. Do you even know what a police state is?

"Some want only a government-issued ID. Some insist upon an ID with a photograph. And there are some who have a fascination for your passport or driving licence – nothing else will do. I mean, just to check a mail, which will take 5 minutes, you have to fill in a form (particulars in a register) and submit a copy of a “proper” ID"

I live in the UK. I'm 27 years old and when I go to the buy cigarettes. I am asked for Id, only photo id will do. I have no driving licence so am forced to use my passport. Same thing happens when I buy alcohol and at bars clubs. Having to give my id to an arrogant bouncer who can blatantly tell I'm over 18 is greatly annoying.

Every internet café I have ever been to in the U.K has CCTV. the owners of the internet café also has to keep a record of all sites visited. Maybe India should take this big brother approach.
Live sports over NNTP is akin to live sports via email.
> lawsuits are based on actual damages

Not if it goes to a jury, cause apparently they're free to ignore the judges instructions on damages in order to "make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist... We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."
This for me is the crux of it.

You're not creating more time, you're moving your waking time to allow you to make better use of it based on fewer interruptions or whatever.

Early morning has fewer distractions than evening (nothing on TV, you can't phone people, e-mail isn't arriving, forums are quiet and so on) which is why it can be productive time for solo work, but you can't sustainably just take that time out of sleep without something (usually one or more of attention span, short term memory, general mood) giving out.
Organs-on-Chips: Rethinking the Pharma Industry
Looks like its getting great reviews at Amazon.com.
It isn't. Which is why it has this line in it -

[0046] It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention as claimed.
OK, my take on this is that I need a framework to operate within. The frameworks I have chosen are Weight Watchers because it gives me a daily food budget which I can fine tune depending on whether I think I am losing enough weight (0.5-1Kg/week). The specific food choices are informed by Glycaemic Index principles which ranks foods based on the body's glucose response and hence provides a measure of how effective the food item is at keeping you feeling fed. I get the impression that GI is not highly regarded in the USA, if so why is this?
If Neil Armstrong Had Not Returned From the Moon
Pinch to zoom is a skeuomorphic gesture, similar to stretching a slab of silly putty to enlarge a pencil drawing. There are only a few ways of manipulating the apparent size of a physical object, such as changing your view to make the object seem larger, or stretching the object itself. Any engineer translating those to multitouch would come up with similar gestures.

Also, when you mention that UX designers need to "protect" their designs, it sounds like you are arguing from an artist's perspective that all creative work "deserves" some kind of legal protection. That is what copyrights are for. However, this problem must be approached from an engineering perspective, as it deals with machines that serve a purpose, and can only be implemented in a very limited set of ways.
Startups Have Become Boring. Really?
> The small minority who actually takes the time to reflect on their own assumptions, is open to refactoring their own thinking and possesses the maturity to accept the wrongness of their own arguments?

Well, yes, that would be exactly the target audience of Less Wrong. Do you have a problem with that?

(Of course (1) posting this isn't going to make bad arguments disappear from the world and (2) someone whose goal is influence rather than accuracy or integrity may well prefer to go on saying things that, when considered as rational arguments, are very wrong; but so what?)
I'm so disappointed in you and most of the rest of the world. I'm glad you think the circus was worth what you traded for it, but it seems like a large step onto a slippery slope to me.
Ask HN: Site for volunteers to write software for academic/research
Would any one know of a site that academics can ask for volunteers to write software for research purposes?

I was thinking that there's a lot of science grads writing business software (like myself) who'd like to write technical software in their spare time.

Likewise there's a lot of academics/researchers who need some software written, and struggling to find someone to do it.

A web site could get the two together, anyone know of such a site? if not I was thinking of putting one together, but thought I'd ask here. Wasn't thinking of profit, just doing something technical that wasn't another orm/language etc.
I would be surprised if anyone actually manages to achieve true uberman sleep. Not only is it very difficult, it's also pretty bad for you. Despite all the talk to the contrary, it's not to you benefit to try to squeeze all of your REM sleep into 20minute sessions, and your body does need the other stages as well. Even if you were able to get to uberman some how, I don't think you could last for more than a week or 2 before you crash. When you consider the "fact" that it takes 10 days for your body to adjust to uberman (and those 10 days you are essentially a zombie), I don't think it's worth it.
I don't think that would convince anyone in #polyphasers, but my 2 cents from a medical perspective (I've discussed this with several doctors, including sleep experts).
What is interesting, gurkendoktor, are the observations you're doing. I'm curious, what do you make of the actual productivity of people trying to game sleep? Are they hyperproductive and want more time, or are they constant time wasters that think uberman will solve all their problems? or is it a mix?
FRAND terms in this case can only be "reasonable" and "nondiscriminatory" if they also account for copyleft, ceative commons, and open source implementations.
Diaspora team hands keys over to the community
I know a few people that do this and their argument is that downloading isn't the illegal part, the uploading is. Is that not correct?
I am not sure if India is a police state yet or not. I think tourists don't have it easy as they don't understand the country as well as the natives. If you are a native you do know how to get things done. However, it is true that India is on the slippery slope where its most important democratic institutions are slowly breaking down. The first to go was the media, an example of which was the media now running paid columns as well as the attacks on journalists who threaten the status quo. The next in line is the judiciary. While the top levels of the judiciary seem to be still untainted, the lower levels seem to have been corrupted. The Election Commision was tainted a long time back as well. All this is happening and most of the middle class is unconcerned at this stage.
Code rant: REST – Epic Semantic Fail
BBC iPlayer for Kindle (Cool Hack)
Please stop blaming Apple and start blaming the patent system itself. Samsung would have done the exact same thing if they had those patents or came out with iPhone first.
YC RFS: Things Built on Twitter [2009]
Mailgun is being acquired by Rackspace
The House of the Spirits
Irish Consumer Insight and the Social Media Challenge
congratulations Paras. Great bootstrapping!
I am a raving fan of VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com (VWO) and highly recommend using or trying their A/B product over any other. Paras truly cares about his product, responds personally to inquiries although I am sure that as the business grows he may not be able to do that as much. It was clear to me from day 1 as an early customer (1st test deployed Sept 2010) that he truly cares about his customer, listens to his customer, and works insanely hard for his customer as does his entire team; and you can not put a price tag on that, in my opinion.

Now go subscribe to VWO and take his team to 2000+ customers! It will be beyond worthwhile for your website and business. It has been for mine.

Thank you for building a phenomenal product @paraschopra and team!
Thanks Trung, good to see you on HN :)
I know that this request was written in 2009, but it's obviously not one that has as much potential with the recent changes Twitter has made.

"And the people at Twitter also want to encourage people to build stuff on top of it."

Funny, how that has changed so quickly. Sad, that it's changed so quickly.
StyleBootstrap.info now works with Twitter Bootstrap 2.1
Looks cool! I've been working on a Gantt chart using canvas: http://beefsack.github.com/gantt.js/

The example randomly generates some JSON which builds the chart. There are still a couple of bugs, but I hope to have stable release soon. The idea was to be pretty and to minimise dependencies, currently it depends on underscore.js and XDate, but I plan to factor those out.
Why not just call it business development? Why do we need the word "hacking" as part of what has been the way businesses grow?
Kayako, FusionCharts, BrowserStack, FreshDesk are other great Indian software companies that I admire. (The first 3 are bootstrapped too, as far as I know).
TRASH (or) TUMMY
Rackspace acquires Mailgun (YC W11)
Then why are you doing it?
I believe the reviews are bad because of people's high expectations. This is essentially an interview transcript. Most PG interviews are laid back and most Andrew Warner's are about getting the information out rather than creating a documentary. That combination gives an informative video, not a book.

This is still a good read for a short flight. Definitely better than the 2-star rating Amazon has for it.
Ten pricing lessons from cartoons
C++ Templates - What is a variadic template function?
Craigslist quietly begins testing maps
More detail: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-appl...
I'm in as well (in TA for another month or so).
So the boot process which is required, by design, to allow you to modify the list of keys... allows you to modify the list of keys? Not really sure how that's "turning the tables on Microsoft".
That's breathless headline BS. The actual statement is quite clear that to keep making progress they'd move on from what was bogging them down and come back to it later.
Thanks James! I remember you being one of the earliest customers of VWO. With expanded team, we're baking lots and lots of interesting new features. But I will make sure the customer experience remains #1 priority even as we grow :)
Come October, I hope OEMs come to their senses and not foist this mess upon us.
They'd lose more money from people training themselves to never 1-click, or to disable it (if possible) due to this one-time negative experience.
Understanding Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
Yeah, it's a shame that poor formatting is so irritating. It's not hard to format a book properly.

That said, I didn't think it was all that bad.

UK link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paul-Graham-Funding-Interview-ebook/...
I would love to see the innovation leave the USA. It is horrible policy that has turned most innovation efforts into stupid legal crap instead of productive enterprises.

But I haven't seen anything about other countries taking advantage of the USA's failing. Is there evidence of that? Where? It would certainly be the wise thing for others to do. We need innovation. If the USA is going to make innovators lives a hell of courtrooms just give us somewhere else to send the innovators and let them create elsewhere. The USA can sit in its self imposed innovation free zone if it wants.
> If you actually read the article you would know that non Indian wrote it.

Dead wrong. Jawed Anwar wrote it, a ToI columnist. He just quoted Soghoian's tweet and used that as linkbait. I posted this article on HN, without the question mark as heading, because this is one headline where Betteridge's law would not apply.
Using Opengl 4.3 from Python
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting the movie studios can have a movie that "never recoups their cost" and yet they somehow make money off the enterprise. I am not saying they don't occasionally take a bath on a bad bet, but they do well most of the time (the percent of break even or better is much higher than they like to admit).
If one part of your argument is refuted, but the others stand, you should simply acknowledge your mistake and point out the remainder of it is still valid.

Pointing out flaws in your argument is not "the worst argument in the world". It's logically valid, whereas the worst argument in the world is not.
OnLive's founder leaves cloud video games service
It isn't so great if as soon as you go earn your living a bully comes and takes what you earned. Yes, when you have nothing before your job, you might see that person walking away with a paycheck and think I wish I could be the target of some bully. Once it happens it ain't so great.
I suspect so many users will reject the new OS out-of-hand and demand their tech-savvy friends install whatever, whether it be Linux or a previous version of windows, that we are going to see a particular set of tools instantly become very popular, and a lot of tech-savvy people complaining loud enough to the OEMs. Eventually OEMs will be confronted with a hard choice, and they may or may not choose to do what end-users demand.
Go where we have never been before - with Hadoop
I don't know about that, you know.

Just because there's a minor zooming bug in iOS, I wouldn't say your iPad is totally unusable.
You Don't Need a PhD To Innovate
Great overview!

One thing that would be great to add to the overview (if you´ve still got the demo files) is how large the download is - it´s one of the things that spoke against Bryntum's solution (over 2 MB!).
The rec.games.roguelike.development group still has a surprisingly active and helpful bunch of folk on it. I check it every week!

(Actually most of the rec.games.roguelike branch is fairly active, but RGRD has a special place in my heart)

Ever since google groups changed formats (earlier this year) it has been really great at eliminating spam too, which has had a positive impact on activity, as far as I can tell.