skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You used to be able to exchange salt, seashells, large stones for all these. Try getting someone to build you a house for salt. Gold could be worth 1/10th of what it is worth today (purchase power) or it could be worth x10 in 10 years. It's purely a speculative play, people pay more because they think someone else will pay more tomorrow. That's all it is.
It's typically faster than any Wifi I can connect to. So yeah, absolutely.
Thoughts on Working Remotely (from Khan Academy)
There's no implication here that Apple is ripping you off. It's just a calculation of the cost of the BoM which gives industry analysts an idea of Apple's bottom line.
Just because a skilled attacker can trivially find the information, doesn't mean that the 15 year old kid living next door to you can find it. Now they can.

The problem doesn't stem from giving information to "l33t hax0rz" but rather providing the key information that can be abused by anyone with a computer and half a brain. They are the ones more likely to make use of it in a widespread and destructive manner.

But with that said, most developers don't care if you tell them this stuff directly since it's simply information and not a proof of concept. Until someone starts using it and shows them that its actually a problem that is affecting their product they usually write it off as paranoia.
You seem to equate "foundation" with knowledge that's not immediately applicable. There's some truth to that, but I think it misses the forest for the trees. Knowledge is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to excellence in software development.

Think of programming like writing an essay. Clearly some knowledge is required; you need to include some information in the essay or it's completely pointless. But the difference between a good essay, one that persuades the reader, and a poor essay isn't in the information it contains. It's in the flow of ideas, the juxtaposition of opposites, the emotional connotation of a well-chosen word, the ruthless elimination of extraneous words. The quality of a good essay comes from the skillful presentation of ideas as much as the ideas themselves.

Programming is similar. It's hard. Doing it well requires more than just knowledge of syntax or data structures or algorithms. It requires identifying the essential elements of the problem at hand, extracting their essence and crystallizing it as code. It means writing code that so simple that it seems so obvious and unremarkable that anyone could have done it. It means being able to move up and down the tower of abstraction, from bits flying around in memory to the concepts and language of the business domain, and from individual lines of code up to architecture and processes. It's a skill, like writing or pottery or motorcycle maintenance.

Now from your "I'm fine" list it sounds like maybe you're not interested in excellence in programming per se, just in the business value you can create by programming well enough to solve your customers' problems. That's a perfectly reasonable. That's how I approach design.

But if you want to be a good programmer, to really master the skill, then you need a bit more than a few tools that can solve most problems, and being able to learn new skills just in time. Which is not to say that an academic education is necessary. But it does mean you'll have to learn things that aren't immediately applicable.

Knowing how to solve a problem 5 different ways means you can choose the best way for the current situation, knowing that the other 4 solutions will probably be called-for another time. I've been in situations where "slick stuff" was absolutely appropriate. (For example, I once solved some tricky timing issues in multithreaded code by using continuations. Another time I used parser combinators to drastically reduce the size and complexity of a family of parsers, and eliminated a lot of bugs.)

I'm self-taught too, so I get it. But I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the idea of building up a good foundation for your skills, if you're interested in developing them.
IANAL, but I'm almost positive they don't have to do this in the US.

In the US, hiring contractors exempts you from many of the taxes and liabilities of hiring employees, and they are also exempt from most benefits (their right to litigation against the company is also limited).

US readers will certainly be familiar with Vector (ie, Cutco knives) - they get away without providing any benefits/insurance, without reimbursing for expenses such as gas/phone bills, and with paying what often amounts to minimum wage because all of their salesmen are college students who are hired as 'contractors'[1].

Don't think I'm saying that contracting is bad - the same laws allow others to make very large sums of money working as contractors. It really just depends on what the setup with the company is.

[1] I may be confusing some of the details with other similar companies, but I know Vector engages in at least some of these practices, all of which are commonly practiced.
Well it was anonymous for me when I published this post today. Then some guy here on HN pointed me to the original link.
OT, but I'm intrigued by their business model.

I don't know the history, but currently, the Android app is free, and it says the use of the service is free for the first year, then will be $0.99 per year after that.

Meanwhile, the iOS app is $0.99 straight up.

Thoughts:

(a) "Free for a year, $1/year after that" seems like an awful long time to wait for a payday, but if it works, and you get lots of free users, I bet you get more conversions in the long run than with a normal free/pro app business model.

(b) "Free in one store, paid in the other" is an interesting idea. If you can build up a large userbase of free Android users, and it's an inherently social app, your free Android users will tell their friends on iOS devices to get the app so they can communicate. They probably don't even know it's not free. It's like unintentional affiliate marketing.

(c) I realize (b) might not be an intentional choice by the developers, but a necessity due to the App Store perhaps not supporting pricing schemes like the one in (a).
Not relevant to LTE devices AFIAK, but I bought my Android phone outright and have it on the $30/month T-mo unlimited data, text, 100 mins plan. Couldn't be happier with it. Amazed to think I was spending over $100 with AT&T before.
imo.im on iOS works perfectly fine with google talk and i receive messages when it's not running as well.
I like TextSecure, but it has one main drawback as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't hide who is talking to who and when. It only hides the message content.

I imagine a messaging app which works like TextSecure (as far as encryption goes), but integrates with Orbot (Tor for Android). Both phones would set up a Hidden Service so they can communicate directly, over the Tor network, over the Internet without an intermediate server.

That would be the perfect messaging system IMO. Not only would the message content be hidden, but who is talking to who, and when, would also be hidden. And it wouldn't require anyone to run a server to handle the messages either.

Please, somebody make this app.
Suckers! They could have held out for a billion.
HackerNode is free for a limited time only
> There is only so far they can go in fighting a court order.

And for Twitter the line is drawn where cost switches from salaried company lawyer's time to real money directly toward the fight. Lipservice is cheap.
Robots and humans could 'talk' via new software
you just need a win, 1 good experience every now and then to keep you overall positive.
Mars Curiosity Descent - Ultra HD 30fps Smooth-Motion
Check out the input method list on whatever OSs you use, and I expect you'll see multiple Chinese input methods. OS X 10.8 has 10, Windows 7 has dozens, a quick Google search shows that Ubuntu 12 around 13.

It turns out that, with over a billion people and dozens of dialects, many different writing styles, and a long history of different electronic input methods, Chinese speakers really do need multiple different ways of inputing Chinese.
You are simply ignoring reality. It's not a matter of twisting anything.

"The price of a commodity when sold in a given market."

There are two markets. There is a primary (unregistered) and a secondary (registered) market. This is a fact.

The price of a domain in the primary market is ~$10 (we'll ignore the fact some registries DO charge based on name quality - see .tv for an example of this). The price in the secondary market is whatever is agreed upon by the buyer and seller. There is NO set price, it's a normal functioning capitalist market.

Nobody is holding anything hostage in the secondary market. It's simply supply and demand. The domains are worth what someone is willing to sell them for and what someone else is willing to pay. There is no morality involved, it's capitalism in its purest form. You aren't owed anything and you don't owe anyone anything. There is a near infinite supply in the primary market for you to invest in. By using the secondary market you're acknowledging the value someone else has recognized before you in the primary market.

As far as it would still be worth $10 argument, that's laughable. As someone who has owned over a thousand domains and made a living off it, I've had domains earning thousands of dollars per month just being parked. You think those are still worth $10? That's idiotic. As far as the "besides anyone else" portion of your argument. Also stupid. Of course you will see a downward sloping demand curve for ANYTHING. That doesn't mean its worth the lowest value on the curve. Supply AND Demand. There are two sides to this simple equation. The supply for domain names is unique in every circumstance. You can't get another uniquename.com. You can get something else, but there is only 1 uniquename.com. So the owner is more than able to try and go for the highest point on the demand curve. (S)He only has the opportunity to sell once.

You're upset because you didn't/don't get what you want for an irrationally low price. You probably think its unfair someone else did get it, and that their time, effort and investment aren't worth anything. Well, I think your product is stupid and a waste of time, effort and investment should I get the domain instead of you after you own it? Would that be fair?

We may not get along but your argument is nonsensical. I will probably never change that line of thinking because people who think things are always unfair are bound to constantly look for someone or something else to blame. People who get shit done simply recognize the rules of the game and play to the best of their abilities.
I'd love to know how the author made the text larger/bold .. looks like a header tag <h1> but Throwww doesn't appear to accept that.
The term used was underemployment.
It's already been done. It is called "Family Plans"
Basically you're asking how much would it cost to make an iPhone from scratch, assuming we start with a hunter/gatherer level civilization. That's a pretty useless value, because that civilization cost is shared by many other things and amortized over a long history.

Prices, therefore, are only meaningful in a relative context, assuming a baseline, which is what this cost estimate is. And that baseline changes, which is why 1GB now is so cheap while 40 years ago it was very, very expensive.
Absolutely. One of the guys here at HP got one and within weeks our group owned half a dozen. No reason not to have one in each cube. I have an expensive mixed-signal scope that I used for LA before but now only switch it on if I have to look at analog.
My opinion - something so trivial as private data sent in plaintext isn't a bug or a security hole, it's bad by design. You shouldn't have to notify someone they've designed their app poorly. If he was taking advantage of a security hole, or something of that nature that wouldn't already be known to the developers, then I could see notifying them before publishing.
A search for "superconductor heat pipe" says Niven is right and superconductors can be used for super-fast cooling.

A superconducting wine glass that fits onto a superconducting cold spot on the table. Or a superconducting sleeping bag for those hot mosquito nights. (The sleeping bag also levitates on magnetic lines so you can sleep on air.)
But who watches the watchers... watchers?
You're over-simplifying what can't be over-simplified.

If you look at Apple's business holistically you'll know that their profits come not only from smartphone sales, but from a wide range of products. Do they have great profit results Q/Q and Y/Y in general? Absolutely. Does that mean others don't have the same kind of profit per smartphone unit sold? No. And that's the key difference between what we're saying.
Then I guess I won't be running Intel chips...that was simple.
I'm not sure who "we" is anymore. Smart people like yourself would not do many of the things we're seeing done. I think it's within your power to control the slippage at least starting with you. Again, the word is "tolerance". When will you say "Enough. No mas."?

If you need one, I'm happy to send you a UNIX (or simple instructions on how to build one) that does not have the complexity of Ubuntu but runs just as fast and does all the same stuff, sans the gratuitous GUI's. You can always add GUI layers later if you want them. My guess is you won't once you see how much faster things are, and how few processes you need to be running at any given time.
Don't upvote anything from BI from now.
I don't think egypturnash or grueful are saying that; rather, they're questioning how many TaskRabbit workers come close to that.

Let's look at Chris Mok, mentioned in this article as a top-ranked TaskRabbit who makes "up to" $1500 a week, but a Reuter's article from February describes him as making about $3500/month, which works out to 42k per year[1], far far below that weekly "up to" number. And so when TaskRabbit's Leah Busque says people make "up to" 60k a year, my assumption is that most are making much less, especially when a "top ranked" guy appears to be about 18k below that.

I'd love to know mean and median figures, at the least, but haven't been able to turn them up—which doesn't do anything to alleviate skepticism about the "up to" numbers.

Obviously if someone can make even 20-30k from this in a market where they can't find anything else, then it's a good thing they've got TaskRabbit, but I wouldn't really call that enabling entrepreneurship in line with the TaskRabbit PR message.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/us-peer-idUSTRE818...
Slicing Pie: Fund Your Company Without Funds
Idea is that by removing diving equity as an issue in startups, founders are more free to pursue it's goals. Mike outlines simple process of dividing equity in early stage startups. Covers a lot of scenarios. I found it very interesting read.

From the description:
"Slicing Pie outlines a simple process to get your business started even if you don’t have a lot of cash. In the early days you can use equity to get the things you need to start your company including help, equipment, supplies, rent and even credit."
This is actually pretty thorough for a youtube video. In 15 minutes, he did better than most professors explaining how limits actually apply to calculus.
Wow, one of the best articles that I've read in a while. Thanks.
I bitbanged an eMMC interface on a MSP430 - enjoyed it greatly but then we switched to a micro with a built in MMC/SDIO interface so it's just a memory now.
Source? Cheaper materials? Lower R&D costs? I see it touted a lot, but it stops there, as cheap shots in the wind.

I have a portable music player, phone, laptop, and desktops that match or beat competing Apple products.

I've yet to see that Apple spends anything close to other players' R&D. PR maybe. A lot of us are questioning whether the "Apple polish" is the extent of their "innovation" and it is anywhere the sink others put into R&D.
Review my startup, www.briefmine.com
BriefMine launched into private beta this week. We have a functioning prototype, but following the MVP methodology. We are a bootstrapped startup located in San Francisco.
BriefMine is a database of legal briefs, which we've applied natural language technology to. Our target market is solo practitioners--small-firm lawyers who can't afford more expensive services.

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Google Apps update alerts: Internet Explorer 8 support discontinued
Another similar project, SuperCollider: http://supercollider.sourceforge.net

And if you're on a Mac, Impromptu: http://impromptu.moso.com.au
I think it comes down to it being harder to make money on the android store and ease of piracy vs ios store. The market share / profit tradeoff ratio on android makes it worth more to be free. On iOS they sometimes make the app free too.
The notice is about IPv4 allocation, not about IPv6 market penetration. RIPE NCC has just begun allocating IPv4 addresses from the last available /8 block.
As to binary literals, there is a straightforward translation from and to hexadecimal. It might be hard to get used to it at first, but when you see enough of them you just know what it looks like in binary.
Apple doesn't strike me as a company to skimp on materials though. My initial assumption would have been that they struck better deals for sourcing materials and parts. They're in a damn good position to do that, so I don't see lower prices for what they need to be too far fetched.
The Windows 8 RTM Upgrade Experiment
You comment elsewhere about a $99k IRA. It was a $12k IRA.

He netted ~$8k from selling it. That adds a few months of whatever he was doing to come up with the part that wasn't covered by the IRA and bike.
For reference, here is a publicly traded retail mattress seller and it doesn't appear from their profile that they manufacture but only resell:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MFRM+Key+Statistics

Take note of the margins, this isn't Microsoft sized here.

They have almost 900 stores in 27 states.

The article therefore is based on the idea of manufacturing your own mattress and selling web based. Unfortunately this would require warehouses around the country and a manufacturing facility in this country to make the mattresses. Although I'm not sure, I would imagine it would not be cost effective to ship a mattress from China (although I guess Mexico is possible) because of the size and weight. So this is not selling sunglasses or fashion eyewear which can easily be manufactured overseas as well as easily shipped (and returned).
There is a very real difference between Über and the other two, but why does Sidecar feel any sketchier than Lyft?

The fact that you know both founders by first name makes me suspect. Someone without a conflict of interest would likely have said "Lyft has done a great job to make it feel like a friend is picking you up rather than some guy with a car to drive you from point A to point B."
I'm usually all for "responsible disclosure", but in this particular case, I don't believe that they weren't already aware of these issues. So shaming them was the right thing to do.
That $18.75/month buys you much more than unlimited data, if it's a truly unlocked phone.
Facebook is similar to people who still use hotmail. There are much better ones now, but they still keep the old hotmail account.
No mention of this on their blog (in fact, no new posts since July). And no quick patch that pops up a box asking the user to assign a password. Since it's tied to a phone number/SIM card anyway, you could easily offer a password retrieval option via SMS.

I wonder what happens if a phone number (the login) is tied to a different IMEI (the password). This can happen when you transfer a phone number from one provider to another.
It's not that easy to say Color is/was a dud considering that it is still around and has enough money in the bank to support its efforts for a decent period longer.
Unsucking Your Team's Development Environment
Thanks for the reply :) . That's what I thought.

At least she recognizes it, and I think she's slowly getting out of it.
I believe what you're saying can be true, but when apple hires Foxconn to build their products, they should assume (and expect) that Foxconn treats their employees decently.

If I hire a company to write a piece of code, at the end of the day I'll care more about the quality than anything else. I will expect and hope however, that everyone who's working on it is treated fairly.

I believe Apple does a their due diligence on this when picking their partners. And regardless of that, it's mostly on Foxconn to do the right thing.
Aren't they already 95% efficent. Not to much room for improvement.
Oh.. I see.. Markdown.. Here's a test of the stuff.. nice http://throwww.com/a/1hd
Why Google's an ISP: Data Mining, Controlling/Learning from Your Search/Activity
Here's the real reason they're doing this:

To guarantee that they will be able to learn from 100% of all internet searches/activities online.
Their business is making money off your searches. However, companies like Facebook, Amazon (and to a lesser degree in-app searches) are stealing that functionality from them. The more searches you do directly in Amazon (or in the future in Facebook ) the less Google will know about you, the less intelligent their searches will be and the less money they'll make.

However, if Google is the ISP, they'll be able to learn from EVERYTHING you do on the internet. Doing a search directly on Facebook? Google will watch that and learn what you (and millions of others like you) mean by your search terms and what's important to you. This will not only improve Google search, Google voice-dictation, etc but they'll also use it to make a smart interface into the Google Fiber TV and internet similar to what XBox now does. Google's looking to be your interface into everything, even before you hit your apps and websites. They're not trying to embarrass the cable companies/ISPs. They're trying to reinforce their information/search/learning monopoly.

More Info on Google and why they do what they do:

The Real Purpose of Google+ is Data Mining: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_was_never_a_facebook_competitor.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29

Google+: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/no-more-no-more-no-more-no-more/
In regard to 1 you may want to think of it in terms of percentage of internet users who are on Facebook rather than sheer numbers. My guess would be that Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook may have had similar percentages in their prime and as a result Facebook may be just as fragile.

The key driver seems to always be user frustration. Friendster was slow, MySpace had UX issues - for the masses (non-techies) is there something about Facebook that frustrates average Joe?
That's baloney. No marketing gain is wort it not being able to actually sell something, at lest if tons of people are crazy about what you are selling.

Yours is just a batshit insane conspiracy theory.
That and (to a lesser degree) the Bionic were absolute disasters of phones last year. And because they were the first LTE phones, they were incredibly hyped and moved a ton of units.

It's a real shame, because it turned a lot of people off of Android -- and deservedly so.
In Nevada they earn 13 cents an hour.

http://prisonlaw.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/prison-labor-and-t...

That's slave labor.
AT&T: Tethering is included (no additional cost, using your existing data pool) with the new shared data plans.
I don't want to think what beastly GPU I will have to buy to run next crisis on native resolution on ~150 dpi 21" monitor.
More requested than international payments? When is this coming folks. We need it yesterday!!!
Really? I sure would be. Luckily cops around here won't bother though unless you are extreme about it.