skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I understand the argument for Nexus 7's screen, but I think I'd still rather do web browsing on the iPad Mini. Web browsing is pretty awful on my Nexus 7. In landscape mode there may be 800px of vertical resolution but it doesn't feel like it, because there's so little physical space. At a reasonable zoom level there's just not much vertical space.

And many web sites (Facebook is an example) go into mobile mode, so the browsing experience is total garbage. As far as I can tell there's no way to force the browser to use desktop mode by default... I can go through a many-tap sequence to do it page by page, but who has the time for that?

I'm sure there are tweaks and hacks I can do to improve that stuff, but out of the box it's not a device I'd want to browse the web on. The iPad, on the other hand, was a joy (I owned the very first iPad for about two weeks and then sold it because I'm poor).
It's impossible to bootstrap a hardware company. You need capital, otherwise you'll never get out of the tar pit that is small-scale production. So hardware companies will always be much harder than software companies, if only for this reason.
Anecdotally, I stopped using my old 10" Android tablet in favor of my new Nexus 7 precisely because the screen resolution is just as high, but smaller and higher density, such that reading things is just as easy, but holding the device is now far easier than before. I've already used it many times for reading and even signing PDF's related to selling my old residence, and I haven't had any complaints about the process so far.
Amusing that it's hosted on Github [1].

There's also Gitorious, which has been around a while and is mature, full-featured, and provides both a SaaS [2] and the FOSS software you can host yourself [3]. I keep backups of some of my repo's there.

[1]: https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq

[2]: http://gitorious.org/

[3]: http://gitorious.com/
Venture Beat and Pando Daily are also good resources. All three tend to run the same stories within a few minutes of one another.
I was referring more to the paperwork :P
Way to try sweep it under the rug by announcing it during all of Apple's product news. Classy act Zynga.
Nobody said anything about breaking laws.

EULAs are technically legally binding contracts, and breaking them leaves you liable in civil court.
as an owner of both a Nexus 7 and an iPhone 4S, I just can't ever imagine Android catching up in terms of app quality, most likely due to fragmentation in their ecosystem amongst peripherals and because of less stringent quality standards.

iOS is simply a more polished, user friendly environment.
Not a big surprise, especially after having spoken to a few people that have worked at Zynga before. High turnover of employees, quality over quantity, etc. Can't say I'll miss their products or their techniques.
For $129 you could buy most of your frequently used apps on Android.

But already being tied into iTunes is a huge momentum.
It's a call that was being made (only) when the page loaded.
iPad Mini has a lower resolution so you will actually see less of the PDF although the text might be slightly bigger.
One thing I am really curious about is the bezel size for the iPad mini. Mathias Duarte gave a huge exposition about carefully laying out the bezels for lots of comfortable holding angles with the Nexus 7 in his interview, but the iPad Mini has only a fraction of those bezels.

So one of the following is the case:

1. Mathias was BSing to make lemonaide from the lemons of the slightly odd looking screen form factor. The Nexus 7 could have been smaller or had a bigger screen. The iPad Mini is easy to hold.

2. Mathias was right, but only considering the weight of the Nexus 7. The reduced weight of the iPad Mini still makes it easy to hold.

3. Mathias was right, and the iPad Mini's design is more about photo ops than daily use, and users will tend to accidentally tap when they hold it.

I'm really curious here, because device design is something of a mysterious art and I have enjoyed watching the different schools of design play out.

UPDATE, "iPad mini intelligently recognizes whether your thumb is simply resting on the display or whether you’re intentionally interacting with it. It’s the kind of detail you’ll notice — by not noticing it."

So, software. Which means that it'll be fine for reading, but probably not fine for gaming where there is a lot of input sensitivity required. That may explain why the bezels on the top ends (for holding it in portrait) are more conventionally sized.
Hmm, my comments don't really reflect this, but I agree with you. I think the end result of a system like this would be that software patents would be next-to-nothing worthless and people just wouldn't bother, except perhaps in the cases of truly innovative works of software (I can't even think of any worth patenting right now...).

Would Apple really file their rubber-band scrolling patent at a value of $1bil, then pay some multiple of that per year when it's so easily avoided by their competitors? Probably not.

And if they do then more power to them. But it would put an upper bound of the amount of silly patents that a single large company could file and maintain (think IBM, MSFT, Apple, etc). Right now it costs a company hardly nothing to file all these and maintain them but they have a huge potential upside if your competitor steps on that patent landmine.
Aptly put. Well done.
Some well informed still think that it is a great deal.
They need to normalize this against the general amicability of the population of the countries.

Ask them if they like North Korea and Canada and use that as a general idea for if the country's citizens just happen to like everyone.
Additionally the A5x was a really expensive chip to produce. It didn't have the graphics power to drive the retina screen so they just threw silicon at it. It had twice the die size as the Tegra 3:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5685/apple-a5x-die-size-measur...
I imagine this data came from the "allow this app to access XYZ of your information: YES/NO" thingy that pops up when authorizing apps on these social media platforms. The only payment to FB that I can think of would be in the form of marketing costs (or does FB have a developer membership cost like Apple?)
My girlfriend broke both her wrists a few years ago. Now they both give her troble and one thumb has nerve damage. She has travelled the world with her 1st gen ipad and never really thought about replacing it... But I bet she will now inside a month.

She's also a physio who fits and customizes wheelchairs, powerchairs, scooters and the like. You would not believe how many of her clients carry an ipad, often in a custom mount, for all the regular uses plus assisted communication, home automation and the like. Give the size constraints I would not be surprised to see the ipad mini become an 'industry standard' there too.
> Apple highlighted the fact that there is a severe lack of tabletized Android apps.

There are two issues with this claim:

1. It's less relevant for smaller tablets like the Nexus 7

2. I haven't personally seen any lack of Android tablet apps. I have an Asus Transformer Prime, and I use a wide variety of tablet-optimized apps on a regular basis. Sure, some niche stuff is missing, but the big stuff is there already.

Edit: another point to make is that unlike iOS app development, if you use the new Fragments paradigm introduced in HC, it's very easy to make a tablet version of an existing Android phone app. You don't need to have an entirely separate app.
Small quibble back: unless you're specifically looking for 16GB instead of the entry level, the comparison is valid. Apple doesn't let you pay any less than $329.
Samsung to stop making LCD displays for Apple
> The bezel seems really thin too, how are you supposed to hold it?

In your palm. See here http://www.apple.com/ipad-mini/overview/
Blocking the entrance to a NYPD building.
Dan Primack at Fortune puts out a daily newsletter called Term Sheet. It's focus is broader than startups and VCs. It also includes private equity and other institutions. But it's a fantastic way to stay up to date on major deals across all industries and sectors.
Can anyone comment on why password-less ssh-keys are bad? ("#11: Never ever use passphrase free key (passphrase key less) login.")

I usually figure that it just generates some random number based on the time + salt and that is more secure (brute-force attack-wise) than any silly password I could come up with myself.
Toys, toys, toys!

It's all about toys!

I want to see iPhone controlled toy tanks with cameras and laser sensors, so me and my brother can kill each other without moving away from our desks.

I want to see usb telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, stethoscopes so my kids can play scientists.

I want to see more e-toys so kids grow more interested in technology.
I'm not sure why people expect Apple (or any company) to simply ignore potential advantages their products have over their competitors'.
New iMac has Easy-To-Access Memory Panel
I tried doing this with some case studies in graduate school - any open sourced OCR is very difficult to deal with.

Of course, this was a couple years ago. Can anyone recommend a library or API that offers a decent OCR?
I was watching a CNet livestream where the commentators were absolutely livid about the announcement. I don't have a tablet of any kind so don't feel strongly either way, I was just curious if their anger was felt by others.

It doesn't seem that it is.
The Windows Phone UI is not the same as the Windows 8 UI. They have similar visual aesthetics and some shared features, but the interaction conventions are actually pretty different.
What I like most about the Nexus 7 is the soft rubberized backing. I'm not constantly worried about scratching it, I can toss it around more, but it doesn't require a bulky, obnoxious case. Have you seen those sci-fi movies where people just have tablets laying around everywhere, like people have documents and books laying around now. That's what the Nexus 7 feels like.

Most every other computer, tablet, smartphone has to be managed. I have to worry about where I set it, where the case is, where it's plugged in, whether I'll drop it, etc. I don't feel that way about the Nexus 7.

I'd rather have iOS and the iPad's battery life, but I don't want my tablet to feel precious.
Apple doesn't seem to be pricing this against competitors, but rather themselves. A price point less than $300 would cannibalize their full-size iPad sales.
sorry for those who lost their jobs.
meanwhile I'm happy to see any gaming software company die in the dust.
Apple unveils iPad mini, new Macs at California event
A smaller Apple just fell from the iPad tree.
I'd like to humbly request that popular science articles geared toward the general public refrain from using the word "theory" in the non-scientific sense. This article even includes the phrase "only a theory"!

I know there are more syllables, but can we start using the word "hypothesis" when it is correct to do so?

It's hard enough combatting anti-science ideologies and repeatedly having to explain that the word "theory" doesn't mean what you think it means. Please, journalists, stop making it even more difficult by using the non-scientific connotation of "theory" when you mean "hypothesis".
Electronic sub-contract engineering isn't new.

Recession hits these companies hard, because of the costs of stock; labour; etc, and because volatility of customers makes long term planning tricky.

And, really, the components that are common over many projects are cheap. It's the stuff that's specific to a build that is expensive. The PCB, the case and tooling for the case, the connector (sometimes), these are the big costs.
> The iPad's screen is a much higher quality IPS display than the N7.

Says who? The N7 is higher-resolution and is also an IPS display. As for the plastic, at least it doesn't scratch...
Good stuff! Used it to get around SF all weekend. App itself is easy and pleasant to use, routing is fast and responsive. The countdown timer is awesome.
On the plus side, the situation is much less dire than it was back when Mozilla first made the argument against H.264. WebM is a serious alternative, and if MPEG LA tries anything funny, people will be able to switch.
I'm unhappy that my iPad 1 is essential on it's way to brickdom.

I had bought it planning to pass it on to my toddlers as it reached about 4-5 years old.

Unfortunately I don't think there will be any supported iOS 5 apps at that point.

I may have to jailbreak it just to get a newer version of the OS on it at some point (assuming that someone gets the newer OS working on it).
I was considering the possibility of selling these emails to a spam email list, but then realized that since so many accounts' email addresses were changed to FOO@facebook.com, the value of these 1MM facebook accounts has diminished rather significantly in this regard.
You may certainly be correct, but part of your viral coefficient is likely driven by continued usage of your application. As such, I guess there are two ways you could go about it:

1. Spam user's social network on sign up;
2. Send out periodic blasts about progress/offers as the user continues using the app.

The first method will likely net you terrible reviews and negative sentiment, while for the second, an exploratory mode wouldn't really hurt you. The key would be designing exactly when and how the sign up should be. For example, maybe after 5 days or 5 app opens (whichever is more), the app loses functionality until you connect. It'd be different for every app. For games (or gamified aspects), you could just incentivize sharing.
How scientists recreated Neanderthal man
Man Made
Yeah. Because their products are crap, right?
Apple has good marketing for good products. Some think they can skip the first part.
Not trolling, but what apps do you miss on the N7? All the apps I use on my phone I have on my N7. Admittedly, however, I use neither for gaming and photo apps pretty much exclusively on the phone...
Yes, you're right. There's some terrible Ruby and Python coders, and some of the best programmers in the world use PHP.

However, this post was aimed at non-technical people. If you don't know much about tech, and try to hire PHP programmers, the quality of talent will be very variable. If you stick with Ruby and Python, your chance of finding someone decent is much higher.

Likewise, in almost any market, the price of an hour of Ruby/Python coding is going to be greater than an hour of PHP coding.
They weren't comparing RAID tapes against RAID HDDs, just RAID Tapes against normal HDD
Well, first, I applaud any efforts to improve/disrupt/whatever the rental market in this town, which is just comically awful. This sounds like it'd be exactly the kind of thing I wanted the last time I was looking, but ended up having to give up on at the time.

But - I don't actually see a solution there. You've got a very apt description of the problem and of what the solution would look like, but I do think there's a big leap from identifying those to actually going to something that works. The critical point to get past is of course actually having a number of interesting properties listed on your site, which requires overcoming the awkward network effects inherent in that market which the real estate agents obviously have a massive interest in perpetuating.

But don't let me get you down - I'm a bit cynical about this after my last experience flathunting, but everyone I speak to hates the system at the moment and would love something better. There are a ridiculous number of real estate agents in this town which implies there must be an awful lot of money in the market - ample room for someone to seriously undercut them while offering everyone involved a better deal.

Best of luck!
Someone invent a screen that can change size already, sheesh.
That's nice spin but what you're essentially saying is they are price gouging based on their current market advantage. If true that is pretty short sighted. I'd love to hear what the actual reason than the high-than-expected price -- maybe it's as simple as everyone else is selling at-cost -- but I highly doubt that reason factored in at all.
Zynga is such an horrible company.
http://gigaom.com/mobile/daily-android-tablet-sales-nearing-...
Would you use a library or framework that dealt with some of the browser issues? If so, what kinds of things would you be looking for in such a framework?
If those were equal, do you think Microfoft would catch up or overtake Apple?
I have the same reaction the other companies are taking towards apple products nowadays: Meh.
> I'm guessing you didn't watch the keynote. Apple highlighted the fact that there is a severe lack of tabletized Android apps. So, an iPad app vs. what is essentially an Android phone app, the information density is actually much greater on the iPad because its app are actually designed to utilize the space.

This is the big issue for Android tablets at this time, hence why the Android team have been pushing tablet design videos and documents lately. During the press conference for iPad mini, when they were showing iPad apps side-by-side with unoptimized Android apps, I think it highlighted just how bad the situation with developers ignoring the Android tablet space, esp. since some of the apps shown put a big emphasis on high quality apps in the first place.
Which do you prefer: paying an extra $120 just because it's Apple, or buying a Nexus 7 just because it's cheaper?
While there is some marginal amount of class mobility, property ownership in the U.S. is correlated almost entirely with privilege. The more white/rich/male/citizen/straight/cis/typical-bodied/neurotypical boxes you can tick, the more likely you are to be a property owner.

The fact that you think Mitt Romney owning property is "just ownership" while the children of, say, a non-citizen Native American who came back across the Mexican border in the 90s to his ancestral lands in San Diego county are "just non-property owners" is absurd.
When facing a strong competitor, you have three options:

Innovate. This is hard, and if you aren't skilled enough to pull it off you end up with something inferior to the original.

Create some kind of gratuitous differentiation. If you're not qualified to innovate but you want to be seen as not copying. This is the worst option IMO.

Copy the leader exactly. (Hello Samsung!) This is what you should do if you can't afford to innovate (and if you can get away with it).

Unfortunately, open source developers who are too proud to copy but not skilled enough to innovate in UI is what leads to bad software.
Not true actually: a urine sample from 1999 was tested later on (after they had developed the test for EPO) and found to be positive. Also, he tested positive for cortico-steroids (which was annulled with a and he also produced 2 separate "adverse" test results, (which basically indicates a physiology way outside normal, but isn't a confirmed positive)- one of which he is accused of bribing officials to cover up.

For the purposes of hacker news at least, it's fascinating to see someone who so thoroughly gamed the system and got away with it. He methodically covered all the angles and was basically able to operate with total impunity.
Does anyone have an opinion on whether Google's purchase of On2 makes any sense now with hindsight?

Did it affect the behaviour of the MPEGLA in any way? I know some of the tech has fed into WebRTC but that battle is far from over.

Was On2 worth the cash?
Compared with what the iOS teams are doing, it is.
Do you even need an app for this level of information? I feel like a crawler could look for this information for users with low privacy settings on their accounts by successively going through friends' friends' friends' ... about pages.

edit: refuted by Permit's comment below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4688893
Request for startups: Fix conference booking
Farmville was a blatant ripoff of Happy Farm - it just happened to be the first clone to hit the U.S. market from China and be successful.
That's irrelevant, the practice is illegal as it violates the right to privacy.
The Qubes project is interesting in some ways, but I think they're trying to do too much in one go, and as a result the final product doesn't seem very practical. For example, applications can't use hardware accelerated video according to their FAQ [1].

So pardon me while I braindump...

It would be an interesting project to integrate an Android-style permissions permissions system(possibly using SELinux) complete with per-application virtual filesystems (using FUSE) into the system package manager. So, for example, you install a music player, the package manager sets up a virtual filesystem for it that lets the program see its own configuration directory and your music directory, but nothing else. The package manager asks if you'd like to allow network permissions to the music player (for downloading album art or whatever); if yes, a firewall rule is added specifically allowing that process to access the network, if not, none is.

One problem with that kind of system is that a lot of end-user desktop programs are written with the assumption that the entire home directory is fair game. I'm not convinced that's really necessary, though. In case a program occasionally wants to access a file outside of its normal sandbox (say, you just downloaded a podcast into your downloads directory and want to play it with that music player I mentioned previously) you could always have the supervising program ask the user if it's okay to temporarily add that file to the program's sandbox. If it happens in an expected way (e.g. the user clicks on a media file in the file manager) you could safely grant access to the file without explicitly asking the user.

Something like that, on a distro using Wayland as the windowing system (to avoid the gaping security holes in X), would provide 90% of the security that Qubes does with significantly less inconvenience to the user. It would still require a good deal of work for the package maintainers, but perhaps a distro like that could implement something like the AUR [2] so users could do a lot of the packaging work for peripheral packages.

[1] - http://qubes-os.org/FAQ.html

[2] - https://aur.archlinux.org/
Raven - Java build with Rake and Gems
This I would also like to know.
I use this quite a bit. Also displays named captures with values which is nice.
This isn't really the place for an in-depth discussion of Mormon doctrine (and I don't really have the time today), so feel free to email me if you would like to continue the conversation.

But I will quickly correct a few of the mistakes in this conversation:

* There were black members of the Church before the lifting of the ban on the priesthood.

* Though Brigham Young characterized the priesthood ban as a "cursing" he was very clear that the priesthood would be available to people of African decent at some point in the future.

* Not being ordained to the priesthood never meant that blacks would be excluded from salvation. Through the practice of proxy ordinances for the dead, Mormon doctrine has always made clear that all would have the chance at salvation even if denied the opportunity to have the priesthood during this life.

* Limiting the priesthood, or even the preaching of the gospel, to a specific family is part of the Biblical pattern in both the Old and New Testaments.

* Though there was clearly some racism in the Mormon Church before 1978 (and probably still is today), the people I know who were part of the church at that time say it was limited. The official position then, as it is now, was of love and acceptance within the limitations they felt the Lord had set.

Conversations such as this one are valuable, but be aware that they tend to oversimplify complex topics.

A great book on the topic written by a black Mormon who joined the Church before 1978 is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Blacks-Mormon-Priesthood-Setting-Strai...