skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How the heck did this ignorant post reach the top? It's as if YC readers are tied to the horse and buggy whip and refuse to do any actual reading about the state of electric cars today. I personally kicked gas over six months ago and haven't looked back.

The 600lb battery on my 2012 Nissan Leaf will weigh 350lbs and store 25% more energy in the 2013 Leaf using the new lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide cathode (NMC) battery chemistry. Not only does it weigh less than most automotive engines, but it also costs much less when the total cost of ownership is considered, including replacement at eight years. They already ARE an order of magnitude better than the car I bought and I'm not dissatisfied with my car today.

http://insideevs.com/nissan-ceo-carlos-ghosn-second-generati...

For the record, I cannot imagine a case where the 280 mile range of the Model S would not be enough. Your car does not need to go 1000 miles without stopping for awhile. If it does, catch a flight or rent a car. As I pointed out, I could afford a limo for road trips for the amount I'm saving on gas.

Also, I heard the major disaster and blackout excuse even before the hurricane happened. The problem everyone fails to consider is that it takes electricity to pump gasoline. The pumps are not siphons and they do not continue to operate without power. Electricity infrastructure is a superset of gasoline infrastructure.
It is a nice article. Interesting read for me as a male programmer. But this line kinda caught my eye under the "Gender-advantage" headline:

"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."

This is a problem.
A very refreshing reading to which I fully agree and recognize my self as a hacker now such in a shit job for years. I don't know if I can recover from that since I'm getting 50. I'd love to try working on interesting and challenging problems again.

At 15 I built my own computer, at 17 implemented a disassembler for 6502 processor with pokes, and at 19 the symbolic assembler still with pokes. These where saved with tape recorders at the time. At that time I bought a book containing the raw disassembled listing of the ORIC Atmos Basic 'OS'. I spent my free time finding out what each function did and documented it, as fun. It felt like what decoding ADN and genes might feel today I guess. Pure hacking. etc.

The reason I "failed" is the lack of entrepreneurial culture in my family and educational context, or meeting a lucky opportunity. There was no Internet at the time which would facilitate meeting other hackers.

My advise based on my experience, is if you feel like matching the hacker description of Paul Graham in this essay, go run to find and join other hackers, ASAP !!! Start with open source projects for instance which didn't existed in my time.

If you don't do that you'll suffocate and get crunched under the pressure of "mediocracy". It's a concept I had plenty of time to develop based on the analysis of my working context. Maybe one day I'll write an essay about it.
Algorithm Predicts Circles of Friends Using Contacts Data
Is there a way to change the field of view angle? That usually causes/prevents motion sickness in FPS games.
(Resolution is not the same as Size. Resolution = pixels per inch; size = number of inches. OK?)

The interesting thing about the Galaxy Note is that as it moves the slider between the 7" tablet and 3.5-4" smartphone sizes it hits an interesting sweet spot. It's obviously better than the regular phone at displaying text, albeit not as good as the 7" (which is roughly the same display area as an A-format paperback book -- this is not a coincidence, IMO). But it's vastly better than the 7" format at being a mobile phone: the separation of microphone (at bottom) and speaker (at top) make the 7" form factor something of a non-starter for voice calls unless a headset or speakerphone system is used. (A curved 7" tablet, mimicking the shape of a traditional phone handset, might work better as a phone, but would be far less pocketable.)

So my guess is that phablets will have a strong niche market among people who do a lot of textual/web work on the move but don't want to carry a phone and a tablet around. The real issue this opens is text input -- how to do it best when your device is uncomfortably large for one-handed use, but too cramped for two-handed -- and the pen is a relatively elegant solution to this, whatever Steve Jobs might have thought about the "scribble thing". In some ways it may make sense to view the Galaxy Note as the logical descendant of the Apple Newton (beefed up, different OS, added phone/internet functions) than of the regular Android/iOS multi-touch phone lineage.
How Airlines Are Getting Back on Track After Sandy
I think the sales of these and similar phones suggest a combination of two things that Apple may have underestimated:

Bigger screens are better

A lot of people want the biggest/most powerful phone that they can comfortably afford, use and cary around. Higher end androids have been growing in average screen size from the starting point set by the iphone.

Diversity = Choice = Good

Among those people who want big phones, there is diversity in pocket size, hand size, purse size & willingness to carry things around. Look at the other stuff they take with them. A lot of women carry around a big purse, for example. It might have 3-4 things bigger than a note in there that go everywhere. I choose a wallet for slimness. My mother's is a good 10X bigger than mine. If you carry around a wallet the size of a brick, a galaxy note is not an issue. When I wear a jacket, I can comfortably take a nexus 7 or kindle with me everywhere.

By committing to a single model Apple gains a lot. But, they also need to target a low common denominator for size. I wouldn't be surprised to see an iPhone 3', 4', 5' at some point.
...and pigs can fly, if you throw them fast enough.

This is just an encoding of a Turing-complete language into another, I don't see what's been demonstrated here.
When you say it fits comfortably in your pocket, how physically active do you tend to be?

Personally I have small kids so spend a bunch of time running around after them, bending down to pick them up and tidy up after them and so on.

Do you think a Note is compatible with that or is the size such that it fits comfortably if you're walking around normally but much more might be a problem?

EDIT: Thanks for all the responses. Food for thought muddying my already unclear thoughts on what I want from a tablet with what I might want from a phone.
If that were so, then they should've doubled those numbers by now - 32GB for $500, 64GB for $600, like the competition is offering. This is especially needed on the bigger iPad with the much higher resolution, where apps are now 2-3x the size they were before, and their new textbooks are huge in size (2-3 GB each).
I think that this is an interesting area. We can support just about any style in an existing programming language, but there are often rough edges.

This reminds me of how I used to mimic OO in C years ago. At a certain point you realize that you have to forgo certain things to help the person coming after you avoid making mistake -- often they do not see the ramifications of your conventions.

I see this in Ruby right now when I write in a functional style. The code is often terse yet easy to read, but the lack of lazy evaluation makes it far more memory consumptive than code written in a straightforward procedural style. If you know you are making the tradeoff, it is fine. For many people, it is too subtle.
Shit, I totally missed that, thanks!
Welcome to a new START
Latest models of Smart Phones, Tablets, and High-end Laptops are common objects of many Maldivians households today.
But then you can't get the extra $100 out of those who'd pay $700 for their tablet as they top out at $600.
Is the main benefit from TDD something else entirely? (Author posting)
It's called price discrimination (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination).

Windows does it with their entire operating system/office line - student licenses are the cheapest because it's all they can afford (otherwise they just pirate - since value to them is so low), home the next (same reason), then the office, then corporations (they can afford a lot - and they derive a lot of value).

You charge what people can afford in terms of value to maximise your profit and increase your chances of continuing to supply said value (or not) into the future. Apple sells most of their tablets very competitively, but they know that there are plenty of people out there who get plenty more value, and are perfectly happy to pay up. So to extract these profits they create stacked price/entry levels to actively help those who can afford overpriced memory and perceive large amounts of derived value to happily pay up for it.

Value perceived/extracted and not the price of creation are what's important to consumers in non-commodity markets and the suppliers who supply them.
Is there a way this scenario can be coded in any other way than:

---

while(moneyGotSoFar < targetMoneyToget)

{

// code to interface with hardware device which
// is taking in money
// NOTE: moneyGotInThisBurst would be told by the
// hardware device software

...

// some time out code. And exception handling if
// no cash entered
moneyGotSoFar += moneyGotInThisBurst;

}

---

So point is, the developers may not think upfront of these kind of cases. And this case can be a boundary condition test case - May potentially test any array overflows. Or some looping done the wrong way. Or out of memory if it has been coded in Java(Oops. Sorry :-))
I remember reading a science fiction novel based on a similar idea perhaps 20 years ago. It was pretty good.

http://www.amazon.com/Redshift-Rendezvous-John-Stith/dp/1880...
> You know in the soft sciences everyone is a quack because fundamentally they don't practice - wait for it - science.

I wonder if you know you're being ironic here. Plenty of us have never even read Chomsky's political works and have been exposed to him solely through mentions in the CS literature, like the Dragon book, or more in-depth stuff on his theory of context-free grammars. There is a startling amount of proof that he not only writes about politics but, at one time or another, actually worked for a living and helped our field produce useful stuff.
How Amazon Exploits Small Online Retailers
Open office plans seem to be considered "hip" these days. The fact that it's cheaper probably also makes it easier for the founders to ignore the lessons from Peopleware.
If they're really on about consumer-friendly numbers and reduced choices, then why not offer the biggest memory increase they can give with reasonable profit margins? They could offer to upgrade from 16GB to 64GB for $100, still making a decent profit while reducing the number of device options.

No, this is simply exploiting people for excessive profit.
I didn't say "anything anyone says to her sexist", I said "assuming women can't code and hence must be a designer is sexist".
Isn't it too early to count iPad mini as a Vista-level failure?
Broken link --- try http://blog.olafssons.com/post/TDD%27s%20Redeeming%20Quality
I'm not that old but I remember that, back in the days, functional meant just that you are able to use plain functions (without objects) and pass them around. By that definition, C is functional language, as scheme or lisp or javascript and many others.

I don't know why, but some years ago, "functional programmers" started to change and twist the definition of functional language step by step, until all those languages fell off and only Haskel remained as "functional enough".
Well, to be fair, I'm 6'4" with a 36" inseam and my pants have big pockets... so I don't think that would be an issue for me (I have 2 as well). Part of my usage case, however, is that when I am home, the phone is rarely in my pocket. I tend to keep my phones on the island in the kitchen unless I'm using them.

At work, I do a fair amount of bending/squatting as a computer tech and I haven't had to shift it around at all. It's thin enough that it doesn't seem to get in the way.
He acknowledged this:

"I can understand paying a nice premium over what you'd typically pay for flash memory, but it gets a little ridiculous when you're paying five times what you'd normally pay."

However Apple adds an awful lot onto the price for upgrades. When I bought my iMac a while ago, the only difference between the two 21.5" models was one had a 500MB HDD whereas the other had 1TB. The difference in price was somewhere in the region of £250. It will have cost Apple maybe £20-30 more for that extra price yet they charged around 1/4 of the original price for the upgrade.

In the end, I just got the 500MB iMac. It was a great machine and worth every penny, it's just a shame that they sting the customer on upgrades. When I bought a Lenovo laptop a year or so later, they too were pretty expensive to upgrade (battery, CPU, HDD), but nowhere near the premium that Apple adds.
The interesting problem with "cyber security" in this country is that the field generally sucks, same with IT. The large problem is that none of it has bite.

I work for a company that contracts for the US gov. I can tell you right now that the government has its shit together. They have some very strict requirements which SHOULD be inherent knowledge to all IT organizations but it is not. The field is largely thankless. As long as people on the "business side" continue to get in the way nobody's going to want to stick around long. And on top of that you want to underpay them?

If the government wanted to crack down on security they would audit all of their contractors and drop contracts if they were out of compliance. Te business types have yet to experience this so it's not well known in the circles yet.
Linotype: Letterpress game engine for Ruby
Verisign Blames Google For Drop In Domain Registration & Renewal Rates
Bigger screens are better is a stretch. This is selling less than either the iPhone or the S3 both of which have smaller screens.

While someone somewhere will buy a phone with pretty much any screen size you can name, there are going to be demand peaks around certain sizes. Where those are will take a few years with more choice to become clear, but the fact that the S3 out sells the Note (both well reviewed, similarly functional, same manufacturer so otherwise pretty comparable) suggests pretty strongly that demand for "phone" sizes is still greater than "phablet" sizes.

And I think Apple get that choice is good - the iPad Mini is a very direct representation of that, ditto the fact that there are now three different iPhones. They're not throwing out phones the way Samsung are because there are other trade offs in doing that, but I think they get that not everyone wants the same thing.
M the roman numeral = 1000, MM = 1000 * 1000 = 1,000,000
SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote is fine (we are based in London)

We are looking for a full stack developer to help with our MVP. Prefer Ruby on Rails and Backbone.js experience.

Please reach out on hs2012mvp at gmail dot com
Their pricing strategy is simple - make the maximum profit possible. Apple is a premium product and the upgrades are there to get more money out of the customer. The relationship with the value received is tenuous.
As someone who doesn't want to buy the Note, but intends to buy a 2nd generation Galaxy Note 10" tablet next year, this makes me happy because they will get more 3rd party support for their S-pen. However, I still wish I could buy a Nexus 10 tablet that would work with an active Wacom pen by default, and I don't think that's possible right now - is it?

I know Google introduced the active pen API's in Android 4.0, but I'm not sure what that means exactly. If I buy a 3rd party active pen, will it just work?
Erik answered right. It's not to make a political point. It's their entire worldview. The problem is just insular thinking within that political movement that electric cars are toys that are doomed to fail. Also, A123 and Ener1 battery makers failed, so they refuse to see that some companies are succeeding. The trouble is that they "eat their own dog food."

Even Mitt Romney claims to believe it, but Texas Governor Rick Perry drives a Volt. When I mention that Volts are outselling the original Prius by over 2-to-1, conservatives argue that it's purely government buyers who are forced to buy them by President Obama.

Try explaining to Romney backers that the backlog on the Tesla Model S is in the billions and that their candidate is wrong about the company.
Crisis in Intuition
> Apple is now spending roughly a third as much as Microsoft does on research despite generating roughly 50% more revenue. Apple spends roughly one half of what Google spends on research, despite having almost three times the revenue!

Apple is, however, a company that makes things; in general, you'd expect lower research spending than software companies.
I imagine it would be quite difficult to have working multiplayer relativistic mechanics. So far, I can only see single player mechanics working, which would restrict the appeal of such a game.
I always enjoy this whole "iSuppli estimates the cost at $X whereas Apple charges $X*3(ish)", like Apple should feel bad about saying "You want more space? Fine, pay $100".

You don't want to pay the extra? Don't. Get a 16Gb device, I have for both my iOS devices and I'm reasonably happy with it due to Dropbox/Box.net having a decent clients that allow me to expand my space concerns outwards.

The argument that they should charge less when people are willing to pay is ridiculous, they should charge what the market will pay, which in this case is $100 to move up the storage scale.

EDIT: Possibly this should be a separate comment. In the fashion world there's two well known UK clothing companies who occupy slightly overlapping markets, but with incredibly different price points. The material costs are roughly the same, stores in similar locations, staff wages the same and so on. Both have their products made in the same factory, by the same people. One charges about 2-3x for their products than the other, the other charges a 40-50% markup immediately. That's just how luxury goods economics end up working.
But 3x the cost from manufacturing to full price retail isn't terribly unreasonable.
You can't compare the generated revenue like this. Apple is selling a lot of hardware. Microsoft as well as Google are selling very little hardware.

Thats a bit like comparing the revenue of a real estate agent with the revenue of a developer selling apps on the app store. A developer of a simple app making 200k revenue / year has probably a higher profit than a real estate agent with the same amount of revenue. Selling one house to a client costs you 200k and you get 3% of that… Does this make sense?
That's probably a very niche market. They can either skip the $700 one for a year, or make it $800 for 128 GB, which should be acceptable for people wanting 128 GB of storage.
Can we please stop using the term phablet before it catches on and actually becomes a thing? It hurts my eyes just to read it. There must be better words for this form factor.
it's just a fact that at the moment a girl working in a software shop is more likely to be a graphic designer than a coder

Yes, it is accurate to say that "statistically a new female hire in an IT shop is likely to be a designer, not a coder". It is factually accurate to say that, but is it right and moral and nice to say it?

Words can affect people, and set tone and expectations. Is it right for all us men to presume, unless shown otherwise, that the new female hire is not a coder? Will this help or hurt our industry? Every little teeny thing (like presuming this (which is a teeny thing)) can be detrimental and can build up. "Death by a thousand cuts", "Straw that broke the camel's back", our society recognises that sometimes lots of little things can be Too Much™ sometimes.

Would software/the company/society be a better place if we didn't vocalise these presumptions about women, especially if it reinforces negative stereotypes about them?

After all, we all know the mistakes that can come when a female starts getting bigger and we ask "Are you pregnant?". Manners say to be careful here, let's apply some manners, rather than fetishising statically accurate deductions, to presuming women aren't coders.
That has nothing to do with premium/non-premium. Thats called "good business". Even with a low-cost product you try to maximize profit, but in a different niche.
Phone in the same pocket as your keys!? shudder
It does, and I'm using it.
For the sake of productivity...
Tabphlet? Like a leaflet ?
New Android 4.2 Panoramic Camera ported to other phones
What does proprietary mean in this context? I'm sure it can be copied/implemented by for example gcc if they were interested.
Is it even a game? It seems to me like a very interesting simulation but I don't see game design there...
"First, an admission: I preordered an iPad Mini. But I wasn't happy about the price I was paying."

The author kindly gives you permission to bail on the very first sentence. Lesser pundits would bury that much deeper.
What is "excessive profit" in the context of a luxury item? We're not talking about price gouging for disaster relief supplies here.
No-one mentioned "seeing an eastern european with a mop". To expand on my analogy, if you met an eastern european/etc. at the company Christmas party, asking "so are you a cleaner?" is presuming negative stereotypes based on race/ethnicity.
He hits the nail on the head in the first paragraph. He bought anyway. Apple will continue to use unfair pricing because people are willing to buy it, even if they complain about it.

I'm frustrated by the fact the MacBook extra RAM/SSD is so expensive compared to manufacturing costs. But it's my only option, so I am going to have to pay it now aren't I?
Sorry for being off-topic, but why in the world would the net filter here at work have blocked this as "adult content?"
British Telecom do extensivly
That was REALLY lazy math and it shows. Run the numbers for real or don't even try. I'll even give you an accurate spreadsheet.

http://www1.extension.umn.edu/environment/energy/vehicle/
My GF has a Note I, she has the sims game on it. When she whips out the Note and fires up the sims in gorgeous 3D her girly friends all drool. It is a fantastic bit of kit that fits in baggy trouser pockets fine, or in a handbag. She puts that and her kindle sandwiched together in a little purse thing. Personally I find the text a little bit small on it.
Why Baumgartner's record dive almost didn't happen
I'd just like to express my astonishment and disgust at the fact that there are people who defend sexism and prejudice in this day and age. People like you make me ashamed to be human.
After reading all of this again, it strikes me that she works with a LOT of sexually frustrated nerds. She says she has to be careful not using her appearant super power of girlyness too much to manipulate the nerds and such stuff.

Is this seriously the reality somewhere, that coders are 99% sexually frustrated super nerds? I always considered that to be a old stereotype :P
The issue here is that you aren't a candidate to work for small bootstrapped startups. You can tell this is the case by the unfavorable results you get by working for them. Startups get talent by partnering with the right people. I can't imagine a good excuse for a startup involved in embedded systems not to have an embedded dev on the team.
That is nasty as hell, and I'm surprised it's even legal: the expected default would be to charge in the local currency and let the card issuer handle the conversion.