skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't easily find your real name, so I doubt you're completely apathetic about privacy. (Mine is in my profile.)

In normal unrecorded life, you can make a fool of yourself and nobody will care after a couple weeks. Online, things are different. Your embarrassing mistakes are preserved forever. Google crawls and indexes them so that everyone can see you at your worst.

The same is true if you're being recorded. Would you like it if everyone you met knew about your fan fiction? What about a time you got drunk and made an ass of yourself? There are many things that are legal, but embarrassing. Privacy allows us to present a socially acceptable persona while pursuing bizarre or embarrassing interests. Until we get people to expand their idea of "socially acceptable", we need privacy. Without it, mavericks would be punished even more than they already are.
Imagine if everyone got this angry whenever they noticed a CCTV camera. Imagine putting up CCTV in your store and all your customers started ranting about privacy and left, or called the police. It'd be amazing. There would be no CCTV.

Wondering how we can get people this fired up about privacy in other contexts.
Although that's true in principle it's a little idealized: HTML5 development on mobile is still a little half baked and impractical. You only have to look at Facebook's massive abandonment (at least temporarily) of that platform in favor of the native API.

The whole point of the article is that while there are more paying customers in the iOS world NOW, it's unlikely that the situation will continue to be true given the current trends.
More shipment based speculation with little regard to actual sales.

For me, the biggest difference between Mac vs PC, and iOS vs Android is that Mac and PC are mostly comparable. iOS and some Android phone/tablets are comparable but a large majority of cheap Android phones are not in the same market as iOS devices, and for me - not comparable.
I completely understand that. My point was that Google has to keep searchers happy or they have no product to sell advertisers. In that sense, the searcher is a 'customer' (you may like 'user' better) that Google needs to keep happy in order to maintain its product and keep it's real customers (advertisers).

That said, the greatest search engine in the world isn't that great if no one uses it. Search volume (and advertising platform quality) is what drives advertisers to Google. If their results suck, users will use something else and lose the product that Google needs to be able to sell to its customers.

(You can say the same thing about the rest of their products as it is all about collecting peripheral demographic information that allows advertisers to directly target them on the content network).
"I expect most developers will be wanting to develop for Android first by then"

I doubt it:

- Owners of Android handsets on average have lower disposable income than owners of iOS devices. On top of that, a lot of Android phones are in developing countries.

- Most Android handsets run an old version of the OS and will never be updated, thus limiting the choice of APIs that developers can use.

- Many Android handsets are used as dumbphones, their owners will never download apps.

- There is not one main app marketplace for Android, and not all Android users can use the same marketplaces.

- Few Google Play accounts have credit cards linked to them. Amazon is in a much better position, but Apple still has more credit cards on file.

- Google makes developers pay for chargebacks.
A different approach that takes the social network graph into account is presented on http://www.celebs-vote.com
Racists in Italy Are Few And Stupid, Balotelli Tells TIME Magazine
Possibly the fact that the creator(s) of Android don't (directly) make any money out of the sales?

Every Apple phone sold = Money for Apple

Every Android phone != Money for Google

That's not to say that Apple shouldn't be worried, but unlike in the Mac vs. PC situation, their competition isn't a single company making profit off every unit sold. It's a mass of semi-co-operative, semi-competitive groups; many of which are helping themselves to the free Android software without giving anything back to the people who made it.

That's a big difference.
I've been making panoramas of Curiosity's images from http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ since it was dropped off by it's ROCKET POWERED SPACE CRANE.

Here are some of them, nearly all are large so fair warning:
Mars Sol 03: http://twitpic.com/b3507u | http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=3
Mars Sol 42: http://i.imgur.com/GDybz.jpg | http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=42
Mars Sol 51: http://twitpic.com/b2o6pn | http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=51
Mars Sol 64: http://twitpic.com/b4wudt | http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=64
Mars Sol 67: http://twitpic.com/ba5cgq | http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=67

Bonus, Earth-ish toned version of Mars Sol 51: http://twitpic.com/b2r5xo
just wondering, is Android free also for smartphones' makers Samsung, HTC etc ?
Anonymous leaks VMware ESX Server Kernel source code
I would just like to add, there is definitely economical benefits in buying your own device, even in the US. T-Mobile offers a discount on contract plans, if you buy your own phone. While AT&T/Verizon/Sprint don't give a discount on their contract plans, all three have various prepaid options that are cheaper than contract pricing.

For example, T-Mobile has a $60 flat price for unlimited text/voice and 2 GB data, which is far cheaper than their contract price. Similarly AT&T Go-phone has cheaper prices.

Next, there are various MVNOs that resell service from the big 4, and they also have much cheaper price on prepaid. However, I have noticed that US consumer are almost universally unaware that such cheap plans exist. Part of it is that prepaid is seen as something used by people with low credit-worthiness, and other reason being that the subsidized contracts make it possible for far more people to have high end phone than normal. I have met quite a few people with iPhone, who would never be able to purchase it if they had to pay $700 upfront in store.
Centralization vs. Decentralization: Two Centuries of Authority in Design
The difference is that there's no comparable 800 pound gorilla controlling the dominant Non-Apple OS that runs on commodity non-Apple hardware. Well I guess there is but adhering to Google's terms are entirely voluntary (see Amazon). Microsoft was far more controlling which helped DOS/Windows develop into a single ubiquitous ecosystem. Google isn't so Android won't.
Ask HN: Can long term quality be maintained via karma voting cost?
Would it be a viable strategy to impose a karma cost to up-voting posts and comments to help maintain the high quality of HN submissions and comments?
I use a Wacom drawing slate for that. It works great, no need to waste dead trees. However, sketching is a very specific use case, I suspect that many people never do it.
"your company needs to have a Uganda plan" - loving it! :)
And knowing this, do you make an effort to avoid surveillance cameras or petition their removal? Do you go to any great lengths to improve your personal privacy more than your peers who don't know this? I know it too, but I'm still not bothered by surveillance cameras, I just ignore them and I'd probably just ignore this dude too. Brent Spiner would do his 'death stare' (http://telly.com/OFUVJ#none). It's important to remember his videos don't show everyone, they probably only show the most entertaining reactions, I'm sure plenty of people just ignored him. (Even in the video people who have business elsewhere do just ignore him, they walk right by.)
Websites I've never visited are in my Chrome history. Mac virus? Corrupt plugin?
I was looking through my browsing history just a few minutes ago, to find a site i was looking at yesterday, when i notice a handful of hulu.com video pages in my history that ive never viewed. I actually cant remember the last time I've been on hulu.com (as in months) so it looks like something fishy is going on here...

See here: http://imgur.com/M4Oul

The real mind-f__k is I was using my computer while these pages were visited. Meaning, it's not from somebody else (eg. my girlfriend being sneaky). I can't seem to find anything on google about this.

Before it gets mentioned: Yes I was on facebook a lot. It's saturday and i pulled an all-nighter coding the night before. Give me a break ;)

Anyway... I'm pretty OCD about tabs/windows and saw no hulu.com videos open while I was on yesterday. I had music playing, meaning the volume was up, so I would have heard any videos playing if they played (I would assume they'd play if it was something trying to game views)

The device in question is an Early 2010 MacBook Pro running Mac OSX 10.8.2. My Google Chrome version is 22.0.1229.94

I am using the following Chrome Plugins:
- Reddit Enhancement Suite 4.1.3
- Hacker Face 5.8
- PageSpeed Insights (by Google) 2.0.2.2

I find it hard to believe one of those plugins would cause it, but you never know. Maybe my mac has a virus I've never heard of? Maybe it's something stupid obvious and I'm overlooking it? I couldn't find anything on google about my problem.

Any ideas HN? What could cause this? And what can I do to dig deeper to see where these page views originated

Thanks in advance. =)
I think any answer to this will have to hinge on why, given the sales disparity, app revenue and "usage" metrics (i.e. mobile browsing) is still either in favour of iOS or tied. My personal reasoning is that carriers are pushing low end Android phones as the standard handset you get when you walk in the door and say "I need a phone". These people don't really know what they're getting in terms of an ecosystem, and seem to use very little smart functionality.

iPhone users (and "high end" Android users), on the other hand, probably know exactly what they're buying into. These are the users that will determine developer targeting. Two ways I see for Android to decisively win this: either these "low-end" users start to participate in the eco-system, or the rise of low income countries (much of Asia, Africa etc) makes the weight of numbers so far in Android's favour that even with a much lower engagement rate, the money's there. Apple could counter this with "iPhone Nano", I guess, but it would require them to sacrifice a lot of margin.

Outside tip: Samsung are becoming the Apple of Android smartphones, selling the preponderance of the high end handsets. Within 18 months, I suspect we'll see them fork Android to differentiate themselves from the "sell at near cost, make it up on ecosystem" strategy that Google's pursuing now with the Nexus (that reduce Samsung to basically a hardware supplier on razor-thin margins). Either that, or they'll use carrier relationships to ensure these cheap, high-end handsets don't ever really get in front of non-geeky consumers.
Ancient Egyptians used electricity?
Most Android manufacturers pay a per unit fee to Microsoft due to patent licensing, so I wouldn't say it was free.
Carriers(at least in the US), for one. Carriers eat the extra cost of the iPhone making it the same $199 as other flagship Android phones. Whereas in the PC market, the price difference between Dell/Compaq/etc. and Apple made all the difference.

Also, $199(or the $650 unlocked) is well within reach of a large number of customers nowadays, whereas $3000 in the later 80s was a huge amount(even more so than now because of inflation). In dollar terms, $3000 in 1989 would be $5,598.56 now.
I don't think it's Mac vs. PC, as we are talking about eco-systems now.
Also their statistic is majorly bogus, they use "units shipped" not sold. Web-traffic and profits show a "slightly" different picture.

Edit: got rid off an unnecessary comment.
Jack Daniels Pulled Beef Garlic Sliders Recipe
"... what they invent is invariably a tight race scenario because that's what gets the most profitable ratings."

I disagree. I much prefer the article's explanation for why they invariably invent a tight race: journalistic 'objectivity'. As Coddington pointed out, when all the highest sources on both sides of the campaign say it's tight, who is Silver to disagree?
The Palm software was OK but it really succeeded because of the app store. Third party apps were huge in the Palm heyday.
Having done corporate grade mobile work, there's no question of which platform is easier to develop for. On Android, not only do you have to simultaneously target in some cases four or five different API levels, you also have to hit several combinations of screen dimensions and resolutions. The documentation for Android is also lacking in comparison to the iOS docs. The android SDK, though comprehensive and generally very high quality, suffers from the same complexity problems arising from issues related to fragmentation.

Remember though, most of the developers who are doing work that actually matters on mobile aren't doing it because they want do, they're doing it because a corporate strategist thought it would be profitable use of their time.
Samsung is also big on low end devices. In India Samsung pretty much is new Nokia.

Samsung is neither low end or high end. They are selling whats suitable strategy for each country and its working damn well.
For-sale apps are a dwindling market anyway. All the contract work I get now is for companies that want an app as part of some larger business and are almost never direct revenue sources.

For this increasingly dominant app category reach is what counts.
> The government’s scrutiny of Google is the most exhaustive investigation of a major corporation since the pursuit of Microsoft in the late 1990s.

I can't help to notice that apparently in the last 15 years or so, a significant government interest was only focused on high-tech companies. Looks like more "traditional" branches of economy and companies working therein are generally behaving fine...

Companies like Lehman Brothers, for example.
That line of thinking can turn any organization into an orwellian entity.
It might not be the primary thing driving the cutthroat price competition, but it does make sense for Google to want the carrier model disrupted. Currently, they are on the short end of a massive power imbalance that puts them at a competitive disadvantage against iPhone. (Just read John Gruber's gleeful posts deriding the (admittedly astonishing) lack of high-speed data on the Nexus 4.)

In fact, Google has been gunning for this disruption since the very first Nexus One. Remember, they introduced that phone -- their first -- unlocked and unsubsidized, with direct-to-consumer sales. At the time, that was a novel approach (and really exciting for knowledgeable consumers). However, they got their ass beat down by the carriers and had to whimper back home with their tail between their legs. They even stopped selling phones direct for a time.

So they failed at subverting the carrier's (anticompetitive, illogical, anti-consumer) business model the first time they tried, but you can bet they still want to. Apple actually does, too, for similar reason, but Apple didn't underestimate the power of the carriers, and waited until they had the most dominant phone in human history and the leverage that came along with to make the carriers lay down and take it however Apple deigns to give it to them.

Google would love to be in a similar position, but they won't be until either Google can make a phone close to the iPhone in popularity, or the carrier-subsidy model goes away or is at least greatly diminished (neither thing being very likely in the foreseeable future).
Yes and no. The OS is free, using the 'Android' name is not free as in speech, but (I think) free as in beer, as it does require compliance with Google's Compatibility Definition Document (CDD). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#Lice...

Shipping Google's applications (GMail, Maps, Google's store; maybe others) requires a license from Google. That probably is not free as in beer, either, but I find it hard to find definitive statements for that on the web. developer.android.com seems to only target software developers.

Also, some technologies used in Android are patented, and require payments to patent holders.

So, in practice, Android is not free for smartphone makers.
Or easier, if you're lazy like me.
But every Android phone out there is another personal information hoover for Google that produces them money, so yes, they are profiting off of every unit sold that ships with the Google-branded applications provided the users use them and their locational services, which most users do because otherwise Android ships rather spartan to the point of urging you to use them.

People who believe Android is 'free' do not understand what's in it for Google. If this was not the case, then lawsuits like Skyhook wouldn't exist: http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la...
I think that the overall quality of HN posts has held up very well given the growth in the community size. OK - some of the stuff that I find interesting and which might have got a bigger feature a couple of years back can tend to drop out of view a bit quickly under posts about "pop" tech companies but they are still here and findable.

I am currently working on a "specialised" social bookmarking site and have gone with only up-votes (posts and comments)and a facility for flagging spam or the inappropriate. I am confident that this simple approach will share some of HN's benefits.
Just chiming in with a question. If someone uses a security camera to peep into other people's private property isn't that illegal?

I'm fine with what he does with the camera in public... Somewhat fine. I'd just record him in return. But walking into classrooms and other private areas, walking on to a stage behind a musical performance... the latter may be pushing limits, but I don't get how the former is legal. Can someone explain it to me?

On another note.. Does anyone know where these videos are being taken?
I haven't found this to be the case at all. With the compat libs you can pretty easily target 2.3 and 4.x. And the dynamic layout issues are more than offset by the much greater flexibility of Android's layout managers.

An iOS app I'm working on right now has been a nightmare in comparison because we had to port our layouts to the i5 form factor but can't require iOS 6 just to get autologous. Apple really blew that transition.
what does "mac vs pc" mean?

i know it was an advertising campaign. i know there was competition between apple and pc manufacturers. but this article seems to assume that the phrase has some clear meaning/implication for the future (and that "it" is happening again). but what is "it"?

is it just saying - look, the market is dividing into two brands, one with wider appeal and lower prices, the other aimed more at discretionary spending?

if so, what is interesting about that? serious q - i feel i'm completely missing the point here. is the idea that this is dangerous for apple? if so, isn't the counterargument that, historically, apple has managed to adapt and innovate? i mean, it's hardly suffering right now.
Indeed. I was not implying that they were stupid or that anyone else would have seen it better; just stating the fact that they did not anticipate what ceding control of the OS market to Microsoft would mean.

From what I've read, IBM didn't pay much attention to this decision - they considered MS-DOS 1.0 a "stop-gap" measure to make the PC-g useful (original IBM-PC model, later followed by XT, jr and AT) while they were getting a real operating system (CP/M 86) ready.

In fact, IBM's original PC-g seems like it was almost an afterthought ("oh, Apple implies there actually is a market for a personal business computer? let's put a leg in this market, just in case"). The original design had very little IBM in it - it was very close to Intel reference designs for the 8088, using available off-the-shelf components (the main non-intel parts were a Motorolla CRT controller, a NEC floppy disk controller which was backward compatible with an older Intel floppy disk controller; unlike Apple's Woz-designed Video adapters and disk controllers).
yes, they are. oh, and sending would cost you .25 as well, unless, of course, you purchase 'unlimited' texts for $20/month, then, you see, they're 'free'. texting is insane and I have to remind people not to text me on a regular basis.
They're pretty frequent around the Islington area and outside of London. Same with the DVLA cards with ANPR cameras that park up on busy roads; and the yellow police vans with 'CCTV Unit' plastered on the side.

'Course, we can all say what we have and haven't seen and go on for ages, without some hard stats.
OLinuXino (Multiple models: IMX \233 Maxi, Micro, Mini, MiniWiFi, A13, A13WiFi)
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/

MK808 (Updated MK802)

The RaspberryPi Model B has been upgraded to 512mb RAM.

Several other devices mentioned in http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_devices
Isn't it obvious? Because phones have completely different use cases to PCs. There's no Microsoft Office effect that renders your smartphone inconvenient due to the small marketshare of its OS.
Content Protection Summit 2012: Keynote by MPAA Chief
That's not what the term "Nuremberg defense" implies in the least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Defense
I am a human being
The article really got me thinking about the quality of life that most humans have, and seeing played out on such a large scale just shook the years of immunity to human suffering that we all develop.
Creepy Cameraman is a Paparazzi, meaning that what he is doing to common folks on video is no different from what famous people are being subjected to everyday.

Question is why is it acceptable to us when Paparazzis do it to Hollywood stars but not when same is done to us?
Met in Jeans Blog sections are: Met Events, Music, Travel, Look of the Day, Breaking News, High Tech for Girl, Psychology, Make Up, Healthy Tips, Met Celebrities,...
The strong point of this web pages are their photogalleries. Also the home page pf the blog is a chessboard of many images, all of them introducing a blingual post, in English and in Italian.
Add an election pin of your candidate to your Twitter profile image
This is super annoying. Why didn't one of the people recorded pull out their cell phone and record this guy recording others, just to annoy him? And make a "point" if that is what he is trying to do? (May be somebody did, I didn't watch all the videos, just one to see what it is about)
I was one of the people who tried to get prepaid/pay-as-you-go plan for the iphone on Verizon by paying upfront. At the time, it was impossible, and I eventually gave up.

So, given that I did want an iphone, and therefore needed a contract, I tried to get one without providing my SSN. Those were another fun couple of days - it began with about 10 different Verizon employees telling me that would be impossible, and ended up with a $400 deposit and no SSN.

So, I paid for the phone upfront, but I'll get $400 back when the contract ends - as of feb 2012, that was the best deal one could get on the iphone 4s from Verizon.

And while it is easy to get coverage of any kind in NYC or SF, that is not true in general. T-Mobile's high speed coverage is lesser, and many of the MVNOs have a really limited coverage area (and non-trivial roaming charges outside those areas)
Samsung may be tempted to fork Android, but this will mean no Google Play (in addition to no Google Maps and others), and Samsung is incapable of growing an ecosystem of developers and apps around their platform the size of Google Play.

Microsoft, Apple and Google have this in their DNA. Phone manufacturers, like Nokia and Samsung don't. If they could have build their own Android / their own Google Play, they would have done so already.