skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold to

To be honest, I didn't jump from Windows to Linux because of this. I jumped because Windows ME was just that bad. However, this makes me increasingly happy I jumped with each new version of both Windows and MacOS.

> Time to start a 'developers' company that works very much on the same model that Sun Microsystems started on, hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and release that fix.

Bits and pieces of this are already here. We need a Wozniak to find the best way to put them together and create the new pieces we need. Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored.
Modern versions of windows are extremely similar from a usability perspective, sure. But that's windows as defined by microsoft, and OSX as defined by apple. The problem occurs because third parties try to shoehorn all kinds of crap into windows applications and onto the windows desktop. There's nothing wrong with windows in theory, but in practice there sure are a lot of people trying to fuck up windows. It's much less of a problem on other operating systems.
Traffic violations are probably a bad example.

(1) Judging cases imposes huge administrative costs. Somebody has to pay those costs; if it isn't you, it's everybody else. Particularly with moving violations, where offenses are so widespread and the cost of admitting guilt is so low and where so many people have interface with the legal system, it makes sense to charge people who force costly adjudication that later proves pointless (which is what a discount for a guilty plea effectively does).

(2) The fines associated with most traffic violations are artificially low. Although any one person who speeds or runs a red light is unlikely in that one instance to grievously harm someone, people who drive carelessly as a cohort impose enormous costs on the rest of society, and those costs simply aren't priced into the $300 you pay for a 55-in-a-35 speeding ticket.
Please learn to distinguish between metaphors and similies.

"* are like Facebook" is clearly a similie.
I'm not in favor of hiding service manuals, but I will mention that in the days of CRT's, one could fry oneself fairly easily. (CRT's can continue to carry significant charge at high voltage, for varying periods of time after being turned off.)

P.S. As a specific example, combine this with the original all-in-one-box Macs' shitty power supplies (and co-located video tuning controls, now that I think of it), and you had a not too uncommon reason for people to go poking around the CRT.
Excuse my ignorance, what does MVP stand for?
This is misapplied cliche HN wisdom and it's unfortunate that this type of comment makes it to the top yet again. You have no idea what their time would be best spent on. As has already been pointed out, there are other very valid reasons someone might want to get in TC.
The pleasure of uninstalling with a Delete keystroke is reason enough to move to MacOS. Say what you will against Apple, but I have been just plain peaceful ever since I smashed my blue-screened Windows laptop on the wall and walked out to buy a Mac years ago.
We're not really talking about usability in general - the particular issue of default installs being crapped up is pretty Windows PC (and maybe Android?) specific
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Minimum Viable Product. They generally exist to validate an idea before investing time and money into it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
Nice idea,

btw you should make the Facebook Page a 'Community Page' not a person so I can like it not have to friend it.
yeah, I definitely prefer 'sudo apt get install this-thing && sudo pray-to-god-this-works'
This is hilarious. You call others fanboys and then compare the horrific inconvenience of disk images (which I don't understand either but it's what, double-click and then drag, right) to Windows install wizards, uninstall, etc. Get real.
I think part of it is that groupon got started at a time of peak desperation for retailers. They were desperate to try anything. They may still be desperate, but wiser.
Because some believe alzheimer's is another form of diabetes. [1]

1. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/bittman-is-a...
Cable was never actually regulated against monopoly (despite appearances to the contrary) and neither are new new children Bells (ATT and Verizon being high at the top of that list).

You've got it backwards. Cable and telephone companies were granted local monopolies all over America, which is why there is a legally enforced duopoly now all over the whole country.

Monopolies only exist when created by regulation.

By the way, to head off a common concern, by example: People who think Microsoft ever had a monopoly are using the word "monopoly" wrong. Consumers were always free to go a different way, or start a competitor (and many did). In fact, MS would probably be weaker today had regulation not forced it to improve its self-defeating business practices.
Interesting.

Would love to see how they work on picking adverts out of SSL pages.

Would also love to see how they deal with tracking and affiliates stuff in addition to banner adverts.

That latter one is an issue for me, I've found some sites to be simply unusable if AdBlock or Ghostery is running in my browser.

It's usually tracking code (LinkedIn Inbox is useless to me as are sites that add Omniture to their shop button), and occasionally I go to buy something which is an affiliate link and it gets treated as an advert click and stopped.

So it's important not to go too far and break the internet either (though in my view it is the sites that add all this stuff that are breaking it).

If this stuff is all in a black box without external configuration... then how do you correct the false positives?
Yeah, I'm not really buying that.

So you're bringing somebody exceptional on who will create some amount of value, and you're willing to compensate them appropriately for that. But wait, the rest of your team will be resentful!

There are two possibilities here: 1) You're paying everyone else less than they're worth to you, in which case they should be resentful; or, 2) You're paying everyone else what you think they're worth to you, but you're unable to convince them of that, in which case your problem isn't that your employees know each others' salaries, your problem is that your employees don't trust your judgment-- or perhaps that you have poor judgment.

Of course any compensation program which isn't flexible enough to appropriately reward employees for the value they create is flawed, but that has nothing to do with whether or not those rewards are public. In fact, I'd argue that a traditional system where compensation is determined by closed-door negotiations with asymmetric information is uniquely unlikely to do so appropriately.
This Land Is My Land: feud over a quarter-mile property line
I remember reading that this is the reason[2] Steve Jobs wouldn't license the Mac OS X operating system to other OEM vendors. As I understand it, a good deal of this crap is caused by misaligned incentives. Software companies pay OEMs to preload computers with their buggy, invasive, resource hogging software. Thanks to the Microsoft Windows operating system having all sorts of nooks and crannies to hide this sort of stuff in, like msconfig; the "PC", with which Windows is synonymous, is seen as a painful platform full of crashes and arcane bullshit.

Of course, the cure is presented in the form of locked down, proprietary platforms which shelter users from software companies self inflicted wounds. As times goes on; these platforms will slowly come to resemble their former counterparts, but without the relief of being able to uninstall the crapware.

I think that priority one for people interested in the future of computing is to fix the experience for the 99%.

EDIT: The answer isn't necessarily other open systems like Linux or Haiku, OEM manufacturers can screw the default installs on those systems up just as well.

EDIT[2]: Part of the reason anyway.
This vitriolic hate for facebook from certain parts of the tech crowd has always confused me. Where does this come from and, further, why is it extended to users? Why must facebook users be considered "fools"?
I like the idea. It has the clever advantage of offering something of value before anyone else has signed up - funny videos. Maybe you should offer more videos before the signup page. Maybe even split the sign up fields between videos. Obviously this is a good candidate for testing.

One major thing I don't like though are the highly restrictive options for gender and orientation. In the case of a dating site, classifying gender does seem like a neccesary evil, but the options could at least allow more people to sign up. I would suggest, as one possibility, adding more options, such as none and other, and also making this a check box selection for people with more than one gender.

Additionally, why do you ask for orientation? You don't need to know this, and you fail to ask the necessary question of "which genders would you like to be matched with". These things are not the same. This section could also allow check box selection of desired matches.
I think that Groupon's customer churn has always been huge, one of the reasons many investors though it was not a good bet.
How to Stop Reactionaries From Derailing Reform in China
I keep hoping for something like this to be successful. I expect that the cross over point is at 25 - 50 lumens (I've got a WXShow picoprojector and it is great camping, not so great anywhere else :-) but there is something to be said for showing stuff to others 'larger' than the 4" screen on the phone. (or iPod :-)
Invariably the device will have security vulnerabilities. The potential man-in-the-middle access this thing will afford an attacker would be a treasure-trove, especially if it has SSL bump-in-the-wire functionality.
> ...hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and release that fix...

Why would that not describe any major Linux distro?
The problem isn't the process of installing. It's the damned trip line installs along the way. If you install Adobe Reader, it shouldn't install McAfee for you. If I install your software, you don't have the right to install browser plugins. In terms of installers, Windows has developed a culture of malware that really needs to go.
That's excellent - Congrats on your project too. I hope the publicity leads to a deal or something. I'm sure any of us would feel pleased to get a writeup. It sounds like you guys have your priorities right.
That already exists for Gmail and it's called Google Apps, $50 per year, http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html
Agreed, I've been having a lot of fun with the language and have been using it more and more on a daily basis.
I was expanding (with a slight correction about macros doing more than just controlling evaluation).

Haskell-style laziness comes with purity, where it does not matter much whether something is evaluated once or many times. It does matter if it is evaluated 0 or more though (due to non-termination and exceptions).

The opacity of values is what I meant by macros also exposing the syntax as opposed to just controlling evaluation.
Amazon is still smoke and mirrors. E.g. Current P/E is -- I am not making this up -- slightly under 3000.

But, like Milo Minderbinder, they'll make it up on volume.
Try Vimeo instead of YouTube.
It seems curateddaily is promoting buying stuff. It's a common thing to do, but not necessarily a good thing to do if you start something new. I value the world of less stuff, of lagging behind with new stuff, of giving attention to people and suffering, in stead of to shiny stuff and "ineedthat". The visual and interaction design are really good, though. I challenge you to come up with another sideproject that combines the best of both worlds.
AC Electronics for Alien Minds
OK, admittedly the fact that I stick to Google Nexus and Apple brand kind of makes me oblivious to the existence of all that crapware. But as far as I can tell, some people actually like what HTC and Samsung are doing with their Android.
OT: Get out of the habit of saying "I built this in 3 days". Most of the time, people say that because they're nervous about being judged. Ironically, "I built this in 3 days" probably exclusively attracts the kind of attention that benchmarks and judges what you built; either way, it's hard to see how it constructively promotes anything you're doing or planning to do.

Get used to people tearing you down. HN is full of people --- most of whom have never built anything --- who tear new products down for sport. But the world is also full of people who will be dismissive in more insidious ways. If you're going to launch products, build up your thick skin now. The industry is full of people who launched less impressive things than this, promoted their work ruthlessly and without neurotic humility, and later went on to run the table on their competitors.
This is in Michigan, a pretty good place in terms of cost,

Go to Grand Rapids, Mi and you can get a membership at theworkfactory.com for 24/7 office space for $275 a month, rent a NICE loft apartment a block away for $1000 a month www.616lofts.com or live in a basic place for $500 a month, while being across the street from the 3rd best beer bar in the world hopcat.com

The state also has some big incentives for raising capital, mostly because the current gov is a former VC.
.
For a seedround under $1mm, they'll do a $250k convertable note http://www.michiganadvantage.org/E-and-I-Access-to-Capital/

IF you raise over $700k there is a 50% match up to $500k.
http://www.michiganadvantage.org/Pure-Michigan-Venture-Match...

There is more, but they REALLY want startups in the state and costs are very low here in town. You can BUY an office building for the yearly cost (or less) to rent in SV or NYC.
Because like it or not, ads are a vital part of the internet.
Note this is an aside on USEFUL background apps, not spyware/crapware, since it appears he disabled the update mechanisms in the last two paragraphs:

Most of those background service apps (Google Update, Apple Push, Adobe Update) are because a tiny background app is necessary to preform certain functions, and check for updates in the background, which is a good thing!

For example, 'iTunesAgent.exe' on Windows was to simply detect if you had plugged an iPod in and auto pop-up iTunes. For usability, it makes sense; because otherwise you would plugin an iPod and get nothing or a confusing Windows 'dunno what to do with this drive' screen. And because of Windows' architecture (for better or worse), it requires a background app to do this.

The same for many of the updaters. I would much rather be sure Flash and Java are updated then go running without an important security update.

I still have yet to understand the "no background app, good or bad" manifesto. Good background apps barely use any CPU time, they barely use any memory (and Windows reports too much memory in the first place due to shared memory), and preforms useful functions.
> And now they all sneak garbage adware with the check boxes enabled by default because most people just click "next" anyway.

While I agree that OEM computers come installed with a lot of crap, that's not a Windows problem, that's an OEM problem.

> Also the whole download and install drivers/utilities etc after installation is very time consuming because the OS has almost nothing bundle

The OS part of Windows is about 2 gigabytes (tried looking for source, but couldn't find one. Although this explains how you can fit a bootable emergency windows suite on a flash drive). The many other gigabytes are drivers. Plus, it's pretty disingenuous to blame Microsoft for Windows not supporting 3rd party devices, even though Windows checks for driver updates automatically.
Floating point numbers are approximations of real numbers, which isn't sufficient in this context. Solving a lossy representation of the problem isn't a reduction in the complexity theoretic sense.
Presumably they'll keep the devices continually updated to keep up with the changing code of websites. Plus, they don't really have to block everything everywhere - this would still be useful even if it only blocked most or even some ads.

Regarding SSL, they could have the device issue an SSL certificate that you install on your devices and it could intercept that traffic as well.
Yeah, but come up with another big time Euro start up success story, other than Skype or Spotify (Spotify arguably happened in Europe only because the labels would only allow streaming in small Euro markets at first as a test case). If you expand the list from 10 to 50 to lessen the dominance of the legacy players, the US list would be a Who's Who of start ups, and the Euro one a Who's That?

Discounting the Samwers for obvious reasons.
Why must facebook users be considered "fools"?

Because zuck once said that about anyone who trusts him?[1]

________________

[1] Zuckerberg's IM: People Who Trust Him Are "Dumb F*ks"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/facebooks-plumm...

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks.
The real problem is that HTTP is not an appropriate technology to distribute service manuals or anything else one is likely to get hassled over. It works fine in the short term, but as soon as anything gets a large enough following that it could be feasible to take it for granted (ie becomes part of culture), HTTP shows its fatal weakness. Bittorrent is much closer.
My experience, as of late, is that HP is pretty bad when it comes to shipping machines with pre-loaded crap. Dell and Lenovo business-oriented computers ship fairly clean, but HP business-oriented machines ship with loads of crapware. All consumer-oriented machines ship with crap.
I would like to point something out here.

Your site says this:

"We admit it — we have to pay the bills. Selling parts is how we do that. We want to be able to afford to write new manuals, and the noncommercial requirement allows us to do that. We frequently grant usage licenses to commercial entities, so contact us with any inquiries."

On this page:

http://www.ifixit.com/Info/Licensing

Specifically "We admit it — we have to pay the bills."

I'm not saying in any way this contradicts anything you are saying in particular. You do have to pay the bills. And Toshiba also has to pay the bills as well, even as a billion dollar company.

Is it my understanding that the OP could use your materials since they aren't "commercial"? And if so, what if they sold advertising and used your materials? Where do you draw the line (serious question and not trying to be snarky)?
So as I understand your point is that it's more difficult to get down to 'hacking level' today, thought it is surely easier to glue things together without deeper understanding. Whereas back in the 80s hacking level wasn't so far from day-to-day development. I agree, I hit these roadblocks every now and then and at each point I'm confronted with the deeper question of whether I want to devote time to really grasp what's behind the magic, or is it better to clutch at workarounds so I can turn up an app faster. I guess in the long term achieving hacker level has better payoff, but I seldom take the metaphorical leap.
One thing I noticed when I first bought a Mac was that the driver for my Lexmark printer was about 30MB and integrated properly with the system printing options. On Windows, it was more like 200MB, had its own custom print dialogue which could be themed and had an online gallery for themes which you could download. You could download a theme that turned your printer dialogue into a potato. Not even kidding. On Mac, the printing dialogue was just the standard OS X printer dialogue.

Why is this? I don't know. Maybe they put less, er, effort into the OS X driver because of marketshare. Perhaps it was a different set of developers and the Mac developers had some sense. Maybe it's not even possible to create custom-potato-themed printer dialogues for OS X. All I know is that since moving to OS X I've seen far less crapware and whilst you're right that OS X has some UI warts too, I find that it (and the 3rd party software you install) bugs you a hell of a lot less.
I created an account and activated it.
Password is not recognised and when I follow the reset your password process I get a blank email.
=(

Looks promising - I want to be able to use it!
Social Media Bubble Update
Like? Saying it's "necessary" for a raise is even more ridiculous than what I said.
The pieces are all there already, but you can't pull it off with dis-associated independent groups. Canonical comes close, as does Redhat, either could do this is they started making their own hardware, or contracting out a HW 'spec.'

But you need a 'real' company to say to someone like an Atheros that you'll design in their wireless chip only if they will commit to driver support for it on your OS. That sort of thing doesn't happen between a company and an 'interested third party' sadly.

The other thing folks will have to come to realize that you won't be able to combine your "TV" and your "computer" much longer. The demands of content producers are reaching a point that 'general purpose computing' on devices that can show their content are made increasingly more difficult and eventually they won't legally exist. Secure boot, HDCP, all of these things are manifestations of externally exerted control over the platform.

The good news is that computers will go back to being computers. It is going to feel a bit weird for a while though.
Give me a break. If a VC is going to invest in a company based on whether or not it was written about in TC, they are pretty terrible investors.

The only thing it could _potentially_ help is valuation, but any good investor would negotiate that perk away anyway.
i find this very gay
Why? Because of this? You would accept an inferior product to there laptops possibly because they do not allow free repro of their manuals? Are you able to investigate every manufacturer before you buy something to make sure they are "open source" with respect to these things?
An aol address is hipster chic.

It also makes a good april fool joke - if you still have one matching your name, just send a message on Apr 1 to your geek buddies explaining you are moving from gmail.com/outlook.com/whatever to aol, and wait for the "WTF?" replies :-)
So this is a bridge-mode transparent HTTP proxy with Privoxy running on it? [Or the equivalent thereof?]

Or does it do an SSL MITM attack on all your traffic?

The former is interesting mostly because it doesn't require end-user configuration, so to a naive user it really is plug-it-in-and-works. The latter is, as several have now pointed out, horrendously awful.

What nobody seems to have mentioned yet, though, is that you can turn the first into the second with a code update.