skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, Apple has often competed with better design and superior miniaturization. But how is this different from other firms? For instance, Sony has often tried to make things smaller and cooler-looking than competing products, from the WalkMan to the Vaio to the modern day. Few companies enter a market resolving "I'm going to just try to make exactly what other guys are making." (Well, okay, maybe Samsung does that.)

No, the big difference is that Apple often succeeds when they try ambitious new designs, whereas Sony and HP and Microsoft usually fail when they try to do the same thing.

I've always thought there was a large amount of self-fulfilling prophesy involved in this. Apple, like Tinkerbell, works primarily because we believe in it. If we stopped expecting it to succeed, it would stop succeeding.

Suppose HP releases a product that seems really cool and potentially useful but has a few annoying flaws - the software doesn't work quite right. Few buy it, HP never fixes any of the flaws, HP discontinues production, and you find the abandoned product on the discount shelf at Fry's.

Now suppose Apple does the same thing. Because it's Apple we know they're committed to fixing the initial obvious flaws. Developers and users see the potential in the new product, not just what it is but what it could be. People buy it. A rash of "early adopters" buy it practically sight unseen and then whine in blogs/newspapers/magazines about what Apple needs to do next to make it perfect. Apple takes the revenue they get from those early sales, considers the suggestions, and fixes the problems. The original buyers get a software patch; new buyers get version 2.0 that fixes the original problems and more.

The first iPhone didn't have copy-paste and didn't allow third-party apps and didn't have an "app store". People bought it, and within a year or so it did have those features. Apple has a track record of sticking with it and improving their crazy stuff, so we trust them to fix problems, so they find it worthwhile to take bigger risks.

[Minor nit: The first iMac only came in Bondi Blue. The choice of colors period came later, when it was already a hit.]
How to Fix Facebook v5.2 Crashing Issue on Jailbroken iPhone
If an attacker controls more than 50% of the Bitcoin network's computing power, they can manipulate transactions. Also, an attacker can fill the network with clients controlled by him, which might be helpful in the execution of other attacks.
Steve Jobs vs. Sam Walton: The tale of the tape
The primary gain is faster feedback, but this can also reduce server load. In general, you should never trust user input, so you should validate on the server. (In particular, not only is it possible for users to manipulate/disable your client code, including validation logic, but it's trivial to hand-craft requests to your server.)
The network doesn't automatically obfuscate transactions, but it's easy to do using tumbling services.
Really appreciate your angle/suggestions here. Working on re-writing the Risks/Challenges section now!
Squirrel Cage Induction Motors have been around for years and have been used in Industry forever.

No brushes, no magnets...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrel-cage_rotor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_but_unclassified
I think the idea is that native apps (in most cases) can only run on the platform they were developed for. Web apps, on the other hand, can theoretically run on any platform with a solid web browser. Mozilla wants to use Firefox OS to encourage the development of quality web apps, as well as show what is possible in the context of a web browser on a mobile device.
Zoetrope Test : Three.js demo
Is it really authoritarian to prevent your children from seeing obscene content online?
The experimental version (&v=3.exp) of it, to be precise.
You make the decision, but you base that decision on advice from impartial civil servants.

That's why it's important that civil servants are protected from unscrupulous dodgy MPs, and allowed to do the real work while the MP just signs off the contracts.

Most of the big decisions take much longer to go through than the MPs term in that position anyway.

> It really isn't difficult to ask Google how to filter web content.

For some people it is difficult. Google try making it as easy as possible. Filter sellers try making it as easy as possible (they have financial interest in doing so) and yet we know it's still hard.

> Just as it wasn't difficult for me to phone up my TV provider and ask how I hide the adult channels on my TV.

I tried this. The only way I could get an answer was to use their Usenet support group. Already they've prevented many people from getting a response. When I asked the question they said it was impossible to do so. All the channels are (I assume) subscription only, but they're in the menus.

> You don't need to be a genius to work a computer. You just need to apply yourself a tiny little bit to do whatever it is you are trying to do.

You don't need to be a genius to be a ballet dancer. You just need to apply yourself a tiny little bit to do whatever it is you are trying to do.
is it using request ip to provide context? i typed in "europa 2189" and see my own appt in santiago, which is disturbingly impressive...
Fortune Magazine Names the New Samsung Chromebook Best Device of 2012
Here's my understanding/oversimplification of the history of of this lawsuit.

The basis was laid in the Nokia-Apple lawsuit over FRAND patents. During negotiations for the license of Nokia's FRAND patents, Nokia asked for a cross-license to Apple's UI patents instead of money. Apple said no, negotiations fell apart and the matter went to court.

In court, both parties lost. Nokia didn't get the cross-license they wanted. Instead, they got a ridiculous amount of money out of Apple.

Precedent has now been set that FRAND patents can be worth a ridiculous amount of money. Motorola/Google now also want a ridiculous amount of money for their FRAND patents.

My assumption is that what Google really wants is a cross-license, that their demand for ridiculous amounts of money is only a negotiating position. The alternative thesis, that Google has gone over to the dark side, is looking increasingly plausible though.
" I can send an email, I can click onto Windows but the minute you talk about downloading software, my brain goes bzzzz"

I don't know much about the wider context. But, from reading the quotes, the point she is apparently trying to negate by playing dumb is that there are plenty of free, easy & available ways of filtering your own internet without government mandated censorship.

Her point is "People are too stupid to do this for themselves. We should just filter the internet for them." I'm not sympathetic to that point.

People can do it themselves (find and download software). They can ask the people who sold them their computer to do it. They can ask the people who sell them their internet to do it. They can walk into any computer shop and pay for help doing it. They can ask any remotely computer savvy friend to do it for them.

I wouldn't object to a government run helpline, in-school setup. Anything voluntary. Preferably sane. Preferably effective. Preferably not at ridiculous cost. But, I'll take voluntary.
Much better, and that advertisement placement in the previous version was one of the reasons it took me so long to finally start using.
How I got 300+ HN points posting a 5yo+ link that made the front page for 20hrs
I thought I'd share my story about the link I posted the other day, Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE (microsoft.com). I never realized this link would be worth 300+ Hacker News points, but I thought the story around it might be interesting enough to share.

I was working on a client site that required the use of IE 7 to test a particular bug. I had installed VirtualBox in the past, but after doing a fresh install of OS X I was trying to avoid that whole process. In fact I was even considering installing the old, old version of IE 5.5 that was actually released for the Mac platform back in the stone age. So I went to Google and searched for "ie os x" and found this:
http://samvermette.com/256. This was the first I heard of Microsoft releasing free VMs so I thought, "Hey cool, I'll share this on Twitter". I posted the link, @stroughtonsmith retweeted it and before I knew it I had retweets and stars coming in at a consistent clip.

Through the retweets came a single mention pointing me over to https://github.com/xdissent/ievms which was quite useful for my case. Knowing the original article was published in June of 2011 I knew this wasn't new information, but I figured I'd post the link to HN anyway. I figured somebody had to have posted it in the past, so I might get a duplicate link error or something.

Well that didn't happen and immediately it started to get points and comments, very helpful comments at that. I chimed in a few times in the beginning and got bonus points for a couple of my early comments.

So a few things I learned from this: HN doesn't necessarily reward new, cutting edge information, chiming in early to a trending topic is worth a fair number of comment points, and you learn a lot more about a topic than you do posting a link to Twitter. Finally I found HN points aren't worth anything toward my profile. I got absolutely zero visitors to my website and I doubt anybody even clicked over to my profile to see who I am.
All the best, YC Winter 2013 interviewees
If you've been invited to interview for the YC Winter 2013 class, all the best! I am sure there are some amazing teams and ideas still in the running and we'll look forward to reading all about them.

A YC reject
Quit My Job for a Startup - What IBM Had Wrong
When the Nerds Go Marching In
The internet is more important than archery.
You can learn more about how Adrian extracted musical information from sound.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGWytn-Ff9E
The Pinterestification of UI continues...
Must wear lots of flair, especially when the VCs tour the office, looking important and trying to sound smart (but failing).
I'm not familiar with either framework, but at least I can understand the intent (if not mechanics) behind Knockout code. With Backbone, it's like reading a whole different language.
"For instance, child pornography and Internet gambling" - So, me playing the UK National Lottery online is illegal? o.o
Facebook offering e-retailers sales tracking tool
Picture spotted on Google street view leads to suspect being arrested
> Mass immigrations threatens both the cultural traditions and the common ground
Citation needed.
Try connecting to those on port 25, see if any accept mail... they don't tend to.
One of the exciting things about building companies now is that everyone has a voice. We appreciate the candid critique.
Maybe it's a "bros only" culture?
Why I Decided to Spend More Time Working from Home
> This is going to end badly for them.

I doubt it. They'll continue to thrive because enough people will jump through their hoops. and they'll give up juuuuust enough ground to keep people agreeable.
Preventing your children from seeing obscene content is fine.

Deciding that other people are too stupid to be able to do this, and thus those other people need a government mandated filter at the ISP to filter adult content is perhaps a bit authoritarian.

Don't forget that UK mobile providers already filter adult content (T-Mobile have something called "Content lock" - you need to go to the shop with ID to prove age to have it switched off. O2 and the others have something similar.)

And the UK has the Internet Watch Foundation - a quango that has the power to request that ISPs filter some pages and images.

I don't know what the answer to protecting people from extreme imagery is, but I do know a government filter isn't it.
Addresses do not have non Latin characters.
Cities Move to Rein In Smartphone Taxi Services
One small detail I forgot to mention is that I posted the link late at night, around 11pm EST.
We haven't figured that out. Because we will be a subscription service, we are not sure if having muli plans are allowed in IAP. Anyone has experience before?
Meet Romo
Unfortunately Amazon's DRM requires HAL, which is deprecated and has been removed from most modern distributions.
Please write your DOM -> Angular or Backbone -> Angualar follow up for this article - would love to see the difference.

Like TodoMVC on steroids :)
I don't know that I have a big bag of "big concepts that emerge from experience in actual production", but I can think of a few things that I still encounter with inexperienced coders I work with.

The mistake of coding as if a back-end web app is a run-once kind of thing. No memoizing for repeated pure function calls, repeated instantiation of connections that should be pooled, globals being crapped out everywhere and functions that depend on their existence vs being passed in.

Giant clots of if/then blocks for application "logic" and implicit state or action-at-a-distance fun lead to doom.

Failure to understand the cost of over-the-wire vs localized data calls.

Separating reads vs writes and/or immediately performing time-expensive tasks in-line. Granted the dark side of this can be premature optimization or complexity, but it's a lot easier to scale out when you've actually thought about how to do it while building things.

Tracking performance changes as a part of basic testing. Granted, it can be hard enough just to get them to build unit tests but simply demonstrating successful execution doesn't mean you haven't negatively affected the codebase by decreasing the performance.

Profile your damned code. Over the years you'll develop the sense of smell required to pre-detect poor design choices, but without a real insight into what the code is actually doing you'll be shooting arrows in the air trying to hit the real problem.

While premature optimization is a known-evil, premature complexity is also a real danger. You don't need a big OOP implementation for a simple function, and abstraction layers can run the real risk of becoming distraction layers making things much harder to debug or decipher when things inevitably go astray.
Knockout is horrible because you end up putting the "messy jquery code" in the html !
While there is no auto-binding in backbone, it is not really an issue in large apps. Furthermore , knockout doesnt have a persistence layer.
In that post, your response to the risks section is that "there is literally no chance we're going to fail at delivering incredibly crafted shirts to all our backers." That is so completely disconnected from the world of reality that it shows a tremendous lack of foresight. Read literally any prospectus for companies much more proven and stable than yours and you'll see a litany of legitimate risks surrounding the business. Yours is no different. As a company who has, by definition, never done this before, your risks are quite high.

What if the fabric from your supplier is inconsistent in quality, do you have another supplier? What if your estimates are off, and labor+fabric costs more than $8, will your margins allow you to deliver? What if every other large manufacturer has discovered that the cheaper labor available overseas more than offsets the increased shipping costs? What if your manufacturer has a work stoppage, do you have another manufacturer you can turn to of high quality? What if their factory burns down? What if their quality is inconsistent? What if they don't deliver finished goods on time? What if your fabric gets damaged en route, do you have insurance?

I know next to nothing about clothing manufacturing, and I just listed more risks than you did. The risks section is not intended to be an exercise in braggadocio.
An interesting wrinkle on this was the recent Presidential election in the US. Some of my contacts "Liked" Romney's or Paul Ryan's page (or both) Every 3rd or 5th day they were there when I looked at my feed "Romney is great" and your 3 friends liked this etc. My first reaction was "Wow, my friends are pretty hard core Romney fans if they're liking every new post he puts up on his page" So from endorsing him once they sent the message indirectly to their friends about 8 - 12 over a two month period that they're a supporter. That's probably a lot more in your friends' face with your political belief than most realize. It's like the guy at a BBQ who casually says "I think I'm voting for Obama" vs the friend whom every time you see them in the build up to the election wants to talk about their candidate and you're voting for him right?
Can someone who uses evernote regularly explain their main use case to me? Like why use this instead of notes or pintrest or instapaper or bookmarks?
I thought the design of their book scanner was very creative. It was also really interesting to see how they were basically able to prototype the entire thing in a day using cardboard they found around the office and a vacuum cleaner. I read through their design document and I'm considering trying to model all the various parts in CAD software for others to use.

However, the figure they posted of 45% of books tearing a page was a little troubling. I'm hoping the design can be improved to be gentler on the books. I read someone else mention that if you wanted to use this scanner on a book then you likely don't care about possibly damaging it. If that is the case, then why not just cut off the binding and feed the pages into a sheet fed scanner? If you do care about the books being damaged then you would likely use one of the more expensive automated scanners or a manual scanner.
I hate to post this kind of comment, but it's "Tim Berners-Lee".
I think an enforced cap and the exclusivity of an offer is a great idea, I'd love to use that in the future.
Americanness is a very central argument, though. In my experience, many immigrants are much more enthusiastically "American" than are most of the rest of us. They made the huge decision to move to America of today and very enthusiastically do not want America to change. Ironically many of them are very anti-immigration.
This is an old argument but: most internet filters only filter for smut and not violence. I'd challenge the notion that using such a filter is at all an effective tool for filtering the obscene.
Simplicity and reliability. The rotor is completely inert (no windings).

The big drawback has historically been "torque ripple". However, with modern high-speed power electronics, the current to the windings can be modulated to counteract this.

Full torque at 0 RPM. An SR machine combined with efficient backlash-free reducing gearing (torque amplification) may be able to deliver the reliability and torque density to replace frictional brakes. The "holy grail" of a combined traction motor and braking system may be within reach.
> Why do you think RGB being bytes makes it special? Bools aren't bytes...

Bools are special too because the compiler handles ensuring that they are true and false (and you don't even get to choose to representation).

How would you handle a real complex type like Customer or Order or Window or Button?

> That does nothing to prevent errors.

Yes, it does. It's effectively the DRY principle -- you can't repeat the data manipulation code throughout the codebase. OOP formalizes some of the best practices for procedural programming.
Answered. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/the-world-suc...
If we hadn't privatised industries like British Leyland, British Steel, etc etc etc, we would be bankrupt and in the grips of unions.

Maybe you weren't born when this was going on, but "prices were cheap" is idiotic. British leyland, British steel, etc etc were some of the most loss making, unproductive industries. If by "prices were cheap" you mean "were massively subsidized by the government so we were paying through the nose for them anyway", then agreed.

Look at the 1970s. Strikes. Union action. Rubbish piling up on the streets, and power cuts. That is what nationalization means.

Since privatization, how many times has your water supply or energy supply failed?

Even the worst privatization (British Rail) is arguably far better than it was before privatization.

One of Thatchers biggest achievements was to take on the millitant socialist unions, and she won. Overwhelmingly. She set us free from their grip.

"Profit" shouldn't be a dirty word. I love companies to make profits when they provide a good service. What I dislike are millitant unions striking for endless pay and pension increases, whilst at the same time providing a horrible service.

I hate to descend into politics, but you are presenting as "fact" what is actually a very biased and extreme left wing view, which thankfully is pretty outdated in the UK now.
The Bass Egg
Aaron Sorkin reveals Steve Jobs film plot
I would say Switzerland, and the cultural and economical benefit they received from the mass influx of immigrants into a fairly small country during WWII.

Oh wait... though, unsurprisingly, a lot of locals were less than amused. Though I know that they are less than amused in many other countries as well, even when the country is pretty large and immigration is minimal.
Stealing VM Keys from the Hardware Cache
Growing a New Website to 100,000+ Organic Visits Per Month in Less Than 1 Year
The HemLoft
I'd use it if I could just have all files offline, and disable syncing. Is this possible?
Facebook is a product. Email is a protocol.

Are you saying that boycotting Facebook is not a solution to Facebook stepping all over privacy? What are we supposed to do? Use harsh language?
A lot of modern motors are brushless, and instead of using brushes, they use a controller that monitors the position of the rotor and flips the polarity at the appropriate times.

The methods for monitoring the rotor vary, so you can essentially you can think of brushed motors as a special case of brushless motors. In a brushed motor, the "controller" is essentially a physical switch that flips back and forth as the rotor spins. But physical switches wear out, so less wear-prone methods like measuring back-EMF can make it last a lot longer.
It's also, unlike XHTML, not particularly easy to do it with a parser: most of the complexity of the regex is due to the litany of edge cases for what constitutes a valid email address, not due to it being a regex.
Lets help them out
Tell the PUC to support ride sharing services Sign the Petition:

https://www.change.org/petitions/tell-the-puc-to-support-rid...
"Call Me Maybe" beatmatched using a heart rate monitor
I keep thinking its going to fall off a table and shatter the screen.
I would use this, if the same company hadn't bought skitch and then completely failed at keeping it working. RIP skitch.
You misunderstand. Independence from central control has nothing to do with it.

I'm not defining value in the philosophical sense, which as you point out is entirely subjective, but you seem to be arguing against the generally accepted definition of value as applied to a system where something is exchanged in return for something else.

> But there are many other circumstances that could result in BTC having no value, regardless of scarcity. For instance if people stopped using it, at all. There would be no value in being the only one with bitcoin, regardless of how scarce they are.

Perhaps you need to re-read my comment. I never said scarcity alone was enough - if no one used it, it wouldn't have utility. You need both, hence my use of the word 'and'.

And thanks for the completely unnecessary downvote.
I think they have too many users to focus on any type of real support. I remember having an issue with Google+ (friend changed my name as a prank) and it took easily 2 hours to figure out that i needed to delete my account and recreate it in order for it to be fixed (or wait 30 days).
That is not inflation. That's a price swing of a commodity. Apples and oranges. Price swings can go both ways. Deflation is extremely rare.
ShowHN: Top Flickr photos of Places
Airbnb CEO has a vision of a future where everyone shares
To be clear, 'their book scanner' refers to a '20% project' by an employee - not the actual hardware behind Google Books.