skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
With an active digitizer and the ability to run full apps, this looks like the perfect photography/graphic work portable workstation, that you can then dock at your desk at home. Extremely interested in it for that alone.

But I might wait a round or two, or look for similar 3rd party convertible things... At $1000, currently, it would need to be something that could do everything I wanted when traveling, and I'm skeptical that the in-lap keyboard experience on one of these will be good enough to make it a true laptop replacement for me. Typing in an airport, for instance (or just a recliner, or bed, or wherever)... I want it to be able to sit in my lap.

A cheaper Surface Pro in the future will appeal just for the portable photography workstation aspect. A laptop-based 3rd-party alternative with as good a digitizer, at about the same price, would appeal as my next laptop. Not sure this version 1 hits what I want, though.
Classic Microsoft rear-guard move to protect margins for Intel and their hardware chain (and consequently trying to prop up their desktop OS appeal as well) by trying to "tablet-ify" their existing offerings. Expect a bunch of Surface clones (MS approved) to hit the market soon afterwards.

This strategy won't work. Many folks who would buy a Win8 Pro surface are likely going to just buy an ultrabook or netbook + iPad/Nexus/Fire instead.

Microsoft shouldn't even be competing against Apple. They should be deathly afraid of Android. Apple doesn't want to turn iOS into a desktop-like experience, however a Asus Transformer did Surface before Microsoft did.
Did you ever compare the Dell device with other ultrabook hardware, such as Asus Zenbook, HP, etc? How does the Dell hardware compare?
I think your point here is valid - if backup options are restricted via DRM, then the company does have at the least a moral obligation to provide re-downloads. Companies like Barnes and Noble that probably have very thin margins would do well to enact business practices that gain them long-term customers.
Researchers Steal Cloud Computing Power Via Browsers
Specifications-wise (http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/surface-with-windows-...) it's actually very similar to base models of the MacBook Air (perhaps actually smaller than the Air without the keyboard cover). At about $100 cheaper.
Wanna join the Triggit team. Email Joanne@triggit.com
OpenSSL 1.0.1 isn't required. but use the following SSLProtocol string instead:

SSLProtocol ALL -SSLv2
Based on what?

The most comparable machine I see is the mac book air. I paid $1300.00 for it and it doesn't' even include a touch screen.

Maybe Apple overpriced their macbook air's?
Speaking of, has a replacement for firepgp (an awesome Firefox pgp plugin from some years ago) ever cropped up? It was so idiot-proof it was beautiful, and had the project not closed down, I probably would have rallied friends and family to use it.
the branding of "hey have your minute by minute activity mined" is weak on alot of different levels

but that's not so different from alot of real world activity, showing face time at work, being 5 minutes early for meetings, that sort of thing

those sorts of little things go into your real world reputation, ie do you feel good about recommending someone for a job that's always 5 minutes late? (superficial as that may be)

part of that is why personal recommendations carry the weight they do

if taking classes with minute by minute monitoring were shown to correlated with better chances a monetary reward at the end (x% gets a job, x+y% gets a job with monitoring), that'd change the calculus for alot of people

admittedly, the branding for that is pretty weak
Republicans give SOPA architect power over science committee
Yeah, it really is almost unusuable on the desktop. The display jumps all over the place, and trying to find your way back to your story usually ends up loading more causing more jumps.
In the business world, ask has been used as a noun at least since 1985 ("I understand it's a big ask...")[1]

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001331.h...
The Humble THQ Bundle
Oh right, scabble is the only thing tablets or iPads are good for. The rest of your thoughts were spot on, but you sort of went the troll route at the end.
Viddy Competitor Klip Adds Video Replies, Private Messaging
The Facts On Using Kendo UI With WebAPI
Compared to a similar ultrabook its not that expensive, the problem is that for the average joe on a store its a $999 tablet surrounded by $200-500 tablets.

Maybe MSFT should have released a surface hybrid laptop-tablet instead. The kickstand+cover combo is great compared to other tablets but is not the same than a proper laptop keyboard.
I'm well aware of these things and none of them has anything to do with ISPs proactively snitching on individual users for the purpose of reporting suspicious activity to law enforcement, which was what my parent and my comment was all about.

(Though I agree that Deep Packet Inspection and Ad Injection may technically be considered a form of "looking at users traffic", albeit an automated one.)
Supersymmetry Fails Test, Forcing Physics to Seek New Ideas
I agree, Microsoft is chock full of talented engineers.

Now if only they would let them make the decisions instead of those clueless PR and marketing people. Let the products speak for themselves instead of trying to dumb down everyone into using them through a fishy marketing campaign; they already have the talent to achieve this, but right now I get the feeling it's helplessly sitting there watching events unfold.
Apple fails at its second attempt to patent the iPad’s design in Russia
SearchMan Gives Developers At-A-Glance Info About Their Apps’ “Discoverability”
Crayola: Dissecting a big UX project
I'm a fairly young developer so managed to avoid the IE6 problems.

Can you elaborate on which MS decisions you preferred over w3c?
Techdirt accused of copyright infringement
The code is on Github (https://github.com/stackgeek/stackgeek-gaeb) and GAE-Boilerplate (http://github.com/coto/gae-boilerplate). I should mention we haven't gotten the blog code integrated into the parent project yet, but are working on it.
I see no moral argument against piracy in the specific case that the content provider will never allow you to legally watch the show in your area. There is zero marginal cost to the provider (as in all cases of piracy) and, in this special case, there is also zero lost revenue potential. You are better off and the content provider is no worse off; this is Pareto optimal. Nobody is being hurt in any way by this specific instance of piracy.
bought in less than a second, thanks to paypal
Groupon CEO on hot seat; board meets today to discuss his job status
Amazon’s Vogels on 21st-century apps and “IT life events”
Amen Brother. IE was/is broken on purpose to prevent web apps from competing with Microsoft's bread and butter desktops apps, IMO. MS is scared they losing IE's drag on the momentum of the web. This is forcing them to update IE so its at least close enough to other browsers that it is not abandoned completely and suddenly I am supposed to be impressed?

Additionally, why is Microsoft marketing material making the front page of HN?
Since when did touch screens become a requirement or even a semi-useful thing for laptops?
It's not. Anything lower than 1440x900 is a deal breaker for me. I rather take a hit in performance than go down to 1366x768. You know something is wrong when your 4.3" phone screen has the same resolution as your 13" laptop.
How much space will it take for OS+Office+other default applications? If the situation is same as Surface RT then 64 GB Surface Pro is definitely not a good choice.
I believe it is a continuation of the joke. Mimicking the look of w3c standards. It's also interesting to point out they are using google analytics
Funny, I re-started using it again last year after ignoring it for several years.

I've noticed I get lots of little freebies when I check in via foursquare. Ie., $5-$10 off a meal if i use my amex, a free dessert etc. Lots of local businesses seem to have these hidden deals but they don't publicise them.
> ...I'm not saying that we didn't land on the moon,
> I'm just saying it's interesting to wonder if it
> really happened.

I don't think that conflating speculation with conspiracy theories is necessarily productive. It's not like Microsoft doesn't have a track record of abandoning partners in the past[1] (e.g. Plays 4 Sure).

> If you haven't noticed, I've been part of this
> community for quite a while.

I'm not sure that 'pulling rank' is necessarily constructive either. It just reminds me of those Slashdot threads where people with increasing smaller UIDs would reply with, "You must be new here," or "get off my lawn."

[1] Though I agree that completely abandoning C# would be suicide in the enterprise market.
Lots of good open hardware in there. Raspberry Pi, MaKey Makey, etc.
I actually kinda like the ad, because the guy could be me in a heartbeat, i even own the same keyboard xD.

However the hate in me burns with the power of a thousand sons, when it comes to IE. The almost constant changes of MS standards with each new version of IE, inevitably breaks something, and will often require separate CSS styling..

And dont get me started on maintaining an app, that was built on IE6..

If I was in a room with Hitler, Osama bin Laden and the devlead for IE6, and had a gun with only 2 bullets.. I would shoot the IE6 lead twice..

That said and done, i really hope they start to embrace the "real" standards, as the the new development team proclaims.
Remember all those compiler warnings about mixing signed and unsigned integers? Now you know why.
Apple releases iTunes 11
Well, no, it's arguably a "better" machine than the MBA in the sense that it can convert to a tablet, has a pressure sensitive digitizer, higher resolution, better sound system.
How are you connecting TWO external displays? I only see one DisplayPort on the specs. Is that via a USB display or can you daisy chain a DisplayPort?
I'm not OP, but in general you don't want to use serif fonts on (72dpi) LCDs. Maybe you all have retina display screens at work, on but regular low resolution screens serif fonts slow down reading speed.

See this site for example.
Because I'd never sell them to you, do you have the right to take my fancy clothes without paying for them?

A better comparison would be counterfeiting your fancy clothes, rather than stealing them, because piracy isn't theft, it's "copying".

Many elements of fashion design are not eligible for copyright in the US so it's conceivable that your design (minus the logos, etc) could be legally copied and mass produced by someone else who is willing to sell to customers that you are not. To me, that's a closer parallel to what is happening in the movie/tv industry today, except that in the media industries, copying the product costs virtually nothing, meaning everything is available as a copy, and distribution costs virtually nothing with the right technologies. Even more strange, those customers, who judging by the success of iTunes, Amazon and Google music stores, are perfectly willing to pay despite high quality, convenient, free copies being available a couple of clicks away.

I think most people follow a pretty simple ideology with this stuff: If you give me a way to pay for a TV show that moderately compares to the experience of watching the pirated version, I'll pay. If you refuse to sell the product to me in any way, I will not feel guilty about downloading one of the six different versions in three different file formats available to me via some other source. Your customers understand that as a business in the media industry you had a choice: (1) Give me a way to pay you or (2) Don't. Unfortunately, option #2 just means I now have to choose whether or not I'm willing to do something that, in my view, is only "morally questionable".
I didn't find any official information about battery life. Anyone know about that?
Personally good power management is what I miss with linux, it seems that I can only get around 2/3 of battery life in Ubuntu comparing to Windows.
ugh, writing a book about cross browser support, that is my idea of hell.
Microsoft is attacking a straw man. The people Microsoft needs to worry about are not trolls with too much time on their hands. The people they need to convince are web developers frustrated by 10 years of IE that refused to cooperate with standards and held everyone back. Even IE 9 has problems with JS features that Firefox, Chrome, and Opera implement. Microsoft did this to themselves, and I believe it is one of the reasons why developers are reticent to develop for Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8.
Did you guys notice the OS X hand cursor when he tweets? Here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/ll0fq
The thing about IE is that once they gain some market share, they start trying to push their "own" standards, even if the community is moving in the opposite direction. That is just the way it has been since IE6.

The ad targets haters that convince "regular users" that IE sucks...haters needed to do that because regular users couldn't totally grasp how much their web experience is affected for using that crappy browser and how many features they were missing.

The fact that a lot of them do not realize how awful their experience is, is due to countless hours of near-suicide frustration from programmers and coders around the world trying to make IE compatible applications.
The site exists to extort those in the pictures. Adding the address isn't for the gawkers; it's to scare the photographed.
It's up to the user to prove that the child porn isn't on his computer. As someone pointed out earlier, you could just download a bunch of child porn with a tor exit node running on your computer and say it was someone else.
Don't forget about dual income families.
Good Guy Cop
Very disappointed this isn't about THQ making some of these games available for Linux, also "Requires Steam to Play". I still have half a mind to purchase it as the Company of Heroes games are excellent, but I really dislike buying games that I have to use wine to play.
How embarrassing :D That happens if one get's the courage to create a book by reading all your blogposts...

I'm sorry...
I'd hold off on "better" until they ship; no word on exactly which i5, and no idea on battery life (bigger battery than the 11" MBA, but software + screen are unknowns).

And it's really a $1100 Surface Pro, because if you're using it like a laptop, you'll want a keyboard. Still competitive, but don't be fooled.
I backed Wasteland 2, and if I see voice acting with lip-synced animations I'll be disappointed at the waste of resources.

Like the other guy said, I'm expecting a play experience similar to Fallout 1/2.

However, if I end up getting nothing, that's OK. Backing a project on Kickstarter is a gamble. This is obvious to me but the rest of the world doesn't seem to get it. I can only hope that people adjust their expectations a little after a few spectacular splats, rather than, say, throwing around lawsuits and ruining the whole idea for everyone.
Why small agencies rocks, and not freelancers
China To Overtake U.S. In Smartphone Installations By Early 2013
Agree with the former, but it bears saying: you're about 2 millenia too late to be complaining about the use of the ampersand. :)
The site tries so hard to tell me how great IE 10 is, then provides me a download link to IE 9.
So it's basically as expensive as a MacBook Air, but not as polished or light-weight, and it comes with Windows 8? I'm still stuck on why I need something in between a tablet and a small laptop, especially when it costs as much as a nicer ultrabook.
Father Of Raided 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl Settles Case For 300 Euros
Definitely too expensive. I could have sworn that they claimed to keep the price under $800. Looks like I'll be waiting for either the inevitable price drop or fire sale for what would amount to a 2nd laptop for me. Knowing this, I don't understand why the ultrabooks are priced so exorbitantly despite them being "luxury" devices if they plan for people to actually buy them.
I am a firm believer that the best way to fix programming is through better programming languages, which I learned about myself while working at Coverity. Otherwise I think it was a great place to work: lots of very smart people, a very good business plan, great startup stock (back then), but I'm too idealistic!

Static analysis tools are very pragmatic in a world where better languages aren't adopted very often.
As someone who's been using a Mac since 2008-ish, beginning with a 17" A4, I'm really considering buying this Dell and moving to Ubuntu permanently. I have a few gripes with Apple laptops and I was wondering if you could refute or lend an opinion on why(or why not) the Dell would be an option.

1) I really hate the hardware upsell. With this XPS machine I'm getting a 256gb SSD, 8G RAM, and an 3GHz i7 processor. The comparable hardware for a 13" Retina is $2,200 and it's still not as light or thin. The comparable Air is missing a GHz of processing speed and still costs an extra $150. Also, there isn't a team of OEM Apple developers writing Ubuntu PPA support for either machine, so I'm stuck on OS X again, which I'm pretty disillusioned with.

2) I'm actually still not really clear what the advantage of a retina display is. Maybe it's because I haven't been able to use one for a significant timespan, but I just don't get it. If there was a way to clearly and easily illustrate why a 13" display benefits from retina resolution, I'd really appreciate it.

3) I'm kind've ready for a change from Apple products. I haven't used a high end laptop or PC from any other manufacturer and I feel like I don't know what I'm missing, if I'm missing anything.

If you or the other XPS tester can respond at all, thanks in advance.
You mean the ones not connected to the internet anymore?
Failed with me once, in 2006. None of my laptops since then had any issues with sleep.
Are these still "64gb" as in it's really 45gb with the OS files and such installed?
I agree that it's not really in the 'spirit' of the humble bundle in that regard. As a Windows and Steam user, however, I bought it instantly. It's an amazing deal.
Amazon Announces 2 New EC2 Instance Types
The infamous IE box model is one thing where you could debate that one or the other was preferable.
They have a blog post about the web app as well: http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=2803
ITunes 11 Available for Download
I would love to figure out how to make up that $70,000 a year slack with a decent investment portfolio! Any tips? :)
I don't get it, really. They designed a tablet whose primary use-case is in laptop mode? Why not just buy a better-spec'd laptop for the same price? And why does Surface have a mission-critical piece of hardware (the keyboard) missing from it? Sorry, but at a whopping $1050 after purchasing this critical component, I'd rather just buy a 11in Macbook air for cheaper.
Everyone's blown away because they priced themselves out of their target market. Whether they agree or not, this is going to be compared to the other tablets (i.e., the iPad) out there, and for the base models, the cost is almost double. For a company attempting to play catch-up, their giving themselves such a tremendous handicap is pretty unexpected.
So, we're vulnerable to persuasion by storytelling. Try to stay skeptical when someone tells you a compelling story.
Yes. Of course.
What market indeed. There has been no market for the hybrid laptop/tablet.
Firefox is quite complicated; we have code written in C, C++, JS, Python, Make, m4, plus at least three custom IDL formats. grep handles these with ease.
Works great on my X1 Carbon.
"I would shoot the IE6 lead twice.."

That's a little bit harsh, isn't it? While I would never defend it's usage today, it wasn't that horrible at the time it was released.

However, as Microsoft decided to kill off development it soon grew too old for it's own good.
Kuddos to the persistence and doing a great job maintaining your tone in your communications.
Introduction to Local Outlier Intrusion Detection using Coke Dealers
The marketplace isn't going to understand that this is more of a computer than an iPad. They need to hammer on "this runs Office".
At least give Microsoft credit: IE10 is a modern, standards-compliant browser. And, you know, IE6 was actually the best web browser out there for a long time.
I'm sure that you could contribute to the project, if it really bothers you.
Having variable story choices is not the sole part of gameplay. Being a sandbox is not the sole part of gameplay. Having a great combat system is not the sole part of gameplay. Having AAA graphics, having many side missions, having complex locations, having complex characters, having lots of different combat styles, having stealth, having character growth, etc., etc.

Gameplay is made up of all those things and you're taking one tiny part of what makes it up and calling FO3 terrible because you didn't like its gameplay mix. It's without a doubt one of the greatest games of the last 5 years. It's just that you don't like it.

Personally I found NV tediously linear. It's a big loop that you go from start town and follow the road round to the dam. Every part of the main story was 'urgent'. End of exploring. Add to that I never felt any attachment to the courier. To me NV had very few unique large locations and was unfinished. Camp McCarran, Caesar's camp, Forlorn Hope, the casinos and the Nellis AFB all felt characterless and empty, as if they'd meant to put a lot more effort into them but hadn't had time so just filled them with unscripted NPCs. Even Novac needed more character. There were so, so many NPCs that were just nobodies. The arena was a total waste of space, a great concept that hadn't been fleshed out.

Conversely I thought FO3 was amazing, you had to roam all over the map. It felt as if you should set up in certain locations for a while, so you got to know them. Every place was packed with unique NPCs and there were practically no areas just crammed with 'anonymous' NPCs apart from areas you'd actually expect them not to talk to you like the BoS compound. You got a house. There was no constant urgency to follow the main mission until the late stages. I loved it. I like being told a story as I play and having too many choices means the story and characters inevitably become extremely shallow, to me, the NV story was shallow.

So based on two totally different aspects of game play we have two totally different opinions. I still enjoyed NV. It was just very shallow and didn't give me the wasteland survivor vibe that FO3, imo, did so well.
As I said in the other IE submission, most of the criticisms that have been levelled against IE are technical in nature and very real (dragging their feet on web standards, breaking their own compatibility guidelines from version to version, etc). So portraying IE haters as having the IQ of the average YouTube commenter just loses any credibility in the message (plus the way they fell back on badly judged kitten memes was just cringe-worthy)

Nobody is disputing that IE has come along way. The issue isn't whether the latest version of the browser is capable, but rather whether we'd want to get back into bed with Microsoft given their past history. And thankfully there is so much choice in the market now, that people can choose not to use browsers for even the seemingly trivial reasons; such as historical prejudice.

Thus as long as there is competition in the market, I'm going to support the platforms that have a history of promoting a free and open web.
No worries, I've made my share of mistakes. Glad to hear my posts were helpful and inspiring. I really do hope your book does well!