skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the sales were down 21% for November compared to a year ago, according to NPD.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/29/npd-pc-sales-down-microso...

It also seems things are so bad, that they've already started to raise prices on enterprise customers, from 8% to 400%, trying to milk them as much as possible before they lose them:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/12/03/sales-down-microsoft-rais...
> I don't want this question to sound loaded and threaded with negative connotations for/against apple but why would you label the computer as "one of the best I have ever used" if one of the primary interfaces to the user is repeatedly faulty?

Because mac users tend to put the weight and thinness of the machine over anything else and since the rMBP is the thinnest and lightest 15" laptop it makes it the "best". Hell, Apple is doing the "thin/small and light" thing even with their "desktop" machines like the iMac and Mac Mini.

Mac and PC users just have different set of priorities. I used to own macs but I fully went back to the PC because being able to handle repairs myself in a timely manner is much more important than the niceties of OS X for me, particularly with desktop machines. The mac mini is not good enough for me, and the iMac is exactly what I don't want, if anything fails in the computer I want to be able to replace the part in five minutes and be done with it. That and the fact that the screen tends to outlive my computers in usefulness, I replace them less often than the parts of my desktop PC so buying a computer attached to the screen feels offensive to me.

The Mac Pro could've been an alternative but.. 2600 euros for a computer that is outdated in every single way out of the box is not attractive. Its GPU used to be a mid-range gamer card, used to, because it's not even mid-range in 2012, it's low end. If you build your own computer a GPU with that kind of performance will cost about ~100 to 150 euros, which is not acceptable for a 2600 eur computer. The rest (cpu, ram) is decent but still doesn't really warrant the price tag. It was good when it first launched.. that's about it.
Has the US gone off the Fiscal Cliff - single serving website edition
it's not beta anymore.
Low interest rates offered on savings (treasuries) drives investors who want to see a reasonable return on their money (most everyone) into riskier investments like equities and convertible notes.
I suspect Xeons will remain socketed. As a side benefit, Intel probably won't mind if people spend extra money on principle to get a socketed processor.
It doesn't turn SSL on for everything. It only turns on SSL for sites that are known to have SSL and that are otherwise poorly-configured.
He says I, for my own safety, manipulated the xif data on the image taken from my cellphone, and created a fake emrgency so that the urgency of movement led, as I knew it would, to the hasty posting on their website.

Spelling mistakes aside, what does that even mean? The first part I can parse; but what fake emergency? What urgency of movement? Is he referring back to the posts about his being caught? And he manipulated the EXIF to trick Vice to make them blog about it more rapidly?
Apple's hardware design is much less distracting for mockup presentations and given the OS, the type is more legible (see below). As a designer, I don't want my work pasted onto a ThinkPad with all of the blinky lights, colored buttons and aged edges taking away from the intent.

*This is not to excuse designers who don't test their typography under ClearType, but rather if there's a way to make my work look better naturally, I'm going to use it.
Create a Sitemap to boost your SEO
I think you're missing my point. What do you want Apple to do about it? They gave everyone a free case with which it works fine. It wasn't a quality issue, it was a design issue. These are different things. No amount of QA will fix a design issue.

What possible other response from a customer service perspective could you want here?
Thanks for the comment. I can see that spelled out all together, it feels busy. The great news is that at heart, it's chat and the extras are hidden easily. Our model is a good text editor, with powerful features like code folding and columular selection available but not required learning. If you feel you have to learn awesomatic to use awesomatic, we've missed the mark. All that said, every feature is undergoing a brutal death match for survival. If anything, we see the product getting leaner as we move towards public release. The beta feedback will be invaluable.
Implement Optimizely.com and have two variations: one with and one without.

See which one converts better.

http://www.optimizely.com
This throwaway line gave me a chuckle:

James did not ask me once about health insurance and did not really care when I told him about the plan

A year ago I left a cushy job as a software engineer at ClearChannel to go work for a startup, and I didn't bat an eye when they said they didn't offer health insurance. But my wife is a nurse at Kaiser, and we get a Cadillac plan through them with no out of pocket cost. That gave me the flexibility to accept the offer.
True, still, careless on Vice's behalf none the less.
You'd think Vice would have some interest in protecting sources, I can remember them trying to pass for 'journalism' at least a few times.

Why doesnt Vice's website CMS strip exif data from public facing images? Seems stupid. Sites like Imgur.com get this right.
> ...an oath taken by jurors to tell the truth (Latin verum dicere), i.e., to say what is true ....

I've always been amused by this interpretation and wondered where it originated --- it seems like an urban legend --- because:

1. In legal parlance, the term voir dire refers to the questions posed to prospective jurors by the judge or lawyers to assess whether any of them is biased or has some other disqualification or disability.

2. The term voir dire is French: After the Norman Conquest, that term and a number of others gradually infiltrated the language of English courts [1].

3. In French, voir is the infinitive to see and dire is the infinitive to say; as someone who was bilingual in French and English as a kid (but, sadly, is no longer), I always took the term voir dire to mean, roughly, "let's see what they [the prospective jurors] have to say."

Fun fact: In Texas, you'd better pronounce it "VORE dye-er" if you don't want to be recognized as a noob or an out-of-towner. The rest of the country seems to use the French pronunciation "vwahr deer."

[1] http://www.michbar.org/journal/pdf/pdf4article756.pdf
#4: loyal devs start to leave: they don't even cover half of it. What about all the game companies literally angry about windows store like valve who is leading the steam on linux charge? Or the unity game engine? Or Notch? Big names in windows game dev who have been very windows loyal are angry and investing heavily in new platforms. And they made this happen.
yeah. I was one of the persons that rested (no real sleep) for 4 hours instead of going home. I still think it is crazy, but seeing half the people do it makes it competitive and therefore you want to stay up too. Apart from students I don't know any professional group that is crazy enough to do that, you?
I used to work phone support for a large auction site (your first thought is probably correct). I can confirm this notion or idea. We were given generic things that the customer could try to fix the problem. You know "Clear cache and cookies", etc.

If the issue persisted and we could not reproduce the problems on our own machine we weren't allowed to push trouble tickets to our QA team. For a lot of the lower tech users, I suspect issues were on their end. However I often got users who obviously knew what they were doing, and it was frustrating that there wasn't more we could do.
Most things can be tested pretty easily and quickly. This would reduce fraud considerably, since you'd have to come up with an item that would pass a cursory inspection, but still fail later. Not at all easy to do.
Looking at AMD's history, I would guess they will copy Intel a year or two later. (Remember Slot A?)
I can get just as many links for ebay and craigslist "scams"

It's no different than a gaming tournament where you pay a $10 entry fee.

You'd keep yourself from popping a vein if you just asked how does yours prevent the headaches of quibids.

Everything I didn't like about quibids I removed from dreamybids.

1. There are plenty of ways to get free bids, you don't even have to buy 1 bid.

2. One of the auction formats, everyone in the auction gets x amount of free bids. Each bid the final price goes up x amount of cents. At the end of the auction the winner pays the final price, if you didn't win the auction it costs you nothing since you never bought bids. Like this free auction http://www.dreamybids.com/contest.php?id=332

3. You can host your own auctions. So even if you did lose $50 in bids, put up an item of your own and make your money back. If we collect 30% more than the retail price of the item, you'd get 50% of the overage, so you can make way more than you would from selling an item on ebay or craigslist.

4. There are some great gamification tools that allow you to freeze the bid of the next bidder, or buy the timer down, or block a power bidder from joining an auction. Also once the auction starts new participants can't jump in.

Asking questions keeps you from being theamazingidiot
Nmap 6.25 Release 85 new scripts, better performance, Windows 8 enhancements...
I don't know enough about the others, but point number 5 is too early to say I think. Windows phones have been decent for how long now, half a year or a year? After having a reputation of sub-sub-zero?

Those at school who have one are very positive about it now, so the market share in this may still grow a lot. I would not think for two seconds about Windows on my phone a few years ago, but I would consider a Windows phone right now because they got so much better.
BGAs in a socket fail after about 5 years of not being moved, or maybe a dozen times you move things.
Another vote for Swappa. I bought a phone using the service. As pdubs said, it still goes through PayPal but the site employees keep an eye on the transactions and there are reviews and negative feedback.
Using OpenRA, I'd still consider it the same game since it needs the MIX files to work. Using a modern engine makes sense, since you can play with higher screen resolution.
Given the amount of research they put into determining the 160 character limit[1], it's disappointing that Twitter had to limit themselves to 140 characters (to allow for usernames).

[1] - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-...
You mean the place where I am currently reading people disagreeing on the validity of approaches like yours, that it's not necessarily to be expected?
Show HN: Recording audio with Chrome using HTML5
You guys are crazy. How did that turn out?
Microsoft Research's TouchDevelop - create apps everywhere on all your devices
Perhaps his goal was to bring attention to the EXIF issue. Not enough people realize that their location is transparently embedded in the photos they take. This should be an opt-in feature that the user has to work for to enable. It should never be an option that I might accept by hitting "OK" to many times.
I run a site dedicated to people who build their own computers. Like you, I am not terribly concerned by this move. From my experience, the number of people who upgrade CPUs keeping a given motherboard, or upgrade motherboards keeping the same CPU is very limited. CPUs typically don't depreciate in value that much, and by the time someone does decide to upgrade availability is limited to the point that prices often go up rather than down. If you wait a year or two, it's often more cost effective to just upgrade both.
Did you wind up hiring a different number of engineers than you were considering when interviewing the guy in the post?
It's a startup. What else do you need to know?
Validation is wonderful (even in really small quantities)
Florian's Compromise
Gists and oAuth warning
The numbers were fictitious in order to work the example. Our CFO in conjunction with our general counsel determines the effective valuation which is ratified at the appropriate board meeting and becomes the official strike price until the next valuation 'event'.

There are two numbers in play, one is the value of common stock and one is the value of preferred stock. Preferred stock is used in conjunction with raising capital and often has terms and covenants attached to it which make it significantly more valuable than common stock early in the company's life cycle where they effectively converge on the same value at the IPO (or 'liquidity event')

That said, the example is illustrative but not strictly accurate (accurate in principle but not in execution). What really happens is that you run out of money faster with a higher salary load, and that means you may need to raise additional funds sooner. That fund raising round would proceed like any other round, caveat your 'target' now includes an additional $200K to cover the salary you're paying out. Worse that stock you sell will be preferred and not common stock, and as such might have preferences like 2x return which would further reduce the benefit to common stock holders in the event of a sale or merger.

Its truly a good prisoner's dilemma game setup. If all of the employees take large common stock grants and low salaries they all benefit more on a non-IPO type event, if a few take big salaries they can make the threshold for everyone else benefiting higher, thus by not co-operating get a better salary and reduce total compensation of their peers.
You need to get a proper domain name if you are serious about this as a business. Go get $10,000 and buy stickypost.com if you still like the name. Look at the comments in this thread discussing what it means.
I think McAffee means to claim the photo was taken and the EXIF data was manipulated on his iPhone, then he created a 'fake emergency' and told the Vice reporters they would have to move urgently so that they would post the photo online immediately.

Obvious question: Who is more likely to be waving an iPhone around; the extremely paranoid McAffee who has been on the run for weeks, presumably without a stable source of electricity, or the Vice reporters who have just been flown in, presumably from London?
In Wine, yes: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&...

In Dosbox, yes (don't have a reference for this, but it's safe to assume that every DOS app except Win3.11 will work in Dosbox)
Instagram exploit (session riding) written in GoLang
Second glance? Even on the first glance this article doesn't pass the sniff test.

Nobody would predict Windows 8 would "stop" the iPad only a month after release. (not to mention the weird comparison of an operating system to a hardware gadget)

"Employees switching away from Windows PCs", and then citing a large iPad purchase by a company. Again, nobody with half a clue would think that these employees are replacing their work computer with an iPad.

Comparing the years old Apple Store to the brand new Windows Store, and trying to pretend like the numbers mean something.

Saying "office is losing relevance" and then citing absolutely nothing.

Saying Microsoft can't continue to invest the profitable Xbox.. because they can't make it the flagship of the company?

Saying their "platform business is collapsing", and then citing areas where they are doing well, and then just assuming they're all eventually going to fail.

This "writer" needs to be fired.
Responsive Design vs Server Side solutions (infographic)
I know you're taking a fair amount of criticism about this post, with some saying that your attitude toward employee compensation reflects poorly on you and/or you company. However, as someone who doesn't know you, I'm pretty damn impressed with your ability to respond in a very cool, calm, and rational manner to very pointed criticism. If I lived on your side of the country, I'd certainly look into your company since that kind of attitude in a founder tends to permeate a company. I would take (and have taken) a 20%+ pay cut to work with calm, rational bosses and co-workers.
This is actually what AutoRef.com, the startup I'm working with does. While it is similar to CarWoo for used cars, interacting with dealerships about specific vehicles tied to a VIN number is quite complex.
I believe Twitter had to restrict status updates to 140 characters not due to usernames but instead due to the fact that SMS messages are 160 septets (1120 bits, or 140 8-bit characters) not 160 8-bit characters.
Never been scammed as a buyer in hundreds of transactions.
I keep reading such stories every week on HN.

This problem doesn't exists in Poland.

There is no such thing as chargeback because banking system runs on top of free, irreversible wire transfer, not credit cards.

The system is better because it's easier to trust established seller than to trust random buyer. Malicious sellers are very rare. Instead of chargebacks there are other protections:

a) Even 10$ items are treated as criminal offense (fraud).

b) Buyer can return anything in 10 days.

c) Sellers and buyers are linked to national id card which is hard to cheat. Police has 95+% success rate finding fraudsters.

d) Auction site has buyer protection, but it requires reporting on police.
Thought about it, decided now would be a good time for life to teach him about backups.
> The point is if you run Ubuntu without Unity that it breaks a large amount of functionality. Wireless for instance becomes a complete pain. Lots of stuff like xorg config is now embedded in unity.

Absolutely none of this is true. I don't even know how you can say it, because it has no factual basis.

You must really think I'm dumb. I run Ubuntu without Unity on a daily basis and everything works. The fact you think you can lie to my face about my own setup is simply astounding.
John McAfee - on the run, but photo EXIF data reveals his location
make a quick tumblr and post it there
I'd love if the talks came with Lanyrd links so I can track them and check out the material, once it's up.
Cool idea, liked it! Can you give some hints about the image processing you have done or what kind of trick did you use?
It's interesting that you mention Dwolla. Their approach is indeed to prevent fraud rather than charging back after it happens, but when people look at the hoops that Dwolla makes them jump though (linking a Facebook account, etc.) they usually go running right back to credit cards.
How many people do you know who have an iPad but not a PC (or a Mac)?

My sample is completely non-scientific, but I can't think of anyone I know like that. My impression is iOS and Android are taking eyeball-time and consumer purchasing money away from PCs, but I just don't see them replacing PCs any more than iPhones or Playstations did. Yet.

What am I missing?
I just tried the iPad mini the other night and was impressed by the office suite included with it. To people who have used it, how does it compare to MS Office?
> I had some activity using gmail and hotmail. Microsoft revealed my IP address. Neither Yahoo nor Gmail reveals IP addresses.

I don't know what you mean by 'reveal IP addresses', but I can assure you that your latter statement is very much not the case.
TC is now just a series of re-written press releases with very little in the way of opinion. The opinion is still there, just to a lesser extent and is camouflaged but all of the other copy they post.

I still give it a look every couple of days to make sure I haven't missed anything but I certainly don't value it the same as I used to when the old team were there.
How would giving a zero to both students have been any less of a dicincentive to the act in general?

In this example he plagarist has no dicincentive to plagarise again from some other source.
Miami Startup Digest 12-03-2012
Interesting to see that Eugene Kaspersky[0], creator of McAfee competitor Kasperksy Anti-Virus, posted in the comments. Do these two know one another personally?

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kaspersky
How does he update his blog multiple times a day without power of some kind?
You're assuming that Paypal didn't purposely withhold any provided proof of scam, to avoid further action on this issue. That appears to be exactly what Paypal did.
More specifically: http://www.hotelmarinananajuana.com ;-)
Note that while it's understandable to think that this is an austrian theory given all of the argument on the internet about whether or not it's a good idea, the idea that easy credit drives business expansion is absolutely agreed upon by both schools and pretty much every working economist.

You can think of it a bit like amphetamines. No doctor would disagree with the idea that amphetamines produce energy in the patient. The debate would only center around how productive or destructive that energy is.
allied.iso: http://www.shacknews.com/file/12203
soviet.iso: http://www.shacknews.com/file/12204
That's cool, post it! I'd love to hear your angle on it
Not true. Placing yourself in the jurisdiction of a competing government is just a matter of going there. People do it all the time.
I don't think America surpassing Britain in any category was solely due to copyright laws. I would bet it was more of an issue of the UK absorbing a huge brunt of the wartime activity during that period.

To use two Asian countries: it's my understanding that Japan has had a lot of technological success while at the same time employing copy-protection practices (from what I remember in my Nintendo days). China is not at Japan's development stage yet but do you believe China, barring a change in how they enforce copyright, will be as much of an innovations leader as Japan was in its heyday?
The Marketer's Guide to Making Green Claims
This happened to me. I ordered something, it took time to build and then by the time i figured out something was up i was out my cash. paypal wouldn't do anything. still trying to get it back over a year later.
That would be a nice topic for a website: to encapsulate and present the duality present in any number of fields.

A major barrier to understanding any new field is being able to strip away the jargon and recast the ideas into a familiar form. One can envisage website, where you tick the field(s) "A" that you want to learn about, tick the field(s) "B" that you already know about, and it recasts field(s) "A" in terms of the terminology of field(s) "B".

Make it have a "plug-in" structure, so supporting a new field is a matter of writing a mapping of field specific concepts to a set of "design patterns". Make it open source, so experts can jump in and contribute mappings for a wide variety of fields. Getting fancy, mappings could be written in terms of any two fields (so the expert does not have to learn a set of web-site specific design patterns), and the software could construct a graph to allow conversions between arbitrary fields.
Wow, it's like you can see through the matrix.
Be that as it may, Kurzweil has a decades long history of making predictions, often considered absolutely nuts by the press and in some very high profile cases, technology even beat his predictions. I don't think there's anyone else with as good of a track record when it comes to predicting far off technical advances.

(e.g. saying in the 80s that a chess AI beating the top ranked human by 1998 or that the human genome would be sequenced by the year 2000).