skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Organizational complexity can show up in odd ways in a shipping product. For instance, why does a single product, the Microsoft Surface, give consumers the option between two very different OSes: one model with “Windows RT” and another with “Windows 8 Pro”.

Can someone pen a counterpoint to this? I feel that one exists but I am not able to get it out. Basically, I see tonnes of assumptions in the above and that basically, it is almost all bad. Yet, there is something about it that must still be working: the company behind it continues to make billions. Why? How? Is there nothing to learn from that?

It is easy to make fun of large companies and their structures and yet Dalton himself probably wouldn't mind building a billion dollar empire with the similar type of "red tape".
Yes, RaspBMC for the media center.

Plain Raspbian for the NAS/music player, plus Samba, mpd, minidlna.

I am not perfectly satisfied with RaspBMC however. I'd rather build the thing myself, piece by piece, so I have only what I need and know what to change when my needs change.
I continue to use gReader more frequently than any other news app. It's lightweight, on all the devices I use, and addresses my reading needs at least sufficiently.

My take on advertising likely differs from most here; I don't mind others paying the bills with my attention -- GOOG does a decent job of it, even. I understand and appreciate it goes deeper than text ads displayed contextually to the feeds' stories. Retargeting, psychographics and inference are OK by me, too.

I completely appreciate the wish to pay for a service in place of having one's contrail sold. Believing your attention and behaviors don't get sold -- or wont get sold -- because you pay should not be a presupposition (c.f. cable tv and [your ISP here]).

From the post -- "and I certainly don’t buy products that aren’t in some way designed to be functional" -- I don't understand how this would be otherwise: would you buy something without intended function?

There also seems to be no attention paid to Chrome Sync (yes, they're likely selling our contrails), Delicious, and other services that've come and gone.

I will provide my attention in return for services I find of value. gReader's been such for several years. Until there's a clearly compelling alternative, I'll stick with it.
Someone in one of the other Ramanujan threads mentioned that if you did have divine guidance and wanted to prove it, dropping information that's ahead of your time but could be verified later is one obvious way.
Actually I think iMessage is in fact not SMS/MMS. I'm not an apple user so I don't have first hand experience. Perhaps there is an SMS bridge on the backend server to deliver to non-ios devices.
I am very close to donating! This describes exactly how I feel about the Silicon Valley publicized on HN. Surely there are plenty of start-ups solving real problems, hard problems -- what can we do to make sure those make the front-page more often? I guess all of the Instagrams getting acquired for hundreds of millions doesn't help.
Even for portability I'm not too concerned about iCloud. You can sync it all locally and the file formats are nothing too special. At worst I might have to go through a tedious process of using the native iCloud enabled apps to export the data brute force. It's all there if I really need it. I feel better about this arrangement than I do with some of the Google services that require pro-active data exports. I even backup my local iCloud cache so I could go back 6 months for a snapshot of old data. It's all just sitting here so I can do what I want with it.
Get off HN and work
Just a friendly nudge from a longtime lurker-

The holiday break has given me some extra bandwidth to stay up-to-date on HN, but I've found myself spending too much time consuming and not enough time producing. Get out there and make something cool! (I'm learning Rails :P)
If Quora and IFTT Had a Love Child
Ah! So Linus argument makes sense indeed. No need to test if the file exists in a process that assumes it is already opened...
Thanks for clearing that up.
Ding ding ding! Without being facetious, this is the most core-aspect of any success. What is actually required is a training wheels level program or book outlining how and where to get the clients. Yes, some of us may have gotten lucky, or had a break that flew into our lap - this is not the rule. And in fact, anything else other than the rule is noise. Getting paying clients should be a key goal of any business. Selling your personal anecdotal experience does not help unless it is distilled into a repeatable formula.

I would like to point out that I've been at this game for a short while with mixed results. What has worked in my favor, well in favor of getting closer to winning a bid or getting paid: clean business presence, professional copy, actually rephrasing all requirements back to the client and how I'm going to solve his problem, not lowering my prices at all - I keep my bids in the upper 25% of what I perceive the ceiling to be, be attentive to every minutiae that seems core-like to the project, communicate without long delay regardless of level of inquiry - no question is too trivial.

Above is a result of unintentional lack of effective execution and then actually committing to being a better manager rather than an engineer. I didn't understand that while I was confident in my abilities to get the job done, I still didn't get that job because I didn't prove it to the client and sold myself.

Avenues that I used on and off: cheap advertisement on radio, local newspaper, business directory, offered to sponsor two contests, scavenged elance, offered promo work for free just like what the other fellow is doing on HN. Regardless, it is hard and not steady. I can tell that specialization and asking for a monthly retainer to offer pre-allocated hours to specific clients is probably the key to crossing that income stability threshold.
Selecting each one of those things and being redirected was killing me.

Here's a shortcut:

problems = document.getElementById('problems'); for(i = 1; i < problems.length; i++) { console.log(problems[i].innerHTML + ': ' + problems[i].value) }
I'm an avid walker and am always surprised when people casually drive somewhere they could have easily walked. I'm wondering how many people (especially people in the tech community) prefer to walk when possible. Or is it just an American cultural thing? (I live here now, but wasn't raised here).
Favorite (Non-Famous) Apps of 2012
What if an ioctl is trying to indicate that a certain "entry" is not valid or available? Like when it is returning a cached entry or dealing with some container, where a notion of an entry does make sense. Insisting that ENOENT is reserved for path operations seems asinine.
Let me buy you an awesome book in exchange for your FOSS contributions
Extravagant headline. UI cues are the same thing as a walkthrough. They're a channel for the designer to tell the user how to interact with something--a communicative affordance. The only difference is that they're not listed as bullet points.

We have to learn how to ride a bike and type on a computer. The user doesn't know how to do everything, nor do they have the intuitive reasoning to pick up and use something completely new and alien. While we should make them feel smart, there's room to teach them and make them feel enlightened with this new system. Contextually, a UI walkthrough may or may not be a good idea.
From my /Application folder (the italic ones are vital to my workflow): AirServer/AirParrot, Charles, Coda, CodeBox, Day One, Kaleidoscope, Keynote, Messages/FaceTime, MindNode Pro, Mou, Numbers, OmniFocus, OmniPlan, OmniGraffle Professional, Opacity, QuickSilver, SourceTree, TextMate, Transmit, VoodooPad, Xcode (and InterfaceBuilder and Instruments)

Most of them have Windows/Linux equivalents, but for me aren't nearly as good as Mac versions (your mileage certainly varies).
FWIW, I got a Google voice voicemail notification just today running the regular Google voice app.
You sure about that?

Interest rates are at all-time lows. Lending standards may make loans unavailable, but the cost of capital is anything but high.
Today you can run hackintosh osx in a vm, ssh to it, and use xcodebuild.

Obviously it's more overhead but it functions today.
What ARM needs to do is start a multi-core revolution. Give me 64 cores, 128 cores, 1024 cores. That shit would be so useful for video encoding.
There's a very interesting book I read called "The Worst Is Over", which discusses this very thing, and talk in detail about how to talk calmly, soothingly and reassuringly to your patient, and the benefits thereof, from the more obvious (anxiety) to the less (pain relief and the perception thereof).
So? There are tons of people, including both rails core and ruby core contributors with legitimate grievances, in the exact thread in question, that are lumped in with this group DHH is mocking. Its an absolutely terrible analogy and is completely disingenuous to the current situation.

This summed it up best in my eyes:

"Reading this feels exactly like reading the passive aggressive facebook posts of someone currently in a fight with their boy/girlfriend. "
Final Cut Pro
The original patch/commit that Linus calls out:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6...
I really don't understand this point of view - why release open source software if you don't care about your users, and only care about your contributors? To me you'd be better off NOT releasing it, and just keeping it all wrapped up and closed, then you wouldn't have to deal with the non-contributing users who want changes.

This is one of the fundamental problems around many (most?) OSS projects. The elitism that comes with believing you are somehow better than everyone else because you contributed, or started an OSS project.

This attitude also stumps your growth - many people who probably would contribute often end up staying in the shadows, not wanting to look stupid, or offend the sensibilities of the OSS team.

Perhaps a more welcoming attitude might not only make people more supporting of OSS, but might find you some more willing contributors as well?

What are you building open source software for, if not to be used by consumers? If you're building it for some sense of self-aggrandisement, why make it open source in the first place? Just keep it nicely closed, so that only the elite chosen few ever get access to it, and keep out those who's opinions apparently don't matter.

Open source (for many) is a way to pay it forward, and give back. Kinda strange that the very people you're supposedly helping by providing free software don't matter.
Too many smart people spending a whole lot of time, effort & cash solving frivolous problems.
Read the number.

Stop being snarky for the sake of snark, please. Stick to the facts.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/607560
broken kernel could fuck up a lot lof users.I am suffering from this broken kernel, and I do appreciate what Linus is doing.
I hope he is right about "health data commons".

Medical research can be greatly accelerated with access to the masses of data which have already been collected on people's medical histories, their response to treatments etc.
Do we really need a reason why?
I wrote Backbone.js tutorials using HN search API. I hope my posts help you.

http://smagch.github.com/posts/2012-11-20-model-is-stateful....

http://smagch.github.com/posts/2012-12-10-assemble-modules-b...
Raspbery Pi is 700 MHz, single core, 256MB RAM.

This is 1.7 GHz, quad core, 2048MB RAM.

If anything, it's more efficient per watt than RPi (and per dollar).
A Definitive Guide: How To Effectively Network Using Disqus
There’s nothing worse than stumbling across a blog or website that has very few comments. It’s like taking a walk through a graveyard! Maybe you’re thinking to yourself “Shit, that’s my website!” and if that’s the case, hopefully this post can change some things around for you…
It strikes me as unfair to say "sure the company advertises that they can perform function x, but trusting them to actually do that makes no sense." I don't have any objection to dropbox not being a good backup solution, but I do have an objection to them advertising themselves as a good backup solution when they are not.
Except that you violate the EULA. I wouldn't recommend this in a commercial environment.
Why self-censor 'f*cking' but not 'FUCK'? Consistency please.
This seems to be the closest I could find to a complete list of these kind of things: ODROID, Raspberry Pi, PandaBoard, BeagleBoard, etc.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_single-board_computers

Also, plug computers like FreedomBox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_computer

And single board microcontrollers like the arduino boards, make controller, basic stamp, etc.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_microcontroller

I personally would like to see a build-your-own tablet type of thing that can run android or ubuntu. Of course there already is the nexus 7 though.
Don't leave us hanging :) What was the problem?
Rich people in the first world will pay a lot of money to have their trivial problems solved well.

All business are solving the problem of "we don't have enough revenue". That's the only metric, here.
Isn't PureData (http://puredata.info/) the open source equivalent, available to run native on Linux, and fairly feature compatible?
Obviously, to make it hurt and set an example.
I have experienced myself different types of offerings from different startups/Companies (ebay now, Get it Now, Instacart, etc...) and I would say the following:

- For groceries, it is really awesome. Instacart prices are 10-15% above Safeway prices, but their customers don't care on average, and that's how they make money. Delivery fees are a necessary evil.

- For premium pizza, "get it now" is really great, but their business model is not sustainable: I never paid for delivery, and they only charge 5% out of which they pay 2.5% for CC processing. The fact that they want to scale now and expand to further categories without having nailed their primary suppliers (fancy restaurants that do take out but don't deliver) seems crazy to me.

- For other types of goods, one hour delivery is a bit too much, and you feel bad the first time. But then, hell it is practical, and in many ways it seems much more relevant and ecological that having an item shipped from a random warehouse in the middle of the country, boxed specifically for me, etc...Same day/next day would do in 99% of the cases though.
My dad had a massive heart attack December 2'nd. My mom and I were at the house when my dad had it.

Having no medical training, I know how to perform CPR and was able to resuscitate him to get to the local hospital and then to Methodist in Indy. Every doctor attributed to him living past 30 minutes to my efforts .

Outlook looked somewhat good for the short term, but the longer he was in ICU his chances worsened. Due to longer term massive organ failure, he passed on 12/12/12. My dad was Wilbur Harold Crawley III: automotive, electrical, and acoustic engineer.
What if an ioctl is trying to indicate that a certain "entry" is not valid or available?

I don't understand the question. It is not possible for ioctl to be called on a valid, open file descriptor that represents a file that is not valid or available. Even if the file is unlinked after being opened, the kernel will ensure that it remains available to any processes that have it open until they close the file descriptor.

Like when it is returning a cached entry or dealing with some container, where a notion of an entry does make sense.

I honestly don't know what you mean by this. ioctls, like nearly all Unix system calls, are file system operations, they necessarily and by definition refer to files.

Insisting that ENOENT is reserved for path operations seems asinine.

On the contrary, ENOENT has meant "No such file or directory" since the early days of Unix history. Arbitrarily deciding to redefine it now would be asinine. There are other errno values to represent other error conditions.
It's a play on http://www.ihave50dollars.com/
One thing you should avoid is advice from people who have an interest in exploiting your ability. I wasted time listening to them. Especially avoid advice from your elders. Now that I am joining their ranks, I have to say that I am profoundly unimpressed, and I certainly would not allow myself to be influenced by the overwhelming majority of them. If you are going to act on advice from someone, wait until after they are dead. There is plenty of advice from the disinterested dead to choose from.
There are no other ones...
Codekit, Creative Suite, Evernote, Finder, Fontbook, iTunes, Reeder, Soulver, Sparrow, Quicktime. You could run photoshop.exe in Wine but there are bugs. There are alternatives to the other apps though, but they are not as polished.
Try shooting a shotgun at the distance you would indoors and you will be surprised I think. The pellets only spread out about 1" per 3-5 ft. Shooting across a room and hitting something is still going to require some precision.
Tumblr is in NY!
Hilarious. Maybe we could add

* Entertain me because I actually have free time -> the movie industry

* Entertain me at home because I'm too tired to go out -> the game industry

* Make me dinner because I'm too lazy to cook -> the food service industry

* Help be get where someplace in comfort -> the auto industry
Second: the buck stops at the top.

Testing procedures should have caught the bug long before being seen in the wild so apparently linux still has some catching up to do there and that's a lesson that Linus should be learning here rather than to dump on the developer that caused the bug that wasn't caught in testing

The buck may stop at the top, but if Linus takes the public blame and picks it up, he then has to put his house in order, wouldn't you agree that's what we're seeing here?

Yes, testing procedures should've, would've, etc, but that's exactly why these kernel maintainers are there for. As far as Linux having some catching up to do, how often does this situation occur? I also believe the most valuable lesson to learn here is the one you can do nothing about: no matter how adamant you are about your dearest and most basic rules (we've heard Linus many times on code that break user-space), shit happens.

His frustration appears to stem from (rightful) presumptions that a kernel developer would not make such newbie mistakes.

I totally agree with you that this exchange should not have been so public, unfortunately kernel communication is by design. I would, however, also like to provide a different perspective. Linus is carrying the burden of being a bully, he does a dirty job of publicly berating people from whom he expects nothing but the best, everything about his handling of these situations shakes our moral fibre and makes him appear a dis-likable human being. But then, we're millions to enjoy the fruit of this dirty job everyday, blinding ourselves to what it takes to provide it. Such is often the burden of leaders.
It's only 10/100 Ethernet, I can't see it being limited too much by the Bus speed. I've tested an apple-branded USB 10/100 Ethernet adapter at ~98Mbit on a beaglebone.
It's not particularly any worse for you than twice the quantity of 95-proof alcohol or four times the quantity of 47-proof, although of course any kind of alcohol is pretty bad. 96% pure alcohol (192 proof) is universally available in grocery stores and pharmacies here in Argentina, and most brands bear a notice stating that it is suitable for food use; a few of them also carry methylated spirits at a slightly lower price. I use the pure alcohol for cleaning and fuel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies

Newton was not far away from Ramanujan divine belief.
It's situational and experience plays into intuition.

For example, I gave my mom a Microsoft Surface tablet I was lent for RT dev this weekend. It was in the classic desktop but I had a mapping webpage open in IE that responded to most touch gestures.

Because it was in the classic desktop, my mom was using her past experience and thinking of her finger as a mouse and hitting the little "+" icon to zoom in.

Not very "hyper-intuitive".
The UI on your blog is wrong. The toggle switch to "GUI Work" is a touch gesture, not one relative to web.
How To Maximize Your Profits From Financial And Other Markets?
What's up with the full photo of a credit card? (I understand the size comparison aspect).
I think you're missing the joke. Most of these apps are some nth-derivative of those industries. Instead of "make me dinner" it's "an app to aggregate apps that help me find someone to make me dinner, plus social networking." At some point the value-add is so small it's truly a "first-world problem."
This is amazing advice, but you clearly aren't dead yet.
Disappointing that it is Windows only.
A) This was discussed by a bunch of people already two weeks ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893022

B) Apparently this is a better-marketed expansion of the long-established maloader, which already works for many of the use cases that people bring up when they hear about this project (such as running parts of Xcode).
With the card numbers 4412 repeated? Like Exynos4412. :)
So this is seriously #1 on HN right now.
Did you consider just making it a list of links? If you want to hide the link targets you can do that with JS. Dropdown list is kind of unnecessary, I think.
Ah you're right! Forgot about that, did I miss any others?
What aspect is unclear then? Security? It seems safe to say that 4412 4412 4412 4412 is not a real CC number :-)
A good start would be to name some of them in posts like this -- both those that are being solved and those that should be solved.
> but in 2003 it turned into a global outbreak that infected 8,098

You'd think it was more than that given the media outcry at the time. 8,000 out of ~6.8 billion is a complete nothing... more people probably died in car accidents in the same time period.
Not if the VM host is on Apple-branded HW.

Also, you'd have to get caught. It's not customer-facing.
I live in a city, so I can and do walk. In fact I don't own a car.

I also suspect suburbanites have fewer destinations that are <= a mile.
Recurly did grandfather their early customers (we were one). For the most part, I'm a fan of Recurly and it helped improve our renewal rates. However, the major outage they experienced earlier this year (including substantial data loss) was a real blow.

Yes, it's possible to build. But if building is delaying you from doing it immediately, then buy -- it's worth it.
Some people skip through tutorials and rely on discoverability, others are lost without a tutorial no matter how discoverable your features are. Written introductions are comforting, You need to accommodate both learning styles.

With a recent project I watched a few totally inept testers discover all the features with no problems, but after launching it became clear that most of our power users were not discovering features. A quick bit of intro text and everybody is happy.
Curious in the responses you'll hopefully get.
Some used this same argument to suggest that Google wouldn't want to ship an iOS Google Maps app, and yet, lo and behold, it shipped two weeks ago to great fanfare. To think that Google would not want to participate in an ecosystem as large as iOS because not doing so might drive some small percentage of those users to Android is ridiculous.