skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think the PS4 will save Sony from the mess that they are in. Is it just me? I used to be so excited for new consoles to come out. Now I try to get myself excited about the PS4, but can't.

Actually, I'm very excited about the next XBOX. Microsoft has been onto something with the whole gaming thing.
Fair enough, once you start needing to path many units at a time (where their movements can potentially conflict with each other), then it starts to sound a lot more like circuit routing.
Ideally, I would trust my OS vendor and be safe using their superior PDF renderer. I think my ideal world is likelier to come to pass than yours, sad to say.
That was my take as well. Why would someone want to use this when there already exist minimalist python web-servers such as flask & bottle that do not require magic?
Maybe to celebrate future birthdays, only members who were here during the first 2 years can post on the anniversary... before it hit the "terrible 2's".
Oh sure, of course. But the value comes from the software stack. iPhones and Android phones both run ARM procs right? If they're the same, why all the fuss about which is better?
Let's hope they don't have a pacemaker.
> One of the reasons Starcraft is interesting as an e-sport is because bugs like this have kept the game in racial balance for over a decade.

It's worth pointing out that I've seen a similar argument made for Street Fighter 2: that a lack of rebalancing is what made it such a popular tournament play, or some such.
I believe it's a comment about the complexity of the language, not the level of skill achievable using the language. Consider this (many levels left out for brevity):

A first-year CS student could implement a working LISP or assembler as part of their coursework

A motivated individual or small group could implement Ruby or Python in a few years in their free time.

AFAIK no organization has yet implemented C++11
It looks like it's going to be less about hardware specs and more about services and experience. I can get behind that.
Also a stereo camera for depth sensing and an always-on screen recorder that lets you watch your friends' games in real time and save video screenshots from any game.
Presumably some of those correspond with the start of funding cycles.
We have a major in house application that displays PDF files as a core part of its functionality.

The Firefox PDF reader is very slow compared to Chrome's.

Also, the second and subsequent PDF files you click on do not commence the display at the top of the page, the appear to commence display somewhere down the page, I'm guessing maybe at the position that the previous PDF scrolled to. So immediately you need to pull the scrollbar back to the top before you can start reading the PDF.

So for now, just on speed alone we'll pass on the Firefox PDF reader.
The uptake of the web was on its way, but google was an incredible catalyst for it. I remember search at the time and it was woeful - google made it an invisible task that let you get at content much more readily.

GPS is great, sure. Don't interpret me as saying that NASA is a minnow. But to be facetious, good luck using GPS without a map :)

but doesn't even really advance the state of the art

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. You deride gmail for being a ripoff of ye olde Hotmail, but it's a lot more than just 'a free webmail account you can sign up for'.

Steel-making on that scale was cutting edge technology for its time.

There's cutting-edge technology in making shoes, too, but that doesn't make a shoemaking company a 'tech company'.
I worked at Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires) and by the time we shipped Age of Mythology we had much better tools for dealing with sync bugs. Most of the run of the mill ones could be tracked down pretty quickly, but there were still plenty of painful ones. What made them easier to track down was a more advanced tracking/logging system for the simulation state history. The simulation was littered with tons of sync logging code that tracked the execution flow and values of things as they were calculated/updated. When the state went out of sync, all the machines would dump their last couple updates worth of logging (often several gigs) and you could diff them to see where things diverged. If you were making a synced simulation game, a nicely done version of this type of thing would be pretty useful to have, especially if you made a good diff tool to go with it.

It's not completely obvious what technology you could make that would make it easier to avoid sync bugs in the first place. You could make a good network command-passing and simulation timing library, but in my experience the majority of problems did not come from bugs with the networking itself. Most of the sync bugs were from things like uninitialized variables, memory overwrites, using user input or other local machine state directly in the simulation without going through a multiplayer command, using a non-synced random number generator in the sim, DirectX changing the FPU rounding mode on you, etc. (Using a "safer" language would help with stuff like uninitialized variables/memory overwrites of course, but at an inevitable performance cost. Static code analysis tools are pretty good at finding these type of problems now too.)
In that time range, I think that developers who are looking at creating more 'general' applications will start heading towards HTML5 more so than they do today. However, as with all applications, it depends on the type..For example I wouldn't expect most games to be going HTML5 in the near future - unless we really see a powerful new framework that proves the maturity of HTML5 in the gaming space.
So basically a desktop pc with "Social gaming features" and onLive?
The cult of ideas
I was confused by your original comment. You're absolutely right though; trying to path a squad of multiple units so that their routes don't conflict is much harder. I can see how it could be very similar to circuit routing.

Heck, it probably has the same basic time complexity and is amenable to the same algorithmic solutions.
How do you do polls on HN?
I agree wholeheartedly. Some people seem to like to suggest how very intelligent they are by claiming smalltalk is useless and a waste of their mental cycles, but said people also don't ever talk about how useful it is for easing the guards we put up when meeting someone new. I imagine these people don't often interact with strangers on a casual basis.
SETI isn't about communicating with alien lifeforms, it's about detecting signs of other intelligences than ourselves. Studying these aspects of dolphins is actually the same endeavour, just looking in different places.
Software and network, software and network, software and network. That’s what it’s about this time around. I don’t think the hardware (in terms of its horse power to run games) could matter any less this time around.

It’s do or die time for consoles. Decent hardware is necessary, far from sufficient. The real battle will be fought elsewhere.

Also, PCs won’t even be competing there. Apples and oranges.
In terms of IPC X.86 is where its at performance wise - this is not a mobile device so power isn't a major design issue.
Slow. Golf. Clap.

Sony, you finally showed up to the party with hardware that devs actually know how to use and optimize for. While Cell was cool, it took ages before anyone knew what to do with it. Thank you for going with something more common!
Interesting point - I didn't even think the Vatican had roads. Looking at google maps now, it does seem to have some, but I'm not sure if they're public (not that you couldn't have a charger because of that)
It's PC gaming that's on the way to obsolescence. I tried to help set up a game for my brother in law (he's 12) on my brother's not-too-ancient PC. Steam wouldn't start and we'd lost the activation code for the game (printed on the manual). Which we found out only after we'd spent 30 minutes installing the game. I was minutes worth of patience away from just going out and buying him an XBox.
I am getting a PhD (with a stipend) and learning on the job.
Playstation 4 highlights
I created my account exactly 6 years ago, on February 20th, 2007. I guess I must have seen that announcement[1] posted on Reddit[2].

It's definitely lost that small town charm, but given how much it has grown it's still remarkably good.

To another 6 years!

1. http://www.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html

2. http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/15gkq/startup_ne...
That's more or less irrelevant to to the legal code. Consider what laws could we remove with 150 million people or how dealing with 600 million people force a lot of new legal complexity.

What really leads to complexity in the legal code is the level of institutionalized corruption. AKA only companies owned by someone living within 50 miles of X and 30 miles of Y may do XYZ. Coupled with the age of the legal system which adds cruft over time.
Well, people kill people, too. But I agree with the underlying sentiment that we should be taking their place in the world much more seriously than we do most other animals.
Cool. I never thought Pinterest would reach this far. It's promising for all web startups.
That sounds very intriguing. However, it's likely that any extraterrestrial intelligence capable of maintaining life on it's home planet, will have an understanding of their fellow life forms, which is more than we have.
Yes, and then there are the Venn diagrams that describe the disappointing result of any combination of two desirable traits. Here's one humorous example:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7L9xAjgoZxo/ToydjJ7Hb8I/AAAAAAAABG...
Indeed. I'd say a mixture of people having more time to study such things as well as people getting over the idea that we have nothing to learn from animals. I study animal intelligence as sort of a hobby in my free time and have focused on birds lately since they seem to get less recognition for intelligence than mammals or other animals that dominate television shows. Everyone knows parrots can mimic, but little mainstream news goes beyond that. Corvids (jays[1], crows[2], starlings, etc) can actually mimic in a similar manner. Birds in general are quite misrepresented and phrases like "eat like a bird" or "bird brained" are quite incorrect.

We all come from the same basic building blocks through evolution, so it would be quite weird to say that we don't share traits with our fellow animals.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T6pUxthClw

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTCoTD3BWI
John Ralston Saul has written extensively about the dictatorship of vocabulary and how it is important to write in clear everyday language instead of the technocratic babble of an expert. Voltaire didn't write crypto books only the elite could understand
There's not much augmented reality in glass; only the turn-by-turn directions sort of qualify. I think the key thing about glass is that it's hands-free. As handy as smartphones are, it's remarkable how much of a difference not having to take the thing out of your pocket and push a button makes.

(The reason there's not much AR is that AR is very power hungry (you have to leave the camera on).)
There's always a place for couch-based gaming.
Well we kill each other more, but dolphins are much more cute.
Molecular Fountain of Youth Discovered
It's an app about measuring the virality of your content in social networks. For more details you can contact me at sven.clement@gmail.com ;)
We broke the tomato, and we’re using science to fix it
So what you're saying is that I need to go ahead and learn to have "realistic" expectations, so that I might settle for partners who do things I hate?
Apache CouchDB for Mac
Blanket statements wouldn't be fair, but she's caveating it with "might" every paragraph. But I think these dysfunctional patterns are more the norm than the exception today.
I found it hard to be sure squinting at the graph, so here is one including the ratio: http://www.ycombinator.com/images/hn6ratio.png

One trend over the last couple years is more people checking from multiple devices -- more IPs for the same page views.

Another macro change in the last couple years is blogs linking to an HN comment thread. Those links often bring one page view & one IP.

Spikes in page views without a corresponding spike in IPs in the early years are due to crawlers.
Excellent response! Just to briefly add on, in the initial building of a product, website, or whatever it is, the programmer may be doing most of the work to get that prototype or beta version built. HOWEVER, if the idea is going to be executed successfully, the person with the initial idea will most likely be doing his/her share of grunt work whether that be in researching the target market, developing an initial business plan, or meeting customers.

Conclusion: One person programs, the other focuses on sales and the business operations. It's the perfect combination so as long as both put in their due diligence.
This single troublesome incident does not really say anything about the status of PC gaming, sorry. You could of just as easily experienced a red ring of death with the Xbox 360.
You can watch the event on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noRJ15T4qb4&list=PLE19672...
I generally agree with you about the necessity of complexity, but the "law" of the internet is actually a counterexample: Nobody enforces it. If you want to start with something that vaguely resembles HTML and make a bunch of changes and call it XML and start using it, nobody comes to your door with a warrant for your arrest and locks you in a cell, or even sues you for breach of contract. It's quintessentially private ordering, where everybody does it the same (to the extent that they do) voluntarily because in those cases compatibility with others is more advantageous than diverging from the standard.

And it is probably worth looking through the laws for instances where consensus-based processes like that could, perhaps not eliminate, but move some of the complexity from the regulatory system where it serves as a trap for the unwary into voluntary standards that work because it's in everyone's interest to follow them.

At the same time, you can still have a set of guidelines and issue warnings (but not penalties) for violations so that people will have notice that if the evil the guidelines are intended to prevent occurs as a result of their violation they'll be responsible for it. Sort of like a compiler warning. But if no evil results because you're doing something sensible but merely unanticipated, or because you've taken some alternative precautions with similar effectiveness, then no penalty would attach as long as no evil occurs.

This approach probably works best where the consequences of a violation don't involve risk of physical harm. Allowing a certain amount of risk of economic harm that the perpetrator is required to compensate for or be punished for causing in the event it occurs is much more palatable than the same when the risk is physical injury, because economic harm can be perfectly compensated for or insured against in ways that physical injury obviously can't.
Is Everything We Know about Password Stealing Wrong?
Small nit-pick on the About page:

"Share view-only or let people to sync and edit"

Grammar be bad.
Questions to ask, when you move in with someone
What questions would you ask people over coffee if you would move in together with them?
Dr. Irene Pepperberg has had meaningful conversations with an African Grey parrot.

It was pretty cool. It gives me hope for a future of being part of a society with other sapient species in it.

But it wouldn't be quite the "whoa, on large enough scales the universe _really is_ the same, everywhere" type feeling that humans having meaningful conversations with, say, Fookin' Prawns would.
Based on not much other than their blog postings, I really like the (for want of a better word) vibe of this company.
While I entirely agree in principle with the idea that laws cannot solve all problems, I must disagree that we should aim for a society where any one person can understand all the laws.

Our society is extremely complex. There are many many industries and activities that need to be individually regulated. Let's take a few examples of very specific, arcane laws that are important for everyday people who might not even know about them.

1.
Suppose you buy a home, and in the bathroom, there is an exhaust fan. You use that fan for years, and one day discover that it has been venting into your attic, and that your attic is thus absolutely full of toxic mold that will cost a small fortune to remove. And if you don't remove it, you're endangering your health and possibly making your house unsellable.

As it turns out, most jurisdictions in the US require, by way of the building code, that bathroom exhaust fans be vented directly outside. Had that law been in place in your jurisdiction, perhaps you wouldn't have a mold problem today.

2.
Now imagine the FTC doesn't exist, or perhaps that its regulations are vastly simplified. You have a pension plan. You don't pay much attention to how your pension fund is invested. One day, you see on the news that your pension fund has dropped in value by 50%. It turns out the plan was heavily invested in a certain company that looked good in its prospectus but was actually in very bad shape.

If today's FTC existed, with its complex and obscure regulations on how a company must report its financial state, perhaps your pension fund managers would have been able to make a better decision.

3.
Now suppose you rent an apartment. Your landlord turns the heat way down for no apparent reason, and it's 50 degrees in your unit all the time.

In many jurisdictions, there are laws requiring landlords to provide a minimum level of heating. With such a law in place, you could force the landlord to turn the heat back up.

=========

Each of these examples hinges on a law that most people will probably never think about. Yet you may indeed benefit from them many times in your life, without ever knowing it.

It could also be argued that such laws are not guaranteed to prevent the negative outcomes imagined above. This is true. No law will be obeyed 100% of the time. But that doesn't make them useless. Laws can and do influence behavior--when they come with an adequate enforcement mechanism, that is.
I wish there was screenshot functionality better integrated on the ps3. I want some snapshots of Okami HD.
HN has replaced /. for me. Thanks for filling that void.
Catholics and Pentecostals are different organizations. Back in the old days we used to purge non-orthodox views, but that's not as tenable anymore, so we have thousands of interpretations. In any event, the traditional Christian view is that circumcision is no longer necessary, as stated by Paul several times in the New Testament.
> Every app that I need a user to access requires three requests to IT.

Then you have (voluntarily or as a result of placing yourself in such an organization) hobbled yourself and your ability to be an efficient developer.

If your escape route through a beaurocracy — in order to accomplishing your goals — is to compromise in your technical design, then you have my sympathy. That is a situation I could never tolerate personally. (Do you really use Ruby? Sounds like Java would be something an organization of this type would use.)

> That's not to mention that many applications have a view/edit distinction

That requirement is certainly not incompatible with the model.
Depends on if the 720 can play 360 and/or used games. If they lock it down as rumored, then no, I won't get one.

Personally, I'm more excited about the Steam console.
I'm a little disappointed to be honest. Easier to approach, easier to optimize for... but since when has console development been an accessible market? Maybe its a naive outsiders view, but it will take more than a commodity instruction set to make console gaming an easy target.
When it's unusually cold, I expect some conservatism, which translates into charging more than I think I probably need to. It's a universal that a piece of technology will operate worse in extreme conditions than in optimal ones (I'd say 15 degree weather counts). The Model S' specificity probably hinders it in this case, since people would naturally build in some buffer in the cases where they have to read an imprecise readout. Since the range readout is so precise, the expanding range is definitely a kink that needs to be worked out.

Edit: My gasoline car will sometimes show my tank as almost empty when I first turn it on, but over the next 10 minutes, will slowly but magically reveal much more gas in the tank. I don't think it's unacceptable to have any kinks whatsoever in a car... they're pretty common actually. It's just that we haven't yet learned to deal with these ones like we have with the gasoline ones.
People have been saying this at least since I started gaming on the PC (2003). So far, PC gaming has actually been growing enormously over that time.
So close! As of right now, my created date is one day ahead of yours. (We get to ignore all YC people with pre-release created dates.)

Happy sixth anniversary to all of us poor saps who were checking reddit the morning of Feb 20, 2007.
I still quite enjoy playing PS3 games right now; or watching my wife play (she's better at action-type games, I like RPGs). I don't chase after the latest and greatest graphics, design is a much bigger factor for me.
> Also when purchasing, or making a trade, you are usually going to pay a fee.

Obviously, when buying a Vanguard fund at a Vanguard account there is no fee
Going Bright: Wiretapping Without Weakening Communications Infrastructure
disclaimer: my understanding of the legislative process is based entirely on Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just a Bill" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyeJ55o3El0).

so a citizen's access to a particular DC statute is impossible without that citizen infringing a copyright? I wonder if circumstances such as these would constitute "fair use" (which as i understand it is a valid defense to copyright infringement).

also, i'm aware that doing things that would otherwise constitute intellectual property infringement, can be justified by the "Essential Facilities" doctrine--originally an Anti-Trust safe harbor, though it's also been applied to IP. This seems to apply here.
> A fun unit in multiplayer isn't really a good excuse for a gamebreaking behavior in single player.

Actually, it is. Single player is basically a financial dead end: you play it through X times, interact with very few people, and put the game away.

If you end up breaking it in favor of gameplay where players are generating content on your behalf (each other)... the loss rapidly disappears as people stop playing the single-player because it not only sucks, it's irrelevant.
IGN appears to be streaming a capture of the official UStream stream complete with buffering animations and stuttering.

http://www.ustream.tv/playstation