skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I more or less paid for my computers selling a shareware¹ calendar program for Macs. It just let you make a one page calendar² of a month and type things in the days with some simple styling.

I initially wrote it as a birthday present for my brother, who needed something to do that job, then decided maybe some other people would like it. It was popular with teachers. (Writing that I feel like a jurassic patio11!)

I think it was $10, then I raised it to $15. These were pre-internet days, pre AOL even. It was fun getting checks from foreign lands, though it annoyed my bank. They eventually started charging $20 to clear a foreign check, so I had to adopt an unofficial “foreign folk get registered for free” policy and just thank them and tear up their checks when they arrived. I think the last check came in over 10 years after I stopped maintaining the program.

␄

¹ Slightly nag ware. Registered users could make the solicitation screen stop showing up on launch. There was a secret little click dance you could do on the solicitation screen to prove you were registered.

² Pro tip: A “calender” passes the spelling checker, but is a machine in which cloth or paper is pressed between rolls until smooth. You will have to update your software and reprint your paper manuals when you discover this fact.

Bonus Pro Tip: If you try to write a direct SCSI access disk utility, you may accidentally corrupt your only hard drive, not have backups of your source code, and then get to write a block scanner using only floppy based tools to scan the wreckage of your hard drive looking for blocks that might be C source code, collect those together, and reassemble your software sources as best you can. That's ok, version 2.0 is always better anyway, and you will have learned to keep backups.
If you think that the OpenBSD has it right, why don't you use it as a desktop, too? Why aren't you running a virtual machine of Windows 7 under OpenBSD? Probably because there's no proper virtualization support in OpenBSD.

Linux is complex because sometimes it has too be, not just for the sake of it. systemd (which is great in my opinion) wouldn't be possible without cgroups. Should I also mention the better multi-processor support? Regarding the desktop, I strongly recommend watching "27c3 - Desktop on the Linux... (and BSD, of course) - Wolfgang Draxinger (+ Lennart Poettering)" [1].

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0
I think we are on the same page now. What your describing works well If you do it _everywhere_ and also _require_ exceptions to be handled, much like Java does (mostly) in c++ its a total crap shoot since destructors don't run if you pop their stack.
I know people want their posts to be on HN front page, but rigging the upvotes is not the right way. (users RamzyIS,acecallwood)
I use ambiance (http://ambianceapp.com/iphone) a lot when working, you can record your own sounds or download lots of free ones. I find airplane noise quite good, or low frequency humming.

I think half the effect comes from people thinking twice about bothering you if you have earphones in.
How Populr Got Me Employed
I knew this was iq's even before looking at the domain name :) Great spanish talent.

Don't forget checking his productions with RGBA! http://pouet.net/groups.php?which=697
3-year terms for anything in this space is an eternity. Even if the math checks out, the inflexibility of that kind of lock-in should be a consideration.

Of course, YMMV.
Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal In A British Supermarket, And Vice Versa
SoMa startups with roof access: help out Ars Technica TONIGHT?
Hey guys, do you love Ars Technica? Do you work at an SF SoMa office with a killer view of Bay Bridge, or have access to roof? We need your help for a story TONIGHT. Looking for good angles to shoot photos of the Bay Lights (baylights.org) project TONIGHT. If you can help us out, we can give you a shout-out in our coverage tonight! Cheers! Email me with details: cyrus.farivar [at] arstechnica.com
And that somehow in understanding monads, the lose the capability of explaining them.
Honestly, the absolute best thing you could do for any dev, is lighten the footprint FF currently has on my ram, and continue to improve the api for add-ons/plugins. The more stable, extensible and fast FireFox is, the more useful I will find it for development. But if more kludge is added to it, and it continues to get slower/bigger, the less likely I am to continue to use it, regardless of what amazing plugins are available (FireBug, Web Developer Tool Bar, etc)

If you are just looking at what's best to add to the browser itself, just look at the plugin market to see what's in wide use.
"Research shows it's pretty hard to be creative in a quiet space."

I'm sure that research is accurate for some people, but it's definitely not accurate for me. Quiet, aside from any noise I make myself, is the only way I can be truly productive.
"we used to write code by typing it directly onto the screen"

I once knew a guy who had programmed by drilling holes in leather with a hand drill. :-)

[Some ancient process control mainframe that booted originally from a paper tape - over the decades of use in a steel mill the paper tape had long since worn out and been replaced by a sturdy leather belt - he had to modify the boot code, hence the drill]
``By "Desktop" - though, I mean users who are planning on downloading/installing various productivity utilities, applications, etc... to do their job.''

I think the average user could be satisfied with what's available on OpenBSD. The only bummer is flash.

``Creating Reports, Slide Decks, PDFs, Spreadsheets, charts, diagrams[...]''

LibreOffice is available on OpenBSD.

``IM apps''

Pidgin and a ton of other clients are available.

``Skype''

It used to work a few releases ago, I don't know if it still does now.

`` - whatever random app they want to use to do their Job.''

Yes, if you compare it to Windows in that regard then it's at a loss. But if you compare it to Liunx I'd say it's up to par.

The problem is that it's getting harder to keep up to date, which is what Marc is trying to explain in his email to tech@.
> I didn't realize heavy handed, unnecessary regulation bound to cause massive market distortions was "healthy" for capitalism.

So the current market where two or three insurers basically control an entire state is healthier?

> Employer health insurance is the current method of distributing risk among a larger group, and any prohibition would simply be circumvented by other types of group health insurance and reimbursements.

In English?

> Making discounts illegal is a ridiculous restraint on capitalism.

So when businesses subvert capitalism that is a-ok because they are part of the system. But when the government subverts capitalism to actually make the market more competitive that is wrong?

> Imagine if wholesalers and retails could not discount for marketing, loyalty, or quantity.

A lot of wholesalers don't. They sell at a set price. Doesn't matter if you buy 50 or 5,000. They still seem to be in business.

> The only thing that should be regulated is the transparency of pricing and services.

What's the point in that when you have no choice in insurance provider?

> That's "healthy capitalism" - not your complex regulatory scheme.

A "scheme" I can describe in two lines is "complex?" Obama care was how many thousands of pages, remind me... If you cannot understand what I am suggesting then I propose that the issue isn't with my "complex" scheme but with your comprehension.

> Illegal to provide your employees with health insurance? Bonkers.

... Just like it is "bonkers" to imagine not providing them with auto-insurance, right?

And I don't mean auto-insurance for their company car. I mean auto-insurance for their private car.

It makes about as much logical sense as insuring someone's private body/person.
Basic liability insurance (for auto) is more like $500 a year. That's more or less the mandated part of the coverage.

I don't really care to see the government insure expensive cars and the assets of the wealthy (expensive cars and asset protection are the big drivers of expensive insurance).
Carbon, data, and pattern recognition
I really love what you're doing with the developer tools in Aurora. But I'm missing a network tab.
More Than Gimmicks: How Obama's Tech Tools Are Shifting the Debate
Well he can put an Adsense ad on his blog and we'll do exactly that, whether we read/enjoy it or not.

That's how most journalism works and has worked. The content is free to consume, assuming you'll accept the advertising. Journalism/writing was always the carrot, but the ads the stick.

So what's changed. Two things:

1. There's so much more writing/journalism/creative arts in general being produced that the valuation of these entities has declined

(coupled with)

2. The Internet producing a culture that's less obsessed with quality, correctness and robustness.

Which has led to new consumption patterns: we want a lot more in smaller chunks and it's worth less to us (in aggregate).
Typo in the marketing copy, "seemless" should be "seamless".
Support V8's debugger protocol so we can use the WebKit Inspector.
This trend towards free journalism is driving down standards to the point where 'journalism' is often now just re-hashing work with little fact checking. This could lead to real problems as it's been the journalism industry that traditionally has been the watchdog for the people.

I have just one thing echoing about in my head: "We get what we deserve"
I'd say that your HTML prototype acted as your wire frame. It does seem to have guided the engineers hand. Nothing wrong with that though. I tend to do a similar process a lot on my own projects. Being solo, and not much of a designer, I'm anxious to jump into the HTML/CSS/backend process. Then when I'm done, I'll call in a designer to "make it pretty", and they'll usually follow a similar layout.
Would love to see integrated ftp/sftp client and in-browser tabbed editing for quick site edits.
Confessions of a N00b
Only three kinds of people have ever understood Monads - some of them died, others went mad trying to formulate explanations and the rest have forgotten all about them.
This is disappointing. I've been waiting to buy this game but at this point i'm just going to pass.
Whoa! You were 8 or 9?

I ran a little ProBoard BBS for awhile. ;)
Show HN: Creating a clock in pure CSS
How about exposing an API for dev tools similar to the "swank" protocol that Emacs uses for editing Lisp code? I know there are people doing stuff like this already, but it would obviously be a lot easier if there were a nice protocol for it (ideally standardized across browsers...). I want to be able to seamlessly interact with a running Firefox instance from my editor or IDE, sending it snippets of code to evaluate and seeing my page change in real-time.
Maximum and minimum amounts are set by the startup. On average $1k-$5k is the lower range of investments.
Java4K: games that are maximum of 4KB in size, written in Java
Websockets inspection would be very nice. To my knowledge no browser does support this and it would be very handy IMHO.
I'm pleased that you don't sound like you're having substance addiction issues.

However, I'd recommend revisiting your entire thought process about this stuff the very first time you break one of your rules (like when you take them twice in a month for that one "really exceptional" situation).

It's called a slippery slope rather than a precipitous drop for a reason and people don't get addicted to drugs because they're "not smart".
I don't discount the idea that Apple will release a new low-end smartphone. However I find the logic in this article lacking. The idea seams to be that because Apple released a iPad mini they will release a new low-end smartphone. That's a little like saying Apple released the Mac mini and thus they will release a new low-end smartphone.

Over time I've learned that Apple will do what Apple wants to do and it's no indication of what they will or won't do in the future.
acecallwood worked on this with justin, and ramzyIS is their friend. no rigging involved!
The JavaScript object browser mini-windows do not behave properly on Awesome, a tiling window manager. There is no way to close the windows without closing the entire web console. If I try to close the window like I close any other window, it will close the full browser window.
I always wondered about those. Did they make any money?
Your comment is somewhat self-contradicting. Baking plugins into firefox will increase Firefox's memory footprint. Plugins are plugins for a reason -- some people will want the functionality and others will not.

How would you like to see the API for plugins/add-ons improved?
Hetzner launches dual hexacore cpu, 128 GB ECC ram server for 299 €/month
We already have a team working on memory consumption (and we already made some gigantic progress). We also have a team working on improving addons APIs (see the new builin SDK).

We are also looking at existing extensions.
Prettyprinting/unobfuscating the JavaScript sourcecode (like in chrome and opera) would be nice.
Uninstall or Disable Java on a Mac
I didn't read the whole research, but a quick glance at it told me that moderate ambient noise boosts creativity. The research doesn't mention productivity, though.

EDIT: And neither does your website, I see now. Why did you use it in the HN title?
No clue. Not my domain. I'll claim ignorance.

Which doesn't exclude you from making a back-of-an-envelope calculation of the cost and a little bit of research, such as figuring out how expensive is a falcon heavy launch, and so on.
The guy is asking for suggestion to the DEVELOPER TOOLS... no to the firefox browser itself.

I have to admit that i changed my dev browser to chrome. The chrome developer tools are great. I like to have everything on one panel instead of the console in one place and the html and css in another.
We are already working on that (we call the "variable view"). It won't be a window anymore.
See what happens when developers write copy. We'll get that fixed. Thanks!
There was a thread about this on HN a while back:

http://www.shotspotter.com/

Here's the thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4034528
Reading this article, a lesson appears: how to shamelessly promote a service on hacker news.
It's really not.

If a company has a remote employee and wants that employee to come to the home office for a day/week/month, it's ridiculous for anyone to think for even a moment that the company wouldn't pay for everything.
Thank you :) Network tab is our next tool.
Pumping Your Own Tires
It isn't just a Gingerbread phenomenon, but Gingerbread is one of the most obvious examples of the phenomenon. It looks like half of all "active" Android devices are running Gingerbread or earlier [1], and many of those devices will never have an OS update released. It happens with iOS too, but devices generally get updates for two years before they're stranded.

But you are correct--it is far from the only example. There are major problems with iOS's model, too--once your device has received its last update, you're stuck with its rendering engine forever! Browsers using alternate rendering engines aren't allowed in the store. With Gingerbread, at least people can install a browser with a newer rendering engine.

But in general, I think the "Gingerbread is the new IE6" claims are pretty hyperbolic. IE6 remained such a scourge because so many companies wouldn't upgrade it to maintain consistency and compatibility with their custom, non-standards-compliant internal web applications. In contrast, mobile devices currently aren't kept very long, and there's quick iteration. After a few years, those Gingerbread users still using their devices can get a new browser if they're insistent on using the device, and idevice users will have to get a new idevice. But those users won't be tied to using those devices by corporate policy. At worst, I think developers will have to worry about the Gingerbread browser and older versions of mobile Safari for a few years, not the better part of a decade like with IE6.

[1] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
Show HN: HighFin.js App Framework for node.
I don't understand this comment. He's volunteering with the NOLA PD. Would you like him to stop doing that? Or do you think tech volunteers with the NOLA PD are going to change the mission of the department?
Sourcemap support + unminification are coming.
Just FYI: You can do exactly this with the latest Light Table[1]. :)

[1]: http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/02/27/light-table-030-expe...
Thanks to the Internet, there is a huge glut of awful, cliched writing that leaves you no smarter than you were before you started reading. Journalism school calls this "pumping out copy", and it's something you used to be able to build a career on.

There is a frightening dearth of well-produced content from a variety of perspectives that seeks to measurably increase understanding as opposed to hit a word limit and generate pageviews.

People talk about this all the time — the first question people ask me when I tell them I have a journalism degree is "what news sources do you recommend?", because the vast majority of what's out there and popular is complete garbage, and everyone knows it, and there still, in 2013, isn't a good way to verify sources or tell good journalism from propaganda.

I believe people will pay for compelling content that leaves them better-informed, that they have a good reason to trust, and I believe we can use technology to go far beyond what's been possible up to this point with static, narrative storytelling. We're still terrible at providing context, perspective, and verifiability, all things the Internet has made possible, but nobody has done well yet.

Nobody should pay for what, for instance, the Associated Press produces. Robots will replace them one day and that day can't come soon enough. There is very little value in what they do.

But there is value in content that leaves you smarter than when you started. The methods of producing it haven't caught up with the baseline of knowledge the Internet makes possible for everyone, or the stunningly beautiful display of information that's possible on the modern Web.

It hurts to see the skills gap up close - journalists in the grad program at Stanford are still totally defeated by data mining, web design (a skill they all know well for print), data visualization, non-linear storytelling, multimedia production, and the kinds of things I believe will elevate journalism in the 21st century, and nobody's paying well enough to poach the people who do have those skills.

So what do we do?
From 2004-2009, I basically built things I could have charged for, but didn't. I was afraid to take money from people.

DHH (et al) to the rescue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

This is where the "Nice little Italian restaurant" SaaS meme was sourced from. He was hilariously spot-on.

I caved and started building things I would charge for. I'm still just part-timing it, but my stuff is growing. And, frankly, I'm not the best Rails/iOS/Java developer out there. Literally if I can do it, you can too.

Great, inspiring article.
I think they are probably referring to http://focusatwill.com/beta mentioned elsewhere in the comments.
That's interesting. I'll look at that. Thanks.
> Virginia, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Minnesota?

Virginia, Louisiana, and Missouri receive more federal dollars than they pay in taxes. For Missouri, the net amount is 2.8% of GDP, Louisiana gets 4.4% of GDP, and Virginia gets a staggering 11.2% of GDP.

North Carolina and Minnesota look pretty good, but they were up there with New York and Illinois in terms of budget deficits a couple of years ago: http://www.wral.com/news/local/politics/story/8049206/
This and tabs on the left. It feels like using Tree Style Tab is not really fully optimized.

I don't think you need to add a more things for developers. The tools already present are good enough, I saw someone suggesting a built-in sFTP. That's just too much.
To the person who just wants to save for retirement and doesn't want to invest in the rollercoaster stock market, the best thing that money could do is to at least retain its current purchasing power.

You can talk about "maintaining a healthy flow of currency", but to some people it's more like "use your dollar coupons before they expire" and they don't like playing that game.
The main reason I'm still using Firefox as my main browser is Firebug, which is still better than the competition. Unfortunately it's a memory hog and dramatically slows down the whole browser. So my vote goes to performance improvements for Firebug.
If this is what your experience has been, you've been ripped off. This is not industry standard except in the case of rogue consultants getting paid a very high hourly rate.
It's an old practice - whether you call it a proof of concept, pilot or a prototype, the tough part is recognising it as such and to be willing to throw it out.

In the enterprise world this is really difficult because managers hate seeing those hours produce seemingly nothing, when in fact the product that follows will inevitably be orders of magnitude better in all respects than the throw-away that preceded it. Personally, the single biggest payoff I've gained from this approach is a cleaner architecture that cleanly separates concerns, allowing individual components to be refined even further.
Aha. Well, congratulations to him. Not being snarky, I just don't consider HTML or CSS 'code' (I always considered 'code' to be executable).