skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting but wrong.

He's bemoaning the fact that a B.A. serves the same screening purpose that a high school diploma did up until the late 60s, early 70s, the focus on college as a ticket to a decent job and hence a good standard of living.

As motivation to improve he compares European secondary education to American, after being appalled at the idea that people are trying to recruit the bottom 40% of the intelligence distribution into college, where they will fail, but will pay money before they drop out. He fails to realise that he's almost certainly not seeing a random sample of the products of European secondary education.

The main strengths of the Irish and British systems of secondary education, the only ones I'm vaguely familiar with, are the exit exams, which are brutal, anonymous and fair. They're also available in different gradations of difficulty (usually two, Higher and Ordinary, occasionally three for the subjects people just keep failing, add Foundation.) This means you can stream, and all results are comparable. No trying to compare an A from Podunk High School, west Virginia with one from Philips Exeter Academy.
Gallery: Flickr users make accidental maps
These are actually reasons why casual, non-developer users are switching to Macs, not developers or designers.

The author describes how OSX is more open-source friendly, describing also how it comes bundled with developer tools, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that an actual developer will have a hard time finding a better tool online. The apps that come with the OS aren't exactly the best, and just about everyone who's planning to get some work done will find other tools wherever with better libraries and more support.

The author also goes on and on about the UI. The simple taskbar in Windows and Linux is enough for me. Is it really necessary to have to view a thumbnail-esque to change to the window? Alt-Tab is enough.

Security? Please! I'll say again: the developers I know are not stupid. Anyone in their right mind and with some knowledge of computers should know that clicking on an odd-looking ad, or downloading a strange attachment, or accessing a crazy porn site aren't sane things. A combination of Firefox and AdBlock/NoScript can make any OS safe for most people. Unless you have kids who have thumb drives and like to use your computer, contracting a virus that way shouldn't be a concern, either.

The hardware-specific optimization is another problem. iPhone development is booming right now, but what about the rest?

I'm willing to accept "the apple", but presenting bogus arguments isn't convincing.
The feature where you display a word cloud over a link seems slow enough that users might find it annoying to watch it load.

Some word clouds are made of clickable tags. When users try to click, but cannot, they may not like your clouds as much.
Excellent observation about the larger openness of the debate in Israel. I have seen that as well. Indeed, when in Israel I have talked to people on both sides of the issue and never had it suggested to me THERE that I was anti-semetic for my opinions.

The closedness of national debate may be something which varies across the world, and the U.S. may be on the more-closed-than-you-woulda-thought side of that. As I read some other comments in this thread about not being able to discuss capitalism, I was thinking "they sure can in Europe." I think the Europeans are a little less self-conscious about their kinkinesses :)

I think many European countries have stricter laws against hate speech than the U.S. Which on the face of it may make us U.S.ians think we are doing better at this free speech thing. When in fact it may just be that we do a better job of unofficial suppression of free speech than the foreigners do. It reminds me of Fred's explanation of the high gun-murder rate in the U.S. in the great movie Barcelona. "It is not that Americans are more violent than Europeans, we are just better shots."
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| |
| Are you sure you want to appoint |
| a Microsoft person? |
| |
| _______ _______ |
| | | | | |
| | Yes | | No | |
| |______| |______| |
| |
|________________________________________|
My experience is the opposite of yours. IE usage is the minority, so I don't feel bad if their experience is slightly worse than users using a better browser.

When they come and ask why X is slow, we send them over to firefox/safari/chrome, and they thank us.
Vista.

Edit: OK, how am I wrong?
The US lost 1 million people, ~0.3% of its 1939 population.

I see the quoted statement, which doesn't make mathematical sense, misquotes Wikipedia. I knew the United States population at that time was too low for one million deaths to be that small a percentage. The Wikipedia page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

shows a lower death total, and shows for each country what assumed number of deaths and estimated national population went into the calculation.
What about brand appeal. Macs are also a status symbol. A way to make a statement about yourself, telling others that you are 'in' that exclusive club, you are cool and happening.
add in "unit tests are not generally useful"
Does VRML support scripting and shaders? I think there has been some advancement in 3D since 1997.
Rules no one teaches but everyone learns
well they are one of the biggest tech companies in the country, couldn't very well appoint Kevin Rose to it
A friend of mine once remarked that it's good to have an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

In a world with almost seven billion people, there are many folks who believe that Darwinian evolution is a fraud, or that 9/11 was actually a Mossad plot, or that astronauts never actually landed on the moon, or that Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans should be the absolute monarch of France. I see no reason to waste my time giving these "theories" the attention required to even refute them.

I don't care how much of a bold and contrarian and politically incorrect thinker you are--at some point you have to draw a line and say that certain ideas deserve to be ridiculed because they are, well, ridiculous.
Follow the Swine Flu Pandemic in Real Time With Google Maps
Yes, exactly. The largest text on the screen says "Better Business Bureau." People are asked to leave reviews. They're assuming this is a place to file complaints that the BBB will follow up on. They are in error.
You are absolutely correct. I clearly misread that table. It is ~400,000, still considerably less than Soviet casualties.
"We... are happy to be one of the first companies to implement Activity Streams at scale."
What a subtle shot at their competition.
The majority of this article seems to be the standard " OS X is Great!" talking points.

In my opinion, the real reason that developers switch to OS X is so that they can develop software for apple products (or in the case of web development, develop websites that are OS X friendly).
Ask HN: Any programmers here that are able to make a living selling their own programs?
If so, feel free to share any advice you might have, and plug your own product as well.

I'm a programmer always looking for inspiration, and my dream is to make a living writing and selling my /own/ software, from my /own/ computer chair.
I'm not sure why a 'unified interface' is such a selling point. Does Windows not offer it? To be honest, I'm constantly finding that things on my Mac don't have a unified interface and that Apple keeps changing what they're looking to build.

Both platforms (Mac and Win) tend to violate consistency on a case-by-case basis. Adium, one of the apps highlighted in the article as awesome (which it is), does not conform to the rest of the system's interface. Specifically, it uses white tabs rather than the new not-quite-metal look of 10.5. Likewise, iTunes has different scrollbars, Camino and OmniWeb don't use the new button-look for controls and use the old-style flat color images, sometimes input boxes have rounded corners and sometimes they don't, sometimes you can tab to select menus and sometimes you can't, find boxes are in every form imaginable. . .

Consistency is great, but practicality beats purity. Both Apple and Microsoft have kept things decently consistent and violate their designs. Heck, with web pages throwing all sorts of interfaces at users, even the non-techies are getting used to understanding how different interfaces work.

OS X is great, but I don't see it as being amazingly more consistent than other platforms.
Here are some more :) (about 85 so far, I think): http://www.listable.org/show/url-shortening-sites
very interesting. I agree with you that it's the phonemes that is the problem. As one ages, one's primary language phonemes sound more and more "normal", and subtlety that do not exist in one's primary language is "tossed out" by the brain.

I learned to speak English when I was 10, and I have no issue with the differences between Chinese and English. But I was exposed to French only a little bit later (12) and I am completely hopeless at it. The grammar, spelling and vocabulary are the easiest parts; I just can't seem to produce the same sounds.
Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn
What!!! Not me.
OK good point in that case. It'd be more politically correct to say "How to get a VC randy/turned on" or something. Doesn't really have the same 'flow' though.
GDP in the US in 2008 was 14.62 trillion.

3% of that is $438.6 billion.

From TFA:
>To encourage private sector investment in research, Obama said he wants to make the federal government's research and experimentation tax credit permanent.

I love the idea of making it more tax friendly for business who wish to conduct research. I hate the idea of the government taxing people and then dolling out that money to whomever they deem most "worthy."
You are not only ashamed of getting caught. You INTERNALIZE the shame. You BELIEVE you are no good. I was just watching a youtube video that had a clip of a "youth minister" in a charismatic church getting a room full of what looked like 10-13 year olds in tears and on their knees talking about how they had disappointed jesus with their behavior, exhorting them that "YOU know what you must repent. Say it out loud."

If only we could keep the external external. If you have managed that you are way ahead. Don't miss what is happening with those who haven't managed.
I actually see this as how users can creatively use a site for what they really want to use it for despite how it is designed. These people wanted to vent their complaints and have other people see them. Since they were complaining about really small businesses, few people would ever really see them unless they searched for that specific business (that is how the site is designed.)

So by crowding all of their complaints on the BBB listing they can maximize how many people see their complaints. If Yahoo really cared about this product they could come up with some creative ways to get the user's entering their comments in the correct place by also providing an outlet for them to have their complaints be more visible.

In a sense all of these random comments are complaints against the BBB because the BBB makes it so hard to complain online (or doesn't provide a better way to do it.)
i've got to agree with the other comments.... there's nothing impressive about url shortening. the idea behind it is incredibly simple -- nowhere near impressive. sites like this have been around for a while already so i'm not sure why all the new web2.0 folks have decided to make it their duty to make new ones. that and pastebins.
Just goes to show that ideas aren't worthless, assuming you have the money to file a patent and sue someone who executed on the idea.
> The RepRap Darwin has already successfully manufactured all of its custom parts except for the extruder nozzle and circuit boards, leaving only a few hundred dollars' worth of common off-the-shelf "vitamin" parts

So it can extrude plastic, but can't extrude

* nozzles

* circuit boards

* guide rails

* screws

* motors

* steel rods

* thermocouple sensor

* rotary encoder

* etc., etc., etc.

That's quite a lot of "vitamins" (to use the propoganda term).

Take a look at the Darwin.

http://www.reprap.org/pub/Main/WebHome/darwin-small.jpg

I believe that of everything you see there, the only things that the RepRap creates itself are the small white plastic bits...maybe 10% of the machine by volume, 5% by weight, and 1% by complexity.

> Check out the RepRap blog

I have. The signal to noise ratio is pretty low, and there's a lot of relentless boosterism (did I mention the OVER 100 TIMES that RepRap has been posted to news.yc?

> In short, your criticism is false from beginning to end. Do you feel that that sufficiently "addresses" it? (Myself, I prefer to address human beings.)

If you're going to do a dictionary flame, do it right. "Address a criticism" is a phrase that has been used in English for hundreds of years, even if you're not familiar with it.
If you develop web based applications, Mac OS X has many limitations, strangely enough.

Mac OS X is UNIX alright, but to pull most of libraries from MacPorts is the only sane way to manage dependencies.

If you run Tiger (and see no reasons to upgrade) - then you are stuck with old Java release for ever. There is no way to upgrade Java other than buying Leopard, and then you are still at Apple's mercy for future upgrades.

A simple task like doing 'sudo emacs' requires some custom shell scripting, since emacs that came with the operating system is old and useless.

My initial excitement about Mac hardware is also dented after battery and graphic card both failed only after a year on my MacBook Pro.

A web developer would be much more happy on Linux if he/she could live without eye candy.
Sure, you can't evaluate every dingdong idea. But when you find one you are going to skip, you can either do so respectfully, or you can declare to everyone around you that even in the absence of any thought on the matter, you happen to know (how?) that this is just wrong and BS and worthless.

Sure its frustrating when you stop trashing all the ideas you reject. But it has some good results too. Like you get a more realistic idea of how limited what you know (vs what you think) is.
The award of $19m is also pretty ridiculous for something so trivial.

To put it into perspective, this is only about 0.06% of Apple's cash reserve.
Will companies stop spending R&D if they can't patent the outcome? I don't think they would.

I think they'd find another way to 'lock-in' - such as providing better value, or a better product.
Ask HN: Please Review our App: Weatherbike.com
To put it into perspective, it probably took a couple of days to come up with the idea, and file the patent. Probably cost a few k.

Quite a nice ROI.
The parasite puzzle: sleeping sickness uses protein switching to hide from antibodies
It almost certainly correlates better with how recently you leared English than with your ability to structrue thoughts.
That was actually mentioned in the article...

So why is the BBC so good when most others are so bad? Maybe it's in the BBC's blood: The news
organization originated as a radio station, where word count is at a premium and you must communicate
clearly to immediately grab listeners. In a spoken medium, each word is gone as soon as it's
uttered, so convoluted exposition confuses even more than it does in print.

Ceefax (one of the few surviving videotext services) also helps instill conciseness in BBC's journalists.
Text on low-def televisions has horrible resolution and only allows for a minute word count (somewhat
like mobile).
I really think that this is an overstated effect for computers. For the iPhone and iPod maybe that's true. But for the laptops? I dunno.

I know OSX is the #1 reason I prefer a mac at home. Being able to play like a native member of the Posix world while still having one of my favorite GUI APIs available is a big deal in my book.
My favorite quote is:

"In a sense, management theory is what happens to philosophers when you pay them too much."
If you want you can find most things offensive. My boss, bosses, boss is a female as is her boss, but I still talk about my company as a fraternity because English uses the male gender as the default. My waiter might be a women, but nobody complains when I use the masculine term. females even use the term "jonesing" even though the term used to mean something else...

What I find amusing is the more historically gender separated professions don't have male/female terms. EX: Doctor, nurse, but people seem to want to add them.

PS: I find it offensive when people don't use the genders interchangeably.
I didn't read the list in detail, but was there realy anything on that list(except the hardware and the mac only apps) that i don't have in KDE4? Im seriously asking and im not really bashing apple this time(i sort of have a history with that).
I love the idea of making it more tax friendly for business who wish to conduct research. I hate the idea of the government taxing people and then dolling out that money to whomever they deem most "worthy."

That's the same thing as a targeted tax break. If the government gives you money because you do X then I pay more taxes. If you pay less taxes because you do X then I still pay more taxes.
Where did he claim he was different?

Is it wrong for someone to criticize an industry they were a part of? Is the appearance of hypocrisy the foremost evil to be avoided at all costs?
I went to Stevens Institute of Technology as a lad. I like telling an illustrative anecdote about the school compared to its competition: W. Edwards Deming went to MIT; Frederick Taylor went to Stevens.

All you need to know, really. :)
4chan is like the social equivalent of fuzz testing. If you want to see how your app holds up against weird unexpected input, you feed it /dev/urandom. If you want to see how it holds up against weird unexpected people, you feed it /b/.
So... don't upvote it? Or, if you don't feel it's hacker-newsworthy enough, go ahead and flag it?

For what it's worth, I really liked the links and 3D additive printing industry analysis, so I posted it here.
On the latter point, it's the opposite. Companies shouldn't leave money on the table for ideological reasons as petty as too-low-mpg. [note that I don't think vimeo actually did anything wrong here - it's the idea that is bullshit, not any action they have taken. I loved the Ad.]

Consumers should move towards vendors that are as neutral as possible. Personal bias shouldn't influence a business decision.

My agenda for Tipjoy is to make money. We're completely content neutral, within the bounds of the law.
From your about page, "you really just want to know 3 things: How hot or cold is it? Is it raining? What are the winds like?"
Really, what value are you bringing to the table that going outside for 5 seconds can't do? Honestly, I would find another app to write that actually solves a need.
> The author also goes on and on about the UI. The simple taskbar in Windows and Linux is enough for me. Is it really necessary to have to view a thumbnail-esque to change to the window? Alt-Tab is enough.

I would argue that -this- is the reason why Mac is converting casual non-developer users. "Normal people" are complicated and the way they perceive files, windows, and apps interacting on a computer is varied and bizarre. Alt-tab is simply not enough for normal people to connect with a computer the way they expect it to work.

Leopard has come really far in making visualization tools that are fast, easy to understand, and useful. With one keystroke, I can interact with my open windows in 5 different, task-focused ways. With two keystrokes, I gain access to even more.
I think treating the memcache as a writeback cache is the wrong model since the memcache could lose data at any time due to failure. You should probably write to the database at the same time you write to the memcache.
I think particularly in the case of pharmaceuticals that would certainly be the case. Why spend all of that time and effort to find an effective and safe cure if all you need to do is sit on the sidelines until someone else comes up with it. At that point all you need to do is simply reverse engineer it and produce it yourself.

The ability to copy someone else's work would dramatically lower the reward for the companies. Ultimately leading to the business decision that it isn't worth investing in R&D.
I disagree.

It's in the interest of both Google and Twitter to resolve this, but I think the issue should be resolved by Google. Twitter should not use the meta-description tag for anything other than its purpose.
"Mac OS X is UNIX alright, but to pull most of libraries from MacPorts is the only sane way to manage dependencies."

The only time this is the case is ImageMagik. Everything else is easily manageable by hand unless you insist of mixing it with the normal mac stuff. MacPorts is hardly necessary.

It's unfortunate too, because Apple has one of the best non-package solutions for managing software installs in their .bundle and .app and .framework scheme. It's exquisitely simple and elegant, but everyone seems hesitant to adopt it because, well, because the UNIX way is to use a byzantine and barely functional package system and not incur manifest parsing penalties when apps are loaded.
Promotional Pens 
Promotional pens and pencils seem like a silly idea to most, but they are rather effective at keeping right on point, especially with customers who write a lot.
+9: lars. 6 Points +1.5x Word Length.

+7: int. 5 Points +1.3x Multiplier.

+9: mac. 8 Points +1.1x Multiplier.

-7: pc. Word not in dictionary.

-57: js. Word not in dictionary.
I think 3M already has the Post-It market cornered. If there were no patent, a new-comer who just copied them wholesale would likely have a hard time making a significant dent in the market. Unless they priced them significantly lower, forcing 3M to go lower, until you get to a point where all commodities are actually priced as such. Wouldn't that suck? ;)
How is that going to tell you what the weather is like at the location to which you are commuting?
This is an interesting start, but what I really need is to know what it's going to be like during the evening commute.

Possibly you could ad a feature to let a user enter their commute times and get an email, SMS or something to let them know automatically what's up that day.

Then, give them an option to enter their route and add some traffic information -- along with highly localized ads and such, of course.
Spending money should never be a goal in itself
>If you pay less taxes because you do X then I still pay more taxes.

That is not necessarily true (although it practice i recognize that it is true). Theoretically (and in my opinion optimally) the government could give the tax break Y because you do X and then continue running with (Revenue - Y) = (Budget - Y)
Yes...
I think it's a statement about Time's approach to IT:
Willing to use data from online surveys it develops, but not to keep results up to date.
Maybe not funding/mandating IT to use sufficient resources to prevent result-spamming.

And consider the online-journalistic issues about "Timeliness" (sorry) of Times news posts: the error's been known for hours, but Time's article (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1883644,0...) is still starting out MARBLECAKE as of 12:30pm, MDT, despite contention at http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/17/the-time-empire-strikes... that Time was "Striking back"...

and no nearby link to news about Time's getting hacked. Will they wait for Newsweek to break the story?
>Side note: do we have to discuss every vaguely technology related news bit about Obama here?

This is not an inconsequential item, committing 3% of GDP to basic research may be one of the most fundamentally positive policy decisions ever made in the USA.