skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Agreed on the 4-way vs 8-way. Anyone playing Pac Man, Ms Pac Man, Donkey Kong or other classic 4-way games will be very handicapped with an 8-way joystick without a restrictor plate. I've successfully used Ultimarc controllers that are 4/8 switchable using a restrictor plate and the controls are amazing.

Other than that people should be aware that there's no way this runs many arcade games using MAME. I've had desktop computers choke on a lot of arcade games for lack of CPU resources so I can't imagine this plays many games without lag especially since he mentions sluggishness right in the article.
I tend to be of the notion that pushing data organization into the application space is just asking for trouble most of the time. I'd prefer to have one big, consistent way to organize things, then a few dozen applications each with their own take on it.

To me the ideal system is one where the filesystem (or probably a very thin abstraction layer) can be intelligent enough to do sensible things with files when they get saved, and my applications work with whatever scheme I tell it to enforce.
Desktop = desktop computer. I put forward a counterargument to a point made in the second half of the article regarding desktop computers.

Some people like tiling window managers, other people prefer stacking window managers. I feel constricted by tiling windows managers which is why I don't use them. I readily stack and deliberately overlap windows daily, and it's part of my workflow. But, at least with a *nix based system you have your choice.

Replacing folders with metadata would make it more unwieldy. Files and folders are a familiar, logical, and easy metaphor that readily lends itself to a graphical environment. Heaps of data (at least in the non-programming sense) with excellent metadata is a second rate version of the former. It's been proposed and tried many times with little success because it doesn't lend itself to easy access of data, except when there are few content blobs ("files") in existence.
Did Hacker News just gain image emoticons?
In Mobile Safari on iOS 6, a reply to one of my comments contains a graphical emoticon, where it didn’t a couple of hours a go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5867697

Does anyone else see this? (Please mention browser+version and OS)
W2s and paychecks? They're either doing it for security clearance reasons or to decide how much to pay you.
Some people can give a lesson, even when they fail - Groupon CEO
GREAT THINKING REQUIRES GREAT ACTION
except when there are few content blobs ("files") in existence

Or many. Isn't that why search engines won to "directories"?
The Pros and Cons of Startup Accelerators
> In college, I learned code quality is as important as the result, turned out wrong.

I'm surprised you learned this in college. My department couldn't care less about code quality, and in fact they teach a lot of stuff that goes against the majority of style guides. In an extreme case, I've seen code written by a senior student that repeated tons of code because he didn't use loops, and he passed the assignment just fine.
Great writing - we really feel along with you ("and that's okay"). It's terrible to care and work with people who don't. Find a new team (in MS or out of it).
Can Government Create A Culture of Startups?
>The issue is not whether the government should vigorously pursue terrorists. The question is whether the security goals can be achieved by less-intrusive or sweeping means, without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights...

There is another issue that hasn't been discussed enough, and this quote from the article simultaneously refers to the need to discuss "balance" between security and freedom, while also unquestioningly keeping alive the idea that there is a grave threat and hence need for outsized security.

So, the question is also, what is the true scale and number of these so-called "terrorism threats"? And, how do you measure the required balance without a true assessment of the actual threat (vs. assuming it)?

After 9/11 we went into this permanent "War on Terror" war-footing, wherein this notion of an overwhelming threat of terrorism was simply assumed (ex. by this article).

But, when, if ever, do we question whether that posture still makes sense (or ever did, for that matter)?
I believe those are emoji emoticons. The reason you see them is because you are on iPhone. I'm on Chrome on Windows 8 and I only see a square 😓.
Ah, I was waiting for Cringely's annual IBM-doom-and-gloom post.
Uh, thanks, but intelligent, educated people who are attentive to civic life (e.g. a significant portion of the HN readership) don't need to have the difference between a pure democracy and a representative one spelled out in detail each and every time the word "democracy" comes up in conversation.
I think the argument was purely about UI semantics. People here seem to be missing the point completely, in my opinion.
Someone should whip up a quick website listing all these books. I would do it myself but I have neither the money or knowledge to do so. I will be reading all the books listed in this thread post haste.
This is a very complex way of reaching the idea that we have a master "Project" folder on my drive.

The key innovation you're actually pushing is that we need less applications insisting on storing data in "their" format. I would love it if I could just map IMAP folders straight to actual folders on my hard drive for mail messages, so when I drag stuff out of my inbox its getting saved to the appropriate place that I can later zip up and backup wherever.
Sure they're keystrokes, but if the software/audits/etc. are run by the same people who might want to abuse it, it doesn't mean much. And put yourself in their shoes: if you abuse a secret database, you likely won't get found out. If you abuse the nukes you most likely will.
I never claimed to speak for anyone else. But "I'm just talking about a random blog post" strikes me as rather feeble.

I mean, respond to whatever you like. But you would have to be very shortsighted, or very partisan, to look at the heart of what's happening right now and see some PowerPoint slides or a well-produced video.
12 spots left for Mobile Payments, Bitcoin and the Law
I see a 😓 (which is Unicode, not a graphic).

(Firefox 21.0, Ubuntu Precise 12.04.)
Interesting to see how an outlet like Mashable talks about startup accelerators. Kind of nice to see San Diego mentioned, too.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coldhardlook/american-se...
No - launching a nuke results in a thermonuclear explosion detectable from space - not just keystrokes on a computer. Keystrokes on a computer can be hidden, those mechanisms can be by-passed - and no satellite from space is going to detect all that and alert us to the problem in the reliable and impartial way that would be necessary.
Every network security professional in the US believes the US sponsors, coordinates, and executes online attacks against China (as China clearly does to the US). This is a little like a "revelation" from a sysadmin for a drone C&C site that the US does indeed engage in drone strikes.
I don't particularly like that particular symbolism either, but I do think you're overstating things somewhat as the term is clearly meant as a metaphor rather than a literal analogy.

It's not even as if they're glorifying nor trivialising real life war. It's just an expression.

However I do agree with you (and the OP) that the term was clearly picked because it has more impact than just saying "our project to cut down on x"

But anyway, I'm sure there's more relevant things we can discuss on this topic than arguing the justification for one word. :)
Reminds me how the FBI will only do sting operations to illiterate, 16 year old Somali immigrants. Nobody every sting ops bankers with insider information, even though doing this even occasionally would drastically reduce it.
PlanGrid is looking for full-stack engineers in SF
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We're looking for front-end engineers with a passion for making beautiful intuitive products. Our front-end tech is iOS, Android, and backbone.js. You will be our twelfth team member and sixth member of engineering.

We've been around for a year and we're growing fast. Unlike a lot of early stage startups, we measure our growth in revenue, not users, and it's been exponential since the day we launched.

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Send your info to: jobs@plangrid.com
I tend to agree with your post as I have been through what you are going through. I still regret taking the SDET role. In general SDETs do a lot of janitor kind of work. Cleaning up after the Devs and PMs. At the end of the day what everyone cares is that you have tested everything and not how you do it. I used to do a lot of system admin kind of work i.e. setting up machines, installing OS, running scripts, running existing test suites, etc. instead of writing new tests or new test frameworks. I am afraid this will take a long time to change. The only thing we can do now is move away from the SDET role. I can't guarantee if it'll be any better but it won't be as worse as being an SDET.
As far as I am aware, even Einstein didn't really like being in school and had problems concentrating, yet his scientific achievements are undeniabe.

Not sure about that:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/06/23/1115185.ht...
great stuff, thanks! you should also check out James Altucher's recent article, it has tonnes of great tips:
http://www.copyblogger.com/professional-self-publishing
This again?

Nonsense like this comes up every so often and it's always based on a myopic and naive view of computing, and of the general public's use of computers.

File systems are necessary because files need to move between applications and devices. File systems are already an abstraction, and they will continue to be useful until someone comes up with a better one. Which, at this point, seems unlikely.

Yes, your exposure to the file system on an iPad is much lower than on a MacBook Air. But it's still present. Try saving an image from the web, an email attachment, or using the Drop Box App. You may not be at a command prompt but you're dealing with the file system.

The more complicated things you want to do with a tablet, the more you're going to have to interact with the file system. A better abstraction does not yet exist, so the file system persists.

Declaring its death prior to the appearance of a better abstraction is silly.
"Everybody loves finding Stack Overflow answers on search results, but nobody contributes those answers. I can understand that."

Hmm. I see lots of excellent answers on Stack Overflow from declared Microsoft engineers, and undoubtedly many more undeclared ones. I think the OP is extrapolating, but also that s/he may have caught something of the culture there..
This is why a majority of polls are absolutely useless, you can get the answers you want by asking the questions in certain ways.

Also, what people say they'd do and what they actually do are two completely different things. You could ask people if they are sick of hearing about a tabloid scandal thats been running in the press for a few weeks and they'll say they are, yet any publication that runs the story has their circulation numbers go up.

As the saying goes: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".
Exactly.

The counter to that (as discussed in this post) is that you can just search for documents based on keywords, etc. which can definitely work well in many cases – but I don't believe it is (or has to be) an either-or. Searching is not infallible either - at least not until search becomes semantic and truly smart, lest I misremember crucial keywords, substituting a synonym (or any of a number of examples).

It's been my experience that organization becomes essential when tasks become complex. This goes beyond computers. This is the case with human systems or physical objects. I think the same goes here. Mobile devices have largely been about consumption or simple creation, with simple workflows. To me, it's an open question of whether or not their current interaction and organizational scheme can hold up as content creation gets more complex.
There's no God for me either, but isn't that a pedantic point? I think it could just as easily read as

> Your rights come from our nature, not government.
I first read this in the 'Bumper-Sticker Computer Science' column/chapter of More Programming Pearls, Jon Bentley. Great aphorism, great book.
"I Can Say What I Want" – that's not an argument
It's a change - it's not specifically "bad".

There are consequences too - some of which can easily be seen as "bad" by at least some (non evil) people.

Providers of all the current "free" content, where "free" means "paid for with personal demographic information instead of money" will need to adjust their business models to suit.

Personally, I think that's a good thing - I'd rather pay directly for the content I consume - but I suspect "most people" would resist the idea of their favourite webcomic/news/game-demo apps going behind a paywall, and it'll be more work to monetise apps (or sites) if CPMs drop due to poorer targeting.
Maybe, but what's wrong with pasting code from one Microsoft project to another? I think the company would be overreacting. This post could have been subtitled, "holy cow, this is not college anymore." Most of it sounds like universal coming-of-age stuff that could have been written about pretty much anywhere.
What?

The US is ahead of Germany, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Finland, South Korea, Japan, Sweden, and so on, but you claim it is one of the lowest in developed countries?? Twisting the facts much?
I don't think that have some kind of backdoor access to the underlying filesystem makes it incompatible with the argument. The argument is about normal UI and workflow, not implementation details.

Besides, the author is talking about content, and what if that's stored online? There's no files except for the server sysadmin.

And no, the fact that you and I may continue to use it is not an argument either. The claim is "obsolete", not wiped from the face of the Earth.
Also if you get a chance read this blog post written by a Microsoft Dev Manager.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/eric_brechner/archive/2011/05/01/tes...
Contract Designer
I usually use Chrome on OS X, where I didn’t see the emoticon. I was reviewing the replies to my comments on my iPhone when I noticed it, and I’m delighted. Another thing to thank the Japanese for.
In October 1962, Licklider was hired by Jack Ruina as Director of the newly established Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) within DARPA, with a mandate to interconnect the United States Department of Defense's main computers at Cheyenne Mountain, the Pentagon, and SAC HQ. There he formed an informal group within DARPA to further computer research. He began by writing memos describing a distributed network to the IPTO staff, whom he called "Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network".

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

The Internet was created by the military so it's not exactly some huge surprise that they use it to monitor you. What did you expect?
Enterprise Mobile App: Mobilizing a MySQL database
>I actually just hope that Snowdon exposed the worst thing that the NSA was doing. I suspect he did not.

well, low level IT tech employed by a contractor, young, without a family ... his access would basically be only to the typical everyday stuff, nothing exceptional or really secret. He didn't actually leaked any new information. It was all de-facto known [the notion of "foreigner" in FISA magically put concerns of citizens to sleep, while even if the government wanted (big if), how could they program Big Computer to distinguish between foreigner (fair kosher game under FISA) and a citizen? By looking up into one big database of all the citizens with all their attributes, including phone numbers, hair/eyes color, DMV and property records, guns owned, etc...? There seems to be still no such database as even government real people have issues deducing immigration status (even when they really interested in it, like in AZ)]. His act is mainly of political value, than of information value.
> some futuristic chip implant in your head to prevent you from committing it

Just curious, are you thinking of The Alliance?
Population replenishment?

Remind me of Orson Scott Card's story (Ender in Exile), in which human crews building off-world colonies consisted of many more women than men (and temporarily allowed for polygamous relationships) to bootstrap the population faster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0KYU2j0TM4
Perhaps Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH)?

As a CIA director I bet he was in a position to influence the outsourcing of duties to private companies. It would not surprise me if he at one time chose BAH for some particular project and now it is time to cash out!

Sorry, I am very cynical
I've had a subscription to the Guardian for ages (on my Kindle, I don't live in the UK) because I think it's the best newspaper out there, period. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership for how it maintains independence (and why supporting it financially is a good thing).
How so? What profits could a flipper look forward to?

In other words, does "app flipping" exist in the Android space (which, given the lack of restrictions, would allow/encourage this)?
In my university, I'm pretty sure you can graduate with even decent to good grades without having written any single program that worked. So maybe this grind is exactly the right thing for these people.
No One Will Ever Miss the Hotel Phone
Though I disagree with you on your issues with the title of the post, I did really like how you've described your definition of an introvert. That you can prefer to be an introvert but still embody qualities that we associate with extroverts (which is what the article is about.)

Under your definition, I'm definitely an introvert. I have no issues with public speaking, leading people, or being shy.

But if given a choice, I'd rather spend time thinking by myself, I would rather sit quietly and listen to other people in a dinner table, I prefer working on my own, and having peaceful alone time at home to "recharge" instead of going out.
> First of all, he has no control how the raw files will be processed ...

This is equally true for any work done on a jpeg.

> Don't forget you've got the ability to change the end result of his work with raw files and with that goes his reputation.

This is equally true for any work done on a jpeg.

> Additionally the raw files aren't always great straight out of the camera, great pictures emerge after cropping, straightening and balancing the entire image. His perceived skill will be greatly reduced when you see unedited images that are in need of work.

This is either a non-existent problem (the customer's perception can be based on the pp'd jpeg), or an education problem (the photographer can explain that often a lot of work is done in post to get just the right look).

> You are paying for his all-round skills to deliver great images not for someone to press the shutter & deliver raw files.

No one has suggested the customer doesn't pay for, and get, skilfully post-processed jpegs, or that that's not the thing the customer wants most.

The OP is seeking these quality, finished products in addition to raws.

> It's the equivalent of asking an artist for his practise sketches & tubes of paint or asking a chef for the raw ingredients, cooking whatever you want with them and the chef still having his name attached to the quality of dish that you create.

No, it really is not.

If I make a regrettably tasteless meal from a recipe in a cook book, I don't present it to my dinner guests and blame Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

> He may have intended to create a soufflé but you may end up creating scrambled eggs and there's nothing he can do about it.

This is equally true for any work done on a jpeg.

> Personally we find that images at 300dpi are optimised for prints (12x8) we scale our print files around 3600 x 2400 pixels. This is around 8 to 9 megapixels. We also provide low-res files too for sharing on Facebook, e-mailing etc.

This doesn't materially impact the desire of the OP for raws.

> Instead of asking for raw files, just ask for a larger size jpg and specify 3600 x 2400 pixels for your high res files, that should make it clear what you want and it protects his work too.

Again the customer is being told that what they want is wrong, and they are wrong for wanting it.
A simple exercise to predict the future
Soups on the Apple Newton
Even metadata is too much information.
The first think I think of when somebody (usually a developer trying to predict the future) says the file system is going away, is:

So, without a file system, how do you organize the Linux kernel code? Or the WebKit code?

The reality is the lack of a front facing file system (like iOS, even thou there is still a file system down there) would probably work for 80% of users, but what do the rest of us do? And the reality is that 20% are developers, music editors, video editors, enterprise, and similar types of users where not having the file system isn't an inconvenience, but a show stopper. I'm in that 20% for some of my uses, and I'll say that my #1 complaint about my ipad (which I love) is the lack of a file system.
Well...provide the dump to as many other journalists as you can first, then trickle it out. It just doesn't seem like a valid reason to sit on the whole lot yourself, surely providing a guarantee that the information will get out eventually is more important than the media management aspect.

And besides, based on this theory, the stream of information being released should speed up, as once you have the worlds attention, they will pay attention to more. But we tend to see an initial release of explosive information, followed by a gradually diminishing stream of information - I am thinking back to Cablegate in particular - until it basically switches off and you never hear anything again.
Pretty common. Don't do it until you've got firm commitments on rate and stuff. A lot of these kinds of background checks are required by BigCo's before they'll allow contractors to work with their IT.
TechFestNW
Thanks. Though it seems odd that the 'remind me later' - essentially the 'decline' - isn't particularly notable on the phone call screen. The typical scenario of being in a meeting and needing to decline a call is less facilitated by the second design than by the first, as it's not obvious where to perform the action.
I will be watching out for that!