skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The comments there do a pretty good job of tearing his "Mozilla is actually pretty good guys!" argument apart. Camino is the last remaining actively-developed non-XUL Gecko browser left (it predates FF!), and even they are pondering a switch to WebKit.

XUL is the only supported way to interface with Mozilla, and it's a monster -- you don't embed a view in your app, you embed your app in XUL!

I had previously written off Clutter as freetard foolishness, but Intel's Moblin project looks pretty fantastic -- miles better than the ubuntu or nokia projects, much less the bundled taiwanese crapware.

It might end up being the first XULRunner app that wouldn't be better off as a mediocre firefox extension.
Check out http://autonomo.us/ where there has been a lot of similar discussion.
while we're dreaming, I hear there's a new source of power called "the sun"
Just what I need, another time waster. As if HN wasn't bad enough.
How Jim Collins Tracks His Workday
Achieving Fame, Wealth And Beauty Are Psychological Dead Ends, Study Says
The Bush one still works.
It's not even a bug, really. The behavior works as intended, it just may not be what the user expects.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link...If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
Did you notice the random embed

"Date All Within the last week Within the last 2 weeks Within the last 30 days Within the last 60 days Within the last 90 days Within the last 180 days Within the last year Within the last two years Custom Type All Articles Podcasts Slide Shows Video Channel All Asia B-Schools Europe Innovation & Design Investing Lifestyle Magazine Managing Small Biz Technology Top News Author Search Cancel close "

the 2nd to last paragraph on the 1st page. weird.
I get the impression this has already been posted on 4chan...
"what if someone changes git history? some rebasing or something like that? how does it affect downstream hg clients?"

I was under the impression that even among Git users, editing the history of something you've already pushed to others/allowed others to pull from is to be punished by public humiliation.
How to Make a Twitter Bot Popular
Think real people are interesting? They aren't. Bots are the new people and Twitter is the new society. Get with the times and make a bot.
Because they were Nazis, the enemy, and all that.

Note that "controversial today" doesn't tell us anything about the story in the 1930s and 40s.
Real title: New '2D barcodes' puts info at the tip of your camera phone. But the post title is a reasonable comment. I actually had a CueCat, which read URLs in the form of barcodes. It was a real bust. I dont see the future they see in the article. Reading UPC codes to get product information or price comparisons? Sure. 2D codes to phone downloads? It's seems so 20th century, compared to GPS based inquires and the like.
Extraordinary Skill Sets
That's nice, but it's not how liberal arts, or politics for that matter, work.
"I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better."

-- Mae West
"Strom likens the App Store to a lottery, with the time and cost spent developing your application as the price of admission. And I think he’s right in this respect. The thing is, I don’t really see how this differs from many professions where the rich and elite are given heavy media coverage while everyone else toils away in obscurity."

Maybe not, but it's a lot different than developing for the web or Facebook, where you can continuously iterate on your product, get better over time, attract a few loyal users and expand from there. The difference between iPhone and other software platforms is like the difference between trying to become a pop star or starting a software company.
Out of curiosity, what are the differences which make you say that?
Interesting, but it seems to me that virtualization probably accomplishes all the goals, cheaper.

Instead of getting 100% of a cheap sipping server, get 12.5% of one that has economies of scale on manufacturing and operation. (You can use the other 87.5% for other projects. If you don't have enough projects to justify use of one full commodity server, you don't care about this discussion anyhow, but renting a VPS might work out for you.)
My hunch is that computers won't suddenly outdo humans and overtake the working world. Rather, I'd imagine that technology will meld with humans. We'll eventually "technologically-evolve" into hybrid human-machines, eventually leading up into being completely machine.

Pieces of our bodies and minds will slowly be replaced with enhancements and superior components as technology evolves. I have no idea what we'll end up as, but it's probably going to be different than what we are now. Evolution didn't reach perfection when humans evolved. There are plenty of area's that can be improved.

The beginnings of this are already happening. Computers are an extension of our social existence. Technology is getting closer to "jacking in" to the mind, Matrix-style (http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/07/researcher-claims-to-read...).

So will there be a human vs. robot war, Skynet style? I'd bet probably not. Skynet turned on, became self-aware unintentionally (AI's one hell of a "glitch" to code up!), was plugged into the military, and did its thing instantly.

AI of that magnitude probably won't come-about suddenly. Rather, gradually, like in evolution. It'll probably be built into us as it evolves. So if Skynet-level AI does develop, each human mind will probably already have its own copy running locally. It'll be pretty tricky for 1 instance of Skynet to outsmart 10 billion other instances and take over the planet...
this thing sucks in internet explorer
For me, taking SCUBA lessons are an example. I spent the first, what, 10 lessons? getting to know the equipment, doing the math, etc. before we ever got close to the pool, let alone the ocean. In return, after a few real dives, dealing with the equipment became a background process that I no longer focused on. Instead, I focused on the experience (and my remaining air).

Same as operation of a car, especially a manual transmission.

Meditation, I'm told, is just the ability to reign the mind back in, as its focus wanders. Which can eventually be redirected to bringing the mind back to the task at hand...

Ooh, look, new programming language...
Why wouldn't you? Most laptop batteries -- with the exception of some of the most recent ones that use LiPo packs, or some very rare designs using prismatic cells -- are just plastic cases built around commodity cylindrical cells.

Here's a photo of the inside of a Dell:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lithium-ion-battery1.ht...

It's pretty trivial to build the charging circuit into the device and let the end user swap out the cells directly, but doing that gives up the obscene margins that manufacturers charge for replacement batteries, and (although I don't buy this as the actual reason) might conceivably lead to more damaged devices due to users swapping cells improperly, reversing the polarity, or mixing cell types.
I don't know what the law is in other states, but in Massachusetts, if the car in front of you stops suddenly and you rear-end it, you are considered 100% at fault. (Unless you can prove that the other car stopped with the intent to cause an accident. Good luck with that.)
The AppStore has become such a successful magnet for developers that it is being attacked from every front just to push them away from the ecosystem.

They are afraid Objective-C and XCode become the next development platform.

Well you know what? With all its defects, it is still the number one marketplace for online apps. And Objective-C, a complete unknown a couple of years ago, is hotter than never.

Period.
> Edit: Or a battery pack like described in the article.

Why would you want to pay extra to get 8 cells bundled together in a pack when you could just get 8 cells individually?

Not only are you getting closer to the commodity part rather than an assembly that's specific to the device in question, you also gain the ability to replace individual cells when they go bad.

Running on AA-style cells like that is a huge plus to me; I hope other manufacturers pick up on it.
You're right, maybe I am being a bit too serious, and looking back I should have noticed the humor. Thanks for the grounding. :-)

1.) Agreed.

2.) I agree with the first part. I'm not sure I agree that there is a negative effect for most people. I'd also argue that college provides a unique environment that allows these types of things to happen.

3.) I also agree, and this ties into what I mentioned in 2.

4.) Again, we have a consensus. I will note though that hardly anyone pays the sticker price at private schools. Others in my family are currently attending private school, and they are paying about what I am paying at a public school.

5.) My answer to this question ties into a larger debate about the proper role of government, so I'll just avoid it for now. :-)

6.) While the numbers are not what I put, I agree with the general premise. I'm not necessarily convinced the quality to garbage ratio could be higher outside of university. I'm more inclined to think that it's just a reality of creation, where most of it is garbage.

7.) and 8.) are larger issues about the value of humanities in general. Something I wouldn't want to get into here, but I've written about it before on HN. I don't think the line is as clear between the humanities and sciences as you seem to indicate. There is definitely a subjectivity about science as well. History is full of correct scientific views that were vilified in their time. The benefit of humanities is also largely unquantifiable, and thus difficult to defend. I will say that salary wise, the free market indicates that philosophy majors are just as valuable as math majors later in their careers.

So you see that we are in agreement about many points. I simply hold that college is a worthwhile experience, and I do not think the quality to garbage ratio is any different than the real world. I have to filter out the garbage from most of the books I buy at the bookstore as well. I also hold that experiences outside the classroom are not directly reproducible in the real world, and thus should be incorporated into our assessment of the value of college.

Your points about taxation of university income and wasteful government subsidies are larger issues that we probably shouldn't tackle here. Suffice to say, the money wasted in educations starts from grade 1. I have a lot of first hand experience with how the Chicago Public School system works, and there are inefficiencies abound. The only reason why I am remotely comfortable with it is that I think the abolishment of the system would result in a loss in human capital greater than the money saved. That's not based on any data, but it's something I'd like to believe is true. Admittedly, that sentiment is less likely to be true as you go up in education level.

I apologize for my overreaction, and while we certainly don't see eye to eye on a few things, I think we agree on some others. I'll certainly admit that you've given me a few things to think about (even if that admission proves how quality education can take place for free outside of university) ;-).
Interesting thoughts. I can't imagine that humans will uniformly adopt such modifications to their bodies. Even if everyone could afford it, many would be skittish about the idea. Things may happen slow enough for social norms to change, but technology seems to advance faster than we can adapt to it. It will be interesting to see how "augmented" people treat the non-augmented (and vice-versa). We could see a more extreme version of the "digital divide".
I think this is somewhat monday morning quarterback. My feeling is before we all understand how the ecology evolves to make restful service, we tried to solve the problem of web service in light of other old internet services. But now we found all fallacies in distributed system is not that important in writing applications.

Amazingly as usual, revolutions always come from outsiders.
On a slightly more serious note, a good playground for developing thses kinds of things might be products for developing countries. Specifically, those parts that are not on grids.

A lot of things you make must be cheap, must have own power source & must be useful enough to (a) justify spending money in a place without much (b) worth the hassle of putting panels on your roof or whatever.

What seems relatively sensible is a solar powered desktop to start with.
How do you define "provocatively"? If a woman has large breasts, how would you have her dress (especially in hot weather) that you would not consider "provocative"?
That's a good dream. I only hope that our ability to harness solar energy advances faster than our desire to kill each other over other forms of energy. And even if we have abundant energy, there are probably other resources we'll
want to fight over.
I can verify that stuff like this works. I once wrote a Ruby script that imported drawings into Visio from XML. It took a while as you sat there and watched the boxes and lines move around and adjust themselves, but you could speed it up by a factor of two just by grabbing and holding the scrollbar with the mouse.
I don't get annoyed reading responses like yours, nor am I nettled my the thought that my post was fluff. Of course it is fluff. Possibly even chaff or lint.

That being said, I am not clear on what you are saying about trying to solve P=NP. While this is important, there are a lot of important things to solve and nowhere in my post or in Hamming's original discussion is there the suggestion that importance is judged by popularity.

I think it is entirely possible for a lone researcher to work on something that does not interest anyone else, and should you ask why she has chosen that work, she answers that it is an important open problem in the field.

So I am suggesting that a dedication to working on important open problems is not necessarily equivalent to following everyone else. People who lie to follow, follow. People who like solitude and adventure strike out in new directions.

Either way, the questions retain their importance, IMO.
Use RunPee.com to know when to go to the bathroom during a movie
I wrote this as a comment on the blog at the link, but I thought I would note here as well:

<i>9. Customization is stressful</i>.

I would add that choice can actually make us less likely to make a decision rather than more likely to; I face this in all kinds of fields, including office equipment. In the last two weeks, I've spent vast amounts of time looking at phone and copier systems for <a href="http://blog.seliger.com>Seliger + Associates</a> and found the experience mostly enervating—and that's with a relatively small sample set!

Trying to not just evaluate a large number of products, but to customize them as well, isn't something I'm willing to do for anything save things that are important to me, like books. And the literature on this issue in fairly vast—see, for example, Daniel Gilbert's <i>Stumbling on Happiness</i>, Dan Ariely's <i>Predictably Irrational</i>, and Tim Harford's <i>The Logic of Life</i>.

Together, those might help explain some of the social issues with mass customization.
Ugh—I forgot about the "no HTML" deal here. That link should be http://blog.seliger.com
Too much white space, not scannable, poor font color/contrast, no indication of what is a link until you hover over it...

...nothing that couldn't be rectified in about 10 minutes of CSS dabbling.
Ask HN: how to monetize email list?
I'm fascinated by the story of Peter Shankman and Help-A-Reporter-Out making $1m / yr just from those little sponsorship paragraphs at the top of each email. Another interesting example is IdealBite.com, which sends out daily tips on eco-friendly living to several hundred thousand subscribers and sold for like $20m last year.

But what about the smaller end of the scale? Let's say you have a handful targeted email lists with 1000 - 5000 subscribers and you're sending out emails 1-5 times per week, with a typical open rate. What's the best way to monetize this? Is there a good provider of ads for something like this? Are there firms that you can outsource your ad sales to? Would love to hear any success or failure stories on this topic.
"Some people ARE born with an advantage (or have one nurtured into them)"

Doesn't that contradict the rest of your statement?

I agree with what you're saying, but I think all people can excel, most just don't have the drive/desire to (or they used to, but lost it). It seems we label people as "gifted" when they are simply interested in learning...
Who is attacking the AppStore?

Who is afraid Objective-C and Xcode will be the next development platform?

What does "the next development platform" even mean?

ObjC and Xcode are just fine, and developing apps for the iPhone is a lot of fun (outside of the AppStore experience, apparently), but I'm not sure they deserve any sort of conspiracy theory.
The link starts on page 2 of the article. A better link is http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/monetize/2009/05/21/free...
And none of what you've said falls into the 90% of what I've seen done with an Arduino.
I wasn't trying to snark as much as invite some discussion about this whole barcode approach. As you suggest, it just seems so...anachronistic.
Don't bother clicking - this site has no useful advice, and the humor is very shallow.
Jetpack is cool, really cool. All browsers should allow plain javascript/html web extensions. I hope it gets standardized by the W3C in the future.

What I don't like is web pages asking me to install them when I visit them.

There should be just a link to the extension, like old xpi. A link, not a popup. If you want, you can use JSX as the entension and instruct the browser to behave accordingly.

Mozilla, please get rid of the extension installer pop up and the {link rel="jetpack" href="myextension.js"} non-standard aberration.
AP: Google increasingly battles Facebook in search
But isn't much of that because of favor-trading and TC's occasionally-stated threat: "give us an exclusive or we'll cover you less"?

Similarly, one of Arrington's recommendations at the 2008 YC startup school was: if you want good coverage, leak us info so "we remember that down the road".

When there's a choice between two sources for the same story, I'd prefer the one where editorial judgment isn't driven by the constant filling and draining of a favor bank... even if that means using a source that's second-to-report.
*nix has /usr/bin/nice for running a program with high priority. Isn't there anything like that on windows?
the big problem here is Intel's nerfing of the atom by pairing it with a very thirsty chipset. Note, you buy an atom board, the Atom CPU has a passive heat sink; the chipset has an active fan.

I imagine this will change once Via gets a competitive chip in a server form factor.
Microsoft May Rename Live Search 'Bing': Massive Ad Campaign Planned
I found it quite a nice read. It's long, but well written. Certainly better than your average blog post.

Then again, I'm obsessed with productivity and focus (because I'm neither productive nor focused).

EDIT: typo.
Penny Auctions: They're Gambling
I've visited this hackerspace and I have to say, Montreal has an amazing hacker/startup communities going. It must be something to do with all the pretty girls and bagels :)
Yeah, until these low-power computers improve a whole lot, I agree. I bought a few of those atoms to try 'em out, you know, people will pay a good bit more for their own dedicated server than they will for a VPS. Once you put it together, the atom, with a limit of 2GiB ram, draws around 50 watts under load. (I can only imagine most of that is power supply inefficiency and chipset badness) one of my 8 core low-power dual-opterons eats about 4x as much power, but I get 32GiB ram and many times the power of 4 puny atoms.

Until intel quits nerfing the atom (and maybe even then) virtualizing a big server is going to get you a whole lot more power for a whole lot less fuss.
"... starting store managers make $100,000, plus bonuses tied to store performance."

Did anybody else notice this and pause? That extra comma at the end was in the original article and made me think the whole number might be a typo, but wow. I hope the number is true.
Gosh, I used to have a couple of games which would hang forever unless I wiggled the mouse a bunch at critical points, I wonder if that was the same principle? I had no idea task scheduler took interaction into account.
go there with javascript disabled, they are using radio buttons and a submit button to vote up/down
> The findings in this study support Self-Determination Theory, a well-established theory of human motivation developed by two of the paper's authors, Deci and fellow University psychologist Richard Ryan.

"well-established" makes me think that this article functions more as a PR piece for SDT. However, I've never heard of SDT befor reading this article, and I find SDT interesting as it seems to be a functional lens through which to study basic human needs - like the need for relationships.

"SDT suggests that there are three basic psychological
needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness that
underlie growth and development"

"[Self-Determination Theory] begins with the assumption that people are active organisms, with innate tendencies toward psychological growth and development, who strive to master ongoing challenges and to integrate their experiences into a coherent sense of self. This natural human tendency does not operate automatically, however, but instead requires ongoing nutriments and supports from the social environment in order to function effectively."

http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/theory.php
wow I love the concept! When I saw the last LOTR movie, I wanted to go pee after the 2nd hour... it was a torture to see all the long ending :) But I will no longer have pain with runpee.com! :P
> they dramatically increased the quality of life

Pray tell, how?
You also forgot about the 'edit' feature ;)
Nice site (could come in useful), however — why flash/flex?! It just seems so much slower than it could have been (especially since it's such a simple site, HTML + light javascript would have sufficed perfectly…and saved CPU cycles!), and to be honest, the thing which flash excels at, animations, are a bit annoying…
I tried to think of something to say, but all that came out is: Not even wrong.

I really wish that it were somehow possible to force you to walk the walk and code only in assembler for the rest of your life. If all programming languages are truly equivalent, just why would this fate be so terrible?
Awk for JSON, in bash.
"When is there ever anything especially remarkable about New Yorker covers?"

When hasn't there been?
The Great Ethanol Scam
Interesting and unique concept but horrific all-Flash website
I think TakeNap.com would be great for an extended amount of time (10-15 minutes) that can be missed in extra-long movies.
Don't see your lists to a third party. That breaks faith with your subscribers.

I subscribe to email lists that have ads. The ads dont bother me much.
Nice idea, but:

1. Flash?

2. Gratuitous unrevealing of the RTO13'd text is annoying.

3. It's full of trolls already.
So that's why it broke my back button...

Please, FTLoG, don't do this. There's nothing in the website that couldn't be done with normal (D)HTML.