skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can agree with this to some extent, and I don't have a solid answer as far as a different approach. However, knock-offs feel cheap, and because elementary feels like a knock-off, it's having trouble gaining some mindshare.

Taking steps to differentiate from OS X a bit more would (arguably, perhaps) be an improvement, albeit not a technical one.
I've tried reading:

http://wayback.archive.org/web/20130530023856/http://lavabit.com/secure.html

But I'm still not entirely clear on what lavabit used to do to encrypt email once it arrived on its servers. As far as I can tell, they still store an encrypted version of the private key, that they can't decrypt with the other data they store: but would be able to decrypt as soon as a user logs in, and supplies them with the password (again).

So while they don't store enough information to decrypt information, at any point when you log in; you provide enough information for them to decrypt all the stored emails.

Additionally, they could store a plaintext copy of all new email. If the mail you receive is already encrypted with something like GPG, the cannot read it, of course.
>The estimates of 35bn loss to cloud companies

Where did you get this info?
I don't understand why we keep having this conversation when the answer couldn't be any more obvious...avid readers represent a minority of the population. And while avid readers represent a big chunk of book sales...many books are purchased by people who rarely buy books at all (let alone for pleasure).

When purchasing an ebook reader is as trivial as buying a pocket calculator...then you'll see a massive shift in the proportion of ebook sales vs print sales. (Also, it would be enormously helpful if ebooks could be purchased WITHOUT a credit card...afterall kids buy books too.)
It is nice! My main issue is that Dr Racket is so pleasant I'm sorely tempted to use it and it brings my laptop to its knees (that feature that draws arrows from uses of identifiers to their definitions always freezes my computer for half a second to a second; if I evaluate something that consumes any non-trivial amount of memory Dr Racket starts swapping like it's 1999 and becomes unresponsive). I used Racket for a while from the REPL and everything worked beatifully but I constantly missed the Dr. In the end I switched to Chicken, which at least for my programs seems to be quite a bit faster too (I mean compiled Chicken code vs JITed Racket, of course, the Racket JIT is usually substantially faster than interpreted Chicken). Chicken also has great library support, so switching was not painful at all.

(Of course, I don't write fancy macros, so I wasn't taking advantage of Racket. For 99% of the macros I write syntax-rules is good enough.)

A few other things I prefer the SRFI way, for example, Racket's comprehensions seem awkward compared to SRFI-42 (in particular Racket decided to call the main comprehension for*/list, leaving prettier and shorter names to less useful variants such as the exotic parallel-by-default for/list, or the execute-for-side-effects and parallel-by-default for); but all in all I agree that Racket is pretty sweet. If ever own a computer with more than 2GB of ram I'll definitely give it another shot.
I'd like to nudge in one thing: option flexibility. I'm still downloading and about to try it out; but I hope that the setting does allow the user to tweak everything they can tweak and not hide options away for the sake of hiding things. My personal thing, but it's shared with many, is that flexibility can lead to a personally complete design.
I love Lua, it's definitely underrated. My first experience using Lua was via Indigo Rose Setup Factory, it uses Lua for scripting installer logic and the thing I love most is how easy it is to learn (even easier than a language like PHP). A few hours and you've grasped most basic concepts and conventions, if you already know another language you'll find the learning curve further reduced once more.
When you're worried about things at this level, laws are just an external dependency not under your control, i.e. a security hole waiting to be exploited.
Europe is absolutely behind, yes. (I live there.) But not for lack of talent.

I'm a pretty flaming liberal and I stand behind unionization of traditional industries 100% - when you get to the point of large capital against a large population of workers, I believe Europe's model is not bad and far better than the travesty we witness in America, where the government is solidly on the side of capital. But most of Europe is absolutely horrible for small business that isn't working with a very, very stable business model.

In other words, if I'm opening a metalworking shop in Swabia, everybody knows what I'm doing, and it's going to be enough just to turn out solid work and treat people fairly. My market is predictable, and when I hire people, it's fair to expect me to have to jump through some hoops to let them go, because they have a right to expect some stability in this well-understood market.

But if I'm trying out a new idea - Germany ain't the place to try that unless I can essentially do it by myself or with a couple of friends. Their incremental, stable business attitudes are great for hardware, bad for software (although there are small software companies there that really kick ass, of course - in my experience, often tools used in industry that can work on the same industrial business model).

Fast iteration and early fail is not something Germans excel at - individual Germans, sure; German society, no no no. And that's true to a lesser extent throughout Europe. But it's been a key to success in Silicon Valley. How that gets implemented, I'm not sure.

But in terms of getting Europe off the American cloud - this isn't a problem. The concept of the cloud has been proven (except for privacy/security issues, obviously), and so it's far less likely that a given iteration in that space will fail. It's a good setup for European companies in that sense.

And again, I want to stress that the problem is not a lack of talent and that anybody that thinks that a lack of talent is the problem is deluded.
I am a bit confused. A lot of it looks like Ubuntu, but with slightly different GUI. At first I thought it was just a variant of Ubuntu(like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc)...is it? How does it differ from it? Sorry if this seems like a naive question. I am really interested in trying it out...will do so shortly after I am done my exams :P
I believe oakaz was referring to the ability to actually play movie and audio files which use non-free formats, such as MP3. This is a frequent/historical pain point for laypersons using Linux desktops.

The answer is yes. In the installer, there is a checkbox that asks if the user wants to install these non-free codecs.
Wow, wget is one hell of a tool isn't it? I think it should be a requirement that judges have to take a mandatory digital refresher course every 12 months to ensure they can deal with cases like this because this is ridiculous.They got him on a technicality, I guess they are clutching at straws and trying to get him on as many things as they possibly can.
This is silly. Why would you go ask a consulate when this info has been on the web for ages. When I got a TN visa in 1997, all the info needed was on the US embassy's website including detailed lists of requirements for the different classes of jobs covered under NAFTA. Many countries including Canada, discourage people from going to the consulate or embassy just to ask questions. The guards won't let you in, and they refer you to a 900 number where you pay a few dollars per minute to talk. Do your research online. In general, the embassy will publish an application form (PDF), a guide to filling it out, a FAQ and often a tool for determining eligibility.
I got mine in Linguistics, so I have no problem with him for his degree, just Perl's "regular" expressions.
What advice would you give your 16 year old self?
I'm 16 and have interests in programming. I know HTML and in the process of learning Objective C for apps. There is so much I don't know and I want to learn as much as I can. What advice would you give?
I like the fact that you can download for free...or you can choose your price to download. It really helps us support you without you guys being too intrusive on donations.
FWIW I don't think it is a bad thing [1]. KDE's look was clearly inspired by Windows XP. But I'm a user.

Designers, people who make their living giving life to a "look" or a "user experience" feel pretty strongly about their work (this is typical of many artists, programmers, architects, musicians, Etc.) In part because they often see their own work as a reflection of them, and in part, and I speculate here, because the creative process is mysterious and it is easy to feel like a fraud when you don't really know how you come up with something, you just do.

So designers look at Elementary OS and they evaluate its look, its theme, its "presence." And what they see seems to remind them strongly of Apple's OS. I completely understand that because that was my first thought as well and I'm not a designer, I thought "Oh, this looks like they put an OS X shell on top of Linux."

I happen to think the other stuff you did, the performance tuning, the application integration, the "fit and finish" if you will is very impressive and it reminds me of how Ubuntu took something mashed up and made it more cohesive.

How ever the design elements always dominate product discussions, even if they shouldn't. Look at the discussion around the Honda Element (car) are they about its innovations in how it converts its internal spaces? Its motor design? No, people talk about how stupid it looks to them (which completely misses the point of the car).

What I'm saying is the Elementary team is going to get razzed a lot about the design elements. Try not to take it personally. The correct response is the one you've latched on to, "We built an OS we wanted to use based on technology we wanted to use, we built it this way." Own the vision.

[1] "rip off" sounds bad "homage" sounds good, both mean "it looks like."
Language is one reason, yeah; I'm not sure how strong a reason it is overall.

You know one very serious problem? Shipping. Amazon can sit in California and send something cheap anywhere in the United States, but if I'm sitting in Hungary and want to buy something in Germany, it might literally be cheaper for me to just drive there and back to get it, depending on the item. That really carves up the market into minuscule chunks.

Someday soon, somebody is going to start offering low-cost shipping throughout Europe and they're going to end up billionaires.
Erlang Embedded
I think design is not the number one issue of desktop Linux. Windows is very ugly and it still dominates desktop computing, by the way KDE looks and feels amazing. The first problem desktop Linux has to overcome is the lack of support from computer manufacturers. Most people are not gonna go out of their way to find a computer with Linux. Another very important issue is that Windows compatibility is unavoidable. Even OS X which has an even bigger share of the desktop market than Linux can't fully replace Windows. Most people are gonna need Windows software sooner or later. Linux has to sell itself as a better alternative to Windows, not as an affordable alternative to Windows, people might end up having to spend more money by using Linux.

P.S. I still think self contained applications like in OS X & Windows are way better than the Linux model. Other than that and hardware support, UNIX-like systems are superior to Windows in all aspects. I can't live without a decent shell & decent support for dynamic languages.
When I have coffee or tea on a regular schedule and it's interrupted I get mild but irritating headaches. This was happening a lot a while ago and I got sick of it and quit. I was only drinking that much of it at the time so my withdrawal wasn't too bad, although I'm sure there's individual variation as well.

Now that I don't have it on a regular basis, I'll have a small cup of weak tea if I'm tired and have a lot of work. The effect of even a small amount is immense when you don't use it regularly. I can have it at about two in the afternoon and I'll still be alert way past my bedtime.

The only problem with is tea or coffee smells so good when someone else is having some ...
I see. And how do your holiness save your "less-than-technical friends and family" from Google, Gmail, iTunes, YouTube, Facebook....
Oh, I've been using Linux for years and had no idea this was a problem on some distributions. I guess I've just accidentally skipped the ones dogmatic about non-free codecs.
I just quickly installed this in a VM and it's literally just a poorly done OS X skin laying on top of Ubuntu, all the way down to dock icons bouncing when clicked. The installer is the standard Ubuntu-derivative fare without much modification whatsoever.

It's not really much of an upgrade from just running Xubuntu or one of the more minimalist window managers out there.
There is already some crowdsourcing of patent research being done like at http://www.articleonepartners.com/ which essentially offers monetary rewards for the top contributions of prior-art or whatever the particular study asks for. Granted, you don't get to pick which patents are listed to research, but I suspect this sort of bounty program greatly lowers the cost and increases the breadth of material available to patent researchers for any number of purposes. And if patents can be challenged for a reasonably small cost, that should mean more silly patents actually get challenged.
The article cites a number of reasons why this could be the case.

I would also like to throw in DRM & proprietary formats. First, you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too. That would make me nervous if I was heavily invested in some ecosystem.

But another interesting theory, not mentioned in the article, is that there may be a difference in reading speed and comprehension between paper and screens (although I have seen conflicting data on this).

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-pap...

One fascinating idea from this article is that "As far as our brains are concerned, however, text is a tangible part of the physical world we inhabit."

Personally, I comprehend information much better when its in some format like PDF which is not re-flowable. But most books these days, available from Amazon or Apple, do not meet that description.

Maybe I'm an odd one, but my ideal reading device would probably be some 13" tablet that could display a whole PDF page at a time.
Hi, thanks for the interest!

Our desktop interface and apps are actually quite different from Ubuntu, though we are an Ubuntu-based distribution.

To give some concrete examples:

- We use our own desktop environment and window manager, Pantheon and Gala, respectively.[1]

- We write many of our own apps in-house or work closely with the third-party apps we ship with. For example, our music player, settings application, and calendaring program (to name a few) are all written completely by us. Our mail program, web browser, and photo management app are developed by third-parties who we have strong developer and personal connections to.

- Similar to the above point, we have our own human interface guidelines[2]. You might find you like it more than Ubuntu's.

- elementary OS is extremely fast and lightweight. Our ISO is ~200 MB less than Ubuntu's, and our OS boots faster and is more responsive. A simple youtube or google search should back me up here.

I hope this was helpful to you and perhaps others. Again, we really appreciate your interest and curiosity. I'd definitely encourage you to give it a whirl once you've aced your exams :)

[1]: http://elementaryos.org/journal/meet-gala-window-manager
[2]: http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines
Why don't all these tech companies form a coalition and release the details together ? The government would never dare going after a dozen companies at once, that would in essence spell doom for Silicon valley (and Obama's liberal rhetoric, such as it is). Surely there are times when breaking the law is the right thing ?
Could better control of feral cat/dog populations in urban areas explain the observed increases in rat weights? What if fatter rats are easier and/or more desirable prey? Why should a cat waste effort chasing after a fast, skinny rat when a fat one providing more calories is less likely to outrun it?
One of the most interesting things to come to light in the anti-trust decision against Apple was that Amazon was happily buying bestselling eBooks from publishers for $13 and reselling them for $9. The publishers preferred the opposite: for Apple and Amazon pay them $9 and then resell the books for $13. The publishers WANTED the eBook market to slow down - they didn't want people to stop buying hardcovers from Barnes and Noble for $30 and they didn't want people thinking that a new bestselling novel was only worth $10.
One problem I have with Lua is that it silently returns nil when accessing non-existent elements. There are a few hacks around this, but the most common only protect global access. I have to wonder why the language reports no error in that situation given that it does report an error when comparing values of different types (no automatic conversion) or when attempting to index nil.
Or as Steve Jobs put it: "People don't read anymore."
Flexibility is definitely something we try to be opinionated about. We don't offer a lot of easy GUI customization out of the box, but you'll find that there's quite a bit hidden beneath the surface or is easy to code up yourself.

If you're really interested in a completely customizable and hand-tailored OS, I'd honestly suggest you look into something like ArchLinux or Gentoo[2]. Both platforms have made available most of our applications and components, so you can pick and choose to build the desktop you personally want :)

[1]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&C=0&SeB=nd&K=element...
[2]: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Pantheon
ARIA provides a solution for the problems caused by <table>.
To you it might be clear that KDE was inspired by Windows XP, I differ. KDE independently developed a Windows-like feeling because it has always aimed at being very configurable. Since I first used KDE (when using XP) I felt that it was better than Windows, that feeling has never left me.
I look forward to an ARM version of this, one for Pandaboard and one for Raspberry Pi.
Bike blog: Experiments in Speed [video]
> I still think self contained applications like in OS X & Windows are way better

The single-folder application is a focus of Canonical's new package format project[0]. I would actually prefer a more LXC-style container format (similar to Docker.io) than another deb/rpm zip file, but that is personal preference.

[0] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2013-May/0370...
Could changes in artificial lighting affect food consumption? Lab mice, pets, and people all have been exposed to similar changes in lighting types over time. Color temperature effects? The 60hz strobing effect of fluorescent bulbs? Have better lighting technologies resulted in brighter environments? Have security concerns. etc. lead to light exposure for more hours of the day?
There are technologies being developed to simulate a feeling of touch in the air: http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/21/siggraph-disney-research-...

"AIREAL pumps out tight vortices of air to simulate tactility in three dimensional space. The idea is to give touchless experiences like motion control a form of physical interaction, offering the end user a more natural response through, well, touch."

It looks like Aireal can only create a pulsing sensation, which will still be insufficient for sculpting, and I imagine it is a weak sensation in the first place, but I am still interested to see how these technologies improve over time.
Well ebooks prices are ridiculous in the first place. I only buy ebooks when the price is not fixed （bundles） and without drms. Other that that, there is so muc free stuff to download from the public domain, i dont get bored.

And i still buy physical books, too.
Thanks very much for sharing this. Trying not to take it personally is something we all really try to work on.

I think you're spot on, particularly about [1]. A lot of the flak we get seems to stem from the fact that we're very very much a design-oriented (as in, design at the top) community. We don't have business people saying "But people will think this looks like XYZ and that's bad for our bottom line".

I personally think there must be a happy median between the "design purist" approach we currently lean towards and the "market differentiator" style. We haven't quite hit on it, as some the feedback we've received today suggests, but with thoughtful insight from people like you, and lots of internal discussions, I think we'll get there :)
But what if you wanted "Linux with the GUI of OS X", not just "GUI of OS X"?
If you want to get rid of software patents, move to Europe. US is not so great after all with all the idiocracies related to software laws, patents and security.
I'm just a few years past you (18) and I can tell you the most significant periods of growth I've had were when I jumped in WAY over my head.

I did design, got offered a front-end dev job, and learned HTML/CSS within 1 week after failing for 2 years.

Then I did HTML/CSS, went to a hackathon and had to dive into Rails to finish on time, and I didn't "learn Rails" but I learned a TON (and won 2nd place!)

Took up a job doing more traditional ColdFusion and XSLT sites - learned a ton in 3 days. I was also forced into learning SASS/SCSS - learned a ton within like 2 weeks.

Keep going. Get in over your head. Take on the projects that you're not sure you can finish, understand it's okay to walk away from them (jobs, too), but try your hardest not to.

Also, take CS101 at your local college ASAP. It'll get you off your feet wicked quick.
If I click and drag the switch without taking my mouse off it gets stuck. I feel like if my mouse goes up the switch should go on or off, not stay in an inconsistent state.
Same here. I quit sugar, and wife put me on a strict "cook it yourself" diet (i.e. everything we eat we make from scratch.) It is amazing. I would eat half a banana for desert and find it too sweet. For comparison, I used to put a whole banana in my frosted flakes cereal, then squirt chocolate topping into the abominable mix.

I gag when I think of what I used to eat. I went back to the U.S. last year and found restaurant fare almost universally gross. Within two nights, I decided to move from a hotel room to a family suite just because it had a kitchenette. When I wasn't cooking in my room, I was eating $40+ meals at "decent" places (compare to Australia where food is a lot less pre-processed.)
Ask HN: Key employee probably going to prison. How do we best tell investors?
Our only employee who's been with us for around 6 months is likely going to prison for several months for a fight of some sorts.

Unfortunately, we are learning of this same week as when we have a partner meeting with a VC that could very well lead our seed round.

How do we best disclose this to the VC in the most accurate manner? Should we do it in the meeting itself? After it?

Realistically, this sets us back couple months but is far from a company-killing event. The employee was stellar in his performance but is far from irreplaceable.
I never heard of elementaryOS but it looks great at first glance. I have a specific question I was wondering: how will distributions using non-Unity DEs/WMs such as elementary handle the replacement of X with Mir? I'm not familiar with how child distros handle divergent dependencies in general so I'd love to hear what elementary is doing.