skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Despite its lack of a physical QWERTY keyboard, the myTouch’s virtual QWERTY works just fine."

No way... onscreen keyboards just don't compare to physical keyboards. Personally, that's what sold me on the G1 over an iPhone.

I had a chance to play with the myTouch, which is indeed smaller, but if I wanted an on-screen keyboard then I'd go for something with a bigger screen.
Glad you approve.
Wasn't x.com one of the two companies that merged to create PayPal?
> BMW and Lexus are also ripoffs by any objective standard.

Very well said. I bought a mac laptop because I enjoy working on it much more than I do a windows PC; I didn't make the choice by comparing the prices of the components, or the relative value of the chemicals involved in assembling the thing.
The VP/PM's I've known reported either to CEO or to VP/M. The VP/E's I've known invariably reported to CEO. I'm not saying it never happens that the CTO heads engineering, but I don't think that's typical.
Maybe it's not too late:

This is very much a draft outline. Both overall breakdown and specific chapter titles are likely to change over the coming months.

In any case, I though the chapter on conditions in PCL was pretty good: http://gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-exception-handling-condit...
It also suggests that the NYT intern that wrote this has very little idea about phone companies.

>DOUBLE BILLING
In Europe calls to cell phones (from landlines) cost the caller 5-10x as much as calls to another landline - local calls on landlines aren't free. Because of this cell phones have special numbers so the caller knows it's a cell phone. So you can't have a cell phone with a local exchange number. Which means you don;t have the wholesale replacement of home phones with cell phones in europe.
Many people there are campaigning for the US system of cell phone owner pays.

INTERNATIONAL CALLS:
The reason your call to Greenland costs $3/min is that the Greenland state telephone company is charging them this. It's also the reason that calls to say the UK cost less than to geographically closer countries in S America and why calls to the 3rd world cost a fortune. For a lot of countries 'settlement charges' are their main source of hard currency.

THE SUBSIDY GAME
Have they not heard of interest? Of return on investment? Perhaps not, perhaps they built a new office block in NY because they assumed they simply paid back a fraction of the cost each month until the capital was repaid.
Functional languages are defined using the Lambda calculus. Imperative languages are defined as a model of the Turing machine.

The implementation details, such as the in-memory format of integers, are irrelevant to the language.
Nice. Sometimes I am tempted to reply to the voicemail transcriptions I get from Google Voice, in the hopes that a robotic voice will call the person back and read my message.
Try Byline, it syncs with Google Reader, and caches feed items, and the pages they link to.
I personally think this could be worked out by comparing the sender of the email with the unsubscribe link with the recipient of the unsubscribe request and if they aren't related at a certain level, the unsubscribe request wouldn't go through.

Off course, there are probably problems with this, too.
I didn't mind the user experience of XP; in fact, there are a lot of things I still prefer in Windows over OS X.

However, the BSD back-end of OS X has completely sold me on mac laptops as a work machine forever. (I know I can install Cygwin, or switch to an actual linux desktop, but those are the things that feel clunky and glued together to me.)
I see several YC startups in Google's collision path and for some time I have wondered if the advice of not competing with Google in things they are good at is valid.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/an-interview-with-vc-pa...

My opinion is that it never was valid: most startups at the list bellow were doing things Googlers are good at and they got adcquired, and those startups' ideas weren't so wild (according with the second advice in that interview).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google
Hacker Says iPhone 3GS Encryption Is ‘Useless’ for Businesses
RJDJ is awesome.
I generally buy Mac laptops and build my desktop machines, but at the right price-to-hardware ratio I wouldn't mind buying a machine with Vista and pre-installed crapware, I would wipe it as soon as I got it.
Microsoft to cut 5,000 jobs
Seems like web search + copy-paste reporting.
i agree with you that "Apple needs to innovate on the low end, or die" because cloud computing and browser OS are going to be a game changer - if every task is done on the net and if the browser is the OS then how would one differentiate a PC from MAC??? all you need is a hardware with a browser OS that is slick and speedy, while all the apps that resides on the net will have same look and feel on all the browsers doesn't matter what hardware you're using!
Yes.

"The current incarnation of PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Beginnings

(Here's a link to the contract: http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/agreements/paypal/con...)
My partner is an incredibly bright coder, debugger, and all-around trouble-shooter (not to mention pretty hot lady), and I really don't blame her for being disgusted at how the media (NY Times?!) panders to this stuff.
If being ignorant of statistics is such a terrible thing, then it shouldn't be very difficult to persuade people that they should learn it. Make your case, and let them make a value judgment. I question the value of locking people in rooms and calling the truancy officer if they don't show up. That's prison, not education.
It's great research like this that makes me wonder why some people are against genetically modified foods. I'm sure some modifications are bad, but how could ones like these do anything but help people survive that otherwise wouldn't?
Probably one of the more inspirational postings I've seen on HN in awhile. Thanks for sharing.
Regarding the "Reload the window to activate..." comments. I was running into this too. It is fixed in the 1.5 alpha version. You can go here: http://getfirebug.com/releases/firebug/1.5X and install firebug-1.5X.0a18.xpi.
Assuming you wanted to be legal, you'd either need to spend a lot of time extracting the crapware, or have another Windows license kicking around. Most restore disks reinstall the crapware.
Ha! That would be funny, you could do that with Twilio if you really wanted to.
PayPal should work on improving their documentation for their developer API before they push out new features. We went with Google Checkout just because the documentation was so much better.
Why did your sister need a $2400 apple laptop if not for the speed and memory? If you are in the US at least you shouldn't have to spend that much for a new Mac. The 13" MBP starts $1200 and you can get a 15.4" MBP starting at $1700 from Amazon, with free shipping and no sales tax (in the majority of states).
Does anybody know of any other EBS implementation besides FogBugz?

I would probably use FogBugz if its usability was better. I think a breadcrumb and a sidebar would help.
Yeah it was really annoying to have the old "inspect" link replaced by a flashlight icon and the next day replaced with a "mouse cursor over a box" icon. o_0
I can't get selenium tests to work in firefox 3.5 either.
You need spectrum. Those with spectrum have all the power and can do essentially whatever they want. The FCC could step in and regulate this or that but I wouldn't count on that happening too soon.

This is why it's a shame that Google didn't go for a win in the wireless spectrum last year. $5 bn would have been worth it and put Android on a whole other level, IMHO. Maybe they were worried about anti-trust scrutiny.
You can also do sequencing (assuming applicative order) and conditionals:

'a; b' ==> (fn x -> b) a

true = fn x -> fn y -> x
false = fn x -> fn y -> y
if = fn p -> fn -> c -> fn a -> p c a
Favorite Worst Movies by The Writers
Phenomenon - Love in 2-D
Jeff Bezos apologizes for 1984-Kindle debacle
Putting into practice "obsess over customers."
I'm using this at my business and it works like a treat. Minor niggles: out of the box it is great for the "long running, low priority task which can be executed whenever as long as whenever is not in the HTTP request/response cycle" use case and rather less good for "short running, high priority task which there is an actual user waiting for". You have to tweak your settings a bit (polling interval and number of workers) to get it to work well for the second use case.

Another gotcha: that god config. I don't have mine quite working yet, and have been relying on manual restarts. Thankfully DJ is a very solid piece of software and has run for weeks at a time without problems, so my only restarts are when I bring the server down or upgrade the code base.
Fair point. Perhaps the title would have been better as "VCs don't care about you as much as you want them to"?

The junk about liquidation preferences will have to serve for a later post. Liq pref is a device of which I am not a huge fan, having been on both sides of deals. I think they create really bad incentives, and when they are not understood, they are accepted by entrepreneurs well before the understand the implications of them.
Ray Kurzweil's book: "The Singularity is Near"

My copy isn't so near, but I think my "intuitions" were informed somewhere in one of his "Reverse Engineering the Human Brain" sections. (Sorry I can't provide a more precise reference.)

His book is well footnoted, and if there are in fact scientific studies reinforcing what I claim to remember him having written, I'm sure they would be documented there.

If you haven't read it, and your looking for some hyper-tech sort of inspiration, I highly recommend it. It is maybe a bit exhaustive for the casual reader, but well worth it considering it's detail and scope.

(And my apologies to RayK if I'm entirely mistaken in my understanding.)
I've heard that Firebug has a new maintainer, and has a very large and complicated code base - which has led to many bugs in the new release.

Unfortunately there is no good alternative to Firebug, since it's been so great for so long no one has felt the need to make a compelling rival.

For the current project I'm working on, which is heavily JS based: console rarely works (evaling code snippets, console.log, etc).

It also always shows the message: 'reload to enable console', which never works. On my previous project it throws random buggy errors on every XMLHttpRequest.

The final thing which appears to be by design, is that you cannot see Net requests while its minimized, which is frustrating but I'd live with that if the other bugs were fixed.
Poorly written article. The author's primary complaint is that it does not attempt to unsubscribe you from the lists of known spammers. He fails to realize that real spammers will see your asking to unsubscribe as a signal that:

1) the email address is valid

2) they got through your spam filter

3) you opened or at least engaged with the email on some level

There's a need for services that eliminate noise that's not easily identifiable as malicious. For example, I'm often asked to fix my friends' computers when they begin to run inexplicably slow. In most cases they've run Spybot and Norton, and have found no viri or adware, yet their experience continues to deteriorate. 9 times out of 10 the cause is all the software which is running in the background but is not malicious, e.g. the software for all 3 digital cameras they've owned in the last several years.

I think this product has a similar target. I know I get a ton of newsletters from online stores I once purchased from, including big names like Amazon. Its not really spam, but I don't want it.
Shopify.com should probably be on there..
Erm? Does it speak well of Amazon when it "boldly" presents negative customer reviews on its pages? I mean, yes, I think it's useful, but I don't think that presentation of user reviews reflects particularly well OR poorly on Mozilla.
It all changes again in 1.5. (sigh) It's like a game where every time I upgrade Firebug on a machine I have to relearn the entire UI. I have no idea why they do it pretty much every single time. (FYI-- http://getfirebug.com/releases/firebug/1.5X/ )

I overheard a developer looking for 15 minutes to find the "inspect" option when it became a flashlight. Now it's some square with a cursor pointed at it (which isn't so bad), but now there's a little "Off" button over on the right side instead of the way I typically closed the window. So now I double-take whenever I'm trying to hide Firebug-- I keep wondering for a split second if I'm clicking the right button.

I love Firebug more than any other extension ever (besides the Tree-style tabs), but the UI refactoring keeps messing me up.
Before 1900, curricula in schools ranging from elementary school right up through university level were prescribed with no choices left to the students.

The attitude also was one of sink or swim, with the idea being a comparatively few "educable" people would become truly learned while the rest would pursue utilitarian goals tied to earning a living.

The classes emphasized formative skills ultimately tied to the idea of learning how to think as opposed to specific instruction that was supposed to instruct in any immediately practical way.

Even the learned professions were regarded as mere utilitarian applications to be pursued only after one had become properly educated.

A very elitist and, one might say, "strongly typed" view of how education should proceed.

It is a modern concept that students should even be able to choose among electives or follow their own inclinations without rigorous guidance from instructors using a strictly prescribed format.

Of course, all this has completely changed today, with the result being an "idealized view of education" (to use your phrase) to the effect that all students are capable of learning, and will learn, if given the freedom and motivation to develop their abilities.

For a fascinating comparison of the old way with the new, read Albert Jay Nock's 1931 assessment (given as part of the Page-Barbour Lectures at the University of Virginia) of what he considered the utter failure of the modern approach to deliver on its promises of universal education. (http://mises.org/story/2765)

Nock's defense of the old way is undoubtedly narrow, even embittered, but his critique of the new way is often intriguing. At the very least, it makes us examine our assumptions about modern education in ways that we do not often do.

If anyone goes to the link, use the index up front to skip past the preliminaries and get to the substantive parts - otherwise, it is a very long read.
The thing I always like to point out to people who are against genetically modified foods is that breeding is genetic modification. Mankind has been genetically modifying plants for 10,000 years, to great effect, by performing artificial selection.
The content creation space is ripe for disruption.

"AAA" games are completely art bound. They are the limited by production pipelines, not game engine technology. The price of artwork greatly outweighs all other costs. Game Studios don't have the resources to innovate here, so we need people commercializing tools like this. ZBrush and its clones have effectively reinvented the creation of detailed character models. We need to help make artists more productive if we want to realize the next major leap in graphical experiences without worrying about all of our most talented studios going bankrupt trying to keep up.

I know this space well, but I just don't have the math strength. It's going to take a very special type of hacker, but someday stuff like this will mature. Artists will wonder how anyone ever created a movie or game without it.
I agree completely, but they rarely get around to demonstrating why it is beautiful, so all the students learn is why it's not practical.

Note that the public school approach doesn't work much better for poetry or literature. Precious few high schoolers graduate with a love of reading.
Hypnotherapy in Manchester
Internationally Recognised Therapist/Trainer in the Manchester area for hypnotherapy . Manchester based hypnotherapist and Master NLP practitioner offering help with a range of issues.
Zealots, eh? Are people actually "marching"?

Regardless of their affiliation, open-source types have demonstrated a fondness for backing free software in a vocal, often argumentative manner.

Hmm . . . This is somewhat of an editorialized piece, lacking sources. I've had some journalism classes in my day, and using the word "zealot" is kind of not professional without at least an example to back up the claim . . . but wait, this is the _New York Times_, and a it's a blog piece, so it's okay.

A more neutral, truthful relay of the facts would be something like . . . OSS companies are usually small businesses, and since small business is at the heart of the American capitalism system, it is feasible that many of them would like to obtain some of the of the government funds for doing those things that governments collect tax dollars to do. But more efficiently and without the bloat. After all, it seems logical that the stimulus would best be spent helping a greater number of people: the independents and other lean orgs. (Having studied accounting, I could actually probably give a presentation proving this issue).

But when money is doled out in such huge chunks, there are a lot of sharks in the water, and there are sure to be lots of big lobbyists.

Sometimes when you're small, you have to speak up a little to be heard. Doesn't make one a zealot or even necessarily "argumentative".
It is strange that City Desk never gets mentioned: http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/

From what I recall, that was the primary product and FogBugz was an in-house tool used to track it.
Monsanto is a company that would probably love to have seeds that only are good for one generation and need to be purchased every planting season (they already do have these for some of their innovations, but I bet they'd love to have total control over the crop). Now, that's neither something that should spread into the wild nor something one company should have control over (closed-source, single-point-of-failure and all that).
It only works if you enable keyboard shortcuts. It also shows a yellow alert banner along the top of the screen and provides an "Undo" link.
I commute about an hour (40 minutes on the subway) Brooklyn<->Manhattan. I live at the end of the line, so I get a seat in the morning _every_ time. I always take the local train, and get a seat almost every time in the evening, perhaps once a month I end up standing.

I play music to drown out the nasty noise, and usually read, sometimes play Nintendo DS. Plus the occasional nap.
I thought I was the only one, and didn't want to complain because its still a beta. The inspect feature is all but broken for me, and I don't like the new UI changes at all. Why fix what's not broken?

By far the most frustrating change for me is that Firebug (and the console) turns off when minimized. I often work on my laptop where screen real estate is at a premium, and having firebug ignore errors when its minimized is maddening.

Unfortunately I've come to enjoy FireQuery, which only works with the 1.4 beta or higher, so I've got to choose between them. Argh!
I highly recommend bicycling, even when it's hot and humid and hilly. I do it, and it's an awesome start and end to the day. Also, for that distance I'd bet your commute would be negligibly longer--for me it's about 10 minutes difference for about the same distance and I'd bet you'd be even faster in NYC.

You get your exercise in, and you can't back out of the afternoon workout. You feel great, and you can ditch the gym membership. You generally have to shower in the AM anyway, so you're not wasting any time if you do it at work vice home.

If you remain unconvinced, listen to software development podcasts; I've been following the Stanford iPhone development class.
Actually, I think Amazon did the anti-DRM crowd (myself included) a favor by this whole debacle.

They gave a very public example of the problems with locked/controlled content and how it tends to directly oppose the consumer.

When you make a purchase for the Kindle, you're not buying a book, you're buying the right to view the content of the book in a limited context.
I don't know anyone in Europe who'd like the US system of cell phone owner pays. In fact, quite the opposite: I imagine everyone I know, without exception, would hate it.
What do they call that? Genetic Rights Management? GRM? I've gotta say that the idea of GRM makes me more angry than DRM ever could...
Fried Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers with bacon?
There is a much simpler solution: Globalization, and never buy anything local.

Only buy products grown in the environment best suited to them. Different crops grow better in different parts of the world. Plant each crop in the place best suited to it.

The are plenty of areas that get far more water than they can use.

Contrary to popular opinion this will not use more energy either.

Buy local is a very very bad idea from an ecological point of view.
This is actually the first I'd heard about FB 1.3 not working with FF 3.5. I've been using 1.3 with the 3.5 beta for months (now normal 3.5), overriding the compatibility setting with Nightly Tester Tools. I recommend giving it a shot:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543
Joel uses his articles as marketing tools. FogBugz makes money and CityDesk is part of that industry that died.
This is very disingenuous because people who campaign against GM are not against GM per se, they're against GM being introduced in an abrupt way with massive changes made to the genome in a short amount of time. The modifying of plants over 10,000 years has happened over 10,000 years, not 10 or 20 years as in the case of Monsanto!
Firebug is a recommended addon and mozilla folks actively work on firebug. It is almost a semi-official mozilla addon now
This is not true. Breeding and genetic engineering are not that same. With breeding you can never add a new gene that was not there before, you can only pick the ones you want from the existing set.

That existing set has been "vetted" by thousands of years of the plant living, and people eating it.

You have no such knowledge with genetic engineering. You can only do a study and hope that any bad effects are not so subtle that you have a hard time finding them (i.e. subtle things can take decades before they are discovered).
It is a good idea from a human point of view. Local workers, who own their land actually have a dignified life.
Jeff Bezos Apologizes For The “Stupid” And “Thoughtless” Kindle Incident
Neuroscience: Functional Simulation of Regions of the Human Auditory System
This apology doesn't fly for me. The issue is not with their use of discretion in yanking paid-for content off users' devices. The issue is that they gave themselves that ability to begin with. Once I see that "feature" removed, I'll be happy.
I can't bring myself to do that. In my brain "mark as spam" is synonymous to "Mummy! Make the Bad Man go away!". I have trouble overloading this with "Gee I guess I'm just not that into you".
Actually, most of the people I've met who campaign against GM are against it because they're scared of the concept of some mad scientist in a laboratory making abominable lettuce with "toxins" in it. Those are the people my "10,000" years argument is for. All I'm arguing for is the idea that GM is not bad per se. I fully agree that e.g. in the case of Monsanto that GM can be used for nefarious purposes.
Bill Gates: My 1979 Memories
I didn't know the posting titles are edited for no apparent reason.
The original title was "Dubious Reporting" with link to this article:
http://www.thebusinessjournal.com/index.php/the-business-jou...

This is an article where the reporter cited the latest earnings report and combined it with the old lay-off numbers from January !!! Looks like copy-paste journalism to me!
Hence the original title.