skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wow, congrats to wheels & co for the TC hit and YC - I don't think anyone knew about that!
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Being another hopeless victim of modal editing, I do have sometimes those "I press a key and it appears on the screen?! What is this madness!" moments when using other editors.
However, I do not think that Vim is The One True Text Editor. Actually, I am envious of Emacs users for their flexible, programmable text editor (operating system? CLI application framework?), but couldn't make the switch yet, I really do miss the Vim interface.
Compared to Donald Knuth he is young.
I was thinking about hiring a dev or several to work on OSS I use too - it can be a savings too, since if OSS you use and depend on and have vested interest in has active development it can attract more developers you are not paying for.
Not the same size, but vastly more controlling. On a windows machine you could always install netscape. On an iPhone you have to download apps only from apple-approved sources.

I suppose the question is whether the concerns of one marketplace (handsets) should override theneed of another (apps). As someone who hasalready bought an iPhone for what is a considerable amount of money, I don't like the turn towards crippling a product I thought was mine.
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I'm not a lawyer, but my guess is that using someone's source code for its artistic value in a movie would count as fair use.
To make it relevant to Hacker News: he was a Windows programmer.[1] Out of respect for the families, I think it's best that we try and minimize our discussion of this. [1]http://web.archive.org/web/20010504020942/users.telerama.com...

One new phenomenon is that reddit seems to be the epicenter of the information gathering network, including access with guessed passwords to the murderer's Google account. It is disturbing and I would not recommend that you personally follow up on the information contained within. http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/97wnt/reddit_exc...
What is a cool cyberkid?
The long-term plan is to drop support for Flash on YT, isn't it?
If you've already got the Macbook then follow the advice given by DZC in the comments:

"I install a minimal Ubuntu (like JEOS) to a VirtualBox instance on my MacBook. It's set up to be as minimal as possible -- no sound, X, etc. Then I set it up as a local server -- mounting it's file system via SSHFS (or NFS or whatever you like) to the Mac OS side.

Then I can use Mac OS Terminal, Textmate, Firefox, etc. for development. The only major downside so far is the ~10% CPU VirtualBox seems to use at idle."

And if you intend to run Linux, don't buy the Macbook. In fact if you're technical enough to be reading this then you're technical enough to plan to buy a machine that's going to run well under linux (no binary blobs etc.) which isn't, even today, a complete no-brainer.
Are modes like Viper (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ViperMode) helpful when switching from vim to emacs?
Suggest HN: Created new 'flagged' page
I regularly read the 'new' page and flag or promote stories. One of the things I've noticed is that because of incoming spam good new stories disappear off the new page and don't get promoted. I think it would be nice to have a new 'flagged' page where any story that's been flagged by a small number of users is automatically placed and the story would be removed from the new page.
This is like a non-evil Swoopo. Entertainment shopping that creates money out of thin air by having people give stuff away.
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Good for lifehacker readers. I use Gmail for it's simplicity (even with ads). I won't ever block those non-intrusive text as an honor to the good service.

When I 'm satisfied of your service I won't to give back something. Maybe I don't have money, but something I can contribute.
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I recently got this book: http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Gentle-Introduction-Frederi...
I found it to be perfect for what I wanted. Basically, my knowledge of statistics was VERY limited, but one of the things I'm working on now requires a good understanding, so.. The book is gentle and not too math heavy. Everything it covers, it does so in detail and with examples and real-world stories. I found it to be a good way to get a basic foundation. You may want to follow up with a more advanced book after though.
The difference between the potential of iTunes being used to access copyrighted material without payment and an eBook reader doing the same thing is that Apple do not sell eBooks.

Apple is ensuring that the apps on the iPhone make them money without any potential to cost them money. It's all upside for them.
My take on this though is that if the pricing was more affordable then piracy would be less prevalent. One of the reasons that OS X has a lower level of piracy is that their OS pricing is more affordable (I'll admit there are many other factors).

I don't have stats to back this up, but I would assume that Windows has an incredibly high percentage or pirated installs (given their attempts to combat this) and pricing is a big factor in this.
"We can take data sets with millions and millions of data points and figure out what’s related to a given item in a few milliseconds. Most recommendations engines pre-compute stuff rather than generating the recommendations in real-time like we do"

I've been looking into recommendation algorithms recently (started with the excellent book "Programming Collective Intelligence"), and this sounds lightyears ahead of the way we currently do things. I suppose you could take one of the algorithms that requires pre-computing and throw resources at it, but it seems like they are talking about something new.

Since I'm just getting started, I'd like to find some academic (or blog-faux-academic) articles on whatever recent advances behind recommendations without the need for precomputing. Anyone know where to look?
Vim rocks!...when emacs is not available.
MacRuby experimental branch merged to trunk
I fully agree with you. The difference between 'retail' and 'bundle' discounts is a pretty good indicator software retail pricing is terribly wrong.

And then there is the fact that you could sell software online easily and you don't actually need a retail channel.

Direct-to-consumer is the only way that makes any sense at all. Why even have a physical goods channel for something that is outdated before it has left manufacturing ?

The other side of the coin is that now people are so used to being able to get that stuff for free that to reverse the trend away from wholesale copying is very difficult.

Plenty of people feel towards companies like microsoft the way they feel towards the taxman. You've already had me pay 6 times over to use this road, I refuse to pay you any longer. The profit margins of those companies don't help either.
I agree. I did horrible in my stats class. IT was only after I graduated that I discovered how damned useful statistics is and I now wish Id done better in class. I'm slowly trying to remedy it though, so theres still hope.
It says they placed a network wide ban on them, I wonder how tight their security is. Can it be bypassed with a proxy or VPN? It seems the real issue is "...links to malicious sites in the hope a marine on R&R ... might click on them", they would be better served by locking down the systems that are accessing the Web, having an IDS and educating the soldiers on cyber risks.
SVM's and clustering are AWESOME. My housemate uses both to analyse EEG data and his classifiers are absolutely amazing. Looks like his work may end up being used by the european space agency too.
OK - I understand the reasoning here and have some sympathy for the post but suspect that the effect would be a lot like 'down voting' and that is definitely against the ethos of HN.
Yeah, it turns out they were only interested in my body all along...
They have a couple of articles on their site: http://directededge.com/tech.html
Thanks, you replied right before I was going to edit in the answer from http://developer.directededge.com/article/Introduction_to_Re...:

"Graph-based recommendation systems".

Something new to learn!

edit: the linked page mentions the book I'm reading! Looks like the answer was a few pages further in :)
Wasn't there a rule about not introducing classic flamewar subjects ?

There are ony two subjects contending for the top spot in 'the most flamewar attraction power graph', the first is significant whitespace in python, the second is Vi vs Emacs (and to avoid starting a flamewar by choosing a particular order, I'll repeat them alphabetically, Emacs vs Vi).

The rest of the subjects (MySQl vs postgresql, Windows vs Linux and so on) are mild by comparison.
Don't forget that games are also bought by teenagers that don't have a lot of money. $ 49 was a lot when I was a teen.

The right price changes from one person to another. That's why you segment the market.

That's what Valve does. People willing to pay $ 49 already bought the game. People who didn't were probably stopped by the price. If you lower the price, you lower the barrier.

In other words, you segment the market based on the willingness of someone to wait for the price to lower.

Segmentation maximizes your revenues.

As for Windows, most people don't buy Windows, it comes with the new PC they're going to buy for X-mass. People who buy upgrades are a different market segment.
Emacs is a fantastic operating system.

One day there will be an 'emacs machine' that boots straight into emacs, current unices are just used as scaffolding during this unfortunate but necessary stage.

EDIT: Thanks for the downmod, in this topic it is expected I guess... :)

Here is the reference for the quote:

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/gnu_emacs_22_wor...
Discuss HN: Did Apple setup Google by inviting Eric on its board in '06?
Just went over the statement from Apple about "Eric having to excuse himself from meetings" and it strikes me, does that not give Apple a very huge advantage knowing about things that Google might have been working on that may not be public?
Secondarily, it has also caused discomfort to Google regarding the monopoly issue.
Theres two points that I see here:
1) Convenience/ease of purchase
2) Low enough price to accommodate impulse shopping

The Steam deals definitely do this and I've often bought games on Steam for exactly those reasons. Theres a lot of games which I would never have thought about buying, but then I see them there for €5 and all I need to do is click and wait for the download and it looks fun... why not!? So yeah, if somethings convenient and inexpensive enough to buy on impulse, people will.
Pfff, just type your stuff in stdin.
But neither "games" nor "industries" have rights, and, for the most part, neither do "customers" (other than the rights afforded by the fact that they're also persons.) I don't have a right to own a nice car; if some bad decisions crash the auto industry, I might not be able to buy a nice car. That, again, doesn't mean there should be a law. If the gaming industry is built on sand, let it sink until it finds a workable revenue model (MMOG companies seem to be doing well enough.) If people don't like that it's sinking, maybe they'll, y'know, express that with dollars?
My primary experience with Steam was Bioshock, where I was forced to pay quite a bit more than the local reseller rate in order to get the game - local reseller was sold out, and only had Xbox versions left. That, and other Steam annoyances, mean I'll likely never buy another game from Steam.

But you're certainly right about the convenience factor. Considering Apple app store: the fact that I don't have to dig out my credit card, and don't have to wait for a big download or - even worse - a physical delivery, and don't have to fiddle with installation, makes all the difference with installing app store applications. Pity the business proposition for the platform is so crap, though (fascist Apple), or I'd try my hand at developing for it.
Please forgive the extremely rude nitpicking: assume -> as soon
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Are you sure about that?

Flash has one significant advantage over plain <video> in a browser: it's got a guaranteed compositing model. This is important for YouTube because they display advertisements as alpha-blended overlays on top of the video.

If they switched to <video>, there would be no guarantees whether a browser supports compositing of <div>s over a video layer. On some platforms video hardware acceleration is implemented in such a way that it's not possible to render any other content over the accelerated video window, so just checking by user agent wouldn't be sufficient to ensure that compositing is available.

It's a can of worms that YouTube might not want to open, considering the increasing importance of on-video ads to their revenues.
Here's the dirty little secret of discount pricing: it only works as long as people think it's a discount. As soon as they leave the page they see it on, it isn't a discount anymore, it is just The Price.

Valve's "here, have 75% off" works because it is seventy-five percent OFF, not because it makes software inexpensive. If your software was inexpensive all of the time, it wouldn't help you.
I consider it strange that he begins his
Vi/Vim tutorial with a page of (bad)
Emacs bashing. I mean, he obviously knows
the virtues of his editor (I skimmed the next
few pages), but why begin it with comments
like this one:

> Emacs is based in Lisp. 'Nuff said.

What is that supposed to mean?
You can
critize Elisp for not having lexically scoped
variables (although there is lexical-let in 'cl)
or tail-call optimization. But the above
"statement"
sounds as if he has never looked at Elisp code.
Btw. if you are new to Emacs, make sure to have
the sources installed as well - you can then
look at the implementation of every function
with

C-h f function-name

and then selecting the filename (this is also true
of the functions and special forms written in C).
If you do this for a while, you will recognize
that the Emacs programming model makes sense - and
it's not so much because of or in spite of Lisp
- it's more because of the Emacs-specific
abstractions (point, buffers, markers,
buffer-local variables, ...) that are quite different
from the usual paradigms most of us are used to,
but nevertheless very powerful for text-munging.

> Vi commands are a Unix standard.

yeah, but bash (for example) and other programs
using the Readline library default to Emacs keybindings...

> Cleaner interface. Only one line is used
> up for commands; everything else is your text.
> Easy to read. Good.

ok, my Emacs uses two lines (one for the modeline
and one for the minibuffer). Of course, ed has
a much cleaner interface than both Vi/Emacs...
Out of curiosity, I wrote a simple non-optimized quicksort function in Common Lisp (SBCL) and timed a 180,000-element sort at 567ms, about half as much as the Java version. I'm sure that could be improved greatly with better coding and type hints.

Here's the code http://donnieknows.com/blog/sbcl-fast
Don't forget that the same regulations also prevent you (theoretically) from running homebrew code on your consoles in most cases. I have to note, however, that the Xbox 360 (not sure if that's the "Xbox" they meant in the article or not, but they also mention the Wii) mods really have no purpose other than running backups/pirated content.
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I can't help but wonder if they'll let Amazon's app remain. After all, since you can send files to Amazon that are converted into their format, their app could be infringing on copyright...

While I understand the conflicting pressures Apple must be under with regards to various apps, I think it is hurting them quite a bit, but it's their own fault. Because they've made themselves the gatekeepers, it's much easier for other companies to sue them if they allow an app on that violates copyright or other laws.
ITV in £25m Friends Reunited sale
Potentially great news for facebook, if they can maintain their growth while seeing an increase in the age of users. Older users have greater spending power making them a more valuable audience to advertisers.
Reminds me of
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
Equivocation on the contrast between "equality" and "superiority". The goal of equality claimed by the civil rights movement -- which you say was really aiming at "superiority", which I think would be news to the white people involved at the very least -- was not that of a society in which every person ends up in exactly the same situation; it was of a society in which people don't have systematically worse opportunities because they are black or because all their ancestors were slaves or whatever.

Aiming at equality in that sense is not the least bit incompatible with hoping to succeed by being clever and working hard to do something that others value.

If the Racism Fairy appeared before me and told me that I could have a life that was "better as opposed to worse, above as opposed to under" by (say) stealing half the property of all the black people in the country and giving it to white people -- I happen to be white, so I'd gain rather than lose from that -- then I would turn down that offer. If the Anti-Racism Fairy appeared instead and offered to obliterate every vestige of racial prejudice, but warned that it would make white people (including me) slightly worse off, I'd say yes in a flash. And if you don't believe me because you think "kto kogo?" is the only question, then fuck you and the (doubtless white) horse you rode in on.
There are days when I want to quit using php...
Seriously. Just wasted an hour on this:

<?php

$s = "title";
$k = 0;

if ($k == $s) {
echo("this is bad!\n");
}
else {
echo("this is good\n");
}

I realize my mistake now ($k being an integer and $s being a string, PHP converts both to integers implicitly and does the comparison) so I would have had to use the === instead but I read over that missing = for a long time...

The problem is that this was not new code.

It worked flawlessly until one day an array key was made that was not a string but an integer, and by sheer coincidence that integer was 0.

The foreach loop surrounding the code did not check the type of the array keys...
I wouldn't. To me that is like writing music for the tone deaf. The wrong direction I'd want do go if doing anything creative.

Removing content and splitting ideas into bite sized pieces seems the way to go. Also, remember these people rarely buy books but people still buy books for them. You could target the "gift" book market.
Jeff seems impressed by Valve.

Across all industries a well publicised one-off sale is going to get in the crowds. See Boxing day rushes and seasonal sales in retail.

These are about publicity and shaking out any latent buying intent remaining after the high value people already paid full RRP. Don't forget stores have to clear stock before the next season's shipment arrives. Perhaps Valve has a Left8Dead sequel on the way??

--

But would lower prices all year round help? All of the pricing theory debates can find backing by looking at a Retail Niche which sells at a similar price point.

All I can add is that individuals do not do well at the cheap end of pricing. Overheads are a much higher proporton of small-concerns. So higher prices would probably be better for HN coders.
I'm pretty sure they were very careful with this.

It's definitely not uncommon for people that are CEO in one company to be on the bod of another, as soon as conflicts of interest arise and they're mild you recluse yourself.

In this case the conflicts of interest were so large that Schmidt would have been waiting in the hallway during any subject in pretty much any meeting, continuing in that position is then no longer useful.
There is no magic. I don't know what Directed Edge are doing, but simpler Amazon-style recommendations (people who bought X also bought...) doesn't need to precompute anything if you choose your data structures properly: get a list of things people bought along with X, count them (or actually store them counted), optionally normalize for general popularity, sort in decreasing order, show top results.

I'd love to hear something from wheels though.
Why even have a physical goods channel for something that is outdated before it has left manufacturing ?

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a tractor trailer of CDs.

(This is, relatedly, why there is a retail price for MMORPGs that companies would really rather give you for free. They don't give a farthing about the box money, they want to eliminate every barrier to you handing over your sweet sweet credit card details. However, if they don't charge for the box, then Best Buy won't stock them, and they'll lose accounts to their competitors who are on the shelves.)