skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Some of these points have pros and cons, actually.

The T400 appears to have five buttons around the trackpad because it has an exta "trackpoint" red nub in the keyboard, so you can handle cursor, scrolling, and typing without moving either hand from the keyboard--indispensable to all the people who have learned to use it.

The T400 has an LED to illuminate keyboard and slightly more so you can turn it on or off when you need to, rather than when an ambient light sensor thinks best, and you can hold anything under the light to see it. (Think airplanes.) Very useful.

The T400 has a physical switch to turn off wireless hardware so you can do it when the machine is off, quickly, without booting up and using a menu, and so you can physically verify its status.

The T400 has connectors for devices most often found in its environment. ThinkPad evolves its connectors, but a little more conservatively than Apple. Which plan is best depends on what particular users need to connect. You also get some complaints that a new Mac can't connect to existing peripherals.

Design is vital, Apple has some great design points, but ThinkPad has some different but equally great design points. Read David Hill's blog (http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/) for insight into the meticulous design thinking behind ThinkPad.
Police Report Of Bill Gates' Arrest
I wish there was a standard protocol for collaborative text editing, so that SubEthaEdit and Etherpad (for instance) could talk to one another. (Google Wave doesn't count, since it's trying to do much more than text editing.)
ditto. Adding Mixpanel tracking was incredibly quick in both Javascript and Ruby, and setting up basic funnel stats is far simpler than with Google Analytics. They've also been really responsive to suggestions.
"Many people there are campaigning for the US system of cell phone owner pays."

Certainly in Australia - which has the "rest of the world" system - I haven't heard people arguing for double billing.
Well lets hope they did the right thing and are trawling the iTunes library xml file instead of tricking iTunes into syncing with the Pre-I have the feeling Apple will only take so much of Palm masquerading as an iPod before smacking them down.
For being complete idiots and violating everyone's expectations of ownership? Is that enough?

They've lost my business over this, that's certain.
In my experience, it comes down to knowing your target, knowing what you want them to do, and being smart about how you allocate your marketing resources.

For example, I've seen a lot of companies focus on getting people to the site without a plan. Once someone discovers your site, what are you doing to keep them coming back? Are you requesting them to submit information, presenting them with a unique offer or message, or do you just want to see what they do naturally?

The second thing is measuring your efforts. Every channel and tool that brings in visitors can be measured and quantified. While you shouldn't purely base decisions on the data, they can provide some very good direction on where you should be focusing your efforts.
Pretty sure it's because you wrote "M$", not what you said about G¢¢gle.
I don't think it is funny ...
LOL, Looks like you glanced at the report a bit too quickly mon fraire.

Henry Gates = Harvard Professor = dude arrested

Bill Gates = MSFT = arrested 35 years ago
If they don't put DRM in the shoes, then break into my house and steal them back in the middle of the night, I might consider buying something from Zappos again.
They are apologizing for using the capability the gave themselves but are doing nothing towards a real solution.

Which is Jeff's modus operandi from way back. Remember the one-click patent, and how he agreed that it was a goofy thing to be allowed to patent, and how he promised to spearhead a patent-reform effort?
What a nice cat & mouse game to watch ... :-) Who wants to bet on an iTunes 8.2.2 update within a week or two? :-)
> Similarly, one could argue that rendering a template without having to explicitly specify keeps Rails DRY. With Django, there's plenty of opportunity to make things harder to keep track of if you're constantly randomly naming templates.

Oh come on, if you're going to constantly randomly name things, no matter what they are, your application will be a mess no matter what framework you choose.
we do that at my newspaper because it's an easy way to track outbound links. sure we could set up our own outbound redirection thingy, but bit.ly is les cool and we have other things to work on.
Twitter 101 for Business — A Special Guide
Facebook is basically designed like a lobster trap with your friends as bait
You may want to consider rethinking the metered billing model. Geeks love them, particularly if the algorithm to calculate the price is spiffy. I have yet to see evidence that people who pay for stuff like them.

Here's an anecdote for you: our industry is going cloud cloud cloud right now and I am pushing it internally. Enthusiasm among management for test projects is high -- I'm presenting one today, actually.

(I rewrote an internal app on the App Engine. It took two days for a prototype, will take two more for getting it production-ready, total cost and schedule less than 10% of when we had more senior, more talented engineers implement the version we are actually using.)

So in this process of "Hey, we don't have to actually host hardware here!" evangelism I actually tried to get a purchase order for Slicehost approved for a different project, where I said something to the effect of "It is going to cost us X,000 yen when I'm in development, and X0,000 yen when we move it to production, and Y0,000 yen if this app gets really popular internally."

This purchasing request broke my manager.

He told me that he'd rather get a request for ten times the highest price I quoted, than try to figure out how he was supposed to incorporate conditional logic into his budget and reporting forecasts for this quarter.

Are you sure you don't want to be selling my manager the low-cognitive-pain, easy-to-buy, ten-times-more-expensive version?

$0.35 per 1000 points - first 50,000 points sent

Boom, you just broke my manager. Not only are you requiring forecasting and conditional logic from him, you're requiring math.

Small Business: $20

Web Application: $100

Enterprise : Call Us

There, now we have an unbroken manager. I ask for $100 a month (not because we need it but because my manager won't approve the Small Business so I won't bother asking), he asks "Are you sure we aren't Enterprise?", I say "Yeah, I did the math", he says "OK, approved."

[Edited to add:

Incidentally, in my own business I'm a stats junkie. There are currently three types of tracking scripts on my pages, plus my rolled-my-own bits, and you very well might be #4.

That said: I pay $19 a month for CrazyEgg, which has given me some very valuable insights into user behavior in the past, so valuable that I continue paying for it on a monthly basis despite not actually using it in most given months.

At the moment, for example, I think I have no experiments actually running.

Now, hypothetically if I were already using MixPanel and savoring that time you made me a thousand dollars by increasing my conversion rate, but didn't currently have an experiment running, you might not be making money from me. That is sort of suboptimal for you, isn't it? I'm willing to pay you for nothing if you have previously delivered wins to me and if I think I might get another win at an unspecified point in the future. This dynamic has earned CrazyEgg about $250 of free money from me. Do you want free money? ;) ]
No, but you could offer more than one type.

For me - you could have had project-based courses that combined reading, writing, 'rithmatic and science and I'd have been in heaven.

That might not work for everyone, but it would be great if we could accommodate more than one type of learner.
By Optimal I don't mean most desirable, but rather whichever plant(s) grow(s) best in that area.

By "one plant" I had a different meaning than what you wrote, but that's OK because I agree with what you wrote.

I meant you are not limited to just one choice in a given area, usually you have several choices.

If people choose "locally grown", then every area will need to plant a large variety - it might be profitable, and people will pay for it. But environmentally it's a bad idea. It's better for each area to specialize.

Say you can plant an avocado tree, and it grows OK. Instead plant some other plant that grows really great. Sell that and buy avocado from someplace where avocado grows really great.

You have now minimized the use of resources.
I know someone at Google and this is pure bull. They decided to make it a web app, not Apple.
Of course the first time I clicked allow this site to know my location, safari crashed! I think this would be a much more interesting app if it was integrated into maps. Logging in and checking it online is a bit of a process and kind of slow. It will be interesting to see how this competes with other geo-social networks. Are there any bigger players then loopt?
Under this bullet-proof logic the best applications would be written in AppleScript (spoiler alert: they're not).

Seriously though, the idea that Linus designed a sub par interface for git because he was sooo busy mallocing and freeing is laughable.
A Brief History of BitBacker, A Startup
Gestalt: Write Ruby, Python and XAML in your HTML pages.
What I meant was that yes, the initial product focus is reduced, but there may be a longer lasting and subtler association of the product with the physical attractiveness, which in the end may be more valuable.

In other words; I don't necessarily believe that the audience focusing more directly on the product actually sells it better. Most products are boring (i.e. this is just more shampoo), but sexual stimulation is not. Focusing on the sex rather than the boring product is probably to the benefit of sales.
By doing that, you're teaching your mail client and, if your mail is hosted by Google, Gmail that that message was unsolicited and should not have been delivered to you or anyone else. That's bad! The solution is to set up filters to send messages you don't care about to non-inbox folders.
It seems the author doesn't know much about Scala. There seem to be quite a bit of "Fan vs. Scala" posting from Fan fans with this characteristic.

No overloading: since Fan doesn't have Hindley-Milner type inference, it seems like a loss to drop overloading. Presumably they did this to make the language implemenation simpler.

Wildcard type: "Any" in Scala is an available supertype to everything, including primitives. It sounds like Fan has some unsafe automatic type conversion going on that you'd have to make explicit in Scala.

Immutability: in Scala, "val" is immutable, "var" is mutable. This is SUPER basic stuff; I'm not sure how you miss that.

As for libraries, build system, JSON: Scala actually has all that (but it looks like Fan has some additional JSON config integration built in)

You can pass Scala objects to Java libs (callbacks, observers, etc.) and it just works. There's almost no difference between using Java and Scala, which is a pretty strong point.
Fine, IANAL. Maybe we can't have a contract that says Amazon can literally break down doors but you can sign contracts that have physical analogs that require you returning the book to Amazon. The core of my point still stands though.

Amazon is using DRM and EULAs to accomplish things that people would not normally expect when thinking about a book. Amazon wants people to think of the things they "buy" on their kindle as books, but this incident demonstrates that they are not.

Amazon is (probably) legally within their rights to do what they did according to the kindle contract, but that doesn't mean it's good for business.
I checked out your site--your non-spam post motivated me to find it :)

I think you guys have a pretty cool product. Maybe you should concentrate on one specific vertical. Right now you are trying to market to everybody, which may be tough. But if you can pick one particular use case, it might be easier to develop a marketing strategy.

Also, make everything free for the first X users. That will really motivate people to sign up. Right now $75/month seems pretty expensive.
I totally agree with this. Get some good analytics tools. Mixpanel launched today, and I am a big fan. Maybe its worth trying out.
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The thinkpad has a trackpoint/nipple mouse. The macbook is limited with just a touchpad.

The macbook keys light up at inconvenient times, the thinkpads only lights up when I want it to -- and it lets me read dead-tree notes easily

I've never used screen zooming so I wont speak to it - the mac solution sounds nice though.

The T400 has an obvious, provable way of quickly disconnecting from a network. It's like pulling out the netword cord. And it has an option to turn that off in software.

The T400 connects directly to my projector, my monitor at home, my cheap plasma tv. For the mac I've got to drag around an extra converter thing.

There are plenty of designs you can knock as not being "together". The thinkpad design is pretty well tested though.
Multimethods are ambient actions. You could implement them with functions and any sort of type system. Maybe also a way to have variable-length parameter lists. If that's OO then functional programming is object-oriented programming.
The problem with that is exactly as Peter Norvig states: learn programming in ten years[1]. I would not argue that some great programmers have never had any formal training. But they worked hard. Really hard. For a long time. To believe that someone who has never touched a programming language before is ready for a developer job after a couple weeks, a couple months, or even as much as a year is just ridiculous.

When CS grads can't even program for years after graduation, the solution is not to bring in people with even less training.

[1]http://norvig.com/21-days.html
Is free security research coming to an end?
High School is a early 20th century (industrial age) concept and should be scrapped. We need innovation, choice, and flexibility in education. The current system is a dinosaur on a trillion dollar+ life support system.
Haha, irc is definitely the best place to start a flamewar on stuff like this :P
But I'm not arguing for one or the other, just wondering what people's thoughts are on it and if they're using it in a public environment. Peaceful discussion :)
I've found recently that a nice option for emacs users to get 99.9% of the same functionality is to have two (or more) users ssh into a server, share gnu screen sessions, and start emacs 23 + emacsclient. Everyone has full access to their own emacs, but share buffers with everyone else. You can simultaneously edit the same buffers, etc.

I know this isn't the niche that etherpad is aiming for, but there are a number of groups dispersed looking for this kind of functionality. For team coding while separate, this plus ichat provides a very compelling experience.
Modern functional programming languages are no more similar to lambda calculus as modern imperative languages are similar to Turing machines.

In lambda calculus, functions are declared and manipulated. Data can be encoded as a function and vice versa. Sound like any functional languages you know (cough Lisp cough)?

In Turing machines, cells on the tape (or variables) are marked (or declared) and manipulated. But try shoehorning OOP into this model. It's a model. It's may not capture all the details.

It's like how modeling the crash safety of a car is similar to idealized theoretical physics. Sure, safety systems differ widely across cars, but ultimately, we have models that put limits on how likely a person is to survive a crash. The model isn't perfect, but it captures the essence of the differences of the two languages.
Hmm. I have FF 3.5 and FB 1.4 and it works for me perfectly! Not sure why it doesn't work for others...
To be honest - as a relatively new Ubuntu user - and an occasional OSX user - trying to get stuff done on the mac is beginning to annoy me more and more.

Apple make some fantastic software - the iLife suite is pretty awesome. That might be reason enough to buy one - (and the hardware design is typically good as well). But just looking at the OS - and what I use the system for on a day to day basis - and Apple's advantage in the OS space is a lot less than it used to be. (And snow leopard doesn't look like changing that from an end user perspective)
Amazon is using DRM and EULAs to accomplish things that people would not normally expect when thinking about a book

Just because people expect to have certain rights, doesn't mean they do. If people expect to have rights (to keep copyrighted material indefinitely) that the law of the land takes away from them, the problem isn't with the mechanism through which that law is implemented, it's with the law itself!
That's the best damage control they can come up with? I realize that Bezos probably thinks he slumming when he delivers a personal apology, but I'm less impressed with Bezos than Bezos is.

I would have liked an explanation for what happened. I would have liked to see what steps were being taken to see that it never happens again and that it couldn't happen again. I would like to see what is being done to recompense the customers (have they been shipped complimentary hardcovers of the yanked books yet?).

This apology fails on all three fronts.
While I'm just one data point, I was a history major, and I've been programming since I was six. I already knew C, C++* , Perl, Python, and small bits of other stuff, and majoring in CS to learn Java didn't seem appealing. I majored in history (with a focus on history of science and medicine) and continued teaching myself on the side.

While majoring in CS correlates with previous programming experience, it isn't an absolute indicator. College is probably too late to learn the fundamental techniques and mindset of programming, anyway.

* Inasmuch as anybody can really know C++...
Ask HN: What website project are you working on?
So many news posts, so few people talking about what they are doing. What website are you working right now?
Yea that seems about right for eBay. At least they didn't say the genesis of their company was when Amaterasu-omikami emerged from the cave of darkness, and became the sun over Japan.
Love the service - I had it up and running in 5 minutes
Estoppel is a long-established legal doctrine (centuries old, in fact). One party cannot mislead another to its detriment through promises expressly made and later retracted. In such cases, the courts will use their equitable powers (i.e., doctrines such as that of promissory estoppel) to ensure that an unjust result does not occur, even if the party might otherwise have the legal right to enforce its claim.

The devil here lies in the details. The Microsoft Community Promise is indeed very explicit and says that it is. In effect, it says, "don’t rely on anything other than a literal reading of our promise." And it specifically says that no rights of Microsoft are being waived by estoppel, among other things.

Therefore, unless someone is covered by the literal terms of its promise, Microsoft has reserved lines of attack for itself should it choose to exercise them.

Estoppel might still work but it would take a costly litigation to determine the outcome. Who wants to put themselves through that?
I would also consider using a professional designer to help with improving the overall look and feel of the site/product, or maybe even a service like 99designs.com. It looks like a solid product and something I'd use, but often I find myself having to consider a product twice if the site is not up to a certain standard of design and/or professionalism.

In terms of getting the word out there, I'm with aberman in giving away free accounts for x users. If you can get a small group of paid users you can also start an affiliate program where referrals earn users money or usage credits.
Sorry to keep replying like this, but I'm just utterly dismayed by your upvotes. To put it bluntly, you are wrong (particularly paragraph 1 sentence 1 and paragraph 3, mutability).

I'm not sure how you have arrived at Lisp being your ad hoc definition of functional programming, but it frightens me.

The main issue here is that the article isn't saying that only the lambda calculus is functional programming but it is saying that the whole paradigm is based on the lambda calculus and so to determine how functional a language is, you determine how similar it is to the lambda calculus.

Wikipedia on functional programming:

"Functional programming has its roots in the lambda calculus, a formal system developed in the 1930s to investigate function definition, function application, and recursion. Many functional programming languages can be viewed as embellishments to the lambda calculus."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming
Linus: "Microsoft Hatred Is a Disease"
Well I had read somewhere the society is driven by need-of-development and human-needs are ignored. People take science even if they are interested in arts, code even if they are interesting in drawing..it's because former will give them jobs. Most of the time work != fun. It's especially true in countries like India and China. We love singing but we need to do some maths assignment because our teacher said so, becaused our parents forced it that way. They say it's good..it's necessary. But interesting things or we can say old-bore content taught in an interesting manner does make life good. Ofcourse I'll go for option 1 because option 2 was never in my domain :(
But yeah there exist classes every kid loves and they are more or less like halley's comet.
Precisely! But it isn't Amazon's responsibility to decide what is "creepy and intrusive" it's your congressman's responsibility to make sure laws which explicitly allow "creepy and intrusive" violations of your rights to not be passed.

The EPIC FAIL here is in Washington, with a minor FAIL in Amazon's PR, and nowhere else.
I've been programming since I was six

Same here. I would definitely count you as one of the people who worked really hard for a long time. That was my main point -- if you love programming and have an interest in it, then you will develop those ten years of experience easily. However, most people have nowhere near that amount of experience, including CS majors. The one insurance point that a CS degree gives you is that you've been exposed to programming for at least 4 years. In fact, coming out of college, I would put self-trained programmers (like you and me), regardless of degree, above any CS major who just started programming in college. I think CS teaches you a lot of useful things (I regret nothing from my CS theory courses), but when it comes to actually developing applications, experience rules all.
Sanitizing Agriculture
so far as I know copyright law does _not_ grant rights-holders the ability to repossess illegally produced copies from unsuspecting purchasers

IANAL, but it would seem Amazon's law team disagrees...
Twitter Launches “Twitter 101″, Step One Of The Business Plan
Windows 7 Developer Contest
Isn't that's where the standups come from, though?
I bet your friends didn't have anywhere near as much trouble finding dates a decade ago.

I'm not sure they're looking.