skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem is that you have another hand in the middle. Intel makes the CPU and then razr wraps it up and sells it to you at a markup. Nvidia makes a gpu and then someone throws it on a board for razr and then razr wraps it up and sells it to you at a markup. Why wouldn't I just buy it on a pci-e board for less because there will be competitors. Anyone here can build a PC - it's not hard. But that is the problem that this is trying to solve - that it is hard.

"For more than 30 years, only the most hardcore enthusiasts were able to take advantage of PC customizability. Convoluted hardware made it insane for the average person: knowing what does what, what works with what, and how to connect the pieces."

So this is for the guy that wants to build his PC but not actually learn how to build it. It's like radio shack xmods - you can put a new engine in your car to make you feel like you're working on a car but you're not working on a car. You're working on a toy that looks like a car.
Well not quite splitting a string, using regexs. Regexs are The language Satan communicates with his minions in...
Marketing Advice for Introverts
I'm tim at ticketleap if you want to talk about them using Ticketleap/Selfie Ticket.
No, you're changing the meaning of usability. It doesn't mean it can be used, but it means that it's easy to learn and use. And vim is powerful but it's not a good example of usability.
"A shell that instead of working on character streams worked on structured and annotated data streams, so it could intelligently interpret what is going on?"

I'm not convinced that's worse, but I'm not convinced it's better for the task of being a shell. It's totally, unequivocally, way the hell better when you're trying to build anything large out of it, but taking everything back to byte streams at the interfaces means a huge ability to easily reformulate things to fit them together.
then handwave away the 80% of the manuscript that has to be gibberish because the information density is too low to be some kind of natural language

Well, if you'd read more carefully, you'd know that Stephen Bax is precisely claiming that it is a natural language. And I don't know as much as you regarding the other translation attempts, but from what I gathered, they made assumptions which are incorrect from a linguistic perspective (e.g words "too long" or "too short" for it to be a natural language, which in fact only proves that it's likely not a european language)
"Hip" does not mean remotely the same thing as "in use".
I am very glad to see TurboGears linked in the "Use Python for Web Programming" section.
Those are just the surface differences. The modes in which you use all of these are very different.

Word: explicit WYSIWYG control over typesetting.

LaTeX: semantic level control over typesetting. Additionally provides explicit low level typesetting commands.

Markdown: given how basic (trivial even) Markdown is (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax) I'm not sure why it's even in this list.
I think the more pertinent question is how do we get out of a surveillance state dystopia? We've been in one for quite a while now.
> I decided to use a equirectangular just because otherwise drawing the gradients would have been a hell.

If you've got a function that maps between map-position and globe-position, couldn't you just compute the gradient color for each pixel one by one? That doesn't sound particularly difficult... :]
A steal? Nobody uses ICQ anymore. AOL ended up selling ICQ for $187 million in 2010, a big loss on that deal!
Historically, TeX and LaTeX have had their best penetration in Math, Physics, and Astronomy departments. Many journals in these fields only accept papers in TeX, and have their own templates.
FWIW, I believe the military already deploys mobile computers with HUDs like this.
Is it bad that I can still remember my 7 digit ICQ number? It's probably been over 14 years since I've used it. I use to judge everyone that used AIM but eventually I switched over to AIM because all my friends in school had AIM.
brucefancher, your comments are "dead", i.e. you're "hellbanned".

Send an email to the admins, since it doesn't seem you should be.

(This is my own new account since I was hellbanned and don't have energy enough to send email. I got angry at an idealist idiot that might not have been a spammer/troll.)
I think the contention comes when you get down to brass tacks; note the author emphasizes "really useful", and hence probably means, sure, your software might be "useful", but it's not useful to the extant that a program you can insert into a pipeline or script is.
Let me just say that I recently had to build a 'new' UnixWare 7.1.0 system. I was stunned and delighted that I was able to compile vim 7.4 + then-current patches.

Couldn't compile git, python or a couple of other things I wanted, but at least I could use a reasonable editor.
No strings :P
but we don't spend life at the point of a gun.

Don't we? I guess it varies depending on the neighborhood, but there are more guns in the U.S. than cell phones, and it's not just the government that's armed to the teeth, it's everyone from your local mugger to your local teenager (and I'm not just talking about school shooters, I'm talking about adults under 20 who legally hold as well as the range of kids illegally blasting themselves and others in the streets).

This is all to say, I agree with the parent; you can't close Pandora's box. Mass surveillance is quickly becoming too cheap not to be inevitable, not to mention that most people voluntarily crowdsource the surveillance behemoth by uploading their entire lives to facebook and passing everything else into google. One might argue that mass surveillance is already here, if it's a true dystopia remains to be seen.

https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/
I'm tired of this argument. Really.

LISTEN UP: There is only this tiny fraction of the population that cares about surveillance, represented by a tech minority, Hacker News, and Reddit.

The rest of the country could care less. They're 10x more outraged that Netflix seems a little slow this week, or that their favorite jelly donut is out of stock at Krispy Kreme.

We've had a surveillance state for 30 years, and nothing is going to change that.

If you don't want to be surveilled get rid of all of your electronics.

The truth is, the gov't is going to continue on the path of a Brave New World, not 1984.

Don't believe me? 50% of ALL drugs produced in the world are used by Americans. All most people care about is their next bump of Oxycontin with a chaser of Xanex, and the next bit of TV or internet nonsense they are going to piss their time away on.

Edward Snowden proved - that deep down - the masses don't care, and they certainly aren't going to do anything about it.

I wish this circle-jerk would end.
I just knew one of the first comments was gonna be about "my x digit ICQ number". (mine was 6)
"You could parachute [Sam] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king." - PG 5.5 years ago[1]

Congrats Sam.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
That's pretty funny. OSX has far more backwards-compatibility with old software than OS <= 9. Heck, it even comes with vim and an xterm-compatible terminal preinstalled.
Modular, but not necessarily modular done right. I'd much rather plug and play than take the time to screw in each component and run wires around and slice my hands on heat sinks made out of razer blades. If that means we have to go with a proprietary mb... someones gotta take the first step. I don't see why this design paradigm couldn't use existing components, like the Level 10 should have been designed.
Well, 300M for 12M users, which is a lot fewer than the services that get bought for big numbers today.

But magnitude of the money aside, has an online messaging service ever been able to really turn a huge profit? chongli points out that AOL eventually sold ICQ for less than they paid, and I can't think of any others off the top of my head (AIM didn't prevent AOL from being overtaken by Facebook, say). They seem to be very un-sticky in terms of user retention by their nature.
I assume the motivation for pulling this out of the archive is the WhatsApp purchase. However, I don't think this comparison is truly fair. Not only is WhatsApp monthly adding over twice the userbase ICQ had at the time of purchase, but it is also actually collecting revenue from them. WhatsApp is a real company with real monetization strategies.
Is this an ironic comment on Facebook's recent purchase of Whatsapp?
Ha, nope. I still remember my number too. Crazy.
>I'm by no means a LaTex expert. I've written a few papers and a bunch of reports, nothing published, just undergraduate stuff

I had a long talk about something like this with a close friend last night. He has a favorite technology stack that is regularly trash talked on sites like this. From what he's seen its usually from people who have only a passing knowledge of it. Either they worked a job and only had to mess with it for a few months or they worked with it for a long time but never went past just the surface. Almost all the complaints he's seen about it are either extremely outdated, fixable with a little custom code or configuration changes. I think you should spend a little more time with it before you say that developers should feel "ashamed" for using it. Your post falls squarely into the category he was talking about.
> Which worked, but technically everything was SysV-flavored afterwards, which in many regards was a huge backward step IMNSHO.

I'm familiar with the history of System V and BSD as the two competing "flavors" of UNIX, but I've never seen a clear description of what "SysV-flavored" really meant in terms of regular interaction with the system. Since you've clearly had some personal history with this change, could you elaborate on what "SysV-flavored" actually meant for SunOS?
An Algorithm for Nudity Detection [pdf]
And old language that looks like a young one... hmm, interesting...
Congrats Sam!! Woo!
At this point it's hard for me to consider another one of these attempts worth reading

Then your commentary on the subject is utterly worthless.
Congrats Sam! I've learned a lot from you.
Indeed, I get the feeling that whining isn't the solution; trying to get out in front of it is.

As a bit of a social experiment, I acually built this just a couple days ago: http://whereis.lelandbatey.com/

My location is updated via GPS every two minutes, and the last checked in location is marked on the map. I'm curious what will happen, if anything.
It's in the list because it's what I would use for my thesis, if I'd do one now :) It's basic, but it has the semantics for most stuff, and can easily be extended for more. I'd do all formula's/drawings in external tools.

Word nowadays has semantic typesetting controls too, I think since they started that ribbon thing that it has become useable. If you stick to using their semantic things I think you can do a pretty good job of properly typesetting in Word.
Maybe we shouldn't be thinking in terms of utopia/dystopia or good and evil. If there is one thing about us, it is technology marching on.

Maybe we're just slowly being converted (or converting ourselves) into the borg. And it isn't brutal, it is cozy, nice, a little bit dull maybe, because we are working on losing our ape-like rawness. If it would be brutal, it wouldn't be efficient, and we highly value efficiency! We have the drugs for 'fixing people', and the neuroscience progresses. Maybe we'll simply end up as some kind of big, self-aware, computing foam covering the whole planet. Which many here would describe as 'dystopian', yet it is interestingly close to the simple idea of 'utopia' from, let's say, the movie 'Avatar'.
Interesting set of comments...
Sorry to ruin the party... but I had a 5 digit ICQ number. I used to work there.
Go read that IRC log. :)
When I went to install Pentadactyl from the Firefox addons site, it told me that Pentadactyl wasn't compatible with my (the latest) version of Firefox, 27.0.
I have only superficially browsed vim sources some months ago. Vim source code is literally disgusting. The number of platforms vim runs on is close to Avogadro's number. It supports 5 or sth languages for customisation. I always had in my mind to fork the thing and remove all those languages, and strip off the compatibility stuff so it will be a pure Unix program, but I never got to do it.

Also, the source repository contains binary (.a, .dll) files, which I did not inspect. I always search the web for an alternative editor when I somehow browse the vim source repository.
Ask HN: Is Whatsapp the new SMS?
I know there are other IM apps out there but everyone I want/need to be in touch with uses Whatsapp (well, my Mom sends an SMS every now and then). I imagine that it would have been very difficult to sell a phone back in the 90s and 00s if it didn't send/receive SMS, I also imagine that is why the SMS 'app' is part of the phone's OS and the SMS server/network belong to the carrier. Why then, have the OS/phone makers and the carriers let the new SMS be owned and controlled by one company? This is no small thing, I bought the ZTE Open with FFOS to play around with HTML5 apps but will never use it as my main phone b/c it does not run Whatsapp! Now what?
$19 billion and whatsapp has 465 million users, and ICQ was purchased for $287 million had 12 million users at the time. $40 dollars per user vs $24 dollars per user.

Now if the goal were to acquire users. its far more likely that facebook would have a huge overlap in the number of users it has already and those on whatsapp. That means maybe a cost of acquisition at let's completely speculate $100 dollars per user(maybe more). It seems kind of silly. but then you think about their penetration in developing markets and network effects... I don't know I'm not zuck.

BUT on a complete tangent of my comment. I should start an Israeli chat company. they've had some big exits.
Coinbase is ACH, CampBX took personal Checks up until 3 weeks ago. My primary bank offers wires within the US but not internationally. Doing wires is just a headache you typically have to call the bank on the phone and it just doesn't give me a confident feeling in general.
This is awesome! Is there a uzbl command to view the page source?
In the early 1970's I implemented the driver for, and programs using, a digital videotape drive (IIRC, it incorporated an Ampex 2 inch reel-to-reel recorder, and used the sound track for positioning information). It used hardware Reed-Solomon error correction (IIRC, it was capable of correcting up to 11-bit errors). It stored a massive (for the time) database of scanned drawings for a number of aircraft maintenance manuals.
They don't. But they should. And that's part of the problem.
go 1.2 has preemptive scheduling http://golang.org/doc/go1.2#preemption
I hope this means PG will write more - PG's essays are why I got into startups (an increasingly common phenomenon), and while some of them are timeless, there are issues of the day that need constant tackling. Here's moar essays PG.
oh and the fact that whatsapp actually is very profitable
The points in this article sound great - until you look at the install base of Android vs Apple. I'm all for well reasoned logical arguements - but this isn't it.
TSA deserves Old Navy Lampoon
It's not like that in all countries, though. If the technology was inevitably reaching everybody, then guns would be readily available independently of cultural and political frame.
> 2014
> not zsh
What Entrepreneurs Should Learn From WhatsApp
I still remember back in 2000 when we still had AOL. I was eight or nine and I had my own aol account. You could have a dozen or so sub accounts on the main one. And because it was a "kids account" there were chat rooms for kids. Being the lovely kid that I was, of course I went into one and was like "how the f*ck are you all?"

Well the kid chat rooms were moderated and our entire AOL account was disabled. My mom had to call to have it re-enabled and of course they told her what I had said.

Fun times...
Jim, rest in peace brother ! you will be cherished forever along with all the greats. You have joined the ranks of the fallen heros of both our craft and otherwise. A life well lived, full of joy, full of love.... we will miss you.
If you worked at large tech company for that long and didn't make enough connections, learn enough, and/or save enough money to start a startup on your own...

I wouldn't invest in you either
To contextualize requires relativity.

ICQ in 1999 had about 45 million users. There were only 248 million internet users back in 1999. That's 18% of mostly international users.

AOL was optimistic. So much so this is the actual response when they beat the street during their earning reports.

"(ICQ is) growing like a weed," said AOL President Bob Pittman. "Monetizing it" will be "relatively easy," he added.

WhatsApp has 450 million users where there are 2.7 billion internet users. 16%. Of mostly international users. Where, again, monetizing it, should be relatively easy.

But then again, why does any of this matter?

Genie's out of the bottle. The game has changed. We're playing a game of scaling now. Less than a hundred dedicated folks can change the world.

That 19 billion is a clarion call to attract even more people to what it is most of us here have been doing for decades.

If there is to be a singularity moment for the generation that grew up remembering the difference between real life and internet life, we have arrived at the internet life.

10593577
> Do you think the world has changed such that a modern HyperCard is just not something people would use?

I think people would—its biggest strength is that tons of people could make their own "apps" using it, and I don't think that ability will ever become obsolete.
Sure. But then it remains the case that "human rights" is a good approximation, and I think we're not yet near enough the point that it ceases to be that consciousness raising is more important than effective communication - so I'd encourage you to at least accept (and possibly use) the term, except where explicitly marked as an aside.
> And I benefit from Sublimes super fast text rendering, it's nice fonts and colors, the way it integrates with my desktop environment, how fast it interacts with plugins that spawn popups and analyze my code.

The sentence quoted above sounds a lot like something out of a product promotion.
can't say I'm an expert but I think the key is the design approach, its like when someone tells you to open your eyes, you open it and see. you already interested in it now you should look sites like behance.net or search articles but it's more important to think about the designs. but dont worry it realy isn't that hard. one more thing: less is more, especially nowdays
Nice job. It's always hard to find a good guitar tuner app and this could become my go-to from now on :) (at least until I develop perfect pitch)
I wasn't trying to put a hard number on it; I said about half because that's the number I keep hearing repeated when discussions occur.

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block

Lots of other interesting charts there. In any case, it doesn't really matter as to the main point that exchanges don't do on block trading, the volume would be far too great for what the network can handle.
I don't think anyone was talking about a garden variety:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile

Some organisms can already handle the radiation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
The EU-only email thing is just a symptom of the broken worldview of some German politicians. They can't admit that they gambled away a lot of our freedom without even being aware of what their actions meant, so they engage in meaningless gestures to hopefully appease the lowly plebs.

If they were honest and serious, they'd just get out there, tell everybody to encrypt everything, change as many laws as possible to force all entities under their control to maintain and transfer data only encrypted and pump money into better crypto.

But as I said, if they were honest and serious...
RankAndFiled.com is like the SEC’s EDGAR database, but for humans
Who, other than VCs, actually care about how many folks use a given social network? As long as the people you care to read, and some smattering of other interesting people are on the network, total size doesn't matter.

Metafilter is quite successful, but also very, very small.
Are you sure there is such a big overlap between WhatsApp users and Facebook users?

The US is Facebook's biggest market but I would bet the US is no where near the top of WhatsApp's market list.
40979067. I don't even know how I remember. I haven't used ICQ for 15 years.
Relative times? Timezones? Neither of these concepts appear in my comment. My comment is concerned with "people's collective obsession with specific times" and this gem:

"Don't like getting up when it's dark? Get up later. Yes, that requires participation if you depend on others' schedules."

Modern civil society requires depending on other people; this is one of the big problems with division of labor. Imagine bringing your child to the hospital and having the nurse explain:

"Sorry Doctor Bob decided he wanted to get up a little later today. So your child will not receive the routine emergency care that he needs. Oh and you should probably rush home. this is can be a rough area. Sometimes the cops that work the night shift decide they want to be in bed before it gets too bright and the day shift cops are not real big on getting up when it is dark."

Collective obsession with coordination and organization is a hallmark of modern society. How am I going to schedule a trip if I am not sure when the plane will take off? How should I mitigate the risk that the pilot of my connecting flight decides to take off early so he can put his kids in bed when it gets dark?

I have no idea how timezones fit into EC2 billing. But I do know how specific times relate to billing: "Billing commences when Amazon EC2 initiates the boot sequence."[^1] That is a specific time, not a "We think it started sometime after 0200 and before 0330."

[^1]: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Billing
I enjoy stories like these. I read them throughout my high school years (late 90's, early 2000's).

Now I've been in industry for close to a decade, sometimes I feel like I missed the golden age of computing.
So concepts are now a thing here?

That one sucks btw; imagine this one: a small white aluminum cube with no visible openings that does everything you will ever need to do in your life, now that's cool.
I don't see how TF removing Android support has anything to do with them going away. I just this moment created a new TF app for iOS and got a new app token/etc. Where are you seeing this "won't allow new apps to be created"?
Damn. Now I wish I could remember mine too. I don't and I have no way to find it back.
However, if you given an appropriate weighting for The Telegraph and consider the influence of Betterige, any reasonable Bayesian analysis would conclude from this evidence that Luton can't be all that bad.
Have you seen http://xiki.org? It seems a good idea for the she'll to know what a directory is for example.
Haha, that's funny indeed. I hadn't looked at it that way :)
"Can we avoid a Surveillance State" - Very Unlikely.

At every level of the Government, the incentives are perversely aligned against this. The local, city, state & national Govts. all want MORE surveillance not less. They will conitnue to chip-away making it more & more difficult to remain private & anonymous.

The only force combating these pressures is un-organized & semi-organized "concerned" citizens (and a few watchdogs).

What will the outcome be?
I am really surprised people on HN do not know about YaCy [1]. It's p2p opensource and free search engine. So it is verifiable.

[1]. yacy.net
You should make it leave a line of where you have been.
And where is the guarantee that ten years from now people will be using Whatsapp?