skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let FB pump all the money into VR they want.
In 5 years we'll have the company that Oculus was supposed to be, and FB will have already cleared the land and paved the roads.
Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team. I don't think Google has much internal hardware production knowledge right now, aside from the knowledge they bought when they acquired Motorola. Before that, they mostly made things through hardware partners like HTC, Samsung, and LG. I think they produce the Chromecast internally, but it's not much fancier than a USB stick. I'm sure they are quickly learning, but Facebook is also already buying up hardware companies and they have been building their own custom servers for internal use for years.
V5031 Quad Channel 10 Gigabit Ethernet FPGA PCI Express Card
As an investor I would be overjoyed.
The grandparent was explaining why these laws exist in the first place. Yes, perhaps they should change to accommodate new modalities, but that doesn't happen quickly (nor should it.)
Two decades, even.
Be sure you save that great comment, Mr. CTO. That's why we're in Hacker News; the people who help us see where we're in need of improvement. (Thanks, @binxbolling!)

In regards to plan cheaper than our "Lite" plan, kindly keep in mind that we have hard costs. Scaling up to meet the needs of API customers, and also, recaculations on the nearly 2 million Hashtag Scans that our users reply on... recalculations on millions of hashtags as for their likelihood of leading to discovery, this take a lot of access. Further, we provide actual analytics that help RiteTaggers learn from their efforts. I don't believe you'll find anything nearly as cheap as our Pro plan - let alone the Lite plan - that does anything close to this. When you're in there and do some smart-tagged tweets from RiteTag, you'll see this in Stats and also My Top-performing tags (Tweet Composer). But do let me know @osakasaul if you still believe we're costly.
Yes, you are saying "these people should not have the same rights as these other people."

You can, and given your posting I am sure will, continue to represent otherwise. You are unconvincing, and somebody who votes, or donates money, in the method of your stated position is an asshole. Because making the perfect the enemy of the good and ignoring that you hurt people in the process is wrong.
Netbeans performance was for most of its history a step better than Eclipse. But I can recall a time when neither would run worth a damn and Visual Studio and Visual J++ was the best Java implementation and toolchain.

NetBeans also behaves like a GUI is supposed to. I wish the Android SDK was built on NetBeans. But with Google and Oracle being at loggerheads, it ain't going to happen.
Techcrunch says the deal was made in 5 days. Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469885
Big Words Are Fading, But Many People Still Love Them
I would tend to agree in spirit but, of course, no one wants to throw their money away, they get tricked into doing so. Government does have an interest in the livelihood of its citizenry.
Also, over-sharing to too broad an audience pollutes the feeds of those users with likely irrelevant info, making the entire property less appealing to those users. I don't think this has anything to do with altruism.
You're really paying for the packaging
Selling out, what are you even talking about.
I don't get the sentiment, those who feel they have been betrayed.

First Oculus gave out the perks they promised to deliver, haven't they? That's the whole deal with backers. You back a project and you should receive the promised perk in return.

Another way to look at backer is to think of them as your first set of customers. I don't see why Oculus should return equity even if KS allows them to do so.

If the option was "give us $10,000 and you get 0.1% of the equity then would we still have this discussion. Obviously not. But the contract these backers signed up for was just the perk.
> The supreme court has equated financial contribution with speech, and many of us agree with that position.

I think this is the root issue here. SCOTUS declared by fiat that financial contribution is speech. According to our law, it is now.

The people do not see that the same way. Giving lip service is speech, while money is altogether something different. What it is, I do not know.

And it seems much more akin to "buying laws", which I think many people find something terribly wrong in our government today.
> "Google has 3 things [relevant to social] that Facebook does not: Email, Youtube, and Glass."

Facebook also doesn't have their own GAE or self-driving car program, but those aren't particularly relevant to Facebook's core business.
I agree, that trust is the real stumbling block for any cloud service today. When I read, that MS is just searching the eMail accounts of its customers, with some thin explanation, than the question arises, what will be with other (sensitive) data I store in any cloud service. Can anyone be trusted, or will I find today or tomorrow some obscure statement in the terms, that is a loophole to just inspect my information at will.

How can Google, MS or the other players know, that the customers don't infringe on their patents? Don't they have the right to inspect? (trust is good, prove is better ...) Or does just a lazy sysadmin sell my data in this moment to the competition?

I also wonder, if the price drops now are a reaction to a big trust-drop (also because of Snowden) by the users ...

I think, cloud based services are a good idea, but until such issues are addressed, I would really recommend to think twice, which data can go cloud.
>The OS reserves 32MB for itself, which leaves you with a bigger working set than a bottom-shelf Android phone. =) I get what you're saying, but I don't think anybody's going back to the halcyon days of fewer megabytes than I've got fingers.

Ok, 96 megabytes. When you set aside RAM for everything else in a 3D game (the main binary, sound/mesh/texture caches, etc) there's not a whole lot of space left for a scripting language's heap, especially when you consider that most garbage collectors require that the heap be significantly larger than the working set in order to achieve reasonable performance. Again, not saying Lua wouldn't work just fine (any 3DS devs in the audience that would care to comment?), just that it's by no means impossible to bump against that limit. For comparison, here are the slides to a 2010 presentation that demonstrates how devs were having real performance problems with (PUC-Rio, not Mike Pall) Lua on the 360 and PS3:

http://www.slideshare.net/hughreynolds/optimizing-lua-for-co...

>It felt like something I'd recommend to a CS student, tbh. Maybe that's just me.

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if the average programmer is actually working below the level of what we expect a CS student to know /me ducks
Apple's UI Chief, Greg Christie, Recounts Development of Original iPhone
Then why aren't there limits on lottery ticket purchases, or casino gambling, or making highly-leveraged real-estate purchases, or buying any number of other investments (including public stocks and options) that can send any initial amount of money to zero, quite rapidly?

It's an archaic set of rules, from a dumber era, and totally out-of-sync with what people are capable of, and what real risks to "all of their wealth" exist today.
He sounds pretty happy about it:

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631990560903169

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631430533246976
I think it will be more mainstream and captivating and thus effective than SecondLife. For one thing, you will be invited to join existing friends rather than jump in and deal with randoms.
I'm finding things to the left of things that are cheaper, eg Integral Neon 32Gb (29.18) left of Centon Datastick Pro 64 (29.97)?
And yet most of them still have accounts, the irony.
Well you can't have it both ways. If you put your money in on kickstarter and expect to get a product in return, you have bought the product. You didn't invest.

Of course, how much people who put money into things on kickstarter expect to get a product versus how much risk they are expecting to take is an open question.
> he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus.

Let's wait a while before making such bold statements, shall we? It may have been the best thing that could happen to Instagram, but decent technology (good enough to attract John Carmack) might have had a brighter future without a new owner with possibly different interests.
I wonder what Facebook wants out of VR. I'm sure they're not counting on it to propel Farmville 2.0 (at least I hope not).

Perhaps they feel that VR will be a new interface paradigm - The mouse/Keyboard or the touchscreen of the 2020s. Being the first one to define this paradigm would give Facebook a huge advantage in the next fight for computing and communication mindshare - scary I know. It sounds a little off right now, but imagine if the VR set becomes more mobile and easier to put on and take off... or why even take it off. You could interface with data in three dimensions or communicate with people as if they were right there next to you. I think this is a much longer play for Facebook than anyone gives them credit for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_API

Given that it was a disk operating system it's no surprise that the bulk of the services are disk/filesystem-related, but it also has ones for I/O, memory, timing, and processes.
My distinction: you're a cofounder if you worked at any point in time for nothing but equity.
Notch cancels Minecraft Oculus Rift deal: "Facebook creeps me out"
Introducing the OCHO Smart Key Tray
I agree with your reasoning that arbitrary advantages could be viewed as discrimination. I'd argue though that in those cases the goal is to cancel out disadvantages (directly or inderectly) directly related to inherent parts of a person (sex,handicap,race) or are benefits that a person can generally choose to acquire (old age,veteran,handicap;) ).

In the case of maternity leave it cancels out the propensity to fire/not hire a woman because she can get pregnant and is likely to be required to raise the kid for the first few months. Native cards to reduce inherent inequality produced by past events. Handicap to allow the handicapped to function to a level similiar to the non handicapped.
Were as age benefits in theory apply to anyone who doesn't croak and presumably if they so desired. Veterans choose to serve the country and are compensated by society at large, admittedly you could argue not all people can join the military so fair point there. Food stamps, just lose all your money.

So onto gay marriage. Marriage is both a legal construct and a religious construct but the government can only recognize the legal part (seperation of church and state). Now the government is currently not recognizing that the couple can be together based on the sex of the partners which is something they can't change (reasonably(you could argue for separate drinking fountains on the basis that skin colour can be medically altered if you think this is reasonable)), you can argue that the marriage is for reproduction but sterile couples can get married, you could argue the child is adversely affected this has been shown not to be the case, you could argue friends will cheat the system but that can already be the case, the issue is the government has no reason to grant the various special right (tax,visitation laws, adoption) to a couple based on the sex of the people in the couple.

The key to that argument is that the government can't use the religious part of marriage as a basis for their decision. It's also worth noting that even if the government allows gay marriage that only guarantees you can get married in a courthouse, nothing about churches would be guaranteed (or in theory enforceable if they decided to say you could).
Kickstarting Open Source and Web Projects with Crowdfunding
First ever physical copy of a programming book I've bought, lets's hope it's worthwhile.
Non-gays are absolutely a protected class. Sexual orientation is what's protected, not a particular orientation.

A business that discriminates against straight people is just as liable under the law as a business that discriminates against gay people. (This is not, as I understand it, currently illegal under federal law. Many states outlaw it, though.)

The problem is that you see Prop 8 as symmetrical, but it is not. Prop 8 is an attempt to remove rights from a group of people. Opposing prop 8 is not an attempt to remove rights from other people, but rather to grant them to everyone.

The proper analogy would be a hypothetical Prop 88 which seeks to ban straight marriage while allowing gay marriage. Ignoring the complete impossibility of such a thing ever going anywhere, donating money to support the passage of such a proposition would rightfully attract a great deal of negative attention.
Astute.io
What if Big Brother isn’t so bad after all?
The only hate that is being displayed here is by the
anti-religious groups and individuals.

Aren't you forgetting the people trying to implement state-sponsored discrimination.

God cannot be proven or dis-proven via science. So how
do atheists know they are really correct? how do
religious people? At least the religious people have
a basis that does not rely on unexplained things. A God
and a creation are certainly a more plausible and simple
explanation to our existence then any offered by atheists.

Insane presuppositions aside. The existence of God has nothing to do with equal rights under state laws. Prop 8 wasn't a referendum on whether or not God exists, it was a vote by a 'tyrannical majority' to strip the rights of the minority.

So who are the real bigots here?

The people who try to deny rights to others.

Play hard against the opposition, but when they fall
down (when they are in need of help), show them kindness,
help them up and continue the competition.

Or just don't actively work to harm other people, that will go much further.
A $2B deal over five days ... sure. A 100K funding takes at least 2months.
And, check this > http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wf6mg/so_no_way_to_...
See, for example: http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2013/02/27/our-incredible...
Back in the day it was a very promising game.

I distinctly remember sitting in a computer lab at Uni watching the dev demo for Halo on a Mac and daydreaming about buying one, specifically to play this game in 1999-ish
> "A person or vehicle appears as a pixel, essentially a moving dot on the screen."

> "I was able to watch several killings caught on camera as they unfolded: ... a victim toppling to the ground"

It can't be both ways.
So equality is not a "basic huma right"?
Larry Osterman (a long time MS engineer) wrote about this at some length here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/06/24/432...
Mozilla's low-overhead open source replay debugger
There are literally hundreds of product design firms that could have helped them with this that you never hear about, that are well versed in bringing mass produced technology products to market.

Facebook doesn't have any of that: all it has is money, which I am certain that Oculus wouldn't have any trouble raising on its own.

Source: a family member works for one, and is in China right now, producing headphones for Dr. Dre.
I don't see the fit here. I get Microsoft buying the Kinect platform for Xbox. Instantly plug it into games, you have an incredible game option, and additional features get built down the line.

Seems like the first stop for a VR headset would be with an existing top-tier game console manufacturer. for the sole reason that they already have a library of material, most of which is an immersive world you navigate with a joystick, which would benefit greatly from a headset. additional use cases down the line.
Sony was launching their own, so nintendo or microsoft would make sense.

for facebook - most facebook games are simple, like farmville - not really benefitting from a VR helmet. how do i interact with my friends in a VR helmet if they are wearing one too? neither face is actually visible - step down from facetime, hangouts etc. photo immersion perhaps?

I guess i will be one of the stunned outsiders when i see what amazing use case facebook has for this.
Don't be ridiculous. That's not how it works. Every dollar, and then some, needed to be spent on the headsets. Oculus wasn't going to give away 10% of the company in exchange for negative dollars.

If the SEC does allow equity via crowdfunding you'd have to be relatively insane to take them up on the offer. It just doesn't make sense.
Issue date is not the only relevant date - patents get extensions and expand in scope. I would imagine the FAT patent that Microsoft uses to get some revenue from every SD card sold comes from the dawn of personal computing.
Except it will most likely vest over a period of a few years as opposed to getting the full 1% upfront. I don't think he will be able to quit his job now and walk away with the cash - he will most likely need to remain employed at FB until it all vests.
Oculus was the future of gaming. Now it’s the future of Facebook.
I just can't see how Facebook is creepier than anything else

For one, there's no accounting for taste, and two, why can't it just be creepy along with the other creepy things out there, and not even bother with ranking them? It's just as easy to avoid creepy companies, period.
John Carmack: Facebook offers the 'Walmart experience of gaming' (2011)
Gogs – a Self Hosted Git Service in the Go
I'm pretty sure Valve can make their own VR headset if they want to -- didn't Sony do just that with Project Morpheus?

There's also Avegant; their focus is different but the tech seems awesome.
Do you have a link for that? I would be super excited to see them get back on top of their OpenCL support. They have been a 1.1 for a long while now.
Tech Book Face Off: Learn Ruby on Rails Vs. Crafting Rails 4 Applications
Well, for lottery tickets and casino gambling, people understand it's gambling (a game of chance). If someone came up to you and said "Give me $100K and I'll double it by the end of the year by gambling" nearly everyone will think "that's high risk!".

You can lose all your money doing real-estate deals or buying stocks, but those are regulated financial activities. Basically the gov't is saying "I don't want just anyone buying a private company, but I'm OK with allowing them to purchase equity in a public company because those companies are forced to be transparent."

Note: I'm not defending the law, just trying to explain the rationale for it.
Congratulations, Clever! Though I am building a competing SaaS which approaches/solves things a bit differently (e.g. purely functional, event stream processing based, simple DSLs as lenses on said streams to apply business rules, ability to push into SISs like IC, non-deterministic client endpoints with lazy eval (yay, scalaz-stream), execution sharding, dynamic horizontal scaling via actors, ability to have district data never leave their DCs, etc), it is nice to see progressive companies in this realm have success and ultimately make a difference in student outcomes. You are a much needed breathe of fresh air in education. Here is to hoping that in the future you branch out and solve more problems (e.g. cross-system analytics seems like a possible next step with all that juicy data linked) :)
Neil Gaiman's comic book 'Sandman' returns after 25 years
While there are situations where the exercising of speech in that manner can cause harm (e.g. very large contributions to politicians), I believe that harm is outweighed by the good. No on can outlaw me donating to the EFF, or other charitable organizations, which would most certainly happen when it suits the lawmakers' purposes, given that it is enshrined as speech and protected by the 1st amendment. Just like the first amendment protects hateful speech, it also protects beneficial and helpful speech. Perhaps you're not thinking of Buckley v. Valeo, but instead of Citizens United, that countered that speech could not be restricted because it was done by a corporation. I am not venturing into that territory here.

There is almost always some harm done by liberty, that is the pain of humanity. There is much further harm done when we restrict liberty to protect the senses. That is my opinion, and I am as surely unlikely to be swayed from it as you are yours.
You're assuming every backer paid 300. Some donated more, some paid less.
That is a very strong point I had not considered. Facebook does not have a smooth relationship with developers. Oculus requires involvement from the developers in order to further develop their product. I reason the Facebook culture of move fast-break things (but don't document it too well) might hurt Oculus.

Plus, I saw Oculus as a technology to build upon. I was already planning to use it with robotics. Now, its merely a pawn in Facebook's game.
How about some downloadable sample apps I can build?
In a perfect world, it would make sense to let people tell everyone "buyer beware".

However in reality, some people do need protecting and the easiest way to do it is to "protect" everyone.
Long-time Appengine developer here. I'm glad that GCE is here now, because a lot of the criticism of GAE came down to people expecting infrastructure (and infrastructure prices) instead of a platform. A massively and seamlessly scalable platform.

Which brings me to my point: yes, GAE does have a steeper learning curve, but almost all of that is due to scalability constraints. If you think you will ever need to scale past one server, it's well worth the initial pain.

Or put another way, you get to choose between a small development learning curve at the start for a pretty scary sysadmin learning curve when you need to scale your app.
I don't understand all the hate towards Facebook. If this was Google, we would all be bending down to thank the Holy Non-Evil Tech Company for its gracious acquisition.
British firm Ovivo Mobile shuts down without warning
Votes are private. Donations are public. That's a material difference.

It's the public support that's really got people frosted. That's what makes it part of the public persona that you can't just leave at the door when you come to work.

Provided your power over others is limited, it's tolerable. But when people's careers are in your hands, a public history of open, gender-based discrimination really undermines the level of trust and goodwill that leadership positions require.
That doesn't mean the site doesn't need a sustainable business model.
I think that is just a sign of the times and has nothing to do with any real fundamental differences.

Hackers HATED MSFT only a decade ago - and many still do - and they do just as much shady crap as facebook does.

The whole hate here is irrational in my opinion.
I just going to start using a transpiler to not feel so uncomfortable and dirty inside when i work in a web project :).
> Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team.

Well I have worked in companies making physical goods (shipping millions every year), and you just don't buy a team from one day to another. It's not just about production, it's about supply chain, it's about quality management and quality assurance, regulations for sale in different countries/states, market research, product qualification to improve the design, actual customer support, vendors, distribution, etc...

It's a whole new area of skills/functions you don't have, and that does not mix very well with a software-only company mentality. I think it's going to be very tough for them to make something solid with Facebook.

EDIT: They would have been better prepared for scaling with a company like Apple (whose main business is already making hardware), Microsoft or Google for that matter. Many people say Valve could have been a good choice, but Valve has said several times they don't want to go into the hardware business (and won't make Steam boxes themselves).