skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, I wouldn't hold my breath for an electron microscope or portable DNA sequencer in the next iPhone upgrade... There are limitations to technology. Apple just hires top-end engineers and designers and forces them to work together to meet tight requirements, but they still need to be based in reality.
I've lost count of the times my wife has said:
"I never said that..."
And I thought,
"Damn, I wish I had recorded that conversation... if only there was a device..."
"[W]hen we authenticate ourselves with Google, Yahoo, Verisign or whoever our Identity Provider of choice is, that website will pass a different, unique URL to the government site we're logging in to."

Sounds like Google, Yahoo, Verisign or whoever [sic] will have a lot of information about which government agencies you interact with and how often.
No, I still think it makes sense when separating knowledge as the product (consultants) and knowledge of the product (I'm selling you a coin-toss, but you think I actually know stuff). E.g. an IT-consultant who clams he knows everything about computers, but really just finished "PHP and MySQL for Dummies" might be a scammer -- and one I suspect many people here has spend some time cleaning up after at one point or another.
I-Swarm Micro Robots are Up and Running
News? The review is 5 years old.
this site just ended up in my ban-list.
I would consider a business a scam when you are knowingly misrepresenting your product. In the baby prediction business, part of the plan involves putting the user through a survey of irrelevant questions, to give the impression that you are somehow using this information to provide an informed prediction about the gender of the baby.

If, on the other hand, you simply said "Pay me $50 and I'll guess if your baby is a boy or a girl" It wouldn't be a scam, nor would anyone pay for it.

To put it more simply, if the customer handing over money depends on them believing something that isn't true, it's a scam.
I can't imagine Apple is so dumb as to think that the current situation is a desirable one, or that a wholly artificial segmentation like that would fly with customers.

No-one with a Touch is going to get a Nano for the camera. They'll just keep using their crappy phone or get a Flip.

Not having the video camera in the Touch is a huge missed opportunity, whose net result is lower hardware sales, period.
Polyroids, a retro space game from SGI times now ported to canvas
> The Radio seems to have come out of nowhere- So far as I know, the iPhone/touch don't have them.

Not necessarily. It was a much-demanded feature for the iPod for a while, though there isn't much customer pressure nowadays. On the other hand, both my Sansa Fuze and my Nokia 5310 have FM tuners in them... Maybe they felt 'peer' pressure to include an FM tuner since there are a lot of other devices out there that do.
i guess both, the lack of data and small bugs are due to the fact that it's a fairly young project. but i really like the ideas behind it, and when they get the API done, i'm curios what people will start to build on it.
Websites 'breaking consumer laws'
"The Radio seems to have come out of nowhere--So far as I know, the iPhone/touch don't have them"

No, but the Zune player has long had FM radio, so best to dominate the Microsoft competitor in all dimensions.

BTW, FM is very convenient if you have a dedicated old computer streaming internet radio and connect it to a small-commercial-type FM transmitter; you can then get FM reception of internet radio over all of even a large property, automatically in time-sync, using existing audio equipment and "portable radios" including the new Nano. (This is legal in the US, but not in all countries.)
I don't know about anything Emacs internals but what a strange remark: "I recently wanted to change how `M-x' works. The command behind it is called `execute-extended-command'. It is written in C. This is disappointing for my desires to tinker, but not all together surprising either. It is a pretty central piece of the Emacs infrastructure."

It being a central piece of infrastructure I would expect it to be written in a higher level language for better maintainability.
Agregar Estudiante
The problem with outsourcing is all the unknowns, language barriers, weird stuff, and the fact it can be awkward and uncomfortable and its harder to tell if anyone is gonna take advantage of you or not. Having said that, if you've done it, and earned your chops its a kick ass way to make stuff. BUT if you're starting out i'd do 2 things, one go local, go intern, and figure out that cost. Two look for a person who's done outsorucing to help you manage the project, you almost need them and their expertise more than just the coder on the outsourcing end. That guy/gal with lots of experiencing outsourcing is more valuable then anything- they know to get stuff done and under budget.

In the past 8 months I've made 11 things i would of never even begin to know how to make and would of cost me 10-20k if i did them with local/national talent. Theres just no way i could afford that.

My learnings from outsourcing.

An outsourcing manager is critical. This frees you up to focus on what you should be doing, using that time/money wisely into making something, hopefully profitable. Set expectations accordingly. Do not expect it to be perfect. Iterate often. Be explicit on what you want the experience to be of whatever you are making. Mockup everything, story board the experience of it, give them as many visuals as possible, point them to sites and say like that, never ever just give them specs in a text file, otherwise you are set for an adventure in waste.

Challenge yourself, your manager and whoever you hire to do it less. Document your code, back it up, and keep going.
It's a step in the right direction. But I'm still wanting to use my own domain for my openid. The common attacks on open id (phishing, man in the middle when authenticating, etc) aren't mitigated by limiting the number of providers. I'd rather they come up with a security standard for openID providers then white list a few.
> The very omission of the camera from the Ipod touch makes me wonder what their design team was thinking.

> A camera on the touch would have probably [...] disrupted Apple's own iphone line.

I think that you answered you own question.
The misattribution, forwarding, and repurposing is a great story. The Wikipedia article includes a link to the original Chicago Tribune column:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen
Sorry but this is full of holes.
"Imagine if the Dalai Lama was teaching your 30 hour class on Buddhism or Michael Chabon was teaching you creative writing, and Michael Beschloss taught you American History. Imagine if this caliber of teachers was available online"
People of this caliber DO teach, and they teach at GOOD schools, not phoenix u.

Also, if the Ivy League started a low-cost online option, it wouldn't be the same. As it's been said many times, one of the reasons these schools are so good is that they are a meeting place for a. the rich and well connected and b. the extremely bright
NSA intercepts used to convict liquid bombers
Mildly amusing that there's one commentary sentence in the whole thing and that it isn't even justified.
Newly Released Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Images
There are a number of easy-to-make errors with digest schemes that allow attackers to make constrained modifications to documents without breaking the digest.

Like what? I'm curious.
intro: the missing link "User experience designer"

Oh shit another title; that those of us that work at small companies - will have to explain why we don't need.

*looks like a solution looking for a problem.
Interesting post. Explains why they may not put ads against their search page. People will think:

"okay, is this the best thing they can think of"

or

"do they need the money?"

or, as the article says:

"whatever they are making, that's about all they'll make unless they grow more"
Not really. Take any investment newsletter, fortune teller, economist or "anyone else who tries to predict the future" and ask them that same question, "What gender will my baby be?" The worst success rate any of them can have is the success rate of random guessing.
I'm impressed in principle, but I'll believe it when I see an article in The NY Times, The Washington Post, or The Economist. That those reporters have chosen to ignore it gives me cause for concern.
I don't think online education will have a significant impact on major universities. However, there are a lot of colleges and universities that probably shouldn't exist. I can think of two types:

1. State schools that became 'universities' in the past 30 years but were previously 'teachers colleges' 'nursing colleges' and other specialized tertiary educational institutions for specific careers.

Seriously, does a big state like Illinois need 12 different business colleges, 12 different English departments, 12 different chemistry departments? Or how about Idaho, population 1.5 million with its 3 state universities and 5 state colleges. Really?

No - a lot of 'universities' only got that appellation because administrators lobbied state legislatures really hard for more money if they created the appearance that they'd be a 'world class' institution. They're not. The quality of education at many of these schools, excepting a handful of departments or colleges where they've really invested heavily, just isn't that different from what you could get in an online program. It'd be different if the University of Northern Iowa went back to being the Iowa State Teachers College - Iowa needs teachers! It probably doesn't need three different universities graduating International Studies majors.

2. Small standalone private colleges founded in earlier periods that don't really have a particular rationale for existing anymore.

Back in the 1800s, the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church needed to have a college that would be attended primarily by Methodist Episcopalians who wanted to be taught by other Methodist Episcopalians. Now, what is it exactly that distinguishes Goucher as an institution from any of the dozens of other tiny private colleges dotting our nation's landscape? Do their degrees carry much weight?

They're expensive, and up in the northeast it seems like most of them are for well-to-do suburban kids who couldn't get into the Ivy League and don't want to study with the state school rabble they've been looking down on most of their lives. What's more, it seems like a lot of them spend more time focusing on holding onto real estate than they do investing in research and academia that makes our nation better.

So I think major state research universities, commuter colleges in big cities, and the private university giants will do fine, and probably make even more money from whatever happens online. But if you're giving Swarthmore $50k a year, or Western Michigan $20k, you literally get what you pay for.
It is a good strategy and I have used it also with some success. However in most cases it is a deeply frustrating experience, mainly due to communication.

Any software application (unless you wake up one morning and you can write a perfect spec for it), is a deeply iterative process. As you develop you tweak and tweak and refactor and refactor. Actually any Development goes through such a process.

You will be better off by :

(01) Building up your skills so you can manage the process better

(02) Finding a developer in your own area, where you can communicate on a one to one basis.

Personally I always try to outsource the design. However, it took me a long time to find the right people and I pay top dollar for it. At the end of the day, it is worth it.
I don't get the comment feeling sorry for the technicians at this machine's shortcomings. It's good that Intel etc didn't help this power hungry superpower to take over the world as they wanted to.
How should I buy a domain name with equity?
I just reached an agreement with a domain owner to purchase a domain for my startup via equity (the company is an LLC). Does anyone have any documents or ideas that I can use to draw up a contract?
So If we reduce the scope of Pickle's goals then the current Pickle that meets its current goals is to strong, and could be reduced.
The tone seems tongue-in-cheek to me. The page is a humorous parody of get rich quick sites. The product itself is real and, if it gives somebody a quick way to get up and running exploring the basics of language, it's likely worth the $40.
Is this different from how the human mind "invents" the color magenta?
I would have thought the CFL ballast would run in the kHz range, not 50-60 Hz.

The DMM appears to be reading voltage, and its input is probably pretty high impedance, so it may very well be sensitive to the hash from the ballast (the meter's input protection circuits may be rectifying the AC).

I'm thinking hoax.
Wow:

> For this feature, the fully denormalized Cassandra dataset weighs in at 3 terabytes and 76 billion columns.
They were probably thinking that the Nano is still the top selling iPod, and that continuing to add features allows them to keep the price (and margins) up. It's obvious that adding a camera does add some kind of value, given how disappointed people are that the Touch did not get that added value.
No, it's incorrect.

Your morality is subjective and therefore not applicable to a business transaction between to other parties. This is where your thinking fails.

A business transaction is an exchange of money for something of value. The "value" is only determined by the buyer (where the price is non-negotiable). If the buyer considers the product valuable, then the transaction is legitimate. This is why it's legal to sell $100 track pants and call them "yoga wear". The buyer is in agreement that the track pants are worth $100.

You seem to think that there is an ultimate morality that can govern the perception of value, which there is not. Your bargain is easily my rip-off. It's fundamental market theory.

The only time you can call a business transaction a "scam" is when the value delivered is not what was agreed to prior to the event. So, if I tell you I will fix your roof for $50,000, and after I do this it leaks like a sieve, you have a case that I wasn't honest in living up to my end of the bargain, or have not fully lived up to my previous agreement.

If I promise to sell you mythical cherries that make every woman you meet fall in love with you, and you, in sound mind, believe that these cherries work as advertised I am not a scammer.

The ability to exploit ignorance of all shapes and sizes is a fundamental concept of the operation of a free market. I know that this can sound disturbing, but it is true. If I can't benefit from your lack of something, I can never create value for anyone.

When pg says "create something of value" he is really saying "create something somebody values". His clearer definition of the statement is only a caveat - that is, if you think something is valuable, chances are a lot of other people do to. That doesn't mean however that there are a lot of people out there that perceive value in things that you do not.
This is a joke. All of these CoCom banned clones were all made like "a hybrid germanium/silicon discrete component transistor system emulating IC". Actually one board full of components was emulating just one IC. Imagine how big they were, how much power it consumed. The big noisy fans so loud you cannot sit in the room and work. The speed - how much speed you can get from a discrete component emulation of an IC?

The process worked like this: some Eastern European country
"institute" working as a front for a soviet "institute" was ordering a components needed to assemble one computer or luckily got an assembled computer via diplomatic sources.
The applications and compilers delivered via other independent "sources" like visiting professors in California.

Then the hardware was reverse engineered. Because there were not existing IC production - one IC has to be emulated by one board. Then after months if it worked, the applications, compilers were cyrilized and delivered to the big eastern country. The big eastern country then was able prove you know what.

This is the way it worked. It was hardly a threat to the West. Almost no original work actually.
I definitely agree...I definitely had a lot of trial and error with offshore teams.

Before I found the right ones in the Philippines, I worked with programmers and designers in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Ukraine, Belarus, India, Canada, Ireland, and Russia.

The most talented OO PHP programmer I have ever worked with was from Belarus, but it was nearly impossible to pay him because the government makes the recipient sign an affidavit that the money is coming from a blood relative. In the end I had to wire the money to Latvia and he could withdraw it using an ATM card in Belarus.

I've found that some of the best programmers (particularly for .NET) are in Eastern Europe, but the English is not so great. Latin America is great if you speak Spanish (like I do) because the time zone is perfect for the US. Same with the Caribbean for timezone, but their infrastructure isn't the greatest, especially with hurricanes. The hurricanes are a problem in the Philippines, it's a risk worth taking if you have a backup team in another country.
Common Lisp was a joint effort to make a good, portable, featureful Lisp specification. All the parties you mentioned were on the ANSI standard panel, hence "Common" and hence "Lisp".

Scheme was never a part of that effort and indeed it shouldn't have been, as it is a standalone language with its objectives and different semantics. It also at no point was ever called LISP, it was Scheme from the very first memo. It is extremely uncommon to Schemer to refer to his code as "I programmed it in Lisp", there is certainly its own, formed identity among the users.

LISP itself stems from original McCarthy implementation; its name bears the legacy of 7-bit teletypes of the day. But this point is well elaborated in the write-up we discuss.
I was going to mention this but I decided it wasn't really necessary to make my point. I was just trying to show that no matter how hard certain people push real-time it usually still comes down to polling in a desktop situation. I think people have gotten it into their minds that 15-60 minutes delayed isn't real-time while 1-15 minutes is.

But I agree that most places will throttle you if you request their feed too often, so how are they going to feel when every one of their subscribers requests their feed within the same minute every time they make an update? I guess that's the big question.
That's pretty much it, it got bored and made YouTube, filling it with distracting videos so it would have something to do
I must say I liked the article itself but the presentation you linked a lot better. It's definately a good, detailed explanation of A/B testing, including all it's gotcha's, metrics etc. :)
The suggestion that you made a mistake. It may take a failure to see the mistake.
I, for one, enjoyed the humor of the parodying of get rich quick sites. If need be you could put a disclaimer, for those that don't detect the humor in the hyperbole, that the book is a playful introduction rather than a comprehensive tome.
How To Make Life Suck Less (While Making Scalable Systems)
It's useful!
So basically... If there is no "insurance" so that mail a notarized copy of the birth certificate is enough to get a refund, you will never hit the law because the failure to provide an accurate prediction warrants the full refund.

If people get really rowdy, refund anyways. Shoot even if it's late refund. I'd be super lenient with it, you will make plenty of money.
Ahh. Sorry, that was a bit confusing. I meant to imply that a test would be an interesting question but not a substitute for experience or a degree.

Re certs, there are powerful political interests working to preserve or extend the status quo. It is interesting that most states have gradually increased the requirement for instruction from accredited institutions for professional licenses like law (Bar) and accounting (CPA).

Regardless of its PV, a degree is far more important for entry level jobs where there are tons of applicants and little experience between the candidates. I agree that other criteria become more important as a person gains experience and as the position increases in importance.

Of course an exception to this rule is, surprise, higher education.
It seems unlikely that adding a camera to a non-phone would somehow disrupt sales for a phone. Particularly when the phone is billed primarily as an all-in-wonder convergence device.

A camera on an ipod touch doesn't somehow remove the flip-phone from your pocket. And leaving it off isn't going to do much to convince people looking at something sold primarily as having 'no contract' to instead get a phone with a relatively steep contract.

I bet the guys at Pure Digital let out a huge sigh when Norah Jones took the stage.
Exactly my point- It's like they went to the box of "What have people been asking for", rather than working on a unified strategy through all of the iPod devices.

The "Good, Better, Best" strategy is massively broken here..
Do I want HD space? Class.
Do I want Video? iPhone or Nano
Do I want Photos? iPhone
Do I want cheap? Shuffle
Do I want Apps, but cheap? iPod Touch

We're stuck with a features grid, not a clear progression.
"This product is intended for entertainment purposes only."

There's a reason for that little line.
Welcome to Hacker News, billyj209. You might want to prefix the title with "Ask HN:", otherwise those readers just glancing over the newest articles page won't know that you're actually asking for advice.

I'd say your best bet is to contact a lawyer (if you can't afford one, perhaps you have a friend in law school, or your parents know a lawyer that owes them a quick favor). You want to make sure that you cover all the "edge cases", like:

- What happens to the domain if the startup goes bust?
- Will control of the domain be transferred away from the current owner? If so will it be transferred to you personally, or to the company?
A/B Testing works fantastically for small, iterative, changes. It is not the correct tool for assessing sweeping design changes, however. Some sort of a focus group or large survey probably makes more sense for tracking something this big (which may cause substantial lateral shifts in user behaviour).
And they can also spoof you since they control their domain and know what your openid is.
If you're a startup, what you really want is people who can do all of the above. And even better if that person is you.
Counting Cycles of a Permutation in Parallel
I think Ars is in a different situation, especially w.r.t. hardware articles. By the time the content is freed ad-supported surfers have already read about the shiny new toys elsewhere. Time is less critical for longer LWN articles, imo.
Here is a solution to a problem which I could probably have never ever thought of by myself

I'm not sure why you suppose you could never have thought of it, but I think it is much more likely that you would have thought of it, given a different background and history. Most likely, that history would involve an example of the same sort of problem being solved in the same sort of way.

Once you've seen solutions, they seem easy. So easy in fact, that it leads you to wonder why it took until, say, 1700 AD before someone came up with it. Much of present day knowledge has only existed for a few centuries and many 'obvious' things have been missed by millenia of great minds. The lesson from that is: we don't learn by being original or by having revelations: we learn by example and by abstraction from those examples. This is exactly such an example: you weren't supposed to have been able to think of it yourself. It's an example that shows you the way, that teaches you, that enables you to, maybe some day in the future, be original or have a revelation.
Is the domain name worth that much in the age of search engines?