skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If I'd have heard somebody saying that before I got an iPhone, I'd have thought they were crazy.

I reach for my iPhone (and it's not a long reach, since it's always in my pocket) for >80% of the things for which I used to reach for my MacBook. I have essentially zero desire for a netbook because of it. (Yes, yes, I know that's not the case for everyone. But I can't imagine a usage in my life where either my iPhone or my MacBook isn't a far better fit than a netbook.)
> And if the programmers at Microsoft have any strength left at all, they are high-fiving.

I can picture these wonderful high-5s ;)
User Experience Practices of YouTube, Nokia, Microsoft and Apple
This is an abuse of the legal system. If you don't want pictures taken on your private property, don't allow cameras in.

I doubt their argument would hold up under any legal scrutiny.
Presumably, he means that netbook sales would cannibalize high end laptop sales

But isn't that exactly what's happening to all the PC manufacturers? Netbooks are growing at a stunning clip -- but when you subtract them from laptop sales, it looks an awful lot like their growth is coming at the direct expense of conventional laptop sales.
Ross Anderson's Security Engineering is an excellent introductory book. Highly readable, and broad but not very deep. The first edition is free online (and is still a perfectly resource; the second edition has a few added chapters):

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html
you're right i'm fixing that bug now...it looks like price changes do not propagate to all servers at once so the load balancer is causing different prices to come back if you reload an app's page right after a price change happens
Yay Skynet..!
That's an excellent point. I can't believe that x86 netbooks will ever be able to outperform RISC-ier ISAs, not in the near future, and NEVER on battery life.

Since netbooks don't really need to do much vector processing or too much FP stuff in general, a RISC-ier ISA is a totally acceptable alternative. A preferable one, should applications be easily portable to it. (That's key. We don't want yet ANOTHER OS X.)
Cool.

For comparison's sake, this is very similar to another website that's been around for a few years, Carbonmade (http://carbonmade.com). Carbonmade is a bit broader than just web design, but it's likewise beautifully designed and it's also a lot cheaper ($12/month for a pro account).

I don't mean to take away anything from this particular announcement or product, but I think it's useful to consider existing products as well in the contexts of discussions like this one.

(FWIW I have no affiliation whatsoever with Carbonmade.)
Adds too much of a hassle for too small a problem to be worth it.
"Can someone estimate the probability of something like that happening spontaneously?"

With a lot of handwaving ...

----

If everything goes perfectly (each random mutation flips the right nucleotide), you would need at least 77.5 years to get alcohol-production-capable RNA in influenza virus solely by spontaneous mutations.

----

Details:

Checking one possible ethanol fermentation pathway [1]: at minimum you would need to synthesize two enzymes - pyruvate decarboxylase (1,691 base pairs [2]) and alcohol dehydrogenase (1,046 base pairs [3]).

Influenza A has 13,558 base pairs [4] and mutates at about 0.0026 mutations per site per year [5] (so you get about 35 changed nucleotides per year).

Putting it all together gives about 77.5 years.

(1691+1046)/(13588*0.0026) = 77.47

----

[1] http://biocyc.org/META/NEW-IMAGE?type=PATHWAY&object=PWY...

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/850733

[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/854068

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus

[5] http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/80/7/3675
This new language's designer makes the Vim text editor, a lovely editor with a ... regrettable scripting language.
John Gruber noted that Apple currently has enough cash on hand to buy Dell in its entirety.
I think the big reason Apple hasn't experienced a decline in Macbook sales is the 13" Macbook is a really good mix of performance, usability and portability. <5lbs, thin, fast, good battery life. My assumption is most netbooks are being bought as a secondary machine to compliment either a desktop or a bulky 7-10lbs PC laptop that may perform well but is definitely not super portable. So let's say someone spends $500-$600 for the primary computer and another $300-$400 on the netbook. That adds up pretty close to the sticker price of a Macbook 13" which can legitimately serve both purposes as a primary computer and a highly portable computer. Is there really that much difference between 10"/3lbs and 13"/5lbs? I don't think so. (can't pocket it, you're probably using a laptop case or bag to transport it anyway. 2"/2lbs isn't a big deal)
Just curious: why do you think people care about geography more than skill?
The claim chowder wasn't just "I'd like Apple to make a netbook." The claim chowder was "If Apple doesn't do this, they are fucked." Apple didn't do it; Apple wasn't fucked.
++ for Ubuntu NBR. I got my daughter an Acer Aspire One netbook. It came with a horrible linux distro (Forget the name, not a popular one). I installed Ubuntu NBR and it's great now. Much faster, and the UI/window manager with NBR is very nicely done to fit on a small display. The only thing I can't get working yet is the SD card slots :/
No, the claim is that a bunch of "analysts" who said Apple was doomed, DOOMED, if they didn't make a netbook ASAP were proven wrong, and quite dramatically.

Indeed, remember when Michael Dell famously said Apple should just give up on the hardware business, a few years ago? Well, Apple now has enough cash on hand to buy Dell flat out. That’s a pretty impressive turnaround in about a decade.
because there has been absolutely no indication from Apple that they are?

(note no one is saying they aren't, just that they don't "seem" to be)
His first requirement is "extreme simplicity". That alone would disqualify AMQP. Just seeing the size of the AMQP spec makes me want to cry. I'm sure it's the right choice for some things, but most apps that need RPC or message passing don't need anything remotely as complex.
Pivotal Labs?
First, transaction costs on following an S&P index are tiny.

Second, I'm not sure how you got 8% from a graph showing a 10-year return of around 300%.
ruby is having a very hard time getting people to switch to 1.9

Stability is important to a whole lot of people, but it is a delicate balancing act.
Doesn't look like it works in 64bit mode. Mine still complains about (libkern/kext) link errors in MacFuse.
Looking at it all, the execution that people see in the stores is amazing and probably a bigger driver then people give it credit for. Also, I think Intel, bootcamp, fusion, and parallels have some big effects (I know the school I deal with wouldn't have been able to buy without them (needed edu software)).
I'm not disputing that, at all. I'm saying that if Apple HAD done it, they wouldn't be fucked. Gruber suggests that if they had made a netbook, they would have lost money. (Been fucked, in the lingua franca, evidently.)
Pentesting/security analysis has been my hobby in high school/early college and I ended up getting BS and MS degrees in CS, with concentration in security. It's also my day job.

It's unclear what exactly you want to concentrate on. Do you want to learn about encryption algorithm details and want to understand the design decisions behind them or do you just want to effectively use them? Do you want to learn about proper architecture and general principles?

edit: feel free to contact me if you have any specific questions, I'll try my best to weigh in on specific issues.
Apple is pretty good at being secretive when they want to be... remember the Intel switch, or the iPhone.
The PS3 Messaging pad has a function like this so you can rub your finger across the surface of the keys to move the mouse pointer. :)
Apple also acquired the P.A. Semi folks in 2008, which means the Apple have processor design capabilities, and some familiarity with x86, ARM and Power designs.
> Gruber suggests ...

No, he doesn't.
It's perfectly legal and the link was for information about how naked shorting works. What was incorrect?
Calling the GIL an implementation detail is like calling tail call elimination an implementation detail: for most software, it may be so, but there are idioms one may or may not be able to use depending on that detail. It's a visible implementation detail.
Honda Shows Off new one wheel no hands motorcycle
You mean trademark.
Well, with Apple that doesn’t mean anything. Sure, updates to existing products or small new stuff may leak. But the big things? You don’t see ’em comin’.

But I would have to agree that it at least seems not very plausible to me that Apple is, at the moment, developing anything that would be recognisable as a Netbook. Hopefully not, because Netbooks may be cheap but they sure are ugly.
If you appreciate the goals and design rationale of this language you should check out freepascal (http://www.freepascal.org) which fulfills similar needs and is mature with an active community.
He outright typed it, doesn't just suggest. Forgive me... "As Jason Snell put it, imagine how much money Apple could have lost if only it had a netbook."
Turn Your Entire Office Into a Whiteboard
I was under the impression that the main reason to choose GPL was that you (the developer) believed in having your code under that licence. If you choose to change that position, that should be entirely up to you.

The reason that this is now an issue is because the original author chose to sell / pass on the software, including rights to sun to do with as they liked. And they sold to Oracle. And Oracle may choose to release MySQL under a different licence, which they as the owner are able to do.

All this means that new versions of MySQL released by Oracle may or may not be available under GPL. I believe they can't make this apply to previous versions, but I am not a lawyer.

Other people are free to take older versions and improve on them and release them under GPL, so this may end up being a community-driven fork of MySQL. So the GPL serves its purpose in a round-about way anyway.

So the whole argument is a moot issue (in my books) anyway. Storm in a teacup even... unless Oracle chooses to non-GPL MySQL...
I forgot the OP asked about the outcome.

I started with this franchisor when they were virtually unheard of, and now I'm sure all of you have eaten in one. For me, it's been highly successful and I earn a substantial income from it. However, the first few years were very difficult because it wasn't what I was used to. It's a totally different environment from professional engineering including the people. Dealing with them is quite different.

Running a restaurant means it's always on your mind. Things are always going wrong, mostly from people quitting, so it requires a lot of hours. It's also very hard on other family members, or perhaps due to other family members, that might want to put their two cents into how you should be running things. (Mostly wives.)

Almost everyone I know has provided themselves some income to a good salary but there were a few who went bankrupt. Now that's a few out of a hundred in my region.
Ask HN: early project and new direct competitor
Hi everyone,

I am developing a facebook application that helps people achieve their goals (http://apps.facebook.com/dogether)

I knew there were two competitors: http://www.43things.com and http://www.goaltribe.com which is actually a good thing, it shows there is a need for this kind of application.

But today GoalTribe launched a facebook application that is very similar to my facebook application: http://apps.facebook.com/goaltribefitness

What do you suggest me to do?

1. Keep improving my application until I reach a better market fit than goaltribe?
2. Contact GoalTribe and find a partnership
3. Stop the project, the space is too crowded
4. Use some analytical method to decide
5. ??

As you can imagine, it is always a bit hard to discover a new competitor when you put some effort in your idea.

Thank you for your help.
New iMac: Great Pairing Station?
It's very small and apparently light, which would also mean minimal battery space/weight. I wonder how many feet it can go on a charge?
Well, you make less money off a netbook sale than Apple does from a Mac sale. He points to Snell's tweet about that. But beyond that, he just points to the people who said Apple HAD to make a netbook. (Obviously he disagrees with the concept of netbooks, but that doesn't have to do with the claim chowder.)
Try out iPython and the matplotlib python module before shelling out for MATLAB. Both are easily installed by macports.
Microsoft unveils Bing Twitter search today and Google's hurried response is a blog post about how they've "reached an agreement" to include tweets in their search results. Ouch.

Microsoft still has some fight in it yet, folks! It's not often that other companies are scrambling to keep up with them these days.
Certainly more the former, but I think that the latter will come as a natural result. I would love to learn both the algorithm details/design as you mentioned and at the same time, some of the attacks available on them (my assumption here is of course that there are a set number of attacks that people would try on a new algorithm; it's entirely possible that is not the case :) ).
Airline cannibalisation down under?
No, you are mis-reading: the “analysts” said that Apple would lose money if they didn’t make a netbook; instead, they made boatloads of money. Snell is snarkily pointing out that said analysts got things precisely backwards backwards by rhetorically asking how much they’d “lose” with a netbook. There’s no suggestion that they’d actually have lost money, or gained money, from a netbook. It’s pure snark, posed as a counterfactual rhetorical question. No one can really know how things would have gone with an Apple netbook: the point is only to call out those who second-guessed Apple’s strategy and have now been made fools of.
chicken scheme is the only other language I can think of that compiles to C code.

He is not making an interpreted language. It compiles down to machine code that runs directly; not vm bytecode.
First, money put in a bank savings account is used by the bank to make loans. Its not put in a hole in the ground. Money put into bonds is spent by the issuer. Etc.

Second, even if it did, the effect can be (and will be) counteracted by the Fed putting more money into circulation.
The security risks of giving such small, easily misplaced devices access to that kind of info seems like a terrible idea. What happens when a soldier gets captured? Having a device like this that is trivially accessible once you have the password gives the enemy a lot more reason to use force to extract information from a POW.
'awesomeness'
I don't know about Sachin, but we like working with locals so we can meet them face to face without paying thousands for travel expenses.
Rather than the spec (for message broker implementers, etc) I'd care more about the programming interface, toolchains, and features/performance. AMQP can be simple to use. And you can certainly send "simple" messages with it, they just get there reliably. The author asks us not to scream "NIH" so I will stop there - just did not see it as a potential tech examined and rejected in the BERT doc.
I doubt this battle will be settled (or even affected) by the fact that MS was first to market with this feature.

Who has the better integration and implementation is far more interesting.
IMO, if 2 or 3 options in a particular space/niche is "too crowded", then you're looking at the wrong business in the first place.
In related news: Google jumps shark, announces vaporware.
The 2009 UN World Drug report in pictures
I'm sure there is some need for balance, but from the (smallish) amount I recall of Macro in college, a small positive savings is the "optimum" for economic growth without unbounded inflation, etc.

If the savings rate were negative, then availability of credit may be the overall bounding factor. In the situation the US finds itself currently, I believe that an increased savings rate will slow or stall the recovery. (That doesn't mean that I don't think individuals should be prudent and save, which I continue to do, but rather that I want OTHER people that I don't know or care about to continue to spend freely, ideally on products my company sells. :) )
Who writes Banshee (Mono-powered media player)
Agreed. This looks like an embarrassingly reactive move.
I don't know of a single language feature which python has innovated.

Python is just a beautiful synthesis of idioms and features which had previously only existed in more esoteric languages.
Well, I don't know if it's that clear. Knowing the math behind differential analysis or the reasons behind the values of AES s-boxes won't make you any better at assessing the standing of a web service or a daemon.

If it's not too technical, try finding some articles in phrack(.org) magazine. They usually outline the details of attacks and will let you see what vulnerabilities attackers take advantage of. If you want to stay technical, I'd look for exploits online and try to understand how they work. If you start at the defensive end, it might not be exactly clear why some counter-measures are in place and might be more dry than playing with something you can actually break.

Get a very old Linux install, disable ASLR, PaX, W^R and anything that might stand in your way and create write your first buffer overflow attack. Then try a a heap exploit. Then move on to more interesting things. Try to follow security conferences and the papers presented there. Attend security-related meet ups in your area. Idle in irc channels, etc.
Ask HN: User friendly book writing software
Hi, I have a book idea and will need to format pages in odd ways similar to how "Ripley's Believe it or Not" books are formatted. I wanted to know if their is any extremely user friendly and cheap MAC software that would allow me to place images and format in this manner. I am avoiding taking the Adobe route until I have to. I don't want to pay that much and it seems more complicated than it has to be. I want something that's fast, simple and cheap.!

Thank you!

BTW - if this doesn't exist it might be an idea for some of you developers to create :)
Perhaps it's more telling that Bing thought they had one up on Google, only to find out that Google was already there.
*err, not error
Nearly everyone does that, the problem is often that they're not entirely honest with themselves. I know I've caught myself (and others) doing this:

Bob: "I'd totally pay $20/month right now for X"

Sally: "Your lucky day! Xyz.com has exactly that and it's only $15/mo!"

Bob: "Oh, um, uh, well I don't really need it that bad right now"

Actually taking out your personal credit card can be an enlightening experience.
Much success yet? This sounds like a very exciting business to be in.
Apple and Developers
The question of whether training more doctors is feasible is tangential to the point that making a moral choice won't make medical services less scarce. It may not be feasible, and in that case there is no solution to the problem of scarcity of medical services.

Regarding increasing the number of doctors: plenty of people want to be physicians. In 2007, 42,315 people applied to medical school, but only 17,759 were accepted.

http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2007/mcatgparaceeth07.htm

The people who are rejected are fairly close in scores (GPA, MCAT) to those who were accepted and there is plenty of overlap between the accepted/rejected distributions.

Let me do a little normal-distribution-fu. Assume that MCAT VR of 8.3 is the cutoff for "intelligence and talent to do it well". If we accepted every white person above that cutoff, we could train about 10,728 more white doctors per year and a few thousand more asian doctors.

(I picked 8.3 so I can call you a racist if you say you want a higher cutoff. ;) )

Regarding point 4), I agree.

In any case, while increasing the supply of physicians may not be feasible, this doesn't mean it is the case that making a moral choice can cure issues of scarcity.
I'm not sure how in any shape or form CloudFront is complicated to implement. It is literally as follows:

1) Create an amazon S3 bucks
2) Upload your files to that bucket
3) Publish that S3 bucket to cloudfront with two clicks in the AWS console
4) Update your DNS CName to point to your CloudFront distribution

Rackspace is fantastic for customer service, but for CDN services, you'll have to weight whether the difference between 22 cents/GB vs Amazon's 10 cents/GB for US bandwidth distribution is worth it.

IMHO it is tough to justify 12 cents/GB just for "better" customer service for a CDN.
> I'm not sure how you got 8%

Basic algebra?
I suspect our respective positions are coming from two very different sides of the industry. You're assuming people, on average, working in web applications are way better informed about the infrastructure of the Internet, or much better at intuiting how a system like DNS might work, than they actually are. I've been supporting non-technical users who are building things on the web for a dozen years now. I'm no longer surprised by the capability of people (even smart people who build cool things) to misapprehend how their systems are talking to the rest of the world and how others are finding them.

Performance:...I don't buy that there are serious performance problems with server selecton.

I generally agree. DNS is an incredibly low demand task, and even a modest server can serve millions of queries per day. No argument there.

That said, DNS is a latency cost that echoes through every service. And some free DNS services are notably slower than a server you run yourself would be. Doubling the latency of DNS queries can add measurable latency to a first load (where you might lookup a dozen names for images, media content, ads, etc.). People do care about shaving a second off of a page load time.

But, yeah, performance is mostly irrelevant. The bigger problem is just that we see folks using those kinds of services as a substitute for actually understanding DNS. We get a disproportionate number of queries from users using third party DNS services, and they tend to be of the really stupid, has no concept of DNS at all, variety.

You're wrong about the security implications of BIND, though.

I will certainly not argue with you on security questions, since it is not my area, and I have a lot of respect for your opinion on security issues.

But, I was unaware of any exploits in current BIND versions. According to the BIND security advisories page there have been two security advisories this year; one a DoS and the other was actually an issue in OpenSSL. And, most importantly, there have been no root or user-level access exploits. That seems to me to be a pretty good security record.

OpenSSH (which we all trust and consider "secure", I guess?) tends to have about one major security issue per year...so if OpenSSH is considered secure, then it seems fair to consider BIND pretty secure, as well. There are probably "more secure" DNS servers (and djbdns may be one of them), but I'm not really competent to make those kinds of judgements, so I trust my OS vendors to choose reasonable defaults for this kind of thing. And, BIND is the default DNS server on every OS I use. If it really had a poor security history, I would probably be spending time worrying about it, or contributing on an alternative DNS server project, as I did back when BIND did have a poor security record.

What security implications do you consider using BIND to have currently?
I am getting these almost every day now. Annoying at first, now I am considering using some other service. Twitter is too popular and popular services eventually become shit.
Monopoly vs. Anti-Monopoly - a David/Goliath trademark fight over a game
Google wasn't the first search engine, either.
Most of the composite shops I know are somewhat to very slow right now. Maybe you could farm it out to someone in your area. Where are you located?