skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Exactly, it's very easy to enable SSH access on a Mac, and I'm sure more than one person has had their MacBook compromised over wifi because they had a weak password. Yet hardly anyone would accept that as a justification for locking down Macs, so why is it different with iPhones?
If only we weren't going to have to live with IE6 until 2020. Then we might be able to use more of the new stuff.

(Apologies for bitterness, I spent a lot of today back porting a Very Large Web App to IE6.)
Libcloud joins Apache Software Foundation Incubator
Is it just me or does it bother anyone else that as a viable alternative to overpriced, almost malicious credit card companies begins to gain some modicum of success, it is immediately bought out by none other than one of said evil credit card companies?

Am I being short sighted here? Missing something? I don't view this as AmEx eventually lowering their rates. I view it as Amex ensuring their rates can remain high.

*spelling, typo
Wow, Stephenson's writing style has changed drastically in the last 16 years.

"... where demographics, entertainment, consumption habits, and credit history all intersect to define a weird imaginary universe that is every bit as twisted and convoluted as those balloon animals that so eerily squelch and shudder from the hands of feckless loitering clowns in the touristy districts of our great cities."

Compared to that, Anathem reads like it was written by a monk. (-:
Blow Out Candles With Your Iphone - Blower App
from the listing all the above plus complete ownership of the platform including exclusivity, rights to on-sell, etc

It sounds like you're selling the whole IP - if this is not the case, could you clarify what 'exclusivity' refers to?
Europe is great, but I wouldn't recommend it for startups. It's fine for tech (especially open source), but the marriage of tech and business that exists in the US in certain spots (like SV) just hasn't gelled here yet.
My bank 2.0 wouldn't be a bank as such, it would be an infrastructure provider with APIs for everything. Anyone could then build their bank-service on top of that. Want that debit card, this checking service and venmo.com for mobile micro payments? Just authorize them to your account, and you're going.

Any withdrawal from the account would require a full trace with timestamps and as much data as is available to be filed in the system. E.g. it would be expected for a web shop to save the invoice for your order directly in your account.

Still, I'd expect this to be regulation and liability hell, and if it isn't, I'm sure our friendly neighbourhood politicians and litigators will make it so in a jiffy.
But that looks like someone's trying to protect something valuable, which could make it more tempting.
I guess I'll get the ball rolling. We're building (and close to releasing) an app that's focused on Twitter users. It has FluidDB objects that each correspond to a Twitter user. Because the FluidDB objects aren't owned, other apps can put their tags onto the objects too. The query language lets you search on objects based on any tags (that you have read permission for), so we're hoping we'll soon see a wide variety of tags on these objects, which will give us a bunch of new ways to identify users on Twitter, to tag them arbitrarily, etc. The are obvious things like ratings, or people you've met, but there are also lists (a tagged set of users is just a list, more or less) including queries that cross lists, and things like http://tunkrank.com scores about Twitter users. FluidDB gives a place to put all that stuff - without requiring you to ask permission or for your needs to be anticipated - and it gives you a way to query on it too.

That's just a first app. We'll open source it. I can think of many more, as you might hope :-)

Terry Jones
(disclaimer: I work for Fluidinfo, makers of FluidDB)
I'm not really certain what they're referring to. The VM itself should be completely portable between VMMs. The VMMs, however, are completely system/processor dependent.

MSRs and the like should not pose an issue for the VM as the VMM should present Intel or AMD compatible via the CPUID instruction. If the OS supports AMD processors natively then it should support the AMD CPUID. Similarly, if the OS supports Intel it should support Intel CPUID.

Edit: OK, I missed the part about Live Migration. I never really saw this as an issue because I never considered using Live Migration in a mixed-processor environment. Generally, I wouldn't recommend it (I highly doubt that AMD and Intel are suddenly going to become identical).
Microsoft walks a fine line between having a browser that's broken enough so that web apps written and tested for it break on other browsers and a browser functional enough not to drive users to move to better products.
Learn affiliate marketing. Seriously. With everything else, you're working very hard for pocket change. Affiliate programs like Amazon's pay you for completed sales, so the payouts are typically large. There are several companies through which you can find CPA campaigns to run, and quite a bit of material for learning how to run, scale, and make respectable amounts of money from these campaigns.

Check out: clickbooth.com, cj.com, pepperjam.com, neverblue.com. There are a bunch.
I think the different rendering modes in IE8 is a serious defect. For example, when testing locally IE8 defaults to IE7 mode instead of IE8 standards mode. You physically have to go into the developer toolbar to switch it. My friend(who's a .Net developer) ran into this exact problem last week and couldn't understand why his site was failing in IE8, looked good in IE7, and worked well in FF & Safari. I've run into this problem more than enough times.

If people need to use a particular older browser for a very narrow application, then they should keep an installation of that browser around for that specific purpose.

Its the same idea with modular programming methods. I build my js in modules. My comment system is separate from my login system. In the last couple of days I have been updating the Facebook Connect logic in my login system and I haven't had to worry about updating logic in my comment code.
Turn Balsamiq Mockups into FlairBuilder prototypes
Perhaps it's a lofty suggestion, but I would definitely bank at any bank partnered with a gold mint which allowed me to convert my savings to gold bullion with one-click. After the purchase, I would be allowed to visit my own safe with the physical bullion. That would be incredible.

Add a beautiful/easy online interface to manage your accounts, your gold, and foreign currencies.The bank would charge premiums for conversions in small quantities, or add a premium to the spot price.

Plus all the best aspects of current banks - as few or as low fees as possible, weekend hours, etc.
But it is not written thus where I wrote my comment, ergo I raise you a smiley

;0P>
Well, it looks as though they have fixed it for now. Apple, this is depressing.
Believe it or not I have seen multiple people succeed with a full rewrite from scratch. The ones I have been close to did it with a prototype they evolved.
Wouldn't you be better off trying to sell it on flippa.com or something like that?
The former. I can see why my message is ambiguous now, but I'm worried about sites being at Google's mercy, rather than criticizing them for using a service that, at one point, was run by a well staffed and very competent team.

As far as Google acquisitions go, FeedBurner was by far the worst IMHO in terms of really sucking the heart and soul out of a product.
Hey dude... I upvoted you because I, too, laughed at the title's inclusion of the iPhone that appeared in all of one single sentence in the entire article, but I just wanted to note; be careful next time about breaking the cardinal rule of karma systems: never bellyache about getting downvoted! ;-)
Cut the middleman, an author can publish an ebook and sell it through kindle or other online means. Once and if the book is relatively successful he/she can arm-twist a smaller publisher and get higher royalties.

Also, a relatively well known author can directly work with a smaller publisher and get higher royalties.
First of all, Great Post!

Free music is totally feasible, it only depends on the artist's approach to pursuing revnue (ie: freeing themselves from the lables.) Another thing is ad-supported alone is not feasible; neither is selling T-shirts...As long as people still want to store mp3 files on their music players, there's no reason why people won't want to pay for them. (Only if their demands are met)

To mikebo: "I don't see flocks of people giving up on mainstream music."

Music is music, mainstream music is no sweeter than indie music; they just have more marketing behind them. If the same marketing opportunities that are provided to mainstream music can be accessed by indie musicians, people will discover that Indie music is actually worth listening to.
Are you kidding me? I thought it was part of the joke. Nice pun, there.
Mobile carriers store subscriber information, and this causes all sorts of problems with mobile device characteristics, roaming and other special attributes that only the carriers control.

It would be great if each subscriber could own their own profile and have it synched with their own mobile device. This would require carriers to inter-operate with FluidDB, but since many of them use LDAP, it wouldn't take much to have this type of interface made available via a FluidDB client library.

This is framework of a simple application that I've been kicking around.
Hulu Steps Into Music With EMI and Norah Jones
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddhp95vd_6hg3qhc

Scroll down to method literals
Erm,
ls .mozilla/plugins
I think
Then use something else. You're not locked in, there is no contract, you aren't invested (no money has changed hands); why not just move on?
Am I the only one scared that notepad on the latest Windows can still display a dialog box that comes straight from NT 3.1?

Why the hell does it still have that DLL built in?
i understand. but the money still gets transferred from your 'wallet' account to the destination. how is that a reversible action in case of user error or malicious intent?
Check out pcfinancial.ca.

Here in Canada I thought we were totally behind on just about everything the states has. That was until I tried living there. Banking in the states is so fragmented and difficult! The big banks were a nightmare to deal with when something goes wrong and merely average when everything was fine. The smaller banks, some of which are awesome, are useless when you leave their prime territory. Even in Manhattan, it was difficult to find a branch let alone a bank machine of WaMu - which is the one I finally settled for. I'll admit that if you can get an employee type plan from Bank of America that cuts fees and makes it all nice and dandy then you are better off doing that.

OTHERWISE, look at pcfinancial. It's so basic and hasn't changed it's services much in the last 10 years I've used it. Use that as a base model and innovate. Also, look up how much money you need to have to legally register as a banking institution.
There are some means, like Lulu.com, for example. Their charges aren't unreasonable, though you won't be making much money if you want to roll out a $7 paperback through them (for bigger, pricier books though, you end up with a good margin).

The problem is the vast majority of authors aren't marketers and aren't that interested in marketing and promoting their own books even if they have some ideas. The relationships publishers have with distributors can prove significant in getting those first few thousand copies out the door. (And it's certainly not as if I'm a massive fan of publishers here.. http://beginningruby.org/what-ive-earned-and-learned/ )
Google Phone? In Arrington's Dreams
Somehow I never tire of these. :-)
And if someone is obviously gaming the system, their submissions should be flagged.

I don't see anything wrong with the current method. I value submissions with links to content higher than someone submitting a random question, or attempts at using HN as their blog.
A privacy policy probably doesn't have much standing but if the privacy clauses were terms of the contract which both parties agreed to then any purchasing company would still have to abide by them.
Moreover, we should be ENCOURAGING people to carry large amounts of our nearly-worthless currency.
it's also completely ineffective.

It's effective at the theater aspect. To ask for more is, arguably, unreasonable.

I strongly suspect the average traveler or voter would be able to judge between what's good security and what isn't. I recall discussions such as arming flight crew immediately becoming political, overshadowing rational discourse.
I have an MBP with miniDisplayPort and an Apple DVI adapter which cost more like $45. Why might you need an 'active' adapter for this card?
Splitting the product line in two is a significant cost (besides engineering, you need to do QA, licensing, support, manufacturing etc). It's not as simple as switching out the chips, mobile phones are very complicated and smartphone in particular are exceedingly so. Engineering is in a constant battle with design to come up with something that works, even something as simple as finishes/paint cause great differences in reception and need to be customized for the radio and radio placement.

I'm sure they'd do it if they thought it would be profitable, but they'd also be giving up the exclusivity money from AT&T which has to factor into it.
Geeks in Toyland - Making of Lego Mindstorm NXT
250% revenue growth over 3 years isn't evidence of a destroyed brand, IMO.

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/company-profile.html?id=2009...
They don't need to fork Objective-C to lock down the use of private APIs!

They just need to check for disallowed or computed symbols in the sumbitted binaries. They don't do any static analysis whatsoever — not even strings!
Mhm. "We don't want your OpenGL/DirectX, we will interface directly with your video adapter, crashing your OS. We're just that sort of a lovely bunch of hardcore uni-core supporters."

http://gizmodo.com/5407204/benchmarked-the-quad+core-i7-imac...

> I think Xbench, which hasn't been updated in years, is a solid benchmark for that old program that you depend on but has been long abandoned or at least ignored by its developer.
What kind of metrics should our Justice system measure?
I heard a great radio interview with the author of this new book "Ordinary Injustice" and was amazed at just how broken our courts are. Their is a lack of transparency and metrics. What kind of metrics could we put in place to track lawyers, judges and the performance of courts? Could this be an opportunity for a startup?
Facebook, MySpace, slammed for not introducing 'help button to protect kids'
Clearly, we need to outsource book publishing to China.
I'd make that "godaddy secured" animation static. It completely distracted me from your how-it-works anim up top.
I enjoyed this, but much more interesting was a link from one of the comments to this talk by Jared Spool, "user interface expert."
Revealing Design Treasures From The Amazon

http://www.slideshare.net/jmspool/revealing-design-treasures...

Kind of a breezy discussion of what Amazon does to improve the user experience and its bottom line, and why "Do it like Amazon" may not work for you.

Slide number 86/91 was a jaw-dropper for me. It was part of his section on "never forget the business."

What the slide shows is that any retail business buys product at day zero and pays for it at day 45.

Best Buy turns their inventory over in 74 days. So on average a product is eventually bought by a customer at day 74, and Best Buy gets the money at day 76 (processing time).

All of the days between 45 and 76 are debt.

Amazon turns their inventory in 20 days. So on average they get customer money on day 22 for a product that Amazon bought on day zero. All the days between 22 (got the money) and 45 (must pay the supplier) are float.

Which is why, according to Spool, Amazon can sell most things cheaper than everyone else. They focus on getting shit out the door quickly.

I'm sure that's not the only thing. But the fact of the float must contribute quite a bit, and is probably very welcome.
Yes they are ultimately predictable, but they are not easily predictable. That is one usually has to go through all the steps of decompression to predict them there are no shortcuts.

Imagine a data stream X that is compressed into another data stream Y. Imagine that a small portion of X is data stream x1 which is the portion of data used for a signature. That will get compressed into y1. Now lets define x2 as all the data in X that is not x1. Now if you are always guaranteed that the same x1 would get compressed into the same y1, then things would be easily predictable and you can just compare compressed signatures. But this is not the case. If x2 is different, then the same x1 can be compressed into a different string.
Post something with content, support your whining, talk about it.

Content? I did mention a few examples, didn't I? Well then, would you care to tell me why they're all invalid? I've done this kind of thing before, and every time someone disparages MS here, he's treading on thin ice. There will always be MS-apologists around.

Microsoft have opened their internal development to the world over the past few years

They sure have made a show of being more "open" to please/distract programmers, that's all.

You can't just drop "Islam is a very real problem" into the middle of a rant about a software company and expect people to think you're not a nutter.

I realize this is something that people don't want to hear, and can't process without adjusting their conceptions of things, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Want some content? Here's a video of angry muslims in London: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoMeUcC_M20. One of the signs they're proudly displaying says "Europe, you will pay. Your annihilation is on its way!!!".

Does that sound a tad threatening to you? That protest is probably related to events in 2004, when they actually killed a Dutch film director, Theo Van Gogh, for releasing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tvH_uowO-0 .. Yes, they killed a man for making a short movie.

The average muslim you meet will most likely tell you that Islam is a "religion of peace", but what they don't mention is that if you say otherwise, they'll kill you. If it's such a mellow religion, why is there a protest full of its followers waving signs saying that they'll destroy Europe then?

Western people believe the line about a religion of peace because they want to, because we should all just get along and coexist in peace and harmony. That's just the humane way of life that we as Westerners are wired to like and want, but that's not what muslims have in mind.

----

Update:

Quick! Someone call PG and get him to delete this thread so no one else will see what I'm saying here!
I think increased ability to focus and steady emotions are basically the same thing.
Having to authorize every damn transaction (even with whitelisting) by phone would make me want to just give up and use cash most of the time. Can you imagine the user experience?

-You can't dare forget your phone wherever you go.

-You close your tab at the bar and you have to text your authorization code in (drunk) while everyone else is waiting in line behind you (because it's closing time and everyone's closing their tab at the same time).

-The authorization time is 60-120 seconds, long enough for you to authorize on the spot before you get your receipt. Your ISP tries charging your internet bill while you're driving, and because you're a safe and reasonable person who doesn't text while driving, the authorization times out.

-Or maybe the authorization time is like 3 hours, which is long enough for you to just plain not pay your bar tab, restaurant bill, or grocery bill, which means bars, restaurants, and grocery stores won't accept your card.

When it comes to recurring bills, here's an easier idea: on your banking history, right where it says "Verizon" or "Comcast" or "Obfuscated Porn Site Billing" or whatever, you can click a button that says "stop authorizing payments to this merchant". As the bank, if you recognized the merchant you'd send them some sort of automated message that said "Our customer, John Doe, the owner of philwelchbankcard account 51431070970963941, has cancelled future payments to you. Please consider this as notice that Mr. Doe has cancelled any and all subscription to your service. You may contact a philwelchbank representative at 1-888-4-PW-BANK to discuss any outstanding charges or early termination fees." So the merchant would have to either send John Doe a bill in the mail or call the bank and say "John owes us $175 termination fee." And then the bank would call John Doe to authorize any final charges regarding termination fees. (The intended effect is to make it more difficult to charge termination fees. It's important that the bank remain on the customer's side, not the merchant's side.)
...another engine with completely separate codebase is a good thing for the market.

You've just made an enemy out of every web-dev on HN :)
That is the case. We will be considering offers for that.
Never realized 'kerb' is a valid Britishism until I looked it up.
Ask HN: Software Update RSS - does this exist?
There are about 50-100 applications, libraries, gems and other software packages that I'm interested in. I'd like to receive updates through RSS whenever a new version of one of these packages is released, including release notes if available. Optionally I'd like to filter out minor updates/bugfixes for specific packages.

Does something like this exist? For music there's Muspy, but I'm not aware of a solution for software.
NSA helped with Windows 7 development
What a nonsense, as if having a button is guaranteed to make a difference. If you're under thirteen you shouldn't be on facebook or myspace anyway.

Does school come with a button to alert 'trained child protection officers' ? The playground ? The mall ?

If you know how to set up facebook in the first place you should also know how to kick people off your 'friends' list and how to delete stuff from your comment wall that you don't want to have there.

This simply seems like a media based ploy to put pressure on facebook and myspace to 'comply' with something they have no obligation for.

They are well within their rights to adopt a wait-and-see stance, this trial by media and 'think of the children' stuff is not helping anybody.

It is funny how a group that is against the bullying of children is effectively bullying websites.
I know a lot of mac software uses the Sparkle framework which checks (what is essentially) an RSS feed for updates.

As far as I know, nothing general like you're asking about though.
Crunchbase Data Mashed Into Microsoft Pivot - a new, flipping cool app
I'm just starting up in London. I only know one startup here, but that's just because I haven't bothered to look yet. My guess is that in Europe, London is one of the big startup hubs. Last.fm was based here. Cambridge also has a decent startup scene. HN user pclark's startup www.broadersheet.com is based there.

Personally I think London's an awesome city to live in. Given it's not Silicon Valley, but it's a vibrant exciting city. I love working here. I'm not looking for funding but from what I hear there's a ton of venture capital too here.

Drop me a line if you come to London.
I believe the more cliché 'group think' reaction would have been to up-vote your Microsoft bashing.