skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's always interesting to look at old predictions– there was that Newsweek article that predicted the Internet was never going to be a big deal [1] (amusing because now Newsweek is online-only), and there were all the negative comments on the launch of the iPhone. [2] Also I believe Drew Houston's "Show HN: Dropbox" thread has a famous "Why would anybody need this, I can do the same with <complicated procedure>" [3].

It's tempting to think, "Ah, people! So terrible at predicting things." I think it's interesting to think about why that is.

The main problem, I think, isn't that people make wrong predictions altogether. It's that it's very hard to see how things will change and evolve over time, and how the ecosystem will change with it. The "One Laptop Per Child" idea [4] sounds a little dated and silly now.

I suppose if we just remember that progress is continuous rather than discrete, and that a lot of seeming limitations can be overcome with currently-unlikely innovations, then a lot of predictions will be forced to be a lot more precise.

Perhaps the Newsweek prediction might've been amended to, "In its present form, the Internet is unlikely to change the world."

The problem with predictions is– things rarely stay in their present forms, and the world around them rarely stays the same, either.

I think pg addresses this in his most recent essay, "What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of?" [5] In his words– "they practically all seemed lame at first."

So we have to learn to live in a world where our initially valid assessments of a thing might become rapidly invalid because of change. And this is where Nassim Taleb's work about the problem of prediction [6] comes into play. Rather than trying to predict a particular outcome, it makes much more sense to focus on evaluating robustness and antifragility– "How will this thing respond to change? What are the potential upsides, what are the potential downsides? What will kill it? What will give it more utility?"

Even if the odds are really low that something might come around, if the payoff is high enough, it might be worth betting on. I think that's the whole point of things like YC.

___

[1] http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20070116071424/http://www.engadg...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

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

[5] http://paulgraham.com/altair.html

[6] http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...
but obviously university rankings are only weakly related to the quality of undergrad education. US universities are the "best" at research... not hard to understand
It's not a local law, it's FCC regulation. AT&T is the ILEC and Sonic the CLEC. This is part of the reason AT&T wants to move everyone to U-Verse---it's not subject to the same regulation as regular phone lines (being FTTN instead of service via central office, as in regular DSL).
Computer Chronicles – The Internet (1995)
So now we'll have to put our trust in software and drivers? :)

PC is open indeed, but for the love of me I can't remember the last time I've actually upgraded a PC. I usually buy a upper mid-range to lower high end PC (currently running Core I7 5820K, 980) but i actually very rare upgrade them. The ones I buy last me for the 2-3 years of which ever games i play at the time, when i can no longer play them at the graphical level i deem acceptable i buy a new one.

And this is because the upgradeability of most PC's is sort of a myth, if you buy a hardware which is all of the same range when you'll have to upgrade a component the rest will become a bottle neck.

And i don't see this being any different, the added cost of the router and the entire protocol simply writes off the benefits considering that an upgrade will require you to upgrade at least 3 major parts.

On top of that you run the risk of the "router" most likely be turned incompatible within a few years simply because the standard will evolve to allow for additional bandwidth, different power requirements, an improved form factor etc.

Take a look at PCI express for example from version 1 to 4 there were huge changes in bandwidth and power supply, and while some hardware kept backwards compatibility it was in most cases severely hindered by the bandwidth limitations. Put in a modern PCIE 3/4 graphics card in a PCI 1 or even 2 slot and you'll see the difference high end cards lose upto 75% of their performance, some wont work at all due to the power supply differences.

Do you really think that for some reason that protocol would be exempt of that?

We already have a combined creativity of a multi-vendor environment, open your phone it has components from a 100 vendors. There are memory vendors, SOC vendors, sensor vendors, radio vendors, screen cameras etc.
You can have an LG phone with a top of the line Sony camera, and NVIDIA SOC and a Samsung memory in it, do you really need to add a plastic square that says Dr Dre to it?

Not to mention that at least now you have the ability to debug issues with fair ease, if the PC over the past 40 years have not managed to tackle cross vendor compatibility even at a hardware level (just check the accepted hardware list for your mother board for example) not to mention on the software level what makes you so sure that this all of a sudden will?

I would rather much see an easy way to connect peripheral discrete devices to my phone with ease for the extremely rare occasion i would (and atm i can't think of one) need it than to have to select different hardware for my phone hoping it will all work together than having 6 different vendors to get support and claim warranty from while hoping that at least 2 or 3 of my lovely blocks will be compatible with the next years model.
Ironic comment, considering what the article is about.

If you don't like paywalled sites, just don't go there. What have you really missed? There are plenty other articles elsewhere.

(Big Music/WSJ) vs (streaming/any other article on any other subject on the internet). Same thing.
Well half of those years we've been using additional "wires" (computers) and ramping up dramatically our reliance on our cyborg halves in the pursuit, so I don't think it's crazy to suggest he original pre-cyborg wiring was inadequate to he task.
Old callbacks can call to newer versions of modified functions. The live-reloading code I made needed named functions for this reason.
Ode to the javascript would be a better title. Yes, javascript is getting more popular but what would be interesting is to see how javascript growth compares with growth of it's derivatives or languages that compile to it. The sheer amount work done to avoid Javascript at its current state is mind-boggling.
that's not true , compared to Spotify, that's a total lie.

Artists don't get a 10% cut each time a song is played on Spotify. The only people getting rich with Spotify is Spotify and the label that grants the content rights. The artists do get almost nothing.
What I'd like to know is what killed the Maserati?

You hardly ever see one.
An interesting aspect of this is that, to my surprise, paying for a Spotify subscription apparently costs more than people historically paid for music:

http://recode.net/2014/03/18/the-price-of-music/

I'm not sure if this is the right way of looking at it and I paid more during my peak music purchasing years but it's thought provoking.

I confess that owning my favorite music, at least digitally, is something I feel fairly strongly about. But I can't really unravel my feelings from just the fact that I always have.
as he admits, per capita funding has indeed fallen. the problem is an over expansion of higher education. what proportion of the population can really benefit from a full time residential degree course? much less than 50%
I'm in the process of looking at this space, and the approach we're thinking of taking is starting with smaller/local municipalities first, vs larger orgs (and larger contracts).

We're in the learning process right now, to see if there's any interest/demand. One of the things that's come up is the RFP review process - even at county levels, I've been surprised at how... paper-based it still is, and even more surprised that people seem willing to change to e-processes.

Anyone that has any more info/insight on local gov bid processes and willing to share insight, please hit me up.

tia :)
Somewhat related, here's a facinating look back at the portable computers used by field reporters in the 70s and 80s:

http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/291145401.html

From the mid-70s to mid-80s the only option available to reporters out in the field was the Teleram P-1800, about which surprisingly little information is available.

http://mccworkshop.com/computers/comphistory10.htm

It was essentially a CPU-less serial terminal with modem, CRT screen, and 2 kB of RAM. It included a rudimentary word processor (with text search-and-replace) implemented entirely in TTL logic. 2 kB pages of text were saved to cassette before being transferred to the home office via 300 baud acoustic coupler modem.

These rare and very expensive machines were eventually replaced by the small, simple, and inexpensive TRS-80 Model 100 portable.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

Instant power up, no disk or fans, MS-DOS and word processor in ROM, 32K of non-volatile RAM, 40x8 character LCD screen, serial I/O, and a full-sized, full stroke keyboard.

It's interesting that it took us 25+ years to get back to that ideal portable form factor.
For many people mobile phones are the dominant computer in their lives. I for one welcome any attempts to make them less monolithic. In an ideal world I would be able to freely mix and match the hardware, the OS, the application framework and the language for my mobile device.

I admit the modular solutions might physically be clunkier and offer worse battery life. I am willing to live with some compromises on those if it means that I have more control over the device.
No, Spotify is better than Google Music, at least for me. When I went to Spotify's mobile site they did not require cc number before I even seen anything, Google music did. Spotify gave me tens of not hundreds pre-canned playlists, Google Music iOS app presented me the blank slate and nothing else.

If you think Google music is better, it would be interesting why you think it is.
With multiple desktops I almost never use windows. The only time I do is when I am forced to use drag and drop for something.
So, glass half full... you got the college degree, you got a job. Ya, you had a sucky job before. Welcome to the wonderful world of jobs. After you have a bunch of them you find many of them suck and start trying to avoid those.

The girlfriend thing.... ya, that's a hard one. First thing, don't be a complainer. Be someone people want to be around. Project light, not darkness. Exercise a little and regularly. Get some sun. Go easy on the video games and the masturbation. Avoid porn. Women are people, not objects, and if you want to be successful around them, that knowledge needs to be in your gut. Take care of what you wear. Very important... eat right. Lots of fruit. Lot's of omega3s. Sleep properly and look healthy. Smell good. Hard to explain exactly, but don't be creepy. Look like you are someone who has something to give rather than someone who wants to take. Be happy. Be open minded. Don't chase too hard. Be yourself... but your happy self and at your best. Don't try to fake it. Don't cling...just like a job, remember, you (almost) always have other options. Pay attention to little signals women give off. Don't mope and feel sorry for yourself ever. Try to be a gentleman at all times. Do these things, and most likely the girlfriend will eventually come when you least expect it.
"People never did end up taking laptops fishing"

The article starts off describing laptops on airplanes, the tag about fishing just seems like an exaggeration by the author. I would say that the author was wrong and this is a good example of a bad prediction. I mean, did you read the line about floppy disks? The authors points were that laptops are #1 to heavy #2 their software doesn't stack up and #3 their price is far to high.

All of the predictions are wrong, so I see this author as betting on the wrong horse.
So the interesting problem/challenge is– there will always be advancements and shocks and changes that we can't predict, that will completely invalidate the assumptions that we build our predictions on.

It might be helpful for prediction-makers to list all the assumptions we make when we're making predictions. I suppose the problem is that we always make more assumptions than we even realize.
there is no good reason why there can't be meaningful standardised exams for post secondary education. professional bodies set exams at this level in accounting, engineering etc. it would be a much more efficient model.
My experience freelancing is as an architect, drafter, and designer over more than 20 years. Both approaches have their advantages when proposing on projects.

The advantages of hourly pricing is that it clarifies that the client is paying for services not products. This is particularly useful when dealing with amateurs and anyone else with a "consumer mindset." It is also useful because on projects where the value I provide comes in discreet chunks - some preliminary design sketches have value that is different from a specifications manual is different from a report is different from comprehensive construction documents is different from reviewing contractor bids.

Hourly proposals are also easy for me to write...indeed I can quote my rate and get people who really should be off the phone off the phone quickly.

Fixed fee proposals are better when the potential client already has established some value for the work...i.e. the sales lead is a professional running a business and even if it is their first time at this rodeo, they've been to others that are similar. Fixed fee pricing works well when the potential client knows the sort of value I can provide already and has realistic expectations of their project.

The key to profitable pricing is not to buy jobs. Set your rate or come up with a price that's profitable and if the person writes the retainer great and if they don't you have to be ok with walking away from a job that doesn't match your requirements.

As an aside, I'd consider thinking about projects as services rather than products. Products imply something bought that is complete and can be returned if the customer isn't happy. Services are paid for as they are performed.

Good luck.
Could you list the specific predictions you believe the author made?
I thought they were making an MDK to prevent the issues with drivers, do you know about that at all?
This is an amusing bit of opinion. It is always a risk to show an opinion for this very reason. At this moment, their are people siding one way or the other about tech bubbles, smartwatches, drones and self driving cars. 30 years from now it will be entertaining to see how it all ends up.
> So, obviously we are heavily invested in Angular

You probably don't need angular at that point anyway. You could make up your own stack it wouldn't make a difference. Or it means depending on a framework that may change with each version new, breaking all the code of your users because i'm pretty sure you won't be maintaining old versions of ionic for long.

Don't break interfaces, that's what made Linux popular, that's what made js popular,jquery popular, even windows(until the modern ui fiasco)... Refactor but don't break. Eventually you people following angular demise will learn it the hard way.
Interestingly enough the links on Reddit don't seem to crash Chrome but the cortexture.net link from Github does. I'm running Chrome 41.0.2272.101 m (64-bit) on Windows 8.1
Can you imagine a "no internet access" sentence today? It's virtually a human right w/r to basic free speech.

I've heard prices at the commissary are pretty ridiculous, so $200 vs. $5/mo seems like a pretty big deal.

edit for people who aren't up on the whole rights thing

http://www.wired.com/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/02/unrestricted-internet-ac...

http://rt.com/news/213611-internet-access-human-right/

http://broadband.about.com/od/International/a/United-Nations...

http://bigthink.com/think-tank/nicholas-negroponte-internet-...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/11252526/Thre...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access

This almost trivially makes sense since so many of our other rights are expressed these days through the internet.
except you don't learn how to any of those jobs at college. a college education is not even a necessary precondition for success in those roles. i think you've largely missed his point.

thiel is surely smart enough to recognise that the economy will always contain a diverse range of companies and roles within those companies. but there are better ways to train the population if we can only get beyond our fixation on certain credentials
Weev did it: http://www.dailydot.com/news/andrew-weev-auernheimer-prison-...

An apparently was punished for it: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/weev-in-solitary-c...
Another library to consider is Snap SVG [1]. It's written by the author of Raphael

[1] http://snapsvg.io/about/
The prediction is in the title, and it's that laptops are a drying (or dead) trend because they are #1 too heavy, #2 do not have good software, #3 are too expensive.
most people do not have the aptitude to benefit from a traditional college education. this is not a controversial statement if you've attended an average, fairly representative high school
I didn't know you lingered around here. Nice to "meet" you Chris.

Hope to some day have some whiskey with you. We share a lot of the same footsteps, though I never did any hard time.
It seems hit or miss so far- Shardj just pointed out that https:// doesn't seem to crash at all.
Ruby knockoff Groovy and Rails knockoff Grails also seem to be following their non-G inspirations into obscurity.
Interesting that this article reflects my current views.

I'd rather have a desktop at work and a desktop at home than lug around my laptop with me.

It's also more cost effective: I just regrettably got a new laptop (dell m3800) which is far over $2000, when an equivalently powered desktop would be under $1000.
Straight outta Compton,
crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube
From the gang called Niggas Wit Attitudes

A number of years ago I purchased the music video to the above song from iTunes. I paid $2, because I enjoy the song and I think it's "culturally significant".

But today? NO. Not for sale from iTunes at any price? Why not? Does it offend too many sensitivities?

Countless other examples like that. Do you want to buy the music video of the song that won the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance? Can't buy that anymore either. Is it because of the words "See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup"?

Why can't I pay someone US dollars to legally "buy" non-DRMed music videos? Everyone in the business complains constantly, but they won't take my money???
As a former contracting grunt, my understanding is that the smaller groups tend to have no money and be at least as disorganized as the big ones. I saw several small companies trying to work their way up, and their method of choice seemed to be subcontracting to the big contractors to help meet small business requirements.

It helps if you manage the tick the disabled-minority-veteran boxes, because then you have a better shot of getting some of the small business setasides.

And hey! If your small business manages to become prime on a contract, you'll find that Raytheon or Lockheed or Boeing will be willing to sub to you...
Please link to the actual place on the page you are referring to. The discussion spans 14 years.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77790#c188
Sedot WC Gedangan Sidoarjo
Well the current trends in personal computing is actually towards monolithic all in one devices, whether if it's the rise of the MAC's or the continuing trend in the PC world to put everything unto the mainboard or the CPU.

25-15 years ago your PC would've had 3-4 different extension cards, today unless you're a gamer or otherwise in need of a discrete graphics card you have none since they've migrated unto the CPU. And modern CPU's can run many games today even AAA title on quite acceptable settings for most casual Gamers, and that trend will only accelerate as they improve.

With AMD built in "APU" being based on the same architecture as their discrete cards, Intel's IRIS being able to drive more and more games, and NVIDIA getting more experience in integrating their own discrete graphic cores with CPU's in their SOC i doubt we'll see discrete graphic cards for much longer, beyond that the only thing that you'll have on your board is your memory and that too with stacked and 3D dies will be integrated soon enough. You already have desktops the with a 10cm^2 footprint that have the same CPU and memory that you put in your tower, within a couple of years there won't be a single discrete component on that board at all.

I for one don't see how being able to customize hardware translates to having any more control over the device i own than being able to select a device with the hardware i want. Infact the compromises forced by such architecture in my eyes result in less control as they force me to compromise on hardware to begin with. Today i can select a phone which has the screen i want, the battery i want, the camera i want and the SOC i want, yes i might be limited to certain vendors but i don't see this change if my phone comes as a single magical block without as much as a sim card slit or as a complete Lego set.
Wait. Python is growing? Somehow something feels off. I'm guessing that's not in the web dev field but rather in the data analysis field. Been keeping an eye out for remote web dev work with a company using python and best practices from extreme programming (especially TDD) and it's almost impossible. The most common stack I see from that kind of company is rails or a js based stack (purely subjective observation there).

Need to take a more careful look at this stuff.
"Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so."

Apparently people in tech have always been clueless about the real world :)
I don't think it occurred to writers that a portable computing device would be able to access news article in real time from multiple competing sources. It's not paper-vs-laptop that's the relevant competition, but NYT-vs-WaPo-vs-blogs-vs-... that's the relevant competition.
Using PACER: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA4Z9LEJSBw
Well, to be fair, saying a JS code-slave (of which I am one) really likes TypeScript is like saying a malnourished man lost for a month in Death Valley sustaining only on dead maggots and his own urine really likes dining at the Home Town Buffet. He would already have been overjoyed with some coffee and harmony, yet the gods decided to give him a real meal.

You won't find a single Javascript engineer who hasn't been tortured by "Undefined is not a function" or worse on a daily basis, so something that promises to liberate us from this evil is always appreciated.
Should we consider an anti-bounty system where we agree to pay more to the foundation for not implementing a `feature`? I personally, don't like websites breaking the 4th wall.
R is in the top 20!
Don't you have clauses requiring X years of existence, Y number of previous projects of a given size or Z income per year in government RFPs? They exist in my country. You could think they are thought to avoid two guys in a garage to win a contract where you ( the government) want to hire a reliable company that can deliver and support the product. Or you can think it's just another way to tailor the RFP to that same big companies every time.

T