skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe, and I'm probably giving Jobs more credit than he deserves, but it could just be Jobs' way of saying - "Calm down dude, just change the name and chill out!". In other words, what looks like a major catastrophe to someone who hasn't faced this situation before is probably pretty minor in reality and replying in such a fashion puts the problem in its proper perspective.
... and the pedobear has been blocked. I rest my case.
So Linus has finally annointed "the most gummed-up piece of absolute sh*t there is!" ?

http://marc.info/?l=git&m=122955159617722&w=2
Some food for thought:

"In the short term, individual citizens and groups will pay. But in the long run, you can see they can't win. The very nature of technology is you can't harness it -- not authoritarian leaders, not anyone," Hom continued. "It's like riding a tiger, and you can't get off."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529090,00.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/censorship-20-china-blo...
The server is not.
How to Fix Firefox from Freezing | TechJaws.com
Deven Gallo, Linus Torvalds, and Victor Wooten star in ground-breaking new RPG
Am I missing something? The Winter 2010 application deadline is already over; so is the RFS just a source of potentially good business ideas or is there something I don't know?
> While apps are certainly a major component to the iPhone, are they really the major factor in end-user adoption?

All the ads I've seen lately for the iPhone are of the "there's an app for that" variety. So Apple themselves seem to think that the apps are a critical factor.

That being said, the iPhone sold very well before there were any apps at all.
Well, it's 2009. A decade would be anything after 1999.

For mean, that means Napster wins hands down.

Not only did it completely revolutionize the music industry in ways that are still being felt today, it opened up whole new possibilities that helped to popularize things like bit-torrent and decentralized networks - One could argue that even cloud computing had it's origins in Napster.

Napster is like the Joy Division of the software world: Everyone forgets about them, but everyone loves something that has been inspired directly by them.
This is what we need (well, maybe just me): Articles about genes and evolution that are informative, readable, and scandalous enough to be linkbait.<wink>

(Full disclosure/serious explanation: I have a genetic disorder and have done a lot to get myself well when doctors claim it can't be done. Yet my "science" background is sort of weak. By that I mean that in spite of the rigorous methods we use around here to effectively get well against all odds, I tend to not understand medicalese. My methodology is rigorous but I face challenges when trying to do research online. So anyone who wants to post more of this type of -- very readable -- stuff, I would be personally grateful. )
Users cannot download apps outside of the app store without jailbreaking.

It's an awfully far-fetched assumption to think that users wouldn't download apps outside of the app store if that were an option. People download windows/mac apps all the time.
About bloody time! I'm amazed it's taken them this long to do something about that awful photo uploader, when photos are surely one of their killer apps. The number of (unanswered) complaints on their forum about this issue must run into tens of thousands.

But did it seriously require a complete rewrite instead of just fixing that woefully buggy Java applet? And could they really not have achieved this new implementation with Gears or YBP? They're rather vague on what was missing from those plugins, and I remember Google stating that they supported decent file upload functionality (including drag and drop) just fine.
The App Store is very similar to US immigration control. People are justifying the maddening complexity and the casualties of the system by analogous arguments in both cases. And building a startup around an iPhone application and then having the app kicked from the store is like a less dramatic version of building a startup in the United States and then having a co-founder kicked from the country.
Yeah... What's the implication of that? If someone wants to bother my PC, they either have to log in themselves or get full access to all my private stuff? On one hand, I can have my stuff everywhere, but on the other hand, if all we had were OS's like this, wouldn't we have a world where nobody can do anything online anonymously? Seems like that could be bad... maybe I just misunderstand...
This whole post was confused and basically incoherent.
In Chrome OS every application is a web application. There are no native applications.

Argh. Why would you do this with a performace-limited machine?

I bought a Pre the day it came out. Great phone, lovely hardware, beautiful UI. And horribly, uselessly slow.

I bitched about this extensively after I got it (http://bbot.org/blog/archives/2009/06/09/jesusphone_day_two/...) five months later and a dozen OS updates later, it isn't a whole lot faster.

The problem is, fundamentally, is that it's a phone, and it's got a small, cheap, and slow CPU. Presented with this obvious limitation, why would you then go ahead and an obfuscatory layer between the application and the processor, one that slows everything down?

And here we see Google doing the same damn thing with netbooks, another computing device known for, and pretty much defined by, small, cheap, and slow CPUs.
I’m frustrated that, in industry, “unit tests” are about the state of the art as far as widely adopted practises go. But I don’t want to just check one or two cases for my functions – I want to check them all!

This is my frustration with TDD when touted as a guarantor of code quality. I think there's a lot of hype because in dynamic languages like Ruby a good test suite combines most of the benefits of compilation error reports in a language like Java with some reasonable validations of code correctness.

However the claims start to get sort of outrageous, like writing tests first makes you design better architectures, which I think is at best incidentally true--making code testable is a valuable property, but there are dozens of abstract properties that make code "good".

The more production code I write, the greater my fascination with functional programming and mathematical proofs because it seems to me that pure functional code is the most powerful single tool in the quest to write flawless software.
It sounds to me almost as though you're supposed to feel so cool about getting such an informal e-mail from Steve personally that you just happily do what he wants. The guy's full of himself.
How about Vuzix glasses + phone app + portable bluetooth keyboard.
The backlash against over-parenting
>Android market might be a little better, but no-one is using it

10000 apps is no-one?
Well all hail Chromium OS, then. Screw google...
Problem with your argument is that everything that Chrome OS runs (web apps), also runs on Windows, Mac, Linux. The reverse is not true. Win32/64/PEF/Mach-O binaries do not execute on Chrome OS.
He's making an announcement that's on topic and interesting to many in the community. It's our responsibility to vote it up or ignore it. And given that more than a dozen people have sent proposals as a result, I'd say the community is finding value.

Frankly, I wouldn't mind if there was a new person looking to invest in startups appearing here every single day. Until we have that problem, let's give him some slack.
Hi [name]

I'd love to work with you on your [idea/concept/plan for world domination], it sounds really [promising/cool/awesome/sexy]!

Right now, I've got [n] things on the go right now, and as you can imagine that takes up a lot of my time. I'm always interested in looking for new opportunities, but it's only fair to dedicate my time properly.

Tell you what, would you be willing to brainstorm a bit regarding your [idea/concept/plan for world domination]? I'd like to know more about your vision, the way you'd see me fitting in, and how you'd see things progressing.

Give me a good outline that I can ponder for a little while, then if it looks promising, we can meet for lunch and discuss it. I'm more than willing to drop [business 1/business 2] if your [idea/concept/plan for world domination] is more interesting!

Look forward to hearing from you!

[your name]

(tl;dr: if you force the prospect to qualify the venture in a nice way, it will instantly filter not-promising ones and only use your time up with stuff that might be worth acting on)
You know, I just realized that a large number of blog posts out there aren't much better than the covers of those women's magazines you see at the checkout line.
Should I learn Scala or Erlang
I am planning on learning a new language and both Scala and Erlang seem interesting but I am not sure which one I should pick. I would appreciate if someone who has had more experience with these languages could help me in making a decision.
Just out of curiosity, why did the headline get changed? The article title (and thus the previous headline) was "OpenId ♥ foaf+ssl".
Well, it is not much of a war. I know perhaps 8 people that use uemacs (I don't any longer--quit when I no longer was using Coherent or Atari ST), so if it is a war, only Linus' weight makes it even a battle.
Maybe this theoretical question.

If you polled a random user of, what are the chances you would find an app that they will get very pissed off at it's disappearance?

What are the chances they will actually skip platforms?

On Windows or OSX, I think the answer is high. On iphone, maybe not.
Except that users CAN. It's called ad hoc distribution. Do some research please.

http://developer.apple.com/iPhone/program/distribute.html
Regardless the state of the "coolest" moniker, only a true geek would try to argue that firefox's release with tabs was timed perfectly to take advantage of the concept the best.

Prior to Firefox, tabs were the cool new feature of unknown utility; afterwards, an expected for all browsers.
Oh yes, the usual idiotic bullshit -- "if it wasn't those liberals with those environmental protection laws we would all be millionaires and have our own ponies."

Let me just tell you some of the more obvious ways you are wrong:

"Interesting Fact: The United States has more oil and natural gas than any other country in the entire world, including Saudi Arabia. These are the official findings of the United States Senate, page 23: http://j.mp/3HIfQi

This is simply wrong. And the very document you reference proves it wrong. If you see table 5 of the document you provided, the US is well below Saudi Arabia and many other countries in oil and natural gas. It has about 1/10 of the oil reserves of saudi arabia and about 1/6 of the natural gas of Russia. Even if you add oil and natural gas up, the US is not first -- saudi arabia and Russia both have more oil and nat gas than the US.

Now if you think the regulations are the problem, just look at Russia. Russia is notorious for having a corrupt government where environmental and other regulations are broken all the time. It also has about three times as much oil and about 6 times as much nat gas as the US. It is also less than half of the populations of the US. So, by your logic, Russia should be much richer than the US, because it has more mineral wealth and does not have the regulations that prevent its exploitation. But that is obviously not the case. The living standard of Russia is still much lower than the US.

What might have made you confused is that if you add up coal the US does become first. But of course coal has not made any country rich after the mid 20th century. It is too expensive to transport for export and it is dirt cheap because it is dirty, causes global warming and disease, and nobody wants to use it unless they have no other choice. Good luck basing our economy on coal.

The thing about Nevada may be right (I do not have time to check) but in global economic terms gold production is simply not a big deal.

Of course you face the more fundamental problem that you think somehow producing raw materials will get us out of a global recession. The problem with global recessions is that demand for everything tanks and that includes raw materials. The so called "voracious appetite" of China is only voracious because they use it to feed the voracious appetite of America for consumer goods. If Americans keep getting poorer that appetite of China will no longer be voracious and raw materials prices will keep falling.

Raw materials only drive economies when they are relatively small economies that can hitch themselves on larger consumer spending economies that are booming. Thus, for example, Russia was able to improve their economy by selling raw materials to booming US, Europe and China. But a major economy like the US simply cannot rely on raw materials or it will quickly become a minor economy.
Facebook Engineering Bootcamp
IMO you should learn ruby and rails framework at the same time. The knowledge of ruby will help you gain a deeper understanding of rails inner workings like the use of method_missing, concept of self and so on. I would recommend The Ruby Programming language by David Flanagan. The Pragmatic Programmer's book Programming Ruby is quite good as well.
Google predicts iPhone launch in 2010
Security by obscurity is not security at all. You should seriously consider opening up the source.

As my great aunt Ada used to say, "more eyeballs are better than your eyeballs."
HOW I ATTRACTED DONALD TRUMP | Law of Attraction Diva
A Good Podcast on Coworking in Seattle
That post should be downvoted as the link does not apply to uemacs :)
What are the pros and cons of Micro-emacs v. mg?
My Appstore, Right Or Wrong
"The Standard and Enterprise Programs allow you to share your application with _up to 100_ other iPhone or iPod touch users with Ad Hoc distribution. Share your application through email or by posting it to a web site or server." (emphasis added)

I'm sure you can work around this somehow, but this isn't really the same as allowing unlimited and free distribution.
Probably because a lot of twitter clients, or others are no good with Unicode. TweetDeck for example looses the heart symbol, and I have seen your post come out as "The article title was "OpenId â™¥ foaf+ssl" here:
http://www.ubervu.com/conversations/blogs.sun.com/bblfish/en...
Hi all, this is Kalid from BetterExplained -- thanks for the submission! Hacker News has been a favorite source of article discussions for me :).

I'm hoping to crank up the posting frequency, topic suggestions are more than welcome.
Would it be a dumb idea to email this guy if I have a product that competes with one of his investments?
Boxee gets my vote. I'll also give cedit to it's source - XBMC.
It's this type of thinking though that has lead to some of the most over-engineered pieces of crap ever built.

Point being: The person writing the spec isn't the one - 99% of the time - that will be using the software. At the very best - if you are the main user - you're not exactly sure how you will use the software, since it doesn't exist yet; ergo, the spec is always going to be wrong.

That's okay if you can keep the spec small and nimble. At that point thought it's just a recording of a thought process. Of course such small iterations are better realized by just writing the code outright, testing for intended functionality and releasing into to wilderness to test whether your assertions about the use of the code are correct. (i.e. testing the spec itself)

The faster you can get to that last point, the better you can use your time. In many cases (not all) the act of writing the spec only lengthens the entire process.
I much prefer HN's interface to Reddit's. I find Reddit's larger headlines, combined with inconsistent thumbnails, to be a bit sloppy.
I decided to follow quellhorst's suggestion and post my product publicly (see it as a good little exercise).

My name is Leo. I'll try to keep this short and sweet. If any of you have specific questions or comments, you can email me or reply to the thread (lefstathiou@gmail.com). To preface this: I have large ego, so please dont hesitate to speak your mind, share your thoughts, tell me how ridiculous this is, etc. I value everyone's feedback, most importantly the constructive kind.

Here are a couple links:
- Our website: www.groupie.mobi
- Download the app on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...
- Facebook fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/groupie
- Screenshots of the App: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=121496&id=92527063...

What is it?

Groupie is a communication tool that allows you to create, join and manage social and professional groups on the iPhone. Designed specifically for a smart-phone, it is (arguably) the most efficient way to network and communicate with the groups and communities that share your interests. It does so by providing every group access to four tools: a group message board, live chat room, GPS-enabled map and member directory.

People like to think in terms of analogies so here are a couple: it's like yammer without the exclusivity and shared email domain requirement or a streamlined Facebook groups without the friending, pokes, status updates, etc. Of course there are a dozen other nuances that separate us from them but you get the gist.

What problem do we solve?

Groupie is the most efficient way communicate with a group of people from your smartphone (yes there are some exceptions). It is also a very practical networking tool. If you attend a conference, meetup, etc. There are a lot of people you meet and even more you dont. Groupie is an easy, practical, and informal way to do it from the device you keep on you considerably more than your laptop.

Monetization: we have a model we're very excited and confident in but this I would rather discuss in private.

About us:

My partner and I are Finance and Marketing guys from NYU. We launched Scriblink.com a couple years ago, now the leading online whiteboard (which operates at a small, but decent annual profit). It's a big fish in a small pond with over 60,000 visitors a month. We started Groupie about 10 months ago and just launched. We've invested $30,000 of our own money and will release a web and Android based version in mid 2010 (god willing).

While I would like to say we arent "winging" it in terms of marketing the application, to be honest we are. My partner and I are fanatically ambitious and will likely try everything possible to get the word out. That being said, we could use some direction. While we've come a long way in 10 months, we've made so many mistakes (and costly ones) that i can say with confidence that it always helps to hear from someone who walked down our path before.
Ad-hoc distribution requires that you:

1) Share your unique device identifier with the developer.

2) The developer registers that device ID with Apple. Only 100 devices per developer may be registered in one year.

3) Apple signs a signing certificate which includes that device ID.

4) The developer signs the application binary with their private key and includes the Apple-signed certificate with the binary.

This is absolutely not useful for anything other than beta testing.
And this was tried in businesses with the client/server model in the 90's as well. That failed, as much as I think what Google is aiming for here will fail except for a small niche of computer users (unless there is a light-years advancement in webapps replacing desktop).

In any event, I actually have no worries for Microsoft. They have a huge share of the web space already, and are already targeting webapps of their products (even if they have to play catch up, they'll get there).

Apple will have problems because their market consists of people that like their products just to be different and to appear in vogue. When that can be accomplished without buying overpriced hardware, see Apple's share of the PC market drop.
Best response to a rejection (not sure if authentic, yet)
Although I don't think your comment is true, I do have a question for PG: Did you buy the 27" iMac just to use as a monitor, or for the computer part as well?
Revel in it. Anyone asking you for cooperation is in a segment of that population that's less than 1%.

What you need to do is get their contacts and spend 15 minutes of your time _understanding_ their business. Got it? Now lock that face, image and line of work into your mind and put away their card in the rolodex.

You don't realize it, but if you keep doing that, you will become one of highly coveted people in the business: the connector. Even if you never work with any of them directly, you can introduce people to each other and your social network gains and becomes profitable, thanks to you.

The highest business relationship you can have with someone is to become their trusted advisor. Their confidant. Their go to guy for problem solving. People in high positions have many people asking them questions, many people offering them solutions for a fee, but few who genuinely want to listen to them and share their professional experiences as friends.

Whatever you can do yourself, or with paid employees, pales in comparison to what everyone you know, along with their paid employees, can do together.

When you are in that role, you can delegate entire companies to become a wing of your small firm. But always keep your mutual best interest in mind: no one likes a take take take only person, or a bully.

Guard your reputation with your life: recommend only people you trust. Suggest people to others in their "rank"; never introduce a high value C-level executive to someone you're sure is a kickass tax-form chef, even if you would use the shady little accountant yourself, introducing him to the big boss makes you look cheap. Introduce people to each other who you know could benefit each other personally and professionally. So you know an amazing underground film director who can make both indie films, and awe-inspiring corporate promotion videos; if you know this director is an uncontrollable social renegade, and a pot-head to boot, STEP IN and manage the guy, don't unleash him on the board-room and expect good karma to come your way after their "profitable" cooperation producing the company's annual event. You are responsible for people you introduce to each other, make sure the relationship can work right from the start, but if you're unsure, be at hand to make it happen (if it doesn't work out; there are at least two people in your immediate network who don't trust your judgement; and this rotten segment grows proportional to how many others in your network they both know and talk to.)

blah blah blah, I am sure this is gonna go way over HN's head :-/
This is a smart approach. If I were a founder, I'd certainly want to be pitching an angel/vc that was on a similar wavelength as the crowd on hn. X2 credit if they actually participate on a regular basis ala joshu. I would like to know some of the areas you're interested in. Your past experiences give some good idea of areas you like, but there are obviously other sectors.
Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos
Here's how I see the question: When did it suddenly become acceptable for a computer manufacturer to decide what software the customer can run on that computer?

I'm sure the money can be good ... but is that really the road anyone wants to go down? Is it worth having your leg chained to the table?
Microsoft Still Chasing the Competition With IE9
you lose weight by eating fewer calories, then get your metabolism going with exercise on a daily basis. You need to stay disipline to eat the right things and follow your workout goals. It is simple in theory, but hard to execute for most.
My guess is the preview. Other plugins seem less concern about preview files.