2008-08-07 front | Hacker News

Stories from August 7, 2008

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1.		Tiny open source computer made from six ICs (hardware startup) (linuxdevices.com)
		63 points by toni on Aug 7, 2008 \| 17 comments
2.		People buy the $999 iPhone app (tinypic.com)
		60 points by st3fan on Aug 7, 2008 \| 68 comments
3.		Hackers' Screenshots
		59 points by mqt on Aug 7, 2008 \| 98 comments
4.		Popcuts (YC summer 08) Pays You To Find Good New Music (techcrunch.com)
		47 points by auston on Aug 7, 2008 \| 18 comments
5.		Pitching VCs? Better know about IBM's latest OS/2 (ricksegal.typepad.com)
		44 points by danielharan on Aug 7, 2008 \| 35 comments
6.		Terry Tao (Fields medalist) on time management (terrytao.wordpress.com)
		43 points by hhm on Aug 7, 2008 \| 19 comments
7.		What early Google employees are doing now. (sfgate.com)
		42 points by shafqat on Aug 7, 2008 \| 4 comments
8.		Schroedinger-like PageRank wave equation could revolutionise web rankings (arxivblog.com)
		36 points by hhm on Aug 7, 2008 \| 9 comments
		byrneseyeview on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: People buy the $999 iPhone app A far, far better thing to patent is "One more click buying," -- sell it to Amazon, and they have a monopoly by induction.
10.		Parasites That Brainwash Their Host (scienceblogs.com)
		33 points by mark-t on Aug 7, 2008 \| 20 comments
11.		Don't be so quick to embrace your own ignorance. (37signals.com)
		32 points by ph0rque on Aug 7, 2008 \| 13 comments
12.		Contagious cancer: The evolution of a killer (harpers.org)
		31 points by herdrick on Aug 7, 2008 \| 2 comments
13.		Markov Chains using CouchDB's Group Reduce (mfdz.com)
		28 points by iamwil on Aug 7, 2008 \| 2 comments
		dcminter on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Pitching VCs? Better know about IBM's latest OS/2 If I was keen to get (or keep) VC funding, I doubt I'd be in any hurry to tell a VC that he was smoking crack whatever I actually thought. While I'm probably a little naive, it also just wouldn't occur to me that he was deliberately looking stupid. So my assumption would have to be that he actually thought this was true for some reason. Possible reasons: 1. He misheard something or otherwise confused OS/2 with something else. DB/2 for example. 2. IBM had extracted some bit of technology derived from the OS/2 lineage and were pitching this as the latest and greatest thing. On this assumption, flat out contradicting him would make him look stupid, and at least be a little rude. So to me this says more about his character (VC who plays games - sounds unpleasant) than it does about that of the people he says it to, other than that they're prepared to dissemble a little to keep an investor happy. Me, I'd say "Really? Are you sure!?" but I'm not looking for cash.
		jcl on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: People buy the $999 iPhone app While I haven't used the AppStore myself, I'd expect the Buy process to take at least two user steps -- a good rule of thumb for an interface action with permanent effects, to guard against accidental clicks. Maybe the user was expecting one more level of confirmation than the AppStore actually had?
		wvenable on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: People buy the $999 iPhone app While I was not 100% enthused about the idea of having every application go through Apple's gatekeepers, I did think the concept had merit. Enforcing a little quality control could be a good thing; especially with the large number of users who've never owned a smartphone before. But the quality of approved applications isn't any better than what's available on the average Pocket PC software site. They're just rubber-stamping applications. Some applications have horrible engrish descriptions. Approved applications disappear and reappear depending on the whim this week. Updates to applications take forever. Apple has dropped the ball on almost everything related to iPhone apps, from the app store to the fking NDA.
17.		Thinking About Starting a Business? Try a Sales Job (wsj.com)
		26 points by utnick on Aug 7, 2008 \| 28 comments
		aneesh on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: People buy the $999 iPhone app > "..I... clicked 'buy'...and it really bought this app" Gee really? What else is clicking "Buy" supposed to do?
		mqt on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Hackers' Screenshots http://monaco.nirv.net/~tran/screenshots/20080807/montage.pn... Those are my six workspaces merged into one image. I use Linux+ion3 and emacs.
		darkxanthos on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: People buy the $999 iPhone app "...I... clicked 'buy'...and it really bought this app...the App Store...It's not being run well...beware!!!" Does this make sense to anyone? Don't click buy!
21.		Balsamiq Mockups Makes Big Impression on Hacker Community (thenextweb.org)
		25 points by agentbleu on Aug 7, 2008 \| 13 comments
		hugh on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Schroedinger-like PageRank wave equation could rev... The paper is unconvincing. Sure, there's some mathematical similarity between Pagerank and the Schroedinger equation (they're both just eigenvector problems anyway, as I understand it) but they haven't really demonstrated that bringing in the QM formalism actually assists with calculating anything. The "X could revolutionize Y" headline is even less convincing.
23.		The Web Developer and His Wife (A Fairy Tale) (blogoscoped.com)
		23 points by ajbatac on Aug 7, 2008 \| 22 comments
		hhm on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Terry Tao (Fields medalist) on time management I'm not so sure about that. Most literature about time management is terrible, so, you tend to ignore it unless the one writing seems to have something to say. And Terry Tao is a great achiever, and also somebody who seems to be doing many useful things at once all the time. Certainly I do care that he's the one that wrote the article... otherwise probably I wouldn't have even read it.
		solfox on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: People buy the $999 iPhone app sending an email != charging your credit card
26.		Former Apple employee sues for violation of labor code (macworld.com)
		22 points by nickb on Aug 7, 2008 \| 13 comments
27.		I Would Rather Be A Jazz Programmer (deadprogrammersociety.blogspot.com)
		21 points by parenthesis on Aug 7, 2008 \| 4 comments
		pg on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Pitching VCs? Better know about IBM's latest OS/2 Seems unethical for a potential investor to try to trick people like that. Investors are supposed to be partners. There's no need to anyway. People who don't know what they're talking about usually disqualify themselves quickly enough without any leading questions.
29.		Writing Testable Code (googletesting.blogspot.com)
		19 points by haasted on Aug 7, 2008 \| 8 comments
		aneesh on Aug 7, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: People buy the $999 iPhone app While you should definitely report transactions you actually didn't make, I don't recommend lying about transactions you actually made. You have to swear in writing you didn't make the purchase. And the merchant has the opportunity to prove you did actually do this.
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