lucianof

That has servers running in debug mode..

*she

Are you saying there are 200,000 Fortune 500 companies? Numbers really lose their meaning, nowadays..

Very good point. Are there any indications that this is happening?

Your point - that the software was at its peak when it was called MSN Messenger - is exemplified by the fact that most people still call it MSN Messenger. It seems even teens, who've probably never seen this brand out in the wild still call it MSN.

How right you are! Another reason to love HN: you even get constructive feedback on a comment written in haste :)

Being Swiss myself, I can for the life of me not figure out why you should be troubled by this fact. Do you feel threatened by us? I understand you're worried about the state of science and education in the U.S., but on the other hand you cannot honestly assume that 100% of scientific and technologic breakthroughs are performed on 6.1%[1] of the world's land mass?

I've been living in the U.S. for 3 months now, and the "American exceptionalism" assumption sometimes gets on my nerves..

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=U.S.+land+area+%2F+worl...

Mobile learning is the future! Imagine everybody spending their idle time learning new skills (languages or anything else) instead of playing angry birds! Additionally, mobile learning is accessible to a larger percentage of the world population than probably any other kind of learning. It's going to change the world.

This is actually one thing I've always been wondering about as a non-native speaker when reading English headlines. Is there any reason newspapers prefer this style? It sounds weird to me.

Maybe the user wants to find out if there is more weather data for Sydney, Melbourne or Canberra by comparing the number of results. Sydney has the lead, btw.

I don't think it's a meaningless number. Maybe I want to know compare the frequency of two terms, then Google's estimate of results is pretty useful. On the other hand result number 230,000,000 is certainly not useful. Well, it might be a little useful, but there are 229,999,999 documents that Google thinks are more useful to me, so it is a reasonable optimization by Google to not actually prepare a results page for it.

This post made me laugh, and I sure hope that's what it was supposed to do. It happens more circa once per week to me that somebody "has already done all the legwork" and only needs me to design and code "the app that will make us rich"..

But what's so surprising is that I don't remember the Windows client to be nearly as bad as the one for Mac. I guess they are made by two completely different teams with no coordination on UI issues.

I switched from Windows to OS X a couple months ago. Everything was bright and shiny until I installed the Skype client. I could literally not believe that this is the same Software I used to love on Windows - there is so much wrong with it (constantly popping up Dial Pad that I never use, inability to resize the Name column, to just name a few). Over time I got used to the annoyances, but it it still one of the worst UIs I've ever seen. Does anybody have an idea how this could happen?

"Beds are considered a cost center but are tolerated because they are the number one amenity requested by guests."

WiFi is just as much part of the service a modern hotel provides as a clean bed, nice breakfast and whatever else they might advertise. Why isn't it treated like that? Why aren't they putting ads on my pillow?

I agree. The article lost me at this bit: 'The company claims that “content is being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet,” but that’s a meaningless distinction given that Comcast owns the entire pipe and can arbitrarily create private networks any time it’s convenient to do so.'

What does the author mean? Comcast certainly doesn't own the entire Internet, so why is it a meaningless distinction?

When I first looked at OpenStreetMap a couple years ago I dismissed it solely because I didn't like the tile design. But now I see more and more really beautiful designs popping up (e.g. also those from http://mapbox.com/) and I expect OSM to gain a lot of importance in the next years (overtaking Google Maps maybe?). These 3rd-party tile designs a beautiful example of how much more can be done with data that's truly open!

The one thing I don't understand is who pays for hosting it. Once everyone uses OSM, won't it be prohibitively expensive for a non-profit to serve it? Maybe I'm wrong and it's not that much of an issue. Does anyone have an idea how much it costs Google to serve the Google Maps API? Wikipedia is in the same situation, and they solve it with their donation pleas. Maybe it would make sense if a fraction of our ISP bill automatically goes to the most visited non-profit websites. They offer kind of a public good to everyone, after all.

Can anybody explain me how to make an apple pie from scratch?

I noticed that Google uses +You in English (as a plug for Google+ if you're not logged in) and +Ich (= +I) in German. Maybe they really just want a three letter word.

Researching further: French: +Vous (polite 2nd person) Italian: +Tu (casual 2nd person)

German seems to be the exception, Googl prefers 2nd person.

That plus server-side browser sniffing to serve only what the user's browser needs could result in an extremely reduced file size. But of course the PITA would then be to maintain that.

Yup, I just tried it out again, because I felt stupid for not seeing the textbox before. It seems I clicked "Add to Cart" and then directly "checkout" last time. Because there is a cart icon next to "checkout" I didn't think there would be another "cart"-view. But as I said, never mind! You can keep the 15 dollars if you keep up the good work! :)

Bought it as well. I couldn't find the "coupon" textbox though.. but nevermind, $33 is still a good deal!

On a related note: http://ihackernews.com/ offers a nice UI for mobile.

Thanks for the link, I'll have to check this out some time. For some reason I always find it hard to imagine how I could write a whole app in a functional language. Probably that's because I've never actually done it..

For web apps I would like a language that works both compiled and not compiled. Either I just copy my scripts to the web server when I'm lazy (or developing), or I compile it (and run unit and integration tests and whatever) when I'm done developing. Is there any language/platform that works like that?

Would it be possible for a carrier (Apple) to "serve one type of phone", as the article suggests? I guess the regulator would not allow that, requiring the use of standards (GSM, LTE,..)? On the other hand we do have SIM-locking already..

Second thought: Would a phone that doesn't support native apps, but HTML5, really be called a 'dumbphone'? Running Javascript even requires a faster CPU for the same experience.

Absolutely! I wouldn't call myself as "unwary", but I would totally click a file with .jpg extension! (the article says 'Unwary people treat this file as a picture'). EXE is especially dangerous because you can make "SEXe.jpg". Who wouldn't click that?

But I guess from now on I look at the chars to the left of the dot as well..

I would argue that the hypertext idea isn't relevant for an app (sorry Tim Berners-Lee). At least not as relevant as for e.g. a blog. Maybe we should talk about the hyperapp model..

Instead of virtually enlisting in the US Army I decided to just donate 10x what I tried to load on the card to a charity for Somalia. Thanks Jonathan for igniting my desire to give!

Hm, I didn't feel like giving *$ my email. But now that I tried it it says: "Please select a state or province." (I cant find anything in this list that is not US/Can) and "Please enter a ZIP Code at least 5 characters long" (we just have 4 digits). They just don't want my money..