skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I guess I can't argue with that, as it's essentially unfalsifiable. But it's worth pointing out that writing a unit test, which is the subject that started this discussion, is definitely not a time when you're "fully considering potential failure scenarios". Unit tests are narrow and focused, and aimed at verifying features.

What you're talking about is something I'd call white box QA. Which is valuable, though it's essentially just an extension of design, and has the same limits.

My broad point still stands: you can't "process" your way out of this with extra testing. Some bugs are just inherent, and stem from the fact that we're human.
I had my complete Google account shutdown last year think it was (Someone tried to login as me a few times unsuccessfully).

The only way I could get it reinstated was because I had a phone number for Adwords, and could call them and say "err, you shut down my account, so I can't give you that money I was giving you".

Perhaps other divisions have good phone numbers and people willing to help, but Adwords seems like the best to me - the ones taking your money.
P-cos blog: Filtered functions
An Android VM Next To Your Chrome OS
That's plugins (like Flash player), not extensions.
Those are some really ugly themes.
FTA:

> Shuttleworth added that he will not, in any way, shape, or form be leaving Ubuntu. In an interview, Shuttleworth said that he's will stay head of the Ubuntu Community Council and the Ubuntu Technical Board. [...] "I will be spending more time on the areas that interest me the most and where I feel I can do the most good." [...] Neither Ubuntu nor Canonical will be changing its direction. Looking ahead Shuttleworth will still set the overall goals, but Silver will be in charge of implementing the strategy to reach these goals and day-to-day business management.
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thanks for the feedback.
The consensus position seems to be that they should accept MS' apology and move forward with their world-domination plans with their obviously desirable UI rather than moaning about some vague notion of damage done to them for the brief time that MS had a clone of their UI up.

They either need to sue MS if they really think they've been aggrieved or get over it.

Moaning on their blog accomplishes absolutely nothing positive and has started to lose them sympathy.

See the series which ran on steveblank.com about a competitor stealing their IP which was prominently featured here as an example about how to use adversity in a constructive manner.

part1: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/03/someone-stole-my-startup-id...

part2: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/07/someone-stole-my-startup-id...

part3: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/10/someone-stole-my-startup-id...

Dwelling on adversity with a "woe is me" attitude is fundamentally antithetical to the entrepreneur/startup mentality as evidenced by the hostility they're starting to encounter in these comments.
Eureqa – Software to Replace Scientists
How do we report spam on hacker news?
I'm not sure if advertisers will sort _themselves_ out... but I hope websites that care about their readership will learn what ads to refuse.
Hit the "flag" link.
Plurk isn't being blamed for having its code ripped-off. Plurk is being blamed for being stupid. Two different things.
Or Canonical will do to Ubuntu what Novel did to SuSE. Ever hear of SuSE anymore? Neither has anyone else...
'Cures Writers Block' is the one liner, but having read a lot of blogs that have it installed in the last year - it also helps you tune your writing to your audience. People request followups, or more detail on topics that you've covered, which helps you connect with your readers.
the vast majority of AdBlock users block almost everything - including the 'useful ads for useful products'

Is there such an option in AdBlock? If there is, I wouldn't mind seeing those ads. Currently they get blocked along with the rest, though.
For me this move makes sense. I'always saw Shuttleworth as the head of the Ubuntu Community and not as the CEO of a company. I'really believe that doing what he will be doing in the future suits him better.
Take guidance from VCs, not orders
In this case I think it's more a case of incentive structures, and not trusting the agent's motivations.

In this particular case the problem is that the virtual valet would, unlike a real valet, be funded primarily by kickbacks from whatever services he winds up booking for me, so I've got no reason to believe he's making decisions in my best interests instead of his own.

Basically if I'm going to trust someone else to make my decisions for me, I want a real flesh-and-blood person that I can shout at if things go wrong.
24 Hours of Gowalla and FourSquare Data
"Drunk drivers kill other people. Drunk walkers kill only themselves."

Levitt said exactly that less than two minutes into the video.
Copyright has societal cost which I in a small way pay for though taxes. Thus the discussion of copyright is a political topic and failing to understand others viewpoints in a political discussion is dangerous.

As to free vs. “price tag” I include any and all forms of advertizing. I directly spend far more money on Art than the average American due in large part to a ridicules disposable income. My sister has made most of her money selling Art and I have supported her in that for years. However, while I am far more willing than most Americans to support Art, I have little tolerance for music and I am part of the growing backlash against the music industry as it stands today. If you hope to support yourself as an artist you need to understand the culture of art, and the people willing to remove all support from your form of Art.

Thus, if you feel the need to protect the music industry you actually need to develop a reasonable argument in support of your viewpoint.

PS: There is a reasonable chance that there will be no copyright protection for music within the United States at some point in my lifetime, conceder how that might affect you.

Edit: If you don't understand why something is being said, becoming dismissive is childish. That’s honestly meant as constructive criticism, but feel free to be insulted.
It is now, but I don't think this was intended to their primary mission profile when they were designed, over a decade ago. A lot of the intended uses were more traditional than the ones that reality has presented.
Sorry about that - trying to juggle too many balls at the same time and we pushed a bad build. All fixed now!
A different approach:

Instead, write a meta-library that generates fast C / C++ / Fortran / whatever code.

Game devs have long had discussions about how to make "the one true standard vector library". Except, no one can agree.

But ... the existence of LAPACK, etc. and the nature of linalg mean that it's a very limited domain that could be specified very clearly.

So ... let users generate their own vector library, with choice of naming, language, which of the spec functions to include, simd, templated yes/no, etc.

I've got some ugly beginnings in Python ...
I'm from the US, never really liked checks, and then moved to Holland (where they simply do not exist) and was amazed.

You have 4 ways to pay for things:

* Transfer from your online banking. You need the other party's account number, their name, and city. It's free for both parties; instantaneous (money is no longer available to your account, and is immediately available to the other party); can't be done if you don't have a high enough balance (no bounced checks); and can be set to be recurring. It makes the US checks/fees/delays look like a joke, but doesn't provide 10 different revenue streams for the banks.

* You can use your debit card (called pinnen or 'PIN-ing') at any stores that have a scanner. There are no fees, you have to enter your pin. Most places (supermarkets, restaurants) will let you PIN, but don't take credit cards. Like transferring money, charges are immediate, done in the order they are received, and don't go through if there's not enough money.

* All debit cards have a little smart chip on them, which can be used to 'ChipKnip'. You load small amounts of money directly onto your chip, and you can now use your card to pay for small things (parking meters, printers at a university, etc). It's insecure (no PIN required) and if you loose your card the money's gone. It also (I think...) doesn't require a live connection to the ATM network, so transactions can be run later

* Giro. Giro is the opposite of a check (it's a credit-transfer instead of a debt-transfer). Sometimes bills are sent with a GIRO slip, which the payer fills out and eventually makes it way to the payer's bank, where a transfer is initiated to the recipient. I've never used a GIRO in the 2+ years I've been here.
I think that's like putting a lot of targets in front of you and then firing without aiming. Sure, you'll hit something quite often, but that's not that intelligent.
This is an absurd comparison. Novell purchased SuSE at a time well past Novell's peak as a company. Jane Silber has been the business lieutenant at Canonical since its youth, and Shuttleworth's plan from the start was to both publish a free OS and support that effort with related business.

This is about someone who's been a key behind-the-scenes manager at Canonical for many years getting a promotion.
please delete this shit.
Shut up before Homesec confiscates our toys. ;-)
While Silber is the CEO, Shuttleworth is still the owner of the company. If he wants to continue pushing Ubuntu, I doubt Canonical's goals wouldn't be aligned.

And there's also the Ubuntu Foundation, created specifically for the reason of continuing to push Ubuntu distro after Shuttleworth steps away. So from that point, I don't think Ubuntu is in jeopardy.

Another point is whether Ubuntu would become a (greater) channel for distributing/marketing Canonical's money-making products to the wide public (e.g. Ubuntu One), and whether Canonical would push so hard as to _negatively_ impact Ubuntu itself.
I don't use screenshots very often, but for that 20% case when I need them, they're invaluable. Still seems a little antiquated that I have to snap a pic, then go somewhere to upload it. Seems like something that could do that and submit it w/in the web app would be a plus.
I actually use OpenSuSE as my main distro of choice, but I get your point. The problem was that once Novell swallowed SuSE there was no one around to really push or advocate SuSE. Novell took the bits they needed and spat out the rest for the "community" do to what they want with. No one at Novell really had any interest in SuSE Hopefully Mark continuously advocating and fighting for Ubuntu and still being closely involved with (and, for that matter, owning) the company will prevent Canonical from cannibalizing it for a quick buck.
click "link" on the item. Then "flag" :)
That's just some sort of sticker, right? Not a case?
Astronomers find Super-Earth with Atmosphere
The answer is simple really. They want to:

A) push their now-free QuickTime X player, along with the H.264 codec.

B) push consumers towards consuming more video through iTunes instead of other, um, ad-hoc channels.

I love VLC, but I can see how Apple has a competitive interest in not actively promoting VLC.
Hm, good idea. I think I will also sign up for a couple of competitions with the addresses of my friends. If they win, they'll thank me, if not, it has cost me nothing.
Hot & Spicy actress Farah khan's exclusive pic's
Yes. VLC allows you to easily circumvent some of the copy protection schemes on commercial DVDs. Apple doesn't like it because the MPAA doesn't like it.
I am typically one of the opinion that if you are doing crypto in javascript you are doing it wrong.
Talks like
http://rdist.root.org/2009/08/06/google-tech-talk-on-common-... provide insight and let us not forget http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2006/4/28/oh-meebo.html
Besides it is very difficult to have javascript return sutiably random numbers cross platform. If you need to encrypt browser traffic use ssl instead of some half-assed pseudo-secure javascript mess.

Sorry JSCrypto team, while your implementation is awesome and all, you are doing it wrong.
Unit tests are narrow and focused, and aimed at verifying features. What you're talking about is something I'd call white box QA. Which is valuable, though it's essentially just an extension of design, and has the same limits.

It seems like most negative arguments regarding "unit tests" start by defining them as a small subset of what can be usefully tested, and then arguing against the value of testing such an incomplete subset.

I don't see the point of drawing such an arbitrary line. I leverage "unit" tests to automatically test units of code as completely as possible (not just 'verify features'), and I expect the same of tests that others write.
Any suggestions for a recurring billing system?
I am looking to integrate a recurrent billing system with a small e-commerce web-site. While PayPal is always an option I wanted to investigate if there are any alternatives. We are EU based, so Amazon Payments would not apply ...
beta badge != unavailable. A badge is actually a bit of a joke - a marketing tool itself so you can later say "our service that has been launched for years is out of beta!"
YouTube short lands budding director $30M movie deal
Good thinking.

There are a lot of simple, inexpensive measures that could be used to neutralize their advantages.

OTOH, if you know where are the satellites drones use and the frequencies they employ, it would be trivial to just set up a very directional antenna coupled to a high-power noise generator to render the drone's controllers more or less blind and the drones useless.

At least until they evolve into autonomous drones.
My approach is from the other angle: I run an Adblocker but set it to permissive. That way if I find a really annoying site I can tap the right button and ads are blocked.

To me that seems the fairest approach.
Meerkat - Better WebApp Notifications?
One (arguably important) unknown here is how likely is a 640x480 user to scroll the page vs a 800x600 user.

You can point out to your client that a more real quality is user engagement -- it's not enough to just show content. This is affected by ATF, but a newpaper-like design of cramming content together may not be the best approach.
I once saw a lawnmower hit a "low E" guitar string. You don't need fancy weapons. Just trail a long piece of string.
And since when providing a nice web environment is in the interest of Microsoft? Their goal is to provide an experience as much broken as possible that doesn't offend their users and convince them to move to better browsers.
You need to round up a voting posse to help push your stories up onto the front page. Doesn't take much, just 1-2 HN users who like your stuff and will toss you a few votes when something goes up.

Edit: Of course they need to be people who really like your stuff. Not suggesting he game HN, just that he let fans know when there's a post they can check out.
There is no page fold
not sure why this got downvoted? by dealt with, i meant: can i watch netflix on linux yet and have the drm issues been legally+properly dealt with to ensure viewers can enjoy the experience and copyright owners feel protected?
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones using $26 OTF software
That's cool, although it doesn't send a message to the site owner that their behavior is unacceptable.

They still get the hits, and just think the ads are performing worse, so they better make them even more irritating.
I was just thinking that the only way HN could be more useful to me is if it also served as a source of ha-ts, shir-ts and bra-nd nam-e sho-es.
Agreed. Google should really be applauded. I'm bored of all this "Ah but google have access to all my data. What if they turn evil".

There was a recent story about Google adding a cookie so that people without google accounts/not logged in, got some extra functionality. Instead of being applauded for improving the product, people started moaning that they were harvesting data from everyone. Tracking peoples movements on the web so they can sell that data. I don't know why there's this recent "But what if Google start being evil" meme, but I think I'll trust them until they do show signs of abusing that trust.
Some practical tips on setting up pay-for-performance at startups
Rally: Only Close Friends Need Apply
I don't care about tits, skin or toofs, but I am incredibly easily distracted, and a single blinking flash ad can totally plummet my concentration.
Negative Cashback Continues from Microsoft's Bing
In case people are unaware, you can flag a comment by hitting the reply link - there is a flag option on the reply screen.
"IE8 scores 20/100, which is still much worse than all relevant competitors in their versions from the test's release, and has some problems with rendering the Acid3 test page."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3

So you're "IE9 is beta" argument doesn't hold, IE8 doesn't beat a browser that predates Acid3, either.
It's just strange that MS uses its resources, both directly and indirectly, to help Mono/Moonlight when it just could opensource (parts of) .NET/Silverlight.
Kepler’s New Astronomy
... and many companies are unwilling to fork out the money for upgraded boxes until those running Windows 2000 finally die. We're stuck in that situation.
I rather think it's because a lot of people don't really know how. Like a lot of others, I don't mind advertisin in principle; indeed, I think they have utility and sometimes click on them because I'm actually interested in what's being sold.

...BUT not the ones that float in when I've already started reading the page, or that take over my screen when I unwittingly roll over them with the mouse (and obscure their close button), or that feature hot pink silhouettes of people dancing in a .gif loop to sell me car insurance, or use what's apparently some guy's mugshot to tell me about some shady mortgage refinance scheme.

For every informative, polite, and compelling advertisement that represents a meaningful commercial communication, there are about 99 that are equivalent to being shouted at via megaphone.
there "are" open source alternatives to flash.
83 sites to watch videos online other than Youtube
Internet is a great place to find about anything and videos are no exception for this. There are many video hosting sites which allow the user to watch and upload videos for free. All the sites combined hold millions of hours of videos so you can find the video you are looking for easily in any one of the site. In these sites you can find funny videos, educational videos, home videos, political, science, action, movies, music and many more.
I look forward to seeing how this develops, and to see it (help see it) in Clojure.
Ironically, on an iPhone that page is a pain to read.
They'd better pay him off and pull him in as fast as they can because he just did for $300 what thier fancy "movie money" accounting claims takes millions to do.

Any amount of money would be would be worth it to them to keep him from making another.
Summary: Google AdSense closed one account that earned roughly $100 over ~3 months. The account owner finds it suspicious that they canceled his account just before payment.

I cannot comment as to why this occurred, but the headline seems to blow this out of proportion.

Update: They got paid for 2 of the 3 months ( http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss/browse_thread... )
Make More Than GPA
Ask HN: Advice or Resources on Revenue Sharing?
Although I've participated on HN for about 2 years, I'm posting under an anonymous account for this question. I run a web application that started I wrote and started promoting in 2001. We are currently profitable, growing and making a nice living. No VC money, all growth funded from profits. It now me, 6 tech support people and a couple of other people.

Our service has caught the attention of a fairly large media company in our vertical. They are wanting to partner with us in a revenue share deal. There plan is to re-skin our application and make sign-ups and logins available from their portal. They want us to handle all the back-end stuff, customer support, etc. Basically - they want revenue share for referrals. They do have the potential to pump a lot of targeted referrals our way.

Are there any resources or places where I could get some ideas for how to structure a fair revenue share arrangement? I had a phone call with the CEO and they started off by asking if we'd share "50/50" which I flatly said no to. I friend of mine suggested something more in the 20-30% range (for their share).

I, frankly, don't know what to do. I'm a half-decent programmer who is pretty decent at marketing, but "deal making" is out of my element. I don't want to pass up a good opportunity but I also don't want to get screwed.

I've asked them to provide me with numbers of how many subscribers they have on all of their web properties, email newsletters and print publications, and to outline for me how they plan to promote the co-branded service and how often they will promote it. That should give me a better idea of the potential, and, frankly, bought me some time to stall since I don't really know.

Any feedback, help, or pointers toward resources would be greatly appreciated.
And then there's the impossibly naive political predictions which, the less said about the better.

I think we should talk about how naïve some people were (and continue to be). Maybe it'll make people less trusting of people and institutions inherently untrustworthy. Of course, you could also call that hope naïve in and of itself. Oh well.
How Google uses HTML5 to reduce startup latency for mobile Gmail
I think the message will be completely lost on every Web Marketing or Product VP I send this to, but I'll try anyway.
That was my take also. It oxidizes easily being poly-insaturated and it may negate benefits of Vitamin E. Elsewhere I've read what we need is not really the quantity but the balance between O-3 and O-6 which nowadays is consumed disproportionately (from vegetable oils mainly)
Yeah, it's only logarithmic in the number of matrix multiplications, so the title is a bit hyperbolic, but I just thought the technique was cool.

I got there via:
http://blog.sigfpe.com/2008/11/approach-to-algorithm-paralle...

Which was perhaps more informative as to the actual technique, but had less obvious wow factor. My bad.