skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It can seem like a weak language since it doesn't have "batteries included", but the whole design revolves around using it as a drop-in library in an existing C / C++ project (which would already have libraries) or extending the language with C. It has a great C API, and it's not hard to write wrappers for C libraries as necessary.

While Lua standalone is a decent language (almost a Python/Scheme hybrid), Lua + C is quite powerful. It's particularly well-suited to the two-level programming style John Ousterhout describes here (http://www.vanderburg.org/OldPages/Tcl/war/0009.html). I haven't used TCL much, but it sounds like the same development style - since you can just use another language when necessary, Lua doesn't have to do everything. It can stay small and simple. While low-level code and hotspots for a project may be written in C, the rest can be written in shell scripts, TCL, Lua, etc. for rapid prototyping. The clear boundary between the layers of development can help keep complexity contained, too.
China Scores Again in Energy: Russia & Central Asia
Imagine if this was combined with the iPhone worm from a few months back. It'd essenially pingflood all phones exposed on the telco networks and screw thousands of people in excess changes without them even knowing something was going on.

This worries me greatly. (puts iPhone on WiFi mode)
This is amazingly bold. Not because they are shutting down operations or even stopping the censoring - they could have done that in a hundred ways that would save face and leave the door open for them to come back in at any time - but because they have come right out and said it, cut the BS, they consider the human rights actions of the Chinese government unacceptable.

I do wonder how wise this is as a business decision - I would fully expect they will never make a cent in China again, possibly even other countries increasingly dependent on China might get pressure to be more 'hostile' to Google.

Congrats to them on such a brave stand!
> It will be interesting to see how the Chinese govt responds.

Chinese Gov will be glad if google leaves - they have nothing to loose. Their credibility as an ethical government will be bruised, not that there was any credibility to begin with.
I meant what I said. I think it only sounds bizarre because you are thinking of the internet as something that is accessed rather than something that exists. Wikipedia defines the Internet as "a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide." Surely a cell phone is one of those interconnected computer networks.
They were willing to censor results. No more. I would say that is a big change in the way they are willing to run the business. Something about this affair must have stung Google. Either morally (going after human rights activists) or in business (increased risks of attacks and infiltration)
we don't do this by default, we have a readability esque script that optimizes content for readability.

We brought it from the web to iPhone - but only if user taps a button after the article has loaded. :)

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
weird. should stream using the default quicktime thing (eg: asap)

will fix - thanks for the heads up.
Google May Leave China Because of Cyberattacks (see comments for non-sub links)
You might consider picking up a few books (possibly used or from the library) with titles like "How to live without a salary" by Charles Long or "The Tightwad Gazette" series by Amy Dacyczyn or "How to get out of debt, stay out of debt, and live prosperously" (I don't recall the author). I read stuff like that years ago and was a homemaker for many years when most folks in America today think a family cannot live on one income. I had to get divorced to really escape the rat race of conventional life. But in some sense I have been laying the groundwork for my current lifestyle for decades.

Good luck.
It hardly ever happens. Real-world example: http://twitter.com/textfiles/status/6234139001
Ha, funny. Microsoft will follow the money, no matter that they have to do. They always have an always will. I wish it was different.
Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily true. In my experience a "complex" piece of code is more often a piece of code you just don't understand. You should generally try to understand a piece of code before you dismiss it as overly complex.
Google simply stated the facts.

The implication (or more accurately, the inference) is yours.
I am so proud of Google right now. It's hard to contain. It is high time somoene stood up to China and let them know enough is enough. I sincerely hope other corporations follow suit.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I am sure there is more to the story than is being let on now. I could only imagine the level of corporate espionage that is in play between China and Google. Good for Google calling them on it and making a broad public move.

As far as I'm concerned, Google has just turned me into a lifelong user.
thank you.

we'll look into mobilizing content via instapaper. we really don't want to strip adverts out - wish more providers offered mobile versions of content. We've had lots of feedback about how slow articles are to load, so we might be forced to optimize the content via instapaper or such.

thanks for the engadget link, we can totally fix that.
Ballmer must be ecstatic.
Edit: Rather than fighting with escaping code in HN, here are scripts to setup symfony and tornado examples: http://gist.github.com/275785

The symfony one requires some more loving to the apache setup which is well documented (http://www.symfony-project.org/getting-started/1_4/en/05-Web...). The script suggests the frontend_dev.php to make sure things are set up right but for actual performance benchmarking you'll have to tweak your apache.
Here is a nytimes link for same story: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/12/technology/AP-US-...

And direct from google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china...
nobody seems to be commenting on the attack part of that post. what was the "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google"?

that doesn't sound like just a few end-user gmail accounts being compromised, but something that was much more serious that may have exposed more information than just what these chinese attackers were looking for.
12 Years of Portability Thanks to OpenGL: Mac - Windows - iPhone (and more)
How using a standards compliant library let me port a game that started as a CS course assignment to multiple platforms and eventually to the iPhone.
I'd say he's making a good observation but drawing the wrong conclusions.

Yes, the importance of the social graph will raise.
No, search will not go away.
No, facebook will not prevail. Instead their services will disperse into open APIs.

Perhaps schools should start giving internet history classes.
Facebook is the new AOL. From there it's pretty easy to predict the curve.
it's just how we speak.

I think it applies both in real life (yes, we say stuff like roflcopter, awesome, leet, rad, man in usual sentences) and our online identities. You should email our support and chat to Donovan, our enthusiastic support robot to appreciate our terminology. Yeah.

But, I'm really sorry if we sound too crazed or enthusiastic. We'll try to tone our lingo down in the future (to a certain extent.)
I live in Dallas where it's been below freezing most of the winter. Which is odd for Texas!

I suppose this explains all the "temperatures are going down in the US, not up" pieces of "research".
I didn't put this in the blog post, but hypothetically speaking you would not even need a worm.

A person would need an ISP account where you don't get limited on uploads (like Internode, or most non-Australian ISPs, for instance.)

A person would need to spoof the ping return address, so the ping never comes back to them. Or spoof a UDP stream where the ICMP port unreachable never comes back (or don't spoof it, and put up with 32 bytes of download for every 64k sent.)

Then, the person just starts sending and people start accruing costs.

I'm not advocating that someone should do this. I'm just worried that they might choose to.
Don't assume that the Chinese Gov. are ignorant of PR dangers, they aren't irrational. It would be complex mixed feelings.
I have to imagine they have also weighed the business calculus on this. Where they might lose in China for now, will enhance their reputation elsewhere - particularly given how they've come under increased criticism in a wide range of fields. This decision whether intentionally so or in keeping with their stated mission is highly symbolic.

Further, don't think this won't help them in China over the long run either. When a "glastnost" comes to China, as it did Russia, if they're clever about marketing, using Google could ultimately be a symbol of new found freedoms. The fact that the Chinese government has made it difficult for them to operate, given competitors an operational advantage and enabled hackers that attack them and other firms, must make it an easier risk to take.

Being the idealist I am, I want to believe, and I think there's a good probability that doing the right thing here, will mean greater profits now and in the future.
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1048909
... This is the first time, I have seen a LARGE company...

I don't want to romanticize times gone by, but I think at certain points in history there have been people who controlled large companies also knew that their sustainable existence depended on a healthy society; there might be short term costs to investing in such a society, but the long term benefits are enormous. In the neo-liberal era, this approach is no longer given any credence, but that is Bad Thing, indeed, and really just plain foolishness.

(Please somebody explain the downvote.)
can you ping me an email if you have any feedback over next few days or such? peter@broadersheet.com
My take on a dropbox purchase would be to get an existing customer base - some of which pay for extra space. I guess google doesn't have an issue getting customers though.
If I were a cynical <insert_competitor> fanboy, I would speculate that they just make up humorous bugs so they can pretend to provide customer service.
fyi, freedns won't allow you to set mx records pointing away from your domain, so (for instance) you can't use google apps for your domain.
It seems very likely it's the Chinese govt. But I don't doubt that other governments have an interest in what activists all over the world do, including our own.
I want to add some background knowledge:

- ever since the ending of the Olympics in 2008, Chinese government started a series of large scale "cleaning up" operations all in the name of removing porn from the Internet (while we all know what's the more obvious reason ...).

- Many report that as of now Xinjiang Autonomous Region has Internet access to only a few selected official websites after the riot in 2009.

- There are rumors about a potential whitelist-based filtering system coming online this year (2010). All websites (no matter where they are physically located or legally registered) must register and report to MII (http://www.miibeian.gov.cn/) if they offer Chinese content to visitors from mainland China, or they might be banned by the Great Firewall.

- Previously, individuals can register .cn domains. They tight up control over .cn registration and some registrars are actually starting to limit the IP address that .cn domains can use to only those within mainland China.
That in itself was a significant enough shift from their normal operating procedure for me to think of it as an exception, and they were bothered enough by it that they felt they had to justify it. Also their justification at least made some sense, so the decision that they came to wasn't entirely out of character with how they generally operate.
I recommend "me MONKEY TAIL domain FULL STOP com".

More: <http://ascii-table.com/pronunciation-guide.php>;
Wow!

Things just went batshit crazy. Trying to tell financial people to calm down. Google wasn't making any money in China anyway. And there is no reason to think right now that this will affect anyone else.

I REALLY hope people can regain their bearing before tomorrow's trading session.

Thank you Google for announcing this after market close!

To have announced it during trading would have been horrid.

EDIT: BTW It is testimony to the power of social media that people didn't freak when it hit Google's blog, but when it hit the social media sites. Lesson learned there, by me anyway.
With the sheer number of internet users in China I suspect even 2nd and 3rd place wouldn't be something to walk away from lightly.
There are very few hacking incidents that have led to such public international incidents.

I think this is one of the first times I've seen a company publicly pin attacks of nationalistic hackers against a government.

This is incredible in a plethora of ways and its impacts on computer security shouldn't be overlooked either.
I imagine they expected to tap into some of the best computer science talent on the face of the earth.

Just like they expected to do when they opened offices in Europe, Canada, etc.
Google is doing something good. This could be a catalyst for something bigger & better.

But, kudos to you for putting things in perspective. Baidu is where 77% of Chinese get their search done. Google is at 19% there.

Edit: @maxklein read the Northrop Grumman report linked on this post in case you think attribution to a country is solely based on origin IP. Usually, it's a bit more deeper than that.
How do blind architects rethink buildings
Why do you defend the Chinese government at every chance you get?

Edit: I am talking about this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1036908 in particular.
> it doesn't look like Google offers synchronization so its utility as a backup environment is quite limited.

Actually, my beef with all these services is the opposite: they rarely provide support to mount plain old drives under windows. It's always some crappy web interface or custom client that synchs stuff around which makes it non-interoperable with every other program I use that just wants to save something to the file system and know that it got to the cloud. I really don't get it - Windows supports WebDAV - what is so freakin hard about this?

I really wish they would just give me a network drive to save to and let me worry about finding some synchronization software to mirror stuff there if that turns me on.
Also, when you think about the concession they had to make, it wasn't all that big:

Exclude from Google results any sites that cannot be viewed from China.

That is arguably the right thing to do from a usability, if not from a political, perspective.
A fair point. Heard recently that the "Iranian Cyber Army" attacked Baidu as well. Nothing major - they weren't able to do much more than hassle Twitter, and they didn't do much to Baidu either.
Yours is a ridiculously cynical argument. 17% of China is far larger than 100% of Germany or France.
Ask HN: Good code to read for Python and C beginner?
I've been working on both Python and C for almost a year now, and am getting to the point where I can start actual projects that do actual things. I've never really looked at other people's code though, outside of books or small examples that is, and was hoping for some suggestions of small to medium size Python and C projects that are written clean to dig into.
So it's probably time to start looking for an EveryDNS replacement ?
And for all these years, Google China has done decent job by providing Google Pinyin, Goolge Music for China to the country. I really appreciate that. Hoping this decision was just a beginning of a bigger picture.
I hate to be cynical but isn't Google's share in China only equivalent to a pawn sacrifice?
If you consider the brand++; in other markets maybe even a gain.
Horrible, but also very exciting!
My prediction: Joss Wheadon does a fully internet only show sometime in the next decade that is sci-fi. Dr horribles sing along shows he knows how to do this right.
Maybe it takes a highly sophisticated attach just to get that much out of gmail.
This site is like my reference manual along with Steve Blank's site, I refer to it so often with my team.
Ease and features combined with pricing model, super affordable for tiniest of surveys. I will be a user.
If Google has concrete evidence to suggest that the Chinese government was behind these attacks, why did they stop just short of saying so?

And if they don't, why would they even consider implying that?
The more right you are, the more significant this is.

Already Google have made a lot of people believe that "Don't be Evil" is a good business strategy. Regardless of the truth of this sentiment, it is to the benefit of society.

The more the slogan is fleshed out and the more evidence accrues that this is indeed good business practice, the more companies will follow.
I doubt Justin.TV sees this as a solution, it's piracy.
See the link cross-posted by timf.
Isn't you charitable donation just a way of making yourself feel better?
Which also makes their departure a bigger negotiating point with the Chinese government.
An additional thought: this could potentially be genius from a business strategy standpoint against Microsoft. I confess I've been weighing the possibility of switching to Bing for a variety of reasons but because of this I'm less likely to do so.

After the dust settles, if Google is able to change Chinese government policy on search that would be monumental. If they aren't and ultimately leave China, that puts the spotlight on other infotech firms particularly Microsoft which has far more to lose by leaving China. On the other hand, if Microsoft chooses to do nothing and stay, it reinforces in the minds of users internationally a key point of differentiation between Google and Microsoft.
s/profit-making/profit-centered/
I have not changed my stance on anything.

Do not make deletions out to be more work than they really are, as others have mentioned the suppression of content from a particular account is already implemented to combat spam. Anyway, deletion of particular message is technically the same as allowing edits after 1hr with a fixed replacement text (such as "[deleted by user]").

User-triggered account "deletion" would be a trivial addition instantly obviating recurring, tedious discussions like this. Even Google lets you retract your submissions from their usenet archives and Groups in a simple way.

There are many valid reasons why a user may wish to have their messages removed that override the interest of forum integrity.

No right lapses after one hour since there is no permanent license grant for user submitted content to HN in the first place (lack of TOS). The copyright of entries remains with the user.
"Welcome EveryDNS users to Dyn Inc.": http://www.dyn.com/dd-welcome-everydns
They are treading thin ice.

"We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China"

I'm glad they are standing up and taking the high road. Still, no need to be stupid.
I think the most amazing thing here is the way they are going about this.

I think it would be naive to imagine that this is a move based solely on ethics (but, then, you never know - I wouldn't want to do them the disservice of ruling it out utterly).

But to do it with such direct criticism of the Chinese government. Even if it is a veiled reference there can be little doubt about the claims. The only inference I can think of is that they are very sure (or have proof) it is the Chinese government that are responsible (I cant help feeling if it was corporate or extremist groups etc. they would be directly named - or at least more clearly referenced). It's a huge political statement.

Im glade I stuck with Google through the last few months and the spate of anti-google sentiment starting to emerge (the cynic might suggest this grand gesture is related...?).
dude, it's a friggin joke...

i suppose you don't find this funny either: http://www.bibliomania.com/2/9/77/124/21473/1/frameset.html
Problems with auto-identifying bots via User Agent
Ask HN: Best Ad Netowrks?
Hi HN,

I'm currently in the process of evaluating Ad Networks to provide revenue for my site. There are so many out there some free, some pay, some new, some old. I'm not even sure where to start!

Any fellow HN readers have any suggestions?

My Ideal network would have:

1. Base level of add track / performance metrics.

2. Geo Specific Ad targeting abilities.

3. Ability to sign up my own Advertisers.

4. Sales Force help. (Sales people to help sell space)

5. Flex banner size (Ability to post different sizes of ads)

Is there a service out there like this?

Thanks
a user agreement cannot override statutory rights.
I wonder if Fox News got this memo.
Verified Just-In-Time Compiler on x86
> the theft of intellectual property from Google

To me, that implies more than just customer information (i.e. private data in a gmail account).
Here's my not as pretty graph of the last day. http://imgur.com/p5hbD
10 bucks on 0day.
When I was doing a lot of interviews I often wanted to give a simple problem that the person could code in 20 lines or so, and hopefully had another level that could be discussed after they'd shown some code. I found it surprisingly hard to come up with questions that could be explained quickly, especially across cultural boundaries. Things like ransom notes and anagrams would really just confound people to the point that they couldn't think about the underlying problem.
This is a huge development. I was just discussing this with friends by email (we should be using Wave) and realized the move, although incredibly noble, could be even more detrimental economically to Google's growth outside the US. Totalitarian governments (of which there are quite a few) will become weary of Google's power and possibly inhibit the company's growth in those countries.

On the other hand, this move will probably placate European countries like France which was recently calling for a tax on Google (and other US companies)[1]

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1041242