skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Platform specific / Site Specific Browsers are going to be immensely useful. I'm a little sad to see this fall of the main page with so few votes/comments... Having developed two medium to large desktop applications using XULRunner, I can say that there is massive room for improvement here.

Using Todd's Fluid.app SSB generator, I was able to create a menu item that displayed an appropriate window with the letsfreckle.com timer as a small popup bound to a hotkey. The more you think about that, the more powerful it should sound. Can I do that in XULRunner? Sure (maybe... it has Windows SysTray at least). Fluid.app took a half hour, XULRunner would have taken all day. Google Chrome is supposed to have something similar, but not for Mac, which supports the platform specific strategy. I don't need one framework that works everywhere, as long as each platform specific framework has the same general API exposed.

So, rock on Todd, I'll be using Fluidium soon.
"If China decides to bear a grudge, things could get very nasty for them."

How? Once Google moves out of China what can the Chinese government do to them?
Just to chime on on the opposite: don't talk to him, because you are nothing like the last guy. Approach everyone without second thoughts, form your own opinions, and convince them of a budget the last guy never dreamed of :) That said, make sure your expectations regarding budgets/output match your employers' expectations, but that has nothing to do with the last guy.
Have you read Halting State?
Principles aside, you have to admit, "Google threatening to pull out of China", or, if it comes to that, "Google pulls out of China", is a much stronger headline than "Google not going into China".
Well, I'm going to be the dissenting voice.

I agree that they should give you better guidance as to your budget before you accept the position.

As for contacting your predecessor, I wouldn't bother. You're not going to get an honest answer out of anybody; everything said about the other will be heavily influenced by the "breakup".

I'll summarize what happened: your predecessor picked a fight, and lost. Leave it at that. The specifics may not be the least bit relevant, won't change what you're going to have to do, and will likely taint your views of your coworkers.

Go in with a clean slate, and make the job your own. Maybe you'll need to pick the same fight. Maybe not. Why worry about it, when you're sure to have plenty of immediate problems.

And again, I would expect better budget guidance before accepting, regardless.
This thread: ?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049859

I mistook the RSTs for a socket without a listen so I thought the server was restarting, but the overflowing listen queue is more likely, especially in the light of riffers comment there. That means the server is still up but not accepting connections.

iirc the default is something like 5 outstanding connections, that is a thing you could fairly easily remedy.

It's bugging me because I see it happening more and more often.

edit: irony, I had to submit this three times to get through...
ASP.NET Performance - Nginx
Michael, open an account with someone nicer. Direct banks usually have to try harder because they don't have local branches and need to incent you somehow. ING Direct is good, but Charles Schwab (http://www.schwabbank.com/checking.do) might be better; they even refund your ATM fees. I'd keep an account at a local bank for convenience, sending everything by mail to your direct bank sucks. I wouldn't use the local account for anything else though to avoid getting nickel and dimed. Most banks allow you to set up electronic transfers between your accounts and these transfers are usually free. BOH allows this, just make sure that they won't ding you for that. This way you will have a convenient way for making deposits and a more sophisticated and friendly account for everything else. Your most pressing problem is cash though. You really need to build up a savings cushion to avoid the likelihood of overdrafts and even worse - falling into debt. I know that it's easier said than done, but do set spending budgets. Mint.com or even a simple Google doc spreadsheet are great ways of tracking your spending habits.
I sometimes enter a bingo hall with exactly 12 grams of carbon-12, and then I fill out a card for every atom, knowing that I'll have covered all combinations when I run out.
I agree. Given the information that was available yesterday, this all seemed very plausible. As more and more becomes available, it seems less and less likely to be the government.

Chinese government hackers are not script kiddies. They would not make that mistake, even in the made for TV movie. Chinese, indeed ANY, national intelligence agency is well resourced.

My guess is that either a lot of information coming out about this right now is being made up by people with no verifiable knowledge of the matter, or there is something that Google is not telling us. Could be both, but I'd put money on internet based know-nothing loudmouths.
And: people already have subsidized phones, with contracts that prevent them from getting another one for a while. I'm still locked in to the G1 I bought in November of '08. People who were waiting on the next big Android phone probably just bought a Droid, with contract.
Mousedroid
Huh? Cappuccino is a web framework and Fluidium is a delivery mechanism: they are completely orthogonal.

Also, http://sproutcore.com is a cappuccino competitor worth mentioning.
Aren't the ads displayed in a particular country from companies that operated in that country? When the user clicks on the ad the (French-based) company is charged by Google (i.e. the company advertising has now transacted, and according to tax origination principles, most likely that would be interpreted as having occurred in France).

See my other comments in this thread about the Amazon advertisers cases in California and New York, for a similar situation.
"Google has demonstrated that any given company wielding sufficient power relating to the free flow of information has the capacity to make a big difference in moving to help liberate countries such as China"

How so? Has China moved yet, in reaction? It seems very unlikely to me that they would, and Google is not even the most popular search engine in China.

As for unstoppable technological progress, there are lots of examples of political regimes keeping their countries in the dark ages.
Google implicates the Chinese government of cyber warfare
Hey eggsagain,

I use USAA and it is awesome. I have never used deposit@home because I generally go for direct deposit, but maybe I'll try it. They give you pre-paid stamped envelopes for depositing checks. That is what I use for the rare times I have to cash a random check. Now that I live in NYC with copious blue boxes, it is even easier.

To join USAA you have to be a veteran or a relative of a veteran. I'm lucky that both of my parents were in the Navy. I've tried other banks and always felt I was getting shafted in some way. USAA, on the other hand consistently makes you feel like you are getting a good deal.
I don't think so. If they had loudly and publicly stated that they were not going to do any business in China because of the human rights violations there I think it would have been a much stronger statement.

Now it looks to me as though they figure the income they make in China isn't worth the continued PR headache, or, alternatively, they decided to leave anyway and they use the occasion to polish up their image.

I'm very cynical when it comes to large companies doing things for the public good, but you could already tell that I guess.

Shell, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google (and many others beside) they all have their skeletons in the cupboard in this respect.
And there's also remember me feature.
"This whole situation definitely feels like the start of something much larger than just Google pulling out of China."

The assumption in government (and of security researchers) right now is that every time you send an email, it gets read by 25 or so countries. However, they haven't bothered to tell the general public this yet. My guess is that they are going to use this incident to either start to break this news to the general public, or else push through additional computer security measures. Possibly both.
Already turned it off.
Tools of a Pro Django Developer
I have a client that's a non-profit. They've got the best IT infrastructure I've ever seen. Non-profit does not always imply limited budgets. That said, is the organization in question a charity? If it's a charity, then keep in mind that most try to only spend a maximum of 25 cents of every donated dollar on "administrative overhead" (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/content.view/c...). You can do some back-of-the-napkin calculations. If the budget's $1M, they're spending $250K on administrative overhead. If there are 4 salaries, that leaves you with $50K (based on $50K salary for each employee) for non-salary expenses. You'll get a fraction of that for your IT budget.

I'd do this speculative estimate in addition to contacting the former guy. It might provide some context.
Unrewarded genius is a proverb:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Ecclesiastes 9:11
Why I Won’t Sign Your NDA
I remain skeptical about anything found on earth, since life is so pervasive here. Even if the meteorites do contain fossils it might be possible that their chemical composition just happens by mere coincidence to be similar to that of Mars. I'd be much more persuaded if a rover on the planet was to find fossils, or if a sample return mission was found to contain fossils.
Google doesn't need China; even the Nexus One is made in Taiwan. Unlike most other large companies (and all governments), they're in an excellent position to call out the Chinese government.
China Raises Bank Reserve Requirements
You'll need to find out what your budget is sooner or later. And you might find that "an interesting challenge" means building everything from used desktop computers. As long as that's inline with your expectations, you should be fine.
China Mobile is helping Chinese police to crack down on "illegal short messages"
Humbling Thoughts (on publishing)
Isn't it unlikely that Mars would not have bacteria, given the tons of earth-sourced meteorites that have bombarded it?
So adobe is one of the 20 companies. Others?
Facebook fan page with contact form, dialogs, navigation & AJAX with static FBML
Effects Of Entrepreneurship Of Savings (Graph)
I've been wondering why Google's response has been so ... ferocious. If the PRC government has been suborning Google's Chinese employees (easy enough for a government that ruthless and powerful) then Google can't really afford to maintain a presence in China ... and they need to let people know on the QT what's happening.

If this is true, it's very serious, worse than e.g. the moles France planted in US companies.
Regarding whether you should contact the former IT director: to put it in two words:

Of course.

You will spend eight hours every day at that place, you want to gather as much information as you can. Naturally you have to filter/sort/disregard, but that is the next step.
Baidu.tw Wasn’t Hacked To Show Google, Doesn’t Even Belong To Baidu
I agree with the other commenters that goodness-at-programming is a partial order, not a total one. However, your comment reminded me of something I remember PG saying in a talk once: "If there is a Michael Jordan of hacking, nobody knows who he is, not even he." I can't remember if he mentioned the obvious corollary, which is that it's pointless to worry about.
Here is a related link and at the end of the post you can see more related links: http://www.mark-welch-blog.com/index.php?option=com_content&...
Mixed Signals on Airport Scanners
Google’s Nexus One phone sells a mere 20,000 in its first week
Victoria Fine: My Dad Tried to Right a Wrong, Now He's Behind Bars Unjustly
I guess we'll have to disagree regarding the headlines.

Still, if you apply the cynical view consistently, then Google refusing to do business in China can be seen as Google making a calculation, deciding they can't make enough money in China to justify the headache/bad PR, and claiming the decision is because of human rights issues. Same interpretation, 2 years earlier.
Ask HN: How best to communicate iPhone to Blackberry
I know this isn't exactly the point of the forum, but I was hoping that some of the saavy mobile users here would know the smartest way to do this.

I have an iPhone with AT&T, I have unlimited data and MMS. My girlfriend is currently in Spain for an extended period of time using a Blackberry Tour with international plan with Verizon. Her international plan includes unlimited data, but no phone or text messaging.

We are trying to figure out a smart way to communicate mobile to mobile without using text messages. Skype is apparently unavailable on Verizon Blackberrys, And, according to Verizon AIM on the blackberry counts as text messages.

Given the blackberry's dearth of easy to find applications we haven't found something that would work.

Does anyone know of an app or communication tool that could solve this problem?
My hope is Google withdraws and throws the resources into developing censorship-circumvention technology.
I'm curious as to why it took so long for this issue to come out in public, and why it came out in public so strongly as it did in this case.

Targeted attacks on specific diplomatic, economic, and infrastructure targets from China were, I thought, widely known of for the past few years.

China targeting Tibeten diplomatic traffic: www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-746.pdf

Northrop-Grumman report: http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2009/NorthropGrumman_PRC_...

Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GhostNet
MI5 reports China targeting UK government in 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7123970.stm
Visualizing Transit Time using Neo4j & GRASS GIS
Gordon: An open source Flash runtime written in pure JavaScript
With a tap into any of various of the major network pipes, the central difficulty would involve sifting through the vast mounds of data that result.

I can often tell when somebody has had their servers hacked, and I just watch my own servers.
I think my statement focuses on broader, long-term trends, at least as I see them. I wouldn't disagree at all with your characterization about widespread repression in the world today, and I failed to clarify that the impact of Google's action short-term will be more psychological than anything else (still important, though, when contrasted with the kiss-up attitude shown by many companies - including Google itself - toward such regimes over the past few years).
I can't seem to find a good source for the noise complaint part, so it may be hearsay (sorry for the potential misinfo). Wiki seems to attribute it mostly to issues with track electrification and some other issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express#High_speed_issues

Most of the track is definitely not equal to the special stuff laid down for the TGV's very high speed sections, so I'm sure that's a contributing factor.
But /statistically/ speaking, its not you.
Ohhh good book. Im a big fan of the notion of MMO as spygame -- it just makes so much sense. True plausible denyability ftw.
I think that depends mostly on spin.

For example:

"After a thorough investigation of business opportunities in China, Google has decided not to touch the place with a ten-foot pole."

Or:

"Google on China: F!@# NO!"
It's true that much of the streaming content is not HD, but Netflix goes to interesting lengths to get the original sources and re-encode them for a better streaming experience. http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html has the details. They're not just taking the original SD broadcast signal and digitizing it. So even though it wasn't made in HD, in many cases it looks better than it ever did when it was first broadcast, or even than seen on DVD.
Given the right set of features, yes [translation: "if it does everything I want" :) ].

Off the top of my head, if it worked like this gem (ability to request arbitrary sizes on the fly) and had the ability to do simple color transforms (B/W, Sepia) that would be cool.

If you could convert RAW files, that would be interesting as well.
Well, obviously. but I was hoping for a more chat-like method of communication. Something similar to BBM, text message, AIM and the like
So, any guess if updating from Adobe to fix "PDF zero-day bugs" ( http://www.macworld.com/article/145670/adobe_patches.html ) remove or install what ever trojan/malware that may or may not have entered Adbode's Corporate Network (and may or may not have been further distributed)?
GetApp.com Aims To Become The Premier ‘App Store’ For Business Software
Have to get HN's perspective on this...
Because multiplying/dividing by 1.6 is too hard?
here is the thing with NDAs.

99% of the cases the person asking you to sign it, is just starting out. Because these are the only guys who think they need to protect their idea(or that an NDA will actually help them).

And the person just starting out, usually doesn't have the money to enforce the NDA anyways. Lawyers cost money, I remember I wanted to sue someone(small b.s. breach of contract clause), and the lawyer told me it'd cost 15-20K.
If anyone actually believes that, I'd like to bet with them about it.
i can't speak to learning the killer apps (mochiweb, riak, nitrogen, rabbitMQ, ejabberd etc). but i think the support for learning erlang the language and development environment and OTP is quite good on the mailing list and stackoverflow.

There's 2 books in print, one Manning MEAP, (and 2 in the pipeline by Gerakines and Cant that I'm confident will be solid.) And if you ask on the list or stackoverflow, you'll get a patient, complete answer most of the time. Folks from Ericsson's core development team, ETC (erl training/consulting the company), and people like Robert Virding participate actively.

tip: the "Search this Group" box on google groups appears ot have had a heavy object dropped on its head. Use a regular goog search with "group:erlang-programming"
A List of Developer Contests out there
Netflix might be able to get films that are unlikely to make it to Blu-Ray in HD though just like HDTV channels get them.
Yes, it works both ways but the change today is huge compared to, say, the days of the "Iron Curtain" (where virtually no meaningful information could get across borders without exorbitant risk, with no form of widespread dissemination even if it could get across, and with only paltry means to bring such information to the attention of the broader world).
Wow, NDA trolling. That hadn't even occurred to me.
And this is the job of the U.S.:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/
I hope Adobe et. al. have deployed some log archival & query (SIEM) solution like SenSage (http://www.sensage.com). If so they'll have records needed for forensic reconstruction of the attack, and find a way to remedy their problem. If not, they're flying blind (or at least near-sighted). It will be interesting to see whether this is an inside job.
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Baidu stock jumps after news of possible Google withdrawal from China
Because I believe in china, the chinese government and the chinese system. I will defend what I believe in, even though it's obviously shared by very few people here.

I think it would be unusual if I did not defend something I believe in.

And yes, you may think I am wrong, but don't forget that _I_ think you are wrong. What's the difference? If this where a chinese board, you would be the one in the minority.
Could have just been redundancy built into the command-and-control network. If you're running a huge spying program... why not? It's a lot easier for regular traffic to/from a google IP address to avoid attention than traffic to/from a personal cable modem.

And just saying what Google has said, the way they've said it, is pretty much the end of their business in China. It would take something like a glastnost event or revolution for things to change course now.

That's an awfully high a price to pay unless you're pretty damn sure the government is directly responsible, or protecting those that are.
Dangers of Using Laxatives For Weight Loss
Google errs
Attack them daily
A program may never be truly finished, but often in practice you reach a stage where the bug count is low and there isn't much extra to be added - at least for certain types of application. This probably doesn't apply to things like operating system kernels, but does for more specific stuff like a datamatrix reader.

Also it is a good idea to avoid too much software architecting from the top down. I made this mistake early on, because "divide and conquer" was how the books said it should be done. Often a more bottom up approach works better, and is more adaptable to mid-project changes in requirements.
Shed Skin - An Optimizing Python-to-C++ Compiler
Default https access for Gmail
"Facebook does not allow Javascript to run on load"

Does this mean you simply can't have dynamic content in one of those tabs (without adding an extra click/link)?

I'd like to connect one of our apps to Facebook in such a way that customer could show their most recent image galleries on their FB fan page.

How would this be accomplished?
Has anyone tried this out? Is it more than a toy?

README says little
http://github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/blob/master/README
4 Best CSS Sprites Tutorials You Should Bookmark
I wonder if this might be a paradox of choice phenomenon as much as it is a feeling-at-home phenomenon. In the store, people are confronted with 20 choices, with a variety of technical numbers that sound important and little obvious visual difference among the sets. They might feel compelled to do more research to make the right choice, or not want to choose at all. In the home, they only have to choose between "This is an experience I would pay for" and "I'd prefer to keep my money."
How objectification silences women - the male glance as a psychological muzzle
Two different talented developers have told me with regards to tweaking news.arc:

"I think the reason you see a lot of posts on arc-the-language and very few on news-the-application is that arc is small and simple, while news, and arc's whole web application DSL, is very alien and difficult to learn :). "

and

"My preferred approach would be to do the bulk of the work in PLT Scheme, and then add the necessary interfaces into ac.scm."
Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See
NDA's have a place in business, but not for VC's and journalists who deal with different businesses and ideas everyday.

I run a small application development services company. Our clients insist on NDA's and we have no problem signing them. We're getting pre-release insight to product development which should be protected.
More information never hurts. Talking to the prior IT guy does no harm, and might do some good, both for OP and for the company he'd be working for. This is not a time for seeking zen enlightenment in just being in the moment with no awareness of the past; learn from others and their past mistakes.