skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a fantastic paper Nate showed me that I need to dig up that established some bounds for timing attacks using statistical filtes. Long story short: you can time low microseconds granularity over the Internet, and you can time nanoseconds over a LAN.

Memcmp is just on the threshold of Internet-timeable. And that's memcmp, which screams.

But Internet-timeable is irrelevant, because anyone who wants to time your app is just going to get an account at the same hosting provider as you and wind up a GigE hop or two away. Hosting on Slicehost, EC2, Linode, or GAE? That step took 5 minutes and $20. I'd pay $20 to bust up an app I hadn't even heard of, let alone a popular app.
You can actually do all that, just not the way you are used to.
The way I see it is: going green is just sensible irrespective of the actual facts. I just don't see any actual committed progress to being "green" (I could name you 10 policy ideas right now that would have a massive impact).

The climate work, IMO, is about talking a very very close look at how much of an impact we are having - and assessing if our response is enough or if more is required.

But all I see, especially recently, is corruption, money and political manoeuvring on both sides.

EDIT: I disagree with your appraisal of the 2 camps though (I'm guessing you fall into the believers camp). As someone sat in the middle, in frustration, both camps are as bad as the other.
I understand why this position is theoretically reassuring as some sort of an open portal onto the device but as a practical matter, web apps will be just as irrelevant on the ipad as they are on the iphone.
Bcrypt is a pessimized version of Blowfish. If you're working at this level of granularity, it should be for a research paper, not something people actually use.
Final price: $6,350.00 - wow!
How are you meant to use ActionScript to introduce yourself to programming? Your options are to buy or pirate Flash (CS4 is around $699US) or Flex Builder (from $249US).

There's a few open-source tools for ActionScript but I doubt that any of the people posting on those forums are using those tools.

My opinion is that most of the people using ActionScript aren't programmers. People using Flash tend to be designers (or artists, cartoonists, etc.) that need code to get their jobs done.
Tell, Don't Ask
Erik Hirsch: “GPs Are Essentially Service Providers”
Just run:

ALTER DATABASE database_name DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

And you don't have to worry about it for any new tables. (If you have existing ones, you'll have to change the table default, and possibly the column too.)
Yes I have an app idea in mind that will help the newspaper industry out.
Former Amazon Exec on iPad: "Amazon doubling down, can't afford to lose"
Rentalic.com: Rent out your household items
Pattern Matching for Ruby
This exactly. I had a programming languages professor whose hypothesis was essentially: "Programming languages were invented to minimize program complexity. So why are there so many tools to manage their complexity?"

Although in fairness, it isn't necessarily a language smell. It can oftentimes be a framework smell or a "your code sucks" smell. :-)
There are actually cars being built now which will auto-brake in cruise control when you're behind a car going slower so you match their speed, and auto-breaking in emergencies when a collision is detected. Along with trying to nudge you away from leaving your current lane when you haven't signaled, the cars of the future are actually giving you less to do (though I don't think they would ever completely remove the manual control, but that's because it can be life or death).

Don Normal talks about this in his book "The Design of Future Things": http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/the_design_of_future_1.html
I thought this may have been a statement of fact rather than an imperative. In the "new" queue I see 5 [of 30] iPad stories. That seems... not too bad.

Of the five: two are duplicates; those two are about updated code that's useful for iPad developers today. Two we could probably do without. One is this post.
Personally I'd settle for no more iPad stories posted multiple times under different names :)
The biggest mismatches that I can think of involve co-founders with completely different expectations of what the company will do, different financial backgrounds and different energy levels.

As soon as you're 'not in this boat together' you're in trouble.

Other than that I certainly wouldn't let age be a problem either way or rule out people with a serious commitment to family or other dependents.

As for firing co-founders, that is not as easy as he makes it seem, I think that if you get to the point where you need to 'fire a co-founder' and they don't leave by themselves that you are probably better off starting over.

Ideas aplenty.
Actual site: http://www.rentalic.com/

(I would have submitted that directly, but if you are like me and your zipcode is empty, it's easier to figure out what it does from the consumerist article)
Yes, I'll be there the first day it's available.
Yes. Not for me, but I'll buy it for my (less-technologically-savvy) friends or family.
Maybe. I'll wait to see some in-depth reviews after it comes out.
Maybe later if they improve the software.
No, it's really not my sort of device.
Ah was not familar with "Bcrypt" thank you very much for the info. I'll look a bit better into it.
For those not aware of the connection, Dan was known and respected around here as fallentimes - http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fallentimes
I actually think this is less magical than most approaches, since there's no pre-compilation or "with" scoping magic. Sinatra's hello world is awesome, until you realize that a lot of the cool stuff is scoping magic that you have to throw out when your app has to play nicely with others.

My original approach for (fab) was like jQuery:

fab()
.find( path )
.bind( method, handler )
.find( subpath )
.bind( method, handler )
.end()
.end()
.end()

but I realized that I could simplify things by getting rid of methods entirely, and reserving methods for HTTP methods and status codes.

As for people not realizing they can define functions outside of the DSL, I'm hoping that the extensibility of middleware will mitigate that, just as the ecosystem of plugins did for jQuery.
I tried to start a similar sort of service in my village, but there are problems. What if the item gets broken? What if the item gets lost? What if the person using it hurts themselves with it? What if they simply don't give it back?

It would be interesting to see how this service plans to answer these questions.
Y combinator should offer a similar option.
My PC is my TV and DVD player combined. I don't know what an "LCD screen menu system" is. I don't have a land-line phone; but I can write a program for my phone, and without needing to pay yearly for the privilege.

Or printing: "SampleForm.Print;" in my case, at the extreme (Delphi).

The microwave, I'll grant you. It's handy for heating up tea that's been brewing long enough to cool down too much; that's about it.
Even if I can't bring him back or comprehend why he left, I can take solace in keeping his spirit alive.

which you do beautifully by inspiring the rest of us with...

Brick walls were mere speed bumps to him.

Thank you, Tom. Best wishes on your continuing recovery.
I don't think that "Not always" is a valid answer to "Haskell can be faster"; or rather, in the sense that it is a valid answer, I don't think your link proves it.
ABS can be said to be a step in abstracting away braking. By stepping on the brakes you're not directly controlling the brakes, but telling them to slow you down as quickly and safely as possible using whatever method it deems best, and most people consider that a good thing. We're also starting to see more cars which auto break when they sense they're getting too close to things. While I don't see a time when we'll have cars without a break pedal I do see that the break pedal will be abstracted further and further away from directly controlling the breaks.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081505
What are you basing that on?

To gold rush developers, perhaps. I spend most of my iphone time in safari, and I don't think I'm alone. With a bigger screen I'd use it even more.

This thing is good for the web, which is what we all need to be pushing. It brings the web to the absolute front. This is "webTV" without all the stupid. A computer that gives you a modern browser and then gets out of your way. The fact that it also comes with a closed marketplace for proprietary apps is neat for a few lucky developers, but hardly matters to the "future of computing".

You're worrying about how we can make "the device" free. Why? All the good free stuff is, necessarily, device-agnostic, and this particular device gives above average access to it.
They could just make it easy to hack open, to achieve nearly the same effect without having to support it officially.
I love how that guy was so incensed that they'd devoted so much to iPods instead of making better servers. Just imagine a world with no iPods, but beefier Xserves... Oh, and Apple going out of business before 2005.
Open-source game development
Yeah, there were ipod haters, iphone haters, hater haters...
As the IPhone SDKs currently run on Mac OSX, if they kill OSX how are people going to develop for whatever the IPad develops into?

It raises an interesting question though. Is Apple slightly killing off their supply of future developers? If people don't grow up with programmable machines will the IPad generation be so into programming or as knowledgeable about computers actually work in general. I know a fair chunk of my knowledge has come from diagnosing and fixing faults in computers.
Cry about it?

(If this were Reddit, I would have said "fuck yer". Actually I wouldn't have... but someone would have.)
No more stories about no more stories about the iPad!
Ask HN: Rate my essay, please: On thinking
Modbook: Macbook tablet that techies want the iPad to be
Ask HN: what do you think are the interesting alternative web frameworks?
They don't have to be production ready, I'm just looking for lesser-known frameworks that make you think "Huh, I wish this were the way Rails worked" or "This is an interesting way to do things, I wonder how far they'll take it". What makes them interesting?
A Call For Climate Engineering Research
what rank do you need to have to down vote something?
If I had a book of art when I was a kid I wouldn't have learned to paint.

If I lived near a 5 star restaurant I would never have learned to cook.

If I could watch professional soccer I wouldn't learn to play.

There are dozens of closed systems, far harder to crack than the app store that people bulldoze through because they love them

Well made products strike chords with people and excite them to the point where they have to make something as nice, or better. If anything I think this will hasten the transition from passive TV watching to interactivity which will spur more hacking.
Really exciting interview but I think Andrew needs to cut down on the Red Bull.
Moving for Money
Wasn't that Sun?
Let's re-phrase those to keep the analogy a little more accurate:

If I hadn't been able to scribble in the margins of my art books, I never would have learned to draw.

If all my meals had come pre-packaged and pre-approved by the food board with raw ingredients prohibited, then I would never have learned to cook.

If I could watch professional soccer but was prohibited from playing myself except on a regulation field (none of which were near my house) then I wouldn't have learned to play.

The existence of closed systems doesn't harm learning. But if the tools we give people are closed systems rather than open ones, that DOES harm learning... folks will learn to work with tools others build but will NOT learn to build it themselves. Which works great for becoming better consumers, but perhaps isn't the best way to create a new generation of inventors and innovators.
My favorite comment on there:

"I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!"

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
"I have a cd walkman and a burner already, and besides that now that I don't have a dotcom job anymore I need that $400 to pay car payments and rent."

This forum post practically dates itself.
remember this? http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
I already spend 80% of my waking hours staring at an LCD screen, I don't see how this will make any difference.
Not really. A meta that says, "Hey, let's stop" is not the same as simply submitting more non-iPad stories. The meta-comment forces a re-appraisal of the decision making model for up-voting.
I wonder what the guy who asserts that "awsome" technology won't exist for 6000 years now thinks of the iPad.
The iPod was not revolutionary, iTunes was. Everything posted about the first iPod was spot on. The iPod didn't become a revolution until a) iTunes was released for the Windows environment and b) it had a USB dock. Before those two events, the iPod was a marginal product.
These are my favorite: http://bullion.nwtmint.com/gold_krugerrand.php

Krugerrands have the lowest premiums and are resistant to scratching. That particular vendor is highly professional.
As someone of Jobs' age I would be most pleased to discover that there are still some human/silicon interfaces waiting to be dramatically polished to someone's sense of perfection.

When someone else amasses both the will and the capital to achieve what Steve has then more power to 'em.
I don't buy it. We all know the thing'll be jailbroken in short order. If a kid wants to tinker with an iPad I'm sure there will be just as many ResEdit-esque opportunities to hack it.
Erlang: riak/ nitrogen combo

Scala: lift

Clojure: compojure, enlive.

Smalltalk, seaside

haskell happstack (i think that's the one that's not dead
That's performed especially well recently.
The iPad story to end all iPad stories.
Typing on mono-touch displays has not been historically a problem because until now you had to type with one finger or a stylus. If you want to type with both hands and more than one finger, mono-touch will be an ocean of pain.
You mean you want us to stop talking about the iPad being for mom but not, being a flop and a success, ironically open and closed, how it will crush Microsoft, Amazon, and Google in one go, and how it's hackable and closed?

OK fine.
If Redis uses TCP it will bottleneck long before 0MQ does, because 0MQ uses a reliable-multicast protocol for communication over the LAN. As discussed in the linked article, in the comments.

Also, Redis is a centralized server and a single point of failure - 0MQ doesn't force you into that topology.
Per the FAQ: There can be security deposits for damage and loss.

They are conspicuously silent on the missing question:

I lopped my arm off with this negligently maintained chainsaw, who do I sue?
You still can use the workaround: http://usesthis.com/interviews/_why

Thanks to the code:

get '/interviews/:slug/?' do |slug|
@interview = Interview.first(:slug => slug)
raise not_found unless @interview

haml :'interviews/show'
end
I guess there is no more "dot" in "dot-com".
It isn't just ruby clients, I've found the python client to be similarly simple. I get the impression that there can be a lot of complexity to AMQP - but so far the c and python client libraries have hidden nearly all of it from me.
the $1000 is really an arbitrary goal to shoot for, I'll send whatever we collect within the next week whether it's more or less. But if you're wondering what the money will be used for, here is a list:

- rebuilding what's left (if anything) of her home when the waters recede
- new clothes for her, her husband, and there 2 small children
- ensuring they have funds for food, water, and shelter over the next view weeks
- helping restart her business when the time comes

Thanks for the question and I hope you can help, even if it's just by voting this up.

- Bradley
Sadly, no.

The first point: this is a necessary input to many manufacturing processes on which the US relies. At this point, China has pricing and volume control over these resources. This is, and should be, a matter of some concern.

Second -- did you even bother to read the article? It sounds like China -- and let's not kid ourselves, every large Chinese corporation is an extension of the government and controlled by the government -- seems to have been selling such ores below cost, possibly as a strategic move to end US production. While we could certainly restart production, there are immense lead times to such things.

Finally, given the evident pricing volatility, this could well be a place where private investment fails to produce the the socially optimal outcome.
Maybe Apple got more closed with the release of the iPhone, but the iPad is more of the same.

The iPad is an attempt to replace the existing open environment of laptops and desktops. (Yes, Steve does want iPads and their successors to replace general purpose computers. It wouldn't be "the most important thing he's ever done" if it was just intended to be a super iPod touch).

Oh wait, Macs were locked down too until Apple switched to Intel processors

That isn't true for any reasonable definition of "locked down". Heck, there were more CPU upgrades available for PowerPC Macs than for Intel.
It is not a coïncidence that MagLev came from the Smalltalk community. See all the other comments here :-)
That's really interesting, thanks!
Bill Gates Funds Research Into Climate Hacking
At times like this I wish the mods could merge multiple links into one large discussion. It seems like some of each discussion addresses the specific link being posted and a lot of the rest is general stuff that applies to any of the links being posted.
i agree those were the inflection points, but the iPod was completely revolutionary from an interface perspective. The click wheel, the large screen, the easy to navigate UI; these were things which hadn't made it to a portable media player device before. Or if they had, they were never marketed the way Apple was able to market the iPod from day one.
Abusing the Cache: Tracking Users without Cookies
I needed this bit of nostalgia humor. Thanks for the link.
> It's possible that now, with greater knowledge of the sweep of literary history, that you'd recognize what's good (or even great) about it.

That's an awfully subjective field. I think Neil Stephenson is 'great', but find most 'high literature' to be a waste of time. I like various forms of visual art, on the other hand.

It's sort of like an old man here in Italy once told me when I asked him how to judge if a wine was good. He looked at me as if I were a bit daft and says "well, it tastes good". Granted, he probably had refined his taste buds over the years, but the main point was to drink something you like.
In an article that outlines how the iPad as doing "little to enable creativity", I'm surprised that he didn't mention the irony of Apple's claim yesterday that it's at "at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts."
The comments, of course, are priceless. Thanks!
Jobs either understood or stumbled across digital content delivery as being "the thing" for the 21st century. Traditional media, in trying to maintain control over the content, failed to realize that their value wasn't the TV shows they delivered, but that they delivered them at all.
Latin Tattoos
> What evidence do you have that the money received in tax would not purchase goods and services that would increase emissions?

Eh? Where did I say or imply that it wouldn't? I asked why you're so sure that taxation couldn't be part of the best policy. I didn't say I'm sure that it should be. I don't know what the best policy is.

(In any case, surely what's relevant is not whether any tax revenue would go to purchasing things that increase emissions, but whether the net effect would be an increase in emissions.)

> I never made an axiom. [...] It was your assumption.

You might want to remind yourself of the meaning of the word "if".

> The least you could have done was to ask me to clarify my position.

Curiously, that is exactly what I did.
I also have the PC app on my old hp tc1100 tablet. I have to make Sure to keep my forearm vertical while holding it, but it works well for me.
The click wheel didn't exist in 2001. And the screen was not particularly large, either (the Neo Jukebox, for instance, if I remember correctly, had a similar sized screen). The iPod Mini introduced the Click Wheel, and debuted on the iPod proper on the 4g (both in 2004). And the connectors were horrible early on: all firewire. Windows was supported through MusicMatch (eww) on the 2g and 3g, and it was after the 3g release that iTunes came to windows.

And it was when iTunes came to Windows that the iPod took off in sales (ironically, reversing a LONG trend by Jobs to keep Apple products on the Apple platform). In 2002 and 2003 they sold less than a million units. The first quarter they had iTunes on windows, they moved over 2 million units--more than double what they'd sold the previous holiday quarter.

People look at the iPod as this huge instant hit. It wasn't even 'till Q4 2004 that Apple sold more than 1m units in a quarter. And sales in 2005 came in a large part from selling through Wal-Mart, too.
The Bureaucracy won't give up paper easily. Please tell me the iPad will kill (at least that part) of The Bureaucracy? Maybe a paperless society is happening closer to the center of the universe. But it isn't here.

Apple's site does list a "iPad Camera Connection Kit" in the Accessory section of the "Tech Specs" page. It allows connecting with USB cameras. So the hardware is there. Who will make the software?
You work for Zynga? :P
I think this is the best comment there.

"I really wanted to like it. Really. But do the math:
20GB hard drive: $199 from APS tech.
MP3 player: $50 from Best Buy.
You save $150 plus get an extra 15 Gig of storage! "
Personalized Hacker News Frontpage
It's only been one day since launch. Stories will die off soon enough.
Damn, digging for iPod articles from 2001 is fun! (For those who want to join the fun, October 23 is the exact date.)

“Apple’s Musical Rendition: A Jukebox Fed by the Mac”, New York Times (David Pogue, no less): http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/technology/state-of-the-ar...

“Apple doesn’t change the world (yet)”, Der Spiegel (sorry, German): http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,164056,00.html

“Apple enters the hi-fi market”, heise (sorry, German): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Apple-entert-den-HiFi...

What a strange world in 2001, though: no Gizmodo, no Engadget :)
Yelp Helps Kill the IPO Market
My understanding is that they couldn't make everything available, because some of their data came from sources with confidentiality conditions attached. See, e.g., http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427393.600-battle-fo... (note: "New Scientist" is less than perfectly reliable, but I have no reason to think they're wrong on this particular point).
Well, it's not strictly necessary, I could have just used an image with my email address but that could be harvested by OCR-capable spambots (I think there are a few in the wild) and wouldn't be clickable. ;)

With the captcha, I can be fairly sure that a human solved it (reCAPTCHA is particularly good at filtering bots, afaik) and the user gets a clickable link.

In any case, that's just to accomodate browsers without Javascript or with it disabled.
I believe most people have Javascript enabled, so they'd get a regular mailto link.