skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Advertising leads to increased profit, on average. Groupon did not. Their whole proposition was bogus, and they knew it from the beginning. Their business model required a constant supply of small business owners who'd make the wrong decision. It was despicable.

The difference is that Groupon never acted in good faith.
I'd be interested in reading why neither Apple or Google have support for trial apps in their respective app stores. Microsoft has this in the Windows store, both for phone and computer and I'll grant that Google has a very quick and easy return system (push a button and it's done, unlike Apple). Is there a reason to not do it that I'm missing?

My curiosity comes from practicality: I'd love to try out the more expensive apps on iOS but I don't want to pay out up front and then be disappointed and have no trivial way to say "nah, wasn't worth it." Even Target lets me show up with a thing and some manifestation of having paid for it then takes the thing back with minimal fuss.
Show HN: Spamaltman – a Twitter bot based on Sam Altman's blog posts
I read this as a suggestion for cities to adopt more R2 zoning.

I heard an architect once say that a city will only grow as large as it takes for a person to travel from one end to city to the other within an hour. Perhaps rapid transit solutions could create more affordable housing on the outskirts of any given city?
For me new has to be new. I learnt Tcl/Tk back in the 90s because I could rapidly develop a GUI on X11 but then started to use Tcl as a general purpose scripting language. Then I look at Ruby and Lua and Node.js and I think, what can any of these do that Tcl doesn't, just as well and usually better? E.g. all the async stuff in Node is old news in the Tcl world. Then I look at people who flock to the latest thing always and I think do I want to work in a world where every project it someone's first in an immature technology, or maintenance in a dead-end technology? That doesn't sound very satisfying to me, I want to get the foundations right and build on top of them, not build on shifting sands.
This is hardly a loophole, this is just comcast using their cable to provide TV service - which is after all, what they do.

Just because it's the same wire, does mean it's internet.
This is pretty cool! I'm sure Sam would get a kick out of this xD
Anonymous hackers uncover ISIS plans to attack Atlanta, Italy and more
Currying in JavaScript
All you have to do is estimate the impact to GDP that has on Norway, and pull it out from the comparison.
1. It's assumed that the seed you get from /dev/urandom is unguessable. This is a very solid assumption to make. The reason why it's a good idea to use an HMAC is entirely different and is the following classes of attacks, not a matter of costs of bruteforcing (which is impossible becase of the search space, without having some clue of the content or state of /dev/urandom). For example, for an error the code could be written to SHA1(seed || counter). In this case you can "re-open" the hash function and perform an "length extension attack", so you add "0" at the end and successfully predicted one of the successive IDs. HMACs are constructs used to make sure the secret and plaintex is mixed in a more cryptographic robust way, basically.

2) If you don't trust /dev/urandom to seed the generator, you have no reasons to trust that /dev/urandom cannot be predicted by observing some part of the old stream of bytes.

More information about the attack I described are available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_extension_attack
There are so many problems[1-3] with this article. This is an important and scary tactic that needs to be nipped in the bud.

[1] "Anonymous" isn't a source, almost by definition

[2] Promoting "stopping terrorism through hacking" is a terrifying trend and will make surveillance easier

[3] Promoting "Anonymous bomb scare" as something to react to is begging for abuse
Isn't that riskier than using a buggy but well audited code base? So far I've stuck to TC for the simple reason that without thorough audits I imagine it would be fairly easy for an attacker to compromise something like veracrypt.
Here's What Happens When a 27-Year-Old Finance Journalist Tries to Manage Money
What Is Going on with Google Chrome?
I think the issue is less that you can't legally patent them and more that because of the relatively high mutation rate in both phage and bacteria, patenting is too slow to be practically useful. Patents are good if the thing you're selling will still be useful in a year or two, but I don't think that's the case for phage therapy.
How did they correct for people who reduced their coffee use because of failing health? I mean, have they proven once and for all that drinking coffee is good for you, or just that healthy people drink more coffee?

When you are diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, heart disease etc, you tend to get the advice to drink less coffee. Older people start drinking less coffee as their health declines because it makes them jittery.
Does no one else find the "our audited software isn't secure, please switch to any of these (compromised) options" rather suspect? I figure it was a as direct a warning that the devs could give based on whatever was happening.

I'm very skeptical, but that was very, very weird, and not too far fetched in our world of gag orders.

Is there a stronger explanation for the erratic behavior?
This is a common misconception. The actual real world effect is that you'll never ever run into a collision, because it is much more probably than any other catastrophic event will happen in your computer, or that bits will flip at random in your processors and so forth. Note that:

1) Economic transactions, signatures, files, are often verified using "incredibly long random numbers".

2) Rsync transfers files hashing blocks with hash functions and avoid transferring blocks with HMACs that match.

You'll never see a collision if not on-purpose in the case the hash function has a vulnerability that allows the attacker to craft a plaintext P2 so that HASH(P2) == HASH(P1), or at least allows an attacker to select two P1 and P2 so that HASH(P1) == HASH(P2).

If you don't trust crypto hash functions to be collision resistant in the explained use case, where even the above attacks are irrelevant since we are just using the distribution properties, you can't trust most modern computing at all.
Microsoft got broken into pieces on antitrust violations for less than this. Comcast's latest strategy is obviously anticompetitive. I wonder how far they can push their luck before an ambitious prosecutor takes them down.
FWIW, the refund system for Apple seems pretty quick and straightforward, even if it's not a simple one click process. Not saying it couldn't be better, but I wouldn't be put off trying expensive apps because of it.
Specifically, by removing cafestol:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafestol

However, cafestol potentially also has beneficial health effects, so it is not necessarily bad. I'm not aware of any study comparing health outcomes (as opposed to blood test results) of filtered vs. non-filtered coffee. This latest study does not distinguish between them.
The Microsoft Bob code lived also on in Office 97, 2002, 2002(XP) in the annoying Office Agent and Windows XP (in Windows desktop search, and WinXP setup second stage welcome screen).

Bill Gates wife Melinda was responsible for the Microsoft Bob (marketing, management level): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

Related products (predecessors) were Microsoft Creative Writer and Microsoft Fine Artist (both for kids):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Artist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Writer

Search on Google/Youtube for better picture/videos - both sister programs are very similar to Microsoft Bob, the have navigation screens and cartoon characters that help you.
A sign that the world's richest are about to hit a rough patch
That reminds me of this: http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/safevsp/
It's also worth to note that pretty much any German scientist that was even remotely capable of figuring out how to build the bomb didn't want to actually build one.
Heisenberg and his team were working on reactors and cyclotrons and intentionally killed any possible weapon program internally.
The problem is that /dev/random, and /dev/urandom in certain systems (it may be just a symbolic link to /dev/random in the extreme case), depletes soon and blocks until the OS can collect new entropy. Even when /dev/urandom can be used without ever blocking, like in Linux, it is slower than just computing SHA1(secret||counter).

For the goal of just getting the initial seed /dev/random is just good. So basically the method described works almost everywhere there is some even slow source of unguessable bits.
I'm not very price sensitive, but would buy a lot more software with a quick built-in refund. I've installed and then almost immediately uninstalled way too much junk to take the risk on a £10 battery app, for example, that I'd have gladly spent on the best one I found.
In certain systems (OSX, certain *BSD), /dev/urandom is an alias for /dev/random so the generator will completely block waiting for entropy.
JSoC 2015 project: DataStreams.jl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84
Heroic: Spotify's time series database for monitoring
What AI?
For our company, normal iPad usage has basically fallen to zero. It's unlikely that a sudden surge in iPad Pro users is going to regain our attention.

Also, Apple's sort of told professionals to fuck off for a few years now while it focused on consumers. So I find it hard to trust them to do right by the needs of niche pro users.

Time will tell though, so we shall see!
I second this, and have used it for years with caffeine for this exact reason. By itself it also has an anti-anxiolytic and calming effect, and has been used to treat ADHD as well.

If you want to try it out, make sure you get Suntheanine. A dose that works for many is twice the theanine than caffeine, but YMMV.
I had to switch implementation to use SHA1 in counter mode in actual code, because on OSX, /dev/urandom blocked. To make it block did not required a huge amount of data.
No, actually, he was just talking about the concept of "rich and poor", nothing at all to do with Marx's theories about owning the means of production.

The concept of rich and poor relies on the fact that the poor can afford less goods than the rich because of scarcity. I.e. in that simplistic scenario, if there was no scarcity, the concept of "poor" wouldn't exist because they'd have access to as much resources at the rich. Though we are heading into a utopian-level discussion at that point.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9606345
Learn Basic Personal Finance
Reminds me of the Vietnamese noodle bar in London named "Phật Phúc" which translates to Happy Buddha (Vietnamese puts adjectives after the noun so it's the "Phật" that translates to Buddha). I presume they thought about the likely English mispronunciation when they picked it...

(There's apparently also a Phật Phúc in Ho Chi Mihn City - a Chinese takeaway)
You're totally right! Security practitioners hate the robustness principle! This article, for instance, contains a small rant.

http://noxxi.de/research/http-evader-explained-8-borderline-...

At a minimum, the robustness principle leads to exploitable parser differentials (filter bypasses such as the above being the most minor form). When you've already determined the data doesn't meet your assumptions, it's really easy to make a mistake in handling it, leading to memory corruption etc.

Don't try too hard to be robust! Call broken data out for what it is!
Do we get this article has nothing to do with global warming?

These islands are not 'sinking' due to rising sea changes, they are just over populated and destroying natural resources, a common thread for humans.

They also can no longer handle the natural movements of the shore due to this.

> No one I spoke to knows anyone who’s yet left the country because of climate change.

This line sums it up.

Why even with the future ocean rises they might not be affected or can just work around it -

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150213-tuvalu-sop...

Assuming they solve their bigger issues first.
Hi guys, Andrew here (author of the medium post). Thanks for the feedback. I'm just going to try to summarize the questions/criticisms that have been raised in the comments - it seems like they're all mostly hitting on the same few things. I think it would be great for Groupon to answer them.

Here it goes:

* Groupon attracts bargain hunters that never come back. It can't be compared to other forms of advertising because the customer you get as a result of a Groupon is less valuable than customers you get from other forms of advertising.

* Groupon cannibalizes sales from customers that would have otherwise paid full price.

* In summary, why should I believe that Groupon is a good form of advertising for small businesses when compared to the other options?

* Whatever the answer, why should I take the word of this corporation over the many small business owners who have reported poor experiences?

Let me know if I missed anything and I'll add it.

Andrew
For Mr. Bich, I can sort of understand it. But transgender and e.g. other groups like first nations / Indian groups that have also reported problems having their names recognised could quickly escalate to anti-discrimination lawsuits if they're not careful.
Hm, I may have been unclear -- I didn't mean to question your claim that Microsoft is not showing us real pictures/video, as they clearly are not.

I was (and am) curious about the ability to display darkness, which you specifically claimed the hololens cannot do, and it sounded as though you knew so for sure.

Every indication from hands-on demos is that it can actually display black, which is surprising and impressive, but no one I've seen has _explicitly_ said so, so it may still turn out to lack that ability. I'd love to find out :)

The primary difference that seems to be reported between videos and demos is (as told in your links and mine) that the field of view is extremely limited, which is understandable, but does make the videos misleading.

Anyway, thanks for the links!
Good on you Turkish, Chechens and Georgians. Uncle Joe Stalin would be proud of his fellow Asian descendants.
Many apps in AppStore/PlayStore already have in-app-purchases. So it's basically "Shareware" (a 1990s term) or Lite-version or a demo-version, and to unlock all features you have to pay once or per year.

The difference for the developer is you have to maintain only one version with optional features, and not two different app-versions (demo/lite/trial + full version (maybe even with optional features))
What in your opinion constitutes as "native UI"?
Show HN: Hyphen – A beautiful, powerful, and robust eBook Reader for iOS
This video says otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCUSTowpS_c
The very same author in her original review for the iPad gave it a perfect 10 for "ecosystem".
i never believed hacking was real until i was helped with my grades by one crazy hacker. i wonder how disappointing it would have been if i didn't graduate. thank you VASTHACK. You may contact him via vasthack@gmail.com
I know people who are hiring, send me an email (address in my profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kspaans).
It sounds to me that "Foo Da Bic" is just someones quick and dirty description to avoid having to go into what "without the heavy k-ending" and "without the heavy c-undertone ending" and "with very light c-ending" means and that they got it reasonably close with that in mind.

Reality is that nobody will pronounce it right just from those descriptions anyway - Vietnamese isn't exactly a trivial language to pronounce for people who don't know the sounds already -, so they're just going for illustrating that it isn't what every English speaker first think it'll sounds like.
Purchased OV

I never understood why this exists. How many people ever open up a website over https, and then actually tell their browser to open the certificate, before clicking "details" and then scrolling down the "Subject" field and reviewing it? If all it says is "Domain Validated only", as opposed to a business name, is anyone legitimately less likely to use that site?

The majority of end users don't even recognise the big green bar of an EV site as meaning anything, let alone the process of getting a certificate that shows up in a browser looking exactly like a DV certificate.
Concerning “Gods as topological invariants”
Into how many languages should you translate your website
will do right away
Google does automatic refunds if you uninstall an app within 2 hours from purchase, which seems like a good system to me.
I don't think pinyin is that hard to understand as a layman, at least no harder than a typical Latin-alphabet language other than your own. It's not great if your goal were a phonetic transliteration into English, but even most European languages would fail that test. For example Polish has quite unintuitive spelling for an English speaker. Same with Portuguese and Danish for that matter. If you put pinyin alongside those languages as just another Latin-script-using-language, I don't find it especially weird, basically in the normal range of variation. An English speaker has to learn specific rules to pronounce it (approximately) correctly, but not an unusually large number of them.
Is anyone really using the ipad (pro or not) for producing stuff? I find it great for checking emails or browsing the web, clunky for typing emails (editing a text is where the experience really deteriorates), but I wouldn't use it for anything else. Without a mouse and a keyboard it's hard to be productive.

It's dangerous to bet against apple these days but combined with a small ecosystem of professional authoring apps (compared with MacOS or Windows), I am not very bullish on the pro.
The 5 “Profit Levers” (The Only How  to Increase Profits in Your Business)
That is insane. And also one of the reasons I try to avoid being a system integrator whenever possible. It just takes up too much time - so much simpler having my friendly Supermicro distributor build my server for me!
Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation
There is now also a very good paid service called Pilotedge: https://www.pilotedge.net/
Increase the size of your Eden space. You probably have something allocating very large amounts of temp objects, which is exhausting Eden. You should optimism that, whatever it is, but bumping up Eden will give you some breathing room.
It is somewhat comparable to Atoms Electron if you are familiar with that, but instead of having node.js backend this one has pyside backend.
Spatio-temporal smoothing and EM estimation for massive remote-sensing data sets
I don't think growth issues in EU are due to more vacations. Tbh, we need lesser work hours and days to pass automation gains to workers.
Gun is so rare that as a Norwegian I still had to look it up to see if anyone actually used it. Apparently there are about 350 of them vs. about 9000 with "Gunn".

We do have lots of unusual variations in use, though, so I'm not surprised. It was only after World War II that these things were accurately recorded, and so I have an uncle that has one spelling of his name on his birth certificate, one in his passport, but uses a third spelling for everything else. How he's managed to keep that going, I don't know, since e.g. bank records in Norway are keyed to the same central government register used to issue passports.
Have a look at Waze (now owned by Google): people on the road ahead of your can put up warnings, and the system can figure out of a certain road has congestion in real-time and suggest alternates.

Also maybe look at OpenStreetMaps for a starting point for mapping and place data.
Hi Andrew, thanks for taking your time.

Since you're trying to capture it in one place, there is a comment hidden down with ctiticism that you did not capture in your list, here it goes:

"unclebucknasty 3 hours ago

That and the fact that those customers were Groupon's customers, not the businesses'. Their loyalty was to Groupon and the never-ending stream of discounts they provided.
OTOH, the businesses that offered the discounts were essentially commodities in the scheme. They created the value via their discounts that Groupon then sold to customers. Few cared about the businesses, as people were not buying the underlying service or product from those businesses.
Instead, the product was the discount itself, which they were buying from Groupon."
It doesn't feel right, because the experience had two levels.

How the demo looked like. Which this demo is wonderful made, not a single complaint, specially because of the innovative step of using pure HTML/CSS.

How programming looked like, trying to squeeze everything into 64KB of memory, while taking advantage of hardware tricks and invalid register modes in the process. No one will experience this while playing this demo.

So it is great that new generations get to see how it looked like, but they don't get to see how it felt to program them.

This is what the OP was complaining about, I assume.
I am 44 years old. I go on an interview binge every couple of years or so, because I normally work remotely from home and I get bored with not having anyone to talk to (professionally). The last time I went on a series of interviews (in Dublin at the end of June 2015) I got about four NOs and six YESes. I think I'm a very good programmer but not an exceptional one :)

I think it's more like Uncle Bob says: the number of programmer has doubled every five years. A consequence of that is that those of us who were in it for a long time (30 years in my case) appear to be surrounded by a sea of youngsters with no clue. Personally, I realized recently that not only I don't have a fear of losing my job - I'm starting to find it strange when others tell me about it. (I'm re-reading Clarke Ching's Rolling Rocks Downhill and I find it harder to empathize with the protagonist than it was a few years ago.)
Ah, yes, I missed that... Thanks.
IMO that just seems like an elaboration upon / the reasoning behind "groupon customers are bargain hunters and won't come back", yes?
I like the ambiguity in your comment that leaves open the possibility that it was you that never turned up for work due to these various ways if taking time off.
I was always a bit surprised that I never heard of an effort to create a GPL'd QNX clone. Do you think that L4 has more conceptual purity with performance and stability close enough to QNX?
> Just because it's the same wire, does mean it's internet.

Just because it's not the internet doesn't mean that we shouldn't regulate it. The obvious spirit of the law is preventing the owners of physical infrastructure from favoring certain content providers (themselves, usually) over others whatever the technical means by which this unequal treatment is accomplished.

Yes, this idea means that the FCC should make Comcast count traditional cable against its customers' data caps.
If the iPad Pro becomes a replacement for laptops (say for children/teenagers), the fallout will affect tinkerers. On a iPad, children don't get a terminal, can't run their own programs, and need to convince their parents to spend $x in order to get a linux machine that has a Von Neumann architecture.

In the worst foreseeable case, desktops/laptops become so rare that they costs tens of thousands of dollars. Children interested in programming will then have a massive barrier to entry.

Really another form of making Stallman's 'Right to Read' a reality; instead of licensing debuggers, you make all mainstream OS's a non-Von Neumann architecture.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/the-death-of-the-von-neuman...
Paris Attacks: We're Not Afraid(The Song of Hope) – Muzaffer
Emails and everything sent to customers were always proofread by a native english speaker. I wrote this on my spare time but lesson learned for next time.