skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most users won't look for the best app, but for the first that is good enough.

The first things where people will look are: Stuff already installed on the device; Stuff that people already used before.

If IE6 didn't have fatal flaws like a lack of tabs, alternative browsers would have never gotten so big.
How+Your+Shopping+Skills+Can+Make+You+A+Better+Trader
It's not just recent phones. This has been in use since at least the Xperia S, though back then you hardly lost anything by wiping it lol. I've been wondering for a while now if Sony could use eFuses (such as the qcom qFuse, seen very recently on the Nexus 6P) to store data, but I've yet to see any change. Perhaps with the Z6 line that launches with 6.0?
You do not really need root to run a recovery, as it's the bootloader's (and until a few days ago, the boot image's) responsibility to boot it up, meaning you need to have your bootloader unlocked. (Unless we're talking of /system recoveries, but those are hacky workarounds at best.)
A few years back there was a CM10 build that could run off the stock boot images, so people who had root but also had locked bootloaders could very easily run CM.
"Sadly this probably means 3 things are going to happen in the next 6 months"

(Genuine question, not snark). Why "sadly"? Companies, even technical companies, get obsolescent and die all the time. Maybe it is just Yahoo's time to go.
Packrat: Seven Years of a South American Threat Actor
Thank you, John De Goes. I definitely agree. While PostgreSQL FDWs are a great way of extending Postgres, I don't see they are a good fit for this use case. Not only there are a lot of pushdowns not supported (although that is in the process of being improved), but more importantly, as you mentioned, this connector is going to impose a lot of full table scans for even the simplest queries. I'm dying to benchmark this connector against ToroDB. But unfortunately, the MongoDB proprietary license agreement explicitly forbids any kind of benchmark. I guess they have reasons to do so ;)))))))

I cannot be objective saying that you should better of using ToroDB, but I definitely think so.

I also want to congratulate you. I think Quasar and SlamData have gone very far, and I'd encourage you to keep on pushing it. While this connector may or may not adversely affect SlamData, there's always room for differentiation and improvement. Good luck!
As an Android hobby developer, given the amount of issues that have been lagging all these years and the quality of each "stable" release, I really don't get where do all those genius that Google does eventually hire work.
Jos. A. Bank Holiday GIfts Sale – Buy 1 Get 2 Free Suits, Sweaters and Sportcoats
But OnePlus still only sells at most a few million units a year - since Oxygen OS is just an Android fork, its still Android, and you don't have the problem of marketshare adoption to attract app developers that any of the non-Android based mobile OSes would have. And thats why I said Plasma Mobile is most interesting, since its not for commercial purposes where success is measured in adoption. The Nexus phones and other devices that are rarely commercially available in stores sell fractions of the units that generic LG and Samsung phones on those shelves do. You can make a business selling a good Android phone out there, but for a mobile OS that needs a good chunk of market share to stay viable, limiting yourself to those seeking you out puts you at an insurmountable disadvantage to getting a foothold large enough to attract developers.
FBI admits it uses stingrays, zero-day exploits
Rent a drone by the minute
Why use the Realm mobile database?
Like Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Green, and Tumblr...?
> 3) If Alibaba buys the holding portion of Yahoo( Alibaba and Yahoo Japan) then look for Alibaba to seek to aquire the rest of Yahoo Japan.

Isn't Yahoo Japan being spun off from the Alibaba portion? Ie. all that remains of the current "Yahoo" company will be its Alibaba stake.
THIS. I love programming, and spent my childhood hacking away on Apple IIs/Amigas/etc., but if I had my teens/twenties to do over again, I would pursue a career in Medicine (couldn't have stomached a career in Law, methinks) while continuing to program as a 'hobby.'

Alas, I followed my "passion." Blech.
Nicotine users just can't catch a break.

Based on the real subject of the article, diacetyl, I'm surprised the chemical has not been regulated by now.

Here is the federal register snippet [0]

§184.1278 Diacetyl.

(a) Diacetyl (C4H6O2, CAS Reg. No. 431-03-8) is a clear yellow to yellowish green liquid with a strong pungent odor. It is also known as 2,3-butanedione and is chemically synthesized from methyl ethyl ketone. It is miscible in water, glycerin, alcohol, and ether, and in very dilute water solution, it has a typical buttery odor and flavor.

(b) The ingredient meets the specifications of the Food Chemicals Codex, 3d Ed. (1981), p. 368, which is incorporated by reference. Copies are available from the National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Ave. NW., Washington, DC 20418, or available for inspection at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). For information on the availability of this material at NARA, call 202-741-6030, or go to: http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/code_of_federal_reg....

(c) In accordance with §184.1(b)(1), the ingredient is used in food with no limitation other than current good manufacturing practice. The affirmation of this ingredient as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) as a direct human food ingredient is based upon the following current good manufacturing practice conditions of use:

(1) The ingredient is used as a flavoring agent and adjuvant as defined in §170.3(o)(12) of this chapter.

(2) The ingredient is used in food at levels not to exceed current good manufacturing practice.

(d) Prior sanctions for this ingredient different from the uses established in this section do not exist or have been waived.

[48 FR 51907, Nov. 15, 1983]

[0] http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?rgn=div5&node=21:3.0.1....
Saw Daniel Kish give a lecture a few months ago, and this amazing ability is a lot more accessible than it sounds. Kish uses both passive and active sonar (based on dental clicks), but the passive sonar is a lot easier to wrap your head around. Even for people with sight, the difference between a large, echo-y room and a small room is immediately apparent. The differences between a voice spoken in front of a hard table and a soft pillow are also very distinct. And if you make an even tone in front of a wall and in front of a corner, the differences are quite apparent as well. Apparently corners are so acoustically distinct that you can hear them from quite a distance away.

It's not a foolproof method; he uses a cane because it's difficult to hear objects below knee level. But he thinks many more people can learn to "hear the walls" (if we don't ridicule people for it).
Also don't use the like button for anything except stuff friends post themselves. Otherwise you will get spammed with that stuff and you will get less of what your actual facebook friends post. You can remove likes also afterwards.
Here on HN, over the years I've mentioned my "spouse firewall" for Facebook, which I considered to be the perfect level of involvement.

Well, about a month ago my spouse firewall very nearly failed entirely. The problem was that with her mature Facebook account, with dozens of "friends" with a ton of other "friends", the stream of continuous bad news just became too much. Partially that's particular to some relationships we have, but even ignoring those, it was still an unrelenting stream of people having surgery, complications, financial troubles, and then very bizarrely mixed in with cute puppy photos, and then mixed in with political shitfits, to say nothing of some other family's "drama", all mixed with a "healthy" helping of continuous ads.

As it turns out, my firewall "recovered", but usage has been toned way down, and a lot of people got themselves hidden.

It gets said on HN every so often, but MySpace and the previous social networks often collapsed virtually overnight. I still think there's a good chance Facebook could still go that way.

Edit: Sorry, my "spouse firewall" is that my wife is on Facebook and I have no account. I hear about the family gatherings and other such things announced only on Facebook that way, but don't have to have an account myself. So it's like a "firewall" filtering out only the most important stuff.
M-Pesa has entered Congo and it and other mobile money solutions have already become one of the primary mechanisms by which soldiers are paid. It's credited with reducing corruption by middle-men and senior officers who have skimmed money from salaries in the past. [0]

M-Pesa is offered there by Vodacom DRC [1], the other main players are Airtel Money from Bharti Airtel and Tigo Cash from Tigo. In some cases there are cross-carrier agreements, such as the one between Vodacom/Vodafone and MTN which allows people to exchange M-Pesa and MTN's Mobile Money in any of the countries in which Vodacom/Vodafone and MTN operate across Africa.

But while mobile money has its advantages, especially in the country's more volatile East, the administration in Kinshasa still prefers to promote regular bank accounts for its civil servants because of the knock-on economic benefits from growing the country's formal banking sector.

[0]: http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/04/will-eastern-congo-see-f...

[1]: https://www.vodacom.cd/Entreprise/home/m-pesa/m-pesa
Go ahead an be pedantic; I looked up a video right after I made that comment and saw my error. :)
Android please!
> I remember that XKCD comic about social network effects. Our minds are 'trained' to 'compare' ourselves with 10-15 of our friends, and assert that we lie around the 'average'. When we look at facebook, where everyone puts on their best (and in the hundreds) our brains 'think' we're doing a lot worse than the average, and we feel bad about ourselves. I've heard a lot of people talk about not comparing to people on facebook, but... you really can't help it.

I'm quite fortunate to have been quite successful in life, especially recently, so it's not this aspect that creates problems for me. It's the constant sharing of political / religious opinions and ensuing bickering (especially among my family) that gets me down. I've actually seen a few family relationships completely break down as a result of arguments over petty things on Facebook, with real life consequences. I'd rather not be exposed to any of that anymore and that was my reason for massively reducing my involvement in it.
Most of my work was on World of Warcraft. I wrote an early Django version of what is now WoWDB (http://www.wowdb.com/).

The work consisted mainly in reverse engineering WoW's file formats, protocols etc in order to understand, index and organize data, and to be able to produce "datamined" patch notes as soon as new game files were available.

I got to work with and learn from people a thousand times smarter than me, it was by far my favourite job and it's why I still do various Blizzard-related work today.

It also creates an interesting relationship with the game's developers. I think on that front, many studios could learn a lot about working with the people interested in the technical aspects of their game, rather than working against them. Most get it horribly wrong, few of them get it right at all - Riot is one of the few that do, I wish I enjoyed LoL. :)
> Google's search engine runs at a loss to support their advertising business

What? I have never heard that AdWords runs at a loss and find it incredibly dubious.
I had a go at showing an iPhone user where something was on Maps - I failed... (after i had just done it on my phone)

I use Android and Google Maps just works, has stars and is awesome. Finds everything when you search for it and just works. Plus browser to device or device to browser via stars is great. There are some annoying things, however the big things work well.

Apple Maps is a pile of junk :/
My tech company has a media department. I've been in meetings with them. I still have no idea what they do.
Again I ask, where should I take ~30GB of photos that I have on Flickr? Yes, I have other backups but I need offsite storage. Guess I'll have to budget for it now. Backblaze B2 isn't quite ready yet.
Slightly off-topic, but I can honestly say I've never once used Apple's Maps application that now comes with Mac OS X (not iOS). Does anyone use this? It probably ought to be faster or better integrated or something than opening Google Maps in a web browser, but, despite being in the dock, I just never, ever remember to use it...
And how is the app ecosystem on other open source mobile operating systems?
Thanks for this. I write file parsers for language translation at my day job, so this could be a nice resource to have on hand.
This is was any addiction feels like. Your brain aggressively telling you to do something and rewarding you when you do.

I've been addicted to other things, but never got that dopamine rush from facebook. From the looks of it though facebook appears to me more addictive, or at least more available than your average addictive substance.
Show HN: Publish npm modules safely and gracefully
The parameters are 115200, -> 8n1 <-……
Remember to enable kmsg to UART in the kernel commandline and … personally, I use PuTTY on Linux as well (just give the right permissions to the tty device you're going to use).

About cmdline parms, note that downstream and mainline DO differ, so take this as reference:
Downstream 3.4/3.10/QC kernels: console=ttyHSL0,115200,n8
Mainline, korg 4.4-rc4 currently: console=ttyMSM0,115200,n8

Aside from this, and if you're a developer you actually should know, here's a lil cool info: you can also use an Arduino to communicate with your device on UART….
Just be sure to NOT connect any VCC to the board, otherwise … you'll have to say goodbye!

Wiring UART is a serious thing and requires soldering experience: use good, non-conductive flux in VERY SMALL quantities and possibly thin-as-hair insulated wires.

My suggestion is to fix those wires somewhere in your phone and "export" thicker ones outside of the phone, practicing a small hole in the housing: this will make your "mod" to last longer, and will make it "safer" since you won't be never anymore touching the mainboard with a soldering iron.

That said… this post finally gives wonderful pieces of informations to all of the very experienced developers out there who want to experiment very new, wonderful things, opening nearly endless possibilities on Sony platforms.

Also, Sony has got a wonderful open device "section" on their Developer World website, you may want to check it out:
http://developer.sonymobile.com/knowledge-base/open-source/o...

...and even if it seems that they are just playing with AOSP, they are effectively creating a good, sane base with clean code that can be also easily used for porting/running alternative OSes, like Sailfish, FirefoxOS etc, like you can see on the Mozilla page here:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/build-and-run-firefox-os-o...

So..... hands up for Sony's friendship with the opensource community!
Tracking the Bitcoin creator story
Just thought I'd list the submissions so far ...
Like Yves Chouinard, Tompkins made his fortune from his outdoor apparel business and plowed a lot of the profits into conservation around the world. He died doing something he loved in an area he has helped which is about as good a way to go as anybody could hope for.
A 2013 N7 (though that's losing support very soon), a NVidia tablet (the newest one is a great performer, only $200), Asus ZenPad S 8 (or whatever it is -- the 2GB RAM variant is great for the price, though updates are iffy). The Nexus 9 gets updates, but its performance isn't the best, and people say the build is very bendy.
Oh yeah, that was it! :)
If Candy Crush is installed on your copy of Windows, the OEM got paid for it. A "default" install doesn't have it, although you may see an "ad" for it on the Start Menu which can quickly be removed. Yes, there's way too much colour and movement on the Start Menu in 10.
Eyeballs.
I would like to see a parallel breakdown of professors by gender, for the same fields in the same time frame.
Ahhh... so its the classic "Design is Art" argument :) I look forward to your next blog post then, if only to make my blood boil! Haha!
Just like building a skyscraper doesn't require a degree. You don't need a degree to lay bricks, pour cement or assemble rebar. But you do if you're the one designing the structure in the first place.

There is a lot of knowledge to be gained by experience, but sometimes it's useful to have knowledge gained from books, and in particular from books you had no interest reading in the first place (which is the real value of a degree: forcing you to go through a process that includes stuff you like and stuff you dislike).
Out of curiosity, are you familiar with Translate Toolkit? https://github.com/translate/

If you're not and are interested by it or in contributing to it, you should email me - I'll put you in touch.
Where do you think the Eurocrats get their ideas from?
That's pretty straightforward, actually --- just fail, setting errno EABSOLUTETIMEISAMEANINGLESSCONCEPTINGENERALRELATIVITY.

There was a reason why modern C extended the identifier limit, you know.
Not being a devils advocate here, but this actually isn't bad.

Some offline GPS navigation app solutions locate a specific address number you entered the same way - on the wanted street (which can be couple Km). But it doesn't indicate it's only an approximation, since it doesn't have the correct location in its maps database. Sygic is one of those from the top of my mind and it uses TomTom as mapping provider, same as Apple does.
In the general case, a basket of options is worth more than an option on a basket, and an equity share can be understood as a volatile asset and an option.

Usually there would not be a parent company but two separate companies (Google is a special case).

Yahoo's case is again very different; it's about avoiding tax rather than anyone else. The Alibaba stock that Yahoo currently holds is worth about $20 more per-share to Alibaba than to anyone else (provided it can make it into Alibaba's hands without getting taxed along the way, because Alibaba can take the shares off the market, whereas anyone else would (ultimately, one way or the other) have to pay the $20 of tax liability that they come with). So the puzzle is to find a way to allow Alibaba to buy those shares without having to buy the rest of Yahoo (which it evidently doesn't want to) and without doing anything that will constitute a taxable event for those shares.
A Tutorial on Impossible Geometries: Non-Euclidean Cubes
That's perhaps the most twisted/obtuse definition of "running at a loss".

Without their search engine, there is no advertising business.
Any recommendations or examples of "good communications grade" handsets?
I can't speak for chollida1, but for me as an "older millennial" (28) Yahoo was how I came to discover the internet.

Between the chats, instant messenger, search before Google, multiplayer games online with strangers (albeit simple ones like chess and poker), and Geocities it was my first taste of the types of things I do online to this day. I think it's okay to mourn a bit for how we remember the company.
As a sidebar, I've always kinda felt the name gets in the way.

Yahoo!

I feel silly saying it. I feel silly asking someone if they Yahoo!? It feels silly seeing it on stock tickers. Do I want to invest in a silly business? Work for a silly business?

The answers are yes and yes in an objective world, if the company is producing interesting products that are selling. But when it comes to marketing to users, investors and future employees alike, I'm not so sure it isn't a small hurdle in the way of that conversation.
I remember back in the day when Emacs stood for 'Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping' ... since then I've always got into the habit of keeping it running & never shutting down, startup was never speedy. It's nice to see that today's computers actually make a difference to emacs' startup times!
From the article, I'd say the point is
"Apple used to pride itself on avoiding these kind of design compromises"
Paul Graham's What happened to Yahoo[0] is probably just as relevent now as when he wrote it in 2010.

> One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to work there was the way they insisted on calling themselves a "media company.

That was a bad decision then, but at the time content and media were newer on the internet and had value. They don't anymore. Yahoo finance and fantasy sports are nice things to provide, but they aren't a google killer for sure.

Yahoo's core business is media not technology. If the NYT and Wall Street Journal are any indication, media is a bad business to be in.

[0]http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html
A palabras necias oidos sordos
Bollocks. Google Maps has just been in a continuous downward spiral on both desktop and iOS.

The naysayers at the Apple Maps launch were extremely short sighted. It was always going to improve significantly over time. Mapping and especially navigation is a data problem and Apple didn't have the data to roll out an A* star service worldwide at launch.
I haven't got the app installed and only check it once or twice a week via browser.

Its useful for invitations every now and again, but its still a conscious effort to keep it out of my life for the most part.
tl;dr there are some good ideas, but existing treaties like the TPP prevent implementation
Here's the dictionary definition of decimate. The primary definition is "destroy a large number of". This isn't recent - I looked it up in the full OED and it's been around for centuries.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/decimat...
9 Principles for Countering Innovation Assassination
Why whould EU do anything to makers ability to do whatever they want with their product? Don't like Apple, get Android or Windows Phone.
Or will EU also do something about me not being able to run iOS apps on Android. You see, I prefer iOS versions, they are nicer.
By themselves, "businesses" don't like to create new companies. But businesses aren't sentient, so it's actually two different groups we're talking about:

1. Executives generally don't want to have separate companies. Having it all under their purview gives them more power and control.

2. Shareholders often want separate companies, especially when they perceive one division as being much more valuable than the rest. With separate companies, they can own the profitable division but not the others.

The balance of power between these two groups is why ends up dictating what happens. This is why Google was able to turn into Alphabet (a single company) instead of spinning off their non-core assets (as some shareholders desired). Unfortunately, Yahoo executives just don't have the clout to hold together any longer. The market thinks Yahoo's assets have negative value: the only thing propping up their stock is their investments, and shareholders want to hold those investments by themselves.
Facebook Ads: A Simple Hack to Uncover High ROI Audiences
I'm not sure I quite understand.

The article puts Yahoo's Alibaba stake at 31bn. Google finance is reporting Yahoo's market cap as 32.75bn. Does this mean that Yahoo's non-Alibaba value is a rounding error?
Goldman puts its muscle into tech push