skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
JD, I understand that you can't speak for Adobe as a whole, but in your perception, what would be the biggest obstacles to open-sourcing the Flash Player? Apart from inertia, what is the value in keeping it a proprietary product when, as has been voiced by John Nack, Adobe's stake is in the creation apps and not in the runtime?
In what world does nobody care about Java?
Continuation of past trends? Flash has always been mildly despised, but ever since the announcement of the iPad, this Flash-bashing and consequent Adobe-bashing has meteorically risen. Every day now, there are multiple articles on HN and elsewhere justifying why the iPad doesn't and shouldn't run Flash.
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is affordability really the unit-of-analysis that you want to use to design (or make tweaks to) a tax system?

lets assume that $50k per year gives a comfortable lifestyle to a person. anyone earning less than 50k per year cant afford to pay taxes and therefore doesnt have to. anyone earning more than 50k can certainly afford it, so they pay the amount needed to get there income to 50k. so a guy who makes 60k pays 10k per year, and a guy who earns 1MM pays 950k.

do you think entrepreneurs would start businesses in this environment? sure, some would because they are doing what they love... but what about all those boring businesses. do you think the dry cleaner LOVES to wash other people's clothes? do you think the guy who started 1-800-GOT-JUNK loves other people's trash?

among other things, you need to think about incentives (and the killing of those incentives) when you devise a tax system.
whats more comforting is that, if they are able to send back things into time then we would have enough computational capabilities to solve the time space anomalies and paradoxes of time travel.
"Microsoft have alleged that open-source software is less secure than closed-source because it's easier to find vulnerabilities. As much more of Mac OS is open-source, shouldn't that make it a more attractive target than Windows?"

Wait.. what?

What has Microsoft's unsubstantiated and biased opinion on OSS got to do with whether in fact Windows is more or less secure than Snow Leopard?

"If Windows itself has more inherent vulnerabilities (including design traits that make it more likely users will do unsafe things) would that not be the simplest explanation as more malware writers see it as an easy target? "

That was addressed by some of the respondents. Basically (they claim), Mac users are just as likely to mindlessly enter their user name and password when asked to install some bit of code as some random Vista or Win7 user might click past all the warnings. You get used to it for the safe cases and it becomes routine; it's just one of those steps, like agreeing to the default install folder.

Many of the security people claimed that Windows had fewer inherent vulnerabilities than OSX, but that the main issue was, essentially, social engineering and poor user habits all around.
Climate Debate Visual Guide
Python, popular!!! that is just so great! I've watched it grow for over a decade and a half. Python got were it is, largely without the big initial push of large companies.

Maybe people now blog about python because the community has always tried to be friendly. It is usually nice to blog about Python, and have fellow enthusiasts give measured, polite feedback.

"... so it follows that the languages where you can get paid and not care are going to be most popular."

But it does not follow that there are less caring, articulate, and productive souls in a more popular languages camp.

- Paddy.
It's not a completely outrageous point. There is a not-insignificant group of Apple customers who are using their Macs for design purposes with Photoshop being their primary tool.

If Photoshop ceased to be available on the Mac (or performed below standard) then which is more likely?

They find some other tool? Or switch to an Operating System which lets them run their tool of choice?

For casual photo editing, you would probably try a different tool. For professionals who live in Photoshop, they'll probably just switch to Windows.
The thing I love about the idea of storing data on paper is that we have lots of experience with paper, have a clear understanding of the failure modes, and know how to keep paper around for hundreds of years.

The frustrating thing is that even using high density barcodes, it still takes several banker boxes per gigabyte.

My current thinking surrounding long term data archives is to store data on a durable, high density medium and use paper to keep the instructions for how to decode the data on the high density storage.
Cool Tools for the Location Independent
By my understanding, there will always be lots of ways to intentionally crash a browser. I know very little about crash-related security vulnerabilities, so I didn't see this threat as relevant.
"I understand that this is the future and hate Flash as much as the next guy, but I just don't understand why we're just suddenly bashing Adobe."

The reason is Steve Jobs' reality distortion field. This bashing all came about after it was announced the iPad wont support Flash.
And unlike clay tablets, the rosetta disk even has some ISO compliance.
Because, unfortunately, HTML5 != Flash.
There's more to Flash than proprietary versions of <canvas> and <video>.

On second thought, that is a valid question: Why exactly is Apple pushing HTML5? I can't really think of any reason in which it benefits Apple.
To add to the fun, I present to you the BASH version in 1 line and 14 seconds:

$ time git clone http://code.reddit.com/repo/reddit.git

Initialized empty Git repository in reddit/.git/

real 0m14.316s

user 0m0.496s

sys 0m0.411s
Dwight Schrute: And how big do you want this robot?

Michael Scott: Lifesize.

Dwight Schrute: Mmm no. Better make it two-thirds. Easier to stop if it turns on us.
It's cute, but it's only popular because the guy actually has some real credentials. If you tried this with a medicore resume it wouldn't work.
If you want to do quant finance as a career. Learn C++. It is the industry standard for quant work.
Did you read the article though?

> During our review of your application, we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections

This seems to me more like a "Thou shalt not mention a competing platform" rule than a "We're covering our asses from lawsuits" rule. I mean the guy was only mentioning that he had been a finalist in Google's "Android Developer Challenge." Are you going to tell me that Google can sue someone for trademark infringement over that?

I could see if he was pimping another platform like, "Hey! This app is available for Android too!" Maybe in that case Apple wouldn't want him advertising another platform, but even that doesn't make sense. They only people that are viewing his App's description are people that have an iPhone, right? So why would they care about Android compatibility? It's not likely someone would drop their iPhone and rush out to buy an Android phone over a single App.
The issue is that Flash seems to be getting worst. And we see a light at the end of the tunnel (new features being added to browsers to do what we use Flash for).

So the building of frustration with Flash over time, a general dislike of closed systems, and a light at the end of the tunnel has combined into the general "fuck you flash" feelings that seem to have sprang up over the last few months in developers. Which is awesome! As the web needs to outgrow proprietary plugins.
modern programmers are pussies who don't know shit because it's all been abstracted and they haven't been forced to learn.

NASA went to the moon in 1969. It would take longer to get there again, wouldn't it?
It seems like a very biased review to me. You can succeed with a huge variation of inputs, including treating developers as code monkeys. This startup might go nowhere, or it might do okay. The guy who was fired from Techcrunch might do better this time. Maybe the execs are also getting paid peanuts until they can afford not to.

At Google it's all about the coders but Apple is mostly about design and they're a 'technology' company. Apple essentially 'outsourced' a huge pillar of their core to FreeBSD and it succeeded hugely. I'm not convinced Larry Ellison thinks programmers are the precious jewels of his company, but he's done okay.
How to create a mixergy.etherpad account and sign in to it?

Kiruthikha.K
Crashed for me on Firefox 3.6 OS X 10.6. Google Chrome 4.0 gracefully handled it through (only the Flash Plugin crashed)
Why not just use good microfiche. Then it would be waterproof, as well as more compact than any dot printer could achieve.
Does that mean that we have to approve of what they do? I don't think that anyone is claiming that they don't have the 'right' to do it.
He was only mentioning a competing platform in a manor of speaking. Someone that doesn't know what Android is would just know that his app was a finalist in a competition, no?
Lawrence Lessig sums it up better than I can:

The point is simple, if extraordinarily difficult for those of us proud of our traditions to accept: this democracy no longer works. Its central player has been captured. Corrupted. Controlled by an economy of influence disconnected from the democracy. Congress has developed a dependency foreign to the framers' design. Corporate campaign spending, now liberated by the Supreme Court, will only make that dependency worse. "A dependence" not, as the Federalist Papers celebrated it, "on the People" but a dependency upon interests that have conspired to produce a world in which policy gets sold.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100222/lessig
I don't really see the need to use a pixel font when printing to paper. It's not like a piece of paper has a given grid that must be followed like a monitor (which is not totally true, given sub-pixel anti-aliasing on LCDs).

This might be a dumb question, but why not just take a regular font and shrink it to the same size as the pixel font, and print that, assuming you're not using an old dot-matrix printer? In other words, why limit yourself to those 8 bits?
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http://www.heroku.com
Reminds me of http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/
Google Earth Launches Ocean Showcase
These guys are up there with anti-vaccination crowd.
I think that point was to parody all these "X programmed in Y lines of code, but without all the 'hard' stuff like load-balancing, replication, optimized SQL queries that allow it to scale, etc; that's all too 'hard' so I'll do just the easy stuff and then claim that my final product is exactly the same as X"
"As the web needs to outgrow proprietary plugins."

I agree. What bothers me is all this "frustration" showing only after Steve Jobs mentions it. I highly doubt his reason for bashing Adobe is due to his love for open web standards --

What I dont get is how hackers can side with Apple against Adobe given the iPhone App store mess... The model of the App store is against everything the open web stands for -- I think hackers should be more upset with Apple than Adobe.
Interestingly enough the "libflashplugin.so" bar popped up on Gmail for me the last time that all my Flash instances crashed. I never realized that GMail used Flash. (The bar only seemed to pop up on tabs that were using Flash, not all tabs had the warning at the top)
I think Java will help you focus on more high level stuff than C++, which is a good thing. For instance, you will spend less time debugging subtile C++ corner cases.

Also, a lot of C++ "good practice" are "built in" in Java. For instance, you won't have to use #ifndef #endif or to declare your function in a header file. So, again, I think Java is a better choice since, if you have to learn and use C++, you will already know the good practices.
Gary Vaynerchuck - Content is King [video]
Part of the difficulty is that this problem applies to all plugins. Flash may be able to handle it just fine, in which case it could just be a poor plugin, but what about any other plugin out there?

Heck, Firefox uses a lock-file in your profile to prevent multiple instances from running. What's to stop a plugin from requiring such a file, writing / reading it frequently, and having no error handling because it's only designed to run singly? Ultimately, you either harden the separations to run multiple instances of it, breaking many in the process and possibly damaging data irrecoverably, or you just let the plugin decide and have backwards compatibility, which is hugely important for a browser.
Yes, but does Photoshop need 9 different ugly sliders, for example?

http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/235455865/the-many-sliders-of-p...
I have a shared plan on mediatemple. I am not a ruby man yet am 100% you can run rails. Then you can demonstrate both your ruby skills and your new found php skills.
You're right! Fornicating with Nazis is not allowed!
If Photoshop ceased to exist for the Mac, that's a huge opportunity for a 3rd party developer or Apple themselves to fill the gap. While most Mac OS users can now simply boot into Windows, I'm sure they wouldn't all be happy about it.
Thanks for the link, that's really trippy.
No, but you seem to be arguing for a broader trend or application of the principle on an anecdote related to one person (and a pretty flimsy anecdote at that). Show me some data.
My favorite CV "presentation" will always be:

http://web.me.com/agueniot/Data/Flash/cven.html

Pulling out a 2004 link, but it has stayed in my Bookmark archive for years.
Since you trying to learn something as apposed to just get something done, go for C/C++.

C++ is closer to the machine. You'll have to worry about things like memory management, pointers, sigfaults, etc - a great learning experience.

After this you should be able to pick up Java no problem. Although if you want to be really productive or hate typing, Id pick Python.
It's when people make jokes like these that I realise how truly poor my state education was.
Only if you too end using words like "officially".
"given that Ajax is a method for retrieving data from the server with Javascript."

You're referring to the XMLHttpRequest object. Ajax is a suite of technologies, XMLHttpRequest object being one of them. Check out the Wikipedia entry on Ajax:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29
A modern laser-printed page has better archival characteristics than the Domesday book.

Most paper is now acid-free. It's chemically stable cellulose that few creatures can eat. Laser toner is black plastic powder, heat-fused to the paper and thus waterproof and fadeproof. It's not fireproof but nothing short of stone or metal is anyway. And it's available in virtually unlimited quantities.

If you wanted to preserve the most important terabyte or two of our civilization's legacy you could do worse than a cargo container full of Xeroxes.
That, or the other reason, that Apple won't let flash onto the iPhone.
Symbian: Most popular OS is now Open Source
This is such bullshit.

I don't use Qik, but I've seen quite a few high-profile folks who do.

Additionally, I personally know of multiple successful, profitable startups who have outsourced development. And someone with a degree from University of Phoenix? Seriously? They could have gotten that ten years ago and kicked ass every day since then. You're really going to hold that against them?

Finally, hiring Daniel Brusilovsky might be smarter than you think; it's pretty unlikely that he'll ever do anything like that again. Read his apology here: http://www.danielbru.com/2010/02/the-line-was-crossed/

It seems like someone thought that slinging shit anonymously would be a good business model. Here's hoping they're wrong. Flagged.
Gmail uses flash for the file upload progress bar when adding an attachment. Will HTML5 allow developers to add this feature?
Proxy sites
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The transcript of the relevant Supreme Court hearing is the reason for hope and is remarkable thoughtful:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transc...
Are you sure you're not running Safari in 32-bit mode? The separation is only set up when Safari is running in 64-bit. That setup worked fine for me; clicking the plugin loaded it, and a few seconds later it crashed and turned into the block without crashing Safari.
Fred Wilson talks trends...advise for startups
The Future of iTunes
Ah, see there's the confusion. Dryad has been used internally since day one, I didn't even know you could get it outside of Microsoft. I don't think it was initially intended to be a commercial project, but more of a "We do billions of processing tasks a day, here's a way for us to do it faster and cheaper."

Anyway, yea I agree... it's definitely not as earth-shattering as MapReduce was. It has some neat integration with other Microsoft technologies but I never really thought of it as a commercial product.

I don't know why people are down voting you. You had valid points and concerns. I voted you back up to help out a bit (you shouldn't lose karma over a perfectly legitimate discussion on the pros and cons of a technology)
Flash on multiple browsers has completely separate cookie and data stores. Flash on a single browser has a single cookie and data store. Without introducing a complex forking/merging infrastructure for that data (which only Adobe would be able to create anyway) you're stuck with a single process for the plugin for all of the tabs in a single browser.
That's a (common) partial misconception. It is possible to get at least partially accelerated Theora decoding on mobile devices, now. For example http://www.schleef.org/blog/2009/11/11/theora-on-ti-c64x-dsp... has some writing on a decoder for OMAP3 chips (Moto Droid, Palm Pre).

That isn't quite the same as H264 in hardware, but should have comparable performance and more importantly should improve battery life considerably.
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Was this really the best time to announce this, given that every one it talking about how Toyata's uncontrollable acceleration problem is probably due to a software bug?

So you cant stop it from accelerating and now you can't even depend on the breaks? I'm guessing it probably has some redundancy built in...
Hm great! Now every malware writer has a code that crashes flash. Let's hope Adobe releases the fix before there are exploits
To make matters worse, us nerds have been confusing value and identity ever since we were shown objects. Bah-dom-bom.
About 18 months ago I came to the realization that Rails just wasn't required for the projects I was using.

I jumped on the Rails band wagon early and loved all the syntatic sugar that comes from Ruby, and I'd never really developed with an MVC pattern.

Like you, I gradually realized I was spending more time as a sysadmin or bashing my clients' commodity hosting into submission than actually building sites. I felt like I was cheating when I finally went back to PHP (CodeIgniter, also).

It wasn't til I rsync'd the PHP site I was working on to the prod server and saw it just work that I started feeling a bit better. Since then, I've been totally happy using simple but solid PHP frameworks.

So, I think you're on the right track. Admittedly, I'm a little out of date on the state of Rails deployment. But if you're productive in PHP, go for it.
My take on it is that at the time Apple didn't have a visionary and whatever you think of Steve Jobs (like or loath) he is a visionary and when he turns his attention to something he demands perfection. The iPod was game-changing and the iPhone I believe has been more so (as nobody was doing what the iPhone has, but they're all copying it now). Large companies with corporate layers usually end up dumbing down products and it takes a focused (and powerful) person or team to push these things through. How Apple will fair without Steve Jobs is anyones guess - it depends if he has managed to implant the desire for perfection as a culture there now... Time will tell
You could turn that argument upside-down and say that it's quite incredible they'd go so far as to create 9 custom sliders depending on the sub-part of the application you're looking at. You can't really argue that all those fit the 'standard' mac slider concept.

I think some of them could be rolled together but without knowing more about the context in which each and every one of those sliders gets used it is hard to be even sure about that.

Complex user interfaces:

http://www.sternstudio.com/HollandsGlorie.jpg

Tend to have a lot of buttons & sliders...
Sound Theme Manager 1.0.0 su Ubuntu
I agree. We moved our entire design base to it and they love it. It's not bloatware and is priced sensibly
You're ok with the AppStore and the Apple policies in general, but when they forbid one guy from using the Android tm in an app suddenly Apple becomes the bad guy?

I don't like Apple at all, but your decision process seems incorrect.
I started hosting a project on heroku recently and it is simply fantastic. They offer a free hosting with 5 MB of DB storage and they just changed their pricing scheme and offer a plan with 20Gb of DB storage for only $15/month. Definitely worth checking out.

http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2010/1/21/pricing_changes_pa...
Wow, thanks, I did not know about this one!
Shameless plug: http://www.asmallorange.com/hosting/shared/ We host Rails with mod_rails/Passenger, so it'll run with minimal fuss. Works really great so far.

But honestly, it's whatever language works best for you. If you've got a good framework in front of it that's helping to keep you from making dumb mistakes, then that's all that really matters.
What every programmer should know about memory
Sure, excessive heat will damage DNA. I would like to see a study that actually induces cancer in a rodent with cell phone radiation at cell phone exposure levels. I suspect, though, that it is not possible.
There are some examples of
this. If you send many SMSs, it costs a lot. But if you are a big driver for SMS traffic, you actually get paid. You make money at scale.
The basic observation is that, since all/most aspects of a system are likely to be of high or low quality, you can use the quality of any of them as s proxy metric for overall quality.

Note that this fails if the proxy metric becomes popular or standardised in any way, since those providing the systems will realise they can appear to be better by improving only that proxy metric.
If you define an ideological position as "something that can't have negative impacts", then I guess the Soviets weren't left-leaning either.
Ventana (in SF) is hiring coders, user experience experts, and other people excited about creating something to make healthcare simpler and better. http://www.ventana.com/corp/careers

Coders should apply with a puzzle solution (comments, questions welcome).
Pedobear @ Vancouver 2010 [jpg]
This has nothing to do with intellectual curiosity, but I couldn't resist posting it :/
What pattern do you develop with?
"ClozureCL (ccl) works on Windows."

I know. It's not supported out-of-the-box with lispbox, though, which is what I was getting at.