skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Unfortunately the signs are that incumbent firms are becoming more entrenched, not less. Microsoft is making double the profits it did when antitrust regulators targeted the software firm in 2000.

I couldn't find any data on it, but do they mean net profits, or earnings per share? Did they adjust for inflation? MS was very successful with the xbox consoles. How would I tell the difference between a company becoming more entrenched and making a good bet on a product (i.e. apple and the iphone)?
Interesting on case usage. I'd say virtually everybody I know with an iPhone has it in a case, but for other devices it's maybe 20% of people I know who use one. All anecdotal, and every mall I go in has a hundred shops selling them, I've just always wondered who's buying them
If I ever get a Android phone, it will be Nexus series. I had an HTC and I waited ages for Android 4 update because AT&T didn't had there "customized" version, with bunch of useless apps on it. On the other hand, my friend was able to upgrade to latest version of Android, because he was using Nexus. I switched to an iPhone and I loved it. Better battery life, and clean installation.
I thought this would be about the logo of the Unicorn web server. Not much here, really, but Airbnb's name makes a lot more sense now that I've seen it spelled out ("Airbed & Breakfast").
OP_RETURN and blockchain: Record storage on Bitcoin
My main exposure to Chrome web apps is Hangouts on Chrome for Mac and half the time I shut it down and choose to use the native app on my phone instead due to the poor, non-native UI and the battery life impact of Chrome.

edit: the other shiny Google Web App example, Google Docs, doesn't work either. In Safari it likes to drops keys, and the last time I used it in Chrome (last autumn), it would either crash the whole tab, or freeze it up long enough for it to tell me it gave up and that I should just copy the content and paste into a new document

It seems we're re-living the nightmare of Java "cross-platform compatibility" but with an even worse programming language.

> In fact, I think Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) actually have a huge leg-up on native apps because you can start using them immediately

> There’s just so much less friction for users to start using them

Every web app I've used has required a painful sign-up process, which is usually where I bail out of the process. Way more friction than an app store install.
One Startup’s Journey Through Y Combinator or There and Back Again
In American society poverty is associated with failure on many levels. We have our caste system as much as India, only ours is economic, and enforced ruthlessly with endless class warfare - largely in one direction.

Something I've experienced all my life, and even more strongly since I came to the west coast and the Bay Area, is the out-sized and mis-labeled emphasis placed on signaling here. Supposedly smart and well-educated professionals will use what you wear and what terms you use as a proxy for actually listening and thinking about what one has said. Recent college grads are even worse.

All societies have used class-based stereotypes as a means of regulating and preserving the status quo. However, what I've experienced in the Bay Area are people who tell themselves they are aware of this and are transcending these mechanisms while virulently and mindlessly engaging in them.

Where have all the real intellectuals gone?
A malicious app must be installed before it can run and is likely vetted by the maintainers of a package manager or App Store. A webpage running JavaScript simply runs with no inspection from anyone.

Also, a malicious party usually cannot inject code into an installed app. Injecting it into a webpage you visit is far easier. Ad/tracking networks have been used for that. There is the possibility of a MITM attack if all parts of the page are not protected by HTTPS. There is also the potential for cross site scripting.

The web is not a place where I would want access to everything an installed application can access to be possible by design.
Risk with GitHub imports and account deletion
Seems it hasn't been fully release yet, getting a 404 on https://cloud.google.com/ml/docs/ nor can I find it in GCP console. This provides slightly more information. https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/03/Google-takes-Cl...
Tay seems really creepy, asking me to DM and for my zip code out right.
You're right, that's exactly what he wants to do. Why shouldn't he be able to? It works great on Android.
People working on a product spend a lot of time thinking about the challenges and issues related to it. They are well equipped to write about these problems because of that hard work. If they also include something self-promotional in the piece, it doesn't diminish the value of the other points they make. And I'd say if they've taken the time to write and share their specialized knowledge (which you find interesting), it's not unreasonable to also include a message promoting a relevant product.
Android sucks so bad, i hate having to develop for it. I pity all those who have disillusioned themselves into liking a substandard mobile operating system. Have you guys not tried iOS? It will change your life.
It was enough of a problem less than four months ago that phonearena.com published an article about it:

http://www.phonearena.com/news/How-to-change-your-Android-ph...

I don't think Chrome is as ubiquitous as it should be. Do new cheap tablets (like the Kindle Fire) even ship with Chrome?

New phones from Samsung don't have Chrome set as the default browser (not sure if it's even installed by default).
Presumably one takes it by an inhaler so that it goes directly to the trachea/lungs/etc instead of having to get absorbed through digestion, get distributed in the bloodstream, survive the liver, and finally make it to the needed areas.
The irony of those comments is that one of the Mac's selling points is that after 5 years the average person can still expect it to be a decent machine running the latest OS and not corrupted by bloatware.

(My six year old PC laptop is an incredibly heavy piece of junk that crashes all the time due to the combination of corrupted hard disk and Vista, and it actually is sad that I still occasionally find a cause to use it, not least because it's still the least unreliable device for running Skype that I own)
I hear you.. but I'm guessing there is actually a larger number of people that would benefit from the bay area being less congested than the number of folks riding a bullet train to LA
I think part of the Android version spread has to do with prepaid phones. At least 2 of my family members regularly lose/destroy their cheap Android phones and then replace them. These cheaper phones ($30 - $60) are usually running an older 4.x version (until recently, often 3.x).
Apps suffer from MUCH bigger security issues than XSS. And most modern browsers are immune to XSS.
>But plunking a person down to sit in a car that can drive itself for 95% of the time will greatly reduce the amount of money you will have to pay said driver.

Really? It's not like you're replacing a high skill/high wage person with a seat warmer. You're replacing a roughly minimum wage driver with... a driver who doesn't need to drive as much (but, for the time being at least, doesn't need to drive as much in a more expensive car). Why on earth would that reduce the amount of money you have to pay?
Putting your development preferences ahead of your customer's preferences is a recipe for failure.
> which is also why server hardware tends to get the smallest sizes first, as they least care about idle power consumption if they're being utilized correctly.

That's certainly true for Google or Amazon but not for most real corporate IT departments. It's very common for small offices to need a local server for one reason or another even though the thing will be idle most of the time.

Moving the server into a larger datacenter would require a faster network link to that office which would be both more expensive and slower for local employees than the local server. So every little office gets a server which is mostly idle.

And then you need two of them for redundancy. And then you need four of them because one app touches credit cards and needs to be in the PCI CDE and the other doesn't etc. etc.
Seriously considering putting our node_modules folder in a repo of its own.
It's funny until you run into a group of people actually using COBOL to run their website.
Logo Evolve
I'm not sure I find this that useful. http://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/docker/ is pretty simple.
I did the opposite and can't believe how much better my life had gotten because my iPhone is just a simple tool that I use for communications and don't think about it as a project. With Android, I always wanted to tweak silly things and run Cyanogenmod because the handset firmware was always so bad and vulnerable. On several occasions I'd bricked my phone requiring hours of recovery, or had transient failures of cell service and communications issues. I guess if you have the right level of discipline, apathy, or use a Nexus device that may be more Apples to Apples (harhar).
Meanwhile, on the desktop google music doesn't work without flash installed, and there's no desktop client in sight. Great times.
No, they're running 2+ year old OSes, not 2+ year old apps.

Just like Windows 7 still runs the latest Chrome despite being a whopping 6 years old, so, too, does Android KitKat run the latest Chrome.
MLeap: Quickly Release Spark ML Pipelines
I'm a big fan of Tarsnap and, of course, of Colin Percival.
Access to this API (and docs) is currently invite-only. Sign up for the limited preview: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/machinelearningpreview/
They lured the lion away from the protected area so they could kill it. According to Hoyle probably not, but yea, that's poaching.
> Is this cringe-y or is this how 18-24 year olds really talk these days.

Nah, fam. I am 35, and I talk like that.

But I also keep it 100.
I prefer to have them on a screen on the other side of my desk, to give my eyes a change in focus.
You see, we're all about those dank memes. It even sent me out of of the blue. https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712699907606360065
Interesting to see the speech, vision API among others. I wonder what this means for metamind, clarifai and many other startups offering an API for doing something close?
Send your enemies glitter
KitKat was the first version to ship with Chrome as the default browser, but IIRC it didn't replace the system webview or become auto-updating until Lollipop. Wikipedia shows 70% of Android users on KitKat+, and about 35% on Lollipop+.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history#/media...

I dunno what Samsung ships with, when I was still doing a bunch of mobile web work (early 2014) they used a forked version of Android Browser that was really terrible. Hopefully they've replaced it with something saner. A lot of recent Samsung devices have dropped Android entirely for Tizen, though.
It probably isn't on the Kindle Fire, no, but neither is the Play Store. It might use Android as its base, but it's not really an Android tablet.

And while I don't doubt there are many variations of Android device without Chrome installed, the devices that dominate the market (Samsung Galaxy and the like) have had Chrome preinstalled for a long time. From a brief Google it sounds like the default browser varies between phone, provider, etc. etc., so I can't say for certain. What I can tell you is that my analytics logs show the vast majority of Android users are running Chrome.
What's the reference there?
This is a fantastic illustration of testing 101: often it's the dumbest possible checks catch huge errors. Get those in place before overthinking.

E.g. a team adjacent to mine years ago had a dev who made a one-character typo in a commit that went to production. Which caused many $MM to incorrectly flow out the door post-haste. The bad transactions were fortunately reversible with some work, but I was floored that there were no automated tests gating these changes. It wasn't a subtle problem. The most basic, boring integration test of "run a set of X transactions, check the expected sum" would have prevented that failure.
Browsers are a huge attack vector. And Mobile Safari can mark data pages as executable, while apps cannot.
Branded.me – Spamming as a service
Oral phenylalanine has never done anything for me (24mg; no improvement or side-effects), even for relatively severe sinus infections. On the other hand, oral pseudoephedrine (120mg) is the closest thing to a miracle drug I have ever used - I go from being nauseated (from pain) every time I bend down to feeling somewhat OK (I suffer from near-constant headaches anyway, so difficult to really judge) in about twenty minutes.

Fortunately, it's still easy to get in the UK, and doesn't exacerbate my anxiety.
Deep Packet Inspection Is Critical for Intrusion Prevention
Instructions for Groupme don't work. You need an email address or phone number to add someone to a group in the Android app.
How one developer just broke Node, Babel and thousands of projects with 11 lines
Thanks for the link - was really interesting, particularly the introduction which explains why accessibility is so important and the number of people that it touches.
The last big example I can remember is fen-phen back in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenfluramine/phentermine

I thought that they had been the instigators in vioxx, but not quite: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/PostmarketDrugSafetyInfo...
Government-Backed Tor Project Supports the Strong Encryption DOJ Hates
I'm imagining an alternate version of the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy clicks her ruby keyboard and says, "All benchmarks are flawed. All benchmarks are flawed. All benchmarks are flawed."

This is not an uncommon technique for comparing programming languages. We are not just trying to compare the performance of different implementations, but we are trying to compare the performance of different idiomatic programming styles in different languages. The shootout does the same thing. And yes, the shootout is also flawed.
They do profit from these policies.
Or maybe people who like roads, firefighters, police ....?
SnapChat Tricks
Hmm. I use a 2011 MacBook Air and the thing performs (and looks) like it's brand new. With the latest OS. I have no plans to upgrade it whatsoever.
If you can't beat them, join them.
I blame the latter on language expressiveness more than anything else. Here's two pieces of C++ code; one "clean", one fast, taken from [0]:

void blur(const Image &in, Image &blurred) {
Image tmp(in.width(), in.height());
for (int y = 0; y < in.height(); y++){
for (int x = 0; x < in.width(); x++){
tmp(x, y) = (in(x-1, y) + in(x, y) + in(x+1, y))/3;
}
}
for (int y = 0; y < in.height(); y++){
for (int x = 0; x < in.width(); x++){
blurred(x, y) = (tmp(x, y-1) + tmp(x, y) + tmp(x, y+1))/3;
}
}
}

The optimised-for-speed version (order of magnitude difference):

void fast_blur(const Image &in, Image &blurred) {
m128i one_third = _mm_set1_epi16(21846);
#pragma omp parallel for
for (int yTile = 0; yTile < in.height(); yTile += 32) {
m128i a, b, c, sum, avg;
m128i tmp[(256/8)*(32+2)];
for (int xTile = 0; xTile < in.width(); xTile += 256) {
m128i *tmpPtr = tmp;
for (int y = -1; y < 32+1; y++) {
const uint16_t *inPtr = &(in(xTile, yTile+y));
for (int x = 0; x < 256; x += 8) {
a = _mm_loadu_si128(( m128i*)(inPtr-1));
b = _mm_loadu_si128(( m128i*)(inPtr+1));
c = _mm_load_si128(( m128i*)(inPtr));
sum = _mm_add_epi16(_mm_add_epi16(a, b), c);
avg = _mm_mulhi_epi16(sum, one_third);
_mm_store_si128(tmpPtr++, avg);
inPtr += 8;
}
}
tmpPtr = tmp;
for (int y = 0; y < 32; y++) {
m128i *outPtr = ( m128i *)(&(blurred(xTile, yTile+y)));
for (int x = 0; x < 256; x += 8) {
a = _mm_load_si128(tmpPtr+(2*256)/8);
b = _mm_load_si128(tmpPtr+256/8);
c = _mm_load_si128(tmpPtr++);
sum = _mm_add_epi16(_mm_add_epi16(a, b), c);
avg = _mm_mulhi_epi16(sum, one_third);
_mm_store_si128(outPtr++, avg);
}
}
}
}
}

I don't know about you, but that looks like an error prone maintenance disaster waiting to happen.

And, just for comparison, Halide code that produces results as fast as the second code:

Func halide_blur(Func in) {
Func tmp, blurred;
Var x, y, xi, yi;

// The algorithm
tmp(x, y) = (in(x-1, y) + in(x, y) + in(x+1, y))/3;
blurred(x, y) = (tmp(x, y-1) + tmp(x, y) + tmp(x, y+1))/3;

// The schedule
blurred.tile(x, y, xi, yi, 256, 32).vectorize(xi, 8).parallel(y);
tmp.chunk(x).vectorize(x, 8);

return blurred;

}

(this is kind of a weird coincidence; last time I replied to you I mentioned Halide[1] as well)

[0] http://people.csail.mit.edu/jrk/halide12/halide12.pdf

[1] http://halide-lang.org/
Is this innovative in some way?
It seems to do a pretty good job btw.
I normally eat a lot of sugar, but tried ketogenic diets a few times for several weeks.

Couldn't think clearly at all, felt much better when returned to my sugar-taking habits.

I really don't understand why suddenly all this sugar-bashing.
Hi everyone, please read this explanation from Kik's head of messenger about how this played out: https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breakin...

We're sorry for our part in creating the impression that this was anything more than a polite request to use the Kik package name for an upcoming open source project.
Convos.org – this Reddit killer combines features of Twitter, Facebook and 4chan
Pretty interesting story actually.
You know that whoami didn't originate with GNU, right?

The GNU coreutils are themselves rewrites of earlier BSD tools. The Rust version AND the GNU whoami.c both look similar to the BSD original https://github.com/weiss/original-bsd/blob/master/old/whoami.... Hell, the rust version is clearly a lot closer to the BSD original than to the GNU clone.

Honestly if you're going to have an opinion on this issue, you should try to educate yourself on all of the Unix that predates GNU.
A discussion about the breaking of the Internet
Python 201 – The handy defaultdict
Ember.js blog: Introducing Zoey
The Case Against Email Strengthens
Wouldn't they make less difference than the vibrations caused by regular factories? Or should we be adding homeopathic fracking to the list of environmental concerns?
Why would a PWA have a sign-up process when a native app wouldn't?
FAQ

Q: What does Tay track about me in my profile?
A: If a user wants to share with Tay, we will track a user’s:
Nickname
Gender
Favorite food
Zipcode
Relationship status
These things that you mentioned, you didn't really have to do. Buy a nexus, and it's as clean as it gets.

What you're saying is that you left the freedom of your device to jail yourself into simple interface...?

I do agree though, that those samsung/lg/etc phone have lots crapwares + carrier crapwares.
I hope you don't often place bets. :P

Honestly, it's not that easy. The StartSSL process is much, much, much easier.

There are a myriad of problems you need to solve when running an internal CA for your organization. Who has access to generate new certs? Is it automated, and what security controls are around that system? What audits are there around certs being cut? Who can revoke certificates? Then you get down to the details of CRL/OSCP...

While running your own PKI is great and definitely recommended, it's much easier to say "just set up PKI" than to actually do it and maintain it.
Ok, let's hit the ground running. This is a (perhaps controversial?) para from the book. What are your thoughts on it?

"Programmers aren’t actually wanting to write complex,
inaccessible code linearly file after file, jumping through dozens of hoops and check-in systems to get anything done. They don’t even want to be discussing on Hacker News how their way of jumping through those hoops is the best one. Their Original Intent is they want to create an abstract model about the constraints and logic and data processing that a system should implement in order to reliably do what it’s meant to, and they want it implemented
in a lowest-total-lifecycle-cost way. And programming languages, compilers, databases, and everything else they currently use is just the current option to do that based on how file-systems, checkin-tools, test-automation tools, deployment tools, computer processors and memory-designs currently work." - Chapter 12, Innovation Thinking Methods for the Modern Entrepreneur - http://amzn.to/1pMdJM9
The web on my phone – How do you solve a problem like Safari?
To the people who stand to make money from our labor, we will always be resources, just like the computers, and the office. We will always be a cost, just like health insurance, and the rent and electricity bill.

Treating us nicely is just a means to the same end of them making money from us. Such is the problem of individual ownership, instead of worker ownership.
Depends if she's smarter tomorrow than she is today.
We (Nurx) have already expanded to New York and will be expanding to many more states in the coming weeks.
> Every web app I've used has required a painful sign-up process, which is usually where I bail out of the process. Way more friction than an app store install.

That signup process can be made better. Nothing fixes the pains of having to download a large app over a potentially slow/spotty network, sacrifice an unknown amount of privacy, then having to twiddle a variable amount of options to get the thing to stop sending you notifications about every single action or event, then after a week of use, having to re-download the large app again because of updates.
> Except that Android is the open one that is implementing agreed upon standards, and Apple is the laggard left behind.

Given that many of these things are potential exploit vectors, I am not inclined to fault Apple for taking its time to implement them.

Also, we are at the point where the standards are driven by a select few companies. If I recall correctly, those are Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. Opera used to be there too, but I doubt Opera does much of anything there anymore and I suspect the same either is or will soon be true for Mozilla given its leadership issues.
I found RST quite brittle (single underscore vs double underscore?) and hard to remember/type.

Markdown is generally less expressive (I would love if MD had RST's "include" directive) but I find it much easier to format a doc in MD.
I don’t know whether or not this type of app was actually intended to be the primary mechanism for 3rd party dev to build apps for iOS but regardless…

This was basically said by Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall during a WWDC keynote.
I am not poor yet I have a Moto E that I bought from Best Buy last black Friday for $10. I love it. Anybody that would judge me based on my choice of phone would promptly get their face laughed in.
Hmm, fact-fic; I wonder who run with it make it an urban legend.
I think you may be mistaking the individual for the brand. I'd be willing to bet that the applied psychology and ability to retain attention across the world is more the work of her PR team than any individual intellectual skills she may (or may not) possess.

Also, at the risk of sounding sexist, I'd be willing to bet that if Kim Kardashian wasn't a sex symbol (we remember how she initially got that attention, correct?) I imagine she'd get significantly less attention.

That being said, I do agree she could have used her star power to improve science... yet I'd be curious how many followers she'd have now if she'd spent the last 5-10 years sending smart science tweets instead of sexy selfies.
I work in a lab. We can't use our most accurate scales when there's construction going on with heavy machinery within a couple of blocks. This isn't cutting-edge stuff either, it's measuring to 0.001 gram, with a $10k scale and a 4" thick granite table on rubber pads (unlike other equipment that's on air floating supports with active counter balancing).
Correct, the author of the Internet-Draft is the one to contact.
Facebook has the data to make a solid prediction market. That should be their new biz model - they'll still exploit our data but they won't be degrading our user experience with ads.