skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Firefox has been on my bad side lately. For months now, it's been the slowest, most unreliable browser on both my PC and my MacBook (not counting IE).

That said, since Chrome's release, the ONLY reason I have continued to use Firefox is Firebug. I do a lot of heavy design work and DOM modification, and sadly Web Inspector is just not up to the job. Like someone else posted, I never really knew why this was the case, but this post hits it spot on.

Most importantly:

* I want my CSS to look like CSS. Specifically, I want it to look exactly like the CSS I wrote. Firebug does this perfectly, and Web Inspector does not.

* I want to edit things with a single click. Double-clicking is for grandmas, I don't have that kind of time.

I did just notice that Web Inspector in Chrome allows me to right-click nodes and select "Edit as HTML". And the editing here is actually very good, good job.
I thought one of the most interesting items here was the difference between the Sublime HTML 5 video player in Safari on Mac (21% cpu usage) versus Windows (104% on a dual core machine). If anything all theses tests show how badass Safari on Mac has gotten
Macs in the enterprise: management headaches linger
ChatRoulette: A quantitative survey
There's a difference between doing something, and doing something well. Larry and Sergey didn't give up just because Yahoo!, Altavista and Excite were around.
Yes, that is still a threat, and I would love to see SGP's algorithm make it into native addons for Firefox, Chrome, etc, triggered by a hotkey or toolbar button. However, my initial attempt fell flat when trying to wade through XUL, just didn't have enough time...

And if you're really that worried about a new site, the mobile version can be saved to your local disk and opened in a separate tab, and then copy-paste the generated password into the site in question.
See also PasswordMaker: It has extensions supporting several browsers and a javascript version as well.

PasswordMaker uses your password and the website domain name to generate a unique password.

http://passwordmaker.org/
Sugar is just as bad as HFCS, according to this video lecture that came across HN:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

It also asserts that pretty much any juice is not a good idea because you're losing the fiber that helps your body deal with the fructose. I need to learn more about it though.
It's just a bookmarklet, not an extension, and if you're not at your own computer, there's a "mobile" version that can be used from anywhere to generate the correct password.
i'd listen to a successful crack dealer if they had something interesting to say about being an entrepreneur.
I didn't post it as linkbait. I posted it (with the original headline from the site) because I was interested in people opinions and reactions. I am glad it has been discussed as it has, so I hope it isn't removed.
WARNING: Do not click unless you don't have anything better to do... I think I lost a month of my life to freeciv.
When I need a critical surgery to, say, survive the next year then I'm not sure I'd really want (or be able) to "shop around" in that situation.

I'm all for free markets, perhaps even all the way down to flu medics and such. But please, when life is at stake, can't we find a way to use some of our excessive wealth to provide basic help to everyone who needs it?

And with "excessive wealth" I'm looking specifically at the health insurance industry that is making billions in profit every year. If there is a symptom pointing at the fundamental flaw in our system then it would be this.
Getting first-author papers in both VLDB and ACM SIGMOD your second year as a grad student (which means they were probably submitted his first year) is phenomenal.
I lost interest around the fourth room, and those blob guys were really annoying because of how far they jump. They always getcha.
Online Music Service Mog Raises About $10 Million
"Why do I still have to carry around a spare tire and jack, jumper cables, tire chains, etc."

Physics and economics.

You can get run flat tires and a spray to fix small holes in tires, though. But run flat tires are a compromise and the ride isn't the same as with non-runflat tires.

Tires are a compromise. In northern Europe many drivers change to winter tires in the winter and summer tires for the rest of the year. You can have "all season" tires but they don't have the same grip because they are a compromise. I don't know how many people use winter tires in the US.
No, common sense!
The article also talks about how P2P use is down. Probably the shift to Rapidshare and other hosted services most likely.
That's not a bad idea. Lau from bestinclass.dk has a screencast on getting Clojure going in a Ubuntu VM here: http://www.vimeo.com/8398020
Tonido for Sharing Stuff
Quit trying to suck up to the people on here. They are not talented people. This would be obvious to you if you had any talent at all. These people are mostly 30-some career software engineers who fantasize about becoming entrepreneurs and like thinking of themselves as hackers even though they lack the skills to justify that term. There's some good domain technical knowledge here, but very little actual intelligence. Just read any math links (everybody upvotes to look good, but nobody comments because they don't really understand - or they write really dumb comments).

If you can read Outliers and not understand the horrible science and generalizations behind it then you are an idiot. 120 IQ?? Are you kidding me? Maybe it makes you feel better because you only have a 120 IQ, but that precludes you from achieving anything meaningful in math and science. High IQ does not mean you will be a high achiever, but only those with exception IQ's are able to achieve in certain fields.

This is the problem with America. This is why America will lose to China in the next decades. We are trained to feel better about ourselves be devaluing those with superior intellect and ability.
I agree ... it's a major pain on EC2 to have separate images that are only used for the smallest instance sizes. While 32 bit vs 64 bit pointers do save RAM on these small machines, I think you make a good point in an amusing way, and you shouldn't be downvoted for that.
Pandora spurs music sales; Spotify not so much
I use a form of the Vigenère cipher cipher that is simple enough that I can 'get' my passwords with a pen and paper (I've had to do this before for public terminals), but is also made less cumbersome with a simple little utility.

It isn't cryptosecure or anything, obviously, but it works well for my purposes. I've never been entirely comfortable with using someone else's web site or a password database (well, I use a password database at home, for example, but I have to have access to passwords remotely).
Google Acquires Online Photo Editor Picnik
I'm somewhat confused. What does being able to label something have to do with reproducing it?

I may be able to label the heart in a person, or perhaps distinguish an exceptional sonata from something that isn't, but that doesn't mean that I can create a hart, or play that song.
I've been working (very slowly) on a VMWare VM tailored for Lisp hacking. I posted to

http://www.lispforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=588

to gauge demand. It didn't seem like there's much.

I still plan on eventually "completing" it, but at the moment I'm sick of trying to get Emacs to behave in some small ways like other editors.
Bryan Dyson is not Coke's current CEO. Muhtar Kent holds that position now (since 2008). IIRC, Dyson was CEO in the mid 80s. Title should read ex-CEO to not confuse users.

Edit: after some Googling, Dyson was President & CEO of Coca-Cola North America in 1983. Then became CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises in 1986. BTW, there is a HUGE difference between The Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Enterprises, and they are often confused with each other. They are two separate, publicly traded companies. CCC produces the Coke syrup. CCE actually takes the syrup, mixes it with water and CO2, bottles it, then distributes it to stores.
I have fallen into the trap of trying to come up with an idea that is completely unique. Its tempting to look for new categories to attack, while dismissing categories with entrenched players as the lack of competition looks so appealing. In reality, unless you have some highly unique attribute to bring to market, trying to create the new market can be highly problematic. If it hasn't already been done, are your potential customers even looking for a solution to a pain? Also, are you certain that if you found a new market, that the lack of competitors isn't a sign that there really isn't a market?

Even though existing markets are full of competitors, the opportunities in existing areas are much more plentiful. Instead of looking for the next big thing, why not focus for a niche in an existing market, and grow it from there? The competitive landscape is constantly changing, and new opportunities are always being created as the market shifts like the tides. What it often takes is just a new twist on an existing concept. If you attack an existing market, all you really need is an opening through a target niche to gain a foothold, and from there, iterate as fast as you can.
Google Buys Up Online Photo Editing Site Picnik
Right. Says nothing about the quality of the book.

Also, I'd like to read the book, but not for the price the author is asking.

I'm impressed that one can sell an e-book for near $1/page, though. I realize that, in the end, it's about value delivered, not page count, but still.

It tells me that people are not as price sensitive to some things as I thought.
> This brings up a very unusual business model for aspiring entrepreneurs. Work in a domain that is technologically challenged until you understand it profoundly. Then start a business that advances that domain by empowering its actors.

I wonder... is collaborating with someone who 'profoundly' understands the domain a way to short-circuit this process?
Semi command line, icalBuddy + GeekTool for displaying calendar items and to do's on the desktop is awesome.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-show-ical-tasks-events-o...
Prof. Varian lectured on this topic at the School of Information at UC Berkeley in October, 2009. The audio is here -

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/events/dls2009...
we had the same issue as we are in NZ and US based companies often have that panic that everything non US is not controllable.
we went with worldpay and have no issues with them. we currently accept visa/master in USD, NZD and EUR via them.
My 2007 Prius has this, it detects the key fob within about 2 feet of the car, and there's a switch along the inside of the door handle that when you touch it (and the key is close), it unlocks the car. When I drive, my key never leaves my pocket, and I never have to push any buttons on my keys (there's a similar lock button on the handle too).

Also prevents me from ever locking the keys in the car, since... they'd be in range, and it'd open.
Awww, "I'm sure 1234567890 is a fine number, but I do not yet know any interesting gossip about numbers bigger than 9999." And I agree with zoba, "i" would've been a good one to include.

Given that the number properties are based off things that can be calculated from the number, why is there such a small limit? I mean, preventing 500-digit numbers makes sense for sheer computational difficulty, but only 4 digits?
The U.S. in 2050: Bigger, younger, less white, less urban
Why not? Nobody knows everything, and if this collaborator is a part of your founding team, that's a recipe for success.
We should be glad that open source (Linux/Ubuntu) works when it does. Its such a curious case that its expected of Linux to support all myriad kinds of hardware systems. Its the responsibility of the hardware vendor to provide the drivers, not the hackers who labor hard to reverse engineer the specs when the vendors even refuses to publish how the hardware works. Few vendors really care about Linux. On the other hand, Windows has it really easy. Before the release of a new version, vendors work their asses off with Microsoft to ensure that before the OS reaches market, their drivers are already up to date. Apple has to care about only one piece of hardware which is manufactured by them (leaving peripherals of course).
We should be just glad that it works when it does. Those who work to make it work, work hard.
Disclaimer: On my Lenovo laptop, today, every single device works now on Ubuntu 9.04 from the card reader to webcam. It didn't always.
+1 on chromium, give it a shot http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-ma...
I feel sorry for people who base their business on computers but don't know how to use them properly or have anyone around that does.
Picnik Acquired by Google
The Promise Of Sleep (a review)
Well... This is Hacker News, after all...
Nice pictures.
Ask HN: Please review my new site
Interesting set of ideas, thanks for the link! I hadn't actually heard of the book before, but I'm intrigued. Maybe they should include a last step of "post about book in popular geek hangouts". I'd also be curious how many sales were generated after the blog post, if they'd consider revealing that data.

Also, "Help Me Promote My Book And Get 50% on Each Sale"

Now THAT'S a good way to sell a book. Hooray pyramid schemes!
I agree, I remain skeptical of all those [citation needed]'s. William James Sidis > * still.
That opens the window, I'm talking about directly inspecting something.
> But tax funded is pretty good because it's answerable to us, the viewers.

Actually, the BBS is not answerable at all to viewers. It's somewhat answerable to voters.

Suppose that 30% of UK voters wanted and were willing to pay for a porn channel and 70% didn't. If the BBC was perfectly aligned with voters, it wouldn't have a porn channel.

Note that the BBC still gets the TV tax from folks who pay their own money for a porn channel.
at what point will you be able to focus solely on the software, assuming that's what you want to do?
Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor talks innovation & entrepreneurship
> Huh? I pay for it too?

I didn't say that you didn't pay. I implied that you didn't pay what it costs.
The ultimate solution to this problem is getting rid of gift cards altogether. Just give cash. People complain that giving money is not thoughtful. Like going to the nearest CVS and paying $105.95 for $100 American Express card any more thoughtful.

Gift cards only give the illusion of being thoughtful. I'm not sure why people are offended when receiving cash. There's really no up side compared to cash. It's less convenient for both the giver and receiver.

I guess it's a cultural thing (I'm Asian). I've always received cash from my parents and relatives and love it. I can spend any where, any amount, or not at all if I want to save it.
Yep, I'm using a kinesis... instant hand cramp.
i wonder if yahoo will keep using picnik for flickr's integrated photo editor.
1) game mechanics

2) Something new every 15 minutes
The $75 eBook: A True Story
Great area to work on =)
This is a kickass article. I see things more clearly now.
A gold mine in the waiting: Corporate Social Networks
yes, technically they can: http://jmtame.posterous.com/cardpool-the-real-deal
Would that you could tell that to Feynman (I.Q. 127). His amused smile at your remarks would probably be one for the ages.
The story of the Toronto real estate market is well described on http://guava.ca.

I was lucky to buy in January, 2009, when the prices had hit the bottom. They have gone up 10% since 2008 already.

Non-Canadians reading those stats should note that most Canadians don't buy in the winter for two reasons:

a) don't want to move in the middle of a school year
b) too lazy to head out in the snow and slush
has tweeted that, he is

That comma isn't needed.
I thought that too, but I think the difference is that a developer could look at a program and say, "hey, I could build that" but with a book they might not see it the same way.
Just need to shift the decoder to the screen - Audio was like that once as well. Just because the raw bandwidth isn't sufficient doesn't mean it can't be done.

A few months back I read something about streaming H264 but haven't got the time to dig up the link. That should likely be able to get the bandwidth down to something reasonable.
How Google can checkmate iPhone
What's `spirit'?
Couldn't find any info regarding your market. Are you launching worldwide right away? Journalism tends to be a fairly local thing, so targeting the right market is of some importance.
Yeah, great point. With so many bright minds out there, and the technology knowledge threshold becoming so much lower, it seems that all bases have been covered a few times.

But, there are many examples of companies that were not first, but who have become dominant.

Reminds me of a story I heard of two economists walking down the street. They spot a $100 bill lying on the ground, and one says to the other "Hey, a $100 bill. Should we grab it?" And the other says "Nah, it must be a fake. If it was real, someone would have picked it up already."

*edit for clarity
My friend has a keypad to get into his house. It's pretty freaken cool. I'm super jealous- not going to lie.
...and so Google entered Adobe's turf.
Unreliable Software, Part III: Brooks's Blunder
Series Seed - free legal docs to close Seed/Series A
Just because it's been the only viable solution, doesn't mean it's a good one.
Between, slow speed, a history of horrible support for non-windows system, a kludge of vector animations morphed into other purposes with plenty of cruft along the way.
Also security vulnerabilities...
And how long has that been the situation?

Additionally it's not the lack of an open source solution, it's that the worlds most popular web browser (IE) has been off doing it's own thing, mostly reacting, rather then advancing. Microsoft's solution to Flash is their own VM/Plugin (SilverLight, before that ActiveX). It furthers their platform and technology stack.

Lastly, Adobe themselves does not have the best track record in software development.
See http://adobegripes.tumblr.com
This is a project made by a friend of mine - she was looking for feedback so I asked her to post it here.
I've done some similar testing with my ZFS pool with excellent results. I have hundreds of gigabytes of rarely used and easily compressible data that I store as gzip-9 and all of my data is at least lzjb compressed. I also experimented a little with different checksums and found that sha256 was too slow so I use fletcher4.
Google welcomes Picnik
I'm aware of that. I don't claim that author is stupid or mischievous.

I just say it's a nice piece of FUD.

I didn't expect to be downvoted so heavily about it.
> Uh, that would be the definition where you don't screw people out of tens of thousands of dollars when they're most vulnerable.

Yes, it's much better to simply deny them care.

As I pointed out the US has a tax-payer supported medical system with universal coverage. Most people opt out. In that, it's exactly like every other "free" system - anyone who can afford to go outside the "free" system does.

Given that, why would you want to expand the scope of free?

> I'm not sure why you're picking out "Efficiency" in a health care system, and deliberately ignoring "Effective and valuable". While efficiency is commendable, you're missing the point of a health care system somewhat...

It's almost impossible to be effective without being somewhat efficient. We don't have infinite resources to spend on medical care and expanding public won't change that. What it will change is reduce efficiency, which leads to more total spending and/or less medical care. (It's likely to be both.)

Which reminds me - "public option" advocates don't want to talk too much about "effective and valuable" as some of their key research support is based on lower cost per death, not cost per life. Unless, of course, the goal is effective deaths.
What would you do during a power-outage?
Gift cards are bought and sold on eBay in high volumes already.
As far as I know Toronto's real estate market hasn't taken much of a hit at all during the past couple of years. I think there is growing sentiment that this is a delayed bubble waiting to burst though.

I have no data to back this up, and I'm hearing it from family/acquaintances that aren't really in real estate or economics, so take it with a grain of salt. I'm also on the other side of the continent and living in the US, so I'm a little out of touch with conditions there other than what I gather get second-hand from others.

As to the article itself, it doesn't really mention that some markets (like in Alberta) suffered real estate slumps, though from the data it looks like a lot of those people did not become insolvent, even though their house value dropped.

It's interesting to note how different the markets can be in Canada though. When oil prices skyrocketed, BC and Alberta were doing really well for themselves due to the oil sands. On the other hand, Ontario was slowing down because most of the economy is predicated on manufacturing (Ford, GM, and others have plants in Ontario; Oakville, Windsor, Oshawa, etc), exports to the US, and drawing in Hollywood with incentives to film in Toronto (though I think that they are province-wide, and not local incentives). This was mainly due to the rise of the USD-CAD conversion rate though that was coupled with the rise in oil speculation.

It'll be interesting to see how some of these things play out in the future. From listening to CBC radio during that period, I gleaned that Canada at one point was a mostly resource-based economy, but that in more recent years (for varying definitions of 'recent'), things have changed to become more dependent on the US investing money due to the benefitial USD-CAD rates. What happens if the US hits a larger slump? How will this affect Canada? Will the aggregate affect be minimal due to the rise and fall of different sections of the country negating each other?
Unused Gift Cards is a real thing, although not so much a problem. At one of the places I work, we are about to introduce gift cards, and from a business standpoint they are awesome.

Anyone who has a business that could use gift cards should offer them. On average, gift cards will leave anywhere from 10% to 30% of the original total unused (depending on products the card can purchase and the total cost of the card).

These companies that are trying to solve the 'problem' (they are definitely not a problem if you are the one selling them) of unused gift cards may run into problems of their own. Read the back of most gift cards and you find that just like concert tickets, they are non-transferable, non salable, and have no cash value. While it would be incredible difficult to prove a certain gift card was transfered or sold, upset card sellers may be able to go after the companies facilitating the selling (pure speculation).

Personally, I don't think that unused card trading companies will take away much of the profitability of gift cards, but it also may make consumers feel more comfortable buying gift cards.

Either way, unused gift cards are very real, and if you can, you should look into selling them.
Replacing a wall would take much more resource than replacing one of thousand cables and you know exactly which one.
While making it easier to port iPhone developers isn't a bad idea, it's not a "checkmate" to the iPhone, since it would only capture X percent of those developers, and even if that X was magically 100%, I've never heard someone say, "I was going to get a Droid except they didn't have the shaken baby app."

You don't checkmate someone by mimicking them. You do it by being better: Better partnerships with low-cost carriers (T-Mobile) AND better coverage carriers (debatably Verizon), developing killer apps the iPhone can't have, and by finding and exploiting other partnerships or technology that Apple can't or won't make that have a unique selling proposition.