skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem is, having an ad blocker installed means you won't see the ad in the first place to make a determination of quality.
In hindsight that would have made a lot of sense :-) at the time we had looked at STL, but getting it to work across Debian and Win2k (which is what SL was running on at the time) looked like a PITA. Didn't even think about porting STL, especially since skiplists were so simple to implement.
I think we'll see more of this if adblock usage increases...

if (user.usingAdBlock()) {
showMessageTellingThemWhyItsBad();
ShowDonationOptions();
offerDegradedExperience();
}
So Ars Technica has the same fundamental problem as every publisher on earth-- how do you allow your content to reach the most eyes across the most channels and platforms while still maintaing full control (only showing your content with your ads intact).

I'm not sure you can have it both ways. You either have to trade in the open/free variable or accept it and some of the loss of revenue it entails as a tradeoff to the gained visibility.
I wouldn't waste anytime thinking Google will be malicious to you if you're hosted on GAE and in competition with them.

If GAE is the best platform for you to host, if it lets you get to market sooner, if it lets you scale cost with revenue better then use it.
You can make polls here: http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

This is not really a decision someone else can make for you though. Especially given absolutely no information about you.
Because parents put much more pressure on the first born.
Do you think that when you attack someone that has been less fortunate than you that you don't have to use specifics or identify positive characteristics?
There may yet be some scroll-oriented in-page indicators that would offer one proposed benefit -- "never having to wonder where to continue reading" -- of page-centric presentation.

For example, a manually-positionable 'pagemark' you could use if turning away from a block of text, or automatically-added lines/shading which capture where you've scrolled to so far (with intelligent updating based on time lingering at certain positions, or reversals of scroll-direction).
If side-by-side pages are allowed (they are) then this is less of a concern. But the real thing you want for texts with figures, tables, and illustrations, is the ability to split-screen. I certainly hope that feature is at least in the pipeline....
Arguably the second point is an incentive to deliberately launch Google competitors on GAE :)
'Probabilistic' doesn't have to mean 'nondeterministic'. Hash tables are deterministic and probabilistic. You could probably do the same with a skip list: hash the key to see what level of the skip list it gets promoted to.
seems pretty interesting

snip

"Effen is a jQuery plugin that supports Concrete Javascript. Concrete Javascript is a pattern in which the state and
behavior of your domain are attached directly to DOM elements. This differs from MVC, where domain behavior is isolated
from the view. Concrete Javascript is draws inspiration from Self's Morphic UI framework."
I'm willing to whitelist them on my ad blocker, I'm not willing to whitelist their ad companies on my javascript filter. I don't trust their ad companies to run arbitrary javascript on my machine.

There's got to be a better way...
Well, if websites stop serving their ads via centralized servers tracking my every move across the web, I might consider not blocking them anymore (provided they're not animated and/or huge).
G.M. and Ford, Channeling Toyota's Focus on Quality
Ever since the early days of the web, I've had problems with scrolling web pages. I'll read a page or so, press pagedown or space to go to the next segment, and read that---and my eye snaps right to the top of the window, where the next chunk of text will be. UNLESS, that is, I'm on the last piece, at which point I get totally lost because I have no idea where to find the last sentence I read. I have to re-scan from the top, searching for it.

So I knew exactly what the author was talking about when he was extolling the benefits of paged interactions!
If your app is written with Java + JDO, then with some effort it should be portable. I've seen JDO backends of relational databases, Hadoop Hbase, ODF, JSON,etc. I don't have a lot of experience with Python appengine development, but I believe that you can exit from that platform also, with some effort.
I crunched the numbers from the GSSS once. 42% of Americans are first born children.
It doesn't really do much for the sites in the long term, as the advertisers won't trust the analytics if these tools are regularly used or if they suspect they might be.

I think AdBlock for Chrome does what you suggest and then blocks using CSS.
Host your own ads, that way they won't be in my ad-blocker's blacklist. If your adds become annoying, then they go in the blacklist.

I'm wondering if, between ad-blocking and tivo, separate ads and commercials will be going away soon. I'm perfectly OK with the judges of American Idol with Coke glasses on their desk, or a sentence at the bottom of a blog post: "This post brought to you by FizzBuzz.com". I also don't mind the ads at the front of some podcasts, spoken by the same people that narrate the podcast itself. http://ruby5.envylabs.com/ is a good example of advertising that I don't mind one bit. Similar to how old radio shows were "sponsored", and the sponsor got a mention a few times throughout the show.
Use chrome. That's how all the adblockers for it works.
Yes, scaling local businesses are not easy.

My research on this topic...
http://www.nikhileshrao.com/post/9824/links-on-local-interne...
there are karma threshholds on doing somethings, like downvoting, flagging, and changing your top colour
The point still holds.

If you don't like it, don't consume the resources of the site serving the adds. This idea that your entitled to the content, without actually 'paying' for it (you pay by giving up a bit of privacy to heighten the value of the ads) is just wrong in my world view.

It's not stealing. It's not piracy. It's just the wrong thing to do.
Creating something that is viral is very ideal. I created http://AskJud.com in a week or so and the viral nature and mystery behind it encourages people to click on ads that generate around $500-$1000 a month.
Inferring temperament from birth order is largely pseudoscience. Wikipedia has a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_order

"Birth order is defined as a person's rank by age among his or her siblings. Birth order is often believed to have a profound and lasting effect on psychological development. This assertion has been repeatedly challenged by researchers, yet birth order continues to have a strong presence in pop psychology and popular culture."
Hehe, great comment :)
As a disclaimer: in an ideal civilization, in which the market ceased to operate, wealth ceased to appeal to people, and our individual ambitions collectively coincided to the mutual benefit of all, then patents would, and should, cease to be.

While I despise the concepts of owning an idea, owning the right to propagate an idea, and possessing control over the use of an idea, I cannot help admit their (mottled, provisional, and entirely realistic) use. Patent law should, undoubtedly, be reformed - limitations on what owning the idea means should be reworked. Just as, for instance, owning a piece of land doesn't mean you can do whatever you like with it, owning an idea should be similarly subject in order to benefit the intellectual community in whose landscape the idea sits.

Should we get rid of ALL patents? Yes - but not until we (being ironical here) get rid of all companies whose capital is founded on owning the ideas that make them money. In the case of software, however, there is right now an immediate dysfunction in patent law, made evident by the examples in the article, that should be immediately addressed.
Disable third-party cookies in your browser's privacy and permissions settings and this concern (mostly) goes away.
"I think I made that comment more to point to how his lack of education was apparent from his manner of speech."

That's an interesting observation. I actually watched the video again to try to pick out the parts which could cause you to think so. But, nothing seemed to stand out. His manner of speaking was not distinguished in a sense, but at the same time, it seemed more like means to an end, and wasn't something that caused me to think any less of him.

I bring up this issue because I feel I am not "well-spoken" and am trying to see how I can address this deficiency.
Pft, that gentleman's agreement was broken when they sold my privacy down the river.
I'm not sure sympathy is an effective business model. If the ads are annoying enough to make lots of people block them, maybe there's something wrong with the ads, not the people.
5, 8, 11, 12, 17, 18, and 19 are taken.
12's taken. Sorry.
You don't think google mines their access logs then?
I've no real objections to advertising online, so for a long time I didn't use an ad blocker. However, in the last two or three years some adverts on sites which I visit often have been becoming increasingly offensive. Flashing animated images, pictures of the inside of people's mouths, and semi-pornographic ads are something which degrades my web viewing experience and if a technical solution to this problem exists then I have no hesitation about using it. For the foreseeable future it seems that ad blocking will remain necessary.

Perhaps the solution is some sort of code of conduct for advertisers. If ads are discreet and respectful of the viewer then I'd certainly be prepared to stop blocking them.
Have you seen her work in OAuth? Her other open-source projects?

You are guilty for the same reason you are accusing others for giving her attention.

You don't think she's good enough because of it.

Seriously, the startup world and the Valley is such a male-dominated place. I would imagine it's not easy being a woman in this space.

There are so many blog posts from men who went to the top of Hacker News and some of them from people who have no experience delivering. I also haven't seen any of her posts here for a long time.

I'm not saying we cut her slack but let's hold her to the same standard we do for posts by men here on Hacker News.
Absolutely. I've heard talk of some sites degrading entirely for users who are using adBlock.

I would expect that to be met with a pretty harsh backlash, though. Even though it's a small minority of people who use adBlock, they are a vocal and persuasive minority.
AdBlock+ white-listing: fine.
Flashblock white-listing: no.
image.animation_mode: none.

Fixed.

(Edit: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11073 for the cookie-haters among us.)
Only if you block using a 3rd party provided list. Many people simply install ABP and block only the most annoying things.
Your insightful rejoinder is addressed in the article.
Hobbyists Build Google Android-Powered Robot
Hey, I'm interested in #4 and I'm located in Palo Alto.
They are not selling your privacy, don't be dramatic.
What we need is some sort of voluntary rating system for ads. Tag the massively annoying (sounds, movement etc) or horribly disgusting (rotting teeth etc) ones as such and I'll happily use adblock software that only blocks those. It could kind of work, there'd need to be a way to block adnets/sites that lie about the type of ads of course and... well maybe it wouldn't work but it would be a good start.

But no, I'm not going to disable adblock while there are still so many ads that clearly cross the line of what is aceptable. Sure I feel bad about it but that's just the way it is given that the other options are a) not using the internet or b) constantly seeing pictures of other peoples yellowing teeth.
When it comes to ads online, though, isn't the right cliché "the cat's out of the bag?" For years before ad-blocking became widespread, the more tech-savvy users complained and warned that the more aggressive ads became, what with popups/unders, talking ads, etc., the more likely they would be blocked. (I seem to remember we were poo-pooed by the marketers saying that "real users don't care," though this may be a nerd-chip-on-shoulder revisionist memory.) But, here we are.

It's unfortunate that there's the collateral damage that affects non-obnoxious sites; and, while I whitelist the sites I frequent, and many here may as well, I'm sure we're the minority.

That being said, here's about as close to a real-world analogue for my thoughts as I can get: in NYC, I'm sure there are people in Times Square trying to gain signups for Greenpeace and other "ethical" purposes mixed in with the other people hustling CDs, comedy club tickets, and the like, but I just ignore everyone as I walk by, wholesale, because stopping and seeing what everyone's about will turn a brief walk into a pain in the ass.

I'm not sure what the answer is; perhaps the various adblocking technologies could make whitelisting a site even more obvious? With AdBlock Plus, you hit the drop-down and choose Disable on foobar.com, but it requires an active interaction to seek that out. GlimmerBlocker for the Mac is even more buried (as it's a proxy, it's in System Preferences.) Maybe switching to putting placeholders where the ads would be with a short message and a single click to whitelist would make it a little easier for users to both see how many ads a site's pushing as well as whitelist the site with the minimum amount of effort? I donno.
Exactly. There is a major opportunity lurking here. Online ads suck, actually ads in general suck, but how does one fix them? Sounds like a good challenge.
Org-mode would be more appealing if they used markdown like everyone else.
Your Startup has Terroir - Exploit it. Alot.
Even if they stop trusting the stats, there's nothing they can do about it really. There's no way to tell if I see something or not. I would be glad to install such plugin... hopefully it will come to FF soon.
I'll be in Palo Alto this afternoon. Send me an email and let's see if we can figure something out.
If you don't like it, don't consume the resources of the
site serving the adds

Wow, if you don't like your resources being consumed—don't put that on the web.
Zoning is just one of many ways that people, through democratically elected governments, restrict private property rights in cities.

While Houston doesn't have formal zoning, a quick Google search (I've never been there) shows they do have extensive land-use regulation, including minimum lot size for single family homes (5000 sq feet) and requirements for parking for businesses.

So, if I wanted to place two single-family homes on my 9000 sq feet of land, or open a retail shop without providing parking, my private property rights would be infringed.
Flash still makes sense for RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) as well. There are admittedly few of them out there though.
I agree about OS Concepts - it's fairly theoretical. It's still a good foundation IMHO.

I haven't read TAOCP.
Then I guess the number of ads you see on the way to have a lunch should pay for your lunch, dinner and supper.
Really? Usually a rough salary/opportunities segment is provided.

If a salary isn't provided my assumption is that it is negotiable.
It certainly makes Google acquiring you that much easier :)
IBM and Google are sort of helping us, but in an odd way. They're soaking up patents for APIs used in many open source projects such that if you want to sue those open source projects, you'll have to contend with IBM and Google. It's not cool that they have to do this, but that's certainly helping many open source projects as well as Linux.

Groklaw has been fantastic in exposing the fallacies of software patent lawsuits.

Stallman -- we owe a tremendous debt to him in this regard.

But the way America works, nothing really moves in this lousy country unless you band together into a Political Action Committee and lobby Congress with perks. That's how the software patent law got created in the first place, no thanks to Microsoft, Apple, and Lotus, who got that ball rolling.

And imagine how we sound to a politician. Companies like Microsoft and Apple get some time with politicians easily, and make the pitch that they just want to protect the competition from reselling functionality that they offer. I can see a lot of dumb politicians supporting that idea, especially when compared with the pharma industry. And then we anti-software patent guys come in -- first, we'd be lucky to get a couple seconds to say hello. Second, our pitch would be that software patents stifle innovation, rather than grow it, but would have little proof. Also, every other technology industry has a patent law, so the Congressmen would be like, "Why not software, too? Why should that be so special?" And if you try to tell them that sometimes there's like only 4 optimal ways to do a given task sometimes, and therefore we shouldn't be punished for it, they just wouldn't grasp that concept. If you run to the Republicans, they would consider you anti-capitalist. (And I say that even though I mostly vote Republican.) If you run to the Democrats, they would say that these big companies like Microsoft and Apple bankroll their campaigns, so there's no way they would not support those proprietary agendas. There's no way out except through the courts.

In our agenda, we come off as a bunch of disorganized geeks, and politicians don't seem to mix well with geeks, especially disorganized ones. In the proprietary, pro software patent agenda, they come off as established businessmen and millionaires, so politicians love them.

If anyone has a better idea, I'd like to hear it.
While I despise the concepts of owning an idea, owning the right to propagate an idea, and possessing control over the use of an idea, I cannot help admit their (mottled, provisional, and entirely realistic) use. Patent law should, undoubtedly, be reformed - limitations on what owning the idea means should be reworked. Just as, for instance, owning a piece of land doesn't mean you can do whatever you like with it, owning an idea should be similarly subject in order to benefit the intellectual community in whose landscape the idea sits.

Where is the evidence that patents benefit the intellectual community at large and increase the wealth of the people at large?

It is one thing to think that the patent system might benefit civilization as a whole, but it's a long jump to suggest that it should be implemented.

Moreover, the ownership of idea does not fit the logical justification for property rights of actual scarce resources such as land.

And furthermore, the very existence of Makerbot Industries and their cupcake CNC hardware as well arduino, and countless other open source hardware product directly clash with the notion of patent being necessary or needed to encourage the development of physical inventions. Here, in the present day, it can already be seen as a direct dysfunction.

That's not including the case against steam engine inventor James Watt, or agriculture flourishing without much patent protection(Breeders would sell new plant varieties to farmers, who then reproduce and resell the seeds on the market), as well as the fashion industry who thrives in the midst of copycats, and more.
A lot of people don't think it's wrong. Ars politely asking has apparently persuaded some people that using an ad blocker is wrong. People caring about whether you are making money comes after you've established a relationship with them, not before. More will continue using an ad blocker I'm sure, despite Ars' entreaties. The problem is the people that don't love sites like Ars.

I suspect part of the problem is for sites like this is that when your top story for the week is the new Ubuntu colour-scheme, then your users probably are not going to pay for your information and analysis.

p.s. For the avoidance of doubt this comment is free to view and unencumbered.
I'm sure Google mines everything they can get their hands on, but without third-party cookies, they can no longer identify you as uniquely. For all they know, it could be 1 or 100 people behind that NAT IP address.
I find comment voting tremendously useful:

- It gives me direct feedback on whether other users found my comments insightful. I find it encouraging when I put some effort into explaining something and I get a bunch of points for it. I'd much rather get upvotes than a bunch of meaningless replies like "I agree", "good post", or "x2". (Getting substantive replies is even better, but not always warranted.)

- It gives me an easy way to find comments others have found insightful, even if they're nested deep in a thread where they don't get auto-sorted to the top. I was actually planning to ask for highlighting on highly-rated comments -- something unobtrusive like bolding the number.

- It gives me a way to reward/encourage those whose comments I found educational or insightful.

Downvoting can also provide an injection of dumbness or ill will into a conversation. But I would take the dumbness of downvotes over the dumbness of people saying "you're an idiot" any day.
http://taco.dubfire.net/ and http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp are of some use for this.

Also if you're using whitelists, they will only track you on the sites that you're choosing to whitelist, so it's not as if whitelisting Ars will immediately allow them to track all your moments.

Neither of these are perfect solutions to your concerns, but I thought they should at least be mentioned.
"Aren’t there enough ways to write web-applications as it stands?"

...no? Choice (and the ensuing competition) is a good thing. Different frameworks and languages have different strengths and different uses, and people have different preferences. Tools that try to be everything to everyone fail.
A lot of people running premium/freemium sites compete in some capacity for advertising space on totally free, advertising-funded sites. More user blocking of major advertising networks means lower prices for advertisers who place directly. It also deals a blow to parasitic SEO sites that do nothing but serve out adverts, taking up space in SERPs that would otherwise go to actual content providers. Huzzah!
I agree, I wish more companies would lay out up front how much they expect to pay you. Every super talented developer I know is already working a full time job or it's equivalent.

I've found it's a lot easier to lure people away from their jobs with promise of 2x pay rather than trying to spin them on how awesome your company culture is.
Using a Flash Blocker and resetting the cookie values inside of Flash alter that behavior.
I don't actively use AdBlock anymore. I keep it installed just in case I need it but it's usually disabled. Banner/text ads don't bother me. I don't even notice them. Click2Flash is my preferred weapon of choice. I have no guilt blocking Flash ads. They're annoying, invasive, and make my browser slow. Just not willing to make that sacrifice.
Top Twitter tools
"Aren’t there enough ways to write web-applications as it stands?"

Chances are someone else made the same argument about his language du jour several years ago.
Charismatic Developers
.. and by 'moving those libraries' you mean 'copying' them, right? :)

A quick look at nginx's ./configure script doesn't show any options that enable static linking on the libraries, but that would be useful for looking into chrooting it.
"...if I pay a plumber to fix my tap, I don’t ask him to leave his toolbox so I can fix it myself next time; ..."

Well, but I do have the right to go to the next DYI market, buy these tools and use them myself. Of course, I can't claim a warranty from the plumber if anything goes wrong afterwards.

It is just much more convienient for me to ask the plumber to do this job, because he sells me his knowledge and skill in doing things that I could only do much slower in a much poorer quality.

That's how far the similarity goes here. Problem is that as a coder, there is no clear distinction between the tools you use and the result you produce with them. So in the end, I'd understand the author.