skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These bitter, narrow-minded opinions about the iPad's closed nature are boring to no end.

The closed nature of any machine or videogame console has never affected people from hacking it and developing for it to make it do what they want; the best example would be vast amount of "homebrew" software available for every damned videogame console from SEGA, Nintendo, Sony and others, that each, with time, has been broken wide open, documented, and made available for developing - and a system just doesn't get more closed than a videogame console.
Hi there,

First things first, it was 926 words originally. Now a little longer and in the 1000+ range you claim. </obsessive compulsive correcting>

It was more to do with how long it has previously been between betas, release candidates and finals. Sorry if that point was not as obvious as I originally thought it was.

It is such a tiny data set to be able to accurately predict when the next version is coming out, but here's my analysis:

* For Rails 1.2 there was 17 days between release candidate and actual release. There were/are no betas.

* There were 2 months between the preview release announcement for Rails 2 and the first release candidate, then another month before the release of Rails 2.

Therefore, if the past is anything to go by, there will be a couple of months between the beta and the actual release but the large part (cliche: 99%) of the work is complete.

I don't want to suggest anything too solid, a release candidate could be released tomorrow for all we know, but given the number of regressions covered in the blog post I would give it another two to four weeks before they release the RC. Hopefully I'm proven wrong.
He said ack, not awk:

"ack is a tool like grep, designed for programmers with large trees of heterogeneous source code."

http://betterthangrep.com/
Glanced the article and stopped reading when i read 'brochures'.
Obviously this guy has no idea the reasons for which brochures exist.
HP Desktops, Laptops
>>The Air Force has the kind of funding NASA can only dream of anymore

Considering all the money wasted for decades: Do anyone really believe we would get any good results from more money into launch systems controlled by NASA? :-(

(OK, people in those white collar job programs probably claim they do.)
And that may well be the reason why men zone out. I know I do.
No, let's please not have that kind of nonsense on Hacker News. We used to be better than this.
I'm pretty sure. It seems quite hostile & derisive, and makes no salient point. It's a drive-by snark.

To make my own position in this thread clear: HN, and the wider hacker culture, is often unwelcoming to women. I speak out when I see something off-putting, or when a possibly well-intentioned comment may be interpreted the wrong way. I would like to see more women hackers and founders contributing to HN, and I would like to see more diverse viewpoints in the comments. My position is not always popular, but I soldier on.
> Not only that, but curl is installed standard on Mac OS X whereas wget is not

On a vanilla Debian, Wget is installed but Curl is not.
Check out http://gametableapp.com

It does not have logic to verify moves (which is pretty clever) so it is just a beautiful gameboard.
Is it compete.com, consumerinput.com or both that you are querying each page view?

AFAIK, you can just query the Compete API (http://developer.compete.com/). I haven't seen anything that says you have to query both. ConsumerInput seems to be the brand Compete uses to recruit users and software developers to cut out the middlemen like ISPs. I guess you are trying to get some extra money, which is fine just make sure the users know next time.

Here are sample API queries for each:

http://api.compete.com/fast-cgi/MI?d=google.com&ver=3...

http://dcs.consumerinput.com/fast-cgi/MI?ver=3ss&userid=...

(As a sidenote, both APIs are handled by Mashery)

Compete's API only takes the domain as input. ConsumerInput takes the whole URL.

I think you are trying to be even sneakier by telling people that you need to hit ConsumerInput to get the Compete data for a domain.

Of course it could be that Compete is forcing you to do that because of high-volume API calls. It would be good to know if that's the case.
People who predict the death of Office/Word have clearly never written anything longer than a newspaper article.

Try writing a 500 page document, complete with TOCs, indices, tables, lists, footnotes, endnotes, references, etc. in something like Google Docs sometime.
Increase PC Performance with Registry Defragmentation
Registry is the core of any operating system. Its proper ability and functioning determines how fast the computer launches applications, boot up and responds to commands hence giving you a huge improvements in computer performance.
ICICI, HDFC Banks Will Be Treated As Foreign Banks
In my experience, using Word for that hasn't been a whole lot more pleasant.
It's not exactly a picnic in Word either

Handling very large text files is something the old unix tools did well (I can load a 500Mb log file (don't ask :/) in vi no problems), but most modern applications still struggle
Another invaluable mention would be "set -u" which triggers an error on undeclared variables.
I've not encountered them before, but yes, they do seem to be very heavily optimised. I guess with relatively large nodes the quantity of cache misses is relatively low.
> Idle moments. Remember when you used to sit in the park, lost in your lover’s eyes? Now you’re both busy checking messages on your iPhone.

I know this is toungue in cheek, but it's also kind of true and sad at the same time. I speak as a guilty party :/
Usually when when the Ubuntu `sh -> dash' link is pointed out, it is meant as a warning to use the proper sha-bang, instead of just using `#!/bin/sh'.

If you're arguing that classic shell scripting doesn't carry you all that far, I would agree, but I don't see the harm in using #!/bin/bash or #!/bin/ksh in lieu of sh the few times you are writing a shell script; they are both extremely common and feature many conveniences.
It's bad because some people want freebies.
A fast, simple list filter with jQuery
Clickable link:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475736
Perhaps it may seem that way from your frame of reference just like how this person may interpret Feminism in the way stated from their frame of reference, but I always withhold judgment when there is insufficient information present; It is better to perform further inquiry than to misinterpret.

I believe you are making a mistake by speaking for all women, by stating that "HN, and the wider hacker culture, is often unwelcoming to women". In such matters we can only speak for ourselves, unless there is some official consensus to refer to more credible than what oneself might believe to be the general opinion; That is, a reliable source.

I myself do not care what gender people have here; To me that is an attribute that simply does not exist in these contexts.
> most attacks that attack PHP tend to use wget to download further files

Nowadays, neither Wget nor Curl is required for downloading in PHP, because functions like file_get_contents() are able to handle URL arguments! So a missing Wget protects only against script kiddies who don't know PHP very well and copied over some outdated code snippets.

Also, not installing Wget "protects" you just from those kind of primitive attacks to which your system shouldn't be vulnerable in the first place.

Security is achieved by sealing entry doors, not by removing tools.
Objects are a poor man's closures (2003)
This is why I mostly just ignore these kind of posts. They're just noise.
The rainbow skip graph
Firefox: 30 percent of the world market
Can't find the paper(s) this article (and the papers claims) is based on. Does anyone have founded them?

JOC: http://journalofcosmology.com/
This is a very good talk. I think the world is flooded with too much of positivity thinking. As he pointed out he is not for negativity but realism.

Books like rich dad poor dad and the secret aren't based off analysis or science but anecdotal evidence.

I abhor anecdote; they only represent one data point and you could easily attribute that to being luck. They might as well give a strategy on how to win the lottery and then say look at Jane Doe she used the strategy and she won a million dollars. Give me a thousand Jane Doe who have done the same then we can talk, until then Jane Doe is just lucky.
"The essence of functional programming is treating a program as evaluating a function without carrying around state"

Isn't a closure a function that carries around state? There's an old tale about this:

"The venerable master Qc Na was walking with his student, Anton. Hoping to
prompt the master into a discussion, Anton said "Master, I have heard that
objects are a very good thing - is this true?" Qc Na looked pityingly at
his student and replied, "Foolish pupil - objects are merely a poor man's
closures."

Chastised, Anton took his leave from his master and returned to his cell,
intent on studying closures. He carefully read the entire "Lambda: The
Ultimate..." series of papers and its cousins, and implemented a small
Scheme interpreter with a closure-based object system. He learned much, and
looked forward to informing his master of his progress.

On his next walk with Qc Na, Anton attempted to impress his master by
saying "Master, I have diligently studied the matter, and now understand
that objects are truly a poor man's closures." Qc Na responded by hitting
Anton with his stick, saying "When will you learn? Closures are a poor man's
object." At that moment, Anton became enlightened."

http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/m...
If you're not trying to guide the client to the best solution for them, you're doing them a disservice. Most clients don't know what's best for them, that's why they're hiring you, for your expertise.
I don't think needing a directory of numbers from each country is an insurmountable task for a company with the mission of organizing the world's information!
DVDs? (& all the similar disks are dying anyway. It doesn't take iPad to kill those).

Text books? I think iPad is the third or so to kill text books or maybe Text books have multiple lives.

Brochures? Is he outta mind or something?.

(stopped reading at Brochures.)
I never got around to writing a job for that. Now you've got me wondering. I counted each distinct word as a concept, but only from the sentences that matched the regex patterns. The 4.4MM concepts, however, includes multi-word concepts (as in 'be part of'). The number of distinct concepts in the corpus is much higher.

Edit: I just went home and started a map reduce job to find the total distinct tokens. I should be able to post the results within a few hours.

Unsupervised and language-independent, now that's something worth working towards. What data (or how much data) are you working with right now?

I plan on selling n-gram datasets from the Web, so I would like to have another set of eyes look over them. If you'd like, shoot me an email at james[at]webscaled[dot]com and I'll send you a copy to experiment with.
Ruby Access Control - Are Private And Protected Methods Only A Guideline?
Download TV Shows LOST Complete Season
'co' is already taken though :-)
I used to have quite an amount of Korn shell scripts, but of course that was on commercial Unices (with some ksh-retro-fitted Linux boxes in the mix).

Having ksh93 available on all systems was pretty nice, and there definitely was a place for some of the features without going for something else (which in this case mostly was Perl).
The Red Bull Stratos video is pretty cool, especially in HD - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyGmTV0q2kY
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1240887

And it's not even directing to the article which is here: http://6coders.com/whats-in-a-name-six-coders-can-do-anythin...
$10 says the final 3.0 release is during RailsConf.
First Google Android Web-Enabled TV On The Way
Green Cleaning Services In New Jersey You Can Trust
Searching for a cleaning company providing green cleaning services is always tough, and that too meeting the cost one can afford. Search for affordable apartment cleaning company will end here with the best NJ maid service company.
40 - let me know if you want one, I'll make you a killer deal. ;-)
not being "popular linux distro" can be a benefit perhaps?

otherwise, I don't see what difference does it make what kernel you're running. matter of taste
Architecture update: leaner, meaner and faster A/B tests
A lot of recent articles such as this one seem to think that dedicated ebook readers are now doomed... I couldn't disagree more. This has been said by other folks, but it bears being repeated: Eink displays function act in the same way optically as to actual books, by reflecting rather than shining light into your eyes (i know which i can sustainably stare at for hours with far greater comfort).

One thing which I don't see discussed as much as I thought it would be in IPad press has been the absence of something like electromagnetic induction stylus capability from the device. I certainly know a number of folks who would be much more interested in the if it had such functionality (and thus actually enabled a digital analogue of the pad on paper note taking abstraction)
Back when mercantilism was the prevailing system, England and France would trade but trade for things that, broadly speaking, the other actually wanted. Nowadays it's like the US is trading for all this random-ass shit it doesn't need because its poor all need to get by in a country with many cabals (medical costs, education costs, housing, necessity of having a car, etc).
They're not mutually exclusive, but they tend to push program design in different directions. There's tension when you try to make a whole program OO and functional, but you can make pockets of OO when it really is the best approach, and give them a functional interface,
But it clearly is no console, why would i think that, wtf?
The Gilded Cage of Technology
RDF for Intrepid Unix Hackers: Transmuting N-Triples
I'd suggest the book Why Don't Students Like School? (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Dont-Students-Like-School/dp/04702...) to those interested in applying the findings of cognitive science to their own learning. I'm finding it very useful in that regard.
Giles Bowkett has written an entire blog post rebutting this point: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/04/ipad.html
I don't often agree with Jeff Jarvis, but I do here. The iPad is a device designed for consumers not creators.

If that were true, why are people getting so excited about the myriad of music/synthesizer/drum machine, sketching, mock-ups, and presentation creation apps that are already available for the iPad?

The consumer-vs-creator thing is bullshit anyway. A tiny percentage of people online are serious creators. Look at sites that have tried video commenting, hardly anyone uses it. The whole Web is really "designed for consumers not creators." The number of people who "give back" is tiny compared to the number of consumers. And so it will go with the iPad, the iPhone, the PC, the Mac, or any other device you make.
Try writing a 50 page document with those same references, but also countless images or diagrams (and perhaps even some care taken with typesetting!).

It has certainly been the case even in the past year or two that the happless art history major with a senior thesis project due soon, but whose machine doesn't have the resources to handle the document or have to deal with unexpected changes in formatting because they switched which printer they'll be printing to!

obvious they should be using latex over word :p, but the point is that theres a tradeoff on where the abstractions are and who has to deal with them.

Seriously though, anyone on HN who regularly writes large documents and cares about their formatting etc being nice, should have a go at latex! :)
Licensing. The BSD license is less restrictive than the GPL.
The same story happens to US/China, once Chinese reach a certain wealth, they will be able to afford US products.

And which products would those be?
DHH recently said something along the lines of that it'd be over his dead body that it wouldn't be out by RailsConf 2010. So unless DHH is terminally ill, any time in the next 2 months I'd say.
If I find an inefficiency or loophole in the markets, I prefer to fix it. However, hedge funds tend to exploit it & make money through automation & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading
Digital Scrapbooking
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Java's more relevant than you think
Apples are a poor man's oranges.
I don't think this analogy applies, insofar as you can't implement apples with oranges. ;) However, anyone who has worked through SICP will tell you, you can implement objects with closures.
Should Men Wear Sandals?
I think superstar effect might be valid if only one person is going to win. Clearly, some people have genetic and experience advantages that would take years for the superstar's competitors to achieve, and why exert the force given the implicit probability that you are going to lose is high? The situation changes where there are number of top spots. Sure there might be one or two superstars, but it is more likely that you would place in a top spot. I am talking about GE competition scheme with 20-70-10. I think, everybody would think that they can reach a top 20% spot. The employees would know some people are a guaranteed for those spots but the others are very much open to someone willing to work hard, so in this sense I don't think it impedes competitiveness.
How does a small adwords conversion optimizer success story translate into Google needing to hire Patrick?
Apple Announces IPad Numbers: 300k Sold, 1 Million Apps And 250k iBooks
Here's a post of mine that may help: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173683
1 simple (fucking) USB port.

It's probably Steve Job's vision that all of these things will just sync wirelessly. That's the design rule of thumb: make things as Arthur C. Clarke Sci-Fi or "magic" as possible.
Can you give a non-hypothetical real-life scenario where Freebsd with BSD license helps over GPL license based linux-distro when running a server?

I am genuinely curious.
WhatApp wiki helps users fight back against toxic Facebook and iPhone apps
And US will have to go through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island phase
99designs is the superstar
IPad: "a gated community [with] a guard at the gate, probably maid service, too"
True, though as the article points out, you can also implement closures with objects. Of course, you can also implement both in C. ;-)
If they can do anything, and they are working for money, why are they making finite salaries? If they can do anything, you would imagine "making more money than a product salesman" would be on top of the to do list.
Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise Trial Program Extended
Kristian,

Good idea; your post title alone made me remember Prism, which I haven't used for anything in forever. For a post more likely to get upvotes on HN, I recommend making a more how-to style post than just an idea post.

While I know what Prism is, many may not, and even I don't know how you would accomplish what you're suggesting using Chrome (mentioned in your post), so linking to information on doing these things would be very helpful.
Startups, Not Bailouts Create New Jobs? Wait, So the Emperor Has No Clothes? 
People in the start-up and investment community understand from first-hand experience that when it comes to job creation- start-ups are where it's at. It's also great to have organizations like the Kauffman Foundation, (that actually study, support and promote entrepreneurship), around to back this up with some hard stats. Below, for example, is the staggering reality about new job creation in this country:
Facebook twins to sue Cambridge University?
wget has a better-designed command line API and documentation, although its inability to PUT or POST is rather unhelpful. For example, curl uses --include to output full headers (wget uses --save-headers) and, more inexplicably, --request to change the request method, even though --method is available.
The iPad is going to kill none of those things. If it will be killed it will be by technology in general not the iPad.

The iPad is expensive not everyone will be able to let alone want to pay that much.
The iPad is going to kill technology news. At least for a couple of months.
lwp-download should be in this comparison. I've found lots of random cases where it does stuff right and the others don't.
1. Right click page -> View Source
2. Read Javascript.
The number of people who "give back" is tiny compared to the number of consumers. And so it will go with the iPad, the iPhone, the PC, the Mac, or any other device you make.

Very true. It's much the same as music. The degree of musical talent required to be a professional musician is widespread. The bar is really pretty low. Basically, if you can play in rhythm, in tune, in the right key, with a modicum of feeling, you can get paid for playing music. This squares with the distribution of musicians in the pre-phonograph United States. It used to be that almost every household that could afford an instrument had an accomplished musician living there. It's what one had to do to have music at all.

Now look at the situation today. The economic barriers to music production are low. The industrial revolution enabled an individual to acquire a real instrument for $20 without even looking too hard (Hohner Harmonica) but today there are millions of devices capable of studio production, advanced digital sound manipulation, and even limited mass production of product. Yet not even close to every household has an accomplished musician living there.

Another thing I learned while teaching both music and programming: Those who aren't inclined to learn won't learn very much, no matter how much time and resource you throw at them, but those who really want to learn can't be stopped.
Teaching Entrepreneurship – The “Survey” Class
Why?

Why, in this day and, would anyone want a 500 page printed document? Something that would need updating as soon as it's printed?

The only reason I use 500+ page things is to read them from my couch, something the iPad (and the Kindle, the Sony and the Nook) can do very, very well. In fact, I carry about 100 books in electronic form with me on my iPod (which could be described as an "iPad Nano")

And any reader can do even better if it's not a monolithic 500+ page monster, but a neatly organized and searchable website.
Branding Deals Come Early in the Filmmaking Process
The only takeaway I got from this is that I'm still right to prefer Perl.
BBC World Service - SuperPower: The Extraordinary Power Of The Internet
> This might be the dumbest thing I've ever seen

Maybe because you don't never observed it's rather easy to teach business to a scientist or an engineer, but it's nearly impossible to teach engineering or science to an MBA.
How Erlang Makes Event-Driven Code Easy
Around 10
Ask the attorney – 5 tips on selling your business
I think it is valid for each edge case where the rewards for placing in a certain position significantly jump. if you believe that you can easily take a position, and that you are unlikely to make the jump to the next tier of positions even with significant investment you aren't going to make that investment for such an unsure gain.
From the article:

"The agile folks luuuuurve them some dynamic languages, because it enables an incredibly short development cycle.

...

Academia luuuuurves it some functional languages, and with a few exceptions, academia is where functional languages live and die. (Some exceptions: Haskell, Erlang, Mathematica.)"

Unfortunately, while this is meant as a "witty" dig at some folk's supposed knee-jerk reactions, this is pretty much indicative of the level of discourse in this post.
The -D option was really neat, thanks for this useful tip!