skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are already devices with this kind of hardware around. The Archos 9, tablet Thinkpads, etc.

Making a tablet good is all about software. Windows XP failed. Windows 7 is meh. iPad OS will probably do well. Android could go either way. (I have used android in a virtual machine, and it's not a good paradigm for devices that aren't phones, IMO. So a lot of work is necessary to make it work nicely on a tablet.)
It's Michel Zalewski's (known to his friends and those, like me, who fear him as "lcamtuf") code.

It's a command-line Unix tool. It builds with almost no exotic deps other than GNU IDN.

It's a pure-async wordlist-driven crawler/fuzzer. It is screaming fast on the network I'm testing it on. Because it's async, it's not bottlenecked on demand-threading for each request.

It generates pretty HTML reports. Well, pretty for a C program.

It's Apache licensed. There are things in here I'd probably steal, like the URL parser; it's much tighter than mine.

How useful is this going to be for YC-style apps? Meh? You should definitely run it on your QA instance. Make sure you give it a login cookie to run with. It will find things. But where it looks like Skipfish is really going to do some damage is on the enterprisey J2EE- and .NET-stack apps.
Wait, what? No. I haven't seen/heard Lady Gaga do anything that Kylie Minogue didn't do better.

It's like, hmmm. Imagine you have a bag of Starburst™ brand fruit chews. You eat one, it's an orange. You eat the next, it's an orange. You go through an entire bag of orange fruit chews when suddenly -- out of the blue -- you encounter a strawberry-flavored chew. And you start raving about how the strawberry is more subtle, more nuanced, more rife with unexplored avenues of flavor than the bag of oranges you've just consumed.

No. It's just superficially different. It's still ground-up pig toes, HFCS, and artificial flavorings and colorings.
Just to explain what might be a tricky point, an equation like F = ma isn't just pulled out of the aether. It's a representation of known and studied behavior.

There is no known and studied behavior of objects with negative mass. There isn't even a rationale for throwing down absolute-value bars beyond "symmetry".
It says they're trying to compete with the kindle too, but I couldn't tell if the WePad can do e-ink?
Even so - in other hacker news post people complain that employers don't understand that programmers are more versatile than just "5 years of Java experience". I have never programmed Flash, but I am pretty sure I could pick it up within 2 days or so.

It actually seems cool that they made an ad saying "no experience required". When else do you get that? And it makes perfect sense. Why would a student taking on the challenge be able to learn to program what they need?
Now you don't get to fly.
Apple allows App Devs to submit iPad apps for review
I watched "air crash investigation" a few times. Since I didn't know this show existed, the existence of the clips was helpful to them in the form of free advertising.

Of course, I don't have cable or whatever, so I just download the episodes from real file sharing sites. But you can't blame Youtube for that, that's all on me.
I understand why the jury reached their verdict, but that doesn't change the fact that their ignorance harmed someone.

Ironically, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." is something I agree with in this case.
I can't imagine many people would take to strolling around with a large LCD screen poised in front of their faces.
Since when do kindle competitors have to have e-ink?
No. What it speaks to is how listening habits have changed. And since a musician's goal is to be heard, a large shift in listening habits unquestionably changes how much is produced.
I can't wait until someone comes out with contact lenses with built-in displays and cameras.
As per my response here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1205011

You have it backwards - you can justify throwing absolute value into the equation if you actually find find evidence that negative mass is just as hard to accelerate as positive mass.
You want to validate email addresses, because a surprising number of users is incapable of typing their email address correctly in one try. Validation saves a lot of rework.
The state of music commentary on this thread is low enough to be insulting and pretty much validates the article.

This seems rather contrary to the kinds of talk normally heard on HN.

It's quite typical for us to take ourselves as developers to task when we build an application that users fail to appreciate, or have difficulty in using.

How is it, then, that when listeners fail to appreciate the greatness in some piece of music, that it's the listener's fault? By analogy, shouldn't we look at this as a failure of the musician?
I also remember this article from Wired last year.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?curr...
Why is it unlikely? I regularly skype from my Linux desktop.
Wow, what an idiotic statement that is.
It's valid to recognise a pattern, a technique that you used. Name it if you like. The mistake is only made when they believe the pattern was made intentionally. More often than not, the only thought entering your mind as you compose is 'this is pleasing, so I will keep it'.

However, even if those facets of the music you interpreted exist by chance rather than by design, they still have value and are a source of inspiration. Conversely, bad designs exist. It's the outcome that matters; that's what you learn from. Not from intentions.
If I was going to read an entire book on a monitor, it would have to be e-ink.
can't you do that on iPhones already? :/

Or you could just get a regular camera/video cam and hack the firmware to show cool stuff.
Germany is only the largest exporter in the world in 2007:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_exp-economy-exports
and the second largest in 2009:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports

So it is not "highly unlikely" that a German company will muster a mass market audience.

I agree however Apple definitely wins on the quality of products and the seamlessness of the experience, but that doesn't mean no company can compete.
I can't wait until someone comes out with a tablet that has a camera on the frontside, so that I can video-chat from the couch. This would be really awesome.
For Internet Explorer Users
Likely. Too busy working. ;-)
Seriously? Hrmm! I wonder if that's possible within Android within Linux ... (goes off to Skype website)
NodeJS JSON Data Services & JavaScript web scraping fu
Yes you can, just tiny screen, tiny processor.
So, to summarize in an only very slightly trollish way:

- The problem with jazz is the people who listen to it.

- Music isn't art, or at least it's wrong to appreciate it as such.

- Jazz ought to be revivalist, not innovative.

Suffice to say, I don't think I can agree...
No, I have not. All of her songs sound the same to me, the repeated nonsense stuttering included. And I say this as a person who as listened to thousands of hours of techno/electronica/drum and bass.
No way - operatic singing techniques are fundamentally different from other kinds of singing, and much harder work physically. Next time in you're in the shower or wherever you can sing, do a chorus of some song you like. Then take a deep breath and instead of using your throat as you do when you talk, use your abdominal muscles to push the air out of your lungs while you sing, such that you can feel the notes resonating your chest cavity. It isn't just louder, it fundamentally changes the characteristics of your voice.

Part of what makes popular music so compelling is that using microphones to amplify the voice allows singers to present a much more intimate quality - they're right there with you, and that intimacy is strongly coupled to the emotional content of the song, even if it's coming through a stadium-sized sound system. It's like the amplification creates a bridge between the singer and the audience. but in opera, (even with amplification) the singer is bridge between the melody and the audience...a big reason why opera singers don't always look right for the part, but when they open their mouths, it ceases to matter...if they're good enough.

I like the opera a lot and go several times a year...but don't get me started on all the things that are wrong with the opera industry. As with nerdy and self-indulgent jazz, the arts establishment is fucked and limits its own audience by wasting huge amounts of money on packaging the product so it becomes a high-priced status symbol - perhaps even deliberately. Every year in San Francisco they do one or two free operas at the baseball park (via simulcast from the opera house), and people love it - last time it attracted over 35,000 people. But if you want to go the Opera house you'll probably have to pay $75-1000 per ticket to subsidize a small army of union stagehands and visual designers, and they send out glossy-full color begging letters every 6 weeks as if people went to the opera to look at the costumes and stage furniture. Well, I guess some of them do, but I imagine that composers and singers would rather be appreciated for their musical ability than their ability to look like they stepped out of a history book.
This sounds like a great self-help book. Think it'd get me on Oprah?
As you learn the mechanics of writing and running a program, start thinking about specific programs you want to write.

This is what I never managed. I picked up programming very fast at school, but could never come up with anything I'd want to use it for. Now that I finally have a few concepts I want to see done (good UIs to promising algorithms), I no longer have the time to pursue them.

That's part of why I believe kids now should start with html+js+css and be introduced to greasemonkey, stylish, and browser extensions. Maybe Node.js, too. Everyone uses some site a lot, and they will find problems in those sites to attack with their new knowledge.
Context is very important for the more "masterpiece" recordings. The relatively short history of jazz music shows a continual building upon previous works, exploring new ideas and new sounds.

Handing a jazz novice "Blue Trane" might be akin to handing a Star Trek novice "The Search for Spock"; it may or may not be superficially enjoyable, but to really understand it requires more background knowledge.
Ask HN: How do you recommend getting a basic understanding of the law?
My knowledge of US law is fairly rudimentary and I'd like to learn more about it. I'm interested in both laws related to hacking (copyright, contracts, startups, etc.) but also just any laws that may be useful in life. Are there any no-nonsense resources I can look at?
I didn't think this was particularly relevant to HN, which is why I didn't submit it, but if you're looking for an angle, this article is extremely relevant to those seeking employment. Think about what kind of first impression you make, in the moment before rational thought.
That's actually a pretty good idea. :-)
actual results are stored as a hierarchy of JSON files, suitable for machine processing if needs be

That's a quality touch. I can't count the number of times I've had to write "quick" tools to parse results into a form we prefer/need :P
I've heard complaints from several (and happen to agree) that augmented reality sounds awesome in theory, but in practice you feel like a weirdo standing there holding a device in front of your face, aiming around the town square. I can only imagine how much of a jerk I'd feel like waving my tablet around. Perhaps that's just "my problem", but I think it's got a decent chance of preventing AR from ever being anything but a novelty. Integrate it invisibly (to others) into a contact lens or stylish glasses and you've REALLY got something, though.

(On the other hand, just as I didn't predict that AR would feel as weird to do in public as it does on a phone, maybe it's less bad in practice when done on a tablet with both arms. More like a map.)
It looks like the book is still in beta and currently being written.
This is an incredibly important point, and bears adding more information. See the Fully Informed Jury Association here: http://fija.org/

I tell myself that were I in this case, I'd insist that my lawyer make this point, and move for a mistrial were my lawyer not willing to defend me in this way. In real life, I don't know if I'd have the guts to do that.

It's incredible that judges as a matter of course lie to juries, telling them that they must decide based on the law, and ignore their conscience. On the contrary, the reason that juries exist is precisely because of their conscience; otherwise we'd just have a computer keep score in the trial. It's a horrible failing of our legal (I hesitate to say "justice") system that this is not only tolerated but perpetuated.
You can do all of these now (and have been able to for many years). If you don't have a laptop, netbooks are great for this and only cost $200-300. No need to buy a stand so you can use it without your hands either :).
I experienced something similar a while back when I tarred up a live instance of a wordpress installation and fired it up on my local machine. To deal with redirects, I changed /etc/hosts to resolve the live domain to the local IP. While I was working on the local copy, I would from time to time need to refer to the live instance. To do this, I'd comment out the entry in /etc/hosts and browse to the live site. At some point, I noticed that the theme for the live site had been set back to the default. When I investigated, it turned out that my session credentials for the local instance were honored by the live (remote) site.

The odd thing about this is that I hadn't been given the admin password for the remote-live wordpress instance. I had manually modified the database to change the admin password in order to work on the local instance before firing it up.

I never did look into how wordpress created or verified session credentials, but it did seem like something odd was going on, there.
The success of the iPhone has shown that it's not about having the most features, it's about doing things right.

Face it, we're disconnected with reality. Most people don't WANT to worry about file hierarchies, searching for the right software suite, etc. They don't care about sandboxing and the App Store gatekeeper model.

In fact, as long as the App Store isn't more expensive than elsewhere, I'd say they even prefer it. You might think that with Apple taking a 30% cut it would be, but they make it so simple to sell software that the greater supply results in a significant downward push on prices.

I still do hope it fails though. Apple is pure evil (and I say this as a macbook owner).
Why in the world would someone spend 6-8 hours listening to a piece of music they dislike just so they can like it? If I already have thousands of pieces of music I enjoy listening to, why should I put any effort into liking even more music?

I don't buy the article's conclusion that people should listen to jazz because otherwise they are "missing a huge chunk of what life has to offer". Everyone is missing out on a huge chunk of what life has to offer! Time spent gaining appreciation for music is not spent doing something else. Who is anyone to tell anyone else what chunks of life they should be exploring?

I have an alternate theory for why Americans don't like jazz. They don't like jazz because they don't hear a lot of jazz. They do like lyrical forms of music because they are exposed to a lot of it in the course of their daily lives. Why is a purposefully acquired taste superior to one that didn't require effort?
I never said I consider HN a hangout for good guys only. "Bad guys" are constantly looking for exploits in wordpress though, considering it's horrible track record. Therefore it's much more likely that one of them would go to the wordpress forums as opposed to here. Plus, it's already posted here, my point was to not make it any more public than it already has become.
It never stopped Apple from delivering products which actually infringe on others copyrights, not just sound similar (iPhone-> Cisco, iPad->Fujitsu).

I think wePad is a great name, if Apple's legal-hounds can leave them alone.
The argument is always the same, and the JSON crowd always assert "superiority" derived from sheer simplicity. XML is too hard for them, and they're part of some bizarre quasi-political movement that trashes object-oriented principles. Thus, 'simple' trumps validation via type, version control (and hence interoperability over time without breakage and maintenance), robustness.

The weakness in the Javascript "eco-system" is it's quasi (the 'quasi' qualifier applies frequently in this eco-system) support of objects. XSD/XML is powerful when used in an object paradigm, and object paradigms have proven (not just via community claims) to be very effective.

The question is, when will the JS community step up to the plate (i.e. mature)? So much energy is wasted now on making JSON work -- just in order to make Javascript easy. Wrong priorities.
For an alternative point of view, Blue Train is probably what got me into jazz in the first place.

But seeing as my tastes went on to become enamored with highly abstract, noisy, wall-of-sound, drone-for-40-minutes sort of stuff, I might not make a good data point. :)
The conviction rate for federal crimes in the US is around 95%, a level typically associated with countries like Japan or Russia that are routinely criticized for their kangaroo courts.
That ship has already sailed. The more places it's posted, the worse it is.
On Writing & Drawing
Both the Copyright Office and Patent Office have sites that can give you the 101.

http://www.copyright.gov/
http://www.uspto.gov/

If you are ever thinking of living in the U.S., especially in NYC, then there's a whole set of laws you should understand regarding the rights of tenants, if you rent:

http://www.tenant.net/

Note that NYC tenant law is not transferable to other cities. The laws exist as they do due to several distortions, both by gov't and the market.
Financial Shenanigans: the Repo 105
Is "not doing any sports" a sport?
Apple designs great interfaces. I accepted the interface of 'smartphones' as an unpleasant necessity until the first time I tried an Iphone. The interface design was a spectacular improvement, on the scale of going from a bicycle to an automobile for transportation.

While I didn't buy an Iphone as I don't care for the rest of the Apple package, their products are mostly the pinnacle of interface quality. I do own an Ipod, although not until I had software that allowed me to really own it.
Apple Is Now Accepting iPad Apps
Just got the email in my inbox - submit by March 27th to make the launch . . .
Isn't Walmart already the poor man's Walmart?
You mean like foaf+ssl?
How to make money on a fan podcast - using Harry Potter fancasts as an example
Particularly on laws regarding the internet you may want to look at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/about/readings especially Free Culture by Lessig.
Unprecedented 25-Year Sentence Sought for TJX Hacker
Charlie Miller to reveal 20 zero day security holes in Mac OS X
Just because the law exists doesn't mean I cede all rational thought. If a law is worded in a way to make a action taken by a reasonable person a felony, then I reserve the option to not contribute to making matters worse by convicting someone of breaching that law. There are so many laws on the books, it is possible to convict people of all kinds of things, even though most aren't felonies. The prosecutor has discretion on whether to charge someone, so I say the jury should too. Civilization isn't going to break down just because jurors decide that a law is being enforced too strictly.

With that said, this whole thing sounds funny, and I wasn't there for the trial.
Screenshot of pretty html report would be awesome. I don't have access to a local *nix system at the moment so can't try it out.
Thanks for the rant, raganwald. Just wanted to say that you're my favorite commenter on Hacker News. Always insightful and level-headed.
From the conclusions: Only identical queries may be serviced from the cache. This includes spacing, text case, etc.

Which is disappointing. I will go look at Postgres... and it seems to cache only at a lower level (indices, tables etc).
The Google page lists a screenshot

http://skipfish.googlecode.com/files/skipfish-screen.png
It's true that s-expressions don't give you a literal syntax for hashmaps or arrays, but note that some lisps (e.g. Clojure) do support these natively … and in a syntax that's better than JSON since you don't have to type all those annoying commas ;-)
I'm not sure how it would work either or if it would. As new technology develops old technologies also become obsolete - thus as we have more laws dealing with biotech and airplanes, we can get rid of laws dealing with leprosy and stagecoaches. More importantly this might force legislators to write their code more efficiently and address the intent of the participants.

You do make some good points about limiting the total size of the legal code but NOT limiting the size of the legal code, as we do now, also has some serious drawbacks.
What do you need a couple millions to start that?

There are plenty of people who could pitch in, wikipedia style, the vids can be hosted on youtube and once you outgrow one server you can sell advertising/accept donations.
Ah! Thanks!
Killer Bees Attack
Take the chairs away.

Seriously. Seating is a scam to collect economic rents on artificially-induced scarcity. Chairs are for sitting and maintaining social ordering, and most people are respectful of that, and by implication of each other. And they are optimal for some kinds of performance. but standing is more equitable and allows people to literally vote with their feet. I have been falling-down tired waiting for a concert to begin, only to forget myself when the artist goes to work - which is why I bought the ticket in the first place.

The fact that two largest ticket companies are now merging into one with a virtual monopoly on the live entertainment industry is a bad, bad thing.

I know, this is bit tough on the disabled who are unable to stand for a long time or at all, but there are ways to work around that.
I kind of like Gershwin. I enjoyed playing a clarinet part for "An American in Paris" in an amateur concert band even. I like Dave Brubeck too actually. But those don't really seem like jazz to me, more like cheating:)
Special Report on Managing Information: Data, data everywhere
Dupe.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1205001
Same book, different link, other comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1204067
Jury nullification is not a recognized part of the US legal system. Its something that can happen, but its viewed as more of a loophole than anything else.

Incidentally, I was recently dismissed from jury duty by the judge for asking an honest question regarding jury nullification.

EDIT: I should add that I think this is unfortunate.