skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Compared to Google Analytics (which by necessity undercounts queries, due to Javascript-related issues) this undereports my queries by a factor of two.

Line-by-line comparisons seem to hold up pretty decently, though, in my five minute spot-check.
The party needs no help looking bad, they're doing quite well as it is.
It keeps your code bona fide open source, so people who want to use and extend it noncommercially can do so without worrying about you at all; the code is genuinely free.

That depends on your definition of "bona fide open source". It's hard to understand how requiring that software contain certain features (as AGPL does) complies with the FSF's freedom #1 "to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs".
A few associations: I was first introduced to the "cargo cult" idea through Feynman's commencement speech (http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm). Also kind of related is PG's idea of nth-degree imitations (http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html).
And maybe every little message wouldn't generate a news article if he did respond more often.
They have a full money back guarantee. Thing is, you'll never return it.
No extensive footnoting is needed for saying that the sky is blue. The evidence of Palin's incompetence is easily available to anyone with an actual interest.
The FSF promotes free software, not open source software. Free software is a term with a somewhat rigorous definition. Open source, less so. Don't try to make my argument consistent with the FSF's. I don't care what the FSF thinks. I'm not a promoter of "free software".

Having said that, the AGPL helps ensure that software is kept open source by making it more difficult to take other people's open source code, extend it, and withholding the changes while profiting both from the original and the extensions. It's a pretty staightforward concept.
Weird, the source shows a lot of text but it is not displaying anything at all if you do not have Flash.

My infantile mind suggested "breasts" rather than "bursts" :-)
Yes, and if your "ballot" had only had those two options, I would hope that you choose the former, as horrendous as it is. What's really objectionable, though, is that the political system in the US effectively presents you with a narrow set of unpalatable options.
Alternatively, if the PDF format is a problem, you could use the Google Docs viewer: http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.simson.net/ref/...
No I stood up when I typed that.
On the contrary:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a%20person%20who...
"Deep packet inspection was roundly beaten here."

And that's certainly not true here.

As for your latter point, the US principle of federalism, which leaves issues like this firmly in the hands of localities (think cities for a first approximation) means we have thousands of Petri dishes in which all this is going to play out.

The theory here is that a school district like this one and others may misbehave, may or may not get formally slapped down, but as long as not too many others follow its lead we're OK (you can in theory always vote with your feet, or home school etc.). And I'm pretty sure this example will help achieve the right result for most school districts.

On the other hand, there are a variety of strong and not strongly opposed programs to have schools quite explicitly interfere with home life, e.g. the "Parents As Teachers" program, which has seen a lot of abuses ... and that's a very real problem. Although I don't know how widespread, since my home state and the one I've retired to is one of the pioneers in it.

There is a general conceit (and probably not just on the Left) that if the parents aren't doing their jobs it's up to the government, often the schools, to step in. Free hot breakfast and lunch for the poor are a nationwide Federal part of that (with all the red tape that implies).
He almost made me want to buy a Thinkpad. Why can't Apple do 15,4" with 1920x resolution? My dream laptop would be MBP unibody keyboard/frame, Intel 256GB SSD, 1920x1200, extra battery instead of SuperDrive.
> The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship - and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens.

That seems arrogant and ungrateful, but he left out that airplanes tortured 4 senses and merely teased the 5th. They did not in anyway make you feel human.
While it's not an app, here's a really in depth article about best practices for typography that helped me out a lot:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/20/typographic-desig...
When all aircraft were grounded over the USA after 9-11, the temperature over the USA spiked 1.1 degrees above expected. It then fell back when flights resumed.

It turns out that the contrails left by aircraft bounce some of the solar radiation back into space before it reaches the ground, which stops it being converted into infra-red and being trapped in the atmosphere.

So if global aviation ceased entirely, it would help global warming along quite a bit. Of course, the emissions would be gone, but their effect is long-term...
The fallacy of premature optimization
Maybe, just maybe, every little message doesn't generate a news article.
This is exactly like locking the barn door after the vampire bats have bled the horse to death.
Jef Raskin created a zoomable interface. From the screensnaps, this doesn't look to be as clean.
"... a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie."

Roger Ebert on Braid.
If books can be art (as he concedes), then graphic novels like Maus clearly are as well. If graphic novels can be art, it's hard to argue that an interactive graphic novel wouldn't be. Therefore, his logic has be that there's some threshold of interactivity across which you lose your artistic merit. It doesn't make much sense.

In the end I think this is very much like the "comic books" vs. "graphic novels" debate, and his problem is that he (a) doesn't like video games and therefore (b) is very unlikely to be exposed to the vanishingly small number that are conceived of or executed as art.
Even when he's wrong he's just such an excellent writer.
Programming books I have read and somewhat liked
Agreed. I homeschool my children so that they can read a lot more than children are expected to read in school. Personally, I'm glad my children also read better books than the books suggested in the submitted blog post.
Read it online:

http://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Br...
I'd wait until the release of Googles VP8 encoder and independent comparisons until declaring VP8 superior to h264 encoded by x264.
yes it has
My friend's IBM Thinkpad went through 3 video cards and a motherboard before she replaced it with a MacBook Pro.
Could you tell a bit more about homeschooling? Experience, advices? What's the hardest thing about it, for example?
You can get it anywhere you take a normal, passionate person and then don't rape that passion with stupid bosses and committees.
I generally agree that voluntary reading is better for the reader than assigned reading. And yet I must give my tenth grade English teacher in Wisconsin credit for assigning me to read The Chosen by Chaim Potok,

http://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Chaim-Potok/dp/0449213447

a wonderful book that acquainted me with the author, whose subsequent books are also well worth reading.
Seems to me that as an outsider to gaming Ebert, whom I respect, misses out on many gaming opportunities. I'm not sure what lofty definition of art he is using but I've played games that run the entire emotional spectrum. Cinematic games like Uncharted 2, reflective games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, funny games like Monkey Island, 'art house' games like Braid, suspenseful games like Resident Evil. These games cover many systems over a long stretch of time, to expect a movie critic to keep up would be asking too much. But he should understand that this would be like me, a casual movie watcher, saying Citizen Kane is boring.
Can anyone beat my record for worst keyword clickthrough rate?

0.01% (12 clicks out of 110000 impressions)

http://i43.tinypic.com/156ppuw.png
How is this a valid comparison? A Big Mac is an end product not an intermediate. I suppose you could say it is an intermediate product for condiments. In which case McDonald's does not have a monopoly on what condiments you can put on your Big Mac.

Even if you did think it was a valid comparison they don't really have a monopoly on the sale of Big Macs. They have a trademark (or whatever) on the name Big Mac but there are plenty of burgers that are very similar and you are free to create a burger that is identical in form to what McDonald's sells.
What does source code have to do with anything if we're talking about a content site? You can't (legally) do anything with this person's political cartoons on his website. The point is moot.
I think this is a very bad suggestion, even for the Lifehacker audience.

Also, keyboard shifting is a standard feature of password cracking utilities.
You might be interested in the "unschooling" ideas of David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman):

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/02/case-for-unschool...

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/02/unschooling-advan...

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/12/home-unschooling-...

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/12/home-unschooling-...
Much more elegantly put that I was able to say. I believe they should have the freedom to do what they want with their property and I expect the same for my property. Exploiting contract law to restrict what I can do on my own property is bull.
Why would it take more money to support multitasking on the 3G? It's probably the exact same OS with the "support-multitasking" switch turned off. And how would that hurt the consistent experience? It's quite likely that in few months they'll be releasing a new iPhone that multitasks even better than the 3GS.
Stay Packages
Subversion now use text files for storage too. You have the option of that or the Berkley DB.
You need the crazy dictator's ego to suppress the formation of the normal corporate culture of stupid bosses and committees. MBAs and marketing droids are like mosquitoes on a warm summer night near a swamp, and you need eternal vigilance a lot of DEET to keep them away.

The most valuable thing Jobs does is suppress the bozo explosion that invariably occurs at successful companies.

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_prevent_.html
See also http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/children/ and a wonderful book by Gareth Matthews, "Dialogues with Children."
There is Google, RIM, Palm. There soon will be Microsoft. Nokia, too. They all will sell mobile apps so I don’t see the problem with Apple being the only one to sell iPhone apps if – and only if – they lose their dominant position in this wider group of those who sell mobile apps.

They can keep their monopoly on selling iPhone apps if they want to. I think that’s unfortunate but not something that has (necessarily) to be stopped. As I said: if they lose their dominant position, if you can get perfectly good mobile apps from any of those companies I mentioned.
The AGPL breaks with what's IMO is a central tenet in free software: The input and output to and of the software is not covered in any way by the license. The license covers distribution, not usage. The AGPL introduces such language as "interacting with it remotely through a computer network".

If my database software is AGPL (and I've for some reason modified it) and my webserver is regular GPL, does accessing my blog-webapp (that talks to the DB) constitute "interacting" with the database?

What if my blog is generated statically from the DB, triggered by uploading a new post through the web-interface? What if the trigger is cron?

If a dataset can be uploaded directly into a software program using HTTP PUT, sure, that's covered. But what if the protocol requires e-mailing the dataset to a clerk who then feeds it in?

Server software is used by letting people access it over networks. If you don't want people to use your software freely, for whatever purpose, commercial or not, free software is not for you.
I think Flint is the perfect product to be AGPL licensed; the argument of "it could be a commercial product but we don't want it to be" holds a lot of weight.
How to save (archive) the web
I agree wholeheartedly save for that I would have picked other examples for good suspenseful games, such as Silent Hill or Parasite Eve. More recently, I would add Heavy Rain to that list, though it's a completely different genre-- I've seldom seen a game that can evoke such powerful emotions.
HTML5 Readiness : A visualisation of HTML5/CSS3 browser support
Palm's software chief quits
His thesis reduces to: adding any interactivity to art automatically makes it Not Art.

I wonder if he's willing to make the same statements about participatory theatre.
Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts Poster
Ironic how commercially useful a tool for freedom can be, huh?
Virtual and Physical Memory Analysis utility
Reporting with Camelot, a Python GUI framework
A tutorial on reporting with Camelot.
A great way to get into history is Thomas Cahill's "Pillars of History" series. Start with "How the Irish Saved Civilization" and if you like it, carry on with the rest of the series.
Indeed. If you're familiar with Michael Pollan's Food Rules, one of them is 'Avoid anything processed that makes health claims'
It's 11%.
IPad ra1n ...again
the author doesn't actually claim its impossible, his main point is that "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets."
Interesting presentation, mostly well done :)

It would be easier to read if each spoke kept each browser colour in the same space. It's much easier to quickly memorize and patrec spatial relationships than colour relationships. If "light blue" (FF 3.5) was in the same location on every spoke, this would be much more useful.
To be fair: if you simply don't care about money, and just want to contribute to open source, there's an argument to be made that the AGPL is antisocial, since it prevents most other downstream projects from incorporating your work. I think reasonable people can disagree about this.

But if you care even a little bit about how your code fits into the marketplace, the AGPL is a fine choice, striking a balance between proprietary or restrictive licenses and "yes, please rape me" licenses like MIT.

That's not a knock against the BSD/MIT licenses. The 37s guys, who obviously care quite a bit about money, MIT-licensed Rails. They wanted maximal uptake. You have to consider your goals. We wanted to do some software development out in the open and work more closely with our users, but we didn't to fund competitors.
In case anybody's wondering, it works by moving a radial gradient with 0 alpha at the center using javascript. It's slow on Chrome, probably due to the effort required to redraw the gradient at every time step.

A better approach, at least for webkit browsers, would be to use the new mask property.
"No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets."

so opine the academics, but the video gamers probably beg to differ.
Our Pecora Moment
In trying to prove that video games are art, Kellee Santiago uses as examples games which are trying to be art in a way that compares with film. It's not surprising that when comparing these games to film, using that framing, that Ebert would find it lacking.

But what about a classic game like Super Mario Bros? It doesn't have a complex story told on wordy fortune cookies, it's not trying to force a particularly complex emotional experience, and it's not beautiful in the way of modern games. However, I'd still say that it's art. A different kind of art. One that's not comparable to film as so many examples here are.

Look at Mario himself: There are so few pixels to work with but not only is he clearly a human, he actually has character. From his overalls to his 3 pixel mustache. The world itself is a unique fantasy of plumbing, princesses, and mushrooms. The music, due to technical limitations, is a bunch of repetitive beeps and boops but is infectious and never gets annoying even after days, months, even years of playing. The shrubs and the clouds are the same -- something that went unnoticed by players for decades. The first 5 seconds of the game shows you, not tells you, everything you need to know to play it. It's beautifully designed. But it's not the same kind of art Ebert is critiquing here and it's not the kind of art that Santiago portrays either.
Some insight on this, both personal and inspired by a semiotics course I took :

Code is not avoidable because, be it text or image, you're still facing elements that are given a conventional meaning. That is the definition of a code.

Text is considered to be a digital code, because words have no "likeness" link with what they mean, whereas images form an analogical code because an image generally looks like something real.

Now when considering a programming language, textual or graphic, you're in presence of a third system, which is analogical no with reality, but with "conventional" parts of the textual or visual code. Since textual code is inherently conventional, one might be inclined to think it is better suited to programming languages than visual code, whose analogical properties are never used (visual programming languages use arrows and other conventional constructs, never representation of real things).

Moreover, textual code has what is called a metalinguistic property, meaning it can talk about itself but also about other codes (like visual code). Whereas a strictly analogical visual code cannot. Even a digital visual would be less effective since we already know the textual code's conventions but would have to learn the visual ones. And it is obvious that a programming language benefits greatly from metalinguistics (which sometimes goes by the name "reflexion", just consider macros).

Simply imagine the amount of work to implement lisp-like macros in a visual programming language, even if I think there are more intricate things to do in a visual programming language.

As a side note, remark that lisp macros could be made a lot more understandable with a more verbose syntax.

Speaking of which, it's interesting to note the article doesn't speak about conciseness (which as we all know from reading pg and personal experience is important :D). It's the trade-off for digital systems versus analogical systems : digital systems are harder to learn but are more powerful (because of new concepts) and easier (because of conciseness) to use once you know them.

And in the end, I just don't feel something graphic would be easier once you get past simple if/while statements.
A key aspect of GPL is that you trigger its source distribution requirement by doing something that requires permission of the copyright holder. This is key because it makes GPL fundamentally different from a EULA. As the FSF notes, licenses for proprietary software try to take away your freedoms, whereas GPL adds to them. This works because GPL only imposes requirements on you when you do something that the law otherwise disallows. The typical EULA tries to stop you from doing things the law otherwise allows.

If you obtain a legitimate copy of a GPL program and completely ignore the license, but only do things that copyright law allows you to do without needing the permission of the copyright holder, such as running the program, or making modifications to adapt it to run on your specific machine, you will not be in violation of the license--because the license only expands your copyright rights.

Affero GPL's requirement to distribute source is triggered by letting someone communicate with your running copy of the program. That's something that does NOT require the copyright owner's permission in copyright law. That's taking away a freedom we have under copyright law--and puts Affero GPL squarely in the EULA category.

The FSF seriously compromised their principles when they accepted Affero GPL.
The biggest problem with A/B Testing
nod

I'm a freelancer, and have been suddenly deluged with new projects in the past fortnight. I'd chalked it up to coincidence, but I keep talking to other people who are experiencing the same.
It's fine to trave by train if it takes less than 12 hours. otherwise, flights 12h*300KMpH = 3600 KM. it's almost the whole EU
I promoted this article not because I think that he's correct, but because I think this article is a brilliant example of a highly intelligent person getting something dead 180° wrong. Ebert is obviously quite intelligent, and a damn fine writer, but he misses much of what makes video games a compelling and beautiful medium for art. Just because one can embed poor prose or low-budget animated cut scenes doesn't mean that the medium is limited to just such things.

Don't tell me that the surreal landscapes of NiGHTS into Dreams weren't art-- I spent many hours as a kid exploring every nook and cranny of those levels all while trying to run away from the dreaded alarm clock. The start of the fourth level of NiGHTS forces you, the player, to make a choice that ultimately draws you into the game even more-- you must trust that you have enough control of your environment to jump off of that cliff and fly. Don't tell me that there isn't art in that beautiful moment when you realize that the rules of the game have changed so beautifully.

Anyone who has played Metal Gear Solid knows how Psycho Mantis' blurring of the fourth wall stretches how you think of playing the game. You, the player, have to make a physical action to get through the battle. Throughout the rest of the game, you are continually making choices about how you get through each challenge-- choices that other characters are aware of and will react to. The impact, ultimately, of such choices is that you empathize with Snake in ways that would not be possible in any other medium.

Others have given many other good examples, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. For my part, however, I will be content to share my 2¢ on the matter and to point attention to this important conversation.
Furthermore, NeXT^H^H^H^H Apple is now an even larger
threat to computing freedom.

Sure. Mostly sponsoring the development of Clang and by shipping it for free with their OS.
Yea, I've heard Heavy Rain is pretty intense. Haven't had a chance to check it out yet that's why I didn't include it, but from what I've heard it is one of the best representatives of artful games.
Excellent.

This sage advice (which is obvious, but I've never seen it elsewhere ... granted, it's now more of an issue since the IPO market is dead) plus some other things he's said in this general area of technical (or at least non-founder) talent, suggests to me that Fred Wilson really gets it. Too bad he loves NYC ^_^.
Thank you for making a much better case for the AGPL than anything else that I've seen, including the linked article.

I still don't see myself using it, and avoiding products that do, but this argument makes a lot of sense.
Is Group Buying a Billion Dollar Web trend?
Interactive HTML5 Presentation
Turbo-prop is in the same danger (TURBO means they use turbine) Piston engines looks to be in safter zone. And prolly we can use it.
Opera has a "Next Page" feature that is usually able to do exactly what you ask on most sites/forums.
Also, it's smart about it - if you're on a page that it's remembered a username/password for, if you go Next Page (either the mouse gesture or left/right mouse rocker gesture), it'll log you in automatically.