skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But namespaces are just more data. Namespaces, in my experience, have just turned into a hurdle that requires a bunch of needless element decoration to get it to play nice with XPath. The only place I know of where there is great confusion over what "XML" document you're processing is a browser trying to decide what type of document it's working with, i.e. all of the various versions of HTML and XHTML. That's not an argument for namespacing, that's an argument against forking markup languages. In every case where I've built XML processing services, I always knew what the purpose of the document was ahead of time.

Then there's XML Schema. In practice, I doubt few people actually validate documents against an XSD, in the rare cases one actually existed. Have you ever tried writing a reasonable sized XSD? Why are attributes treated differently from elements with a single text node as a child? Why can't I specify that a certain attribute is a prerequisite for another? Why are we specifying document structure and default values at the same time? What safety is type information actually giving me if I have to validate in my consuming service anyway?

I've had to process XML documents that claimed to be of such-and-such standard schema, and it invariably turns out untrue. There's always some 11pm job that fails to validate a doc because the author added an extra attribute or misspelled one you don't care about. Eventually, you just turn validation off and start doing things much more dynamically. I've always had to infer the schema from the document itself, otherwise my apps were too rigid for real-world use.

Someone else mentioned that S-exprs would need an intelligent editor to make writing them more coherent. I personally think the same is true for XML, as reasonably large (i.e. anything beyond tutorial demonstrations) XML documents will have the same problem of guessing what tags are already closed and which order they should be closed in, if only because their openings have scrolled off the top of the screen. Sure, you know you're closing a DIV tag right now, but which one? How long did it take to get decent XML syntax validation? While your Lisp interpreter has been sitting there quietly for the last 60 years. Throw in validation against namespacing and schema, and you still need an intelligent editor either way.

I don't really buy that XML is human readable, either. You don't read a 5000 line XML document, there's nothing to be gained from reading raw XML in that case (even if you have a raw text editor that can handle the file size). XML might have a slight advantage with being easier to demonstrate for new people learning, but once you get into actually using these tools, you don't ever use them in the "human readable/editable" format. That'd be like managing your finances with nothing but text files.

I'm just saying, Lisp was already well understood and parsed by the time XML was invented, and even XML + XSLT isn't even on parity with Lisp. Namespacing and XML Schema just turn out to be conventions that people say they're going to try to adhere to, but never do. Like I said, just like speed limits on roads.
Frustratingly, it's not available on the Canadian App Store. I wonder if there's a reason for that, or if it just hasn't propagated yet.
x264 is a codec implementation, not a codec standard. The x264 source code is free, but what it produces isn't (at least in the US). Rumors are VP8 will be free on both counts.

As for the patent issue, Google has no doubt done this during its ~9 months of due diligence while buying On2. Not saying that issues won't come up, but Google apparently felt comfortable with the situation.
This comment explains how to find the sites: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1260609

Since nobody has posted the site names yet, it's EliteMeeting.com (also run under MeetingMillionaires.com)
No, that is wrong. I have had occasion where Apple have not allowed me to submit an update, because they object to some perceived trademarked data, which is also present in the last version. But they have left up the last version.
C Is Not Assembly
No, I'm talking about seeing something like:

http://voice.google.com/?r=google.com/voice, where the resulting URL is inside the query_string
:-)

I will add that, in my experience, communicating on the web can be useful for honing your communication skills because you get quick feedback on whether or not you really said what you were trying to say. You don't tend to get this in face-to-face settings, where we rely a lot more on context, facial expression, voice tone, and body language. A lot of people comment that I write well. (And my sister, a journalism major who used to edit my school papers, eventually began turning to me for editing suggestions.) I learned it in online forums. Good communication skills are fairly uncommon and quite valuable for getting things done.
Unlikely. Opera Mini works by doing all the rendering on the server-side, and then sending the pre-rendered website to the client. It's not actually a browser, so much as an app that gets screenshots from a server-side browser.

Firefox, on the other hand, would be a real browser, running Javascript rendering and Gecko on the phone itself, which would not be allowed.

That said, I don't understand why anyone would want Firefox anyway. The iPhone's limited memory and CPU would likely make Firefox nearly unusable, while extensions would eat away at what little free space was left. Firefox isn't optimized for the mobile space, and I can't think of any features it would provide that would make it a better choice than Safari (or, on Android, the built-in WebKit browser).
We use ASP.NET at Feedity - http://feedity.com

Drop me a message if you would like to know more about ASP.NET in the production environment, automated build/deployment, affordable hosting options etc.
Perhaps they tried it and realized that it's not something that most users would want, and thus it stands little chance of hurting the platform.

Opera Mini is good for little more than simple content consumption on an extremely low-bandwidth diet (e.g. EDGE). For any sort of interactive, dynamic, or AJAX-y site or web app, it just doesn't cut it.

Case in point: http://twitpic.com/1f79bp
Is the obvious idea also obviously wrong somehow? Make a site(s) that addresses the needs of those who get scammed in a reasonable way.

I realize it is difficult (chicken and egg, subtleties about dating/sex habits of males and females), but someone ought to be able to do it.
Banal nitpick, but I'm pretty sure you mean W-9. :-)
I agree with sjs382 - I'm pretty sure they could argue that this violates the Sherman Act - an attempt to gain market power by something other than pure product-awesomeness and low prices. I really think a lawsuit is plausible - I just don't think this guy has sufficient grounds for such a headline.
I didn't vote you down but, their claim is true at a micro level: I ensure that you give me this, whereupon you can be sure I'll give you that (or exceptions will be thrown). Plus, it's maybe a waste of scoffing to scoff at marketing hype.

Poor Eiffel; its doom was to lead the way, and get picked apart by its children. Maybe if it hadn't looked like Pascal it might have done better. That said, I'm really surprised that design by contract hasn't been incorporated more widely, before now.
Relevant complementary reading (Widefinder implemented in Clojure): http://meshy.org/2009/12/13/widefinder-2-with-clojure.html
hmmmm.... unfortunately, #baddad is a nice color, while #fabdad isn't IMO.
A lot of netbooks allow 2-3gb ram. Is that enough?
Then why would they invest millions, if not billions, in creating, enhancing, and supporting developer tools?

Obviously they only do so to benefit themselves, but it's quite clear from their actions that Apple does care about developers.
20 days isn't that long though. Just think about the time it takes to get anything approved by the government...
First impressions:

1. it's very responsive. Much snappier than Safari; the difference is very noticeable.

2. pages download much quicker

3. zooming in and out is faster, but you only have two zoom levels. If you "pinch to zoom" it immediately zooms in all the way.

4. the home screen with 9 favorites works great

5. it's a little buggy (clicks don't always register)

6. killer feature #1: it automatically stores the entire app state, so you can open a few tabs, switch apps, go back and have everything the way you left it. This is a big deal, because Safari forgets your pages eventually, which is so frustrating when you have your travel plans in a safari tab and 3G is not exactly reliable.

7. killer feature #2: you can save pages

8. In full screen mode it makes for a pretty decent reader.

9. It doesn't suffer from "too small font" syndrome.

10. It has this "Snap to column" thing where your view automatically snaps to the column edges. This makes reading more like reading on Instapaper and less like safari.

11. It loads instantly, even when I have 3 tabs open. It's really that fast.

The only real downsides I know of so far are that it has trouble rendering more complex web pages, invades my privacy and doesn't do Javascript. Flash content simply doesn't appear (so you don't even know it should be there) and YouTube links don't link to the YouTube app. Still very impressive.
Armando helped us with Cloudomatic.com. He's absolutely fantastic, gets his shit done fast, and I'd recommend him to anyone on HN. If anyone has further questions email myself or Andres: founders@cloudomatic.com
If you only know how to use a hammer then everything else looks like a nail. In other words, re-implementing an inverted index in SQL is waste of time when you can use tools like Sphinx and Lucene - which are highly optimized to do inverted indexes and that can easily handle 2 billion words. The same can be said about FlockDB - it's possible to emulate a graph database, but is the effort really worth it when there are such tools like Redis and neo4j which seem to be optimized for graph like structures.
One thing it does really well is make everything one column of text- I think it's Mobile view in Settings. That is really nice for reading stuff. I'd still be using it if the Android Browser didn't already do the same thing.
Lots of hackers want to go to space. See the space startups of Allen, Bezos, Carmack, Musk; the trips to Mir by Shuttleworth, Ansari, Simonyi, and Garriott. It's fitting to remember the first man in space went there 49 years ago today.
Unfortunately, neither of those two businesses seem to be doing particularly well either.
> Jolly good, and I'm all in favour of better tool support for contracts, but that still can't "ensure quality code".

It all depends on how you define "quality".

And your down-votes could be attributed to the topic of the thread. Anything that casts doubt over Microsoft's One True Way is not welcome in certain message threads.
yesbabyyes is not suggesting that Google will force Apple in to adopting VP8, he is just pointing out the fact that if Apple doesn't support VP8 their users won't be able to watch YouTube videos. Google won't have to do anything, Apple consumers will pressure Apple to adopt this standard in order to be able to play YouTube videos.

YouTube is bigger than Steve's perceived ego.
A Google Tablet Could Be Good News for Adobe
In defense of "How to win friends and influence people", its title makes it sound more manipulative than it is. (Relatedly, it may not be the book the original poster is looking for.)

Way back when I read it, I hadn't given thought to all the issues it addresses and it really opened my eyes. Maybe you can spot people that try to apply it as a tool "from a mile away" - however, I suspect it is a best seller because it has helped nudge lots of people towards having more positive interactions with others. I don't remember much phoney-ness in the book, although I could imagine phoney people applying its advice poorly.
It reduces memory time. Mine has 1.5 gigs. Never (well, almost never) touches swap. Disk is a bit slow, probably because low-rpm.

And it still runs Django faster than my company-issued 4 gig Windows Core 2 Duo laptop.
CLPython, enables use of Python libraries from Common Lisp
The Firefox Mobile runs ok on N900 which has RAM- and CPUwise very similar hardware to iPhones, but 2x more pixels to render.

Why would someone want it instead of Safari? I'm sure lots of people use Firefox on their Macs too. Competition usually benefits us consumers.

Do I think we will see it on iPhone? Definitely not (I'm pretty sure both Apple and folks at Mozilla agree).
Thanks for the test and the book ref. I didn't do good on this quiz, I scored 30%.

I'll check out the books. This appears to be great stuff, glancing at Cialdini's wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
I thought Apple wasn't accepting alternative browsers because they duplicated the functionality available in the native browser? In any case, I'd hope this browser has a Javascript interpreter built in -- in which case, it ought to violate the "no interpreters" clause in the developer agreement, right?

Surely this is a victory for iPhone users, but I've got to wonder what the guiding principles behind which apps get approved and which don't really are.
I find it amusing that "their adverts feature 30-50 year old professionals, a class of people that are not as used to the internet and its danger as other younger people" - what class of people is it exactly that are always wringing their hands about the safety of young people on the interwebs?
The iPad + OS 4.0 backed up the approval process. We submitted before Opera, took about 14 days. Previously it's been about 5-7 days for new apps as Apple has been making a lot of improvements.
maybe what is needed is an additional mechanism that browsers can use to verify that a CA is the correct one for a particular domain name.
The Newest Chrome Dev Channel Release has Internal Flash Enabled by Default
Apple's Wager
Well, what's the licensing cost for MPEG4? It's probably per user/minute streamed, rather than a one time cost per minute of video encoded.
It is relevant in many, many different ways:
1. In short - it is relevant in the same way as talks about banking system, unemployment e.t.c - indirectly but in a profound way.
2. It is also relevant in a way that this was a major event
of the Cold War, and that war was a vehicle of many technological advances of USA.
3. It is also relevant for general knowledge of the world around - especially for brainwashed American people, who might have been thinking that American were first in space,
and that happened in mid-80s.
Given the even point spread over the comments on this thread, the verdict is still out. Something's going to work, and I haven't found it yet so it will be interesting how this pans out. I definitely would want something where I can grab the headlines I like and the ability to drill down deeper in the articles.
Signed up. See you guys there.
Nothing to do with AT&T or bandwidth; the preprocessing and compression are what make it abide by Apple's TOS.
Ask HN: Where to focus my mind and concentration
To expand a little on the title, I'm a CS student which has been having a little problem finding where to focus his mind and concentration.

I mean, with these huge assortment of technologies, and branches, it's kind of difficult to know what is worth pursuing and what not.

Everything excites me, from the most minuscule detail of the human body, to the greatness of the universe. In response to this thirst for decoding how the heck everything works, I remain indoors reading for pretty much the entire day.

So my question, goes for those of you who have experimented this (and I'm pretty sure many of you had, after being an avid reader of HN), how did you solve this dilemma? and how did you integrate this to the problem of having some of money to survive?
Why Partnerships hold businesses back
A lot of the apps don't trickle down from the US store to local stores :-/
What you've said there is that you are not rational with respect to your position re Apple. You explicitly say that people should work with Apple platform from a "sense of duty", that people should be "faithful".

This seems to me to make you unqualified to counter rational arguments.
it's amazing that in this day in age, people can still easily fall for these scams.

A simple google search for [dating site name] + scam will easily reveal the details about any site.

Maybe what we need is a yelp.com for websites.
6 inch YSL Yves Saint Laurent Pumps in purple - Online Sale Discount YSL
Google Abolishes Japan Local President
Jesus, for $30 a month you could: Go get a drink every week with some friends and maybe meet someone in an actual real life bar, sign up for a fun activity like salsa, generally do something you enjoy where you'll meet like minded people.
Opera complements Safari in a sense. It's an app to browse with on the ancient networks with bad reception. Chrome might conflict too much with MobileSafari's core functionality, so it would really be a miracle if it was approved.

+ Does Google even want to compete there? Chrome on the desktop may have some strategic value beyond spreading the Google brand, but is there anything exceptional made 'the Google way' in the Android browser?
Put it this way: they don't care about what the developers have to say about their platform or their policies and they assume that whatever minority of developers has left their platform will be replaced by an army of new ones. I mean, how many people have actually dropped their development for the iPhone/iPad? Have you noticed it?
I'm not sure I fully agree with his argument against using materials and textures to humanize a software interface. I do know that it requires a designer who's execution is better than average, but I don't think it's as much of a distraction as they proclaim. I also think it largely applies to the type of software one is designing. For example, the stock Notes app is fine but for Cultured Code's Things, it would not fit since task management is a much deeper interaction.

Anyhow, this article wasn't really informative, seems to be mostly opinion driven and the message is scattered. I showed the iPad to my parents this weekend, they were enamored by it because it was easy to relate with compared to their clunky Windows-based "laptops" -- a UX that's cold and impersonal.
Brilliant. Putting the unsubscribe link at the top should be the standard for all legit email marketing. Burying it at the bottom in ultra small, lightly coloured text is just nasty.
Why Put Android on a Tablet? Convenience
Fireworks Blueprint CSS template
Program something you want to use.
A chip like an OMAP2 or OMAP3 has a built-in DSP used to assist and accelerate video decoding. They've already added H.264 decoding to the IVA for some devices (hi, Dell) so adding new bridge code for VP8 is certainly possible.
Beyond the difficulties that you've mentioned you've got established competition who has plenty of ill gotten cash to spend plastering the web/world with ads. And as someone already mentioned people who have been scammed by a dating site are likely to keep that to themselves. Competition who will sing their own praises from the rooftops combined with quiet victims is a bad combination to have to compete with.
Good Jewelery
"when cars have a far, far higher incidence of causing property damage, permanent debilitation and fatality."

But we are used to cars. Cars are "normal" (and therefore just fine). The more I observe human nature, the more I see that most people make decisions using "normal" as a reference point.
So then we start obfuscating the URL parameters? Or what if google.com/voice is just one step in a series of redirects? What if some "clever" dude decides to protect against this and say base64 encode the r argument to "protect" his app?
This is an interesting interview.

I like the running back analogy at 21:00. Here's a link to Lindzon's blog post Fred was referring to: http://howardlindzon.com/breathing-drinking-twitter-poker-li... (Ignore the wheels off title, it's actually a good read esp. if you're a Twitter developer.)
You have to wonder how much of this is PR damage control considering how the developer community pretty much called out their BS.
Finding Available Domains By Keyword Combination In PHP
Actually, it turns out storing passwords in cleartext is exactly what they did. I think it's worthwhile for everyone to be aware of the ramifications and problems associated with this.

Their second response was far better, and addresses all of the concerns their first response generated.
Big question then, can you embed Opera as the browser in your native app just as you can Safari?
'Mind-reading' brain-scan software showcased in NY by Intel researcher
That sounds probable given their other business practices. Sticking those who complain with a much higher fee would cover the cost of keeping a lawyer/legal standover man around.
Walled gardens are the new proprietary file formats.
I think this is a re-post

Indeed: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1255045
Totally agree that seemingly small tweaks can be huge differences and differentiators.

When we were launching, many compared us to HuffPo, TechCrunch or one of a handful of other blog networks. It can be annoying, but it can also be a bit of - as Marcellus Wallace put it - "pride fucking with you." What you're building will be its own thing because it's a different vision and set of experience building it. True/Slant's been public for a year, and I don't think I've heard those comparisons in awhile.

> And we're not gussi-ing anything up in wordpress.
> You don't take the core of your product off the shelf
> like that, at least, not as a technology company.

But then, you will be reïmplementing major chunks of a CMS from the ground-up? Editorial and publishing workflows? Access controls? Tagging systems and info hierarchies?

I am admittedly biased here, as we made a very conscious decision to build trueslant.com atop Wordpress MU. I've built CMSes from the ground-up. I've created them from general-purpose tools and content management-specific frameworks. Building atop Mu has allowed us to spend significantly more time and energy on the overall experience and less on the nuts and bolts.

I'd like to think we've done more than some gussying up; the Automattic folks, among others, seem to agree

http://2009.newyork.wordcamp.org/program/saturday-sessions/#cms

http://www.slideshare.net/rogertheriault/technology-of-the-new-news-workflow

Bless you, too, for launching with Fb Connect. We implemented it after being live for several months and had tens of thousands of existing Members to contend with "linking" existing with Fb accounts (or specifically NOT linking, as the case was). Doing it from the get-go should be simpler for everyone.

I look forward to your official launch.
Ex-Macromedian here. It was the release of Flex (which generates Flash UIs by default) that started this trend. It was clear to me from the start that MM (now Adobe) had made a bad move with Flex because all the examples reimplemented basic HTML form + JS functionality in Flash, with a bonus "Loading" window at the start.

I know a lot of otherwise bright devs that were drawn to Flex by the MVC paradigms that littered the tutorials. Classic 'Architecture Astronaut' stuff as Spolsky would describe it which really didn't translate to delivery of better sites for users, especially once the JS frameworks took off.

In my view, the decision to trade off user experience and established standards for developer convenience is never the right one, but I guess it's a temptation if you're in the dev tools business.
Zombie Chaser: A graphical interface for mutation testing
I don't think so, unless Opera Software gives you the sources.
Is iFart still there? If so, I call bullshit.