skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Until Apple, Microsoft, Google and others start writing their operating systems in Java/C# instead of C, I wouldn't worry.

Keep in mind the runtimes those languages require is written in some flavor of C. Even with Squeak, where the VM is written in a subset of Smalltalk, it's transformed into C and then compiled to run natively.

Having said that, I have, long, long ago, designed a stack-based architecture that would run something very close to Forth. Got me an A+.
Done right, this will change the world. I'm currently working on porting an emulator. The major sticking point so far is the audio API, which seems rather primitive, but should be sufficient for my needs.
It is open source, and could be adapted by any browser, AFAIK.
To be clear, this is only searching public posts. Its just that a large number of FB users either don't know, or don't care, what they are now broadcasting to the world.
I love your demand of citation to the OP, and not a single citation here (with exception to BoL stats, but as the other respondent noted, general stats are pretty irrelevant to the actual argument being made here)

3. Abortion is still federally legal (and contrary to popular belief that actually HASN'T changed regardless of what North Dakota claims), care to give some examples of other gains that were rolled back?

The article is definitely simplistic, but don't confuse simplistic with wrong.
This is the same kind of logic Facebook is using to justify their moves to make everything public, and it's flawed. These are different kinds of public.

For example, with Facebook fan pages there used to be an option to hide which pages/groups you were a fan of. Now you can't do that — all of these are public. There is now no way to hide them without 'unfanning' them.

Yes, before the change if someone started looking through the many thousands (millions?) of fan pages they could have found you listed on one. But now it's just sitting on your profile page.
If it works like the others do: it sends a request to your friends to add the group/page etc. (this could be different, I haven't had a close look, but it is what others did)
Gowers is a very brilliant man. But he supposes that most human errors in reasoning about public policy are linked to formal invalidity of the reasoning. The human mind is beset by many forms of irrationality.

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238...

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog...

Research does not suggest that formal training in mathematics does anything to improve the quality of discourse on public policy. Please note that I write this as a teacher of mathematics. I like mathematics and think that mathematical thinking is helpful, but I don't expect it to have much help for public discussion of policy.
I think every site out there needs to fully expect to have their ideas stolen and operate as if their competitors could duplicate their functionality tomorrow. If you have built anything worthwhile, it's going to happen.

A key to success is staying competitive and always improving on what's available to your marketplace.
Agreed. Kickstarter really played this well.
citation? citation? citation? you can't ask for a citation about linking pay gap btwn men and women and then not give one for society being organized in such a fashion as to burden women etc. etc.
For anyone who wants to learn more about the nature of IP: Patents, Trade Secrets, Trademarks, Copyrights, Licensing, I recommend this book: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517960.

I read it about 6 months ago, it will give you some clarity of thought about these matters. And apart from the odd gratuitous computer metaphor it is quite minimal -- you could probably use it as a reference if necessary.
This seems to be a problem with not having uniform policies across the nation. I think a similar thing is happening in the European Union with its free movement but no uniform internal policies -- locations that have more generous policies attract needy from the places that don't.

I'm all for universal health coverage and making sure that people who can't find work can get support, but this is why piecemeal solutions don't work. It needs to be national.
There was a FF plugin that was included in the research bundle. (although it never worked for me)
This reminds me of the initial opinion of the telephone 100+ years ago: nice toy, but it has no practical business purpose.
How does ActiveX sandboxing work?

As far as I know, it mainly relies on signatures. What happens when you trust a control that has a bug which overwrites your hard disk? And that's leaving out malicious code...
:-) Nope, although that would have helped. I think I should've have started thinking about my own company sooner, rather than getting graduate degrees and working in a safe job.

But then again, I'm from a country where job safety is highly valued by the society and your family, so risky entrepreneurial moves are frowned upon. A lot of European countries are like this, I guess.
The iPod isn't trying to go mass-market by exposing a focus group for a short time. It's trying to go mass-market by exposing a minority of vocal earlyvangelists and having them show people why it's useful.

So far it's working really, really well. The question is just whether they can keep it up -- if the use cases continue to be interesting and compelling to, say, 10% of the population rather than just 1% of it.

Still too early to tell.
So let me get this straight, they went to a business with the potential, brains, and resources to steal their idea, had virtually no barriers to entry, and told them about it freely?

There are several things you can cry poor sportsmanship for in business, this would not be one of them.

That said, I can't tell if they're truly bitter or just running with an opportunity for a marketing ploy that presented itself.
from the OkCupid faq:

Are you interested in a “strategic partnership”?

Not if it involves us paying you.

I have an idea. May I tell you?

Sure! But you won’t get anything for it, and we’ll keep it
to ourselves, and we’ll use it to make millions. Possibly.
You might want to keep your ideas to yourself.

(source http://www.okcupid.com/faq > Business)
One thing that prevents me switching from SVN at the moment is that I like the fact that every time I commit I'm also performing a backup.

Is there anyway to set up hg to mirror all commits to another remote repository? Would that not be better than hoping your repository never goes over the Dropbox 2GB free limit?
I don't even know why people would tell half of their friends that.
I think the point is that it's very expensive to keep people in prison, much more so than giving a homeless person a meal. You have to provide a very solidly built, if not large, home for everyone and keep them company 24/7.
Wow, they stole a whole idea? Somebody call the cops, I can't believe it!

Seriously though, if you think your idea is that great, you should write it on a little note and keep it in a shoebox. Then, within days, weeks but at most years you'll find that somehow someone seems to have had magical access to your shoebox and managed to read right through the cardboard.

How did they do that?

Don't tell anybody your ideas if they're that good, they'll run with it and might even do a better job than you yourself ever will...

Especially somebody that is in a position to implement your idea overnight and make a bundle while doing it, that's tying the proverbial cat to the bacon and expecting the bacon to be there in the morning.

Nice story about ideas and how to make money of them:

Two gentlemen showed up at a notary public to see if he had a solution to their dilemma.

The first was a well known businessman, the second an inventor.

The businessman made matchboxes and the inventor had come up with an idea to save money on the production of the boxes, but realized that if he gave his idea the businessman would implement it and not pay him.

So he named his price, asked the businessman to deposit the money with the notary, and if the idea upon disclosure would be implemented within 5 years the money would flow to the inventor, otherwise it would go back to the businessman.

The idea was simple as can be: "only put the 'rubbing surface' on one side of the box", instant savings.

The businessman immediately realized the potential and the money was released, both parties happy.

So if you wish to 'sell your idea' use some kind of escrow to make sure that you get what's due to you, and if you don't, don't bitch.
Should an entrepreneur have an MBA?
Given that it's so clear that "reveals everything" was intended, yes. It's generous of you to stretch the meaning to accomodate the mistake, though.
Google Summer of Code 2010: Meet the Students
Why atheists are more intelligent than the religious
I'm really really bored of this on HN.

There's no real evidence that anyone using facebook really minds the changes facebook makes.

Changes to their privacy are fairly moot. It's not like they're changing the color of a button, making it harder to play fishville or anything massive like that.

Can we get back to moaning about appstore policies now? Or iPad articles?
The about page has a lot more of the background story of this project and is a nice read:

http://www.beforeidieiwantto.org/about.html
Ruby support may be implemented down the road depending on customer demand.

Many UML tools add too much info automatically, we have a number of features that allow users to add the nodes they care about with a single context menu click: Show Super/Subtype Hierarchy, show Extending/Extended Classes, and show referencing types / methods.
A good tutorial on Python Unicode is http://diveintopython3.org/strings.html. It's also my favorite explanation of Unicode in general.
I am trying to understand this, if this is similar to activex, do we have to deal with annoying popup like "Do you want to install this activex plugin" for every webapps for chrome based on this?
I noticed at the bottom it says, "Patent Pending." Hah! Much of this site's concept was ripped off of hot or not.
Microsoft's plan was to build most of Longhorn on managed code. For what was publicly said, it became clear that plan didn't work out, they had to scrap most of what was written up to then and start from more or less scratch. Vista was released late as a result, Jim Alchin retired and the same codebase lived on to become Windows 7.

Lisp machines, I think, proved the concept that, if your CPU is clever enough, even the low-level code can retain a high-level of abstraction.

Sadly, I have none to play with. Someday I intend to correct that.
The corporate job where I'm at right now has this exact problem. HR has made termination require a LONG process that starts with a 6 month "performance initiative plan" before enough data can be collected to fire someone. And even then it requires a tremendous amount of executive level approval.

We've had lots of incidents in the past where older employees would play the "I have a health issue" card to avoid being fired. Just to avoid getting sued, the company would capitulate and "promote or move" them away from the manager who didn't want them.

Part of the problem is that as companies get bigger and their pockets get deeper, an entirely new class of employee enters which is low skill, highly cunning, and completely untrustworthy. Unfortunately, in my experience, most of these individuals always fit a certain profile:
Middle Aged Men (50+)
Low level of education

Most of these people are hired for two reasons:
1) Need someone for grunt work (support/maintenance)
2) Need someone that will accept a very low salary

Once a few incidents happen, HR and legal issues take over and begin the stranglehold on operational efficiency that infects large organizations.
No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…
AMD’s Vision: The chip race is finally over
I was honestly shocked at the $120,000 median net worth statistic. That's WAY higher than I expected. That was listed as 2007, so I wonder if the housing market and stock market changed that dramatically in the last few years.
You could get a basic, working social network built for a few hundred bucks, but that wouldn't make it a threat to Facebook. And Diaspora won't be one either, unless they've got a trick up their sleeve.

The only thing that is a threat to Facebook is something that causes them to start hemorrhaging users. But face it, when the average person logs in to Facebook they have new stuff to look at it and people to communicate with. But if they signup and login to Diaspora, there just won't be as much activity, if any. So the average person will go back to Facebook, and stay there, until all of his/her friends move to Diaspora. But they won't, for the same reason. It's just not going to happen unless there is some fundamental change.

The reason Facebook gained users so fast was because they generated incredible amount of buzz by making it exclusive and lauching it at Harvard. If I were diaspora, I would follow the exact same launch plan. However, from what they're saying it sounds like this won't be the plan.

So when they launch they'll have a bunch of hacker types come signup and check it out, and they'll possibly even invite their friends. And a few friends may even join. But those friends (normals) will go back to Facebook simply because there's more stuff to look at and more people to talk with. And that will be the end.
Because you think, through no longer valid experience or through misunderstanding, that you're only communicating with your friends.

Email is a good example. You carry on a conversation about rectal surgery with email correspondents (maybe your doctor). You may have a vague idea that system administrators or men in the middle may be able to read those emails, but you have the conversation anyway because you assume (with some justification) those are unlikely circumstances. You have just posted about your rectal surgery on the internet (over which email travels).

If you were to find your emails publicly searchable you'd be rightly upset.

I originally thought my posts on facebook were only visible (using the English definition of visible, not facebook's co-opted definition) to my specific friends. Many people probably still think so, and it's not an unreasonable leap.
I can't honestly accept the terms of submission, but this picture definitely belongs on http://devteamorindieband.tumblr.com/
"I thought the core of feminism was that men and women are treated differently and thus we should try to treat them the same?"

That might have been what feminism was about in the 70s, but not today. Modern feminism is about building shelters for female victims of violence, getting more resources for women in schools, creating special medical centers for women, etc. Which sounds great in theory, until you realize that men are vastly more likely to be victims of violence, vastly more likely to fail out of school, vastly more likely to suffer from terrible physical and mental illnesses, etc. Modern feminism is basically propaganda to trick society into thinking that women have it worse off than men so that they can redirect society's resources into programs that only benefit women, despite the fact that the median women does better than the median man on virtually very measure.
Dynamic Linking: ELF vs. Mach-O
I've never been myself, but a lot of the organizations involved in the panels are pretty credible (SVASE, Garage Technology). A trusted co-worker of mine has worked with them with good results and recommended that our clients apply too.
It's hard for me to see what the problem is there - it's like me putting a bumper sticker on my car then being worried that everybody might see it, right? Do many people really 'Like' fan pages that they don't want other people to know they like? If so, what's the point? If I like something that I don't really want people to know I like, I just don't 'Like' it on Facebook.

It's obviously very inappropriate to change the privacy settings in ways that deceive people or change privacy settings without users knowing (clearly, and well in advance) that they're going to be changed. But it's hard for me to foresee a coming Facebook diaspora over privacy when I don't think most people think of Facebook as being private... the incredibly vast majority of people that I know don't see privacy as a hierarchical set of access control lists that they're going to tweak to their contentedness: I think they see a particular site as either private (say, gmail) or public (Facebook) and treat their interactions on the site along that binary divide.
HTML5 must not become the future of the web
Saw your other HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341236. Here's an idea - make an app for people concerned about privacy - both, their own, as well as that of their friends and family.

What if you sent a message through your app to each person who is revealing personal details about themselves, a) letting them know what's out there b) showing them how to fix it/offering an alternative. In case you are not able to do so directly, you may be able to reach these folks through the people who've installed your app. You could also have a public-facing presence that shows how many possibly privacy fiascos you've helped people notice/squash.

edit/ps: I'd be interested in collaborating, if you're interested in making a public-service app like that.
> "Alright, jerks. iPhone 4G, $199 on both AT&T and Verizon"

Better: "Alright, jerks. iPhone 4G, $299, available unlocked only"
http://pastebin.com/ceWGKZjJ , now you just need to firebug a Facebook page so you can figure out what those element IDs do...

At a quick glance, I'd say ErrantX is correct.
Introducing the JW Player for HTML5
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1335146

Several comments already there.
Well, as wmf said, sandboxing is key. All NativeClient apps are compiled specially and scanned before they are run to ensure that apps can't use just any system call - they must interact only through NaCl's posix like library and the plugin api.

Their homepage has a paper and video describing this in detail: http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/

[edit] Just realized I didn't respond to the meat of your post. Theoretically, there is no reason why any warning would be necessary for running a NaCl plugin because the sandboxing would be secure.
Giving a voice to more languages on Google Translate
What's funny is if you use this article's twisted logic than the Microsoft's old Tablet PC would bury them both. I'll run down the list.

1. Microsoft Office is more well known than Google's apps or iWork

2. Windows can run Amazon's Kindle App

3. A full-on Windows computer is "more like a tablet computer" than an Android tablet would be

4. Tablet PCs are still offered by Dell, HP, etc.

5. Microsoft's more business oriented than either Google or Apple.
“So many people think it needs to exist,” Mr. Salzberg said. “We’re making it because we want to use it.”

Selfish motives provide the greatest motivation. At least, they are working on it for the right reasons.
The fact that he didn't like to be tricked into reading a book? :-P
Given their January study in profile pictures [1] I'm surprised they require people to pick a picture manually in hot-or-not fashion.

A better idea would be to implement this feature as an A/B test Automatically rotate through the pictures and see which picture gets the most responses.

They have the data to do this and it would avoid any idea origination conflicts (with FriendlyRank anyway).

[1] http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big-myths...
If you were to add a "rsync to" context item to a folders ctrl-click, you'd officially be my hero.
One of them must be wrong then.
These anecdotes remind me of the videos & articles of young children, teens, and grandparents (and pets) using the iPad. They are definitely interesting examples of possible early majority[1] members adopting this technology - though perhaps it's more telling to look at the buyers of the technology (who are probably early adopters) than the recipients of it.

My own experience in a suburban area of Southern California is that I have yet to see someone using an iPad. That doesn't mean it's a failure anymore than seeing it in a cafe mean it's a success, of course.

I think more time has to pass, and more data needs to be collected, before anyone can declare the iPad a true success or failure with the mass market.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_lifecycle
NaCl hosts hacking contests asking people to break their sandbox: http://code.google.com/contests/nativeclient-security/

ActiveX asked users "are you sure you want to run this native code?".
A bumper sticker on your car can only be seen by people who actually see your car (small subset of the world). A public post on facebook can be found by anyone who wants to search for it (potentially large subset of the world). I have no way of knowing if you have some crazy bumper sticker on your car, but if you posted something on FB then I can find it via search.
It seems a little funny to claim that C is in decline because of Android, since the Linux kernel most definitely is C.

But I was very disappointed when I checked out the Android SDK the other day and noted that it required me to use Java.
I left a comment on your other post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341519), but here's a proposal - why not make a privacy app for those who care about, that can monitor their as well as their friends' feeds and help them squash unintentionally public posts about personal details? I'd be willing to collaborate if you're interested.
Hubble Discovery: Massive Star Booted from its Home
Honestly, I think I would be fine with a unencrypted central repository that just isn't evil. Something with a very clear policy on what data is stored and what is done with.

I assure you the mechanics of how the data is stored is not of interest to 99% of people. Nobody really understands encryption anyway. Or is this site exclusively for geeks?
Miley Cyrus Lap Dance Video | Pinay Ads
That's pretty vague. How does it apply to this situation?

The code is open; part of the NaCL API is designed around Posix/Linux; the Plugin API is the familiar NPAPI and its extensions.

Which part is proprietary or controlled by Google?

To my mind, some more relevant questions are: Does this tie the web to x86 (and ARM)? Can it be adapted securely to x86-64? Can it be made secure? Can multiple implementations be made secure?
AFAIK, there is no "ActiveX sandboxing" per se. It is the same as the sandboxing techniques that are available to all Windows executables. But, also Internet Explorer runs in "Protected Mode" by default, so many of these sandboxing techniques get applied--by default--to plugins. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250462(VS.85).aspx.
Hate to be the downer, but the problem with this is that people don't really care about privacy. The NYTimes and every other mainstream news publication has been running this exact same story for five years: "New edgy upstart ______ is aiming to be the antidote to FB/Twitter oversharing by introducing innovative privacy controls..."

Most, if not all, of those services have seen a brief flurry of activity before eventually withering and dying. People don't truly care about privacy -- they like the idea of their privacy being important, in theory. No combination of new features, openness, or distributed systems is going to be able to overcome the fact that people largely only care about two things when it comes to social networking: being on the network that the most of their friends are on, and having their stuff seen by the most amount of people possible.

If you ask, people will tell you until they're breathless that privacy is important to them -- but almost no one will ever touch the robust privacy controls they asked for.