skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Foxit has had some pretty blatant security vulnerabilities -- straight up unprompted local code execution: http://blog.didierstevens.com/2010/03/29/escape-from-pdf/

It does a mediocre job of rendering, and isn't faster than Acrobat if you strip out all of Adobe's lame plugins (we put plugins in your plugins so you can extend while you embrace!)
Maybe by bouncing radio waves, similar to this?

http://books.google.com/books?id=91B7QvCX_iAC&lpg=PP1...

It's not the same thing by any means, but I'd imagine you could bounce the cell signal off something, and capture the echo, or "listen" to its interference of surrounding background noise.

(for non-clickers: Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things: calculator + radio = metal detector)
Lots of little reasons probably. Didn't Opera have those built-in toolbar banner advertisements for a long time? That probably didn't help. I agree the naming has always been a problem. Not that Firefox, Chrome or Safari are more descriptive names but they at least do not associate themselves with an art form that is generally considered to be lame or elitist. (not sure I agree but that's the perception in the US at least) Then again, to this day, a lot of people seem to think it's actually pronounced Oprah which is probably equally confusing but less negative to most people.
The cool thing about this is -- browsing quickly through the source -- it looks like it's real easy to make your own Heroku plugins. Their addon system seems to be going gangbusters, and this is the icing on the cake ;)
"what about facebook ads getting added to the stream?"

Does the fact that those do not exist have any bearing on the conversation? I'd find ads mixed into my search results pretty darned troublesome; Google is not stupid enough to do that, though.
Tribble is an uber geek, marvel at his output:

http://david.tribble.com/letters.html

A classic USENETer, and an stickler for minute truths.
Complex VM? New UI metaphors? ...W3C? Sure, that spec oughta be ready in 20 years or so....

It's a vendor job, not a committee spec. They can take the arrows in the back, keep what works, toss what doesn't. I personally think that modern JS+JIT implementations are nearly fast enough: it's become the DOM and its legacy behavior that's becoming the problem now.
Fun excuse, but section 3.3.1 forbids even intermediary translation or compatibility layers under your control. So that's a line of bullshit.
> I wouldn't want to buy a book by JK Rowlings if it was actually written by Umberto Eco

What. How could you have the capability to conceive of that, yet not want eagerly to read it?
I know where you're coming from - trying to update a common lisp port years ago got me into porting stuff. I'm happiest with OpenBSD, and I've done a fair bit of porting. (Not everything made it into the tree, though.) These days I'm a bit wary of depending too much on anything I can't bootstrap.
* Cool. This is a hard problem.

* Custom hardware sounds expensive.

* This does not solve CAP issues.

* There is a physical limit to ACID scalability because of synchronization latency and network throughput maximums. KV stores don't have this issue.

* Will developers still have to implement KV caching layers for database data? I suppose the real question is: does the system accelerate "hot" data where normal RDBMS sharding schemes would otherwise not?

* Does the linear scalability also apply to OLAP-type activity where queries are ran against large datasets?

* What are they doing that Oracle RAC isn't?
Apple Steps Up Pace of Deals in Race for Startups (Update3)
Supreme Court: Family can't sue federal doctors over immigrant's cancer death
This is the conversational equivalent of "your feelings on the matter are irrelevant; suck it up, because I don't think it's so bad". Your opinion is duly noted.

For what it's worth, I haven't flown in over a year and a half, and have no intention of doing so until airport security returns to some semblance of sanity. I'm not being a "drama queen" about it; I simply won't pay an exorbitant rate for the privilege of being treated as a criminal because I'd like to board an airplane.
Good list,

I would also add the following:

a good sudoku game like opensudoku.

connectbot for when you need to fix stuff on your server on the go (I did an app review on this app ... it's a must have).

I think slacker is better then pandora (better variety imho)

Bonus: For those who still go into video stores... use google goggles. If you take a pic of the dvd case, goggles usually is smart enough to take you to the IMDB page for that movie. - Instant movie review w/ no typing
I absolutely love reability. Not only does it remove distracting ads and styling but it allows me to decrease the number of words per line which is great for improving my speed reading.
I'm screwed.
OK, I don't see how any of that is relevant to your claim that iPhoto and iMovie are for passive consumption of entertainment (if that's indeed what you're saying, as you couldn't be bothered to actually tell us.)
This is where I see a pretty huge opportunity for facebook. Tie credit card to identity and offer a simple yet robust payment system.
Alt Med Supplement Guru Nearly Killed By Own Product
Ha, looks like Bryan owes you a beer for this ringing endorsement. :)

There are a number of reasons why it can be that complicated - doesn't always have to be, but I think you are the exception rather than the rule.

First, most people just don't have a basic understanding of how it all works. The idea that a merchant account isn't a bank account at all is non-obvious to everyone I've walked through payments hell with. Recurring billing, in particular, is a huge pain in the ass, especially with upgrades and downgrades that users do as they try to optimize their freemium subscriptions. (There wouldn't be at least four companies doing just this if it wasn't a total PITA.) If you're not built in Ruby, and you can't use ActiveMerchant, you really have to evaluate the documentation for each of the various gateways - and good luck finding out the names of all of them - before you can even begin. AmEx, in particular, is a whole 'nother circle of hell, although OnePoint solves a lot of these issues (but, of course, for a price).

Honest to God, I'm going to try to learn Ruby this summer purely because ActiveMerchant exists. My existing startup is coded in PHP with a dash of Perl and Python, but online billing is so complex and so tedious that I'm learning a language that's not useful to my existing startup because payments are so hellacious.
# words required + patience required = C * # of HN users, where C > 1... <sigh>...
I meant my library of archived items, not my home screen. (but thanks for the thought!)
http://img.skitch.com/20091104-qx7f3diea647pm9bfyxri1fuhg.pn... might give some context to the desks here at ENTP.
In what sense is less traffic on lame social network games "unfortunate"? Seems like a net positive for humanity to me. :-)
Clustrix plans to sell its appliance (which consists of more than a terabyte of memory and its proprietary software)

If you give people a few TB of memory, of course database reads are going to be fast.
The "OLTP landscape chart" raises red flags. Matching functionality of Oracle in 4 years and $18m is an extraordinary claim.

So this raises the question as to what exactly can it do? The white-paper covers straight select, insert, sort and a an inner join which is pretty good already, but it doesn't go beyond that.
Embeddable Tweets
China wholesale Electronics,Cell Phones,Computers,Clothing & Apparel
I like it alot, but do I trust it? Like to see real faces and names of the founders, and a blog..
I think they meant TBs of storage...?
Is that really so much of an issue?

I'd rather keep using Facebook knowing that they index 5-10 pages I clicked 'like' on than just stop using it.
Google also advertises Chrome in the Real World - e.g. several London tube stations are plastered with Chrome ads. I've not seen anything that high profile for Opera.
Yeah, I know, but I reeeeeeeeally want to see their graphs!
This does not solve CAP issues.

Their advertised setup is a small number of nodes interconnected with infiniband. Partitioning problem doesn't apply here.
They need to work on the rhythm.
Twelve years ago, Microsoft found itself in a courtroom opposite the US Department of Justice for including native internet browsing support. The conclusion of that case was that Microsoft is not allowed to add "products" to their operating system. I think a PDF reader constitutes a product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
is there some new innovative way around this problem specifically for SaaS/ web apps that charge businesses? (Ecommerce, consumer purchases, and virtual currencies are different beasts).

- Could we put together some type of invoicing system/coalition that lets users sign-up then pay by check? ie- you signup for a paid web service such as 37 signals/freshbooks/etc. Agree to pay by check. If payment isn't received within 15 days, the account is suspended. As a user, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't screw around with paying you since my data is important and continued access to the service. Businesses write checks all the time, especially for software purchases and services. This would pretty much eliminate the need for processing fees and all this crud. I don't know enough about ACH-debiting, but I believe there is no charge to do this. ie- you can do recurring payments on the bank account after one check is sent in.

Once again, this is only a suggestion for SaaS/business related apps.
U.S. Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds
OK guys, since it's a bitch, let's bitch about it, which will no doubt have the effect of attracting some bitchin' bitches.
I'm on a Mac and I also rolled my own solution. I hard-coded my most frequently used applications to function keys. It's a great alternative to having multiple monitors (because I'm a nomad freelance developer and do not have a desk).

Here are the scripts: http://techiferous.com/2009/12/streamlining-your-workflow-wi...
Applying lean development principles to workouts
Shameless self-plug: Phonalyzr is my little baby :)

Also, I just tried Swype and its actually quite incredible. I think you can easily type twice as fast with it. Since the beta is closed, you can get the apk from my site:
http://phonalyzr.com/com.swype.android.inputmethod.apk
hundreds of nodes

Whitepaper seems to imply all nodes are connected to all other nodes, using infiniband. Infiniband's point-to-point afaik, so it'd be interesting to know how they plan to do that with hundreds of nodes.
The worst part isn't the x86 processor, but the ancient standard x86 hardware platform that can never be changed because then Windows XP won't boot.

The Atom might only use 2.5W, but the chipset to go with it uses 9W!
And since then, they've included anti-virus software, a firewall, video players and codecs, and so on. I don't see how a PDF reader would be any different than Windows Media Player.
Partitioning also happens when a node fails. But shouldn't be that much of a problem since they probably use a N=3/W=2 setup.
Pdf technology is a native part of Apple's drawing system Quartz in OS X: http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/osx_quartz .

That might explain its relative ubiquity.
Couldn't getting sick be considered crashing? We obviously have a lot of redundancy (10^12 cells) so we don't "crash" unless a lot of those cells get sick. In E-coli, on the other hand, there are plenty of genes in which a single mutation kills the whole organism. (302 of them according to Japan's National Institute of Genetics: http://www.shigen.nig.ac.jp/ecoli/pec/index.jsp)
I have an iPad, a Kindle 2 and a Kindle DX.

I prefer the Kindle DX by a wide margin when reading books.

The iPad is not unusable for reading, but the kindle with a bright reading light is much nicer. The Kindle is superior outdoors.

I can read without my glasses with the Kindle DX, but I always need glasses for the iPad.

The iPad is much better for everything else.
I can't believe this predates WolframAlpha by like four years. This is a bizarre little idea begging to be re-discovered by a larger audience.
Each CLX 4010 appliance contains:

Two Quad-Core processors (8 CPU cores)
32GB memory
Seven 160GB solid-state drives (SSD)
I remember when people saying nobody needed another browser and Chrome would never get adoption.
The rise of "consumer" as the default word to describe humans in our society is the loudest indicator of everything that's wrong with it. It perfectly denotes the role that the masses are supposed to (and largely do) play: cattle.

A citizen is an actively engaged individual among equals; that's why we don't refer to "citizens" any more. The very term sounds quaint. A consumer, by contrast, pigs out on entertainment, industrial food product, and drugs (not those bad drugs, mind you - the good drugs, the ones we tell you to take).

That this is our concept of what a human being is called to do in this world is depraved. Future generations will look back on us as insane. (I say this as an optimist.)
You make "third party software" sound complicated.

Here, free PDF reader with annotations, blazingly fast: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
Actually it's probably an anti-priority more often than a priority. I would not be particularly interested in making surfing the web a more enjoyable experience for my employees. The one thing that will end IE 6 is when Microsoft stops supporting it with security updates. Until then, I expect it to be a significant player in the browser market.
Quick, find a base case.
I think Opera has historically focused on features that power users find interesting, maybe because most of their user-base is power users. But that has negative implications for mainstream adoption.
Yah, those newbies. They don't get it and can't read pseudo code.

(the yearly summer trend is still far away regardless of how sunny it is in the bay area right now. If there is anything special this year is the relatively early arrival of Easter which may break patterns.)

ah, much better with more words.
In most airports we call the public transportation "Taxis" or "Car Service". Lame, I know. If you're ever flying to NYC our best airport is Newark International. You can get from the airport to Penn Station quickly, cheaply, and relatively easily by train. From there you've got the whole NYC subway system at your disposal.
Are Adaptive Interfaces the Answer?
After casually trying AwesomeWM on my mac for a short while, I decided to try to make XMonad as usable as possible under OSX without writing any HOC code. It's been an incremental process, but at point I'd call my setup _more_ than adequate. One of these day's I'm either going to update the OSX/Xmonad wiki page with my method with all of the scripts and configurations I am using under the hood... In my opinion, much of the magic of integrating X11/Xmonad with aqua involves 'capturing' key combinations (on the Xmonad side), determining how to respond, then either responding directly or emitting the correct keystrokes using xdotool (http://www.semicomplete.com/projects/xdotool/).

For example, I let xmonad capture the keysequence <Command-Tab>. Xmonad keeps track of the MRU-like window list and switches to it. If it is another window in the current workspace, xmonad can switch to it unassisted. If a 'switch' would involve switching to an aqua application, xmonad then uses xdotool to emit the <Command-Option-A> + <Command-Tab> key sequence (popping out of X11).
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Twitter Security Issue
I don't know much about the lingo in the Forex world, but pipsandchips.com is kinda catchy. But it might be an issue if you ever tried expanding the network/app to other niches of, say, day traders.

I'm just gonna share a few that popped into my head, not knowing the lingo or real purpose of the site: getpipped.com igetpips(or pipped).com pippers.com showmeyourpips.com i-pips.com pippr.com pipster.com
This mobile payments startup just raised $15M
http://www.cmoney.com/NewsEvents/tabid/57/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1/C-cMoney-Secures-15-Million-Financing-from-Kodiak-Capital-Group-LLC.aspx
I agree with noticing the URL change, but what's a lot more noticeable is when the look of your site changes. They're used to your site's look and feel. When you direct them to a different site, even if it sort of looks like the original site, it's a big speed bump in the flow. Makes you stop and think (hey, what's going on?!) and question if you're in the right place (did I click the wrong button?!). You may even get suspicious and leave. You'd probably feel the same if at a supermarket when it's time to take out the card and pay, within seconds the building changes, the cashier is no longer there, the door you came through is gone, the lightning is different, the people who surrounded you disappeared; only the colors sort of look the same...
There are dragons down that path too unless you buy-in to the idea that by rationalizing adjectives you're somehow going to synergize the language.
The science:
- dilated pupils make focusing harder.
- Higher contrast makes reading easier.

So: Reading on a kindle with a bright light closes down your pupils and makes it easier for your eyes to focus on the words without using the muscles in your eyes for focusing. This is especially important for readers over 40 who are starting to get farsighted.

An iPad has a glossy screen, which limits the contrast. (comparing signal to noise, well the reflection is all noise)

An e-ink screen has very high brightness and contrast, even (epecially) in bright sunlight.

I'm not saying it's impossible to read with the iPad or iPhone or a computer. Just realize it may take more unconscious effort for some people.

I have both an iPad and a Kindle and love both.
Microsoft has a competing format: XPS
Export to PDF functionality is native in Word 2010 Beta
I have both a Kindle 2 and a Kindle DX. I prefer the DX.

I know it sounds simplistic, but I can make the words bigger or show more of them.
Moving from PayPal Standard to anything is pretty easy since for most people it's a very simple payment service.

The other gateways are more complex since you cannot migrate the credit cards, and if you have recurring profiles managed on the gateway, you will have a harder time moving as you'll have to convince your customers to punch in their credit card again.
Apple Steps Up Pace of Deals in Race for Startups
Wow. I’m not saying anything here, but it's interesting Print to PDF is such a big draw, when OS X's print dialog has included an option to save to PDF (or preview as PDF, or email as PDF, or import to X where X is Evernote, Yojimbo, etc.) for years
Starcraft II launches July 27
There are certain things that I cannot rationalize, this is one of them.
In osx you get print to pdf, reorder pdf's, remove pages from pdf's, add pages to pdf's, etc... for free out of the box. In addition using skim (3rd party) you get an excellent, fast, opensource, notetaking pdf reader.

Not saying that foxit is not good, I use it all the time in windows, but it is not a full featured free pdf utility.
Only hackers and friends of hackers know about or use Foxit. Everyone should have a lightweight PDF reader, which is what makes the case for the OS handling it so strong.
Superficially at least it sounds a lot like what you'd get if you added SSDs to Oracle's Exadata.
WebOS is a real Linux, it uses vanilla kernels (close to stock linux-omap, the hardware platform is basically a beagleboard), standard drivers, and a mainstream userland with glibc, gstreamer, pulseaudio, etc.

Android is none of that. It's a Linux that's been bludgeoned to death by Sidekick developers, and then run through the meat grinder by a bunch of Taiwanese hardware idiots. Everything their code had to touch directly was needlessly reimplemented in boggling ways that are neither useful nor portable.

The fucking iPhone is more recognizably Unix than Android is! You get about as much of the "openness/choice/capability" of the Linux kernel on Android as you do with a TiVO.
Your loyalty should be to yourself, and your sadness comes from within. "Finishing what you start" is not virtuous. Mining what you need and then redirecting your attention is a smarter approach.
Some cottages in St.Simons Island and vacation rentals in St.Simons Island
Welcome also to St. Simons Island…land of magnificent beaches.From the minute you drive onto the Sidney Lanier Bridge and the causeway, you are assailed by beautiful views of the marsh and marina.
Except if you say No, they delete all your profile information. It's either links to Pages or nothing.
To add to there's point:

When I first started getting into subscription based services about 2 years ago, googling "recurring billing rails" brought me ActiveMerchant, a few Payment gateways, and some blog entries about getting a merchant account which is all you need. I was on my merry way.

Try that same query now and it's full of noise. You get rants from various people and you get companies peddling their services. While I agree that new services are helpful and are an essential part of the eco-system it's becoming really intimidating for newcomers because it's so hard to get the bare minimum truths one needs to know.

Sure, there are many payment gateways to choose from (Auth.net, TrustCommerce and Braintree are great with ActiveMerchant, btw). Sure it's a lot to thinking and worry about. We're talking about taking money out of other people's pockets here - there should be at least a little bit of effort right?

If you're intimidated by recurring billing issues - get over it, it's really as easy as there makes it out to be, especially when you're just getting started. There's time to fill in the details (like coupon codes, special offers, prorating, etc) after launch. For now, I'd suggest ActiveMerchant + Gateway + cron job and worry about getting customers instead of worrying about your middlemen.
Google Taps Employees to Crowdsource Its Venture Capital Arm
Don't expect things to change any time soon. The problem is systemic, on a global level. This is not just GS; they only happen to play the market better than most.

Banks have an incentive to take on greater levels of risk in order to attract deposits (which are a highly liquid, short-term source of capital); hence, investors must find a way to out-do the bank returns in order to justify their existence.

People can point to specific flaws within the system (of which there are many), but we live in a global economy with many banks competing for profits. Given that the possibility of eliminating greed is near zero, this really is a catch-22.

Global regulation (see the Basel Accords) would result in significantly diminished economic growth, but is the only viable "solution" (you can begin to see how Marx justified communism).

Result: the global banking system tends not to incentivise long-term investment, which then leads to asset bubbles. While we can not prevent bubbles all together, regulatory regimes can help to make them less frequent.
Clarke's three laws
The enforced restriction (your suggestion is more of a passive aggressive one I know) of browsing is an oft cited reason for discontent among my more corporate, non-startup friends.

It seems to me a both an admission of defeat by management and a statement of distrust of employees when it is done.
...that Apple's levels of control are a natural evolution of platform development.

That makes me a sad panda.
well... just because 85% of Ruby runs, doesn't mean that 85% of your usecases are covered. Unfortunately for me, a variety of rubygems that my apps and libs depend on break with 0.6, even things as lightweight as Addressable.

Still lookin' forward to more macruby though :)
Where is mobile in this? Is mobile safari a safari? Is it in all others? Something seems missing. (sent from my iPod)
Would it reduce the amount of .docs floating around the Word Wild Web?