skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Fine Job, both technically and graphically. Smooth on Chrome. The only aesthetic change I'd make is that the up/down buttons could jump, or scroll faster - at first I was unsure what they were doing different from my window scroll bar.

I did find one bug...On slide 14 (well actually all of them, but it's most noticeable there) you can indeed highlight and copy the text...but not the last character in a block. If you try to select the last character you'll invert the selection to be from the start of the slide to your highlight point (sometimes this includes the page frame so it looks like you've selected the whole page). I suspect (based on my own bad habits) that it's a boundary error, counting the length of the highlight from 1 when the string length is counted from 0.

Rendering more complex documents isn't as perfect as pdf, eg column-spacing or margins can look a little bit off, but that's a minor cosmetic flaw that I'm sure will be fixed.
keyboard support?
Wknd Project: Migrate from Direct Partitions to LVM Volumes
Is the benefit of open sourcing this that people might get a feel for how their api works? Or maybe it's just a "why not" kind of thing?
If you're planning on doing any sort of Facebook integration with that, I think Facebook has revoked API access from people using Face-names in the past. Just something to look out for.
accidentally downvoted
From Angels to Search of Mobile Design
One or more large investors believed that the correct price for Accenture was about $40. When they saw it available at prices between $0.01 and $39, they bought and bid it up.
The article is not about trying to "create make-work by using more people than a job requires". It's about cutting costs by not hiring all the people a job requires as full-time employees. Full-time employees are entitled to better treatment and benefits than temps and contractors. Also, offshore full-time employees cost a fraction of US employees. That's what the article is about.

Personally, I think the article is refreshing because of its no-nonsense and no-bullshit approach. I've been in too many corporations that keep telling us employees how much they love us while creating an increasingly hostile environment at the same time.
As far as I understand it in the US each state has different sales taxes so the norm is to quote without tax. For the UK at least it's all the same VAT (17.5%) so the norm (for consumers at least) is to quote with taxes.
Agreed. Storage, even big NAS, just does not do it for me anymore.
True - with VAT at 17.5%, £700 is roughly £600 + tax
We you can't fight them join them. I guess the best option is to own a company instead of working for one. I'm pretty much preaching to the choir here but it's worth mentioning
Are you using Windows 7 with discreet?

No I'm running 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04. I do have integrated graphics though. I agree that Flash wouldn't likely be any better.
Why Facebook's "Foursquare Killer" Won't Kill Foursquare
I'm definitely not in favor of creating needless jobs, and companies that can be creative and do more with less in a sustainable fashion (without creating a poor quality of life for those doing it) should be rewarded. That being said, overworking people and pushing them aside when they fall out of fashion is short sighted and will create long term problems for society as a whole.
Or the back button. But it's still damn cool.
Make work is useless, that's for sure, but a part of the arguments of the luddites stands, as it was against the upheaval of social structures, not technological structures. Unfortunately, these two are closely tied, and technological progress will lead to social upheaval, mainly what we call today structural unemployment.

Sure, you automate the factory, so you fire the workers, but they're not machines or work animals that can just be put out of their misery. The capitalist approach is that their working wage is large enough for them to save money to tide them over. Well, look how well that works in practice. What's the average household debt in the US ?
Indeed; I've been reading this same spiel as long as I can remember reading the business press and the like, back to sometime in the '70s.
Believe it or not, it supports IE6, 7 and8 out of the box. Was not easy either.
The biggest risk to the stock market is the illusion of liquidity
It might be a duplicate, but I didn't see it last year and I'm happy you posted it - I laughed, I cried; it became a part of me.
will create long term problems for society as a whole.

Even worse, it creates an externality, a debt that society will pay for the corporation.
How will this change affect API users or those who have embedded Scribd content on their sites?
Help a brutha out? :)

Depressing that I couldn't even get an upvote. I thought for sure that I could get an answer on HN. I suck.
Surprisingly, this seems to be an indication that MS could easily make a good Win7 tablet. They only need to get a good finger-friendly email client, web browser, and IM client.

The argument thta people make is that once you go into some apps then the mouse/keyboard nature is exposed, but it appears that most people never dive into those apps. And in those cases, if the Windows tablet had an easy way to use a keyboard (convertible & detachable) then it would have the best of both worlds.

The only thing Windows doesn't have today is the app ecosystem, and I suspect we'll see that with Windows Phone 7 (and since all the apps are managed, the port will be easy, if not binary compatible).
Embedly (YC W10): A Call for Publishers
9 steps to get out of debt &#8211; Part 5
If there were no buys to prop up the free falling, why did the markets rebound almost instantly?
Michael Seibel: The Problem With Live Web Video And How To Set It Free
We're not.
Book Review: Rework
Silverlight (which is used for the videos) constantely allocated more and more memory (more than 500MB) and used about 30-50% CPU while the video was even not played (but paused) and in background.
This topic on StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...

The Smalltalk library linked from that page: http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html

O'Reilly open books: http://oreilly.com/openbook/

Some FP books (Ocaml, Scala, Haskell,...): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1088594

Scheme:

"An introduction to Scheme and its implementation." ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/garbage/cs345/schintro-v14/schintro_toc.html

"The Scheme Programming Language, 4th edition." (Dyvbig) http://www.scheme.com/tspl4/

"Concrete Abstractions." http://gustavus.edu/+max/concrete-abstractions.html

Lisp:

"Common Lisp the language, 2nd edition." http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/cltl2.html

"Successful Lisp." http://www.psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/

"Common Lisp: an interactive approach". http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~shapiro/Commonlisp/

Ocaml:

http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis500/cis500-f02/resources/ocaml... (draft)

Scala

"The Lift Book." http://groups.google.com/group/the-lift-book/?pli=1

Linux:

http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20090405061458383/20oftheB...
and
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20100402190204972/12Moreof...

Programming Languages

"Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation". http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Books/ProgLangs/200...

Other

"Communicating sequential processes." (Hoare) http://www.usingcsp.com/

"Foundations of Computer Science". (Aho and Ullman) http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html
How much we will be tweeting by January 2011 (chart)
Try switching the 'view mode' in the bottom bar (just to the left of the search field) to 'Slideshow'. Arrow keys should work once you do that.
There is actual social effect. Calling out "Luddites!!!" every time an attempt is made to discuss and address the risks and balances to economic and technology progress may be masking self-denial about responsibility and consequences?
Apple and Controlling the Platform
I think if you could do a left-right layout or ajax one at a time for the document pages, then it would feel more like reading a book and increase the likelihood that users will notice the bottom tool bar and use it for navigation instead of the side scroll.
The small print says it was updated September 2010.

(I know, it's April 9th. That date format/ordering just gets my goat.)
Agreed, this feels vaguely like writing Java or C# in Python. If you're coming from one of those languages it's more useful to learn how Python (or Ruby or JavaScript for that matter) solves these problems rather applying those patterns to Python.
I have to say that I found that stat (and the 1 out of 8 married couples met via social media), most surprising. And if true (about social media overtaking pornography), I imagine we'll see lots of porn-based social media activity going forward.
The spam apps are written in Objective C, C, C++, or Javascript, I hope.
"Implementing PageRank, for example, takes only about 15 lines of code."

Interesting. I wonder what it looks like.
What it means to be a hacker (2008)
I'm really glad the article includes a warning against trying not to overuse design patterns. I sometimes wonder if teaching design patterns causes people to rely on pattern matching as a crutch, and hampers the development of creative thinking skills required to solve new engineering problems.
Mobile has been the next big thing for years now. And maybe there's actually some real activity in mobile now for that to happen...
Wasn't there a Mythbusters episode about this and it was busted?

Something about how ninjas in movies walk across water.

They tried to make their feet pontoons but it was hopeless.

Ah, here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=5GWhOLorDtw
I know this is obvious, but it seems like if Apple doesn't want crappy apps that don't take full advantage of all of the iPhone OS apis in the App Store there are a couple of simple steps they could take before resorting to something like the 3.3.1 change.
We need a word for this technique where you get a customer to up their purchase by selling them on additional things.
I like programming and solving problems, but I also like working at the big picture and being aware of the financial aspect. I'd be a great VC, although I'm also a pretty strong programmer. It'd be nice to straddle both worlds and learn from the best on each side.
Indeed. The infographic about which news source's audiences are better informed is a pretty good example of "how to distort with infographics":

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/15-07/s...

Three big problems:

1. On the left, did they really only ask three questions in an attempt to find out who was better informed? If not, what happened to the other questions that (perhaps) didn't support their point? If so, why did they only ask three questions when they could have asked more? Also, the wording isn't specified; what does it mean to be able to "identify Scooter Libby"?

2. The area of those bubbles is not proportional to the number inside. I'm pretty sure they've made the radius proportional to the number, so the area (and psychological bigness) is proportional to the square of the number, thus exaggerating relatively small differences.

3. On the right hand side, the questions are arranged so as to decrease the visual significance of the four questions where knowledge increased from 1989 to 2007 and increase the visual significance of the four questions where it has decreased. Then, despite the fact that knowledge has gone up in four cases and down in four, they stick the big headline "Americans know less about politics than they did in 1989" at the top and you have to look very carefully at the data to realise that it's pretty much a wash.

Anyway, while infographics can be useful, you want to be very careful in reading them. Ask yourself: "Why would someone go to so much trouble to present this information visually if they weren't trying to distort it in some way?"
The Audio Spotlight was introduced around the same time as HSS (~2000-2001 IIRC). The LRAD was introduced earlier, but that uses a different tech (it's just a large two-dimensional array).
Google is know for many things good, design not being one of them. Sure, minimalism was their thing and it was good, but once they went in for design it showed that they have no clue. Usability yes/maybe, but aesthetics definitely no.
Nobody else in the world has anything even close too as many visitors as google, so it's really hard to apply normal logic to this testing they are doing. My feeling is that every single tiny and seemingly insignificant change will have an impact on their bottom line. If it affects 0.1% of their users, that's still a whole ton of people. I see nothing wrong with this multivariate a/b testing.
I've read this several times now, but I still laugh when I get to this sentence:

"Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them."
Okay, from the website hits there seems to be alot of interest. I'm going to draft up a little website and organize a little tournament. Will post when the site is up.
There's a McDonald's near where I work that charges for some condiments (barbecue sauce, for instance) if you didn't order specific food items. If you ask for the condiment at the time of order, they almost always charge you. If you ask at the time of pickup and you paid with a card, they rarely do. If you ask at the time of pickup and you paid with cash, it's about 50/50. I think they're more likely to ask when you pay with cash because it's less hassle for them compared to charging the card a second time.
Does the project have a homepage of its own? Why not post that, and put a link on that page to the kickstarter page?
3D Television: The Fertile Technology That is Impregnating the Nation
If you can make your employees more productive, I would think you would want more of them, to capture more of the market. That is, if employee output increases, but the cost per employee are constant, you are better off hiring more employees until the marginal output of the next employee reaches the cost of that employee.

But what do I know, I am just an engineer ;).
Super size me
You have seen http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1327788, so what you're saying is that you very little formal privacy when it comes to the government, which can lock you up or kill you, whereas the laws you like protect you against private companies which have neither power.

Unless of course they and the state are conspiring, which is not uncommon ... and which can allow for the companies who get into a "good" relationship with the government to use that stuff the latter is collecting.

I'll emphasize what I said in my other reply to you, the US is a very different place. Of that list of horrors, the only ones we have in the US are:

- tapping requirement for internet traffic

- the secret service gets access to all immigration data

- a DNA database of 'offenders'

This may be coming, with no opt out:

- an electronic medical datbase (with a very convoluted opt-out procedure)

This is true but it doesn't matter to most people since the US is so very big:

- an RFID chip in the passports

This is a debatable point:

- camera usage without any oversight rising enormously
Botnets exploit Linux owners' ignorance
I don't know--Alonzo Church might have a claim, but a digital computer made by anyone else is obviously derivative and covered by a well-written patent claim.
By the way, I like how they used a semi-geeky woman to present this (well at least in 'toon form).

Are there actually female coders at Scribd by any chance or was this just a marketing concept?
One thing they left out is that Elon has a cameo in the new Iron Man movie. :)
Odds are high that those hybrids are now evolutionarily irrelevant.
Perhaps it's time to gather up all the old drives lying around and do something with them...
Nintendo boss calls Apple 'the enemy of the future'
More like the enemy right now. No wonder you guys are getting your ass handed to you in the handheld gaming market.
Voyager 2 probe stops making sense
Oh, not specifically and officially; I don't know what actual contractual or legal rules surround this, and it could well be that trading is contingent on a contract that allows them to do whatever they want. By "rules", I mean the usual rules that people believe are in force, like "Once I buy or sell, it stays bought or sold". In exceptional situations (like this one, or 9/11), it always seems to turn out that honoring obligations was optional all along, doesn't it?
I wonder if this can be considered an NP-complete oracle.
Why decision by committee often fails
Apple is lazy.
The Smoking Jacket
Does NASDAQ rescinding trades help or hurt confidence in market?
I realize this is out of the normal HN realm, but I'd like to poll folks as to their opinion of the NASDAQ rescinding some of the trades from yesterday. Is this going to help or hurt public confidence in the stock market, or have no affect?
Have We Lost the Desktop Security Battle?
IPhone market share grows to 16% at expense of BlackBerry
Shining a light in your eyes (the basis of many a type of screen) isn't, though. It can muck with your circadian rhythm (that is the basis of bright light therapy). There are some timer programs that automate turning down screen brightness in the evening..
Nook vs. Kindle?  Amazon vs. BN?
So I have finally decided to make the plunge into an ebook reader. I'm debating with this whole nook vs. kindle decision. Realistically, I prefer open devices, so the Nook will be the way to go. But, I have no experience with Barnes and Nobles' [online] bookstore. Here's a few things that I'm wondering:
- How do the prices b/w the two stores compare in general?
- I love highlighting and taking notes in books I read, can I easily export the info from the Nook? I saw some ways to do it in the Kindle, but I don't care for the Amazon here's-what-the-rest-of-the-population-highlighted-too idea. Too big brother for me...nor do I care what the rest of the world thinks.
- Per Google's recent announcement, will I be able to download/buy their ebooks as well on both of the devices?
Keep in mind that I will primarily use this for reading books. Unlikely to deal with games, surfing the web or pdf uploads.

Thanks for the help!
Hi!

Actually in an upcoming release of Chef, you'll be able to do exactly that - manage Rackspace cloud nodes with the knife command-line tool. What that means is, you can launch new RS Cloud servers with knife, passing in the validation certificate and a run_list of recipes.

For EC2, Opscode provides a reference AMI with Chef pre-installed on Ubuntu 9.10 with a special configuration file that can parse EC2 metadata through Ohai to automatically validate and run a set of recipes. See:

http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Amazon+EC2+AMIs+and+Che...

One of Chef's benefits for managing a dynamic environments is the Search Index feature, which can be used to search for other nodes that have particular roles or attributes set. That is part of what the application cookbook does to dynamically deploy and connect with other systems running services like memcached or mysql.

As for the learning curve and getting up to speed, that varies by person.

Sincerely,
Joshua Timberman - Opscode, Inc.
Nice work. It doesn't suffer from the problems of many of the other infographics, since it's not claiming to be some kind of unbiased presentation of data; rather it's an unashamed advertisement for the idea that you should quit smoking.
You know I wonder why the "super size me" technique isn't seen more with other products. Is it the bad PR/association with fast food or does that model not work for other business types?
The discussion about ordering a sandwich reminded me of the exchange in Five Easy Pieces (1972) between Jack Nicholson and the waitress who would not allow him to deviate from the choices on the menu.

He basically wanted a side of wheat toast but this did not come with the menu item he wanted.

Jack: "What do you mean you don't make side orders of toast? You make sandwiches, don't you?"

Waitress: "Would you like to talk to the manager?"

Jack: "You've got bread and a toaster of some kind?"

Waitress: "I don't make the rules."

Jack: "OK, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. I'd like an omelette, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee."

Waitress: "A number two, chicken sal san, hold the butter, the lettuce and the mayonnaise. And a cup of coffee. Anything else?"

Jack: "Yeah. Now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules."

Waitress: "You want me to hold the chicken, huh?"

Jack: "I want you to hold it between your knees."

The whole exchange is found here: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Five_Easy_Pieces.
A module is a singleton. No matter how many times you import foo, the namespace foo is always the same. If you reassign foo.bar in in code in module x, then later access foo.bar from module y, it will be the value assigned in X.

This is not amenable to inheritance tho, however there is a strong argument against inheritance in singletons anyway. Further, the borg pattern is considered "more pythonic" in the case of inheritable singletons, as frequently what is desired in such cases is shared state vs instead of shared identity.
Actually, a much worse con, if you want to have this discussion, is that millions of private-sector corporate employees are getting paid peanuts for their work, compensated largely with a promise of future prosperity/advancement that will never come through. A much worse con is that the economic growth since 1975 has been siphoned off almost entirely by the increasingly entrenched upper classes, with consumer debt, a housing bubble, and student-loan debt bondage replacing wage increases to fuel the growth. A much worse con is an economy now plagued by individual insolvency and a widespread lack of trust, resulting from these catastrophic social changes.

Do you really think that it's of benefit to society for some people to show up to work every day and take home Wal-Mart wages, instead of having real alternatives?

A large share of this government waste goes to military contractors employed in completely unnecessary wars such as the multi-trillion-dollar mess in Iraq.

Also, please cite your "on average double" statistic. If my memory serves me, the discrepancy is about 30% on average, mainly because private-sector pay is far more recession-sensitive. (The discrepancy would shrink, if not reverse, in a growing economy with a healthy private sector.) For the record, low-level government employees do make more while upper-level people make considerably less than they do in the private sector.
Computing P-values
The norm in Europe is quoting and posting prices with VAT included.
Only if you assume that there are a fixed number of jobs available. And even if you do believe that, why is 40 hrs the optimal number? Just think, rather than 100 people accomplishing 5000 hours of work per week, we could hire 5000 people and then they only have to work 1 hour per week! Everybody wins!

On the other hand, perhaps everyone is better off if those 20 people go out and start companies that create jobs?
Essentially, this is a problem with any "recommendation" system that is based on tagging. There have got to be better ways.
Katterman’s pharmacy in Seattle takes advantage of latest technology
I wouldn't upvote, but wouldn't flag it either, and I think it'll reach the frontpage.

Now, if you put some videos of the construction, some diagrams, some thoughts about the piece, I mean, information about the creative process and its labor, now that's something worthwhile of upvoting.
"This suggests that one reason there is so much spam from Linux could be that many companies that have implemented their own mail servers, and are using open-source software to keep costs down, have not realised that leaving port 25 open to the internet also leaves them open to abuse."

So I closed my port 25. This fixed other problems as well. Since then all my customers stopped complaining via email.