skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a lot of features that (I suspect) are prohibiting GV from getting a larger footing. This may be one of them, since GV is preaching liberation from being tied to your service provider... but then tying you to them as a service provider. I have a GV number and love the service, but this reason prevents me from giving it out and using the service more.

An even bigger "get with the program" feature is the ability to forward calls internationally. I'm a US-expat, and I'd kill for this feature (read: pay). I personally know many others who spend a lot of time traveling abroad, and pay for other half-baked solutions to this problem. And unlike portability, turning this on costs GV nothing.

The ability to transcribe your pre-recorded calls (which can be done with voicemail already) seems like it would be pretty easy to turn on as well. This would be a magnet feature for anyone who interviews for a living, and would be peanuts to implement.

I'm sure they're focusing on their core service, but it's been a year and I haven't really seen a lot of innovation going on over there.
Ask HN: I quit my job to finish school. Is it OK to get an online degree?
I'm 21 and I just quit my job to finish school. So far I have completed 80 semester hour credits with an online school, but was accepted into a reputable college.

If I accept the offer, I will surely end up with a better education but also with a loan of $10-25K on top of what I have already earned from work. (The school's total cost is of $30K per year.) Depending on how much credits are transferable, I may be required to continue one additional year before graduating with a BS in Computer Science--the school will not tell me how much credits are transferable UNTIL I accept the offer and attend orientation.

However, if I don't accept, thus decide to continue pursuing the online degree, I will save $30K and earn a (cheap?) degree by next summer.

I applied for the FAFSA and a dozen of scholarships, but none helped much. Could you please give me an advice? Should I take on loans to go to a better school? Is it all worth the pain?

Thank you.
Ask HN: How Do VCs/Angels Use Social Media for Investment?
...or do they?

I'm writing a post today on how angels and VCs use social media for business purposes, and although I have thoughts of my own on that, I'd like to get your take on it.

If you're an investor who uses tools such as Facebook/Twitter/what have you, or if your a startup who found funding through similar media, please-please-please let me know about it.
Actually this gives me an idea for a spherical-cow Farmville clone in which all cows are simulated with simple yet physically justifiable parameters...
Checking for a live database connection considered harmful
HTTP and the 5th Beatle
Why do you assume it's for support? I think that doing it on specific dates is intended to make it a statement, a visible drop in statistics.
BT to launch tablet computer to rival iPad
The Remindery.

Wine from a winery, reminders from the remindery.

diction from the dictionary

... which informs me that medieval Europeans did not expect chicken from a chicanery. Drats.
"Also, $350-$400 (may be even $500 for topend) is a sweet spot for smart phones in India. "

Given that the average Indian worker makes less than $6k a year, I'm not sure I'd really describe those figures as a "sweet spot".
In my opinion, you get what you pay for -- payment meaning time, money, and other sacrifices.

Online degrees are ok if you're already established in your field and simply need a piece of paper for upward mobility. If you actually need to learn shit, I don't recommend online universities.
However, are the successful ones narcissistic or just confident?

Narcissism is a flaw of overvaluing yourself to the point where it negatively impacts relationships and performance. I can't see many successful entrepreneurs getting through as narcissists. However, I also think that many confident people are mislabeled by those who lack confidence in themselves and insult those with it.

I forget who said it, but "It isn't arrogance when you back it up but it doesn't mean you can't be a jackass about it."
No. But all the info I've been seeing on privacy issues did prompt me to update my privacy settings so that I share basically nothing.

Facebook is too useful a platform for sharing photos and the like to get rid of it entirely...
No offense, but to test/verify our privacy settings on FB you want us to provide our FB login info to an un-trusted site.

Thanks but no thanks..
Nor did they suggest it was real.
Not to mention the fact that a goal of universal college is impossible, let alone unnecessary:

"Whatever his or her claims of solidarity with the Third World, each American college graduate has had an education costing an amount five times greater than the median life income of half of humanity."

- Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (1970)

http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html
...at jobs that require a four year degree. I think the point of the article is there are plenty of jobs people can do that don't require a four year degree.
A degree makes it easier to be successful at big companies with dumb management -- but why work there?

It's no big deal at better places. If you don't get a degree, you can spend less time learning at least as much relevant stuff.
The browser back button does not work as expected in Vista + FF 3.6
I really think there's too many social networks / news feeds / email accounts / twitter accounts etc. these days... it's information overload.

With that said, I don't know if adding another layer to integrate everything is the best solution. Instead of uncomplicated our lives, it just adds one more thing to manage.

I can see it being used by people with hundreds of contacts, but for the average user, it's probably not necessary, and perhaps overly complicated.
This is my favorite project we have at Engine Yard. I've been rooting for it and fighting to keep it alive for years now because I know that this is the future of ruby. Evan and Brian and all the contributors have done great work on this ambitious project.

I've had ruby aliased to rbx on my own personal laptop and run all of my development on rbx, I only have to bust out MRI every once in a while, like once a month. I write lots of code with event machine, redis, amqp and many other complex parts of ruby ecosystem and for the most part they all just work on rbx.

Huge congrats to rubinius team again, I predict this will be the default ruby for most people inside of a year if not 6 months.

Rubinius is ruby done right IMHO.
How come they came up with hard numbers for facebook market value?
No. I never ever used it for anything I would consider private.
"Steve Jobs himself called Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam to personally request that Gizmodo return the iPhone to Apple"

I imagine not going volcanic on that call was the hardest thing Steve Jobs has ever done.
The major difference seems to be platform. Xobni works with Outlook, eTacts is for Gmail. I suspect the two will have a lot of duplicated functionality.
User Interface Design Studio MONKEYmedia Files Patent Lawsuit Against Apple
The point of the article is you're not likely to obtain a four year degree by going to college, especially not for only 4 years:

"But federal statistics show that just 36 percent of full-time students starting college in 2001 earned a four-year degree within that allotted time. Even with an extra two years to finish, that group's graduation rate increased only to 57 percent."

Technical education has a much more certain payoff. Bookkeeping, welding, plumbing, nursing, all are possible with 2 year degrees and are ways to get a good job and a good career.

A 2 year nursing degree is a relatively fast way to get into a good income and relatively flexible schedule, allowing further study.

And economists are backing up the 'Don't even waste the money, just go straight vocational' approach.
OT: I really like the HTML diagrams on http://rubini.us/. Is there a library that does that or are they hand-built?
Sadly, a 4 year degree has become more and more a requirement for a lot of jobs, regardless of talent and skills. Increasing credentialism of this sort will just lower the value of having a degree and also make it more necessary for every professional to have a 4 year degree (which is expensive even at the cheapest colleges).

None of this is good.
Former Christian Apologizes for Being Such a Huge Shit Head for all Those Years
If it weren't real, they would be denying it like very strongly, almost as if their future depended on it.
Got a link/ref to their response?
This is true. Social ads got banned and mobile payment ads got really restricted. A lot of facebook ad networks not only got hit by that but got put out of business by those changes.

Also, facebook is always tweaking what you can do on ads, business lines are always rising and falling on that platform.
Coworker signed up 6 weeks ago and still hasn't gotten his invite. So things have changed.
For pure ruby code you write yourself with your own classes and while loops and algorithms and whatnot, rubinius can be up to 20 times faster then MRI. But there are still some corner cases where it is slower. So micro benchmarks rubinius kicks ass over almost all the rubies. But macro is still has some spots to polish.

The reason for this is that core things like Hash and String and Array are written in pure ruby. And they are only like 1.5 times slower then the C impls in the other rubies. This means that it is optimized for running ruby code really fast, this means that once the edge cases are gone, rubinius will smoke all the other rubies hands down.
Build Your Own Blocks (an advanced offshoot of Scratch)
I have been working on a project that required clients be implemented in both Obj-C and JavaScript. They are functionally equivalent. The code base of the Javascript version is close to 20 times smaller and was coded about twice as fast. I much prefer Javascript for UI work.
It depends on how you define success. If you mean "landing a job that pays well" then certainly a degree gives you an edge. If you mean "contributing something meaningful to the world" then I'd say the importance of a 4-year degree approaches zero.

There are so many people making incredible contributions to humanity without college degrees, and so many people simply fretting away their lives in cubicles making slightly more money than they would have without a degree.
If you want to make your own business cards with a QR code here is a QR code business card site: www.b2vcard.com
it lets you upload your own art or you can use one of the templates. best of all it creates your QR code from your profile so if something changes you can update your profile for free and your QR code on your old cards scan your new info!
It says under pricing only 10 appointments per month.

Who only has 10 appointments per month. And does a person with only ten appointments per month need a service to remind them of their ten appointments. Better yet does a person with only ten appointments have enough money to spend ten bucks on your service.

I can see charging extra for additional users, but the second user should be a discount not 20 dollars on top of the price for the first user. Your argument would be well they get more appointments.

Your appointment reminders give them unlimited appointments that are very low cost to your company. Then limit the amount expensive features per account like sms messages.
If you don't realize that not showing up for an appointment is extremely discourteous and more importantly costing someone money, then yes you do have something you need to recognize.
I seem to remember Yegge's drift was on the next version of JS, which diverges somewhat from what we have here -- the AS3-like one with optional strict typing, formalised classes, and modules. (Having tried AS3, it seemed like a modernised Java: rather office-world utilitarian.) Of course, that new version didn't quite happen . . . or, I don't know, I haven't looked recently . . .
Well, rocket technology hasn't really advanced all that much since Voyager was launched. We could certainly send a faster probe out by spending more money to build a bigger rocket. On the other hand, they could have done so back then, as well.

On the other hand, Voyager picked up an awful lot of its speed not from its initial launch but from slingshotting around the various planets it visited -- essentially picking up some free energy at the cost of infinitesimally perturbing the planet's orbit. If our goal was to send a probe out of the solar system as quickly as possible, we might be able to do a better slingshot than was done back then.

On a third hand, Voyager 2 benefited from a rather fortuitous arrangement of planets which enabled it to visit all four giant planets and presumably pick up some momentum from each. This kind of configuration only comes around once every few centuries so if we launched it now then it would have to miss some planets. I don't know how much of an effect this would have; did the Uranus/Neptune visits "pay for themselves" momentum-wise? (Edit: I looked it up and apparently not, because Voyager 1 which skipped the last two planets is further out and travelling faster than Voyager 2).

One thing we can do now which we couldn't do back then is build a good ion drive. A probe with an ion drive and a nuclear fuel cell could keep accelerating for many years, so it would probably be able to outpace Voyager eventually.

So in conclusion, if we wanted to build something faster than Voyager I think we probably could. But in answer to your second question, no, I don't think it would be very useful to do so. There's not much that's particularly interesting beyond the solar system. We're still keeping Voyager alive because we might as well, but sending another probe out there with it would be a fairly low priority for missions.
Kubuntu Lucid 64bit
Chrome 5.0.375.38 beta - no action on buttons, except rollover. Same on Konqueror (Webkit-based). Also FF3.6.3. All are using Flash 10.0.45.2 (64 bit).
"Shady email"? How about a post title without the idiotic editorializing?
Are you really calling photoshop and autocad state of the art in user interfaces? While I certainly appreciate the power and features offered by both apps, the actual UI is really nothing to write home about. Sure they get the job done and generally stay out of your way (once you've gotten the hang of them), but there is really nothing cutting edge of even slightly interesting about them.
For them, yes. For Joe Whoops-I-Didn't-Want-My-Mother-To-Know-I-Was-Gay perhaps not.
Those are done by hand.
Hmm, even Digg wasn't too keen on your asshole comments, what made you think Hacker News would tolerate you? For someone who's so concerned with productivity, you sure seem to have a lot of time to waste telling other people what they should do.
I think half of the reason Google uses invite-only beta services so much is to make people want the service more. People desire things more when they are scarce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_value
No. Ask me again once Diaspora or OneSocialWeb or whatever provides a viable alternative.

I tainted my data long ago, and only log on every few months to PM a friend or something, so I'm not too concerned atm.
tl;dr from the affidavit:

[Suspected CA penal code violations by Chen]
496(a) - Buy or receive stolen property (felony)
499c(b)(3) - Without authority make [photographic copy of] a trade secret (felony)
594(b)(1) Maliciously damages property of another valued over $400 (felony)

Gray Powell last saw the phone when he put it in his bag on the floor, which was subsequently knocked over. He left with his uncle at closing time, unaware of his loss. A drunk guy gave the device to Hogan in the belief that it was his. Hogan took it home and realized it was worth money. Next day, he and a roommate found Gray Powell on LinkedIn and Hogan recognized him from the previous evening in the bar. Hogan removed the stickers with serial numbers.

Gizmodo, via Chen, paid Hogan $8500 or $7500, including $5000 in cash, and promised a bonus if Apple launched a phone by July and it was the same device. Chen damaged the phone during his teardown, rendering it inoperable. Gizmodo published their story on 4/19. Hogan's roommate called Apple the same day and informed them of Hogan's possession and plans to sell it. Gizmodo editor Brian Lam refused a telephone request from Steve jobs to return the device, demanding a written confirmation from Apple.

When police attempted to contact Hogan and his other roommate (not the informant), they tried to destroy evidence by throwing away Hogan's computer and SD cards, all of which were later found, along with the phone stickers. Hogan's roommate was arrested on unrelated outstanding warrants.

...

On the facts in the affidavit, it looks bad for Gizmodo/Gawker. Admittedly, I've said that since the outset. Much depends on who authorized payment and how, and what Chen was told by his supervisor(s) about his legal position, if anything.

Edit: corrected an inaccuracy about when the roommate called Apple, which I had put in the wrong paragraph.
Shady is right.

I'm surprised he had the audacity to write some of this stuff..

"I get that it would hurt sales to say this is the next iphone. I have no interest in hurting sales. That does nothing to help Gizmodo or me."

wait for it... wait for it...

Gizmodo: "WE FOUND THE NEXT IPHONE!"
Take the loans. Get the education at the better school. You need to be near your peers. There is no substitute for this. I went to what was a "commuter school" and lived off campus and I deeply regretted that distance and lack of community.
what is the performance as compared to Enterprise Edition ?
Interestingly, that points to TEC Printers made by Toshiba for a similar purpose (barcoding). So perhaps this is a common barcoding language used by compatible printers.
Adobe-Apple war on Flash reminiscent of PostScript struggle
They don't like having to pay two separate early termination fees either, oddly enough.
Yay! It's exciting to see all these cool new Gmail plugins; first Rapportive, now Syphir.

Quick review: Rules are like Filters, but better. I do wish I could apply them to messages already in my inbox. (I added one to have anything that is to: cc: or bcc: to an alternative e-mail to be archived; in Gmail, you can only set filters based on the to: field.)
WiFi data collection: An update
I had a notion I had seen STM discussed at lwn.net, and did a simple search. This comment http://lwn.net/Articles/336039/ , may explain it:

I read all the relevant theoretical papers, and poured over the code of existing implementations. I tried to implement a simple STM mechanism, and it's not possible for any amount of data more than 16-bytes
Lieing has a built in forcing function which serves to motivate a liar to hone their skill. As the article mentions, one lies to make the world easier; to avoid harm or receive undeserved reward. But if one is caught in a lie, there harsh punishment. For obvious lies, this punishment is immediate. Parents send you to your room without supper, removed from class, found in contempt of court. This forcing function serves to teach one to refine deception; using deny-ability, vagueness, omission.
Yeah, I don't really see this as shady. Disagree with the headline for sure.
This is the crux of the issue. Where's the line between email and Facebook? "If you don't want it public, don't put it on the web," they say. But that's way too simplistic. Webmail's on the web, and we (and the law) certainly have different expectations of it. So where's the line? And how evil is it to pull a Facebook-style privacy bait-and-switch? There's a privacy spectrum between email and Twitter, and FB is somewhere in between.

Don't get me wrong -- I haven't taken sides, and can't be arsed to care, having never gotten involved with FB.
It is not true that all CTR is low on Facebook. There's a wide range of CTRs for ads. Some of them are really low, but some are ridiculously high, a lot higher than what I've seen on a traditional high quality web-based ad network.
Wow. What a seriously damaging email. Has this guy not heard of lunch?
I think now that we've hit 1.0, the path forward is easy to break up into bits could be on the blog. Before the 1.0-rc cycle, it was hard to separate out individual things.

Given that people think this is a good idea, I think we'll go ahead and do it!
From Team Motivation to Design Hell
How about calling out headline editorializing in a more civil manner?
jQuery is a good place to start. Getting into frameworks before you have some fundamental understanding of programming can make the learning curve a bit too steep.

jQuery is shallow enough that you can get a ton of work done with it, but still understandable enough that you can dive into it's source and fidget your way through it.
Worked in Silicon Valley all my life. The degree meant nothing. Worked with lots of guys with no degree, doing the same job. All that mattered was skills.
Roommate’s Tip Led Cops to iPhone Finder
Köpa Lägenhet | Lediga Lägenheter
Modern cars vulnerable to malicious hacks
You mean the same Google where Python beat Ruby years ago?
"the shell" usually means (on modern Linux distros) bash, which is the "GNU Bourne-Again SHell".[0]

Brian Fox[1] developed the readline library to handle bash's interactive input. Between Brian Fox having been an Emacs maintainer, and bash being a GNU project, the keybindings followed suit...

Had bash been "Bill Joy's[2] Awesome SHell," things might have gone differently :-) Well, it would've just been csh[3] (written by Bill Joy.)

[0] I address this introduction to anyone not already "in the know."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Fox

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_shell
Congrats! Welcome to the other side.
Coke's Freestyle Machines Ready to Rock Tongues With 104 Flavors
Generally yes, I agree. But in this case all I'm doing with the error is displaying it to the programmer, and it doesn't matter to me if the programmer has to be using Firefox to see it. We were talking about displaying debugging messages and dealing with a missing console, not handling application failures.
Is Your Site Too Slow?(The Importance of Page Load Speed)
He responded to you to explain this. He certainly isn't alone and even if he were, there's nothing wrong with this. People expect "we" from businesses. This is a business.
We’re Not Greece
Free Office Furniture in Berkeley - Very Solid
Cool I might give it a try when I need to next. I've used Captivate in the past just wanted to know what is different.
It certainly sounds shady to me. What I can't believe is Apple would even bend to Gizmodo by sending them the publishable letter.

It surprises me because I can't imagine Gizmodo having any right to withhold the phone from its rightful owner (Apple). Like "Oh we have your missing property, and we'd love to give it back, but you have to do something for us first". I don't know the legal system, but that just can't be right.
Excellent point. I forget that javascript doesn't really have arrays, just array syntax. My example is much more appropriate in other languages with true arrays and the ability to store object references in them.
I don't know, if that was true then the person who originally posted it might have found it themselves, or the people who responded to the original post might not have been so perplexed as to how he figured that out. It seems like a no brainer when you think about it but I'm not sure everyone would think about it right off.
I love reading about hobby hacking projects such as this. Awesomeness!
Our company moved into a larger office and threw a bunch of furniture away. There are a number of great desks and some chairs. Just come and pick it up. Location: http://bit.ly/cx4jkM