skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, Adpative bit-rate is currently missing from HTML5.

However, Apple has a method of doing this with entirely standard HTTP and a few metadata files, as this is how you do adaptive bitrate content on the iphone:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/Netw...

The formats and methods Apple provides in the spec for the IPhone can be used for both Live Content and for adaptive bit-rate pre-recorded content.

I hope eventually the iphone http streaming spec or a derivative would get adopted into HTML5 :)
If they keep this up they'll cross a million bucks in the next 18 days.

I'd start to feel a little uncomfortable if I were them by now, $10K is fine, but a million is a serious responsibility, even if it was gathered as small change. The surprising thing to me is how many people pledge fairly large amounts.
Developer rights Google Group
"I didn't mean to imply you personally are stupid."

You implied I wasn't using my brain when using git. What did you want to imply with that if not stupidity?

"Just that 'one' wanting to use git should effectively concede that it gives you the tools to cut off your hands if that's what you're aiming to do."

Not sure I get that. I need to use git, so it's my fault? The thing about a mistake is that I wasn't aiming to do it.

"If the rotating blades are meant to be used to amputate limbs and to cut logs in half - then yes, I'd say if you are trying to cut a log in half you shouldn't put your arm in it."

Who would build such a thing? And even further, who would build a machine with 100 buttons, two of which look exactly the same, but one cuts wood, one cuts of your arm.

What is to gain by having a destructive file operation and a non-destructive branch operation have the same name? Why do people seem to feel hurt when people suggest to name them separately?
I'm not a big fan of C# but I have to agree. Even in the TIOBE index it may only have ~4% but that still makes it the _7th most popular language_.

He ends up with Scala, which according to TIOBE is 27th with 0.433%.

Interesting read, but clearly this is making the solution fit the data more than the other way around on the original author's part.
(if (you-have-to-learn-one-language)
(begin
(make-highly-subjective-claims)
(eliminate-good-candidates-for-specious-reasons)
(arive-at-questionable-conclusion))
(begin
(broaden-your-understanding-of-programming)
(be-able-to-evaluate-multiple-solutions-for-problem)))
What's his company called again? Why isn't it linked on his blog?
I didn't understand his reasons for eliminating Haskell and OCaml. It's not even that his reasons were subjective like with a lot of the other languages — he just didn't offer any. He names a bunch of things Scala can do that they can also do and then goes, "So I'm eliminating Haskell and OCaml." Like, does he not realize those languages can do monads and XML processing?
Change your development platform.

Facebook has made itself very unpopular as of late.
Related to the whole Facebook fiasco, I just found this. I wonder how credible it is - that information is hard to verify. Basically, Zuckerburg allegedly IM'd his friend, and called early Facebook adopters "dumb fks" for trusting him with their information.

http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
Well, if nothing else, this is certainly proof of an innovative fundraising strategy. Why sell equity in your company when you can appeal to masses of tiny investors with a "battling evil" story? I don't think Facebook has anything to worry about from a product perspective, but from a PR perspective, this shows that a lot of people hate them enough to put money down.
yea i hope so. im looking forward to the final product
If you're there for a month, I imagine a few of your employees might want to "get acquainted" with the locals (more likely other tourists, in reality, but makes little difference.) Perhaps a spare room is in order? ;)

Also: I think this idea is pretty cool. I might side with others that four 2-week trips would be preferable, but traveling like this is definitely something that appeals to me.
$100k in non-venture backed capital, other than that, maybe a glimmer of hope.

All we can do is wait and watch. They've talked good game, now it is time for them to walk it.
> Not exactly. It updates the file to the state from the index.

Whoops, you got me. I of course meant "in the working tree" when I said local. It's just easy to be close, but not quite, right with the terminology.
Maybe so, but a sales person guilting a customer into making a purchase in order to save his job would be something a bit different.
> You choose the OS platform. And if this is the argument, why aren't people complaining that Windows doesn't run OSX apps, or that the PS3 doesn't run Xbox 360 games?

If someone had a great OS X app they'd ported to Windows, and Microsoft refused to run it, yes indeed, I'd be furious.

I think you're actually the first genuine troll I've met on HackerNews. Feel free to continue posting by this is the last time I'm responding to your posts.
It's blocked for me here at work (as I sit sipping my Diet Coke). What is the reason?
In my experience I have not seen a correlation between meda hype and success.
I would imagine its possible as long as you keep the faith, show progress, and don't promise too much.
The list could be much longer than it is. Facebook has a large reach, and some people just aren&rsquo;t too bright: http://ryankuder.posterous.com/facebook-users-think-readwrit....

There are many cautionary tales of Facebook users getting into trouble, but, whatever you think of Facebook, there is only so much you can do to prevent people from embarrassing themselves.
I like to think of programming languages as tools. You should always pick the right tool for the job. Otherwise, someday you will pick up your hammer and realize not everything is a nail.

Language design is all about trade-offs. Some languages are better at string processing, some make it easy to write quick scripts, some have good framework support, some have high speed, none has it all.
Hey, check out my reply here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343564
Take a look here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033503
If it's true one more reason to be very wary what you put in writng, even if it is just an IM message.
Even if cash stays with us for another 100 years -- inflation will make it more and more inefficient over time.

Eg.: around 1970 when $100 became the largest bill, it was actually worth about $500 in today's value. So, it lost 4/5 of it's real value.

If you look another 40 years out, $100 will become the new $20, the government will probably not have introduced any new bills, and the amount of transactions you can actually transact in cash will be even smaller.
Some people may not like it, but this is exactly why I chose to force UTF-8 for http://github.com/brianmario/mysql2 for all the strings you get back (in 1.9), and the connection itself.
We've all dealt with improper use of encodings between applications, their persistence layer and their presentation. It's a nightmare unless you put your foot down and say "We're making everything Unicode, nothing comes in or leaves unless it is".
This obviously doesn't work for everyone but it's my experience that it will work for 99% of all use cases.
>Is there $500 worth of value for the iPad over the Macbook Pro?

If you're not working while you're on vacation, yet need to stay connected, that $500 will make you feel like a million dollars.

I took my iPad on our vacation in Vancouver late April. It was the only electronic device aside from my cell phone that we took. Rocking that thing loaded with movies and TV episodes on a plane was unbelievably convenient (and try getting a netbook with an IPS screen at that price point). At the condo after walking around the city or hiking in the North, I'd shoot off some emails or map out where we wanted to go next and enter it into Navigon app for the next day.

Not lugging a $2000 MBP around on a vacation is reason enough to celebrate :)
Python Developers are you up for the Performable Challenge?
OK now I know about:

"git pull --rebase"

If only somebody would explain what this really does! The man pages are not helpful!

git-pull(1) Manual Page says: "--rebase: Instead of a merge, perform a rebase after fetching. If there is a remote ref for the upstream branch, and this branch was rebased since last fetched, the rebase uses that information to avoid rebasing non-local changes. To make this the default for branch <name>, set configuration branch.<name>.rebase to true."

Oh how clear. So let's try git-rebase:

"If <branch> is specified, git rebase will perform an automatic git checkout <branch> before doing anything else. Otherwise it remains on the current branch.

All changes made by commits in the current branch but that are not in <upstream> are saved to a temporary area. This is the same set of commits that would be shown by git log <upstream>..HEAD (or git log HEAD, if --root is specified).

The current branch is reset to <upstream>, or <newbase> if the --onto option was supplied. This has the exact same effect as git reset --hard <upstream> (or <newbase>). ORIG_HEAD is set to point at the tip of the branch before the reset.

The commits that were previously saved into the temporary area are then reapplied to the current branch, one by one, in order. Note that any commits in HEAD which introduce the same textual changes as a commit in HEAD..<upstream> are omitted (i.e., a patch already accepted upstream with a different commit message or timestamp will be skipped)."

I'm lost!

Now can anybody explain so nice like Yehuda did about the workflow, what and why that

git pull

did "wrong", and what the hell is that that "--rebase" does "right." Especially as here and there "--rebase" is described as something that "doesn't keep history" and therefore "bad."

Note that I put "bad" "wrong" and "right" in quotes. I know that's all relative, I just want to get some simple explanation what's going on without reading "recursion see recursion" man pages!

Thanks in advance!
Wow, that dude is going to get flamed. Maybe he'll win a prize for pissing off the most advocates of different languages in one go?
I'd say desktop syncing is a really great part of the ecosystem, since it means that I can buy a new iPhone and be completely up and running again in less than an hour. Upgrading the software is a breeze, which is something you can't say about Nokia phones (last time I tried). I'd agree that iTunes on Windows sucks, but that's not too surprising given that they are running it inside of their cross-platform Objective C/Cocoa thingy.
It isn't over until the fat lady sings.

But if I were them I'd shut down the pledge site now, thank everyone and say that if after the launch they feel they need more funding they'll do a second round.
We have a small distributed development team. We are three people in Sweden, two in London UK, two in San Francisco US. (We also have five non-developers, in London and the Netherlands.) We are not looking to add any further developers outside of these three locations at the moment, as we often have team meetings via Skype and it is a quite hard to keep organized with three time zones already. Especially with the time difference between EU and CA. I spent a couple of months in Asia this winter and it really didn't become any easier.

I suppose it all depends on how the team is used to work and communicate, but I do wish we could have everyone in the same office more often. We have a team meeting in the same location once every six months for 4-5 days, but you can only achieve so much in a few days.

With everyone either having partners, children or both to take into account it isn't always so easy to fit everything together.
What programming experience do the Diaspora guys have?
Just a quick comment: never tell the world how much you make, unless required by the law.
As bad as diet soda is, I have the feeling it's not as bad as the non-diet soda with the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). So the point is, don't drink soda, of any kind, at all. It's poison.
This is how Apple rolls
This seems like a great opportunity for Google to "donate" some senior talent to the project, blow this up into a fully functioning platform (optionally backed up on Google's servers), and one-punch KO Facebook.
Why Android Just Surpassed iPhone in Sales
If I was a journalist I would start stalking them right now, it's going to make a great cover story or book in 12 months whichever way it goes.
Not like it stops a select few individuals from recording OTA content and making it available online anyway. All it takes is one source to make the video available, so DRM really is pointless.
hmm but the question is if they can shut it down while still keeping the money. maybe with this money they can expand their team and develop faster and better.
Right, I'm not saying there should be or that I want there to be, but a) this entire post can be translated as "We're not using HTML5 because there's no DRM" and b) even though it's not a business I'd want to be in, certainly seems to be a market opportunity for it
I'm not clear on how this will damage Kickstarter's reputation. They're only hosting the project's donation collection system.

They could have put up a simple webpage with a "Donate Now" button linking to Paypal to collect funds. Would that have made Paypal look bad? Or their web hosts's reputation?

As for "Is this going to be another Diaspora," I'm not sure I would totally connect the Diaspora project to Kickstarter - unless it was Kickstarter writing the software that wasn't delivered (in the worst case scenario).
I'm pretty sure that this is exactly the case in the US, at least. You do need to buy a box to watch over the air broadcast after the digital transition, although technically it is probably encoded rather than encrypted.
You're right. That end user facing thing will be touch. After iPad, I want an iMac with multitouch.
Well, let's not forget that the pay-off for that particular thought experiment was relativity. :)

I (and possibly others) would probably be a little less cranky about the whole article if he'd followed his steps rigorously and arrived at something interesting. And I don't mean it has to be revolutionary like relativity, but something better than just highlighting his new favorite language.
He eliminates Smalltalk because of speed but leaves in Ruby? Ummmmmmm. What?
True, it didn't _have_ to change anything, but since it was there, there was no pressure to make dedicated applications and user interfaces that worked well with touch. With a stylus, you can use normal desktop applications even though it's sub-obtimal.
What The Fuck Should I Make For Dinner?
@pquerna (for some reason, your post didn't have a reply link):

Interesting scheme. I'm wondering if this same idea could be used by a client-side library to enable buffering and dynamic bitrate changes. It could also be used to dynamically insert advertising video content into the stream...
They went from 10K to 100k, and they're probably going to end up with even more massive amount of money in the end. I'm really interested in seeing what they're going to deliver.
These iodine deficiency claims are entirely pseudoscience and alt-med bullshit. Here's where they come from: http://www.naturalnews.com/008902_hypothyroidism_thyroid_gla...

The whole pH thing is a lot of nonsense too, as many of the commenters on this article pointed out. Here's a thorough debunking: http://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/your-ur...

For the more real point about BMI increase being associated with artificial sweeteners:

- The bloggers link to this 2005 WebMD article, which doesn't cite the reference for the study: http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050613/drink-more-diet-soda...

- The real literature appears to be from 2008, so I don't know if the authors just spoke to WebMD ahead of their publication or what happened. I believe this is the study: http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v16/n8/full/oby2008284a.ht...

There's also a critical response: http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v17/n4/full/oby2008623a.ht...

And a response to the response:
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v17/n4/full/oby2008624a.ht...
Do Microsoft's EULAs have any real legal basis?
For many people this will be their first exposure to kickstarter. First experience a negative one for a now very high profile project might damage the kickstarter brand.
Startup v. Contractor--change in case law on "work for hire" employment
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that not everyone would find a "that's what she said" joke all that clever, or even all that appropriate for a business to subtly present on its site.

And I think this speaks to one of the points I tried to make here (http://langer.tumblr.com/post/538680961), which is that ideas like this can come off as witty or clever in such a male-dominated industry because most of us are tone-deaf to the many ways in which another person might find something like this offensive.
"We are not looking to add any further developers outside of these three locations at the moment, as we often have team meetings via Skype and it is a quite hard to keep organized with three time zones already. Especially with the time difference between EU and CA. I spent a couple of months in Asia this winter and it really didn't become any easier."

This is completely fair and rational. You shouldn't have to make any irrational sacrifices to work with people in far away places.

The way I look at this is - I am not (yet, perceived as,) good enough for people to want to work with me in spite of the distance/time difference etc. Lars Bak (for example) [1] is so good that he can work from somewhere in Europe and the rest of the team (and Google) make whatever compromises are necessary. In my opinion the best way to overcome this is to become (and be seen to be) way better than the average. "Be so good they can't ignore you" is good advice.

So, back to work!

[1] From Wikipedia

"In 2004, Bak was hired by Google to work on what was to become the Chrome browser. He did not return to the United States, preferring to work in Denmark where his daughters were also receiving their education. With a team of 12 engineers, Bak has been coordinating the development of the JavaScript machine for Chrome which he has code-named V8, to mirror the powerful automobile engine"
I have noticed this about people I know that have good vocabularies and were top students when they were young: Their fathers don't do baby talk. When I've seen their fathers interacting with young children, they talk to them as young adults. Is this a known correlation or is my sample size too small?
There really isn't any motivation to shut it down now though as far as I can tell. It seems like they're getting money with essentially no strings attached - might as well get it now while it's easy to get.
They're starting to look at some serious cash. I hope these kids use it wisely. A reasonable amount should be used for living expenses, but there's enough left over to hire a good quality graphics designer, and other contractors to help with the load.
Why is that? I've seen similar advice elsewhere (for example, 37Signals doesn't disclose revenue etc) but I've never been sure of the reason.

Andrew Warner on the other hand talks about how he was initially uncomfortable with it but decided to do it based on the advice of the Neil Patel and it really helped him establish credibility and build traffic:
http://mixergy.com/about/
It's the latest build of the runtime they need to open up, not the file format spec.
It's exactly why I tell everyone around me about GrooveShark if they mention Pandora or another music service. As soon as they get a BB Storm app I may not need my iPod again.
Yeah, we use Apple's spec in our own iPhone app. It would be very nice to see it, or something like it, in HTML5.
I would guess that potential donors will be far more critical of future kickstarter projects

Good.

Those of us who are serious, with actual working code and real customers, welcome the extra scrutiny. No one ever said that Darwinism was painless.
Sorry, that was me. I thought a little bit more about it and decided that I was mostly wrong.

The people who donate money on Kickstarter aren't donating with the expectation of a real return. In a sense, they're "voting with their wallet". I don't think people give Diaspora $20 bucks thinking "hey, this is going to be a Facebook killer!", I think they will donate with the idea that they'd like to see someone give it a go.

Sorry for being so bipolar about it; I figured I'd delete the comment before having to defend a position I no longer agreed with.
I was wondering this too. I assumed it was the homepage: http://www.cubeofm.com

But it doesn't have much on it and shows 1 or 2 iPhone apps which I'd be a little surprised if they were making $40k a month. What is the product or company?
Why isn't --rebase default? Can anybody explain what it actually does and why it's not default, man pages are not clear to me? Every thing is explained by referring to a bunch of other things and there's not a trace of a simple explanation.
I would disagree with this. I think it's reliable but all too often i find that i have to restart the videos, advertisements fail to load, and it takes a while to start up. Don't get me wrong - i think it's great and i use it almost daily, however saying it's video player is rock solid is definitely an overstatement.
You know what language is pretty good that no one would ever pick? Actionscript. It's like javascript but it has strong types (if you want them) and a decent toolset. Of course, everyone hates flash now...
Colour me unimpressed. Show me the code!
WiseWeasel, dude, you're all over the place. Like many of the "vs." crowd. I am gonna hit all of your points, so you don't Republican the debate.

ThomPete - you're a voice of reason and contemporary fact.

To the "vs." crowd: try and read all the points; not skimming and then commenting without paying the respect to do some legwork.

* ads - HTML5 ads will exist. The easier they are to make, the more of them there will be. Advertisers will use whichever has the widest audience. In fact, advertisers will be more encouraged by all the circle-jerk mob-mentality surrounding HTML5.

* video playback - for one, HTML5 doesn't play better or with less CPU. I think about 10 or so YouTube videos have proven this (visually, not blog opinion rhetoric). I'd link a few to you, but let's face it...you're not gonna look at them. You'd be forced to see proof. (If you do manage to be overcome with a neutral state of mind, do some research)

* cpu - another red herring. So far, I've not seen 1 canvas+js example (of which has a close equal to a Flash equivalent) that outperforms Flash. I wouldn't expect it to, either, since Flash is compiled and JS is interpreted. Bottomline: an immersive experience is going to take some CPU. Realize it applies to all technologies and get over it.

* ipad/mobile - Flash depletes battery. I agree. Equivalent canvas+js experiences use similar CPU. Taking that into consideration...the battery specifically hates Flash? Please.

* greater control/poor coding - Do I really need to point out that this applies to everything? Not just Flash?

Let's consider that HTML5 is being implemented in 2010. I've been on the 'net since 1995. That's 15 years for video to make its way into the browser -- without the "dreaded" plugin tech.

You know what's dreaded? Not being able to move ahead at the speed necessary to make great, immersive experiences. Being tied to a set of slow, archaically-driven, standards.

Flash (or more specifically plugin arch) is a petri dish for the web's innovative future. It can't and shouldn't die. If anything, it should become more open, more accepted and more accessible.