skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is totally unimpressive. You could totally do this with canvas and HTML5. In just 4-5 short years WebGL will be implemented in all browsers, so flash is totally useless here. And it uses like 50% of my CPU, which is stupid. Flash is stupid. What's the point of using flash, just because it let's you do things. Adobe development tools are terrible. CSS is awesome! Stop using flash! You're just locking yourself into a closed platform! You should develop for the iPad instead!

Edit: Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Every single submission that shows off something done in flash has a bunch ridiculous posts claiming you can do the same in HTML5. I thought I'd save them the trouble.
Chrome on linux.

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/9215/screenshot1ig.png

it could possibly be my fault, it's the dev channel chrome, '6.0.408.1 dev'

edit: it does the same thing with Firefox 3, so it's not Chrome's fault.
I do understand that the point they're trying to make and I am not arguing for that. Nor am I arguing that vintage cars might be popular - you're going into too much detail (the point was that in our modern world, in regard of products produced, "newer" usually translates to "better").

But what I do believe, is that they're asking the customer to think the analogy behind the idea of not drinking 9 year old milk and connecting that to the idea of not using a 9 yo browser (old = bad, new = good as you said). Wouldn't you agree that for that analogy to work with the message they're trying to convey, you need to make a connection of putting the IE Browser into the milk's place in that analogy?

I mean look at that page: half of your screen is filled with a carton of milk - the other half tells about why you wouldn't use a browser (IE 6) which also is 9 yo.
So wouldn't you agree that somewhere in there lies the notion of IE 6 being as good as 9 yo milk?

Probably?

And remember that most people are bad at remembering numbers. Names, on the other hand, are something that most people do remember better.

Therefore, imho, I don't understand what the marketing department was thinking, as in my opinion, the advert connects your thoughts about 9yo milk to an internet browser (of which we already have created our own views) - and in the long run people will most probably only remember 9 yo milk & Internet Explorer (and bear in mind that this advert comes from microsoft).

Therefore, the question of what was the marketing department thinking rose into my mind. I believe that the point of viewing and "comparing" IE & a carton of milk screams for some serious rebranding for the product called "internet explorer" - because nerds can really relate to that message or what?

And in the end of the day, they are the people who power the revolutions of switching browsers.

tl;dr I don't believe that the advert works in advantage for Microsoft & IE
I realize this is not the forum for this, but hopefully it will serve as a warning to others: the linked article does not scroll on the iPhone (horiz or vert orientation).

"Cool" layouts are all fun and games, but usability is king.
Thanks for the reply.

I guess I don't see how you can terminate VPN connections from users and not be a VPN concentrator but since you have a loophole, best of luck to you!

I have a small pile of routers with 3DES cards for terminating business VPNs at work (ISP) and have pondered offering end-user VPNs but the potential legal hassles weren't worth it to us.
So that makes IE8 14.5 month old milk.

yum.
The Future of The Internet; and what Diaspora needs to be
I've been reading many of the news articles about the leak, but most seem to stray away from the long term effects of the leak if it's not fixed soon. If the engineers don't stop the leak within, say, a month, what kind of ecological damage can we expect? What about three months? A year? Longer? Is there a chance that it will just "run out" anytime soon?
I don't understand why BP's people think that you can just shove some heavy gunk into the hole and expect it to stay there. Common sense would suggest that you'd have to start by anchoring something inside the hole which you could use to build a progressively denser matrix. How the hell you do that at 30,000 feet underwater I don't know. Depending on the state of the hole perhaps you could put a hollow, expandable cylinder into the hole. The cylinder also would have a series of hinged blades that could be released and the pressure of the oil would force the blades together and close the leak. Hard to explain without drawing a diagram. Since it's an obvious solution I would guess that there's a good technical reason why it can't be done.
SOLID Affiliate Marketing System for eCommerce?
I recently stumbled upon Cloudomatic's FLOW app for affiliate marketing of SaaS apps. Their interface is beatiful, clean, and how it should be. Every other affiliate system I have seen looks like it is straight out of 1996. What other systems are out there that would work for an eCommerce site and look like something from this century? Appreciate any assistance!
According to 60 Minutes's interview with one of the engineers, the main failsafe equipment was damaged weeks before the explosion, and BP didn't bother repairing it and in fact increased drilling speed since they were slipping behind schedule.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6490509n

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/35642/
As a person who paid money I earned for a good product, including the promise of a free upgrade to 2.0 whenever it came out - I would not share your feelings on the matter.

(This does not mean I have any expectations as to when 2.0 is coming out, or what 2.0 means, or anything like that... I love Textmate, and have purchased several licenses.)
You must have killed your companion quicker than anyone else.
Ahh memories. When I was in undergrad I convinced IBM to send 12 ThinkCenter desktops to me to play with MPI and other multiprocessor systems. While it certainly was fun to set up the systems, it was a pain in the rear to come up with stuff to run on it.

5 years later, you could get the same number of CPU cores in a single machine...
I might well fit in that latter group, but I consider that the 'engineering' in this case was on the part of the fund managers.

The managers have basically been surfing on the tax status of their investors' gains. Funds of their own which were actually invested are still taxed at the capital gains rate. But the managers' bonus can not seriously be called capital gains, because it gets paid when they make a profit but they have no corresponding liability to their investors if the fund should lose money. It's not as if the investors were somehow lending a portion of their investment to the manager, or s/he would owe repayment regardless of performance. Any portion of the investors' gain paid as a bonus is income and deserves to be taxed as such.

The lower tax rate on capital gains is meant as an incentive for people to invest their assets instead of just hoarding them; investment implies an element of risk.
I'm not sure what to think. While I don't know a lot about drilling oil wells specifically, my first degree is in mechanical engineering and although I've never worked as one I know that engineers prefer to oversecure everything where a failure would cause injuries, not to mention disasters on this scale. Simply put, safety always comes first on the drawing boards of engineers.

For example, simple elevators are typically designed to be able to safely carry 7-10 times their normal operating weight, including the cabin. I find it hard to believe that "many of their safety systems" just failed - I think it's a lot more likely that a series of really stupid human mistakes are behind this as well as management that is unable or unwilling to enforce (sometimes costly) safety procedures and practices.
I live on Capitol hill. 545 in, and MS commuter bus back is fantastic. The ensured reading/downtime everyday is wonderful. The only downside is the restrictive times on the commuter bus and the lack of a vehicle at work to run errands. I'll shortly be moving to a house walking distance to MS and the reading time of my commute is something I'll greatly miss. I'm seriously thinking I might (on some days) take the 545 in to Seattle to get Vivace coffee and take it back to MS to get to work.
That was kind of my point in creating this thread. While there are some complex elements in play here and it is a problem with many technicalities to it, there aren't THAT many elements to worry about at I understand it. You have water pressure, the pressure of the oil excreting, the depth and breadth of the hole, and how deep it is under water.

Further more its not like the solutions that they have tried so far have been particularly high tech (put a cap on it and hope the water pressure with seal it, stuff the hole with crap and hope the water pressure will seal it, put fluid in the hole and hope the water pressure will seal it).

There are a lot of smart people on HN, so if nothing else it is good mental masturbation to make suggestions and then explain why those suggestions are or are not feasible.
Interesting he was big on school vouchers. I've always thought those were a great idea too and that they'd spark some incredible innovation in education, but I've never really heard many high profile people speak out in favor of them.
I _think_ it has something to do with the fonts on Linux. I will have to check my nix box.
I appreciate how much of a challenge those conditions must be but I still don't understand why they were so unprepared to fix a leak. Couldn't a 5,000ft leak have been simulated by a computer or in a lab environment? It seems like they're just throwing untested solutions at the problem hoping something will work. With the amount of money these oil companies make there is no excuse to not be fully prepared.
Does anyone remember that WebObjects used to cost $50K? It failed because no one could afford it and there was little to no documentation. By the time Apple woke up and reduced the price it was too late. Other web languages were already off and running.
a few = 11
I don't get why everyone is so up in arms about this. Did text change in some fundamental way over the past three years, thus rendering all the glowing reviews I have read of TM1 void? Or is it just our irrational obsession with newer and shinier things?
[citation needed]

http://genomebiology.com/2008/9/7/404

"Overemphasizing the genetic contribution to complex human disease or behavioral traits can promote not only racism, but also a naive genetic essentialism - the notion that genes determine health status or behavior [28-30]. Such essentialism is particularly dangerous in clinical translation, where a focus should be maintained on the individual rather than the group [31]."
Well, that's true. I was just trying to keep the post short.
I don't think that's a very good excuse. It's not like as if they didn't know beforehand that conditions at 5000 feet are difficult.
>and am also waiting for the part about Google in the OP)

One good reason not to work for already big companies like Google and Microsoft, is that your growth potential is limited. Case in point, video.google.com and www.youtubue.com. Nobody needs to wonder about which of the two developers among these projects struck it rich.

Why shovel for someone else's palace when you can build your own?
Excellent article. So far computers have been aimed towards technical users. To most people computers are rocket science. The iPhone OS is the first serious attempt at challenging that, and it's working. It's an exciting and profitable time to be a developer, so long as we focus on creating apps that solve actual problems and create valuable experiences for the user.
This was my favorite part.

"Michael, just because you put a question mark after things, doesn't make them evidence to support your headline of 'Guy Who Copied Digg Slams Digg For Copying Twitter.'"

That might be because I find the rhetorical question incredibly annoying outside of a Socratic setting.

On a different note, I'm disappointed that Arrington would fuel this little drama production, but of course, that is his MO.
Furthermore, in many of the literary traditions Tolkien was building on, formulaic phrases are just the way it’s done. For a well-known example in epic literature, take Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey are full of repeated wordings which, if you’re being uncharitable, you could call clichés or dead metaphors. It’s simply not the level you look at to appreciate that particular genre, any more than you would look for grand allegories in P. G. Wodehouse.
Malaria happens all the time, the oil spill is a pretty singular event.

If there was a sudden massive malaria outbreak I'd hope to hear about it, too.
BP knew for weeks in advance of the explosion that the well was unsafe, and had deliberately dialled-down the federally-required tests they were running on the well, which strongly suggests they knew it wouldn't pass the real tests:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30rig.html

This is not an engineering puzzle; good engineers in the oil industry have been drilling much deeper wells than this for years:

http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/magazine/15-09/mf_jackrig
http://factoidz.com/the-deepest-offshore-oil-rig-in-the-worl...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_platform#Deepest_oil_platfo...

This accident is the result of greed and a failure of regulation; an economic and political problem. Once we have found the engineering solution to shut down this well, the pressure to prevent it happening again must focus on politics, not technology.
It would in many ways be much better if this were only a failure of regulation. It’s trivial to change rules and with a catastrophe like this the incentive to do so is there. Looking back at other catastrophes (I always have to think of Chernobyl, I don’t know why) I fear much rather that your view of the causes (mistakes and laziness) might be closer to the truth. That’s not as easy to change.
Anybody complaining that the Iliad and the Odyssey are full of clichés is forgetting that they were written several thousand years ago. The clichés where stolen from Homer, not the other way around!
Probably a dumb question, but since I don't know the answer, I'll ask it: why not blow up the entire reservoir with a big thermonuclear bomb? Or otherwise set it on fire such that it all burns up before getting out?
College students may be lacking in empathy, study finds
Again, what is the iPhone app store doing that Palm didn't do before? There was a thriving app market. While it was web based (as opposed to device based), normal every day people bought millions of dollars in apps every year. I cut my teeth in that market at Quickoffice (who has translated that experience onto the iPhone today). While Palm was at its peak we would do 7 figures in sales.

What Apple did that other cell phone competitors (particularly Symbian) absolutely failed to do was make the app buying process seamless. For Palm users it was drop dead simple. Download the file, double click, and sync the device. On Symbian devices it was a mess of menus, disclaimers, and other crap that made installing stuff generally suck. It looked and felt like installing a big software package on Windows. The iPhone certainly deserves credit for fixing that.

Still, so much of what the iPhone has done was improve on what the folks at Palm did years ago. You can find examples of touch based interfaces (snappermail springs to mind) on the old Palm devices. Palm sported app-centric data with no exposed file system. Many of the design conceits of the iPhone first resided on Palm devices. It's part of the reason that I chuckle every time Jobs rants about how everyone is trying to steal from 'him'.

That said, there is one thing that I think is truly revolutionary about the iPhone app market. The advent of truly useful (and effective) mobile ad networks changes the game quite a bit. Being able to monetize free apps is huge. One of our app developers here in Colorado has actually seen their ad-supported titles surpass their app-store purchases which is interesting (and they sell a LOT of product). We didn't have that in the old days... it would have been really nice:) Both Google and Apple are bringing interactive ads to their respective platforms, so they clearly 'get it'.

In todays marketplace Apple clearly doesn't have a monopoly on the app market. The Android app store is a worthy competitor. It's easy to find apps (although I wish the 'top *' categories would rotate MUCH faster). They install seamlessly. You can find all the information you need in store. I really am not sure how it's really any different than the iPhone experience...
Tolkien was not a 'perfectionist', inventing history because Middle-earth demanded it. Inventing history was a little game, a 'secret vice'; Middle-earth grew out of the game. And it is clear that he did not take the game half as seriously as some of his fans.

This is supplied as a criticism, but for me this is what makes Tolkien great. I dislike immensely that feeling that authors are just throwing in fantasy-ish sounding names and toss-away references to "deepen" the story. I can tell when they're doing it, its cheap feeling, and it sucks.

The one thing you know for damn sure about Tolkien, is that when he mentions some ancillary character or place reference, not only did he not make it up on the spot, there's very likely a whole file cabinet drawer on it somewhere because he'd been thinking about it for 20 years.

It made his world huge, internally consistent at nearly every turn, and immensely satisfying to read about even if his prose was "dense" or "cliche".

The fact that it wasn't intended explicitly to be a book, and was something he did for his own amusement is probably a key ingredient in the magic.
Interestingly his blog is no longer online: http://www.0format.com/
Your sounding very angry about it... Perhaps hn just isn't a good fit for you.

Anyway; I think were going to see such posts as these. In all honesty I much prefer these to 20 rehashing the same piece of apple or facebook news :p (which is happening quite a lot at the moment).

Don't expect people (particularly here) to pay much attention if you sound like a jerk :(. And that is all I have to say on the matter.
Google wants to delete the data and has already deleted much of it. But they've constructed a catch-22 where they believe that under German law it is illegal to possess the data, illegal to delete it, and illegal to give it to the government, so they're doing nothing. It will probably have to get hashed out in court.
Start pouring millions of tons of sand. Might have an affect after a month or two.
Oil needs air to burn. You can't burn all of that sucker at once, you'd start a hurricane as all the air started swirling into feed it and then there CO2 would create an outward pressure wave that would prevent it from staying lit. Complicated and messy.
I hope blogging won't disappear. It was really good for a while, when we still had blogrolls. Now it's all walled gardens, that make it even easier to share and comment. I kind of think it's time for the pendulum to swing back.
Have possible links between prankster Joe Cassara and ad firm space150 been investigated?
Alexis, you sound like an awesome guy. If this were someone else, this would probably turn into a shouting match, but you were above that, and instead offered him a t-shirt. That's just the right thing to do.

I respect that a ton.
Getting a cylinder into the hole seems difficult. An earlier attempt called the 'top hat' involved putting a capped cylinder on top of the hole but apparently methane hydrates, which are lighter than water, started accumulating inside it and it kept lifting off the seabed.

So my idea is halfway between the two: place a large, weighted concrete cylinder with no end caps above the hole - a hollow top hat, if you like. It needs to be big, like 25' x 25' or larger; height is more important than diameter. This in itself does nothing to stem the flow - but nor does it obstruct it. So the cylinder can then be sealed around the bottom and fixed to the seabed without interference from the pressure of the outrushing oil.

Then one can begin filling the cylinder with gravel or whatever is suitable - smallest material first, working up to rocks. As we begin covering the gusher, the pressure will obviously push some of the filler material out of the way...but as it's inside a cylinder, the filler is just going to get pushed against the side of the cylinder, where its weight is going to increase the downward pressure on the material at the bottom, which has nowhere to go except in towards the center. When the aggregate pressure at the bottom of the cylinder from the sides into the center exceeds the pressure of the oil, it will pinch off the flow, like a valve. This of course assumes perfect packing of the filler material; in reality the oil will diffuse through it, but in doing so the pressure will be distributed across the diameter of the cylinder, which will make it much easier to cap.

Or we could just go with Andy Borowitz's suggestion to plug the whole with BP executives....
Google MyTracks now open source
But I thought regulation was always bad? Isn't that the consensus here?
Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drills world's deepest oil well (Sept. 2009)
Why? All Mashable does is post about Twitter trends and recycle Techcrunch posts a week later.
It's for much the same reason you'd struggle to stop an avalanche or a hurricane.

All of the remedies they've tried are ones already tested and modelled like you mention - but at the end of the day this happens so infrequently and under such varying circumstances it's hard to cover every eventuality.

One of my friends pointed out that it's much akin to running one of the mars landers - it takes a long time to sort out what to do, send down the ROV's and give it a shot.
It is if you care about the future at all. A mild prohibition (don't smoke) causes me very little grief, and I can find other things to make me happy. If I do enough bad things for my health, eventually I'll give myself enough chances to "win" the lottery. It's not about just eliminating smoking, it's about being healthier and happier over all time.

Knowing that I'm avoiding cancer makes me happy by itself. :P
Great! One other piece of feedback. There needs to be more contrast between the meta line (points/name/etc) and the text of the comments.
Browser Tests: Which of the Current Generation is Best?
Thanks! The way I see it, it's all sticks & stones. I got to learn that early as an overweight kid with a girly name and fondness for videogames.

I just wish I could get the TC Comments to work for me (why aren't they using disqus?) so I could chime in there...
Well, since we're throwing mud, remember that Arrington is the one who just held a startup contest that gave a $50k prize to a company with $8 million in previous funding. Attacking the establishment is not something he's known for.
Sure, but even internally. Like a lot of long oral literature in verse, it has a smallish set of colorful epithets for often-mentioned things. For example, where the rhythm requires it, Ulysses might be called πολύτροπος, resourceful; where there’s less room in the hexameter, he might be δῖος, glorious – over and over and over again.

It’s not just that we don’t think of “rosy-fingered dawn” as being fresh because we know Homer used it: it’s that even if you’ve never heard it before, it will have lost its freshness halfway through the Odyssey.

So word-by-word freshness is usually not a useful or fun thing to look for in epic literature. While people can criticize Tolkien for a lack of eye-kicks (as I think I remember William Gibson calling phrase-scale fireworks in cyberpunk), a tree can be green-fingered twenty times without it being a violation of the rules of the game he’s trying to play.

(Also, for all we know, Homer might have stolen all his clichés.)
I would love to hear the libertarian defence of a private enterprise's accident that is putting thousands of people out of work and destroying an entire coastline's worth of ecosystems.
What ceiling?