skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Uh, oh, Pakistan is going to ban Wikipedia now.
I am in the process of getting a patent on a method for distributing digital media in a unique way. I have a private proof of concept website set up now, but it is not ready to launch publicly yet (the graphical design is very rough and the selection of media is extremely limited at this time).

If you would like to check it out I can set up an account for you to see how it works.
Rooting your phone is not a DMCA violation. sudo simply is not pre-installed, it's an app you have to add yourself, just like anything else. Reverse engineering for interoperability is a DMCA exception, and there are plans to make the language in the law specifically refer to "jailbreaking" phones.

Also, at least with Android devices I've worked with, there is no trickery involved to flash a new firmware. You just do it.
That is not exactly true. When I browsed to the link given on this post with showdead off, I was still able to see the comments, which is weird.
I'd love to see Google celebrate today with their logo. CNN sort of has a drawing on the front page.
Yeah, all computers can't recognize jokes.
Agreed. Like calling tax collectors "terrorist". What then do we call those who blow up schools?
Advancements like this make it feel exciting to be young and have so much time ahead of you.

What, you're still using your original telomeres?
You're right, most end users don't hack Android. Or their computer, or their car, or their washing machine, or anything.

But, these people can pay others to do so. Anyone can make their own Android-based device, just like anyone can fix your computer or your car or your washing machine.

Compare this to the competition, like iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. You simply can't sell a device with one of those OSes without permission from the vendor. And the vendor is not going to give you permission, except maybe Microsoft for Windows.

That's the power of Android - anyone can improve it and profit from their improvements, without permission from anyone else.
Will this be an adequate replacement for Lala? It sounds like it might be.
A patent?... Let's not get started here. Just do it.
Retrospect? Mac support? Ah, smell that 2005.

Oh, and regarding #10,
from The Practice of System and Network Administration,

"15.1.2 - Fix the Cause, Not the Symptom

A coworker reports that there was a problem and that he fixed it. “What was the problem?” we inquire.
“The host needed to be rebooted.” “What was the problem?” “I told you! The host needed to be rebooted.” A day later, the host needs to be rebooted again."
And really, what else could they say? "Oh no, they just killed us! SNAP!" Anything said by a corporation (or a manager (boom!)) is so "spun" these days it's hardly worth listening to.

Perhaps, however, I am wrong.
Nope. Android SDK updates have never yet (to my knowledge) contained updates for real live phones. The SDK is released, but Android 2.2 isn't out for any phones yet. Which makes sense when you think about it. Dev's should have at least a little time to test their apps under 2.2 in the emulator before 2.2 starts rolling out to phones.

On the Google developers blog, it does say:

"As I said at the beginning, Android 2.2 will be here soon, and some devices will get the update in the coming weeks. I invite application developers to download the new SDK and tools and test your applications today."

so hopefully that means we won't have long to wait?
German Court Opens The Floodgates By Saying Software Patents Are Legal
My television came with a VGA port on the back of it. The funniest part? Actually setting my video card to display 1080p makes it an unsupported resolution (at 60Hz). It stretches things like 1024x768 fine, but that's not really what I was hoping for.

The thing that worked best was a DVI->HDMI converter (which are apparently very similar). Go figure.

Also, a bit off-topic, but if you're looking for a DVI-HDMI converter, do not buy it from Best Buy. Their cheapest model is something like 10x the highest price I found online for the same product.
Interview with Bill Liao co-founder of Xing
It's not at all clear from the video, but what are you typing on when you watch to search for whatever it is you're asking the Google TV device to search for?

A keyboard plugged into the set-top box?
I find a Mac mini + Plex to be an excellent home media center: http://www.plexapp.com/

The new media management features in the upcoming Plex/Nine release look great: http://vimeo.com/11880867

The Apple Bluetooth keyboard is small enough to be living room friendly.

Overall, a Mac mini isn't quite as simple as AppleTV, but it's far more functional.
You couldn't pay me to run an s-video signal into my TV.
I hope XBMC gets support for Google TV. Rather than just watching your media collection, being also to watch web TV would be an amazing bonus.

For those who are unfamiliar, XBMC is a media player with one of the best UIs I've seen on any application, anywhere, ever. Seriously, it looks gorgeous, particularly the "Aeon" skin with custom backdrops. XBMC isn't just a pretty face though, it also handles pretty much any media format you can throw at it (like VLC). And it's FREE. If you have a HTPC it's the media player of choice. It even has an iPhone app that allows you control XBMC over WiFi.

Great XBMC Article:

http://lifehacker.com/5536963/the-ultimate-start-to-finish-g...

Aeon Skin for XBMC:

http://www.aeonproject.com/
While I do force my kids to apologize on occasion, more as a way of teaching that when you hurt somebody (either intentionally or not), you should try to make it better and an apology is part of that, I know what they are thinking:

"Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry I got caught!"
They're just gauging interest and making sure to get emails they can push adoption to later, it's a classic sales technique. Don't hate.

Regardless, the links they send are open:

VoltDB product overview: http://www.voltdb.com/_pdf/VoltDBOverview.pdf

VoltDB Technical Architecture white paper: http://www.voltdb.com/_pdf/VoltDBTechnicalOverviewWhitePaper...
Android Froyo Is a Slap in Apple's Face
Nice. But how will it fare against my magic pony/unicorn hybrid? It lives on rainbows and magically makes money for me.

It's as real as any other thing someone on the Internet claims to have, anyway...
How is it a proof of concept website if no one can sign up for it yet?
So, in other words, the customer's system can now be described as being "a client/server application written completely in [not Prolog] with SQL Server behind it except for this ONE piece - THAT one is in Prolog!"

Next question - Who's going to maintain it?

I mean, props for using Prolog to tackle the complex problem and save gobs of money/time, but doesn't an approach like this seem _really_ risky?
Visual History of BBC Television Logos and Idents from 1953
There are various pony memes, including a Django one, but in this case I believe they're just trying to exemplify openness by using a picture of a toy that lets you complete the design yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Decorate-Figure/dp/B001...

Also, I don't think it's rainbows, just colorful hair.
Why is you putting a knife in someone considered attempted murder in one case and assault in another and an accident in a third?

This would be a good analogy if knives were being constantly broadcast into my head.

Also, since it's impossible to prove that you listened to a radio transmission, I don't see how any law against listening to public Wifi would be enforceable.

(Example: saying "I've smoked pot" on the Internet. I just confessed to a crime, but probably won't be spending much time in prison for it. A confession is not enough proof.)
The reason for the uproar wasn't so much that flat-rate pricing is a problem, but that the company switched the API functions that were previously global across any pricing plan to the $199/month plan. So even if you could justify $50/month or $100/month for their service, you didn't have the option. You already implemented the API and can only keep using that implementation with the $200/month service.

I don't even pay my payment gateway $200/month, and they do automated recurring billing and credit card data storage too.

At the same time, the competing subscriptions-as-a-service startups already offered flat rate pricing. The per-transaction pricing Recurly offered was their main differentiator to some of these alternatives. That's the reason so many bootstrappers chose them, so switching to a $200/month fixed cost with zero notice (time to switch) and no grandfathering was a hit right to their primary customer base.

Of course I can't say for sure that's who most of their users are, but the fact that they've now backpedaled again, removed their pricing page entirely and started apologizing to users seems to indicate it wasn't a good move for them.
Don't Bluetooth and 802.11b/g wifi both operate on the same 2.4Ghz spectrum? I'm pretty sure if you do a google (or duckduckgo) search on "bluetooth wifi interference" you'll find a lot of hits.
Wait so are you saying that flat rate is usually better than per-use from a biz perspective or vice-versa?

EDIT: I guess it depends. Flat rate seems like an attempt to get more cash upfront to cover costs initially. The problem is you are leaving money on the table with large customers and you're potentially leaving a lot of money on the table at that. Flat rate makes sense up to a point but is anything really truly unlimited?
This is clearly a juvenile attempt to troll a religious group for their beliefs. Everyone who values free speech and reason should support it.
Or http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5981/958
7 Simple Daily Changes to Improve Your Fitness
I was curious about the Recurly blog post you mentioned, so I looked it up. Here's the URL for anyone else: http://blog.recurly.com/2010/03/new-pricing/
GTV is running on Atom instead of ARM, the Android VM approach makes sense to me now.
Thanks JarekS,

Those sites are great for design, but I'm really after the UI's that get users to sign-up and get interested in the product.

More of a sales than design thing.
Really? You miss flash that badly?

Other than the occasional restaurant website, what are you missing? Most flash apps are very awkward on a phone, having been designed for a mouse. And most flash games apparently don't perform remotely acceptably on Android (not enough horsepower in the phone).

The remaining reason would be Hulu - but they won't stream to your phone, even with flash - since they don't have mobile distribution rights to the content.
If you have the dish network google TV can interface with the scheduler and your dvr. Hopefully more providers will come along as this develops.
I've switched over to Mog.com, which in many ways I actually prefer to Lala.
Why We Exist: Matter Wins Battle Over Antimatter
Please yell at your carrier. If Google had their way, every phone would already be on Android 2.1, but unfortunately carriers and manufacturers are still demanding to be in control of what firmware gets pushed to "their" devices.
That is why it is good to never act condescending or disrespectful towards anyone. That kid that you made fun of during the interview for not knowing some obscure feature from C could be buying your company in 10 years and you could end up working for him.

This is even more true in a relatively niche markets with a limited number of companies. Eventually everyones ends up knowing everyone, perhaps by meeting at trade shows or just word of mouth, and reputation and networking becomes very important.

The same goodwill goes for customers as well. Our company is loved because we go out of our way to please the customer. Even the customers that are fussy, mean and ignorant. We work weekends and evening on site to get them up and they always put in a good word for us. Aside from having a good product that is the only reason we've been around for 17+ years.
Applications currently can't be installed to the SD card at all (rooted/modded phones excepted). I don't know what say the user will have.

Many of the older phones have limited internal storage, which the newer releases don't easily fit into, so presumably some applications could be offloaded into SD storage to make upgrades possible.
Ask HN: HN Alternatives?
I love HN.

But HN is so news oriented it doesn't give me the kind of hacker/entrepreneur community that I'm envisioning.

What are some other sites where hackers/entrepreneur go to just to ...

- discuss early stage startup ideas

- brainstorm implementations and solutions

- give each other feedback on prototypes

... as suppose to commenting on news? I guess like a forum?

Reading news gets old after a while and makes me feel like I'm just a follower not a leader.

I'm planning to start a web community if there isn't one. I did a survey to see if people would be interested here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358654

But that post quickly got drown out by the noon news flood, which is part of the problem that I'm talking about.

(P.S. I do go to real-life meetups of hackers/founders. Those are great but scarce. The only good one I have been to so far in the Bay Area is "hackers and founders". And they don't even meet that often in San Francisco.)
The same thing was e-mailed to customers before it was posted on the blog.
It has the potential to be different in the way that building a 747 is different than breeding a bird to be able to carry people across the Pacific Ocean. Either may be possible, but it's different.
In our current world, full of colorful distractions, an education system that relies on self-discipline is obsolete.

Some students have a "discipline" trait, they'll force themselves through boring drudgery to get the A, then never look at the material again, the A is all that matters. That's a waste of time.

True "discipline" comes from having an interest in the material. That interest has to be sparked by something, the material gives you a buzz, and working on it does not feel like work. That's not something I'd call self-discipline.
"Really, it's the height of hubris to think that we can engineer something that works as well as what untold generations has evolved."

Why? Technological progress through logical deduction is patently more efficient than evolution through natural selection. Modern technology has already far surpassed the capabilities of natural organisms in a number of areas, all within a geologically minute timespan.

Just because a caterpillar can self-replicate, doesn't make it better than a car in every single respect, otherwise we'd be riding caterpillars to work. In terms of self-replication and regeneration, nature has us beat (for now). But if you want to send packets of information halfway around the globe, there is no biological process that comes anywhere close to our technological capability.

"(And I'll apologize for the tangent, but this is also the fatal conceit of those who believe that any central authority can manage our economy any better than the market can on its own.)"

But it can, or at least, a market with regulatory oversight is more efficient than a completely unregulated market place.

Natural environments and unregulated markets suffer from very similar problems. They don't magically gravitate toward the most efficient solution; very often they'll do incredibly stupid things that would leave an intelligent observer scratching their head.

However, natural selection does produce very robust ecosystems, which is why life has flourished for millions of years, and why caterpillars will outlast your car.

Logically, the best approach is to combine natural selection with intelligent oversight. Left to its own devices, an unregulated market has a tendency to fall into traps which benefits an individual or subgroup for a short time, but disadvantages the market in the long run. The Prisoner's Dilemma, the Tragedy of the Commons and the Market of Lemons are all common effects that can be circumvented by intelligent regulators, but would cause great damage to any market left to its own devices.
50 Examples of Beautiful Crowdsourced Logos
I can understand protesting against fundamentalists of any type. I was initially concerned this would offend and alienate moderate Muslims. But I have to wonder, would I be offended if someone protested extreme Christians that blow up abortion clinics? I don't think so, and in fact would support the protest. It's ok to protest the actions of a subset of a group. Level-headed people won't be offended.
Predicting who you will marry
For older Android phones like the G1, it has been difficult if not impossible to upgrade to 2.1 because the devices do not have enough space in ROM to store the entire firmware and userspace applications. There are a few custom firmwares that use an "Apps2SD" method of running applications from the SD card, but it tends to be flaky, and requires special partitioning from the user.

If 2.2 makes the Apps2SD method a reliable part of the core firmware, combined with the JIT/V8 performance boosts, it should be quite possible to breath new life into an older model with 2.2.
I worry more about the local police.

I was investigated for threatening to burn down the campus a couple of years ago. Supposedly I talked about it to someone on campus over the summer. I wasn't enrolled for summer classes and I hadn't been near the campus for 5 weeks when I was reported to have been there.

I can't count the number of times I've had my laptop banned from the school network because I plugged into a mis-labeled ethernet jack. I'm on some list with the system administrators. I've filed more bug reports than anyone else. On top of this I use an encrypted vpn to prevent them from eavesdropping on my traffic.

If the FBI wants to investigate me for my comments on this site, they are welcome to it.
For the same reason Boxee is coming out with a dedicated box. Plugging a PC into your TV, setting up a remote, setting up software, etc. is easy for computer geeks like us, but most of America (and I assume the world?) is still baffled on how to set the clock on their DVD player or microwave.

Not to mention most PC's are surprisingly loud when you leave them running in the living room (or bedroom) 24x7.
5 Interesting Data Articles
To be disappointed that they used existing DNA to do this is uninformed. We are so far away from synthesizing a completely novel form of life from scratch. This step is needed before we ever get close to designing our own cell — it's the leap from using hand tools to CNC.
> so there's nothing I could have "wanted" out of their apology

That you are consciously aware of. :)

(I bring it up because there have been some apologies I wasn't okay with when I didn't have a clear reason not to be.)
I lack the artistic skill to draw Mohammed. If I had the skill, my drawing would be of him rubbing himself down with peanut butter. The title would be "Mohammed, peanut butter upon him".
Hidepriv.com - Surf The Web Anonymously
I don't understand, you will never create a 747 with bird genes. In fact, they can do nothing with this technology that could not have been done by infinite monkeys with gene-splicing equipment. The only difference I see is the speed.
Because nothing supports the noble causes of free speech and reason, virtues that have inspired some of the most eloquent and passionate arguments throughout history, like juvenility and trolling.

Locke was in it for the lulz, no doubt.
Documentary about Adrian Lamo leaked. Also with Leo Laporte, Steve Woz
Embedly Releases a Wordpress Plugin
I think this whole thing is stupid.

Don't get me wrong - I think we should have the freedom to draw whatever the hell we want and be free from threats of deadly force. I think all the people who threatened physical harm to the original cartoonist are despicable, but this way of going about it is frankly extremely damaging.

Note: I am not Muslim, I am an atheist, and I want to apologize on behalf of atheists who have unfortunately chosen to participant in this disgusting farce. They do not speak for all of us. But, moving along...

Most Muslims are against violent reprisal. Are they offended? Yes, but like every other controversial issue in the world, only the extremists would go to the end of harming someone. The internet community that has fueled the popularity of EDMD is ignorant of this, and their numbers are muddied by the many racists and bigots also in participation for the wrong reasons. It's like if the KKK showed up at your political protest - there goes your credibility. As organizers of a principled stand for your rights, you need to make sure that your group cannot be conflated with racists, bigots, and other nasty people. The community around EDMD has done an extremely poor job at it (IMHO mostly because a lot of the core people spreading this around are themselves racist).

It is, frankly, juvenile, especially once you read some of the discussion by people who actually are participating in this.

Imagine if a group of atheists firebombed a church for making fun of atheism, and the Christians' response is instituting a "mock atheism day". Does this solve any problems? Does it create more understanding? Does this help improve the view, from either side, that most people are actually reasonable, sane people?

No, it simply promotes more polarizing viewpoints, more extremism, and eventually more violence from both sides. It is counterproductive and I'm embarrassed that so many atheists, who like to proclaim themselves freethinkers, have gotten on this bandwagon.

This isn't a principled stand in response to extremist action - this is an indiscriminate melee of offensive content that is not targeted at the groups and people actually responsible for making threats against people's lives for their expression. Speaking to my Muslim friends, they are as appalled by the violence of extremists as we are - the correct course of action is to work with moderate and liberal Muslims to combat the actions of extremists, not to alienate and offend the allies we need most.
What I meant was, without the direct link, you wouldn't have ever seen the story, not that the page would have 404d.
They controlled for IQ, but they didn't control for desire. Some people want to make good grades for pride, to impress their parents, etc.. Others would rather do something other than the busy work required to be in the 94th percentile as shown in the graph. There is no difference between getting As and Bs in 8th grade. Colleges mainly look at grades in 9-12.
I love how Wired post a direct link to the pirate bay just in case someone who reads wired can't navigate to TPB and find it themselves :-)
> The current idea seems to be "Do whatever the hell you want", and if enough people get mad "apologize profusely and come out looking like you really care about your customers." Facebook has practically turned this into an art.

Selection bias perhaps? This isn't anything new.
Google TV Vs. Apple TV Is Android Vs. iPhone Round 2