skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No, a domain can't read cookies set by another domain.

Here's how it works: a publisher (eg. 'travel.com') will place a snippet of JS or an image from a tracker (eg. 'tracker.com') on its site - anything to initiate a HTTP request. The HTTP response from 'tracker.com' will set a 'tracker.com' cookie in your browser. This cookie will contain a unique identifier, which links to a backend database at 'tracker.com', which will now contain the fact that you visited 'travel.com'. Sometimes 'travel.com' will use JS to add parameters to the HTTP request to 'tracker.com', to pass things like gender or age or location, should they know that about you. This information is also added to the database at 'tracker.com', keyed to the unique identifier in your cookie.

You'll then go to another site, which will make a request for an advertisement. The request might be directly to 'tracker.com', or it might be to another domain which will return JS which will then force an HTTP request to 'tracker.com'... there could be many redirects, but an HTTP request to 'tracker.com' is involved, which automatically contains the unique identifier in your cookie.

'Tracker.com' then uses that unique ID to look up what it knows about you, potentially supplements that with location based off your IP address, and potentially appends some guesses about demographic info made from the content of the site you're visiting and the type of folks that tend to live in your ZIP code. It then uses all of this (or passes all of this on to another party) to select a related advertisement. That's why you see ads for cars after visiting car sites, and ads for travel after visiting travel sites.

There's nuances, of course, but that's the gist of it.
Yea, I really gotta look into that!
This article is just a small subset of the photos available. The Library of Congress has many more on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/721576...
Tell the difference: Kindle software or Commodore 64?
By the way, full source code available at: http://github.com/cloudhead/thingler
Diffr: Difference between two strings. Online. Beta
One thing that's always piqued my curiosity is the old handwriting seen in these photos. Look at #6 and #30.

You see a lot of this style of handwriting pre-WWII, then it disappears. What changed?
On the iPad I find the portrait keyboard much better than the landscape keyboard. Not great, or even good, but good enough for simple tasks. I avoid using my iPod Touch for text input at all costs. I expect this is an area where everyone's mileage will vary considerably.

I suspect there is room for improvement via keyboard scaling/tuning for different size hands and input needs. I _really_ wish I could drag and drop my own keys onto the various keyboard layouts...
We view it as hard compared to what we have now. However, not having that comparison -- did people back then actually think life was hard? Or was it just normal?
I'm not particularly familiar with modern Japanese history, but wasn't the culture more amenable to entrepreneurialism in the postwar years?
I've got Stats 101 knowledge, biostats in fact, but perhaps I've misapplied it here. I'm at work now, so I'll maybe revisit my thinking later.
I think you're underestimating the value of authenticity, especially within the right demographic.

Bingo Card Creator (correct me if I'm wrong) is primarily targeted at a demographic that is friendly to small business. An attempt in this market to appear like big-faceless-megacorp will, as this study proved, hamper your results.

The old logo may not look terribly good, but what it says to me is: authentic small business run by some dude who sure appreciates my business.

It always surprises me how many small companies try so hard to appear big, when in fact there's so much value in projecting that of the underdog.
So... Does the active/total file descriptor ratio ever go above .6? It looks like from Zed's tests that below that ratio epoll is invariably faster, and above that ratio poll is. Pretty straightforward, and Zed did a terrific job of elucidating the key distinction.

The natural question at this point is whether that ratio ever does go above .6, and honestly... I have no idea because I don't even really know what active or total file descriptors are! But it seems like it should be easy to find out, if people just ran a few tests, yeah?

I only bring this question up because the last section of the article asks why everyone just assumed epoll was always faster. A potential answer is that if the ratio never goes above .6 then epoll IS always faster.

In any case, I have no vested interest - as I said I don't even really know what these things are. I'm just trying to understand the human side about why people believe what they do.
MBAs are sophisticated thinkers that can create high quality business plans

HAHAHA This person has clearly never been to an MBA school. If only my peers were sophisticated thinkers. I'd say less than 10% of MBAs are sophisticated thinkers (and by extension great problem solvers) and those 10% are the ones you WANT to hire. The MBAs who can just churn out business plans - forget those.
I don't work in such an environment, so what is the proper response to a ticket that took a week to process and is closed with no useful detail? Open another ticket to ask for more detail on why the previous ticket was closed?
"Really? Is this what it has come to? I bought an iPhone 3G on day one, used it until the Nexus One came out, and have recently gone back to iOS and bought an iPhone 4."

I think you are misreading what the "writing on the wall" is. It is not the end of the iPhone. Instead it is "the smartphone world will remain multi-polar, and the iPhone's domination is not a predetermined conclusion". Pundits like Gruber developed a cocky swagger of being on the "right", winning team, on some sort of morally justified religious campaign.

"Because I know someone will yell "provide examples," here are some superior iOS apps that have no rival on Android"

I would not at all debate that the overall app ecosystem on the iPhone is superior to Android, largely owing to its early lead, yet the gap is rapidly narrowing. Very rapidly.

However, to your specific examples, Dropzone of course allows local saving (just to prove I'm not insane, I just did it). The official twitter client is now considered the premiere version (it was developed by Google). RealCalc is a close-to-perfect calculator and conversion application (does it have a spinner? No. Do I want that in a calc/conv app? Of course not). Mail in Android 2.2 is superb, and the GMail client is unrivaled. There are hundreds of note taking apps, most of them excellent. Personally I think the Android calendaring app is excellent.

I think your examples are very weak, and most smell of being a pre-2.2 analysis. Where you are absolutely and overwhelmingly right is games, where iOS has a massive lead, owing to the wide disparity in hardware capabilities of Android devices, and many devs targeting the lowest common denominator.
If your company is obligated to follow regulations like those set forth in something like PCI standards, then devs will certainly not have access to production.

Otherwise, good practice could be to have everything automated in the production env...whatever you're doing on production, make it as scripted/automated as possible. That way, you're forced to examine your processes ahead of time.
Craigslist's shame: Child sex ads
This might be obvious to most people here, but what do you consider to be their user-hostile policies with starcraft 2?
Not to mention the whole subtle warning to Google not to implement multi-touch. Google finally opened up that can of worms after the organizations had a falling out.
There is no "official" computer museum in my city. There are a couple private collectors with interesting artifacts and there is a group that is trying to establish a "real", curated, computer museum, but so far there is nothing definitive.

You also know not everybody lives on or close to Mountain View ;-)

You should also take into consideration all geographic differences in computing machinery. There were computers in Asia, Eastern Europe or South America that simply are not available elsewhere. A friend of mine has one of the few Macintosh clones (68K, Fat Mac-like) ever made and from that machine we can prove Apple's allegations to the DoJ against the Brazilian manufacturer were false - they removed the reverse-engineered ROM and put an original ROM inside the machine in order to show they were copies.

Those little moments will end up lost if we don't take care.

If we fail, one day our descendants will sing songs about the Whalers on the Moon and their heroic exploits.
My mom was in born in 1929, and she once told me that people didn't smile in photographs in that era because shutter speeds were slow. Smiles would end up as blurs, so people were encouraged not to do it.
I can't recall where I heard/read that, but I seem to remember some psychology research that proposed that the psychologically damaging thing about the search you describe is not actually the search itself, but precisely the fact that you can't do anything about it.

IIRC, the conclusion of that research was something along the lines of: to completely destroy someone's self-confidence/emotional stability, all you need to do is that every day, for five minutes, at the same time, five people appear out of nowhere and hold him down, without harming him, for five minutes. If you do that every day for a year or two, you'll have a remnant of a human being at the end (in most cases).

My father works with victims of "mobbing" (basically bullying at work). One of his clients was a normal office worker who was being bullied by the security guard at work. Every morning, the security guard would single him out for a pat down search - every single morning. Apparently the guy was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time my dad saw him.
I moved from SF to Boston about six months ago.

SF is a great place to build a startup, but a lousy place to live. I never felt like I could really be myself there (despite meeting hundreds of supposedly like-minded people).

Bostonians are far less friendly on the surface, but man, you can really get to know them. People are nerdy, intellectual, informed (and not just about tech), opinionated, and largely quite sane.

The pace of the city is slower, too, in a way that I appreciate. When I go to a tech event here, I'll often meet someone and spend an hour locked in conversation with them. That kind of deep, engaged conversation never happened in SF, where people are perpetually on the go, and cutting from one thing to the next.

Outside of work, Boston (and by this I specifically mean Cambridge and Somerville -- or "Camberville" as we call it) is the best place in the country to be a nerd. The place is filled with swing dancers, LARPers, grad students, cult movie screenings, comic book and game shops, and quite possibly more CTY alumni than any other city.

Simultaneously, we've got a lot of general culture, too -- lectures, theater, good food, and so on.

Stuffy and introverted? Sure, a bit. But you can get past that quickly, and discover a wonderful place to live.
Anyone consider the idea that they might be successful despite their 'ugly' design?
Is there a list of airports (terminals?) where these scanners are being used? I visit family in the UK a couple of times a year, usually by plane, but this is one of the reasons we're taking the car & ferry on the upcoming trip. And yeah, I strongly hope the Tory & LibDem government make good on their civil liberty promises and then some.
If it weren't for the "hard-times", our perceived happiness levels are likely to be pretty similar. The people from 1940 probably looked at the black-and-white photos of the Civil War era, and thought how hard it must have been to live in a world without cars and planes.

For all we know, the next generation will think back on us 2010-folk and think "could you believe it took 5 hours to cross the country by plane?!"
The Golden Football and the Economics of Groupon
While I agree that Martin is excellent, be aware that this is a book in a series that has not been (may not be) finished yet.
If you're one of the few people who have their body scans leaked, you'll be a sort of celebrity. If you're one of the many, it'll be no big deal.

The scan pose and false-colors are so clinical that any such image wouldn't be titillating. I suppose it might reveal an embarrassing piercing/implant/deformity. ("OMG! He has a tail!")

As a mechanism for harassment of public figures, it seems less harmful than photoshopped fake nude (or other compromising position) pictures -- and you can't stop those, and they're more likely to mislead the unwary.

I'm concerned about the idea that an arbitrarily detailed personal search can be required before travel -- but that concern applies at least as much to pat-downs and carry-on-searches as body-scans. In fact, probably more, because while we all have naked bodies, an agent rifling through my carry-on sees my books and personal effects -- unique to me.
I'm working on a program that uses the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface to stop charging my netbook battery to 100%, thus shortening its life. Instead, it will start charging at 40% and stop at 60%. There will be an option to charge to 100% in case I need a full charge to work off the grid. There will also be an option to turn off the charging as sometimes the dual load of charging the battery and running the computer trips the circuit breaker of the power supply at an airplane seat.
Love it. We use it as the primary entertainment (education?) device for our 6-month-old daughter. She'll pay attention to the flash card app whereas she's quickly distracted with paper flash cards. We also have a few sing-along book apps that highlight the words as they are sung. She's just starting to figure out that she can touch it but her fine motor skills aren't quite there yet.

My favorite app is a purple dinosaur that repeats anything you say in a higher-pitched voice. She'll spend ten minutes alternating between making baby sounds then pausing for the dinosaur to repeat them.
> Nick was living in 81 square feet in a 3 bedroom in a beautiful brownstone in Park Slope for under $800. Living out here is costing him more money.

Yes, but at least you get more than 81 square feet!
I think perhaps HN readers don't know that Sallie Mae is the quasi-private entity that originates a large portion of student loans in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLM_Corporation

The joke is that he is $50,000 in debt, so half his net worth is -$25,000, so he will donate that debt to the United Way.

I thought it was funny in the "clever-funny" way that usually garners upvotes.
I wonder who the so-called experts in this field are that will be directing the coursework?
In case it's interesting to anyone else, here's a more trusted link to the Alexa and Quantcast top 1M sites lists:

http://www.seobook.com/download-alexa-top-1-000-000-websites...
Anyone bought the WiFi only version and regretted not getting the 3G?
You beat me to it, except I think it's more HuffPo or Flipboard. Maybe looking at old photos can be used to find start-up ideas.
Ask HN: What skills do employers usually ask for in internships
I'm a computer science student and I am going to start looking for internships by this fall so I could start next January if I find any.
I'm wondering what technical skills employers usually look for in students. I definitely have no preference as to what specific field I get into right now but I see myself getting into the networking/data communications field in the future when I graduate.

I'm no genius nor a hotshot programmer, just the average joe who's very passionate about programming. I know a little about a lot of things (Java, C, C++, Python, Windows, Linux, etc) because I believe that I have my whole lifetime to master some or a few of those.

If you have any general advice regarding getting my first internship, by all means, please pitch in. Thanks!
Jason Freedman attended Dartmouth.
How do you know this light doesn't suck? So far you're 3 for 3 on sucky lights, and you haven't tried this new one.

If there's a review for the new one that says, "This doesn't suck," then there's probably a review for your previous 3 that says the same thing...
If there any substance -- for example, a deodorant or lotion with a specific ingredient -- which would allow drawing a picture or words on your body for the scan-reviewers to see?
The Internet Revealed: A film about IXPs
DHH: "Ruby is French and Java is German" vid at 08:10
Er. It's diff. In a web page.

What am I missing?
I own my iPad for almost 2 months now, and I still love it.

I use it primarily for email (default app) and reading (Kindle + GoodReader) during my commute to work. I watched a couple of movies on it during some recent long flights, it was a much better experience than watching on my laptop mainly due to the amazing battery life. I also play some games on it - FlightControl, RealSoccer, some Chess app.....but not a lot.

I do not use it at all for photos (due to the pain of copying pics over, and no real use case) or music (my iPhone is much more useful for that).

Strong positives: Great reading device, amazing battery life, very good screen, much lighter than my laptop.

Complaints: Can't do any real work on it (the touch keyboard is a pain), and it could have been a bit more lighter (~0.5 kg ideally)
Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/classic

Ranked according to the votes cast by members with higher karma, I think.
The (unfortunate) third option is not flying, or at least not commercially and via airlines.
While witty enough as a throwaway comment, I disagree and recommend IJ to anyone who likes nested (recursive!), variable scope humor. The experimental portions of it do not thrill me except insofar as they are amusing.

The novel is a sort of intersection of so funny it hurts and it hurts so much it's funny.

The eponym of the title is apt for one of the viewpoint characters, who is unable to communicate by the end of the story (beginning of the book), and much more so his father, who is a very type of Yorick: mute by being dead, of excellent fancy, etc.
Looks good. Although, playing around with it, I found that sometimes it randomly multiplied some of my items. Weird
I love how people are using it for chat.
I've found this light to be fantastic:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002CMLDT6/ref=noref?ie=UTF...

very adjustable, read hundreds of hours with it, no glare problems.
I'm loving mine. I mostly use it as a reader and a convenient way to get around the web without pulling out my notebook.

Shameless plug: since you mention GoodReader, I'd like to point out that we've written a PDF reader called Folio ~ The PDF Reader, more details about which can be found at http://ballisticpigeon.com/folio, which does an excellent job with technical PDFs. In particular, we do up-front fulltexting of your whole library and let you search across it as well as providing very fast results (with context, highlighting, etc.) inside documents. We do the usual family of things you'd expect (Dropbox and MobileMe integration, integration with iTunes and Mail, etc.), but you can find out more about that on our website.

Bonus: iPhone version (as a universal binary, free upgrade) coming soon.
Have had mine for a month or so. Love my 3G iPad for mobile use as I don't have a modern smartphone.

Haven't synced any photos, music or videos as iTunes is atrocious and I really don't care to deal with it at all (except for OS updates)

App store organization and usability is also atrocious. I I have yet to be able to find games applicable to my pre-school aged kids. The process is completely random now, trial and error which is great when you have an impatient 4 year old and a crying 2 year old.

I've bought 1 app for $0.99. A Craigslist app which I like but it feels silly considering I can browse the same data via the web.

I'm now traveling so I wish I did have some photos and video that I could use to entertain the kids (since I can't find good games!) and also myself as I have no TV late at night.

I expected some dual use for business/sales meetings (I'm a web developer) but have yet to pull it out for that reason.

Also feel kinda douchey telling/showing people about it so that has me concerned as most see it as a very expensive toy (which it is).

Have to say not having Flash has been somewhat of an issue. Also some web apps like Google Analytics don't seem to work at all.
I think they are used to banks giving them next to nothing on interest for their savings.
The iPad has been out for two weeks here in the Netherlands, I bought it on release-date.

I now read all my feeds on my iPad or iPhone. Reeder makes this awesome and syncs between the two. This frees up a lot of "check for new feeds" time on my main pc, a.k.a. procrastinating.

Reading, using stanza or Kindle is great.

What I'm disappointed about is the app offerings. No facebook app? No spotify app? No skype app?! As you said it's been four months since it's out. The lack of apps is just...wtf. (That being said, the available apps are top notch: Flipboard, Reeder, IMDb, Eyewitness etc.)
I definitely think this is standard operating procedure. I've had tons of people shit on my idea. In fact, it sounds like you haven't put yourself out there that much yet (in the online world, that is) and so I'd expect a lot more shit as you do.

It's not pleasant but it does get easier as time goes on. For one, if your blog posts get on Reddit or Digg or even HN (depending) - DON'T read them. People get nasty when they're on social media sites. On YOUR site it's all "I disagree completely and I don't think it will work" and on a social media site it sounds like "She's an ugly hoe-bag who is so stupid for ever thinking of this and deserves to die". Trust me, don't read them.

As soon as you get a nastygram on your own site, either a comment or an email, delete it. Don't respond because that just feeds the beast.

This article really helped me:
http://blog.asmartbear.com/distinguishing-constructive-criti...

Oftentimes it comes in the form of "friendly" business advice. Everyone wants to tell me to start doing X, Y and Z and that's the only way my business will succeed and all the advice basically boils down to "do what I do" even if they're not successful. But you can't be everyone else, you just have to do what's right for you.

So in this case I'd just say "Ok, thanks for your input." and never contact him again.
Make friends with some sysadmins. When the gears aren't spinning, ping them on IM to find out why. Usually there's a very good reason for that.

Sysadmins are your friends if you treat them well, like human beings, and you respect their work. If you treat them like a ticket processing machine, or worse, like an obstacle, you'll struggle.

I learned this from 4 years of deploying apps at UBS (one of the world's largest banks), which had exactly this kind of ticketing system (called GCMS, iirc). I was IRC-pals with 3 different sysadmins in 3 different continents (yes, there was an internal IRC system), and so whenever things got stuck in the pipes, I could ask them to have a look in the system and see what was going on. As for the other sysadmins, I always treated them courteously, used the ticket system, and got the necessary approvals whenever I could.

The one downside of this is I ended up being stuck managing lots of deployments, because I was good at it.
Go for it then. Patrick is making about $4,000 per month. If you think you can do better in 3 days then, you stand to make a fortune. So why haven't you done it?
Isn't this an offense? Can't they be sued for lying to the public? Why do they get to get away with this?
Hey, at least the substance is there... if this situation is as you characterized it, I see it as a rather massive breach of trust on the part of Tumblr. The tone might be regrettable, but that's a minor concern.
I'm glad you found apps for your kids because I haven't had luck. How did you find these apps? Research via the web, random searching via the app store or what?