skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article is a crock IMO.

For background, there are almost 2m applications annually for green card/citizenship, and roughly 2000 prosecutions for immigration fraud.

[extract quoted from memo]
In other words, USCIS is specifically instructing its agents to attempt to “friend” citizenship petitioners and their beneficiaries on social networks in the hope that these users will (perhaps inadvertently) allow agents to monitor their activities for evidence of suspected fraud...

Well, if your job is to investigate suspected fraud...

First, the memo makes no mention of what level of suspicion, if any, an agent must find before conducting such surveillance, leaving every applicant as a potential target.

Right...because determinations about whether an application is suspicious will be made before the case file is sent to FDNS. You can browse (almost) all of the Adjudicator's field manual to find out what criteria are used to make that determination; the current version is accessible via http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...

Nor does the memo address whether or not DHS agents must reveal their government affiliation or even their real name during the friend request (...)

True, but then they're not obliged to wear uniforms or travel in marked cars either.

Second, and perhaps more disturbing, the memo assumes a user’s online profile always accurately reflects her offline life.

No, it says that this is '[g]enerally' the case. It's an outdated 2 page 'did you know?' bulletin, not the guiding legal authority of immigration investigation.

Unfortunately, this memo suggests there’s nothing to prevent an exaggerated, harmless or even out-of-date off-hand comment in a status update from quickly becoming the subject of a full citizenship investigation.

Doubtless there will be a few false positives, but that's why appeal procedures exist. Again, this division's job is to investigate applications that look dubious to begin with; it's not as if the rest of the agency rubber stamps everything sent in to them and FDNS just picks out cases at random, any more than the EFF makes FOIA requests for random document numbers and hopes for the occasional interesting find.
My wife and I had a very smooth, easy interview. We had 30-40 photos (with family and just us), lots of joint accounts/bills, and all the paperwork they require. The couple in the cubicle next to us was however being grilled like it was the Spanish Inquisition. They didn't have any of the paperwork right, barely had any pictures, and had no joint accounts/bills. Makes it hard to prove you live together in a legitimate marriage, regardless of your circumstances.

My advice would be to get all the paperwork filled out exactly right and take extra copies of every single original document. If they want to keep a copy of your electric bill, you can just hand one over.
Pssst....Wanna buy some cool laser technology?
My guess after seeing that: big, flashy buttons are a "better" way to lure kids in ... ? (If anybody remembers, kids sites also have the largest amount of trackers, so that would somehow nicely complement that "design strategy".)
A 10/GUI style horizontal window scroll is quite feasible with the new touch mouse and trackpad.
‘Alien’ Prequel Rewrite By Damon Lindelof, Could Star Natalie Portman
Conversations: Jon Bentley (2008)
I didn't suggest it as a product name; I just said "Panther" and "Jaguar" both describe the same animal, so it shouldn't be a problem for "Cougar" and "Puma" to describe the same animal.

Incidentally, "Panther" was the first Mac OS X to be released in a black box instead of a white box, and they used shots of black panthers (the cat, not the political group) to promote 10.3. I think they were obviously playing with the allusion even then.
It was three months ago to the day that we announced our private beta. We were thrilled to see thousands of people sign up for the beta. We've worked hard to improve the product over the last three months based on their feedback and we're now ready to come out of beta and launch to the public!

Our goal is to make it as easy as humanly possible for you to create and run A/B tests on your site. All you need to do is enter your website URL and point and click on what you want to change. Absolutely no coding or engineering required. You don't even need to create an account to get started.

We're working hard to improve the product every day based on your feedback-- just reply to this comment or shoot us an email at feedback at optimizely dot com and let us know what you think!
That is possible.

It is also possible that Ohloh's tracking is not perfect. They can't track things that haven't been reported to them, and that process can take time. So I'd expect under reporting of recent changes. (Not necessarily as much as we see though.)
Not faceBOOK, faceTIME.
"Pad" was met with extreme derision by female tech journalists, their "me too" male counterparts and anyone on Jezebel.

I'm sure Apple's brand is strong enough to overcome the current connotations.
This is a really sweet product. Congrats on the launch!
As an Android consultant I'm always amazed at how much clients underestimate the effort involved in putting together a high quality "simple" app. It's actually worse for Android, for some reason clients can't fathom paying the same for Android as they pay for iPhone apps. I always have to explain that it is no easier creating an Android app than an iPhone app. Of course people get what they pay for which is probably why the quality of Android apps in general is so poor.
New Apple patent awarded for anti-sexting technology
$ cp_playlist.py countryfun /media/non_ipod_player <Tab> <Enter>

As I said, I can't sync iTunes to my mp3 player since a) it's not an iPod due to this anti-feature http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1202 and b) my music doesn't fit.
i have been working on something similar to this:

http://www.searchstream.co
I've seen surprisingly few news sites doing this.

Google's new search-preview-thing is somewhat along the same lines, although it doesn't actually take you to the same content as the other links.
The follow-up question is "Why users disable JS?".

How many do it unintentional because they think JS is Java(applets ...), or the browser does not support it.

I'm also wondering how many people change the advanced JS settings in the browser (do browser other than Firefox even support them?).

I'm one of those 2% for different reasons(open for discussion):
- it blocks 90% of ads, because most banners are JS driven
- I consider JS as a privacy and security vulnerability
- disabled JS saves bandwidth

It never takes more than 2 seconds to get an idea if a page does work without JS, and another 2 seconds to decide if it is worth it to enable JS.
That's 2% I could do without, no problem.
Instagram Captures 100,000 Mobile Photo Addicts In Less Than A Week
I think working on your startup are hours spent working towards a greater potential outcome than hours spent working in a corporation. There's more of a reward (sometimes) to starting your own company.
I agree the description is a little unfair, but the point is sound.

This is how it should work

1. User clicks download link
2. Browser downloads a standard cross-platform .zip file, decompresses in a temporary directory
3. Browser notifies OS.
4. OS looks in Info.plist for instructions on where to install, possibly mpkg for more complex installers
5. OS prompts user for permission to install and possibly run the app, or passes user over to Installer.app for complex installs
6. Temporary files are deleted

From the user's perspective it would work like this

1. Click download link
2. Click "Install and Run"
Asp.net padding oracle: impact on asp.net MVC and PHP
I'm confused by what you're saying here - do you have a keyboard with '#' as a primary key? Every keyboard I've ever used requires shift-3 to generate a '#'.

Your reference to 3rd level keys seems to refer to an international keyboard. Is your keyboard not a U.S. layout?
In comparison, the first version of Dayta took a week of around 12 hour days. At $100/hr (I think you could find someone great, who works for that rate or less- hint: students), that's less than <$10000.

Of course Dayta is much less of an endeavor, but don't be phased because of the price of developing one of the best iOS apps out there.
Over-engineering - the most common, hidden cost.
"The deal marks a big leap forward in social search"

It of course also marks a big leap in data mining.
Their tracking is probably imperfect, but it seems like a reasonable indicator. I'm still waiting to see if their data has some flaw, or maybe if github has more.

However, that data wasn't the point, just an indicator.
Well, then I'm left with two copies and I have to go back and delete one. If OSX had a cut/paste, that might work better. Even so, with the way Finder currently works, it's easy to have 10-15 Finder windows going at any moment, so cmd+` can be a pain.
Email needs to embrace its inner Lady GaGa
A undo functionality would be super sweet!

"Also on the front page: when you enter a URL and hit enter on your keyboard you are taken to some TechCrunch article :)" ... well scratch that, it does not happen any more.

Great job otherwise, I'm "selling" this to my boss tomorrow :)
The simpler you make something, the more perfect the execution of each of the remaining elements have to be, because your attention is now laser-focused on them.
It's a great product, we have been using it at Shopify with great success. Fantastic news that it's available to everyone now!
Actually I think most open source doesn't depend on companies paying someone to work on it. I also think that during an economic down turn you see more. But, that's just my experience and (like you) I have no data to back it.
This is a list of sites I sign into using Google as my OpenId provider. That's not the same as having "Access [to] Your Google Account".
for my sins I have been making mobile apps for over 6 years, the original problems we had explaining to clients about fragmentation in J2ME was even worse as Java was sold as write once run anywhere, A similar thing now happens with iPhone OS variants where people just see it as a "iPhone app"

The real skill is in explaining why this is difficult and actually how much design work needs to be undertaken to make these "simple, clean" looking apps

However it has to be said there are some quick wins for mobile apps that can be achieved quickly, however something like twitterific which is probably one of the top 2% of iPhone applications the effort expended is not that surprising unfortunately
http://www.Garmz.com start your own fashion label - you design fashion, we provide the rest

ah damnit its two. no sequoia for me :(
Keep in mind, they are assuming an hourly rate of $150. However, this does put into perspective any jerk offering 5% equity for a developer who creates their "simple iPhone app."
This one stood out to me:

> 5. Starving your muse

Care to elaborate? Looks like something worth thinking about.
Ask HN: I have 15 years of horse racing data what should I do with it?
The data covers 203,916 races. I have info trainer, jockey, individual horses, betting odds, and a multitude of other things. I have a few ideas for what I can do with it, but thought I'd get some input before starting work on it.
Add MacPorts (/opt/local/bin) to the front of your path and you have fully updated versions of all of your favorite UNIX goodies such as Emacs, Clang and Python.
Don't let a professional app like Twitterrific discourage you from taking a dive into iDevice dev.

Prior to writing my iPhone app, I had 0 experience doing iPhone or Objective-C dev (I do have a comp sci degree which did help a ton.) All told it took me and my partner around 70 hours of dev/design work (some of that was me reading HCI guidelines for the iPhone.) We spent around $200 on an icon package, $75ish on an anti-hack kit, and had some server costs that got absorbed elsewhere.

It was a fun project and something we'll continue to play with in our spare time.
Perhaps. Have you given the BSDs a try?
Unfortunately, you'd also:

- get spammed by those dealers in a heartbeat, for 2-12 months after submitting the lead, even if you end up buying a car!

- have to manage the negotiations over email, with at least 3 dealers if you want to be sure you're getting a good price (clearly possible, but not easy)

- have to compare non-standardized "quotes", some of which are nothing more than a one-liner to the effect of "I'll sell you a 2011 Honda Accord for $22,390" with no mention of options

- convince each dealer that another dealer gave you a better offer

- go through a lot more back-and-forth than is necessary (to give each dealer the same feedback, to get them to lower their prices, etc.)

If you've never used the lead system for buying a car, I encourage you to try it with a fake email address and phone number so you can see how bad it is.

Some sites will sell your information not just to car dealers, but to mortgage companies, insurance companies, etc. It's not a pleasant experience.

At the end of the day, though, some people prefer not to pay for convenience and that's totally fine.

However, if you're hesitant because you think you might not get what you want, I encourage you to check out our 100% Happiness Guarantee:

http://carwoo.com/guarantee

We're very serious about making sure each customer is happy at the end of the day and if they're not, they get their money back. No questions asked. It's only fair.
It takes more time than anyone really thinks to do anything really well.
Wow, some of the comments about the costs there are flat out insulting. A well done app is going to take time and money to create and polish, and a simple app is almost always anything but simple. Twitteriffic is a well done, "simple", polished app, and $250k seems like a good number to me.

Personally, I'm still learning how to bill my time out properly. I've got a serious case of underestimatitis. Maybe Craig's numbers will help me understand how much time I really spend on a project.
The data dumps are in an xml format, you don't need SQL Server to work with the data.
I'm not being snarky but if A and B are your experience, you're doing it wrong.

Let's say Popular Website A can give you 100,000 views and charges I dunno $35 CPM. Less Popular Sites B, C and D may only be charging $10 CPM, and you can get the same number of ad views in aggregate by placing ads across all of them. You'll have to work harder to find them, but I generally assume people who have no money have a lot of time when it comes to marketing.

As an example, I know of a site for wedding photographers with good numbers that will give you an entire year of sidebar ad placement for $275. (Drop me a mail on my contact form, I'll send you a link.)

To answer your other questions, don't worry about the dogfood at all. And no, affiliate prgrams are really hard to sell to individual site owners; they're generally not setup for it, don't understand it, and don't think it will work. The sales cycle on your part is way too long.
Thanks for the feedback!

We've actually just implemented Undo! It didn't make it into the demo video but if you click on the little upside triangle next to a variation's title (e.g. "Variation #1") you have an option to Undo or Redo. There are keyboard shortcuts as well!

As for the front page, is it possible you accidentally hit tab and then enter? If you hit enter right away, it works. If you hit tab, it changes focus to the first testimonial link on the page which is that TC article. We'll fix this so it doesn't happen in the future.

Thanks again for the feedback!
Wich formats are available?
Because .mov it's not very standard...
For the past 6 years I've used Thinkpad T40, T41 and T42s exclusively. These models tend to have solid hardware support under Linux and FreeBSD including suspend/resume and wireless.

I've come to accept the fact that every couple years I do some serious damage to my laptop, so it's a huge plus if 1) I can replace parts myself and 2) I can cheaply and easily buy a replacement laptop if the thing is totalled. Both are the case with Thinkpads. The aftermarket is still healthy, I have no problem finding T40-T42s here for about $200.

Between repairs, battery upgrades every few years, and the few times I've had to replace a laptop wholesale, my cost of ownership is probably about $200 / year.

YMMV, but I've found this setup more than adequate for coding & browsing, and have no reason to upgrade to a newer model.
The iPad example may be a bit of an anomaly because it was going to take 9 weeks / 60 days no matter what.

If Apple had given them 30 days, they would have released a product on iPad day 1 that cost half the money.
The UI is not intuitive. You need some messages that help the user navigate and use the site effectively. Right now I m just clicking around trying to make sense of it. (you could include messages with a "Dont show this again" option)
Thanks for all that :)
I think it is very important for people to know that CPI is not inflation, it is not even a measure of inflation. At best-- and that is, if it were not so greatly "massaged", it would be a measure of the impact of trailing inflation on prices with the effect of productivity increases removed. But even that ignores international money flows.

Inflation is increase in the money supply. So the best measure was the money aggregates that the government used to publish. (Though I'm not sure how accurate they were.)

This may sound like semantics, but it is this constant under-reporting of inflation that is distorting the market. If you measure monetary inflation and work against that, a capitalist system is much more effective. By replacing "inflation" with "CPI" in people's minds, so many people have been led astray and many economic calculations come out wrong.

But this is beneficial for government that wants to print money to support deficit spending without limitation... and so they publish an essentially completely fabricated CPI number. then when you talk about inflation being %20, people say "LOL U Stupid. Inflation %1!!!!!"

To predict how prices will go, you project the likely increase in productivity over the next year and the amount of inflation over the last year... but even then, this is ignoring the massive holdings of dollars and treasuries overseas -- which really represent past inflation that whose effects we avoided via the bretton woods and other agreements. If confidence in the dollar continues to drop, those dollars will continue to come home to roost, goosing price changes even higher over the amount caused by the significant deficit spending (and consequent money printing that increases the money supply) minus relatively small increases in efficiency.

The noose around the dollar's neck is the accumulated decades of inflation that have been exported overseas. If it becomes untenable to continue holding them, then a selling panic will likely occur as nobody wants to be the last one holding the bag.

This is what happened with greece. The US is approaching greece in terms of debt levels and given that it appears the federal reserve is buying a large chunk of the treasuries at each auction (under the table, of course, as if this word got out it would immediately cause what I'm describing) the game can go on for only so long.

2008 was not the financial crisis. The financial crisis is in the dollar, which is the mother of all bubbles. I believe, that less than %10 of treasuries have a greater than a year, which means that %90 of the debt is being rolled over each year.
seems like hacker events would be a thing for YC to track.

it would be great if there was an ical feed based on keywords.

a few years ago i bought the domain name hackerweekend.com, but maybe there is a better domain.

if it doesn't exist anyone want to build it?
You can always just search Stack Overflow directly (I consider it to have an adequate search engine), which is easily done in Chrome by typing stackoverflow.com (often only the first two characters), tab, and then your query.
> 9 variations of cat faces, mercifully none of them include a LOL.

That would require standardizing the Impact font.
It's actually a bit harder to create an Android app of comparable quality, isn't it?

Apple gives you a boatload of really thoughtful, usable UI classes. What I've read is that Android's SDK UI code isn't nearly as substantial or mature. Can you confirm if this is the case?

edit: Then there's Core Data for object modeling and persistence, which is a huge time saver. Is there an Android analog of this with comparable power?
Yes, for the benefit of those applying, I would also echo that currently immigration interviews usually are fairly straightforward.

But it is still very important to consider the issue for society and individuals when an agency has "wide latitude" when it does decide it's time to investigate.
Well, do consult a professional if you're not sure about anything. As Chime says, not having the paperwork straight is going to upset them, and it's a lot of paperwork. Forgetting a form or failing to mention something can be expensive later.
What about the possibility of the emergence of distributed version control? Perhaps this is causing less actual commits to the actual project, but not necessarily less code being written.
It's quite possible I hit tab first yes. As for the undo: great. To be honest, I haven't even noticed the triangles, so that's why I wasn't aware of the feature.
Fair enough. That could be a risk.
http://www.ohloh.net/p/numpy

Numpy must be stealing from other projects, as they have -150KLOC
Anyone do a comparison of Optimizely and Visual Website Optimzer?
Judge Arcara raised doubts on the arguments for both sides, questioning Mr. Grable's point that Mr. Zuckerberg could come back to live in his parent's home while also asking why a man running a major company doesn't own any property in California.

Since when is personally owning property a condition of running a company?
thanks for the feedback.... the messages with don't show again is a great idea.

what part is not intuitive? the search engine? the blog part? the integration of the two?
not only this. also all other privileges (contacts, gmail, analytics) you've shared with apps (maybe you don't).
ie, antirez (Redis Author). I think thats useful information that should be in the title
Sign Up Forms Must Die (slides and vid from warmgun presentation)
Hi
kya haal hain
This is one of the times I wish I had a 3D printer. To make one RIGHT NOW.
It obviously depends on 1) who your target audience is, and 2) what your website is.

If the target is HN type people I'm guessing the number of non-Javascript goes up.

If the website is pure information, why not provide it even to people who telnet to port 80?

But if the website is a rich interactive application, even if it could fall back on simple form submissions, I'd say it's fair that non-JS users sees a "This requires Javascript" message.

(my answer is very different if the "interactive application" was powered with something vendor/platform-specific)