skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why reencode to WebM when the rest of the world can play flash.
Based on your "assumptions" it comes down to flash video for 99% of users vs html5+h264 for iDevices..

All in all it is just really sad that the major companies weren't able to agree on one common video format for html5 (thanks, Microsoft and Apple!).

What's the future now? Flash for Windows Phone, html5/h264 for iPhone, html5/webm for chrome and android, html5/ogg for firefox and i think opera should just go for html5/avi+intel indeo, maybe nokia could do html5/animated gif. (the sarcasm ends here, btw.)
To be fair when i realised i had enough scripting knowledge to be dangerous i did try some things like this. My advice is to definitely try stuff like this out, because its an excellent learning experience, but on places you dont care about being banned from, theres a million HN clones out there, go forth.

In order to learn to develop things to withstand such attacks you first need to understand them yourself.
Ask HN: how to make flipping book interface?
a noob questions:
I was wondering if it will be possible to implement the flipping-book kinda reading interface without using flash? if yes, how to?

update: by interface, i mean the web interface..
I'm pretty sure even the first prototype had much deeper psychological meaning than what's being presented. Heck, I was in a college at the time too and I think I know fairly well why so many guys tried to do their versions of "face book".

"We just like to build things" excuse sounded so lame it's unbelievable it came from a person who supposedly studied psychology.
It will be interesting to see how (and how quickly) Treasury yields rise when they ultimately do. I suspect that the longer the Fed keeps up T-bill purchases, the more violent will be either the collapse of bond prices when they finally pull out or the greater the rate of inflation when they don't pull out early enough.
Yeah but I upvoted you for the sake of debate. I feel cheated.
That's great, they released sooner than Adobe.
However, Adobe is preparing and updating its tools which include HTML 5 animation.

Adobe Edge Prototype - their new HTML5 animation tool:http://www.gizmag.com/adobe-edge-html5-animation-tool/16741/

and also Flash Pro can export to an HTML file.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryZP00_KhYE
<i>I understand the implications and everything</i>

I don't think you do.

<i>I can always say "I forgot[...]" Then what happens? I go to jail for 4 months?</i>

No, you go to jail for a few months and then they take you back to court to see if your memory has improved. If you don't have the key or if you produce a key that doesn't reveal the data they wanted it to, you go back to jail for longer.

If you can't produce the data the state demands, either because it isn't there or never existed, or because you really forgot, then you can stay in jail the rest of your life.

That is the purpose, goal, and implication that so-called law enforcement wished for and got from data investigation rules.
Ruby is a good choice and is similar to Python. However, if you do choose Ruby, I would recommend starting out with Sinatra instead of Rails. Sinatra is simple and easily understood so it makes a good starting point. Rails does a lot of things by 'magic' so it is a lot more difficult to start out with.

http://www.sinatrarb.com/

On the other hand, if you do go straight into rails, this is the best rails tutorial I have found:

http://railstutorial.org/book
There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth

Maybe there is a hidden cost, such as charging per request.
Effective Facebook Ads Images
You have it doble posted:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840444

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840442
There's not a lot of "let's do this just to do it" going on in Hollywood. Think about it: at it's root level, the film business is FAR more money driven than the tech community at large is (Silicon Valley can be just as nasty as Hollywood, but that's not everyone). Hollywood is structured in such a way that doesn't reward collaboration and sharing (at all) but instead rewards exclusivity and cut throat behavior at every level. There isn't exactly a large and thriving open source film making movement out there. Very few outsiders are breaking into Hollywood in the way they are in the tech world.
If the problems he is thinking about are MBA-related, Excel could be a good choice. Yes, it has its limitations (limited interactivity, too easy to end up with spaghetti-code, its debugger isn't too good, etc), but it makes it exteremely easy to build a basic interactive UI that allows data entry and storage, has lots of built-in functions, has some graphing capabilities, etc.

But honestly, without knowing what those 'a few ideas' are about, it is impossible to answer the question.
I like that is like the desktop and open enough to be abused. I prefer that to approval process based systems.

I like that the choice is available (the world would be a poorer one if it didn't have such systems for people who want them), but this makes me just that much more happy with my iPhone. For me.

Not that such a thing would be impossible with an iPhone, of course: someone could jailbreak it and install a similar app. But it'd certainly be harder and more time-consuming.
>> 'how could I be so stupid?!'

This reaction, or something similar, is very telling. I'd hazard a guess that having that response is indicative that you in fact do have the right mindset to be a programmer. I'd be more worried about someone who just shrugged it off with a 'programming is hard' or had no self-doubt.

Or perhaps I'm just convincing myself, because I make spleling and syntax mistakes constantly while programming and 'stupid' is always the first word that comes to mind once they're caught.
An alternative not mutually exclusive: Mixing Shows, Tells, Asks, Offers together into one page

* I doubt offers will be as plentiful as Show, Tell, Ask.

* Offers also expire where Show, Tell and Ask are relevant for a longer periods of time. Mixing Asks, Tells, Shows, and Offers + others together allow irrelevant or aging submissions to slide, making a more useful "offers page". It makes offers compete in some sort of page ranking, instead of a usually unchanging page.

* If I want to see a recent, hot Offer, I'll see it on the top page. If I want to see medium-aged offers, by mixing them in with asks, I'll see other interesting content as well. It is a more useful offers page. Making a separate offers page will have me polling a page that doesn't change usually.

* If I want to see very old offers, I'll use searchyc, google, or check jacques' blog. Chances are I won't be doing this that often because very old offers will be expired.

edit: totally implemented, probably before I posted even a long time ago

In that case, with an offers list on the next invocation and a very functional asks link, I don't think an extra link on the bar is necessary
How do you convince people you are going to be as reliable over a span of years as the big name companies?

(The mere act of conducting this kind of informal market research is a clue that you may not be -- your interest in the market is tentative. And making claims that could fail if tested -- 'unlimited bandwidth' -- similarly suggests unseriousness.)

Having buy-in at launch from major companies on multi-year deals could address these concerns by sending strong signals of viability and social proof.
This is "how I would make Twitter scale" all over again. Unless you're an engineer working on that particular system, you can't credibly give advice on how to improve it. Doing so is an insult to the profession.
Well, first, it's an imperfect system, which is all we'll ever get. We're still human, after all.

I say "don't know enough" as a specific and non-judgmental quantifier, not an overall statement - in other words, while otherwise competent and capable, and possessing areas of expertise, the average person may not know enough about specific issues and the diversity of interests surrounding those issues to draft adequate policy, nor judge the quality of drafted policy. That's not to say they couldn't learn, but people simply don't have enough time to fully engage the issues of the day.

Because of this, we've elected to have a republic. Ideally, this means we choose gifted and dedicated people to represent us and to, as their full-time job, build up a body of knowledge and wisdom such to devise policies which best address pressing issues (Ideally.). This is a concession to the fact that we as citizens simply do not have the time to become experts both in our chosen craft and in the business of state. As to their qualifications, they're nothing but dedication, integrity, and intelligence. Ideally.

Obviously this isn't what we have, but it's the thinking behind what we wrote down a few generations back, and I think it's still valid.
Forgive me for asking, but what's wrong with just reloading?
I'd be very wary of assuming zero bandwidth cost in your business model. Yes you have a partnership right now. But partnerships are made and broken all the time. What are the chances you can get another partnership for free bandwidth if the current one fails?
Confused CAP Arguments
35 years of keyboards
No, you outsource or buy where it's appropriate. They should no more build every Microsoft website than any other firm should write their own word processor.
that's great advice in spirit, but terrible advice in reality. At the least, your ISP might ban you, and at the worst, the cops or FBI could show up to ask what you are doing.

http://nmap.org/book/legal-issues.html

There are a lot of thoughts on this subject over on the nmap.org site on messing around with data on someone else's computer, be that a private or public service.
Nice. How come "saved" isn't on my main navigation bar? Weird :)
http://autolicio.us --> Thanks!
Wow. This site is amazing. Tons of gems: http://www.textfiles.com/underconstruction/
Employers in U.S. Start Bracing for Higher Tax Withholding
Just got mine today. Very interested in this.
ah thanks for the tip.. did some domain shuffling recently and I've neglected to forward that one on.. http://bradleyjoyce.com should work :-) Thanks!
Once emailed you about your wonderful service while it was in beta. Would love to take advantage of it as an online marketer and tie something like this directly into my own conversion analytics, but the pricing doesn't make it as viable when dealing with large volumes of traffic.

Quick question, does your service work with android/ios devices/all other JS enabled devices? On the web of course...
I wonder how long it'll take for an exploit to come along that automatically installs this type of stuff on people's phones?
Their last big success? It was launched 10 years ago, last year was the first time the XBox division made a profit and it's still years and years away from recouping the investment made in it.

If that's a success I really don't want to see one of their failures.
Norton has had an anti-virus product for Android for months. I think Kaspersky does as well.
So did you try installing this app and see if it says something like, "App installed, but no shortcut/icon given... warning!"?
Thanks, that makes sense. In fairness pg could also paste it into the server invocation too though.
Good point.

He didn't explain his ideas specifically but was clearly talking about web-based apps, hence Python vs Ruby.
Seriously cool. I'll have to do some data mining on this...
pg said it's currently just added in the REPL, so until the next server reboot it'll be at /offers [0]. Just as with /ask it'll probably stay if 'Offer HN' stays a busy list.

0: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1840062
The 11 (inch MacBook Air that is)
Flagged as spam ^_^
xlvector has a blog on recsys that talks about a good but overlooked feature of those systems from a user point of view: the ability to have the user make fortunate discoveries while looking for something seemingly unrelated:

+ http://xlvector.net/blog/?tag=serendipity

I have no easy answer on how to quantify that myself but I guess the papers quoted by xlvector must be a good place to start.
I've been working on this webapp for quite sometime and I'd love to have some help with pyAMF + Flex best practices.
Trap Rooms Redux
I think it was an awesome thing, and I enjoyed reading your analysis in that thread.

Actually, I love this whole rash of "Offer HN" - I was going to write one up myself, but I'm transiting to Malaysia tomorrow from Saigon, and have a busy week ahead of me. I'll probably post one in a week if the community blesses the general idea.

As always, I've got contact info in my profile and anyone's welcome to drop a line for any reason, to ask for a hand, etc. People who read the comments here probably know what I'm good at by now. As for you camz - I think it's phenomenal what you're doing, and I hope more people do the same.
Joey Hess: git-annex for managing large files with git
How many "web rings" fit into 1 TB?
It may be spyware, but I'd still like the option of installing it if I want to. Nobody every said freedom came without flaws.
It's written in Haskell which some may find interesting.
I'm working on a shopping startup and need to get a basic recommender system built in the next few weeks.
So far, I've implemented SlopeOne to determine the order of results every time a user searches.
Is there any way to cache/memoize this repeated computation?
Also, is SlopeOne the best way to go for this?
This is what I was going to say.

Your data may be full of noise with people coming expressly to check out your new fangled feature. This is especially true if you've been getting press about it.

Personally, I'd interview the people who DID buy. Ask those who used it why they used it (and what they thought of it), and those who didn't why they didn't.

If the net effect is still positive for your client, then I don't see what the problem is. Maybe even just give it some time to see if the situation changes once the buzz has stopped.
How'd you make a poll? Sorry if I'm being dense...
Did you have experience with AdWords API?
I'd like to advertise large number of jobs (hundreds or thousands) from my job board www.postjobfree.com using few-cents bids on Google AdWords.
Would AdWords API be right tools for that?
That's a good question. You're right, the cost of bandwidth is not zero. The partnership allowed us to get a good price on a dedicated 1000mbps line with unlimited use as a fixed monthly cost. Because we aren't paying per GB of transfer, we can pass this savings along to the customer.
I still won't forgive her for killing DEC/Compaq Alpha, one of the most beautiful CPU architectures.
I use a MBP with an SSD for iPhone dev. The only difference is the screen size; 15" vs whatever size you have for the Air.

Xcode runs much faster now. Its still going to be the slowest (and largest) application you'll load (besides iTunes). But, it doesn't feel as heavy anymore.

Builds are much faster for me; one project used to take > 2m30s to build and now builds in just over 1m (between getting an SSD and switching from gcc-4.2 to clang).
Our Startup's Journey: Becoming a Finalist at MassChallenge
Although that would be awesome to see, I was exaggerating the level of fear I felt. It'd probably be more accurate to say it was exciting for me honestly. I'm fairly isolated from any startup scene, so I love any bit of interaction I can get.
Exact String Matching Algorithms with Source Code & Visualizations
She destroyed the "HP way...which put a premium on integrity, respect for employees and a focus on how the company's work would benefit the broader community.

Difficult to see how you could do the same in Washington
Learn hadoop / lucene / pig / hive / clojure / python / ruby and put your code on github and if you can digest all of these you will get plenty of interesting job offers.
How about making Offers there own separate section? Like Jobs.
Absolutely. With email, business knowledge gets hidden in someone's inbox. It's of absolutely no value to the business in there.

It's a hard sell to get a business to change its behaviour and keep its information elsewhere where it can be shared for the greater good.

It's a big problem for a business.
If your business requires TechCrunch noticing you to be successful, then its a bad idea for you, pick something else in your league.
Ask HN: How long is the long tail, really?
I just stumbled across, what seems like to me, the hundredth 'time/money tracking' web application.

http://www.getcashboard.com/

Saw that they sponsored Rails Rumble and was a bit intrigued. Even more interesting is their claim that:

Our customers have tracked 2,003,595 hours
and collected $266,643,144

Given that this whole financial/time management for businesses space seems to be so saturated to me, my question is how long is the long tail really?

How many of one specific type of business can thrive on the internet? It seems that from the financial management perspective, many can. They probably will not be the next mint.com or have a major exit, but they will likely produce very solid/respectable cash flows from now and into the future.

So I guess my real question is how do you measure if a particular industry is over-saturated? I would have thought that this industry was over-saturated years ago, but the more I discover competitors makes me think I was wrong.

It either proves the theory that it is over-saturated - the mere presence of too many competitors - or proves that it is not - the mere presence of new entrants.

Which is it and how do you know?
Yep, that was exactly my thought process. Thank you for clarifying.
NC’s Demand for Amazon Customer Records Violates the 1st Amendment
You could install it, Android allows software installation without the Market.
It should just not get distributed through the Market. It's Spyware.
But that's hard to record for the same reason that it's hard to get the community's opinion based on upvotes. If 1000 people read this page, 200 vote in favor 90 vote opposed you would say that the majority of people are in favor of Offer HN posts. However, if the other 710 would have voted "I don't care" then your results would be completely off.
If you're putting this on your kid's computer, you probably regard their first sudo apt-get as a precious, teachable moment.
Why not shard by check-in id and map/reduce to get the badge calculation? When sharding by user id, no solution is going to lead to a balanced cluster since some users will always be more active than others. If map/reduce takes to long, batch it and return the badge calculation later.
I imagine at least somebody will download to a server and host them all there. Might grab a new 1TB drive into one of my servers and do it if I'm bored enough...
LaserMotive looks to break own record for laser-powered flight
USB keyboard. Many people use the wii to browse.
So, you too don't understand the desire just to build things?
"This isn’t a choice between chocolate and vanilla folks, it’s all rocky road: a few marshmallows to get you excited before the election, but with a lot of nuts to ruin the aftermath."

That pretty much sums up modern politics for me, and I was a crazed politico just a few years ago.
Over 200 CV's received so far so can I ask that you don't submit any more new requests?

I intend on responding to everyone who has emailed me up until now and I am going through each request chronologically.

Thank you so much for all your messages of support.
www.postjobfree.com

Reviewing the whole web site would probably be too much to ask for, but could you review job details and resume details pages? They have the most traffic.

For example:

1) http://www.postjobfree.com/Job.aspx?id=69531a3762d0430cb0615...

2) http://www.postjobfree.com/Resume.aspx?id=4c6bea8dec2e45a4b6...
From another source, clicking on link appears to shown a certification error dialog[1].

[1]: http://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/27/new-java-based-malware-t...
It seems to imply that once the link is clicked it downloads and runs the payload automatically, but this is rather hard to believe (I would guess that there is some user action required).

Is the article correct?
Maybe you are six levels deep into a JS-heavy webapp? If you reload, you would have to re-navigate to what you want to fix.
Git-annex: manage large files with git without committing their content
It's almost certainly possible with javascript, although it'd be tricky. I'd personally look at jquery UI for similar transitions.

If you're interested in nifty interface design, watch the development of the new searchlightdigital site (mine) over the next few weeks, at searchlightdigital.com/test1.php

Various things coming.
Some languages, like PHP, have very low learning curves — it’s super-easy to get started. And, that’s awesome. It’s easy-going, fun, and you feel super-productive (especially if you’re making a big change to something new). But, once you get past that initial dating period, you need to think about your future. You want to forge a relationship with a language that will be long-lasting, rich and deep. A language that brings the best out in you — over the long-term...Since I'm going to get into a long-term relationship with a language, I figured Python's a pretty good bet.

I started out as a PHP programmer and have loved it over the last few years, but after spending the last couple months playing with Python, this is exactly how I feel.
Ask HN: help with relocating to San Francisco 
I am relocating from Atlanta to San Francisco. I have a family and we have decided on living in the Walnut Creek area. I have been looking for a room to rent for November and December, while I pave the way (settle in to work, get familiar with the area, schools, etc) for the family to join me in January. Due to the 3000 mile separation, there will be a 2 to 3 week lull between talking to potential roommates and actually seeing the room/house and moving in. How would you go about safely handling security deposits during the time after you've talked to a potential roommate, until it's time to move in the new location? Escrow? Credit cards and chargebacks? Just don't do it and hope it's still available? Other instruments or tools that aren't well know?
always more options!
From the FAQs[1]:

How do I submit a poll?

http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

This is an experimental feature so there is currently a
fairly high karma threshold for submitting new polls.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

(edit: formatting and URL)
This isn't new internet behavior. It happens on Reddit, the Something Awful forums, basically any online community.
Awesome Johnny Cash Video using Crowd-sourcing
Interview with Mac App Developer Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater
WHOA, how'd that happen? pg ?