skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know. Before this 'dump' the rest of the press wasn't involved but this time around they are and I wonder if he asked for advice (and took it) on strategy. In a long-drawn-out media ploy if you put your most interesting stuff out first then it will fizzle out, if you draw it out and put more and more interesting material out then attention will not flag. It could be a deliberate ploy.
2 things I would love to know:

Are there other commercially available cameras that already do this out 'in the wild' (ie am I already hit with these daily, I just don't know it)?

What are the health implications of it (if any)?
You know little about the Chinese education system.

All Chinese kids (I was one of them) are basically trained for these kinds of standard tests. For the most part of their school life, they are judged by the scores they get. The whole point of the system is not to educate, but to test, and based on scores, pick the few at the top for better schools to go next year, and the process repeats. This pattern starts from primary schools all up to graduate schools. That's all freaking 16 years!

It is no surprise they score high in this one. They do not need to cheat. Of course if they want they can, but my point still holds: they are battle-tested “exam machines”.

The problem, though, is that the approach kills creativity and innovation.

Threat? Hell no. As long as the States keeps recruiting the best minds with scholarship and offers visa for them to stay working there, I don't see any chance the States will fall behind in smartness.
A mandelbrot fractal from the 10th century?
Music For Productivity: December 7th, 2010
There are some people who need constant audio companionship to keep us sane/motivated. Music is the soundtrack to our creativity. It makes work possible, helps define who we are and adds just enough fuel to our day to get us over most major hurdles.
You don't need to reply to 'reinforce' a comments opinion. Just click the 'up' button.
This doesn't really answer your parent's question, does it?

If you use TFA or RTFA make sure you do it properly, it's rude.
By the very nature of Shanghai there is tons more selection going on than in any US state.

1. Incredibly high land prices
2. long history of smart/rich people moving to the city - if you fail, you go back to your hometown
3. legislation trying to push people out of the city (only overcome by smart/rich people)
4. delayed puberty compared to average white or black american
5. no cultural value assigned to being rebellious

What percent of the US students tested were non-native speakers? What percent had spent years of their education overseas?

Finally, I don't know why everyone always talks about average education levels. I would much rather have the best top 10% or 1% in any field living in my country than have the highest average. And that's why I still feel pretty good about the US.
> Ugh. Really, you guys think this is the future?

Yes. So do you, apparently. Here...

> There is a place for web apps and a place for real apps.

And shoehorning web apps into real apps is bad. While I don't suggest every app should be made into a web app, I also think a lot of "real" apps make no sense outside of being a web app.

> Still hacking choppy javascript animations on a document markup language!

And yet, these "fake" apps are the most popular apps in the world, preferred by geeks, professionals, and non-technical people alike.

I don't see native apps going away, I just less natives apps merely doing something that can already be accomplished online, and usually better.
Ask HN: Best metaphor for software development?
You know when a client comes to you with a three-sentence description of a project?

And you want to scream that "NOOOOO it doesn't work like this! I can't tell how much that will cost WITHOUT AT LEAST spending half a day understanding your whole concept, doing some research..."

Now, these people are not stupid/evil, they just don't have the SLIGHTEST idea how complex software development can get.

So I try to explain it using different things, for example, "you know, even a painter can't give you a quote without seeing the whole house from the inside?" But that still implies that if I only knew the wall area that has to be programmed, I could give an exact quote.

Other times, I use architecture as a simulacrum, saying "you know how you need a plan for a house? You can't just ask a bricklayer how much a new house will cost." But then it's hard to introduce agile development later (no big plans).

Sometimes I say that new software is like developing a new car; but the differences between car and car are MUCH LESS than between software and software, so it's not very good either. (Who would have his own car developed?)

What metaphors do you guys use to explain software development to "mere mortals"? Please help, I'm out of ideas. :)
The picture is called "God, the Geometer" and is from the 10th century.
Their vector implementation of Maps will making it a lot more usable, if you can cache a whole route's worth of map data beforehand:
-no worrying about getting lost right outside data coverage
-people without data plans can precache data while still on Wifi (smartphones without a data plan aren't that common among normals as far as I know, though it'd be bad news for GPS companies if it comes out for the iPod Touch any time soon)
> In modern society most people have lost their respect for nature.

So the people who don't risk their lives climbing mountains have lost their respect for nature? I think you might have that exactly backwards :)
http://supreme.justia.com/us/403/713/case.html

New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)

"Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do."

Justice Black
Is duck calling Jason Fried a bad idea and calling for his assassination? I think that's taking opinionated a little too far :)
There are also some heavy downsides in Xcode/Obj-C development, such as hunting down memory leaks and crashes, and having a relatively slow upgrade path for new versions, without a guarantee that everybody will upgrade.

I agree that there are cases for both approaches (native and web app), but it's also pretty amazing what you can do with HTML5/CSS3 if you know how to utilize e.g. iOS hardware acceleration properly.

In fact the whole iOS web stack with offline support, local storage, startup images and icons etc. is getting so complete, you can't even notice whether you're using a native or a well crafted HTML app.
However if you do compile and/or run the tests it makes a lot of sense to make logical commits instead of monolithic commits of changes that are not interdependent. And --amend ing a commit message to fix a typo before pushing it is completely harmless.

There's some valid bits in there but commandment-from-on-high writing style is pretty offputting.
How important is getting a mate? was Maslow wrong?
A real-life example:- a significant chunk of people I have worked with, who are working with computers every day, don't know how to open an application if the application's icon does not appear on the desktop. Seriously.
OCaml has a long way to go before it can replace java.

http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/manual038.html

"The threads library is implemented by time-sharing on a single processor. It will not take advantage of multi-processor machines. Using this library will therefore never make programs run faster. However, many programs are easier to write when structured as several communicating processes."

Ocaml is a nice replacement for ANSI C, not for Java.
Layouts, windowing systems, graphic libraries....They almost always assume that screen devices are rectangular.
I saw slowloris over at hack a day last year, its really neat. I brought down my 100MBit server with 8 gigs of ram in about 30 seconds from a 1MBit connection 8 hops away.

Theres a python implementation called pyloris - http://motomastyle.com/pyloris/
Google maps/nav was one of the deciding factors for me when moving from the iPhone to a Droid X, and it just keeps getting better.
SQL over a web service...speedy !
> "We see cloud databases as a massive market opportunity that will power the shift to real-time enterprise applications that are natively cloud, mobile and social."

Wow; that's an impressively high corporate-buzz-word-speak ratio. I guess if we take it literally, though, I guess AT&T and IBM employees have real-time, cloud-based social internal apps to look forward to (IBMVille?).
> [If you use git merge --squash some-branch] [w]hen a QA person or your boss says, "Hey, is some-feature {merged into QA, deployed}" you have to resort to `git log` spelunking.

Of course you shouldn't use merge --squash in that context. That doesn't mean you should never use merge --squash. You just shouldn't use it to rewrite public history. Do you have a local branch in which you fixed some bugs and which branch has not been pushed out to the world and would you like to use merge --squash to merge it into master? Go for it! But if that branch _has_ been pushed out to the world, just use a regular merge.

The fundamental practice the author is arguing against is rewriting public history. But instead of making that point, he makes these sensationalist, dogmatic assertions that rebase, merge --squash and commit --amend are evil and should never be used. Until the end of the article, where he finally admits that really what he (correctly) has a problem with is rewriting public history.

OK, fine. Just title the article "You shouldn't rewrite public history".
Assange Vows To Fight On After Bail Refusal
Right now, all requests require a callback with a token. user a@a.com sends a request to b@b.com with a generated token. b@b.com then sends a verification request back with that token to a@a.com, and a@a.com sends back true, and b@b.com completes the request.

Which, if I'm not mistaken, is very similar to how XMPP does it.

The protocol also tries and minimizes the amount of actions that a third party node can take. You only trust your own node to take actions on your behalf.
Whatever it was, it doesn't sound like anything which could be classified as an assault, sexual or otherwise.
I don't think that's entirely fair because if they are aware of a merchant doing such a thing they'd be shut down in a heartbeat.

That said I really don't think they have any business shutting down the flow of funds between parties that have not actually been sentenced (or even accused) of a crime of sorts.
especially if you're in areas with poor 3G coverage.

It's not just poor coverage that is a problem. If, like me, you live in a small country up off in the corner of the civilized world, then half the times when you've travelled far enough to actually need your GPS you will have wandered across some national border. Trying to download maps over 3G in such a situation will basically lead to a phone bill that will require you to re-mortgage your house to pay off.
"For many years now countless companies have been investing in shoehorning an app into a webpage, and they don't have much to show for it except buggy javascript and unreliable software."

Examples?

"Not even semi-professionals would consider using Google Docs over client-based Word for serious document composition."

I do, I'm a 'professional'.
Don't need to, but have the option to.
Compatibility Only Suits To Your Print Folders
When it comes to the custom folders, they have always a special edge for you by any means. That is why online folder printing company offers you compatible folders printing solutions cost effectively.
Reason given: Your service is usable for KKK, porn even anti-abortion idiots, but not for Wikileaks? Bye!
Brain Games: The Marco Polo of neuroscience
Would it be possible to "fork" Java?
Alternatives could probably be Parrot or LLVM?
Does anyone know if modern ARM designs include hardware virtualization extensions along the lines of vt-x and vt-d? It seems like a pure software virtualization approach along with full device emulation like vmware had to use in the dark days would be too heavy on a 1ghz/512mb platform. Maybe this is one of the drivers of the dual core arm adoption.

It's interesting that vmware is clear to say that they'd be guest agnostic - allowing whatever the user wanted to be emaulated. So while the use case here is android on android, I could see a real use for running a slimmed down but industry standard linux guest that could provide a standard dev/test environment for development. Sure the ui wouldn't be phone oriented, but plenty of LAMP installations run headless anyway. What other OS's have ARM support?
swombat, just to add a little humor to that. "hunted down like Osama bin Laden"
When exactly did the US of A actually manage to hunt down Osama bin laden? If Assange is hunted the same way, he is sage until around 2030.
If you want to live forever you will certainly need to solve the problems which normally come with aging. You will also need to deal with the problem of the sun burning out in X billion years and the heat death of the universe.

I hope you have a lot of money.
Off-topic is largely subjective though and there were about a million submitted posts on the same topic. One post can be ignored, multiple posts on the same topic that one finds off-topic probably warrants a comment.

Oh and one more thing: topic, topic, topic topic.
I'll give the trial a shot. It really does look amazing, and I really am not opposed to paying something for it, it just seems to me (broke-ass student) a bit much.

Great way to solve a problem, however, even if most people don't know they had that problem.
Google Cloud Print, Now Available
Years ago, I worked on a project that involve capturing images filmed with an ophthalmoscope and mosaicing them into a complete image of the back of the eye. Part of that involved finding out how bright a light we could get away with beaming into peoples eyeballs. I don't remember specifics, other than being surprised at how much you could get away with.

A quick search showed that there are standards that cover this and include infrared light (see http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidanc... for more information).
So basically you can threaten the lives of your customers and not fear any repercussions from law enforcement as long as the New York Times doesn't write a profile on you using your real name and location.

Not to mention the fact that all the consumer empowerment brought upon by social media has now been flipped on its head.

Is this the direction online commerce is heading? Its great that they nabbed the guy but the fact that he used the failings of the system to prop himself up for years is worrying. There are plenty more Vitaly Borkers out there waiting
Should have just tortured and murdered lots of people and made himself dictator - then the UK home office would be falling over itself not to arrest him.

On the other hand this may be the safest place for him. If he accidentally "shoots himself in the back of the head while shaving" while in police custody that should bring down the current coalition government.
Isn't the job of an x-trial to find out, whether x has happened?
That's super impressive ;)
"Granted that's mostly to do with their CSS files."

I think that will be the #1 contributor to jQuery Mobile's inevitable success. It is just so easy to get working prototypes without having to mess with CSS or anything. Everything is taken care of for you, in a very convention-over-configuration way.

I recently built a mobile version of a HUGE web app in 2 days using jQuery mobile. Compared to the earlier mobile prototypes using jQTouch and Sencha Touch that took a month+.
The TCK Trap
Is the headline a deliberate echo of Dick Cheney's famous observation that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter"? Or a rhetorical malapropism?
If you have the subscription it's worth the read.
Google Nexus S preview
The article is a little misleading; the refusal by Oracle is to not let them run the certification tools _for_free_; every other JDK developer has paid for certification. Apache won't pay; so they don't get certified.
I'm using Mongodb to store Real Estate MLS data. MLS vendors all have their own schema for storing property data that can change on a regular basis. Rather than attempt to map every field we store each property as a document. We index the important fields (price, beds, baths, etc) but all other "metadata" is stored as a Dirty Attribute (in an embedded document).

We are still beta testing and have 100K properties and ~1 million images stored. Query time is faster than our current LAMP site. We will shard based on MLS Vendor as we add more.
I thought it was a parked domain as well when I first saw it.

I'm definitely interested in hearing people's thoughts on the actual offering though.

[Edit: So far pretty unimpressed with their attention to detail. Registering for a "free" force.com account, email address is required as well as a username. After specifying a username and submitting, an error in the form of an alert box popped up saying "username must be in the form of an email". Why they wouldn't just use the email they required me to give them is beyond me.]

[Edit 2: Okay, this is enterprise in the worst possible way. Clicking links sometimes give an "Authorization required" error message, even though I'm logged in. Information is strewn all over the place. It's going to take a lot of convincing that their database product is best of breed to convince me to want to use any of this garbage.]
The downvoting on Hacker News has become erratic.
They don't agree, they both need it to be ahead of the competition in the web arena. Microsoft lost a lot of time trying to hold the web back while they milked the most of the desktop world. Now they are catching up in desperation as they see their internet flagship IE sink to lowest levels ever.

So, all agree in HTML5, they all support it, because they all need it.
> Oracle won't sue you for using OpenJDK because they know it would be a lost cause.

Even if it's based on OpenJDK, you still wouldn't get any patent protection. I wouldn't put my trust in Oracle to not sue me over anything...
I agree. It's from Salesforce.com and they don't even use the Salesforce logo. Really? Overall, it doesn't inspire much trust.
I don't agree that it makes sense to "design a protocol" before building the application. You can try to imagine what you want the protocol to look like at the end of the day, but you are likely to get it wrong if you don't have an application that's actually using it. It's important to keep your eyes open and try to avoid going down blind alleys, but there's not much value in building infrastructure before it's needed.

The questions raised in that post are good, and we intend to address them as they become relevant to what we have build. Discovery, namespacing and routing are areas where we are starting to feel tension on in the product, and will probably be tackled quite soon. The point about affecting interface design is good, but we look at it the other way. We want our interface design to drive the protocol design, so we want to make protocol choices as late as is reasonable.

Finally, it's fantastic that people are reading and forking the code. The more people out there trying things, the better.
Mastercard and Visa: what are they good for?
I'm struggling to think of examples where an open application has defined both a successful architecture/protocol and also provided a widely adopted user-interface.

For example, not many people used Tim Berner-Lee's original web browser but it did help define the standards that then went on to be picked up by Mosaic which was the first really popular web browser. However, by the point that Mosaic came out most of the features of the architecture of the web were in place and remain recognizable to this day.

Surely the goal is to provide common lower levels of a "social" protocol stack and allow as many and different user interface applications to layer on that common core?
Froyo for nookcolor
Ynet מעצרו של אסאנג' הוארך בשבוע: "נמשיך לחשוף" - חדשות היום
Thanks for the link. Nice quote: "In fact, if you believe what you read in the scientific literature, you shouldn’t believe what you read in the scientific literature."
Julian Assange Arrested in London
Mainstream blogs too, what's the point of this debate?
I've did a bit of experimentation with hexagonal layouts in the past, just for fun (hexagonal grids have some useful properties). But is has some problems that make it very unconvenient to use: for example, you can't subdivide a hexagon into smaller hexagons. This makes for really wasteful layouts :)
From that video it seems like Android still has performance issues compared to the iOS. The scrolling looked choppy and had a noticeable lag. Presumably this can be fixed, but I am always surprised that some phones still can't master smooth, no-lag scrolling, given that it is provably doable.

It's also amazing how much they copied from iOS. Almost everything about that Android tablet is a blatant copy of the iPad. Look at the Gmail app, for instance.

In the 80s Microsoft got big by commoditizing Apple's innovations and it looks like Google is going to do the same in mobile. As a consumer I'm not complaining, but Steve Jobs must be going crazy.
Details of the charges against Assange
According to the Guardian:

Gemma Lindfield, for the Swedish authorities, told the court Assange was wanted in connection with four allegations.

She said the first complainant, Miss A, said she was victim of "unlawful coercion" on the night of 14 August in Stockholm.

The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner.

The second charge alleged Assange "sexually molested" Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her "express wish" one should be used.

The third charge claimed Assange "deliberately molested" Miss A on 18 August "in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity".

The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on 17 August without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.

[from http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-updates ]
Changing the Looks of Nagios in 60 Seconds
Like they love saying around here about scaling, that will be a nice problem to have.
Yeah, I TOTALLY respect Everest. Everest would kill me dead.

That's why I'm staying the heck away from it.

I respect lions, too.
In doing business with criminals, you become one IMO. Sure, technically he's not violating any laws, but I think that points to flaws in the justice system (worldwide, not just the US) more than it does to his nobility.

If someone illegally sells/steals/shares confidential information, then where does the chain of responsibility/legality stop?
We just released (as in literally 5 hours ago) a competitor to database.com called ClearDB. Our solution is much simpler than theirs is and is priced much more attractively (starter accounts get 400K calls per month for free). We're actually looking for folks to check it out and give feedback. Would you folks mind having a look around? Check it out - www.cleardb.com.
It is criminal in the general sense. He will be prosecuted for violating any statutes if there is jurisdiction. I don't see how I oversimplified; truth has limits, so you can "shoot the messenger". Truth is not a defense if you exceed the limits I mention.