skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Many spammers know how to embed a YouTube video (it uses the YouTube player...), and I'm not going to click through to the other information if I think I'm on a cybersquatter page. They presumably spent at least a mid six figure sum* on the domain back in July, which makes the amateurish landing page even more embarrasing.

It's not the worst site I've seen, but I've seen better landing pages designed as weekend projects by people who then post on here with all the appropriate "I'm not a designer...can you give me some help please" questions and get advised to commission a freelancer who knows a bit about colour schemes as well as having the time and skill to add polish. For a major launch from a massive corporation whose products are (theoretically) driven by good UI and a consistent corporate image
http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/misc/SFDC_StyleGuide120...
it's quite shameful.

*reserve price if you wanted to buy at auction earlier in the year was $800,000
I am having a hard time trying to verbalize the difference between knowing something is there and experiencing it first hand and the difference. I think there is a difference, hopefully someone more eloquent than myself can explain.
Perhaps it was overly general and poorly worded, but I think the underlying point is clear and valid: building an open source distributed system intended to be used globally by diverse individuals and organizations is several orders of magnitude harder than building an app that lives within the doors of a single organization.
I was fortunate to hear Peter Hillary speak last week while I was home on Thanksgiving break. His stories were amazing. I was absolutely floored the entire two hours. A couple quotes I remember (and damn I wish I brought a pen and paper)...some of these may be paraphrases:

"On the top of Everest, your perception of reality is distorted. I remember thinking, 'wow, its really cloudy down there' while looking down the mountain. When I got back to base camp, I looked at the pictures we had taken. There were no clouds. It was clear as day"

"People often ask me what I'm most afraid of. Sure the elements are tough...but what gets me is more mental. Often when you hike you are alone in your thoughts for days,weeks, even months at a time. You have nothing to do but think, and if you don't have the mental discipline, you can deteriorate quickly. Its important to have good relationships with your family, your friends, and especially your climbing mate"

"I once went on a trip to the North Pole with some friends and my dad Edmund. You may know them. They were Buzz Aldrin and Steve Fosset"

"The last time I went to Everest, National Geographic sponsored the hike and the plan was to have a 3-way phone conversation with my dad and the [CBS/NBC/ABC] affiliate in New York because it was the 50th anniversary of my dad's first climb. When we got to the summit, I phoned in despite my hands rapidly becoming frostbitten and the affiliate said, 'Gosh, we're really busy here. Can you hold on a minute. Theres a conflict going on in Afghanistan right now'...'What? I can see Afghanistan!'"

"When I went to the South Pole I had to train in a rather unusual manner. On that trip we had to pull a [x100lb] sack of supplies behind us for a month straight while cross-country skiing. To train, I tied a bunch of tires around my waist and went jogging with my son in a stroller. You can imagine the weird looks I got"
yes that is exactly right. micahl-zalewski and adrian-llarion reported it here :
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/456339/30/0/threaded, nevertheless, it definitely _is_ very interesting
> What business do you run?

I run a web service with a subscription component, friends of mine run an IPSP.

> Is the stolen CC # problem greater with certain kinds of businesses than others?

Yes, absolutely. If you run a service targeted at businesses or teachers or other 'nice' people you're likely not going to see much, if any of this. If you run a site that sells physical goods you'll get plenty but you will be able to do some pretty good checks before shipping the goods and you'll have a signature from a recipient. You will likely also have a list of destinations you do not serve.

If those are not your target markets then all bets are off and you will likely get bitten badly before you learn the rules by which the game is played.
I'm really dissapointed that the ministery of peace has always gotten more research money than the normal variety. It seems hard to defend especially since the cold war ended. Some people must be really eager to start a new cold war with China. Depressing.
Livestreaming Google Chrome Announcement @ 10:30 Pacific
I don't think that the idea of Microsoft "trying to hold back the web" has ever crossed my mind, but damn if that isnt true. They are even shipping an IE7-level browser with Windows Phone 7
Actually, no. Virtually all successful frameworks (Rails, Django, Tornado, MapReduce, etc.) grow out of an application or set of applications where common pieces are incrementally refactored out of the application and into the framework. When you start with the framework and design it upfront, you end up with an overdesigned mess.
Google Books: Positive rays By Mery Samuela Murray
I guess I'm not impressed by first mover advantage. I like second mover advantage. First mover advantage is subject to too many problems. Confirmation bias. Unseen players which make the better solution infeasible. etc.

In the end, execution is key. I value polish over cleverness. Someone who can execute quickly and cleanly is who I want. Testing for those qualities is more difficult and interactive than simple interview questions.
Or, he doesn't need to bother, because it's going to show once again a bunch of stuff that we very much don't like but very much already know: that Countrywide came as close to the line as possible, overstepping it regularly, in pushing subprime residential mortgages to people who couldn't possibly afford them, and then pushed the ratings agencies hard to help get those mortgages packaged into deceptive AAA-rated MBS's --- all of which would be (a) horrible, (b) unlikely to be cleanly prosecuted as a crime, and (c) not a revelation.

Read Joe Nocera; one of Countrywide's biggest competitors, Ameriquest, was literally handing out methamphetamine to its dealers to keep them awake to push bullshit second and third cash-out refi mortgages. Those shitheads owned the Rangers stadium and were eventually sold to Citigroup.

By not actually illuminating the issue, WL could instead split whatever opposition to the played-out mortgage fraud issue into WL-supporters and WL-opponents who will synthesize new opinions about banking regulation based on emotions; in otherwords, the process and the leak will become the story, not the lack of oversight and regulation that allowed the events being leaked to happen.

Or not.
"A National Geographic climber originally on Everest to document Brian Blessed's (ultimately botched) attempt at summiting"

On QI recently, they said on Brian Blessed's closest approach, he abandoned his climb and turned back to help an injured climber. In the context of this essay about bodies it's not on to call that a "botched" attempt.
What sets jQuery Mobile apart from the others (jqtouch, etc.) is that it seriously adopts the things that make HTML5 unique as opposed to just Javascript+DOM/CSS/DHTML/etc. For being an "alpha" product, it's quite complete and relatively bug-free (again, for an alpha product).

If you have cross-platform aspirations it's hard to argue against the value proposition of going the web app route (and coupling it with something like PhoneGap if you need App Store distribution, etc.).

Certainly there are some apps that can't be done this way due to hardware support or other device features that are not accessible via a web app but for the vast majority of the apps being commissioned today this is not the case, and being able to launch on multiple platforms with almost zero additional effort is hard to argue with from a cost perspective.

Of course being able to leverage existing knowledge and experience in the HTML realm is another bonus.

I have to say also that with the diversity of platforms now available, the "it doesn't feel native" argument is loosing some steam, since what feels native is different on each platform.
I just seems too convenient that he would be accused of rape now.
Time. Quality. Money. Pick Two.
It seems like it would be against Google's best interest to give their excellent Maps app to iOS anyway. Free, built in GPS navigation was definitely a selling point for me when I bought an Android phone.
more likely monsantonana.
No, this is a hugely selfish act

You say that like being selfish is automatically and unquestionably a bad thing.
I think the actual mortality rate is closer to 2%. I don't know if that changes your opinion at all. Frankly, I feel that even at 2% mortality, it's a pretty selfish act if anybody else depends on you.
If you don't want your ideas to be "stolen", keep them to yourself.
I don't think it's so much first-mover versus second-mover advantage but rather an overall question of timing. I agree that being first doesn't matter if the market and timing aren't right.
I think this depends a lot on your team, your practices, and the way you use source control. At the old job, source control (mostly SVN) was essential for figuring out why a new change to the framework broke a customer-specific customization written six years ago by someone no longer with the company. The company culture was to keep commits and merges so clean they were almost releases in themselves. (It took me, ahem, quite some time to adapt to that style of working -- coming as I did from not using source control at all.)

If they had used git, they would totally have approved use of rebase for optimizing readability/understandability of commits for the beleaguered maintenance engineer in 2016 trying to figure out what why what we did today (in 37 separate incremental commits) just interacted with new code and blew up $MAJOR_UNIVERSITY's payroll system.

I follow very, very different practices when developing by myself. I largely leave the history as it is, warts and all. If in the course of trying to fix a bug I make five exploratory commits and on the fifth one finally find the magic that works, then history just happens to include five increasingly frustrated commit notes.
NASA wants you to redesign their UI
People wonder if these test scores in China are beyond the norm. But the bitter truth is that these scores are indicative of their Confucian training, not any independent thinking that a "standardized" test could evaluate.

The Chinese education should be noted for a strong emphasis on rote memorization and the regurgitation of lectures. Unlike most Western philosophies of education (e.g, Plato), the Chinese education system does not instill or encourage creativity. What you will find is that many students that have undergone a Confucian education system are extremely capable within their competent subjects, but they will have a difficult time coming up with creative solutions other than textbook solutions.

Confucianism (as I have wrote before) was adopted aggressively during the Qing dynasty, because it perpetuated the importance of respect to the state. It taught that one should respect the state, the teacher, and the parents, because if one did all three, they would naturally respect the power of the king. In short it became a way to brainwash. And predictably, most Chinese innovation during the Qing empire diminished.

You'll note that Asian countries have a difficult time creating software. A lot of software in China are clones of American counterparts. It's because Confucian thought has made it difficult for many in China to be creative.

I've personally tutored students from China, and many of them who excelled through the Chinese education system found the American university system extremely challenging. The greatest challenge for them was writing an essay. Many of their essays would read like semi-plagiarized versions of the history text, without a pervasive POV that stayed close to the middle without making a single claim. These students would often blame the essay-writing to their language abilities. I told them that even if these essays were written in Chinese, you still don't have an essay because you don't have a thesis, and the whole point of the essay was for you to take a side. And then they would ask me which was the correct side...

The point is that, yes, these test scores are very impressive. But I don't think other countries--in particular, America--are exactly boned. The one redeeming attribute is that we can have any idiot in this country think he's a genius, in some extreme cases, become a world leader, and that's the sort of mentality that will save us. Until China has a Google or Apple that can develop iOS or Android. But then again, China isn't known for having a college dropout culture, so it's hard to see if they will have a Facebook, Microsoft, or Oracle given that the cultural differences.
Mallory also had a pretty strained relationship with his wife as a result of his mountaineering. If I remember correctly, he promised her several times he would never go back to Everest but always ended up going. I'm not saying I don't sympathize with his dilema, but it's worth pointing out that there are two sides to those famous words.
Perhaps I misunderstand you, but "protocol agnostic" is a red flag to me. SOAP was designed to be protocol agnostic (there were specs for SOAP-over-SMTP and XMPP and so on and so on) and look how that turned out.

As the OP points out, protocol cannot be truly decoupled from architecture, especially when it comes to things like routing. There's a huge difference between a Twitter-like @user, an SMTP-like user@domain, a URL-based system like OpenID, etc.
1. Do a search for all the colleges in Cantor's district.

2. Look those colleges up in the NSF Database he supplies.

3. Report them to his little program.

4. For more fun do it for all of Virginia.
Plover: the open-source Steno program
Way better prices than database.com
The page isn't loading for me right now, so all I have to go on is the title, which gives the unfortunate impression that we should be doing "wash all the windows in Seattle for a single fixed price" startups!
Actually, I agree. My framework was built out of Appleseed the application, and was then re-factored into a framework, and most of the structure was based on what I had learned from building the app.

I don't think anyone should start by building a framework without any conception of what that framework is meant to do. But Diaspora already has an app of sorts, so they wouldn't exactly be doing that.
Diagnosing Entrepreneur's Syndrome: Controlling the Pandemic
My concern is that the American public politicizes questions of science, so I really don't want them deciding what research is worthwhile. There are some genuinely scary statistics such as 50% not believing in evolution and 20% not believing that the earth orbits the sun.

I posted the source and some other stats at http://www.bendmorris.com/2010/12/sciences-worst-nightmare.h...

Thanks to everyone who posted links of the actual studies he named...they're a perfect example of how your average citizen (or Congressman) doesn't understand the value of basic research.
I tried to sign up and I was directed to this page after I submitted the registration form:

http://cl.ly/2U0E3g0w3U0s3s213527

Might want to change the notification messages on there
Really good article. Worth watching the Dmitry's (author of this article) interview on Mixergy: http://mixergy.com/how-do-you-get-users-and-how-do-you-turn-....

Loved how it covered everything from inception of the idea, to the marketing and blog coverage.

Would be interested to find out what they're going to be doing in the long term though...
Microwave Typing
I have been looking forward to checking out Chrome OS, but haven't had time to download one of the installers out there right now. It will be nice to have an official, easy to install version, if they release one. Do they plan to make it easy for people to download and install the OS, or are they mostly going to market it to device manufacturers?
The next step for HealthIT (after widespread adoption of robust EHR/PHR systems) is capturing data from a variety of devices in order to monitor health in real time. This includes everything from BMI to blood sugar levels to heart rate and even more complex data from implanted monitoring devices. It's really invigorating to finally see this ultra-connected future approaching over the horizon.
seems like duplicate entries are across the board:

http://cl.ly/1a292d1P283a1k1I0x14
I'm with you so far.

According to this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/07/assange-bail-req...

Which has the actual charges in it there was a second occasion with the same lady, this stretches credulity I believe, one count of rape with one person according to this definition I could believe, but two are at a minimum a little strange and would require some pretty fancy footwork to be explained away. Especially with the victim throwing a party for the perp between the two occasions.

The fact that the witnesses colluded and that Assange apparently was at their places at their invitation and that he undoubtedly was not aware of any of these laws and that at least one of the women definitely was (and tweeted all over the place about it) makes this all very sordid (pardon the pun) indeed and not nearly as clear-cut as you might think at first glance.

Personally I think Julian Assange is an idiot for behaving like this while knowing he's under the microscope but given that the flesh is weak and that these women apparently only decided to go to the police after comparing notes makes the whole thing something that may have been harder to avoid than it looks.

The case is so shaky that one Swedish prosecutor already overruled another and dropped it only to have it revived again without knowledge or consent of the victims.

Pretty weird if you ask me.
It's be great if the dashboard showed which one of the people was me more clearly (possibly you could show that box in a different color?). Just having "^ You" is not very easy to find. Other than that, it looks pretty neat. Not sure I'd use it, though.
Transition to github/git from trac/svn
Not impressive at all; it's Ruby roots are obvious and it screws up virtually every place where performance matters in JavaScript and the DOM. Definitely an 0.1 attempt. You're better off with SproutCore or Cappuccino. Also, it's not even lightweight!

JavaScript in not Ruby. Good code in Ruby != good code in JavaScript. The author would be far better off contributing to existing JavaScript frameworks than trying to make JavaScript work like Ruby.
I consider Sencha touch to be currently much better than jquery mobile. Just wanted to mentioned it here.
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Oh, right, I did read that.
Oh and excellent work on the wiiscale and the PHR... Nice to know we have some fellow HIT hackers here. Cheers.
A Note To The Entrepreneurs
This is supposed to be light hearted?

What am I supposed to rebut? He gives little reason why the features says get broken are more important than the other things. He just states it.
Hackers - a newspaper for doing things you're not supposed to do
Shortcodes are an easy way to type 5 or 6 numbers and send a quick message. I use the google shortcode to get phone numbers for local businesses. It saves a trip to the browser and is an easy way to retrieve information without leaving the "phone" feature of my smart phone.
What would be really awesome is if this class was offered at the peer-to-peer university (http://p2pu.org/) allowing anyone to take it for free.

P.S. If you like the idea, vote for it here: http://p2pu.uservoice.com/forums/84091-course-suggestions/su...
This list is missing marijuana: anxiolytic, anti-inflammatory, anti-angiogenic, anti-viral, antibacterial, neuroprotective, pro-neurogenisis. Hands down the most important of any drug there is. Plus it increases your IQ by an average of 6 points, decreases your diabetes risk by 66%, and can be used to treat everything from Parkinson's to cancer. There is even some research suggesting that up to 50% of all infant mortality may be the result of marijuana deficiency.
I think the real issue is that the mass public doesn't see how seemingly random research could actually benefit society.

The whole situation is really upsetting. The public has no idea how research in "pointless" X, "grant-begging" Y and "wasteful" Z could, through their combined research and perhaps a couple surprises along the way, yield W, something new and outstandingly useful.

For an example of this, look at the Four Coloring Problem. Microsoft permitted one of their employees to work on that and, through the research required found a way to make their systems crash less often. Yes, Microsoft themselves funded the research, but did you or I see "more stable OS" from "Graph Coloring"? I know I didn't.

Also, when you think of research to explore space, do you think of:
high efficiency foam insulation, "Portable X-ray machines, programmable pacemakers", "concentrated baby foods", "freeze-dried instant mixes" and "surgical tools"[2]? I don't. If you have, you have vastly more foresight than me, and I'm sure I'm not alone in my narrow-mindedness when it comes to the usefulness of some science projects.

In all, I believe the normal citizen has no idea what's useful in regard to research and what's not.* Is there even such a thing as useless research?

[1] I'm having a bit of trouble locating the citation for this one. Unfortunately, it is still one of my favorite, obscure discoveries. If anyone can remember more of the Hacker News post that made reference to it and could help me find it, I'd be most grateful and change my post right away.

[2] http://space.balettie.com/Lovell.html

* I do admit that there is an opportunity for scientists to begin to do unethical things and this should be controlled, (perhaps not by the people, perhaps so), but this is not decided what to research so much as what/how not to research.
Agh, sorry! Looking into it. I have WP SuperCache installed so I don't know what's going on.
A scientist in field X is great at judging the benefits of project Y (relative to project Z) to field X. He can provide an expert opinion on whether the project is new, whether it is likely to succeed, whether other people working in X will use it.

He has no particular expertise whatsoever at deciding whether project Y is more useful to society as a whole than other possible uses of the money. In a democracy, that decision is left up to our elected leaders.

To give a specific example, it's quite possible that within the field of comparing minorities to caucasians, this is a great project:

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1004...

If the public as a whole doesn't care about comparisons between minorities or caucasians, or doesn't believe that information is particularly valuable (e.g., perhaps there is no legitimate way to act on that information), this project is a waste of money. If enough people flag this project, it might suggest to Congressman Smith that it is a worthy project to cut.
Point noted. I'll highlight it better.
Actions speak louder than words:

http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
Which part doesn't make sense, running intermediate byte-code in a VM, or using LLVM to target Parrot? If it's the former, I'm not sure I can persuade you in this thread if a decade of enterprise software can't do that, if it's the latter, then I can see that also.
In the spirit of this brilliant experiment with direct democracy, Cantor should elect to crowdsource his next colonoscopy. We need the steady hand of the people on that endoscope, not some elitist Harvard doctor wasting taxpayer money! A weighted average of tweets containing a direction and velocity to #cantorsrectum would do just fine.
all the into you => all that into you, of course
Wikileaks Morals: The Cliffs Notes Version