skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
h.264 and WebM are similar enough that it depends entirely on the implementation details of a "hardware decoder" as to whether it can handle one or both. Not all hardware decoders simply take in an h.264 bitstream and emit uncompressed a/v signals. Many "hardware" solutions are just a collection of execution units that handle the most time-consuming stages of decoding or encoding, and they are strung together with software and possibly use of GPU shaders to form a complete pipeline. For such devices, it may be possible to use them to accelerate WebM with most stages going through the fixed-function units and just a few things like entropy coding handled with compute shaders. Such a solution would be just as deserving of the "hardware accelerated" moniker as most of the decoding engines currently out there.
Future to be brighter, literally
That dedicated hardware has no specific circuits with hardcoded decoding of specific formats. It is DSP with microcode and that microcode can be changed by updates.
This is so F'ing awesome! I was feeling bad for the hackers. This news made my day.
19 Essential Web Applications for Chemical Engineers and Professionals
Seems like a better argument would be that this is a step backward for short-term openness.

The argument can still be make that this is a step forward for long-term openness.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: Flash has nothing to do with this. Flash isn't vying to be part of the <video> tag, it is merely a proprietary browser plugin that no one has to support. (As Apple has shown). H.264 is a contender to be a codec that any browser-maker must support by default in order to meet an agreed upon specification. No such requirement exists for Flash.
Will Apple remove the home button from the next-gen iPad and iPhone?
AOL'S New Problem: Mike Arrington
Death Of The Mouse?
I don't think so... isn't the keyboard disabled in Flash fullscreen? Same goes for Silverlight and Java applets.
I'm curious how an app could use 11 touches. Both hands and a toe?

Also, most of the piano/music type apps support at least more than two.
Apple moved away from PowerPC because it was increasingly becoming a vastly inferior technology. h.264 is not a vastly inferior technology.
Anthony Pipkin's Button widget in the Gallery is excellent -- http://yuilibrary.com/gallery/show/button
Did you look at the graph at all? It shows that the spike right around when Digg's problems occurred was just as big as their traffic increase over the last two years with the spike excluded. You need to count the increase in estimated and direct graphs separately because of the discontinuity.
Those who forced you to click the link have been sacked.
The cat url shortener - catcat.us
He is Brittney's ex. Also remember the 'Cry me a river' song.
I bet the superconductor just thinks it conducts better a little buzzed.
The keyboard remains active in Flash fullscreen, though you cannot bind anything to the "ESC" key if I'm remembering correctly.
We could not locate 'Cole XXXXXXX'.
Mozilla is also supporting it. Upcoming Firefox versions will support WebM. Even IE9 will support WebM with HTML5 when the codec is installed locally on windows.
> Whereas drugs like citalopram and fluoxetine primarily target the neurotransmitter serotonin, reboxetine targets the neurotransmitter norepinephrine.

I'm curious if this might be effective as an ADHD drug. This is essentially what Strattera does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomoxetine
A joke of my own creation:

What's the par value of a zero-coupon bond with no maturity?
Pee Dollars!

This joke didn't do very well in the last joke thread, so I'll explain it in this one. Typically, the par value of a bond is represented by the letter P. Maturity is when the bond pays out. A person with no maturity would hear "p" and think "pee", so the joke is a pun on both P and maturity. But wait, there's more! A zero coupon bond without expiration is worthless -- just like pee dollars.
Other than dirty jokes, perhaps a two-player game?
Microsoft presented their new touch mouse at CES. Yeah, mice are definitely not new and exciting at this point, but until 'touch' becomes ubiquitous they are still quite necessary.

Since I still have to live with mice for the foreseeable future, I'm frustrated at the lack of decent wired mice on the market. Wireless mice always give me tracking issues and I don't like the inconvenience of replacing batteries. But every new mouse on the market is wireless now.

I'd love to try the Apple Magic Mouse or even the new Microsoft touch mouse, but I'm not willing to deal with wireless. Therefore, I'm using an IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0, a mouse first released in 2001, because new mouse innovations don't come with USB models anymore.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I wonder why this case was filed in the Federal court for the central district of California. Isn't the eastern district of Texas usually the preferred place for patent trolls[1]? In this case, the plaintiffs wouldn't even have to go very far since the Plano, Texas address is already in that court district.

1 - http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-p...
6%?
C'est vrai.
One detail that caught my eye:

> ISO and ITU do not require the members working on their various standards and specifications to give up any specific patent claims that may cover the technology that they define.

Quite the contrary -- the ITU specifically had language that every contributor agreed to provide their contributions royalty-free. Unfortunately the politics got complexated when it became a joint ITU/ISO thing. Some of the biggest players made noises that they would agree to a "royalty-free baseline profile" (ie without some of the more patent-rich features, such as interlace and B-frames).

At the last minute, like Lucy from Peanuts, they took their ball and went home, leaving all the smaller players who had an interest in a truly free standard high and dry. This event IMSHO left a vacuum that resulted in pent-up demand for a truly free codec, which created room for Theora and WebM.

[disclaimer: I was involved]
You're joking - but that's actually an EXTREMELY interesting question.

Would humans on Reboxetine do better on a forced swim test? Because if they do, but they are still depressed then that's clear evidence that the forced swim test is worthless.

On the other hand if it has no effect, then humans are different from animals and don't react the same way to drugs, but the test may still be good.
I can imagine using the new dial widget as on-screen thumbstick controls on a mobile device type game.
Im not sure the last time Chris made the front page of HN, but for some reason reading this was absolutely a breath of fresh air for me. The internet will keep doing its thing whether facebook IPOs or the 'bubble' bursts. Focus on your own work, the stuff that really matters, and you will inevitably succeed. Whatever the next big wave is, you'll miss it if you're too busy fretting about what has already come and gone.
If you're on Windows 7, an update was just released over Windows Update which should fix this and a couple of other issues. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2454826
There are two different kinds of royalties associated with H.264. One is the fee on each encoder or decoder, and the other is a per stream royalty. Although most of us are concerned with royalties on the codec, Google is more concerned about the royalties on the streams.

Although the Ars article mentions that MPEG-LA won't charge per-stream royalties for free youtube videos (for 5 more years, anyway), H.264 content from the Youtube Store are already subject to per-stream fees, starting at the beginning of this year. Also, Google TV streams may not fall under MPEG-LA's definition of royality-free "Internet Broadcast AVC Video". Furthermore, MPEG-LA hasn't yet made it clear exactly how much these fees will be!

WebM (vp8), along with lower-quality FLV (vp6), is a hedge against both current and upcoming per-stream h.264 royalties.
Cool. But where's the live demo?

Also - just one snarky comment on JS style:

if(!!document.createElementNS
&& !!document.createElementNS('http://www.w3.org/2000/svg, "svg").createSVGRect) {

No need for the bangs!
Book Preview: Mobilize by Rana June Sobhany
Since our eyes are built into the front plate of our head and our head is mounted upright on our torso, displays are bound to stand vertically in front of our eyes. Hands are pretty bad at interacting with vertical surfaces as this requires us to lift both hands and arms for prolonged periods of time.

Hence, there has to be a horizontal, desktop-surface that we manually interact with and a vertical surface that we look at. This seems to require some kind of virtual agent that represents the hand on the screen. I don't think mouses and keyboards are going away any time soon (even though they might get enhanced with other technologies)
Assuming the scientists were responsible. Perhaps it's possible some of the business types blocked some of the reports?
OpenJDK? GCJ?
You can test single window modus. With Gimp 2.7 - the development version of Gimp
"Cut the Rope" is a popular iOS game that reguires 4 or 5 finger movement on some levels to cut multiple ropes simultaneously. I can recall at least one level that would be near impossible to complete on 4.3, as it requires imitating the new gestures.
What was it like in Silicon Valley after the bubble burst in the early 2000s?
My home button died on my iPad after six months. Warranty replacement.
Fascinating responses on Quora, but I'm hoping some HN'ers lived to tell their stories too...
Similar, but for DVD+Netflix - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097527
Personal computing has left the realm of the desk and the office. Surely, we can use a mouse and keyboard while being mobile, but we wouldn't trade the accuracy and ergonomics of a mouse and keyboard for something else when at home or at work. Many new devices, like the iPad, are consumption devices. You use it to watch videos, to play games, to listen to music, to read books, or to surf the web. Creation on these devices is limited. Surely, you can type an email or take notes in a meeting, but what you gain in mobility you lose in accuracy and ergonomics. The mouse has been around for fifty years and its design has been iterated upon again and again, from a simple block of wood to well formed plastic molds to fit various hand shapes and sizes. Touches and gestures may be the new hot thing, but for real work the mouse isn't going anywhere.
Do you remember how Microsoft snuck a Trojan into their IPR statement for the integer transform? Something along the lines of, "We agree to the standard royalty-free terms, as long as everyone else does".. It didn't take long for everyone to adopt the "Microsoft amendment" to their IPR statements, and for one token member to object to royalty-free terms, and the whole thing came tumbling down.
What are your concerns with using a wireless mouse?
I hate batteries.
I don't know about that. If they aggregate the info without breaking into anything I'd call it fair game, however unfortunate. The info is out there, they just make it easier.
More like the most sensationalist title in internet history.
Q&A: Jimmy Wales Reflects on a Decade of Wikipedia
when firefox 4 is released (and is rapidly adopted+), if you are a major video provider on the web and you want to use html5 video, you will need to serve webm or theora or you will miss out on a quarter of the world web audience and the majority of the european web audience.

if you weren't planning on doing so, you were either going to have to serve video via flash or not at all anyway. google's decision only tips the scales a little more.

+edit: note that I'm not prognosticating a new firefox monopoly or anything, just that firefox 4 will rapidly replace most of the current firefox 3.*s out there, which currently make up the referenced marketshare.
Perhaps not having the ability to regenerate leads to more cautious behaviour, avoiding life threatening situations to a much greater extent? Puzzling...
Razer's mice are pretty nice: http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/DisplayCateg...
I hope not. I own an iPhone, Nexus One and a HTC Surround (WP7). I struggle with the soft keys on my Nexus One everyday. I think they're absolutely horrible. The soft keys on my HTC Surround is much better than the Nexus One, but I still prefer my hardware home button on my iPhone.

That said, seems like I'm not the only one that thinks the Pre's off-screen touch area is a good idea worth copying. But I can't imagine these four/five finger gestures translating well to the small screen on the iPhone. There goes one hand use...
I agree that it's functional, but it's not hugely intuitive, which is why most people who've only ever glanced at reddit complain about its design. Vim has a great design with fantastic UI if you're an expert with it, but it's confusing as all hell for people who've never used it. Similarly, I think reddit (and HN, for that matter) could probably make more effective use of their space and lay things out in a way that's more intuitive. That's not to say I want them to be digg, or one of the many over designed CSS nightmares out there, but it's be nice if they had a UX expert really sit down and hack away at it.

I'd settle for it loading, however. That'd be nice.
$450m doesn't sound like much money in the grand scheme of things. Google spends this much on coffee. Can't they buy it all, open source it, and be done with the whole drama already?
I'm half convinced this is some kind of clever marketing campaign intended to get peoples' attention and make them go to the site where they say "Hey, this isn't so bad" and start using the service.
I don't think Google has affected anything with this move. By any counts out there, Firefox has double the market share of Chrome. It might reduce the use of HTML5 video versus Flash video in Chrome itself, but for the whole web, it doesn't make a difference when Firefox already took this position with twice the market share.
There is single-window option in 2.7-dev. I am using 2.7 dev version for more then 6 months and it's stable enough IMHO.

How to install it on Ubuntu from PPA - http://www.webupd8.org/2010/01/how-to-install-gimp-with-sing...
1. If someone breached an NDA and you helped/instigated them in doing so, you will be held jointly liable in civil damages. First amendment will not protect you against that, and there is ample case law in this area. Sony might lose the case, but not for the 1st amendment reasons.

2. Kindly avoid the condescending tone.
The title's just been edited. For context, the original title was "Spokeo - The Biggest Privacy Invasion in Internet History".
Are you looking for full-time engineers?
How American Troops Cheat Death
For the iPhone it could be an advantage, but since the iPad has/needs a 'bezel' area around the screen, there's not much point in removing it. Still the gestures would be a good backup/alternative option.
two people multiplayer on device.
It looks temporary to me: http://i.min.us/ibF9ni.png. It also think this logic is supported by alex_'s logic [1].

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2098679
d3 is really interesting from a coding standpoint. It's a bit like a fancy orm like SQLAlchemy, Sequel, or the new ActiveRecord with arel. Instead of transforming model data it transforms view data, though. It's worth a look IMHO.

https://github.com/mbostock/d3
> Is it possible that lab conditions affect the psychology of the animal? (i.e. who won't be depressed spending your life in a cage)

Yes, although that view seems both controversial, and very poorly funded. The landmark experiment here was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
Can you say why you think this?
I can't help feeling that there must be ways for us to find our way in this world without torturing other living things.
I think it will damage their business in the long term, as today's developers gradually move to business positions.

Before Oracle acquired Sun, I was neutral toward them, and didn't really care. I thought they were a big enterprise vendor, with a supposedly very good (but pricey) database. If I were given the money to use their DB, I would use it.

Now, I really hate what they represent. 10 years from now, as a CTO, I will try my best to consider other options, even if I have the "money" for an Oracle DB. I already love Postgres, but with Oracle's recent behavior, I will push even more toward good open source projects and away from bloated enterprise solutions.

Plus, Postgres / RethinkDB / other OSS databases will be better in 10 years ;)
Getting rid of the home button would be very interesting/nice, since it is one of the last things that keep the iPad from being truly orientation-agnostic. (The rest being the power switch, speaker and the headphone jack, but these don’t matter that much.)
It's kind of hard to ask a rat if he's feeling blue. While I agree that the tests are somewhat suspect, they're used because they provide an objective metric that isn't influenced by experimenter bias. We'll likely need to find something else that will work better.

In the end, I agree with you, but I'll add this: I think this is a triumphant moment for science. We ran tests, we thought we were getting one result, but we got another. Now, we'll reexamine our assumptions, and attack the problem with renewed vigor. The end result will be a much greater, and much better founded knowledge of depression.

I love that science always wins. Even, and especially, when it fails.
Yes, we are.

http://www.backtype.com/jobs
Google yanking H.264 video out of Chrome
I use:

Invoicera.com - Invoicing and Time Tracking
Mint - Money Management
I actually paid the fee to see if they could come up with anything else - Given I use _exactly_ the same userid everywhere, and it is extraordinarily rare - I'm shocked at how the poor results are. Had the incorrect address for me, incorrect phone number, and was missing a ton of blogs that i regularly participate in.

If anything, spokeo gives a very, very poor sense of what type of information is collected on you. If only it was so minimal.
FP language flashcards
I doubt it. My two year old can easily use an IOS device as they are. There is no way she could do multi touch gestures. Disabled people can use them as they are many couldnt do complex many finger multi touch gestures. I think apple gets this.
Darn, I was hoping the article would be about trackballs. :-)
I absolutely swear by evoluent mice: http://www.evoluent.com/ Your forearm is in a much more natural position, and the hard part of it is exposed to the table edge or pad, not the soft part.
The library they're using, b3, was developed by some of the same folks as Protovis. Protovis looks interesting, thanks for the link.
I would dare to say that more money probably went into this issue so far than Sony will ever lose because of the hack?
"The arguments pseudo array becomes a little bit more array-like in ES5. In strict mode, it loses its callee and caller properties."

Anyone know what replaces this?

How would I write this (stupid code that would eventually blow the stack) without arguments.callee?

(function () {
console.log("hello world");
setTimeout(arguments.callee, 1000);
})();
Except that if you actually travel in parts of the world where you would need this service, international data roaming charges for accessing this service will be so outrageous that it may just be cheaper to hire a professional interpreter to travel with you.
Flash isn't an open standard anymore. As of Flash 9 when they started shipping the DRM subsystem, free software cannot be fully compatible without rev eng.
Ehmmm, the ergonomics of mice is horrid. Just read a bit about mouse damages.

Touch might not be the saviour, but dont holdt the mouse as a good example of ergonomics.
Has anyone else been waiting for this 'invention' forever? Between speech recognition and machine translation it seemed to be a solved problem for the longest time.
Ufone GSM : Welcome to Youth
Рысь Шаманская. Комментарии : LiveInternet - Российский Сервис Онлайн-Дневников
major video provider on the web and you want to use html5 video

Here's the sticking point -- as the article says, no one's going to go through the pain of dealing with VP8 transcoding and storage. Flash will be for everyone except iOS, where HTML5 H264 acts as a backdrop.
Winners of Mozilla Open Data Visualization competition announced
There’s Absolutely Nothing You Can Do About Spokeo, So Stop Whining
the scientists responsible for this are a bit screwed career wise

What, the companies they worked for are just going to hang them out to dry? Not likely, not if they want scientists to keep distorting results for them. The scientists responsible for this might not have the admiration of their peers, but they'll be securely employed.
The MPEG-LA promised in August that they wouldn't charge per-stream for free videos ever.

http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme...
Rechargeables don’t cut it?
I really like this message. It has a lot of similarities to a life-changing (for me) audiobook that I recently finished (Brian Tracy's The Psychology of Achievement).

Here's a short summary:

If the situation [can be remedied], then there is no need to worry about it. ... The appropriate action is to seek its solution. Then it is clearly more sensible to spend your energy focussing on the solution rather than worrying about the problem. Alternatively, if there is no solution ... then there is also no point in being worried about it, because you cannot do anything about it anyway.

If you are motivated by a wish to help on the basis of kindness, compassion, and respect, then you can carry on any kind of work ... and function more effectively with less fear or worry, not being afraid of what others think or whether you ultimately will be successful in reaching your goal. Even if you fail to achieve your goal, you can feel good about having made the effort. But with a bad motivation, people can praise you or you can achieve goals, but you still will not be happy.

[In order to not be overwhelmed by the difficulties,] it is vital that we make every effort to find a way of lifting our spirits. We can do this by recollecting our good fortune.

[Negative thoughts and emotions - such as hatred, anger, pride, lust, greed, envy] are thus the cause of our destructive behaviour both toward others and to ourselves.

There are many methods [to train the mind] ... It is this pattern of thought [focus on turning adversity to advantage].

... one of the mind’s most marvellous qualities is that it can be transformed... [Those who attempt to transform their minds] will become more disciplined and positive.
How To Make An 8-Bit Twitter Avatar
That would get them an extra inch of real estate on the iPhone screen. That's significant.
"Rather, the point is that in practice developers don't let royalties impede their implementations."

This is simply not true, MPEG-LA would go after any commercially successful project not paying royalties.
I would be surprised.

The new gestures in iOS 4.3 are neither obvious nor discoverable. Will anybody instinctively know that getting back to the home screen requires a pinch gesture with five fingers? (Using more than one finger also precludes one hand use and is awkward on an iPhone or iPod touch.) You can currently comfortably use iOS without ever putting more than one finger on the screen. Zooming might be less precise but double tapping works perfectly fine (edit and correction: you need to double tap with two fingers to zoom out in Maps so this is not entirely true). A departure from that principle would be weird.

These gestures are nice shortcuts but, I think, not much more.

I might be less skeptical if there was any credible evidence that Apple plans to steal from Palm and Blackberry and will extend the touch surface onto the bezel. That would allow for much more obvious and intuitive one finger gestures.

That said, Apple does weird stuff from time to time. The iPod shuffle had no buttons for a year. (At least Apple is also willing to correct such mistakes. The current iPod shuffle regained buttons.)
time to get a PS3 master key t-shirt!