skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
sqrt and its approximations seems a bit too low-level, both for what he did and what Facebook is doing. This is the kind of stuff you look up, as opposed to other algorithmic difficulties that arise out of total different situations where without a good general background you wouldn't even know what to research.

Questions about trees, graphs etc. would seem more appropriate for game development (and probably for Facebook in general).

But that's just me. Sqrt might even be a good question if he's a recent graduate and they want to see if he still can think back a couple of years...
True, but I'm referring to "3D" 3D. Wearing glasses. I only played a couple at CES last year (2010) and was blown away. There's also the Vuzix which are a little bulky, but again pretty amazing w/ games.
Uh, Gabriel made a point by point analysis of the issue, and your response is "fud" and "many of us see right through"? Can you please stick to responding to the issue and not engaging in your own contentless smear?
The ACM won't stop spamming me. "Your invitation to become a member", they say. Following the unsubscribe instructions doesn't work. Blocking the sending address doesn't work (they keep changing it). I've resorted to blacklisting *@acm.org.

I'm not the only one, either: http://gmplib.org/~tege/acmspam.html http://fries.net/~david/thoughts/ACM_membership_spam.php

</rant>
Permanently opt your browser out of online ad personalization via cookies
Would you like to give some concrete examples of scientists "getting into politics" preferably with quotes?
Microsoft Rewards WinMo Hackers With New Asus Phone
This makes me wonder why someone doesn't put out a set of glasses with just clockwise (or counterclockwise, shouldn't matter) polarized filters in them so that both eyes see the same image and you don't get the headache. While it would suck to pay extra and not get it; it would help those that can't get it anyway.
A case for multi-tasking [productivity]
Narrowing Down Encryption: Why it Matters in Online Communication & Storage
Not to be too contrarian, but you should let your friend know that much of what they espouse is unhealthy. Atkins was a passing fad, but, it's the sort of thing they'd tout like crazy on there...I understand that some people enjoy this sort of thing, I mean viagra spam is sent out for a reason, it doesn't mean I need to stoop to it.
Journals are priced for institutional libraries. They still don't know how to address the non-affiliated scholar market.

While the industry evolves its business model we need to get stuff done. Here's a workaround: use Google Scholar.

Look for the link that says "All X versions". Find the free pdf pre-print, usually from on the author's home page. Works at least 80% of the time for me. The OP is right though, this doesn't work so well for older pre-interwebs articles.
If the js is running on the main page itself, yes. If it's in an iframe then no.
I use DDG as my primary search engine and plan to continue, but I am really getting tired of this aggresive/attacking marketing approach of gaberial.
when somebody is photographed at a street action, they're putting their friends and family at risks. everybody knows it. as you say, it's a general principle: repressive regimes will target the friends and families of anybody who gets their attention sufficiently.

but the risk profiles are very different:

- go out in the street: risk getting killed, or bashed with a nightstick, or photographed (in which case you wind up on a list and they may target you, your friends, and your family

- share a link on Facebook: risk winding up on a much much longer list (so they're less likely to have the resources to target everybody on it, let alone their friends and families)
Google launches Chrome extension to opt out of ad tracking cookies
Thx Matt. At issue here is the search leakage, and I tried to keep this post to that topic. I included the quote from Google because it mentions the Referrer sting aspect; I included the full quote because I didn't want be accused of taking it out context.

The part in particular that is relevant is "All search engines and websites use referrer terms as part of the architecture of the web, but we recognize our responsibility to protect the data that users entrust to us and we give them meaningful choices to protect their privacy."

It is not a choice that you need to give a user -- you can just do it for them as it should not effect search results. The bottom line of the post is that Google can easily control this particular leaking of personal information, so why not do it? I cannot seem to get a straight answer to that question from you or anyone.
I have the same issue with living in Vancouver. It might be worse having come from Calgary, Alberta. Generally, in the prairies, the winters are bright and sunny. It's even nice further north around Edmonton where they get more significant snow, because the snow reflects a lot of the sunlight. By contrast, the Pacific Northwest is full of rain and overcast skies. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a term everyone here is familiar with. Most people seem to think snow is the big issue to face in the winter. For me, snow is no problem. Overcast and rainy skies 90%+ of the time is a big issue to consider, however.
This is totally great! I love when he says, " I then thought, "What would it be like to play NES games backwards??"" I mean...who wonders that?!?! Clever!!
Agreed. Especially since most cases similar to his argument are retargeting, not query leakage.

In his example, if the user actually clicked directly from Google to Wikipedia, Google would be the only one who knew about the user's interest in gout. Google isn't in the business of sharing this information (believe me, it wish they were ;).

In most cases that people might assume to be related to this, you search for Timbuk2 bags, click through to their site, then are bombarded with ads all over the internet for Timbuk2 bags. This has nothing to do with search leakage, this is retargeting. Timbuk2 drops advertiser pixels on their site so they can later target those users with advertising.

Most advertisers are stupid. They don't have the fancy tech to handle and parse search terms, target users, and display ads. They're probably using RMX or DoubleClick, where you only have the ability to retarget users that have seen certain pixels. They may be using AdSense or AdWords to target queries, but those are using Google's own data, which has nothing to do with search leakage.

I think DuckDuckGo rocks, but as someone working in the online advertising industry today, this issue seems manufactured for publicity. This information is useful in theory (and I'm sure a small number of companies are using it) but there are much bigger issues that are getting exploited by everyone.
The iPad: The Best Thing to Happen to Meetings Since the 1960s
Looks neat but not revolutionary at all. I don't think each content provider needs their own app but what's the problem with using a mobile friendly format and letting RSS readers do the extra work?

Pulse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
Agreed, which is why describing it as a 'key logger' seems to miss the point.

Although admittedly I guess The Atlantic are not targeting the HN crowd.

However, the problem would have been (mostly) avoided by serving the login form over HTTPS. As most people who have used a browser have some notion of HTTPS vs HTTP, couldn't the Atlantic have credited their users with some intelligence, and mentioned the significance of that in the exploit?
I'm not spreading any fear, uncertainty, or doubt with my response. In what way should this blog post rectify the view of donttrack.us and that billboard in the eyes of the people who think it's a load of crap?
i wrote http://metra.jcs.org/ to provide train schedules for the metra rail lines in the chicago area after metra spent $3.9M on a new website that wasn't even usable on an iphone. they finally have a mobile version now but i find the interface difficult to use compared to mine.

aside from word of mouth, or searching google for "metra iphone", i have no way of directing traffic to it like i would if it were a dedicated app in the app store/android market. i've often thought about just taping up flyers at each metra stop to advertise for the site.
to add my two cents into this. This is my issue with 3D movies. I find it very distracting.

A good for instance is that I recently saw Green Hornet in 3D -- not by choice entirely, since they weren't showing a 2D version. As an example, in one scene, they were panning to a person talking who was sitting behind a desk. The pencil holder was in 3D of course. I was very aware of the pencil holder as a result. But the pencil holder was irrelevant to the scene, but that's all I was looking at.
Hey, this is Mark Wilson, Founder of Philanthroper.

I truly respect their approach in that they're really going after impact measurement and tangible metrics. But if we all listened to GiveWell, there would be 10 charities in business. Literally. That's how many they've deemed worthy of your support.

GiveWell is kind of like that kid you knew in grade school who said he'd only marry a supermodel. Standards are great, until you realize that sleeping alone for your entire life might not be the best way to actually live.
That climate change is occurring is falsifiable. Whether or not it will negatively impact our world insofar that we should try to prevent it: not falsifiable. That's what a climate skeptic really cares about.
Interesting that more than half of these 23 fonts are from just three designers: Carter, Hoefler and Frere-Jones. Carter alone accounts for 30%. Carter's Georgia, not included here, is an unsung masterpiece of a display font, tarnished a bit by ubiquity, sure, but still so easy on the eyes.
Joule is cool, but not alone in quest for sunlight-to-fuel “game-changer”
I agree that a distributed, secure, privacy-respectful social network would be very useful here for the activists to work together and am looking to the point where Appleseed, Diaspora et. al. are ready for it. It doesn't solve the same problem, though. Facebook is all about reaching people who aren't the core activists -- 600,000,000 people in the Diaspora universe yet.
"Syntactic sugar" is a term for which I do not have a suitable, technical definition. I feel we could find a satisfactory one, however. If not, I may have to taboo that term as well.
Informally, that seems to be true. See Patel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patel
Well, All this FUD has ensured that I'll never try DDG. It's sad really - it's not even a real search engine, just some hack using APIs. And the best marketing Whiny-berg can come up with is half-truths about referer linking.

I'll stick with the search engine that has a legion of brilliant programmers working hard to bring me great search results.
The obvious reason in because you have no internet connectivity in the subway stations.

But that doesn't affect the arguments, just that one example.

On a recent visit to New York, Google guided me all around Manhattan with great efficiency, but I had to keep an app for when I was underground.
You're definitely right. I don't know why I received the very same results after having switched from Integer to int, I must have messed it up. Now it behaves with the same timings you describe. I'll rerun the tests and update the post accordingly.

Thanks!
I think you're reading too much into Brooks' ideology from that singular article and that singular excerpt. Based on my experience with other works from him and from listening to him speak on PBS news, it's disingenuous to lump him in with the "conservative right". He is anything but anti-intellectual.

That said, his position is not that "plain talkin' people who struggle with math and science" should be lauded but that social skills are not skills that can be learned through formal education. His point is that group dynamics, being able to read people and lead people, is a very subtle art that is learned throughout childhood and adolescence and Chua denied her children the opportunities to learn these skills by refusing them sleepovers and plays and such.
Qwiki is the reason why Burst 2.0 will happen in 2012.
I started waking up at 6:00am when we switched off of daylight savings time in the fall. It gave me a nice 1 hour bonus from when I was normally used to waking up.
Taking his suggestions would no more "break the web" than Craigslist broke paper. It would harm a common business model, sure, but I have yet to see a good reason for me to care about the business models of web companies any more than I care about the business models of newspapers or record companies.
Gabriel mentions in this post that https does not fully solve the problem, as referrers are still sent when using google in https mode. Can you confirm whether that's correct?
What about the fact that all Erlang revolves around thingies (the processes) that send messages to each other?
This is my last post on the subject. I felt that my position was being read unfairly, and I wanted to set the record straight. I apologize if it did not come off that way as it was clearly not the intention.

I truly believe this is an unnecessary leaking of personal information. And I address the browser argument directly in the post, as well as the argument that no one cares.
See if you can spot the Cohen island in N-NW London. I lived in that area for a bit, and around Golders Green and Stamford Hill there's a large Jewish community, many of them orthodox.
You know most China citizens that need access to western news or websites for business reasons, etc can figure out how to get a VPN account somewhere..

FB and twitter are the last place any revolution should take place on as than you have adversary using same service to out the victims to dictator authorities..
Not considering the specifics of DDG billboard and the Referer angle, does it not bother you to the slightes that Google does in fact track you all over the Internet?

One is basically checking in with Google everytime he visits any site that uses Analytics, embeds a YouTube video or a font from a Font Directory, or a Google-hosted Javascript snippet. Not to mention GMail. Don't know about other people but this bothers the hell out of me. So while I don't think DDG should've focused on the Referer issue, they got the core issue absoluely right. Google does in fact track everyone.
Hey - does anyone have the steps for recreating the problem?

I have a 2006 MBP with an Atheros 5424: 2.1.14.5 - but I'm currently not experiencing problems. My router is using WPA2, and it occasionally "forgets" the password, even though it's saved in my system keychain. Is that what this is all about?
>>Have you also tried Market Samurai to find a niche?

I tested both before recommending MNF. As you mention, both are well suited for this task, but Marketing Samurai is a bit harder to use IMO.

>>You definitely have to take notes and go back to it regularly, but I feel the book has tremendous value for its target market

Awesome, thanks for that.
Wait, how are they different? All the 3D effects I know of are still the same thing as movies, in that your eyes must always focus on the same distance. With the 3DS, for instance, while the underlying technology is different still consists of your eyes focusing on the same flat surface in your hands, and tricking your eyes with two separate views. Same focus vs. convergence issues as mentioned in the article.
So is Facebook with their like button, AddThis with their widgets and probably dozens or even hundreds of other services people use. At this point no, I'm not worried about it.
I don't really get this. Do publishers use Wordpress? Why are they so proud that it is not an app? Why is this better?
This is good feedback; thanks for bringing it up.

I've just added an interim step that allows people to download the PDF and audio files separately (and I've added the size of each file to the page).
Review my startup - BlipSnips - Video tagging & sharing
Well, you were referring to games from the early '00s, which didn't have "3D" 3D. (God, that's awful. Anyone know of a better way to express that?) In any case, it remains to be seen how accepted "3D" 3D gaming is by the public.
Gabriel has been avoiding the 2 most important points though.

1. Most of this is theoretical

2. Theoretically advertisers can build profiles of you based on the web pages you visit anyway. Referer leakage or not
That would be a cool solution too, but Bundler _really_ doesn't like it when you try to load multiple libraries with the same name so I'm not sure if this'll work. I will give it a shot soon, though. :)
That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Go to a real IMAX theater and watch a real IMAX movie. They tend to be science documentaries, like Hubble 3D. Compared to that, Avatar just seemed fuzzy and out of focus to me.
You're not thinking like a Tunisian activist.

Most of them have Facebook but don't have servers -- or skills to administer it.

They may not have a credit card to pay for these secure out-of-the-country hosting accounts; if they do, the government will be monitoring their transactions so they'll get exposed anyhow.

> "The email list" in the case of a revolution should obviously include everyone you know.

Nonsense. In a country like Tunisia you may well be putting somebody's job at risk if you send political mail to their work account, so you have to be a lot more discerning. And this has been going on for over a month - if an activist sent all the updates to all of their friends in email, people would have long since stopped reading.
I wish there was a way to flag comments that obviously did not read the article, as there's an entire paragraph devoted to "omg you're just attacking Google you meaniehead!"
Sure.

But the funny thing is that using an OO language shapes the way you use procedural languages.

Owen Taylor, who worked in the same research group as me for a semester and who is one of the core developers of GTK, is somebody who believes (or used to believe) that "OO sucks" in the sense that they made a conscious decision to code GTK in straight C, not C++. That said, the actual organization of GTK is shaped by OO ideas.

On the once in a blue moon that I write some C that isn't just simple procedure "glue code", my C coding style is heavily influenced by my OO experience, in the sense of how I name things and I frequently end up passing 'this' as the first arguments to functions. I think of the old C++ compilers that just outputted C code with mangled names... That's how I write C, except the names aren't so mangled.
Apps vs the Web isn't a new debate.

Some thing apps are merely a stepping stone and the Web will be everything in the future. A bit like how 5-10 years ago, Flash was the only way to do "rich" Web apps whereas now most things Flash can do, HTML/JS can now do.

The problem with apps isn't really about payment though. I have a paid NYC subway app and quite happily paid for it. I'd prefer to do that than have some micropayments system where really I had no idea how much it was going to cost.

It's a bit like how phone calls from land lines, unless they're international, aren't charged on a per-call or per-minute basis (in the US, YMMV elsewhere). The situation is analagous to micropayments IMHO.

People generally prefer flat cost models for simplicity, even when it means they pay more than they would had they paid for each call. But that's a function of risk. You pay insurance on your house even though the expected value of all your insurance payments is you're worse off than had you self-insured: you're transferring that risk to a third party.

Also, micro-payments (and this includes charging per phone call) has another cost: the cost of billing actually becomes significant. So the phone provider prefer a flat rate rather than keeping track of and billing you for all those calls.

Anyway, back to apps.

Some people don't like apps because they're balkanized. If you write an app you need to write an iOS version, a version for Android, a version for Blackberry and so on. It's a valid point but one I think will sort itself out in time as such platforms inevitably become commoditized.

What you have to remember is that most people aren't tech-savvy. So give a person and tell them you click on this icon and it gives you a subway map and the times and they understand that. Tell them to go to a Web page and it's a whole lot harder.

Yes you can bookmark a page on the home screen but that experience isn't yet as good. Web apps generally don't work offline (which is a bit of a problem in our subway example). Web pages vary greatly in their mobile user experience, both in terms of display/layout and in terms of remembering what the user was doing as you switch apps (which is an issue on mobile but not on a laptop/desktop).

Lastly, games I see as being apps for a very long time to come. Sure computing power is increasing but power on mobile is an issue so the pressure will simply be to reduce power consumption rather than increasing CPU power, making the viability of HTML/JS for something like Angry Birds just that much further in the future.

The fact is though you don't need to buy apps for pretty much anything. There are lots of free apps and free Web pages. I can navigate around NYC using Google Maps if I want to but I like my paid NYC subway map.
Because search still sucks.
No-one does context very well or very consistently. Even with hints. Google can't do it. Wolfram can't do it. UDDI sure doesn't/can't/won't do it.

Further, a huge part of the drive to apps is because people prefer more-responsive and dependable apps that are geared for the mobile use-case of the query they need at that instant. e.g. an interface that's not only finger-friendly, but one-thumb friendly and/or low contrast-friendly.

Even in a magical UDDI future, no generic interface group is going to churn out something that displays subway maps as well as a dedicated UX group that's only worried about subway maps.

Lastly, you only search for an app once. And most people never search randomly at all: their friend recommends an app and they search for that specific app by name. You may recognize this behavior as: the way most people use the internet. The worst the 'appocalypse' could ever get, is as horribly unusable as the current internet. And we certainly have enough history on that to see whether people will ignore it because it can be difficult to find things [1].

That the author totally skips the UX concerns and shamefully overhypes the search process strikes me as somewhere between 'just not getting it' and 'intentionally disingenuous'.

[1] So we're clear: It really is still too difficult to search for most things online. My point is that state of affairs just doesn't matter. Maybe you could get more use from more people with better search. It remains to be seen whether people would rather search for themselves or whether they truly prefer to get their information through third party curators and aggregators. But clearly apps won't run into a roadblock because of search any time soon.
just some feedback...

i would drop the registration process for new donors, or at least make it optional (ie put it at the end of the donation process where all they do is just enter a password or something).

i really dislike these things on shopping carts and moreso on donation sites. great idea!
The problems I had were all in coffeeshops and with older routers, it would either refuse to associate with the AP whatsoever, or I couldn't get an IP address (i.e. it was associated, but couldn't receive any data including the DHCP ACK)
I'm sorry you feel that way. All I can say is that I tried my hardest in this post to do the opposite of FUD. I believe this is a serious issue and I am trying to get it solved for everyone.
how many search engine results are https?
It also doesn't work well for articles outside CS.

Stab stab stab -- the journal model is hopelessly outdated in the digital age, and the sooner it disappears, the better.