skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This raises the question if a more controlled and restricted site would have risen to the same prominence.

It appears, that a very low barrier to site usage was helpful in getting a critical mass of users in the beginning.

In other words, accept that some users will "throw in the windows" vs. the site being a ghost town.
> I'm sure that a lot of people with flash video delivery systems did not particularly enjoy converting to h.264

Flash is a wrapper, not a codec, and has in fact supported H.264 encoded video for some time. A "switch" from Flash to (likely MP4 wrapped) H.264 entails only removing the Flash wrapper, not a re-encode of the content. Apple not supporting Flash is not the same thing as Google not supporting H.264 (codec != container).
You are correct, but why would you imagine Google would treat Android differently? Even though they haven't announced any changes specific to Android, I expect Google's left and right hands to work together... eventually.
Concerns of breathing in this silicate have been popping up a lot in this discussion (especially concerns about silicosis). I’d just like to point out that we’re discussing very small quantities; nano-coatings of ~100nm, only 15-30 molecules high as mentioned in the articles. Wikipedia states that the silicate clusters ascribed to silicosis each have a diameter of ~10 microns; each clusters is 100 times larger than the thickness of this coating. Additionally, the article states that the silicate coating chemically bond to the applied surface. Such silicate bonds only cleave at high temperatures (500 deg C) so the coating won’t evaporate off under ambient conditions.
#sidibouzid: This Week in Online Tyranny
Is Android more efficient than iOS at generating search revenue?
Mostly about site tracking rather than business tracking but:

Visits by time of day & day of week. For a lot of sites traffic is very time dependent. People look at jobs sites in late afternoon, dating sites in the late evening, etc. By running our ads specifically in our peak period we tripled our CTR.

Scrolling metrics. We've found scrolling metrics to be a much better measure of engagement than time spent on site (which is often incorrectly recorded as 0 by many analytics systems for bounced users)
That's probably because the real advances aren't newsworthy.

Who wants to read about a new kind of steel that's slightly harder than the old one?
Ask HN: My MVP has no name, should I wait until I can think of one to show it?
I'm coming to a point where this project that I have been working on over the past week is in an MVP-type stage. There are only a small number of changes I'd like to make before pushing it to a production server. The only problem is that I do not have a solid name, yet!

I'm not asking for name ideas, but I am wondering how important you all think a name is at this stage?

Obviously, everyone's day dream is to make your Review My Startup post and have it get positive feedback and perhaps written about by somebody on TechCrunch or any other big tech website. Although it'd be a great problem to have, I'd hate to have all of this happen with me using my current domain name. I think my current one is a little too difficult to say - it doesn't quite roll off my tongue as well as I'd like. It's also a little clumsy to type. It's 8 letters, 4 syllables. It's just type words mashed together, nothing fancy. I guess my main complaint is that it's not catchy, or fun to say, or anything ... it's just bland kind of.

I realize I can brainstorm good names all day long, but in the end it's users that have to agree. So, the name I have may be loved or not. I don't know. But, what do you all think? Should I wait until I have a solid name picked out so that I don't have to risk changing it and losing any initial tracking I may gain if I release it under this other name?
Announcing The Teens in Tech Incubator
Stealing SIM Cards from Traffic Lights
To keep the fail whale afloat?
Everyone always pulls the entitlement card if you bash some open source project or framework nowadays...
Digital cameras didn't make amateurs worse, they just increased the amount of amateurs. And I'm sure it increased the amount of good photographers too, so I'm not sure what the complaint is here.

If old cameras took better pictures, then I implore professional photographers to use them.
Company shuttle?

Several companies in the valley offer this (including mine).
Wave solved this problem really well. I wish it had worked out.
DId anyone else notice that the report is from 2009?
I would respond to your comment, but really, there's nothing worth responding to there..
Teens In Tech Launches Startup Incubator for Young Entrepreneurs
Your future career may also depend on how well you score in cubeduel.
>I imagine coating my mobo/cpu/gpu for safe and easy, fan-less, liquid cooling!

Isn't glass a thermal insulator? I guess a thin layer wouldn't create too great a temperature gradient. Sounds a nice idea. Of course you could do this now with a non-ionic liquid (oil?) but I don't fancy your jellyfishes chances.
NIST’s Excellent Guidelines on Secure Deployment of IPv6
Those aren't criteria for judging the fitness all web technologies, they're criteria for deciding between H.264 and WebM, should one feel obliged to choose.

There's no hypocrisy here, because you can take it as a given that Gruber believes that Flash sucks, and not just because he's an iOS partisan. All Mac users were subject to years of abuse by the Flash plugin. I gratefully welcome its decline.

But I seem to remember that he wasn't that keen on Apple supporting Flash, even though it was in wide use by mobile playback devices, and online video services.

Hardware vendors like camera and phone manufacturers aren't substitutable for online video services. And prior to the release of Android 2.3, where was Flash in any measurable use by "mobile playback devices"?
Not only is this already a product, it's already on sale in Germany and other countries in europe.

http://www.nanopool.biz/

Product demonstration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEgfdr7GKow

I don't know why it isn't for sale in the US at this point. But this is not vapor-ware.
This happened before, the relationship between Cepheid luminosity and variation period were worked out with nearby stars that we could measure distance to via parallax. This relationship was used to determine the distance to nearby galaxies and thus establish the basic foundation of the scale of the Universe (e.g. determining the value of the Hubble constant, etc.) However, it turns out there are actually two types of Cepheids and they do not have the same relationship between period and luminosity. This meant that measurements of distances to neighboring galaxies were wrong, since they included a mixture of classical and Type II Cepheids. Fixing that error led to adjustments to the estimated distance to neighboring galaxies by a factor of 4, and a comparable increase in the age and size of the Universe. This solved a fundamental problem at the time, whereby the Earth was older than the Universe (since we can measure the age of the Earth via radiological dating of Uranium, for example).

Note that today we have multiple methods for determining the age of the Universe (such as type Ia supernovae, study of the cosmic microwave background, etc.) so this revelation is unlikely to change that, though it's likely to have other implications in our understanding of cosmology.
I, for one, hope that you are right (though the pessimist in me is skeptical).
This is where floppy disks come in handy. Burning an ISO to a CD for each round of testing is a pain and wasteful. When I dabbled into this years ago I was lucky enough to still have a floppy drive.
Also, of those companies, most have contributed specifications (Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo), and one contributed code (Google, with the initial version of Maps). All of that code is now under Apple's control, and if Apple needs to fix it or update it or debug it they can do so.

Flash, on the other hand, is closed-source. Adobe could, at best, provide Apple with a binary plugin to drop in. Apple would not be able to fix any bugs or track down any problems, and judging from their performance on OS X, it would be the source of a lot of crashes Apple couldn't do anything about. Apple might announce iOS 5.0 in June, a few days before or after Flash 11 comes out. Now what does Apple do? Rush to incorporate a major version change into a minor version release? Hold off on releasing until Adobe can get them a stable version? What if it's buggy? Now users who bought a new iPhone with iOS5, or users who updated to iOS5, think that Apple's released a buggy release, when in reality they've released a (probably good) release with a crappy version of Flash. This is exactly what happened with Snow Leopard already, and Apple caught flak for distributing buggy software because Adobe had released security fixes after SL went gold.

It's not about control, but determination. Adobe for years hasn't been able to show off a stable, reliable, and performant release, and so in exchange for Apple accepting Adobe's crappy code into the OS, Apple would also lose the ability to speak for the quality of the OS and experience as a whole. It's lose-lose for Apple, so where's the incentive? They got screwed with Snow Leopard, they'd get screwed with iOS, and in the end the ones who suffer are the end users, who can either wonder why their browser is so slow/crashy/laggy/jittery when scrolling, or who can wonder why they don't have Flash, but then shrug it off because most sites don't need it.
I'm having trouble getting the facts through the indignant tone of the article... how much of this is "can't get a better job until I pass the bar, can't pass the bar until I pay off my debts (for which I need a better job)"?
Perhaps what we need is something like CJSR (Common JavaScript Runtime). Languages that compile to JavaScript generate standardized debugging information as JSON (CoffeeScript has been pushing for this). These languages can then use a shared set of in-browser debugging tools (JSDB?). The fact that Safari, Chrome, and FF all support common browser extension architectures as this makes this solution even more compelling.

Agressive source transformation becomes less of an issue.
Sometimes it is how you say it; Google and H.264
Interestingly, I believe the US customary units are defined by metric values now. If they weren't, it'd probably make international trade between the US and other countries almost impossible.

It certainly doesn't dictate what hobbyists will use for a project. Though what does surprise me is that even people with an interest in science don't recognise the benefits of metric. Mathematical formulas often use metric values for simplicity. No doubt you could adapt them for customary values though it would needlessly add complexity thus increasing chances of error.

Wow, I'm surprised how much my original post got modded down. Didn't realise how sensitive US people were about their units.
Using async.js (http://eligrey.com/blog/post/pausing-javascript-with-async-j...), you can do away with callbacks and still have asynchronous code by using the yield statement. The following is an example (taken from my blog post) of asynchronous code using async.js:

yield to.request("/feedback", "POST", (
yield to.prompt("What are your impressions of async.js?")
));
yield to.inform("Thanks for your feedback!");
// do more stuff here

The equivalent code with callbacks is as follows:

async.prompt(
["What are your impressions of async.js?"],
function (response) {
async.request(
["feedback", "POST", response],
function () {
async.inform(
["Thanks for your feedback!"],
function () {
// do more stuff here
}
);
}
);
}
);

It makes it very easy to handle DOM events, as demonstrated below.

var clickEvent = yield myButton.next("click");

Full disclosure: I wrote async.js.
I know full well that Flash is not a codec; I never implied as such. The point is, many people served a non-h.264 codec through flash, and so they would not have just been able to supply the same source video through a <video> tag rather than through flash.
Too late. Seriously. The world got into H.264. We're here. It's it. What is WebM's fighting chance? Did you read the article? Do you have any counter points to Gruber's thesis? The web will continue to use H.264 and all Google is doing is ensuring that Chrome users (myself included) just get H.264 video in a flash wrapper. If we get WebM through Google/YouTube then great, but nobody else is going to bother serving it to us... why would they?
I'd guess that IE is too gargantuan a project with too many people involved and too much history (read: compatibility baggage) to be able to say, "welp, let's just fork it." Doubtless internal politics and MS's own corporate shortsightedness also have a big say in it. But that's just my guess.
No worries - I don't mind, but it made my post read somewhat different so I thought I'd mention it to explain.
As if the double referral incentive (referrer and referred) wasn't viral enough... Go Dropbox!
Why Democracies Will Always Go Bankrupt
I use slime and the repl that it provides. I start a project generally early in the process, and put stuff in methods there, recompiling (reloading with ,lo projectname (a slime trick)) as needed.

I also often do ESC-x with the cursor positioned in a function or top-level form to compile just that function.

All good work flows with Lisp include adding little bits of code, then executing to see how the result has changed. This leverages the beauty of lisp develpment.

There are those who do something similar with vim--adding little bits of code, perhaps in a function, then pasting that either directly or with the help of a package to the REPL.

For many of my programs, I generate an executable that is kicked off automatically, e.g., by cron. To build the executable, use 'save-lisp-and-die'.

And don't hesitate to use quicklisp at http://www.quicklisp.org. There are many very useful libraries there. For example, if you need to integrate through the command line, there is the getopt library.

For unit testing, i use xlunit, but I seem to be in the minority for that. There are a handful out there. Some info here http://aperiodic.net/phil/archives/Geekery/notes-on-lisp-tes... and here http://www.cliki.net/development.

Now you are mentioning a pretty specific deployment cycle there. WiX will work for executable delivery in a windows environment.

Keep in mind, however that many using lisp for production keep an emacs/slime session open, generally using term, to a running production instance. This is likely to be culturally different that the environment that you are describing above.

I haven't done anything that requires a continuous integration step, as my team size is just one.
I interleaved for decades, then switched for anything that's not a point-by-point reply. And it's all GMail's fault. You see, top replies are now snippeted in my GMail and on my phone.

I can process email faster that way, as can most folks I converse with.
Wait - its ok to game the heck out of advertising placement, but a single guy decides to game the other way and he's doing something wrong?

The ad is there, its my pageview, I'll click on anything I please, thank you very much.

<edit - remove profanity>
Just release it. If you suddenly have to worry about press and having massive traction, then the name wasn't a huge problem. If not, there'll be plenty of time to change it and put a redirect.
We have no guarantees from the MPEG-LA that they won't turn around tomorrow and demand outrageous royalties from anyone using H.264 videos.

Yes, we do know that, for the same reason that they don't start charging end users of DVD players. They have legally binding agreement.

For free video, H264 is permanantly free. They can not turn around and change this.

For non-free video, they have established pricing that is locked-in until 2016. And then you're saying, but then they'll screw me, right? Wrong, MPEG-LA states in their contract: "For the protection of licensees, royalty rates applicable to specific license grants or specific licensed products will not increase by more than ten percent (10%) at each renewal."

So enough with the FUD please. H264, amongst licensed technologies, is probably one of the clearest there is and with the least minefields.
It's hard to disagree with his analysis of what the practical outcome will be.

Google's not stupid though, so there's either another piece of the puzzle still to be revealed or Google's aim with this is to throw a spanner in the works for Apple's various iOS projects. AirPlay comes to mind in particular as a major feature that would neutralised by reversing the trend towards standardising on h264.

This is ok. Google can do this if it wants. Just don't dress it up like it's some selfless contribution to the good of mankind.
Slick CSS3 overlay system (js)
>I'm surprised that a community of internet entrepreneurs is so disinterested in advertising considering how many of your own sites are dependent on it.

I followed a Facebook ad the other day - it was some really spammy looking marriage guidance ad and I wanted to see if it was as fraudulent as I guessed it was going to be. They used every trick in the book, a very long audio intro with what this was going to do for you including an excellent push for a high price expectation and some logical sounding smack talk about opposing options. Good calls to action, strong pressure sell. You could write a marketing lecture on it.

Obviously didn't have any thought of buying. To me it looked as close to being a con as you can come without being illegal, all advertised direct through Facebook.

Also occasionally I'll look at a spam site (from email spam) to see where it originated or who might be behind it.

>Look at Reddit as a great example of how to advertise. One text ad and one picture ad per page.

Reddit beg their readership for money as well. I'm not really sure it's as great an example as first appears.

>ads on Facebook are pathetically horrible

See above. Also I keep telling them that Farmville, Townville, Zombieville, etc., etc. aren't interesting to me but they keep showing me the same ads.
Note that this was (at least conceptually) derived from a (more or less) equivalent F# feature that exists in the shipping version today.
As for your last statement: no. My bet is Flash gets WebM support natively next as part of a bargain between Adobe and Google. And that Android phones get WebM hardware decoders forced down upon them.

For Apple, they took a stance and now they risk Firewire/USB again.
Those don't sound like the WSJ's goals to me.

In this case, I think the simplest reasoning, and one Chua herself hit on, is correct: They strung together the most controversial parts and got bundles of page hits.
New picplz for iPhone
My favourite example of a copyrighted work in a public court record is that time Jack Thompson submitted gay porn as part of a court filing, now available to everyone, including minors, from public records, forever.

http://gamepolitics.com/2007/09/26/judge-spanks-jack-thompso...
Yes, the dangers of Asbestos were limited to people exposed to asbestos. It was an occupational hazard, and the uses of asbestos were largely commercial and industrial in nature.

As such, Asbestos was never directly marketed to consumers. Asbestos exposure was also limited because it's relatively narrow scope of usefulness. Asbestos was never a cultural phenomenon.

The extremely wide range of usefulness of nanotech means that it will show up in everything everywhere. Of specific concern should be anything designed to be airborne or directly applied directly on somebody. The product in question directly matches that description. Furthermore, this product is aimed directly at consumers, and the article even mentions how it is about to "revolutionize everything", alluding to widespread adoption and use.

I'd hate for something like this to be plastered over keyboards, door knobs, floors and countertops, sunglasses, shoes, phones, surgical equipment, dishes and silverware, headphones, cosmetics, etc... Those are the targets for something like this. You know, things you touch and use every day.
AES256 is indeed more complex than DES, but it's important to remember that both were designed partially with fast hardware implementations in mind. The difference is not as dramatic as you might initially think. 52 bits of an AES256 key are weeeell within "doable" in 2010.
Poll: What is your career?
I've seen some some statistics[1] on the distribution of people across different careers in the US and wanted to see how HN's audience compared to it.

I chosen to use very broad career clusters for this poll. To see the types of careers in these clusters, visit this website: http://www.careerclusters.org/list16clusters.php

[1] - http://stats.bls.gov/oes/home.htm
Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources
Architecture & Construction
Arts, Audio/Video Technology & Communications
Business Management & Administration
Education & Training
Government & Public Administration
Health Science
Hospitality & Tourism
Human Services
Law, Public Safety, Corrections & Security
Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Transportation, Distribution & Logistics
Not Applicable (e.g. student)
I already found prions terrifying: incurable, nigh-indestructible, and not terribly difficult to ingest without knowing it. This just kicks it up a notch.
I've never clicked a TV ad, direct mail flier, or billboard. That doesn't mean those ads are worthless. This is often a somewhat silly metric for measuring advertising depending upon the goals of that advertising.

Quote from the article:
“Today, marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84 percent of Internet users who don’t click on an ad. That’s precisely the wrong thing to do, because other comScore research has shown that non-clicked ads can also have a significant impact. As a result, savvy marketers are moving to an evaluation of the impact that all ad impressions – whether clicked or not – have on consumer behavior, mirroring the manner in which traditional advertising has been measured for decades using reach and frequency metrics.”
Isn't this worthy of a "duh"?

I mean, seriously. A prion is a protein. Say you have a prion disease and you sneeze: it's now in the air, where it won't die if it dries out or is exposed to UV radiation like lots of non-air-traversing diseases.

In the experiment: a mad-cow-disease-for-mice was aerosoled (sp?) at lab mice, and they're surprised it infected the mice through the nasal nerves, which are damn-near exposed directly to air.

>"We were amazed at how efficiently they spread"

The efficiency may be surprising. How can the spreading be?

>The prions didn't need processing by the immune system first, as some other research has suggested

Really? It's a protein! Sure, some could need processing by the immune system, or gastric acids, to change how they are shaped, but certainly not all.

This being science, yes, it does need an experiment to show that it is so. I'm by no means arguing this is a superfluous use of funds. I'm arguing that believing otherwise and acting on it when designing your safety protocols is borderline gross negligence, and I wouldn't be surprised if it has killed someone already.
MS shouldering more of the burden for software updates makes the comparison a little flawed though, doesn't it? If every PC buyer was at the mercy of their OEM when they wanted to upgrade to the next version of Windows, desktop computing would be a different place now.
Just use a filter subscription and you won't even have to do this.