skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not just shock jocks. Normal people as well.

Your policy response, which can be paraphrased as 'don't build dams, move major cities' is idealogically warped and just wishful thinking. You would find it hard outside of your peer group to find anyone to take you seriously.

The cities are where they are. It's not a surprise that Brisbane and Ipswich floods - the very first parts of written QLD history contain stories of immense flooding events.

More flood mitigation via Dams is the only sensible and possible response. More dams also has the side effect of more water supplies and possibly more hydro-electric power.
iPhone OS 4.0 first available: June 24, 2010 (seven months ago)

Android 2.3 first available: December 16, 2010 (one month ago)

So, really, a release seven times older than another one has more adoption? Stop the presses!

Android revision takeup on disparate hardware is a real issue, but as usual this is just cheap fanboyism in its presentation.
There's also epic flood control stuff on the river north of Tokyo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Undergr...
Python, Unicode and UnicodeDecodeError
Wall Street Battles Silicon Valley for Tech Geeks
> I'll bet Google engineers have access to their full database too for the same reason.

No, we don't. We have test instances of everything. There are a privileged few who have access to sensitive production data, and their access is carefully monitored.
this guy beat me by 10 minutes and put it in far more concrete terms.
That's the understatement of the century. Apple is not a company, it's a exoskeleton for Steve Jobs. The two entirely symbiotic and probably cannot survive on their own anymore.
I know he considers Android's .X releases major, but in case you don't:
iOS 4.X: 89.73 %
Android 2.X: 87.4%

Of course, it's hardly the fault of the Android users. If it wasn't for cyanogen and a couple hours of work I wouldn't even be on 2.2.
Pharmacy automation
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Read on to the part where Android 2.2 has much less share than iOS 4.x, despite them being of similar age.
Liked it...used it...modified it. Wasn't bad. The code was a bit convoluted in places and almost completely undocumented, and they strayed from the typical Django style. All added up, it was negative productivity for this long-term Rails programmer and Django novice. Switched to Shapado (based on Rails) and things are going much better, if for nothing more than Rails' self-documenting conventions. The only drawback is that Shapado is based on mongodb and the (compared to active record) functionally incomplete mongomapper.
Because having support and encouragement at home of any kind is preferable to benign neglect, imo.
I wish they would graduate Alexia to cover better stories. Give her some of those Glengerry Glen Ross leads, Michael and Erick, instead of making her trawl through Hacker News threads.

Other than the ironic name use, what's the point of throwing 460 words on this?
What Is A Trust Seal Actually Worth?
He had pancreatic cancer in 2003. If he still "had" it, wouldn't he be pretty dead?

I dunno. We mythologize the guy, but, he's a human being. After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a death sentence, and then learning that he had the super-rare kind that could be cured surgically, he... went on a special diet. He strikes me as maybe the kind of guy who doesn't want to be dying.

So put yourself in Apple's position. You've got Steve Jobs at the helm. Jobs can only make it in 2 days a week and can't make it to caf for lunch. But he doesn't want to be dying. What is the board going to tell him? It's not like "doctors" are the White Council of Middle Earth who will speak with one voice and say "the verdict is you are dying".

What you say about organ transplants and immune systems and a 55 year old guy with a history of cancer makes sense. And it made me kind of sad.

Meanwhile, the market priced Jobs health a long time ago.
Local election campaign websites: ripe for disruption?
Several reasons. Here are are the ones I can quickly think of:

1. Lots of money for a product that customers can't really inspect before paying.
2. Same as #1, but simpler: lots of money.
3. The customer. Feature-creep and a lack of vision can really dismantle a project in it's nascent stages. I've seen many a project fall victim to this.
4. Lack of testing. This is usually caused by #5 and #6 below.
5. Deadlines + customer's constantly changing scope can == bad code (at times).
6. Like @coderdude said, the field itself (and it's workers) are generally immature (and therefore haven't learned best business practices - or best practices at all, for that matter).
7. Web DESIGNERS != Web DEVELOPERS. Many, many customers don't know this (you'd be surprised).
I remember playing Spyro, good memories. I think there's a new one out, maybe I'll check it out for old time sake. Thanks for the positive nostalgia
as long as people are using 2.1 and above (90% of users are) - most of the apps just work.

A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if developers are targeting old Android OSes because the newer releases don't have critical mass. I'm reminded of the Vista debacle.
No, GCC is not written in s-expressions, but GNU RTL is.

You can write an RTL processor in Lisp and have macros both for input and processor itself.

If you want to explore macros for infix algolish languages, look into Jonathan Bachrach's D-Expressions for Dylan. Some of the people who first implemented it are here on HN as well.
Certainly mattered to a friend of mine who was suckered into buying an Experia X10.
IANAL, but: Banking law isn't relevant here : This is to do with offerings of securities.

The SEC regulates offerings in the US. Goldman is no longer offering these securities in the US, so the SEC is not involved.

As someone else points out, if a US client seriously wants to jump through hoops to invest, I'm sure Goldman would help out an offshore entity.
Web's Most Overused Graphics Techniques Revealed (2000)
I use MediaTemple's (gs) service. From my experience it can handle traffic spikes fairly well. The only problem is that there are a lot of unplanned downtimes. The good news is that their support is impeccable.
Chatty Apps
Potential Clients who are highly satisfied with another developer are much less likely to call you. I suspect there may be some sample bias.
Thanks Ray! Looking forward to more of your feedback soon.
Ask HN: Java dev interview at Atlassian, any tips?
Hi everyone,

I have an interview for a Java developer position at Atlassian coming up, I have made sure to study a lot of OOP and Java however I have heard terrible things about Atlassian interviews, I'm not sure if they are looking for solid OO, Java and algorithm skills, I am not very good with algorithms but I'm getting there. I REALLY don't want to mess this up, I love Atlassian products and their culture so any tips on how to prepare will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
How Call Centers Use Behavioral Economics to Sway Customers
WebOS and BlackBerry are running out of time: What can they do?
Why is it different?

Most people in Australia know of the extremes of the place. So major fires, droughts, floods, storms and cyclones are only a matter of when, rather than if.

It's not a 1000 year flood. These types of things happen at least once every 50 years (plus more frequent minor floods) going back about 170 years to the written history. The major dam built to mitigate (not prevent) flooding arguably might have performed better to lower the peak, but the flood event came after a month of record rainfall, and the dam operators followed the manual given to them. That might need review for future operations, but it's not like someone did something rash or stupid.

Australia is not a place of high social tension, or of high crime. Brisbane itself is a sunny, peaceful city with a normally benign river winding through the middle. When a disaster strikes, people are more likely to muck in and help out their less fortunate neighbours than to try and steal their stuff. Not that looting doesn't happen - some does, but there is plenty of incidents where citizens have interrupted looters and run them out of town.

Another feature of Brisbane flooding is that it affects rich and poor equally. Some of the most expensive houses front the river and have private pontoons (most of which are now in the ocean) - these get flooded. Some of the poorer areas are built in low-lying land, which also gets flooded. So it's not a class thing in that only the poor get affected. Some of the worst hit suburbs are also the most expensive suburbs to live.

As to why Australia tends to come together rather than fall apart - well, that would make for a fascinating social study. Personally I see it enshrined as part of the nations (and especially Queensland) culture - fair go, mateship, sticking together when the chips are down, having strength in adversity. You can probably explain as much when the most celebrated annual military parade day (Anzac day) commemorates Australia first and greatest military defeat, whereas there are no parades celebrating Australian military victories.

Or, to sum up even more succinctly, despite sharing a language and both being previous colonies, Australia and America are fundamentally different countries in many ways.
I am not sure how great it is. My impression was it skips and jumps around the language territory. For example, as I looked through the Clojure chapter, I knew I would not understand the language if I had not had studied it before.
this is probably true to some extent
Newspapers' Partial Paywall Test Shows No Drop in Ad Revenue
It is so interesting when you have a smart dog to see how they learn. My dog responds really well to hand commands compared to other dogs I have owned but voice commands usually only work so well except as a supplement.

There are a large amount of interesting things she responds to other than simple commands but I can't say she has a human type of intelligence or even close but there is definite problem solving ability (such as opening cabinet doors, the refrigerator, and even pushing the sliding glass door open by standing up on it and moving her paws).
Steve is passionate about product and bringing new value to the customer via great product. Ballmer is about competition. The end difference is ... well the difference between Apple and Microsoft.
Yes but this is MG Siegler's article. He cherrypicks certain data to show that Android is inferior to iOS.

Majority of Android phones are on 2.1 and up. For him that's not enough so he had to break it down to specific releases (2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) so he can prove his point.

There may be significant difference between 2.1 and 2.2. However, after playing with 2.3 for a month, there's not a big difference from 2.2.
I wonder why they don't attempt to differentiate from what they're cloning at all. OSQA's replicated not just functionality but look and feel, ordering and layout of each StackExchange (StackOverflow, ServerFault, et al) feature.
Actually, I think the field is pretty mature at this point. I think it's more an issue of that fact that the barrier to entry is so low and that if someone has a hard time identifying a bad developer, they'll have a hard time identifying a good one too.
Journalism Online test with 20 mid-size newspapers found that limiting visitors to 5-20 free articles per month allowed newspapers to tap subscription revenue without affecting ad revenue.
The Lessons of Private Manning and WikiLeaks
Fundamentally not true.

Some of the most dangerous snakes in Australia always live in and near watercourses, and are usually disturbed while sunning themselves near a river when someone decides to go for a swim. The types of snakes found swimming around in the Queensland floods are not the types you want to be messing with.

Try this one on for size : http://www.snakecatchers.com.au/Red_Bellied_Black_Snake.html

I saw a 3m one of these about a week ago sunning itself next to the river near my house. And I don't live in the bush.
An alternative explanation not involving carriers:

Device manufacturers fiercely compete to get people to buy THEIR phones. They get customers by adding custom extensions, and by always having fresh phones in the pipeline. Customers do not seem to prioritise promises of timely updates.

Porting customizations costs money that the device manufacturers prefer spending on new models.

Apple customers on the other hand are loyal enough to (now) buy phones from mod 2010 or even 2009 - of course only with the latest iOS. Of course these phones get updates.
I suppose you could argue that... in my experience, no matter how successful your portfolio, potential clients that don't really understand the work/skill involved still easily get stuck at price
Thanks for your suggestion. Is there any way to determine how much traffic a linode 512 instance can handle?
With respect, why exactly is total script size 912kb minified? That seems unexpectedly high. Likely not the root of the problem at hand, just curious.

Also interested in what you plan to do to alleviate massive DOM issues, if you could share. Typically an overlooked point of performance.
Joakal, after reading a bunch of comments on this thread it seems like you have a great group of people with whom to start your own online meetup.

You could organize it to be in a private IRC at a certain date and moderate the discussion. IMs could be used for people who want to breakout and have private conversations. It doesn't have to be limited to those who can't attend a physical meetup, but maybe at first just to test the waters.

This post was really inspiring, thanks for having the courage to ask the question. So many people will find excuses not to do something and it's so invigorating to see people who, literally, stop at nothing to succeed.

Best of luck to you!
Right, but the idempotence is a side effect of the safety here. It's not the main point.
You "refresh" your email? May I suggest .. an email client? Will save your time and F5 key.
Right, like I said, Android revision takeup is a real issue.

It doesn't change the fact that headlining "90% vs. 0.4% LOLOL" is just yet another episode of sports team like boosterism.

Or did MG write an article titled "apple tablet crippled by lack of OS upgrade strategy" 30 days after 4.0 shipped that I missed?
None of that addresses the issues of whether the dog understands. Yes, humans have a higher level of understanding in the sense that we understand abstractions, but our greater abilities in that area don't disqualify the dog's simpler ability from being called understanding.

If the dog can tell the difference between being told to fetch the paper vs fetch my shoes, then he understands.

Beyond that, the statement...

> their brains are merely receiving a signal and performing an associated action

Equally applies to humans; our brains just have a more complex form of association. There is no inherent meaning to any of the noises we make that we call words other than they're associated to something. Your associations to those noises is far more complex than the dogs, but you can't call yours understanding and not his; his understanding is simpler, but if he performs the correct trick, then he understands the word in the same sense you do, he associated some kind of meaning to that word, just like you do.
Clustrix (YC W06) Lifts the Curtain on Early Database Customers
Youtube-dl: command line tool for downloading YouTube vids
Considering his monetary pay is $1/year, I think he really enjoys doing something, where he has the resources, and backing, to "do it right".

And when something doesn't come out right, he can breath a little fire (e.g. MobileMe problems a year back or so)
What Makes a Programming Language Good: Thoughts on the Extrinsic Factors
Memory chip production
My cat rolls over (full flip) to get fed. She's recently figured out that even if it's not food time, then a flip leads to food. FINALLY.
I am actually using this book right now as the textbook for my programming languages course, so far it has been fun but I tend to like the pragprog books.
Serious question now : do you really believe/agree with what Bob Brown is saying? Or are you going along with the support just because you support his political party? He has no facts or even scientific support for his statement. To state that the Australian coal industry has somehow caused major flooding is to indulge in bald-faced lying of the type that only agenda-driven politicians can manage. The one data point of worse flooding in 1893 before the coal industry even existed is case closed for most rational people. Not even the most activist climate scientist is prepared to definitively link the floods to warming temperature, let along the percentage of warming attributed to co2 emissions, let alone the 1% of global co2 emissions that Australia accounts for. About the best you'll get is 'global warming may have contributed to the flooding'. And that's hardly a smoking gun of the type Brown is fantasizing about.

If I was a supporter of Bob Brown I would be embarassed by this particular outburst.
Apple has paid over $2 billion to app developers, $12 billion to record labels
Thanks. This appears to be a suitable option.
It should also be noted he got this cut from helping people in his electorate move furniture out of their houses.
Google's New Cloud App Capable of Designing Nuclear Weapons: Consensus
I think a fair number of people have unlocked phones outside the USA because their carrier offers rebates for "phoneless" contracts.
I think the general consensus is that the flooding would have been worse than 1974 had the dam not mitigated what it did. Investigations and modelling will determine to what extent the releases from the dam increased the flood level.

I expect the outcome will be a new operating manual for the Dam, and more frequent minor flooding in keeping with an aggressive plan of keeping the dam at 100% (water storage) level, leaving the extra 100% of flood mitigation level free as soon as possible.

Another possible outcome may be more dams on some of the other river systems, such as the Bremer river.
Well the developers don't lose anything by targeting a lower API version - if they target 2.1 the app is more or less guaranteed to work on 2.3 due to forward compatibility.
I'm interested in hearing feedback and comments.
Make that a $5 billionaire (not counting the Apple stock value).

Back when Disney bought out Pixar, I made a little spreadsheet that calculated how many DIS shares Steve wound up with. Assuming that he has not sold off (or gifted) any/much since then, his DIS stock is now worth slightly more than $5B. It has a net gain of $2B since the Pixar buyout. He is doing what he is doing out of internal motivation (and certainly not because he needs the money).
What do you dislike about him?
It should also be noted he took the time to alert the media he was about to go and help people move out of houses. I'm not making this up - some of the media have reported his office alerting them.

In reality the PM who deposed him was in town, and I think he felt compelled to get some air-time to compete, seeing as he was the local boy and all. No love lost between those two.
What do you mean it's fake? Is the croc photoshopped in, or is it a big rubber crocodile?

If it's photoshopped it's pretty convincing, and if it's a big rubber crocodile then... who has a big rubber crocodile anyway?
There was more water this time around than there was in 1974, but the flood levels were higher in 1974 because there was no dam then.

Wivenhoe dam[1] did work as flood mitigation, but there were concerns during the flood as the water level was spiking quickly towards maximum storage[2], so some water was being let out (apparently about half of what was going in).

If the dam did get to full capacity its automatic system would have fully opened the flood gates, potentially making the flood situation quickly worsen even more.

[1] http://www.seqwater.com.au/public/catch-store-treat/dams/wiv...

[2] http://www.seqwater.com.au/public/dam-levels

See the interactive graph at the bottom of the page, you can choose to see only Wivenhoe's storage level history. Its level is almost back to 100% which is the normal water storage level, not the full flood mitigation level.
Could you explain this signup process a little bit more? I don't see anything unusual at Torbit...
I'm framing that statement in perspective to almost all other imaginable fields of work. I'll concede that it may not be the cause for all the bad developers -- low barrier to entry seems like a much more likely cause, but I do not believe that this field has matured yet. Almost no one on the planet was selling web development services just 18 years ago, so it stands to reason that the field is not very mature yet. At least in my opinion.
Unix, which animal has been used most frequently for a band name?
certainly I've never heard of any accusations that a Royal Commission is biased one way or the other.

For this American, that sounds like not being allowed to talk about their bias. I would guess that many Americans do not believe in an unbiased group of any sort, at any level.
the site looks great. Registered ;)
1 and 1 Internet hosting. I've been using it for the past 4 years. I have a $10/month account.

In the 4 years, I have had almost no downtime (only twice). When there was downtime, I called up and talked to someone and my site went back up shortly (within an hour or so).
Global web sites support an average of 23 languages
The thing that really surprised me is that at first someone made a beatbox with MISUSING Google Translate! but now google instead of (for example) banning that misusing, has created a tool to help you enjoy Google Translate in any way you like! even if it's not it's original purpose!!
Please don't take offense to this, Mark, but if you only have 30 minutes to work on this, then your priorities are very much in the wrong place.

You're talking about doing something that could make you real-world money that goes in the bank. Spend all of your time selling threewords, then use the money from that to fund your other ideas. Being "too busy" means that you're doing something wrong.
... I would wait until the royal commission before I lay blame on dam operators.

I suspect, that much of the flood waters came from the Lockyer Creek (the waterway that was the source of those horrendous videos from Toowoomba) - which actually feed into the brisbane river _downstream_ of Wivenhoe dam, meaning that the dam couldn't stop a large chunk of the flood water from entering the Brisbane river. See this map here: http://maps.google.com.au/?ie=UTF8&ll=-27.409109,152.603...

So maybe part of the blame should be placed on the Dam designers... But perhaps other topological constraints prevented the Dam from being located further downstream?

Lots of pieces to the puzzle and I don't think it is as simple as just the dam operators waiting till it was too late..
Well, the riverside of Brisbane is mostly private property, including the CBD. Unless you're going to forcibly confiscate private property, people are not going to leave of their own accord - and even if they do, others will be happy to move in behind them. So it's a choice of leaving things where they are, or suspending democracy, private property and freedom of choice and doing a dictatorial thing like clearing all the houses and buildings along the river and creating a park. Even if you did it under existing laws, the amount of money required to resume all the properties would be immense. Everyone of those riverfront homes is worth at least a million dollars. The buyout and demolition would far outweigh any reconstruction costs.

These people know they live in a flood zone. There are flood markers all over the place and every property purchase inclues a 1974 flood report as to the level of flooding in the particular property. People choose to live in these place of their own free will in the full knowledge the river might one day come and flood them.

So a wide green belt along the river might be a good idea. But it's also completely impractical and only good as a theoretical talking point.