skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's not what the lawyers said. In the US, at least; things may be different in your jurisdiction.

http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/x264-devel/2010-July/0...

Even if you decide to use a closed-source decoder, just because the decoder has to be closed source doesn't necessarily mean the entire browser has to be closed. What exactly was the lawyers' reasoning behind this?

http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme...

They do require you to pay to produce an encoder. Of course someone can then distribute said encoder for free if they want, so the end user doesn't technically _have_ to pay. But in practice they do.
And if you use an unlicensed encoder, then you're infringing on the patents. So is anyone who views any videos that were produced with the unlicensed encoder, even if their decoder is licenced.

What are you talking about? The page you linked clearly says that non-commercial content is free. I didn't say that no one has to pay to create content, I said not everyone has to pay to create content.
The Practical vs. Idealistic Scenarios for the Near-Term Future of Online Video
"we still have value we can bring to a superior civilization. That value may be in providing services, cheap labor or producing reality television."

... or we may just have really delicious brain stems.
I see you've adopted a new pseudonym "Jesse Diebold"... an ominous name.
Meh.

Be dismissive without rolling your eyes...

Ready? Go!
The WebM patent grant contains insurance against this. If any "new" patent holder sues anyone or makes available their patents for suing by other party, he will be excluded from the (VP8) patent grant.

Any CE or IT company will think twice, whether it is worth it. Can you imagine Samsung or LG suing someone over VP8 and in return losing access to VP8 content on Youtube? What it will do to their CE business?
Or, it means that you worked in industries where LinkedIn use still isn't widespread, and/or places where even if people have an account, they don't accept connections.
> "All ads, across the board."

Ah so that includes adverts that are just affiliate linkes, or paid links, and all the billions of other things which don't look like adverts?

What about all the adverts on HN, like the 37signals "article" today which was an advert for Tim Ferris' book?

How about if you've done a search on DuckDuckGo and clicked on an amazon link? Oops, you just clicked on an advert.

Reminds me of an episode of "Brasseye" where they show a graph over time of "Crimes we know nothing about" and it's increasing ;)

It all depends on your definition of "advert", but if you say "I never click on adverts", either you mean you don't click on things that obviously look like adverts (Display advertising), or you're extremely naive.
> You're neglecting many reasons extra terrestrial life may pose a threat.

I'm ignoring the ones that are so far in the realm of speculation with today's knowledge they could go either way. For example the argument "they may want to live here" could be valid, but there is just as much reason to believe that any space-faring civilization bent on aggressive expansion should already have significant terraforming capabilities, thereby making uninhabited worlds an easier target. The second issue with this particular argument is the probability that Earth would be a perfect environment for a given alien species: We simply don't know how many earth-like planets are out there. If there are many, the probability of compatibility would be high, but so would the number of less-problematic alternative planets to choose from. If there are few, chances are our world needs to be terraformed anyway in order to make it habitable, meaning there is no reason to choose it for colonization over many other (uninhabited) candidate planets in the first place.

> wiping out humanity probably won't be particularly challenging for them

Nobody said it would be.

> Also, your second point is invalid, territorial reasons are not void. We may pose no threat now, however a technologically superior civilization may conclude we pose a future threat, and so wipe us out now before we can become one.

That's a misunderstanding. I did categorize reasons like this one as spiritual or "other", because it's not rooted in a concrete need to eliminate us right away. Never mind the categorization: yes, that's a possibility I tried to hint at with the paragraph "There are still some nefarious reasons why an outside civilization may attack us [...] There are certainly other reasons we can't even think of yet."

> Also, the old 'dangerous biology from somewhere else!' is almost entirely null and void, organisms are adapted to their environment, they usually pose negligible risk to any other environment already inhabited by biological organisms. This is why, for instance we don't treat organisms from thermal vents as 'oh noes, biohazard material'.

I really dislike your polemic style, so let me answer in kind: the caretakers of countless pacific islands and other isolated places who are currently struggling to protect habitats from invasions of foreign species would probably like to subscribe to your newsletter. Little did they know how unfounded their concerns had been until you came along.
How a fruit fly's biology could lead to better distributed computing networks
My favorite JS blog
Display adds have definitely made an impression on me. But, for whatever reason, I tend not to click on the adds, but to open a new tab and google the product. I'd click on them if doing so did that process for me. I.e. "Click here to google <random product/service>."
CNBC: Groupon Met With Bankers Today To Discuss A Potential Spring IPO
`Bind` with named methods goes a long way to cleaning up nested callbacks. Here's a (quick+dirty; I know I'm missing some `do`'s in there) version of the same code in CoffeeScript:

_ =
fileMenu: ->
mainWindow.menu "File", (e,f) => this.onFile(e,f)

onFile: (err,file) ->
if err then throw err
file.openMenu (e,m) => this.onOpenMenu(e,m)

onOpenMenu: (err,menu) ->
if err then throw err
menu.item "Open", (e,i) => this.onOpen(e,i)

onOpen: (err,item) ->
if err then throw err
mainWindow.getChild type('Window'), (e,d) => this.onDialog(e,d)

onDialog: (err,dialog) ->
if err then throw err
#...

_.fileMenu()

( `=>` is CoffeeScript for a function bound to the current scope )
I'm completely convinced that the growing ubiquity of asynchronous and multithreaded code will all drive us to embrace Object Oriented Programming 2.0 AKA Functional Programming. Can't come fast enough for me.
Well, if we're talking specific situations, I work for a mobile web developer and I'm literally surrounded by a pile of devices. My plan for when I want to buy a new one is to convince the company that we need to test on all my top candidates so I can play around with them until I pick the best one :)
What are you trying to say? That there are things that we know are not carcinogenic, such as wifi signals, and therefore, nothing is??

I think it was a perfectly valid comment: we really don't understand biological interactions at nanostructured interfaces all that well. See eg. all these hand-waving explanations for the supposed toxicity of carbon nanotubes http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080520/full/news.2008.845.ht...

(btw, CRT screens emit beta radiation, so if you'd sit close enough...)
DON'T DO THAT ON SITES YOU LIKE. Google will TAKE THE SITES MONEY AWAY and CANCEL THE OWNERS ACCOUNT FOR LIFE.

Sorry I had to yell.
There was an episode of This Week in Startups with DHH as a guest where a Shark Tank caller pitched his web-based IDE. I was surprised to see both Calacanis and Hansson shit all over the idea. For the reasons you mention, it's a great idea. Off topic - it's really interesting to observe people making poor judgments when they're blinded by their own success.
Probably a lot like javascript.

with_monad(foo){
var x = bar();
baz(x);
}

where foo includes a definition of bind and return (return should be renamed, there is already a return in js). Subcalls like baz(x) would be interpreted within the same monad.

Basically you would just make semicolon a function with dynamic extent, rather than a language builtin.

I don't know if it would be possible to monadize functions which use break, continue, or return. While and if would have to be special cased.
Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3
Interleaving is for people responding point-by-point to a two-thousand-word essay posted to Usenet. If you top-post you're going to have to write more to provide the relevant context to each of your own points. Might as well just interleave your responses, retain the original statements for context, and trim the stuff you're ignoring.
You led off with the snark, pal. I'm just asking questions here.

All of our instructors' profiles are listed on their course pages.

We absolutely appreciate thoughtful feedback and we're happy to answer any other questions you might have about CodeLesson...we have tons of satisfied customers. But at the same time, we recognize that instructor-led training is not for everybody, and for a lot of people, their time is less valuable than their money. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

It's important to recognize that not everybody learns the same way. Joining an instructor-led course is an effective option for people who respond well to the structure of an organized course. If that's not how you learn, then great for you.
No, In Fact, We Haven't Seen This Movie Before
Supporting arbitrary codecs is more like supporting arbitrary font formats. Each separate codec uses its own (potentially vastly) different way of encoding video, and requires its own code to handle. Using the operating system facilities is too risky from a security standpoint (such as if someone finds an exploitable bug in the ancient Indeo codec).
Social Capital and Collaborative Consumption
Extremely rare compared to what? Compared to the entire population of the United States? Maybe. Compared to the population of those directly and continuously exposed? Not so much.
We don't use that much asbestos anymore for a reason, and it's not because we found something better to replace it.

I'm not advocating we abandon nanomaterial research by any means. I'm hoping that it's widespread use and adoption doesn't outpace research of it's effects on humans given it's similarities with asbestos.
At first I thought, "This must be an article from a year ago, so we'd be like, 'aw MAN, they dodged a bullet'." Then I was like, "Oh man, I hope they're not trying to buy up recently flooded property on the cheap." Then I was like, "Oh. California. X'ing out."
I distinctly remember 404s on Yahoo, which was why I switched.
I listen to a lot of podcasts and the ads they do register in my brain. I usually listen while doing the dishes or some such and I don't fast forward past them. Unlike visual ads, I can't look past them either. So I am consciously aware of almost all of them.
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 actually like looking at ads. I like finding out about new products and trying to find a good deal. I don't like to use ad-blockers. If a site has too many ads and loads too slowly, I simply won't visit there.

The key though, is having a tasteful amount of advertising. There's nothing worse than loading up a site with a dozen slow-loading ads that makes your system slow down. Look at Reddit as a great example of how to advertise. One text ad and one picture ad per page.

Facebook has 2-4 ads per page, which is sometimes a bit much, but at least they load fast. The problem with Facebook ads though are that despite knowing everything about everybody, the ads on Facebook are pathetically horrible.
Or just dispense with newlines.
Cubeduel: A Hot or Not for rating your co-workers
That's because they are NANO - of course you can't see them - they are far too small.
I doubt anyone would have to sell their home for a commute from SF to Brisbane (its one town down and right off 101) at most they'd have to get a car.

That being said, I'd think staff would hate this idea in general.
Somewhat related -- Spray-on Solar cells:
http://www.google.com/search?&q=spray-on+solar+cells
I used to be like you, never clicking on ads.

Then the ads got good enough that they started to advertise something that I might actually want.

The same thing will happen to you at some point - either it will be groceries that you can get cheaper at some other store or some product there really isn't a replacement for (say the Roomba, which as far as I recall is the only autonomous vacuum cleaner) which will save you a lot of time and/or effort.
Yup, it's probably no more dangerous than printer toner or asbestos or coal dust...

Wifi is known to be safe; we understand what makes UV and higher frequency light dangerous, and know that radio frequencies are fine (ionizing vs non-ionizing). CRT screens I believe use leaded glass to block the xrays they'd otherwise bombard you with.

I'd guess GMO foods are about as safe as anything else intentionally made poisonous to insects and other field pests.
The hell it was! I remember finding a low-res pinup on a shareware game disk and then examining the contents of every pirated or shareware disk I had. My parents asked me what I was doing, and I told them it was something terribly technical. I didn't find any more that day, but after that I looked at every disk I could get my hands on and did find naughty pictures from time to time. I even found a couple of programs that did nothing but display crude animations of people having sex. Some of the pictures were pretty good given the display limitations; I think they were scanned from magazines and then touched up by hand.

National Geographic and those shareware disks were my only sources of female nudity until I got older and managed to get my hands on R-rated movies. (Sheltered, yes, I know.)
I mentioned "secular zealots who hate individuality" in fairness of my inclusion of "religious zealots".

Just as not all religious people are zealots, not all secular people are zealots.

As mentioned, I'm an atheist. Which would make me a secularist. So if there was any intentional ding, it was against those secular people (like communists) who devalue individuality and its expression through free choice.

As far as saying secularism is never a cause for zealotry, that's just crazy. The French Revolution was filled with secular zealots...
it is, but it's been around that area for a loooong time :)
>Other outlets, such as many supermarkets, may be unwilling to stock the products because they make enormous profits from cleaning products that need to be replaced regularly, and liquid glass would make virtually all of them obsolete.

I dont get it, I ahve a glass sink and counter in my bathroom at home. I still have to clean them.

Every mirror I have ever had has been glass - I still windex them.

All my drinks at home are served to me in nothing but the finest crystal - I still have my help clean them.

etc....
I think the article intended 'secular zealotry' to mean something more like 'nonreligious zealotry' - the zealots are secular, not that the zealots are zealous about secularism. This is intended to contrast against the religious zealots referred to in the previous sentence.
For the nevers, if you are running any sort of online business and you don't investigate competitors ads/ads in your space, you are doing your business a huge disservice. I am not endorsing click fraud--I am merely saying that if you don't know what ad copy/banners your competitors are using or what landing pages they are directing traffic to, then you have blinders on.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like its analogous to Burger King saying, "We never watch McDonald's commercials because we would never buy anything from them."
One reason why nobody should get panicky about opt-in ad-block browser plugins draining ad revenue. Those people (me) were never going to click on your ads anyways.
Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: App store is a clear and present danger
I find them quite natural. When reading a response, the subject of the email has already clued me into the context, I really don't need to re-read what I already sent, even an edited version.

Top answer with my email below for reference, if needed, is what I prefer.
Thanks, I've read the instructions in detail but I don't have a US Credit Card or address, and don't think it's possible for me to set up a new amazon account with US details.
I think it's worth mentioning that in this case, the restrictions weren't arbitrary. There was insight in the two rules- designed perhaps to stay true to Makers (the "best bourbon") and still create something truly innovate and distinct.

Arbitrary restrictions can also inspire creativity and create focus (timeboxing, learning to say no), but creating restrictions can be an opportunity to frame the problem in a purposeful way.
"Astonishingly, it has become one of the most-upvoted submissions of all time to Hacker News."

3 of the top 5 "most-upvoted submissions of all time" are from the last three days:

http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=500

It looks like there's been some significant growth in the number of voting users recently. If you check the top 10, nine of them are from the last month.
True. My biggest fear is that they make an alien version of the documentary The Cove about what happened to earthlings...
Careers at Research In Motion
In general most people with an email don't know how to write an email, what is the right balance between top posting (sometimes it is faster both to write and read), and when instead an interleaved reply is needed.

And when the latter is needed, what is the right amount of email to take, what to remove, where to put a [snip], and so forth. I at this point think this is something that just programmers and other power users can get right.

I'm completely pessimist in the ability of the random internet aware guy to be able to reply well to emails...
Enhancing creativity through artificial restriction is an old idea. The "Oulipo" movement in literature tried things like removing random letters from writing (try writing a story without using "e"), or transposing random words. When you put in restrictions like this, you get a much higher variance in outcome, with the bad being truly awful and gimmicky but the good occasionally being sublime.
Every interview I've had for a job I really wanted (with Google, Amazon, etc) goes roughly like this. The ending where "I think I did pretty well but they decided not to continue" is pretty consistent - I did get a lot of onsites, though, so I got a step further than this guy.

This obsession with puzzles is frustrating.

For all I know on some of the puzzle-type questions I got a slightly wrong or sub-optimal answer... but I never have any idea if that's what sunk me, or if the interviewer didn't like me personally, or if my whiteboard handwriting was too bad to read, etc.

Very frustrating experience, these type of things. Though working on the puzzles is always fun (and sometimes, I kick myself afterward for missing something that seems obvious in retrospect)
I wonder if using the word "glass" is a good idea.

I could see some public outcry when people hear that their hamburger and catheter has a "thin glass coating".

Perhaps it will have a brand name later ...
Iphone saying goodbye to home button, maybe
Suggestion: ratings should be based on some kind of logistic model (like Elo ratings for chess) instead of the percentage of duels won. e.g., feed the scoring history into Bayeselo or something to get a ranking.
[Edit: this post was killed off of the front page. I wonder why.]

That's interesting. I knew that the number of users was growing, but that the top three are from the past 3 days means that it's a lot more significant than I figured.

Also, until an hour or so ago, Silk was "number one" -- and I know for a fact that there is at least one other submission that's over 600 points that is not showing up on that list, because it was showing up earlier.

There may be a bug in the way that the over page gathers stories from the database.
Whoa, this press release was from October 2009. Got anything more recent than that?
Rule.fm now has a free plan
I recently attended a presentation on StratifiedJS and it is really cool, but as you say they do some rather aggressive source transformation. You are basically writing in a different language and loading in an interpreter in JS to handle the new language. ObjectiveJ does the same thing. Take JS, extend it and run it through your own interpreter. It still sort-of looks like JS, but isn't.

Not only do you have the overhead of loading in an interpreter but you are also left without good debugging facilities.

CoffeeScript doesn't have this problem because it compiles down to readable JS, so if you're familiar with both CoffeeScript and JS you can just use native JS debugging tools to go at it. It does, however require the programmer to be familiar with both languages, so it's usually not the right choice for writing projects that you can hand off to another team at some later point.
Here’s How the U.S. Postal Service Can Increase Revenue By Millions of Dollars
Capcom "saddened" by its own apparent theft of 'Splosion Man
I love these old web pages, it always brings back some memories seeing a "Netscape Now! 3.0" button or an ancient link to the Mosaic home page :)

This is also very nice:

The Analemma and the Equation of Time:
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~oliver/ast3722/lectures/CoordsNtim...
(last revised September 4, 2003 12:52 PM)
http://www.nanopool.eu/en/news/57-end-of-year-review-2010

Here's their year-end review: a burst of publicity in February, and then hardly anything apart from a November article in "Cleanroom Technology". They're using it to coat toys in a children's hospital allowing kids that would not normally be allowed to play with the toys at all to use them.
I concur with your point that in a situation like a blog or Twitter where you don't necessarily care about the contents of previous posts and the information density is low, top-posting is natural.

However, when you DO care about the contents of the previous posts[1], or the information density is higher, I think interleaved posting really starts to shine. When I use email (as opposed to IM, Twitter, etc.) I'm usually discussing technical or business-oriented topics. Precision and context are very important in these discussions, and the emails are often significantly longer than might be common in personal communication. With top-posting, each point or answer is divorced from its context, which can force the reader to jump back and forth in the text to fully understand what's being said, increasing the chances for confusion. Interleaved posting allows me to act as an editor: I remove parts of earlier emails that are irrelevant to the current discussion, group quoted text with the corresponding reply, and add spacing or reorder fragments as needed to improve clarity. I find that in the end, this makes the discussion much easier to follow for the recipient.

For me, the bottom line is that when a misunderstanding could waste much more time than it would take me to do a little editing, the interleaved style really makes sense. When I use email, this is usually the case, since I usually use other mediums for personal communication.

[1] I can't help but think of this privately as: does this discussion have the Markov property?
All of our instructors' profiles are listed on their course pages.

If I click on "Charles Wood", the Instructor, I'm taken to a page with a profile description of, "A freelance Ruby on Rails programmer. I love learning new things, especially new technologies.".

Is that the instructor profile? (serious question, no tone).
You have seen what the author posted later on in the discussion?

https://github.com/sam-mccall/node-plate