skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The shell of coax (and what's in the space between it and the center conductor) also affects the impedance of the cable or antenna system. It's generally not that critical for a receiving antenna.

Sticking up almost any wire more than a few wavelengths long will collect a reasonable amount of a strong signal. A truly resonant antenna for the frequency you're interested is a lot better, but not that helpful for general HDTV viewing where the frequencies range all over VHF and UHF.

One of the amazing things I've learned from years of ham radio is how many unseen and unpredictable things affect radio signals. You can move your antenna twelve inches to the left and lose a signal completely, especially inside a structure. Or an airplane flying overhead can reflect enough "multipath" signal to wreck your TV viewing for 30 seconds. Of course your own body blocks a lot of signal and is capacitively coupled to the antenna system as you adjust it. So if you're playing with an HDTV antenna and are too young to remember the fun of constantly adjusting TV rabbit ears, just keep tweaking until you get a good signal.
I wish there was more documentation about the portability of Objective-C and specific Core Foundation features. It's hard to find a definitive answer. gcc supports Objective-C, and Apple open sources CF-Lite, but apparently and confusingly, that is only a subset of Core Foundation.

I make OpenGL videogames but my code is written in Objective-C (long story) and so currently only supports iOS and OS X. I feel almost at home with ObjC and my codebase, I enjoy the features mentioned in this article, and it's performant enough for what I need, but I'm reaching a point where I wish my core logic code was multi platform (from PS3 to Android including iPhone). Moving to C++ would mean learning C++ and best practices (which sounds quite daunting to beginners) and rewriting the whole codebase, but the lack of practical documentation on the portability of Core Foundation looks like a big neon sign that dropping Objective-C is the only reasonable way towards a cross-platform codebase.
Okay, I was wrong. I don't know when they updated the App Store Review Guidelines without notice, but they did. The above would be true if it was only 11.14 that needed to be dealt with. I hadn't yet seen the text for 11.13. Given the text for 11.13, it seems like everything from Evernote and Instapaper to Pandora and Netflix would be affected.

11.13
Apps can read or play approved content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is sold outside of the app, for which Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues, provided that the same content is also offered in the app using IAP at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app. This applies to both purchased content and subscriptions.

11.14
Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchasing content to be used in the app, such as a “buy" button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected
Same here, not sure what the problem was. Seems like the points were more than sufficient to keep it further up the field for a bit longer.
it does, but i probably should have provided more detail.

as a genre, sci-fi loves to explore immortality. i have a crappy memory for titles, so i can't give you specific books or stories to look for, but most of the big names have taken a look at the problem: Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, etc. None of them have viewed it in a positive light. we shouldn't take their word on it as final, of course, but like all sci-fi, they provide excellent food for thought.

tl;dr: we can't reliably distribute the limited resources we have now, while lifespans are also still limited. there's nothing to suggest that this problem will be solved by increasing lifespans, let alone increasing them indefinitely.
if you are going to dispute them dispute them with numbers, virtually every benchmark, independent or otherwise puts ie somewhere between bad and embarrassing

http://waynepan.com/2008/09/02/v8-tracemonkey-squirrelfish-i...

If you point is that we should just be happy with the web that ie6 supports then sure we wouldnt need to put up with fairly minor differences between firefox / chrome.

Personally I think we are still at an early stage of realising how computing can benefit our lives, for the last 5 years ie has been significantly slowing that progress down, hopefully recent signs continue to show that this progress will happen even if we need to drag ie along the way.
There's nothing "innovative" or "visionary" about making me fill out a CAPTCHA just to read your blog post.
Very. Well, actually I would say that they're extraordinarily busy and would rather just throw money at people to do things so they don't have to worry about it.

Having set up wifi networks for big conferences (under contract) and written conference software (under contract), I can say that literally everything is a pain point for them.
The argument is off the mark; Apple artificially restricts the iPhone app market, SOLELY so they can skim money from all the apps.

Sell your stuff on Amazon, your own store, whatever; Amazon can compete in that free market, and if its worth it to you, pay their premium.

Apple monopolistically freezes out any possibility of competition; skims off of apps that have nowhere else to go.

Then they want to set your prices outside of their store too!
I sympathize, but if too many people are doing too much multitasking it would be a good idea to have the interested parties continue alone. Sometimes I see people claiming their seat at the table without contributing as a new mode of passive-aggressive behavior.
While Java is not in jeopardy of dieing any time soon, It has most certainly been mugged in the back ally by Oracle and is banged up pretty bad. While Java the languadge is a bit verbose at times I never felt that it was in real danger. The library wealth if nothing else kept people fixed to it. But with Oracle's stewardship, it has given people the reason to ignore all the practical reason to stick with Java and move on to other pastures. The problem is none of the cool kids are using Java anymore and that is a real problem, that means new problems sets and new solutions will be accomplished in other languadges it also means all those libraries and the developers who graciously write them and distribute them for free are going to start looking to work in other languages, these political problems do present a serious threat to Java's crown and it seems that Oracle is oblivious to the fact or sees value in monetizing it to the pulp while it can squeeze Java technology adopters.
New pwnagetool - works on 4.2.1, untethered, and fixes iBooks problem
A phone is a physical device. You own your phone.

This argument is tantamount to saying MSFT owns windows and so deserves 30% of all purchases made through IE. This is insane.

If Apple wants to provide infrastructure developers can use for handling in-app purchases, and give them the option to do so, that is fine. Forcing people who write software for their platform to use their APIs for in app purchasing, and to pay 30% is wrong.

Apple does not own phones it has sold. The owners do, that is why they paid for them.
Earth is just shy of 8 km from the sun in this model. ...which reminds me that we're 8 light minutes out from the sun. So the 1:20 million scale happens to fall pretty close to a 1km:1 light minute scale!

units(1) confirms this (and groks "light minute" - huh!). 1 km : 1 lm is 1:18 million - within 10%.

To get a feel for how vast interstellar distances are, if we wanted to place Alpha Centauri on the Swedish solar system map, we'd have to put it 5x further from Sweden than the moon - at this insane scale, interstellar distances still require interplanetary distances!
"...you can select a sensible subset of C++"

I love programming in a sensible subset of C++ too.

The problem is that C++ has long history and when it began, many programmers had erroneous ideas about OO - some skipped it completely, some built absurdly deep inheritance trees, some engaged in ridiculous tricks to stay within "doctrine" (remember a fellow who had a pointer-member to the same object in a parent and a child class just avoid something about down-casting).

So from this history, there's a lot of really bad C++ code "out there".

And just much, when you take two code bases or two groups of programs, each happy with their different sensible subset of C++ and combine them, without being careful, you also wind-up with a hellish mess.
The first programmable nanoprocessor
Well that settles it. I'm buying a spool tonight. Thanks!
Original post:

http://blogs.starbucks.com/blogs/customer/archive/2011/02/15...
> If true, the ability to export to ePub would induce me to buy books in kindle format.

Keep in mind that by doing so you would still be supporting a consumer-hostile ecosystem.
Sorry about that. If I post the scores again, I'll do so w/o giving away anything in the title.
"A single use of an obj-C number formatter..." [emphasis mine]. Carmack is a pretty smart guy, he wouldn't be using number formatters in an inner loop.

Anyway my point was that you can find fault in just about anything. But, you'll be much better off if you found out the strengths of each language instead, and used that to your advantage. Here's a guy that has this figured out: http://www.savoysoftware.com/blog/my-iphone-is-not-a-mac-pro...

We need fewer religious language BS articles like this one, especially from a guy who seems completely clueless about C++.
You'll get even better reception if you shape the wire in a fractal pattern, like this: http://www.instructables.com/image/FDXQQVBFP8NM7YF/Create-fr...

Nathan Cohen made this discovery after listening to a Mandelbrot talk on fractals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna#Fractal_element...
"First, the only rule of the road generally recognized, followed or not, is the letter of the law."

I really sincerely hope that you do not have your drivers license, because that is incredibly wrong.
Yet another spin on the Microsoft brand carousel. Someone over there seems to think that if they give their product a certain name then people will start buying it. Zune seemed like a good brand. The products were of high quality and had good reputations. I feel like a few well placed articles titled "Zune: Microsoft's quiet success" or "Microsoft becomes the underdog with Zune" would have gone a long way.
Good point. In some sense, netflix isn't so different than Amazon's app. Both are providing content the users pay for externally, and in many cases, Apple also provides that content through iTunes.

Now, imagine if your $10/mo. netflix subscription fee was $13 just because you are using it on an iPhone.
How to get a business development job in Silicon Valley or San Francisco
I don't think natural talent "helps", I truly believe it is a prerequisite.
Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients
tl;dr "I think my language is better than your language because I haven't used your language and am ignorant of the fact that it can do everything I've just described, but with less effort".
I was curious about the Redis sets used for social graph storage and using intersection of sets to find nodes in common. Would anyone have an idea about the complexity of this as both the number of nodes in the graph and the number of edges each node has?
Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks
I seriously considered it. It probably would have worked, since database tables were implemented as delimited text files. [1][2]

But our vendor had their own deployment system, and there was zero chance of them sending us Git patches instead of their proprietary ones, and most of what we did was integrate patches from the vendor into our code. So really I took the only option available to me.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_U2
Wave is a great tool to sell to companies as an Outlook/Exchange/Sharepoint/Office replacement.

In that respect, it is very, very good.

As a competitor to Facebook? I don't see the slightest similarity, and the gmail like marketing only hurt the product.
The Bobby Fischer Defense
Perhaps you should actually read the Amazon terms first:

"By our General Pricing rule, you must always ensure that the item price and total price of an item you list on Amazon.com are at or below the item price and total price at which you offer and/or sell the item via any other online sales channel."
Companies can always build their own "last mile connection". I have a fiber optic connection here in Vancouver (20/20mbps), it cost $45/mo, which is reasonable.

The thing is that the ISP (Novus) had to lay cables to all the suites in the tower. This cost money, and might only viable in high density areas.
What do cable providers have anything to do with this?

He built his own antenna to receive local channels that are broadcast over the air. These are broadcast specifically so that people with antennas can receive them.
There is an elephant in the room here, and it's why so many content providers seem just so annoyed.

Regardless of whether this is 'fair' for Apple to do or not, many content providers simply /can't/ give Apple (or any third party) 30% of their revenue - even just for for subscriptions sold through iOS apps - and still make a profit. There's just not enough margin in what they're selling. Since Apple is demanding that the prices in-app be the same as outside the app, these providers have two choices: raise prices for everyone to subsidise the iOS-purchased subscriptions, or don't offer an iOS app at all.

This is a big change to the status quo.
And Jobs has just stepped over the line of brilliance to madness. It is this same God-complex that ultimately led to his original ouster from Apple. Jobs really thinks that 30% of the revenue in the mobile world belongs to Apple??? I see a HUGE opportunity for Android here (and I'm an Apple fan)!
That rings a bell. Commercial support of existing products.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/08/despite-petiti...
Except they aren't the only player. Netflix, Amazon, NYT, the list goes on and on. Any major subscription service has a way to get users to subscribe via the web today. And Apple didn't just introduce a subscription model today, they introduced a subscription model that directly attacks any other model if they want to be on iOS.
Although the Zune was largely a failure in terms of overall market share, it wasn't a bad product offering.

* The Zune Pass was an excellent way to get music for a flat monthly rate, and the selection and price was competitive with Rhapsody and other services.

* Zune hardware was always top-notch, with Zune devices having FM or HD radio. The Zune HD was particularly nice.

* Zune Social was somewhat similar to last.fm and provided useful music recommendations.

* Zune offered DRM-free music, in addition to DRM-locked music for the Zune Pass.

* The (Windows-only) client software was very well designed, and superior in usability to iTunes (IMO).

I would be disappointed to see the Zune name go, but sometimes good products fail in the market.
Team Lead developer
Please email your resume to tprendergast@yodle.com

Job is in NYC and pays 125-150k yr.

5+ years of experience in a Quantitative and/or Software Development environment, building software that works, is reliable, testable and maintainable.
Experience leading a team of technical professionals
Having programmed in Java will help you get going faster, but your primary languages aren’t as important as being a great programmer
SQL proficiency. Proficiency with PostgreSQL is a plus
Proficiency in Python, R and Excel is a plus
A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant course of study (e.g., Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics). Advanced degree is a plus.
Delegate a Task in OmniFocus With Email
Apple understands the internet, it just doesn't like what it sees. There's a lot of smut, hate speech, pirated content, and malware out there.

Just as Google has tried to do with its search engine, Apple is building a system that makes it easy to find quality content. Content that is legal, age rated and doesn't harm your devices. A lot of families value those qualities over 'absolute freedom'.
"...too young to remember the fun of constantly adjusting TV rabbit ears..."

Too young, ha! I use rabbit ears on my HDTV (no cable, just netflix + locals is enough for me) and laugh when I go to Best Buy and see "state of the art high definition" antennas for anywhere from $20 to $100. The same laugh hits me when I go down the gold plated monster cable isle, but that's a different story.
Arguably, most corpses do mutate into other things. This is just an argument of semantics. Java as we knew it is going away. This is as close to "dead" as philosophical ideals get.
I really enjoy C++. It's a "live and let live" language. Pick what you want to use and be happy. Sure, not everyone picks the same pieces to use, but like in everything, humans will have differences and C++ allows and encourages that.

You can do procedural, functional, OOP, generic, template meta-programming etc. It has something for everyone and does not try to force anything down your throat. That is why I love it.

I use it daily and am very productive with it.

Edit: grammar
Well I guess some people dvr everything, but I don't think this is a spoiler any more than ESPN's website the day after the superbowl, or a newspaper headline reading OBAMA WINS.

Maybe if it had been posted at 7pm EDT yesterday.
Right now event organizers hire someone to print out badges ahead of time and hand them out at the door. Having your badge printed right there saves time, table space, waste from no-shows, makes it harder to gate crash (there's a scene in Up in the Air where Clooney's character just picks up someone else's name badge from the table).

Don't underestimate the psychological factor of having something printed right there with the personalized (you typed it) name.
I presume you are talking about the iPhone app store.

Apple did it because they can. For their money vendors get development tools, marketing and distribution assistance plus, of course, access to the marketplace.

Its the same with supermarkets or big stores. Want them to sell your stuff? By and large you have to do it on their terms.
Webstream PR Clients
Its a baby god.
"Nathan Cohen made this discovery..."

He's the reason you don't have a stubby antenna sticking out of your cell phone anymore. Really cool story.
I'm not sure what exactly this is, but I've been behind people a few times where they are using some kind of elaborate coupons that the cashier has to double check and compare to the items and it takes literally 5+ minutes to go through it all. Maybe food stamps. But it is really frustrating.

Regular coupons can just be instantly scanned by the bar code reader and take no time at all.
I wonder why they were rejected? :-P
I was wondering when there were going to roll this out ...
Yup the CouchNotes demo app does push / pull replication, just needs another flag for continous, the mobile CouchDB is a vanilla CouchDB so will replicate to CouchOne / Cloudant fine.

Replication on mobile isnt without gotchas though, there are issues with mobile carriers interfering with http via proxies and various minor bugs. CouchDB will be updated with these fixes as they come along (within weeks, not months) so I wouldnt let it hold you off building an app that requires replication.
Facebook Will Be Baked Into Dozens Of Mobile Devices This Year
10-Year-Old Explains Import Of 3D Printing At Ignite
It's not where the customer registers, it's where the sale occurs.

A publisher must make all content that's available elsewhere also available in the app, and at the same price.

If the customer buys in the app, the transaction settles to the iTunes account and Apple takes 30% off the top.
It depends on the circumstances. Often a meeting will have multiple topics, and different people can be more or less engaged at different times. And often it's useful to have somebody around to answer questions if anybody comes up, but she or he isn't needed for most stuff being covered. In both of these cases multi-tasking can be very efficient. Of course as you say it can also be abused ...
"Nokia could continue to hang onto it because they are both Finnish."

Trolltech is (was) a Norwegian company. They still have development offices in Oslo.
Go to tvfool.com and put in your addresses. From what I can find they have Canada data in their DB too. The first step to understand how to get good reception is to learn where all the towers are located and what band they broadcast on.
I've got the next great idea for a social networking site... But now what?
So I've got a million dollar idea for a simple social networking site. The dilemma.. I'm not a developer and I don't know any, or know how to find one thats capable of bringing my idea to fruition. So whats a guy like me to do? I've got the money, time and motivation but where do I go from here?
This is a huge game of chicken with Amazon.

I could see a scenario where Amazon decides to let the kindle app be pulled, and throws their weight around with the publishers in order to damage iBooks.
Not quite, iTunes is a proprietary service that just happens to utilize HTML as it's markup language, at least in Apple's intent. It's use is similar to the use of XML in other applications: the service is strictly there for one client, it just so happens that a lot of other applications implement it. The web-accessible version is a benefit of this, but it really reveals the bullshit motive behind keeping iTunes' store closed.
Considering Jason's recent tweet of a last minute entry, my bet is that he got in.

Good job!
Google has failed multiple times at launching social apps. Is there an equivalent series of Apple failures from being too controlling? If not, what makes this a blindspot?
This is seriously disconcerting. As someone just considering moving into San Francisco, and using Caltrain to commute to work, it makes me have serious second thoughts.
I'm a bit lazy to look up for the source, but one article mentioned that the engineers were surprised that humans could get down to the 10 - 15 ms range by anticipating the light rather than reacting to it. They said this beats the mechanical buzzer, and it does happen, though not terribly often.

So yes, it is possible to beat Watson to the buzzer even if you both know the answer.

I suspect they could have improved the buzzer if they really wanted to, but it might have made things too lopsided.
You can use http://www.tvfool.com/ to chart the strength of nearby TV signals based on your location. It includes both US and Canadian broadcast towers.

I'd be interested to know the strength of the signals you're able to receive with your paper-towel-tube antenna design.
This isn't a subscription model. It's a middleman model.
I still don't see the problem here. The only things that aren't subpoena-able are things covered by doctor-patient confidentiality or attorney-client privilege. My phone calls and credit cards and bank accounts are similarly subpoena-able. The privacy issue isn't that this stuff is made available to investigators through due process after they already have reasonable suspicion, it's when investigators just go on a fishing expedition through it.
The Workshop on Economics and Security has some great stuff http://weis2010.econinfosec.org/

Here's Ross's "Economics and Security" resource page http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/econsec.html
Thinking about the questions at the end,

Microsoft is (or was) really good at backwards compatibility (and making it easy to import other formats into their own). This is their weakness: they are focused on getting content into their own formats.

Facebook's strength is to get people to impart information into their system. Their weakness is in always trying to make it public (or at the least visible to anyone you friend)