skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What a proud moment for Egypt and all Egyptians? I didn't think I will see a revolution in my lifetime but here we are watching one unfold in front of our own eyes.

This is what wikipedia says about the french revolutions - sounds very similar - doesn't it. Except egyptians did it in 2 weeks and not 3 years.

"The French Revolution was a period of radical social and political upheaval in French and European history. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from liberal political groups and the masses on the streets. Old ideas about hierarchy and tradition succumbed to new Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights."
Goodbye Palm, It was Nice Knowing You
For what it's worth, I interviewed with them shortly after their acquisition by Sony. The gentleman I talked to told me that Sony corporate had dictated that they give up GOAL for C++ so that their code would be interoperable with the rest of the company.
Why do BA's & project managers get higher salaries than programmers?
"I'm interested in seeing whether Watson has an "aggressiveness" algorithm that allows it to respond before the answer is fully spoken.

You cannot buzz in until the question is completely read out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy!#cite_note-9
It's optional -- you don't have to enable it if you don't want it.

This is a good answer to those who were recently moaning that "anybody who hacks my google account can now push apps to my phone with out a confirmation!"

Quite frankly, I worry quite a bit less about hackers pushing malware to my phone than I do to people hacking into my e-mail.

I'm going to let this shake out for a while and then enable it.
Looks like it's currently broken. The article says "You can activate it by hitting the ‘two-step verification’ link on this page[1].", but it's definitely not there.

However, if you go into "Authorizing applications & sites" it has a warning box which says "An application-specific password can only be created when you are signed up for 2-step verification.", with no mention of where or how that can be done.

It'd be nice if this feature allowed me to have secondary passwords for eg google talk. I don't much care for having to hand out my full credentials just to use things like bitlbee/meebo.

[1] https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount
Agreed,

PhoneGap + jqtouch (or perhaps jquery mobile as it matures) is an awesome way to get going fast but that last mile can be torture, especially if you're working with an uncompromising customer/designer/etc.

At some point someone is going to throw on the brakes because "x doesn't y like an iPhone app" and then it gets ugly.

I think that you can do some very cool stuff using the "web app in a can" approach and I think it's appropriate for a lot of the typical "corporate"-type apps as long as you can manage expectations and stress the cross-platform angle (which can be almost zero-effort, check out https://build.phonegap.com/faq).

But pistoriusp is right, if you're breaking new ground then time invested in learning the native way is well spent.
I've been looking at this lately with my work with Torbit. One thing to keep in mind is the performance hit you may take from including that seal. They are usually served directly from the certification companies website and often take multiple seconds to load. Depending on how they block the rendering of your page, the seals could actually hurt your conversion rate just from the performance hit.
PlayStation Move creator wants to open the device to PC users
More like the Six Million Dollar Man theme...
And the second is only entered once per method of accessing your google account.
That sentence was written for its poetic impact, not its accuracy, I think it’s nevertheless somewhat defensible. Humans were obviously never selected for playing Jeopardy and evolution didn’t in that sense “conquer” Jeopardy (like dinosaurs “conquering” flying) but evolution nevertheless produced humans which are very good at playing Jeopardy. (We know of nothing else in this universe that can even only understand the rules of Jeopardy. Except for human-built machines.) That we can build a machine which is just as good as we are at playing the game obviously doesn’t mean that this machine is as intelligent as humans, it’s nevertheless quite impressive.
Somebody already PWNED your idea?
This is great - getting access to your mail account allows someone to essentially take over your online identity, so this helps a lot.

I do hope that you can't get in just by knowing someone's mother's maiden name, though...
Egypt is a military ally of the US and it sends its generals for training there. Other allies of the US do so as well (for example: Israel's prime minister and minister of defence have also studied in America). Suleiman was the head of intelligence, and thus responsible for all intelligence programs that Egypt had with America. Why would you single out the rendition program?

For some reason, you're pulling two questionably relevant
facts from his biography and present them with a conspiratorial tone.
That dude is an art professor if I recall right from the posting the other day.
Both have positive notes but I think if the two offices bred the offspring would be closer to what I consider ideal. There is a lot of noise with all the flair at Zappos but the 37s space lacks fun & individuality. So something with the clean aesthetic of 37s with a shot of Zappos individualism would bring it home for me.
How to Track Wisdom
I think you have to realise that when you say a majority of /companies/ you're actually talking about a few key decision makers in this company. The HR manager and your team leader and probably the CTO equivalent have to back this plan.

These people generally have to justify what they do not only to their superiors but to other people in the business. And hiring someone who isn't physically there is always going to be riskier (to them) than someone sitting at their desk whatever they are doing.

That's my 2p worth anyway.
Understanding Disk I/O - when should you be worried?
The Pixar offices take an interesting middle ground. They have the flair and joy of Zappos but avoid the generic cube aesthetic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/veerles-blog/461586084/

While I like 37signals, their sterile office would drive me nuts, but so would the extreme state of disarray at Zappos'. The Pixar model keeps the craziness slightly organized and not all in view at once.
Cloudworkers: The Future of Your Small Business
Developers say iAds are "hurting"
Career Fairs: May I Have a Mug, Sir?
Watson's voice isn't menacing enough.
I'd also imagine the people who work at 37s are generally introverted developer/designers while Zappos is packed full of extroverts.

I'd expect different environments for both.

Does the Zappos engineering dept look the same?
>Most of those logins happen over my phone, meaning I don't see the "trending" ads...or any ads at all.

That's the actual problem with Twitter regarding monetization, not the function of the site. Twitter is more a service/platform than a website, and thus Twitter consumption is decentralized. Therefore they're not able to capitalize on their broad reach through ad publishing. It's just as well, since Twitter has shown a staunch unwillingness to place traditional web ads on their site.

If they did have a FB/Google style ad setup, one apparent next step would be to charge for API services, to make up for lost revenue from people not using the official site. Third party developers would be forced to pass on the cost to consumers, most likely through hosting their own advertising.

Since Twitter doesn't seem to want to do that, this leaves customer data as their major capitalizable asset. Therefore the question is how capitalizable all the data flowing to Twitter is.
They have a list of errata for the first edition, and it makes no mention of my correction:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~keith/Errata.html
If you're in any way technical, why would you go MediaTemple (or other VPS provider) and not Amazon EC2? With the new micro instances, Amazon is very competitive on the low end, and they've got configurations to scale up to the highest volumes. I think as far as features go, they're miles ahead of the competition, but feel like there's something I must be missing.
I think he means Facebook.
2045: The Year Man Becomes Reduntant
Zappos would drive me crazy. I have been in an environment like that. It's "cute" at first, but then you realize you're just living in a messy corporate cubicle. It really inhibits work if your job is something such as development or design, in my opinion... just too much visual noise.

37signals office seems virtually distraction-free. If you need groups of people to work together efficiently in an office environment (that is still comfortable and not a cubicle farm), this is the kind of space works well, I think. Because they have so many remote employees, I think they want their real "office" to be Campfire anyway.

There is a significant difference in philosophy with how the companies operate, I think. Zappos wants people to be comfortable (or 'at home') where they work, and 37signals wants people to work wherever they are comfortable.
Science PhD = Smart + willing to follow orders + conforming + able to focus on something for years.

You'd be foolish not to hire one.
Gaaah, Seb!

The whole dialogue can be summarized as "someone bet me he will still be in power a year from now".
Free eBook: How to Be a Credit Card Processing Ninja
FeeFighters just released a free ebook that provides business owners with useful info on credit card processing, like: how to compare offers from different providers, info on gateways/POS systems, and common tricks processors use to rip off business owners.
> If their aim was the highest level of security

Which nobody has stated was there aim. There's a big misconception that somehow security firms should strive to have absolutely perfect security, which is completely wrong.

Security firms should aim for the most appropriate level of security to protect their information assets based on a reasonable approach. As should everyone else.

If their source code was stolen, then yes you could say that the level of protection was inappropriate because if the source code is the highest value asset they have, it probably shouldn't be accessible from the Internet.

That an Internet-facing web app was broken into and an email server for receiving and sending email to and from the Internet means that they have to be connected to the Internet to work. If these systems contained information assets that were sufficiently sensitive to the point of considering post-compromise lateral movement then they probably shouldn't be connected to the Internet.
First we need a viable airline industry any where in the world.
On one hand the UI doesn't seem remarkable. On the other hand, neither does Craigslist, Amazon, eBay, Zappos, Facebook....
Interesting to compare these with http://positivesharing.com/2006/10/10-seeeeeriously-cool-wor... -- especially Pixar's office which is downright beautiful.

Personally, while I'm not so fond of the total mess Zappos's offices look like, I find 37s a bit too tidy, cold and uninviting.

Bottom line - it is more important who are your neighbors (assuming you are working together) than what the place looks like. Smart and friendly coworkers are priceless!
Actually, as mentioned here already, you don't have to go native if you're writing a game. You can use Corona with great success, or Unity3D if you're going the 3D route.
A lot of the charm with crafts is being hand made and individual. Even if a craft maker can make and sell 1,000 popsicle stick men, there is still the illusion that each is unique and painstakingly made. When you present up front that "we're going to make a bunch of popsicle stick men", it kind of kills that, even if the same amount is being produced.
Even a real brain kept in a bottle wouldn't properly behave like a real human

I'm curious as to how you support this statement?
Thingist (http://thingist.com), which is one of my side projects.

/Warning: Rant/

Status updates as they exist right now freaking suck. There's not any context, no way to organize them. They're disorganized. I used to always post songs that I liked to my facebook or twitter feed so that I could share them with my friends (as well as find them later). A problem was that I had to search through 5 years worth of statuses to find the songs.

On thingist, it's just a list: http://thingist.com/t/list/38/

I used to do the same thing with quotes. If I found a quote I liked, I would usually share it on facebook or twitter. Same problem as with the songs...and now I have a list for it: http://thingist.com/t/list/51/

Or bars I like: http://thingist.com/t/list/65/

Or things that blow my mind: http://thingist.com/t/list/134/

etc. etc.
I think the styles are more similar than Ryan makes it out - both have control over their environments, but in different ways. At Zappos, they have standard half-height cubes and they control their environment by sticking things on the wall and hanging it from the ceiling. At 37signals, I recall that they designed that office - they had a deeper influence on their environment than Zappos. Same thing, but a different style, and each one very much demonstrates the company culture.
Apples to Oranges. Zappos is a support oriented culture whereas folks at 37s need a lot of quite time. I can't imagine Jamis Buck writing all his awesome maze algorithms while surrounded by balloons and tents everywhere.
http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/
Technically, I see no problem with an extension that keeps one or more websockets open and displays notifications received over them. Politically, people would have to agree to use that extension instead of creating their own.
Cool... what kind of site were you testing it on? We'll do our own a/b testing but I think it makes sense that near product selection and credit card entry is the place for it to go. For us it'll be near where they enter sensitive information.
I've looked around a bit but couldn't find any information on how the game state and clues are input to Watson. Are they typed in on the fly? Pre-loaded and just revealed as clues are selected? Is it parsing speech and reading the board visually?
> Social Security is doing much better by comparison.

You're assuming that your younger co-workers are going to pay the benefits that Congress provides to current retirees.

My younger co-workers are pretty sure that their younger co-workers aren't going to honor those promises wrt them. My shoud I assume that my younger co-workers are going to honor those promises wrt me?

BTW - SS is only a "good deal" if you're well below the cap. If you're contributing at the cap, the return is much lower.
Embedly-node - GitHub
The difference is my hypothetical is a realistic one many people face. Yours is just pure fantasy with no connection to reality.

Yes personal motivation and attitude to succeed are large factors, ones we should encourage, but the empirical evidence heavily suggest your personal circumstances and level of support are equally as important, if not more so.

I'm a little tired of people with multiple advantges largely ignoring them in favor of the "I'm so great and awesome and all you need to do is be like me" mentality.
Zappos workspace is bad from programmer point of view. Open space with lot of crap, phones on tables. May be this workspace is good for communication, someone could feel more happy in this workspace and so on but it's terrible for hacking. It looks like this envirement encourage interraptions. 37s office much better for productive work.
IMO the theorems in Apostol are tricky reading for most first learning Calculus.. Although probably for the HN crowd are appropriate. But I can't argue with the content or preparation it provides.

I personally prefer Stewart as I think it is appropriate for a wider range of ability, while still being excellent.
> The whole dialogue can be summarized as "someone bet me he will still be in power a year from now".

The differing analysis was actually more interesting to me than the wager - his was that Mubarak is resilient, ruthless, has weathered things in the past, and has the military.

My thinking was that things had already progressed beyond the point where he could possibly stay in power... and the military is not so clearly on his side against the people, especially considering he likely won't live much longer.

I thought comparing the two points of view was more interesting than the bet itself.
HP announces plans to add webOS to its Windows PCs
>Twitter is more a service/platform than a website

Yes, and this is the problem. They're providing coders, and bandwidth, and datacenters...and they're trying to do all of it for free. This is fine, and obviously twitter figured out a way to make it work for them (projections for $100 Million in revenue is freaking awesome for them), but I doubt it will go much higher than that.
I guess 37signals hires employees that like the design of the place. i.e. personally, I really like how 37signals is designed and I wouldn't even think of putting something weird on the wall.. so in a way, 37signals let me design the place how I want it to be (clean and empty). So, by working in a clean place, I control my environment by letting it stay clean.

In contrast, working at Zappos's office, how would I be able to control my clean environment?
Interesting, thanks. If I move to a state with income tax, or enter a tax bracket that warrants it, I'll definitely take a closer look at municipal bonds.
A classic use of watson that IBM is saying is in the field of medical science - Imagine if we can feed the entire set of medical books into watson (somebody estimated that would just take about a week for watson to process and make the connections) and then you have the watson physician's assistant which can listen into the symptoms and spit out the first five most probably causes - that would be so damn amazing!
It'd be nice they allowed secondary passwords for eg google talk. I don't much care for having to hand out my full credentials just to use things like bitlbee/meebo.
I've heard exactly the same thing from a friend who runs an e-commerce site, though I can't remember what the % improvement was it definitely noticeable.
Oh absolutely; but when did I describe it as straightforward? If it was such an obvious slam dunk win it would have happened faster and Microsoft would not have been caught with their pants down. The gist of my point is that over time, you have a cross-platform, no-install environment that clearly has a ton of disadvantages, but it cleans the clock of superior established platforms simply due to a little less user friction.
There is no "remembering" involved -- you get the second password from an app on your phone. And you only have to enter this second password once per month (per computer that you access your account from).
I don't know the percentages but Watson is built on UIAM http://uima.apache.org/ which has bits in C++ and bits in Java. From there I am sure different teams used language bindings to use the language that best suited their particular needs to accomplish their tasks. Not that I know it to be true, but I would not be at all surprised to find R, Haskel and even some lisp in their somewhere.
We can make them a bit more popular. ;-) Would you be interested in guest blogging an entry about foreign or specifically Russian math books?
Can you compare this against the HTML5 pushState API?
Yes, this particular post could seem spammy, but I have been reading this blog for quite a while and generally find the content to be relevant and interesting.

Even with this particular post, I personally have no problem with affiliate links and this list is an interesting compilation which the readers of the blog helped to create.
Most users don't want to add context or have to organise stuff. I signed up for your service, added something I like, but having to fill out a form after? Ugh, I am lazy.

The reason why Twitter is successful is that its so simple, there are millions of use cases.
"I deny that the human brain IS algorithms. It is neurons connected by dendrons/synapses. Right?"

"I deny that Watson IS algorithms. It is transistors assembled into logic gates. Right?"

My statement is obviously a silly thing to say. Watson is both algorithms and transistors, depending on how you care to think about it. If you believe that your statement is not equally silly, please explain.
Had the same experience with Appcelerator. Not knowing Objective-C it was a lot easier to get ideas into code quickly for prototyping, but when I ended up having to read all of their source and writing custom modules to get what I wanted done I decided it was not worth it. (Side benefit: this is how I got comfortable w/ Objective-C)

If your app is brochureware or a simple web app port to mobile it probably works well. If you are pushing anywhere on the edges it starts to get difficult.

Organize your application really well and it will be easy to port between the two platforms for any models/libraries you write where the concepts are the same.
Odd feature of Egypt constitution, as far as I'm aware: if the president resigns, power falls to the speaker of the parliament, not the vice president.

E.g.: http://www.eipr.org/en/pressrelease/2011/02/05/1091
sure. We're not talking 1000's though. 10-20 is more realistic. Something your average crafter can create in a few days.
Very interesting programming project. I'll have to give that a try sometime.

For day-to-day automation of stuff, I like to use sikuli [1] which lets you automate pretty much anything in a gui using screenshots. (Their editor is pretty cool). It's a research project so a bit rough around the edges, but still worth your time to check it out if you're at all interested in automation (auto-configuring systems, driving applications, playing flash games, etc)

[1] http://sikuli.csail.mit.edu/
Increases in computing power affect the whole chain - you're looking at the high end, where the limit of computing power is pushed but you also need to remember that computing power for a given cost increases across the whole spectrum of computing devices.

My phone can listen to what I say, translate it into French, and speak it back to me, albeit leveraging external compute power to do most of the heavy lifting. But it wouldn't be possible to provide that external compute power at scale 20 years ago.

I'm also sure that countless small innovations in bioinformatics add up collectively to significant changes over time, and those individual innovations are powered by the more broadly available increases in computing power.
Should we make a hackernews seal of approval with a link that references how bullshit seals are?
Well, I'm not seeing that result now, likely because the results are now filled with actual news about hiybbprqag. But if Vanessa Fox Nude was ranking then that likely means that some signal was associating hibbpraqag with Google and that either they're using (at least in part) a really old index or the crawler they're using doesn't follow redirects very well.

vanessafoxnude.com has been redirecting to my current site for several years now, but back when the original site was active, much of the incoming anchor text was related to Google and search.
Now that I think about it, I see how the title may not have been suitable for an international audience. So, I changed it from ``Programming Language Engineering in Brussels in English'' to ``Lisp-oriented Course on Programming Language Engineering''.

Thank you for your feedback.
If you're willing to share your reason, I'd love to know. I work on Chargify.
I think anyone who has worked in the field of AI would admit there are a lot of philosophical questions around the definition of intelligence and it's relationship to algorithmic problem solving.

One of my favourite thought experiments in the area being Searle's Chinese Room:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room