skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Open letter to adobe: please free our PDF files.
Now that PDF is such an ubiquitous file format, I think it would be appropriate for Adobe to offer a free way to add and remove pages from our own PDF files. Your acrobat tool is simply not affordable for most of the world, yet, people have to work with PDFs. People spend hours trying to work around the inability to add and remove pages to a PDF document. By handicapping acrobat reader to not have this ability, it just makes you feel like a cheap and restricting company that wants to force users into paying for a tool on which they are dependent. I want to pay for your software, but you don't offer any price-points that make sense to my budget. Please, please give acrobat reader the basic ability to add and remove pages within a PDF. Charge me for the annotation tools, fine, but please, at least don't restrict basic manipulation of my own files which are now such a standard format.

Thank you for considering this proposal.
The trick is growing the user base to new users that have no reputation. If "good" places won't rent to me, then the quality of the rentals from my perspective is quite poor.
PayPal Freezes Support Account For Bradley Manning
140Fire (YC W10) Lets You Create Real-time Overlay Ads For Your Video Content
Does anyone have any questions about our technology? Tell me what you guys think of it!
I guess my only problem would be that this really shuts down users that aren't able to install RescueTime on their work PCs due to company security policies. These may be the hot-shot types that are actively seeking a new role and the relative data would be missing for these users unless they do moonlighting of some sort after hours where RescueTime can monitor that data.
I suspect most people never noticed the addition of multitasking in iOS. Suddenly Pandora didn't stop playing when they checked a mail message and their apps reopened much faster, but they probably credited/blamed the app developers for that. I wonder what percentage of users don't even know about the double-click-home menu.

I think multitasking UIs on touch devices (where apps are usually 100% of the screen) are more confusing for users than just going back to the icon on the home screen. Users get that more than one thing is running at a time in a windowed environment -- you can see both of them at the same time if you position your windows properly. I'm not sure they bring that understanding along when they pick up a tablet.
How do you know there's been a massive uptake when you don't have any numbers? Aren't you just guessing?
OS X is a fully POSIX compliant operating system (as opposed to Linux, which is not fully compliant). It is officially branded as Unix. I don't understand what you mean?
Link to story: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:un_MdjwjvxkJ:w...

The two-column view may be a bit of a downer, but then one could always download the Word document...
Seems to be a hoax :

(Mashable) -- UPDATE We've just heard from the NHL, who tell us: "The NHL is not in discussions with YouTube to stream live games. The NHL has not had conversations with the Google spokespeople mentioned in the Bloomberg report."
I am not advocating any sort of Zero Tolerance policy (e.g. "instantly failing") for this. In fact, I think ZT is insane in most if not all cases.

For the purposes of this discussion (which was about having students use version control for assignments) using version control is as central to the requirements as implementing the algorithm and using the assigned language and failure to follow instructions can, at the instructor's discretion, result in grading penalties. As a bonus, this adds another hurdle for cheaters to clear and provides another opportunity for profs/TAs to notice anything suspicious.

Hope that clears some things up...
That's not at all what Kasparov said:

My concern about its utility, and I read they would like it to answer medical questions, is that
Watson's performance reminded me of chess computers. They play fantastically well in maybe 90% of
positions, but there is a selection of positions they do not understand at all. Worse, by definition
they do not understand what they do not understand and so cannot avoid them. A strong human Jeopardy! player,
or a human doctor, may get the answer wrong, but he is unlikely to make a huge blunder or category error--
at least not without being aware of his own doubts. We are also good at judging our own level of certainty.
A computer can simulate this by an artificial confidence measurement, but I would not like to be
the patient who discovers the medical equivalent of answering "Toronto" in the "US Cities" category,
as Watson did.

I would not like to downplay the Watson team's achievement, because clearly they did something most
did not yet believe possible. And IBM can be lauded for these experiments. I would only like to wait
and see if there is anything for Watson beyond Jeopardy!.

If IBM wants to fix the "Toronto" problem, have at it. But those sorts of "embarrassing" errors could be quite costly in medical situations. During the show they showed Watson's progression from really stupid answers very frequently to less frequently, which makes me personally believe their fundamental process is flawed (not necessarily irreconcilable) and their current algorithms are just a bunch of hacks thrown together on top of Google rather than something more sophisticated like Wolfram Alpha.
As I understand it, the projects and efforts you mention didn't "fail fail" - the computers didn't explode incinerating the buildings and the programmers involved.

The ideas failed in a relative fashion. They failed to yield that many result relative relative to the effort and resources that were put into them. And they especially failed to yield as many results as you could get by just increasing raw clock speed. And their cost was not just their raw complexity but the training required for programmer to understand parallelism (the low cost of today's "entry level" programmer is a huge bogus to the IT industry. If companies had to spend a year on system-specific training, the cost would be vast).

But given that such projects were only failures relative to the alternative of just coming up with a simple architecture with a higher clock speed, if the alternative is going away, there's no reason they can't become relative successes. Watson was a relative success - if you could have Watson-level processing-power on a single chip programmable with Ruby, the effort IBM put into the project would look silly. But since it looks you can't, Watson seems like a productive use of resources.

In a lot of ways, the last thirty years have involved substituting low-cost, high-power chips for high-price, high-skill programmers yielding a huge, de-skilled programming workforce. The end of Moore's-law-for-speed would seem to mean things will move differently in the future.

I won't address the particular architecture points you make, which all sound good but are unrelated to the general of previous parallelism efforts "failing".
As of this morning, $1200 for a 512GB SSD is cheaper than what's available on newegg.com
I intend to test this eventually, but I think the test has to be a little more complex since you want to measure if it shares google-juice, not just that Google reads the URLs.

Ideally I'll registering two random number domain names, both with random text around a unique word, then mention one in a keyword rich PDF and see which domain pops up first in the Google search.
Related:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259673

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259787

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259195
Instagram opens a realtime API for a “more connected and transparent world”
Related:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259673

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259787

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259121
Totally agree. It's shocking how many doctors seem to be lacking basic knowledge about things like drug sideeffects or lesser known symptoms about common diseases. You obviously still need both specialists and general practitioners but I think it's time to revisit the idea of a medical expert system
.
Related:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259673

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259195

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259121

(not that I don't appreciate the upvotes (thank you!), but I sometimes find it a little depressing when I get more votes for cross-referencing items like this than for original work that provides real information: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259761 )
Related:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259787

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259195

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259121
Anuncios gratuitos Elche, Alicante: CIBER LOCUTORIO CHOQUE - ELCHE -
I actually told my wife (who knew the correct answer - Chicago) half jokingly that perhaps it was the sportsmanship built into Watson to throw away an easy answer once in a while, because he was on a hot streak up to that point.
The API for that is still private and undocumented, though.
legal action? kneecaps action?
my thoughts:

We need to think carefully about having a gas tax. Once taxes are in place, they are rarely removed, because the government starts to rely on that money.

We are "addicted" to oil because everything needs it to run. It's not easy to completely uproot the infrastructure that has been in place for decades.
But any dollar not spent on one part of a work setup can be spent on some other part of the work setup, so that kind of thinking can easily come out in the wash.
How do you write an entire article about iOS app advertising and not include a single word about mobile ad networks? I see discussion of banner ads on major sites, AdWords, roadblocks on various ad networks, Daring Fireball RSS, MacWorld banner ads, but nothing about AdMob or MobClix. Maybe they tried that and it didn't work also, but it would have been nice to hear some specifics. I've heard of multiple people having success using AdMob to drive downloads, and that makes more sense to me than a Daring Fireball RSS sponsorship. The channels they named seem more like places you'd use to market Mac software (something they have experience with) than places you'd go to market an iOS app. None of this is to say they don't know how to market iOS apps - they've sure sold a lot more than me. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDF_software
Blackberry running Android apps already?
The difference, of course, is that people these days are quick to say how much they use Facebook or OKCupid, but very few people are willing to talk with their friends about their extramarital affairs.
I did hit the "Report" button. Let me know if you did not get the report or if it is useless and you need further testing.
Snowman Slide: insanely elaborate slide
You suppose Google has a "test detection" heuristic? For example, if we see a completely unique word suddenly appear on 2 domains that themselves have no possible meaning or prior reference, and everything is the same except 1 variable, then we'll just randomize the results? Seems like a test scenario itself might be algorithmically detected and f----ed with.
Excellent point. But that "Toronto" was its highest guess makes you wonder if it could confidently select something that exploits whatever errors led to Toronto. And if you asked it a medical question, would it say "I don't know?" if it wasn't confident or would it give an answer anyway (along with a confidence level that might be ignored or rationalized away)?
I still can't believe that this guy is basically being tortured before trial with the solitary confinement regime that they have him under. I know that military justice is different than civilian justice but I'd still think punishment requires a trial. And punitive solitary should be on the wrong side of "cruel and unusual" for any crime up to and including treason -- if it's capital, you can kill them, but you can't do so cruelly or unusually.
Ok AirBnB, great work so far. you've got 11 months till my honeymoon, get me some more choices: GO!
A Real-Time API for Next-Generation Apps
There's no point in adding however many MB of download for an add-on that so few people use.
Android Market Adds Google eBookstore
> but I would not like to be the patient who discovers the medical equivalent of answering "Toronto" in the "US Cities" category, as Watson did.

Surprise, that kind of mistake happens far too frequently in the medical field now.

Why is Kasparov commenting on something so far out of his recognized area of expertise relevant anyway? I don't go to Knuth for advice on chess, nor Hawking for snarky banter on economics, etc. (Although if I had access to either of those 2, I might try it.)
Secrets of Super-Effective Networking
It's a romantic post, hence the references to all the fictional depictions of pickpockets. It's very much of a piece with the heroes of caper films - people don't normally root for crooks, but the idea of a nonviolent, clever crook who puts a lot of work into perfecting what he does appeals to people.
Cool, now I can add the memory footprint of an entirely separate browser instance just to check my email! What a great idea.
Anybody have any insight into how they handle taxation? Is it up to the homeowner to declare any income derived from their rental as taxable income, or is up to Airbnb to keep track of the tax codes for every locale they have listings for?
Agreed. This seems like win win all around. If you want Banshee to take more of the cake, patch in their affiliate code or throw your own affiliate code in there if you want ... actually, that doesn't sound like a bad idea ...
But we're not talking about Apple's marketshare. We're talking about Intel's influence. And that's quite a bit different.
Watson was not confident in that answer - only 30% (http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/02/watson-on-jeopardy-da...). Had that been a normal question, it wouldn't have buzzed in. It only answered because Final Jeopardy is the only time when not answering and answering incorrectly have the same penalty.
Canonical don't get 75% of the sale, they get 75% of the affiliate bonus. I don't know how much it is, but I guess its low (anyone know?)
Yes, it reads like a Victorian Era Oceans 11. One of the biggest things I remember about it was that they didn't even consider doing anything but stealing the keys to the safe. It wasn't "pickable" given their technology level, explosives weren't powerful enough to open it and it was massive enough to make brute force measures infeasible.
Sparrow works just as nicely off-line which is the main reason I went for it.
I'd revise it to "Don't spend money on advertising for you iOS - even if you wanted to, the price has multiplied many times over for the last couple of years".

I found it very meagre on stats and arguments, and I think what was most interesting to me: whether there's a difference to companies and apps with traction and those without.

I would never pay for ads on a product that hasn't gained any traction, users nor fans, but I wouldn't mind paying for some reddit ads later on.

As long as you consider buying ads to be noticed instead of buying ads to get people to like you, I think it's still open for discussion.
I would be most interested in getting introductions at these target companies. Even if it's an informational interview with the person who has my dream job, that's a big step from not having that relationship.

If we imagine this as an AngelList sort of system, then the employers and prospective candidates are all high quality. The service could just be a match-making service that does a bit of due diligence on their respective quality. That's a big asset.
My point is that the "Toronto" error is constantly cited as proof that Watson is fundamentally flawed, when it's actually a fairly reasonable bug if you understand the process it goes through to reach the answer- It's just seen as a stupid answer because it misses a key filter that humans would pick up.

In the medical case, it's actually better for the answer to be obviously, embarrassingly wrong than slightly wrong. Like the other commenter said, people aren't going to be getting amputations for headaches just because Watson says so. There's much more danger in something like prescribing medications with a fatal interaction, something that a hypothetical "Dr. Watson" would pick up.
It sounds like she grabbed you wallet, took (or planted) whatever, and then put it back...
The same way PayPal is free to choose whether it does business with anyone, we can also choose whether we want to do business with them.
I still would prefer the resources tab to split between css/js/images instead of just one giant list of all the resources (including XHR)
I think that list is a bit silly -- I'm finding it somewhat difficult to come up with a list of successful web properties that do pass that test.
Instagram Unveils Realtime API W/ Fancy, Momento, Flipboard, About.me & More
Would Watson make that mistake happen more or less often? (Bringing in Watson can lead to blindly trusting or blindly ignoring the "stupid computer" depending on the doctor; seems like a problem with doctors rather than a lack of tools?)

> Why is Kasparov commenting on something so far out of his recognized area of expertise relevant anyway?

Isn't the asking obvious? (I won't comment on the relevance; people do and read many irrelevant things every day.) People asked for his thoughts 'cause he got beat by IBM's Deep Blue and he's had a lot of experience with computers in their relationship with chess (specifically combining humans and computers to make really strong opponents). People also asked for Ken Jennings' thoughts and AI isn't his expertise. And people recently asked Hawking for his thoughts on aliens...
Don't assume anything.

I had someone steal my card info and use it to by a bed and mattress, which was delivered to their house.

Sears (ahem) wouldn't tell me who bought it, or where it was delivered, because I wasn't the purchaser, but they were happy to charge me for it. I turned it over to the police, but they said they weren't going to deal with it as it was 'only' ~$1200. This was in 2002 IIRC.
Do you still have to buy the production version when it ships?
"I cannot apprehend the confusion of ideas that would lead you to believe this is caused by C. It's assembly, not C, that runs on your machine, and assembly is not memory safe"

There is no confusion of ideas, but I like the Babbage reference :)

In Singularity the code is compiled first to CIL, then to x86, x64, or ARM by an AOT (ahead-of-time) compiler. Now here's the thing: the OS loader does not load Assembly code, it loads CIL code, which it then compiles further down to Assembly. Since CIL is verifiably memory safe (like Java bytecode), and assuming the AOT compiler is not buggy, the OS is memory safe. Hence no need for MMU/MPU to do memory protection.

So even though you're right that Assembly is not memory safe, the final compiler stage (in this case CIL can be seen as an intermediary language) is implemented in the OS (the loader), and the OS will reject any non-memory safe code. No code that can write outside array boundaries, violates type safety, and attempts pointer arithmetic will be allowed to execute.

So no, Singularity does not provide a software layer for memory protection, it's purely an (intermediary) language feature.
Java Port of Dosbox - Run Civ/Doom/Windows 3.1 In Browser
Naval Academy STEM summer seminar, for your high school relatives
I attended this as a junior, 17 years ago. For a kid from Kansas public schools, it was mind-blowing. Definitely influenced my life.
Google is making its presence felt more and more on the desktop, right at Microsoft's doorstop. Unlike Chrome which is an alternative to IE, this Google Docs integration is just making things way too complicated. It's a parasitic relationship. Each of these services are handicapped in their own way and are using each other's services as bandaids.
As noted in Paul Hoffman's recent book "King's Gambit", after his matches with both "Deep Blue" and "Deep Junior" Kasparov was exhausted:

"As with Deep Blue, he had once again let an encounter with a machine play games with his head. He had been obsessed with the idea that Deep Junior would never tire. 'The machine is never distracted by an argument with its mother," he told me, 'or a lack of sleep.'

And in the linked piece Kasparov alludes to the reported next approach IBM wants to take with Watson - support in medicine.

Kasparov's human reaction to his encounters with Watson's distant cousins brings up one obvious benefit in the use of technology like Watson for supporting medical decision-making - simply that such software will be less likely to miss something. Software is less likely to miss considering a diagnosis, ordering a crucial test, or following up on a finding - unlike the fallible 'I' who may have skipped a class in med school, or was up all night on call and just can't think straight, or am just occasionally more stupid than usual.

Diagnosis is the first thing people think of with technology like this, but in my opinion that's not the big problem Watson should tackle. Medical diagnosis in and of itself (dramatizations like the TV show 'House' notwithstanding), is not really that difficult 99% of the time. When you hear hoofbeats, you're very likely going to find horses and not zebras. A future Dr. Watson might occasionally be very helpful in pointing out very obscure (but uncommon) diagnoses. However, in my opinion the most helpful thing a Dr. Watson could provide is collecting, evaluating, and comparing evidence and outcomes as they are developed globally and locally (ie across broad swaths of medicine, but also within a single physician's own patient population), continuously educating the physician, and monitoring cases.

There is plenty of untapped medical data/evidence out there, but it's almost all hidden away in plain sight...text/natural language. I have to agree with Kasparov here, in that the primary advancement Watson represents was in moving farther down the path from syntax to semantics.
Not so for US companies. They are not free to choose, for instance, to not do business based on certain characteristics (race or sex, for example). Don't be so quick to give up the ship just because it's "business." The companies enjoy a relatively stable environment: roads, power grid, and security do to US soldiers willing to risk their lives. In my mind it's perfectly acceptable to make them play by certain rules.

If they don't like it let them go run their business in Libya.
Sony’s War on Makers, Hackers, and Innovators
Its a wonder people still use the service after articles like this come to light. Its not the first time Paypal has pulled this stunt. A mass boycott isn't out of order.
Really? around the same 'price' in the US?

places i've lived it was an optional 10% if service was good. usually no tip above $1-2 euro for everyday stuff
Is two weeks a long time?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/meet-livestand-yahoos-attempt-...
No it will work exactly as intended. They'll experience a thunderbolt.
Do you think it's more or less tacky than "Firewire"?
This particular project seems to be pretty heavily invested in Maven, so migrating might not be very easy. At least as importantly, it's not really my project.
Are you still creating these comments with an automated script, or are you doing it manually?

I recall pg banning a script that did the exact same thing, but I can't recalled how that discussion ended.
Amusing - "dipping" is slang for pick-pocketing ...
Yes, but there are a some more nuances. I'll bet a fair amount of downtime is scheduled, and would be scheduled for low usage periods. Second, most services I've ever used with an SLA for n sixes hasn't actually lived up to that SLA. Instead they offer you a prorated charge for that month or something similar.

What people promise in an SLA and what they deliver are very different things. I'd be very interested in some stats about historic uptimes for similar sites.

Also, how much more are you willing to pay for an extra 9 of uptime?