skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not going to bother to look up references about malware or scareware etc. on Windows. Seriously? You've never heard of spyware or people having to reinstall windows, or registry corruption, etc. etc.?

Also several of those companies were actually born on the Mac (Adobe), or NeXT (Mosaic->Mozilla), or FreeBSD (Yahoo). And the fact that you think Windows enabled Hewlett Packard to be born suggests you have little grasp of history. I was AT HP when the decision was made to standardize on Windows - it seemed like a multi-billion dollar corporation at the time - not something that was just being born.

I don't have a wild imagination - I've encountered lots of everyday users who've messed up their systems by installing software that caused them problems. One of the reasons the App store is so successful is that users don't have to worry that installing software from it will mess them up.

Sorry, there's no double standard.

Firstly the Apple ecosystem includes the Mac, which is open, and would have enabled me growing up to write software for my iPhone or the web or whatever I wanted, much as I do now. I'm talking about the world as it exists now - not some imaginary world where only iDevices exist.

And more importantly, my point is that there IS a very real benefit to the App store for end users. We might not like it, but deceiving ourselves that there is no value to it doesn't help anyone.

I'm not arguing for a world where all devices are closed. I'm arguing that open devices need to actually be better and really open - not just in principle. Competition from the iPhone is why Android devices aren't just slightly better Blackberry's today.

If you don't like Apple's way of delivering that benefit then as you point out the solution is to build better apps and set a standard in your domain. That's why I'm critical of Android. I want Android to be better.

The solution isn't to legislate against Apple or make false-in-practice claims about the openness of Android. It's to make Android genuinely better and more open.

It's also worth pointing out that if it were really open, the community might be more involved in making it better.
I use either `at(1)` or a 5 min cron job that restores the firewall rules.
I think the best programmers know all this stuff instinctively.
I'm not quite sure how the anonymous part works. If I post a blog there anonymously, how is it going to be discovered? Random chance that someone stumbles across it? Or perhaps I share it via social media, email, another web site? In which case the anonymity vanishes unless I've created fake profiles, in which case I just use those instead. Like an anonymous blogger account.

I suppose I should clarify... the "read" portion leaves much to be desired at this point in terms of discovery. It's a long scrolling list of hard to read content. Categorization maybe?
Yobongo circa 2000: Cybiko
I much prefer a bookmarklet to sharing, because I control the content posted a little more and I don't need to rely on the website operator to recognize the social site I use as part of their either too-small (just Facebook and Twitter) or massive list of social networking sites (my bookmarklet is actually to share on Friendfeed, which all then gets imported into Facebook via the Facebook Friendfeed App. I do periodically use a Delicious bookmarklet also).

If this increases the link count when it ends up showing up on Facebook, I don't know.
Someone please add this to the top of the list.

There is little value in following programming rules that you don't understand.
Ask HN: What's the best email capture form to use?
Quick question to the HN crowd:
What's the best email capture form to use?

I'm just putting up a splash screen that shows what's to come of the company and the visitor can input their email to receive a beta invite down the road.

I'd like for it to just be an email submit form that uses an email auto-responder (one I can customize) and manages the list of people that sign up. Possibility of managing future email contact with users would be a plus.

Does not need to be a free service. I've searched for the service and haven't came across any customizable ones yet that I can use with my own design. Any recommendations?
It's all about cause and effect, which a lot of people seem to miss.

I remember starting a company some years ago, and our investors insisted on filling the board of the company with politically well-connected high-rollers that knew how to do multimillion dollar deals, the reasoning being that all successful companies have these kind of people on their boards.

But this is backwards, it's like saying that all multimillion dollar companies have a canteen for 100 people, so if you build a canteen that will seat 100 people or more you're a asuccess. Yes, all successful companies use an internationally recognized and expensive accouinting firm, yes all successful companies have a welldefined strategy for how to assign e-mail addresses to employees, and yes all successful companies print their annual report on glitted paper.

But that doesn't mean that if my small company builds a 100 people canteen, uses an expensive accounting firm, and prints it's annual report on glitted paper it will be a success. These thing are the effect of success - not the cause.

The cause of Zynga's success isn't that they don't do a lot of marketing and quora's success isn't due to the fact that they don't disclose their numbers. It's an effect.
Microsoft Makes Native Languages More Accessible to often underserved cultures
A triple-bond is not inherently unstable. In chlorine azide, though, you've got a strongly electronegative halide (chlorine) bound via tenuous single-bond to a partial triple-bond in the nitrogen compound. One of those nitrogens has a partial charge at all times.

Bottom line: that chlorine wants to dissociate, badly. When it does, it's going to take the azide with it. It's like a chemical hair-trigger, waiting to be pulled by the nearest partial charge.
I was actually serious. When Chrome came out I left Firefox since Chrome was so much faster on my PC. Same thing with Sumatra. I guess the analogy would work well for those who had a similar experience with Chrome. :)
I don't see it as straightforward. I agree with a lot of what he says, but trash talk of pretty much any kind tends to distract of the issue at hand.

Like in sports or gaming, I always prefer the person who plays silently and speaks with purpose than someone who tends to trash talk while playing. But neither form of etiquette effects who is the better player.
I have nothing but the highest admiration for anyone who could endure all this and still emerge with the abiding spirit that Mr. Towler now displays.

Hear. Hear. What was especially harsh for him is that in the prison environment, child molesters are the lowest of the low, the prisoners who are held in contempt by other prisoners. He had to exercise immense self-control to keep his dignity intact in that environment. No one should have to live with a false accusation of having harmed a child.
Well. Personally I see a whole lot of difference between web applications and code running on my machine.

In the case of gmail, I rely on their code only for checking/sending mail. And they have access to just my mail data. When something runs on my machine, I need to be a lot more careful about what data that code has access to and what privileges it has.
Not that the post actually brought up the Tor concept, but... I hate it when people diss the Tor concept by making the assumption that all uses of Tor requires an exit point. It doesn't. See torchat as an example. https://code.google.com/p/torchat/
Boycott HarperCollins
Thanks to isitrainingnow.com and
downforeveryoneorjustme.com and other, similarly designed websites for inspiring us.

Just to be clear, we're not leading anything, just documenting what happened and making it easy for people who do participate in a HarperCollins boycott to know when it's over.

As soon as HarperCollins reconsiders its decision, we'll change the "Yes" on the front page to a "No," revise a few of the other words in bold letters, and update the text on the explanation page. That's been the point of our
design from the beginning. While we don't know if HarperCollins will ever revisit its policy, we want to be prepared if it does.
That a tough one - it's always easier to identify a problem than craft a solution. Here's a shot:

* Projects should include screenshots or other visuals (no matter what their state of completion) on project pages. Browsing the usual Github page shows no visuals at all. Not every project is going to be heavily visually oriented, but most of the project pages I see look like a giant "Designers not wanted" sign.

* An environment where design can happen collaboratively. The "design thinking" ethos requires understanding what the problem is before trying to solve it. To really involve designers, some sort of sandbox where ideas can be expressed as something other than code, feature requests, bug fixes or "64x64px.png goes here." Would be ideal - a way to say "I see this working like this..." in a way a visual designer can express. Lots of discussion happens via chat, etc, but pretty hard to access if you're already feeling excluded.

* Something recognizable as a team structure. If projects need a designer, a project page noting an unfilled slot on the team would be ideal, along with some details. Icon designer? UX specialist? Copywriter? What do you need?

* Integrating rapid prototyping tools for design exploration. One of the tough tasks I find in interaction design is to get a feel for how a complex system is going to work without building it. I've see everything from Flash to Filemaker Pro used to build working models, to then be built out in another tool. Photoshop comps are great, but not a great way to simulate a lot of complex interaction models. If designers and developers are going to speak the same language, it's probably not going to be code.

I teach at a university of the visual arts, and I've often wondered about finding a way to engage students in open source projects, but to be honest, I've always been to fearful of what the outcome might be to really push this. My worry is that for a lot of developers, a logo and a few icons is all they are looking for. Fair enough, but not terribly attractive to the types of designers that projects really need.

Finally, designers need to understand what a big deal software is. You almost never see application design (web, desktop or mobile) represented in the big design award annuals, and the types of things that do get in tend to be gimmicky, Flash-driven web sites for consumer products.
thx. Stackoverflow added.
This is great. Previously I used to receive a document that was printed, then signed, then scanned and emailed to me. I would print it again, sign it, scan it, and send it back. This can greatly simplify the process and seems to work rather well.
Selling adverts on a quality site is under utilizing a site in many scenarios, IMHO.

If your ad space will be profitable for the advertiser, become your own advertiser. Pivot to generate more direct revenue. I'm doing that on a number of sites of mine and it's working well.

Example: Google is getting into the loan lead generation business (http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-adwords-comp...) and the airlines business (http://www.google.com/press/ita/) because they know that by letting advertisers get access to their audience, they are leaving a lot of money on the table.

I see their trend towards trying to get more of the pie continuing over time to expand into banking, movie tickets, car rentals and a gazillion other industries until they start coming close to the antitrust lines because it's a huge source of revenue.
Thanks sagacity!
This blog post (and stuff linked in the comments) talks about ways to use properties of semirings to parallelize algorithms for free: http://blog.sigfpe.com/2008/11/approach-to-algorithm-paralle...
Please embed Hacker News RSS feed to the page HTML using link tag, this will make feed discovery easier using tools like Firefox.
I think it's a style. He's not literally being (or trying to be) an asshole. If you substract the style, he writes with substance. Frankly, I'd love to see more written in his style than some of the pompous/formal blowhards I've seen elsewhere on the web. Dave also was a "working stiff" before he got PayPal bank, I believe, which differentiates his perspective and style a bit more from the standard blueblood VC/bankster type.
I used unbounce.com
Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre
You're damn straight I'm calling you crazy, running Solaris on a Tadpole Sparcbook - If you're running a Sparcbook or even a Sparcbook 2, Solaris is just too slow to reasonably run - choose life, choose SunOS 4.1.3.
With all the rumors of Android on the Playbook, you'd think it was right around the corner. I'd caution that the Playbook doesn't run any java at the moment (only Air, C++) unlike the previous BlackBerry SDKs.
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A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus with Animated Reduction
1) Agree: Presumption of guilt is definitely a problem. I would assume we could blame prejudices, arrogance (over confidence in pre-judging), or profession apathy for this.

2) Disagree: Prosecutors only caring about their kill ratio is a plus to me. This is what they should be doing. If they slack in any way because they think the accused might be innocent they are taking away the power of decision from the judge or the jury.

3) Wha?: Judges only care about exercising power? This seems like a blanket statement, like an absolute, which are typically wrong.

4) Agree: I would guess that this is the sad consequence of the talent going where the money is. In some states lawyers are required to do X amount of pro bono cases a year. I am sure this helps but maybe there is something else we could do.

5) ?: Do you have examples of this for Judges that oversee criminal court proceedings?

6) No opinion here for the prison system.
I came across this during my search. So you've used it? Could I see your example?
> It doesn't matter how old the tech is. Apple is bringing it to the masses and nobody has done that before.

Nobody has done that before, except for a company with about 90% of the Desktop market share, first party remote desktop services, a third party market with services to 'go to your pc', implementations of some sort of VNC-type service and goodness knows what else to secure it all.
Almost. Record types are checked as part of Clojure's "=", but not as part of Java's ".equals". See [1] and linked material. This means that Foo{:x 1} and Bar{:x 1} will collide in sets and as map keys (of Clojure or Java varieties). This seems a bit icky to me, but seems to be intentional.

[1] http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ-736
X11 is much older.
Oh - and why do you care about what Apple does, when you have Android giving you what you want?
How to specify the programming language of a code sample in HTML
I have a little trouble conceiving of a completely classless society - at some point you have to acknowledge that, for example, some programmers are better than others, and that that's a positive thing. That acknowledgement alone creates a class. The important thing is upward mobility - we shouldn't define "better" as "knows the other people who are 'better'".
It's not new. The way I see it is as in the film industry, it's a reboot. It's shinier, it may lack the depth and revelation of the original, but what it lacks in that area it makes up for in special effects and ease of consumption.

Consider Sendmail vs Exim, or Tron vs Tron:Legacy.

Both are essentially the same thing, but one is infinitely easier on the eye.
It does require code signing, because deploying to a machine for testing is the same process as releasing it into the wild.

On the Blackberry for instance, I could put up a web page with a link to my test file and you could download it directly to your device.

Hence everything needs to be signed before it can run.

Now, that said, the crusty old IDE that they had for Blackberry development had an emulator built into it. Being an emulator there were certain things you couldn't do (make calls, bluetooth etc).

If you asked "why didn't they just do another emulator?" that would be a good question. Complaining about the code signing is not a good question - it is far too fundamental to how their whole infrastructure works.

Also, the code signing process itself is automated, so in terms of interrupting you workflow it is not too bad (if you have a good internet connection) - 15-30 seconds or less -I've seen corporate build files that were worse... much much worse. /twitch
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/slice-and-dice-your-r...
Djangy is shutting down
You're assuming that the OP has heard of thrsti. Shockingly, not everyone on the internet has heard of or cares what you're working on.
I remember that chunkhost has really aggressive pricing.. And I remember there service being pretty good...
Agreed. Most of software 'methodology' is really software ideology. It's just cargo cult programming. For me the key consideration in building software is whether it produces more money than it consumes.
Out of the Tar Pit
Name.com

Btw this question gets asked here at least once a month, so search back to get a wider set of answers.
We're Joyent customers as well, and their support has always been great, so this is definitely surprising. You should get on the phone with them (they provide an emergency number). What kinds of machines are you running? Is it just one, or many? It shouldn't be necessary, but message me if you're still not getting through and I can ping some contacts.
If anyone is interested in a cheap way to shoot stunning timelapses, buy yourself an old Canon Powershot off eBay, a $5 memory card writer, and download the CHDK firmware hacks for Canon cameras: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

Sadly the CHDK hacks don't work with DSLRs (yet).

EDIT: I should add that the beauty of timelapse is that even an old 5MP camera can create beautiful 1080p HD videos.
I understand, but it's not obvious to me that that really makes a difference.
Google axing innocent bystanders in content farm war?
The script was: sleep 1 minute, then restore rules, sleep 1 more minute, then reboot.
That first rule restore was so I could conceivably get things back in order before the reboot. I had the final reboot there in case the new firewall rules somehow killed my ssh session. This never happened, and I might have been able to ssh in again at that point, but I wasn't going to count on it.
My Plain-Language Freelance Contract, Open Sourced
Integrating AWS CloudFormation with Opscode Chef
Unrelated to anything but: Your terminal colours seem a bit brighter than the standard ones in Snow Leopard. Are Terminal's colour capabilities improved in Lion, or are you using that SIMBL plug-in, or...?
I generally like Joyent, and use them. So I offer this tip with a tinge of sadness:

It looks like these message are from a problem with their Howe server. That is one of their old servers, which came over from the Textdrive merger years ago. I used to have some sites hosted on that same server, and was likewise not very happy with things. It appears to me that Joyent as a company doesn't care very much about that legacy equipment and line of business.

The way to make the pain stop, is to stop using Joyent's old TextDrive servers. You can do that by leaving Joyent entirely, or by moving to their newer stuff. Either way it's a fair amount of work, depending on the complexity of what you are hosting.

I took the path of moving to their newer stuff, and have been very happy with Joyent ever since.
For sure. We'll definitely move into that direction if we have enough older kids (> 5).
It's been a year or two since I've read the Sunday Times (it's so huge I ended up spending a week reading it) but my experience with it has been very good, just as good if not better than the daily edition.
Ah - thanks.
Maybe you can have an implementation of shared-memory model that is "predictable" (transactional). But I failed to see how that solves the synchronization problem shared-memory model exposed to at large-scale system.

On the other hand, GPGPU community has an interesting idea to this problem. The idea is to have a memory hierarchy and at the bottom of the level, you have a homogeneous continuous memory space which is painfully slow and have strong consistency. When you walk up the hierarchy, you will have faster, smaller, local memory that have weaker consistency.

Disclaimer: I haven't got time around to read the paper throughly, it is just my two cents.
Get 2 or more VC's together and they'll sure to be complaining about valuations! ha!
Very cool. Seems more like extracting value from the right customers rather than the way you currently have it which seems kind of negative: Focus on a few and forget about the rest.

Some other feedback:
1. I clicked "Tour" and got stuck since I'm not either. No way to get out except the Back button.
2. Would love some screenshots or examples of the type of data you will be presenting.
3. Love the design! Is it too retro-looking for the old guard of retail/e-commerce?
As someone who works on investigations into such offences; this weighs on my mind constantly.

There are perhaps one or two cases (out of several hundred) that still have me lying awake at night. In deeper moments of reflection I know I made the right call on them, but I still worry about it, as part of the process of self-assessment. Sadly I don't always see so much concern in others within the same field.

Child abuse is one of those horribly amoral crimes that clouds our personnel opinions, and so often I see prosecutors who simply hate the defendant on a personnel level. That sort of approach sickens me, it is exactly the sort of approach that screwed this guy; from the cop to the judge it was the same problem.

I can't talk for anyone else, but stories like this mean that tomorrow, as with every day, I make damned sure I am certain of what I find out. To the extend of putting my own liberty behind what I present. This sort of thing should be required reading in our field...
Show HN: My weekend project, a graphics/cellular automata playground
Mailchimp works pretty good. You can customize the front end of your landing page and use Mailchimp's backend to capture the email and manage the list. Here's my example: http://www.sharescribe.co/
Ouch. This goes against rule number 1 of software: don't lose your user's data. I'm sure they're smart enough that nothing's permanently lost, but even the perception that it could happen is bad enough to seriously tarnish their brand.
I had a lifetime account with TextDrive. I don't know if it was official policy at Joyent to neglect the old customers, but I certainly felt like I was being pressured to repurchase services I had already paid for. After several outages, data loss and extremely slow responses from tech support I switched to linode. No problems since.
This is a quick, dirty hack I wrote up using JS. It's based on Langton's ant, but adds a lot of new, fun stuff. You can do all sorts of interesting things with it -- a command reference is included. The "docs" were written in 5 minutes, so feel free to ask for clarification. Enjoy!

One of my favorites: http://demoseen.com/langton.html#+..............................
I had some issues with a Textdrive server recently as well and migrated over to one of their smart machines (at a lower price than what I had been paying). I was a bit frustrated like you, but Joyent was extremely, extremely helpful in assisting me with the migration and now everything is running smooth.

I would try to touch base with them again and see if they can help you out.
Inside the essay-scoring business
moving to new infrastructure so he doesn't get treated like garbage sounds pretty terrible.
Where exactly does the 500,000 number come from?