skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I say something similar every time someone reviews Ubuntu, but if these are the "problems" (on a $100 dollar no-contract phone!) then Ubuntu/Android has arrived.

I think about half of the issues are valid problems, and some are fixed in later devices e.g.

* Google's moving away from mountable USB storage to MTP system, the Nexus S has no removable storage,

* the newer Android versions have a recently installed tab in the ELOP though Google would probably prefer you to use search

* moving things to the home pages is much smoother in Honeycomb

* menu actions are more obvious in Honeycomb

but some are just stuff you have to, and will, get used to like not closing apps.

Coincidentally I just blanked an old iPhone for my son to use and the number one annoyance for me was installing an app and being dumped out of the app store each time rather than them installing in the background in parallel. I can see how this might help people who have never installed an app before, but it was certainly an "annoyance" for me as I tried to fill the phone with apps. In general after a few days I found the Android experience better, but certainly at first coming from an iPhone it was like using a mouse with my left hand.
Okay, this is just nonsense. I'm a power user, more or less, and I have an HTC Incredible that I've been using for a few months. Here's my take:

1: When I plug in my phone to my computer, I have to mount two separate drives and then hunt for the file I'm looking for.

Where's my music? Is it in "My Documents" or "MP3" on the phone storage? How about "data" or "documents" or "My Music" on the card?

The whole thing is a huge mess. Every app has its own little scheme for storing data.

2: Okay, so I hit "install" and now it's installing. I do something else for a minute, and now I want to put it on a page and launch it. Where is it? The app list. Where in the app list? I dunno. What's its name? Is it the same as the one in the market? Not always. Google Reader is "Google Reader" in the market and just "Reader" in the list.

3: No, he doesn't like having to hunt for something, then manually place it before being able to use it easily. Why isn't the option to place an app on a pane given at install?

4: Do you use Android at all? There's no adherence to an interface standard.

5: You're right on this one. Multitasking works great without me having to bother it at all.
Looks like a good set of updates, although I'm still waiting for OmniFocus support before I can completely switch to using Sparrow.
A few days ago I released the DateCalculations library which was inspired by Ruby on Rails calculation library. I'll leave it here just in case: https://github.com/oscardelben/DateCalculations
It's a brand-new site: http://twitter.com/appdevmag/status/47628367058579457
This is questionable. A couple stray observations for the boffins at HN:

1. Confirmation bias. Sure it works, because when it doesn't we don't think about it or publicize it on the net.

2. Glass holder removes your big meaty hand from the equation. Your hand absorbs radiation and is the equivalant of wrapping a phone in a steak.

3. Only works because the iphone radio is such a mess. You may be looking at bar strength changes that are happening anyway.

4. Works but because of orientation. Holding up compared to laying it down may give you better reception.

5. No controls. He should try this with a plastic holder or hanging it in the same orientation with a string. I wish the "aha I discovered something amazing" crowd would learn what controls are.
Please don't. I'd much rather have a consistent UI on my phone instead of each dev brewing up his own controls.
It has several bad properties too. The algorithm they outline is exponential.

The challenge to make it run in cubic time will certainly turn it into a GLR or an Earley parser. (They can be formed from each other)

To me: it is just another way of looking at Dotted LR-Items used within earley parser. Earley parsers keep a state made up of grammar rules with a dot indicating where in the rule the parser is at.

(I wrote an earley recognizer that uses a derivative style interface to grammar rules.)

It has novelty, and some utility but it is not the holy grail you are looking for.
Most likely these are natural bar changes that are happening anyway. The glass or the "magic sticker that goes on your battery" just fools you into believing confirmation bias.
Pandoc is another alternative that uses Markdown for syntax and converts to a variety of formats (html, epub, rtf, odt, docbook, pdf, LaTeX, etc.):

http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

Works quite well. If you known LaTeX, it allows you to customize your output template, while still composing in Markdown.
People are turned off by RMS's extreme stance and the "Stalin's dream" hyperbole, but the problems he is talking about certainly do exist. They're something to think about.

I wonder if there is really a need to choose either convenience or privacy in the long run. Privacy-conscious technologies could be made easy to use. We're just not there yet, but it seems that lately security is being taken more seriously. When people realize how much of their lives they are giving away there might be a push for it...
"It just so happens that I’ve been working on de-duplication for Synctus"

OP should clarify that Synctus has no issue with this project, prove he has rights to release, etc, and stick that in the license.

This feels like a copyright morass (although probably isn't).
Think of a needle on a gauge representing public opinion about nuclear power. One half of the gauge reads green for nukes. The other half is red for no nukes.

If the needle is firmly in the green, a slight shift towards red in response to Fukushima might mean commissioning some studies and announcing a budget for upgrading the safety features.

But if the needle is just barely into the green, a slight shift moves it into the red and that means shutting them down. So yes, in a country where public opinion is divided, it is not out of the question to swing from yes to no in response to the biggest emergency since Chernobyl. I'm not sure about the phrase "knee-jerk," though. It may seem like a drastic move, like a leg kicking in response to a small tap, which implies a response out of [proportion to the stimulus.

However, perhaps the response is in proportion, it's just that when the needle is right on the dividing line, it only takes a small move to get from green to red?

Now that I write my thoughts out, I obviously agree with you :-)
I switched away from Comcast over to Verizon because Comcast has a 250 GB cap (even if you're paying for their 50/10 service), and Verizon doesn't cap you. At 50 Mbit down from Comcast I could use up my entire monthly allowance in just over 11 hours (without any upstream, math may be suspect it's early). That seems crazy to me. Vote with your dollars (if you're lucky enough to have options) and let them know that caps aren't a good thing.
whois.sc is the registrar that initially pointed out the 'domain name front running' practice to me, and advertises that they find it deplorable, and definitely don't do it.

I generally use them when I'm trying to iron down what domain I actually want, and don't hit a registrar until I've got credit card in hand, and am ready to buy.

According to the article they posted, ISPs also sell reports of popular mis-typed domains to would-be squatters as well. So in addition to avoiding most registrars, you should also avoid the popular urge of 'just type the url into your address bar' method of seeing if a domain is taken.
Only in public opinion. Did you read the bit about Merkel getting thrashed in regional elections?
Did the US shut down any of its nuclear reactors, if they did, I certainly haven't heard about it
How We Killed The Internet And Nobody Noticed
This is more likely just a publicity stunt to calm down the people, since there are elections coming in several federal states and the reigning party CDU already lost a lot of ground. I would be surprised if anything really changes
I don't think this is a knee jerk reaction. I think this is a move for short term political gains without regard for the long term societal costs.

They had decided to extend the life of the reactors just last year. No new risk inherent to their design has been exposed. No new tsunami or earthquake risk in Germany has been exposed.

I agree with the person quote in TFA (despite the fact that his statement may be a political play as well) :

"She just wants to get through the provincial assembly elections," said Social Democrat leader Sigmar Gabriel, accusing her of playing political tactics with people's fears.
That appears to be a Lantronics XPORT, been using them for over 7 years. Interesting they are selling them for over 200 we buy them for 70 each, Now that's markup....
This IE9?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326048

edit: I predict severe downvoting once people start arriving at their offices in Redmond...
This strikes me more as a political stunt by Merkel to rally the conservative base in Germany than anything else.

Still, it doesn't surprise me that this is such a hot button issue right now. I've long been a supporter of nuclear power, but the events of the past week have made me start to reconsider a lot of my beliefs about its safety.
Germany's new boom: making money by making stuff
Naww, but soon they'll have more people with lung cancer from breathing all that burning coal and oil for energy.

I think this is a political move that is going to help in the next election. The "greens" will see this as a handout to them and nuclear power is too complex and scary an issue to have someone defend it properly. Oh well, back to fossil fuels!
That might have been the case 10 years ago but not today. According to G. Kroah-Hartmann, more than 80% of kernel contributors are full-time paid developers, the remaining 20% being spread among free-time contributors and companies who do not want to disclose their names. People contributing to gcc, mozilla or OpenOffice are all full-time paid developers funded by a company to do so.
While I agree with the merit of what you just said, you too ended up sounding smug and arrogant.

Open your comment in a text editor and count how many times you said " I ".
This attempt to promote flapon.com is probably a little too thinly veiled.
Classification Essays
Students will be assigned many types of essays for writing. One of these is the classification essay. A classification essay arranges topics and subjects according to different categories. The idea in writing a classification essay is to obtain new knowledge about the topic classified.
Maybe I have a hard time understanding this, but the whole discussion was how Amazon undercuts their competitors and runs the business with a small loss because they are looking at the long-term game.

Saying that Amazon sells you customer service seems entirely unrelated. Yes, the might have better customer service and they might have more things (EBS, Route 53, etc) but they certainly do not undercut their competitors price-wise.
Talented creative people want to work on projects that matter. Steve jobs had the vision to create those projects. They also want to work with people who have ideas that are groundbreaking. Again Steve Jobs provided those ideas. Is Steve jobs a bad boss... I doubt it. It probably depends on who you ask.

This question reminds me of my kid's Jiu Jitsu instructor. People have said he's a jerk and he's received bad reviews online. I have a different view of him and so does my son - he loves his students and expects a lot of them. He wants nothing but the very best you can do and doesn't accept excuses. Does that mean he calls you out sometimes? Yep. Does it bruise the ego and make you feel bad? Maybe. But most of the time he's right.
I’ve written a block-based UIAlertView and UIActionSheet wrapper that makes working with alerts and action sheets less painful (no more button indexes and alert tags):

https://github.com/zoul/Lambda-Alert
Lightening up the tone, I wish we could figure out a way to use Stallman as a bad cop: "Mr. FCC chairman, I appreciate the arguments the Telcos have made to you on the Golf Course. But if you don't display a little flexibility on the subject of Net Neutrality, we're going to have Richard back in here eating his toenails during the hearings. And once he starts talking, it's impossible to get him to stop. Nobody wants that. So how about we do this..."
Wow. I didn't know they made any with that little internal memory.

Get the app "app2sd," get a 32gb SD card for ~$30, roll around in the money you saved from not getting a 32GB iPhone. ;p

But seriously, that is a flaw to license the OS out to manufacturers without making them abide to some level of minimum spec.
They still have not managed to roll out their first update, containing critical bug fixes.

This does not exactly bode well for IE9 rolling out at all. And then the mobile webkits not only have pretty damn good support for actually displaying pages but have made quite monstrous performance improvements recently.
You're pretty much saying you think markets are efficient. Some others are pretty much saying they think there is a predictable panic sell component in current prices (and likewise in other bad news events). Maybe the latter is often true. Actually I believe it is possible for someone to have sufficiently good judgement to consistently make money from market overreactions. In this case, I personally don't have a clue - there too many uncertainties for me with this one.
Hmm. $200.

You can get an Arduino with an ethernet shield for about $75-80.

This does not appear to have any detailed tech specs on the linked page,detail on customisability/programmability or on the interconnects offered. But even if we allow it some leniency on that I figure an Arduino is still the no brainer choice :)
really? looks like 50/50 to me, and the biggest ones are certainly surface ones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_mines_in_the_Unite...
Tell HN: Android Developer Console now equipped with analytics
Today when I logged into my android developer console under the download statistics for each of my apps I had a Statistics link.

The following statistics are available for an app:
App install breakdown by:

* OS version

* Device

* Country

* Language

On the side it also shows similar global market statistics.

Besides it also shows how the number of downloads increased over time.

All of this is shown using Google analytics style pretty graphs and charts.
> To wit: when I play piano, I play in C. When I play guitar, I don't think about what key I'm in. I play in whatever fingering is easiest and what sounds best at the time.

I know what you mean, but I think that's significantly a keyboard-based hazard. I play the trumpet (mostly; I can do a very little on a few others and trying to improve) and I've frequently ended up jamming away in odd keys, switching between them as required. F# major is a relatively common key for me, I just hear the intervals and the fingers move quite automatically, even though trumpet harmonics are arranged around C major (well, concert Bb). I'm sure it's much the same on other wind instruments.
With respect to 1, 8GB is exceptionally generous for "internal" storage. Most phones, especially towards the low end, might not exceed 1GB or even 512MB.

Even phones with a large internal storage (say, the Nexus S) will only have a small amount partitioned for Android's "internal" storage. Of my 16GB internal storage, 15GB is treated as being an external SD card and 1GB as internal storage.
Is Apple Throttling Performance Of Web Apps In iOS?
Can someone explain this to a typography ignorant person please?
Disable popup-blocker? really?
She, in this case.
I'm sorry this isn't clear. I wrote Synctus, am owner/director of the company that owns it, and have released ddar under the GPL having authorised myself through my company to do this.
Just another example of concepts being minced by the general publics perception. Sort of like how "Web 2.0" means gradients, and every code library is a "Framework" despite no real Inversion of Control. Don't even get me started on "The Cloud"
They've been on the market for a lot longer than that, actually. But it looks like some incremental improvements have been made over the years, quite interesting really.

http://www.digi.com/products/wireless-wired-embedded-solutio...

http://www.lantronix.com/device-networking/embedded-device-s...
If one of the worst earthquakes on record can't break the containment vessel in these old plants, then I think we're actually doing very well.
efficient > slightly inefficient > inefficient > pretty inefficient

My comment was not meant to start a conversation about the meaning of efficient markets, but to get wheaties to explain his reasoning.
Five Long-Term Pitfalls That Entrepreneurs Forget
This decision is not so much irrational rather than populistic:
There are several upcoming elections this year.

IMHO, this is the best explanation for the sudden change of heart of those who decided to prolong the duration of the atomic reactors just a few months ago.
As I just posted elsewhere in this thread -- the "go to the domain" idea is also flawed, in that ISPs sell that information to would-be domain squatters as well.

It's perhaps slower than losing it to a registrar, but it's no safer.
it is not clear at this moment if the containment vessel is damaged or not. the spike in radiation levels that was measured lately does indicate that it is broken.

Edit:
If you want to read up on the radiation levels:
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110315-red-alert-radiatio...
Note that Sigmar Gabriel wants to shut down all nuclear reactors himself.
Fragility of Free
Oracle releases Java mobile development framework
No, but earthquakes. And we are so clever to build nuclear plants on places where they are more likely to occur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BClheim-K%C3%A4rlich_Nucle...
My original point was that it's not necessarily "deceptive business practice."

For example: when I first built my buddy's business site, I wasn't knowingly half-assing his work, or attempting to extract maximum profit for minimum work. I was giving a good faith best-effort, which unfortunately (and unbeknownst to either of us) was well generally below accepted practices.

Now, should someone have yelled at me and told me I was an idiot and shouldn't have been developing production sites? Maybe. Certainly, if we'd been exploited. It's easy to look on everyone with rose-tinted glasses until you accidentally cause your best friend's business to fail.
I think there are several differences between academic and non-academic world and bodies like are current solutions:

1) In the non-academic world, prestige (or whatever you want to call it) is measured by the projects, you've done, your blog, your HN, SO, etc. karma points. There are no good analogs of these in academia.

2) Academia is much more international. When I meet a professor who is an IEEE Fellow from, say, China, that gives me a certain understanding of their accomplishments (I know, flawed, but sometimes the only way, if s/he's from a university you don't know). If, on the other, you meet a hacker from Japan, he might tell you the open source projects he contributed, companies he started, etc.

3) Then there's the question of paper review. Based on the huge number of papers to be reviewed, there's a need for a body to organize the process and find qualified people to review them.

I'm not saying the system is ideal, but the same type of academic organizations have sprouted in many different disciplines. Maybe Internet tools will change the situation. Note that academic people are usually old, so we need to wait for the next generation to become professors to see the full effect.
> Having a mix is like having two hard drives. You're suddenly asking your users to make decisions about things they probably don't care about or that they do care about in ways you can't predict. Will they want this app on internal or external storage? What about this music?

Except it's not. Android doesn't give the user any options, with one exception that almost nobody ever needs to worry about. See my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2327424

>> 2. The epic list of applications (ELOP)
>I find this a little strange too. If someone installs something, it appears at the top level in iOS. On Android, mainly due to manufacturer customization, you have less "home pages" for your apps (and they're generally filled with crud you need to remove). Making your newly downloaded app harder to find is a little odd.

This boggles my mind. What is so hard about pressing a button on home screen and then finding the application in a sorted list of icons? If it's something you'll be using often, you can put it directly on a homescreen, but otherwise, how is it hard to find? Just because it's different from iOS doesn't mean it's hard; it just isn't what you're used to.

Edit: Further on this note, iOS allows you to group app icons into subfolders on your home screen. How is that any easier than having a single sorted list for finding everything installed on your phone, other than the fact that you were the one to define those folders? How is that any different than being the one to define what's on your home screens?
Which beliefs? That a nuclear power station situated in a major earthquake zone next to the coast could magically survive a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami?

Right now, we don't know how serious this situation is, it could be that this will end with a small amount of radiation leaked and four reactors that have to be decommissioned. Or it could end with a major environmental disaster. We simply don't know yet.

I'd caution calm and not following in the footsteps of Germany. Let's wait and see. In a few weeks we may be reconsidering nuclear power, or we may be marveling at how well those plants survived what happened to them.
Why are there seven notes? Is this due to an property of the ear?

The 7 tones that make up a major scale are basically a cultural artifact of western music (which goes back to gregorian chant). Other cultures have more/fewer tones.

Ditto, for the octave concept, why should it be multiples of two?

Can you clarify this question? Octaves result from the natural harmonic series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music)

Why are there black keys between some white keys on the piano and not between
others?

Well, IMHO this is a purely arbitrary cultural artifact resulting from the evolution of the keyboard (first in pipe organs). Since the octave is divided into 12 chromatic tones, you could in theory devise a keyboard with alternating white/black keys. However, the organ keyboard evolved in the middle ages, when chromaticism wasn't fully developed, hence, it appears the "white notes" of the keyboard appeared first, then later, the black notes added at the appropriate positions within the chromatic scale. See this, along with the accompanying picture, which clearly shows a small keyboard with the white keys only:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_organ#Keyboards
This was Amsterdam, people in Amsterdam are weird to Americans, so who knows :)
This is really cool. I like the form building interface when it's in full screen. Very nice design, snappy UI.

However, I can't help but feel that you may want to make the "Quick Tools" section way more prominent than the other sections because it contains the most common fields people might use (and maybe move the file upload to this section).

Edit: spelling
It's only a temporary measure anyway, the plants will be inspected and (if everything well) turned on again until 2023 or so.

Personally, I'd feel a lot safer if all nuclear plants were turned off forever. Sure, the chance of something going horribly wrong is low, but if it goes wrong it is a big big mess. Just too horrible to warrant any of the advantages that nuclear power has.
Functional Thinking after OO
Nice tidbit: "Relcom now boasts about 100 nodes and as much as half a gigabyte of traffic each day".