skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I love that people are thinking about confirmation bias, but you can't really "confirmation bias" your way from "I can't receive calls at all" to "Now I'm getting three bars and reliable signals of some types". There's an empirical state transition there, not just an opinion the way "I went from 2.1 bars to 2.8 bars" is unreliable.
Ok, this is a good point. The code encrypting/decrypting the GSM is not open, which means it'll eventually be cracked, and until then we have to just assume nobody else has figured it out. But does this have anything to do with being spied on?

Other than the government decoding your GSM communications (which it can just ask Ma Bell to tap without a warrant and get away with, according to the W.Bush-era abuses) I don't see that particular un-free code helping in tracking or spying on you.
Thank you for calling a spade a spade! The author talks about REST being object-oriented when it is actually resource-oriented. I know I'm flirting with pedantry for getting worked up about this, but anyone who knows what "object-oriented" actually means is either lying or ignorant of the manifold meanings associated with that term.
In my view, there has been a lot of fretting from US-based HN folks and others about jet stream fallout, etc. There are reports of runs on iodine on the west coast, e.g. [1]. All of that is woefully premature given the information at hand. The danger in Japan is real; in the US, not yet.

Assessing risk from radiation is tricky: people are exposed every day and don't realize it. Bananas are radioactive; so are granite countertops. It's highly likely that you'll get more exposure on your next cross-country flight than from any fallout from this disaster.

[1] http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/japans-nuclear-emergenc...
When you solve that one, you can try to figure out why people still listen to Chopin's music, or read Shakespeare.
Except, instead of having to define as new protocol for evry service, you just use JSON over http.

Why do people keep saying things like this? These are protocols, but they are at different levels. HTTP is the transport protocol, JSON is the serialization protocol, but you'd still need to define a protocol to communicate the content. What will the fields be named? How do you handle missing fields, which are the required ones? Will all data sources that list photos agree to naming the fields the same? And what about field metadata, and metadata for the field metadata? Maybe that can be avoided with namespacing. Now we have something as crappy as XML.
With error handling in Haskell your code would look like

getData = fetchDataFromSource =<< validateData =<< ProcessData

By the way, the original getData with (.) is backwards. It should be:

getData = ProcessData . validateData . fetchDataFromSource
I use Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS at work and I keep experiencing a serious desktop bug. Namely, gnome-settings-daemon leaks memory at something like 1G/day, so every week or so my machine slows down until I kill and restart g-s-d.

That's the one thing that has been making Ubuntu look bad to be for a couple of years now. Memory leak bugs have been reported and allegedly fixed in g-s-d prior to 10.04, but mine persists.

The only thing that's unusual about my setup that it occurs to me to note, other than that I changed my window theme and a couple fonts from the default, is that my homedir is NFS mounted.
Yea, I found a bunch of good projects from your repo a while back. I ended up just using those projects instead though, as having a layer of repository-indirection just didn't sit well with me.
The summary at the end of the article is funny, and it excluded one line:

$535,500 Twitter’s annual payroll tax payment
$0 Amount Twitter pays if it relocates to Brisbane
$22M Potential value of payroll tax break to Twitter over six years
350 Current Twitter employees
750 Work force projection by July 2011
1,500 Work force projection by July 2012
3,000 Work force projection by July 2013
$4.59M Annual payroll tax payment to city upon expiration of deal

The line it forgot was:

$0 Actual annual tax payment to city after Twitter negotiates another
tax break sometime in year six, spending about $1 million bribing
enough city officials to get the tax break passed

Yay.
I see - he wasn't advocating punishing everyone responsible, he only wanted to punish a few high profile scapegoats.
Okay, first this was of course nit-picking, as I just hoped to get across the point, that REST is not just pretty URLs.

> Except those are of course guidelines

Well, obviously.

> Instead of a list of methods, you get a list of methods (which do not have to stay the same, by the way) and a tree of resources.

Well, yes. But those are already established and if you're exchanging representations as REST demands, you shouldn't need anything more than GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and PATCH to manipulate data.

> Theoretically you should be able to crawl a REST API using only the document types and the root URL, I don't think I've ever seen a "public" API letting me that.

Sun tried to do that for their cloud computing API, I think they're the ones that created the term RESTful where you'd use elegant concepts like <link> in your representations to advertise available actions.

> Yes, because if you POST the same thing twice you don't risk fucking things up...

If you do it properly with versioning/unique ids where appropriate, then all your calls should be re-triable or at least fail.

> Oh you should be using PUT, not POST, you say? Good luck getting that one in browsers.

You can create browser API (with proper CSRF protection etc. btw) that acts as a [server-side] client to your REST API. Also I see most usage of any REST APIs from browsers coming from Javascript based clients, which usually don't impose such limitations.
Mozilla To Ship Firefox 4 Final On March 22
Meg Whitman proved you can't buy an election in California.
> The hardware is impeccable, but nobody had any problem with the thickness of the first iPad and that's what they changed.

They changed substantially more than that:

- More RAM, so browsing and multi-tasking is better

- Faster processor, so apps launch faster

- Better graphics processor, so developers can make even prettier games or do crazy graphics transforms in realtime like PhotoBooth

- Cameras for video conferencing

- It's lighter, so it's easier to carry around

None of these things is trivial, but it's an incremental hardware upgrade. That's how Apple's cycles work: Major revisions every two years, incremental bumps in between.

Meanwhile, Apple's OS release schedule isn't coupled to its iPad release schedule. iOS 5 will be announced sometime in the next month, if the past is any indication.

Apple does better than anyone else at continually improving its software and making it available to previously-shipped devices. I doubt the iPad is going to be left in the cold.
gNewSense is actually the "GNU/Linux" distribution: http://www.gnewsense.org/

The laptop is the Lemote Yeeloong -- which I'll grant isn't much better to English ears.
Mozilla Shooting For March 22 Firefox 4 Final Release
Building power lines isn't the same level of risk. What's the probability a given house wants power? Basically 100%. Municipalities have lost their metaphorical shirts on fibre rollouts before. If it was similar in all relevant ways you wouldn't have such different outcomes. That's a sign your argument isn't capturing something about reality.

The reason why I'm not in a hurry to ban it is that I'm actually not upset to see people experience the consequences of their actions. It inevitably happens anyhow and trying to legislate it away has the usual problems that arise when you try to legislate an impossibility.

I suppose I shouldn't have used the dreaded l-word; we say nearly the same thing but you wouldn't know it from the karma outcome.
No, it's not REST, and it's stupid to call it that, but if you think that posting a few arguments makes something "SOAP-style", I find it hard to believe you've interacted with a SOAP web service recently..

Note: Requiring that the call are OAuth'ed, doesn't affect its RESTness.
Is this a good illustration of the phenomenon?

http://i.imgur.com/cDgjD.jpg

The glass is the antenna and the shape (here a circle) radius at a given point is the signal strength at that point.

The glass is exploiting some anisotropies(?) in the cell phone signals. i.e. the red arc is somehow bigger than the black arc. I am using the circle as a way to depict an isotropic signal. If the signal is not isotropic, the shape would be somewhat more bulged in the left region (pear-shaped).

Sorry, IANAP, if someone can explain it better...
You might want to look into functional reactive programming, and (unrelated) have a look at how xmonad does the IO-heavy work of a window manager, which is all about affecting external state, in a pure language like Haskell.
What mature tooling is around for PEG investigation?
What SOME reports are saying. You are cherry picking the lowest counts.

"But other reputable scientists researching the most radiation-contaminated areas of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are not convinced. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, another UN agency, predicts 16,000 deaths from Chernobyl; an assessment by the Russian academy of sciences says there have been 60,000 deaths so far in Russia and an estimated 140,000 in Ukraine and Belarus.

Meanwhile, the Belarus national academy of sciences estimates 93,000 deaths so far and 270,000 cancers, and the Ukrainian national commission for radiation protection calculates 500,000 deaths so far."
The 1 mSv/Y guideline is based on a hypothesis that extrapolating downward from higher dosages that have well understood health effects we can infer the effects of lower dosages. They call this the Linear no-threshold model. It was chosen because it's the most conservative, safest option.

Scientists suspect that it's wrong though. We have DNA repair mechanisms that may catch many errors.

The wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model) is pretty good.
There are reports of runs on iodine on the US west coast [1], which are not based on any scientific assessment of risk.

[1] http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/japans-nuclear-emergenc...
Yes, but it doesn't stop with registrars. Certain large ISPs front run on domains that don't exist by recording domain names that don't resolve or exist, then trial register them while sending you to their 404 link bait landing page. We only go to the registrar when we want to buy, otherwise its whois in the terminal.

For interesting results, whois google.com
The frustration of XML can be divided into two parts:

1. The frustrating infrastructure build around it, such as SOAP which is anything but simple

2. The verbosity of the protocol itself which frustrates human readability which supposedly is a key feature of XML

If we use JSON and avoid the infrastructure mistakes of XML (e.g. requiring huge amounts of boilerplate for RPC calls), then I think the native readability of JSON makes it a far better choice for serialization protocol than XML.
As I suspected, there's a previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317804
Interesting parallel to cicadas. I wonder if start-ups could increase their success by teaming with other start-ups and all launching at the same time. Could this be an idea for short term project--a twist on the November Launch challenge?
No, those are not part of a REST API. You've got it wrong.
> Chomsky's search for universal grammar (..) has been a failure

I don't know about Chomsky, but I took a linguistics course and the universal grammar was a major part of the course. It seems you're implying there's no such thing, what makes you think so? The impression I got from the course is that the idea of "universal grammar" is universally accepted (among linguists, of course).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-bar_theory

Ironically I don't remember Chomsky's name coming up during the course at all.
No, if I want to send a handwritten note I want it to look like my handwriting. Maybe you can invent a font-creation web app that analyzes my handwriting and creates a font for it.
I'm not sure what you found heavy about it; it's feature-full, yes. (I'm a bit familiar with the code because I used it in a project of my own and have my own fork of it at GitHub.)
How would you scale something like this?

$5-$10 to write and send a letter is a bit steep considering a stamp costs $0.44. I understand the value of convenience, but that much mark up?
72% of Apps Downloaded Are Used Less Than 10 Times
Funny, I was just wondering this morning if there's code somewhere to do the "pull to refresh" action on tables that everyone seems to be adding recently. Found a good round up here: http://iosdevgoodies.joostschuur.com/pull-and-release-refres.... On further inspection the three20 version uses the EGO version.
> I don't think anyone (sensible) is advocating that the entire program must be free of side effects, just that side effects have a cost in terms of clarity and maintainability and so should be avoided when possible.

Indeed. Haskell for example, just `tags' all side-effecting code in the type system. You are free to use lots of side-effects in Haskell. (Even though that would miss the point of the language.)
They don't want it, they want people to see it.
They probably just forgot to rebuild the WebKit view built into the Springboard that runs homescreen webapps with the new JS engine. I am sure they will issue an update soon.
Game Mechanics: The Psychology of Badges
No I read the second page. They looked like "half-criticisms" that won't affect the IE userbase - "geeks won't like it", "the 64 bit version sucks" etc.
But that's just because of a general ignorance of how HTTP protocol works. If someone were to be explained, how it should work from the beginning, I'm sure they'd have no problem with grasping the subject.

Actually some Google engineers do a very good job of explaining how AtomPub and GData APIs work just with short Youtube videos.
HCG Diet Side Effects on Periods & Menstrual Cycle with Questions Answered
Came here to post the same. The problem has more to do with how he uses online communication than with any particular tool.
The E-commerce Store of Babel
It's pretty clear that reactors are designed quite well, and it seems the design is working.

What people forgot were those storage pools. It looks like the radiation is coming from those, and not the reactor itself. It's clear those needs some serious design attention as well.

A passive cooling system to start with.
Long term this sounds like a terrible idea.

What happens when you want to search for a message or attachment you got 3 months ago? Good luck via Twitter.

What happens when Twitter imposes some TOS that you don't like or stifles innovation by closing their platform?

What about the fact that any 3rd party app you give read permissions to can read your direct messages?

The list goes on and on.

I use Twitter but in the big picture it's not remotely close to being able to replace email in the long run.
C++ Programming How To Guide
I don't want people to pirate my software, but I'd rather file sharers and individuals get away free than have a felony on their record or go to prison. Civil penalties are a good idea, possibly light criminal penalties, not a felony though, much less prison time.

Commercial piracy is a different matter, and I don't have a thoroughly-considered opinion on what the punishment for it should be.
Nice idea, and UI seems very simple to use.
> What I have seen is a huge number of media outlets and bloggers falling over themselves to assure everyone that everyone is safe and everything is under control.

Perhaps in response to a huge number of media outlets and bloggers falling over themselves to link Fukushima to Chernobyl and gloating over being right that nuclear power is going to kill us all.
Note that there's also a pdf if you don't have the time for the whole video.
Yes, the 400 mSv figure is at the plant - the front gates to be specific IIRC. If 400 mSv/h is measured in a populated area this would be a complete and absolute disaster - within a few hours people would be falling sick from radiation sickness, some will die in the short term from it, and you're now dealing with an incredibly large long tail of cancers in the future.

Even just measuring that level at the plant is alarming, though it currently poses little threat to the public. It does raise the question of whether or not they have it under as much control as we'd hope.
I didn't say it is a PR plant, I said it's barely much more than one. This is to say, I'm accusing the article of being low on content demonstrating its primary premise (IE9 is the most modern browser) and of being written in a tone comparable to marketing material for the IE browser.
She only proved that you can't buy an election if you're outrageously blatant about it and a terrible candidate on top of that.

Most congresspeople spend more time raising money (banging the phones, attending fundraisers, etc) than they do on policy. You need a few million in the bank to be a "credible candidate", and lobbyists can get you a chunk of the way there.
I don't like API version numbers in the URI.

It implies that a resource is different just because you are using a newer version of the API.

My own most recent implementations use Accept: and Content-Type to define version compatibility, which is what content negotiation is supposed to be about.

Versioning in the old web API sense meant changing the way the protocol works, and REST will always be REST and the resources will always be resources.

All that is likely to change between 'API versions' is formats, which you negotiate with headers, and adding new fields, which old clients can either ask not to get through content negotiation or can safely ignore.
Ask HN: FarmVille vs. AngryBird in Facebook.
Who will dominate?
I will go with angrybird.
I agree. I recently built an API for a project of mine and I decided to make it REST-like, but not use the HTTP method to distinguish actions. In some circumstances you can only use one (JSONP, for example), so I sacrificed some purity for "the real world". This seems like it goes a bit over the line, however.
The easiest way to add recommendations to your Rails app: acts_as_edgy
If you're still around Boston, I started a similar event at MIT called Startup Bootcamp. http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu/

(Register at the bottom, and you'll hear about the next event this September.)

All of the past talks are on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/startupbootcamp
We're in violent agreement here.
Now that you mention it, US District Judge Gladys Kessler just ruled a few weeks ago that the federal government has the right to regulate "mental activity":
http://reason.com/blog/2011/02/23/dont-think-of-a-health-ins...
>What I have seen is a huge number of media outlets and bloggers falling over themselves to assure everyone that everyone is safe and everything is under control.

the posture of calmness and thoughtfulness are now in fashion. Anyway, nobody can predict the outcome - too many variables, including human intervention which in itself is highly unpredictable and looks more like a "knee jerk reaction" than a planned for such a case strategy.

>... putting water on the melting fuel rods.

That puzzles me a bit - whenever they tell about the water on the melting rods they also mention that it causes the water to split into hydrogen and oxygen which mix causes these explosions. Water is also neutron moderator, so may be it thus lesser of evil...
Coal mining killed more than 6,000 people in China in 2004 (a typical year). Early deaths due to air pollution from coal combustion are measured in the tens of thousands per year in the United States.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe0809178

Chernobyl was the worst possible nuclear accident. It caused between 50 and 5000 early deaths. As a major industrial accident, it was only average. It pales in comparison to the 1984 Bhopal disaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

It took a long time to convince myself of this, but it really is quite obvious: because of the energy density difference of ~ 1,000,000 between fission and everything else, just about everything you'd care to measure about fission is going to be at least an order of magnitude better. That's because the amount of energy we're interested in is roughly constant, so the upper bound on destruction is roughly the same, but the material flows for fission are a million times smaller.

Actually, appropriate use of fission should increase the demand for energy somewhat, and this would be a very good thing.
It's not a calm article though - it's as bad as the ones proclaiming the death of nuclear and the upcoming atomic apocalypse... just in the complete opposite extreme.

Where one side is "fire! brimstone! death!" this side is "lalalalala NO PROBLEMS KEEP CALM CARRY ON". Both are unnecessary, unproductive, and dogmatic.
Well, it's not open, and all comms go through it - we have no idea what it actually does?
Actually URLs are supposd to be opaque in rest so that is correct.

Nice urls with http verbs but no hateos is what most "REST" APIs are though.
Delphi's IDE implements its code completion etc. using the real compiler parser, and has done for over a decade. The chief "tricks" are skipping method bodies other than the one the cursor is in, and otherwise having a fast parser (hand-written recursive descent / operator precedence hybrid in Delphi's case).

But completion / analysis etc. is still triggered on a pause after typing - it's not fast enough to run on every keystroke, not least because of basic reasons like having to page in referenced modules.

I agree that parsers or grammars should be reusable. I'd put parsers ahead of grammars, because frequently in practice there are some ambiguities around the edges in production grammars that are resolved using type and semantic analysis. What you want is something which can turn the text into a parse tree with the thorniest ambiguities already resolved.

Of course, doing interesting analysis with that tree is still pretty awkward if you have things like overloads in your language, to take a single example which needs pretty complete type analysis to resolve correctly in all cases.
Summary:

Rdo: "Yeah, we have POST!"

Thought Palace: "What about the rest?"
Overreaction? History will view this as "underreacted".

It has been days now since the earthquake, and at the reactors they are having trouble pumping water. Japan and the world is full of equipment that can pump water, but for some reason not enough is on hand.
What Islamist Terrorist Threat? - Reason Magazine
True, most of the time I really don't have to worry about IE. Occasionally, though, I'll have a job with 40%+ IE visitors. Those times, I really have to make things look right, and it's always something hacky.
Yes. In the dull of our non life-threatening hackernews browsing moments, it's easy to say "It needed to be done! I'd do it in a second!"

I, however, don't know if I'd have the fortitude to cut myself open and remove an organ. I mean I'm sure I would if it was life or death but at no point would I be certain about any of it really.
I was under the impression that telephone lines were considered utility infrastructure and not everyone wants a land line (or ever did).
So, you're relying on the editorialized summary of the legislation instead of the actual text to call the article "wrong"?

Municipal broadband operators shouldn't have to "play fair". Broadband access is a natural monopoly, and a municipality offering quality service should not be bound by the same obligations as a profit-making enterprise.

If the city and its residents believe that broadband is worth funding, via any method they choose to do so, that should absolutely be their right regardless of what TWC and their lobbyists think.
my previous 2c : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2324723

Read more about Chernobyl and nuclear technology and you'd be able to see yourself where similarity is and where isn't.