skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think Ebert's article was written quite in line with what he was trying to accomplish, and with matching the reader's expectation of the article.

As a movie viewer, I relate directly to the article's opening. Movies are no longer visually appealing. I don't know exactly why. Is the glasses I now wear? But they don't seem to affect TV. Is it my increasing age? Etc.

As for the "empirical evidence", just try taking a camera -- or even a light meter, I suspect -- into a theater to gather it. At least with a light meter, once you explain things to the police, you probably won't be facing a felony charge.

I did feel a bit uncomfortable that he was relying on and citing so extensively others' written comments. But there's not a lot of choice, in this case. Both because original sources are difficult to come by -- read in full the articles/blogs he quotes. And because Ebert is still recovering from a serious bout with cancer of the mouth/head and may have trouble running around digging them up and vocally interviewing them. (They may not want a written record that can be connected back to them.)

My more general comment about this topic would be that this is an example of what you get with market capture. The average viewer has no ability to choose an alternative. Unless, for example, you are able to identify a theater that properly uses the cited Christie projectors and stick with it and its schedules.

Otherwise, people are opting out of the theater market and turning to another, home viewing. Of course, there you have the delay until discs are released, the commercial barrage increasingly corresponding to that experienced in the theater, the outlay for equipment -- repeated for every home. The format wars. The different social aspect. (Not that I, for one, miss the talkers, the texters, the munchers, and the seat back kickers.)

It's like Sony with its memory stick. It's not about aiding the consumer; it's about locking them into Sony. (And slapping arbitrary DRM onto their content -- remember that aspect of the memory stick format?) And the resulting experience is worse for said consumer.
Almost everyone registers for atleast 4 courses a term. You need to work on all of them because every course counts. However, when you're going to take the Junior Lab (if you're in Physics) or the digital death lab/ software labs (if you're in EECS), you take classes that are relatively easy. For example, you might take extra humanities classes to work on the HASS requirement and then in a later semester not take the humanities class and replace them with courses in your own major.

I don't know about the junior lab (i'm in eecs), but when I take classes that are difficult (which has been pretty much every semester for the past 2 years :(), I am working overtime on these classes. Besides attending lectures/recitations during the day, I spend every evening, and all of my weekend coding for the projects. Having projects and labs that took over 20-30 hours to complete were the norm, and in a particularly bad semester, I'd have one of those due almost every two weeks.

Initially, there would be people who could get by without putting in as much effort because they already knew the material, but as you go higher and start talking about lab classes (where the work is punishing regardless of your knowledge/experience) or graduate classes (very intensive, almost no one can coast), you don't see people coasting.
I agree that the incredible range of custom window managers (WMs) is a very interesting aspect of *NIXes and a source of innovation. I can't however agree with your initial worries about Wayland.

Wayland actually makes it easier to roll out your own window manager than X11. The Wayland protocol is a lot more straightforward and has fewer extensions. You no longer have to deal with XRender, XDamage, XComposite, etc. You also don't need to think about setups where some of these extensions are missing.

It also does away with network transparency and replaces the protocol with a simpler, more unified OpenGL ES based solution. You have more freedom to develop something original as you aren't stuck in X11's rendering system which is a glorified painters algorithm. You can use XComposite to obtain more freedom under X11 but so far few window managers use it (compiz, KWin, metacity). The default for Wayland is very similar to what you find in XComposite but is faster (given a decent video card driver) and simpler.

The only drawback to Wayland is that it is rather new and the protocol hasn't been finalized. As soon as it gains wider adoption and there are a few example Window Managers, expect to see some interesting and innovative WMs.
This should be an entrepreneurial opportunity for someone.
There's no loop there:

Genghis Khan -> Borjigin -> Clan -> People -> Human ->
Taxonomy -> Science -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Information -> Sequence -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property (philosophy) -> Modern Philosophy -> Philosophy

Mongolian language is in parentheses, so you don't end up in the infinite loop.

So far, the only loop I can see is Panhard, though I'm sure someone will edit the page so that no longer happens. I think the stub pages have a far better chance of defying this law than any other page, though, so it's probably best to start there if you want to find more loops.
Can an open-source backer thrive inside Microsoft? This one says no
> we won't have google analytics, or any of the major analytics packages.

weblogs analytics packages have been around since the beginning of the Web.

> we therefore wouldn't know about things like screen resolutions, etc.

You don't need cookies to record browser capabilities. A smidgen of JavaScript and an endpoint of some sort, and you are there.

> so we'd have to design to the lowest common denominator possible, because we wouldnt know that only 1% of visitors have 800x600 screens now.

This is a hysterial overreaction. Or think about concepts like Media Queries, and Responsive Design. (You can haterz the name, but the principle is useful and appropriate).

> we also wouldnt be able to track conversion goals,

Don't your conversion goals have completion pages? Are you not able to add meta information to your links that record this information? Third party tools mostly require JavaScript anyway, so there's nothing impossible there.

> and what do we do about frameworks that automatically set a session cookie?

Don't store information in the corresponding server-side session that isn't essential to providing a service.

> think you'll find that most corporate special interests try to minimize the numer of cookies set anyway
My anecdotal evidence differs from yours. I find the use of random third party analytics and ad tracking tools, plus on page cookies mean they set loads of cookies. Winnowing that down to a small number, like one per type/duration would help. Corporate interests in the UK don't care about saving bytes.
Facebook ‘Not Focused On Mobile Advertising At All’
置き換えダイエット口コミランキング
Blacklists, ahoy PROTECT IP Act sails on to Senate floor
There are different ways to buy bitcoin. The first one worth mentioning is through #bitcoin-otc or #bitcoin-pit on irc.freenode.net (http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/Using_bitcoin-otc) other ways to buy them is through markets such as mtgox (http://mtgox.com)
sorta reminds me of the time I built something in 2001 which was a reactive system that was sort of a web crawler but also a bit more... seems demented looking back, but I used qmail as a message queue system for it.
If we had a JSON query language as powerful as XPath would you feel the same way? I can't think of any other reason for agreeing with you (thought XPath is reason enough).

Edit: While underscore.js is wonderful, I doubt it performs nearly as well as XPath.
Peter Thiel was on to something....

"We need to figure out a way to escape from it (politics)".

Shit like this is a reminder that we don't have much time.
"You can expect to lose about a quarter of them every seven years" can be translated in one of two ways:

1. Every 7 years, 25% of the original links are lost: in 14 years half are working, and in 28 years you have approximately 0% of your links working. This is a steady, linear rate which does not have a half life.

2. Every 7 years, 25% of the remaining links are lost: in 7 years 75% are working, in 14 years 0.75^2 = 56% of the links are still working, and in 28 years 31.6% are working. This is exponential decay, which has a half-life and is contradictory.

From looking at the data, and from the explicitness with which he states that the decay is linear, I'd conclude that the former is true. It would be hard to make a case for the later.
Just plain cool: First Floor Under Campaign
Xkcd succeeded in making me waste 20min yesterday clicking links on Wikipedia checking whether it was actually true. I wish I had had this tool then!
So they have a quarter-life of 7 years?
This order represents a good kick in the rear to the parties.

Judge Alsup had suggested that Oracle cuts its claims from 142 to 3. Plainly, though, the law gives him no authority to force Oracle to do this (or to force Google to cut back its claims either).

What does he do? Well, he arm twists.

This order says to Oracle, in effect, "you want a quick trial, cut your claims back radically and keep it focused on the most serious of your claims; if you insist on your theoretical right to try everything that is legally cognizable, that is your right and I can't prevent that - but, in that case, I just might grant Google's motion to stay this entire case while it gets to take several years before the USPTO hacking away at your claims in re-examination proceedings."

The message to Oracle in particular: trim your case back radically and you get the carrot (a quick and expeditious trial focused on the most serious claims only); else, you just might get the stick (years of delay in getting your trial as your case gets progressively cut back in a side proceeding). This is a great illustration of how a strong judge keeps his docket under strict control. Oracle will not miss the message.
As far as I understand, from an off-hand chat with a lawyer last year, UK law applies to businesses that have a record or filing in Companies House. http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/
Me, I'd be more inclined to create them >_>
Safari supports WebGL and the rest isn't a JS feature.
I know I'm being pedantic here, but I'm pretty sure you haven't verified it. To do that, you would have to visit every Wikipedia article.
An Ex-Geek Offers Hope to Teenagers
i've considered xmpp as a queue, and hear some do use it!
Slightly over egging the pudding with the headline I think. The government has stated that they wont be enforcing this law until they've figured it out themselves.
As someone who writes assembly, I think this is overstating the case. There are a lot of algorithms (particularly short ones) where good C compilers generate nearly optimal code that you would be hard-pressed to improve on.

In my experience the benefit you get from writing assembly comes largely from your ability to do better register allocation for your fast-paths, in cases where your compiler would spill registers to the stack.

There are cases where the compiler does something that is genuinely stupid (http://blog.reverberate.org/2011/03/19/when-a-compilers-slow...) but in modern compilers these are pretty rare.
Still living in Russia?

Moved to the USA as a child.

I highly recommend exploring outside of one's ideological echo-chamber (all of us sit inside such chambers.) You will learn many interesting things! Many of my own political bits have flipped as a result of such exploration.
If you're building a very complex Enterprise SOA system, use XML as the associated technologies (xsd, xsl, soap+ws- etc) will be very useful.*

What precisely are they useful for? Honest question, I have not had a job yet, let alone the "enterprise" one.
First 3D advert revealed on iPad
I don't have an answer to your actual question about Google's motivations here, but I do think Street View is valuable, and what's genuinely valuable for users, eventually leads to money for the provider.

However, I am genuinely curious why you had to qualify your very reasonable question with a "I am not trolling or flaming". I have noticed many other commenters do this recently, and don't understand the need for qualifying yourself if you have a genuine question.

Btw, I am not trolling or... ;)
The church changes character along with those in power, so comparing the church of then to the church of now is not very meaningful, nor is talking about contemporary church views in contrast to past views.

Pope Urban VIII had at one point actually encouraged Galileo's teachings, but Galileo himself was known to be arrogant and headstrong, having little patience for bureaucracy, and virtually no tact when dealing with others, especially if they disagreed with him.

There are a number of ways Galileo could have approached things:

1. Present both the Ptolemy and Copernicus models, along with the arguments for each.

2. Delay publication until he could build a fully working model, rather than a series of observations and assertions.

3. Defy authority, fraudulently publish, and damn the ignorant fools in power.

Option 1 would have been the best approach, as it would be the least jarring to established knowledge and would provide a wedge for new ideas.

Option 2 would likely stir up controversy at a later date, but would not involve insubordination.

Option 3 was pretty much guaranteed to blow up, much like an employee directly disobeying his boss to his face. Even if he and the pope had been the bestest of buds, there would have been no way politically for the pope to ignore his behavior. (As it was, the pope flew into a rage when he found out that Galileo had published behind his back)
Ask HN: I am a founding engineer leaving a startup 
Ask HN: I am a founding engineer leaving a startup that will likely be successful...

I wanted to ask a question on the HN. I am a founding engineer in a SaaS software stratup that is gathering significant traction.
I have helped build the startup from ground up and directed non-technical founders along the way to the proper software engineering process. (If you ever tried to explain features vs.
quality to a sales guy - you know what I mean). I have recruited a very good technical team and wasn't afraid of firing fat. One of the founders provided the capital to get the company going and operate for a year.

Quite a few times it looked that the startup would flop, but we all persevered and pushed through. Because the founders are non-technical, the product is to a large extent my work and my
baby. I voiced disagreements, fought for MVP and controlling the scope. There are many other people working on this product, but I have a disproportionate contribution.

Now, that the startup is steaming along and gathering users, both founders seem to have rose glasses on and hiring VP of Sales/Biz Dev and VP of Product, CFO, buying other companies without consulting with me. I think those decisions have merit, but are suboptimal to improving the product and having happy users. I feel we already have a world-class product, but there is definitely room for improvement. I think we have lots of dev challenges ahead and should staff up on the developers(we are a software product after all).
Nobody is asking my opinion though and I disagree with the direction. I also don't think it is a good idea to bring VP level guys whose initiative the dev team won't be able to support unless we have more developers.

I do want to say that I was well-compensated (for Toronto, Canada) during this time, but still provided incredible value. I am not boasting - I have a key position in building a 30-million-dollar company and 150-180K/year is not quite as good a compensation for that.

Moreover, I was side-tracked on compensation negotiation, ESOP, etc. And, I feel that my significant software, management, negotiation skills are being devalued.
I feel that I no longer want to enrich people that don't provide the value back to me. One founder is a nice guy with whom I have a good relationship, another one is riding the success.

I was a successful freelancer before and I am considering quitting and looking for work elsewhere. I already have a contract lined up.

I pause because if a product becomes wildly successful financially - it would very positively reflect on my career and I can play that card for a few years after.

So what do you say HN? What would you do?
On the other hand, would you have spent less than 20 minutes playing with the tool?
First of all, Ebert actually attributes the quote to David Poland of MovieCityNews.com.

To put that 60-40 split for 2D vs 3D into context, I'd need to know: a) what the proportion of 2D vs 3D showtimes were (perhaps weighted by the historical popularity of their timeslots, if that's not asking too much), and b) how much of the split is due to price sensitivity, as I assume 3D showtimes command a significant price premium.

Without that context, the naked percentages provide me little evidence for Ebert's assertion that, all else being equal, the average moviegoer really prefers 2D over 3D.

Mind you, I don't know what the fact of the matter is, I just know that the evidence provided is not convincing.
The definition of "cookies used by the core service" here is so far off its insane. Analytics packages like Google Analytics are not part of my "core service"?

It increases the burden on site owners collecting data about thing that are happening on their own site. Less data leads to less ability to make optimization decisions leads to a worse online experience for everyone who uses that site. If I can't A/B test my site how the hell am I supposed to improve it?

Additionally, for ad supported sites, don't be shocked to see revenue drop like a rock when sites can't fill any inventory with retargeted ads or other forms of more targeted advertising that pay a higher CPM. Less money = less resources = worse experiences.
What I've seen with RabbitMQ is that the memory usage can grow and grow. If it runs out of either committed RAM or address space, it crashes. I suspect this may be a feature of the open source Erlang VM that's improved in the pay-for-support version. Even though RabbitMQ pays the performance cost of bouncing everything off the disk, it's not quite recoverable from that type of crash.

I'm sure my information is old, perhaps these things are improved in newer versions. Still, the behavior of the Erlang VM itself was relevant.

As a C++ programmer, I wouldn't feel comfortable abstracting away memory management for this type of server which is both so memory intensive and requires high reliability.

But of course many people swear by highly reliable JVM based stuff, so perhaps I'm wrong about it. :-)
HTML5 History API
I haven't been here that long, but from what I've seen, Google doesn't even have up to date maps in India. I went jogging a few days ago, and ran into what google maps described as a dead end. The road didn't stop - it just continued through some "undocumented housing" in dirt road form.

Google has their work cut out for them.
Kinda cute but looks more like fed by MSFT PR
You mention a few authors, but would you mind sharing specific books or other resources on community building you found practical and helpful?
The Benefits of Cloud Hosting with VMware
Field test for Google Wallet starts today, official release is this summer.
Does any one remember what was the state of the experiment last year that most of those threads were active?
Such a distinction is reserved only for classes with a reputation for being especially difficult and time consuming.

I disagree with this. I think the reason why some classes are called by their name are usually because of speed/convenience (faster to say), to group multiple class numbers, and for obscure class numbers than nobody would recognize.

Saying "unified" is way simpler than saying "sixteen double-oh-one". Saying "eight thirteen(?)" or "eight one three" is just weird. Also note that "junior lab" is not even the name of the class, it's just a nickname (just like "ice") that makes it easier to communicate.

Also, note that Unified is actually 4 classes (course numbers). Junior lab is 2.. They're both expected to be taken over the course of a year, not a single semester. Nobody cares if you're taking 8.13 or 8.14; it's really just one thing: junior lab. If you want to know the number, you can tell by knowing the current semester.

Lastly, if you're taking a not well-known class in say, 21F, you'd say the name. Even if it's relatively popular (and easy!), nobody says "21F.302".. They say "French 2".

Sorry for the long post responding to such a minor point; I just thought it was incredibly misleading.
In other articles I have read mention of allowing the user to opt in via the browser:

For example the directive suggests users can express consent through the use of browser settings, whereas the ICO guidance states, "At present, most browser settings are not sophisticated enough to allow you to assume that the user has given their consent to allow your website to set a cookie… We are advising organizations which use cookies or other means of storing information on a user’s equipment that they have to gain consent some other way."

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2073597/cookie-law-creates...

This would be pretty easy to do with an extension and something like OnePass or OpenAuth. My issue with that solution is the centralization. I like having multiple passwords, however, I also like having everything blacklisted and making the user whitelist websites.

We are still waiting on over half the EU to say that they will implement this. Can't wait to see what interesting ideas spring up.
Well, same question here. I've interned on an enterprisey web service before but I couldn't imagine what sort of mental gymnastics are required to justify xml being used the way it is.
Main_Page is currently taking 19 steps too.
(According to the program—other comments here point out that it may be ignoring the comic's rules.)
Just hijack Philosophy.
The picture should be just as bright for a 3d projection. Unfortunately, that means a more expensive light source (or two separate ones). The decision to simply use an old lamp at half intensity may have made immediate cost-cutting sense, but it's damaging the 3D brand. Case in point, Tron 2 3D was dim to the point that I removed the polarizers for the 2d-only scenes. The difference is quite visible.
An interpreter isn't a fair comparison though - in assembly you can use a few tricks like threaded code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code) to get a big speed boost, but these techniques aren't really broadly applicable to programs generally.

And in any case, it's still not an argument for writing an entire OS in assembly, but rather only a few important segments of the code.
Divorce Probability Calculator
What am I missing?

Example 1: Amazon uses a cookie to keep track of login and a shopping cart. -> No popup since they are essential.

Example 2: foobar.blog.com uses cookies to track me (ad-banners and analytics). -> Popup to ask for my consent for those "useless" cookies.

Now I understand that the "useless" is somewhat debatable, but I very much welcome the discussion. This is not about breaking the web, and postpone this law is a good idea, but I look forward to start cleaning up the cookie mess. "Do not track" and "don't accept third-party cookies" get's us half the way, but since the web-industrie does not react to the european pursuit for high privacy standards, it might be a good time to suggest some laws to create pressure.

What law would I suggest? Primary cookies (example 1) are okay without a popup, secondary cookies (example 2) either expire on the same day, or need a popup to ask for permission to stay on my computer for longer than a day.