skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think anyone is calling them evil due to the app store restriction here. But they definitely stole the guy's app and logo. That's both illegal (at least the logo part) and immoral.

Reject the app, sure. Build similar functionality yourself, perhaps a bit scumbaggy but also probably legal. (This crowd still hasn't forgiving Microsoft for doing that 20 years ago.) Do all of that and steal the logo too and you've crossed the line.
If you want to maintain your wealth... I'd suggest cashing out as fast as you can.

Sure, things may go well and prices may rise more. But it's only a matter of time before governments start going after BitCoin.

Oh, wait. That started yesterday:
http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/08/government-crackdown-on-bi...
The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is money laundering.

The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is tax evasion.

Hmm...
Great idea; thanks! I do now have the option for each scaffold to link to a blog post somewhere... but hosting HTML demos is an interesting thought too.
ouch... i'm conservative when it comes to filesystems; i had to revert from ext4 to ext3 on Amazon's EC2 because ext4 had more trouble with EBS... every other time I've tried a new filesystem i've had trouble with wrecks and data corruption... making a whizzy new filesystem the default will cause a lot of pain
Sure you can. If done right some people gripe then adapt and new users are none the wiser.
We arrived at these solutions by doing a detailed analysis of every page to try an understand what barriers were on those pages. We did 4 detailed tests on usertesting.com to understand what fresh eyes were seeing with our signup process. We also informally brought in a few of our friends to give us their impressions/opinion on the changes. Once we had our approach solidified, we internally iterated through a few sets of screens before we got to the current versions. Once we have more data on those screens we will iterate some more.

We did not do focus groups, my experience is that focus groups can be hit or miss; They are also not really on the agenda for a lean startup.

I am sure that over the next few months we will continue to tweak our pages to help further tune our conversion ratios.
-Brett
Fusion-io I.P.O. Surges
Tagging is often better than hierarchies. You can organize by project (i.e. office fitout, web server upgrade) and other categories (i.e. budget related, list of people involved, plans) to make things easier to find when you switch contexts. Want to look at a single project, or all the budgets for the year?
Of course, didn't you know that the New World Order, Shadow Government, and Illuminati don't even take Visa? Bitcoin only at the Area 51 gift shop.
Entering Contract Work with Baggage
I've got a fairly stable job, but have passed on some really great opportunities in contract work (usually leading to full time positions) because I'm married and have small children. My fear is that I won't be able to provide insurance and the stability that it appears is only provided through more stable positions.

I get contacted by recruiters often and would like to pursue some of these opportunities. Does anyone have experience in this area?
Where does your energy come from? Do you care?
I would do it in HTML using some fancy CSS3, shows you know what you're doing at least for web stuff. Also makes it scannable in the SEO sense
American Underground is very nice. I was there for the first time a week or so ago for the Triangle Cocoaheads meet up and was very impressed with the space!
How is it that in all the years of public schools and university throwing flash cards at us that I have never, until this thread, heard of spaced repetition systems? I looked up the program you recommended and will try it out for sure, but here's my questions for you: Is this something that you do everyday to maintain, how many subjects do you use this system on at one time and how long each day do you spend total doing this?
Thanks for the info and recommendation - looking forward to using it.
You could also solve it analytically with dynamic programming, computing the probability of falling for each spot on the plank.
Oh jeez. At the first sentence I hoped the answer was not going to be 'Everyone is creative', but yup, there it is.

No, they aren't. 'Creative' as a attribute for a person means that they have creative impulses and aren't afraid to express them. Nobody is arguing that people are born without brains. They are arguing that people are disinclined to use their brains in that fashion, or that it's difficult for them.

When it comes to coding, I'm amazingly creative and I have no problem admitting it.

When it comes to visual, audio, or any other artistic expression, I cannot claim to be creative at all. I'm simply not that kind of person. I would love to be! I want to play piano, and draw, and write novels... But I know the effort involved in doing those things far surpasses the effort needed to be creative at programming on the same scale.
Step 2, build a time travel device to go back to 25-27th of May.
My point is that it's a bad metaphor because, as with most metaphors which have emotional, criminal or violent connotations, it comes with too much baggage which distracts heavily from the intended message.
There once was a time that if you used a computer, you used the command line. But that has not been the case for a long, long time. That's the meaning of "out" that was meant.
I understand this concern and think about it quite a bit myself. Is whatever I'm working on worthwhile? Who does it help, exactly?

The fact of the matter is that the problems people have in Big City, CA may be vastly different than those in Small Town, MI. Proximity, salary and culture can all vary so widely that you can't necessarily solve a problem that is shared between these two groups.

Personally, I think you just need to work on what inspires you. Photo sharing? Go for it. A new way to deliver groceries in small towns and disparate areas? Dig in. But don't hate on yourself because you think your problem is insignificant to someone that isn't your target market; that's just silly.
Yeah... I want to see webOS do well, but making one of your main differentiators be tight integration with a product that essentially nobody owns isn't normally the route to success.
A Look at Mugr's Facial Recognition Platform - 100 Invites to Private Beta
here's a nicer 2d drunkard's walk simulation that i put together in scratch in a few minutes...

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/electric_mouse/1002199
Well, it's not just files. It's also folder hierarchies. Both have usability issues.

It's likely that folder hierarchies will be shown the door first. Actually, a lot of people already just save their documents to "My Documents". Then weep when they realize that this is a local folder, and their hard drive crash wiped out all their work, and IT support can only say "Next time put it on the NAS". Some defaults are just stupid.
Well I guess this is one way to speed up development and testing. I don't think the disk format is even finalized yet.
What really bugs me about this article is that we get no sense of what ships and technologies China has built to protect this ship. A aircraft carrier without protection and a fleet train is a status symbol.
Show HN: Underscore.php
Apple relents on in app payment cuts
I find it a lot easier to hit "Sync" than to look at my podcasts and think "I listened to that one, this one and that one, so I can delete them, and hey! there's a new one, so I should transfer it..."
Why would a criminal want to use Bitcoin? I'm not convinced Silk Road is more than an elaborate troll. Even if it's not a hoax, Bitcoin is irrelevant and in fact less convenient than cash transactions, since they still have to get the drugs to you.

Most criminals are interested in changing dirty USD into legitimate bank balances. If Bitcoin is criminalized, it becomes conspicuous and thus less attractive to money launderers. Cash will always be preferable so long as there is a large legitimate cash economy to camouflage crime.
This. Excellent advice.

I'm rather appalled by the smug "this is easy to fix" or "the problem is all in your head" attitudes exhibited by some posters here. This Shit Is Hard.

Much sympathy for what genuinely sounds like a very unpleasant situation, mattman, and please don't listen to the people saying you're bad and wrong.
Those are enterprise? Except Google Apps, which > $100 million rev/year companies are using basecamp or zoho on a company (not departmental!) level? Departmental sales are easy, you just need a few users and there is no 'big manager' involved usually. But to get companies to pick your software as the company standard... I don't believe basecamp or zoho are there. But I could be wrong.
"You can also email us at TouchPadSDK [att] palm [dott] com and one of our app specialists will work with you to see how you can qualify for this program."
It sounds like you work for Accenture, out of interest, have you ever worked at a startup?

[Edit: I'm not asking to be snarky, just curious as I know a few people who have worked for big consulting firms and who now work for early stage companies and who relish the difference in environment. I was curious to see if anyone has gone in the other direction.]
Facebook leaves IPv6 enabled on developer site
If you choose to grow your spinach in a cattle ranch you will be responsible for your own problem. The best part is that since I'm growing my own spinach, your lack of judgement does not affect me. So I don't need anybody regulating you. I'm quite happy regulating myself, and letting you regulate yourself.
10 Worst Time Wasters at Work
Do you have data to support that?

It sounds too much like the No True Scotsman Fallacy for me to take it too seriously.
I want to gauge interest in our startup, but wonder if anyone cares where their energy comes from. Do you care if you vote with your hard earned money to support coal, natural gas, nuclear, oil, wind, etc? Would you want to control where your energy comes from?
Sorry if this sounds snarky, yet I think it's true: If you have to leave an area to be reminded what everyday people are like, your business is already handicapped.
I know that a lot of people hate Arduinos, but I like the flexibility of prototyping on an Arduino, moving the same code to a raw ATmega328, and then (for teeny projects) maybe port to an ATtiny for cost and space savings.
Your call to action is too vague regarding the details and intended audience for me to part with my email address.

The blog post is slightly more helpful--it lets me know that, as an apartment-dweller with only one electricity utility available, I probably have no use for your service.

I'd suggest narrowing your focus, and proofreading the blog post.
Avoiding Duplicate Content is Key for SEO
Replicating Reality demos 3D virtual reality system
Blog Posts to Read for June 9, 2011
It's awesome to see NC on the front page of HN and it not be related to how backwards our new broadband laws are. :D

I was curious if anything similar to American Underground existed in the state, glad to see it does. Thanks for writing!
We (Spring Metrics) are indeed interested in hiring Ruby devs. http://www.springmetrics.com/jobs.html When does the visa arrive? Can you bribe someone to get it faster? ;-)
Thanks Sebastien. Will send you an email shortly!
Colourwar - a typewar for science
I was going for the distance from some arbitrary spot in North America to some arbitrary spot way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where I'd assume the ocean is at its deepest, but this is interesting too.
There are also events at the Palm campus in Sunnyvale today (June 9) and next week (June 16)

http://developer.palm.com/content/community/events/webos_wor...
Ask HN: Want to join a startup, only have Fortune 500 experience
I am a developer with nearly 15 years of experience, and I'd like to join a startup.

The problem is that all my experience is in "uninteresting" problem domains, mostly banking. On top of that, all of my recent professional experience is with .Net (since 2000).

I live in the Midwest right now, and would like to move to a more startup friendly city to join a company working on interesting problems.

The problem is that I don't really have a network in any startup hubs.

I have done a little Ruby on the side, and am trying to learn Scala right now. There isn't really a startup community in the city I'm in, so I don't think it's possible for me to try to join one here.

What should I be doing to improve my chances of joining a startup that's working on interesting problems? I feel like I can pick up other languages reasonably well, but I'm not sure which language stack is predominant in startup hubs right now. Besides technology decisions, I'm not sure how else I can help improve my chances.
That'd only really be true if a significant portion files were hardlinked. My root filesystem (Debian GNU/Linux testing) has 393,410 files, of which 825 have more than one link. My /home has 0 out of 156,273 files hardlinked.

Having 0.2% (or less) of files hardlinked shouldn't prevent storing files in the same directory near each other.
Nope. When business gets slow, they fire the experienced people, who are much more expensive to keep around idle.
I worked in the adzerk office this past weekend during Triangle Startup Weekend. At first I was a little bothered by the lack of natural light but I quickly got used to it and actually enjoyed the environment/architecture there.

Since moving to the triangle though, I think the best decision I've made is moving to Durham. It's still affordable, has a lot of character, and offers the same amenities that Raleigh and Chapel Hill offer. I think this why the startup scene in Durham is taking off.
One small competitor did, yes.

One rather dominant one didn't. Amazon are, fair to say, a fairly significant threat...
Why does the Malaysian gov bother listening to the movie and music industries? What do they lose if they don't block (i.e. have some companies threatened to move out? Threatened not to film there anymore?)?

edit: fixed my split infinitive.
once you jail break, can you still use the Apple App Store, buy content, etc, etc as if you did not jail break? So you get the benefits of both worlds?
I believe they made it fairly clear that the only way to get Lion will be through the App Store, though I don't recall the exact wording during the keynote. What I'm trying to say is: I came away with the impression that the App Store was the only way to get it; could be wrong though.
Accompl.sh launches its biggest changes yet: New multi-list system and credits
Yes, I probably was unjust but hey, that was a rant. I must be agreeing more with the general analysis than would appear from the rant; it's more the reference book I was after, and maybe the chosen perspective.
Actually he addresses the "work" issue:

"People focus too much on the 'work' aspect of it, it should be looked at as more of a zen practice. Growing and preparing food is very zen and is a very karmic and devotional practice!"

In this way, one could conclude that the work you put into it actually does cost nothing and in fact benefits you through it's karmic ROI.
Granted my above idea would sort of overlap you with railscasts or asciicasts, however the one issue is that thoses casts go out of date. If your site or another site focused on idioms only, and the best practice to use those idioms, peer-reviewed with comments and maybe versioning, then it would easily become a go-to reference for developers, that would always contain the most up-to-date method of implementing said idiom.

For instance, you want to implement authentication. Right now the best thing you can do is head to railscasts, see what the latest screencast is for authenticaiton. Ah, november 2010. Might as well be ancient history! Perhaps there's a newer, easier, more-accepted authentication gem out there. Or maybe not! You just don't know. So what's next, maybe check some blogs, github, do some date-specific searches on google, etc.

If you or someone else had a site that basically said, "here's the current accepted practice for implementing authentication, and here's why", then that saves so much time!
Thanks for the feedback.

I guess the question is, do you know where your electricity comes from? And if you could choose where your electricity comes from would you care to change? If you could vote for certain fuel sources over others would you exercise that choice?
> Accenture had "all their best people" on the job. This meant almost an entire floor of staff; managers, project managers, BAs, god knows what else. Oh, they also had two young devs, you know, to actually do the work.

As a dev/architect in Professional Services (not at a big 5 consulting firm), this is way off the mark. PMs and BAs do a ton of work that I either would not want to do or am not good at and while the end product is a bundle of code there is a LOT of work that goes into building it outside of straight development.
I always viewed blog platforms as the "Hello World!" of web apps. They are non-trivial, but everyone has written one, knows what it should do, and how it should look. So instead of worrying about how to solve the problem, you can see how the language or framework works.
> Check out http://socket.io for the front-end libraries

A note of clarification: socket.io is a front-end AND back-end (node.js) package.
Some good points but the idea of Peak Attention seems to be conflated with focus. Its one thing to have the captive attention of a tv audience, but its a completely different thing for a team of people to have joint focus on a task. The later is what gets things done, the former is just a way of passing time for those without the motivation to entertain themselves.
In the pre-Google era, I worked for a dot-com startup that was a community for senior citizens to get together and presumably chat about their grandchildren or whatever. I suggested that we do fun things with the logo like different permutations of the logo on different parts of the site, or changing the logo out for holidays or whatever.

The CEO just berated the hell out of me. He said that was the worst idea he had ever heard, and that any serious and successful company NEVER EVER EVER changes how their brand looks and is presented and gave me all sorts of examples of how all "real" companies have elaborate and detailed documents explaining the only acceptable way to display the company's name and/or logo in every possible scenario.

So every time Google (or anyone else) does this sort of thing, I feel a small rush of vindication.
Most problems like that come from the industrialized food supply. You'd be pretty hard pressed to get e coli from spinach you grew yourself.
US diplomatic pressure has been quietly and not-so-quietly exerted on piracy-friendly nations (China's a good example) in the past.
It's a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-CPU APQ8060 1.2GHz

But they don't mention RAM or cpu.

It runs flash, but doesn't mention java (so it probably doesn't).
It is the same case made by the Air Force during the 1950's. It relies on using ICBM to target carrier groups. I would direct your attention to the nuclear tests done after WWII on the use of nuclear weapons against fleet battle groups and the amount of missile defense a modern battle group has. Also, those spy satellites that you need to target those ICBMs are not exactly totally immune to attack.

I think the original article the report was in support of more funding for advances to the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.
Do you have any open source contributions? If not, are there any projects you could contribute to? There are many .net open source projects that could use a hand.

At the very least, it will give people a chance to see what sort of work you do if they want to see more than what's on your resume.
I still think he's confused. I've never yet met a geek that was anti-intellectual. Anti-college, anti-snob, anti-something... But not anti-intellectual.

The 2 are too much at odds. The geek loves information, and (often) spreading that information, and using that information. Information is a geek's stock-in-trade.

He continues to claim that he's only talking about geeks, but by definition he can't be. Because anti-intellectual means anti-geek. And I've never yet met a geek who hates other geeks. Okay, maybe some particular brand of geek rubs them wrong, but not all geeks.
Supreme Court says Microsoft must pay in i4i patent case
- Change is slow in enterprise software. Unlike a startup where you can think of a new feature and implement it in a day, it can take months or years to go from inception to roll-out for a new feature or innovation. There are so many stakeholders that must be satisfied, and so much red tape to break. These restricitions can stifle your personal creativity.

Not unique to Accenture.
That is like saying you shouldn't exercise because you might run in front of a car. Actually, it's like saying exercise gives you diabetes and heart attacks because the exact opposite situation is true.
Dual accounts was working for me, for a couple of years, without faffing with settings. But a recent Google Apps update broke things - such as forcing a tab into the other account, etc. I wasted some time until I dug this up. Thought some more people might currently be in the same boat.

(Not intended for front page discussion, of course, just a note left in the stream.)
Lobby the US Government, lobby the world?
The requirement that in-app purchases be the same price is gone as well, so now they can charge a 30% markup to buy from the iPhone app.
Ask HN: Build it/buy it photo kiosk software
I'm looking for software to run a point-of-sale photo kiosk. What I'm looking for is similar to the kiosk system here (http://www.subitophoto.net/vss/), however they have gone out of business.

I did find an open source system xKiosk2, however it will not function for my needs and changing it over to what I need would take as much time as it would to build it myself. In addition, it just doesn't work.

So what I need is software that I can have a host computer with photos on it and several "browsing" computers looking at those photos. Customers can select the photos they want to buy, purchase with a credit card (or cash), and the photos can be burned to CD or printed.
Neat idea. One thing I'd probably do if I wanted to use this technique would be to develop a browser extension to go along with it to either hide the row when accessed from "trusted" IP addresses, or injects the row via the extension when accessed from an unknown IP. That way I wouldn't be forced to have that row on my screen from home or work where it might accidentally be clicked on and triggered.
Yes, the article read like something produced by The Heritage Foundation; but that doesn't mean it cannot have some valid points along the way.

As to your first sentence, one of the largest weaknesses of the entire essay is that most every criticism being applied to Khan could be applied equally to traditional education; the fact that something is tested for in class certainly doesn't make it the best thing to be learning.
Karma is a bitch and what you should do about it.
Google Public DNS IPv6 addresses
I don't wonder any more why children don't want to eat vegetables

As a counterpoint, my kids (6 and 4) find it easier to eat the "tasteless" veggies than the ones with real flavour.

They don't like any kind of spice on their food either. Makes it really frustrating to find meals that the whole family can enjoy... Either we all have bland food (and the adults add spice after being served) or we have to cook the kid's food separately.

My mother assures me that this is just sweet, sweet revenge for my own childhood misbehaviour :)
If only I knew! It should be relatively soon now (next month or so), but we've managed to hit so many bumps along the way, including a period where the visa application sat untouched in Texas for almost six months last year, that I don't want to jinx it :).
Twitter.com Gets Its Own URL Shortener
Android developers are more prolific but less persistent than iOS developers