skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is law for a reason, and 300 millions American citizens and legal aliens abide by it. Do you want make all of them feel idiots?

Obviously you've never dealt with immigration. My wife was a Chinese citizen here on a student visa when we married, and so I've dealt with the process first hand.

It seems to me that most people believe that the process of getting a green card or citizenship is just a matter of filling out a couple forms, going to a notary, and waiting a few months for everything to be approved. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and as a result, many people who want to do everything legally, who really try to do so, wind up with an illegal status.

The process involves scores of forms that must be filled out just so. I can tell you from personal experience that figuring out exactly what the INS wanted was a challenge -- for me, an native English speaker who got 680 on the SAT verbal section. It's nearly impossible for non-native speakers, but many of them can't afford a lawyer to help them.

My wife's application was rejected twice. The first was due to confusion about the correct papers to prove marriage. The second was due to improperly collected fingerprints. We went to the State Police to have the fingerprint cards done. Who is better qualified to take good fingerprint samples than the police, right? We were rejected because the NJ State Police are not certified by the INS as fingerprint authorities. It seems that, to get the prints done legally, we had to drive to the duly certified fingerprint authority, some 40 miles away, which turned out to be a camera shop. Her prints were taken by some Indian guy, obviously an immigrant himself, rather than a police officer -- and these were accepted.

On one occasion the wife was at the INS office in NYC Federal Plaza. The woman at the counter was telling wife that something had to be done just so, no exceptions. Wife asked to speak to a manager to try to clear up the misunderstanding -- a perfectly legitimate request in any business. Rather than trying to work with my wife to resolve the disagreement, the worker pushed a little button, and two big burly guys came out of a door and physically removed my wife from the premises, claiming that she was a threat.

Obviously this process is not about a correct and complete application: they are about perpetuating the INS itself, through the fees for fingerprint certifications; shoring up their little fiefdoms, and so on. Anyone who believes that people who are unsuccessful in navigating this bureaucracy are criminals, bad elements that we don't want in our society, is badly mistaken.
Guy Updates Facebook Status During Police Standoff
for more on the whys, here is the EN blog post: http://blog.echonest.com/post/6824753703/announcing-echoprin...
Netflix: letting users reduce quality to avoid bandwidth caps
there's a google group-- that's probably the easiest for now. you can pester alastairp on the musicbrainz IRC channel too (he's our resident musicbrainz/EN liaison)
Eclipse 3.7 Unleashed
I've had that error occur several times, and then the file finally made it through.

It was from a Russian band, tagged with presumably non-ascii characters, but it finally went through, and I really really doubt they have some of the other things I've uploaded.
Gzippo - A NodeJS Gzip middleware for connect and express
See, not everyone wants the latest iWhatever. I quite like the BlackBerry, actually - it's not flashy, gets far more battery life than nearly any other mobile device, has BBM (which is still, in my opinion, one of the best mobile chat platforms out there), and can do email/web browsing.

Yeah, there's not as many apps, and yeah, it's not all shiny like the iWhatever, or quite as open and easy to develop for as Android, but it's very stable and reliable. And there's something to be said for that.
My 0.02€ - can it include a way of proportioning "work to date" - ie let's say the startup has been incubating for 2 years, and it's now found 2 co-founders... How do I model that ?
I find it annoying that I basically have to use Facebook to gain instant access. To be fair, I have no idea how the alternative login method works, but apparently you have to wait until they make it through to you in the queue - so if I invite a friend who doesn't have a Facebook account, I end up disappointing them.
SQLite - famous applications
I agree, in particular, that the image of how the stack works is critical for really understanding the problem. The hotel analogy is nice, but doesn't help much in generalizing or extrapolating to other issues.
Control your Kids’ TV with KIDO’Z TV Chrome Extension
I second Arethuza, if you count construction projects there are some impressive long term projects. Some, such as Chichen Itza (400yrs) or Stonehenge (1,600yrs), have direct scientific significance as well.
Show HN: mobilethread.com -- instant message threads for mobile
Totally with you. Cute idea but pales in comparison as a listening experience to Pandora.

However - if they can get some brand-name DJs on there with a known style (or grow some) I think the value prop changes for me. Right now it's "experience what it's like to be a cool dj!" Which is great for the dj but bad for everyone else in the likely event that the current dj is not in fact a 'cool dj'
It isn't just the _id field, it's any indexed field.
PowerPoint 2010 Presentations Compatibility Support & Slide Cloning
This maintenance release includes resolution for many regression issues as well as exceptions being thrown during presentations access, PDFs generations and slide cloning for both PPT and PPTX. The bullets rendering issue have been remedied and the compatibility support for working with PowerPoint 2010 presentations has also been enhanced. The compulsion of using Aspose.Metafiles for Java has also been eradicated in this release and now, one will only need to add reference to Aspose.Metafiles for Java, if a presentation has WMF or EMF file contents.
This isn't NASA launching a quest, this is NASA / DARPA asking some else to take up the quest.
I read the article, where exactly did it state that they "hate the west and all it stands for". Popular political figures like to repeat it, but I have yet to hear it from someone that isn't from the west...
Geordie Shore Episode 5 online 
Geordie Shore Episode 5 online
As a commercial license holder with 7 years experience that would make my day. However, we should approach this a bit differently. The question should not be will Nokia's first wp7 phone run qt apps. It should be will we be able to develop wp7 apps using Qt technologies. I am specifically speaking of QML. Qt has been using web style technologies for a while. I use CSS to style my c++ apps for example. QML is basically what amounts to javascript and a json like syntax sitting on top of a c++ runtime. With that in mind, it should not be that difficult for them to allow QtCreator to target, Symbian, MeeGo, traditional apps with QDeclaritiveView, a new Windows 8 runtime and a new WP7 runtime.

It would be huge if Nokia was able to leverage the existing Qt developer base for there new wp7 phones. Personally, I am way more excited about the N9 running MeeGo than any of the future wp7 devices. However that could change based on the developer tools available. A Dev stack that runs on linux, osx and windows that I already know and use (QtCreator, QMake etc) would be huge.
Drawing FullScreen Quads with XNA 4.0
For a long time, that was also my impression. But it's wrong. Mostly.

It turns out that there isn't a single definition for the word species—there are multiple definitions that lead to different results. Reading through the Wikipedia article about species will give you a sense of the different definitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

If you use the Biological/Isolation species definition, I think you could argue that humans are or were multiple species. (Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.)
I'm not sure this sort of logic scales. The examples he uses with a single boolean are simple enough because you're just writing two methods instead of one. What if, however, you have a signature that takes multiple booleans, either as formal parameters or as part of a struct? Do you write exponentially more methods, requiring the caller to be familiar with your naming conventions, just to free the caller from having to remember what the parameters represent? For that matter, what if you're passing in an enumeration? That's also a "flag" that is frequently used to switch behavior, and again, would require expanding one method into n, each with human-readable names.

If there's some a way to win big by doing this, I just don't see it.
Change your tone: I'm sure we all understand the concept of 'salary'. :)

I don't think that's our only gain from working at a company. Working at a company (1) gives you experience working on projects that you might not be able to get without the required trust in your personal brand, (2) socialises you with technical people from your discipline, and (3) increases your job security.

I particularly consider (2) very important. Of course, you can quit your job and create as startup, but: you're creating risk for yourself and there are things which companies provide employees which have to be built over time.
Dutch Pass Net Neutrality Law / Ban Nonconsensual Cookies
At $8300 a month for http://decknetwork.net/ advertising, it is compelling that this sort of content can both 1) have this kind of viral platform for current issues surrounding intellectual property as it is now and 2) allow you to support and/or be complicit in the ongoing battle.
I guess they did follow the rules, as it was just after Israel sent a demand for the app to be pulled from the market that it got pulled. That to me says that it was approved by apple... OTOH it could've slipped passed the review board
I seriously hope this is good enough even for the lawyerly folks out there.

It's probably the biggest thing to happen in this space since the release of the iPhone version of Shazam!
Google: 'At scale, everything breaks'
Yes, this is one of the half-assed, half-dead efforts I was referring to. Last commit Jan 2010, and even that one touched only some files, previous commits are all from 2008. It only supports a few languages - no C++, no Java, no .Net. The website itself says on the first page "relying on any implementation in production would be a bad idea". Plus, Rx doesn't offer the same functionality XML Schema does, from what I can find (only does type checking, no element order/count, default values etc).
City dwellers more sensitive to social stress than country folk
Eclipse Indigo released with WindowBuilder GUI tool and EGit 1.0
I don't buy that. If thier web app is rubbish, surely the time would be better spent on making thier web app great.

But thier web app is great.

What's the big deal about a desktop client that wraps a great website?
I think it looks great, just a few thoughts (mostly on UX/UI):
1. You probably can do without the <hr> tag separating the head and the rest of the body on the landing page
2. I see a signup button, but not a login/signin for existing user
3. I find the font a bit quirky, but that's just my preference. I try to do non-cursive font for easier reading
4. The about page: a) url is sprint.im/user/about--that's a bit weird as I'd assume it's just sprint.im/about b) shorter paragraphs and make the long paragraphs about "why Sprint.im different" into a list
5. Quick tour page: the bounding box of each step needs some top/bottom padding/margin. They're connected to each other right now.
6. Register page: a) help text for password is "secret salt" I get it, but I think the word salt would be confusing b) I don't like the arrow icon to the left--it's too big and too gaudy as a list icon
7. Just another thought/question for discussion as I am also wondering about this myself. It's a B2B/Saas, I wonder if the fact that it was made by one person should be pin-pointed (on the about page). Most people would prefer that their software is made by a team/group/company. Having a single name as designer/developer takes away that illusion of "faith" and can turn a lot of people away.

I think it's a great project. Congratulations on launching your beta. It's a great step and you should be happy and proud of it. Now just iterate like a machine and I'm sure you'll definitely see some interesting movement. Your space is interesting in that: there's a lot of players, but there isn't a king or someone who basically rule the rest (well, basecamp/jira maybe?), but that means if you focus (which I see that you are) you'll capture some market share that other guys haven't or can't seem to do. Good luck and as always, please update us on each iteration.

-V.
The first edition of the OED took about 70 years (starting in the mid 1800's) if I recall. Newer editions are still being edited.
The whole article acts like we have never discovered thermocouples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple

I mean the voyager spacecraft are powered by them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_gen...

Along with many gas appliances with pilot lights.
C++ is perhaps the only language with a strict typing regime that doesn't have any memory safety.

This is ridiculous because safe memory access is more easy to implement, places fewer restrictions on the programmer, and is much more important for writing secure software than strict typing. Unfortunately, it does proscribe pointer manipulation patterns which are popular in C programming, so it was excluded from C++ to align with the "C with classes" marketing.
AVC: MY First Post
A good analogy no doubt! But you should be careful when using analogies. Every behavior of the analogy might not be applicable to the original problem.

Analogies can only help make people "understand" something. Normal brains try to relate things to what it has learnt so far. So analogies seem to help. Analogies in themselves are not scientific explanations obviously.

A scientific/rational explanation to the question posed by the user would be - C++ makes no promise about the behavior of the program when out-of scope C++ variable is used. Obviously this explanation -a simple one is quite less dramatic.
The human response to diversity seems to be "KILL KILL KILL" unless mental effort is employed to override this natural response. I've wondered for a long time if there are no other hominids, and so little diversity in our own species, because we killed them all. Genocide seems to be in our natural emotional structure.

But I wonder if this could be related back to the bottleneck. During a bottleneck, inbreeding-related genetic disorders become an issue. Maybe evolution selects for genetic "purging" behaviors during such bottlenecks as a means of ensuring fitness... basically during the bottleneck you'd become Nazis to escape the effects of inbreeding, and these impulses might stay afterwords.
I don't get it.

If I made a windows desktop client for a popular website, would anyone at all even care?

Github (the website ) is great, it works well.

The thinking that a website is a poor substitute for a native app is increasingly outdated. Github is an example of this, it does a lot on the web.

What extra does this app bring to the table? What does it make possible or easier that I can't do on the website or in TortoiseGit?
After a court case this big, this long, one wonders how much of the ~$65 million winds up in the hands of the lawyers anyway.
Haven't watched the video, but I'm wondering if this hack is available to other projects/build systems.

OpenEmbedded/Angstrom would be ideal targets.
He means Worse is Better: http://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html
How is this different from Shazam?
But after a couple of hours with Pandora I'm hearing the same tracks over and over.

I find turntable.fm is way better for discover of new music.
Incubator Summit: Which Startup Incubator / Accelerator is Right for You?
Slice of life:

I worked for a company in 2000-2001 that had a small branch that built custom industrial machine vision systems. It was probably the most fun I've ever had in my career. Anyway, one day the head of the branch gathered everyone together and talked about how he wanted to break off from the master company and build a machine vision startup. Everyone was extremely excited and most agreed to follow him on the spot.

One week later 9/11 happened.

One week after that the same branch head gathered everyone together and laid off 80% of the staff. You see, "industrial machine vision was no longer viable"[1]. We were crushed and I moved on to other fields.

I haven't though about machine vision much in the past 10 years, but I think I'll read this book. Thanks for the submission.

[1]: Vision system to seek and destroy on the other hand...
http://www.shazam.com/tc
Introducing projectile motion with Angry Birds
WordPress disable Tinymce HTML editor excluding array of users
> the incredible lack of hominid (great ape) fossils for the last many million years of years

Why do you call it "incredible"?
> Persistent data structures intrinsically involve copying on updates, and no amount of compiler cleverness can avoid that.

The compiler magic can help you there. You are looking for linear types.
I do not recall recently reading stories about how Hulu traffic is now 30% of the internet traffic during peak times. I do recall reading this: http://www.telecompetitor.com/report-netflix-represents-30-o...

I don't think Hulu has much scale to offer Netflix.
Lean Designs Now Offers a 16 Column 960gs Grid with Smart Snapping
Because it's open source.
I have to work with MB's of this type of XML. It forces the use of special XML tools to even make is readable.
Actually I believe it's do A and B breed naturally in the wild. Not can they breed, but do they breed.
I've consulted for many a serious finance company using PG, sure Oracle et al are the main ones, but I've never run across MySQL in those kinds of shops doing anything significant. Granted, I'm a PG consultant.
It doesn't compare at all. We tried it out as a way of prototyping iPhone game ideas, but it didn't even have the concept of arrays, which made anything beyond the absolute most simple game state impossible.

You can't build serious games without a powerful programming language.
> You can always extract some useful work when transferring heat from a hot bath to a cold bath.

True. But this is Jesuitry. Are you by any chance an investor in the scheme?

Yes, you can get more work out of your car engine by surrounding it with Peltiers or other heat engines -- if you drive in the Arctic.

Seriously, if you, a physicist, actually know how to build an engine having no waste heat, why settle for the chump change of HN publicity? Go for the Nobel that you deserve.
I am serious, document a JSON interface with what, English? Are you serious?

JSON has no way to describe in machine readable way what to expect, instead you have to read a document then go hand code the interface in your language of choice.

WSDL and SOAP is not complicated, and I have implemented my own SOAP stack. Then again everyone now days everyone thinks relational databases are complicated.

If you you have tools that implement it for you then there is no excuse.
In some ways, WebGL reminds me of OpenDoc - a consortium of competitors offering the mashup model as an alternative to OS implementation while ignoring salient performance issues. In no small part because the proposal breaks the architecture of Microsoft's implementation and is coupled with a PR campaign to negate the implementation advantage Microsoft has based on the nature of their product portfolio and market segments, i.e. as an OS provider.

This isn't to say that Silverlight is the solution - but rather that the idea of giving browsers a generic ability to bypass the operating system and access the hardware is different from how Silverlight is implemented in the vast majority of cases. The Silverlight implementation is provided by the OS vendor not a third party.

It's not that WebGL doesn't have a reasonable goal, but design a sandbox without a lid and you wind up with cat turds. A system which depends on the priority which the authors of graphic card drivers assign to security and mass market hardware vendors assign to driver updates and continued support within the consumer segment doesn't seem like a plan consistent with the potential for mischief the web offers.

[http://gregmaletic.wordpress.com/2006/11/12/opendoc/]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opendoc]
Dutch water projects have lasted for decades?
Samsung Galaxy S 2 vs iPhone
Excellent readme for that project. It details several issues of which I wasn't aware.

Thanks for that.

(edit: It wasn't the readme, it was the wiki page. Still, excellent documentation.)
This looks like a cool site, but I don't have a facebook account and won't create one for the purpose of logging in to another site.
If those people who write code for a living never program in C++ or other languages with pointers, instead using languages like Java and Python, I wouldn't expect them to know what happens when you mess around with pointers in C++. If you don't use pointers, and your language doesn't even support pointers, why care about the behavior of pointers? Understanding the simpler concept of "references" is good enough.
What's the relationship (if any) or distinction between Echoprint and Chromaprint/Acoustid?
http://acoustid.org/
"Java's Forgotten Forebear"
XSLT is XML, that whats nice about it, you can reflect on it.

XML has no operators for manipulating or evaluating, it is a metalanguage. XSLT adds this on top of XML to process XML.
Looks incredible! One note though, the page seems to partially break for me in Safari on the Mac (the sidebar overlaps onto the content as I scroll horizontally).

But the tech looks incredible. Good work for releasing this!
"just give it another 50 or 80 thousand years and there will be multiple species of human."

That isn't as clear as you might think. At the moment, we've returned to the entire human species living in one gene pool, one that spans the entire globe. We'd have to lose the ability to cross the world in timeframes on the scale of a human lifetime, and even if you postulate a total civilization collapse and a total loss of all knowledge, we know that civilization could return to an Age of Exploration-level of capability in a mere few dozen generations even under the absolute worst case scenario that still has humans left to talk about at all. Speciation under such circumstances is certainly not automatic.

However, talking about human speciation without accounting for the extraordinarily high chance that it will end up being driven by human intelligence is probably a waste anyway. Again, on the tens-of-thousands-of-years time frame, even if our civilization completely and utterly collapses, another one could arise on that time frame quite comfortably. (Civilization #2 faces some resource issues, but with enough time they can still be overcome.)
Hi, I wrote the accepted answer and welcome changes or suggestions (it's community wiki).
Taiwanese blogger jailed over critical restaurant review
Losing your job is paying for it, just not the way you'd hoped. :)
http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/

This thing offers cross platform game development with code, and comes with full source.
Nokia isn't trying to win you over - they're going after your maid.
I'm not getting it, what's the connection between that website and the post?
Not kidding, XSLT is functional, it's very different from imperative style OO, it's not complex and can get a lot done with few lines of code.

If you think it's painful and ugly, then don't dig any deeper in computer science than javascript.
EA to Buy PopCap Games for $1B
Congrats to Michael and Tan on all the recent success. They've been building Gendai for a long time starting in Austin. Lots of sweat, blood, and tears went into this product. Great team, dedicated and innovative.
Getting Started as a Social Entrepreneur