skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
BU law prof study: hard to conclude software patents provide social benefits
I tried out Symfony (1.x) and I'm thankful for it. It's madness drove me to Rails, where I built some amazing stuff with! It was the entry drug that brought me over from php to the great (but at first sight scary) land of Ruby.
The article (like most of Mr Greenspun's articles) are somewhat tongue in cheek.

I think he's illustrating the absurdity of the situation with another absurdity while managing to be half serious.
I sympathize with both sides of the argument. Large organizations really do need a longer support and deployment cycle. If they adopt version ___ of a product, they need some assurance that it will be supported for a certain window of time. On the other hand, if you let "The Enterprise" dictate your development strategy, you will find yourself making faster horses rather than electric roadsters.

This might be a good opportunity for a business to sell support contracts with guaranteed life cycles for EOL'd versions of Firefox. That way, an enterprise shop could pick a version knowing that it will be supported for a year or two years or whatever they negotiate.
Hacker claims to reveal identity of LulzSec leader
In this case, Australia is a common law country. Its legal heritage is English, not civil/Roman.
Max Tegmark's 4-level Multiverse solves the issues discussed in this article. For Tegmark, the physical world does not emerge out of the Platonic world, rather, the physical world is (a subset) of the Platonic world. The real question is I think what sort of subset, and, more broadly, what other types of subsets of the Platonic can evolve observers capable of asking these questions.
I blogged a detailed response here: http://bit.ly/lyCwCH

But the bottom line is IMO the reason JSON is so popular (and it is popular) has more to do with the ubiquity of JavaScript in browsers than anything in the format itself.
Blog Designing in the Perimeters of User Interface
The responsibilities of a web designer are not limited to a beautiful layout. Yes, this is considered to be the most important thing; however, there is a lot of other stuff that a web designer has to take care of. Apart from making a beautiful layout, it should be user friendly
One the one hand, you can't really blame FF. Chrome is killing them with their quick release cycles, so they felt they needed to respond.

On the other hand, what options do enterprises have? Assuming they're currently using FF, they probably don't want to go back to IE. Chrome is out of the question for the same reason we're having this discussion, frequent releases. So, what's left? Safari on Windows? And too much is broken on Opera. So, I don't really think FF has much to fear in terms of losing existing enterprise customers.

It may stall adoption on the enterprise market, but if it brings them back in the consumer market, and it's a net gain, then it was a good move. After all, Mozilla's customers like Google are buying eyeballs wholesale, irrespective of them being enterprise or consumer users.
In my experience, most extensions work just fine after an update without modifications even if they are marked as incompatible. The addon authors simply tend to set the version compatibility rather conservatively.
Unfortunately I don't live in the US :(
Thanks for the pointers, but the language issue isn't really a concern for me or is getting involved kids who like to game. It's more of how to explain all the other wonderful things CS has to offer. College really helped me understand that there were so many interesting questions in designing fun interfaces and gamification techniques that delve closer to psychology. Graph theory was really fun because it seemed so exotic from lame calculus and geometry, and the fact that basics could be taught visually was intriguing. Learning that I could explore places like stack overflow and read APIs made it less intimidating to learn even more. Seeing that technology could better the lives of the less fortunate and that is was an important leveling force appealed to my pinko caring heart ;) These are the messages I'm concerned with sending.
To my mind, this is mostly a culture clash. In no way is it "Enterprise Users" that FF is worried about; it's Enterprise IT guys.

Spoken as a startup executive who also wears the IT hat at times -- those guys can be fascist bastards. I don't really want to help them either. Well, I guess I'll erase this post when I do my next Group Policy-based startup. Until then, I stand by my statement.

Long ago, IT was there to help users work with something they couldn't understand. Now IT has sort of turned into that abusive controlling parent who too often says "you can't do this, because I don't like it."

Standard disclaimers apply: you are not like this, you are a great IT person.

That said, I think there is absolutely no chance that the Firefox team will, after significant internal effort to speed up and become more agile, slow down to please IT groups.

Organizations that are also learning to speed up will get benefits from FF or Chrome, others won't.

I do agree that plugin development issues are a serious pain point. I anticipate that they'll work out some better system (maybe a version API contract that tells a plugin what they can consume?).
There are things I think most HNers basically take for granted (at least I do): the theory of evolution closely matches reality, all animals that ever existed on Earth (including humans), are subject to it, and basically all life on Earth is a big family of more or less distantly related cousins (you don't even need the fossil record for this one, DNA is enough).

This article doesn't challenge that. In fact, the idea that our hominids ancestors split in several cousin species flows quite naturally from the above assumptions. Now the question it raised is, why we don't have closer cousins than chimps? We may not unique in that respect, and the big gap between us and our closest cousins may not be that much surprising. But given that our ancestors and elder cousins colonised most of the world, wondering what happened to them is an interesting question, if only to understand how a thriving specie can go extinct.

Now, basic rationalist question: How do I know that?

Well, it's a bit complicated. First, as a child, I was interested in science. I had few religious influences (I only attended church at Christmas). The History I'm aware of tells be that Science is to date the most successful way to describe our world, and the engineering successes I see every day tells me that it indeed works. For instance, the computer I'm typing on right now depends on a fair bit of science. Most of it is magic to me, but I'm confident I could find a comprehensive explanation on the Internet. Science also just makes plain sense. I "get it" when I read science aimed for lay people.

The bottom line is, I trust scientists. I trust journalists that talk about science a bit less. I trust settled science best. I acknowledge that the current state of the art is probably mistaken on many many things, but I'm confident that subsequent discovery won't shake the foundations of everything we know, though we may discover earth shaking new things. (For instance, relativity is a refinement of Newton's theory, not a complete revolution. It confirmed that under "ordinary" conditions, Newton's theory will give almost exact results.)

This particular article looks like a journalist's report about a bit of reasonably settled science, that just makes sense. Therefore I trust it. On the spot. No need for further proof.
According to Wikipedia the native speakers said [ˈkajsar].
The quickest dirty hack is using Anki or another spaced repitition sytem program. If you download Anki you can get at the shared decks and there rea some very nice ones for German vocabulary.

For speaking/understanding speech I've heard great things about Pimsleur. Once you have the rudiments of the language listen to podcasts all the time.

Learn the grammar. You are unlikely to pick up more than the utter basics by osmosis. Good luck!
Part of Joyent's product line is the Node.js Smart Machine.

http://www.joyentcloud.com/products/smart-appliances/
I'm a mac user with a netbook...

Up until the MBA (with the exception of the 12" Powerbook) there was no Mac ultraportable. Ie: something you can throw in a briefcase and whip out at Starbucks to use on those tiny tables. Netbooks filled that niche, and because of the cheap price a Mac user might not even care that it can't run all their apps.
The kind of trade that we're talking about here isn't consumers buying a few books or DVDs online. For business to business deals where the counterparts aren't using the same currency one of them would have to take a risk due to the exchange rate changing (or pay money to hedge against it). And that risk could be significant even for one-off transactions with Net30/Net60 payment terms.

Of course for a large multinational dealing with these issues comes naturally. But for a small to medium business dealing with different currencies is going to cause a lot of friction.
I believe they're building one in Cupertino next to the new Apple HQ:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M#t=505s
I'm sorry if it sounds like I was attacking him, but I actually didn't mean to.

The author admitted that he hadn't read the post...

P.S. - I'm a she not a he...
DAY-mun. But you really gotta drag out the AY.
The consumerization of IT goes both ways: people get the latest & greatest at home and want to bring it to work, but they often are trained to use interesting tech at work -- and become comfortable with it -- so they tend to use the same at home. If Mozilla doesn't change their tune, Google & Apple will eat their lunch.
Just because something is cheap and funded, doesn't mean it's easy. That's like saying, "Math departments get more funding than pottery classes, and paper and pencils are cheaper than clay, therefore math is obviously easier than making your mom an ashtray."
Is There A European Tech Incubator Bubble?
Glad to see this. If Mozilla started chasing corporate then it would be necessary for me to switch browser. I've stuck with them through the misconceptions about memory from people who don't understand how memory management works. I've put up with slightly worse performance and standards support for enabling features I actually use like ad block.

However I would never tolerate kowtowing to the mishmash of nonsense that is corporate IT. I don't use IE for exactly this reason.

The simple truth is that if corporations need consistent behaviour they should not be using web apps to begin with.
What? No, seriously-- what?

How is this at all analogous to a warranted search? The FBI had permission to take something - so did they perform due diligence to make sure they took the correct something? That is the question.

So let's say I gave you permission to drive my car. It's green. You hop in a green car near my house, find the keys in the ignition and leave for four hours of errands. (Typically, I'd give you my key and you'd select a car that the key fits, but not today.) My neighbor reports his green car stolen and the police intercept you on your way back into the neighborhood. Did you perform "proper diligence" in selecting the correct car to take?

I have no idea how this situation would play out, but I suspect your own intent (to drive MY green car) plays into the considerations of the prosecuting attorney.
Customer Service In Sales - New Ideas To Build Long Term Clients
"Taking 3 months to roll out a new browser is ridiculous."

Unless you have pretty poor infrastructure, actually rolling out a new version should be trivial, it's the testing to confirm that the new version doesn't break anything vital that will take the time.
While I prefer Firefox to Chrome for my own personal usage, I think businesses would be better served by Chrome.
Enterprises don't have time to be modern or forward thinking, they're too busy wrapped up in management process and business bullshit to concern themselves with upgrading the software on their corporate network.

I know this because I work as an enterprise developer in a large enterprise company. I can't wait until I die :)
Agreed - I was happy to repost the comments as well to add some more to the burgeoning discussion.
The issue is usually the extension creator's fault. It's left up the developer to say what versions your extension is compatible with - and usually that's left to just the current version.
On the other hand, about 50 people see a market opportunity right about now. :)

Well, enterprisefox.com and enterprisebrowser.com are both already registered, so basically, yeah. :-)
Five takeaways from folding a startup
Ozma Released: Scala + Mozart/Oz
One thing about the Linux point: why buy a computer whose major advantage is portability and battery life, then give up a huge chunk of the latter by putting Linux on it?

That's the thing that pissed me off most about my netbook. Windows sucks and I couldn't put Linux on it without its shitty power management cutting a couple of hours off the battery.
Maybe not the best title, the "...if they find them offensive" is the most interesting part. Before I clicked I thought the hive mind in Rhode Island had some space age technology to identify hackers as the click of a button.
I'm in the same boat - except replace the iPad with a netbook. I figured - why get a "big iPhone" when I can have a real computer with an actual keyboard for half the price?

I am sorely tempted to "trade in" the current netbook and Macbook pro for a Sandy Bridge Macbook Air.
The exec is right. Why should mozilla "slow down" to accommodate enterprises who churn out absurdly brittle applications and who change them literally only when a crisis forces them to do so.

It is the internal enterprise apps that need to "get with the program."
If deploying outdated mechanical "security," it's obvious that keys should not be bumpable and employ a spring-loaded, retractible covering that also protects the edge.
Look upon my big clock, ye mighty, and despair.

Edit: apologies for light-hearted comment.

Edit2: amazing how quickly you get slow-banned on News.YC. Thanks downvoters.
A few thoughts. First, Fx extensions are required to expose the versions that they work for. In many cases after a release extensions will work pretty well and just need to have the "working versions" updated.

Apart from that, I think the new development process (http://mozilla.github.com/process-releases/draft/development...) makes it less likely that new versions will break extensions.

The past Fx development model focused on cramming a ton of features in to the browser, then bumping the version number. This could be a pain because there were huge changes, extensions broke and were slow to be updated, users were nagged...

The new approach is to ship on a schedule: if a change is good, it goes into the RC; if it isn't ready, it stays out.

But this likely means that every "new version" won't contain nearly as many massive and possibly breaking changes. I think this should let extension developers keep up with development better.
I think that the author was talking about functionality...

>>> If there was an appetite for easy-to-use, lightweight, entertainment and light computing devices, the netbook was supposed help fulfill that dream. Instead, it's been replaced in functionality by lower priced computers (a version of the MacBook Air became available for $995) having more capacity and better specs than the OLPC—while retaining light weight, high battery power conservation, and SSD devices without a plethora of jacks and an integral DVD drive—and the smartphone and pad/tablet genre. <<<
LulzSec's 3-line PHP Portscan
You'll find it at the bottom, but Portscan script alone: http://pastebin.com/KFyFaDmz
This article made me realize that to enterprises, what SaaS really sells is not the ease of (or lack of) deployment, but the disability for IT departments like these to control deployment at all.
Nope, then you go to recently closed tabs and you'll see a folder that says "6 Tabs" or whatever and clicking it will restore the window.
what do you mean hollo documentaries?

we will get back to the stone age between those two things.
You'll find it at the bottom, but Portscan script alone: http://pastebin.com/KFyFaDmz
Agree with voide_2, people are more likely to sign in via twitter.

Is there an opportunity to rate tweets that tweetport send me ?

For e.g. if you send me a tweet report with your algo, I didnt like it do I have a choice ?
Yeah, in an ideal world.... This is a really ignorant statement, though. Just one of my teams has a tracking spreadsheet for >100 web apps they support. A fair number of those are "legacy" -- created by folks who are no longer with the company, or which are no longer the standard way of performing a task -- but are unkillable for one reason or another. Besides homegrown stuff, certain versions of expensive commercial software only support specific browsers and versions of browsers. If you have to test, AND you have to setup GPOs for users at the app-level because of browser incompatibilities, it is completely understandable why the internal upgrade cycle can take longer than the vendor's upgrade cycle.

You should spend some time in enterprise IT and see what it's like on the other side of the fence.
Oh! I'd never noticed tab pinning in chrome. Thanks. I agree that the FireFox is just copying chrome's style, but their "spaces" still gives them a slight advantage in my mind.

If chrome adds a slick tab groups management system, I'd probably switch back pretty quick. (it might not have been obvious, but the 'smugly superior' comment was a joke)
Right, but again, Mac users are a minority. 15% currently. The number that wants a netbook is probably a small percentage of that 15%. I was arguing against the "Mac users not buying PC netbooks" as being statistically insignificant. Other factors mentioned (smartphones, ipads, cheaper laptops) have to be a much more important factor than a niche audience having an alternative product.
That's an unfair generalization, especially if you're in control of the hardware used.

There are some drivers that certainly drain your battery very quickly (I'm looking at you, Broadcom!), but there are other hardware constellations where Linux has a significantly lower power usage than Windows. It's up to the hardware manufacturers to select the right components.
I saw an interesting point in a scientific paper recently which I, admittedly, only got to read the abstract of (scientific journals are littered with paywalls). It basically stated that the corporation is a form of social technology which has failed society. When looking at the reality of the situation, in particular, how slowly they move and how much they tend to halt progress, I tend to agree with the sentiment. Just look at IE6 - the web would be a very different place if certain people weren't so obsessed with making money (by always taking the path of least risk) and making everyone else pay for the fact.

EDIT: This paper - http://sts.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1.abstract
I have used Mockflow for a year, but seems the frequency of my design need wasnt so high that I continue to use it.

I'd love to hear which tool falls all the criteria !
I think this new development process will actually be a benefit for plugin authors. Each new version will come with fewer big changes, meaning that plugins may just keep working across different versions.

Of course, that benefit can only be realized if plugins are no longer tied to a version. A good solution is definitely needed here.
i liked the examples. a typography noob, this was mostly new to me, and made me think about how small things do really matter.
"I’m not convinced that they did everything they could to prevent the seizure of non-targeted servers, and their lack of proactive communication with the affected customers is beneath the level of service I expect from a host."

I can't speak to the level of service you did or did not receive but I seriously doubt DigitalOne could have done more to prevent "non-targeted" servers from being seized. If it was in the same rack as the "targeted" server I'm sure that 100% of the time LE would take it and find out whether it was related later. It's their job to take every step necessary to preserve evidence first and foremost when executing a search warrant like this.

I agree with you that the data was almost certainly not compromised and I think it's great that you're so proactive about protecting your customers by moving to bcrypt.
interesting. are those ever applied all together?
Though this article is a way for Space to sell their new theme, I can attest to the information provided being very useful in-and-of itself. It's a strong overview of the fundamentals of typography and basic rules to follow for strong visual hierarchy and content readability.

If you want to learn more about typography, I'd pick up (what is considered) the typographic bible, The Elements of Typography by Robert Bringhurst. While it is largely intended for print, most of the rules and suggestions still apply to the web. Alternatively, some pioneering folks put together a web adaptation of Bringhurt's book, http://webtypography.net/
Apple’s ICloud Music:How It Works and How It Stacks Up To Google Listen
what options do enterprises have?

Change their policies?

Just let Firefox freaking update itself, after all, Mozilla is more trustworthy than an IT department of debatable competency.

And what on earth are they doing in those internal apps that makes them incompatible between Firefox 3 and Firefox 5 ?

I do have an intranet app of reasonable complexity that was created using IExplorer 6 and the original Mozilla browser. It still works today, the same as it was working when I made it. That's what standards are for.
getaround.com looks interesting. Shame they require a facebook account.
I thought this was really cool... I wonder what that beer tastes like.
Yeah, and we probably should take this discussion to email. What's your address?
The corporate mindset is the problem. They've got to get away from the hubris of thinking their software testing process is so special or better than the community's.

I don't entirely disagree with your sentiment, but there IS a difference that makes "their testing process" special... it's relative to their environment. Simply put, if there is a critical business app that XCorp is running, and it's closed-source FooApplication from MegaVendorCorp, then "the community" is unlikely to have tested their new browser against FooApplication. So XCorp would be foolish to roll out a browser, without additional internal testing, that verify that it works with FooApplication.

And that's only the most trivial example... when you start talking about the interactions between different apps and different systems (all the varied SSO systems in existence, for example), you can easily have a case where an organization's internal environment will result in failures that would never be caught be the external testing of the browser vendor (and this true whether it's a F/OSS browswer, or something from Microsoft, Apple, Opera, etc.)

Interal IT testing and certification isn't just a way for some bureaucrats to justify their positions... it really does serve an important purpose.

That said, none of this is meant to argue against the notion that corporate IT departments need to improve their processes to become more agile, and more able to adapt quickly.
Vintage van eck awesome:

"Optical Time-Domain Eavesdropping Risks of CRT Displays" [Kuhn 2002]

"Electromagnetic Eavesdropping Risks of
Flat-Panel Displays" [Kuhn 2004]