skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So we're at this point in the conversation already. I guess we've really been in it sometime, as you continue to drag Gapps and Skyhook around like they support your point and now apparently we're involving trademarks too. Oh well, here it goes:

Mozilla owns the Firefox trademark and controls who can use it. Google does that with Android. Surely you're not suggesting that anyone should be able to use trademarked names of other products just because their source is GPL/MIT licensed...

As for everything else, it's just you talking past me or over me: I'll repeat it, Android and Google Apps are two completely different products. Your attempts to use Google Apps to discredit Android's openness is dishonest, disingenuous and just weak. Android is free and open and Google muscled them out of Skyhook by threatening to withold Google Apps. Android is free and open; still, completely regardless of that statement. Gmail is not part of Android. Calendar is not part of Android. They're irrelevant at this point in this discussion. Dude, I even granted that the Market missing would be detrimental to the sale of any Android device, but that's STILL completely ancillary to Android's openness.

Android is all MIT and GPL. RedHat does development behind closed doors. So does Canonical. Hey, guess what Novell does? Does that make their core Linux product any less "open"? Certainly not by any technical standard. Does Canonical operating a paid channel in the Ubuntu Software Center mean Ubuntu is no longer open?

Heh, as for my comments, the first two pages don't even touch Android, there's a complaint about WebGL in iOS, but Android doesn't even have WebGL at this point, so it's not like it was fan-based by any means. I like Android but think Google is screwing themselves in about 5 different ways and I think we'll look back at WebOS as damn near visionary. I won't lie and say that I like iOS, because I don't, I can't stand the user experience, but the quality of the app store and the graphics are smoother than I've seen in any pre-mid-2010 Android phone. I'm a big fan of competition, but I'm also a huge fan of OSS and I just don't understand the need for people to try to cut down Android and make it seem like Google's little prized possession (not to say that it isn't, by any means), but if that's bad... what does it mean for Apple/iOS?
As someone who's been trying to hire good software engineering professionals for some time now, I'm going to tentatively agree with, "people who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen"; however, I'm going to posit that, in the world of technology companies, good software engineers who are passionate, diligent, and bent on improving themselves and their field are rare. So, please do not despair because you've read the Old Programmer's advice and you're not fluent in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, or mathematics. I can say that even as a generalist, you can help advance the field of software engineering, and I represent one technology company that will value you for that.
Could they be referring to the INES disaster scale, on which Fukushima rates equal to Chernobyl?

Also, the direct release of radiation from the reactor is significantly less serious than the release of certain radioisotopes. If they're only comparing absolute radiation levels, and (hypothetically) most of Chernobyl's was in radioactive cesium, while most of Fukushima's was in alpha/beta/gamma particles or short-lived radioactive oxygen/nitrogen/etc., then the comparison is not very useful.
Superb, that's going straight into my text file of wise words.
Oh, it was aggressive. The only options that were available when the dialog showed up for me, was to either oblige, or to "Skip".
Ah, pedantry, the pinnacle of all evaluations of a single statement one could make. Next you should criticize how the book doesn't cover decorator generators that use @wrap or how it doesn't cover discrete mathematics. That'll be very effective.
Ask HN: Long Island Meet up?
Was hoping to gage the interest of any Hn'ers in long island. I'm hoping there will be a few, everyone can't be from the valley!

Anyhow if you are interested in a meet up in the future or just to network leave some info
I've heard the aphorism before, but the reason I like this interpretation is that it mentions that "even technical people" make mistakes. I usually take this quote to imply that the people using your products are getting dumber, but here the implication is that as people are getting smarter they'll test your products in ways that you weren't smart enough to think of first. The products need to be safe from the smartest users, not just the dumbest users.
1. It's not a "post", it's a single chapter in a whole book http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ which I'm guessing you won't read because you clearly can't read.

2. I am old compared to a lot of programmers, but yes it was kind of a joke. There's several exercises where people know my age.

3. It's a good thing you're not my target audience. It's a lot harder for me to write in 2nd person passive voice like you're used to reading in all those academic papers you devour.
I got the impression from bartwe's post that the NIH symptoms were confined to personal/learning time.
They don't, but that's a security restriction. They can't give dynamic-codesigning to all apps, or their security (which that disables, as a requirement to enable the JIT) would then be useless.
Yes yes yes:

4. Don’t give me any bullshit homework.

I have a thousands of lines of open source software, created over 8 years of doing open source work... it really does feel like a waste of time when a potential employeer asks me to spend "2 days coding up this thing in C++" as an entrance exam.
1. RIM needs to to stop trying to be Apple. I'm not saying ditch the touch screen completely, but they need to stop following so closely in Apple's product development footsteps.

2. RIM needs to stop being shy about where they manufacture their products. They need to bring manufacturing completely (as in 100%) in to North America and advertise the heck out of that. Apple relies on inexpensive, cheap labor - hit them in the marketing cahones.

3. RIM needs to build a profitable developer marketplace. The only reason anyone cares about iOS Apps is because there is a chance small developers can make a lot of money developing. RIM needs to create a system where developers can easily earn money. From in-app purchases, to a robust in-app ad serving platform to flexible purchasing options, RIM needs to take a giant step back and let a developer develop any app they want and charge any way they want.

4. RIM needs to remember that it is first and foremost, a hardware company. They've never been good at making pretty software that works well. Palm, Handspring, HP, Microsoft, and Apple have all at one time or another beat RIM time and again with software - but rarely hardware. Mobile Internet Devices don't need to be complicated or even revolutionary - they just need to be sturdy, refined and fashionable. Forget about saving money on Curve keyboards, forget about trying to breakthrough some crappy "clicking screen", build really great hardware, even if that hardware doesn't conform to the latest trends.

5. Last, RIM needs to kick cellular providers in the butt. They need to step up where Apple hasn't and make their consumer level data plans inexpensive, open and user friendly.
Ask a silly question, get a silly answer:

for i = 0 to ackerman(list.length, list.length)
pass

return quicksort(list);
I keep /usr in a squashfs, mounted with aufs over top of it, for the 0.01% speedup I probably get (I grew up on gentoo, forgive me). Periodically, I need to rebuild the squashfs to reclaim space in the aufs writable directory.

I once had a script something like this:

mksquashfs /usr /squashed/usr/usr_tmp.sfs -b 65536
umount -l /usr
umount -l /squashed/usr/ro
rm /squashed/usr/usr.sfs
mv /squashed/usr/usr_tmp.sfs /squashed/usr/usr.sfs
rm -rf /squashed/usr/rw/*
mount /squashed/usr/ro
mount /usr

Guess what happens if you hit Ctrl-C during the mksquashfs? That's right, bash runs all the rest too, including the deletion of the old squashfs file. I was left without a /usr, and it was brutal. Managed to recover (it's incredible how resilient a linux system is, as long as /bin and /lib are intact), and immediately put "set -e" in almost every bash script on my machine (I also fixed the script to keep the system in a recoverable state at all times...).
>Bare [sic] in mind that although Android outsells iPhone's,
>Apple still has 40% of the profit of the entire
>smartphone industry.

Bear in mind that RIM probably has more profits in mobile than Google. Would you argue that profits as a metric is still useful in this case?

Usually, unless there are serious switching costs (see Microsoft-of-the-90s), production learning curves (see Exxon), etc, excess profits invite high levels of competition and the mobile market seems pretty crazily competitive and innovative right now. (HTC 3D?! Gimmicky? Sure. Super cool? Totally!)
Have you seen Android 3? I have seen complete laymen choose that over IOS4.
The way IE is reliant on Windows and vice-versa, you can't really draw a clear line separating Windows and IE (at least not security-wise). It's very different with Mozilla and Webkit codebases, where the clean separation exists (as they are both multi-platform). I believe IE's base also carries lots of cruft from previous versions, something that complicates matters even more.

Microsoft did a lot, quite possibly because they had a whole lot to do. No other company has an OS that large (Windows is huge) so tightly coupled to a browser.
Which means that hardcore bootleggers, as always, will spend their money on the hardware that works best for them.
>I don't have any evidence to prove otherwise, but I have a feeling that the raw data is tampered with before release...

Evidence is the currency by which one fulfills burden of proof.

>Why would they up and release data all of a sudden?

You just read an article listing several reasons. All government data is by default public unless related to national security and explicitly upgraded to a higher secrecy level. You could already request to view any of the information being released, but it's cheaper to start moving all public information to one location than to have every agency inconsistently implement its own information handling processes.

It's extremely unlikely the government is coordinating all of its workers to tamper with public disability claims, military recruitment trends, environmental reports, geological surveys, public housing inventories, etc. before posting it on the site.
As the grandparent says, this is a purposeful decision in this community. There's a goal of encouraging useful conversation, not just conversation. I do a lot less posting than I might otherwise and I make sure my comments have content before posting them. This hesitation helps ensure that I'm providing value, not just rambling opinion. Having an online community built around presenting value really is a feature, not a bug.
"Went to the Verizon store to get an iPhone, and walked out with an HTC Thunderbolt. Pretty amazing phone!"

- non-techy Facebook friend of mine a couple days ago.
Blackberry became the big name in smartphones by making emailing dead simple. In the middle part of last decade, that's what mattered. People were mostly used to mobile phones for making calls, the occasional text message, and maybe a stupid game or two.

When RIM made emailing from the road a very simple process, and created an enterprise-class system for businesses, their brand hit its peak. When they tried to leverage themselves into the consumer market, they did have some initial success. But when they were starting to actually jump into the pond--after dipping their toes in--Apple came in and sucker punched the entire market in January 2007.

All of a sudden, big players like RIM were behind the curve, figuratively and, for RIM, literally.

They essentially had a 6-month period to get phones that could compete with Apple and nobody really did a good job. The first iPhone was very vulnerable--no native apps, EDGE, and big price tag--but by the time anyone could offer an iPhone-like experience, Apple had the 3G, native apps, and a lower price tag.

RIM seemed to simply take too long to close their gaps. Their first touchscreen had a hugely misplaced marketing campaign. When RIM released the Storm, they made their SureTouch (or whatever it's called) screen a huge focus. Differentiation is certainly a product strategy, but it seemed like a fairly ridiculous thing to try to base your marketing around. At the time, a lot of people were weary of touchscreens vs. physical keyboards, but the added "value" of the SureTouch didn't come close to a physical keyboard and hindered the use of the touchscreen.

It seems like RIM's major problems were with product design / development, coupled with bad marketing. They controlled the business market, which helped drive the consumer market, and then lost control of it.
Hence the 'not telling the whole story' part. Would Microsoft play politics with something like this? Not saying that's the case, only that one would have to be silly to think they wouldn't.
I believe Google and Mozilla (doesn't Safari support WebGL?) are shipping code that interfaces with insecure GPU drivers.

We cannot, however, discount the incentive Microsoft has in preventing the formation of another standard it can't control. I would consider any info coming from Redmond on this issue to be somewhat exaggerated.

And Windows-specific.
I still use an iPhone as my primary device, but I develop for Android. After the recent WWDC keynote, I'm confident I'm now creating and delivering apps (HD Widgets, Cloudskipper music player) with features that will show up on iOS6 next year.

Apple was once the platform for innovation, but only Android offers that freedom now.
If anyone is hoping for Samsung to value perfection at launch over being one of the first-to-market in every Android form factor, they're holding out for a Galaxy far, far away.

But it seems to be working well (enough) for Samsung. I agree, though, that reviews should always be based on what the reviewer has in-hand. Every review I've read for non-Apple tablets has offered some "benefit of the doubt" that the iPad never got... or needed.
I've gone through http://learnyouahaskell.com/ and it wasn't too hard. About the only difficulty is the pointless and contradictory jargon like "point free" or the hand-waving about Monads and how they violate their purely functional execution model. Never heard of Agda, but then I sort of don't care.

Obviously, there are old programmers who are into programming languages, but they usually sit around writing crappy programming languages that nobody can use because they never ask anyone if their programming languages are usable. You know, kind of like Haskell.
SMS Business text msg marketing business for sale on Flippa
While the idea that Fukushima would be responsible for a 35% increase in infant mortality anywhere in the U.S. strains ones credulity, her being anti-nuclear is not proof of her being wrong

Ehh, no, but...

While ad hominem makes for lousy arguments, when we're dealing with a claim that's already completely freaking implausible, knowing that it comes from an unreliable source is generally enough for me personally to decide it's not worth my time.

If a respected professor of physics claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine then I'll probably take some time to actually investigate it and figure out exactly why it's wrong. If it's some random dude off the street I'll dismiss it without consideration because... well, who has time?
Rather than build the OS themselves, they decided to acquire it. That tells me that RIM is suffering from a lack of creativity and while you can buy your way to innovation(Microsoft has been doing it for more than 20 years) it's always better to develop new technology in house. The fact that RIM didn't for a flagship product is a huge red flag.
sounds like a place to start a business!
If half the world uses your product, at some point you'll stop growing...
Excellent battery life? My iPhone lasts just as long as my girlfriend's Droid X2 does, which is a day if we are lucky.

Currently yes the app store does have all the latest games and that makes sense as iPhone users were previous iTunes users. Unfortunately, i think Android draws more the non music buyers who used p2p and are looking for free ride - not all but a good majority. I think a useful study would be iPhone and their P2P usage(always, rarely - iTunes instead or never pirate iTunes buyer always) vs. Android users & their P2P usage(always, rarely - use iTunes instead or never pirate iTunes buyer always). I think you would see why apps are developed first for the iPhone and sometimes only for the iPhone. Even with a bigger market share Android developers are not making the mint iPhone developers have been and continue to make. iPhone owners are of a different mind-set/demographic (for the most part) i am thinking. Also Android's marketplace is a mess comparatively.

Overall i was an Apple iPhone fanboy but the tons and tons of Android phones are outpacing Apple's prior innovations.
as a performabler (?) i'm really really happy by this too.
What I discovered after this journey of learning is that the languages did not matter.

This sounds a lot like my journey. I was overwhelmed with the details of ~20 programming languages and data formats. Eventually it actually got rather frustrating to work with all of them. Then I discovered Lisp.
O HAI! You found an article about programmers getting respect in Silicon Valley. You totally proved me wrong, since it's exactly like Silicon Valley in...New York.
What's wrong with people making subjective judgments about the work of others in a community they share? You have to have a certain level of karma to down vote, which means (theoretically) you have to have done things that created sufficient value for at least some people and hopefully learned about what the existing group values.
Hrmm, 25%?

I purchased the Linode 512 package a while ago... and
installed an Archlinux image and had it use 100% of the storage capacity. Now, Linode's manager is reporting that I have 80% full... (instead of 75%, as this post would have it)
I got bored with programming so I started studying guitar. Way more fun.
Well they have the EV cert and as far as I know, you can't get one for wildcard domains.
Ask HN: How to start a software company (the basics)?
Looking at 2 possible avenues:

1. Software products and

2. Custom software development in Australia.

I tried Google and got eHow pages and I tried searching HN but didn't find what I was looking for.

I know this is a place about start-ups, but where does one find the basics, from the start? And in Australia?

Software Products:

I am going to develop a product, and host it online. What kind of company do I register for that. What lawyers do I need? If people pay for my product what and where do I get the T&Cs from? How much should I save up before I begin the adventure?

Can I own two companies? Say I want to create a separate company with a couple of graduate developers and we just work on small customised software solutions.

Can I own a parent company that owns these 2?

So many questions, I need a bearing of where to begin.
sigh I wish I had anything good to say to accompany this, but I came here to be as cheeky. If it's as good as I hear, then I could use it ... yesterday. Implementing payment systems as we speak!
Test Tube Meat
> I'm not re-stating a talking point.

Actually, you were. (The credit rating agencies have govt monopolies. They're not disinterested parties. It also doesn't matter what they think because they're not lenders.)

> You (and the Republican party) are setting up a false dichotomy.

I'm not setting up a dichotomy at all. I asked a simple question, namely, how does increasing the US' line of credit make the US a better credit risk? I asked that question because that's your claim. I said nothing about the deficit.

As reducing the deficit "in a responsible way", which lender is saying "I won't loan money to the US govt because it's reducing its social security/military/medicare/medicaid spending?"

Seriously - I want names. Will China reduce its lending? How about you (assuming that you've been buying treasuries).

Yes, lenders care if you skip on repayments, but your argument assumes that they want to continue other spending. Some supporting evidence would be nice.

You seem to have trouble making an argument without using political references....
Bacon Ipsum | A Meatier Lorem Ipsum Generator
Ahhh, thanks. That is just what I was looking for.
At least homeland security is developing some alternative to our transformers when this unfortunate events occurs.
If our best scientific assessments are based on absurdly low-confidence ancillary statistics like these, doesn't that automatically suggest that we shouldn't decide anything based on the results?
I've started about a couple of weeks ago to start unfriending people I haven't interacted with or lost connection with. But going with that article, the first people I unfriended were the "never met in person" category
/me lights up the grellas bat signal.
I doubt you get paid comparable to your contributions to the bottom line. Or, maybe you do. :-)
I realize it's probably early, but can anyone find any layoff numbers? (even vague numbers, on a scale between "a few" and "a boatload" will be accepted)
It's not so much pro-nuclear as it is pro-"scientific progress".
Facebook Stats and other social media metrics
But... how will I know to buy it if Billy Mays (RIP) isn't shouting at me to buy it?
HasOffers: Charging Changes Everything - with Lucas
hahah...About 23 hours to late for me too, would have loved to known about stripe yesterday before I started fighting with paypal and IPN (thanks relix)
I'd be curious to know the longer-term traffic data for sites which do these types of reviews. Folks like us are quick to read these reviews, but I wonder how many regular users are reading them, say, four months down the road. I know when I'm researching a purchase about which my knowledge is nothing noteworthy, the immediate reviews (like this one from Ars) are beneficial to me when compared to later reviews because it enables me to see how the product has developed over time.
Some great points here. I went to school in Waterloo (where RIM is) and worked for 4 months in product design at Apple, so I am pretty aware of the differences between the two companies. Here are my thoughts on your points:

1) Very true. Apple is anal about the smallest details, RIM isn't. RIM has too many products in parallel development to dedicate the kind of resources they would need to match Apple. Just can't happen. Just accept it and come with your own style.
2) I absolutely love this. RIM does have a lot of manufacturing done overseas, but they have a very modern manufacturing facility right in Waterloo. Bring it all here and hype that up. It might flop, but it's a ballsy move that people would appreciate.
3) I am not sure if this is the case anymore, but for a while there, BlackBerry's were being shipped without App World on them. Wtf!
4) I disagree here. Their acquisition of QNX was brilliant. Use the playbook and you realize that it's an entirely different operating system than OS6. I think it could be very successful on their phones.
5) Interesting. Would help to become the low-cost smartphone while keeping margins relatively high.

In my opinion, it all comes down to how well QNX can create a compelling smartphone operating system. Do it well, and RIM will do just fine capitalizing on their legacy customers and getting those who want a keyboard. Screw it up, we might be looking at the next Palm.
Probably a more secure way is to log into your Gmail account, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the "Details" link of the line "Last account activity: 1.5 hours ago on this computer. Details" They show you locations from where your account has last been logged into.