skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This makes the cynical parts of my brain howl with laughter. Apparently problems with the law aren't real problems until they inconvenience rich white financiers!

I mean, if they end up throwing out business-method patents, I'm all for it, but it's very sad that this is yet another political problem whose legislative resolution will be completely unrelated to the merits of the issue. One would prefer a resolution where the best arguments, not the deepest pockets, win an argument.
I'd be interested to know how you are using the Foursquare API to get check-ins. Are you just requesting user check-ins at regular intervals or is it cleverer than that?
Who Will Buy TiVo?
I have to second that notion as well. My current contract is with a regional grocery chain, and it is easily one of the top 5 gigs that I've ever had. Very progressive environment and a TON of data to swim in.
Men can wear skirts, too.
I knew I couldn't be the first. I couldn't find any other previous examples, though. Do you have any to hand? I'm interested in seeing what other people have done :)
Same situation here. I'd love to know if this is ever coming to Apps accounts.
Someone anonymously sent me a copy of this. I still don't know who. Was it you? :)
"Comfortably use" my eye. Web browsers have always been bulky by the standards of their day. I remember using IRIX on a 64MB SGI Indy and cursing. It thrashed swap furiously with Netscape 4.

Today's agony always seems new and fresh, but it never is. I still have some of those old systems sitting around to remind me. The "good old days" were pretty miserable.

Today I have Linux and Firefox and the exact same problems -- in 1G of RAM, which is a comparably low-spec system today to what the Indy was back then. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Strangely, I was thinking the same thing after I wrote the comment. Theoretically, as I have a WP7 and love it, I'd like to see Windows in a car, but I've used the Microsoft Sync in a Ford, and it is HORRENDOUS.

Is QNX a bad OS? Is the playbook software experience somewhat lacking? I don't think so, but I've never used it.

I think RIMs current difficulties are more a problem of lack of vision, which has lead (or I guess wandered) to poor marketing, and hardware in the handset arena which isn't competitive. They've screwed up the developer ecosystem, but will that matter in 5 years?

They need new leadership and flesh blood, but they've already got a few pieces on the board in advantageous or at least competitive positions, now we have to see if they can do anything with it.
If I were in your situation, I'd be speaking with my lawyer to get answers to those questions. Best of luck in getting paid!
Unfortunately, the only recourse is to have an attorney send a letter declaring a plan to file a lawsuit if payment is not made by a given date, which will cost around $300/hr for a few hours. The follow-on lawsuit will cost at least $3K to get started, and more likely $7-10K to close. It's important to note that choosing the lawyer option can cause the client to dig their heels in (they know how much it will cost you to run a lawsuit and might just let you burn the cash in an attempt to call your bluff). Freelance workers often require a retainer or upfront payment to reduce their risk of payment defaults.
Goldman Sachs must be flapping over the PR plus is getting.

Google really do seem to have product momentum - an FB account could very soon be Myspace cool.

Also I sense there is something going on with G/Twitter at the moment - the plus launch and the firehose issue all seem too coincidental - feels like some M&A brinkmanship to me.
Almost unusable?

Your comment is almost unreadable. How can you possibly say that site is almost unusable?! It's so simple. Search works excellently. Site layout is clear, obvious. Fonts are easy to read.

Hell, it's probably a lot more usable than HN.
"C'mon guys. When's the last time Firefox put Chrome on the offensive."

Panorama and GPU acceleration for Firefox 4 come to mind.
Care to point out a serious project with a line break problem?
I'll take one if you still have them. Thanks!
Who wants to live forever? Scientist sees aging cured
Avoid These Mistakes When Pitching Investors
In my view, Facebook is a bit degenerate at this point and not getting better.
"I have to disagree that they are not suitable for the 'non technically savvy'."

I agree. That's why I said "may." It depends both on the nature of the notification, as well as on the sophistication of the user.

The sort of system you described sounds interesting. I'm trying to imagine how turning the whole web page reddish would work for common error/warning notifications. I've got a feeling that it wouldn't work well for the web, but it might be worth experimenting with.

Thanks for the idea!
You're confusing between unusability and unreadability.
Its been over 36 hours for me and I'm still not in.
I prefer headlines with content available on click. Likewise no point without access to comments...
I've seen the phrase "second class citizen" used a lot recently and I usually think it's a bit over the top.

In this case though it seems about right - I'm a total Google fanboy but as an Apps user I'm just not allowed to use their biggest new product!
I must be missing something. When I select the 'view post' on the invite email, the interface tells me that I need an invite. Quite a conundrum!
China Wants To Buy Facebook Stock
Cisco Poised to Help China Keep an Eye on Its Citizens
Absolutely. He wants and expects 'Facebook' and is going to complain every time G+ does something different. Why all the negative anger and hissy fits. Just use Facebook.
Thanks. This is why I have remained very civil so far. Another option is to directly call up the company I was doing the project for which had hired my client. They always liked me on a professional level though I never tried to cut out the party that hired me for obvious ethical reasons.

Someone told me he may be indulging in fire fraud of some kind so I am exploring that angle.
My first step is to write all my ideas in a small notepad as soon as I have them and then I get them out of my head. Then after a month I check these ideas and see if any of them look even better with this distance in time thus validating it with myself.

I have no formula for what's next though.
Why Only One in Four Teens is Employed
I called it a search engine, but it is not supposed to be a google replacement and do general queries. It only finds blogs similar to ones you're already interested in. At this point it's more of a fancy RSS reader with a twist.

I've been wondering whether or not it's best to hide the search box. I decided to hide it because I don't really want people to use it. As you've pointed out, it's not really that good. I'd rather people find blogs similar to ones already on the screen by clicking. That's where the strength of my display comes in, I think.

I wanted to experiment in new search interfaces, but I thought that taking on google directly would simply be too hard. That's why I didn't jump right in to general purpose search.
Oh. Well why would you ask freejack in particular about that? That's not how their security is set up.
> Why not allow a system-wide audit of all business-practice patents, and software patents too

I don't think they have that kind of manpower.
Black Glass.growlStyle
My gmail is in my profile. I would appreciate an invite. Thanks!
Did you read it? This isn't a "your site isn't usable to the 1% of users with motor disabilities" Nielsen article.

WSJ spent money to create an app that, because of one poor piece of text, made existing, paying customers dislike them.

And not for a real reason, like charging them twice, but a misunderstanding caused by bad copy and never testing the app with real subscribers.
The latter doesn't really solve the problem. Folks are still going to see that Firefox is using a lot of memory, even if the OS is now more inclined to swap out pages that are less important.
I don't like that rule. Sure, it sucks when a show you love gets cancelled, but I'd rather have a little bit of something awesome than nothing.

Great example, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a 2005 comedy show written by Aaron Sorkin. It's ratings weren't great and it was canned, but I think it's amazing, and I rewatch that one season at least once a year.
> What if one of them wanted to take their phone number off the site? What if one of them wanted to hide their information from you specifically? If you've downloaded it already you're depriving them of the right to control their own data.

Consider how ridiculous that would sound if you asked "What if one of your friends had emailed you their phone number and wanted to remove your access to it (or had emailed you and wanted to remove your knowledge of their email address)? What if they gave you information in person and now want to hide it from you specifically?"

That's the mental model I, personally, use for social networks: any information you choose to publish on it is fair game for whatever your friends want to do with it (and they can do whatever they want with any information I publish on it). Anyone who does not want to be contacted (or have their contact information exported into other formats - such as the linking of name and email address which is required to email) should not make it available - there's no reason to publish an email if you don't want to be emailed, and no reason to publish a phone number if you don't want to be called.
You are right that interest payment is typically a redistribution of wealth towards the rich.

The interesting thing is that a monetarily sovereign government actually sets its own interest rate, via monetary policy: the interest paid on US treasuries is ultimately a function of the interest rate set by the central bank, i.e. it is a political choice.

This is initially unintuitive, but it follows from developing an understanding of the system from first principles, as is done by Modern Monetary Theory. You can read about it under the heading "What role does the bond market play in all of this?" in this article I already linked to elsewhere: http://pragcap.com/resources/understanding-modern-monetary-s... and also in Randall Wray's book "Understanding Modern Money".

Quite a number of economists in the MMT line of thought actually argue in favour of letting the interest rate drop to zero, and using fiscal policy instead of monetary policy for inflation targeting.

In other words, government debt does not need to be a way of taking from the poor. It is that way as a result of political choice - though I do not think that it was a conscious choice, since people have not really internalised how our monetary system works these days.
No, you're confusing usability with being pretty.
On the very local scale, this map seems to work (the relationship between Leicester Square and its 4 neighbouring stations looks about right).

On a larger scale, it doesn't seem to work. I looked at a few journeys I regularly take on foot: two @ 1 mile, one being about twice as far as the other on the map. Another two @ 2.5 and 3 miles, which were 4 and 5 times the distance of the shorter mile, respectively.
Beautiful data - thanks for this. I've been coaxed into making a presentation to some other students here, and I'm collecting graphical data to make it more interesting. Appreciated!
Mostly to indicate tempo and style. A 3/4 measure and a 6/8 measure are the same length, but the 6/8 has twice as many beats at twice the rate. So a composer would use a 6/8 signature for a faster-moving piece with a lot of eighth notes. Similarly, a slow piece would have a 2/2 signature instead of 4/4.
I like Facebook because it's just my friends (since it requires a two way confirmation)

You may use Facebook like that, but lots of people don't. The majority of Facebook users have 300...400...800 friends. Very very very few people are actually friends with 500 people in real life. I trimmed my friend list down from 380 to 40 a couple months ago and it's already crept back up to 60ish.

I think part of the genius of G+ is that it isn't a two way mutually agreed on relationship. You get to decide what you share with who. Facebook you're either friends, or your not. Everything generally gets shared with everyone of your 800 friends. Thats not the case on G+.
AFAIK, it is currently not a crime within the United States, although there is legislation in the pipeline to make streaming a felony[1]. These websites rely on having links to the copyrighted content, rather than hosting it themselves.

[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071913-17/senate-group-b...
As the tau manifesto discusses, "half tau" is the more meaningful answer: the area of a circle is equal to the area of a triangle whose base is the circumference and whose height is the radius.
The Broken Promises of MRI/REE/YARV
Telecommunications, utilities (electric/gas/oil/water) & networking, and supporting fields (they need programmers, engineers, and admins for all this infrastructure).
I'd love an invite. Email is: aayushu [at] gmail [dot] com
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship
It's a perfectly valid reaction, just not a valid comment on HN. This page is clearly for people who want to discuss this topic, if you're not one of those people, don't click the link.

Ironically, I'm sure you don't go into every single topic on HN and comment when you don't care about the subject, yet you complain about the hype that made you bother to write a comment about it.
Indeed. I only see information about a €500,000 investment and creation of at least five jobs as a way to get residency.
I definitely liked the presentation. I won't tell you my opinion about your business, though. The thing about the ebay business model is, that it acts as a market place (like Amazon), but actually is more a social network (for people who want to buy and sell stuff). Thus your main problem is the "empty disco effect". Nobody wants to join a disco, that is empty and so a disco stays empty. Only if a certain amount of people starts using your service, you will get others to join in. Some of your weapons of choice are viral marketing (like Dropbox: bribe them to invite their friends + have a great product at hand that they want to show off with), integrating into a big social network (like Farmville or in some way "Angry Birds") and buying + integrating niche networks that do already, what you want to do (no example at hand). Of course other ways are also possible. How do you want to tackle that social threshold?
6/8 really has two beats in a bar, each beat containing three quavers, while 3/4 has three beats in a bar.
I could not agree more. This is a pointless group. They should focus much more time money and effort on spreading word to the media indicating the implications of this. I seriously doubt any tactics these guys do will have any effect.

Basically kids will never care. To them "personal info" is harder to understand than money. And money is already a problem. The only thing you can do is appeal to their parents. The parents won't care because they don't want kids messing with the toy anyways so it won't break. Its a problem.

The only way to win is to vote with your wallet. Just don't buy nintendo products. And make sure nintendo knows that you are boycotting them. That's all.
Chrome also allows you to access native code in extensions using NPAPI plugins: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/npapi.html
I agree with teaching Tau first. Personally, it took me at least a week to begin to understand radians, and almost a month to understand it pretty well. Tau is more intuitive than Pi in this case.
US claims all .com and .net websites are in its jurisdiction
Can you explain what made you in despair? I don't understand what I did wrong this time.
I can't say getting the reference makes me feel very mature but, Misaka is an anime heroine with psychic powers... that uses shorts under her skirt.
The "braces on separate lines" style contributes to a line break problem, in my opinion. If you use this style and have nice, concise methods and/or functions, the extra lines added for each start brace can take up a noticeable amount of your code window's real estate.

There are other code style choices that increase line count which I dislike for the same reason, this is just the first one that came to mind.
That makes a lot of sense, knowing what (little) we know about how creativity and connectivity work in the brain. Memories interact with each other and with the outside world, and that just doesn't happen when stored externally.

I can definitely say I've been feeling the effects of my "hard" knowledge gradually being replaced by pointers and references in the last 15 years. And it's not just that horrible "smartphone dies -> IQ drops X points" effect, but also declining creativity - regardless of my smartphone's battery.

So yeah, I agree this is probably a stage in our evolution and will be a non-problem once we upload to the net, but what can we do until then?
AT&T Adds iPhone to Insurance Offerings
While the improvements they're promising are certainly a Good Thing, one bit jumps out at me:

"introduced a significantly improved about:memory page with buttons that can manually trigger garbage collection (GC) and cycle collection (CC)... hitting these buttons repeatedly — or by hitting “Minimize memory usage”, which triggers both processes three times in a row — you can reduce Firefox 6′s memory footprint significantly."

Really? Really, guys? That is a wincingly strong code smell. Why is it necessary to press the button more than once? Why is it necessary to press the button at all? I appreciate that it's hard to get all of this working correctly, but that's a clunker of a design - it tells me that this feature does not actually work, but instead kinda-sorta-maybe works. Something like that should, pardon the cliché, Just Work - it is way out of the scope of things you should have to care about while browsing.
The VC product is broken for 99% of founders and I want to fix it
First, how Nielsen came to conclusion that the reason for the app's bad rating is its startup screen design is beyond me. Read the comment of cageyjames. That could be the reason.

Second, usability isn't a science. So it's vulnerable to criticisms.
If you could spare an invite, my email is in my about section. I appreciate your offer. Thanks!
They recently added +1 metrics in Webmaster Tools. Not ideal, but it's better than nothing...
This bill doesn't require that the government audit the financial industry business patents, but rather lets the financial industry lawyers challenge the patents in court (currently patents have a presumption of validity that would prevent this in many cases). So it would be Google and Microsoft's lawyers that would be doing this.
It's a poll, it's asking for people's reactions. If you exclude options, people or opinions it's selection bias.

If you want to know what people think, ask broad questions and listen to the answers. Asking questions like this where you specifically exclude some points of view means you'll get "data" that statistically worthless.

Well, even more worthless than the usual polls on HN.

I'm sure lots of people on HN are all very excited about Google+. Fine, I'm happy for them. Really. It's just that they're currently like puppies, pissing about all over the place. I'm doing my best to ignore it all, but it's not easy.

But I'll do what some people clearly want and go away now.
Well, when the front page is covered in Google+ stories since it launched, I think its fair to voice disapproval at the hype.
Because the micro-pulse of 6/8 is different than 3/4. 3/4 is naturally emphasized as "1 2 3 1 2 3. In contrast, 6/8 is naturally emphasized with a micro pulse of 1 2 3 4 5 6, which produces a strong pulse on 1, a slightly weaker pulse on 4, and a macro pulse of "1 2. (Think 4/4 with triplets). You thus get a much different feeling from 6/8 than 3/4.
Hacking Office Printers To Steal Data & Burn Paper
Mixpanel is looking for front-end devs who want help build real-time analytics.
But nobody, no man and no woman want to take an upskirt shot of that...
Let’s turn the tables for once
Lately, it seems like getting a [paying] job as a programmer has become much harder than what it used to be.
I send out resumes, get called for interviews, solve programming quizzes, do mini projects, and everything goes great. Some companies even brought me out from LA to spend time with them.
I just can’t seem to get a straight answer from anyone. I also say this, because I’m:

• An expert in Front End coding, and x-browser compatibility issues,

• Really really good with PHP (and specifically CodeIgniter),

• Very good with Flash and Actionscript (see github.com/obsesh),

• Can write test units (if you’re into test-driven dev),

• Contribute to open-source projects, including Firefox,

• Entrepreneurial; co-founder of Obsesh,

• And willing to relocate!

Here are some examples of recent websites I made:
obsesh.com, thierrybearzatto.com, and svveetdesign.com

Having gone through dozens and dozens of hoops, I’ve decided to try turning the tables around.
Instead of solving other site’s programming puzzles, I’m going to post my own. Interested in hiring me? Drop me a line:

011011010110100101100011011010000110000101100101011011000100
000001110011011000110110100001101111011011100110011001100101
011011000110010000101110011011110111001001100111
link to hiring thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028
Another odd thing about this effort, is that it solves a problem that doesn't exist any more.

The TFL Journey planner will take you from anywhere in London to anywhere else in London using the most appropriate route; Google directions include both public transport and pedestrianism; GPS is on a lot of people's phones; and Legible London fixes the problem for the technophobic.
Definitely needed yet another Google+ link on the front page.
In the US it costs maybe a couple hundred bucks and a week or so to set up an LLC and an S-corp(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_corporation). How much would this cost and how long would it take in the EU?
You're going to get a huge amount of selection bias in a poll like this. The people most likely to try out Google+ are the ones who were already looking for an alternative to Facebook.
Here is what is wrong with the "anti-tauist" rants:

They take a bunch of people who already learned the subject and presume that those people are experts a teaching said subject. These people always assume that the way they learned is best, because "dammit, it was good enough for me". They just can't see any other way.

Sadly, this ignores all of the other people, who may be capable of understanding and properly using the subject if presented in a different way.

For pedagogical purposes, Tau is worth a shot, if it helps some people get to the point that they realize "for the math the constant doesn't matter".

Just like anything else: try to teach broadly, and let the experts do the adjusting, not make the novice bend to the expert's will or be damned.
90 Law Professors sign letter in opposition to Protect IP Act
Whew! For a second, I thought we'd have a day without another endless series of Google+ advertisements--er, links.
Right now, I "prefer" Facebook because none of the invites people have sent me have even appeared in my Gmail inbox yet.

I wouldn't mind so much if the invites were there in my inbox and I clicked on them and the system just didn't let me in yet. But going silent is annoying, because:

ME: "Dude, send me a Plus invite!"
FRIEND: "I already did, idiot!"
ME: "I haven't received a thing!"
If I may go back a few years...

If my number is listed in the 1995 local big yellow phonebook but then I choose to have it unlisted in the 1996 phonebook, is it wrong for someone with the older phonebook to have my phone number?
It would be awesome to see something like this that tracked the frequency of languages / frameworks desired over time.
Thanks for the offer. I'd like to try out g+ if you have any invites left.
Better link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/03/us-anti-pir...
I'd appreciate an invite - email in about