skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can reliably say that a robotic car will stop for unexpected objects in the roadway it detects with radar, visible and infrared light 100% of the time that it is physically possible, regardless of traffic, lighting or mood. What's your hit rate on that?

You're giving "human instinct" a whole lot of undeserved credit here.
This argument about 'they' being acceptable seems to have become extremely popular in the last couple months (or maybe I just didn't notice it before then). I find it to be unconvincing at best.

I think that "aks"[1] instead of "ask" has wide usage and goes back a long, long way and yet I suspect that if you here someone say or write "Let me aks you a question" you would think they were completely wrong.

Just because Shakespeare used a word a certain way doesn't mean that it's usage is acceptable.

[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aks
My take on CoffeeScript
It is probably a safe bet to assume the parent knows this.
Swartz isn't accused of an "orange juice crime". But I agree that nobody should be throwing stones at him.
Nice! I'd love to see it in a few months.
I realized one point regarding patents that I haven't thought of before. Patents shouldn't be transferable or saleable.

A patent should be nominated to its inventor personally and for a company to profit from it they would have to connect with that person. They could employ him or otherwise compensate him for being able to do things that were patented.

This would diminish possibilities for all kinds of trickery and return the power back to the actual inventor. A company who wishes to invest in patents would have to compensate these inventors more than fairly to reach an agreement where the inventor only licenses the patent to that company. Futile, bogus, or useless patents wouldn't be paid for so nobody wouldn't bother to file them. Inventors would have a big financial incentive to invent things that are truly good enough to be worth somebody paying for them.
I am sorry you think that way. I think it is beautiful to be able to do what life has done.

Nature has had billions of years to perfect her design, and we've only been trying for a few hundred years. I'd say that is pretty good considering.
I think that phenomenon might have more to do with the fact that the general public doesn't understand technology well enough to know when enforcing a patent on something (or granting one) is and isn't ridiculous.

I forget the details, and I might be wrong, but I think with the whole Microsoft XML file format suit thing, the suit boiled down to a company claiming they had a patent on using XML for document type file formats. But that's the whole point of XML, to be used as a general purpose markup language, to markup whatever you want. It's ridiculous to attempt to patent that when it's the whole point of XML to begin with. But the general public doesn't really know what XML is or what its for, so no one realizes how crazy it is.

If, on the other hand, someone tried to patent putting a doorknob on a door that leads into a postal office, as opposed to some other kind of building, everyone would realize how ridiculous it was. Because people know what doors and doorknobs and postal offices are.
A New Two-Factor Mobile Solution from Confident Technologies
Before anyone makes a comment here I implore you to listen to this past weekend's This American Life. Here's a handy link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/w...

More on-topic: they finish off the show by pointing out that Lodsys's registered address (104 E Houston St. #190) is the same as Oasis Research, a front company for Intellectual Ventures: the ultimate patent troll and the focus of the entire show.
Choosing the Right Linux Distro for Your Business - Datamation
Pentagon discusses armed counterstrikes to cyberattacks - CSMonitor.com
Huh? iOS runs on Linux?
"mens rea" means that there was knowing intent to commit a crime. Clearly there was mens rea is this case as steps were taken to circumvent and conceal the act. mindcrime's point is that your comment suggests the crime could be escalated based on some possibility that the defendant might commit a more serious crime. This more serious crime was of course not committed, thus making it a crime of thought.
If they sell this at $49 with a 2-year data plan contract - would rock! Two reasons:

1 - This is a brick if you don't have internet.

2 - This is a brick if you can't use it on road. People have internet at homes.

So consistent always on internet with a very low buy-in cost would probably be better, imo. I mean, this thing needs to sell as a complete experience.
The article was meant to be forward looking -

"You see, we are almost certainly moving towards"

I don't think the vision is practical if you have to continuously plug/unplug your devices. The wirelessHD spec has theoretical data rates up to 25Gb.

Latency matters for user input ( keyboard/mouse) which is already accommodated at much lower bitrates, so I wouldn't expect it to be much of an issue.
what kind of car was he driving?

I know it says BMW...but I can't really imagine getting killed by a car that's already slowed down enough due to rolling. Unless it was a convertible, then I can somewhat see it...but even then it's kinda hard to imagine as well
Up(Film) Remix
Wait. Then how are you settings stored in the cloud?
With individuals self-driving, we get a certain number of unrelated accidents, injuries and fatalities.

With computer controlled cars we'll have zero day hacks and crashes, viruses, and near simultaneous accidents all due to the same unpatched bug.

I would never leave the house on Wednesdays in such a world.
50 Google +1s on sale at SEO shop for $9.99
>All of these browsers are part of the OS of both desktop and mobile platform providers. Mozilla has no platform. There is no Mozilla OS on either a desktop or a mobile device.

>Without it Mozilla will never have the "special relationship" that these other browser's enjoy with their parent's OS. How can Mozilla compete?

absence of this "special relationship" is the major reason (technically-wise, not politically) i'm using it.
Not to be confused (as I was) with OpenSPARC.

http://www.opensparc.net
Ok, IANAL, but I don't see the connection. My understanding of the use of "mens rea" in criminal law was that it referred to the necessity of intent, in order to qualify an action as a crime. I've never understood it to mean that intent - by itself - can be considered a crime.

My point above is that if Aaron did not actually distribute the files to bittorrent, then making any relevance of his intent to do so, is "thought crime." And as you can no doubt gather, I would consider such a thing to be total bullshit. That is, bullshit vis-a-vis my personal view of a sort of universal ethics... not necessarily with with regards to US government statutes.
New Free Help Authoring Tool
My First Time With A Social Game: A Painful Experience
Why Do Viral Videos Go Viral?
Yep. The whole 'business model' of his website is based off of Facebook's success. He definitely has a vested interest here.

I also think it is simply too early to define what Google+ is or what niche it serves best. A lot of these criticisms could be said about Facebook when it was in its early stages too (no brand profiles, lack of returning users, etc).
Without real names, G+ will become Yahoo Pulse. Won't help anyone.
I've found a reference to it in Jean Bacon's Concurrent Systems. She calls it "quorum assembly", but I can't find any other references with that name (slides on cl.cam.ac.uk are by her, or influenced by her work.) I'm afraid it is probably an idea that has been had many times.

The write quorum (number of nodes you must talk to to do a write) must be > n/2. The read quorum plus the write quorum must be > n (otherwise you can read from outside the write quorum).

So the n=3 case is simple, RQ=WQ=2 as you suggested. I think it wasn't very successful in larger cases because n/2 isn't much better than n, and you have to do some kind of synchronisation between the nodes which is tricky to get write (consider how the write nodes know the other write nodes have done the write.)

In practice, hierarchical schemes where you are reading from a slave which might be behind the master are more common. There you can have 1 write node and n read nodes. Since reads are generally more common than writes, this is great.
The making of the bird:

http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/11369_11468.htm#id_11468
I think that was the problem...
And your bug reports just sit there, with people popping in every few months saying they have the same problem and asking for help... but nothing ever comes of it.
I wholeheartedly applaud this. It makes the "student discount" less necessary too.

I think this will help me get a few more people to show up, too.
In an ideal world commonsense would prevail and there would be no such thing as software patents, but in the real world perhaps a software patent meltdown of the kind you describe would focus minds.
Best answer I'd say. I wonder how many people think they are running a 'startup' when it is actually just a 'company'?
Kumpulan Sms Ramadhan 2011
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Stay in school and utilize the school's resources to build your startup-- people, office space, tools, a huge market, etc. When you have milked the school for what it's worth and your startup is ready to expand outside of your college, quit.
RepLab - the Open Source Fab Lab - HackerspaceWiki
And that's what I said about implying the victim, somehow, caused the abuse, that the victim actually wanted to be abused.
From what I read in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unite... I can certainly conclude that death penalty is commonplace. A majority of the states keep it legal.
I don't have an iPad though. I like to have a keyboard for typing if I have the option.
Yes, that sort of DOM "cookbook" is scarcely worth the paper it's printed on.
I think the GP was referring to the broader case of Lodsys going after iOS Apps developers. The fact that they kicked it up a notch and went for larger companies with this move only increases the likelihood that more companies will feel that they are not immune to patent trolls.
duplicate of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2802303
That is an incredible amount of money. Though I may not agree with raising that much, I am really excited to see what they do with it!
Swift U.S. action on debt needed in global interest: IMF
Don't forget that Amazon has already worked out their margins for books and spent a long time convincing publishers to list most books under ten dollars. Along comes Apple and demands 30% off the gross. I don't know if Amazon had any choice but to remove the store.
Is it a physical address or one of those "2000 companies registered at the same address for tax reasons" deals?
Perspectives: A Conversation with Steve Blank
I like how in #1 he says, "Don't just do what others are doing!", then goes on in #2 to say, "You don't have to be original! Google wasn't the first search engine!"

Google is a good example, in fact, because they followed #1, #3, #4, and quite possibly #2 (a search engine that doesn't suck? How novel!). There also might be doses of #5 sprinkled throughout Google's work.
A contrary but constructive and well-written opinion isn't a crisis for your karma. But you better get ready to spend some of it if you bad mouth Apple...
Mozilla Ensures Future of Firebug
Such a hugely promising area of research. Also consider something even finer grained, adjusting optimization options on individual blocks of code at run-time or through instrumented binaries using genetic algorithms. It could revolutionize optimization.
While I don't doubt there will be exploits, we already have a great deal of computer automation in vehicles, and one way they prevent potential hacks of the system is by making it one-way only. Plus, car manufacturers are actually being proactive about protection. More info: http://www.caranddriver.com/features/11q2/can_your_car_be_ha...
You should pay them to upvote this story :)
OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over
According to the Federal government? Yes.

"US Smash!" and all that jazz.
I am too old to be interested in visiting colleges, and too young to have children of college age, so I personally would not be interested in such a tour.

At my alma mater, a group of former students created their own tour: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hahvahd_tour As far as I know, their business model is different that yours in that their focus is on history and tourists, as opposed to campus life and prospective students.

I also think that you are considering charging too little for what is essentially a private tour by an experienced guide. The Hahvahd people seem to charge about $10/person for their public tours, but I remember seeing groups of 50+ tourists being led by a single guide.
Sure, but I think the OP is right that the pricing makes it pretty unattractive given its limited benefits.
I'm a little sad for RIM and would like to support a Canadian company but in the end they just aren't able to adapt. I don't think they ever will unless there is a management change. Seriously a tablet that can't receive email Nativity? That's what they were know for yet they can't use there strength right. QNX is a decent system, open it up, let others use it, in the end they won't be able to stop the tsunami of apple and android without help, other manufacturers using their QNX platform could help.
Downvoted ONLY because of the sniveling caveat at the end.

People need to stop doing this.
IOS reading apps begin ditching outside store links
> one could argue this opens the door for other bad
> behavior at OSCon

It's already been happening though. It's not like leaving it out of writing preventing incidents from happening.
Amazon should add an embedded safari, and allow the user to set a home page. Then I could just home page the online store, and have in-app-esqe purchasing.
A day after the big news in tech was about patents, the TAL episode and Intellectual Ventures and they pull another crazy patent lawsuit, just to drive the point home.

They are making themselves a big target. Those that didn't really follow patent news previously likely all know now who Lodsys/IV etc. are and what they are up to.

I hope these cases lead to reform of the entire system.
Guido punctuates with more emoticons than a 14 year old girl. :)
Is President Obama’s presidency at risk over the debt talks?
Apple soon to be most valuable company in the world
as a former multi-year employee of a formerly glorious company that fell victim of its self-denial to recognize a paradigm shift i can say that employees can blame only themselves.
>This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm.

>That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so.

Hyperbole? Driving is dangerous, on that we are agreed, but the activity in your example is far, far, far more dangerous. There is obviously some standard of danger at which we no longer ban people from doing things: you aren't allowed to shoot at people, but you are allowed to carry a gun in the first place, and even regardless of your own intention this admits the possibility that someone insane might steal your gun and shoot innocent people.

So I don't think that valuing the freedom to control your own vehicle can be immediately dismissed as absurd. The apparent danger of driving is exaggerated by the astounding safety of modern life: at no point before 1900 did any human enjoy anything remotely approaching a modern standard of safety. In industrialized countries, the vehicle fatality rate is commensurate with or below the suicide rate. The number of people who enjoy the freedom of driving is massive, essentially the entire adult population of those countries, and so this common experience perhaps should not be ignored.

Some of -- but not all of -- the value in freedom is reflected in the potential for damage in non-freedom. If some external agent controls the mobility of the population, the potential for abuse is massive.
> mass transit ... densely populated areas

In America, we have a choice of where we want to live. Do we take the .011%/yr chance we will die in an auto accident and also have a large house, yard, and live in a safer neighborhood for our kids? Or do we live in the higher-crime urban center, but ride mass transportation? He tragically lost on these odds, and it is a sad day for his family and humanity.

I have a friend who commutes to work via motorcycle, so he can spend an extra 40 minutes a day with his kids versus driving a car. Or hours better than mass transit.

But, you are correct that drivers need to pass stricter testing and it needs to occur regularly, but since the majority of voters are bad drivers and could very well lose their licenses, it will always be opposed.
Certainly not. All of the top-rated comments in this thread express a negative opinion of Apple's policies.
CSS tip: Spot unsized images during development
I don't think I've ever read an explanation of why Apple requires this. Is it the 30%? or is it a user experience thing? has Apple written up why this policy exists?
Three hours and no one has jumped on this one?

Keep passwords as encrypted for security. Decrypt them in application when required

DON'T encrypt passwords, use a good one-way hash. Actually, just use [s|b]crypt.
So if I were to try to scrub photos accessible to me with a valid username and password from Facebook, (btw Facebook makes millions annually off its users viewing photos) I would be hacking?
Saying that someone is 'doing it wrong' on a social network is doing it wrong. The average user isn't going to think deeply about this stuff.
> Latency matters for user input ( keyboard/mouse)

Not really, as long as those latencies stay significantly sub-second they're invisible to users. These latencies matter for everything but user input.
Hacking On A Dime: Sqlmap Introduction - SQL Injection Walkthrough
Trespass still wouldn't be a federal offense, it would be a state issue. He isn't being charged with trespass.
10 'great' tech products that really weren't
esr also keeps a close eye on the developments in the mobile phone market. His latest blog post on this is at http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3493 , a short quote:

"Nokia’s strategy, insofar as it’s actually had one since the tie-up with Microsoft, has been to hang in there on volume sales of dumbphones until it could deliver world-beating WP7 handsets. The major risk here, other than the wild unlikelihood of WP7 ever becoming anything consumers actually want, was that the Chinese electronics industry would undercut them on price-performance. I predicted this would happen, it is happening, and Nokia’s disastrous July earnings call is the result."
Asus is going to sell(presumably) the eee x101 running MeeGo for 200$, with decent specs for a "net oriented" computer(1 core Atom, 1GB RAM, 8GB SSD), so aren't manufacturing limitations what drive them away from that price tag. May be Google doesn't want to be identified with the somewhat crappy experience that low end hardware may deliver, just as they don't want Android to be associated with cheap smartphones, but with the iPhone competitors.

Which would be silly because their "OS" is much more limited than Windows 7, even the Starter version, and its only compelling feature would be to run on much cheaper hardware.
Pareto. They bought in their PDF engine from Foxit. Their product is fast, lean, truly multiplatform and has countless man-years invested in dealing with bugs and quirks.

Google are exceptionally good at identifying problems that matter. They invest heavily in the stuff that yields the greatest results. When there are still so many glaring problems in web browsing, implementing a PDF engine from scratch is wasted effort.
That's what I don't get: in a social network where you only receive updates from people you have subscribed, how can spammers affect the experience?
This makes sense, the landscape was very different. Cassandra wasn't something I would have used back then either.
" as long as those latencies stay significantly sub-second"

exactly.

You can't really state that something doesn't matter, and then give criteria under which it doesn't matter. That implies that it does matter, and the solution needs to be engineered within spec.

I'd also be interested in some examples of the "everything else" cases in which latency is a big deal ( within the given context).
Watch out with this. If you auto-fix a Java program, the result is that none of the original code survives; it's rewritten from scratch in Scala!
"If you're maintaining an open source product that is meant for mainstream distribution then please do not do this, fixing bugs is not about closing tickets, it is about improving a product."

MySql is an open source project, but Oracle is not an open source organization, it's the biggest of BigCorps, with performance reviews, raises, 360s and for all I know 720s. I'm sure that bugs closed is someone's performance metric, and as we know, that which gets measured gets done.
Why should they have shame? This is exactly how the system works. They are abusing the system in the same way that companies like Apple and Microsoft have been, the latter just seem to have a soft spot in some people's hearts.

We need a patent nuclear war. This needs to end. BRING IT ON LODSYS. May every patent holder in every nook and cranny start cashing in.
>Such flamebait is not appropriate.

In this particular case, the death penalty is relatively commonplace. As in, using OECD as a benchmark, the US executes more people than the average OECD member. I wanted to illustrate the contrast between the American and Norwegian legal systems, not make a statement about the use or validity of the death penalty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty#Global_distributi...
I'm aiming at $30 for a 1.5 hour tour

only you and your family are on the tour

Does that mean you'd only collect $30 per tour? If so, the most you could ever make is $20/hour. After factoring in time between tours, unbooked time, etc., it would probably be a lot less. That doesn't leave much to pay your tour guides with.
The next Rovio game I'd like to see: "Angry Nerds", where you hurl enraged developers at patent trolls and the structures under which they take cover (causing very satisfying damage, of course).
http://www.google.com/patents/about/7620565_Customer_based_p...
Posession with intent to distribute is an actual statutory crime (written explicitly to make prosecution easier for the cops)

There is no generalised "intent to" law, there would need
to be an actual seperate crime of posession with intent to distribute academic articles.

So "mens rea" is not enough to convict without action unless there is a specific exception. And in general even the police try not to rely on the intent laws - which is why bank robbers get nicked after robbing the bank, and why we have such convoluted anti terrorist laws.
Wow, that's just mind-blowingly wrong.
For a government website, this looks really good. As many have mentioned, incorporating red into buttons and the like would work better to draw the eye.
Monroe or Einstein?  Instant eyesight check.
Developing Enterprise scale web applications with an Agile mindset
You could always make another graph that includes confidence intervals! (Please)