skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree that making web pages takes a lot of testing on different browsers and OSes. And that, as you said, there is no write-once-run-anywhere in software. But I think we should minimize the problem, not make it worse. Having the same JS TTS gets you much closer to the ideal, using system TTS gets you farther.

I do agree that a native library will have better performance, I am estimating something like 3-5X faster in the near future. So that is a benefit to the system TTS approach. But even the fairly unoptimized version in this online demo isn't too slow to be useful, I don't think, and it can be made much faster if necessary. I haven't focused on speed yet.

My concern with each OS having its own voices is that the names of the voices aren't enough to know what your users will hear. Unless we have a standard for TTS that includes the actual voice data, otherwise say "male UK English" may sound very different on different platforms.

It's clear there are tradeoffs here, both ways, and you make sound points. But I prefer the JS TTS approach, unless you are writing something like an iPad-specific app. If you don't care about other platforms, then I agree, system TTS is better.
1) computing arbitrary polynomials is all you can do to data. Everything you do is somehow adding two numbers together, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing. At the very very worst, this is all your computer is doing - you could implement a computer on top of the encryption scheme. It would be horrendously wasteful, but it would work, and that's what really matters in all this. Improvements will come, or computers will speed up.

2) >The result I get is still encrypted, but since there are only 128 possible values for an ascii character, I can encrypt each of these values and compare the result to the result of my computation.

And that's why keys of one byte are a bad idea. Bad in symmetric, bad in asymmetric, just plain bad. This same attack is true for any block-level encryption - it doesn't make them insecure. And homomorphic encryption needs, if I remember right, enormous relatively-prime numbers. Like, gigabytes worth. We're not talking small keys here.

3) The most dangerous part about using homomorphic encryption is that, necessarily, how you operate on the data reveals something about the data (and the search). Say you're Google, and you repeatedly see sequential access on blocks 123-345, 346-356, and 357-789. You can make a pretty strong claim that those are separate blocks of data that have been encrypted. The more you do to your encrypted data, the more someone else gets a peek at what you're doing. A very obfuscated peek, but a peek nonetheless. Add enough peeks, and you can get quite a bit of information. Or try something like a search through a binary search tree - the early locations you access will be touched by many processes, in a linear fashion, always with branching behavior. What kind of data does it look like?

But there are ways to combat this as well. If you're going to access 123-345, grab pieces out of it and others at random, overlap the edges, and split it across multiple operations. On the receiving edge, just toss out everything extra. All that can be seen is that you accessed a lot of data, but they don't know which ones were important (unless you were truly random, and then statistically the edges of that block can be seen).
Weekend project to save ctrl+c/v-ing addresses when coding cross-browser support. Would love any and all feedback.
What are good keyboards for programming?
Obviously both is best, but you're not always going to find someone passionate about the business. You should never compromise on finding someone passionate about the code though.
Bootstrapping an Ultra Low Latency Trading Firm, Part 1
What You Need to Know About the Internet Snooping Bill
Website Mobilier - CMS - Ecommerce | Magazin online si CMS | Crom.ro Store
If this kind of thing keeps happening, isn't Bitcoin inherently deflationary? With gold, for example, only a small proportion is ever permanently "lost"; even shipwrecks can be recovered in the future. And of course more gold is always being dug up. But if bitcoins from a fixed set are slowly being lost in various ways, irreparably shrinking the money supply, it seems like it'd have trouble being a viable long-term currency.
it seems so https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/v1_9_3_preview1/ChangeLog#...

Notice this does not solve rails becoming slower every release (I recently recovered a 1.2 project and it runs the tests something like five times faster then a fresh one with 3.0)
Inside Match.com
> one of my friends "had CFS" and was "cured"... she had anaemia

Just so we're clear, this point is not in debate at all. There are indeed many possible causes of fatigue which need to be looked into. I'm sure many of them get lumped into the catch-all category of CFS before someone realizes there is a less obscure cause than EBV/HHV-6 infection.

On the other hand, my case was characterized by two phenomena which, AFAIK, are quite specific for EBV/HHV-6. (And yes, I mean "specific" in the statistical sense: they are rarely associated with any other condition, and thus, as diagnostic cues, would generate few false positives.) The first is the fact that my symptoms began after a flu-like illness, and were clearly not present before that illness. The second is that I would have the symptoms as much as 48 hours after exercise. I'm not a doctor or medical researcher, but I have yet to hear of another disease with that property. Many illnesses make exercise unpleasant, but they tend to do so at the time the exercise is taking place, or right afterwards. A 48-hour delay is bizarre. (My SWAG(†) is that it has to do with the release of growth hormone during the post-exercise recovery process. Growth hormone triggers neurogenesis, among other things, and I suspect that the virus is somehow taking advantage of or interfering with neurogenesis. Just a thought.)

(† SWAG = Scientific Wild-Assed Guess)

> Given that CFS is not defined, I would strongly challenge anyone claiming that such-and-such is "proven" with regards to it.

Fair enough, but cfshacker also has a point: some doctors have tried for years to treat CFS as a "mental illness", with very limited success.

Now to the main point:

> I strongly agree with you that mental illnesses have a very strong physical component, if not being completely physical.

Well, if that's where you're coming from, why even use the term "mental"? If you think that your condition was rooted in a neurotransmitter imbalance or something like that, why not just say that? Then we're not debating whether it had an organic cause, we're just debating what kind of organic cause.

The irony is, I absolutely do believe in psychosomatic illness. But I believe its causes are emotional. If the cause is actually physical, it seems to me this contradicts the very definition of "psychosomatic".

EDIT: formatting.
Realized this would be a much larger effort than a single HN reply or a single blog post would justify, so I am starting a blog series on this. First post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2829116
No sir, Ruby is dead slow for my needs. For the things we work on, it can be used for some scripts here and there but that's it.
The Constitution is not about direct democracy at all, it's setting up a parliamentary republic. And the drafting of it involved a lot of online feedback and participation, but was ultimately written by a committee of 25 people.

Some noteworthy aspects: It guarantees universal health care, the President is elected with preferential voting (where voters rank their choices 1,2,3,etc.), and to amend the Constitution, Parliament must pass a bill and then a vote is held within 1-3 months. It's also possible for Parliament to unilaterally amend the Constitution, but only with a 5/6th super super majority.
Awesomium (embeddable browser)
Wow, this is truly nice! People gathering around, commenting and voting, singing kumbaya!

Until someone games the system. Heavily. Then it ends.
Given this type of code directly makes or loses money, it's effectiveness for it's intended purpose is already directly measured.

Whether it's "good code" or not from a technical perspective, if one guys pile of crap code works the market 10x better than the other guys, who has "better code"?
Yea- why would BTC translate to BTC, but "kwote" translates to EUR?
This is not actually true. If you Stop an EBS-root EC2 instance, the EBS Volume can be safely detached and moved along to other instances, or you can restart the instance and your data will be ok.
Additionally, There's no excuse for not snapshotting your EBS volumes of any sort, and these snapshots persist beyond the lifetime of the volume.
I find it just a little sad that relatively few (less than all) EBS customers don't snapshot their volumes.
am i being dumb? what does the size of the key have to do with knowing that there's only a small range of possible values (and then encoding each and checking for equality)? isn't this more likely addressed by random ivs (or whatever the equivalent is)?
I actually regret upgrading at this point mainly because of Mission Control. 2d spaces and painfully slow switch-screen animations has hurt my productivity.
JavaScript: One language to rule them all
I think it depends on whether an employer views passion as a character trait or a byproduct. The distinction is very important.

I'm an employer (and a programmer) and I view passion as a byproduct of developers being properly incentivized to do something they find fascinating.

That incentive varies from programmer to programmer. Incentives can be cash, equity, profit sharing, flexible hours, encouragement and recognition, kick-ass equipment, a steady supply of new tech toys to play with, paid time and travel to conferences, etc.

The second aspect, of course, the truly hard one, is keeping people fascinated. Everything gets boring as hell eventually. As an employer I actually find this harder than determining what incentives people respond to because I'm personally aware of how quickly programmers get bored.
No they don't ... if you spent this much time with your OS you are doing it wrong, sorry.
You are right. The "signal to noise" will be terrible if the rare behavior is much less likely than the random event. The only "statistical" solution would be to calibrate things by making the random event similarly unlikely. (e.g. one could use a 100 sided die.) If this statistical solution destroys the psychological advantage of the whole thing, I don't know!
"While in fact it's evidently true they haven't put her in a new apartment and furnished it as promised, do we know this is because they failed to make good on their promise or because she turned them down or never followed up with them on that offer? We can't know."

We can't know. Exactly. So how is it you were comfortable stating "'But the staff at Airbnb has not made a positive contribution to me personally or my situation in any way, particularly since June 30.' While maybe true in fact, clearly misleading her audience." as if you do know?
It sounds like they lost the bitcoins, not the database.
"meaning I have to go through HR"

By the way, the reason why you haven't been able to find a job is because you have no idea how to land work. (I can tell because saying "I have to go through HR" is as clueless as someone saying "I wrote a program but it didn't work so my computer must be broken" :-)

The relocation option works because you don't need to know how to land work to get hired -- there are jobs all over the place and you just walk around and stumble over one.

That's not a bad idea for your situation right now: if you don't find something just by posting on HN here, you could get yourself to San Francisco, crash on someone's couch, walk around and talk to people, land something that gives you some income. (The trick here is that the more active you are about it -- e.g., if you come to SF, and if you go around and talk to people -- the faster the process will happen).

Now, longer term, thinking about where you want to be next year (that is, after you've resolved your immediate crisis), you might find it beneficial to learn how to land work, depending on your goals. For example, maybe for personal reasons you'd prefer to be in Michigan.

Someone hires you because you will solve a problem for them. Some of the problems that people have can be solved with Python or numerical analysis, etc. Of the people with problems that can be solved with your skillset, a small percentage already know that their problem can be solved with Python or whatever. Those people advertise for jobs. When you don't find a job in Michigan, it doesn't mean that no one in Michigan has problems. It doesn't even mean that no one in Michigan has problems that can be solved using linear algebra and so on. What it means is that people in Michigan with those problems don't know yet that their problems can be solved with those techniques. Thus sending HR a resume listing those skills won't land you a job because the recipient doesn't understand that you can solve their problem.

You can learn how to land work in the same way you learned how to program. Think back to what what your most effective learning method for you, when you were learning to program. (Was it reading books, taking a class, or talking to people who already knew how to program, or what?) Then use the same method for learning how to land work: if reading books works best for you, read a book or three; if classes are your style, take a class or a workshop; and so on.
Well then where does the renumeration disparity come from?
"Even if you exercise, the longer you sit the greater the chances you will die."

...what?
I, too, was concerned that going from an all-sitting to all-standing arrangement was simply trading one set of bad effects for another, so I split my desk into two heights and put a monitor on each (mirrored). With a wireless keyboard and mouse I can move between sitting and standing whenever I feel the need. Interestingly, I find myself wanting to stand when I'm writing new code from scratch, whereas to debug or merge I want to sit. I don't track my weight so I can't speak quantitatively about that aspect of it, but overall it feels much better. When I'm stuck working at an office away from home I actually miss it.
Obama’s Dead And The Top 5 Twitter Hacks
> (like Bill Gates).

Well Bill did exactly what you said you didn't want to. He worked hard, made alot of money and then retired from Microsoft.

He just happened to move to a new opportunity.
That's the key takeaway that you're missing from everyone responding to your what would I do with money comment.

Money give you the freedom to do what you want.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008000/Sitting-long...
A consultant is someone who can improve a client's situation for the better, applying knowledge or resources that the client does not have in-house.

A freelancer is more of an implementer whilst a consultant helps to decide what is implemented.

Simple to get started, just find clients who need your knowledge and will pay you for it. Simple, but not easy...

Be warned that as a recent ex-student, many will see you as a cheaper alternative to more experienced professionals ("looking for student or recent graduate" in freelancer wanted ads is usually code for "I pay way below market rates").

It's not impossible, but it might be difficult to make livable money at first. I was freelance straight out of college and in hindsight a year or two at an agency or startup would have given me a big step up as I spent the first few years re-discovering things that an agency job would've taught me very quickly (specialize, pick a profitable niche, don't be afraid to fire clients/turn work down, etc).
I have been using a standing desk for almost a year now. I would recommend the Utby from Ikea for a more economical and permanent solution. My current Utby setup: http://post.ly/2hqhN
DanceFlix | Instructional Dance DVDs - Online Video Rental
funny you mention farmville, as actually working on a farm is one thing that the robots have yet to master.
I was, as I said, under a tremendous amount of stress. The credit crisis had inflicted a fatal wound on the startup I was working for, which was dying a slow, painful death. There were also some stresses within my family, which I'd prefer not to say more about.

All in all, it was as stressful a time as I can recall ever having experienced.

Again, I'm sure this contributed to my susceptibility to this infection. I just don't think it was the entire cause of my condition. My life now is certainly far calmer and more stable, yet my symptoms are not gone.
Maybe it depends on where you live.

I see Hi-Chew at Walgreens of all places.
There are a few start-ups I know of that sell lottery technology/services to states, but afaik it's mostly dominated by big players and hard to break into.
Buying An Electric Car
On the bright side, if the wallet has truly been lost and not stolen, everybody else's BTC got just a bit more valuable.

In other news, funneling thousands of trades through one wallet.dat... how on earth do you successfully back that up when it has new data every minute? If exchanges are going to become a "thing", I'd think you'd want something like multiple redundant networked databases storing the BTC.
I don't think it is a fair thing to ask for, but it is certainly a fair thing for you to look for.

It is the job of the company to impart passion, set an example and hold on to the people that get behind the company vision.

Without that vision or passion from the founders, none of the employees will have it and you are left with salary trumping everything (because there is nothing else, except maybe a small group of people you like hanging out with).

If you are passionate and convey that clearly, passion will trump salary for the right people, and those are the ones you want on your team.
Do you try to keep your programmers interested for long periods of time? Or do you think that every programmer has a finite amount of time at your company and that they will move on after a few years?
Ask HN: What are the upcoming events for startups to launch their product?
My startup is in social networking space and is right now in private beta. What will be the best event/platform to launch it?
"... and date library were reimplemented in C"
Is this merge of https://github.com/jeremyevans/home_run ?
This is very interesting. Would love to see more posts about it as you go.
Was at the Microsoft campus bus stop in Redmond recently and it was plastered (and I mean plastered) w/ posters for Mike Daisey's spoken word piece:

http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/
Time after time I'd be led into angrily upvoting some story, only to learn later that things were not at all as they seemed initially

Exactly. To me it seems very suspicious that the airbnb accuser won't release original communication between her and airbnb. She can do that voluntarily. However, airbnb being a corporation cannot do the same unless as a court proceeding. On the same note, airbnb also cannot publicly indulge in setting the record straight and calling out a former customer no matter how much she may be at fault.
Folks at HN simply appear oblivious to these finer points.
From the study quoted on that statement:

"The participants were asked the question about their leisure sitting time, not their time sitting at work ... My friends who wrote this study also pointed out that the more you sit and watch TV the chances are you will eat more and gain weight."

That doesn't prove anything, but shows that potentially they are focusing on sitting along with other activities like eating fatty "leaisure" foods rather than sipping on a coffee coding all day.
Not to mention, the internet is a lot speedier than missiles- you'd need your destructive forces to detect, react and utterly destroy your target in milliseconds, otherwise they'll shut you down before you can do anything.
Instructional dance dvd videos you can rent by mail. DanceFlix is the leading online video rental company focused exclusively on dance. Their mission is to provide access to quality video dance instruction at affordable prices
How did you manage to work in HFT straight out of high school?
This is just one of many games in MA. There are other Major Jackpot games with huge payouts.
It's the thought that counts.
http://redcareditor.com is a free and open source TextMate-like editor and worth checking out. If you really want TextMate specifically I would appeal to the developer themself. Many of us know how rough tight financial situations are but the amount of free (in speech and beer) editors out there makes piracy nothing but crass.
My guess is that it is for privacy and legal reasons. They cannot make public details about their conversation with a customer they have a contract with without potentially violating privacy agreements. The best they can do is release fluff pieces or remain completely silent. They went with the former though between those two choices, I don't think it makes much of a difference.

Now the accuser can easily clear all this up by publishing her original communication with airbnb and their exact responses. Instead she continues to post summations which the public here seems to take as a definitive word(wrongly, in my view).

I've a hunch that when the dust settles, we'll be reading a lot of mea culpas from HN users who rushed to judgement against airbnb.
I'm interested by standing, but what I really want is to be able to code while I wander around the house. Does anyone make a Macbook harness yet?
Ask HN: Who's hiring? (August 2011)
Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or H1B if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.

Here's a link to previous month's thread:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028
Care to rebuke?
BTW, read hackbod's comment. She's an Android engineer. This guy is flat out wrong and failed to read documentation.
She puts it much nicer than I can.
> I had one project where the damn process used so much ram per request they had to go buy an Azul box just to make it run even at 2 req/sec

I either worked on the same project as you or very closely related one at BSC. The upside of this was I got to play with Azul hardware for a year.
"The voice of the people" -- An idea for crowdsourcing politics
> Currency is regulated into existence.

Nope. Gold and bitcoins come from the market.
For better integration with an issue tracker, and because a master branch should have a formal commit history.

I make tons of little commits on a local branch with messages such as "reformat styles", "whoops, fixed typos", "fixed the query", and such. I use "rebase -i" to squash all of them together with a better, and more formal, commit message, like "Repairs and styles main navigation, closes #9".

I hate a master branch with a commit history with casual commit messages.
Hi-Chew is the one thing they don't run out of, actually.

Puccho grape is the one I really miss. I can get Hi-Chew grape, but it's not as good as the other flavors of Hi-Chew.

I especially love melon flavored stuff and while I can get Hi-Chew melon, the Kasugai melon gummies are nowhere to be found, even though they have other flavors.
Such a simple, elegant solution to fixing an abusive and shady marketplace.

Square completely clicked for me when I recently paid for coffee @ a small neighborhood stand.

Their digital receipt was cooler than anything I've seen at big merchants, and because they virtually give away the service and eliminate the monthly every small business owner is going to wind up using them.

At $4m a day their take is ~2.75% or ~$110,000/day revenue - figure they've got 100x that in potential growth?
I worked at the MS main campus almost 8 years and now work in downtown Seattle (Pioneer Square). I will take a vibrant, walkable urban setting with great, cheap food everywhere over any number of silly amenities in a sterile campus environment.