skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What about Rubinius?

Can you also elaborate on why you're happier with Ruby and Rails than Python and Django. Since I'm completely the other way around, while Ruby paid my bills, if there's a Python job offering I would have jumped onto it without much thought.

One of few things I envy Ruby developers for is the HAML, SCSS, Jammit stuff. Apart from that, not so much, especially for documentations for Ruby modules. It might be from the fact that I prefers Flask[1] to Django, but I also like Python's explicitness than Ruby's implicit and found Python language design to better suits my taste (e.g. the Python class[1]).

[1]: http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2011/7/9/python-and-pola/

[2]: http://flask.pocoo.org/
Aaron Swartz is probably not trolling you, to answer your totally unnecessary snarky aside.
Additional tools used: http://yuilibrary.com/about/

* Ubuntu

* Nginx

* Node.js

* MongoDB

* Express

* Cluster

* Handlebars

* node-mongodb-native

* npm

* Google Prettify

* Git
HP's twists and turns over the last 10+ years really reflects management-by-mbas
Good point. I assume they would only rescan a book if it was a different edition than what they already had on file.
I wonder how well they do with math books?

Even the original publishers have trouble with those. I was going to buy the ebook version of "Proofs from the Book", but downloaded the sample first from Amazon, and it was completely worthless. You'd have a line that would say something like (S in the following represents a capital Greek Sigma):

S( ) <= S( )

where there were supposed to be things inside the parenthesis.

I checkout out a few other serious math books for Kindle, and although most weren't as bad as the above, I'd usually find some deal breaking errors in the handling of math symbols. For instance, I seem to recall one that would lose exponents of -1 if they were attached to a small letter. I didn't see anything else wrong...but it was an abstract algebra book, and it is customary to use multiplicative notation for groups, an so a^-1 is the customary notation for the inverse of a. Group theory gets very confusing when a^-1 gets replaced by a.

At this point, I don't think I'd buy a math book for Kindle even if the preview was flawless unless I was very sure that the preview included every mathematical symbol that would be used in the book, and in all the sizes they would be used in.
Its not coming up with keys that's the problem. Its storing the keys in a place that's only accessible to authorized users while not incurring massive performance or usability problems that's the issue.
It just means that you have to be venture-backed. But overall, this is still really good for the economy in general to try to get more entrepreneurs to first leaping from their comfort zone ( full time job ).
Married opposite-sex partners of E3 holders can work today under an E3D visa.

The point I was trying to make is that the E3 is possibly a better option than a H1B for any Australians interested in working in the US.
but what is the status of rubinius? is it nearly as far along as pypy?

I would think that the metaprogramming features of ruby which make it so much fun would also make it n times harder to build a JIT for.
> You must have another very serious problem.

That is possible, of course. However, I would point out that these meetings were attended by a whole team of contractors, each with their own computers configured with their own choice of OS and browser. Moreover, they were held in a variety of different locations, and indeed across several different locations at once via teleconference on some occasions. In other words, it wasn't one very serious problem, it was probably a whole bunch of little problems that caused specific features to be inaccessible to certain locations or not to work properly on specific client platforms during a particular period. (Before anyone jumps in, clearly everyone's Internet connections were fine during the teleconferences, because we were using Internet-based conference software to run them...)

My point is only that it's a bit rich to claim a 99.984% uptime based, presumably, on having servers available, if the code that is running on those servers isn't properly quality controlled so that customers can actually use it to do real work. Just because most of the people on the team can connect fine, it still screws up the meeting if a few others can't follow along. Just because people looking at the spreadsheet in Firefox and Chrome can update it, it doesn't help if the guys using IE can't see the changes.
No. People just tend to choose ones that are.

Here are some that are mostly bilaterally symmetrical, but with left-right asymmetry.

http://endlessforms.com/o/69562/ (ghost)
http://endlessforms.com/o/60967/ (mad hatter)
http://endlessforms.com/o/39225/ (Dr. Evil)

There are some with no symmetry at all....
TL;DR: "Most reexamination requests rely on a finding of obviousness, which is a far more subject[ive] standard than demonstrating a lack of novelty. A lack of novelty can be established by any one piece of prior art that discloses each of the key elements of claimed invention. In each of these cases Google has identified not one, but five separate pieces of prior art that each alone demonstrates a lack of novelty in the critical Lodsys claims."
> if two people send in an identical book, are they allowed to send the same PDF to both rather than scanning twice?

In somewhat-analogous circumstances almost 30 years ago, a court said "no." The case was Micro-Sparc, Inc. v. Amtype Corp., 592 F.Supp. 33, 34-35, 223 USPQ (BNA) 1210 (D. Mass. 1984). The defendant offered a keyboarding service: It typed in the source code of programs published in a hobbyist magazine, then sold disks to purchasers of the magazine. The court rejected a fair-use defense and held that this infringed the copyright in the programs. (Adapted from a chapter in a treatise I published long ago.)
I know British people who don't think the UK is part of Europe. British discourse often refers to "the continent" as something distinct from Britain.
HP Kills TouchPad, Pre, And Veer Devices
> I remember that GSoC! Any idea as to what happened to it,
> if it was scrapped, or whatever?

I know it made a lot of progress in Cython-land (updates at http://rguillebert.blogspot.com/) but no real overview or high level status update has been given yet (AFAIK). Since it's from GSoC 2011, it's about time for that to happen... and for other people to start contributing code <hint, hint> :).
IBM Announces Neural Network IC
Event photographer London
I can't imagine how much money is wasted by this constant acquiring, rebranding, spinning off that seems to be getting more prevalent (in the banking and tech industries especially). Is this a US-only thing, or does this occur elsewhere as well?
Apprenticeship Notes: Ideas into Words – Extracts II
If this is true, surely the judge will ask: if each of these claims can be invalidated by five separate pieces of prior art, why in the world were the patents granted in the first place?
Sorry. The site is getting hammered right now due to the press articles and Hacker News. We just did a bit of hacking and hopefully it will work now!
Equally interesting is that one of Lodsys's targets is seeking discovery in Arizona of whether Lodsys is a cat's paw of Intellectual Ventures: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=201108171318536
That's true, and although I don't know much about the US welfare system, I assume you're better off on welfare than many people were not on welfare 80 years ago (economically).
It's not about better information, it's about speed of information. You can look at a progress bar and instantly gauge the progress of your task. "10.7/75MB copied" is more precise, but of less intrinsic value--I have to calculate in my head where the halfway point is. To get a percentage in my head out of those numbers is even harder.
Yes. As a simple example, if you XORd your input text with a 1-byte key, the letter frequency of english text would be unchanged.

So your most common byte in your output would be likely to be the encrypted char 'e'. You could then recover the key by XOR 'e' with that most common byte.

More complex systems have more complex patterns, but that's what cryptopgraphers do - try and spot weaknesses in an algorithm.

As always, this is a great read: http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2009/7/22/if-youre-typin...

Search for "Garbling a block to confuse an app" and read on from there for a real-world use of output patterns (used when you can partially control the input).
With so many people caught up in technology nowadays, it's actually refreshing to see someone wanting to take the time to actually meet in person over lunch.
I agree with many of the issues raised here and had my own issues with the blog post.

I wrote up a response which contains more acceptable conclusions/fixes to the issues you present.

http://randomdrake.com/2011/08/18/no-php-errors-and-notices-...
10 concepts regarding PHP that are wrong?
but what if you work in an environment where you can't afford to test every single little thing

What if you were performing surgery in an environment where you couldn't afford to sterilize every single instrument?
I don't have any experience in this sort of thing beyond the ramen-profitable startup scene, so I'm not entirely well versed in what those structures would be.

I can easily imagine the traditionalist "A Gentleman's Word is His Bond, Seal the Deal With a Handshake" sort of C-level executives. From a purely economic cost/benefit standpoint, if the 100k in opportunity cost/travel/etc is going to turn more than 100k in profit, it would make economic sense to do it. You could probably get some marketing mileage out of it as a nice symbolic gesture with some glossy photos in $finance_mag as well.

At the same time, you need some way of managing/restraining that sort of thing lest you end up with $200,000 "working lunches" which are nothing more than a brief holiday on the company dime.

I've no idea how Berkshire Hathaway operates. Certainly I can see the opportunities for tech to reduce the need for physical meetings in the general case, but this whole argument is about the special cases.

Having a fancy Cisco full-room telepresence/videoconference rates higher than a skype call with a webcam, which (imo) still rates higher than a regular conference call. For higher latency interactions, email (or enterprise groupware and whatnot) is the hands-down winner. Those things might be where the real work gets done (and "my people get together with your people and make it happen"), but they don't have the same symbolic significance.
Just bug fixes? If you allow file uploads, you would be wise to upgrade.

Fixed bug #54939 (File path injection vulnerability in RFC1867 File upload filename). Reported by Krzysztof Kotowicz. (CVE-2011-2202)

"The rfc1867_post_handler function in main/rfc1867.c in PHP before 5.3.7 does not properly restrict filenames in multipart/form-data POST requests, which allows remote attackers to conduct absolute path traversal attacks, and possibly create or overwrite arbitrary files, via a crafted upload request, related to a "file path injection vulnerability."
I'm a huge fan of skitch. I hope they continue to support the product.
He's also top Android supporter that I've ever known. Great hire by Google.
a) Although I agree it is a gray area,the USCIS is probably not going to come after you for "working" for your company for free while you waited for the H1-B approval.

b) Noone has to know.

c) Although different apporaches exist,my opinion is that you should have probably already made something that a lot of people use even before you talk to the VCs.By doing this you were working for your company without an H1B.But this issue can be solved if you refer to point - B above.
Careful.

Peter Shankman might direct message you on Twitter (and not follow you so you can't direct message him back) and say he expects more from you.

Like he did to me an hour ago.

Peter Shankman: "would have expected more logic from you on your hackernews comment... Morton's can put a dollar amount on this, yes. It's business."

Peter Shankman: "Read the comments on their website. They do this all the time for non-famous people. As does KLM. And Virgin. It's good biz."

Peter Shankman: "An entrepreneur should know that. :)"
HP Exits Tablets, Spins Off PCs, Keeps and will license WebOS
Huge news for the YUI community. Big hat tip to Ryan Grove, who did so much of the work on this, along with Dav Glass, Jenny Donnelly and the rest of the team. The new site really starts to realize the core virtues of this project and to foreground the excellent community contributions.
Ask HN: Anyone know of a 3rd party Product Manager,billing, invoices?
Looking for something that can manage all of our products, purchases, and invoices. We do not have many products, but we do have an insane billing structure. Where their could be tax, adjustments, Affiliates, Affiliates that get adjustments, promotion codes, initial product subscription price, subscription price. ect.

If possible the system should play nice with paypal payflow pro.

I'm currently writing a custom one which will work out fine. But the boss wants to know why im writing one when their seem to be so many other solutions.

My answer was finding one that meets most of our needs will be hard. And by the time we set it up and integrate it into our system I will probably be done coding one.
It is becoming obvious to me that the battle with Microsoft has left deep wounds in the Linux community.
Instead of focusing on making software, a lot of people are focusing on Microsoft and are driven by hate.

This is emotionally unhealthy and it's holding both the community and the individuals back.
From the HN guidelines:

Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
Skitch is one of those products that only does a few things, but does them extremely well. When you experience taking a screenshoting, annotating it, resizing it, and then dragging it into an email to send to someone, it hurts having to "click to upload an image" ever again.
HP to Discontinue webOS Devices and Development
Well, that CLI argument is a bit strange. Couldn't the default error/notice handler check which SAPI it runs in, and leave out HTML encoding for CLI while escaping in web server SAPIs?
HP to discontinue operations for WebOS devices
"I am 100% convinced this is not true. I'm sure if I (with 15 twitter followers) had posted something similar there would be no chance of something similar happening."

Well is one of your followers Morton's? Do you eat there all the time?

Morten's invested in some 'free' PR here. Basically they know this guy is legit because he has a history with them, further they can estimate is future business 'stream' since they know how often he eats there. A simple affinity card where you get 'stars' for each visit and a free meal on your tenth or whatever, works exactly this way.

There are three HUGE things to learn from this story:

1) In order to know whose important you have to know who your customers are, it helps if you can tie a customer identity to a social network identity.

2) Keeping frequent customers happy brings in business because whenever they are in the conversation 'Where should we [consume/use/buy] [service/product]?' they recommend your product or service.

3) It might cost $100,000 for a 'small' advertising run or PR stunt, something like this probably costs less than $100. In terms of customer acquisition costs its hugely efficient relative to broader and necessicarily more dilute activities.

So I don't doubt for a minute that Mortens got their money's worth here. And I don't think it mattered at all that the guy has 100K followers. I think they looked at him as a great customer and this as a low cost opportunity for PR. They seized it, and hit one out of the park.
I tried it, but for some reason the plugin/my browser had a big problem with the remake. There were very few layers, but it was overlaying my calendar onto the image or something strange. I restarted the browser and tried again but it kept messing up.
1) I had heard Bill Gates was long winded in written correspondence, but wow.

2) I've often been impressed by his intelligence and grasp of a wide variety of topics in interviews, but this letter really makes him look like Nostradamus...

Definitely worth a full read, really enjoyed it.
Building Code Consultants
Twitter’s t.co link shortening service is game changing – here’s why
* but what if you work in an environment where you can't afford to test every single little thing, and where business models, let alone requirements change constantly (ie. a startup)?*

Constantly changing requirements are exactly why you want tests. Not only do they help you find regression bugs when requirements change, but they help tremendously in writing code that is easy to maintain. If you can't test a piece of code, it's a red flag that you can't easily change it either.

Furthermore, I don't buy the notion that writing test code adds significant time to the development process. I do not have metrics, but I would argue that a good test suite actually reduces total development time, since the time writing tests is more than offset by the time saved testing manually and fixing bugs later.
OTOH, it does make it fairly attractive for 5 or 10 or 20 students to buy one copy and have it scanned.
"Noone has to know"

Except the investors, who would realise immediately. It's all very well to say that USCIS "shouldn't" and "probably won't" do things, but:

1) That doesn't reassure me much. I don't want to be deported.

2) That shouldn't reassure an investor much, either. If they realise you are going against immigration law they might run from your company at sprinting pace once they realise the founder could be deported.

I want these kind of changes because I want to be legitimate.
I'm not sure if that's a legit complaint. Can stuff like that be taught adequately in a course or is it something you pick up by "just doing" it?

A lot of classes where you program your ass off force you to make design decisions, some explicitly as part of the assignment and some implicitly. Isn't that valuable? What would a "design based" curriculum look like?
Sorry to spring this on you, but it looked interesting and I figured HN would dig it. Hopefully you're getting some good feedback though.
It’s Official: HP Kills Off webOS Phones and the TouchPad
I sincerely hope that your account is a fake, and is not managed by the actual Peter Shankman.

It would be disappointing if the real Shankman was so willing to paint the entire HN community with a ridiculously broad brush, when he's a professional and should know better.
I don't know if there is anyone also paying for proxy services these days.
Honestly I think the real answer is "if you're asking that question, it's time to find a new job"

I've been through this very same ringer recently and strongly believe that changing from within is far more trouble, far more stressful and far more difficult than the effort is worth.

If you've got so many options, leave.

I've very happy in my new role and it took getting out of the old one to fix it.
aren't like 80% of patents invalidated on reexamination? (which is, of course, significantly different than 80% of patents being invalid)

the judges are probably pretty used to crappy patents.
yeah it's hilarious what people's doodles actually end up turning in to. Everything's logged on the server, I'm planning to do a stop-motion style playback video to put up on youtube eventually.
it seems google wants all the internet traffic to pass from their servers...
Do those actually exist? I've never heard of someone being able to hold simultaneous H1B visas.
This is the third time I've seen you try and start a flamewar over Israel. Please knock that shit off.
ZeroCater (YC W11) Takes the Pain Out of Ordering Your Company Lunch
Meta: Wow, I didn't expect to be downvoted for this. I wasn't trying to discredit the extension, I just wanted to be helpful. The attempt at humor probably didn't improve my case any, but I can't edit it anymore.

How can I submit comments like this in the future? I didn't see an easy way to submit feedback to serg472 (the author's name isn't clickable, and there's no email as described in http://www.google.com/support/chrome_webstore/bin/answer.py?...), so I dropped it here in case the parent, who was obviously supportive of the extension, wanted to forward it to someone who could take action.
Show HN: Applying gamification to real life activities using RFID & Netduino
Why on earth would Autonomy want to get into the PC business?

I don't think they are big enough to leverage their enterprise customers into buying hardware from them.
> Resold as PDF files? Not by this company, anyway...I don't think that business model will work out legally.

I wonder. If the company holds onto the PDF and just sends out that PDF whenever someone mails in a book already scanned, isn't this the equivalent of those music services which simply make you prove through uploading music that you already have a copy and then give you access to their one stored version of that song? I think this has also been done with DVDs as well. So why not books?
OS X Lion: Is Auto Save a Savior or Nightmare?
Not really sure what's pissing you off, "hopeuarefake," I simply countered several of the inaccurate assumptions that have been made here. Why is that such a problem for you?
As evident by most reactions to the news yesterday, I'd say that most people absolutely do not want this information shared with -anyone-.

However, I doubt G+ has the social graph built up yet to form such an insightful list yet.
I still want someone to couple webOS with great hardware and dev tools.
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Fail?: How #fail can lead to success with customer service
HP Makes Big Shift on WebOS, Exiting Hardware Business
HP plans to buy Autonomy for $10bn
You would be amazed by how many down-votes my attempt to describe the realities of the situation has gotten.

This is one of those taboo subjects about which people are in serious denial.
HP to Punt WebOS
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When You're Ready to Quit You're Closer than you think
I quite literally just got access to the "wordpress" account on GitHub within the last 48 hours. I'll be working to get that one update automatically again.
Their computers are not horrible, at least not on the higher end. But the fact of the matter is, if people are looking at higher end devices, they may lean towards a Mac. Their tablets are clearly not selling well.
And on the low end, asustek is competing aggressively.

Focusing on services seems to be the way to go, I think the Opsware acquisition has done ok for them.
Because your REST should not smell. Simple web services testing tool
An Android Developer's take on Google+Motorola
I do too but it's no good if HP owns all the rights and patents. Not to mention all the developers.
Absolutely. A much more compelling story of customer service. An extemporaneous act done without extravagant giveaways or lavish incentives. And the outcome? Pure magic.