skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The DOJ may be using its leverage to get better concessions out of AT&T. Basically, because AT&T set such a big cancellation fee for itself, the DOJ can bargain up to just less than that amount. It's saying, "shape up or we'll seriously make you eat that $7 billion fee!" I actually think the huge cancellation fee means the deal is more likely to happen because AT&T will tolerate a lot of regulatory arm twisting before walking away.

Exactly what AT&T will need to do I'm not sure. AT&T will probably be forced to sell any T-Mobile operations that overlap with AT&T's existing service just like in the Verizon-Alltel merger a couple years ago. Presumably this will be to small regional carriers so choice is preserved for people in those areas. AT&T will probably need to agree to some kind of consumer price protection at the very least to keep AT&T prices at current levels or lower for a number of years and protect existing T-Mobile customer contracts. AT&T might also have to sell or spin off its TV and home internet operations. The issue of ridiculous text messaging fees might come up, but nothing will be done about them.
Fun fact, you're the only person here with karma over 100 (2210 when I checked). Your criticism therefore is not only brutal but reputable.

There are googlers here on HN, and they are trying to make right by offline access (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2627365).

Since you develop for the Chrome app store, did that particular comment advance your cause? Are there particulars you could point them toward, or identify things they should keep in the total re-write you hope for?
I spent about a year as a maintainer of FlockDB, Twitter's social graph store. If you don't know, it's basically a sharded MySQL setup. One of the key pain points was optimizing the row lock over the follower count. Whenever a Charlie Sheen joins, or someone tries to follow spam us, one particular row would get blasted with concurrent updates.

Doing this in-memory in java via someAtomicLong.incrementAndGet() sounds appealing.
I'm not sure I can take blanket issue with it, it would make a lot of sense to at least require a company to base their infringement claim on their actual bootstrapped use of the patent methodology i.e. if you cannot demonstrate to a reasonable level that you are using that patent in something that is actively being produced and sold or have done in the past then your claim should be heavily penalized.

I appreciate there are lots of loopholes and things to pick at from my wording, but the spirit of the idea is there.
I don't think most people take issue with the
fact that patents are purchasable or otherwise
transferable.

I disagree -- because patents are government-granted monopolies that are supposed to help the inventor in being the first to market with an actual product, instead of, say -- keeping it as a trade secret or losing in front of bigger competitors that are simply going to copy it.

Considering that time and time again there have been inventions, like the telephone, that have been done by independent parties -- the notion of selling it is simply offensive and relies on the electorate being stupid or ignorant or both.

What next? Copyrights being used to disallow photos of buildings?
Don't call it piracy, call it ship-sharing.
There are differences. If you have a plan in California, it works in New York. But if you're in Europe, good luck getting your unlimited data from France to work in Germany.
I can't speak to all systems like this, but the Prevayler approach is pretty straightforward. Most importantly, there are no simultaneous transactions: changes happen one at a time. That seems crazy if you're used to dealing with disk-backed databases, but if everything is hot in RAM, then it's not a problem. In that context, it's pretty easy: when you start executing a change you verify all your constraints before doing anything.
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff cheers on HP for fleeing PC industry
I hope this article is really old...at least then the author can claim ignorance.

phpsec should update this article with a more secure example.
The storage system of Postgres, one of the earliest rdbms, uses MVCC. The early version even allows you to roll back or query historical data.

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/MVCC
Amazing post. I read every word of it (as opposed to just scanning it).

What type of work does he do* and where can I meet/read more people like him?

He strikes me as a kind of mentor...something which I find is lacking in the IT industry. Mentors don't always need to be the smartest person in the room, they just need to have experience and patience to see the things that you are blind to.

* He says he's a strategist, but that's awfully vague.
Bringing Scheme to the iPhone
Self reported results, right? Not very reliable.

edit: I meant, as in some people choose to respond so the sample is biased.
It's amazing and infuriating how almost each OS X release breaks many existing applications. They may cost 30$ or 60$ bucks a pop, but then you have to upgrade other vendor's app and it ends up costing you hundreds of dollars.

In Lion, I've read they changed the time machine format. Another reason for me to not upgrade is I'll have to buy something else to replace my MediaSmart server that centralizes all my backups (among other awesome features).

One begins to see the value of Windows backward compatibility approach when your always able to keep using the software you own...

If Apple wants to improve OS X here are 2 basic suggestions:
1- fix this Finder POS; if you want to do anything productive managing more than a few files, you're currently better off using the shell. Not so with Windows Explorer which is actually productive. Heck, I had to resort to using Windows the day I wanted to visually classify in folders thousands of pictures.
2- fix multi-monitor support: the insistence on keep that top menu bar sticking to a single monitor is awful. It hasn't changed since my Mac SE. I find menus sticking to Windows more useful especially when wanting to use more than one screen. Then, in Lion fullscreen, they decide to kill the second monitor? Come on. Show some multi-monitor love for once in your life. Using more than one screen on OS X is a total mess.
A failure of an author to cover his bases is hardly proof that SproutCore is doing poorly.
Great work - a bit of a 'form over function', but it at least got me till the end (which few how-tos do).
How PHP is Broken and How It Can Be Fixed
Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey

Good quick read.

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-English-Opium-Eater-Pengui...

For an extra $5 you can pick up this which is fantastic: http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Relativity-Fourth-Dimension-R...
I maintain two accounts on OS X: one for software installation & updates, and the other being my primary account with limited credentials. That way, if I were to accidentally run some malicious code, it wouldn't hose the entire system.

So Google Chrome.app resides in /Applications, but it's installed by the account that gets created when you reinstall OS X (which is by default an account with full privileges). Standard users can read /Applications, so they can launch Google Chrome.app, but the process can't write to /Applications because of its effective UUID. That's why it prompts for an admin password.
Try the search box at the bottom with terms like 'downvote.' these meta discussions come up fairly often.
> JavaScript compilers are under extreme pressure to compile code quickly, unlike any other type-inferring compiler, because JS compilation keeps the user from seeing the page

You only run type inference after you detect the hot loops. Same with other expensive optimizations. This is something that all JITs out there do -- you start with simple interpretation (or extremely cheap compilation, in the case of V8), and then when you detect that you're spending a whole lot of time in one section of code, you replace it with a highly optimized version.

Type inference is not that expensive compared to several more interesting optimizations done on several JITs that are in production systems. In some long running JITs, the compilation of some hot loops takes far longer than static compilations, running in a low priority thread in the background (while the less optimized code keeps going in the foreground).

Finally, if anything, JITs allow more time to run heavy optimizations because they can leave those running in the background without affecting the use of the program or hurting developer productivity.

> JS's semantics require that ints overflow into doubles, for example

On recent x86 processors, you would just use doubles in most cases. It turns out that they're on par with integers for speed, although I believe there were some differences on latency. I'd have to look back at the Intel opt manual to confirm, though. However, if you really want to solve the issue (say, on ARM where integer/float performance actually matters -- especially since lots of architectures are still on softfloat), then you'd use a combination of guards, versioning, and VRP to solve the issue, not type inference.

> Finally, the presence of eval() and the like mean that almost no inference can be totally sound, requiring even more dynamic checks.

Yep, eval is a terrible language feature if you care about making things fast. Regardless of whether you have type inference or not.
I don't understand what you mean. Microsoft has said you'll still be able to access the file system from Metro. You'll still be able to access hardware devices and system settings too. So how is it any more of a shell than what Apple has done?
Life 2.0 &#8211; SEO Internet Marketing in Unknown AZ
I'm not following your logic. I see your point that AT&T can absorb T-Mobile's existing infrastructure and thus provide wider coverage to their customers. What I don't follow is how a single provider will result in said provider putting more resources into infrastructure enhancement and lower prices. Please explain how.
True. I don't use 960.gs personally, it just has some good examples (I tend to use compass+susy, but flexbox looks better for mobile).
I don't think it's possible with the typical git/github plugins out of the box. However, Jenkins lets you run any manner of scripts at different parts of the build.

One simple (perhaps too simple) way to implement this would be to run a script which enumerates branches and exports the name of the most recently touched branch to an environment variable. Then, parameterize the build on that environment variable.
after submitting the survey click on view previous results.
Alternatively click https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewanalytics?formkey=dF...
Facebook to launch music service at f8
Hunting for Insecure Direct Object Reference Vulnerabilities
Here's the results page if you want to see it without taking (or retaking) the survey:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewanalytics?formkey=dF...
Limited to Chrome, this is still non-standard.
Java creator Gosling bails on new Google job to play with robotic boats
That's what suPHP is for.
Also see: source stripping, where we remember 'facts' without remembering their source.

Slightly OT: I used to think all ads were stupid, and the industry run by morons. Then at some point I thought that at least some of the ads seemed clever. At that moment, I realized that I'd shifted, and become a target demographic. The ads before weren't clueless, they just weren't aimed at me.
Exactly. We basically have a Verizon & AT&T dominated market now, with T-Mobile and Sprint being nothing more than an afterthought; I think Sprint more-so that Tmo, but I digress.

AT&T as put off putting up new towers to keep up with use for years. Ask New York iPhone users how well that's working out for them. Meanwhile, TMO decided to get serious in the US wireless game and has been spending a lot of money building out their next-gen network while at the same time reducing the prices of their plans (or at least giving you more for the same money). VZW seems to be the only other provider serious about rolling out a 4G network, and to my admittedly limited knowledge, ATT hasn't done anything in that regard, besides try to buy the network off TMO.

Why would you possibly think anything would be different if they suddenly became the #1 provider? Based on their past actions, what would happen is they would drop all of TMO's low price contract-less all-you-can-eat plans and most likely stop the 4G rollout and just rest on what's already built. I wouldn't be surprised to see some price bumps or at the very least airtime/data reductions in there either.

What have you seen that makes you think anything else would happen?
How do you screw up tapping with two fingers?
Why Radi uses Canvas – comparing CSS-based animation and immediate rendering
Why Windows Tablets Might Have a Chance
Apple's suppliers are polluting China
Notes on Fexl Meta-Parsing
- Mirroring state is easy; you just pipe the serialized commands to multiple boxes.

What? No, that's ridiculous. That's how inconsistencies crop up. Unless you plan on locking the entire system during each command.
Review my startup: Loqly-Be local anywhere
I request the YCombinator community to help us by taking a look at our app Loqly - http://bit.ly/e5u4jv and giving us feedback on UI and user experience.

Our Pitch:
Loqly allows you to Be local anywhere.
▸ Discover what is around you
▸ See Restaurant Menus,Foursquare tips, Yelp & Google reviews
▸ Navigate to an address using your fav GPS app
▸ Search anything (iPhone4, lawyers, dentists, schools).We are Google powered, we will find it for you.
▸ Ask the locals for recommendations. Just ask a question about a place or ask for a business recommendations, we deliver your questions to the locals in that area, who then answer it for you.
I would like to second this sentiment. That feature has become a vital part of how I navigate code, especially for projects that I am looking at for the first time.

It's the only thing preventing me from using SublimeText 2.
You might want to add a warning about this requiring flash - I had to turn flashblock off to get this to work.
I think you could add something else to your algorithm. Some of the key words defining the business are ranked on adwords, so a particular good keyword in the name will increase the search engine ranking of this new name significantly. Perhaps you can specify this fit with some stats taken from adwords.
In firefox and chrome, reopening tabs is cmd-shift-t.
The userecho page on Code Folding has a lot of votes, though there's some speculation that it'd be pretty difficult to do with the current implementation of the editor control.

http://sublimetext.userecho.com/topic/19281-syntax-code-fold...
yes, smalltalk users can just image persistence or sandstone from Ramon Leon.

http://book.seaside.st/book/advanced/persistency/sandstone
Salesforce creates a HTML5/Phonegap SDK
Also, everyone knows someone who has strong feelings against AT&T, even regulators and legislators probably have at least one friend or family member who has been screwed over by them.
I'm curious how CI is done on branches. It's mentioned but not elaborated on in the article.
To be fair, this book is about libraries that are strictly MVC implemented in JavaScript, and no more. At the time Alex was writing the book, SproutCore 1.4 was the current version, and is obviously a "full-stack" framework, including a UI library.

SproutCore 2.0 alpha was released on May 25th of this year, so Alex didn't have time to cover it. My hope is that a second edition would hopefully at least mention it, now that it is much more competitive with things like Backbone and Knockout, et al. :)
You are driven to believe others are wrong just because they are others.
Every branch is scheduled to build in Jenkins as soon as it gets pushed. We get success/failure notifications in Campfire.
It's really a judgement call, although I'd definitely recommend against committing every single save. The only hard-fast rule I follow is to always commit whatever I have left-over at the end of the day, so that I never lose work overnight or over a weekend.

Other than that, if you felt like you've taken a decently-sized chunk out of whatever problem or feature you're currently working on, commit.
I think you might be misunderstanding the post - or at least interpreting it differently than me.

I dont' think it's so much about success as it's about being different. Once you step over the cliff into the unknown there aren't that many people that will follow you. You become a loner, a misfit and a stranger to many people. Your desires, goals and interests drift away from normality, and thus you will eventually find yourself in a state of loneliness because there's noone else like you.

I think that's what it's about.

I wrote something similar, albeit on a more positive note, some time back: http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2009/04/moving-boat.html
I don't see how a 2-bizhead team can hurt, unless they're focused on an market outside their areas of expertise/work experience.

A lot also depends on the type of product. E.g. for a consumer oriented startup with a tech-enabled (not tech-centric) product, the immediate big challenge (assuming business model has been established) is often sales & other "businessy" challenges.
By inlining the comments, he's reducing cpu time by...transferring extra data across the network?
Thanks for the nice counter-argument. I think you're probably right in practice.

My opinion stems from two things. First, HMTL and CSS are trivially easy for me and consume only a small fraction of time I spend on the design process. I imagine this applies to almost all of those who share the opinion that you must know HMTL and CSS to be a web designer. You make a strong argument that this is not a necessity to being a top-notch designer.

But where my passion in this debate really stems from is my recent experience completing a graduate program in architecture. We were mentored to experiment with our medium; to uncover the materials' latent properties and capabilities, incorporating a bottom-up design process. This was (and is) highly unusual and controversial. Opposed to this is a purely top-down process, subject to the whims and inspirations of a single designer. The idea and form come first, and they are then imposed on an inert medium.

I see parallels to web design. Photoshop enables top-down thinking. The web (through HTML and CSS) are inert -- they are at the will of whatever form Photoshop demands. But I see something different in the code. I see a rich source of inspiration. I see capabilities, limitations, and tendencies. I see a "charged" source of untapped potential.

It's true, there are many valid sources of inspiration outside of code. Most of them, actually. But if no designers looked to HMTL and CSS for inspiration, I think a lot of potential would be lost.
sorry, we had a glitch this morning when one of our db clusters went offline - had to reroute all traffic to our other cluster - all good now.
But remember, he was fired for that, and was lucky to dodge a lawsuit from his own employer.
Like you, I believe in the right tool for the job. For many applications, an SQL server is awesome.

I'm sure the developer community for MS SQL Server is reasonably large, but it is much, much smaller than the Ruby community or the Java community. The same is true for library code for each environment.

I think the Facebook example cuts the other way. If they had implemented all their core application logic in MS SQL Server, they would have been well and truly screwed if the performance wasn't enough. With PHP, at least they could write their own compiler; trying to reverse-engineer MS SQL Server is orders of magnitude harder.

Regarding the "volumes of data being passed around" part, that works well with a hot-in-RAM system; no data is passed anywhere. As with doing it all in stored procedures, no data leaves the server.

I do agree that a lot of people don't get full value out of their database. Sometimes that's a very reasonable business choice: vendor lock-in is extremely expensive at scale. But it does often come from ignorance. On the other hand, almost every developer has written a few database-backed applications, but very few have written anything in the NoDB style. Many can't even conceive of coding something without a database. I'd love to see both sorts of ignorance reduced.
Hack your City [ Title Misleading Intentionally ]
Felixstowe Art on the Prom 2011 Competition
Apple's License Claim Disputed
I'm confused. Is there a reason why I'm supposed to be excited for this? It just looks like a waste of battery life to me.
The Meaning-Driven Organization
Users in countries with slow/expensive internet connections will hate the feature. It might not even work as the machine is not connected to the network 24/7. And when its connected they do not want Google to use bandwidth for updating software. I know many people in India turn off autoupdate on their windows machines because it eats bandwidth (of course I try to talk them out of it).
Virtualization and cost reduction
I really hope calling tablets "tabs" doesn't become a new fad.
It's still August. Stuff doesn't get rushed out until the end of a quarter when OKRs are looming. At that point you can push any old thing and get away with it.

In other words, check back in a month to see even worse.
I'm sure this was meant as a joke, but, the downmods still make me sad. I used VS for some classes in school and at my first job and it made me a worse programmer. It took years to undo the damage. In my opinion, as a developer, and in my experience in working with a lot of other developers, terminal + vim + build tools (gcc/javac/python, etc) is far superior compared to VS.
Hrm, if someone answers "I'd google it," I consider that to be a completely valid response. Of course it automatically invites the follow-up, what if a google search fails?
This particular quote isn't about advertising, but its something Steve Jobs said that reminded me of your post.

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."
Was he? I can't find any news story about it.
Devs, designers, managers, QA, clients as seen by devs, designers, managers...
Apple Cries About Samsung and Motorola's Patent "Monopoly"
Grandparent was correct. Vim's basic completion is "similar words in the current file" (plus some other things), but omnicomplete is an arbitrary algorithm that can get pretty fancy. For example, in Ruby, omnicomplete on 3.14.tr will include truncate, while omnicomplete on [[1, 2]].tr will include transpose.
Excellent point. My 'favorite' comment on the article page is the guy who says ads don't work very well, except for the majority of people, whom he calls "sheeple."

You can't say that ads don't work and also argue that most people are too mindless to ignore them!
From his about page:

"I’m consulting on increasing LVOC numbers (lifetime value of a customer – usually selling additional valuable things to customers you’ve already got, but also conversion rates, price points, referrals, etc), doing some light real estate development, and some professional writing."
What to Do If Your Blog Goes Viral (from the fake Apple store blogger)
I'm in the DC suburbs and am happy with T-Mobile. At my house Verizon has NO signal at all. So clearly it's a location-dependent issue.

Carrier diversity does have its advantages in other ways. I was in NYC during the earthquake and had no problems with text or data immediately afterwards, even took an incoming voice call. Everyone around me with iPhones on AT&T or Verizon couldn't do a thing.
تعارف وايميلات - face meet