skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Perhaps I am an odd one out, but as a user I really do not like software that updates itself, leave alone silently like Chrome does. As a developer - sure, I would love for everyone to be on automatic updates, but looking at stats it appears to be not the case.

I have an app out that checks for updates and prompts the user if there's a new one. That's the default setting and it can be changed to disable all checks or switch to an automatic updates. Looking at the server logs I can tell that users do disable the update checks after the first notification, a lot of them do, like close to 25-30%. And virtually no-one switches to the automatic updates. YMMV obviously by an app and the OS, but it's still a data point to consider.
Might be hard to estimate anything but the Facebook numbers, though. I would have a hard time estimating anything to do with the silver halide - annual consumption? Annual silver mining? etc.
Try Semantic Versioning [1]. It gives you a sane, well-defined way to version projects and makes the version numbers useful and meaningful. It makes it easy for technical users and developers to get a feel for what has changed since the last time they updated.

You don't have to display version numbers to non-technical users. The update summary in this post looks fantastic for showing what changes have been made to end users.

[1]: http://semver.org/
This solution will never work. Almost all cars should be equipped with the system, which is very difficult task. And just look at this sentence: "At the same time, vehicles leaving the jams are made to accelerate away quickly using automated cruise control." The car accelerating by itself... this is madness.

A lot better way to dissolve would be to show the drivers the traffic jam on the map so they take another way that is free. This is the main idea of this system:

http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/technology/connecteddrive...

I have used it and it really works, because you can see the traffic jam in advance and plan another route (or the navi can do it for you).
Developing your JSON API in Rails with Rabl
Hacking an air freshener to puff whenever you're retweeted
I feel badly for the author, not just for her loss. It seems a little cruel to be denied the therapeutic fading of memories over time (just as a natural part of the grieving process and recovery). I hope that we develop some cultural norms as dying and leaving behind a digital presence becomes more common.
The java api access was already published[1], however ruby will probably need a few more minutes[2]

[1] http://code.google.com/p/google-api-java-client/updates/list

[2] http://code.google.com/p/google-api-ruby-client/updates/list
I will give a HUGE HUG to the first person to let me pull RSS feeds or a Twitter stream into G+.

(and I give great hugs)
Small update

HTML5 manifest is now activated, feel free to use it offline :)
Wasn't Coca Cola the most valuable brand in the world? Or were they just the most recognizable?
This is especially true when you're reversing a codec. I helped out reversing ALAC (Apple's answer to FLAC), and I didn't know what 99.9% of the code did, I just knew how it needed to do it. Certain things fit common patterns with simple changes (e.g. modified Rice coding), but most of the time you're just matching code behavior directly.

I will say, building an encoder based solely on the reverse-engineered decoder (didn't want to reverse out the encoder as well -- total mess) is a really fun challenge. Good way to dive into codec work.
A lot of people just like C#. I think it's fair to say that it's a well designed language. It also depends on the task at hand and your personal preferences. I had to develop a couple of iPhone apps and in the process I've developed a pretty strong dislike for Objective-C (mainly its syntax, stupid, I know) - in the future I'd probably try MonoTouch.

Many people also tend to prefer the language they're strongest in when they need to get things done, especially when they don't know the other languages and frameworks that well.

In my case, I'm a Windows / C# guy at work, at home my laptop is running ArchLinux and I use it to code in a variety of languages. This didn't prevent me from trying to set up a mono / asp.net mvc app with nginx and postgresql on it :)
I organize my knowledge, but I have never heard of a topic map.

So the answer to your question is, that not enough developers know about them, or that topic maps are not useful enough to developers.

Can you give an example of how they can be used? How are your using them? Why are they useful to you?

I don't think it wouldn't be helpful to me to just organize my knowledge by topics/keywords. The tricky parts are the concepts, not the connections between topics/keywords.
I'm not sure I understand your argument correctly.

Are you saying that you can increase the salary you're willing to offer, but it won't drive up the quality of the developers applying for the job?

I think you're correct that it will attract the attention of incompetent developers. But I also think it'll attract the attention of competent ones. Why wouldn't it?

Once you have the attention of developers, it's your job to select the ones who will fit best.

In which case, increasing the salary offered, while doing your job as an interviewer, does have the net effect of attracting the talent you're looking for.
Well, the point being is that users shouldn't really be exposed to the details of internal branching. It is perfectly fine to use hierarchical versions internally, but they should be mapped to something simpler for the public releases. A one-to-one mapping, there should be no such thing as two different #37 releases.
If you activate the Search Charm from the new Start page you are presented with an alphabetical listing of all installed application (Metro and Desktop).
It's not that uncommon. For starters there's Office 2003, 2007, 2010, etc. and Ubuntu version numbers are year.month (e.g. 10.04, 10.10, 11.04).

For uncommon stuff: Ubuntu and Android use alphabetical code names, but I guess they're not really version numbers.

Knuth versions some of his books by digits of pi or e. (3, 3.1, 3.14, 3.141 etc).

Emacs has an implied "1." before each version number. It was decided that since there would never be a "2.x" version, they would just drop the "1." (22.3, 23.1, 23.2 etc).

Edit: oh, and git names revisions by SHA hashes, so each version is effectively random!
At Dreamforce a couple weeks ago I was wondering how sfdc was going to position Heroku since sfdc has already put a lot of time/effort into selling force.com. Seemed like they were trying to make the argument: "You use heroku for facebook apps and force.com for everything else!" This makes even more sense in that context.
Show HN: QR-code maker and landing page
Great point- life hacking is much easier when you have the data to look at.
You can do this yourself. Just leave space. Others will see you do this and leave space, too. While making this a science project sounds like fun, that seems unnecessary.

If the traffic pattern is so saturated that people rush into the space you leave, leave space anyway. Leave more space.

People seem to want to optimize for "average distance from the destination". That doesn't get them there any quicker.
This is not an accurate estimation because not all of the old customers were on the same $10/month plan, and not all of the 24 million (forecasted) customers are on the $16/month plan.

Netflix's own document lays out the forecast pretty well: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/1403529688x0x500... (see Venn diagram). Too bad the CNN article doesn't delve into these details.
Butts in Seats
The post also mentioned "Idealist". Would have been a much greater name, lots of clever wordplays and explanations what it really is: Idea List Ideal Deal. I wonder why they decided against it.
Why Microsoft 8 doesn’t matter
I think the check in started as a way to communicate 'This is what I'm doing right now' tied to a location. I've found more value in the 'this is what I did in the past'. So the utility of the check in isn't instant, it's faith that one day it will be useful.
Actually, this is suboptimal.

The optimal flow is for everyone to use both lanes up until the last moment, and then to merge by alternation (one car from one lane goes, then one car from the other lane goes).

Unfortunately, this only works when a substantial majority of the drivers understand that this is how it should work. If you don't hit that threshold, then the people who use the disappearing lane are going to get glares.

Here's a link that describes the theory behind optimal merge patterns:

http://jksqr.blogspot.com/2008/09/optimal-lane-merging-part-...
I'm old-fashioned this way, but split infinitives are like nails on chalk to me. I try to avoid using adverbs, but if an adverb is necessary, I try to place it after the verb it is modifying, not before.

Another recent habit is the infinitive split with a negative: "I asked him to not do that any more," rather than: "I asked him not to do that any more."

An unsplit negative can sometimes lead readers down a garden path, but that usually indicates a need to rethink the sentence, for example to reframe it without a negative: "I asked him to stop doing that."
I was just thinking that. Her experience is (so far) uncommon, but I think many people have had the experience of long electronic trails from former relationships. I keep them, mostly because I never feel the need to ever pull them up again, nevermind take the time to delete them. My roommate deleted all of hers, though, and at the time I thought that was drastic.
How to Use awesome fonts in Your Websites from Google’s Library
How Will Affiliate Taxes Affect Cloud Computing?
I'm not sure how Apple is trying to shoehorn touchscreens in Lion. They have made a very clear distinction between OSX and iOS, and instead added more gestures to the touchpads instead of trying to make a Mac with a touch screen.

I agree though, that trying to mix both is a mistake (one that's been tried for 10 years without much success).
My experience is more like yours. I've used Jira a ton of times and any problems we've had using Jira/Greenhopper have been organizational. The only problems I've had with Confluence have been fixed in newer versions.
Jason interviewed me for the BBS documentary - http://www.archive.org/details/20040130-bbs-mthreat

He loves making these documentaries, and he does a ton of research gathering for them. I think this is a person and cause worth supporting.
This seems to come up in every discussion of Netflix, but they do not use AWS for distributing streaming content.
New Game: HTML5 game conference
As a Python developer I was delighted to see Python in the list of supported languages. After cloning the repo you can notice it's just a standard Flask site with Jijna2 templates and helpers for accessing Facebook's API. I can see this as a really easy way to start developing for Facebook and also Python.
this doesn't surprise me at all. It's a chain reaction. Prices increase along with subscription rules, subscribers leave, less revenue, less profits, the company is worth less.

I'm interested to see how Netflix is going to respond to this. I expect them offer new deals to try and recover users. I canceled my service three weeks ago
Is not triggering InsertLeave a good thing or a bad thing?
Jobless in America: An Anthology of Essays About Looking for Work
Synthetic DNA added to yeast cells, paving way for 'evolution' on demand
Exactly. Having started building webapps (when there just called CGI) in 1996 and seen all of the app servers and platforms come and go, there has never been a better time than now to be a web developer, thanks to products like Heroku, New Relic, SauceLabs, CloudBees, etc.. I'm constantly blown away by the improvements in developer efficiently being made seemingly every day right now. This is why you are seeing a ton of startups (even the well funded ones) only hiring a small focused technical team. What is rather funny is watching how fragmented the mobile development space has become, with some exceptions (PhoneGap, SpacePort, Mobify, etc.), especially considering that is where people are moving so rapidly to do their computing. But I'm no mobile expert so my perception is probably skewed.
I was using Google+ within about a week of the open beta. I was excited to use it in a way similar to Twitter, the circles feature is definitely great there.

Then they shut down my account due to the full name policy. I never went back or attempted to reactivate my account. I am not going to use Google+ if the name policy is in effect. Twitter does not require a full name.
It does, iOS is a minimal OSX with a customised GUI.
I used emacs for a while, but fairly recently I switched to vim for one simple reason: opening speed. Emacs always takes a while to launch, but no matter how many plugins and whatnot I install in Vim it always launches instantly. And that, to me, is worth learning a new editor.
治疗尖锐湿疣的新方法
if OpenSocial on Orkut was any indicator... this api spec will change so often the docs will never be up to date.
Actually one of the guys I go to school with is looking to do that. He's creating a site that aggregates all of your social networks among other things and stores them creating a sort of digital timeline. I'm not real sure on the details as he's still developing it, but the way he described it to me is that social networks focus on the now while his site is meant to preserve the past.
Putin. Vladimir Putin.
> And that start screen looks like it was written for 5 year olds.

That's how the average user IS. That's what Apple has shown us with the phenomenal success of their iPhone, iPad products. It's the "Don't make me think" philosophy taken to an extreme.

I'm guessing that you are probably like me, a command line aficionado. They call it "simplification" of the user interface, but we feel that there's an element of idioticization there, too! :-) I mean, how do they get things done when there's no place to TYPE?! It's scary to have no place to type. :-)
Your hug will have to wait because this API is read only.

More info here: https://plus.google.com/117377434815709898403/posts/53bL7RAh...
Ah, I guess you then run into some blurring when you get to external beta testers and partners, or if you're developing an open-source product. But if you've got a closed-source product that you can manage the external releases to a single stream, then yeah, you can go with simpler public revision numbers.
Text Particles
Watch Joey Hess code for half an hour
Dear Fellow Shareholders ... Love Netflix
> informative version numbers

That's the thing. It is really hard to make a string of dotted numbers informative. They can obviously be used to express hierarchy of the versions, and that's useful in development context, but I would strongly argue against trying to pack any additional sense into them.
MomentFeed: How to measure your location based marketing investment w/ Rob Reed
Google Developers
http://semver.org/ provides a very useful scheme.
What is a Proposal Essay?
The idea behind a proposal essay is that the author is attempting to convince the reader to take action, approve a plan or believe that a product or set of ideas is the best way to achieve the given ends.
Actually, it's more like this:

Use Force.com for rapidly developing an app that integrates with Salesforce or fits within the limited scope of what that platform offers. For everything else, use Heroku.
Nice buzz ;-)
If they're able to. A lot of people work at companies where they have to use IE, and are not allowed to install something else.
I think you mean anything currently popular.
Your users don't want to be bothered by notifications. Automatic updates sound scary; they don't trust that your changes will always benefit them. It's easier to just turn the notifications off.
Has anyone gotten the people demo to work? I can't seem to get by own data, even after switching to private access. I get a 403 on everything.
Makes me think of Trello shots. Made with Pee Cola.
No surprise to me - I'd prefer the DVD route myself. The streaming service has a fraction of the content and is apparently destined to grow smaller, or more expensive, if the Starz news is any kind of bellwether.

My fear now is that the golden age of rental DVDs will come to an end before I have finished enjoying it. I want to be able to watch older or obscurer films, and the disks are better for that, probably because they don't require me or the rental company to acquire and maintain a stupid never-ending oft-renegotiated contract with a movie studio and its lawyers.
Windows is read only (although clipster somehow manages to write out prores files). There are two licensed products (hardware) that write out prores that I am aware of - ARRI Alexa cameras and AJA ki pro.
That was just a marketing offer, where FB app developers got a month of Joyent for free. This is an integration that's much more impressive for getting developers past hosting, permissions, security, etc. to their first line of code much, much faster. It took me 10 minutes to get to "Hello, World."
Seems like it would be a pretty good business model for utility companies.
There's also a GWT sample app: http://gwt-google-apis.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/apis/samples...

The code for which is here: http://code.google.com/p/gwt-google-apis/source/browse/trunk...
I would offer a suggestion, but I just had another go on the Wikipedia version and I honestly don't have a clue what it's telling me. I think I get what non-deterministic means, but then I'm totally flummoxed as to what that has to do with problems whose solution can be quickly verified.
Getting an internal server error when trying to signup (after filling out the signup form and clicking the "Create New Account" button on the signup) ... http://cl.ly/020I2N0Q3d143L2f040a
yep, that's what I do. Just try to drive the average speed.
Are you opening emacs with -nw? That will load it within the terminal, like vim. It loads within a second for me, and I have a sizable .emacs.
>> make their content progressively harder and harder to get hold of (which seems to be the case) I predict more and more people will switch to torrenting the content.

You have to keep this in the context of the non-tech mass market. For them, the content is on TV now. Turning on the TV is easy. The studios aren't making content harder to get as long as it's available on TV. Netflix/iTunes/torrenting is not easier than turning on the TV (for most people). Most people don't consider turning on the TV to be a difficult hoop to jump through.

Yes, I know that some shows aren't available in some countries. But then, the vast majority of people are likely not even aware of shows that don't air in their markets (i.e. foreign shows).
Actually, 10. doesn't necessarily repeat the last command 10 times, it just runs it again with an argument of 10. For example ">>10." will indent the current line and then indent it and the following 9 lines.

I still haven't found an easy way to indent a line N times without pressing ">" 2N times...
I assume they decided against it because the .com was taken.
I liked that name the best. However someone get there way before us: http://www.idealist.org/
Conference Nonsense
Computing has changed so greatly in just the last 5 years alone. While Microsoft is still a huge player in the industry, I don't think Windows 8 is going to do that much for them. Only time will tell though
These days it seems like much of a language's benefit to developers comes from its libraries rather than from the elegance of its syntax or the ease of implementing an algorithm. The big question is, how much of the "standard" libraries are supported on these devices? I remember writing a C# application using Winforms back mid-last-decade and assuming that portability would be a cinch...right up until I realized that Winforms weren't supported by Mono yet and I was supposed to use Glade# or some such nonsense. C#'s mindshare mostly comes from Windows GUI developers, and telling these folks that they can use their pet language only if they relearn all the libraries isn't going to be much of a win, I don't think.
The over-reaction kinda confuses me.

I hate price increases too but is there is any proof that Netflix is profit-gouging subscribers? Or are their suppliers jacking up the prices and Netflix has to pass it along somehow vs become the next Blockbuster?
I really don't know what you're talking about RE: a Kindle version.

I'm talking about https://read.amazon.com/about
Well, it's complicated, but the main reason is that since our premises are just around the corner from one of the biggest Apple Stores in the world, we can replace any of our servers literally within minutes if they fail. This makes me sleep a lot easier at night.

Also the savings on the electricity bill are not negligeable either.
HTML5boilerplate uses those browser conditional statements too, but applies them to the html tag instead of body: http://html5boilerplate.com/

<!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- paulirish.com/2008/conditional-stylesheets-vs-css-hacks-answer-neither/ -->
<!--[if lt IE 7]> <html class="no-js ie6 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7]> <html class="no-js ie7 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8]> <html class="no-js ie8 oldie" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!-- Consider adding a manifest.appcache: h5bp.com/d/Offline -->
<!--[if gt IE 8]><!--> <html class="no-js" lang="en"> <!--<![endif]-->
Launch it in server mode at startup then use emacsclient: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsClient
I feel like there is too much attention paid these days to who badmouthed your precious programming language, or whether your language has the appropriate amount of respect, or whatever. I'm a C# dev, sometimes. People have been hating on it (and its devs) for years, but it just doesn't matter. Get over it and use whatever language or other dev tool you want.
That is a strange way to look at the decision. Clearly the costs of staff have to be included if you want to compare operating your own data centers to using Amazon. It is pretty easy to say that Amazon is more expensive by x% if you are willing to exclude certain costs from the alternative. What is the difference after adding in staffing costs?
I agree that a lot fewer people would actually want to use Windows, especially now that they're completely revamping the interface, and "normal" people might find it hard to accomodate with it, if they didn't have all the Windows programs.

But I also don't think the iPad has "won" for eternity the tablet market. It's having a nice head start, but eventually its market share will become a bit more niche with 20-30% market share.

Apple is great for the computing industry, they push it forward. But they can do that very well from a 20% market share, too. But even at that kind of market share they tend to become very strict with what they allow on their computers. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if they actually had over 50% of the market? Or even 90% like Microsoft?

I don't think any company should have more than 50% of a market. Not Apple, not Google, and not Microsoft. They all become a bit perverted when they get that much. Some more than others.
I can actually see a good argument for the API remaining read-only so that Google+ emphasises original content and doesn't just end up as a ghost-town full of content syndicated in from elsewhere and sending people off to another site to join in the real conversation.
All governments want this but they don't quite dare to do such an unpopular thing quickly and openly, so they are testing it first in some low-visibility countries.

We could go into a long analysis as to why they want it but the short explanation is, as proved again and again by history, that they work for their own interests, not for those of their people.
Someone forward this article to eBay please.

When I'm "logged in", even something as trivial as clicking the [add to watchlist] button prompts for my password. It's insane. Maybe require a this-session password for "money" things like bidding on an item, but not for everything on the site.