skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, worked a summer at a supermarket warehouse. They were nice enough there to sprinkle water on the roof, bringing the temperature inside down, in addition to having coolers. Middle of summer was still very hot, worst was the smell of tins of cat food that were spoiling. The only plus points for that job was the Windows CE powered, voice activated, order picking computers and driving electric carts around...
That is exactly what makes this interesting. He is going to be one fairly accurately measured datapoint.
I think indemnifying your customers from IP lawsuits when they use your product/technology isn't a bad thing.

It's the carrot at the end of the FUD. "If you buy our stuff, you'll be safe from someone suing."

"What's that, still going to use Unix? Well you'd better at least buy from Novell, as they've signed an agreement protecting you from being sued."

It's not "shades of SCO", it's the other side of the same coin.
Interesting News, Any Time You Visit
Thanks, Dewitt! I love what you guys are doing, and I'm glad to hear some acknowledgement of an open and federated future for G+. I'm happy to be patient, but I was a bit worried since the launch seemed distinctly different in approach from Buzz and Wave. But I think nailing down the user experience first is probably a good idea.
John Carmack coded Quake on a 28-inch 16:9 1080p monitor in 1995
Google+: Social Media Upstart 'Worse Than a Ghost Town'
I hereby accuse each member of the Italian legislature of copyright infringement.

There, that ought to keep them from causing any further trouble.
A Week of Check-ins on the Path to One Billion [video]
The machinery that makes firearms isn't unique or special. Some of the tooling may be, but I can't imagine all the CNC mills an lathes are purpose specific at firearms manufacturers' plants.

As with most things firearms related, the offense occurs with the action. In this case, the transaction. You can manufacture a firearm with standard machinery and suffer no penalty. The same applies for a printer capable of printing a firearm (or parts). It is when you sell those firearms (or parts) that you have broken the law.

If it is against the law to possess a firearm in your location, then it doesn't matter how you made it. Possession remains illegal.
"Yes, your Honor. My eyelids were open and my eyeballs were receiving light reflected off the victim, but my pre-frontal cortex was not paying attention to the input at the time. Therefore, you must find me not guilty."

IANAL, IANAD, but the "collecting data without analyzing data" argument still seems pretty flimsy.
> You can't simultaneously have an invite system
> and a huge marketing push.

I don't think Google has done a huge marketing push, yet, considering how big a product this is for them.

They've done little press and haven't bought advertising online or in the real world - something they did for Chrome. They've so far done pretty much the minimum a company of such scale could do for a product this big. It was inevitable that a lot of people would want to join as soon as they heard of Google's plans.

I have a feeling that the marketing push is very much still to come.
We have a saying here used by the IRS and CRA (Canadian-equivalent) for determining if contractors are employees, that if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, then it is a duck.

Basically, a contractor (by the nature of its name) is supposed to be hired for a fixed-length period of time. I would guess that's what the tax laws are trying to enforce.
The next IMHO-blindingly-obvious step in computer evolution is that your tablet/cell phone becomes your desktop when plugged into a probably-USB-based dock that adds a keyboard, mouse, and real desktop monitor (or more).

Thanks for publicly mentioning that (seriously): Your mention in itself is now "prior art" for pretty much anyone who might later try to patent the idea. (IIRC, Arthur C. Clarke described something much like that in one of his Rama novels back in the late 1970s or early 1980s.)
Twitter’s ever-changing infrastructure story
And what media groups are reputable in India?
Or the Bogan Ipsum: http://www.boganipsum.com/ (Which is randomly generated)

Stands out like a show pony bloody come a ratbag. Get a dog up ya yakka mate flat out like a amber fluid. Built like a metho mate as cross as a skite. Mad as a hit the turps piece of piss as stands out like down under. Lets throw a rage on with shazza got us some mates. Gutful of longneck mate we're going lizard drinking. He hasn't got a metho heaps mad as a barbie. She'll be right shag on a rock where he hasn't got a freckle. Shazza got us some bounce bloody mad as a spag bol. Shazza got us some fremantle doctor also shazza got us some doovalacky. Lets throw a bottlo he's got a massive smoko.
Huh? The iPad is pad-shaped and "pad" is a commonly-understood noun in the tech world to refer to these devices.

Same thing for iPod. It's pod-shaped (or was when it was introduced) and it's a pretty simple mental leap to classify this "pod" as a thing that you put your music "into".

By stark contrast, "Qwikster" has absolutely no mental, cultural or conceptual link to the product or service it describes. It's worthless as a name in addition to being confusing, already taken by various other services, impossible to spell, and dorky.

Not really debatable.
Actors had a memory leak when a lot of the formative Twitter Scala stuff happened. This lead to more usage of java concurrency primitives, which snowballed within the culture.

There's some people at Twitter who truly love and grok Scala and Scala idioms inside out, and there's some people who look at Scala as a more functional, less verbose Java.
Coffeescript finally works on Windows
Nor should it try, because it's an objective measure, whereas HPI is completely subjective measure. Apples and oranges.

I'm also not convinced self-reported happiness is accurate across cultures. How do you control for cultural variations in the question "are you happy?" Diverse cultures have deep differences of understanding when approaching that question.
Newegg's warehouse for comparison:

http://www.anandtech.com/print/1945
Well, since the concept of sin is well defined in the bible it is silly to equate it to what some silly people say it is.

>Scripture does not define typical Christian behavior; let's not conflate the two.

Exactly, thank you.

Blurring this line is exactly what irks me, if you're going to 'talk shit' about Christianity then use scripture.
Otherwise, properly define that you're simply arguing against stupid people.

Don't say you know scripture, and then use anecdotes to show it.

Sin is well defined in the bible, it doesn't matter what people think it is or what it should be.

BTW, I'm aware the author didn't make this claim directly, but this notion is what irks me.

If you ask any Christian, and indeed they know the nature of the equality of sin, then these 'common' Christians that don't follow scripture and bash people can't exist.

If that's the case, are these people you are talking about being Christian, or just being people?
婚宴邀请短信
Show HN: My HTML5 Etch A Sketch
APL is cheaper.
they are clearly not unsolvable, and in my view they aren't even thorny UX problems. they are clear cut.

the issue is that Netflix thus far has done zero to try to make them better and has, ever step of the way, created these issues when a simple, customer friendly workaround seems apparent.

what to do about ratings? make the two sites interoperable. hell, create an API for Netflix ratings.

what to do about the two Queues? i already have two Queues on Netflix. make the two sites interoperable. seems pretty basic for a big league company.

whatever. i am not shedding any tears. I've been watching movies online for almost 10 years now and I'm going to continue doing so. whether i pay netflix money or fire up a BT client, i don't really care.

the real question is: does Hollywood want my money?
How to Contribute to an Open Source Project
Thank you. HN never fails me. I saw the 10 pages and closed it without reading because there is no way I am wading through all those ads for 10 pages.
Picasa is what is used for Google+'s photo backend. You are not required to share anything from Picasa on Google+ and vice-versa.
> Can people still buy computers capable of running XP without extensive tweaking?

That has nothing to do with current hardware. I had to do that back in the day too. You people have been spoiled with Vista and Windows 7.
When I put something in my DVD queue, it automatically appears in my streaming queue when it's available. This makes me happy, I watch the movie online, then delete it from my DVD queue. If the new system no longer supports this, it will affect my morale.

But I suspect you're right about killing off or selling the DVD service, and I think they're intentionally trying to sour customer opinion to bring about this end. It's a shame, because Netflix, as it previously existed, was one of the few subscription services I was happy to pay for. After the site redesign, everything's gone to hell (instantwatcher.com is the only useable interface I've found, on any platform). Oh, well, it was good while it lasted...
Is growing the same as buying? I wonder if the precedent of Gonzales v Raich would apply to printing firearms (if it were ever feasible).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

...a decision by the United States Supreme Court ruling that under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, the United States Congress may criminalize the production and use of home-grown cannabis even where states approve its use for medicinal purposes.
QR code security risks
Of course, you're right and IANAL. Indeed, the quote I chose to include was from the "special circumstances" section, it may only apply to 10 states, and there are special requirements. Also, you are correct that a class would only include victims of wrecks whose OnStar systems were cancelled but active (and possibly any other people affected by the wreck -- e.g. the people in the other car).

Nevertheless, it seems unethical for OnStar to profit off human suffering when they are in a position to assist -- I suspect their crash statistics are among the most profitable data they collect.
> The websites, however, will remain separate, so that we can start giving these different worlds the unique attention they deserve.

Sounds like they are being separated to me.
I thought about that but they might expire :(

A GUID is guaranteed unique forever pretty much :)
In case anybody was wondering, Richard Dawkins explicitly says that there are huge differences in harm between various religions and the members within those religions, and that if all religious people were the friendly, liberal kind, he probably wouldn't have bothered writing a book about it.
You mean Scala 2.8.2 and 2.9.1, respectively.
That's nearly very plant, factory, and warehouse in the world. There's nothing unique about these conditions. When I was younger and worked in my family's plant I'd get to work before 5am to beat the heat. Sometimes I couldn't and the heat was brutal, but you learn to deal with it (set up fans, take more water breaks, change your clothes).
That's not accurate either. You can own an AR-15 in California without a license of any sort, it just cannot have any of the restricted features like a 30 round magazine.
What's odd is that Newegg always ships me broken stuff, whereas the stuff I get from Amazon is always packaged properly to avoid damage. (Note to Newegg. Don't send me a hard drive in a plastic eggshell case with a few packing peanuts in the box. I'm surprised those drives lasted long enough to even get an OS installed.)
There isn't a law. Each company has their own policy as a result of so-called Permatemps at Microsoft filing a class action:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsoft
> Not to mention that a lot of there growth was due to the fact that they had a fiercely loyal cust base that proselytized endlessly for them.

Yeah, that was me a week ago. Now, I just dread explaining to my other half that we will need to manage two movie queues.
I'm quite sure a large number of people working in an office are truly productive only an hour per day as well. The only difference is what gets in the way of real work.
HTML5 vs Native Apps
That's what I was thinking. This whole article boils down to the fact that there are people working in a building without A/C, there were a few hot days, and some of them aren't very heat tolerant. And $11/hr is pretty good pay for this kind of work. When I worked in logistics our customers were paying their employees minimum wage.

There are a lot of jobs where people work in these kinds of conditions. Where I live when it gets hot and the air is still it's pretty common to see people who work outside overcome by the heat to some degree.
I heard good things about "Algorithms For Interviews" by
Adnan Aziz and Amit Prakash - http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Interviews-Adnan-Aziz/dp/14... (about $20)
Reengineering the Windows 8 boot experience [New post]
Free tools every website owner needs to know about
All the government cares about, though, is that they are W2 and not 1099. Then there are no rules. The IRS just wants to make sure that a big entity is responsible for payroll taxes instead of some individual. That way, it's cheaper to collect if there is a problem.

(Where I work, all contractors come in through third-party companies that pay the employees as W2s. They limit being a contractor to 18 months because then people can start suing to get benefits, like an invite to the Christmas party and healthcare. Or so I've been told.)
+1 for pissed off Google Apps users.
Ask HN: How to get featured on TechCrunch
Are there any hackers out there who have ever had their startup featured on a website like TechCrunch?
It seems having your startup featured on large website is a great way to boost your chances of success, and as I am soon to launch my own startup I'm really interested in hearing any tips or advise you can offer.
Is it a good idea to offer some kind of promotion? e.g. 10 beta keys for the readers? Or does that kind of strategy take away from your pitch?
> I can tell within two minutes if someone can code or not.

How?
There will certainly be people to make that argument. But people already make guns, and it's not illegal (at least under federal law; some states probably do criminalize it). Selling a gun you've made is a problem, but making one for personal use? NBD.
“Scala for the Impatient” is indeed probably the best of the current generation of books for getting into Scala.

Unfortunately it's not for the actually impatient since only the first 9(?) chapters are released and the more interesting ones probably won't be available until late this or early next year, so you'll need to augment it with another book for now.
Unix sort but keep header line
Ah, if only the nuances of a year's worth of experiences can be held in a collection of text and diagrams ;)

And if only comprehending the full breadth of that experience is as simple as hunkering down and reading it all!
Borders employees vent frustration
We wrote something similar at Brightcove to collect system statistics and publish them graphite. It runs as an independent service and focuses on OS (not application) level metrics.

https://github.com/BrightcoveOS/Diamond
I have done the pragprog code katas before. Did it make me a better programmer? I think so because I actually sat down and thought about what I was doing when I program(and how I could improve it) instead of focusing on the problem. On the other hand, most code katas I have seen focus on something very small. I am already pretty good at that, it is development in the large that tends to be tricky.
Something similar is PFNC <http://www.pfnc.net/index.htm>, who aim to manufacture houses out of shipping containers, with an on-site cost of $15,000.
NASA wants to hire a space taxi
Rebranding the DVD company is relatively easier than the streaming one due to the many devices in people's homes which are "netflix enabled"
This situation cries out for Congressional oversight.
Alternatively it would be interesting if Identified showed three scores for each factor considered - one score for education tied to national surveys/ rankings, one score for companies worked tied to perhaps employment surveys conducted by HR consulting firms, and another for connections so that viewers would see three numbers side by side. The availability of all this information is of course dependent on how willing facebook users would be to voluntary disclosure, especially their connections. Some important people don't want to be identified as such and the friends of these individuals would want to protect them from others capitalizing on the relationship.
It's been mentioned many times before, including by ESR in 2008: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=614. Not that I expect that to stop the patent office from handing a lawsuit factory to the next Lodsys.
Ask HN: What personal projects for learning web scalability?
I'm gradually becoming more and more fascinated by the big and/or just interesting web apps/sites that rely on massive amounts of trafic, data, queries, etc. To scratch the itch, I've decided to start some personal project exercising some of the technologies and approaches to scalability ... BUT as you probably have guessed - it's hard to come up with ideas that are of the development scale of a single developer AND at the same time have some of the real-world challenges of scalability and/or high availability and/or performance.

I'm quite open to new technologies/stacks. Currently work as fairly standard webdev (LAMP stack).

What ideas would you propose? It can be fun!

Thanks in advance
That looks really convenient and useful.
> I'm curious, do you have numbers backing the higher profitability of their streaming business over DVD-by-mail?

Simple reasoning will get you to that conclusion. There are no physical plants to maintain. No physical inventory to maintain. No postage costs.

You do have the costs of bandwidth, computing power, and licensing fees. I would imagine those are less than the above.

On top of that, they wouldn't be throwing everything into streaming unless they were making more money there. Even the most retarded of businesses will focus on a more profitable line than a less profitable one.
Legally, the only difference between a CAD file of the AR-15 and an AR-15 repair manual should be that one is actionable by a machine. They're both a description of the operation of the object (and thus speech).

And let's go even further into the hypothetical future where we've made great advances in AI. Also, for whatever reason, a court has found weapons CAD files to be illegal. What will the law say when a machine is intelligent enough to decipher the same human-targeted AR-15 repair manual and reconstruct one from that information?
This article seems to conflate "works less than eight hours a day" with "doesn't get the job done." I would expect somebody who doesn't have the distractions of an office or the pressure to appear busy for eight hours regardless of actual workload might get things done faster.

Also, a lot of telecommuters are either intermittent workers (e.g. freelancers) or part-timers, so it's unsurprising that a significant number don't average many hours a day.
To be fair: That is actually #1 in the list.
I assume that most people who post here are smarter than the average citizen or at least more informed. The real "spaghetti code" problem here is that this obscure statute can easily be violated in advance of being told your rights. And you only get ready your rights a.k.a. mirandized when you're bordering on already in trouble with the law. Coupled with the fact that this is a federal statute it only applies to federal agents not city or state. And since you can lie to city or state officials up until you are under oath (which most people know) you might be inclined to believe he can do it to federal agent until it's too late. Which means their first encounter with a federal agent will be a crash course in the finer points of the law. One which they will unlikely be able to walk away from. I believe the spirit of v. Miranda is being violated the statute, I believe the beginning of any contacts with the law enforcement official should begin with the reading of your rights which should now include information on statute 18 sec 1001.
The article focuses on a particular gun, the AR15. After much wrangling, settled law dictates that the "lower receiver" _is_ the gun; all the other parts are incidental. Sure, the lower receiver alone is little more than a big paperweight, but it's the unchanging core to which all other variable components are attached to form something functional. And no, you can't just "whittle it from wood" etc., it's a pretty serious chunk of milled steel (there exists a "plastic" version, but that ain't generic plastic).

Yes, some jurisdictions aside you can make one AR15 lower receiver on your own without any paperwork, fees, checks, or permission. Understanding is that nobody going thru that much effort is going to waste it by doing something stupid (if there's criminal intent there are many far easier ways to acquire one).

The issue here is: where's the line on making one? You can make one yourself legally, but if you hire someone else to knowingly make it they'll need an expensive big-hassle manufacturer's license. The key is "knowingly", as up until recently it was pretty obvious to the machinist what he was being asked to do. Now, with "printing", you just upload the pattern for what is otherwise just another odd-shaped chunk of metal, a computer & machine crank one out, and the result gets sent back to you with a minimum of comprehension by any humans involved - are _you_ "making" it? or is the printing house "making" it and, in effect, selling it to you? The legal line has been blurred.
Gandhi, is that you?
I've been using Google+ since it was first made available, I've got may main personal account on there, and several accounts for fake persona's and a business account for my business (still hasn't been tagged or removed by Google for not being a real name).

The only people who I've seen are affected by the "nymwars" seem to be celebrity accounts or people that like to go by pen names on social networks. With my various fake accounts I have had no issues yet, most likely because they don't get a ton of traffic and fly under the radar. It is not like Facebook hasn't had these issues either, whereby they will lock people out of their account until they send in a photo ID (locking out out of your Facebook mail/text messaging stuff as well).

I keep hearing stories about how people consider it a desert or that certain articles and stories are claiming that there is 40% less activity. I've noticed that I have started to become more careful as to who gets to see my posts and if they are allowed to share them. More information is shared in specific circles rather than publicly. I've also found that there is much more engagement on Google+ than any other social service.

When I post something on Google+ I get more feedback, more people commenting on my posts and more people having intelligent discourse than on Facebook or Twitter, or even my blog. Since I can target specific circles I am able to categorise my friends based on what I think they would be interested in, so instead of having non-tech friends get techy stuff from me and thus becoming disinterested they only get my personal stuff that they might find interesting, like how it is going in my life.

Yes, Facebook has had that for a while as well, however it was always more tedious to set it up, get people into the various circles, and now that it has been made easier they have cocked it up royally:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3018403

For me so far Google+ has become more interesting, more targeted and has much less noise compared to the signal. Will that change as more people join? Maybe, I'm not so sure, as I think people will realise that with circles they don't have to include me in a conversation (nor will it show up in my stream) with a mutual friend... (public walls ...)