skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I noticed something interesting on Reddit. I recently installed the Reddit Enhancement Suite extension for my browser. One of the features is that it displays next to a user's name above their comment the sum of +/- 1 votes I have given them. It also colors them based on their distance from 0 (or something similar to this). Suddenly I find myself reading comments differently based on whether they a strong positive or negative rating from me. I worried a little when I found myself upvoting a comment that was made by a very common poster on the site, and I realized it was the sort of stupid joke that doesn't contribute to the discussion that I would normally down-vote.

The reputation the user had with me caused me to give their posts the benefit of the doubt. It was a very odd experience.

On HN, I almost never read the name of the person who posted something until I am about to vote on it. I enjoy trying to evaluate a post on its contribution to the topic, and not on the authority or popularity of the author.
Skype's future under Microsoft: integration everywhere?
What to Expect from the Next Generation at Apple
Off topic, but how do you do bold/italic text in G+? And can it also do headings? Seems like great way to blog if it did.
I remember when Cringely was interesting; sadly, he's gone the John C. Dvorak route of pulling stupid, provocative assertions out of his ass.
I've been researching this area lately too, I wanted something like MyBB but with better internals.
there's an hn-chicago mailing list, but it's usually dead: http://groups.google.com/group/hn-chicago

apparently it has something to do with chicago.concat: http://chicago-concat.gathers.us/

there's been a few chicago meetups organized here on the site, which were not associated with that hn-chicago list.
>Also, a boson is a force-carrier particle – like electrons – whereas a fermion is associated with being a matter particle.

I think he got that backwards. An electron is a matter particle and not a force carrier.
I'm loving this. Thanks for sharing!
You don't think you're maybe proving the wrong point when, after being asked to provide evidence for the argument that Monsanto is evil, you respond "just Google for most evil company in the world"?

If you really want to pursue that point, maybe you want to start by reconciling it with the fact that by that scale, Monsanto is competing with Activision, Ford Motor, and Coca Cola (all of which appear alongside it on the top half of the first Google SERP for "most evil company in the world").
Linux Today - Photoshop Alternatives for Linux
We tech people often have the tendency to take things a little too literally. No company can really make an offer that is truly unlimited for a fix price if they have any variable costs.
MLSP Wake Up Call? It's Like a Daily Meditation
I don't see how decrying a partnership with Monsanto equates with anti-capitalism. Monsanto is seen by many as an enterprise with particularly questionable business practices, but more revelatory than that, one with deep ties to our political system, from which they might be said to derive great benefit from our government's support through subsidies, research grants, political pressure on other countries, abuse of the justice system in going after often innocent farmers, and the list goes on. If anything, it is Monsanto which is seen as anti-capitalist, for their reliance on government power in order to succeed in the marketplace, rather than the inherent merits of their products.

Beyond that, the fact that their genetic modifications to our basic food staples are not contained, that they are allowed to contaminate our seed stocks as a whole, with often poorly understood long-term consequences, touches a nerve for a large portion of the population, since we are talking about a consequential and irreversible effect on the basic food upon which we all rely to stay alive and healthy. It is not hard for me to see why this would be controversial.
Surely people should be writing (they already briefly were before Siri was known) about Google's attempt at this, including email and os on. Google is far more likely to grab from every source it has, including email, in the background. I'd expect Siri to only read emails you refer to (Siri, what was that restaurant from the email this morning?). FUD with Google isn't as far off as it sometimes seems (yes, agreeing with fud is stupid, but still).
Agreed. Always vest non founders. Don't get stuck with a non-preforming shareholder a few years from now.
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=google+plus+cheat+sheet
Jump & Co Solicitors
I personally wouldn't partner with Lockheed Martin if my tech was going to be used for weaponry. We've refused lucrative contracts with certain companies because we don't respect their product or their past behavior. It completely depends on the relative weight of what you find important.

Partnership deals happen in the background without anyone knowing about it unless you are in the scene. Fact is that they could've done this deal without such an announcement and people/investors in the know within SV would've heard about it.

The fact is that Monsanto has a long history of harmful activities in the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#Environmental_and_heal...) and the world (http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsan...) that it is a red flag. Sure, Cloudant isn't a bio warfare company, but the fact is that they are proud to be associated with Monsanto.
I agree with pg on this one, and I find Nick O'Neill's arguments to be as ludicrous as O'Neill seems to find pg's.

This must be a fundamental, deeply ingrained, clear-cut difference in the way people think.
I couldn't agree more. The annoying part is when they ask you to call them so they can verify your identity.

It is a safe assumption that they don't do voice recognition, so why do they think I can't just spell the same numbers out loudly I'd have sent in an email...?
>Er...the delegation thing depends on what the manager is being paid to do.

until the manager is specifically being paid to do delegation, the manager should do his work instead of delegating it.

>Not every technical manager can be an expert in all the fields he/she supervises.

that pretty much equivalent definition of a bad manager.

>the details or tactical implementation without having to worry about the strategic.

and the strategy BS they bring in.
"Oh, that's a pretty silly comment then, it's where their store is. Given that people have to supply a card and/or delivery address when buying it's not going to be a massive pain for online retailers."

So why can't it apply the same way to online merchants? Where their business is located?

You obviously don't run an online store. It's not as easy as just charging them tax. There are so many different tax rates (that are constantly changing btw) that it's going to be very difficult for any small retailer to keep this up-to-date.

It would be much easier to just require the customer to claim it on their tax forms (which I believe is already a requirement).

To claim this is "lost revenue" is about the same as when the RIAA claims piracy is lost revenue.
Justin Massa on Hacking the Food System: Democratizing Data
IOS 5 and New Features for Web Developers
How to install rpm packages in Ubuntu?
And web retailers are willing to handle sales taxes where their stores are. The difference is that they're being expected to handle sales taxes for cities and states they don't actually have any presence in - ie, in every state and municipality that has a sales tax.
I'm actually working on a novel right now

Funny tidbit, the original version of my post was something along the lines of "If you wrote, a book, that snippet would make me want to read it." So yeah, make sure you post to HN, or shoot me a tweet or whatever (@jessegumm) when it's done. You've piqued my interest.

if you step out of the box to do your own thing, all of your friends are secretly going to think you're a little nuts.

Agreed, but that's no excuse to berate a you, at least if they wish to be considered a friend. It's one thing to express disagreement, it's another thing entirely to poke fun at a friend's misery.
I claim shenanigans. Read all of section 7
If you have the "turn-on when driving" setting enabled, then our app will acquire a CPU wake-lock that keeps it running (this is not a big drain on the battery, about 1% per hour). Every three minutes we'll poll the GPS to see if you're driving and then start the application up if GPS indicates your speed is above 10mph. When it starts up it'll also notify you that it started up by speaking aloud to you.

If your phone is entirely off (and not just sleeped/screen locked) then there's nothing we can do about that... :)

Also if you have more questions, start a new comment thread in this post- the reply timeout makes replying super slow.
The licensing fees we're talking about farmers getting sued over are for the Roundup-ready crops, not the herbicide. The point of the Roundup-ready system is that it allows you to plant crops that aren't killed by Roundup. As someone else noted, you can buy Roundup itself at Wal-mart.

I think even a cursory read of the thread would have indicated to a good-faith commenter that I know the basics of the difference between Roundup and the Roundup-ready GMO product.
mmmm ...
You have a strong password but how you will remember it with a sticky note?

Some persons says that a pass phrase is safer password and it is indeed math true. However, currently most of the systems have catpchas or block out and brute force or dictionary attacks are no longer used.

One of the more effective methods is for example: you made a user in a weak page like a blog or something and then a someone break into a obtain a email account and the password for the blog.

Maybe if the hacker is smart enough he could try the email account with same password found and they got you.
So, different passwords is the safest method you can lastpass, 1password, keepass to remember your password.
They also allow to use multi-step security using OTP devices like yubi key or RDA token
Nice one, except ours don't show up. But for all you coders/synth-nerds want a great job! Check this out:
http://twitter.com/#!/jugendingenieur
'Fuck Monsanto, and by association, fuck Cloudant' is not a constructive opening to a conversation. If that poster had started by saying 'This announcement makes me not want to do business with Cloudant. Here's why...' then I'd largely agree with you. You are right that Monsanto is a politically radioactive company, so putting out a cheery press release about becoming a core technology supplier displays a misunderstanding of branding.

However, raving and swearing at people is not persuasive, it's bullying. We'll never find out what pg really thinks of Monsanto or the idea of doing business with them, because all we've got is his understandably snippy reaction to what sounds like the aggressive ranting of an insane person.
Sent over HTTP and generated on a remote machine, which could theoretically log it along with your IP. </paranoid>

Alternate ways of generating strong passwords on your local box that I'm aware of:

* Mac OS X users can launch Keychain Access, click the + button, then the Key button on the very right. This gives you a dialog window which will generate strong passwords in various configurations, such as memorable ones.

* The pwgen utility is available on several Linux distributions and on Macports. It too can generate memorable passwords. Check out the -s and -y command line options and note that you can give the desired password length on the command line.

Any other recommendations?
Another Linux Project Hacked
Post-return-of-Jobs Apple (and really Apple throughout its history, though more cleanly and clearly recently) has, for all its success and all its innovation, been very very traditional at its core: It sells hard goods to public consumers in exchange for cash. I don't think Apple has any interest in flipping that incredibly successful equation and selling its consumers to advertisers.

iAd is an obvious-feeling exception to this, of course. That said, iAd has clearly never been a focus, it's always felt like an "I guess we should," and maybe a poster child for WebKit in the commercial/ad space, but not as a significant means to an end for the company. How often is iAd discussed by Apple or anyone else, especially compared to everything else they do.

They also sell content in their online stores, but that is also a false lead, because it differs from Google and social network styles of digital monetization. They're still selling CONTENT to CONSUMERS there, and they're only doing it because they want Apple hardware to be the thing people buy to consume their media.

When selling iCloud, they have repeatedly pointed out that its an advertising free service. "Who wants ads in their email?" was the sentiment expressed at its announcement.

Apple suddenly shifting gears, turning their precisely built, paid for and profitable consumer goods into trojan horses for bundled adware seems nearly entirely unlikely.

Letting users INSTALL that sort of thing wouldn't be a surprise -- "Siri, play 'Super Troopers' on Netflix" -- but that's, again, the user using a paid for service or product on the device, not the user being sold to an advertiser.
The Quasicrystal Laureate
Come on, this is HN indeed, can't you assume a little good faith? They're here answering questions, trying to learn from potential customers.

Have you launched a product? It's easy to call it "marketing bullshit" and move on with your day. Those people have spent time and energy designing their app, and they didn't post an ad, someone (maybe them, who cares?) posted a link on a blog about their product. Just ignore it if you don't care for it.
This is great news! No competition from these dinosaurs!
Weird. Every single learning program I have been a part of that helped me towards my current profession was long-distance... I taught myself how to program on the Internet and turned it into a career that pays for every single aspect of my life. Why can't that work at a university? You can learn anything from anywhere, why let physical boundaries limit you. I learned about half I know from distance (books, web): opera, classical music, history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, et cetera. I'm not really sure what you mean, and can't relate to your viewpoint.

Relatedly, I honestly don't understand how people fetishize educational institutions but it seems very common. Perhaps I am a bit more sensitive than others, never having been to a 4 year university, but I always thought it was all about learning. When did preserving the institutions of education become more important than actual education?

~ Immensely Prideful Autodidact
Previous HN discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430495
Thawte
Information about SSL Certificates to navegate more secure in Internet
AOL CEO pitches investors on Yahoo deal: sources
Learn to give Glossy Floor Effect in photoshop
In my experience (game development, hundreds of thousands of LOCs of C++), compiling is purely CPU limited if your HDD isn't utterly braindead (e.g. at or above normal desktop 7200 rpm levels).
I agree with you, but for different reasons. Calling someone is as intimate as you could get, next to seeing someone, plus it's realt-ime. I rather email. If I want to talk to you I will call you.
I have two points:

1. So the problem of calculating and distributing use tax is complex... That sounds like a business opportunity for a new kind of web service.

2. I think the issue just comes down to online retailers dragging their feet because they want to enjoy their advantage as long as possible.
Well, I don't know if it's a pathetic after thought (Okrut, anyone?). But it's definitely a "me too" kind of a product. One that still needs to appeal to a wider base.

POLL: Is Google+ little more than a pathetic afterthought?
Vote: http://www.wepolls.com/p/3740179
Sounds great. Does anyone know if examples of successful applications are published? Thanks
How to upgrade to iOS5 without issues
IOS 5: Tips, Tricks & Hidden Features
Use 2-factor auth for Gmail: a cautionary tale
Do you buy any food at all that is not grown by local organic farmers? If you do, chances are you have a much stronger business relationship with Monsanto than Paul Graham does.

After all, you are directly giving money to a supermarket, which is giving it to a big agribusiness, which either is Monsanto or is a customer of Monsanto. All these evil things that Monsanto does? They're done with your money.

Contrast that with Paul Graham, who is a partial owner of an investment firm, which invested in a company, which has Monsanto as a customer. No YCombinator money is going to Monsanto. Indeed, it's the other way around: Monsanto money is going to a YCombinator company, in exchange for services. PG's criticism of the original comment was right on.

If Monsanto's business practices bother you, factor that into your purchasing decisions. There are dozens of local organic farmers that would love to have your business. They usually charge more, because evil is efficient. Monsanto is not the only beneficiary of their evil ways, though: because of their evilness, millions of Americans spend less on food than they otherwise would.
I had peers in junior high/high school (before I even had a cell phone) who sent hundreds a day. One girl bragged about reaching something like 30,000 one month.
An End to Negativity in the Tech Community
Some of them do. c.f. PHP's mysql interface (as opposed to mysqli)
http://www.filleritem.com/index.html?q=teen+sex This should have no results. Other queries should have relevant results, but they don't. How can anyone complain over his site being axed?

The guy needs to code a better site and I sure as hell would never use that so he can get affiliate money.

Sorry, but your fortunate this site has survived for so long.
15 Things I Did After Installing New Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot
by that flawed logic one should kill Americans because of the killing of civilians in Iraq..
The Civil Rights movement was monumental but it didn't eradicate racism

No. But it did lead to the government creating laws and regulations called the Civil Rights Act, which enforced desegregation and more. A dramatically major step towards adjusting society to address the existing problem.

Considering effectively zero laws and regulations of merit have been implemented since 2008 in regards to the out of control behavior on Wall St, a comparative measure to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 seems to be in order. You're not going to get one by canceling you AT&T wireless plan and growing vegetables in your back yard.

Of course, I don't mean to imply that the things you're doing aren't positive. Certainly they are. My point is simply that OWS is significantly more powerful in nature.
WaterField Launches Two iPhone Wallets With Window to View Apple iPhone 4S
Is it that evil is efficient or that being "good" (providing positive externalities in the process of delivering goods/services) is less efficient?
What's the "unfair advantage"? If I run a physical store in my town and someone from out of state drives in and buys something, I'm not expected to make sure the appropriate sales tax on that item gets to that person's state or municipal government. I'm only responsible for whatever sales taxes (if any) exist where I physically am.

On the other hand, online merchants with physical stores already have to charge for sales taxes if their online customers are within those jurisdictions.

Requiring online merchants to collect the correct sales taxes for every state and town is either a stupid attempt to increase revenue or a straight attempt to hobble online sales on behalf of physical retailers.
Who matters in education, the learners or the people who get paychecks from schools? As one of the most eminent economists of education has written, "The education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and, like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean," in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985).

If learners have power to shop, because funding flows to learners rather than to institutions, all the change we need to provide better education will happen through the usual process of learners shopping for what works. Until learners have power to shop, there is little prospect for meaningful improvement in education. Public choice theory

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html

http://perspicuity.net/sd/pub-choice.html

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/publicchoice.htm

http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/pdf%20links/Booklet....

in political science predicts that interest groups who gain a paycheck from the current system will fight harder to protect the current system from change than will voters in general who might benefit from changes in policy. So it takes a rare degree of political leadership by elected officials, or rather unusual coalitions of voters, to change a system that provides employment to as many employed people as the current education system does.
Ya, it seems to me that pg was talking more about the tone/type of comment and HN then anything else.
Long wait to get mobile money moving
If it's such a great advantage why aren't B&M shops closing down and replacing their stores with a shopify account?

Also, most internet sales are interstate commerce which the states have no business regulating. I can't believe the gall of the government to claim that using Amazon.com is not interstate commerce yet growing a plant in your basement for your own personal consumption is.

The SCOTUS is very clear that anything with the the potential to affect the interstate market for goods and services is interstate commerce.

Why can't the states respect that?
People here have already said they use flags as downvotes for submissions, what makes you think the same wouldn't happen in comments?
Such a horrendous PR move.

This is like during apartheid claiming that you are delighted to have partnership with government of South Africa. Or like now partnership with Ministry of Morals of Saudi Arabia.

All customers are good, but but you don't parade all of them during triumph.
Every Ruby object is an instance of a singleton class that inherits from its declared class.

# o is an instance of its singleton class,
# which inherits from Object
o = Object.new

It is like saying:

class Object
def self.new(*args, &block)
# Class.new(Object) creates an anonymous
# subclass of Object
Class.new(Object).new(*args, &block)
end
end

except with built-in language support. Instead of having to do this manually, every object gets a singleton.