skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Its got a name, information white out, and can occur for a number of reasons. The example I use is finding information on Steve Jobs from 2000 - 2005 is nearly impossible on Google because the first 50 - 100 results of the query 'Steve Jobs' is filled with eulogies and references to his death.

But news worthy events are only one form of white out, historical weight is another (as the perl example shows).

Disclaimer I work at blekko.com (a search engine) which allows you to specify things like /date=2005 in the search providing semantic intent. Searching through white-out situations is one of the uses of the slashtag system.
I know, I saw. My question is, how did they do that?
Hey all, I'm posting this to HN to see if there's any interest in a full-fledged JavaScript port to Lua. Colony right now is a proof-of-concept, but there might be a real use case out there for embeddable JavaScript where solutions like V8 would simply be too large.

Since it's a source-to-source compiler, you can use Colony generally wherever Lua source is required. For example, I was able to follow the beginners tutorials of the Corona SDK (http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/, a cross-platform mobile SDK that uses Lua) by programming CoffeeScript instead, which was surprisingly fun.
For the rationale behind it, read this article by Larry Wall ... http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html (really, it's one of the best language-related essays around).

Contrast with Python, where "There should be
one - and preferably only one - obvious way to
do it".

As a Python developer myself, I call that bullshit ... how about 2 urllibs in the standard library, both broken and a dozen or so XML parsers and I still have to install PyQuery to remain sane.

Also, its one obvious way to do it also breaks down in the language itself, like there's still a difference between old-style and new-style classes. And because the language does not have anonymous code-blocks (something which Perl has), the language designers added a bunch of features to take care of certain use-cases, features which are not orthogonal, like lambda expressions, foreach blocks, with blocks, iterators AND decorators, all of which could have been avoided by adding just a simple feature.

If you ever try building a simple DSL, something that modifies a class at runtime, you'll have about a dozen or so techniques to use, but none of them as beautiful as ActiveRecord ... which relies on the fact that a class block in ruby is just syntactic sugar for opening a class context with define_class and passing it a code block.
Cheers. For what it's worth: My main concern in this is that any kind of widely-used perl tutorial needs to inherently updatable by a wide group of people. Modern Perl would make the cut because it's hosted in Git and a website could easily be generated from there in regular intervals.
Leonardo DiCaprio Invests in Photo-Sharing App
Google updates many parts of "Android" such as Mail, Maps, Youtube, Market etc. independently of the OS. Other parts are improved not on the phone, but server side (e.g. google home page, mobile web interfaces, audio transcription). The bits that it doesn't upgrade (launcher, browser etc.) can often be replaced by 3rd parties, including repackagings of parts of later versions of AOSP.

I was pleasantly surprised how many upgrades my phone (which the vendor never took past 2.1) continually got from Google. I managed to get most of the other features from later AOSP releases, without rooting or anything harder than browsing the market.

In the end I added a custom froyo rom to get the benefit of the JIT (since the device had enough RAM to benefit from it) and will probably jump to CyanogenMod soon.

All in all, in not sure why people are so keen for Google to follow such an archaic and monolithic release model. It's as baffling as the people who care that their browser's version number is changing too fast, except in reverse. It's a mostly meaningless number.

You can start complaing the first day Google switches the new version of Youtube or Maps to supporting 4.0 or above and you actually miss out on features. Most of the stuff they are putting in the OS is hardware-related like dual-core support, NFC beam or soft-keys to replace missing buttons. Even the new font is designed for high-DPI screens.
Because the algorithm takes a slightly different code path over time depending on the bits of the key.
A Mac-exclusive app not being Cocoa is perverse.
I think this is akin to drawing the Mona Lisa in MS Paint. Yes, it's impressive that it can be done. That doesn't mean you should do it and it's still outside my skill and patience level.
Randomly not so random
Possibly the most damning sentence (for adding pauses rather than doing it right) in the whole thing is a quote to another research paper:

>... even though the Internet induces significant timing jitter, we can reliably distinguish remote timing differences as low as 20µs.
Why Income Inequality Has Been Booming
OLPC beat the mass popularization of mobile by a few years. The had to start with a non-stock (and more expensive) device because there weren't many parts that did what they wanted to do.

This tablet is probably what OLPC would look like if it started today.
Big Python
Set a pass code. It encrypts storage transparently after that. There are ways to force device security using lion server (or iCloud or active sync) too.

Unfortunately there are some flaws in the implementation, but it is at least easy.
Agree with everything with one small nitpick:

"Leaked sales figures have it [Kindle Fire] outselling the iPad right now."

Not technically correct. The 'leaked sales figures' was a supposed internal screen shot showing 250k preorders over the first 5 days. What people did was use the same rate until Nov. 15th to extrapolate the mythical 2.5M preorders. Probably not going to happen.

The original iPad had 300k pre-orders to a market that didn't exist, and the iPad 2 wasn't available as a pre-order, but did sell close to 1M over the opening weekend.
NOOOOOO!!!! HTC EVO 4G NO HAS 4.0 upgrade? Noes!!! NOOOOES!!!!!! I am very sad now.

As a side note, at these speeds, feels like windows xp has less hardware reqs than android :P
gcc -m32 -static -nostdlib -x c - <<< 'int main(void) { int s = 12; char *m = "hello, world"; int n = 1, d = s - 8; asm("int $0x80"); d = (n = 0) + 1; asm("int $0x80"); }' && ./a.out # Hello from a libc-free world on Darwin 11.2.0, GCC 4.2.1, x86
So is this essentially a crowdsourced courier service? Neat idea.
No, playing fun with the system itself could be useful in unexpected ways. Like esoteric programming languages (leads to the serious exploration of unconventional computation models), code golfing and obfuscated codes (helps shaping the knowledge of a particular language and often leads to the clever way to tackle problems), demoscenes (you know where the Spore came from) and hacking (with the original meaning).

As long as you are aware of doing something unconventional, it is fine to keep these sports. If he/she did put these logos in production then I'll object though.
I'll be participating in the forums, encouraging folks, and giving writing tips throughout the month. Would love to see some of you awesome HN folks join in the fun.
> It shows off what a clever person can achieve by tinkering with a system

You could say the same about the Gosper glider gun. I don't want to be part of a hacker community that doesn't encourage autotelic projects.
OK, but if Google isn't releasing it, isn't that an indication that it won't run very well even if you do manage to install it?
I think you dropped 1,000.

(I would expect 161 nominal megawatts to produce more than 1 megawatt-hour in an hour)
Hmm, I guess I never knew how much "search engine integration" was in Firefox. I just assumed Google was configured as the default search provider and that's it.

Honest question - can someone explain to me how is this different than just changing the search provider to Bing in my current copy of Firefox? (corp PC here - can't try it out on my own now).

I see other commenters saying this isn't available on Ubuntu - why not?
I upvoted it because if the reader reads through it, they will leave with more understanding of the system stack than they started with. As someone who has been deeply involved with teaching a systems class, that's near-and-dear to my heart. I think it succeeds in that goal. I'm far less concerned that it doesn't actually emit "hello, world".

That it fails at being an introduction to assembly is, I think, missing the point. It doesn't try to be. It's just trying to demystify some of the system stack.

As for HN itself, I've known for a while now that there's a pretty wide range of people here. While I think the percentage of people will almost no systems experience is more than it was a few years ago, the number wasn't zero a few years ago, either.
Robot Cyclist
Anchoring Your Design Language in a Live Style Guide
That's a special case of what I believe is called the ratchet effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratchet_effect
Random is no different, it just takes more samples. An example:

Say I give you these results:

*
* *
*
* *
*

No real pattern, yea? So sample some more:

*
* * *
* * * *
* * * *
*

Maybe nothing. So try more:

* *
* * *
* ** *** *
* * ** * * *
* *

And more:

* * * * *
* * * *
* * *********
********** * *
* * ** * *

Zomg. You have a discernable behavior. Adding more randomness would just give you the same easily-visible results after adding, say, 2x as many points, at which point you have this (expanded a little):

* * * * * * *
** * ** * * * *
* * *** * **********
*************** * *
* * ** ** * * *
I've both planned some fairly large events with speakers and worked closely with well known but 'eccentric' personalities similar rms. It's really a mixed bag as to who is to blame. On the one had the committee coming up with this should have done some research (and asked themselves "why hasn't rms done any convocations before?"). I've known organizations entertaining the idea of rms as a keynote, and it almost immediately gets shot down by anyone how has actually watched him speak. But undoubtedly the committee in charge of this event was mix, and rms on paper does sound like a good idea. At the same time, I know rms is passionate about his cause, but it is a dick move to not at least pay some superficial lip service to the event you're speaking at. In fact he'd do a much better service to his cause if he just made a good speech connecting graduation to free software. Look what a fantastic speech Steve Jobs gave, but certainly promoted both his personal image and apple as well.
Their revenues are also down significantly...

That is incorrect; revenues were up 44% (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=iro...)
Ah, yes, apologies. KWh should have been MWh, I'll edit the comment above. Thanks for the correction.
How Technology Made 'Occupy Wall Street' Both Irrelevant and Ubiquitous
Despite the recent downward spiral of NFLX, I'd agree that Netflix isn't doomed - it just has to seriously re-evaluate its branding and messaging. Their success as a company will hinge on their success in shifting the meaning of the Netflix brand (Qwickster was clearly one attempt at that).

Netflix is down, but not out, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it bounce back (maybe not to quite the same peak, but still much higher than it is now).
I cannot adequately express how awesome having access to this information is to me. When I was younger I would read one biography from http://www.gap-system.org/~history/ before going to bed. It is nothing short of amazing to be able to get a projection, a snapshot of the workings of the great minds of centuries past. To see them struggle and then brilliantly succeed in explaining concepts that were at the edge of knowledge, that are still non-trivial and have their work remain timeless by continuing to stand head and shoulders above modern treatments of the same subject is remarkable.

I did a search on a bunch of people - Hamilton, Euler, George Green, Bernoulli, Euler, Gauss, Clifford, Boole and more. As is to be expected not every one is there. The most interesting essays my short search found were:

A Mathematical Theory of Magnetism by William Thomson http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full....

and An Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances by Thomas Bayes. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.p...
Yes and thanks. ;)
Your parent said "free and open source". Tiny but important difference.
"The information-theoretic argument demonstrate that a model cannot exactly match the reality unless it's as complex as the reality."

What if reality is self-similar at certain scales? You could generate something that resembles the whole from one part of it.
I have actually seen people talking on the phone to people just holding the phone in front of them, so there's already precedent for that as well. I don't think social barriers will last long.
What prevents you from using firefox or opera?
I do not know, but I assume "defaults"
Lua is a great language. I personally would rather go the other way and use Lua instead of JS in the browser.

This is cool though from a hacking perspective. Good work.
Reminds me of a commercial I just saw:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcAp1ogn79g
For a minute I thought this was satire put out by one of the campaigns against the Act. I was thinking, "Who would really call something that?" I'm glad I clicked the link to see that it's actually what happened.
I think the "flown around the world" bit is the most important. In America (or even Western Europe, for that matter), we may wonder why it includes so much detail. But perhaps by spelling things out, it removes the possibility of cultural misunderstandings.
Why Headlines Attract More Attention Than Images
Is there a "canonical" justification for why the US legislative system allows non-germane additions to a bill? Or is ball-of-mud style legislation the norm due to tradition, rather than some philosophical ideal?
The key point here, as another commenter pointed out, is they are not going to give up.

You can win a battle here, perhaps rally around your congressman and get it killed, or petition the president to veto it, but it doesn't matter. They'll just be back again next year, and the next year, and the next.

This is the importance of constitutional amendments: they settle things on a broad scale exactly to prevent this kind of nipping (although it still happens, it just takes much longer time) We need an amendment or two around internet and computer freedom, specifically that computers are extensions of our minds, not machines to play content on, and that the internet is our primary form of political organization and persuasion, not a fancy telephone line.

I hate to be all doom-and-gloom, but I think that boat has sailed. The tech community might get its act together, give up all social causes and form some kind of committee or group to push for such amendments, but I seriously doubt it. Half the community is in bed with big media and the other half are just as concerned with other issues as this one. We are not organized, coherent, or focused.

Just saw a great series on PBS, Ken Burns' "Prohibition". It was all about how focused groups can make big changes -- but it takes a long time. I don't see the kind of anger and outrage against this as we had against alcohol. Very sad, because this is a lot worse.
Are TextMate and Coda Yesterday’s Editors?
I think I have more KDE code on my computer than GNU code. Both are undeniably useful, but no one is insisting on calling it KDE/Linux.
> I'm normally far more progressive than conservative, but at times like this I wish there were some penalty associated with proposing or backing a really bad bill, or with legislation by subterfuge.

I believe the intended result for this, if a sufficient portion of the represented find this behavior objectionable, is to lose one's office. This assumes an educated electorate , or at least the voting subset of the represented to be so educated and so opposed.
> It took maybe 20-30 minutes for the full visit, which would make doing this universally quite a chore.

I assume they're working out the quirks so the process can be much smoother and they can do a row of businesses in a strip mall in the same amount of time.
Ive been working with python/django for about 6 months now so i wouldnt call myself an expert but i understand where youre coming from and im willing to help you out. How best to contact you?
Both the Nexus S and Nexus GS use an SGX540 which is fair jump in GPU performance.
I remembered when this happened to be when iOS 4 came out and I still had a 3G, a complete wipe/restore solved the problem for me that time, perhaps that will work here, YMMV.
I renewed my developer account last week and due to an email snafu didn't get the renewal code before my developer account expired. When I finally got the renewal processed and launched Xcode 4.2 for the first time, I was treated as a new developer. In Xcode, everyone was done for me -- creating a certificate, making the team provisioning profile, etc. All I had to do was connect devices so Xcode could grab their UDIDs and add them to the profile.

If you're getting started today, it's pretty damn seamless. Most people find this stuff harder/more painful than the actual coding, so it's a big win for iOS developers.
Introducing Android WebDriver - selenium for android
I completely agree with you. The act of exploration is a beautiful thing. However, my statement was based on the fact this technique has been done before. This area has been explored. While this site is executed very well, in my eyes, it doesn't offer (or attempt to, seemingly) anything I have yet to see. That was my only real point.
Wow - thank you for being so straightforward and gracious yourself. I probably went overboard in my replies, but it was good to hash some of this out.

FWIW, I agree on the type of statements you're referring too - they bug the hell out of me.

I'm OK, you're OK (and PHP's OK too!) :)
Can anyone open any of the app descriptions on http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/ada/ ? I tried on FF, Chrome and Safari with no luck - I click but nothing happens. Copying the link seems to go to a page without any styling...
Emailed. I lost contact with you some time ago, but we were always wondering when the service would become publicly available. Glad to hear it's coming soon!
But oftentimes, the party of the incumbent won't run another candidate (since that might split the vote and lose the seat to the other party). So the only way to vote an incumbent out is to vote for the other party, which may also be against your interests.
Comparing it to the installed Sarnia plant at roughly the same latitude.

That is 96.6 ha (239acres of cells) 80MW capacity and (estimated) 120,000 MWh over a year.

So this plant should achieve around 70% of that, so 85,000 MWh /year or 235MWh/day
"The... (launcher, browser etc.) can often be replaced by 3rd parties, including repackagings of parts of later versions..."

"I managed to get most of the other features..."

"I added a custom froyo rom... and will probably jump to CyanogenMod soon."

Punchline: "All in all, in not sure why people are so keen for Google to follow such an archaic and monolithic release model."
Kindle makes for heavy reading
A flexible/programmable SMTP Server
Click the place result title on the left ("Scream Sorbet"), then click the image above the text ads on the right.
A few of my in-laws are working night and day, literally, to meet the legal document production requirements for a DoJ investigation of a Large Financial Institution which must remain nameless for ethical reasons. The DoJ is doing it's best to investigate Wall Street as aggressively as it can, but their electronic discovery team's annual budget is on the order of $20 million, which is peanuts when an investigation can yield tens of millions of responsive documents.

http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?i...
I used to be too timid to ask employees, but since I've gotten over that I've usually found that they do know where things are.
I wasn't referring to the name GNU/Linux; I was specifically refuting the comment I quoted. The funny thing is that the comment effectively justifies RMS's insistence on using GNU/Linux. Because so many refer to the entire distribution as Linux, a lot of people fail to realize the hugely-important role that GNU software plays in Linux systems.

Linux is still useful without KDE, but the functionality provided by GNU is critical and would require a large effort to replace.
Does stopping internet piracy mean no more talk like a pirate day?
I notice this because the only free ATMs I know of are too far out of my way to be practical. I would probably do better to move to a larger credit union, but I don't know of any others I could join.
Agree completely. As a proof-of-concept it's amazing. But practically speaking, SVG is a far better way of doing this.
Well, I wonder. As the neighborhood bookclub's pain in the ass (I did not seek the vocation; it found me) I see quite a number of books with great blurbs, and even the occasional award, that I think are very sloppily done. A large number of best sellers seem to scratch an itch widely but briefly felt. Will anybody read _The Da Vinci Code_ in 2025?
It's called Montgomery multiplication. VIA has had it in their CPUs for quite some time now. I don't know about AMD or Intel.
There is No Profit in Education, No Competitive Advantage to Better Learning
amazon's entire focus is on top-line growth. if they have any extra money lying around, they'll use it to make investments, hire people, or lower prices. as far as i can tell, they aren't too interested in profit as long as they can get away with it.
Do you mean riders? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rider_%28legi... The House actually has a "germanness rule" (which is not in the Constitution), so they generally avoid it as a matter of policy. But the Senate has no such rule. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Christmas_tre... So a bill which passes the House goes to the Senate, where riders are added. Then the modifications go back to the house, where it might be passed depending on whether they like the new additions or not.
That kind of market calculus made sense before the recession. Now the value proposition has changed, and while people may still buy newer hardware (such as tablets) they expect better value from their tech purchasing because increasing wealth is no longer a given.

I'm not so sure about that. You can (probably- I'll be honest, I haven't checked for sure) get a more powerful Android handset than a Nexus One for free if you sign a new two-year agreement right now. There's very little to lose there- except having to take on a two year plan. Except...

Also, people are more suspicious of corporations in general, especially ones that are sitting on a large cash pile. Public sentiment is fickle and can quickly bite a company in the ass - look at how far the stars of Groupon and Netflix have fallen in just two quarters.

I'm extremely skeptical of the former claim- people's anger is directed towards banks, not large corporations with hordes of cash (by and large). If they were, people would hate Apple.

Groupon and Netflix are both things that you can quite conceivably do without. A cellphone these days is seen as an essential, so signing up for a new two year term isn't such a friction point. You're going to need cellphone service from somewhere, after all.
Game Theory in The Dark Knight: the opening scene
Microsoft and Mozilla Get Closer, Customized Firefox with Bing Released
I like the way the stock browser renders normal webpages. I don't care for the 3rd party browser interfaces, and I don't think it's too much to expect the stock browser to be reasonably robust - for the same reason that I expect the default wheels on a car to be sufficient for normal driving.
Sahil, what is your next move (startup-wise)? I am really curious.