skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Apple hired Chris Lattner, who started LLVM when he was a graduate student at UIUC. It may be funding development now, but it wasn't "Apple's" innovation.

So what if Lattner wasn't working at Apple? Apple's not a person, it's a corporation; LLVM's not a person, it's a library. Apple funding LLVM now means a great deal more than you're giving credit for.

> Apple's primary reason for funding LLVM development was likely to be able to integrate their proprietary software more closely with the compiler, something that GCC is designed to discourage.

And that is a technical failing of GCC, kept in for ideological purposes. Yet somehow LLVM remains open source, Clang remains open source, and the half-proprietary system of XCode has something far greater than GCC will probably ever have.

In the end, Stallman just happens to be one of the guys who contributed to the GNU system. Personally, I'm confident that something similar would have come along with or without him and the GPL (in fact, you mentioned the BSD license that was applied to many components used in NeXT). People implement many parts of these kinds of systems in undergraduate college courses- they're not exactly new discoveries.
Agreed, 100%. I've actually bundled a Wordpress install with the necessary plugins and libs (google analytics, basic survey abilities, a/b testing harness). This makes it super easy for me to spin up an ec2 or linode instance. Then I can run a test and make a decision without touching any of my core products/sites/servers.

Not too difficult to do.
And even faster than this, MODIS is continuously broadcasting its raw data for pickup by anyone below who is listening:

http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/directbrod/index.php

This "direct broadcast" is in addition to the arranged, higher-bandwidth, downlinks of science data that feed the near-real-time pipeline (mentioned above, a couple hours behind realtime) and the regular science data pipeline (archival science data, days behind realtime).
This post seems to be missing the point. When people say they work 80 hours a week, they don't mean 80 hours one week, then 0 the next. They mean 80 hours, then 80 hours, then 80 hours, then 80 hours... That is primarily what the linked posts seem to be talking about avoiding.
Tor 0.2.2.34 is released (security patches)
40 hours?! You're all being silly. Everyone knows about the 4 hour work week!
I think this has been common practice for over 2 years now. Where did you learn this technique from?
But that's the point -- that kind of oversight happens because of male privilege. It's because it's easy to think of programmers as men, so much that you have an "oversight" about including women.

That excludes women, and that's exactly what this kind of stuff needs to be called out. The problem isn't always one data point; but rather, there are a lot of these data points that are easy to dismiss one by one, but lead up to an avalanche when collectively viewed.
Thank you for your feedback, Matt!

Yeah, I'll charge for it, but with different levels and with a very affordable entry level.

I'm thinking to people that cannot go straight toward the MVP. They will benefit for sure from being "controlled" by some peer. Relatives and friends don't work well for this, they are too much condescending.

Again thank you.
Thanks! We hate being interrupted too, so we are very sensitive to that.
OWS: Where the Rubber Meets the Road
NO.

I love my job but I also love other things. I get all my tasks done in the 40 hours (usually). I take the rest of my time to do other things I love.

I have a family and many hobbies. I love to travel and take time off whenever I can just to go and have fun.

That is why I stop at 40 hours.
I'm working to help improve http://dropbox.com/help

It is a lot more than a FAQ: it has a somewhat good search feature, and also directs users to an intro tour, the forums, and votebox (a place to request and discuss features).

Improving it is a bit more complicated than just getting analytics around how many hits on /help end up searching, reading help articles, and maybe filing tickets. There is a lot more needed to understand which areas of the help center aren't getting enough prominence, which topics are just missing, and also how we could create some automated tools to help people find sources of problems. For example, if you are over quota, we should tell you that prominently on /help. Getting automated feedback on search results (clicks on help articles increasing their rank for a given query), and also from ticket responses (the article which would have answered the question needs higher rank for the original query) is a huge area of potential improvement, but both require a fair amount of work.

The potential impact is actually huge: would we need to double the size of the support team if we double the userbase (yet again)? If you're interested in hearing more about this, and especially if you've like to help build these systems, shoot me an email: ivan@dropbox.com
The Turning Point?
Ah. I see. I only came in here to correct the statements about ownership. It matters to me that HN is not the kind of place where people think they own their iPhones - after all the news about software patents, free software, mobile platforms, etc, I think it's an important distinction to make on this site. The people here care (obviously, hence this debate) about this issue and I just wanted the definitions to be set right: jailbreaking != ownership.

As to why it's good or bad, that's entirely personal preference. For me, I want to own it because I want the option to change it. That's all. Therefore, for me, it's terrible to buy a device I don't own. That should answer your question about why it's bad.

Maybe it's not bad for you. Maybe it's good for you to not own the device. That's fine; I'm only here to remind you that you don't own it (after it was erroneously suggested up top that you do own it)
The future is amazing, and Microsoft has video to prove it
2D Game Art for Programmers: Part 3
6500 sales is actually pretty significant. By way of comparison the Nissan Leaf (which is much cheaper) has only sold 7217 cars in North America since launching in Dec 2010.

To be fair though, Nissan originally had 17,000 pre-orders but had trouble filling them due to production issues. It remains to be seen if Tesla can actually deliver their first run, but let's hope that Tesla is able to get some magic done in that NUMMI plant.
I've got a couple of guitars sitting close by, but I don't use them often enough during the work day. Have been thinking about doing something other than surfing for breaks, might have to start working some Knopfler bends myself!
> Although I suspect they are using the patched version of the JS interpreter mentioned on github.

We are using standard Firefox, no special patches. However, we used the Firefox nightly, not current stable. The decoder runs much faster in nightly, due to JS engine improvements that landed over the last few months, and are not yet in stable.

> Still not sure how this is meant to actually be useful though. The problem with H.264 isn't availability of implementations, it's being non-free and heavily patented.

First thing, this at least gives you another option. That is, if we get this codec to run as fast as a native one, then we now have the choice of either the browser or the video website providing the decoder (and properly licensing the decoder, if they are in a country that has pure software patents). More options are never a bad thing.

But I think the real potential in this approach is something entirely different. The opportunity is that you can download arbitrary decoders. So instead of the current world we live in, where you have a few decoders installed, you can have custom ones for different websites. Imagine a website that has cartoon videos or anime etc. - in principle, they could use a custom codec that is heavily optimized for that kind of content, as opposed to being forced to use stock decoders.

Also, it prevents being frozen in time: If you can download decoders from the web, you can improve them constantly while making sure your users have the proper decoder (since you ship it to them yourself), which you can't do if you rely on stock preinstalled decoders.
Tell HN: the best thing I did this year
I used to be a ROM on HN, but I am very excited about something I did this year and it sure is one of the best decision I have made.

2 months ago, I deleted my facebook account. since then, I feel like I have so much time back and become much more productive.
I am not a facebook addict, I used to get on facebook 5-10 times a day and I spend less than 2 mins each time. but mentally I feel so good and much more focused without knowing what my friends have done, bought, eaten, seen.

I can't explain why it helps, but I am recommending it to all people I love, including you.

but I encourage anyone who wants some changes in their lives, try it. Maybe it is just a change of habit that stimulates my positive changes, but who cares. It worked for me.

try deactivate your facebook for a week, and see.
Put down your smartphone for a week, use a non-smart phone for a week

do a social media fasting for a week. See what you actually like.

I am not anti innovation, but I think a change in your habit can bring only positive things.
I have read more books since then (9 books so far in 2 mos), spend more time to think by cutting the 30 mins with facebook.
It's not that markets are completely rational at all, it comes from supply and demand. If you exclude a large portion of your supply the price will go up. For example, if I only higher people greater than 6 feet at my company, and my competitor doesn't care about height -- the wages will be lower, unless of course tall people are the cheapest to hire already.
Thank you for your feedback!

Yes, there will be different level prices. Basic one will be quite low.

But there will not be a free version, because asaclock will be a community of serious people that think their idea is worth some bucks per month. So spammers and trolls will be cut out.

Thank you.
I think they're actually claiming something weirder: hydrogen combining with nickel to make copper.

http://daily.wired.it/news/scienza/fusione-fredda-bologna.ht...

"the hydrogen atoms penetrate into the nickel and copper turn. Or at least, this is our interpretation." (gli atomi di idrogeno penetrano nel nichel e lo trasformano in rame. --- translated by google)
I feel like these types of articles where the author attempts a deft explanation as to why work isn't work when you enoy it, are just annoying.

Surely as engineers, hackers, tech-minded people, we all know what the definition of work is. Nowhere in the definition of work does emotion come into play (unless your job description is to achieve a specific emotion).

This reminds me of a high school teacher of mine who used to heckle the football players asking them why they lifted weights and would say they're not actually accomplishing work(unless you're deadlifting, I guess). Most of them didn't understand which made it even more amusing.
Reminds me of a tiny thing on my jailbroken device that pleases me: http://i.imgur.com/1QXUm.png - every slider is an animated kitty. (It's called NyanSliders in Cydia, in case anybody else would like it, and I think there's an unrelated version of the same concept available for Windows too.)
They are claiming that they can both fuse hydrogen atoms at low temperatures, produce useful amounts of energy, AND not produce significant amounts of radiation which seems ridiculously unlikely. To the point where a perpetual motion machine could be created without violating as many past observations. IMO, the radiation bit is the most ridiculous, If 2 atoms are going to release that much energy there is really no way to get it without either an high energy photon or high energy particles.

PS: 1MW worth of power from fusion would generate enough radiation to kill a stadium full of people in a fraction of a second without a lot of shielding, but cold fusion people never seem to have an fear of radiation...
Print or online? One masterpiece and one screw-up – VisualJournalism
You can intern strings manually in .NET (I think you can in Java too), which effectively makes them ineligible for collection. There are serious memory concerns with that approach, since nothing in the tag engine is a constant.

In C# you can use the unsafe keyword to get more or less back into the C/C++ world. While your new'd objects are still GC'd, you have the option of just grabbing an allocator and getting unmanaged memory if you feel like it.

It's worth noting that the .NET GC works quite well for typical cases, and only noticeably chokes on this one use case we have and only under load that most websites will never see (and most users don't notice even on SO, but we watch the logs religiously to make sure these things don't become noticeable). There are also some improvements coming in .NET 4.5's GC that may mitigate this, but we're naturally not willing to wait for it.

I worry people may be taking "don't use .NET, its GC sucks" away from this blog post, which really isn't the point (or accurate).
How did the $0.55 price turn out? Did you keep it?
Minus for Android - Brand new look and feel
Saying that 20 hour and 60 hour weeks, depending on the situation, are better than 40 hour weeks ignores one very common and important case: when the work is boring but important. The author seems to assume that 20 hour weeks can solve all boring work, but they can only really solve boring and unimportant work. If it's important and boring, you'll probably need to spend more than 20 hours a week on it. I'll stereotype a little here and guess that the author might be like a lot of professors I know, in that he assumes that boring work is the definition of unimportant work.

But sometimes you need to get some boring thing done and it just takes a while. It may not be fun, but in those cases it really helps to have the rock solid habits and discipline that come with a regular work schedule (whatever it is) to fall back on.
There is a Ted talk that goes over why Doodling should actually be encouraged:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown.html
It does not seem to de-anonymize as in allow someone to identify a client's original IP or such, but can reduce Tor to basically being pseudoanonymous.

It seems to only really bone you if they control the entry guard and the final targer or the exit node, which is pretty much broken anyways with just traffic analysis.
Hey now ... that's not fair to us toaster hacking people ... we too like to enjoy our modified toasters.

http://www.embeddedarm.com/software/arm-netbsd-toaster.php
Or they're optimistic, and want to be in a good position to capitalize on it if it works?
WebOS nearing the end of the road
Tor Project patches critical flaw in its anonymizing network
Others have pointed out that there are a lot of things that we 'own', but that fail this definition for regulatory or safety reasons. I don't think that this is a good definition.

To most people, ownership means legal control over physical possession, and the right to transfer 'ownership'. Apple can't legally require that I return my iPhone to them, just as Toyota can't legally require that I return my minivan to one of their dealers. They 'belong' to me - I 'own' them and control who possesses them.
Um from your article (I accept its not absolutely proving my point) but the basic premise still stands that Apple has a secondary ongoing revenue stream past the actual hardware sale.

"It's hard to say whether the second-generation Apple TV is subsidized," said Rassweiler, noting that iSuppli's BOM doesn't account for software costs, licensing fees, research and development, marketing and other expenses. Nor do retailers -- including Amazon.com, which sells the Apple TV -- pay the full retail price when buying them from Apple.
Meanwhile, outside their data centre, they do very little to ensure customer card security and enforce heavy-handed policies that put most of the risk on merchants and downstream processors.

---
obDisclosure: I am a merchant who has been defrauded hundreds of thousands of dollars and have no love for the credit card companies.
Windows Mobile Phone Apollo,  Supports Dual Core Processor and NFC
Well heck, I am an Apple shareholder, but still don't particularly care whether Apple happens to sell more phones than any other individual company, as long as they're still selling plenty of phones and making plenty of money.

I mean, I'd prefer 'em to be making more money rather than less money, but it's not a great idea to get too emotionally invested in every piece of news about every company you happen to have some money in.
Relevant NPR story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1017270...
That didn't stop Apple from going after bluwiki a couple of years ago for something as simple as reverse engineering the iPhone file transfer protocol. "There's nothing they can do" is never really true when you're talking about huge corporations with lawyers.
You know you can get a scanner with a feeder right? You just have to drop the paper in the feeder and it will produce a set of pdf documents.

It is more expensive than normal scanners but in your case it would properly be worth it.
Ask N: node.js best practices?
I'm an experienced Rails programmer looking at a potential future client project in Node.js.

I've played around with node.js a little, using node.js at a very low level (no frameworks, less than 100 LOC).

Obviously, that style of development won't work on a real project.

Node.js seems to mostly "pick your components and go". (With the exception of maybe Railroad.js). Pick your components is OK with me (I've been doing web work since before Rails got popular, so I'm used to this style).

But I also want to make sure my best practices from the Rails world stay with me. Database migrations and testing are a few of the areas where Rails has a clearly defined best practice, but things seem murkier on the node.js side.

Also thinking coffeescript, to reduce boilerplate.

So, node.js hackers of HN: What are your best practices? For example, what auto-reloading tool do you use? Testing framework? ORM? (or no ORM?), view/template system?

Any other advice for a programmer whose been around the block a number of times (C++, Python, Cocoa, Ruby) and wants to start a new node.js project off right?

(Book recommendations are also great. I looked at the current crop of books, but I almost want a Rails Recipes or Python Cookbook style of book for node, but don't see one)
Will JavaScript get fast enough?
In 2011, it doesn't matter much any more, audio is not very big. In 1996, I guess it made sense. For the few cents of extra space you get the peace of mind of perfect copies, the ability duplicate, remix, and reencode ad infinitum.

Notice you won't see the visual effects industry using JPG's to build their shots ... no, they use very high resolution 4k ~48-bit color depth files, that are then combined and then scaled down in resolution/color to theater/blu-ray output. This maintains the highest quality throughout.

You could also think of it the same way as free software (although not the perfect metaphor). Software may pick up compatibility bugs over the years. You'll want the community to have the ability to make fixes or risk losing it.

All these are examples of "keeping your options open," which people value. Now that the cost is not prohibitive and only getting lower there's not much reason not to.
1. This works much faster on Firefox nightly (that's where we demo'd it on). Nightly has a lot of JS engine improvements that are not in stable yet (but will be in a month or two).

2. This does not use any hardware acceleration yet. This is simply compiling the Android C decoder into JS, nothing else - just a few days of work. We will now start to look at actually optimizing the code specifically for JS, and also to use GPU shaders for the relevant part of the code. Both of those can potentially make this even faster.

Regarding real-world applications, the interesting possibility is for websites to ship their own codecs. As I mentioned in a comment above, imagine an anime video website that ships a video decoder optimized for that kind of content - it could be much more efficient than stock H.264. Also, if websites can ship their own decoders, they can continually improve them (unlike now where websites rely on client decoders which are not constantly being improved).
> Rolling release isn't quite the same, because you still get frequent updates to "core" software.

You don't have to install updated versions unless you want to.
Spin-Off vs Start-Up
Facebook sees 600,000 compromised logins per day&#8212;0.06% of all logins
The argument against the Desktop app seems unfounded, the author states: "I don’t usually like playlists and I’m the kind of guy who enjoys listening to whole albums, front to back". I'm of the same opinion, but when finding a new album to listen to I simply dray this into a new playlist and they become one and the same. This would also negate the argument against the mobile app as well.
Why iCloud is a bigger deal than you think for Steve Jobs’ legacy
I've been using Rhapsody for a while and the selection is pretty solid.
There's not a lot of CE manufacturers selling devices with a $100 BOM for $150-$200. Those $200 Smartphones (iPhone 4S is ~$189) retail for $600 assuming the same markup even with your number of $100 your looking at a $400 box. Boxee's box is $200 bucks and is pretty decent so you have to assume a $200 box is possible, but GoogleTV is a significant step up in performance and hardware features to Boxee.
Because my home computer is a 7-year-old Sony ultraportable featuring a Pentium M with 0.5GB. My upgrade pattern is: buy maxed-out top of the line, then grind it into the ground.
In the ancestral environment, violence was the main cause of death you could do something about and cars didn't exist. The result is evolved instincts that are wildly irrational in the modern environment.

If you actually stop and think about it for a minute, the probability of the driver taking it into his head to murder you is likely negligible compared to the probability of being killed in a plain ordinary road accident, despite - or because of - the fact that we have no instinctive fear of the latter.
Setting the Scene for a Productive Day
Not clear as to whether it's tethered or not.
Rob Walling has a book on doing these things systematically that might be worth your time. You can read the first few chapters for free: http://www.startupbook.net/
From the comments, I must be the only one that thinks that adding new features to something that is already a complete mess, is just a terrible idea. Google TV is not a real consumer product. It sucks big time. I cannot even gift it to my parents because they (as well as I) dont have a cable box and most (all??) Google TVs use HDMI (reminder: my cable provider doesnt have an HDMI cable coming out of the wall).

So what am I supposed to use this junk for?

- Browsing the web? I guess that is what my cursor and the big ass keyboard on my lap is for.

- Netflix/Vudu whatever other streaming service? My PS3,Wii XBOX 360 do that already.

- Games? That crap doesnt even have decent accelerated hardware support, and did I mention that I have a PS3, Wii and XBOX 360? Any of those devices (which by the way are mostly at the same price point) can do 1000 times better.

- Apps? I like my apps in my tablet or phone. Since I usually have to read to use them and it is a horrible experience to read anything on a TV screen.

I know I am going to get downvoted like crazy, but I dont care at all about my HN score.

Face reality - Google TV is a piece of junk that does several things - and it sucks at all of them.