skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure you understand. Users are sheep. Our job is to manipulate, track, addict, and force users into giving us their money. By any means necessary. Mobile social local browser phone cadence tracking combined with snooping on their every webpage visit gives us a direct connection to their "If I see X, I will pay Y dollars" brain function.

If you're still playing nice, you haven't realized the truth of the world yet.
I had to do exactly that just to see what he was talking about. (I didn't click any ads)
That previous attempts failed does not mean they quit trying. IE9/10 does show some goodwill, but also shows the are still in the EEE game. Take for example the hardware accelerated canvas: Several (non-MS) websites had "optimized for IE" marketing campaigns. Such optimization is nonsense when using standards. Also, MS publicly stated WebGL has security problems because of direct access to the shaders. However, they forget to mention Silverlight has the exact same problem.

> In addition, Microsoft's actions against Android, while despicable, are hardly different than what most other tech companies are doing,

Eh, no. It's true more patent trolls exist, but not many companies in the industry try to enforce software patents.

About C#: Microsoft has stated several times that open is not the same as patent-free. They did so in context of Linux/Android, but also in the context of .net. Also, anaylis exist where C# tech is tied to patents.
Horseshit! That's what APIs are for :P.

You could have accomplished all of this just fine but left the config in yaml and I would have personally been a happier person for it.
Wha? "Light travels much faster than electrons." But electrons aren't 'traveling' when signalling in silicon circuits - its just photons of a different wavelength, right?
> Note that it's very easy to opt out of this: turn the phone off. You click one button.

I agree with you on the first part, and I really see this as no different and no worse than online visitor tracking. It's a trivial thing to worry about and I don't think people should be concerned over it.

That said, though, for the folks that are, it's not always that easy to just turn off the phone. Sure, most people have their cell phones on as a convenience and it wouldn't hurt them a bit to turn it off for a few minutes while in the store, but if you have the phone on because your kids are home alone, or your ailing parent may need you at any moment, etc. it becomes much more problematic.

So, in this case, while the opt-out option is simple and trivial for most people, it's practically outright unavailable, or at least perceived as unavailable, to a particular segment of the customers. Even in those instances, the cell phone is often as much or more about peace of mind than actual emergency, but I'd argue that's just as valid a reason to keep the phone on for someone in those situations.
Huh? The ad is an image. It can easily be adblocked.
Except you need to do it before charging back the past 6 months of purchases from the store. I doubt even going up a few levels of management can get that account unlocked after that. Even very big retailers have to treat chargebacks as an attack on their very ability to do business, since riding the 1% limit can be so hard. He's proven he's not a customer they can take money from, no matter the facts of the situation.

Once I read that line, my first thought was "chances are his account was locked by the fraud/risk department".
To anyone: What method or tool is used to feed the news stories?
"The Vegas Tech scene that I encountered revealed a burgeoning entrepreneurial community anxious to collaborate with an openness to sharing ideas and pursuits with others."

Damn proud to be part of this.
Yorapi Instant Back-End Platform for any UI Starts PRIVATE ALPHA
yorapi one of the easiest Instant Back-End Platforms for any UI.

Now Accepting Alpha Tester Applications on our site!

http:://www.yorapi.com
Its completely amazing to me how companies fooled us into paying for devices which are used to expose our habits. If cell phones were free, perhaps there would be less complaints. The fact that we each finance devices that can be used against us by companies and even government is bewildering. Make no mistake, turning off your phone does nothing.
New Samsung ad mocks Apple
I think the parent is asking why it's not possible to have a plugin system + a simple config file (or GUI config app).

There are a lot of common things that people do with XMonad, so I'm sure that a number of them could be consolidated into plugins with simple config options.
Interesting. This must be a new position within Microsoft - it deviated significantly from the previous Silverlight idea of using C# within an environment provided by a browser plug-in.

Now that they discontinued the plugin (was it a month ago?), they feel it's OK to criticize Google's approach.
I believe Dart may have lot of uses beyond scripting HTML pages, and does not need for IE compatibility.
And I have not found a single word about Dart in the article. Just some small changes in JavaScript, very minor compared to what is planed to JavaScript 5.
Do you have any solutions for dealing with slight browser rendering differences? E.g. antialiasing on one browser but not another, slight font size / padding differences, etc. What browser are you "targeting" with the image?
>Five years from now, people will clap technology on the back for giving them more efficient store placements because of "mall analytics"

If there were a way to bet money against that statement, I'd be doing it. Honestly, have you been to a mall lately? Did it give off a "trying our best to make shopping less of a bitch" vibe to you?

Web analytics can create value for the consumer because a website can morph to fit the user. Earth malls do not have that option.

And to the extent that this data will be used to inform store placement at all (maybe for new malls; probably just sold to stores in existing malls), it may actually be in the mall's best interest to move popular stores further apart. That way, you're forced to pass shops for which you have no prior expressed interest. Probably Cinnabon. Win?
If GE refrained from tax-dodging activity...

GE should stop giving employees health insurance (untaxed compensation) and producing green energy (which nets it various tax subsidies).

Is that what you had in mind?
How does the performance of this compare to other libraries like PaperJS (http://paperjs.org) or EaselJS (http://easeljs.com) or ProcessingJS (http://processingjs.org/ though I understand Processing doesn't really have a display list)?
I have the original no-wifi cheap kobo, it only has free content on it.

I connected it the PC and and simply copied epub and pdf to it using calibre. It comes with 100 free books that you can erase, none of the memory is reserved (except for the OS)

ePub works perfectly.

pdf is a little limited in range of zoom, for technical books I convert to epub with calibre and download that.

The only downside of the Kobo - it takes a long time to boot up if it has fully shutdown. Then once it has started it takes a long time to open books.
That's smart, and very cool. I recall the dollar signs in my eyes when I thought about the potential in getting a predictive system like this to work -- I hope you guys nail it.
What about things like outbrain? http://www.outbrain.com/getwidget

They have more deceptive ad units at publishers: http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/23/world/africa/egypt-protests/ (Scroll to pre-comment-box or search for "From around the web")
Racism And Meritocracy
Another example: RIAA - it does exactly what its member companies want, but they get to distance themselves. Similarly, the MPAA.
I adblock all youtube comment divs. It's quite effective.
I've never understood the point of special browser only languages.

Why don't browsers support a sand-boxed python (or insert favorite language x) with some sort of standard dependency management? It already has JIT compilation, is cross-platform, bytecode, a wealth of libraries, etc. Why are we reinventing this wheel?
No ebook license (or any other "virtual" good) will ever have a license that confers 'ownership'.

A license can be more flexible and allow free transfer, copying and backup; but I don't think the law allows for a concept of the ownership of trivially duplicable data.
This is why I back up all my Kindle purchases to my hard drive with Calibre. They're DRMed still, but I know I can crack the files if something like this happens to me.
Typically, when a site pulls that kind of thing, I cease to use the site. I'm not interested in buying anything, and by distracting my eyes from legitimate content with your "get a foot in the door" ads, you earn a big red X from me.
I hope so, though what a waste of money for the people that bought in early. I spent way too much money legally purchasing music during the DRM days... I can't play any of those WMA files anymore since the license servers to authenticate my "rights" are no longer online.
You have made assumptions about what I meant with my original comment. Your assumptions are incorrect. Why not just ask me: "What do you mean by that?"

Here's what I meant. I believe there were naysayers in the 1980's and early 1990's (and maybe they are still around today) who argued open source would never work. I believe history has proved them wrong.

As you pointed out, open source, like proprietary, can produce good results or bad results. It can produce "high quality"[1] results. It can even produce "higher quality" results.

I believe the reasons why open source is as good a choice as proprietary are very simple and quite obvious:
If the user of the software can read the code, then
1. it is easier to evaluate the author's skill and programming sensibilities and
2. it is easier to fix errors and make improvements (without having to pester a proprietary software vendor).

You were also hoping that I would make an argument that the results obtained are somehow related to whether a project is open or closed. As I said, I won't make that argument. And as such I won't look for evidence to support it. That's because I do not believe it.

You have set yourself up for disappointment. I played no part in it.

If you want to know what I believe in terms of how "high quality" or "higher quality" software is achieved, just ask me and I will tell you[2].

But please do not make assumptions about what I think.

All the best.

1. Quality is a subjective determination.

2. I should warn you it is nothing revolutionary. I will only state the obvious.
That is possible and also my hope.

Unfortunately, I think there are a number of differences that will make that harder with ebooks than regular books. Most significantly, people consume the media different. Excluding a few reference books and the Bible, I tend to read a book once and then I am done with it, and I think most people are like that. Even people who reread books only do it a few times with some spacing in between. With music, I keep adding to my collection, but I still have songs I found years ago in my MP3 player. I want to listen many times, so I have a big push to preserve every song for a long time and to be able to take them with me across multiple generations of devices. The push to have full control, while present, is much weaker for the average consumer.

Another lessor factor is that music was in an unprotected format (CDs) that could be easily made digital long before DRM existed for music. With books, the truly unprotected dead-tree form is difficult to digitize, so they have a different history in terms of consumer expectations.
Isn't this similar to the way phone data is used to estimate traffic speeds on streets and highways?

Also, when I saw this: "To make it harder for hackers to get at this information, Path Intelligence scrambles those numbers twice", my first thought was "with XOR?".

And third, are these the same malls and retailers that want to block data connections to prevent people from doing on-line comparison shopping while in the store?
Thks 4 that contribution Rodriguo, I think the same but wouldn't have put it best!
To think Apple is not interested in the same information about their customers just seems incredibly naive or like some kind of cognitive dissonance.

Actually I think there's definitely room for argument there. Apple may be be interested, sure - but unlike Google, they don't have an imperative to collect and sell that information. Google and Apple, for the millionth time, have different business models. Apple takes money from people who buy its devices and software. Google takes money from advertisers. Both are focused on getting the people who give them money, to give them more money. So while Apple certainly could collect and sell this information, they actually have a choice. If Google didn't collect and sell this information, someone interested in a minority-shareholder lawsuit could argue that they were leaving money on the table and doing a disservice to their shareholder.

Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world right now, and on top of that a company whose corporate culture rejects stuff like Carrier IQ. Google is in a position where they could conceivably be sued for not implementing something like this, and is a company whose corporate culture prizes data, data, data and endless analysis.

It is 100% plausible that one of these companies would implement a Carrier IQ style of rootkit, and the other would not.
> SVN has branches, too.

I don't think I have said it doesn't
Thks 4 that contribution Rodriguo, I think the same but wouldn't have put it best!

Fadi from Silverpeas

www.silverpeas.org
(GNU GPL 3)
"sponsored placement"

* uses the smallest font size
* is directly above an obvious ad
It was helluva more costly though. That's like saying that spam was possible for years because someone could just send a billion copies of an advertisement via the post office.
Many years ago, before smartphones, my family was entertained by a group of families that were using long distance walkie talkies (multi-mile range, no FCC ham radio license required) to communicate.

"(BOOP) Where are you?"

"I'm near The Gap"
Honestly, they should have contacted him before removing his ability to access his content. I view the chargebacks as no more severe than what they did. They removed access to the books, he removed access to the money.

They said they'd contact him in 24 hours, they didn't.
Interesting. Euclid only works with smartphones, in that it appears to simply sniff MAC addresses, and triangulate them with off-the-shelf wi-fi equipment.

I'm guessing the mall tracking systems are using something on the GSM and CDMA spectra, and are sniffing UDIDs?
Maybe, maybe not. I still keep in touch with most friends I've made and find them valuable. Also, travel doesn't have to equal hostels, the piece itself talks mostly about hiking, surfing, and writing.
I think the superficial-boozing aspect comes from youth, which is common but fades as the years take their toll. As I'm pushing forty I find myself in nightclubs much less and museums more. For example, I've spent a few days in the Louvre and Archaeological Museum in Athens. I've lived with a family in the Himalayas ... there is no book that can do these experiences justice, sorry.

The choices we make while traveling are as important as the travel.
One thing I really like about this is that it's a great example of a university making it's expertise publicly available.

Universities are definitely entitled to their proprietary intellectual property, but things like class content is something that the public can really benefit from and the marginal cost of production is near zero. Much of this content is valuable, but let's face it, it's not worth the tuition Stanford and other schools charge (now maybe the compete college experience is worth it, but that's a different discussion).

Kudos to Stanford for setting the bar high, let's hope other schools follow (MIT, CMU, we're looking at you...)
We use Superfeedr.
Because they're shifting resources to google x, expect big announcements on the scale of self driving car from them soon
I base my personal guess of "no" on the fact that Carrier IQ is currently advertising several job openings that ask for deep knowledge of Android internals, and zero job openings requiring similar iOS experience.

Of course, the possibility remains open that Apple simply implemented something similar in-house.
Ready For More Social Apps? Socialize’s “Social Action Bar” Hits Version 1.0
at the end of the day the webkit and firefox teams are going to control where it goes.

I don't think this is entirely true. IE still has more than enough marketshare to matter. Microsoft embracing some approach, be it a new language, or be it evolving JavaScript, has influences in how likely the efforts of the other teams are to succeed in the marketplace.
Not an endorsement of Dart at all, considering people who haven't really learned javascript by now are going to be the same people who won't really learn Dart in the future.
I like more you design you 3d print a functional robot
http://asrob.uc3m.es/index.php/Proyecto:_Plastic_Valley
This is exactly what I expected. I firmly believe Groupon's business model(daily deals) is not a sustainable model, because it's not actually creating any real value but only destroying margin.
How does this compare with Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5?
If you aren't already doing so I would suggest you to start developing web applications. Pick an idea that you find interesting and useful(not necessarily profitable, but it doesn't hurt to be so). Develop and launch it. Show it to HN. In the process you will learn many things like

1. Feasibility analysis of idea

2. Project planning

3. UI/UX Design

4. Front-end development using HTML5/CSS3/javascript/jQuery

5. Server side programming using vanilla php and mysql, its freedom and headaches(then you'll understand the importance of frameworks).

6. Testing - unit testing,stress testing,browser testing,resolution testing etc.

7. Analytics and its importance.

8. Performance optimization techniques.

9. launching and marketing your application.

10. and the fact that programming is fun in itself but it is even more fun to use it to actually make something.

Best of luck.
I am stating what government contracting is like. I don't quite get the psudolibertarian point of your post, but I know personally that as I worked for a Georgia state agency doing federal contracting, nothing even CLOSE to a bribe was used anywhere. We couldn't even buy them lunch.

If you jump through a series of hoops and bid low enough, you WILL get government contracts. They're just expensive hoops.
Even with the pre-paids, they'd stil be able to see where a person with one of those is going and their shopping patterns, therefore giving them exactly what they're looking for. They're tracking the movement of dots to analyze shopping patterns. If a dot is prepaid it doesn't make it a "fake" dot. What would really confuse them (maybe?) is getting as many phones on your person as possible then running around in circles.

Why they would choose to attempt to discover patterns on black friday though is beyond me - consumer behavior on that day is completely wacky and inconsistent with any other day of the year.
It's actually kinda crazy that I looked at this image

http://images2.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/ad-blending/...

for about thirty seconds and literally did not see the ad, at all. I am now impressed/scared of my mind's ability to completely disregard probably unimportant information.
Holy crap! I was planning to install and play around with Plan 9, but after reading this decided that I can do better things in a week.
> Saying Dart needs Microsoft adoption is like saying CoffeeScript or GWT needs Microsoft adoption. They all allow JS compilation and the ability to use JS and be called from JS.

I'm not sure that is the case, because of the native Dart VM.

CoffeeScript compiles very straightforwardly into JS, with similar performance to normal JS. But Dart is significantly different, and the Dart VM could be faster than Dart-compiled-to-JS, both because (1) The Dart VM will be optimized for Dart in new ways, and (2) It isn't clear that Dart code will be extremely efficient when compiled to JS.

So CoffeeScript adoption needs no support from browser vendors, but Dart, if it is to fulfill its goal of being fast, might need the Dart VM. And that does need browser vendor support.
You can skip them after 5 seconds.
I shouldn't have to turn off my phone, I should be able to shop (using the malls services) and use my cell phone (a service entirely unrelated to the shopping mall) without having to worry about this nonsense.

I honestly don't see what business the mall has using a tactic like this. I hear the 'it's no big deal' argument, but something about the path we're on with this feels sinister.

I don't have a technological, philosophical, political argument for not liking this, I just do not want to be tracked. I feel akin to a toddler throwing a tantrum, I want to heap all of my electronics in a pile and stomp up and down on them screaming "I DON'T WANNA BE TRACKED!"

Unfortunately gadgets, phones, etc have a pretty good hold on me so I'm stuck grumbling on the internet, where I'm tracked.

edit: changed reason to argument, since thinking about it I probably do have some philosophical reasons but not anything broad and clear enough to form an argument.
The reason it's confusing is that the spec is attempting to document the confused logic that browsers implement (almost certainly for backwards compatibility with bugs in older browsers). As an HTML author you shouldn't waste the brainspace on learning these rules, but rather just encode ampersands correctly.
The apple comment was merely tangential observation. My concern is people using "Simple" as an excuse to not deliver. Just like we use different dialogue for different audiences we build software for particular audience. Gnome Shell is not Linux Users.

Your interpretation of "Think Different" is nice but I don't think its what Apple was thinking. In fact it seems Think Different was stated as "there are other alternatives to the PC".

Later on Apple reused the phrase to indicate that they are creative paradigm shifters and in the same league of some one who topples a regime when in a reality they are now the regime/status quo.
Really? From a "rest of the world" point of view (I am speaking for France where Amazon is now officially selling kindles and kindle books, but it is also true for Germany), it is more the contrary: Amazon has the smallest selection of e-books compared to the other generalist e-book sellers.
I've wondered for years why GitHub doesn't provide a license field as part of the repo along side name and description. I've been known to pester people after they point me to their repo, and ask them to add a license before I'll use their code. Automating CLAs would be a dream.

GitHub, are you listening?
The reviews are hilarious. I like how it got panned for lack of a trepanning tool, after all there you are in the backwoods with a subduralhematoma and pressure growing on your brain, you need to relieve the pressure right away. :-)

Fun stuff.
would be neat to see it overlaid with road-work, congestion, other variables
Nokia's Shares Tumble as Analysts Lower Lumia Sales Forecasts
I talked about this at OSBC, in case you (or anyone else) is interested. It's basically the verbose version of the comment above.

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2011/05/24/the-age-of-data/
Yes, malls already make the bathrooms and food hard to find because they know that everybody needs those, and making you search for them increases your chance of buying something on the way. If the malls knew which "store transitions" were most popular, they would definitely try to maximize their length.

Simple objective function for the mall: maximize the sum over all paths of the path length times the number of people who took that path.