skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wait, is Facebook really rolling it out? I don't know anyone that has it that hasn't gone through the developer hoops to get it. Didn't they say they were going to roll it out for everyone in October or something?

Why the delay?

(Aside from the fact that it's the creepiest thing they've ever made)
Another Case for Using Top Aligned Form Labels
A good part of that is episodic and accidental. There have been instances of those "spammy" internal mails that just can't give up, such as a mail sent by the HR to inform people that a car was left with lights on in the morning with everyone (and not just the building) in cc instead of bcc or a contact group, with endless streams of "reply all" asking to remove them from the mailing list.

These happen, and in very large companies these issues can degenerate fast unless your email admins are on their toes. Repeat the incident once a year and it's fine. Repeat it once a month and you have a failing email system with very visible streaks of 200+ mails/day.
It reminds me: I believe in Feyman's day, Jews were fighting a similar problem to Asians now.

I'm pretty sure that SAM (a Jewish frat?) was gone by the 80s at MIT, as a calibration point.

Edit: I was a little confused, he was turned away from Columbia for being Jewish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota
Are artists cheaters?
Again, you're missing the point. It's not about technological advancement (although speed and stability is huge), it's about how many tech-savvy people are recommending it to their mothers and IT managers. By that metric, Firefox is losing ground quickly to Chrome. Chrome is nicer to use and easier to recommend. Yes, those are subjective beliefs, but they're widely-held ones and that's what matters.
As someone who has largely failed to make money while trying to give away what I have to offer, I have to wonder where you think the money will come from? What will be the motive to donate? I've known other webmasters, in some cases of fairly large sites, who just couldn't get the funding they really needed. They were idealistic and didn't want to "commercialize" it and didn't want to "beg" for donations either. I guess they thought people should just give out of the goodness of their hearts and, yet, in one case even when members were trying to find ways to give, the owner was turning them down due to his idealism, which was such it simply put a strangle-hold on any means to fund the site.

Do you have experience with the not for profit model? Are you familiar with the challenges that most non-profits face in trying to fund their work? Non-profits work on a similar basis to business as far as asking for money in exchange for something of value. In other words, the pitch is usually "we offer a valuable service to the community and you should fund us because it does positively impact your life in X way (such as reducing the number of homeless people on the street)"

I'm all for idealistic projects but many of them are so idealistic that they simply don't work. And frankly I kind of resent how much other people have benefited from my work while I got little in return. I have serious financial problems and could use the money. I wish I could find a way to crowd fund what I do. If I do, most likely that won't be called "crowd funding". It will be called "sales to the public", perhaps in the form of t-shirts, merchandising, etc.
The more common downside is that some qualified guys are passed up in favor of others that are just "promising" but have the right skin color.
Taylor Solicitors Cork: Part-Time Employment Rights
11 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Designer
Most companies do not have a problem finding web designers these days with graphic and web design becoming one of the more popular college degrees.
I don't have a problem with you recommending Chrome (and I work at Mozilla). However, it's not fair to say Firefox is sluggish. With a new profile, it's just as fast as Chrome. Try it.

Chrome has an advantage because it's relatively new. It doesn't have to deal with over a decade of add-ons and browser history and cookies.

Much like how a computer gets slow and needs to be reformatted, people who are browser power users need to clean out Firefox every few years.

Try vacuuming your Firefox database [1], syncing everything [2] and/or create a new profile [3] with only the extensions you actually use.

Oh, and be careful of Firebug. That's why most developers laugh at Firefox for being so slow; they use Firebug, which slows Firefox down to a grinding halt. We're working on our own dev tools, which are slowly coming together. They're not a Firebug replacement yet, but they're getting there. [4]

1 http://mozillalinks.org/2009/08/vacuum-firefox-databases-for...
2 http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/sync/
3 http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing-profiles
4 http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/11/developer-tools-in-firefox-...
Apple May Build Data Center Next to Facebook in Oregon
Hunch blog: Is a copycat a thief…or your biggest fan?
This page, like several other parts of Facebook, is completely inoperable for me. Something in the page dies before it gets to the <body> tag.

This is perhaps irrelevant to the topic, but it's really frustrating that there's basically no way for me to do anything about this. I've waded through their highly unhelpful help pages to submit bug reports for all the things I've found not to work, but this has been the case for months.

I assume that I managed to be a part of an A/B test that causes some really inoperable things to happen? Regardless, it sort of reinforces my negative opinions of Facebook engineering when something can consistently break for me to the point that it renders no page.
SEEKING WORK (Freelance only) – San Francisco, Remote

1.	I specialize in Ruby on Rails, and by this I mean I’m competent in Ruby, Rails 3.1, JavaScript, coffeescript, CSS, Html, Linux, deployment with multi-server architectures, asynchronous requests, regular expressions, TDD, VIM, jQuery, refactoring, design patterns, git, and sql.

2.	I’m writing a book on Ruby on Rails best practices.

3.	I know the Facebook platform inside out. I’m equally familiar with Spree, an open source e-commerce platform allowing you to create stores that sell online – be that digital goods or otherwise.

4.	I’m fast. I built and deployed one app per week for my previous client. I stay fast by keeping a deck of 6000 programming flashcards which I keep in constant rotation.

5.	I’m practical. I’m not the kind of engineer who will waste your time and money perfecting architecture till the end of your budget. I’m the guy you want to hire to rapidly prototype something at a reasonable cost so that you can go and raise money right now.

6.	I studied at and graduated from Oxford University.

7.	I know a lot about marketing, having built viral Facebook apps, having managed Facebook and Google advertising campaigns for over 2 years, and having done heavy SEO work. I will imbue your app with sensible optimizations that will make marketing your app, and ultimately making money, much simpler.

8.	I take pride in my work. I’m ashamed of bugs and I won’t let them creep into projects with my name on them.

9.	I can build your web app alone, although I prefer to work with a graphic designer since your end results will be better for the same cost.

10.	I’m aware of my own cost, and my goal as a consultant is to offer you the most value per dollar, not to bill the maximum number of hours. I will suggest technical compromises to your spec where we swap ideal functionality for cheaply implemented functionality. You can always add the ideal case when you raise your first million.

Sample site: www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk [100% me]

Github: https://github.com/jackkinsella

Further samples: www.jackkinsella.ie

Tel: + 415 568 7164

Email: jack.kinsellaHATgmail.com [replace HAT with @]
FWIW, I added several improvements, and according to the built-in survey, it works for about 95% of all visitors. If you had bad results initially, clear you cache and give it a second try.
I'm wondering if this fact is indeed unique to polar bears. Did they check other mammals that live in similar conditions, i.e. Arctic fox would be a candidate.
Getxbook, a collection of tools to download books from websites
It's an interesting read, but I just can't help but think that the tragedy lies with Microsoft and not the low resolution. It's 2011 and Apple has been doing font auto-hinting for ages, and so has been Adobe. Microsoft though still prefers to live in tragedy and defiantly clings to TrueType format and its horrendously labor-intensive manual hinting. I really don't know what's wrong with them, but for a fraction of Vista's 1bn budget they could've written a dozen of TTF auto-hinters.
My understanding is that 0% of MIT admissions is non-academic admits (legacy, recruited athletes, development, under-represented minorities).

Is that incorrect?
You're good. Care to review a site of mine?

It's still in debug mode and unlaunched. I've still got a few design changes.

TimeforZen.com
username and password are both: "testing"

The JavaScript timer for meditation sessions is incomplete and won't reset, so be warned if music starts playing after you've canceled it min-count.
Show HN: The Book
Apparently I haven't visited HN. :)

I wonder if the use of ghostery, no-script, that sort of thing, is what bamboozles it? Overall, it looks like it's guessing.
> I don't think checking "Asian" or "not Asian" makes a huge difference, because in the end, it's your activities, recommendations, and essays that differentiate you.

This flies in the face of the fact that affirmative actions exists and that the racial demographics at any given college are typically consistent year-to-year. Somehow the numbers get hit every single year, yet you claim it's an inherent property of the applicants themselves that naturally results in those numbers appearing every single year. I find that highly suspect.
> First statement I imply that things aren't getting better, I'll agree that some things are getting better, new features and support etc... but theres a chunk of stuff not getting improved.

What things that actually matter aren't being improved?

You're wrong about plugins so I'll assume that you mean addons here, which use a completely different interface. Addon compatibility over the new release schedule has been rough so far, it's being addressed and I expect it to be, largely, a solved problem in the near future.

Pulling support for HTML 5 features? Are you referring to WebSockets, which were exposed again later once the security problems in the spec were resolved?

Web SQL DB is a terrible spec, as it stands. It effectively requires locking a specific version of SQLite (bugs and all) into the web for eternity to ensure interoperability. You'll note that IE has also refused to implement it so far. It's hardly fair to claim it's "in direct conflict with W3C standards". Web SQL DB never made it past a working group stage, and Firefox was not the only browser against implementing it.
Where Do Entrepreneurs Get Their Money?
Nope. I see this is a throwaway because you don't feel like taking a karma dip (at least you don't lose your internet points).

Your points boil down to this.

1. I'm upset because other people don't feel the same way as me

2. Closing down/fining illegal shops because they don't have the proper permits is killing America.

3. Selling in the subway is not annoying, for me

4. It's ok to ignore laws because some laws are minor and mostly ignored (i.e. jaywalking) and because other countries have different laws on the same subject.

5. If you don't agree with me you are a racist.

Oh and the whole reason we don't see it the same way as "two white girls selling things for college" is because the man is not trying to go to college. If it was "two black girls selling things for college" that would be comparable. He is exploiting his race in order for people buy his candy.

>"If you don't spend a dollar with me, either you don't have it or you're a hater," he's concluded."

How is this a respectable business model?
It's weird that they don't show the mini icons by default next to the text in the main profile links. They do a little animation to show them when you hit the down arrow to show more.

That could solve that problemo.
I'm sure it's the trick where you make a bunch of links to various sites, set a :visited color, and then interrogate all of the links with javascript to see what color they are. It's no longer possible on most browsers.
374 domains now reside on DOJ/ICE seized domain server
>wouldn’t those laws apply equally to IM as to email? In other words, if the law requires that internal communication be logged they’d be screwed either way in your scenario.

then how about oral "instant messaging"?
I'm a bit late to the topic, so quite possibly you've moved on, but

> I keep failing and getting frustrated as soon as I hit a wall, I didn't used to be like this but now everything seems too hard

> depressed and demotivated

Just one of many possibilities, but you could have a neurological disorder ("I didn't used to be like this" and depression, no motivation). Go to a decent doctor and get checked for a bunch of things. Could be something treatable like vitamin deficiency.

In any case, feel free to ping me, emails in my profile.
Serious question: Is there any reason not to just lie about your ethnicity? Why not put "black" or "native american" on your app to really up your chances?

I mean, I'm sure the school would reject you if they knew you were lying about it, but there really isn't any way for them to tell, is there?
Hp TouchPad Go on eBay. Bidding at $1,500 right now.
Ask HN: What do you use for SSL load balancing?
There are the usual suspects: nginx, Apache, F5 etc. But I would like to know what has worked out the best for you and why.

I also seem to remember a startup posting on HN about how they built a lightweight(ish) SSL proxy specifically to terminate SSL connections but can not remember the name for the life of me so I would appreciate any help if anyone else on HN remembers.
I would argue that what copyrights should do is give rights holders the exclusive right to make a profit off of them - other people should not be able to simply steal your ideas and sell them. That said, copyright does not mean that you must be paid for your work. If you can offer a service that people want to pay for, by all means go ahead. If people are not willing to pay for your work, find another job.

Back when distribution cost money, it was a reasonable service that was provided. Specifically, rights holders allow corporations to use and distribute their intellectual property and then people would pay for the service of distribution.

With distribution free in today's world, there is no longer profit to be made by controlling distribution. However, those corporations want to create artificial scarcity so that they can continue to use their old business model. We do not have any responsibility to sustain obsolete business models.

With no money to be made in simple distribution, content creators must focus on different services if they wish to make a profit. There are many different ways to do this. One option is to reform digital distribution - make it more convenient to purchase than it is to pirate (Netflix, Spotify). Another option presented earlier in this thread is live performances, but obviously that does not work in every industry. Yet another option presented is to monetize creation - appeal directly to fans, run kickstarter campaigns, etc. Find people willing to pay money for you to create more content.

Because at the end of the day, people focusing on the old model of distribution are offering me a service I don't need. I can obtain information for free - the costs of digital distribution are zero. Profits must be found elsewhere.

The exclusive right to make a profit should continue to belong to the content creator, so you still cannot sell copies. However, since distribution is free, I see no problem with giving away copies.
I just want it known this is not MY listing. I don't even have the regular TouchPad. Thought this was freaky and interesting. Wonder if HP will shut it down? [typo edit]
Most Individuals Throw Up Their Hands And Cry ‘what Are You Able To Do?
Hollywood special effects: Watch the profits disappear
I chose my above words carefully: It was an issue of SATs, not qualifications in general.

Prior to affirmative action, SATs were the be-all-and-end-all of equilibration for GPAs; A GPA of 3.9 at the Bronx school of science was not the same as 3.9 at Rural High. Along came some studies showing that the SATs (esp English) had some cultural biases.

The admissions depts were truly trying to figure out: Which candidates will have the biggest impact after graduation? SATs were called into question as a predictor of that, and that "standardized" tests were maybe not so standard after all.
whats the context, is it an unreleased device ?
Considering the drops we have been seeing in public funding, at least for public universities keeping funded is perhaps going to become an ever more crucial goal...
This is pretty close to how we did things at Princeton.

You can only admit so many violin playing science hopefuls.
Yes, VERY unreleased! It's a prototype of a model that never went into production because HP killed the TouchPad.
10  effective  herbs for weight Loss
The white kid might stand out a bit more, but he'd probably get lost in the crush, too. There's got to be a twist, there's got to be an angle.

So a kid with incredible credentials who plays the violin and is awesome at math....who grew up in an igloo is going to get extra attention.

That same kid who went to a math/science academy in NYC has a tough path in front of him.
That's fascinating and all, but I'm really not interested in arguing with people about their opinions. I'm not here to argue. If they make claims that are factually incorrect, I'm happy to point them at the facts.
First, it's a proof of concept, that's all.

Even so, even without doing any work to ameliorate these flaws, it could still be (ab)used. Don't assume that it's only useful if everyone can scan which of the top 100 websites you've visited.

Any site could use this to check which competitors' sites have been visited. It's unlikely anyone else has an interest in checking that information, so the cache is not going to be poisoned by anyone else. With knowledge of which competitors a potential customer has checked out, you could do some effective price discrimination -- the guy looking at the $10 solutions sees your lowest price, while the guy looking at some competing Microsoft Dynamics package enters a more enterprisey sales funnel.

It's also useful for retargeting. Throw the code up on an ad network and you only test for cache hits against domains of current advertisers. If there's a hit, store it in a cookie so you don't need to check the (now filled) cache again. You can now show ads for companies a person has already had an interaction with, without having to cookie every visitor to the advertisers' sites first.

It doesn't take much to come up with (mostly nefarious) uses for this, even without perfect accuracy and even without the ability to have multiple parties check the same URLs.

It also doesn't take much to come up with ways to improve the process. You can ameliorate the problem of overlapping testers by having a large pool of URLs from each site to check. The average top 1000 site probably has dozens and dozens of images and other resources per page, each of which can be used for a cache test.
> "Not to really generalize, but a lot of Asians, they have perfect SATs, perfect GPAs, ... so it's hard to let them all in," Olmstead says.

I didn't know there was a quota on how many Asian students a college could accept.

And besides, doesn't a college want the best students in their college, regardless of ethnicity?
No. It is not doomed. Google would not let ~350 million potential users go to waste.
http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/whatischatter/
I'm a developer that switched back to Firefox, after I gave up on it during the 3.5 days. Firefox almost died in its transition to version 4, however now it is back on track.

I prefer it over Chrome because Firefox is a platform, not a product that treats me like a dumb user.

I use it on my Android too. It's a little sluggish and still uses too much memory, however it has a killer feature - it syncs everything with my desktop. It syncs my bookmarks and my saved login data for various websites I use. Saves me from a lot of manual typing and it is so addictive I can't give it up. Plus I'm seeing progress and they've promised a native interface that will be more efficient.

The desktop version is pretty stable these days too - I'm on the Beta channel (version 9) and I don't have problems. Even the versioning problems for the plugins I use have been sorted out.

I still recommend it to people, I would recommend it even to my hypothetical grandma.

If people from Mozilla are reading this - thanks for all your hard work.
According to PBS, Race is an Illusion:
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm

Jared Diamond concurs:
http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/0...

If you believe their arguments, there is no scientific basis for categorizing someone on the basis of race. Appearance is particularly hazardous.

Therefore, why can't Asians mark black on the application? Who is to say they are not black if they self-identify as black? According to PBS, Jared Diamond, and many sociology departments, it is impossible to administer a genetic test that distinguishes African Americans from Asians, so self-identification is the only measure that matters.

So: why would Asians simply self-identify as white? Why not self-identify as black?

If race just a sociocultural construct, well, many Asian Americans certainly are into rap music and cultural markers that are associated with socially constructed category of African American. So why aren't they black?
Do you have evidence to back that claim?

It's not clear to me that qualified people who lose out (i.e. not get a place anywhere) would be so greater in number that they would outweigh the doubts created about people who may or may not have had a helping hand through affirmative action. Those kinds of doubts are pernicious and likely affect that person's social groups and career for many years; while unambiguously able people would be held up a year at the very worst - but most likely just having to attend a different college than their preference.
Wasn't there something that could simulate a 3G connection? Or was that not for iOS?
"Web SQL DB is a terrible spec, as it stands."

And further, Mozilla championed and gained consensus for IndexedDB (http://www.w3.org/TR/IndexedDB/).

It's simply not true that Mozilla is disengaged or actively hostile to popular standards without presenting a plausible alternative and fighting to make that alternative so.
TBH I've stopped using FF unless I'm working on a new site, I can't think off the top of my head what isn't working because as stated I don't use it much anymore.

But you don't have to take my word for it, there was a big discussion about it recently: http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/08/29/1454224/Mozilla-Comm...
there are a few tools that can do that, like the Network Conditioner that comes with the developer tools or something like the Charles Proxy, but the special purpose of this little project is to fake the Reachability Information provided by the Device into completely offline, which is a bit different.