skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, now they oppose it. After learning we were watching and paying attention. After an overwhelming majority of computer users and companies very vocally opposed it.

And, IIRC, Microsoft didn't make any public statement regarding SOPA. It's assumed they pressured the BSA's president to change the institution's opinion.
I'd say not bad for the initial draft. I don't really think it's for "anyone" though. It seems like it's written by a programmer for other beginning programmers. That's just my first review without going through it more thoroughly. Here's some feedback based on going through it real quick:

1. The main link leads to http://ruby.bastardsbook.com/about/ which talks about the book, but it took me forever to figure out that I go to the top where the little "Contents" link is to actually read the book.

2. I think you're whole first chapter with cut-paste could work, but I would provide the files. On a technical level there's all sorts of problems with cut-paste out of a browser and into code. It's rare but it's problematic, either by browser encoding problems or sloppy mouse usage. I'd set up a little .zip file with the code in it so they can just run it that way. Personally though, I find cut-paste has almost no value in actually teaching people to code, but I get you're trying to get them interested.

3. Your first real chapter, "Conventions" is just too much for most actual beginners. It is throwing in complicated inject calls, blocks, a really gnarly block of code that no programmer with any style would ever write, and other oddities. I'd recommend reworking this chapter so either it's at the end and is a capstone on "idiomatic" ruby style, or ditch the convoluted examples and keep it simple. Also, don't be fooled if someone who can already code tells you this is awesome. For an already capable programmer this is good, but for "anybody" this is just way too much and you'll lose them here.

4. You seem to spend a lot of time trying to convince the reader why they should learn to code. So far most of the material I've read has been the kind of stuff to pump them up and get them excited. Maybe you think that's necessary, but if that is your goal, then go back and rewrite some of your examples so that they're more accessible and people will think "oh man, I can totally get this!" Right now I think they would think "yeah! totally! oh wait, wtf is that shit?"

5. In the chapter on methods, why on earth are you showing them the C code to Ruby's implementation of puts? I really think that has no place in this book and wonder why it's even there. The link to the code isn't even valid anymore, which should tell you one reason why this is bad: Ruby's C code changes to quickly. The other reason is Ruby's C code is just bad. Not only are you overloading the student with C code in a Ruby book, but you're showing them very weird C code.

Overall I think you've got a book for programmers who want to learn Ruby, and not really a book for beginners or "anybody". Programmers would love this book because there's not many free good ruby books that are this extensive except for _why's (and that's crazy so many programmers can't handle it). You should basically consider making up your mind. Is it for beginners? Ok, then ditch everything complicated and redesign the order you teach things. If it's for programmers who can already code, then keep doing what you've got here. I'd place it at maybe intermediate programmers or beginners.
Are his degrees in psychology, sociology, pedagogy, political science and a teaching qualification?
I don't think they do it consciously, but doctors try to sell you on their philosophies for healthcare.

No, doctors try to make you as fully aware as possible of the options available to you, so that you or your heirs don't turn around and sue them later for 'withholding information that could have saved your life' or something along those lines. Arguably, these suits are motivated in part by the need to defray the extremely high costs of care and pushing back at the physician or caregiver about the quality of clinical care is a powerful negotiating strategy because it plays well to a jury.
Google Swiffy extension exports Flash to HTML5 [HTML5][Flash]
Here's a real life example I ran into a week ago:

http://dev.aol.com/aim

We've made some changes to the Open AIM program to better align with AOL’s new direction and clear focus on our core strategy areas. Going forward, we're shifting our focus to select partnership opportunities that will help us move the needle in the communications space.

NotSureIfSerious.jpg
Also note that it's an iframe, not a real IE6 browser. :)
Longtime Google Policy Guy Andrew McLaughlin Headed to Tumblr
Organic Can Feed the World
In Sweden medical care is free. I can fight as long as I want without them getting in trouble.

I thought Sweden had committees to decide on what standards of care would be provided or not, preventing you from making the mistakes discussed in the article?

EDIT: Also, remember that the US government spends more per capita paying for people's health care than Sweden, but manages to spend that huge amount of money on only poor and old people who don't have employer-provided health care.
humorous anecdote: My brother's friend thought "lol" meant lots of love. Until one day an exchange went down:

someone else: "I have to leave town, my mother is sick."
them: "oh no! lol"
I like this guy's article and it makes good points. But dropping the capitalization of the pronoun "I" half way through a formal article that one publishes for a general readership looks really bad.
Apple, Motorola, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile latest to be sued over Carrier IQ
You're right, I did miss that. I saw nested tags and assumed this is another CSS compiler (or whatever you'd like to call them).

I guess you could say this is like Doxygen for CSS?
That's true of the actual cost of the service. For the 1000% markup that U.S. hospitals take, it's more arguable.
Http://anytubedownloader.com/
... and, in the method of disbelief they choose to employ, they provide the very evidence they are demanding.

Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing, and leads to fantastic piles of irony. Humans are all irrational; anyone who claims to be rational is, in fact, irrationally rejecting the overwhelming preponderance of evidence.

The best we can do is be aware of our irrationality and attempt to compensate with tools like checklists, blind resume screening, empirical data, and awareness of biases to inform cultural and personal behavioral modifications to minimize the harm that irrationality can do to our field, our businesses and people around us.

For example, any time a human has a defensive reaction to something and lashes out with an attempt to dismiss or discredit the speaker rather than the argument it is probably because they interpreted the statement as a personal attack on their identity. That is, if someone says "bicyclists who run red lights endanger their own lives and the lives of people around them" the people who respond angrily probably went through this unconscious thought process:
"Endangering lives is bad! People who do so are bad people!"
"I run red lights on my bike, so the speaker is accusing me of being a bad person!"
"Well, they probably aren't even a bicyclist/don't know my specific commute/don't understand how hard it is to cycle to work every day, so what would they know?"
"Whew, I'm not a bad person after all!"

And then they will probably feel superior because they rejected a poorly supported argument, or an insufficiently supported argument, no matter how much evidence is presented. What should have been evidence against their behavior instead strengthened their commitment to it. I recommend the recent book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" for a more complete explanation of this process and the relevant citations.

The practical implication of this is that whenever one's first reaction is defensive dismissal of someone's report of their personal, first-person experience of the world, it isn't because they are wrong: it is because their experience being true threatens one's own self-image. That they may be wrong or purposefully lying are merely post-hock justifications for an initial emotional response.
Talking about Burn Rate
IncubateNYC — bringing a technology incubator to Harlem, NY
I don't know if his technical explanation is correct or not, but he is absolutely right about the importance of responsiveness. I was an Android early adopter (G1) and while I could put up with slower HTML rendering (for example), I could not tolerate the poor responsiveness.
This is correct. However, the Android team made their decision with the assumption that Android would power keyboard and trackball devices. That was never the case, so they made the wrong decision based on a faulty premise.
Video Marketing Software
How is the state linking health care to employment?

My understanding is that health care is linked to employment because of the adverse selection problem that occurs in a free market of individual health insurance. Can you elaborate on why you consider this to be the government's fault?
Best "cross platform" app platform for Android?
Clients refuse to pay for "one native app per platform" in general (For smart business reasons many times).

While I think a pure native app on each platform yields a nice experience for the user, budget realities mean I must determine what non-native yet not web platform works well on many different types of mobile, especially Android (Blackberry, Winmo7 and Symbian are also nice to have) to give those prospective customers options.

It's not like the platform has to work without modification, they just need to work so MOST of the code is shared among the versions.

Any success stories you can point to on the web?

Any APIs with nice examples of complicated apps?

I'm especially interested in the playing of audio and video files local to the device as well as streamed.
Online Finance Training Courses
SIP support is already in Gingerbread (and possibly earlier versions too), it just doesn't work with a SIM with voice plans.
IBM’s 3 big chip breakthroughs explained
Ücretsiz ev , iş , Cep Telefonu Arama Sitesi
I started e-banking with UBS in Switzerland around 10 years ago (it's were I live) and they provided me with a card, and a little card reader with a key pad. To log in, I have to enter and 8 digit account code (not my account number though - something random but consistent). It then gives me a random code. I type my secret pin number into the card reader and enter the given code. It gives me back a response with number and letter characters (all capitol letters) that I enter into the web page to complete the log-in.

This seems quite secure as someone would have to have my card and pin number to access my account, which is the same level of security I have when I access my ATM machine. This was my first experience with e- banking. Imagine my disappointment when I tried to open other bank or trading accounts and found out they just used normal passwords.

Now, I only use e-banking with UBS, even though their fees ares somewhat higher - I consider the security well worth it. I guess the cost of the device and administration must be less than 35USD per year, which they easily make up for in fees. My question is, why aren't the other banks doing this as well. I would totally pay for it.
The EU countries that are not circling the drain also have socialized healthcare, for the most part. Healthcare is a driver of public sector costs, but hardly the only one.
I would pay Google a decent amount of money for first-party GV+SIP integration.
IBM Labs: Future of Computing with Graphene, Racetrack & Nanotube Breakthroughs
I am always reminded of him when someone quotes the saying used in gambling if you look around the table and can't spot the sucker the sucker is you. Smart people (at least smart enough to bullshit) are used to deflecting questions from the dumb and they are shrewd enough to never get trapped in a room in which they are out of their league with people that can see through their ruse. What he did was lure them into a trap in which they felt comfortable not bringing their defenses (lawyers, and accounts) because it would scare the sucker. The did not play conservative in the face of a competent adversary. So thinking they had a sucker they adopted a riskier strategy of bullshit, and pacify, in an effort to keep the sucker at the table while they milked him. Where they entered the room thinking they would keep it small an "among friends".

There is a lot of back story on this deal and it is a long story, one day I may post it. But it did involve this player starting negotiations by suing us, so there was a lot of bad blood. He pal'ed around with their CEO for a month being their sucker all the while rejecting a purchase in favor of a partnership (which made absolutely no since to us or them), he would use all kinds of dumb excuses as to why we did not want to sell. I had no idea how well this guy had us covered, until I went into that room.

It was one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed. If you have never seen a person that can plan out 20 to 30 steps ahead, all hinged off of other people, when you see it unraveled in front of you and connect the actions, it is nothing short of amazing. It was the single greatest display of brilliance I have ever seen. A single man took on a giant with his mind, and nothing more than timing. It was a valuable lesson in underestimation and the element of surprise.
The problem with math is that more so than other subjects, one bad teacher, or bad year in general, can impact you for life. I think it's more important that we make sure a higher percentage of high school students have a basic understanding of the fundamentals, and leave the depth for college.

From what I've seen from tutoring 3 younger siblings in math throughout their high school days, I think they should spend the first 3 years of high school drilling Algebra into their heads. Then in the last year they can spend half a year on geometry and half a year on trig. Or maybe keep kids in Algebra until they can demonstrate an absolute mastery.

The biggest problems my sibs had with higher math wasn't the higher math, it was the algebra underlying it. They get one year of Algebra in 8th grade and the move on to Geometry assuming they have mastered it, but they havent.
Very cool idea and implementation on the web! Suprisingly my css3 based website looked just right, does this works just as IE6 for real?
In case #1, it doesn't take a lot of time to raise money. Collateralizing a bank loan against future revenue is a fairly pretty straightforward process, and the only "pitch" you need is (possibly audited) documentation of your free cash flow.
Siri Is Apple’s Broken Promise
Huh, Cloudflare doesn't seem to like this site for some reason. I tried plugging in my blog and got a denied notice.
I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it's been pretty eye-opening. It reminds me of how I once took a photoshop course in order to improve my design skills... pretty easy to guess how well that worked.
Slightly different fail in the Newton's case. The tablet/PDA/smartphone/MID/palmtop market was niche at best and effectively non-existent at worst when the Newton came out; it simply was in too small of a market to go anywhere. The PlayBook, OTOH, showed up in a crowded, relatively well-established market, and so far has almost totally failed to get traction with either developers or customers.
What are the problems with catdoc's "xls2csv"?
Or libxls (sourceforge)?
I recently interviewed somebody who had previously been an elementary school teacher. Their resume had the following line: "Instructed a diverse group of up to 29 students in a self-contained classroom on a daily basis." I laughed at that bit of buzzword padding for quite a while.
Over 100,000 XXX Domain Names Are Going Live Tomorrow At 11 EST
How can we know if there is life on any planet (close or far) if we can only look for it using our senses? Forget Mars, is it just possible that there is life on earth that we simply cannot know of because we do not have the required senses to perceive it.
I think there are examples of what you're saying. I remember reading in "The Emperor Of All Maladies", by Siddharta Mukherjee, about experimental chemotherapy treatments that initially only extended the patient's life by 6-12 months. Later, as science advanced, combining these with new therapies greatly increased the survival rate.

But in the end, it is an individual choice. There will always be some who choose to fight no matter what (and they should be aware of their chances) and there will be others who prefer to let go.
Ting: new mobile service
I agree. There's only so far you can go in probability theory without knowing calculus--but learning up to that point in probability is far more useful to 19 out of 20 non-engineers than calculus is.
Isn't "the startup might not blow up" the incentive?
I think it the takeaway is slightly different: When many of Android's fundamental design decisions were made, specifically making UI animations take place in a normally-scheduled application thread, the prime competition/inspiration was the keyboard- and trackpad-driven interfaces of competitors such as Blackberry.

Apple, on the other hand, decided that a touch-based interface was the way to go. As such, Apple designed iOS to make rendering in a special, real-time priority thread to ensure responsiveness.
Note that the Red Cross is not asking for this to be legally enforced, they're just saying that it would be "appreciated".
This seems complicated, it would be cool to have something like this for non-ruby guys. If I understand correctly, I need to write a ruby parser myself in order to use this. Much easier would be a binary which just takes all files in a directory by default, and creates an html with a default template. If I want to customize it, let me customize it by comment syntax, not ruby code.
I guess pointless gum flapping is OK in a bar over a beer, less in a business meeting
I hadn't heard about SpeakerDeck before. It's certainly a nicer viewing experience than SlideShare.
Wedding Catering in Greenfield Ma
How Secure Is My Password
I was JUST about to post a snide comment saying NO before I clicked on it, when I saw your comment.
I interviewed once at a hedge fund that had a power rack in the corner. All four people I spoke with were ripped. So yeah, exercise at the office can work pretty well.

I have no idea what the water bottle curls described in the article are going accomplish, however.
Their usage of 'habitable' has nothing to do with whether you could get there. It's about distance from the star and the brightness of the star.
ROR Manager
Are you ready to enter the dark world of management? call me at 973 335 7800.

maggie
IIRC the Palm Pilot outsold Newton by a large factor during the same years, so Newton was a failure even relative to the size of the market.
Google's 2010 revenue was more than the GDP of 28 poorest countries combined
Perhaps he was thinking of the convenience of the morgue workers.
Mozilla Says Google Relationship in “Active Negotiations”
“...a lot of the work we have to do today is because of certain choices made years ago... ...having the UI thread handle animations is the biggest problem...An easy solution would of course to create a new UI toolkit but there are many downsides to this also.”

What would such a re-write look like, from a practical coding point-of-view? Couldn't this be done in a way that is transparent to the calling code, or would there have to be a fundamental re-write of the SDK, i.e., the UI thread no longer be the main thread?
Thanks Zed for the criticism. You basically voiced what I was thinking as I quickly skimmed over old material, that a lot of it is overwhelming (especially when even I had trouble remember what was going on), and not in the good kind of way. But I guess I worried too much that things were too dumbed down and overcompensated. I definitely still have to find the proper balance between accessible and thorough.

As I mentioned in various scattered parts on the site, your LPTHY was definitely an inspiration. In fact I think I started writing this shortly after LPTHY came out.
Has Online Piracy Robbed $58 Billion From The Economy?
I found the handwritten section quite illegible.
The interesting thing would be an estimate of the amount of work needed to move the android ui-rendering to its separate real-time thread. Would it even be realistically possible?
The radius is known (2.4x earth), so why wouldn't we have the volume?
Real Model Heads on CG Bodies
8 Handy iOS Flashlight Apps
The latest smartphones are packed with tools that help make your life easier. They have already replaced many everyday objects. Such is the case of this flashlight applications which allow you to use the phones flash as a flashlight.
Would you like to get your ebook autographed?
While I agree "habitable zone" is a bit of a simplification, it really just serves as a starting point for exploration of the galaxy. If we can find thousands of "theoretically habitable" planets, we can pretty much guarantee there are hundreds of thousands of "uniquely habitable planets" like Europa, which we most likely can't detect using our telescopes.

Low hanging fruit first.
Can you explain what you mean by "it doesn't work with a SIM with voice plans"?
Why uFlavor is Taking a Dozen Tech Geeks on a Startup Shuttle Across America
JQuery 1.7.1 Visual Cheat Sheet
Have you ever been hospitalized? How old are you?
"Just type it in this field and we'll tell you!"

JFC
killing virtual people in a virtual world - violence, bad. At the same time each and every of us oppresses, brutalizes, tortures and kills in real-life through our hired-for-money agents - governments at all levels.

"Come on, let us shoot"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

Games are to blame? Or hysterical propaganada dehumanizing arabs, Afgans, etc... and blessing violence against them.
Android Carrier IQ Detector Apps Top 200,000 Downloads
Yay Blotter 2.0 is finally here
Users expect things to work from what they see
Are you sure? I think business presentations are 99% getting your name out there and 1% teaching people valuable information. I've been to them and I'm not sure how anyone could pay attention to the content because it's very very slow-moving and boring. But now I know the presenter. Hence, it's obvious that this is a social ritual rather than something that makes objective good use of everyone's time. (The audience members attend so that other audience members will remember them too.)

(We recently had some company-wide meeting that was a few hours long. I realized that I could have read an essay version of the "presentation" in five minutes. 1 hour and 55 minutes times 300,000 employees makes presentations a pretty fucking dumb way of sharing information, if the only purpose is in fact to share information.)
This isn't a "follow-up", per se.

Nonetheless, while Android continually works to smooth out the rough edges -- helped along by the march of technology -- this is something that is a bit overblown: Minor jutters of the interface is something that primarily irritates people as a relative thing, not as an absolute thing.

If you are a developer or a reviewer and you regularly use an iOS device and an Android device, the difference is evident and jarring. If you're an end-use it quickly disappears and is a non-issue. It just isn't a real problem for end users.

It's the same as getting an upgrade to your PC, a new video card, etc. You were perfectly happy before, but relative to your new reality the old one seems subpar, and you overestimate how much it interferes with your enjoyment of the device.
With smartphones becoming increasingly prevalent, there's no reason a software OPT on your phone couldn't be used by many people.

Those without smartphones could fall back to fobs or more "traditional" forms of auth.

Question: what is a good/trusted one-time key generator for Android and/or iPhone?