skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For sake of argument, I just tried to download 6.24-1build0.10.10.1 of sun-java6 for Natty from that website, and the site simply told me it, and all files related to it, were "(deleted)". (Which is so silly and obvious, I have to ask: was this a real suggestion, or are you just trolling me to waste my time checking? ;P)

Honestly: I have never known Ubuntu to keep an old package around. There was a new update released today, 6.26-2natty1, and the now hours old version 6.26-1natty1 is already marked: "removal requested in 16 hours". Do you have a more serious suggestion for how the old packages could be obtained?
I'd take issue with your definition of "easy". Even if we had self-driving cars today, it would still be a matter of a phone call to get major traffic arteries closed, whereas there's no guarantee that any group of individuals could work out a way to turn off the cars. You're comparing a known, implemented process with a hypothetical possibility. Similarly, terrorists _could_ conceivably hack their way into a traffic control system, but it's a lot more likely they'd simply try to take over a plane with brute force.

This is similar to "tin hat" theories: they favor the dramatic and insidious, but unlikely, fear over the much more imminent and mundane problem.

I'm more than willing to give up the right to absolute control over my vehicle in return for better safety and faster commutes. The lives saved in both time and accidents would far outweigh the remote possibility that it would be used as an instrument of oppression. Maybe folks can control their own vehicle when off of major arteries, but be required to give up control on heavily shared routes (the same as they have to when taking public transportation.)
XMPP is still bloated and the specs still suck, so not much has changed.
You make it sound as if they're just there to help make the world a better place. Lobbyists are there to ensure the interests of the organizations they represent are addressed. They do this using their financial influence, and by "providing technical expertise" in the form of drafting the very policy they expect the politicians to support ... easing the burden of said politician actually doing the work they were elected to do in learning what it is they're foisting upon their constituents in the form of laws. If you think even half of the politicians voting for SOPA have a clue how DNS works and aren't just parroting the message from someone that's given them money, I think you're deluding yourself.
PHP: Personal favorite I used to quiz my students on:

$a = "5 Monkeys";

$b = "2 Bananas";

var_dump($a);

string(9) "5 Monkeys"

var_dump($a + $b);

int(7)
Pushing updates is on par for chrome and firefox as well. What specific ways is IE's usability "spiralling down"? I quite like the improvements made from 6 up to 9.
I second dekz's encouragement. I went from windows/eclipse to windows/eclipse + cygwin to linux/eclipse to linux/vim(et. al).

It's worth it. It really is. At some point you will marvel that you ever thought it was a good idea to navigate filesystems with the mouse, or edit text in a non-modal editor.
Sounds like they could use a good designer co-founder...
I think it's the wrong approach. How about:

"Dear Congresscritters, we made the internet. It is now everywhere. If you pit the full force of the law against it -- the law will lose. Do not make yourselves irrelevant."
generally not users fault, so our bad in type still
> "Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure."

Apparently, this one is usually attributed to Robert LeFevre. Do you have any sources attributing it to L. Neil Smith?
I worked at a University where it would take a week to get production logs. If I couldn't find the source of the bug, I'd have to deploy a new version with a few more debugging statements, and wait another week to see the debugging in the next production logs. I eventually learned to put a hell of a lot of debugging statements in my code. I think about every other line was a debugging output statement.
Just send a Tweet to @cheerlights with a color in it and all of the connected lights in the world will change to that color. Also, the apps for iPhone, Android, Chrome, and Twilio will also display, read, or announce that color too.
It would be a shame if you didn't buy the Nexus if you like 4". It would be a huge mistake. The Nexus is barely larger than the Fascinate because of the lack of hardware buttons.

Seriously, give it a shot. I was shocked that it was not much larger than it really wound up being.
'"If it's the Sinaloa cartel, they have unlimited resources," Durst [assistant special agent in charge of ICE's San Diego office] said.'

That sums it up. The wrong-on-every-level US drug policy has resulted in the people the government opposes having 'unlimited resources'.
Pet peeve number 1 for me.

There is no plural.
'Mum gave me a LEGO set'
'I want to go and play with my LEGO'
'I have a big tub full of LEGO pieces'

This was the official statement by the company:
"LEGO® is a brand name that is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely appreciate your help in keeping it special by referring to our bricks as "LEGO Bricks or Toys" and not just "LEGOS". By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand that stands for quality the world over."
CheerLights is a network of lights connected to Twitter! All of the lights and apps that are subscribed stay in sync with each other. We are all connected!
I've enjoyed your comments in the past and am (surprisingly) enjoying the heck out of this particular argument between you and Antonio Salazar Cardozo.

But.

I think you have to question whether you're on sure footing when your argument requires you to relitigate Marbury vs. Madison.

Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.

If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power, in its own nature illimitable.

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.

If an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void, does it, notwithstanding its invalidity, bind the courts, and oblige them to give it effect? Or, in other words, though it be not law, does it constitute a rule as operative as if it was a law? This would be to overthrow in fact what was established in theory; and would seem, at first view, an absurdity too gross to be insisted on. It shall, however, receive a more attentive consideration.

IT IS EMPHATICALLY THE PROVINCE AND DUTY OF THE JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT TO SAY WHAT THE LAW IS. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.

--- 8< ---

You can't look at the Constitution and declare that, for instance, Congress has no power to "regulate", as that isn't one of its enumerated powers. The authority to do that is vested with the Supreme Court. The track record of your underlying argument --- that Congress should keep its hands off X or Y or Z, because it has no enumerated power to tamper with it --- is not encouraging.
I think that top developers may be like explorers - once the frontier is settled, its time to explore further afield. It's not that the settlers aren't nice, it's just not exploring.
"It's not right. It's not even wrong." - Wolfgang Pauli[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
Why Facebook Uses MySQL for Timeline
New ZangZing Will Never Keep Your Photos Hostage
Reading through some of the comments and have come to the conclusion that A LOT of people have no sense of humor. I read this post and chuckled a few times with the understanding that this was not how you actually composed your emails. I cannot believe that someone read this seriously thinking it was similar to what was submitted to companies. Let's hope that the "pretentious arse" learns to take a joke on the future. Thank you for sharing your experiment in a humorous way.
It depends on which part of the server you're speaking about. Python and Ruby are fantastic for shell scripting, but I've always found myself gravitating towards PHP for web application development -- but that's only a personal preference. I haven't done any client work with Node.js but I know I'd feel just as comfortable building a full web app in JavaScript.

At the same time, I've tried to use PHP and JavaScript for shell scripts and I just can't get it to sit right with me. PHP is just awkward (again, my preference) and Node's shell interaction is asynchronous which doesn't work well when trying to do things like build scripts.
I've used OpenJDK to build Gingerbread, and it seemed to work OK, but it wasn't extensively tested. Recently, I'd installed Sun's Java because I wanted minimal hiccups with building ICS. I guess we'll either have to install it manually, or give OpenJDK another try. Ugh. I try so hard these days not to install software manually.
Here's the demo: http://demo.owncloud.org/index.php

Very interesting. Their community page says encryption is in the works, so this might just end up being a great product.

Yet again, it might fail miserably. We'll just have to wait and see.
And Prohibition (aka the War on Drugs).
Electronic Discovery Needs Innovation
Your assumption is that VCs fund YC startups purely because they are YC startups?
Huh? I would expect insurance discounts for every mile you drive under automation.
How to remove Carrier IQ from Android, Blackberry, and iPhone
Why the downvotes? If we can have a lower limit then why not upper limit. They may have an advisory status but voting rights should not be given to "old" people.
Do big companies really fail to keep talent? Yes, talented people leave. And in particular, attention-seeking, talented people leave. But I've also met lots of very talented engineers within large companies that have been there 5-10 years or more. And I've been at startups where the talent was running out the door like the place was on fire.

The article fails to support the theory that big companies are any worse at retaining top talent than companies in general. Not surprisingly, people who are highly talented tend to be in more demand, they tend to get more offers, and they tend to have more mobility between jobs. When they want to move (for whatever reason - personal, boredom, etc) - they can.

There are a number of good tech companies that recognize this and make sure that if a valued employee is leaving, they leave on good terms and it's made clear they can come back later if they want to. That makes a lot more sense than trying to figure out how to prevent talented people from ever leaving.
If you're writing BackboneJS apps, you need to buy this book. There's so much great information in there. It's the book I wanted to write, but they beat me too it. :)
If you're in California you'll pay tax on the whole $650 unfortunately.
I'd always believed that Slackware was the first Linux distribution - this claims that "MCC Interim" was actually first?
Nightingale Media Player Preview Released (Songbird based audio player)
I'm looking forward to running the Windows 64-bit version on my new 4-processor 8GB Dell E6420 :)

Mik
"Anyone who makes a decision about how the product should be is a designer. Designer is a role, not a person. Almost every developer on a team makes some decision about how the product will be, just through the act of creating the product. These decisions are design decisions, and when you make them, you're a designer. For this reason, no matter what role on a development team, an understanding of the principles of design will make you better at what you do."...While I agree with Jesse Schell, what we are highlighting, the potential for designer founders, is not mutually exclusive with your concern...there are many ways to get design done eg Jared Spool lays out some types (I am by no means advocating for one size fits all), but I am saying that having a strong design leader may help your team (the best ones don't have to control every little detail, they empower others), it's like having an editor eg http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/technology/what-apple-has-.... my major issue with design thinking and make everyone a "designer" so easily is you lose a bar of quality, craft, and professionalism that you want everyone to aspire to be...just like you'd want your CTO to inspire other developers to work with him/her, you want a designer founder to do the same...great talent attracts other great talent... It makes sense that a prerequisite for a tech company is to have a founder with technical skills. The same heuristic should hold true if you want to consistently ship well designed products like Pinterest, AirBnB and Path. Why not have a co-founder with design skills who champions the user experience?
I'm a couple of chapters in and I'm already really glad I bought it. After watching quite a few different Backbone.js screencasts I've been after something on "paper" to really piece it all together.
Wow, you have strong feelings about Lego, don't you?
Martial arts and the mind
What All Can You Get With Eve Online
I know this thread is dead by now, but I just have to ask whether this is some kind of brogrammer troll, or is the author seriously that uninformed about the editing landscape?
Official? You mean you WANT a carrier to sell you a phone?

The GSM model overseas is Google-official, it's just not here now and who knows when it will be. I got mine from Expansys, it came with English everything as well as a US plug.
OK, we got our signals crossed there.
>> Slackware can be difficult to set up and use without a modern package manager like APT

slapt-get
Japan set to declare stricken nuclear plant in cold shutdown
Announcing Rackspace Cloud Monitoring Private Beta
Actually, the tagline is rather meaningless (I'm not offending anyone),

"Did you know about billions worth of value created by tech startups with XYZ co-founders?"

Replace XYZ with you choice and here you go.
Then they'll get viruses and have to reformat, or call Microsoft support and find out that it's pirated (if they didn't already know) and eventually end up upgrading. If nothing else, the fact that hardware vendors no longer make Windows XP drivers is about to kill off IE 6 once and for all anyway.
We were also pretty intentional about not really using the word 'success' too
For a plate you will remove a few times in the life of the phone, it's a strange reason for killing the deal.

I agree, it is very cheap feeling, but it also feels thin and snug because it is a useless piece of shell.

You know, ideally, it'd be paper thin, but just as effective as holding in the battery/sim.
I noticed Vint Cerf specified "signing as private citizen". Does anyone know why Google tied his hands?
Open Source E-Readers
They claim it was NOT bought for resale.
Don't let anyone tell you that NYC is a bad place to work. You will have a much shorter commute, much more to explore in your city, and have a diversity of people around you here that aren't all in web companies. If you are dedicated and put effort into it, you can find a cheap place to live as well. The Google office here is also the real deal: plenty of big projects based in NY :)
I would probably recommend going with PHP as it is one of the easiest server-side languages to learn. As others pointed out, JavaScript is omnipresent and picking it up after you got some basics down with PHP is fairly easy.

To get a hold of Java requires more time (it's forcing you to think in objects rather than just going ahead in scripting) and you will probably see less results as with Python, Perl or PHP.

If you have someone to help you out (to answer questions and set up some development environment etc.) in any of the languages above, I recommend going with that. It will have a huge impact on your progress and motivation.
I don't think it is a question of needing more girl scientists and geeks. If there is a question, I think it is merely one of removing institutional barriers to those who want to take this path.
My advice, make your offer, these guys are pros. They don't need to sell anything for the rest of their lives. They've got one of the nicest portfolios in the business. If they negotiate, see if you can reach something agreeable, if not, move on. Don't waste your time.
There are also things like JAWS screen readers and other add-ons that educational institutions MUST use to comply with ADA regulations which, surprise, generally depend on specific versions of IE to function (though personally the ones we use at my work are at least compatible with IE 8).

There's not really a very good alternative to this-- Firefox has a history of breaking it's extension model with every major version, and Chrome is still in relative infancy (though I personally use it every day), so I think it's understandable that "enterprise" software companies haven't rushed to ditch IE for them.
Why you really shouldn't use MP3 in your HTML5 and Flash games
Google Insights: HN vs. Reddit vs. Digg
Re: I dont think the value of start-ups with a design co-founder gives us much more value than saying, designers are very beneficial for a product-oriented startup.

That's the simple point, you got it, we're saying yes they can be very beneficial for a product-oriented startup just like more engineering and business focused people are (you'd be surprised by how many people don't act like that)...then exploring stories about the value these people deliver... there's no conclusions, we put '?s'
> At Google every commit is read and reviewed before it lands
> in source control.

Something Mozilla has been doing for 12 years.

> And they have an entire team dedicated to building the
> testing infrastructure

As does every browser developer.

> so they can do things like testing Flash against every
> possible input

http://www.squarefree.com/2010/07/14/fuzzing-talk-at-the-moz...

Jesse and company have been writing lots of other fuzzers that aren't public yet as well...

Seriously, what you described above (pre-checkin code review and fuzz-testing) are all standard industry practices for web browsers and have been for years.
I'm sure you're joking, but unfortunately, not only is that approach wrong, the statement is wrong also. If anyone will lose, it's probably not going to be the law.
I love that they are getting bigger. I had a big issue with the Galaxy Note vs Galaxy Nexus. The Note's 5"+ screen sold me, but the button configuration was last generation (android 2.x), and no ICS, and not the pure Google experience.

HP, ignoring the disaster that they are, really were headed down the right path. A tiny phone, a large phone, and a tablet. Over the years, you could totally see that large phone getting larger and the tiny phone getting even smaller. Great for both me and you. Too bad they went and screwed everything up.
I am trying to work on solving that 'I don't know what I want' / 'I don't know what to get them' by building a gift site that works on describing the giftee.

It launched last week: http://www.GiftLizard.com
Does anyone have any insight into how Galois made the mental leap to his solution? Everything I've read says (or implies) that his solution came completely out of left-field--i.e. it wasn't really related to anything that had come before him.

And along those lines, does anyone know of an English translation of Galois' paper?
In the spirit of constructive criticism: I can't see the difference with going to the Meetup home page. Actually, for the meetups, you are worse, because you have less information. I can imagine that you include events that are not on meetup, but it's not enough for me.
Blue Orchid Exotic Wear
I wish I could wave a big flag and yell "don't follow us! we're as lost as you are". To top it all off, we've not exactly been doing an exemplary job of finding our own way of late.
Holy crap I've been working on the exact same thing but for a different platform. This is incredible. We should talk!
He doesn't get my ad money, I stopped clicking any link to daringfireball a long time ago....
Aussie here - while we do have our various lobby groups, they certainly do not seem to be as rampant as in the US system. Because the rules around donations are stricter, issues seem to get fought out in the public sphere a bit more. So for example when a proposed mining tax looked like it might cut corporate profits the mining companies funded massive advertisement campaigns on TV, saying how it would cost jobs.

Our system is much more like the British system, where for technical expertise ministers rely on the public servants of the department they manage. Many of the public servants have university degrees relevant to the areas they work in, and years of relevant experience.

While the system isn't without its problems (see the British comedy 'yes minister' for a more detailed explanation :-) at least ministers have somebody 'non partisan' providing them with expertise and recommendations.
Since I currently have a co-founder with design skills who champions user experience, I'm for that.

I'm also all for inspiring leaders. But in the startup context, I think the job of "designer" is as dangerous as its technical equivalent "architect". As Schell points out, design is a pervasive concern, just like software architecture is. A CTO who fancies himself chief architect is likely to drive off good talent, because talented people want to solve whole problems, not mechanically execute somebody else's vision.

I think the same applies for the visible sorts of design just as much as it does for the under-the-hood design: if everybody cares (which requires feeling empowered to make things happen) you'll get a better product.
If you make a significant % of the population into criminals, the population's respect for the law suffers and subsequent legislation is more likely to be ignored or bypassed by the population.

(I wonder how many legislators learn at least a little bit of game theory)
This sounds great and increased participation of technically-trained people is sorely needed. There've been some stirrings toward this over here across the (other) pond:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/science/09emily.html?pagew...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientists_and_Engineers_for_Am...
http://www.physicstoday.org/daily_edition/science_and_the_me...

it is worth remembering that inside-track "experts" come with their own set of tradeoffs, especially when they have unchallenged influence - think Mcnamara and Kissinger, Rice and Wolfowitz, and Summers and gang.
Ha! Good luck with that. If I tried that, I'd probably get a divorce for Christmas :)
A YEAR IN PROTESTS - FOREING POLICY
Make things as vague as possible while still patentable, and no clearer.
When looking at their daily uniques, reddit's upward trend is not that significant:

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=reddit.com%2C+digg.com%2...

What I find more funny are the trends on Compete:

Reddit: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com/

Digg: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digg.com/

HN: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/news.ycombinator.com/
That means they were deleted from the repository, but they are still archived in launchpad. The reason you don't see the files for 6.24-1build0.10.10.1 is because they were copied over from maverick. If you want the 6.24-1build0.10.10.1 files, you can get them here (click on the architecture you want to download under "Builds" on the top right):

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+source/sun-java6/6.24...

No, I was not trolling you to waste your time.

All old packages are archived in launchpad, even after they get removed from the archive.