skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> What about testing over dial-up or slow DSL?

Assuming I'm in a location with reasonable signal, I tether my netbook to my mobile phone and use that to simulate the unholy trinity of relatively slow CPU, small screen, and slow high-latency connection.

The data rate I see varies wildly, but on average is somewhere close to first generation ADSL links over here (512kbit/sec) - I've seen 3mbit/sec on HSDPA but only on speedtest apps and even then only in ideal conditions (strong signal, silly hour of the morning so relatively little contention for the cell's resources, ...). If I want to test worst conditions than that I tell the phone to force itself to use GPRS/EDGE only (there doesn't seem to be a GPRS and GPRS only option other than breaking out the old spare phone that doesn't support EDGE).

Of course I can use the phone directly if I want to test against a much smaller screen and an even slower CPU.
What did they use to make the presentation?
I think the point is not so much that he was prescient, rather that he drew attention to these issues early on, well before they began to threaten the free exchange of information and ideas.

One could say RMS is simply pointing out the obvious, the already demonstrated. Especially technical people like you and I. But remember, RMS has been ridiculed for these positions, by folks much like the author of this article who admits to dismissing RMS as a paranoid fanatic.

The salient message in this story is that the author's opinion has changed. The world has progressed further along this path and it is now quite obvious that the scenario RMS depicts is not only possible, but in some degree has already taken place.
You Try Cutting The Defense Budget
Sounds like you could benefit from some (carefully thought out) blog posts/knowledgebase docs on how to build a successful website.
I've begun learning Clojure recently and chose https://github.com/functional-koans/clojure-koans as a starting point.

I think it's a good way to get acquainted with the general use and syntax.

Right now I'm implementing resolutions for problems from Project Euler (http://projecteuler.net/) as a more hand-on practice.

>> All Advanced Hackery is OK, but teach me the basic stuff first. I need to learn the if/else, for/do/while , functions, IO, regular expressions, Battery usage, socket etc kind of stuff.

Keep in mind that Clojure/Lisp comes from a functional paradigm and so you won't find a lot of constructs that you might think are the starting points in imperative languages.

So if you come from an imperative language, like me, learning Clojure is not just learning Clojure, but a bigger dive in a different programming paradigm too.
As an Emacs and Dvorak user I disagree. Yes people don't understand my choice, but so what?

As for incompatibility, switching keyboards is literally just ctrl+shift.

And no, it is not about speed but about handcomfort -- I move my hands much less and have less awkward resting positions.
So your suggestion is to disregard all data without perfect controls? In that case, we have no evidence whatsoever that any nation outperforms any other nation.

The fact that they don't do standardized tests doesn't mean it's impossible to know whether they're doing better.

How can one possibly know this, even in principle?

If you are being intellectually honest, your answer should agree with your principle of ignoring all data unless perfect controls are used.
Pitch HN: Marketplace for Small Github Projects / Code
Inspired by GitHacking, which won 1st place at Philly's Startup weekend, I was interested in making a marketplace that sat on top of GitHub that allowed developers to request code, plugins, libraries, etc from other fellow developers (for a price or for free). Kind of like Elancer, but developer-to-developer, with focus on smaller projects (a few hours) that the original developer simply didn't have time to code him/herself.
2012: The Year of PHP Cloud Hosting
There's no problem using Dvorak with Emacs - in fact, it spreads out a lot of keyboard shortcuts that are otherwise scrunched down it the bottom-left corner. (I can use vim fine with Dvorak, too, but I mostly use Emacs - I'll leave it at that.)

And: it's not about typing speed, it's about typing comfort.
Transposing a matrix in O(1) with Io
Development Driven Dependencies
Add new features to our old and beloved Twitter for Mac
Yeah, I don't see that being a massive problem. I've just started to develop a RESTful interface for MongoDB, which, if done correctly, could utilise the same code for an Apache module and an Nginx module... Let's see how it goes.
"There is no equivalent in any other language."

I don't know, LWP is pretty easy to use.
No kidding. From the responses I'm definitely going to have to tone down my british sarcasm in the future.
Different class of thing altogether, but a BASIC compiler targeting the ZX Spectrum implemented with Python/PLY:

http://www.boriel.com/software/the-zx-basic-compiler/?lang=e...
That's the spirit of those "penis enlargement" ads.

To be pedantic, there are hardcore limits on stuff, that we can not improve upon. We cannot sort a list of n items in less than O(n) for example.
If backticks are good enough for them, then they don't need the more complex usecases that Popen allows, so just tell them to use check_call or check_output. As far as they should be concerned, the subprocess module has two functions that are straightforward to use.

And those functions are more convenient than the default behavior of backticks, because they handle for you raising an exception if the subprocess fails.

Python:

import subprocess
output = subprocess.check_output('command')

Perl:

$output = `command`
die "failed: $output" if $?
I haven't said there's anything wrong with BSD. Where did I say that? As you said, it serves a different purpose.
What is it that makes people assuming exercise -> running? It has all the unpleasant effects of exercise + it destroys your knees and you still don't have a sixpack.
>Learning

Learning is of course awesome. It's the entire point of life. We are all here to learn.

But, excessively doing things solely for the sake of "learning" is actually doing a disservice to yourself. You should do things with tangible applications to real people besides yourself, too.

There are a lot of preliminary or experimental avenues to explore, but once you find a handful with promise, my advice would be to try to follow those more deeply and apply the principles you learned to something with direct applicability.

What you'll find is that by turning an experiment into a product, you've actually learned a lot more than you ever thought that little idea could yield up. You'll gain not only depth but also breadth as you explore the implications of that product in various fields, gauge peers' reactions to the product and marketing, and attempt to develop your idea into a repeatable, profitable boon.

Tinkering is really important for a lot of reasons, but endless, exclusive tinkering results in a very superficial knowledgebase. I recommend that everyone follow several of their promises tinkers down the rabbit hole and see what comes out of it. I recognize that this takes effort and commitment, but I think you'll often be surprised at the results.
I am constantly tweaking at label sizes, and which labels to show at various zoom levels, and am not quite satisfied. You've pointed out an issue that is on my todo list. Problem is, it's easy to get sucked into a full day of TileMill styling, and I have to get some other stuff done over the next month ;)
I really like the suggestions. So, January is analog. Time to buy myself an XBox Kinect and try and high score Virtual Dance Off High School 8.

3. Embrace the uncomfortable.
How about quit Facebook...
New iOS Design Pattern: Slide-out Navigation
If it had a reason it wouldn't be a hobby.
Thanks for the praise, nothing inappropriate about it ;)

Our name is a huge misnomer, it's more like Ride With or Without GPS....Problem is you can't really rebrand a 3 year old company with good traffic.
Brutal Charts of Mexico's Homicide Rate
Please don't feed the troll. ;)
Don’t make your customers think when they are trying to contact you
Fun hack, but my cat would methodically disassemble that little robot piece by piece. The little mongrel chews through ethernet cords and has zero tolerance for anything that moves and is smaller than a human. Evidence the flying leap from the couch that took out my U-Control gyro-copter.
Social Network For IT Professionals Toolbox.com Acquired By Ziff Davis
BERG Cloud
Sure, but the (real or imaginary) savings of this is not about your hit, is about the hit from the server point of view.
Map data is a complete OSM planet import - 20gb compressed file, expanded/indexed into a 225gb database. OSM has lots of good data but most custom styled maps leave out a good amount of it, or, in the case of the OSM style maps, they include way too much.

Importing and indexing planet.osm takes a while. It's better than importing the whole planet file in gazetteer mode for geocoding though. I have been fighting that import for a month now, on decent hardware!
Very slick indeed! Do you know anything like this but more "customizable" (e.g. build to order)? Essentially I want something like Pi but with more RAM and HDD.
Do We Really Need a New Web Design App?
Couldn't agree more. In a garbage collected language, object retention graphs and call stacks are everything when it comes to object lifetime. The garbage collector looks at them to figure out when it's time to clean up an object, so you need to be looking at them if you want to figure out why the GC isn't cleaning up that object.

If those features aren't being used then there's a good chance that the problem is in the chair, not in the profiler.
PayPal: Mobile payments and location-based offers go hand-in-hand
OK, it seems like an interesting concept, but I'm totally lost. Maybe my thoughts will be helpful.

Is it an iPhone-only thing? (It looks like an iPhone thing, but there's no app store link.) Is it a service which uses iPhone text messaging for its user interface? A smart phone thing, or a cell phone thing? I've clicked around every page here (short of actually registering) and I can't tell if I'm even technically able to use this.

Is it just for people I work with, or for people I know, or will it be hooking me up with strangers? Will it always be the same group?

The "How it works" page is pretty sparse: it looks like just a feature list, not an explanation. I was expecting something that takes me from "step 1, I'm sitting at home in front of my computer looking at damnsimplecarpooling.com" to "step 10, somebody is dropping me off at work". (All I'm getting from the screenshots is that I have to buy an iPhone and type "y-e-s" a lot.)

I guess I could probably figure some of this out if I actually register, but I'm not giving away my phone number to an unknown service just to find out what it does.

Promoting something as "damn simple" works great if it's something that's generally known to be complex, but carpooling is already pretty simple. I can just send email to everybody I work with (or post a message on Facebook) that says "Who wants to carpool from X to Y every morning at 7:20?". You should paint a picture for the potential user: how's this going to help me?
Internap buys Voxel to beef up dedicated hosting and public cloud mojo
O(n) only applies to non-comparison based sorts; for comparison based sorts that might be used on "items" the lower bound is indeed O(n.log n)
>I learned Dvorak to help with RSI.

That makes sense.

>What fascinated me about learning Dvorak was that I felt like a stroke patient.

That's a perfect explanation of the learning process. I just don't think people should be playing the stroke patient with their livelihoods.
Agree. I'm very active but don't do any cycling/running/gym work. I participate in sports for the enjoyment and adrenaline of the sport itself. Way more addictive - no need for training schedules and the like. I just HAVE to get to the beach when the wind is right.

Still, that's not taking away from running, many people really enjoy it and there is no denying it a cheap way to get fit.
In other news, more training leads to better athletes.
Here's my start to that :) better-restaurant-websites.com
To Entrepreneurs: We’re in for a “shitty 2012″ – Sincerely, Michael Lazerow
That makes no sense to me. Is there some obligation that all hobbies be useless? One of my hobbies is contributing to open-source software. That's useful, right?
Researchers Identify Notorious Botnet Operator Codenamed "Google"
Really disappointed in TNW's title selection. Apple tells employees not to confront thiefs if they show up with stolen goods, and TNW's response is to call this questionable? Really? The original owner gets their device back, and Apple takes the hit for the stolen device. How is this "questionable"?
Switch to Google Safe Browsing v2 (API)
Android doesn't put manufacturers in control. Manufacturers are inherently in control regardless of the OS. It's not like the iPhone/iPad takes control away from manufacturers because Apple is the only manufacturer, and they definitely have full control over iOS.
Thanks for posting this! I found it some time ago and found it useful and enjoyable.
Digital-retouching
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/11/21/1110747108.full.pdf+html
Washington Post App Tracks "Social Media Success" in Presidential Primaries
Also see Google Safe Browsing v2 Lookup libraries for Perl, Python and Ruby - http://research.zscaler.com/2011/12/google-safe-browsing-v2-...
>Fact: Android puts manufacturers in control

And in the case of phones, the carriers are also in control. Unlike the iPhone and Windows Phones, carriers can and do load up Android phones with un-uninstallable and battery-sucking junkware.
How to teach yourself to code in one month
And that's what rubs me the wrong way about the state of the world with mobile devices.

I like fiddling with my hardware and trying different OSs on it. I like being able to upgrade my OS as I see fit, and it's a shame that I can only do that on a very small selection of hardware.

Asus is treading into interesting waters here. What if the Transformer Prime was a laptop that shipped with Windows 8?
1.8 is also fixed.
The $200 Luxury USB Cable
We still haven't explained pink
I had the same problem too. I had no idea it was supposed to be a slide show, then once I gave my browser as much screen real estate as the site wanted I had to figure out how to navigate the damn thing.

Whats so wrong with just sticking a bunch of static slides on a page one after another?
Am I wrong or does it mean that TileMill, while impressive, lacks an essential feature ?
I'm one of the first engineers to join Zaarly, I've been with the company since pre-launch (late April). I can tell you from analyzing the traffic statistics myself that these traffic bumps are extremely short-term. Tweets from celebrities give you a spike for a few minutes, but that's about it. That's useful for sure, but it won't get you to 100k users by a longshot.

Still, if you're looking for a lesson to gleam from the whole celebrity thing, it's that networking is important in business (shocker). Networking and connecting with people -- especially those who are well connected -- who are excited about your business can be beneficial, but only if you do the other things right (building the product, attracting users, etc).

But seriously, you're completely missing the point if what you got out of this was "find some celebs to rep your brand".
For anyone who takes him up on his Datalog suggestion, this (http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ramsdell/tools/datalog/datalog.h...) is a pretty good standalone implementation. Free (LGPL), in a mix of C and Lua.

For Prolog, try GProlog (http://www.gprolog.org/) - it has good constraint programming support.
Uh.... All I see is some web 2.0 layout, some cryptic mumbo jumbo about something called uberjs, and a plea for $10 or I can sit in line and wait for something I'm not even fully sure what it is.

Perhaps you should make me love your product, before trying to get me to give you my hard earned money.
Very true. I spent quite a while trying to learn subprocess, then gave up and just use os.popen() now. It's a shame -- there are certain subprocess features I really would like to have, but it's too hard to remember how to use it.
Google Easter Eggs & Tricks
If Social Media Controlled the News in 2011 [Infographic]
Techmeme's biggest stories of 2011, literally, as measured by height
White Xperia
Seems great. So you're suggesting you will keep a library of all the major libraries, and load them async for the user? How do you handle dependencies, such as jquery, and jquery plugins?
"How can one possibly know this, even in principle?"

Are you seriously suggesting that standardized tests are the only way to measure school or student performance? What about non-standardized tests showing improvement within the same region or district? What about measuring achievement differences after leaving school? There are plenty of other options besides standardized tests.

In addition to cherry-picking and strawman, you've just added the the excluded middle to your list of fallacies. There are more than two options here, not just standardized tests or mere guesswork. Just because something can't be measured by one yardstick, even if it's the most accurate one (which itself is debatable in this case), doesn't mean other yardsticks won't suffice. Do you really want to turn this into a discussion about intellectual honesty? I'd relish the opportunity to cast your disreputable claims and tactics even further into oblivion.
Any halfway decent memory profiler analyzes memory dumps and shows back references.

A quick look at their websites confirms that all three of the profilers mentioned in the article do.
The Thiel Fellowship: Re-imagining higher ed or re-imagining venture capital?
Check the OLPC project's power listserv. They have been hacking on your problem for years.

http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/Power
Don't fret about it - this is perfectly in line with the browser being considered an OS by the same people [1]

In their vocabulary OS == "platform" and while these notions are sometimes interchangeable, in regards to market-share that's really comparing apples to oranges.

Three reasons for that - (1) Java ME could start being distributed on Android phones (God, I hope not) + (2) Java ME is not a standard you can rely on and Nokia/Symbian and Samsung/Bada could always ditch Java ME, effectively killing it + (3) Java ME is as potent as Java's browser plugin is - good distribution numbers, poor apps, unsatisfied customers and in general a plague.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...
Apple vs. Samsung the trolls win
Iceland rewrote their constitution online and prosecuted bankers after 2008
Is online dating a failure?
Siri in Portuguese on the iPhone 4S
Speaking of boots: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." George Orwell

These devices are, today, de facto extensions of our senses and tongue. If the user, can not exercise effective control over such devices that is required to view, create, and disseminate mediated information, then the user is potentially subject to external control.
Your point is negated by Windows Phone 7. Manufacturers and carriers do not have much control over it. All they get is a bigger tile for one program and all preloaded stuff is easily uninstallable with a long press. No always-running battery sucking services in the background are allowed by Microsoft and the phone has to pass strict battery and hardware tests performed by Microsoft before it can be released.

So it is indeed accurate to state that Android puts manufacturers in control.
It's great that you got one that isn't locked, but worth mentioning for others thats Samsung is indeed locking the bootloader on some (many?) of the wifi-only 10.1 devices.

(As far as I know, all of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 7 Plus devices are sold unlocked, for now.)
no its not a total failure . . . /
Murdoch’s Wife’s Twitter Account, Wendi_Deng, Was Fake
The goal, I believe, is to prevent recovery of the plaintext password so that it can't be used to gain access to other accounts with the same password. The double hash prevents an attacker from ever obtaining that plaintext password.
As much as solar can be expensive (Possibly even more so considering you would need it shipped in) looking into some of the other possibilities isn't a bad idea. Solar I would think could end up more reliable, and be able to generate enough, I've seen some 60W panels for sale for around $100-200 USD at various times. 60 Watts should be fine to charge up most laptops. I think some more information about what kind of laptop you have could tell us what kind of power generation you need.

Edit:
It looks like some amount of it might be cheaper if you're doing it yourself [1]. I'm not sure where to find a good reputable place for finding kits like this though.

[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Solar-Cells-DIY-Panel-Kit-w--Junctio...
I actually have more respect for people who pirate to get things for free than people who pirate and claim that they're only doing it because X condition isn't met. X could be that it's not in the format you want, that it's not at the price point you want, or any number of other things. The publishers business model is their business model, good or bad. Own up to your decision to pirate.
You can actually do this with TileMill as well, but a common option is GSV - http://mike.teczno.com/giant/pan/ or panojs: http://code.google.com/p/panojs/
Think you misunderstood GP's point: With enough access you can simply wait for the users to log in and steal their password when they do.
I just like to go places on a bicycle. Not Lance rides, just use it to get stuff done; it's very good for people with knee problems because it strengthens your knee ligaments, as far as I know. And it's been a good way to stay in shape!
Kindle Fire may have cost Apple $1 billion or more in holiday iPad sales
I would probably explain what on Earth my product is before I go about asking developers for $10 to get early access to it...
Excellent synthesis Andrew, thanks for summarizing this. From my perspective, you really nailed it with the third and fourth points -- fans, communities and evangelists. It was truly amazing to see how excited people got about Zaarly and how it's morphed into a really unique and active user base.
3 Reasons Pinterest Is Going To Be Big in 2012
Introducing the SourceForge Open Source Mirror Directory
Yes. It's way too common and sickening.

I first reported a similar issue to Rackspace Cloud 2/2/2010:

http://feedback.rackspacecloud.com/forums/71021-product-feed...

They still email new vps ROOT passwords with IP addresses. (At least they said they would fix it about 2 months ago.)

Perhaps there's not enough people that are bothered by this? There is this site: http://plaintextoffenders.com/