skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Again, tempest in a teapot. Apparent bad behavior is uncovered, immediate denial is issued. Followup investigation reveals that a third party contractor acted out of line, has admitted guilt, and remedial action taken.

A minor scandal by all measures. Embarrassing maybe, and probably worth a good look over how Google chooses its third party contractors, nothing more.

> "by the company which over the past year has tossed hundreds of sites into oblivion from its search engines, because they had content that was deemed too "thin""

This would be scandalous if Google actually did participate in a blog-payola situation, which they didn't.

> "done by the company with the biggest video ad network in the world, which advises others on how to do video advertising"

Have you worked in a big company before? The fact that you expect the Chrome team to be "advising others on how to do video advertising" is pretty far out. Breaking: corporate communications in giant companies is substantially less than perfect. Film at 11.

> "Simple. It's not a small issue."

The only way this could be construed as a major issue is if Google's lying about the rogue contractor and did in fact knowingly engage the bloggers. Do you have evidence of this?

I honestly cannot see how this is nefarious. Google screwed up and picked a crappy contractor for this work. Everyone goes home with egg on their faces. To generalize and extrapolate this to see malice really demands some substantiating evidence that Google did this on purpose.
You should probably have a look for a way to disable overscan in your television's manual. My several year old Samsung DLP supports "PC mode", which disables overscan.
I would apply to any jobs that ask for 5 or less years experience. Don't get caught up on all the cruff they put in job postings, they say they want this and that but really what they want is someone who is competent and can help their company in the specific role for which they are hiring. Whoever posts the ad doesn't usually understand much about sofware development, hence ads where you see things like "Java J2EE developer needed, ruby, python, php, javascript experience a plus", they really don't need someone who knows all these languages, they just figure it would be nice to have someone who did
I love sites like these! I wish there was one for every language and every learning subject.
thanks for the link vacri!
Google: Chrome Page Will Have PageRank Reduced Due To Sponsored Posts
5 Questions To Ask Yourself About Your Company For 2012
Service Offered by Local, Social, Mobile API Providers
Great example for apology after partial server outage
Yeah but Game Mode still doesn't provide 0ms of image lag.
Firefox Responds: Will Firefox ever drop Gecko for WebKit?
If you don't need color, a quick googling gives you monstrously expensive display with 4096 x 2560 pixels: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A5.... If you need color and are willing to live with just 3280 x 2048, you can spend a lot less on a http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A5....

I'd be happy with 8 of these (http://barco.com/en/product/1219/specs) arranged in two 2x2 clusters on the sides of my webcam.

edit: Eizo has another cool one, color and 4096 x 2160: http://www.eizo.com/global/products/radiforce/rx840/index.ht.... I don't even want to know how much they cost.
Uh, at first I misread this as UDDIDirectory, and was very glad to realize that was a mistake.
IBM Assigns 217 More Patent Filings to Google
Hacker hopes to force Apple’s hand by hacking Apple TV to run iOS apps
It seems they did everything to stay in control in such a situation, especially knowing how many and which users were affected in which way. Point in time when that pays off: right now.
The site is pretty fast. It states it's hosted by Clojure. I wonder what's the architecture layout is.
This would be incredibly funny if it weren't true :-(

It reminds me of Joel Spolsky's rant about standards: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html -- the bit about headphone jacks in particular.
Wrappi: an API for everything that Linux does
As reference, Vidar Hokstad has been writing a series about writing a compiled in Ruby for the past couple of years: http://www.hokstad.com/compiler
Ten Things Every Creative Person Must Learn
cloud could could cloud
You know what's interesting about the comments on this story? You're posting a lot of comments telling people to charge more money because the work they're doing is valuable and the market is tight, and almost all of them are telling you why you're wrong!

You're basically handing people free money and they're too busy adjusting their plastic sheriffs badges to accept it. As if it were somehow dishonorable to charge your value in the marketplace. Craziness.
> I don't understand why you would refuse to discuss this in the abstract.

Because it's just gossip and opinion. There's nothing to discuss.
One required feature is the flexible toe-ball connection (so that you can comfortably use the toes to balance when the weight is on the balls of your feet), which not every shoe without heel cushioning will provide, though some probably will.

The other important feature is "high-resolution" impact transfer - you need precise ground feedback for your muscles to compensate for an uneven terrain.

If you have (as an extreme absurd case) a super-hard graphite/plexiglass sole, then you have no cushioning, but are not likely to avoid delivering impacts to your knees even if you run on the balls of your feet.

Supposedly, Vivo Barefoot, Nike Free and Newton are as good. But I only have experience with the Vibram FiveFingers, which is why I recommended it.
I've often thought that Stallman was too prickly as spokesman or organisational leader, but I've never regarded him as being too extreme from a free software, ideological perspective. His thinking along those lines has always been meticulously careful and he generally sought out and found extremely competent legal advise. His basic mode of argumentation is to point out various legal exploits and note that there was no good reason to assume that government and industry won't abuse them if given the right set of circumstances.

It's a mystery why every ten years we have to have this discussion about whether we've entered a new age of ethical business and responsible government, where we somehow think that human nature and human organisations have changed permanently (through technological innovation!) in some egalitarian way.
Locked bootloaders in Android devices are required to support Google DRM
Did F-Spot go to heaven mommy?
Fill.fm needs you (Ruby/on Rails, Javascript programmer)
Hello there!

Fill.fm is looking for a helping coding hand (better: two ;)).

We made a music discovery app called Fill which lets you discover new independent music artists (and download any of their tracks legally).
We listen to every track sent to us to always ensure high quality.

Fill was actually a weekend hack project we started because we were bored of the music in our playlists
and wanted an easy way to discover new music.
Last.fm just did not satisfy us.

[BTW] This app was also part of Music Hackday 2011 at MTV Headquarters in Berlin.
After that we did not do much because we were too busy with other things (and still kind of are).

But we think it would be too sad to let this project die.

That is why we are looking for another skilled programmer, who can help us with

- getting the Linux and Windows version of this app done (they're almost done actually :))
- getting an Android an iOS (almost done) version done
- build in new features that will make this app more attractive to musicians and listeners

You should

- be open minded
- be interested in independent music
- consider programming also as your hobby
- be skilled in programming Ruby (on Rails), Javascript, Objective-C (not neccessary, but would be really awesome ;)), Coffeescript (is a plus)
- write good and clean code
- be able to put yourself in the user's position

You will

- apply your skills to a real product
- have an awesome team to work with
- fun ( definitely)
- help spreading independent music
- get $$ (if Fill makes any money (with your help))

Please write us a mail if you are interested.
Tell us a little about yourself and why you would like to join this project :)

http://fill.fm/

WHO ARE WE?

ALICE
is currently studying bioinformatics at FU Berlin and has been collecting sounds and noises for years.
She produced a lot of noise herself, too.
She is responsible for artists and label relations at Fill and does a little coding now and then.

LUKAS (aka aki, spaceship.io)
studied communications at UdK Berlin and has been programming his whole life.
When he's not programming he plays guitar in his electro punk band.
He is responsible for the coding at Fill.

THOMAS (dergraph.com)
is the designer of this project. He understands pretty things, creates mysterious typefaces, breaky beats and functional interfaces.
He is responsible for the good looks and ease of use at Fill.
Pepsi Says Mountain Dew Can Dissolve Mouse Carcasse
I'm not sure that post is 100% correct. Reading it gave me a bad feeling that it missed something I'd read in the past.
See here for example ...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1741820/assignment-operat...

The = operator is only a "top level" construct, while <- can be used anywhere. Now exactly what those limitations are may be a bit subtle (the OP's point), so I also just use <-.
My understanding is that there's a few things at play in this. The first is the screen makers which you mention their reasons for doing it. The second is one of bandwidth to the display, my understanding is that that is the limiting factor here. At 2560x1600 you've got (2560 * 1600 pixels) * 24 bpp * (60 frames/second) about 5.5 Gigabits per second. at 3840x2400 (1.5x of above) you've got 12 Gigabits/s. At the moment HDMI has a bandwidth limit of 8.16 Gigabits/s after overhead, which isn't quite enough to do it. Display port 1.0/1.1 also had a limit of around 8.6 Gigabit/s. Displayport 1.2 however goes up to 17.28 Gb/s so it should allow for the larger displays but I've not seen many non-apple display port monitors myself. DP 1.2 came out in December of 2009 according to wikipedia so it should have started to filter out to people by now but I've not looked into that.
Where University Technology Opportunity Listings Fail
Whilst it doesn't tell you about the stack it's running on, the site code is open source: https://github.com/4clojure/4clojure
The Social Network That Stole Christmas
Wonder what Start-Up Chile’s 40ty latest LatAm companies selected do?
What's an hour of teaching worth? Data and transparency in tutoring
I realize now that you can't see my 'saved stories' and I can't see yours. I want to share those up-voted ('saved stories') articles with others. Does anyone know of way to do this? Or if it'd even be possible?
Productivity hints, tips, hacks and tricks for graduate students and professors
I used an HDTV once that had three different HDMI ports on it (0, 1, 2). Each port reported a slightly-different EDID for the same TV!

One of the HDMI ports reported this (extracted using SwitchResX):

Established Timings:
--------------------
720 x 400 @ 70Hz
640 x 480 @ 60Hz
800 x 600 @ 60Hz
1024 x 768 @ 60Hz

Standard Timing Identification:
-------------------------------
#0:	1280 x 1024 @ 60Hz	(8180)

The two other HDMI ports reported this instead:

Established Timings:
--------------------
640 x 480 @ 60Hz

Standard Timing Identification:
-------------------------------

Almost all other EDID data matched, including additional timing data inside the EDID extension block, so I'm not certain these differences were that big of a deal. None the less, weird when all coming from the same TV.
The greatest trick Apple ever pulled was making you think it’s Never their fault
In cases where I've been hired for an identifiable project, that's what I've done. But not all consulting fits that mould; the most interesting I've done has been in the category of "be available for random stuff we throw at you, and send us a bill at the end of each month".
The T221 is a great monitor for coding -- check out the size of the "fixed" font on the wikipedia image. But with most configurations it only does 12, 24 or 48 Hz depending on how many DVI channels you can use. Also, since it is being driven as four separate 1920x1280 displays with xinerama there tends to be tearing across the boundaries with movies or video since the refresh from the cards is not synchronized.

Other than that, I love mine and am considering a second one for dual head using eight DVI channels.
That's an interesting observation and a piece of game theory that's played out in my head quite often when choosing whether to recommend things or not. One has to wonder if there's an entire cross-discipline of marketing and game theory to be analyzed there.. :-)
Having worked with pathologists, radiologists, military air traffic controllers, and cinematographers, they seem fairly happy with BARCO 30" 2560 x 1600 (16:10) screens. I guess the question would be what high-stakes decision is going to benefit from higher resolution? Instead of using the zoom function in your imaging tool of choice, you break out a glass and metal loupe and hold it vertical? How is that a plus? I'm sure every imaging company on the planet is well aware of the Retina display and has plans for building out higher resolution manufacturing.

I just haven't met professionals who are sweating that particular detail of their workflow for several years. What industries are you seeing this problem in?
Ugh, this. Comcast re-compresses some of their video streams so much that it almost looks like YouTube. The best video quality I've seen on cable has been HDNet, but many providers have dropped their channels because they can replace them with three low-quality channels.

Still, I've never talked to anyone who has noticed the difference, so I assume it's a rare gripe.
Parse - dynamic data storage for mobile
My wrapper is quite robust after almost five years. e.g. It can save headers to alternate data streams (on NTFS) for proper 304 handling. If there is anything left to implement it could be done pretty quickly.

Still I like these new projects; it's a shame they missed the python 3.x boat by only a year or two. That would have been a great time to include them in the stdlib.
Maybe in terms of Javascript, but IE has so many frustrating CSS bugs that aren't as bad in 7/8 that I draw a very clear mental distinction between them.
TI, ST-Ericsson share their mobile SoC strategies
For $4.99 get a glimpse into the thinking of two players in smartphone and tablet chips, courtesy of EE Times Confidential
I plan to get an Android tablet later in the year.

However, if used consistently, I will also need to charge it. :)
I thought this was going to be an alarmist article about getting rid of your TV and doing something else with your time.
The real issue is that VC was over-capitalized in 1999-2000. More capital chasing the same investments bids up valuations and increases copycat competition, which both lower returns.

It takes a looong time to rebalance the supply of capital since PE/VC funds typically raise their next fund before the results of their current fund are realized. So the venture landscape was likely overcapitalized from 1999-2005, if not longer.

Has the balance come back or do we again have too much money chasing too few great companies? Given the choice, I prefer to have more capital in the system. More funding for entrepreneurs.
It's pretty simple. There are three categories.

1. plain-text or plain-text equivalent: you can access the original passwords in microseconds

2. lousy hashing: you can't tell what the password is immediately but it's computationally feasible to figure it out

3. good hashing: you can't figure out the password

The only time you ever need to distinguish plaintext from plaintext-equivalent is when you have a partial data breach. Good hashing is safe even under a full data breach.
This appears to apply to wifi as well. There's been an open bug in OSX for years involving OSX assgining its own DHCP lease when it fails to negotiate one with the router. This results in the dreaded "Self-assigned IP" message, which is nigh-on impossible to rid yourself of short of voodoo dolls and wifi dances.

Getting a bit off-topic here, but that's not a bug: it's assigning itself a valid zeroconf* address because the DHCP server is not responding.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_configuration_networking#A...
So now you just have to endow the majority of the population with the same level of curiosity and desire for open critical discourse as a computer scientist. Have fun with that.
WhisperSystems / TextSecure for Android Open-Sourced
Gesture recognition with contact-microphones
I have a 6-month old 1080p TV that apparently has no way to disable overscan.

Poor purchasing decision I'll grant (though it is a decent TV), but my point is this area can still be a minefield.
Title should actually be "How I Re-designed Code Year in 1 Hour".
Ask HN: What payment gateway do you use?
I'm working on a small project that needs to accept one time payments, what would you guys & gals suggest for that?
Android Set to Return to the Linux Mainline. Will it Succeed?
I think the big issue that's bothering people is the potential for hypocrisy. This event clearly proves that shit happens and if google doesn't either ban it's own chrome from search results or loosen up on it's rules for bans and appeals then they are being fully hypocritical.
> Ugh, this. Comcast re-compresses some of their video streams so much that it almost looks like YouTube.

All the cable providers are using the same set of transmission boxes from the same vendors.

Usually, they are employing statistical compression: Take 16 channels and determine which video needs more bandwidth in real time. So if your favorite show is opposite talking heads, then it looks fine. But if you're opposite action-packed hunting in jungle scenes (lots of high-frequency content), you're gonna see it.
I was hoping I could get something I can hang on my roof and connect to a plug.

The bag looks quite elaborate.
Klout Confirms Mega Funding Round
Ask HN: Example of software deals with big corporations
A billion dollar corporation with ~1000 employees wants to buy/use software my startup has built. Getting the software to work for the corporation would take some work. Is there a list of example software deals with corporations somewhere? I know about kiko selling on ebay but I want something that fits our situation a little better.

If I think the software is worth about $200,000 how much do I license it for a year?
Ask HN: Best way to accept CC on behalf of 3rd party vendors
Let's say I wanted to build a marketplace with multiple vendors selling their goods. What is the easiest way to incorporate a payment system that accepts credit cards on behalf of the vendors?

I know my scenario is a little vague, but do I need a merchant account of my own to accept the credit card payments from customers, then "reimburse" the vendors after taking my cut?

Or is there a way to extend the vendors' existing merchant account functionality to the online/mobile space? E.g. a comic book store that normally processes credit card payments in store can now get credit card information electronically through the marketplace.

Does my question make sense?
I'm kind of frustrated that I can't go to a game and get as good a media experience as at home. Why can't I go to a game and get the announcer's live feed on my smartphone? Why can't I get replays on my own display?

You're right in that there is value in the atmosphere and excitement of a live game, but surely the price of admission could include more than a seat.

Are there any startups in this area?
Another fun thing with processing that most people don't realize: almost all TVs will internally convert the input signal to YCbCr 4:2:2 for all this processing. Even though data is practically always transmitted as 4:4:4 over HDMI, and has to be converted back to RGB 4:4:4 to be displayed on the panel.

So if you have red/blue text (or anything with red/blue detail) looking awful, like it was lower resolution than it is, you have the TV to thank for that.

EDIT: to clarify, this doesn't apply if the text is a part of a movie (then you blame the codec for that, not the TV)
I'm not sure I agree with that.

I farm as a hobby, so I see lots of unique problems. In typical programming jobs you're just stringing together the work of others. There's lots of book learning to do, but not much actual problem solving.

There are people solving real problems, but those kinds of jobs are fairly rare, and often not very well paying when done in academia. Implementing working implementations based on those already found solutions are where the jobs are.
Hardware acceleration, and a few other minor things.
Should you have any questions, I'll be lurking :)
I've never been to WWDC so I don't know how the ticket process works. Given that the demand is so high for this event, what prevents folks from buying a few tickets and flipping them on eBay etc.?
First of all, I do genuinely try to use the fastest and best techniques that I can. Maybe I'm subconsciously doing things slowly, or not using the best techniques I can, but I do think that I try to do the best and fastest job that I can. My interest is in pleasing clients and doing new and interesting things. Taking a long time on one problem is bad on both fronts.

But yes, I can very easily see how someone could take advantage of hourly billing.

As for how weekly billing works, I'm afraid that I didn't understand your example. It sounds like I estimate a project as taking two weeks (i.e., 10 days). One week into the project, it looks like it'll take one more week than I originally expected (i.e., a total of three weeks). So I tell the client that it'll now cost them for three weeks of my time. Did I understand you right? And if so, how is this a win?
There's a new book that seems to be about best practices for writing software in R. It's called 'The Art of R Programming'. I got a review copy but I haven't read it much yet, but the premise is that the book actually focuses on R programming techniques as opposed to introducing statistics using R.
While it does have some interesting worked examples

This sounds good!

and some good explanation,

Also sounds good.

the book is essentially a commented version of the R introductory manuals.

The question that comes to mind: exactly how good are the comments?
Create your own framework... on top of the Symfony2 Components (part 1)
I've htns mapped to <^v>. There's no need to restrict yourself to the default mappings.
My resolution regarding php this year: no new php projects. I will continue to support existing projects/clients but from here forward I am done. I have studied other languages extensively and even worked on relatively interesting personal projects in them (racket/node js etc.) but now is the time to draw the line and start using them for new projects. My last argument for using php in which hosting is easier/cheaper w/ php is moot now. So I am left with the realization that I keep reaching for it like a kid who still watches pokemon instead of doing his chemistry homework.
You would have to get your own merchant account and then distribute the vendor's share. Another option might be to force the vendors to sign up for Stripe and provide their API key to you. You could then make charges to their Stripe account. The first options is a lot more seamless and gives you the potential of charging a commission.
So...after reading this piece, i realize that I was wrong, thinking that all the ARM-based apps processors for smartphones are more of the same...
I want to put a display on the wall and stand five feet away with a keyboard and mouse while working (mostly Emacs, web browser, and reading pdfs). What should I check to determine whether a TV would work well in this configuration (without overscan issues and the like)? Is the only safe thing to go to a physical store with the computer, set everything up, and check for artifacts?