skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Right now, though, notes Levin, America is focused too much on getting "average" bandwidth to the last 5 percent of the country in rural areas, rather than getting "ultra-high-speed" bandwidth to the top 5 percent, in university towns, who will invent the future.

Well - this is because our political parties have come to the consensus that in order to be successful in elections, city issues must be kept out of the discussion.

http://salon.com/a/sE_2zAA

“The core of the Republican constituency in metropolitan America are the growing, racially and economically exclusive ‘outer suburbs’ whose privileged status Republicans seek to protect at all costs,” says former mayor of Albuquerque David Rusk, now a consultant. He cited New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as an exemplar of the trend.

Democrats are equally to blame:

Republicans saw little gain by reaching out to minority voters (the quixotic efforts of GOP maverick Jack Kemp excepted) and Democrats feared that if they put too much effort into solving urban problems, says University of Pennsylvania historian Thomas Sugrue, they would reinforce their image as the party of ‘special interests.’

That is root-cause of the difficulty of the "last-mile" delivery of broadband. Our society at the end of WWII decided to give ourselves a huge present for winning the war, in the form of an Interstate Highway System, and the politics of suburban sprawl that resulted has stymied efforts to build any serious broadband and mass transit systems that we require to continue strong economic growth and improve national security.
If I wanted to see how everything works, why would I need the abstraction of a higher level language? Why not just code in direct assembly? Abstraction has a value and I think it's a waste of time that it takes so much boilerplate code to do routine things in Java.
Yikes.

I'll be leaving PHP as soon as PHP gets "Unicode Support".

The thing I hate the most about Java is that 2/3 of the time a junior programmer will write the wrong incantation when they open files, so Unicode characters will get scrambled. This gets missed by TimewastingDogmaticDevelopers (TDD) because they never write JUnit tests that read real files because they're too busy making mock objects. Instead, this problem gets discovered weeks or months after the fact.

I've never had Perl or PHP apps double-encode text that gets written to the database, but now it's on my checklist to check for double encoding whenever I smell a "bad smell" named Java.
There's a whole book that goes much deeper into this subject: "Slack" by deMarco (of "The Mythical Man Month" fame. Edit: Crap, it was "Peopleware", thanks for pointing it out) It describes some negative effects of 100% utilization efforts. The funniest one is that the workers quickly adjust to the 100% utilization metric and achieve it by slowing down so that their inbox is never empty.

Google Books link: http://books.google.pl/books/about/Slack.html?id=563gvssRPvk...
My (former) home network backup solution had a truecrypt volume created locally, and rsync'ed to my offsite backup provider (rsync.net). It did not have to send the entire volume for small diffs; in my experience, Truecrypt keeps local changes local in the volume.
"better visual"
Where are screenshots?
Working out RIM's BlackBerry Bold 9930 over Christmas break
Loosen the Rules Stifling IPOs by Venture-Backed Startups
Like any insurance, it's a numbers game - homo economicus will gladly pay an extra 10% for extended warranty if they believe there's a >10% chance it will require replacing in that time.

Of course, those selling the insurance know the numbers best so it generally works to their advantage, which (in association with consumers who lose / forget their warranties) is a big revenue boon to retailers, as you note.

Recognising when you are an edge case helps - I always buy extended warranties on microwaves, because I'm a once-a-month-cooker who therefore uses the microwave a LOT more than the average consumer, and that bet has paid off for me several times now.
Yahoo Appoints Paypal president Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer
"If your head is always in the rushes, you'll never get the opportunity to see the water, until its right upon you."

wr1472
vi(m) rock my world.

If that means I don't exist anymore, there's only one ascii art I can think of for Mr Bill Joy.

.i. (o.o) .i.
I'm pretty sure it would blend...
Google punishing Chrome for 60 days
The first thing I thought of was, why aren't they getting some kind of parking ticket for their vehicle? Extra publicity is certainly not going to help them if they are violating any city ordinances with their business model.
Perhaps, but knowing that the business isn't necessarily durable, it might be worth it for the folks involved to get some eyeballs and raise awareness of the neat projects they've put together (and their noteworthiness for all the deletionists).
Said blowhards have an equally shallow understanding of what design is.
The Theory of Interstellar Trade by Paul Krugman
India's sub-$50 Android tablet claims 1.4 million orders in two weeks
In the audiocast they said they have the occasional parking ticket.

I use visa consultants. If they set up a website front I'd be happy to seek them out next time I go to China. Sounds like they know the system inside out and $20 is a small price to pay for sanity.
Microphone turns any surface into a multitouch interface
The effect is not bad if you scroll with the touchpad, but in a couple of slides I thought it was stuck.
Produce no code that you do not know to be useful or believe to be awesome. A mantra to live by?
I've looked at this previously but

* It seems to be closed source

* The German government is involved (Close friends with the US)
I have found their recommendations to be stellar and much better than anything else.
Fair enough-- I'm sure the decisions behind which components go into the smaller phones is quite a complicated and even bureaucratic exercise. Products are tough, and, unlike software, hardware design is irreversible in the immediate sense.
Huh? The GGP talked about trends. Opera has been at a stable 1 - 2% for years now. Opera usage doesn't appear to be decreasing much at all.
Awesome, what a great combo.
For those unfamiliar with Vi's work, she makes very entertaining and accessible video series called "Doodling in Math Class". Here's one of my favorites, called "Infinity Elephants"
http://bit.ly/zEiugp
How are you keeping the students accountable if they are not being graded? I'm not attempting to criticize the idea (I'm rather interested in it), but I'm curious how you deal with the student that says "I'm not being graded, so I'm not doing it."
I think the problem is, comet where selling the cds. I'd be curious to know for how much.
"A service like foursquare can be useful to different people in different ways."

Which indicates that their focus is too broad to capture a critical mass of users that use it in the same way. I don't think a pivot is necessary, just a focus. They probably have enough $ to figure it out, but IMHO they need to find something soon and stick with it. I suppose "Radar" is supposed to be it, but I don't see it.
Google Chrome HTTPS Address Bar Spoofing
It does when you can hover your cursor over GetMap() and see the exact specification for it.
Dell inspiron 6400 battery
http://www.99batteries.co.uk/ - Relace your dell inspiron 6400 battery here, with suriety of genuine and warrentied parts. You get best customer support and pay lowest price than other online stores.
Resources to Teach You Rails in a Month
PayPal is an entrenched player whose largest market also happens to be its parent company. Their customer service is terrible, they've been vilified in the press, and I can't say they're known for innovation, technical or otherwise.

Not who I'd want running a floundering tech giant.
How many monitors do you have? (:

http://secretgeek.net/jat_vc.asp
Server Tent, Bridging The Gap, and More Server Set-ups
Yahoo Names PayPal Head Scott Thompson as New CEO
Top 5 VC Mentors and Early Stage Investors in Boston
> Caveat: If you buy a TV don't expect it to be a computer monitor. Most TV designs are just that: TV sets. They are made to do one thing reasonably well: Take a crappy satellite/cable/whatever signal and give you a reasonable image back.

...

> In general terms "monitor mode", if you will, should be a mode that bypasses as much of the internal processing as possible

...

> As I said before, they are designed to be TVs, not monitors.

I think this is 100% the problem. TVs these days essentially are big monitors, and they should be designed as such.

I believe that if a TV is taking content from a digital source (ie, HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort etc.), it should perform the bare minimum image processing possible. Things like scaling and gamma correction are necessary of course, but other operations like sharpening filters just destroy images and are unnecessary for digital inputs, and things like motion interpolation (ie. MotionFlow) are ridiculous (seriously, the only thing it improves is text like rolling credits, but it introduces serious motion artefacts to actual video and does strange things to noise in images, making the image look what I can only describe as 'slushy')...

This is just my opinion from being both an engineer but also having done a lot of film-making and photography work. It just appals me to see the default settings on these TVs degrading the images so much, and it takes a lot of searching through menus to set it to something sensible, which the vast majority of the population won't do...
Ahh, yes - adding some now, until then you can see visual representations of the interface on the splash.
How to Activate 2012 Stage in Angry Birds Season Working
See an opportunity and take it...
I've used Foursquare for about a year now and I have to say that I agree with his statements.

However, I feel that if anybody is going to eliminate Foursquare, it would be the credit card companies. Reason being, my credit card statement can give you a more accurate picture of where I spend my time and money. And that information is what is important to the "real" customers of Foursquare (i.e. businesses and cities).

We're already seeing this start to happen with American Express. They've partnered with Foursquare and have people link their AmEx card with their Foursquare account to get special deals on certain check-ins.
Zork on the PDP-10 The Digital Antiquarian
I disagree. Rules are tough because equity in these companies is being made accesible to the average Joe. The only way to secure retail investors from risky companies (high growth tech companies) is by creating high barriers of entry/requirements. The public equity markets is not for all businesses, and the tech sector has a healthy pool of liquidity available to them e.g. late stage funds, large institutional funds, bank financing, etc.

The way I see it is that VCs are the ones who want less stiff rules to pump and dump their more dubious investments.
I'm sorry to hear this, but it's possible that the mods aren't doing this out of malice.

I used to help out HN by going to the new page and flagging what I thought was off topic content. My reward for this was to have my flagging privliges taken away :)

The unfortunate reality is that when you are a mod it's far easier to punish than it is to educate, especially when you're a volunteer.
I find it very handy with GUI programming under python too.

with wait_cursor(wxwindow):

... change cursor to hourglass whilst process runs...

I have similar context processors for locking controls or other temporary GUI changes
I think that's a bit doom and gloom. We now have github, it's easier than ever before to copy code and release it as your own.
Agreed. Once you use a language with type inference it's hard to go back to Java.

Java also lacks properties, which results in boilerplate getter/setters if you want to follow idiomatic convention (you could make all the member variables public, but your coworkers would probably shun you).
Out of my frustration in writing HTML, I took a look at Bootstrap and some sites that were built using it and they looked very professional.

But I'm confused if I should learn to do webdesign by hand before using readymade frontend packages.
Specialize in one thing, but stay diverse enough to be broad minded and nimble enough to switch.

I was hired as a PHP developer in my current role 3 months ago. I have spent the last 7 years specializing in PHP, but also learning Java, C++, C#, Pyton and Javascript.

A month later our iOS developer left in a hurry. I was able to pick up the language and be commercially productive in 2 weeks. I was a hero.

A month later Google approached us wanting a project in Python. All of our PHP devs shrugged. I completed the project in Django (Python), we kept Google as a happy client. I was a hero.

You WONT have time to learn everything before you'll need it. One day you'll be tested with very short notice, and those generalists who were nimble enough to change diet quickly, will get the $
How’d My Avatar Get Into That Sneaker Ad?
> Similar in the Common Lisp object system we use :before, :after and :around methods

Ditto for Moose (in Perl)...

before draw => sub { shift->move( 50, 50 )};

sub draw { shift->draw_something }

after draw => sub { shift->move( -50, -50 )};

Also you can package up these method modifiers into a role which not only can be composed into a class but can also be applied just to an object...

{
package DrawRole;
use Moose::Role;

before draw => sub { shift->move( 50, 50 )};
after draw => sub { shift->move( -50, -50 )};
}

my $d = Draw->new;
DrawRole->meta->apply( $d );
This question did come up in my class. I said "if you do not want to take this opportunity seriously and would rather be graded on an assignment, I'll gladly assign you a different project for the rest of the year that I will grade you on." He stayed with the 20% project.

The accountability is in the documentation and the presentations. More of a peer accountability than anything else (which I think is powerful). I'd be happy to hear any suggestions!
No offense but name one HN'er that would ever let Scoble or MA or Tc writers run a startup..

crickets..crickets..

Its not the buzz, its deep knowledge, something this article lacks.
Walks And Walking - Essex Walks
I used WePay recently to invoice a client and I really thought it was quite a pleasant experience. I considered using Dwolla but they seemed less established and credible. I had some questions about the service that their site didn't answer.

I was really happy with WePay. I hope I can use it more soon, it was really was very simple, and I think the features to "split the ticket" are pretty cool.
While I can appreciate the author's experience - that learning lower-level technology gives on a great appreciation for the full stack and an ability to deal with leaky abstraction - I think he gets confused when he ties the lower-level implementation he's discovering with java's verbosity.

C is a lower level language that exposes a lot of stuff that's hidden in Java, but I've not read much C source code that makes me think it's too verbose. My experience with Java has contained far too many AbstractErrorCorrectingModalDialogueFactory classes for me to enjoy using it.
Tell me if I am understanding this:

I can create an application, like a website for realtors (as a simple example), and then customers (like realtors) can pay me and get a hosted instance of my web app. Right?

If so, cool!
As your karma score builds, you will gain access to some other features (the exact number has changed a few times, so I'm not sure what it is these days - I think 200 was a level for a while, and I note you're just below that).

You won't ever get a downvote option for the article. You will eventually be able to downvote other people's comments - unless they are replying directly to you like I am now (this stops pointless bickering via votes).

Flags are designed to note off-topic / incindiery submissions - saying 'this shouldn't be here' rather than 'I don't like this', and should be used sparingly given the extra power they represent.
I wonder how many HN folk's first inclination would have been to create a website to do this instead of rent a van and deal directly with people? How much do we hold ourselves back by trying to go directly to a scaleable solution?
I've met and interviewed Scott several times over the course of my career.

He is the anti-Carol Bartz. He is extremely likeable, approachable. He's a consensus-builder, not a bomb thrower. And he did double PayPal's user base and revenue to 100+ million and $4+ billion respectively.

Yahooers will like this guy. He's sharp. He's the right man for the job.
Tutoring is a good idea, thanks for the tip. I live in Boston, so there is bound to be plenty of parents or college kids around needing tutoring.

Worst comes to worst, I'm prepared to work at a coffee shop or some other part time job as well. Just need to get out of my current soul-crushing position! :)
I think there should be less focus on 'how to be in interesting' for others, and more focus on 'how to stimulate your interests and make life more interesting for yourself'

A similar sentiment echoed in this HN discuss a month ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3279190
I found it interesting that he mused about the 3.5" vs. 4.12" screen, particularly when you take into consideration how Apple has defended their designs recently. If it is really true that they hit on the "this is the size that humans perceive as perfect" goldmine, then the way that Apple has argued against imitators is less "they shouldn't copy" and more "we want to be the only ones who sell 'perfect'". A subtle difference, but if true, a very interesting approach to battle your competition. After all, it leaves you in a very comfortable position - your competitors can try all day to build strong products if you have control over the ultimate perfection that nobody will be allowed to get to.

At least for now, you can't patent sizes, but it's not like we haven't said this about other things and it's certainly not like they wouldn't try.
It is a common idiom in C++ RAII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_acquisition_is_initia...

Context managers in Python:

with fly('Seattle'):
see_sights()

Real-world example from Fabric http://fabfile.org:

with cd('/to/path'):
do_stuff()
I've never understood this point of view. I wonder if these same managers drive down the highway with their gas pedal pushed all the way to the floor in an attempt to get 100% utilization out of their car purchase.

Silly.

It feels so natural to want to keep some headroom in the "system" so that your team can respond to unanticipated events.

The recent Godaddy/SOPA thing was a great example of this for us. In September we completed a customer service efficiency analysis and confirmed that we could deal with 20% more customer service inquiries without hiring any additional people. Instead of relying on this 20% to cover future growth, we made arrangements to increase the workforce by an additional 14% which increases our capacity to handle customer questions by an additional 30%. While the influx of new customers over such a short period of time (2 months of customers in less than 7 days) pushed us to our upper-limits, we never entered the red zone and coming into January, I know that we're right on track with our ability to continue to provide great customer service and aren't scrambling to hire, etc.
besides the bootstrap problem, I don't see how chef doesn't solve the issues they had w/ puppet.

Perhaps there were things that disqualified chef in their eyes?
> And it's clear that Adam Humphreys and Steven Nelson have stumbled on a viable business. In a van. On the street.

Well, that all depends on your definition of viable. Being dependent on a single bureaucratic bug for your livelihood is not that great. They need to diversify a bit before this can really be called viable.
The aversion is to assessment in the service of future employers. Assessment for feedback's sake is a great help to learning, but grades are much more of the first type than the second.
Most of the trouble with the Chinese Visa system is the requirement that you apply in person. Note that this is for reciprocity against the USA requiring the same in-person application for Chinese nationals visiting the USA. There are several "by-mail" services that just stick a runner in line with your documents, I've used one for the last several trips to China.

These services are expensive, like roughly 50-100 bucks, depending on which consulate you're using. Those who stand in line risk running into trouble like the folks in this story, and I'm sure they're more than happy at this point to fork over some cash for the help they need.
Does the Asus Transformer Prime really exist?
Sounds like a reasonable policy. I'll be curious to hear how it all turns out.
On a Mac you can use the "Dvorak - Querty ⌘" layout to achieve that, it works only with the Command key as far as i know.
Low-end devices are still important in some territories. Part of the reason JavaME is so popular (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/01/if-android-is-so-hot-...) is Opera Mini, but also the Nokia S40 browser.

This is worth a look also: http://www.slideshare.net/yiibu/adaptation-why-responsive-de...
When I write code, I want to solve a problem, not write a book--that's what documentation is for.

Whenever I code in Java, I always feel the language ends up working against me. To get from point A --> point B, the end result usually consists of having traveled through points C and D as well as having written a corpus of code whose length might rival that of War and Peace -- when working on a major project. Writing similar code in other languages, my LOC clock in at a fraction of the Java code. Personally, I've found the less LOC I have to deal with, the easier project maintenance gets, but that could just be me.
Vancouver is on page two, ahead of Toronto by a few spots (but well worth the cost difference in my opinion)
Islands of Thought in Macrotypography
This is what happens in front of every single Indian government office - state or central :(
"Also, what happened to do one thing and do it well?"

This is an oft-missed point when discussing these tech services. Foursquare is a cool little product that many people find fun and interesting. It's done well, and within that context is fine.

But what's wrong with these companies earning a few hundred grand in profit and maintaining a small, stable company? Instead, VCs throw money at them like it's going out of style, and we lavish the founders with platitudes like they invented electricity or cured cancer. In that context, of course they're in trouble. It's a check-in game for crying out loud. Last I heard, they had a valuation well over half a billion dollars. Really?

So, in reality, they're not doing anything wrong. But our expectations for the next-big-thing are certainly out of whack.
Actually, I think they're facing the opposite problem. They don't need more. They're already trying to do too much. Is it a checkin service or a location review service, or is it a way to find discounts?

To Foursquare's credit, they realized that checkins were just a feature and not a business by itself, so they've begun to expand. The problem is that there isn't a clear direction to where they're going. Apps that do a better job of providing reviews will likely win on that front.

I see Foursquare's biggest potential in location based deals. I think that's muddled by their focus on everything else though. So I'd agree that they're in trouble. They aren't doomed, but they need to find their focus quickly or they'll be the next Gowalla.
While I applaud Google and the spam team for trying to hold up the rules for EVERYONE. I think this is the stupidest thing I've read in a while.
Android’s throat is now exposed
Android is facing issues with updates on older devices. And this is a huge drawbacks.