skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure it's a great idea to get so focused at such an early age. There's a lot to learn about the world when you're 14, and it might be good to explore a wide range of topics. (I personally took most of my "real" classes in high school, so by the time I got to college, I had an idea of what I wanted to do. After going to college for a year, I realized my needs would not be met in that way. But deciding at 20 is a lot different from deciding at 14.)
Nope! The machines at TSA checkpoints aren't connected to a database of any sort. All of the info is encoded in the boarding pass in a PDF417 2D barcode.

If you can read PDF417 (Zebra Crossing, the barcode reader for Android, can do it somewhat unreliably if you make your own build and have a good phone camera - otherwise, there are online services that can extract PDF417 from an image) you can see the info for yourself.

And, more importantly, if you can read PDF417, you can make your own!

To connect those machines to a database would both involve a lot of infrastructure build-out (imagine the chaos if that system went down nationwide!) and a lot of information sharing and standardization between airlines and the government. Signing the barcodes is smart, and is how "mobile boarding passes" work, but because paper passes were standardized so long ago, there's no security in place.

I also suspect the current TSA checkpoint barcode readers aren't smart enough to actually check the signature in a mobile boarding pass, but I don't want to find out myself.
Amazon AWS Return on Experience
It's psychology - we all fall fowl of the labels we apply to ourselves.
After Being Banned, Grooveshark Returns to iOS and Android With HTML5 App
To clarify, you added stripe as a new payment option and you're running both in parallel now right? I didn't think there was a way to get your old PayPal subscribers moved over.
Yup, we have an API to create plans - https://stripe.com/docs/api#plans
I wonder how many technical books anyone reads from start to finish.. for me very few have met that criteria
It's not that you can't expand with #3, it's just more difficult.

A friend of mine runs onlyattech.net. It was initially launched for Georgia Tech students, and then when it came to expand, they became the "Only At network" and got onlyatuga.net and onlyatuf.net

Of course, in the taxi example who's to say that BestBostonTaxis isn't already taken? You'll end up spending a lot to keep your branding and moving into a new network.
Ask HN: How complex is what you are working on?
On a scale from 0 to 10, how complex would you say is the project you are working on? (0 being a hello world) Why?

Note: By project I mean, the entire project, not just what you are working on, but also what other team mates are doing.
Inside Facebook's New Menlo Park Headquarters (photos)
Thanks Viktoras! Just drop us an email at help@gocardless.com if we can do anything to help
Don't entirely recall the old design, but this is really well done. Simple and to the point. A little bit of room for improvement, but that will come from further iteration and feedback from users.

Best part: infinite scroll. Google could learn something from this (yes I realize entire businesses are built on "getting on page one of Google," but this makes searching much more fluid).
It's interesting to see that DuckDuckGo ranks higher than Blekko - One reason could be that it promotes SO articles via the 0-click info box.
I don't understand -- is this visualization available on the site, or is the site just an advertisement for some art installation somewhere (and if so, where/when??)
Yeah, it was just a snarky way of saying that you meant 'pre-tax', not 'pre-vat'. VAT (Value Added Tax) is a specific tax, one that only end-consumers pay.
Given the number of stories and PayPal's 100M active users, even the merchant complaints are (an extreme) minority of people who have issues. It comes down to PayPal caring more about buyers and big merchants than little merchants.

(Disclaimer: I work for another part of eBay.)
They do. With partners. It's "Getting Kenyan businesses online": http://www.kbo.co.ke/

They've done a similar action in France few months ago.

The guys who said coming from Google were probably a partner of the operation.
US military access cards cracked by Chinese hackers
Yeah, MUNI(cipal railways) of SF, which uses a kind of honor system for buses and above ground LRVs, have a fare evasion rate of 15 to 30%, based on MTA estimates.

http://missionlocal.org/2009/08/muni-fare-beaters-slapped-wi...

Local activists typically lobby against enforcement as they interpret it as targeting a vulnerable population. On the other hand, MUNI is running a deficit.
You mean "federal screeners". Using terms like "agent", or the official term, "officers", implies they have powers they do not have (yet).
Ask HN: Long term effect of British children being taught programming?
The UK government are introducing programming lessons into British schools: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16509298

Does anyone have any opinions on how this may affect the programming landscape of the UK in the future (say, 5-10 years from now)?

I thought it might be interesting to consider how such a scheme may change code quality, employment prospects, programming language prevalence, the number of programmers and so on.
Yes, Cocoa Controls is one of them.
I am certain that if this thing actually happens, it will spin out companies on par with any accelerator.
I would love to get one of these for my son to learn to program on. Ebay shows a number of them available for parts but none in working order. Does anybody know how to get a working one? I would be happy to pay someone for parts and time.
I guess both you and the parent are right - You definitely had advantage over people from poorer/war torn countries etc - but you did work for what you achieved, it didn't just come to you for free :)
The thing is, those aren't fair comparisons. Software engineers are in exceedingly high demand at this stage. This is just a reaction to that demand. In addition, software engineering is a very flexible field. You can engineer under or tangentially to almost any position or field and be a part of what makes those things interesting. Assembly line worker and street sweeper are not so similarly blessed.
As a person who finds immeasurable delight in programming, I am immediately wary of this idea. My impression is that this HS's curriculum would be narrower than usual, to accommodate a deep focus on SEG.

If that is the case, I feel this is a disservice to young humans: we ought to be exposing them to as broad a range of human thought as possible, and not narrowly focusing on a passion. The idea (as I understand it) seems to be a recipe for producing narrow humans.
> Your app would only look out of place in the sense that your app has a different design and UI compared to other apps using the manufacturer theme.

Well yes, that's kinda what "looking out of place" means, and the point of themes is originally to have a consistent look and feel even when that l&f is customized no?

> I don't really consider that an issue as it is common to have apps use different themes and styles for UI widgets.

Stop me if I'm wrong, but isn't fixing this issue the whole bloody point of TFA?

> The important point is that within your own app, you can enforce a theme that hasn't been tinkered with by the app manufacturer, giving you a stable theme to work with or modify as you write your app.

1. as I noted, and 2. as I also noted this is at the cost of risking that your application clash with the customized vendor theme.

> This is the great power of this change for ICS, as now I can opt-out of carrier customizations and stop having specific work arounds and hacks for some devices to avoid their custom theme from the manufacturer.

From my having written this in response to buff-a's comment, you could have inferred I am aware of it.
2.9% is a pretty good rate when you want to accept credit cards. I suspect most companies would like to accept credit cards...
Grooveshark in HTML5 (ios compatible)
If they learn to engineer software, surely they'll know how to access Wikipedia.
I think it's a great idea! I'd love to use it! Some ideas:

- Clicking on a selection didn't make it look like a tag (blue box)
- Once you have more than 4 blue tags in the field, additional ones don't get added or aren't visible. It's probably best to add another line of height to see them all. Or to avoid the problem entirely, take the resolved 'tags' out of the input box and put them below. Perhaps by accepting a jQuery selector for where they should be dropped?
- It would be nice if the 'prompt' option also read from the html5 placeholder attribute
- tag items that are set should probably be settable via the option value not the display text, or maybe both?
- An option to remove the blue arrow: if you have thousands of items in the list you don't want to display them all.
Given DDG's relatively ad-blind early-adopter audience, I reckon the sponsored link would get more attention if it wasn't highlighted in yellow
(I don't think this is a "dark pattern" when the text "sponsored link" appears next to it - alternatively the sponsored status could be clearly but not obtrusively indicated with a badge similar to the "official site" badge)
What would 10 be? I need some more context before I can attempt to answer this question.
JavaScript Weekly: A Free, Weekly JavaScript Email Newsletter
They are also often written by young consultants who don't really care about the topic at hand. I have often seen reports to congress be handed down 5+ layers of management to a 22 year old in the middle of a huge time crunch who basically says whatever seems reasonable to them and then everyone above them signs off on it at most skimming over what's said and then passing it on.

One example that comes to mind was someone who asked their boss a basic policy question which then traveled though 8 hops before someone asked them their own question. (up 4 over 1 down 3 then back to them) You could see their email address on the top and bottom of this long chain. He almost sent it back up just to see what would happen.
I wonder how the payment rates would change if he simply mounted a non-functional wireless camera plugged into a socket pointing at the bagel location?

(ie, hinting to people that they are not invisible as in the story of the Ring of Gyges)
Maybe in York...
This is fantastic! This is the same thing I want to start in China someday.
Awesome, I'm glad we're on the new HN where we downvote things we disagree with. Google doesn't have a compliance requirement of "prevent users from running another OS". MS does. That pretty clearly crosses a line that none of the Google requirements do.
I only have a galaxy nexus, so no idea! :) Repurposing the search key would probably make the most sense to me, but I can see that would be confusing.

Has ICS rolled out to any older phones yet?
I do not believe there is any obligation to pay back accidentally overpaid sums in the UK. I base this on the fact that if you receive money from some-one accidentally (they got the account number wrong for example) you are under no legal obligation to pay it back (although the bank will ring you asking you to).

I don't know if it's different with overpaid money during employment however I doubt it is.
This kind of thing applies generally to all overpayment of contracts. The advice I've been given by employment lawyers in the past about this kind of thing is that once you leave, it becomes a normal debt and they are free to chase you about it however they choose. Usually this results in you offering to pay them a small some every month with no interest until it's all paid back. They don't want to go to court either after all.
Forgive my ongoing skepticism, but where are these codes? on the boarding pass? Who is at the gate to turn you away? Does the TSA chase you down when they discover you have outwitted them?
Not sure if I'd jump straight to malarky, but I definitely think it is very plausible that a scamming outfit is running the pages through translate, either as an obfuscation or actual translation.
> I hadn't really considered that it'll look foreign to the Android user.

Only to ICS users (if that) since consistency between applications has not exactly been a forte of Android before ICS (hence TFA). And you'll still likely end up with issues due to vendor-custom themes (Motoblur, Sense, TouchWiz) which may very well look nothing like Holo.

> It'd be very cool to design it once, and then have the site rendered to look a little more native, depending on the platform. But maybe that's a dream.

It's hard to pull for "native" toolkits to start with (see e.g. wxWidgets or Qt, they often get close on "look" with a lot of efforts, they usually have big issues on "feel"), but for web applications? Yeah we're not in the realm of "hard" anymore but way beyond.
"Paul F. has noted a strong correlation between high payment rates and an office where people seem to like their boss and their work."

I wonder if this could be a way for companies to figure out (surreptitiously) how managers are doing: provide such a bagel service to each department, and see where the theft rate is the highest. Of course, it has to be done completely incognito, otherwise the managers would make sure that the cash box is stuff full of cash....
An absolutely excellent book list. If all those books are available on Project Gutenberg (which it seems they are), this is one hell of an achievement as a civilisation, that we have managed to make freely available these foundations of educated thought.
Java SE 6 will no longer be publicly available after July 2012. Customers interested in continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JDK 6 have the option to purchase Oracle Lifetime Support.
I think this is great. The kids who are going to be applying and accepted to this school already have the desire to pursue CS and I would imagine are already investigatingthe topic on their own time. To be able to be exposed to formalized education in a field that you're already excited about is an amazing opportunity.
10 years later, isn't it time to revamp MS's Trustworthy Computing initiative?
You should still receive official written notification of the change. (And if you choose to leave due to that change, you are not contractually obliged to work a notice period either.)

I agree about the continuing to work thing, it's not obvious from the article if CM followed the correct procedures when implementing that change.
Comment was sarcastic.
I love computers and I work with them everyday, but I believe the idea of a high school geared primarily towards software engineering is wrong.

Computer Science teaches you to think logically about problems. It gives you primitives to build complex systems that will later help you understand the world. In fact, most computer scientists think the same when they approach a problem.

But there are other kinds of thinking that are also important which high schools should introduce to students. Art. Music. Athletics. Each subject requires you to think in a different way.

I will always remember what Marvin Minsky told me when I was taking his class: when he approaches a problem, he first chooses how he will think, not how he will approach the problem itself. He also said that he studied how the great minds of the past approached problems so that he could think like them.

Do I want to think like a Richard Feynman or an Albert Einstein? Have you ever thought about that question and what it means? If not, I recommend you start reading books that they've written so you can try to capture that brilliance.
I was talking in a general context. A typical user has a desktop PC at work, maybe a laptop, a phone and maybe a tablet. They shouldn't need to learn different visual UI metaphors across devices. 'Sall I'm saying.
EdgeQuestion 2012: What is your favorite deep, elegant, beautiful explanation?
Totally intend to if/when I get some time :)
Yes. I made stripe the main payment option and left paypal as a second option. There is no automated way (that I know of) to move customers from paypal to stripe.
Especially given the source.

For those unfamiliar, Cory Doctorow is a professional writer of fiction. Like my favorite sci fi authors, he crafts stories about an "imagine if these conditions were true, how would that world work" starting point. His selection in news carries a similar bent, he likes a news story that would be interesting if true. It's generally best to enjoy them as that.

Take a moment, imagine a world where Google actually does this, then remember that it is probably fiction and get on with life until you see the story reappear with journalistic research behind it.

Edit: I see Mr. Doctorow updated with a note that he contacted google and google is preparing a response. +1 for journalism.
The bifurcated society: computers are taking out the middle
Did Mocality contact Google about the issue before going public about it? I can't find any mention of dialog in the CEO's statement.
You could also do: kill -STOP `pidof iTunes`

(I have no idea if pidof is included in OSX. It exists in Debian systems though!)
The simplest way is to write subroutines to generate the HTML. But it's probably better to use templates; you stick your standard HTML "boilerplate" into one template and use a templating library to interpolate stuff into the middle of it, instead of making a zillion copies and editing each one.

As for CSS, most of the time CSS's own cascading facility is sufficient to separate your "standard" CSS into one file and your other CSS in another file. But when it's not, there's also stuff like Sass.
I don't think it is fair to compare Radiohead or Louis CK to that of a lesser known artist in this regard, because the bias is all in the media coverage.

Bands have been self releasing (outside of "big entertainment") since well before digital distribution, because signing to a label isn't always feasible (financially or creatively). Digital distribution makes just makes this even easier.

You only know about Louis CK & Radiohead because that is that the media covering. Digital distribution & artists self releasing material is happening and has been for a while, but no one knows because unless they are already into these lesser known bands & record labels. You have to think of it like this: "Lesser known artists can be more successful by releasing their own material digitally than they would by signing with a label." Or "This independent record label can lower their overhead and make things easier for their bands by embracing digital distribution."
Religion class aside, it seems a loss to do away with geography, philosophy and foreign languages. I love that you guys had a shell and learned so many great tools, but I think programming is also enhanced by being exposed to many non-CS topics.
FastSpring may be too full-service for what you're looking for, I'm not sure. 10 currencies are supported, 20 languages, there's multi-store management as you mentioned, etc. However, the products need to be digitally fulfilled (or be shipped via DVD/CD), and it sounds like you may be selling something physical.
I'm assuming that they're offering google apps, which you can sell as an affiliate (naming your price). But reading through the transcript, and listening to the calls, they claim to be offering to "develop" a web site for the business, which I very much doubt google would ever do.

They have tools in google apps for making pages/simple sites, but everything about the call stinks of scam.

> Caller: Twenty one days. We're going to develop the website within twenty one days

When has google ever "developed websites" for independent companies?

Caller: XXXXX, and do you have a gmai account?*
Business owner: yes, I do have a gmail account.
Caller: Kindly give me your gmail account.
...
Caller: ... you will be given a personal password which you can use to log in and make changes in case you want to.
...
Caller: ... For photos, I will give you my gmail account so you can forward to me either the business logo or the photos you feel have nice looking clothes that can attract customers.

Yes, I've cherry-picked some of the transcript, but the point is that these are practices which aren't just against Google's "Do no evil" policy, but would be counter to how they would actually run. For a company like google, with their existing infrastructure, this would just be bad business.

Also, why ask for a gmail username, and then say later "Well we'll send you a username and password once we're done". It doesn't make any sense.

Oh well, I assume that at some point, Google will be forced to respond, will give a big "What the hell, guys, this wasn't us", and then everyone will look sheepish for a while until a year later where some blogger will stumble on it again, and try to expose the truth of "google being evil in africa".
Education not only teaches facts, but efficiently exposes a person to unknown unknowns. I'd argue that a student-teacher conversation is more efficient at exposing a student to an unknown unknown, than Wikipedia would be.
Introducing a .data Top Level Domain
You're not required to boot from floppy disks these days :-) You can even test on another machine without installing the new kernel by using network boot.
I've rang PayPal before and been treated like an idiot. I got a notification to call and was told that the manager in charge of that issue won't be back for a few days so call back them. A far cry from the 24/7 support a few companies are starting to implement.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of things we "don't need" but many of those succeed because they're part of what the developer community "wants". People can profit from these wants, making things developers don't necessarily need and "real people" neither need nor want.

The point of the article is that it's easier to build and profit from these wants, even if they're not truly beneficial to people outside of the developer community.
I would be interested in knowing what the browser client was set to

You mean the User-Agent? It's referenced all over mocality's blog post http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-t...
Good post. I'm also going through the process of learning Python, but with no programming background. I found GOOG's class pretty straight forward (and so far a better resource than Learning Python the Hard Way, which I was using up to this week.)
Should've mentioned above: if it's no longer Friday, just feel free to reach me at the email in my profile.
Making SSH Fast | 0xEA by Eric Anderson
Ugh. Here it is all on one page:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/113345-ubuntu-unity-5-0...

but don't bother reading it, the article doesn't say very much.
Yes you do need to have a wider range than just CS

In fact a lot of what industy needs is more Computer Enginering and lees hyper secpecialised CS majors - you dont see Audi or Mercedes saying we need engineers lets train a load of physicists.
> it's just a run-of-the-mill scammer scamming and using google's name

A scammer selling a Google service for which their is no affiliate program?

I wouldn't file this one away due to having a Google crawler on an IP address that’s on the same B block (that's like having the same car brand, not the same make/model)... An IP address that's not even related to the original investigation, but to some anecdote at the very end of the story.

We need more info about the service being sold, and how it's being sold, who's the billing party, etc.
Learning how to accumulate facts is a completely different problem than learning how to think about ideas. I think teaching children how to think about things is far more important than focusing on specific skills at that age, even if they are useful skills.
Dutch Launch National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)