skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because it's orthogonal to the conversation.

1. the site is only about free books.

2. nobody cares about what books you have or want. The site is about free books that appeal to hackers.

3. do you really expect somebody to trawl your amazon list? If there are free books on there that would be of interest to the target audience, upload them.
Well, I've been using Nvidia cards with the nvidia-driver and dual-monitor support as well, and it has been fantastic, until I upgraded my Ubuntu install, got Unity without asking for it, after which multi-monitor support was completely broken. My colleague who has 2 screens of a slightly different type (all are Lenovo ThinkVision) and is running Arch with Gnome 3, has been experiencing random multi-monitor glitches since day one. Sometimes for no apparent reason one of his displays doesn't get a signal after waking his laptop from sleep or hibernate, and the only way to resolve it is a reboot.

To make a long story short: we could exchange anecdotes all day about the state of 'Just Works' on Linux, but at the end of the day, I think no one with enough experience using various Linux distros and OS X, can honestly and sincerely say Linux is even close to OS X in that aspect.

Myself, I've been using Linux since Slackware 4 and have tried about 10 different distro's over time, alongside OS X for the last 5 years or so. Up to this day, I regularly run into problems that need fixing on Linux, particularly after upgrades, or when switching hardware. Whether it's Wifi cards, USB hardware, multi-monitor support, network configuration issues, software that stops working, system library problems: there's always something. OS X on 3 different machines, from OS X 10.4 through 10.7, I've only had one issue that required maintenance once, on a b0rked upgrade. It was pretty nasty, but fortunately OS X has Time Machine and target disk mode, so in no-time I was able to pull off any important data just to be sure, re-install the OS, restore my Time Machine backup, only to find out everything was back to normal, to the point I didn't even need the files I had to pull before the restore.
If you're using XP or later then you shouldn't be using DOS batch files you should be using Powershell, which is what MS write all of their own CLI interfaces to work with.
stationEry. it's "E for Envelopes" (stationAry means not moving - it's an Adjective).
Yes, those are all factually correct. They're not, however, relevant to a thread about "legally free tech books".

I didn't down-vote you. But if I posted a comment about Usenet or torrents or other sources of not-legally-free books I'd expect some downvoting or negative comments.
A Schrödinger cat with eight lives: quantum entanglement of eight photons
Pretty cool. It would be awesome if you showed the title or other meta-info when you hover over the thumbnail of a video. Great job though.
Tweetbot Developer Paul Haddad Reviews iOS Apps For Address Book Transmissions
Just noticed that you are using Python 2.7.1. Is that intentional or you just didn't update that?
C++ Standard Draft Sources
Not a complaint, just to let the creator know: when I drag and drop the "window" grows vertically. This resets when I drop the window. I'm using Firefox 10.0.1.
The UI is very similar to a Twitter dashboard (if you are familiar with that). I don't think it's possible to search for old posts in either case, and the style of the site doesn't really lend itself to that kind of use (for better or worse).
FYI - I just added 'On Lisp', but the registration button is at the top right, called 'Signup'.
1.8 Million Dead People Still Registered To Vote in US
Here's a summary.

The author uses Windows instead of Linux because:

1. Linux isn't as popular as Windows

2. He can't use Visual Studio on Linux

Compelling argument!
Then again, most programmers today aren't C programmers.
And developing in Java/C# really makes a good IDE mandatory.

The point is valid, even if you have a point in what you write too.
Feather & Hammer Drop on Moon
Perhaps it has to do with the attitude towards meetings. If someone is wasting his/her time in a meeting, he/her should excuse him/herself and leave.

It's the same pattern as when you need to be in a meeting about a specific point, but not attend all the other points. You ask to have the stuff you care about come first and you can leave it after. If some unexpected things needs your input, you'll be called in anyway.
tl;dr: The author failed to fully explore the tools available for Linux and uses Windows on account of his ignorance
Actually they do.

And if you are talking about the Nexus One or G1 in particular, no provider continues major-version support of 2+ year old phones.
That lsb_release is "an optional package in many distributions" is only a minor complain:

> There's already the lsb_release tool for this, why don't you just use that? Well, it's a very strange interface: a shell script you have to invoke (and hence spawn asynchronously from your C code), and it's not written to be extensible. It's an optional package in many distributions, and nothing we'd be happy to invoke as part of early boot in order to show a welcome message. (In times with sub-second userspace boot times we really don't want to invoke a huge shell script for a triviality like showing the welcome message). The lsb_release tool to us appears to be an attempt of abstracting distribution checks, where standardization of distribution checks is needed. It's simply a badly designed interface. In our opinion, it has its use as an interface to determine the LSB version itself, but not for checking the distribution or version.

And I guess distributions are far more reluctant to install a shell script than adding a file to /etc
Samsung O Table Concept For Your Kitchen
One of these was built recently in my backyard. Looks like great fun and they do good business. (Though I'm not going to pay $100 to tour the woods I hike daily for free)

http://www.smuggs.com/winter/amenities/canopy-tour.php

Another ski area just built a huge indoor waterpark.

There are tons of these types of adventurous opportunities out there. Movies are for the lazy.
They do. Nexus line is always first and quickest to get an update AFAIK
The procedure you described just there is susceptible to confirmation bias. You need to take that into account, as well as the power of your tests as Bayesian evidence updates. There are a lot of doctors that order tests even though their evidential value is not high.

For example, consider a test with a 1% false positive rate, for a disease with a 0.1% incidence rate for a particular set of symptoms. If you come through positive for the test, what's the probability that you have the disease? Too many people think it's 99% (the converse of the false-positive rate); but in reality it's more like 10%. But you still formed a hypothesis, did a test, and the result came out OK. You think you're doing science, but in reality you're cargo-culting.

Double-blind trials and high-quality statistics are prerequisites for good work here.
And also you guys, being at that level, should insist on Apple guys to respect web-standards for file-input on iPad Safari.

This is gonna get corny very soon.
could not agree more. very hard to read, seems opaque in a way when trying to read the text.

Update: so, i removed the dot texture on the page and also changed the google webfont to "gudea" instead of "open sans" and it seems to be a lot more readable. i think if the authors of the site changed the font to something more readable, all would be good. the font i choose was just picked at random.

see my edits: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/103326/after_Gudea.png
Seeing Chrome's resources, some magic happens at

ws://indutny.com/socket.io/1/websocket/1315565259493660447

What does ws protocol do exactly? I can read something on wikipedia, but it is more confusing than clarifying
(thanks) ok, another small bug - for sufficiently narrow browser windows the registration links are not shown (just drag your browser window narrower and you'll see them disappear). you need to float right or similar.
The Cookie Law
Thank you Markus. I am now at TEchnopark for VentureKick. Cheers from our team to your Connect.io team
readability is a great option, but this site is brand new. it's not like it has outdated typography, etc.. you would expect the site to be readable without any tools :\
Microsoft, Apple, RIM cleared to buy Nortel's patents
The list is pretty much on topic. It's books that appeal to hackers really since I made it from talking to people in #startups on IRC, the only difference is that, yeah they are real books that cost a few dollars to own.

Also it's more than introductions to various programming languages, there are more advanced concepts on the list that appeal to hackers.

Its 1 page of 17 books.
Fantasy baseball is pretty popular I thought. Never played it, but that's where fantasy sports started. It's also known as "Rotisserie Leagues".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_sport#Modern_founding_-...
Looks interesting, but you've got a contradiction on your signup page: the email is obligatory (which I personally don't like), but it says optional inside the text field.
It looks like you're using Raphael. How has the performance been? Are you having to limit the number of nodes to prevent performance degradation? Also, do you happen to have any tips for improving SVG performance?

I can see the YouTube graph being useful for discovering artists and songs. I wonder if you could do something similar for Pandora, or LinkedIn? Generating playlists? Visualizing and ranking recipes?
Show HN: RedisRecord - Redis Backed ActiveRecord replacement
Yes, apologies, I meant to word that in a better way. I knew github did not invent the readme, it just seems they are sparking a revival of it. In that I mean you don't just get a bloody jar file (or whatever) and have to go looking for ways to use it. Take a look at any good shared project out there and there is just a text file outlining how to get going with it.

I think this is possibly my being jaded with Java's documentation conventions. It can be great for index level documentation, but is absolutely terrible at showing use cases and why things were done the way they are.
Bent over in an awkward position or in a way that exposes the area of their genitals.

We're not talking about some kids playing in the sand. This was seriously perverse stuff.
I think it's really only missing Debian and Ubuntu to cover the "big distributions", so while "majority" might be a strong word, it does seem to have about half of them.

There also seems to be a bug report for it on Debian: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=659891

One thing I feel people might be missing is that /etc/os-release could be applicable to Mac OS and the BSDs, making it widely applicable.
This is cool. A bit of feedback - it would be really helpful if the linked page said exactly what pressureNet does - I had to read the linked Giz article to understand that it takes barometric readings off of the Xoom's built-in barometric sensor.
Can Pinterest Change The Way We Contextualize The World As We Know It?
I use Guava extensively and it has helped me quite significantly to reduce some of the code normally Java developers wrote.

I use Rails for CRUD app and I use Spring MVC too.

I used Python a lot a few years ago from writing tools (testing, scripting, automation), to small web-apps.

Saying that 100k can be cut to 10k (or 1k) is like pulling number out of thin air, that's what I find... "magical". It's like some CEO of a startup giving a deadline to the developer to write Hadoop in 4 hours; pulling the number out of thin air.

Compiler => helped syntax errors and types (95%, 5% consist of reflection hackery that might bite).

Static code analysis => One level up from syntax errors, focused on common pitfalls and bug patterns

One step, two step, three step, doesn't matter, it helps, that's the bottom line.

What I refer to "except that happens as well in dynamic language" is to the business logics, the app logics, not syntax and whatnot, you _got it wrong_. We all got business logics bugs that can't be caught by anything other than testing the app themselves (QA, automation, whatever).

So we agree that dynamic languages requires you to write more testing code because there's no compiler? Gotcha.

I never say anywhere that using a static language requires NO testing.

What I found is that a bunch of old-timers who wrote Java back in 98-2003 and didn't use more modern Java frameworks and tools but already jumped the band-wagon to Rails or Node.js keep singing the same tune.

When I use Rails, then Spring MVC + Spring Data, I noticed that the amount of business logics that I have to write is more or less the same. 10x is again out of thin-air. I admit writing code in Java requires more typing albeit Eclipse helps a lot (and please don't bring the old argument of "But You need an IDE!", who cares what I need as long as it helps me to do my job).

Picking one example to refute the epidemic that occurs in the ecosystem is probably not a strong argument (Rails is well maintained, I give you that, although it takes Rails up to version 3.x to realize that they need to cool down and stabilize but I give you that, but that doesn't mean the other plugins and libraries are held the same level of quality and commitment with Rails).
A call for REAL hackers on HN
> In the end, I doubt owning a patent on something will have any impact on our ultimate success or failure.

How I wish that were the case. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of patent trolls out there that would love to use their patents to extract value from your company. When the trolls come knocking (and they will), having a patent of your own may literally be the only defense.

Everyone who wants to understand just how incredibly corrupt the US patent system is needs to do themselves a favor and listen to the "When Patents Attack" episode of NPR's This American Life. Then you'll understand why neatly-reasoned arguments are, in this instance, entirely besides the point.
No, you are cherry picking by using as your example a stadium that isn't managed well.

There is no moral justification for the government's charging more than the cost of duplication (which itself should only ever have to be paid once).
Does It Pay to be Certified in IT?  Apparently yes.
depending on who sponsors this and what control they have over the content, a positive side effect of this social program (ironically) might be exposing the kids to the beauty of consumerism and opulent realities outside of their backward culture and spark the evolution out of it - in the sentiment of shanty towns sprinkled with satellite dishes
How to Keep Your Job When You Don't Know What You're Doing
Except when you do serious computations the MacBook Pro begins to squall serously.

If you do nothing, then yes, it's better even than Windows.
Thanks for that feedback. Writing the post was a difficult mix of trying not to bore my current users while still being accessible to a new audience; I'll see what edits I can make in order to be more clear in the opening. :)
I take it you've never seen teenagers at the beach.
How to pitch to tech journalists
This is a fantastic resource. I've seen many implementations of a programming/hacker library but the user submission and library support is a huge plus!
The first thing to note is that Reddit was not on the main list of the 50 Most Innovative. It was included in list of top 10 for Media, which is where we recognize innovators in a more general way within different industries. The main focus of Reddit's entry, after explaining the site to someone who might never have heard of it before, were the "Ask Me Anything" Q&As. Those interviews were far more social and newsworthy than most Q&As that appeared in msm. Although the series didn't start last year, it began gaining traction and became more newsworthy during 2011. Many innovations are slow to mature, or even fail despite their unique approach. The Reddit entry recognized that those Q&As have come into their own.
Patent trolls are by definition non-practicing entities. How does having your own patent defend against them, if they're not actually producing anything that would infringe it?
The DoJ announcement does say "During the course of its investigation of the Google/Motorola Mobility transaction, the Department of Justice cooperated closely with the European Commission."

So yes, it does sound like the Google/Motorola portion of the decision was coordinated. The DoJ was probably waiting for the EC announcement before releasing theirs, or maybe they just agreed to release them the same day and the DoJ one was released a few hours later due to the timezone difference.
Nice! Seems like the performance drops substantially when I zoom out all the way though (using latest Safari/Lion).

Goes to show that YouTube could really work on their relevance scoring. Does anyone know what's taken into account? It'd be sensible to relate to stuff that's mentioned in the comments, but then again, this takes control over scope away from the author.
It is probably a mistake of him to let the beautiful nixie tubes and the elegant wooden finish pull so much weight in the promo video and then reveal that the final product will feature very bland LED numbers and an equally non-attractive plywood finish. He should sell the product, not the one of a kind and too expensive to manufacture prototype.
ok, I admit: I just found out about this now. blush. But it's not exactly like this space isn't crowded. Will look into that.
Git-sync: a small tool for git-based deployment
Female Passengers Say They’re Targeted By TSA
Well, for 99% of the world, the end of American Football would probably go unnoticed...
This is nice, but did you intentionally disabling touch gestures? Swipe-to-go-back is not working with this page on OS X in Chrome.
Nortel veteran claims Chinese hackers stole its data for nearly 10 years
That's much better; thank you!
OK, I just got new stuff and tried again. It looks like it's building in the same way. Paying closer attention to the error, I think it's some sort of automagic torrc checker which does not like the new config, as it fails with: "Unrecognized option: Unknown option 'ServerTransportPlugin'. Failing."

I sort of suspect that if I want to run new stuff like obfsproxy, I should be just running tor and not the standalone / no though torbrowser package. Honestly, I haven't put enough thought into this to understand the configuration required to do that. However, Tor is on MacPorts... so I guess I have an evening project for later on this week.
Operations Research is the science of resource allocation.
I would certainly ask an OR guy about NASA funding.
Where's the Boss? Trapped in a Meeting
Ikeameter "Search all Ikea products that fit in that gap of your home"
Love that place... It is a well designed experience, and you can find something new each time. This is what increases experiences replay value.
How Much Would Mint Be Worth Now? (2011)
I understand that hungryblank. But I don't consider myself a journalist. I'm a developer writing for developers so they can hopefully learn something that will help them build cool stuff. To that end I use a very concise easily digestible style with as little extraneous verbiage as possible. Nearly every point in the article could be exploded into a long form article and I already get in trouble for TL;DR :-)
What's so bad about webkit on the iPad? It's my favorite way to browse the web.
I added a couple of books. Seems like this could be a useful resource. A couple of feature requests: Search and ratings.

Maybe ratings are what "points" are, but I'm not sure exactly what points means in the context of this site. Care to elaborate?
Interesting strategy on the starcraft idea. Might work for startups too. Every barcraft I've gone to has basically been entirely developers of one sort or another.
6. No chairs. People will soon learn to focus on what must be done and skip all the B.S. before they get tired.

Won't work if you have a lot of adepts of standing desks, though.
Static analysis for your Ruby code with Pelusa
"Proposes alternative to fix this, by changing to a new system , which will solve this problem, once it's always there"

Aye, and if you don't implement it you are "working towards the further balkanization of the Linux landscape".

Is this arrogance? Dictatorship? Am I being too sensitive? Whatever it is, it does not strike me as an effective way to get people on board.

Tell us why it is better, not that we are wrong if we don't do it.
Totally off topic, but what about team sports? I played teeball when I was six and flag football in the 5th grade, but other than that, I totally missed out on organized sports as a kid. (I played a lot of "unorganized" sports in the back yard though). I run, but that's an individual thing.

Where would an adult go to learn to play baseball, basketball or football? I know there are after-work adult leagues, but do they let people with no talent and experience play? What about coaching?
It's in the window title, but I agree, it should be on the page. In Chrome, my tabs only show me about 2 words, so I never see that title.
I take it you've never seen the photographs in those subreddits.
When I think about this it makes me think about Pompeii. The sheer delight we have at discovering the preserved minutia of everyday life -- but 1000 years old. Of course, if you asked those people what they’d rather have, I bet they would have taken being forgotten.

For most, embarrassing Facebook posts are not life and death or even career ending. But I’ve got to think that most of us want better control over our legacy, even if that’s an unrealistic aim. I’m not saying that archiving it is a bad thing, I’m just wondering what level of control we’re allowed over what the future thinks of us.
Startup Culture: A Team, Not a Family
Upcoming New Evo XI Edition
Shameless relevant plug: here's the site I set up for community curated startup books that are not free: http://hn-books.com

Features include searching for books by the problem you are trying to solve, one-stop cross-searching of all the hacker sites so you can review what other hackers say about the book, and free startup tools like a countdown clock for your startup's runway.

About the time I did my site there were a bunch more book sites created. If I had the list I'd be happy to post those as well. Seems like books -- both free and paid -- are always in demand with this community. I think the key feature here in all of these sites is "community curated." I find reading what other hackers say an irreplaceable aspect of selecting which books to read. (My list was generated by spending a couple of days on Google searching HN and reddit finding the best-of-the-best books for hackers)
The Next Big Thing in VC
Long-term: CPA: cost per action. You're a brand and run a campaign to make people do things? We can make you help that happen.

Short-term: premium paid app
If you check the donation levels, there is indeed a nixie tube version.
Again, the error you're making is mistaking patent law with the insane way patent law is actually enforced. Listen to "When Patents Attack," and you'll understand that non-practicing entities have been very successful lately in filling their pockets at the expense of the genuinely productive.

Patents are also not supposed to overlap each other. However -- and again this was made startlingly clear by NPR -- they do, and by the tens of thousands.

You're making the mistake of believing yourself to be in a world where reasonableness prevails.
It's a way to share data with a clojure application. And s-expressions are a pretty good format for data transfer so it's not a terrible idea to provide ways for people to use it as such.
Efficiently Managing Two Jobs (AKA working 16 hours a day)
If you say "Linux is stupid" or "Ubuntu is stupid" or "FOSS is stupid", you'll get the same response.
My take on tags
Top startup questions you should be asking yourself
http://fr.anc.is/2012/01/21/top-100-startup-questions/