skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And then we have Wal-Mart...

> "We were contacted about two years ago by somebody who runs a security company that had been asked in a request for proposals for ways they could link video footage with customers paying for their purchases," Albrecht said. "Wal-Mart would actually be able to view photos and video of customers paying, say, for a pack of gum. At the time, it struck me as unbelievably outlandish because of the amount of data storage required."

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/walmart/walmart-birds.htm

In general, an isolated video is not interesting.

It becomes more interesting and potentially scary once you have a digital, searchable, analyzable history of video customer transactions.

Reduce leakage/theft:

If a cashier has been already flagged and the customer matches up in the network of cashier's friends (Facebook?), possibly in conjunction with another theft deterrent system, be able for managers to watch in real time a potential leakage event (where they don't scan certain items).

Hyper-targeted marketing:

(New) wedding ring detected. Commence deluge of in-kind marketing partnerships with Home Depot, maybe even Crate & Barrel.

Customer over the past three months has been showing signs of possible pregnancy relative to their baseline body mass index. Somehow, non creepily, market to them via 3rd party mailing lists who had no idea how you learned she was expecting or more subtly by changing the default landing homepage of walmart.com to reflect more future mother when her cookie is detected.

Kids. If the kids seem hyperactive in the overhead view, email coupons for toys that appeal to ADD-type kids.

Over the last year of transactions, customer's head has been exhibiting signs of male pattern baldness. Send them targeted coupons for hats to see if they think its something they need to cover up.
> What constitutes research?

Gathering experimental evidence by having many different people from many different demographics read many different things, preferably under controlled conditions. Comparing the resulting statistics to comparable statistics regarding other writing systems. Analyzing the interaction between the human vision system and reading. Probably a dozen other things besides, some of which do indeed involve lab coats.

> How would Arabic look if you hadn't encountered it before?

Probably weird. Distinguishable as a writing script, though. Your point?

Anyway, assuming you're serious:

This script is certainly more compact than the Latin alphabet. It's also completely lacking in things like contrast, visual cues, and optimization for letter frequency. Furthermore, it's factually incorrect that the Latin alphabet was optimized for writing, and totally irrelevant that it was invented thousands of years ago.

Given that we have the Latin alphabet as a well-established and imminently functional existing standard, your argument simply aren't very convincing. Sorry.
Forbes optimizes for pageviews like Target optimizes for sales. They even emphasized the most emotionally compelling part of the story. And comparing the HN votes and discussion for this post vs. the original New York Times version, they chose wisely.

Perhaps Ian Ayres' book Super Crunchers would have been more widely read had it begun with the pregnancy angle.
IOS App: 'SiriLaunch' tweak for launch Siri from notification center.
It's still months away from release, we might see an option to put trusted certs in the keychain.
IAAL, and I think you should make up your own mind about what the agreement means. Personally, I think you're over-thinking it, but you shouldn't take my advice, because I don't represent you in this instance. It's a shame that something so simple has to be so dressed up by Apple's legal group in obfuscated language. I also fault Apple for deferring to its outside counsel on these matters. There's nothing stopping them from using plain english that everyone can understand in these agreements. Having said that, I read so many of these things, that I recognize 75% of it as pure "boilerplate" that is for all practical purposes ignored by everyone.
Apples hands exclusives to Gruber, WSJ, not NYT after iExposé
How are you migrating user data to Next? Or does it use the same underlying schema/data representations?
I think the results are very good for me. When I wake up using Sleepytime, I usually feel refreshed and able to do push-ups and some stretching early in the morning.

1) Just right before sleeping, check sleepytime
2) Set alarm
3) I wake up refreshed

Note: I have a very flex schedule, so this works for me.
As far as I'm aware, Tucows follows the ICANN dispute policy pretty closely. I've been a reseller with them forever (11-12 years?), and had a bunch of domains registered for clients which almost certainly would have drawn GoDaddy's ire, and never a problem.

http://www.tucowsdomains.com/tucows-domain-promise/
"A thoughtful, “registrant-first” approach to dispute resolution.
Tucows’ approach to any domain name dispute begins with the firm belief that your domain name is your own. We also have a full-time, dedicated Compliance Team to make sure these matters get the attention they deserve. We will not allow your domain name to be used as leverage in a dispute. We will not readily “seize” your domain name under public pressure as other registrars have done."

eNom is the other one where I know some of their management. They have killed some domains in the treasury table of deny orders, rather than going through the full ICANN process, but are nowhere near as arbitrary as GoDaddy.
The Alarming Rise of Jeremy Lin's Black Antagonists
The problem with your comparison is that the stakeholders of SOPA/PIPA are people who want to screw you. They don't care about your experience they want to make the most possible money off you.

I'd argue that to Apple the consumers are their stakeholders. They want to do everything in their power to make the user's experience better.

If we see Apple pulling apps of honest hard working people then I'll eat crow but in the five years of the iOS App Store how many horror stories do we have (if any)?

I will continue to give Apple the benefit of the doubt until they do something to make me question. So far I've never been inconvienced and only had a better computing experience since I got my Mac and my iPhone. That is why I, and many other people, will continue to use their products.
With a stylus, the predominant goal is likely to keep movement to a minimum. It may seem to you that a similar dynamic would apply to letters, but in practice it's not the only driving factor. Other factors like the ambiguity caused by sparseness must also be weighed.

> quite clear that if the alphabet happened to be recited in a different order, these dots would have the same progression but assigned to different letters

That is very far from clear. If you'd think for a moment, you'd probably be able to come up with about 10 patterns that could have been used, that appear about as deliberate. As mentioned below, mappings with and without patterns (many more without) were considered.

If you think you've identified a better pattern, post it here. I'd be interested in seeing it.
I know that :) But if one thinks Makefiles are complex with ugly syntax, CMake will be a revelation (more complex, uglier syntax)
They sure are disconnected; you've made clouds of dots instead of continuous shapes. Ponder the fact that a dumbbell shape is easier for a human to process and recognize than two disconnected dots.

On the other hand, if you're on some kind of a business-school inhibition-reduction assignment (you know, like "get up in public and say the stupidest thing you can think of"), then you're doing well.
That takes a lot more effort. Besides, most apps will be signed by the time it's released.
My intent isn't to bash Apple, I love their products and intend to use them for the rest of my life, provided they don't fuck it up.

I don't want to see them fuck it up.

Now:

>Thus, every pro media application distributed without sandboxing was LESS safely distributed than a sandboxed one.

First, they weren't less safely distributed, they were less safely executed. Nothing gets sandboxed until after it's been distributed. The only reason we're discussing both issues here is that Apple has elected to conflate the two with their MAS policies.

I'm only 25, and yet I've installed thousands of pieces of software during my brief time on this planet. Very few of them wreaked havok on my life, so you'll have to forgive me if I remain unconvinced that every single application I run must be sandboxed to maintain the stability and integrity of my system.

My contention is not that sandboxing, generally speaking, is bad for users. It isn't.

My contention is that sandboxing, as Apple has narrowly defined it, is impossible to implement in a large segment of professional applications as they are currently written.

Furthermore, if developers choose to eschew the MAS, users of their applications will be deprived access to useful new tools like iCloud file sharing for reasons that seem arbitrary at best.

Finally, in two weeks time when Apple begins to enforce regulations which will exclude these applications from MAS distribution, but does not remove VST/AU support from Logic Pro, Rewire support from Mainstage, or [insert your favorite hypocrisy here], they may be acting anticompetitively, which is bad news.
An Op-Ed on "Why China’s Political Model Is Superior"
As I indicated above, I think the reboot of Final Cut was well intended.

Having said that, I've had far too many conversations with far too many professional filmmakers and editors (I'm talking "multiple all-nighters every week editing multicam RED; invitations to Cannes; contracts to produce music videos for multi-platinum selling artists and promos for Fortune 100 companies" professional) about the weaknesses of Final Cut X to have much regard for the opinion you've shared here.

Ultimately, if the intended users are dissatisfied, then Apple missed the mark, any rationalizations from armchair analysts notwithstanding.

By the way, you left a complaint off your list: Zero compatibility with project files from previous Final Cut versions. Hope you've got some free time to recapture everything you've ever shot.
Easily Animate CSS with MooTools
At the very least Apple Legal is not comfortable shipping GPLv3 packages in OS X, even as binaries. This might be stupid - IANAL.

The GPL isn't the only other reason they might move more command-line functionality into a separate download - OS installation and download size is another.
Yeah. Sometimes the stats get it horribly wrong. I recently purchased new stove plates and burners and that's pretty much all they've been recommending to me for a few weeks. As though it's some kind of oft-recurring purchase or something? It seems to me, at least in my case, that they're missing a crucial piece of data (frequency of purchasing a particular product), and I expect it to eventually correct itself.

But in your case, I have no idea. Maybe try contacting them?
My list, in order:

- end the Wikileaks blockade; support free speech & individual rights not censorship & corporatism

- be clearer in your API documentation when certain features don't work in certain areas (e.g. recurring payments in Australia, several years ago, wasted nights coding, argh ...)

- allow me to choose a credit card as my default payment method; I know it's better for _you_ if I use a savings account, but _I'm_ the customer

- allow PayPal to be used for the purchase of firearms & related equipment
> I'm sorry, did you really criticize my logic on the grounds that it would not fit into a dialog box?

No, I didn't. I don't even know what you are referring to with this. I criticized it because it was a completely unhelpful response that would only serve to confuse users even more.

Are you joking? You're going to sit there with a straight face and argue that Apple should tell users that signed apps are a credible threat? Jesus.

> The fact is, the dialog box is intentionally deceptive.

No, it isn't. The app is untrustworthy because it is unsigned, and they are using a "signed = trustworthy" model. It's as clear as day and completely factual.

> Actually, the way forward is the direction we've already been going on.

No, it isn't. The way forward is simplifying interaction with computers. Arguing otherwise is completely idiotic, take any other example of technology in the world and notice that it advanced faster and more efficiently than ever before when it was simplified to the point of the masses being comfortable with it.

> where there are no gatekeepers interrupting their collection of punitive tolls on software only long enough to lie about the software they don't collect their 30% from.

They aren't lying, and they aren't imposing this on "apps they don't collect their 30% from" that is actually a flat out lie and you know it. Signed apps don't have to be distributed through the MAS. They can be distributed through the web, not result in that dialogue box, and not have to pay 30%.

Try again anti-Apple troll.
Been there, it's no fun. I spent last year making an HTML5 game. On the day we delivered the final beta, a silent Chrome update caused an error and all of our sprites started losing their z-index and thus flickering like mad. But only in Chrome, in the newly released version. I had to tell the publisher to use Safari or Firefox while we figured it out... Which was not what they wanted to hear.

That said, I enjoy developing for the platform and think the huge benefit in audience size for social games makes life on the bleeding edge worth the pain. These are the early days. It'll settle down.
Wow. I never thought of that, but you're absolutely right.

Uber is Netflix in 1997, sending DVDs through the mail to people's mailboxes, carefully awaiting the day when the technological infrastructure will support their true purpose.
Well, I'm 21, and I don't see it as a violation of privacy because they're choosing to publish the data (their purchasing habits) simply by making the purchases. I think it'd be naive to assume otherwise. Similarly, Google and Facebook track you to show you more relevant ads, and thus increase conversions.

That's not to say I don't find things creepy, but if the data is obviously collectible, you should assume it's being collected.
see my reply to beatle below.
> that installing from repositories doesn't.

You can add a repo though. You add a repo you thought was trustworthy or a repo becomes compromised, the end.

> So yes, Linux really does have the best approach here.

Nope, just another "blame the idiot user" excuse. Feel free to try again though.

Get over it. You're not going to alter computing with your Hacker News comment. The only real way to stop malware is through code signing. This isn't a new concept or something that Apple came up with, it has always been the case and it's about time we stopped pussyfooting around it.
You used to be able to get aggregated data for free at data.mint.com, but it looks like they have removed that feature.

http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/mint-opens-up-its-data-see-...
Everything is a Remix Part 4
Merely black and white? Sure, writing was developed when there was just black ink and parchment, but now even free (with service plan) handheld devices have rich color displays.

Convert each letter into the trinary representation of its 0-based ordinal position – 26 is conveniently close to 3^3, isn't it? Use each digit as a scaled R/G/B value.

So for example, 'a' is letter 0, trinary 000, HTML color #000. 'g' is letter 6, trinary 020, HTML color #0F0. And so forth.

Every one of Dotsie's dots can now be a whole letter! I can fit the full text of 'Huckleberry Finn', 'Pride and Prejudice', and 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' on my 1920x1200 monitor – and still have room for the 'Kama Sutra'! (Free Gutenberg Project plain-text editions, of course.) Yes, it may require a jeweler's monocle to read, but think of the space optimization.

The color-blind can join the blind in relying on braille.
Here's one way to "see" the actual wifi signal strength in an area. https://vimeo.com/20412632
If you've got a better mapping in mind, post it. It would be interesting to see.

Many things must be taken into account beyond just where the dots seem like they should go on the letters. However, there's a decent enough correlation on enough of the letters that I suggest it would be pretty easy for you to remember them. For example, A, C, F, H, I, K, O, P, R, S.
It's not really niche though, the entire Utilities and Dev Tools section of the app store are full of these kinds of apps that provide users with convenient management of data in predetermined locations, my own included http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/space-gremlin/id414515628?mt=...
If you're not aware why you're being downvoted - the URL of your submission goes there anyway, so you didn't need to post this. :)
> they aren't adding Macs to that list or doing anything else objectionable yet.

Ah, but they are asking me to cede power to them. To trust them with saying whether or not the majority of users can, by default, run software that I may write.

Sure, they haven't yet abused that power, but I find their asking for it to be a bit objectionable on its own.
I won't dismiss this outright. I do find it to be fairly interesting. If a system like this were to gain wide spread usage, I think many invaluable insights on reading ( and all those behaviors associated with it ) would be realized regardless of how effective a system this proves to be.
Programming Conway's Game of Life in APL
But they're unknown.
> You... really believe that adding a wordy "this guy didn't ask for our approval, delete program now" dialog box is "extremely ambitious"?

Is that what I said? Because I think I said that attempting to tackle the fear people have with their computers is extremely ambitious. This dialogue box is one part of a clear effort on Apple's part to do that, so I applaud it.

> In the only direction in which this is ambitious, is in handing over even more control to Apple, something which iOS showed us that developers for the Apple ecosystems are more than willing to do, no matter how draconian the terms.

Or that not all developers are as overly dramatic and full of shit as you are, but whatever.

> Other than that, it's just a harsher version of what every OS does already.

You mean those "other OSes" that are constantly under threat of malware? Yeah, I wonder where the idea came from that a harsher strategy would be better?

> On Linux, the custom is to write downloaded files without the executable bit... if you decide to veer from trustworthy or at least publicly-signed channels of distribution

Right. So in other words, on the default setting a user can easily install compromised software via a social engineering attack, or with a compromised USB key or other removable media? Great job, you've improved nothing and solved nothing.

> I don't see much of re-thinking of anything here, nor a liberating whatever for the masses.

Go figure. I doubt the Hacker News community could identify improved user interaction/reduced user anxiety if it bit them in the ass.

We'll make a deal then. Apple will do this, and sell more Macs than ever before. You'll insist they'll should do otherwise, throw a fit when they don't, insist users are idiots when it works perfectly and sells like gangbusters, and then act like it didn't change anything and was no big deal when eventually this is how all desktop operating systems work.

Sounds good? Ok, break!
Communicating via serial port on an iPhone
When I first watched this Leonard Susskind talk about Richard Feynman (link and transcript below), I assumed the sentence: I actually don't think Feynman would have liked this event. was referring to that entire TED event.

I'm still not totally sure. :-)

But really Susskind was talking about the talk he had just given.. the general pattern of Paying Humble Deference To A Great Mind.

Of course, the Susskind talk is actually really really great. But there does seem to be a lot of baloney in the TED proceedings lately.

http://www.ted.com/talks/leonard_susskind_my_friend_richard_...

So I think I'll just finish up by saying I actually don't think Feynman would have liked this event. I think he would have said, "I don't need this." But how should we honor Feynman? How should we really honor Feynman? I think the answer is we should honor Feynman by getting as much baloney out of our own sandwiches as we can.
Are you dense?

It's unfortunate for users, rational beings who, having spent several hundred/thousand dollars on pro applications, can generally expect not to be served malware. I don't really need Apple's assistance to ensure that Ableton doesn't sell me a trojan. If they do, I have my lawyer's number in my phone, we know who to sue, we've got it covered. It's unfortunate that the way the rules are currently written, no pro media application will be able to take advantage of iCloud functionality…except of course the ones that Apple sells.

I don't care who Apple trusts. And if the answer to "Who does Apple trust?" is "No one but Apple," that says more negative things about Apple than it does about the tens of thousands of software developers, large and small, who aren't Apple.
Really interesting, I don't get it why everyone is so eager to shoot this down. Of course you can't know the benefits before you learn it. Also the pure dots present just the base system, typography and different typefaces can evolve from there with more aesthetics, redundancy, readability etc. I'm definitely up for it for science/entertainment!
Well, one way to do it would simply be to rename the field, then make/ant/maven, and then visit the error lines, especially if you can feed the compiler error messages back into your editor to auto-navigate. Not instant, but not intolerable.
Ask HN: We met on HN and built Like Secret, what do we do now?
Hello HN,

My friend Jesse and I met in late December (through a thread on HN, nonetheless), and after a month of coding, we launched Like Secret (http://likesecret.com/). We had a bit of a boom of users on our campuses when we launched (we're both students), but we don't know where to go from here.

Like Secret lets you pick the friends you are romantically interested in. If they pick you back, there you are both notified of the other's interest. If not, it remains anonymous. We know there are other applications similar to this, but we think we have the best implementation out there.

The anonymous component has made any sort of viral growth difficult, because users obviously aren't going to recommend the website to the people they want to use it.

So, in the interest of determining whether or not this is worth continuing to market and develop, do you guys have any idea how we might overcome the inherent marketing difficulty here? Of course, we would love any general feedback about the site as well.
I understand. Without talking to the author directly we'll never know if he especially crafted it to be received that way.

Personally I feel this is just the authors genuine opinion/enthusiasm for this topic coming out on paper. I think he believes (just like I do) that this should be the "norm" and is a correct step forward. I see this as how I would have a conversation with my parents and explain to them why Mountain Lion is going to be so great for them. Obviously I would be crafting the conversation to lead them towards this being the "norm" because I think it should.

But again I am bias because I basically agree with the author whole-hardily.
In an ideal world (according to economists), this isn't an issue. In the world we happen to live in, basic health research is publicly funded. Maybe it shouldn't be, and research funding should be purely commercial, or philanthropic. But with public funding crowding out commercial and philanthropic funding, banning public funding for some kinds of research has a similar impact to banning it.