skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with others that Mashable is deteriorating in quality. However the bulk of their visitors, I bet don't come from "devoted" followers, but rather from search engines, I would venture around 75-80%. They're like a content farm disguised as a quality blog network. They put out 10-20 pages a day, for 4-5 years, and each page gets like what? 20 links, 20 likes, 20 +1's? That all adds up to high search engine rankings. At this point it doesn't matter if Mashable jumps the shark - they can just keep on putting on mediocre content, and it'll still rank based on their brand and authority.

I don't know if CNN knows that's what they're buying - they probably think Mashable has lots of "fans". They do, but it's not that valuable.. definitely not 200 million valuable. If Google gave them a site-wide penalty, their traffic would plummet overnight.
Good work, but I feel obligated to mention that, of course, this is all already built in to emacs.
There's something called "Cognitive Behaviour Therapy" which is a carefully controlled exposure to the thing that causes fear, with a lot of thinking and feeling.

Your example (Let's call him Bob, scared of spiders, and Ann, a therapist).

Ann would explain that Bob is in a safe space, and there are no spiders, and that she's not going to bring any out. Then she'd ask him to think about a spider. She'd ask him what his "hot thought" was; what his "emotion" was; and she'd ask how strongly he felt those.

Bob might say Fear, 50%; "I might get bitten".

Ann would then ask him why he thought that. Is it a reasonable thought? There's some discussion about the probability of being bitten, and so what if you are, and etc. She then asks Bob how he feels, and if it's as strong. Hopefully it's not as strong.

This continues each week; next week she draws a scribble (not even a spider) on a piece of paper; then a spider; then a picture of a spider; then a dead spider; then a live spider but in a sealed box; then a live spider in a box with the lid off; eventually building up to Bob being able to touch a live spider.

Note that all the time Bob is in control of how much exposure to spiders he gets, and it's all very gently progressing. CBT is a very effective treatment for phobias.

Compare this to "FACE YOUR FEARS" - Charles hates elevators, but he decides to face his fears. He goes to the mall. His palms start to get sweaty, his breathing gets faster, his heart beats harder. He's having an adrenaline reaction. He walks up to the elevator. He's really stressed now. He pushes the button to call the elevator. He waits. His stress and fear levels are pretty high now. The elevator arrives, and he gets in. It's small, and he's really panicked. The door closes, and the elevator starts moving with that little jerky clunky move they make. It goes up one floor. Charles is on the verge of a full blown panic attack, and is very uncomfortable. The doors open, and charles leaves the elevator.

As he leaves relief -endorphins- flood through him. He sits, head in his hands, so pleased to be out of the elevator.

All Charles has achieved is to strengthen his fear of elevators - now they're more scary because he's had a really unpleasant experience in one, and he was rewarded when he "escaped" the situation.

Your idea of a virtual computer driven way to introduce people to something they fear is excellent, but only if done carefully.
You might not be able to ignore leap seconds if you are interacting with an external system (software or hardware) / API that expects actual UTC. General rule applies to everything.. know your system, know what systems you are connected to, know what standards you need to adhere to.

Microsoft apparently rejected the idea of using leap seconds because Windows just isn't accurate enough:

The W32Time service uses the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, in Windows Server 2003 R2,
in Windows Server 2008, and in Windows Server 2008 R2.
...
The W32Time service cannot reliably maintain sync time to
the range of 1 to 2 seconds. Such tolerances are outside
the design specification of the W32Time service.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939322
If not marketshare, it certainly has mindshare. I just returned from China and if you're in any of the major cities, you'll see iPhones everywhere, on the bus, subway, restaurants, etc. And if you're buying phone accessories, iPhone cases dominate.
Homeless people used as WiFi hotspots at SXSW
fixing the monetary system - how about that for ambitious ;_)
Heh, I'm certainly not against static analysis and warnings. The library author is talking about not making locks re-entrant, though, which would mean that in the case where you accidentally try to use a lock that way, the program either crashes or deadlocks. That's the better solution?
I wish deployment to the iPhone would be as easy as to the Android. Why mess around with deployment certificates in the first place?
Apple Slammed Again Over Vulnerability Fix Process
I was not expecting this to produce so much interest. I guess a lot of people have asked about how to implement try/catch/finally in C++.
Kim Dotcom: Many Megaupload Users at the US Government
Switchable graphics do indeed suck. I returned a laptop because of it, despite being told specifically the model I ordered did not have Optimus hybrid graphics. But it's not unsolvable. It's problem with companies not supporting Linux. Nvidia just joined the Linux foundation and ways to accommodate switchable graphics are already being discussed. It rules out some of the newest hardware in the short term but I have no doubt it'll become a non-issue eventually.

>Linux won't be ready until you can download a file from the Internet, run it, and install it just with a couple clicks (and not "you need to set the 'exectuable' flag!" error).

The Software Center has long since solved that problem, as well things like apt links in pages and it's far better than what's available on Windows at the moment (download exe, allow exe to run, hopes it's not a virus/malware, manually update it often etc).

>Linux won't be ready until you never have to reconfigure the graphics driver from the command line upon boot.

For a lot of systems it's simply a matter of using the GUI in Ubuntu to check for and enable proprietary drivers. Again it's down to support from other companies and that appears to be growing.

>Linux won't be ready until you can run a system update and install a new program at the same time.

Installers can block each other on Windows as well. This point just seems like nit-picking.
Birth, life and death of Google Wave project
What the OP describes here is a common C++ pattern known as "scope guard" (check "Solution 4" in http://drdobbs.com/184403758). It was possible to implement it in C++03 with some tricks but C++11 lambdas make it much easier.

This is a very nice small implementation but, as always with C++, devil is in the details:

* Creation of an std::function needs a dynamic allocation, so if the allocation fails an exception will be thrown and if the finally is guarding a resource, the resource will be leaked

* std::function has a non-negligible calling overhead, hence this should not be used in performance-sensitive code

* Checking a condition inside the finally clause is not very elegant, a better idiom in C++ is to support dismissing a scope guard.

* The finallyClause may throw an exception, and since it is called in a destructor this is generally considered a bad idea. I don't know what could happen in this case, but some scope guard implementations I've seen catch the exception and explicitly call std::terminate(). I guess this is for performance reasons, because the destructor can be declared nothrow.

Here there is a more complex implementation, which addresses most of the corner cases:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/C9-Lectures-Stepha...
Microsoft releases Robotics Developer Studio 4, bring your own Kinect
Apple rarely, if ever, reply to catastrophic bug reports like this. Its part of their policy not to acknowledge problems until they're ready to fix them.
Microsoft cuts touchscreen lag to 1ms, makes other panels look silly (video)
I suspect both.
It has gotten a little bit easier with the XCode4 Developer console, but yeah .. the certification process is one hell of a way to weed out the truly devoted from the casual.
I have not looked at this framework in particular sorry, I was only really commenting on JS vs. C# here.
I +1 you. This is sad indeed. Imagine all those wannabees setting up websites with minimum content, couple bloggers, plastered all around with ads.

on the other hand - does anyone know Mashable's profits?
Yes, definitely planning that for April. We're happy to meet teams individually or just talk on the phone if that helps too.
Being evil is not necessarily a crime, but now we've got both problems covered :)
You're not making the world better though. Evil people will ignore your warning, and, if you're releasing as open source, people who are serious about licenses can't integrate your code with other stuff because of the "weird" license that doesn't make sense (who gets to define "evil"?).
How was Google supposed to do that? Flash (still) doesn’t support WebM, so there wouldn’t be any fallback. Google surely isn’t arrogant enough to make YouTube videos not accessible to more than half of the browsers out there.

There was and still is no realistic way for Google to switch to WebM. Not exclusively. (Yes, they can also encode their videos in WebM but h.264 versions are always necessary.)
There's a common mistake - assuming "evil" is a crime. (and it's obvious counterpart, that "good" can not be a crime)
The Father of Video Games
Discover (the characteristics of) every item in the universe.
Help wanted: Tech companies searching for talent
A "real" user proves Windows 8 fails on the desktop
美容护肤
This is a very real issue, that's why there are no Android apps.
>Bob might say Fear, 50%; "I might get bitten".

That's the weird (or is it common?) thing - I'm not afraid that they will hurt me or bite me - I realize that they are mostly harmless (at least where I live.).

I just find them... repulsive. I don't know how to put it differently, I just think they're ugly and unpleasant.
8 Incubators Being Set up in Singapore
I’ve done this before, and this version has a significant flaw: it is not exception-safe. The destructor should not read as it does:

~finally() {
finallyClause();
}

This allows exceptions thrown by finallyClause() to propagate out of the destructor, which, if an exception is already being thrown, will result in a call to std::terminate(), causing the application to die horrifically. Because C++ kinda-should’ve-but-really-doesn’t have checked exceptions, we must simply discard them:

~finally() {
try { finallyClause(); } catch (...) {}
}

You can also avoid problems with exceptions and std::function’s dynamic allocation by using a template instead:

template<class F>
class finally_type {
public:

explicit finally_type(F f) : function(f) {}
~finally_type() { try { function(); } catch (...) {} }

private:

finally_type(const finally_type&);
finally_type& operator=(const finally_type&);
F function;

};

template<class F>
finally_type<F> finally(F f) { return finally_type<F>(f); }

This can be used like so:

void test() {
int* i = new int;
auto cleanup = finally([i]() { delete i; });
may_throw();
}

Finally (har!) the equivalent idiom in C++03:

void test() {

int* i = new int;

struct finally {
finally(int* i) : i(i) {}
~finally() { delete i; }
int* i;
} cleanup(i);

may_throw();

}
Why do hackers keep breaking software?
Bloomberg signs NYC 'Open Data Policy' into law, plans web portal for 2018
Peter Norvig: Tweaking Bayes' Theorem
In Peter Norvig’s talk The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data, he describes a translation algorithm based on Bayes’ theorem. Pick the English word that has the highest posterior probability as the translation. No surprise here. Then he says something curious.
> All this is just another way of saying that rarity creates desirability.

Hmmm. I notice that the iPad3 pre-orders are sold out. Hmmm.
I think the answer is more along the lines of seclorum's reply. Ops people in self-respecting companies are always watching.
10 Optimization Secrets To Drive More Mobile Traffic From Facebook
Retrieving Clear Text Wireless Keys From Compromised Systems
Microsoft shows off universal translator that preserves your voice
IAmA Employee of a state lottery with intimate knowledge of the industry
Got to say, been using Ubuntu for 3+ years now, never encountered anything like this.
Thanks for this post, it's very informative!
Awesome, very well done! I'd consider reworking a couple of your comparison table headings, maybe something like this:

"iPhone only" -> "Supports all smartphones"

"Participants need the app?" -> "Participate without [installing / the app]"

"Max participants" -> "Unlimited Participants"

This purely subjective on my part, simple because I think it's easier to read a list of "YES" answers, and compare against the competitors's "NO" answers :-)
Show HN: Project tracking software that doesn't look like a 4 letter word
I get your points. In general, the use cases for this pattern are not production code. The post points out this is not a good way of handling resource and that the example is about debugging. It would be up to the implementer to ensure the finally clause does not throw and exception or to catch it (I think there is something about nesting).

As for memory allocation failures, my experience is that depends a lot on the platform. It is a common misconception that dynamic memory is likely to run out and therefore we need to worry about that but not automatic memory. However, I have seen stack overflow many many many more times than a genuine 'out of memory'. Further, if an application has actually run out of memory so badly that a allocation of the closure's internal storage barfs then I suspect it cannot be retrieved. Naturally this does not apply if your platform has a very low heap size (e.g. realtime hardware or some such).
What #6 on Hacker News means
Creating Structure In An Unstructured World
Many thanks. You are the second commenter to provide this feedback, I'm going to change the table right now :)
Make?! Are you serious? It already is. Currently Firefox is just using Flash to play h.264 videos, not OS codecs. There is little practical difference between those two things.

This was always about booting h.264 from its position as the standard for publishing video on the web.
I think IBMs concern was them being held responsible for their customers actions, rather than that they were concerned they might directly do something Crockford considered evil.

An amusing anecdote none the less!
Courtesy @llimllib:

"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” site:http://code.google.com
yields 35k results, they’ve got a lot of banning to do
So far the comments seem to be negative. Just want to say congrats to Pete Cashmore. I don't know him and don't really read Mashable. But, I'm sure him and his team have put years of their lives into making Mashable a success. When he first started, I bet he never imagined a day like this would come. He made it happen. Good for him.
That is really nice. Could you expand on how this works a little "You can also avoid problems with exceptions and std::function’s dynamic allocation by using a template instead:"
Scary Things I’ve Done That Could Have Killed My Business (& Some I’m Gonna Do)
Ralph Baer's Odyssey, an interview
Shortest Path Tree
No. Rather seems to be a _part_ of work that got them to sell for $200MM. Mashable has executives with very deep connections. I say this was more important.
I don't think any of your responses justify or explain the lack of documentation. MS is inviting developers to their new OS and Win8 now has a customer preview, with the developer one being out for a while. Pointing to a potential situation where MS might be criticised over hypothetical changes still doesn't negate the criticism of the very real problem of missing information right now. I find the idea that this can also be explained away by a desire to surprise/woo customers totally absurd given the release of installable Previews of the entire OS.
JSMin isn't welcome on Google Code
Indiana Jones goes geek: Laser-mapping LiDAR revolutionizes archaeology
Linux won't be ready until you can download a file from the Internet, run it, and install it just with a couple clicks (and not "you need to set the 'exectuable' flag!" error).

We're talking about Ubuntu, not all Linux distributions. And in Ubuntu, that works fine: try downloading any .deb and double clicking it.
Ctrl+Alt+Compete: a new documentary on the startup economy.
Here's a VC4404 manual which shows the key layout/functions:

http://vt100.net/volker-craig/vc4404-um.pdf
New iPhone with 4G LTE launching later this year, report claims
It's a legitimate criticism that you can't install software while updating your system.
Holy crap he needs an editor.

"Gamification works - give people things to find / build / collect / modify; then count those things; then allow them to display those things; and display your counts too."
In my experience: cheap inkjet printers are a nightmare on anything except recent Windows versions. If you want to use a printer for anything other than recent windows versions, don't buy one. Pony up and buy something better.
This reply hit so very many of my buttons - it's either a brilliant trolling, or incredibly unfortunate

What a glorious way to lead into an equally valuable comment.

First off - rather than address the content of the original commenter I quoted, the first thing you do is go after his credibility.

Unsupported, undetailed, unsubstantiated claims by an unknown person working doing who knows what at an unknown company. HEY EVERYBODY WE'VE GOT AN EXPERT HERE! See if someone says "a product claims that it has 128 shader uniforms but it really only supports 64", name and shame it! Why are these details always so astonishingly vague?

Battleheart's developer confirms that they has the luxury of just developing for iOS. And by making this cut, they're signalling they no longer care if the Android market follows him.

They strangely have yet to either withdraw their products from the Android market (which ultimately they should be forced to), or even make a comment to prospective buyers. But they have very loudly pandered to the Apple audience (this story has appeared on every single Apple blog and news site), eliciting sales in the Apple sphere by essentially going after the illusory foe.

This quote calls out BROKEN APIS YOU CAN EXPERIMENT WITH RIGHT NOW.

Where? What?
痘痘告诉你哪里生病了
Who and/or what defines "good" and "evil" for you?

I see the list of you-may-nots on your site, but those also aren't (a) conclusive and (b) strictly defined (what constitutes an 'extreme' position, etc?).

It's evident when certain articles are posted on Hacker News that even this crowd's diversity in backgrounds, experiences and morals vary over quite a range.
I am reminded of a simile from _The Manchurian Candidate_: about as effective a rubbing a jar of vanishing cream onto the flight deck of the USS Enterprise would be in making the carrier disappear.

(Quoted from distant memory--may be the wrong carrier.)
If there's a workable solution for supporting codecs in gecko via a system license, why not use the same method on the desktop? Why fragment the engine?
Top 5 business ideas for 2012
I'm using 11.10 at home, and when I download a file from the Internet as a .deb, it will install from the Ubuntu Software Center (but not if an update is running). If I download it as anything else (.sh, etc), it needs to have the flag set manually. Unfortunately, quite a few installers come as .sh for universal compatibility.

Most recently, installing VMWare tools I ran into this. Granted most consumers won't be installing VMWare Tools, but you do run into the issue of "what format will your software ship in?" .deb? .rpm?
I was quickly skimming the article but then I stumbled upon my project management mantra:

"A lot of peo­ple think that the first out­ing with a prod­uct is the prod­uct but the truth is more com­pli­cated. Whether you are going out with a min­i­mum viable prod­uct or some­thing more com­plex, there comes a point where one has to make the call as to a prod­uct being “good enough” for the mar­ket­place. And “good enough” for any­one who has poured sweat and tears into a prod­uct is sel­dom what comes out of that first product."

and I had to read it, top to bottom. Best ten minutes of today's internet.
I agree with you.
Browsers are alot like operating system. They are all good for basic tasks but once you get into it, some are good for different tasks.

IE10 metro is fast and has a great UI. But it lacks flash and plugins.
Some people will switch to FF to use the plug ins. Some people will use Chrome Metro (They will eventually build one) to use the Google account integration and app store.
So at the end of the day Browsers are just like any other app. Whats the big deal?
That's not weird. Very many people are repulsed by bugs for the same reason - bugs are just horrid.

But, if you wanted to work on it you'd be able to get to point where you wouldn't freak out every time you saw a bug and it would only take a few weeks. There's probably something online to help guide you through it.
I think you'd have to take a slightly different approach for use in the car..unless you had a mount for your phone on the windshield.
Command Line Methods to Completly Delete a Hard Drive in Linux
So it this same story going to go front-page every single day for a couple of weeks?
> But, the most important thing I take away from this license is that this additional clause adds an unnecessary complication…

The standard (and correct) response to this is that if you don't like the license either don't use the code or negotiate (as IBM have done in this specific case) alternate terms.

> one that many people don’t even know is lurking in their dependency tree.

That is a due diligence failing on the part of those people, rather than a problem with this specific license. If you don't know that this clause is relevant to your dependencies then what else might be hidden in there that you are unaware of?

A bit like the "blue M&Ms" (and other such) found in the riders for celebrities, they do that as a test to make sure people have bothered to read the information provided rather than any real need for the specific demand to be complied with.
Sure, I quoted that particular line for a reason; I don't disagree with the rest.
Have fun with your jailed platforms.
Examining the NBA through spatial and visual analytics