skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't understand the thinking here: are they abandoning business users?

People use their computers in very different ways, and while a user may have a windows PC at work and an iPad at home, that doesn't mean they want to "do work" on the iPad. In many cases they actually hate the idea.

Secondly, I get the feeling that many windows users are still 100% windows because that's what they know. Microsoft seems insistant on forcing users to re-learn the OS at every release. I can't help but think this is what makes more and more think, "well, if I have to learn a new OS I should try out those apples/Linux that everyone loves to talk about". That can't be good from a Microsoft pov.
Often the tweaks are then used to inspire more solid mathematical footing. An interesting example of this is going on with the recent surge of interest in neural networks and deep learning at machine learning conferences. What used to be hacks and heuristics are being given a more rigorous narrative. Of course, as soon as we have a better model for neural networks, someone immediately finds a non-rigorous tweak to improve its performance. And the cycle goes on...
Find the jQuery Bug #6: Traversing Trouble
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I saw this. Really does show that for many people Windows 8 might be extremely cumbersome. I think this is Microsoft's hail mary.
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Use gift cards instead of registering a credit card. It's much easier to control the spend.

I totally agree with 'ad-free experience'; if I can't tolerate adverts in apps then I wouldn't let children see them where they will distract from the app itself.
Hacking Java annotations to build an authentication and authorization layer
I believe something similar was developed at CMU under the name ABBY. I wonder if they are the same; nevertheless, the CMU tech was impressive - real-time translation with voice characteristic preservation. We wanted to use it to develop a plugin for Skype for international business, but it didn't pan out. A missed opportunity in my opinion. However, now that Microsoft owns Skype, maybe we can expect an announcement soon.
(http://blog.stevenlevithan.com/archives/validate-phone-numbe...)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbering_plan)
Watchdog group reveals 'Enemies of the Internet' list for 2012
Could this be considered a weighted iteration?
One should often consider applying tweaks to a final system. If there's an obvious place to introduce a free parameter, it seems silly not to do so and cross-validate the parameter against application performance.

Things get out of hand if there are many such possible tweaks, or multiple components are combined, each with interacting tweaks. Then some principles behind the tweaks need identifying. Or at least a differentiable cost function to target.
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You don't have kids, do you? Small kids don't really understand money. When a parent downloads a "free" game, they expect it to be free. When their kid starts crying because they can't do anything without buying something in app, it pisses the parent off. Or, once burned, you have this scenario:

"Can I have this game, daddy? It says free!"

"No, honey, it costs money".

"But then why does it say free?"

"Because they're telling lies to you to try to get you to buy it."

You can't really avoid that conversation.

If you want to charge me for a kid's app - PLEASE do it up front. I've spent more money buying my kids apps than I have buying myself apps. It's not the money - it's the deception that game makers try to push on my small children. I can do without that.

*edit - the first sentence reads a lot snarkier than I intended. I should have left that out.
You can, but you lose the ability to see when the other person is typing when they don't have an iPhone.
But is the world ready for it?
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This is funny. A few years ago I read somewhere that we were expected to accomplish the "minority report UI" before the cure for cancer and that the cure for cancer should have been achievable in shorter time. Funny how hellbent we are on seeing it through as a society. Then I see this and I think, have cake and eat it too?.
My definition of competitiveness does not imply equivalence. For example, Windows and OSX are expensive, while Ubuntu is free. A free market would suggest that it should be slightly inferior since it is free. Each OS has strengths and weaknesses. The point of this article is to illuminate the fact that Ubuntu can be seriously considered as an alternative to Windows/OSX for the average person.
Ask HN: Are you frustrated by your storage devices too?
It seems that with each incremental improvement in technology, we always lose something. When we had floppy disks, they offered limited storage and were sensitive to environmental factors. But when they worked, at least they worked reliably.

Then came optical media like compact discs. They offered significantly more storage and were also a bit more robust (except when they got scratched). However, copying data to them was no longer a simple matter of `copy c:\foo.txt d:\`. Now we had to 'burn' the data via special programs. And because discs were non-rewritable, you essentially had single use storage media.

For the past few years I've been using a NAS drive at home. It's a good way for me to store my 1 Tb collection of family photos, videos, and music. But I'll be damned if my NAS drive and computer talk to each other reliably each time. On my wifi N network, the state of the mounted directories is still slow to retrieve. Copying data back and forth is annoyingly slow too. It has a built-in backup feature which just won't work.

Other people I know use attached USB drives. They are mostly happy with their experience with some exceptions. There are times when the drive will spin for minutes on end even though no application is using it. And then there is existential fear of misplacing the drive itself.

Do you feel the same way as well? Have you discovered something that eases some of these frustrations?
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Start8 for Windows 8 - Bringing back the Windows Start menu
Basically, all the points you mentioned also apply to Diablo and its a widely successful franchise.

I don't see the fun in playing Diablo 2 to level 99 as well, but there seems to be a huge group of players that do. There is a lesson for us developers in that :).
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Is there a way of stopping accidental taps on the lower part of the screen? Android is bad for this, with back/home buttons in the corner.

Perhaps some sort of elasticated non-capacitive fabric barrier wrapped around the device that can be moved when it's needed?
You think it's bad now, it was awful when it started out. There was little to no documentation, so getting an app on a device generally entailed clicking random buttons for a few hours until things somehow worked.
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Off-topic: I shall also name my startup after a Tube stop - I really enjoyed the city.
Also, which is better for kids - landscape or portrait? Has anyone seen a preference, or are all the apps landscape?
Do you mean a "ban" on scroll bars?
I've also had printer issues, particularly with OSX. Printer idiosyncrasies still exist on all platforms, but I'm not about to call OSX unworthy because it doesn't work with a certain printer.
I LOVE the points made in this post. I would two other observations:

1) Make sure your app has lightening fast response for touch events.
Kids are smart, they expect that when they click a button, something should happen. If it takes over 250ms, my kid thinks it's broke and will start clicking it repeatedly.

2) Always use "onTouchDown" instead of "onTouchUp" when handling simple presses.
My kid doesn't always release his finger after touching a button and when nothing happens, he thinks he needs to touch the button repeatedly. If the developers targeted the "Touch Down" event instead of "Touch Up" my kid wouldn't have learned this behavior.
For many new users, I imagine they would be starting with Windows 8 from scratch on a new PC or a fresh install, which surely provides a guided tour and lots of hints and tips.

No, it doesn't. At least not the Consumer Preview.

And that workflow only works for the very first person to use the system. It's defeated in any situation where you've got multiple people sharing a computer, and all using the same account. (i.e., normal computer usage patterns.) It's also defeated in any situation where the user dismisses the tour without even looking at it first. (i.e., normal computer usage patterns.) What they actually need to have Win8 do is automatically detect if it's running on a standard PC, and if so then have it default to the kind of user interface that PC users have been used to for the past 17 years.

I suspect that Metro is a great interface for tablets, and I could see even making it very easy to get to from PCs, for users who like it. But making it the default for PCs will be a dangerous and stupid move my Microsoft if they decide to stick with it. It's not just that it'll be confusing to users. It'll be that it's sacrificing the single biggest thing which ensures their continuing dominance in the PC market - familiarity. The interface on Win8 CP manages to be different enough from previous versions of Windows that it will feel more alien to their customers than the OS of their primary competitor, Apple. The last thing Microsoft needs to be doing right now is accelerating the rate at which Apple takes their customers by voluntarily jettisoning the primary reason why many of their users haven't switched yet.

it's clear from the video that switching back to Metro with the mouse is non-obvious.

And how. "Non-obvious" is like the official slogan of Windows 8. It's amazing how many things are non-obvious on Win8 consumer preview. When I first tried it (having not tried developer preview first), I found myself at a loss the first time I tried to find the control panel, get to the desktop, open IE in a Window (that is, get the non-Metro browser), get back to the Start screen from the desktop, close a Metro app, switch Metro apps, shut the computer down, open an application that isn't on the start screen (e.g., cmd.exe), add an app to the start screen. . . All of this might have been easy enough to figure out, except that I was sitting there looking at an OS named "Windows 8", so I kept (perhaps foolishly) expecting it to behave somewhat like the one named "Windows 7".

Long story short, Windows 8 is the first operating system since Unix where I felt the need to keep some sort of instruction manual close at hand while I was getting used to it. Even Unity felt less jarring to me.
Most apps that have in-app purchasing list "Top In-App Purchases" on the left-hand sidebar on the App Store listing.

If you go into Settings > General > Restrictions, you can set restrictions on the use.

* You can set a different PIN passcode

Optional restrictions available:

* installing and deleting apps

* set age limits on apps

* restrict in-app purchases

You need to enter your Apple ID to make purchases but it's worth deciding on whether to give a 15 minute window for purchases without re-authentication or to require immediate re-authentication.

If the kids know the Apple ID passwords and passcode, none of that will provide much protection.
According to that question's answer and comments, that definition is buggy (making it not quite a fair comparison). Here is a less buggy, more flexible version, taken from a comment:

(defmacro unless [expr & body] `(if ~expr nil (do ~@body)))
Greece defaults and tries to move on...
In Settings, under General, there are Restrictions that you can place on the device, including disabling In-App Purchase. Every app has their In-App Purchases listed in the store, so you can see which ones have them before buying.

More info on restrictions: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4213
If it's designed for young kids, and the in-app purchase is reachable in 1 or 2 taps, it is scummy.
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Comments from the IRC chat in the background says it all: "If Joe can't figure it out, Windows 8 will be the new Vista" :)
I will always bet on JS as well.

The games you're talking about here, however fall in to the category of casual games described in the article. So for more featured games, we'll have to wait a bit longer and mature the platform as we go, but eventually we'll get there.

Good point about the same code base. I forgot to mention this in the article, but the reason the programmers say "HELL NO" is that maintaining two different code bases is a nightmare. (Semi-)automatic porting is easier and cheaper.

But that might shift in the future, we might be looking at a time when the only version you need to make is the web version, even for non-casual games.
+ means you need to dial a code (an 'exit code') to call an international number. In the UK this is 00. The UK country code is 44.

To call the UK from the US you'd dial 011 for the exit code, then 44 for the UK country code. The country code for the US, and for Canada, is 1.
I seriously have no idea what Microsoft thought when they decided to abandon the start button.

They trained their users for nearly two decades to use the start menu and abandon it for a weird hybrid between desktop OS and tablet OS which ends up being neither. It's actually rather sad.

I am definitely going to skip this version of Windows and hope that Microsoft will come to its senses and realize that you can either have a Tablet/Mobile interface or a desktop interface but not both.
The Chosen start-up method. Pros and Cons
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The other aspect of design that needs to be taken into account is the size of the tap area - you don't have to make the buttons huge, but the responsive area should be larger for younger audiences and with more spacing between controls.
I believe you'll find his explanation in the dictionary, somewhere between "humor" and "sarcasm".
I would add that kids hold the side of the iPad. So don't count that as a touch.

In fact my daughter hasn't figured out to use one finger so if you can hack the touch interface to ignore stray fingers or hands that would be great.

Also if you ate presenting some kind of activity that two people could conceivabley do at once eg building blocks, moving shapes around allow two fingers to mover separate objects at once. The same thing with drawing.
> Because C++ kinda-should’ve-but-really-doesn’t have checked exceptions, we must simply discard them:

This would make the error pass silently, possibly leaving the program in an inconsistent state. It is probably better to call std::terminate() instead, which is what C++ does when an exception is thrown when another exception is active.
If someone had filmed me using trying to figure out how to eject a floppy disk from a Mac as a first time user, the results would have been similar - but the video would have been significantly longer.

Using a new operating system takes some getting used to. But first time use isn't the relevant metric for an activity which one will do for years and in which one engages for productivity.

The metrics should match the expected learning curve - i.e. F16's are not designed for toddlers.
The clause doesn't just make it incompatible with the GPL, it makes it not open source.
>Pretty much everyone I hand my Android Tablet to, when they're not used it. Will instantly hit the home or back button by accident after 5 seconds of holding.

I've had a Galaxy Nexus for since early January. I like the phone, but I frequently hit the home or back button by accident at least once a day, often while typing (e.g. while trying to hit the space key).

I let my son play with my Galaxy Nexus occasionally with a few apps appropriate for his age. Those buttons are a big problem. Things work out best when I hold the phone with him, with my hand strategically placed hovering over where the buttons will be in landscape mode. But an option to disable, or a hardware solution would be ideal.
This sounds like a pitch more than a comment. How do you differ from Appcodes?
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Problems created by a technical vocabulary
It's a such a crazy price, but we have seen similar purchases of blogs like TC recently.

Normally, websites are sold on the basis of a year or two worth of revenue - I am talking content websites, rather than services. There's no way that Mashable is making anything near $100 mill per year.
This is a Young Foundation initiative, who started the Open University, Which? Magazine, the National Consumer Council... They're dipping their toe into the IT space for the first time, but they've been doing social innovation acceleration in other ways for decades.
click the lower left corner.

It's functionally similar to pressing the old start button. though there's clearly some guesswork involved, since no start button is present.
I think in app purchases for apps targeting users under 13 is a really bad idea. Even if there isn't some dark premise behind it, I feel like an asshole every time I tell my son "no" I wont buy you extra {whatever} for your game at just 2.99. Kids games should be reasonably priced(0-5 dollars) and not monetize with ads or upsells.
Poking around suggests they are using a modified natural gas compressor. That doesn't give the pressures they are working with, but CNG, when used as a vehicle fuel, is stored at closer to 200 atm (which again, doesn't suggest that they are working at those pressures, but 100 atm isn't crazy anymore).
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There are indicators that apps have in-app purchases but most kids and parents don't notice them.

In-app purchases require you to enter your iTunes account password so it's generally hard to accidentally buy something. The problem is that once you enter the password to make a purchase (even of a free app), you stay logged in for a while (15 minutes?). A lot of parents have been burned by downloading a free app (requiring a login), then handing their phone to their kid to entertain them for a few minutes. The kid then racks up a few in-app purchases before the login session times out. Quite a few parents learn that lesson when their kid buys a $1.99 add-on, but the really scummy apps have $99 purchases.

I generally wouldn't worry about it. If the device is for a kid, they'll probably be begging for iTunes gift cards and will learn to budget their purchases. The only real problem is when mom or dad have their iTunes account tied to their credit / debit card and don't pay attention.
First read the Open Source Definition: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

Almost everything in there is dedicated to giving rights to the user instead of the other way around. In the end, even if a work is created "for evil", you can get the source code, change it and make it be for good. (Not to mention the whole non-discrimination thing is considered by some to be pretty "good" in nature)

Public domain allows you to do anything you want at all with the source material and the product never has to give anyone any rights, prevent discrimination, allow access to the source code, or do anything positive whatsoever. I can take the SQLite source code, rebrand it "SQLPeter", change it so it corrupts your data randomly, remove all documentation and tests and keep the source code from you and charge $1,000 for support.

The work itself may be made with the best of intentions, but the license (public domain) allows it to be used for more evil than the Open Source license would have permitted.
I'd like you to extrapolate on the software commodity quote.
Thanks for the reply iseff, it's always nice to hear from the competition :)

I totally agree that ASO is going to get huge. There is also an interesting "fight of tools" coming up, as there are many ways to organize the whole process, and no "right one" discovered yet.

For example our tool (http://www.AppCod.es) has a totally different interface from yours, and we offer a different set of functionalities (like for example the prediction tool and the keyword guessing module), while of course there is plenty that we can learn from you :)

What I also think is that a good tool should not only track your position in the store, but also help - at least a little bit - with your PR actions. Suggest & teach you how to get the word out about your app.

Cheers! :)
Can you trust a person you know only online?
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The problem with this license is that this phrase is simply there to be cute. There is no legal definition of Evil and I don't see how you can come up with one. It accomplishes nothing other than making the license incompatible with other licenses and adding uncertainty.
Youku to Buy China Online Video Rival Tudou in $1 Billion Stock-Only Deal
I get irked enough when a non-kids app keeps prodding me towards in-app purchases, I'd be pretty livid if I found out a for-kids app was doing it.
Impressive technology. But this doesn't really solve the problem of accurately translating from one language to another, with all the ambiguities of language, does it? I mean, as far as I can tell, the really hard part is completely transferring the meaning of something spoken/written in one language into another. Sometimes it's obviously just not possible (like certain jokes, etc.). Most of the time though, it's just very hard to do with software.
"Virtual Box wasn't capturing my Windows Key entries"

What the hell is a Windows key? Why would an OS be built to expect a special OS specific key?

To be honest, I know what a windows key is, but I haven't used a windows key keyboard in my lifetime.

I can get to my Windows 7 start menu by clicking on it, and failing that, CTRL-ESC will work. If there's nothing to click on, and I'm now forced to CTRL-ESC all the time, I can live with it, but it's definitely not something I would call an improvement.

I know there's a familiarization burden with every new major release, but I'm hearing about an awful lot of extremely inconvenient sounding issues with this one.

I wonder how hard it would've been to include an OS-wide "tablet mode" / "desktop mode" toggle.
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Re Matlab/ Octave:

I am an R to Octave convert. R has some great stuff, especially multi-type tables and a decent OO system for packaging complex analyses, but .... Octave rocks R when you have to come up with complex matrix oriented algorithms -- much, much more straightforward.

Also -- cell arrays are funky and necessary for string manipulation. I suggest not dwelling on their weirdness -- you may grow to like them.