skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is hilarious, but it doesn't take into account one of the major factors of online advertising, and that is branding, or brand awareness. While the official EA ad may not get as many clickthroughs, what it will get is subconcious eyeballs, and given enough impressions of the same ad in various formats, same EA logo, car, game title and branding, you don't need people to click on the ad to start to recognize that there is a new Need for Speed game available. It's similar to flooding the airwaves with a particular TV ad. The goal is awareness, which over time, can lead to a purchase, whether the person decides at some point to purchase online or offline. Maybe they're at GameStop and EA has placed an in-store display with the same EA Need for Speed branding. The person may have forgotten about the game, but walking in to this GameStop, they're memory is refreshed of it by being previously exposed to it through digital or television.

So in short, what's more important? Immediate click-through satisfaction or building real brand recognition that can show greater returns over time, mostly in ways not calculable?
I don't judge others for choosing to indulge a bit more and saving a bit less. I spent most of my 20s living exactly that way. It's a personal choice either way and only sustainable if you choose to live that way.

If you're forced to live that way due to some personal hardships, you'll only come to resent your lot in life and you'll just end up over spending as soon as you are able to again.
I agree with the flaws. I find it interesting that they stress that the phone-connected hardware is for lower-value transactions and higher-value transactions would get the larger "hardware security module".

I think the real goal is that it offers offline digital user-to-user transactions.
US Postal Service to Use Camels To Deliver Mail Due To High Fuel Costs
Problem is, most things on a sub (et al) are boring. Clean this, cook that, monitor this, listen to that. You would have to constantly be under attack with only brief respite to repair your ship. Listening to whales, cooking with lard, and mopping the floors wouldn't make a compellin... actually, people pay to do menial tasks in MMOs all the time right now. How many chefs were there in Runescape, or dedicated crafters in WoW?

You might be on to something.
Fork it!

(oh, and tap Shift key 2 times, not 4)

Take a look at the Source on Github which has been updated from the original I wrote for the NYT. It also now uses jQuery (NYT was dependent on PrototypeJS)

https://github.com/NYTimes/Emphasis

Its a nifty project to contribute to and I welcome updates and discussion.
That's why I just use VI. Ever since Nibs became XML there's no reason to ever use XCode anymore.

Seriously though.. XCode does suck. It's a miracle anyone has been able to write an iOS app, let alone over 500,000.. /sarcasm
User Acquisition: Viral Factor Basics
"Trusted" hardware for a monetary system in 2012 ? (Did the Yes Men create this site for April Fools?)

With the backing of a bank, it's possible to be anonymous, offline, and prevent double spends with standard user-trustable computation - really, I kid you not.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.46.4...
Project Glass by Google[x]
Perl 5 has nothing to do with Perl 6 development or even releases. Even after Perl 6 is released Perl 5 will still continue to evolve and grow.

At the moment Perl 6 specification gives a good evolution map for Perl 5 development. So you need not to have to ever worry about Perl 6.

Perl 5 is a solid language in itself. Perl has been amazingly useful since almost 25 years now. And anybody who denies this is simply trolling. Its useful for almost anything to everything. From scripting, to application development, to prototyping to building reliable applications in any domain.

Perl adapts to nearly every programming paradigm out there. Object oriented, functional, declarative you say it Perl has it. Its amazingly flexible, easy to learn and extensible.

You also get to benefit from the community experience and knowledge accumulated over years. You get the power of CPAN. There are also amazing resources to learn Perl.

Its a tool that you will never stop being in love with.

Those of us who have used Perl and pushed its boundaries to get amazing stuff done over years, even now can't write down words to describe its greatness. We can only tell you how great it is, but when you see it yourself you will know it.

But the position of any new Perl programmer is enviable to say at the least. He stands at the gates of a city which is going to take him to places he has never seen and experiences he has never been through. Most of them are going to change his life for ever.
Why Signup Processes Must be Dead Simple
> Assume for a moment a team of developers spend several months if not years doing infrastructure build-out to support the imagined CPU simulation system

Huh? A CPU simulation is not that complicated a task. If it takes Notch several developers and years of time, he's definitely doing it wrong.

> active and interacting with one another at all times.

Yes. That's a solved issue, mostly. It's a large task, but it's not an unsolved problem. (See e.g. social networking sites. Humongous amounts of people interacting with each other)

The point is that you'll need to make some concessions to the realities of large scale when it comes to the game design.

> the closest anyone has got to offline simulation is effectively "event queue and timer" and not for lack of trying.

Funny. And here I thought Havok just gave a talk on physics in MMOs. (GDC China).
and then multiply that figure by 3.14 to account for running around in circles
Meet the Active Couch Potato
Yes, they have disabled parts because NVidia was having serious yield issues that generation and didn't have enough perfect chips to make a product line from them. If you want to be an AMD partisan, just say that NVidia cripples their cards because their silicon engineers aren't good enough to get acceptable chip yields without doing so.
Quote: By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals.

I would think that by 2007 Larry Wall would have seen DrScheme (now DrRacket). You can't get a better onramp than that.
Switching to polymer notes, too. Someone needs to investigate these happenings!
Bret Victor's interactive programming idea is real
Seems like the Firefox guys got inspired by Bret's talk for JavaScript development! Looks amazing!
Microsoft hasn't had any problems with their development tools that support rather archaic languages.

The problem is solvable; it's just that making a decent developer product is not a priority at Apple. Provisioning is another example of terrible UI. And then there's their crappy command line/scripting support (for integration into a CI server), and their horrible developer portal web interface. The entire developer UI and usability experience is downright embarrassing. And to cap it off you have the typical Apple unhelpful or misleading error messages, including the most common and my personal favorite "An unknown error has occurred".

Ugh... my blood is boiling already, and I still have another 10 hours today with this shitty tool to look forward to...
Flickr Adds Photo Editor, Powered by Aviary
Hey alain94040, I didn't have time to test for CVR :( It would mean split testing demogrpahics/bids and possibly even landers. The point that everyone should take home is just to test every idea that comes to mind :)
Draw Something Beats Out Angry Birds for Top Paid App
Paul Ceglia, Man Suing Facebook, Asks Judge for Time to Dig Up More on Zuck
Booting Up: Groupon the Defensive Edition
Now That Taxis Will Have Cellphone Charging Stations, So Should Everyone Else
Soon, the iBrain May Read Your Thoughts
Want to startup? Learn to code.
I find it ironical to read this comment on HN.

What's the fuss about HN? What aren't we having this discussion on redit, or digg, or 4chan? Or metafilter?

Software and specially social software is not a list of features. You could replicate Twitter's functionality and that wouldn't make people leave twitter.

Instagram has build a solid community, and that is what social software is all about.
Well put. There's certainly a lot of that, and even worse it can often seem like a competitive advantage.

But there is good work being done, like http://ourchoicethebook.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD8Zrruo6fE and there will be more in the future.
Groupon stock sinks to new low, investors sue
16 of the Top 100 Paid Kindle Books Exclusive to Kindle Store
Ask HN: would this project make me a terrorist in the law enforcements' eyes?
I believe SOPA went down in the toilet thanks to the publicity the issue got. If we all wouldnt oppose, SOPA would be shoved in our throats and we would be told it taste like a well-made steak.

I was thinking about web-development project where it would be easier for people to come together and oppose something they are against in an organized and sequenced way. I think web, as a tool, would be a great medium!

Let's think about SOPA example. You would import ways to contact with senators, corporation representatives, etc, people that are against. Then everyone whos willing to join the chain to protest again would sign up. System would assign a block of time to each user when and where to call and complain about the issue at stake. Once the use is done, he would flag it in the system so next person can be assigned.

Now, if this would get enough traction, could LE shut it down and consider me a terrorist??
In the spirit of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", has anyone verified this?

Problems:

1) No mention on the Royal Mint website that I can see. News releases seem to normally be on http://www.mint.ca/store/mint/about-the-mint/news-releases-7...

2) Whois should probably point to Royal Mint, not this person's house, and not to a hotmail address.

Administrative Contact:
Zaykova, Vessela
vessyz@hotmail.com

Address:
131 Camelia Ave, Ottawa, Ontario, K1K 2X5
This is a suburb. Streetview: http://bit.ly/HMFiMB

3) Domain is registered through GoDaddy, which IMHO is a bad sign... like having a hotmail address ;)

4) Site T&C say the site is operated by ChallengePost.

ChallengePost has been listed on techcrunch: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/challengepost

ChallengePost.com has their domain registered through GoDaddy though, so perhaps I'm wrong about that signal :)

5) No mention on the ChallengePost blog at http://blog.challengepost.com/

6) Vessela Zaykova does apparently work for the Royal mint though, according to http://ca.linkedin.com/in/vessela

So - very interesting news, an inadvertent early leak, or very elaborate hoax?

Oskar
A Clang backend means a LLVM backend, which I believe is a lot easier than extending GCC, and gets you support for all sorts of languages.
Google is, of course, free to do whatever they feel is best for the company, but I've always thought that social is very tangential from their mission, which is to organize the world's information. You can spin social all sorts of ways to cram it into the mission statement, but I think it's telling that they've never really obtained critical mass in the social sphere despite several attempts.

Now they're leveraging their most successful product to attempt to boost something at which they've historically failed. There's a huge risk in doing this; many tech people have moved to a new search engine to avoid the social focus and tracking, and while these people may not be the majority, I think they're ultimately the trendsetters on the internet.
Impressi only supports webkit based browsers
To convince people, come at them from different angles
Is there an official assembler for this yet, or shall I roll my own?
You can not rely on your kids to support you. I would not be making plans as such.

Be nice to your kids, and hopefully they will give you room and board in case of emergency -- but I've tried to help my parents many time only to regret it.
Has the quality of writing on Wired.com always been about that of a more poorly edited Time magazine or am I just finally waking up to it?
Well, do be really honest, I don't think there is much choice in the matter. With search engines and people focusing so much on personalization google would be left far behind if it doesn't have the friends' data to recommend you some place. It is, I agree, in its nascent stage at the moment and you would never know when it might get big. But whenever it does happen, google doesn't want to find itself lost and hence the focus on "social".
Without social, google is just a search engine from early 21st century; with it, one of the leaders in the dot-com world.

The facebook's valuation and ad model speaks for the importance of social.
Additionally, social is the thing where a customer would keep coming back to you just like e-mail.
To each his own. Owning a house =/= youth to me. I want to travel! :D
Just FYI, my family immigrated to the US when I was an infant and I've lived in the different parts of the US since then.

So while I had a mostly eastern upbringing, I still grew up in the suburbs, went to public schools, and lived a typical American life.
We've been logging client-side for a little while now, and while we have tons of log files filled with Facebook like buttons issues, it has been very helpful a number of times.

Of course, some browsers are of course less helpful than others (IE loves "line 0" errors).
This is covered fairly extensively in Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash. It even uses the same term for the persistent world "metaverse!"
Check out the Jot Pro for iPad. It simulates a full finger press using a disc the size of your fingertip, but the disc is clear, so visually, you're looking at the tip of a pen.

http://adonit.net/product/jot-pro/

It's fantastic with any iPad notebook app with wrist rejection. (Only downside: write in cursive otherwise it clacks.)
Groupon sued by investor over revised results, IPO
This is a big step backwards from the security of Bitcoin. All someone has to do is break open the hardware and extract its key (or take its key with a side-channel attack) and they can double-spend money. That's problem one. Bitcoin's entire byzantine protocol exists entirely to solve the double-spend problem, and it works, while this doesn't.

Every MintChip has an ID, and every transaction is logged on both the sending and receiving device with the ID of the other device. This means that if someone takes your chip, they get a complete record of every transaction you've ever made. In other words, it's not anonymous at all. That's problem two. Bitcoin solves this by encouraging users to generate a new address/private key for every incoming transaction, so that matching up addresses to people is hard.

It's tied to single physical devices which can be lost or damaged. This makes them unsuitable for storing savings. Bitcoin wallets, on the other hand, can be backed up securely.

Both MintChip and Bitcoin can be stolen if the attached device is compromised. Bitcoin is designed in a way that makes it possible to fix that, and developers are working on a fix: multi-signature transactions (so you have several computers, or a computer and a phone, and all of them must agree to any outgoing transaction). MintChip, however, cannot solve this problem in any way except with chargebacks, and the documentation given so far indicates that they aren't supporting that.
You should really look at the Sales Engineer positions I know are open at Asana and Mix Panel.

I've been looking at these because I'm about to graduate and have similar interests!

Links:
http://mixpanel.theresumator.com/apply/Eoh3qJ/Solutions-Arch...

http://asana.com/jobs
The World's Quietest Room: Nobody Has Lasted More Than 45 Minutes In It
5) IOS4 vs IOS5. Come on Apple, I am begging you to not
turn IOS into the next Internet Explorer.

I don't see how you can avoid this and without incurring the fragmentation you find in Android. We should expect Apple to continue with the measured iOS migration and sometimes not so subtle push to get us devs to move the bar forward. Interesting to see how Mountain Lion will force a move to XCode 4.4 (my guess) and Apple will bury the older SDK's ever deeper in their website.

I really can't fault Apple for this approach.

BTW, we rely on Flurry data to judge what the economic cost of choosing a new iOS target.
Years ago I asked my mother about her retirement investments (she's been a career stay-at-home mom, for which I was grateful).

She responded that she had eight retirement plans, and I was the oldest.
Emulating a very simple computer like this isn't hard at all; it's basically just a big array for memory, a few variables for registers, and a switch statement for instruction handling.
I tapped Shift 6 times and a nickel spit out of my USB drive. Amazing!
I am CEO of ChallengePost and this challenge is real: http://mintchipchallenge.com
http://challengepost.com/discover

Note how excited we are that the winners receive gold bars. -Brandon
Learning Haskell: Functions
Ask HN: How Do You Know About Upcoming Hackathons?
More often than not, I find out about hackathons either the day of or day after they occur. How does everybody else here keep track of upcoming hackathons? Is there any good "upcoming hackathons" website?
It sounds like what you want are Eclipse's workspaces. Try this help page: http://help.eclipse.org/helios/topic/org.eclipse.platform.do...
Fly Or Die: Nokia Lumia 900
For C++ and Objective-C XCode absolutely smokes Emacs with regards to code completion.

True AST based code completion aware of all of your constructs without hacks and kludges like ctags and the like...
Bellard's latest project
Increasing Ecommerce Conversion Rates
Google Uploads The White House
sweet. my country is a startup.
Please. As if anyone with half a brain couldn't see this ponzi scheme on the blowup train of doom. Who are these magical investors?
Youtube promo of how it might work (is this for real or just a concept? looks too good to be true)
http://youtu.be/9c6W4CCU9M4
When in ketosis, excess ketones are expelled in the urine.
true, but there are a lot of things you can catch with pre/post conditions in clojure that you wouldn't catch with a compiler in something like java.
Everyone would go crazy with the ability to check a news feed 24/7. I suppose we'd have to find a way to adapt to it as there are some pretty awesome advantages.
i'm not sure how developers overlook that most browsers on the web are NOT webkit. i'm not about to leave my FF nightly to test your app because you were too lazy to finish it, sorry :(

not supporting the latest browsers (and they are all more than good enough) is a shame. would be happy to test it when it works in FF though!
Nothing happens in IE. Not that anyone here cares...
Livehoods: Understanding cities with machine learning and social media
Livehoods is a research project from Carnegie Mellon that uses machine learning and social media to understand the structure and patterns of a city.
Interesting Finds (Code, Web, Silverlight, Security, Cloud Computing, ...)
The Business of Pricing Your Product
Give p4merge a try. We have a huge codebase, and I've found that p4merge, though not perfect, tends to do better than the default.

Another thing we've done to keep the insanity down is break our monolithic project into a few library projects to keep the project file merge damage to a minimum.
We've been doing this for a few years in our GWT app. We also keep a ring buffer of log events.

We don't have much noise, but we're using GWT's "unhandled exception" hook which I believe is driven by try/catch blocks on all entry points into the app. (i.e. event handlers - I think they just wrap callbacks before hooking them up.) So we only get exceptions that occur in our own code.

For us, the stacktraces are actually very useful (on the few browsers that provide traces). We dump a translation table from GWT's minification process and use it on the server side to de-obfuscate the stack traces. It works on all of the function/method names, but not local variable names.

The new javascript "source maps" technology should provide enough information to do this with any minifier or compiler. I'd expect your favorite javascript minifier to start outputting source maps in the next few months.
I was under the impression that the only thing they ever done is stamp new 25¢ pieces with different people / animal / commemorative events on them every year.
I do, i have a cupcake.

I have, but they kind of suck. my programming language snobbery makes it hard for me to use openscad. i keep meaning to write a haskell dsl to emit openscad, but i'm unbelievably lazy.
Stellarium (Open Source Planetarium)
Em. I have always thought that having 1 mln. $ and more is about earning more - not about spending less.
By the way, it doesn't mean you have to "work hard" - it's much better to work smart.
Unfortunately, if perhaps realistically, this assumes/presumes that "the system" -- and public authorities -- are your enemy.

Instead of seeking and implementing real, effective, restricted, audited governance, we end up promoting the opposite.

Mind you. I've no love for current fascist or neo-fascist tendencies. OTOH, I don't hold much hope for the typical (or, least common denominator) libertarian agenda, either.

I try to avoid politics on HN -- and more and more, in general. OTOH, from a societal perspective, one can fairly neutrally ask whether a society can govern itself, or not. The U.S. seems to be increasingly veering towards "not".
How To Increase Your App Revenue By 41.3% Without Doing Much
These are called WinerLinks, as in Dave Winer from over at scripting.com. The Times started doing this in 2010, here are his thoughts:
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/11/29/theNyTimesLeadsAgain...

More info here:
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/11/30/winerlinksAndOutline...

Note, that on his blog, he uses a simple, tiny # character after each paragraph to allow direct linking. No shift key required.
Perl 6 has very ambitious goals. One aspect of Perl 6 is it pays extreme emphasis on sane, safe extensibility. Perl 6 grammars are killer features. For all those people who wanted lisp like extensibility inside C kind of a language, Perl 6 will be a perfect match.

Given those goals, Perl as a language has a long bright future. Because flexible and extensible languages evolve their way out of time.

Compared to all languages in its class, Perl hasn't broken backwards compatibility since past 25 years. Python had to break it for some very simple syntax changes. Perl has never done it, not even once in past 25 years. That is quite a feat considering so much syntax has been added to the language since then. Perl 5 has also found a way to add more syntax without dealing with the core by modules like Devel::Declare.

So Perl evolution is set for many years. You will see it evolve grow. New neat ideas and many like Moose will find their way into Perl.

Basically what makes it special is its hackable, flexible and extensible. And such languages generally stay around for a long time.
(Love your metaphors/adjectives.)

Grammars aren't easy, but not currently no harder than XSD. Further, DSLs are all the rage. Personally, I prefer to use a pro tool like ANTLR to some in language voodoo with Scale (or some such).

LALR (lex/yacc) kicked my ass. Just could not understand it.

LL(k) (ANTLR 2.x, JavaCC) was a struggle. But I slogged thru it.

LL(*) (ANTLR 3.x) is a pleasure to work with. I really enjoy it. For example, the delta between SQL's (idealized) BNF and my SQL ANTLR grammar is very small.

ANTLR 4.x, currently in progress, will do left recursion, which I haven't played with yet.

I'm not too worried about adoption. My tools make me more productive. If my competitors choose to use rocks for hammering, I'm okay with it.

Lastly, I indent with tabs. Old habits die hard. :)