skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually, at work i try to send restructuredText + a neatly generated .pdf.
Looks better, is easily editable.

As one of the few Linux/LibreOffice users i HATE(HATEHATEHATEHATE) .doc and especially .docx. It's a nightmare to work with and collaborate on it between MS Word and LibreOffice Writer. Something always gets screwed up.

Please, Office people in the world: Uninstall the nightmare that is called MS Office. LibreOffice will do everything you will ever (everevereverever) need.

And if it doesn't have to be WYSIWYG: restructuredText is a pretty, awesome, lightweight, cross platform, easily editable solution to a lot of crap that i can find in my inbox (including rst2pdf and rst2odt and rst2html, etc etc ;) ).
Big news for IPv6: Akamai to launch service in April
Relevant: http://xkcd.com/688/
This could be neat, but it needs some work on presentation. You can probably reduce the height of each commit entry by 2/3 if you switch to using a 20x20 gravatar, get rid of the hash, and truncate the commit message to the first 50 characters. It would also be great if you could find room to stick the "52 week participation" graph that shows up on your user page (but not sure if there's an API for this, could be tricky).
Help make GIMP operations better (GSoC 2012)
> How could there not be a few Death Stars inhabited by English-speaking humans somewhere in one of those galaxies?

I know this is just a tongue in cheek comment, but I actually thought it somewhat reasonable until recently when I spent a moment with the numbers and saw its impossibility.

Basically, there's only ~100 billion galaxies with ~100 billion stars each (to an approximation of several orders of magnitude...), while the space of possible societies, languages, histories, etc, grows exponentially.

Even if there were 10^100 stars, log_2(10^100) is still only about 330. This means all those stars can only accomodate 330 forks in history where it could have gone one way or the other with equal probability. Or, in computer science terminology, all those stars can only encode 330 bits of information. And describing English alone takes far, far more than 330 bits. (Depending on how inevitable language of a certain type is.)
Fusion idea that I've always had. Why can't we scale up a something like a car engine's piston and cylinder to be 1000's of times bigger and explode hydrogen bombs in it to move the piston up and down?

I know it sounds kind of absurd to think about but it seems like it would work to me. Can anyone explain why it wouldn't work? Is it just a cost issue?
Me neither. A lot of what I do (proposals, specs) requires multiple people making simultaneous changes to a document.

I do however not have to do the edit-email-edit thing. We use SharePoint at work, which lets all of us make changes to a document in realtime.

This works inside and outside the company. The partners we typically collaborate with authenticate using identity federation. It works really well for us.
Regarding:

Paypal isn't used much by European websites, other than the ones targetting the whole world

I completely disagree, in England most websites allow the ability to Pay Via PayPal even specifically stores which only sell to those in the United Kingdom.

Referring to the economic region of Europe, and the fact that we all have our own banks and...

What I would like to see is a universal payment provider with the same reputation as a regular, trustworthy bank

Well PayPal actually is a universal payment provider [1] as it has a European Union banking license and is regulated as a bank by the CSSF where it was previously a Electronic Money Issuer which was approved by the FSA from 2004 until 2007 when it moved to Luxembourg. Actually because of that, UK customers aren't able to obtain legal redress from the company in UK Courts.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2808982/PayPal-be...
ITER won't produce any stable power at all, so they most likely mean something like "A single run of ITER will consume about half a gram of hydrogen while having a peak output of 500MW (for a few seconds).
I thought that, but I now think it means in a single run, using just half a gram of hydrogen, the peak output power is 500MW, it would be helpful if it also mentioned how much usable energy was generated too.
Updatny - Android rss feed reader app
What use would this have?
I hate this list. It should really be called the Ten Commandments of Good Little Worker Programmers. The 'commandments' are all about creating nice friendly programmer cogs that work smoothly together, minimising hassle for their employers.

There's nothing there about programming as an art. There is nothing there about pushing the boundaries of what is possible through determination, vision and, yes, ego. There is nothing about solving complex technical problems through sheer force of will.

To hell with 'egolessness'. Why shouldn't programmers have an ego. And, indeed, doesn't it take an ego to do anything great, to think that preposterous thought that you can do something no-one has done before.
Goldman Sachs to implement electronic bond trading platform
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Beta Frustrations
What is Economics? A Definition of Economics
Exactly. This guy is being dramatic. People love to hate Zynga; this guy could have written a number of boiler-plate complaints about Zynga and HN would jump on the chance to get to talk about how evil this is all over again.
They have millions of companies posting twitter messages and they provide analytics and other tools for businesses. I think they need a lot of people at call centers, support department etc.

All we see as users is 140 characters + apps https://twitter.com/#!/download as there is nothing to ask about :)

Look at http://business.twitter.com/ they have more than just 140 characters.
Why does a maximized window have the wrong window rectangle?
Show HN: Automated online workout logging with an Arduino
Yeah, the plan for ITER is to produce 500MW over 1,000 seconds, with an input power of 50MW (and 0.5 grams of deuterium-tritium fuel).

The current record is, like, 10 seconds and no one has broken even on input/output power...

Edit: Ah, actually the current record is less than 1 second: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Background
Seems pretty similar to Betterment or a host of other providers (Personal Capital, etc). All these guys rely on the same thing: low-cost, large ETFs and the use of modern portfolio theory (MPT) to put together a balanced portfolio. The problem with all of them is the same - following MPT in 2007-2008 would have gotten you killed. All that being said, getting people to save and invest in general is a very good thing - so maybe there's the true value of the idea.
I bet you're wrong. There is nothing more than just a container, a space and memory hog, that word processors and Adobe suites provide. I believe that HTML is far more powerful than currently tapped.
Why don't they use open source accounting software? I am sure we could recommend a few packages ;-)
And my axe! errr I mean my $0.99 as well.
SQL Server Database Backup and Restore Database
While working with database we need to store our information time to time. and for that purpose we take the backup for that database. Backing up a database provide many solutions for us. The main thing is if we lost our database from SQL Server then we can restore our database from our computer.
Generate energy, use the piston to drive a giant generator.
It's true that sometimes the best tools are free, but there are a lot of organizations where you are not allowed to use even those free tools as they are not approved by some legal or IT department. The fact that those tools are free doesn't make a big difference for BigCo types of organizations.
Monorail.js Release 0.9.8
Surprised to see a post of mine here on Hacker News. (First time in a long time. Thanks!)

Feel free to ask me absolutely anything here.
Put yourself in your boss' position and imagine he had to turn around and pitch your idea to a VP. What ammo can you give your boss to make that next-level conversation go smoothly? How does this new tool solve some problem the VP has been on your boss to solve?

Mention a competitor or partner company already using this tool successfully. Tell him what business metric will be positively affected by adopting the tool.

Timing can be critical so watch for the perfect moment to pitch your idea -- like ahead of a management meeting where your boss needs to talk up what your group is working doing.

But above all, be honest about the costs, benefits and alternatives. Good luck.
High school expels student for tweeting f-word
Looks like those sun gamma rays haven't been following their diet.
I don't see how it is useful.

a) The first instance of Berklee shows the full name, which isn't "University of California, Berk(lee|eley)".

b) It consistently says Berklee in the article, never Berkeley, so there's no confusion caused by inconsistency.

c) Your comment implies that the author is an idiot who can't even spell the name of the college he attended; which is impolite at best.
Real Madrid vs Apoel Nicosia live UEFA Champions League March 27, 2012
Real Madrid vs Apoel Nicosia live UEFA Champions League March 27, 2012
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App Store Numbers (My Experience)
Open Rights Group Conference 2012 - Some Interesting Links
> With a modern context, I'm not sure where I would even start. I'm proficient with a bunch of programming languages, none of them seem as accessible as the BASIC code above.

Core Tcl (i.e., that portion which a child would be exploring in his/her first introductions to programming) is very close to BASIC in accessibility. Core Tcl has very little syntax overall. Compare the Tcl/Tk code above to draw on a Tk canvas to the BASIC code for the same. There is nearly a 1:1 correspondence. And Tcl/Tk also gives the added advantage that when the children gain a bit of proficiency, then can also easily create GUI's for their code snippets and apps. The GUI's they create may not be beautiful GUI's, but they would be "their GUI's" that they created with their own efforts.
Do You Have a Goal Oriented SEO Strategy?
Samsung DV300F – A camera with new options « StartupTunes
I don't think anyone knows how much 'usable' energy ITER will generate (plus, ITER won't be a power plant -- the heat produced will actually be thrown away -- so I guess we won't ever know.)
Single molecule circuit controlled through quantum interference
I find the "saves money" routine a bit transparent. It deprives your boss of the satisfaction to have contributed something important. Let your boss save the money, get the tools you want or need.

How? Simple, compare two solutions, write up advantages and disadvantages and present them. Since you have already made up your mind, you're biased to the thing you want anyway. Your boss will usually see your point and make the right decision.
I would like researchers to publish their results instantly so that they are freely accessible through natural language. Like: give me all the proteins that bind this molecule!
I assumed by "research institution" he meant a university, which doesn't really care about "leaks" like Big Corporations do.

Then again, there are quite a few big corporations on Google Apps.
It's OK. It's a common confusion.

My senior year (at Berklee) the company that prints up our report cards sent them to Berkeley California.

Kind of an ongoing joke. ("Where did you go to school?" - "Berklee" - "Oh wow, that's really prestigious!" - "... College of Music." ".... oh.")
Sounds great except for the absurdly impractical parts (i.e. exploding hydrogen bombs to move a giant piston). Where would you propose expelling the radioactive gases after the first stroke of the engine?
Great writeup, thanks - always interesting to see how the other platforms and stores are performing.
a tenuous hope, I'm sure you'd agree.
Father of the email attachment
Taking into account the snark, it doesn't change the fact that you're presenting a false dichotomy.

Ungar isn't saying that we have to give up determinism. What he's saying is that to take advantage of massively parallel systems, determinism comes at a high cost.

Clearly, we can write programs on current architectures that are deterministic (well, perceived as such, at least) and we don't have to forgo that. But there is no reason to believe it has to be the only architecture. Ungar is looking at what happens when you try to do computation in a highly networked environment with low latency (like say, a brain).

Also, if you don't see it helping for the practitioner, perhaps practitioners aren't asking good (or enough?) questions.
Indeed. I suspect the anti-immigration, anti-drug, and anti-worker policies from large sections of the political landscape have sown the seeds of the destruction of the United States as surely as anything else.

I was reading Herwig Wolfram's "The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples" and he makes an interesting case that the collapse of the Western Empire a thousand years before the collapse of the Eastern Empire was due in large part to undue concentration of wealth in the West. Despite this, most of the book is about the rise of the Goths within the Empire as essentially a non-state armed force.

It occurs to me that the drug cartels are in a similar place to the Goths, although they are arising in neighboring countries rather than our own country. They are, however operating on both sides of the border and so have a tangible presence in US border states. Perhaps these are all similar as well?
How startup StereoGrid helps artists get the most out 'leaks'
The sort of documents that need to be reviewed are usually in a prepared-to-print format, plus the amount of garbage that would accumulate in an email after 10 reviewers would be horrendous.
I'm not sure why we're still pursuing the incrediblly difficult and expensive route of fusion when thorium is simple, safe, inexpensive and incredibly abundant.
A little off-topic, but HN gets so many slideshows posted so I have to ask this: Why don't any of these slide sharing services have a decent "all on one page" option, or a powerpoint-style outline view? (this one has some SEO-text of all the slides at the bottom, but it's not very readable) I really hate clicking next-next-next through individual slides that are pointless when you don't have a presenter talking.
> So what is "evil"? Can a company be evil?

An interesting point, made by a friend [1] recently at dinner: companies can't be evil.

Companies can't love, they can't be loyal or caring; they can't be malevolent or heartless. Only people can be those things.

What we mean when we label companies that way is that their employees have acted that way. It's ethical hackery to absolve someone of malevolent acts because they were in the service of an abstraction. We may still continue using that sort of short-hand, but it's important to remember that at the end of the day, a company that's being "evil" is really a bunch of individuals that are collectively and actively making decisions to hurt others.

1) http://twitter.com/tilladam
FAQs for Silent Updates in Firefox
Twitter for Small Business
One of the things that I do is help designer/UX folk understand developers better (and vice versa). There's a fascinating little exercise that I do that involves showing folk some screen mockups and getting people to write down the important details.

From the designers you get things like descriptions of the visual hierarchy, guesses as to what people want the user to do most/least, comments on why fonts were chosen, comments on the grid and vertical rhythm of the page. Questions about why some functionality is there, etc.

From the developers you get lots of comments on the what the features will be doing, pointers to edge cases that the UI doesn't handle, comments on the complexity of implementation, suggestions for features to be added, things that they personally prefer (as opposed to designer comments about what the user might prefer), etc.

They're all very detailed oriented - just different details. Getting both groups some idea and appreciation for the other folks details makes everybody playing nice together much simpler.
Xss security bug in for 4.1.11 core and possibly 3.8 on youtube
The SEO text is auto generated by Slideshare. Download the PDF and things should be easier to skim. I try to make my presentations make sense online by using "sticky notes". But you certainly have a point.
Darn it.. Sometimes i wish i had found a teacher like this. i.e: someone who could teach at my pace and not the class' average pace.
Derek, wow you were a driven kid! What lead you to be in such a hurry to get through school?
Funny this was down voted on the same day we have this article on the front page: Bill Gates: We need crazy energy entrepreneurs

Perhaps we're part of the problem? We should discuss radical energy ideas, teach others what wouldn't work, and how to change them, not poo poo them.
My points:

1. No one stops you from keeping "zone" feeling during lockout, you can just drink something (what actually helps to think a lot is to drink regularly) or sit for a while with closed eyes thinking about problem, etc.

1a. I sincerely think that regular breaks actually help solving problems (at least in some cases).

2. Schools use timed breaks and in rare cases of interesting classes they do not discourage students to learn. Of course schools should be optimized more, I'm not arguing that.

3. Timed lockout is not target, invented just to prevent illness, it is also a method. Method to teach self discipline, even to begin teaching self discipline in some cases. No one will tell you how to optimize living when you'll grow up, that is why we read a lot of articles about people who burn out on a job.

Later it is insanely hard to go from super lazy, undisciplined student to focused worker.
Comparing five card poker hands quickly
I'm totally with you on this.

At the very least, if someone down-votes they should reply as to why they disagree. There a great sense of loss when you say something factual and relevant and get down-voted without explanation.

When I've brought these issues up in the past, the conversation usually resolves with "don't worry about karma." And, I don't, but it does change the community, and about that I worry.

Basically, the community will turn into whatever is rewarded. If you reward hive-mindedness, that's what you'll get. If you reward interesting discourse, that's what you'll get.
HTML5 Async Scripts
See project Orion.
Good point about the radioactive gas. I wonder if there is some way to mitigate that?
Yeah. I can definitely agree with all the points being made. It just seems at least in the Midwest college age developers aren't pushed to do anything innovative. Just get a corporate job, and 401k and be a company man the rest of your life. I think I may start looking for a new gig then. Life seems too short to play it safe everyday.
The fact is that it's much harder to train people who haven't had programming experience (e.g. biologists or medical doctors) to use this stuff. Word does the same thing pretty well (better imho, the reviews interface is intuitive), and has plenty of citation managers too
To put this image in further perspective, take a look at this link[1]. It blew my mind as I had the universe and observable universe all mixed up conceptually. For instance, the universe was not a point at the big bang: only the observable universe was.

[1] http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html
It's not even original. This has been tweeted by that celebrity (comedian) who starred in the movie Bewitched. his names is Will Ferrell
I was in a hurry to get famous!

I wanted to be a rock star. Ain't no fun waiting 'round to be a millionaire! Gotta hurry.
My favorite nugget:

" I run across kids all the time who say they want to be a great musician. I tell them I can help, and tell them to show up at my studio at 9am if they're serious. Almost nobody ever does."

I've learned this after so many years. Everyone talks about wanting to be successful. No one ever means it. Having someone just show up is a miracle.
It depends on your level of expertise and the type of tool. For instance, Sphinx to write documentation is free, but you need to have at least a desire to write in markup to create it, and I'm assuming that single-sourcing multiple user manuals with conditional text and variables is not exactly trivial. Plus, sharing the writing of such a user manual between more than one person requires the use of a third-party solution, a version control system, which also requires some training & expertise to use properly.

Where as, on the other hand, if you can convince your boss to dish out $200 a month per user for something like Author-It, you get an extremely powerful system that does everything an authoring tool is supposed to. That's what I'm trying to do right now with my boss, convince him to switch (not from Sphinx, but from another cheaper software solution called Flare), and it's not an easy task.
How about attaching text files then?
Why you can't sue your wireless carrier in a class action
I will blow my own horn, here, and say that every one of my students has heard of Emmy Noether, and a bit about her story.

I made it a point- following something like Eugene Hecht's lead in his (brilliant) Physics Algebra/Trig text.
I think the actual feasibility of man made annihilation is smaller than what it is made out to be by the media and entertainment industry. The two most popular ways that are highlighted are nuclear war or bio-engineered pathogen. As far as the first one goes, nuclear war will only eliminate the population centers and irradiate everything, there would be survivors and they would adapt to the conditions.

The second, a pathogen, is just as unlikely to get every last one of us. A virus with a 100% kill rate is highly unlikely. Look at Ebola, while weaponized Ebola would get a great deal of us it's kill rate is somewhere in the 90%'tile, I don't know the exact number but I know it is high and I believe that it is the highest. 10% of the earth population is still allot of people. Even if it is less than that, somewhere their will be a group of people that for whatever reason are resistant to the pathogen.

The only thing that I think is a real threat to our existence today, is a big piece of something floating around out there, deciding to slam into us down here. I don't think we have the capability to do it to ourselves. I heard someone say that it is likely that we will keep resetting ourselves back to the stone-age at a certain mark in technological progress, which I think is a little more feasible, but I personally believe that mans desire to cull different people is self regulation for whatever reason.
For the vast majority of us, technology is one component of the business. The rest of the business is about figuring out how to lower shipping costs so that we make more money per item shipped. Or how to deliver food more efficiently. Or accounts receivable software.

And none of those problems are, well, are particularly hard or complex, at least not enough in my mind to justify ego as you've portrayed it.

There are plenty of professions where people work just as hard (harder, even, including people in the knowledge-working industry) and do not complain nearly as much as developers.

There is a lawyer in our office who works very hard to ensure that we are selling wine in a compliant way across multiple states with different regulations. That person's job is at least as difficult, if not more, than my job writing python. But you'll never hear them complaining because we only have apple juice, rather than orange juice, in the vending machine.