skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ten years ago, the web was HTML and CSS with javascript as a optional extra. It seems to me that the web has evolved into a communications and app-delivery medium where HTML, CSS, and javascript are all first-class citizens. I understand why some still block js, but I think this will soon make as much sense as blocking HTML.
"Very often websites that don't work without JavaScript have serious design/privacy issues, which better be fixed even if no one disabled scripts."

I'm not sure I understand your logic here. Many sites use javascript for advanced features not possible otherwise. I don't see how not working without javascript equates to privacy issues.
Turns out that unlike FOSS software that runs on your device, apps which have a server-based component can only be offered as "Free as in Beer" & not "Free as in Freedom" services.
The OP missed the point: it's a passive aggressive way to get you off the site and hope you never come back.

Then tell us that. I'm serious, I'd rather get a "fuck off" message than one assuming I'm an idiot.

Nobody is saying you have to support non-Javascript users. The author is saying that if you want to support us, then get it right.
> ...is that these topics are ones that anyone who calls themselves a front-end developer will need to be familiar with

I don't know about that. With Github you profess that experience with git is necessary to take advantage of "the rich open-source community that has arisen around front-end development technologies" – but that's not true. Explain how downloading the repo as a zip is slower or less advantageous than opening Terminal and typing commands – while I'm already looking at the Github project page in the browser? How would a purely front-end developer tell the difference?

> At the very least, you should be aware of tools like UglifyJS or Closure Compiler that will intelligently minify your code, and then concatenate those minified files prior to production.

In what world? This grates on me because it looks to be little more than grandstanding. And I hate grandstanding. What if you're coding with RoR or any other language with a sophisticated asset pipeline? Ugh.

50% of the techniques/tools you mentioned could be replaced or removed entirely without much issue in any front-end developer position I've encountered – in fact, this rigid brick layering of relative experience may even be looked upon as negative to an employer as it's clear that you are unwavering.

> that I wish someone had done for me in the past.

I think it's great for you to catalog and share, but to declare your list as the defacto baseline is ridiculous and presumptuous.

> Good front-end devs know to prefix any search engine query with mdn

Yeah, not an ego-derived rant at all.
So the posting to Facebook/Twitter/whatever is done automatically, one-click? I can see that being appealing and simplifying things some. But I'd hardly call the old process cumbersome.
I think you're underestimating the amount of work that is required to cater for those with JS turned off, each new feature would need to keep that in mind, it would need to be designed for and UX tested. Scenarios where you wan to rely on javascript need to have a fallback, each change needs to be tested in a noscript environment.

In my opinion with the multitude of great new JS libraries (particularly knockout, backbone etc) and JS browser features we're going past it being as simple as progressively enhancing your site. If you are a startup trying to do things in a lean fashion it must be hard to justify.
I don't know if anybody uses proprietary tools to minify and obfuscate their javascript. We all use the same minification tools, with different features selected. Seems like most people use YUI compressor, or one of the others listed here http://compressorrater.thruhere.net/. I assume Google is using their closure tools (which I've never played with myself).

It's a lot easier to reverse-engineer the site than to build it from scratch yourself. You won't get all the comments, and some of the names of functions and variables and whatnot may lose their semantic meaning in favor of shorter names. But yes, it is trivial to unminify the source and work through it. If it's 10k+ lines of code, that's never trivial to understand and get it all in your head, but the concern is absolutely valid. If you think minifying/obfuscating is securing your code intellectual property, you're fooling yourself. It's like security through obscurity... it's not really offering you any protection.
رفع المستوي في المزرعة السعيدة
Robert Doisneau the French photographer “100th birthday”
I disagree with movie theatres, mice, and phone numbers. Phone numbers are convenient as a primary key for people and are already ingrained in our consciousness, why would we get rid of them?
Movie theatres are more about the common experience, and I think will continue to be so. The author misses the point, you don't go to watch a movie, you go to the movies. It's so ingrained in our culture and has grown to be such a bigger thing than just passive watching. When it comes down to it, people like lining up and hanging out with people for something exciting and new. Look at Apple releases and video game releases, people still line up and dress up to go do things collectively.
And mice are just more accurate than touch and less cumbersome for navigation.
I have yet to see a share of your revenue for enabling Javascript. Oh, you want it all to yourself?
Kaleidoscope (YC W11) launches on iPhone
> if we're talking about writing experiences for those with JS turned off, isn't that the same as having to write code for an IE6 experience?

Not quite: the major issue with IE6 is that it fucks things up by providing partial implementations. A no-scripted browser "just" provides no scripting, static content and styling are perfectly handled just not additional behaviors.

These are very, very different situations.
If that site is the case, then lack of maintenance will have reared its ugly head long before a lack of Flash (or, the inclusion of it) broke their site.
* Invasion of privacy - that's a big one, yes.

* Obnoxious and gratuitous animations - yep, that too.

* Pop-up/floating/video ads - static or near-static ads are fine. However, if it covers up the content, or makes a noise, it can go die in a fire.

* Badly-written scripts, or pages where there's half-a-dozen+ streaming video ads, can bring my creaky old laptop to its knees.

* There's a possibility (albeit small) of security holes in the browser's scripting engine.

* Personally, I consider graceful degradation a metric of the quality of a website - if it craps out without good reason, that reflects poorly on its owner, and is going to make me suspicious of the quality of their product.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all that spring to mind for me at the moment.
Isn't this what is known as currying[1]?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying
> Let me let you in on a little secret. We don't want you. I'm dead serious.

Then say that, don't be a condescending prick. It's ok if you're not interested in that part of the market, just buy a pair of balls and say it.
Ok, so presumably somewhere in the vicinity one per mille of total users online. Actually more than I thought, and no doubt an important demographic for some types of sites.

I guess the only way to know how relevant it is to cater to noscript users is to measure how large a chunk of potential customers your leaving behind relative to the cost of fixing your site to work without JS.
Imho you cannot approach the issue just from a pure numbers point of view. For instance, one big portion of the people browsing without Js are disabled people working with screen readers and such.

True Story: I worked for a while on a website where users would upload and share tutorials on various topics. As the company behind it grew, it had the genius idea of selling print copies of their best tutorials. At some point, we were looking for a Python tutorial to publish. We select our favorite one, get in touch with the author and were genuinely delighted to find out that he was blind, accessing our app via screen reader.

He went on to publish a book (last I heard selling at over 10 000 units in less than a year topping Amazon's sales in its category). It was our app (the general focus on accessibility, independance from Js was a big part of it) that allowed this cool blind kid to publish a best sellers book. The odds of something like this happening, clearly, aren't very high, but when they do it's instant gratification for the developer who worked on making it accessible.

If you're too hung up on numbers and ROI, think of all the benefits the company got from the positive exposure it gathered from the press around the incident. In any case, unless the core of your app is in JS, it's always a good idea to provide alternatives.
These terms mean different things in different places, but I feel like "data science" is much of what software engineering was supposed to be before a bunch of monkeys in suits attempted to commoditize our work: an apolitical arena where smart people thrive on the basis of their ability to solve very hard problems.

I joined a company where I had the option of working in data science or on "architecture". Since it was small, I figured starting in architecture early on, and moving into data when they had more (data, that is) was the way to go. Big mistake. So. Fucking. Political.
Ospriet: an audience moderation app built on Twitter
I think what the poster's implying that a website not working without JS is indicative of an incompetent team, though I might be reading him wrong.
My freshman and sophomore years, I was taught Java... the rest of undergrad and grad, I was living in a world of C and Matlab. I have no idea why it was taught in that order, and I think they're in the process of fixing it, but I remember my first C course when we started doing pointer arithmetic... quite the experience!
I agree with that, that they are very different. What I'm saying is, if you're going to start coding for minor audiences – where do you draw the line? And how would you explain to your client/employer that you will take extra care to make sure people with no JS get love but IE6 users get Chrome Frame/redirect?
This is slightly off topic, but the reason I never started using Instagram is related to the reason I quit Facebook: the continuous stream of ego-stroking, look-at-me status updates and photographs was just tedious. The narcissism in all these updates, check ins, and shares is unbelievable.

I can fully understand why Instagram was worth $1B. It enabled enhanced ego-stroking because it took tedious photographs and made them look like they were cool without any effort.
I suspect that watch could last maybe a few days without charging. I am quite tempted to get one however if it needs to be charged every few days it might be annoying when traveling. I already have to carry enough cables when I travel.
I used to be a Noscript user, but I just got sick and tired of clicking 2-3x as much as usual, just to get every page to load correctly. Normal process:

-Page loads, great

-Click on something but it doesn't respond

-Shit, probably JS

-Click NoScript, see a list of sites

=This is where is really gets good=

-Stare at the list of sites noscript is blocking on the page, arbitrarily unblock one that 'seems' like it would be hosting the code that runs the thing I'm trying to fix, based only on domain name

-Refresh the page, try clicking that thing again, if it doesn't work, repeat the process

I wasted many hours of my life on that process, and what did I gain from it? Security? Not really, since I would randomly enable sites to run JS. So I uninstalled it. Worst case scenario, I get a virus and have to reformat, and lose an hour or two. I don't have any important data on my hard drive.

So, Noscripters, are you guys just really concerned about security or is it a psychological thing - as in, it feels good to be able to be the boss of your browser and tell sites whether or not they can run JS?
Please do this! I had to zoom in quite far on my 13" mpb just to make the site comfortable to read
> I think you're underestimating the amount of work that is required to cater for those with JS turned off

This is highly dependent on a number of factors, mostly:

* The kind of site we're talking about, if this is a real-time chat application it makes sense that it can't work without JS, if this is a company site or a presentation site for an appstore application with an embedded video and you can't make it work without JS you don't know what you're doing.

* Whether this was considered from the beginning or whoever built the site just went wild with javascript without consideration.

And even in the first section of the first case, if the unlogged account-less front page can't work without javascript I'll probably still think you don't know what you're doing.
> The "Gawker Experience" (white page, nothing of value is lost)

Bingo. Since I first installed NoScript, I've started noticing a correlation between how gracefully your mostly-static website degrades without javascript and how worthwhile your content is. Those that fail completely rarely have anything worth looking at on them anyway.
If you've got JavaScript disabled, no one is interested in catering to you. You are the pathological customer in the ad-driven content consumption world of the Internet. It's impossible to make money off of you.

Sure, you enable JavaScript but you don't disable AdBlock and so now you're just consuming resources and contributing negatively to the site you're visiting's bottom line.

I understand the myriad justifications for disabling JavaScript, but I don't really care. There aren't enough people with JavaScript disabled to warrant giving it any attention.

It's the same with Flash. If you don't have Flash, I will show you how to get it, but I'm not going to spend the time telling you why you ought to get it, because I don't care to argue the point. There aren't enough people without Flash for it to be a concern.
Privacy and security (XHR and CSRF are still two of the most common security flaws on websites) is definitively one of the reasons, but I think the most important one for me is having the habit of keeping (many) dozens of tabs opened - and sometimes opening a dozen or more within a few seconds, like when reading HN - while using a single-core 1.6GHz laptop. Heavy JS can bring it to its knees.
It's not. HashMap<K, V> works exactly like Hashtable with regards to equals() and hashCode().
And by the leg work you mean omit instructions on how to enable java-script?

Seems a little silly to me, if you know java-script is disabled then you should just ignore the link.
well, look who's talking about innovations, rofl
For what it's worth, Larry Rosen argues that use of a unmodified GPL'd work, as specified in its API, doesn't necessarily create a derived work.

In my opinion, this question won't ever be put to rest since it's about specific cases, law and human interpretation. It matters quite a bit about what the GPL'd work is, what the application is that uses it, how they are related, and the public intent of both parties. While some lines may form in the future, the boundary of safe use itself will always be a bit blurry.
Apple delivers Flashback malware hunter-killer
Most people watch video's and surf the web even without installing apps. This takes a lot more processing power than you might think. What they don't use is the GPU, but that's a small fraction of the cost of an iPhone.
I think that means Instagram succeeded because iOS camera app (unlike Android camera app) was crappy. That is, it mainly fixed iOS deficiency.

Is that the right interpretation?
Wow, thank you for sharing this. I love when Chrome obviates the need an extension to do something simple like this!
Sure, you enable JavaScript but you don't disable AdBlock

I'm the opposite: I run NoScript but not AdBlock.
I think your comment is fully on topic. We're talking about how Instagram grew to be worth $1B. Its appeal or lack thereof to you individually is part of the conversation.
I don't think they are falling into obscurity -- last I talked with people there, Sensha is quite profitable and growing rapidly.
If the stolen stuff gets yanked post haste, wouldn't that suggest the system is being active in removing copyright infringing material? That a system allows you to post copyrighted material should not matter.

I can easily post copyrighted material here on HN that I don't have permission to post.
Seems like there's a lot more entertainment potential than military.
I don't find it that difficult to work out which items need unblocked, TBH. If I can't immediately tell, a brief dabble with the document inspector usually reveals it.

And it's not just about security: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3836601
No it's not, because if the Flash object is invisible, it simply does not give you any way to enable them unless you go to the preferences and explicitly add an exception.

This was my entire point in the first place, if you look up at the beginning of the thread. For example, turn on click-to-play and then go to pandora.com. If Chrome treated Flash the same as Java, you would still be able to use pandora easily.
In practice it's <2% on average per site. But at this point I don't view it as any extra effort. It's just a different way of approaching my development workflow. And it might just be a placebo, but it makes me feel like the site functions are more testable and compartmentalized.
'Monolith' Object on Mars? You Could Call It That
You can do just fine with C++. Or Java. I have taught new programmers using both. I think you can do better with Python, because there's less initial friction. I'd rather not have to tell students to ignore "public static void main" because there are several concepts in that phrase alone that I'd rather they not worry themselves with. I want them to focus on developing the ability to think algorithmically.

But, as I said, you can still do this just fine in C++ or Java. I think that people tend to place way too much importance on the first language we teach students. What matters far more is the quality of the teaching itself, and the relevance and logical progression of the projects the students have to solve.
The only (semi-) good justification I've seen is someone who was very pro-OSS who said they would not use proprietary JavaScript.

It was still kind of a shit justification, but I couldn't poke any holes in it.
Spotify for iPad - WOW
This thing is awesome! Unofficial app, but it looks great. Has that metro ui look and feel that just kicks ass.
Many people don't understand the distinction between client-side and server-side. Javascript typically runs on your computer. I know that it seems to be out there on the Web, but it's not. It's running locally on your computer. It's using your CPU and your memory. It's important that normal people understand this.

Edit: We disable Javascript because we don't want other people running code on our computers without our consent or knowledge while we browse the Web.

Edit2: Here is some Javascript to peg a client's CPU (this can be malicious or accidental, but either way it's why I run Javascript blockers):

<script type="text/javascript">

function burn_cpu(y)
{
var x = 0;

while ( x != y )
{
x = x+1;
}
}

burn_cpu(99999999);

</script>
What I think many Instagram critics misunderstand, is that Instagram is not about the filters. Sure, they're added value for many people, but at some point they'll go out of fashion, and I'm sure the people at Instagram know that damn well.

The real value of Instagram is the social network behind it. Photos are the easiest way of sharing what you're doing. You don't need to write a word, you just hold out your phone, snap a picture and upload it. And from the other side it's exactly the same, you don't even need to read to know what your friends are doing, you just glance over the picture stream.

Obviously you can do exactly the same on Facebook and Twitter, but by focussing on just photos Instagram has cut away all the clutter. And if you want to share what you're doing (or should I say seeing?) with friends who are not on Instagram, you can still flick the sharing switch.
Think about it this way: previous generations conspicuously consumed "brand X" for the same reason: to show off. Now we can "show off" without consuming. In my book, that's progress. I'm not sure it makes us happier, though.
Short answer: not necessarily

A good JVM contains optimizations, which makes it cheap. For example, it will try to allocate the object on the stack instead of the heap. Apart from field initialization, this costs nothing, because the stack pointer probably had to be changed anyways.
It took years to convince the wider commercial technical community to so much as expose portions of their source code, regardless of license. It's invaluable for bug identification, security auditing, and general programmer education. I'm glad they're sharing it under any license, and I hope your attitude does not become more widespread.
"My prejudiced view is that it's such a small part of the population it's not worth caring about, though I'd be glad to be proven wrong."

It also depends greatly on the kind of web app you are making. If your audience is highly tech-savvy then caring about noscript population will increase your userbase.
Apple said to be prepping ‘revolutionary’ new product for launch this year
Why? What is so bad about Java that it makes learning it so bad as a first language or as a introduction to programming?
I have to agree completely: math and science just hasn't been cool and it's ostracized not just girls but I bet a hell of a lot of boys as well. I dropped out of my extracurricular science/computer classes as a teenager to maintain my social reputation, and I know I'm missing huge pieces of knowledge because of this.

What's changed? Well, computers are pretty cool now. The high school I mentor at has the hippest computer class I've ever seen, the teacher is an enthusiastic woman who drives the energy of the class and lets them focus on what interests them while directing them towards genuine learning towards what should be amazing careers for all of them. It's seriously encouraging and I have high hopes for a better gender balance in the years to come.
I don't see how not working without javascript equates to privacy issues.

Stuff like including Google's JavaScript by linking to Google's servers equates to privacy issues. The fact that some websites don't work (at all, don't even render) without external scripts is a design issue. These issues often come hand-in-hand, but no one said that one equates to the other.

Also, if your notion of "advanced features" includes rendering of text and images and working links, you might consider re-thinking it.
WordPress: How To Create Custom Permalinks To Use In Your Plugins The Easy Way
In this tutorial I will be teaching you how you can create custom permalinks. We are going to write a simple plugin to demonstrate how to do this.
Show HN: NewsWire, A better news reader for the web (mobile soon)
What about Wagyu beef? I see outrageous prices for that in Las Vegas. Is that legit?
Likewise. AdBlock feels slightly scummy to me - it's going out of your way to subvert the site's business model. NoScript doesn't automatically discriminate between ads and content, which feels... fairer.

In fact, if I like your site, and it happens that NoScript is blocking your ads, I'll make a point of letting them through. http://www.projectwonderful.com/ is on my whitelist, for instance.
Got really tired of Google Reader, and Pulse was a bit too visual for me. My buddy and I put this together and are planning to make some mobile apps and more sharing features.
I run Pentadactyl with a Noscript integration addon, so enabling domains is extremely fast. Considering the slowness that JS often adds to a page - particularly on my slowish laptop - I'd say I still save time.

Then I get the benefits of security and not being tracked everywhere I go.
Agreed. The square aspect ratio is actually very nice for many types of photos;wish my D7000 had a setting for that.