skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They seem to completely ignore the existence of ultrabooks. They say that nobody is making thin and light laptops other than Apple, but my thin, quiet, slightly lighter, cheaper, and higher-resolution Zenbook would beg to differ.
In exile from Apple, Steve Jobs compared himself to Jeffrey Dahmer's mother.
Feeling peaky: The economic impact of high oil prices
Randomness is an interesting topic indeed.

For instance, up until 2012 introduced with Ivy Bridge, a true hardware-based random number generator hasn't been available to the masses. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RdRand)

what we believe to be random may not be, and I've seen UUIDs generated on cheap mobile devices can easily collide when their clock battery is dead.
Any time you use them, your code becomes significantly less readable, and significantly less portable.

Specific examples?

I've actually often found the opposite to be true, given a good (meta) syntax for handling this.

I've often seen patterns in Smalltalk like:

myTransaction
commit: [
"Stuff happens here"
]
onRollback: [
"handles rollback"
].

Semaphores are used for critical sections like so:

(mySemaphore)
critical: [
"critical section code goes here"
].

I think these examples show how such a thing can increase readability.

As far as the portability thing goes, I've never heard of that being a terrible problem in Smalltalk. If code from one environment has some custom method like "isNilOrFalse:" or something like "ifNotNilDo:" then it's a simple matter to port that code over another environment, or have it syntactically rewritten by the browser to make a portable library. The sorts of patterns I list above are generally for DSLs that are only used internally in a given library or for code that uses the particular library, so portability isn't a problem. The structures are carried where needed by the library.

It all just becomes a giant clusterfuck way too quickly. Small set of well-defined semantics, please.

Smalltalk does have a small set of well-defined semantics, just not at the level you're used to. I have never heard of modifications that break the control flow standard library. My experience is that good programmers don't change how the "standard" behaviors work, because those changes tend to break the rest of the code base.
This is really cool but I can't get the PNG node module to install on my server or on my laptop
Actually, bare minimum would be clocking in at 9AM and leaving at 5PM. I'm not sure where you're getting 8:30AM.
If you have a GSM phone, anyone could already track your every move.

http://youtu.be/ZrbatnnRxFc
Polygonal Map Generation For Games
That's a good point actually. I'm in the opposite camp just now - I'm on a mac, but I'd quite like a way to alter the WM behaviour for some apps.

The Apple 'our way is best' approach is often great, but when it fails, you're stuck without easy (or even hard) ways of fixing it.
I second Gandi.net. Their interface is much nicer and much more intuitive. $15 per domain though.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Including Your Location
yes...but all those stories would have boosted GoDaddy by quite a bit in rankings in Google

My guess is that this change is temporary and that someone at GoDaddy is calling their Google rep...and we'll see a fix shortly.

GoDaddy actually uses Adwords(and they rank #1...so they spend the most)...NameCheap doesn't appear to be(at least for the domain name search term). And they have a valid claim for being the biggest domain registrar...so Google loses nothing by playing the game and getting them to rank higher
Your customers probably don't care as much as you like the increased referral money.
Anonymous functions can generally be abused in ways that make code harder to read. Then again, so can recursion. It's a double edged sword.
björk and mike patton are clearly outliers
a non-compete clause or anything that makes it so you can't own your own work.
The most successful economies are not free and feature heavy governmental influence. One of the most successful, China, could be considered a totalitarian regime.
> Penn & Teller have made a career out of showing how tricks are done

No they haven't. P&T don't really show how tricks are done. They especially don't reveal big secrets used by other magicians. The notion that they're doing something transgressive that makes other magicians dislike them is just a schtick they came up with for publicity purposes.

When P&T do "reveals" they are usually mock reveals - revealing a technique that they're not actually using which often was invented specifically for the purpose of being revealed. Or they're "revealing" something that everybody already knows which in no way detracts from the enjoyment of the trick. And sometimes they're just riffing on the psychology of magic, showing us how even when you're trying hard not to be fooled you can still fool yourself.

(The clear Cups And Balls might be an exception to this general rule. That's the only one I can think of that more-or-less fits your description.)
hover.com is incredible. They aren't cheap but their interface and support is worth it to me.
Twilio is pretty great. I used it for https://github.com/Ell/catfacts and it was super easy to setup and get going. Had to take the site down due to lack of funds but processing SMS messages and sending them was a breeze.

https://github.com/Ell/catfacts/blob/master/catfacts/apps/fa... the twilio part of the project.
When one starts using the "it just works" phrase or its variants, I know no further reasoning would be necessary.
No (though I've heard that device manufacturers might be able to).

That being said, one of the other rumors floating around is that this might change for Windows Phone 8.
And this on a weekend filled with Ludum Dare 23 and the Philly Startup Weekend. Oh, such evil timing.
Another cool thing about this (aside from not needing to carry around it's own oxidizer) is that a car-sized pack would be small and light enough to make battery swapping a reality.

Li-Ion and older technologies make battery swapping hard because the pack is large and heavy enough that it really needs to be integrated into the vehicle chassis, which means that each model of vehicle—or at a minimum each class of vehicle—needs a different pack.

Something roughly the size and weight of a gas tank would be much easier to swap out and could probably come in only a few different sizes.

Another thing I'm wondering is if the battery could be simplified by "reprocessing" rather than recharging it. For instance, maybe the anode could be a big spool of lithium "tape" that is slowly unwound as it gets oxidized, with the spent lithium oxide wound around another spool. The whole thing could be mounted in a "cassette" that would be swapped out a reprocessing station, where it could be de-oxidized in a controlled environment and at a controlled rate using off-peak grid power.
Thanks.

I misread. According to jwz, it is the unchangeable default on iOS, not OSX.
I think you missed the point of the article. Once the biometrics are in the system, you can't go back to that country (or any other country with which it is sharing data) precisely because those biometrics are forever linked with the first identity's travel documents. If you show up again, the fact that your biometrics no longer match the first identity is going to set alarm bells ringing. In other words - the first time those fingerprints passed through the system they were attached to a British citizen called "John Bull" and now look! Those same fingerprints are attached to an Israeli called "Menachem Reichman".
also
http://www.viewsy.com/

They are in startup bootcamp
Blank page on FF with NoScript on. I enabled the primary domain and it's still loading 5 minutes later. Just a grey background so far...
Free for a year, IIRC.
500 Startups Live stream
For every domain, you get 1 year of free SSL -- when you need to renew the certificate you do have to pay for it.
I am a big fan of http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net
A little theological question...

If the beings so depicted are gods, then how can these picture be considered "obscene"? Maybe pictures of mere humans in whatever positions/alignments/configurations that the gods indulge in might constitute "obscenity", but because the pictures show gods doing something, doesn't that by necessity make such pictures non-obscene?

You know, sort of like how being a soldier in a war means you can kill people and not be guilty of murder. Being a god means that whatever you do is sanctified.
In the USA this is a big issue, because computer programmers aren't entitled to overtime pay.
An Introduction To Android Shared Memory
my guess is that their research shows that at those prices they make the most money

and by them I mean Amazon...not the author.

A <$10 kindle purchase for Amazon...means that the person will spend extra to bring the cart up to $25 to get free shipping
His wikipedia page redirects from his initials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jwz
Usability is not a constant property. When we first see an interface we evaluate its perceived usability. Research has shown that this is mostly a function of its visual appeal. I think skeumorphic design has a high perceived usability. Someone who has never seen an iPad would recognize the iBook. But the same is not true for kindle. It does not look like a book.

After using the interface over time, our perception of usability changes. I suspect, overtime skeumorphic design will lose its appeal overtime because many constraints will be forced on the user artificially. Flipping pages on the iBook may seem more work than just tapping.
WebGL Shader Effects: Old Film
"The problem with multiline lambdas in Python is that no one knows a good way to indent them."

How about new keyword(s)? "begin" and "end"? I imagine this has thoroughly been discussed ad-nauseum. Is there a good synopsis?
Pretty easy to do on Android if you have root. Would be cool to have an app that could regenerate a new random one periodically. Changing your IMEI on the other hand is more difficult, though reading that is more difficult to do.
really smart people generally don't have very good social skills.
I've got 30+ years of experience, in a variety of areas (early console games, Unix kernel hacking including ports and adding virtual memory and demand paging to a swapping system, BIOS software that shipped on millions of motherboards, SCSI drivers and firmware including writing the development tools and reference software NCR included in their SCSI SDK, PCI compliant credit card storage system, and much more).

They sent me to "Learn Python the Hard Way". A book aimed at teaching people with NO programming experience.
>> "I'm certainly willing to inconvenience myself for my political beliefs. I've done it before and I'll do it again.

But in this case, the inconvenience is too great. Apple's approach is resulting in a product that is just so much more usable than Mozilla's (and especially Google's) product that using it all day, every day would be just too much of a pain in the ass."

This seems to be a wee contradiction, you don't mind inconvenience when it's for political conviction, however, the inconvenience stops at tabs in your browser and your browser's UI. Luckily there are the many, many, many political beliefs that do not touch on the unsurmountable problem posed by UX/UI for which one could live with a bit of inconvience.

I don't mind some inconvenience to take to the street and partake in a demonstration, but my sofa's user experience is just so much better. I'm certainly willing to inconvenience myself for my political beliefs, though.
1,019 people +1'd this

That's what I see under the NameCheap listing, which is number 2, Wikipedia is #1, with GoDaddy at #3.

The GoDaddy listing doesn't seem to have any +1s under it.

Could this be the effect of Google using G+ data to influence its search results? Thus, by giving more weight to G+, plus, GoDaddy's sinking popularity "socially", equals, a drop in its rank.
I loved the HSoE; I found it ages ago in a bookstore in London, while on vacation. I read it to rags. Looking forward to the update.
Oh come on. Apple’s iPhone and iPad barely hits the mark there. They are overshooting nothing.

It’s a petty good approximate term that to my mind works perfectly well. Sure, things change depending on view distance but I guess nerds have to survive a term that’s not always exact. The horror!

That was an uninformed rant on your part. What are you suggesting as an alternative? High-PPI certainly does not work.
Honestly (and I say this as a card-carrying Apple hater) the Macbook Air is an Ultrabook. The term "ultrabook" is Intel's attempt to push PC vendors in that direction via branding. But the form factor was fundamentally Apple's innovation, and they got there three years early.

But yes: some of the recent ultrabooks looks really nice too, and the upcoming ones look even better. I'll probably buy one once someone gets a 1920x1080 display on a ~13.3" screen (I know there's a Vaio Z that does this, but it's a little old and not thin enough to qualify).
Urgh. Just when we thought we might finally say goodbye those noisy CPU fans, now the battery needs its own fan!
I agree. I can't believe how companies promotes facebook.com/brand instead of brand.com. It's perfectly fine to have a facebook brand page, but you should promote yours first!
I'd argue that it's less of a mess than Mail.app in Lion.
Look, the people you are "pitying" are the people you depend on: we make your operating systems, your languages, your frameworks, your tools; we invent the things you use; we create your social networks; we abstract away the things you find too hard; we built the very internet you're using to mock us.

Wrong. Absolutely wrong. The opposite, in fact, is true.

For every programmer working overtime at his paid job as a Ruby on Rails rock-star producing an advertisement-backed web application, there need to be several more clocking out of their paid jobs at 5:01PM to go home and write open-source operating systems, languages, frameworks, and tools without being paid.

Because most of the time, the essential infrastructure all the paid businesses rely is created by unpaid volunteers working off the clock (or at least it started that way!), or even better: researchers.
The bit about respecting your coworkers, rather than simply being nice, really struck a chord. When I think back, the worst working situation I had was the one where I lost respect for my coworkers. I think it's an important question to ask yourself. If the answer is no, it's time to move on.
I made this point previously on HN about Apple's Find My Friends app: in light of how ridiculous the leather stitching looks, the friendliness of the UI distracts users from the reality of how intrusive the app's functionality can be.

Imagine Find My Friends with a standard grey/black iOS UI. User reactions would quickly go from 'this is neat' to 'this is scary.'
Depends on the audience. There are probably lots of people who know Ruby and would like to be able to use it where they currently can't. It might not be likely to win the hearts of the C++ game engine hackers, but that might not necessarily be the goal.
While I can sympathise since I also dislike tabs and prefer integrated browsers such as Safari and Epiphany (though I'm currently using Pentadactyl which sort of has tabs) I'll note this contradiction:

"Anyone who truly understands UI design realizes that every preference option is an admission of defeat: it's there because you couldn't just get it right the first time."

Yet Safari offers tabs and gives you an option to turn them back off. Seems to directly contradict his issue with Firefox not giving him that option.
Interesting to read about the helicopter pad in Aoyama

http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09TOKYO2570.html
Which is precisely why open-source programmers have to be 501'ers. If we stayed late every night at our paid jobs, how would we ever do our unpaid jobs?
It wasn't that he didn't get the job because he played basketball. It was that Max couldn't ever imagine himself or anyone else at PayPal referring to basketball as 'hoops' - this speaks to a greater cultural difference where this candidate might not be a great fit with the nerd / D&D culture that was pervasive in the company at the time.
One-time break? Did you forget that no Windows Mobile 6.5 devices got an upgrade to Windows Phone 7? That's starting to look like a pattern.
Since people still don't seem to be getting it:

jwz was one of the principle programmers of Netscape Navigator. He coined the term mozilla. He spearheaded the effort to get it open sourced. If you learned to program in the 90s the only hacker that was even comparable was Carmack.

... and further more all of you youngsters need to get the hell off of my lawn.
The difference being that Diablo 3 has an in-game real-money market, and more people playing the game means more people putting money into that market. The same strategy has been applied (successfully) with Team Fortress 2.

This is not a new idea, either. Free to play but in-game real-money purchases have been going strong with casual games since it became easy to send money over the net.

I'm not saying it will happen, but it's not an impossibility.
When should I raise my seed round?
I thought the context would make that quote sound better, but nope, it makes them sound even worse.

> PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job. No PayPal people would ever have used the world “hoops.” Probably no one even knew how to play “hoops.” Basketball would be bad enough. But “hoops?” That guy clearly wouldn’t have fit in. He’d have had to explain to the team why he was going to go play hoops on a Thursday night. And no one would have understood him.

> PayPal also had a hard time hiring women. An outsider might think that the PayPal guys bought into the stereotype that women don’t do CS. But that’s not true at all. The truth is that PayPal had trouble hiring women because PayPal was just a bunch of nerds! They never talked to women. So how were they supposed to interact with and hire them?
Congrats, looks like a cool app.

My first thought is "why do I need this?" Your site doesn't answer that for me.

The intro video certainly sells me that it's cool, so that I am trying hard to think of a reason that I need this "note-taker". Then I think... note taking? These are made to look so fancy. Am I showing these notes to other people? Are these notes for myself? Why do I care how pretty my own notes look?

I conclude either (a) I'm just not someone who needs beautiful notes when I'm jotting things down, or (b) I'm missing something about what the product is for. Either way, I decide not to buy.

And speaking of buy, I would like the BUY button at the top to be emphasized more, rather than carrying the same weight as the "T" icon on the left. Also, when I scroll down to the bottom, I'd like the page to conclude with another BUY button. If you sell me while I'm scrolling down, are you really going to make me scroll back up to buy?
Lua "cheats" by leaving out regular expressions and including a lightweight (but still powerful) matching facility.
In the united states, there are places where you would think that it was "nudity" that was illegal, when it fact it's public indecency/lewdness that is illegal. That is, it's the "intent" - I have run into naked people in San Francisco (Bay to Breakers being an obvious example, but numerous protest/art/just-being-social examples) as well. And, from time to time, I see naked people protesting in Berkeley who don't seem to get arrested that quickly (if at all).

I have zero problems with public nudity, but, I also have zero problems with laws against outright public displays of affection (PDAs) - hell, for that matter, when I go to burning man, there's lots of environments where you trip across balls-out sexual-activity - and I don't recall being particularly offended (or even shocked after the first couple times). So, I do believe it's a lot about social-relativsm, and defining what the norm should be. Depending on where you are, any of these activities (kissing, nudity, intercourse) may be considered lewd/indecent - and I don't usually judge/disapprove of a society that makes any of these activities illegal.

I do think it's important (and I do judge cultures) as to whether they clearly establish what the laws are, and that they uphold a certain level of evidence before finding someone guilty. I also think you should have the opportunity to confront your accuser. So - No problem with Dubai outlawing public kissing, but, I do have a lot of problems with the way the approach to the law went in this case (2 year old child's testimony of a third-party event, and the mother of the child/child didn't even show up at the trial)
Yeah really cool but when you click 'HN comments' it opens it in the same tab so you loose the podcast. Should open in a new window. Great otherwise
Nope, so just flag it like I did and move on.
I believe some Android phones (at least, the Galaxy Nexus and Droid X) randomly select a new MAC address on reboot. Whether this is a bug or a feature depends on your point of view:

* Android Issue 23330:	Galaxy Nexus (VZW/LTE) wifi MAC address changes with every reboot
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=23330

* Droid X WiFi MAC address changes when I power WiFi on and off.
http://rootzwiki.com/topic/1332-wifi-mac-address-changes-whe...
Facebook's second data center now online
This is very cool. I recognized the website right away, because I've used Amit's excellent resources on pathfinding in the past while working on games.

http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/
Am I missing a pop culture reference? Last sentence reads, "Get a job. You numpty." I take that as get a job doing something else. I don't think it unreasonable to train for the job you want.
WebSocket Platform in Amazon's EC2 Cloud
So easy even my grandma could do it.
And doesn't happen to millions of others (particularly those who buy Nexus or other higher-end devices).

In fact, it is entirely possible that there are more ICS devices "in the wild" than there are WP7 devices. If not, there will be soon (with the various upgrades and new devices rolling out).
So what is the definition of 'an idea' when people say ideas are worthless?
I've been using www.dyn.com for years and would happily recommend them. Not the cheapest but they are a lovely company to deal with (and are probably one of the most hardcore DNS providers in the world - Twitter offloads their DNS to them for example).
Would this work better over WebP?
If the amount of oxygen exchanged between the battery and atmosphere is enough to make the battery "much lighter" in its charged/non-oxygenated state, wow, that's got to be a lot of oxygen!

I didn't see any numbers in the article, but a commenter (name, moishep) on the site posted the relative atomic masses of the elements and compounds involved:

Li ~7, O ~16, LiO2 ~39

If someone with a better understanding of the chemistry could answer, does this mean that a discharged battery would have over five times the mass of a charged one?

And if that much oxygen is being released in the charging process, that's quite a fire hazard that will need to be designed around.

Or am I missing part of the physics/chemistry involved?
Ruby has an ISO standard now
You can find a list of a few YC companies that are hiring by clicking on 'jobs' on this site. At the top of that page, you'll see that YC will be hosting a "work at a startup" event which you can sign up for that will feature many YC companies.
Lingscars.com's in-your-face approach deconstructed/critiqued
Make money with Microworkers
Why would you need free shipping for a digital purchase? (Which is why kindle purchases don't count towards the $25 super savers shipping).