skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was just about to flag this story because it seemed like the home page of some regular New Zealand ISP. But in their FAQ they list a "global mode" that "offers greater access to the internet by circumventing geographical restrictions placed on the certain internet services". I guess they have implemented some kind of web proxy running from IPs that aren't tagged as NZ in the standard geoIP databases.
That is exactly what they are doing.
While I haven't been doing much Ruby for a while, I agree somewhat with the article. Personally, I think it boils down to composability. Building simple, modular functionality with clearly defined borders should enable both a larger library composing these modules together and offering a unified interface towards them as well as a developer hand-picking and using these modules by hand as he/she needs them. The Prismatic blog published a good post recently where the problem with libraries vs frameworks was highlighted, and I agree with that post. I'm not saying it's easy, and it's certainly easier in some languages than others, but most of us could probably agree that it's the way we would like it to be done, no?
The obvious difference is that you cannot use FreeDOS for typical desktop activities (like surfing the web, reading mail, Facebook), whereas you can use Ubuntu for almost everything, except Gaming and Photoshop. From my experience with "normal" (non-techy) users, they don't bother switching OSes as long as they can use it for what they want to do, which is in many cases little more than running a browser.
Agreed. This is a useful project, but it stands or falls on maintenance. Kudos for putting it on Github. I hope you will take good care of any pull requests!
I don't think it works this way.

The neurological equivalent of digital heroin is not free access to YouPorn. The reward happens offline. And the lab rats you're looking at are enjoying this 'give me pleasure' button forever, with society swinging like a pendulum between (correct) ignorance and (crazy) ideas of imposed restrictions.

Seriously - when I was a teen I had no internet porn. But certainly equal substitutes, ~just as readily available~. Maybe I couldn't really focus on specifics like 'give me a threesome of the following composition of sex, race and sexual preference, speaking in language x' - but that's a different kind of problem I guess. More like 'I had plenty of heroin, but nowadays I can order it online specifically from Redmond and add the fantasy that I shoot the same stuff Bill buys' [1].

1: I've nothing against him and I highly doubt he has any experience with (these sorts of) drugs.
Just because the Star Wars films are old, doesn't mean they're not great entertainment. Why should they be forbidden from watching them if the kids are of a suitable age, and they want to watch them?
<meta age-restiction="18+" region="uk">

The age of consent for sex in the UK is 16.
How many times have pornographers been brought to court for distributing to minors? Getting minors addicted at a young age would be very important strategically for the porn industry, ensuring both future customers and cultural mainstreaming. Compare with the tobacco industry.
Even though I am not a fan, Ada seems to be a good choice for this sort of thing. People have years of experience, the language design pushes towards safety, and the compilers are well optimized.
You're right in that Google's made excellent engineering tradeoffs to keep Chrome snappy, but note that memory is, sort of, the bottleneck on modern systems. Specifically, the channel between memory and the CPU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Von_Ne...
Which is exactly why I'd rather use a library that doesn't make the choice of Rails and ActiveRecord for me.
Every tcp/ip packet should have a 'porn bit' that can be set to indicate that the packet contains pornographic content. Then screening such content at the router level becomes trivial.

(Sarcasm, btw)
Looking for Earths by looking for Jupiters
Fine. This is the equivalent of sprintf.
They want Street View to be constantly up-to-date, and they don't want to pay hundreds of drivers to constantly crawl the streets of the world 24/7. I can think of many possibilities when every Street View picture of every sign and storefront is updated every morning.

They've already got a lock on online advertising. Now what happens when all you need to do to use Google to advertise your business is to hang a sign in the store window and wait for the automated Google Car to come by every morning to take a picture of it?
Evidence: every single porn site is currently directly accessible to minors.
Fair enough. If you can guarantee that adding to conversion, usability, usage, etc, can't fix a broken business, then I'll accept that visual design can't fix your broken business.

Basically, I'm saying "it just might."
Even the first Mac was pretty gorgeous compared to something like an IBM PC or clone.

A period where they did lose their elegance was when Jobs was in exile, they started looking like pretty ordinary (though still decent) PC systems.
Heartbeat of a Bicycle City
Apple HDTV rumor roundup
In a lot of countries, lotteries are heavily regulated and the government is the only one allowed to run one.
In my experience modifying existing C#/Java in such a manner is not a big deal since the type system and the language enable extremely powerful refactoring tools like Resharper.

But your point is fair. It is a tradeoff between flexibility and guarantees of strong, static typing -- a tradeoff that's a no-brainer in my opinion.
To what end? Does he think he can run the company better? Of course, given some of the decisions that have come out of Yahoo, he might be able to.
O2 certainly had an adult filter on their 3G data by default in 2011[1]. It was very annoying because it was so indiscriminate - anything that could be used as a proxy was blocked (like Google Translate) for instance. Turning it off required giving them your drivers licence number as I recall.

[1]http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/04/o2-mobile-web...
I wish we could find a way to make non-programmers understand this. Just because programming doesn't involve moving lots of heavy stuff and putting it together physically, doesn't mean that there are no rules about how software needs to be built.

People tend to focus on the happy fact that you actually can change your fundamental assumptions in software without loud, ugly demolition sounds, but they tend to stay blind to the fact that it still involves a lot of work.

It's partly our fault, too. We're the ones who have been promising that "this time it'll all work out with this fancy new methodology we've discovered". I've seen a lot of people assume that "agile" means "clients can change their mind as often as they want and we'll take it in stride" and that we'll do so at zero cost.
You ask: Why not let them discover it for themselves?

In our social circles, many kids see Star Wars before age 5 and most have seen it by age 6. For many, that will be their first exposure to violence and evil. Depending on your values around violence (graphic or otherwise) and evil, you might want your kids to discuss and assimilate what they're seeing in a thoughtful manner.
This guy's kids are 4 and 6 and they don't use the computer OR play video games? Tough for me to take this seriously when Star Wars seems more developmentally important to him than essential technologies that will help his kids succeed.
If many parents are unable to regulate their children's access to the Internet, doesn't that support the case to regulate in some form? Just a question...not taking a position.
Show HN: My MVP - InformationCollector.com
Could I please get some feedback on my MVP? https://InformationCollector.com

It's a simplified version of Microsoft Access for Android users. Non-programmers can create a form online in about a minute. Android owners can then use my app to submit information to a central server (where it can be viewed in real time or downloaded as an Excel file).

Possible use cases: Apartment hunting (submit pictures, sizes and rents), field research (no longer a need for typing up field notes / lugging around a laptop), recruiters evaluating candidates at networking events, etc. I have tons of use cases that I am fleshing out on my website.

Even if you don't have an Android device, I'd still like your feedback! I have a "quick tour" button on the bottom of the front page, so there are screenshots of every step from creating an account to viewing submitted data.
Demystifying jQuery’s .index()
Windows 7 sidebar.exe on my machine regularly wanders north of 4GB, until I restart it.

(It just shows a clock and my CPU core temperatures.)
I guess it is about the click feeling and proper position of the hands.
I didn't use a computer until I was about 7, I know plenty of people who didn't use one until they were about 12.
Doesn't seem to have affected our ability to use them too much.
I'm not sure what you're implying. He doesn't run Yahoo. He makes no managerial decisions. He doesn't even sit on Yahoo's board.
Not to be glib, but has this guy never heard of IRC? First thing I do if I'm learning a new language is join the IRC channel. Frankly, there are smarter people in there than you're likely to find at a local meetup.

It sounds more like the OP's problem was more along the lines of 'didn't have any coder friends', which is a much less universal problem.
Some stylistic remarks:

- _MxStringBuffer need not be defined in the header, a forward declaration would be sufficient (a.k.a. encapsulation).

- the two #defines can be removed form the header, too.

- I wouldn't try to typedef away a pointer (as in typedef struct _MxStringBuffer * MxStringBufferRef) but either use the pointer (MxStringBuffer* ) or create a handle: struct MxHandleStringBuffer { _MxStringBuffer * impl; };
But "adult" content is given an "18" rating in the UK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18_certificate
I audited this class (just showed up on the first day of class, not an MIT student, not registered). This class is probably the best class I've ever taken. I went from knowing a little about cryptography and computer security to doing novel computer science research (as one of the problem sets I broke a SHA3 candidate http://ethanheilman.tumblr.com/post/16944272296/shash ).

It isn't particularity "heavy and hard into cryptography", but it is very hands-on with many programming problem sets and puzzles to solve. It covers security from AES to secure voting to firewalls to buffer overflows to sql injection to physical security. This class will teach you to build more secure systems.

To get a good idea of what the class is like check out the lecture list.
http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2012/handouts

At the end of the course students present research projects. They are almost always worth taking a look at because they tend to be highly creative and fun (the MBTA "T" hacking talk at Defcon was originally a project for this class):
http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2010/pitches.html

This class is excellent and Ron Rivest is very friendly and very approachable. If you have a chance I would recommend taking it (or watching it online). If you have a background in programming you can take this course.
We're on track to ship this in late August.
Yet Anthor Python ORM - Thing (Based on SQLAlchemy)
Apple's most (ab)used catch phrase
MIT Creates Tech For Moving Files Across Devices With A Swipe
SCADE!
barring that, Ada and C.
TeliaSonera already offload automatically to their own wifi whereever it is possible and the mobile client supports it (mostly meaning it will offload iPhones as the support from Android phones isn't very good yet).

Nice to see things happening but the main problem to solve is not the end user equipment this article talks about, but rather operator systems (systems that could handle this and scale for the increased traffic is not something many operators have).
But people aren't very good at driving, it would be silly to try and handicap computers with the features we evolved. Every new car made already has lots of advanced technology to make up for our two eyes.
Update Digma iDx7 Tablet to Android Ice Cream Sandwich Gadgets
Microsoft to eliminate its Azure branding in billing portal
"Recently Closed Windows" is even better, for those times when you accidentally manage to close your main browser window with 200 open tabs, expecting Firefox to restore them the next time you start the browser, without realizing that you have a dinky little popup window left over somewhere.

But also note that Opera's had a Recently Closed Tabs dialog for as long as I can remember.
Haxioms and the "Delta model"
Psychiatry's "Bible" Gets an Overhaul
How is capturing video in a public place illegal?
HNers taking Coursera classes
I created a virtual meetup room:

http://hadron.appynote.com/sl/?pr=38-99c11274989811e1

Join the conversation on the Team Space.
I think that fantasy violence is more tolerated by the censors. Generally that seems reasonable to me. Probably should be PG or above though.

A U rating in the UK means for over 4 year olds however. - http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/u/
The comment about the cost of formal methods growing "exponentially" with project size is clearly false.
Does anyone have a copy of the full memo?

The snippets posted in the article didn't make it sound like an apology at all -- more of an "I'm sorry people were so upset about this, but let's forget it." No real admission of guilt or explanation of why he did it or anything. There very well may have been in the "extended memo" though, I'd be curious to see it.
Kids can't make purchases, so they are at best leeching. This isn't much like Photoshop; they don't stand to gain much by getting people hooked early in the hopes they'll convert monetarily later because this market has perfect competition. This is on top of the PR disaster it would be to be caught intentionally giving it to minors. So it looks to me like there are more and better incentives to participate in age restrictions voluntarily than to give it away to kids.
I've been running Debian and U untu chroots on all of my Android devices going back to the G1. It actually works very well. One key for me was making sure to bind mount the sdcard inside of the chroot environment so I have access to all of my local files. As far as X goes, I find the vnc solution works okay provided you aren't trying to watch videos but for programs like Writer and Geany, it's fine. The X server you can download from the market needs a lot of work to be useful but hopefully that'll happen.
Why Facebook frictionless sharing apps are suffering, and what it means
The bandwidth saved once gzipped cannot possibly outweigh the downside of another HTTP connection for the JS file and then the processing time needed to run it. Additionally a JS file at the top of your page will be blocking.

The benefit to the JS method is developer convenience.
You can look at www.finn.no where you will find alot of jobs. You can also check out http://skalar.no/?locale=en (where Im employeed) Oslo central RoR/mobile company - we are looking for talented developers. There also accours job listings for startups at www.irb.no
The printf-style is really only deprecated in the sense that most of the core devs would prefer string.format. There's no formal deprecation policy in place to remove the printf-style. The standard library still uses printf-style, the documentation still uses printf-style, and printf-style isn't going away any time soon, if ever.

Many core contributors have sided with printf-style and the community has spoken up a few times about wanting printf-style to stay around. I don't think we'll ever reach a majority siding with removal of it.
Ok here is a guide I wrote for installing & setting up Postgres in Ubuntu. It's in Spanish but you will find your way around:

http://lobotuerto.com/blog/2009/07/20/como-instalar-postgres...

It covers instalation, setting up the postgres user (the _root_ you want), changing the authentication schema so you can use it for Rails dev (or something else), and finally how to install the Postgres gem for your Ruby.
Not to speak like a party-pooper, but could someone potentially mess with this LIDAR system by aiming a very bright IR beam at the device, if not a matching laser itself?

Bringing down the cost of the LIDAR will be one major task, the other will be making this untouchable in the environment, IMO.
The people that should be scared by piracy are those that aren't making really high quality, possible cult films. If you're making the next Jennifer Aniston movie, which replicates tens of others then people won't be motivated to go to the cinema, some may pirate it and others may buy it on DVD just for something to watch but you can't dedicate a huge following to go watch it in the cinema.

The Avengers got people to go in mass groups and those people told other friends to watch it.
Really? It's so hard to learn to use a computer that we need kids to start using them, and playing video games, before 6? That point and click is a tough concept to grasp. They better start early.

As you can tell, I couldn't disagree with you more. My kids are 4 and 2, and I have grudgingly allowed them to use my laptop, because they demanded it. I certainly didn't encourage them, and I will never allow them to play video games before they learn a little thing like reading books.

You and I share the belief that there are things that are valuable for kids to learn. I believe this is reading and independent thought, not pointing and clicking. If your grandma learned it at 50, why can't a kid wait till he's at least learned to sit still and focus on a non-moving page of print, which is the more difficult thing, I think.
As I've become more experienced over the years I've come to believe that the prolification of patterns to "fix" oop problems (dependency injection, immutability, builder patterns, events etc etc) are a symptom of inherent flaws in the object oriented model.

It feels like we're bending over backwards to fix a model that promotes lots of problematic designs while not doing much for resolving them (or supporting basic things like concurrency/parallelism). We can never predict all possible problems, or predict the future so no language can be "perfect", but a language could inherently be more agile and flexible. I wish I could say what a better model would be. I'd hazard a guess that its something more based on composition and functional programming than inheritance and classes. Perhaps even metaprogramming and/or code generation

For now it seems OOP is the worst paradigm for programming, except all other paradigms of programming
Toshiba sees rebound as Apple leads demand for NAND
From Hate Mail to 1 Million Likes
"Or do we find some other, less salubrious way around the problem?"

Since salubrious means "good" or "healthy", this statement doesn't make much sense. If you're going to use words your readers are likely going to have to look up, at least use them correctly.

EDIT: at least, it doesn't make sense insofar as I understood the intent of the sentence.
The point is having a Pentium III Win 7 machine covers using a Pentium 4, Athlon XP, and all those other old computers to install IE9 - covering the biggest fraction of users through backward compatability.
> Overall though, I think the most important thing is to have skilled developers who understand the tools, libraries and languages that they're using.

I work with C every day as an embedded developer. I've done a lot of safety critical work. By far the worst aspect of safety critical development is the complete inadequacy of many programmers who work on it.

The level of complexity that shows up in these system scares me. Even when introducing languages like Ada, people find a way to abuse them. Budgets get tight, schedules slip, and verification gets lax. These programmers are then the only people capable of dealing with the massively complex system they've built and the cycle repeats itself.

Ada's a great language, but it's not a panacea. I'm working on a language for embedded systems as well, but it's not going to ever fix the 'bad programmer' problem. The best I can hope to do is find ways to reduce the complexity of these systems through language features.
The list under 'History'? That's not the same, just history.
its a problem if you don't know your domain ...

you have no business designing type hierarchies if you don't have a clue about the domain you are modeling.
This deals with performance, but not durability. The system would pump data into swap at a fast rate during a thrashing situation, wearing out the SSD.
Hot Spot for the Young, Techie and Rich in San Fran
Indeed:

>> Esslinger convinced Jobs that zero-draft tooling was essential. As well as gaining a subtle but powerful precision to the shape of Apple's cases, it decreased their actual size. A zero-draft enclosure could fit more tightly around the components within, and, despite the tooling expense, the resulting decrease in plastic could eventually decrease costs. Moreover, zero-draft molding, being an unusual, complex and expensive technology, helped prevent a growing problem for Apple: unauthorized clones.

http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/design2.html
Yahoo was doomed when it stopped focusing on product and technology. The "media" company angle doesn't really work for it or another dinosaur: AOL.

The engineers need to take back the company and run it.
Mark Cuban says Bubble is Confined to This Place and Sector
> It is a functional language, which means that code has no side effects. This property of declarative languages in general and pure functional programming in particular means that the program can be assumed to do exactly what it says on the tin and no more. The absence of side effects makes it possible to do a formal correctness proof of the program because the program code describes the whole computation. This assumption cannot be made with imperative languages such as C.

As much as I love Erlang, nothing in this paragraph applies to it (it would apply much, much better to Haskell though still not perfectly): Erlang is not a pure language and it does not put any limitation on side-effects (the way Haskell does by putting them in separate monadic containers unless an `unsafe` function is used).

Erlang does use immutability (its only mutable data structure is the process dictionary[-1]), it does not share state between concurrent processes[0] and features pattern-matched bindings (technically `=` in Erlang performs pattern-matching, not equality, but if a matchable part is unbound Erlang will simply fill it with the correspondence from the other side, as a result it behaves much like single assignment in many situations), which do help in making code pure and correct, but fundamentally its approach to reliability is not to make code unbreakable (the way you'd do by formally proving it for instance) but by making recovery and error management easy, simple and widely supported by the runtime and its libraries (OTP), in (no small part) part by applying the telecom-borne principles of separating concerns (between the thing that does the job and the thing which recovers the error in case the first one blows up) and building redundant systems (if you have a single machine and it crashes you're gone, if you have 2 machines and the first one crashes the second one can handle things until the first one comes back (and you can have a third machine overseeing that with its own hot spare), Erlang encourages doing that at the process level)

[-1] a process mailbox might also be considered mutable, in a way

[0] it does share memory for big binaries — they are shared and reference-counted — but these binaries are immutable so no state
This research doesn't answers why we brag. It just tells us what we already know.. that it feels good to talk about ourselves, but why?