skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks, Joe, I didn't see a way to reply to you off-forum in your user profile, so I'll follow up here. I sent pg the link to the subthread opened by your grandparent comment to your comment here, and asked him if the HN software allows changing a username with preservation of records of user submissions and comments. I told him I'd be happy to change my user name (and suggested a new one) if the HN software makes that possible. The software is not configured that way, pg told me, so I guess after 1301 days here I'm at risk to my reputation with this same user name I started with. On his part, pg also told me he didn't think my user name is a problem for the HN forum, but I appreciate your concern, and I thank you for drawing it to my attention. See you in the threads. (P.S. I looked up some of your previous comments in the same threads where I've commented before, by site-restricted Google search, and I see we share some interests and you have a thoughtful perspective on several issues I care about.)
You caught that quick! It only finished compiling a few minutes ago... (I generally kick off the release builds manually)
ooop I didn't think about this, it should be fixed now. Thanks for the feedback.
Add a few fun prefixes and suffixes hither and yon, and you largely eliminate the "token" nature of words as well. Even a couple of well-placed (but ordinarily inappropriate) uns, antis, disens, ousitys and ishnesses increase the problem space dramatically without significantly decreasing (and perhaps even increasing) the memorability.
the only time i hate the packaging system [apt] is when a new version of some software is released
He must be referring to them storing the passwords as unsalted SHA-1 hashes.
Your anecdote about the bowling ball is (AFAIK) incorrect, you're thinking about Walter Lewin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaALPa7Dwdw. (starts at 1:08)
It suffers from what a lot of metrics offer: it's easily measured, easily gamed, and not particularly correlated with output.

I'd say it's probably useful to measure, but also key to keep in mind when you're warming a seat just to move that number up, rather than actually getting things done.

Including other measures of work output would be a very good modification.
Well, in cases where you can't (or don't want to) install browser extensions it is an astronomical limitation.

Even without the cases of your phone being stolen/lost/battery-empty the hassle is just waay too much to even consider it.
This nicely illustrates the difference between merely being "open source" (Chromium) and being developed in the open (Firefox). At the very least a decision of this magnitude would have been discussed in the community BEFORE being merged in any sane openly governed project.
It might not be very impressive technically but that is not the major selling point (to me). I like it because Ironspread allows me to use Python in Excel without having to learn COM. This is great because interacting with Excel would be the only reason to learn COM for me (and my co-workers).
Yeah all the content is from Wikipedia. Some very first places were not attributed properly, the newest ones are. We'll fix them soon. Thanks for the feedback.
Emacs Screencasts
I'm on an iPad and I can't make any of the links work.
Show HN: My realtime Twitter image search webapp
Impressive stuff clemos. Thanks for sharing.
It's not the same. Attaching a person to the link is a much "warmer" referral/introduction/what-you-want-to-call-it than just linking to a site.
I don't buy it. My wife's yahoo email account, which shared a password with her linkedin account (yes, yes...), was accessed from abroad and used to send spam emails with a link, presumably to some exploit. While the password wasn't that great, it wasn't likely to be guessable or brute-forceable via login attempts.

Sounds like at least one affected customer to me...
heh, concept reminded me of:

http://bestofcalvinandhobbes.com/2011/10/a-swifty-kick-in-th...
NB/offtopic: this page design is horrible.

On mobile, there's a "social sidebar" which hovers over the text, as others have noted, to the left side of the page, obscuring the first word or so of each line, in a manner that it cannot be dismissed.

Reading with NoScript enabled on Iceweasel, the text is squeezed into a narrow 2-3 character column to the far right of the page.

My solution is to disable stylesheets and read the page unstyled.

Distractions such as this take a great deal away from actually being able to access content.
What a coincidence. I had a discussion with the head of a software development house for start-ups on this weekend. He strictly said no to such a proposal because they have had a only failures trying to build products. I think it takes a lot of commitment and full focus to really build a successful product than just moonlightining on an idea.
PG's message sounds too alarmist. Facebook has a huge impact on the tech ecosystem, but FB's impact is I reckon overrated.
all true - but my unfair comparison was between the typical java enterprise dead horse, and a typical startup stack.

I did not compare Java best practice for one reason:
The enterprise bloat is how Java is perceived. Its not about why Java is not suited for startups, but why Java is not choosen by startups.
Nobody is suggesting that Apple should be forced to make their devices open.

Nobody is forcing you to buy Apple's products either. The solution is perfectly laissez-faire: Stop buying them. There are plenty of hacker-friendly alternatives to Apple products which, while not quite as pretty, are still fun to use - and often enable "magical" features like the ability to use an international SIM or free WiFi tethering.
I absolutely love Python and absolutely love VBA for Excel apps. Eevn though it is interesting to see how Python fits in with excel, I am totally fine to keep using VBA for MS-Office apps.
This seems to be taking some liberties with the facts, and it is unfortunate if they are able to get away with this. He said they're unsure if email addresses have been taken, but is very sure that no customer has been harmed!

Even assuming that no email address has been taken, the fact that this list of passwords is now seeding rainbow tables across the world is a quite harmful, I think (and this is true irrespective of any advice to users to use unique passwords). Also, for a site as large and supposedly sophisticatd as linkedin, not using salts is inexcusable.

I have been a long time user of linkedin, and have no plans to stop using it. I certainly dont want to hang them, but an acknowledgement of mistakes are expected, otherwise declarations that it wont happen again have no weight. Disappointed.
I like how he says "Lets see" after each question, as if he's trying to spin the story in a way which will reassure people. Maybe it's a common phrase, but to me, "lets see" seems fishy.
Huh? The post claims non-performing loans are some sort of poison pill for Chinese economic and political stability. The point of the back-of-the-envelope calculation is to show this isn't the case using some simple math. The blogger could easily have run those numbers himself.

And the reason I said "smells bad" instead of "wrong" is that China is complex and some things that seem wrong on first pass might actually be right. As far as I know, for instance, the blogger is also wrong when he implies that the big four are holding significant amounts of Treasuries on their balance sheets. The reason I believe this is because the People's Bank of China sterilizes currency inflows and monopolizes currency exchange. So the banks which are the most exposed to non-performing SOE debt should not have the USD to invest in US Treasuries and it should mostly be the PBOC which handles Treasury purchases. Googling for terms like "ICBC" and "US Treasury Bonds" suggests this is in fact the case since it doesn't pull up any documents suggesting ICBC is buying Treasuries. But maybe the bank is awash in them and the blogger knows something other people don't? China is strange. It could happen.
CloudFront is S3-backed CDN.
This is a pretty big change to bring in without warning. It would be nice if extensions could be signed but not on the store. I have extensions for internal business apps, they make no sense on the store but having a techy installation process is a big hassle. Google could even host the code (and have the ability to revoke), I just want a way to have "private" extensions that only only delivered to who I want.
I like the way you think. I'm a business guy.
Let's connect. Write me a mail at: sommersnicki at gmail dot com
Whoa, I had no idea that Starbucks was explicitly owning the term 3rd space/place in its advertising. If anyone's interested in the aademic source of this model of places there's a nice intro in this economist article. Cmd-f for 'third places' http://www.economist.com/node/10950463
The first people are amazing if you are solving a problem point that they've been 'suffering.' That's a good signal to have. :)
> Why would anyone use any of the other game engines out there which are targeted towards the mobile world if they could use Haxe?

Haxe isn't a game engine. It's a language that compiles into other languages.
Technology Makes Us Richer; The Paper-Bag Revolution
Your mistake is to consider the Fed profits instead of the profits derived by the private sector from money lent to the government.

The government is running a deficit, but the law (treaties in Europe) forbid it to fund itself by printing money. So it needs to reduce expenses and/or increase taxes, but in the meantime it has to borrow from the market (whether that happens through the central bank like in the US is irrelevant). Borrowed money is not free at all as you say, it comes with an interest that is paid to the private lender, not to the Fed. The interest adds to the deficit, increasing the drive for higher taxes (hence the burdening of the tax payer) and lower expenses (hence the austerity).

This mode of funding often amounts to a tax on the poor (through spending cuts in social programs for example) and to a lesser extent a tax on the rich (through tax hikes). A government funded directly through printed money is more of a tax on the rich, due to the loss of value of their savings and assets. It also makes it much easier to run an irresponsible budget.
I thought I explained the reasoning on the bug, but I can give it another go. Users are being tricked into installing malicious extensions, and thus getting compromised in significant numbers (Facebook "like" selling is a major target). We have continuously improving measures in the WebStore to catch malicious extensions, and the volume there is very low. However, we don't have a way of catching malicious off-store extensions. So, the best solution is to disallow other sources by default, and provide technically inclined users and enterprise administrators with the ability to add trusted sources.

This is basically the same model that every Linux distro uses, so I'm not sure what the complaints are about. I'm also surprised Firefox hasn't proposed something similar, since I'm told they're seeing the same trend.
No Silver Bullet - Essence and Accidents in Database Management
I am confused between Customer Kit and Starter Kit. Your custom kit signup button does not show any price but the starter kit shows $99.
Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks
On the other hand, if you want to help contribute to Waterbear, it is an open community. The code is on github: github.com/waterbearlang/waterbear and the mailing list is here: http://lists.waterbearlang.com/listinfo.cgi/discuss-waterbea...

Waterbear isn't a language like Scratch, it's a toolkit to create a Scratch-like visual programming interface to any language you like. There is active development on wrappers for Javascript, Java robotics, and Arduino.
I was sure I'd seen the Geek Spots one on HN before, so here, I found it: http://nerdydaytrips.com/

Also though in tracking that down, I found this enormous (2300+!) catalog of Google Maps mashups:

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/google-maps/mashups
Best not to worry about these things. Better to build up and start a feedback loop with friends and family.

One of the coolest things about being a yet-to-be-known startup is that you do not have to worry about formal press releases and the like; Build something hot enough and you'll share in the delight when your users cannot help themselves in sharing the value.
Actually, in many cases Android does use the software renderer.

Take a look at /system/lib/egl/egl.cfg
In many cases where I've looked (though it varies on device) the software renderer does get picked up. If you remove the entry for the software renderer, it often speeds up in general, because hardware is forced to be used.
I'll go for the Google role. Social proof of the name "Google" counts.
Their site's UX is amazing. The aesthetic design could use some work, but the actual interaction and interface design on amazon is pretty great.

Their goal isn't to look pretty, it's to sell stuff. There have been many times when i've been looking at something on amazon, clicked the one-click purchase button, and then hours later realized i wasn't really sure i wanted to buy it, Amazon just makes it far too easy to give them my money.
Could you elaborate on how you think their site's experience leaves much to be desired despite being highly functional? I'm having trouble thinking of any time when I thought to myself "boy, I hate the process Amazon makes me take to do this task" and isn't that really what it's all about?
He just means unoccupied apartment buildings.
I listen to free music on www.aupeo.com
SMB checker and Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Exploiter Script
This is basically the same model that every Linux distro uses, so I'm not sure what the complaints are about.

What do you mean? In both Debian and Ubuntu I can install a .deb (equivalent to .crx) just fine. I don't have to approve its source beforehand.
I'd very much appreciate feedback, good or bad.
Dumbest thing I've seen all month.
The extension manifest has update information in it, so when you install a CRX you're inherently configuring an installation source. That's something you have to take into account here.
Yes, and the beautiful thing about it, is that the blocking calls you make are actually implemented as evented IO. This is great when you have a large number of goroutines; it keeps it very fast!
Yes, I know of a similar app. I think the name is "storytelling".
hi, thanks for the great ideas.
It's easier to see what's wrong in a particularly egregious example (savings rates approaching 50%!!!) and then later examine what parallels you can find in your own (assuming you're not Chinese) culture.
The complaints are about a major change occurring with little warning.

For context, I've spent the last 2 months working on an extension that asks users to install from our site during signup. Making them install through the Web Store will increase confusion (why am I no longer on CoolWebsite.com?) and hurt conversion rates.
Indeed. I can simply double click a downloaded .deb file and it'll install. To get the equivalent of this new Chrome policy, it'd have to require me to save the .deb file to a specific location, open Synaptic Package Manager, and click-and-drag the .deb file into the package manager to install it.
Formatting long if conditions
How do people usually format if conditions if they're unusually long?
I wasn't criticising the security of this library, I was criticising it's reason to exist in the form that it does.
Webvulscan v 0.12 - Web Application Vulnerability Scanner
Semantics on words here. No one ever said projects == non-money making things. At least I don't view it so black and white. If anything, I view the word "products" as limited as it is different from "services", etc...
The official Google Chrome .deb for Debian/Ubuntu downloaded from google.com/chrome sets up a software source as well, so you can't say that's not how .deb files work.

kerrick@psyduck:~$ ls /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
google-chrome.list
kerrick@psyduck:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ###
# You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost.
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
Short Calendar app now for sale
From the discussion: "In order to install off-store extensions, the user must download them to a directory and drag them onto chrome://extensions/.". Is this not a viable solution for your use case?
Microsoft Patent to use Kinect to collect Emotional States
>you would have to believe that the average person would pick a passphrase like "gastroenteritis jurisprudence algorithm aberration", which is clearly ridiculous.

Oh how I wish my bank and mortgage lender would let me choose easy-to-remember passwords like that.
That's true in many ways. The actual site's UX isn't bad per se because it's pretty easy to find what you want, buy it, manage the order, etc. And yes, that's what "it's all about" at the end of the day.

I think I was caught in a little bit of Silicon Valley myopic thinking since their site isn't shiny and that's what is mistakenly considered as interchangeable with good UI design these days. That being said, Amazon.com the site does still need to improve UX in a couple key areas. Compared to more contemporary e-commerce sites, the ability to compare items and make sense of ratings (i.e. the flaws of the 5 star rating system) is where they need to make the most improvement IMHO.

It may have been an overstatement to say "their site leaves much to be desired" in all fairness.
First, a distinction between frameworks and languages... Framework benefits include rapid development, and familiarity (since they use preexisting languages). The cost is that performance will never be as good as native code, and you won't be able to easily change certain behaviors.

The Haxe language gives you far more flexibility and performance optimizations, since it is generating optimized native source or byte code. The cost is that you have to learn the Haxe language.

Many people on this discussion are criticizing the java-style syntax of Haxe. I think most of these negative feelings are due to the excessive boilerplate required for many Java classes. Haxe does away with a lot of boilerplate code using type inference and other modern compiler techniques.
http://haxe.org/ref/type_infer

You can remove even more boilerplate with macro libraries for shorthand class declarations:
https://github.com/back2dos/tinkerbell/wiki/tink_lang

There are many other tricks you can use to define behavior without resorting to complex inheritance or class definitions. One of my favorites is the "using" declaration:
http://haxe.org/manual/using

So, in my opinion, the cost of learning Haxe is very low if you already know Java or Actionscript. The cost of coding/writing Haxe is also very low, since you're not required to write boilerplate code.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that the Haxe developers are not just trying to gloss over the technicalities of each underlying platform in order to get things working. They really understand the behavior of each platform, and make many conscientious decisions based on considerations for performance and cross-platform consistency. I've learned more from the Haxe language google group about each target (js quirks, java limitations, etc.) than I have from the Java, JS, Actionscript groups themselves:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/haxelang
Many people have remarked that simply following the Haxe development list has made them a better programmer.
zck is right about failing to account for the friends votes - which does mean an asymptotic approach to 0.5 rather than 1. I updated the graph (and the example fractions). That does, however, change the conclusion, that you shouldn't share with friends at all.
> he implies that the big four are holding significant amounts of Treasuries on their balance sheets

What? Where? The only mention of "big four" in his text is about big audit firms being silent about evidence of fraud perpetrated by big Chinese companies.
This sounds like IntelliWheels, a UIUC startup. If it is, I don't think the FDA process has been that big of a obstacle.

I was at another startup at UIUC's incubator when IntelliWheels spun up, and it looks like they are on track to meet their original projected release date (at least it's the only projection I've ever heard).

That said, as pointed out elsewhere, there are some very good reasons for many of the regulations concerning DME. In many cases, it is about life and death. Understand, I'm not arguing for the status quo, here, but the FDA does provide, necessary, oversight. The DME industry and even the FDA are in dire need of an infusion of common sense, but this idea that no oversight or even disbanning the FDA (common talk among a certain political element in the states these days), is absolutely not what we need.
It may be an issue of having multiple channels of communication, and the bug tracker is only one of them.

For example, though I work for Mozilla, I'm not terribly good at keeping up with the mailing lists, so every so often something pops up in Bugzilla (which I read more frequently) that seems to have come out of nowhere.

And of course stuff happens in our IRC channels that never makes it to a bug; same with internal emails. There's a lot of effort involved in making sure your communication is clear and accessible when you have several different modes of it.
Finally something to do while you're dropping a deuce (other than reading HN, of course). I don't know about a great idea, but it is a humorous one indeed. :)
Ask HN: Mistakes from inappropriate use of diagnostic code
I was reading "Fear and Loathing and Windows 8" (http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2012/05/fear-and-loathing-and-windows-8.html) when I came across this statement, "An OS almost always gets faster right before it ships, because the last thing the engineers do is strip out all the diagnostic code they were using to track bugs."

Has anyone seen a situation where stripping out the diagnostic code has caused crashes, because someone's code was using what was supposed to be purely diagnostic code to perform a function?
I load links as background tabs and visit them later when I am on a slow connection. When sites do things like this I end up viewing the site for the first time several minutes after clicking on it only to find that I had been waiting for nothing.

Thanks for the snark though.
Yeah, same with the Google Talk plugin, which I just installed.
Was there some new law of nature added in the last few years that says as soon as any app platform takes the lead its vendor must begin restricting the distribution channels available to 3rd party developers?

Wouldn't it be awesome if Microsoft and Apple forbade competing walled gardens (such as Chrome) from running apps on their operating systems?
All the latest malware that I see spreading on facebook came from Chrome extensions. Users don't care, they click and install stuff. Then the extension, which can interact with any page, can spam walls and comments on facebook.
Which is why no-one should be storing passwords in SHA1.
It's entirely automated.
One thing I never see on these discussions about static typed versus dynamic is compile time errors versus runtime. For me this is really important, but I never see it mentioned anywhere, am I missing something?
For one thing, this can't be done without a mouse to drag-and-drop with. This limits the extension of off-store extensions to those who can use a mouse, which is an accessibility issue. Are handicapped users or keyboard-only users just thrown to the wayside these days?
You can use S3 as an origin server for CloudFront but it's not serving files directly from S3. CloudFront has "edge locations" that you can push files to from S3 -- which "stores the original, definitive versions of your files."[1]

[1] http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/