skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see:

- a woman owns a shady company

- she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp

- Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't filled with spam opinions

- the woman is upset

The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.
I'm dual booting Linux Mint and Windows 8 on my Asus N53 laptop and can't see any problem with dual booting.

Windows 8 is using UEFI and boots in 20 seconds. If i select Linux Mint from the GRUB it boots too. (actually this is the same computer as mine and it boots very fast with Windows 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Win_8_Runing.ogg)

Maybe the concerns are about the ARM version?
Gizmodo Puts a Bounty on Mark Zuckerberg
Enable all warnings and fix them!
Interesting bet. While most are betting on having all your data and apps in the cloud so you can live device-agnostic (eg iCloud, GDrive, Chrome OS, etc), these folks are basically proposing a mobile-centered world.

The only advantage I see of this model over the existing cloud model is possibly cost, as presumably the device is much cheaper than a laptop.

But that comes with a UX price tag - as already pointed out here, app interfaces built for touch can be frustrating to operate with a mouse/trackpad cursor.

If they can pull off an attractive price point AND an elegant solution to the UX problem, this could be a serious sales machine.
I completely agree. Most of these features aren't necessary and seem more interested in playing with your phone than using it for a purpose. People already have a problem with putting down their phones and being constantly inundated with notifications which doesn't make this a good idea.

I do enjoy the app previews while multitasking since it is wasted space but it seems that Apple has been toying with this similar concept for over a year. A YouTube video shows an early build of iOS 5 running this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg-gfF3Pryc
Sure it's a gamble, and a risky one for that. But continuing business as usual is IMO even riskier. Possible that Win8 could face the same fate on desktops like Vista did. How that wuld effect customer perception of Win8 on tablets, well good question.

the main benefit I see in Win8-tablets is that you finally get a real computer for the price of a real computer and not an oversized smartphone you can't use to make phone calls for the price oy a computer. But that's just my opinion.
Ginetta GT SuperCup Leader Tom Sharp on Oulton Park's races
Thanks for the response. It's quite surprising.
ShowHN: obsqr QR scanner - bringing minimalism to Android
My girlfriend's attempt to make a small and simple QR scanner for Android. No settings, the only action user can perform - is opening the QR. Of course, it's open source, costs nothing and is ad-free.

And what do you think of software with minimal functionality?

Here's the repo:

https://bitbucket.org/trikita/obsqr/wiki/Home

And here's the link to the market if you want to try it:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=trikita.obsqr
Was there really a need to put "legitimate" in quotes every single time?

More seriously, though, it shows that the legal system has put itself, perhaps unwittingly, in unexplored and potentially very volatile territory.

Most times, a warrant does not affect at lot of people in the grand scheme of things. Potentially inconveniencing an innocent household is, all things considered, not a big deal. But a warrant that affects quite literally millions of people, which cannot possible be all guilty - dangerous, that.

I wonder if this will force some changes in the way seizure of property is handled. I suppose it depends on how much of a "shitstorm" it continues to cause.
I love how they are saying less processing power is better. If netbooks taught us anything is that sacrificing too much processing power for battery life ends up with frustrated users. Why not just use a Ultrabook? Everything is in the cloud already.
Last good Symbian phone is Nokia 808 PureView. I own it for 3 days and that's my favorite smartphone so far. Technically it took 5 years to make camera for this phone - does it make it bad smartphone?
Germany, Not Greece, Should Exit the Euro
None of those require C, and are frequently done using high level languages.
The only way they are going to make money in China on a $25 phone is if they tie it into a monthly or pre-paid plan.

Otherwise, the margins are going to be slim, non-existent, or in the red on those phones.
Am I correct in saying that the only way to find the minimum with perfect accuracy is to iterate over all coordinates (i.e. no shortcuts possible)?
I like a lot of these. I have an issue with the Mission control feature. It's nice and it looks pretty, but it's not necessary. To go back to an app that you were using do you really need to be able to see a screenshot of where you were? The linear fashion of the multi-tasking bar is meant to convey a sense of time which a grid doesn't do as well or as obviously. Do I read to the left or do I read down or do I read in a spiral? I did like the way that you could pick a page in safari to go to because that is a pain sometimes.

The "flipcons" are an interesting way to overcome widgets. You get to see small bits of information like a widget but it's not always there.

Notification Center, I'm not sure why it really bothers people that it pulls down over instead of being under the home screen, but to each his own.

Overall these look very good. Great job.
Desalination is less of a problem than pumping water to farmland, industry and residences high above sea-level.
Does anybody here have an idea why? I have heard reasons ("interfacing languages is a mess" and "you'd have to learn several languages" being the main ones), but none I found compelling (especially when the alternative is C++).

If it's irrational to reject multi-language solutions (I believe it is), why do people keep doing it?
For the kind of problem where I can take that approach, I also have a python API onto BLAS, and guess which I prefer to write my programs in.
The thing is most people who have a need for a laptop, don't have a need for a beefy laptop. Its the form factor they care the most about. Sure you and me need something more beefy. I have emulators, and simulation programs, and virtual machines running. My brother on the other hand has 3 spreadsheets, a word doc, and about 5 tabs open in chrome. A smart phone could probably handle his workload. I would take a guess that the average computer user has more in common with my brother then myself. To them there's probably a lot of value in having this all on one device.
An ironclad rule of platform-specific development: You use the compiler that everyone else is using. On Windows, that means Visual Studio.
Indeed. I am trying to think of any software company anywhere right now that doesn't build on someone else's platform. I can't think of any. Either they are setting sail on someone's hardware platform or OS (or even kernel and utilities, as Linux distros do), or both.

I think the key issue as you say is to keep tabs of the risks and try to manage them. But I don't think it is really possible not to depend on someone else's platform to some extent, well unless you want to write your own cross-platform C compiler and then write your own kernel with it, and then write an operating system surrounding it, and then writing your app..... or give up on the cross-platform bit and just make your own chips too.....

I guess that IBM software on AIX on Power might be close to building on your own platform. I don't know if they wrote their own compilers though. But in recent decades even IBM has made noises about abandoning AIX in favor of Linux if they can meet the needs of existing AIX customers.... So maybe it doesn't even work for IBM....
I do tend to disagree with the sentiment on HN regarding some aspects of the "pirating issue".

Common arguments are (as quoted from the text)and my symbolic translation to the HN world:

> "Movie theater incomes are in most cases enough to cover the production costs. Their business remains viable even if people continue downloading their movies"

in HN-speak: "Developer salaries are the highest in the economy, so their careers remain viable if people start copying their code"

> "Isn’t the main goal of content producers that their content is seen ? Well. If you would charge less for a movie I would be glad to pay for it. But prices for buying movies online are just abusively high."

in HN-speak: "The main goal of a developer should be to get the product/code in front of many people. If the price would be lower, I would buy it. Ergo, the price should be lower and if not, im just gonna take it"

> "If I buy a DVD I have the right to do what I want with it"

in HN-speak: "I know the terms and licenses of the code I am using. However, i dont like it, so im just gonna do whatever I want anyways."

My view is that this is just like any other market: If you don't like the product or the way its sold under specific conditions, you always have the freedom of not buying it. No one is forcing you to anything.

Also, before this whole downvoting madness starts, please consider that I'm just trying to voice my opinion and argument for my stance.
Same here. I've just bought a new Windows laptop, and I'm planning on getting a new "machine" around 2015 or so. The hardware should be "good enough" by then (quad core 2.5-3.0 Ghz Cortex A20 - or whatever they are calling the next-gen 64 bit chip after A15), and I'm hoping Android will be mature enough as an OS by then with a lot of productivity apps, that I can just use an Android machine (like a Transformer device) for everything.

I'm also on the lookout for a Windows alternative in the future, as I'm not liking the direction Microsoft is taking with Metro at all. But Google needs to become a lot more serious about tablet (and desktop) apps by then. So far I've not seen that, but maybe things will change when they launch their own Android tablet at I/O, unless they will keep pretending phone apps are good enough for larger screens.
> If you think CNN just goes around making up stories, you are wrong.

It's interesting that you assume that that claim needs no supporting evidence.

Are you really sure that CNN doesn't "go around making up stories"?

> CNN is a reputable news organization.

That may be, but reputable news organizations do make up stories.

> To claim that a completely plausible CNN story is wrong, evidence is needed.

Or what?

I'm sympathetic to your argument, but it's not nearly a strong as you think that it is.
How Far Away Was This Explosion?
However, C is not suitable for all purposes and it would be nice if people bashed it a little bit more. For example, it is a very common as an introductory CS101 first programming language here in Brazil even though it is full of traps for begginers and has some severe limits in expressive power (most notably, manual memory allocation really gets in the way)
Don't use shared web hosting.
I don't see any indication whether this device will have a touch capacitive screen. If this is going to use the trackpad instead, it's going make a significant difference for usability, especially for apps that were designed for touchscreens. Still, if the price is right it might be good enough for most users. And if it catches on, some apps could be adapted to behave more like desktop applications if they sense a keyboard present.
What "logic" is this? Where are people getting the idea that I'm instructing them not to patch MySQL?
I wonder if anyone actually understood what the one child policy would have. I mean, was this predictable? Did the Chinese government know it was going to create this situation?
I don't really see a good logistical way to deal with this kind of problem. Any algorithm is going to see a bunch of sudden reviews of extreme positive or negative opinions as possible spam, and for users who never review more than once, I'm not sure how the filter is supposed to know what is and is not legitimate.

Yelp does seem to have a conflict of interest with advertisements, but considering the only alternative seems to be a subscription-based model, and people don't like paying for things on the Internet, I suspect that this is still the best possible case at the moment. Plenty of room for innovation, though.
Form factor is just the topping. Using web apps and cloud storage is so far the most accessible way to have a seamless computing environment (versus experience, which must be different like Jobs knew). Apple or anyone else could side step those entire industries by making powerful portable smart phones that acted as a driver or data storage for other operating environments.
It's more rectangular then it is wedge shaped.
Meta-question: If the author is no longer able to publish the work, but HN still hosts the article comments with the title "Using an electrical circuit solver to track ad click fraud," then isn't the cat already out of the bag?
I do not believe that it is irresolvable, I'm looking at biology for my counter example. In biology there exists a rigid framework inside which a "general" search of language/model is taking place, after a few billion years it seems to be doing ok. It is my hunch that there is a big something out there which will pull a lot of these issues together:

How do you build efficient markets?
How do you build an effective AI?
How do you design effective distributed systems?
How do you build effective languages/models with which to compress the world?

Under what circumstances do such 'meta' searches fail and succeed?
It's all beyond me but this is what my nose is saying...
Analyzing Amazon and their $48 Billion in Sales for 2011
I think the difference is, most people recognize that there is a place where C is really your only choice. Maybe you need a little shim code to interact with a shared object in another language from ML or something. It's harder to argue that for C++ or Java.
It's not the same thing. Netbooks were forced to use a 20 GB OS with much more bloated apps compared to the lean mobile alternatives, and on a single core processor. Use Office on a netbook, and then use an "Office" app on iPad. See which is faster.

The thing about netbooks is that everything from the OS itself to the applications written for Windows were made with powerful processors in mind, and as processors became more powerful, those apps became more resource intensive as well. Then you took all that and crammed it into a very low-performance netbook.

Mobile operating systems and apps were designed from the ground up to use very little resources and be lean so they don't use a lot of battery life, either. So yeah, the comparison is not the same. The most "advanced" app on a dual core tablet will probably feel just as fast as the "most advanced" program on a high-end PC, if not faster.
DramaFever, Asian Vid. Platform Popular outside of Asia raises additional $1.5M
I'm not suggesting they need to be fundamentally the same.

Apple has taken steps to give iOS and OSx some key similarities in look and feel, the lines don't need to be blurred any further, in fact for this concept to be successful, I don't think they should.
Yet another problem created by cloud storage. If instead of putting everything on a community storage service we took Eben Moglen's suggestion of storing everything in our homes (which would require better bandwidth and ISP AUPs, of course) our data would be in the best legally protected place in society. It won't happen. The cloud will win because it has bigger corporate backers, but this is another example of how technology solves one problem while simultaneously creating another.
I did have a specific pitch.

You want input on your idea if you're looking for a cofounder as opposed to an employee.

The biggest barrier to getting cofounders, be they technical or bizdev, is the propensity for people to have ideas first and business partners second. Two people with two different ideas are really hard to fold together because it often requires a destruction of value proposition- someone's going to have to shelve their idea in order to join together on one.

Unless you're convinced that your idea is the greatest thing ever, you may actually be better served by going in pluripotent- eager to pitch yourself and your skills but not to pitch your idea. If things don't work out you still have your idea, and if they do, maybe your idea can get folded in.
I just wanted to point out the fact that we are working on referring to legal offers where these are available (especially in the US).

We completely agree with the don't make me steal manifesto which explains the issue in European countries: http://www.dontmakemesteal.com/en/
> I think a lot of people here would benefit from 6 months in a 'normal' company

I've worked several years at a normal company. My group of dozens of software engineers codes overwhelmingly in C, with Python, Perl, Lua, and the occasional ML in support roles.

I think a lot of people here would benefit from 6 months in a 'normal' company, that employs the vast majority of programmers. There's so more to the universe than Rails, Django, and JQuery...
Well, I hadn't even heard of TMDB before, and now I do, thanks to movies.io, so they must be doing something good!
This is exactly what I am thinking. If we expect others to respect our software licenses, why don't we respect others' license on creative content they produce, no matter how outlandishly priced or badly delivered we believe it to be?

What baffles me is the amount of rationalisation. I come from Russia, where piracy is a social norm, and if you pay full official price for entertainment products, you are either a sucker, or a rich person asserting your wealth status (I don't imagine much has changed). But Russians never attribute themselves downloading movies and cracking games to some higher purpose: we just like free stuff, and gaming the system for personal gain is a national pastime.
SEO Strategy after Google Penguin
Apple removes Dropbox apps from App Store
Not sure I'd still qualify K&R as an excellent introduction to C in this day and age; the book lacks focus on safety, which is so important today. It's fine for learning the language, but a language is more than its features.
There's nothing in the "Python way" that precludes dropping into C as and when it makes sense to do so. A C programmer is able to make that decision independently.
"Analyst Serene Chan of Frost and Sullivan said that Microsoft plans to charge $100 for each Windows 8 licence - a significant increase over what it charged for Windows 7 running on mobile devices, especially when compared with Google's Android operating system, which manufacturers can use for free."

"The cost of the licence that OEMs have to pay Microsoft will be a major drawback," she said.

100 dollars per W8 license
Here's your informed person bashing C: http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/HateC.html (Disclaimer: I like C more than C++, though I can't say I love either of them.)

I do think there are bad languages. Brainfuck is terrible. Maybe there are no bad serious languages, but you'll have to define what you mean by serious, and you'll have to argue with Dijkstra's ghost when it comes to COBOL et al. (though I think he would have liked J). (His two famous quotes against COBOL come from http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html) I don't think good/bad is really the best way to judge languages, I'm more interested in language power, fluidity, and library support.

I'd agree that every language has a purpose, even if the purpose is as simple as making a joke like in the case of LOLCODE, and that people abuse the language beyond its intended purpose. I read somewhere someone asserting "Design patterns are missing language features" and I more-or-less agree with that.
Many Voices of Sweden, via Twitter
Dropbox Apps Removed From App Store
Because it's their forum?

I really don't get it. I mean, could Zagat have gotten away with this in the pre-internet era? "Hey man, love your restaurant, but each star costs $100."
NSA is searching for cyber soldiers
Someone’s registered my personal name as a domain name
> most people recognize that there is a place where C is really your only choice

But should it be?
Why can't prices go down? As chinese apartment-owners start to look to 'cash in' their investment en masse, the supply/demand equation will flip and people will see at whatever prices they can to get some cash back out of their investment.

Unlike Chinese workers, a Chinese apartment is never going to compete against a western apartment
NSA is more interested in searching for "offensive" soldiers, rather than "defensive" ones - meaning they are more interested in people who can hack into other people's systems, rather than people who can help them patch things up against security threats at home. They are just looking for trouble with other countries, like they did with Stuxnet.
Continuing your sarcasm... What? And expect the world to build its houses our your platform?

I agreed that the sweeping generalization backed up by a single example and barely any data is absurd. You have you build your "house" on something so build it wherever is profitable, not always where the plain is wide, the weather is perfect (for you), and the neighbors are easy to please. If anything, such places are lightly tread and you're not likely to get much business in them.
Announcing the Snipt.net blogging platform.
So, whats the tech stack behind movies.io?
Hackers attack League of Legends databases, steal user data
I'm not sure why this was down-voted ... isn't "dropping out" just the extreme version of reduced usage? There was an article posted last week that described users as being tired of FB and that there was a 30% drop in engagement (I'll link later if I can find it).
(Production of desalinated water costs 2.1 times more than
fresh groundwater and 70 percent more than surface water,
according to El Paso Water Utilities.)

Copyediting fail. How about "110% and 70% more"?
Sony creates flexible 9.9-inch OLED panel
That claim doesn't really tell me anything without a measure. How much C should everyone know? I passed an introductory course in C, but that far from qualifies me to write any production-ready C. Every day I see some thread on C pitfalls here, many of which I would probably fall into once. What do you think someone should be able to do in C?
There's a well known solution for this and it's called a chinese wall. You segregate the ad team from the other teams and restrict the data flow between them.

It's what Google and many others use to stop ad revenues biasing their product.
Ask HN: how do I learn to think like a programmer.
I am currently a freshmen in a technological school majoring in Computer Science.

I have a friend here at the college who has been programming for 4 years prior to starting college. It seems as if he can think more programatically and he knows how to approach a programming problem and find a solution.

Do you have any advice as per how to think more like that?
Headline I'd like to see:

"Google Turns Android Into A Computer"

I almost suspect that the chromebook project is down Google's attempt to make a new kind of laptop.
Reassurance through obscurity
The article says she asked her customers to post genuine reviews. I don't know if that's true but if it is, I see nothing shady about asking your customers to post reviews. There is definitely a conflict of interest on Yelp's side, but I don't see a good solution to the spam problem.
"2.8 billion square metres of Class A office space"
The grading inflation makes me sad.
If you have 2.8 bn sq meters of above average quality office space, how much average and adequate quality office space do you have?
Because every other mobile OS already has these features ;-)