skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Ethiopian decision isn't about monitoring, it's about protecting a monopoly. It's the same sort of thinking that has a certain political party opposing free trade agreements out of a fear that it will bankrupt manufacturers using inefficient processes. It's a classic case of violating Henry Hazlitt's economics lesson: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

While this prohibition has the immediate (apparent) consequence of 'saving' the state-controlled telephone industry and ostensibly the jobs of its workers, it has a long run consequence of raising telecom costs for the rest of the country which results in less money available for other investment, resulting in a net-loss for the economy. This will also result in an expansion of the "industry" of catching illegal Skypers and prosecuting and incarcerating same -- thus magnifying the net economic loss. Instead of diverting government and/or private resources into innovation, those resources will instead be consumed by reactionism.

The Ethiopian policy is entirely about protectionism and has nothing to do with communications security.
Seriously, the 'toilet seat problem' is merely a side effect of the toilet lid cultural ignorance problem.
Google+ will go down as one of Google's biggest failures. It's a forced product that is killing bits of Google's soul with each passing day.
Search is in the header. Is that not what you are looking for?
You don't need fancy technology to snoop on people in America. All the companies are based in the US, so it's just a matter of the government compelling them to build the spy mechanisms into their products or turn over their data. Ethiopia is functionally doing the same thing (massive surveillance of its populace), but without the power to influence these companies, it just bans the products.
I have noted a number of prominent technologists do their work on MacBook Air 11s or 13s, even Linus. The MBA is in some ways the antithesis of this list, it makes a number of 'nice to have' tradeoffs for a few important things: weight, awesome disk performance and great keyboard and screen quality are these things.

I would love to have an LTE option on my MBA, and I VERY occasionally wish I had an ethernet jack on it. I would like it to have a retina display. And I would like it to have 6x the battery life. But, I most often don't worry about my Air at all, it's there, it works, it boots super fast, and if I remember to run make -j4, it compiles relatively quickly.

I'm not willing to add 2 pounds to get any of my nice to haves; the combination, while necessarily limited, is as good as it gets right now.

For this reason, I think that the MBP 15 Retina is a sort of proof of concept device, the real awesomeness will come when those displays work their way down to the Air line.
It is funny, cause the no pseudonym policy was brought up as the reason why Google+ is an older male technologist wasteland, and vast majority of the vanishingly small number of people who care about the no pseudonym policy are older male technologists.
> If the laptop is truly defective, and you can't install the original operating system as a consequence, NewEgg has no quick means of determining what you did with the system ... and the manufacturer won't care either.

Or they could do what the user did and boot to Windows via USB/Disk, which (correct me if I'm wrong) shouldn't take much more time than booting to HDD. They are a huge online electronics retailer; is it really too much to ask that they have basic debugging/testing tools on hand?

If the retailer sold a defective product, the burden is on the retailer to test & fix the issue. Unless newegg has no way to reasonably test the system (claiming this would be absurd IMO), it is their responsibility to test it and see that it works. If you ship a broken product then refuse to fix it and wag your finger at the user for using it, that is bad business and it's rude.

My question: Does installing Linux really make it impossible to test the hardware without it costing "more than the laptop is worth"? Is it not possible to boot to disk or USB and run some hardware tests?

Newegg's stance could be reasonable if they disclosed it sensibly: "At Newegg you get the best prices for hardware and 'no-frills' service. We get you these low prices by streamlining our business processes ... including testing of returns. If you wish to take advantage of our 'no-frills' service, please leave the OEM OS on your laptop: supporting user installed OS costs more so if you install your own OS, be prepared to support the hardware yourself." Or something like that. A case could be made that servicing the 80% could result in a desirable reduction in retail prices that is good for the consumer. But then I wonder what the 80% on Newegg really looks like- what portion of their users is really keeping Windows on their boxes?
sounds like they're taking all measures so their people can't organize an uprising and overthrow the government.
I generally replace my laptops on a 4-5 year schedule and have not performed upgrades on any of those systems. Usually by year four I'm thinking that some upgrades would be nice, but there are usually major improvements on the newer systems that make putting money into my old system of questionable worth.

So while I get where you are coming from, I do question how many actually take advantage of that ability? I imagine it is an exceedingly small group.
Just fixed the www problem. Turns out I erased aname record and that was causing the problem (I was just following the tutorial by Heroku guys!!)
YES! I PLAN ON USING THE EXTRA SECOND TO PLAY WORLD OF WARCRAFT AND READ MORE HACKER NEWS BLOG POSTS.
How would you define hack, if not fiddling with hardware against the manufacturers intent?
It's not a bad thing to say "I don't know" to some things. In this case though (and please don't take any offense) any intermediate PHP developer should know how to work with multi-dimensional arrays. That should be part of any PHP developers immediate skill set (the set of skills you can reach into your brain and pull out at any time).

It's such a common element of PHP development. This probably came off to your interviewer as "he hasn't worked with PHP much" because of how common they are.
If this is the state of things, it needs to change.

When I return a computer, the disk needs to be re-imaged no matter what operating system it boots to. Otherwise, they have no way of knowing that I didn't get all sorts of malware before returning the system. You're selling the next customer a potentially dangerous system that could get them into all sorts of liability if they handle financial information. In what world is that acceptable?
The law does indeed entitle people to certain expectations. Lawless societies only benefit the very smallest minority, a current example; Somalia.
Most people (as in the majority of the population with access to digital media) have a very difficult time understanding that the filesystem is a hierarchy.

I'm always espousing the necessity of backups to my friends/family, which means I've usually got the role of setting up a Dropbox account for someone without a technical background.

When I say that their "My Documents" folder is a level above their Dropbox folder, I get a blank stare. While many users can create folders and somewhat organize their data, to most non-experienced users I've encountered, the mental image of a hierarchy of data segmented into directories is not represented clearly enough by the GUI's of modern operating systems.

When people hear the word "folder" and see the folder icon, they don't think of it (the way we do) as a metaphysical representation of the overall directory tree. They simply think of a folder on a desk. A folder on a desk is not usually inside another folder. It's usually just sitting there. So a user without knowledge of the tree/hierarchy model just sees various sets of folders, not a set of folders within other folders. Therefore getting things into their Dropbox is an exercise of mental visualization that takes time and explanation.

Further, once I've somewhat explained this concept, I usually leave it there and tell them that "the green checkmark means you're backed up." The web interface is a whole new exercise in visualization that is quite a bit more difficult to pick up. Even after I tell people that "your data is synced to the web interface," they don't initially understand what that entails, and believe the web interface is separate from the files they've "backed up" on "their Dropbox" (the local Dropbox folder.)

My girlfriend (A/B test subject #1) is used to using the "upload" button on the Dropbox web interface because for a good while she didn't realize things on her local folder would sync to the web interface. She's also not entirely comfortable with the hierarchy model, and the "upload" model is in fact easier for her to understand.

Reminds me of the SJ quote from an AllthingsD conference where he says every usability test hits a wall when the user encounters the filesystem. I've seen this evidenced again and again.
if you outsource your development, the work will still get done, but just don't expect it to be the leader in the field.

by the same token, you can always get the work done with compiling-js approach, but don't expect it to be the winning product.
AskAllOf.us - a platform for you to share comments you made on other blogs that needed answers. Sort of a hybrid of Disqus and Quora. Never did anything with it, I'd sell it if anyone wants it.

1orZero.com - think Hot or Not, but a much simpler scale. Would you or wouldn't you...
webtimetable.com simple timetable webapp in the cloud

postiquette.com simple social media updating webapp (similar to ping)

printive.com online pdf generator service

podsender.com podcast hosting and streaming service

substitweet.com for a twitter service (still on my todo list)

P.S. If you have some cool ideas for any of those, drop me a note, I could sell some.
Amazon taps MapR for high-powered Elastic MapReduce
Another interesting point is that the Oatmeal started a reddit-like site called http://bearfood.com 25 days ago.

I wonder if that could make him be considered a "competitor" to FunnyJunk in the eyes of the law.
Makes me think of that aspergers nerd stereotype.
Yeah I agree that privacy is a valid issue. I will think about it some more. Thank you for the feedback!
The simplest solution is that each member of the household customize the seat to their liking before performing any actions. If you fall in and flush your intestines out, well, tough giggles.
Considering that most Windows machines ship with MBR-partitioned disks, which limit you to 4 primary partitions each, it is not difficult to imagine somebody nuking the whole partition table before setting up. I prefer GPT to logical partitions, so in my case the restore partition would be gone anyway.
They should open-source the app. That would be the ultimate freedom.
Personally speaking, I don't think it's necessary to send a letter of this length to rebut what is a spurious claim by FJ. The Oatmeal's lawyer has analysed the case well and is aware of its flawed nature, but this didn't need to be stated in the letter, as it would have sufficed to relay his analysis to OM.

I am fairly confident FJ's lawyer is aware of the flaws in his case and although an easy target, he is likely to be aware of relevant case law.

The point is that FJ's lawyer's letter was more akin to a shakedown used to obtain leverage, rather than a legitimate letter before claim detailing the full extent of the accusations present.

I would have responded in a blunt fashion denying their claims and asking them to prove loss to the value of $20,000.
F5 Friday: Avoiding the Operational Debt of Cloud
I tend to aim for a minimum of 3 years.
Everyone is so full of simple solutions. My simple solution is to own a house with at least enough toilets for everybody so that you can have your own and don't need to share.
The average person doesn't run Chrome and Gmail?
I'd be more impressed if they were able to individually (or in small geographic groups) address the wristbands. Then you might be able to get some sort of interesting visualizations as opposed to pulsing.

But, it is a neat trick, and certainly looks cool from above.
Can you elaborate on that? Why do you say that?
In your position I would do a few things.

1. Become an authority figure in the market. Start writing blog posts about independent music, comment on music blogs, ask for permission to write some guest posts on some (small, medium, or large) music blogs.

2. Reach out to independent musicians and bloggers. Send them an email, be human, start a conversation. Don't just pitch your startup to them. Define the problem which you have the solution.
thanks, didn't know that. Unfortunately I don't find anything worth pursuing...
NeverSeconds blogger Martha Payne school dinner photo ban lifted
This is very impressive, nice job! If I can give you one piece of advice though it would be to hire a designer. You need to give people the feeling that they will be able to build a beautiful website with your product and I almost dismissed it by looking at your landing page's design, it was only when I decided to check out the demo that I was convinced.
Any reason why the marketing department would do it?
Who wants to buy your broken unfixable computer? Resale value will drop.
This is an absolute domination. Not only is it far more thorough than Carreon's original statement and quite clearly dismantles every single point he makes, but it's a very reasonable and human-readable letter that contains a number of well informed possible outcomes and suggestions for courses of action that funnyjunk can take.

Honestly at this point the best think funnyjunk can do is publish an apology. This whole issue has been extremely public and has not only completely ruined funnyjunk's reputation (if they ever had one), but also made Carreon (who seemed previously to be a relatively respected lawyer) look like an absolute idiot and a scumbag for his frankly stupid and uninformed research and attempts to take down a charity initiative.

Sometimes you have to realize that you have been absolutely dominated and just drop your pride and give in before it gets any worse. This is one of those situations.
FWIW, when I interview technical candidates, I ask technical questions until I get to the point where the candidate says "I'm not sure" or "I don't know". That helps me understand where the are in their career. If a candidate knows everything then they're not being honest with me :-)
The problem for Google is the first group is a lot bigger than the second.
Off the top of my head (and so, perhaps wrong), I seem to recall the amount Apple is charging for going from 8 GB to 16 GB to be on the order of US$200. [1]

For RAM that they are purchasing and installing in volume.

That's a lot of net profit into their pocket, for each unit.

And that's where I have one particular concern: Apple closing down and engorging itself on yet another market segment (upgrades).

You can argue that it's their product, to do with as they please.

But when they start to own entire supply chains (just how "easy" is it going to be for competitors to get retina-class displays, in a timely fashion?), well... you have to start considering the word "monopoly", even if you stick a "quasi" in front of it.

They've done an excellent job with their products, and with their marketing. But there's a reason that "competition" continues to be a mantra throughout the world, one that is held by many factions of differing ideology. Over the long term, total control tends to go bad.

[1] I don't know from where my memory has retained the $200 figure, but looking at Apple's web site, I see that switching from the 8 GB / 256 GB configuration to the 16 GB / 512 GB configuration takes the system price from $2199 to $2799, for a $600 difference.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo...

Amazon has a retail Samsung 830 256 GB at $253 and a Samsung 830 512 GB at $677, for a $424 difference.
There is a difference between making fun of someone that is a woman and making fun of some one because they are a woman. But logic fails when emotions get involved. I'm done with this stupid argument.
Monetization != Innovation

Many of Google's projects are advancing the state of the art, if you don't see that I don't know what to tell you.
"Your display is broken? Oh, you installed cygwin? Sorry, you're on your own: we don't support cygwin"

Mostly joking but how far fetched is it to speculate such a thing, given that they are denying display service due to OS install? bittorrent clients can be quite hard on HDDs, I've heard, furthermore illegal torrents are purportedly full of malware which could "damage your computer"; can they reject a defective HDD claim if you have uTorrent installed?
Looks like I've logged close to 9 months of screen time since I started using it in 2009. RIP Wakoopa.
I see twitter bootstrap, facebook, and the sparrow app to all mean the same thing: view a list of options.

Bootstrap: list of pages

Facebook: list of feeds

Sparrow: list of folders

It makes total sense to me.
Your anecdote is interesting, but not relevant. The parent rightly observes that the whole point of a service like RDS is that you don't have to babysit it. If you still do then it's all of the disadvantages of your own box, plus more disadvantages.
You get what you pay for. Single-AZ databases were lost due to a failure in a single AZ, which Amazon tells you will happen. If you want durability you need Multi-AZ, which is the only place I'd put a production database.
I'd say this "difficult-to-debug" attitude comes from those who did not actually tried to work with CoffeeScript and just think that would be the case.
We have a lot of code in it already and debugging was never an issue.
I've always been in the camp that rarely replaces the battery in my Mac laptops, especially with the new LiPo batteries. It's not like they're NiCads that need replacing every month (I remember having a stack of batteries for my Powerbook Duo). Additionally, in the past, the only other components I've replaced have been drives (adding an SSD) and memory (upgrading to the max amount supported by the board). In this case, you've already got those. If you go the 16GB route and pick an SSD appropriate to your needs (I'd never want to trust 768GB of data to one drive in a portable machine, anyways), what's left to upgrade?

Seriously, most people talk about adding SSDs and replacing drives: it already has an SSD that is near-as-makes-no-difference fast enough to saturate the SATA bus. People expecting to get the one-time boost they got from going to a 5400RPM drive to a blazing-fast SSD won't ever experience that again until we push past SATA interfaces. The 16GB of RAM you can option it out with is also pretty close to not only the limits of practicality but also the limits of the chipset. So, those points are moot. Max out the RAM and pick any SSD and you'll never need to touch them during the lifetime of the computer, and if you could, it wouldn't have any real effect. The SSD is even socketed so--should it die--you can replace it.

And, sure, the screen is hard to replace, but it's not like Apple's ever been the pinnacle of upgradability anyways. What were you expecting, a socketed processor and some thumbscrews so you could drop in a new chip? Whether you know it or not, this serves the needs of well over 99% of Apple's market for the MacBook Pro, and if it doesn't serve yours--if you really insist that you must be able to replace and/or repair every single component in your computer, then a Mac wasn't for you in the first place. Two Thunderbolt ports and two USB 3.0 ports further drive the point home. I do, like many of you, lament the loss of the "hacker" ethos that enables us to modify our computers and drop in new parts, but we're kidding ourselves. This isn't a new state of affairs and we're making a mountain out of a molehill.
Yeah it's always has been cheaper to buy the ram separately from Apple who seriously overcharges for it. I guess they just closed that "loophole" in their scheme.

I'm concerned about the battery. Those things don't last as long as they are claimed. I have a new one in my late 2008 MacBook pro right now.
It's also because the power consumption is quadratic with the frequency.
This is important if you agree that an additional hour on battery is worth much more than few cylces per sec.
"... I'll note simply that FunnyJunk does not appear to have a notice ofdesignation on file with the Copyright Office."

If true, that's pretty bad- that means that FunnyJunk's safe harbor status can be challenged (17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(2))
In the era of miniaturization, this strikes me as an inevitability. If computers shrink to dime-size some day, I don't see how you can make those serviceable, so it is only a matter of when the tradeoff happens, not if.
Grads: Skip the Bank Job, Join a Startup
But but...the cloud.
There was a study. It ignored personalization, which is a huge factor in Google quality.
Snow Crash movie to be written and directed by Joe Cornish
Survive in the Wild with a Busted Handphone
I don't buy that thin-and-light requires glued batteries, soldered ram, and proprietary hdd connectors. As exhibits A, B and C I cite my Thinkpad 420s and the machines I almost got instead, the Samsung series 9 and Sony Vaio Z.
Even better is

>"The council has had no complaints for the last two years about the quality of school meals other than one from the Payne family..."

I can see why nobody complained before if this circus of excuses happens.
Purchase New Apple Laptop -> Sell on Ebay after 12months having only lost $200(average) in depreciation -> Purchase New model. I have followed this cycle since 2004, It's kind of like leasing but on my own terms.

I personally feel that $200/year is a very small price to pay for a machine that brings in the bacon. I spend a LOT MORE to keep my Adobe CS Master up to date.
It's not a product. It's an shared component and enhancement to all their products. Look at the name.
I right clicked a random folder and used "Get a Link" and I was able to browse to it without being logged into Firefox.

What more do you want?
Agreed - and it's not the only problem. I mentioned this to my brother and he said:

You know, I think I once wee'd in my face doing that.
I hit some crazy angle and it just sprayed out.
I can't remember the exact parameters but something very odd happened.

Always sit at your own risk.
It’s not the that Object modeling metaphor used in CoffeeScript is bad, it’s just overly object-oriented and builds on OO style inheritance.

There are lots of people who don't even include inheritance in their definitions of OO.
I work at a company that uses Jive (forum software written in Java) and its a grave yard. I'm really surprised that Yammer is so popular.
What I Learnt From Italian RubyDay
And just yesterday the story here had tons of people insisting that this was no big deal, just a one time mistake, and that they should shut up and be happy. This is exactly why I didn't consider their initial reaction to be an acceptable resolution. They need to make it 100% clear that you can install whatever OS you want, and they need to make it 100% clear that they are going to train their staff to know their own policies.
Right Click Any Folder, Dropbox -> Get a Link
Microsoft further Metroizing the desktop
target="_blank" on next page links; that's "special"
But in this case un-hackacble meant, unable to add ram which if the slots are there are not in anyway against the manufacturers intent. Now the new macbooks, if someone figured a way to add ram, it would be considered a hack.
you should turn this into an app for how to coordinate fan chants at sporting events

at duke basketball games they pass out a paper detailing all the chants they're going to do

The How to Root app - eveyone chant (whatever) now!