skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would tweak his hypothesis:

1. It is now easier than ever to achieve "ultra-learning" because the vast majority of knowledge is available everywhere for free online. The "learn to code the hard way" crowd will disagree, but I would say working knowledge of almost anything can be gained in between a week and a month, depending on how specific the topic (eg creating websites: week, creating a kernel: month). You will NOT be an expert at either, but you will be someone who can imitate. Imitation and application of existing knowledge is extremely quick once you learn how to learn how to learn. I would say the researcher from the article and Steve Jobs are masters of the "working knowledge and apply" school, but the low barrier to entry explains why every day we all read about the "LinkedIn for this" or "Instagram for that."

2. I would define "deep-knowledge" as knowledge that doesn't already exist or isn't already accessible. This is true innovation or discovery. This is the internet, nuclear fission, DNA sequencing. This kind of knowledge is rare because it takes time, persistence, and capability. One has to gain working knowledge and keep digging until you hit the bottom of all knowledge about the topic... and then break out a drill bit and push on, or go to the tallest building in the world and add a story on top.

Unfortunately, our society rewards the first category far more than the second.
I agree. I bought a white MacBook C2D in late 2006 that is still going strong, with the only things I've replaced being the battery, the HDD and the fan (pretty recently). It's still my primary machine which I use for Python and Java coding on a big retail application.

The fact that most parts are not user-replaceable has never been an issue as with the sole exception of those three parts everything else has lasted extremely well.

That Retina MacBook Pro is looking extremely tempting, however.
Are there any decent and, preferably, open-source alternatives to Skype video calls? I don't mind hosting my own server if that's required.
Hellbanned? what does that actually mean? Seems i missed a lot online since around the early 2000s...
I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking this.
It won't even matter by then because the Illuminati will have already started the New World Order and we'll all be in secret FEMA camps.
Might I also recommend akismet which is quite good at filtering spam and is very simple to setup. Also, just disallow more than a couple links from anonymous comments.
The BBC's weather forecast UI
Oh, an editorialized title. I thought they are not allowed on HN?!

I would welcome a change of this policy.
I will say, the way the article is worded, you could take from it that Skype might be trying to parse your active conversation to offer up contextually relevant ads, which to some people would be incredibly invasive, not to mention prone to displaying insensitive ads...

Imagine a grieving mother talking about the recent loss of her son, and the ads being offered up are for childrens' clothes or child friendly activities.

Over all though, it's just one more spot they're putting ads on. By now, this is nothing new.
Most SSD <-> SATA interfaces are themselves essentially a bridge. You could instead directly wire in to the SSD's interface. It helps in a number of ways, as the SATA protocol was really not designed with SSD's in mind. Under the covers, SSD's are kind of this weird hybrid of RAM and storage devices.
<hacker-unrelated-news>Today in Hacker News, Skype will now begin advertising in 1:1 audio calls for non-paying users. </hacker-unrelated-news>
tldr; anyone?
My ancestors didn't have indoor plumbing. By your logic, you should do just fine without.

It's far more of an point being made, than just being squeamish. But somehow I don't think me re-listing what's been said will make a difference.
I had a similar experience with Newegg. I bought one of these shiny 13" uber-thin laptops from them about a year ago. The wireless card on that machine is useless (due to aluminum casing apparently). Exchanging with another model was almost impossible and I had to literally argue with a bunch of people on the phone to get the RMA. Not sure if I ever would buy anything from them again. Amazon on the other hand has been the best experience for me so far. Prime + Amazon, and the only thing I buy in person are groceries.
Why not just use Google video chat?
I have installed 3 in the past month as the prices have come down. I should have done it sooner but did not realize how much they speed up a computer to the point where it is hard to use a computer with a old fashioned hard drive now.
Relevant question. Even with pretty good Internet connections (for European Standards) the sound quality of Google Hangouts is sometimes awful. I have heard of people preferring Team Speak (!).

Which service currently offers the best experience?
https://www.airtime.com/ just launched and although it seems to be focused towards meeting new people, it also lets you talk to your friends and family as well.
i think the salient point about dragonbox is not the reward system, it's the fact that the rules of algebra have been mapped, transparently and isomorphically, to the game rules. playing the game doesn't just help you memorise the rules of algebra, it actually makes you think about how you use those rules to manipulate and transform expressions, which is the fundamental skill underlying "real" algebra.
I've had great experiences with Apple's Facetime in terms of video quality. It's a shame that they haven't released a Windows version..
It is good to know multiple languages, but I think at some point you are only marginally making your job easier by learning yet another. The article, at least as I read it, speaks to learning something new that makes solving a problem, that was previously out of touch, significantly easier.

Maybe a different programming analogy would be that you know C++, and then you learn some electronics and realize that you can now build a small wristwatch computer using a basic microcontroller – something that would have been impossible with the full-fledged PCs you are used to programming on.
All three of which typically provide inferior service with little expectation of a pleasant interaction or desired outcome.
That's not a product choice, that's a mistake.
re: bolster their DC image -- equinix doesn't need to bolster anything. $166 a share: EQIX on Nasdaq. They're fairly well renowned for their facilities around the world.
I read somewhere that you can still install Google's Map app.
5 minutes!
If Skype wasn't a P2P system I'd be inclined to agree. So now they are using my bandwidth and pushing ads on me.

Might be time to move.
We need an open source library that handles nat traversal and persion:ip mapping. Maybe we can steal some networking code from a bittorrent client? I still find it silly that the default way to build an app for person-to-person communication is to have that communication go through a central server.

Once you have that stuff done building voice chat on top is trivial.
You can't write a server-side implementation of canvas or AJAX either. ^_^ It is possible to create a polyfill for CSS variables if you use JS as well. You can do a mostly-working one relatively easily that covers the simple, static case (where vars aren't changed dynamically), but a feature-complete one is a lot harder.

More directly, though, things that can be done by a preprocessor are, by their very nature, less attractive for us to work on. Syntax improvements are nice, and can justify their existence in the core language, but more important to us in the CSSWG is adding functionality that can't be achieved any other way, or not without a lot of painful hacking.

I'd rather let a thousand flowers bloom on the syntax side while I spend my limited time adding new features.
> users will see content that could spark additional topics of conversation that are relevant to Skype users

Sounds like an April 1st joke or an article from the Onion, except it is real.

So what if you use Skype credit and load it with $0.01. Is that enough? What if you never upgrade to the latest Skype client, is this technology already built it anyway.

Most of all time to look at WebRTC and open source alternatives. Anyone know of anything that is functional?
"X as your Y" is a sign of good architecture in X.

You can consider Unix as a collection of hierarchically organized entities that can act as nouns and verbs. To develop in this system, all you need to do is to add verbs for text editing and compiling.

BeOS/Haiku has this versatile property as well. In fact, you can use BeOS as your media player/mail client with no app at all.

Python and Ruby are built with this quality. There is tremendous power in their REPL. The language is somewhat its own advanced debugger.

Smalltalk is much like Unix, with its structure of nouns and verbs and a REPL everywhere. This is precisely why the Smalltalk compiler is just another first class Smalltalk Object.

Any app like an IDE is actually something like a design pattern. It's actually a symptom of something lacking in your language/substrate. This isn't something bad or wrong, because kitchen sink architectures have their own drawbacks. It's also possible for a system to be too generalized.

Rather, the sign of something wrong (or conversely the sign of something right) is the extent to which you are building everything yourself or composing pieces that are already there. To what extent are you building together your own, and to what extent are you exploring powerful tools that are already there and putting them together to get things done?

Being able to do the latter is the definition of power in most contexts. The too much need for the former is pathological.

Unwieldy IDEs, app servers, dependency management, etc -- this is all a sign that something needs to be improved.
The Retina MBP seems more like the "Macbook Air Pro." (Which is cool...)
One case where he could be a little bit correct is screen sharing a large desktop would use more bandwidth, but I doubt he was thinking that.
Anyone know any open source initiatives to replace Skype that could use some developer oomph?
Superstitious but there's also a lot of identity from eating meats. Especially for men. Eating muscle meats like Steak is a big deal, and we as men are somehow less macho and manly if we don't eat these. It might sound ludicrous, but when I became vegetarian it was amazing the comments I got from friends all around not being a man from the decision. A wife of one friend piped up "I dunno, I think it's more manly to stick to something you believe in, than do something just cause it'd be 'Manly'."
It seems to me that this point of view is becoming less and less common - now that most people have cameras in their pocket, we're starting to lose the intellectual distinction between "seeing" and "recording", and without that it's hard to have any nuance about what you are and aren't allowed to do with video you captured in public.
Eventually, there will be new social norms about it, but for now, you must expect that "in public" means "potentially seen by any person on Earth"
Because it pays for more people to use the service for free?
Did 37Signals axe Backpack?
This strategy throws away some of the most powerful features of distributed version control. It only works if you're going to work in a silo and then suddenly share your changes, fully finished, with the world.

In any collaborative environment, or even as a solo developer working from multiple machines, rebasing is a pain in the ass. It breaks your ability to seamlessly synchronize your work across branches and across machines.

Don't fear merge commits. Git is built around the expectation that there will be plenty of them, and the tools handle merge commits just fine.

The author seems to be trying to limit the damage from colleagues who don't understand how to use git by severely restricting what parts of git they use. I think that's an ultimately self-defeating strategy.
An elegant solution.

Sorta like the idea that there should be two leagues for the Olympics, the Tour de France, et al.: one with steroids, one without.

It would be interesting to see which got more viewers.
yea I think I get it now. Thanks for explaining it to me. It is a bit mind blowing. It's like taking the AS/400 model and applying it to the entire internet (or all of computing).
Sensational Titles to get upvotes. I am not getting what the biggest issue here is. Is it okay to get free email with ads in it but injection of ads to an otherwise empty space for free video calls that are crisp and very high quality with some ads is a deal-breaker?

A lot of people think running things is free. We all need to realize that maintaining the code base, running the servers etc all cost money. Companies are in the business of making money and if they can make money while providing a free service why not?

Those of us who are not happy with it, should just pay for it to offset the costs :)
He says he favours tinkering. But then he says he believes "pre-installation" is the way forward. Am I the only one who sees a certain incompatibility here?

It is not rocket science to transfer an image to some media. Installation of an OS is not some black art. Non-technical consumers can do it. (I've tested this with some people and they caught on more quickly than I expected.) More advanced users can compile their own images from source.

At the same time, I suspect that replacing Linux when it is "pre-installed" will prove more and more difficult. Hopefully I'm wrong. But Linus himself fears bias. That fear should also apply to "Linux bias". Equal opportunity for all OS's.

Pre-installation is a Microsoft/Apple tactic. It is far too easy to abuse.

Consumers should have choice.

Make OS installation easy. Let consumers do it, not just OEM's and Apple.
The Federal Reserve's history via Google Ngrams
- Absolutely no one will see this and think, "Wow, ads, THAT'S what Skype was missing. I'm glad I have a better product now."

- Maybe a couple of people will think, "Meh, another ad-based monetization business plan. I'll live with it."

- Many people will see this and think, "Ads? Forget this, I'm using gchat/facebook/facetime/other free video service without ads."

This, to me, is what is wrong with all basing your revenue on advertising. Skype's mention that "this will make Skype more engaging and useful" is laughable. Basing a business plan on advertising is a decision to provide a cheaper/free service at the cost of deliberately worsening the UI and, ultimately, the user's experience with your product. That's a serious trade-off indeed.
'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=0998565

Has a download link in it to the 28-page essay. Compared to this really turgid article by the same author, the essay is really engrossing. Incidentally, I just finished reading it a few days ago on a privacy paper binge, and I also recommend

Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450006

which is an even better paper, although it clocks in at 77 pages. Also free.

Some fun findings:

1. The combination of ZIP code, birth date (including year), and sex is unique to 87 per cent of Americans. Cross-reference this with voter data, and you're busted.

2. The information of how and when you rated any three movies on Netflix can identify more than 80 per cent of its users (68% for two movies). Cross-reference this with IMDb database, and you're busted.

It's scary as hell to learn that privacy is an even harder problem to solve, as someone who cares deeply about it. The key take-away from the latter paper is that privacy and utility are mutually exclusive - you can't "anonymize" data. The second is that we have to rethink our concept of personal identifiable information, because everything can be used to whittle down the candidates to a unique person with the right information.

We are so far from implementing useful privacy measures legally and practically that it's ridiculous. We are being embarrassingly myopic by only turning our attention to social networks, when there are privacy vulnerabilities everywhere.

Unless it's biometric data that we can relate to our own body - retina, fingerprint, facial features, DNA, etc. - , there is some psychological mechanism that makes us less averse and sensitive to the collection of data about us. Compare how you feel about the police storing DNA and fingerprints of acquitted suspects to how the NSA is trying to basically data-mine the entire communication infrastructure. That is, when careless companies or witless users don't just hand the information to them directly.

For people who care as much as privacy, as people in technology circles do, we have a really bad habit of focusing our attention narrowly at mainly what Silicon Valley does. But consider the value of something as simple as your zip code, birth date, and sex, and how many sites you might hand out that information to - the last information of which can usually be inferred by the service or commodity you buy, or your name.
Exactly. The "public surveillance cameras" in the UK mentioned in the article (although the number is probably a slight exaggeration) have now been turned against us further. So instead of being used to protect the public, they are now being used to raise money for the government by issuing tickets for traffic violations such as illegally parking. I such a ticket for stopping in a bus pick up area for less than 30 seconds whilst a passenger got out. It may all start off with good intention but it's exactly how their long term agenda is snuck in.
It isn't new, but it's beyond annoying and beyond intrusion. Personally, if I had the servers for it, I'd provide a platform based on XMPP using it (though I haven't tested out XMPP's strengths).
Syntax isn't frozen. Here's another possibility:

:root { $header-color: #06c; }
h1 { background-color: $header-color; }

(Note that the spec's use of the :root pseudo is just to generically declare "global" variables that should apply to the whole page. If you're just using HTML, feel free to use "html" or "body" as the selector instead.)
Skype should recognize how many people use it for outsource and other global business communications and leverage something in that space.

They should have turned the pro version into some cross between eLance and Campfire. Where you can find professionals to incorporate into the stream of a conversation or workflow.

But alas, they did some mediocre and they'll get a mediocre return.
Yes, but there are two types of flash cell you can use. SLC cells have an order of magnitude higher write-cycle lifetime than MLC cells, which is why there's a difference in "enterprise" vs. consumer ssds. In practice for most uses an SLC based flash drive will be retired before it reaches its durability limits.
Freshdirect!
It's controllable, append s=<size>, which will directly bubble down to Gravatar's s=<size> parameter.
Is that what you meant?
Concerned About Brand Image, HTC Will Steer Clear From Low-End Phones
Blatant link bait or am I missing something?
I've been to a "server farm" that was in a burnt-out storage facility. The "walls" were welded wire mesh and there was a group of old rusty ventilator fans attempting to cool a pile of hardware that looked like a piece of set deco from the last Matrix movie. This was in the Philippines.
MVC never worked for regular web pages, it needs bindings and direct feedback to make sense, all the purported MVC web framework were basically full of shit. To "do MVC" on the web, you either do it all on the client, or you split the C across server and clients, with M on the server and V on the client. Something like that.

Or you use different meta-patterns, and you stop lying to yourself (and to everybody else). That's fine, regular web interactions work and work well and they have structural advantages. They just can't do MVC in any sensible manner.
On my 2010 Macbook Pro I upgraded the ram and replaced the rather horrible 5200rpm disk with an SSD. I've upgraded the ram on every Macbook i bought (3), since the default amount is always insufficient and apple-supplied memory was overpriced.
Is Zurker a worthy competitor to Facebook?
Why do all of that? I might be repeating myself, but why not use XMPP's video chatting services for this?
"then I wouldn't have any problems with Newegg."

You sound like the person threatening to not fly an particular airline because of the surly behavior of the ticketing agent. Fact is you will fly the airline if the price is significantly cheaper than what competitors are offering or the schedule works for you etc.

Companies are in the business of making money. They don't need you they need everyone. The effect this will have on newegg is nominal.

News flash: In order to give low prices something has to give. While there may be a few outlier exceptions you can't be all things to all people. Price quality speed pick any two. It's not just a cliche.

HN readers seem to be very polarized in how they view things. Things are good or bad. Either you bogu to their every needs or they make a big fuss and want to be catered to.

Lastly, Heroku and newegg are two different companies catering to two different markets and customers although there is overlap.
At $185,000 per gTLD "processing fee", ICANN seems to have "earned" over $350M from this effort. Nice work if you can get it. I totally get why this is great for the Internet now.
I wonder how would this Weasel_Diesel DSL framework that sort of drives you toward sinatra deal with number one requirement for most APIs --- being secure.

In other words, I need it to work well with implementing an oauth provider functionality.

Also potentially one needs to come up with a way for an API consumer to be able to generate oauth credentials in a (hopefully) user friendly way.

Hence Id prefer full Rails environment with things like Devise and ActiveAdmin
As Bill Hicks said [1]: "If you're in the marketing business.. kill yourself."

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
I'm having trouble learning
There are still GPS applications out there the phone isn't so great. Number one on the list is fitness. Number two I'd say is precision. My Garmin owns the phone in that regard, but really who cares except for mappers and cachers, and half the cachers will just use their phones anyway.

"Just killed" is a bit extreme. How about "have been killing for the past three years and are continuing to kill now"? But, yes, the standard GPS is going the way of the standard PnS camera.
I don't see a way to signup. If you go here http://backpackit.com/email/ and click on Plans and Pricing it takes you back to the home page.
And how is this mass surveilance in US/UK/other "free and democratic" countries different from what was happening in USSR way back? Western propoganda was all over it, but I suspect that it was just a way to hide the real threat (own government). Since USSR ceased to exist few attempts have been made to invent a new threat, but that worked only partially...

The reality is, try as we might, there is no way to regain full privacy. Ever.
People with expert knowledge in any field will frequently notice "wow, the media does a terrible job of understanding and explaining my field." Too few take the next logical step: the media does a terrible job of understanding and explaining almost everything. You simply notice the problem more in areas where you know more.
I don't know, guys. I moved away from Oovoo because it looked ulgy (for one) and because of those annoying ads. Now that the one service I use a lot and push for others to use is doing EXACTLY what I try to avoid; collecting a bunch of cloud servers and hosting a service at a cheap price doesn't sound too bad of an idea.
For those of us following the tutorial, is the gemfile the only thing that changed?:

gem 'rails', '3.2.6'

I also had to run "bundle update railties" to fix a couple of dependences.