skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The N16 is a good piece of hardware. I've been running one with DD-WRT for a while.
The Apple 27' Display is extremely nice, but in my opinion it's not worth the money. Get a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter and a cheaper monitor.
The Art of Spotting Opportunities
JQuery Event Binding Methods explained
Stunning Progress in Technology: The Death of Unskilled Labor
A projector! I never thought of using a projector for an external monitor/display. It sure sounds cool. But from discussion here - http://ask.metafilter.com/95233/monitor-vs-projector, it appears there are a host of issues with them - resolution, lighting, cost. which would make it not a good choice for coding.
Anyone know the amount of radiation received from these things versus other sources (granite, the sun, etc)?

Assuming the machines are properly serviced and not faulty.
no, it's the kernel livelocking in response to a call made by the jvm
It was kind of interesting comparing the quotes from the various network operators. For instance, this management-speak gem could apply to any product at all:

"Etisalat aim to enrich the user experience and improve the life of its customers by providing enhanced services across a complete portfolio of devices and operating systems. Firefox OS will provide an open source platform to our customers and various ecosystem players, such as application developers, to experience innovative services. Thanks to this strategic initiative, the industry will benefit from a sustained growth in mobile data and the development of cutting edge applications, as well as the promise of affordable smartphone devices that provide an enriched customer experience."

[edit: off-topic, i know]
s/basis for the boy's identity/led to the boy's enlightenment/. True as written, just a bit redundant, and not what I meant. :)
" I have reached premium billing status within my industry, but seem to be offered to work on relatively repetitive problems that are anything but challenging"

I sometimes get that feeling and I have almost reached premium billing in my specific niche as well. But then I realize that some of thte things that don't seem challenging anymore is because we have become really good at doing it over the years. Thats why you get the big bucks even though it might seem like an easy task. The real issue for me is repetitive work as a consultant.
Yes, but it would still be de-facto unfeasible in most modern (well-run) organizations. It's no longer a matter of setting up a few boxes in a hallway and dodging a lone manager who happens to be patrolling. Everything from building access onwards is non-trivial to consistently bypass - even with inside help.

FWIW, I'm not sure the current culture at Apple would support this either. Every single one of the employees who aided Mr. Avitzur would essentially be putting their careers on the line. Modern day Apple is notoriously stern when it comes to employee transgressions.
I like the concept, and am waiting for someone to execute on it well.

As for your FaceToFriend site... It is very difficult to figure out exactly what to do after logging in. You need to direct the user (especially a new user) to the key feature/areas. If the "I Want To Talk About..." search box is where you go to get rolling, you have lost already.
Please definitely do, any time you feel up to it. We make bad calls sometimes, too; you can contact me directly if you have questions. I can do a pretty good job of predicting what the rest of the team is going to hit you with. :)
Here's This American Life telling the story (very, very entertaining): http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/284/s...
In Europe you can buy a prepaid phone card and use your mobile phone/modem to get online anonymously. Phones can be identified by IMEI id but you can physically hide the device or likely swap IMEI when needed using software. Not sure if other ways to remotely identify phone/modem exist.
Totally agreed. It's a bunch of words about how awesome Weavrs are and calls to action to make them but I still don't know what they actually are. Show some pictures or something.
Maybe this should be a poll?

Happy at a 9-17 job which involves Linux, network, concurrency and C++ and is close to the metal yet still involves a huge set of features. This combination makes it challenging.
I agree. A good way to sell Clojure to an experienced Java programmer is to ask him has he ever serialized data to a string for passing it around in a program, and why. Then when he explains how the semantics for all the composite Java types except for string suck, tell him that every type in Clojure just works right, like string does in Java.
Thanks for the feedback! Any specific cheaper monitor you use or would recommend?
Ok, so in turn I would blame the "User Confusion" on Facebook's decision to change everyone's public facing email address (without warning or consent) which then pushed the email into a system many of the users have never even touched.

(and perhaps a poorly designed email system though I haven't used it so I can't say personally)
> The correct strategy is only obvious to those outside the experiment.

Wait, are you suggesting that cooperating in the prisoner's dilemma is the correct strategy then? Because in fact defecting is always a best response to any of the opponent's choices, even if you are aware of the rules of the experiment.
I see it simply as a failure of developer-centric hiring.
Your network provider sucks and it's all your fault
Currently self-employed/consultant: Happy

Industry that I work with: Semi-happy

Billing rate: Happy

Working for large corporate clients doing challenging but repetitive tasks: Not happy

Bottomline is that I have the "bootstrap a company" itch that I am looking to scratch asap.
It's hard to see this standing up in a Supreme Court trial, if it ever made it there.

IIRC, they struck down heat images of houses without warrants because they reveal too much about the inhabitants' activities. This is way worse.
Great point regarding lighting and resolution. As for cost, it seems that prices have gone wayyy down since 2008 - here is a decent looking one on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-PJD5133-SVGA-DLP-Projector/d...

Thanks for your feedback septerr!
At the price point we can afford?

Just a quick note: from personal experience, I've been a lot more productive in Clojure than in Java, and I have written a lot of Java code. Things like the REPL, STM or FP speed you up a lot, I would say by a factor of at least 2 - 3, maybe more. I have no data to back it up but this is my perception.

So hiring one programmer instead of 3 and paying him 2x more is already good for you.
Ask HN: What's the best Language/IDE to teach a group of kids programming?
What's the best language/IDE to use for teaching kids programming in an after-school group setting?

I'm looking for a programming language/development environment that has the following characteristics:

- Runs on Windows
- Includes an IDE
- Free
- Easy to install
- Really easy to do graphics programming without using advanced language features.
- Well documented

To elaborate on the purpose:

I am starting an after-school program to teach kids how to program. The end product of the course will be a simple but fun computer game that the kids can take home and run on their home computers if they wish. The schools computers run Windows, and I will be using their computers.
The course will be targeted towards students in the gifted program at a public school. The students will be 10-13 years old.

I will not consider visual-only programming languages such as Scratch or Alice for this group. If, at a later time, I do a class for younger children I will consider these programs.

This is a non-graded, purely optional after-school class. It is important that the course be fun as well as educational. That is why the focus will be on making a video game.
I want kids to learn how to search reference documentation for an answer to their questions, so a well documented language/api is a must.

I have ruled out the following:

- Scratch/Alice (too visual, perhaps useful for a younger audience)
- LOGO (Not general-purpose enough, again, perhaps useful for a younger audience)
- Lego Mindstorms (too expensive)
- C/C++/Java/C# (too advanced – I would consider these for a 2nd language)
- QBasic (I just wanted to mention this because I taught myself QBasic as a kid. It's obsolete now though)

The following are viable options that I have considered:

- Microsoft Small Basic (I'm leaning towards this)
- Python+pygame (I'm thinking this may be too complicated to start with though, also a
setup headache for kids... what do you think?)
- Hackety Hack (anyone have experience teaching with this?)
- Squeak (seems more complicated than I would like)
- Visual Basic (6.0 is obsolete, but VB.NET is possibly viable, but is the complexity worth it compared to MS Small Basic?)
- Just Basic (not as “polished” as small basic)

I am a Software Engineer, and will be working with an experienced teacher to make this after-school program work. Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!
OpenTTD ported to Javascript via Emscripten
Am I the only one who thinks Carreon wants to be the new Jack Thompson?
I didn't see an option for making a poll, but I can tabulate the responses once this has run it's course and write up a quick blog post about it with the data laid out so we can get an better idea. I'll have to use some liberty in analyzing answers that are vague though.
It is too bad if people complaining about PHP makes someone feel bad.

What's really important here is that people need to be aware when they are adopting a tool which brings this much technical liability.

People should not be unknowingly exposed to this relentless stream of years-old, fatal bugs. Life is too short and it's even more unfair to newbies to make them deal with nutty, random issues like 'can't use a Turkish locale'. This isn't just picking on PHP. These bugs are epic and breathtaking and impose an exceptionally high amount of effort to work around.

It is clear by now that
(A) these are not just a few isolated bugs but a big pile
(B) most of this pile is old and already known for years
(C) the PHP team is not fixing the pile despite lots of time
(D) it would be such an epic amount of work to fix that you could never reasonably expect others to do it, especially if they have no reason to be invested in PHP (how is that reasonable?)
(E) you could never get the fixes and cleanups published because of all the existing code which would be broken, unless PHP adopted a risky, even more labor-intensive backward-incompatible renovation project
(F) there are already multiple well developed alternatives which do not have these problems, so why would I wait for PHP to get its house in order?

I'm not saying that PHP sucks and could never be fixed.

I'm saying that PHP doesn't have enough positives to justify the huge time and effort to fix it... or to suffer through using it for years. There is no third choice.

Why on Earth would I bust my butt trying to fix this pile of bugs when I can just use anything else?

Just because I feel sentimental about the name 'PHP'?

This is a slowly sinking ship, it is not responsible to tell newbies to get on it.
I wish I could upvote this 50 times.

The diagrams show two separate masters in different regions with their own slaves, yet DNS is essentially randomly delivering users to each "half". There is no mention of how this is handled, or even that you would have to consider it.
I am a Kiwi currently living in London(UK). I am more than happy to answer any questions about living/working in New Zealand.
Does anybody know if the Nexus 7 can read pdfs?
IAAL.

I think it's quite amusing to see everyone saying the recommended advice is to just confirm dates and title. It is, but only if you're implying that you have nothing positive to say about the employee.

Potential employers call HR to confirm dates and titles. They call former managers/supervisors to confirm other aspects of a potential hire's work history, i.e., to confirm the potential hire's alleged accomplishments while working for your company.

There are laws in most states saying that employers cannot impair a terminated employee's post-employment job hunt. This does not mean you can't talk honestly about the employee to another potential employer if you're asked. It does mean that you can't lie about the employee in a way that harms their job prospects (legally, this includes exaggeration).

Think about it folks: if there were laws saying that you couldn't talk honestly about former employees, no one would ever ask for references, especially not corporate HR departments, because it would be illegal and they would be exposing themselves to serious civil liability. The law usually is logical, if you know what the logic behind a particular law is.
This scares the shit out of me.

Honestly, if applied broad spectrum (pedestrians, passenger vehicles, etc) what is the legality of what I conceal on my person or in the privacy of my car? What if I'm in a public space and I have a concealed weapon but a permit to do so? How do the differentiate in that situation?

I really don't like this at all. I love how the company making this product is called 'American Science & Engineering' and if this is applied on a street level it's one of the most un-American things I've seen.

Stuff like this makes me sad about where this country is heading.
I chose Java for a major (non-android) project last year (other potential choices were Ruby, C++ and Scala). It's a great middle ground. Statically typed, fast and well known with very good tooling. I've ended up loving it because it works well for what it is and is super practical, not because it's a beautiful, perfect language.
Interestingly, for me Chrome used less than 2% CPU (didn't show up in my top 5 apps), but it responded slowly, presumably due to the GPU being very busy.
Possibly "Unethical", and thus generations of children are condemned to learn with us not knowing if they're using optimal techniques or not.

EDIT: For the silent downvoters - (http://www.badscience.net/2011/03/when-ethics-committees-kil...)

> At present there is a bizarre paradox in medicine. When there is no evidence on which treatment is best, out of two available options, then you can choose one randomly at will, on a whim, in clinic, and be subject to no special safeguards. If, however, you decide to formally randomise in the same situation, and so generate new knowledge to improve treatments now and in the future, then suddenly a world of administrative obstruction opens up before you.
>“From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.

Honestly? You're hard-pressed to see how x-ray vision into people's cars is a privacy concern?
Sony buys Cloud Gaming Company GaiKai for 380M
How do debuggers keep track of the threads in your program?
Consejos para Alquiler de Coches
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Right, you could use BASIC or any Turing-complete language.

Actually, BASIC has been written so many times that you would probably get a pretty sane and systematic experience out of a web BASIC. Relatively speaking.
the funny thing is that if everybody has this uefi stuff installed and active then the criminals will only target this "uefi technology" because there's no money to be made in attacking minorities' technologies. if everybody has it, everybody is an attractive victim.

so, this whole uefi-brings-security-to-the-masses-argument is void given sufficient time.
alright keep the jokes coming :) Wpengine.com here I come!
Everyone claims this about their favorite language. If I were a manager, I sure as hell wouldn't believe it.
Show HN: pan.do/ra - a free, open source platform for video archives
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -Albert Einstein
Some ideas :
Monkey => http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/ ? (the html5 version is free)
or Processing => http://processing.org/
or kodu => http://fuse.microsoft.com/page/kodu/ (perhaps too graphical).
Tips For Co-Presenting: Lessons From TechEd
Ask HN: Would you go cold turkey (quit) with half baked ideas at age 30+?
So I am almost 31, worked for almost a decade in the corporate world, got good technical background and always had the itch to go on my own.

I have been really struggling lately with many of my half baked business ideas that I never seem to be able to lock down. So far, the good things that I have been able to do it teach myself enough python, the flask framework to build simple apps, understand what tech. stacks are used in 2012, read and contribute plenty on HN.SO I know where to start if I have an idea locked down.

The bad things: not able to lock down on any of my half baked ideas. I got plenty but just cannot make up my mind.

Is this because I am still employed (self employed consultant btw), get paid well and just lazy enough to not get to the next step ? I can tell you that I am not scared taking the plunge (done that plenty of times in my life already at times when things were in comfort zone). Then why is it so hard? What if I quit 100% and then focus on an idea even if half baked ? Would you recommend this ?

EDIT: I have a wife and she has a decent job. No kids yet but planning one soon (next year or so). We can live off her income if we live within our means which we are doing already. I have more than 18 months of savings based on our current cost of living.
"and also being (somewhat sensitive)"

"As for the received email, I had just enough time to reply "If you put as much effort into the rest of your work as you did this email, you'd still be working here" before the guy left."

One of these things is not like the other...
It's working for me, but in case it's down again, here's Google's cached version: http://bit.ly/OdjSdM
Workshop on the Economics of Information Security 2012
Agreed, every step in this could be an article in itself, but the intention was just to give an overview of all the options.
That is quite honestly, the stupidest "hack" I have ever heard of. People gets dozens or hundreds of emails or calls each day, especially at the manager level. They don't always have the time to respond to each email or call, especially (to them) low priority emails about a former employee.

Your suggestion would basically just screw over any person whose boss had more pressing matters on his plate.
Well rather than, you know, burn them, "selling" women to China might still work out. They don't have a skewed sex ratio just by chance.
To be honest I don't know myself how to mske HN polls. Perhaps it's one of the "if you need to ask, then it's not for you" things :-)
London, UK, Full time

A rare opportunity for a Linux/C++/SQL developer to work at the leading edge of live video analytics and big data management!

Crowd Vision is an exciting early-stage London-based technology company with ambitious near-term growth plans. The company has a unique software product that automatically analyses crowded scenes from video feeds in real-time to provide actionable intelligence to a wide range of customers.The company is now investing in further developing and optimising the product. R&D plans are in place and include optimisation of architecture, algorithms and user interfaces. In addition a new remote web-based service variant of the product ("Cloud Vision") is being designed, developed, tested and productised.

The company’s new Tech Hub, now being formed, will be led by the CTO (and the original developer of the software) and include a Hub Project Leader, a Software Developer, and other Technical Support staff focused on product management and technical support to sales and customers. The Tech Hub will be located in central London in a pleasant creative environment intended for tech businesses. There will also be the opportunity for some home/mobile working amongst the team. The Software Developer will be a key member of the Tech Hub and involved in several different projects that require coding skills and experience.

The job will be fulltime and based in London. There may be a need/opportunity to travel on a limited basis. The chosen candidate can start immediately if available.

The ideal candidate will have:
• Excellent coding skills in C++ and SQL
• Solid experience of working in a Linux environment
• Experience of and/or keen interest in: video processing, data extraction algorithms, big data management, the cloud-based real-time environment, user interfaces
• Experience of, and respect for, best practice software development standards

For more information / to apply:
http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=3314124
Given that computers are better at networking than people, if my professional network sucks, it is only my fault to the extent that I have failed to build a system that makes it not suck for everyone.
That's exactly what I was wondering.

Ars writes an entire article purportedly about the picture, yet they don't even have the picture.
That is true in the US, but not as true in other countries. The US eats an enormous amount of meat compared to most countries (and even more so compared to history).

The article mentions that it would be better if some of the farmers started growing vegetables rather than grain, but the subsidies don't pay for vegetables.
I wonder why they don't implement the google solution on pool.ntp.org.

I.e. gradually slow/accelerate time over the course of a day, rather than stepping it hard at once.

I'd say this approach would be vastly preferable for about 100% of the systems relying on pool.ntp.org.

The remaining 0%, e.g. scientific applications that absolutely need the leap second to appear at exactly the right moment, most likely don't use pool.ntp.org anyways.

And for those who do they could create a second pool with the old behavior. Maybe call it science.ntp.org.
I know that when iOS 5.0 mentioned 'twitter integration' and BBM like messaging, I had assumed (wrongly) that iOS was going to use twitter DMs in the way that they are using iMessages now. This would be using a person's twitter handle instead of the Apple ID associated with the iPhone. Like I said, this did not come to pass, but it could have been used as a BBM-like messaging service pre-iMessaging.
Bootstrapped To $1 Mil In 1 Year By Selling Tires?
No, I haven't solved that problem. tup looks really useful. Thanks for the suggestion!
Good point, and a reminder that not everything needs to be ported to Vim (just because it can be).
Any site that requires Facebook to login is a site I will not use.

So, my feedback: it sucks until you implement login that does not rely on a third party that is known for its questionable privacy practices.

After you do that, I would definitely check it out.
Well done by the way. "Finishing" stuff is hard and you have launched!
Because developers are awesome
How much of this has to do with the HBGary/Palantir plot uncovered by Anonymous?

IIRC, it was to manufacture identities on social networks to allow governments and big corporations to allow for "persona magnification" and "consent creation"

In short, could social-network ballot-stuffing be a likely cause?