skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My guess is that it will take a long, long time for enterprises to move to Windows 8, with most sticking with Windows 7 for as long as Microsoft continues to provide security patches for it. If you're an enterprise with 10000 or 50000 non-technical users running Windows 7, the cost of moving to Windows 8 will be primarily IT staff hours, including all the support questions from users puzzled by the new user interface. What compelling benefits would there be for a bank or insurance company to move to Windows 8 that would offset the steep costs?
Its Not the Skins' Fault
It's not the most frequent method for launching. According to MS, their metrics indicate pinned task bar items are, or are trending to be, the most frequent method.

When I don't remember the name of the thing I want to launch (which is quite frequent), I rely mostly on positional navigation through a customized start menu. That is, I don't remember programs by name, I remember them by where I left them. Windows Vista / 7's start menu was a major regression for my use case (the scrollable treeview with expandable items destroyed absolute screen positioning); I had to replace it with Classic Shell to get usability back.
This seems very much like a prearranged PR event. He says:

"... but to be honest, I’m not sure what I would have made for the deliveries themselves. Postmates recently changed its pricing policy to charge users based on the difficulty of the job, and it declined to disclose how much it pays its couriers for those jobs."

So it is pretty clear that the company is not treating him as an employee, but is giving him special treatment as a journalist.

If he really wanted to show how it feels to be a psotmates employee, he should just get the job as an ordinary joe schnoe, like the lady that wrote "nickel and dimed".
"As currently proposed, Secure Boot impedes free software adoption. It is already bad enough that nearly all computers sold come with Microsoft Windows pre-installed. In order to convince users to try free software, we must convince them to remove the operating system that came on their computers (or to divide their hard drives and make room for a new system, perceptually risking their data in the process).

With Secure Boot, new free software users must take an additional step to install free software operating systems. Because these operating systems do not have keys stored in every computer's firmware by default like Microsoft does, users will have to disable Secure Boot before booting the new system's installer. Proprietary software companies may present this requirement under the guise of "disable security on your computer," which will mislead new users into thinking free software is insecure."

https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot...
While I agree that increased competition is better for consumers, Apple hasn't cut costs for the consumers -- they've merely absorbed the cost of the OS into their hardware.
About that hate speech...

Tara Carreon responded:

"There is now plenty of proof that Matt Inman is one
of a gang of people who promote the same type of ideas
that inspired Jared Loughner to try and kill Gabrielle
Giffords," she wrote. "Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty
Law Center, who studies hate groups and hate speech,
examined Loughner's sites and concluded that his material
on grammar, in particular, likely came from the writings of
far right activist David Wynn Miller. If you Google Matt
Inman + grammar, you will find a similar obsession. And
similar hate."

Citing SPLC suggests Tara Carreon is left leaning. But her misunderstanding / misuse of "hate speech" is very right wing.

Kind of like how trogs don't grok that Colbert is making fun of them.

Hate speech is wishing harm on your opponents for political reasons. Calling people names is not hate speech. Neither is making fun of people. That's just being a dick.

Alas, wingers don't get that distinction. I suspect the root cause (mental failing) also explains trogs rampant false equivalency (e.g. Clinton got a blow job == Bush allowing 9/11, illegally invading a foreign country, killing 100,000s of its citizens, making refugees out of a few million, and using depleted uranium to convert much of the formerly inhabited areas into Superfund sites).

I once had a winger tell me that the Rodney King riots in LA were an example of left wing hate speech. The stupid, it hurts. I honestly can't decide if trogs say ridiculous non sequiturs because they're thick or if it's merely to distract and enrage (a la Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter). I've decided to simply judge people by their actions, vs their intent.

The grandma having sex with a bear is obviously funny. To you and me. But the trogs can't see it that way. Any mocking is a direct personal attack demanding a defensive response.

Inman didn't know the Carreon's were mentally impaired. But for future, just know that trogs will misunderstand, misinterpret, twist, assume the worst, distort, etc. No one can control the audience's reaction. But in my mocking, I do try to avoid borderline humor which can be labeled "hate speech". No sense giving the trogs another chew toy. And there's no shortage of funny stuff to say.
Mobile Apps Compete in Chatbot Battles
That would just help redefine the term I first heard on season 2 of Archer: "rolling probable cause"
Plant It and They Will Come
This is huge for webdevs. With MS making upgrades to Win8 (and therefore IE10) so cheap/easy, the death of OldIE is that much closer.
Las Vegas, NV
Romotive Inc. http://romotive.com/

Seeking EE's with manufacturing experience and iOS devs

At Romotive, we build smartphone robots that can be controlled from any smart device anywhere in the world. Because software for Romo is distributed through the Apple App Store and the Android Market, our users can download new behaviors and personalities for their robots at the click of a button. We provide continuous support for our dedicated developers through the Romotive SDK, allowing anyone to build and distribute new apps for Romo.

We're a venture-backed company that counts Stanford University, Tony Hsieh, David Cohen, David Tisch, Lerer Ventures, and PivotNorth Capital amongst its investor team. We've built thousands of robots in the last few months (in our apartment), and we're setting up distribution agreements with retailers across the US to sell 100,000 robots before Christmas of 2012. The team is comprised of Harvard students, YC founders, iRobot alumni, etc. We're currently located in Las Vegas as part of Tony Hsieh's investment fund, but spend a great deal of our time in Palo Alto / SF.

We're looking for funny and brilliant people who design and build awesome hardware and software. We're looking for engineers, designers, and people who love robots. We don't care if you have awesome job offers from every bank and consultancy on the planet. If you match the above description, reach out to us and let us show you why you want to be building robots instead.

Reach out to us at founders@romotive.com. We want to meet you.
So, Java's HashMap.get() should throw a checked exception whenever the value is not found in the map? That would sure eliminate a lot of boilerplate code :)

Aren't exceptions meant to be used for, well, exceptional cases only, i.e. when no matter what, execution really can't be continued? It makes sense for a lot of functions to return some sort of "Nothing" value instead of raising an exception, but the problem is that in many languages there is no explicit "Nothing" value, so people just abuse null.

You can have Maybe in Java too, but getting out a value or a Nothing out of a Maybe value is just not enforced by the compiler due to the lack of algebraic data types and pattern matching; still, it is an improvement over null hell. On a side note, Maybe is called Option in Scala.

By the way, exceptions are monads, they are just predefined in most languages in a way you can not change. If you want a lengthy Java centric read about that I would strongly recommend checking out [1]. Ant here's another if you're ok with reading Haskell [2].

Also for the record, in Haskell you can use the ErrorMonad in place of the Maybe monad if you want precise error reporting capabilities.

[1] http://apocalisp.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/thrower-functor

[2] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Exception
fyi: webrick (the dev rails server) only needs to be reset for database changes. Everything else will show up with a refresh.
I think the Surface Pro looks like a nice device, and Windows 8 makes perfect sense there. For my gaming rig/media productivity desktop with a large monitor, however, it seems detrimental to me. What has you stoked about it?
I predict lead lined trucks.
Ha, Hex was top on my list for games to create. I was leaving it open for other people to suggest. Glad I've got some support :)

Yes, anonymous accounts poses many challenges to things like that. Chances are, if/when we implement random opponents, you'll have to be registered (and your opponent would have to be registered as well).
Working with CSS Regions and Shadow DOM
I know of literally thousands of specific apes (and have it on good authority that the actual number reaches into the billions) who have built vocabularies reaching the tens of thousands without the use of advanced technological aids.
Ugh, somehow in the 3 days since you've posted this the URL just returns a default "MobileMe is closed" page.
It looked like this http://i.imgur.com/8hPFB.png
Pretty sure it was a Chrome bug, all is fine now in a new game using Opera
MT4 / NJ4X 1.5.8: isLimitedFunctionality()? trials user experience gets better
Whether or not a business just buys new machines or upgrades their OS depends on a variety of factors. Coporations who have bought Microsoft Software Assurance can upgrade to the latest MS Software on any machine without incurring any new licensing costs. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/new-ve...
I'll use it in a VM until the dev tools I work with start to support it, then I'll go all in. It is always the same thing when a full OS update comes, this is not any diff from the others. I'll keep my linux machines handy on the side as always. I don't see what the ten-foot pole security counter measures bring to the table at this point.
Learn Java first before learning other JVM languages: one of their strengths is interoperability with Java libraries.

If you want to learn functional programming _for its own sake_, learn Scheme (Little Schemer, SICP, Seasoned Schemer) , ML (either OCaml or SML would do), and optionally Haskell.

Common Lisp is worth learning, but majority of Common Lisp code is not very functional: idiomatic Common Lisp code readily takes advantage of cons cell mutability and uses do/loop macros; macros and CLOS are the salient feature of Common Lisp that are worth knowing about.
Why the downvotes, I wasn't sarcastic. Those are really interesting languages.
This is actually a more general issue. Profit/loss is wrt an entity. A given entity's profit/loss says nothing about the profit/loss of related entities.

For example, many "non-profits" have associated entities that are very profitable.
Uh, no. "ipad" is an improperly formatted way of writing "iPad", a product by Apple. Tablet is a generic term.
Have you actually used Windows 8?
I don't make much use of the metro apps, but there are lots of smaller improvements that I appreciate, like the new task manager, file copy dialog, login screen, etc.

The sight of the new start screen incites revulsion in most power users, but try to remember that you won't be spending much time there. Treat the start screen like what it really is: a fancier start menu.

Like me, you'll probably spend most of your time on the desktop, so Windows 8 really feels more like Windows 7.2. So I think your "ten-foot pole" proclamation is a little unjustifiable.
Tablet is the generic name for tablet. iPad / ipad is an Apple registered trademark.
Except this is the upgrade version, so this requires a previous version on Windows too.
For most people the "All Programs" menu quickly turns into a circus. Curating it is a chore.

They are messing this up in Windows 8, as every time you install a application, including desktop applications, all of its start menu items get pinned onto the start screen. I'm afraid most users will never bother to unpin them.
If you think you see principles then we have a different standards of what constitutes a principle.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.
Try getting a definitive list of state or federal laws. No such list for the Feds and most states.
Of course people porting software will have to read. How else do you expect them to figure out the do's and don'ts of a new CPU?

Just like software, CPU's have release notes that describe the major behavioral changes and additions. For most software, it will provide sufficient info. However, if you are writing an OS or want to wring out maximum performance, you will have to read about every single detail. For example, suppose that division gets 1 cycle cheaper, or that a pipeline gets one instruction deeper. That could shift the balance in such a way that a compiler needs to change in order to produce the best code possible.

Similarly, an OS might use a CPU feature or bug that gets changed (for an example, see the A20 line at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_memory_management#The_80286...)
16 Saal Ki Hot Padosan
Exactly. Our law firm is almost -- almost -- ready to roll out our Windows 7 build. And we only have about 650 users.
So...does that mean you're looking forward to Win8 because the start screen items are much easier to position?
The pole is to keep that cluttered ribbon interface away from my relatively clean Explorer windows, the touch-centric gestures away from my mouse-driven desktop, and to ward off the mental expense of context changes as my environment switches between the classic desktop with classic apps, the start screen and various metro apps.
Higgs Boson “God Particle” Almost Found
So it's only a view when you write all your code to push bits to the monitor yourself. Outputting using libraries that convert formats like html (-> browser -> os/driver -> screen) aren't views. Got it.
Medicine Man: Risk Assessment
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I've also been playing around with it a bit (my excuse was that I needed to use Windows for some work stuff), and have had a similar experience. That is, I mostly just use the standard desktop and only see the launcher rarely. For me, it's basically just Windows 7 but very pretty. (I actually think that Microsoft now has the best graphical design with Metro.)

I did try some of the metro apps. It was a little weird--it wasn't immediately obvious how to close the metro app--but fairly nice over all. The preference for scrolling sideways is a little odd, but not difficult to get used to. The problem is that the app store doesn't have anything I actually need at the moment--the only moderately useful app I've found was the Wikipedia one, and I usually just use my browser for that. Of course, I basically live in Chrome and Emacs, so I'm not very representative :).

So, as far as design and usability goes, I'm content. However, I've had a major over-arching problem that eclipses everything else--stability. After any extended use, the computer just freezes up and most things stop working, forcing me to restart. It's probably a driver issue, but it's very annoying nonetheless.

I've had some other similar problems (for example, regedit did not work until a couple of reboots), but they do not recur often, so I can forgive them in a beta product.

In short: it's very pretty and entirely useable, but also somewhat unstable. And still not as good as Linux :).
If you're technical enough to be buying old computers to work around it, I bet you could figure out how to disable it when the option is right there. :)
I hope they carry over the WunderMap. Of all the radars I've browsed, theirs is definitely the quickest, and has all sorts of layers to customize it with. (As well as a multitude of station readings.)

It looks like they'll be keeping the Wunderground site as-is, but I've learned from past experiences that those kinds of statements don't hold up too well down the road ..
This is the problem.

Tech monoculture is going to persist so long as you have stuff like this be exalted, rather than condemned.

Of all the cultures for this industry to embrace, gaming -- where players exploit the veil of anonymity to be sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. -- is one of the poorest choices.

I like programming, a whole lot. I don't really like gaming . That shouldn't be a problem.
> Based on my limited experience, delivering for Postmates means you spend more time waiting in line than doing anything else.

Isn't that why people hire someone else for errands? So they don't have to wait in line?
The minute you delete your account.

Until then you're just complaining about a product you refuse to stop using.
Can you be more specific about your struggles w/Cocos2d?
Were you simply more comfortable w/the similar concepts and naming schemes for Sparrow and AS3? Thanks!
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've always thought Controllers were supposed to be dumb and Models were supposed to be smart.

That is, a model encompasses extracting the knowledge and turning into something that the controller passes to a view or another model, but is not processed much (if any) during the transfer. At most, it might be combined with data from other models into an uber-record that is passed to the view.
Welcome Wakoopa Social Users, RescueTime to fill the void
> Why do you claim that the IDF is more effective than other organizations?

I didn't claim that the IDF was more effective than all organizations, I said that it was more effective than most.

For example, I'd claim that the IDF is more effective than almost every failed startup.... (You can argue that many fail for reasons outside their control, but I'll respond that such vulnerabilities are a failure.)
If I was TWC, I'd use the network of private weather stations all feeding into WXUG to create hyper-local forecasts or even a mobile app that can push-alert you on the ETA of upcoming storms.
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It does not work on iPad.
It's certainly not the most common method; I'm sure point-and-click is. But the kind of people who use keyboard launchers, the ones who are sounding off the loudest on their tech blogs and sites like HN and Reddit, surprise me. I'm sure the average user might be confused, but for me at least, I'll do what I do with Win7, OSX, or Ubuntu: Super + typing + Enter.
Dotjs script to add collapsible comment threads on HN
This is definitely easier to use (and understand) that Dominion's maps. Some notes and questions:

"Severe" is spelled wrong. Some periods are missing at the end of sentences.

Why is the ZIP code required even if I enter a full address?

It also does not inspire confidence to enter your home address into a site that claims "no responsibility" when doing so proclaims that you are either at home without power or away from home. Sites like this need a privacy policy.
Hey, thanks for the clarification. That's a totally fair point. I was probably a little over-eager to reply here since this story so much invites the lawyers-are-evil thing and I've been looking for a chance to put it in context. Like, "yes OK lawyers are evil sometimes but this isn't that." :)

After thinking more about it, the literal-minded moral crusade is something I've definitely seen in the legal system, not from lawyers but from pro se parties -- non-lawyers who are representing themselves. There's a group of people who are absolutely sure that the world has wronged them and that they'll eventually be able to make everyone understand, but are unable to parse or accept the reality checks they're getting back from the system, so they go through a series of lawyers before striking out on their own. I bet any clerk's office you walked into, they could name a handful of people like that who they recognize by sight when they come in to file their next complaint (and then a complaint against the judge who handled the last complaint, and so on). They're sad situations.

I don't really know anything about Carreon or the rest of this mess, but assuming that's what's happening, maybe there's some observer bias here -- the reason we're hearing about this at all is that he is a lawyer, so he's able to navigate the system well enough to cause real trouble, at least for a while.
It's very similar you're correct, particularly when you add in the Manager/Service layer (something that I hadn't spent enough time investigating).

The main advantage of Operations over controllers is that they're fully composable. You can take the operation that logs a user in (which displays the login screen, and awaits the user typing a username and password) and use it as a sub-part of any other operation.

In a purer MVC world you get something similar to this by making a function that instantiates the login controller with its associated view; that's pretty good, but there's no obvious place to put that function.

I'll certainly be following up with more details, and some actual code.
That's too bad. I always liked the raw radar imagery. (OK, not really raw, but the same images that real forecasters get.) The Weather Channel is too mainstream; all their imagery is editorialized and dumbed down for an audience that just wants to know if it's going to rain today.

I guess I will have to write a quick perl script to generate my own images now.
The only thing they're missing is something like Weather Undergrounds easy radar map.

That provided XML for the forecast might come in handy for something I was going to do though.
The task manager is something I use to find the app that's misbehaving (usually Firefox) and kill it; I can't imagine much relevant improvement, unless it somehow allows me to do this faster. It would have to be faster than "control-shift-escape -> [start typing name of offending app until it's selected] -> alt-E -> enter -> escape" -- maybe using the "control" modifier instead of "alt" would be an improvement, or maybe assuming I'm only going to kill one process and exiting the task manager automatically after killing the app.

Other than that, I've got the login screen bypassed on boot and file copying has not been a problem for me; I don't see any value here.

I don't need to put up with any of that other stuff; I'm happy with Win 7 the way it is.
Wow. I am crestfallen. Loved the service for years and have been a paying member for a while.

Weather underground did a great job of making historical and trending weather information available. They do a great job of supporting local weather blogs, too.

I wonder how long until the "integration" occurs and it is just a memory.
> All freemium services are in essence an example of such a system

No, they aren't. They exist because sufficient people pay.

> and therefore by extension most startups.

Do you really think that a significant number of startups are freemium?

> Currently, the primary funder of such services are ad and brand agencies.

Not at all. They're funded by "heavy users" - see dropbox.

Ad supported is not freemium.
If ClojureScript ever becomes self-hosting (it's currently compiled via JVM-Clojure), it'd be much more attractive for scripting.

(PS: should mention that it's fine if you don't anticipate editing said scripts often)