skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sorry, I guess that was badly put. I wasn't discussing any specific change/simplification of the system and saying that this would make things worse. Without some specific changes at hand it's difficult/meaningless to make such predictions. I certainly don't think that the current process is optimal and any change is a change for the worse. Personally, I'd be happier with drastically relaxed notability criteria.

I meant that if there was a change that involved a trade-off between process complexity and article quality[0], we shouldn't tend towards article quality at all costs. I meant that maybe a lower article quality is worth it if it means being less byzantine, less harsh towards the newbies, more flexible, etc.

Of course if you can avoid that trade-off, if Wikipedia can be any or all of these things without a drop in quality -- and I'm sure it can be although I don't know how -- that's even better and we should implement that first.

[0] You're 100% correct that "worse" isn't well defined here, and "high article quality" is not much better.
I agree that these could provide only a basic filter like Fizzbuzz, I could solve most problems provided here when I was high school.
Slate.com n famous economists blogs
This story (and others on this page) should drive home the point about how little most businesses really care about technology. If it solves a problem, they do not care about the hardware, programming language, database, user interface, etc. Look how many business applications still use character-mode interfaces (most banking, insurance, stock/inventory systems, etc). Why? They work.
Microsoft have always had a funny habit of using GUIDs for everything.
But so should a high-school student...
I think this has more to do with age than anything else. But it might also be because you can do stuff faster in Ruby or Python or JavaScript so you have all this time to wax poetic about it. ;)

There's still nothing like C/C++ for getting close to the metal. And until we have an OS written in Ruby or Python, rather than C, it's gonna be like that forever.
> For example, a claim could use the word "lawnmower" to refer to what you and I would call a banana by defining "lawnmower" appropriately.

Yeah, a patentee can be his own lexicographer, but... I've never seen anything like this in practice, and I've read a lot of patents. Reading the claims in isolation generally gives you a pretty good idea of what the patent's about, once you get the hang of claim reading.
Yes, it is common because too many people drink the kool-aid. You should be entitled to be paid according to your contribution. "Should" because other factors may be involved:
- paying you more might upset some employees with a degree;
- paying you more might arise requests from some employees without a degree;
- why pay you more when you are contented with less money?
If your contributions overcome such side-effects, you can ask for more.
Apple does not require it because its not their job. Its the app developer that's losing money because of this not Apple. They provided a way to do it right.
Reverse engineering chinese scope with USB
According to both Wikipedia and Mathworld, "whole number" is sometimes used for:

• The positive integers

• The non-negative integers

• The integers
Ordered one a minute ago in protest.
What about delicious.com?
That's incorrect. The copy is:

"1. Getting your Developer ID.
Mac Developer Program members can get their Developer ID now. If you’re not already a member, join today."

"Join today" links to https://developer.apple.com/programs/mac/, where they politely ask for their $99/year software development tax.
Like the exact opposite of flat-real mode.

Flat real mode was a hack mode on old 32bit intel systems to enable flat memory mapping with 16bit code. You'd jump into protected mode, map the full 4gig address space flat, then jump back into 16bit real mode without remapping that memory space.

Afterwards you could access all your memory in a flat address space rather than using 64K segment:offsets. You had to prefix your memory access instructions with a 0x66 byte though. Also, you had to write your own runtime library.

This is the exact opposite, Giving you all the registers, but not the memory address space.
Oh my god that is so not an edge case.
Python.org Redesign Proposals due in 7 days
That's what it says on the tin.
This should result in another surge of OUYA contributors.
It has been said here before. Linux fully supports PAE whereas Windows only uses it for execution restriction. Therefore you are not able to see anything beyond the 4 GB limit on Windows.
XP's interface was horrible after the last possible minute, too. Aero is great though, but, hilariously, from what I understand it's being thrown out in Windows 8.
I've gotten letters like this from the IRS...
I’m not a programmer but I loved this line from the post:

But if you don’t mind too much feeling like a baby, and if you can create some space in your life where you aren’t forced to be an adult, then give the masters a try.

I think this is very good advice for many things.
Worldrat, Urban Exploration
I don’t write because I can, I write because I can’t not write.

That seems a better definition of a writer than the Thomas Mann quote.

If I published the exact same Github projects under a pseudonym, would anyone who hasn’t read my writing care?

You can pull a Stephen King and try it. Start rolling out new code under a new name. See what happens.

I think, however, that you'd run into the problem of getting lost in a sea of code, regardless of the quality of your work.
Thank you sir. Yes, I do think options are open in the long term.
Looking through hamburglar's comment history, I can't work out why he'd be shadowbanned. He doesn't seem to have said anything particularly egregious or spammed.
I tried HQX and the results are impressive! I have abandonned the Python tool because the installation is tedious but this one is very straightforward.
Browser extensions might be the way to go. Everyone can choose between "skins" on HN. There are some already I believe.
This is frustrating. I can't tell if you're making a joke, in which case I understand fine and I was going to make a joke about tautologies myself but then changed my mind. But if you're not making a joke and you think this involves circular reasoning, then you completely missed my point:

Notability, the Wikipedia term, is not an input to the article inclusion/exclusion process, it is the output of this process. The process itself depends on the topic and relies on various proxy metrics because notability (the English word) relates to an abstract concept which you can not meaningfully discuss directly.
> Currently, for most devices only software decode of audio and video is hooked up.

This is a good start, but ultimately, you need hardware decoding. Even if a modern phone or tablet could decode 720p x264 in real time (many cannot), the battery usage would make it entirely untenable.
One of my favorite stories in this vein:

You may know that we often read Plato but never read Socrates, and you might have wondered why the hell we don't go back to the 'originals'. Reading Plato's dialogue "Phaedrus" gives an answer near the end: Socrates apparently believed "that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence." Socrates of course was famous for using questions to try and ferret out truth; the idea that you couldn't have a conversation with a book seemed to make Socrates very cautious. He expresses other concerns as well: that memory must be exercised to be strong, and that writing would thus lead to a weakening of memory; also that writing makes it easier to pretend to know something which you don't really understand; and that people will write texts which cannot be used to learn the subject but only can be used as an aid to remember it.

Thus ironically, Socrates seemed to believe that books would end the existence of knowledge. This presumably was the reason that he never wrote down his own philosophy, and his students had to do it for him.
For the middle one, would you accept the arithmetic progression 1, 1, 1?

I know that 1 is not considered to be a prime now, but it was considered to be a prime by most mathematicians up through the 19th century, and Lehmer included it in his lists of primes as late as 1956.
s/whole number/integer/
This is exactly how I got my start in software. I was hired to walk a warehouse at a furniture retailer and take inventory with pencil and paper. At this time I had 0 computer experience.

Soon I was voluntarily transferring the paper to spreadsheets and printing them out. Next was a starbase db with a simple form on a laptop.

A year later I had built a custom system with a mysql database, barcode scanners at the arrival and departure gates and automatic email reports to the owner.

It is because of this that I was able to get to move on to another company to be hired as a software developer without a college degree.
Did we look at the same chart? The characters in that last line are 3 or 4 pixels tall. I just did an experiment and 80% of guesses were wrong. There is just not enough information, but this method can still decode them.
They are usable implementations of all these graphic algos. See: http://www.scriptol.com/programming/graphic-algorithms.php
Reading this post I get a nice feeling of joy for belonging to the software community.

Being so entrenched in the software world it becomes easy to gloss over these details. The outside perspective of this article really shines a light on how well the software community collaborates and shares.

I can't think of a single community that even comes close to the level of collaboration we have in software.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you think only laypeople would search for such a thing because more knowledgeable people think that what the program is doing is mathematically impossible? Sounds like a classic example of thinking you know more than you do, and trying to look at the world as binary, black and white.

In actuality, images have a wide range of sharpness. In this case, Blurity can improve the image. (Using mathematics no less!) Will it be perfectly sharp? No, not always, but it will be better. And that's something people will pay for. Even experts.
If you're in the US and near the Canadian border both are available here in Canada, I think.

http://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Products/Galaxy_Nexus

I don't know if is the new one or not:
http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/samsung-samsung-10-1-...
Man.. Metro/Windows 8 is like watching a train wreck in very slow motion. Everyone knows the hybrid desktop/tablet UI is a disaster and Microsoft out of a middle-management positive reinforcement loop of putting their heads in the sand keeps chugging along down the rails. Everyone who has used it and reviewed it so far has said it's a disjointed experience to have the start button go to a completely different UI with its own app ecosystem. It sucks more because personally I think the windows desktop OS is much better than Mac and Linux for a number of reasons (I spend time in each Mac/Linux daily for development.) Have you been to a computer store lately? There are tons of desktops with touch enabled displays, but they have only been gimmicks. There's no real demand for them because the usability cases aren't practical when you already have you hands on a mouse/keyboard. Touch = tablet UI. Mouse/keyboard = Desktop UI, and which UI is the majority of windows users? Anyways.. god dammit Microsoft, get off your high horse and fix windows 8 before you really start pissing people off with another ME/Vista release.
Yes, but you could put your tablet on a charger and hook it to the TV. If you then had a remote control app on your phone, that would be perfect. Even better, someone designs a snazzy dock for this function, which may or may not have its own purpose-built remote/controller.

Voila, your tablet is now also a media center box. (And could even function as a low-power game box.)
Google's new unit conversion widget
Yeah, "leaked" is quite a statement here. The full source code is on github. Should be clear that someone will post a debug build of that, right?
Screenshot in case this is a partial feature rollout: http://i.imgur.com/eieHM.png
Google Ads vs Facebook Ads vs Linkedin Ads
In what way did the

aabb = a(ab)b = a(ba)b = abab

fail to prove the if?

edit: I did fail to re-state it, but figured it was obvious in the not-really-formal-proof setting. If that's all you meant by "a bit murky" then nevermind.
One of the big problems some startups might face is actually getting a significant amount of traffic in order to do a/b testing properly. Even if you set it up correctly, drive traffic and get a "result" you may or may not have enough data to make that result statistically significant.

So, while it might be nice to a/b test everything - sometimes you just want to start out on the right foot and then test from there.
Will this work with the Nexus Q? Doesn't seem to work on my HP TouchPad.
Classes can be changed after loading using HotSwap, it's just their method signature can't change:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/guide/jpda/enhancem...
Stripe accounts are free and they have a test mode where you can easily create subscriptions and transactions. I think that's beter than a demo.
Interesting comparison :)

I'm curious about what you're thinking about when you say "write your own runtime library" - wasn't the whole purpose of this "unreal mode" and staying in 16bit such that you would still have access to DOS and its API? (compared to switching to full 32bit mode, where DOS went out the window unless you implemented or embedded a "DOS-extender"?).
Were you able to track via pixels or cookies or something how many of those premium accounts signed after using the free version?
Since the Mail app is the protagonist in this piece, I will say that Apple's own Mail application was for a long time (and may still be for all I know) similarly dreadful.

In general, they tend to be slow, contain artefacts, crash, hang, lose responsiveness, or just flat-out refuse to do any networking operations.

This exactly describes (to the best of my recollection, I gave it one final chance in Tiger I think) Mail.app on Mac OS X.
Spool is shutting down
Sorry, didn't see it. Thanks for your response, that makes sense!
From the link:

Me: ``Oh, well, see, this isn't really the devil, it's just, well, it's sort of a mascot.''

Native: ``And what kind of football team has the devil as a mascot?''

I call BS.

College mascots that are devils, off the top of my head:
- Duke Blue Devils
- Arizona Sun Devils
- Dusty, from a branch of Texas A&M

All of which have been there for decades.. and since Duke and Arizona are regular NCAA champion contenders, it wouldn't be a surprise.
Also with Github you are publishing actual code, and not just writing about code (I am looking at you, coding horror).
It doesn't equal utility, but it does equal quality, at least to the extent that bugs per SLOC matter. This has also been known for awhile, with data to back it up.
You have very clearly established the following:

ab = ba --> (ab)^2 = a^2b^2

It is less obvious that you have proven that:

(ab)^2 = a^2b^2 --> ab = ba

If I were grading a sophomore algebra class, I would expect to see something along the lines of:

Suppose (ab)^2 = a^2b^2.
Re-associating gives us a(ba)b = a(ab)b;
multiplying on the left and right by the
inverses of a and b gives the result.

In any domain outside of a sophomore algebra class, I happily accept much briefer and more hand-wavy proofs.
As far as whether I was making a joke or not, it is a bit of both. I understand that the wikipedia definition of the term notable means something that has been decided to be included in the encyclopedia, however in discussions over whether articles should be deleted, I have noticed that it seems very common for wikipedia members to give notability as the reason for deletion, which if notability merely means whether something has been decided to be suitable for the encylopedia, is then circular reasoning.
Raganwald, you are a computer philosopher more than you are a programmer. Blogs by you are always interesting, so don't worry too much about it.
php over fastcgi is a good example of how to reuse the same php process. I use http://php-fpm.org/ and nginx and it's great.
The Rise of the Incredible Cell-Sized Enterprise
Inadequate enforcement of contracts is a separate debate. But living somewhere with strong tenant laws helps. For instance, where I live, people can (and do) sue their landlord for damages when their quality of life is affected by the landlord breaching some part of the lease.
No problemo. Am glad that my minor bout of OCD came in useful.
For those more knowledgeable than I: would this run on Google TVs? It looks like it's an NDK app, and I was under the impression that GTV didn't support the NDK.
So I posted an app in the market place that got rejected the first time because I didn't include a privacy policy. I forget how much detail was included in the feedback when they told me this but it didn't take long for me to fix it and resubmit it. While I will agree it'd be nice if they sped the process up, its not slower than the competitions and it seems be about on par. Being on par isn't great though, and they should seek to excel and be better than apples process. Not sure how much that would help but its definitely a place to start. Anyways I'll be releasing another major update for my app soon so we'll see how it goes.
Indeed, it's hard to knock Chrome's UI, it barely has one.
A poor craftsman blames his tools -- because one upon a time, a craftsman would make his own tools.

If you give a shovel and a screwdriver, don't complain if the house I build is not up to code.

If I show up with a shovel and a screw-driver, you have every right to send me away.
> For me, personally, we never really thought about Reddit too much. It was always just this poorly designed site that was slowly gaining traction.

Wow. I always thought Digg was a poorly designed site and thought reddit was brilliant with a minimalist bent.

I suspect it means something significant if a site can slowly gain traction over a long period of time, versus a flashy site that can seem like the next big thing for a week.

Easy come, easy go.
It occurs to me I answered your question only obliquely: Android doesn't have ORM. It does have a database stack that makes ORM unnecessary in most cases.
Ah, when I read your response I flipped the order of the problem around in recalling it, so had the if and only-if backwards. Yes, I was handwavy there but it seemed clear enough for the setting (which you seem to be granting anyway) - just wanted to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding something. Thanks :)
> Having seen the possible consequences of a bad decision first-hand does not, in fact, stop people from making bad decisions.

For certain personality types.

Are you saying if 16 year olds were forced to work with rehab patients, a good percentage of them would not be scared away from driving?
You should check out sites like TopCoder [0] or UVa's online judge [1]. These sites offer tons of problems that focus more on algorithms and data structures, rather than just number theory and math-based problems like Project Euler - which I find becomes repetitive really fast. These judge sites will have problems ranging in topics such as ad hoc, searching, sorting, greedy, graph theory, geometry, dynamic programming, etc.

If you want to get started, try going through TopCoder's high school competition arena. The problems shouldn't be too bad if you have a good understanding of your languages stdlib and about basic data structures (alternatively, it's probably a great way to learn a new language's stdlib). You basically get a problem statement and just have to fill in a method that performs the computations required with the example inputs. Then you can test it against all the test cases once it passes the example outputs. UVa is similar, except you have to take input from a file and it doesn't tell you what test cases your solution fails on (more like the ACM ICPC style of questions).

I prefer TopCoder more since the focus is all on algorithms (UVa's problems will usually require taking input/producing output in very specific ways, which gets annoying sometimes), and since you can see the top ranked competitors' solutions for previous contents. It helps to review these after you solve a problem to pick up little tricks.

[0] (http://www.topcoder.com/tc) - click the O(n) icon in the top left to start the arena applet. Then go to "Practice Rooms" -> "TCHS" or "SRM" and pick a room. Within each room there should be 3 problems valued based on difficulty.

[1] (http://uva.onlinejudge.org/) - go to "Browse Problems" to view them all, but I find http://uhunt.felix-halim.net/ more useful; just enter your username and it'll suggest problems for you to do next (based on increasing difficulty)
They're not going for upgrades on already existing windows customers computers, the main goal is to sell new tablets and touch enabled laptops and all in ones. There was a section of WPC 2012 where they showed off some of the new OEM devices and guess what, the majority of them were touch enabled.
or for that matter their reputation.

That they still have a reputation worth defending is fairly surprising given their history.
In the US, 17 USC 117 disagrees.
My point is that if you don't have one at all, you pay nothing.
This is similar to how Scott toilet paper completely copied Charmin toilet paper.

Exhibit A, a Scott toilet paper roll:

http://ts3.mm.bing.net/th?id=I4937842907021398&pid=1.5

Exhibit B, a Charmin toilet paper roll:

http://www.coloredtoiletpaper.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01...

Also, I usually like to shop for rolls by unpackaging them, placing them side by side, stepping back 20 meters and just staring at them from the other side of the store, and now I was totally confused as to which was which. I don't understand why more people aren't up in arms about this. Scott clearly had the intent to copy Charmin's paper-around-roll design philosophy. The world needs more patents to prevent this.
I've worked directly with a number of "average" people now who moved to Chrome because it was recommended to them by somebody else, but they didn't even know about its main menu. You wouldn't believe their surprise when they see that Chrome allows them to open multiple tabs or windows, or that they can zoom the page, or that they can print.

I'll suggest that these are not things "average" users do. They don't care about tabs and windows, they just deal with them when the site they are on opens them. If they need to print something, like an order confirmation on amazon.com, they use the "Print" button that's on the page. Or they might do a screenshot if they know how to do that. And then email it to themselves.
Which is exactly what they do

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8858333/Apple-ta...
It is a licensing restriction. Windows Server supports up to 64 GB on 32-bit versions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa36...
1 1 2
"the current state of Metro's applications do not bode well."

Metro apps run great on WP7. The problems with a pre-release version of Windows 8, are not inherent in Metro and probably not in Windows 8.

Instead they come with the territory of volunteering to be a beta tester.
The first application that comes to my mind is improving the quality of photos in real estate listings. Half the time it looks like they were taken by a camera phone circa 1995 by someone who was skipping from room to room.
What if two-factor fobs were actually secure, really cheap, and required nearly zero user intervention?

How about a device that would just live on your real-world keychain, which would communicate with the website through a central registry? If you have it, it does a two-factor authentication behind the scenes with any website that has the feature that you've enabled it for.

It would have to be someone like Amazon, Apple, or Google to implement this.