skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A striking graph, but ultimately nothing more than a popularity index, isn't it? Since there's no allowance for whether someone was augmenting or criticizing or what have you. And placement of nodes seems more or less arbitrary as well, or rather they had to choose between grouping by connections or grouping by theme, and it's rather difficult to accurately place hundreds of philosophers on some kind of 4-axis graph. But that is in fact what I was hoping for. X axis is time perhaps and Y axis is power, as measured by longevity and frequency of reference from that time forward?
Well, we didn't think about that when we wrote the library for use in our app. :) Now that you mention it, I think it would be a great addition.
I intentionally left out WW2 because only one nation on earth had nukes, and only at the end of the war. It's not a valid reference in a discussion about multiple countries having nukes and that acting as a form of peaceful standoff.

The point about conventional war is, for example, if India were stomping Pakistan in a conventional war, there would be an inflection point at which Pakistan would be willing to unleash nuclear war to stop India. History is a pretty consistent reminder about how irrational nations can be, there's nothing about nukes that prevents that.

Japan had not acted rationally for a very long time. They invaded China and slaughtered civilians by the tens of thousands. They initiated war against the the Ally powers and joined with Adolph Hitler. I'm not sure what your point in referring to that is however.
To be fair, I'm not a regular reader. I've repeatedly heard their journalism is top rate, so I was surprised simply because caption tricks are the journalistic equivalent of Comic Sans - funny on lighthearted stuff, weird at the high end.
Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
New MacBook Pro with Retina Display: 2880-by-1800 resolution
...

One screen. Five million pixels.
When you pack over 5 million pixels into a 15.4-inch display, the results are positively stunning. The pixel density is so high, your eyes can’t discern individual pixels. Images take on a new level of realism and text is pin sharp. And with a 2880-by-1800 resolution, you can see more of your high-resolution images onscreen with pixel-for-pixel accuracy. So your best ideas can become your best work.

...
By not having datacenters they don't have capital tied up in buildings, real-estate, staff/benefits at those data centers, they can be much smaller personnel wise and having much more of the staff focused on stuff that matters to customers. Customers don't care where the data center is or who is running it, as long as their movies come on when they want to watch.
It's called the left-digit anchoring effect. Google it for an abundance of scholarly papers and other articles, if you're interested.
Yeah, what jack-r-abbit said: the point is you've got malicious script embedded in a page from somebody else's web site, so you have access to cookies and can inspect and/or manipulate the user's session arbitrarily.
I hope/wonder when WebRTC gets adopted more that we will see more things like (I'm sorry I can't remember the name) [the variant of SIP that desktop clients can implement to allow WebRTC -> SIP connections] but basically modified UDP protocols that will initiate inside of a connected WebRTC session allowing one to connect to desktop clients via WebRTC clients.

So if uTorrent/BitTorrent implemented TorrentRTC protocol, browser based clients could initiate a WebRTC PeerConnection and then communicate using the normal DHT/BitTorrent UDP protocols.

Very exciting.
Show HN: I am bored of pixel art so I'm making my video game with wool.
Given that both sides are entering arguments, and that a failure to compromise is going to delay the extradition process, It seems likely that the legal implications of the treaty and intricacies of the extradition process are far more complex than you describe. If they were not, the requests by the defense would have been thrown out already.

Furthermore, considering the high quality council retained by Mr Dotcom, it would seem doubtful that they are missing something that an armchair analyst is able to discover and present in an online forum.
I wonder if this is one of those rare instances where the US plays catch up with an established money making idea (another being text messaging)? Glasses Direct have been doing the same thing in the UK since 2004 and having similarly major blow out success. Usually it's the other way around.. the UK copies the US model ;-)
Namitha bikini still
I've been using FastMail for years, and I've looked into Rackspace Email recently, and back when it was Webmail.us. FastMail's interface is definitely superior, and their beta interface[1] is on par with Gmail.

If you're using a desktop client with IMAP, then the decision matters less, but definitely take the time to check out FastMail Beta.

[1] http://beta.fastmail.fm
Ask HN: Looking for Contact Work
Start-up is going slower than expected, if anyone is looking for a contractor (fellow hacker) shoot me an email: mikecurry74@gmail.com.

c/c++/java/php/python
nope, in this case the image will be interpreted as an image, not a script.
TheHarvester v 2.0 - Collects email accounts, usernames and hostnames
I don't know if that's a fair comparison since you have a lot of experience in PHP and it sounds like, less in Ruby. It would be more fair to compare your productivity and costs in PHP against a seasoned Ruby developer.
A lot of people in libertarianism will actually oppose copyright and patents on property right ground. However It would seems that Ron Paul oppose public domain on property right ground.

Even so, I think the libertarians are coming to the consensus that IP are something to be opposed. Ron Paul is just a little bit behind on the time.
No, but if it becomes standard in most browsers, I would guess that would be enough for many people to consider using WebRTC for the same reasons they would consider use BitTorrent. And because of its accessibility, WebRTC would probably win. If that happens, that doesn't bode well for BitTorrent I'm afraid.
Gmail and Google search.
This is easy to say as someone who has never managed a product, but I feel silent self-update is table stakes for consumer-facing products at this point.

Requesting permission to update throws a significant amount of users. They're typically not capable of determining if the request is legitimate or not, they're fearful of updating things they rely on, and god help them if it's not a one-click update.
Online Tutoring Niche: Keyword Research Project
anothermachine: it's not just that numbers ending in nine "look smaller," as you put it. My understanding is that the 'number 9 signaling effect' works even when the price is higher. In other words, if a store prices the same item at (say) $9.81 for one week and then at $9.99 the subsequent week, the store sells more of the item on the second week (all else being equal). As the Atlantic article explains it, our brains have been conditioned to equate prices ending in 9 with "this is discounted," even when it isn't.
When I say efficiency, I mean in the economic sense. That the ratio of input it takes to develop some things in PHP is lower than it would be for other languages.
Chemdoodle -- an open source framework for chemistry
It's a special case of automated client software updates, though.

Most of us are probably more familiar with systems like Firefox, Chrome, or Sparkle. The App Store mechanism is more complicated, and interesting.

The third party data (version string) that you don't want to trust is, in this case, very carefully screened by Apple as part of the submission process. It is trustworthy by the time it lands at the App Store -- but since Apple owns the whole workflow, they have much better options.
You have no idea of whether these probabilities and payoffs are correct. WWII killed tens of millions of people, not including nuclear weapons. I have zero doubt that there would have been a conventional war between US and USSR in the 20th century if it hadn't been for nuclear weapons, and that war would have killed millions.

So which is better: a 100% chance of a war that kills millions, or a 0.01% chance of a war that kills 5 billion? On a calculated payoff basis, a 100% war would only have to kill half a million people before it's "worse".

We don't know the probabilities here. I don't think the actual probability for global nuclear war is as high as 0.01%, for one; and I do think nuclear weapons are the biggest reason for global peace. Politicians would love to start more wars if they could.
Please explain~
(I can tell the magic is happening in fun.js and I could figure it out if I spend some time on it, but wouldn't mind the explanation handed to me on silver platter.)

http://zbyszek.posterous.com - the theme for this, did you create it? It's neat. There are a pair of forward slashes at the beginning of the page though. In Chrome at least.

http://naugtur.pl - Love the categorization and of course the animation. What are you using to do the animation?

Thanks~
His libertarian approach on this issue is that the government should be "hands off" and not make any legislation to control technology and the internet, including legislated net neutrality rules. He makes a good point in saying that legislation can't keep up with the speed of technology, but I'm not sure where I come down on his overall ideas.
What doesn't make sense? The only way to guarantee the free and open nature of the internet is to keep the government out of it. Once the government builds an apparatus to enforce net neutrality it's role will gradually expand to start controlling the internet.

An argument can be made that government funding of teclos should come with certain restrictions - those restrictions must be present when the money is doled out. Government creating problems in order to solve them, is an easy way to further their involvement. Additionally, I believe the Pauls would be against the funding.
I think the takeaway from this should be slightly different than the one the author found: don't fight users' expectations of what your product is.

When Chrome came out, it was a new product; users had no expectations of "what Chrome is." So Google could do with it essentially whatever they wanted.

Firefox was in a completely different position. When Mozilla moved Firefox to rapid release, the product branded "Firefox" had been in users' hands for seven years -- nine if you count pre-1.0 versions. Over that time, users' expectations of what a product branded "Firefox" was settled into a particular place.

Rapid release was painful because it broke those expectations. Suddenly Firefox didn't behave like people expected a product labeled "Firefox" to behave anymore. It's like opening a bottle labeled "Coke" and having orange juice pour out. "But orange juice is better for you!" Yeah, but that's still not what I expect to get when I open a Coke bottle.

There's a simple way Mozilla could have avoided this: just call the rapid-release product something else. Create a new brand, and put it on a version of the browser that receives updates every six weeks. Call it Fastfox or Frequentfox or really anything other than Firefox. Then encourage users to start moving from Firefox to the new hotness. Make the new product compatible with Firefox extensions, but don't do the version-number compatibility check that Firefox does, so users aren't constantly being prompted to update working addons.

(Yes, both products are the same code under the hood. That doesn't matter. The important thing is that you communicate to users that this is a thing that is something other than Firefox, which resets their expectations.)

Eventually you'd have most users on the new product, since that's where the cool new features that get users excited would be showing up. Curmudgeons and enterprises would stay with boring old Firefox, but that's OK, because you make "Firefox" just a periodic snapshot of Frequentfox development. "Firefox" becomes a legacy brand, maintained for those who care about it. But the new brand is clearly established as the new hotness.

This lets you move your users without violating their expectations. They expect the new product to behave differently, because it's a new product. It's got a different name and everything!

Violent changes in direction for an established product, on the other hand, always tick off users, because they do violence to those users' expectations of what that product is.

It's better to send your well-loved legacy brand gracefully off into the sunset, in other words, than to try and shock new life into it with electric paddles.
Ask HN: Can I buy insurance for my Smart phone other than the phone carriers?
Just curious if I can buy insurance for my smart phone and other electronics not from the carriers but some 3rd party company?
Nope, you have an image embedded in somebody else's web site, the script never runs.

Also that's completely different than what you originally said.
So, That’s It For Thunderbird
" Using Parse can lower your development time by 10x to 100x. Developers go from taking weeks to build an app to being able to build one and push it out in a matter of hours.
"

So here is an interesting question. If you can build an app in a matter of minutes, how much is it worth? I ask because there is often a strong correlation between economic value and the time it takes to produce something. For example, movies produced in a couple of days often have a lower economic return than movies that take months to produce. Even including pornography in that mix, sans outliers like Paris Hilton, there seems to be a strong relationship between time and value.

Presumably Parse makes the implementation stage easier, but is that for all types of App? Or is it a class of App? It would need to be the former to 'change the industry' but what does that mean about the economic value of the industry to begin with?

Clearly this is part of a much bigger question of the economic value of 'Apps' in general. We are evolving models based on various metrics of course, and I'm curious does this 'destroy' value or does it 'grow' the market, or something else entirely.
I think the biggest propaganda coup of the US in recent years is convincing the world that "rogue", "terrorist" etc. groups are irrational. It justifies so much.
Why Tech Founders Are the Best CEOs
I call such things "chameleon files"

JS and PHP is also possible
http://tantek.pbworks.com/w/page/19402872/CassisProject

JS and HTML
http://project.mahemoff.com/josh/
(also demonstrated by Tantek Çelik earlier on in a project that eentually led him to Cassis.)
> OneClick: Turn your torrent downloads into normal in-browser downloads.

This has been possible in Opera out-of-the-box for half a decade.

Apparently with Torque I have to manually install a third-party plug-in, and that plugin only works on Windows. Great progress there. It's like replacing HTML5 with Adobe Flash: from native browser support back to a proprietary plug-in.
There is a principled argument against net neutrality as it's usually proposed, whether or not you happen to agree.

Given congress's track record, I think there are plenty of rational reasons to be wary of asking them to start telling ISPs how to run their networks. Why should we think such regulations wouldn't simply favor incumbents who are big enough to play the political game, like most of what congress passes?

If the problem with the telcos is that they're wielding publicly-granted monopoly powers, then let's address that directly. For an example alternative, I like the model where neighborhoods or municipalities own their own last mile infrastructure, giving them plenty of leverage to buy transit at competitive prices. This solution is practically illegal thanks to the legal barriers supporting the existing monopolies. Streamline the process for startups to get approval to compete and I don't doubt we'd see many innovative new models.
Andreas Illiger Announces 'Tiny Wings 2' in Clever Teaser Trailer
Darpa announces Integrated Hypersonics program.
Shaping everyday lives, one screen at a time
That first paragraph is choked with hyperbolic language. I think I'd rather read a different source on the matter if one exists.
> it forces coders to cover their code with awkward code and maintain it manually

Friendly request for proof via examples. A gist would be fair.
The manifesto has some serious problems, but the Boingboing piece is a long, long way from an unbiased interpretation of it. Saying that it opposes the public domain and argues for government monopoly on control of information is just twisted and simply not true.

Read it yourself here.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/99193487/The-Technology-Revolution...
No it isn't. The point isn't that you should get free internet--the point is that a government should not prevent you from freely using the internet. This is no different from a right to, say, travel.

The internet is particularly important because it is very good for getting a message out to the world at large. Other existing channels tend to be more difficult to use or more limited. The internet lets people document current events first-hand without having to rely on reporters or news organizations.

So there are definitely some completely rational and practical reasons to declare internet access an international right, at the very least as a check against oppressive government.
The idea is that network operators should be free to operate their networks as they see fit, including blocking traffic, throttling, charging for preferred access, etc.

I happen to disagree, because internet operators tend to operate in a quasi-monopoly state in the US, but the simple freedom/libertarian angle here is against net neutrality.
Citytrip naar het Olympische Londen - Richting Vakantie
Yahoo and Facebook Launch Strategic Alliance and Resolve Patent Dispute
>This has been possible in Opera out-of-the-box for half a decade.

But it hasn't been in other browsers and Opera has a very small percentage of marketshare. If you're BitTorrent and you want people using their client in the browser, this project makes a lot of sense.

>plugin only works on Windows

I haven't played with it yet, but it ran an installer on my Mac. You might have been confused since it detects your operating system and just installs the right version, not letting you see which systems are supported.

>have to manually install a third-party plug-in

It is mostly automatic, but does ask you since plug-ins run native code and present a significant security risk.

I am guessing it might be necessary to use a plug-in because it requires more access to the system than Flash provides (at least in the security model that it gets run in within the browser) and also perhaps because it allows reusing existing code.
The first link has a scribd embedded with the document itself. You could go read that.
Discover Where Your App Users Are Coming From, In 5 Minutes
Currently (according to google analytics) around 3% of visitors to http://bugmuncher.com sign up for trial accounts. And then 20% of those trials go on to pay for it.

No idea how typical those figures are, but I think you shouldn't be discouraged by 1 in 100
I didn't see any mention of the scenario where Iran sells nukes to Al Qaeda who may perform a strike by proxy. Nuclear material can be sourced back to the lab of origin in some cases, but I wouldn't bank on that being enough to dissuade terrorists.
I don't think it has anything to do with your family's attitude towards your work (although I do agree if they put their interests before your priorities they shouldn't be given more importance). Family/friends could be more important than work to someone who derives more satisfaction from them. And in your comment, you seem to imply that a job automatically deserves loyalty (in this age where companies can let you go in the drop of a hat?).
If you see a job as "just another activity one does", no more no less, (doesn't mean the person doesn't give their best, and not demeaning a job here) in the path to overall growth, and has the same importance just like perfecting a hobby in your leisure, you develop a different attitude to it.

My whole point is that work is not sacrosanct. It has no special place. There is nothing in it by its very nature that makes it right to put it above all else. There are other activities one does throughout the day, or maybe every so often, that is more important or needs to be prioritized, IF one feels that way.
I used to use a similar trick with windows PE executables and ZIP files, basically making self extracting ZIP applications.
I wasn't sure what they meant by property rights, I assumed they were referring to physical infrastructure that runs the internet. Mandating sharing is a violation of property rights. I didn't see this as addressing intellectual property at all.
32-year-old man talks to his 12-year-old self -- on YouTube
8,000 Mobile Devices Left At Top U.S. Airports
What is the difference between using the prototype technique shown in the article and this?

var Person = function (){
this.Save = function() { … };
};

var person = new Person();
person.Save();
I thought of an idea similar to this a few years back but a VERY different implementation. Unfortunately the project was finished (in code) but never launched due to limitations of other platforms at the time to support the overall way the solution worked. Its a good problem to solve.
Many people are. I did a couple for my eredis project that let's you interact with Redis over an elisp repl or create/edit tables dynamically in a buffer from redis keys etc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP0MOaRueHU http://code.google.com/p/eredis/ disclaimer: I am not as cool as magnars
Bother, 'net access lost when trying to delete.

Apologies ...
So annoying your users with constant updates, reboots, and breaking functionality is okay as long as you do it from the start? And the way to get people to accept you adding such annoyance to your product is to rebrand it?

Okay then.
I'm sorry, I probably worded that unnecessarily harshly.

My point is that while you obviously feel strongly that you have chosen the correct path for your life, you are not an objective observer. I have come to realize that my thoughts on commitment and work--which were strongly like yours--were primarily a coping mechanism for a lifestyle that was not good for me.

Edit to add: This is the message of the "top 5 regrets" post linked in the HBR article: the decisions we make and defend during life might not look so great as greater perspective is gained.
>> evil "collectivists" ... are saying that "what is considered to be in the public domain should be greatly expanded."

It is "collectivist" to release software (etc.) in public domain???

Something done only by collectivists? So that if I contribute to FOSS I must be labeled a collectivist?

Maybe the Paul's better offer further explanations.

[edited for clarity]
When they say "public domain", I assume IP rights are involved.

Expansion of the public domain is the kind of things that any anti-IP libertarians will applause.
This doesn't look all that unwieldy. It looks like a concise library of choice front end utilities.
Facebook is bomb proof.
"The World's First Law Review Article That is Also a Working Computer Program"
The term most commonly used for such things is a 'polyglot': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_(computing)
Optimal Facebook Cover Picture
Google is a great company in many ways, but "net neutrality" is a political catchphrase.

If Google changes your ranking, you lose traffic and visitors just as surely as if Comcast throttles your bandwidth and people bail on your site for slowness. But no one is talking about "search neutrality" and regulating Google's rankings. And Google owns its own dedicated fiber connections, which obviously prioritize its own traffic.

Freeing up the telecommunications market is the solution here. With new protocols and new carriers, you could implement things like SPDY in hardware if carriers were free to discriminate between packet A and packet B.