skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "All three of these tests were null results. (i.e. No significant difference in aggregate purchases between either of the two options" (for goog&payp vs stripe, and several other combos)

This is a very interesting result. I would have thought that additional payment options would boost sales on the margin i.e. increase conversion by a couple of percent (not percentage points ;) for e.g. international customers, or people who already have accounts with GG/PP.

Patrick: Any chance you could elaborate a little more here? Would be very interesting to see some more detailed stats on this aspect.
If you're going through that much technological effort, why still use paper cheques?
How can they prove it WAS you? This is why it makes sense to avoid locking down a connection. If someone breaks in and does something illegal, you'll have a much tougher time proving it wasn't you than with a wide-open network.
I wasn't so much saying that this one is impossible to pick one, more just how do you confirm that it's a good headline. For example the original OP of this submission probably didn't write their headline and think "well this misrepresents the story, but fuck it".
I find this stuff fascinating.

But, are the jurors not as clueless about why a given line of questioning as we were?

They don't get to see this doc, do they?
At ConversionVoodoo we've found that the gains pulled out of cart-work are staggering vs. other areas in your funnel - 50%+ improvements to be had even on high volume / "well optimized" projects (10k+ sales/mo).

Three easy places to start:

a) Simplify the UI - Make it as simple as possible for people to enter their payment details - large fonts, cross-browser tested, minimal pages, optimized for the lowest screen resolution of your average user on up.

b) Reiterate TRUST messaging - testimonials or buying popular symbols (Verign /McAfee / etc) and even dialing in the PLACEMENT of those logos is high-value eg http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placemen...

e) Implement a Cart Abandon strategy - either sending "instant discounts" via email good for 24hrs to complete order, calling dropped carts, or hitting a pop-up of live help or similar is easy money.

Add to this all the usual - proper messaging on buttons, lightning fast response times, mobile optimized version too, etc and you instantly gain a massive advantage over your competitors.
Every single time I look at images captured by the rovers on Mars, it throws a wave of tingles through my spine.

The technology and brain power to achieve this picture, the landing, engineering and the science to come is so mind blowing to me that I almost feel drained!

Such a massive amount of awesomeness.
Collision Detection Between Polygons Using the Separating Axis Theorem
It's an RTG, it uses the heat created by decay of radioactive isotopes to drive a thermocouple. These things have been designed to be incredibly safe, capable of surviving an explosion of their launch vehicle and remaining intact, for example. But even should their protective capsule be breached the radioactive material is in a ceramic (oxidized) form in spheres. If you cracked open an RTG and threw the insides into a very hot fire nothing would happen, you could just come by and collect the intact ceramic spheres after they'd cooled.
> TL;DR Linkbait/Apple is evil because they removed old software.
The article and some of his comments show a very narrow mindset. Thinking on how evil is every corporation, just for being a corporation.

What is the value in giving a synopsis like this which is completely wrong? The author discusses his feelings a couple of times in the article, impugns Apple's motives not once, doesn't discuss corporatism, and uses the word "bad" precisely once to describe his experience here. He's not hyperbolic enough to use the word "evil," that was you.

Users who depend on both X11 and Apple's RSS support (all ten of them) are going to find this upgrade a bit of a pain. That's not reflective of a narrow mindset, it's reflective of an unusual use case.
Ah, fair enough. I'm not an OS X user, but I have heard about Apple's tendency to have out of date open-source (and therefore often insecure or buggy) libraries and software.
MPAA Recruits “Surrogates” to Support Extradition of UK Student
Are you planning hacking the Rover ? :)
Not to be sour, but an innovation in what? The first cellular network was a radio tower with a backhaul supporting handsets. LTE is a radio tower with a backhaul supporting handsets.
Lein already included into some Linux distros
New Features On The iPhone 5
Apple enthusiasts around the world have been waiting patiently for the eventual release of the iPhone 5.
Getting Started with Microsoft Silverlight 5 (26 free videos)
Because...magic. And fairy dust. And nobody who uses a laptop could possibly be cool.

It's not a great device for making music. It's an adequate device mostly used by hipsters (and I use that term offensively) to look cool, sort of like how "writers" hang out in coffee shops using Macbook Pros (or various other expensive laptops, like Vaios) to "write" the next American Novel.
Not sure sepcifically about rails but I usually go to github and search for the keyword there. It shows me a list of all projects under that keyword and you can possibly filter through that to "watch" the ones you are interested in?
Right, but Convore existed and died. One explanation was "it wasn't actually popular or necessary". It would seem useful if not actually important to figure out how this is different from that service, given that that service had strong backing and even had a temporary working community surrounding it.
The pinch-shrink keyboard might even top the different-sized keyboards built into webOS. Samsung has some innovative UI stuff going on in that video.
VIO is a great product, no doubt.

I made my personal ski movies with my VIO.
Best Buy Founder Offers $8.8 Billion to Buy Out Company
I like Twitter. I don't mind the ads. And Twitter is close to letting us download our own archived tweets: http://searchengineland.com/twitter-tweet-archive-tool-comin...

If ads interrupted my experience, then maybe it would become a pain point worth addressing or paying for. Until then, I'll stick with the free, ad-supported Twitter.
TradeKing Announces Financial Entrepreneur Pitch-Fest Competition With 1M/1M
Same thing happened to me. I looked for XQuartz after the ML upgrade on my hard drive and found that it had not been uninstalled. So I ran Gimp and it requested XQuartz be installed and opened the download page. I downloaded and installed it, then I attempted to open Gimp again. The program then requested the location of XQuartz and I identified it under Utilities and Gimp started running.

Go ahead and open a bug report. I don't that this is expected behavior.
Yeah funny how much we spend on stuff that blows up (or never does because it's never used and we have to spend even more billions dismantling them).
X11, Flash, and Java were all potential attack vectors whose security is provided for by a third party -- I can see why Apple would want to discourage this.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Apple's Radar bug tracker had a few dozen bugs in Safari RSS, maybe even a potential DOS threat, and they chose to move on rather than allocating more resources to an unpopular feature.
Then perhaps piracy is an indicator that the pricing is considered too high, above the threshold at which a potential customer decides to either not buy it or pirate it.

For some customers it is absolutely too high so they resort to piracy. For others, it is the correct price or even too low. In a perfect world, the seller could use your income to determine price (or some other even better metric for what you are willing to pay) and charge everyone differnet amounts. Very wealthy people would pay huge amounts, impoverished people would pay very low amounts, maybe even nothing.

The question then is how the ability to pirate affects that "reasonable price" threshold, amongst other hard to quantify effects of piracy.

I imagine it pushes the price down slightly, but who knows if the record companies are acting rationally (pricewise) or could even predict the correct price they should charge to max profit. (I imagine they have some very smart people modeling pricing, but models can only get you so close).
So ignoring the safety issues, would there be enough radioactive isotopes on Earth for every house to have it's own RTG? Imagine unlimited energy, and heat your home with the waste heat?
Eko: Group Messaging with Topics
Not true. The last stock keyboard for Android doesn't resemble any other I know. Nor does the Windows Phone 7 / Windows 7 one.

This "there's no other way to do an X" argument is getting really tiring. I don't really care about this Apple vs Samsung nonsense (let the judge decide) but i think theres pretty strong evidence that you can do innovative and creative design if you put yourself to the task.
Well, they did. And I say that as someone who really dislikes Apple.

That keyboard looks like someone took the iPad keyboard and beat it with an ugly stick a little bit. What makes this especially sad is that the default Android keyboard is really good and they should have just used that, but in an attempt to "differentiate" they basically just badly copied the iPad.

As much as I dislike Apple for the current lawsuit mess, I'm starting to dislike Samsung just as much because unlike most of the rest of the Android ecosystem Samsung clearly DO have a problem with badly copying Apple's design elements to a confusingly similar degree which gives an unfortunate truth to at least some of Apple's claims which then makes it harder for the layman to see when Apple is overstepping.

Fix your shit, Samsung. Hire a couple of real designers.
If I were going to do .Net on windows, I'd probably use Visual Studio. The last time I used it was about 10 years ago, and I found that it didn't get in my way. Not having VI controls in the buffer editor would probably drive me crazy but I'm adaptable.

I'd still be installing vim on my windows box, but when in Rome...
More rigid static type safety, mostly. Haskell doesn't allow you to accidentally cast something to the wrong pointer, or accidentally index off the end of an array, or similar things to which C++ is vulnerable but which modern interpreted languages protect you against.

Meanwhile, Haskell's sophisticated type system lets you enforce rules that help make sure you don't accidentally pass an unescaped string to your database or user's browser, which kinds of errors are rife in even those sites developed in interpreted languages. Yesod leverages this extensively.

On reflection, I think C++'s templates may be powerful enough to let you do similar, really, but 1) it is likely to be incredibly verbose, 2) you are still potentially vulnerable to the pointer or buffer related errors mentioned above, and 3) in my experience people don't generally write C++ that way - it'll be interesting to see what they've done here, though.
I answered "Ruby" on the survey without question: in my case, it has significantly broader applicability than Erlang.

In more general terms: no, I don't see this as a critical methodological error. Could it be "Pick your top n"? Sure, might be useful. Yet, I've never met a programmer who had trouble with "What's your [primary|favorite] language?", and the survey made it clear what to do in cases where more than one option applied: pick one, and don't worry too much. Survey design is always a balance between specificity and nuance, and I think in this case he made an OK call.
Reminds me of a quote I once saw:

"Attempt great things and great forces will come to your aid."

No idea who said it; I saw it on the side of a refrigerator at the dump while disposing of a deceased dishwasher.
What cameras are capturing photos from Curiosity on Mars
So if i understand this right:

- DogStatsD is running on my Server and is collecting data.
- I can use "dogstatsd-ruby" to collect data from my (i.e.) Rails App.
- DogStatsD reports Stats to your Service Datadog HQ (optional)
- Pup is a small version of Datadog HQ that is running locally on my Server and connects directly to DogStatsD.
- If i feel Pup doen't satisfy my needs, i can switch from Pup to Datadog HQ, get more functions and you my money? :)

right?
Ask HN: Launched the MVP for my new Android app.  Any feedback?
I recently released an Android app to track and manage sales lists for small businesses. It will track your call queue, log previous calls and notes, and will allow you to report on past performance.

It's a basic MVP right now. I'm working on a few requested features and getting a presence on the web so customers can find me. Since my user base is small, I'd appreciate any feedback I can get for design, features or marketing.

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lyote.coldcall

Thank you!
Launching an API based App | Scrapit - Extract keywords from webpages
Honestly, I'm not sure what GoPro's software looks like any more? (I assume it's pretty solid.) But that could be an opportunity.

Also, I believe the design and aesthetics could really be improved.

If you really want more people using a p-o-v camera more often, it needs to be a little less intrusive (the GoPro looks pretty awful). A streamlined, low profile camera with the ease and simplicity of a GoPro would be a winner.
I know, but 2 out of the 3 is vanity stats. They had their best month ever, why not put numbers on that figure versus # of employees or funding.
Why Building a Business in the App Store is Like Playing The Legend of Zelda
It's not about figuring it out, the key thing here is transfer of risk. Its certainly won't be "bs" if you get a fine due to a breech.
Interesting. It looks like a useful product for sure...
Isn't the idea to have a formal standard owned by a standards body? Currently SPDY has not been accepted by any standards body as a formal standard.

That's probably why HTTP/2.0 is going to be based on SPDY, an attempt to codify an emerging standard.
They have both have immutable data structures and i realized just now, that is after GC the second most important feature i want in a high level language.
Note that 4.9 was already released on August 1st: http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.9/

I.e. this is mostly noteworthy because it's a maintenance release for the previous major release series that is done after the new major release series has begun. This is not unheard of, but relatively rare for KDE.
> I'm not sure why so many people in the HN community wants to put themselves out of business by pushing the $ value of their craft down to $0. When this happens, don't complain and don't try to unionize: you did it to yourself.

I think you're confusing saying something is true to wishing it was true. Just because you want it to be true, it doesn't make it true. There's actually a named logical fallacy for this, but I forget which. Personally, I would love if the market would to throw all their money at me because I'm pretty. But the reality is that it wont. You can either sit and whine that you wish the value of your craft wasn't heading to zero. Or you can build around it and find workable solutions. Like many software developers have done. And like the music and movie industry are taking too long to do the same.
It seems like a weird decision that they don't stick to the 140-character limit.
Anyone has any background info on that picture? How did the MRO lock on the descending rover?

Did NASA feed it the correct coordinates beforehand, or it had to somehow autonomously acquire the rover? I suspect the later is possible, as there might be radio contact available in that stage of the reentry, but I really have no idea on how it was actually accomplished.
How Gizmodo Got Hacked and How You Should Defend Yourself
AT&T Customers Can Get Their Shared Data Plans Going
I totally agree.

For sports, there is certainly a performance aspect (in this case, aero-dynamics).

But even outside of sports...if you really want people using p-o-v cameras on a regular, everyday basis, the design needs to improve dramatically.
Great to hear, I'm just praying they remove the need for a social security number in the US.

One of the main reasons we chose the US to incorporate in was for access to business tools like this. But with neither founder having a SS number we can't use the service.
According to Google that's not true.

"In order to do this we had to deploy no additional machines and no special hardware. On our production front-end machines, SSL/TLS accounts for less than 1% of the CPU load, less than 10KB of memory per connection and less than 2% of network overhead. Many people believe that SSL takes a lot of CPU time and we hope the above numbers (public for the first time) will help to dispel that."

https://www.verisign.com.au/ssl/ssl-information-center/ssl-r...
No, I think there is no way to detect if the HTTP-request to the server which makes the API call is made via HTTPS or not. Except if their libraries detect that on your side and block the API call there, but of course that can be easily circumvented.
They can only enforce that HTTPS requests are made to their API.
Tools released at Defcon can crack widely used PPTP/WPA2 Enterprise encryption
Ask HN: How can you turn solar energy into thrust?
I was just reading about energy sources for satellites, etc., and I got curious: How might a person/company/government/mankind convert solar energy into thrust? I found this website (http://energy.nd.edu/research/transformative-solar/), but it doesn't really provide a lot of substantive information on how such a thing might be achieved. I didn't find much else through a cursory Google search. (Well, found this, but am not quite catching on yet: http://cstec.engin.umich.edu/)

update: I did find this website, which gives a little more info on it -- http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2793009

So, in short: in idiot terms, what kind of technology would be required to convert solar energy into thrust? I would think you could have, for example, some sort of air thruster that works off of electricity that works like an air compressor, but don't know if that's really efficient, etc.

Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just was thinking about it while at work and wanted to pose it to HN.
John Sheehan from Twilio has some great tips too - http://www.quora.com/Hackathons/What-are-some-useful-tips-wh...
> Why does that matter?

It matters because the economic argument is the only marginally justifiable motivation for the heavy handed enforcement of copyright over civil rights. And I'm being very generous in using the word "justifiable".

> People pirate media because they don't want to pay for it.

People pirate media because they understand they shouldn't have to pay for it. We pay for services rendered (Netflix) or goods delivered (DVD's). Everything else is either tax or extortion.

You know, passive phrases like "owning the rights" are so insidiously misleading. Nobody "owns rights", all that actually happens is that the rights of others get limited. That's how this convoluted artificial construct works.

No, I'm not denying that that leaves us with the original problem of stimulating the creation and distribution of original work.

But millions have woken up from the shared illusion of copyright, and no amount of enforcement, DRM or just incessantly repeating the words "stealing", "pirate" etcetera is going to put them back to sleep.
I guess I should point out that I don't pirate software or music. The only music I download is stuff I can't be arsed to rip from a disc (It's actually faster now to download it, anyway - funny world we live in.) or stuff that hasn't been released on anything newer than cassette.
I suppose it depends if we are talking about a criminal or civil case. AFAIK in a civil case (say copyright infringement) they simply have to prove that it was likely to be you or that your negligence (i.e opening up your internet connection) aided somebody else.

It's certainly enough of a gray area that I wouldn't want to get involved.
As I commented above, the design and aesthetic of the GoPro could really be improved.

I think that could move the needle.

But you're right, GoPro is killing it. Tough to beat right now.
That fee is usually somewhere between 1.5% and 3% so it is quite steep. Bank transfers though in Sweden are and most of Europe are either free or cheap.
Nice project, I love the UI.

I solved the same problem in another way with:

* collectd

* collectd to graphite plugin (for server-level metrics, from all your servers)

* graphite

* statsd (for custom app metrics over UDP)

* graphene - my own UI toolkit for graphite, also based on D3.js (http://github.com/jondot/graphene)

All in all, I got a better, more robust and detailed solution using these components. Using Chef, the time to set it up is very minimal.
Here is a link to a Nature blog with some info from Alfred McEwen, the PI on HiRISE:

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/08/mars-orbiter-plans-for-...
Renaming SPDY to HTTP/2.0 is on the table, but some people disagree with some of SPDY's design choices and are hoping to fix them.
Good on Samsung for continuing the trend Lenovo seems to have started of bringing the digitizer pen back. The fact that people are buying aftermarket styli for devices that don't have pens is an indicator that there should be more devices with them, since nothing really beats an actual digitizer pen. To me it seemed like a step backward when Steve Jobs first asked "Who wants a stylus?" at the iPhone keynote.
It's a good point to make. I feel strongly that the people who advance in their lives actually learn something from their mistakes. We are all stubborn to some degree but as long as you can realize when you are wrong and move forward that's all that really matters.
When software kills
How  to Identify a Douchebag Investor
In a nutshell, yes. You can also contribute some of the features you need to pup if you are so inclined.

We're on a mission to provide monitoring that doesn't suck, and we believe that making it easy and rewarding to instrument your app is an important step on the way.
Depending on your volume a lot of cash.

Fast Spring is 5.9% plus $.95 or 8.9% flat per order.

Stripe 2.9% + 30 cents.
Yeah, we just messed this up. I'm very sorry. I'm literally walking to a meeting with a user, but I'll follow up and edit this comment with details and what we're doing to prevent it within the next three hours.

[Update:] So, the background here is that 1099 reporting rules changed last year. A lot of companies—including some of our partners—didn't yet have their infrastructure in place to properly handle them. A lot has been written about the change in the law (search "2011 1099 confusion" for a small sample), and there's been a fair amount of ambiguity and confusion overall (Citibank issued 1099s for frequent flyer miles; whether this was necessary isn't yet clear). Due to this confusion, the IRS actually backed off plans to require the reconciliation of Form 1099K in tax returns filed for 2011.

In Stripe's case, one of our banking partners responsible for the filings was unable to meet the original filing date for all 1099s. While they filed a proper extension with the IRS, this meant that receipt of your 1099 was delayed.

As you point out, we should have done a much better job communicating this at each step -- and, obviously, receiving tax forms in mid-April is not an acceptable outcome regardless. We are working on controlling the process much more closely ourselves next year so that this does not happen again.

But the bottom line is: sorry. We built Stripe to make this kind of hassle go away, and we're doing everything we can to make sure that this was a one-off blip.
I don't know about svg's, but Pages can do all of this stuff. It's not just a word processor, but a very good age layout tool. You might want to check it out before dismissing the iPad so quickly.
"Is Stripe available outside of the US?"

"Currently Stripe is US only..."