skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's pretty hard to obfuscate the paper trail when there needs to be a counterparty and the trade needs to be attributed to one person. There's also rather a lot of work that's gone into verifying that a trade has come from the person it claims to have come from.
Good point. Though sometimes I feel that HN is hosted on planet Vulcan, rather than on planet Earth.
Why only startups? Wouldn't it be interesting to know what non-startups use?

I can see how it wouldn't be all that useful to have a full stack of Oracle and Peoplesoft, but a lot of big companies are built on the same stuff that startups use.
I would argue that it is making money off the feeling of discrimination. The serial lawsuits are just a tool being used to make this money. Just as Ryan's soapbox as editor of Wired is a tool, the media is a tool for getting out the message of the "War on Christmas", etc. You don't actually have to feel oppressed to use the fear of oppression as a tactic in getting what you want. In Wired's case, there was no sexism either implicit or explicit. But you know, calling sexism gets pageviews and attention. And those things lead to money.

Has Hirsch really been tortuously injured by the lack of handicap-accessible businesses? It doesn't matter. What matters is that he is using the fear of discrimination to justify a lawsuit (or 87). This is definitely going beyond my original point of the use of language. The original point was that I cannot give offense to you, offense is something that can only be taken. Therefore it is up to the audience to be damn sure offense was implied before it is taken.
I think this advice is more geared towards city environments than it is to suburban ones, which are plagued with cars everywhere!
Their greatest strength - social collaboration - is also a potential weakness.

While I like the idea and the mechanic, the initial emphasis on social integration of a spreadsheet makes the assumption that others will be able to A: willing to download the app when invited & B: be able to use it with minimal instruction in a collaborative fashion.

This may be something that many more tech-savvy users will embrace, but despite the simplicity of the UX it does require a mental hurdle to cross in order to utilize it fully. I think many people will certainly overcome that, but the question is how many. Is the market of users large enough for this use case? Of course, I may also be simply reading too much into the video - there will be plenty of other uses for this sort of app.

I think this will become less and less of a problem as the next generation of tech users come of age and embrace technology like this. They're growing up with this sort of functionality and will use it in ways we can't yet anticipate. What Grid certainly has going for it is one of the most solid guesses at that sort of interaction I've seen so far.

Despite my initial misgivings, I definitely want to give it a try.
Log Insight has been Acquired by VMware
Which town in Moray if you don't mind saying?
> That said, the Apollo missions took a not-very-modified Hasselblad camera with them that worked fine, which is why we have much higher resolution pictures of the moon, despite it being decades ago.

That and the fact that they used sneakernet, which is still much higher bandwidth than wireless, especially in space.
What we need is a javascript library that slowly lightens the text over time :P Starts off black and moves to lighter shades the longer you're reading the page.

I'm only kidding, but it would be sorta interesting.
Fortunately most of don't live in such places! Cycling is a very good way to get around. Urban areas in particular have been making accommodations at a fantastic pace.
Interesting point. Though I have to interject that the origin of happiness is so different from person to person that it is sort of silly to make any kind of generalization. In fact, I've read longitudinal studies on happiness that conclude that a person's happiness remains relatively static throughout their life, which provides substantial evidence for happiness being the result of genetics and temperament.

Still, as far as I'm concerned, there's no good argument against aiming to understand what makes you feel happy and fulfilled, and keeping that magic thing in the forefront of your goals forever.
Walk into a Walmart and you can find tons of knockoff products like "Honey Nut Oatie Os". The breakfast cereal industry doesn't appear to have collapsed, though. In fact, you can buy a generic brand version of almost anything.
It's barely even DRM... it's more like you just have to be logged in to Steam to launch online games or games that specifically require an Internet connection.

I've started Steam in offline mode to play my singleplayer games whenever I don't have an internet connection quite often, and without issue.

But I agree, his 0.2 MB/s connection is probably the main problem there. The issue isn't with Steam's download speeds... it's with his ISP's.
Consumers will.
You mean like iTunes and Safari?

Because Windows users think the same of cross-platform Mac apps.
Pseudoscience unchallenged at IIT Kanpur
I'm sure if he was capable of upgrading his connection he would. A lot of places (even in the US) are still not equipped with high speed internet. Just a couple of years ago in Washington State I was still on dial up (albiet in a fairly rural area, but still not more than 45 minutes outside Portland, OR.).
This just in! Spoiler aren't that bad: http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/spoilers-are-actually-kind-...
I couldnt disagree with this article more. I'm frustrated with how little webpages use black.

In all my development environments where i'm coding for hours on end, i always find black background with white text to be far superior in terms of readability. I wish everyone had AMOLED screens (even on our desktops) so using black had more of a real purpose.
Take a look at the state of copyright law in the USSR circa 1961 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_Soviet_Uni...).

Essentially, once something was published, it was pretty near free game. 103(4) grants:

> The permission to use scientific, artistic, literary, or oral works (speeches) in film, radio, and on television, provided the original work existed already in a form amenable to such use.
And not even two weeks ago he was talking up Zynga's prospects in the wake of their horrendous last quarter: http://allthingsd.com/20120727/zyngas-john-schappert-talks-u...

Anyone know if this language in the 8-K is essentially boilerplate? "The Company further noted that Mr. Schappert leaves as a friend of the Company and it wishes him all the best."
The higher the contrast, the easier to see pixel edges.
6 years ago, you could simply install xfc4-panel - or any other XFCE package - individually without too much fanfare. It would happily install and run no matter what WM you were using.
These days, trying to install xfce4-panel individually is impossible as it will force you to install an army of "additional" packages, some even originating from GNOME.

XFCE is not the same "lightweight" desktop environment it once was. That task is now handed over to LXDE.
Zynga's COO John Schappert Steps Down, Effective Immediately
Mobile browsers can help matters by letting you override the user agent (e.g., with a desktop user agent), to stop sites from redirecting you to their horrible mobile versions.
I'd totally forgotten about that demo. So either Apple doesn't have a first-party payment system in the works (I honestly don't blame them, it's hard business) that they've told anyone about, or they do and Starbucks said no thanks.
Disable automatic application termination in OS X - Mac OS X Hints
Yeah. Steam games aren't encrypted, for instance. They aren't locked to your computer. You can copy the game content files, re-install steam, copy them back, and you'll still have your games provided you can still log into Steam.
I have experienced happiness much more as a personal choice than a byproduct of living.

Your living creates certain external circumstances that can lead to happiness or depression. Often it really doesn't matter what the external result is produced by your "living" but how you internally decide to respond to it.

To share one of my favorite quotes on the topic :)

"If you can't be happy with a lollipop - how could you possibly be happy with a yacht?" Richard Bandler
This is another symptom of Google's extreme "let's make algorithms do what people usually did". In an effort to automate everything and minimize employee-customer interaction, Google creates automated systems that work correctly 90% of the time. The 10% of the time it doesn't work correctly, you're fucked, and there's no way to contact anyone at Google to dispute or fix things.

Google just doesn't care at this point, because trying to fix the remaining 10% apparently costs more than the resulting good user experience / satisfaction would generate. This is also very visible in AdSense and Gmail. I think Google just doesn't like edge-cases.

Highly relevant Dilbert comic: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-02-25/
To survive, the service has to go where the customers (which are not the users, but the companies buying ad space) wants it to be.

That is not entirely accurate either. In order to have any customers, even by your definition, twitter must continue to have lots of users. So there is already a checks and balance system of sorts in place such that if twitter goes too far in the direction of addressing advertisers while hurting the users, the users may jump ship causing the advertisers to do the same as well.
Personally, I love Steam for the fact there there are no $0.99 fart apps or flash games.

Everything is high quality. No games on the store were purchased a thousand+ times with hacked Steam accounts just to get them to the top of the Steam store. Simply because the hacker wouldn't be able to get his shitty game onto the store in the first place.

When I browse through the Apple app store I often feel like I'm sifting through a rubbish bin for something useful I accidentally dropped in there.
> in the form of "It doesn't work if you have unrepented sin/if you don't pray hard enough/maybe you need to fast longer/maybe it's just not God's will"

You might be confusing that I've said you have to do 1, 2, 3 while using this product, for random, mystical, steps.

The reason you wash up first is because the alum salts have no effect on the odor substances/chemicals already on your skin (and what permeated below the surface).

The reason you use the product consistently is because it takes time for the salts to kill-off the bacteria (to permeate in and below the skin) and to help eliminate the odor.

The reason you don't use regular deodorant while you use this is because it just makes it so much harder for it to make the proper and consistent contact with the skin.

The reason why it doesn't work so quickly if the person has massive bacteria colonies, or dosn't give it a proper go, etc, well, you should be able to figure that one out yourself.

At no point is spirituality, god, or homeopathy claimed here.

You can read about alum salts on wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_alum

Potassium alum is an astringent/styptic and antiseptic. For this reason, it can be used as a natural deodorant by inhibiting the growth of the bacteria responsible for body odor.

They are already an ingredient in the deodorants that you use, and have known effects.

With one of these "crystals", mineral rocks, stones, whatever you want to call it, you're getting the above in it's more potent amount.
Done and done:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

We'd be overjoyed if some other folks deployed these ...
Navcam Left A: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...

Navcam Left A: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...

Navcam Left A: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...

Navcam Right A: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...

Navcam Right A: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...
would Zencoder qualify? We should have an interview from them in the next week or two
Amazing pixel artist, where are you now?
Thanks for the reply. I see what you mean and agree there is some difference. Let me put it this way: I would feel confident my Wuala backup is secure from my boss or ex-girlfriend, but not from a hostile government. If I were an activist or otherwise doing something very controversial, I wouldn't trust it. And honestly, that's the same way I feel about Dropbox. It's not the most secure thing around, but as long as I'm just another J. Random Hacker, who cares? So to me there isn't a distinction.

For why not to trust a closed-source system's claims of security, see Skype. If I remember correctly what I have read, they boasted about using "end-to-end encryption", strongly implying that your Skype calls could not be wiretapped. The catch? The encryption keys were stored on the server! And there was a story where someone (a drug smuggler, I think) was busted seemingly as a result of intercepted Skype calls. The misleading claims of security didn't ruin Skype's reputation - people still use it.

I'm glad you replied to my comment as it shows you're at least thinking about these things. I hope you will consider opening your source code in the future. At that point Wuala might be of interest to me.
a spreadsheet even though it isn't

But it clearly is a spreadsheet. It's moving in a direction spreadsheets haven't gone before, and in order to innovate that way they've made some decisions about which classical features to defer. How could they have done otherwise?

The research literature on spreadsheet users shows that about half of them rely on computation with formulas and half don't. (That data is old and spotty but it's the best we have. Joel Spolsky made a similar point a few months ago.) So a sizeable chunk of spreadsheet users aren't going to mind, or even notice, that computation wasn't prioritized here. Those users probably aren't well represented on HN but they probably are a good fit for a tablet spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet space is remarkable for how little innovation it has seen relative to how massive its user base is. Has there been a fundamental innovation since pivot tables? That was 20 years ago, and even then something of a hack, designed to answer Lotus Improv. I guess collaborative spreadsheets count (Google Docs) but that feels more like adding in a generic modern feature than rethinking spreadsheets per se. We need to see a lot more of the latter. I suppose I should disclose that I'm working on it too, albeit at the computational end.
Ask HN: Are there any free APIs that do speech transcription?
Like how Google Voice and Twilio offers Speech->Text on their services.

I have yet to find a API that does this. Is there a reason this is not available yet? Cost issues?

I suppose piggybacking of Twilio's API is the closest I found but it looks that feature cost $.05/min. :\
Right. But saying you cant have internet based DRM because you dont have a capable connection is equivalent to denying the last 5 years of progress.
If the design and testing of physical objects occur in silica, I wonder if by picking up the speed and iteration of software, they'll also pick up the size, scope, and complexity of software.

While doing software dev has its advantages, there are well-known disadvantages as outlined in classics like the mythical-man month.

Will physical dev pick up the same disadvantages? Or is there some constraint on designing physical things that help contain complexity?
The story of the Gnome Project
I think it's the service that is the product.
How to sell your latest Mission-Critical UX to your next customer.
How far away are those hills in the back? I'm guessing they're farther away than we might think, due to Mars not having much of an atmosphere to reduce visibility.
thanks.

the first link makes the valid point that it's not that smart to run this code on the same machine used to access the service (if that machine is compromised then the "two factor" aspect becomes a single, compromised factor).

so i guess maybe what i was planning is not so good an idea. on the other hand, maybe it's better than nothing.
Steam for Android has seemed like an obvious target for me for a good while now - I would literally bet money on it happening in the next 12 months.
That ~400M of ram comes with other penalities then just thw space it takes up. This is the problem firefox got into. they just kept getting bigger continually saying ram is cheap and desktops have tons of ram. Just because I have 8Gb of ram doesn't mean I want my WM taking up all of it. What do I get for all that ram anyway. I get to have my desktop composed using javascript. This is why people left for XFCE this isn't a small subset of XMonad users, there are actually lots of people in between who want a windowed desktop, but don't want a huge heavy enviroment. GNOME can be that desktop.
On the other hand, it's been clear that Windows 8 would have an app store for about a year.

http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/wind...
I don't.

Open source tends to work better in mature markets where there is something relatively stable to copy and where there are a lot of players who are incentivized to cooperate and adhere to standards. That's not mobile right now, and by the time mobile turns that corner Android (currently locked down on most installs in a very non Free way) will probably be the open source contender of choice.

From what very little I know about GNOME, it sounds like a great plan. I just happen to think mobile is extraordinarily important and look forward to the day I ditch the iOS platform.
Jefferson's famous quote, "the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" is actually a smaller snippet of a quote which speaks directly to this:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Interesting stuff...

A further point to consider if we're talking about real world applications is that it is not actually established that markets have finite variance - seriously.

In the 1960's, Benoit Mandelbrot began his research into chaos and fractal by looking at markets and finding that non-Gaussian, Levi-Stable distributions modeled changes in the market best[1]. And these L-stable distributions don't generally have a finite variance and sometimes don't have a finite mean [2].

And it is fairly easy to see how a market tends to not be Gaussian; change based on a Gaussian distribution tends to be random walk a la Brownian motion, where the final position of a variable is the sum of many small changes in the variable. Non-Gaussian, infinite-variance-distribution-based movement on the other hand has the property that the final result of a variable tends to be more the result of a finite number of large changes rather than a lot of small changes. And this is what the stock market often looks like. A few wild moves often impact things as much as the incremental changes. The apparent mean, variance and distribution of stocks on a day-to-day basis may not pan out in extreme situations and these can eat away the rest of your profits. If the stocks that seemed independently in normal conditions all go down in crash, your estimated-correlation-based-diversification hasn't protected you very well.

The Black Swan is a sadly too-simplified popular summary of these points.[3] It does point to the general idea. The higher-level take-away is that infinite variance distributions exist and indeed, you can not apriori assume a given distribution you are working with isn't one.

[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=6KGSYANlwHAC&lpg=PP1...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9vy_distribution
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_(Taleb_book)
I think this is excellent, and that the general consensus here to add more data structure and drilling/reporting is a great idea.

I was a little disappointed that there isn't an auto-biographical interview. The meta post of "We Use That Uses..." seems like an easy add.
So, what would you say to an underprivileged, unattractive, short, Caucasian male? Perhaps, "I'm sorry, but I'm going step on your rights and make you a casualty in the fight for the 'greater good', as defined by me. Please step aside and keep quiet." Or would you bother saying anything to him at all?

Maybe you aren't obsessed with driving wedges between various groups in society, causing them to become factions with increasing animosity towards one another, but you're doing it.

It's odd: No group hates underprivileged, unattractive whites males nearly as much as privileged, attractive white males. It's a cruel form of preening.
I'm pretty sure the content ID stuff is self-regulation - not a formal DMCA request. After the set number of strikes, stop allowing them access to the content ID 'convenience' tool and require them to mail in a formal DMCA takedown notice.

If someone had to fill in a DMCA takedown notice, print it out, stuff an envelope, put a stamp on it and then drop it in the mail I imagine there would be a few less "Oops, we didn't own the copyright on that." incidents versus clicking a button, ignoring the entire "penalty of perjury" agreement and just hitting "agree" and having their video taken offline.

You're still following the law, you're just not providing tools to make it easier for scumbags and idiots to wreak havoc.

Make smart things easier, make stupid things harder.
I found "…to escape justice into Ecuador. This would be a catalyst for many more like him to rise up in his place." more awkward. I also thought the lack of contractions was unusual as well given the general lack of formality otherwise.

But I think the writing sample size is too small to be very confident. Not that it matters too much, unless someone's trying to catch them.
.2Mbps = .025MB/s
You should add http://weusethat.com/ to the description of the repository and as the url of the github user (not an org?). Right now there is no link to click!
Well... never let the truth get in the way of a good story...
this is the same NYPD arresting credentialed photographers for taking pictures of police in the line of duty. http://gothamist.com/2012/08/06/nypd_arrest_photographer_on_...

we can record you, but you can't record us. double standards.
Has something been whited-out in the bottom right corner?
Little experiment: I changed text from black to #130F30 on a website and couldn't notice the difference..
It is short-sighted to assume that 2x will be the limit of high-resolution images. If we're making browser developers add support for this, we might as well have it be at least somewhat future-proof.
Exactly. But they weren't "cross-platform Mac apps". They were poorly-done "ports" (i.e. the UI code was not shared).

iTunes is garbage on all platforms, and its update is long overdue. But Safari (4.0+) is great on OS X. I use it as my main browser (and find it vastly superior to Chrome or Firefox 3.6+ for my needs). The windows port of Safari (which has been discontinued recently, incidentally) was always horrible, much below the standard of Windows apps, and far below the standard of OS X apps.
StatusNet is also not vaporware. Furthermore, it's also open source and federated rather than being yet another proprietary walled garden run by a corporation.