skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why do people expect anything different from mainstream TV these days?
World's largest oil producer hit by a cyber-attack
Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners -- they're about improving the user experience.

But Android has shown that it's possible to have a curated, restricted experience for the typical user without totally shutting out more advanced users or users with different priorities. That extra little bit of control that Apple insists on just happens to give them a tremendous amount of extra power. It's hard to imagine that this is a coincidence.
Going Backwards to Go Forwards
Many schools use google for email, calendars, and chat. It's google for business, but I believe it's free (or relatively cheap) for education institutions. Theoretically all those users would be using Google and perhaps Google+ with enough encouragement.

Many other schools choose MS Live and those students would not necessarily have any reason to use Google+. Interestingly, at least at UMass Boston, the primary justification for MS Live was because MS claims it can identify the physical machines your data is housed on, whereas Google does not make such promises. This is only important for checking off boxes when audited.
Verified by Visa has a pretty bad design flaw: the recommended implementation uses an iframe to load the page that prompts for your password, so it's not obvious if that iframe is legitimate or a phishing attack.
Well, I'd say not even that. When you're laying out a spreadsheet, just use tables then style them as appropriate. My recommendations were summarily passed over, and I don't work there any more. :)
I simply offered a lexical correlation; from your response one might think I murdered your children.
The scumbag viral mechanics slide made me think for a second. It seems quite effective to 'force' people to invite friends to get early access to a beta. More and more common. Klout I think does a really good job of offering something for each desired action from user, i.e. higher score & more reliable score.
Thanks to jailbreaking this is rampant in the iOS world as well. Here in SE Asia I have yet to see a non-jailbroken iPhone.
The Python Challenge is a great way to apply what you learned from other resources towards a fun practical experience: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
With WikiLeaks On Ice, What Has Happened To All Those Digital Whistleblowers?
Why you should celebrate noise in your life? 3 Reasons.
Hm, I'd argue it's not that obvious, otherwise companies would just try to miniaturize everything hoping that there's a market for it. Companies won't typically make this leap because it's fairly costly and their product manager may not get a bonus that year if the product is a flop. It's only obvious to you because everything is obvious in hindsight.
Before anything, Google+ badly needs a complete change in UI. It is very counter intuitive and stupid. Also, they should not be allowing anybody and everybody to add a person in their circles. It is annoying. That said, I think it might really work in their favor if they can execute the plan well, because significant number of active FB users are college students. I think it makes a good selling point to switch.
By tying G+ closer to docs, spreadsheets and hangouts with your lecturer I would guess this will bring it more in competition with Linkedin. In this world it becomes more of a business social platform than a friends and family social platform, at least initially.
Wikipedia prefers and advises this method too.
Here is how a good boss would rationalize it.

Boss: Hi new Employee, what laptop would you like to use as your daily computer?

Employee: A $700 Dell.

Boss: Are you just saying that to save the company money? Because it's not about the money. I'm paying you $80k a year and I want you to be productive and happy. I want you to pick something you feel good about every time you use it. You will be using this laptop 40+ hours a week for the next 2 years. Don't forget, this is your job and career.

Employee: Hmm. Well, I do prefer Mac to Windows. Is a $2200 15" MacBook Pro retina OK?

Boss: You tell me. The purchase price is a tax write off. I really don't give a shit.
Downvoted. It's a semi-serious article, not something that suggests you shouldn't eat plants (what else can you eat? meat? cows eat lots of plants when they are being raised).

Only a really disingenuous person would claim it's kinder to eat meat. There's arguments in favor of eating meat (there's some book called "The Mindful Carnivore" which goes a bit deeper than "meat bad veg good"), but ... that's way off topic.

Nobody with half a brain thinks plants scream when you eat them, and that's not what the article is saying.
> $2200 is a rounding error.

When you consider that the other options aren't free, this becomes even more true. A heavier or thicker case, plastic body, shittier display, or even something as seemingly insignificant as a bigger power brick to save a few hundred bucks? No thanks.
There is no reason why Facebook can't create a separate echo-system for each College University and mimic what he is talking about here. Facebook certainly has the resources and brand recognition to do so.

If anything Yammer could probably do this more effectively than anyone else since they already offer this service for companies. Does that mean they will Dominate Facebook? Hrm.

I am a fan of Google+, but I am sorry to say your argument will have to be better than that.
I dated a vegetarian for a while and people would always ask her dumb questions about it and make unoriginal (basically exact same) jokes about it so I sympathize with you to a degree.

On the other hand, I find it annoying that a vegetarian can draw the line in the sand and decide what is morally correct for everyone to believe.

I'm sure there are vegans judging you for eating (milk, eggs etc. whatever you do eat), and there are "vegetarians" that eat seafood who think you are too extreme, and there are probably people who only eat plants that died of natural causes who think all those groups are terrible and should have more self control over their diet.

The article was pretty interesting and novel to me and if you get a few more dumb questions from people, I don't think it is the end of the world.
I tried to like the air, but the fonts were just a bit too wee for my eyes for extended use. Maybe if the airs ever go retina then resized terminal fonts won't look completely awful, and I may give it a go again. A retina 13"-mbp could be pretty nice too though.

Still rockin' the mid-2009 15"-matte with an aftermarket ssd for now.
I've been maintaining my Intel i7 based Hackintosh (currently running Lion) since May of 2009, and the only time I've really had any asspain was doing major OS upgrades. I went from Leopard to Snow Leopard, and then to Lion, and each time I basically spent the better part of a weekend on the upgrade.

While this box has held up fine for my OSX work, it's getting long in the tooth for Windows gaming. Now that Mountain Lion supports high end graphics cards like the nVidia GTX680 out of the box, I'm looking to build out a new Ivy Bridge based Hackintosh that I'll also boot into Windows for some high-end gaming.
Would you find this new "Tool" finding service useful?
Seeing into the future
all their phones have micro usb connectors. the 30pin adapter is only for their tablets.
Mathematical Challenges
It's perfectly rational. The primary concern of the corporation is to remain a 'going concern'.

This entails certain operational risks, key of which is 'key person risk', where the ongoing operation of the business is exposed to the availability of a single person (or small number of people).

This is why CEOs of large companies are such mediocre 'everymen/women/persons' because if the ongoing operation of the organization depends on the availability of the CEO, that is a very large risk to be exposed to.

If you cannot reduce a function in your organization's business process to something that is repeatable and replaceable, then you have an ongoing operational risk.

Small companies value growth, large companies value security, consequently large companies will expend more resources on mitigating risks than expanding the market/revenue/products of their business.
What is the benefit of this service rather then just using Google to find a tool?
Note that it'll only be on Netflix US. Netflix Canada, UK, etc, subscribers will have to wait in hope:

http://o.canada.com/2012/04/24/the-good-news-about-arrested-...
Sure. Given enough resources anyone can copy anyone. But then Facebook will be playing catch-up and Google will become the de-facto leader. In a space where the winner takes all, you don't want to be the one that plays catch-up.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, but unrelated to G+.
Java on the desktop could be (have been?) great, but Sun screwed the pooch on adding the details that a good Java desktop experience needed. The Swing/SWT thing aside, they were slow to, or never did, ship support for various popular audio/video codecs, system tray integration, support for various IO channels (serial ports back in the old days, later USB, Bluetooth, etc.) and probably a whole laundry list of other things I'm forgetting.

It's sad too, because I'd still much prefer to push Java for certain classes of solutions, and still - to this day - find audio/video support (among other things) lagging.

I guess, once Java took off as a server side platform, Sun just didn't have the vision or courage to seriously push Java on the desktop. Sad. :-(
What about the fact that you can't share programs that you write on an iPad? Apple doesn't allow code downloads inside of apps. I would hardly call Apple an open platform anymore.
Give this man a kewpie doll!

http://rlv.zcache.com/cute_mustache_octopus_sticker-p2177152...

2008: Rag tag, understaffed, throw them into the deep end working on rewarding projects that made small strides toward advancing the infrastructure of technology in politics and bring widespread public attention that gave hope for burgeoning markets and a space for competition. A new frontier! Technological solutions for campaigns and the American people!

2012: Best and the brightest fighting to uphold the principles, ideals, and best practices of all veins of the technology industry but they only actually let them do their jobs in order to give lip service to what got those young talented people so excited and what got them there in the first place, and they only let them do it if there's a blatantly obvious way to save face if it backfires, or in a subtly insulting way.

Its a beat down for uppity youngsters who thought they might be able to, I don't know, start a business, or run for office, or provide solutions in the political realm. Technology in politics is a victim of its own success. Politicos don't see technology as way to connect with people and do their jobs better. They see it as stealing their thunder because they don't know how to control it yet. They don't understand the rules so everyone, down to the president himself seems to be spending more time playing whack-a-potential-political-zuck than doing their own job. The only thing we can hope that that eventually they'll be spending so much time preventing technology workers in politics from doing their job that they won't have enough time to screw over voters as much.
The initial experience of G+ is horrible.

I think everyone here takes it for granted since they've had a Google account since 2005, but I had to setup a couple of accounts recently to utilize G+ and Hangouts and getting friends that weren't part of the network yet was atrocious.

First of all, it looked like I could invite others to my hangout by just an email address, which I did, but they never received the invite. Then we had a hunch that they both had to be part of each others circles, but finding the "Add Friend" functionality where I could simply add an email address was another treasure hunt. FINALLY after finding that dialog buried in the "Circles" dialog, I could add the other account, the other account added me back, and then FINALLY we were able to fire up a Hangout.

Like launching nuclear missels.
You make some good points, but I think it's important to make a distinction between the management of behavior by fiat and the management of behavior by response to improper actions. The examples you give for restricted behaviors are clearly valid, but they don't imply that I should not be allowed to own a stereo or TV on the chance that I might crank it to 11 or throw it out the window. I think that the issue at stake here is more closely related to the opposite case, where we would be disallowed from owning those things for fear of future misbehavior.

In my opinion, there is a profound difference between limiting a person's behavior by eliminating their ability to decide versus limiting it by responding to transgressions. The logic of limiting ability to decide ends with a gilded cage, which is something I'd prefer to avoid.
What's missing from this (and most "why $newcomer will beat $incumbant" claims) is why Facebook can't simply duplicate the feature, and remove it as a differentiator.

As a programmer, and looking at what Facebook can do already, it just doesn't seem like adding a "let everyone from my *.edu see this" permission level would be that hard.
A venture capital lecture series for my campus:

http://wute.vc
Your iPad sucks - here are 6 examples why
This is really cool. If you look at this graph of the Standard Model interactions http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Elementar... you will see the ways in which all of the particles we currently know about interact.

If you'll notice though, there's one interaction between ALL of the particles that is missing: gravity. Gravity affects anything with energy. Photons, leptons, quarks -- they are all attracted to each other because they possess energy (negligible, unmeasurable attractions, but still extant).

Wouldn't it be interesting if the only way that dark matter interacted with the other particles was through the gravitational force? Maybe from some alien's perspective it would constitute the matter of everyday life, but because it didn't interact with any of our particles except through gravity we would be missing out on a large aspect of our universe!

Furthermore, is it that far-fetched to think there might exist particles that do not interact at all with the ones we have discovered? Gluons, for example, only interact with themselves and with quarks. Some other particle may interact with nothing we are familiar with -- and thus we could never study it. Is it even "real" then?

(Any particle physicists on here, please feel free to educate me further!)
The Life Story of Nikola Tesla (Documentary)
Sure they do. Messages, Photos, Videos.
"Android as model of a free OS is just a tribute to the organizers methinks."

Yeah, I'm sure the fact that you can download the source code to it, make any changes you want, and redistribute that source code or that you can install any app you want on an Android handset whether it's in the blessed market or not has nothing to do with it being open. Nothing at all.
http://beta.minecraftsaver.com/ - Backup/displays for Minecraft worlds

http://steamxl.com - Chrome extension, coming along slowly, but haven't spent too much time on it. Still learned a lot from it.
It took me a second to recall where I first heard "underpants gnome" from. But it's Slashdot of course.
I just joined g+ after google after not using any social network for about two years. I'm not impressed. The UI is just a sea of grey. Everything is just piled on top of each other. I've been keeping up with the changes over at Facebook (with the accounts of friends and relatives), and their UI is better (but not great, either). They do use colors and icons in a more functional manner. g+ is also buggy. I keep having problems where the app just hangs or stops working. I've tried it on a couple of different computers with different setups and I still get bugs. Weird because Gmail is very solid. I would have thought their JS would be a bit more reliable across the board. Maybe its me, though. I do think that what will kill g+ and FB is what I call the privacy wars. This is something that is brewing given the substantial abuse being carried out against civil liberties across the world by these mega corps.
Another dirty trick they use is refusing to fix the button to turn off apps, plugins, and Facebook integration on other websites. Log in to Facebook, click the down arrow next to your name, click "Privacy Settings", click edit settings next to "Ads, Apps, and Websites", then in "Apps you use" click "Turn off". You will see this error:

"There was an error while disabling applications and websites. Please try again."

I reported this to Facebook three months ago and haven't heard anything back. This has been broken for three months. I believe it is intentionally broken. Shame on you Facebook!
I share the experience and frustration. Seems like the UX was designed by the same people who design the assembly instructions for baby cribs.
The iPad does suck for those six things, and more, but it also has hundreds of awesome features which in my opinion, makes it the best tablet.
> That's actually not true, as far as I know, and I would appreciate if you specified exactly what you are referring to. (saying "everyone knows" is not a good enough answer)

Let's take one, specific, example: Blinding. So you think that science added the concept of blinding and double blinded experiments because it didn't result in an improvement in results and a decrease in bias? And a sample size of more than 1? Are you saying there is no evidence that a sample size larger than one leads to better results?

What about my statement that having, rather than not having, basic scientific controls in place results in more trustworthy evidence is "actually not true"

> What I do know is that this meticulous record keeping produces bogus results at an alarming rate because of the things it does not consider, like "publish or perish" pressure and the "negative reuslts go in the drawer" effect. This xkcd describes the mechanism http://xkcd.com/882/ , and these extremely well written, peer-reviewed papers, show that most published results (which are golden according to the school of thought you seem to belong to) is actually wrong: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-science-cancer-.... (points to a paywalled nature article). In case you are unable to get a copy of the nature paper: 88% of celebrated cancer results published in the last 10 years CAN NOT BE REPLICATED (that is, are most probably WRONG), despite following the "golden rules of science".

> Because I actually live in the real world and not in some fantasy world. I don't think removing controls and oversight is a good idea. However, Roberts has no funding for these experiments because there's no way to make money off them. So he does what he finds interesting, in the best way he can, and lets others try to replicate -- and then collects their results as well.

Which side are you arguing? So science is hard and there are a ton of shitty results accepted as valid. But you seem to be suggesting that the solution to this is good intentions and a scrappy can-do attitude. If the well funded experiments with large sample sizes, double blinding and excellent controls still screw it up most of the time because of some bias or error in procedure then why would I expect removing all controls would result in something even worth looking at?

PS Just to clear something up, in science unreplicated experiements are weak evidence, most are expected to be wrong. replicated experiments are stronger. and theories with multiple lines of evidence from multiple experiments in multiple fields and have emerged as the consensus opinion among experts of how things work are strong. The way you pointed out that unreplicated papers are probably wrong seemed like you thought you had some kind of gotcha. Well the "golden rules of science" are pretty clear on the value to be placed on unreplicated papers in a field overrun by media attention.
There actually is a religion/practice that eschews even eating whole or root vegetables on the basis that killing plants is also murder. It's called Jainism, and practitioners eat only fruits, leaves, nuts, seeds, and the like. They also walk barefoot, and sweep the ground in front of themselves as they go to avoid inadvertently stepping on insects.
> If my computer is faster, cheaper, and lets me accomplish the same things in the same amount of time, how could it be worse?

Seriously?

Let's just take the most obvious example then. One is a laptop, one is a desktop. There. One is "faster, cheaper and lets you accomplish the same things in the same amount of time" but one requires you to be tethered to a wall and the other doesn't.

If that example is too much of an extreme for you, how about a desktop replacement laptop? I can get a 11-pound beast that is "faster, cheaper, and lets me accomplish the same things in the same amount of time" than my MacBook Air. Good luck opening it and using it anywhere other than a full desk though.

A computer is not just a spec sheet, much like a car is not a spec sheet. If you don't value the differences that putting more into a car or computer brings, that's fine. However it makes you look pretty out of touch if you can't even see what others value in it.
Also similar, the protocol used in Jason Rohrer's MUTE peer-to-peer network: http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/howAnts.shtml
I prefer to think he dies the same way he lived his life - humbly. I think he realized his first step on the moon wasn't only his accomplishment, but one of the many thousands who designed and built the machine he and his crewmates flew.

This really sets an example.
My daughter roped me into using G+ but now I think it's a superior experience to FB in every way. I actually enjoy using G+ (and I thought I had social media fatigue).
It's enough money to put a bid in on the $1.6M property where Tesla had a lab, not even enough to build a proper museum on the property. So: keep giving!
Facebook and Myspace basically competed from the start (although not directly), so the social networking landscape didn't have a chance to find a stable equilibrium. That situation is not comparable to a new service coming out and destroying a strong established network.
A World of Warcraft player reviews Guild Wars 2
The G+ look and feel is way better than FB, IMO. I find FB claustrophobic and almost anxiety-inducing.
I was put off at first but discovered that by using Page Down it was more slide show-ish (and I'll admit kind of cool) and less headache inducing.
I almost hate myself for quoting W.C.Fields here, but I can't resist sorry :-)

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."
> (I get tons of meme's and cat photos on my feed

I get none. My friends get none. My parents get none.

You do realise that the content comes from YOUR friends and not from Facebook, right ? And that if you are your friends moved to Google, Diaspora or whatever that it would continue ?

And that ordinary people would just block the people in question or remove them from your feed.
My (Apollo 11) moon-landing jam session by David Gilmour
Ludum Dare game 'On the Origin of the Species the Game'
There is a general perception that initiating a chargeback is a way of getting out of a credit card related charge for any reason, when in reality it's an opportunity for the merchant to prove to the bank that they provided a product/service to you.

I know someone that used to fight chargebacks as part of their job. If you'd been using that service to send pics of your junk to people and then became despondent when it turned out that women don't find unsolicited crotch photos an appropriate pick-up line, you can be sure those pics would get faxed over to your bank as part of the package to show you'd been using the site.
As a meat-eater, I've determined that the answer to the question isn't particularly relevant to my dietary choices.