skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your argument that Apple revolutionized text messaging is kind of flawed. Even if you ignore IM/XMPP clients (they're not the same), fact is, RIM did it first with BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

With BBM, you get end-to-end messaging between BlackBerry phones, with no limitations on the lengths of messages. You get a typing notice, delivery notice, as well as a read notice. You can transfer files, pictures, and video between devices.

BBM is also very tightly integrated into the OS, more so than any other platform. It requires no set up on the part of the user, all they need to do is exchange PIN numbers with their friends. No signup, nothing, it just works. Moreover, it allows developers to incorporate into their own apps, so they can provide in-app chat capability, as well as app-to-app communication ability (e.g. a multiplayer game initiated with you and a BBM friend). What's even better is that if that friend doesn't have the particular app/game installed, you can invite them to download it. When you go to invite a friend to use the app with you, it will only show you BBM contacts with that app installed (i.e. BBM knows what apps your contacts have). It's a pretty powerful setup, especially when combined with push notifications. It is leagues ahead of what XMPP can provide. Just ask WhatsApp or Kik.

RIM misstep (amongst MANY) is that they didn't translate this to other devices. They have delayed BBM on the PlayBook while they updated their infrastructure to allow 1 user to use BBM on multiple devices with multiple PINs. They're fixed this a while ago, and will release it for BlackBerry 10. They also don't have a desktop client available for public use.

So while iMessage is definitely an improvement over SMS (pretty much anything is), it still has a lot of catching up to do to BBM. Old school BlackBerry OS is a pretty shitty system, but they did get BBM right. Apparently, it's going to be very improved for BlackBerry 10. Here's hoping it is.

Edit: Reading some other comments here, I realize that iMessage's "innovation" is that when you send a text message to a phone number, it checks to see if they use iMessage too, and sends it that way instead. While that's cool, it's by no means revolutionary. Furthermore, you're still shackled by the limitations of SMS messages. That can be good, can be bad. Finally, I'm unclear of what happens when you're on your Mac or iPad: do you iMessage someone using their phone number still? Is that the unique ID?
Yea, most of the time the access code is purchasable separately without the textbook, and many do allow paying online directly for them.
Ask HN: Why not Java?
I am building a web crawler to access data to be processed. All the code is fairly high level, so I am drawn to Python, but there are certain bits of it that require data manipulation that is much easier in a C-like language (arrays are a big part of it).

Java seems to fit this role very well. It is statically typed, object-oriented, and doesn't delve into memory. However, it seems to get a lot of hate (or, at least, dismissal) from many programming communities, so I am asking, why not Java? Why is it so horrible as a systems language above C? Is there any other language that fits this role in a better way?

I am in particular asking this because I have been banging my head against the Python syntax for awhile, but I am trying to expand what languages I can program in.
Removing Potential Points of Failure in Your Startup Idea
Ah the HTML/CSS background explains a lot. Because most first-time coders could never make anything this nice looking. And it's very functional too, so I'm definitely not trying to bash your PHP skills.
What you’re missing out on on App.Net - O Mr Speaker
This is cool.

Would be nice to know how popular a particular tune was, i.e. at minimum Youtube Views and preferably also Likes/Dislikes as columns so you could order by them.

This is useful for many reasons, e.g. someone recommended a band and you do not know the easiest way to get into it.
Most asteroids in our Solar System are bathed in about 1 KiloWatt/m^2 of readily available power 24/7 in the form of ordinary sunshine.
A couple friends and I just spent the past 48 hours building an app that recreates a lot of this functionality. Some key things to note with this is that you're stuck with RDS, and locked in to amazons platform choice.

If anyone is interested in the work we did this weekend, https://github.com/jawnb/badatcomputers
"Like Finland, Norway is small and not especially diverse overall, but unlike Finland it has taken an approach to education that is more American than Finnish. The result? Mediocre performance in the PISA survey. Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup."

The US is doing much better than Norway... and Sweden. The idea that Sweden doesn't value equality is just absurd.

http://www.vdare.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize...
A few days using the SlimFold Tyvek Wallet
Couldn't this just be done on Kickstarter currently? Just make the rewards different levels of inclusion on the adventure. Although I don't know if Kickstarter has a way to cap donations, you wouldn't want to have to bring 1000 people with you.
The Iridium satellites demonstrated that it's possible to build satellites in an assembly line, at enormous cost savings. For a very simple satellite I think $1mil/unit is achievable.
Holy smokes, you chose a cool video to demo it with.
"For christ's sake, what a stupid" reply. You mixed and matched what you wanted to make me look silly. Despite being disingenuous, you missed the entire point of my post.

edit: I just can't get over the tone of your post, especially given that despite my implication of productiveness and keyboard, you gave an example that explicitly and obviously only requires a stylus.
Indeed I have noticed textbooks often only contain minor changes from version to version. In other cases, entire subject areas can change as research progresses. But sometimes the only way you get to know that is by looking at older texts.

The quantity of changes may be less relevant than the quality of the changes: i.e. did anything major change in this field in the last n number of years. With a closed source software program, like Windows, it's very difficult to assess the quality of the changes. All we see is the user interface.
My school changed it so that the AP US History test only counted if you got a 5. If you got a 4, you were exempt from taking US History, but you didn't get credit, so you had to take another history class instead.

If you made a 4 on the AP US history exam, you most likely learned more than the average student who made an A in college US History.

They also severely limit credit by examination. It's all about making people pay for classes.
Unreliable ? Where?
Price! Heroku is vastly more expensive.
Shown HN: Gearfoot. Social Marketplace for Sports Gear [video]
This my startup. The website, http://www.gearfoot.com/, is a BIG work in progress, not nearly finished, but wanted to show HN the concept in its early stages to get some initial feedback as I really value the opinions of HN community.

Thanks in advance for any help!
To be fair summer vacation is shorter in most areas than it used to be due to an extended school year. The standard used to be 180 instructional days for kids, per year but it keeps creeping up there every year teachers renegotiate their contract for a raise.
This seems like an excellent opportunity for authorities to physically track people who use their bitcoins for illegal purposes.
BBM messages are encrypted end-to-end. However, BBM messages sent through the BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) network (i.e. via your carrier) are encrypted using a RIM possessed by RIM. That means, that if/when required, they can be subpoenaed and asked for those messages.

The same is not true for BBM messages sent via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). Those are also encrypted, but using a key possessed only by your company's IT department. That means that if someone wants to read you messages, they have to subpoena your company. RIM can't help them, at all.

I'm not sure what happens when a BlackBerry connected via BES sends a BBM to a person using BIS, or even another BES network. Either decryption and re-encryption occur, or it reverts back to using RIM's private key. But it would be safe to assume that BBM messages sent within your own company's BES network are safe and secure.
Only if they're stupid enough to fund cards tied to their real identities with coins from a shady past. Bitcoin is as anonymous as you make it, put in the effort and you'll be ok - don't put in the effort and expect sirens.
You always have control. Some want control of receiving information the moment it happens. It will be these individuals that will drive real time.

I view this the same way people view sports. People that watch sports want it real time because everyone discusses it as it happens (or immediately after). If the media you are consuming is important to discussions in approximate real time, then it will be important to receive that media as it happens.

This obviously doesn't fit everything, sports is just an example where it does.
Freedom from US-east. Heroku, afaik, only have instances in US-east.

Also, it's way less expensive than Heroku.
Isn't the normal attitude with contracts like this is do as little work as possible to satisfy the requirements checklist and get paid as soon as possible? And then charge even more to come back and fix it later when it doesn't work as originally envisioned?
Sure it could, but even in your comment, you're already adding layers of hacks onto kickstarter to force it into workability.

Sounds like a perfect candidate for its own platform.
A lot can change in 5 years...

Silverlight as a platform doesn't look so rosy anymore and the "old school" downloaded app seems to have recaptured the lead thanks to the App Store and Google Play.
Can't you use RDS like any MySQL database? And since you're writing a standard WSGI app, it seems like there is very little lock-in. This seems to basically automate the provisioning of EC2 instances for the web app and the DB. and since you just have a standard app, you're free to move it around as needed.

Or is there something that I'm missing with the Elastic Beanstalk? (I've only used raw EC2)
Would be nice if the author had a section where he wrote in detail about the problems with the architecture and team, as I like reading about the "struggles" in team management and how they were solved.
I like that the port authority police union rep is complaining about the quality of the security system. Does he think that the port authority police can just sit on their asses because the security system is going to do their jobs for them? The man was wearing gear designed specifically for high visibility, and nobody saw him.

Also, are there really no exemptions to trespassing laws to account for emergency situations like this? It seems that if you're stranded at sea you shouldn't have to find a public beach to get out of the water.
"Immediately there should have been an armed response. Heavy weapons, armored cars to the area that the perimeter was breached. The airport should have been locked down."

Even if this were a legitimate attack, isn't this sort of response a bit overkill? I have trouble thinking of a threat to a large airport on US soil requiring "heavy weapons" and "armored cars" as a response.
You can always do the speed-critical parts in C and link that from your Python code. Or, if your analysis is something already done, use a library already written in C (such as NumPy).

Another approach could be Jython (or any other JVM language closer to the desired level of abstraction) and Java.

I don't have much love for Java the language. It's not much easier to program than with C, isn't faster and is very verbose. Still, what you are doing looks like a good match for it. And all the respect I don't have for the language, I have for the JVM.

I wouldn't use if for web app development as there are much more productive options around.
Ticketing is weird in that the supply chain exists post wholesale. I have worked on both the live and recorded side of the business. I know most of what could be tucked into a "service fee" from recorded.
Ruby gets `each` specifically and blocks in general from Smalltalk, so I'd be willing to bet there is research showing whether it is easy or hard to pick up. I'd further wager that the answer is that it is no harder. Loops are more "natural" for the machine, and therefore anybody who understands the machine; that doesn't mean they're more natural for the student.
I had a similar problem with a Chemistry professor who thought it was brilliant to let students do their homework on a website held by Pearson. The access to the website was conditional to the purchase of a code found in the textbook, which code was expiring at the end of the semester (4 months after registration). She also found that it would be a brilliant idea to give 30% of the term's mark on homework; it would give a chance to student who had a hard time on the exams.

So what happened is that in order to be eligible for that 30% part of your final mark, you had to pay an extra 150$. Otherwise, you simply couldn't do and submit your assignments.

In other words, you first pay the university to be taught the course but, oh that's not all. You can't actually get the course for that price; no you have to pay an extra 150$ to really do the course.

After fighting with her for two weeks at the beginning of the term, she gave me the choice between subscribing to the service for 50$ to only get an access code, without the textbook. Or I could get the questions on paper, and submit them manually, but only if I would take a rendez-vous every time to get the questions, and answer them on site for the duration of the rendez-vous, which was ridiculous. In the end I bought the 50$ access code, in shame. Maybe I should have fought my case, but I was already sick of this 2 week fight over one of my 5 other courses.

I think there's a fight to be done there. There must be laws that force the prof to disclose how much money they get from publishers. There must be laws that disallow linking marks to the purchase of some material. It seems obvious to me that once I paid the price of the course to the university, I should be given access to the same share of marks than student who will pay for whatever other extra. Maybe I would have a harder time doing the course without the textbook, but that would be my own decision, and I would still get the chance to have all my marks if I work hard enough.

To end this long post, I'll admit that although I don't agree with piracy, I do use bootleg copies of textbook if I don't consider them of worthy quality. I don't like to be forced into buying something I don't like. However, I will (and do) pay for the books I consider worthy, and be quite happy to do it. For instance, I don't like the book required by my C++ class, so I will most likely use a bootleg copy, and buy another book that I find of better quality.
Does anyone know if this has explicit support for a task queue like Celery?
Learning from a Bicycle
Slightly off-topic but as an international, this seems very heavy handed to be charged with criminal tresspass just for seeking help, which for anyone other than this athletic and fit swimmer could have been life-threatening.

Is this a "felony" charge in the US and would it stick?

Anyway, I imagine this will make it to Schneier's list as the latest piece on security theater...
Director Tony Scott commits suicide
I'm using Elastic Beanstalk with PHP and overall the experience has been fairly positive. I don't really have any ops experience, so I wanted something that could get me up and running quickly. There are some gotcha's, but it's been great. If you use git, there's a git CLI that deploys directly to Beanstalk which is very convenient. Deploying an environment or deploying a new instance of your code to an environment is really a piece of cake. You can set autoscale rules, interface with load balancers, add some other configs, etc. right from the beanstalk interface in just a few clicks. Support from Amazon has been solid, and the documentation/forums are not bad.

Fair warning, Beanstalk is still young so there might be some growing pains, but for someone with little ops experience, it's been pretty awesome. One very important fact to note, is that it's just a layer on top of other AWS services (with no extra fees, you only pay for the underlying resources), so if there's something you can't do on beanstalk, you can do it with whatever resources are beneath it (EC2, RDS, Cloudwatch, etc).

I'd recommend if you're interested in it, or feel AWS is burdensome/complicated, it's worth a try. You have to scope out if it's right for you or your project.
This is such a non-article.

The optimist in me would like to see cold fusion demonstrated but this article didn't even elaborate on the work MIT is doing and just cites investments as proof that there is some progress being made on this front.
Yes RDS is like any MySQL db. The key word there being MySQL. If you want to use another data store like say, postgres or even some NoSQL solution. You're outta luck.

As for platform lock-in, my comments were less towards the web services level and more about system level concerns. It's not entirely clear how you would run persistent background tasks (read: celery). This doesn't even get into the headaches of learning yet another DSL to define OS packaging requirements.

That being said, IMO this would be great for simple apps, with no strenuous requirements. In addition, anything that allows more people to easily deploy their django apps is a good thing.
Managing Productive Visual Design Reviews
Yes, RDS works with MySQL. And you're right about the provisioning for the EC2 instances for beanstalk, but it doesn't do much for RDS, that needs to be set up independently.
I think heavy weapons is a relative term, I think he probably meant assault rifles not M240 Bravos.

Any and all passenger screening would be worthless if you could just walk on the tarmac and have access to the planes fuselage and or fuel tankers.
I never tried it but I guess you can use SQS for queues on AWS.

http://aws.amazon.com/sqs/
A social more is something that is demanded by a society

Actually, the singular is "mos".

<ducks>
I hated crimlaw and I dropped out of law school. But isn't there an affirmative defense for emergency/neccessity? I think there was in NY but I have no recollection for federal criminal proceedings. Can anyone that passed the bar comment?
Kinda... there are GPU instances, but they are targetted towards GPU cluster computing for HPC applications. I suspect that GPU clusters work largely the same way that generic/CPU clusters work. You have a cluster manager that dishes jobs out to the worker nodes. The common HPC job scheduler that we use (Torque/PBS) includes support for scheduling jobs that require GPU access. (I assume SGE does as well).

Cluster GPU Quadruple Extra Large Instance

22 GB of memory
33.5 EC2 Compute Units (2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad-core “Nehalem” architecture)
2 x NVIDIA Tesla “Fermi” M2050 GPUs
1690 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: Very High (10 Gigabit Ethernet)
EBS-Optimized Available: No*
API name: cg1.4xlarge
> in my experience Christians are much happier

Maybe because when they do something wrong, they believe an imaginary being will forgive and still love them; or if they encounter difficulty, they can beg this imaginary being to help and think they're doing something meaningful.
RIP Authenticity, Passion, and Guru. (And Save Epic Sh*t)
Descargar Kinect Oficial para pc
Um, I think he was complaining because he wants to highlight the failures of a system that is in direct competition with the members of his union. I would imagine that the automated system was put in place under the guise of "doing the police union members jobs for them."
That must have been one hell of a lunch for everyone to deserve a week off!
Not YC, but from a Dallas-based incubator. I flew out multiple times on business AFTER getting into the US, and every time I flew back in, I was granted an additional six months stay.
This timeline gives you an overview of revolutionary UI starting from 1600
The Port Authority told ABC it's undertaking a fast review of Castillo's breach and will find out how the perimeter detection system, built by defense contractor Raytheon "could be improved."

Oh, I know this one. It could be upgraded to actually detect intruders. I'm a taxpayer. I want a freakin' refund. I don't want a "congressional review" or "hearings". It didn't work. Give the money back.
Probably the saddest part of this article:

> Meanwhile, they've beefed up water patrols around the airport and are policing the perimeter.

So the response to their non-response of the non-terrorist breach of security is to respond with overwhelming security to no actual threat. Do they really think they're fooling anyone with this security theater?
Not to mention the typos and inaccuracies that remain year after year.
I believe there's a fundamental tension between generating data in real-time and consuming information. The author is correct in thinking more focus is given to generating data compared to the effort in turning it into relevant, consumable information.
Real-time is just a feature and it's here to stay. The problem is the amount of data available has exploded and the algorithms to sort/filter that data haven't caught up yet. But they will.

Take, for example, Facebook Top News. The benefit isn't that it's not real time, it's just that the algorithm for deciding what's top news isn't driven primarily by the post timestamp. In the future defaulting to Top News makes sense, but there's no reason that feed shouldn't be real-time. If a close friend gets engaged, I would want a notification about that as soon as possible. But I want Facebook to be smart about when it interrupts me.

The same is true for Twitter's weekly digest. I'd love to have the tweets Twitter picks out in real-time rather than only at the end of the week. I may not want to be notified in real time, but I wouldn't mind if they went in a special list I could browse every day. Basically whatever metrics Twitter uses to decide what are the best tweets for me, I want those applied is real-time, and when a story meets the threshold, let me know.
> believe an imaginary being

Needlessly condescending. I am sure the parent is well aware of the "imaginary being" criticism of his belief.
The U.S. passed a law saying that displayed airline tickets on sites (expedia.com, etc.) have to include all fees.

That was a great thing, because suddenly you could accurately compare between sites that included and didn't include the fees up-front.

Seems to me that ticket purchases would be another great area to pass a law saying advertised prices must reflect all fees. It won't stop them from charging them, but at least they'll "feel" built-in, rather than feeling like a bait-and-switch.

Heck, no companies should be allowed to display prices that don't include minimum mandatory fees. (Except for sales tax, since people expect that.) It's kind of ridiculous they can get away with it in the first place.
It would be more fun to have card balance in BTC. I do not know how fast will it be to load the card with new BTC.
Real Revenue and Profit Statistics For Small Websites
They sound what my uni called "bricks" - a bunch of licensed copies of reading material, all stapled together. They cost about $10-$50, as opposed to $50-$100 for a 101 text (note, this is Australia, the US has more expensive additions of textbooks for no good reason).

There are two kinds of bricks - draft textbooks, and collections of papers.

It's quite common to get a draft textbook as a brick one year, then laugh at the students the next year who pay for the textbook when it's finally published.

It seems a bit weird to publish a collection of papers as a textbook, especially at a low undergrad level, but I hear it's happening these days.