skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not quite sure I agree with you. User data is always accessible - I can get pretty much every aspect of my iTunes library in XML and there are plenty of 3rd party programs that can interpret it. Contacts on your phone usually sync with your PC contacts app (Outlook on Windows, Contacts on Mac OS X) or via iCloud. You could use those apps to export. On Mac, it can be exported as an "archive" which is a bunch of plist XML which is parseable. You don't bulk export directly from your phone because, I don't think too many people have ever asked for such a feature (beyond vCard, which does work easily).

Basically it seems to be sour grapes that consumers are finally getting what they want after 20 years of geek rule... It's not quite the 80s again.
It's not exactly comparable. The $100/year includes being able to use the desktop apps.
And I still don't know how much it costs.
RMS's original motivation for starting GNU was to address exactly the frustrations expressed by the article.

With open source software, if the universe of people with a particular bug is big enough, it'll contain developers who are capable of fixing it.

Or if a particular bug is hurting you badly enough, you can find and pay a developer to fix it.

See Linus's Law [1] (scroll down to point #8.)

[1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral...
If you click "Tuition" (second from right) it explains the pricing.
I'm a CoffeeScript newb, so take this with a grain of salt ;)

You really don't want to just do a quick convert, you're not going to get the most out of it. CoffeeScript has an idiomatic way of writing it, and I haven't seen anything that can match hand coding.
http://arcturo.github.com/library/coffeescript/04_idioms.htm...

You can use something like http://js2coffee.org/ , and it's OK, but it doesn't always make the best choice.

Hope this helps, and I can't wait to see what the 'pros' think!
There we go, thank you!
> Why do authors insult their listeners with "You're Doing It Wrong" titles like "You're Not Listening"? How does he know this about me? How can he possibly know this about every one of his readers?

He can't, but he's probably right for 9 out of 10 readers. That's just Sturgeon's Law, applied to listening skills in the general population.
It's because the market competes on features. This leads to a race to the bottom. If you go slower and test more, you will be too late and too expensive, and nobody will buy your stuff. The market does not value too high quality.
So there is lexical scope, but it requires "do" which means an extra function, something that wasn't required in JS. You don't get lexical scope "for free" in CoffeeScript, there's overhead, unlike in JS. Is that right?
viewcount would seem to me to be a tried and true motivator, especially for creators, no?
https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/2552
Skube - smart speakers
For the reel contest itself, the reward is a meeting with an investor.
Ask HN: What are some of the YC companies that are totally B2B and Enterprise?
Looks like I was wrong about the definition of warp speed. Oh well, sorry, I can't delete it now.
Be careful what you wish for.

I've been using GWT solidly for the past two years (not my choice for the project, but sometimes you just have to play the hand you are dealt) - and IMO GWT's biggest problem isn't so much that it is Java, but rather that it is Java without any dynamic features (i.e reflection, late binding etc.)

I could rant at length about the dark alleys that GWT's overemphasis on static analysis can take you, just a massive hairball of impenetrable compile-time code generation in order to provide features that would be trivial if you could just reflect on things. Ironic, given the fact that your code is actually running in Javascript.

So while I don't believe static typing is inherently a bad thing, you can definitely have too much.
Freshdesk Wants To Make Customer Service Fun With Game Mechanics
Honest views on my first FREE app for better restaurant recommendations
No, it's cool that you got it up. I thought it was really neat from a visualization standpoint. You probably just submitted at a more fortunate time of day.
FTL is not the same thing as warping space in the same way that speeding is not the same thing as driving a Maserati. But if you can warp space at your will to give you the power to effectively get from point A to point B faster than a beam of light would, then you will also be able to construct "closed time-like loops", which will allow you to travel backwards in time.
9 weeks isn't enough time for anyone to be learning how to write production-quality code, much less take a job as anything more than an engineering intern.

The fact that TapJoy is hiring people straight out of DevBootCamp makes me seriously question the quality of their engineering organization, rather than causing me to think highly of DevBootCamp (which may be an excellent program).
I wanted to get other hn'ers thoughts on this. As someone who's done technology support for 15 years, I would be offended and insulted if someone tried to change my job into a game.
I am assuming San Fran'cisco' is being referred here.
You might be wondering why people think that. Here's why: it's the entire point of CoffeeScript. According to the first two intro grafs at coffeescript.org:

> CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Underneath all those awkward braces and semicolons, JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model at its heart. CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way.

> The golden rule of CoffeeScript is: "It's just JavaScript". The code compiles one-to-one into the equivalent JS, and there is no interpretation at runtime. You can use any existing JavaScript library seamlessly from CoffeeScript (and vice-versa). The compiled output is readable and pretty-printed, passes through JavaScript Lint without warnings, will work in every JavaScript runtime, and tends to run as fast or faster than the equivalent handwritten JavaScript.
I normally would agree with you. Here, though, the author arguably presents his case to go beyond the common definition (a.ka. hearing noise=listening). So, the article is more about "doing reconnaisonce" and putting info in context so that the noise makes sense. That's not a trivial line of attack for the purpose of a blog article. He could word it differently:"Youre not listening, unless you're doing reconaisance." Or "How to listen better: tips on...situational awareness" or whatever. After you read it, you shouldn't feel insulted though per-se. (If you are listening to what he has to say.;)
Skypipe: Pipe data across terminal sessions, even across the internet
I didn't pay for my education. I am very thankful for that. I wasn't judging, I promise, only observing :).
See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4533566
Earpod Apple online store reviews
High reviews for new earpods
Hmm, I'm curious where I could find the originals (if there are any).
Nothing you just said contradicts my statement, which was, "there are frames of reference in which that information arrived at the destination before it left the origin."

I suspect that you don't know anything at all about Special Relativity, in which case, there's not much more I can tell you except to go educate yourself.
How to fake an "almost" Halting Oracle. For one thing, it's not a Halting Oracle, it's actually an "oracle" that tells you if you have an unspecified bug. The "oracle" doesn't answer "trivial" questions, for an unspecified definition of trivial. In reality, the "oracle" just uses heuristics to determine if the program is complex enough, that any experienced developer would tell you that there's probably a bug somewhere. The "oracle" will only answer questions about systems that are really Production systems. The "oracle" will not answer questions about systems that use Formal Methods.

If the above criteria are met, the "oracle" waits a random interval of time, flashing lights in complex patterns, then simply answers, "Yes."
I don't deny problems with today's software, but perhaps the issue is that things are moving FAST, particularly in the mobile space, and like the last few software booms, sloppiness occurs. I mean, look at the pundits all complaining that the new iPhone 5 is boring, why can't Apple reinvent the mobile world every 2 years? Because they're having a hell of a time incrementally improving the current world, which isn't anywhere near perfect! There doesn't seems to be much excitement in "getting things perfectly right", it's about finding the sweet spot of "mostly right". This tends to cater to consumers and not geeks or power users with edge cases.

I don't get upset about today's software because it's much better than what we had before (even iTunes). I remember the 90s where my computer would lock up twice daily with a blue screen. Where my data would get corrupted regularly. Where I had to reinstall my OS bi-annually to deal with slow downs. I haven't had to experience these things in nearly 8 to 10 years. Now it's all more about annoyances than catastrophic failures.
That'd be a good day.
also http://www.salon.com/2012/09/17/newsweeks_muslim_rage_invite...
Well, the Python and Ruby communities have different engineering cultures and this is part of that. "Explicit is better than implicit" is one of the mantras on the Python side.

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/
Yes, but people aren't going to but those, look at the specs. What kind of experience does a 350mhz cpu give you?
Unlike FB or Twitter, it's relatively difficult to post content to Google+. They only recently opened up APIs to some third-party social media management tools like Hootsuite, and they're still not just open to anyone.
That is a reasonable assumption in the common case, but it's reasonable to not always assume that. The same is true if you have obj.v(), you would normally expect there to be some v property defined on the object but really it might be coming dynamically from __getattr__().

This is something that python specifically has language level support for, I wouldn't say it's a hack just because its using a feature that isn't taught in Python 101.
I bought a pair yesterday, and in my opinion they really are that good.
Postal rate calculator. Calculate postage given a package dimensions / weight, tells you which carrier to use (USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.). There is one app like this already in the store, but it's not very good (and USA only).
As the owner of a small non-profit with real turnover, I would much rather use something like this.. just my two cents. We've had issues with holdover accounts costing us even after our developers are no longer actively involved. It makes a lot more sense to charge based on storage space.
If they changed how older APIs behave on devices and that were not expecting it. Wouldn't that, by definition, break backward compatibility?
The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years. Nothing is irreparable. It may mean humanity shrinks quite a lot for several thousand years out of its own folly. The Earth will endure.

As for liberty and human rights, I concur with my sibling poster - the world has been getting BETTER with regards to those things the last 30 years, Americans are the ones that have been escalating the crazy lately.
For the wishlist, you can add this to .vimrc: map gf :tabnew

Then you can gf over the project name, and then you'll either create a new file with that name or open that file. I use the technique for a personal minimalist wiki: http://idoh.com/#2365733587
I'm not sure inkjet printers are a good example, although you can say that since the cheap printers flooded the market there are fewer "good" printers and they lost the economies of scale so they are more expensive.

This example is so polluted by the whole ink cartridge "sell the razor blades" business model and the legal challenges around 3rd party cartridges that I would be very hesitant to generalize from the printer example.

With that said, the kindle business model is that same model so maybe there is something to it.
I haven't been able to reliably watch Flash video or listen to Flash audio since early this year in Chrome 64bit Linux. Not to mention the awful (multi-)touchpad support in Linux.
Amusing then, that there is so much interest in hardware. A hardware company seems to win a big prize in practically every hackathon I've seen in the past year at least.
Sweet deal, guys. Keep up the great work
"When you take a picture on your Android phone, you have likely become an active G+ user as it uploads the picture to your G+ account."

Unless you have installed & turned on G+ Instant Upload, this statement is untrue. If you have decided to turn on G+ Instant Upload, it doesn't seem unreasonable to consider those uploads activity.
I also had problems when I tried CloudFlare. Different problems, but it cost me a few days contacting users and apologising before I U-turned and switched the nameservers back.

I unfortunately use PayPal and their Instant Notification thing, basically a callback to a web page with a POST about the transaction that just happened. Upon receiving the POST I can then do things like notify the customer, dispatch goods, award virtual goods, etc.

The problem I had was that after putting my website (in the London Linode datacenter) behind CloudFlare, PayPal started randomly failing to reach the callback page.

PayPal, being PayPal, failed silently for a few days before finally sending an email to say that they couldn't notify me of transactions. I figured it out just before that though, because users were getting the CloudFlare "site offline" message.

The pages on my site are 100% dynamic, so nothing was cached by the feature that keeps a site online.

My biggest problem with CloudFlare was visibility for debugging: I had no visibility.

If it wasn't for my users letting me know and PayPal emailing me confirming what I thought... I wouldn't have known. Even then it took too long to find out, over a week from when it started to fail silently.

According to Linode there was no downtime in that period, and according to my server logs load was never above average and there was no reason it should've been unable to be reached.

Did I submit a ticket? I submitted some questions beforehand and got back answers that were very friendly but not technically detailed. That's also how I found the interface, I couldn't debug using CloudFlare, no way to answer the questions "What is happening? Why is it happening?". So no, when I figured it out I wasn't going to stay with CloudFlare as even if it was resolved I would still lack visibility for future problem-solving.

In the end it was costing me goodwill with my users.

I wanted things you didn't provide:

How often did CloudFlare fail to contact my network?

Can I see a chart of such failures over time?

What were the failure error codes and times so that I can cross-reference them to my logs?

Basically: I wanted transparency so I could have confidence in the service, and detail so that I can debug failures when they occur.

And I was going to email this as it's really a "just to let you know". But you have no email in your HN profile, and looking through the support emails I had I see tenderapp.com and can't make a guess what your email address may be, and I pinged you on Twitter but no response and it's very late here... so posting it so you can see.

If you add ways for developers to debug issues when using CloudFlare then I may well be tempted back in the future. The fundamental premise is a good one and I really wanted it to work (paid for the Enterprise level, had every intention of using it). But when failing silently costs real money and customer goodwill, I don't feel I had a choice but to U-turn very rapidly.

As soon as I was off CloudFlare, PayPal Instant Payment Notification worked again and there hasn't been a single failure since.
Yes, rules of cinematic narrative outweight the need to tell a faithful story. I.e. in Stargate universe it would be really boring if the Goa'uld just came, slaughtered everyone and take the rest prisoners for experiments within the first 5min-1hr.
>I don't really believe in burnout. A lot of people work really hard for decades and decades, like Winston Churchill and Einstein," says Mayer, a former Google engineer and one of Google's earliest employees.

Logic like this is so baffling. Look, I can think of one or two people that don't seem to suffer form X, so clearly X doesn't exist! Alternate explanation: Churchill and Einstein were freakish and don't represent normal humans, thus using them as exemplars is likely not going to be useful.

The rest is just her extrapolating her personal experience as a template to be writ large with 0 evidence behind its accuracy other than her claims that it 'worked for her' (maybe, people have an amazing ability to conflate 'I was succesful' with 'what I did clearly is right/effective').
How To Disrupt Technical Recruiting - Hire an Agent
Pentadactyl requires Firefox and Firefox is a memory eating pig.
The Web Cryptography API - W3C's first draft
But Asus has a whole line of what are effectively ARM based laptops:

The Asus Transformer series of "tablets" + keyboard dock. Sure, they're shipped with Android, but you can install Ubuntu on them.
Really? Python's handling of reaching into the outer scope of a function is just as confusing (although I hear it is fixed in 3000?).

Python used to be my favorite language, but I'm currently working on a project that is CoffeeScript on the client and Python on the server, so I'm getting plenty of time to compare them side by side. It would be difficult to overstate how much I prefer working with CoffeeScript.

The thing is, this scope situation, which is admittedly not as elegant as it could be, is really a rare situation to run into. If it happens to you often, it generally means that you need to give your more global variables less vague names.
They've also got a space faring race (well sort of) generally looking out for them.
I love stats analyses like this.

Pleased to say my pin occupies one of the darker regions of the heatmap :)
I wrote a response to this at my blog jobtipsforgeeks.com. For all of you that want to see what actions can be taken to disrupt recruiting, (hiring an agent, flat fees, etc.) check it out. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535547
> It is possible to write sane CoffeeScript that is lexically scoped and not subject to misinterpretation.

Possible is an extremely low bar. We hold ourselves to a higher standard these days in computer science, including language design.

It is possible to write sane INTERCAL that is (however INTERCAL is scoped) and not subject to misinterpretation.
I have been teaching myself how to code for 1.5 years and also did bloc.io, so I will have about 1,000 of programming under my belt before starting Dev Bootcamp in October. Almost every other student has been coding a lot before getting started. If you start from nothing, I agree that you will not make too much progress in 9 weeks, but this is not the case for most Dev Bootcamp students.
Try Vimium. converts entire browser to vim bindings

http://vimium.github.com/
As it turns out, diamonds fall into a particularly important category of objects which are both (A) Expensive to purchase, but simultaneously (B) Have little resale value.

It is these properties that make them ideal in the context of a marriage proposal. From a game theoretic position, it demonstrates serious intent on the part of the proposer, in that they can't afford to propose to many partners, while, at the same time, protecting (mostly) the proposer from gold diggers, as the person being proposed to will not be able to resell that ring to others.

People who buy diamond rings, therefore, are actually rational actors.
Android can also be really ugly http://fuglyandroid.tumblr.com/ :P
Why would you arbitrarily mention Hostgator? Shilling?

Yes, Dreamhost sucks. So does Hostgator. So does every other oversold host.
Webservices supply chain management : the SIRI case
I take it that no other whale can hear him, but he can hear them. He's effectively mute (to them). However, loss of one sense is often compensated for by acuteness in other senses. If he can hear them, he can find them. Might he not have other ways of communicating? Whale sign language when near, or voiceless noises when far away? I'm hopeful.
Yes, they do now and they run Android. But at CeBit in 2008 when they were doing a follow on to the EeePC 900 there was no Android.
Tl;dr = [meta] [pr stunts]^N
So put the header at the top of the page like a regular block; if the platform doesn't have position:fixed, then don't try to emulate it.

There's just not enough screen real estate to make a persistent header bar with social media links worth keeping there.

(It's unpleasant on a desktop. It's downright obnoxious on a mobile device.)
I cannot remember a more aggravating discussion on Hacker News.

A lot of people who are working with / building and using 'NoSQL' databases are the very same people building the RDBMS tools that you are so eager to defend.

You have stated elsewhere that you do not know anything about 'NoSQL' stores, so instead of insulting a huge number of people far more experienced than yourself, why dont you attempt to learn? (or at the very least, avoid disregarding the thoughts of a huge sector of the industry)
The slope slips both ways. If you don't take that line of reasoning far enough you end up with Perl.
I live nearby Hua Qiang Bei in Shenzhen, if you are serious I could ship some for you. I'm actually seriously considering setting up a Hua Qiang Bei e-commerce: this place is really a gold mine for electronics.
Update here: http://www.bistudio.com/english/home/news/company/330-update...
It seems to be a feature of kitchens in Spain that the cupboards for crockery double as drying racks. The shelves are racks and the cupboards have no bottom so that the water simply falls onto the counter. My cupboard is right next to the sink as well so that whole washing process is very efficient.
For a universal search bar I've been wanting to implement a chat bot style thing for issuing actions:

/find search term

Which is actually the same as not including "/find"... it acts like a search box when not told otherwise.

/goto inbox
/goto home

Navigation to common pages.

/me is dancing

That one updates your status.

/me slaps [user] with a trout

Is the equivalent of a Facebook poke I guess.
The OP is not the author (in case it helps).
The plural of insulting everyone's intelligence who disagrees with you is not authority.

>But do you have ask why so called inexperienced users are choosing NoSQL in the first place? Hint: it's because most RDBMS are ridiculously complex and inflexible.

If we're going to have a cliche fight, this one is called having your cake and eating it too. Either inexperienced users are gravitating to NoSQL or they aren't.

Operating under the assumption that they are, I'd say it's both because they can interact with them without an impedance mismatch; also because they are flat, they are easy to visualize. Another reason might be because they don't have to put a lot of thought into their schema, which would involve new concepts that would take a little time to learn. The biggest reason in my eyes would be that they don't know how big a performance hit they're taking in a write-heavy environment.

In very read-heavy environments with wide heterogeneous queries that you would end up denormalizing in 18 different ways anyway? They could be doing it because they're smart and have done their research. I love NoSQL.
Could someone explain the following terms:
Elastic Block Storage unit,
IOPS,
Striped 1000-IOPS EBS volumes,
Memory warmup time.
seems unlikley.

if only we had some kind of improbability engine.