skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good point. We actually have support for subtitles - but our first goal was to mimic a more human interaction and see how it helped adherence rates. So far since users make time to sit down and follow the programme each week this doesn't seem to have been a major problem, but I agree for trying it out the requirement for sound is limiting.
If you have such extreme people as your only choice, what you do is hire both, part time!
:-) Thanks Jof!
> The scale changes too arbitrarily to keep a feeling for the actual distances growing,

Yeah, this is the issue I have with it as well. The whole point of these things is to get a feel for the scale, which is totally impossible if the scale keeps changing.
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C/C++/Java have dominated programming for 30 yrs & are at a turning point [2000]
let me point to a comment made by PG yesterday when asked by thaumaturgy what it's like to have your every written (or spoken!) word analyzed by a bunch of people?

It's pretty grim. I think that's one of the reasons I write fewer essays now. After I wrote this one, I had to go back and armor it by pre-empting anything I could imagine anyone willfully misunderstanding to use as a weapon in comment threads. The whole of footnote 1 is such armor for example. I essentially anticipated all the "No, what I said was" type comments I'd have had to make on HN and just included them in the essay.
It's a uniquely bad combination to both write essays and run a forum. It's like having comments enabled on your blog whether you want them or not.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4497691

Maybe we should be discussing the future of finance, crowdsourced funding, new programming paradigms or some other interesting forward looking stuff instead of spending our time looking backwards trying to poke holes in an essay written more than ten years ago.
Your Blog Is Not Seen by Over 2 Million Federal Workers
App Design Elements you should focus on.
I think that that's a fascinating look at it, and yet, I think that the success of small startups, and the ever-shrinking tech company has been a vilification, of sorts. You look at Facebook, and it has been a much smaller company than Google (the most successful company on the map right now, that uses Java widely). Twitter (where that Clojure guy Nathan Marz went) is even smaller than Facebook. Is it possible that language/management choices have had an effect on this? I certainly think so.

I think the verdict should still be out on Java, because I think that the success of Java is dependent on two confluent economic factors.

(1) there's a lot of people who want nice stable jobs, but aren't really pg's type of hackers per se, and

(2) "management" oriented people tend to have big pockets in our present economic environment

But if we remember from economics, competitive markets tend to drive the cost down to the minimum cost of production. You can deploy vast amounts of capital to build a large organization that hires Java programmers, but is it possible to seed lots of small teams hacking in more productive languages, and is it possible for them to create more software that more people are interested in using? Heck, is it possible to use that model to just develop features that bigger organizations might buy out, instead of developing them in-house with the aforementioned armies? I dunno, but it seems like something worth exploring. ;-)
Well that's gone to hell then. I've dealt with Telerik lots over the years and have nothing pleasant to say about the experience.
Exxon's marketplace is largely commoditized, which is part of the reason they act how they do, Apple's marketplace could not be more different.
How would you verify identity in a free but reliable manner ?
OS X is indeed a very good desktop Unix, but the kernel is Darwin, not Linux.
Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype
Awesome. I have to say, this is very impressive. Is there a free trial or anything available? I would love to try it out but, alas, I'm a skint student.

Especially since it's the start of the academic year I can imagine this going down well with my student friends - maybe some kind of discount would make it more enticing.

Either way, this looks awesome and clearly the result of a lot of hard work. The Boots partnership makes it all the more exciting. Congratulations guys :)
It is not about letter "a", but letters "A'pl", witch is different.

I could be as angry as the next guy from Apple patenting geometric shapes and natural gestures and tech that was already invented 20 years ago, but this is a typical case of trademark dispute, and Apple could be right here. A pl could sound like Apple and so Apple needs to protect their trademark, or they could loose it, as someone already stated.
For the Dune fans out there...

Java and the JVM ecosystem strike me as very much like the programmers "Golden Path". That is (for those not familiar with Dune), Java represents a sort of "forced peace". Yes, things work. Yes, tools are available. Yes, there is decent, even good, documentation.

No...nobody's happy about it. But then Java also bred the JVM, and today we have "the Scattering" (another Dune reference), where hackers, honest-to-goodness hackers, have spread out from this forced peace to build a new world. One that, while it will not be as peaceful as the uniform world of Java, will ensure that the JVM remains relevant long into the future.
I've become really fond of Groovy during the last weeks. It's compatible with the huge number of existing Java code but more terse. Also its defaults seem more pragmatic, e.g., "==" comparing Strings by value or implicit setters/getters.
And version 2 promises Java like performance (and type checks) for statically compiled code.
I started building ToddlerTube, a YouTube iPad app for kids. The first minimal version is almost finished.

Is anyone with kids maybe interested in helping beta testing it? Some more info in the google docs form: http://goo.gl/nYIGD

Background: We have an iPad first gen and an iPad3 at home. My young nephew would always ask for the older iPad and for a long time, I didn't understand why. After looking over his shoulder for a few days, I came to realize that he loved to watch certain clips on YouTube (other kids singing his kindergarten songs, Mr. Bean, kitten videos).

Since he cannot type, his search strategy works as follows:

1. Start up the youtube app

2. Go to History (recently watched videos)

3. Piggyback on the app's history feature to watch existing videos and find new related videos.

Since the history of "his videos" were only available on the old iPad1, it makes sense that he would insist on using this device only.

YouTube channels were cumbersome to create and maintain. The user experience was so bad and my nephew so insistent, that I believe there is a problem here to be fixed.
Blue Toad could be a front company for the FBI ...
House to reauthorize warrantless wiretapping on Wednesday
From the screenshot it looks like an OSX clone to the point. It seems like the UI designer switched to 2d-dock, inverted the colors, replaced the apple with an 'e' and called it a day.

Not that this is bad per se though.

Edit: They even pretty much copied the icons for browser, address book and dictionary.
This demonstrates that you are educated and have a special love for teaching, an adorable trait that, honestly, I very much appreciate. I would like for you to consider though that priming might not apply here unless Apple legal team has been doing this stuff more than once before Steve Jobs passed away, and I just didn't notice or remember a single article about it.

Not to mention that the case you pointed me to (and more on http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=apple+trademark) look way more legitimate, because there is some kind of a visual resemblance with the Apple logo, the grocery store on the other hand is totally different visually and I think it is extremely unlikely that a consumer may be confused by it.
MediaFire restores virus researcher’s account, questions copyright troll
Most 2002 "Naderites" will describe you how that strategy is so prone to backfire, you might as well shoot yourself in the foot right now.
I have a mantra that I repeat on a regular basis in a lot of contexts:

"You espouse a false dichotomy."
"it uses a lot of bandwidth" is exactly the problem that skeu-craziness is. Purposeless high-resolution backgrounds and animations waste storage space, bandwidth, cycles, and developer time. Time/money spent adding a fake leather texture is time/money unspent on functional aspects of a product.
They do that on YouTube too. Viral videos are key to YouTube's popularity and success so removing those sharing options would piss off a lot of people and unnecessarily hurt the product.
MIT overtakes Cambridge and Harvard to top spot in QS world university rankings
HAProxy supports SSL now
I know the fabric does appear a little thin in the photos, but honestly, they're really high quality tees. We consulted with our printer and they assured us they are the best available at a reasonable price point. I think the see-throughness is exacerbated by the harsh flash from the camera. In reality they are a good weight and made from high quality cotton.
Right premises wrong conclusion. Most of the things PG says about Java are true but his conclusion that it wont be successful is completely wrong. Java is not a darling of hackers for all the reasons he has mentioned but it is embraced by large organizations for the very same reasons PG mentions which means there is huge market of job for Java coders if not hackers.
> He said when he took office that we absolutely had to pass the stimulus bill, and if we did it would keep unemployment from going over 8%. You might have noticed, that since then unemployment has in fact never been under 8%. We have the weakest recovery in recent history, with a jobs report last Friday that said 400K people were so discouraged they gave up looking for a job.

George W Bush recklessly spent eight years enacting some of the most irresponsible and cruel policies in decades, and as a result, in combination with a general trend of banking deregulation over the past thirty years, more than tipped the scales to cause the second worst economic disaster in US history.

Obama takes office and within weeks manages to take enough steps to stem the brunt of this disaster, restoring the banking industry and the general health of the economy, pushing back at the damage done by 30 years of decline with a good five or six years of intense irresponsibility at the end. Unemployment stays a point or two higher than what everyone hoped, despite the fact that the opposition party has taken historically unprecedented steps (see http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/12/breaking...) to unconditionally block any positive action the president might take, an unheard-of development that nobody anticipated.

Overall, if unemployment is your vector, the job creation records of George W Bush ("qualified") vs. Obama ("unqualified") could not be in more stark comparison: http://www.pensitoreview.com/2010/10/11/obama-created-863k-j... (Obama Has Created 863K Jobs in 2010, More Than Double Average Annual Creation under Bush)

This is your evidence that Obama is "unqualified", yet George W. Bush, largely responsible for the whole mess and virtually unopposed during his entire two terms is considered as "qualified".

This is an entirely policiticized point of view.
What Apple and Red Shoes Have in Common: Using Broad Design to Block Competition
Thanks so much! We did have a free trial, but we're trying it without...and since we're so close to launch we need to coordinate with what Boots is offering. Out of interest what sort of price do you think you (and your friends) would expect to pay for this, based on what you've seen?
yawn

Nothing new here, nothing to see, really.

One possibly valuable angle to look at this from: people with better soft skills sometimes keep their jobs longer and/or get promoted faster/further than people with better tech skills. And this often seems unfair to the techies.

(Written as a techie, consultant and startup guy who has hired, fired, and promoted those from both camps.)
Just to put the events into perspective:

Number of people who died due to Hitler: ~50,000,000

Number of people who died due to terrorist attacks in the US: ~3000

Number of people who die in a car accident in the US EVERY YEAR: ~40,000

Number of children who can be saved EVERY YEAR by bringing US infant mortality rate down to Slovenia's or Czech Republic's (!!) level: ~11,000

How many lives could be saved by directing anti-terrorist organization's funding towards preventing car accidents or other preventable causes of death?
Geefts: A Selection of 9 Must Have Films for Geeks
RIP Fiddler...
The Unix Chainsaw - Gary Bernhardt - Cascadia Ruby 2011
Cookies in the UK may end up being treated like weed in the Netherlands: technically illegal, but not prosecuted even when out in the open.
I said:

> I don't claim that the behavior is intuitive, or appropriate for some cases. But the lack of RTFM isn't excusable either.

You failed the read test. Twice. The first was the manual itself.

> please explain how is this issue somehow elevated by node when it is a part of language standard

You failed the read test. For the third time. Please indicate the part where I claim that node elevates the issue vs. standard ECMAScript behavior. I said something about the node vs browser runtimes. This is a totally different beast.

> This is a gotcha of a language. It uses + operator that does something completely differently than what it usually does on almost any other language with similar syntax. It's the definition of counter-intuitive.

The only gotcha is the coercion that some regard as dark magic vs statically typed languages vs the operators themselves. The "+" and "-" operators in JavaScript: "+" for summing Numbers or String concatenation, "-" for subtracting a Number from another Number (which basically makes it a strict arithmetic operator, you know, stuff for Numbers).

Besides:

- PHP uses the + and - as strictly arithmetic operators (it has the . operator for string concatenation), while summing up two strings equals int(0) since (int) 'foo' === 0: http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.arithmetic.php

- C (and to some extent C++) uses the + and - as strictly arithmetic operators: invalid operands to binary + (have ‘char ’ and ‘char ’)

- Java uses the + the same way as JavaScript: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/ops...

What other language with "similar syntax"? D?
Wow, you do take public urination seriously :)
Incredible homepage and introduction but I'd love a 7-day trial to see if it's for me.
I know this is referring to programming, but I went overseas to study for two months this year with only my Galaxy Nexus, so this is my experience:

Yep, to a limited extent you CAN live with only a phone (and be quite productive!). Expect to use a physical notepad a lot too though, as flipping between apps even on Android 4.1 constantly is no fun when you need to keep referring to information.

Battery life is a KILLER. I get a whole day out of my Galaxy Nexus back home, but when using it exclusively as my only technology, it lasted me half a day max. 8am to 1pm if I'm lucky.
No, consumers don't care at all. That is why Apple is still in business after the all the stories about exploitation in manufacturing. If customers cared at all, that would put them off for sure. But no. So clearly, customers don't care as long as they get their pretty toys at prices they are willing to pay.

Not an Apple thing either. Don't know why Apple get the flack when almost every one else is at it in one way or another, and "we" happily lap up their product.

If people actually cared enough not to give Apple money, the likes of Apple would change. They would have to.
Erm, anybody remember Apple Corps vs Apple Computers[1]?

So, how's them… ah, forget it.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
I don't think that in a few decades we'll see a "world filled with Gabriellas". Luckily (for the time being), our universities are really good at pumping out Rodrigos rather than Gabriellas. It's later when you enter the working world when the occasional Gabriella moves up through the company. So the real issue revolves around manager competence, or manager-team member relationships and how this social selection dynamic affects all of us.
Well I'd be willing to pay £25-ish or maybe a bit more. I don't know if the fact I'm Scottish skews that at all :P

The Boots thing is very interesting. Are you willing to share how that came about? I'll need to nip in today and have a wee look.
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Visualize Agile — Impressions from ALE2012 Unconference
As a slight aside, I wonder if you would consider putting your name and/or relationship with PHP in your profile (particularly as you use "we" and "our" in relationship to PHP). It might help newcomers appreciate the particular (valuable) insight into PHP in your posts and put them into better context.

It took me a while of reading your posts on here to realize who you were, and I note in a recent thread someone even asking how you learned so much about how PHP works...!

Please keep commenting on PHP threads here, the balance and insight is very much welcome!
This all looks like typical political rhetoric to me. The politicians think something must be done-- OK, here is something, let's do it! It doesn't matter that this something isn't the right thing, because now "I did something about this problem. Re-elect me."
Ebook Authors Continue To See Self-Publishing Stigma Disappear
They might have just set the priority differently, given the time and resource constraints.
SEC files charges against Bio Defense executives for misleading investors
The EU cookie law is so stupid and full of holes that it's absolutely ridiculous. Also nobody seems to know how to implement it properly so most people just don't. This includes a lot of government websites and EU organisations, even the EU's main website http://europa.eu/ doesn't comply with the law.

If ever there was a bad case of Politicians trying to reach a noble goal (in this case caring about a users privacy) but not having a clue about the technological means to reach the goal this is it.

Maybe EU needs a technology commissioner.
Ha! Top one is the best - not sure how effective that would be in getting anyone to sleep though...

It's a tricky question - there's no solid data on the awareness of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy but it lends credibility to those who do know it. In our (quick and dirty) research it seems that a majority of our main initial target (middle aged women) have heard about it but don't know what it is...
"Most widely used" seems a bit strong...
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cbt

(just in the interest of full disclosure, I'm the lead developer for Sleepio)
Indoor Navigation Takes Signals And Sensors
There are two discussions waiting to happen here:

1. "Haha, what an idiot. He said Java will die and now it is still there, hahahaha." (obviously, an contrived example). This would be an useless "discussion". We wouldn't learn anything from it.

2. "Well, as he writes in the essay: predictions are hard. Let us check which predictions did hold and which didn't." - This discussion could provide useful lessons for the future.

I hope for the second, but fear the first. In a few hours we will know the answer.
hmm you probably couldn't be faulted about thinking that all this was imaginary until you get a grenade thrown at you - I was part of an NGO team in Kabul, Afghanistan that was targeted by a grenade thrown from a motorcycle (tandem) that providentially didn't explode.
Time to backup current Fiddler binaries.
I agree with this entirely. Two guys standing in line at a concession at a crowded football stadium talking might have no strict expectation of privacy, but they might have an expectation of privacy from a particular audience (hypothetically, let's say their wives). When you record their conversion, you are not violating their expectations of privacy, because many people could have heard that conversion. However, were you to broadcast the recording, at that point you have violated the assumptions they thought the privacy was affording them. Some of the hackers here would argue that they shouldn't speak in plain English, but should always speak to other humans in an encrypted spoken language and because they didn't do that they deserve no privacy for speaking in English.

I would disagree with those people.
Thank you for your comment and your effort. I get a little chuckle everytime I see job ads for ROCKSTAR DEVS, thinking, "Really? Can you actually handle a rockstar dev?"

Having seen classical managers call a group of mild mannered programmers unmanageable before, i'm glad the some folks realize that you might get exactly what you asked for when you hired that rockstar dev: some behavior that might look prima-doma to C level execs (but is really just the devs saying, "please don't add tickets to the sprint mid sprint"). Or when some exec gets mad at people who clock in at 10 ("2 hours late!!") without realizing they fought some server or deadline until 3am.
Thanks. Yes we initially had a 7 day trial but are now trying it without. The challenge is how to manage expectations from that trial - you need to stick with the programme to see a positive effect (like a weightloss programme), and despite our explanations mot people expect to see some instant results in that first week. We were hoping the 'Try it now' might give people enough of a taste of what the user experience is...but we'll give it some thought afresh.
Is there a free alternative using the same methodology?

Sounds interesting, but £49.99 is way too much for me right now.
Show HN: your own LinkedIn
This looks great! Can you tell us some more about how you managed to get into a large national pharmacy chain like boots?
While I usually agree, in this case I found it a very interesting. pg is a very influential figure in many business circles, but for a lot of people on HN, pg is a very influential hacker, who has thought a lot about hacking and the software creation business, and has very graciously let us look into those thoughts. From that lens, this is a very interesting article.

I personally think this article makes great predictions. Obviously, Java has since become an incredibly popular language. But I still think there are many people (including me!) who have the same beliefs about Java as are shown in the article. Many people consider it a much more "business-y" or "bureacratic" language than, say, Python/Ruby or many others.
I'll say it ... I love Java (and I'd been hacking in a for a couple years when PG wrote his article).

I came from an embedded systems background and treated the JVM as my machine. I read and understood the JVM specification, and then the language specification. By that time it wasn't any different to me than writing for a uP or uC. At that time, Java was a fast-growing eco-system and our JUG met twice a month to keep up.

While this was happening, I knew a lot of people like PG who did judge the book by its cover (and there were parts of the cover I didn't like). Don't be so hard on him as he admitted he never cracked it open.

Out of curiousity, have any of the YC start-ups used Java? I'm curious whether he's still biased against it. (We can count JVM languages for half points).
its really good please check out PracTutor here .http://www.practutor.com
Proof of concept ‘stacking’ responsive menu
There seems to be currently two entries of the same story on the main page (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4504246).

In case someone here has kids and would be interested: I'm creating ToddlerTube, a YouTube iPad app for young kids.

If you have a few minutes, would be awesome if you could help fill out this three question survey: http://goo.gl/nYIGD

(Link to the other post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4504690)