skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Agreed, Amazon's regional stuff is really, really weird.

Base item prices seem to vary wildly between sites, and there are some real head-scratchers related to postage: amazon.es does not have free "supersaver" delivery, but amazon.co.uk will post to Spain for free for orders above £25.

Plus of course the permanent confusion about VAT: you can't get any of the websites to show VAT for a specific delivery country, it will only do so at checkout and show the VAT-inclusive price for that site's "main" country for the rest of the site. For some types of item, (mostly food and books) VAT can vary wildly between countries (e.g. 0% in UK, 10% in Austria), but there are at least small differences for all items between most countries. So bizarrely, it's cheaper for me to get non-book items sent to Spain from the .co.uk site, but for books I'm best off buying them when I'm actually in the UK. Electronics are usually cheapest on amazon.de, so I tend to get those while in Austria.

As 'bencoder says, the warehouse it actually gets delivered from mainly depends on the destination, not the website you ordered it from, despite huge price differences. Although items e.g. only available from the .co.uk site do usually get sent from a UK warehouse (so there's at least some method to the madness).

And as the article says, they IP-geolocate digital downloads, although I'm assuming those aren't necessarily Amazon's fault, but rather demanded by the contracts with the copyright managers/holders. Though they really should handle this better for Kindle books where they have a direct relationship with the author or publisher for all countries. (I can only assume it gets insanely messy with music and the draconian licensing schemes)
I'm a professional designer but I'll tell you what I think doesn't matter. At the end of the day this is direct marketing and the best thing to do is to test your concept by placing an ad with AdWords. In fact I think the only thing you are really doing wrong is just having one page -- you should really test several pages that offer different copy and layouts. I would also suggest getting a professional copywriter who knows what they are doing...
I agree on this -- I wrote my thesis on the VRP (Vehicle Routing Problem) which is an even more difficult problem. I've studied GAs extensively (they are pretty awesome, hence my interest), but other methods are much better. I've heard great things about ACOs, but eventually I settled for Tabu Search, because:

- It is deterministic, hence not a black box
- It is a local search, easy to explain
- Does not require as many parameters to tweak (GAs' performance demands on how you set these: mutation rate, population size, cross-over mechanism (dozens of possibilities), stopping procedure, selection procedure, etc...)
- Considered by literature to be one of the strongest class of algorithms for the class of TSP problems, in both solution quality and computational effort

Here's an open-source implementation in Common Lisp:
https://github.com/mck-/Open-VRP
OStatus is just about as short as it can be on its own. "The 4 other specs" _together_ aren't much longer than what is necessary _anyway_ for implementing the necessary aspects of a federated social network.

And as all of the protocols necessary already exist and are quite well-established, there are already parsing tools available for anyone to use freely. So development is really easy to get into when it comes to OStatus.

Using something that already exists is in this case much better than reinventing the wheel and rediscovering all implementation issues that have already been taken care of with protocols like XMPP or OStatus.
Checkout http://codenow.org (Ryan@CodeNow.org) I believe they are doing this exact thing. If you have any trouble reaching them let me know, they are in my coworking space and I will help get you in contact (details in my profile).
> the textfile doesn't seem like a problem to me, just another version of a DB, what would be better?

It's not atomic at all. You could at least use bdb, or sqlite.
Not to mention, using high resolution graphics when only displaying at a lower resolution increases battery usage and lowers performance of the webpage.
Gold Counterfeiting Goes Viral: 10 Tungsten-Filled Gold Bars In NYC
Links for C/C++ programmers
At my previous job I was responsible for the i18n of our globally-used web app. The problem came down to a choice: follow the HTTP standard and pay attention to the request header the browser sends that specifies its language setting, or ignore the browser and maintain a user configuration setting in our app. We chose the latter, which worked much better: users could choose a language from a dropdown at any time, and we remembered that choice across sessions. (They had to log in to the webapp so we knew who they were, but we also set a cookie so most of the time the login page was the right language too.)

I guess the other choice we made was to support any language through the same codebase, rather than a separate codebase/deployment per language. A lot of websites do the latter, which means that if you go to a country-specific site you're stuck with the language used for that site. Bad design; I think there are few places left in the world where a region only has one language in common use anymore... at least among people who use the internet.
You don't buy Red Hat any more than Ubuntu. In both cases you're free to pay or not pay.

In any case, the product I might pay for has nothikng to do with the WM. It's a great package manager with timely updated. All this moving of the cheese, for me, mlstly distracts from the core service I'm looking for. (same deal with Apple/Microsoft.)
I gave specifics - people have said to me that they weren't going to use Groovy in the past because of the speed penalty. This was year ago, well before Groovy 2 or even Groovy++ was useful. As Groovy2 continues to develop and mature, I expect more people will adopt it in their toolset - obviously adoption in Grails will be a bit boost, and that will drop in the next month or so, and continue to evolve there as well.

No one has ever said to me "the name groovy conjures up drug use - I'm not going to use it". No one I know using Groovy bothers to reference "Gstrings" except as a one-time bad joke.
Ask HN: I made a Handwritten Book for Newbie Entrepreneurs
I made 10 mindmaps that illustrate, visually, some of the concepts required, alongside the particular state of mind required to "make it" in this craftsmanship of StartUping to destroy the Old Religion with this new Digital worlds.

It is for sale but there are 4 pages so you get a sense of what mindmaps are.

http://handwritten.posterous.com
You need to verify that you're solving a need that people have, and would pay to solve. Not sure that you've done that here.

Highly recommended:

http://theleanstartup.com

http://www.runningleanhq.com/
I agree with your fire analogy. Could have done without the "all-knowing government" hyperbole, though. That just makes you sound like a wacko and detracts from your otherwise-valid points.
If you don't throw anything at the police, they may not tear gas you, and what fun would that be?
The problem for me with the Maps app isn't that it isn't accurate for the few things I tried (turn-by-turn for navigating to/from work & my daughter's preschool), it's for the other things that I might try in the future.

It's an issue of trust. What problems might I run into in the future, when I am in a position where I cannot fall-back on the Safari version of Google Maps? Low/no signal conditions where I am trying to navigate unknown areas are times when I can't have something that is good enough, most of the time. That's why I downgraded to 5.1.1. Google Maps hasn't let me down yet, and there's no reason why I need to upgrade to iOS 6. The new features are only nice-to-haves.
If you purchased it from the Mac App Store it is kept around and you can re-download older versions.

http://imgur.com/m7tLP that is a screenshot of my App Store purchases, notice that Mountain Lion and Lion are both available...

---

Snow Leopard wasn't sold in the App Store and thus will not be available. You should have physical media for Snow Leopard.
Static data in the binary.
The Key Steps to Setting Up Corporate Party in London
Even if we (dubiously) assume that the FBI's proposed solution is technically impeccable, and can't be comprised, what solutions exist to prevent people from social engineering their way to the data? Heck, what prevents corrupt FBI agents and federal IT staff from just accessing the data themselves?

Of course, the same worry exists for the data at each individual company, but at least those breaches are limited to a single company's data. And, from what we've seen, externally, it seems like at least some companies are more interested in protecting privacy than covering things up. When Google found that an engineer was using his access to stalk someone, he was fired, and the indecent wasn't covered up. It's not uncommon for companies to tell users about security breaches in their own product that would otherwise have gone completely unnoticed (e.g., Pinterest announced a security flaw they had rather than just silently fixing it).

Conversely, in most cases of police and government corruption I hear about, the news breaks after a failed cover-up. No doubt I don't even hear about most cases, because they're swept under the rug. I don't have a particular fondness for Google's employees or process, but, given their track record, I trust them with my data a lot more than I trust some random government employee.

Moreover, if this law gets passed, why would serious criminals continue to use any of these services? This strikes me as having the same impact as most anti-piracy measures: highly inconvenient to non-criminals (in this case, when data gets leaked to actual criminals), but completely ineffective against real criminals. Not to mention the effect on the companies themselves -- I'm certainly not going to use a Chinese email service, because I don't want the Chinese government reading my email. What's an EU citizen going to do if this law is passed?
Charge them a dollar per line?
Well said. I'd love to see how would the FBI react if "terrorists" used the same backdoors to get into their systems.
At least for the Airs, they are currently all TN displays, and significantly lower res than the Asus model discussed.
It sounds like you'd really like Haskell. It gives you a far more succinct way to represent your data. Since the overhead of creating a new type is very low, you also become far more likely to express more of your logic in the types.

I always start my Haskell projects by laying out the data types. The type declarations are very readable--you can just skim over them to see what's going on. This means that you can get a very good overview of what the project wants to do just by quickly looking over what types it declared, and then looking through functions' type signatures.

Then, after you have the data types defined, the resulting code is not only easier to read but reflects the data operations it is doing. I've found the type signatures above each function--which are optional but highly recommended--really help tie the code back to the data it operates on. Additionally, pattern-matching against the data makes the structure of most functions clearly reflect the exact data it is working on.

The low overhead of creating Haskell types also makes it very easy to add aliases to existing types. So perhaps you use a `Map Int String` in your code; you then give it a domain specific name:

type IdMap = Map Int String

so your functions refer just to that. Then, when somebody comes along and tells you about `IntMap`, refactoring all your code to use `IntMap String` is far easier!

So if you really like a more type/data directed style of programming but are getting tired of OOP, you should definitely check out Haskell (or something similar like OCaml).
Agreed, its a significant fraction. I recall the discussions about how 'slow' it was to use CalTrain from the city to the Googleplex, the shuttles are faster of course, and they have WiFi which the train doesn't (still) so I don't know if Google could pay for a 'bullet' between SF and Mtn view (the 332 train[1] is closest). But the piece I'm missing is how much traffic is into San Jose to/from the suburbs. Or is that traffic mostly serviced by the VTA lines.

The 'smart trains' envisioned as the original people movers were a much better solution (dynamically adapting to traffic they would auto-exit at your chosen stop and ride on the through traffic center rail while expressing) but building that even on the existing right of way would be expensive.

(oh and the hovercraft could come up at Crittendon but it would have to go over the sanctuary and that would cause some resistance to its arrival)

[1] http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/weekdaytimetable.html
"vectors, turn-by-turn, and 3D" are nice, but essentially shallow, features. They aren't fundamentally important.

It's far better to have ordinary boring maps with good coverage than it is to have pretty frippery-laden maps with horrible coverage.

Of course, I'm sure Apple wants both good coverage and pretty maps—but that's not what they delivered. Either Apple screwed up, or their priorities are way out of wack.
not OP, but at the point someone is trying to make money off me, it is not a free product.
What you should do after an accident
What you should do after an accident Every driver involved in an accident is legally required to remain at the scene. He or she must also offer aid and give necessary information to others involved and to law enforcement officers. If you’re involved in an accident:.......
And how well-built it is! Look at the construction: all-machined bolts and panels and stuff. Looks like something you'd find in the avionics bay of a spaceship. I love how the panels have milled labels, too: "Common Memory", etc. Looks like it'd sing "Daisy, Daisy" as you opened it up. If I had the means I'd pick this thing up and put it in my living room in a heartbeat. Alas.
Practical Semantic Web and Linked Data Applications
1. I don't think people will pay for that
2. I don't think there will be enough users to decide how to monetize later.

I can speak from my voice only and I won't use such service.
I don't think it's ridiculous. They don't have (probably don't want) a web version, so they are redirecting you to Google.

Would you prefer to read "sorry, you can only see this map on an iPhone/iPad with iOS 6 or higher"?
If I remember correctly, when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion I too lost my iPhoto, but that was because a newer version was required than the one I owned, so I had to re-purchase it.
Can't you add a function for memorizing the code written?

Thank you!
Everyone seems to claim a better way to do it (myself included).

Here's a TSP challenge for you to prove yourselves: http://www.tsp.gatech.edu/data/usa/index.html

Deadline is July 4th, 2013 -- Price $500 & Honourable mention for finding the shortest path to the world's largest TSP problem.
> That argument would be a lot more convincing if the Dash actually displayed results from a lot of places, not just Amazon. What if I want to search the Web? What if I want to search my social networking services? What if I want to look up directions to a location? What if I want to look up a word in a dictionary? (Remember, Ubuntu is popular in schools in some countries.)

Apple already tried this with Sherlock. It just isn't something people seem to actually want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)

When Apple killed Sherlock, they replaced it with Spotlight (local search only), and Dashboard (widgets that you can use to find specific network information without going to the web).
I didn't realize GitHub had abandoned Resque. What are they using now? Or is it in "works for me" status and they don't feel like changing it?
I find myself writing new functions and updating existing ones a lot more often than having to add new columns or tables to my database schema.
This is probably true for all well designed systems. If you need to change your schema every time you need to change your code, its a clear sign you are a very bad developer.

quality of code indicator = [code changes] / [database schema changes]

Related quote:

"Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious." (Fred Brooks)
Vectors are very important in mobile devices. They are anything but shallow, as is turn by turn. I'm not really sure where you get the crazy idea that turn-by-turn is not important.

Anyway, the point is that Google could as well have forced Apple's hand. I'm honestly confused why people are so certain that Apple is the aggressor here.
The most important book ever written?
Also the storage space. Tablets and ultrabooks still don't give you enough space if you need to install a lot of development software, database servers, etc.

Oh, and if you need to develop in more than one OS, then a tablet isn't going to cut it, and the 128/256GB SSD in an ultrabook is a pretty tight squeeze for dual boot.

Those factors, the RAM and the back pain are the reasons I stick with larger devices for now. I do have my beady eye on the forthcoming Asus U500 though.
Right, that isn't what I got from the title though.
Right, I definitely missed that, I read this article in three parts while making lunch and clearly skipped some paragraphs. It was my mistake that I though Lion was supported on these machines. I have an old Core 2 that runs Lion (poorly) but will not run Mountain Lion due to the crappy Intel graphics, not because of the processor.
thanks! well, one thing i've learned for sure was that there will be paid accounts right away. one person per city or one meeting per week or something, above it'll be paid, depending on the dynamics of the offers market.

i never thought people would pay for a simple twitter analytics service (i felt it would be the big guys at most), but with fruji.com (side project that made me good money, and keeps going) it's 90% regular people, 10% business paying for these accounts.

what i'd be curious about is, if you're traveling much? say, you go to new york and there's a guy from general assembly willing to show you around the local startups they host? yes/no? i'm really curious!
This story is a hack job. The reporter (James Glanz) is fascinated by quoting large numbers and pointing to the "waste". There are so many flaws in this piece I hardly know where to begin.

From an economic argument, data center operators have a profit motive. A profitable enterprise consumes less "resource" than it consumes (as long as they are not subsidized by the government). So it's obvious that they are doing something valuable for the economy regardless of the residual "wasted" resources.

Compare to other human activities, where "waste" can be identified. If you live in a home that has a bedroom that you only use 8 hours a day, do we decry the 66% of waste that the home represents?

How about comparing the total energy costs of buying a physical book in a bookstore to downloading it to a Kindle? I have no doubt the new mode represents a savings of several orders of magnitude less energy consumed. But Mr. Glanz wants us to be outraged that the power distribution network wastes 30% of the minuscule amount of energy required to send it to me over the Internet.

Had he not wanted to write a sensationalized piece, he could have been more helpful in explaining data centers on a human level. How many watts of electricity are being spent in data centers on my behalf? Rather than sensationalize a "300 million watts" number for Google data centers, he could have said Google expends 3 watts per US household...but that number is not going to scare anyone.
What about this does Apple not emulate? I download and pay for the upgrade, I right click, show contents, resources, and voilá there is a perfectly good disk image sitting right there for me to burn to disk or write out to a USB stick.
This post convinced me to re-think using Resque in a new webapp of mine. I'm thinking about Celery + RabbitMQ now, does anyone have feedback about this or other recommendations? (i'm in a python wsgi stack)
for client side ML! hence my question...
thanks for the advice. i know the lean movement very well and I am not a very religious person per se. but i do value your thought on whether that's something people need. this is what I am starting right now, i am sourcing any feedback i can get (and not only here). there's always people who would not use such a service for sure - but I want to know why, and for those who want something like that, i'd be really curious to hear what they imagine it like.

i'm a massive fan of iteration, so that's the easy part, just want to make sure i'll scout the field for qualitative input a bit right now. i value your guys' opinion a lot, so this is why i am starting out here. thanks again.
This is why strong, asymmetric crypto is necessary. I'm worried that the US government will try to put the genie back in the bottle and go back to the 90's where strong crypto was considered a munition not suitable for export [0] and when they wanted all "secure" telecommunication to include an NSA backdoor [1].

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_in...
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
There's quite a few private park and ride type busses servicing port authority and jersey.
> Writing code that is both easy to understand and maintain and correct can be difficult, lots of people just go for the latter.

They believe they go for the latter, but actually they don't. If their code was easy to understand and correct, it would have fewer defects to begin with.

Your second paragraph I totally agree with. I've dealt with such code. Sometimes, I can halve its volume simply by applying local correctness-preserving transformations. That is, without even knowing what the code is doing. I even spotted some bugs in the process.
That is the last thing the FBI would let you see. It would be so damning that immediate removal will be the only perceived option and the solution would unequivocally to re-double security efforts while maintaining security holes as much as possible.

Or switch old security holes out for new ones.
The Geography of HTML5 Security
"Could you apply the principle of charity and think of any other possible reason why employers might care about grades?"

If you knew twice as much about the issue, do you think you'd be more or less charitable than you are today?
If you live in NYC, hold off. The integration between apple maps and third-party transit apps is anything but seamless. The new Apple map doesn't show the names of the train lines so you can't pan around the map and see "oh, there's the nearest 4/5 stop". Launching a transit app takes too many taps and you have to exit and relaunch maps to get back to it - no longer is it convenient to switch between views of "how long would this take via transit" and "how long would this take in a cab".

On the flip side, there's one GOOD feature in nyc rarely remarked on: Having switched to vector-based maps means you can now pretty reliably pan and zoom the map even when you have no signal because you're in the subway.
It really seems like the entire point of this article was the author declaring, boldly "I don't know how to use OS X," and that's Apple's fault.

They're not without issue, but I've done every single thing he's complained about not being possible……except installing an OS over Target Disk……but that's a stupid idea anyway.
Holy cow, $60/month for one VPS strictly used for educational projects? You can find and build 10 VPS's (US based) on http://www.lowendbox.com for less than that, granted you wont be on Amazon's network, but for small projects and testing distributed services they are great.