skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Users who upgraded ubuntu versions were able to simply select gnome from a drop down menu at the login screen. People who installed 11.04+ (I think) had to install gnome after the main installation.

Changing the default is the only way you can get rapid improvement in a market. Making it easy to switch back satisfies those who are significantly upset with the change. It is the best compromise I have seen between progress and supporting legacy users.

Also, unity only changed the desktop. The apps you run were the same. Metro has a different UI paradigm for the apps themselves.
Somewhat relevant, how it all started on OSX:
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/06/first-wave-of-mac-app-st...

@Author: for the latest numbers:
http://www.distimo.com/leaderboards/apple-mac-app-store/unit...

App store pricing is a function of intrinsic value to the customer and competition in the market. No matter what you propose, the race to the bottom (optimal) can only be avoided if similarly skilled developers in cheaper countries can be kept out of the store. Good luck with that...

Initial market leaders have limited choices: out-market, out-innovate, out-price or out-service the competition. Deliver value or perish. It's a 'win' for the consumer, who can vote with their wallets (now transparent) and their reviews (also transparent). In general, it's a win in terms of quality and experience for the consumer, and for the small developer as well.

I am very happy about this. Big name companies can no longer get away with crappy software and crappy support. Little guys can shine. For most developers amongst us, this is an opportunity, not a threat.

PS Though I like the feature of 15min review on Android, I think this breaks the feedback and quality cycle (who bothers to complain if you got your money back?!?). They should abandon this mechanism.
Next Up: "TeX and Roman Polanski Films"
Probably the fact that soliciting fake negatives is a more direct route to damage them.

Granted, not exactly something that would restore your faith in Yelp...
That sounds really tough. An extra key press. I bet that wastes like, 10 seconds a day.
Looks fun. Why invite only?
That's really curious I don't know why anyone would write just Middle East rather than Europe and the Middle East. Finnw care to comment?
The Power of Electricity – Saving Money Through Green, Renewable Energy
Looks really good.

I tried to fill out the form to get an invite, but when I pressed Enter, the form wasn't sent, instead it added a new line to the input field.

Hope this helps, and excuse me for my English - not my main language :)
Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk
I think it's likely that Twitter is willing to sell them more, but the price is too extreme for TapBots.
Despite all the criticism in this thread, I thank you for writing this, and I hope you are right.
It's a site most people here use, and it's interesting. It's not about getting things back up faster, but letting people know what's going on and giving them the chance to witness how a large site fails and recovers.
Here is the source for what marban said.

https://support.google.com/chromeos/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

See point 4.
But people who are desperate and gullible don't check references. The scammer can just as easily claim to have an MD they never earned from a legitimate school, or an MD from a school that doesn't exist, or one that has never received approval to teach in any particular state.

School accreditation really isn't an effective solution to the problem you pose.
> it looks like another single-language tool for smuggling code onto a box while failing to set up any interdependencies with the system's package manager. I don't like being so harsh, but "every language has its own packages and none of them interop at all" is a growing antipattern that eventually leads to horrible messes.

I like that Quicklisp doesn't interoperate with the system package manager (I use Debian and Debian derivatives mostly). Quicklisp sets up repositories per-user, which means I can easily have different versions of libraries running for different users. This is handy because the Unix user facility is the original "virtual machine." All Common Lisp implementations are also very easy to set up to run from your home directory, which is great. I never use apt for installing CL implementations.

System packaging is great for command-line and GUI applications, and certain services like databases. But I don't think it works for development, and I don't even think that having machine-wide library installation (like npm and RubyGems) is a good idea. I've used npm and RubyGems and the way Quicklisp does things is much better in my experience (although one thing it doesn't provide is library versioning for individual projects).
What about GP's post that implies cutting down educational standards?
Of course, I did not mean to imply equivalence. I am only pointing out that restrictions to freedom of speech being acceptable for physical protests does not necessarily imply anything about what may be acceptable limitations in other scenarios.

(In this case I agree with the exception)
Costs =/= Standards
Do you also think that it's ok to have sex with a girl who's drunk and passed out as long as you clean up afterwards?

You say that like it's a bad thing.
A few people have gotten hung up on the word "owner", but clearly all the addresses used by a Web wallet are under the de facto control of a single party, even if that party is not the legal owner. This does make it hard to estimate how many Bitcoin "owners" there really are.

I would also guess that Ron and Shamir didn't look too deeply into the Bitcoin community since they use slightly different terminology, but the paper is still interesting.
And that theoretical harassment will pale in comparison to what results when someone tied to something controversial is outed on reddit. It's not really comparable.
You can achieve seamless failover in RabbitMQ by running a clustered rabbitmq node on each of your clients, and configure the client to connect to its local rabbitmq. The cluster will take care of routing the messages to the active mirrored queue. (Note that on the consumer side your code must still properly handle consumer cancel notifications, but that's not too much to ask.)

This is architecturally similar to the mongodb/mongos solution described in the article.
Full Circle Founder's Take on the Stanford Organic Food Study
Some do, others don't: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/12/higgs_on_the_gr.htm...
Error 500 on the submission for being a sensei, with no feedback to the user that it didn't go through: http://i.imgur.com/DHA4w.png
Recorded lectures instead of live people who can answer questions?
They didn't even disable https, so the site was still fully usable.
Thanks! Alas, that means I have to deal with a fresh install. Which I may do, but it's not the straightforward things I was hoping for.

What I'm really looking for is the sort of upgrade/rollback process I'm used to creating for my production apps. One-button upgrade, one-button rollback.

Looks like Ubuntu isn't there yet. I suppose the easy thing is just to get another disk, clone my existing setup, and do the upgrade. If I don't like it, I'll just swap in the backup disk.
I'm not sure why the article is saying this video is now on YouTube. The video pages says it was uploaded in 2009.
Think this was due to the uptick in traffic - scaled up the heroku processes to accomodate. Should be ok now!
That being said, there are also programmer's layouts specific to single languages which among others have a semi-colon on the home row.
Unicode is fun. ;)
This is a really interesting point, unfortunately the counterpoint to this is that a complicated rating metric is not successful either. People don't want to spend ages filling in some huge questionnaire and if you start trying to introduce complicated systems of combination star ratings like the zagat ones for example, it just bamboozles both reviewers and readers, and still has the same issues as a simple 5 star rating does - it's too rough a tool and tries to decide in advance on a procrustean taxonomy into which all decisions are forced.

I think the most useful reviews are textual ones which set out the interests and prejudices of the writer (sometimes inadvertently), and elaborate on why they like or don't like this particular place/thing, which can give you clues about their lifestyle, tastes, and even whether they were hired by the company to write this review in the first place! I'm always suspicious of reviews which say something is great and then list several selling points as if they were read from a brochure - not many people write like that without prompting and it's a good way to find fakes.

Unfortunately another problem as outlined in that article is that even if you managed to completely represent the views of others, you'd find that many of them were simply uninteresting to you, as they are based on false premises or different tastes. That's where social rating systems become more important; where you can decide whose ratings you trust (not necessarily friends), and use those to make decisions - I still think you need the complexity of written reviews to really flesh out people's opinions though. We have a few ideas on this over at coolplaces, but have not yet had time to take them anywhere. Trust does require that you identify with a person's tastes, and also that you know they are real, so using a network of like-minded people built up over time can help mollify the concerns you have about yelp reviews.

Thanks for the great article linked, I've not had time to finish it but it really does cover this subject in depth from a different perspective.
I think you are right. Maybe something like force_utf8=✓ would be more clear?
we already do this.

there's software that almost every higher ed university uses in their lower division courses to administer homework electronically. it grades the homework for the instructor and populates a gradebook. it's pretty hands off.

as far as I know, they have packages like this for every lower division STEM class. I used this software as late as multivariable calculus.
I made the mistake of getting the Acer chromebook in the UK when it came out and it was probably the worst computing experience I have ever had. Slow, laggy, frequently crashed, terrible video playback (couldn't watch YouTube videos), cheap hardware (screen developed a crack which split corner to corner completely), terrible battery performance, no cellular connectivity and flaky wifi behaviour. All for 400 quid! It looked like a fisher price toy and behaved like one as well.
Six types of clicks that Google gets paid less for
Why do I need Skype to help people?
A potential workaround is to always use an American keyboard. It's what I do.
Presumably you'd give permission when you downloaded the app.
"use of out-of-copyright reading material" rather than the best material.

"homework and exams that can be marked by a computer rather than by hand" implying that we should only test (and thus only teach) skills that can be tested by computer rather than the skills that we want students to learn. Basically you'd be wiping out essay type questions (which test depth on knowledge) in favour of multiple-choice (which test breadth).
Of course, Twitter can prevent the use of any of their trademarks, making branding difficult, to say the least. Sure, you could make an unofficial Twitter client without any problems, but Twitter might be able to take legal action if you state anywhere that it's a "Twitter client."

Plus, these cat-and-mouse games require a user base that is fairly quick to update; if Twitter blocks one avenue (and they will try desperately to do so if one of these clients gains a decent number of users), an update for the client is likely necessary. I would think the easier way would be for users to get their own API keys and secrets and enter them into the app.
Just like Python, Haskell only ever has significant indentation.
If you want to check whether a browser supports a feature, it's preferable to check whether the browser supports the feature instead of whether the browser is a browser that supports the feature. The latter can cause problems when dealing with an unexpected browser.
Which is usually wrong.
The way forward
I don't know about Vietnam, but in the Middle East(at least in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt which is where I've been in the past few years) 3G is usually way more expensive than DSL due to low data caps. I pay 10$/mo[1] and have a 100MB/mo cap + 0.1$ for every MB over quota. DSL is ~30$/mo and a 12GB cap(this is Lebanon). So at least in this part of the 3rd world 3G is useless for anything other than checking your mail, chat and the occasional google search.

[1] That is, over and above the 20$/mo for the phone line itself. So if I were to get a line just for 3G usage(so as to put it in a tablet or chrombook, for example) it'd be more like 30$/mo.
Skype is generally a good/fast way to communicate - especially when trying to explain something. Certain tasks might not need it, but it's generally the best option in my opinion!
Universities are not part of the government, fyi. They take money from the government, but the government's leverage consists of conditions on funding, standards for accreditation, and well... laws like this. If the changes you propose were written in law..., I think most people would agree that's a bad thing for many reasons.
The objection was probably the post's implication that those technologies could manage all or most courses.

> switch to ereaders

Unless they're seeing different ereaders than me, that kills most detailed and colored diagrams in science textbooks. Also makes the experience worse in many geography, history, etc. courses.

> abandon the practice of lecturers performing the exact same lecture term after term when a recording will do

Recordings don't pause to answer questions mid-stream. A chat room or forum is probably good enough for upper-division courses where students have probably learned decent learning skills, but even freshman college courses probably need a human available at some point. Suppose they could be restricted to study sections...

> move towards homework and exams that can be marked by a computer rather than by hand...

There go essays and critical thinking questions in every literature class, to start with. Also a lot of the more useful evaluations in my engineering and science courses probably couldn't be marked by a computer.

To be clear: I think Coursera and similar efforts are awesome, and are an excellent supplement to college educations. I think they could also manage partial replacement of a minority of college courses. But especially with typical college students, who are not self-directed learners, I don't think it's the kind of replacement that will help budgets much.
Quick tip that took me years to learn:

If it looks like a bunch of apparently smart people are behaving like total idiots, A) I could be a genius, my brain overflowing with incredible insight into the nature of the universe, or B) I could have a too-simple understanding of what they get up to, and therefore be acting like an arrogant, know-it-all jackass.

State A does happen to me occasionally, but most of the time I think I'm in state A I'm actually in state B. I've now learned to keep my mouth shut for entire minutes at a time, which helps me reduce the frequency with which people realize I'm in state B.
well, it's a superhero show, so just say human chaining ability is part of his superpower. his suit makes little metal tendrils that reinforce the structure or something
I hear you on Ubuntu, I've switched from recommending it as a Windows alternative to Mint. Linux Mint is lovely; too bad I still have a Windows dependance due to a few legacy desktop apps.
if your chromebook has 3g capabilities, you can connect to global 3g networks. chill. you have no basis for your argument. http://support.google.com/chromeos/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...
Yes, that's how you use them on a laptop or Apple bluetooth keyboard.

But the point is, on Windows or Linux, they move the cursor, but on the Mac, they scroll the view but don't move the cursor. Home scrolls to the beginning and End scrolls to the end.

On the Mac, to move the cursor by larger amounts, you combine command or option with an arrow key.
Recorded lectures are better. Students/pupils can rewind things they missed or didn't immediately understand, can pause to refer to source material or look things up, watch the whole thing again, even rewatch previous lectures. They can still submit questions (forum, classroom, whatever) except now they wont be holding up the whole lecture.

And logistically, what happens with 'live people' is that some people ask their own questions, which the lecturer will make some attempt to answer. It's not like a lecture format somehow provides the interactive benefits of a 1-to-1 tutorial for every student in the audience simultaneously.
> An internet troll reviled for his pornographic posts on Reddit and recently revealed as a middle-aged software programmer told CNN that he made "a huge mistake."

Unbiased journalism at its finest.
It's not common but a group of Rails developers and designers did this once in a blog post. Didn't even say who they were, just that it was X developers and a designer or whatever. They were hired as a group pretty quickly. So you might be on to something.
$80 and pipe tobacco! What a prize
I would advise coordinating with Coursera and asking the Minnesota state legislature to devise a new subdivision that exempts things like Coursera.
It's unusual for developers, IME, but given how popular it is in sports, it doesn't surprise me, at least. Some developers have the cachet of sports stars within their niche.

(Hmm, maybe we'll see wanted ads for "Rails world champions" and "JavaScript sports stars" soon instead of ninjas and rock stars ;-))
request invite button for sensei doesn't seem to do anything?

EDIT: yeah looking at the network requests it's giving an internal server error.
> Unless they're seeing different ereaders than me, that kills most detailed and colored diagrams in science textbooks. Also makes the experience worse in many geography, history, etc. courses.

Agreed! Worse, in my mind, is that e-readers are good mainly for linear access of read-only text; textbooks are much better at random access and user modification. I love my Kindle, but I think it sucks for books I'm trying to study seriously. Flipping back and forth between diagrams and text, jumping back to look at previous pages, putting in bookmarks, notes in the margins: all stuff paper is much better at.

And really, the price of textbooks isn't high because they're printed on paper. It's because textbooks are expensive to create, and many markets have a small number of suppliers, giving them crazy pricing power.

And now that I think about it, textbooks are a tiny proportion of what schools spend, which is in turn a small portion of government costs. So I now regret that we've all been fooled into wasting time on a proposal that makes no sense.
Machines that want your job
Futurist Thomas Frey believes robotics and advances in technology could help wipe out 2 billion jobs by 2030.
On Chrome for iOS latest on an iPad 1 this doesn't appear to render properly. There's a gutter of scrollable space on the right side and the headers in the 4 ad copy columns bleeds over to the next column.
'OSX' being the operative term here. Windows is an entirely different kettle of fish. If your hardware is considered too outmoded or somehow slipped by the Windows driver dragnet, you're SOL. There are very few times I have installed Windows and _not_ had to go to another computer to get the network/wifi driver onto a USB (or CD!) and transfer it to the Windows machine so I can get the rest of the missing drivers.

Having 'Device Manager' full of yellow question marks is _common_, even in Windows 7. http://i.imgur.com/zembU.jpg
Anyone who thinks otherwise either has kept their Driver CDs, has the original installation still on the machine, or is just plain lucky
Apparently Atlantic is now combing Reddit for old news? Like six months ago news?
Their idea is obvious ("existing X applied to existing Y"). Their business value should be in implementation, execution and first mover advantage, not in some imaginary "claims" to an obvious idea that anyone can come up with without breaking a sweat.

The entire article boils down to "patents are bad except when they're ours", and that's disgusting.
just what i needed today
Most of the Google's mega acquisitions are long term. And Google indeed thinks long term. People were saying the same about Youtube in 2008. But look at YouTube now.

I'm sure Android is helping Google's revenues rather than hurting. And Android is going to be game-changer in places like India/China. Imagine how much ad revenue Google will generate. Google beat MSFT with Android not AAPL.
Google Apps uses a ton of HTML5. For this reason, they recently discontinued support for Internet Explorer 8: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-support-m...

What other "web apps" work better these days than Google's? What is your basis for saying Google's apps don't have advanced HTML5 capabilities? Have you heard of Offline Google Drive for example? How do you think they pull that off? HTML5...
or

C) there are massive, incumbent pressure groups obstructing changes in government spending practices
Excellent question.

Amazon's Kindle is being sold basically at cost. Amazon has incredible power to make suppliers dance, and they've spent years bringing the price of the Kindle down. So I don't think it's possible to make a decent e-reader significantly cheaper than the Kindle without subsidies.
parsimony =/= elegance
Buying a patent portfolio attached to a troubled hardware-maker is hazardous for a company like Google. But if Moto didn't make Android devices, this story would have no link to Android.

Maybe there is a wider story in that Android strategy hasn't been consistently good or effective. Mixed messages about what Google will do with Moto made OEMs nervous. Prior to Nexus 7, tablet marketing wasn't brilliant. But everyone should be so feckless as to bumble their way to 1 million+ activations per day.
I doubt it. Even if Twitter would receive $100 per token, the total would still be peanuts for Twitter. 100,000 tokens × $100 = $10 million.

Even if every single Mac user would pay Twitter a one time fee of $100 to use a third party Twitter client, that would result in just $5 billion.

I think Twitter is betting they can earn more by controlling the experience.
Well, that would be straight-up tortious interference. But I feel like now that clients have moved on to higher-level protocols, and exist on so many platforms, Twitter would have a hard time blocking use of API keys extracted from the official apps. If I have time, I'll retrieve them myself...
what about in highschool and earlier?
Android is a staggering business failure?

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
Much more detailed article, with magnified view:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/17/3515158/htc-shows-off-stu...
I thought the same thing. I guess they were reflecting that the man had survived the times to find himself on a gameshow about 80 years later, and about 60 years after that, the TV show found its way to youtube...
If your access to files consists of a public index (or something like a torrent tracker), they can just crawl the index, fetch all the keys, fetch all the files and check them. It would be a bandwidth hog compared to running recognition patterns on localhost, but it's not hard.

And more to the point, they could put the onus on Mega to go do that. It would be easy to argue in court "if we can find the key, so can they, if we can check the file, so can they" and cast their actions as wilful negligence.

It's not so much whack-a-mole, as "keep it quiet", then. Mega pretty much has to kill what they can find the keys to, but if you keep the key a secret and share it sparingly, that is no longer possible.