skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You make a reasonable point in your first paragraph. There is no strong evidence of vendor lock-in in MySQL's case, though Oracle's past history makes for legitimate suspicion on the part of prospective MySQL users.

It's unfortunate that your second paragraph is either trollish or ill-informed. Sure, there is a part of group-think about Postgres' popularity in some communities, but Postgres has a number of advantages over MySQL (though I'd say MySQL has a better multi-server story). Implying this plays little part in its growing popularity is condescending.
"Windows Phone is doing so badly that Nokia, Microsoft’s
largest and staunchest mobile partner, actually sold more
of its abandoned legacy Symbian devices (3.4 million)
than its new Windows Phone Lumia phones (2.9 million) in
the last quarter."

That stat actually looks relatively impressive to me. 2.9 mil Lumia phones in a quarter? Why is this stat presented as "doing badly"?
At least as far as the US is concerned, shrink wrap licenses restricting your fair use rights were not received favorably by courts up until the late 90s. This has changed somewhat in the past decade and change. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of the supreme court on the 'first sale' case, which is a closely related topic.
That is amazing, will the simulation be open source at some point, I would love to run that!
Reminds me of the nice Starbucks joke from last week:

I like my women like I like my coffee - paying tax on their income in the UK.
I rather enjoy my Kobo. I'm not sure why it says "Coming Soon" because it's out now.

http://www.kobo.com/koboglo

It's definitely e-paper, I don't believe it has remote wipe, and can read many ebook formats, including DRM-free ones.

Some titles on the Kobo store are DRM-free (and are indicated as such), and the store is massive. If your books are DRM'd, it supports Adobe's DRM scheme.
It absolutely should be illegal to delete files from a device that is currently rented or owned by another party unless they give explicit permission.

It should be wire fraud, just like hacking a server and forcing it to act in a way the owner does not desire.
Accessing disparate data through PostgreSQL Foreign Data Wrappers
Here's the text of the law.

(http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/VII/crosshe...)

Anti-circumvention is mention in the 'long title'. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright,_Designs_and_Patents_...)

England doesn't have fair use, it has fair dealing. Fair dealing is much more restrictive that the US fair use.

Europe implemented a copyright directive. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#European_Uni...)

Here's some advice (from a biased source) about fair dealing (http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p27_work_of_othe...) - notice that the only mention of back-up is for computer software. (That's the only mention in the actual act, too.)

Maybe parts of Europe allow circumvention of technical measures for backup, but England isn't one of those parts.
Stoking Cyber Fears
Agreed. But, we've yet to establish if indeed they do take away rights that the law provides. I would have thought HN would have uncovered such a law by now.

A cursory glance at the Wikipedia article on DRM suggests the law is favourable torwards DRM and all that that entails.
Is there any chance to look at the code (application)? I'd be interested in running this locally as I have a need for generation of regular expressions.
sold units is meaningless without profit. iirc Lumias are being sold with razor thin margins (or even at a loss).

see here for a more detailed analysis, courtesy of Horace Dediu:
http://www.asymco.com/2012/10/19/nokias-lumia-brand-strategy...
>buying new PC hardware bundled with the Windows 8 “we won’t say Tax but that’s what it is when you levy a fee on all products within a market because you exercise dominion over it as a quasi-authority”)

Really? So does my car have a tire tax, just because it comes with tires on it? If you're buying a PC, 99.99% of all people expect it to come with an OS. In fact, it's cheaper to buy a PC preloaded with Windows ($35) than it is to buy an unloaded PC and buy a copy of Windows ($150). There are major manufacturers making Linux PCs. There are major manufacturers that will sell you a box loaded with FreeDOS. There's even a major manufacturer that sells pre-installed, well-supported, and beautiful Unix PCs (I've heard they're one of the richest companies in the world). It's not like Microsoft is literally taxing computers, they're charging an incredibly small amount of money and in return you're getting their OS preinstalled like most of the market wants.

Can we get over the Windows Tax thing? It's pretty much akin to saying Micro$oft. Funny in middle school, but it makes your argument much less attractive now.
Show HN : When Pinterest met Adwords, Viraliti was born
I look forward to trying this once the HN server overload effect has worn off.

This is something I would have found useful a year or two ago, considered writing, and decided it would be impossible to get a usefully generalised regex. I'm glad people cleverer and less defeatist than me had the same idea, since it seems it is possible to get useful results after all :)
From the Wired article about the camera that is linked in the OP (which is actually quite interesting in its own right):

http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/10/high-speed-camera-at-gi...

> they [FOX] also plan to roll out another Vision Research camera for the World Series that shoots up to 20,000 frames per second with a 500 mm lens.

> At that speed Davies says viewers should be able to clearly see things like the bending of a bat when it hits the ball or the impression the bat leaves on the ball when it first makes contact.

The most impressive part of this to me is that they are able to do these high fps shots without good lighting. Normally you want some really high powered strobes to help out. But they're doing this in either daylight or even more impressively just with the game lights. Must be some really awesome ISO performance.
To address questions 2-4, it's a space-filling curve [1], or basically an easy way to take a line and fill a 2D space. So when a single name is added to a namespace at the beginning of the curve, that blob gets bigger, and every other blob moves 'right'. Once you stare at it a while, you can see that every blob moves along the same path, and it's slightly easier to see which blobs are growing and which are getting shoved. But I agree that it isn't easy, and I think it's because the CPAN Map wasn't meant to be time-lapsed like this.

Edit: if you go to the mapofcpan.org site and click on pixels, I think you'll figure out what the blue areas are.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-filling_curve
Looks like The Register[1] has picked up your clarifications straight from HN and your blog.

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/22/3d_simulation_babbag...
Yes. There are a number of reasons for doing the simulation (not least of which is checking that it will actually work), but one is that I want to make the simulation public.

As a charity Plan 28 is set up to educate the public at large about Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine while building it. That means publishing openly as much as we can. Study has been ongoing for a while now and first public results will be early in 2013.
How many words do you need to write to say "Microsoft Bad-- Apple Do no wrong" over and over?????

And all of those words and zero mention of Linux or Android...
I also imagine that after Microsoft officially announced that existing Lumia phones won't get upgraded to Windows 8, many people decided to hold off on buying a Lumia device until the next version came out. I know that is certainly true for me.
The "human Barbie Doll" - is this the future of cosmetic surgery?
Kicking TypeScript’s Tires
They went after the authors of DeCSS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lech_Johansen)
Its a nice concept.. So do u guys only do Pinterest or other social media platforms also
http://www.levchin.com/paypal-slideshow/index.html

here is the intended splash page, provides a bit of context.

interesting photos and commentary - makes it seem like it happened so long ago (i guess it did...)
But introduced their own errors: see spelling of my name.
Your Cashflow Shouldn't Change When I Get Paid
The classic nook. I'm from Germany and one friend brought it for me from the states.
The B&N nook store is blocked in Germany, so I'm forced to load DRM-free stuff.
Most German eBooks stores do not sell DRM-free books, so I'm really really forced to only get DRM-free books.
They really don't want my money... :(
We are currently on Pinterest only so as to ride the Pinterest growth tide. However we will soon integrate Twitter, Tumblr and Youtube. We plan to be the one-stop solution for social media advertising.
How would you envision that working? What is the estimated distance function?
Nice. It's almost rare these days to see a shop manage its deploys like application releases.

Do you do staged production deploys of new code for small groups of users? I found it was beneficial to be able to test a change on a random subset of users so if there's a production-only bug it doesn't hit everyone at once.

This also allows you to not have to "stop" the app servers because you're starting up the new version's instance in parallel with the old. The frontend just passes user-specific requests to the new instance and the old instance keeps chugging along with no downtime. Of course this usually requires no schema changes (unless you have lots of spare infrastructure handy).
In a sense, though, that discussion is entirely on topic. What Microsoft has done here has been a reaction to Steve Jobs utterance of the phrase "post-pc". They have been frantic to counter that frame ever since, insisting that they can deliver a tablet that is also a PC, with "no compromises".

Well, you can't avoid compromises. The best you can do is choose which ones you will accept. And if you don't choose, then unexpected tradeoffs will be thrust upon you.

This customer confusion over RT is just fruit from that seed.
I think it's the computers. Most of the ghosts I see weren't trolls, just young accounts going far enough against the grain to get downvotes. If it's humans doing it, they are absurdly harsh.
The definition you quoted matches the one I gave. And as I already said, composite does require an actual design pattern. It isn't just "use properties", I think you might want to re-read the book.

P.S. If you want people to think you are making a good faith attempt at discussion, making passive aggressive douche notes like this is counter productive.
(to the below comment)
Yes they did go after authors and redistributors of DeCSS, by arguing that it was a piracy tool. What I think is unlikely to happen, is anyone going after indiviual users who are using it to play DVDs, using provisions of the DMCA.
Well... There is something to be said for public statements of intent and focus. There are also the cost savings in not developing Symbian anymore.

But I agree that this seemed pretty reckless especially since WP7 was/is still at such an early phase. It basically multiplied the risk that future nokia phones would be crap by the risk that windows would be crap.
Opening paragraph:

'The newly appointed head of the promotional body for London’s technology cluster has said the capital could become “the number one location for tech in the world” if it boosts its capacity for growth.'

I think that title is a little link bait-y.
They have certainly lost me as a potential Kindle user. I was considering buying myself a Kindle for Christmas, but that's not going to happen now. I thought Amazon could be trusted with my money, but it's clear that it's too risky.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone higher up sees her issues and activates her account. But I can't trust my money to a company where you could lose access to books worth thousands if you talk with the wrong person.
Thanks, came across this via google news and had forgotten they have a paywall in place. Unfortunately I can't edit the link anymore, so hopefully an admin will do it at some point.
How much money can an active user actually make?
Quant5 Rolls Out Marketing Analytics for Big Data Wannabes
Manipulate Presentations Uploaded at Amazon S3 Storage Using REST APIs 
Saaspose development team is proud to announce the PowerPoint presentations manipulation uploaded at Amazon S3 Storage using Saaspose.Slides REST API. PowerPoint presentations bring visual impact to your data and provide a number of features to captivate your audience. Users can now manipulate their presentations uploaded at Amazon S3 Storage using Saaspose.Slides REST API. Previously, we have explained how to integrate Amazon S3 storage with Saaspose File Format APIs.
It started out as:

Ex-Facebook exec says London could become "the number one location for tech in the world"

but there is an 80 char limit on titles and didn't want to mangle the quote...

I thought the original statement by Joanna Shields (though qualified) was somewhat controversial, but perhaps an interesting starting point for discussion as to why tech hubs begin and whether the world of tech will continue to revolve around Silicon Valley and areas nearby.
This sucks big time !! I'd be so pissed if this was me !

I've mailed amazon to hear if this is the norm.

I don't really expect a response, but hopefully a few 1000's emails like that will at least let them give the situation more attention ?
Version your client assets. E.g. <img src="/img/v2.12.35/logo.gif" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/v2.12.35/frontpage.css" />

As someone mentioned before, hard-linking old and new deploy files means duplicated content doesn't cost any disk space. Rotate out old deploys past X days, and use strong cache controls to expire the content quickly.
Previous Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3014039
And more and more these days you are using a mobile device where torrents aren't an option.
Stupid prediction of the day: "Google May Meet Its End"
Vibrator/mobile app startup Impresses in Dublin
French government wants Google to pay publishers for linking to content
if neither of you picked it out, steve chen (of youtube fame) used to work for Paypal before starting youtube and you can spot him on this slide: http://www.levchin.com/paypal-slideshow/3.html
My interpretation is that the grandparent either has poor English skills himself, or is describing the difficulty of socializing with people who have poor English skills.
Nook Touch. It's Android-based and can be rooted to add Kindle, Kobo, other eBook apps.
Phone Call Translator App to be Offered by Japan's NTT Docomo
When you want to know what happened to many of the others pictured there (besides Levchin), lookup PayPal Mafia on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
"The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas is a tremendous book, pulling back the curtain on biology. Clear, concise and well written, very similar to Feynman with physics.
So which is better Storm[1] or Spark[2] ?

1. http://storm-project.net/
2. http://www.spark-project.org/
Also, Retarded Technology fits well.

Jokes aside, I won't be developing for the next Windows because WinRT development still looks like a painful process.

Edit: fix freaking iPad auto correct typos.
Thank You. Upvoted (both here and on quora) That was a very interesting bunch of takeaways. I found them more interesting than the ones in the OP.

I wasn't there so I'm probably imagining things, but I'm getting the vibe that the VC/investor types were giving canned pop psychology 'MBA'/management consulting type advice like advice, where the hacker/founder folks sound more original (and useful).
Amazon is forcing British publishers to pay 20% VAT but itself pays 3% to gov.
It's not cheating! If they wanted to limit the size of the program counter then they should have specified a limit on the amount of code!
> Well in the case of Google's interviewing techniques they don't really care about the question per se

From my experience interviewing for Google, I beg to differ. Many other accounts seem to confirm this.
Project Cybersyn, a 1971-73 Chilean Experiment in Computer-Assisted Economy
Wouldn't it be cool if... you could engineer a better world?
I hate when retailers make piracy tools necessary even if you paid. Head to the Apprentice Alf's Blog.
from the slide:

"Saving money by seeking for better performing instances, simply using “trial-and-failure” method

– Applying for instances randomly;

– Checking if performing well;

– If not, drop and apply for new ones."
Awesome, now when and where do I download it for Windows??? "Please checkout the source and build it yourself" - wtf.
As long as you have a venue, Hackathons are not terribly expensive. They typically cost anywhere from $500-$2,000 most of which can be financed by sponsorships. PennApps does have the luxury of being housed at Penn, and the organizers have subsidized use of the rooms there. Given the community that has formed in various tech cities around the world, it shouldn't be hard to find a venue for free or a reasonably if you look around.

Here's a breakdown of other costs:

--food
----< 50 people
>>> (3 Meals at $6 pp) = $300 (sandwiches, pizza, bagel breakfast)
>>> (3 meals at $10 pp) = $500 (with this you can get a well-priced taco buffet, pizza, snacks, bagel breakfast)

--drinks
----< 50 people
>>>> $3 pp = $150
....bubble tea would be much more pricey, but also much more awesome.

Also note that gummy bears can be purchased in 5 lbs. packs for $16 http://www.amazon.com/Haribo-Gummi-Candy-Gold-Bears-5-Pound/....
That would have been my misunderstanding from what the tour guy said.
The rumor is that the Courier tablet was killed by Ballmer because it wasn't "Windows enough". So maybe the Surface / Windows on Arm / Windows RT team actually wants to get their stuff to the market
I am hoping that the same thing will happen with mobile devices as with pc's and you will be able to buy a device and load it with the software you choose. I don't like any of the mobile OS's they all feel too restrictive in terms of storing and manipulating files and turning on and off functionality.
Worth noting that some BIOS flags can be resetted using an exploit, but usually it is just a blind guess.
Properly supporting Windows and Mac OS X requires testing on the 3, maybe 4 latest OS releases. Properly supporting Linux requires testing on the last 3 or 4 versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Mint, Arch, Gentoo, and who knows what else. Furthermore, while code that works on Windows XP is almost guaranteed to work on Windows 7, and code that works on OS X 10.6 is almost guaranteed to work on 10.8, there's no such guarantee on Linux.

All we build is a browser extension, and we've seen issues on Linux that depend on the version of gcc used to build Firefox, the version of d-bus, the window manager, and the desktop environment. I can't imagine what it would be like to support a real app.
that sounds interesting!!! looking forward to that too
I used to have the Gmail and facebook plugin for chrome. Once I removed them I was a lot more focused. Before as soon as a notification came through I'd check it. Now I only check them a couple of times a day.
It amazes me how the concept of "non-scarce" goods being a one-for-one substitute for physical items only seems to work in one direction in this brave new world in which we are unfortunately inhabiting, too.

If she'd been caught torrenting those same books in the US or a growing list of other countries, she'd face fines and court fees. Her Internet browser could be diverted to "anti-piracy education" sites; perhaps one day, she could be disconnected altogether.

Yet Amazon is allowed to arbitrarily remove those very same files with no explanation.

Pretty mindblowing how severely copyright has been perverted from its original intent.
Startups needs to think twice when they decide to use a .io domain.

.io domains aren't top level domains like .com, .org, or .net. They're ccTLDs - country specific domains - like .co.uk, .us, or .com.au. Io is the local domain for the Indian Ocean states. Unlike the TLDs, and a handful of the early ccTLDs, Google doesn't treat .io as a global domain - it treats them as domains specific to the Indian Ocean. This means you're immediately at a disadvantage at being found by your target market via a google search (unless they're specifically searching for your brand).

So while you're more likely to get a common-word .io domain, and they have the obvious relation with technology, if your start up is going to be relying on search engine traffic or might be dealing in a slightly grey area, you should probably just save yourself the bother and go for getX.com or Xapp.com, where X is your website name.
Appifier Launches Blogstand to bring web publishers to life on mobile
It would behoove anyone to research that information using more than one source.
I'm not sure privacy obligations are really at play here. I can think of two reasons they're taking the approach they're taking:

1) They don't want to get into a discussion which is likely to be time consuming. It's not just innocent people who appeal these things, often the most guilty are those who will most actively and vocally profess their innocence (in some cases up to and including going to court over it - c.f. the UK politician Jonathan Atkin).

The minute Amazon became willing to talk about this stuff they'd need a who bunch more people to start looking into each one in detail, review every claim and counter claim and so on, and they clearly don't think that that's a good use of their money.

2) The sorts of things they'd likely have to reveal are going to be the sorts of things people who are abusing the system want to know to get round it. Doing this would make their job harder.

Not saying that it's right that they take this approach, just I can see the reasons they do.
The Linksys iPhone was a fairly insignificant Cisco product and there is some dispute as to what extent they where even using the name before Apple showed an interest in it. Between 2000 and December 2006 they didn't use the name for any product they sold. And the December 2006 Linksys iPhone was a re-branding of an existing product. A cynical person might suspect that Cisco had completely forgotten that they even owned the iPhone trademark until Apple asked to license it and then quickly started to us it again in hopes of winning a bigger settlement.
One of the coolest things for me about games that span the day/night barrier is watching more and more cameras activate the automatic flash. I wonder if all those camera flashes are bright enough to have an effect on these shots.
It depends on number of factors one being number of followers that particular user has on Pinterest. An average user having 100 followers could make something between 1$ to 3$ per post.
If you haven't already, you guys should check out pinerly.com - it has the same concept although they focus more on the analytics side of things - still in beta though.