skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I want a video of people using these as laptops.

Isn't it exactly what he's doing in the videos?

edit: the second videos (saving a document in word) also makes many tap target seem laughably small compared to... the guy's fingers to start with. Am I dreaming?
How to Work with Large Rails Codebase Effectively
Any more helpful tips?
The Fool and His Money released (it took 10 years)
Science and religion do not have to be at loggerheads
I got: "Watching each of the drown"
Fred Wilson's Email Stats
Thanks, it worked !

Any explaination ?
A map of London painted in Twitter languages
Sorry, I literally mean as a LAPtop device. I want to see him use this in his lap.

I have bad habits that leave my fingers a bit nubbier than they should be, but trying to use Office on the RT tablet at Best Buy was barely short of impossible. I'd HAVE to use the keyboard to use it for any amount of time.
This seems like a pretty fair analysis. The positive is these all seem to be software issues that can easily be fixed in updates. I was just worried about bad hardware that can't be fixed.

As a sidenote, maybe this is just an RT vs 8 thing but the Mail app did take me through a setup wizard when I first ran it.
I am extremely happy with the surface RT and more specifically IE10. Finally a desktop class browser on a tablet.
I'm excited about the prospect of a Windows 8 tablet. I'm willing to spend as much as it costs to get one. Unfortunately, nobody wants my money.

Yesterday was the big retail launch. I was on a mission to check out what my local stores had and, if they had anything that could do the job for me, buy it. I've always wanted a tablet, but only if it could be as useful as a laptop when paired with a keyboard. The new Windows 8 tablets are supposed to be just that.

Best Buy had one (1) Windows 8 tablet. It was a Asus Vivo Tab running Windows RT... supposedly. I don't want an RT tab, and this store didn't even have a working floor model of the one tablet they were selling. The one they had was stuck on a "failed to automatically repair Windows" screen. It was also glued to the display stand so I couldn't pick it up and get a feel for the hardware.

OfficeMax had zero (0) Windows 8 tablets. Heck, they had no Windows 8 touch screen laptops either. Or price tags. Or product specs. Or anything I could play with, really. There was one employee there setting up a display model of some laptop while complaining to another about how they were supposed to have tags for the computers but had none. Their electronics section was a joke.

Staples had one (1) Windows 8 tablet. It was a Samsung ATIV running Windows 8. Success! I actually spent some time playing with this one. Again, I couldn't really get a feel for the hardware, or specifically the weight, given it's got a pound of security alarms and tethers bolted onto the back chaining it to the display area. Beyond that, the specs just weren't up to snuff -- with 2GB RAM and 64GB storage, I'd just barely be able to run enough software to occasionally use it as a portable development machine. With nothing installed on it, there was only 14GB of free space -- the OS and preinstalled apps were using 50GB of the 64GB out of the box.

So all those trips were a waste of time. There's no Microsoft Store anywhere within 4 hours of me, so those 3 were the full range of retail options here.

I'm basically looking for a Surface Pro (Intel Core processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage). It's amazing that despite knowing Microsoft would be building this, nobody else built something comparable, and stores aren't carrying even the few tablets/hybrids they did build.
He seems to be using the Surface RT in desktop mode in that video. I thought this was not supposed to be possible, is that untrue?
Detecting Advanced Persistent Threat with Network Traffic Analysis
They knuckled under much too soon then. If you came by your conclusions independently then they just lost their trade secret. Trade secrets only protection is that they're secret, and you have no innate right to that secrecy.
> Germany has a unified grid, I'm sure.

The article seemed to indicate that this is not the case, and that until the south and north parts of the grid are well-connected domestically, excess power from the north gets routed south via Poland and the Czech Republic.
When I read

> For years the audio was trapped on the piece of foil you see above. There was no device that could play it and even if there had been, doing so would have likely ruined it. This summer, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, physicist Carl Haber and his team were able to create a 3D picture of the foil whose topography could then be translated into sound using techniques of mathematical analysis and physical modeling to calculate how a needle would have played the recording. They were able to do so "without physically having to touch them," he explained to me. "And that's kind of the key issue, because these things are so old and fragile and torn-up, broken, and delicate that in many cases it just would not be possible to play them back in any of the more standard ways."

All I could think was "it's like audio cryonics!"
IITs and IISc elearning Courses in Engineering and Science under NPTEL
Yeah, same problem yesterday for me. I don't know if this will lower the chance to get in the beta, but I sure hope it doesn't.
Mechanical storage has safety issues when it's used for transport. Unlike gasoline (in real life, not movies) mechanical storage does tend to release all its energy at once in a crash.
Sounds good, good luck!
There's a full desktop on Surface RT. I was rather surprised that it was a nearly full feature desktop. You can run full batch scripts, copy files, etc... You can't install applications on it though.
Jessica Livingston's "determination" and Angela Lee Duckworth's "grit"
It currently exists for Office, because it isn't fully ported to Metro yet.
The videos clearly show him using the Windows 8 UI to launch Office, open a document, then later to launch Mail.
" Windows 8 on a PC, I can say Windows 8 is worse in usability than Windows 7"

This is false. I have used both extensively and Windows 8 is better by a good margin.Actually my old POS HP laptop runs better with Windows 8 because of the driver, kernel and display improvements. No blogger can take away the fact that Windows 8 is very good however its funny to see them try.
One thing that everybody forget is that with agreement with the main power producers in Germany, the government of Gerhard Schröder (10 years ago) started the plan to built the network to link North Germany to the South for renewable energy production together with the agreed shutdown of the nuclear powerplants in 2020. Once the left/green government was replaced with the current one, the big power producers did a nice lobbying not to shutdown the powerplants and thus delayed the building of the network. But the laws to develop renewable energies (and the subsidies going with) were not changed. Thus, we ended up with a lot of individuals, small and medium companies building small "power plants" with wind and solar energy. A lot was done in the North because of good winds combined with cheap land. End result, power imbalance.

Also, the power network is still very "former East - former West" built, which is not helping. We had 3 years ago a blackout of the West while the East (which includes the part with most of the windmills) was still up.

At the end, the problem is mainly because of the delayed investment from the network operators and they are now affected by their own unwillingness to build the network. From a financial point of view, it is easy to understand because they are mainly coal/gas/nuclear producers and they would have had to build a network which would then be used by their competitors...
Windows 8 and Windows RT are the same OS. Both have the desktop, with all the standard desktop features. Taskbar, system tray, Explorer, control panels, etc. The only difference between the two is that Windows RT can only install apps from the Windows Store, which are all Metro apps.
The real question to be asked is that whether the tests are serving the intended purpose i.e that of finding the best students of the lot (best can be defined as being most knowledgeable of the subject being tested). A student with experience of solving of large number of questions will have an advantage over another student who knows the subject matter but have not done any test prep.

In India, where I come from, this is a almost a way of life. Almost all prestigious institutions including graduate schools determine whom to admit based on a test score (and an interview in some places), as opposed to the practice in the U.S (graduate schools) of considering a candidate's GPA,essays etc. On one hand this a very transparent method ,which is important in a country plagued with corruption like India. But on the other hand it leads students to play the "test-prep game" i.e practicing a large numbers of similar questions. This has led to test prep becoming a lucrative business. Students who do not attend the "coaching centers", which are often more expensive than the regular schools they go to, will lose out to students who do, even though the knowledge the subject is the same. In India it has manifested as a problem when students from rural areas losing out students from urban regions, due to lack of these test prep centers.

The truth of the matter is that such tests serves as a good mechanism to condense a large applicant pool to a smaller one. But to base the entire admission process on one test doesn't seem to be optimal.
I've been using Win8 for a couple months now and I like it much better. I like that the Charm screen can show me an overview of all the things running on my computer just by pressing Win. I like that it's way faster than Win7 in booting up and launching programs. I like that windows now has a mode for "programs that are simple, predictable, with a good-looking UI."
That's what everyone said about windows 7 and XP and NT ... People always are afraid of change until they get used to it. Metro is really just a replacement start button, if you give it some time so it's familiar you'll be fine. Everyone hated the start button back when too.
"The diagonally-oriented camera is strange. In the one orientation it’s optimized for, it’s slightly annoying. In any other orientation, it’s almost intolerable. "

"The built-in front-facing camera for Skype is angled so that it’ll work great when the kickstand is open, but again, only for Danny DeVito, or maybe for people who want to show off their chests in Skype."

------

"The Touch Cover is one of the Surface’s biggest innovations. I thought I would hate it, but I didn’t. It’s not like typing on a completely flat surface: each “key” is raised slightly, so while there isn’t any mechanical feedback, it does feel a bit like a keyboard."

"The Type Cover (the one with real keys) just works. I’ve got big hands that often struggle on undersized keyboards, but I can type very quickly on the Type Cover."

------

"He showed me Office, which was almost unusable: it was extremely sluggish, and touch targets were tiny and difficult to hit."

"So quickly, in fact, that I can outrun Microsoft Word on the Surface. I get the feeling that the Surface RT’s CPU or Word code just can’t keep up with my typing. Here’s an example video:"

-------

"The standard gestures don’t help, requiring many in-from-the-edge swipes that not only aren’t discoverable"

"After waiting over a minute for the machine to boot and launch the mail app, I got a blank gradient screen. User interface 101: if the app needs to be set up on the first launch, offer to do that, please. Folks from Twitter suggested that I swipe out from the right side and click Accounts"

--

So, can we conclude that these observations might be real (V. 1) problems without resorting to ad-homs regarding the author?
Malnutrition is not a simple binary condition. However, while East Germany was one of the wealthiest areas of the Soviet Union and economically better off than many nations today the average diet was lacking by current western standards.

Don't forget this was the middle of the Green Revolution, but the USSR was still slightly behind the curve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
I bought one of those Microsoft touch mice. I was getting ready to install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, and after watching the video, it looked like a great option...and simultaneously, my Logitech Mouse had a dying mosfet switch so I was in the market for a new mouse anyway. [Really, I wasn't just rationalizing buying sexy technology].

It wasn't the first time I've bough I Microsoft mouse. I bought one back about a decade or so ago when another Logitech mouse died. It suffered the same fate as the Microsoft touch mouse. It was returned to the store and exchanged for another Logitech - for exactly the same reason.

Neither was acceptable for my workflow. Unsurprisingly, I spend a meaningful amount of time using CAD/BIM software. The touch mouse zoomed in when I adjusted my grip ("drawing" with a mouse largely involves holding it). There was no way to program the gestures. Likewise, the earlier Microsoft mouse had lots of buttons, but no way to program the middle button as a middle button - as an early "many button" mouse, the middle button had some dedicated function and I had about a decade of muscle memory and projects to push out the door.

The author is experiencing the same thing. The new device isn't tailored to his workflow. It probably isn't reasonable to expect it to be. It's competitors aren't; most people don't have a similar workflow; and it's still version one of the software (Word for RT).

This doesn't excuse the devices performance. But it also puts the author's experience in perspective. Right now, he's somewhat of an edge use case.
American Superconductors has a rig to help solve these problems, it is expensive (probably more expensive than off-loading the excess to unwilling neighbours) but it works.

http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/amsc/description

From a description I once read (but can't seem to locate right now) these devices store excess power for short periods in superconducting coils to release the power again when the consumption side needs it. That way both the grid and the windfarms are matched better to each others needs and capabilities.

The whole thing is housed in a 40' container.
Just wanted to give a shoutout to the first dirty hack using OpenedCaptions: DRUNK-SAPN

It is a C-SPAN transcript that gets increasingly drunk. http://openedcaptions.com/drunk-sapn/
Your last point, about supply, seems unlikely. To a first approximation anyone in the world can take a course for free from Peter freaking Norvig, and that's only been true for a year. (Not just those particular courses but the way online education's been getting more interactive.)
The Power of Digital Learning--Or a Must Read for Edutech Cos
But you can easily phrase it the other way and argue that corruption is good because it gives leadership an incentive to keep the capitalist system going instead of flipping back to Communism, and the cost of the payoff (a few hundred billion?) is far less than the increased welfare of the Chinese people (pulling hundreds of millions out of deep poverty).

Indeed, some have argued corruption is a good thing in general because people can buy what they want from the leadership instead of their running rampant over everything, which ameliorates any abuses: see for example Bryan Caplan http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/incorruptibly_e....
Surface with Windows RT is supposed to be a stripped down version of Windows, that runs 99% in Metro-mode, not Desktop-mode.

Right now there are two exceptions to this: Office (preview version - buggy) and a Desktop-mode version of IE. Everything else is 100% Metro. And I don't think you can even install anything yourself on it except via it's App Store. Hence it's Desktop-mode is not really there for the benefit of the consumer. And the Office offering will need to be further ported and refined for RT before everything is worked out. I'm not even sure why they put Office on it.

It's a device made mostly for browsing the internet and running some apps while holding it in your hands. Which is what the bigger market is for.

While this was a good and honest review, I think his use-case is off on this one and he will be better suited waiting for Surface with Windows 8 Pro.

I would also be curious to know what his height is, so I'd know what "for short people" means... The pics I've been able to find of the author, he's at least 6'2", maybe even 6'5".

If you are as toll as the author, you could probably either move the device away a bit, zoom out the image, or perhaps put something underneath it's stand to angle it properly.
Back when I was involved, the compression was gzip -- each archived page (HTTP headers + body) was separately gzipped and concatenated onto a ~100M file, though I believe they're now doing 1G files. (This cleverly allows retrieving the individual document by seeking to that offset and doing gzip decompression.)

They have significant amounts of inline images and other files in the web archive, which of course typically are already compressed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_ARChive
I used to think accounting would be an easy job, then I took two semesters of it.
Is it possible just to order it online?
One Direction's Christmas single?

Sorry, couldn't resist...
Why trying to fully replicate the real world ? If you're presented a less than perfect virtual reality as the available reality as soon as you're born, that'll be your reality.
The great Halloween hybrid storm named Sandy
Those coal plants will be all gone soon, and replaced with gas turbine plants which you can shut on/off in a hurry.
Branding the Presidents of the United States
I don't see any better selection on their websites, honestly. Best Buy had one additional 64GB tablet online that wasn't in the store.
Two expressions seem to fit the Microsoft Store: "uncanny valley" and "cargo cult".
Bootstrap Form Helpers now has 6 plugins including one for timezones.
Exercise your brain | the social media age
I know you're speaking from the power plant's perspective, but factoring in externalities, natural gas is cheaper to operate than coal. Nuclear is really cheaper. Wind is about the same as coal.
Please read between the lines, this article is a political issue.

Why don't Denmark and Spain experience such "blackouts" when these two countries have a higher wind energy capacity/production compared to CZ/PL?
This is some degree of complexity.

What does it suggest when they say "learned about new failure modes". Suggesting that there are new ones not yet learned.

One wonders if somewhere internally they have a dynamic model of how all this works. If not, might be a good time to build one.
I don't know why it's so hard for people to skim read. I looked at the photo, immediately got what the text was going to say and am perfectly capable of reading hyperbole without it making me grind my teeth or have any other kind of overly dramatic response.
Walks And Walking Essex Walks Oak Trail Epping Forest Walking Route
LeBron James of Miami Heat says goal is 'to be the best of all-time'
Do you contend that concurrency—and I mean true concurrency in the abstract, not a particular implementation of a parallelization idiom like threads—is well-served by C++ or Java?
Its probably intentional.
All of this has a kind of 'game' vibe to me.
Maybe its part of a CTF? It seems to run on nodejs, like m3m3n70 does. Maybe its a puzzle. Or a joke.
I wouldnt know.
Is safari on the iPad not desktop class?
that post only mentioned the Linux Group. At that time, there was no news about a Linux Survey. The group was empty and all you could do is join the group, but there was no mention of a survey. So it seems unfair to me that this would not get upvoted because of the post you mentioned.
what is the theoretical limit for storing energy in a spring.

I spring is a material (usually a metal, but could be a plastic as well) that is under stress, typically tension, torsion or compression (depending on type of spring). The limit is basically the yield strength of the material, which is the point where the stress vs strain curve goes nonlinear and the material begins to plastically deform. Obviously the fracture limit represents catastrophic failure of the material, but that is higher than the yield limit.

Basically, it's a material strength and elasticity problem.
But usually taller people will have longer hands as well. That would increase the distance of the keyboard from the user's body and so the angle should still work.
He encountered problems typing at a reasonable speed, saving a Word document, videoconferencing, and opening the mail client. They sound like issues that can be corrected with a software update, but I don't think they're specific to his workflow.
Show HN: DB-UI Database Viewer
It's a shame they didn't hit the 3m goal. The device they were going to build them seemed more competative. I think the 16 core device will probably be an interesting toy though. Wrote my thought up here:

http://41j.com/blog/2012/10/my-take-on-the-adapteva-parallel...
Most exceptions aren't recoverable. They are usually a result of bugs or system problems. This means 1) the bug needs to be fixed. 2) the system needs to be fixed (start up a DB service, clean disk-space, add memory, etc).

This is where java went wrong, java checked exceptions treats everything as recoverable when recovery is unlikely.

I mean, someone tries to login to a web site and the DB is down. What do you do? Or there is a bug that throws a null pointer exception. How do you recover from that?

I think the error code approach has the same effect as CheckedExceptions. People will tend to code to ignore the problems and not report them. Exceptions are great in that they bubble up to the top of the stack, so they are easy to report/alert on.
This is where the proxies for quality come in. I'm not aware of any jurisdiction that requires an accounting degree or CPA certification to practice as an accountant. Yet, no big corporation is going to trust their accounting to someone who took some online classes in accounting, no matter who they took those classes from.

More generally, I don't think online education is the big game changer people on HN seem to think it is. Modern online education really doesn't buy you anything that hasn't been available for decades through correspondance courses. It's all just reading and writing and that can be easily done over e-mail, fax, or even physical mail. People who think online education is a game changer don't understand the point of education. It's not really about learning. It's about signaling. The most important part is the degree that some people get and other people don't get, with the name on the degree from a school that some people got into and other people did not. That's what the industry cares about.

I love the quote from "Good Will Hunting" where Will points out that there isn't anything in a Harvard education you can't get for $10 in late fees at the public library. That's true and always has been. But the education isn't the point. It never has been.
The new MegaUpload is coming this January
FYI: I really wanted to sign up just to try out the service, but I can't, I picked GitHub (because that one takes less information than, say, Twitter ["Application will be able to follow new people"]), but I just keep getting redirected to sign up.
Saw it last week as well. Looks nice. What do you use to make the content directly editable? A javascript library of some sort?
Chrome on an iPad is also showing the red SSL warning page.
Hi. Brent here, the post author.

Thanks for making the point. I had hoped that by recording videos of the problems, I wouldn't get attacked as just making off the cuff observations. Readers can see the problems for themselves. Still getting attacked by the fanbois, though, and that's a little disappointing.