skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
does anyone know the most common 500 words? Is it language neutral or does it vary from language to language? I definitely agree that learning the 500 or so most common words is a great start - even if some of the words are conjugated verbs and you don't have the background to understand the conjugation.
Do you really understand C? 21st International Obfuscated C Code Contest
Do the best you can, That is all anyone can ask of a person or group of people.
6 Things You Should Never Say to a Software Tester
We stuck to about a minute. I don't have any specific insight into how the YC acceptance process works, but it seems like a minute should be roughly the right amount of time to describe what you're doing. Remember that people have short attention spans.
My Software Engineering degree had a course called Personal Software Process that covered all of that and more. It was fantastic as it really emphasized how code quality and controls are the responsibility of the individual engineer.
I never got into the helpful staff thing. I dislike being helped when in shops. Clearly I have been in New Zealand too long. Something that really irked me in the US was the way taxes worked. I never knew what I was going to pay, as taxes weren't included in the label price. It wasn't a large percentage, but I never could quite understand why anyone would take the time to make a price label which showed a price different to what I would pay. Does anywhere else do this? i have travelled a fair bit and have never encountered it before (My US experience was limited to California I should note).
Have you considered adding a web gallery? I wasn't expecting the full size image to download when I clicked on it...

That may just be me but I would rather have the original hi-res download be an option.
It was a joke, as commenters here observed. Generally if I see a comment I don't like the best signal/noise strategy is to just ignore it (unless its offensive. Didn't mean to offend).
Creating and Using Libraries with OpenACC
Hurricane tracking applications
Quite impressive traction for those applications in the last two days.
NYC regulators announce proposed rules for taxi apps
Well, if he truly wants to emulate Jobs he needs to have his wilderness years outside of Apple's bosom. As the prophecy has foretold he'll return in 11 years to retake his spot as rightful CEO.
I wouldn't assume that was Samsung's choice. Isn't that a legacy of old disagreements between Google and the PRC?

I know that Asus Transformer Primes sold in China did not come with Google services, either, though buyers quickly learned that using a US/Taiwan/International update file would restore functionality fairly easily.
I don't think this has anything to do with Scott's departure. He sold most of his shares 6 months ago.. It's time for him to leave and build his own company.
Take a look at this blogpost... from 10/23

http://fox41blogs.typepad.com/wdrb_weather/2012/10/could-a-s...

Jeff Master's Blog is excellent as well:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html

And yeah, I was born in NYC. We're tough.
> Why on earth should multiple logins on smartphones be considered patentable?

The actual patent linked [0] makes several claims and it simply isn't just "multiple logins" whatever that means as you don't login to any phone from any vendor of which I am aware in the Symbian era (circa 2004). The SIM card represents your "login" to the phone network and this patent describes all the innovations that would be required to turn a single SIM card into a usable "public" or quasi-public resource (usage reports, access controls to apps and data, etc etc). Consider all of the services and technology that would be required to make this scenario possible, and more importantly usable (voicemail for each user, some way to indicate incoming calls for specific users, etc).

Computer operating systems support multiple user log-ins for time sharing of CPU resources and for data security. The concept here is not to have a multi user operating system in that sense. The idea is that the phone features can be shared, not the "computer" features.

So just simply having multiple logins to a linux kernel running on a phone with some UI trickery or a "jail" to enable a "guest" mode would not violate the claims of this patent as I understand them.

You may or may not be philosophically opposed to software patents but this probably is not the poster-child case for abuse you want to use in any reasonable discussion. Are there any of the claims made in particular you find objectionable?

I read the patent claims as enabling an extremely novel/innovative use case of a smartphone. Would you also find objectionable the patent application made by Zipcar [1] for the technique/technologies required to turn a privately held automobile into a shared public or quasi-public resource? Kind of what appeared in my mind's eye as I first read the Nokia patent.

[0] http://bitly.com/Q3okiK
[1] http://bitly.com/TkSR6d
> Google is building cars that drive themselves. Microsoft is still analyzing real time data and improving email.

What makes you think one is important but not the other? Google is building cars that drive themselves but they are also analyzing real time data and subsequently improving their email. It will be stupid for Google to ditch Gmail and direct those engineers to work on cars.

>It could be that the author cherry picked examples that were easy for the average reader to understand.

Well since NYTimes has a broader demographic than just IT professionals I think the examples do fit perfectly in.
> This seems to be based on the idea that learning a language is mostly about learning words. That has not been my experience

Er, sure, there's tons of other important aspects to learning language, but words are really important. At some point (once you're somewhat competent with basic grammar and conversation flow, and have the core vocabulary down), lack of sufficient vocabulary can be a big hurdle for conversing with adults about non-trivial subjects. Educated conversation uses an amazing number of words... ><

Of course you're right that it's really good to learn words in context (e.g. by reading), not in isolation (on flash cards or whatever).

[Memory is also weird: for a huge number of words, I remember the exact context (e.g. book title/page/sentence or conversation topic) where I first learned it; I hate to think of the number of brain-cells all that info is using up, but it gives these words a nice ... familiar feel.]
I bounced after getting to the form.. As a developer and therefore your main target for potential customers, you never answered the most important question... how? How does it integrate? Is it an API, do you have plugins for my platform? Etc, etc.
It's hard to judge speeds from this, and they're often more important than direction. It's beautiful, but it doesn't tell me if the next high tide will have an even higher surge.
Actually, the Clojure world has a good critique against using objects when datastructures are generally better. Rich Hickey has all sorts of talks where he explains why datastructures beat objects. One reason is that datastructures let you write more generic code, and you have all sorts of powers which the original author didn't need to plan in advance. For example, you can use any operators which operate on mapping types. And anything built on top of those operators, like set operations over tuples.

(Disclaimer: I've written only one service in Erlang, without OTP, so I can't evaluate all the claims.)
"The proposals would require any e-hail app to obtain a one-year, renewable license from the TLC.." sounds like a tax....
There is a specific and yet extremely widespread usecase for switching account on a phone: to distinguish between personal and business use. I'm a different person at work with my phone than I am at home or at a pub. I don't want to clutter my gallery at work with thumbnail pictures of last week-end debauchery, though I do want to see the whiteboard pics I took every day after each design meeting. The notifications I want to receive at home are not necessarily from some automated JIRA sender.

Moreover, I've been working on projects that are founded on the assumption that the device is "public" (for instance a phone wired to a bus stop) or at least "shared": the devices that, say, train operatives use, could be tied to the train rather than to the user. I believe we would all greatly benefit from multi-user accounts on the phone.
Show HN: time-js - simple date-agnostic time parsing
Since you should have been saving your answers for storage on the application page, why not auto-submit anyone who hasn't done so by the deadline and then allow edits after? You should be able to see who manually re-submits after the deadline (I would think) and allow them to explain their situation. Drop any auto-submitted apps that are not manually re-submitted after a certain time frame.
Storm surge was higher than expected.
I think you're missing the point.

It's important to not only empathize with things you could believe personally might happen to you, but also to the millions of others who you might know.

Maybe someone has updated their YC several times. But they also haven't heard from a family member in 24 hours in Manhattan.

I don't need proof that we knew the storm was coming, I'm just asking you to put yourself in other people's shoes and anticipate that maybe things are bigger and more out of control than we think.
See also https://twitter.com/DEVOPS_PORN
ps - it would be a real bummer if someone spent the whole night worrying about sick family in those hospitals that are being evac'd and missed out on the chance to apply.
The proximity sensor hack is delightfully ingenious.
Status bar up top is probably fine.

I would think though that sticking the navigation buttons in the center while in landscape mode would be aggravating. I would rather have the buttons rotate while the bar stays on the narrow end. That would even be consistent with the actual phone UI.
"If you switched the voting on HN to find the worst commentors, instead of bringing the best up top - what would happen?"

It would become Reddit?
I wrote about this here: http://hortonworks.com/blog/dinosaurs-are-real-microsoft-wow...

It includes raptors.
Apple reportedly boots Scott Forstall for refusing to sign apology
Retard, maps are hard. Worldwide maps with routing is super hard. Have you actually done any mapping?
Relevant artcile: Overwriting memory - why? - http://www.viva64.com/en/k/0041/
> Great decision from Cook

Cook hired him, which many commentators pointed out was a mistake in the first place.
One of the questions that are long hid the yes/no buttons for me so I had to zoom out twice to see it. 13" MB Air.
Sometimes you're not calling or SMSing a specific person but rather a place or a community ("Is John with you?", "Is everything alright over there?", etc) Sometimes it's even weirder to have to choose between calling Fred or Julie whenever you want to chat with the couple and don't want or need to show a preference for either of them.

Anyway, we've been there already, and it worked for the most part. We used to have one phone in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in my sister's room and we would all be fighting to not have to be the one to pick it up whenever it rang.

But it worked, and it wasn't exactly "weird" :P
I love Evernote as a productivity tool, and I do have a few decent recipes buried within, but I have doubts about adding first class support for them (a la Evernote food), or first class support for this or that.

Evernote have done an amazing job of creating the core experience for creating, retrieving and synchronizing notes across devices. I don't know what lessons their product team has learned along the way, but I wonder why they are drifting away from their core strength.
You can perhaps check out https://github.com/basho/lager when it comes to logging.
Agreed. I would add that really big (large textbook size) PDFs occasionally hang Adobe Reader. ezPDF tends to handle those better.
Yeah, context, especially how you got there. I've been wishing for that for years. Also what your other tabs were doing for any particular tab/bookmark.

I leave a lot of tabs open too, all related to each other. There are usually two or three groups of related tabs. TreeStyleTab addon helps a lot with that, since the vertical tab list shows parent/child tab relationships and lets me move things in and out of hierarchies.

I don't even use FF's bookmarks anymore, which is a shame because I miss the address bar integration. I just use pinboard, which is basic but works.
From inside Apple, the Scott Forstall fallout
I'll second this. I was interested, but it's not something we can evaluate until you're ready to commit to price bounds.

Given the heat in this space now, it would also be nice to know how your service differs from e.g. Vero or customer.io.
You could push it back by a month and I still wouldn't be able to figure out how to answer the questions in under 120 words each.
The datacenter where most of my servers are is not too far from Philly, but I have 0 worries about it. Why? It was properly designed and maintained from the start.

Not only is the first floor 6 feet above the ground, but it is at the top of a gentle slope that naturally drains all water away to lower areas. The water level locally, would have to be about 20 feet for the first inch of water to push its way through the doors.

There is absolutely NO reason that any datacenter in VA should be having problems, aside from either shoddy facilities management or poor initial choice of the site. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
You say that as if companies won't find a way to take over:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-taking-over...
If you push the deadline back, everybody gets the extra time. People affected by the storm get a break. I see no harm in it.
Quick Tip: Working with SASS and Bootstrap | Webdesigntuts+
Not sure if you have ever read about the system in Finland, but its fascinating. And very low on testing from my understanding. Searching for Finland on this education site is interesting
http://www.edweek.org//search.html?prx=p&occ=p&qs1=F...
The power company told my family in PA that the power will probably be out for a week. They are charging their phones at my father's hospital office (possibly drawing off of the generators.) The news reports that roofs have been torn off of houses in their town. The storm seems to have had much more impact in NYC and NJ.

Sure, it's possibile that somebody will claim "the dug ate me hamework", but I think it's rational to keep your eyes open and use your judgement.
I think you might have misread; what I saw was "exec responsible for Maps goes away. His underlings, who were feeding him bad data but which he was apparently unable or unwilling to replace, also go away." Whether this is the right thing or not can be debated, but arguably it's why people on that level of the enterprise get paid the big bucks.
Not just executives, a majority of non-leaf nodes (but not all). The more money that's at stake, the more petty and childish people act. Acting like a child is an actual strategy people use. If people act rationally it provides a stronger basis for criticism and makes them a target. If someone acts like a child then people say "wow that person's a real stupid jackass that only wants power." If someone tries to rationalize bumping off their competition, its "wow that person is a real threat."
People make mistakes, good that he could recognize he made a mistake.
Who cares if your boss sees you click on a goatse link? He's probably been pranked before; he knows how it works. Are you afraid that he thinks you're a goatse afficionado? If so, you've got bigger, wider problems.
Usability test failed, because what looks like a main menu is a bar of ads. That is just going anger anybody who feels they have been fooled into clicking an ad. I suggest removing it asap. You're going to lose people from your site before they have even looked around
7 Third Party Software You Won’t Need on Windows 8 - Instant Fundas
Sticker Mule is hiring a Customer Experience Lead
I'd like to an "Add to Home Screen" feature for phone contacts for one-tap dialing (like you can with browser bookmarks).
How did you find the transition? That's an interesting pathway to have followed.
Screenshot Taking and Annotation Tool Skitch Now Available on Windows
Publishing online? What is the most important part for you?
Do you write blogs, forum posts or edit a magazine? Do you share your photos and videos? What are your requirements? What are you missing in the existing services?
Televizor LED 3D Samsung 46ES6710 la oferta - Consumatorul | Consumatorul
http://qz.com/21606/how-hurricane-sandy-broke-the-internet/

http://buzzfeed.tumblr.com/post/34607165930/major-media-isp-...
Japanese toilet can save penalty kicks
Clearly, removing everyone involved in failure is the route to success.
Apple's Scott Forstall ousted over Maps apology -- WSJ | Apple - CNET News
We have started a survey, please complete it here: http://www.scrollum.com/

Otherwise, please share your thoughts and experience here.
Hey PG, would you regard climbing a ~20,000 ft Himalayan mountain (~single digit known previous attempts) as an impressive achievement?
50 People Shaping the Future of Design
This whole discussion is about personal preference and opinion. The original post and all of the posts that followed. If you think there is any objective fact to be had here, you're crazy.

I'm a long-time user of HN, reporting my experience, and so it is about me, just as much as it is about raganwald's desire for people to be even more civil than they currently are.

P.S. I'm not literally calling anyone Christian. Equating a behaviour to Puritanism is a rhetorical device to illustrate a point. I think you and I may be communicating on completely separate dimensions...
>All of the original mechanics make perfect sense

this is the same thing thats spouted by fans of the iphone. We don't need a smaller ipad 10" is the perfect size. We don't need a bigger phone screen, this fits the perfect size for all hands. All this is said till Apple actually does it.
The spec. The spectacle. This fall, only on Twitter!

I see the assertion that:

>MMD has a very clear specification. It also has an openly available test suite.

But the specification link goes to the help page [1] which as far as I can tell has no spec, just links to descriptions (Gruber's canonical blog post) and examples. Is there an actual spec for MMD, or are they claiming examples are specs?

[1]: http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/help/
The people most affected by this storm are likely not able to see the poll.
>If you only look at their entry products, like the 16gb iPhone, the 21" iMac, the 11" MBA, yeah, Apple seems reasonable. Any other Apple product ? the margins on those things is something no one else could pull off without getting lynched.

This is a pretty common case of price discrimination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

Apple is certainly not the only company that does it. However they do commonly have a higher profit margin than their competitors.
Mapping Scott Forstall's departure from Apple
Join the first Hacker News Happy Hour in Italy
Nexus 4 vs. Galaxy Nexus
With this in mind, the "never fit into the culture of Apple" line in the WSJ article is telling. Jobs never fit into the culture of Apple either -- rather, the culture of apple fit into Jobs.

It sounds like Forstall wanted to be like Steve, and, for better or for worse, he wasn't allowed to.
Peter G. Neumann's RISKS forum
This article is so east coast. Next thing you know the WSJ might have an article saying that some young people are questioning the need for business cards!
The paper indicates good performance increase compared to phoenix. Very welcome and useful, thanks!
> It would be because he over promised and under delivered.

And alledgedly refused to own up to it.
Mercedes Benz 6-ad campaign to promote the reversing camera
Doing a Wizard Like Flow in Backbone.js and Jquery Mobile - creativepsyco's Blog
Gawker Media and others downed by Sandy
Reports come pouring in about Hurricane Sandy and the massive problems it has wrought so far. From what I can gather, if you are on the East Coast you're either getting completely devastated by this storm or it has passed you over gracefully leaving windy vengeance for another day. NYC is blacked out for the most part, a crane dangles from the rooftops. I will definitely be looking at the NY Post tomorrow.

Watching the internet weather report, most networks still seem to be chugging along, but an upshot in packet loss never means good things. Sites like NY Times and WNYC.org are still chugging along (I assume they're hosted with servers in New York based on little to no evidence of my own because I am lazy) but I noticed many sites in the Gawker family are having issues loading. How will I get by without a constant deluge of gaming news or the latest on sci-fi robohookers who play sports? Incidentially, Conde Nast is still afloat.

Heroku has been issuing warnings about potential outages since bad weather has befallen them before. AWS looks to be very healthy.

The internet will be A-OK through and through, but it is still incredible to me that the largest stock exchange in the world has gone quiet in anticipation of Sandy, bowing in reverence to the awesome power of a force larger than finance. We will see what the morning brings.
Same here, 1366x768 resolution seems to be too small.
Maybe he is referencing the pdf: http://fletcher.github.com/peg-multimarkdown/mmd-manual.pdf
Sure. You never know...

"The Starfish Story" http://www.ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com/articles/the-sta...
This article is stupid. Who would want UAS on a phone? Everyone has their own. Tablets will replace the home PC in the next 5-6 years, not phones.
What is Chrome's bottleneck with hundreds of tabs? The resource load from hundreds of processes? IPC overhead for the browser process to managing the content processes?
IBM brings carbon nanotube chips one step closer
There is a test suite [1] available, though. Furthermore, the core of MMD is in the PEG grammar [2], which is enough of a specification for me. Compatibility of language subsets is even provable, so specifying a MMD-lite version (which might be the vanilla Markdown features) would be simple. On the other hand, I think its flexibility/sanity is actually a disadvantage for MMD: with the confusion and variability of a spec-free language that is still roughly familiar (i.e. Markdown), people seem more likely to adopt it with their own implementations and customizations.

[1]: https://github.com/fletcher/MMD-Test-Suite

[2]: https://github.com/fletcher/peg-multimarkdown/blob/master/ma...
One way a charter school can undermine the normal public school is by draining away motivated students, since they do get to choose who is admitted, thereby skewing stats.
Coder Heya: A centralized place for guides for programmers
Apple's Gag Division Unveils Sleekest...
Scroll mode was introduced in the just-released iBooks 3.0. And I personally think think a never-ending scroll of text is not a good way to read a book. Pagination is very helpful. I realize other people like scroll mode, but that's a personal preference.
I would love to tweak and apply this to my blog.
> That was true of Jobs as well... but holy crap, have you seen his yacht?

On the other hand, have you seen the designs the approved for the future HQ?
As usual, Gruber seems like a bit of a prick.
How are you planning to reach your customers?
> Jobs was right on the money when he said that at the executive level, there's no "it's not my fault."

I see the truth in that, but you have to admit Jobs was probably the person for whom it was easiest to make this admonition.
Here's What Happens Every Sixty Seconds in the World of Data | Architects Zone