skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seems like "procedural techniques" is a huge factor with this game. I haven't played the first ones, but it seems like auto-generating galaxies and stars was what enabled the game to make it feels huge.

I'm wondering how these "procedural techniques" will work with high quality graphics? Also, for those who played both Elite and Minecraft, is it a similar feeling? Is there any other similar - yet more recent - games in that genre?
Yes, but it's way more worth it with a strong already existing startup ecosystem.

It's not going to be fun if you drop a ton of cash on a startup in Singapore and then the government decides to kick you out because you didn't meet their specific milestones.
Also worth mentioning that performance is much more predictable when the data fits into memory (or the working set, but that may be harder to convey).
And yet to be considered a non-toy image editor, you must support 100% of this format perfectly.
The images and the proposal part was what I noted first as well. I left the site as soon as I noticed that all content was in images. I wonder what the reasoning behind such a poor choice of displaying content was? Prevent Search Engine crawling? Prevent easy copying of the text?
I think it's a valuable distinction you're making, and I don't think it's merely a matter of semantics. Knowing the motivations of the criminals involved is useful in building workable defences - the fact that they don't care if they get the money or not is important information, and not immediately obvious. I for one have learned something from this thread, anyway.
Thank you for pointing me in this direction, I'll see if I can make this work in the application I'm building. Thanks again for the reply.
Is there any alternative ? I guess there platform is very generic that is why there are 1000s of themes. I was able to build up http://syncfin.com in less than a month using wordpress and with an awesome theme. I believe it is a great platform but would like to know if there is any alternative ? I am not looking for RoR or DJango for just a simple blogging needs until there is some significant performance improvement prrof.
I definitely like groklaw above the rest. Did he post on this issue as well?
tig and git add -p are my standard way of using it. Sometimes from within vim(yeah you can use fugitive, but it has its' own purpose.

beats any gui imho, although tig is technically a gui.

for those that don't know it, compile:
http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/

and type 'S'
People in this topic might be interested in a project of mine: one-handed typing using your existing two-handed muscle memory.

Basically the muscle memory you use to type "F" is the same as typing "J"; index finger, home row. Your left hand already has the muscle memory to type right-hand characters, and vice versa. Press the "mirrored" key with the other hand... your brain should be able to make this substitution almost automatically.

Add some software predictive text and you can suddenly type fast with one hand with hardly any learning. Especially good for temporary hand injuries.

Mac or PC: http://www.onehandkeyboard.org/download/
A 'notwithstanding' clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that lets the government override it, as long as it's 'reasonable and justified'? The somewhat amusingly named Canadian Human Rights Commission, which can regulate what can and cannot be said publicly?

Canada's a pretty free place, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't have the well-thought-out constitution that America has, which means every once in a while you get things like the October Crisis - where habeas corpus was suspended, thousands of warrantless searches were conducted, and almost five hundred people were arrested in nighttime raids and held without charges, in some cases for weeks.

Americans really don't appreciate what they've got. Historically, civil liberties are the exception, not the rule, and there's certainly no guarantee they'll stick around in the future.
I'll check it out! Thanks.
The demo could be done better for sure. A few steps in I think I encountered a bug that was chording keys that I was only pressing one at a time (forcing a backspace when I wanted the literal 'st').
I could not agree with this more. Whether they support such obviously awful legislation due to malice or ignorance is irrelevant, they are still not doing their jobs correctly.
that would be PERFECT to have a dashboard like this on wordpress :)
I'm surprised they didn't bake a deeper integration with Facebook profile and photos instead of making Instagram more Facebook-like with potentially competing features. As a user I do think this is the right approach to keep both services running as separate networks, but in the long term I'm not sure if operating as independent kingdoms will be sustainable if they continue to merge closer in features. Facebook Camera now offers filters, Instagram now has profiles in browser... Maybe its own news feed next? Not to mention profile and news feed fatigue that could hurt engagement for both...

But that's all cynical speculation, congrats to FB and Instagram for not killing off Instagram. My gut says that's the right decision.
How to Rig an Election
How does it effect me ?
Currently, why even to bother about anything else other than work in hand !! - http://syncfin.com
That's by design, and it's a beautiful thing. Set up a solid set of core human rights and then design a system that disempowers bickering politicians and you've got a flourishing democracy. Unfortunately, it decays over time.
well i'm glad it was posted again
Amazon AWS - 21st Price Reduction
I don't know, those are awfully significant performance differences. On mine, the last is 357 times faster than the first - might be a test flaw, but yikes.

That said, this (and many others) is probably not a concern for most (even most JS heavy) sites, since most simply don't compute enough to impact the page as much as, say, reducing reflows.
So, I guess embedding a PSD in a DOC file is like putting a Bag of Holding in a Portable Hole?
We cool. Thanks for following up. I assumed too much about your circumstances.

Paper ballots cast at a poll site is the only way to absolutely ensure voter privacy. The Australian Ballot method. The reason it works is because the ballot box scrambles the order of ballots, so they can't be tied to individual voters. (There are some exceptions, like very small precincts.)

Voting electronically eliminates that anonymizing scrambling. If it scrambled the order, they'd never be able to audit the process.

Postal ballots (aka vote by mail) has to be done just right to protect voter privacy. Many jurisdictions don't scramble the ballots because of the added expense.
Hey Ash, been meaning to write a blog post as someone who moved their startup from NZ to Singapore - it's not quite as dire as you supposed.

Firstly, I would never recommend anyone to get the Entrepass - best thing to do is just to register a business and apply for an EP pass as an employee of said company. Admittedly in this scenario you would need a local director - but services for this shouldn't run over $1000/annum.

The next statement about spending $100,000+ per year, is again - not true if you are on the standard EP pass.

Rents for accomodation are, however as you stated expensive, we're currently paying $5400 SGD / month for a 3 bdroom in a nice condo in central Singapore.

However, for 2800-3500 / month you can find 3-4 bedroom places that are lacking condo facilities but are more than suitable for living.

If you have any additional questions or queries please don't hesitate.

Also, don't take this as a glowing endorsement of SG - there are plenty of downsides to this island nation for tech.

cam
#BASHTRAY The Political Ashtray
The reason binaries aren't distributed by default have to do with US Export Controls -http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the...
If you are a consumer hardware company, yes. If you're on the edges of what we as humans know to be possible, it can take far beyond Series D to get there. If you look at the early telecoms, they were essentially series Z with the government before becoming accessible.

If you're talking about anything that has impact on utility scale power or anything else on a massive scale, series D is just the beginning. LightSail needs to build a product that not only works but is so damn good that someone will be willing to put it into a system that has to last 10-30 years for an ROI.
I concur with most of your arguments, I do concur with you that there seems to be over importance given to Job's personal-life than it should. But, your last paragraph about Job's life seems to be out of line with your philosophy. You are claiming that Job's death was unnecessary. Unnecessary in whose terms? Is the purpose of life living the longest possible life? Here, by saying that his death was unnecessary or untimely, you are implying there is a time for a person of his stature to die. Now, its no more about making decisions that make you happy or not worrying about the shortness of life, or the lack of meaningfulness of life, but rather you are now preaching how somebody should live their life(or make certain decisions) just like the author or the article is trying to do.

P.S- I do think Steve Jobs contributed greatly to his field and I admire him & his products. The arguments made above are purely for discourse
Since your HN password is obscure, how bouts you publicise it here?

After all, hidden passwords are security through obscurity, and that's "just the wrong way".
Закрепляем jQuery — 25 отличных советов
If he thinks PSD is bad he should try PDF which is really about 30 inconsistent formats all packaged into one inconsistent format.
Over-specialization is the curse of our profession
I consider something to be an obsession when X wants to do Y, then it is obvious that the primary issue is Z but he continues to do Y.

X = Obama, Y = health reform, Z = economy

Think I'm wrong? If you agree the economy and jobs are the biggest problem in the U.S. and in the world right now as far as the majority of the U.S. is concerned, then look at:
http://www.barackobama.com/plans/
and
http://www.mittromney.com/jobs

Despite going off-the-rails during the primaries trying to sound uberconservative and building fences, and strong talk of military strength during the debates which would indicate the typical Republican massive $$$$$ sunk into the military, Romney's page appears to be more economy focused. Do I believe it will really be like that? Probably not. They both have their problems and so does everyone else.

Back to the OP, the answer is not that our voters are uneducated. Uneducated voters vote for both parties. People make fun of Palin and tea partiers, but I heard an Obama supporter answer "1" to how many senators there are in the U.S. government this morning and didn't know the VP's name, so let's call it even. The problem is that there is no incentive for real leaders to lead; there is only incentive for politicians to schmooze. That incentive doesn't change if the voters become educated. They can't vote for the right person when the right person won't run. You may disagree and think that we have strong leaders, but I've not had that much respect for a president in recent years.
Interesting! This reminds me of the new Playstation Vita's rear touch sensor. I think it's definitely a step in the right direction of preserving screen estate for what its primary function should be.
I stopped reading when you said up to 1tb of data like that was a large number.
One of my favorite blog posts from Joel Spolsky talks about this, basically explaining how these formats come to be. For mega-softwares like those, the source code is the de facto file spec www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html
Hey! Thanks so much for your response! I didn't know about the local company + director option. That sounds like a good path to head down.

I did read somewhere about the $100,000 per year or maybe per two years + hiring minimum 2 singapore nationals by the end of a year. That, or something similar (I think that's the Q1 pass). These are the guidelines governing entrepass renewal. http://www.mom.gov.sg/foreign-manpower/passes-visas/entrepas...

So yes, the local company option really does look like the way to go!

I really love Singapore, went there about 2 years ago and thought of starting a business there (the place is full of opportunity!).

I'll definitely hit you up with more questions if I do decide to move there. Thanks so much for offering! :)

EDIT: Also, do please write that blog post! There's not a lot of info out there about tech startups in Singapore and it would be interesting to read an insider's perspective.
I'm glad to see they included $37k in the Kickstarter budget for regulatory certifications (CE, FCC, UL, etc.).

Many hardware projects on Kickstarter include no mention of it, and it's a pricey thing to skip.
So much cleaner than jQuery Mobile. Cool!
It's no design flaw, it's constraining your problem to find the most efficient solution within those constraints.
This looks very promising. Can anyone compare and contrast with supercapacitors, flywheels, and/or simply pumping water uphill and running it through a generator when needed?
A List Apart had a good article today on this subject: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/your-content-now-mobile/
Apple's not so subtle political backing
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but in this case, both British and American English would say that the correct word is "has" and not "have" in the title?

I know British English is a little different when referring to entities comprised of many people, but in this case, the the "have" refers to "your talent" and not "Signapore" and, as such, should be "has" instead?
Wrong. The designer of web profiles (Maykel Loomans) joined Instagram before the acquisition and this has been in the works for many months.
It’s a Wrap on Windows Phone at BUILD 2012 [session videos]
Sounds like really cool software! Is it agnostic of my keyboard layout? Dvorak user here.

That would mean I can not only freak out people that my keys don't type what they say, but that I only need one hand and somehow it works out what I want. People will surely take me for a con artist.
"Who can see my web profile?

If your photos are set to public, anyone will be able to see your profile by visiting instagram.com/[your username] on the web. You do not have to be an Instagram user to view a public user’s profile on the web.

If your photos are set to private, your photos will be visible only to logged-in Instagram users you’ve allowed to follow you."
I think that Singapore is suffering from almost exactly the same problem as Vancouver, Canada. It's a fantastic city enveloped by the ocean and mountains, has world-class cuisine, and city planning that has a semblance of sanity to most observers.

Yet, the young brains are draining en masse for Montreal and Toronto (not to mention California). It doesn't help that Vancouver hasn't bothered to match the aforementioned cities' tax incentives for small and technology businesses (thus the brain drain). And, lately it seems that mainland Chinese are trading their yuan for Vancouver real estate, thus seriously inflating the bubble and pricing everyone who doesn't own an Android phone factory in Chengdu out entirely.

Singapore is increasingly being known as a haven for the borderless rich to park their jets and their cash, since the tax climate is the envy of most of the developed world. So, the same situation foments: You can't keep the Creative Class without giving them (affordable) space to live and work and play (which for that class is all the same!)
Entry test for MENSA I had about 5 years ago didn't have any words or shapes of any real-world objects. There was only one kind of questions. You had to pick image that would fit in the right bottom corner of (usually) 3x3 image grid. It was all about picking apart those objects and noticing how their elements change as you move from row to row and from column to column. Me being programmer given me some advantage I think because I perceived some transitions as bitwise operations and frame by frame animations.
I'm actually a Dvorak typist myself, so it definitely works! English dictionary and Qwerty/Dvorak layout only for now.
Website glitch exposes Dodo [AU ISP] customer details
Allow me to give you a perspective from someone who strictly uses DDG (well, I sometimes use blekko).

Their search is lean. It doesn't feel exagerated by a lot of advertising optimization. It has the !bang feature that allows users to quickly refine searches. Though Blekko uses the /search-term which is also very useful. Back to DDG, their user experience (in my opinion) is better. Things are more clear and concise. Results for programming related stuff are very very good. In fact, if Nuuton manages to be half as good as DDG, I will have considered it a success. Not sucking up to anyone here, but I just love the damn thing. Been an user for more than a year.
http://www.xsled.net
I'm getting a 404 on this page. Does anyone have a link web-cached link or something?
10 startup launch lessons
Gun rights vs. equal rights
The 2012 presidential campaign in a screenshot.
An open letter to Tim Cook and Jony Ive
I'd be pretty unhappy if my favourite website was missing a column just because I was on my mini.
Coke or Pepsi? Politicians Say Choices Like These Reveal How You Vote
This is really interesting. It makes a nice template when the subjects are different but the sentiment is the same.

For example:

*

I'm sick of the distinction between developers and operators.

The developers think they're hot shit because they solve the big problems. They know how to scale. They look down on operators who are only solving trivial problems. Developers build the real things. They don't have time to learn about Apache configs or how to determine how many servers to allocate to a task. Without them, a project can never be successful.

The operators think they're hot shit because they're the closest to the metal. They know to perfect an infrastructure. They look down on developers who have no idea how the product is actually run and who don't get woken up at night when it breaks. Operators build the real things. They don't have time to learn about the rails stack or wretched languages like JavaScript. Without them, a project can never be successful.

You're both wrong. You must do both or you'll be irrelevant (somewhere).

Over-specialization is the curse of our profession. Stratification breeds condescension. The only remedy is for all engineers to do devops.
MOV spec: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/QuickT...
Until the developer decides he always wants everything pixel-perfect, writes a separate stylesheet for each device/class of device, and locks your zoom.

Fuck you, developer. Let me zoom. It's my device.
Show HN: First WebGL app. Uses NOAA data to visualize storm paths back to 1848.
How to Install Hadoop 1.0.3 on Cluster (and Nutch also)
"Your talent" would be a collective noun in this case, referring not to the talent held by an individual, but the pool of talented people to draw upon. The usage is analogous to team or crowd in this sense. (And yes, you could use the singular, shift mental gears to anthropomorphize Singapore and assign it the quality of talent, and keep the same overall meaning with a minor shift in grammar and metaphor. And who said English is a simple language?)
The computer graphics industry is highly stratified with only true independents being able to cut across different domains. This is probably because learning the skills required to be top-ranked in any given discipline is extremely demanding.

A highly skilled animator may not be the best modeller, and an amazing rigger might be terrible at texturing.

The software business is both older and newer than computer graphics. It's older in that people have been doing it since the sixties, but it's newer in that the "pipeline" has radically shifted several times in the last twenty years. Each new delivery platform, be it desktop apps, web apps, or now mobile apps often requires re-thinking how things are made.

The problem here is a lack of people who've spent time in different disciplines to understand them better, not that there are disciplines in the first place.
Will Java 8′s Lambda Change The Face of The World?
Agree with the author on how over-specialization is a bigger curse on our profession than most others. But breeding of condescension is a rather petty justification for becoming a more broader human being/ programmer. Many bigger gains come from having ample breadth at personal and group levels.
Yes! Sorry and thank you!
23MM Racing Wheel
How about we all torture each other out by suggesting great Elitesque games to play in the mean time?

I'll throw in Space Rangers 2. Great soundtrack, universe feels alive without you, NPCs that can rise to fame just as the player, plenty of minigames (e.g. land battles are an RTS, prison is a text game) and space battles are pretty cool.
If one day ARM offered competitive performance to future high-end Intel chips, it would be hard to say no to a switch.

From a developer perspective it's a bit annoying, but having survived the switch from 68K to PPC to Intel, all of which were surprisingly painless, I'm sure this next one could be pretty straight-forward as well.

If there's one rule that's proven itself over and over it that emulating today's CPU is trivial on tomorrow's hardware. A 68K requires inconsequential resources even on an iPhone, and even the then powerhouse G5 PPC is barely a fraction of the speed of the slowest Intel chip shipping today.

To a large degree Apple has already "switched" in terms of units sold. Intel continues to shrink in terms of share and might even sink to 10-15% of CPUs within a few years as the iPad, iPhone and future iOS devices continue to sell well.
Our industry is less specialized than even 5 years ago.. let alone 20. With better communication comes less specialization.
Congratulations, Raaaaaaaandy!
with eight "a"s
Early Surface RT sales “strong” says analysts
Election day tools and tips
Enterasys Launches New Devices for High-Density Wi-Fi
I think that if it can be done right, that'd be the coolest feature of it.

I imagine it'd be possible to detect that you've got all of your fingers resting on the screen in the 'keyboard' configuration, and only 'activate' the keyboard when that's the case.

Like how with an iPhone it can distinguish when you press and slide your finger to scroll from when you press your finger to tap a link.

I think it'd be a cool feature because it'd give you so much more screen space for visible content (like when you're editing a document), and less of the context-switch that happens when an on-screen keyboard pops up.
Brain drain to Montreal?

I am a bit skeptical that anyone would want to pay Quebec-level taxes, particularly with the recent political issues at play.

Could you offer some evidence for this? I'd love to believe it is true (as I am originally from there), but it just rings hollow.
its not very specialized at all

education is basically free, educate yourself on anything you want - front end, back end, devops whatever.

its your own choice and problem to not broaden your skills when the cost of doing so is so low.
Can you give me some examples of apps built with Kendo Mobile so I can see how it actually performs?
To tech companies everywhere: If you're finding it hard to find talent in Singapore, you should seriously consider looking in Malaysia.

Here we have a glut of talent, costs are hell of a lot cheaper than Singapore, and best of all, the Googles and Facebooks of the world don't have much of a presence here, so that's less competition for you!
all your talent are belong to US
Voice Recognition Using Matlab
Ask HN: Who actually reads YC applications?
A recent tweet suggested that YC video submissions are being watched by people outside of the core YC team, sometimes in public.

How are applications processed, and what guarantees are given to applicants that their submission will be kept confidential?