skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ok, well I'm in the states, so I'm in no position to assume what the UK public wants, but it seems little strange to prioritize payback over progress, which is my interpretation of what is happening here.
Syncing between Git-Annex Assistant instances: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan...
This argument has been made in every generation of thin-client vs. fat-client technology for the past few decades. We still have both, and probably always will: each has its strengths.
What is the business model, if any? (This question is not addressed in the FAQ, and I believe has at least some relevance to the longevity/shape of the reDB community over time.)

Also, have you talked to the Meteor folks about swapping Mongo out for this? Or would this be 'newness overload'?
Groupon is Now Worth Only One-Third of What Google Offered to Buy it for
Maybe it's the case that YMMV. I didn't touch-type QWERTY, so I learned Colemak just fine. On the other hand, my friend who touch-typed QWERTY at 90 WPM also had no problem switching to Colemak. In addition, the official Colemak website states:

"Easy to learn – Allows easy transition from QWERTY. Only 2 keys move between hands. Many common shortcuts (including Ctrl+Z/X/C/V) remain the same. Typing lessons available."
Or you could use fixed point math: 600 in database means $6.00
Then aggregates and comparison operators would work, but you would have to decide upfront how much precision you might ever need
By the way, how safe is the JS interpreter? Can you get into trouble by running untrusted code in map/reduce queries?
Not disagreeing that the judge should punish them for non-compliance, just arguing the initial punishment was inefficient (despite that fact that it might be satisfying).
Part of being a good programmer is knowing when you are writing bad code. In my mind its subtlety different, I never plan to write bad code, but sometimes it just turns out that way because of a tiny initial bad decision.

That is what sets good and bad programmers apart. Bad programmer have no clue that they are writing terrible code.
Ha, awesome! I went for an exact transliteration although if I were to use this idea for real I would probably do the assignment explicitly in the body. I think this looks a bit more pythonic:

@contextmanager
def restoring(obj, attr):
old_val = getattr(obj, attr)
yield
setattr(obj, attr, old_val)

x.a = 1
with restoring(x, "a"):
print x.a
x.a = 2
print x.a
print x.a
Once you slap your name on it, it becomes your problem (in image, in any event). I'd argue this is a case where due diligence on the part of Google failed. [1]

--

[1] It's also an argument for enabling (including legally) security researchers to break things. Experience shows you cannot necessarily take partners at their word.

In the physical world, you will often take and test samples, yourself. You need to do your own analysis and testing in the digital world, as well.
Sometimes, paper is your best prototyping tool - even if you're Nintendo
But in terms of innovation-without-Jobs so far, I’d say going from the original slow chunky iPad in April 2010 to the retina super-fast iPad 4 and svelte iPad Mini today is a pretty brisk clip. Two and a half years later Apple offers two very different iPads that both completely blow the original one away — and the original one is now almost universally hailed as a landmark innovation in the history of personal computing.

I know coming from Apple's POV is Gruber's thing, but really? I feel like producing products that get smaller, faster, and in slightly different form factors are hardly things to trumpet as success. Those are just vital signs that show a company is still functioning.
This is an absolutely perfect use case for cloud hosting like Azure - dev local, test on a few small instances, scale up as needed on election day, then shut it down. From the article it sounds like they paid for eleven servers, which was significantly more expensive and lower powered.
Well obviously the amount needs to be higher. Clearly the apology is not as simple as it might appear, hence this whole debacle. Apple is definitely the one making it more difficult, but I can't imagine other companies wouldn't do the same, and the courts should be expecting that.
Then it's probably my mix-up. An extremely similar passage occurs in Metamagical Themas, in which Hofstadter describes a conversation in which he first realized that he may have only assumed that Carroll's Tortoise was male. I've likely confused one with the other.
someone ought to send this to dalton caldwell.
Thank you very much, have you signed up to the private beta? We'd love some feedback if so - please feel free to email me rich (at) tray.io
The other thing that bothers me about all these new JSON databases is they aren't really novel anymore.

Clustered databases are essentially a solved problem, and have been for years. What's needed today are databases solving the problem that Google Spanner addresses – global consistency across distributed clusters in separate data centers. If you want a challenge in the DB world, that's where it is.

But another clustered, schema-less JSON database? Might as well open up Intro to Algorithms and run through the exercises -- it's no longer a challenge, algorithmically or otherwise.

Sorry to be a downer on this, and it does still take a strong coder to implement one, so well done on that front. :)
AS a UK resident I'm upset that Apple has wasted the court's time with this. The article states that a million people read the first notice. Presumably a large number of people were following links from articles, on websites like this one, pointing out how the notice barely conformed to the courts ruling.

Maybe if no one had noticed and Samsung hadn't complained (I don't know if they did) then nothing would have happened. But you can't show contempt for a court ruling in a massively public way and expect no consequences.

Justice has to be seen to be done. And Apple caused this to drag on further than it should have.
This is how record labels should work
I switched to Dvorak back in the summer of 2005 and I've never looked back. Colemak may have been a better choice for certain metrics on certain keyboards, but one that cannot be stated enough for Dvorak is the way your hands alternate keys so much more than they do on QWERTY. I'm not sure if that has been studied for Colemak.

Thoughts on changing keyboard layouts:

1) If you're gonna do it, I agree with this article, touch typing = #1 priority. You're not going to see a colemak keyboard, most likely.

2) QWERTY actually seems to work pretty well for big thumbs on a small screen. I don't use tablets, so I don't know the state of affairs on Android or iOS keyboard layouts. This has notably not been a problem for me, even though I was initially concerned about using BlackBerrys (oh 2005 me..)

3) IRC/Instant Messaging are a massive way to learn how to type because you'll prioritize learning words that you type often, and natural patterns for you.

4) Buy a better keyboard if you're gonna go to this effort for your hands. I swear by my Kinesis Advantage Pro.

This process is frustratingly slow, but after ~3 weeks of going cold turkey, I have not once switched back. I was even a sysadmin for 1000's of desktops in labs, and it took 2 seconds to switch them to dvorak and back.

Finally, while we're at it, if your company offers ergonomic consulting, DO IT! You'll be amazed how much more comfortable your typing is when you've fixed how you sit, your monitor height, and your keyboard tray.
For you 007 fans: Bond Girls, Bond Cars & Roger Moore
That sounds good, but with only 53 bits of integer precision in JSON (51 if you move the decimal point to account for cents), there's just not enough digits for finance these days.

A similar problem exists if you use JSON numbers (aka doubles) for timestamps –- the numbers just aren't big enough to do it accurately.
Because that still allows Apple to profit from what the court views as severe misbehavior?
The Greatest Bond Villain Of All: Technology
It's too bad the Romney campaign was unable to tap the services of an experienced businessman who is expert at management and delegation.
Downvoted, because "X happens in every dictatorship" does not mean "every place where X happens is a dictatorship", and also because I think there is a noticeable difference between Gmail and Wikileaks (even though I supported the latter).
Thanks for the great tips! I'll copy them over and quote you in the comments on the post.
the corporate customers turn out to be remarkably price-insensitive,

I haven't read all of Spolsky's response yet, but I find this comment interesting in light of the fact that the original article specifically calls out customers who ask for a discount with no justification. Okay, I can see that some places need to check all 80 boxes on their IT purchase approval sheet (I work for one of them), but if they are asking for that, AND being impatient, AND being rude, AND asking for a discount? You don't have be an accountant to see that you will be losing money on that sale. Circumstances indeed will inform choices better than rote rules, but that cuts both ways; if you suddenly jack your prices, many customers will assume you're trying to bilk them and go somewhere else.
Permissiveness, or lack of it, isn't relevant at all. How I interpret the complaints with the 'no evil', the issue is the 'gotcha' factor, which arguably is out in full force with the AGPLv3. How many companies have botched handling even the GPLv2? We hear about it all the time.

I sincerely like the GPL and AGPL. I don't think potential confusion is a compelling argument against either, nor do I think it against the "do no evil" clause.
I don't know about you but there were days when I was trying to get a web app to support IE6 that I was envious of how easy the president has it.
Maybe to keep the rodents inside the vessel until the sailing date.
Because there is no way of calculating the potential cost of the damage to Samsung's reputation.

Plus, it makes far more sense to tackle the root of the problem — the harm caused to Samsung's reputation — by ordering Apple to make public announcements that its allegations against them were false.
Yes, that's true.

I assume you meant that sarcastically, as in "look how BlackBerry are killing off developer interest in their own platform"? Regardless of sarcasm or not, this is the best play RIM has - to use an existing platform and not rely on people developing specifically for them. That's the only hope for the underdog platforms (i.e., everyone except for Android and iOS).
Why do you think the penalties for perjury and contempt of court are so extreme?

A large chunk of society hanging together and working relies on impartial but powerful judicial systems. It's one of those thin edge of the wedge situations. We don't want a system where people flout court rulings even if it's just about a notice on a website.
On my Chinese Android phone gmail will load enough for me to see it's gmail but I get “no offline messages”. In Shanghai.

Google.com is blocked too. Neither google.com nor gmail were blocked yesterday. Youtube has always been blocked and Docs has worked once since I got here.
Learn a language in 22 hours
Joshua Foer: 'What if, instead of tabbing over to the web browser in search of some nugget of gossip or news, we could scratch the itch by engaging in a meaningful activity, such as learning a language?'

Yeah, right.
I've joined RethinkDB just a couple of months ago, so I might not have all the historical facts right, but here is what I know.

In a previous incarnation RethinkDB was a highly optimized storage engine for SSDs implemented in C++ to be able to take full advantage of both low level SSD and kernel access.

The current distributed engine was built on top on this storage engine and I think it only made sense to continue with C++.
So it should be fine to break the law and commit any sort of crime against a company, and the only penalty should be giving them make-up money after the fact?
I can't even tell what's going on any more. All of this notice-posting is meant to undo the "harm" Apple has caused by saying Samsung copied the iPad, right? But the court insists that it never even touched the question of whether Samsung copied the iPad. Yet the same court is upset about Apple suggesting that Samsung did copy the iPad.

So, to sum up:

- Apple said that Samsung copied the iPad;

- the court wants Apple punished for saying that;

- although the court never made any determination about whether Samsung copied the iPad;

- and Apple is still forbidden from saying that Samsung copied the iPad.

Nope, still confused.
Bitcoin can scale to VISA level transactions[1]. The software is still BETA, the optimizations required for this scalability have not yet been implemented (they are being actively worked on). The primary one is support for pruning the block-chain. This will drastically reduce the current 3GB blockchain size.

You are right though, in it's basic form, Bitcoin will not work for micro-transactions where you want to transfer a few cents a few times a second. However, there are strategies [2] to support some forms of micro-payments.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

[2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts (see example 7)
The browser will get a 404 when it tries to load the GA script, or simply get a tcp connection refused. It won't affect the rest of your site unless you are depending on other assets served from google.com.
A Pill to Prevent HIV
This is ridiculous. Let's look at the iPhone for example. There are several browsers available, all which are highly compliant. I use Chrome, however, not because of its compliance, but because at the moment, it's the fastest, allows for more tabs, and just feels more fun to use. Blackberry will lose this game because they don't know how to do good UI. And this nonsense about working with Facebook is just laughable.
Just store it in a string. Or a special map structure: {"date": "2012-11-01", "format":"YYYY-MM-DD" }
The front page of HN almost exactly 5 years ago
This is exactly how normal, map reduce and aggregation queries work in a sharded MongoDB cluster.

While it's true that on a single node MongoDB map reduce is single threaded, it is parallelized when running on a sharded cluster.
Does anyone know what software they use for fashion design?
link?
I'd be interested if there was an "Effects of Regular Alcohol Consumption on Programming Ability" type study.
"People who I don't like and people who I think they think they're cooler than I am"
No shit.[1]

"Apple. Your brand is being ruined by misplaced trust in a losing super-aggressive legal strategy."

I genuinely used to like Apple. I can actually remember regularly checking the website for the different gadgets I could buy. This was well before the Android v Apple "fan-boyism".

I switched off totally from the anti-consumerism that drives Apple. They make great devices that just work. I have no problems in borrowing an iPad for an hour, but they consistently take strategies beyond their products that have decremental effects to their customers and customers of other companies.

Who needs a third adapter for their phone (that will only work on iPhone5)? Who needs a different form factor for their SIM card so Apple can secure three year licencing deals with carriers? Who needs the walled garden of an App Store that prevents developers from releasing Apps that might cross over with iOS functionality... Who needs to write a book on Apple Software where the terms demand that they only distribute the book on Apple platforms[2]..

Put honestly, there is very little that Apple does that could be interpreted as being for the "better-ment" of people that aren't Apple customers. They take a "fuck"[1] everyone attitude that isn't a beneficiary of Apple stock.

I just think that this is a very toxic label for Apple to have against them.

Just to stress... I think Apple make great products, although I will never again contribute a single cent to anything that bears the Apple name. They have all but destroyed their brand that I once so sorely coveted (and this was a time not so long ago).

Who needs humility... Clearly, not Apple...

[1] : I hate swearing. Apologies.
[2] : This got changed shortly after considerable backlash.
[9] : I need to stop writing so many "Apple" critical comments..
If you look through any of my last 50 comments I'd guess
perhaps 10 are Apple related. It's wrong of me that I consistently
only comment on Apple posts.
Yes, because millions of people have $1,500 laying around to solve a software problem with expensive hardware. I sort of contradict myself though, since that's what large sites are already doing with WordPress.
That explains what I saw on one of my past projects, including replacing PM, travel&per diem, and presenting failed projects as a good reference.
I'm interested. But the article and the main site (colmak.com) fail to provide a full layout - or at least I gave up after being unable to check where my keys would go.

This is from a German that runs everything with a qwerty US english layout, because Germany uses a crappy qwertz layout where really every interesting character for programmers leads to pain and suffering to compose. What I get ~reasonably~ fine from US qwerty:

@{}[]~`/\|;':"

That's my measurement for any keyboard layout I'd be willing to try: If these letters are hard to type I cannot be bothered to switch, even if I certainly do type more prose than the chars above.
I'm in Beijing and I'm experiencing this as of now. This is real
Nope, it actually is a complete word: http://tangorin.com/general/%E3%82%8F%E3%81%8B%E3%82%8A

You probably came to that conclusion from the fact that the word 「分かります」 means "to understand". Actually, 「分かります」 is made up of two parts, 「分かり」 (the same word that started this whole discussion), the nominalized form of the verb 「分かる」 ("to understand"), and the polite suffix 「ます」. 「分かり」 (or 「わかり」, as it's often written when nominalized) can of course be used by itself as well.

> Probably because it's still beta.

From a software branding perspective, that would be a really stupid thing to do. It would severely damage your SEO, and you'd be stuck renaming all kinds of resources and files after you go out of beta.
I maintain sites using both the older synchronous and newer asynchronous Google Analytics. I also personally as a matter of course block Google Analytics using a few adblock rules. As a user I have never experienced page breakage due to blocked analytics, and as a site maintainer I have witnessed that you simply don't get analytics information from those users. I've had clients freak because their Google ecommerce data doesn't add up, but in the end that information relies on trusting the client.
We thought of supporting data types that are not part of JSON (date/time/timestamp/deltas, etc.), but we wanted to take the time to do it right so these didn't make it to this version.

alex @ rethinkdb
> The interwebs are awash w/ the latest US election results, and viral youtube videos of Obama thanking his young twentysomething campaign staffers.

Strangely enough, those kind of images remind me of a Chinese-style dictatorship. Legions of apparently adoring fans worshipping their benevolent leader, chanting slogans, etc.

To the rest of the world, the presidential election is a reminder of everything that is wrong with America.
Indiegogo page: http://www.indiegogo.com/robotdragonfly
Self-control need a boost? Gargle sugar water, researchers say
I did not know that Apple's paper advert had been pushed back so late. I have seen a photo of one that appeared in the Guardian about a week ago [0] which as a reader I would skim over given the lack of branding and its similarity to adverts that try to appear part of the newspaper copy, yet have that tell-tale 'Advertisement' header. (These are common to all newspapers in the UK, big and small - maybe elsewhere also.) Skipping over these is something that regular readers naturally do and I expect the design is intentional.

I am very interested to see what their Nov 16th ad will look like. Given that it must appear in magazines as well as broadsheets it may be that the mags require it to have some sort of branding/style so as to not make the magazine appear cheap, unlike the image linked.

[0]: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/the-frontline-blog/2222112/apple-p...
Ask HN: What Are Some Good DART Tutorials To Get Started?
I want to get started with DART, but I am not sure where to even begin. I have 3+ years experience with Java and about 3+ months playing around with JavaScript. I have not fully gotten a grasp of Javascript which is why I want to learn DART, and perhaps my knowledge of Java will help!
Wow. Looks very much like the front page today!

:)

You posted the wrong link.
It takes time. The use of CSS frameworks is a topic of debate on HN; I find them very handy in getting something attractive and usable up fast. Then you can play around and customize it and get more experience.
Well BB10 devices might not be for sale, but the browser has been shown off and it is part of the dev devices that developers got at BBJam in September. If you want to see a little preview of it in action checkout this preview video taken at BBJam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onNTDUncA44 If you follow the link in the article to Matt's post on the RIM developer blog there are more articles on the browser and what it has: http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/11/blackberry-10-browser-...

As mentioned in the video one of the neatest aspects of the browser is the fact that the chrome itself is written in HTML/JS. So the animations, transitions etc are all done by WebKit. The BlackBerry browser includes support for remote inspecting which meant not only could we host the chrome on our desktop while developing, but we could debug it from a WebKit browser on our desktop, all while it was running on the device. When you make a web application for BlackBerry10 it will be on top of the WebWorks platform which sits on top of the same HTML Runtime that the browser is using which aligned rim's interests to make sure that web applications work well.

For the curious a much more in depth look at the browser and how it was made was shown at this BlackBerryJam session: http://hosting.desire2learncapture.com/RIM/1/watch/50.aspx

Disclaimer: I am part of the WebKit team at RIM.
Richard Gabriel. Though Peter Gabriel would be good too :)
> your hands alternate keys so much more than they do on QWERTY. I'm not sure if that has been studied for Colemak.

From TFA:

The keys in Colemak are scientifically arranged with the following goals in mind:
...
Typing should alternate between the hands for greater speed and comfort
I'm looking for any and all feedback. Thanks guys! nikhil, founder - nikhil@lawdingo.com
JS interpreter (V8 under the hood) runs in a process pool -- similar to a thread pool, but outside of the core rethinkdb process. The code running in the JS interpreter cannot corrupt memory or crash the rethinkdb process (if it crashes, rethinkdb will simply start another v8 process). You also can't write from js executed on the server, so the data is safe (though I think it's more of a limitation than a feature).

Currently if you write an infinite loop in js, or write code in a way where it starts eating up memory we don't do anything to restart the js process, but it would be relatively easy to implement.
from my testing, google.com and gmail have been blocked in Beijing for a few days now.

Of course, this is the same government that forced taxi drivers to remove the handles from their taxis so passengers can't roll down their windows, because they were afraid someone would drive by Tiananmen square and drop a bunch of ping pong balls with political messages on them.
And a good book for folks who already know how to program and want to learn Lisp in some depth is "Practical Common Lisp" by Peter Seibel. http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
I thought it was going to be about how single people can work for 24 hours straight while all the married ones have to go home at 5.