skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I totally don't get your display argument - how can a display with higher resolution and which can be brighter in any way be a disadvantage?

I'd rather not sideline this with a discussion about resolution and brightness, because frankly, it's one of those subjective, "try it yourself and see what works best for you" sort of things. In short, I view high brightness as a drawback, not a feature, and the resolution + font size is more important on OS X, where I have a much harder time getting everything to a reasonable size for me in concert.

I'm willing to bet none of that sounds familiar - as I said, it's one of those things where, if you have to ask, it's not an issue for you. All I can recommend in your case is that, if you're considering an XPS13, take look at one of the XPS13 models and seeing if that display works for you or not.
I think I am not the first ine to suggest this, but if you have a company blog, put a small section at the top, where you a) state what your company is about and b) link to your main page. If my first contact with a company is through a blog, I always will want to check first what the company is about, to decide if I want to spend time reading. If you put barriers in my way during that step, I might not even bother at all.
It's a fine article, but the blog could use a bit of UX tweaking too. I have no idea what prismatic is, and the lack of a link to their homepage from their own blog seems like an obvious flaw, which i've seen really often in most website/startups blogs.
What storytelling does to our brains
Might I remind everyone that trading in snuff films (where someone is murdered and taped) is legal.

The act of murder is illegal.

Why is this different for child molestation films? I think we can put both murder and child abuse as horrible crimes.
Marco has a point here. So, without further ado...

Hey Netflix stop saying you're sorry for not being available in Italy and please sort it out already.
One has to wonder if that's not related to how C# and .net are being treated as second class citizens nowadays at Microsoft.

As we saw recently:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842024

they're looking for someone to work on a C# to native code compiler. Even if .net as a VM and the C# to IL compiler are far from gone (and probably never will be), it doesn't look like C# and .net are in favor at Microsoft nowadays.

Oh well, as long as Eric keeps on blogging...
I think it is a nice idea to finance the development via Kickstarter.

I think this could become much more common for common big open source projects, i.e. some particular interesting missing feature or redesign which might need anyway some professional designer or so - financed by the community. And if I am interested in the particular feature, I am also very open to spend a bit money there.

Also, by doing separate campaigns for separate features/goals, you could see where the user really is interested in. For example, in this particular feature (a Win8 Metra GUI for VLC), I am not interested at all so I wont really give any money there. But if it would be something which I would like to have, I definitely would.
Can you explain this? As a Windows 8 user I'm wondering what the issue is.
You should take a look at ThinkWiki, they usually have good information on how to get around the little quirks of Linux on a Thinkpad.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
Those "poor business models" are making plenty of companies lots of money.
One problem I have out of the box with xubuntu (i.e., xfce) is that if I suspend it in a docked configuration (with an external monitor connected and laptop display turned off) and wake it up in undocked config, it doesn't automatically switch to showing stuff on the laptop.

Dunno if it's an XFCE thing or a Ubuntu thing or an X thing or a Linux thing. I'm too lazy to debug this fully. I just yank the power and reboot. :)
No, by which I mean exactly what I wrote. I even gave an example.
well, you got it right this time :)
https://twitter.com/akamai_soti/status/274163048263057408/ph... Akamai traffic for Syria
Yep, I wrote a review of it here: http://unretrofied.com/blog/2012/11/29/review-fantastical-fo...
Vending Machine Randomly Dispenses Old Books
Hey, your point is right on. We'll be adding all that stuff shortly.
Many round-robin DNS failover providers can afford to offer free DNS, though API access is a differentiator:

http://www.cloudflare.com/plans

http://www.dnshat.com/free-dns.html

etc.
With regard to point #1 I generally find VLC to be much more forgiving than the generic video players built into Windows or Mac OS X. VLC will often play damaged video files and all sorts of random, slightly corrupted files found on file sharing sites, etc.

With regard to point #2 it is more than just a new interface look for VLC. It will require extensive rewriting to work within the Windows sandbox using appropriate security sandboxed API's to allow distribution through the Windows Store. There is also the subsequent project to get it to work on ARM architecture, which will be a challenging project due to the reliance on low level C and assembler code.
Great point. It's always easy to assume context where there is none! :)
The preview has been available for a couple of weeks: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Info/Downloads/Default.htm...
...and this is why we can't have anything nice. This should give all of our lawmakers, wanting to impose more and more restrictions on how we use the web, more fuel for their cause.
The 3 Things You Can't Do On Twitter
I'm not the original poster but I'm more interested in discussing Marco's post than the original. The original is attacking a straw-man.
Why does the login form need CSRF protection?
1) Since there are a multitude of codecs, profiles, and containers to encode and deliver videos in, yes.

2) That is all your opinion with no facts to back it up. It is extremely unlikely that Metro is going anywhere at this point.
I agree that having a simultaneous connection limit is a good safeguard. I was just noting that simply limiting the simultaneous connections to eg. 20, without considering all side-effects could lead to a world of hard-to-diagnose-and-reproduce problems and frustrated customers.

HTTP Keep-alive connections play a big role in the number of connections as well so this should be considered when choosing the number.
"The desire grows as it is fed."

[citation needed]

"Furthermore, the reason you hear of child porn rings is because those are what form - people share it with each other in a tit-for-tat sort of way. It absolutely incentivizes the production of more, which means more abused kids."

You believe in driving pedophiles in corners, and are then surprised that they group together in said corners you just drove them into. I'm not sure how that was an unexpected result?

"God damnit HN, I should have known a thread on a Tor node being shut down would bring out all the child porn apologists. Funny how that happens, eh?"

I should have known a thread on a TOR node being shut down would bring out all the irrational witch hunters. Funny how that happens, eh?
Looks great! The underlying service is fantastic so it's good to see the web UI updated. I'd be curious to see some of the other design options they looked at.

I have a few questions:

1. Why is the nav on the right? When I'm scrolling through articles I keep wishing the main content was more centered.

2. Did you guys look at doing a serif font for the header and a sans serif font for the summary? I feel like it would separate the two more.
OT, Prismatic is impressive in the choice of articles it displays. So much so that i have noticed it's getting a bit creepy. On some days when i happen to open a lot of pages on a particular topic, Prismatic will start showing me related stories.
So is it tracking histories? Do all such services track online usage?
Microsoft thinks you're getting 'scroogled' by Google
"Is Anybody Down" is the "new" site that Marc Randazza has set sights on destroying.
Another commenter pointed this out, it's a fair criticism and we'll make an update to the blog accordingly.
Nothing really "forces" people into piracy. They "choose" to do it.
Abandon, no. But they can be expected to push back a bit more on decrees and pressure from Redmond that they not push Linux/Android as equal citizens.

Acer probably has less lattitude in this regard, but HP and Dell have non-trivial inroads to Microsoft's (very profitable) enterprise customers. And if they start building and shipping Linux-based servers that plug into the MS infrastructure they're already supplying, at massively less cost [1], Microsoft's entire fallback plan of milking the enterprise into the sunset (going IBM) is under threat.

[1] Consider an opensource Sharepoint replacement that has all the Exchange/Office/Active Directory integration. HP has the staff and resources to make that happen, given that they can deliver any and all windows plugins necessary to support the edge cases. Or even linux-based web and database servers that play well with an otherwise-MS enterprise.
That's the resolution of all the XPS 13's, I believe. The specs that are different for this model are CPU, memory, graphics card, etc.; things that are likely easy to change. I suppose laptop screens aren't one of those.
You can always increase the font size or lower the brightness...

You can't do the opposite if the display does not support it.
This is a massive over simplication, but my personal take is that the people who make it big always had a nag that they were going to be successful.

Success doesn't strike me as something that you just stumble upon. There is always work to be done, but most people just won't do it. I'm not saying most people are lazy, I just think that they decide to work on the wrong things.

Furthermore, if your determination can be deterred by an article, I wouldn't bet for you to be successful to begin with.
How do you see this playing out? "So, Mr.Node operator. Is that your child porn?"
For Tor, the ratio of legitimate to illegitimate is perhaps 1:1, whereas for taxis it's like 1000:1, or higher. At least that's how I read "as much as".
Realistically, many shows will never make it to my country. So my two choices, in fact, are:
1) Don't watch it.
2) Watch it.
It's not that I'm cheap or impatient. It's not even that I'm lazy (though I am), unless you count not being willing to move to the US.
The full content of the "man sex" page:

http://www.sanitarium.net/jokes/getjoke.cgi?180
Btw, I'm with you. I turn down the brightness of my monitors and have gray-on-black in my terminal windows.

For a while, I even went hardcore and used color-blind color mappings hotkeys via compiz to cut out the white glare backgrounds of web pages.
While I don't totally agree with it, I think the requiring a password on your wifi is not a gray area compared with having a computer virus or a hacked computer. A more comparable analogy would be a hacked Wifi vs a hacked computer - in either case i doubt you'd be liable. That's probably their reasoning in requiring a WiFi password.
(price includes costs of ensuring OS works flawlessly with hardware and delivering updates in the future to keep it that way)
Off-topic: Ha, I like the detail of it starting from meetings at Think Coffee (in Manhattan). I can hardly ever sit down there anymore and not overhear startup talk.

More off-topic: If you need a distraction this morning, here's an NYT article about why Think Coffee is enormously popular among South Koreans:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/a-coffee-shop-a...
I absolutely agree that seizure rules need to be SEVERELY reformed, and that the way that seizures are currently carried out is unacceptable. However, I don't think that it fundamentally changes the situation in this case. Until seizure rules end up getting reformed, law enforcement plays with the hand they've got, not the hand we wish they had. If the choices are between "permanent" seizure or just walking away from a suspect, they'll go for the seizure every time.

Seizing equipment for at least some period of time is absolutely necessary for any kind of forensic examination. It's part of the cost of having laws, and the imperfect nature of human justice means that that cost will occasionally be paid by the innocent as well as the guilty. I agree that that cost should be lower so that innocent people are not unduly punished, but there will always be a cost.
I think you're doing something wrong...
But you should still buy it with built-in Windows? naaahhh
Interesting - in the past I've only ever tried 2 external displays when I've turned the internal display off, come to think of it.

So the XPS13 definitely works with 1 external + 1 internal, but maybe it won't work with a second external after all.
Google+ Boss Just Brilliantly Deconstructed Everything Annoying About Facebook
I imagine piracy stats are probably more accurate then Nielsen ratings.
you just have a different value for baseline. I assure you that getting multi-touch trackpads ready for more than two finger gesture support under x does indeed remain quite fiddly in the majority of cases today.
What is the reasoning for taking anything more than the Hard drives?
Possibly that the exit node is NOT his means of subsistence and the legal status of taxi driving/Internet Provider.
Obama Turns His Back On Silicon Valley
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fatal-fruitcake-mary-kay-and...

Funny, the button clearly says "Buy now". Not "License now" or anything else. If retailers want to make that distinction clear thats fair enough, otherwise I'm perfectly happy with the attitude you refer to.
How we manage our sales pipeline with Trello
Story Card - An Open Source Agile Story Card Dashboard
Previous submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4515019
Can you say more about why you prefer the Mac?
Rails Strip_tags == Massive Overkill
Not everything copyrighted is a throwaway popular culture movie. If they were, perhaps it would be justifiable to completely eliminate public domain.

Everything after 1923 is in copyright, and thus affects an era even before movies with recorded sound were even invented.
H.264 video in Firefox for Android
It's either New York-ese or investment banker-ese (hard to distinguish between the two sometimes). They also nounify "spend" for some reason.
Ask HN: Good SAS Resources.
I am trying to pick up SAS for the purpose of data analysis. Does anyone know and good resources for one to teach themselves?
It would appear this was fixed upstream and OSX just hasn't pulled in the latest. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=224407
$1,549 for a 1366x768 display?!? And they say Macs are expensive?
I believe you are working with a different concept than I meant. The concept of these "interchangeable gears" is that a person can walk out of one dev/manager/retail/teaching job and walk into another in a different industry, and be completely effective on day one.

This is a concept I learned from several professors across many classes in 2 separate colleges. I've read it in management blogs too -- it's a widely held incorrect concept.
Windows 8 is an enormous gamble and the firesale upgrade price reflects that MS sees it that way. They are all but bribing users to upgrade, and if you want the Windows improvements from the last 3 years, this is your only route. This is the first time there has been a serious discount for an upgrade license for Windows ever. (Although maybe the Win 3.1 upgrade might have been only $50... I don't recall any more, but in that case it was well worth it).

With Windows 8 Microsoft is foisting a whole new UI paradigm on desktop users who didn't ask for it and mostly don't want it. Yes, you can still use the desktop mode, but I'm betting a lot of non-techie users will just suffer with Metro because they have been conditioned to unquestioningly accept arbitrary awfulness from computer software. I doubt 95% of computer users ever go outside of the web browser and Office applications... and no matter how awful the Metro implementations of these apps are (I imagine IE in Metro isn't much different, but other apps?) they'll just deal with it. After all, they learned how to use Word, one of the most arbitrary and capricious pieces of software this side of Lotus Notes.

I've seen it in person too many times to believe that most non-technical people don't realize software could be a lot better and that it doesn't have to be the way it is. And in a lot of corporate environments, even if they know, they can't do anything about it.

And the only reason MS is pushing Metro on non-portable device users is to jump-start their own app store, because I'm sure they are drooling over the idea of taking a significant cut out of every software sale like Apple does. They are drooling so much that they are willing to risk antagonizing desktop users in order to get it, understanding that a lot of people will just think "this is the new normal" and go along with it, because they don't have the knowledge or experience to realize they have some say in the matter.

This is not a bash on users... a user should not have to be an expert unless he wants to be, but Microsoft is counting on being able to strongarm these users to suit Microsoft's needs, not the users'.

MS is years behind in the tablet and phone markets and Surface doesn't look like the iPad-killer it needs to be to give them a foothold in a market where they are currently all but irrelevant. Ditto phones. MS can't coast on the biennial desktop/laptop upgrade cycle the way they used to because a huge chunk of money spent on computing devices is going to devices where MS doesn't (currently) have a decent entry.

Meanwhile, a lot of users will needlessly suffer with the angry fruit-salad of Metro and hate it, but just take it as the new "normal". If that weren't true, Office would have actually gotten better over the last 15 years.
I've always been interested in creating a RAD interface similar to how MS Access works.

When I was 18 years old, I created some simple patient management software in Access, and it was great! Within a few weeks of never using Access before and no real familiarity with any SQL, I had built a pretty cool application I thought.

There was only one big issue: the dependency of the software was Microsoft Access...a pretty big overhead for a single application.

I've been using Twitter Bootstrap almost since day 1, and with a good PHP framework (like Kohana), I can pretty much make RAD applications similar to what I did in access in half the time, and there are a lot less limits of who can use that software.

One day, my goal is to create an interface builder with Twitter Bootstrap elements (I've dabbled in it before w/ other projects, and I've seen some great software on HN of people that are doing UI builders w/ Twitter Bootstrap), but then you can write custom queries for filtering data. It wouldn't be a 1:1 SQL command, I believe they are too complex for what I want to do and it seems like a lot of work.

My though is it'd be a drag and drop interface similar to the one in Access.

--------

If there is a startup that's doing an Access killer, then that is awesome! It'd be even more cool if it was web-based!
The laptop itself looks great, but what are the opinions on the profile tool? Doesn't something like http://vagrantup.com/ with vubdle, pip, rubygems, apt make it obsolete?

Also, linux dev environments are finnicky because every developer has their own miniscule variant that drives them crazy if it doesn't exist. Pre-made dev environments seem like the antithesis of this.

Opinions?

edit: It seems I have slightly misunderstood. It seems more like chef-solo for dev tool configs.
About the format it says "Other lines should begin with a month and day. They may be entered in almost any format, either numeric or as character strings." So "month/day" isn't a requirement.

And there's no reason the dates can't be placed in their true order--calendar.ubuntu is ordered by version number and calendar.debian has multiple groups of dates ordered by year.
Socialism, or guillotines for that matter, do far less than the American dream to actually help the poor.
Technically, it is an i7 ("3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3517U (4M Cache, up to 3.0 GHz)").
Some men just want to watch the world burn. And it's not about "sending a message", it's just gleeful vandalism. Lulz. It's also about exploiting society's disproportionate obsession regarding nudity and sex. But not with the goal of changing anything - no. It's just fun to see lives of stupid people destroyed.

It's somewhat like being a pyromaniac - you like to see things burn. Though just having that mindset doesn't make you an arsonist - that's a pyromaniac that's also a sociopath.
Doesn't support mozGetUserMedia, unfortunately. Vendor prefixes are, as usual, a pain.
Agreed. We use it and it has been rock-solid, has a handy API, and a nice usable console that doesn't get in the way of someone who knows what they're doing.

The one bummer with Route53 is http://aws.amazon.com/route53/faqs/#DNSSEC.
Thanks for mentioning the keyboard, I use the Das Keyboard too and the (imo) terrible Mac keyboard has kept me from buying one for serious use. How much have you used Lenovo's laptops? Can you make a comparison to their keyboards?

Edit: the older Lenovo keyboards; reading more comments has informed me that Lenovo's using chiclet keyboards now too.
No, the 55K visas moving from DV to EB are immigration visas. As for immigration dropping to zero in 2007-2009 you're wrong too, over 1 million legal immigrants in the year 2008 same as 2007 and 2009 http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2008/...
News about Foursquare has been pretty bleak lately. I tried using it to find restaurants but their search results page was a disaster on mobile: tiny text and it wouldn't allow zooming in. They just updated the Android app but it has a bunch of reviews along the lines of "doesn't work": https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joelapenna... All this when they apparently have only 20M users, which seems low for how long they've been around.

Any HNers with an optimistic view, and/or use Foursquare and think it's awesome?
Direct link to video for others who don't read TechCrunch:

http://youtu.be/lD9FAOPBiDk

I don't hate IE, but for me to consider start using it, it would need to run on all major platforms and be open ala Chrome and Firefox. Otherwise, I don't see the point.
If they do gut it, can we at least get all the science they've done in open source, especially since they've used $5 billion in tax payer's money to do it? At the very least, that research could be a start point for someone else's fusion research 10 years later.
Can also connect newrelic with it and get stack traces logging how much time each component of your app is taking including DB queries.
A simple box that can bring the Internet anywhere
We either have freedom or speech: sending any data to anyone or we do not.

"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither." -- Benjamin Franklin

I choose freedom.
I, like most programmers, am comfortably in the top 5% and cannot even imaging being able to own a home like you describe at my income level.

Sure you can. Anyone "comfortably in the top 5%" can afford a very large home, it just might not be exactly where you'd want it to be.

You're choosing instead to devote more of your income to being close to where you work and/or living in an area with ready access to services you find valuable.
Brainstorming for New Startup Ideas: A Framework to Spur Creative Thinking
I.B.M. and Ohio State University to Open Center for Big Data
How robust is it? Does it use plastic or aluminum? How well does the trackpad work under Linux (e.g., does it detect that one finger is resting only resting on it, while you use the trackpad with another finger)?
But I do have access to it. It's right there on all those torrent sites.

And morality is subjective. If enough people think that whether or not the creators are selling a TV show on itunes makes a difference to the morality of downloading it from other sources, then it does.
Sources for those ratios please.