skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm simply pointing out that there is no "universal service" in the taxi world now. I'm not claiming that Uber will create such a service.
But it is seriously damaging to their company and there are other things they could do:

If they notice apparent click-fraud, they should suspend payments and notify the account holders. If the fraud continues (either this one issue or if it repeats regularly)[1], shut them down.

Like it or not, Google (and others like eBay) have put themselves in the position of supplying people's livelihood. There needs to be more respect for that fact. They've shown that they believe their algorithms can be wrong by reinstating people's accounts when stupid crap like this hits, but I contend that is not good enough. Crap like this should just not be hitting.

They can have automated systems and reasonable algorithms at the same time.

1. Some will probably say this gives fraudsters more chances to learn Google's algorithms. How hard is it to create a new account?
They disable ad serving in absolutely legitimate AdSense accounts bringing over $10,000 per month just as easily (this has happened to us); without any real possibility for a recourse. These posts are important for any founder or webmaster so they realize the grave inherent risks to their business if they plan to monetize only via AdSense.
Living without the internet: how do you look at porn?
Nothing particularly interesting seems to have actually happened. Some posts got onto the Dashboard, which was still running. In fact, everything was still working just fine.

Script kiddies found a small crack and went for it.
This applies to more than just Google. Your income should not solely depend on one party, unless you're in an employment relationship with them, which carries with it various sorts of legal and social obligations that are a lot harder to simply end on a whim.

Does your revenue depend entirely on being in Apple's good graces, and being dropped from the App Store would end it? Does it depend solely on Google's advertising money? Or even if not solely, if 75% of your revenue comes from one source, it will be game changing if you lose that.

This is why monopolies are a bad idea, and duopolies aren't much better. A healthy market will have at least three viable players, with none controlling over 50% of the market, allowing you to diversify and be save from any one of them deciding not to play.
"Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term." — News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch

Translation: we're shutting it down because we couldn't find anyone with less than two brain cells to like and pay for our crappy content.
Whatsapp: Has Facebook Found Its Next Instagram?
You Can't Keep Your Money Because It Belongs To The Government
Apparently they have internet in North Korea. Even have a single Internet cafe in Pyongyang according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea .

However they could have a hundred internet providers there, but if Kim wanted to collectively log off it wouldn't help much I suppose.

It's probably not the number of service providers that matters. It's the power of the Mad Despot.
You have absolutely no concept of the difference between "leverage" and "extortion", the latter of which is exactly what you described. Last I checked, not only is extorting your customers bad for business, it's probably illegal. That being said, I'm going to dare throw an anti-Apple comment in here: after all the BS Apple's pulled in the past few years, I'm sure most people in the world wouldn't blink twice if Samsung did try to pull something like that (how would you feel if one of your clients tried to sue you?). Fortunately, I think Samsung is smart enough to not pull a stunt like that.

And for what it's worth - "[...] Supply chain management at Apple's scale is unbelievably hard." How do you think Samsung feels?
I've bought a MBP every year for 6 years. I spend so much time on them that it's absolutely worth it to get increased performance and space. My current rMBP has 16GB RAM and 512 GB SSD -- more than enough.

But I'll get the next rMBP for one reason: improved graphics performance. At the 1920x1200 resolution, even things as mundane as scrolling webpages is pretty low-FPS. Also, Google Chrome's aggressive GPU use seemed to be locking the whole OS about once a day, forcing a hard reboot.

Aside from the locking, which now seems to have been resolved with 10.8.2 12C60, I'd say it's been worth it to have phenomenal screen resolution over my previous MBP. Nearly two whole browser windows side-by-side is terrific. I've seen mild ghosting, but I wouldn't say it's affected my day to day operation.
This seems like a great way to seriously injure a competitor's ability to conduct business. In a sense, it could be used for a denial of service attack.
Sure! Though I'd love if people would ask this question before giving negative votes. Anyway, before you read these, just try to be a bit impartial towards any side, which is generally difficult for Apple fans.

(Tell me very honestly, if you think the logo of this small coffee shop in Germany has really any similarity with Apple's logo, except the fact that both of them are derived from the fruit apple!)
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1231539-Apple-sues-small...

That poor woman just sold coffee, not electronic devices. Any sane mind would not find any 'infringement', unless they believe Apple 'owns' the fruit itself now.

Second, they sue an online GROCERY shop from Poland since its website name is "a.pl". ".pl" is the top level domain code for Poland, a is the first alphabet. Even they are not competing with Apple in any manner, but it claims "they are using our reputation". WTF!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409669,00.asp

They always know that small businesses can't fight back, so they are easy targets.
No, please don't come up with arguments like "What's wrong with defending your brand?". This is NOT defending your brand. There's no brand name getting hurt here. You just think you own the fruit.
Last time I've disassembled a Lenovo laptop it still had the entire thin aluminum shield thingie inside, y'know. And desktops are made of metal instead of wood and rich corinthian leather for (a bunch of) reason(s). On the other hand, my experiences with Lenovo T-series were mostly of the "flimsy pieces of crap that only look solid" category (but maybe I was just less than lucky).

Aggregated studies of customer satisfaction seem to still be so much better for Apple than for other manufacturers, that it's a bit hard to blame it all on confirmation bias.
Do you have a source for this? I have never heard this and I very much doubt it is true. If you look at the "Paying Taxes Report" from the world bank + PWC, the UK has a yearly time to comply of 110 hours - versus 175 hours USA, 207 hours Germany, 330 hours Japan... Time to comply isn't a perfect metric of course, but all the classical "easy tax" countries like Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore, HongKong, Ireland have even lower numbers than the UK, so there is at least a correlation. (If you control for economically comparable factors)
Absolutely, there should be a full blown appeal process. There are a few items in place but in the cases of several YouTubers I have tried to help through this process they often don't result in any additional clarity or reversal.
>I wasn't sure what I needed to do to get to the "Desktop" mode where it looked like Windows 7

Really? I suppose you could have difficulty with it, but the "Desktop" tile is quite clearly visible...
With very few points you don't have certain privileges on the site (downvoting, reporting) and you can get hellbanned for an unpopular comment.
I would say a 99.9999% success rate is a reasonable algorithm.
It's true the writeup didn't mention Gauss, but the PDF that the author linked did mention that.

But either way wouldn't the importance for the field of computing in this case be more on the application of the algorithm and not who published first? I.e. if no one knows about a computable algorithm used sparingly 150 years earlier then I don't think it's completely unfair to give some credit to one who later rediscovers and popularizes that algorithm.

According to the Wikipedia article the Cooley-Tukey algorithm was an independent re-discovery so it's not as if Tukey had read Gauss and then tried to steal the credit (it wasn't even noted until almost 20 years later that Cooley-Tukey was a rediscovery of a Gaussian algorithm).

It's almost unfair though... I think if we really deeply dove into what mathematicians like Gauss, Euler, Cauchy, etc. came up with that there may be other "CS" algorithms that were innovated hundreds of years before computers were available to really popularize them. Every time I read about Euler and Gauss especially I end up even more impressed.
I'm not sure I buy the premise. It's not Google (the company), it's the internet as a whole. More competition for news reduces margins. Suppose Google search was a grant-funded nonprofit operation with no ads. How would that improve the condition of news reporters?
How do you manage to keep up with the content? I'm surprised at how you manage to dig up so many obscure and interesting tidbits of information so regulary.
The advice isn't about beer snobbery, it's about fitting in. The author is spot on with his recommendations.

Amstel Light is an extremely common and perfectly respectable choice for the mid-ranking employees of my clients and partners when I take them out to a bar. (Senior decision makers generally get a dinner where it's wine and scotch all round.) Natty light, PBR and Keystone are not acceptable and will lead to comments, raised eyebrows and a sense that you don't quite belong.

Edit: It is, of course, all about branding and not a bit about the beer. Amstel has made themselves 'premium'; PBR did the opposite. If you're a connoisseur, as your profile says, then you can avoid the issue altogether by ordering a good craft beer. That's still keeping it classy. You'll just need to exercise more.
In general, kids can learn by trial and error quite efficiently, sometimes in a matter of minutes or seconds and shouldn't be used as a benchmark for how intuitive an interface is,

That seems like a great benchmark to me. If trial and error gives feedback that allows you to qiuckly learn the UI then that's pretty useful.

At the end of the day a lot of usability is about two things:

1. Consistency
2. Familiarity

If trial and error is effective then consistency is in place. Skeumorphism is about taking familiarity of the real world and applying it to the digital world. And this actually has some use, in particular for UI that users won't interact with much. There's no chance for users to be become familiar with that UI. But for UI that is always there, skeumorphism becomes limiting and can become unusable when you really want to extend beyond what you see in the real world.

Metro says, "The digital world is becoming so prevelant that we should optimize for it, not just the physical world." Is Metro perfect? No. But I think it has the right idea to figure out what works on computers/tablets/phones first. Don't be encumbered by trying to map to physical objects. People will spend so much time with the digital objects that they may spend 10m doing trial and error the first time, but shortly the digital world will be just as familiar as the physical world. Lets not waste the opportunity to introduce the right interactions.
Usage of Perl Critic and claiming that Perl 'rots your brain' are miles apart.

Also, I don't see anyone claiming that Python will 'rot your brain' because PEP-8 isn't enforced by the language.
The features in our platform. Our customers who come from other platforms tell us that it is about the depth of features and the simplicity of our APIs.

We allow you to bring your own carrier services. This is huge for enterprises and service providers.

Our ability to register SIP devices - actually connect your IP phone or soft client

Our support team continues to get rave reviews from our customers…
For anyone who hasn't seen Bret Victor's mind-blowing talk, here it is:

http://vimeo.com/36579366
I thought that running that animation will fix stuck pixels, not cure ghosting.
Misleading title. A small BASIC program serves as an introduction to one topic in the book. This is like arguing that "It was a dark and stormy night" is the subject of a mystery novel.
Indeed. Mass click fraud (and you don't even need to enlist the services of a botnet; there are Asian companies that will do this for you at a flat rate), YouTube shenanigans such as mass flagging or fake DMCAs (resulting in videos being pulled for significant lengths of time).

That's one of Google's primary problems and it will only get worse with popularity - they need better CS.
"...but I'd argue that you won't find better English speakers for the same amount of money anywhere in Europe."

Wow, I must admit I've never heard this opinion expressed before. That was why I was surprised in my previous comment. All you hear in Ireland is that "wages are too high, we're not cost competitive" blah-blah-blah.

I've heard that you can get programmers in places like Germany, Scandinavia and parts of Eastern Europe (esp. countries like Estonia, Poland and Latvia) for relatively cheap and they nearly all speak good/great English too. Maybe that is for more contract work than for hiring on a more permanent basis though, I've never hired anyone myself.

Can I ask, what line of work are you in? You seem to have a broad perspective on this.
We launched today - http://www.ultimategiftlists.com - we've spent the last week on it. I got bored of having to write an email with a series of links to my family to tell them what I wanted for Christmas and for my birthday so built this..
Just pointing out that for anyone I've ever met, the antennagate was just media sites drumming up page-views.

I never had an issue, and despite everyone at my office having iPhone4s and 4Ss, the only time any of us were ever able to affect antenna-strength was having a wet hand, and then purposefully applying a lot of pressure to attempt to attenuate the case.

It could be the signal-strength display "fix" was hiding issues (actually, this is almost certainly the case), but in practice, it was never an issue, and the 4 had consistently better signal than any other device I've owned, including a GalaxyS2 since the iPhones could get a good enough signal in elevators that previous phones (both iPhone and Android) didn't.

And despite being the same basic design AFAICT, never seen a mention of the issue with the iPhone5.
Yes, it clearly mentions that. Pretty cool stuff, but I know for a fact that Philips were working on this too a 3 years ago. When I say working, I actually mean they had working prototypes back then.
Open government report card
The Lean Startup Conference – LIVE BLOG from 4 am
Hacking Happy
For the downvoted (not "punished") comments:

1 (FizzBuzz): You're responding to a strawman ("unrealistic audition programming for a live audience") and dismissing, rather than responding to the very point the article makes at great length ("Perhaps the hiring pool really is that bad"). I wouldn't have voted it down, but it's honestly not much of a value-add.

2 (Craigslist middleman): Again, I wouldn't have downvoted, but you're being assertive for one side in the debate without backing your assertion by reasoning or arguments. Also, it might just be me, but I catch a whiff of aggression in your comment.

3 (same thread): You're aggressive and you're asserting that some nefarious secrecy is going on, when no-one else has claimed that.

Granted, in both of 2 and 3, there's a likelihood of you being voted down because it's a story about an entrepreneurial guy doing well, and you disagreeing with the legitimacy of what he's doing. This is a very entrepreneurial forum, so there's a bias against that.
> As a loyal customer of apple for almost 11 years (iMac G4) my loyalty has been shaken.

I really hate bloggers that do shit like this. Apple isn't an airline so bringing up your Apple mileage isn't helping. Really, 11 years and this one problem shakes your loyalty? Not their DRM, custom screws, custom cables, EOLing still powerful Macbooks, making free services paid (iTools), or the $1000 price bump when they introduced the G5 towers.

I've been an Apple user for years (20+) and I have no loyalty to them whatsoever. Their products work for me and as long as they continue to work I'll continue to buy them. Also, a real Apple user would know to never buy a new version of their products. v1 is usually full of design and technical flaws. And each genius is different, keep asking or try another store until you get the satisfaction you demand. Apple Geniuses are given a surprising amount of latitude (more than most tech retail) so if you can convince just one it's a problem than for Apple it's a problem.
My entire dashboard was filled with these worm posts an hour ago, and hit a number of major sites.
One thousand times this. And it doesn't count if you eat after the first drink, and hors d'oeuvres are useless. You need to scarf down a burger, a couple of slices of bread, some rice, pasta, anything voluminous to line your stomach BEFORE that first sip. It makes all the difference.
I have a retina iPad (version 3) and since 2 months regularly I've got a full white screen when I turn it on and I have to make some voodoo incantations in order to make it disappear. So finally I sent it to Apple and they returned me without any repair after having concluded they could not reproduce this issue. So now I'm back with an iPad that is not working correctly half of the time. I'm disappointed at Apple, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. I'd live near an Apple store I'd brought the iPad to show them the issue but it's not the case.
"The new Dell Ubuntu laptop is the only thing I can think of as a reasonable alternative to what Apple's doing."

Maybe you should get your head out of the gutter and realize a laptop isn't deemed "good" because it's an alternative to "what Apple's doing".

Edit: And to whoever downvoted this, thank you for proving my point.
The ability to down vote and change the title bar are lined to karma.
This is what has put me off buying the 13" Retina- people were complaining about the 15, then they left the 13 with integrated graphics only. Can't bode well.
I could consistently re-create antennagate on my iphone 4 every single time I "held it wrong." I was forced to completely change the way I help my phone, permanently.
No I'm not. I'm saying that there is no acceptable insulation in the device. The chassis for example uses air gap between the board and the base for insulation. Even condensation can bridge it, which is the theory why mine exploded.

Regarding appearance, and? Does that really matter?

Why you pick a ThinkPad: http://appel.hu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/rollcage.jpg

That and you can throw the damn thing across the room and it'll still work. Mine is 5 years old, has been thrown, dropped, spilled on, yanked off the table, stood on and it's as good as new.

I'm not a fanboy - the thing is just built to last which when you're spending n-thousand dollars is a shit load more important than the shiny factor which you are obviously obsessed with.
Sorta fails on the list example. The ul's are always displayed even with nothing in the list. It's missing the template definition for lists.

{{#names}}<ul>{#item}<li>{{name}}</li>{{/item}}</ul>{{/names}}
You nailed it. The pretty factor is not at all important, neither is blindly copying a vendor.
> Why would I buy a Lenovo T-series? It looks virtually indistinguishable from any laptop made in the late 1990s

That's the point!

Thinkpad T series laptops are what apple laptops can only dream of being.
Run ChromeOS in Ubuntu
>But a physical button has a shape or appearance that makes it look like something to push. It's learnable.

And there are also plenty of things that looked like buttons when I was little, that I thought you could push. But you couldn't. I don't really buy this argument.
Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
FightCode - code a JS robot and battle
"focusing too much on a narrow skill set contributes greatly to the perceived skills shortage"

I'd say not just contributes greatly, but is pretty much responsible for 90% of it. Employers aren't willing to find talented people and train them for a month or so -- they think everyone should have been self trained on their exact arbitrary technology stack and have a giant github of related projects.

This is how employers work:
"Oh no! Talented applicant X doesn't have experience with arbitrary framework Z, we better import someone from India because we all know smart Americans can't learn something new in few weeks or a month. Unless they're tech celebrities."
Sadly, Lenovo cannot be relied on as they once were (even for the first few years post-IBM). My W520 has been to warranty depot three times - still not fixed - for this problem that has been known for 1.5 years:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/W520-s...

I'm still using, and loving, my T61P. If only there was a way to get an i5 or i7 in that lovely reliable chassis :(
By your logic people would be posting about how "Apple shook up the UI pardigm" with it's extreme skeumorphism. They're not - it's being almost universally panned. You live in a fantasy world if you believe Apple gets a from the larger tech and design communities.
Ah, the numbers in my head we 90k Chinese speakers and 60k Irish speakers, but I couldn't figure it out from the reports on the census. Do you have a reference I can look at?
I think this has been The Apple Product Cycle for ages.

1) Random problem appears on 1st iteration product
2) Some are lucky and get it repaired, some are not.
3) Lots of petitions and screaming in forums
4) Apple silently changes their policy and gives some kind of extended warranty or replacement (optional)

It's absolutely something Apple should improve, but it's certainly not new.
Ah, didn't realize that - throwback to my xargs days! Thanks for the tip.
website is not accessible for me, anyone cares to paste the questions here?
> It's hard not to believe that a voting ring is involved somehow.

Take that back. It's not true: I have no voting ring for my posts.

And here's some data to back that up. According to the HN Search API I have submitted 373 items that are posts on jgc.org (out of a total of 670). Of those the following karma has been gained:

Points Number of posts

1	81
<5	102
<10	32
<50	74
<100	47
<200	6
<500	31

So, 215 posts out of 373 had less than 10 karma. Only 37 posts out of 373 had > 100. So, as you say, some of my posts (about 10%) are greatly appreciated here, but most are not. No voting ring needed.

All those posts account for 12,624 points of karma (from my total of 18,119 points obtained from submissions, not comments). So 56% of my submissions were for my blog and resulted in 70% of my submission karma.
Understanding Agile Quality Through Acrobatics
If you're only drinking because everyone else is drinking you're a sheep. People who would seriously judge you by what you do or don't drink are not worth knowing.
CentOS Puppet 3 Install With Unicorn & Nginx