skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, it is a Swing app and Swing apps on Linux look atrocious. Especially the font rendering looks like taken from Linux distributions from 10 years ago.

When you see this on the first run, it kind of successfully undermines the argument about ridiculous attention to detail. I know that Swing is not under JetBrains' control, but Eclipse looks fine.
Intel says Company Committed to Sockets
> I'd expect kids will grasp the meaning of symbols really well, but may be easily frustrated if the symbols don't differ how they expect.

The game is, in principle, just a REPL. Kids will learn quickly by erring and iterating on their mistakes. ;-).
That is super interesting, thanks for the pointer. Looking forward to reading over the paper.
...and Benny Goodman and Count Basie.
I love the look of this ( https://www.balancedpayments.com/ ), is it just US only and requires US bank accounts?

I have customers and sellers in the UK and would love to be able to offer an escrow service and payment solution for them.
Like nuclear weapons? Nerve gas? Anthrax?
Reducing Churn by Identifying Unusual User Behaviours: Painting a User Story
Rube Goldberg just beat Isaac Newton on Camera
I'm just going through this and while I love the concept, there is one criticism from me. The course is very comfortable to walk through, but it doesn't make use of the benefits of the online environment.

It is just "this is how it goes, now type it" kind of teaching. I am almost done with the second session, and most likely have completely forgotten most of the content from the first. If anybody else is going to try teaching stuff in a similar way, please let me try to play/try out stuff as early as possible. Even if the exercises are completely pointless, please make them a bit harder than just exchanging an "+" for an "-". It feels so pointless having such a great learning environment and not using it to make it feel less of a brain-dump process.
Lean Startup Conference - Crowdsourced Notes from WeWorkLabs
I remember playing a lot with my old TI-83. One of the most impressive games was DOOM: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/238/23843.html Best video I can find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuupoxmeQ6U

Unfortunately I never had a TI-89. Would've been awesome if I had one back in the day, and then test these games: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/405/40593.html and http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/323/32318.html
Show HN: Location search done well (Geolocation and auto suggest)
This is dumb, dumb, dumb. This will surely bring the Federal Govt into the 3D printing culture. Not only will it potentially violate state laws for those states that require background checks for handgun purchasing but I can see a potential argument from the Feds that this violates interstate regulations against transporting firearms.

Plus if it becomes possible to produce a 100% resin based gun (not sure how without springs) this will cause Homeland Security to go apeshit over the potential of a difficult to detect weapon.

I see nothing good out of the effort. Not that this would make the slightest bit of difference but it's often better to self-police one's industry rather than forcing the Feds to do it.
Best Buy's gross margins hover around 25%, and that's before all the rest of their overhead kicks in. Best Buy probably took a bath here.
As you may know, the mandatory consecutive days of vacation time isn't due to the kindness of their heart. Instead, it's an audit control. The idea is that if you are forced to stay away from work for some amount of time, it's harder to cover up fraud or other unscrupulous activity. Many companies have a similar policy, although it's typically a week of consecutive days off.
Completely agree that a news aggregator isn't one of the world's 10 most pressing needs. It isn't in the top 100 either.

But Prismatic has told me about articles that make me better at what I do. Depending how widespread that experience is, they may be having a larger impact on our 10 most pressing needs than most teams that attack those needs directly.
Welch effect: people first to be laid off are junior members of macroscopically underperforming teams, who had the least to do with its underperformance because they were not influential on those teams.

(I named it for Jack Welch, father of rank-and-yank.)

Consequently, companies tend to lay off from the middle, not bottom.
Podiatrist tustin
R doesn't seem to get much frontpage love on HN, or even if it does and I haven't seen, what would people suggest is the technology for statistics going forward? I really hoped it would be around Clojure (e.g. Incanter[1]) and not Python, for entirely selfish reasons.

[1]: http://incanter.org/
Flatstrap - It's Bootstrap without the gradients and rounded corners
As usual, Northern Europe is top of the world.

This is why I enjoy the idea of a European Union. As dysfunctional as it looks right now, it still puts my homeland France together in a big bag with the likes of Sweden, The Netherlands, Denmark or Norway, who regularly top the charts in terms of fight against corruption, equlity, education, citizen happiness and tons of other good metrics.

It's always nice to have that kind of example right next door.
Oh, I had thought SPJ was reducing his workload, too. I must not have read carefully enough; sorry.
Excellent question.

Simply put: We follow where growing companies are looking for talent. That's our indicator.

Banks, hedge funds and other parts of the financial sector use a hell of a lot of fancy tech (they're the first "big data" after all), and there's a lot of expertise that's been locked up there for too long.

When I left finance (4.5 years, 4 years ago... hells yeah) I had all sorts of engineering skills, but knew nothing of the companies, how to evaluate employers, or what exact tools were most in demand or growing.

Helping people answer those questions more quickly than I could is our mission.
I'm honestly curious as to how you mean DRY here (as I've principally only seen it with software issues). Do you mean once you do an initial configuration then write a set of standards for how it should be carried out that ought to be made available across companies?
Referly's Top Users and Products
This is brilliant marketing by Thinkful.
I agree, Balanced is a great service. Thank you!
On another (un?)related note, Citibank ran a 'Cyber Monday' in India where

"it would provide discounts of up to 60 per cent"

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-02/news...
No, I caught that. I just honestly don't think what's witnessed in that screenshot would be repaired by a screen of any resolution. It's a UI/UX tragedy of a severely high order.
The problem sounds like it was a bug with vender interoperability based on the unidirectional link detection that most people run on fiber based uplinks. Personally I would have went with a homogenous environment with staged deployment. While the server guys seem smart, having a professional network design team commissioned to do the work should have prevented this by labbing it up properly in the first instance. That said, I completely understand outages because projects like these are all a game of calculated risk management.
Moleskine Notebook that works as an analog iPhone app
Sorry, I still don't understand. I checked your profile, visited your twitter profile, found out that you're following around 2100 people. How many "tweets" is that per day? Do you really read them all? I feel I'd go insane doing so much "context switches of mind" to read 140-char messages of 2100 different people.

I also tried to see some random samples of the tweets from the people you follow. My impression: most of them have the form:

"@somebody: yeah right" "@somebodyelse: no, I don't" "mumble mumble sil.ly/asdasdew" etc.

I know, such "substantial" messages are not only twitter-specific. I believe you that you enjoy the whole experience. I just don't understand what's in there for me, from the people like you who like it I get the impression that I'm missing something and it frustrates me still that I can't "get" what that is. Thanks.
Verizon to offer daily deals based on tracking your phone data
see GigaOm to learn more about this phone-tracking twist: http://gigaom.com/mobile/att-verizon-offer-daily-deals-with-a-phone-tracking-twist/
Or The Mars Volta, or Cinematic Orchestra, or the Mission Impossible theme. Anyway, Time Out is great, but it is anything but overlooked.
I miss the whimsical nature of the previous status page (it seemed to fit with GitHub's "voice" better). But I'm guessing this version isn't going to crash when GitHub does (https://github.com/blog/1261-github-availability-this-week). Hopefully it's statically generated.
There’s Now a Facebook for Unpopular People
mydomain.com is another "real" site that many people use in example scenarios. It's actually a domain registrar.
That's exactly how I see all prospective and current hobbies--if I'm doing it entirely for fun, it doesn't seem like it's worth my time. With so much to pick from, I'm always looking for something that on top of being exciting has lots of synergy with other stuff I'm currently doing, or builds up skills for me to realize long term visions. Great post concept.
GigaOM has a story about this phone-tracking twist: http://gigaom.com/mobile/att-verizon-offer-daily-deals-with-...
I'll reply to my own post as I've asked in the freenode #balanced room:

> 23:05 <mjallday> buro9: Balanced can debit cards from pretty much anywhere in the world. Payouts currently require a US bank account

> 23:05 <mjallday> buro9: you can subscribe to https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/23 to get updates when make we progress on the international payouts
Revenues aren't profits. Over the last 4 years their pre-tax profit on revenues was 3.6%. Even assuming this was much more lucrative than average, I suspect they lost money.

The real cost doesn't come in the suit, though. It comes in lost opportunities and increased deal-making costs because potential partners are much less likely to trust them now.
Mad Magazine Celebrates The Dumbest Things In 2012, Facebook IPO Is #16
Humble Bundle (YC W11) has sold $3.6M in worth of games in its latest THQ Bundle
"MVC, Backbone, wireframing ... Django, Rails, Node, Hadoop ... Amazon Web Services & Heroku ... Git in a Nutshell
Continuous deployment & TDD"

They should teach more than just the latest (popular) concepts/languages like node, ruby, python. There seems to be little mention of important concepts such as data types, pointers, and OOP.
If you want to get down with different meters and rhythm you need to check out: Dimi Mint Abba (album: Moorish Music from Mauritania), Afrocuba de Matanzas (find them playing a batarumba), Orchestre Poly-Rythmo (album: the vodoun effect). Lots of others, but those hit all sorts of territories taken together.
Facebook Wants Game Makers to Develop for Its Platform — Or Else
Agree - in the US, try and use the VIN and prompt the user to declare any addons outside of factory stock to be covered.
One thing in that list I'm pretty sure they won't deliver is superior reliability.

You can argue the tech has some reliability advantages, but I'm guessing it will take a decade or so to match the incumbents in all-around reliability, seeing as that's the hardest thing to get right as a newcomer.

Still, can't wait to play around with the cool tech!
As far as I understand it, it's more of a "Bottom/Top" versus "Top/Bottom" thinking. Personally, looking at:

void checkCloseWorkshop() {
if ( noMoreElves() ) {
fireAllReindeer();
}
}

is enough, I don't need to look more precisely. But, for someone who is more "Bottom/Top", the second version is a headache because they need to jump everywhere and keep 10 different files/functions open all the time.

An anecdote of this, I once worked with a programmer who was "Bottom/Top" and really hated functions. (1500+ lines function was the way to go for him). He would then refactor my code like this:

void checkCloseWorkshop() {
bool noMoreElves() {
return elfCount == 0;
}

void fireAllReindeer() {
for (int i = 0; i < reindeerCount; ++i) {
delete reindeerArray[i];
}
delete reindeerArray;
}

if ( noMoreElves() ) {
fireAllReindeer();
}
}

I.e. Pasting my functions into the other functions he needed.. rather than just calling mine or moving them in another file. Obviously, there was no tests or frameworks used by this company. This is a true example of "Bottom/Top" thinking.

Last note, I understand your point but there's a way to mix both strategies by using high-level strategies. For instance, fireAllReindeer is deleting an array while noMoreElves is checking for emptiness. Good C++ programmers would use boost or the STD functors/SmartPointers rather then manually reinventing the wheel every time.
You should pretty much just default to secure random.

/dev/urandom is fine; in Ruby apps, I'd use OpenSSL::Random.random_bytes or ActiveSupport::SecureRandom.random_number.
What do you mean by front-end web designer? Do you design and code front-end as well? There are plenty of jobs in NYC looking for front-end devs with design chops. Check out nytm.org/made-in-nyc/ for a list of hiring companies.

On your resume, be sure to link to your portfolio and github as well. Be prepared to do mini-code projects as a interview test.
Actually, I believe in the end the court didn't give any kind of jury instruction about the deleted e-mails in Apple vs Samsung. Apple's contention was that Samsung should've anticipated that they were about to be sued and retained any relevant e-mails even before the lawsuit had been filed, and the judge sided with Apple on this until it turned out Apple hadn't bothered to retain their own e-mails from that period either despite having actual firm knowlege they were going to file a lawsuit.
Who is surprised? No-one in the article nor the sub-editor's choice of headline suggests surprise.

Where are the sensationalist lines that you see? Apart from the heading, the article is full of questions as to whether or not the birds are doing a modern variation of a previously acknowledged behaviour, from the first paragraph to the second-last. It seems to me that you're reading too much into just the heading, then choosing to be outraged.
Lots of innovation over here in NC :) I suppose most folks are working on the "sexy" side of social media (i.e. marketing/engagement). There are some compliance-oriented startups in the valley, but nothing quite like this that we know of. I guess you could draw some parallels to services like Cue on the consumer side. Maybe some other folks here on HN know better?

And yes, we'd love to be the archive for CA (or SF for that matter).
The main reason I would put forward is that it's completely free and open source. That means that all your work is transferable and usable by anybody, not just people who have the ability to use Matlab (including possibly your future self).
I just wish people would really start getting rid of the box glow by default, that's my only caveat.

But I will be using this very soon :)
RC4-based CSPRNGs were an OpenBSD idiom. But you should use your OS's or your framework's secure random number generator in preference to arc4random(), because there's more to the security of a good CSPRNG than just the algorithm it to jumble up its internal state.
> At least /dev/urandom should be used for seeding purposes in applications where you need an unguessable PRNG.

I usually consume /dev/urandom and convert it to the base I require, using that directly as my random number. When you say you should use it for seeding purposes, are you referring to using /dev/urandom as a seed for something like PHP's rand(), or do you mean something else?
A simple idea + a few WordPress tweaks = $70k a month in revenue
Our goal with this change was not to radically redesign our network in one bite. We are making incremental improvements in our existing environment to solve very specific, ongoing problems.

Given the flexibility to completely rearchitect our network you might see different decisions. Stay tuned. :)
Tuna.js: A Web Audio API effects library with effects such as overdrive, wahwah
So I see. I think I didn't take the time to define my terms, or give the full sales pitch around them. I am not going to give the sales pitch, but TopN is a style of report that can query in real time every metric across every performance metric available and find not only find and alert on ones outside of normal operating parameters, but predict which ones will go haywire in a given time frame. This means no going around to all your switches to figure out which ones are causing problems.

In this specific instance if you had an indicator on an OID .1.3.6.1.2.1.17.4.3.1.1 you could see how big the MAC table was and have noticed when it dropped below the expected value. This would have alerted immediately letting you know not only that you had a problem, but on which switches there were issues. Alternatively you could have set alerts on any number of packet level indicators.
From the actual policy writeup:

https://developers.facebook.com/policy/

Mobile Web Apps that are running within the Facebook iOS app must not accept payments. In particular, these apps must not reference, use, or otherwise encourage the use of Facebook Payments or other non-iOS approved payment methods. [clearly to keep on the right side of Apple's policies]

...but also...

Games on Facebook.com or Mobile Web must use Facebook Payments as their sole and exclusive payment method for all virtual goods and currencies made available to users within the game.

This seems to make mobile web games, which do anything (like notifications) through the Facebook iOS app, unable to use any payment mechanism.

Or is there a way to thread this policy needle?
Agreed. We have some really exciting ideas on how to derive value out of this data, now that we have it in this form. I am curious what kind of analytics you think might be useful to government agencies or companies keeping this data for legal reasons?
Apple had another similar issue with itunes searches that they just recently fixed -- searches for taboo words returning a lot of results:

http://blog.appstorerankings.net/blog/2012/10/28/itunes-sear...
You should probably use your system urandom/random in preference to any application-layer CSPRNG. Your OS developers are charged with maintaining a high-profile high-value CSPRNG used for most applications on the system, and vulnerabilities in it are a hair-on-fire problem. The same is not true of application-layer replacements. The kernel RNG is also in a privileged position to collect entropy.
Every time I see a ridiculous URL without any vowels I say it, in my head. It sounds stupid.
It's funny to see Canada being 9th place. In Québec, we currently have a public inquiry regarding the corruption and collusion in the field of construction. Last month, the mayor of Montreal stepped down on reference of keeping a percentage for his party of all contracts given by the city for the past ten years. This particular public inquiry was decided after almost 4 years of denial from the previous government in place. Right now, it seems to be directly linking the Mafia, more specifically the Rizutto family.
Speaking as someone in a very similar (if not worse) kind of environment (feral employees, uncivil servants), I think you'd be surprised. Sure, most people at Citi (and where I work) are probably very risk averse, but that doesn't mean they don't have smarts. I've often felt that there is an enormous untapped talent pool at many of the national labs. A change to something fresher might be just the push some people need to go guerilla and try a startup. Heck, if I wasn't tied down by local personal interests, I'd have jumped ship long ago.
Sullivan and Wright are not to be mentioned (except in passing) given that they did not hail from Europe and do not share the political ideology behind Bauhaus and other related early 20th century movements in Europe.
Seeding is largely a problem you have if you're building (or retrofitting in) your own CSPRNG, which you shouldn't do. The random/urandom interface Unixes provide will allow you to shovel in high-entropy data, but I think you're more likely to do harm than good (it's a marginal impact in either direction, though).

You're doing the right thing already.
Why? Serious question, if I get a refund the amount isn't compensated for changes in the Australian dollar.

Either the buyer or seller will lose out if the value of bit-coins change, so is there a compelling reason for picking which party that is other than "merchants have the control to give whatever refund amount they want"
I am not looking for anything (in terms of "buying a policy for me"). I paid insurance claims for five years (and have an industry certification: "Certified life and health insurance specialist") and I do freelance writing at times and I sometimes try to help people by answering questions they asked. For various reasons, when I have gone looking for info online, I typically cannot find anything substantive and meaningful.
Yes, you are exceptionally cynical. Cheating is not a reasonable strategy over the long run. It's no small coincidence that it's Best Buy, a notoriously mediocre company, that had cheaters at the helm. This would be less likely at a better company.
The post is an advertisement to be sure. But they are being somewhat charitable themselves by giving their service away for free to ex-Citi employees.
No. Swipe-to-archive means working the same way as it works in every single other iOS app that implements that functionality: left-to-right.

edit - To clarify: widely-adopted shortcuts are only effective when they work the same everywhere. Imagine if some applications mapped "paste" to ^P instead of ^V. It might as well not be there.
> You need a render farm anyway.

Sure! Would you be willing to provide the necessary funds?
The exception - but only in severity.
No, but what they're competing for is audience size. And their audience is their users.
That post, which is great, is the normal way bad RNGs are broken by attackers: you trace down how they're seeded and then brute force the seed values.

What's great about this blog post is that it attacks the underlying algorithm; the post you linked to is more fun, but this post is a little more useful.

In either case: just use random/urandom and this stuff is taken care of for you.
Let's be careful: It's the perceived level of public sector corruption.
You nailed it outright. I award an Indignation for your this post. I will also award one to Thinkful for this brilliant marketing move. So it's a Joint Indignation I award today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s

If 100 is the typical productivity of a smart person when she's making the technical calls, picking the tools, and writing a new system, most corporate environments expect software engineers to function at 5-10-- maybe 20-30 when they get to senior dev roles. The problem is that if you're used to 100+, that feels like being at 0. It's demoralizing when your productivity is a rounding error for environmental reasons that aren't your fault.
How to actually wrap a web app with PhoneGap
I don't see any claims of recreating Portal's graphics. I think yours is an excessively sensationalist criticism.
Tough crowd today.
Why /you/ should talk at conferences
New Zealand tied for #1? This is the same country that's suspended local elections in Canterbury for years: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/7954650/Suspension-of-...
In Python os.urandom provides random string suitable for cryptographic use.
How to make a live-action app video
The "local storage" support in Google Docs Android client is still abysmal. I've more than once gotten network related errors when trying to do stuff to a document that I've explicitly marked as "offline".

Vastly better than before though - their offline support is very new.
The wunderground app is awesome, life upgraded.