skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand.

Now include the probability of such an event actually taking place, and the probability that the TSA could prevent it...

A comet strike would cause many trillions of dollars worth of damages. How much money are we spending right now on a pea-shooter based comet defense system?
A year ago I'd have supposed that Google would lend the branding to anyone who wanted to work with them to distribute good AOSP patches/overlays and images available to download. Now, though, they've tied it pretty well to "Google Play" in their commercials and branding such that I expect them to hold onto that branding for themselves.

I kinda think everyone is reading way too much into this "X" branding. It's a codename. I'd bet some spare change in my pocket that it will be a Nexus-branded device.
Binary: Ternary is one thing too many.
Gun lobby defiant as US remembers
While I don't disagree with the "Quality product + good price + industry head start + robust and lucrative developer platform = dominant market position" line, I do think you should add "amazing marketing" to it.

If Apple's marketing were not key to its business why would they have spent over $1 billion on iPhone and iPad marketing since launching the devices (Google it)? Have you spoken with a teenager lately? Every single one of my younger siblings (1 in middle school, 2 in highschool) have an iPhone. They have an iPhone because their friends all have iPhones, because it's cool to have iPhones. They don't care about anything else.

So again, while your points are solid, discounting marketing all-together is very silly.
JavaScript: Web pages aren't interactive enough.
But compared to notebooks, laptops, tablets and smartphones server will always remain a small market.
There is an official port of Android(done by Intel) on x86, it powers the several Atom phones out there(Orange San Diego & etc).
You can even download an emulator build for Atom, which perform great(it has support for virtualization extensions).
This is beyond welcome. The title doesn't really convey what they're doing here, though I'm not sure how I'd phrase it either.

This is blocking the sort of extensions that get installed with other desktop software. So, like, for whatever god damn reason Microsoft thinks it needs to install Office addons into Firefox when I install Office. That wouldn't fly in Chrome now.
Set caps on spam and auction the space, then. If the price of getting to your inbox is $10 people will have to have a really good reason for getting in touch.

I'm usually anti-FB but I'm curious to see where this goes.
Brainfuck: Assembly provides too much, and obfuscated C is still readable
Ah, yes, Borges' Law.
Thousands of dialogs pop up all the time telling me stuff I'm not interested and that is not important or useful (e.g. explaining some gimmicky and useless gestures).

I was told that deleting crapware from Android phones would be easy, however, it seems to be very hard. Even then, there is no way to know which apps you can delete and which you cannot. I gave up on it. It seemed like too much of hassle.

The settings are a mess, unorganized, not explicit, confusingly vast, with very bad descriptions and many options on a same hierarchical level

That Play Store! Thousands of confirmation dialogs, updating apps is an ordeal. I gave up. I think I have to take another stab at it tomorrow.

Scrolling inertia is wrong. Ugh. That's real ugly.

Contacts crashed, showing a black screen for a good 20 seconds. When iOS apps crash you are back to the home screen immediately. (Apps crash. I have no problem with that. But they shouldn't crash like that.)

That inconsistent back button! You never know what it will do (since it's not consistent, there is no rhyme or reason). Sometimes it means back in the app hierarchy, sometimes it takes you back to the last screen you saw, independent of app hierarchy.

That damn menu button! It hides tons of crap, you never know what there will be. It's seemingly used by lazy UI designers to throw in everything they thought they needed and couldn't fit into the normal UI.

The translation to German of the interface is atrocious. Apple make their fair share of embarrassing mistakes, Samsung/Google puts it on a whole new level. Labels that don't fit and are cryptically abbreviated and so on.

Those may seem like small things, but those are things that tick me off. I have to note that I'm talking about my personal taste here. Others may be able to deal with it. I noticed that I can't. Even though I thought I would like it. I'm honestly shocked now. I thought Android would be pretty awesome by now. That's what everyone told me – and I believed it. At least for me personally that's sadly not true (but I still want to try one of those Nexus phones, Samsung, however, is dead to me now).
This ebook sells itself. I'm so glad you/Hyperink finally put it together!
Haskell: My proofs are correct but my code is wrong. I just want to execute my induction proofs.
Javascript: the "java" name is very cool.
PHP: let's pretend it doesn't exist by not adding it to our cool list.
You might think it is "truly spectacular" because it is unique to you. But you have to question yourself if it is really THAT effective. One could buy a hand cranked powered led light for cheaper. Sure, it'll take more time to power it. (Few seconds vs a minute). If i could afford neither i would go for the second option.
Honestly? Primarily non-economic reasons. (People asked me for it, the Hyperink guys seemed great, "published author" beats "owns a software company" in the McKenzie Family List of Approved Jobs, etc.)

It is possible that there are some markets and consultancies for which publishing a book would be a great credibility enhancer, but I sort of doubt I'm in one of them. I do something which is very quantifiable, with very few people available who do it, and which empirically produces absolutely stupid ROI some of the time. Books are not required to raise rates. (And, if I ran into a company that was unpersuaded by "I made $FIRM $X million in two weeks by running a series of A/B tests" but really responded to "... and I wrote a book!", I'd run screaming from that engagement, because that client sounds like they're going to be a lot more stress than my savvier clients.)
Here are some graphs I knocked up a while ago:

http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/EveryLanguageFixesSomething.ht...

There was some discussion a while ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2816526

Added in edit: That's a shame - someone has flagged this item so it's no longer on the front page. 8-(
Yeah sorry about that. I removed Vertebrae and Sentry because they were over-engineered and weren't that useful. Vertebrae did some things to help with relations and identity maps in Backbone but there are already better solutions out there now.

e.g.

https://github.com/PaulUithol/Backbone-relational

https://supportbee.com/devblog/2011/11/25/identity-map-for-
backbone-js-models/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3276990 (Discussion on jashkenas pattern for a solution to identity maps)

https://gist.github.com/3057320
HN, it is time to lobby the government for tech entrepreneurs
Tech. entrepreneurs are essential to the modern economy.

Yet, you are under-represented in global politics. Governments are stuffed with old-fashioned, technophobic politicians who lack a grasp of new technologies. Often they implement regressive Internet policies---such an SOPA---that stall economic growth.

It is ripe time to organise a well-funded tech. lobby?

An Internet enterprise think tank would lobby on behalf on Internet entrepreneurs and investors, representing their interests to national governments and transnational organisations to promote favourable policy change.

The mission group would:

(1) Campaign for productive policy change. This would include lobbying for: a larger funding pot for tech. entrepreneurs and investors, net neutrality, tax breaks for tech. entrepreneurs and investors, introducing a more rigorous computer science education syllabus in primary and secondary schools, extending Internet provision in the developing world.

(2) Summarise current (and prospective) relevant policy for clients. This would include: briefing stakeholders on relevant taxation and budgetary changes (alongside flagging up tax breaks), net neutrality developments, Government funding opportunities, relevant IP law changes, entrepreneur visa changes, etc.

(3) Build awareness of the sector's interests through traditional media, i.e., editorials in national broadsheets.

Is there scope? Is there real interest in a narrowly-defined think tank serving the tech. enterprise sector?

What are the sector’s priorities? What policy briefings would stakeholders be interested in?

email: ekpyrotic [at] gmail [dot] com

location: London, UK
Malbolge: Other languages can be used to write programs by a human being.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge
> I have a friend that really loves Sony laptop hardware. Every time he buys one, though, he has to spend a day cleaning off the bloatware. It literally goes from a sluggish Windows filled with crap to reasonable OS.

been there, I had to clean up a friend's laptop, it was a new one straight from the store and it barely worked until I removed all the sony crapware. and it was one of the expensive ones at the time (17'' or sth).

I got a personal motto, not to buy equipment which name starts with an S and ends with a Y. Sony is a perfect proof of the rule that hardware companies shouldn't write their software.
As someone thinking about writing an e-book, I appreciate the recommendation of Hyperink. I was approached by Packt a while back, but I found at least one author who had had bad experiences with them. The financial incentives are already so bad, why go with a publisher that will treat you poorly?

> I am spelling-challenged

Indeed: "tails of abysmal failure." (Or was that a joke? :-)

EDIT: Forgot to mention how much I appreciate all the time you've spent to help fellow techie entrepreneurs. Happy holidays to you.
I dont recall Celeron being a major problem for AMD. The things that did hurt were

a) Intels effectiveness at preventing AMD SKU's from hitting markets

b) The Core 2 family from Intel

c) AMD insisting on shipping 'native' dual / quad cores with worse yields - there wasnt any advantage to the end user and I would imagine the yields were worse

d) The TLB bug
I completely agree with performance per watt Intel is on the path to be where they need to be but ARM is on path to be par with a chip that even AMD's x86 offerings can't touch on a core by core basis. Now with Microsoft's Windows 8 trying it's very best to be a tablet experience it seems by sales figures people much rather prefer an Android or Apple tablet compared to even i5/A10 laptops with Windows 8. The technicalities you present are right on the money but what we have here is a perfect storm. Microsoft wants to be a tablet OS manufacturer and is skirting the traditional desktop/laptop experience leaving Intel with no real face value to their contribution.

When people go to their local stores and see rows of tablets that look like tablets and rows of laptops that look like tablets and rows of desktops that look like tablets, well they just seem to get actual tablets. Sure an Intel i3 will handily beat out the upper echelon of ARM offerings but with Android and IOS be entirely optimized for this experience we are finally realizing what AMD fans have been shouting for decades, the extra horsepower really does not come into effect often enough to make it a deal breaker. Your web page may load 40% slower on an ARM rig but when the Intel model will load it in 1.5s and you tablet will load it in 2s we now experience the Law of Diminishing Returns. If a dual core ARM A15 can consistently run at around 40-50% of the speed of an i3 mobile processor, a quad core ARM should settle at around 60-75% while being tasked to do much, much less.

With Intel and ARM you are also dealing with 2 very different ecosystems. x86 has had to be fast because most of the applications you will run on a daily basis are likely not really optimized, profiled or threaded anything above a couple compiler switches. They have to be fast because the code is so slow. Now with Android and IOS the language, libraries and sand-boxing improves the underlying mechanisms to the degree that most of the code that matters is optimized by Apple and Google where the equivalent Microsoft Windows libraries are not as optimized and in many cases so specialized that it gives a look and feel of a Wordpad type app rather than what you are really after.

Basically I feel by looking strictly at Intel's raw performance as to the reason why a platform will succeed is improper and an unfair comparison. People are moving en-mass to tablet and smart phone ecosystems not because they are faster or run by a particular processor but because it feels like a custom solution and the integration overall is acceptable. So I don't think it is ARM v Intel but rather tablet v notebook and laptop. If Microsoft keeps up with making their desktop OS look and feel like a tablet OS people buy tablets and Windows 8 doesn't have the applications, word of mouth or market penetration to make that possible right now.

If things don't change and quick we may just have a Microsoft and Intel "Double clutch"

"Double clutch: this is where a non-swimmer ends up in deep water and, out of panic, grabs the closest person to them to stay afloat."
http://www.firstaid-cpr.net/lifeguarding/minor_major.html
Instant purchase. Worth it to have all in one place. Thanks for all that you put into the community!
What airport was this at? Did you report this incident to his supervisor? Did you complain when it took more than 2 minutes to get someone to do the pat down?

I've had about 20 pat downs in many different airports. I've never had to wait more than three minutes for someone and everyone has always been professional and courteous. As much as I hate the TSA and complain about them, the airport staff has been nice and helpful. In two or three cases they went out of their way to help me, beyond what I expected.

Edit: I should also add that I'm a middle class white male who looks "respectable". I'm not going to experience the discrimination some minorities may endure so take that for what it's worth.
Precisely, Apple understands that the women demographic is more important than the male. An observation I've noted is that of the women that love iPhones all love them due to the size and "feel" in their hands. A very visceral and physical response to a device if you ask me. They may hate the rest of the phone/company/etc, and hate here is over-exagerrating, but being able to hold your phone in one hand to use is important to many people.

Having to explain this as a guy with small hands to really big guys is annoying. But I have noticed that larger people (physically) don't mind the larger/wider phones. But their hands are actually bigger. I can't use a phone much wider than the iPhone. Once I get to the point that I have to shift the phone in my hand I feel like I'm holding a mini tablet.

I know everyone raves about the bigger devices but I can't use them for more than a few minutes. They're too wide for me, no matter how much I may want to use android I have to side with the women on this one. 3.5" width is the sweet spot for the other 50% of the population. As guys the sooner we realize that our physical characteristics influence what we buy we'll be better off.

For the record my glove size is 7.5, big for womens hands, tiny for guys.
Right. Complaining about a TSA agent (who isn't law enforcement) shoving you is going to get you killed. Hyperbole like this helps no one.
Groovy: Java is not Python enough
AWS is slowly becoming the Oracle of our generation, in the sense that they have found a way to lock startups and large companies into a software/services ecosystem that is really really hard to stop using once you get started.

You start with regular open-source instances, but that's just the hook. Once you have EC2, it's really easy to get started with AWS 'magic' services like Elasticache and RDS. It's easier than setting up a memcache cluster or mysql right? But once you get comfortable with those services, it's just so easy to keep going down that road and making your software reliant on proprietary services like SimpleDB, S3 and AWS Data Pipeline. And then you wake up at some point and find that you're 100% dependent on AWS.

By that point, if you're lucky your monthly AWS bill gets you an invite to speak at the next AWS conference. :-) You might even get a personal customer support rep that calls you when your servers go down.

A website/service cannot by definition be HA if it's reliant on one service or infrastructure provider. AWS has so many proprietary parts now that you really need to be careful which ones to use so that you don't wake up one day and realize that you're completely dependent on AWS.

I'd stay away from this with a 30-foot pole, but if we really did need to use it, I would only use the features that I felt comfortable building internally at some future point if we chose to move off of AWS.

It's important to keep your software stack as flexible and open as possible, and for risk-management you should plan on using (or least having the option of using) multiple vendors and service providers.
Well, you have a whole bureaucracy on top of the TSA employees that you actually see at the airport. I'd expect that consumes a bunch of our money too.
Except the TSA hasn't prevented anything that would have been a successful terrorist attack.
It's always possible to lay new fiber. Wireless requires spectrum, which is finite and heavily regulated.
Right-to-left support for Twitter Mobile
Why would any vendor agree to such an arrangement? If you're not allowed to differentiate on either hardware or software except in trivial ways, the product commoditizes immediately and there's no profit for the vendor.

The reason Apple can do this is that they make their own hardware, so there's nobody else who needs to get paid and no reason to try and "differentiate". The downside of the Apple strategy is that hardware businesses are extremely difficult and expensive.
Chrome 25 To Disable All Sideloaded Chrome Extensions
I think you're not giving authorship enough credit. Being an author under a well-known publisher gives credibility, shows competence, and may confer the "expert" title.

Considering the other ways to this path take years (working ones way up the corporate ladder), money (a university degree) or risk (launching a startup), losing a few months and earning 5k may be worth it. I'd imagine this publisher validation is built in to the price you are paid.

I have a few personal friends who have written tech books and it is a large part of what helped them leapfrog their peers in job position and compensation.
I was mostly talking about my own taste. I do not claim that you can generalize my impressions.
Don't let the middlemen (Dell/HP for Microsoft, Verizon/AT&T for Google) define your user experience.

This is not, as you think, simple. There are no margins in commoditized devices. If they all trend toward being identical and low cost, all partners will find the most exceedingly clever ways to differentiate from each other or boost margins. Software is a prime target.

You also speak of "letting" vendors ship crapware. Let? This is an open platform. Google only has control if vendors desire the Google goodies that cost a little bit of money. Also, how much leverage do they have exactly against a carrier like Verizon, which is their primary sales channel? Not as much as you would think. As this article points out, forking Android (especially to Samsung) is becoming an increasingly viable alternative to playing ball with Google, and the consequences would be pretty disastrous if they were to do that.

This hedge of doing their own hardware represents yet another challenge with your shockingly simple solution: that supply chain management in this market is really difficult, especially if you have some killer ideas in mind for new kinds of hardware (i.e., using materials other than plastic, new experimental displays, sensors, etc.) How quickly did Nexus 4's sell out? It's very possible that demand was strong, but the double-glass enclosure probably proved to be more of a headache than originally conceived to manufacture.

So it's not simple. This market is difficult, fraught with trust issues and risks in doing it all yourself.
To paraphrase the article...

No offence but you don't know jack about fonts ; )

I mean: zooming in on a subpixel antialiased fonts and showing us the magnified to try to 'make a point' !? I hope you do realize that the subpixel anti-aliasing trick is totally gone once you zoom in right?

You do realize this right?

If so, why do you even show that in your article?

I find a bit strange that basically every single example at normal size he uses give better result for the column he names "fat & fuzzy".

And that's with Chrome on an old MacBook.

Interesting his colum named 'Thin & Pretty' doesn't look like white text on black background but 'uneven gray text on black background'.

Freackingly ugly to read. The colum he considers 'fat' and 'fuzzy' actually looks much better.

And I've typeset books using Quark XPress so I'm not 'seeing things' here: I know a thing or two about fonts ; )
Erlang: Concurrency should be easier
A refund for the free money they offered you? How is that going?
Do you get a bigger cut if I buy via Amazon Kindle or buy a .mobi (which Kindle supports) via Hyperink?
Effects of storage time & temp. on nutritional content of fortified fruitcake
>The point of the article is that intel has been disrupted by ARM.

Has it?

Intel is a much smaller part of all CPU's sold, that's true, but it's also true that the market for CPU's has increased exponentially in the last few years. The places where Intel is losing is places where they have never actually competed in.

A decade ago, if you were looking for a low-power CPU for a mobile device, you sure as hell weren't looking at X86. You were going with an ARM solution. That hasn't changed, but the market for those CPU's has grown incredibly.
I doubt the problem is solved that easily. Stores have been known to instruct cashiers to enter information about customers during the checkout process -- age, gender, race, etc. -- and combined with what you buy, there is probably enough information to identify you or to distinguish you from the set of all shoppers. Some stores print coupons with your receipt; it is not all that unlikely that the profile they are building of you as a customer, even without the use of a customer loyalty card, is used in deciding which coupons to print.

In the future, they might even use their security cameras to add some extra data points. Never mind facial recognition; I bet they would only need to track your walking pattern as you move through the store. Some people like to browse. Some people enter knowing exactly what they are looking for. Some people store by going left, others by going right. Maybe the first thing you do is go to the produce section.

Chances are that this sort of data, combined with other data, can be used to identify you even if you never explicitly gave Walmart any identifying information. If Walmart can distinguish but not identify you, they might make more money just selling your profile to an advertiser, who can combine it with data gathered from other sources to figure out who you are (then annoy you). Maybe it's already happening, but I think it will be a few more years before the technology is really that advanced (I have no doubt that this will happen in the near future, assuming no laws to stop it).
Javascript came from Java? Or was that just to make sure we were paying attention?
Prose is cheap.
Did you just use "team player" without irony?
All I want for Christmas: the perfect office