skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hover.js - Zoom thumbnails on mouseover
I also find it worrisome that what are effectively lottery winners are supposed to be role models, be it Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or, for that matter, rock and movie stars.

Winning the lottery is not a good goal to set for a society or a generation (cf. Kant).
Yep. The whole quibble over the validity of DistroWatch got me motivated to search for something a little bit better; as it turns out, Wikimedia kindly publishes aggregate stats reports of traffic through its Squid proxies at http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera...

I hand-plotted a few months' of data before deciding it wasn't necessary to go further: from August 2012 to October 2012, Wikimedia saw an increase of 1.1 billion page requests from Linux operating systems (a 10% growth for Linux in that time period); of those, Ubuntu gained 230 million page requests while Mint remained steady at 11 million page requests during that period.

Just to be clear, I would have liked the story that Ubuntu users were flocking to Mint, but that appears to be a fiction at this point.
Setting up a blog with node.js
SolusOS 1.2. Previously I was mainly an Ubuntu user, but I didn't agree with the direction in which the distro was going with its dash/Amazon/search exfiltration decision.
The author has stated[1] that the names of the countries were excluded for consideration in the choice of most frequent word.

@atsaloti "New" really should have been excluded as the most frequent word. It appears a lot in the names of New Guinea, New South Wales, New Holland... It would be interesting to know what word came afterwards in frequency.

[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/omnitarian/8288065763/sizes/o/i...
I don't know if this is a result of different semantics or biology (actually different colours around here), but:

I live in Bulgaria. Terms for yellow, brown, orange and red are pretty much alike English in their semantic meaning.

Still, the grass during high summer (not autumn) is definitely "yellow" (as the sunflower). So are fields with wheat crops when they mature. And this is nothing alike the "brown" of the tree trunks.

Leafs of the trees become yellow, brown, red or orange in the autumn. All of the respective words are acceptable and used for different species of trees. They are clearly distinguishable. I wonder if this is because of perception or actual ecological differences between here and the place you live :).
Time Machine works great, and is a free part of OS X. You can use any external drive, but I use an extra Windows PC on my network which I hacked to act like a "Time Capsule." (If you're interested I can help you do this.)

(Time Machine backs up hourly, daily, monthly, etc)
This will all come to a head, very soon.

Mary Meeker's forecast, the very same from which the inset slide is drawn, predicts the smartphone/tablet installed base will overtake desktops Q2 2013.

Something must break. It will be interesting.
I'm not excusing it, but it seems plausible to me that the Android charge is separate from the Chrome charge because they are different projects that probably have completely different systems. It's the same poor experience you sometimes have with tech support phone trees with e.g. a credit card company, where each time your call is redirected they ask you for your information again -- poor integration between different wings.
Disagree with the post although never before seen sex and accounting mentioned in the same sentence or on the same side of the comma.

If they have the kind of drive at an early age, school only gets in the way. But school is very important for the dreamers who just talk.
> visitors hated-hated-hated progressive JPEGs

I call BS. On most every web project I've been involved in, we've used progressive JPEGs for the size optimization. This was crucial in the dial up modem days when we were inventing how web sites should best serve users, and we still do it. Sites with faster times to perceived page completion consistently drove higher page views and longer times on site. Even in browsers not supporting progressive rendering, perceived completion was faster due to smaller size meaning faster load time. Switching from baseline to progressive consistently drove higher page views and longer times on site.

I have never heard a single client say a single user complained about progressive JPEGs. I'm not saying it hasn't happened somewhere to someone. Users will complain about anything. But in billions of page views across countless clients (including pro photo clients), I haven't run into user complaints from progressive JPEGs, only measurable page view and time on site improvements in user behavior.
I've been bitten by googles non-existent customer support too while dealing with my adword account(s). Somehow I had two accounts, but one of them was transferred to my friend by changing all the info + have him verify the new bank account. Sure, I probably messed up somehow.. but it should be easy to fix but it's impossible to get in contact with them. I mailed multiple times over 1-2 months.. with details what I had done. Never got a single reply. Extremely frustrating. I want to put their ads on multiple sites, but they wont let me :).
I made a PHP VM in PHP once, but it was just the eval function (http://php.net/manual/en/function.eval.php).
With CPA + FB traffic on such a large scale, one could easy make $50k+ in a week with multiple CPA networks.
To give them credit: Google does a lot of things right, which is why I like using their services (avid user of search, analytics, adwords, blogger.com, gmail, android, chrome etc).

In a way, that they do so many things right makes the terrible support harder to swallow ;)
The version of Mach in OS X is not a microkernel. Only the last version of Mach was a microkernel, and OS X's kernel is based on an earlier version.

And while the Mach project used a BSD userland, Mach is not really "BSD-based" other than in terms of interfaces to userland - it is based on Carnegie-Mellon's earlier "Accent" project.
"Better for society," as it is typically invoked, is an invalid standard for determining what's good. It's a vague concept, and it's easy to shred intellectually. For example, we're often told that eminent domain is in "the public interest," but what about the homeowner facing eviction and demolition so that a new stadium, highway or shopping mall can be built? Isn't he part of the public? What about his interests?

In reality, society is nothing more than a group individuals. A society has no special attributes apart from those of its individual members. If the "good of society" has any meaning, it must refer to the good of each of its individual members, as individuals.

So how do we know what's good for an individual and what isn't? The correct standard for determining the good is the life of the person being discussed. The good is that which furthers that particular individual's life (with this standard, it is obvious that the evil is that which destroys that person's life).

Finally, regarding the counter-argument about conflicts of interest that some might raise: I don't believe that there are any, in reality. What is in the true, rational self-interest of one person is never in conflict with the interests (defined in the same way) of any other person. [I don't have time to sketch this argument further, and I have to stop somewhere, so I'll leave it at that. If you're interested in more on this point, Google for "conflicts of interest among rational men."]
> (cf. Kant)

Sorry, but what do you mean there?
I think you are right, I live in a world of shades of grey. Now, what wighting would you give mathematical knowledge in the education of children? Say the weighting factors for all subjects added to 1.00.
I use Resesif color scheme.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/oUL5U.png

Download: https://github.com/sonereker/resesif.tmbundle
I'd bet that the customer service for google's actual customers is top notch.
As a current college sophomore, I agree, education is important. However, I strongly believe that a degree does not define a person as educated. As long as you continuously have a general thirst for knowledge and act on it, you'll build your way to becoming an educated individual.
Simple enough issues to fix, of course, since this project is open source and only 431 lines of Python.

https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/NoPriv/blob/master/nopriv.py
"Honestly, (and you've basically said this), taking out significant loans to go to college is not the same straightforward decision it used to be."

One reason I returned to Europe.
> Taken to an extreme, there should never be more than one paying customer for every piece of digital (or convertible to digital) content ever created.

Sounds bizarre, but used to be quite common, wealthy individuals commissioning a piece of art (music, a play, etc).

And of course kickstarter is paving the way for a mass pay before production business model for all sorts of different cultural endeavors (music, video games, films, etc).

I think copyright has been a net benefit to society over the last 100 years, but it has now become too unwieldy. Copyright was never "natural".
Serious achievement. Well done!
I think this is just a pattern with companies that have high numbers of employees. Facebook is just as inaccessible. Although I suspect that it's hard to troubleshoot Facebook to begin with since the particulars of their product changes so often.
Thanks for pointing this out. I don't usually like the phrase "kids these days", and truth is this has nothing to do with age and everything to do with experiencing first hand the many interesting ways users' connections can be borked.

Same holds true in video streaming, where companies got overconfident with broadband then are surprised when the limited bandwidth and high latencies of wireless are better managed by the multi-bitrate and error correcting streaming technologies of a decade ago.
Me too, if they had PCs in 1963....
FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE is now available
You're focusing on having things being driven by data. That is commendable. However, that only tells you a part of the story.

There's a big blind spot of people who depend on analyzing things like this. And that is, they stop listening to other people. It is usually because such people are consumed with being right, or even trying to prove themselves right. The skeptical stance gets distorted into requiring other people to challenge your assumptions. Sometimes, it is a covert (as in Jungian shadow covert) way of feeling good about being contemptuous of other people.

To really listen to other people, you give up the notion that it is all about you. In other words, it's better to assume that you don't know what you are are talking about. You don't have any preconceived notions blocking you from hearing someone out. You are not "listening" in the sense that you are waiting to for the other person to stop talking so you can tell them how they are wrong. You might even learn something.

This is exactly what customer development is about: listening to other people.

In any case, I doubt this will persuade you. That's the cool thing about this. Some people don't want to consider this, so it becomes an unfair advantage for the folks who do :-)
This "income ceiling" you mention brings up a potentially interesting idea - why not scale the cost of college according to the expected value of your major? I know that in a broader sense this happens already, as "better" schools tend to be more expensive, but perhaps (to use a cliché example) an English degree and a CS degree shouldn't cost the same.
Not from my experience. Last tried in Ubuntu 10.10 and it didn't, unsure of the exact version. Will double-check though as I may be wrong. I use the XFCE terminal (also VTE based I believe) and that doesn't do it.
This is the kind of thing one can expect when their leaders are so far removed from the people that they govern. Joe Biden has been in office since 1973. I'd wager that's longer than many of the HN readers have even been alive. When you have politicians who have been running around in the Washington circles that long, some really bad things will come of it.

So, at the time he proposed that, he had been in Washington for nearly 20 years. Shouldn't surprise anyone that he was pushing an agenda for a larger, more powerful federal government.
I live in the UK, so I may not be up with US politics, and I know Winer has political views. Are you saying that Winer underestimates the median voter, or that Medicare is wrong?

PS: I suspect you are being down-voted because you are not making your meaning clear.
Almost nobody has the drive necessary for completely unguided self-education, and even those people will inevitably miss some important things.

I believe that a college education (lectures and assignments, at least) can be replicated online. I just don't see that anyone's done a particularly good job of it yet. There are lots of bits and pieces floating around, but not much overall structure.
> Like step over people? Screw the ones who love me? Be unethical? Ignore other parts of my life?

You define your 'want'. Based on your comment, you are setting your sights too low.

Instead of 'I want a fancy car', try 'I want to obtain a fancy car in the fastest way legally possible while staying within social bounds and not hurting anyone.'
Ask HN: Should you TDD a MVP?
Is it beneficial to do so or does it simply add too much overhead?
Not limited but based on your study at university. Most people never again get the chance to learn so much from educated people. I didn't realize and appreciate that when I was a student.
Reference to the categorical imperative.

„Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde.“

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

Everyone can't win the lottery.
Knowing what little I do about the market for browser code execution vulnerabilities, I am very skeptical that there is a black hat market that pays 5 figures for XSS.
It's because once a company gets to be over a certain size, everything is part of a process, and processes tend not to care all that much about their participants. When you get really good service from a company, it's generally the individual service rep going above and beyond what the process calls for, rather than the process being one that delivers good service.
"10-15 years ago, if you were in tech, you wrote software to sell to people. Back then I don't remember much righteous indignation about the morality of copyrights."

People didn't have nearly as much access to the Internet then, and the implications of copyright enforcement were much less pronounced (and more endurable). It was a time when 90% of Windows installations were unlicensed. It was also an economic boom (and Microsoft in particular was on fire). Now the Internet touches much more, and enforcing copyright laws among other things (increasing surveillance, etc), feels suffocating. Most countries are in a recession, for one reason or another...
Excellent, now what part does mathematics play in your model of education?

PS: I have learned to respect craft skills over the years. Those skills do not normally earn degree level certification in the UK (exceptions being surgeons, opticians and dentists).
Ask HN: Open Source project (Python)
Hi,

I am interested in contributing to open source projects that are using Python.

I never contributed to open source project before but I would like to start now. Nevertheless, I know that there are a lot of libraries and frameworks in Python so I am not interested in those. I am more interested in maintaining/contributing an application(eg: Blender)

Do you know where can I start?
Bill & Melinda Gates Uphold Household Ban on Apple Products
Very?

If I consider the math courses I took in college undergrad (I was a C-S major) there are some that are useful in everyday day life like pre-Calc (aka. algebra + trig) when I build a new deck or figure out how much grass seed to buy. Others courses such as Calc I and II are useful in understanding the issues and trends around me, both business and political. But the vast majority are valuable to me every day as I work on systems software: Mathematical Logic and Discrete Math, Graph Theory, Linear Algebra with Differential Eq & Intro to the Theory of computation.

How can you not think Mathematics is important to tech?
There are certainly devices that are harder. Many relies on various bugs. Most ICS and Jelly Bean devices appears to be trivial to root due to a timing issue in the "recovery" functionality, though - there's a script floating around that claims to root pretty much everything.

Note that there are several issues: Rooting is often reasonably easy. But rooting is not enough to be able to install custom roms. For that you also need to be able to unlock the bootloader. There's any number of obstacles.

That said, there are tons of easily rootable and unlockable devices out there, so it's not really a big problem for those of us who insists on one or the other.

Especially with more and more higher end devices coming out of non-descript Chinese manufacturers who couldn't give a crap about the carriers desires, and which will start being "good enough" for more and more people (my new phone is Star phone that looks exactly like the Samsung Galaxy SIII, and while it don't perform as an SIII, it beats the pants of my 2 year old HTC Desire HD in every way and cost a fraction of what my Desire HD did)
Not really a bash utility, but delegating to this script from vim has been a huge
timesaver for long running scripts. For instance I can trigger my ruby specs from
Vim without vim getting blocked. I wrote a blog post about it here: http://minhajuddin.com/2012/12/25/run-specs-tests-from-withi...

#!/bin/bash
#~/.scripts/runinbg
#Author: Khaja Minhajuddin
#Script to run a command in background redirecting the
#STDERR and STDOUT to /tmp/runinbg.log in a background task

echo "$(date +%Y-%m-%d:%H:%M:%S): started running $@" >> /tmp/runinbg.log
cmd="$1"
shift
$cmd "$@" 1>> /tmp/runinbg.log 2>&1 &
#comment out the above line and use the line below to get get a notification
#when the test is complete
#($cmd "$@" 1>> /tmp/runinbg.log 2>&1; notify-send --urgency=low -i "$([ $? = 0 ] && echo terminal || echo error)" "$rawcmd")&>/dev/null &
Yes indeed. I don't bother with 'this' at all, except when forced to by some interface. I don't even bother to define objects most of the time, just top level functions that can easily be called from a REPL. That simple subset of JS is powerful enough to go a long way — long enough that I'm unconvinced one needs anything else, unless one believes one does — and programming this way feels liberating, like riding a bicycle instead of pushing a car.
Hey,

Tried to e-mail info@vousha.re but received "Relay access denied (state 13)", please contact me chase[at]sweebr[dot]com for a business opportunity.
Worse examples are useful when someone starts by saying silly things like "probably the single most consumer-unfriendly company on the planet."
> Most people never again get the chance to learn so much from educated people.

This. I didn't realize it either, and I wish I had. I have a decent number of interactions with educated, intelligent people now, but not with the sort of frequency and intensity with which I had them at university.

I don't know that I ever want to be a proper student again, but I do miss that.
Source: http://bit.ly/JVfaeK

IMO, the most interesting slide is # 17. Advertisers spent 25% of their budget on print media even only 7% of the consumers time was spent on the print media.
I guess not, but explain it to them.
scientific/rational thinking is fundamental to being able to understand and interact with reality.
This is the same mentality that suggests that 37signals is supercar-successful because they lucked out and got a popular blog. As if blogs were harvested from comet shrapnel instead of simply being the result of posting regularly about your work.

There is nothing Patrick is doing that most people on HN couldn't do. That is, in fact, his whole damn story; it is literally his thesis. "I spent 5 hours a week building 'hello world' and hooking it up to a random number generator and then refining ways to sell it to teachers; here's what happened". LUCKY DUCKY! cries HN.
what has kept you going all this time? Please reach out to someone, you trust be it a friend or love one.

My family just lost someone to suicide and our lives have been forever scarred. If we had known we would have done whatever we could to help that person.

Is there something we can do? Do you feel comfortable to disclose who you are and where you are?
My studies in math led me to graph theory, before I took any Comp Sci. So yeah, I'd say my math was pretty helpful.

It also stretches the mind. It's like saying weight training is useful if you're going to be a basketball player, even though there's no point in a game where you all stop and lift weights. :-)

When you learn how to prove a theorem you are learning how to debug a program.
For 9.1 they are available as emulators/virtio-kmod; 9-STABLE has them in the tree (I used both recently).
Railyo - Folyo for Ruby on Rails
Is there any demand for a private job board for 'cool' rails freelance developers ? something like folyo for rails freelancers ?

MVP : http://railyo.com
As a teacher, I like on-line resources as granular as possible so I can remix them and present them to students. My practice is then the 'glue' that sticks the bits together for the particular individuals I'm working for.

Do you think that direct contact with a teacher (motivation and confidence building in the case of Winer's post) can be replaced by some other model?
As someone who left college early in favor of a career, take it from me, its a hell of a lot easier to learn things in school than outside of it.
Fantastically important.

Fundamentally, math == logic, and logic is the basis of all of mankind's post-Enlightenment gains in productivity, standard of living, etc.
Chrome is blocking twitpic.com
"Nowadays Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste."

This is false. I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley, and I know no one who says that. Even Peter Thiel, who is arguably the iconic college skeptic, only says that college might not be optimal for everyone.
9 Reasons Why Your New Year Resolutions Fail
In Europe the knowledge you need to be a educated voter and citizen is supposed to be taught at high school. Most european countries dont have generic education lessons at all. I dont think the purpose of colleges should be making someone a good citizen, that is the role of public education that everyone receives.
A Quarter of a Million Downloads – A Play Store Developer Looking Back on 2012
As much as the Linux kernel itself is not an OS, neither is it correct to generalize the way you do.

There are tons of devices that run Linux that don't include GNU tools.

I've personally ported Linux to devices that didn't run any GNU userland at all, yet that had a recognizable Linux/Unix-y interface.

For many applications, the differences in kernel will in fact matter more in terms of portability than the userland will - I've written more than one application where I had to deal with differences between BSD vs. Linux kernels, for example, but where the userland didn't matter one iota.
This plan has one important drawback: If we assume that society is better of by people majoring in CS instead of English then we should not discourage people from studying CS by increasing prices.
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