skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was going to try it, stopped at the Persona (who?) log in. I'm not going to create Yet Another Damn Account I have to remember the password to. Then I read here that it's based on RSS, and that kills it for me altogether. BTW, I've tried other blog->book services and they usually choke to death on my blogs. This one probably would too. Next!
Verizon's New DVR Will Spy On You
How To Check Stocks And Exchanges On iPhone Using Siri
Exactly. I've developed for Android and I found the tools to be horrible. Eclipse is slow and hangs a lot, the emulator takes a long while to start and the only debugging tools you have at your disposal are console and Logcat. Xcode has an entire Instruments app with dedicated tools for detailed debugging.
There are 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world of which 1 billion are smartphones, which leaves billions of smartphones coming online in the coming decade. The smartphone market has most of its growth ahead of it. That growth will not be on iOS because apple doesn't do low-budget.

That growth will be mostly on android, but there's plenty of opportunity for it to be on windows phone as well. Microsoft has made some smart moves here. They've used windows 8 as a foot in the door to get people used to metro. The pc market may be shrinking, but there are still a billion pc's out there which will gradually be replaced with windows 8. They've also made sure that windows phone runs well on low budget devices (better than android even). And they've made sure that developing apps for windows phone is easy and cheap.

At this point i would not count microsoft out yet. Android is going to be the dominant player, but google seems not to care as much about the app ecosystem as microsoft. If google doesn't fix the piracy issues it's not inconceivable that windows phone becomes a more attractive platform for app developers. I hope this will be a three-horse race, as neither android nor iOS are a great fit for me.
Ha! The site "freezes" while loading for me, and all I see is a spinny wheel and no requests coming across the net panel in Firebug.
Well, it depends on how you do it. My original reaction was, "duh, idiocy." But once I paid more attention, I learned a lot about the emotional motivations behind it, the placebo effect, and why western medicine is so unsatisfying to people.

That's helpful, in that you can convince anybody by saying: "Although I have no evidence, I'm sure that crystal healing is bullshit and I'm waaaay smarter than you." All they read from that is contempt and arrogance; that approach to skepticism is basically bullying.

I think a better approach is the one taken by my doctor. When people come in with concerns about vaccines, she first listens to their fears about kids and patiently explains why those particular fears might sound reasonable, but in this case are unwarranted. It's not really about the facts; it's about the hand-holding. For her, the interaction isn't about being right, but about persuading people.

So I agree, but for very high values of "understand enough". It's not enough for me to know that they're wrong; I want to understand why they're wrong sufficiently to have empathy for their situation.
I do hope you succeed. Congratulations on repairing 1000 cars. What sorts of repairs were they? If you pay your mechanics so well, how does the business itself make any money? Other questions that spring to mind: What equipment do they have, what repairs do you specifically avoid, How do you source parts, what happens to flat rate when the part is wrong? I looked at your website last week and don't recall seeing this information.

I have not met a shop yet that hasn't had a ridiculous customer complaint. You seem to be lucky, for the rest of the industry it is always 1% that drives you crazy. By that math you should have had 10 unreasonable customers by now. I also believe that people are inherently good. I did $2,000,000 in sales of $50 tools with Snap-on and only ended up with $6000 in bad debt on what where essentially handshake deals. A loss of $3 per thousand.

Also if you would like to have a non-public discussion, you can email me at gregpilling @ gmail.com
that is awesome. I still can't grow one.
There are more states available to you than "buy in" and "reject utterly".
“You can thrift on cost. You can take cost out of a rocket. But I will guarantee you, in my experience, when you start pulling a lot of costs out of a rocket, your quality and your probability of success in delivering a payload to orbit diminishes.’’

This sounds similar to the cry of every company that is about to be painfully disrupted.
some time with Air tickets also
I played with a Lumina 920 when I was in the store a few days ago. It demoed very well and the phone itself was very nice.

I was willing to buy one for my collection of smartphones for research and development purposes, however in the UK its currently only available on the high street as an exclusive with EE and the phone is locked to that network. Sad but true.

Clearly Microsoft didn't learn from the mistake Palm made as when you aren't the market leader, going with an exclusive carrier deal only prevents people buying into your platform. Apple learned that, and clearly Microsoft feels necessary to mimic even Apple's mistakes before it gets it. I'm sure RIM will make the same mistake when they launch BB10 next month this leading to their demise. All this has happened before and all this will happen again.
at the # prompt type:

# yes die > /dev/mem

:-)

When I was younger my friends and I would find cool and interesting ways to crash unix boxes.

A more modern version:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/mem
"The Defense Department on Nov. 27 directed the Air Force to end a launch monopoly"
"A week later, the service awarded the trial missions to Musk’s firm, known as SpaceX."
"SpaceX...now has the opportunity to prove that its rockets are capable of launching satellites serving Pentagon planners, ground troops and the nation’s spies."
"The missions, scheduled for 2014 and 2015, are designed to help the company become certified to carry the military and spy satellites."

- Much will be made here of Lockheed's comments. To me the real story is a h/t to government for opening up and encouraging disruption in a key market. Given the general negativity (often deserved) towards government by entrepreneurs it's important to acknowledge when they do positive things.
See also: http://gigaom.com/video/netflix-encoding/ and DRM schemes, esp. those detailed in content contracts (protip: big studios specify codecs, encryption specifics, etc.)

Different for each device based on how much power the device has. TVs have nothing for CPU power in most cases.
So who was punished in all of this? Let me guess - no one.
The auxiliary solid fuel rockets of the space shuttle slashed in the sea with parachutes and were "reusable". But they were so bumped that the refurbishment procedure involved a lot of handwork and iirc more than a month.
Biggest news events of the year
Indeed, that design is horrible.

But you can still read it through instapaper.
Gapingvoid Gift: “I’m Not Delusional, I’m An Entrepreneur” [2min vid]
Why should they care, Netflix is the biggest competitor to Amazon Instant Video.
This works well until it isn't cost-effective to do at Netflix scale. Doubling your spending for once-a-year events doesn't sit well with investors.
If your app can be developed as a web app first that may be ideal. Building with a responsive design will allow it to work on both devices initially. Then you can watch your statistics to learn where is it more successful and build for that platform first.
So how do you know DHH doesn't meet that threshold? (I don't think it's clear either way, but still "most common young nerd mistakes" is pretty dismissive.)
Even if it took a hundred thousand transistors (/transistor-size devices) to emulate a neuron, that wouldn't actually be a problem. Compared to electricity-on-copper, the connections between neurons are slow. When operating on electricity, there are no problems whatsoever in making your brain consist of a million chips that fill a warehouse.
That's been my experience as well. The article claims it isn't true, but I know for sure it is, since I remember researching a particular hotel extensively -- I really wanted to stay there -- and Expedia was by far the lowest price. This was an overseas hotel, so I was not fond of calling them up and asking for a discount from somebody who might or might not speak English.
> For the most availability, best prices and service, always book directly with a hotel.

It has never been the case with me. Expedia, or any other travel site, always had better deals. In fact, I once called the hotel in question to ask why there is a big price discrepancy between their site listing and makemytrip. I was concerned makemytrip is selling me rooms that doesn't exist and the hotel won't honor my reservation. The hotel staff told me the hotel sells rooms to makemytrip well in advance, and whatever the price that is listed on makemytrip will be honored(doesn't really matter; you pay directly to makemytrip).

Also, I am a bit paranoid. I would hate it if some hotel overbooked and told me "lol sorry" when I arrive. I know travel sites aren't really on my side, but at least I will have someone to appeal to.

I didn't have any bad experience with Expedia but then, I had very limited interactions with them(I didn't even modify or cancel my bookings).

I would advice against agoda and booking.com as they forward your credit card info to the hotel as security. In what world does forwarding a customer's credit card info to a random hotel makes sense? Imagine the surprise when you are at the hotel counter and the staff shows you a printout of your credit card info(nothing obscured; everything in plain text).

> If you would like to know more about our hotel just visit our website at www.lunabluehotel.com.

I tried, and the link is down. Most of the hotels don't even have websites, let alone online reservations. There is a reason customers go to expedia in the first place.

EDIT: Random travel tip. If you are in a foreign or an unknown location, a hotel which provides airport transfer generally ends up cheaper than a hotel which doesn't + cab fares. You would be surprised how wrong your assumptions about transport might be. "You have a flight to catch at 8, it's 5, you are in the lobby and there isn't a cab in sight and looks unlikely there will be one for another 2 hours" isn't a pleasant situation to be in.
Dear small business hotel

Yes, Expedia sucks, but here's what you should do

YOU make your website and booking system available on the web. Make people able to google your hotel and get there. (Edit: this seems to be already in place)

If I search your hotel on Expedia and it shows no dates available, I begin to suspect Expedia, or your integration of systems with them.

And if they really say your hotel is going out of business, get a lawyer. Edit: get a lawyer NOW
PayPal Bans BitTorrent Friendly Hosting Provider PRQ
It make it look like a more expensive hotel. Much of the time, you can get them to match Expedia's price by asking. Think of it as price discrimination.
If you have to use abstract algebra to explain your business process analogy, you probably don't have a very good analogy.

I'm not complaining about your analogy; I'm pointing out that the conclusion is simply incorrect.
"Haskell being one of them"

Also Fortran being one of them (you can mark functions and subroutines 'pure').
I know people in the hospitality business, and all third party travel websites (and travel agents) are bad for the traveler and hotel, for a few simple reasons.

1) Middlemen always need their cut. In this case, you pay the website, and then the website pays the hotel less.

2) By bypassing the middleman (call the hotel directly, and speak to that specific location's on site employees), you SHOULD be able to get a better deal. Simply compare prices, and if you find it cheaper on a website, ask the hotel to give you 5% off. Any competent manager will do this because it costs much more than 5% to get your reservation from a travel agent. Obviously, they will have to verify that third party price, but in the case of Expedia, they can just search it.

3) Additionally, it's good to book directly with the hotel for the following reasons too (or at least call them directly after booking online to confirm):

-In the fine print of travel websites' T&C, it will say you are guaranteed A room, not THE room you want. This means if only smoking rooms are available, the third party site will still sell it to you as a non smoking room. Also, there are many incompatibilities in the GDS/Central reservation system software, so there is a chance there can be an error in your reservation.

-Third party reservations don't go to the hotel with the guest's contact information. This means if the hotel wants to contact you about some issue, they cannot reach you, and the websites won't give out the guest's information. This was a big problem during Sandy a few months ago.

All in all, third party websites are a relic of the times when hotels did not have the technical expertise to implement internet reservation systems. Nowadays, you can just look up the hotel's reviews on TripAdvisor, call the hotel directly, and make sure you get the room you want by speaking with someone directly at the property, with actual knowledge of the place. The ONLY benefit these third party websites can provide, seems to be with the bundling of hotels/flights/rental cars, but I still wouldn't use them. Going straight to the vendor has been the more pleasant experience for me.

Edit: I should have noted that my knowledge comes from US and British hotels, mostly franchises like IHG/Hilton/Choice/Wyndham.
Can you share data showing otherwise?

Here's an article from a few weeks ago supporting my claim: http://m.guardiannews.com/technology/appsblog/2012/dec/04/io...

Edit: to clarify, Android is doing better, but it is still no match for iOS.
That's a shame. Does anybody know whether it's the same in the UK? Project Skylon seems very promising.
Branding theory goes against your claims. It's not the oportunity that matters, it's the behavior and psychology of consumers.

RIM is dying for the same reason windows phone is a dud: both companies have failed to produce meaningful innovations and the public recognizes that.
Killer's DNA Won't Explain His Crime
I am just pointing out that refactoring the code he proposed, removing duplicate code, we arrive again at the Rails controller he does not like.

I see duplicate code all over this "service based architecture".
SWAT entry teams use them. At close range they're quite a bit more effective than at the longer ranges often encountered in military situations, since the bullet is likely to fragment.

At the same time, tests have shown less overpenetration after encountering drywall than hollowpoint handgun rounds, which tend to fill up the hollowpoint without expanding and then go through several barriers.
Lockheed is going to be in for a rude awakening one day, the jab they're giving SpaceX is nothing compared to the jab SpaceX is about to deliver in return.

Price is indeed just one factor in competition. But if your reliability is the same as or equal to the competition and your price is substantially lower the door is wide open for a massive shift. Ignoring that or making fun of it isn't going to help one little bit. Maybe Lockheed is willing to postpone slashing their prices until they are absolutely forced to but by then it may be too late to stop the shift from happening.
It works much better with javascript disabled, and as a bonus you get to be amused by the incredible false claim that "QZ.com works best with Javascript enabled."
hahahah and then world abhor Talibans. _Irony_
They do care, but they're also developing software pretty quickly and they break stuff just like everyone else. Only, when they break, people tend to notice, and those people tend to spread word around pretty quickly.

When I worked at a hosting company, we'd have at least 5 shared hosting servers (with ~75-200 websites on each) go down each day, and yet we had a reputation for good uptime, because comparatively, we DID have good uptime.

I think the problem is that most people think about uptime wrong. Uptime is a compromise; a trade-off. You can pay for more uptime with diminishing returns after about 98%. Running one dedicated server colo'd with decent fault recovery systems in a decent datacenter will probably get you 100% uptime most of the time, until it doesn't, thus ~98%.

If you're going to attempt to get beyond power failures, you'll need a second server (or "instance") somewhere. If you need the capacity anyway, this might not double your costs, but you may still have unused headroom. You could buy flexible computing power by using shared hosting ("the cloud") or whatever, but it's the same problem.

Once you get into a state where you have a global business, customer demands, supplier issues, vendor lock-in, etc, it becomes a numbers game. You can hire (more|better|famous) devs and possibly get more uptime. You can test more (and slow down feature releases) to get better uptime. You can break stuff (and pay for the recovery + lost face + downtime) to decrease downtime. Everything is a trade-off, and right now it makes sense to chase about "four nines" of uptime -- 99.99%.

Four nines is 4.32 minutes per month -- four minutes and nineteen seconds AT MOST once a month. This is very possible for many large services and while it does have cost overhead, it's manageable.

TL;DR don't go chasing waterfalls (100% uptime.) It's not practical. It may be possible, but it depends on how long. 100% uptime for 10 years would be a pretty damn lofty goal. In my opinion, it's much more important to recover quickly and gracefully with awesome communication with your customers than it is to be up 100% of the time. 100% uptime goes unnoticed, but consistently great customer service does not.
> Simply compare prices, and if you find it cheaper on a website, ask the hotel to give you 5% off.

I did. The staff told me they sold a number of rooms well in advance, and the travel site does the pricing with a guaranteed return to the hotel. To the hotel, it doesn't matter how much they are selling it for, but they can do only what is listed on the site.

Also, many 3 star rated hotels don't have online reservations.
That's Nokia's decision to go with an EE exclusive, not Microsoft's. The other carriers are going to get the Lumia 920 in January. Other Windows Phones are not carrier exclusive, for example HTC's flagship 8x is available on all carriers in the US.
I disagree on a couple of levels.

First, Expedia, as a service business, should definitely pay attention to passionate customers. Word of mouth matters.

Second, this lacks "all the classic 'crazy person' literary features." The copy is reasonably well written, the formatting is solid, the narrative is coherent, and it's part of a long-running blog with reasonable articles. It's a bit over-written and over-dramatic, but not egregiously so.
I concur!

When you book via Agoda.com you get points that can be used toward future bookings. It’s effectively a 4% rebate, so even if the hotel can match the Agoda price, it’s still a better deal to book it via Agoda, that said, in the past I would often ask the hotel, before booking, if they could match the Agoda price, and more often than not, the answer was no.

Despite my best efforts, I did not succeed in getting an explanation of this policy.

In the case of Agoda, they do not buy the rooms in advance.
Launching a multi-billion dollar satellite is a different than a hello world rails application. The ULA record of successfully putting dozens of satellites into the _correct_ orbit is important here. Which I don't even think SpaceX has done yet.
Also, you may find that the room you want is actually available even if not marked as such on the aggregated list. Unless the smaller hotel is doing business exclusively with such website, they will have to spread their available rooms manually across multiple services and manually close them once they become reserved.

That means some room may be marked open on one website and another room on another. If there's a large number of rooms open, there may be some overlap... but then overlap means a possibility of overbooking. I've seen the systems that small hotels have to deal with and really I'm surprised we don't run into overbooking more frequently.
The problem is no open source (or even closed) come even close to the Photoshop workflow, and also integration with other monopolized software like Illustrator and Fireworks. It's also one of the reasons why a lot of people can't switch to Linux, winin' it is just not good enough
PesaPal: Kenyan Web & Mobile Payments
This is because of momentum. The online travel websites have established themselves among a portion of the population. As a result, in competitive regions, hotels have to play the third party travel website game, which means offering their rooms cheaper there, otherwise their competitors will get that business if they choose not to offer it. However, as I noted below, if you call directly, and offer to pay the hotel directly 5% less than what Expedia or whoever is offering you a room, they should take the money, unless they are incompetent. I would ask to speak to a manager if the lowly desk clerk doesn't accomodate.

The larger hotel franchises are combating this with www.roomkey.com, which is a direct link to the hotel.

As for credit cards, all major hotels (Choice/IHG/Wyndham/Hilton/Accor) have systems that comply with credit card standards. Credit card numbers should not, and I have never seen them, printed plainly on any piece of paper. They are not even visible to most employees, only managers, if proper procedures are followed. They are forwarded to hotels as a security deposit because sometimes the third party websites are not paying, the guest is, and the hotel then pays the travel agent. In this case, the hotel needs the guest's card info to authorize the card after the cancellation period has expired, so that the hotel has a guarantee of being able to collect the money.

>I tried, and the link is down. Most of the hotels don't even have websites, let alone online reservations. There is a reason customers go to expedia in the first place.

In America, most hotels certainly do have websites, via their franchise. If they don't, I'd advise looking up their phone number (google, tripadvisor), and calling them.
Volume is not profit. Intel is an order of magnitude more profitable. However, ARM's model seems to be to suck the profit out of the market. It's a textbook example of a paradigm shift, with an initially inferior product offered at a much lower price point gradually catching up with the market leader. Intel has no choice but to follow ARM down the price curve to settle at a lower profit margin. They seem to have realized this with their current chip strategy. I would be looking at intel to start diversifying into the device market, because that's where the profit is moving.
Sounds like a problem calling out for a solution.
Because he's clearly one of the good guys!
Did you ask to speak with a manager or someone in sales? Most desk clerks are minimum wage employees who won't go out of their way to make a sale, but any competent manager would never forgo cutting out a middleman.
I hear about iphone hardware all the time. You've never heard praise for apple's mythical "build quality"?
How can a brick-and-mortar oriented video rental business compete with Netflix on "convenience"? I can't see any way.
Actually I think that poster was being slightly facetious and meant that it does stop that abuse for those 500 people a year because a dead person can't abuse drugs.
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