skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
ShowHN: Tag Cloud free extension for Google Chrome
Tag Cloud Search + Translate is an extension for Google Chrome that allows you to create, for any web page displayed in your Chrome browser, a Tag Cloud with the 100 most often used words, providing a quick synthesis of every page you browse, in less than a second, and with only one click.

Together with the Tag Cloud, actually right above it, a search bar is provided: you can click on any Tag in the Cloud and add it to the search bar, then you can edit the search bar text, and finally search it on some of the most common websites you might want to search on (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Quora, Wikipedia).

In addition, this extension adds an entry to your right-click context menu inside Chrome; the new entry is shown only when you have selected some text inside a page, and allows you to search the selected text with one of the search engines above, or to translate it using Google Translate (by default, it sets translation from an automatically determined language to English). All of these options requires literally two mouse clicks, and they all open the new search page in a new tab/window.

You can install it from the [chrome webstore](http://goo.gl/pQHts), read about it [here](http://mlarocca.github.com/01-14-2013/tagcloud.html), or check the source code [here](http://goo.gl/Lrqiq)
The fact is that mainframe (emulated at least) COBOL still makes most of the world go around. There are billions of loc in play and maintained. It's out there, cutting your paycheck, processing your loan, or billing your premium.

There are some who claim we're approaching a talent shortage due to the sector's inherent underpaying and uncoolness, while others who poo-poo such shortage on the grounds there are plenty of offshore shops trained and lined up to take on the business for less than the old, local talent. The only thing I could contribute there is there are some sectors, banks for example, who cannot outsource because of privacy/financial regs, so they are stuck with internal hires.
14 Reasons to Upgrade Your Website
There's no money in being nice to your victims.
I think one of the main problems here is that large companys use these shady distribution methods. Nobody gives them any crap about it.

I can't count how often I clicked 'no' when some installer tried to install Bing toolbar or Google Chrome.

Chrome is/was offered as crapware in the Flash or Adobe Reader installer!!!
How to do Sponsored Posts Without Selling Your Soul (2011)
The crapware situation on Windows is horrible. I'm a Mac/Linux user but from time to time I have to power up my Windows VM.

A few days ago I wanted to install the Partition Magic trial on my Win XP VM. Having left Windows around 2005 I figured that typing "Partition Magic Win XP download" in Google would be helpful.

I got a handful of "reputable" download sources like CNet and the like. I went there and was bombarded by 20 (dramatization) different download buttons. I clicked the one that seemed most promising and somehow ended with a new Zip-Archiver installed ...

So I went back and found the Partition Magic installer. It was an installer with 'added value' that asked me three times to install some toolbar crap. I ended up with one of those toolbars installed because unchecking the box and clicking on 'next' obviously is not enough. You have to click the decline button instead of next.

Now I would consider myself computer literate and yet still I didn't manage to install a simple utility without littering my system with crapware. I can only imagine what hell the internet must be like to inexperienced (read: normal people) Windows users.
I think they can still make money without hurting anyone's experience.

(Edited because I misinterpreted your comment the first time.)
“Fast” has been used as an adverb since at least Old English…

http://i.imgur.com/GuFFX.png
This is so stunningly true! I never actually thought about it, but with each passing sentence the light-bulb above my head grew brighter.

I love the lead-glass reference. It's true, but I personally imagined it as building a large sand castle with special grains, grain-by-grain, and than a wave of distraction smashing into it. Go find your fucking special sand grains. :(

I usually don't drink coffee at night, but I have been for a few weeks and I catch myself staring at imgur, tumblr, twitter, hacker news, even reading Wikipedia's featured article. So, I am usually telling myself "damnit, go work!" And I do, for a few minutes; then I go back to previous activities.

I can't really confirm my bright monitor is what makes me stay up--although my monitor's brightness is maxed--but my sleeping pattern is definitely fucked-up. I sometimes go to bed around 7 am or 8 am, depending on when my room mate starts making noise around the house. I sort of do it subconsciously, thinking "oh it's that late--early--already. better go to sleep."

Everyone who knows me thinks I'm a noon-waking-sloth. :(
It's common for people who received good educations to say that test scores aren't an acceptable indication of learning. It's probably true that if you already have an acceptable level of education, test scores shouldn't be too important, but it seems like the people criticizing test scores haven't experienced what education is like for the children being "left behind."

In middle school, the last three weeks of each semester were spent watching movies (the same two or three movies over and over). In high school, I was taught that the big bang theory was when the continents divided. I was taught that the most direct route between two points on the globe is through the north pole. My Spanish and woodworking teachers taught math because they knew that the math teachers weren't doing it.

When you're talking about schools like the ones I went to (which weren't nearly as bad as many other schools in America) I think that test scores are a decent indicator of the education a student is receiving. You're measuring things like "can this kid read English" and "can they multiply two numbers together." Standardized tests are certainly capable of measuring things like that. Testing probably breaks down for measuring intelligence/education as the level of education improves, but I encourage everyone to consider just how dysfunctional many schools are before ignoring testing entirely.
I'll just hack your bank account and take your money to compensate for the positive externalities of my work. If you don't like it, use a stronger password and mail me a dollar.
part of the problem is that, despite wishful thinking to the contrary windows is /the only/ large platform for desktops and the Windows 8 App Store might as well not exist, so the 'app store' argument is fundamentally flawed.

worse though is that this kind of stuff has ever been tolerated. its obviously shady... tricky adverts and sneaky buttons should be just as illegal as any other con or fraud. then they would not exist.
The study identifies teachers who are effective against a particular metric. Most identified are likely members of the subset of good teachers. Yet, the three R's as measured by standardized test outcomes are not the only measure of effective education, just one that is cheap to measure.

Dewey believed that the goal of education should be to produce good citizens. Systems with metrics based upon the model of student as consumer are more likely to produce outcomes biased toward producing consumers.

The entire set of good teachers includes those who inspire a lifetime of learning. It includes those who teach kindness, sportsmanship, and good humor. It includes those who teach subjects for which there are few students and in which standardized tests make little sense such as art and shop.

Maybe the study can point us in the right direction. But few districts will bring outside evaluators from Cambridge's famed institutions. Few districts will fund ETS analysis or purchase their tools.

What we are likely to get are processes localized to the political reality on the ground.
Ask HN: How do you go to sleep quickly?
I would like to go to sleep much more quickly than I currently do. I often lie awake in bed for an hour or two before falling asleep. I typically get in bed at a reasonable and consistent time (almost always before 10:30pm, often before 10:00). I would like to be asleep by 10:00pm and wake up by 5:30am. When I do fall asleep quickly, I have no problem waking up without an alarm at a reasonable time.

Short of taking drugs to assist in falling asleep, do you have any suggestions for how to fall asleep more quickly? What has worked for you?
Google "Best pop bands" search
I had to stop and think about that one myself. But it makes sence, at least if you emphasize on "hint at". When you wander though the source code, cascading the layers of abstraction, and jumping from place to place, it's nice that the code is somewhat bound to the same context.. in a way. It could be naming conventions, and using the same names for the same things consistently throughout the code.
Another way to hint at the overall design is strict structure, e.g. layers: DAO-layer handles persistence, Business-layer handles business, Service-layer handles the interfaces to other parts of the application / other applications, etc. Naming the code-artifacts accordingly hints strongly at what it's doing.

Also code that is not directly dependant on the context (business domain) should be put in a special place, in Java that would be in util-methods "hidden" away in some common-package. This way it does not clutter the rest of the code, and allows for easier reuse.
My friend just found this gem in their privacy policy

“We gather personally identifiable and may include information regarding your geo-location, ip address, operating system, language setting and information regarding whether recommended advertiser software has been accepted, downloaded, installed and any reason for failure installing. None of his information is personally identifiable.”
It is quite possible that Apple is, technically, breaking EU law but the Commission are letting them get away with it because they have more important things to deal with. With no consumer outrage and no real local competitor to protect from a foreign predator there is no political gain from action.

However competition law applies uniformly across the EU so it is easy to comply with, if you choose so. A more complex situation exists with Facebook. To follow a variety of applicable national and state law they would have to an extraordinarily large amount of legal resources familiar with the respective intricacies and probably create national variations of their product. This is the kind of thing that holds back European companies but in this case it protects FB, because the Commission (the only institution with enough political clout and resources to take action) is only going to address EU-wide issues, not a bag of a dozen different issues. So it is rational for FB to mostly ignore the law, which in reality they chose to do.
Would you start off a business with a mainframe?

I understand a lot of big orgs use them - likely because when those orgs started there were no other compelling options. There are more options today, generally more cost-efficient, partially because it's easier and cheaper to find people with expereice with modern hardware and software.

Given that I don't see much trend for small businesses to use them, and many small businesses grow in to the larger businesses, it seems like it's going to be a continual marginalization of "mainframes" as part of business. They'll never go away entirely, but it'll be harder to find people to work on them. I don't think it's an issue of 'sexy' as much as 'demand'.

If 'sexy' was a huge component in job skills, I couldn't explain so many Java developers. :)
How do we know what a "bad egg" is?

Just because some behaviour is acceptable to "InstallMonetizer" does not mean it will necessarily be acceptable to me.

Besides if they are seeking to maximise revenues for investors there will always be that incentive to find ways to justify bundling more intrusive stuff.
Yeah, I knew people who were in Saudi during it. I would have felt safer as an American in most of those countries than as an Arab in the US, immediately post-9/11. I think there was a news article about some westerners in Yemen post-9/11; the people they were with were quite kind.

It still would have sucked for travel, and would have been pretty scary.
Their users (scumware peddlers) aren't susceptible to market pressure from the poor bastards who end up with their vectored garbage ruining their computing experience. Where's the incentive to make less money, once it's nut-cutting time?
8 Unique Waterfalls Around the World
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Where's Lad Vampire and Muguito When You Need Them?
Where did you go to school? How does this happen?
What's the Right Platform?
Red October Diplomatic Cyber Attacks Investigation Analysis
Homo Floresiensis: New fossils prove that it was a real specie
To elaborate on kapowaz comment: Star Wars was directly inspired by an earlier era of space opera. Most likely, so was this ad in Vogue.

Even the idea of starting at "Episode 4" makes Star Wars feel like one of the older serials -- they were presented as shorts, split into multiple episodes.

Another similar homage that went way over my head as a kid is Indiana Jones. The whole concept is a deliberate remix of adventure serials of the 30s and 40s.
The true talent problem I see is maybe 20% solved by offshore talent. I say that because with most of these monster systems, it seems the talent comes in understanding the system yes, but more importantly the business that the system is designed for (around...)

There are offshore people on mainframes in the banking industry, but the problem faced is more in explaining why or how to do something business-wise. Once some of the older ranks , and thus their experience/knowledge, retire there will be less people who understand why the system does what it does, with hoards of offshore who just pump code leading to a crippling process to which I imagine will hinder any non-trivial change.
I played with an IBM mainframe when I was in university (mostly for the free t-shirt), and the reason I don't really want to work on mainframes for a living is because too much of what I was doing revolved around the machine, as opposed to problems.

For example, one problem revolved around creating a file, which required me to specify how many lines and how many columns it was before I could open it.

I suppose this is why I prefer higher level languages e.g. Python, as I can spend more time thinking about the problem at hand than, say, the details of HTTP.
Anyone got a link to the other side of this story? I'm happy to believe that the Tory/Liberal coalition is doing something stupid, or even something evil for the benefit of big business, but ironically this overwrought and fact-free propaganda piece in favour of expansive copyright (which is standard MO for Orlowski) actually makes me think they may be onto something good if it annoys him so much.
Mac or PC? A Developers view
Perhaps someone here who actually is a lawyer can answer this or correct my understanding... Under current rules, any plea bargain offers by a prosecutor can't be introduced into the trial. What if that were changed? What if, at the same time a jury is told that the maximum sentence is 47 years imprisonment they were also told the details of any plea-bargain negotiations, such as that the prosecution had been willing to accept 3 months? Might this help to mitigate the perverse effects of the plea bargain system we have now?
Best of Quora - 2010-2012
Cool effort.

But ... its a score to jstor. It's unorganized.

But ... science if full of noise and crappy publications these days anyway. Lots of ways to do the same thing, unprooven and only exists because everybody has to publish to stay relevant.

Now: How to really improve science ?
My suggestion: A big python framework for each field of study. That has implementations of the real algorithms and models for comparison and benchmarking and even real life implementation.

See as example in the robotics field, ROS ( Robotics Operating System) . Ros is like a basis glue framework where universities and individuals can publish their code. Its decentralized, it has simulators so that scientists do not need to own the physical robots and can even compare(diff) results and algorithms in a very fast way.

The simulator can have a embedded browser + wiki + quora that explains X.

evolution: physical paper -> PDF -> simulator.
Ninite is great and has saved me time in the past. What exactly does this have to do with the article? Are you implying that since Y Combinator funded non-junk applications that it's okay to now fund junk applications?
Like I said, review the software and get rid of the bad eggs. Not all of it will be bad, I'm sure, since not all of it is bad now. The incentive to leave some of the money on the table (the money from the bad people) is in not tanking your brand just to scrape in a few extra dollars.
My understanding is that performance is a negligible factor next to maintainability when writing CSS in virtually all cases. The best post I've seen on the subject is by Steve Souders[0], which does include some numbers.

[0] http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/03/10/performance-impa...

Further reading:

http://csswizardry.com/2011/09/writing-efficient-css-selecto...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/Writing_Efficie...
How to Track Website Content with Google Analytics
These ads interrupt...

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...doesn't harm anyone's experience?
>But TechCrunch is completely right to call us all out

Agree with you.

If you look at Aaron's activity on HN[1], you will see that there is none from around 144 days i.e. 15 days before from after the help submission[2] was discussed. If you see earlier activity, he had been posting things with a gap of 10-20 days. So it can't be ruled out, that perhaps he felt let down by the community. Sad.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaronsw
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484
The phrase "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." is suspiciously similar to the one in the ad, though. But maybe that, also, was borrowed by the ad from previous material?
Offline safety in a cloud app
Agreed, a lot of the reasons that non technical users dislike Windows seem to be the result of these. It really takes control out of the users hands.

We can see the origins of this becoming a problem on Ubuntu with Canonical adding stuff like the Amazon search and seemingly having no issue with bundleware as a means of monetisation.

On the other hand I'm surprised this isn't more of an issue on the Mac, since Mac (especially older versions) will allow installation of software from random sources which could include bundleware.

Is there something about OS X that makes bundleware more difficult to develop or is it just easier to monetise an OS X app without bundleware?
It took me a double-read to understand you meant "...funded our solution (to [crapware] junk like this): ninite.com"

Upon first reading, it sounded like "to junk like ninite"

Great stuff!
It's nice move to fund both junk and solution for the junk... Some people say that antivirus software companies are the ones that make viruses, you know...
I'm very surprised to learn that ninite is YC funded. Thanks for a great product. And I say this on behalf of many less-technical friends, as well.
The accepted answer relies too much on hindsight and experience, something that young programmers definitely don't have available to base decisions upon.

The real answer is: no young programmer today grew up using anything other than a PC or Mac, and no CS graduate today was instructed on a mainframe in college (AFAICT that trend ceased in the late '90s).

I'm a very occasional mainframe programmer myself (though I get to use RPG4 rather than RPG2), and I distinctly remember the inner incredulity I experienced during my job interview that anyone (other than banks) was actually still using these things!
> Winzip and Nero use the Ask Partner Network

Sadly, on Windows even Oracle's Java has the ASK toolbar.

Almost nobody has any pride left on the Windows-platform, user-abuse is rampant, almost expected. It's killing the platform and there's nothing Microsoft can do about it.
People mean different things when they say "local storage". Some of the storage APIs prompt the user, some don't, some only prompt if you ask for more than a certain amount of storage space. The various browsers are not consistent, especially when it comes to quota management.

I wrote up some notes on this, though they're about a year old now and the browser UIs continue to evolve: http://tech-blog.clericare.com/2012/02/choosing-right-browse...

For someone building a consumer web app that needs to painlessly convert users in volume, I can see where it would still be a pain. For me, it's not so bad -- my app is B2B, and having an install step as simple as clicking "Allow this app to use up to 500MB on your computer?" is actually a huge improvement over the "enterprise" junk we compete with.
I think he was saying it was kind of a humorous contrast with YC essentially funding companies that compete in a way. The nerdy conclusion of this discussion would lead to a battle of the two platforms, one trying to install spam-ware and the other trying to prevent it...
Like most people they probably know what sucks to have sprung on them. If they don't want their brand to suck as well then they can strive to align with peoples' expectations of how such software should behave. You don't like popups? I'll bet they know that.

I think the investors can see the value in not tarnishing the brand and so that might fuel their efforts to make sure none of their advertisers can be classified as malware/adware.
Thanks! Edited (hopefully) for clarity.
It's not meant to be a competitor to JSTOR, as much as this is a statement in honor of someone.

A framework like that would be awesome, but that has a different meaning from the collection of personal pdf posts/uploads each individual on Twitter contributed.
Not sure where you're located, but in most countries you can simply get Melatonin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin).

This will help you better adjust to your sleeping times that you would prefer (a lot of people use it mostly for recovering from a jetlag).
This is exactly the same argument that Bill Gates used in 1976 in "Open Letter to Hobbyists", asking: "Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"

Here we are, nearly 40 years later, standing next to Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and all the open source software in the world, and we can say, Yes, people will do this work for free. The fundamental premises of your argument (that people won't do it for free) has been disproved.
Great pricing, but it doesn't give me a lot of confidence in their service when it can't survive being linked from TC.
Wow....I thought these kind of companies stay and operate from the darkest corners of the internet, just like those CPA networks where you get paid to SPAM the hell out of the internet. Frustrating that these are coming mainstream and Y Combinator has backed one of them.
Stevey's Google Platforms Rant on SOAs (2011)
The problem is that the end user is not the customer here, so the perception of their brand in the users eyes is nowhere near as important as the ROI they can deliver for the bundleware vendors.

Think of it like the IRS, they don't increase the tax take by being nice to people.