skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm just bringing up three points in relation to this article I'm popping out in my lunch break, I know they are rantish - but they are on my mind a lot...

a) Maybe I am missing something, but where is the mobile web app 'store' as a good middle ground for people trying to find mobile versions of sites? So many people have been conditioned out there to think mobile = 'apps' - perhaps a push in this direction would be an idea?

What I seriously dislike about Google search on my phone is it gives me a mish-mash of Web and Mobile results that give a totally inconsistent user experience. For some sites I can get away with using a standard 'big' web view - but for anything generally requiring input, forms, etc - 'conventional' web pages are a serious pain. Try booking a hotel room with one of them.

b) One thing to keep in mind as we get more and more devices (and thats what the hardware manufacturers want us to do right?) I notice the download an app model as not 'scalable' in this way. I can see a future where I have a desktop at my office, a tablet sitting at my office, a phone always in my pocket, a tablet sitting in my bedroom, a laptop at home, a tablet sitting in my kitchen, a tablet sitting in my lounge room, a tv connected to the internet, a tablet that I take out with me when I'm on the road, a tablet kind of device in my car. Do I really want to be downloading, installing and updating apps on every single device? This might sound far fetched today - but I still have computer magazines from about 1990 when 16MB of RAM was US$4000. And I can still remember seeing my first plasma TV for sale for about US$20000 in the late 90's. Prices will continue to drop on these things and people will get more of them - I'm sure of that. But it's already annoying enough to have to sync, install, update apps across two devices right now.

c) I keep hearing that people are calling for native apps in mobile devices for reasons such as they offer a faster user experience, offer more native controls, etc. But I could make the argument that building a desktop version of say, Facebook would offer something faster and look more 'native' than what I currently see in the web. But where is the demand for this? People you are missing out on a beautiful 'glides like butter' Facebook shiny, polished look and feel experience on iOS! Where is there an outcry? I think the only reason HTML5 sucks in most use cases for mobile web is it's just still too slow - but each keynote for a new iPhone I hear about delivers speeds usually 2x of the previous version. Therefore I sometimes think this is a short term problem. I think the web in any form it takes will always take a while to 'be ready - how long did it take Wikipedia to push off the CD-ROM behemoth Encarta?
Wait.. so any JSON API that doesn't do this is technically vulnerable to CSRF? Mind blown.
curl_multi???!!!
This left me thinking "what are the signs of cancer"? Here are a couple of links after a quick search:

* http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/signs-and-symptoms...
* http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Aboutcancer/Si...
Hi, good perspective. I've used Scala as well. Twitter held a meetup with Martin O back in 2007. At the time we started using it, the actor code was not ready for production. I think there is a lot of great activity in that space. I'm sure most of these have been addressed.

I also agree with your last statement. This is not the end of the road.
I suspect (utterly without proof) that the higher up the chain you get the stronger that sentiment.
AOL In Talks To Buy Gdgt
Zoom to fit would be very much appreciated on my 15inch laptop screen.
They recently appeared behind an about:flags flag. :)
They already are. But sure, you could do that if you wanted.
That was somewhat uncalled for.
> Studies say that couples experience a happiness spike in their first year or two of marriage. But that euphoria is fleeting: A couple's happiness returns to its normal, pre-marital level in the years that follow.

I wonder if they control for couples who have kids versus those who don't.
Some opinions hold more weight than others. I'm not sure what the law is in the United States, but in Canada if an engineer gives poor, actionable advice in some field related to engineering he can be held liable for any damages related to that advice.

A ratings agency is neither an engineering firm nor is it a food-review newsletter. I suppose it's the job of the courts to decide which of the two it more closely resembles and if its "opinions" can be protected by free speech laws.
I have EPB Fiber here in Chattanooga, TN. I currently pay for the 50Mb service which usually runs on faster than that and is symmetrical. I started with 15Mb and since March 2009, they've bumped the speed up from 15 to 30 to 50. My friend has 100Mb service through them, which I'm considering since switching too since the cost isn't that much more, I'm finally setting up a wired NAS box, and my household no longer has cable TV, instead using the Internet for our media consumption.

With current technology, I wouldn't complain about 1Gb speeds, but 50, let alone 100, is still pretty damn quick. An HD TV show at just over 4.6GB took just over 13 minutes to download; in the process, practically saturating my wifi connection (which I've found to be the more limiting factor in my Internet speed).

So, fiber: yeah, it's awesome. But I'd wager that stupid-fast speeds aren't necessary for most people for a while, and until 802.11AC or faster has market saturation, it won't be.
Make Sure Your Business Is Solving A Problem
Wow, the moment I saw "Parallel programming", I knew it's John Owens.
I think it's fair to say that developing gnome applications at the moment is something of a nightmare, and anything they can do to woo the developer community is a good thing.

Using javascript as a scripting language seems to be pretty popular these days, so I can't really say I'm surprised at the choice. A proper C code base with easy to use javascript wrappers would make writing apps in GTK using gnome libraries a lot easier.

Just one other comment:

> JavaScript is increasingly being seen as a first class desktop programming language -- it us being used in Windows 8, mobile platforms, and for local web applications.

No it's not. Ffs, that's the magical unicorns and rainbows future microsoft is betting on, and no one is buying it at the moment. Those RT apps are crap.

We have yet to see if javascript can be a compelling desktop story.

Just be honest: We want developers and we're hoping like hell that people will write JS apps for Windows 8 and we'll get a synergy bonus from that and the same people will write gnome apps as it becomes the defacto standard.
Android is the new Windows CE.
The spec seems safe for data models where instantiating a data structure does not mean running arbitrary code (ie, constructors). For example, ML or Haskell abstract data types, or 'bless' in Perl.
Yeah. Just to be clear, I don't think prosecutors should have to wring their hands and back away from plea bargaining every time any defendant claims emotional distress. I do think there should be a framework for evaluating claims of defendants being at risk for self-harm and then selecting appropriate courses of action; in Aaron's case I think that prior evidence (e.g. content from his blog) as well as the nature of his crime should have been suitable grounds for an adjusted plea bargain under this hypothetical framework.

Courts are messy affairs; there's still a lot we don't know, like the disposition of the judge, so I can accept that the defense should have brought that to the court, but would rebut that we don't know that they didn't, or that they weren't able to for some reason. Either way, I don't think that completely exonerates the prosecutor's office in this case.

Thanks for the calm, reasoned discussion.
Why does Google append their JSON responses to while(1); ?
Well, I can't really agree with this. Filming a movie and viewing a movie are two completely different experiences and take place in completely different environments, even if the medium is the same.

What you're saying would be like saying all movies should be filmed in cinemas… I think using the browser's rendering engine is great, but there's no reason why we necessarily need to create websites in actual browsers.

In fact I think the main weakness of apps like Easel compared to, say, Photoshop, is precisely the fact that they run in the browser and don't feel as fast and responsive as a native desktop app.
Twitter looks to add two-factor authentication to stop password hacks
Darn, am I that old at the age of 32? I start to find myself disqualified because of my age from a lot of new things that I do like a lot. Even worse that so many of my friends are on the other hand are in their middle-late twenties, and I feel much more like that as well.
I jail broke for "protect my privacy" and shell access. Way better than sbsettings
I found some graphics that support your point: http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/overall-had...

In the 1850-2012 graph the temperature is mostly increasing, but not straightly increasing. The interesting part is the flat part at the end. It is expanded in the 1997-2012 graphic. In this period the temperature anomaly is ~.5C, it is even very slightly decreasing, but it's too noisy to take the decrees seriously.

The graphs are based in the HadCrut data: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/hadcr... compiled by the UK Met Office. I didn't download the data and redraw them, but in that page they have a table of yearly global average temperature of the last ~15 years. The temperature anomaly is ~.5C and the variation of the numbers look similar to the values in the graph.
def double(number)
return number * 2
end

double(10)
# => 20

double("foo")
# => "foofoo"

It's called polymorphism. `*` is a method.

Learn how the language works before you write an article about it proclaiming your ignorance.
Bitcoin Wallet Options
> some (like Gore himself) stand to make quite a bit of money

> That's a key reason to oppose such centralized schemes: ... any expected benefits will be more than swallowed up by the social costs of people gaming the system.

Wait, what? I'm not sure I've understood this allegation here, or that I have all the facts, so please correct me if/where I'm missing something. With that in mind, here's what I know.

With respect to solutions, I think you're saying that "centralized" incentives are a bad idea because they can be gamed (to various degrees). Suppose with me (just for this paragraph) that there is a catastrophic problem looming. What alternatives are there to centralized schemes, whether absolute restrictions, or capitalist incentives? Are you hoping that everyone will spontaneously change their behaviour? If that's what you're proposing, I disagree violently. If you have some other proposal (other than centralized planning, and other than spontaneous distributed action), I'm curious what it is.

With respect to Al Gore in particular, I think you're claiming that Al Gore's bona fides as an objective judge are compromised by his profit opportunity. All I'm aware of is that he is a partner at KP, which is invested in greentech, where he has forfeited his salary. He presumably has some equity there (not known to be forfeited), so I guess he might profit some if centralized schemes are implemented. But it strikes me as downright crazy reasoning to assume that because he has allocated (some of) his personal wealth to a capitalist solution (in the capitalist country that he is loyal to) to a problem he's worried about, that therefore he's not _sincerely_ worried about the problem.
Well, when I heard that WebRTC was in Chrome stable I thought this must surely include DataChannel, since it's simpler than a full-blown video stack. So although it being behind a flag is better news than it not being there at all, I was still pretty disappointed when I read that page :)

edit: also, I don't see it as an about:flags flag.

edit 2: I should just tunnel data through video then, what could possibly go wrong?
MOOC = massive open online course

TIL...
A native app with a WebKit canvas would be much nicer, no?
Having just seen the subtlepatterns bookmarklet it would be awesome if you had a subtlepatterns available in your background picker.
Whenever an instance of blatant sexism comes up

Excuse me, have you even read the article?

Someone uploaded fake porn pictures of her to a forum and then persistently sent the URL to her employers and acquaintances.

This was a targeted attack on her reputation, or perhaps malicious stalking, but how on earth does sexism factor into this?

The porn pictures were merely a vehicle. If the attack had been carried out against a man they would probably have used accusations of child pornography or such.
It's never too late (education)
You Really Don’t Know if Your Market is Too Small For Quite a While
Read "Master Switch" by Tim Wu to see how we got from point A to point B.

There's no beef to your argument. The telco oligopolies are the result of two simple factors:

1) Telecom is a field with almost infinite economics of scale, which means that the natural tendency is towards consolidation until there is only one company left. It's the textbook case of natural monopoly.

2) Most of the existing telecoms arose through government-sanctioned monopolies. Those monopolies didn't arise because lobbyists padded the right pockets. Those monopolies arose because rural areas dominate U.S. politics (their votes count about 2x as much when election districts are accounted for). As a result, governments go to huge lengths to make sure that utility providers don't do the most economically sensible thing of concentrating infrastructure in densely-populated areas. One of the measures is giving utilities monopoly rights in return for their servicing rural areas.

The fact that it takes something like Google to take on these interests is completely unsurprising. They are one of the few companies with the dollars to address (1). They are also targeting, so far, only Kansas City (not a megalopolis, but an urban area of 1.5 million people) and thereby dodging (2).
Crowd-sourced sports broadcasting idea
I've had an interest in setting up a course like this for a while now. I'm actually putting together a short survey right now to gather feedback and gauge interest. If I can find enough people and the format is right, I would make it happen.
It appears the instructor is employed as an "instructional designer" in Georgia Tech's distance learning program. Superficially, traditional distance learning programs have something in common with MOOCs, but there are a number of important differences. An obvious one is scale and it seems like the instructor was legitimately unprepared for the M in MOOC. Unfortunately, (and obviously generalizing here) another one is quality. Distance learning programs have long been second rate and even though the MOOC format isn't perfect, there are some very good professors teaching fields they have made significant contributions to, which is not something I've experienced with distance learning. My take away? You have to vet the instructor.
Technologies for Better Infrastructure Planning
I'm a bit perplex why you've chosen to pedantize this particular word choice since "prepend" itself is a portmanteau derived by mashing "pre" and "append" together.

Perhaps the trio of "affix", "prefix" and "suffix" might be more useful, since there is no "postpend" or "suppend" to accompany "append" and "prepend".

Regardless, the Google ngram chart of these various words is pretty interesting: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=prepend%2Cappen...
This is so absurd. So basically US is not a democracy. From networks to cabs, everywhere these companies need protection from disruption. But if Uber can do it in cab services, can't all Cities group together and fight ?
That's an awfully big assumption that only pirates don't update to the latest and greatest device. Especially when many can't afford to and a smaller community does actually jailbreak to mod their devices. Some I know that went back to iOS from Android were waiting for a jailbreak so they could mod stuff.
I don't see anything that makes me think it's homophobic?

Me neither. But then again, I don't see anything that makes me think it's sexist. Or racist, for that matter.

And yes. Parenting sites that assume that fathers can't be parents are sexist.

Well, that's the problem I'm trying to highlight. They probably assume no such thing. But we must brand them as sexist by the same token that we are not supposed to tolerate a guy with a beard on an IT recruitment site.

Here's another example: when Nike uses a photograph of a tall black guy to advertise their basketball shoes - are they being racist, sexist and disrespectful to short people?
This method only works for HTTP GETs, and can't get around requirements to present CSRF tokens with the request. This is one of several possible strategies for guarding against CSRF.
Its a great idea, but the UI seems a bit confusing. I got lost in there.
Building a supersonic ping-pong gun
Firstly, the feminist bullshit you linked to doesn't support your point, because it lists women's occupations like "governesses" and "middle-management" - is that supposed to be blue collar?

Secondly, the period referred to in the original post was like a century later than that referred to in the feminist bullshit.

Thirdly, the feminist bullshit is trying to "put to bed" the "myths" of the nuclear household, non-working woman and the child-devoted mother. You try telling the matriarchs in my family that these are "myths".

And fourthly, even if the feminist bullshit were true, you still didn't address my point that the returning soldier 70 years ago couldn't get away with being a house husband. Hell, I doubt you could get away with that now.

I admire how you managed to squeeze so much wrongness into just two lines of comment.
It's true that websites and sofas have different refresh rates, but I'm guessing you didn't read the OP, check out the site in question, or click through to any of the examples he provided.

If you do, you'll see that we're not talking about general conventions here (e.g. the similar layouts of YouTube and Kickstarter pages). Nor is this "emulation" in many cases. It's just unvarnished theft (i.e. using the same copyright protected photos as backgrounds).

Best thing to do is to send the owner a Cease & Desist letter, and if they're based in the US, a threat to have the site pulled by the webhost under the DMCA in the event that the owner refuses to comply. It's diplomatic to give the owner a way to save face be acknowledging that that may also be getting victimized by an unscrupulous third party who is passing off the work of others as their own. But also note that this doesn't change the facts of the matter, and state that, one way or another, the site must come down immediately.

You shouldn't say or offer anything else until they call you back and offer you a chance to gauge their demeanor. Chances are good, they're going to be angry. Question is, at who? If it's with you (for ruining their day) then fuck 'em. They're not the kind of people you want anything to do with. Just tell them they have 24 hours to comply or you'll have the site pulled for violating copyrights, and that you won't release the claim unless they pay you several thousand dollars. However, if they're reasonable, they'll be angry with their vendor, apologetic with you, and then you can turn the exchange into a sales call.
> That's never going to happen b/c there is too much legacy infrastructure and the benefit is marginal.

It is going to have to happen, or there will be no internet.

> All current home routers are configured to do NAT, so you're not going to be able to have a Skype 2.0 be P2P b/c then you'd need to explain to millions of people how to reconfigure their routers.

Current home routers will be replaced within a year or two. They do not last that long. Some people are starting to not have dedicated routers, instead renting equipment from the ISPs.

> Also P2P opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to security.

Firewalls have been around for a long time. We'll survive.
It's back in stock now.
Ships in 2-3 weeks.
https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_16g...
Completely agreed. Mandating that employers pay parents not to work is hugely problematic; for starters, it creates an economically rational incentive to avoid hiring women of childbearing age. If society believes that having children and taking time off to raise them should be encouraged, then society should pay for it, not individual businesses.
B3D PM is fine.
You youngsters dont realize what it was like to have one day turnaround. Yeah, one day to find a syntax error. Mailing in your coding sheets was only marginally slower than sticking them in your out basket and getting them back a day or two later. Even longer if you wanted them verified.
RQ is cool but it's not fair to say that celery is complicated, if you use redis rather than rabbitMQ then celery is just as easy to set up and has all the features RQ wants to add in 0.4 and 0.5
So everybody is right, everything is relative, and so on?

Sorry but no. In some cases, maybe in most cases, the right thing in not in the middle. For example: having or not ads on Wikipedia, using or not useless animations in websites, allowing or not third-party to access private data, etc.

So, removing a useful cue for user without strong reasons to do so is not "somewhat right", it is just wrong. It is a sin, and will send you to designers' hell (which is a room with thousands of 30' screens on the walls displaying random websites from 5 years ago).
Have you ever invested in anything? Ever spoken to an investor? Do you know the circumstances around the issue?
That's a good overview and a great link, but I have to ask why the ratings agencies wouldn't be expected to take positive feedback loops into account? After all, this phenomenon has been discussed since at least the days of Dutch tulip mania.

We had an asset bubble with a painful pop right at the turn of the century; and while it appears the Fed and many economic pundits such as Paul Krugman advised pumping up the housing market a bit to compensate (since houses have considerable utility independent of their asset performance), housing bubbles aren't exactly unknown either. I got caught in the early 90s UK housing bubble as a callow youth and luckily had the good sense (or risk aversion) to sit the recent bubble out because there was just way too much easy cash sloshing about to believe that it could last.

I have some understanding of economics and a basic grasp of finance, so I'm no expert, but how many standard deviations away from the long-term average do you need before something triggers the 'too good to be true' warning? While 'the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent,' and everyone hates a party pooper, I feel that when ratings agencies say they are helpless in the face of public irrationality, it's like inviting consumers to buy a car with no brakes.
Don't you think Kansas City had a municipal franchise agreement in place with telecom/cable providers before Google stepped in? Surely some modifications had to be made to allow a competing company to lay fiber.

In fact, that probably explains the whole "Hey kids! Get your town to enter the Google Fiber Lucky City Sweepstakes!" that was used to roll Google Fiber out. The winning city bought into the fiber idea so hard that the next step of kicking out the franchise agreements would be a snap.
"GNU grep 2.12 changes behavior of recursion options, breaks existing scripts": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4295681
GameStop’s Kongregate to invest $10M in mobile game developers
Many banking and insurance regulation are based on the ratings of the securities held : So being a Nationally Recognized Rating Agency is a pretty critical role, and a ratings agency deserves to be held to a higher standard, IMHO. OTOH, perhaps the government should subsidize them, since they are performing work for the governments regulators, in effect.