skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wanted to say "a language with units of measure wouldn't have allowed this", but in this case it would have... I guess sometimes even the most restricted tools can't save you :)
One big difference here is that Firefox OS (just like PhoneGap/Cordova) is aiming at standardizing the APIs, not at just being another framework.

That by itself will make the web richer regardless of how FFOS fares on the market.
Show HN: My forum project; a different philosophy than Discourse
tl;dr: http://pony-forum.com, forums are in again, baby!

Longer version that breaks character limit: https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4753948

I was abroad earlier last week, so I unfortunately was not there to join in on the discussion of Jeff Atwood’s Discourse[1].

Discourse has received a lot of attention, and revitalizing the forum software of yore is suddenly part of the public conversation. As such, I feel I should bring your attention to my own forever project[2], which has been years in the making from the idea stage. I am not planning on “launching” it any time soon, but the project, Pony Forum, is relevant to the discussion for a few reasons:

1. As another “modern” take on forum software, it allows us to conceptualization modern forums from multiple perspectives.

2. My approach is entirely different than Atwood’s—just look at the screenshots(!).

3. All of it is open source, available for your immediate perusal and comparison at GitHub.

4. It is based on Django, increasing the potential for some hilarious fanboy wars.

The project should be fairly easy to set up on dotCloud or locally. Here is how to do it locally, IIRC: https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4753982.

I submit this project not because I plan on “launching” it soon, but because it makes me happy that Jeff was able to draw so much attention to something so great and yet so abandoned. It means the iron is hot as ever, and the the time to discuss the future of forums is now.

As you can tell by comparing both of our projects, Atwood and I only agree on the state of forums, and the urgency of doing something about it. But now what?

That couldn’t be a better way to start the discussion of what to do now.

http://pony-forum.com

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5172905

[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5096009
Oh wow, that is definitely a better way of doing things. Good stuff!
Show HN: Re-Imagining the College Essay
Our goal is to make the college paper more engaging and shareable. On our site https://chalktips.com , users publish "booklets" which are counterparts to the traditional essay.

Essay assignments, especially for the social-sciences, rely heavily on text documents and they are meant to be read only by the teacher. We would like to make these assignments cater to the 21st century writer while maintaining their intellectual integrity.

Here are a few examples of student work. Please note that there are 2 layouts possible, booklets and slideshows:

https://chalktips.com/t/view/e37b797e6f3c4f97bd088629509e5f9e (booklet)

https://chalktips.com/t/view/8ce8c41333a743f696fd01984d19c5a5 (slideshow)
Interesting if this is in fact the goal. I would argue you still will have a mix of both. No ubiquitous environment, but Web apps will get first class support on upcoming platforms. At least this seems to be the most logical route. If you've ever used Cordova or "PhoneGap" you would know about the plug in architecture and how it is in fact still the wild west. Developers write native extensions to do things the underlying JS API can't, this won't change for a long time until the Web API does. The future is a mix of both Web and native, not just the Web.
> A test about pointers is not stupid. A test about printf formatters is.

Obviously you did not have the joy of working with people who write their own byzantine 1k LoC formatting code for cases that would have been perfectly covered by printf (and yes, this was on a system where a printf implementation was available).
You didn't stop at the "discussion at hand". You invoked the general principle of "proving a negative" and Russel's teapot (which is rather naive reasoning in itself).

Well, proving a negative is certainly feasible:

>In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

You might want to check the whole Wikipedia lemma on "Proving a negative" before retelling old wives tales:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proving_a_negative
Notes on the classList API
I'm starting to feel like html/js/css is starting to become the 'this will be the year of linux on the desktop' of apps.

They're flexible technologies, but don't think they'll ever have the feel of purpose built native API's.
I'm not arguing about use the product or not, but about the developing/marketing model... I didn't contribute to TM2 and I'm not going to, I'm wondering if anybody else is going to contribute at this point...
Eric Schmidt confirms Google+ content is given search priority
I'm not sure if it's even necessarily a be nice thing.

Tim Cook strikes me as generally less emotional than Jobs. It may well just be that being dispassionate he felt that when you took the heat out of it the pain to reward ratio just didn't make it a good move (which is pretty much spot on).
...then it's spreadsheets all the way down.
Clicky:

[1]: https://gist.github.com/ndarville/4753948

[2]: http://pony-forum.com

[3]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5172905

[4]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5096009

EDIT: Looks like Travis is acting up, even though all I did between my last working build was to edit a Markdown file.
I've read the article, I agree with the HTML5/JS premise, but I still do not understand Firefox OS.
I would not change a thing.
UI Trends: Analysis of 22 iPhone and iPad apps
10 Online Snippets to Test your Coding
Unless the native apps are meant to be built with web technologies. It's not like using these technologies no a mobile OS is a new concept. And be wary of using something like iOS has a base for your assumptions. It's not built with those technologies in mind, and people already use HTML/JS/CSS for their apps (successfully, I might add).
You're right sir. I think he shouldn't trust anyone, but still consider the suggestions seriously. Legal help is surely his highest priority.

Btw. almost if not all of the fiction described in that movie has become a real threat. Not taking them into consideration is silly.
Sounds fun, you are doing what you are enjoying and some aspect of collective consciousness are contradicting with your definitions.

Continue doing what you enjoy until you can't.

Life will provide if you put trust in it, if you don't, heh, it will provide with it also :D
Good point here, we don't hear enough about the "Intrapreneurs"
And if your problem is with JavaScript as a language, you can already use a myriad of languages that reliably compile to it. Do you come from a Java background? You’ll probably like Dart, from Google. More of a functional kind of developer? Try ClojureScript, which is an impressive, well-maintained and well-performing implementation of Clojure on top of JavaScript. Coming from Ruby? You’ll be almost at home with CoffeeScript. You get the picture.

God no. Instead of having to use a single awful language all the time I get to choose what language to transpile to javascript and I never have to look at or think about javascript at all. Unless of course there are bugs and then you get to experience the pleasure of debugging machine generated javascript. Maybe some people are filled with joy by the thought of debugging generated js, all I can say is that those people are certifiably insane.

How about we work on platforms that support more that one language as first class citizens. Is that really such a crazy idea in 2013?
Okay with bored
> For some context I am turning 35 in less than a month and have yet to release my life's work which extends over 11 years of effort after my college degree. A significant amount of my efforts cover similar ground as your aspirations. I still live month to month (~$200 in my bank account right now and significant debt I incurred in following this path I'm still trying to manage).

I think that says it all. The guy had a vision of something he was trying to achieve and fiveteen thousand hours later he is essentially no closer to his goal. Stallman is very idealistic but he managed to change the world. This is an unbalanced approach to life which will only yield pain. Attachment is suffering.
Pope Benedict XVI to Resign on February 28
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4#Design

"The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is thought to use performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by Apple)[12] in collaboration with Samsung.[13] The resulting core, dubbed "Hummingbird", is able to run at far higher clock rates than other implementations while remaining fully compatible with the Cortex-A8 design provided by ARM.[14] Other performance improvements include additional L2 cache. The same Cortex-A8 CPU core used in the A4 is also used in Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC.[15][16]"
Yes, and that's despite all those efforts to reduce bugs. Imagine all the bugs found by tests going into production...

Or were you jsut put off by the phrase "eliminate bugs"? That wasn't meant to imply eliminating all bugs, just those the tests have found. And we all know they don't catch 'em all.
Shattered Genius
How to hold your iPad
IntelliJ IDEA 12 Wins Jolt Award for Coding Tools 2013
I think a bulletproof jacket is logical if his life is in danger.

Yes, I agree on the weapon, every signal that can pull the trigger of an official's gun should be avoided. But I think not having a weapon maybe careless too, only he knows what's right in his situation. A stupid move when confronted with officials could cause him more harm than wearing a gun.
ANY UPDATES?
Unlike children (who typically are given their toys), these toys are the result of "his" work.

Er, no. They are the work of everyone who posts on CL.
Why wouldn't they? If you've paid for something isn't that _more_ incentive to make it badass?
I'm just talking about rendering a page based on what you specify in HTML/CSS, not the component model you might want to add behind.

I'm pretty sure there's no technology more optimized for displaying content-rich visual information than HTML/CSS and the browser's rendering engines.

It's that combined with the fact that this has been the lingua-france for every web-designer wishing to express himself for the past decade that makes it a winning combination...
Smalltalk is capable of evaluating statements as they're entered, and it's a relatively small step to reflect those changes immediately on compilation - thus, 'liveness', as in Light Table. I can't imagine being able to do that in Java.

If I'm missing something, can you please provide some more detail?
see: http://meta.discourse.org/t/lots-of-loading-time-when-browsi...
>"frequent HN contributor"

What's the point of that exactly? Supposed to be amusing?
POPE CLOSE 2 DEATH
Translation goes around these lines: On the year 2000 (Apple's iPhone only came in 2007), our marketing department needed a name for our "internet phone", the name was too big so we decided to use "iphone" instead. We filled the patent register in the same year and in 2008 the INPI gave us full patent rights.

Now they proceed to explain how Gradiente's Iphone is a piece of garbage, they could have added that Apple's iPhone on Brazil costs 2 or 3 times more than on other countries, but they didn't.
>Where are you located?

For the intents of an internship, I'm geographically unconstrained anywhere within the States. Exploring is part of the fun! However, I'm currently located in the Greater NYC area for a 6-month supply chain co-op/internship ending in June, and go to school in Tennessee.

>Your background sounds very similar to mine and I now work in Advertising Operations, which was a job I did not know existed when I was in school.

That looks like an amazing field! It has the perfect mix of tech and business to satisfy both sweet tooths!

>Working in Marketing or Data Science in a startup might also be an option for you. Have you looked into those fields?

That was a driving factor of posting here, actually. Although the recent glut of data mining courses online marginalizes the worth of any particular statistical skills I have, having a solid grounding in business operations allows my insight to make up for the deficiency.
Hi lifeisstillgood, I am one of the core Persona developers. Persona is a pretty awesome project with very ambitious goals. We obviously want to see growth explode and are working hard to make Persona great for both users and site operators.

Persona's growth has been steady, primarily driven by newly developed sites. We hope that as the user base grows and support for the BrowserID protocol is natively built into the browsers, existing sites will have more of an impetus to offer support.

A version of Persona is already integrated into FirefoxOS and we hope to offer support in desktop Firefox by the end of the year.

If you want to participate in discussions, have an idea on how we can improve, or just want to see what we are up to, our mailing list is open to everyone: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla.dev.identity
The big question (for me, at least) is: why not Backbone.js?
You should get out of the Apple bubble more often, though to be fair, when Steve Jobs stands on stage and claims he designed/invented/built something, the media seem to give him a pass in general, despite his reputation as a master salesman/liar.

Even if they had designed their own chip, basic tests (as well as iFixit style tear-downs) revealed that "There's not much revolutionary here. In fact, the A4 is quite similar to the Samsung processor Apple uses in the iPhone."

or

"To be clear, we are not talking about full custom circuit design, yet. This is about choosing from essentially the same catalog of individual IP building blocks but selecting fewer of them."

"[Compared with the Samsung chip used for the 3GS] The simplest and most striking observation is just how little discernible change there is to the number or type of circuit block. Both devices have a relatively high percentage of the die consumed by an ARM CPU core containing a large L2 SRAM cache memory along with 10 additional blocks of digital logic. The A4 die is smaller, 51.8 mm2 versus 72.2 mm2, but this says little about the design since A4 is manufactured with 45-nm technology."

"From a circuit design perspective, the changes in the subdivisions of chip real estate are relatively minor. A lot can be attributed to transitioning manufacturing to 45-nm. To summarize the block level comparison with the two "reference" designs, there were no wholesale changes to the floorplan. Yes, the A4 is different, but not by more than one or two blocks. ... It is also reasonable to describe it as evolutionary compared to the references."

from: http://eetimes.com/electronics-news/4200451/Apple-s-A4-disse...
How To Integrate ClamAV Into PureFTPd For Virus Scanning On Fedora 18
That particular problem will improve immensely with SourceMap, so you'll almost never have to look at JS.
How about we work on platforms that support more that one language as first class citizens. Is that really such a crazy idea in 2013?

You mean like iOS' half-C or Android's half-Java?
Sydney startup community is now on the map
Screw that, I loved it when we'd get a "bonus test" that was actually really difficult.
Except Android is no more or less closed than Firefox OS. Both open source, allow sideloading and have curated app stores.
Hours later I regret this comment but it's too late to delete it, so I'll just put here that I now recognise that this is an outrageous humblebrag which adds nothing to the conversation and serves simply to boost my ego. I am ashamed of it and I'll try harder to restrain myself from giving out fatuous advice to people with real problems in future. :(
thanx for the TLDR.
Raytheon's Riot Program Mines Social Network Data Like a Google for Spies
I know you're brazilian too but they did the right think by releasing that video. They clearly spent a few bucks on it and I'm sure they did it for their own good but you can't ignore the fact that they didn't tried to ride on Apple's profit wave and screw up customers at the same time. Most companies wouldn't.
22 year olds should design everything
Ok so is the solution a standard bytecode for browsers ? Or is is NaCl ? Or PNaCl ? Or something like Hypercard ? Or do we tear down the monoliths that browsers are in small Unix-style components ?
While this is a very nice idea, what does this have over HootSuite?

Also, if you really want to win in this webapp, IMO, you should have G+ integrations. There are not many products out there that do this that has G+ integrations (only HootSuite the last I checked)

(p/s I think the boxes thingy makes it feel better than HS)
You miss the point, both Lotus Improv and Excel are an (pseudo-)endless wall of cells.

Numbers puts bounded tables on a page[0][1] instead of fitting the pages (and everything, really) into an endless table dating from Multiplan, thus solving the "hacking the cells to implement layout" problem. In this example[2] a table is actually selected, and allows for south, east and south-east extension.

[0]: http://www.file-extensions.org/imgs/app-picture/3615/iwork-n...

[1]: http://maymay.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/example-bu...

[2]: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1400/1050927588_8765bb65a6.jp...
Dream, but don't forget to live
Correctness is not enough. (http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.2045)

> The usual aim of spreadsheet audit is to verify correctness. There are two problems with this: first, it is often difficult to tell whether the spreadsheets in question are correct, and second, even if they are, they may still give the wrong results.

You're assuming that people know what model to use; use the correct model; implement it correctly; and use the correct inputs for that model.

Since most of these ad-hoc spreadsheets don't have any kind of specification, let alone a formal spec, it's really hard to know what they're supposed to do, and that makes it impossible to know if they're actually doing it.

And that's just one spreadsheet. Many spreadsheets are linked - you take data from some other unauditable spreadsheet for an input.

After all of that you still have users manipulating the spreadsheet. We know that users will make errors. We can minimise the errors using excellent design (excellent design isn't always used for expensive customer facing planned websites; what hope is there for semi-secret ad-hoc internal quick and dirty spreadsheets?) but even with clear labels we know that users will make errors, and that some of those errors will trickle through to future versions of this spreadsheet, and maybe other spreadsheets that depend on this one.

If you can automate (or partly automate) spreadsheet testing there's probably money to be made.
You might be fighting a battle that's already lost. For most people, live programming is having a running system with a REPL or equivalent attached so that you can run & update code inside that system. For example a running web server with some mechanism to add a new request handler while the server is running. Or a program that's playing programmatic music or some kind of graphical demonstration where you can add and redefine functions to change the music/graphics. This kind of "live programming" is basically the same as hot swapping, but some people also associate it explicitly with a live stage performance (e.g. music or visual).

With the kind of live programming that you mean there is some meta system that is monitoring your code and continuously giving you feedback on it. Perhaps it does this by just running the code and showing the output, perhaps it displays the execution trace in some way, perhaps it displays a visualization of a data structure over time. In a way, live feedback on static type errors could also be considered a limited form of live programming. Maybe it's a good idea to adopt a new term for this kind of live programming? It would also help from a marketing perspective I think, to have a new thing that people can be excited about rather than a term that they associate with a boring, limited and old fashioned feature (i.e. hotswapping).

Even with this second notion of live programming the question of updating running code does not go away. If you are developing a game, you may want to do live programming by running the game next to the code and have that be updated whenever the code changes. But a game has state, and how do you transport that state to the next version of the code? Hot swapping code by blindly mutating a function pointer in the running game is obviously not the answer. That's just a hack that works some of the time: it doesn't work when updating code while the running game is still in the middle of something, and it corrupts the state when there is a bug in the code, and it doesn't work at all when data structure structure changes. The perspective "how to transport the state to the next version of the code" is much better than "how to I shove new code into the running system with the old state". The same issue comes up with most programs, not just games. This is still an open problem as far as I know. For live programming we also need tools to manage and reset the state. When you have corrupted your state with a bug in your code, you want to be able to quickly go back to a previous non-corrupt state. Even if you change the entire programming model, you'll still have to address this state update problem in some way.
The Verge says this about the Pixel: "Google’s greatest advantage is that it doesn’t need bleeding-edge specs to build a high-functioning computer."
That could be exactly what I'm talking about.
How does this differ from debugging any other VM? Except in Javascript you're almost guaranteed your 'crash' will come as an exception with a stack trace – guaranteeably raised by the only executing single thread that could contribute state to the crash.

Debugging a Java or a C crash is infinitely worse, since instead of comparatively pretty symbols and a verifiably correct trace, you have a vector of bytes where your stack is supposed to be, and any number of threads running third party libs that could have written all over your frame pointers, and instead of semi-structured code you have a few thousand flattened basic blocks, devoid of any type information, absolutely swamped in gotos and boilerplate prologues/epilogues.

I'd much rather debug a JS exception than the subtle mental math required to statically analyse the stack operations of some assembly.
I hear he had covered up a lot of sexual abuses by priests under him from before he was pope.
An escalating arms race towards maximum apparent relaxation. That sounds like an excellent short story or Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic.
>The hard realization was that the stuff in my head just couldn't be expressed by any real world media, even of my own design. Reality sucks like that.

There is a term for this: Weltschmerz.
If X was made redundant rather than fired for incompetence, and then commits were to mention that X was a terrible developer, then if X sues for unfair dismissal, then you've just given X evidence that the company lied.
To be pedantic - you can't put Java and C crashes together unless you mean JVM crash. If I dare say - Java stack trace information is much better than JS stack traces.
I use it everyday! Well deserved!