skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find it extremely useful to have a base foundation to start an app. Doing all of the mundane gem integrations and standard set-up is not fun. I agree that it's a challenge to keep the base app updated with improvements from the forks. I have repo on github that could benefit from some cherry-picking. It's great for working on multiple projects at the same time. You never have to go digging to see how the basics work, you just know. On top of that, my clients save at least a few days of work.
I will say that Office 2010 OEM licenses were a pretty good deal IMHO. Yes, you could only install them once... but they were close to half the price of a retail version. At least for me, it worked out to be cheaper to just bite the bullet and buy another license in the case of catastrophic hardware failure or major hardware upgrade.

Looks like the pricing is more confusing (and higher) for 2013 though.
I babysit a lot of my friend's kids (lacking kids of my own, I'm available for this) so I get to watch A LOT of children's TV. Perhaps its just an "in my day..." sort of bias but I do feel like the 90s were of higher quality than content of today.

Most hit shows of the '00s till today are invariantly tied up in trying to peddle toys of some kind. Certainly older shows were used for merchandizing but it seems like today the toy comes first and the show is developed around it. Plot development is optional and stories need not build off one another or refer back to past episodes. Out of those the early seasons of Pokemon and Digimon weren't bad and there are certainly a few neat shows on Disney & Nickelodeon (The Fairly Odd Parents and Sponge Bob come to mind).

Aside from that it seems like a lot of shows lack the complex story telling of shows like Batman: TAS, Superman: TAS, Spiderman, Beastwars, Reboot, XMen, and the others mentioned in the article. While not really a kids show (seriously - watch this as an adult and its 10 times funnier), Freakazoid outdoes most content peddled to adult audiences.

Another thing I've observed that seems to be detrimental to animated shows is the rise of cheap soap opera style live animation in place of cartoons. Probably the biggest example is Miley Cyrus' early career (Hannah Montana, etc). These shows let companies monetize in more ways since you can create concert movies and albums and the fanbase will follow the actor/actress to multiple shows. Benda Song[1] has spent nearly a decade jumping between various TV shows on the Disney channel (and playing a pretty good 'crazy girlfriend' in the Social Network IMO). I'm sure there are many other examples (all the faces seem to look the same between Disney's shows) but she stands out to me since she's seemingly the only cast member my age in shows filled with 12-16 year olds.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Song
> In what world?

Ecomonomics?

> The Xbox has been profitable for most of its life

No.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmSmlk-Wo4uhdEh...
Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely intolerable to the mods at SO.

Not sure how the rest of you feel but in my mind if the answer is black and white, the question was probably bad.
If Apple is competing with Tetris, then Nintendo/Sony/Xbox won't have to worry about them. The people in that space are Smart TVs, Rokus, and Apple TVs, which already exist and aren't eating Nintendo's lunch.

If your console cannot play Call of Duty and Mario like the big boys, you aren't really competing in the same space, and as long as Mario and CoD are popular, your average person will simply just buy the iDevice and a Nintendo. Now if the Nintendo has the advantage of doing everything the iDevice can do, most people will simply opt to buy the Nintendo, especially if they are being sold at the same price.
Given that it's a proper noun and the pronunciation is "X Box", I would think the pseudo-initialism "XBox" would be more proper English.
Agreed. There are lots of technologies and tools you can learn. It helps to step back, take a deep breath and ask yourself a few questions.

Do you want to work with the Web, with distributed systems, with software, or none of the above?

Once you narrow it down, it becomes easier to prioritize and pick your tools accordingly. I learned this the hard way, as I aimlessly spent a summer trying to learn Ruby, Python, and Java all at the same time, just so I could say I "knew" them.

It hurt my brain and my motivation suffered.
Flawed analysis, smaller city's have less congestion and less demand for public transit. The real issue with cars is they don't scale as you increase population density.
Because most startups are being done by technical types who dont have a clue about how to sell something. So they value those who are like them, and devalue those who are not. They really do think in binary. As a hybrid, I can tell you that this kills more startups than anything else.

Good post, btw.
Comparing Two Centuries of State of the Union Addresses With Text Analysis
How to Put 120 Million Apple Store Visitors in Perspective
This is one of the beauties of Matlab and similar languages. They look and act like excel but more explicit and powerful. (and harder to use) Matlab documentaiton is very similar to excel documentation and the ability to run m-files with the touch of a button gives a lot of 'reactivity' that other languages lack. Also a live, easily accessible and manipulable variable editor makes it much easier to work with data.

I would really like a program that wrapped something like Matlab around excel. Basically something that let you work in excel then let you hit a button to 'vomit' the variable space into Matlab code. I often find it much easier to manipulate data in Excel and often find myself working in Excel until it becomes too burdensome then swapping over and converting into Matlab or Python. I think seeing a language 'live coded' and being able to alter the live code would allow people to bridge the gap more easily. It would also fix the debugging issues as each spreadsheet would also contain a executable code that could be implanted into other spreadsheets easily, (it would also contain a number of assumptions made explicit like what variables it takes in and what it kicks out.) Of course how strings etc are handled is a messy question.

A similar tool exists for the open source scientific image altering toolbox-ImageJ that allows it to 'record' your actions and easily loop/automate your code by turning your calls into code as you perform them. I've found non-programmers can easily learn how to write 'code-like' actions into this macro language.
It is possible to do it, in the same manner that it is possible to create an account without a credit card at all.

This is slightly dated, so it might not be the case now. Originally every AppleID had to have a credit card assigned, the form wouldn't let you progress without one. The trick was to fill in the form with fake data, go to the next screen where it would error out, and then when you clicked back a "no credit card" option would appear at the bottom.

Removing a credit card is possible. Crank open the iTunes app and the option is there. You just don't seem to be able to do it on their website, as far as I could see.
Meanwhile, in reality, Nat looks uninformed for writing "xBox" because it is incorrect.

I'm not saying "Xbox" is necessarily the best, or that I even have an opinion, but it does happen to be the correct capitalization.
A LadyCoders Attendee: Learning To Code Isn't Enough To Get The Job
> meaning if it can't push 100 million polygons at 1080p it will never get great adoption

If you look at the Wii sales, you'll notice polygon pushing does not equate sales or profits.
What Nextdoor is doing right with hyperlocal and Patch is doing wrong
Step 1. Don't go to college.
This is a great story by one of our attendees talking about how learning to code wasn't enough to help her actually get jobs. She still had to learn to speak confidently about her skills.
Dropbox for Teams adds more coaching tools
Is It Cheating to Have a Side Project?
Last year a young blind man who recently got a degree in computer science did an AMA on Reddit. It was one of the most inspirational things I've read on the Internet. Looking back at it now makes me feel ashamed that I'm not enjoying life (or programming) as much as this guy clearly was

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fpxzk/blind_since_the_...

Here he answers someone how he can program while blind

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fpxzk/blind_since_the_...
You just posted a chart detailing a whole division's profits and losses as opposed to the Xbox's. But regardless, it shows that division being a huge loser until two years after the Xbox hits, at which point it magically becomes profitable, until 2012 when the division starts pouring money into Windows Phone, at which point it magically becomes unprofitable again. This is exactly the way I described things. To recap:

"it lost money its first couple of years … and since then it has been largely propping up Microsoft's entertainment division, which otherwise would be bleeding like mad."

That is exactly what that chart shows. The Xbox has been turning a yearly profit since 2008, which means it's been turning a profit for most of its life.
IOS Custom URL Schemes for Fun & Profit
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about this.
I don't understand. The IP address should be yours and not his servers, as gists are client-side embeds, no?
I tried using Zaarly when I was in LA and loved it. But after moving to NYC, realized TaskRabbit was more popular and had to switch. I always thought there was enough room for both (zaarly and taskrabbit) to survive... guess I was wrong. Best of luck in your future endeavors...
Apple, Microsoft, Adobe Called By Lawmakers To Defend Higher Prices In Australia
Students of the type you're talking about would best be served by being home schooled or attending private school. I realize that doesn't work for many families. What's your suggestion?

Universal, portable public education vouchers, payable to any educational institution the parents select. (A portion of the standard voucher could be payable to the parents themselves if they wish to homeschool and can maintain a satisfactory inspection record. I wouldn't complain if such an inspection regime were very strict: it's public money.)

Some public schools would close overnight; they would literally empty the instant that their customers had any choice at all. Others would struggle for a few years before either closing or improving. Other public schools would have to add staff and buildings. Some private schools might grow more selective. Other private schools might just grow. We'd also see online providers expand and innovate, which will be good news for those who spent high school in their own lockers.

The top-down thing hasn't worked, and even TFA agrees with that. It's time for the people at the bottom, the customers, to have a choice.
I wonder if there is some plausible medical research which could justify 20-50mg LSD doses.
A few things:

- People buy more games per console (not even including digital sales) on the Xbox which is the real money-maker

- People pay Microsoft an annual fee for XBL which their competitors provide for free

- People spend more money on XBL on top the annual fee compared to their competitors for digital goods

- They actually get ad revenue for XBL on top of the annual fee and digital goods revenue
> Actually, I think he's screwed. As a 29-year-old with no work experience...

Screwed? Nonsense.

At 29 years old, I had zero work experience, other than a few research assistant jobs in my 10-year slacker bachelor's degree (which did not result in positive references). Oh, and 4 months at a Subway. The only thing even vaguely positive about my economic history was that I did do a degree in computing science... but I had deliberately made it as useless as possible, because I was an idiot.

6 years later, I work at the best company in the world (I believe you're familiar with the place, mchurch).

He (she?) may well be disadvantaged by his age, that's fair. But then again, he's already had lots of advantages, like being educated, living in Canada, etc.
> I just saw this: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Live-Programming

Ya, I saw it to. I didn't see the talk though, but I expect it to be more of the same promotion of live coding as somehow actually being live programming (programming is like playing music! Ya...).

> Since a sorting algorithm is not a continuous quantity, aim-and-shoot is inevitable though you can still make it bit more "continuous" by making the aim-and-shoot cycle more rapid.

A sorting algorithm can be fudged as a continuous function. But then here continuous means "continuous feedback", not "data with continuous values." The point is not that the code can be manipulated via knob, but that as I edit the code (usually with discrete keystrokes and edits), I can observe the results of those edits continuously.

> You can do this in their framework; you can specify at which granularity you want to have the 'repair functions' and at which granularity you just want to recompute.

I'll have to look at this work more closely, the fact that we need custom repair functions at all bother me (repair should just be defined simply as undo-replay). The granularity of memoization is an issue that has to be under programmer control, I think.
Thanks for posting that
Mass Effect shows that moral choice systems in games need to improve
Yeah, or we could ask law enforcement officers and prison guards how many people should be in prison, or how many laws we should have...
Fuel for shipping may be on an upward cost trend but shipping is more energy efficient than more or less any method of transportation requiring an engine. Trucking stuff across the border takes a lot more fuel per unit weight.

I doubt the point on immigrants too; Mexican enforcement of immigration laws is a great deal more vigorous than its US equivalents.
Hah, I gotta find that episode. I am near a place the Chinese government renamed "Shangri-la" for tourism purposes recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongdian
What are you trying to communicate? What have you read that would indicate Mexico is unable to produce equivalent engineers to India? (Note, I'm not comparing with China since that's a different can of worms).
As mentioned in the SO question, the head of Google's accessibility team, T. V. Raman [1], is blind. I feel like this speaks volumes about the opportunities for disabled programmers on its own, and, though a bit cliche, reinforces the thing I love most about engineering--in many ways, this line of work is as close to a pure meritocracy as one can get. I hope Mr. Raman would agree that it seems fitting that someone who is blind himself would be sensitive to the needs presented by blind and low-vision users of computer software, and I'm happy he's around to provide guidance for accessibility features for a company like Google.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman
That is not my IP
>Most hit shows of the '00s till today are invariantly tied up in trying to peddle toys of some kind.

This isn't anything new or particular to children's shows from the '00s; this has been going for the entire lifetime (or longer) of many HN posters.

Wikipedia has a compendium of TV shows for kids that are tied into toy lines, over the last 30+ years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Toy-linked_animated_an...

edit: On doing a little more reading, I didn't realize that this was actually banned up until 1984 when the Reagan FCC rescinded regulations on children's television. Those regulations had previously banned "program-length commercials," a category under which shows like this would have fallen.
In 1962 a scientist gave an elephant LSD. Unfortunately they got the dosing very wrong and gave the animal a massive overdose. The elephant died.

(http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/05/30/science-va...)
The Charges Are Flying Over a Test of Tesla's Charging Network
Ask HN: Coderbits Vs. Github Vs. Coderwall
Recently I started using coderbits which is simply a online resume(this is a over simplification mind you but still you get the idea). In the same way that github & coderwall is a resume. If you were an employer or anybody looking for talent which would you prefer a strong github account or a strong coderbits account or a strong coderwall? About coder bits https://coderbits.com/about. I have tried coderwall and I really didn't like it, it wasn't about your skills it was about you selling yourself to the highest bidder.
How safe is Tijuana compared to most Chinese manufacturing cities? I was always discouraged from visiting when I grew up in San Diego.
On page 11, it says that Entity A has 78k addresses and 2.8M bitcoins, and is distinct from known large exchanges.

The implication is that some early adopters (possibly the creators) have stockpiled bitcoins in that entity.
When Will Google Give Us Useful SEO Information
That said, I subscribed to the online MS Office suite (w/ SkyDrive and some other goodies) a few days ago and I'm impressed. The Microsoft user experience is pretty slick nowadays.

I've even switched from Google to Bing and Chrome to Internet Explorer for a month. At first the "newness" of it all was a bit jarring, like navagating an alien landscape, but after only a few days I don't think I'm ever going back.

Do yourself a solid and give it a test drive.
> You can drive from our San Diego engineering center to our Tijuana factory in 20 minutes, no passport required. (A passport is needed to come back, but there are fast-track lanes for business people.)

Oops, I forgot my passport. Now I'm stuck in Mexico!
There's already an language named M, which is even ANSI-standardised under that name. It's also known as MUMPS.

f i=1:1:100 w ! w:'(i#3) "Fizz" w:'(i#5) "Buzz" w:'$x i

Whitespace matters in that. Kind of. Sometimes. Considering it has hardly changed since 1966, it's suprisingly usable - much more so than BASIC, for example, and includes a pre-relational (the marketing calls it post-relational now) B-Tree storage engine. And the biggest vendor has extended MUMPS with a Macro language to make it do SQL. Yep, it's a NoSQL engine that does SQL that's been around since 1966. There's no end to the silliness in that world :|
The 80s were particularly notorious for toy-based animation.

Transformers is the most famous example. Characters would be killed off and replaced to boost toy sales.

Still, there's a difference between a show where you make the toys and then get the nastiest animation done to create a 22-minute advertisement; vs making a halfway decent show and flogging some merch on the side.

In other media, one might compare the original Star Wars trilogy with episodes I-III.
You 'Can'. The issue is Microsoft doesn't think you should (I believe you have to use a VL).

As for Windows VMs, I've found if you keep what is presented to Windows stable, it doesn't know the difference. Keep the MAC address on the network card static (this means you can't run two copies on the same network at the same time, which by the license you shouldn't anyway). After running on a number of different processors Windows may want to reauthorize though.

It would not be surprising if they put code that detected a VM in Win8 and Office 2013 some time in the future (or it's already hidden there)
Obama administration defends $222,000 file-sharing verdict
Think about the long term though. Apple has already convinced millions of people to put the AppleTV in their homes. With a simple update they could enable iDevices and an App Store to allow developers to do crazy stuff. Then at next iteration they unveil offerings more tuned to hardcore gamers. They liked the first one, now they want more. Apple is already deep in the gaming market, they have the patience.

So yeah at first Apple will compete with on delivering simpler game experience like Angry Birds or Space Team or Letterpress. But so what? People love those! Don't forget that "hardcore" gamers are no longer the focus here, other markets are much bigger. Apple can wait to focus on bigger titles.
In a Data-Driven World, Honesty is the Fundamental Virtue
It was locked fifteen months after the question was asked...I think its prudent to protect a significant discussion from the noise that it will inevitably generate as people discover it via long tail in years to come
Exactly. I've desperately needed answers to a handful of questions in the last 2 weeks alone that were all locked. I think unless you can quote an error message there's a good chance it will be locked. Didn't know server hard drive space came at such a premium. Honestly what good does it do to lock a question? I can see wikipedia wanting to groom their site to maintain some credibility and focus to achieve high overall quality with limited editing resources. But Stack Overflow? Give up the power trip already. How has Joel not created Subjective Overflow already?
Right, the difference between "fashionable" and "unfashionable" is just what the cool kids on HN say it is.

To take your example on a stroll, PHP is like regular (non-skinny) blue jeans. Everyone knows them, most people use them, every store carries them, at one point in history they were revolutionary, they're probably never going to go away. But the cool kids say skin-tight crazy-colored jeans are the new hotness...
I've done it before with Office 2010, but I must admit I've not tried the latest 2013.
Oh, my young life. And yes, the 90s were a Golden Age.

My son and I watched DuckTales together for the first time this year. I was pretty disappointed that the discs stopped before the last season, although I did feel the earlier shows were more atmospheric and classic.

I had massive deja vu for every single frame of the GizmoDuck 5-parter. We must have taped it and I must have seen it many many times.

The other thing I really love about this show is that it's so sweet. The characters really mess up and have feelings and make important choices. Scrooge many times walks away from money for family and friends and is better off for it (he gets the money in the end too but that's not the chewy center).
I loved reading Don Lancaster's articles in Radio Electronics when I was Junior and Senior High School (yes ... I'm that old).