skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Proper kerning in browsers is still "work in progress" anyway - there's the text-rendering[1] property, which when set to optimizeLegibility enables kerning. However, there's some bugs with how it behaves, and only Firefox enables it by default (to fonts over 20px in size).

Anyway, proper outer stroke should not affect the actual text positioning, so it shouldn't really do anything to the kerning. If some people want to use huge stroke sizes and widen the gap between letters, they could always mess with the letter-spacing property.

Here's an example[2]. 50px Constantia, with kerning and ligatures enabled (using text-rendering: optimizeLegibility), with the bottom having a thick 5px outer stroke (example produced with HTML5 Canvas).

As the article mentions, Webkit has prefixed text-stroke CSS properties, but these suck. The reason? They use centered stroke, not outer stroke. This means that a 4px stroke renders 2px inside the glyph, and 2px outside the glyph. On larger stroke sizes or with thin glyphs, the results look awful. Just take a look at this second example[3]: It has 3px centered stroke on top, 1.5px outer stroke in the middle (to demonstrate how much of the 3px centered stroke is actually outside), and 3px outer stroke on bottom. A world of difference, no? Ideally, you should be able to control what kind of stroke you want (inner, centered or outer), but it should most definitely default to outer or be outer-only if there's to be just one option.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/text-rendering

[2] http://puu.sh/2776P

[3] http://puu.sh/277nM
ATTENTION: 1. What were you asked to do? 2. Do that. 3. Forget everything else.
Yes, they must be making a killing getting people to build them cars for free in C++.

More seriously, it sounds like they go out of their way to avoid giving their applicants any work someone might profit from.
Thanks, that looks useful for Common Lisp projects. BTW, for Clojure, I have been looking at the 'friend' library.
I'm using an Android phone without Google.

It is business phone, so all the mail-contact-calendar data live on Exchange server, not on Gmail.

The only one thing that you really need google account for is the Play Store. If you do not need anything from there or can get the applications from elsewhere, I cannot not see why you could not use Android phone without google account.
Obviously part of the reason you hate that quote is that it's a misquote.

It was written in 1755 by a then-loyal subject of George II. It's uncertain --- maybe even a little unlikely --- that Franklin was even its author. The quote is taken from a letter from the whole of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the governor of Pennsylvania. Franklin denied authorship of the compilation from which it's taken.

The quote itself is: "Thofe who would give up essential liberty to purchafe a little temporary safety deferve neither liberty nor safety".

Note the words "essential" and "a little temporary". The letter to the governor isn't an extended treatise on the rights of man; it concerns the utility of a bill funding the protection of far-flung frontier settlements in the context of the French & Indian War. The words mean what they say: it's bad to trade essential freedoms for small amounts of temporary security. The PA assembly wasn't interested in helping us with situations involving ephemeral freedoms or large amounts of transient security or small amounts of important security.

It doesn't help that this quote started a centuries-long game of telephone almost immediately.

You are of course right in the broader sense. The quote as it's usually deployed on message boards is borderline nonsensical. Benjamin Franklin signed the US Constitution, which is the world's oldest enforced contract regarding the exchange of liberties for security.
Are you implying that developed civilized nations mean you can let your guard down and no harm will be done?

You could bring up countless other examples of things people usually do not prepare for. Bottom line is we can not prepare for everything but does that mean we should prepare for nothing?

Why do we have locks on our doors or use passwords and 2 factor authentication in a developed civilized nation?

We all pick and choose the tools that we use to keep us safe.
I used VMWare. And no, just attaching the "new" USB hardware to the guest was not enough. iTunes only saw the iPhone if the Linux host did not have the USB modules loaded (and in fact had them blacklisted so they wouldn't be loaded automatically either).

It is (or was, don't know, this was about two years ago) a known problem: http://www.ivankuznetsov.com/2009/10/upgrading-iphone-firmwa...
Absolutely spot on. Hellbanning a real user would probably be worse than not catching fraud in the first place, so must be avoided with utmost care.

- Hellbans are made via operator decision

- Hellbans are reversible and all customer support channels still work for a hellbanned user
Sounds like an official Google statement. The reality, however, is different.
The MATLAB CV library is almost identical to OpenCV if you prefer C or C++.
>> Yeah, the whole X + Unity stack is mind-bogglingly complex, and nvidia is a pain. Their driver is proprietary, so you have to use all of their custom configuration tools to make everything work, and whoopdedoo, their configuration tools are crap.

I've used their proprietary driver now for years and on several different cards including one of the newest top of the line cards right now. They work great and deserve a lot of credit for their drivers, hardware and the configuration utilities.
Read on.

"Holders of annual hunting permits, government workers, and NSDAP (i.e., Nazi Party) members were no longer subject to gun ownership restrictions...
Jews were forbidden from the manufacturing or dealing of firearms and ammunition...Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, promulgated Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons. This regulation effectively deprived Jews of the right to possess firearms or other weapons."

"Preventing a Coup d'état with a militia is just a pipe dream."

Yes, that would be why the United States is still part of the British Empire, right?
Thanks for your insight from a serial hackatoner perspective. It`s true, there is no way we can make "commercial hackatons" day after day, that would miss the point. But to make from time to time fast MVP with client, it doesnt sound so bad IMO
Minor point: Absent a constitutional amendment, I don't think the bill would be legally binding (it could, of course, establish a social norm within the Congress, enforceable by peer pressure).

Suppose that a senator or representative were to introduce a bill that didn't conform to the diff requirement. Suppose also that both houses passed the bill, and the president signed it. I don't think anyone would argue that the bill hadn't become law.
In the US, the current published version of a law reflects all legislative amendments to it.

The problem is finding historical versions of the law, which usually requires historical lawbooks or access to expensive legal databases like Westlaw or Lexis which maintain historical versions of state and federal laws.
That's a good point - I'll mention this to dcurtis, who runs svbtle. Certainly don't want to sucker anyone into liking something they in fact do not!
You can actually toggle the visibility of posts from hellbanned users. Under your account settings, turn on 'showdead'.

I leave it turned on, because while hellbanned users don't often contribute a lot, many of their posts are still interesting.

For example, take losethos, who is afflicted with schizophrenia and writes his own operating systems so he can make music with God. (You'll have to turn on showdead to see his comments): http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos
> I honestly don't know how people can stand using a Mac for "real work".

I live in a terminal (aside: iTerm2 is head and shoulders better than anything I've found on Linux), Photoshop, Xcode and IntelliJ when working--and when not working, literally-literally everything just works without me putting an ounce of effort into making it work. So that's why.

I can be productive on Linux, but spending more than five minutes setting up my environment just starts making me frustrated. (I have a four-monitor desktop, two-GPU that choked on Ubuntu 12.04; I spent a week on trying to get Ubuntu working, gave up, Hackintoshed the thing, and had it running perfectly within two hours.)
Four winds? Unless you have other indications (direction of boom, light flash, mushroom cloud), go upwind. If upwind is an obviously bad idea, orthogonal to the wind may be better than downwind, especially if you cannot move fast.
How does shadowbanning even work on HN? Do you still get random increments to karma on different comments?

If not, I find it hard to believe that after long enough a period of time of noticing absolutely no activity on your posts, people won't catch on.

Also, yeah if someone is a troll I feel like it's 100% fair game to troll them back. And this is the best counter-troll of them all. I had exactly the opposite reaction of yours when I found out about the shadowban - finally! Some way for us to fight back and give them a taste of their own medicine. Assholes that they are.

There are only two problems with this - one, when people are shadowbanned wrongly/arbitrarily with no right to a fair and speedy trial in a court of their peers, and two, hypocritically I have a tendency to troll sometimes and this may or may not suck >_>
1) You're assuming that everyone who owns a gun will say so when polled. That turns out not to be the case.

2) Even using your number, it's still 80 million compared to 2 million (and not all of those two million are going to go along with it anyway).
Great list. I really appreciate the graphic used to distinguish platform support (responsive vs not). Much easier on the eyes than a written list of supported screen sizes for each framework.

Would it also be useful to list the underlying language used for each framework (plain CSS, LESS, Stylus, etc) in case you plan on customizing?
12.10 Ubuntu has a system setting about privacy. There is an OFF button there. Can't remember the precise location but you can switch off the Amazon integration in the Home search.
iTunes Music Store sells standard format AAC files which can be played anywhere, freely converted, etc.; there's no DRM or anything. How is iTunes locking you in?
As much as I don't like using the word "FUD", this piece pretty much begs for it. Or, rather, the usual semi-informed opinions presented as fact.

For example:

>They're going down a road where I don't want to follow.

What road exactly is that? Anything concrete, or simply you don't like the Mac UI anymore? Because the "lock-up" things are just BS. There's nothing you cannot do in a modern OS X that you could in OS 10.1. The App Store just makes it more convenient, and sandboxing is optional.

>I don't intend to use whatever comes after Mountain Lion -- not that they even talk about OS X any more.

They don't? Last time I checked they had two Keynote presentations about Mountain Lion, which was released half a year ago. And they announced IIRC that they OS X will be released in an annual basis. Plus, they released several new laptops with some state-of-the-art features (hi-dpi displays) in the last 10 months and the redesigned iMacs. And yes, those are meant to run OS X.

>But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure that will be even worse.

What exactly will be worse? Just copy the files over. You can even arrange iTunes to put it in nice folders based on album/artist for you. The mp3 metadata will still be there, because it's in the file. You might lost some data like "scores" and "recently played" but the same would be true with any player, open source or not. There's not a standard format to interchange such things.

>Another problem is going to be iPhoto. I've cropped, rotated, geotagged, sharpened, level-adjusted, and done countless other things to my thousands of pictures. They all also live in some database which is effectively opaque. While there's probably some way to get it out, it will be far from trivial.

Really? Because I find it quite trivial. Just drag the bloody images out of iPhoto and to the desktop. Or "export". Or use one of ten utilities to help you with the process and offer more control. Or write a ten minute Applescript.
"I don’t know what language engineers will use in the future, but I know they’ll call it Fortran."

(A famous quote, but a quick Google doesn't yield a definitive attribution for it.)

Yes, Algol was what I meant as the odd one out. Your point is well taken, although I think this implies more that Algol is among the living than that modern Lisp/COBOL/Fortran are completely divorced from their first-generation ancestry. (To be clear, I read your comment as agreeing with me here, I'm just highlighting the distinction.)
I'm not sure I get all of that out the article, but there were a couple of red flags for me as well.

Assuming that Credit Suisse surprised him with the coding section of the interview, I can't necessarily fault him for walking out, because at that time, he realized that he didn't want to work for that company.

The response to the riddle is arrogant. So you don't like riddles, that's fine. Extend the same courtesy to the interviewer that you would want to see as an interviewee; if you don't want to work there, politely thank them and leave.

Asking to see open-source contributions is fine, but I don't agree with the idea of giving somebody homework. They could easily ship that work out to a friend or hire a cheap contractor. More importantly, it's the company investing almost nothing in the interview process, and yet asking the candidate for a substantial amount of return.

During my interviews, I have candidates pair up with team members and work on code. This is subtly different from homework, in that my company invests as much in the interview process as the candidate, which pays off as members of you team get a test-drive of what the candidate will be like on his first day.
Thanks! Maybe I won't have to get a PS4 after all. :)
The author chose to be on Svbtle, yes?
Interviewing is totally broken.

The people you are looking for will never come in for an interview, unless it's a major position like lead engineer or your compensation is off the charts. I am a fairly new programmer and have had numerous job offers without an interview. I would say I get two or three job offers a month, usually from fellow coders I am working with.

If I were hiring, I would skip the coding challenges (unless it's for an entry job and you have 100 applicants).

In the end, what you really want to know is:

Are you humble?
How fast do you learn?
Would you fit our culture?
Why do you want to work here? (or how long)

Unfortunately, it's hard to know you are getting an honest answer. What you really need is a recommendation from other programmers in your office.
It's actually usually way too late by the time the chargeback rolls in. Proper villains will have moved on.
Funny thing that the author gets a Transformer, and then claims that tablets may have a chance now that MS "invented" the hybrid PC.

I've recently brought a Transformer for upgrading my 2008 laptop. The main differences are:

- The tablet needs rooting, I could find no good development enviroment for Andoid, but Debian runs well as a userspace system. (Asus distributes the rooting software, I wouldn't even buy it otherwise.)

- The tablet has less USB ports (but has more I/O options). It still wasn't a problem, but I've already needed more than the laptop had.

- The tablet's keyboard is smaller, but better designed. Up to now, I'd say they are equivalently hard to use.

- The tablet has a slightly slower processor, but enough battery for an entire day with keyboard, or an entire working day without keyboard (the laptop lasted for 3 hours), and weights about 10% of the laptop's weight. Also, it's smaller (10" vs. 14") what is both good and bad.

- Touchscreens are simply great. It's still worse than a proper desktop, but it is much more convenient than plugging a mouse at a laptop.

- Also, you can unplug the keyboard when you just want to browse the web or read something, getting a much more convenient format and just half the weight.
How do you even define the problem you're trying to fix?

The competitive nature of the marketplace has inherent perverse incentives. It doesn't get fixed, people just tend to adjust their world view in one of many potential ways that allow them to stop seeing it as a problem.
>> goes and spends ›$1000 in a Macbook and hails the nice experience of having everything working.

Or do like I do and have done for several years, buy any new PC you want or laptop and install Ubuntu and it just works.
Perhaps because she realizes how much work it will be for her. If one uses many non-standard applications, changing platforms or even a clean install of an OS - Win, Mac, or Linux takes a lot of effort before one can get back to the productive work one bought the system to do. That is complicated by interoperability with auxiliary devices. Choice can be great but often comes with consequences that can be costly. Hmmm - isn't that really the message of Rachel's rant...
Take the email address and search on Facebook, LinkedIn, various blogs, etc. At the least you could be re-assured if the person looks like an upstanding citizen. And if you reach out on a trusted social network, the person might actually respond. It might also send a "I know who you are" type of message. But don't be too persistent, you're probably just freaking the person out. And if you upset this person, well they have your info.

Also, go ahead and get set up with an identity theft monitoring service. You'll know the instant a new credit line or address change is made.

Like others have said, the vast majority of people have no interest in identity theft. You realize that as a manager I have access to hundreds of applicant's passports, driver's licenses, etc.? You know how many people see your social when you apply for a mortgage? Ever considered how many average restaurant servers could steal your credit card number?

Anecdotally, I sold my car to a dealership which years later I realized had my social security card and birth certificate in an obscure compartment in the car. Probably the worst documents to lose. Nothing came of it.
Ok that seems more realistic, the actual process is key, I assumed it would be automated with no human intervention.
See, being an anti-TDD person applying for a TDD team (I'm anti-TDD, btw) or anti-pairing on a pairing team are great examples of legitimate "culture" filtering. Thanks!
I'd spend more time on my Windows machine if it supported Retina (200% DPI isn't sufficient), but I agree that it's not bad these days. I do something fairly similar with my rMBP, but with OS X as the host OS. Played XCOM on the BOS->BNA flight last week in VMWare Fusion, had a blast.

I think it's pretty important (not for you specifically, but people who might read this comment) to note that Cygwin has gotten leaps and bounds better over the last few years. If you haven't tried it since 2005 or so (I sure hadn't), you may be pleasantly surprised.
I would definitely add http://roots.cx/ to the list.
"... the staggering evidence that guns in citizen's hands are unnecessary at the least and dangerous at the worst."

Not true.

US citizens are more effective than police in handling firearms:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming-t...

http://actionamerica.org/guns/guns1.shtml

scroll down to "Armed Citizens Make Fewer Mistakes Than Police"
How are you going to enforce "gun registration"? House-to-house searches?
My most productive period was when I was waking up at 8pm, grabbing dinner and drinks with friends from 9pm to midnight (I would drink water), hacking at the lab from 12:30am to 8:30am, run errands from 8:30 to 10 and then sleep from 10am to 8pm.
And Amazon's downloadable videos aren't? All online video "purchasing" services are DRM-laden crap. Blame the publishers.
Great post!

> I have an XP, OSX, Ubuntu, and CentOS VM

If you don't mind me asking, how much RAM per VM?
No, he doesn't, and I don't too.

How would that be different with any Open Source application?

There is NO common interchange format for music information besides the embedded mp3 metadata. Of course iTunes (and ANY other player, OSS or not) has to store non-standard stuff outside those. And even if it stored them inside, there is no consensus about the naming and interoperability for metadata not in the standard list.

So there's nothing in her points that can be particularly applied to Apple or iTunes.

It just makes no sense to say "I'm going to use Ubuntu mp3 players because of this" -- because the situation there would be the same.
The idea that small font sizes are acceptable because “users can zoom” is fucking ridiculous, and I am extremely disappointed to see it suggested here. That is absolutely the wrong attitude. If a user has to go out of their way to use your interface, you're doing it wrong. No question. Interfaces should bend over backward for their users, not the other way around. Yes, you can't satisfy every edge case, but the default attitude must not be “well, users can just use this workaround”. That thinking is why we have crappy interfaces. If that's your approach for building interfaces, please stop building interfaces, for the sake of the user.
Ok, so his daughter was at the school down the street. Does that really change anything? He's still a member of that community and should be able to protect his children to the best of his ability.
The government probably sees it as a small price for industrialization. Machiavelli and all. On the other hand, people will suffer but probably live longer thanks to medicines they can now afford.
Well that does make sense.

I very much concur. I do enjoy tinkering, but with what I do these days, I need the OS to not be such a giant obstacle.
Make it common knowledge that anyone who pretends that they are winning all the time are frauds and hucksters?

Not that this is necessarily a good idea, but in terms of psychology it makes sense to me. Plant a kernel of doubt so that people ask real questions, and if they don't get honest sounding answers hit the door. Gives an incentive for founders to be honest with both themselves and others and less downside to doing so.

I was definitely told by several VC folks and by even the NSF grant office that if they get "overly optimistic" coming in the door, they tend to ignore what they say. Having a realistic appraisal of your problems and advantages is a sure sign of delusion and lack of maturity.
The hard truth is that 9 of 10 applications (commercial or start-ups) are just mistakes. So whats the point of delivering well documented and beautiful designed app that nobody use? That is why i think that hackatons in order to deliver good enough product and test your hypotesis does make sense. If it`s a market fit, then i agree - lets clean up the mess and develop it in normal way
Amazon's videos are available on a wide-variety of hardware platforms, so I'm much more confident purchasing from them.
This is a little silly. What is a discussion of hiring practices if not a debate about which hoops are valuable and which aren't? Hiring hurdles aren't all intrinsically valuable.

I had the same initial response to the tone of the post; I thought it was a little self-important sounding. But then I reread it, and a lot more of it made sense on the second read than the first.
IFeed Class - Read XML Feeds
Anti-nuclear hysteria is another good example.

Which "tragedies" would those be, by the way?
Thanks for insight! I hope that somebody somehow will test this hypotesis :)
And what if it's a male called Rachel? (Like the "boy named Sue"). Or this guy:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1290&dat=19900628&...