skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I see now that this is what they purport to do. However I still maintain that the presentation is dishonest. Showing a comparison at 25% scale gives the impression that the tool is better at choosing "nearly lossless" setting than it really is. Look at the dog image, which on their demo appears to be identical to the original.

Now look at it at 100% scale: http://imgur.com/z12mHnd . Block artifacts galore. Now sure, it may still do a better job than just choosing a constant quality setting and applying it across the board. But the demo doesn't show us that. It doesn't even make the right kind of comparison.

What we need is a comparison of choosing a single quality level, and using JPEGmini. To be useful, here's the kind of demo we'd need to see.

On the right side: five JPEGs saved with JPEGmini, having a total file size of X, shown at 100% resolution.

On the left side: five JPEGs saved with a constant quality setting, chosen so that the total file size is X, also shown at 100% resolution.

Then we'd honestly know whether the program is worth using.

My guess? Probably not. The train station image, for example, is so grainy that you can compress it to damn near 600KB (50% in GIMP) before the artifacts are really noticeable (and well beyond that if you scale it down to 25% afterward). So did JPEGmini's visual model detect this and cut the bitrate down accordingly? No, it decided that the image should be saved at the equivalent of 83%, making the file more than twice as large as necessary. And this is on an image that was presumably handpicked as a shining example of how well the product works.

My guess is that if you just chose around a 75% quality setting and compressed all of your JPEGs that way, you'd do just as well as JPEGmini.
I have tried (both cheap and high quality) ear buds and they don't really work for me. I can barely hear the music despite turning the volume of the source to full (probably because I have severe hearing loss). I haven't tried custom fit ear moulds yet, but I guess they would be just slightly better. Basically, I need the amplification that my hearing aids provide to listen to music.
Absolutely true, and I wouldn't argue against hosting your own email is there are such very specific constraints on your organization. We don't have any of that, and hosting our own email makes zero sense for us.

Or to put it another way... we're a 2 person, self-funded, bootstrapped startup. Our most precious resource right now is the time of myself and my cofounder. Every minute we spend tweaking and tuning an email server, is a minute we're not talking to customers, doing market research, working on our product, developing strategy, doing competitive intelligence research, etc. For us, that's not a tradeoff that makes sense.
Logic Hacking with
"the popular argument that left and right are the same, and that any conflict between them is an internal conflict."

They are, and it is.

The only useful distinction here is that between liberty and slavery.
I built http://www.modewalk.com/ from scratch using Django. I do have "plenty of exposure", and the default template engine worked just fine. The default ORM is just fine. Most of the defaults are just fine.
If My Phone Falls Down The Seat Crevice Again I’ll Lose It
Adding Concurrency to Rails Apps with Unicorn
I've always said my perfect laptop is an 11" macbook air + retina display + integrated LTE. My understanding is that the LTE thing happens because the networks aren't ready for it...
404 is an error code sent by a HTTP daemon. Browsers don't reuse them.
Is this becoming a common need for people? I just bought a Chromebook the other day and adding cellular network support wasn't much more, but I opted against it. I find if I'm on a laptop then wifi is pretty much always available.
Still crashes. IE10 on W764.
The conference is getting pilloried within the security community (and other organizers of BSides conferences), it seems, although that may just be that the loudest voices are the most opposed to what happened. BSidesLV extended an open invitation for her to speak (again), and made it clear they'd never bar someone for a talk like this.

At the same time it would also suck if the response to censorship were hostile to women or whatever.
What Github Cant Do for You
via previous hn submissions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4418685 and the story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3792627

Also:
http://blog.linkibol.com/2010/05/07/how-to-build-a-popularit...

http://www.andymoore.ca/2010/02/bayesian-ratings-your-salvat...
i would appreciate an explanation of what you mean by "without affecting its original quality." We're talking about lossy compression, so whether that goal is achieved is purely subjective, isn't it?
Solving The Back Button
There are studies underway about converting body glucose into electricity. Fascinating stuff.

http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/technology-1/powered-by-lobster-sc...
Maybe they do that for lossy images, but I just compared what's on imgur to the original on my computer, and it is pixel-for-pixel identical. They did shave about 7KB off of it though, so maybe they push PNGs through pngout or similar.

I mean, as far as I know, there aren't even any practically useful algorithms out there for doing lossy compression on PNGs (although there should be).
Have no fear! America is a Christian nation and would never do something explicitly banned by the Holy Bible like usury.
TL;D(id)R version:

Beamr isn't claiming a superior encoder. They're claiming to provide a service for video compression that is similar to what the tools like optipng and jpegoptim do for images: recompression without (noticeable) loss.

Their big claim to fame, however, is that they determine the "minimum" bitrate for your video to still look good.

So, in theory, if I feed back in the compressed video they give me - Beamr should refuse to optimize it further because it should be as perfectly compressed as possible.

Someone please do this test.

Then, more importantly, redo the test but modify those option strings embedded in the video (as mentioned in OP) so that it can't cheat and detect a "perfect" video by noticing its own proprietary app name or a previously seen checksum of the file.

I'd love to see the results.

If it can't detect perfection, letting the user recompress video over and over again until it slides into digital blocks of moving mush, then there really is no difference between this service and using a CRF of 18.5 as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
Sure email is but spam isn't in the RFC is it? That doesn't get delivered straight to your email inbox, or emails from domains that are on blocklists.
Are there any particular examples that come to mind?
Comparing performance of "shuffle" in Ruby, Python, and Factor
Can someone sum up the engineer?
Q:I've been trying to choose a class and I've played mostly mesmer because I liked it but I'm looking for alternatives because while it is very strong in PvP, it's PvE is very meh

I didn't get to play much engineer so I'm just wondering what kind of class it is. Is it more PvP or PvE? What are its strong/weak points? It it more bursty or sustained DPS? etc...
- See more at: http://www.gw2gold.net/news/97_2707_can-someone-sum-up-the-engineer#sthash.BBCWgfqb.dpuf
Sir, i tried to bring your attention on the fact that pizza is not the best food to eat. All i did I just used the same words you used to describe MSFT.
MSFT has 94,000 employees and ~1 billion devices running windows around the globe. You can buy brand new computer which runs windows 7 or 8 for ~250$.
And i don't know why guy like you, who finds pizza ordering process so sophisticated that made post on ycombinator about it, thinks that he has rights to insult 94000 people, saying that they don't care about their customers. Some of this people i have an honor to call colleges and friends. I think you owe apologies, sir.
There are over 40k users as of today.
They should at least launch an OS with first-class support for iPhone tethering.
Google: PageRank Dilution Through A 301 Redirect Is A Myth
Hypothesis competing with dark matter gains support
Heavy on Conditions, one of two or three professions that can directly heal via the use of elixir gun as I recall. Pretty defensive in nature imo good CC, elixirs which can buff you considerably. - See more at: http://www.gw2gold.net/news/97_2707_can-someone-sum-up-the-e...
Kickstarter for Mini Radiation Detector
There is no safe term. Over here where I live 'deaf' is politically incorrect and 'hearing impaired' is the politically correct word. 'Hard of hearing' usually implies that you're old and therefore, have low to moderate hearing loss.

When I was in USA, 'hearing impaired' was politically incorrect (responses to an post on a HLAA mailing list where I used 'hearing impairment' made that clear). The PC word is 'hard of hearing' or 'deaf'. As far as I can use, those who belong to the 'deaf culture' (i.e. use sign language as their main means of communication) prefer to call themselves 'deaf' whereas others who use hearing aids or cochlear implants decide to call themselves 'hard of hearing' or 'hearing impaired'.

I don't really care either way which term you use. It is more how to use it - i.e. you shouldn't use any of these terms to derogate or mock hard of hearing/hearing impaired/deaf people.
AdWords for Targeted Traffic
I hear Google may be using it in Chromebook Pixel.
Why I Hate Rails - After six months you’ll be lucky if you have this
Hear me out.

I was full for this 'teach kids how to code' thingy. But I think we have got this all wrong. Heck we don't have the right kind of tools to teach kids how to code. In fact I have now realized that you can't and should not teach kids how to code. You rather must teach them how to solve problems. Math was supposed to deal with that, but unfortunately that turned out to be complicated symbol manipulation if not for anything else.

My niece here in India is around 12 years old, and she is being taught C programming back in school(She is in 8th standard, or 8th grade as per US terms). No she generally comes and stays with us in the summers. So last time she came over for a month's holiday she bought her laptop with her and wanted me to teach her to program in C.

The net result is disaster. I tried everything possible. Every other trick in the trade. Even tried to start with Python first and not C. But I figured the nature of problems is something else. Kids view programming very similar to the way they see math. They find themselves manipulating things/symbols/stuff without understanding why, for what, or even why its even relevant to them. They struggle to understand where or why should you use an if/else/switch statement, or a for/do/while loop. Its difficult for them to map solution patterns to a code pattern.

Its not their fault. Its ours. Better luck trying to explain a kid why they are being asked to write a program find greatest of three numbers, find factorials, or sort numbers. To them it very clearly looks math in a different language. Its that boring math thing all over again.

Much complication starts when stuff like pointers is pushed down their throat. Or something like bit shifting. Oh and yes, they start asking things about the process of compiling, linking etc. Or why they need to put a #include at the start of a program. You can't honestly explain all that without explaining them some underlying stuff.

Beyond all this it needs to fun, which it very clearly isn't.

What kids need to be taught is how to solve problems, even if it means repairing a mechanical watch. Instead what they are being given is math in a different dose. And trust me at that age, they don't really like doing that.

And oh, by the way. Next year they are about to be taught Java. I can only imagine the horror, the way kids of going to deal with the text walls full of verbosity, API dance and the XML mess. And the last time I heard they don't really use IDE's.

One thing that I'm convinced is, after this episode due to all this trouble and trauma of having to learn this, she clearly doesn't enjoy, she will hate programming and hope she never has to deal with it again.

Because last time I talked to her, she told me she wants to be a journalist. That's how much damage 'Teach kids how to code' has done.

I'm now glad no one ever introduced me to coding when I was a kid.
Its a little bit relevant; so I would like to mention that I created a little collaborative and opensource[0] _spanish_ directory of videos and documents to learn programming; it's called http://Programando.la/, I would also like to mention that CodeCademy haves a spanish version[1].

[0]https://github.com/AltIvan/programando.la (MIT License)

[1]http://www.codecademy.com/?locale_code=es#!/exercises/0
(def newsletter) – a weekly Clojure newsletter
Finding and Keeping Your Perfect Investment Partner
My experience is that, if you're in a place where you want to work on a laptop, that place will probably have wifi. Sure, in the park, on the street, your chances are lower -- but that's where you'd be pulling out your phone or tablet instead of your laptop.
Here's why everyone should learn how to code - creating your own answers
Unless the title changed, I don't see quotes anywhere. There is an apostrophe after the word in the HN title, but that's there to show possession (it's their hands).
In my experience, another source of great DSP explanations is Professor fred harris [1]. I attended a 2-day lecture by him (20 years ago) and it was beautiful in its clarity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredric_J._Harris
I'm actually stone deaf at high frequency (I cannot hear a 'sh' sound, even with hearing aids) but have some amount of hearing at low frequency. It is possible that I'm hearing partially through my ear vent with the headphones but the hearing aids definitely assist.
Check out my other app Screendocs!

http://screendocs.com/

It lets you capture step-by-step screenshots, formats them nicely with HTML in a public Dropbox folder, where you can share a link in 1 step.
The only thing I hated about django was using south for migrations. It was a huge headache.
Yeah, they're great for telephones but there is too much ambient noise around them for them to make listening to music fun for me.
Based on their sales history with iPads, it doesn't make sense. Dropping in a modem also requires a lot of engineering from software drivers to the custom hardware to the compliance testing with any carrier network the device would be operating on. Apple has made the right choices in the past by focusing on the important problems. Unfortunately, carrier pricing makes the demand for LTE on all our devices weaker and the challenge not worth it.

http://gigaom.com/2012/03/20/sorry-carriers-9-out-of-10-tabl...
Uhhh.... why?

Laptops and phones have totally different use cases.

You could make a much better argument saying that an iPad with cellular means you wouldn't need an iPhone.
Payment methods available to consumers via banks. Yes, other countries are farther ahead.

Online commerce is a different story where the US is far ahead of the rest of the world.
Did you even look at the resources on Khan Academy they have? They're STUPID simple and really useful. Heck, I learned some stuff!
True programming education is a education for hackers or in other words it is a self-education. Today our hollywoodstic world have many examples which may inspire anybody to become a hacker who can learn anything by hacking.
Of course coding basics and algorithms, like arithmetic, should be at school, and many countries already have programming courses.
>The difference is that your point was based on a single circuit ruling, where it's pretty much required that the "another circuit ruling differently" happen before it's even possible to get to the SC.

It isn't a requirement that there be a circuit split before the Supreme Court will take a case. You're certainly right that a circuit split makes it a lot more likely they'll take it, but that doesn't make it a prerequisite. They've been known to take important cases of first impression without it. If we're going to be pedants then we have to be pedantic, right?
My brother and I started a bet on this in November 2011. At that time, I'd already had a Cr-48 with 3G for a year. As of Superbowl 46, someone everyone here would recognize thought that Apple would roll out cellular in what proved to be the retina MacBooks. The bet comes due in April 2013. So far, I'm still losing. Anyone got a Campagnolo chain they want to send me? :-)
Marissa Mayer Is No Fool, take it from the actual business point of view: http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/2013/02/marissa-mayer-is-no-foo...

Sure we all what to work from home, we sympathise and this is human nature, but its not good for Yahoo.
I think it is just that she's procrastinating a lot (which I'm also doing for a conference tomorrow). It wasn't intentional.

She has a few talks on slightly edgy topics which she gives at different venues. The "hackers and suicide" one from CCC was probably more interesting, but that was just delivered 2 months ago to a largely overlapping audience.
I always thought the space bar would provide an adequate window.
That still wouldn't be right. My huge iPad doesn't fit in my pocket. And I will feel silly holding said huge iPad to my face when I want to make a call.
A Look Back At Instagram’s Growth As It Hits 100 Million Monthly Active Users
Thanks for the reply. Ok, I'll probably give it a trial and see how it goes then!

I'm pretty committed to my mindcrack pack world at the moment though, so what are the plans to support other modpacks in the future?
Do they get a bonus or other benefit if they act as if they are spending their own money, or alternatively, punished if they do not act as such?

In other words: if there's no incentive, what difference does it make?
I only have a few small-ish mail servers under my care, and I couldn't agree more.

Reviewing the history of the mailop list [1] shows how frustrating it can be when a behemoth (AOL, MS, etc.) stops accepting your mail. It's bad enough when you're a sizeable mail operation; as a tiny standalone mailserver, you are not at all a priority, and it's possible you'll lose the ability to communicate with a significant fraction of the Internet's email users (regardless of how complete/correct your configuration) and with little recourse.

[1] http://chilli.nosignal.org/mailman/listinfo/mailop
You take laptops to where wi-fi is. I'd rather go to Balboa Park or the Black Mountain Preserve.
Why would the politics be worse? You are supposedly hiring people who are culturally compatible, possibly apolitical.
It helps build the Internet Archive's open database of legal documents, which PlainSite re-presents to the public for free, OR if you want to pay, also provides additional analytic data about.

Your characterization of the initiative as being solely designed to benefit me financially is misleading and inaccurate, and I disagree with your assertion that I somehow should have been more forthright.
A year and a half after its announcement
Pinboard has an API [1] and maybe even better for your uses they tried really hard to make it compatible with the Delicious API, so adding support shouldn't be much of an issue.

1 - http://pinboard.in/api/
We launched http://scholr.ly in January- we've still got plenty of issues, but we handle some of your use cases, like citation linking. We also first-class authors so you can see an easy summary of a researcher's work. We're still working on personalization and have kicked around tagging/rating for some time- I'd love your feedback.

It seems like the rest of your issues could be solved by Mendeley- WDYT?
Honestly, it's more of a 98/2 case for most business systems. Writing complex SQL for that 2% hasn't bothered me particularly thus far. And for simple (and not so simple) joins, the syntax is lighter than SQLAlchemy.

I'm not saying the critique is bad, it's just that in practice it's not something you'll be noticing day to day, and if you are, switching to pure SQL or SQLAlchemy is not a bad alternative (and Django makes that very easy to do).
> What Diaz showed is that Beamr is offering nothing that actually improves either visual quality or bitrate

Well too bad Beamr never made that claim (AFAIK). What Beamr does claim is that their software can automatically find settings (per frame) that will compress a certain video file to it's smallest size without affecting quality (too much - in some subjective measure).

I'm not saying that Beamr is great. I have no idea, I've never used it. But what I can say for sure is that Daiz has not made a fair evaluation of the technology in the OP.
I agree that this is odd, and I think it is the reason this thing was a problem in the first place. It was decided months ago that she would speak at this conference, according to Violet Blue's blog post. They are both aware of the focus of her work and it makes sense that an organizer of this conference would want to know the specifics her talk in advance. It seems like a mistake for them to have not settled it sooner.
Why are pages slow?
Run Meteor Apps Anywhere with Demeteorizer
Er, because generally you wouldn't want an Islamic fascist state to have nuclear weapons?
This is interesting, I'm also using Pinboard (with some custom ruby code for caching) to power my fairly popular Bootstrap links page [1].

Pinboard has been awesome for this and a few other projects where I use it as a sort of URL import / processing queue. I have a specific set of tags that trigger different actions for the different services, things like taking a screenshot of a URL or posting the link to Twitter via IFTTT (which has good Pinboard support).

1 - http://www.bootstraphero.com/the-big-badass-list-of-twitter-...
Ruby 2.0 released
Maturity of a technological system to me implies a plateau of design, but that's not the case in missile guidance. Current generation systems are significantly more advanced and more capable than previous generation systems.
I can understand the fear of a lawsuit or fine; these things seem wholly beyond your control. What I don't like is paralysis that comes with that.

Now, some amount of pragmatism is important, and I'm sure you've made your decision in a way that's best for you. I just hope that the entire community doesn't fall into the trap of "there's this [regulatory/bureaucratic] risk, so forget it. I won't even try."

My take on these types of hurdles is that they are surmountable with a good helping of resourcefulness. Example?

In our case, there's actually not FDA approval for primary clinical use of a technique we depend on, so there would be quite a bit of legwork between us and getting to market, not to mention the hospital bureaucracy.

What we figured out, however, is that technicians in the pharmaceutical industry (and biotech) use this same technique, in similarly high volume. The barriers to them adopting new technologies are much lower, and better still, they actively demand and pay for new technologies that boost efficiency. So we're starting with them as a target market, and we'll chip away at the barriers to direct clinical adoption in parallel to revenue generation.

This is only one trick of many we're bringing to bear in fielding our technology, and some patience is required before we can realize the impact we dream of.

Handling the risk associated with being involved in medical or scientific decision-making presents its own set of challenges, as well. Briefly, our take on this is to work hard and validate the scientific merit of what we ship before we ship it. This does take a bunch of time, but having doctors and papers to vouch for what we do means that we've built trust and support in the community. Sometimes this means we ship a smaller set of features than "what is possible", but we're patient and see these products as stepping stones.

Finally, I'll note that we're a small team that's not venture -backed (at present, intentionally so). We're fortunate to have enough grant money to prevent starvation, but that's it. Really, lots of things are possible, even in the healthcare space.
At least three different people you know work for Raytheon developing exploits?