skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am wondering if you ever lived in a small town. There was no real anonymity.
I worked for a large pharmaceutical firm that had a whole department involved with just doing background checks on their prospective scientists. Diploma fraud could be a big problem for them.

Perhaps this startup was doing the same thing but just outsourced the work?
this looks like an interesting alternative https://github.com/clojure/tools.reader
I have a Nexus 4 and the dock. Honestly, it was an impulse buy and doesn't add much value, but it's worked great for me so far. I haven't had a problem with the phone getting dusty so haven't noticed slippage. The dock does charge incredibly fast and the design is wonderful, but it doesn't really provide the value that you'd expect for the extra $30, but it is still pretty cool.
Emory University and Campus Bubble Create University Collaboration
A shocking data point about how things are going is that the median real net worth for households headed by someone under 25 dropped 68% from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662.

I remember hearing this on NPR a couple days ago. It's actually 35.[1]

To all who write blog posts: please cite your stats.

[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap...
I feel that the only relevant factor in hiring should be competence. How do you define being well rounded, and how do you measure that when you're interviewing? Is that just a code word for being someone like you?
Ironic that this is happening on a game that's all about mitigating disasters.
Deposition Reveals Prenda Law Business Model: Monetizing Squalid Douchebaggery
Minecraft took an obvious stand against graphics, kind of like someone who purposefully doesn't comb their hair in the morning and it looks awesome. These graphics just look uninspired, like they never made the jump to modern lighting techniques or shaders. Even one man jobs have more interesting visuals. I agree, the graphics need to be updated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

But is not the classic case of Ad-hominem, you did a deduction from point B to make a personal attack to deny the validness of point A. Interesting.
Flash fails to reach a large portion of the market, so Flash fails. HTML5 is the future. Also, this game (and many other flash experiences) crash my Flash plugin and take up more CPU usage than HTML5 video or canvas experiences.
Well, that's awesome if you're into that, but personally I like games that leverage the abilities of modern graphics card. I'm not afflicted with a lot of nostalgia, though, either.
From the Onion: New Social Media Startup Launches, Shuts Down Within 45 Minutes
"I rarely use anything but a weather app, maps, and the web browser, though."

This and cost were the reasons I initially thought about switching. I do almost all of my real iOS use on my iPad. The phone just does calls, checking email, and some web browsing when I'm out and about.

That said, I have expanded my phone use with the Nexus 4 considerably since I've found it to be more pleasant. For example, I send emails from the Nexus 4 regularly, as opposed to never (or maybe in an emergency) on iPhone.

"Also, the Nexus 4 is just large enough, it's actually difficult for me to operate with one hand sometimes, because I can't reach my thumb quite as far across the screen."

This is probably the main thing I dislike, although it's hard to totally fault this as I enjoy the larger screen when reading or web surfing. And apparently the iPhone 5 is starting to have similar issues.

Better idioms for navigation that don't require long stretches to the top edges of the screen will probably mitigate this in time.
Gee, that sounds familar... Felt the need to create a new account? http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=GeorgeJetson
What about them? Maybe I'm dense today, but I don't see how what you said relates to what he said.

His mentioning DRM was ancillary to the main point, that you don't buy digital goods in the classical sense, but instead lease the right to use/play them. This applies to every form of software that has paid-for licensing, even those that don't have DRM attached to try and protect it.
Putting a

maxwidth: 600px

on the form inputs, dropdown menus and order button makes the page much friendlier on the desktop, at least for me.
Did you try Chrome?
These are the stories that Nat Geo: Banged up Abroad program shows. Have you guys seen it?
There are many delivery & pickup laundry services in the LA area, and elsewhere. Here's one that covers downtown: www.soapyjoes.com/laresidential

I tried a different service in the south bay and was happy with it, except for the cost ($45 for three weeks' laundry and a few items dry cleaned).
P.S. Firefox is complete garbage compared to Chrome.
Actually it is the future, and like you I too don't buy games much any more. Your kids or your peer's kids though will play games this way because it is the only way to get them and they will think its 'normal.' Eventually you'll be called an 'old timer' and derided for all your comments about how in your day when you bought a game it didn't need to download 4GB of 'patches' nor did it require Internet access to run.

What is most curious though, is whether or not this new world order is stable long term. Other creative works publishers like movie studios or musicians, can capture the long tail of revenue for their products long after the initial 'rush' but for game studios and other 'active' products there is this continual draw on the host companies resources to keep servers alive or what not. So eventually keeping a game 'alive' starts generating negative money. And killing a game generates negative customer sentiment. So the combination might overwhelm the business model.

Only time will tell.
But HTML isn't usually "remoting" an interface anymore, it _is_ the interface. This trend will only continue and solutions like VNC, NX will become unnecessary.
Ruby Demystified: and vs. &&
Holy cow! Everyone who pledged $10.000 or more receives a copy of "Akalabeth"! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akalabeth:_World_of_Doom ]
If you want to play 2000, GOG.com has it for 6 bucks. Works perfectly on my mac, and I love playing it while offline on my long train ride. It's a shame, since when I am offline is the only time I play games, that I won't get to play the new one...
Couldn't you say the same thing about the USSR? All the smartest people should work for Gosplan because correctly allocating capital is key to creating wealth, and to achieve that all the people working in and running Gosplan should get paid the most.
Interesting thought, and I think we have the data to answer the question. HAART has been around since ~1995, so we actually have about 20 years of data to say that it does not cure HIV.
Because there's a semantic difference between "SimCity" and "SimCity Online."

SimCity's been a single-player offline experience since its inception. It's reasonable to believe in a vacuum that a newly-released "SimCity" game will be the same.

Lots of people are in such a vacuum -- a LOT of people hear "A new SimCity game is coming out / has come out" in their periphery and, having enjoyed its past iterations, rush to buy the new copy. Their surprise in finding that it's an entirely online experience is reasonable here.

Calling it "SimCity Online" could have dampened this effect, causing some -- if not a lot -- of people to stop and think "Wait, what makes it Online? Oh, it's more like an MMO."
Beware click to play is not a security feature in Firefox or Chrome as recommended by this site. In chrome you want to use 'block all'.
Runnable.com is hiring. Come help us build something really cool
http://runnable.com/about
He's raised 11.181 euros so far of 10.000 goal. That's all of what, $15 US? Is this a joke? Or is he in some backward poor country where $15 is a month's wages?

He probably could have self-funded -- with money left over! -- from a single hour of actual work for someone.
I didn't downvote, but your premise is incorrect. You can have increasing economic growth with a dwindling population. Russia and Romania have experienced this for over a decade. You may discount Russia as a post-Cold War bounce, but there are other examples of economies with negative or stagnant population growth that also experience economic growth.

You claim that our economic malaise is primarily due to cultural problems, but you don't cite any data to support this. I doubt anyone collects statistics on the percent of people who "help others", but there are statistics that contradict your assertion that American culture is declining, e.g. the dramatic decrease in violent crime over the past two decades.

You also ignore the possible causal relationship between a degrading culture (if it is indeed occurring) and national economic problems. Perhaps people would be less likely to help others if they feel less financially secure?

Too much sex with too many partners and a declining stock of fertilizer, as causal factors of economic malaise, is a tenuous connection at best.

If I had to guess, I'd say that most people didn't find enough relevant, substantial claims in your comment to bother replying to.
Great story but also captivating title, I was hooked the moment I read the title and the idea of it. This is writing.
Client side saving is already implemented. In a few instances where I disconnected from the server and continued to play, SimCity would try to push my work to the server on reconnect.

At times this wouldn't work and I would lose my progress, but I'm willing to attribute that to the fact that it was supposed to be a rare case backup mechanism, rather than the necessary crutch it is currently.
You should probably be ashamed of that, at least a little bit. I would.
I'm sorry but as a gaming enthusiast, I'm experiencing some major schadenfreude here.

EA's tactics, ethics and influence have been the worst in the industry for the last 10 years. Pushing DRM, buying up smaller studios, releasing endless add-on packs and DLC. Thankfully I haven't been addicted to any of their games since Dungeon Keeper. That was a great game.
Why did they have to disable accelerated time in the single player game? I'm not disputing what you are saying -- the notion that it had a server-side engine for single player games seemed silly -- but that aspect of the story struck me as very odd.
Did not go through the registration wall. It's rather new, I guess - haaretz stories used to be free to read.

The article is about this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Kaminsky

see also: http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kaminsky.html
Towns is a stripped-out Dwarf Fortress done shittily with somehow even worse UI. For that sort of game you're better off playing either Dwarf Fortress or Gnomoria, which is also simplified compared to DF but has a much better UI.
This is not the future of gaming. Look at how badly SimCity flopped.

Let me compare to DotA2 which I play a lot. It's exclusively multiplayer and thus needs an internet connection, yet it's free to play. How much have I spent on it? At this point at least $75+ dollars. THIS IS THE FUTURE OF GAMING.

Valve has the right model. I know valve didn't create the F2P model but it has implemented it the best as far as I know. They have pulled more money out of me giving me a free game then they would have made if they sold me 60+ copy.

EA should of just given out free copies of SimCity. Given out free copies with enough features to keep me entertained without the need to spend money. Then releasing toolsets for modders to create items; resell them to us for profit.

The DLC will surely be created but based on how EA conducts DLC in The Sims 3, I expect expensive expansions and stuffer packs.
I feel so sorry for guys and girls responsible for keeping the systems up and running at EA. Days without sleep, without a doubt. And I'm sure their managers are cracking the whips and blaming all the bad things an them.

It just makes me sad to think of :(
If you find Runnable.com to be slow, please bear with us. We're getting slammed right now and it should get a lot better with the day.
Java the language is not insecure, nor is having the JVM installed. The issue comes from the Java browser plugin, which has been a security disaster to the point that it's being disabled in browsers automatically.
Dresssed, your Rails apps will be and nicely so.
I think you're right about the reasons for not upgrading. For orgs still using IE6 and XP, statistically it's very likely they're not going to be doing new development in PHP 5.5. (statistics pulled from thin air based on 15 years of experience with PHP and orbs who use it).

There's not been any security patches for PHP 4 for many years, but people still use it. Those same sorts of orgs will continue to use stuff out of date and unsupported for any number of reasons. Catering development processes around an increasingly small number of users doesn't make sense.
The period is the equivalent of the comma that you're expecting. 11.181 Euros is equivalent to 11,181 Euros (depending on where you live).

You can find more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
I also miss the days when you could just start up a BF2 server on your LAN and have your family and friends join the game for some fun.
This was definitely well-written, and very enjoyable to read. But I don't think it was true journalism. The story was manipulated to show first one side, then the other, then to leave the reader hanging in the balance. I can appreciate the writing skill to do that, but I'm still left wondering whether some information was sacrificed to achieve it.

HN commenters have come up with some probable scenarios (my favorite is that he knew there were drugs but really thought Denise was real [1]), and I would think a more journalistic piece would explore those. Obviously, the writer can't put in all the details from months of research, but can give scenarios that seem plausible given those details.

Finally, I'm surprised there was no research into who the con men were. Maybe it's dangerous to investigate that, but it still seems like a totally one-sided story if he was conned, but nobody is trying to figure out who did it. So in the end, I think the entertainment value was higher than the news value or even the investigative reporting value.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5344496
Thanks everyone for clearing that up for me!
Steam does exactly the same thing, from my understanding.
I think it all depends on how you define "know".
Do you separate your marketing site from your application?
Correction: When the government uses the threat of force to ensure their cut on peaceful transactions, crime arises.
Basically you are just providing a general interface to dry cleaners with your apps. And simply taking a cut of each transaction. No need for overhead due to how most cleners already have pick up/ delivery service. Smart business model.
Show HN: Glancy - Article lengths at a glance
I agree 100%. For me it was Egghead Software in the late 80's early 90's. I also had fun working in Babbages in the early-mid 90's while I was in high school. Unfortunately, those years were mostly dominated by Myst and Mortal Kombat sales. I think that's why I liked Egghead so much, no BS just computer games/software.
Aaron Swartz's Partner Accuses DOJ Of Lying
Of course, which is why I used % rather than absolute numbers. In terms of relative inequality, there is no real limit, the limit comes from when a segment of the population falls under some absolute threshold where they can't sustain themselves and therefore cannot create their own wealth.
According to HN Search, several people posted it but none of them got more that 5 points.
Reading this story made me wonder, does it ever work? And if so, I wonder what the success ratio is. Clearly is must be high enough (or profitable enough despite losses) for them to keep doing it...
They could still have all these social/online features and not require internet-DRM to play.

You play your game, and if you want to do something social and the servers are down -- it sucks, but you can still play, and take part in the social stuff when it is up and working.

For online saves -- there is a local backup for when the online system is down.

These are not difficult things. They are just trying to fight an ever-losing battle against piracy.
I rarely see Python 3.x mentioned so I did a little Googling and found this interesting assessment:
http://jakevdp.github.com/blog/2013/01/03/will-scientists-ev...
The thing that causes political instability is not that the 1% derive their gains at the expense of the 99%, but the perception that they do.

In sports, it's pretty easy to demonstrate which athletes are superior. Nobody even argues about it except when it's a close call and "home team" loyalty comes into play.

But for some reason, perhaps a legacy of the Puritan ethos that hard work will produce deserved prosperity, Americans have always felt like their net worth is a measure of their worth as individuals. So when the relative purchasing power of the 99% decreases in relation to that of the 1% (as it has over the past few decades), people tend to feel that the game is stacked against them in a very personal way. If, the thinking goes, they have still been working hard all this time, why are they suddenly valued less? Surely someone must be conspiring to steal the fruits of their labor and allocate it to the 1%.

It's the kind of thinking that revolutions are born out of, which is a scary thought.
It makes the landing page similar to a photo captured with an expensive lens on a high quality camera, where the foreground (text and logos, in this case) is in crisp focus, whereas the background is said to be in [bokeh](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh).
I'd be really curious to A/B test mailto versus contact form, but my gut is that fewer people would use a mailto.
>* A small law firm in Chicago, through a series of shell transactions, acquired the rights to some porn properties.

It seems like they originally did have proper contracts to sue on behalf of porn studios, with the porn studios getting a cut of the settlements. Then that well dried up, due to a combination of factors like very slow moving cases and a few nasty countersuits against the porn studio owners that had to be settled for cash going the wrong way.

It's only at that point where they decided they could just buy the copyrights to films directly, and get rid of the pesky clients.
This misses his point entirely. Sure, everyone in a small town knows each other, but it used to be that when you moved to a NEW small town (or anywhere else for that matter), almost nothing followed you. You could re-invent yourself, move past old failures. Now you have a constant and easily accessible record of your life online, which anyone can look up. There is no space you can go to that people can't easily find records of who you used to be. THAT is a loss of anonymity.
I loved U7 The Black Gate. I just hate the fact that all games are 3d now, it just doesn't add anything to the game and it's distracting (in case of RPG games). I'm too old for this s*it :)
Good concept, this can become a marketplace to find and discover Vim plugins. You have moved one step ahead to easily install(but manage the same?)

Little feedback:

1. Add options to see what a developer just installed. I find it very interesting to see other's development environments, their workflows, history and .rc files.

2. Create a system where developers love to share their workflows, environments, history, vimrc, bashrc settings. Following and connecting with similar workflow developers would be cool.

Overall your first step is perfect!
AwesomeBall source code on github (over 2M app store downloads)
>I've paid into Social Security my entire life. It's one of the few things my massive federal taxes are going to give to me in this life. Of course, this one "entitlement" (it's apparently an entitlement to at some point pull out some of the thousands I pushed into Social Security) is the only thing really on the chopping block in any form.

The bases around the world were how the US bought global security, upon which our economic growth for several decades was premised. Without (what looks like) a sprawling military with bases everywhere, we would have less safe/reliable sea lanes, which means higher prices of inputs and lower value for exports, and we would also have much of the advanced world spending ever more of its money on defense goods (it's called a nuclear umbrella for a reason).

Social Security is one of the few things your massive federal taxes are going to give to you in this life THAT ARE OBVIOUS. The other stuff is just as important, though way less obvious.
What about Java so exploit-prone?

I always thought that, from day one, it was specifically designed to run untrusted code downloaded over the network in a secure sandbox. Java's over 15 years old and has always had the backing of a major company, so it's not like these are the growing pains of a new technology.
I agree. When I said this was the future, I wasn't saying it with any cheer. We had a pretty good run for a while there, though.
John Hopcroft (Turing award winner) on Future of Computer Science
Even without central planning, social security requires administration, auditing etc. The Social Security Administration alone has 57,000 employees.
The theory is that the client communicates with the server for saves based upon in-game time not wall-clock time. So cheetah speed forces the client to talk to the server more often for this purpose.

I made my statement based upon my experiences playing. For one, I played the game for 3 hours disconnected from the servers - I knew my progress wouldn't be saved but I just wanted to play. It seemed to work fine aside from region play and that my progress wasn't saved.

Another time I lost my internet connection for 15 minutes. I continued to play. When I got it back, it claimed it re-sync'd my game with the server. As a test I logged out and back in and it all looked the same.

Maybe there is some simulation on the server side. But it doesn't seem necessary based upon my experiences playing the game.
Works for me on a AC700 Chromebook. I think it doesn't yet work on the Samsung ARM CB.
MIT's charm school for geeks turns 20
Re: [PS]

HN needs subheads! They could be slightly more tolerant of pulling out salient details or interpretation, and even wiki-rewritable by users over a certain karma, with a version history. They'd make the 'original title' policy more tolerable, and be a massive timesaver for readers, when they provide the necessary counterbalance (in details or qualifications) for whatever sensational or dry choice was made in the title. (Popehat writeups could win with a good subhed; 'trick' titles would lose when the subhed offers the necessary clarification.)
It's a barbarism, a mixing of Greek and Latin roots into the same word. Barbarisms are errors in usage.

"'Television' is one of the most recent offspring of linguistic miscegenation." -- Leslie A. White, The Science of Culture, 1949

http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/barbarismterm.htm
Can anyone recommend a Django connection pool for MySQL that -- and this is the important part -- closes local pool connections to the database on a routine basis.

Reason: load balancers and machine maintenance. In per-connection mode (i.e. no connection pooling), operations folk can take machines out for service quickly: put the box in MAINT (ala HAProxy) or equivalent, wait a few moments, see the connections drain away to zero.

But I haven't been able to find connection pooling logic that recycles backend sockets on a short basis. For instance, 60s is long enough to amortize the cost of connection setup, but short enough to make your operations people very happy.
It's also the kind of thinking a lot of genocides have been born out of .. a perhaps even scarier thought. That said, it's not quite yet the time to fear such things.