skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Probably it is correct that Google dropping Reader will hurt some people's businesses. In the last week I went through a lot of hassle moving my blog from Blogger to Wordpress (which I have more control over). Would Google ever drop Blogger? Probably not but who knows. I also stopped using GMail as my primary business email service. I recently blogged about the 5 Google services that were terminated that affected my customers' and my businesses.

I like to use free services from Google, Twitter, and Facebook, but I certainly don't want to rely on them for business.

An analogy: my family likes to support small local businesses. For web services, hosting, etc., I prefer using companies that I pay fairly for services and who support me.
Sorry, a little bit off-topic but I have to ask --

http://i.imgur.com/7CsRNjD.png

Right side: Chrome; left side: IE.

Can someone please explain to me why 'Geckoboard' (as well as the other text) in Chrome has jagged and sharp edges? Why does Chrome always render text so poorly? IE seems to be getting it right.
You find it unlikely that a compiled language might be 15x faster than a interpreted language doing a compute-bound workload, when said compiled language is often 30x faster in posted synthetic benchmarks... I think you are extremely skeptical...

I have ported node.js applications to Go and seen similar substantial speedups. In my cases though I was running in a multi-threading enviroment. not GAE and the performance difference (improvement) was much greater under concurrent load versus single request latency. But that seems reasonable since node.js is closer to Go in performance than Python is.

I guess I just believe it because I have seen it. :)
How so? The pointer pointing past the last member of an array may not be dereferenced. Doing so is UB - end of story.
It's important when an application has a plugin or extension API.
Rogue Pi - Low Cost Penetration Dropbox
Tradehill, First US Bitcoin exchange, relaunches
> logging in, re-entering my passwords and sometimes entering another PIN

Agreed this is really annoying. It should be just a PDF for sure

>Scientific work

I feel a white board (or even better a smart board) works for most purposes. Paper gets lost too easily. Although the ubiquitous lab book is going to be hard to kill off entirely
/me straightens DuckDuckGo independent evangelist hat and nervously rings doorbell

"Judging from your comment, you sound like the perfect user for Duck Duck Go!

If you set DDG as the default browser for chrome/ff, you can search mdn with just '!mdn foo'. Also at your fingertips is searching !jquery (and hundreds of other search shortcuts)

DuckDuckGo is great and makes searching super productive!"

/me smiles eagerly
Removing a feature that fixes a major shortcoming of your product (spam sites) and directing your customers to use an extension to fix it is awful.

What faith I once had in Google being a company that puts users first is long gone.
You are missing the point. Google Reader was also an API.

And there has been this assumption with Google that they would keep their APIs available. Especially for something a innocuous as an RSS API. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
> A .g[doc,sheet,...] file isn't a document. I want to open, edit, and save in .odt within Google Docs.

so, open it, edit, and then download as -> .odt and name it the same as the original file?

I don't really understand. You want its internal representation to be in odt? What does it matter as long as it's not observable except by an icon and a filename extension?
A lot of webfonts seem to render badly in Windows Chrome. I've yet to find a solution apart from blacklisting certain fonts.
Was that feature really that indispensable? I can usually get away by refining my search query, and more often that not, using the minus sign solves the problem.
Another possibly relevant note: there are about 2¹⁴⁹ Planck times per second. None of the above takes into account the Landauer and related quantum-mechanical limits to computation, which may be more stringent.
Regarding the penguin: sl(1) was originally written in 1992; Linux itself didn't hit 1.0 until 1994, and the Linux penguin itself wasn't introduced until 1996.
I didn't say other species clearly do not possess equally impressive linguistic abilities. But qualitatively, our stand in sharp distinction. Surely, we can never be certain the woodpecker is absent, but, that's just a new take on the fact that our theories are merely the expectations with maximum probability. I stay open, and prepared to accept if a new sign of legacy-based behaviour is found in other species, as well as a form of extra-neural storage of symbolic configurations (e.g writing). But surely you cannot ask me to expect those.

I'm not sure about what you meant in your last remark. I meant that humans are uniquely able of starting where the former generations left off. This explains the techno-ideological development that has been occurring naturally for all and any of us (unless a library was burned down, which was a pathological thing to do).
Okay that is freaking awesome. I now have GoT's theme playing in the terminal.

This may actually make me misspell git even more.
I'd call it less of a bandwagon, and more of a tipping point. Google has killed lots of little services, beloved or otherwise, in addition to all the acquihires by various tech giants.

Google Reader has simply become a focal point for the closures of so many beloved products and services, because it's so comparatively ubiquitous that an abundance of nerds and literati are all sharing the same frustration simultaneously.

Though I'm also skeptical about trusting new Google products, I think the real lesson is being skeptical in general. If a product isn't part of a company's core business, and/or the business model is unsustainable or user-hostile, go in with eyes open, and ensure you have an exit strategy.
I made a decision to leave OS "tweak" utils behind when I got rid of Windows. The existence of these utils is a smell, and a signal to look elsewhere.
Back when the Chrome plug-in shipped (it preceded Blocked Sites by a bit) I compiled an extensive list of content farms as a starting guide for people wanting less spam in their SERPs. If you're migrating over to the extension it's worth a look (and as always, any new suggestions for the list):

http://www.jongales.com/blog/2011/02/14/list-of-content-farm...
Does nobody get the benefits of TOPA?
MTGOX is the most trustworthy and secure bitcoin service out there. I still wouldn't put a large amount of bitcoin through it all in one go.
My understanding was that anyone who conducts commerce could be held accountable.
Server framework for doing what?
It actually started when Larry met Steve Jobs and was recommended he focus his efforts.

Ever since then it's been all about Google+ and finding new ways to force feed to everyone.
The most obvious use case is you have an x86-64 desktop machine. I've met people who have also finally given up on Apple ever updating their desktops (which I found unusual). I keep thinking the only thing between a more general migration is printer and video card support.
That's a very interesting system you've built.

The the thing about backtesting a strategy is that it is very easy to make a mistake in your backtester. Look ahead bias is the most common mistake.

Another challenge is the data. Are you testing against a history of stocks that includes bankruptcies? If not you have survivorship bias.

I suggest you take a look at my website, www.quantopian.com. Look at our open-sourced backtester, https://github.com/quantopian/zipline. Between the two we can help you get past those two sources of error.
Yes the counted metrics are much more reliable.

It's much harder for TC to misenter an acquisition/funding round then it is for them accidentally add an extra zero to a number.
"A bank counteracts this by loaning out the money we give it (earning it money on interest), and then paying us another, smaller interest rate for our deposits in turn, which will offset inflation to whatever degree."

That's only true if your money is an interest-bearing account. Most consumer accounts are not.
1) Yes, Google should move more of their apps to supporting this, but looking at only Google services is missing the point. Google Authenticator's TOPA is based on an open standard, so any third party can work with it too (and many do,Dropbox, Lastpass, Drupal, App.net, Dreamhost..."
Also worth reading: "If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness" http://web.archive.org/web/20090416230704/http://www.nytimes...
Science research requires funding.

Even though we beat our chests about STEM education, basic sciences are woefully underfunded in relation to the number of students who graduate every year with BS, MS, and PhD degrees in life sciences.
so we get to download furniture for free?
Google Reader has been active for 8 years. That's longer than most technology products. In addition, there are countless alternatives to choose from, and you can easily get your data out of Reader and move to one of those countless alternatives.

This whole thing has been so overblown. It's like everyone is bored or something.
It's not "commerce" broadly defined, but "public accommodation" which is substantially narrower: "Under Title III, no individual may be discriminated against on the basis of disability with regards to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation. 'Public accommodations' include most places of lodging (such as inns and hotels), recreation, transportation, education, and dining, along with stores, care providers, and places of public displays, among other things." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act...
Very nice.

This is functionnality very similar to http://www.aimath.org/knowlepedia/ but done much better.

example usage of knowl.js here (loads proofs inline)
http://linear.ups.edu/html/section-HSE.html
"I feel like none of the tools I use are in Linux..."

Well, carry on using what you are using!

I'm an end user and I find that Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, Audacity, R, Gnuplot, Texlive, the desktop text editor and a few other bits and pieces cover most of my simple needs. I've almost reached the point where I can copy my dotfiles over to a new installation and sync dropbox or a backup and just get to work, like the Rob Pike approach but on recycled hardware...

http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/

Almost any recent GNU/Linux distribution works fine on my 2009 vintage PC and 2010 vintage laptop.

Currently I'm living in KDE for a bit, having used Gnome 3 and Unity and XFCE.
The Google Reader and Pycon stories are coming in about as ad nauseum as the Aaron Swartz ones did after he died, but this article makes a very important point for both users and vendors of free services:

Google's been picked on a lot over Reader, but it's a microcosm of the entire web services industry. We've developed a culture over the last two decades of launching compelling new services without a clear revenue model in a land-grab for users. Many software frameworks utilize lazy loading, whereby they defer the execution of expensive operations until the last possible minute. Our business culture lazy-loads revenue models. We set up a product, hope for enough users, then hope to monetize those users effectively. Without a compelling product or an audience to consume it, a business model is useless, so we've optimized that out to focus on the bare minimum.

There's an implicit assumption in all of this that the perceived value of a free service outweighs the potential costs of the service eventually failing in the user's eyes, that they'll keep coming back for something free and cool every time we ship it. As an industry, we haven't addressed the risk of crying wolf. At what point do enough consumers say "I'm going to wait until this has traction" before they're willing to invest their time and their hearts into the services we build? If the wait-and-see crowd grows large enough, it could seriously impact our ability to launch minimum-viable-products on the hope they'll monetize later.
Whether intended ironically or not, this comment amused me. (Knowledge seeking, moral high ground, and social approval are also pleasure-reward systems; not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Carry on; both of you are fantastic humans. :)
I appreciate the nice gesture. I do know about these other projects, and do consider them as allies. But I believe that the more projects we have like these coming out, the more improvements will there be made as whole.
I'm not sure what you're asking here, what are your tools? Certainly it's not hard to imagine having a toolset that is workable on Linux, right?
The big one that hasn't been mentioned yet is package management. It's a killer feature, especially if your job requires any form of tweaking. Working on windows, you have to search the internet for tool X, then figure out if you can afford it, or if it's free if there's an official page linking to a trustworthy download service, then once you install it, almost every one of these has it's own 'phone-home' mechanism to see if there's updates for it to who knows what websites.

In a package-managed system, you don't have to open a browser to starting hunting on the internet. You can search your own repository. Install it in literally seconds - particularly if you already know the name. There's only one program doing the 'phone home' - your package manager, and that only does it to sites that you can confirm with your own two eyes.

I run a windows desktop at home, but only for the games. Working with windows for work would be like tying one hand behind my back - windows makes it harder to 'get at' the system. But it really depends on what your specific tools are, there are analogues for most in the linux world if you ask around.

And licensing, oh my god, licensing. The nail in the Windows coffin for me was licensing (the joy of package management came later). "Hi Windows Support, I have this remote server that's going to expire its CALs in two days. I have applied the license code in a couple of different ways and it refuses to 'take' and demands a phone call to you guys. I can't get at this server physically. Okay, thank you for the code, I've applied it. Now, can you tell me where I can see that it has been successfully applied? Because the license box just disappeared when I clicked 'ok', there was no confirmation. This is a box in a country hospital, people's health actually depend on it - so please, I need it to remain remotely accessible - where can I actually see on the system it saying 'it is now licensed'?" ==> "Oh don't worry sir, that information is stored on our systems". It's not the Microsoft Police that I'm worried about here ==> "Oh don't worry, sir, that information is stored on our systems"

Licensing shennanigans drove me from being fearful of that crazy weird linux thing that doesn't make sense, and since then I've come to love it for all its advantages over windows. Linux has its warts, but every time I run into a problem like a dependency issue, which really isn't often these days, I remember the method of hunting Windows software on the internet, and it's much easier to deal with.

EDIT: also with package management, it's trivial to set up a new system with all the bits and bobs you want (awesome for testing stuff). You can do this with windows, but it's an ordeal getting it set up automatically - the usual process of installing in windows is manually going through each thing you want installed and every one of it's click-through windows.
> You are missing the point. Google Reader was also an API.

A hacked up, reverse-engineered API. Since it was never official they haven't actually broken any promises.
Chromium Issue 137692:	Horrible font rendering with Google Web Fonts on Chrome for Windows:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692

>I am restricting comments. We know it's bad, we know we need to fix it, and it is in the process of being fixed. Unfortunately it's not as simple as flipping a switch.

>There have been plenty of workarounds suggested in the comments already. That's no excuse for us, but it will help you get by until we fix it properly.

--Nov 8, 2012
I have hundreds of starred articles which unless someone makes a replacement for Google Reader is going to disappear come July. For me it's like losing years worth of bookmarks.

And I hope that you post the same thing if/when Google discontinues Google Mail.
It's also that there are people in hospitals who are exceptionally sick, too. I was always a lot less worried in a trauma-focused hospital than in local clinics which served local nationals with a variety of illnesses and huge numbers of parasites.
In Chrome you can just add something like

https://www.google.com/search?q=mdn+%s

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=%s

to the bottom of you search engine list with shortcut letters of your choice (e.g. "m")

chrome://settings/searchEngines

Then typing "m query" into the omnibox is even faster than resorting to google first.
transportation costs. as well as having less time to look for work.
Funny that the 3 "top paying" acquirers are telcos and not Googles :)
She's not exactly a scientific, moral, or economic authority, anyway.
I agree with your first ideas, but not the last. There are successful companies that have allowed significant independence to the lower levels of management and employees to a point where I wouldn't class all companies command economies in any strongly centralized sense.

Also, the failure to generate new economic activity (or supressing new activity) is a prevalent theme in failed companies. Furthermore, when you look at new innovative products coming out of large companies, you'll often spot a phase goes something like: "A small group of employees broke off and put together <widget> after hours or out of sight of the upper management, etc". The new activity or market areas often come in spite of the controls in big companies.
You don't understand why I don't want to depend on there always being an export option? I don't understand what you don't understand. I don't want to have to export to .odt every time I make an edit just to maintain portability.

I want Docs to work like its desktop predecessors work. Even Office's web applications do this. There's no reason Docs can't. I can make an edit in Word and instantly open to see the changes in LibreOffice, or run some kind of cross-cloud sync.

Maybe we're talking about different things? Here's the workflow I envision:

1: Create an outline for a book in Docs

2: Open it in LibreOffice from the GDrive folder

I can do this in 2/3 word processors.
I'm curious how all this "wood putting" is affecting staff attrition/layoffs.

If had invested my work into one of the major cut projects, I'd be fuming as an employee right now.

Also, it's interesting how many of the cut services seem to be around working, but slowly decaying and abandoned projects. It says something about google's ability to keep working on and developing products...especially since most of their products are essentially public betas.
Ah, I was imagining a huge page filled with resumes in the same vein as a wall of text.
Let us now daydream about the possibility that Steve sabotaged Larry.
Chequing accounts (non-interest-bearing accounts, used primarily for their other conveniences) are an instance of a bank providing a (traditionally) not-bank service.

Basically, chequing accounts (and all their features: cheques, wire transfers, EFTs, cross-bank ATM withdrawal, etc.) are forms of remittance: a service where a group of people get together and agree to maintain an 'eventually-consistent' balance-sheet between them. Alice goes to one member branch of the remittance group and gives them $N (plus a transfer fee $F) to send to Bob, who may be anywhere else. Bob goes to a different member branch and gets his $N. $N is transferred from the pool to the branch Bob went to to cover their loss, and then $F is split between the group.

Remittance has never really been a function you would expect a "bank" to provide until quite modern times; banks tended to be single-branch, holding the deposits of the people who put them in that bank. You could get someone else's deposits from a bank if they had them turned into a bank note and gave that note to you, but to withdraw it, you'd have to go to that bank. (Greenbacks--federal bank-notes--were a clear innovation from this system. Imagine, a system so bad for holding and transferring value that "cash" is an improvement!)

When a bank temporarily ran out money to cover its outstanding liabilities (withdrawals), it didn't ask to be paid from some pool--it just took out a loan with a neighboring bank. (This still happens, and it's the basis of one of the very important numbers in Macroeconomics: LIBOR--the London Inter-Bank Exchange Rate, which measures the average interest banks will ask for when giving out those bank-to-bank loans, and which is built into the base of pretty much any other loan interest rate you might look at.)

Eventually, though, wire transfers plugged banks directly into one-another's balance sheets in a way they weren't before, and banks could suddenly outcompete all the traditional remittance providers because, unlike the remittance providers, they already had pretty much the whole population of each city/town they served as members. It's like Google suddenly realizing they could do ads when they already had so many eyeballs specifically looking for things to purchase online: it went from "fun idea" to "main money-maker" in the span of a few years.

But that still doesn't mean that that's what it means to be a bank, or that Bitcoin "banks" make any sense. Bitcoin remittance providers, sure--but nobody ever figured it was a good idea to keep their savings with a remittance provider ;)
I'm not talking about friends on Facebook. I'm talking about blogs for the most part, but sometimes I find an interesting RSS feed in an odd place.
They need to carry distro specific patches though, that was my point. This also leads to most plugins not working without modification, at least on fedora.
why not create jobs for these things? not for going to school though. why does someone need incentive to learn and train for a better job? something like that seems like it could be abused too.
Exactly! In case of news stories, taking the headline and lede technically seems like a quoting, but in reality it is grabbing the substantial part of the original work. Moreover, when a journalist works on a story, he needs to compile much more information and interview much more sources that finally will appear in the news story, so there is much more hidden work, which the scraper don't need to do.

I personally applaud this decision, and I am also a bit surprised that EFF would support the scrappers.

I also like this quote and think the Judge is exactly right: "Judge Cote rejected the fair use claim in large part because she didn’t buy Meltwater’s claim that it’s a “search engine” that makes transformative use of the AP’s content. Instead, Cote concluded that Meltwater is more like a business rival to AP: “Instead of driving subscribers to third-party websites, Meltwater News acts as a substitute for news sites operated or licensed by AP.”
As many others, I used this mainly to block w3schools from my searches. Disappointing to see it go.
It's a nice fun little tool -- but it's rather inefficient in terms of the number of AJAX requests that it needs to do in order to fetch the templates. The rather simple linked page needs a total of 3 AJAX requests, one for each template. As your app (especially mobile apps) needs more templates, it probably won't be very performant. There's a reason why Ember and other frameworks prefer their templates to be embedded right in the HTML -- no need for separate AJAX fetching.