skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Web & Application Design: we've been designing for a very specific use case
I realized something recently and curious what others think. We seem to design for the web, desktop applications, etc. based upon three specific things:

1. seated close
2. relatively large screen
3. precise mouse

If you take any of these things away... you can no longer cram functionality into screen space as we currently do.

It is the reason behind responsive design and the "mobile first" approach. You take away the precision mouse and the large screen and you have trouble. I'd actually say true screen size isn't even as much of an issue as is the precision (or lack of) of your finger. Especially considering you can put the mobile phone very close to your face.

In principle, mobile design is even similar to the other end of the spectrum, TV design. Although the screen is large, you sit far away, effectively reducing functional screen size. Throw in the use of a controller or even gesture control (i.e. Kinect) into the mix and the similarity between mobile and TV is even more striking.

It seems we've been designing for a very specific use case that is currently changing with phones, tablets, and even smart TVs. But do you think the "sit close, large screen, precise mouse" design paradigm going to fade away entirely? I suppose perhaps it can't because of productivity applications... but I wonder if there will be an upheaval there? Will see cluttered screens and toolbars give way to cleaner interfaces (everywhere)?

And would that even be beneficial? Or akin to trying to fit a square peg into a round hole?
helped bankrupt the USSR

Which alone should be reason enough to declare anyone a Saint and then give them the Nobel Peace Prize for twenty years in a row.
http://blog.oleganza.com/post/42262765318/direct-use-value-o...
> Bitcoin isn't backed by anything.

It's unusual in that it does have a cost of creation - the expense of the machinery and power required to mine a bitcoin. So it does have a "base value" of a sort, you just can't redeem it.
We all are gonna be arrested by the Ember officers soon for this attacks.
The N Carolina law mentioned appears not to have any reference to distribution: http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2013/Bills/Senate/PDF/S648v1.p...

However this law in Indiana does, http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2013/SB/SB0373.2.html

IANAL but this appears to make distribution of such recordings illegal:

Makes it unlawful recording of agricultural or industrial
operations, a Class A infraction, for a person, with intent to harass,
defame, annoy, or harm, to: (1) enter real property that is owned by
another person and on which agricultural operations or industrial
operations are being conducted; (2) take a photograph of or make a
video recording or motion picture of the real property, structures
located on the real property, or the agricultural operations or
industrial operations being conducted on the real property; and (3)
distribute the photograph or recording; without the written consent of
the owner of the real property or an authorized representative of the
owner.
Every field of science is about gathering, modeling and summarizing data - that is not exclusive to statistics or any other field, which means we need to be more specific than that to determine whether Data Science is doing anything different than statistics.

Unfortunately data science is not well defined (in part because it is a young field), but it draws extensively from computer science and is targeted toward data sets that are different from those that have typically been used in 'traditional' statistics - huge, dirty data sets.

This debate has a similar flavor to Physicists saying that Chemistry is not a science because it's all just physics, and Chemists saying that Biology is not a science because it's all just chemistry. They are extensions, just like Data science, and pretending that an expert statistician will be and expert data scientist is just not tenable.

There is room for something more.
My own personal anecdotal evidence is that mysql is fine, until you have complicated queries or a lot of data. And then it suddenly sucks. We had a huge problem where the query planner refused to use the indexes we had unless we manually put index hints in the query (yuck).

Rather than actually doing that, we migrated all our data to postgresql. The postgres query planner works much better than the mysql one. Since then we've started using some of the postgres specific features, like windowing, which have made complex queries that we didn't think were going to be possible not only doable, but easy and fast (running).

Postgres has some different philosophy about certain things in the devops side of things, but if you don't try to force it to be like mysql it'll be fine.

At this point I wouldn't ever use mysql again (for new projects where I have the choice).
His SICP lectures are also a delight. He seems genuinely happy to be talking about computing - and turning people onto what he loves. A great teacher
Really hope you guys have autonomy to keep it going kind of independently, specially with stuff like Open API.

Good luck there in this new path!
Scandinavia is small, but depending on who you ask it's not homogenous. E.g:

http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Work/Life_in_Sweden/A_multicul...
Most certainly. I've witnessed it. It was a really bad mistake though.
I almost died in Syria
Simple terms and pitch all over. Got it. Thanks!
It's funny that theres a west coast startup lab called "grow labs". Wonder what sort of business ventures they focus on.
'Send me your data in PDF and ONLY PDF' said most courts in the US.
As a new web developer I'm very interested in this. Looks like a not so complex next step after building basic static websites.
Where would you place Blair? I'm unsure what to think of his hidden religious side, but have strong views on his Murdoch ties, Bush pandering and subsequent obfuscating of his role in the Iraq debacle.
The HTTP 1.0 RFC says the same thing:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#page-4

"This specification describes the features that seem to be consistently implemented in most HTTP/1.0 clients and servers."

Is HTTP not a real specification either?
> Back to the article. WebKit won't allow hooking in random JS engines. Allowing this slows things down because many DOM access optimizations can be achieved by assuming a specific engine. This is totally reasonable thing.

I agree, it's totally reasonable, which why I say in the article, "Removing the JavaScript layer is one thing; this was a piece of code that existed only to support Google's use of V8, and with JavaScriptCore now the sole WebKit engine, streamlining the code makes sense. Google, after all, is doing the same thing in Blink. "

It may make things harder for some out-of-tree branches, so it's probably bad news for them, which is why it also suggests that, depending on their priorities, some forks might find it better to switch to Blink.

> Apple is talking about removing a feature that no one is stepping up to maintain.

Apple is also the richest technology company in the world. I would never pretend that this means that it can simply add new WebKit developers overnight. But equally, I have a hard time accepting that there will apparently be a _long-term_ developer deficit, such that the best option is to simply cull features now, rather than retain them for a couple of months while staffing is being increased.

It's possible that features culled now will be restorable from version history in the future, but that rather depends on how many changes are made in the interim. If they're significant (integrating JSC more completely, ripping out things that Google added such as threaded HTML) then it's not clear that reinstating them from old versions will be trivial.

I acknowledge that Google had an advantage here. By making the decision to fork, Google was in a position to make sure that it had the right people in the right places to maintain the codebase. Opera's involvement in Blink is probably helpful in this regard too. But come on. If Google can maintain this range of standards track features, is it really reasonable that Apple can't at least match it?
I remember meeting this journalist in Iraq; seemed fairly "well-hinged" then, relative to everyone else, so I can only imagine how screwed up Syria must be.
Do I Ever Need to Upgrade My Cable Modem?
Seeking to Outdo Google in Searching for Events
This is actually something that Access did fairly well. If someone made a nice frontend like it to SQLite you'd end up with a magic bullet for this. Access did very well as a frontend but on the backend it was horrible and unreliable for anything non-trivial. I've actually been thinking about QT's QML for this since it would let you build the interface like access did and has bindings for SQLite. Might be worth doing some real work on rather than just thinking.
Or is it that Stallman's framing of his message (ie. moralistic) isn't memorable to most people?
Exploring the Lower Depths of Terseness
I know as tech people we're strong about using latest technologies and we like to think users are like us, but sadly, this is not the case. Actually, it really depends of your market.

"the web is no longer just text"

Although I can't deny that statement,I find it hard to convince myself that browsers can't read your page because no JS engines are running. I see it a little bit like emails.. yes, more recent clients give you a better interface or better features, but if I'm emailing someone who has a very old phone with very basic email support, I'm hoping that this person would still be able to read my message.

I'd love to see what would happen if HN turned JS-enabled only for a day.
Bitcoin not inflating is a good thing, or at least for everyone that uses it. If some people do hoard bitcoins, that doesn't affect anyone else, and in fact it will benefit everyone else in some sense. Everyone else's money will increase in value.

Think about it this way. People spend hours arguing about this, but in reality which would you actually want to use? The currency that will increase in value if you don't spend it or the one that decreases? That is, can you make any argument of why it would be rational for you yourself to not use bitcoin, all else equal?
Open Call for tumblr Collaborators
Not necessarily, in fact that was was of the fallacies of the dot com bubble. Revenue is traction if it is gained at a reasonable cost. There are definitely unit economics that look like growth but come at an unsustainable cost.
Cliff Click on Wait-free hashtables and another one on modern Hardware and Processor Systems.
Give Yourself a Security Makeover
Two Networks Hint at Leaving the Airwaves
I'm curious, what's wrong with 20 meat/3 veg for these single-serve meals? Most meat-eaters wouldn't be happy being forced to eat the vegetarian option, that's bound to happen unless you provide more food than necessary. The rest of what you said only applies to a lunch not served in individual portions.
I think he refers to a teaching script, as in a series of exercises.
It isn't quite so simple -- usually you pay for the flexibility and freedom of FOSS with a significantly less polished UX.

In an ideal world, everyone would pool their resources toward free software and all would benefit. In reality, it is like a multiplayer Prisoners' Dilemma: people who "defect" by using proprietary software are rewarded (in the short term) with a nicer UX, at the expense of those who "cooperate", and at their own long-term expense.

There are other problems: FOSS (especially Linux) suffers from severe fragmentation, and I also question to what extent people are willing to develop software that is not fun for free.

Anyway, I never "forgot" the excesses of, say, Y2K-era Microsoft. I have just been skeptical of the workability of FOSS. But I do think it is the ethical way to go.
Principled : Responsability for Code ... and Defects
The example you picked, Vizio, is the lowest-end brand on the market. Nothing wrong with cheap, for the price you pay, but the whole point is that it cuts corners and isn't as good as the name brands.
Examples or evidence for any of those 3 claims? Appears to be wind and noise.
The boom and bust cycle wasn't caused by deflation and it hasn't gone away today either.

> it will always be tempting to keep your Bitcoins in your pocket and let them appreciate instead of using them for needed goods and services.

What's wrong with this? If you choose to take a choice which actually makes you better off, how is that a bad thing? Shouldn't people saving/investing their money be encouraged?

>And certainly, no one will take on debt denominated in Bitcoins.

They would if the interest rates became low enough to make up for deflation. As you claim, more people would save a deflating currency, which will further push down interest rates (since when people save money they usually invest it or put it in a bank which loans 90% of it back out.)

Inflation necessarily makes everyone worse off. The person that prints money can now buy more goods. But the amount of goods in the economy doesn't change. So there is less for everyone else. It's effectively a very confusing and indirect method of wealth redistribution.
I give Surowiecki for knowing that quote.

It perfectly describes the situation.
Not quite true - particularly of WW2 where is was big and long. Dresden, Hiroshima, Russian treatment of German prisoners etc. The list is very long. And where do you draw the line between aggressor and defender? Were Germany and Japan the aggressors in 1945?
New Zealand helped defend the UK, as did many dominion nations. However while the threat to New Zealand was felt (from Japan), it was hardly playing the role of a defender (and declared war on Germany before the UK did). This position is common in many conflicts.
I found the article to be well-written and informative, but I take issue with the title:

Surface isn't a verb unless you're a submarine.

Or rather, outside of some narrow technical uses, it sounds jargony and self-important.
I read a novel in the late 1970s where a "hacker" breaks into a city's computer system and messes with traffic lights - does anyone remember the title? In the novel, the modified traffic light timing kills some joyriding teens who blow through an intersection counting on the light to stay green. At the climax of the book, the villain tries to kill off the protagonists by electronically locking the data center doors and triggering the CO₂ fire suppression system. Does anyone else remember this book? Was this "The Terminal Man" or am I mixing up two books?
freedom is more valuable than features
People care, they are just too lazy to do any research or return crappy products to the store. They just pay their money, hate the product, and be miserable, and forget the whole thing next time they buy from the ad or the salesperson at the store.
Statutory minimum wages not rising are not an example of worker exploitation. Even if there were no minimum wage laws worker exploitation does not necessarily follow.

Additionally, in your example while the federal minimum wage might not have increased many states have their own minimum wage laws that have changed over the period you describe.

The closest statement you could make is that an absence of minimum wage laws may make it legal to employ people at an exploitatively low wage. This is not really the name thing.
What Are Liberal Twitter's UniteBlue's True Colors?
Norvig: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data [video]
Listen to military advisors, sure. But be careful. Iraq and Afghanistan are recent, but in 100% of wars someone's advisors are wrong.
You should have spoken to them pre-2001 then. Waterloo dumbed down the first two years to be "more industry focused".[1]

Waterloo has been founding great companies for decades - the Watcom compiler came out of there in the 80's and 90's.

1. A quote from a friend who did his PhD there during the period.
yummyfajitas certainly does. Check his extensive posting history on this topic.
The USA was prosperous during colonial times because it imported talent directly from England.

Yes, the USA has a long history of innovation (for instance Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, and the Franklin Stove.

But if you read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution you'll find that major technological progress began in England, and the USA was mostly an innovative footnote until surprisingly late. The USA did much more important than exporting of major technology for decades.
ahh don't try hahah, it's not an encryption it's just some identifier for some other website awhile back that was doing some sort of HN integration xD
It's frustrating (and yet slightly satisfying) to read stuff like this. Watching an outdated business model face the reality of the modern era and sputter and spit in an attempt to keep its old revenue streams intact.

My first thought was "Why do they care? The ads are getting re-transmitted - if anything, they should be happy about getting a wider audience!" but deeper in the article is the key:

"The threat is specifically aimed at retransmission fees, which have become a crucial second source of revenue for stations as ad losses mount."

The broadcast networks have managed to get lucky in that they've found an alternative revenue stream to make up for their failing business model (ads). The problem is that alternative revenue stream isn't a consumer-driven product, it's a "forced" license fee. And now someone has figured out how to get around that fee, so it's hurting the broadcast networks.

Honestly, the move to cable is a natural one and it probably makes sense. Cable operators are willing to pay a per-subscriber fee to the networks, and consumers (in their decisions to subscribe to cable tv) are willing to pay for content. And as HBO / Showtime / etc. have shown, it _is_ possible to build a business without advertising if your content is good enough.
Ya, I've been meaning to reach out and connect with you personally for some time now :) <3 Extreme Startups!
Once you concede that it might be Pareto efficient, you've already lost. In the real world that's never the case. No one is (a) so spiteful that they will scuttle their supposed productivity because they are limited to $X Billion instead of $X+Y Billion, and (b) so important that no one will produce eqivalent value in their absence.
Because these just got added to my watch list, here is a link for others. :) Thanks for letting this ignorant programmer realize that these were available!

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
No, they won't.
Whether or not it was provided by a third party supplier is irrelevant.
It does not make disney any less infringing if they are the ones selling it.

It just means you can sue disney, and then disney can turn around and attempt to recover the damages you win from the next guy up the chain.

You absolutely, positively, do not need to sue the people all the way up the chain.

I am an IP lawyer (though this is not legal advice, just an explanation of general concepts :P)
because they are forced into a series of incremental trades that are not globally optimal across a lifetim, and cannot do things like borrow now and pay back later at mutually profitable rates, due to lender uncertainty.
How Google GLASS works
In addition to Access, FileMaker might be an alternative here. It's easy to learn, cross platform, has simple and approachable design tools, field types, relations, SQL connectivity and is hands down the best solution when it comes to getting results fast.
If you're on a Mac you should check out BibDesk.
Good link. This particular paragraph struck me:

"Menger's theory avoids all of these difficulties. According to Menger, money emerged spontaneously through the self-interested actions of individuals. No single person sat back and conceived of a universal medium of exchange, and no government compulsion was necessary to effect the transition from a condition of barter to a money economy."

If Bitcoin is to be a success, it is the polar opposite of the origins of money. Instead of developing naturally as a more efficient means of exchange, it has had to be designed top-down in order to work backwards against all the cruft that fiat currencies have collected - features that would have prevented the original money from ever being widley adopted.
I think he was using techcrunch write ups as an example. In Canada, there seems to be less time spent focusing on the tech elite echo chamber ... keeping up with the startup benjamins.
ANZ pledges $1 billion for start-ups
it's base64 encoding.
Those who remember the hell that was VBScript in the browser, know that having support for more than one front-end language is not such a good thing. Web developers have benefited from having javascript as the only language supported by browsers.

Language fanboys might bash javascript, but there are many examples of the great things that can be achieved with javascript that make them look really quite silly, and every language has its pitfalls. Javascript is not a bad language, but it is misunderstood and people who misunderstand it are the most vocal detractors.

Opening up the browser to many languages causes the tower of babel all over again. Now front-end devs won't just be required to be a "javascript ninja", they will now have to master many other languages in addition to all of the DOM wackiness that comes with supporting multiple browsers. It's all just too much.
http://www.saveie6.com/
I've heard the kimba/simba thing before, but don't see it myself. Simba is the swahili word for lion, the plots are not at all similar and they don't look anything alike:

http://theafictionado.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/lionking46...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/ReallyKimbaThe...
>Now as currencies are supposed to be used as a medium of exchange to facilitate transactions, spending is really important because it’s how the market participants interact with one and other (and considering Bitcoin isn’t backed by a commodity this is important). Once people are reluctant to spend then, the economy will stay depressed because, people expect deflation AND deflation will continue because the economy remains depressed.

People not spending money is generally a good thing. There are more resources to go around for everyone else and other people can afford more things with the same amount of money. Most people who save money invest it, which benefits the economy in the long term.

>In order for an economy to get out of the deflationary trap and to counter deflation, fiat currencies can use monetary policy to increase the money supply and deliberately induce rising prices, causing inflation.

This hurts everyone though. Everyone has the same amount of money they did before, but suddenly everything costs more. No wealth is actually created by doing this, the same amount of goods are in the economy. But the person who gets the printed money buys a bunch of them, and then has a larger share of the pie, leaving everyone else with less.

Yes bitcoin has a mechanism for creating new currency, but this was a necessary evil in order to distribute the first bitcoins relatively fairly. It doesn't actually benefit anyone to give free bitcoins to some people just for running their computers a lot.
Living off the land in a small unit is an incredibly inefficient way to produce value.
They do still provide a bundle[1] though, for cases where you need it (eg homebrew's curl-ca-bundle package).

[1]: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html
Drop me a line: box2850 at hot mail com dot.
We have dozens of open coding jobs in Vancouver - and none of them are ASP or C++ game dev.
The only reason to hoard bitcoins is if you plan on spending them eventually. In the long run the same amount of bitcoins will get spent.
Perfect is the enemy of good.

If we'd waited for perfect we'd never have linux, we'd still be waiting on hurd. If we'd waited for perfect we'd never have the internet and the web, we'd still be waiting on xanadu.