skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Government control of the post office was more about controlling the flow of information. Recently I was reading a biography of Ben Franklin, and the reason the Postmaster position was so important back then was that you could use it to control the newspapers that went out. "Bradford was the postmaster of Philadelphia, and he used that post to deny Franklin the right, at least officially, to send his Gazzette through the mail" - http://books.google.com/books?id=L64OOJGaCKIC&printsec=f... ( search for "postmaster" )
- Preview of SVG files

IANASVGE (I am not an SVG expert): while I'm surprised Finder doesn't show SVG previews, if you use quicklook (hit space with the file selected), it will show you a preview. You can also open SVGs in Safari.
So what's the next step in this cat & mouse security game? Chrome-like sandboxing? OS level virtualization of every process? Is the end in sight?
PathFinder indeed sounds like the best alternative.

A tree view in the contents pane is a little clumsy for my liking. And as another poster pointed out, Finder doesn't make real symlinks. Thanks for the info re: Date Modified and Date Created tho.
There's actually a very significant difference - a symlink just resolves to a fixed path, whereas an alias always resolves to the same file/folder, no matter where it is moved within the filesystem. They remember things like which volume a file is on as well, so if you were to have an alias on a file server or a disconnected drive it would automatically remount the server or ask you to connect the missing volume. (EDIT: Or at least, used to in pre-OS X times. Just tried it now with an external hard drive and it failed to ask for the volume back. Still works with file servers, though.)

That alias also points to the same file no matter which Mac it is moved to, so if you create an alias to a folder on a server, you can copy that to 10 different Macs and it will always resolve so long as it can contact the file server.

Since they act so differently, you really can't replace one with the other without breaking expected behavior.
Because dragging and dropping is faster than typing scp, a folder, a hostname, and a colon.
I'm surprised too. But it doesn't - just a document with a Safari logo. I can open the files in Safari fine, but Finder won't preview them.
yeah. Nothing new happened so i just lump them as one.
"IE6 is like an illness that won't go away" - so true. :)
So let me see if I understand you.

You think that if I have money in the bank that is owed for taxes, I should pay the taxes even if it means not having food on the table. That since I'm "obviously a smart guy" that I should find work at some place based on your criteria (one supposes that criteria would be "make enough to pay taxes, you schmuck") instead of having the freedom to negotiate a contract and situation that is more productive to me and society in the long run? So my obligation on taxes is greater than my obligation both to my family (to find the best job possible and to support them during times of non-work) and to myself? (to have the freedom to spend money I have in the bank in a priority that I set, even if it means risking higher debt and fines later on)

Nobody is skipping taxes. Nobody is advocating not paying taxes. I've yet to have not pay -- eventually. I'm simply describing how easy it is if you are a non-standard wage earner (like a startup entrepreneur) to get hosed up in tax liabilities. People don't fit into the little boxes that tax policy wonks want them to. That's the point.

I grew up with the idea that the people owned the government, not the other way around. It seems that your feeling is that taxes are such an obligation that they should come ahead of personal preferences for work. That folks should take jobs wherever they can find them in order to fulfill their tax obligations.

Ok yes, I've rehashed what I think you're saying and it's true: you sound like a dick.

Care to rethink any of that? Or did I misunderstand?
Maybe the lawn chairs are a good thing, because they encourage you to stand up and take a break every once in a while? A few people have standup-desks at Google, and ergonomically they seem much better than the regular sit-down ones. Humans weren't built to sit in anything for 12 hours per day.
Umm... Who writes this?

"The upcoming version Ubuntu Linux distribution which is due out on April 33rd. You shouldn’t wait to get the latest version, maybe your friends waiting. Why don’t you download the released candidate of Ubuntu 9.04 for your operating system. On that version, their is no major bugs found and even no changes will be made within a week and few days are left. You can install that operating system by showing your OS to your friends."

Perhaps just liking to the Ubuntu site would make more sense, as stated by wvl.
I would love to see effective high speed rail in this country. I'm not so big on air travel.

Does this plan create new tracks that are solely used for transportation? Or is there cargo too? Because I know one of the biggest hassles with Amtrak - at least in the west - is that cargo carriers own the tracks and get priority.

I'm also kind of surprised that there isn't a high speed link for the three networks. That's probably asking too much, but if I could get to SF or Chicago from the PNW at high speed I'd be a happy guy.
Anyone have a suggested script like this that isn't so phishy? Tinyarro.ws is absolutely worthless to IE6 users (since it doesn't support unicode in URLs) so we actually would want to encourage IE6 visitors to our homepage to upgrade.

It's easy enough to tell them ourselves, but if there's a common/classy alternative, we'd check it out.
The simplest thing we can do against IE6 is: don't support it anymore. Build your sites like if IE6 does not exist and the problem will auto-fix in short time.
php is a movement?
sex is an embarrassing, dissatisfying, and stupid activity in their worldview, and they seek out the sorts of women who are likely to confirm their nightmarish vision.

I don't think we need an HN poll on this to disconfirm. The mindset of most men chasing sex seems to be based on the fact that it feels very good. Period. No nightmares needed.
Regarding the tetraneutron issue: I would be interested if they could repeat the experiment which supposedly detected this. My guess is that this was a statistical anomaly. It is highly unlikely 4 neutrons could arrive more or less at the same time at the same place in the detector, but the alternative, that something is wrong with the Pauli exclusion principle, may be even more unlikely. Accordingly I would seriously bet if they did the exact same experiment again (shooting beryllium atoms at a carbon target) that they would not detect any "tetra-neutrons".

With things like this, I always remember something Sherlock Holmes said in 'A Study in Scarlett' I think it was though not quite sure where it was exactly - "Once one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the case."

Here, it strikes me that though the anomaly seen was very improbable, the alternative idea that the Pauli exclusion principle and hence the standard model is wrong in some way is tantamount to impossible. It is far easier for me to believe what they saw was just a fluke, than to think there is an issue with the Pauli exclusion principle. Of course, if they can repeat the experiment, that is something else again, and I suppose then further inquiry would be warranted.
Yeah, I like PHP quite a bit for the instant gratification, it definitely has the quickest zero-to-dynamic-content rate in the world today[1] (though I can't speak for Windows systems, dunno what has the lowest barriers of entry for an aspiring, Windows-based geek)..

But, the landscape has changed drastically since this article has written. I guess I'd consider PHP the second generation of web development platforms[2], with CGI being the first. Not to say PHP is going away, but it's certainly not a phenomenon at this stage in the game, its a de-facto tool but it's facing an uphill battle to stay important (IMO), the phenomena today are Rails, Django and the slew of 3rd generation tools that accompany them.

[1] before anyone argues, it's basically test.php:

<? print 'hello ' . $_GET['hello'] ?>

and then http://localhost/~user/test.php?hello=world

The tools are ubiquitous enough that setup is a non-issue.

[2] I'd say that our better, late 2nd and early 3rd generation tools lowered some barriers to development and allowed us to rethink the web and how we were building it, which led to "Web 2.0".
well, LAMP is/was a movement
FireTrucks, the Internet and Life and Death
Bruce Sterling: Poor folk love their cellphones
Duct Tape Marketing: Book Review
Ok. So what you're saying is that you have a profession which has long dry periods in between lucrative jobs. Also, that you don't have the planning skills to have enough in the bank to feed your family if things don't work out, and you have a longer period between jobs. So, you skip out on legal obligations (you know, paying taxes...) in order to make ends meet.

I'm saying that instead you take a pragmatic view of things, you pay your taxes, avoid jail time, and further ruin later (fines, interest, etc). Build up more of a cushion of savings, since obviously you can't count on your income. And consider the idea that maybe you should get temporary jobs to NOT STARVE if it comes to that.

Basically, our disagreement here is that you think that the money is yours the whole time, and that taxes are a separate bill, which you then don't plan ahead for. I propose that the money you set aside for taxes is no longer yours, it's in your keeping, but you are legally obligated to pay it (probably quarterly) to the government, in order to pay for all the societal benefits taxes provide (whole other argument).

I get annoyed that you make a ton of money (on the order of $100k), have the foresight to put aside the money for taxes, and then ... "whoops, I spent it all", and complain that you don't have enough to pay your taxes. You have a family sure, and a hard to predict job, but come on, you make way more than enough to feed them, and clothe them, and even pay for piano lessons. All while paying taxes.
Ask HN: Shall I become a Freelance?
I have been an amateur developer for a long time. I was hooked to computers since the age of 10. I started with windows 3.1 and Qbasic. Few months, I moved to Visual Basic where I developed few applications just for fun. During this time I was always a novice, amateur developer.

Two years ago, I started seriously with Dot Net for windows developement and PHP for Web developement. I worked and learned for the both sides (Web and Windows, Microsoft and Linux). I now prepare (and I can take) the MS certificates. I made a huge progress in programming and it turned from a hobby to a serious (job??).

Yet, this is the problem. I live in Tunisia, where my programming skills have no value for our industry. I can't go abroad, as I'm not really that competent and also it's recession. (+ I'm 18 years old only).

I have tried building sites and blogs, I made about $800 with Google adsense (but that was a long year, which means $2 a day!!). + I like more coding that being a webmaster.

I'm now a good developer on MS Visual C# Dot Net, I have also a good knowledge on PHP/Mysql and AJAX. I can build sites and optimize Wordpress Blogs.

But I have very little experience about the Freelance World.
I want you guys to share your experience with me. You may have experience in this field, so simply said "If you were in that time in my place, what should you do?"

1- Become a Freelance? What shall I really do, what articles you think are best for reading?

2- Take a virtual Job? they exist? Is it easy to take it? what processes shall I go through.

3- Other Options?

I want just your advice and some ideas and hints to start. No matter if you write long about your experience, I'm interested to know it.
I have learned that the most I know, the least I will fell in mistakes and then I save time and money.

Thanks for your suggestions.
There's a bunch, with different biases. Also:

http://forums.hardwareguys.com/

http://hothardware.com/category.aspx

http://techreport.com

http://hardwaretechreview.com/about-us
(not too up to date)
I don't think you even know what "alpha male" means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_male

"In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community whom the others follow. Where one male and one female fulfill this role, they are referred to as the alpha pair"

Girls want to be part of an alpha pair, it's as simple as that. I think you are projecting your own warped ideas about sex ("humiliation") onto this. But hey, whatever floats your boat, we're all grownups here.
Rates vary - substantially - by reigion depending on sources of power and transmission costs. If you live in an area with hydroelectric power, you pay much lower rates, for example. If you live a rural area, you have to pay for the connections.

Perhaps utilities were a bad choice of example on my part because of this usage confusion.
1 - I would argue that truly good sex, despite all hype, is yet highly underrated.

I expect few people experience it though. Contributing factors include accumulated skill, anatomical compatibility, mindset, mood, physical fitness, etc. It's an outlier.
Or they're just using any of a hundred older browser vulnerabilities, and targeting people who haven't patched.

Though, for what it's worth, 0-day browser exploits may not be hard to come by for the FBI; government agencies are vulnerability buyers.
Ever since I learnt Cython, this has been my preferred combination as well. I can't overstate enough how great it is to be able to get the rapid prototyping of Python combined with being able to offload the heavy stuff to C.
DTACK GROUNDED Archive
The article is old no?

Since, now PHP is even bigger! You don't have to build projects you just hack, there's infinity of Open Source Prjects in PHP. It's the Choice number 1 for web developement.
Here's the whole story, including Richard White (kiko):
http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/04/17/the-year-of-the-scrappy...
Anyone who has ever hacked 68000 ASM or h/w should check out this cool newsletter from the early/mid 80s.
check out Leap: http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/index.html
A Review of Studies on Expert Estimation of Software Development Effort
Seems like the kind of thing that would be more fun to write than to read...
> With utilities, you pay based on how much you use, not on how difficult it is to get them to you.

Actually, you do pay for untilities based on how expensive it is to get to you. The local power folks won't run a line to whereever you happen to be "for free". They'll charge you, the developer, someone. If you're a long way from "enough" capacity, the cost can be significant.

That's why some folks aren't on the untilities grid.
Offline is a default, and defaults rule.
But how many people are still restricted to 8 bit colour?
Basically, our disagreement here is that you think that the money is yours the whole time, and that taxes are a separate bill

Yes. As a free and individual sovereign person I feel as if I own the money that I earn and I own the political power that I was born with. I choose to apply both of those assets to the best of my ability. I expect others to do the same.

Our government was founded on a tax revolt. Remember "no taxation without representation"? We, the people, are the original holders of money and power. Nobody else. If we reach a state where, god forbid, we are being taxed for more things we do not allocate our political power for, then -- something will happen. People will leave, new leaders will be elected, there will be a balanced budget amendment -- something. And if everybody had to write out those multi-thousand-dollar checks every quarter, there would be a lot more scrutiny than there is today.

And the day I let the government decide whether/where I should be working, in absence of a war, is the day that I stop being a voluntary citizen.

I find it interesting that your argument basically consists of impeaching your opposition (me). I'd argue that no amount of planning can eliminate the problem I've outlined. If planning could account for all economic conditions, how did the banks get where they are today? How come economists can't predict the economy four years out? I've had gigs that ran week-to-week for over a year and ended suddenly. If you've got some magic pixie dust that lets you plan a year out, I'd love to have some.

So yes, continue slamming me for the failure of your model to include reality. I'm a poor planner, I'm selfish, I have a bad attitude. One imagines the list is endless. Perhaps I am not a patriot as well? Who needs logic when simple ad hominem attacks work so well. (And it is ad hominem for instead of acknowledging that I am simply presenting a case for your consideration, you've focused this conversation on your personal opinion of my finances, morality, and planning -- none of which changes the nature of the debate and the only goal of which is to insulate yourself from thinking through this) Even if you are right, if people are naturally poor planners and selfish, etc, you still have to account for the fact that the system doesn't work. But you don't want to go there. You'd rather talk about how bad the people are.

Since this is where you've taken us, I think it's a good time to bow out.
For the loser men who chase bubbly/slutty girls, the most common sex act is being rejected. I wouldn't imagine that this feels good.
I think to the best of my knowledge that in teleporatation when one grabs the quantum information from the original location one destroys the physical content from the original location, then transmits the information to the second location, and rebuilds the original physical content. In other words the original physical content is destroyed in the act of analyzing the content. So there is not a danger of leaving a "copy of oneself" at the original location. Necessarily to measure quantum spin and so on, the original physical material is destroyed, or more precisely, is re-arranged into indecipherable form.
I'm kind of ignorant about this subject. Are most wars started by moral disagreements?
This reads more like a comparison of "old money" and "new money" to me, than of rich and poor. I have more than one rich friend who would hate to be disconnected.
The concept of "alpha" is highly variable among species and therefore doesn't generalize easily. In humans, it describes the type of man who would have a large number of wives in a pre-monogamous society-- narcissistic, brutal, detached, and without conscience.

Healthy women don't want to be anywhere around those sorts of men, who tend to be abusive husbands and terrible fathers. However, a certain class of psychologically damaged woman does tend to find that type of man sexually attractive.
Sure - why not. The nice thing about being freelance is that you can work full-time at one thing and freelance in your spare time. You don't have to go completely freelance if it makes you nervous.

Have you tried elance or odesk? I don't know if they are right for you but they might be good options.

Good luck!
Rails and Django are frameworks, not languages, of which PHP also has a few, for example, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, etc.
Click the "Persist low bandwidth view" in the top right corner.
On OSX I can do almost all of those things easily
in a single window with emacs dired-mode in a Terminal, the ! (shell) key and the "open" command.
The article was thought-provoking for me, as I hadn't heard the Sterling talk, but she lost me here:

I myself mostly post links to this column, hoping that the self-promotion is transparent enough that people can easily ignore a link or click it if they’re curious ....

I can’t help wondering if I’ve turned into some banged-up street kid, stuck in a cruel and crowded neighborhood, trying to convince everyone that regular beatings give you character. Maybe the truth is that I wish I could get out of this place and live as I imagine some nondigital or predigital writers do: among family and friends, in big, beautiful houses, with precious, irreplaceable objects.

And what is stopping her from doing that? Her Twitter usage seems to be very much self-promotional and one way, so it's not as if she's leaving a community she has a stake in. What's she whining about?
$39.95
BMW Checkmates Audi
Especially given that many corps. have intranet applications which require ie6.

And since Microsoft will not alienate them, they will continue on happily not upgrading.
Eh. The data is the same in both articles. They just disagree over the definition of "cliff".

No matter who you ask, a 50% drop in investment is bad news.
Just about the exact same experience with swing dancing as well. It's a slightly different crowd: higher energy, more into the flourish than the candles, but still it's easy to learn, fun to do, and a wonderful way to meet women.
They where suggested by many friends. I began with Elance, but it aksed for credit Card and other stuff, that I don't have, I didn't know how I can go...
if one would realize it's all a hologram, that there's nothing to lose or gain except the amount of value one actually perceives.

is it necessary for survival?

i think the problem areas lay in the fact that everyone is buying into the greatest hood wink of life and turning it into something greater than it really should be.
> not wanting to switch to xmonad ...

I become less reluctant after installing a time tracker and finding that I spend >45 minutes a day looking for or moving windows. It only took an hour to install and learn.

Leads me to wonder if there are similar inefficiencies in the rest of my work. Has anyone tried tracking similar statistics for things like features implemented or bugs added? There's no end of efficiency advice on HN but I've yet to see anyone take a scientific approach and actually monitor their performance.
Doves and hawks: An evolutionary quantum game theory-based analysis of financial crises
It took me more than one try to parse the meaning from that title.
for example a lot of women play it dumb for fear of intimidating the guy they're flirting with

Ironically enough, this doesn't seem like a very intelligent strategy. I definitely get it, but it doesn't seem like a very wise approach in the long-term. What kind of partner would you end up with by hiding one of your most prized qualities?
Insightful perspective on what might happen if you gradually augmented your brain. Kurzweil covered a lot in The Singularity is Near; this narrative on consciousness is more playful. The brandy in the chocolate here is his existential musings on the Omega Point - blew my mind.
I think you're overgeneralizing quite a bit. Aren't women allowed to prefer an alpha male without being accused of wanting to be degraded?
Aneesh Chopra Appointed America's Chief Technology Officer
If I'd have got an office in January 2007, I would have met the Queen (of England) at the opening of a new office block (built by the same company). But I didn't for health reasons. Still, there's worse things than not meeting the Queen.
A number of people in the US find sex to be degrading and harmful, at least on a subconscious level, while most reasonable people would only apply those epithets to a small subset of sexual activity.

Heh, I doubt this phenomenon is endemic to the U.S.
On a few occasions I would have certainly said PHP qualified as a movement. Particularly under definition 6b: http://www.answers.com/movement
Just so! What is this, 1995? There is no such thing any more, even mobile phones have 24 bit.