skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lenovo Denies Me Windows 7 SP1 Unless I Pay $170
So, I tried to install Windows 7 SP1 on my Lenovo G560, but the update says I need to update my Graphics Driver. Tried to do that, but Intel's update says I need to go through the vendor. When I went to Lenovo's support site, it didn't have the latest driver, so I called Lenovo. They said they I had to pay $120-$179 to get the update (!) even though there is an update for the driver from Intel and it's Lenovo's fault I cannot upgrade. My conversation is in this video (if I sound angry, it's because I am). Anyone know if there is anything else I can do? Is this standard practice? Am I overreacting?
I don't want to do this, but I am really asking myself, how could this be on the front page of Hacker News?
EWScripps sold Shopzilla to Symphony Technology Group a couple of years ago.
Having spoken to administration who work for CUNY Baruch (which is a great school) who formerly worked at NYU, that money could make a huge difference. For instance, $40,000 was apparently practically a rounding error at NYU, while at Baruch the only way to free that up would be to fire someone, essentially.
Show HN: DashFB downloads Facebook Data in exact FQL schemas as in Facebook API
As already stated it's partly about the convenience. Click a link, there it is, source code et al.

The other reason is that most of us are familiar with the online world a large amount of us will have written JS and therefore have an emotional investment of some sort in it. Thanks to the recent JS engine/browser wars the possibilities have come on so far that it would have been almost inconceivable to have seen this five years ago in the IE dark ages so seeing it live like that is fascinating and gives an endorphin-fuelled sense of 'how far we've come'.
The help of an IDE restricts the use of the language. It's the same for the TypeScript variant. If you say "you need a Visual Studio" or the like to use it comfortably, you're restricting the use-cases of the language.

I forgot to give the example of using "Enum-like" types instead of boolean parameters, because boolean parameters don't give enough information, so then you might need to pass something like MyClass.MYVALUE to a parameter rather than true or false.

So yes, there's much to like and dislike. Needless to say, there are those that need more type features from the language and toolset than it already offers, even if it's kind of hard because to come up with more if some of it needs to go into compiling down to JavaScript.

With more type features they would expect to have more features like real Enums or what-have-you.

Even "var" declaration starts to look awkward in a language where types are available. So things like "for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {}" are more natural than "for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++)". And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

When you start declaring things like "listenToMouseEvent(MouseEvent e, () {})" when using some event API, that's when it gets uglier still.

But yes, to each his own. JavaScript is still the leader in many ways, including some basic performance despite not the extra type declarations. They have really extracted nearly all of the performance allowed from JavaScript it seems. So performance alone is not what will differentiate these other languages from JavaScript.
> ...swearing hides something. Maybe a low IQ, or low self esteem or some other personality issue.

citation fucking needed
What music industry could learn by listening to its fans
> the best western world animation there is

Even restricting ourselves purely to mature comedy shows, I would argue that Archer and Venture Bros are better than the latest season. I highly recommend checking them out.
>- they charge VAT while it's not allowed when doing intera-european purchases

What do you mean it's not allowed?
Probably because:

1) HN wasn't that big (or existing) at that time.

2) Now you can also see the code, it's not in some opaque swt archive.

3) You don't need a proprietary Adobe IDE to code it (yes, you could do without for Flash too with some bizarro third party tools. Talking about the mainstream).

4) Everybody hates flash anyway.
Their Twitter feed hints it isn't out of stock and they recommend trying again in a few minutes.

https://twitter.com/geeksphone/status/326661079826563072
Did just the same, 197€ with VAT and shipping isn't too bad.

I guess the first lucky few will have them by the end of the week, the rest of us by next week (I'd imagine they staffed up for deliveries but will still be overwhelmed since all their stock went away in 2 hours).
But it is a scripting language! And it can draw in 2D in real time. And it is deployed to a very popular fat-client over the network. And it even looks like decent frame rate. On my quad-core machine. What is there not to be impressed with in 2013?
"Minimalisticalism", n., the excessive expansion of the adjective "minimal" until it isn't.
I'm British. I did a stint on a factory floor. Oh My! The language!

The article is correct. Never aim words at people. Be sensitive to those around you, some of them will be deeply upset by bad language. And be creative. English is a glorious language and the range of swearing isn't limited to a few F-Bombs.
> I get that there's some novelty to this stuff, but we already know that asm.js can achieve performance within a factor of 2 of compiled C code.

My guess is that even if this is common knowledge (which I doubt), lots of people still don't know what that means. Demos like this showcase that.

As to JS vs. AS or Java Applets, well, among the "technical crowd" I'd wager that JS is more popular than those other two platforms. Simple as that, perhaps?
I wish/hope netflix can take on the show, like they did for arrested development
Same for me. I was very surprised by the low price (usually a smartphone is over €400, this one €91) and might actually have bought it depending on the payment options (credit card is an instant no-go)... but both out of stock. Couldn't they anticipate that a decent number of hackers were gonna want one?
I think the real crime in this story is L0.80 for a Twix!
The advantage is.. you can see the code, see what it does, play with it... and see the results instantly.
Professionalism is about doing a job well and in a responsible manner. It's not about doing a job while maintaining a respectable appearance. Appearing respectable doesn't hurt, of course, but it's not a requirement for being professional.

Let's put it this way. Suppose you have two people. One has a perfectly professional appearance and demeanor. The other one is perfectly professional in the decisions he makes and the work he produces, but he curses a lot and wears shorts and slippers. I consider the second person more of a professional than the first. A database administrator who wears a tie but who neglects to test his backup procedures is less professional than the stereotypical Metallica-t-shirt-sporting DBA with questionable facial hair who does. Whether somebody curses or wears flip-flops would be a tie-breaker at best.

There is undoubtedly a strong relationship between appearing professional and high conscientiousness. As a general rule, conscientious people make for better employees. So whether somebody swears or dresses well serves as a proxy for the thing we're really interested in. To elevate this instrumental value and to turn it into a terminal value is therefore a mistake.
Would the result have been different and would you have reacted differently if it was a normal ban (ie. you were made known when attempting to log in that you had been banned)?
Indeed. In Germany for example, employees of this company could be tried as accomplices to the crime if it was found that they had duplicated a house key without asking for proof of residence.
I don't think that it's true that the core developers don't care about performance at all.

There's an argument that removing the GIL would require a lot of effort for little gain (and in some cases decreased performance). It's just not a priority for them.

Of course, every use case is different (sometimes very different), but I haven't ever hit a problem that has caused me to curse the GIL.
This article starts with an error: it's a third degree equation that can have real solutions whose calculation may involve the square root of negative numbers.
For second degree equations, instead, if the discriminant is negative there are no real solutions.
You may check on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_number#History_in_brief
Ask HN: What is wrong with our UX?
We've created a simple tool for discovering gift ideas and its flopped horribly. I plan on doing some direct observations over the next few days but would love to hear some feedback from HNers.

Site is: http://www.giftwell.com/discover/
Imagine if HN and comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos really would have the same audience. So everybody'd be like

"oh, cloth simulation. we did that in the 90s",

as well as,

"... in javascript, even! ... just like scenerdude303 did 8 years ago, except he didn't have a canvas-element back then, web browsers were still make of wood and he had to get up at 5am to write the code in the snow when it was still fresh, type with his bare feet and be crawling uphill both ways, ah, why when I was a young programmer ...", etc.

Except that many people would also be supportive. Cool cloth demo, it works well! Nice touch with the interactivity and the right-mouse cutting action. Because those two make it fun to play with, and slightly more interesting than just the simulation by itself.

Because, and this is something that the actual HN audience should (optimally) also understand, writing a small demo like this is an act of creativity. That should be stimulated no matter what, because--actually I just remembered from some other discussions[0], there's really a load of people here that don't understand this: When making art, there is tremendous value in doing what has been done before. It's called practice, and the value is having the experience of having done something yourself. It's also rumoured to make perfect. It only gets you so far to just know the "why?" and the "how?". To get anywhere you also need to make something. Because only from the vantage-point of being right in the middle of that mess, you can truly decide what your personal take on it, your influence will be. And if you can't, just go right back to practice :)

[0] it was a series of InkScape tutorials called "vector game art for programmers" or something. many people were complaining "but he's only showing how to make these characters and objects", that the author didn't explain why the circles go where they should and what a proper shadow should look like. only by people that didn't actually do the exercises, of course. there's no magic involved. just practice. if character faces are too complex, go draw fruits. all fruits. and then remake the rest of pac-man's sprites in vector! (in the snow, uphill both ways, etc)
Yes! We should treat them like to rotten criminals they are! Throw them in the hole and toss away the key. That way they will never return[1]!

Oh, wait, that doesn't work. Perhaps treating them like normal human beings instead proves more effective[2].

[1]http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=17
[2]http://www3.unil.ch/wpmu/space/publications/recidivism-studi...
Clickable link: http://www.giftwell.com/discover/

We've seen ok numbers of "more suggestions" but we've seen virtually no users "star" gifts. Our tool gets smarter as you star gifts and it will get smarter with use but with no interaction the tool is hosed.

We intentionally went with a very tame, vanilla UI because we figured it would convert better with the average online user. We've got a few ideas for more radical user experiences but I was hoping to hear some additional opinions on why this fails so hard before venturing down another dead-end.

Thanks in advance!
So not a fan of The Thick of It then?

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

[Only TV series that I am aware of that has a "Swearing Consultant"].
"Some of the most popular open source tools" would have been better.

Google is a huge company, with many good programmers.

A reference implementation is great.

Provide patches to some of the most used open source products just helps Google spread their tech, and helps all those open source products.

My post wasn't meant to be a dig at Google. Re-reading it I see that it could be read that way, and I apologise for that.
>Nobody is asking you to apologise. I'm just saying that we already know what the web is capable of as a runtime.

Who is that "we" you're talking about? Because it's obvious that the parent does not "already know" and neither do many people.

People see trivial stuff like this simulation all the time, not knowing anything about the domain or past developments, and are inspired to learn more, or change it and adapt it to create something else, etc.

It would a sad world, yours, where everybody should delve in domain specific tomes to learn about prior art and theories and such, instead of also being able to give a quick glance at some web page and see something he didn't knew about.

Not to mention that "having been done before" and "it can be done in Javascript, on the browser, with adequate performance, and not that difficult code, and you know what, you can adapt it for your web project too" is a different thing altogether.
Netflix alone takes up a third of U.S. bandwidth between 9:00 PM and midnight
Nothing boosts the morale of a company in crisis than having a boss that rules with decrees instead of leading.
In the real world, fiduciary trust isn't trust in government, it's trust in ratings agencies. Recourse to the courts won't matter if the bank or insurer is a fraud and the money is gone.

The point is, however: There is no reason not to insist on the same guarantees for government offices. There is nothing magical about trust in government or of fallible people working for government. It can be bonded, insured, and rated like any other transaction where significant liabilities may need to be covered.
"English is a glorious language and the range of swearing isn't limited to a few F-Bombs"

Malcolm Tucker!

[Edit: Just noticed that could be rhyming slang]
I got the sarcasm alright, the humor I could not find.
PBR: Route a packet based on source IP address
"It is also true that code size would increase, since there are now two function definitions...

...But, on a positive side, when you manually define N different overloads (say N=10), those N different overloads would be anyway be compiled,linked and packed in binary (the executable). However, with templates, only the required instantiations of function would get into final executable. With templates, the overloaded copies of function might be less than N, and it can be more than N - but exactly the number of required copies - no more no less!"

There are times when every byte counts. Most of them were before the second Clinton administration. Odds are that with RAM at $20 a Gig, a few dozen bytes isn't the difference between your program being memory constrained or well tuned. Contemporary memory issues tend to be orders of magnitude larger.
Excellent tutorial, thanks! I just tried submitting it to HN but it was auto-killed for some reason. Any idea why?
Luckily I work in a situation where swearing is completely acceptable.

>Almost everyone in Britain will blanch at "Cunt".

Really? Britain is one of the very few places I've found that doesn't seem to flinch at the word. It's almost common place.
DCMA request in the UK???
Did you have proof of (home I suppose) ownership with you? If not he didn't do it because it would have been against the law.
What exactly don't you understand?

People wanting to port stuff to new domains?

Excitement about the web being a feasible platform for running 3D stuff?

People learning about old stuff for the first time and doing experiments with the language available to them?
When I hear people using curse words regularly I form the opinion that such individuals lack the eloquence to express themselves without resorting to profanity.
Thus I hold these people in low regard, as I highly value literacy, and most educated people are able to avoid profanity while conveying their thoughts.
That said, I do use profanity from time to time informally, but I refrain from doing so in a professional setting.
That's what most websites do, even Apple. Especially Apple actually. Buying something from America in Dollars is often much cheaper.
Whenever I'm working on my personal project I do things that many modern developers would balk at. ... On the other hand programming as a profession must be wholly different.

Even when working professionally, different approaches fit projects of different scales. Processes and tools that keep you sane and productive if you’ve got multiple small teams to co-ordinate over a multi-year project could be absurdly over-managed and inefficient for a couple of developers at adjacent desks who are spending a month writing a bit of in-house automation software.

(Insert obligatory citation of The Mythical Man Month here. It’s about more than just why adding people can make late projects later.)
For starters, you're using the font awesome gift icon. Theres not really much thought in the UX at all. Invest a few hundred dollars in a 99 designs contest and you might be able to remove the bootstrap stigma and stop your website looking like an administrative panel
Just in: "Wow initial previsions were largely surpassed! Devices will be back on stock in a few hours, thanks for your support!" https://twitter.com/geeksphone/status/326665566758793216
> Without wishing to appear negative

One way that would have avoided sounding negative, and which (I HOPE) would have got you a lot more upvotes, would have been to say something like "This is a nice demo! Here's some further reading for these algorithms {CITE}, and here are some other implementations if different languages {CITE}", with a bit of discussion of where you used them and the problems you solved.

Personally, I'd much rather see someone's implementation of something that yet another {article I don't like}.
QR Code Quilt for oldest son
Shouting "Fuck you computer!", standing up and storming out of the room was acceptable (but infrequent) practice at one of my previous workplaces. Nobody seemed to mind.

I think I swear a little to easily. I used the C word at a barbecue the other week, when I dropped a sausage in the coals. In front of all my friends' children.... Ooops.
Because enough people upvoted it? I wish it was possible to downvote stories.
So you step from your hygienically awesome home into your hygienically awesome car, drive it, and get out. (I presume that this is the goal of having and driving a car.)

How's the hygiene at your destination?
What about people that eloquently use profanity?

You are assuming something unproven.
If you don't have a smartphone already, I'd definitely buy it. Right now. I'd get a credit card right now if that's what it took ;)

Unfortunately I already have a Galaxy Note II, which is top of the line and really a great phone, so now I don't know whether I should buy it... https://plus.google.com/100221912051999668442/posts/dDkEuUzL...
TokuDB est désormais open source 
La version 7 de TokuDB, le moteur de stockage haute performance pour MySQL et MariaDB de Tokutek, vient de sortir en édition open source communautaire. Développé originellement par des chercheurs au MIT, Rutgers et la State University de New York, le moteur de stockage utilise une indexation de type Fractal Tree, une technique basée sur l'algorithme cache-oblivious.
This is a completely different issue. The site is mixing up dollars and euro so it's overcharging. It's not a conscious price decision they've made.
I clicky the link.

I see a nice, clean, site. I wouldn't have chosen that orange with that blue, but it's not hideous. I clicky [FATHERS DAY] and next question.

It says "Coming soon, sign up to get notified", and I can go no further.

So, this is something that I would be interested in. I don't care if you use skim links and affiliate links. I really do want to find gifts for people and would welcome some kind of service that helps me discover stuff. But I'm not going to sign up until I've been able to see something.

Good Luck though!

EDIT: I clicky the browse all products link. There's a nice selection. I can see how it could be expanded to a huge range and provide really great suggestions.

I dislike the bold of the font - the bold white on grey doesn't look nice in my browser. (Chrome on Windows Vista).

I usually browse with a narrow window. Doing this makes the pop up happen in a weird place. here's a screen shot. (http://imgur.com/PIEkFai)

I don't mean to be negative, I mean to be constructive, but sometimes I have problems with tone.

It looks like a good site!
Alenka is another open-source GPU database engine that looks quite interesting:

https://github.com/antonmks/Alenka
Surely this is the right time to quote mr. Stephen Fry.

"Swearing is a really important part of one's life. It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing and without enjoying swearing... There used to be mad, silly, prissy people who used to say swearing was a sign of a poor vocabulary -such utter nonsense. The people I know who swear the most tend to have the widest vocabularies and the kind of person who says swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary usually have a pretty poor vocabulary themselves... The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest or -is just a fucking lunatic... I haven't met anybody who's truly shocked at swearing, really, they're only shocked on behalf of other people. Well, you know, that's preposterous... or they say 'it's not necessary'. As if that should stop one doing it! It's not necessary to have coloured socks, it's not necessary for this cushion to be here, but is anyone going to write in and say 'I was shocked to see that cushion there, it really wasn't necessary'? No, things not being necessary is what makes life interesting -the little extras in life."
This application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.

Seems to be running on AppEngine by the look of it. AppEngine has the limits far too low for basic stuff like this, they should really re-look at their service offering if they want to actually compete in the market.
I absolutely love the sound track to this!
When G+ was announced I realised the implications were I to do anything on the social side that risked the account... loss of access to email, calendar, documents, etc that go back more than a decade.

I made a choice that day and I still stick to it:

I split my Google identity.

My original Gmail account is still in use and I use that for anything social, for any settings and preferences... i.e. the non-essential stuff: Google+, Chrome Sync, Android Play Store, and Google Currents.

A Google Apps account deals with anything that I care to keep and is on my private domain: Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, and Drive.

I then used sync control in Android to turn off everything that each account won't use. And in Manage Domain on the Google Apps I disabled G+ and anything social.

For me it's a risk limitation exercise.

Should Google lock my Gmail, I lose things I don't care about. I keep backups (Gmail offline + Grive) of my Google Apps domain, and should that get locked I can change the DNS, setup my own email and restore the backup via IMAP.

I get to benefit from Google services without a large exposure to risk should something happen.
curiously, although the article mentions that american research is more critical of swearing than uk research, it doesn't consider cultural differences. as a brit working in an american company i have learnt that swearing is much less tolerated over there. after being met with stony silence a couple of times i no longer do it.

would love to see nationalitites added to posts here. i suspect many posts at this hour (early for the usa, and generally pro-swearing) are from the uk....
JBoss Application Server has a new name...