skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So, part of the problem is that in the US, not only would such things fly, but they have been on the receiving end of some suspect pressure and investigations. Most of the taxi systems in Uber's homeland are highly regulated and effectively run by strong lobbying organizations who are very vocal about their concerns and distaste for having their business threatened. In the US, such allegations are not only reasonable, but they're not even really a sign of corruption - typically, the people who get their way are the people who ask the loudest and most frequently, and that doesn't mean that anyone is acting in an unsavory manner.

This isn't to say that there isn't a twinge of tinfoil hattery going on, or to say that the same tactic is appropriate here, but the fact is that they've had tremendous success asking their users to tell the authorities that they're good guys in the past - they had success in this endeavor here, for that matter. The fact that there is a blog post calling them out doesn't really seem to have had a strong impact on the support that their users are giving them.

Moreover, this blog post smacks of tinfoil hattery - is the suggestion that, by not signaling itself as a taxi, Uber is attempting to confuse users? To my knowledge, they're not picking people up on the street - only people who have signed up for an account and are well aware of the price differences. It seems likely that they're less interested in removing the need for the meter and more interested in removing the need for external signals that the car is fared similarly to a taxi - which is, after all, 50% of what they're offering. So a yellow license plate, sign, and fare sticker might have the larger impact in their eyes.

Based on that, do you not think that it's reasonable that, in an, "unregulated," market, they should be allowed to charge people who have jumped through the hoops to actually get into an Uber car, with all of the fare information shoved in their faces a number of times, however they have agreed upon with their customers?

I'm playing devil's advocate here, but let's please be intellectually honest.
This definitely seems to have been Uber's tactic since the day they launched. In SF it worked because the taxi industry is an unholy mess, but that isn't replicable everywhere.
How Apple's Developer Conference Grew Too Big for Its Own Developers
I've really enjoyed building on Google App Engine. (Disclaimer; I work for Google, but not in engineering)

You can use the Datastore for NoSQL data, or connect with CloudSQL if you want to use a traditional MySQL database. It's quite forgiving when it comes to mistakes; and GAE will automatically spin up new instances as traffic warrants. (No need to manually add/remove dynos).

I know people have had problems with support, but at the same point I understand that if you pay the ($500/year?) for Premium support that the team is really responsive.

For me, as a very novice developer, I had enough on my plate building my app. It was nice to leave ALL of the sysadmin work to App Engine...
Simply because it's never a case of spending "a few extra hours" when learning and evaluating a new tool. There are many "unseen" hours in troubleshooting, monkey patching, and re-evaluation. These are real costs that can be avoided by defaulting to known best practices (at the expense of ultimate performance).
You can create oil from oil shales and the price won't be that high ($70 using current tech, maybe $50/barrel at larger scale). There's massive amounts of oil shales to be used. I agree that the real problem with oil is not peak oil but global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_economics
This is the way MSFT does things, and I hated it. (Don't get me wrong, this isn't a blind MSFT bashing response, this is something that directly affected my career there. If you're there YMMV but this was clearly my experience in my BU.)

During the review cycle, you were given, more or less, two ratings. A performance rating based on your current performance, and a rating based on the company's opinion of your ability to "rise through the ranks".

I liked what I did there. I did well at it (not just my opinion, but that of others and consistent performance reviews). I was comfortable with the job, the responsibilities, the pay and benefits, and the job provided a good challenge and no real risk of boredom or burnout. In short, I liked what I did and enjoyed the prospect of continuing to do that job.

That is career poison there. No matter how good you are in a position, and how much you enjoy it, your incentive is to keep moving up and if you're not so eager to do so, that's seen as a career limitation.

I was at the top end of the technical path I was in, and my next step up was to become management and manage employees who would be doing the job that I was doing now. MSFT saw that as a good career path, to take me away from a job I enjoyed, and put me in the position of curating other employees to do the job I enjoyed doing.

I understand a company's desire to make sure their employees are continually on a career path, but you can't move everybody up the ranks all the time. Sometimes the best employee you can have is one who's a good fit for a position and likes being in that position for a while.
see http://www.boundless.com
I'm so happy, cuz today I found lithium on in here
Thanks for the offer. I'd love to move the whole platform to the browser in the future, but I'll probably wait for WebRTC and WebComponents support to get better before I start looking seriously at it. If I find the time, I'll try to see how a JSIL port of the Web player compares to my handwritten approach, I might be surprised to see the result :) Thanks for the pointer!
I've yet to see a card where all the required information to clone the card isn't available on the strip too, have you?
I gave it a try and the first thing I noticed on the top of Popular category "Memes: How Many Can You Name?". So no, thanks.
You'd be hard pushed to find a buttery actually made of butter these days. Even the local bakers are using vegetable oil and fat. Still, they are beautiful, flaky rolls of salty tastiness.
Guidelines to format a manuscript
If you submit manuscripts to publishers or agents, you have probably come across the demand that you use “standard manuscript format” (or “SMF”) for your submissions. However, it isn’t always spelled out what this actually means. Generally speaking, the term indicates that you should format your document with the following guidelines in mind:
That may be more of a case of the stack reflecting you than defining you. The distinction I'm drawing is whether you allow external perceptions to influence your decision.
The problem of how to cash higher in an IPO and be hailed by the media as the next next Zuckebergs.
There also is the technique of completely replacing an ATM in say a mall. Read about that one a couple times. Some ATMs in convenience stores and even retail chains like Walgreens and CVS already look sketchy enough.
Don't suppose anybody knows of any service that provides historical market pricing data available to download en masse? The only services I can find just allow you to view data for a specific company, whereas I'd like to just dump the data for as many companies as possible.
Agreed. There IS a point of diminishing returns. I've found i save myself 5-15 minutes a day simply by ignoring all Apple-related news :) The day-to-day is simply same old same old: 10% faster CPU, 10% more pixels, big whoop.

Also, while I'm here:
http://hackaday.com
http://diydsp.com
http://pricewatch.com
http://slashdot.org
Hyundai Apologizes for Commercial Showing Attempted Suicide
CraftStudio itself has well-maintained French, German and English translations. There are stubs or partial translations for Spanish, Polish, Portugese, Russian and Dutch.

If anyone feels like helping out, you can fork the translation repository at http://bitbucket.org/sparklinlabs/craftstudio-i18n (and http://bitbucket.org/sparklinlabs/craftstud.io-i18n for the website).
Eh? If global warming was not real, and there wouldn't be any negative sides from CO2 emissions, then it would of course be bad to reduce Co2 emissions by lowering the standard of living (assuming that you're an utilitarian and not a psychopath).

On the other hand, maybe you're talking about other negative environmental effects that are linked to activies that cause CO2 emissions.

I think well being of people should be maximized, and in the optimal situation there shouldn't be any lifestyle changes or "austerity" measures to reduce CO2 emissions if there's no reason to reduce CO2 emissions. If they're required, then of course it's reasonable to adopt them.
Why do you assume that? During Sandy there was plenty of water to go around, and supplies were delivered. There was availability. Maybe if some asshole bought all the supplies available in a store then there might a be a problem, but guess what- no-one did.

If that situation had persisted it would actually be one of the rare situations where rationing makes sense- and that rationing would logically be controlled by the government. Which makes all the free market Rand-ians foam at the mouth- despite the fact that it makes sense.
I think you can only conclude that it's popular among trend-following designers... and I guess tech-turned-design-bloggers as well.

I'm really curious what the general public's perception is (not that it really matters) and if there are really any functional implications for the way some of the interfaces have been designed.
Not just yet but now that the beta is out, this will be my next big focus! I've been doing some technology tests already (see http://sparklinlabs.com/2013/04/craftstudio-beta-release-dat... and http://wars.sparklinlabs.com/)
How do chips solve the problem? From my understanding, a man-in-the-middle scanner can gather enough information about query-responses to simulate the chip. This was one of the big problems identified with RFID chips embedded in passports because all a criminal would need to do is brush by other travelers with his skimmer.
Earth's core far hotter than thought
It's a legitimate business, and they've generally been a bit smoother than this hacktastic email.

It just so happens that they're entering a regulated market, and some observers will go full tea-party upon hearing things like "we have extra regulation applying to taxi services due to some experiences we've had over the last hundred years."

Better dispatch over the internet doesn't change everything.

This email reminds me of talking to some idiot soda lobbyist at a cocktail party in 2009, telling me she doesn't understand why her boss told her equating taxes on soda with fascism was a bad idea.
Painting all users of unlicensed cabs as "drunk people" may be a helpful way of coloring your argument, but nonetheless if the only advantage unlicensed cabs is speed of arrival, then that is still providing for unmet demand.

If the risk of these services outweighed the time advantage, people wouldn't be using them. Moreover, eliminating the choice doesn't necessarily stop them from being victimized. Whatever form of of transportation they may use instead, such as walking, could involve similar violent crimes, which wouldn't make it into your official statistics for taxi-related crimes.
3 Common Browser Misconceptions
Very cool - this will get a lot of kids (and adults) into creating great little games! Kudos.
Many moons ago, families were larger and clothes dryers did not exist. With enough motivation and wherewithal, you'd be amazed what you can do. You just believe that it'd be a nightmare because a) you don't have any desire to make the necessary personal or familial sacrifices to make it happen and b) you don't know anyone that does it. (And both of these reasons aren't unique to you, so please don't consider this a personal attack.) However, if everyone in your "world" suddenly started doing it, a new "standard" would be set and the practice would no longer seem impossible or nightmarish.
It's still quite easy to mess up a metro UI, you still need a visual/graphics designer that know grid and typography. An undesigned metro UI is actually more obvious than an undesigned iOS UI.
> What we are seeing more of with flat design and color though is the matching of tone and saturation.

As someone with practically no design skills, how would I accomplish this? For example, let's say I had two or three colors in mind or already picked out. What are the steps I could take to line up their tones and saturation? Is there a formula or algorithm that applies?

I realize design skills are developed through practice, but I very often find myself with something I've put together that looks just OK and just sort of aimlessly tinkering around with it until I've inevitably made it look washed out. So obviously my feel isn't working yet--where else can I turn?
You've managed to prove my point in four words and a URL.

Congrats.

Edit: Just to be clear, I belong to the part of the population you can convince of nuclear energy, at least as an intermediate solution. But not this way.
The app offering free guitar lessons 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-22299360
I live in Virginia and all the grocery stores here do the same thing. It is listed on the shelf tag next to the item price.

Update: According to NIST, 21 of the 54 US states and territories have some form of unit pricing law.
AT&T debuts 'Digital Life' robo-home and security tech
Ever since Instapaper got the bright idea to charge monthly for a search feature, fuck them. Go pocket.
> A suit doesn't make you look subservient

To me, they have that connotation. Fashion doesn't tend to be that regular outside of close-knit groups, and even within those groups there are differences that those within can pick up on. You might think that Amish all dress alike, but they really don't. Similarly all suits look more or less alike to me, despite the fact that I'm sure if I spent a lot of time looking at suits I'd start to notice more refined differences.

To have such a narrow variation as suits tend to constitute, among a group of fairly diverse individuals... that implies to me that there's a power effectively forcing that distribution on the group.

> a t-shirt saying Hollister or Linux or some other corporate entity does.

I don't see the relevance, no-one has to wear those things so the connotation of subservience isn't there. I suppose coming off the point of the fella above this fork you could view it as submission to a group norm, but I think the connotation's different there - less about overtly oppressive dominance.

In any case, I don't wear that sort of thing - don't like writing on my clothes, if someone's advertising with my body I want to be paid for it. Prefer patterns and pictures and nice rich colours.
Einstein Was Right — So Far
Is there no way to delete your account?
I seem to recall that some banks (in Estonia??) will mail you a piece of paper with a list of single-use PIN numbers. Use one, mark through it. When you get close to running out, they mail you a new list.
'Smart skin' hope for touch sensor
Pmarca archive has moved - no longer on Posterous
"Replication -- an exact duplication of a study and hopefully its results -- is a cornerstone of science. And without full disclosure of the original study's method and results, replication isn't possible."

My first quarter in grad school in statistics, a girl who was a couple of years ahead of me quit. She was doing an internship with an MD, and every time he got a new diagnosed kid in the project he pondered which group to put the kid in. "This one's going to die, where do I put him to make the results come out right?"

The institution was considered second-class in that field, so he got the money to replicate a Harvard result. If he got the right results it would make him look more competent and he might get better grants. So he was doing his best to fudge the results so they would come out right.

She tried to argue that he should do his statistics correctly and he disagreed. She was so upset that her work was pointless, and that her career would be pointless, that she quit completely.

Ideally scientists would be rewarded for doing open science correctly. In some ways that is not the case now, and we should look at ways to fix that.

How can average mediocre scientists get job security without keeping secrets? Perhaps we are giving too many people a chance to be professional scientists, so that too many of them must lose out?
I would go for a Jawbone Up if your using it mainly for sleep tracking. The sleep tracking on a fitbit is a bit of a hassle since you have to get it out and put it in its own separate arm band.
MI5 hack unsaved word docs to convict terrorists
Most smart people confident in their skills would be happy with profit sharing and/or real equity in their work. Even founders draw a (quite substantial) salary.

The word "ownership" implies "owning" something.
>That is like saying the programming behind an API is simplistic because the API only consists three functions.

Actually, that's pretty close to my argument. I'm not saying the mechanisms underlying a transistor are simple. I've taken (and struggled with) a microelectronics course. I have a good idea how complex they are.

I'm saying that the metrics for success are really simple because we have designed it to fit a very simple logical abstraction. If you want to make a better transistor, the process might be extremely complicated, but it couldn't be simpler to test what you have and see if it's correct.

On the other hand, it's simple to make food (I should, however, stop and point out that when Rhinehart is "making food", mostly what he's doing is mixing together other existing foods. Of course that is simple.) But it's orders of magnitude more complex to analyze the result of that food than doing the same for a transistor. Because now instead of plugging a black box we understand into another black box that we understand, you're plugging your invention into the human digestive system. Not only do you have to consider the interaction with human parts, you also have to consider dozens of species of gut bacteria. I don't think that is simple and I think anyone who claims that it is is quite confused.
My experience from running AdMob campaigns for a free app
I want to share my experience as an indie developer using Admob to generate installs for my free app.

BACKGROUND:
We had created a rather popular quiz app (it reached the top 10 most downloaded charts in several countries).
When it began to fall on the lists we decided to launch some AdMob campaigns in some specific markets.

THE RESULT:
Unfortunately we can't measure exactly how many clicks from a campaign that convert into installs. But by comparing the installs before and after we ran the admob campaign we can at least tell if it had any impact. Here are the numbers for the Danish market:

Monday April 1:
Downloads: 906
Clicks: 0

Tuesday April 2:
Downloads: 577
Clicks: 0

Wednesday April 3:
Downloads: 358
Clicks: 0

-- CAMPAIGN BEGAN --
Thursday April 4:
Downloads: 336
Clicks: 1591

Friday April 5:
Downloads: 264
Clicks: 1836

Saturday April 6:
Downloads: 275
Clicks: 2410

Sunday April 7:
Downloads: 227
Clicks: 2050

-- CAMPAIGN ENDED --

Monday April 8:
Downloads: 105
Clicks: 0

Tuesday April 9:
Downloads: 107
Clicks: 0

CONCLUSION:
So, we bought almost 8 000 clicks. The installs it generated are very modest, or close to none. (And yes, we tried different ads and different copy.)
For example: on April 4 we bought almost 1 600 clicks. Total installs was less than the day before when we bought zero, null, niente clicks (!).

I know - and totally understands - AdMob is worthless for paid apps. But I had expected more for a free app which had reached the top lists and received good reviews.
For us AdMob campaigns are a bad marketing investment. The installs will cost more than we earn.
What's your experience from AdMob for a free app with in-app purchases?
"Painting all users of unlicensed cabs as "drunk people" may be a helpful way of coloring your argument, but nonetheless if the only advantage unlicensed cabs is speed of arrival, then that is still providing for unmet demand."

They were drunk people, that's largely who used them. I have been one.

If the risk of these services outweighed the time advantage, people wouldn't be using them.

False, this assumes perfect information is available and that people always make good choices. These things are not true.

Moreover, eliminating the choice doesn't necessarily stop them from being victimized.

It makes it less likely, as the guys aren't hanging out looking for business outside pubs and clubs any more, and these drunk people (amongst whom I have been counted many times) call a registered and regulated company.

Whatever form of of transportation they may use instead, such as walking, could involve similar violent crimes, which wouldn't make it into your official statistics for taxi-related crimes.

Entirely possible, but public transport in London is pretty safe and as has been mentioned, licensed cabs are not generally more expensive, they just take a few minutes to arrive.
If every store tripled the price of bottled water you would have truckloads of water arriving within 24 hours with absolutely no government intervention at all.

It would also mean that smart entrepreneurs would pre-stage needed supplies in anticipation of the price increase. With strong 'gouging' laws, there is no incentive to spend money on preparing the supply chain or in spending more money to overcome supply difficulties (i.e diverting supplies from elsewhere, rushing delivery, etc)

Price 'gouging' contains the seed of its own destruction because it encourages over-supply and subsequently lower prices.
That's a great description of how it works - looking forward to reading more of your comments on HN in the future.
The best part of this rather traditionally long-winded article (not a jab, just the truth) from The Atlantic was the observation that the availability of energy to the individual almost exactly correlates with economic growth.

It makes me wonder if we are not completely misunderstanding the role of energy, making it into some kind of threat or something to fear instead of a huge enabler of human progress. Perhaps if we want flying cars and jet packs, if we want burgeoning economies with more employment and GDP, we should be doing anything physically possible to reduce the cost and increase the availability of energy to the average person.

You're free to solve that in any way you want -- nuclear makes the most sense to me -- but if we have our heads on backwards, then we have a lot of well-meaning people who are actively trying to destroy our future by preaching conservation. Without knowing it.

Energy very well may be the 20th century's internet. The more everybody has it, the better off we all are.
I used an early version of http://www.sleeptracker.com/ and it worked well.
Top 5 Considerations for Transitioning from Flex to HTML5
To make matters worse, after C&P rolled out some banks would just flat out refuse to reimburse cardholders for fraudulent charges. They claimed the system was bulletproof and if fraud did happen, then it was the cardholder's fault: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN#Banks.27_liability
> IE, you use you mobile phone to order the taxi or pay.

Except you already did that in Stockholm, at least for the ordering part (not sure about payment).
Only if your distro handles that for you; but point taken.
> However, more SaaS applications should also consider a usage limited trial.

it depends on the product , but for Saas that makes more sense. Even if the offer is really limited. However , what i dont like is services that has a free limited offer , but the first paid offer is just too expensive for those who want an entry level but paid service.
I always tug at the card reader on the ATM to make sure it doesn't come loose.

What I don't understand is why don't ATMs in Europe use chip and pin yet? All the stores do. That would solve this problem.