skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
All my programming life has been in higher-level languages, yet with Rust I'm being inexplicably drawn to down and dirty systems programming. It's cool to finally be able to use :make and all the C-oriented things like [i and ]i, ctags and the like. It's interesting seeing how much 'dogfooding' vim has in that tons of stuff are undoubtedly geared towards his own needs developing vim (and C applications in general.) Pretty much how I work with coding products, I work my best when I'm the use case, and great open source products like vi/vim and emacs excel in that legions of people share the creator's use case (and well, configurability right down to the bone.) I've found that a non-trivial amount of people do share the use case for the first project I've launched[1], I only hope for it to hold true for my most ambitious ones in the working.

I don't know Bram, but I can't help but wonder why such a distinguished open source figure has ultimately ended up working for Google. Maybe he enjoys the access to resources. I wish donations could still support him directly rather than his idea of aid (well it does seem to have a bend towards education at least). I wish he wouldn't need a day job and could yet breed other new and great contributions to the world. I don't feel particularly endeared towards Google, despite all the collateral good it has done while doing a lot of evil (i.e. something to do with the looming ad empire strengthening big corporations.)

[1]: https://github.com/goldfeld/vim-seek
Weirdly, that page tells you that the creator himself thinks Soylent may be dangerous for people other than him.

> I am reticent to provide exact brand names and instructions because I am not fully convinced of the diet's safety for a physiology different than mine. What if I missed something that's essential for someone of a different race or age group?

Why does he now think it's acceptable to market this to everyone?
who knows I'm with you
Ask HN: Are there voting rings on HN?
Lately, I've been noticing that content from a select few sites gets upvoted to the front page, and when I click the link and read the content I don't find anything that thought provoking or interesting. Usually, just a small observation about something.

Does this mean that there are voting rings that ensure these things get to the front page without having too much merit? Or do these authors have so many followers that even their mediocre writings make it to the front page? Or am I just "not getting it" and these are indeed very good pieces?
That's a very good point and very observant.

I too am highly skeptical of ALL of these claims.

My main gripe with Soylent (ever since I first saw it here on HN a month ago) is that they are making cooking seem like a horrible chore that nobody wants to do.

Shopping is convenient because I go whenever I have time and only buy exactly what I need. At the same time, I also ensure I only buy the best ingredients I can at the moment (Assuming labeling is correct).

A lot of people I know and myself included, LOVE to cook. I love cutting a bell pepper and catching a whiff of its fresh smell in my nostrils. I love sometimes adding different sauces, spices or ingredients in my meals to give them a distinct and unique taste.

And cleaning up is also fun because I recognize I am a responsible adult, able to revert something back to the state I received it in. Just like my bed, or a rental car or my home.
But is memcached on RAM?
I've been eyeing some of the some of the Zimbra hosts (01.com, xmission.com) as a possible home for my email accounts, as we've been testing Zimbra at my day job for a possible Exchange replacement and I've liked the experience so far. Anyone have experiences with Zimbra (and the hosts) to share?
You have to be biting your tongue awfully hard to shoot off "Google is, in other words, the new AOL." He admits all of the services are not complete alternatives, save for maybe RSS readers. In other words, either 99% of users can't manage to use these non-alternatives for reasons like calendar and contacts not syncing, or they already don't use the product like RSS, or they definitely won't be able to run their own server.

Not to mention, I would tip my hat to Google for forcing every one of these "alternatives" to be better, because before Google, these services sucked. AOL sucked. MS sucked. OSS sucked. Firefox sucked -- thanks Chrome.

These are not the alternatives you're looking for. People should definitely care about their privacy, and they should definitely live on platforms that encourage interop. However, these articles focus far too much on trying to frame Google as some evil actor, when we could be championing everything Google has done well and how their competitors -- alternatives -- should be doing better.
From Damn Interesting - http://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon... Although, in my circle, it will forever be known as the Pizza Stone Phenomenon.
Maybe you hear that so often because it's a trend, so the idea of it being the focus of your media center box for the next decade might be a little antiquated.
It's a real bummer that they don't send it anywhere outside US
As much as I think the nutritionist in the Business Insider piece is right, I wish she could have been somewhat more even in tone. It's hard to link that to people who are predisposed to taking Rhinehart seriously.
Questions to Get the Most out of Meetings
I also recently did the Gmail -> Fastmail switch. I had some trouble with the automated import, but I found a Perl script that did the trick: https://gist.github.com/masnick/5239278#file-gmail_to_fastma...

So far I've loved Fastmail. It's great having a real human respond to a support ticket, usually within a few hours!
Sorry Dave, this is bigger than just you :)

I care about being a part of a community that doesn't let the escalation of (real and perceived) slights debase the overall conversation. That's what I'm talking about. You spent 15 minutes on a story, I've spent the last few years trying to be a constructive part of this community.
How is that "mitigated"? You're saying there's a natural defense to this first attack, so therefore the attack doesn't hurt.

Except it costs engineering time to fight back against this attack.

Then, someone starts putting the file into the RGB channels.

Then, it costs engineering time to fight back.

Then, someone starts putting the file into the low-order bits... which happens to make the file compress terribly, compared to a normal PNG.

Then, it costs engineering time to fight back.
I love the idea of writing down the details you remember. Because, like you said, you know that they are not doing the tracking, they will thank you for it.
This is a fantasy of mine as well. A generic opensource PaaS would be awesome. Now if I just had the ambition... It is quite an undertaking.
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.2.0/ch08.pdf page 250

Screenshot of relevant text: http://i.imgur.com/xMnHDg4.png

Basically certain Hebrew characters have descenders which can overlap with diatric marks in the next line of text. These variations are suitable replacements that alter it slightly so it won't overlap.
AOL Alto makes a nice alternative than Gmail. And a much better one at that.
Life, The Universe, Startups, And Everything
Correct -- 0xfb20 through 0xfb4f are alternative glyphs for Hebrew characters. (I don't know what makes these so special that they need to be handled separately by the regexp processing code, though.)
Totally agree, let's make it happen! http://github.com/mashape/worldchat
Good stuff.

I would add that one exercise which should really help is sitting down and actually quantifying the value customer receives - dollars saved, dollars earned, time saved, all broken down by type of customer (however you chose to define that), and by the aspect of their workflow you aim to improve.

What this will do is anchor your pricing gu feel to the right range. Besides, you can show it to the users and get valuable push back where you're off. My mentors spent countless hours convincing me of the value of this exercise and it's finally sinking in now, so I am in a hurry to share the wisdom. :)
> Developers will be able to make a game that works on PC, Xbox One and PS4 so easily that brand loyalty will mean a lot less.

Developer effort hasn't been the limiting factor in the current gen either. Exclusivity is all about politics/marketing. And I don't see any signs of that changing.

So the reason to buy a next-gen gaming console would be the same as for the previous: games.
"Unfortunately, there are no good alternatives to some Google properties. Maps...."

For maps, depending on your uses, bing mapquest's map and geocoding APIs can be replacements, and sometimes cheaper.
Node.js clustered db with messaging
I think the first step towards change is to envision the world that you want, and find people that agree with that vision. And if you can't agree on everything, find that subset of policies and objectives that people can passionately agree on, and forget everything else. Then, get organized.

Start by going door to door; find people who care enough about the issue to help out; have in-person meetings and events and build connections; give people the tools--online and offline--to recruit participants and stage their own meetings; orient people towards a focused set of objectives, and ask them for money to help you broadcast those ideas with counter-propoganda; ask people to contribute time and money to candidates that support those objectives; always keep everything above board, to avoid being attacked; rinse and repeat. If enough people care, you can win; if not, then maybe "money in politics" wasn't the real hurdle to reform--maybe it's just that the voters didn't want the reform you were preaching.

Democracy today seems broken, like it doesn't work any more, but it's always been "broken," it's never "worked". The progressive movement and the labor movement of a century ago both fought an uphill battle against big money in politics. It took decades before they experienced lasting success. When voters want changes in government that cost profitable businesses money, a lot of those businesses will spend at least as much money as they stand to loose to prevent that change from happening. It was as true one hundred years ago as it is today.

The fact is, though, that absent massive violence or election fraud (which itself is only possible when the polls are tight) with all the money in the world you still need people--individual people--to vote your way. Money in US politics has influence only insofar as it can be used to convince the masses of voters to vote a certain way. The thing is that money and propaganda have limits, especially if a message of reform resonates. That's what social movements are all about--coalescing around a message of reform that makes propaganda sound unconvincing.
Yeah, it wouldn't work with free, since even their (whatever) -> client is 1/4 c/ minute.

My concern isn't really about the money, though the free calls through voice are nice. It's that Google voice has my number now (as a gizmo refugee), and that + a voip provider + cell provider could be condensed down to twilio on the desktop and wifi, and maybe cell data on a tablet, or prepaid cell as a backup.

The $1/month for a number isn't bad, international sms is awesome for my use case.
Is your insurance company (I assume you carry liability of some type) going to go for that?
MS has always required you to have Xbox Live Gold to access Netflix, no? I only first got Netflix when it came to Canada, so maybe they changed it by then.
Pretty sure that's a twilio api.
I've been using GMail since its inception, so I figured I'd try the authors first suggestion, FastMail to see how the competition was fairing.

The article mentions that FastMail operates both "free and paid tiers of service", so I figured I'd make a free account and poke around. But I've clicked and searched for five minutes now and found nothing except paid plans with a free trial. Am I missing something?

Also, the article mentions that it "exceeds" the features of Gmail, but where the hell are all the features listed? I see nothing on any of the pages except for features like "Reliability" and "Easy migration" which tell me nothing about how it compares to GMail in features.

If this is an example of the best "alternative" to a Google product then the competition has a LONG way to go.
Please include an example.
In the old days they didn't have to report home...they knew what you were watching! (It was the only program being sent)
I recognise that I might be cut, that's a risk I'm willing to take if it means a more informed and positive environment.

I actually only started commenting then, I'd been a lurker for awhile longer, but that's not the point... I don't have much to add so maybe I should be removed from discussions until I can add more, I've only posted like 5 stories none of which I had anything to do with - I'd just found them.
Make up a fake code, or memorize a couple of random postcodes which aren't yours? Grocery stores in the USA routinely ask for your phone number for their "rewards program", and I just punch in one of any number of commonly-known numbers, which other people have conveniently registered for me. This occasionally leads to hilarity - Safeway's database shows that (206)555-1212 belongs to one "Hardman Dick"...
Dave's writing was all about him. I generally respect and understand what you're saying, but this is a unique case. He sought to elevate himself above Mayer by painting her in an unflattering light – timed to coincide with a moment of her prominence. That's tedious.
For those interested in replacing the Gmail's built-in voice calling feature, I wrote up instructions for setting up a SIP endpoint: http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/05/18/replacing-skype/

It's by no means a complete Google Voice replacement (though one could presumably build one with some work using Plivo, the SIP provider I used).
You realize you're talking about a codebase which still uses pre-standard parameter type declarations, right?
They removed the ability to buy, sell, and lend games. You have to pay an undisclosed fee to "install" a game that has already been installed, which is mandatory.
Sorry. To be honest I didn't test on mobile and actually built the site using a 24" thunderbolt display, thanks for the heads up!
"and really $40/year is a totally fair price for something as important as email."

It isn't about importance, it is about a comparison with its competitors. Drinking water is pretty important, but why pay for $5 worth of bottled water a day when I can pay 5¢ a day for water straight from the tap?
Apparently this is in the code that decomposes strings so that they can be compared (necessary with Hebrew and Arabic seemingly?).

This is an interesting snippet from that code...:

/* decompose the character if necessary, into 'base' characters
* because I don't care about Arabic, I will hard-code the Hebrew
* which I *do* care about! So sue me... */
if (c1 != c2 && (!ireg_ic || utf_fold(c1) != utf_fold(c2)))
{
/* decomposition necessary? */
mb_decompose(c1, &c11, &junk, &junk);
mb_decompose(c2, &c12, &junk, &junk);
c1 = c11;
c2 = c12;
if (c11 != c12 && (!ireg_ic || utf_fold(c11) != utf_fold(c12)))
break;
}

Apparently string comparison is harder than I previously thought.
Weaponized information, distributed
It's amazing to me how few people follow up. What's the point of the conference if you don't actually create relationships?
Amazon.com's proposed downtown Seattle office buildings
When I got the news about Google Reader being discontinued I tested around 4 alternatives.

Having tried NewsBlur I thought the web UI was perfect for my style of RSS reading and it was fast enough for my needs. The Android app is the icing on the cake.

I paid 36 bucks, the extra, to support a product that I use every single day for more than 10 hours a day, a product I enjoy using and would contribute if I had the knowledge or time.

Thank you very much Samuel, you are doing a very fine job and I am more than happy in helping the only way I can/know right now.

NOTE: I am not affiliated to NewsBlur or Samuel Clay in any way. Just a very happy customer here.
I'd be willing to pay something on the order of ~$8/mo for what Google Voice offers, especially if you added better filtering and an API. But I wouldn't pay more than my cell phone bill.
You don't block the people you disagree with.
You block the jerks, the obvious trolls, the negative shit aka noise.
Oh yes, Vim's code is anything but pleasant. I worked with it a decent amount several years ago when I was maintaining, for a short period of time, a patch that would add a terminal emulator to Vim windows.
"MS's focus here with ESPN and the NFL is bang-on."

I disagree. They managed to partner with the NFL but yet not show any games. Most of the games for my favorite team I still can't watch. Seems really lame to me.
I'm not brave enough to start with this price level, but then I fear that starting lower will leave money on the table...
Makes you wonder if the Republican party isn't intentionally taking the wedge-issue craziness to 11 only so that they can rebrand next election cycle and yank the mat out from under the Democrats. Given the effectiveness of Romney's rush-to-the-center in the 1st debate against Obama, the thought has to have crossed their minds. The timing (tossing last election to win the next one) makes sense because next election they won't be running against a relatively popular incumbent. They don't have anything to gain by doubling-down on the losing side of every social issue on the list -- their core demographic will vote R regardless -- but a pull-the-mat strategy could net them tons of wealthy individuals from the "socially liberal economically conservative" camp.
This is not a comment from a hiker. You do need to pressurize sleeping pads. If you're older than 25, you do, trust me.
As much as i love cooking, there are times where i would love something that is quick and healthy. not to say soylent is that, just that it would be nice.
I just switched to commafeed for rss. My only complaint so far is the iphone display.
Usually it's just a buzzword topic that garners votes, not the content. For example, anything with "bitcoin" has gotten play recently or anything tumblr.

They have code in place that blocks rings, so I'm certain it isn't that.
Very true. It was hard to get plugged into these events on my first trip at this conference. That's why I took a few people out to eat afterwords. It was easier to organize a 1 on 1 with less notice.
You laud the Arduino ecosystem as a place for hobbyists, yet you promote beaglebone? BeagleBone specifically warns against using the beaglebone in a retail product.

From the beaglebone terms of use....

You may use the Beaglebone Black as you choose. However, we do not support the use of the board in commercial products.The reasons for this are very simple.
We did not design the board for use in your product. We cannot therefore guarantee that it will work in all cases and over the full range of operation you expect.
We have had instances where people have done this and returned 25% of their purchases saying they would not work. Either the boards worked perfectly once received, or they had been blown up.
This adds to our costs and puts a burden on our RMA operation. It also takes away from our production capacity. We do not want to see our distributors run out of boards because someone is buying up the inventory.
What is the difference between GPG and PGP?
I think it misses the reality that operators don't care, at all, whether your device is up to date in terms of the OS once you've signed on for your plan

I think it's more likely that they care, but in complex and conflicting ways that aren't always obvious to the general consumer.

When you first buy the device (if it's close to launch), they probably care because your opinions inform others quite a bit, so hey want to make you happy and generate positive feedback.

Close to the launch of a new flagship device, they probably would prefer to delay updates for other/older models, to help adoption and uptake of the new model.

Throughout the entire time, they care enough to not generate too much negative feedback about their products such that it affects the marketplace.
Besides being able to achieve higher pressure (which I agree isn't terribly important), the Expeds need extra force to inflate because they're filled with down or synthetic insulation, which dramatically increases their insulating value. A R value of 1.0 isn't useful as a sleeping pad for hiking except in really warm climates. 2.5 is a realistic minimum for a three-season pad.
In these parts "red bull gives you wings" intended even less seriously. It is not 80-100% of your diet.
Thanks for the link. I love your stuff at swombat.com btw. Please keep it coming.
It really bothers me that people are so hung up on appearance.

For any media coverage about Lady Gaga, you are more likely to see column inches dedicated to deriding her appearance than you are to discussing her music.

When the Occupy protests were at their height, there were so many comments along the lines of "They may have a valid point, but no-one is going to listen to them if they dress like that"

All too often I see comments criticizing appearance as being something that indicates their value to be less. frequently it comes in the form of "I know it has value, but you should change the appearance so others can see".

I think this is counter-productive. Appearing business-like may make more people believe you are business-actual, but it also reinforces the attitude that means people judge the business-like as business-actual. It may be good for you but bad for the world. Those who wear the right suits and walk the right walk but cannot actually do the right work can deceive a lot of people.

I think pushing back against this attitude is a worthy endeavour.

- Neil Graham, Screaming Duck Software.
Limited market appeal (folks who eat to live vs live to eat)

Are we that rare?
Ask HN: CS-Texas A&M or Uni of Texas Austin?
I know UTA has a higher ranking, which should imply a better reputation. My friends at UTA say that the CS depart is too focused on research and not the best choice for undergrads.

I don't know anyone at Texas A&M, but have heard that the students are really hard workers.

Any feedback would help!!!
I don't see how protesting against Google's perceived abandonment of open standards[1] by using a Microsoft product makes any sense.

This is directed more at the linked post than you, but it fits here: Sometimes I get half-way behind one of these screeds, because after all I do believe in open standards (and was pretty peeved about Reader). But then I look more closely and find stuff like this, which frankly sounds like yet another Apple nut trying to stick it to Android via proxy.

[1] Which, of course, maps are not.
Most people would regard riding a horse as a pleasant thing to do in leisure time, but most today would also balk at the idea of having to care, feed, and maintain a horse to get to work every single day.

I realize this is anathema (I love food as much as anyone else) but there are moments in my life where I'd like to code or create things rather than worry too much about my next meal.
Because not everyone has a smartphone?
Mobile Development With YouTube APIs: Best Practices
Rob is a Y Combinator alumnus with professional experience in electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship

He researched the human nutritional needs and was frustrated to find that nutrition is not quite a hard science right now. Regardless, he identified the essential ingredients the body needs to thrive and, a few days later, began constructing his alternative diet using supplements purchased on Amazon.

Is it safe?
We have been testing Soylent on ourselves for several months and the data shows it to have a positive nutritional benefit.

Can we please see these data, and maybe have some trusted agency/regulators/company check them?