skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I understand this; that's what I meant by "I understand that Google Apps is a different beast".

Regardless, to the average end user this distinction doesn't matter. I think users will gravitate to what works well and what their friends use.

I really hope this is Google Hangouts instead of Facebook Messages (ugggh).

iMessages has problems of its own (TERRIBLE sync between devices), but it has the huge advantage of working for everyone with an iDevice.

What I really want:

1) a service that works seamlessly between any device (like iMessages is supposed to for iOS and OS X)

2) this service should be platform-agnostic, working on any computer or mobile device

3) it should be federated like Jabber so we don't have to depend on one company

4) comparable features with the existing services: read receipts, group chat, push notifications

I hope Google Hangouts is exactly this, and that they let me enable it for my Google Apps account.
I wouldn't worry too much. UMass' Computer Science program is ranked very highly - comparable to Ivy League institutions. It's also the flagship public university in a state where higher ed is very, very important. Talking to Boston-area CS profs, I've heard that UMass is better than, say, Harvard for PhD students because the support provided to students is better.

In a financial crunch things can get uncomfortable, but UMass Amherst probably qualifies as too big to fail. And administrators are less likely to damage nationally-ranked departments then weaker parts of the university. For instance, after Katrina, Tulane killed off its CS and engineering departments (including civil engineering!) but kept areas where it was nationally ranked.
Looks like Foursquare is about to die.
In case there was any ambiguity about whether Google knew the 'real you' from their logging of IPs and search terms, this should remove all of it.

In a way I think we're seeing Google striking against Facebook in what I call the "identity wars" where each service is struggling to be an identity and information service about people.
What about movie trailers?
But not everybody has an email address! Oh noes!

No, seriously, this is a bad link, it's got no advice, and it's not helpful.

Here's some serious advice: Put a field in your database, make it Unicode, bound it according to your DBA's advice on how much space you have to spare. A couple thousand code points should be plenty. Then give your users a single field called "Name" and have it accept up to a couple thousand Unicode points. Done.
Out of interest, where'd you recommend getting a decent burrito? I used to go to Adobo on High Holborn, but as I spend less time in central and more time in east london, it seems like a little far to go.
The new Google Hangouts will not support XMPP
Hello from Google!

You are the administrator for one or more Google App Engine applications that may be impacted by an upcoming new product release. Google will be releasing a new communications product called Hangouts which users may choose to use instead of Google Talk. The new service does not support XMPP.

As a result XMPP bots such as the App Engine XMPP service will not be able to communicate with users who adopt the new service. There are two ways to keep your App Engine XMPP service working for end users:

1) Your users may use any chat client that supports XMPP. XMPP clients will continue to work as usual with the App Engine XMPP service.

2) End users will be asked to opt-into the new service when it goes live. Note that the go-live date may vary for Google Apps domains. End users and google app domain administrators may choose not to opt into the new system. If they do not opt in they will remain on the current Talk client and there will be no change to their existing functionality, including being able to exchange messages with App Engine XMPP bots. Users who already opted in may toggle back to the old XMPP based chat clients in Gmail.

Note that the changes discussed above have no impact on non-Google XMPP clients, which will continue to work as usual with the App Engine XMPP service.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don't hesitate to email us at app-engine-xmpp-questions@googlegroups.com.

Sincerely,

The Google App Engine Team

© 2013 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to Google Cloud Platform or your account.
The people who let their phones ring in movie theatres.
I hope they improved their phishing/scam detection as well.

If it only takes a few clicks to 'reply with money', and if the scammer only asks for a small amount, this method seems to have a much lower 'barrier' than wire transfers.
The article was good, but there are a few issues.

My background: I went to uni to be an economist, but I'm now a freelance software consultant/trainer. Also, for years I've written a blog about how to be an expat and on top of that, my wife and I run a company and she handles international IT recruiting. In short: I know a ridiculously large amount about this topic (except for the black-market work).

> Schools and universities are failing to equip young people with the skills that twenty-first century digital businesses need, these people say.

That's not true at the university level. At least here in Europe, increasing amounts of people aren't taking degrees in STEM technologies. If people won't seek the degrees, there's not much the universities can do. At a younger age, public education could be doing more to help here, but aside from interesting ideas like Estonia teaching children to program (http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/09/06/why-estoni...), you're going to have to have government support around a wide-spread approach of schools trying to interest students in IT.

> The time and expense that Navarro says is necessary to import a European national to work in the U.K. is not insignificant. The paperwork alone costs $1,000.

That's misleading. It's sort of true if you're a medium or large employer hiring tier 2 workers (http://www.overseas-exile.com/2012/08/we-dont-sponsor-work-p...), but ... that's a one-shot cost for becoming a licensed sponsor. After that it's making a job offer and issuing candidates a sponsorship number (which costs £184 for a tier 2 or £14 for a tier 5). Yes, there are still costs in bringing them over, but not

No, the real issue with the UK is that they currently limit non-EU skilled workers to 20,700 per year (unless you earn over 150K). As a result, you want to import your workers early in the year. Need a specialist in October? Ha! Good 'un, guvnah!

Of course, like the US, UK university graduation rates are dropping as tuitions rise, causing them long-term issues that they can't offset with importing enough skilled labor because both countries are limited said import!

Also, it's disappointing to see the article failing to mention the European Blue Card. That's one of the most exciting opportunities that Europe now has. Designed to fight against the US Green Card, it's a way to allow European countries (minus the UK, Ireland and Denmark) to import skilled workers with very little paperwork or hassle. Stay in your first country for a few years and you have the entire EEA labor market (minus caveats above) open to you! In Germany, for example, it's almost as simple as getting a job offer and moving. It's paying off well for Germany and it's going to be a long-term game changer for the EU if they can overcome their Euro troubles.
I swear by O'Reilly's SQL Cookbook (http://www.amazon.com/Cookbook-Cookbooks-OReilly-Anthony-Mol...). The examples start of easy and get more complicated as you go along, all with detailed explanations. The book is a bit out of date but it's still useful. IMHO, it will turn you from a novice to an intermediate in no time.
Does anyone know what fees are incurred for using this service, and if there is a maximum limit on the transaction amount? I had trouble finding this on the Wallet site.

(edit: The FAQ page just says it's free, but doesn't isn't clear about limits)
It should be noted that much of this process is federally mandated across a multitude of regulations. Since 9/11, it has been illegal to open bank accounts without a valid SSN, so that the government can track money more easily.

AFAIK, IANAL, IIRC, etc etc etc etc
JSCocoa has been there, done that. They even have optional Objective-J support.
That's not clear at all. When you close a bank account, they give you cash. You can't close the account without bringing the balance to $0 (unless it's done by executive fiat / government closed and froze your account with a warrant)
I was referenced in 4 different ways by 15 different people in a meeting today. My name is still intact and I am whole.

I think we should be careful with our words; there are people that have had their names (and more) literally taken from them. Using such an evocative phrase in this manner is irresponsible.
"coming to theaters July 4th..."
The real issue issue is here;

> securely send money to friends and family _in the U.S._

Google Voice it's the same problem - most of the world can't use it. Instead of 80/20 this is 20/80
Ah, I mis-worded that. I mean that the chance it was the passenger's phone is very low.
Ok, so it's 2.9% fee for credit / debit card payments. And I'm assuming the "connect directly to your bank account" is just using ACH transfers, which take a couple days.

Anyways, a while ago I heard a rumor that they had a team working on adding some, um... alternative, payment methods. Does anyone know where Google Wallet is headed with this?

Edit And here's some clues from the ToS[1]:

> 6. Google Wallet Balance & Peer to Peer Payments

> 6.1 The P2P Service is currently available only to Senders and Recipients who are U.S. residents and who otherwise meet the requirements of these Terms of Service. The P2P Service may not be used for business, commercial or charitable transactions.

> 6.2.a.iii For a Funding Account that is an ACH-enabled checking or savings account, initiate a debit through the ACH Network in the P2P Payment amount.

> 6.6 GPC may charge fees in accordance with the then-current fee schedule, as stated herein. Google Wallet may assess a fee of 2.9%, with a minimum fee of $0.30, per P2P Payment charged to the Sender for P2P Payments processed through the Service. Such fee shall be waived where your Google Wallet Balance is used for the P2P Payment, or an ACH-enabled checking or savings account is the Funding Account for the P2P Payment.

Looks like they've beat out Dwolla here. Ouch.

I'm also really interested in what forbidding "charitable transactions" actually entails. Is it just donations to 501(c)(3)s or is it gifts of other types? How about political donations? And what's its primary purpose? My first thought was that it must be for tax reasons, but then I remembered that people who want to prevent PayPal charge backs often request that payments be marked as "gifts", so it can't be disputed.

[1] https://wallet.google.com/legaldocument?family=0.buyertos...
I have a friend who's a pilot for one of the major commercial airlines. He uses his iPhone during flights all the time (seems to be common among pilots). I guess only the passengers are subject to the regulations. Though, I do realize that the pilots can easily turn theirs off if there's an issue; it's a little harder to track down the phone causing problems if it's one of the passengers'.

Regardless, the data doesn't seem to concretely prove that phones are causing any of the problems
It seems like they charge fees for the sender, if they fund via credit card. Otherwise it's free.
Hangouts on Android does not need a Google+ account as far as I know. Not sure about iOS. On Gmail, you can definitely use it without a G+ account, but photo sharing and group video calls will not work. Also, Google Talk will not be shut down, you have to opt in to the Hangouts experience in Gmail.
In comparison to http://here.com Google Maps was stale.
It asks me to sign in when I click "Request Invite" in a browser that has never logged in to google. Also asks me to sign in if I've signed out of google.
Well, the government can connect the onion URI to the new yorker. Would it be feasible to use domestic warrants to identify the server? I'm not sure as to what end as it would still be end-to-end encrypted.
There's also culture. Among my friends, I have to keep straight whether they expect 0, 1, 2, or 3 kisses on the cheek.
You have to go into settings and verify your account and then you can add a bank account, which will allow you to do an ACH transfer.
The USA is the only country that requires tax returns & payments of expats that make no income from their home country and no longer live there. I'm not surprised many 'normal' people are very unaware of these facts when they move away from the USA.

On top of that you have huge accountant costs to file these complicated penalty prone returns even if you end up not owing any taxes year over year.

It's still 'negligence', your IMF example is just in part instead of in full.
Well, this isn't scientific discourse, it's about erring on the side of safety. And it's not like it's easy to get any other kind of evidence from actual flights.
Well I'd be happy to sacrifice a few inches of cloud visibility so I could plug myself in to music and turn off the rest of the plane.
Wallet grew from Checkout. The Checkout brand is dead, but the functionality is still there in Wallet.
LOL at adding PHP support to app engine almost 5 years later. PHP gets a lot of bashing but you can't deny its popularity, as evidenced by the number of stars.

https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1...
>If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright?

GPL protects the users' investments in that as a purchaser (there has to be a better word than purchaser here) of a derivative of GPL will have freedoms 0 through 3[1].

--
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
--
[1]
> a) can write non-trivial software and b) can't learn a C derivative language who c) would actually write software for Apple's platforms. It just seems like a pretty small set.

Funny. I've sometimes similarly speculated in the past that the set of developers who (a) struggle with JavaScript as a tool for in-browser apps and (b) would actually be genuinely productive with some other dynamic scripting language (Ruby, Python, CoffeeScript) in the same context is pretty small too.

But the truth is probably that whether or not someone can develop non-trivial software with any roughly equivalent language is mostly a function of available time to ramp up vs spend on other things. So, sure, Obj C and JS are close enough that anybody who can develop non-trivial software in one can probably do it in the other... but it's still going to be a time investment while you learn how things are done in the language and various associated APIs.

I don't know if Apple particularly cares if they're pulling in more developers. If they do, though, adding another language that many developers already know makes sense. It reduces the friction involved.

> And, if Apple were to switch, why would they pick a language as shitty as Javascript?

On top of the widespread at-least-shallow familiarity, not everyone shares this opinion.

Also, this is unlikely to be a "switch." It's more likely to be a gateway.
I don't give a shit about sexist and homophobic neanderthals who need to put down, intimidate and bully other people to make themselves feel better.

And no, I truthfully don't hang out with such scum.

You seem to have a very twisted idea of what normal, civilized male behavior is.
I'm talking about the OpenGL drivers. They were never intended to be exposed to untrusted code running on web pages, so they haven't really been hardened appropriately.
They don't because liability risk increases as you apply these liability prone powers.
And here I was hoping for real OTR encryption in Gtalk. Silly me.
Google Wallet is how old now, three+ years? They didn't even bother adding any other way to pay than credit cards. Someone needs to tell them that there are countries where people simply don't use credit cards. They exist, but at cost, and the culture just isn't there.

If they continue innovating in the payment space at this rate, they will maybe have a solution people here can actually use in 2020.
Interview: Harvard Prof Robert Steven Kaplan on 'What You’re Really Meant to Do'
And higher property taxes encourage saner property prices!
When you find yourself arguing about whether a tree falling in the forest causes a sound, the right thing to do is to start talking about vibrations and audio sensations instead. Ambiguous words can almost always be bypassed by using more words to nail down meanings properly.

And, more elaboration on the subject than necessary:
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human%27s_Guide_to_Words
This Is How the Web Was Built, According To Google
It might seem impossible to comprehend the web existing before Google but it did!
> 99.99% is good enough for me

99.99% is 1::10,000. Multiply that by 643 million passengers per year (http://www.transtats.bts.gov/), and you get a lot of interference (64,300 passengers whose devices interfere...).

I believe that the chance of any typical passenger device interfering with critical plane systems is much less that 0.01%, but we need to be careful with seemingly unlikely events multiplied by large numbers.
nifty, it pushes notifications to pebble watch.
Google Compute Engine - now available for everyone *

* Till its gets some traction, whereupon we will either jack up prices by 100% or more, or till some bigshot at Google kills it saying its not 'strategically aligned'.
Depends. Prefixes of Dutch names are lower case if preceded by another name, and upper case if on their own ("Van Vlack" versus "Wheeler van Vlack"). Prefixes of Flemish (Belgian) names never change case, so the name will either be always spelt as "Van Vlack" or "van Vlack", regardless of context.

I guess that in the US the Dutch/Flemish conventions do not apply, and the spelling choices will depend on the person/family.
You don't have to identify with anything to recoil at the abstract thought of Capita. Eurgh.
Looks great, too bad it won't even launch for me on Windows 7. Anybody else running into problems running it?
I'm sure google knows the "real you" if they care to look, but at least in the past, they didn't care to look unless there was a court order. Maybe they care now -

In what way does this announcement make this more or less evident?
> How would you guarantee that known version? Using the normal import above would not do this

Because that's the source code sitting in your src tree. That's actually exactly what 'go get' will do: pull the source code of the current version of the dependency into your src tree and build objects in your pkg tree.

> The only way currently to guarantee you get a known version is to fork your dependencies, put all the code in your own repository and update them manually.

Nope, you just use (e.g.) a git submodule for the dependency. When you need to, but only when you need to, you can update each dependency or all at once.
watch the livestream of the "google maps: into the future" session which is on right now:

https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/326458345
That's not what I mean.

On that page (http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/, no SSL, no hashing, etc.) is an onion link. I see it as http://tnysbtbxsf356hiy.onion.

An adversary with sufficient access (whether to the server, or to the network between the New Yorker site and your browser) can rewrite that link without your ever knowing. Then you are legitimately directing your browser, once on Tor, to a spoofed site.
Yep, I already warned about this a few days ago. I would like to encourage everyone to avoid using this walled garden service and make sure you tell both your friends and Google why. Say NO to proprietary network protocols!
It looks like they have preemptively documented how to install Wordpress: https://developers.google.com/appengine/articles/wordpress

I wonder how the performance is -- will they support common cache plugins? If not, I wonder if stock wordpress on GAE will be able to withstand getting frontpage'd on HN/Reddit

Edit: Unfortunately, as there is no CloudSQL free tier, there's no way to test it out without paying a small amount.
The early access preview (http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html) is definitely prettier than Eclipse. Not that that's a high bar to clear. It also seems to be less stable, which is a high bar to clear. ;)

Yeah, I know, pre-release software.

The windows seem to take a long time to load, too. That strikes me as odd -- it's one thing when you're starting up some sort of interpreter, but several seconds to scan the project directory or open a file? Perhaps that's another pre-release issue.

The layout XML editor looks like a big win, though. The syntax awareness, suggestions, documentation access, formatting and just all around general helpfulness seem to be about 1000x better than Eclipse. That alone would make it worth the switch! I think the biggest time sink for me while working on layouts is remembering "what's the darn attribute for..." It's all right there in glorious detail.

The realtime WYSIWYG view is . . . cool, I guess. ADT already had that, though you had to switch to a different tab for it. Maybe I'm missing something; it doesn't seem that revolutionary to me. It still doesn't handle custom views, which I use a lot of. (And I mean a lot! Custom container views, too.) And I don't really like feedback while typing, anyway. YMMV, of course, but it looks to me like the big win is the text editor itself, not the graphical display.

I've been meaning to get off of Eclipse for a while now, so I'll play with it more and watch how it changes. For now, color me experimental and cautiously optimistic.
I am logged into 2 Gmail accounts at the moment, which one did it connect with?
>>> my alma mater, the College of William & Mary, was founded in 1693 (second only to Harvard, which was founded in 1636)

Bah! ;-) My alma mater, the University of Edinburgh, was founded in 1583, yet is still young compared to Oxford and Cambridge.

However, even the oldest or 'best' universities in the UK have tiny endowments compared to their US counterparts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UK_universities_by_endo...
Show HN: Encryption in your browser with GnuPG.js (part of unix-toolbox.js)
Not only that, but in the last example in that section he replaces a fairly short and readable expression with a function call. I don't see how this is different than a comment in any meaningful way (except that it requires extra lines of boilerplate and whitespace that don't lift any explanatory weight), and unlike a comment it pollutes the call stack for no good reason.
I might be confusing things here but does concurrency, at least the definition give here, not directly map to task parallelism?

Task parallelism and data parallelism are two important concepts and the tools we need to implement them are very different. The two words used by the author to convey the difference between those two concepts are not chosen optimal in my opinion. There seems to be a hierarchy between concurrency and parallelism whereas task parallelism and data parallelism are directly comparable.