skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree. One of the more annoying things about people who talk too much about typography and other design topics is that they get locked into orthodoxies which are barely even opinion and certainly not even fact.

The classic example is Helvetica vs Arial. The first thing every designer learns about typography is that Arial is just an ugly copy of Helvetica and is to be avoided, but in fact, the difference between the two is so subtle that it really doesn't matter which you choose in most applications. In fact, when it comes to webpages, the fact that both of these fonts are being displayed on a computer screen means that pixelation will hide most of the differences most of the time so that they will really be equivalent. People who see the difference between the two on a website and decide one is better are falling victim to a kind of placebo effect.

My favorite example of this was a blogger who was extolling the advantages of Helvetica over Arial one day and showed two bitmapped renderings of Helvetica and Arial back-to-back. He intended this as proof of the superiority of one over the other, but he got the two samples mixed, and I had to point it out. Two samples, intended to show how one was superior, but he couldn't even tell the difference between the two.
Well, yes he was really special.

EDIT: That behaviour show what having a conscience means when you take it to the limit, which -to me- is really inspiring...

It is not only that. He left the IHES as a protest because it was partially founded by the NATO.

For non-specialists, the IHES is equivalent in 'scientific value' to any Insitute of your choice: Princeton, the Newton Institute, Max Planck, CERN... whatever. It is one of the few 'best of the best'.

He just left.

He became a recluse long ago, but that does not diminish his scientific merits.
Excellent quote from a famed Japanese microbiologist: "During the war, when I worked at the research center, I was assigned to determine what insects in Southeast
Asia could be eaten. When I investigated this matter, I was amazed to discover that almost any insect is edible.
For example, no one would think that lice or fleas could be of any use at all, but lice, ground up and eaten
with winter grain, are a 'remedy for epilepsy, and fleas are a medicine for frostbite. All insect larvae are quite
edible, but they must be alive. Poring over the old texts, I found stories having to do with "delicacies" prepared
from maggots from the outhouse, and the flavor of the familiar silkworm was said to be exquisite." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka
Can I ask why? From my other comment on this article I don't see the use case for an embedded NoSQL, but I'd like to.

Where and how would you use it? What, if anything, do you currently use in its place? If nothing, is there something you could use instead? Why is it better than a serializing your own domain model (assuming you have a domain model), or other alternatives?
Honestly, you could build a decent embedded document store on top of SQLite pretty easily. It's hard to beat SQLite's long and solid track record for embedded data persistence.

The default BLOB limit is around 1GB.

http://www.sqlite.org/limits.html
There's a ton of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that LSD, psilocybin, and similar compounds can -- under the right circumstances and in some individuals -- serve as "steroids for creativity." Think of all the people who have said this-- that they were inspired or experienced major positive shifts in consciousness after using these compounds. I personally know several individuals who had very positive experiences, in some cases ending addictions and making major very positive life choices after being exposed to these things. These drugs seem to have the ability to help people break mental cycles and habits and see things from radically different perspectives.

Of course, I've met burnouts too. The big difference seems to be that the burnouts were abusing these substances-- using them far too heavily and in very irresponsible ways. Of course, nearly anything psychopharmacological can be very harmful if abused.

I mean, listen to the pre-LSD Beatles and then the post-LSD Beatles. That's a good and rather striking example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNLcXj5yR68

These drugs really need to be scientifically studied. It's too bad that our society is terrified of any genuinely deep or maverick study of consciousness or psychology.
I try to do everything to avoid eating invertebrates.

The only reasonable exception is shrimp and alike.
What about that soylent diet?

There's other reasons we eat than just nutrition. If it was just nutriment we were looking for I'm sure we could do it easier than eating bugs.
Why I'm Not a Vegan
Apple, Samsung Devices Seen Raising Pentagon’s Cyber Risk
This is similar to the Egg of Columbus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus
Unless we clearly define "A player" this is a tricky discussion to have. What is clear, though, is that no matter what threshold you choose, there is likely to be businesses that can't afford a sufficient salary to attract people above that threshold, or doesn't have sufficient status compared to other places.

And what about all the jobs the "A players" don't want to do and/or are over-qualified for? A company that only hires the best and brightest will massively overpay for a workforce in which a substantial percentage will feel their talent is wasted on stuff that could be handled by someone with less experience.
Why would you want an app to take up more space than strictly necessary?
That would be a fantastic addition
The article does not state a major problem which is that fastmail.fm is not free.
Oklahoma Tornado Relief: Domain Name and SEO Services Charity Auction
The courts are getting more skeptical of software patents, in one chart
So you learned how to interview well, so what?
1.) Rasberry Pi 2.) USB sound card 3.) Analog mic splitter: (plus other things of course) -

Run small mic's and speakers to most commonly used rooms in house. Star Trek computer search enabled.

Missing link: send results to (x) screen.
The licensing is strange as well. The BSD license is listed as a feature, but the embedded scripting language (Jx9) is SPL (their own GPL-alike/Sleepycat license).

Since the Jx9 language is fully embedded (even stated as " All C source code for UnQLite and Jx9 are combined into a single source file."), they seem to contradicting their own licensing. The resulting library would also retain the copyleft SPL license.

The base code may be BSD, but incorporating the whole database into your code infects it with their SPL too.
Also, "The Doors of Perception", Aldous Huxley.
Almost Flat: The Future of iOS Design?
> As long as nothing illegal is happening

The problem is that it is not always clear cut what is legal and what is illegal when it comes to taxation on an international scale.

Tax laws are often written in language that lays out principles - such as profit should be booked in the country that the sale takes place in - but it is very easy to manipulate "profits" to make them appear in other countries. If a company goes too far to manipulate profits out of a country with relatively high taxes it can become illegal - but it would take a full investigation to determine this.

More certainly can and should be done to close loopholes and improve coordination between countries, but it is not a simple matter of a country writing "a new law" to fix the problem.
How Twitter Is Reshaping The Future Of Storytelling
Quote: "
15. Iowa. Official state bird: eastern goldfinch

Eastern goldfinch? That’s not even a thing.

What it should be: dickcissel"

Hm. I see goldfinches every day. They are colorful, fast, brave and everywhere.

Who is this guy? He has a lot of uninformed opinions.
The author's argument is vacuous. All* versions of Windows allow for applications to run when their window is minimized. And there's all kinds of crap that runs as a process or in the systray.

And if anyone wants to know what is "really" running - i.e. using resources - they use TaskManager or a similar tool.

*O.K., I mean "at least since 3.1."
But that's exactly it: at what point does tax "avoidance" become unethical or "civically irresponsible". After all, Apple is operating in the USA: doesn't it have a responsibility to the country (and state), along with it's shareholders and customers?
I saw this on Twitter the other day but even though I've LOVED math jokes since "because 7 8 9" in elementary school, I've been avoiding this post on the principle of not rewarding the linkbaity (and quite likely disprovable) title.
all sourced from reddit eh?
I'm looking forward to the day when drones provide TV coverage of sporting events like the Tour de France.

Where riders are assigned drones that are able to swarm safely above them, and when the riders make solo breakaways some of the drones tear off after them and give us close coverage.

The cost savings over helicopters for these types of uses will be stunning.
If your CFO is not doing everything legal to reduce your company's tax burden, then s/he is negligent in his/her duty and cheating the stock holders. Apple's CFO is very good.
I also love that, to connect to a XMPP server, a client needs to use SRV. Which AFAIK cannot be queried via gethostbyname, getaddrinfo, or any other standard interface. So you need to pull in a nonstandard resolver library, or to fork off `host`.

With that said, John I'm very happy to report that thanks to your library I've been developing an XMPP client for months and have yet to even see any XML.
(Pardon my french,) WTF is this followgen thing that breaks the browser's scrolling?

Here's the original page: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015?...
On Android, why would you care? They get killed when the device is low on memory anyway.
I can't believe the author suggested Verdana or Tahoma. They look terrible.
Software defined networking for public cloud
There is this running joke here in France with our local Superman, Super Dupont. The guy's so patriotic and so proud of his country that he regularly pays his taxes late to pay the tax penalties and support his country.

On topic, it's funny that the Congress seems so eager to treat Apple as a one of a kind bad boy whereas most of this industry is doing the same, and would be stupid not to. They bring more to their country than if they were blindingly paying the taxes the Congress think they should pay: more money means more products and more jobs. Simplistic view of the whole thing, I admit, but if France has shown one thing, is that we don't gain competitivity by suffocating companies with taxes.
Jquery required, but there's http://sisyphus-js.herokuapp.com/
Business Insider: Google Glass Will Be An $11 Billion Market By 2018
Well, yes and no. It would be possible through Firefox, but the feature (through WebRTC) is very recent, and low-level -- you'd have to go through a prompt, then they'd probably have to connect with sockets, do a request, and come back with the final results.

Conversely, Chrome has had x-webkit-speech -- a high-level text-to-speech feature -- since 2011. The code's already all there, everything just needed to be linked up and presented a little better.

They'll probably come out with Firefox support in a while -- it just takes more work.
Who pays all those individual tax payers? What should be the ratio? Isn't there far less companies than people?
"Their design ability might be improving, but again and again they show a lack of editing — they lack the ability to be selective about their product portfolio." This statement seems strange to me, being as the the prior paragraphs were about Google shuttering many of their products.

Google may not have historically had great "editing" but they seem to be getting there. They're discontinuing products that they don't think will succeed, exactly what "editing" sounds like to me.
There is a difference between avoiding and evading, but it's often difficult to tell when a company is doing one or the other. When people say "well they either did something illegal and should be punished, or they didn't and everyone should shut up", they usually don't understand how complicated the situation is.
Bullshit strawman. There's no evidence to suggest that true innovators require any such protection to convince them to work on projects. And regardless of motivation, that sort of R&D effort is its own barrier to entry, you don't need a government granted monopoly.
I couldn't agree more. I think most of the public would agree that corporations aren't paying their fair share of tax but it's wrong to accuse them of doing something unethical. They are doing their job and maximising profits. It's up to the government to fix the many loopholes in tax regulations. The current tactic of trying to embarrass companies in to paying more tax is just a waste of everybody's time. If the government can't do it's job right and close the loopholes they have no right to complain to companies that they aren't paying enough tax.
Gif's inventor says ignore dictionaries and say 'Jif'
In my opinion, chickens' white meat is the tastiest meat out there.

WRT "bland", that's why you cook your food. Throw in some spices and soy sauce and combine with greens or pasta.
What's yellow, normed, and complete? A bananach space!
C# and C++ counts are part functional.
My twin children spent seven years in Minnesota charter schools - one at one school, six at another, ultimately graduating high school. Overall, the experience was extremely positive. The reason is obvious to me... there is no single "right" way to educate a child. Every child is different, and has different needs. Techniques that work well for one student can work poorly for another, or even be counterproductive. Charters allow more technique flexibility and focus than mainstream schools.

The first charter my kids attended, in sixth grade, was awful for them. They were miserable and got bad grades. Does that mean it was a bad school? No, it's a great school! But it was a bad school for my children. The rigid, Catholic-like environment of that first school is great for regular kids who could use a more disciplined environment, but for neuroatypicals, it sucked.

The second school we tried was absolutely wonderful. It followed a project-based learning curriculum that gave children a lot of control over their own learning, but also demanded a lot of responsibility. My oddball children (and the herd of aspies, ADD cases, and queers that accompanied them) thrived in this environment. But frankly, I think it would be a bad school for most kids. It's too demanding.

Charters are in part about experimentation. And some experiments will fail. It's not a good idea to conduct large-scale, risky educational experiments on involuntary subjects - mainstream schools. But for parents and kids who CHOOSE to try new things, the opportunities are fantastic.

Sadly, most people's opinions of charters are knee-jerk political reflex, rationalized with "results" that have nothing to do with how parents or kids feel about their education.
It depends. Some coconut larvae taste great by themselves. The squishy inside of barbecued silk worms are also pretty good, for example.

But for many insects, yes, the seasoning is what counts. Or they can be just part of a more elaborate dish.
The quote is 'XMPP entirely'; what do you base your claim on?
They're lyrics. Admittedly puerile and tasteless, but every lyricists from Shakespeare to Springsteen (and lots of others that don't alliterate as well) can be accused of stupid lyrics in at least some of their works.

I don't like blanket value judgements of people's intelligence based on a ridiculously small sample group of their behaviours. It's sensationalist, reactionary and half of what I see wrong with society.

EDIT: I'd also like to say that you, sir, are responsible for one of my favourite HN comments in the last few weeks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702566). I beleive that made me giggle while drinking tea, and almost burnt my sinuses :-)
HN's editors (it has people designated as such) should replace blogspam submissions with the actual submission.
As maw points out, that is not a pure win, it is a tradeoff. And it is a tradeoff that I've found to be a really bad one. Being able to run indent over your code and have it automatically formatted is really helpful in large, long term projects where people come and go and weren't effectively forced into using one style.
I was experimenting with a bookmarklet-y thing. Sorry it breaks scrolling for you.
Same usecase, but with me skiing/snowboarding and my drone following me to record the downhill :-) I actually hope to have this prototyped for next season. Only issue is battery life.
How does that actually become legally binding? If the patents are assigned to Twitter, and are later transferred to an entity that never agreed to the IPA, what actually happens? I honestly have no idea how it would work out.

And I fully agree about the IPA's goal, I'm protesting against people saying that it should be treated as a benevolent patent pool now. On the whole, I think the entire patent bullshit is moronic and should be annihilated at first opportunity, but that's a different story.
Gary Vaynerchuk teams up with WunWun to deliver wine on demand in NYC
In a few years (months?) there will be articles telling everyone to quit using slab-serif fonts which are very popular right now.
You will be surprised about how many people actually know that you can change your default fonts on browser. For normal non-nerd users, you make choice of good defaults.

That's why VIM is not MS Word.
Practical challenge: automatically generate a natural language plus visual diagram series explanation of arbitrary equations marked up in MathML or similar.
genuine - was meant to mean a CoWo with tech startups residing in the space rather than creative startups - guess it could have been clearer
LOL, who has /time/ for 12-hour LSD trips :)

srsly though, we can learn a lot from acid. We don't necessarily need to repeat the drug over and over again, but we can undertake the same ritual without the drug:

i.e. If we stop doing everything in our regular schedule for 12 hours, put on bright clothing, go out into the woods, listen to our favorite music, spend that time with our most trusted friends and pondering nature, leave ourselves wide open to the speaking of the universe, we probably /will/ receive important insights on our life, our work, etc.

However, most of us can't actually self-discipline ourselves enough to do that for 12 hours. The drug -forces- us to have downtime, and its perceptual effects -facilitate- our curiosity and positive mindset... We will reach the next stage of human evolution when we are able to put everything on hold, put our foot down and tell the world: I'm going to open up the gate wide open between the world and my mind... with or without the chemical itself!
It's really crazy how fast Apple tax stories get flagged off the front page.
Holy Octocat There’s Church Music on GitHub Now
https://github.com/blog/1379-zen-writing-mode
I've encountered it just enough times to avoid it 100%. I think in my scenario, the problems have been compounded by an overall lax (lazy) coding style on the part of my predecessors, in that many of them were junior devs who virtually made-up their own coding styles. These devs treated whitespace like it cost money, and avoided any unrequired use of spaces, tabs, and newlines.

These types of conventions -- no curlies around simple blocks -- aren't too bad if a) your devs are adequately seasoned, and b) your devs believe in whitespace.

For instance, this isn't really so bad:

if (foo)
foo();
else
bar();

Hell, that's clean!

But it's stuff like this that causes issues:

if(foo)foo();
else bar();

Sometimes I'm lucky and find this:

if (foo)
foo();
else {
bar();
baz();
}

The best is abominations like this though; first, the sane formatting:

if (foo)
while (i++ < x)
foo(i);
else
bar();

Or, as I have found it:

if(foo)while(i++<x)foo(i);
else bar();

Seriously, that's enough for me to revoke commit privs.
I think that in their desire to explain this popularly, which is legitimate, they made a rather confused version of both the history and the mathematics. First, neither Weil nor Deligne are unheralded - they are about as famous and acknowledged as mathematicians can be, aside from a few universal geniuses such as Gauss and a few people who have solved a long-outstanding problem and were mentioned in the press a lot (e.g. Andrew Wiles). (Incidentally, Weil once joked that many generations from now, people will probably think that André Weil and Andrew Wiles, both professors from Princeton, were the same person).

Second, it's an exaggeration (to put it mildly) to say that Weil is the first one to think of a connection between numbers and geometry. I mean, this goes to Descartes at the latest. And such sophisticated tools as the fundamental group of a topological surface were introduced in the 19th century.

For anyone confused by the statement that the solutions to x^2+y^2=1 in complex numbers form a sphere: they obviously don't form a sphere in the usual sense, since the solutions are not bounded (since there is a root of every polynomial in complex numbers, you can find a corresponding y for every x, indeed usually two such y's). What's meant is that the Riemann surface defined by the graph of this function (i.e. y=sqrt(1-x^2), which is two-dimensional surface embedded into four-dimensional space, has genus 0, i.e. it is topologically equivalent to a sphere, which is to say it doesn't have any holes in it. I think you are supposed to prove that this is so by considering this surface on the complex plane minus the set [1,+inf], seeing that the function has two distinct continuous branches on the remaining set, each of which is equivalent to a sphere since it's a simple one-valued function over the complex plane, and then gluing the two spheres along the line [1,+inf] like you would glue two regular spheres along edges of cuts made in both. You end up with another sphere (from the point of view of topology).
Assuming the users know what stylesheets are and write them.
Tip: cars drive on the left in Australia, so road signs and posts will be on the left.
>This article, and others like it, imply that what Apple is doing is unethical. However, the opposite is true: it would be negligent for Apple not to do this. Apple's responsibility is to its shareholders, and that responsibity is to maximize profits.

Ethical, to have a meaning in the common sense, has to refer to "the society as a whole" -- not to whom you have a "responsibility to".

A gang member also has a responsibility to his gang members (e.g to maximize profit and get rid of people causing trouble there too). That doesn't make his crimes "ethical".

So, no, it can be legal and not ethical. Finding corner cases to side-step the spirit of the law is not regarded "ethical" in any place I know of.
> (although I would prefer it if they displayed apps and settings on the same page)

this is coming in 8.1, thankfully.
I was unemployed at the time (I'd just moved back to the UK and was looking for work) and didn't fancy hanging around for 2 months, so there is that.

But even if I was employed I'd be looking for an out much faster. I work with 4 week notice periods (max). A two month decision process is just messing you about.

--edit-- I'll add that the work sounded uninspiring, the location wasn't ideal and I was trying to go freelance/contract at the time (successful within a couple of weeks) so their goals and mine were completely misaligned...
>I appreciate that these are old rules

They are current rules also. The rules are largely the same as BSD rules, and go rules. Just because they are old, doesn't mean the people who wrote them moved on to doing what the trendy javascript kids do.
A scary percentage of "naturally polite americans" feel entitled to to whatever they want with complete disregard for others' convenience, as long as they politely say "Excuse me".
http://spikedmath.com/445.html
Spiked Math slowed down recently but it's still good.
Google I/O: The end of search as we know it?