skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Does anybody know if the new Kindle 7" or the new Nexus 7 are ok for reading books with diagrams/images (i.e. IT manuals)?

I tried quickly my bro's Samsung Galaxy Tab 10" and even though it's 10" I think the resolution is not enough to have a full page readable on the screen..
MonoOne - a font for programming and code review
That already exsist, in open source form. Just use hledger, which offers hledger-web, put in online behind a nginx and you are done.

It uses ledger compatible transaction files which can you edit and inspect manually if needed, offers a bunch of additional functionality, and is a joy to use, bot the web and command line version.
Yep. Windows 8 isn't very popular amongst gamers. Also, remember Steam in 2003? It wasn't great, but Valve stuck with it and kept making it iterativly better. Also, nowadays most people can get their day to day functionality out of web apps if need be.
This makes sense if you look at it through your own tech-centric lenses. It seems plausible that Linux is good for a normal user when you try to put yourself in their shoes but the problem is that you can't really do that without bringing along your own knowledge and experience without realizing it. Linux is not okay for the basic user described in this post but it can be great for a lot of non techies.

"Grannies" don't like to deviate from the norm. The library has windows, friends have windows, by this point in time a person has come into contact with computers outside the home lots and they're almost always windows with an occasional Mac. You put Ubuntu on Granny's machine and she'll be asking why this doesn't look like what she saw elsewhere. Even if the function and UI are eerily similar there's this weird mental block that stops people from seeing the similarities and focus only on the differences.

The distribution described in this post is basically a Chromebook. Honestly, if your "Granny" needs email, skype, and the web then get an iPad + keyboard or a Chromebook. Not a full Linux install that you rip stuff out of. In fact, people with these granny use cases are already flocking to tablets over desktops in droves. A copy of Ubuntu "Gutsy Granny" as described here is bending a desktop to work not like a desktop save for the mouse.

I'm annoyed with the 2 mainstream OSes like anyone else and I especially hate having to troubleshoot problems that shouldn't come up for these Grannies but as annoying as it is I think switching these people to Linux is partly us trying to enlighten others (which comes off really condescendingly) and partly trying to make our lives easier rather than the user's by putting the user in the equivalent of a bubble where they can't break anything and if they do it's very convenient for us to fix.
Do you ever see yourself transitioning to a closed-source or SaaS accounting package, like Wave Accounting or QuickBooks Online? If so, why? If not, why not?
There's an article on Slate about those ads: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_...

Basically, the trick is "weird" because it's not too positive, so as not to make it sound false and unbelievable, not negative either, and uncommon enough to attract attention and pique interest. Of course, overuse of the technique desensitizes the viewers and it will eventually fall out of favor.
My web work these days are personal projects, volunteer work, or small freelance projects; so I am answering from that perspective.

For paid work, generally I stick to what I know -- a LAMP stack and whatever MVC/CMS framework fits the job.

My personal side projects are where I push borders and try to research new solutions. These side projects give me the breadth of knowledge to then be able to say, "hey, X technology will work really well" for work that is more important.

If you're asking for opinions on technologies and frameworks --

- I did a survey of php frameworks a few years ago and arrived at Kohana. It met my criteria of (1) a lightweight MVC framework, (2) code that is clean/easy to work with (aka not too much "voodoo" going on), (3) useful library of utilities (pagination, etc.), and (4) very configurable URL routing/validation. Developed one small and one medium sized kohana web apps since then and it is a pleasure to work with.

- When I was still doing web work under salary, we used an internal Zend-like framework which was forced upon all devs. The learning curve was high, it was very convoluted, and kept getting in my way of trying to develop my application. After I got used to the way it worked, it was more bearable, but I wouldn't go back there again. You'd have to modify dozens of files to make the simplest of changes.

- Very rarely do I write my own libraries or frameworks. There's almost always someone else out there who has already solved at least part of your problem.

- For simple CMS websites, I use wordpress. I started using wp back when textpattern was still a thing and haven't found any compelling CMS alternatives in php. It does seem to have gotten bloated in recent years. I tried Joomla once and decided I wouldn't go there again. It's very confusing, bloated, and the administration pages are unintuitive.

I'm open to suggestions for alternatives!
These are two different things:

1. Give more weigh to recent ratings in order to calculate the average rating. If there hasn't been any new rating, there is NO penalty for not having recent ratings.
2. Rank better the apps with more recent ratings. There is a penalty for not having recent ratings.

I agree with 1) (my proposal), but not necessarily with 2). Although it's true that ConnectBot has a lot of new ratings despite having been updated in October 2010.
Nobody has been stopped from speaking their minds.

The subject of the criticism has just decided it no longer wants to facilitate this criticism and they should be free to the extent outlined in the contract.
Apple Maps flaw results in drivers crossing airport runway
It doesn't feel like it's enterprise enough to be realistic.

class TwoBaconRashersInsideTwoSlicesOfBreadFactory {

/* Make a sandwich
* <p>
* Construct a foodstuff consisting of two slices
* of bread with two slices of bacon.
* @return TwoBaconRashersInsideTwoSlicesOfBread a sandwich
*/
Public TwoBaconRashersInsideTwoSlicesOfBread getSandwich () {
BaconRasherFactory pig = new BaconRasherFactory();

BaconRasherInstance bacon1 = pig.getBaconRasher();
BaconRasherInstance bacon2 = pig.getBaconRasher();

SliceOfBreadFactory loaf = new SliceOfBreadFactory();

SliceOfBread bread1 = loaf.getSliceOfBread();
SliceOfBread bread2 = loaf.getSliceOfBread();

return new TwoBaconRashersInsideTwoSlicesOfBread(bread1, bacon1, bacon2, bread2);
}

Or something... trying to do Enterprise Java is hard.
I wonder if electrolysis and storage of Hydrogen would be a viable 'storage' method? Of course, the problem then might be the hazards associated with containing such a 'bomb'.
Stop wishing. If you have a problem with easyJet, don't buy their product. If that means you can't afford to fly, stay home.

The problem is that beneath the feigned outrage, everyone can see that this is just a stupid bully of middle manager making a stupid decision. Nobody really cares enough about it to actually change real-world plans.
Exactly what I thought xD
Custom layouts FTW. I have the following line in my layout configuration (Linux/xkb):

key <AE11> { [ minus, underscore, endash, emdash ] };
YouTube improves its comment engine
Why we are building a new marketplace for projects and talent
Systems can be intuitive and novice-friendly without limiting the capabilities of technical users.

Also don't count on basic digital competency anytime soon worldwide. Where I live, young and old alike stare blankly into computer screens with no clue what's happening. Two days ago I unsuccessfully tried to explain to a 25 year old woman what a website is.

There are so many emerging markets for computers that intuitive UIs will be crucial for a long time to come. I'm glad for that, since the ease of opening my web browser or music player has never once prevented me from using command line tools, editing system/configuration files, etc.
"Instagram is it’s own category of social sharing"

These guys need to hire a copy editor.

Anyway, Instagram baffles me. I don't understand what it offers that Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook don't each already offer.

The fact that the mobile Twitter app no longer embeds Instagram photos (which party was responsible for that, anyway?) basically means I haven't viewed an Instagram photo in over a year. It's simply too much effort to open the link to view a pithy photo I'm probably not interested in.

Does anybody "get it"?
How To Design a Call-To-Action That Converts
the '3 lines' button that no one has a good name for.

It's called a hamburger button: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/03/18/whats-a-hamburger-but...
And cars and busses. And, most importantly in this case, multiple airlines in fierce competition.
It may be a case of grass being greener on the other side but working with astronomers sounds pretty cool.

I work on web stuff and get requests like that all the time.
anyone try running this with WINE?
To my eye, only the name looks similar.
Macs are great for this. Option-hyphen gives you an en-dash and option-shift-hyphen gives you an em-dash.
Some of them are fabulous UI. Most aren't.

I was referring to what takes but a second to learn and makes perfect natural sense thereafter (not to be confused with learning painful rote/ugly process). Interface should be obvious in context - but that doesn't mean the user has ever encountered that context before, and initially doesn't understand it enough to know what constitutes "obvious". If you've never encountered gravity before, walking (i.e.: stand, then fall forward, then stop yourself with a foot, repeat) is not something you'd think of doing, but is obvious once you see it done.
Sweet, this looks extremely promising!
I'm surprised you don't have make installed. That's usually one of the first tools I install on any new system (if it's not included as part of the base install, like Arch does):

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Incidentally, the make error you'd get is amusing:

make: *** No rule to make target `me'. Stop.
Any language has hard time being enterprise.

That what the space station architects are there for.
I've seen some shit fonts but this one...
Seems to perform quite well, though the fill tool is a bit useless thanks to the antialiasing on the lines that can't be turned off. Considering the simple approach of this, I'd either remove the AA (or make it togglable) or get rid of the fill tool.

Also...

h1 { font-family: Comic Sans MS; }

Seriously?
No, the best [insert unfavorable stereotype here]-proof OS in 2013 is iOS. Compared to iOS, Linux compares unfavorably on almost every factor:

- For truly casual, non-savvy users the iPad is the ideal hardware platform. It's small, it's unintimidating, it's inexpensive.

- Touchscreens are great. They're the natural interface for a casual user. I have a grandmother who became somewhat notorious for breaking LCDs in my family. This was back in the early 2000s before touchscreens were remotely common, but that interface mode still managed to stick in her head so firmly that she never did develop an instinct for using the mouse.

- For users this casual, a Linux setup depends critically on having a friend or family member who's able and willing to set up and administer their computer for them. Very few people have that.

- By contrast, the biggest problem I've had to support with non-nerdy friends/family and their iPads is, "I can't get this Send to Evernote bookmarklet working in Safari." That's obviously coming from one of the less intimidated ones.

- The onscreen keyboard is generally fine because people this uncomfortable with computers generally don't touch-type anyway. For those who do, a case with a built-in keyboard is an easy solution.

Now I'll grant there are some political objections to iOS out there, and for people to whom those political objections are important, Linux is less problematic. To them I say, get over yourself. This isn't a computer for you. This is a computer for people who neither know nor give a damn about the GNU Manifesto.

Or if you think they really do want something that folds, a Chromebook probably works too. Haven't had a chance to try one of those, honestly.
As far as I can tell, Docker & Ansible don't work well together.

If you provision your app using a Dockerfile, you get a bunch of cool stuff because it knows what's been applied and what isn't.

If you provision your app using ansible, you get a bunch of cool provisioning features from ansible.

I want both. It looks like you provision your app using ansible, meaning that you're missing out on a some cool Docker features. Our ansible scripts take over a minute to run even when it doesn't make any changes but one of the major reasons to use docker is because you can spin up an instance instantaneously.
Not enterprise enough, it doesn't implement any interfaces nor extends any generic classes, there also should be some try/catch blocks (what if the bacon isn't fried enough?) and of course several unit tests to guarantee the highest quality sandwich ;)
Of course we would grow out of GNUCash some day. I have not explored yet on what solutions we may end up looking at though. Since we are not an e-commerce outfit, we can live for some more time with basic tools just recording our expenses. The day when we start issuing invoices (or if we had to procure inventory to convert to saleable goods), we would need something other than GNUCash.
they should be free to the extent outlined in the contract.

Only if the contract is valid. I don't think you can sign away your right to speak your mind about an airline in order to be allowed on a flight. That would be unlikely to stand up in court in the UK.
Economist has an article this week on French people being unhappy with taxes that may be of interest.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec...
The Lifeinvader mission had me rolling around in stitches, really good stuff.
Excel and CSV Conversion to JSON and XML in JavaScript
This reminds me of the 'Bullshit Jobs' article by David Graeber. While I don't know how much I agree with the article, it does touch on your pet peeve:

> Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.

source: http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
sudo make me a sandwich

will result in sudo running with 'make me a sandwich' as arguments.

'sudo make me a sandwich'

will result in 'sudo make me a sandwich' running.
Ironically they are both in the same neutral family. https://www.dropbox.com/s/peqvvtw50ko6kbv/Screenshot%202013-...

That's probably also the reason why you think that it is meh.
Several have shipped, including Butterfly Labs (although they're still backordered). Here's a review http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/06/how-a-total-n00b-mine... Looks like they'll be profitable for a while yet.
Yeah there's still a bit of work to do on the paint can.

Hey, Comic Sans fits perfectly here, don't you think? :)
Parallax.js with HeadTracking Support
Trolls send letter to congress opposing patent reform
"The solution is really to speak up for yourself. You may have to remind your boss that he put you in charge. I can be a tough boss but I will listen to any argument and will be glad to be proven wrong or told that my idea is going on the list for later. But - you must convince me that your idea is better, or more practical, or that you at least have thought things through."

I'm fine with that, and believe me, I tried on almost every occasion to take that approach with this boss. Whenever I did, I'd get some condescending reassurance that he'd respect my plans, etc. From there I figured, as you suggest, that perhaps he didn't understand how I'd been thinking about something. Attempts to walk him through my thinking, or my team's line of thinking, would be met with a mixture of apathy and hostility.

It became pretty clear, in this particular guy's case, that he wasn't really interested in empowering anybody. He had some ideas, and he wanted them executed. Over the months, that became the path of least resistance, and we all just sort of accepted it. Unfortunately, many of his ideas -- perhaps even most -- turned out to be pretty bad.

Wisdom was probably the one thing this guy really needed, to be honest with you. He was older than I was, but only by 3 or 4 years. He was the type of guy who'd either been good or lucky early in his career, and who'd risen to a position of leadership for which he was probably not ready, or to which he was just not suited. He had been a strong individual contributor in his early days, and what I saw in him was an individual contributor uncomfortable with delegation and management. And the frosting on the cake was a big dollop of narcissism. (Not all inexperienced or uncomfortable bosses are narcissistic or bad; this guy happened to be, pretty nakedly).

"I'd say - face it head on. If the boss still won't listen, then start figuring out another employment opportunity."

True. But depending on the case, I'd amend that to "Face it head on and start figuring out another employment opportunity." Those things should happen in parallel, because, depending on how big a narcissist your boss happens to be, and depending upon the organization's culture, facing the issues head-on could result in your getting blacklisted within the organization, or negatively reviewed for insubordination.

It's possible your boss is just looking for you to step up. But it's equally possible he's just a douchebag. Hope for the better case, but prepare for both. Hope you don't have to pull your parachute -- but pack one, just in case.
You don't have to do things stupidly.

You can say "Older than X, decay", "has feature Y, decay". This is the company that makes pagerank, I'm confident they could come up with a useful ranking and rating algorithm
The internet's most viral colors
Of course it should have a ring-back feature. Not only is it a good idea for reducing customer wait times and frustrations, it is a feature Amazon already implemented several years ago for their regular customer service.

Around 2010 I placed an order and quickly realized I had made some stupid mistake--I think I had left some of my items in the wish list or so. I clicked through the support option on Amazon.com and it asked me for my phone number. I entered it, and the site gave me some clue about how long I'd wait (only a few minutes). Before long, the phone rang, and the person on the other end immediately resolved my issue, corrected it with a level of calm reassurance I hadn't experienced since something with LSI RAID support in 2007 (a higher-margin business with real critical stuff on the line, not my BS shopping cart mishap!).

Before that little episode (which lasted all of ten minutes), I liked Amazon. Afterward, I rarely considered buying elsewhere.
Amazon introduces the Kindle Fire HDX
How do they think Google Now and all those other lovely services work? New news? I think not, move along.
If you look carefully at the screenshot, you'll see that bread and bacon are declared to be ints above the method. =]
Condé Nast is investing in real estate
It is interesting that most tablet makers are global, while Amazon is very US focused (plus UK and Japan I think).
I run an online community and have had to ban abusive or just plain annoying users in the past. A few times those people will get in touch saying "OMGZ! You don't believe in free speech!"

Am I obliged to provide access to the platform i've built and paid for so that they can be disruptive and annoying? No. Do I support their right to go somewhere else and talk their crap? Sure! Absolutely! Go crazy! Just don't expect me to pay for it in money (hosting costs, etc.) and time (cleaning up the mess afterwards).
I'll never understand typesetting fans. Two spaces after a decimal point is confusing and incorrect (even though it has the advantage of using buttons that are actually on the keyboard) whereas having three different kinds of dash that are identical except for width (the middle one being generally indistinguishable to the layperson's eye) is perfectly sensible.
Cold you tell more about 42 school and it's innovative learning method ?
Gadget Deal of the Week: 20% Off Washable Logitech Keyboard
I believe the simpsons had an internet cafe named The Java Server.
Yes! Such a wonderful game - from the dry humour to bots' AI and the gorgeous art deco design of the ship itself. Although it's not exactly solvable without a walkthrough...
I believe that crime will increasingly move online,including wars. Cyberwars and cyber-fraud are the growing menaces of today's world. And, the NSA revelations about deliberately injecting weaknesses into encryption algorithms have only made it worse. The challenge here is that these crimes are faceless and borderless. So each of us is left to our own to protect the devices we use and thus, ourselves from an unknown enemy/criminal.
This comment is hilariously unaware of the actual history. Remember, I was around for the whole thing. Those guys writing HTML were writing static pages. Not guys that were writing Perl scripts, not guys that were deploying the websites—those guys were getting payed a LOT more.

The pay was out of whack because public money was flowing into tech stocks and companies were doing IPOs with little to no due diligence. You had do-nothing companies with ten to fifty times the capital that a typical well-funded company would have today. Large companies were buying things left and right out of sheer terror and misunderstanding of what the web meant to commerce.

So no. We're not in a bubble.
The second coming of Java the platform (the JVM), at any rate.
It only supports one finger at a time, but it works well then.
Solar pond
> Regarding the taxes, deal with it. full disclosure: I'm french and I like the healthcare system.

Sure.. How long will it last?

> VAT is not painful at all, even an accountant fresh out from school could handle this easily. Protip, hire an accountant. If you're a business, VAT is transparent for you. It only impacts french customers.

It's a myth. Companies pay VAT, you pay 19,60% of the value added by your company.

> You don't have to declare every website to the government, you declare it to the CNIL which is an independent administrative body whose goal is to protect data privacy. I like them too.

They haven't stop PRISM. Nothing is independent, the CNIL gets its money from state taxes, it's government.

> Why setting up a business in France if you only see the drawbacks of being here?

I am from france.

> Though I agree with you on the bullshit part. This incubator is a total waste of money

We agree on something! :)
Yeah, sure, they support the Zune players, XNA game development, and Plays for sure music.

/sarcasm

They support lots of things, the things where they are or have been market leaders. But Metro doesn't seem to have the market share to make MS commit to them. Neither does blade.

So, there's no real reason for MS to support them in the long term.
> The best way was a brand new architecture based on Java, a programing tool that grown more powerful than may expected.

Kudos on the proof reading.
Do you have any screenshots of this computer setup with vim?
It's pretty difficult to immigrate to most "attractive" places without a degree, the US included.
Alas, here in Texas, it's illegal[1] to call yourself a Software Engineer without a PE certification. The decision came out in 1998/99, and you should've seen everyone scramble to change their business cards.

You can't even design an embedded electronics device for a 3rd party (for a company you work for, is ok - industrial exemption) or write software for the same without a PE.

[1] http://sce.uhcl.edu/helm/SWEBOK_IEEE/papers/10%20reprint%205...
is it thread-safe ?