skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Just because you don't like the fact that you can't download music from them without using their (very good, in my experience) music player doesn't mean it's useless or their strategy is broken.

Oh, I don't have any animus against the player. While I preferred lighter weight players that support more formats and are easier to customize, foobar, classic winamp, and amarok, Apple definitely made some gains in usability, simplifying the experience for the commodity consumer.

I love it when they compete on features, I'm just depressed and frustrated by any company that tries to win through lock in.

It's an old quote now, but it still lines up pretty well with my feelings: "The paradigm of competition is a race:by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way. If the runners forget why the reward is offered and become intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies--such as, attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late."

I understand why companies do these things, just as I understand why people steal or commit fraud. I just wish they wouldn't, that's all.
Varies a lot by form factor - my experience with Metro apps on touch devices has been amazing. On desktops, I rarely have a reason to use them - except for running a full-screen Kindle / Netflix app on an additional monitor.

FWIW, iOS7 and the latest Android UI actually borrow a lot from the Windows Phone flavor of metro pretty heavily. The context switching between apps on iOS7 is identical to what MSFT introduced in WP7.1 (Mango.)
Why C++ Programmers Aren't Moving to Go
I have a PhD and have been talking to different employers and they don't know what to do with me. Sure I can code, sure I can sysadmin, sure I can solve problems, and convert cutting edge research into practical applications, but what exactly am-I good for? The chameleon analogy is very good...

So I say, f*ck it, and keep doing what I know how to do best: teach, write and build tools for teaching and writing.

To all chemistry and biology PhDs out there, please get in touch with me if you want to write a short textbook to introduce UGRADs to your field. Together, we can partner and take over the textbook industry.
IGOR, a 2008 class project at a Norwegian university:

http://opencores.org/project,igor

http://www.idi.ntnu.no/news/index.php?news=163

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaitorge/sets/72157609445719327...
I used to use http://help.dottoro.com/ when I was learning to program. I would recommend it if someone was looking for a good go-to doc. But for quick reminders (which is rare) I use generally MDN or read the official spec.

They (help.dottoro.com) also have links (when available) to the Microsoft Developer Network, Mozilla Developer Network, Safari Developer Library, and the official W3C spec, which can be helpful. The only thing I would really change about their site is the URL structure. Completely nondescript and not user-friendly.

Once you move from using W3S to MDN or really anything else there is no going back.

CSS's display:

W3S: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_display_visibility.asp

MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/display

Dottoro: http://help.dottoro.com/lchnsqsb.php
Why do people worry about the possibility of entering an ice age? That seems like the sort of thing humanity is much more prepared to survive.
It is long-term. Opening up iBooks to any device or just being available on the web would increase profits immediately. Building out the ecosystem is the long-term part.
It's reasonably common in southern Europe to have bidets in the bathroom for that purpose. You're right that they're uncommon in the US and northern Europe, though.
DC is restricted to that 60 sq miles and can get no larger. It was actually a bit larger until they gave back all the land on the south side of the Potomac to Virginia.
I don't have a copy of the final 2011 standard, but as far as I can see there's nothing in the latest 2011 draft of C++11 that expressly prohibits COW.

[21.4.1.4] does say "Every object of type basic_string<charT, traits, Allocator> shall use an object of type Allocator to allocate and free storage for the contained charT objects as needed", but that "as needed" most definitely leaves the door open for a COW implementation.

The only other part that I can see that may preclude a COW implementation is the postconditions specified for copy operations [21.4.2], which says data() returns a pointer which "points at the first element of an allocated copy of the array whose first element is pointed at by str.data()". Again though, "allocated copy" doesn't necessarily mean "a copy I just allocated". When I go and get a copy of a book I don't literally go and copy it.

In fact the standard specifies that the move constructor leave the source value "in a valid state with an unspecified value"... which again suggests you could use COW and have the source argument return the same value it had before you moved from it.

In the latest C++14 draft though (N3690), you're right, it is explicitly prohibited because "Invalidation is subtly different with reference-counted strings".
Ignore trolls please.
IPhone, you're ruining everything (2012)
Out of curiosity, how is this different from a radio station?
Single character or double character names are the trend these days. (Not saying I support that though!)
Bingo. You see a bunch of guys with machine guns coming out of nowhere, you may spill your beans right there and all of that is admissible in court.
There's a nice Econtalk on 'price gouging' [1] that talks at length on this subject. ihsw hits the highlights.

[1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/01/munger_on_price_1.h...
As a web developer with some extensive Firefox familiarity, please, please, please do not use Pale Moon. Please do not suggest to others that they use Pale Moon.

It has bugs that other versions of Firefox do not. Because he does not openly share his build configuration/etc it's not possible for you to fix those bugs.

I've had to spend a lot of time trying to troubleshoot issues Pale Moon users had with my HTML5 applications, and in every case the solution was for them to use a properly built and maintained browser. :(
All of it. The pilot is going through a checklist. The checklist is not going to have unnecessary steps in it. When pilots don't follow the checklist sometimes they die, so they are pretty religious about following the checklist.

That is a pretty new 737 (someone speculated 737-800). Note the flat panel primary displays (color LCDs), that is the tip-off that this is pretty new.

P.S. There is a small piece of me in the FMS.
I agree. On my (non-touch screen) laptop I hardly ever use the metro apps. I like win8 but I just go to the desktop practically every time. There just aren't any metro apps worth using right now (I basically only use this laptop when i'm in front of my netflix-capable tv)
DRBG Validation List
Mentioning CDs reminds me that the price of physical CDs on Amazon in some cases has dipped below $0. For some CDs, Amazon throws in the MP3 download (with the usual cloud storage) for "free". The funny thing is, the price of the CD+MP3 is sometimes less than the MP3 alone, even with shipping. Check the Velvet Underground's back catalog for some examples.
> Mistrust of banks' ability to honour withdrawal requests is largely irrational in a developed country given the existence of government-backed deposit insurance (and the much greater risk of having your cash stolen). I'd actually consider this to be the classic example of irrational mistrust based on a limited understanding of who actually loses out as a result of bank failures

Pretty much every developed country has spoken in the last few years of forcing depositors to take losses in the event of bank failures, and some have actually done it. Governmental deposit insurance SHOULD be inviolate, but that isn't the way the regulators are talking and acting.

Meanwhile, how many HNers are currently praying that Mt. Gox will stay liquid long enough to give them back their money?
Friendly, intelligent flash cards
Not particularly (as hard as it is for a child to say about their parents). My mother has ADHD, and only diagnosed 2-3 years ago, which caused issues in school and work and any other ambitions. We're pretty sure my father has autism, but getting him formally diagnosed would make no difference. Due to him being in finance during the recession, he had trouble adapting to the new career environment.
Assuming the marginal cost of printing an extra card is fairly small, have you considered sending a copy of the card to the sender?

Unless the recipient provides some sort of feedback the sender doesn't really get anything to show for it. This could also let the sender see the quality of product sent. You could limit it to just the first card sent to limit your cost increase.
Brief Lessons From Reading “Give And Take”
I am physically disabled, I'm from Finland, and I looking for an investor and also CIOs for develop my projects in the round world.

So I need someone to private investor or financier should be involved.

If you have question for support and development contact with me, Mobile: +358 45 266 2882 E-mail: ali.alizadeh3p(AT)gmail.com and Official E-mail: ali.alizadeh(AT)fassment.fi Thanks.
How many times in a row can the same post be submitted?
Our Brains Often Fail to Notice Key Words
The UN do a world of good. Unfortunately, the US – which are the central actor in this surveillance scandal – do not respect the UN and other institutions of international governance.
This is rather fucked up. The author does not provide any proof that Fairplay is the reason their app is not able to play. Of course HN crowd do not need proof to bring out the pitch forks. If they can show me proof I will definitely fall in line. In fact if the guys want some help fixing their app they should try talking to Apple and not try to sensationalize things and make false accusations.
I'm successfully pushing local content to my Chromecast. The developer in question was using an undocumented API. If you use the documented APIs, things work just fine.
It seems that the uncertainty is much higher at the end of the blue curve. I wonder why.

It also seems that the red curve has no uncertainty data.

I would not dare draw any conclusion from these curves before I have satisfying explanations for these two questions.
I want to play devils advocate here.

You seem to be pretty much in line with most of the people commenting here, who largely assume there are methodological problems with the studies rather than accepting the findings that wealth causes moral decay.

Whenever anyone offers "some" amount of anything, candy in this case, is it wrong to take all but one? They're rationally maximizing their holdings within the bounds specified.

Yes, this could account for why that person is wealthier. But it is not moral behavior. Someone who says "the rules do not strictly prohibit me from taking as much candy from the children as I feel like, therefore I will do so" is a cancer on society, someone who takes as much as they can get away with, everyone else be damned.

In other words, anytime the rules are ambiguous, why not test them?

Because there are other people, and you should consider their needs and wants in addition to your own.
Never Underestimate the Bandwidth of a Station Wagon Filled with Backup Tapes
I don't understand this point of view, sorry Warren. The fed is generating revenue for the government in a certain sense, yes, but saying it is a successful hedge fund is like me saying that if I hold a bunch of bonds in my portfolio throwing off some interest that is a successful hedge fund. The entire question is what are they going to be able to sell those bonds back to the market for. If they end up having to sell them at a massive loss, which is likely, then all that revenue they've been throwing off in interest better offset those losses. I might have this wrong but it seems to be very odd to characterize the fed's QE programs as a success when it is literally an experiment in progress.
Spotify is very popular in Europe, I really wonder why people still buy albums when you can get access to a huge catalogue for a relatively small monthly fee. Of course some albums are not available but I guess it will improve over time.
We use toilet paper to wipe our butts, not our hands. So we shouldn't get fecal matter on our hands to begin with. Though we still wash our hands afterwards.

How do you wash your butt with water? I wash my body parts (in shower) using my hands to rub. Should I apply my hands on butt at loo? Sometimes I do it, but that's only when paper doesn't do a good job. But then my hand is in direct contact with fecal matter and there's a good risk of getting it under fingernails too. Of course I wash my hands as well as I can afterwards, but regularly dirtying them that way does sound like questionable personal hygiene.

(I can't believe I'm discussing this on HN.)
I learned writing compliant HTML and CSS by reading the specifications "from cover to cover" (or rather the online equivalent of that) in 2001 or so. A few years later I learned PHP and MySQL from reading the documentation on their official websites.

(Well, reading and trying it out on my own purposeless projects.)

Never saw W3Schools until 2010 when a co-worker (web developer) showed it to me.
140 Years Ago Today, The Great Panic Of 1873 Led To The First Market Closure
It's probably because all the climate scientists in the world are trying to trick you.
But 3rd-party software (like Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil) can offer a lot of nice features that are not present in 10.8: Routing of output from arbitrary apps to an AirPlay device (even without app-level support), simultaneous output to multiple Airplay devices throughout the home, graphic EQ, etc. etc.
There was a This American Life episode during the financial crisis when interest in bank failures was high. They followed an federal takeover of a bank, and from what I recall, it was an extremely swift and surgical procedure. The don't inform the bank ahead of time when they're going to take it over, because the last thing they want is a bank run. For that reason they also try to disrupt banking hours as little as possible if at all.

[edit: here's the episode, very interesting listen: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/377/S...]
Now here is the bigger part of the problem: how does an inventor or an entrepreneur-with-such-a-karma reach such an investor (quickly)? Getting into Stanford is one way, of course, but that would be inefficient to do say a "Google" now.
Is anyone else bothered by the lack of lossless audio availability on Amazon and other music distributors? This has been a stumbling point for me. Why doesn't Amazon offer FLAC or similar? I can't imagine the bandwidth and storage requirements are beyond what they can (inexpensively) handle.

For this reason I've been really excited about bandcamp. That and it makes it really easy for (actually) independent artists to distribute their music.
Funny that for all of the people in this thread who has described W3Schools as sucky (countless!), only two have supplied any examples and those were for PHP-MySQL concepts.
How to stop cheats, the Dexter way
This is the only place that I've been able to find a decent list of vendors potentially affected. This lists all vendors, so you will have to ctrl-f for BSAFE.

To be completely clear, most vendors on this list are not known to be affected, only those listed as using the library, or libraries derived from it (also listed).

All entries using Dual_EC_DRBG are potentially affected, but it is believed that most do not use that by default. If it's the only one listed, you can probably assume they use it by default. Especially things called "Datacryptor DUAL_EC_DRBG" by Thales e-Security.
Shark Tank also takes 2% stake regardless if they get funded or not.
This is a pretty cool idea. I had considered it but not deeply enough in that it would likely increase the rate at which customers ended up returning which is the key metric. I might give it a shot, since it's easy.

The only reason I'm skeptical is that I'm already contacting people after a few days to follow up with them how their order went, so I'm unsure how much more upside there is to interacting with senders more post-free card.

The other two problems is you've now doubled your acquisition cost so it'd need to at least double your return rate to be worthwhile. Also you'd need to get people to enter their own address which will reduce your top-funnel conversion rate, but this isn't really a huge deal in the long run if you assume you can drive users cheaply to the app.
I took a Distributed Systems class with Prof. Cheriton in 2007 for my Masters degree. In the first few classes, I remember being awed by the wealth and legacy of the man, and wanting to glean everything I could from him. It quickly became apparent though that he hadn't updated his course materials or lectures in over a decade, e.g. the pros and cons of distributed shared memory vs COBOL RPC. The core topics were there, it was just presented in such a dry manner.

Worse though, was that he would needlessly inject his very conservative politics as total non-sequiturs. Test questions like "Hillary Clinton wants to build [obviously unscalable system], explain why it won't work. I found it very unprofessional.

Stanford records a video of every lecture, and enrolled students can then watch them whenever. I remember sitting in my dorm room, watching one of his 75 minute lectures where there was literally 3 students in a 150 person auditorium. It just floored me that this was how a billionaire was spending his time. I do genuinely like the man, you could just tell he was capable of so much more.
~18 months ago, Gizmodo linked to[0] a page on my web site. It was then posted to Reddit, was shared several thousand times on Facebook, and also linked to by The Atlantic. (I'm not sure if it was ever linked to on HN or not or how to even check.)

I was at a customer's site that morning (one where cell phones are absolutely not permitted and I couldn't exactly pull up my personal e-mail) and my first hint that something was up was when I looked at my phone upon leaving for the day and seeing the absurd number of "new follower" e-mail messages from Twitter.

I knew something was up but didn't know what until I got home that evening and could get online. By then, the page had in the neighborhood of 145k page views and the worst was over. I thought it was cool as hell but the girlfriend, meh, not so much. I had already arrived home later than expected, making us late for dinner w/ friends, and she certainly did not share in my enthusiasm, to say the least.

When it was finally over, that page had received just north of 180k page views and made me a few hundred bucks thanks to the AdSense banner across the top of the page. It was certainly a neat experience.

[0]: http://gizmodo.com/5881627/have-you-ever-unlocked-any-of-the...
I tested both extensively lately and the performance was exactly the same (under Intel Compiler and Visual Studio) so probably those compilers found a way to optimize it. They both are much slower than hand coded version anyway so it doesn't really matter (link to implementation which beats standard qsort/std::sort performance by 2x/3x times (at least on my data): http://www.ucw.cz/libucw/doc/sort.html).
Absolutely. You might be interested in Radley Balko's book: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...
I just tried this on my Surface Pro and although performance is really lacking and pinch to zoom does not work, I am excited about the possibility of using other browsers than IE11. Chrome for Windows 8 has been abandoned since release so I hope Firefox will continue to develop this UI.
Peachy Printer - The world's first $100 3D Printer
Latest Snowden Leaks Show GCHQ Gleefully Hacking Belgian Telco
The elephant in the room is that if you're a successful academic, you should be either networking to get invited into the sort of position that companies don't post openings for or founding a company. Jobs, and especially job calls, are for suckers.
>What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results.

i wouldn't mind if NSA was doing something really useful like that instead of building total surveilance and instilling fears of it into its own citizenry
In a balanced society, the needs of businesses do not outweigh the needs of citizens.
Yes, yes you did. One example:

"[M]otivating inventors was not the purpose of patents, it's merely the side effect of the method used to get inventors to give up their trade secrets."
Yes, and it is not clear on the diagram, if the red curve is actually inside the uncertainty range. At least on my screen I really can't tell.
Zynga's not a great example because startups got a foothold and are now doing well why Zynga flounders. Kabam, Kixeye, etc. Zynga's audience was 100% casual users, and they've been unable to use any cross-promotional muscle to get into the mid to hard-core segment. Also there aren't real economies of scale and there is no third party distribution problem.
That is an awesome tip.
My critique goes more in the direction of DNSSEC being a centralized infrastructure. I didn't mean that it is easily subverted but its possible, especially for an US state actor. Its definitely more transparent as SSL CA's for sure. However, for my communications I'd like rather rely on an infrastructure which is independent from centralized resources.
> ...the use of Microsoft ASP...

So the use of ASP makes a resource "unworthy" already?
I presumed this is going to be about Facebook's constant push for users to fill out more "profile information ". Every time I go to my profile, I am presented with a banner about updating my info… They ask for more school details, or lately, books, music and movies that I'm familiar with. One day I filled out something about movies at their request, then I saw on my girlfriends newsfeed and I've been saying that I added movies to the list of movies I'd watched! Which I suppose I had but it seemed somewhat disingenuous since it was at their urging.
The story goes that Page and Brin had intended to name the company "Googol" after the number but Andy wrote it "Google" on the check and they had to incorporate under that name to cash it.
Try talking to Apple! Hilarious!

Apple does not help with Airfoil. They would prefer it to simply go away. Interoperability is not their thing here.

I worked on Airfoil at RA for years, including a couple of major updates and many workarounds for problems like these (although generally less severe). Apple never returned our metaphorical calls.
Build a Website for $10.17 with Godaddy and Blogger
The standard for astronomical measurements today is the J2000.0 epoch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch_%28astronomy%29#Julian_ye...
OK. I too am already tired of hearing about this Snowden stuff but felt this was interesting to share because it mentions a (new to me) method / technology / "project" (i.e. 'Quantum Insert') which I hadn't seen before in previous releases.

"According to the slides in the GCHQ presentation, the attack was directed at several Belgacom employees and involved the planting of a highly developed attack technology referred to as a "Quantum Insert" ("QI"). It appears to be a method with which the person being targeted, without their knowledge, is redirected to websites that then plant malware on their computers that can then manipulate them."

Here's the link to the related story in case you missed it: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/british-spy-agenc...

And here are the slides: http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/photo-gallery-operation-so...