skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
News Flash: Griefing People Makes Them Angry
Using iSCSI On Ubuntu 9.04 (Initiator And Target)
5 Photo Composition Hints. The Fifth Element - Light
Based on my own observations (take it or leave it), it seems that agile still has a long way to go to overtake ad hoc practices and stiflingly weighty document-centered systems.
Page not found, but http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/ still has it on the top of the front page.
In research. Our computer systems, despite being man-made, are complicated enough that we have to use the scientific method to understand their behavior.

If you're a professional developer, then there's probably litte, if any, science in your work. Much in the same way that mechanical engineering is not science, but physics is.
I love Fibonacci as pedagogical exercise, but there is a closed form solution that can find the nth term without the need to calculate all the preceding values (no need for recursion). In computer science we are often obsessed with finding good algorithms for calculating, but are not so good at finding ways to completely jump past the calculation, of course this is very hard, but I don't think it is emphasized enough in the undergraduate computer science curriculum.

Here's a link to the closed form solution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number#Closed_form_ex...
I used Windows in the past, moved to Linux (right now, I'm using ArchLinux), also tried FreeBSD.

My problem is that I have a laptop, and FreeBSD doesn't have to many drivers for it including the battering saving ones. Plus, since I need a desktop (includes applications like Firefox, Flash, OpenOffice, GIMP, etc) I found that FreeBSD had quite a few usability bugs (eg. in Firefox, images were only half rendered). So now I'm happily using Linux - the arch way.

I tried installing ArchLinux on my father's computer, but I didn't have time to configure everything (eg. pressing the poweroff button shuts down the computer) and from an end's user point of view his desktop was barely usable. Finally I decided to go with Ubuntu, and since then I haven't heard any other complain about his OS. On contrary, he is much happier than he was when he had Windows installed. Now, only if I find some good chess linux software. Grandmaster Chess was his favourite, but in the linux world I could not find anything similar, only some playing engines.
Artificial scarcity is not an ethical or legal principle, but an economic one. Because 1s and 0s can be "copied almost infinitely", in order to make money on it one has to enforce an artifical constraint on the number of copies that are allowed to be made. The distinction is simply that with its opposite, natural scarcity, no effort needs to be made to ensure that each object has value on its own.

To put it another way, the "default state" of a naturally scarce commodity, when it is simply produced and then discarded, is still high-value. It can be resold at auction, or traded in a market, and will be fought over even in a state of legal and moral anarchy. The default state of an artificially scarce commodity, however, is value asymptotically approaching zero; without some sort of agency to "prop up" its value, it is worthless, and no secondary party will assign it value unless it is forced to as part of a larger deal (e.g. accepting the legal code to be a citizen of a country.)

Your question ("is open source anti-capitalism?") is just a matter of equivocation. Open Source fits just fine with capitalism, but it is not the capitalism you would first imagine (i.e. that of the US); it is instead "true", or lassiez-faire Capitalism.

In Lassiez-faire Capitalism, there can be no artificially scarce commodities; they are simply a market inefficiency to be eliminated, along with those producing them. A true Capitalism would destroy the value in all "information products"—movies, books, music, games, and, yes, software. In a true Capitalism, value is just "what people are willing to pay"; you don't deserve an ROI just because you worked hard, you only earn money if people feel that your commodity has value to them. In such a market, the only software that could exist is that which was produced for other motives than profit—open source software—or produced as a means to an end of profit, e.g. software that makes a business process more efficient, rather than software that is a product in-and-of-itself.

And now you see why we do not use such a capitalism ;) Though some "creatives" would survive, whether as on-the-whole consultants or by donations from fans (see http://pc.ign.com/articles/967/967564p1.html), the majority would not. In reality, a majority of people desire to keep these creatives around and producing, even at the cost of large market inefficiencies. Realize thus that copyright, more than anything, is a form of socialism, in that it redistributes wealth to those we think deserve a "fair share" for their efforts. Sort of mixes up the arguments most people have on the subject: Open Source is anti-socialist ;)
Pittsburgh hospital's e-records show what care will look like in the future
My favorite method to prevent brute force attacks is to disable password-based logins all together.
You can still use mail providers other than gmail (which actually provide true anonymity as a service), and you can also buy a SIM card and phone with cash.
Hey, Fred, the VC Model is Broken
I'm an Ex-XM subscriber: Thanks, iPhone 3gs
Remember, the leader of the pack on this issue is RMS. He's not looking for a world of coexistence with Microsoft -- he wants them to go away and not come back. If you try to get inside of how he'd be approaching this issue you get to, "What about when Microsoft is on the way down? Will they fire back with these things?"

However, RMS is also pretty true to his stated purposes there; he'll welcome things back to the fold when situations change (e.g. the Qt / KDE schism over Qt's licensing), but he's not one to look at things from a good faith perspective when there's no guarantee of followthrough.
While nothing beats mplayer-nogui, it's nice to have an alternative running on Windows.
The closed form still depends on the precision of the decimal expansion of the irrational constant phi, the golden ratio. You can't use it to find any arbitrary F(n) without a precise expansion of phi.
Thanks for the info. The code is currently hosted on my server so I have that going for me. There is currently nothing in writing which has lead to the predicament I am currently in. I am hoping that he is open to negotiation because, as far as I see it, it would be more detrimental for him to lose the business knowledge that I have gained from coding the app. Unfortunately, it looks like the only way that I am truly going to be safe is obtain an attorney which I was hoping to avoid. Thanks again for the reply.
The official website, announcing the news: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This version doesn't support Mac OS X Tiger anymore. From the changelog:

Support for Mac OS X 10.4.x was dropped due to its technical limitations.
Social News Sites for Web Designers and Developers
"This article features social news/bookmarking sites for web designers and developers."
Microsoft has no patch yet for security flaw
I'm British and codes would be used for cryptographic codes or voucher codes, but not in programming. Files full of C++ are code, not codes.
You can run VLC without a GUI too:
vlc -I dummy

There's also a skins, ncurses and http interface.
Authority Site Building Video Reveals The Basic Foundation Of A Authority Site
Looking for some answers or examples of an authority site? Well here’s a great video I found on YouTube that shows you the basics of what an static authority might look like. It also gives you some examples of how
Considering VLC has worked wonderfully for many years, I am not sure how an arbitrary version bump is particularly meaningful.
The last time I checked, you could also accept a gmail invite without giving your mobile number.
Adventures in Lisp application deployment
Well, MPlayer and VideoLAN share most of the libraries so it's basically the same back-end. I like them both and I'm glad they share resources (speeding up the development process). Basically the best video players out there.
As someone who didn't even own a mobile phone until half a year ago (and still doesn't like the idea of them), I don't really like the sound of this.
The title is wrong -- it should be "On the Quadratic Time Algorithm...". The fastest algorithm of which I'm aware is O(n log n 2^log*(n)); and I'd be astonished if it were possible to compute the nth fibonacci number in o(n log n) time, although I can't offhand see any way to prove that it is impossible.
my first thought was Canadian soldiers quoting Shakespeare as they launched across the great lakes...
EMC prepared to offer $2.1b for Data Domain
How good is Tata Sky DTH?
Tata Sky DTH is one of the pioneering DTH services in India. Among the first few DTH players Tata Sky was launched in 2006. Tata Sky is a joint venture between the Tata Group of companies and the Star Group. This DTH service (best DTH service in India) makes use of the brand name UK owned SKY TV. Though Tata Sky is one of the earliest DTH players, you can find Tata Sky in relatively few homes in India.
ubernostrum: "And even if they went Theora-only (which they're not going to do), they'd have to provide a fallback for IE, which would probably end up extended to Safari as well."

I'm not bothered about the actual format shipped, let the market sort that out. What I want is to be able to publish a webpage with a video and know that all standards compliant browsers will play that media.

Safari doesn't have to only use Ogg Theora, YouTube doesn't have to stop using flash.

Keeping the openness of the web means allowing content creators a path to create content unencumbered by license disputes IMO. They should go back and specify it for HTML5 standard compliance and let Safari fail compliance.
I don't care that much too, but I would say: it's good to see some software which doesn't suffer from the eternal beta syndrom (like Gmail).
most people would consider the so-called "linear" algorithm exponential, as the size of the input for the number n is m = Theta(log(n)) bits; the running time is Theta(2^m). the "quadratic" running time is Theta(4^m).
The title mimicks the common misunderstanding that naive calculation for Fibonacci numbers is done in linear time, which is not true when cost of arithmetic operations is not negligible. The whole point of the article, as I understand it, was to show that not taking such details in account will lead to flawed analysis.
"Real" programmers, male or female, program
It's been this way for years for most other countries. But the invite method does work and I got my first gmail address via that. However for my other gmail address, I just gave them my mobile number and typed in the verification code I received via sms.
Yep, quoting the article: "Also, if you know someone who already has a Gmail address, you can ask them to email an invitation to you."
That and the fact that computing the closed form expression still needs log(n) steps (as exponentiation).
BizTeen.net beta has launched
"Real" programmers program... but humans empathize. Its this linked comment that illustrates the problem women face in our industry.
Wholly agree with that.

The guy who blusters about and talks a lot might well be pretty smart. His charisma opens doors.

But I for one would be keeping an eye on the guy by the door who hasnt spoken yet. Because usually, just as it is "all decided" he can chime in with the most insight of the day :)
The website description:

"Hey and welcome! BizTeen is THE social network for young entreprenuers; ages 15 - 18. Our main goal is to help you start a business, find business partners and discuss business topics!"

Actual typo in italic.
Two things:

1) It's a memory allocation, scanning data structures, possibly involving some thread-locking or even a system call. A single check is cheap. If you want to keep the CPU happy the 99% of the time, put the most likely case first, so the CPU doesn't have to jump. Speculation should help mitigate the rest.

2) A good reason why operator new() throws by default.
If they all have the same backend, why is it that nothing beats mplayer-nogui? Is it so that you can watch video in a screen session? </humor>

Now seriously, what is the application? Isn't that a defect in the GUI?
What actual difference does this make? Is VLC 1.0.0 any more stable or secure than the non-1.0 versions? Would Gmail be any different if it didn't say "beta"?

(As an aside, VLC still crashes on malformed data because the video codecs are written in careless C code. Changing the version number isn't going to fix that bug. )
An Update on the Book [Practical Django Projects]
CometChat, a Facebook-style chat script – based on PHP / MySQL script
What's with the inflammatory (and patently incorrect) HN title?
China Blocks Access To Twitter, Facebook After Riots
"What I want is to be able to publish a webpage with a video and know that all standards compliant browsers will play that media."

Your proposed remedy does not accomplish this. Putting language in the spec and "letting" browsers "fail compliance" leaves you in the same situation as not putting language in the spec.
Van Leasing
Nobody works harder to get you the right financial package for you or your business - even if you have had previous credit problems. We have an array of understanding and sympathetic lenders willing to help.
Okay, I think I understand better now. There's only physically so much gold on the planet. Barring alchemy, we can't make more of it, so it has a natural scarcity.

From that, I gather that we can't use the traditional economics of Supply and Demand to allow a market to decide the value of software. Because the denominator in the equation demand divided by supply is infinite, essentially, it doesn't matter what value demand has in the numerator, because anything divided by infinity is zero.

But my initial impression of this model is that it is doomed to failure. It is doomed to failure, because the artificially scarce product being produced itself requires the consumption of naturally scarce products that are subject to the laws of supply and demand. The developers that produce the software for example need to eat, the need to live in a house, they need to consume energy to drive to work, etc...

So how do we find a balance? Do we find a new way to value software or will software just go away? Will software be relegated to a charitable organization like in the article you linked to, which was quite interesting by the way, so thanks for that. Will the only valuable software be that software which is paid for in advance to be developed at the risk of the consumer? "If you pay me, I'll build it, otherwise, I won't" sort of scenario?

It's like the software only has value if it doesn't exist. If the mechanism to produce the software exists only in the minds of a scarce few who can implement the solution or who have the ability to control access to it, perhaps through SaaS or some other monthly subscription mechanism like WoW or battle.net.

Perhaps we can value software based on how much additional revenue it helps you generate or how much savings it generates through optimizations or automations.

How are we going to strike that balance? Is the gold rush for software over? If there is no carrot, who will run those wheels and invest in our future? Who will take the time to solve the problems before the problems arise? Take Oracle vs. MySQL. Oracle has solved a lot of the problems MySQL has. Over time, as people contribute to the MySQL code base, those problems can be resolved, but consumers of MySQL have to wait for someone else to implement the solution, or they have to pay for a computer programmer to find a work around or implement some solution outside MySQL.

It feels like it will slow us down. Corporations like Oracle and Microsoft will survive a little while longer, but if MySQL ever actually does become as good as Oracle, then people will stop paying for Oracle. If people stop paying for Oracle, Oracle can't hire the best and the brightest.

Well, I appreciate the answer, I do understand better, but that just leaves me with more questions, so I'm thinking out loud.

All I can think of right now is that software will all move to aaS models or be embedded in physical devices so that we can attach a natural scarcity to them. There are only so many factories that can produce microchips. The article you linked to suggested selling plastic figurines with the software, which is a similar idea. It harkens back to the age of dongles.
I've used OpenBSD for years, and I've installed FreeBSD a few times (largely because it has more ports), but have found it less convenient in a variety of small ways* . I'm curious what you found less convenient about FreeBSD.

* OpenBSD has mg in the default install, uses sudo by default, I much prefer its installer, etc. To some extent, this is probably just due to OpenBSD's defaults / general style suiting me well, though.
If someone farts in your face repeatedly and you go on to punch them or harass them in any way that is considered inappropriate by society, would you say that your actions were 'justified?'

Call me "biblical," but where I'm from farting in a grown man's face will get you punched in your own face, repeatedly, in a highly civilized manner.

[edit: formatting]
New York Times reporting on same research discussed here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=690538
You have to pay off x to get your site on the internet, where x is ISPs in the no-net-neutrality scenario, and Apple in yours, but is bad and wrong either way
For VLC: apparently this version 1.0 is effectively not a special release, a "major version, with long time support". 1.0 just comes after 0.99. However, quoting one of the developer blog: "After the longest feature freeze stabilization period in the project's history, VLC 1.0.0-final is coming at last..." (http://www.remlab.net/).

In general case: for me "version 1.0 not beta" means "we give you the insurance that this software is very stable and reliable. We consider all bugs as important issues. We respect you."

In the case of GMail, I'd like Google to give me this insurance and stop the "no warranty at all, f* you if there is a problem" era. I think they have the power to do it.
Would it be really different? No, but I would be able to sleep at night knowing Google takes really care of my email.
A Review of the Smplayer Media Player for Linux and Windows
Ask HN: Did we get past the "point one" micron barrier in chip fabrication? How?
So I accidentally bought a book about future technology written in 1995 :-( It keeps mentioning the upcoming "point one" micron barrier in chip fabrication. Anyone know how or if that was overcome?
What The Hell Happened To The Free Version Of Google Apps?
You can probably use Gosper's algorithms for computing with continued fractions ( http://perl.plover.com/yak/cftalk/ ) to generate precision as needed. The CF for phi is [1; 1, 1, 1, 1, ...] and basically all you need to do is take the n^th power. You can use that using the log(n) method (http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus5/html/page54.html (that reference took a surprisingly long time to find - there must be a better one))

I'd be surprised if there isn't a true linear time algorithm for Fibonacci, it's just that it's more subtle than people think.

PS: Finding an optimal sequence of multiples and squares for computing an arbitrary power is still an open question.
Anyone know if a trakfone will work for this?
I've actually been toying with doing this rather then email verification and a captcha for a social site. Would you find this more or less annoying then an email loop and a captcha?
> Our main goal is to help you start a business, find business partners and discuss business topics!

How?

The "help" link isnt [a link]. And that introduction is all the explanation I can find.

Other than that - nice design.
> Also, if you know someone who already has a Gmail address, you can ask them to email an invitation to you.

I'm taking it at face value as anti-spam.
I was on our high school football team and once we were going to another school by bus for a game and along the way there was a loud bang and the engine died and we were stuck on the side of the freeway. The driver and coaches were clueless and soon were saying we probably would not make it to the game in time and would have to forfeit. One of my teammates stepped up and said he worked as a diesel mechanic over the summer and asked to take a crack at the problem. Most of us were skeptical that he could do anything about it (and there may or may not have been bets placed on the outcome ;-)... amazingly, and to this kid's credit, he got it running again in about 15min with only pliers and a screw driver. So we made it to the game in time and won.
I agree with this. By declaring this branch stable, who knows what new features will be brought in...can't wait to see the 1.x/2.x roadmap.
I thought this was an old Linux Mint review when I saw the title.
I fail to see how this "kills email anonymity" You can get a phone for $10 at any Walmart / Target / Bestbuy activate it anonymously with a number in any area code you want w/o providing any personal information what so ever.
I like the idea, but I always thought that the action of lending something, involves a somewhat laid back attitude, meaning that if I lend something it might be just because I don't mind when I'm getting that item back. So why would I need an app to follow the people that borrow things from me?
Why the Imp in Your Brain Gets Out
Spam?

I'd appreciate hearing from someone as to whether this really is any good, or if it's simply an unsolicited commercial posting.
Yes, this is like a soap opera where everyone has their own obvious interests in mind but are still willing to put on a charade.

I'm a Linux user and I'm getting pretty tired of not having an open source codec standard for the browser. Mozilla (and Opera) has my full support in this.
I'm pretty sure it would. You have a number and can receive text messages.
Having hot wife paves over a lot. How bad can the guy be if she puts up with him?
Oldest known Bible goes online
If we didn't have this promise until yesterday, does that mean the haters were right all along until yesterday?
Yes, I'd only do it if I trusted the site, but it works far and away better at preventing spam than a CAPTCHA. It seems more annoying to the bad guys than the good guys. To this day it's the only thing that Craigslist has done that has worked. Phone numbers are expensive to get, especially since they block most VoIP stuff.

Google around about Craigslist phone verification and you'll read all the spammers having freak out sessions. It's a great way to spend an hour.
Paradise lost: SatNav "destroys" local knowledge
Ian Hickson should continue supporting Ogg Theora as the only free solution. It leaves a lot to be desired from his decision to drop the ball right now when firefox 3.5 just released, knowing that more than 100 million users support Theora.

Ian, you're on my watch list, I don't want to ever know you were bribed by greedy bastards or criminal monopolists.

It just takes a million dollars to buy a soul.
Definitely more annoying. I dare you to add "Phone Number" as a required field to your signup (don't even bother verifying it) and measure the change in signup abandonment.
Are patents too complex? Yes. It used to be possible to file a workable patent without the aid of an attorney/agent if you had a strong technical background and willingness to learn. Now, there is no doubt that the process requires substantial help from a professional in order to write a patent that would be defendable in court.

I am frustrated, though, when people write off patent protection using arguments about "copying xxx product". Patents protection is more than preventing duplication of complete products. Patents are about protecting unique aspects of a product or process/method - things that may be costly to develop but relatively simple to integrate.
Push Gmail Comes To The iPhone — Through An App (If It’s Accepted)