skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>I don't even know how to conceptualize a Kelvin-Byte.

I can actually see where this unit would be useful; in determining the probability of bit rot. The more kelvins you have, and the more bytes you have, the more likely you are to flip a bit due to random fluctuations. temperature*storage capacity = Kelvin-Bytes.
Accounting for Obamacare: Inside the Company That Built Healthcare.gov
Why must SSDs have "power loss protection" in the form of a battery or supercapacitors to finish writes? Can they not simply cache writes but not falsely claim to the OS that they aren't fully written yet, and do some internal housekeeping (journal-like) for recovery? Does SATA/SCSI support the concept of "sync", or would allowing the disk to fall behind without deceiving the OS kill performance in some way?
I thought it was great. Maybe I haven't heard of these tools before. Reading about them doesn't mean I know how to use them or have a thorough understanding of security, but it's a good place to start googling and learn more.
There are many nice bluetooth keyboards that work fine with iPads.
He explained why he chose those 5. Only those 5 advertised certain features he needed.
Mac hardware doesn't break, but when you purchase the four year warranty on a Dell (which will get you a total near the price of an equivalent Macbook) it will break a few times during the four years, but each time you get it fixed or replaced next day at home.
I would't really count time passing as an operation, since other programs are able to run during that time.
Recordings will be uploaded to youtube.com/cccdevideos, in the meantime take this: http://30c3.ex23.de/saal1/30C3_-_5622_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201312...
How the Omni Group ported ended up porting Doom
China reforms one child policy
From what they said about these reading sensor data, I'm picturing a factory, industrial, or field type scenario. I'm picturing a very small embedded computer with some sensors attached and an internal ssd. Referencing a 1.5gb OS like they did makes me think they just have a normal OS installed, but it's entirely possible that they have a modified kernel and fast boot process.

Essentially, it sounds like they have a single unit that gets turned on, gathers sensor readings, and then get turned off. I'm guessing these are not handheld devices, otherwise they most likely would have a battery attached. If a non 24/7 factory, these could be turned off with the rest of the assembly line by someone throwing breakers off on the way out (very common).
It is good to see someone actually testing the power-loss protection claims made by manufacturers.

However, uninterruptible power supplies are usually a better investment than power-loss resilient storage media. The problem is, even if your SSD or hard drive behaves perfectly during a power-loss scenario, your server software may not. Almost every database, filesystem, etc. includes some amount of buffering in memory, because sending every write directly to disk is a performance killer.

Also, the best-case scenario with power-loss resilient media is that your system shuts down cleanly. With a UPS, you can keep the system up until diesel generators kick in, a much better endgame for everybody.

I once asked someone who had worked in the hard drive business what a hard drive would do when power was lost. "Try to park the drive head immediately before it crashes on to the platter," was the immediate response. Trying to flush the cache contents wasn't even remotely on his mind. In practice, losing power while writing to a hard disk does often corrupt sectors-- even sectors that weren't being written to during the power loss incident.

It's good to see that (some) SSDs are at least trying to flush the cache, but you really have to ask yourself: can you really trust the manufacturer's claims? And if you can trust them, can you trust your specific software configuration under this unusual scenario? I think it's just too long a frontier to guard with too few sheriffs. Dude, you're getting a UPS.
I use a Realforce 87U as my primary keyboard and my secondary keyboards all have Cherry MX Red or Blue switches. I have purchased custom-manufactured aluminum cases for my KBC Pokers. I also hate Alps switches. It's almost a guarantee that there is nothing on the market that I will find suitable for getting real work done. There's the KBTalking Pro, but it's fullsize and not good for travel. The Neo 87 has poor build quality and the wireless barely works. It'd have to be at least a TKL but a 60% or HHKB would be better.

The best I've seen is a bluetooth mod that's far too battery-hungry for prime-time. I want something with a wire. Bluetooth keyboard pairing and the typically-horrendous bluetooth stacks border on nightmarish.
I was hoping for a comparison between competing platforms and how they stack up against iOS OSX.

But this article is free software evangelism ("I set myself free") not a serious guide to moving away from Apple.
Yes, they're clearly not necessary, and you'll find many entrepreneurs right here who'll be living proof of it. But if VCs ask for them, having at least one patent does make it easier to secure financing.

And there are other, less obvious, reasons VCs may be interested in patents. The second study (and other studies) showed that having at least one patent is correlated with significantly higher chances of a startup having a successful exit.

The reasons behind this correlation is not clear, but if it presents such a powerful signal, VCs have a good reason to look for patents.
I'm of the same mind. I switched from the iPhone to Android because I was dissatisfied with the tiny iPhone screens, but I expected a quality drop-off in apps.

The drop-off, in the instances where it does exist, is not nearly as dramatic as advertised. It's pretty small, really, which has me looking at switching my tablet from iPad to an Android tablet as well.

Plus, on Android, I have a browser with functioning plug-ins (Firefox). iOS's app ecosystem doesn't seem so great when it fails so dramatically at perhaps the most important app: web browser.
Encrypted chat service Cryptocat for iPhone rejected by Apple
Absolutely fascinating and awesome note!! Thank you very much for taking the time to write it!
I thought America's presence in Korea was imperialist until I went to Seoul in April and walked around trying to forget about the missiles that were pointed at my head. All of a sudden I discovered a newfound appreciation for American foreign policy, despite its faults.
I think this will be an interesting thing to watch going forward.

So for years the "AT" and then "ATX" design has dominated personal computers. pushed by Intel as a way to create a serviceable framework for OEMs to create workable computers, all of the "tough" engineering challenges (like heat management) were "designed in" by the modularity constraints. Evolving as a unit, the x86 PC, the Processor, and power requirements (and later GPU requirements) all foisted their own compromises on the builders.

Now Apple had something pretty cool, they started with a platform that is designed for heat dissipation. Basically the entire central column does nothing but suck heat away from things attached to it. And they put a large diameter fan which can be quieter at the top.

Given that most of the things we used to think of as "interface cards" which attached to a bulky parallel bus are being built on top of serial buses, either USB, Thunderbolt, or PCIe. The ability to support the big hitters (CPU/Memory complex) and GPU complex, in addition to a "ports and I/O zone" would be welcome relief for PC makers if they had something similar.

There hasn't been a company, other than Intel, that had the reach to create a mass market form factor for a long time. The last serious change was when VIA created the ITX standard, and it was really pretty modest relative to the ATX standard at the time.

So whether or not you like the 'jet engine' look of the thing, it seems like it brings some nice innovation to the systems design table. I would love to see a generic equivalent that built in a thermal management system as nice as this one. By keeping the 'fins' on the other side of the boards, there is nothing to suck dust on to the circuit boards. And if you've ever cleaned a PC that was stuck under a desk in somebodies house for a few years you will probably find this a huge improvement.

All in all, I give it top marks. But I've yet to see it in person!
I think it is still taboo among most VC's and angels. Founders are supposed to be cookie-cutter stereotypes who fit a pre-established program. Your personality / public face can be "challenging" but not challenging, if you know what I mean.
Claiming that Perl is a bad language because you can obfuscate it just means that you've never looked for "obfuscated <better language>".
I would ditch Apple in a heartbeat if I felt that anyone could provide a similar hardware experience. I'm not just talking about CPU/RAM/Graphics card (yes, I know I can get a slightly better deal with non-Apple hardware), but everything else as well. Apple displays are beautiful and completely free of defects, Apple trackpads are incredible, the computers are ridiculously thin (my new ThinkPad is twice as thick as my MBP), the battery life is incredible (my early 2013 MBP gets 5-6 hours, new MBPs get 10-12 hours), etc. The hardware is just great. I don't understand why no one else can make hardware like this.

Re. failed laptops: I had to take my last MBP in for repair something like 8 times in 6 months. Totally unacceptable. Most of the time it was for something they botched during the last repair. However, Apple gave me store credit for the purchase price of the laptop and then some, so I'm happy. I do beat the shit out of my laptops, so I'm sure someone who was more gentle would have better luck.
Having new businesses is not a net loss to society? Sure, a vast majority of them will be worthless, but without experimentation how else will valuable new markets be discovered?
I've never seen an apple laptop that didn't break after a few (<= 2) years. YMMV.
Practice makes closer
Tim Draper wants California to split into 6 states
I don't think that's it's possible to push to the client from the server without the client initiating a request, so I think that use case is better suited for a client side AJAX call.
Several years ago I made a very silly simple Christmas tree in HTML/CSS, with <blink>ing lights and Unicode ornaments, and my friend made a way to place your own choice of "ornaments": http://unicodexmas.com/

Not as stylish, but in the spirit!
2013 Photos of the Year
Lenovo X1 Carbon (wait for the X3 or the revised Haswell X1)

Nexus 5

Done.
Rap Genius vs Google
Do you have any resources on fingerprinting cameras based on noise? Seems hard to do outside a controlled environment (as noise is so heavily influenced by environmental factors).
Which SSD is going to last for decades in a strenuous environment?
Another Kino Lorber gem http://www.kinolorber.com/film.php?id=1377
Aside from the fact that there are dozen(s) of ultrabooks with equally high res screens?

I love hearing people dismiss Linux font rendering out of hand given that most distros ship with different patches and thus such a statement is silly. And the fact that when I do side by side (with no window UX to bias), Mac users choose my font rendering as preferred everytime.

(And I've done it on HN previously too, with the exact same results, including someone going on a rant before realizing he was praising the Linux rendering)
Ask HN: books for new engineering manager?
Our startup is growing and one of the coders is stepping into a leader/manager role (our first)..

Any suggestions of good books or articles?
Everybody accepts drinking coffee or caffeine, but its clearly "performance" improving. There is even a culture of providing adderall to employees if they want. Do investors frown upon those activities?
Show HN: My first IOS Application
My first IOS Application, has been a great learning experience in both Objective-C and the IOS SDK.

Can't wait to launch soon!
My wife gave me this great book for Christmas:

Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality
by Edward Frenkel

It begins with the author's struggle to learn the math behind
quantum physics in spite of cold-war era soviet educational obstacles
and leads bit by bit into the Langlands program, drawing connections
between group theory, number theory and harmonic analysis.

It's definitely my favorite book of 2013.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465...
Nicely efficient use of space. Reminds me of a motor home (as opposed to a 'mobile home' which tries its best to avoid reminding you it is only 10' wide). I enjoyed the comment that read "I only need 200 sq ft to live in but I need 4000 sq ft for storage." :-)
The problem is that sometimes you simply can't do it properly in application. Uniqueness is the most obvious example, although not the only one.
Upgrading from Rails 3.2 to Rails 4.0 takes very little time, assuming the gems you depend on are compatible (which they should be, by now, or you might want to look for replacement gems..)
I don't know who was the (car 'hacker) but this one was the last in the recursive tail call:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1DFwtR755I
> I would ditch Apple in a heartbeat...

Why would you ditch it in a heartbeat if you think that:

- Apple displays are beautiful and completely free of defects

- Apple trackpads are incredible

- Apple computers are ridiculously thin

- The battery life is incredible

- The hardware is just great

---

It's like saying I would ditch my wife in a heartbeat, but her face is super pretty, her body is perfect and her heart is a heart of angel...but I would still ditch her in a heartbeat...
Sprocket - I don't see any contact info in your profile, but would like to talk to you about your business, as it is very much in line with my long-term goals as well. Would like to compare notes a bit. If you are interested, contact me at jeff -at- mercenarytech -dot- com
Paul Graham interview in The Information
Left 4 Dead 2 punishes you much harder for going slowly. The Spitter and Charger were introduced for that express purpose, and a number of other mechanics (like crescendos) were changed in that direction too. That's probably what jebblue means by "muted" vs. "Hollywood" — the pacing.
This article mentions that there is no native 1Password client for Linux and recommends some kind of dropbox workaround. While this probably true at the time of writing, Icculus recently wrote a native Linux client [1]. There's more details about it in this G+ post if you are interested:

- https://plus.google.com/+RyanGordon/posts/ZFyb9TQS9zB

[1] https://icculus.org/1pass/
I'll throw out a vote for lbzip2. It threads strongly, and doesn't cannibalize your memory like threaded xz. (You can still use gzip where every CPU cycle counts)
I looked at getting a Sputnik 3, but it's available only in select countries and 16GB isn't an option (nor is it for MBA, but it is for the relatively light rMBP).

And I hate the Dell logo. In fact, I hate all text logos. It's ridiculous. 150" TVs in shopping malls with a huge "SAMSUNG" or "SONY" at the bottom. If you have to do something, use some image (an apple, the ubuntu reactor thing, windows 4 squares...)
WeChat Isn't a Messaging App - A Closer Look at China's Hottest App
The author of that article, James Bessen has been called out on questionable methods or analysis in some of his studies. For instance, he's the guy who created the "trolls cost 29 billion" meme out of thin air, the debunking of which [1, 2] never got much press.

Here's a study that directly refutes the claims article from another researcher with a lot more data:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1597919

It finds that Eastern District of Texas is not even in the top 5 when it comes to plaintiff win rates.

1. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2117421

2. http://blog.patentology.com.au/2012/06/29-billion-us-troll-t...
I don't have a single good thing to say about Ubuntu, but it's hard to imagine most people jumping right into the deep end with Linux. Sure, Ubuntu is the wrong way to start IMO, but at least it shows people it's possible.

Speaking of what a joke laptop manufacturers are though, sometime around 2005 or 2006 when I worked in retail, we got these brand new, ~$3200 HP laptops in. DV4000something. While trying to upgrade a customer's laptop to use both DIMMs, we found out that this was impossible. Somehow, HP produced an entire line of laptops where the contacts for the second DIMM slot had no connections to the rest of the circuitboard. We opened up all the ones shipped to our store and confirmed with stores in other states. This actually made it through their QA process!
>I dislike Apple's software

In what sense? Does it run slow? Does it not give you enough options?

I've used Linux on and off, from RedHat 5 (circa '97) to the latest Ubuntu. Heck, I've even worked with CDE and such on Sun and HP boxes before Linux. Have also used Windows.

Besides political reasons, I haven't seen anything compelling enough to move over. I have all my commercial software (from Adobe to MS and beyond), I have most UNIX cli stuff, and if I want hardcode unixy stuff I can do it an a VM with Vagrant (as I would on a Linux system anyway, why pollute my desktop with project specific dev installations?).

I've tried Gimp -- it's no match for Photoshop, and I prefer Pixelmator and Acorn for lightweight stuff. I also try Open Office every couple of years -- it remains mostly as it was 15 years ago, and has added cruft and slowlyness to it (why it needs a JRE I don't even...). Pages, Numbers and Keynote are fine for my needs -- the only time I need something more it's when I need more MS Office compatibility, and there OO doesn't cut it either.

I also dabble in multimedia, and nothing on OSS comes close to Logic and FCPX. And I've been keeping an eye on the DAW space in Linux since before there was Jack and ALSA. Heck, even Mail.app has no much of a competition. If you like clunky, you can go for Thunderbird.

>The reason the author cited for switching from Apple was two failed laptops. For what it's worth, my previous laptop -- a Dell -- broke every six months or so.

I never understand this reasoning. Don't people understand that there are faulty shipments in all production runs? I've had AMD CPUs overheat, IBM disk drives fails, Toshiba laptops crap out, etc. I've also had Apple stuff die on me. Those things happen.
Stick to the Pro. The EVO are based on TLC which are cheaper to manufacture and have a reduced life-span.
So 1024 bytes is 1 kiB?
> I'm sure Apple will "fix" this.

I don't understand this at all. OK, you want to hate on Apple a little, I get it. But this statement just makes no sense. Do you think they did this by accident? Is this really a problem for them?
Maybe you and your wife have fundamental differences in beliefs about how people should live their lives?
People, take note... This article was written for Guardian readers, not the elite HN hacking corps.
For iTunes, Google Music provided a pretty darn seamless transition. You download their client software, it scans your iTunes library, and registers the songs you have with Google Play. Songs it doesn't recognize, it uploads.

This is a double-feature because Google Music is both platform-agnostic, and integrates with Android.

Google Music itself is not necessarily the most amazing user experience, and someone with a bajillion music files may be upset with it, but for me the high quality (all purchased & "recognized" music is 320kbps) and general platform- and client-agnostic nature trumps music management "power".
Check out the tiny house blog
It's not. There is also a phrase "bad rep", but it is distinct.
Yes, compared to North Korea, the US is quite free of problems. Wake up.
For better or worse, the current regime has a surprisingly good track record at not forcing the Korean War to go "hot" again.

A hypothetical "worse regime" might become less interested in self-preservation than the current regime, and more interested in taking out as many people as they can before they fall. Right now the mass murder and slaughter seems to be largely a byproduct that they are not particularly concerned by, rather than their goal.
Amazing "Linux Birthday Cake" by Leah Wendt
My 2008 MBP has never had any issues.
It's entirely possible and very realistic. I built a SaaS product in the equivalent of about a 7-8 working days that 4 weeks in had $1000 in MRR and 8 weeks later is double that.

http://joshpigford.com/baremetrics-stripe-analytics

It's about solving problems that businesses are willing to pay for. Doesn't matter how good the idea sounds. Only matters if businesses will fork over real, tangible money for the problem you're solving.
Thanks, I didn't realize I made that mistake. Maybe a better analogy would be a broker who is facilitating the transfer of some property, and the cops unreasonably searching/seizing the property while it's in the broker's possession?
That's a great looking tiny house. If you're interested in seeing more and learning about other people's experiences building and living in tiny houses, I recommend checking out http://tinyhouseblog.com
Your crutch is not an asset.
This is the most incredible computer-related cake I've ever seen. Very thoughtful, amazing and delightful. Bash script program that calls function happy_birthday. The confectioner is a techie for sure and I hope she doesn't displace us! The code is not perfect but gotta give the credit for the nice try. Who would like to debug this cake script?
Only if your name is Mel:

http://foldoc.org/The+Story+of+Mel,+a+Real+Programmer

http://www.wps.com/J/LGP-21/mel-the-programmer.html

The man didn't even use patch or diff! Now git off my lawn kid!
Sometimes how you decide to tackle the problem matters more than the size of the idea.
1 - Some of us aren't in the US.

2 - Just because NK is in the new a lot doesn't mean people don't care as much about other places, or have bad priorities.

3 - If you're going to rank countries by evilness of their regime towards their own population, NK would be probably be #1; you have to consider more than just whether people starve. Hell, if NK fed everyone it would still be an atrocity.
If anything affected my short term memory adversely, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
I recently switched my Windows desktop to Ubuntu, with the intention of making myself an at-home desktop dev environment. I still use my Macbook for work, and my MBA for personal dev.

My thoughts have been positive, Ubuntu is much nicer than I remember previous brushes with Linux being. A lot of things required slight configuration, but Ubuntu and Linux have hit that critical mass that most of my problems can be solved with a simple search. However, there are a few persistent problems that have lots of different solutions that dont all seem to work; and I feel there are lots of lacking areas in the app ecosystem. For instance, there does not seem to be a single well-designed SQL gui for linux. Everything looks out of Windows-ME-era-enterprise. For Macs, you have Sequel Pro amongst a lot of strong competition. Additionally, homebrew is a lot easier/more robust than apt-get; no repositories to deal with.

I think this all points to something about me, specifically: I want software to make some assumptions for me. Brew does this, apt-get doesnt. This is both the strength of Mac and the strength of Linux -- they cater to the level of assumption that their camps want. I, unfortunately, want more assumption.

Also, as a small side note, I can't get League of Legends to work on WINE, so I am unable to play with excoworkers -- that was the main way we kept in touch and it's pushing me to a point that I might put Windows back on my desktop, if only to have that connection back -- a little juvenile, but oh well.
I've never seen one break long after that. In fact, I finally just had to part ways with an iBook from 2001 that lasted me over a decade, and upgraded from 9.2 to 10.5.