skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This whole nonsense bodes ill for Apple after Steve. In fact, I suspect it's a foreshadowing of how fucked up Apple will be if he ever leaves the company. Apple+Jobs is a bit like North Korea (though more successful) -- it's whole structure is built around a single personality. There seems to be no cultural ability to properly delegate authority.

If Steve had been full throttle over the last year, he would have personally vetted the first 500 apps, and carefully trained a couple lackeys to predict his innate reaction so well that they could proxy for him for 90% of the submissions (those from unknowns). Steve would have personally handled the 5 or 10% from developers deemed important enough to not completely piss off. This is how he's run the company since his return (and probably how he ran it in the first place).

In my experience negotiating with Apple, it was like talking to the staff of a very famous and influential person, rather than talking to people at a company with a normal distribution of responsibility. Everyone could give you an opinion or best guess about what might transpire, but absolutely nothing could be decided one way or another without the direct involvement of Steve.

I think they're in for a very rough period if/when Steve leaves. Obviously the app store has fallen off his radar or we wouldn't be seeing this kind of bullshit. It's all a factor of his personal bandwidth, which has obviously been impacted by his health.
Touchable Holography @ Siggraph
Not all ads are paid-per-click, some are paid-per-view. And even for those that are paid-per-click you can often get into better ad programs if you have more ad views.
Twitter was apparently founded after Ev noticed the way people were using the personalized away messages on their instant messengers (as status updates). MSN Messenger has been doing this since 2001, and IRC has had /away for much longer than that. Seems a similar kind of service, doesn't it?
Stephen Baker's book, the Numerati, covers what data geeks are doing with stats, data mining, semantic analysis, machine learning...

Here's a link to some of his talks on the subject: http://thenumerati.net/index.cfm?catID=4
The very phrase "cool cyber kids" is hopelessly out of touch with the younger generation, let's break it down.

the cool kids are the trendsetters. Something that is already adopted by more than 10% of all age groups can not be trendy or cool in any way, it's just the status quo.

cyber is a word that could only be associated with cool 15-20 years ago. 10 years ago it was already tiredly rolling off the tongues of wrinkled white politicians to whom John McCain was a scrappy young upstart.

kids, well, now we're getting somewhere. If the 16-24 demographic is using Facebook less that's at least an interesting statistic, but it doesn't warrant this kind of inaccurate clumsy hipster wannabe title.
"I'm not a lawyer... "

Please, let's keep it that way. Their process is random, it conforms 100% to rapid cycling between capricious fascism and complete lack of attention. What they are doing seems almost designed to piss off the maximum number of developers, thus vastly increasing the probability of lawsuits and bad press.

Face it people, Apple is just completely screwing up. Get over it, they're human like everyone else.
Rupert Murdoch plans charge for all news websites by next summer
Cool cyberkids never were on social networking sites. Heck, they never even used a browser. They mail themselves single webpages and check them out in GNUS. Cheech. Really.
I've never been a fan of changing SSH's port.

If you're going to firewall SSH, changing the port is redundant.. The only reason to change the port is to prevent brute force attacks, and the firewall will do that for you.
Every industry has its barrier to entry, it is likely that the one for banking is probably at an historical low. Also Branson of Virgin said in an interview that he is applying for a license(or looking into it), so at least one of them actually does is for sure.
Well, school may be over, but life is not :-)
Guy Kawasaki: Will anyone pay for anything?
re: 1) sudo NO PASSWD...

So the problem I have with this is that it collides with using Puppet to manage your users--Puppet will have to know about the users' Unix passwords.

It should be fairly straightforward to write a script that tests for SSH keypairs with an empty passphrase, simply try to authenticate an SSH agent by loading the user's key.
IBM & ETH Zurich building water cooled computer
I'm not sure why you would think we don't know about this in the UK. Canaries were used in UK mines until around 1987. I'm pretty sure it's a well know saying, at least among the people that I know.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/30...
Anyone who wasn't registered keep getting pushed off the site? F-that.
Cost-per-impression isn't that rare. We have a nice deal that does just that. In fact that whole network does only cost-per-impression.

But even for cost-per-click views matter. If you have more views, you can get into better programs.

But most of all, you deprive the site and the advertiser of the opportunity to make money of off you. If you don't click a specific advertisement: fine. Then it's the publisher's job or the advertiser's job to find ads that do get them value out of your visit. If you "opt-out" of ads, they don't have that opportunity and you've become worthless to them. A freeloader with no potential of ever being worth something. The site would be better of by blocking you...
"The legislative effort later stalled after local media characterized the bill as a $1 billion tax break for high-tech giants."

What is the prevailing local opinion now?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/03/value-social-net...

fits in, doesn't it
What made me laugh about this article was them mentioning The Sun and "Quality Journalisim" in the same sentence. What, quality journalisim such as Ruth's impression of MS Bing? (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2570027/Micros...)

All he'll be able to charge for on that is access to half-naked women
The mice that didn't make it: 20 weird pointing device patents.
Just google for name of the article go to the site from this point. Site never blocks traffic from search engines :)
While the term "almost the majority" is just another way to say "the minority", I do agree there is some truth to this. I just came from from the grocery store, and of the $65 I spent, $25 of it was stuff that wasn't on my list that (but that I usually buy) that I'd qualify as impulse.
Why is the speed of developing new products inversely related to the number of old product units shipped? I'm not saying it's not related, I just wonder why.

Maybe the answer is that huge numbers of the old product shipping means that any new product promises only a relatively small change in revenue and earnings. And that may be particularly true if the new product is perceived to be a niche product.
I'm not saying that there aren't real, valid reasons for the state of things today to have evolved in the manner I described. And I completely agree that designing APIs well, and doing object-oriented design hierarchy well in the manner in which it was intended is a formidable problem domain. Never did I mean to imply that it wasn't. And certainly, there is a qualitative, artistic dimension to the way in which one goes about stringing various APIs together, too.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that today when I - and many others - program, we're spending 90% of our time putting together the pieces of some reference. Back when I was growing up writing code in C, there wasn't so much of that, aside from the sparse library functions and, of course, system calls. I actually felt like I was writing a lot of code; maybe unnecessary code from a contemporary point of view (lots of linked list containers, hash table implementations, etc.), but definitely code, and I was writing it. There's something in that productive bliss that's gone today, when it's basically a question of figuring out what the javadocs say.
Maybe the head is there to symbolize that big brother Google is always watching you???
You should write that bookmarklet. As a site owner, I can tell you I'd probably ignore it if it's only one person, but if several people are complaining, I'd look into it and discuss the problem with one or a few of them. And I would be grateful for the feedback.

Constructive feedback is always good. "Your ad in location XY is loading very slowly." "The ad for product Z is misbehaving and causing a redirect/hang/whatever." As long as it isn't annoying comments like "I don't like ads, you should remove them" or "It moves. Can't you just use ads that I don't notice?" Those are pointless, because they hinge on the concept that ads are fine as long as nobody sees them, which goes against the whole point of ads.
If you feel the app is useful, there are a myriad of sites out there who may be willing to review your app (Phandroid, Android & Me, etc) which is a good place to start. Other sites related to site administration might also be good to talk to.

If the tool is free, you could also promote it via it's own website or blog and allow users to download the APK, or give them a QRCode on the site that allows them to get ti directly from the market using the barcode scanner tool
Googe v Adobe, new game?
ah, yes. Missed out on that one! I actually had one of the first ARM based machines straight out of 'Acorn' (before they went on general sale) through a deal with the dutch importer (lvl rocom).

The only software that it came with was a game called 'lander', it didn't do much other than display this amazing 3D landscape that you could fly across to shoot at stuff.

We'd be mesmerized for hours by how smooth the animation was.

It was pretty sad to see the ARM to go down the way it did only to be resurrected as an embedded platform. What a missed chance!

Just about everything coming out of Acorn (except maybe the atom) was engineered so well it was quite amazing.

The bbc micro had a dual processor option (in those days pretty much unheard of, the only thing that would come close would be a float coprocessor in an ibm, but that would not be a secondary general purpose processor) through a flatcable connector on the bottom of the machine called 'the tube'. The ARM was originally designed to be one of several coprocessors available for the bbc.

I heard an interesting anecdote about the ARM at the time, that it was the only processor designed that worked on first silicon. They'd built a simulator for it and used that to verify the design.

I didn't get much assembly time on it though, this was just about when Acorn went under as a manufacturer of general purpose computers (the 'master series' bbc were also pretty good). So I moved on to the Atari ST and the IBM pc (a homebrew machine that I built on top of a filing trolley, a buddy of mine welded a steel sheet to an empty folder hanger trolley and that became the basis for my pc, motherboard bolted on top, powersupply to the bottem. It looked pretty scary :) ).
Convert OneNote to PDF
> I don't click on those ads, so I have an Ad Blocker.

It's probably the other way around: You have an Ad Blocker, so you don't click on ads.
The Million Dollar Question
Teams need to pull together...
This is a question I've been meaning to ask on here, but didn't think it warranted its own "Ask HN": What's the best way for someone with an otherwise decent math background, but no statistics, to get started on the topic? Any particular books, websites, etc that people recommend?
I can't speak to puppet, but I would expect the proper thing to do is to run puppet as root, or possibly create a puppet user with NOPASSWD if you must. There's really no reason to not run as root if you're going to run NOPASSWD ALL, since anyone with the slightest bit of deviancy in mind (or just annoyance with not being root) is going to "sudo su -", and sudo is done.

You can probably write a script that searches for empty-phrase keypairs, but this would be a client side thing. The private key is not disclosed to the server, and all operations involving the private key happen post-decoding, so this is unenforceable server-side. It would be an interesting policy/hygiene enforcement tool but would be of little or no use for security purposes.
Richard Stallman is kinda old to be called a "cool cyberkid", you know..
oh yeah, turn checkboxes into iPhone toggle switches. that's not boring! very, very exciting.

what is wrong with you people?
Panel discussion with high school and college kids reveals shocking truth - young people tend to be broke.
Rupert Murdoch to charge to view News Corp's online news
I would have though the reason is quite simple. Most companies would fall into the category of software users and as such have no desires what so ever to become developers of software.

If you’re not in the business of developing software, you won’t be needing software developers.
I really hope facebook and twitter are fads that will be abandoned and forgotten. I don't want to be practically forced to use them just to stay in touch.
Very impressive looking contender.

The one weakness it does have is that it is not considering past screens, just the current one.

Thus, AI will fail when the only way to progress is by going backwards a bit(while the tempting forward paths lead to Mario's demise).

Then again, maybe going backwards is not allowed in this particular Mario environment.
I had the opposite experience. Got it to run locally, but failed when deployed.
It was my first impression after I've bought iPod Touch: you can't do this, you can't do that... and things I am allowed to do (there is a closed list) normally involve paying.
I was totally enraged by the concept itself so I returned the thing.

I have paid, but I don't OWN the stuff, more like LEASE it and pay, pay, pay for every my fart. Considering that the useful output of the device was kinda limited, it was looking perfectly cynical: a device induces electrical impulses in my hypothalamus and debits money from my account. Perfect! Perfect!
I wonder if you consider yourself “creative for a living” because I am, and your generalization does not ring any bells for me.

Creative people are often motivated by a task, filling in holes in the patterns they see (and finding these patterns), not by boredom.

I don’t smoke or gamble and have no interest in picking it up. Drinking is limited to “on special occasions” (and that is how I like it). I do however like to travel, and that is my guilty pleasure.

I can feel guilty about this (hence guilty pleasure), so I travel less than what I want to, exactly because it affects “work”, like the grand parent talks about. But that feeling helps me be creative for a living, because I finish the things I start rather than go awol, smoking, drinking, or traveling the world.
I always carry a small Rhodia notebook in my back pocket. They have very sturdy covers and won't come apart or get torn up. Everything goes into it: todos, ideas, notes about things I've just seen, heard, or read. I also like to keep some of those post-it bookmarks and some stamps stuck in the back against the cardboard backing. When I come home everything gets dumped where it needs to go, like my daily todo list, address book, or whatever.

I also keep a few text files going with books to read, movies to watch, and sights and attractions I'd like to visit.

I should add that these notebooks are much cheaper than moleskines :)
Memory analysis and exploitation is fascinating. Anyone knows any good resource for someone interested in it but still quite "noobish"? I know only Drepper's paper and the classic "Smashing the stack [...]"...
...and all these sites are pure luxeries.

...and all the content is generated by the kids themselves.
Ravoux's slavemaker ant
They irritate me a lot on the iphone as well - I really hope this metaphore goes away, checkbox type thing is just fine...
Not a formally trained mathematician, but I think this story is a stunning example of just how much innate mathematical ability the human brain contains. Also, it's noteworthy that the ability to describe complex mathematical concepts without being able to write them down formally seems to be a common thread in a certain kind of genius (e.g. Einstein).
Nice little lessons for anyone who wants to sell to 'young' people.

I'll call out this point, however: "they never buy anything because of the advertising."

I've heard this before in market research groups, and even from business owners, but let me tell you - if you're buying some product, anything with a brand, chances are that advertising played some role.

See also this recent HN discussion - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=690758
#2 is definitely an interesting suggestion.

I don't quite get the black market thing though. If they can't trade the points for dollars, what's the motivation for creating useless auctions? Doesn't seem like a way to launder money.
Without the @ it could be used as an address too. The To: field is unambiguously a list of intended targets, independent of the formatting -- it's unfortunate that twitter has no metadata and the recipient list needs to be listed in-line with a special syntax. When someone wants to get my attention or directs something they say at me, they use the same string I use to identify myself, my name, not (necessarily) with any special prefixing/enclosing/suffixing embellishments.

I am thinking that the domains have less and less importance, and that our data should be more integrated across the web.

That a "domain" is something on the RHS of an @ and is the name for something you can "purchase" the right to use is inconsequential. I could just as well purchase a domain that is my name (independent of the fact that there are well-known TLDs that you are limited to purchase under). Domains are just the base-line identifier that we tie a bunch of internet related services to, through the DNS and zone files, there is nothing inherently "domain-y" about them.
Ameritrade has an api.

I've also been looking at the BATS exchange: http://www.batstrading.com/home/ . I don't know how feasible it is to get an account with them. http://www.batstrading.com/membership/
One of the big bottlenecks here is access to the low latency network connections & data streams. Successful HFT systems integrate information from ultra low latency news wires, trading activity in microsecond timescales, and are constantly testing things like dark pools for private market pricing information which isn't publicly accessible. Even if you'd written the ultimate trading app, you still wouldn't have that kind of access -- which takes millions in infrastructure and business partnerships you don't have, and no consumer brokerage would give away practically no matter how much you wanted to pay for it -- making the game unwinnable for anyone but institutions and highly specialized proprietary trading firms.
I am remarkably non-broke for a graduate student that went to grad school straight out of undergraduate. I was still amazed when my advisor whipped out his credit card to pay for Pandora One practically on a whim. On the other hand, I have learned the value of going out to eat instead of cooking.

Tangible goods have value. Pain avoidance has value. Intangible entertainment that is consumed at home has so many free substitutes that we're only paying for the marginal entertainment. I don't think this is news -- we didn't just grow up with Napster, but also DVD libraries, romsets, and hackable consumer electronics. I wonder what proportion of young people are aware of someone with substantial romsets for the NES or SNES?

Finally, my social network exists outside of its computer representation, and transcribing the personal data from Facebook to the next system is embarassingly parallel. Of COURSE there's no reason for loyalty.
They're suspending people's accounts pretty quickly if they tweet the google cash scam.
Microsoft Shutters Encarta as Douglas Adam's Encyclopedia Model Wins
I had the same thought, but this strikes me as a pretty clever "hack" nevertheless: it exploits a functionality of the service to circumvent the service itself.
There was an Ask Metafilter question about learning stats.

http://ask.metafilter.com/105045/Best-way-to-relearn-statist...
Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?
I always have a tiny scribbling pad about the size of my palm and a pencil in one of my pockets at all times. So wherever I am, I can immediately jot down any ideas that come to me.
Younger people (high school students especially) also tend to not have a CC# to put in to pay for things online. They tend to have to ask their parents for their card, and justify to them why they should be allowed to charge something to their account (even if they already have the actual liquidity necessary to pay them back.) This becomes especially problematic with micropayments, because it's very hard to justify "giving my information away to a strange website" for a $0.99 charge. It's actually much easier to convince a parent to get off their ass for a $200 charge, as long as you could justify/pay back the actual 200 dollars.
Do you know any other good visualization toolkits in javascript?
If Maemo is the way forward, there's a serious problem.

At my previous company, we developed an 'applet' (one of the little widgets on the desktop) for the Nokia 770 and N800 tablets. I worked closely with the tablet team (all great people, for the record) and yet it was one of the most painful development processes I've ever experienced.

Applets run in the context of the desktop app, so if there's a crash, the entire device reboots, period. The desktop toolchain worked well enough once set up, but it didn't have access to the wireless APIs so we were unable to use it. I eventually wrote an app for the device that loaded and ran our applet inside it, which made debugging with gdb possible, but even with this it was horrid.

I'll be a Nokia fan for life after working with those guys, but I can't help but see Maemo in itself as one step forward, two steps back.
True, but on the other hand, if you're already creating, but you find there's just no spark in your work, these things could be good muses.
Monopoly. I like it because:

1. It's a really long game.

2. With a bit of creative rule modding you can totally change the game.

3. The concept of getting to become insanely rich is very alluring.
I just found that game a few months ago myself. Since then, I've played a few games with some of my friends. Lot's of fun.
From my own experience it's a "Time and Effort" vs "Money" thing. When I was young I was willing to put up with broken torrent connections, annoying ads, and other inconveniences in order to get stuff for free. Because I had more time than money and was willing to put in the effort.

As an adult I'd just assume pay the $1.99 or buy the $36 (a year) Pandora One membership so as to not have to put up with that stuff. Because now I have the money but there is much more of a demand on my time.

In that way I think these young kids aren't going to spend money they don't have now. But once they have enough money for media costs to be inconsequential they'll start paying for stuff.
And Gmail stands out as the one web-app that the kids love. Woot, they love the one innovative web-app that really improved something? Unbelievable.