skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Satya is no Steve Jobs or Larry Page. He is typical corporate ladder climber who took 22 years in the company to get to where he is. Before you credit with all the profits in server & tools, make a note that he was in Bing and did not had any major impact in direction or turnaround. Microsoft divisions are setup in such a way that if you put a monkey on the top (or even Steve Ballmer, for that matter) for a year or two, it will still make same amount of profits because of licensing deals. Satya also hasn't brought anything dramatic or revolutionary in his current job. Azure is still irrelevant and Dev Tools still has little impact on Windows or vice versa.

So Satya would be your choice if you want "stability", no fear of any dramatic changes and "easy as she goes" attitude. Honestly that is the least what Microsoft needs right now. Microsoft is currently pretty much in same situation as Apple was when Steve Jobs arrived. I know, I know, I see you jumping off your chairs quoting last quarterly results and telling me it is far from bankruptcy like was Apple. But have noticed a chart of PC sales for last 3 years? Have you noticed a giant slump in Office that is only matter of time to eat away the growth in server and tools?

In any case, I really think Micosoft needs a bold bet, not someone conservative. It needs someone who would come in and say, this size of 100K employees is bullshit, who has courage to remove about 60% of crud that has been accumulated in form of MBAs, PMs, "Business Managers", GMs and their 13+ levels of hierarchy. Someone who would have balls to say managers are overhead, less important and there needs to be 30 reports per manager (instead of current 3-7). Someone who can personally deeply dive in to products and send out "30 things to fix and improve" every Friday night. Someone who will go to end of the Earth to get the best talent in industry. Someone who insist on best customer experience and signs off his/her name on each product release saying that he personally has tested and used every customer facing aspect of the product and is happy with it. Someone who would never let crapeware like Windows 8 get through the door. Someone who insist on same OS for Phone and Tablets. Someone who would not hesitate to move org charts if things don't work out as intended.

As far as I'm aware Satya is neither of these. He is your regular MBA with tech experience who can keep the ship steady in good weather.
Same here. But I checked it using my mobile.
Ask HN: Best IRC channels?
What are the best IRC channels for developers, security, networks, programming, general tech discussion, data science, etc. Just looking for some recco's.
DRACO: Death to the Virus
https://talky.io/hn
https://opentokrtc.com/hn
https://apprtc.appspot.com/?r=hn
http://caatch.me
https://vline.com
IANAL, but standing alone, with no exchange of 'consideration', and only signed/stated by one party, it likely doesn't create much of a legal obligation.

Combined with other communication - perhaps as one of a pair of 'pinky-swears', each stating one party's offering in return for the others' - it might contribute part of a larger commitment. After all, a contract doesn't have to be written - it's just wise to do so for the sake of clarity.

The exercise of writing down a mutual understanding, even if it's not a legally strong contract, can still be useful in reducing the risk of misunderstandings.
That would be counterintuitive. I always inform my bank before traveling out of the country. They want to know the destination nation and a date range, which is necessary to avoid triggering red flags when "card present" transactions start showing up from an unexpected location.
The moral of the Twitter-GoDaddy breach: People are the easiest thing to hack
Sadly I'm not holding my breath. For the past ten years we've been upvoting requests for value types, being told that they were not necessary because the JVM was brilliant already, then after much argument and ample proof being told that stack allocation in the JVM was a better solution, then having it delayed, finding out that the implementation didn't really work that well, etc. Sun has been pretty shit about prioritizing this issue, perhaps Oracle will be better, but it's a far shittier company than even Sun was so I'm skeptical.

It's also possible I'm jusy raging because this is a problem that has been well known for well over a decade but has been played down by the folks in charge of the JVM every time it comes up, even though it remains a real problem with the platform.
Optimize your JS with IRHydra 2 for V8
I got the same problem when I opened it on Safari but it's working fine with Chrome. I tried it with a friend of mine and it works fine. But I think audio needs a bit of fine tuning.
The Best Free JavaScript Resources
HAH! Me and my best friend used to do the exact same thing, especially with Halo. You can break that game like no tomorrow.
NyanCoin creators are lying about being the first licensed crypto
My back begins to hurt if I lay around too much.
they should use https://code.google.com/p/webrtc/source/browse/stable/sample... to make it work for both browsers.
Yeah, meanwhile Skype is just removing features. The other day I had this Skype followup job interview and I realized I should change my display picture or better yet remove it because taking pictures of ones self is tedious. They removed the ability to remove your display pic. What the fuck?

Would love a proper open source Skype replacement. Something that meets all of the features in a similar or better interface, while also being pro-privacy pro-encryption. Kind of like the Firefox of communication clients. I don't think it's plausible any time soon as you can only Skype fellow skype users. People need a reason to switch and stay there, thus approaching Skype levels of a userbase. Maybe if Firefox itself integrated a powerful addon that could compete with Skype, which would allow for a huge userbase. Heh, one can hope.

I'm with you on the quality thing though. So. Many. Times. Have I had to deal with cumbersome upload speeds for either person thus degrading audio and video to the point where they look like blobs or I do. Sometimes it happens no matter what the user's connection is like. Then there's the whole auto background noise amplifier that kicks in when you're not speaking for a period, to conveniently transmit your TV or aircon at ear shattering volumes. And once again you can't turn that off!

It's just, like, these people developing apps like Skype don't care about making it a great application. How much does it really cost to put in a few critically useful features? Are the devs not passionate? Is there too much bureaucracy? Why is "it works" an acceptable standard? How the hell can you be a devloper for something that is literally used by so many millions of people and yet feel no urge to make that software the absolute finest possible?
it should be easy for the devs' to add the interop shim for WebRTC to make it work in both Firefox and Chrome: https://code.google.com/p/webrtc/source/browse/stable/sample...
The biggest priority for new CEO is to get the two major divisions OS and Devs on the same page instead of bickering and reinventing the UI several times over from other groups. Secondly, he needs to put focus on UI design and usability instead of having engineering lead the way.
shameless plug: http://staging.callstats.io/api we are trying to solve the problem for all WebRTC devs with poor voice and video quality.

Drop us an email.
This is an excellent essay which all EdTech people should read. We're all down with more Tech in the Ed, but more interesting is getting the Ed into Tech, i.e., not stupid arithmetic math and puzzles in computer games, but real math reasoning.

> Over the long run, humanity will no doubt build more powerful new patterns of explanation into our media platforms, permanently changing and expanding what we mean by explanation. We're only just beginning to explore these possibilities, but it will be exciting to see what happens in the decades ahead as we reinvent explanation.

this

> A second problem with educational games lies in the word "educational". The most important fact about compulsory schooling is that students do not -- indeed, cannot -- choose to attend. Instead, they are required to attend, for what society deems "their own good". This is true even in the most enlightened schools. A student in such a coercive environment does not have full responsibility for their own learning. And, in my opinion, it is not possible to do serious intellectual work without full responsibility for your own learning. Put another way, I believe that compulsory schools, by their nature, are places where serious intellectual work cannot occur.

True. For many students, schools are prisons.
Given this context, the quality of the teaching material is more important.
If I were in prison, I'd wish for good books...

> what would happen if we put the resources and talent of a major video game or movie studio toward creating great explanations, rather than pure entertainment products?

It's called the Khan Academy ;)

______

My take on this is that we should aim for lowest common denominator: a system based around HTML (like standalone .html files or .epub) with JavaScript enabled (for MathJax and scripting canvas/svg interactives). Content written in this system will be renderable on most pixel-based devices (for interactive exploratory learning) and with a toLaTeX() method should also be printable (for analytical learning).

____

Here's my attempt at the kidney studies' Simpson paradox in text.
For large kidney stones Treatment A helped 55 people out of 80,
while Treatment B helped 192 out of 263, in two separate studies.
For small kidney stones treatment A helped 234 people out of 270,
while Treatment B helped 81 out of 87, in the same two studies.

We shouldn't really compare the statistics from the two trials since they were performed on different patients. Nevertheless, since both studies had 350 patients in total, we can say that Treatment A is better since it helped a total of 289 patients on that trial which is > than the 273 saved by Treatment B.

Treatment A Treatment B
Large kidney stones	69% (55 / 80)	73% (192 / 263)
Small kidney stones	87% (234 / 270)	93% (81 / 87)
All patients	83% (289 / 350)	78% (273 / 350)
hackers rule!
This is typically the job of the congestion control and the application constraints set by the developer. Dynamic Frame rate control is just one tool in the congestion control toolbox and works only for small frame sizes (typically thumbnails), which perhaps is fine for Hangout-ish large conference with one or two active speakers.

But there are other use-cases where doing dynamic frame rate wont be sufficient.
I am not sure if they are using https://code.google.com/p/webrtc/source/browse/stable/sample... -- it works as a charm on our application.
I'm now signing up there.

It would be really nice to be able to log in with github, since many project owners already have a github account.
Ask HN: how bad are trademark conflicts for startup names?
After spending a lot of time/effort agonizing over names for my startup, I recently identified one that I like, and that I might actually be able to obtain for a reasonable price.

To my dismay, a USPTO trademark search turns up the exact name as an existing trademark. The two businesses don't seem that related - mine is a consumer web site, the existing trademark appears to be for some software related to IT management. It is owned by a 5th tier IT consulting company. (In other words, obscure product.)

I also noted there was at least one other consulting company using nearly the exact same name I had in mind. (They get #1 on Google.)

Both of these companies presumably have deep enough pockets to cause problems for me. Does it matter and how much should I expect to pay a lawyer to check it out for me?
Yea. The first 500 years of history of my region in Germany were lost on September 11th 1944 when the archives of Darmstadt were consumed by a firestorm.
Seconded. I know to look for an AMEX or Discover logo at a cash register or on the bill cover at a restaurant/bar. Those cards are accepted at many more businesses than they were ten years ago, but acceptance will never hit 100% due to the fee differences for merchants.
I share deep concerns about anything seemingly scammy.

Modeling ways in which societies can prevent more people from being exploited is one of my 'hobbies.' There are many paths that can help. The path that's most wise and ethical, I'd argue, is a route that respects more free choice and builds more groundwork for cultural conditions that are more conducive to skepticism and information-based awareness. Many of the current methods of interference, licensing, and monopolistic-fueling procedures -- often under a sheep's clothing of a supposed collective trust -- have countless damaging effects in the long run. It will overwhelm society in other negative ways to gain temporary positives in protection. It erodes progress. It often shifts access to the powerful. I won't get into it here but it's all part and parcel of fueling corporatism in general.

Distrust is critical.

Distrust should pervade consciousness. The opposite happens as a result of many current policies. People start to mindlessly believe in claims more than they already do. I believe there's a large vacuum that waits to be filled where third-party cooperatives fill the thirst that people would otherwise have for vetting trust (e.g. NGO regulatory bodies, quality/certification programs, voluntary submissions to transparency) -- given a remarkably underutilized internet -- except a great push won't happen until a tipping point occurs. The public will have to say enough is enough and reject the double-edged sword of policy. Deferring more solutions to an entity comprised of people willing and eager to wage violence and torture as a method of order: this ultimately grows insidious laws and insidious forms of reasoning as a whole.

There's a good argument that a state can have greater legitimacy when it's relegated to a role as a more supportive backbone of arbitrating claims and disputes, while vastly decreasing corporate control/protection. This would render most executives more vulnerable to loss of assets. This would naturally decrease a person's willingness to be deceptive. A bridge to this model could be as simple as first requiring disclaimers by any independent service that wishes to oppose a status quo. It would allow choice/consent. "This [entity] has not been regulated or verified by [authority]."

Grandmas, grandpas, and the like are naturally more vulnerable. No one wants people to lose their life savings due to natural mental circumstances that beget trust. I'm all for any effort that perpetuates exposure and awareness of scams and lends power to grievances.
this is awesome it reminds me of how much i loved meetings.io before they sold
SRTP/DTLS to be specific instead of SRTP/SDES. In the past the keys were sent in SDP (using SDES--Security Descriptions) therefore over HTTP, but SRTP/DTLS is the way forward and in the spec.
While your code may be fine, I find it weird to see functional operations in the same expression as the ASCII code '0' (48). It is a very weird juxtaposition of abstractions.
By democracy I mean principles like a multi-partite political system, free speech, commitment to securing human rights. I am not talking about freedom as such - surely the idea of freedom is "deeply ingrained" in every person, regardless of culture.

My point was that these principles cannot be just implanted in a country where traditions are very different (e.g, tradition to give some political power to religious leaders), and where the circumstances are very different from the West (e.g., poor economy).

> democracy has not evolved over a long time. It came with a bang and that was possible because the idea was already widespread.

So it was God-given?

> it's not even clear what "foreign culture" really means any more.

On the internet, probably not. But when it comes to actually running a country, factors such as family clans, nepotism, ethnic or religious factions, are still very strong in many countries, and I don't think the internet is going to change this any time soon.
اندرويد بالمختصر المفيد
مدونه لمستخدمي نظام اندرويد تهتم باخبار اندرويد, اجهزة هواتف,تطبيقات اندرويد ,برامج ,العاب أندرويد تطوير ,تحديث, نتابع باستمرار آخر الأنباء المتعلقة بنظام وأجهزة اندرويد في العالم
I recently joined nfl.com as a FE dev; I see a lot of 404s on Game Center data feeds. The feeds are being requested past the end of the data (the feed tells you where to look for new data until last feed returns 200 with no data - beyond that it's a 404). Not sure how to reduce the 404s, suppose we could document the feeds and make them openly available. Hmm.

I like finding projects in the wild that do creative things with nfl.com data. This guy is building an Arduino Fantasy Football trophy: https://github.com/sambrenner/future-trophy And this person built an OSX app using score strip XML for current scores: https://github.com/kchau/NFL-Menu
> Take a Taiwan invasion scenario, which is the PLA’s top operational planning priority. While much hand-wringing has been done in recent years about the shifting military balance in the Taiwan Strait, so far no one has been able to explain how any invading PLA force would be able to cross over 100 nautical miles of exceedingly rough water and successfully land on the world’s most inhospitable beaches, let alone capture the capital and pacify the rest of the rugged island.

I've no idea where the author gets the idea that Taiwan's beaches are the world's most inhospitable. China has continually increased it's stockade of short range missiles located along the coast by the Taiwan Strait. Their strategy most likely would be to decapitate the command and control structure and probably much of the military hardware along with power generation and infrastructure in Taiwan first. It would be a relatively relaxed "invasion" across the Taiwan Strait after that - assuming no retaliation or retribution from the US or Japan first.
This is pretty cool. Would it be possible to get basic text chat in there? Some people have no mic but could benefit from this anyway. Thanks for your hard work!

By the way, it works fine for me in Chrome.
Not presently. However, it's been on my mind for a while and as of now is priority numero uno.
Why price fixing engineers salaries is a big deal
Original article: http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/
>I don't think most people around the world have an issue with colonial Britain either.

Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but many outside the western world consider the UK to be one of the chief evil influences in the world.
At least in US they are still scared of the First Amendment. In UK, for example, they just say "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."
Training Missions would be a great use for OpenBadges.

http://openbadges.org/
Screenlogger – A keylogger app for Android and iOS Smartphones
There is a reason for this: so that the Army (or any of the other British institutions that nominally have the Queen at the top of their org charts) can't be politicized. That's the theory anyway, tho' New Labour tried their best to stuff the civil service and the BBC with their cronies. So when the PM of the day says "go and shoot the leader of the opposition" the soldier or marine or policeman can say "sorry mate, I actually don't work for you".
Blackberry messenger still the best, or...
Food for thought (or how to change the world for the better)
The world is not like it used to be anymore, the world is good. We need to cooperate. Intelligence and the will to change the world for the better are all it takes.
I probably didn't post this before because I was too scared of the world. I was too worried about surviving rather than to try and change the world for the better. Posting this information goes against my survival instincts because the world would somehow destroy me. By not giving me money, by claiming I was insane, by throwing me in jail, by censoring this information or by sending people to kill me (in no particular order or way).
My own body tried to kill itself and I'm not suicidal, I just faint when I think about this.
Do you know any app which allows up to 15 participants for free or by issuing one time payment? My company is mostly ok with voice standups and meetings but from time to time we want to experiment with video ones. We are still not sure about them so we want to play around a little bit before deciding to switch to a video tool. The problem is, most of the tools have a limitation for a number of allowed participants so small that we cannot give them a try during our weekly meeting because not all team members can join. Is there anything that allows higher number? Or something that can be used once without recurring payments? Must work on mac os, linux and windows. Preferably without using browser plugins or java solution but if that's not possible then we can go with them. So far hangout with their 10ppl limit and good compatibility across platforms seems best. Webrtc solutions worked for us in technical terms but were limited to 8 participants usually. Why always 8? I really hope there is something out there that we could use.
INRAC, the langauge RACTER (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter) has the most bizarre flow control I've ever seen in any computer language, ever. It can best be described as "a random, pattern matched GOTO/GOSUB" which is the most succinct description I can come up with.

I have a blog entry about it (http://boston.conman.org/2008/06/18.2) but in short, each line of an INRAC program (unless it ends with a '#' mark in which case execution continues to the next line) is a subroutine, each with a label. The label does not need be unique, but when you "call" a subroutine, INRAC will just pick one line with that label at random to execute. The pattern matching comes in because you can select the label with wildcard characters (which just picks a line that matches the pattern at random).

There isn't much about the language on the Internet. In fact, the only other page aside from my blog entry (which I wrote as I went through the existing source code I found for Racter) is the Racter FAQ (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.int-fiction...) which has a few inaccuracies (or perhaps was looking at a version of the code before processing).
They're way ahead of you :-
They can take any audio recording (from any source) in the UK and get an exact time-stamp of its recording and detect whether it has been edited in any way : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20629671
The bit about racial profiling is spot on, but heavily understated. People who are clearly U.S. citizens are merely inconvenienced and embarrassed by the TSA's shenanigans. If you know somebody from either the middle-east or a country noted for supplying narcotics (e.g. Mexico) who has flown through the U.S., even just to transfer to a connecting flight, ask them what their experience was like. The TSA treats U.S. citizens like Hollywood celebrities by comparison! The stories I've heard frequently cross the line into what any reasonable person would define as outright abuse. Obviously, few victims stand up for themselves.

The terrorists didn't win. The TSA became the terrorists.
Nomination for worst information graphic design of the year.
Yep, and note the careful wording in the original piece: "1950s Soviet designed airframe". Those aren't 50 year old planes either.

Production was performed by the plant at Xian, with at least 150 built into the 1990s. China is estimated to currently operate around 120 of the aircraft. The latest version is the cruise missile-carrying H-6K.[1]

They aren't exactly the most advanced plane in the world, but they don't need to be. It is disingenuous of the author to make it sound like the Chinese are doing anything dramatically different to what other nations do.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_H-6