skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Has anybody ever trusted people in authority? During the bootlegger era, it was common for public officials to be quite openly on the take. Can you even imagine,[1] something like that being tolerated today?

What is different,[2] now is that trust has been eroded in institutions. I think people in my parents generation (born in the early 1950's) still believe that government more or less acts in the best interests of the people.[3] I think that belief is a lot less common in my generation, and I'm quite past the age of generic rebelliousness (born mid 1980's).

What strikes me as interesting are two related facts:

1) Those who are the most distrustful of government tend to skew libertarian; but

2) Many of the biggest changes in the U.S. since 1970 have been in the direction of deregulation, increased emphasis on markets, and smaller government.[4]

Measures that should be increasing trust in the system are having the opposite effect. In the 1970's, it was considered reasonable for government to outright set prices and rates. Today, even subsidies draw strong attack.

To be fair, I agree with much of the agenda of deregulation since the 1970's, so this isn't a criticism of that trend. But I also believe a nation can't do great things if people don't have faith in its basic institutions. It is, to me, one of the most striking differences between the West and the East, and I don't think it's coincidental that societal prosperity is highly correlated with the amount of faith people have in their basic institutions.

[1] Without resorting to the facile false equivalency between campaign donations and outright bribery.

[2] Although not new--it has been described elsewhere that these moods are cyclic.

[3] It can be argued that the government really does act in the interests of upper middle class baby boomers (like my parents).

[4] People will contest this, but it's hard to argue with the facts. From 1970 to 2002, federal spending exclusive of interest, social security, and medicare dropped from 15% of GDP to 10% of GDP. It spiked during the recession, but is trending back towards hitting 10% by early in the next decade. Deregulation has moved similarly. We might complain about lack of competition in telecom today, but in 1970 AT&T was still a sanctioned, national monopoly.
So your problem isn't with the small-start screen vs big screen, but with the density of information? With the Metro Start Screen you can customize apps, folders, and their sizes to your liking, or just type what application you want and hit enter to launch it.
How can you more readily find something in a smaller space? And the new start menu is much easier to organize then the old start menu.
All I want is to be able to open the calculator or preview a photo without it taking up my whole 24" screen and forcing me to ALT+F4.
I think you just have to sign into your live account. Its completely free and took 5 minutes to get install/initiated. After you install , just check updates like you normally would and the new ones should appear. April 8 is when the new 8.1 will appear for anyone with this app installed and registered.
Except that that gets you precisely one option, which isn't even normally the one I'm looking for. When pressing the power button somehow gives the the restart/sleep/shutdown option, then it will make sense.
It's also about poor consideration of the varying circumstances of real world use. Ideas about a full screen start menu that work well in small form factors can't just be assumed to work on a desktop display. I think the new start menu is great on a small touchscreen device like a tablet, but my workstation has a pair of 30'' monitors and it's ridiculous.
Does anybody with experience doing analysis in both R and python have any insight as to whether one can replace the other, or do they significantly supplement each other? I get the impression that python with pandas/scikit-learn/scipy/numpy/matplotlib can be used almost completely in lieu of both R and matlab, but I don't feel that I have enough experience in R or matlab to make such a claim.
The U.S. Military Is One Step Closer to Having Invisibility Cloaks
Researchers are one step closer to creating shields that could render parked tanks and aircraft virtually invisible.
I think Python has become a de-facto standard language for machine learning (not necessarily academic AI research). The book Collective Intelligence by O'Reilly is a great overview of ML techniques, and it uses Python. You might also want to take the Coursera ML class. If you sign up today, you might not even miss the deadline for Week 1 coursework. (And if you do it's not that bad.) That uses Octave, not Python, but you'd still learn a lot. You might also meet like-minded people in the course forums.
He's also been kicking the project around for years now, so he's probably thought/worked through a lot of the initial hurdles.
I've been waiting for this, being able to ask siri(Cortana) to set my nest or lock unlock the Lockitron would be awesome. Even better would be an IFTTT app that could run certain scripts based on certain phrases. Like "Good Night Cortana" would adjust my thermostat, lock the doors, and turn off any lights that are still on and make sure my alarm is set.

This is a feature that would make me interested in switching to a WinPhone
It undoubtedly helps that the key people behind the Windows 8 Ux have either left Microsoft or left the Windows org. So perhaps it's less 'we screwed up,' and more 'they screwed up.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Sinofsky

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/larsongreen/default...

http://www.geekwire.com/2013/microsoft-windows-shakeup-conti...
They really need to go both ways with their cross platform offerings.

I can use their technology to develop apps for other platforms, but I cannot use their technology to run those apps. That requires having the other platform.

It would be nice if I could not only develop cross platform apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, but I could also run them on their Windows Phone platform. I would buy a windows phone if it could do that.
Why would you rant about this? You don't know what they're even looking for in an answer. How many LOC there are in your app is relevant but doesn't necessarily mean it's going to effect your application in any way. I think the history of some of the groups accepted speaks to this.
They list "Plex" (DLNA server) in their "streaming services" list. It would be nice to know if there are other servers supported.
Now what if riding your bike, structured and unstructured reflection, and everything you do in your free time were also part of your job?

And with the example of the athlete a portion of their job is to have down time, and not be out doing strenuous physical activities the night before the big game.

When I encountered the situation where my leisure became my job, I simply didn't have anything I wanted to do to fill the free time anymore. Sure I could of done push ups or gone on dates or something else which I personally hate doing, but making myself miserable in my free time isn't my idea of healthy.
Fukushima photo essay: A drone’s eye view
int main(){ puts("Hello World"); }

> This doesn't work in Windows.

Sure it does. Windows has console programs. Though I'd argue that your use of non-standard main is not something I'd do, but IIRC even that works on Windows, at least it did with older compilers, haven't done much windows C programming with the newer ones.
Off topic, but thanks for wading in and describing the moderator viewpoint, even if it isn't fun. :) I think more moderator transparency is helpful, even if it ends up being something I disagree with[1].

[1] Not anything that I saw in this thread, just theoretically.
> "According to one report, the predictions made by the Good Judgment Project are often better even than intelligence analysts with access to classified information"

This makes me wonder how well analysts do, when they aren't given classified intelligence information. It's entirely possible that the analysts' skills are being hamstrung by information they think they know, but isn't actually true.
.Net native code compilation, aka static linking for the .net age. This feature is a LOOOOONG time coming, they should have had it available a decade ago.

P.S. Mark my words, this is going to be a huge deal. Especially since MS is acquiring Xamarin, which basically does the same thing, but for mobile platforms. With the ability to develop in .net languages and still deliver a plain-jane .exe that doesn't require jitting it'll open up a lot of new opportunities. Especially if they start targeting non-windows platforms like linux, iOS, and android with fully-baked tools. Imagine how much more popular C# would be if it wasn't tied to the Windows platform? And if you could choose whether or not you wanted to ship a small managed exe or a fat native exe that launched quickly?
I'm always interested in open hardware but I'm a bit baffled by the choices that are available:

Just the board: This is perhaps the most appealing option but I would want a case with it, I'm not interested in building my own case. Why would I want a 4GB microSD with that? I'll buy my own with a decent capacity/class or even an SSD.

All-in-One Desktop: $700 more than board for a case and LCD? The design of the flip-top LCD doesn't make a lot of sense - you lose a lot of desk space and the board is going to collect dust. It's not very portable due to the lack of a battery, controller board, keyboard and mouse so I might as well just plug it into my monitor.

Laptop: $800 more than the desktop option for a battery, controller board and SSD. Seems a little expensive and again still not very portable. I'm not sure you can call it a laptop without a keyboard or pointing device.

Heirloom Laptop: $3000 more than the "Laptop" for what is now actually a laptop that includes a keyboard and pointing stick with a wooden case. Wood is quite heavy so it's not exactly the ideal material for a portable device.
I end up dragging things onto/onto items on to open with/off the start menu enough that that was a major annoyance having it take up the whole screen.
I bet that apple is working on this, and Microsoft just got there first. Not to take anything away from Microsoft, this is awesome!
Same with Gawker. I used to read Lifehacker quite a bit, have up years ago as the articles have become steadily worse.
Small Data and Loyalty Marketing
> A full screen, searchable start menu isn't the worst thing

No, but it's a symptom of the worst thing. The worst thing is that Microsoft's UX team failed to realize that "The user's actually only interacting with this one thing right now" does not necessarily imply "This one thing is the only thing that deserves to even be visible right now."
This has been around forever, since at least Windows 2000. The power button signals the OS through ACPI to shut down correctly. It wasn't always reliable on all hardware and BIOSes, and didn't always default to that behavior until set in Control Panel - Power Options, but soft power-off is supposed to have been working for a long time and is hardly new.
RedHat and SuSe are both oriented towards enterprise server (RH) or enterprise desktop (SuSe): large-scale deployments with big support contracts.

Ubuntu has gone for consumers (home users, home servers), where nobody else ever managed to build a profitable and sustainable business in the Linux world.
Or better yet, ban commented out code from getting into the source tree altogether.

If the code is in past commits, there isn't a reason to muddy the source tree with it.
I was expecting a much more damning copy. They just took one bit of yours, and that's it. They are also not a competitor, so there's less (if any) likelihood of anyone confusing them for you.

All in all I'd say this is not the worst thing that could happen, and there's little reason to pursue this.
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Why would they want to help you provide content for Android?
Meta-eX – The Music of Code
http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/img_2014...

Yes they are. Windowed Metro-apps, and legitimate Start Menu with decent Metro live tile integration (and a shutdown button)

I was hoping that they'd have jumplists back on the startmenu, but lets see what they come up with...
The Design and Implementation of the Tor Browser [Draft]
Who would have guessed restart/shutdown would be under the settings?
Barge: deploy PhantomJS and CasperJS scripts as load tests (private beta)
Why do you need a woman?

I don't understand why we all talk about the gender problem in engineering, then continue it by isolating female students from male teachers. There is no isolation between male students and female teachers, or same gender students and teachers.

If we want to move towards equality, why carefully structure inequality in?
> it's line based (1 dimensional) not 2 dimensional so a VERY long line can still choke vim and Emacs.

Have an upvote because (to quote Johnny Carson) I did not know that.
Leo Web: Leveraging the Web and Address Book
What you point out is an _abstraction_ that compilers include as part of their kits.

You claim to be a low-level programmer who understands C. The truth is right in front of you. Decompile those programs, look at their symbol tables. Notice, every Win32 program starts at WinMain, called with the arguments that I listed above.

Come back when you've done this simple exercise. Realize, WinMain is the _true_ starting point of "C Programs" in Windows. The rest are compiler abstractions.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff38...
>>> How does the compiler know to invoke wWinMain instead of the standard main function? What actually happens is that the Microsoft C runtime library (CRT) provides an implementation of main that calls either WinMain or wWinMain.
Look at the window on the far left of your task bar, and tell me if you can read the system clock while looking at it. Now tell me if you can make out what the window directly next to it on the taskbar is while still looking at the first one. Peripheral vision is a limitation.
People saying its too expensive obviously haven't done any research into PROPER standing desks.

I was pricing a CRANK ModTable - it as going to be over 560 and it isn't even motorized. Getting a motorized one would be about 630.

So for this motorized version at 399 is, as stated on their kickstarter page, "most affordable".

Edit: All the suggestions for cheaper alternatives are really just compromises - stacking cardboard ikea tables, or recycling bins, or used warehouse pallets - "$37 cheaper even with the tetanus shot - so sick of kickstarter scams".
Sure, but they can't drop support for everything built over the past couple of decades just to have a new interface, so it is the fault of introducing Metro into Windows 8. To get around the problem, they could've had plenty of integration from the start - having the taskbar throughout Metro would be a brilliant start, and something familiar.

Luckily, they're integrating Metro into the desktop properly now, so the entire system will be usable.
Chrome, and thereby all Google webapps, run on every major OS.
All MS platforms yes, why would MS care about OSX or Linux.
Think pure thoughts. :)

(for those who don't get the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGX7N-CoaPo)
I can't work out what they were trying to achieve. They already had the email address. So... ?
This comment is nowhere near as bad as the others, but it's still bad. It's fluff that contains no information; it's playing with being provocative, and that link! don't get me started.
I love this topic. It's been a sticking point with me for the last year.

I'm currently on Wave - and have been for nearly three years. Prior to that I used FreshBooks exclusively, pretty much since their establishment. I've used QuickBooks, FreshBooks, and Xero, and Kashflow as recently as January, importing sample data into each, messing around, etc. Equally, I send my financials to an accountant.

First off - I don't ever integrate my bank accounts with the online services. Banking is insecure enough, that integrating it with a third party terrifies me. I'm not having to extend my trust - and it's just not something I'm willing to do with real access to my financials.

QuickBooks - In order to get what I'm getting for free from Wave, I had to upgrade to the $39/month package (Canada). I needed support for multiple businesses, and I needed invoices that didn't look like complete tripe. Receipt integration was not fantastic. Basically I found QuickBooks to be expensive and not useable.

FreshBooks - it's great at invoicing, but it pretty much falls down at everything else. I really wanted time-tracking integration (Toggl!) but it was pretty poor. I wanted expense integration with receipt scanning systems (Shoeboxed!) but eventually gave up, it just wasn't there.

Kashflow - it was okay, not great, not bad.

Xero - It's great. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about it. But, it wasn't $30/month better than my Wave workflow. Now, if I was starting from scratch, I'd probably go Xero.

Wave - First off, it's free - that's huge. It integrated (past tense) with Shoeboxed, but then they developed their own Invoice Scanner/Importer. Immediately that saved me $100/year. More importantly, I've found Wave's actually 50% more accurate than ShoeBoxed since I've switched over.

Reporting in Wave stinks. There's no way to put it. I just export things to CSV and then yank them into Excel, it's faster, better, and more reliable. That being the case, it also takes seconds.

Now, I'm looking at thick-client software that runs on OSX and Linux. I'm looking into Moneydance, and GnuCash, though both seem to fail for me. iBank is the most promising, but it's OSX only unfortunately. I'm going to continue with cloud invoicing, because I want to know if anyone was "clicked on" the invoice link I send them. That's where all thick clients fail.

Just my $0.02. YMMV of course.
Reminds me of this quote:

"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code." - Ken Thompson
Data didn't suggest, but the managers were able to find the support in the data. When you want to find something really hard, you will find it.

A lot of "poll questions" are designed to present the party who paid for them in the best light. Both the managers who request the poll and those who can give the bill to the managers for the poll have the same interests.
And then we can stack every conceivable use case on top of it, and write that language-agnostic API in a way that makes interfacing with most current languages so onerous that people can build hundreds of thousands of lines of code to make it slightly less painful!

Maybe we can make the configuration so convoluted that we can base entire companies and revenue models around maintaining them.
For data munging and sorting/organizing and basic analysis I would say that matlab/python easily match R or even exceed (especially performance-wise) it's capability. The true strength of R is in the available third-party packages. There are over 5000 available with pretty much any statistical algorithm you can think of implemented by at least one.
I know everyone has their reservations about Microsoft and their developer ecosystem, but WinJS really is a delight to use, at least in my limited experience. A WinJS app is really just a zip of a bunch of JS (using WinJS's nice APIs for fancy stuff), CSS, and HTML, so most web developers who are used to the modern tool chain should be pretty comfortable with it. And yes, you can supposedly use it alongside Backbone/Angular/whatever. Worth a closer look.
While I appreciate the joke, you miss the point. This has more to do with marketing strategy than with release numbers used by developers. But I don't feel like discussing such small matter.
C# is ..., with a much richer set of libraries...

Citation please. AFAIK, there are significantly more C libraries than C# libraries.
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Data Hacking: Using IPython to get the most out of your security data
Suspect many already have at least one Airplay capable device.
Microsoft relied too heavily on metrics.

Windows 7, Office 2010, etc. "phone home" by default, sending them usage patterns. But power user usually deactivate such intrusive annoyance.

Lessons learned the hard way: Don't rely completely on automatically gathered metrics. Do not piss off the community that develops applications for your platform.
Please don't tell people rude things like "Go away" on HN.

We appreciate efforts to combat snark, but the cure must be better than the disease.
This is bad advice. If your friends was happy with WhatsApp they don't care much what it the most secure messenger but probably want to use it on iOS or chat with friends with iPhones.
Not sure if you have tried doing this. In practice, it's quite painful as you need to have a separate visual studio project file for each platform (phone vs tablet).

Further, the Phone implementation of WinRT is a subset of the tablet's, so sticking to the WinRT API alone isn't enough. Complicating matters further, the phone lets you actually use a Win32 subset which is not allowed on tablet.

This (appears to atleast) unify everything towards more of a write once, run on all windows platforms world.
This seems awfully similar to the Stir Kinetic Desk [1], except the Stir desk is selling at ~$4k.

Anyone know what accounts for the huge price difference between these two?

[1] http://www.stirworks.com/
> The far more interesting possibility is that the data suggested that they do what they did, but that the data was wrong.

New Coke scored better than Pepsi in blind taste tests, yet New Coke was a sales disaster. Pepsi scored better than Coke Classic in blind taste tests, yet the Second Coming of Coca-Cola quickly came out on top.

What I find ironic is that the same people who did the Office Ribbon also came up with Metro. The Ribbon was all about exposing features that had previously been buried a couple of layers down in menus, because users will only use features that stare them in the face.

But Metro was all about burying features that had previously been staring users in the face!
I believe it was Bill Gates:

"Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs."
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Sometimes, less is more.

Some said: "A piece of art is only finished, when there is nothing left, that can be taken away."

The art in computer programming is, to find ways to bring the problem to the point, to find out what is really necessary to solve the problem (and not more). This reduces (often, not always) the runtime, the amount of memory needed -- and (most importantly!) the amount of maintenance that is needed. The maintenance of a program is directly dependent on the number of code lines.

Many companies start fast with a superior product, but than comes the time of growth and growing demand, new employees are rushing in ... and the number of lines explode. That is the point of danger. The company is about to strangle itself. The number of errors are rising.

I remember an old, but once famous database product. The first 2 or 3 versions where great and the company grew out of 4 developers to a horde. The next version came out much much later than expected and was first a bug ridden chaos. The problem: The number of employees and the number of code lines grew faster than the company could manage them.

It is also said: "Adding new members to a late project, makes it later" That's because of the overhead of managing those peoples and the added code does not always add to project speed.
I believe they also had a segment about this for sideloaded apps.