skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Dropbox team has been working hard on Webhooks for some time now, it looks like this is a much-needed tool for developers.

For example, a little under a year ago I released a mobile writing app that synced using the Dropbox Sync API. Right out of the gate there were problems syncing large documents, specifically due to slow mobile connections. The webhooks functionality (while I haven't launched a version of the app that implements this) allows me to check for changes quickly on a server before syncing files on the user's device.

Kudos to the team on adding a much-needed feature to the Dropbox functionality.
I feel we may be getting into bike-shedding territory here. When I'm refactoring, as part of the TDD Red/Green/Refactor cycle, I'm changing how code is implemented, usually to improve the design and readability, such that the functionality stays the same e.g. all of my tests pass without touching them. Anything I gain from the refactoring is bonus on top.

Refactoring without introducing bugs is the #1 reason people do TDD vs Test After. But if you don't trust the test suite to catch bugs introduced when refactoring then I'd argue the test suite itself probably isn't that useful and needs work.

On a side note I believe the term "refactoring" has been way overused these days. You can change code without it being "refactoring". When I've seen people use the term "refactoring" (and I've caught myself multiple times on this) they mean rewriting, for in most cases this rewriting means changing the code and changing the tests. If you have to change the tests because of changes to the code, that's not refactoring, that's just changing code.
I can think of several:

1. Monopolistic lock-in. DRM is more than often used to control the market. It happened with Apple in the past, and was one of the key reasons that music publishers realized that being DRM-free is actually better for them.

This reason also includes DRM derivatives like DMCA-1201 and the like. It's all about control (over the markets, over users and etc.).

2. Covering one's incompetence. DRM is used to justify failing sales (i.e. when execs are questioned about why the product performs poorly, they say "Pirates! But worry not - we put more DRM in place").

3. Ignorance and / or stupidity (many execs have no clue and might believe that DRM actually provides some benefit). This type can be called DRM Lysenkoism.

None of these reasons are valid, all of them are crooked and anti-user, but they are often present in various combinations.
Sorry, no. If you are doing your accounting in floating point, you are setting yourself up for really strange non-balancing balance sheets. You can do everything in fixed point.

Remember that fixed point does not mean the point is at the rightmost position. It means it is in a fixed position.
It's great that they're improving an existing/familiar tool like Jasmine.
Also, I love the way they treat CommonJS modules.
According to Mozilla's official statement[0], it will not be open-source (it will be an open-source wrapper around the closed-source binary)

There is still the question of the analog hole[1], but that's a separate matter (unrelated to open source vs. proprietary binary blob).

[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challen...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
Webhooks don't require SSL. We're going to publish a little Python script soon that can generate fake webhook notifications for local testing, but in the meantime, I'd suggest just using curl. Something like this:

curl http://127.0.0.1/whatever -d '{"deltas": {"users:" [12345]}}'

Another possibility is to use a tool like ngrok or localtunnel, which is what some of our beta testers did.
It has been a long time coming and we're really excited to see what folks do with it!
Is Unicode ever a problem when you do real-life web development in Lua? Lapis looks appealing otherwise but the lack of a built-in Unicode string type in Lua makes me somewhat wary.
ASP.NET MVC5, Web API2 and Knockoutjs Web Application Development
I find the description unclear. Do I pay the money if I don't get rejected or if I get rejected? (It would make most sense if I pay if I don't try. The text is confusing in this regard though.)

How does it handle money/does it handle money? Or do I have to go and give money somewhere myself? Where does it go?

Very confusing. I have to assume a lot.
Depending on how it works, it could be useful.
NSA's Efforts To Collect Data From Skype, SkyDrive, And Outlook.com
3D Video Capture With Three Kinects
This place is like the worst possible demographic for asking this question. The technology habits of the hacker news readership are almost completely unlike the vast majority of America, much less the rest of the world.
You can answer, but first you might need to click the "link" link. I'm not sure why it's needed sometimes. May be when discussion happens too rapidly, the site assumes it can be some spam bot or whatever. So it puts some roadblocks.
I love what Zapier has done for integrating services. Keep it up guys.
The writing was on the wall a while ago once Google implemented this into Chrome(Netflix on Chromebooks was the first real world use of this IIRC). Firefox no longer has the market power it once used to have thanks to Chrome being bundled and installed by default with Flash, Acrobat and Java updates etc. Google has been spending massively on pushing Chrome even bundled as default on new machines with OEM agreements to reduce payments to Mozilla in the long term and it's working since the past few years.

Pluginless HTML5 support for H.264 followed a similar path, in which Google promised to remove support from Chrome in favor of WebM(which FF and Opera added support for) but never did, in the meantime Firefox and Opera relied on the promise and then were forced to start implementing support once they realized Google was not going to keep the promise and it was hurting them and then included support(I don't think Opera ever did?).

Three of the four major browsers, Chrome, IE, Safari are owned by huge corporate interests and Mozilla is pretty much powerless since users blame FF if it doesn't support something, so I expect more of such things to happen in the future. It's pretty much game over at this point and I fear this is only the tip of the coming iceberg with all these companies having huge media deals for Play Store, XBox Music/Video and iTunes.
What would make it better?
Peerbackers
I don't see how JTRIG was a "super-important reveal". The domestic spying reveals were significant and important because they revealed programs that might be illegal. JTRIG, on the other hand, appears to fall into what we expect spy agencies and intelligence agencies to do. It would be newsworthy if they were NOT doing these things. There might be some newsworthiness in which agency is doing it (e.g., if GCHQ is doing something that should be done by MI6).
Russia Calls for Ban of US Military Launches Using Russian Rocket Engines
Functional CoffeeScript for the Impatient
Game of Phones:How Verizon is playing the FCC and its customers
Isn't that what the following portion of the blog post is all about?

"As plugins today, the CDM itself will be distributed by Adobe and will not be included in Firefox. The browser will download the CDM from Adobe and activate it based on user consent."
I assume that DRM has no effect on piracy (it doesn't) and it always degrades usability (it does). Which means scraping it off always has no financial impact except for improving usability of the service and reducing costs of using DRM itself. Better usability + more user friendliness = more satisfied users + more new users = more profit.
First impressions:

anything over free seems like a lot to pay for something that looks so limited.
pay $1 $2 do who or what?
what would I do if unable to do challenge? (don't have facebook.)
only 30 cards? surely you could have come up with more than that. (or are you planning on having card sets as in store purchases?)
some of the display photos are redundant and after looking at them I still have no idea what kind of experience I might expect to get out of using the app.
If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

I am tempted to try this for my own writing; the only thing I'd want to figure out is a sane way to get files off of it without having to resurrect a floppy drive.
Why Does TechCrunch Let Its Reporters Work for Startups?
Show HN: HelpStack.io – open-source support SDK for iOS
I'm curious about this quote on page 21: "Administrators really hate Python. Really. HATE."

I hadn't heard anything like this before, what is the reasoning here?
Whenever you fix a bug in your code, try to cover it with a unit test. If you can't, ask yourself whether it might be because the code is poorly abstracted.

This, big time. Whenever I get a bug report I first write a test that fails because of the bug. Only then can I a) be sure I understand the bug and why it happened and b) be sure I fixed the bug and finally c) prevent a regression in the future.

Even for people who are not TDD or big on tests in general can make great use out of writing tests to verify and fix bugs.
This is great, thanks! Quick question: Is there a best practice for handling rate limiting? I.e. if you send us X number of web hook updates in quick succession for a user, are we ok just sending X delta requests back at you in quick succession? Or do we need to worry about rate limiting? What's the maximum rate we can expect to be sent web hook requests for one user?
I'd actually be extremely interested in hearing more about your experiences with HealthCare.gov. I'm working on implementing test infrastructure for my current employer and would love to learn from folks more experienced than myself about the process!
I agree, and think the sandboxing of the DRM plugin is a positive step towards more openness as well - the opaque algorithm implementing the DRM can apparently only touch the video streams it's being fed, and a unique identifier generated by the browser. Much better than the current situation of Flash having arbitrary network access and suchlike.

In concept, I think it's not too much different from server-side website code being mostly closed source. The only difference is that this component happens to be running on your computer.

Also there is prior form for this in similarly open systems, e.g. tainted modules in the Linux kernel, which seem to have turned out okay.
(Hi, I'm the fb eng who wrote Jest)

Yea, I'd really like to add support for other testing frameworks as well.

Right now we use jasmine internally, so I was pretty focused on getting it running with that. However, it is (quite intentionally) built such that the 'jasmine' parts are pretty isolated similar to a plug-in; So it should be possible to build plug-ins for other frameworks as well (like Mocha, QUnit, etc) in the future.
Snakable The Lightning and Micro USB Cable With Armor
I'm not so sure about allowing for private research repos. As a former scientist, incentivising siloization seems to be the wrong direction; if they want it, they should pay for it. A normal micro plan is cheap enough that it won't break the wallet of a researcher.
If I'm reading your post correctly, what you're calling "nonsensical" is deliberately part of my point; you may want to re-read my post in light of that fact. The difference between a local context and a fully-composed program in a conventional mutable language is a core part of my argument, not something I overlooked.
"At least, he doesn’t have to worry about viruses or hackers messing with his work."

Cause there aren't any DOS viruses? Heh. Kids today.
You could always emulate it or run it in a virtual machine if you're just looking for the experience of an old style word processor.
Whenever I see a panel on the left of some main content I expect it to do something to that content.

Perhaps the problem is that the Dribble side feels like the main content for the page. I mean, you can even hide the left panel to let the "main content" take over the whole screen!
This is like a commercial for forking Firefox to build highly efficient ad blocking into the browser.

It's sad that the most-demanded feature on every browser, as evidenced by plugin downloads, is ad blocking. However, all the major browsers are produced by companies with their hands in advertising, and this conflict of interest has resulted in this feature request going unfulfilled for a over a decade.

Fork 'em.
Yes, it will be a plugin that is downloaded on first use. That's exactly what the blog post describes.
Ukraine Anti-Terrorist Operation Attacked Pro-Russian Separatist | 14 May 2014
Ukraine Anti-Terrorist Operation Attacked Pro-Russian Separatist | 14 May 2014 | COMBAT FOOTAGE
The black font over the grey window. The buttons with the cartoon icons. The hideous tray icons. Sheer ugliness.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Unity 7 is the most polished looking Linux desktop.
Shaping up with Angular.js
So... how long until we reverse-engineer the CDM and write a free decryptor? Is there any indication that reverse-engineering the CDM would be technologically unfeasible?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_cow_problem
The Man Who Preserved Decades of NBA History
Shaping up with Angular.js – Code School (Google sponsored course)
> It is a continuous process prone with errors that eventually evolves into getting us closer to understanding processes. If people take that as a sign that everything is junk instead of having a healthy skepticism and reasoning for themselves, they have themselves to blame. Can't argue with stupid.

A couple points:

1) The average person probably lacks the necessary background (knowledge of statistics, methodological concerns, etc.) to independently evaluate scientific research. So blaming them for not going and evaluating the research themselves is a bit unreasonable.

2) You also have to realize that this is not an abstract question for new mothers. When you're injecting something into the precious bundle of joy they carried in their bodies for 9 months, asking them to trust the current conclusions of a "continuous process prone with errors" is not going to be the easiest thing. Accepting the scientific consensus, one which you yourself admit is no magical source of truth, is a leap of faith for these parents; they're committing their child to a medical procedure based on that consensus.

And they should take that leap of faith, in my opinion. But let's not pretend like faith doesn't enter into the equation just because it's science.
Have you tried using pen and paper?
Not bad, but you should hire a good ui designer.. this all is a pain.
Also, when I look at item summary (http://klipperapp.com/#item=2b6701a481a877ee59abc40cfb9f9f61) - there are no breaks and paragraphs.. Very hard to read.

Other thing is speed. I guess that you're fetching feeds for every user request. You should think about caching and return precached results only or server will die with big amount of visitors.
It's airgapped.
When API Documentation Is So Bad that It’s Good, Part 3
I don't think it's a reasonable assumption to make that DRM has no effect on piracy. It won't stop sophisticated pirates, but I do think it stops people from releasing an easy-to-use app that lets your grandma store Netflix movies locally.
http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxy...
Simple way to know if your linux box has been hacked
Having written quite a bit of text using both word processors and just plain text editors, I can see the value of this.

When your creatively writing or drawing its critical that your tools stay out of the way. Good writing and drawing programs do this, poor ones bog you down in administrivia, formatting, correcting, and the like.

This does mean things like having control, and many word processors these days dont allow the control needed. I also see this trend in many programs these days where the program seems to think that it has a better idea of how you want something done than you. When you get into a fight with one of these programs it can really burn up the idea you had in your head and then your stuck trying to find it again.

So, yeah, artists and writers sometimes use older things because they are better in that way.
So that's "Improving (GitHub for science)", not "(Improving GitHub) FOR SCIENCE!".
For me on Chrome, there seems to be some broken loop somewhere. It continually requests and then cancels those requests to certain sprite images. It still downloads at least part of them though, so you're getting maybe ~100kb/sec continually downloading for as long as you're on that site.
Does this mean that passwords entered on the phone are hashed/encrypted in a case-insensitive manner? I don't understand how this can work unless you're doing the equivalent of .ToLower()/.ToUpper() on everyone on the back end.
That computer is not connected to the internet.
It is naive to expect that decrypted media stream will ever be leaving CDM module as so optimistically shown on that illustration.

Microsoft dropped and neglected a bunch of great features when shipping Vista, but it went out of its way to drag Protected Media Path into it. PMP is fronting a major industry effort to create trusted software and hardware framework that on one end accepts encrypted stream and on other draws video pixels on the screen, all the while showing a middle finger instead of raw data to the user on whose system this whole circus unfolds.

It will be laughable to think that CDM won't be PMP-based. Getting access to the raw data with CDM in picture is a pipe dream. Mozilla, sandbox, open source - no matter. CDM exists to prevent raw data leaks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Media_Path
Downvoters seem intent on muting you.
I don't think we can block ads in mainstream browsers because ad providers will just work around the blocks. Plugins provide defense in numbers against suck workarounds, making ad blocks actually effective.
Did you even click the link? A cursory glance of the first chapter leads me to believe it's targeted toward people new to programming.
> 1. Monopolistic lock-in. DRM is more than often used to control the market.

How does this benefit the publisher? They already have a exclusive rights to whatever particular movie you're watching.
Cormac McCarthy writes everything on a typewriter that cost him $50 in 1964 [1]. The novel, A Confederacy of Dunces was written by hand [2]. So I guess this means that when it comes to writing, especially writing fiction, the man and his mind are what matters.

[1] http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/cormac-mccarthy...

[2] http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/John-Kennedy-Tooles-A-C...
You got [0] wrong. It is an open source wrapper around a closed source CDM.
this is how all networks work. there are no special MIT theses. get an ASN and use BGP.

Fiber hardware at $30 each is probably not happening, since we barely get ethernet hardware in that price range, and certainly not of any quality.
> the majority of non-technical users wouldn't be able to rip streaming video even without DRM.

How hard would it be to make an app that made this easy for non-technical users, without DRM?
Snapchat competitor Blink bought by Yahoo!
Thanks for your thoughts! How do you initially connect with your target customer phone or email?
Agreed. I think I may have a gluten intolerance (my brother has been properly diagnosed, apparently its genetic, and other symptoms that have lead me to believe this, that you probably don't need the details of).

I avoid wheat products given the choice, but I won't stop eating wheat products as A) I like them, B) I don't want to be one of the whiny "I can't eat this" crowd (who also seem to come out with crap like dust allergies, or smoke allergies - everyone sneezes at those).
The first sentence seems to say this is the first launch of the app, but from the second sentence it sounds like a new feature to an existing app. Which is it? What does the rest of the app do? The description of the app says nothing more than this blog post, which appears to be about just one feature.
It's not always the publisher. It can benefit some middle parties which implement DRM. Or for example mobile carriers which use DRM to prevent users from switching. Or whatever other monopolistic lock-in scenario.

When publishers realize that monopoly falls to some other hands, they quickly become sober and find common sense. When monopoly remains theirs, they pretend that DRM is needed for other reasons.
John McPhee uses Kedit with a bunch of macros[1] which is pretty hardcore.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/14/130114fa_fact_...
And my colleagues wonder why I use emacs. I like IDEs, I use VS for work a fair amount. But when I just want to dig into the act of writing a program or text, I like editors that just stay out of the way.
You're right, it should be clearer.

With Rejection Therapy, the object of the game is to get rejected. That constitutes success in the game. So, if the challenge of the day is to 'ask for a discount when making a purchase' and you fail to get the rejection, you pay $1 or $5, depending on whatever you chose. That is the consequence.

Payment is taken via PayPal.
Have you tried GNOME 3?
Coffeescript class as an AngularJS Factory
Resharper added jasmine support in v.7 as far as I remember. I wonder if Jest would work with Resharper out of the box, would be helpful in .NET world to have the Jest runner integrated with VS.
Im very excited that github is pushing forward with this. As a graduate student Ive been desperately trying to get my lab to switch over and use github as opposed to myfile.m --> myfile_diego.m --> myfile_diego_changed.m etc!

I want researchers to use it not just for code, but for latex files for paper writing as well!
Replacing unsandboxed plugin APIs like NPAPI that can directly access the OS with sandboxed plugin systems like NaCl and emscripten that support sandboxed native code seems like a major improvement. The browser is quite enough attack surface area; let's not expand it further by having plugins.

That said, while the article's described sandboxing approach to EME works better than the alternatives (assuming content providers will support it), that's a lot like saying "at least the arrow through your eye wasn't on fire". Gee, thanks.
> I don't think it's a reasonable assumption to make that DRM has no effect on piracy.

It's not just reasonable, it's easily demonstrated in practice, when goods released with DRM are pirated almost right away (with DRM being scraped off). Sophisticated pirates are needed to break DRM. Unsophisticated ones get it from them without any hassle. Which means that DRM has no effect altogether except on legitimate users!

I.e. the vast majority of pirates never deal with any DRM, and experience of legitimate users is always degraded by it. It's pure common sense that removing DRM would always improve any service. And the fact that it's not happening is caused by other reasons (see above).
At AudioBox (https://audiobox.fm)
we have a strong use case for it.
We are already providing our users a "live filesystem" with Box, exciting that Dropbox is also adding this.

We'll have a look at this after our next release.
That mandates copyright holders suing for copyright infringement and/or the statutory fees they are due from the creation of derivative works.

I would suggest that an argument could be made for some sort of fraud as well, for not delivering "the internet" (would have to consult with a lawyer to be sure).

Throwing protocol changes and such will not work in the long run, because you're trying to fix this in the wrong problem domain. This is a legal and political issue, not a technical one. If there is a desire to fix this idiocy, time is best spent where it is most effective.

/I suggest political action towards hitting the big ISPs with the Sherman & Clayton Antitrust Acts. These ISPs are patently abusing monopoly power in various ways.
Not really. They could just as easily have switched from Foursquare to a different third-party location provider.
DOS viruses generally didn't spread over the internet. :-)