skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why this trend of using large font size on blogs? (1.225em from http://mattgemmell.com/stylesheets/screen.css). This is ridiculous, especially when this is done on mobile too. I have to scroll to be able to even read the first word of the first paragraph on my phone!
DRM leads to stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit

And like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...

But that's the result, not the reason why it's sinister. It's sinister because it shifts from presumption of innocence to police state method of "all guilty by default". Like the Sony exec quoted in the first link above expressed it:

>>> The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source - we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC... These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake.

And in practice it's always bad because it's not a theoretical "protection of content", but something actual running in your private digital space (your computer, your OS, your program), with the sole purpose of not trusting you and doing whatever (you usually have no clue what - DRM is a black box). Something not trusting you should be not trusted in return - i.e. always treated as potential malware.
Human centipede basically.
I don't know that much about finance, so can somebody explain to me why I never hear anybody censuring Soros over this? I only hear congratulations for bamboozling the incompetent British government.

He made billions at the expense of an entire country.

I'm not saying it was illegal, and maybe people like Soros are needed to help deter governments from artificially manipulating their currency like the British did. However, when it comes down to it, he benefited by executing a bet meant to enrich himself, compound the problems of the pound, and diminish the wealth of a nation. It seems like a plainly immoral thing to me.
Project un1c0rn
Thanks. I hope you guys blog more about it. It def. shows how interested people are in the feature and makes people pony up, to prove it.
The important thing about IP rights is that they eventually expire. The whole deal is that you can get a limited monopoly only if you release to the public.
Keep in mind, however, that I didn't earn wages for my time. In contrast, most businesses that garner 7% profit pay their employees.
I'd just like to point out that the H.264 issue is way smaller than this. H.264 is a public standard that anyone is free to implement. This is why FOSS encoders and decoders for it can freely exist without any issues (and the FOSS x264 encoder also happens to be pretty much the best H.264 encoder in the world too). The complications arise from the fact that a lot of tech used in H.264 is patented (software) and licensing of said patents is required in many cases to make use of it. But all in all, H.264 is still quite compatible with FOSS (and would be perfectly compatible if software patents didn't exist), whereas DRM is completely incompatible due to its secret nature. This is a far bigger issue for Mozilla to compromise on.
Sounds like Soros has produced superior returns.

http://www.news.com.au/finance/markets/george-soros-quantum-...
Still no good public PoC? I still can't get the UAF bug to trigger for some reason.
Hence "average content". The studios are the reason Netflix has to serve their content with DRM, and they're fairly unanimous about it.
Better Touch Tool (http://www.bettertouchtool.net) is another great free app that can really up your productivity. The biggest features for me are additional multitouch gestures that you can program any way you like. My favorites are three finger swipes up, left, and right to reposition windows a la Windows-Key Up Left Right.

While it isn't strictly a keyboard app, it also gives you a lot of flexibility and does support the keyboard. My latest addition is a script that pulls up the Lastpass extension from a global hot key and puts the mouse over "Copy Password." It is very useful for getting passwords into the command line.
Hi Luke,

We are so sorry to hear about your experience. We really do not want any of our clients to be unhappy, so look forward to an email from one of our Solutions Specialists very soon.

Best,
Team Homejoy
Of course. We are still decades away from being able to replicate the human visual system (and whole brain really) that is needed to unable autonomous vehicles. Of course by then we may not need them anyway because anywhere not covered by a sufficiently high bandwidth signal in 30 years is probably somewhere you wouldn't take a self driving car to anyway.
> A CDN is a route, is my contention. Its value is being closer to the user.

Being an endpoint that is closer to the user is not the same as being a route between that endpoint (or any other endpoint) and the user.

> CDN nodes should be understood as caching routers.

In some respects, yes. But in other important respects, no. For example, CDN nodes do not route traffic that does not have that node as either a source or a destination. The fact that the content at that node ultimately comes from another source does not change that; it simply means that some of the traffic to and from the CDN node is to and from the ultimate source of the content. It's still not at all the same as routing traffic to and from arbitrary endpoints.

> Being closer to the user – the CDN’s value – rests in having a better position vis-à-vis the last-mile network. A better position vis-à-vis the last-mile network is what Netflix bought.

You're conflating two different ways of taking a "position" in the network. A CDN takes advantage of the existing network and the existing routes to place copies of content closer to users. It can only use the existing "positions" in the network, not create new ones.

The Netflix deal created a new privileged route that didn't exist before, for Netflix content going to Comcast users only. So the "position" Netflix traffic is now in with respect to Comcast users didn't even exist before the deal.
Can anyone suggest a less baity title?
Maybe it's because I'm from Europe, but I don't see what's so special about that.

Isn't the debit card number just the bank account number?
Basically, the main categories of firearm that are still allowed in the UK are shotguns, long barrel revolvers and small calibre rifles. They're almost exclusively used in rural areas (vermin, hunting, etc.).

It's often the case when you hear of firearms related incidents, that the stolen shotgun (or whatever) gets tracked back to a farm.
It's interesting that the loss to the Bank of England is attributed almost entirely to Soros. If you accept that the fixed rate was unsustainable then even without Soros the Bank of England would have been forced to defend an untenable position, and eventually would have lost enough to give up. It's reasonable to assume that the acceptable losses for the Bank of England would have been similar whether they were sustained in one day or over the period of weeks or months.

Soros' brilliance was to see the inevitable and take almost the entire opportunity for himself.
Aha, yes, that makes sense. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with packaging the app server along with the app. It's just not traditional in the Java world.

My preferred solution would be to package the app and the app server as operating system packages, and have the app depend on the app server. That makes the dependency explicit, but doesn't leave you with a gigantic deployable.
I took this class and enjoyed it; it was my first experience with scala, but I had previously taken grossman's programming languages course which introduce me to FP (https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang).

Actually I thought grossman's was better at giving a comparison of FP and OO and hit on some more of the theory in FP (for example, odersky doesn't talk about the expression problem, but grossman did).

There will still be a lot in scala that's confusing after taking this class, but it's trying to teach the concepts rather than the language details.

That being said, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

Scala is an interesting blend of FP and OO. Just be aware that the ML-style languages (or even a lisp e.g. Racket) really feel more like FP. The blend is what makes it a mind-expanding course.
That was a fun read, it strikes that heart of business naivete. Not particularly in a bad way, these lessons need to be learned somehow, but in a real way.

I've advised a few folks on doing Kickstarter projects. It can be a wonderful experience, and it can be soul crushing. In this case they got their rewards out, and at the end of the day debt free and a few thousand $ in free cash flow. That seems to be an unusual outcome for the ill prepared.

It is a challenge to understand the costs associated with building something, it takes an ability to face unpleasant realities, deal with folks who are possibly unscrupulous, and keep risks under control. Fall down and you can end up out of money and deeply in debt, unable to fulfill your rewards. That cannot feel "good."

This article covers some of the interesting bits (error in your final product results in re-doing a bunch of stuff) paying off costs to third parties for licenses and such, and storing mailers (something a lot of people totally miss). At some point I hope there is a "Kickstarters for Dummies" book that helps people make good estimates about future costs and potential risks.
Quantum simulator gives clues about magnetism
I live by keyboard shortcuts, and one that I use many times a day that I find lists of OS X shortcuts always miss is how to restore a window if it's minimized, or open a new empty document if no windows are active.

Normally, when you cycle open apps with Command+Tab, if you land on an application that has minimized windows, nothing happens. The way to remedy that is as follows: Hold Command and tab to the app you want to un-minimize. Without letting go of Command, press down Option, then while holding down Option, let go of Command.

It's a little awkward to use at first, then you'll do it automatically. I hold Command with my thumb, then tab with ring finger, then just move ring finger back down to Option, and let go of thumb.

Edit: Bonus tip: When landing on an application icon with Tab, continue holding Command and use Tilde (~) to cycle through windows of the same App. I use that one a lot too.
Facebook: MVC Does Not Scale, Use Flux Instead
| 2.78 DM to 3.13 GBP.

I think they mean between 2.78 and 3.13 DM per GBP.
Italy has surprisingly low salary levels for a "developed" european country.

http://www.italymagazine.com/italy/business/wages-italy-amon...
I believe the 20% cut that the manager make is after they clear a benchmark like the S&P 500 to ensure they get paid when they produce a superior return compared to what an index fund could deliver.
> you can write Spring / Java EE with Scala

It'd be nice if we could also write Gradle with Scala, or some other decent JVM language.
He played the game according to the rules. You can't fault a winner when he wins on a even playing field.
Hi Otis,

We are so sorry to hear you had such a poor experience using our platform and we would really like the opportunity to turn that around.

Please look forward to an email from us soon.

Best,
Team Homejoy
Politicians always like to blame speculators when their attempts to fight the market inevitably end in failure, and this instance is no different. Soros didn't "break the GBP," it was already broken and the British government's guarantee to prop it up was never sustainable in the first place.

Someone was going to a lot of make money when the British government's scheme unraveled. Soros just happened to make a lot more than anyone else. Reminds me of a good Rhett Butler quote: "Opportunists have always been held in disrepute. Especially by those who had the same opportunities and didn't take them."
There's a few differences:
1. You have to hunt down a check or track down your account number and routing number from your bank where you have your debit card in your wallet.
2. We've found that customers are more skittish to share their bank account than their debit card number. I can try to guess why, but that's at least what we see.
3. Bank account numbers can't be verified in real-time (takes 2-3 business days) where debit card numbers can. This can lead to big issues the first time a customer gets paid and a poor initial experience.
You might want to switch to a real window manager. I use Spectacle, but I think ShiftIt is much more popular.

http://spectacleapp.com/

https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt
Italians tend to quote after-tax salary. 2000 EUR seems roughly right for an associate professor in Italy, according to http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersOb... (see bottom of page).
NOoooooo not even remotely. That would be terrible.

The debit card number is a layer of abstraction that allows you to HIDE your bank account number from retailers. If you give someone your bank account number they can do whatever they want until you shut down that BANK account.

Someone steals your debit card or the number it's super simple to get that changed and replaced. Someone steals your bank account number it's a nightmare.
> After the speech, Marchiori returned home in the hopes of realizing his ambitious design. "When I came back to Italy, I asked the university for 20,000 euros to develop a search engine, but instead, they financed a project about the history of copper metallurgy in Italy," he says. Meanwhile, Page got his first $100,000 check from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. A spokeswoman for Google in Milan declined to comment.
This is a game changer, how did you even discover it?
Here is the video the article is about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5REM-3nWHg
In fact, Soros won on a playing field tilted against him. He went up against a sovereign country with taxing power, and won.
Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)
Why is it that taking advantage of loopholes and incompetent bureaucracy to take things from innocent people is monstrous if you do it on a small scale, but heroic on a national scale?
Michael Lewis' essay about wasting time
Blaming Mozilla's decreasing influence on a vague and alleged "Google-Apple-Microsoft industry alliance" isn't really accurate.

While the corporate players involved may just happen to have interests that might align somewhat in this case, Mozilla has made its fair share of mistakes that have driven people away from Firefox. A browser with fewer users results in less influence for its creator and users, obviously.

Phoenix, Firebird and Firefox before version 4 were generally excellent releases. This was back when Mozilla innovated and put out offerings that benefited users. These versions truly made people better off, and much of Firefox's rapid adoption was due to direct word-of-mouth recommendation.

Then around Firefox 4, they decided to imitate Chrome, rather than leading the way. The release schedule changes caused broken add-ons for a very long time. This drove people away. They've also repeatedly made harmful UI changes, to the point where Firefox today is almost visually identical to Chrome. This has driven more people away. Meanwhile, there has only been minimal progress when it comes to improving the performance of Firefox, and reducing its memory usage. This, too, has driven more people away to browsers that manage to perform better, with fewer resources. (Spare us the are-we-fast-yet-style benchmarks that just don't seem to match the actual browsing experience.)

Nobody but Mozilla themselves made Mozilla act in such a manner. Nobody but Mozilla themselves are responsible for driving away so many Firefox users.

And so here we are today, with Firefox at perhaps 15% to 20% of the browser market, if even that. This is a far cry from their peak, when they were above 30%. They no longer offer an appealing product, which causes a decrease in the number of people using it, which directly results in the unfortunate lack of influence that we're seeing in this case.
That's actually not really the point of a business plan. The costs is the important thing. The bjallions in profit in year 3 are almost always pure fantasy.
This is a good tip but it comes too late. To deal with this exact frustration I decided years back to simply never minimize anything ever. It's working well for me.
He also promised to close Guantanamo.
(EDIT: I didn't know that in NYS since 1992 there was no age rating! This has nothing to do with ACA.)

It's cute how they quote without asking age; that way the quoted price (which seems to be for a 26 year old, if not younger) looks small; then they get your phone number.

It's what, 4x that for a 64 year old who smokes?

Seems like an example that no matter how clear the rules are, insurers will lie.
U.S.’ Text-To-911 Service Goes Live
Why is it no one ever puts the blame on the incompetent bureaucracies that are actually responsible for losing their countries' money?
> Someone steals your debit card or the number it's super simple to get that changed and replaced. Someone steals your bank account number it's a nightmare.

So account numbers are essentially secret?

Over here, they're like phone numbers. You need them to transfer money to someone else.
I didn't downvote you despite my almost reflexive tendency to downvote posts bitching about being downvoted.

That said, I was strongly inclined to ding you for the sarcasm. Any point you might have been trying to make is obscured by the cloud of superiority and smugness your tone radiates, and, personally, I find that both off-putting and un-constructive. You could most assuredly use this invention as a means of starting a discussion about crap patents — a position with which I probably even agree in this instance — without burying your point beneath your invective.
That depends on what you call "casually pirate". Numbers are important. The massive bulk of piracy occurs with copies stripped of DRM already by those who know how to do it. If some users of a DRMed service will decide to pirate something and will hit a roadblock of DRM not letting them to copy it, they'll quickly find other sources which provide the same thing without DRM. So DRM doesn't prevent them from anything - it actually encourages them to look for pirate sources essentially completely defeating the whole purpose of itself.
FCC Advances New Broadband Rules
I find the philosophy behind keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS vs Windows interesting; the former appears to be designed with a much heavier emphasis on mouse use, with keyboard shortcuts added later, while the latter feels somewhat more balanced and the shortcuts easier to discover. E.g. menubars can be navigated in Windows via Alt, the arrow keys, and Enter, with the underlined items also accessible by pressing the corresponding key; in Mac OS the corresponding shortcut is Ctrl+F2, is only available after enabling it with Ctrl+F1. and there's no underlined letters to guide you. Things like moving/resizing windows can be accomplished pretty easily with the keyboard in Windows (Alt- -M/Alt- -S), there's no equivalent by default on a Mac.
But couldn't he just turn off spell check? I mean, the real reason is that he probably likes WordStar 4.0 more than the modern word processors, and I can totally get that, but the spell check excuse is a bit ... weak.
Thanks for pointing it out -- my eyes had slid past that portion of the article. Shortcat is really impressive! I'm not sure whether I'll use it enough to get into a muscle memory with it, but off the bat it makes navigating web pages and controlling iTunes much easier.

http://shortcatapp.com
> 1. You have to hunt down a check or track down your account number and routing number from your bank where you have your debit card in your wallet.

In the UK at least, your account number and sort code are also on your debit card?
ACCELERATING GIGABIT BROADBAND IN HIGH DENSITY URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
> you started this conversation talking about the data facebook holds that locks you in

Yes, in response to you saying that the analogy with social networks was weak. I was pointing out that, while the specific mechanism of lock-in may differ, the underlying logic appears to me to be the same in both cases.

> Relationship data is trivially rebuildable (and often benefits from periodic culling anyways)

I think this depends on the person.

> that leaves the more concrete data like pictures and posts. Those are important, but most people seem to treat them pretty much as ephemeral in practice.

Do they? Or do they just, without thinking about it, assume that the content will always be there on Facebook (or wherever), so they don't have to worry about managing it themselves, backing it up, etc.? My money is on the latter.

This, btw, is another way in which the analogy between movies, music, etc. and social networks is a good one: in both cases, people seek short-term satisfaction without stopping to think of the longer-term effects of their actions, on both them and society. The result is that people end up locked into a walled garden that gets more and more difficult to escape without giving up the activity altogether.

> Where this differs from films or television is that, unlike films and televisions, your friends can two-time another network that offers a different value proposition until the network effects catch up.

But that means they haven't really switched networks; they're just using two instead of one. Similarly, people can get content from more than one provider.

> At the end of that 6 month period the network effect had completely shifted to them

Why was that? That's the key question I was asking. Was it because FB actually delivered a better user experience, or just because FB gave them access to a larger network?
Would it have been better if the British treasury continued to buy pounds for months (or years) before finally realizing they couldn't prop up the sterling? You could argue that Soros making such a significant bet all at once forced the government to concede earlier than it would have otherwise, and saved them money. He did what speculators do best -- price discovery.
A robot service entrance for single page apps
Again, I can only offer anecdotes.

My cat will react to unusual movement outside a nearby window even when he's curled up with his eyes closed. I remember one instance in particular where I was playing music fairly loudly. He had his eyes closed and was lying down facing away from the window when a dog walked past. His ears perked up and he immediately got up and looked around. I can only assume it was the sound that tipped him off.

It's not necessarily that their hearing/smell/vision is so much better than ours, but rather that it's more specifically evolved for their role as predators (as another poster pointed out).
Sweden directly subsidized deployment of fiber...

Yeah, so did USA. The only difference was that Sweden actually got the fiber they subsidized. We've been over this before.
Insurance maybe? I pay DogVacay 15% because they cover the crazy shit that usually doesn't happen, and then I can relax. Dog sitter got in a car accident? DogVacay sends someone to pick up the dogs and bring them to another place. That sort of shit.
It was going to happen anyway, so there's nothing wrong with benefiting from it, yes?

If a man with diamond cufflinks and a fat wallet is passed-out drunk on the sidewalk at midnight in a bad neighborhood, he is definitely going to get robbed. Does that mean I should go ahead and rob him myself with a clear conscience?

I guess, according to you and Rhett Butler, I'm just jealous because I didn't pickpocket the last drunk I met.
Laravel Forge – Servers For Artisans
> the smartest ones mock nothing

Could you expand on this point? I can't imagine testing without some sort of mocks.