skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Google is bent on establishing platform domination unlike anything we've ever seen, even from late-1990s Microsoft."
[citation needed]. I think this is an assumption, and it needs to have some basis. Can somebody explain to me why it would be in Google's
interest to obtain platform dominance?

I find their own reasoning for making Android and Chrome in the first place quite compelling. They're making platforms from which it is easy to use their services and distributing them freely. With that in mind how is creating lock-in in their interests? What motives would they have for creating a lock-in with their platforms? Why would Google want to risk less use of their products from other browsers and platforms? Google makes money from the use of their services, but not from Chrome directly. The only way they're making money on Android "directly" is the Play Store.

The examples mentioned in the blog post are not very strong examples of Google creating lock-in. Of course offline Docs is coming to Chrome (and Chromebooks) first. Google has long announced that Chrome would become Android's default browser (and was criticized when it was not). I don't think they are particularly laudable actions on their own, but I don't think they are evidence of a bigger Google plan to create lock-in.
France did that with Monaco in 1963: Charles DeGaulle blockaded the city until they signed a tax treaty. It didn't eliminate Monaco's tax-haven status, but did limit it in various ways, especially as regards French citizens and companies.
What you're asking for is actually pretty broad. A lot of CodeCombat can be played with traditional Game AI strategies to try and defeat the opponent. It's one subfields of AI I've done very little research in, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but it's my understanding that the best resources for learning Game AI are actual books on the subject. I would love for someone to prove me wrong, but I don't remember too many great online sources when I was trying to learn the it.

Before you start reading about different AI tactics, I would recommend just going through CodeCombat and trying out some of your own strategies. You'll get a much more intuitive sense for why things work, as well as how you would apply different strategies to your particular game.
Hacker News, You influenced me to start consulting. Now tear apart my website
No one "paid" the loan, the debt was sold to a private creditor and OP's account was then considered settled in the eyes of the DOE. They can't delete the account in order to keep an audit trail, so the amount owed is adjusted to zero.
For those saying Google is a benevolent company, here are a few signs that the bean counters are taking over:

Tracking Google Apps for Education and even paid Google Apps for Business emails to build ad profiles, making misleading statement to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to statements to federal court, lacking the dare to continue lying and finally confessing the truth and then claiming the consumer Gmail policy applied to Apps for Education data.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.ht...

Conspiring to kill SkyHook(and succeeding) with its 500lb outsized influence like Microsoft used to.

http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la...

Tracking the physical location of Android phones for ad purposes without properly informing users and disabling things like Google Now if you disable the tracking.

http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/

Google employee access personal information of others. Google says it has fixed the issue, but how do we even know? Is there any legal safeguard against someone at Google reading your email?

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

Paid inclusion for shopping search results

http://marketingland.com/once-deemed-evil-google-now-embrace...

Ranking Google+ reviews over Yelp results even if the user explicitly searches for Yelp

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-complains-outranked-...

Decreasing contrast in the background of ads, this especially hurts older people as ability to see contrast decreases with age, and the FTC found that almost half the people fail to notice that there are ads on the page, thus forcing products that are first in the organic results to pay Google for ads.

http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-itor-maybe-not/

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional...

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/ftc-googles-ad-practice-i...

Making people literally cry with the forced Google+ integration into Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs (warning, NSFW language)

Extracting petty revenge on CNET for googling(!) information on its CEO

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/
4 Hot Dividend Growing Insurer Stocks To Buy?
Yo.js
IIRC it's going to be released in stable branch around february 2014.
Also, if it's lock-in, they're handing out the keys. Android and Chrome are open source, and you can easily download all of your data out of most of their services.
About Firefox vs Chrome. Yes I said it's up to debate, I'm not going into this.

"Just remember the dark years of web, when IE was dominating and web was stagnating."

I do. And we are well into the process of getting out of it and wonderful, good, new browsers have emerged. That is in favour of what I was saying. The products converge towards a better quality because that's what people gravitate towards.
So they break into my router, then fuck with somebody else's network, and then I'm getting blamed for it ?

1. using my bandwidth, electricity etc is theft.
2. framing me for for their crimes is criminal conspiracy.
3. fucking with somebody else's network is terrorism.

Either all these people (not just the scape goats) go to jail, or they just declared the internet as law less zone.
Effectively legalizing piracy spam blackhat-hacking etc.

Because proving guilt is now impossible, every plaintive can just point to dark government circles having control over their computer. In case proving guilt is no longer the guiding principle for justice they just lost the bases for governmental monopoly of violence, the right to collect taxes etc.

Also it's only going to be a matter of time, until some other criminal(s) gets access to their ORBs & start ddosing or blackmailing everybody with impunity.

Governments should stay out of the internet, because now we have cyberwar. They just create MORE chaos & disorder. Give the internet back to the geeks & maybe we'll get some semblance of decency back.
What effect on ethics? There's no duality at play here. Many great developers are complete assholes. Will you stop using their work?

Google is keeping Mozilla alive. Do as they do. Keep Mozilla alive.
Yeah, no offense to GP but that is possibly the worst way of looking at it.

There are platforms where developers need to stop developing. iOS was the main one; it has extreme lock in, an unfriendly development environment, an extremely unfriendly publishing environment and is actively doing evil things. But no, all aboard the ios apps train!

Windows I could say similar things about but given the competition I really can't. Android... Definitely not. Some of the most free mobile OSes run atop of android.

But when it comes to developing on platforms in general, developers absolutely need to use themselves as a voice to tell other platforms what is good, what is needed, etc. There are excellent general desktop features that people have found on mac os, windows and linux alike. Without developers to make use of them, regardless of the "open" or "closed" state of the platform, users are worse off.
The lock is also active on Mac.

But on both OS, you can get around it by enabling the developer mode and installing unpacked extensions.
> in the modern, western world, alas

I don't know what you meant exactly by "the western world", but this advice seems to really only apply to a part of it. There are numerous legal traditions (cultures?) around the world, and not all of them require everyone to get legal advice/help.

As an example, any legal culture where precedent isn't as important as in the USA is much more accessible to laypeople — you can actually read the law, understand it, and be reasonably certain that you found all the applicable laws.

As another example, there are places where courts take mostly intent into account, instead of deciding based on how a comma was placed in an agreement. In these jurisdictions the best agreements are short, clear, understandable, to the point, and do not require a lawyer to draft them.

I avoid mentioning specific countries that I know, for two reasons:

a) knee-jerk downvoting based on opinion has recently become widespread on HN,

b) there is always someone who instead of discussing the general point will find a nit to pick with a particular part of one of the examples.
> This future of no capitalism people want scares the heck out of me, almost makes everything I've worked for pointless.

The future of continued capitalism scares the heck out of me, because it's the future of more and more people living on subsistence level, slaving away all their lives for increasingly smaller group of wealthy people, until the whole thing either collapses or the economic machine optimizes all humanity away for more profit and the Earth will be left with no people.
If you do not have a preferred lawyer then in an arrest situation a public defender will be appointed to you, which will then become "your attorney" for the duration.
They don't need to pivot, they just need the rest of the business to grow bigger then the advertising arm. Which it will, since robotics and AI have the potential to be much much bigger. Of course, then people will worry that Google will create the technological singularity.
"If you do not have an attorney, one will be appointed to you."

Also, there have recently been court cases where someone accused of a crime didn't immediately VERBALLY exercise their right to remain silent, and that fact was used as evidence. Crazy stuff.

You should say essentially, "I chose to remain silent until I can speak to an attorney."
This, so much this. I'm super confused as to why we are having a discussion about hashing emails?
The leak points to a slack development/release process (is there one?). Its expected to check for leaks, crashes before releasing a point build. That this dog got out points to a systemic problem. Was that fixed by 2.5? Or was just the leak fixed.
It's very hard to be locked in to an open source browser. If Google fucks up badly enough someone will fork it.
Compared Care helps patients price-shop for medical procedures
Don't you actually have to remain silent? Its not just a game of Simon Says; anything you say can actually be used against you. The only solution is to remain totally silent.
Oh, you're in Canada. Your situation is far less dire. Though articling adds to the time required to pass the bar.

But lack of financial pressure is an illusion. Unless you've got family support that will end with school, you're running up debt, not getting income, and not learning a skill that will be of any use to you.

If you're truly certain law is not for you, the only thing finishing really gets you is an ability to not look silly to others when you describe what you're doing with your life.

You'll value that now, but feel silly about it later.
Do Software Engineers Get Enough Respect?
> protesting will never change anything

I'm sure the British said the same thing in 1775.
I have been a long time FF user and can only echo your experience. But sometimes, on (badly written) JavaScript heavy pages, the entire browser locks up instead of just the rogue tab. I've tried enabling electrolysis[1] on my nightly, but it isn't quite there yet. Firefox may not be perfect, but it really is the only option for me, and it's getting better thanks to the amazing community behind it.

[1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis
My mind was almost literally blown when I found that org-mode in emacs has this. I believe you have to be putting in the noweb comments, but there is a detangle function.
Not linking to a company described requires a very conscious effort. It's obvious that when you want to tell people "hey, look at X", you want to point people towards X somehow. If you don't do this, then it means you have some ulterior motive for not doing that.
Part of the problem is the competitive nature of the industry. Lots of job ads these days expect you to have some blog posts, or a side project. I am writing one in my limited spare time, not because I need to, but it seems like a step towards improving my career, having some code I can show people.
Ff fan here. Running Aurora on desktop, laptop and mobile.

Love the project, have nothing but minor complains.
Currently leading the list: For quite a while FF on Android has a 'broken' long press menu on links. Someone thought that it should be

Share Link ->

Open Link in New Tab

Open Link in Private Tab

Copy Link

Bookmark Link

I.. guess I don't understand how others use their browser. The last action doesn't make sense to me (bookmarking a link I haven't visited/open?), but worse: The first item annoys the hell out of me. Same question applies (share a link that isn't open?), but reserving the top spot for that? In my world you use the 'open in *tab' operations or copy a link. I regularly hit 'Share Link' and curse about the UX and shake my head trying to figure out what process lead to this design.

Minor quibbles.. :-) Best browser, hands down.
The conclusions of the summary are vague. ADHD most frequently mis-diagnosed; then they test people 'diagnosed with ADHD'. How are we to be sure they were in the correct group?

Then they tested folks on and off Ritalin. Those off Ritalin showed less of the eye movements they were testing for. This they extrapolated as proof that Ritalin works to treat ADHD and is not a placebo. Circular reasoning of a sort I am baffled to explain. Perhaps the eye movement is a spurious irrelevant symptom; then Ritalin's effectiveness for ADHD is completely disconnected from that finding.
How can everyone--including O'Callahan--be giving Apple a free pass on this issue? Pointer events are a great example of Apple's obstructionism. The W3C tried for years to standardize touch events and Apple blocked them several times by claiming patent rights. Microsoft proposed pointer events, and everyone seems to agree that they are much better as a future standard and a way to unify pointer models, but Apple seems to have no interest in implementing them.

Whether you agree with Google or not (I don't), be realistic and admit that any web platform standard like pointer events that lacks an Apple implementation won't help developers--how good is a "standard" that doesn't work on the iPhone/iPad? My guess is that Apple sees no reason to move quickly on improving web standards, since they'd rather have people develop for their proprietary walled garden. They just created a new proprietary language to do so!

Microsoft and Mozilla lack the market share in mobile devices to be able to move standards in any direction by themselves. Google is in the driver's seat. Apple is willing to sit quietly in the back and we seem to be okay with that?
Hi, I'm glad I saw your post.

I nearly got expelled from high school and ended up dropping out. When I went to college, I had no idea how to study, and I spent so much time writing code for my own private projects that I had almost no time left over to study or do homework, so my grades were awful.

But I kept getting stronger at solving computer problems. Employers asked me lots of questions about Linux, and C, and how I'd solve various problems, and so on. But nobody has ever asked me about my grades, or my GPA, or the courses, or my degree. I know grades and degrees may seem important to you now, but in my experience, it just hasn't made any difference. What has made a difference is the huge amount of time and effort I've put into programming and solving problems.

I'm 35. I work at a startup. I work very hard, but I do whatever I want. I'm still learning and getting better. I don't have a boss. I work with my friends. One friend, like me, had disastrous grades. Another friend, probably the most brilliant and talented person I know, did not finish college.

You simply don't need permission from a university to be what you want. And the university doesn't even have the power to grant anything except a certificate. If you want to become a software engineer, you do it by putting in time every day. Always curiously searching and probing and testing and challenging yourself and making yourself stronger.

Like I said, I know grades seem important to you now, but your dream is not destroyed -- it's hardly even started. Go find an interesting repo on Github and study the code and make a meaningful contribution. Solve a tricky problem and write an article about it (explaining to others is an excellent way to solidify your own understanding).

Don't get discouraged and don't ask people for permission to do what you want! :) Good luck.
Edit: I can't edit my post, perhaps due to the downvotes(why downvote without replying?), so here's a couple more.

Tying Android App store to having Google search engine as default on Android, ensuring that alternative search engines cannot be shipped as default.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/12/documents-shed-light-...

Stopping Acer from shipping Aliyun OS by threatening to pull the Play Store and Android beta access. Bonus points for enforcing this by the duplicitous moniker 'Open Handset Alliance' doublespeak

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/report-google-threate...
Somebody Make This: IT ideas
You don't need to have a lawyer, or the name of a lawyer, to ask to speak to your lawyer.

The act of asking for one gives you protections: it is improper for the police to question you after you've asked for one before a lawyer is there. If you've been arrested, you'll consult with a state appointed lawyer before your arraignment, but generally arraignments are purely procedural and after one you'll either be released (and you'll get a public defender or have to hire one depending on your means) or have the opportunity to hire a private one via the phone or a proxy.

You ask for one because:

1. Talking to the police is almost never in your interest, and you have very little chance of recognizing when it is in your interest without assistance of counsel

2. Asking for one will stop the interrogation attempts until a lawyer is there. If they want to keep questioning you in custody it's on them, and not you, to get you a lawyer.

3. You gain protections you didn't have by asking.

There is no reason not to refuse questioning without a lawyer present.
I would hate to see that happen. In a project with a sufficiently good review processes, the investment of time for helping somebody contribute the first patch(es) will far outweigh the benefit, and amortise only for developers who stay with the project for longer.

Add extrinsic motivation to contribute patches, like extra credit, and what you will end up doing is abusing experienced open source contributors as teaching assistants instead of an actual contribution to open source.

Let's not forget that one of the guys who did open source to further their academic career, only to drop it later, was Robin Seggelmann, the creator of Heartbleed.
I only mildly follow this stuff, but I believe you have to verbally exercise your right.
Can't reply lower.

The idea that Google will somehow abandon it's current advertising/data mining business model is ridiculous.

In 2013 Google's non-advertising revenue was less than 9% of their total revenue.

For average people, the $0 price tag is one of the big appeals about Google's various services - of course those things are really just ways to acquire product (i.e. people) data/eyeballs.

If you look at a lot of their online services outside of straight search, they do not have the best experience, they are simply free and "good enough" to squeeze out or marginalise paid services.
Yes, Rapportive Is All #$%ed Up Right Now
Coming on Kickstarter – Indigenous Craftsmen Shoes
ieg.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/projects/pdf2table/
No. If you're under arrest, you'll generally want to help them identify you properly (unless you don't, in which case going through the system as a John Doe [1] is an option and I know people who this worked quite well for) and state that you won't answer questions without an attorney.

The act of asking for one gives you protections.

Likewise, the police may read you your Miranda rights and try to get you to sign something saying you know and understand them. You should refuse to sign, stating that you won't sign anything without a lawyer.

Signing it opens the door for further questions and a chance your answers can be used in court. Not signing it will generally lead to them skipping the questions, as there's little point.

[1] edit: to do this you refuse to give any name. DO NOT give a false name like "John Doe" - that's merely what they'll put on the paperwork if you refuse to give a name. Giving a false name is pretty much always a bad idea. Note that generally refusing to not give your name is probable cause for arrest in many jurisdictions and I believe may even be a misdemeanor in some places. I think it's generally only a reasonable route if the arrest was clearly illegal and disclosing your real name might make you a target for other reasons (e.g. immigration status). I do know someone who wasn't a citizen who was arrested while engaging in protected first amendment activities and refused to say a single syllable (lest their accent give away their status) and they were released as a john doe at their arraignment. But yes, YMMV.
No. You should say you wish to remain silent.
Careful! In some states you must give your real name.
Hi HN, we have been working for over 6 months on our first shoe collection. This will be launched on Kickstarter as we need backers to successfully launch it.

Would really appreciate any feedback on the landing page or product itself.
Your profile is green (meaning new), maybe that's why you can't edit. I never noticed downvotes having anything to do with it. I found your post interesting and it contributes to the conversation, not sure why anyone would downvote (care to explain, downvoters?).
This Video Explains All the Reasons Robots Will Take Your Job
I'm interested in CentOS.
The Oxford dictionary’s new words
I don't think they have been very quiet about ART. They had a whole I/O session and they recently dedicated a whole dev backstage podcast to ART and its future evolution (btw, some nice things are planned : suppression of the 65k limit, code hot-swap, ...).
I'm a little surprised by this. I can believe that Firefox is slower (I haven't done the comparison myself), but even so it's still capable of rendering hundreds of thousands of points or thousands of complicated geometric shapes.

I would have thought it you had more data than that then the points will all be rammed together and hard to distinguish, so it would be better to switch to density plots.