skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Asp.Net 2.0 (and up to 3.5, which is still framework 2.0) sites use UA sniffing to determine which markup to emit for many built-in controls, like Asp:Menu. When Yosemite / iOS 8 / Safari 8 was released, anyone with a SharePoint 2007/2010 site had their navigation get all screwy. I know first hand how infuriating someone's badly designed UA sniffing can be; it happened to me, and I wrote up a fix for it [0].

Why did it happen in the first place? Where did the UA sniffing fall apart?

A poorly designed RegExp looking for "60" in Safari's UA without a word boundary or EOL check. The new Safari UA includes "600" in the relevant section, and suddenly SharePoint sites were sending markup intended for (now) ancient browsers - browsers that weren't even on the compatibility list for SharePoint in the first place.

UA sniffing does need to go away for determining what structure your markup sends to the user agent.

[0]: http://blog.sharepointexperience.com/2014/10/did-safari-or-i...
Optimize them again, you will save 75% more!
I agree with cbr, there are too many cases where feature detection either isn't possible or hinders the performance of the application.

Does anyone know if there is an authoritative database of user agent strings, their associated browsers and the features of those browsers? If this resource existed, it would be trivial to wrap it in an API that web developers could use in their apps.
... in this case the lane already exists. We're talking platforms and re-striping. The biggest cost is the political argument about making some car journeys take more time.
An Agenda for Purely Confirmatory  Research (2012) [pdf]
Brewing Your Own Beer, with Help from an App
Developing a Bidding Kiosk for iOS in Swift
I agree this is a decent solution, and the one OP compares to is not.

But I would have javascript feature detect, and set a cookie based on what it found. Now, for all but the first page, the server can look at the cookie instead of the User-Agent string. Server just needs to sniff user-agent string if it doesn't (yet) have a cookie.
Hmm, true, but that could be remedied by transmitting the signal with something like Manchester encoding, so that the average intensity is constant whether or not data is being sent.
If you have a look at the Y Combinator startups (at http://yclist.com), quite a large proportion of the 2008 and earlier startups appear to be dead. Although it only lists "Dead" for a some of them, if you click on the links for the other sites (apart from the ones that say "Exited") you'll see a lot of their websites don't exist any more. It looks like about 80-90% are dead.
Every time Basic Income is discussed here in the first world, people mention monthly amounts that would sustain their comfortable lifestyles. The article links to a project where the basic income grant was just about enough to reduce extreme poverty (about 45 times minimum hourly wage, that would mean USD 400-500/month in the US/Europe), thus conclusions (both for and against) about much higher basic income schemes in the developed world are not valid.

By the way, with the US military budget you could provide similar Basic Income for about 3.75 billion people. Just saying ...
yet another? What others are there on the web?

I'm surprised preview doesn't do WebP, that's too bad.
Getting free contributions works for Wikipedia because it is not a business, has no ads and it's supported by donations. And because people get ego value from getting their contributions on a large, popular site. However, if the intention is to use free content to make the owners (and VCs) rich, then I am not sure that is a sustainable business model in the long term.
Which is a drop in the ocean as far as the FOSS app ecosystem go, and to be honest after all this time I can't see either of GTK or Qt winning the 'toolkit war'.

If either of those would have the capacity to emerge as the de facto standard then it would have happened long time ago in my opinion.

Taking a quick look at the gui software (not a whole lot as I typically prefer the commandline) I have on my Linux desktop machine (running bspwm, not a desktop environment):

Gimp (GTK)
Krita (Qt)
VLC (Qt)
Inkscape (GTK)
Chromium (GTK)
Firefox (GTK)
MyPaint (GTK)
Handbrake (GTK)
Galculator (GTK)
Shotwell (GTK)
VirtualBox (Qt)
Brasero (GTK)
Thunar (GTK)
File Roller (GTK)
Deadbeef (GTK)
Blender (opengl)

Of course this is purely anecdotal, but this notion of some 'winner' in the FOSS toolkit space comes across as fanboyism more than anything based in reality.
What's the etiquette for registration-required (or paywalled) links?
There's plenty of room for everyone. Best of luck.
To me, the strongest evidence that programmers are worth considerably more than they are typically paid comes form the absolute insistence from silicon valley companies that there is a "shortage" of programmers at the market rate (or well above the market rate).
My guess is that a near term local maxima is the combination of Lyft/Uber and a bus - or Uber Pool on steroids. It's very rare that I need to leave now, usually if I leave sometime in the next 30 minutes that is sufficient. Furthermore I don't mind walking a minute or two to get to the car/bus, or from the car/bus to my final destination.

Relaxing the constraints on time and distance will (my guess) vastly increase the number of people that want to go on a similar route as me. Therefore depending on how many people get matched up the system can intelligently assign the right type of vehicle (small car, SUV, small bus, big bus).
A good chunk of open source is reimplementated copies of closed source.
Yes it's Bardel.
If threads aren't interesting except for parallelism, what do you think people were using them for the multiple decades when the vast majority of people were running single-cored uniprocessor systems?

The answer is that it's often useful to manage multiple things at the same time, even if we can't or don't want to actually do them at the same time.

We may want to use blocking IO for the simplicity it gives us compared to asynchronous IO, but allow other parts of the system to continue to run during that blocking.

We may want to let threads and the kernel manage our context and context switches for us, instead of manually storing and restoring state, because it can be simpler that way.
I'll post here the same thing I posted on another HN post about user agent strings [0], because it's still relevant. I'll also add that the MS article link artfully dodges the whole "we suck at UA sniffing" issue their own products have.

Asp.Net 2.0 (and up to 3.5, which is still framework 2.0) sites use UA sniffing to determine which markup to emit for many built-in controls, like Asp:Menu. When Yosemite / iOS 8 / Safari 8 was released, anyone with a SharePoint 2007/2010 site had their navigation get all screwy. I know first hand how infuriating someone's badly designed UA sniffing can be; it happened to me, and I wrote up a fix for it [1].

Why did it happen in the first place? Where did the UA sniffing fall apart?

A poorly designed RegExp looking for "60" in Safari's UA without a word boundary or EOL check. The new Safari UA includes "600" in the relevant section, and suddenly SharePoint sites were sending markup intended for (now) ancient browsers - browsers that weren't even on the compatibility list for SharePoint in the first place.

UA sniffing does need to go away for determining what structure your markup sends to the user agent.

Edit: linked to earlier comment mentioned at beginning of this one

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8647749

[1]: http://blog.sharepointexperience.com/2014/10/did-safari-or-i...
The site design is very good. It is light and gets to the point, namely, the pricing: http://www.sultantutoring.com/pricing.html That seems crazy expensive. Who's is the intended audience for this? I certainly don't have 2.5 grand to drop on tutoring... I don't even know what the MCAT is!

The main question visitor have when they land on any site is "Is it relevant for me?" See if you can't put that info above the fold on the landing page. Otherwise, I'm left with the question "Who is Sultan?" and "Is this a Turkish site?"

Apart from that you should think about showing more of the product, e.g. a sample lesson plan, or a screenshot of a tutorial session to help visitors understand what is on offer.
Ask HN: Where are old historic posts from HN news?
I have been lurking on this site for 6 months now and found very interesting posts.
I would like to know where are historic HN posts though ?
Unless I search explicitly for specific term they don't show up. What I am looking for is listing of post , as it appears on front page or in ASK HN /SHOW HN categories.
If nothing else, a material UI widget set comes out of it which I can use to write android and ios apps. Thanks for this :)
Asians are being used as a wedge in the one lawyer's agenda against affirmative action.
But why you need people to log in to see about page? Just 1 static html page so I (not really me, because I spent a lot of time on that conversation anyway, but somebody, whatever) could decide if it's worth my time to sign up using real email account. It's, well, the point of about pages, to explain people what is that stuff they are looking at, and if they really want to go further. Scalability issues? That 1 static html page could be hosted anywhere, and, besides, if your servers aren't dying to host login page it wouldn't make very much difference anyway.
I was really hoping it would keep scrolling down nearly forever, with something neat waiting at the bottom :-)
Keynesian stimulus is only a temporary measure to create inflation to get around sticky wages. Namibia's inflation rate is 5%/year. If wages are sticky 10% below marginal product, then any BI in Namibia should last well under 2 years.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/namibia/inflation-cpi

Also, even testing at a town wide level is insufficient. This BI is merely a transfer of resources from outside the town into the town. How could that not make the town richer?

At the nation level the only way to accomplish that is imperialism.
> They clearly state that FreeBSD is in the same position....

He also talked about using XML (blech!) for configs, and seemed to be implying that launchd was more what he was talking about (see [slide 33][1]).

I am not especially worried though, as it was just a presentation from [one guy][2] who is not a current member of the [core team][3] or [the FreeBSD foundation][4] and is probably not wholly representative of the entire FreeBSD project.

[1]: http://www.slideshare.net/iXsystems/jordan-hubbard-free-bsd-...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Hubbard

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_Core_Team#List_of_membe...

[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_Foundation
I recall reading an article a few years ago where an entrepreneur was sued by the Spanish government after his company went under. Spain is, as is the rest of Europe, quite hostile to entrepreneurship. It seems like Spain is trying to attract people from outside rather than deal with the problems inside. If they could make it super easy to start a company, relax red tape for businesses under a certain size, and encourage Spaniards to start companies (not just in tech) and soften the blow of failure, I think only then is it time to start inviting in foreigners.
Because I have a FreeBSD box with this:

$ uptime
11:23PM up 835 days, 5:33, 1 user, load averages: 0.07, 0.02, 0.01
Wow that's a coalitiion against plant dieting
Keep in mind, we currently remove entire mountains to extract coal. If there is one thing we can do at scale it's dig holes, move concrete, and make steel cable.
I would think you could find an elevated lake that replenishes naturally to avoid pumping the water up. But then maybe that is just "energy".
The linked page mentions the Accept header, and notes that some popular browsers got it wrong at some point (maybe still?) so now no one can use it anymore. You propose something more specific, but not very different. It'll fall to the same fate eventually, but might give us a couple of years...
Researchers Reveal Method for Magnetic Field Calculation of Exoplanets
Electronic Device-Mediated PH Changes in Water [pdf]
You had me going right until the closing line

> By the way, with the US military budget you could
provide similar Basic Income for about 3.75 billion
people. Just saying ...

I am quite sure what I'm about to say will no doubt, sound hawkish to anyone
outside of the United States. To some Americans even. But that is the forbidding truth.

The reason the United States has to spend so much on defense - constantly one-upping the bad actors of the world [1] - is because no other nation will ( or wants to ? ). Perhaps if Western Europe stepped to its end of the bargain, U.S. won't have to.

President Obama summed it up nicely in a recent 60 Minutes interview with CBS News' Steve Kroft:

Steve Kroft: I think everybody applauds the efforts
that you've made and the size of the coalition that
has been assembled. But most of them are contributing
money or training or policing the borders, not getting
particularly close to the contact. It looks like once
again we are leading the operation. We are carrying...

President Obama: Steve, that's always the case.
That's always the case. America leads. We are the
indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else
has. Our military is the best in the history of
the world. And when trouble comes up anywhere in
the world, they don't call Beijing. They don't call
Moscow. They call us. That's the deal.

Steve Kroft: I mean, it looks like we are doing 90
percent.

President Obama: Steve, there is not an issue ...
when there's a typhoon in the Philippines, take a look
at who's helping the Philippines deal with that situation.
When there's an earthquake in Haiti, take a look at who's
leading the charge making sure Haiti can rebuild. That's
how we roll. And that's what makes this America.[2]

[1]
U.S. Navy unveils high-speed rail gun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg

http://www.onr.navy.mil/media-center/fact-sheets/electromagn...

[2]
President Obama: People Don't Call Beijing, Moscow, They Call Us When Trouble Comes Up In The World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XZRQgT9D5k

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-obama-60-minutes/
Homeless people camped out under overpasses are only one small and very visible kind of poverty in America (maybe the only visible sign in SF proper at this point, for all I know).
I would speculate that this problem is not as big as the paywall problem.
I did some quick analysis comparing the proposed project against Li-ion, adjusting for storage and lifespan, and the result is very hopeful. I used values for $/KWh and lifespan from abdullahkhalids' comment. The analysis shows that if you can get more than one cycle per day out, the proposal offers fantastic value.

Model visible here - http://imgur.com/KmQPb8P

Finance uses something called 'equivalent annual cash flows' (EACFs) to compare projects of different lifespans. Using EACFs makes this analysis very simple.

Using abdullahkhalids' figures and assuming a single cycle per day, the equivalent annual cash flows per KWh are equal when the cost of capital is about 4.35%.

Something magical happens when you assume can get more than one cycle per day. At two cycles per day, your funding costs could be 10% and the project still feasible! At four cycles per day and with a 5% cost of capital, Li-ion costs almost four times as much as the proposed project.

Could someone shine some light on how many cycles per day is realistic for both Li-ion & the proposal?

PS if you find this sort of analysis interesting and want to hit me up to talk about such things, feel free to send me an email (available in my profile).
That helps, but the cost of the other features is still significant. I would still expect them to get a lot of complaints about why they are spending so much money on "bus stops" and why they can't just put up a pole with a little sign on it.
> The reason the United States has to spend so much on defense ... is because no other nation will

I don't think it's clear which way the causality runs there.
We will see self-driving buses as well servicing a more budget market. Mass transit isn't going away in a hurry.
"The greatest shortcoming of exponential forecasting is the S-curve."
A self hosted and open source version of something like this would be amazing. I'm not sure I feel comfortable leaving my private key on third party servers, even for non-production/purely personal usage.
The Fight for $15.37 an Hour
It gets even better:

"Base is 300 ft by 100 ft, with wings that extend width to 170 ft. Will allow refuel & rocket flyback in future."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/536263260056850432

Instead of spending valuable propellant on a boostback burn to get to the launch site, they'll just partially refuel the spent lower stage on the barge and have it fly itself back to the launch site. This'll improve their maximum payload, and possibly save money.
Get in the habit of using sharp quote (in elisp)
I would agree with this. That is the way to success... as well as finding people who share the goals that you'd like to accomplish.

The thing I like about Space X is their balance that was referred to earlier in these comments. Risk vs. profitability vs. engineering cool things. They also take the position of mitigating risk through USING their engineering and technology skills. At the heart of it, using repurposed thrusters from oil rigs to make a seafaring landing platform isn't "difficult" per se... but there certainly is ingenuity there. Not only did they make something cool with their engineering skills and ideas, but they made something that makes their development of "spaceships" safer.
Slightly off-topic but if anyone is interested in the awesome resources buried deep in university pages, I've tried to compile a few courses[0] that have all their lectures & assignments available online (CS240h is one of them). Feel free to send PRs!

[0] - https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses
I honestly wonder if you are a bot or someone struggling with translation. Of course if you're a bot, I don't know what your purpose is, there aren't any links in the post, it's just conversation. If this came up and I was judging a Turing Test, I really don't know if I'd pick correctly. At some points you seem like you're just listing words that appear on HN frequently. Other times there are distinct opinions though. The mmm www tick doesn't seem to be related to anything I can find. You are interesting person.
That does not exonerate Harvard from its Asian glass ceiling, misdirection does not explain 20 years of "record".
You can't, for example, write a tool to safely update a config file to work with a new version of the software

You never can tell the future. This is a straw man.

apply some specific update across a bunch of machines

This is a bad idea anyway: the immutable server model seems to have been recognized as the way forward. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6705269 for reasoning.

or to catalogue the configurations each machine has

Again, immutable servers make this pointless.

I think, overall, given your examples you are clearly looking at the wrong tool (ssh or whatever plus systemd; a host-centric combined init system, process manager, log manager, and whatever else) for the job (managing multiple machines in disparate states).
I assume you're being very non-US-centric since you brought up Beijing.

But you're still not getting it. This isn't about martial law, which is what you're essentially describing. Even with martial law, the U.S. way too many road, way too many people, for that to be effective, but that's besides the point, so let's focus on the kill switch.

Assume that self-driving cars would be not be really autonomous in the sense that you would have a very detailed local map or GPS that the government doesn't have their hands in. I think that's pretty reasonable considering what we know about government (at least the U.S. government and many other western governments).

If that's a reasonable assumption say 45-50 years from now, then any individual, groups of individuals, any area (big or small), any groups of area can be kill-switched with the press of a button. That is not ANYTHING like what you are describing as possible now with "roadblocks".

Don't you find that in the least bit disturbing, in that a fundamental of travel is very easily disabled for just about everybody and anybody?

I love the idea of self-driving cars. Driving is a nuisance for me as well as most people out of their teens, but for people that value freedom, you have to take a realistic look at what the cost will likely be.
To bypass the paywall: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
Anyone have a good idea of what are the 27 companies that are worth 100 million+?
Someone usually posts either the article in full, or the Google redirect link (WSJ doesn't paywall traffic directly from Google)
F# in ASP.NET 5: The good, the bad, and the really ugly
This is one of the best ideas I heard in years. To me this totally makes sense, plays on Linux strengths etc. I wish you best and intend to follow closely.
For true pay-wall articles it would be a problem but here you can just search for the article's title on Google and see it for free
Assembly Neutral Interfaces
I have used this method before and it works great. It is really useful for large parties where you are not sure when everyone will want to eat. Just throw everything in the cooler (heater I guess) and when everyone says let's eat throw everything on the bbq for a couple of minutes to sear.
Are Asians as privileged as whites?
one thing i've always liked to have in my rolodex is someone who can figure out really difficult ops problems, like odd server behavior or database performance issues and take whatever steps are needed.

I used to work with a contractor who knew linux inside and out, used very low level tools to watch packets, OS behavior, etc, and could just about always solve vague questions like "our db is occasionally taking 1 second to pick up a connection, and our dba has been looking at it for a week with no results". Sadly, he got a (great) job and stopped contracting.

If you can accomplish that sort of thing, its worth a high billing rate.

That said, when i've needed that kind of service, the last thing i would ever do is put up a post on stack overflow or something that says "for some reason, our cluster in europe is hozed and we're missing client SLAs. the US one works fine. we already tried rebuilding it. etc etc

Thats because if the problem is that hard, we're not going to realistically get help from the public. we probably won't even be able to provide enough detail to make it solvable via post. and its potentially embarrassing.

I think you'd have to do your some selling to get into people's backup plan.

Maybe put together a portfolio of detailed stories of doing this sort of thing? The more technical detail the more credible, at least for me as a buyer. maybe optimize for searches like "intermittent timeout" :)

maybe a physical object that you mail to VPs of engineering that they stick on their desk until they need it? "Break glass in case of unfixable server issue"
It takes context to know that 1) It was an off the record event and 2) that previous attack pieces were levied at his company and a reporter baited him into giving quotes that would sound incendiary without any of the context (i.e. answering the hypothetical question "how could a company stop biased attack articles).

The writer neither acknowledges his own conflict of interest nor does he give any indication that it's an answer to a hypothetical question. The real answer is that the uber exec isn't going to do anything about the attack pieces because they haven't done anything about them.