skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What is google up to with Gears ?
This a major bug and they don't even comment on it, is there a plan for something bigger ?
Numpy is one of the best packaged python modules there is. Saying it is hard to install is completely wrong.

It's even already packaged for many OSes. For example, it comes with OSX(and ubuntu, red hat, etc). There's a 3 click installer for windows.

There are also distributions of python that have numpy(and many other sci modules) by default.
a reasonable percentage of the time it doesn't work correctly.

The pypi web interface is very poor.

There is lots of scope for improvement in locating and installing packages.

(though I agree it is as intuitive, at it's most basic, as ruby gems)
I don't think the question is whether it can be trusted or not. That's pretty ambiguous and, as mentioned, you can't really put 100% trust in anything. Also, the meaning of 'the cloud' has become diluted, seeing it's now analogous with pretty much anything web based. We might as well call it "scalable, distributed and virtualized computing" or something.

The question, for me, comes down to education and understanding. The term 'the cloud' is relatively nascent, but the basic underlying principles are not really that new, just more evolved. The cloud is as secure and reliable as you make it. By definition it promotes redundancy, accessibility and scalability.

I work on a 'cloud' claims management application and it's targeted at the enterprise (finance/insurance) market, who are notoriously slow to adopt new technology. Trust me, it's a tough audience, but not as tough as you might think. The realization that data can be accessed (and work done) anywhere, at negligible cost with existing hardware is simply too compelling for any forward thinking company.

Quite simply, the pros seriously outweigh the cons - whereas the opposite is true for traditional client-server technology.
Tried this a while back (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=629493), never worked for me (even on Windows), but then trying to get rid of background process SpoonSandbox.exe was worse than cleaning a virus. It just kept coming back, uninstall didn't do anything...
Well, all programming is not done on a client and poorly using the many CPUs of a server is not cost effective. I think we are a long way off from the "magic sauce" and languages designed to allow programmers to express their programs in a parallel manner are going to have an advantage.

"Would Charles Dickens stories been any less had he written them in French rather than English? :/" - yep, they would have been - a particular turn of phrase or expression doesn't always translate well. Different languages bring different world views.
Yeah, sorry, definitely underestimated the number of DSs out there.

Nintendo DS: 113 million

iPhone: 21 million
Designing "Coming Soon" Pages
How blind people "see" the actions of others
Lame. If you really want one just email me and I'll send you one.
Actually ... spending money is a lot different from barter. If you're producing honey, you can't directly change that for guns.

What stops you? If the gun manufacturer wants honey you can trade. If that direct trade doesn't work you could do some intermediate ones till you got to the gun and that is the same as just issuing money, just more difficult to do. Why do people like bartering so much? Money is a better solution for the same problem.

The fundamental concepts are really different ... previously owning $10 bill would mean that your bank stores an equivalent quantity in gold for you. Now $10 just means someone owes the bank $10 ... and it's really a useless piece of paper with an unrealistic value. That's really the reason behind an economic crisis.

All money is debt, be it gold or not. All it means for me to have $10 is that society has agreed to give me that amount of goods or services in return for giving it back. It is always a debt, if it is represented in gold, paper or a number in a computer. In the previous model where the bank held $10 worth of gold for your bill if you redeem the bill for the gold what can you do with it now? There are industrial and decorative purposes but for you as an individual, what good does it do?

I don't understand these arguments that gold is some kind of one-true-currency. The only thing having a gold standard does is set a fixed monetary policy. The monetary base cannot be expanded as the amount of gold is fixed. But the Fed could set the same policy without having to handle gold. Having the physical metal is just an implementation detail that used to be important but isn't anymore. If it's the monetary policy you don't like fight against that.

Putting value in gold also motivates people to go digging around looking for this largely useless metal. That in itself is a drag on the economy as those people could be doing something more productive with their time.
blank stare

I don't have a car. What does that tell you about the quality of my life?
Iphone unlocking solutions
Unlock iPhone 3Gs provide a simple solution to unlock any iPhone version, including the latest iPhone 3Gs and firmware 3.1! We can unlock ANY iPhone version! Our iPhone unlocking solution is the easiest, safest and most secure iPhone Unlocking Solution available on the internet!
And that's about all it does. You have to update packages manually and you can't remove them at all with easy_install. What's so beautiful about gem to me as a Python dev is this:

$ gem update && gem cleanup

A lot of headache I don't have to deal with at all. I really wish Python would grow an equivalent tool.
Google Wave Meme - Pulp Fiction
The most unintuitive thing is that there's no easy_uninstall.
Google Offers Free Airport WiFi during Holiday Season
I don't like this kind of journalism. He cites something like "Apple is not proud..." in two lines and we have three paragraphs from other person interpretation, telling whatever he wants. Just give me the entire conversation and don't get out of context.

Classic trick for manipulating information.

When Carmack says Apple is not proud on the iPhone I believe is about Steve Jobs when he thinks that computers are powerful machines and you can use it for doing amazing creative and scientific work but you can use it for wasting all your time too.

I'm trying to remember the exact real interview he said that, I think it was in the famous Playboy magazine interview, long long time ago.

They get a ton of money from that, but feel more proud of other things.
Please, please stop overloading well-known terms like 'operating system'. This is simply an application platform, much more akin to something like the JVM than an operating system. The implementation details are sparse, but at the lowest level this could be a VM+language, and at the highest level simply a set of libraries. Calling it a "data analysis operating system" is akin to calling Ruby on Rails a "web application operating system."
Are there some sort of studies or statistics out there regarding adoption of different versions? I'd be interested to see them.
>Firefox accounted for 44% of all browser bugs reported in the first half of the year.

And what about the ones that closed source IE and Opera didn't report?
I'm reading this now. It is the driest prose I have seen in 10 years.
The idea is sound, but it was a distraction for us, so we were more than happy to offload rubygems to a dedicated service that could give it the attention it deserves.
... and even so, I've seen people struggle to install them - Scipy in particular - countless times. I'm not sure how easy is easy enough, but it's going to have to be basically impossible to screw up.

And I'm not sure that's possible short of bundling everything with Python, and of course that's a bad idea.
Perhaps mjnaus meant you should consider Swift's struldbrugs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldbrug ). Or possibly the material richness of Huxley's Brave New World.

Not that I disagree with the gist of your point.
Harvesting data from websites using WebKit and PyQt4
That's not the argument you previously made. You said "it's fine not to have health insurance because I didn't have health insurance and I'm still ok". That's a severe failure of logic. Anecdotal reasoning when looking at something like health insurance is pretty silly.

Unless you're the kind of person whose plan to get rich is to play the lottery, you need health insurance. At some point, in your life, it is quite likely that you will get very sick, or have a serious accident, or have some sort of mishap that suddenly smacks you with a multi-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars-or-more medical bill. At that point, if you don't either a) have health insurance or b) have lots of money, you're basically fucked.

If you pay the insurance all your life and you never actually get to use it, you should count yourself lucky. Health insurance if the kind of thing you pay every month and fervently hope that you never actually need. But if you do need it, having (good, not the american "we'll drop you if you get too expensive" type) health insurance is quite literally a life-saver.

Finally, if you declare bankruptcy because you can't afford your medical bills (and huge medical bills can happen to anyone), society is paying for your treatment anyway, indirectly. Therefore, it is reasonable to mandate that everyone must have health insurance.
Laser eye surgery has no long-term effects on cornea
Colorado springs eye 
ABBA Eye Care offers a full range of eye care services and procedures to accomplish your needs including wide range of contact lenses, regular eyewear, prescription
What Will Google Do (to AdMob)?
Seems pretty good to me. (I know a little Haskell, but only a little.) I think you and the original author are using different standards of readability. Yours: "If I look at this code, starting without knowing anything about it, does it look familiar?" His: "Once I've taken a few minutes to get the hang of this, is it easy to read and write?".

Here, the <|> and <$> and <* are unfamiliar and weird-looking: fair enough. But once you know that <|> means "or", and <$> means "try to parse some of the input using the thing on the right, and then the thing on the left is the resulting value", and <* means "try to parse both of these, and return the result of parsing the first one", it's hard to see how it could be much simpler.
Hollywood: Making a fatal error by killing convenience
Startup Ecosystems Take Time
Straight from the article...

And safety is a critical concern. In February 2008, Lawrence King, an eighth-grader from Oxnard, Calif., who occasionally wore high-heeled boots and makeup, was shot to death in class by another student.
Computer Sc - Data Structures and Algorithms (Free youtube lectures)
Consider that middle-aged managers are probably not eagle-eyed - light green text on white is not ideal, as already pointed out.

A very few may have a fond thought to give to a former holder of that name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ

P.S.: the 'Works with' part is more important than the out-of-the-way corner where it is tucked ...
If somebody is interested I am planning to sit through one lecture per day from that series and post the class notes I take from the lectures on my blog -> http://unknownme-justblogging.blogspot.com/

So far just completed first 2 lectures
The US didn't do too badly out of it either.
Bankruptcy Filings Carry U.S. Jobs Away [infographic]
On the verge of the recession business bankruptcy rates and national unemployment levels were steady. But in late 2007, these numbers quickly began to inflate.
Also doesn't work on Chrome. Hillarious given the subject matter.
The problem is more complicated than just C code being more difficult to build.

The whole distutils infrastructure is messy and badly designed. It takes care of everything from build up to installation and packaging, and all those parts are tighly coupled. It is also incredibly inflexible, and the way to extend it through subclassing leads to incompatible code (if package A subclass distutils, and package B subclass the same thing, how can you use A and B ?). Almost every design decision of distutils is wrong, and badly implemented.

Numpy and scipy binaries are built for every release: actually, that's the platform we support the best in some sense since we can reliably build binaries, and that saddens me quite a bit.
America's Natural Gas Revolution (is Spreading)
PG and you draw the wrong conclusion - to the extent hardware is like software it should only be protected as expression.

The sad fact about intellectual property law is that the courts have taken the "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" part of the copyright clause and affixed it to the first amendment instead. The implicit message of including the clause in the constitution at all is that the right to copy exists and belongs to everybody. That right is only properly traded when the expression or invention fulfills that requirement.

That being said, I don't advocate acting as if patents are not where they are. You've got to take the world as you find it, and if the government makes patents available on loose terms you should use that to your business's advantage.
WARNING - I just tried to install this on FF3.5 (XP) and Firefox would not start. Took me a while to figure it out, but you need to use Add Remove Programs to get rid of it.
Put a huge button on your home page that lets users straight into the actual application without any signup. There are so many sites that require sign up (I know yours is only 3/4 fields), it becomes off-putting, no matter how minimal.

Just make it so unbelievably easy for people to start playing with your app by just letting them use the thing immediately. Then, you can do all sorts of conversion stuff to turn visitors into users with an free/paid account etc.

Also, there are both 'Signup' and 'Join Account' buttons on the homepage. The only way I could understand what 'Join Account' meant was to hover over it. Why not just have one signup button, then as part of that process determine if the user wants to join an existing account. This way the user only has one choice and no ambiguity.

It's looking really great. Nice work.
tzury dot by at gmail dot com
code readability is relative.
Even in that code block, <|> and <$> both have roughly the common meanings of | and $ elsewhere in Haskell, which is the "next case" operator for pattern matching expressions and the strictness operator for ensuring that a function is applied to a value correctly.

Only <* is a really new construction.
Disclaimer: I'm not a user interface designer or anything person to this is just my opinion as a user...

I agree, its best to minimize error messages, however...

why didn't it just do that, maybe a few times, before even thinking of bothering the user?

How do you know it didn't (aside from assuming MS is dumb/lazy/etc...)? In any event, this is a case that can come up, and, as the post says, the error message is bad in almost every way.

perhaps the web page could figure out the closest valid key and just log in using that key (or have a Google-style "did you mean XYZ-123-ABC" link for the matching key).

This is actually a tougher case than just that. In fact, the problem seems to start before the error message. If there are two ways to register

1) Sign up for a username/password

2) Enter a key

You should be entering these in different fields and/or pushing different buttons and/or having these on different pages.

This shouldn't even happen to begin with! What did the screen look like? Was the user supposed to type the key into the password field? Thats silly, incorrect and confusing.

About your suggestion for finding a nearby key... I suspect that would be problematic. People use 16 character keys to make them hard to guess. Since only a small number of the 16 character combinations are valid, a random guess is unlikely to succeed. The more leeway you give, the less effective this is. For example... if you allow any two adjacent characters to be swapped, you increase the number of "valid" keys by a factor of 15 (of the 16 characters, each of the first 15 can be "swapped" with the next one).
Is your website easy to buy from? Tips to improve conversion
At the risk of getting downmodded because people disagree with me, it's hackneyed dull crap. Hey, my opinion's as valid as yours, right?
The newest one is all downloaded, the main problem is that the downloaded games cost the same as brand-new store bought ones - meaning you can't get cheapo 2nd hand games, and downloading games doesn't save you any money despite not having to carry around the cartridge.
"Now $10 just means someone owes the bank $10 ... and it's really a useless piece of paper with an unrealistic value."

It's more complicated than that: of course if somebody asks you to give you something in return for a debt (a ka money), trust enters the picture. The less you trust that person, the less the money is worth. If a a person/bank says "tee he, I am not giving you anything in return for your debt/money anymore", you will not do any transactions with that entity anymore in the future.

In that sense the system regulates itself - there is a risk attached to money, just like to anything else. People just took too much risk in the current crisis, powered by greed. Also of course because the risks were cleverly hidden, but it is not true that nobody had doubts.

As for honey, of course you can exchange it for guns.

Disconnecting from goods: it is not possible to manufacture everything yourself anymore. Of course that might be the real point of simple living: trying to only rely on stuff that you can manufacture yourself. But what if you get sick and need expensive medical equipment?

I am very connected to the cost of "manufacturing" software atm...
That link didn't work for me, but this one did: https://browserlab.adobe.com/

That's a great find, I'm definitely going to use that in the future. Thanks.
That Adobe link is broken. This works - https://browserlab.adobe.com/index.html
It doesn't work for Chrome, so I loaded it up on Firefox and it prompted me to install a plugin that I don't want all the while serving me up a Google Chrome advertisement.
Poll: How did you pay/are you paying for your studies?
I'm just asking out of curiousity.

In my case my parents paid until I started earning enough to pay my own way.
Bursary or Student Grant
A 3rd party (other than a financial institution) paid
A 3rd party (other than a financial institution) loaned me the money
Bank loan
I paid my way through without lending money
Novell benefits from Microsoft deal
9 In 10 Web Apps Have Serious Flaws
In other news, all software has bugs.
Company co-founder -
http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/6717

To see the interview, it seems you'll have to go to the front page, charlierose.com, click the 'archive' tab on the flash interface and scroll down to 08/11/09.

--
To charlierose.com site devs, linkable content - good.
Google's gift: Free wireless Internet in 47 airports for the rest of the year
UK government insists on retention of all communications data
Wolfram Alpha does not understand copyright
I bet somewhere, people are laughing at perfectly nice pieces of python, lisp, or even Java. Just because it's new to them.

What did Gandhi say...
What does it take to become a grand-master developer?
Invisible blood set to trace criminals
> Am I the only one not offended by the idea of package managers for each programming language?

Learning multiple tools to do a similar job is a bit of a nuisance. If you know one tool, you can learn its details over time. That's much harder with multiple tools. Does tool X remove configuration files when uninstalling? Can it even uninstall? Do I need to update some configuration files manually?

There's also the part where you sometimes need integration with packages from other package manager systems. System libraries (libcurl, etc.), header files if it gets compiled at install time, make, a compiler, etc.

But since the problem is getting solved by multiple tools already (cpan, pear, apt, yum, just plain ./configure+make, etc.), maybe we should work more on integrating those package managers and less on replacing the others. It seems unlikely to happen with so many incompatible personal preferences around...
I like using two browsers - one of them with just HTML (and CSS, no plugins, no javascript and cookies turned off), for general reading, search and scouting.

A good portion of the web is still readable, usually the better part, and works much faster. Make image loading optional for extra speed. It's amusing how some sites fire volleys of 6 or 7 cookies at you (if you choose notifications about that). And some even manage to be annoying with just CSS and images.
The why imperative
Paper hot air balloons - don't try this near a flight path! [video]
I would place Keith Ohlfs ahead of SK.
While I agree that that's probably a good measure, I don't think it's feasible. Many exploits are reported privately to the company first, so they have time to fix them. After the fact reporting by the company would create an incentive to underestimate the amount of time it took. Finding the reporters may be hard, and even if they are inclined to comment on when they found it, you can't really trust them, since their incentives aren't clear either. They may love the browser, or hate it...
Download Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 - Download - FileHippo.com
The person that discovered the bug originally would be the authority, not the company.
Amen!

Umm... what would you call LoseThos? It is an operating system every-bit as much as MS-DOS and more, but not exactly like Windows or Linux. It's 64-bit and multicored but has no networking or support for lots of devices.

http://www.losethos.com
I use this, and only allow HN and Google Reader during my lunch break. It works pretty well.
Pakistan to launch "Culture TV" to counter Extremism hmmm
I wonder how much it was ever in doubt that this would happen, when a 'benevolent dictator for life' wants something it happens.

From the introduction of the subject on the mailing list it seemed as though the moratorium was already in place at the time of the announcement.
Yes, it is a big problem.

Try installing any major piece of python software (and no, easy_install does not always work, or work properly) and you're in for a world of grief.
You guys do an amazing and thankless job, and I'm sorry if I oversimplified that aspect of it. It's just difficult to see how to solve the problems you describe, let alone to explain those problems to a researcher you're trying to wean off Fortran. :)
Can Java Be Saved?
EyeWriter: open source eye tracker for a paralyzed graffiti writer (who has ALS)
Amex sends USB trojan keyboards in ads
I love the idea of Europe as a "distributed" version of Silicon Valley. Not a single cluster where everything is put together, but where actors are spread out -- but is nonetheless as effective as Silicon Valley at pumping out great entrepreneurs and technology. You start to see the beginnings of it.

Most big EU VCs are in London but they invest all over the continent. Skype was started on the shores of the Baltic, but is headquartered in Luxembourg, has programmers in Eastern Europe and offices in London.

Saul is right, it would take a very long time to have Europe be a "distributed Silicon Valley", and maybe it's impossible, but it's still a very encouraging thought (dream?).
Marketing & Entrepreneurship, the Chicken or the Egg
Good to know that he's actually a writer for Maxim. Makes the TV deal seem less bizarre.
I say outcode him.

I blew him up last time (a couple years ago). I also supported Leach's efforts (ELER, web-comic).

The 'E' in esr stands for Ego.

http://geekz.co.uk/esrfacts/fact/16
That's an excellent article, thanks Fogus!

Not only does it level some valid criticism, it also proposes (for the most part, omitting 'new' would break too much code) workable solutions.
this could really use a more cohesive documentation, say a simple example. I don't understand how to hook it up, my callbacks don't get called