skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When did OpenOffice become a shorthand for 'bad usability'?

I mean they're basically just cloning Microsoft Office (There's a joke there but I'll avoid it). I can think of a bunch of problems with OpenOffice but I've never felt they had a particular problem with usability, not compared with Microsoft Office nor with your average Windows or Linux app.

Don't get me wrong there is always room for improvement and they used to do some crazy stuff years back (like have their own desktop) but I'm fairly certain that's in the past.
I had a variant of this ...

I was working for Radio Shack in Australia in 1979 and we had a TRS-80 on display. It was running a fairly standard demo, but we needed to be able to unlock it to run live demos for prospective customers. So we needed a password.

Problem was, there were always a few kids around who would "shoulder surf" (although I didn't know the term back then) and then unlock the machine when we weren't watching.

So I hacked the password mechanism so it required not only the right password, but the right rhythm. When it got a correct password it then analysed the rhythm, and only unlocked the machine if they were both right.

A later variant (unnecessary, as the first was never hacked) was to required a failed login first, where the failure was the right password but wrong rhythm. As I say, that was never deployed, but I now see similarities between that and "port knocking" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_knocking )

I did have a third phase ready to be implemented, but the first was enough by itself.
How Much Power Does The Human Brain Require To Operate?
Does anyone knows what kind of operating system UAVs have?
Posted a related link a couple of weeks ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=898214
Interestingly, the last photo is about a block from my apartment, where I live with my co-founder and we got Directed Edge off the ground. :-)
Tax on unhealthy food would encourage healthy eating.

It's a good tax too because eating such food increases healthcare costs on the public.

See http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/pigou-club-manifesto....
Alliances can easily decrease the risk of small scale war, but this is at the cost of systematic risk (alliance vs alliance war or world wars). Perhaps we've only managed to decrease the risk of medium-sized wars at the cost of increased risk for that very rare, very big one. It wouldn't be too different from the recent financial crisis or power distribution networks in the US.
So there were a few issues with rolling out a new release. Is that really worth a big fuss on the blogosphere? I still haven't upgraded to Snow Leopard because I have heard about all sorts of issues. If you are worried, wait a couple of months before you upgrade (that goes for any vendor, not just Linux). If not, just upgrade away.
Building a Twitter Filter With Sinatra, Redis, and TweetStream
Western Europe has lived for decades under the U.S. Strategic Umbrella.

Once (if) that goes away, Western Europe will either have to pony up for it's own defense, or be held hostage to outside powers with their own agendas (like Russia blackmailing Europe with gas supplies)

I don't see the struggle between national interests going anyway anytime unless and until the nation-state itself is rendered obsolete. People need stuff, and that creates conflict. Different groups of people will need different stuff. And let's not forget ideological problems -- Western Europe isn't exactly a model of social integration.

It only takes one bad actor to make all participants gear up for the potential to use force, and we've found that once geared up, the actual use of force is not far behind.

It's a prisoner's dilemma played out on a global stage. But you'd find the same situation with three thousand guys living in caves somewhere. War is a natural consequence of groups of unique and intelligent humans.
The Perfect Server - Ubuntu Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) [ISPConfig 2]
That is not how the real world works.

If you put all the power the state can muster on one pile and that of the population on another, resistance against the state has been impossible – I would guess – for a few centuries (or more). But that is – again – not how it works. There are other players involved. Parts of the state might not be willing to use all that power. Other states (sometimes with vastly more power) will constrain the ability of the state to use all its power. And so on.

The consequence of all this is that revolutions against tyrannies are possible without firing a single shot or using any violence at all. Even though, just looking at the raw power of the two sides, the state could easily crush the population. Just think of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Raising capital - The 50 or so things you should read first
Brilliant! Is this the Y-Combinator, as a science fiction story?
Starting next year, private insurers could no longer deny anyone coverage based on preexisting conditions, place lifetime limits on coverage or abandon people when they become ill.

Worth it!

I also don't think suggesting that this violates the Fifth Amendment is very convincing. 2.5% of the average American income isn't very much, if you do the math! Even a family making 100k per year (well above average) would be penalized $2500, which is fairly light when you compare fines for other crimes.
I'm not sure what you mean by "back in the day". I played it the first time a year or so ago, and was consistently impressed at the design. The gameplay holds up very well against today's best.
Those are really good points. I know enough about affiliate marketing to know that acai ads get "slapped," but these top bidders seem to stick around no matter what.

The FTC/various AGs have gone after some of the people running the acai ads, but I think the bigger problem is the rebills in general. There will always be a new ringtone, grant offer or diet pill to slap a rebill on.

Anyway, I guess I'm not ranting about it.
A sex change would apparently do wonders too; from 49% down to 37%.

Anyone have any speculations to why? Might it simply be that a lot of women for some reason don't register themselves as unemployed?
It worked for western europe: Great Britain and Portugal claiming rights to trade with Spanish colonies in America motivated a lot of wars; the USA independence war from GB was motivated by economic reasons, etc. But it is not enough.
I would also add the end of nationalism and colonialism to the requirements for world peace. Although you could say that without the former there isn't the latter.
How to Follow Through: The Emerging Science of Self-Control
It very much is. Canonical purposely picked a release date to coincide with that of Windows 7. The Ubuntu community practically marketed this as the Second Coming and The Age of Linux (redux). And then they blew it.

Remember, it's the first impressions that count. Always. Someone who's hardware is wholly unsupported under the default Ubuntu configuration, crashing the PC or fscking up the display isn't going to try Ubuntu - or any other Linux - again anytime soon.

That's not to say that Ubuntu isn't a great distro. But like the article says, if you're going to market something, make that the best you've got. You don't enter a championship with your mediocre offerings when you've got loads better. Ubuntu can do, and indeed in the past has done, better so why this and why now?

Initial impressions == does it work or not. How badly is it going to mess up my existing configuration. How does the upgrade go. Is my hardware supported.

NOT initial impressions == how many windows you can wobble at once. Having the latest (and buggiest) version of framework X just for bragging rights or the need to get it out regardless of quality. Testing extensively under very limited conditions and barely for any of the slightly-out-of-the-mainstream cases.

EDIT: Wow, seem to have really struck a nerve to have reached -4. Would love to know what the downvotes are for, or if it's just a knee-jerk OSS reaction because I think I explained my POV quite well (whether you agree with it or not).
Vendetta Online - Linux MMORPG sees update
VxWorks: http://www.electronicstalk.com/news/wia/wia277.html
And what you're missing is that they realized people might want to randomly shuffle a sequence before there was obvious applications for it.
I don't think that was the implication. "I didn't see it, someone else logged in from my IP did -- you must have blacklisted my account!!" is not necessarily accurate.

(This, incidentally, happened to me quite recently. Customer A went over to her sister-in-law's house to play some bingo. She set her sister in law up with a trial account, and her sister and law printed some cards in color. Customer A was not pleased that she had paid for the software and couldn't print in color, but her sister (who hadn't) could.)
It seems quite slow. I am using Python 2.6.4 on Linux, slow processor (~2GHz). I out-commented the testOpacityFrequency and _compare defs in the test/pil.py. Now I added about 10000 points and it is calculating for half an hour already. With 1000 points it tool 5 minutes.

Is that normal performance or did I do something wrong?

edit: after 36 minutes it threw "AttributeError: 'LoadTest' object has no attribute '_compare'", oops that was my fault. Trying again with less points.

edit2: It is swapping... I have 2GB RAM. Using an 8192x8192 image and 20 points. :-(
If Health Care Is Going to Change, Dr. Brent James's Ideas Will Change It
Vim assistant
That doesn't clarify anything, it took me about 30 seconds to figure out what it was you are trying to say. It's pretty simple to understand the penalty is 2.5% of your income, most people don't think in terms of their existing effective tax rate.
> Over the next 20 years, one side effect of this sort of bill might be to slow that innovation down.

There was an article in The Economist recently (unable to find the link - read a hard copy) which dispelled this myth. Research was done in some European countries (including the UK) which showed that introducing the NHS has not slowed down innovation. They also suggested some incentive plans to make sure innovation did not take a hit.

In either case, I think it's a long stretch to say that this bill, among other things, will lead to a reduced drug innovation. The money in the Drug business in the US and around the world will ensure that does not happen.
He may have plugged his book (and not in a spammy way), but I must say that I did learn something hear.

Answering questions up front that you may be afraid to answer or will come and putting them right out there to be disarmed is a very interesting concept.
I disagree. I feel that this goes against the principal of "release early, release often". You want a lot of people using the latest release of your software so you can get an idea of where the bugs lie before your next version.

Besides that, what this blog is basically advocating is turning Ubuntu into Debian. Perhaps there's a reason why Ubuntu is getting all the attention that Debian isn't getting?

And no, it isn't "marketing". That's almost always a cop-out answer.
It's probably not racism then, but, umm, culturalism.

We don't have good vocabulary yet for distinguishing between race, culture and nationality because for most of history, these were very strongly correlated.
This is a very tough subject to comment on, and maybe why no one has yet.

I do believe that some vaccines are very important (like polio), but I don't believe that we should vaccinate for others (like chicken pox). Know anyone that has had H1N1 yet? I bet you do and chances are they survived and found it just about the same as regular flu, so why vaccinate the whole population for it? Now, I do believe high risk people should be vaccinated, like my girlfriend's father who had a kidney transplant (because if he gets the flu it can be life threatening).

I feel for this person who cannot send their child to daycare because other children are not vaccinated, but I'm not sure it is a reason to push vaccinations on others.

Please don't flame me for this; I hope you see that I'm just hitting on this from both sides and do sympathize.
El Reg's LHC visit
Unfortunately in most large companies that means "promote them to management".
Fantastic innovation, similar to the "why didn't I think of that?" article that was on HN front page yesterday about the university student who made that new UK plug that takes it from one of the largest to a slim design.
Age in this case is just a proxy for year of graduation.
While that's true, the advantage of investing in mildly stable developing countries is such that we will run out of developing nations faster than you might think. China has something like 40 years until it has US level consumption per person with India not all that far behind. When 50% of the worlds population has modern education and infrastructure the cost savings of shifting your work force around the world shrinks. Japan might be the poster child for this transition but without massive destruction there is little to slow things down.

PS: The ability for science and technology to progress has had a lot to do with the number of people who focus on such things, when 80% of the world is developed we might see 10 times as much research which is then quickly spread around the globe. And like the old VC equation having 1/3 of 50 trillion is worth less than 1/20th of 5,000 trillion.
Since we have some patent people on here, does anyone have any great resources (that aren't the usual google search spam) to show you examples and how to go about filing your patent without having to dish out big bucks for a patent lawyer and someone to help you write it?
> Know anyone that has had H1N1 yet?

Yes, a former colleague of mine had H1N1 this summer. He was put into a drug induced coma and intubated for 3 weeks. He is in his mid-30s and seemingly healthy.
Seems fishy to me. You can't vaccinate against all possible diseases, so it seems to me with the weakened immune system, daycare would be off limits no matter what.

Also I have never met a doctor who recommends taking all possible vaccinations there are. Maybe some can have side effects after all.

The measles example also seems a bit silly: how did the other kids get infected? Apparently they were not vaccinated either, so they were fair game (except for the very young ones).
I don't want to be a douche about cancer or anything, but maybe the reason no one has commented is because it's not really related to technology, startups or even business.
I think the fact that the National Guard consists of nothing but fewer, lesser-trained soldiers with aging, outdated weapons/technology is a pretty good indicator that the population would never be able to take on the full might of the federal military branches.
"Someone who's hardware is wholly unsupported under the default Ubuntu configuration"

It's nice if Linux supports as much hardware as possible, but to demand that it supports ALL hardware seems over the top. If you want to run Linux, check for hardware compatibility BEFORE you buy stuff.

I don't think Windows 7 supports ALL hardware? OS X for sure doesn't. If W7 supports all hardware, hats off to MS. Actually I think supporting all the weird hardware out there was a major achievement Microsoft did not get enough credit for (back in the days). Apple never even tackled that monumental problem.
This is such a "two years ago" argument. My upgrade to Karmic was much easier than Hardy or Jaunty (I didn't try out Intrepid). Heck, it was even better than my upgrade to snow leopard.
What the bill provides:

>>Required coverage for preventative care

>>Starting next year, private insurers could no longer deny anyone coverage based on preexisting conditions, place lifetime limits on coverage or abandon people when they become ill

>>Insurers would be required to disclose and justify proposed premium increases to regulators, and could not remove adult children younger than 27 from their parents' family policies.

>>the House package would immediately offer discounts on prescription drugs and reduce a gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage, closing it entirely by 2019.

>>Uninsured people who cannot get coverage could join temporary high-risk insurance pools, and unemployed workers would be permitted to keep their COBRA benefits until the public plan and insurance exchanges started in 2013.

>>Tax-free benefits for domestic partners just like health benefits provided to the family of an employee married to a person of the opposite sex.

>>Provide grants to states for home visitation programs in which nurses and social workers counsel pregnant women and new mothers in low-income families.

>>Nutrition labeling requirements for snack food sold in vending machines and many restaurants.
But a 2.5% penalty for someone who makes $150,000 is a great deal for emergency care. Obviously family and kids change the decision-making process, but if I were single and making $150k, I'd rather pay a $3750 penalty and get free emergency room care (as anyone can today) than pay an insurance company $600/month.

In the end, passing a law that create more demand for private insurance services has little chance of driving the price down.
Is there some unwritten universal law that says, all demo must fail when you are feeling nervous?
Also, check for incompatibility:

http://www.leenooks.com

For instance, it's well known that nvidia stuff doesn't work as well as Intel, because Intel is involved with the production of free drivers, whereas Nvidia dumps out a binary driver once in a while.

(I run that one as a community service - if someone wants to help with the design, it would be more than welcome!)
"Microsoft spends huge on QA" and "QA doesn't find security bugs" are things you said.

If their QA can't find security bugs, then, perhaps, they should rethink what software quality means to them. Remember: even if bugs costs them millions of dollars, they cost even more to their customers.
You should probably come up with some reasoning to support your position aside from "lots of people survive the flu". Otherwise your "both sides" basically consists of a vaguely-worded opinion versus people who are verifiably alive because of vaccines but wouldn't be without them.
"how did the other kids get infected"

Per the article (helps to read it) some were too young to have been vaccinated. Perhaps the others had parents who refused.
Latest satellite transponders 11-8-2009
Vaccines aren't 100% effective in all people. You can catch a virus you were vaccinated against, but your odds of immunity are improved.
...But from a civil liberties point of view it is a bit alarming to think the government could force you to purchase something, and jail you if you didn't. I hope they don't enforce that too diligently...

I'm still trying to wrap my head around that sentence.

Are you saying it's bad for government to take away all those freedoms? Or are you saying that it's a little bad for government to come strip you of your property, but hopefully they won't do it too much?

It sounds like you are equivocating. Either it's more bad than good or not. Right? And -- assuming you reply -- if it's just a little bad, where is the line where you know the government is overstepping where it should go? If your party does a little bad this year, and the other guy's party does a little bad next year, after 100 years we're not going to be in such a good spot, are we? (Made even worse by having nobody to actually blame for our predicament) But hopefully nobody will enforce all those laws too much? (scratches head)
I disagree with you.

It doesn't go agains release early, release often, as all geeks and early adopters will continue upgrading every six months, detecting bugs and improving the distro.

In fact, Ubuntu already does what the article says, the article just advocates a change in emphasis.

De article is not advocating turning Ubuntu into Debian. There are no PPA in Debian, so staying with an old distro really means using old software. With Ubuntu LTS+PPA, people would use solid software for everything except for thos programs that need to be upgraded more often.
So are they going to jail homeless people if they can't pan handle enough cash to pay the premium?
There are people that compost and bring what little trash they have to the dump themselves. There are people that ride bikes instead of driving cars. There are people that are their own fire department. Why is it so had to imagine that health insurance might be optional foe some people.
PlayPower: 1980s computing for the 21st century
Tudou: A push towards mobile video and profits
Yes I can. Nine times, no less! ;)
Are you testing functionality or UX?
My worst experience in college was Machine Learning. The professor taught the class by reading a series of sparse power point slides. There wasn't a book for the class, nor were we given other notes. There doesn't seem to be a vast amount of knowledge on machine learning as with some other topics, say calculus.
I had that problem in Ubuntu and switched to VirtualBox. Surprisingly, when I enabled 3D rendering in VirtualBox and enabled compositing in OpenBox, My performance and snappiness increased.
Invisible but indispensable
We are nearing the point when computers will be mentally equal, if not superior, to humans.

Not even remotely close. In fact, if we ever want to reach a point where computers are as intelligent as humans are, we are likely going to have to start from the ground up with the way we build processors.

Our computers rely on precision, our brains rely on lack thereof. Our brains were "built" from the beginning to match fuzzy patterns. I look at a door and I know immediately that it is a door, even if I can only see part of it and have never seen one that looks anything like it before. Computers are terrible at this. We're getting sortof-kindof-maybe close by applying bayesian filters to images, but you're talking about rooms full of specialized hardware that cannot even compete with the brain of a mouse.

Additionally, that which makes us intelligent (what a delightfully indescribable word that is) is partially our creativity; which is something that computers are absolutely incapable of in their current form.

Sorry, but it is probably going to be a while before engineers, or architects, or programmers, or babysitters are replaced by any sort of "machine intelligence".
Microsoft's COFEE Spills All Over Internet
Digitally Tracking the Elderly to Help Prevent Falls
well quite frankly, you will need to hire someone, or else your patent will probably be worthless. A lot depends on the writing and if you get it wrong, you will lose in court.
How much would you pay to see your future?
India Economic Forum: Has India Got Talent?
Indeed. The "guard" (I can't remember what the DLR call them exactly) can also take over driving the train too, if necessary.
Even after 13 years of living in Berlin, for the most part at locations right next to the former border, I am still amazed by the magnitude of change this city has seen.

German photographer Matthias Kupfernagel took around 2500 impressive pictures of the former death zone between December 1989 and March 1990, right before the wall was demolished. You can see some of them here: http://www.kupfernagel.de/e/edoku.html. I can recommend the CD.