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Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge 2011 - Results

I don't think this proves a superiority of any algorithm against other. Just that SuperVision team did a great job on task 1 and task 2. I just would add two things: 1) There is a No Free Lunch Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem) that had been applied to pattern recognition too and that states that there is not a significative difference in performance between most pattern recognition algorithms.2) There is way more chance to get an increment on performance depending of the choose of the features being used, and that seems to be the case here.

Hinton's team (SuperVision) uses an interesting 'dropout' technique. He gave a Google Tech Talk on this back in June.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78&feature=plcpAnd an older talk that covers some of what a deep convolutional net is:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdIURAu1-aU

Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge 2011 - Results

Hinton's team (SuperVision) uses an interesting 'dropout' technique. He gave a Google Tech Talk on this back in June.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78&feature=plcpAnd an older talk that covers some of what a deep convolutional net is:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdIURAu1-aU

Sensational title that misrepresent the results of a competition with limited (albeit high quality) participants. There is limited information of general value in this link.

Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge 2011 - Results

Sensational title that misrepresent the results of a competition with limited (albeit high quality) participants. There is limited information of general value in this link.

Am not sure if you can apply winner takes all for such marginal difference in error. Give a slightly different database and things go awry.Check out : "Unbiased Look at Dataset Bias", A. Torralba, A. Efros,CVPR 2011.

Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge 2011 - Results

Am not sure if you can apply winner takes all for such marginal difference in error. Give a slightly different database and things go awry.Check out : "Unbiased Look at Dataset Bias", A. Torralba, A. Efros,CVPR 2011.

I found the title of this post really ironic."There is now clearly an objective answer to which inductive algorithm to use"

All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

Here's a year-old story by a more reliable Dutch newspaper, claiming 1 in 1000 phones is being tapped in the Netherlands.http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=ht...

I call bullshit. Phone metadata is saved since forever yes, but stored at ISPs, not at government organisations. There are strict regulations regarding the privacy of voice data over the phone (VoIP does not count as such though), and I don't think the secret service and military secret service (AIVD and MIVD) can do anything they like. They have more permissions, such as demanding passwords for encrypted files as long as it's not for your own conviction (while normally you have the right to remain silent), but it probably doesn't go that far. Keyword searches are probably not true.It is however worth mentioning that we have this CIOT system which is a publicly known and automated system that actually provides automated access to name and address details of any given Dutch IP address. The system is updated with ISPs' data every morning and can be queried at will. ISPs, even the most privacy-aware one (XS4ALL) do not give statistics of how often their part of the database was queried (I asked them), but it has been made public that the database had a total of 2.6 million queries over 2010 and 2.9 in 2009. That's one in six citizens' data queried for no apparent reason.Tech details: The CIOT system is a centralized search dispatcher, that queries systems provided by individual ISPs. A government official can enter an IP there and within seconds all ISPs have been queried and one probably returns a match.

All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

I call bullshit. Phone metadata is saved since forever yes, but stored at ISPs, not at government organisations. There are strict regulations regarding the privacy of voice data over the phone (VoIP does not count as such though), and I don't think the secret service and military secret service (AIVD and MIVD) can do anything they like. They have more permissions, such as demanding passwords for encrypted files as long as it's not for your own conviction (while normally you have the right to remain silent), but it probably doesn't go that far. Keyword searches are probably not true.It is however worth mentioning that we have this CIOT system which is a publicly known and automated system that actually provides automated access to name and address details of any given Dutch IP address. The system is updated with ISPs' data every morning and can be queried at will. ISPs, even the most privacy-aware one (XS4ALL) do not give statistics of how often their part of the database was queried (I asked them), but it has been made public that the database had a total of 2.6 million queries over 2010 and 2.9 in 2009. That's one in six citizens' data queried for no apparent reason.Tech details: The CIOT system is a centralized search dispatcher, that queries systems provided by individual ISPs. A government official can enter an IP there and within seconds all ISPs have been queried and one probably returns a match.

"De Telegraaf" may not be a reliable source, but even members of parliament are asking questions. Apparently the Dutch government is preparing a massive internet interception program. See: https://www.bof.nl/2013/06/10/nederlandse-overheid-broedt-op.... Sorry, but Google Translate does not translate HTTPS urls.

All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

"De Telegraaf" may not be a reliable source, but even members of parliament are asking questions. Apparently the Dutch government is preparing a massive internet interception program. See: https://www.bof.nl/2013/06/10/nederlandse-overheid-broedt-op.... Sorry, but Google Translate does not translate HTTPS urls.

If you are interested in this story and comments, then you will most likely be interested in the following comment and associated dialogue as well:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5830994

All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords

If you are interested in this story and comments, then you will most likely be interested in the following comment and associated dialogue as well:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5830994

The newspaper that published this, 'Telegraaf', is notorious for publishing bullshit. The article is very short, the journalist wouldn't be able to check if it's true, and the newspaper hungry to publish anything that attracts readers. Offline version of link-bait.

“Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Everyone should really just read the entire Autobiography.http://www.amazon.com/The-Autobiography-Malcolm-Told-Haley/d...Also, they should spell "Malcolm" correctly. :)

For those who feel uncomfortable with Malcolm's former creed that white people are devils and the black race is superior to all others, please do take note of the fact that he did convert to mainstream Islam near the end of his life thus disavowing any such racism or black supremacy.As Malcolm so eloquently stated:"America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white - but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color."You see, orthodox Islam, from the very beginning, espoused equality for all races. In fact, race in Islam is an inconsequential matter. Take for example, one of the greatest and most respected companions of the Prophet Muhammad was an African: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Ibn_RabahThe fact is that the Nation of Islam could not be any further from orthodox Islam. In fact, an orthodox Muslim could never possibly even consider one who believes in the NOI's teachings to be a Muslim. It's a shame that the NOI usurped the name Islam and applied it to its organization which really has absolutely nothing to do with a religion with such an illustrious history and tradition.

“Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

For those who feel uncomfortable with Malcolm's former creed that white people are devils and the black race is superior to all others, please do take note of the fact that he did convert to mainstream Islam near the end of his life thus disavowing any such racism or black supremacy.As Malcolm so eloquently stated:"America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white - but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color."You see, orthodox Islam, from the very beginning, espoused equality for all races. In fact, race in Islam is an inconsequential matter. Take for example, one of the greatest and most respected companions of the Prophet Muhammad was an African: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Ibn_RabahThe fact is that the Nation of Islam could not be any further from orthodox Islam. In fact, an orthodox Muslim could never possibly even consider one who believes in the NOI's teachings to be a Muslim. It's a shame that the NOI usurped the name Islam and applied it to its organization which really has absolutely nothing to do with a religion with such an illustrious history and tradition.

> At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes—until the guard approached again. That went on until three or four every morning.I did something similar as a child, with my guards being my parents (oh what a metaphor). Looking back, as someone who does not read a vast amount any more, I was privileged with both the means, and the inclination, to have such a habit. God knows it made me who I am.

“Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

> At one-hour intervals the night guards paced past every room. Each time I heard the approaching footsteps, I jumped into bed and feigned sleep. And as soon as the guard passed, I got back out of bed onto the floor area of that light-glow, where I would read for another fifty-eight minutes—until the guard approached again. That went on until three or four every morning.I did something similar as a child, with my guards being my parents (oh what a metaphor). Looking back, as someone who does not read a vast amount any more, I was privileged with both the means, and the inclination, to have such a habit. God knows it made me who I am.

Such a wonderful mind and finely tuned level of metacognition. The arc of the voicing in this passage is beautiful. It saddens me that the world has caused people like him so much pain.

“Learning to Read” excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Such a wonderful mind and finely tuned level of metacognition. The arc of the voicing in this passage is beautiful. It saddens me that the world has caused people like him so much pain.

If I only could read all the books I want to read. I can't count the books I bought and only read half or not at all. The stack of to-be-read-next books grows and grows. And now after reading this text I just ordered Malcolm X's biography.

The Story of Wanz, 51-Year-Old Breakout Singer on "Thrift Shop"

Just so I'm clear on this: The number 1 song on the US charts (EDIT: and a bunch of others, according to wikipedia) isn't on a major label, is a white guy rapping about going to the thrift store, and the hook is sung by a software test engineer?Somebody should call Alanis Morissette and explain the concept of irony, because this is about as golden as opportunities get.

Catchy song, lots of fun - On a side note, while I was in Australia last fall they were playing Thrift Shop uncensored on the radio. We'll never hear that in the states. How about the rest of the world? Does it get uncensored air play in Europe, Asia, etc?

The Story of Wanz, 51-Year-Old Breakout Singer on "Thrift Shop"

Catchy song, lots of fun - On a side note, while I was in Australia last fall they were playing Thrift Shop uncensored on the radio. We'll never hear that in the states. How about the rest of the world? Does it get uncensored air play in Europe, Asia, etc?

Girl Talk had a similar "dual life" experience at the start of his career where he was working as a biomedical engineer during the days in a cube farm and jetting off to Europe on the weekends to do gigs.Here's an early interview: http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/6415-girl-talk/

The Story of Wanz, 51-Year-Old Breakout Singer on "Thrift Shop"

Girl Talk had a similar "dual life" experience at the start of his career where he was working as a biomedical engineer during the days in a cube farm and jetting off to Europe on the weekends to do gigs.Here's an early interview: http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/6415-girl-talk/

I just downloaded this album about a week ago after finding another story about it on HN. I was blown away. First album I have listened to on repeat over and over again since Pink Floyds Animals. Its really brilliant writing and just on point.

The Story of Wanz, 51-Year-Old Breakout Singer on "Thrift Shop"

I just downloaded this album about a week ago after finding another story about it on HN. I was blown away. First album I have listened to on repeat over and over again since Pink Floyds Animals. Its really brilliant writing and just on point.

Site seems to be down for me; Here is the cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qZ_7OsB...

Germans and Jaywalking: An American's Perspective on the Berlin Tech Scene

I'm an American that's lived in Berlin for the last 7 years, and run a startup here. This post is mostly correct; in fact, it's pretty impressive that the author soaked up the vibe that much in such a short span. But there are a couple points worth clarifying:The jaywalking analogy is stretched. Like, the source of it is partly true, but it's a pretty boring social convention. There are enough places where Berliners proudly flaunt the law that make Californians seem like straight-laced prudes.However, what the argument gets right is that the issue is more cultural than structural. There are a lot of things that come together to make German startup-culture somewhat tamer than the US variety, among them less of a drive for polarized go-big-or-go-home attitude, the historical strength of the German Mittelstand (medium sized companies) and less tolerance for risk.Also, the thing on data and Google Maps seems off. I'm not sure why Google Maps has only recently started to integrate Berlin's subway data, but there are excellent apps for Android [1] and iOS [2] that accomplish the same (and are not published by the local transit authority, and I can't imagine that solo app authors have more clout to get at the data than Google). It seemed a bit lame to assume that since Google Maps doesn't have the data that it must be the city's fault.[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach....[2] https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/berlin-brb/id409357982?mt=8

OTOH people smoke spliffs in bars and drink beers while bicycling. There's a strong hacker mentality here. Its anti corporate and there's a distrust of American style funding and bullshit valuations. Lots of open source people here.Many people here work at music technology firms, and those lead the world. Ableton and Native Instruments employee 400 programmers total. Emagic was from Hamburg. Soundcloud of course. Somehow these are never mentioned in articles about Berlin.There's a lot of activism. wiki leaks has or had many core people here. We protest and riot without permission. The squats are slowly being evicted one by one.And yes, we jaywalk. Maybe not up in prenzlauer.

Germans and Jaywalking: An American's Perspective on the Berlin Tech Scene

OTOH people smoke spliffs in bars and drink beers while bicycling. There's a strong hacker mentality here. Its anti corporate and there's a distrust of American style funding and bullshit valuations. Lots of open source people here.Many people here work at music technology firms, and those lead the world. Ableton and Native Instruments employee 400 programmers total. Emagic was from Hamburg. Soundcloud of course. Somehow these are never mentioned in articles about Berlin.There's a lot of activism. wiki leaks has or had many core people here. We protest and riot without permission. The squats are slowly being evicted one by one.And yes, we jaywalk. Maybe not up in prenzlauer.

Berlin may not be the best representation of Germany as a whole right now. It is somewhat of an anomaly and may be the least German city in Germany right now due to attracting a large number of foreigners (which I'm not saying is a bad thing). Anecdotal evidence: Last time I was walking through Kreuzberg on a Saturday night at least half of the people on the streets seemed to speak English. However, as a German I have to say that he has a point. People not jaywalking is a symptom of a certain mindset in Germany with regard to rules and respect for authority. Along with this comes a lack of individual initiative and risk-averse behaviour. Being self-employed or starting a company is not seen as something to strive for but to avoid due to its inherent risks. People will actually give you funny looks when you tell them that you don't have a 9-5 job and they may actually pity you. When I quit my job to go freelance, everyone always pointed out the risk of not being in steady employment but interestingly nobody pointed out the benefits. This is curious as our social security system is rather extensive (expecially compared to the US). Even if you fail and fall, you're not going to starve or end up homeless and it'll be a comparatively soft landing. In theory this should benefit risk taking, but it does not. In fact, studies show that numbers of companies being founded and people going freelance go up in times of economic distress (e.g. '07-'09) and go down in times of a booming economy. When asked, the people answered that the did it out of necessity and not out of genuine desire to be independent. So we can conclude that Germans do prefer a 9-5 over the risk of being on their own despite the social security net. My interpretation of this is that most German's perception appears to be biased towards seeing the risks and not the possibilities even when the risks are objectively much smaller than perceived. Coming back to jaywalking this may mean that saving a minute or so may in their perception not be worth the risk of being run over or stopped by the cops however unlikely that may be in reality.I also think that this mindset is a bad thing and has larger ramifications in a world that appears to be changing at an ever increasing pace than most people realise yet. Germany as an economy is highly dependent on the ability to export innovative premium products due to the relatively high costs of labour. Mechanical and chemical engineering are two of the main contributing sectors when it comes to exports. The extent of this becomes obvious if you take a look at the 30 stocks in our DAX index most of which stem from these sectors. What is also obvious is the distinct lack of IT companies. There is SAP and then there's Infineon, that's it and those are neither new nor particularly innovative companies. SAP is a 40 year old enterprise software company. I've never used their products but everybody I know who has, hates it. They may be very well on the forefront of companies ripe for disruption in the coming years. Infineon is a chipmaker that was spun off by Siemens (yes, THAT 165 year old Siemens). They have been struggling for years and had to spin off some of their departments which subsequently filed for bankruptcy to save themselves. There is really no company in Germany that would compare to the likes of Apple, Google or Microsoft in size or innovative potential and this looks like a major deficit in our economic structure to me. What I find notable is that nobody in Germany seems to be noticiing or even talking about this. Given that in the future IT will probably become even more important, this may very well come back to bite us.

Germans and Jaywalking: An American's Perspective on the Berlin Tech Scene

Berlin may not be the best representation of Germany as a whole right now. It is somewhat of an anomaly and may be the least German city in Germany right now due to attracting a large number of foreigners (which I'm not saying is a bad thing). Anecdotal evidence: Last time I was walking through Kreuzberg on a Saturday night at least half of the people on the streets seemed to speak English. However, as a German I have to say that he has a point. People not jaywalking is a symptom of a certain mindset in Germany with regard to rules and respect for authority. Along with this comes a lack of individual initiative and risk-averse behaviour. Being self-employed or starting a company is not seen as something to strive for but to avoid due to its inherent risks. People will actually give you funny looks when you tell them that you don't have a 9-5 job and they may actually pity you. When I quit my job to go freelance, everyone always pointed out the risk of not being in steady employment but interestingly nobody pointed out the benefits. This is curious as our social security system is rather extensive (expecially compared to the US). Even if you fail and fall, you're not going to starve or end up homeless and it'll be a comparatively soft landing. In theory this should benefit risk taking, but it does not. In fact, studies show that numbers of companies being founded and people going freelance go up in times of economic distress (e.g. '07-'09) and go down in times of a booming economy. When asked, the people answered that the did it out of necessity and not out of genuine desire to be independent. So we can conclude that Germans do prefer a 9-5 over the risk of being on their own despite the social security net. My interpretation of this is that most German's perception appears to be biased towards seeing the risks and not the possibilities even when the risks are objectively much smaller than perceived. Coming back to jaywalking this may mean that saving a minute or so may in their perception not be worth the risk of being run over or stopped by the cops however unlikely that may be in reality.I also think that this mindset is a bad thing and has larger ramifications in a world that appears to be changing at an ever increasing pace than most people realise yet. Germany as an economy is highly dependent on the ability to export innovative premium products due to the relatively high costs of labour. Mechanical and chemical engineering are two of the main contributing sectors when it comes to exports. The extent of this becomes obvious if you take a look at the 30 stocks in our DAX index most of which stem from these sectors. What is also obvious is the distinct lack of IT companies. There is SAP and then there's Infineon, that's it and those are neither new nor particularly innovative companies. SAP is a 40 year old enterprise software company. I've never used their products but everybody I know who has, hates it. They may be very well on the forefront of companies ripe for disruption in the coming years. Infineon is a chipmaker that was spun off by Siemens (yes, THAT 165 year old Siemens). They have been struggling for years and had to spin off some of their departments which subsequently filed for bankruptcy to save themselves. There is really no company in Germany that would compare to the likes of Apple, Google or Microsoft in size or innovative potential and this looks like a major deficit in our economic structure to me. What I find notable is that nobody in Germany seems to be noticiing or even talking about this. Given that in the future IT will probably become even more important, this may very well come back to bite us.

I lived in Germany for a long time, and have actually been called out by a kid in a stroller who disapproved of my jaywalking (Rotgänger!).But my favorite story comes from a friend, an American who lived in Germany in the 90s. To paraphrase:A firetruck is in front of an apartment building where, evidently, there had been a small fire. The scene is basically calm now, the situation dealt with, and several of the firemen are waiting to climb back into the truck and leave. But a firehose still runs from the truck, across a bike lane, over the sidewalk and into the building.As my friend walks by, she hears crazy, incessant ringing. Turns out it's a man, on a bike, irate that the bike lane is blocked, demanding that his path be cleared.What gets me about that story isn't that the man is batty, not at all. In fact it reminds me of lots of similar experiences I had in Germany where someone's iron-clad, inflexible attachment to rules and order created a totally absurd situation.

Germans and Jaywalking: An American's Perspective on the Berlin Tech Scene

I lived in Germany for a long time, and have actually been called out by a kid in a stroller who disapproved of my jaywalking (Rotgänger!).But my favorite story comes from a friend, an American who lived in Germany in the 90s. To paraphrase:A firetruck is in front of an apartment building where, evidently, there had been a small fire. The scene is basically calm now, the situation dealt with, and several of the firemen are waiting to climb back into the truck and leave. But a firehose still runs from the truck, across a bike lane, over the sidewalk and into the building.As my friend walks by, she hears crazy, incessant ringing. Turns out it's a man, on a bike, irate that the bike lane is blocked, demanding that his path be cleared.What gets me about that story isn't that the man is batty, not at all. In fact it reminds me of lots of similar experiences I had in Germany where someone's iron-clad, inflexible attachment to rules and order created a totally absurd situation.

Thanks for the write up! Its always hilarious to read about experiences others made in the country I grew up in.Here are some reactions: Jaywalking - I definitely do that and in Berlin of all cities, I saw folks jaywalking all the time. But yes - generally, there is more discipline to wait for the green light, like in Japan, Korea or China."multimillion dollar round was not given in one big check". This is what I heard is common practice in the valley as well. When a company raises 10 million, my understanding was never that the VC just transfers 10M cash to their account but that this investment would be rolled out. We should definitely review/discuss this.Also, I agree with the appreciation with something fitting into a puzzle. That probably stems from system thinking, growing up in a European community where Germany is only a part in the whole of the continent and its political and economical bodies.Who owns data... mhhh. I think that depends on the industry. Oeffi (http://oeffi.schildbach.de/) for example leverages the public transport schedules of public local agencies as well as Deutsche Bahn. Pretty awesome!On the other hand, data can be very proprietary in the States too. Take for example movie showtimes. There is NO public, free API for that you could build apps on. But yes, overall, you might be right.In in case you want to see other impressions, US-Americans have in Germany, I totally recommend this blog: http://www.nothingforungood.com (seems it got hacked but hopefully will be up again ;-).

Ex-Google executive's new venture helps students avoid corporate life

The backers - acquaintances, alumni or other accredited investors - provide funding that will typically range between $20,000 and $50,000 in exchange for an agreed share of the graduate's future income over a 10-year period.Well, I am skeptical, but also glad someone decided to try it out - the chances are slim, but this is so unusual some unexpected good may yet come out of it.

At first this sounds a little like indentured servitude. That too, solved some problems of its time. A little weird though, the concept.

Ex-Google executive's new venture helps students avoid corporate life

At first this sounds a little like indentured servitude. That too, solved some problems of its time. A little weird though, the concept.

"The backers - acquaintances, alumni or other accredited investors - provide funding that will typically range between $20,000 and $50,000 in exchange for an agreed share of the graduate's future income over a 10-year period. Upstart determines the portion of future annual income to be shared based on the total sum raised and the person's qualifications, including academic record and field of study."I'm failing to see how this is any different than a loan, with the exception you can pay a loan back early AND you know how much you owe the lender. This just seems like for $100k (based on the 5 backers at the minimum $20k that is quoted above) you could be paying many times that for success that is unrelated to the money that you received.

Ex-Google executive's new venture helps students avoid corporate life

"The backers - acquaintances, alumni or other accredited investors - provide funding that will typically range between $20,000 and $50,000 in exchange for an agreed share of the graduate's future income over a 10-year period. Upstart determines the portion of future annual income to be shared based on the total sum raised and the person's qualifications, including academic record and field of study."I'm failing to see how this is any different than a loan, with the exception you can pay a loan back early AND you know how much you owe the lender. This just seems like for $100k (based on the 5 backers at the minimum $20k that is quoted above) you could be paying many times that for success that is unrelated to the money that you received.

There's an interesting Quora discussion on the legality, logistics and mechanisms behind "human shares": http://www.quora.com/Can-you-buy-human-shares

Ex-Google executive's new venture helps students avoid corporate life

There's an interesting Quora discussion on the legality, logistics and mechanisms behind "human shares": http://www.quora.com/Can-you-buy-human-shares

Since when were college graduates "students"?

Do I really want to be using a language where memoize is a PhD-level topic?

Not as my _only_ programming language, no. But in general, why not? I value programming languages for what they can teach me. Haskell does make state slightly difficult. (If you need it, just use the IO monad, already. It doesn't bite.) But Haskell makes certain other things easy, things which are extraordinarily difficult in almost any other programming language.For most of my professional life, I've been paid to program in Common Lisp, Scheme, Dylan, etc. Macros, to me, are an ordinary and natural part of programming. But after a while, macros become boring: 99% of them are just a thin syntactic wrapper over something I already know.In Haskell, you don't build higher-order abstractions using macros. Instead, you build your higher-order abstractions using math. And math is almost entirely stateless, lazy and functional. You are forced to think in terms of combinators, abstract algebras, algebraic optimizations, and, yes, category theory. Category theory is the closest link between the lambda calculus and mathematical logic, for example, allowing you to transform some very exotic programming paradigms into actual code.So, yes, Haskell is hard, and it's an ongoing research project. You will spend a lot of time reading papers. (And frankly, you don't want to maintain somebody else's code if you haven't read the same papers.) But some of those papers and theses have blown my mind more in a single weekend than some entire years of hacking in Lisp.Haskell is not the most practical language I know. (State is not the biggest problem for me, but rather the lack of subtyping.) But Haskell is the language I'd be saddest to forget, and the language which has stretched my mind the most.

A couple years back I read a blog post with someone complaining about how hard it was to implement the traditional Lisp "map" / "mapcar" function. Specifically, one that took N lists and a single function with N arguments. The author was totally right, too. I could implement this generalized "map" function in Haskell, but it required defining an extra type class which is a little extreme.Of course, the real problem is that people who are new to Haskell expect to sit down and solve problems in the same way they've been solving problems all along. This author was used to the "map" function from Lisp, and wasn't thinking about whether it was necessary, or whether Haskell had a different way of doing things.Here's what the "mapN" function does: > mapN (+1) [1,2] [2,3] > mapN (+) [1,2] [5,8] [6,10] The reason that we don't want to use "mapN" in Haskell is because of the following problem: > mapN (+) [1,2] ??? The result is either "[Int] -> [Int]" or "[Int -> Int]", with no clue as to which is correct. This is why Haskell has "zipWith", "zipWith3", ... Not as pedantry, but because the alternative is ambiguous. (You can use Control.Applicative + ZipList, but that's a tad verbose).My conclusion is that Haskell's differences are what throw people off -- programmers have to relearn how to do things they thought they had figured out for good years ago. (In this case, "everything is curried" means "varargs requires type classes"). It's FINE if you don't want to learn to do things differently and I won't think less of you, I respect your choices for what you do with your precious free time, and I understand that you might want stuff just to work now without learning anything, just please stop stereotyping the Haskellers as a bunch of ivory tower PhDs. I'm not even done with my Bachelor's.

Do I really want to be using a language where memoize is a PhD-level topic?

A couple years back I read a blog post with someone complaining about how hard it was to implement the traditional Lisp "map" / "mapcar" function. Specifically, one that took N lists and a single function with N arguments. The author was totally right, too. I could implement this generalized "map" function in Haskell, but it required defining an extra type class which is a little extreme.Of course, the real problem is that people who are new to Haskell expect to sit down and solve problems in the same way they've been solving problems all along. This author was used to the "map" function from Lisp, and wasn't thinking about whether it was necessary, or whether Haskell had a different way of doing things.Here's what the "mapN" function does: > mapN (+1) [1,2] [2,3] > mapN (+) [1,2] [5,8] [6,10] The reason that we don't want to use "mapN" in Haskell is because of the following problem: > mapN (+) [1,2] ??? The result is either "[Int] -> [Int]" or "[Int -> Int]", with no clue as to which is correct. This is why Haskell has "zipWith", "zipWith3", ... Not as pedantry, but because the alternative is ambiguous. (You can use Control.Applicative + ZipList, but that's a tad verbose).My conclusion is that Haskell's differences are what throw people off -- programmers have to relearn how to do things they thought they had figured out for good years ago. (In this case, "everything is curried" means "varargs requires type classes"). It's FINE if you don't want to learn to do things differently and I won't think less of you, I respect your choices for what you do with your precious free time, and I understand that you might want stuff just to work now without learning anything, just please stop stereotyping the Haskellers as a bunch of ivory tower PhDs. I'm not even done with my Bachelor's.

Long and detailed discussion, including original participants, on Reddit, http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/crgxs/do_i_real...My take away:* The Haskell culture is to take questions seriously * In doing so, the literature will be cited where appropriate * Some people get turned off by research papersIn this case, the guy asked a fairly profound question, and received a long, friendly answer, which included references to the literature.Also, it plays on a stereotype, hence all the upvotes.

Do I really want to be using a language where memoize is a PhD-level topic?

Long and detailed discussion, including original participants, on Reddit, http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/crgxs/do_i_real...My take away:* The Haskell culture is to take questions seriously * In doing so, the literature will be cited where appropriate * Some people get turned off by research papersIn this case, the guy asked a fairly profound question, and received a long, friendly answer, which included references to the literature.Also, it plays on a stereotype, hence all the upvotes.

Actually, arrays in Haskell are automatically memoized and lazily evaluated. So in most practical situations you get memoization for free.For example, imagine you need to calculate a function f(n) for various values of n (let's say for n ranging from 0 to N). You simply define an array memo_f such that memo_f!n = f(n). ('!' is the array selection operator in Haskell).Because Haskell evaluates lazily (i.e. not until it absolutely has to), it simply stores a link to the definition of the function for each array element. But once a particular array element is used, that link is replaced by the calculated answer.I'll post some actual code to demonstrate this in a minute, just in case anyone's interested.

Do I really want to be using a language where memoize is a PhD-level topic?

Actually, arrays in Haskell are automatically memoized and lazily evaluated. So in most practical situations you get memoization for free.For example, imagine you need to calculate a function f(n) for various values of n (let's say for n ranging from 0 to N). You simply define an array memo_f such that memo_f!n = f(n). ('!' is the array selection operator in Haskell).Because Haskell evaluates lazily (i.e. not until it absolutely has to), it simply stores a link to the definition of the function for each array element. But once a particular array element is used, that link is replaced by the calculated answer.I'll post some actual code to demonstrate this in a minute, just in case anyone's interested.

There is (has always been?) an interesting formula for writing academic C.S. papers: define the most constrained environment imaginable and then do mundane things in it. Haskell is a very beautiful language in a very pure sense and it is the perfect garden for C.S. papers. Likewise, it's an incredibly fertile garden for language features and programming techniques. Is it hard? In some ways perhaps, but to me Javascript's notion of logical truthiness is extremely difficult to hold in my head. It's all relative I suppose.

Is Google Knol failing?

Is it failing? I think it's a little late for that question. More like "why did it fail?"I understand the nature of a company like Google is to cast your net wide, devote a small amount of resources to a bunch of products and hope some of them take off. That's what Knol is part of and that's fine. Google's mistake has been not improving or shutting it down before it became an embarrassment.Given that I consider articles like this to be exactly the level of mockery they deserve.

Knol is Google trying to Cuil Wikipedia

Is Google Knol failing?

Knol is Google trying to Cuil Wikipedia

Honestly, it took me this headline to recall that thing exist at all…

Is Google Knol failing?

Honestly, it took me this headline to recall that thing exist at all…

Well...here, courage is being scared of embarrassment but doing it anyways. nice try, G.

Is Google Knol failing?

Well...here, courage is being scared of embarrassment but doing it anyways. nice try, G.

Why Google's online encyclopedia will never be as good as Wikipediahttp://www.slate.com/id/2200401

Google Image Search imgcolor= Parameter Allows Results Filtering by Color

http://images.google.com/images?imgcolor=red&hl=en&s...A search for "White Shirt" with imgcolor=redFun results

Reminds me of this great piece of coding/data mining: http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=ea977e,5c259a;

Google Image Search imgcolor= Parameter Allows Results Filtering by Color

Reminds me of this great piece of coding/data mining: http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=ea977e,5c259a;

how long has this thing been around? http://www.google.com/advanced_image_searchlooks like you can search for faces and line art as well

Google Image Search imgcolor= Parameter Allows Results Filtering by Color

how long has this thing been around? http://www.google.com/advanced_image_searchlooks like you can search for faces and line art as well

It would be awesome if someone could make a mosaic generator using these tools (if they haven't already)

Google Image Search imgcolor= Parameter Allows Results Filtering by Color

It would be awesome if someone could make a mosaic generator using these tools (if they haven't already)

I found that if you search for bikini, then adding an imgcolor really hurts the quality of results.

Ask HN: After e^x growth, what aspects of HN are changing?

Things that have changed: * Stories have a much tougher time making it to the front page * It's more rare to recognize all of the people in thread comments * The level of discourse has slightly degraded * The focus of the site has become more general-interest and less startup or hacker related Things that have not changed: * New people claiming the site is turning into reddit * Hand-wringing about the direction of HN

Alexa says traffic has grown 4x since the start of 2009. In fact it's been a little over 2x. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1404759

Ask HN: After e^x growth, what aspects of HN are changing?

Alexa says traffic has grown 4x since the start of 2009. In fact it's been a little over 2x. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1404759

Wow, this is amazing. I guess the huge increase has resulted from increasing media coverage of YCombinator and its alumni.I'm here now for close to a year, I haven't felt any major changes in site "flavor" except for the fact that the diversity of submissions have increased. However, the core HN reader group is quite successful in prevention too much dilution of content.One reason I don't think HN will go the way of the reddit/digg/etc is due to this dedicated, close-knit community, that is tied to HN in ways quite different from, say, reddit's community is tied to reddit. A coarse comparison could be the Wikipedia admin community perhaps. Also having "benevolent dictators for life" like PG helps :-)

Ask HN: After e^x growth, what aspects of HN are changing?

Wow, this is amazing. I guess the huge increase has resulted from increasing media coverage of YCombinator and its alumni.I'm here now for close to a year, I haven't felt any major changes in site "flavor" except for the fact that the diversity of submissions have increased. However, the core HN reader group is quite successful in prevention too much dilution of content.One reason I don't think HN will go the way of the reddit/digg/etc is due to this dedicated, close-knit community, that is tied to HN in ways quite different from, say, reddit's community is tied to reddit. A coarse comparison could be the Wikipedia admin community perhaps. Also having "benevolent dictators for life" like PG helps :-)

http://hackermonthly.com/ was awesome! What other initiatives have aimed at unearthing the hidden wisdom buried inside HN?

Ask HN: After e^x growth, what aspects of HN are changing?

http://hackermonthly.com/ was awesome! What other initiatives have aimed at unearthing the hidden wisdom buried inside HN?

What studies have been conducted about the news covered by HN/its users/its karma system etc.? Is crawling of HN discouraged? Is there an archive of all HN data available somewhere for download? I noticed an "Ask YC" archive at http://ask.searchyc.com/ Are there other such places or lists?

I Heart SASS, But HAML, I'm Just Not That In To You

I'm just not buying it. Look at his example erb code, compared to haml. Which would you rather be typing day in and day out?In terms of learnability, it takes 15 minutes to learn 95% of the haml featureset. So you spend 15 minutes, then presto, less repetitive stress injuries from hitting the shift key all the time when creating view templates. AND it's much easier to read, and it forces correct indentation. That's just a whole lot of win.Also, haml and sass are not mutually exclusive, nor are they a pair. They are 2 different tools that work with 2 different things.

Sass offers solutions for some CSS shortcomings: lack of variables, mixins, terse nesting and like. And easy modularization as a bonus. You can have all that with regular CSS syntax (SCSS). HAML offers… well, just different syntax. So I see very good reasons for using SASS and see no reasons to use HAML. Or maybe that's just 15 years I've been writing HTML.

I Heart SASS, But HAML, I'm Just Not That In To You

Sass offers solutions for some CSS shortcomings: lack of variables, mixins, terse nesting and like. And easy modularization as a bonus. You can have all that with regular CSS syntax (SCSS). HAML offers… well, just different syntax. So I see very good reasons for using SASS and see no reasons to use HAML. Or maybe that's just 15 years I've been writing HTML.

This post is a great example of what I dislike about Ruby culture, making a big deal out of pretty simple stuff. At least the article didn't mention DSLs.This SASS thing, it seems interesting… I'm a Scheme programmer. I'd like something like it. After about forty-five minutes of hacking, I came up with this:https://gist.github.com/956113It lets you write code like this: (make-css '(("body.loading" (font-size "12px") (color "#fff") (" ul#sidenav" (" li" (blah "blah")))))) And generates output like this: body.loading { font-size: 12px; color: #fff; } body.loading ul#sidenav li { blah: blah; } I agree with the guy's point though: SASS is different from HAML in that it actually does something conceptually useful, viz. it introduces a scope-like concept to CSS.

I Heart SASS, But HAML, I'm Just Not That In To You

This post is a great example of what I dislike about Ruby culture, making a big deal out of pretty simple stuff. At least the article didn't mention DSLs.This SASS thing, it seems interesting… I'm a Scheme programmer. I'd like something like it. After about forty-five minutes of hacking, I came up with this:https://gist.github.com/956113It lets you write code like this: (make-css '(("body.loading" (font-size "12px") (color "#fff") (" ul#sidenav" (" li" (blah "blah")))))) And generates output like this: body.loading { font-size: 12px; color: #fff; } body.loading ul#sidenav li { blah: blah; } I agree with the guy's point though: SASS is different from HAML in that it actually does something conceptually useful, viz. it introduces a scope-like concept to CSS.

They both abstract the programmer from what's actually being produced and I can't help thinking that this is a bad thing.I'm currently maintaining/developing on a 10yo Java project which contains a mix of JSP pages and ECS^-generated HTML in servlets. Which one is easier to maintain? The JSP pages by a mile because there is a direct correspondence between the source and the output. The ECS-generated HTML is totally obscured within the Java code.So while HAML and SASS (to a lesser extent due to the similar syntax) abstract us programmer from the limitations of HTML & CSS, I can't help feeling that they will create huge maintenance headaches for our future-selves. Will anyone actually know HAML in 5-10years time? So, suck it up and use ERB and keep your abstractions as close to Earth as possible.^ Apache ECS (now EOL'd) lets you build the HTML tree as nested Java objects.

I Heart SASS, But HAML, I'm Just Not That In To You

They both abstract the programmer from what's actually being produced and I can't help thinking that this is a bad thing.I'm currently maintaining/developing on a 10yo Java project which contains a mix of JSP pages and ECS^-generated HTML in servlets. Which one is easier to maintain? The JSP pages by a mile because there is a direct correspondence between the source and the output. The ECS-generated HTML is totally obscured within the Java code.So while HAML and SASS (to a lesser extent due to the similar syntax) abstract us programmer from the limitations of HTML & CSS, I can't help feeling that they will create huge maintenance headaches for our future-selves. Will anyone actually know HAML in 5-10years time? So, suck it up and use ERB and keep your abstractions as close to Earth as possible.^ Apache ECS (now EOL'd) lets you build the HTML tree as nested Java objects.

Is it just me or is this the 100th "SASS rules but HAML drools" article this week? This one doesn't even point out the biggest weakness of HAML, that it is terrible at inline markup.

How To Fire A Co-Founder

The whole concept of co-founder as a "title" is a bit ridiculous. In the beginning, when companies are small and things are literally getting built from the ground up, when customer relations are KEY, every single employee who contributes is, for all practical purposes, a founder. Things get dicey when the people with "founder" in their title start getting big egos, start getting cocky, and think that they have the sole authority to go around getting rid of people they don't "like" in order to intentionally screw them out of their equity and thus keep their positions of power intact.This is a long-running problem in management science: CEOs surround themselves with "yes men" (or "yes women") -- people who worship the ground the CEO walks on, people who tell the the CEO how "great" he is, etc. The CEO assures that these "yes men" are paid handsomely to keep the CEO in his role. See also: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57533674/the-evils-of...Early-stage employees who _don't_ have the "founder" word in their title, but who still contribute(d) pivotally to the team are oftentimes "let go" right before their stock vests. These early stage employees are often paid _far_ below market rate for their experience and education, but promised equity with a slightly accelerated vesting period. Early stage employees work themselves to the bone, and right before they are able to realize their ROI, they are "let go." This is a slimy, insidious thing that anybody working for a startup should be keenly attuned to.I convey this knowledge from firsthand experience. I am absolutely certain that the CEO who manufactured falsehoods in order to screw me out of my fair pay and equity is an unethical scumbag who lacks the maturity and the moral fortitude to be running a company.If you're an early-stage employee in such situation, here's what I did, glad I did:(A) Don't sign _anything_. If you are an employee of an early stage company, think of yourself as an employee founder, even if you don't have the word "founder" in your title. You built or helped build the company where it is today; you have a legal stake in the company(B) Request an extension of time to review your "termination" paperwork. They usually try to make you sign something within 7 days. Ask for 30 - 45 -- or just ignore the deadline. Especially if the severance they offer you is insultingly low and doesn't contain any equity(C) File for unemployment insurance IMMEDIATELY. If they're firing you without due cause ( almost always the case when their motivation behind firing you is to screw you out of your equity ) you are entitled to collect UI -- you paid for it, you deserve it. File for unpaid overtime as well. http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_overtime.htm Think about it like overtime is OK, as accumulates in stock, if they screw you out of your stock, they're screwing you out of your overtime, which is illegal(D) Don't worry about what people think. If you were fired because the company is trying to screw you out of your equity, there is no reason to be ashamed that you were fired. It happens WAY more than people realize -- the slimy underbelly of greedy people and shoddy ethics(E) Don't give up hope! There ARE good people and good companies in the Valley -- there are companies that hold on to their early stage employees and let them realize the fruits of their hard work, companies and execs who don't try to screw the worker bees out of their efforts. I've interviewed with a couple of them, and am not giving up. When I first started working at the company that I used to work at, I would arrive at ~7 AM sometimes. Another employee (@mjallday) would also, and I remember telling him: "I'd still want to be working, even if I was a millionaire." This is _so_ true, and why I haven't and won't let one bad experience ruin my faith in humanity

I think oftentimes "firing" is the wrong way to look at this.I founded my startup with two cofounders. We all agreed, with the benefit of hindsight about eight months in, that we were the wrong guys to be working on this together and that we should step back and look at the situation. I started that process but they could see it too.We analysed the problem (their skills were more ephemeral than executional… networking/introductions/ideas) and it led to us occasionally overindulging in "taking the idea for a walk". I was frustrated because I felt very strongly that we should be building and dedicating all our time to shipping software and speaking to our users.The conversations were entirely amicable. They had both invested cash and time, and had received equity + founder's round equity as a result. They kept their bought equity and we reduced the founder's round equity by 50% each, and I reallocated it later on to two fantastic directors who have been, for near enough a year, surrogate cofounders. Both of my original cofounders dip in with advice as we need it and have since been really helpful.Nobody was fired and I appreciate that sometimes it's necessary to have a sterner conversation (and indeed sometimes it's probably appealing in the heat of the moment). The thing to remember is that everyone has an emotional attachment to the company, and that makes it a very tricky conversation to have.

How To Fire A Co-Founder

I think oftentimes "firing" is the wrong way to look at this.I founded my startup with two cofounders. We all agreed, with the benefit of hindsight about eight months in, that we were the wrong guys to be working on this together and that we should step back and look at the situation. I started that process but they could see it too.We analysed the problem (their skills were more ephemeral than executional… networking/introductions/ideas) and it led to us occasionally overindulging in "taking the idea for a walk". I was frustrated because I felt very strongly that we should be building and dedicating all our time to shipping software and speaking to our users.The conversations were entirely amicable. They had both invested cash and time, and had received equity + founder's round equity as a result. They kept their bought equity and we reduced the founder's round equity by 50% each, and I reallocated it later on to two fantastic directors who have been, for near enough a year, surrogate cofounders. Both of my original cofounders dip in with advice as we need it and have since been really helpful.Nobody was fired and I appreciate that sometimes it's necessary to have a sterner conversation (and indeed sometimes it's probably appealing in the heat of the moment). The thing to remember is that everyone has an emotional attachment to the company, and that makes it a very tricky conversation to have.

A. Is this something you can work out?Stop right here and define "this" and think about it from many different perspectives. One of the biggest challenges with founder issues from my personal experience and from talking with other founders is lack of clarity people have in their heads about the objective position. They immediately want to jump to solutions or to fixing the problem without even being able to elaborate the precise problem beyond "he sucks" or "he can't do x" etc. The problem with stopping there and not critically thinking further is that you risk not trying hard enough and smart enough to make conflicts between founders work out. For every tragic founder story, there are plenty of successful stories where if you dig deeper, you will find the successful founders who at one point were at significant disagreement but instead of moving on, they took the time to deliberately make things work out. This may require Founder A to coach Founder B in a specific area or for Founder B to rapidly change certain behavior etc.From the outset, be willing to invest time and brain to making things work out before deciding to split. This itself is a huge ask. If a founder isn't willing to engage in good faith difficult conversations on a daily basis(about any topic), that is a bigger grounds for splitting for me than any specific issue.

How To Fire A Co-Founder

A. Is this something you can work out?Stop right here and define "this" and think about it from many different perspectives. One of the biggest challenges with founder issues from my personal experience and from talking with other founders is lack of clarity people have in their heads about the objective position. They immediately want to jump to solutions or to fixing the problem without even being able to elaborate the precise problem beyond "he sucks" or "he can't do x" etc. The problem with stopping there and not critically thinking further is that you risk not trying hard enough and smart enough to make conflicts between founders work out. For every tragic founder story, there are plenty of successful stories where if you dig deeper, you will find the successful founders who at one point were at significant disagreement but instead of moving on, they took the time to deliberately make things work out. This may require Founder A to coach Founder B in a specific area or for Founder B to rapidly change certain behavior etc.From the outset, be willing to invest time and brain to making things work out before deciding to split. This itself is a huge ask. If a founder isn't willing to engage in good faith difficult conversations on a daily basis(about any topic), that is a bigger grounds for splitting for me than any specific issue.

Pretty interesting article in the way that you explain some really diplomatic way to handle these kind of situation. But I really think the best way to avoid these kind of problem is to set each founder role in the company. I just wrote an article about that as a reaction to your article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5029029

How To Fire A Co-Founder

Pretty interesting article in the way that you explain some really diplomatic way to handle these kind of situation. But I really think the best way to avoid these kind of problem is to set each founder role in the company. I just wrote an article about that as a reaction to your article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5029029

So basically, talk to the other founders, investors and lawyers first and hope the guy you want to fire doesn't realize what you're doing.

Ask YC: Great software companies to work for in DC?

I know you said software, but if you're into web development at all, Freewebs and Clearspring seem to be two big companies in the area.Disclaimer: As an FW employee, I may be a bit biased. Besides, it's technically Silver Spring MD. Go figure.

We are a start-up seed-funded by investors in DC. Depending on your expertise and/or time frame, we may be able to leverage your help :)We are fairly well-connected in the start up scenes here in DC through introductions from our investors. If your expertise doesn't align with our needs, I will be happy to make introductions. Drop me a note, my Email is in my profile.

Ask YC: Great software companies to work for in DC?

We are a start-up seed-funded by investors in DC. Depending on your expertise and/or time frame, we may be able to leverage your help :)We are fairly well-connected in the start up scenes here in DC through introductions from our investors. If your expertise doesn't align with our needs, I will be happy to make introductions. Drop me a note, my Email is in my profile.

We're an energy efficiency software startup called Positive Energy, and we're expanding rapidly, looking for software engineers (Java, web, database) to grow our engineering team. We're based in Rosslyn, across the river from Georgetown. Our products are 100% software and are designed to help utilities inform their customers and drive down energy usage. You can read about what we do, our team and our jobs at www.positiveenergyusa.com.

Ask YC: Great software companies to work for in DC?

We're an energy efficiency software startup called Positive Energy, and we're expanding rapidly, looking for software engineers (Java, web, database) to grow our engineering team. We're based in Rosslyn, across the river from Georgetown. Our products are 100% software and are designed to help utilities inform their customers and drive down energy usage. You can read about what we do, our team and our jobs at www.positiveenergyusa.com.

It's not small, but I like working for Booz Allen. I have been on a small project <3 million a year budget and 3 developers so it's like working for a small company but with great benefits. The only real problem is a large portion of your pay is in benifits (ex: 16 days off, 2 floating holidays at level 1) which is nice if you have a family but it's not so hot if your trying to save up capital for a startup.

Ask YC: Great software companies to work for in DC?

It's not small, but I like working for Booz Allen. I have been on a small project <3 million a year budget and 3 developers so it's like working for a small company but with great benefits. The only real problem is a large portion of your pay is in benifits (ex: 16 days off, 2 floating holidays at level 1) which is nice if you have a family but it's not so hot if your trying to save up capital for a startup.

Juice Analytics: www.juiceanalytics.comLooking for python/django developers, UI types, db developers, and machine learning people...

Google may not like it, but facial recognition is coming soon to Glass

I wrote an open source face recognition demo here for Google Glass if anyone is interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1aeMJY1AO0 https://github.com/lnanek/MedRefGlassIt doesn't use lambda labs since they weren't out yet, but it is just as easy to use other APIs anyway.

After the current NSA scandal, is there any chance for wide adoption of a wearable mass spying device ?

Google may not like it, but facial recognition is coming soon to Glass

After the current NSA scandal, is there any chance for wide adoption of a wearable mass spying device ?

You could easily make it completely opensource and standalone by replacing the calls to web-based api's like lambda or betaface, with the standalone face recognition engine from openbiometrics.org https://github.com/biometrics/openbr

Google may not like it, but facial recognition is coming soon to Glass

You could easily make it completely opensource and standalone by replacing the calls to web-based api's like lambda or betaface, with the standalone face recognition engine from openbiometrics.org https://github.com/biometrics/openbr

If they don't like it its only because they want to be the only ones doing it. Seriously facial recognition is the one big technology useful on the glass and Google knows that and probably developed a lot for the glass itself.

Google may not like it, but facial recognition is coming soon to Glass

If they don't like it its only because they want to be the only ones doing it. Seriously facial recognition is the one big technology useful on the glass and Google knows that and probably developed a lot for the glass itself.

They've said on twitter that glass is deliberately left open / unlocked.

11 Things To Know About Semantic Web

Alan Kay said the best way to predict the future is to invent it.I wish he would have gone further and said that if you aren't creating the future you have no business predicting it.

One single company could affect a global semantic web adoption within 6 months: Google. Once they decide to give webpages with semantic info a higher relevance, armies of SEO experts would swiftly generate vast amounts of semantic information...

11 Things To Know About Semantic Web

One single company could affect a global semantic web adoption within 6 months: Google. Once they decide to give webpages with semantic info a higher relevance, armies of SEO experts would swiftly generate vast amounts of semantic information...

[ Remember, you heard it here first (or tell me where you heard it before :) ]Without having read the article (yet), my theory is that the web will become "semantic" in the sense "semaniacs" hope for ONLY when users can generate structured content (other than just photos, articles, comments, forum posts etc) EASILY ... that is: differently from when HTML started out, site owners cannot get such a ball rolling by painstakingly fleshing out RDF mark-up manually. Rather, those web sites will be "semantic" that provide wiki-like editing for data sets.As an example, imagine a web-based database of restaurants: - Let everyone provide tags for different categories (taste ie Indian/Italian/Regional, style ie luxury/fast food joint/middle-of-the-road, features ie garden/bar/smoking area) - Let everyone update base facts such as address or name changes - Let everyone add photos, media, reviews, comments - Most importantly: let everyone rate/confirm/deny everyone elses contributions - Reward by credits/trust/rankings but where commerce is involved, also by discounts/"miles"/whatever.Make it easy for websites to do that, or create successful websites that do that so others follow suit should this be what people really want, and you have a semantic web in no time.If the semantic web is what people want, this will be the only feasible way to create one. If it's not what they want, we will find out soon enough.

11 Things To Know About Semantic Web

[ Remember, you heard it here first (or tell me where you heard it before :) ]Without having read the article (yet), my theory is that the web will become "semantic" in the sense "semaniacs" hope for ONLY when users can generate structured content (other than just photos, articles, comments, forum posts etc) EASILY ... that is: differently from when HTML started out, site owners cannot get such a ball rolling by painstakingly fleshing out RDF mark-up manually. Rather, those web sites will be "semantic" that provide wiki-like editing for data sets.As an example, imagine a web-based database of restaurants: - Let everyone provide tags for different categories (taste ie Indian/Italian/Regional, style ie luxury/fast food joint/middle-of-the-road, features ie garden/bar/smoking area) - Let everyone update base facts such as address or name changes - Let everyone add photos, media, reviews, comments - Most importantly: let everyone rate/confirm/deny everyone elses contributions - Reward by credits/trust/rankings but where commerce is involved, also by discounts/"miles"/whatever.Make it easy for websites to do that, or create successful websites that do that so others follow suit should this be what people really want, and you have a semantic web in no time.If the semantic web is what people want, this will be the only feasible way to create one. If it's not what they want, we will find out soon enough.

Sorry, semantic web = semantic networks a la Quillian. It's a step backward.RDBMS work because they have a solid semantic foundation with n-ary relations. Description logic based formalism can't do n-ary, nor can RDF triple stores. The whole adventure is ill fated and us database weenies knew it from the start.

11 Things To Know About Semantic Web

Sorry, semantic web = semantic networks a la Quillian. It's a step backward.RDBMS work because they have a solid semantic foundation with n-ary relations. Description logic based formalism can't do n-ary, nor can RDF triple stores. The whole adventure is ill fated and us database weenies knew it from the start.

Other than the oft-repeated 'machine readable', I'm having a hard time getting over the conceptual hump of what the Semantic Web is.

Ask HN: Where do you go to meet interesting like minded people?

Hacker News, Twitter, IRC. I follow a lot of people on Twitter and I have interesting tweets, and many follow me back. I have made several new offline friends this way.Some of my IRC friends from the 90s are some of my closest friends now, too. It's cool 'cause they're geographically distributed so I have people I'm tight with in almost every major country.Interestingly enough, one of my closest friends in my city I first "met" on the GNU Screen mailing list. I met him randomly at a conference here after moving and recognized his name.Also, local user groups are good places, too.PS: Freenode irc is full of dorks, but it's a good starting point. Try EFNet or one of the smaller hacker darknets (e.g. Buttes or hardchats or antisec/anonops) for the real motherfuckers.

In my experience "interesting" is often at odds with "like-minded".

Ask HN: Where do you go to meet interesting like minded people?

In my experience "interesting" is often at odds with "like-minded".

Usenet, back in the day, was a great place to meet awesome people. I still have several great friends whom I first got to know via usenet. Unfortunately usenet kind of died, and for some reason all the replacements that have shown up since are but a pale shadow of what usenet once was.

Ask HN: Where do you go to meet interesting like minded people?

Usenet, back in the day, was a great place to meet awesome people. I still have several great friends whom I first got to know via usenet. Unfortunately usenet kind of died, and for some reason all the replacements that have shown up since are but a pale shadow of what usenet once was.

School.If you're in college right now, and especially a top-tier university, try to meet as many people as possible. Don't miss this opportunity; your network will be invaluable once you're done with school. College is a great place to step out of your bubble and college admissions committees usually do a good job of putting a diverse group of interesting people in one place. Meet people from different backgrounds, countries, and majors. Even though you may not realize it now, you will one day need most of the people that you meet in school.

Ask HN: Where do you go to meet interesting like minded people?

School.If you're in college right now, and especially a top-tier university, try to meet as many people as possible. Don't miss this opportunity; your network will be invaluable once you're done with school. College is a great place to step out of your bubble and college admissions committees usually do a good job of putting a diverse group of interesting people in one place. Meet people from different backgrounds, countries, and majors. Even though you may not realize it now, you will one day need most of the people that you meet in school.

Try attending local TEDx meeting: http://www.ted.com/tedx

How can I teach a bright person with no programming experience how to program?

The top comment is bullshit.I could not get through those three books but I get paid to program. My code is repetitive and shitty but I can produce a working web app as long as it doesn't have to support too many users, and it's fine.My husband never read any books about formal programming and taught himself from those random "learn Java" or "learn python" books. He's a mathematician and programs to write simulations/solve equations, and he gets paid for it too.If you can't get through those three books maybe you can't hope to be a computer scientist, fine. But you can certainly program, in the same way you don't have to be an English major to read or write.

K&R is awesome but... C would not be my first choice for a beginning language.Things like pointer arithmetic, memory allocation, etc. distract from the basics and high-level concepts.I would start with Python or Ruby these days. If Python is good enough for intros at places like MIT, it's good enough for me.C is a masterpiece of elegance and simplicity and gives you a mental model of how a real computer works, and it gives you a foundation for understanding Unix, but I just think it overloads a beginner with stuff that gets in the way.came to comments expecting a lot of reasons why Scheme or Lisp was a better choice LOL

How can I teach a bright person with no programming experience how to program?

K&R is awesome but... C would not be my first choice for a beginning language.Things like pointer arithmetic, memory allocation, etc. distract from the basics and high-level concepts.I would start with Python or Ruby these days. If Python is good enough for intros at places like MIT, it's good enough for me.C is a masterpiece of elegance and simplicity and gives you a mental model of how a real computer works, and it gives you a foundation for understanding Unix, but I just think it overloads a beginner with stuff that gets in the way.came to comments expecting a lot of reasons why Scheme or Lisp was a better choice LOL

I suppose most of us would give a similar answer as what Joel gave, but I found this nice pair of comments:Is this really the only way to be a good programmer? I'm someone that wants to study programming in my spare time and that's a bit of a daunting list for someone new to the industry... – toleero Jul 28 at 14:54No, it is not the only way to be a good programmer. But if three books is a "daunting list" than you might be underestimating what it is that programmers do. – Joel Spolsky Jul 28 at 15:05Seriously.

How can I teach a bright person with no programming experience how to program?

I suppose most of us would give a similar answer as what Joel gave, but I found this nice pair of comments:Is this really the only way to be a good programmer? I'm someone that wants to study programming in my spare time and that's a bit of a daunting list for someone new to the industry... – toleero Jul 28 at 14:54No, it is not the only way to be a good programmer. But if three books is a "daunting list" than you might be underestimating what it is that programmers do. – Joel Spolsky Jul 28 at 15:05Seriously.

tl;dr: If a book were going to teach somebody how to program then you wouldn't be asking this question. A book requires a self-motivated person to pick it up and read it. Assuming you're trying to teach somebody who didn't have the desire to learn on their own, then you're going to have to relate to them and explain it in a way that they'll understand. Getting them interested and excited about it usually seems to be the best kick-starter.You know what? I've actually unintentionally taught several people the basics of programming. I work at a small company with other bright people who are not programmers by study, but have learned how to communicate programming with me. I truly believe that teaching somebody to program is as easy as figuring out how to best explain something sequential to them. Usually, I begin my stealth teachings under the guise of me just trying to help them communicate their program requirements or ideas to me. I quickly jump into the lower level explanations of things and somehow I manage to get them excited or interested enough that they actually feel like talking "programming" with me will be cool. I try to explain to them that programming is like giving the computer an ordered list of things to do, and it'll do them exactly in that order. As simple as 1, 2, 3. I then explain loops. I don't get into functions and classes because that's not necessarily important to them understanding the flow of logic. Most people seem to easily grasp the concepts of if-then, and loops ... this is all really simple stuff for most people to understand at a basic level. I don't even necessarily mean code, but more so logically what an if-else means. I find that most people generally give you the "yea yea I got it" type of response while explaining this. Once I get them to this point, they're where I wanted them to be. I then try to include them in scenarios where I'm debugging something. I don't deliberately ask them to help me do my job, but I more so start talking out loud and usually they'll come over to help brainstorm. I show them my code, and explain the logic flow (if-else, loops, etc). You'll be surprised at how easy it is for people to actually help out here. Sometimes it's the non-programmers who can give the most obvious advice. At this point in time, it's up to them. If they're interested enough they'll progress from them, otherwise it may just no be their thing. I work with 8 people, and I have actually had one guy learn Python and he now writes Python tools for us - he knew zero programming. I also got our accountant into programming because he would always ask me the status of projects, and slowly over time I got him speaking "programmer-speak" with me, and now he basically understands all my programming yammer. I realize that these guys are not writing the next Redis or Twitter, but they were non-technical guys who are now on their way to being on their way to writing those things. :)

How can I teach a bright person with no programming experience how to program?

tl;dr: If a book were going to teach somebody how to program then you wouldn't be asking this question. A book requires a self-motivated person to pick it up and read it. Assuming you're trying to teach somebody who didn't have the desire to learn on their own, then you're going to have to relate to them and explain it in a way that they'll understand. Getting them interested and excited about it usually seems to be the best kick-starter.You know what? I've actually unintentionally taught several people the basics of programming. I work at a small company with other bright people who are not programmers by study, but have learned how to communicate programming with me. I truly believe that teaching somebody to program is as easy as figuring out how to best explain something sequential to them. Usually, I begin my stealth teachings under the guise of me just trying to help them communicate their program requirements or ideas to me. I quickly jump into the lower level explanations of things and somehow I manage to get them excited or interested enough that they actually feel like talking "programming" with me will be cool. I try to explain to them that programming is like giving the computer an ordered list of things to do, and it'll do them exactly in that order. As simple as 1, 2, 3. I then explain loops. I don't get into functions and classes because that's not necessarily important to them understanding the flow of logic. Most people seem to easily grasp the concepts of if-then, and loops ... this is all really simple stuff for most people to understand at a basic level. I don't even necessarily mean code, but more so logically what an if-else means. I find that most people generally give you the "yea yea I got it" type of response while explaining this. Once I get them to this point, they're where I wanted them to be. I then try to include them in scenarios where I'm debugging something. I don't deliberately ask them to help me do my job, but I more so start talking out loud and usually they'll come over to help brainstorm. I show them my code, and explain the logic flow (if-else, loops, etc). You'll be surprised at how easy it is for people to actually help out here. Sometimes it's the non-programmers who can give the most obvious advice. At this point in time, it's up to them. If they're interested enough they'll progress from them, otherwise it may just no be their thing. I work with 8 people, and I have actually had one guy learn Python and he now writes Python tools for us - he knew zero programming. I also got our accountant into programming because he would always ask me the status of projects, and slowly over time I got him speaking "programmer-speak" with me, and now he basically understands all my programming yammer. I realize that these guys are not writing the next Redis or Twitter, but they were non-technical guys who are now on their way to being on their way to writing those things. :)

I am firmly convinced that if you don't enjoy programming you'll never actually become a programmer.It does not matter how smart you are.It does not matter how much you WANT to become a programmer.So the first thing I do when introducing someone to programming is point them at tools that will allow them to be productive quickly to see if they "get a kick" out of creating things with code.I think Joel's advice to start with C is GREAT. But only if the question is "I think I love to program. But I'm a noob. I want to become a great programmer. How do I start to become one?"

Overpriced Developer Conferences

I've run a conference for freelance web devs 2 years in a row, both times at a loss (though the loss is shrinking each year) but have tried to keep the ticket prices down, but also try to cover some expenses for speakers (hotel or travel for speakers from out of the area, primarily).Tried to keep tickets at a max of $99 the first year. Bumped up to $149 second year (with cheaper 'early bird' tickets both years). Bigger issue was trying to get sponsors to help defray costs. Given the nature of our conference - freelance web professionals (devs, designers, etc) - surprisingly a lot of companies weren't interested because we weren't 'targeted' enough. I may have just been getting polite brush offs, but I'd contacted 45 companies - many of whom sponsor other tech conferences - and had 3 sponsors the first year. A few only want to send a speaker and schwag, but no money. Conference venues and catering staff don't like to be paid in bobbleheads and cup holders, unfortunately.A note on schwag - I basically hate it. I think it's wasteful, and going to conferences where I've paid hundreds of dollars, then given a bag with a bunch of plastic crap made in and shipped from China just gets my goat. So we don't do 'bags of crap' at my conference. I don't think too many people have missed it so far.gentle plug - http://indieconf.com is setting dates for this fall in North Carolina. I remember inviting Amber to come speak at our first conference two years ago, but the timing didn't work out - perhaps we can get her to come this year. :)

As a frequent conference attendee and speaker, a lot of the points that this post enumerates resonate with me. Our profession seems to have a love affair with conferences, and it's been getting worse year after year.I believe a large part of the problem is that many conferences are priced with the idea that the fee will be covered by corporations that pay for their employees to attend, as opposed to being covered by an individual. Businesses have an easier time justifying a $1000 conference ticket (especially if they're able to recruit or scout out new potential hires at said conference) than an independent consultant.But, conferences don't need to be quite so expensive. Conference organizers just need to reorganize their priorities. The best conferences I've ever attended (and paid for out of my own pocket) had less than two hundred attendees, were not held in a hotel, and had an incredible focus on the local community.The best example of this: http://brooklynbeta.org/2011. Total cost for the conference was $100, and an additional $100 for the (optional) special event held the day before the conference, both of which included food, coffee, sponsored after-parties, more beer than we could finish, and the list of attendees and speakers was the best that I had ever seen.People need to start voting with their wallets a bit more. Stop going to conferences that suck.[Disclaimer: I now work for the organization that runs Brooklyn Beta, but did not work for them when I attended the conference in 2010 and 2011]

Overpriced Developer Conferences

As a frequent conference attendee and speaker, a lot of the points that this post enumerates resonate with me. Our profession seems to have a love affair with conferences, and it's been getting worse year after year.I believe a large part of the problem is that many conferences are priced with the idea that the fee will be covered by corporations that pay for their employees to attend, as opposed to being covered by an individual. Businesses have an easier time justifying a $1000 conference ticket (especially if they're able to recruit or scout out new potential hires at said conference) than an independent consultant.But, conferences don't need to be quite so expensive. Conference organizers just need to reorganize their priorities. The best conferences I've ever attended (and paid for out of my own pocket) had less than two hundred attendees, were not held in a hotel, and had an incredible focus on the local community.The best example of this: http://brooklynbeta.org/2011. Total cost for the conference was $100, and an additional $100 for the (optional) special event held the day before the conference, both of which included food, coffee, sponsored after-parties, more beer than we could finish, and the list of attendees and speakers was the best that I had ever seen.People need to start voting with their wallets a bit more. Stop going to conferences that suck.[Disclaimer: I now work for the organization that runs Brooklyn Beta, but did not work for them when I attended the conference in 2010 and 2011]

While I'm not a "fan of expensive conferences" per se, I thought this was a bunch of junk. FTA:"I’m a huge proponent against expensive conferences, as I feel that the point of these conferences in the first place is to get the community together to learn and meet each other."As The Dude once famously said, "Well, that's just like, your opinion, man."I don't think that at all; I think a conference that I pay for should be a learning experience. I think that, for $1000 or $2000 that I should be able to get vicarious experiences from attending the sessions/demos/labs that I would either (a) not have been able to receive elsewhere, or (b) not been exposed to. It should replace my time at a training class, for example, except that it should be broader experiences.Networking is fine but dude - you simply have it wrong if that's what you think programming conferences are all about. And you have it wrong if you think that tech conference attendance fees are paid for by the individual programmers/devs who attend. Oh sure, there are some folks who pay for these huge costs out of their own pocket but, by and large, this is a "job perk" or a "job training" event that is, thus, paid for by their company.Sorry but, for most companies, there is no "networking" budget for the programmers/devs.

Overpriced Developer Conferences

While I'm not a "fan of expensive conferences" per se, I thought this was a bunch of junk. FTA:"I’m a huge proponent against expensive conferences, as I feel that the point of these conferences in the first place is to get the community together to learn and meet each other."As The Dude once famously said, "Well, that's just like, your opinion, man."I don't think that at all; I think a conference that I pay for should be a learning experience. I think that, for $1000 or $2000 that I should be able to get vicarious experiences from attending the sessions/demos/labs that I would either (a) not have been able to receive elsewhere, or (b) not been exposed to. It should replace my time at a training class, for example, except that it should be broader experiences.Networking is fine but dude - you simply have it wrong if that's what you think programming conferences are all about. And you have it wrong if you think that tech conference attendance fees are paid for by the individual programmers/devs who attend. Oh sure, there are some folks who pay for these huge costs out of their own pocket but, by and large, this is a "job perk" or a "job training" event that is, thus, paid for by their company.Sorry but, for most companies, there is no "networking" budget for the programmers/devs.

I've never attended any conferences in my life (and I have been programming for 25 years (16 years professionally)). I can buy books, read online, watch videos online on more programming topics than I have time/capacity for. My tolearn.txt is quite long all the time. For networking among programmers there are more than enough online communities. Business networking would be very useful (basically meeting people who need my knowledge/expertise and learning about business opportunities), but how can I do that among people who want to sell the same thing that I want to sell?I am not saying that conferences are not useful, just I did not find the motivation yet to attend one.

Overpriced Developer Conferences

I've never attended any conferences in my life (and I have been programming for 25 years (16 years professionally)). I can buy books, read online, watch videos online on more programming topics than I have time/capacity for. My tolearn.txt is quite long all the time. For networking among programmers there are more than enough online communities. Business networking would be very useful (basically meeting people who need my knowledge/expertise and learning about business opportunities), but how can I do that among people who want to sell the same thing that I want to sell?I am not saying that conferences are not useful, just I did not find the motivation yet to attend one.

I kind of agree. I've attended two conferences for the past few years: Pubcon and An Event Apart.Pubcon was priced at $699, and included three full days of sessions, with 5 different tracks. I learned a lot there, and felt it justified the price.An Event Apart was $899 the first year I registered, I believe, and this year is $1045. I work for a small company that pays these expenses, but I couldn't even justify asking for that this year.I know that I am paying to see some of the "biggest names" in the industry. Several of these people are excellent and entertaining, and I don't doubt their knowledge in the field -- Dan Cederholm and Jared Spool specifically.But do I really need to pay over $1000 to hear from the "biggest names"? I'm not sure if it's worth it. Yes, Eric Meyer is a genius at CSS, but how do I somehow explain the ROI of using slightly more optimized CSS? Or one year AEA had a speaker who spent almos the whole hour somehow relating fashion magazines to web development. Ugh.I guess what irks me is feeling like I'm paying extra for the celebrity status of some of these speakers, when in reality, I'd most likely learn just as much _useful_ knowledge at a Wordcamp or one of the multitude of sub $200 conferences.

Accessibility and the iPhone - a tale of woe

Regarding the keypad issue:9. It's almost impossible to get the right letter without being able to see the screen. Because you have to place your finger, listen for the right letter, then "lift it off" and place it again. Trying to slide your finger inevitably results in it thinking you're "holding" the wrong character and "pressing" the one next to it.... which then causes the phone to input that first character. Of course, you don't "know" whether it just inputted the wrong character, or whether it just announced that you'd re-selected the same wrong character, because there's absolutely no difference in the audio cues.Is there a market for making some sort of Braille screen overlay for the iphone, similar to something like http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/11/your-iphone-can-also-feat... ??

You can't even put in a fucking server name without giving it an email address, a password, and letting it fly off to the internet and bang on things it thinks* might be your mail server. Once you've got that, you can put in an incoming server and username, and an outgoing server, and then you wait while it fails to connect, automatically because it hasn't got the right port. And then you have to go back in to set your outgoing server's authentication. It takes a 3-minute process (laboriously hunt-and-peck your name, email address, password, and mail server settings) into a 15-minute process as it repeatedly "helpfully" tries things that you know are going to fail, but can't interrupt and can't cancel. So you wait for several minutes before it realises you really do need to use an alternate port and enable SSL.*While this instance may be specific to the iPhone with screen reader and setting up wireless, this kind of make-it-easy-by-removing-options-and-attempt-to-probe-for-everything is especially frustrating when you know what the options are but the device or UI wants to do something itself in the name of helping you. I find these kinds of things especially frustrating because it's often difficult to verify the settings after it's been automatically set up.No, you need to leave the Mail app, then find Settings, scroll down (see 2), select mail and other things, select mail, select this account, select this account, find the password field (without it reading the field names, I remind you), and put in the password, then save the settings and restart the mail app.Finally, an example of "having all the settings in one place", but divorced from the place the setting is used is a bad idea. I never really understood the mindset that this is supposed to be easier. I know that the app needs the settings, I can find the app no problem, but its settings are some where else, with navigation totally separate from the app. I guess it makes accessing the settings consistent across apps, but this is a weird thing to optimize since you should rarely be messing with app specific settings, and when you do, you're already in the app.

Accessibility and the iPhone - a tale of woe

You can't even put in a fucking server name without giving it an email address, a password, and letting it fly off to the internet and bang on things it thinks* might be your mail server. Once you've got that, you can put in an incoming server and username, and an outgoing server, and then you wait while it fails to connect, automatically because it hasn't got the right port. And then you have to go back in to set your outgoing server's authentication. It takes a 3-minute process (laboriously hunt-and-peck your name, email address, password, and mail server settings) into a 15-minute process as it repeatedly "helpfully" tries things that you know are going to fail, but can't interrupt and can't cancel. So you wait for several minutes before it realises you really do need to use an alternate port and enable SSL.*While this instance may be specific to the iPhone with screen reader and setting up wireless, this kind of make-it-easy-by-removing-options-and-attempt-to-probe-for-everything is especially frustrating when you know what the options are but the device or UI wants to do something itself in the name of helping you. I find these kinds of things especially frustrating because it's often difficult to verify the settings after it's been automatically set up.No, you need to leave the Mail app, then find Settings, scroll down (see 2), select mail and other things, select mail, select this account, select this account, find the password field (without it reading the field names, I remind you), and put in the password, then save the settings and restart the mail app.Finally, an example of "having all the settings in one place", but divorced from the place the setting is used is a bad idea. I never really understood the mindset that this is supposed to be easier. I know that the app needs the settings, I can find the app no problem, but its settings are some where else, with navigation totally separate from the app. I guess it makes accessing the settings consistent across apps, but this is a weird thing to optimize since you should rarely be messing with app specific settings, and when you do, you're already in the app.

Considering that the guy goes on to slam everything Apple in the comments (including saying you have to buy a peripheral to use more than one mouse button), I'm taking this whole thing with a grain of salt.

Accessibility and the iPhone - a tale of woe

Considering that the guy goes on to slam everything Apple in the comments (including saying you have to buy a peripheral to use more than one mouse button), I'm taking this whole thing with a grain of salt.

Apple is the only company I know of even trying to make an accessible modern SmartPhone. It's been less than 6 months since accessibility features were introduced. I think patience is reasonable in this case. Apple is almost certainly developing these accessibility features at a financial loss.

Accessibility and the iPhone - a tale of woe

Apple is the only company I know of even trying to make an accessible modern SmartPhone. It's been less than 6 months since accessibility features were introduced. I think patience is reasonable in this case. Apple is almost certainly developing these accessibility features at a financial loss.

Trying to find the source of this: someone recently observed (maybe here on HN?) that a number of communications methods we take for granted in our everyday lives started as accessibility options. The example that struck me was text messaging, which allegedly began as a way for deaf people to use cell phones. Anyone know the reference?

Three string functions every PHP project needs

One caveat: until the mythical PHP 6 comes out, if you're using unicode at all you should be using the multibyte string functions. http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mbstring.php Python has had unicode support for a while and generally does the right thing, something that might be missed with blind PHP replication.

For anyone interested, you can actually make the startsWith and endsWith methods a lot faster by using strncasecmp or substr, like this:https://github.com/Nycto/Round-Eights/blob/master/src/functi...It could be a micro-optimization, but I find myself using these methods quite and it's a simple tweak to make.

Three string functions every PHP project needs

For anyone interested, you can actually make the startsWith and endsWith methods a lot faster by using strncasecmp or substr, like this:https://github.com/Nycto/Round-Eights/blob/master/src/functi...It could be a micro-optimization, but I find myself using these methods quite and it's a simple tweak to make.

May be slightly off-topic, but I feel a little pain behind my eyes whenever I see the hack-around-namespaces function naming (e.g tt_whatever, for "ThumbTack" presumably).Surely a singleton class would be a nicer way to do this (or just leave the "tt_" off, why is it necessary, you're not overriding core functions)?

Three string functions every PHP project needs

May be slightly off-topic, but I feel a little pain behind my eyes whenever I see the hack-around-namespaces function naming (e.g tt_whatever, for "ThumbTack" presumably).Surely a singleton class would be a nicer way to do this (or just leave the "tt_" off, why is it necessary, you're not overriding core functions)?

I love StartsWith, EndsWith and also Contains in C#. Contains especially feels so nice to use compared to IndexOf all the time.

Three string functions every PHP project needs

I love StartsWith, EndsWith and also Contains in C#. Contains especially feels so nice to use compared to IndexOf all the time.

In JavaScript I always use: String.prototype.startsWith = function(s) { return this.substring(0,s.length)===s; }; String.prototype.endsWith = function(s) { return this.substring(this.length-s.length)===s; };

Why JSONP is still mandatory

Not sure you made the right choice. This is how to use CORS without Preflights: http://homakov.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-use-cors-without-...And this is why JSONP is almost always a bad idea (for sensitive data): http://homakov.blogspot.com/2013/02/are-you-sure-you-use-jso...

Yes, you generally need a fallback when using CORS. When I can get away with it, I prefer running a proxy on my origin domain for this fallback, as it allows me to use all the headers I like (rather than JSONP).The article doesn't mention that many modern browsers don't respect MaxAgeSec for caching the OPTIONS requests, at least not for more than a few minutes, which is another knock against CORS due to it causing 2x the number of requests versus JSONP.Also the article doesn't mention that, once you've already moved all your header data into the body, you can make simple requests that don't require preflight OPTIONS requests [0] - which eliminates the problem with the 2x the requests.[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/#simple-cross-origin-request-0

Why JSONP is still mandatory

Yes, you generally need a fallback when using CORS. When I can get away with it, I prefer running a proxy on my origin domain for this fallback, as it allows me to use all the headers I like (rather than JSONP).The article doesn't mention that many modern browsers don't respect MaxAgeSec for caching the OPTIONS requests, at least not for more than a few minutes, which is another knock against CORS due to it causing 2x the number of requests versus JSONP.Also the article doesn't mention that, once you've already moved all your header data into the body, you can make simple requests that don't require preflight OPTIONS requests [0] - which eliminates the problem with the 2x the requests.[0] http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/#simple-cross-origin-request-0

At RunOrg, we've encountered this a few times with our CORS-only API.It is against our philosophy to leave users behind only because they are locked in by outdated infrastructure. We still want to support them.It is against our philosophy to bend the purity of our API to accommodate wrinkles in how outdated infrastructure declines to support standards. There will be no JSONP alternative to CORS in RunOrg.The solution we propose each and every time is to mount a proxy to our API on the same domain as the site it is used on. Users on modern infrastructure reach us directly at api.runorg.com, users on CORS-hostile infrastructure reach us through the proxy and still get their data (albeit with decreased performance). It's a fairly simple technical solution that leavers our API clean and supports non-CORS modes of access.

Why JSONP is still mandatory

At RunOrg, we've encountered this a few times with our CORS-only API.It is against our philosophy to leave users behind only because they are locked in by outdated infrastructure. We still want to support them.It is against our philosophy to bend the purity of our API to accommodate wrinkles in how outdated infrastructure declines to support standards. There will be no JSONP alternative to CORS in RunOrg.The solution we propose each and every time is to mount a proxy to our API on the same domain as the site it is used on. Users on modern infrastructure reach us directly at api.runorg.com, users on CORS-hostile infrastructure reach us through the proxy and still get their data (albeit with decreased performance). It's a fairly simple technical solution that leavers our API clean and supports non-CORS modes of access.

A different position would be to simply let these misconfigured and badly written networking programs fail - and let them fail hard.Yes, it will be painful in the short term and users will notice outages, but in the long run it will result in these issues being fixed. If we continue a policy of reversion to bad workarounds (which is really what JSONP is), we not only add complexity and the potential for obscure exploits to our own software, we ensure that nobody at Cisco et al will ever feel the pressure to fix these bugs.

Why JSONP is still mandatory

A different position would be to simply let these misconfigured and badly written networking programs fail - and let them fail hard.Yes, it will be painful in the short term and users will notice outages, but in the long run it will result in these issues being fixed. If we continue a policy of reversion to bad workarounds (which is really what JSONP is), we not only add complexity and the potential for obscure exploits to our own software, we ensure that nobody at Cisco et al will ever feel the pressure to fix these bugs.

Would using HTTPS prevent the VPN and various proxies from messing with the traffic as described in the article?