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Stories from January 3, 2013
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1.Every NFL play for the past 10 years in CSV format (advancednflstats.com)
421 points by edw519 on Jan 3, 2013 | 101 comments
2.Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance (github.com/munificent)
362 points by factorialboy on Jan 3, 2013 | 118 comments
3.Google's text-to-speech engine randomly inserts phrase "he now praises the ipad" (code.google.com)
311 points by moeffju on Jan 3, 2013 | 64 comments
4.Rails SQL injection vulnerability: here are the facts (phusion.nl)
289 points by blacktulip on Jan 3, 2013 | 112 comments
5. Black and Whitey: How the feds disable criminal defense (forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate)
244 points by eplanit on Jan 3, 2013 | 149 comments
6.Show HN: my useless weekend project, add speech bubbles to images (phrase.it)
225 points by chezmo on Jan 3, 2013 | 95 comments
7.Write Gambling Software, Go to Prison (wired.com)
216 points by cyphersanctus on Jan 3, 2013 | 148 comments
8.Fitbit, why can’t I have my data? (simplystatistics.org)
211 points by KC8ZKF on Jan 3, 2013 | 101 comments
9.Warren Buffett Buys World's Largest Solar Project from SunPower for $2.5 Billion (treehugger.com)
208 points by MikeCapone on Jan 3, 2013 | 85 comments
10.Are Designers Crazy? (shkspr.mobi)
198 points by edent on Jan 3, 2013 | 152 comments
11.Behind enemy lines: 3 months as an iOS developer at Google (splinter.com.au)
200 points by chubs on Jan 3, 2013 | 154 comments
12.The TSA wants to be everywhere in 2013 - here's why we shouldn't let it (linkedin.com)
185 points by mtgx on Jan 3, 2013 | 97 comments

Visually pretty, but the grid is completely non-functional. I don't know where to start looking to get at the information I go to Facebook to find. The other pages look better, but still seem to be a summation of current design trends rather than any sort of innovative new way to display the information (which is fine, but not interesting to me).

I also agree that it looks a lot nicer because of the high-end stock photos.

Edit: scrolling down further, there are some other UI refreshes that I do think improve the experience overall - the calendar and photo album views stood out to me. But I think it's important to use ugly people with weird names in your designs to gauge how it will actually look in production! The dark theme on pages, for example, looks very clean with Apple and Adobe as featured, but I imagine will look pretty dreary to stare at all day.

14.Enhancing digital certificate security (Fake *.Google.com cert issued) (googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com)
181 points by cleverjake on Jan 3, 2013 | 108 comments
15.Quantum gas goes below absolute zero (nature.com)
175 points by evgen on Jan 3, 2013 | 64 comments
16.The future according to Google's Larry Page (cnn.com)
157 points by Libertatea on Jan 3, 2013 | 49 comments
17.Make Me (github.com/blog)
153 points by Pr0 on Jan 3, 2013 | 32 comments
18.A Tor proxy that runs in your browser (stanford.edu)
152 points by mmastrac on Jan 3, 2013 | 30 comments

It's much easier to make it look "gorgeous" when the timeline is full of gorgeous people, beautifully photographed.

Awesome, I look forward to purchasing my OEM copy of Facebook Home Premium 8!
21.LLVM.js: LLVM Itself Compiled to JavaScript via Emscripten (badassjs.com)
140 points by cleverjake on Jan 3, 2013 | 12 comments

The SunPower facility has already sold its power under long-term contracts to SoCal Edison: http://www.elp.com/articles/2013/01/antelope-valley-solar-pr...

So from Buffett's perspective this just looks like a bond. I don't think it's a bet for or against solar, but rather a bet on deferred cash vs present cash (so on interest rates).


No, designers aren't crazy. You just don't understand a very fundamental concept of design. It even applies to engineering. It's okay—many people have the same frustrations as you do.

But those who care about the details achieve truly high quality results overall. It extends to all areas of the design, not just to the parts you can't see.

In the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," there's a scene in a dark room where Roger Rabbit (an animated character) flies across the room, knocks a hanging lamp around, and the lighting becomes so dynamic that all the shadows move around including the animated character's shadow. Here's the scene in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EUPwsD64GI

This was such a small detail that it would have been forgivable if the animators had left it out entirely: if they had not moved the lamp, kept the shadow steady, no one would have really noticed the difference. It would have been 100 times easier to animate and the effect wouldn't really have been that different.

But they did it anyway. The term was later coined, and "bump the lamp" is used throughout Disney (and probably other organizations) to mean something akin to "go the extra mile"—but I see it as having a special significance to design.

You're right, most people won't notice. By that logic, you could cut corners a lot of other places too. You could be lax about button colors matching exactly, or per-pixel sharpness on the map and buttons. No one would probably notice.

But if you go for every detail like it was the most important detail, you have the possibility of reaching a level of design quality that is superlative, and some people will notice. Others will not notice directly, but will see that the piece exudes style and quality subconsciously, due to the attention to small details. If you carry this into other areas of your work—programming, customer service, market strategy, marketing, and more—then you have a chance to create something of true quality.

If you don't pay attention to detail at that level, well, you might have the chance to actually get something done. Yes, it's a balance, like everything else. But you have to know that it won't be quite as good, and understand that yes, you are sacrificing something, even if you can't see it.

24.All you need to know about CSS Transitions (alexmaccaw.com)
116 points by uptown on Jan 3, 2013 | 11 comments
25.One Way to Write A Powerful Cold Email (life-longlearner.com)
107 points by scottbrit on Jan 3, 2013 | 46 comments
26.Open source Linux driver supports 3D acceleration with all GeForce GPUs (h-online.com)
104 points by w1ntermute on Jan 3, 2013 | 27 comments
27.Web Scraping with Node.js and Chimera (deanmao.com)
98 points by dandrewsen on Jan 3, 2013 | 32 comments
28.Heroku now supporting Python version switching, and Python 3 (heroku.com)
95 points by whalesalad on Jan 3, 2013 | 25 comments

I wasn't making a language war claim. Every platform has security bugs.
30.Ray Kurzweil Says He’ll Get ‘Unlimited Resources’ to Work on AI at Google (betabeat.com)
92 points by iProject on Jan 3, 2013 | 113 comments

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