jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
That was when they first started requiring all extensions/add-ons to be signed by Mozilla before allowing them to be used in your browser. From that point on users couldn't edit their installed extensions or use extensions from outside the pool of Moz approved ones.

And yes, I know that some linux Distros that believe in software freedom have negotiated to be able to provide Firefox without this lock-down (ie, Debian), and that if you use the well hidden unbranded builds available in no repos it's possible too.

But 37 was when Moz decided that users shouldn't get a choice and it's been downhill ever since.
I already have to debug C/legacy C++ code (“C with classes”) on a daily basis for my day job, so I sure certainly am not going to waste my free time doing it. The best I can do is be an evangelist for better practices, a fly on the ass of people who still pump C into the garbage stream of the internet.
The point is they do something, but for that something to be most likely good/positive, you also need therapy, which if you want, you can interpret as a "trip sitter" or whatever the phrase is.

Y'all aren't disagreeing.
I find this a strange point to make. Neither war crimes nor soldiers' misconduct falls within the boundaries of what we usually call "our justice system".
Personally I prefer histograms (assuming you have all the data, not just mean and std dev).

For example, here's a histogram of ages of passengers of the Titanic: https://www.statwing.com/demos/titanic#workspaces/21

Or rents in the bay area: https://www.statwing.com/open/datasets/034b4af16d50a0ad35f1a...

Gives a real nice feel for the data.

These histograms are lacking in that they don't actually have the mean line or std devs on the plot itself; my general point is that if the goal is to get across a distribution, a histogram is the best way to do it, perhaps aided by markers for mean, median, std dev, etc., as the case merits.

Disclosure: I work at Statwing.
Agreed, but since he did expose some pretty nasty stuff, maybe we should cut him some slack and focus on the real villains?

It's now, according to the actions of these justice systems, worse to expose secrets about crimes than to commit actual crimes. The simplest way of interpreting this is that these crimes are not viewed as crimes at all. But blowing the whistle is.

(edited for clarity)
I tried playing the video of the scaling down video animation on safari on iOS and every time I closed the video it would immediately pop back up. I had to quit safari actually to get out of the loop.
Only sometimes is it paid, and indeed the rise of the unpaid internship "for experience" is something of a problem.
Change in their behaviour is secondary effect. In most cases it is change for better one so maybe there should be mandatory recording of all proceedings of authorities?

Well, at least the public ones.
Here's my question: Why is an unsecured loan for education any different than any other unsecured loan?

Remember, these aren't backed by the federal government. These are variable rate loans, often with double digit interest rates, 10 year re-payment plans, and virtually no consumer protections (even bankruptcy.)

I'm lucky that I can make my $1,400 monthly payments. When I left school, I thought that I would be able to pay my loans off in 20-30 years. A few weeks after leaving school I was floored when I found out that I had to repay my loan in just 10 years. No negotiation, no other options. Pay what they ask or they ruin your credit.

Personally, I'm on the fence about including student loans in a bankruptcy. It's not an option for me, but should someone have to live their entire life in service to a bank because congress changed a law in 2005?

Should a bank really be making $100,000 unsecured loans to 18-22 yo-s just because someone in their (future) field has the potential to repay it?

OTOH: What are thinking going to schools that cost $40,000+ a year when we have no means.

At least this taught me the value of unflinching frugality.

Proposal to include private student loans in a bankruptcy: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.5043:

Exceptions to Discharge: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode11/usc_sec_11_0...
While limiting bandwidth could restrict innovation, encouraging people to use 'as much data as possible' is not a driver of innovation. Using more bandwidth is a subset of people finding, 'new and interesting ways to use their phone.'
Yeah, why would anyone ever want to access information over an encrypted channel?
I agree.

I was introduced to Ruby through Sinatra. Developed all my web apps using that though I used to play around with Rails. I had an initial idea that Sinatra was meant for small apps, and for anything serious you should go Rails.

However that idea seems invalid now; the way I'm now used to Sinatra, it is kind of getting almost all the goodies of Rails without the Routing layer (which I find hard to follow - as mentioned by the OP).

Sinatra+ActiveRecord+ActionSupport+ActionView = Rails - Routing - ActionController

http://gist.github.com/423571
Thank everyone for participation. Did some more research and found out two interesting projects:

http://smart.fm – a next generation learning platform from Japan featuring personalized learning techniques.

http://grockit.com – a social learning tool to help students prepare for SAT, GMAT, etc. With elements of a social game.
While they're at it they need to break down voice plans a little further, too. I believe it was Dan Hesse that said he noticed people were using the phone part of their smartphone less. I don't see why I need to pay $40 for 400 minutes, most of which I don't use. I'd easily deal with half that. I just checked my account and I currently have ~4,000 rollover minutes.
Having just researched Personal Learning Environments (PLE's) [1] - this is a timely reminder of just how bad standard teaching portal type application are for the goal of teaching and learning. Hopefully this will spawn a few imitators which will drive the costs down so that it isn't just useful in the US.

[1]http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.97....
But realistically it's much less of a problem in that ecosystem. And if you write for the 3G, it will work on the OS 4 devices. It's only an issue if your app needs the bleeding edge features or speed/mem.
I personally have no problems with him, but I have serious problems with his opt-out policy.

As such, I relished the fact that he was sweating up there. This is good. Why? There's nothing like body language to get the truth out of someone. And because I hope this brings even more attention to the privacy issue.
On one of the previous threads about this topic, someone suggested that accepting H1-B applicants in order from higher to lower salaries instead of based on a lottery would clear up a lot of the lottery spots that currently go to the below-market-wage-indentured-servant type shops to be used for more deserving companies and applicants.

Seems like a solid change to me, without an obvious downside. (But I am not an expert and haven’t done any detailed analysis, so maybe this would have negative consequences I’m not anticipating.)

Another change that might be a big improvement, it seems to me, is to let H1-B visa holders more easily change jobs once they’re here, without so much risk or paperwork hoops to jump through. If it were easier for H1-B workers to switch jobs, then abusive employers would have less leverage to exploit them (forced overtime, below-market wages, etc.).
Discussed here:

1000 True Fans? Try 100 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22263274 - Feb 2020 (217 comments)
I'm not sure how the security is different than the correctness. Security is just an aspect of it - the software doesn't do what it's supposed to, in some specific way.

But my broader point was that this analogy is basically what 'can god make a rock so big they can't pick it up' is to a discussion of theology.
With all do respect, but who gives a sh*t what Ars Technica thinks in regards to this?

This project looks unbelievable! I am super excited for this, as many many others are too obviously. I’ll be honest I’m not even going to click on the Ars Technical article, their opinion couldn’t be less interesting to me.

No doubt this company still has a lot to prove. Can they put their money where their mouth is? Remains to be seen.

But the fact that there is a real company out there, making an attempt to build a product like this makes me so happy.
Sure seems like USC and relevant treaties should have language about abandonware / unlicensable copyrights. If they're gone, the copyright should either land in the public domain or be auctioned off for creditors.
I go back and forth on this. I am NOT in the "decentralize everything" camp. But I fear power more than chaos. Chaos turns over. Power resists that. Power seeks its own structural stasis. But in chaos, there's a fertile and teeming intertidal zone in every churn of a chaotic system. (though it is uncomfortable for us as inhabitants, and that is fuckin real)

I've had the privilege to be involved in both tech, biochemistry, and a few years of community organizing, and there's something going on here that's interesting. There's maybe some redemption of decentralizing forces, even though they invite chaos. If there is a redemption, it's in a dynamism I don't see articulated too often.

It's like we need some force that decentralizes at the edges (that pushes itself out, and invites more entry across the boundary of in-and-out), but that once inside, it's agents repel themselves from power -- repel themselves from the center.

In my community organizing conversations, we speak of this concretely around the term "we". We want members who are new and drifting around the edges, considering entry -- we want them to feel welcome to step over the boundary into a space, and feel welcome to use the word "we" as early as they care to. But then as people stick around, they'll use "we" more, moving toward the center. But as they cross some fuzzy threshold, a good "leader" or steward in such a community should pump the breaks. They should resist using the word "we" too comfortably -- they should resist using the word "we" to wear the community like a mech suit in conversations. They need to work hard to prevent themselves from falling toward the middle of the group and making themselves central. And if all members navigate this dynamics well, then you end up with a leaderFUL organization, with many leaders. And that community is fractal, almost holographic -- any fragment of that community contains a low-resolution version of the whole :)

I believe this dynamic is important to all stable and complex systems of the certain sort that we humans are :)

EDIT: I'm quite interested in these intersections, so if someone is reading this, pls feel free to poke me on Twitter @patconnolly if any of this runs parallel to your own complexity science or network science interests!
Low income areas can rely on benefits programs to fill the affordability gap (EBT) until, hopefully, those receiving benefits can grow into higher paying wages. In the event that they don’t, they still get groceries and Piggly Wiggly workers still receive a living wage.
Looking forward to diving into more detail on this. Thank you for sharing your work and appreciate your engagement in here!
If curious, past threads:

1,000 True Fans (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21369257 - Oct 2019 (24 comments)

1,000 True Fans (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17007347 - May 2018 (7 comments)

1,000 True Fans (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10625906 - Nov 2015 (8 comments)

All you need are 1,000 true fans - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338957 - May 2010 (10 comments)

The Problem With 1,000 True Fans - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=922919 - Nov 2009 (6 comments)
IMO the 10,000 hours thing is more of a truism based on the definition of what we call an expert. Its based on the human lifespan more than anything. If we lived twice as long, we would have professionals with much higher times spent practicing on average.
I'd actually love to see a game going in that direction. If you try to set up some evil scheme for dealing with homeless, you'd have riots on your hand and citizens storming with guns into your office.

Or say, you decide to create a police state, with full surveillance and all the like. You see everyone is happy... unitl the whole thing goes to hell - because people weren't actually happy, your metrics just were wrong.
This article touched on something that's bothered me about Xen: We don't have a secure dom0 OS. It'd be encouraging if there were some work to take something more secure than the average OS (for some value of secure, anything from Minix 3 to seL4 would probably be much better than what we have now) and make it a full-featured dom0 option.

Dom0 disaggregation has the potential to help, but there's going to have to be a tremendous amount of wheel reinvention in safe languages to provide the safety and features everyone needs.
This is a very cool concept. I'm looking forward to it taking shape!
"moom" is great but I prefer "Spectale" and its keyboard shortcuts
More like "if you stay poor it's probably your fault".
I think your focus on this one example instead of his larger argument could also be considered an irrelevant distraction. VA benefits are part of two of your big three so they seem relevant to me. In order to cut taxes we have to cut something from the big three and VA care is such a thing that could be cut to pay for tax cuts. It seems completely relevant to me, and yes it is emotional, that's why we never deal with this problem. The estate tax is emotional too, especially when called the death tax. It seems impossible to talk about this stuff without dealing with things that are emotionally charged.
Does ICQ have potential uses in the multi-billion dollar corporate marketing industry?
When its MacGyvered, it's temporary. Remember last year? Snow hit parts of the south-eastern US and state emergencies were being declared... for a few inches. That's when this is probably practical.

Compare this to what London, Ontario has been facing. It's basically had a years worth of snow before winter has even started. Places around it had over 2 meters of snow fall within a period of a week.

I know here in the GTA I regularly see over 3ft of snow in the bike lane in winter. I think if the plows had shifted over 2 meters off the road surface, even the most determined biker will say fuck it when the bike lane has snow higher than them.

Also -5c can make 'all season' rubber become hard, brittle and reduce grip. So regardless, if you're biking in true winter conditions, you're better off to get winter tries made of actual winter rubber that will stay soft (usually) down to -35c.
So you complain when it can't be modified, and then you complain when it can?

What exactly would make you happy?
Seriously? Clearly I didn't.
Let me know if you feel otherwise, but it could be reasonable for paypal to want to distance itself from "african american phone sex."
After doing some stability testing, I'm now running 2.2.0 RC1 in production on http://wasitup.com

Unwise, maybe. But thanks to the ease of doing this upgrade on several nodes with Puppet I couldn't help myself.
Nice! Just did it on mine: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/ekuo.png

using a cropped version of this photo (had to crop it a few times to get the eyes to align properly) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/i_kx.png
That's irrational. You found the service valuable at the price point you paid. They're running a promotion where new customers get a credit. Another persons deal doesn't make yours less valuable... it's perception.
Ok. You have yet another open redirector here: http://posterous.com/logout?jumpto=

Not good...
"compilers or some other such nonsense"

Seriously?

I'd spend time refuting that notion, but Steve Yegge already did it quite eloquently: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food...
I am thinking the best retort would be to submit a patch.
a. There is a strong local tech scene in Israel, if I were you I'd go to every meetup, conference and social event

b. If you want to be a programmer I'd tackle a new language and try to build something: But keep in mind you can do other things in the same field be it information architecture to business

c. If you are getting your college degree in Israel I'd start to look into that now
This is mostly right. The trust fund "assets" are worthless, but the common national debt calculation does include the explicit obligation to repay the SS fund (but does not include the program's unfunded liabilities).
It's not about the languages you know, it's about how you can apply them to make yourself a living.

If you're confident that your friend is capable of running a business (with your skills to help him - although I hope you're a fast learner, because two years of programming isn't very long) - and that his idea will do well enough to support both of you, then by all means do it. If you're sceptical at this stage, stay at school and code in your spare time, and then start something when you're finished or when the right opportunity comes along.

Coming from someone who quit school at your age and ended up - well, successful enough :-)
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The straight up property tax (per property, no exceptions) will be added at some point. Municipalities can't make so much money by selling land anymore, and the central government doesn't kick back enough tax revenue. Not only that, but they have committed to eventually providing social services to migrants, like you know, schooling for their kids. That has to be paid for someway.

But they will definitely hold off for now, a property tax would cause huge devaluations in property prices inflated by the lack of one. But if we get a crash anyways, it will be easy just to add it at the bottom. The question is what is next, with transaction reaching a very low bottom to keep prices from falling, we seem to be in for a long bout of stagnation which will drag down the larger economy even more than if a crash would just happen and we could be over with it.
> WOW. You are a terrible human being.

Yes, heaven forbid someone qualified run their IT dept. What's he supposed to do? Sit around, idly hoping that someone else notices the incompetence?

I think OP made the right move. To me it sounds like the guy should have been fired rather than demoted.
I actually don't have a problem with newspapers printing whatever the hell they want. However I do have a problem with it, when it's broadcast television or radio which is explicitly (and necessarily) a government-mandated monopoly, and to a lesser extent cable television which is in most cases an effective monopoly due to various stupid policies at the federal, state, and municipal levels of government. Assuming we eventually shitcan net-neutrality, I will have the same reservations there, as well.

Basically, as long as there is no physical limit to the number of voices that can be heard (as with broadcast television), and the barriers to entry are reasonably low (unlike with cable television, and possibly internet in the near future), then absolute freedom of speech works very well. Otherwise, all you're left with is propaganda under cover of freedom of speech, and it fucking sucks.
Was very interesting. Would have been nice to have links for everything--I didn't understand why the various types of photosynthesis would cease working, for example.
Eh, the lack of gigabit ethernet makes it a pretty poor NAS.

Don't get me wrong, I like the RPi, but you can spend $25 more and get a much better NAS board.
>I think one part of improving cyber security is prosecuting people who deliberately and maliciously hack into other systems who do so for either monetary gain or fame.

This would do nothing except cast a chilling effect over the security community. Everyone would sit on exploits, too afraid of overzealous prosecutors to publish them or even reach out to the affected parties.

Unless, of course, you believe the US justice system to be the paragon of restraint and reasonableness.
Neat, I expected it was the other way around:

" I don't really know much about Python. I only stole its object system for Perl 5. I have since repented."

Larry Wall
http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/12/06/soto-11.html
Instead of attempting a nasty (and possibly insecure) workaround like this, you should use http://www.tarsnap.com/
I'm an iOS developer and there is one reason why I don't develop for Android: Java.

If Google would officially support Go as a development language for the system it would be awesome. I'd support Android without hesitation then.

But Java? No thanks ...
You know, Scott Hassan does have a name.
To turn/lean a bike at 100MPH you have to push the handlebars opposite of the direction you want to turn. If you need to swerve right, lean right and push the handlebars left. Not knowing this is probably related to many loss of control accidents among novice riders (speculation).
It's no different than Safari 5 supporting XP (2001) but no longer supporting Mac OS 10.4 (2007).
You don't have to buy a MacBook Pro. A MacMini works just fine for development, and it's half the price.

> since MacBook is BSD based, it should be possible to at least make it run on Linux and FreeBSD

Mac OS X has a UNIX foundation, not the MacBook - you can run Windows on your MacBook if you really want to. A lot of the low-level system libraries are open source (http://opensource.apple.com) and can be compiled for Linux/FreeBSD. I highly doubt they're going to do the necessary work to port over the development tools and UI that sit on top of that, though.

Would it be nice? For some people - possibly. Is it ever going to happen? Nope.
[off topic] but this is why we should go back to be seeing karma points. The only reason why his exceptional comment stood out was the length.

It is hard to read every comment on every post. But some people post valid interesting links and quick comments and I am sure I am missing them because I can't zero in on them w/o seeing the upvotes
PokerStars is back - http://pokerstars.eu

This is the message I get when I log in:
http://i.imgur.com/PfUl4.png
As an Android user who suffers from lag every time a background service starts up, I concur. This whole article was nonsense. How could he talk about Android development without mentioning the woeful mess that is the emulator?
For this problem:

scp $(ssh remote find -name 'fic.tar.gz') .

seems simpler. But of course there are another advantages to be able to contact the local computer from the remote.
Yes, it was a little slow on my iPad. Couldn't get the AS3 demo to load.

I guess the question we need to ask is "will html5 get faster?". For example, will we see 2x or 3x improvements in the next few years? Java, for example, was initially much slower than C++. Now it's quite competitive.
You can skip the step of wearing silicone earplugs by getting a pair of IEMs (Etymotics HF5 and Shure E2C are two good models which cost around $100). They serve as both earplugs and earphones, and block noise much better than noise-cancelling headphones.