skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This has been proven time and time again to be a recipe for disaster. Consider what would happen if HN was “raided” by some group. Say, people who like to discuss mountain biking.

If their numbers were such that they could force all the technology posts off the front page and flood the site with mountain biking posts and pictures, should Hacker News morph in MTB News?

Most sites suffer from an Eternal September sooner or later. If new people start making very low-quality insult comments, and other new people flood those comments with upvotes, should discussions turn into toxic flame wars, because that’s what garners votes? Should the Hacker News discussion become YouTube comment threads?

The idea that votes should triumph over moderation presumes a certain critical mass of people who consistently vote in favour of quality. But given enough time, and enough success, exceptions to this take place. And when they do, if left unchecked, the site can degrade very rapidly, as the original core people get outvoted and give up.

Hacker News exists in part because this happened to Reddit. If left to become an absolute, unmoderated “democracy,” it will happen to Hacker News was well.

I will close with a reference to the word “democracy.” Countries have a lot of friction associated with citizenship. Most people don’t leave when things stink, they try to make it better for generations before fleeing and becoming refugees somewhere else. Most countries don’t allow absolutely everyone to show up and vote on everything.

The lack of friction associated with joining and leaving social media sites makes the business of “democracy” on social media very different than the business of democracy in the US or Canada.
I am not questioning the existence of monetisation models for things. That's why we have an economy. What I question is generalising the existence of monetisation models to say that there can be no free goods, especially when this is somehow argued with reference to natural laws and implying that free goods is an absurd or non-feasible concept. If we are to look into examples, what would you say with regards to reading Wikipedia, or Standord encyclopedia of philosophy. Are these ad-free channels defying a physical law?
Dirty jokes are off limits if you want to avoid sexual harassment complaints.
I understand the why [nice rundown]. What I don't understand so much is why people do this in practice for some kids of goods but not others. It's not as if local shoemakers are having a new golden age [Oak Street, excepted], or knifemakers or garment makers (tailors, seamstresses).

A shoemaker moreover would have more involvement [manufacture] than a mere "merchant" which is what booksellers are.
This is exactly the response to this tragedy that I was fearing in the UK. What the article fails to mention is that France passed their own sweeping surveillance law earlier this year [1], and it clearly failed to stop this attack from happening. That isn't to say that increased surveillance never aids in intercepting terrorism, but to sell it as a golden bullet is highly disingenuous. Now is precisely the wrong time to be making rash decisions and passing reactionary legislation which will have serious ramifications for privacy and cyber-security for years to come.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/05/france-passes-n...
A first look at RDS Aurora
NSA's Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition, Pt. 1
Pharma patents are less abstract. They patent a product, not the idea of making a product.

Changing a pallete was a solved problem. "Doing something when it's a time" was a solved problem. But if you change a CLUT "becuase it's a time" your software belongs to someone else. It seems like the only innvoation here is observing a need discovered by health researchers, and patenting the existing components of the solution before someone else does.

I'm would find it a bit suprising if someone on HN really thought that changing a CLUT because of the time is so hard that no one could figure out how without the promise of a government granted monopoly on the idea.

I will hasten to add that actually implementing, marketing, and maintaining a real life multi-platform proprietary solution sounds hard, in the sense of being plenty of work, and I think lots of people would gladly pay for that service.

The question we should be asking is: where is the public good in the government intervening to reduce competition in this space by creating a new abstract property right?
That's definitely very high on the TODO list!
You're probably talking about pain in general, however for hangovers specifically I find aspirin is much more effective than ibuprofen. After a trip to Osaka several years ago I was told by my GP that I can't touch NSAIDs any more - I'd stripped my stomach lining from taking them too regularly. Well, in conjunction with Japanese whisky.

Anyway, I discovered a very unusual treatment for hangovers in my desperation: Melatonin. Not just any Melatonin - slow-release low doses. My sinuses would relax, intraocular pressure would go down and headache would cease. It had an anti-inflammatory action. Having read that Melatonin reduces intraocular pressure was what made me try it in the first place.

It works best when combined with caffeine, chiefly because you'll fall asleep otherwise but also because caffeine tends to help with hangovers as well. If you're ever deathly hungover take a stack consisting of slow-release Melatonin, 1000mg aspirin and a few cups of coffee or some caffeine pills. Avoid regular Melatonin - it's too strong and is not safe to use when operating a vehicle.

EDIT: I should clarify that it's not effective for prophylaxis - you take it when you wake up. Also note that taking a sleeping-aid on the night of drinking might be a death-wish. Wait until morning.
I'm curious how long you did the three minutes per day before doubling to six, and likewise for the time before doubling to twelve.
This is interesting. It seems that you at 17hats built remote work into the core business model, establishing the processes and tool sets to enable and encourage it. Your story stands out as your outcome is so much more positive. The difference in your approach vs. what what most clients/companies do is that they tolerate and accommodate remote work rather than embrace and enable it. The accommodation approach, in my own experience, leads to the comms and isolation issues.
Ask HN: How to improve spoken and written English skills rapidly?
I was born in India. Although I studied in English throughout I always feel my spoken and written english skils are not good. I work for a tech company and get along with my coworkers easily. There is no problem for me understanding or talking in general.

What I want to improve is -

1. My accent. I don't like Indian accent. Indian English is influenced by British English. But, I like American accent.

2. I have problems speaking continuously. I often miss spontaneity. I can't speak flawlessly without struggling to come up with correct and smart word. I prefer brevity but I often fail to express myself in similar way.

3. My written English are okay but I often miss articles ( you might have noticed from my writing ).

Are there any free courses? I am 29 so it's kind of awkward to take classes but I am ready to work on myself if anything available online.

What are your suggestions?
a few weeks ago the supreme court said it wasn't able to have the copyright law applied to it
Show HN: Camera1 – B&W iOS Camera App for Street Photographers
And it's based on their business relationship with certain providers.

If the bar to establish the business relationship was onerous, I'd completely agree. T-Mobile is undermining the argument by stating (whether true or not remains to be seen) that a qualifying website need only sign up to participate.

Not a fastlane, but still counter to the spirit of net neutrality.

The purpose of the net neutrality regulations were to provide equitable treatment in favour of end users. I'm struggling to see how giving end consumers more of what they want for the same price (zero-rating with an option to opt-out) is counter to the initial spirit of the net neutrality regulation.

I think that current net neutrality regulations settled into a position that network operators shouldn't unduly (or at all) influence or favour certain endpoints over others. However, by providing this type of optional zero-rating, T-Mobile is firing the first salvo to force pro-net neutrality groups to more sharply understand and define the true incentives driving their respective agendas. If pro-nn groups don't respond to this the right way, then similar to the way that zero-rated streaming audio was used as a precedent to bring in these optional zero-rated streaming video, precedent upon precedent will build upon each other.

I'm not sure if this is simply a loss-leading tactic by T-Mobile to gain market share, or if this is part of a longer-term play to form a beachhead from which to dismantle the entire net neutrality Title II regulations.
No. Not even close. Way, way
off.

Gads, no one here knows
the story.

Hint: What country in the
Mideast is widely believed
to have some nuke bombs
and has had for many years?

Hint: There's only one.

Hint: Considering how long,
say, Iran has been working on
concentrating uranium, just
how the heck did the
first country in the Mideast
get the critical materials?

Hint: As in the movie
The Sum of All Fears --
I thought that enough people
has seen that movie to get
it.

Solution: Some years ago, some
accounting errors in or near
Pennsylvania -- that's the usual
story.

Understand now, or is this still
too vague?

Again, my guess at the purpose
of the OP now is to point out
again to other countries and
any terrorists that
they better not
mess with the Mideast country
that has long had nuke bombs.

Now, let's be totally clear:
At no point did I say that
long ago Israel got some
chunks of nuke bomb material
from some accounting errors
from some place in Pennsylvania
and that those errors
were the source of Israel having
nuke bombs. I did not say that!
But it has been said often
enough before by others.

Too many words to understand
this time?
This is less about free speech, and more along the lines of an NDA. We're talking about researchers employed directly by the federal government. Canada has a public service whose role is to advise the current government and provide input into policy decisions, and then to implement whatever policy decisions came down from above.

By and large, though, it seemed like Harper's government didn't seem to really want input from the public service unless it agreed with whatever policy decisions had already been made. If you think this is just about the environment, you'd be very wrong, too; I live in Ottawa and know people in Health Canada, in Transport Canada, in Statistics Canada - I don't know anyone who wasn't complaining to me about how the advice they were giving was being ignored in one way or another.
people don't want to be libelled in the newspaper
Very cool. He did not say, but I assume, he was totally alone? That is very brave. And those skinny tires? I would have assumed a mountain bike or something similar?

I would like to do something like this with a group of people.
Apple Pay launches in Canada Nov. 17 – finally
Do You Clean Up Your Rails Engines?
So the ls and make and all those tools; where do they come from? Are they straight compiles using GNU gcc tools etc?

I only ask because I have no idea how much is the kernel compared to everything else; and if it has its own custom compiler or whatever.
excellent post
+1 for occasionally meeting up. My team works remote and while some of us do see each other more frequent, others are on the other side of the country.

So about two times per year, once for a tech summit we go to , and another we have our own summit, we take over a hotel and hang out. During this time we also gives talks and other things but it is half fun and half work.

I think occasional face to face time and bonding time is super helpful, but not everyone needs that every day, and I think in our case it had made these twice a year meet ups something we all really get excited about and look forward too.
Why is it very brave? There are tons of people around. It's not like biking through an uninhabited wasteland.
You've made a good counter point here and it has left me with things to think about. I hope others weigh in.
I think this is part of a larger issue of people making programming their lives. Our profession encourages obsessiveness more than most - and making your work your life is something people seek out! (just look at startup culture)

I find it makes finding professionalism a lot harder. Most companies expect you to be friends with your coworkers/boss/etc. and then leverage that to exploit their workforce.

I like the artist alternative he proposes. With github you can now take ownership of your work/contributions. You can go into an open source project and make a contribution and then never touch that software again - yet your accomplishment is something that's tracked and stays with you
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8599640

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10022366
Attention people! We found the problem!

Apparently the Muslims did a big land grab about 1500 years ago or so (just like the Romans did before them) and that's, apparently, where it all started.

Turns out it has nothing to do with the US foreign policy of the past 60 or so years, the creation of the state of Israel (and the Israelis being a bunch of dicks about it, and for the record, I'm most certainly NOT an anti Semite, though I'm allergic to assholes) and the British hopelessly trying to colonize Afghanistan throughout 1800's and a whole bunch of other dickhead moves by the west and their buddies.

Apologies. I'm not trying to insult your (or anyone's) intelligence. I just couldn't resist...

/sarcasm

PS: I'm very much a westerner, white male, atheist, born and raised in the Netherlands and currently living in Australia, for what ever it's worth.
You're wrong to say this, but not because your opinion isn't valid. Many jobs get done much faster and better through the process of professional socialization. If you'd be working alone anyway, then you're likely right, but most jobs aren't completely isolated and having an actual team to be a part of is 100% beneficial.

I started my career working in an office, then spent about 10 years working from home, and am now in an office again. The flexibility of telecommuting is a benefit that can't be overstated, but I personally find that being in an office I solve problems faster and enjoy my working hours more, as a result of the people around me.
The many words don't make the post any clearer.

I wonder what situation you think might come up where this oblique dancing around is better than just saying directly that the material could have ended up in Israel and that they would use it to make nuclear weapons.

(To be clear, I understood your original post and voted it up from gray prior to you posting the second comment)
I find it really odd that all of the mentioned studies fail to mention whether natural (d-alpha tocopherol) or synthetic (dl-alpha) was used. (Not just in the abstracts; the full texts don't say, that I can find.)

And the author bothers me in repeatedly calling beta-carotene an "antioxidant".

In fact, most of these studies attribute the negative results to the beta-carotene supplementation (not Vitamin E or other antioxidants), with Vitamin E by itself producing neutral or positive results.
If it's only for education purposes, why C? Wouldn't you want to choose a more "clear" language to get the ideas across?
Tech people can disable the forums where terrorists recruit and promote their ideology. There are many foreigners who join ISIS, and many who initiate attacks based upon what they read.
I aggregated everyone’s perspectives on Paris from my newsfeed
> Local vs. long distance vs. international.

That fits in with saying that broad categories are fine, but you can't charge extra for me to call specific stores.

The internet is doing pretty well, but you get ridiculous things like ISPs wanting Netflix to pay to peer even though all the traffic is initiated on the ISP end.
These other goods you keep comparing it to definitely seem to fall more on the utility side as opposed to the entertainment - possibly art? intellectual?luxury? - side, which I think is a large distinction.

There's a romantic aspect to being in bookstores that just isn't found with stores of other types of merchandise.

People don't flock to knife stores for knife signings. They don't sit down with a cup of coffee inside the knife store with other knife enthusiasts and talk about the latest knife they sharpened. They don't take one knife off the shelf, sit in an overstuffed chair and flip it a few times then put it back and take down another, all with no expectation of purchase or pressure. etc. etc.
I was playing this on my phone and was regularly "we're not actually sure you're human" I was also a little buzzed at the time. I'm pretty sure this isn't accurate.
I think it is figurative 9-5 rather than literal. In other words, knowing that there are boundaries and limits between work and non-work time instead of falling victim to the temptation of working all the time when you are at home.
OP article lists a lot of schools using it as well.
I haven't read much of his work, but I love his art.
The UK has a similar problem making cars. It's a kind of urban legend that you shouldn't buy a UK built car because the workers are so incompetent and bits will fall off. People I've met trust Japanese cars more. That's not to say English people are somehow inferior, just that the competent people will be doing some other higher payed or more prestigious job.
Someone should make an attempt at it with contemporary tools.

ps: ah, well, there are http://www.4004.com/
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/11/15/intel-celeb...
That sounds like a great way to go bankrupt.
Tech entrepreneur, diversity advocate Hank Williams has died
I just up-voted you to an even 1,000.
"in the Tech community which envisions Silicon Valley as an Island governed by the future..."

We're not seeing much innovation in housing from the SF tech community. Mostly it's about summoning servants with your phone - Uber, DoorDash, Eat24, HomeJoy, Pure.
Opinion is not libel.
There's also OS161, which is Harvard's version of this. It comes with a very simple MIPS emulator, on top of which the actual operating system is built. It's a lot of fun!
No, they are minimal versions written for the OS. Here is ls[0] and cat[1]. You can compile with GCC.

[0] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/64.html
[1] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs3650/unix-xv6/HTML/S/42.html
Although I posted about the difficulties of working remotely, it is not impossible to work with your coworkers remotely. I actually pair program with my coworkers in the UK (I am in Japan) daily. It's hard on the sleep schedule, but that's about it. In fact, the physical set up for doing remote pair programming is so much nicer than being side by side, that I tend to do it even when I'm in the same room.

Basically, we use tmux and any editor that uses a terminal (tends to be vim, but sometimes emacs on our team). If you have good bandwidth and latency then you can use screen sharing tools for the same purpose. For audio, you can use mumble, which is really low bandwidth and low latency. It is really easy to set up the audio so that it is exceptionally good. You've got different channels (basically rooms) so you can chat all day, just like you were in the same office and move to a private room to shut out chatter. If you are in the same city then you can meet after work for real face time.

There are definitely some people who do not like working remotely, so I'm not trying to convince you that you should do it. I just want to point out that working remotely does not equal working alone.
Perhaps because operating systems are still largely written in C and if a student in the class later goes on to work on OS internals not knowing C would be a major handicap.
This reminds me.

"Luke, you switched off your targeting computer! What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm all right."
If this is your interest, I'm hiring. Email in profile.
Because C is the de-facto standard for writing operating systems.

If you want to write an oh-cool blog piece for general programmer audiences about how OSes work, sure, go ahead and write it in Python (seen that done, and pretty well, in fact).

But if you want to prepare people to be able to work on real operating systems, they need to know how to do it in C.
YYKit for iOS
Here's a paper about them: http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.8242
Java has a nice solution: An ArrayList<Ellipse> is an ArrayList<? extends Shape>. But it is also an ArrayList<? super Circle>.

The former is "read-only" (can read elements which are all guaranteed to be shapes). The latter is "write-only" (we can add circles to it, but not all elements in it are guaranteed to be circles).

I use quotes because it is not strictly true, but any writes or reads will be of the sort that they don't cause type problems. For instance you can call clear() on a ArrayList<? extends Shape>
tl;dr: OMG! Think about our children! THE CHILDREN! We need to reject the refugees for the sake of our children... And what sort of refugees are these who have have a preference for the quality of life they want to live. Don't they know you get to choose only when colonising?

Pretty rich coming from a citizen of an aggressor and coloniser.
Okay, I can explicitly say that it would cap and use percents of the cap if you want. Look at flattr, not as an exact model but as similar.
No need to go with a group. Really it's just like biking around your neighborhood, but then staying overnight where you end up, and then continuing on the next day.

http://daxfohl.blogspot.com/

Note I'm not particularly in shape, not "brave" by any traditional sense of the word, and hadn't ridden a bike in 15 years before my first bike ride, from Poland to Turkey (the above is my second). I have traveled quite a bit before then though.

I'd recommend knobby tires. There are a good number of other riders I met along the way, but only one was using a road bike.
Somebody else has already done it. https://github.com/jonls/redshift has been by go-to for a few years now. It's my suspicion that Jon has no intention of patenting the idea.
Well, $1.8M and they are displaying the HUD logo so presumably some of the barely wealthy can get a subsidized McMansion.
I think Margaret Mead said it closer to the topic:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
xv6 is an amazing teaching OS - it is very simple to dive into and play around with. A while ago I wanted to explore some filesystem/permissions stuff and use xv6 to play with some concepts (see http://sarahjamielewis.com/posts/file-system-permissions-and... - still lots I want to play around with there when I find some time) - If you are at all interested in OS dev it is a great gateway.
> Being 33, it has essentially been OTC my whole life and I seriously took for granted how awesome this drug was until I could not take it (or any other NSAID) any longer.

Wait. Why could you not take any NSAID any longer?

I am someone who gets a lot of value from the occasional ibuprofen, and you have me worried.
It's been 8 years since I was in Vietnam, but just crossing the street on foot was an adventure. I can only imagine some of the near misses you would have on a bike.
If you don't have any choice in the people you work with and you can't find topics to discuss due to the strictness of conversational rules at your job, the problems at your workplace run far deeper than can be solved by going remote.
The line says that progress entails unreasonableness, not vice versa, so I think Shaw (or rather his character) can plead not guilty there.