skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't get a good feeling about this. I checked out Melon Media and they are outside the USA, so the law for me is a little tougher in punishing them if they do wrong. Then, they are an email marketing firm, and I would be giving them vital access into my Twitter feed.
Disclaimer: I work for Smarkets, but I thought something from the London scene would be of interest to HN.
PTPT touchscreen interface sounds little, could be huge (video)
Functional programming convinced millions of people to overvalue their homes and become real estate speculators?
The Twitter Engineering Blog
Would anyone be willing to skim their terms of service and see if they mention requiring access to your server?
I'm confused.

Skeptics don't make claims, they doubt claims. How has the burden of proof for climate-change claims shifted to a skeptic?

Renaming doubt as "claims" and then "debunking" the doubt reminds of straw man, no?

Labeling a climate-change skeptic as "pretending-to-be serious" reminds of ad hominem, no?
It would be amusing if this were a subtle advert for R...
I think that's different.

On a shopping street, I don't have to be looking for a book store to run into one. I might not buy anything the first time, but now I know it's there. And every time I walk out the clothing store, I'm reminded the book store is next door.
You're arguing one simplified example while having ignored the thrust of the argument.

Yes, applications on physical inventions try to broaden their claims as much as possible. But there is still a substantial and quantitative difference between the domain covered by "fixed or removable fastener" and "a network" or "a process".
Maybe not paying as such, but freeing your organisation from the annoyance of dealing with licenses has been a major factor in some migrations I've seen. I wouldn't call that ideology, more more of an economic factor, as there is both a direct cost and an opportunity cost to dealing with licenses.
Why not sign up using a disposable email such as http://whyspam.me (disclosure:developer) and get a P.O. box and try it out. Then you can let us know.

WhySpam also tracks spammers and not-legit sites, so you can check to see if someone reported on it already.
NASA Unveils New Web Based Space-Weather Science Tool
This is also included in a collection of essays by Asimov. http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Wrong-Isaac-Asimov/dp/15756... <-- non-affiliate
FYI - I decided to link to the 'tool,' rather than the press release, but if you're interested, here it is: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/iswa-program....
I was interested at first, but it seemed more and more that the author was referring to a context that he thought was shared but was actually obscure. When using examples from novels I've read or exchanges between bloggers, I find some light introduction (e.g. who's the "they" in this "Player of Games" book?) or footnotes is the best way to avoid the "scary homeless person that yells at me when I get off the subway" vibe.
I just sent this post to my girlfriend with the annotation "Look dear! Other people have these conversations too!" :/
Jesse Schell on the Future of Gaming
This article sounds like a typical enterprise architect bullshit. And he is missing the point. NoSQL is so much more than simple KV store. NoSQL Wants To Be "Elastic Caching" When It Grows Up. What is he smoking?
You acknowledge and agree that Go Daddy has the right to carry out a forensics examination in the event of a compromise to Your server or account.
This is untrue. If you are a small business owner, your earnings are taxed as salary, even though you take as much risk as any venture capitalist.

This is true until you sell your company; at that point the proceeds of the sale are taxed as capital gains. Personally, I think this rewards short-term planning over long-term planning. It's also essentially a subsidy on publicly traded companies that us little guys don't get.
Oops, you're right, two things have changed. There is a lot of English documentation now, too. My bad.
Hostmonster.com also stores your password in plaintext. When I called customer support once they asked me for the last 4 characters of my password. So, I asked the support guy "Can you see just the last 4 or can you see my whole password?" He told me he could see my whole password. W. T. F.
Lomborg purports to be approaching the matter scientifically rather than through partisan politics. He's been taken at face value in some quarters. If indeed he's now been shown not to be engaged in honest scholarship, then that seems to me to be "worth much".

Why the fact that someone has co-authored a couple of books about newspaper reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict should make it appropriate to describe that person in a totally different context as "a Pro-Palestine writer" is beyond me, by the way. If you happened to know Friel's political allegiance, would you have written "Pitting a political scientist vs a Democrat ..." or "Pitting a political scientist vs a Republican ..." or whatever?
Help find missing kids by putting them on your 404 page
there is one that I found a while back but cannot seem to find for the life of me..
That's the problem I have with it... specially if their admins can access that at will to SSH to their VPS boxes.
I do. The case is certainly not as clear cut as Bild claims but Bild might have a subtler point.

After all Apple does censor (if censorship is defined as checking content before publishing and rejecting certain content based on certain criteria) - but that certainly doesn't have to be a problem. After all editors in chief censor, too (using that same definition).

We have no problem with that because there are several competing newspapers which create ample pluralism without any need to intervene when editors in chief censor.

We (i.e. Germany) don't rely on that when it comes to broadcasting. That's why we have public broadcasting institutions. They were created because it was believed that merely private broadcasting is unable to create ample pluralism. Too few frequencies, too expensive equipment - a technolgy to which only a select few have access. Not enough for a democratic society. Or so it was thought.

This is not to claim that any of those views (i.e. private competition among newspapers creates ample pluralism, the same won't work with broadcasting and public broadcasting can solve that problem) are correct, it's just to say that we traditonally have no problem treating media organisations differently than, say, manufacturers of toys.

It's a valid argument to have whether Apple should be allowed to freely censor or not. Ok, maybe not right now (the App Store is still somewhat unimportant and far from having any kind of monopoly on paid media content), but at least in principle the discussion is not without merit.
And Lomborg's response, debunking Howard Friel’s claims in return, is here: http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20r...
I agree with that (and I also confess that I didn't read it before signing up). However, it doesn't say that they will do that WITHOUT your permission (or even asking first).
After climategate I have a hard time giving much creedence to studies on either side of the anthropomorphic global warming issue. It seems like the right answer is "we don't know."

That having been said, articles and books like this seem like not much more than a desperate attempt at staying relevant.
Why don't articles like this ever discuss the need for education on patterns and abstractions around threading such as messaging (via actors), the use of immutability, etc.?
I don't really mind describing myself as a pirate. They need to come up with a label that stings. "Thief" works better, but unfortunately also makes it obvious that it's just bullshit.
Really? I left lighttpd in disgust over it's nonsensical config files esp how they didn't work the way the docs claimed they did. After dicking with lighttpd to proxy the way I wanted for 1/2 a day I got nginx installed and configured in less than an hour.

nginx config files are logical
I've filled a complaint to GoDaddy support and I'm now looking for an alternative. What are your suggestions?
You can tell I've been a SEO too long when the prospect of somebody yanking my domain name hurts a lot more than the prospect of somebody rooting me.
Lomborg makes plenty of claims.

The burden of proof is not determined by whether one is claiming or doubting. Someone saying "I think there's some room for doubt about geocentrism" would bear the burden of proof, for instance.

"Debunking the claims" is straight from the original article title. It seems to be pretty well justified by the article itself; someone has gone through the references in one of Lomborg's books and found them full of junk. (Of course it might turn out that the new book is itself all lies or something, but the mere possibility of that doesn't justify complaining about the word "debunking".)

A straw man is a position falsely ascribed to one's opponents to make them easier to debunk. What false position do you think is being ascribed to Lomborg to make him easier to debunk?
Now this is a fantastic idea.
The Chromium Projects - Tablet
In praise of hoodies
I suspect that "climategate" did not change your stance from agreeing with climate change to disagreeing with it. However, if honestly changed your mind I must ask you why?
Segway Made from Lego Robot Kit Using Light Sensor For Balance
I think he means that he found a site that maintained a list of sites of NameCheap.
To me it means ensuring equal opportunity for all citizens. Historically that's included women's suffrage, ending slavery, civil rights legislation, public education, OSHA-type worker protections, fiscal policies that allow for upward mobility via opportunity and hard work, etc.

I am sure others would include additional programs in the definition, but I think that anything crossing the line from providing equal opportunity to equal outcomes (ie quota programs) crosses the line of equitable treatment in the other direction.
rep2p, haha
One thing people should be aware of is that almost no VPS hosting solution is secure.

The worst offender is Parallels/Virtuozzo(which I think godaddy uses).

On the linux side. A root user on the host node can simply run the command
vzctl enter 1111
and enter your vps without a password. To make things even scarier, when an admin enters your container this way. It doesnt leave a bash history file. You have a very small chance of ever knowing they entered the container at all.

Even if they dont want to enter your container. They still have full access to all of your files which are located in in the /vz folder on the host node.

Other vps solutions are slightly more secure. But it seems like %50 of the vps hosting industry is using virttozzo and most of them probably have no issue entering your container with or with out your permission.
Here's the more complete article from the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/technology/companies/25goo...
Aren't you giving them permission when you agree with their terms?
and my favorite although ultimately ineffective

/etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com ycombinator.com
This is a little different than just a registrar having access to your passwords. I don't have a server with them, so I must admit, I'm more concerned with whether or not they have my domain account password in cleartext. If they do, I'll switch registrars immediately, just on the principle of the thing.

That being said, I don't really care about them having your root password for your VPS. I really don't. Why? Because it's their server (physically). So, if they wanted access to it, they could just pull the hard drive and mount it in another computer. Your expectation of privacy just goes out the window if you don't own the hardware.
It was a joke (I think); like saying "Mozart was the greatest Italian Opera composer." (Also true, imho).
This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientific concepts. His "Please Explain" should be required reading.

However, I think he has misclassified the error of the English Lit correspondent in this essay. Since I have witnessed this misunderstanding many times (and I want to postpone writing my C++ thread pool code), let me elaborate. There are basically three areas of intellectual endeavor, classified by how they go about investigating the truth of the statements: One is scientific, where questions are handled using the scientific approach, so well described by Asimov. The other is group is axiomatic systems, like mathematics (and heraldry), where statements are mostly proven rather than checked through experiments. Given a statement, e.g. "there are infinitely many primes", one does not go about making measurements in the real world to check its truth (although sometimes real-world models can help, pioneered by Archimedes in the "Sand Reckoner").

Then, there's a third category of questions where these two approaches fail. In fact, when asked a question of this type, one does not immediately know how to go about proceeding to investigate it, e.g. "What is truth, Is there a God", etc. This, of course, is the realm of philosophy with somewhat different techniques of tackling problems then the previous two.

With this (rather simplistic) classification, we can see the impedance mismatch between Asimov and the Lit guy. Asimov is the scientist par excellence and is talking about the scientific method. However, the Lit guy's letter (truth is relative, etc.) is the culmination of a certain philosophy that is still the accepted standard in liberal arts school and may be summed up as moral relativism. The guy's obvious error is to apply this approach to the scientific realm. But mind you, this is very common with people of this background. If you don't believe me, just find a liberal arts major and talk for 10mins. He/she will be dumbstruck that you think otherwise. A common example with such people is how Newton's theory was "wrong" and Einstein's theory "corrected" it, clearly showing there's no absolute truth. Years ago, my professor in graduate level Syntax course gave this very example with the same conclusion that the Lit guy arrived.

But apart from its misapplication to scientific matters (such as the shape of the earth), is the moral relativistic approach a useful one, despite its acceptance as an axiom in a lot of universities? Now, that is a long debate.
Home Improvement, Hospital & Health Care, Comfortable Life, Home Accessories
Confessions of an Internet “Shock Jock”
This title would have been far more useful to me if it said "Tools to Help you Focus and Increase Productivity as long as you are a Windows or MacOS user"
Benchmark of Django deployment techniques
Just as publishers have the right to monetize their websites and blogs, they should have the right to monetize the content they produce on Twitter.
this is why i use http://prq.se for hosting
So stupid since open source licenses are all about intellectual property rights: you create something and thus it is your right to determine the license that allows other people to legally use it.

That said, shitty laws paid for by corporations will be problematic for us (an easy prediction to make!)
Anyone have a link that shows the result? I didn't see one in the article and I'd like to see how it looks. Did I miss a link or screenshot in the original article?
Worth repeating for the nth time: just because they have access to your password doesn't mean it's stored in clear. They could simply be using a reversible encryption algorithm.

This does not excuse them from accessing your VPS without your permission, of course, but the only thing you know about their password storage mechanism is it allows them to access your password when they need it. You have no idea what the procedure for this access is, or how exactly it's stored.
Latvian 'Robin Hood' hacker leaks bank details to TV
Great post. For some people science is absolutely a religion. These folks don't know enough to try and falsify the theory they believe but they have no issue trashing people who aren't as convinced.
Bloom Box and the Very Disruptive Future of Distributed Energy
Watch this. It has much, much, much wider application than the game industry.
The Unbelievable World of Warcraft
Linux Configuration Management Tools
Alas, their 404 page is just Blogger's:

http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/02/missing-kids-on-your-none...
>It really is the broken window fallacy, but in reverse; that working harder could decrease aggregate employment implies that working less hard (or more counter-productively) could increase aggregate employment.

Not all system responses are reversible. I can start working really hard, making it feasible for my company to lay someone else off. I could later stop working so hard, but there's no reason to expect that job to come back.

> This is even more hare-brained than the suggestion that we should all work less

Did the article make a suggestion? I think it was more of a scientific statement that this would happen. Of course in a global competitive market it's irrational for any single individual to start working less. That in no way refutes the claim being made. Depoliticize for a second and consider the claims being made. Your stance is right, but you have no need to defend it here.
Site Leaks Microsoft Online Surveillance Guide, MS Demands Takedown Under DMCA
If you think that "climategate" throws much doubt on the main claims of anthropogenic global warming, then either you've been misinformed about what's in the emails or I have. (I think the "climategate" emails establish that some climate scientists aren't very nice people sometimes, that some software written by research scientists is a bit of a mess, and that if you cherry-pick the worst-sounding bits from hundreds of emails you can make things sound worse than they really are. Not much more than that.)

I don't understand. Friel hasn't been particularly associated with global warming in the past; why would he be writing a book like this as "a desperate attempt at staying relevant"?

Lomborg gets plenty of attention for his work. If, as Friel claims, it's full of dishonest pseudo-scholarship, isn't that worth drawing attention to?
Large thread on this two days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1142424
If you want a VPS you should check out SliceHost.
Something like a random sequence but …
I saw a really good TED talk where the speaker argued that we have far too many laws right now: http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_howard.html
Top of the list on all search engines, now what?
Is that a good thing? Considering 300+ million in the USA, 3 Billion people on the planet. The site's concept is based on a fictional artist. What should one do with this awesome positioning? What possibilities or opportunities are there? Juan Corbett.
What service are you using to actually send out the SMS?
Four ways to fix a broken legal system (TED)
I use https://filttr.com/ :)
Not sure why you're getting downvotes for this. Lomborg's defense directly addresses Friel's rather serious claims (the same cannot be said for Friel). On the other hand, at least as this blog notes: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/where_tone_torpedoes_c..., we now know quite clearly where Newsweek stands on the issue especially as they outsource their skepticism to foreign news services despite recent challenges to the "gold-standard" IPCC reports.
Why, that's pretty impressive. It's too bad they don't offer VPS, :(.
Would any of this transfer to understanding how git works as well? Alternatively, is there a similar introduction to git? I'm in the camp of someone who has used CVS and Subversion a lot and have had "learn Git" or some other distributed VCS on my to do list for a while now.
Have you bothered to read Lomborg's rebuttal? It thoroughly addresses each of the claims that Friel makes [at least in the book review]. (as linked by Luyt: http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20r...)

Did you even read Begley's screed? As WindsofChange notes: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/where_tone_torpedoes_c..., Newsweek discredits itself in its opening paragraph. Since when is "fact checking" so distasteful so as to be considered to be one of the worst jobs by Newsweek? I mean isn't that supposed to be sort of their job? And they wonder why circulation continues to freefall (falling from 2.6M to 1.5M http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-washington-post-company...) in one year alone!

There was no "debunking" here. What exists, appears a desperate editor watching her circulation plunge while she attempts to hype a made up controversy to plug the hole.

There's a journalistic dictum if I recall that goes something like: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" [Thanks sailormoon for the correction]. The evidence from both Begley and Friel do not rise to this level especially as Begley attempts to trash not only Lomborg, casting aspersions on both the reviewers of Lomborg's work and Lomborg himself. What is particularly galling is how profoundly unskeptical Newsweek was of Friel's claims and the remarkably anti-intellectual stance they've taken.
Exactly. When I see people getting themselves tangled up with parallel programming, it's because they can't accept the performance trade-offs of simple, tractable solutions. 90% of the time, the inability to accept the trade-offs has nothing to do with actual performance measurements and everything to do with groundless assumptions that certain techniques are always way too slow.
The big difference between US and EU privacy laws and the corresponding personality rights is that, in most EU countries, every individual has the rights to their own image. You can't just go ahead, take their picture or video and make it publicly available without their consent. I guess most people see this as an important part of their privacy rights.

There are of course exceptions for public figures and events, and there's an interesting debate going on with lawsuit after lawsuit trying to balance freedom of the press with personality rights. At least in some cases it is hard to see how the benefit of the public seeing a politician in swim wear outweighs his or her rights to privacy.

This hasn't stopped sites Xing, StudiVZ or Hyves from becoming very popular sites and building successful businesses.

There's also an ongoing debate in Germany and other EU countries, to what extent UGC-sites are liable for their content and how much they should police it. Majority opinion: not liable, police some, react quickly to take-down notices (though your mileage may vary from court to court).

As for the case here, the main blame is clearly on the guys who shot and submitted the video. The question is whether Google has reacted appropriately to the take-down request and whether it has tried hard enough to keep the vid off of youtube (keeping an eye on the inevitable wave of re-uploads).
The first thing about security
Newsweek makes the mistake that they accuse Lomborg of doing.
"As Friel shows, Lomborg sourced that to a blog post and to a study that never mentioned polar bears."

Here is the blog post: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2888

It tries to debunk a WWF claim on the polar bears. After I found this out, I was not going to bother to read the rest of the article, I have a low tolerance for plain lying, and would flip out for something like this IRL.

EDIT: Actually, the quote is tricky, is it saying that the blog post doesn't cover polar bears or that the study does not? Anyway, the link they provide to the study doesn't work. So it's hard to check their sources. Also, the study doesn't have to cover polar bears, Lomborg could just have been fact-checking the blog post, making it a more legitimate source (hey, it's Cato, a think tank, not that there's anything wrong with being biased, as long as you stick to the truth.).

Conclusion:
The Newsweek article is just sloppy journalism, I didn't even finish past the quote I provided, and they made too many errors before then to be taken seriously. MSM shouldn't get away with sloppy journalism.