skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As I've said elsewhere, and as Cory Doctrow mentioned in his write-up, this kind of complete invasion trains children to become adults who do not value privacy and who do not understand why it is important to be vigilant against just this kind of thing. For many of the children growing up under this kind of privacy-less regime, there is nothing absurd about the NSA's warrantless wiretapping programs, nothing unconscionable about the Total Information Awareness office and the PATRIOT Act. Guilt becomes the default, and the state's actions in obtaining evidence of guilt are justified under this kind of an inverted (perverted?) worldview.
That doesn't explain the relation to his previous purchases. I don't see the connection at all.
Start using it yourself, maybe even with a cron job that regularly pulls the latest changes into your local repositories. I give it 2 or 3 version conflict or deleted file incidents where your use of VC saves the day.
Hrm... Some text right next to the field perhaps?

Alternately, simply showing a world map graphic would work quite simply. There aren't that many time zones.
I am able to access it from my office network. Is this real though? I am not sure if I will login into here.
A website fully hosted on 99$ plug computer - must see
Looks like a failover or clone to me. Twitter dns points to verio as the host / datacenter.
The only way we can give them a "great experience" is by teaching first.

Who do you mean by "we" and what exactly do you think should be taught?
There are some google ip addresses. Who knows how many google but registered in another company's name IP addresses they're doing this sort of thing from
When dealing with potentially the largest user base in the world, any "confusion" is the fault of the design and development team for not designing, testing, and redesigning a user-friendly (for whatever that term is worth) system.

I used to have a female acquaintance who would complain that "all men are assholes, every guy I've ever dated has ended up cheating on me." I had a male acquaintance who would complain that "all women are bitches, they give me their number and then never answer when I call." They both didn't like it too much when I pointed out that each of them were the common denominators in their respective problems.

When complaints about your company's approach to privacy pop up in large quantities, what's the common denominator? Thousands of "confused" users who don't understand that their privacy wasn't violated/isn't really important after all, or one company with a wrong-headed approach to privacy? When faced with frequent failure, it's not the world out to get you, it's your own failure. But when you have an agenda to push, like focusing on attractiveness over maturity or integrity, looking for quick access to sex instead of building relationships, or creating a master database of people's preferences to serve them the most uniquely targeted ads that they will be the most likely to click on because you don't have a real product to sell, then you tend to ignore the signals around you and push blindly through.
This really lowers ones faith in mankind. What on earth possessed these people? There must have been at least three people with knowledge of this and probably more. None of them thought it was enough of a problem to speak out against it and make a racket if necessary? I can understand one person having a crazy thought and I can imagine him convincing a second. But as soon as a third found out, the whole affair should have been seen for what it was: an invasion of privacy.
"With the release of Java FX, widespread deployment of the JRE, and better browser integration, Java has set the stage for a comeback to its roots."

I'm guessing he hasn't actually touched this part either. It's a disaster. JavaFX is a less capable version of Flex or Silverlight. If he thinks applets were stillborn, this was closer to a miscarriage.
I and others have written something like this with backend support using gd or imagemagick.
Police push for warrantless searches of cell phones
We're talking about a potential new Apple product here, not Watergate. Were the guards justified in assaulting the reporter? Absolutely not. Did the reporter have reason to suspect that the guards might frown on that kind of behavior? Yes.

My point isn't to say that the reporter was necessarily doing anything wrong or the guards were correct. My point is that this is hardly an international incident that has much implication for Apple or any of the other named corporations.
That's horrible!

Also: How the hell did they finance handing out Mac laptops to all their students?
Don't just sit there fuming - do something.

You can contact the school board's directors at capitalcomments@lmsd.org or call (610) 645-1800

If you believe that a criminal act may have been committed, you can contact the Montgomery County District Attorney at KKasopsk@montcopa.org or call (610) 278-3090
Silicon Valley Startup Strategy Roundtable starts in 20 min,come right in
Cookies, Supercookies and Ubercookies: Stealing the Identity of Web Visitors
I like how he sums it all up:

"Thanks to him, chumbys are $2 cheaper which frees up more money for us consumers to spend on $2 coffees at Starbucks."
Sadly, I don't have the citation off the top of my head. For all I know, I could've fallen for an urban legend. If I have, sorry for being gullible!
Without real anonymity comment-threads everywhere on the net would suddenly become much more civil.

Of course we would also lose the tremendous benefit of the information people are willing to share without any fear of it coming back to them.

On balance, those benefits are probably much more valuable than "order".
So what are you saying? That the activists proclivity to believe anything they want and ignore the rest gives Google carte blanche to dismiss the real issue, to lie ("no one was harmed", really? How can you be sure?), and belittle the honest complaints, for the sake of PR? Is there no ethics in PR?
I have a 16-gigabyte SD card.

In order to have a 32-gigabyte iPad, I have to purchase the 32-gigabyte version for $600.

If the iPad had an SD card slot, I could hypothetically purchase a 16-gigabyte iPad for $500 and use my previously purchased 16-gigabyte SD card.
Looks like a failover node, just in case
I feel that there may be a chance of "Why would we need to user version control when we can just use you instead?". I do like the idea though and will probably set up a repository today for projects that I'm working on.
Unlimited Free International Calls & SMS on Google Voice Outside US
When I started my last job they weren't using version control, so I just told them that if nothing else it would be very easy and painless to just check in every time we push to production so that we always have a snapshot of the last version. The problem with them was that their developer would go and make changes to files in production to fix bugs and issues, even after started using version control, so it was always a chore keeping up with his hotshot prod changes. You don't have to implement a full continuous integration environment or start branching each developer separately, you can just start catching snapshots along the way and it will have a positive impact on future development.
"And they did not try to execute the man or put him on a prison in an island for 5 years without trial, they just took steps to make sure he did not have pictures that would compromise their factory."

For all we know, they could have intended to do horrible things to him. They tried to drag him into the warehouse. And I doubt they were doing it to apologize to him.

"In the U.S, guards routinely shoot 10.000 volts of current into people."

To be pedantic, voltage isn't the best measure of how harmful electricity is. A 12 volt car battery is much more lethal than a 10,000 volt tazer.
Schools are issuing iPhones?
25 bizarre job interview questions answered honestly
I would tell him you want to setup a source control server (That you personally will administer so no overhead or extra work for him.) Have it be fully optional aka people who use it have to fully comply with current practices(Everyone has to be able to work as if it doesn't exist.) That way he gets zero complaints from other staffers who resist change.
What scares me is the kind of review that will likely happen isn't going to be one that emphasizes the rights of schoolchildren, but that emphasizes how schools should modulate their activities to stay within the letter, if not the spirit, of the law. For anything substantial to change would require a fairly fundamental reexamination of the role of the school system in the private lives of students.
Just for a little bit of trivia, Andrew "Bunnie" Huang is the guy who originally cracked X-box while at MIT. The guy is _ridiculously_ smart and I'd recommend reading his blog (it's quite interesting).
Loudable's latest post
> However, in my experience, most people are not willing to learn about their computers if you give them the chance.

I didn't understand this in the past, but I notice now that it all depends on what you really care about. For example, I know more about computers than a lot of people. However, I don't know anything about the phone system that my company is using. It has functionality that could make my life easier, but it has a lot of menus that I am not interested in learning. So, I just use it in the worst way possible, and that is fine for me. I don't care about learning what protocols this phone can use or what additional functions I can enable, because what I care is working with software. Most people feel just like this with all computers. They just want to get their stuff done as quickly as possible and get out of the way.
one advantage you might use to "sell" the idea is that it lets people work on laptops away from their desk more easily (i'm imagining that a marketing company is full of people wandering round, brainstorming in cafes, etc... :o)
It's cool - I do believe you. [You'll always get suspicion over that story because it is the #1 most common defence (and ironically easy to disprove)]

I'd always be interested to see if it actually happened though - it would be useful research.
I agree with you about the title not being completely accurate, because I am blaming the job sites, not the internet. Thanks for the correction.
When?

They are very slow deploying new software. They are talking about a Twitter client since last year and there is not a public beta yet
Ask HN: Who are the Alpha Geeks you follow?
Tim O'Reilly once famously claimed that by following the "alpha geeks" you can see what's going to be a significant technology down the road. Chad Fowler describes them as, "... those supernerds who are always on the bloodiest tip of the bleeding edge, at least in their hobby activities." This probably applies to quite a few HN readers.

So who are you following and why?

I'll go first: Rich Hickey, for his amazing work bringing a Lisp to the JVM and moving STM concepts deeper into practice. I especially enjoyed his talks on InfoQ about state and identity.

On a side note, if you agree with PG in his Great Hackers essay that, "Even hackers can't tell [who is a great hacker]," then the Alpha Geek concept becomes moot since you can't actually detect the true alpha geek. There is the possibility, of course, that perception becomes reality.
It seems a bit irresponsible to me to encourage people not directly involved to call the authorities over this. Surely they have been made aware, if only by the media. Often times (again, not a lawyer, so I don't know how to nail this down), charges and complaints can only be filed by those directly victimized by a crime. If people followed your suggestion, then the DA's office would soon be flooded with redundant, useless and perhaps counter-productive communications.
about the difference between computer science and informatik (UK/US vs europa):

as others have noted: in europe "computer science" is not taught at universities. informatik is. (one could argue wether the courses "fachhochschulen" offer teach "computer science").

reading what lectures in computer science (in the US) are about, it seems "computer science" is really a lot about computers and writing software. whereas informatics ("informatiker") do not necessarly work with computers - often they do, because computers are handy for working with information. but the computer itself, its software & hardware, how it works is not a part of all informatik studies (it is of some).

i'm no native english speaker but from what wikipedia tells me "informatics" - this very broad field - is actually what we mean with "informatik". for example at the technical university of vienna there are eight different, specific sub-disciplines you can do your master's degree in ("media informatics", "medical informatics", "software informatiks", "technical informatiks", "computer graphics" - my own translations, sorry).
Sunlight Labs' Android/iPhone Door Opener Details and Video
I hadn't considered the usefulness of this for the designers. Being able to go pull up "that awesome design from last week" would probably be very attractive to them.
through sale of kiddy porn?
Obtaining working free wallhacks/aimbots for most games is pretty easy.

Right now I can only remember http://www.mpcforum.com/ .

I "tested" one of their aimbots (on TF2) and not only did it work, but I also did not get banned.
Is it bad that the web (especially the mobile web) is shifting toward a monoculture around WebKit?
If anyone has a cd-key for a blizzard game they don't play anymore, I wouldn't mind taking it off your hands. message/email me.

:)
I guess that attitude comes from the fact that I've always had to buy my own cake in life. My parents provided me with food, clothing, a place to live, and other "necessities". They never bought me a laptop, a cell phone, a car, or any of the dozens of other things that teenagers seem to feel entitled to these days.
Top 25 Programming Errors: Should Software Developers be Liable?
Great article. Wise words from such a young person!
There doesn't appear to be a claim in the complaint regarding any child pornography laws yet. But who knows--that may change if new photos turn up during discovery.

Here's some thoughts on the Fourth Amendment illegal search claim, at least:

There is this 2001 case, Kyllo v. United States, that held it illegal for the police to use a thermal scanner to detect heat lamps in a guy's house (the heat lamps being used to grow marijuana). The Supreme Court held, in an opinion by Justice Scalia:

"Where...the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant."

Seems to me this case falls pretty squarely within the Kyllo rule. Maybe webcams are in public use, but a spy program connected to a webcam and operated by someone other than the possessor of the computer would probably not be. The webcam photos were of the inside of a home, and those photos could not have otherwise been taken without going inside the home.
I didn't get it at first either. I think if you explain the context is in your profile, more people might understand.
I wish we could ban cash altogether and go digital.

It's a useless inventory management exercise that we all have to go through every day.
It really looks like WebKit is going to become the standard for mobile browsing. Google, Palm, Apple, and Nokia are all in the WebKit camp and now RIM. Who does that leave now that RIM is going WebKit? Microsoft? Opera clearly has its own engine, but they don't control a platform.
Screencast - django-template-repl | codysoyland.com
Google Books Fosters Intellectual, Legal Crossroads
They have been doing this since 2004 and is somewhat unsuccessful as a lot of the real "cheaters" steal steam accounts to abuse. Although to some companies piracy is bad, for Valve it is not as they have Steam. There is no real way around getting into servers without having Steam installed unless you want to play strictly with cheaters.
It isn't now, but do we know for sure that it wasn't before they fixed the problems?

To test it earlier, I went to someone elses profile and checked out their list of followers. These people obviously set up their profile - but people here have stated that a profile may exist from other Google services and I don't know if what you say was the case from day one.

As far as I'm concerned, if, when it was released, Buzz was like it is now, there wouldn't be any problems.
..finally decided to jump on the "Poor man's email" bandwagon, using their email system as a base.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-ceo-twitter-a-poor-man...
Windows 7 tricks: 20 top tips and tweaks
A bunch of comments showing up in the blog post. Several from students. Not everyone cares about cheating apparently.
"AJAX and DOM tech turns out to be good enough"

But not as good
Could be a phishing attempt!
Probably the worst legal job available in my town (poor pay, terrible hours, etc etc) is for a factory which makes more cell phone camera lens gaskets than any company in the world. These come off the production line in sheets of a thousand. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: tweezer them off the sheet and onto the waiting chasis. Your quota: a thousand an hour.

There is an acceptable rate for misplacement, which I shouldn't tell you: suffice it to say that my region credits its anal-retentive attention to detail with allowing other, lazier Japanese people to take over worldwide automotive industry.

They have a waiting list for this job a mile long at the moment (my neck of the woods is hurting in the current economic environment).
I wonder if these laptops had a recording light by the camera like most. Wouldn't this have been an immediate tip-off to everyone? Disabling the recording light (if this happened) would have required some effort as well...
And every Java developer is an Android developer. Is Microsoft planning on opening a Windows Phone App Store? I'd be interested to see what that looks like.
Drop a note explaining potential disasters of using such a system to everyone including your lead developer's boss. Then wait for the disaster to happen. And then shout again pointing to your email.
The DA's office provides a form on their website to report a crime - they are actively inviting people to report illegal activity. DAs only prosecute where they believe it is in the public interest to do so.

Would you call the cops if you saw a guy on the corner of your street dealing drugs? Would you do something if you heard your neighbour beating his wife? If you would, then why stay silent just because the criminals are a school board?

It is our democratic duty to speak up. It is our duty as citizens to apply pressure to those in power to do the right thing.

What do you think the Christian right would do if they got wind that a school was, for instance, permitting it's students to view pornography? They would be calling the DA, calling the school board, calling their senator in huge numbers and rightly so - that's how you achieve change in a democracy.

It's not irresponsible to do your democratic duty.
> If you're talking about free Flash games the obvious competition would be free iPhone games which Apple makes no money off of. If you're talking about ad-supported Flash games then the competition would be ad-supported iPhone games, which Apple makes no money off of.

Apple may not get any money on freebies, but those freebies are still distributed through the iTunes Store, you still need to pay the $99 entrance fee, and you still have to own a Mac to develop iPhone software. That's control they are going to great lengths to keep.
So that'd mean some schools (or is it the same one?) did such spying without even trying to conceal it. That it hadn't occurred to students to cover the camera with something is a bit troubling too (either they don't realize the possibility/risk or they don't care).

I may sound paranoid, but having integrated cameras in almost every electronic device around, with no easy physical (vs. software) way of blocking it somehow, is a recipe for such situations happening one day or the other (of course that doesn't make it any more OK).
I completely agree with 1 (which I'd mentioned in my initial comment). I thought it meant enable / don't enable too, at first, and was extremely disappointed when this turned out to not be the case. I wouldn't have minded the auto-enable setup if they hadn't made it so hard to actually disable it, and if they had an "opt-out" link like we thought they had.

They've effectively addressed this by having a simple completely disabling link now, but I still don't like how it requires deleting your public profile. What if I have a public Picasaweb page?

I'll admit, I pulled a tl;dr on the welcome screen; I typically do, welcome screens are rarely worth more than a quick scan. Expecting the "no thanks" link to refer to buzz is pretty much my mistake, though it could've been clearer.

edit: and as others have addressed (carbon8 this time), 2 and 3 are still incorrect, even from the beginning.
Congratulations, and well deserved too! Had the pleasure of their company during a mentoring session at the Seedcamp 2009 founders panel.
This has been coming down the pipe since RIM acquired Torch Mobile in August:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/24/rim-buys-torch-mobile-bla...
Kinda strange, lots of pages are cloned straight from twitter.com, even the trending topics are upto date. Most interestingly though, if you login with fake details. It redirects straight to twitter.com, presumably recording the details along the way?

Certainly is a good clone, either that or twitter really liked the jaiku source code...

Mat
Given that Webkit is an open-source project with contributors from many different companies and areas of the industry, I don't see how monopoly could divert too far in the direction of non-standardness.

Really, the concept of 'monoculture' doesn't really apply to browser renderers, because a rendering engine isn't a cultural artifact. It's a medium. It's designed to be totally neutral. The only reason that we're discussing the competing browser engines right now, and discussing them in terms of culture and creativity, is an artifact of their history, not their nature.
How is that a violation? I assume the school actually owns the laptop, and the monitoring is disclosed up front.
It links to a Reuters post :
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE61824V20100209
Competition helps drive innovation, but right now WebKit has so much forward momentum, it's hard to say that standardizing on WebKit is a bad thing. WebKit is LGPL-licensed, so if it were ever to stagnate, there's nothing preventing anyone (even companies) from forking it for their own desires.

I'd much rather see a WebKit-driven force than a proprietary one.

edit: LGPL-licensed, not just BSD. Thanks buymorechuck.
I think tail call elimination is handled in the Apply method for closures - http://github.com/bobappleyard/golisp/blob/master/lisp/lisp.... . Looks like a trampoline to me.
I think it's actually a good idea to train them to treat the internet as a space without privacy, because it really is. Not sure if reading their emails etc is the way to go about it though.
More disturbing about that is this: I face serious consequences for all sorts of things, many of which I don't know are illegal. Some of those things I don't know the legalities of are related to my profession. Yet, while being tried, if I put up a "I didn't know it was illegal" defense, I would be laughed at, found guilty and fined/jailed/etc. Why do the school officials get out of liability for not knowing that their actions were illegal?
To be fair to the school shown in that particular documentary, they weren't looking at the students through a webcam. It looks like they're using a remote desktop program to look at the students desktop. He explained that many students use the webcam program as a mirror to look at themselves or just mess around.