skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Precisely. The legal system has certain informal but crucial checks and balances in it. One of them is that the cost and uncertainty of litigation make it in everyone's interest to settle, and in addition insurance creates incentives to settle. A third party purposely removing those incentives distorts the process.

Also to this general point, another check and balance for civil litigation are the reputational and discovery risks. With very few exceptions we require proceedings to be public, meaning that a plaintiff has to be willing to publically stand behind his action, and we allow defendants to have very broad discovery rights, to inspect the books and communications of a plaintiff.

Both of these are disincentives to filing a revenge based lawsuit -- as opposed to an action primarily to recover monetary damages -- and these were perverted as well by having a hidden third party who managed to evade that scrutiny during the proceeding.

There is a reason why vendetta based litigation is not all that common, and formal and informal checks and balances are a big part of it.

As an aside, if I were in Peter Thiel's camp right now I would hope to God he's all paid up with his taxes, doesn't have any angry lovers or ex-employees out there, and isn't engaged in any unethical or embarrassing activities, given that he now almost certainly has a lot of investigative journalism firepower pointed at him.
Mediachain: A Distributed Metadata Protocol built on IPFS
The subject of the case really isn't a red herring.
>"Gawker wasn't speaking truth to power and criticizing individuals. Gawker posted an illegally obtained sex-tape. "

Nice deflection! No one cared about the sex tape, they cared about the racist rant contained therein.

Tony did not sue Gawker because of a sex tape (although that was the vector Thiel's lawyers chose), he sued them for exposing a racist rant of his.

To claim that exposing his racist rant isn't criticizing a public individual is quite the massive deflection!!
This is also what Castingwords does - if you want high quality results transcribed by people. https://castingwords.com/support/transcription-api.html

We use Speechmatics (and sphinx) for caption alignment and timestamps. We certainly recommend them if that’s the service you need.
Takeaways from Devops Pro Vilnius
The call itself is relatively expensive, but as you say it's a one off call at startup time and the methods it produces are faster than explicit promisification using `new Promise`, they are blazing fast :)
Extremely wealthy people are just like any other group of people in that they come in all shapes and sizes.

Here, one very wealthy individual used his money to fund someone else's lawsuit. He did so secretly. He did so against an organization that had harmed him and against which he presumably wanted payback but that also had done a gratuitously damaging and sleazy act as part of a pattern of sleazy acts upon which it had built its erstwhile presumably profitable venture, hence presumably deserving payback.

So what does this say about Silicon Valley? Well, nothing at all, really. Both before and after this incident, Silicon Valley was, is and remains a place where multiple tech entrepreneurs and those who back them financially have built amazing ventures (and fortunes) that have reshaped all of world commerce even while many others failed. The thing that is new and different is the tech and the ways of using it to disrupt old-style business models. What is not different is the people. As with people everywhere, some are great, others sleazy, still others ravenously greedy, still others amazingly kind and gracious - in short, people who come in all shapes and sizes. I guess they are on average more educated and accomplished than average folks but the personal traits that define them, both good and bad, are pretty much the same as with people everywhere.

I don't know Mr. Thiel and don't know any more about him than what the headlines say. He may be fully justified in taking this action (it is a perfectly legal thing to do) or he may be displaying traits deserving our opprobrium. What I am sure of is that his actions here, good or bad, have little or nothing to do with what other prominent tech entrepreneurs do or how they think or how they run their companies.

So the logic of this piece - Mr. Thiel did x as a private act in his life, therefore all Silicon Valley tech billionaires stand indicted, therefore the public will now see them as no different than robber barons - seems to rest on multiple non sequiturs that really need to be more carefully thought through.

I guess we are conditioned to accept this sort of sloppy reasoning when it comes to discussing the very rich but this seems like a way-over-the-top overreaction to an individual episode that is what it is but that reflects very little on the broader environment surrounding it (or, if it does, not in ways that can be generalized in the crazy ways the author does here).
Browser testing in 2016
Best of luck!

I like how you mention first thinking Common Lisp was archaic, and then realising how advanced it really is.

BTW, you might want to wrap your text lines:-)
I'd enjoy the sarcasm more if I were more familiar with tech conferences. I assume the situations described are exaggerated tech conference tropes, but I don't have the firsthand experience to know for sure.
Location: San Francisco (Civic Center)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python, Flask, Django, Clojure, ClojureScript, SQL, Postgres, AWS

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxcountryman

Email: maxc@me.com

Hello! I am a passionate Python developer with loads of experience building out scalable server-side components for web and mobile clients. I also have experience with functional languages, such as Clojure. Additionally I am a maintainer and developer of numerous popular open source projects. Check out my Github[1] for more info on that. My ideal opportunity would be working for a small, dedicated, passionate team; the most valuable aspect of any opportunity from my perspective is the potential for mutual growth. Please do not hesitate to reach out.

[1] https://github.com/maxcountryman
It's my understanding that the Android app that interacts with Pebble (the watch) is more robust and better supported.
Functional Programming: Is It Worth It?
Read HN from your terminal
> Progressives move forever farther and farther to the left, and then accuse the right of "moving right" because we didn't move to your new definition of center fast enough.

The individual mandate for purchase of private insurance + subsidy system adopted as "Obamacare" was first proposed by the Republicans and insurance industry lobbyists in opposition to healthcare reform efforts under the Clinton administration.

Today, its a Democratic achievement seen as socialism by the Right.

> -we haven't privatized schools or gotten vouchers,

Both traditional public schools and traditional private schools are losing enrollment to homeschooling and public-funded, privately-operated charters -- both of which are things that have been pushed by the right.

(The right's also unsuccessfully pushed vouchers and drastically cutting public school funding, but when your pushing for multiple and mutually-exclusive things, you can't really characterize it as your opponents winning when you get some of the things that your side is pushing for instead of the others.)

> -we haven't been able to abolish any major social program,

Well, in the 1990s you got to abolish AFDC, one of the biggest social programs in the country, and replace it with the more-restrictive TANF.

> -we have only lost ground on gun rights and religious rights,

Actually, the federal "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" and state laws modeled on it have advanced religious rights to discriminate which had previously been found to violate laws which existed prior to those.

And, on 2nd amendment rights, major advances were made by the right in the Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller (2008) -- holding that the 2nd Amendment created a personal right in federal enclaves -- and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) -- holding that the 2nd Amendment created a personal right incorporated against state restrictions by the 14th Amendment.

> -we have not been able to slow the judicial activism of the courts,

And the left really wishes you would slow the judicial activism of your courts, such as the bizarre ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius that Congress can't set the terms for State participation in a program (Medicaid) which is otherwise within Congress power to establish.

> To a conservative of the Goldwater years the Republican party of today would look like a bunch of Socialists.

Well, we could ask a conservative of the Goldwater years about that, like the one that's the odds-on favorite to the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States in 2016. Well, except someone did, back in 1996 (on NPR, 1/13/1996):

"SCOTT SIMON: I mean, did you ever back in the ’60s, between when — I believe you were a Goldwater girl —

HILLARY CLINTON: That’s right.

SCOTT SIMON: — and whenever you became politically –

HILLARY CLINTON: That’s right. And I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don’t recognize this new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl."
Actually, I believe that's the next (or current) big debate in software due to privacy/search warrants/recent FBI vs Apple iPhone unlock debacle.
In my case I think I must be stuck in an old version (42) by Corporate IT. But to crash chrome 42, you have to use some nasty javascript or exploit a vulnerability. I haven't seen the website (for obvious reasons) but it would have to be a pretty sophisticated website to justify this kind of use of javascript. But from the title it looks like just a blog article....
>I strongly dislike being able to keep paying to throw the justice system against your enemies.

Why? This is simply how the world works.

It doesn't have to be the justice system.
Microsoft wants Windows to open into mixed reality
> I developed heart palpitations

http://drsircus.com/medicine/magnesium/magnesium-the-ultimat...
It is decided by a slow and deliberate process with many voices.
I consider "racism" to be a mental/emotional disease and you describe it well: a logical confusion between "group", which is a mental construct, and the real individuals encountered in real life, leading to severe anti-social behaviour. Generalizations are useful, but people get fucked up on "race".

To answer your question, I am upset that someone as intelligent and otherwise interesting as the urbit fellow should suffer from the logic-disease of racism. It's like how Konrad Zuse is always neglected because he worked for the Nazis, so "fuck him", eh?

Generalizations can be useful, "race" typically isn't. "IQ" can be a useful shorthand, but if you take it too seriously... Let's just say that Mensa is a group of people who are almost, but not quite, as intelligent as they like to think they are.

To paraphrase Deckard, '"IQ" is like any other concept, it's either a benefit or a hazard. If it's a benefit it's not my problem.'
My thought was the OP has an Apple Watch, thus obviously an iPhone. If they want to buy into the Pebble ecosystem, it'd be a better experience with an Android phone, not to mention you get amazing features like an external battery and an actual choice in software.
Would that not be true?

We do have our opinions and they do stem how we do work. Therefore we have interests, received opinions and such.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/01/technology/elizabeth-holmes-...

> Forbes said it has reexamined and revised Theranos' $9 billion valuation in light of recent investigations and allegations against the company.

> Citing conversations with venture capitalists and analysts, Forbes estimates that the company is actually worth a great deal less: $800 million. That takes into account its intellectual property and financing, according to Forbes' Matthew Herper.

> Holmes' 50% stake in the company would effectively be worth nothing at that valuation, Forbes concludes, because her investors would be paid back first (they hold preferred stock, not common stock like Holmes).
Last time we posed something (freelance dev deposition) we got about 4 applications . 1 with no qualifications , 2 with unrealistic hourly rate , ... And one who we hired and working with since.
If you are not trying to use Haskell (which has monads as a workaround for certain problems) then what is the point having monads? The average developer doesn't care because they are working in an environment where monads aren't needed.

Trying to drag monads into arbitrary languages like Javascript isn't some kind of best practice, it's cargo culting.
>To see why, I’d like to point to one empirical thing about the brain that currently separates it from any existing computer program. Namely, we know how to copy a computer program. We know how to rerun it with different initial conditions but everything else the same. We know how to transfer it from one substrate to another. With the brain, we don’t know how to do any of those things.

What about DRM? We can copy programs because we make them or we know specifications of the original computer it was meant to be run on or we can guess (because there aren't that many architectures, etc.)

What if a DRM scheme didn't need to run on modern architectures, was written in new programming languages from machine language and up, on entirely new paradigms? Do you think it would be easy to copy? What if it was unethical and illegal to do anything that could stop the program, or break the hardware? Would it even be surprising that we couldn't emulate it?

Even today's DRM schemes have not all been broken, and not all programs can be run on other substrates. The ones that have been reverse engineered is because they're written for architectures that are already known, and there's just specifics that need to be figured out. (Or so is the impression I get from reverse engineering discussions).
Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
Let me write my comments in VI, and I'll be working constantly all day :)
My question exactly, and also I was a little unsettled by how they went out of their way to not mention owncloud in the about page.

Why not just say "we're a fork of owncloud", instead they use forced marketing speak like "Nextcloud is a reboot of the most popular open source file sync and share solution", or "his previous project".
Yeah, but they have to read several data/parity blocks, and then rewrite all parity blocks plus one data block, for any write to a given block.

This creates big difficulties for both consistency and performance, and fixes for consistency make the performance worse (and vice versa).

Google's filesystem could use reed-solomon because they're append-only, making consistency a non-issue and performance can be fixed by buffering on the client side.
Released as a gift for its second birthday :)
I don't know why this is trending on HN. It's a sloppy implementation of something that has been done better already. I cringed after installing this.
Slow maybe, but are you sure it is deliberate?
>> artificial

Perhaps you wish to draw our attention to the question of "ecological validity"?

http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/why-measure-toy-benc...

http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/dont-jump-to-conclus...
Something like this.

function resizeImage(req, res, next) {
lwip.open(req.file.buffer, 'jpg', function (err, img) {
if (err) return callback(err);

var image = new Image(img);
let ratio = (image.width() > 960 ? (960 / image.width()) : 1);

async.series([
image.scale.bind(image, ratio),
image.crop.bind(image, image.width(), Math.min((image.width() / 2), image.height())),
image.write.bind(image, req.params['id'], "TITLE_IMAGE", buffer, "image/jpeg")
], next);
});
}

router.post('/:id/title-image', function (req, res, next) {
resizeImage(req, res, function (err) {
if (err) res.sendStatus(400);

res.sendStatus(200);
});
});

This is just my "way" of writing things:

1. I write with 4 spaces because it lets me know when I should refactor my code into something more readable.

2. I usually move route handlers to it's own file. So it will read like
```
router.post('/:id/title-image', routes.resizeImage);
```
The idea is that routes code simply goes through the model code and send the right http status codes.

3. async is your friend :-) In general, I try to model my model APIs with async in mind.

I can give it a better shot later today if you had any comments on my first try.
> To me it would only be scary if a media company was taken down by a rich entity simply litigating them until they couldn't afford to fight the lawsuits anymore

It already is scary because people are taken down by the media company simply publishing lies because they can't afford to sue.

Crying on behalf of Gawker in this case is a lot like crying for the bully that's finally getting punished.
I didn't discuss whether the cause is noble or not. I discussed whether what Peter Thiel is doing noble or not. I don't find his action noble. In other words, that someone supports a noble cause does not make them noble, one should also check their intentions.
Twitter should grow horizontally now, not vertically. Company keeps a blind eye on its brand strength.

Why not open up new services closely connected to Twitter:

-Video Hosting site - YT and LiveLeak competitor, but without all the noise

-Social Network where Twitter is a core, but social network by itself would be separate product - "wall" could use Twitter feed, this would work perfectly...

-Image hosting company - Imgur competitor

-News distribution and news curation company - its almost already that, worth investing in it

-Social tools company - thats easy...

As long as Twitter would stick to minimalistic design and rule "less is better" it would work and Twitter could become worthy rival to ABC...
I'd love to see syntax examples for objective-block usage. I swear I go to fuckingblocksyntax.com every few days, but it still doesn't have any examples.
He is not using sloppy reasoning, he is only saying what members of the media have been thinking for a long time now.

The media see us as competition.

More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824117
I find that interesting because Amazon is a "no impulse buy zone" for me. Everything I buy there is meticulously planned. It is probably an effect of living in Hawaiʻi - shipping can kill a good deal very quickly (and Amazon, while I'm at it, you know where I live - stop telling me that the item is free to ship when it isn't!).
There wasn't a racist tirade in the video posted by Gawker. Your facts are wrong.

The racist tirade was published by two completely different publications much later on by July 24, 2015. As far as I remember, by this point, Hogan had already been suing Gawker for releasing the sex tape for quite a while.
After 2 years of FP in Scala, I'm amazed to see at what lengths OOP engineers go to circumvent learning what monadic composition is (including reinventing it).

Go ahead guys, in another 6 months you'll reinvent the for comprehension! ;)
As it should. If you don't know that you know, do you really know?
GNU Astronomy Utilities is released
I don't have a large sample size but here's an interesting anecdote: India's largest phone manufacturer had to set up operations in Taiwan to buy fully functional phones, open them up and reassemble them in India: here's details + an interview where the CEO mentioned this story:
http://blog.shriphani.com/2016/05/26/the-lunacy-of-the-apple...

It is almost as if the nation has internalized its mediocrity and decision-making is overly focused on potential losses.
They actually did use violence.

If I set up a hidden camera in your shower, and post the results on youtube, most libertarians would agree that I have committed some sort violence against you or your property.

If instead, I pay someone else to set up hidden cameras in your shower, I have also helped commit violence against you.

Thats basically what Gawker did in this case.
Actually, the main point of the article was not really that Thiel had done something wrong. The point was that, given the average person's (not tech nerds, mind you) understanding of silicon valley's utopian dreams, the revelation of Thiel's secrecy is not going to look good. It's a matter of public opinion, whether or not that's fair. I agree, actually. I think big tech would be wise to put its money where its mouth is or face a public revolt.
Are there any sites that use grid systems? I can't think of any off the top of my head.
I think that's implied from the tagline "OwnCloud A safe home for all your data". And the Features page saying "Access, Sync and Share Your Data, Under Your Control!"

https://owncloud.org/features/
>there's still yet no factual…from which they should

Exactly, except not 'factual' but no valid reasoning to do so. From the essay:

"For there is no such Finis Ultimus [utmost aim] nor Summum Bonum [greatest good] as is spoken of in the books of the old Moral Philosophers." —Thomas Hobbes

"It [is] extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values… It is nowhere written that “the good” exists…" —Jean-Paul Sartre

"It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." —David Hume

>It IS the purchase from which moral statements gain any sort of coherent meaning at all (Since you value X, therefore you should Y).

No one is denying that humans use moral statements. It can be the meaning in Moral Nonrealism. It cannot be the meaning in Moral Realism. Here is why, again from the essay:

"In suggested approaches to morality, I am surprised to find authors moving from propositions with the usual copula ‘is’ (or ‘is not’) to ones that are connected by ‘ought’ (or ‘ought not’). This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the greatest consequence. For as this ‘ought’ (or ‘ought not’) expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be pointed out and explained; and at the same time a reason should be given, for how this new relation can be—inconceivably—a deduction from others that are entirely different from it. I am persuaded, that attention to this one small matter will let us see that the definitions of right and wrong are not based on the relations of objects nor can be perceived by reason." —David Hume

>I could similarly ask, "Whats so good about God's Nature"?

The limitation applies to a non supernatural/supramundane universe. Hence Hume declares the only possibility "The standard of Sentiments [Values] is ultimately derived from that Supreme Being, which bestowed on each being its peculiar nature, and arranged the several classes and orders of existence."
Downvotes for this?

I personally think that many who use the "cultural invasion" angle fail to realize that it often ends up being a two way street. In the US, not many people make a big deal when, say, a French film wins a US Academy Award (example: The Artist) or a French artist tops the US pop charts (example: Daft Punk). It's a global world, after all.

Perhaps there is some scope for protecting the uniqueness of individual cultures that might get lost in the global shuffle. But a lot of people happily stand up for this cause on their own, without any sort of political angle.

Now, the NSA snooping angle with American tech emphasized in the article, that's another story -- I see this as a legitimate concern for any foreign firm. America's spy agencies probably underestimate how much they've hurt American companies in this global world.
30% sourcing of products from India is a requirement to start single brand retail stores in India. The ban on import of used phones is with some other law.