skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
reading the comments in this thread is a little depressing, and reminds me why the army has their own justice system. we as safe citizens, protected by these very soldiers, want to scrutinize and analyze and put every move under a microscope to ensure it meets our concept of right and wrong and decency.

Guess what. Mistakes will happen. War is war, and it is inherently already not particularly moral. We reap the benefits in security, and wish to tear people down when mistakes are inevitably made... If soldiers were tried by civil courts I can see things getting just as bad as the private sector, where liability laws and their effects are suffocating and nobody can move for fear of a civil suit.

Put another way, we send these boys- kids my age, people much like myself- into a pressure cooker with their lives at risk. We ask them to sweat and fight and sufferand die all on our behalf, and they do so. Then we want to punish the ones who aren't perfect and make a mistake. That's right, go on and punish a man sent there for you and by you who did his best for all of you. Then come back and tell me how you can sleep at night.
My main complaint about curl is that it prints a bunch of crap (well, statistics technically) to stderr by default. Especially for something claimed to be (at least in this article) "traditional unix style", that seems undesirable.

It's annoying when I do 'curl $URL | less' and end up with garbage in my pager that I have to scroll around a bit to make disappear.

It seems like default behavior should be more like 'curl -s -S' -- silent, but print errors if they occur, just like...well, every other sensible command-line tool in the world (so that's what I have curl aliased to).

wget of course prints statistics too, but it's not such "pipe-oriented" tool, as the author points out, so this isn't as big of a deal.
Same assessment here as a former soldier. The first piece is debatable. I clearly saw an RPG and a personal weapon, and to be honest, unless the cameraman was ID'd, I would be 50/50 on that.

I don't know the tactical situation, but it looks like they were providing aerial cover for a convoy of some sort, since that's who they keep chatting with. This was quite possibly an ambush in it's very early stages. While disturbing (welcome to war) I don't think that the actions of the crew where unbecoming at that point.

I did however have an issue with the destruction of the van. There were no weapons visible, it was clear that they were collecting bodies for transport/medical attention. Any perceived or real threat to the convoy was at that time neutralized, and there was no need to fire.

Doing so clearly violated the Geneva conventions and the US Army's ROE. Both apache crews should be charged with murder, and the authorizing officer should be charged with some lesser charge for not confirming the intended target.
Not in our name.
The user would have to be aware of streaming audio. Also, as stated elsewhere in this thread, apps don't normally run in the background on Android either. I'm curious what app you believe killed your battery life in the background? That sounds... unusual.
Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.
That seems like an enormous number given that about 4,800 US soldiers died in the same time period. At about 250,000 US troops in Iraq, that would imply about 7,200 journalists total in-country, assuming an equal proportion of journalists killed.

In fact, there were about 220 "embedded" journalists in 2007 [1]. Certainly, there were a lot of journalists not associated with the US Army, but, still, the conclusion seems to be that being a journalist in Iraq is far more dangerous than being an American soldier in Iraq.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10...
If they announce multitasking for 3rd party apps, it's gonna put a really entertaining new twist on this discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1240171 :-)
Great resource. I've already found some stuff I've been looking for for a while.
That's why closures are a poor man's objects. :-)
Watching Will It Blend videos feels almost like watching Bob Ross paint happy little trees...
Also,

A lot of conversation around data sets happens on Google groups such as "Get the info"

http://groups.google.com/group/get-theinfo
yes - it's good! i kind of wish it were longer.
One solution is auto-responder SMS coupons. Walk by Starbucks, see instructions in the window to text them for an instant coupon, do it!

I'm building a platform for this right now. Obviously it's not rocket science, and something like the blog mentions would be much better.
no, this is a course that's mostly for non-CS majors who want to learn some programming for their research (e.g., computational biologists, economists, physicists).
The Stray Space
These things couldn't get more stupid. Why not do a "will it help" site and give that $500 to where it does some good.
Price elasticity testing is one of the simplest, and most profitable experiments you can run in an A/B testing engine:

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conver...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
Joran, taking breaks and letting work go is extremely necessary. Your marginal production and happiness begin to severely decline and you end up just burning yourself out.

You can put in 2 days of straight, solid work and get half as much done (and be much more unhappy) than if you take a day off, check back into the real world, then work the next day, for example.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"
> It was in Bush's clear interest make the economy appear to be strong in spite of the war and the resulting extremely high gas prices.

Yet he did nothing, except that he did (see below), and what he did was counter to the above claim.

> The question we need to ask is, why were there initial calls to attend to the GSEs in 1999, 2000, 2001 but none after? I'd argue that it's because a) the extent of the problem was realized and those in power figured they'd let another president deal with it, b) those in power wanted to focus on their own agenda which didn't involve cleaning up the GSEs, or c) both.

You're forgetting Bush's bid in 2003 and McCain's bid in 2005. (The 2005 bill was actually considered in 2006.) So much for the "none after" theory. (Google "2005 mccain fannie freddie")

The evidence suggests that neither of the above theories was a major factor, that the driving factor was that every effort to deal with GSEs showed that it was an unwinnable fight. The populists wanted folks to get mortgages even if they couldn't afford them.

FWIW, during their brief tenure in the senate, Senators Obama and Clinton got more money from Fannie and Freddie than the chairmen of the relevant committees. In fact, their totals (over their entire tenure) were approaching the totals of those chairmen, even though the chairmen had been getting such donations for decades longer.
Watch out if you are on youtube html5 beta with Safari. I got black screen followed by some number of deafening pops from my speakers.

Edit:

Aw, dead link. There were a couple interesting tidbits. Several blows in to folding the iPad, with the screen glass shattered it brought up the on screen keyboard, sort of the digital version of "Wait! Can we talk about this?"

Also the force required to bend once it started was significantly lower than the initial force. The considerable initial stiffness comes from construction, not masses of materials.

Oh well, just talking to the dead here.
You can't be serious.

That guy is a sadic. It's OK to be scared. It's OK to confuse a camera with a gun, and shoot before discovering that it really was a weapon the hard way. That shit happens at war.

But aiming a severely wounded guy, begging him to take a weapon so he can shoot without permission it's sadistic. That guy is a sadic. Now we can discuss if he was born sadic or just the result of careful training, but it's hard to deny, watching the video and hearing the conversations that he wanted to shoot, and was having fun, the kind of fun a hunter feels.

Of course the US Goverment, the Army, whoever, is to blame because covering the thing up. But that soldier is a murderer, no question about that.
>killing unarmed people helping wounded is murder, it is out of moral and military code of any legal combat group

I'm not so sure that's true. According to the Hague and Geneva Conventions medical personal are off limits, but are supposed to be identified as such. If the people who jumped out of the van had medical personnel markings, they wouldn't have been attacked.

Instead they were presumed to be members of the same un-uniformed militia which is common in Iraq (as I understand it).

That's not political BS, that's just how war works. War is terrible and should be reserved for the defense of our nation, not these pseudo war escapades across the world that we have now.
iPad wifi connectivity problems
Can you explain the meaning of your statement? Do you mean that the distributed system guys are a lot smarter than the average person?
Rails != Ruby. Play (http://www.playframework.org) successfully replicates the Rails experience in Java (finally).

What Rails did was introduce a new way of thinking about pragmatic approaches to developing CRUD web apps. While ruby apologists (I once was one!) will argue that Rails couldn't have existed without Ruby, that's simply not the case. Rails was just there first...a trailblazer. But Rails could've been written in perl, python, or even, as Play shows, Java.
co and ci are the old RCS commands, and they're why you can do "cvs co" and "cvs ci" with CVS.
Well in the long run, it IS a zero sum game. A stock is valued higher only if someone wants your stock. If no one is interested in buying your stock and you try to sell it, its value will be zero. Also, if everyone holding a certain stock starts selling it, in the end the value will drop down back to zero. So everything earned by someone is lost by someone else. The only real earnings which you get by owning the stock is the dividend which the company pays out.
Obvious Prediction: All the people that have been vehemently defending Apple's lack of multitasking will very smoothly switch to extolling the virtues of this new feature, and how its way better than Android/BB/whatever.
At a certain point, you have to admit you aren’t good enough to do something better than an expert could do it even if the technical option exists for you to give it a shot anyway.

While people will tolerate a lot of things, what we want is beautiful food that looks good. There aren’t many nonexperts who can accomplish that. Expertise needs schooling, maturation, taste, and quite a lot of attitude.

The foregoing explains why home cooks have nothing to teach experienced chefs or indeed any artistic creators, since talent doesn’t scale as you give more and more cooks access to the pots and stoves in their own kitchens. It further explains why one’s inability to eat this (beautiful gourmet meal behind glass at a museum) means precisely nothing. Nobody needs to taste a gourmet meal to enjoy looking at it, except those who have no capacity for enjoyment other than eating and complaining about same.

This was the weekend those of us with high standards lost their remaining residue of patience for ideologues who hyperbolize about homemade food without actually creating something people want to look at.
Top 20 most promising startups (Reuters)
Yes, but if you allow a banking system collapse of the 1930s style to happen because you're unwilling to bail out "greedy", "evil", [fill in the blank], startups aren't going to save you.
I've been collecting a few myself

http://datavis.slinkset.com/
--post-* is pretty sensible for POST. Unfortunately wget doesn't do PUT or DELETE.
Particularly clever readers will note the statement that people will tolerate a lot of things but want beautiful things that work well. We also want world peace. Maybe we don’t have it, but do you dispute we want it?
It's a shame they couldn't release the iPads with 4.0 on them because many of the non-technical people won't realize there's an update or no how to update it. Though I guess last time they did an update along with a major device release (iPhone 3G) it was pretty disastrous because of all the hits on their OS and activation servers. Maybe they should have not required iPads to activate via iTunes.
Apple vs Microsoft - Can elephants dance?
People who defend single-tasking do so because multitasking can cause problems w/r/t memory, performance, and battery life. If Apple releases a solution that doesn't suffer from those issues, there's absolutely nothing wrong with "extolling the virtues" of multitasking.

My money's on some sort of limited form of multitasking, where apps can launch background processes or something like that.
Could be like copy & paste, I didn't know what I was missing really. Didn't think I'd use it and I find myself using it a lot now that it's there.
Supertaskers: Multitasking Easy for 2.5% of Study Participants
vis studio 2010, finally
The Steampunk Workshop just published a defense of their Creative Commons status today. Coincidence? Well, maybe, but it's right on-topic. http://steampunkworkshop.com/steampunk-strat-and-creative-co...

OS X and that awesome guitar wouldn't exist without open source.
The iPad this, the iPad that. Blah blah. But, 'Will it blend?' Oh yes
Are the press creating a significant part of the iPad Buzz?
Just a ping: ordered. We shall see.
Except that it's not war. It's a unilateral occupation.
If you are talking about the intrinsic value of your company's stock increasing, then it's definitely not a zero sum game. But they do pay out part of their profits (intrinsic value gains) as dividend. If we consider just the stock price fluctuations due to demand/supply (and no changes in the intrinsic value), then it is a zero sum game.
Obvious Prediction: people who can't see the difference between a claimed feature and a feature that is designed and works well will continue to be mystified by people who reject claimed features and acknowledge only features that are designed and work well.
This is just the announcement, isn't it? The OS probably comes out with the next phone around June.
Open = 3rd Party Parity with in-house

Good point. I still remember a lot of Microsoft shenanigans along these lines.
I'm disappointed that this was killed.
Building Web Apps on MongoDB [audio]
I agree. My post explicitly says that.
I can verify, anecdotally. A friend of mine got a full time offer from Google a couple months ago and accepted right away. He's been told won't find out his team until just before starting in June (or July?).
Dam, I can't believe I got suckered into visiting that site again. DED from Roughly Drafted is a rabid, frothing at the mouth fanboy who does Apple no favours. He's demonstrated in the past (in a heated exchange of words with me) that his grasp on real world business computing needs and technology, beyond the confines of his bedroom leave a lot to be desired. I'd advise you not to pay any attention to anything he has to say.
> Why doesn't the helicopter have the ability to shoot non-lethal rounds in this kind of situation?

Even if it did, I'm pretty sure the lethal kind are called for when you see an RPG pointed at you. We know it wasn't one now, but if it had been me in that helicopter? I doubt I would have chosen non-lethal.
Don't want your iPad? Just do this to it: http://youtube.com/v/lAl28d6tbko

Best iPad demo this week!
Ha! I made the candidate so nervous he peed in his pants! No way were we going to hire him after that!

I don't think I was particularly harsh. Just wanted to see what it would take to make them cry. Because that's exactly the kind of people we are looking for at Google. Because it mirrors the work environment so well!

High-five to me!
Well, not everyone agrees on the definition of multi-tasking. As a consumer, interleaving of processes seems quite adequate to me (i.e. no apps running in the background; apps are suspended on minimize), but an app developer may not agree.

I suspect that multitasking support, if introduced will be of the interleaved type- Apple's stance on true background apps being battery killers seems sensible to me.

But then, you never know: with the newer iPad style batteries, they might even pull it off! (I still doubt it, though, since that sort of OS update won't work on older iPhones)
> clearly unarmed

Even "collateralmurder.com" says the men are carrying "something that might be a weapon" and "what appears to be a weapon" and that site is hardly unbiased.
Support large repositories.
Think of it not as a computer, but a tuner for the interwebs. If it can display a full-screen MKV HD stream, with room to spare, is programmable, and it can talk to the control-channel on the HDMI inputs, it's hard to imagine what should come about that would render it obsolete.
I agree with a lot of your points - except there is no such thing as a non-lethal round fired from a helicopter. Any material you shoot at people at that velocity will kill them, and the velocity you need to make it non-lethal would be too low for any accuracy from that height. I did some work on non-lethal rounds and they need to be fired from an underpowered shotgun or grenade launcher to be slow enough not to kill people.

What really would help is better cameras. If the gunner had better resolution and zoom, he would have clearly seen it wasn't an RPG. If we give these guys the power to be judge, jury, and executioner, we also need to give them the senses to make an informed decision. That technology is possible and just like uparmored HUMVEES for whatever reason it is not available to these guys and innocent people died because
of it.

But hey, lets go back to the broader generalizing on the state of US society and the blood-thirstyness of its troops because after all, it is the internet.
The System Administrators' Code of Ethics
I agree that the shooting of the van was unequivocally wrong and, possibly, murder.

People commenting, though, need to remember a couple of points; they are sat at home viewing this on big monitors under no pressure. In reality that was viewed on a small screen under the pressure of war fuelled on adrenaline.

I can see how the first attack could be considered simply a tragic mistake. Also there is probably little chance they would have spotted the kids in the van. Regardless the attack on the van was utterly unprovoked - I wouldn't call it totally malicious but a mistaken, adrenaline driven, undisciplined and rushed attack. He wanted to shoot it and didn't take the necessary pains to decide if it was a threat or not (clearly, it was not).

Someone should be held very responsible for this.

However I also feel Wikileaks have milked some aspects of the video. I would much prefer to have seen the shortened version without the "heart strings" introduction etc. I believe doing that actually takes away from the impact of the video - show us what happened first, then do the dedications.
While of course there are limits to how fast you can get back to candidates, you should know that from "we'd like to schedule a first-round interview" to "we do/don't have a position for you", Microsoft is about 5 times faster than you, and Amazon is about 15 times faster. That's the case for or internships, anyway, to which my experience is limited. I've heard it's pretty much the same story for full time positions.
Pfizer too big to nail
Also,
http://delicious.com/popular/datasets
What's to agree on? You either have multiple, concurrent tasks or you do not.
At 4:20 one of them says, "We had a guy shooting" even though clearly no one is shooting at the time. What's up with that?
Only if you went to the 'right' school or previously worked for the 'right' company.

There are a lot of screens prior to a human reading your resume, and without a recommendation, you have a slim chance of a callback.
If Chinese income rises to the point where its middle class can afford to buy American products, I fully expect a lot of manufacturing to be coming back onto this side of the ocean.
Right, because photo stills from "collateralmurder.com" are intended to convey the ease of identification from a moving helicopter during a live situation? There are other form factors for RPGs:

http://world.guns.ru/grenade/rpg22-2.jpg

http://world.guns.ru/grenade/rpg26-1.jpg

http://world.guns.ru/grenade/rshg2-1.jpg

I wouldn't want to be wrong on the fly about whether it was an RPG or a black telephoto barrel that's sticking around the corner aiming at my crew. Presumably I'd use other cues to help decide.

The site leaves out stills showing the key decision-triggering factor - surreptitious behavioral cues. Here is one they left out:

http://imgur.com/PjolB.jpg

The site talks about the cameraman shooting a picture of "whatever is occurring further down the street" but the video, even in slow replay (that the airmen didn't have in the moment), suggests the man is taking cover then popping out to aim at the helicopter. The man appears to "engage" the helicopter. Thinking in context of 2007, that was incredibly dumb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0#t=4m14s

Want a picture of an American chopper while you're walking in a hostile zone with militia carrying what even "collateralmurder.com" admits "might be a weapon" and "appears to be a weapon" -- ok, stand in the middle of the street with your camera, wave your obvious press card while wearing your obvious press jacket, and take your picture. Don't duck around corners then share the intel with your gun carrying group.

Troops made a call about the RPG vs camera (though certainly doesn't look like a white Canon lens as shown in the website, looks black, and that tube and the way he aims it sure looks like bazooka or anti-tank RPG considering troops can't see around the corner). After that judgment call was based on behavior more than identifying the weapon, what happened after that could have been interpreted as combatants feigning nonchalance until their next chance to ambush from behind cover.

Even assuming it's an unmarked photographer, presence of a war correspondent in a hostile zone does not mean the armed men with him are not combatants, that they should be immune from attack, or that they should be free to wander around armed studying long distance photo intel of their enemy to better plan an ambush.
You might be interested in ask.metafilter's discussion on the practice:
http://ask.metafilter.com/15638/Whats-the-deal-with-cord-blo...
I don't think you've been following the conversation very well. When people bring up the iPhone's lack of multitasking (I've done this often in the past), most people will not say something reasonable like "Yes, you're right. It's a weakness of the platform that they should address". No, most of the time its a story about how lack of multitasking is GOOD and how the other platforms are bad for offering it, how users are too stupid to use it etc.

This is one way in which I can tell apart people that like Apple products (ie, me) and fanboys (ie, those who think Apple products are perfection)
Go to Stanford or MIT. I know that may sound flippant, but my understanding is that Google really does have a very strong preference for hiring from big-name schools.
Don't forget too that this was right around the high point of violence in Iraq not long after the surge started. It's likely the Apaches and the Bradleys were part of a coordinated clearance operation not a convoy.

I definitely saw cameras with telephoto lenses in the video, but I also saw a weapon as well.

I'm glad the video was released, but it should have been released raw and without all of the markup and commentary.
Do they have a non-YouTube link with the original video they have to see its quality? I'd be interested to see if the Apache gunner has that quality of video when making decisions or if it was clearer for them. It would seem that a better video camera that showed the gunner more clearly what they were holding could have avoided this whole incident, but the fuzziness may be an artifact of YouTube itself.