skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They're so ineffective that they might as well not exist.

The only rules I've seen applied to lawyers with any regularity are those governing decorum (eg, don't be an ass in court) or client obligations (ie, don't be a shitty contractor) or those that are also criminal (eg, if you commit fraud, we'll yank your license too). Technology could do better there.

But to call out government surveillance or cyber warfare, which are both overseen by legal departments that work diligently to inventively authorize the acticity? Or dark patterns and data collection, where lawyers go through contortions to authorize it in "agreements"?

I would say all four of your chosen examples are more failings of lawyers than engineers. (Though both bear some responsibility.)

It just seems strange to suggest professional rules for engineers would've stopped something that clearly professional rules for lawyers did not.
Show HN: Python books to write great code
> Still makes me cringe thinking about it.

Probably because you are in a much better place now.

I have found that the propensity to lie is directly in proportion to one's [for the lack of a better word,] desperation. The less desperate I am, more ideology I tend to exhibit.
geometric algebra is one of my favorite-est things. for more info and history, check this out:

http://geometry.mrao.cam.ac.uk/
"Who are the most successful lawyers? Politicians"

The most public ones, sure. But not necessarily the most successful.
Why Having a More Mobile Friendly Website Is a Must in 2017
i think it uses bing's spell correction.
A little broad and opinionated at points I thought.

> diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment.

Could you work at a targeted advertising company or at resource extraction (eg mining)?

> Consider issues of physical disabilities, allocation of resources, economic disadvantage and other factors that can diminish access to the benefits of software.

Seems like some economic SJW stuff, and would you break your oath if you didn't add blind accessibility to your GUI?

> 3.03. Identify, define and address ethical, economic, cultural, legal and environmental issues related to work projects.

This seems way outside the scope of a developer, especially if we are speaking of technical and deep fields like health care or finance.

The rest isn't too bad. I often fear things are this would just be used to best people over the head that disagree with "best practices" in the industry or work in unfavored industries.
7 Convenient CI/CD Tools for Your Node.js Projects
That's because SoC companies for the most part simply never update the kernel. Whatever kernel they were using when the chip tapes out is the kernel they're still using when the products hit EOL. Wireless routers with Broadcom 802.11ac are all running a kernel branch from 2010.
It looks like he was fined for claiming to be an "engineer" when he is not a professional engineer. The whole "fined for questioning red light timing" seems like fake news.

http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/OR-Math-Jarlstrom-F...
Ask HN: Best tools to handle complex requirements writing?
Can anyone suggest free or paid tools that could handle complex business requirements creation. I am looking for something that could handle a complex domain where there could be many questions that could arise from the business requirements document. These questions would have to be reconciled before a proper specification could be created.
Unseen suffering is non-existent suffering. With no capacity for understanding what, if anything, another brain is experiencing, it's easy to rationalize and dismiss. That goes for fully formed humans as much as lab experiments.
> But preparing for an interview by cramming/studying material that is supposedly needed for the job makes no sense.

Usually people prepare for job interviews by cramming sorting algorithms, balanced trees, answers to questions like "why are manhole covers round?", and similar things unrelated to job.
Guinea pig?

J/k. I like "biot" that someone else mentioned.
Where didn't I mention children? :)

I've been run off the road, almost hit head-on and all sorts of other stupid shit that would have massive implications to my life and the life of my family from people texting + driving.

Hell, last month I got rear-ended by a state employee who was looking at her phone while stopped behind me and then struck my car during yield-merge.
Fix link to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZZEskrwc4w
Judging from the release notes of their other products, which I assume this will be based on, it relies on exploits, or having the phone unlocked. So if you run a patched google phone or an iphone, they get nothing.

http://www.cellebrite.com/Releases/MobileForensics/UFED6.1_R...

The device lists makes and models of Android phones they can access, and ones they can bypass the lock. I have to assume they are using exploits. Especially with the lack of similar lists for Apple.

What I have to wonder though, are they getting a special version of the product, or is the euphemism or a digital "breathalyzer" just a way of dodging the fact that they want to do warrant less digital forensics on people's devices?
Most companies aren't like Google. It makes sense for Google to encourage cramming on algorithms because the type of programmer Google does not need is one who "doesn't do algorithms" and so the cramming expectation filters against those. The type of programmer Google wants is one who can cram for algorithms in the sense that when there is a problem, the programmer can sit down and research algorithms and distinguish between them and perhaps even come up with a new twist.

The other day, I read a rant about an algorithms interview question at some big company (it might have been Google, but I'm not sure and it doesn't matter). Essentially the rant was that the candidate had been asked to implement an obscure version of some widely known and well described function that has O(n) time where all the standard and widely studied and likely to be crammed versions have O(n log n) time -- more or less the question was based on an algorithm of the sort that probably appears in a research journal or conference proceedings and no where else. Essentially, the question was uncrammable.

That's what makes it a great interview question. It identifies true genius when the candidate can figure it out on the fly. It identifies ordinary engineering talent when the candidate starts with what they know [an O(n log n) solution] and reasons from there (and perhaps asks for help!] and it identifies people candidates who are applying at Google because it is Google and not because they enjoy challenging problems.
I have no problem with the possibility that men and women are different. What's unjustified is, given the powerful effect of culture on behaviour, someone making offhand claims that they know what differences are natural.

I read "natural difference between men and women that are implicitly understood by people" as saying that what's "implicitly" (i.e. commonly) understood as to be the natural differences is correct. Because what has been "implicitly" understood has differed substantially across time and cultures, that's a highly suspect claim that requires a matching degree of evidence.

Furthermore, just the long and loud history of people spouting off absolute bullshit about what women are and aren't is, by itself, enough to demand significant evidence for any positive statements of what's natural or not.
The prisoner's dilemma can help bridge liberal and conservative differences
caught me, I am grumbling about net-neutrality and my inability to keep up with what is going on.

the tiff between fbi and apple[0] I see as woefully unresolved. and my concern is when I hear politicians discuss it I hear in my brain the following "we need silicon valley to give us tools, they are creative and smart and I'm sure they can do it" this is not unique to D or R I actually think I recall Hillary making a comment along those lines that I do not have time to track down right now. lastly what about ISPs having their new rights to our privacy [1][2], in regards to [2] there were many that sprouted some collectecting a few hundred thousand dollars... what became of them I do not know.

I suspect some agreement with apple will be reached, or worse which I am incapable of imagining. The government persists and I do not think the general populace has the vigilance to keep up. comments like "

comments like that of Eric Schmidt (I am paraphrasing) -- Those who are doing nothing wrong have nothing to hide.. I pulled an all nighter and see myself grumbling but I feel this is coherent enough for others to fill in blanks. I feel powerless to change the current state of affairs and the trajectory we are heading.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/17/inside-th...
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/senate-puts-isp-profit...
[2] https://www.gofundme.com/BuyCongressData
No. An example of a submachine gun is the ubiquitous H&K MP5 [0]. It cannot be easily purchased (legally) because it is a fully automatic weapon, meaning that it has a setting where pulling the trigger once can fire > 1 bullets, and it's less than 26 inches in length, classifying it as a short barreled rifle (SBR).

A MP5 can be legally owned, with a few caveats:

* It must have been manufactured and registered with the ATF as a machine gun prior to 1986. Guns meeting this criteria are fairly rare and very expensive. I don't know the price for a registered MP5, but I would guess > $20000.

* You must apply for and receive a special approval to purchase a machine gun.

* You must apply for and receive a special approval to purchase a SBR.

However, a variety of companies make semi-auto (one trigger pull = one bullet) MP5 clones that can be purchased more easily. Clones are sometimes built with an extended barrel so they are not considered a SBR and can be treated like any normal rifle. A common strategy is to hide the extra barrel beneath a fake non-functional suppressor [1]. Alternatively some are made as SBRs for people who are willing to get the SBR approval.

[0]: http://discovermilitary.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/mp5.j...

[1]: http://mfiap.com/images/F30028878.jpg
There has never really been a compelling scheme for a flat tax that solves the problem inherent to it -- that a flat tax hurts those with a lower ability-to-pay.
> I am sure the last time I wrote I did it as a novelty. I did it because I was penning down something that held a certain value to me or maybe I just thought that actually writing it down will make me feel more connected to it. Even as I type down the word “writing” the first thought that comes to my mind is actually typing on a keyboard. Whenever I have to write something down I use a KEYBOARD.

This honestly sounds like a humblebrag to me.

Typing on a keyboard is not a drop-in replacement for the act of writing by hand. It has very different effects on the brain and how it engages with what is being written.

If I'm working out difficult problems, in the early stages I much prefer a combination of doodling and handwriting over typing stuff on the computer. It actively engages the mind in a way the keyboard does not. Typing really only works best when the problem solution is already present semi-finished thoughts in my head and just needs to be fixated in external symbols, with a little bit of restructuring along the way.

Basically: I prefer handwriting for thinking, and typing for transcription.
You can achieve this for a few accounts with the Twitter API, but due to API limits, it is tough to get it done at scale and make a product out of it. There are creative ways of achieving this, though.

Point in case: take a look at how Nuzzle works for Twitter accounts. It is very close to what you are asking for.
it was probably just not on the books.
There could be a bias in the summary writers too, in that they prefer "he murders" and "she poisons" for the same method of killing.
Texting Robots on Mars Using Python, Flask, NASA APIs and Twilio MMS
Know your competitors' pricing – infograph from Media Lounge
As an engineer, I consider it my job to automate myself out of a job. It's a sisyphusian goal, but a healthy way to think about your duty to the company and leads to a good kind of laziness.
What's wrong with Lithuania?
I don't think the main advantage of this is switching databases. It's switching mindset.

Lots of developers think database first, then build on top of that. That's good for simple crud apps.

For complicated apps you should think domain or business problem first. Model your domain, make it good for reasoning about your business issues, and then afterwords think about persisting that to a database. You domain is your application core, database persistence is a technical issue outside of that core.
The Vanguard REIT's largest holding is Simon group, which owns a lot of malls. I don't think that REIT would be a good vehicle for shorting malls because there is so much else in it.
The law is the implementation, it's not morality at all. Absolutely immoral things can be legal and absolutely moral things can be illegal.
The bet I usually make about hardware vendors is that, since their core competency is hardware, in many cases software is an afterthought.

Not to pick on hardware companies. Nearly every type of company has a few select areas that they focus on, hire for, and are truly good at. With everything else, they do what it takes to get by. Not because they don't care but because it takes a concerted effort to develop your organization into one that has high competency in any particular area.
Day of Datomic (2016)
I have the same view as you and my security system is a dog and a pump action shotgun.
Real-life advanced uses of git
off topic slightly, your post comes across as serious, yet probably is not - the articles on your homepage are hilarious. well done
The Mac Pro: A Case for Expansion
There's no specific date mentioned, but the PDF does mention 'late summer' of this year.

Looks like they're about halfway along with preparing the graphite tiles for the next phase (4500 out of 8000).
My Heroku Values, by Adam Wiggins
still waititng for the media to turn on them ala uber. they do shitty stuff
> But what you're ignoring is the great number of bad things that lawyers don't do because either a) they are afraid of the professional consequences, b) they can get their clients to easily back off because they say, "professional ethics!" and people know it's a real thing, or c) they get disbarred and can't act as a lawyer any more.

Most lawyers don't do bad things because they're decent people. Ethics codes don't stop unethical behavior any more than laws stop crimes. There is some small percentage of the population who will shy away from a crime specifically because of the potential punishment, but most people wouldn't steal or murder regardless of the law. Ditto for lawyers.
Ok, so it's not very smart AI; emacs's eliza might do as good a job.

But setting aside the article's lack of technical rigor, and its scientism, the film itself is interesting. I was impressed by how the actors could convey feeling, even with a randomly generated script. I imagine that, in acting school, actors have to do this sort of thing as an exercise: learn how to convey feeling using random words or grunts (is this done?).

For me, it's interesting that there's another side to human communication that has nothing to do with verbal meaning. It sounds hard to do THAT using software.
The UK is (for now) part of the EU. If we believe the original article that it's illegal in the EU, then it's illegal in the UK (this is likely to be the case even after Brexit, judging by what is being said about the legal process). That doesn't always mean that action is taken, unfortunately. I also don't immediately find any EU laws about it (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getAllAnswers.do?referen... suggests that there wasn't any in 2011 and the new road-worthiness harmonisation only made it easier to detect)
Writing a Java compiler (not the full language, but a large subset including inheritance and polymorphism), writing a C++ game engine.

So much work involved. Very complex problems, needs a lot of theory but also practical knowledge. Needs good debugging skills. And endless amounts of time.
I disagree. Programming is the act of interacting with AI (the compiler) in language (code) detailed enough to specify what we want it to build for us. As tasks become abstracted to a single click or line of code, the programmer is free to work at higher levels of abstraction.
On the flip side, I don't feel there's anything wrong with people who use marijuana for recreational purposes, even if it's illegal.

The law is just that, the law, it has nothing to do with what's right or wrong.
Turgid.

Most applications copy a string from here and paste it over there. Input, processing, output. What we used to call data processing.

Add some defensive programming for sanity. Validation rules, "schemas", type systems.

Favor composition over inheritance, a useful programming language over "dynamic typing" (aka type hostile).

Extra credit for logging, monitoring, auditing, alerts, rolling deployments.

Life time victory achievement bonus award for setting breakpoints (debuggable) and easy reproduction steps.

---

Instafail if you use mappings (eg ORM), observer/listener, factories, singletons.
This series of epigrams is one of the best things I've read about building software products.
> Even having different boxing (the sport) categories for men and women could be construed as "sexism".

It absolutely is. And that's a good thing.

And boxing's weight classes are weight-ist. Also a good thing.
>Our Site:1 speakers are lovingly handcrafted. We make them one at a time, to our customer's desired spec, [...] If all goes smoothly, this process takes about six weeks.

>Amazon relentlessly pushed us to accept lead-times that were typically only four days, and sometimes demanded fulfillment of orders in as little as 24 hours--including delivery.

Amazon is not really an appropriate distribution platform for 6-week custom-made-to-order products. Maybe there's another well-known retail site that caters to that type of vendor but it certainly isn't Amazon (or Walmart).

One way for Princeton Audio to become compatible with Amazon's short lead times is to run some sophisticated projections (e.g. "demand planning") on the most likely customer combinations[1] and build an inventory of those ahead of time. (Sell semi-custom on Amazon with immediate delivery but fully custom on Princeton's own website with 6-week wait.) However, that requires a big capital investment -- and the hassles of managing inventory.

[1] PA's website shows 32 possible combinations (4 woods x 4 metals x 2 batteries) so maybe prebuild and sell only the most popular 3 configurations on Amazon.com

https://store.princeton-audio.com/products/site1-bluetooth-s...
I wouldn't expect amazon to be a good choice for a custom audio place.
Essence of calculus [video]
Just want to say this has absolutely nothing to do with the research I did for my senior thesis [0] which was quite popular on HN when I posted it a few years ago.

We never moved beyond the research / theory phase, which is admittedly frustrating, but we never intended to scam anyone.

That said, the idea of incentivizing routing is one I think about every day. In college I ran a successful business selling proxy servers, which opened my eyes to the unoptimized economics of small/medium scale IP transit. Major cloud providers are making a huge racket by charging for transfer rather than capacity. This presents an opportunity for a marketplace.

My next product is going to be a global L3 routing-fabric-as-a service with developer pluggable routing and filtering rules. I'm going to bootstrap it by offering outbound http proxies with hourly charging and an API. Then I will develop the more generalized routing fabric, with the eventual goal of creating a marketplace for bandwidth and routing.

If that piques anyone's interest, feel free to email me - address in profile.

[0] http://dedis.cs.yale.edu/dissent/papers/hotpets14-torpath-ab...
Our Site:1 speakers are lovingly handcrafted. We make them one at a time, to our customer's desired spec, using their preferred tonewoods, choice of hardware, as well as other unique customizations.

This doesn't sound like a good match for selling on Amazon -- Amazon seems more suited for products where you can ramp up production easily to meet demand. And I probably wouldn't buy a $450 handcrafted wood bluetooth speaker on Amazon, assuming that it's some cheap mass produced mess where the wood will delaminate in a year.
That's a copout. This bullshit is unacceptable and shouldn't be allowed.

The big companies are pushing down the gruntwork to these companies and setting performance standards that require unfair or otherwise unreasonable labor practices. DHL and Amazon know full well what their procurement standards mean. The contractor just exists to push accountability out.

You see the same thing in the auto industry... there was a Bloomberg article a few months ago about this topic. Honda runs well-administrated, safe factories in Alabama. The supplier a mile down the road gets some crazy SLA for delivering parts that results in cut corners. (http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/markets/inside-alabamas-auto-...)
At the edges of America, Blockbuster video stores still exist
I take issue with your third point. Libertarianism does not in any way mean you won't avail yourself of law enforcement if you've been the victim of a crime.

I'm not a cryptocurrency guy, but what exactly about them would someone involve law enforcement for?
Generalized-LL Parsing (2010) [pdf]
I'm not convinced that what the NSA/DOJ lawyers did here was unethical. One of a lawyer's roles is to answer the question: "Is what I'm about to do legal? On what grounds?" Here, they analyzed existing laws and determined an approach to doing mass surveillance that, they believed, would be legal.

They didn't build the surveillance system, nor did they pass the laws in the first place that would allow for such a system to be legally built.

Regarding the engineers here, it's not black and white. Looking at the ACM code of ethics, #1 is "Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest." Is building a mass surveillance system "in the public interest?" That's grey. My personal opinion is "no", but I can see the point of view of "Protecting my country from terrorists is in the public interest."

If we're going to look at the NSA surveillance systems, the first place to look is at the legislators. If we want to prevent the government from building such systems, step 0 is to make these systems illegal. That ripples down all the way through this: the lawyers' analysis would have come up negative instead of positive, and it's clearly not in the public interest to build systems that have been democratically-determined to be negative.
> I'm not sure picking one relatively odd member of a category and concluding that since it doesn't match in some aspects that the category doesn't exist is useful. To stay with the theme, you might encounter 24 Hours of LeMons[1] at some point, and I don't think that makes the idea of race cars invalid or useless (there's a reason I said a 70's Pinto might be acceptable).

Is Go an odd example then? What's a typical example? Better, out of the 10 or 20 most popular programming languages, which are "systems languages" and which are not? I genuinely don't know how to tell, other than maybe "no GC". As far as I can tell the term mainly just means "language I like".
So leaving aside the fact that tools for converting your handwriting into a font already exist. The way the Latin alphabet is typeset is really inimical to this. Arabic is a much better match, because the font shaping engines understand that letters have different forms in different parts of a word, and that the strokes need to align. Maybe you could do this with learning pairs and glyph substitutions, but I doubt many people are going to have the patience