skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I dont see a lot of Java/Pascal animosity, although as a full time Rubyist I could at least tip my hat at the arrogance. I'd say ObjC and Flash/Flex/Fusion are absent and would put the Ruby guys on their feet - simply because these guys (on average) make 20k more.
My son (about 8) just managed to walk a half mile across streets and traffic lights to the grocery store to buy lemons -- for lemonade.

Beyond the fact that he managed to overpay for the lemons, he came back safe, proud and happy.

Sign me up for worst father!
There's an interesting problem here. Any criminal accusations against him are going to be presumed false by virtually everybody. Imagine if he'd been arrested for possession of drugs. Would you believe that? No way. So he's pretty much alright to smuggle drugs, because if he gets caught it'll look so much like a setup that any jury will struggle to convict.
Bull. It's not about technology, it's about people.

Back in the 1960's, people had a fear that there was going to be this one big mainframe, attended to by a bunch of priests, that would rule the world. (See "Colossus, The Forbin Project")

Just a decade later, in Don Parker's 1976 book, "Crime By Computer",

http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Computer-Donn-B-Parker/dp/068415...

we see that the computer crime landscape is substantially the same as it is today. We see embezzlement, computers being used to create thousands of false insurance policies, data theft through timesharing terminals, physical attacks on computers, and concerns about privacy. The only thing that's missing is phishing... And this is just before microcomputers hit the market.

By early 1980's the "Cyberpunk" genre is established in science fiction and Niel Young sang "Computer Cowboy" on his album trans... We then knew the threat of computers was anarchy, not total government control.

The fact is, evil is in the heart of man. People are going to use whatever technology is available to do what they're going to do. Criminals use cars, air travel, and telephones every day. We can certainly close off certain avenues of technological attack, but as long as there is a motive, people are going find the opportunity to commit crimes.
I like how the only difference between Java and Ruby to a Lisp guy is Sarah Palin's boobs.
I noticed during a quick browse of several regions that there are far too many women on the site who are nowhere near ugly (I can't speak for the men, I'm afraid). This seems to indicate that there are many people in Britain (and probably elsewhere) who have a vastly inaccurate image of themselves.
Why do you believe service sector jobs are not "real jobs"?
The better map would represent this as a doubly linked circular list since pretty much any type of programmer considers the language they are most effective in to make them superior to every other sort of programmer.

I don't know what it is about programming as a profession, but something which ought to be humbling (have you ever created a bug-free program of any consequence?), produces a surprisingly large number of people who are insufferably arrogant out of all proportion to their accomplishments.

Or perhaps the arrogance is defensive, and is built around the fear of being found out as a fallible human being, not some godlike creator.
Frosmo - Bubble Greed tournament####
I am confused now. You just said:

"That's the thing you see. This man does not know better!"

- because

"If he knew better he would have been running a startup and laughing his way to the bank."

- That is make money. rather than

"This man is obsessed with one idea. Freedom." - that is dedicating himself to a principle.
It started out as a way to talk about events that were happening now. So, you'd more or less check into an event and be able to converse. Then, it turned into another twitter clone, where you could post what you were doing, listening too, whatever, and then you could have inline conversations about it. Nothing terribly exciting, but enough to get the attention of Facebook. I'm guessing this was all for talent and nothing more.
If you like this you should read "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado" - they go into greater depths of how to find a niche, how to pivot and how the general market forces work.
Small addition: you can't kill him because of this: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/wikileaks-insurance...

But anything that damages the man that can not be directly traced back to the source will do fine. In that case, the obvious choices are either possession of child porn or rape. And the first would be hard to pull off with a paranoid tech-savvy guy.

Which leaves accusing him of rape, which is the perfect crime to frame someone with, since you can take it all the way to court without a shred of physical evidence.

None of this excludes the possibility that he actually did it, but it is the perfect scenario for a frame-job.

Don't think it will come that far though. I would put my money on the following scenario:
1) Assange turns himself in.

2) He is led away in front of the cameras in an unnecessarily humiliating and public way, making him look like a criminal, which is a very powerful image.

3) The victim mysteriously disappears, making sure there will always be lingering doubts.

Damage done, operation successful. Even if it won't stop Assange, it will scare the crap out of anyone thinking of helping him.
Strategy and Tactics Make Dreams A Reality
Church plans Quran-burning event
One thing i have learned in my job is this; generally coincidences happen all the time. The real conspiracies etc. Are much much more infrequent.

Occams razor
Please read my comment carefully. I said the US government started a war that killed a million Iraqis. The sectarian violence of which you speak was not a significant issue before the war.

Your use of the word 'exterminated' makes it sound like you're arguing that the US is directly responsible for Muslims killing Muslims. Sorry if I misunderstood you.

You never answered my question though: how many of your friends and family would I have to kill before you turned to violent revenge?

This is quite obviously a rhetorical question. However, the answer is "not many", but randomly murdering people wouldn't be my response.

I also would like to see a source that says Israel intentionally attacked Lebanese civilians.
Or maybe it's "where we went right". Let's imagine a world where TCP/IP was encrypted. What consequences would this have? 1: it would have spread a lot slower. Effective encryption was VERY expensive 30 years ago. 2: The powers in charge would have been much less likely to let commercial interests and non-research institutions connect.

The most likely possibility in that environment? It may well have caused AOL to win. Remember, network effects are hugely important. Sure, the digerati would have accounts on compuserve or the Well, but they would have also have had an AOL account because everybody was on AOL.

I shudder.
It was just the characteristics of the organization. Lots of government, unions, and huge tasks. It was tough to make yourself useful at all times. Keep in mind I was a contractor at a government facility (a NASA project) with government employees as managers and zero profit incentive outside of keeping the government guys happy with our company. We're talking about multi-billion dollar projects - it's easy for a junior engineer (like me) to get lost in that environment.

Needless to say, I work much more since I jumped to the world of startups and freelancing, and am much happier for it.
Wow, isn't a "70-year gagging order" the most explicit cover-up possible?
I doubt that secretly classifying post-mortem examination reports is standard.
Snowclone search example
I'm sure that they would be really interested to know that, then. Can you provide citations for your claim?
Don't worry about the lines of code you write, I'm pretty sure even Dr Norvig can't write 50 of these per day: http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html
There was a reason that the Hutton report was seen as a whitewash by a very large number of people both inside and outside of the government.
To all those wondering why he was not framed for possessing child pornography instead, the answer is simple. In order to "catch" him with CP, it would have to be unencrypted. And anyone can see that the only plausible explanation for unencrypted child pornography in the possession of someone as paranoid and encryption-savvy as Assange, is that it was planted there deliberately.
>User education, or the lack of it. (Clutches head.) I have seen a computer that is probably safe for most users; it's called an iPad, and it's the digital equivalent of a fascist police state: if you try to do anything dodgy, you'll find that it's either impossible or very difficult.

I'd be interested to see some security studies that compare banking behavior on iOS/Android vs. desktop. I don't access financial data on my phone, but my impression is that the way these devices are designed to be used without much training makes it a lot easier for social engineering to succeed, which is the primary attack vector anyway.
I had a friend who used to install peep holes on doors. He would go door to door and try to sell his peep hole installation service.

Usually, he would get 2-3% of the houses he knocked on to buy his services. He would install the peep holes in 15 minutes and be off.

He later managed to get this 2-3% to 20%. What he did was revisited the houses that had refused his offer during the first time - and told them: so and so of your neighbour installed it. Would you want to install it too?

He later on bumped that 20% to an insane 90%! How? Got endorsement letters from the local fire houses. And from the homeowner's association.

The strategy teachers may call this the Bowling Pin strategy. He simply called it "saturating an area." And getting approvals from the influentials.
This method of using a wildcard and excluded term just occurred to me. (Admittedly it fails if the original word appears somewhere else.) Hope you like it.

If you have no idea what this is about, refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone
Because we assume he is innocent until found guilty. And because many powerful people want to get rid of him one way or another. This is not to say that he didn't do it, just that it's fairer to assume that he is innocent until conclusively proven otherwise.
I just don’t think there is any good evidence for this being a conspiracy. Hence crazy conspiracy theory. That’s all.

Just take a moment and think about what would be necessary to frame someone. That doesn’t seem like a simple task to me. We are talking about Swedish police and prosecutors here, police and prosecutors who know that they would be in the spotlight and under intense scrutiny the moment they decided to prosecute Assange. Sweden is not exactly known for its corrupt police and prosecutors, taking that route seems like a stretch.

How do you get two completely normal women (and not any random women, women which have some, however torturous, connection to Assange) to lie to the police? They, too, must know that they would be under intense scrutiny the moment they talked to the police. Lying to the police is no joke, it’s a crime. It’s also a risk for the briber. Who’s to say that one of those women doesn’t break under the intense scrutiny and reveal the conspiracy? If there ever is a trial it will be public and intense stress for the two women. They will also be evaluated, probably several times, by a psychologist. Those two women are not professionally trained super agents.
Even the paranoid have enemies.

And Assange has more enemies than most, both corporate and governmental.
Who Should Get A Life?
C++ and a Scheme dialect at work.

Mathematica for research.

SuperCollider for audio work.

Played around with Haskell, Lua, Python, Oz and Erlang for fun.
You're right, there's no reason to try to correct the 20% of the population that believes the Sun revolves around the Earth. It's a lost cause; you win.
I've been using Quickbooks Online since the days where it was IE only. It's a real accounting package that's been improving quickly, and that my accountants can use without issue.

Not gunna switch.
>My point: I think genuinely, unquestionably consenting sex is really a quite difficult standard to meet and there are many cases of less than ideal encounters where it ends up being a judgment call on the part of the woman as to a) how she views it in her own mind ("rape" or something else) and b) whether or not to publicly accuse/charge someone.

That's what I was primarily responding to. You don't say it directly, but you're using very weaselly language to suggest that in some cases it isn't a terrible thing to ignore a woman when she says no. You're not just 'putting out statistics.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks has a list of the most important leaks.
He had that sentiment already which is encouraging.
just to throw a cog in the "dirty trick" reasoning...why wouldn't they simply use child porn? it's a much more effective effective accusation for this sort of thing and much harder for outsiders to call bullshit on.
How would you prove there was no rape? Rape has always been the ideal smear, because typically nobody else is in the room. It's a classical. You can do nothing about it.
Only it’s more a presumption of conspiracy until proven otherwise. And there really isn’t a way of proving otherwise, any such proof will likely be dismissed as yet another part of the conspiracy.
@Ardit20:

What I was trying to say was that you can't fill a full glass. This man is too consumed by his work to get into another mental pathogen for a time long enough to commit a crime like this once, let alone twice. It's just too unlikely.

This is why most people won't understand him either and this is why this smear campaign will work. He is an outsider, an "other", trying to tell those sensible folks who "know" what's good for them that their most cherished beliefs might be null and void. Where do you think the pendulum will swing?

This is why I said that.

[edit: I just recalled that whenever I used to be under a lot of positive creative stress I didn't have the time to get into my suicidal thoughts. Those moments were like a barren, but safe and beautiful harbor for me.

He isn't like me, but the thing is that our brains can have only so much on consuming us running on our minds without a complete breakdown.]
Seconded. I've looked pretty closely and have found absolutely no evidence of any of that.
Yeah, groups in California tried to frame John Steinbeck for rape during the depression.
Womens Puma Ferraris Sandals,Puma Sandals,Womens Sandals
I was with you until '3'.
Clojure, concurrency and silver bullets (good comment thread)
A summary of Crossing the Chasm (a great book):

* All products are first adopted by Innovators, then Early Adopters, the Early Majority, the Late Majority, and finally Laggards. You may be an Early Adopter in one market (e.g. gadgets) but a Laggard in another (e.g. fashion).

* Disruptive products may do well with Innovators and Early Adopters, but the Early Majority is not willing to deal with a product that they don't understand (because it's not like another product they know).

* Happily, the Early Majority finds out about new products from the Early Adopters. So if you're building a disruptive product, you need to first make a critical mass of Early Adopters willing to recommend you to the Early Majority.

* To do this, he suggests that you make a "whole product" that addresses 100% of the needs of a particular niche (a "bowling pin"). The users in that niche will endure the pains of early-adoption in order to have 100% of their needs met (versus a generalized product that only meets, say, 80% of your needs). You will thus get happy Early Adopters in one niche.

* Then, you add the features you need to create a whole product for the next niche. As you succeed in each niche, you are not only improving your product, but you are collecting customer references in each niche. Eventually, if you have great customer references in a lot of niches, you can "cross the chasm" faced by all disruptive products by having enough overall customer references that the Early Majority will hear about and try your product.

* So, using this approach gives you two advantages. First, you have explicitly considered a bunch of niches and added features to make your product satisfy customer needs deeply. Second, you have a critical mass of customer references to "cross the chasm" to the mass market.

Here is an illustration: http://faculty.msb.edu/homak/homahelpsite/webhelp/Crossing_t...
Ask HN: HoyKeys for iPad - my new app
Hi, I've been doing some work recently on a new iPad app called HotKeys, it's a series of programmable shortcut buttons for any app. You can then share these key setups with friends. It's currently in review, I'd like to get some feedback from the community as to whether I've wasted my time or you think it's an ok idea.

The url is: http://hotkeys.gameweaver.com

Thanks
It would have to be planted in a way that it could not be proven to be planted.

Now I don't know Julian Assange personally, but I do know one dutch hacker that he hangs out with and if there is anybody that I'd be very wary of when pulling such tricks that would be the guy.
Hmm, I've just tried it. It has potential, but it's very slow and sluggish on my machine (quad).
Linux distribution popularity trends plotted
I think you were a little late to the party there, wikileaks has done a lot of stuff before the war related leaks.

That's when they started to get serious headwind from various governments though.
I think the others are more beautiful because of the people in them.

Like Justin Timberlake in #32.
They /can/ shoot him though. All it takes is an angry war widow who feels their life is forfeit without their partner. A little encouragement and the means to enact the murder and you have an assassin who cannot be traced back to you. But, he's simply not important enough to be assassinated. While the media coverage of him may make it seem like he is the bane of the American government, they have much more important things to worry about. This approach was perfected by the CIA during the cold war, but it has been a long time since someone in the public eye was important or dangerous enough to warrant an assassination.

The other problem I have with this is that rape is an awful way to frame someone. You need to condition someone to stand up to extreme amounts of interrogation and cross-examination. A single slip-up in memorization of facts can cost the entire case. It is not nearly as simple as "pay someone 10 million and have them say he raped them", we're talking about world class psychiatrists and world class lawyers, the victim needs an incredible amount of practice to be able to convince them that they are telling the truth. The American government has the NSA at their disposal, they could frame him a million ways and make it stick, they would not use a random swedish woman.

That is not to say that the American government isn't happy about it, nor that they aren't encouraging this story, nor that Assange did it, but this certainly isn't the work of the American government.
The library is complaining about not being able to find gcc. It'll still fall back to the pure-python code and work
properly. I made a release this morning to make that error message a less noisy debug message.

As for the blinking lights, rxvt based terminals like Terminal.app only support 4-bit color. I'll be making a 0.2 release soon to automatically downgrade colors for these types of terminals.
There is a type-system (and graph) encoding for JSON called JSYNC (http://jsync.org) which is compatible with YAML's model.
Hans Reiser was innocent until proven guilty too.
Sony Vaio E-Series VPCEA22EN in India
I don't understand how Jacques survived the 12 hour days for weeks on end? I go pretty stir-crazy when I work a 60 hour week and it's why I haven't started a startup. I'm not sure I would have it in me. Kudos.

I'm also wondering why he stuck around so long. To me the writing was on the wall that it wasn't going to work!
Feed news: Titlurile zilei 21 august 2010
That's what I was primarily responding to. You don't say it directly, but you're using very weaselly language to suggest that in some cases it isn't a terrible thing to ignore a woman when she says no. You're not just 'putting out statistics.'

No, not my point at all and I don't know how you are getting that. My point is that such situations are often not as cut and dried, black or white as people would like them to be. That doesn't make me an apologist and it isn't weasily language. It is just reality that life isn't always easily categorized.
JavaScript Grows a Mustache
Thanks for this excellent summary of the book. I'm involved in product development for a company and was taking some of the management claims on face value without really understanding "how" the product is going to sell!!! Shame on me!
Is Assange the target of a U.S. smear campaign?
I'm not sure that this is what jvdh had in mind, but any pure-heating device is by definition 100% inefficient. Any physical device which does work produces heat as well (well eventually. The energy may feed into other processes before it ends up as heat). A 100% efficient device is one that produces work equal to the amount of heat (I think - my thermodynamics is a little rusty). A pure heater produces heat without doing any work whatsoever with the energy.
The most efficient heating would be done either by a heat pump (backwards air conditioner), or by doing some work with it.

Your point about heating only the rooms required is quite true, though. portable heaters may be more efficient than other extant kinds of heater. One other disadvantage is that many of them are air heaters, and the human body is more sensitive to radiant heat than air temperature. (It feels a lot better to be warmed by the sun, than to breath warm air).

There are portable radiant heaters, though far less of them around than there used to be. I think people see them as less safe, which I guess they are.
Lobstertech: I couldn't help but be reminded of the fancy things we did with ANSI graphics in the BBS days. Merging the gif/jpg to ansi converter was very clever. This could make for some interesting terminal programs.
Please shoot me the details by email and I'll take a look - I've had a few others inquire as well and will let everyone know by the end of next week who I decided on.
Those who downvoted, and the other replies to this have missed the point.

I know what Wikileaks has done. None of it fits the description "fac[ing] the most powerful government in the world [and] uncover[ing] their lies" any more than the most banal of broadsheets does.
My experience with programming books
Ask HN: QA service?
Any recommendations for products/services available for automated web and API testing? I'd like to be able to setup a suite of automated tests to run run externally (outside of Rackspace) and report results via email, API, etc. Thanks!
I know, but mrleinad was specifically talking about Assange's dealings with the US so that's what I was asking about.
Am I just being screwed over with bad luck by where I live, or do the rest of you have trouble finding good programming books too?

And some suggestions of books would be nice too.
There are a lot of powerful groups who would prefer it if he were made incredible.

It's not proof, but there is a strong motive, so it's worth keeping the mind open to the possibility just in case.
Usability will effect retention and adoption rates - but overall doing a critical business function better or easier than their competitor - Quickbooks - will be the winning factor here. This means financial statements, tax planning and integration, and proactive alerting and real-time status. Branching out to integration with Freshbooks for invoicing and billing (as I believe they have done) along with multi-user, tiered accounting and HR integration (they do most of the accounting for small businesses), and resource planning.