skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Assuming you know something about digital snooping, and he doesn't know anything about privacy, you can figure out a lot about him, possibly even remotely access your computer and (if it has a webcam) take a picture and report everything to the police. You should talk to the police first (in fact, you should've the moment it was stolen), but explain that you know a lot about computers (most police don't have much in the way of computer security experts on staff, and they wouldn't waste their time on petty theft) and will be trying to find out more about this guy. They'll probably be glad for anything you might find, so long as it's well-documented and provable, and this kind of investigation should be admissible in court. There are reported cases of theft victims snapping pictures of thieves with their webcams and actually getting results.

If you feel bad for the guy, and assuming you find him, you can ask the cops to cut him a break if he gives evidence about the thief he bought it from. They will probably offer him this deal too, but since he already reached out to you, he will trust you more when it comes from you.
Dark, cool, quiet room with bright table lamp and coffee, plus snacks like cookies and chocolates.
But it doesn't cost Intel more to produce the high-end chip. In fact, maintaining two fabrication lines will cost more than producing a single chip and disabling the premium features. So I don't think "artificially increasing prices" applies here.
I'm genuinely curious - why do you find this to be a problem? Isn't the decision to upgrade (or not) completely up to you? How is this any different than enabling a feature set on a cisco router with a license key, or adding users to an exchange server. In both of those cases the systems are already capable of performing the function. Are you opposed to all of these classes of 'pay to enable' functionality?
The consensus today is that traditional semiconductor scaling is going to get iffy below 22nm for most devices. Flash is going to hit that limit first, because it's on the leading edge with component densities doubling every 12 months or so. No one knows what's going to happen at that point, but it seems like the most attractive option is 3D integration - building up, rather than out. All of today's chips consist of a single plane of transistors, connected by layers of metal wiring. It's possible to build multiple layers of transistors, but there are serious fabrication issues that haven't been solved yet.
Hmmm, sounds like it's going to be right before I launch my App. Might be a good way to get some feedback and meet other hackers.
I think this would require a new set of assumptions, a new social contract and the government would have to write new laws to accommodate it. Their would probably be a vigilant "free market-ism" backlash that would crush it all before it even got off the ground. This is assuming the press wouldn't ignore it all together and people are remotely educated enough to understand this "tech stuff" to care. I think their would need to be an extremely thought out tangible template that gets enough people on the side of the idea that it can persuade a large chunk of the "big business" eco-system that it's for the better and there's something in it for them. Otherwise, It will probably remain just that - an idea.
Because Hugh would be denying the café revenue if he occupied the table without a purchase or 'nursed' a coffee for an unreasonably long period of time.

Each table needs to earn $n each hour to keep the place in business. If you enjoy your neighbourhood café, you should do your part to add to that revenue as much as possible while you enjoy their services.
he's a criminal. he bought a stolen laptop (who buys a used computer without turning it on and exploring it a little to make sure things work? remember, he's smart enough to get your email, etc. he knows about computers and buying used computers).

contact your local police and explain the situation to them. ask if an officer can accompany you when you meet this person to receive your data (or whatever they think you should do...). you could then set up to meet in a public space and just have the police officer sitting somewhere nearby and then he'll walk over as your exchange takes place. i'm sure they can help with planning it all out and according to their policies...

if they turn you down for some bizarre reason (grumpy/lazy officer or receptionist maybe?) make sure to press the issue. make sure to walk in rather than just call. bring a copy of the email with you.

have a good one
I wrote it myself, drawing inspiration from the best parts of Symfony. I use Doctrine for ORM and database abstraction, and Smarty for templates instead of the raw PHP that Symfony uses. I also ditched Symfony's static file caching in favor of Smarty's. I kept basically the same YAML config structure from Symfony...no need to fix what wasn't broken.
Making It Big In Software: Google's Peter Norvig
Somewhat off-topic, but... This is a good time to point out the value of insurance.

For a few bucks a month, I pay my insurance company to cover my computers. For anything – theft, me being an idiot, accidental damage, whatever, they'll pay to replace it.

Whoever writes your homeowner's/renter's policy (you have a renter's policy, don't you?) can set you up with coverage for your laptop. A few bucks a month to replace what may be the most important, valuable tool you own is a no brainer.
Investing in China - even harder than it looks
Can't be bothered to create yet another account to comment, so here's my constructive criticism:

Why did you bother with the web interface for recording your statistics? Why not do it directly from the game?

Also, I think it might be more interesting to know which enemies caused the most deaths. Just saying that enemies caused the most deaths isn't very useful to anyone who has played any variants of Super Mario.
Experience with the iPad shows that you really, really don't want to use apps designed for a phone on a tablet. It's a stopgap measure at best, until apps are designed with that specific form-factor in mind.
Or 4chan. It seems those people love challenges like this.
how about "because your customers can't think of a use for flash drives over 16GB"
>> But when you buy this, it's perfectly functional, just artificially limited

Sadly this line reminds me of certain phones and media players
Wynncom Y23 Price @ Rs. 1895, Double Memory With Dual T-Flash Card Launched
Wynncom Y-23 is a Dual SIM handset with Dual T flash card that supports expandable memory up to 8GB (4GB + 4GB). This makes it easier for the user to transfer data from one memory card to the other by eliminating the process of taking the card out of the instrument and inserting another card. This unique feature is one of its kinds.
A very attractive and well justified rant. But others, with far more experience but much less aesthetic sense have been barking up that tree for 30 years.

In fact, it's thanks to the lousiness of the Unix shell that we have Perl and TCL, and their progeny, Python and Ruby.

People who need intellectual closure should try SCSH, which unifies the disparate worlds of procedure, builtin, operator, command, socket, file, pipe, process, thread and system call into one coherent construct: function.

http://www.scsh.net/index.html

Take a look at the manual as well. The quality of technical writing and presentation are the norm in that neck of the woods. Suckage shouldn't be the status-quo. Worse is not better. Evolve!
I would be stoked to attend this event, but I think that Startup Weekend may be scheduling an event in Vancouver at Bootup Labs that same weekend. http://vancouver.startupweekend.org
(It doesn't seem like they are marketing it very well, though. I only noticed because I had attended a Startup Weekend elsewhere, and have been following to see when it was coming to Vancouver)

Definitely keen on this type of event, and happy that the price is lower for this Hackathon than for the startupweekend.org event, but I've been waiting all summer for this type of event to come to Vancouver. And now we have two of them overlapping on the same weekend?
This is true in my case as a recent engineering graduate. The company that hired me also hired another recent grad and we haven't really been applying anything learned in school so much as general skills.
Yes. If you want to do tech, you want to be in the Bay Area.

However, rather than just blindly moving out West and hoping you'll find a job, I'd recommend that you apply to a bunch of jobs at the big tech companies out here (Google, Microsoft, Oracle, O'Reilly, etc.) Many of them are hiring right now, and if they like you, they may pay your moving costs. It's also much easier relocating when you have a large corporation with an organized HR department helping you. And you'll have a built-in social network through coworkers and their friends, instead of having to build up your network from scratch.

Then, when you've been out here for a couple of years and have a sense of what's going on and who you'd like to work with, you can look at jumping into or founding a startup.
Tennis is not about winning individual points, but about stringing points together to win games (and sets). I find that first-serve faults tend to happen a lot in the same game. I think employing this "two first-serves" strategy and double-faulting a few times in a game could cost you a break of serve and lose you the set. Winning more points on average over the course of the entire match doesn't necessarily help.
If it is an Apple laptop (time machine) then report the stolen serial number to the police and Apple. If he brings it in to be serviced then there is a chance of recovery.

Nothing good comes from the act of stealing. I could get see with food and basic survival items (much less so in the US where organizations will give people these things), but not with a luxury good like a laptop.
Actually, from my understanding, there's only a fee if you have it delivered over 3G.

If you transfer personal documents to your Kindle via Wi-Fi there is no
delivery fee. If you transfer personal documents to your Kindle via 3G
while inside the United States, the fee is $ .15 per megabyte.
When traveling outside the United States, a fee of $.99 per megabyte will apply.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
Lousiness of the unix shell? The shell is beautiful and useful and not in any way lousy. It's not supposed to be a programming language, in fact, the only places it's used as such are places where it's unreasonable to expect a system will have anything else (autoconf and friends).

When's the last time you used perl, tcl, python, ruby, or anything but the shell as an interactive prompt to invoke other programs?

If I may:

filter ()
{
read p && echo $p || exit
while read x; do
if [ `expr $x % $p` != 0 ]; then
echo $x
fi
done | filter
}
This is a good reminder for people to set an Open Firmware/EFI Password on their hardware.

If someone has physical access to your hardware then they can get access to all of your unencrypted data if they really want it. However, a firmware password would probably prevent someone from emailing you from your own account a couple of hours after they've stolen your laptop.

When the firmware password is set, your laptop will prompt for the password before booting from DVD, USB, or Firewire drive. It will also prevent booting into Single-User mode. You can set up a firmware password by using the Open Firmware Password.app in your Utilities folder.
There are evil things which are legal and illegal things which are not evil. Whether something is illegal or not doesn't effect whether it's bad. Only that there are a certain class of consequences involved.
I would say that "No" - without hesitation, is far more powerful than Yes. Yes is expected, yes is what happens very frequently. But when "No" comes, we are taken aback, offended, and potentially have life-changing modifications to our self-esteem.

"Yes" keeps things going as they are - because with every question comes an expectation of "Yes" - if the many single men afraid of approaching a woman are any indication, most frequently, when we ask a question we expect a positive response - the times when we expect a negative reaction, the questions don't get asked.

For that reason, "yes" is - in my opinion, which I feel could be substantiated by data - not nearly as powerful as the opposite, no.
if he's a competent criminal he'd offer to mail the hard drive not meet..........
What you lost when your laptop was stolen:

1. Privacy

2. Data

3. Hardware

I'd say those are in ranked order.

1. Your privacy in relation to the data on that laptop is gone.

2. He's offering to return the core data back to you. If your laptop is anything like mine, the value is in the data. You have a means to get it back, so get it back!

3. The hardware is fairly unimportant comparatively.

With that out of the way, the returning of your data to you will create an interesting dance between you and the purchaser of stolen goods.

If you just want the data clean and then to move on with your life, just do as the thief says, get your data and go buy another laptop.

If you want to turn up the volume on this, start thinking up methods of doing the data exchange that'll expose the thief's location. Here are my ideas, none the less:

1. The thief knows what time machine is and got your email out of your data. Based on this it seems a self installing lowjack.dmg on a keychain drive is unlikely to work. If discovered, you just lost all that data. You lose the moral high ground just by trying it.

2. Were you pulling any kind of network/voip log files into time machine regularly? Perhaps on start up your time machine would have pulled identifying information from the laptops new location.

3. Reddit style email header trace. That's really taking the gloves off.

If/when you are able to get the data, I have a suggestion and a story...

In college my girlfriend (now my wife) was a DC intern and had her cell phone stolen. Its been a while since it happened and some of this is likely embellished from re-telling. Back to the story...her reaction to this was to wait a day, call the cell phone and ask the person who answered if she could speak to the lady of the house. She got handed over to the thief's mother, who agreed to meet her in the park to return the cell phone. Telling no one about this, the next day she solo's into the park, gets her cell phone, has a heart to heart with the thief about stealing and returns to work.

This path of actions is, of course, insane (and awesome). The moral of the story though is IF you get the contact information, don't both with the thief because they've already said strait up that "Berating me for my actions is useless." Instead, give that thief something to answer for next Thanksgiving. Shame is often felt by proximity, so call in the mommy air strike.

Good luck. Be safe.
I don't know about the rest of you but I've thought about firing up LOIC just so I could say I fired up a Low-Orbit Ion Cannon. Who cares about DDoS-ing. :)
Why not go to the library? Many of them allow food (some even sell it!), and they are perfectly happy for you to stay there all day.
> "The person who stole it clearly needed it more than me."

Counterpoints that will be unpopular, but need to be said anyways:

1. "Needing" is no excuse for stealing, and that demeans all the people who BUST THEIR ASS to get out of poverty. If the thief is not working 12 hours per day and living on bare necessities, they have no excuse, and being even mildly sympathetic to their plight is bad for everyone, most especially poor people. NEVER pardon stealing, ESPECIALLY from another individual. Condoning ANY stealing is terrible - thieves are far more likely to steal near them, which will be from other needy people, thus making their poverty worse. Never condone a criminal's behavior, especially and above all street crime.

> Find out why he needs it. I doubt it's so he can watch YouTube videos, based on his email. You can buy a cheap desktop (or even laptop) for a few hundred dollars. Offer to trade a crappy computer for yours.

2. This could very well be another scam or attempt to rob MORE (the person has already demonstrated that they have no integrity and will steal from people), and you're encouraging the original poster to walk into the lion's den and potentially risk getting robbed or ripped off even more. This is crazy, reckless, and dangerous for the OP.

> After all, giving him a computer could change his life.

It's a THIEF, dude. You can get a used computer for a few hundred dollars, that's like a week worth of saving at the most low quality minimum wage job. Work 80 hours for a couple weeks and use the money to buy a computer. Some of us do stuff like that to get out of povery. God, this smug "crime is okay because they need it" crap among upper middle class people is awful, it makes me sick to my stomach. NO, committing street crime is NOT okay, EVER. There's ALWAYS another way.
hey we need to do a better job of promoting it too, I'll work on that (-danielle @ twilio)
Facebook Places Rolled Out in the UK
Well, that's one of the more interesting things I've read recently.

Hopefully it'll work better than attempts at rabbit control in Australia.
Hey it's Darius! :-)

Younglings, gather around this man and help yourself to his stash. He knows how to have a good time:

http://wry.me/~darius/

I can spend hours on that site and always be delighted.

(totally off-topic, I know, but you don't need an occasion to appreciate the awesome! :-)
It took me about 20 minutes to google all of the terms in your response and figure out why this is really important, but I feel like I might actually get some of this this now and feel the excitement.

Thanks for this as the paper itself was more or less unapproachable for me. Biohacking still seems to me like this great big unexplored space filled with new terms and exciting ideas that I'm just beginning to get acquainted with.
That was more interesting because nobody was really sure as to whether or not you had to answer those questions. Turns out you don't.

This is silly, though, because there is little point in bringing down a website that nobody visits. If a tree falls in the forest...
And this lens is likely to be f5.6 or slower - it's a lot easier to make a 35mm f5.6 design than a modern f1.2 !
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Because it implies that I'm "licensing" the blob of engraved silicon sitting in my computer. How long until we're just "licensing" everything?
I use the library a lot, but in a weird way I actually find it quieter in a coffee shop. Libraries are mostly quiet, but the one group of gossiping people pretending to study becomes that much more annoying since you can make out every word. Background noise in a coffee shop is more ambient and generally constant. I also don't get outraged when I hear someone speaking since they aren't breaking a rule or making me think they never saw the episode of sesame street where kids learn to be quiet in the library.
Not exactly original, but well written.

And the choice of words in the title is irrelevant! It doesn't even make sense to argue about the "power" of a word, without a useful definition of power. So don't!

The discussion so far falls squarely under http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-i-stopped-reading-hn/
Earplugs are definitely a simple solution, but have the drawback of not being highly visible to people around you.

When I need to concentrate, I wear my big Sennheiser headphones - often not even plugged into an audio source.

They are very comfortable for long periods, block out most of the noise, and (best of all) they send a clear "do not disturb" message to anyone thinking of interrupting.
I think the point was to introduce the reader to small functions and lazy lists, not to perfect numbers.
To expand; System Preferences > Time Machine will tell you time of last backup, date of oldest backup, etc. You email address will be in the Account settings of Mail (Preferences > Accounts)

Also available are - your home address and phone number (in Address Book, he'll already know your name from Mail), saved passwords in FireFox (stored as plain text), iTunes account if you've set it to save your password, and websites where you've set 'Remember Me' (GMail and the like) etc

Luckily for you this person seems to have some degree of respect for your data, and hopefully your privacy. If you're not happy with their access to this, it seems they have more leverage over you than you do over them.

Protip: In OSX you can set it to require login password after a certain timeout, eg 1 hour. It's under System Preferences > Security > General
act all nice about it, and figure out some way to find out who he is, then fuck up his life.
I 100% certainly see your point.

I don't mean to condone it, I'm just looking for a way for him to get his computer back. By understanding the persons motives, he can figure out the best way to do it. (In this case, it doesn't seem to be about money. $100 for the laptop and the name of the person who stole it, like other comments suggested, isn't going to work.)

If there was a way for him to just get it back and get justice, I'd say go for it. I just feel this is a more realistic approach.

And if he gets it back this way, and happens to help someone out along the way? Good. This person did pay for the computer; he just paid the wrong person. And the fact that he was willing to buy a hard drive probably means there's more to it than money.

There's an interesting article on the top of HN right now called "The Most Powerful Word In The Human Vocabulary: Perspective" (http://blog.sokanu.com/the-most-powerful-word-in-the-human-v...). The point I was trying to make basically boils down to that.

Or maybe I've just seen too many sappy movies about the kid from the other side of the tracks getting a second chance.

[Edit: I completely reworked this post, after thinking about it a bit more]
We couldn't think of a use for hard drives over 500MB a while back, too.
Where's the crushing?
This is going to be heavily debated, of course, but mine is: thanks.

I live for when people say thanks.
This is a very good point. Thanks is one of the most underrated words we have. So few people understand how much impact a simple word like that can have.
Thank you so much for those kind words, I really appreciate it.