skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Note: I am not in law enforcement, just going by my instinct here. Observe:

> I am offering to back up to 160 gigs to another hard drive. There is only about 240 gigs worth of information. I see that you have backed up most everything using time machine. If there is anything smaller like 4, 8, or 10 gigs worth I can do that faster to DVDs or flash drives. I would have to buy another hard drive to get you the 160 gigs. Which i would if you need the info.

This combined with the supposed very quick rapid sale of the laptop has me suspicious - I would bet it's the original thief emailing you. Since he mentions time machine right away and found your email quickly - this is a computer sophisticated person, who possibly has done this before. "Berating me for my actions is useless" is also well written English. This is not a run of the mill stupid person. You're likely dealing with someone intelligent with very bad intentions.

I'd be scared now if running into another scam - I'm guessing, again I'm not in LE, but I'm guessing that the offer to buy a hard drive and back up for you will ask of you cash to be sent to a Paypal or Western Union or something, that you'll never see again, nor your data.

> what would you do?

First, pause and reflect. You don't need to hurry, it's more important you don't do anything stupid.

Second, get law enforcement involved. Now, I had my car window smashed once and had a bunch of stuff grabbed when I lived in a bad neighborhood, they took my stereo and cigarettes. Police are good people, but they tend to realize there's not much they can do about something like this, and they have limited resources. So, think about how to approach the police to get them interested - maybe talk to a computer crimes person online who would be interested in helping out, and get all the information you can. If this is a scam or a common thing (again, my intuition says so), then the police will be a lot more interested. Maybe you can put a sting together and get your computer back and/or put this bastard in jail.

I think your next two steps should be contacting people online who deal with this sort of thing, and contacting local law enforcement. Maybe the FBI would be interested actually, if you find the right agent and ask if this looks like a pattern/regular thing. Police love to catch and lock up repeat offenders, especially sophisticated ones.

Contact a lot of people - people tend to be sympathetic to when crime happens, and hate criminals. Whatever you do, don't contact this person on your own before consulting experts on the matter and law enforcement. It puts you in harm's way. Whatever you do, don't meet them or send any money or resources before contacting experts and law enforcement. Good luck and sorry this happened to you.
Actually you bring up a good point where it's much better for the consumer because mobiles are so hard to upgrade. Joe consumer can buy the cheap laptop today and then pay an upgrade fee later to simply bump the processor up without having to buy a whole new machine. Sounds like a good deal for him.
It's not quite so simple. The $25 you spend on the share isn't used by Microsoft : It's used to pay to the seller of the share.

Until Microsoft needs to issue more shares (or repurchase them), the value of the stock is not meaningful (to the company). Of course, people with stock options care about the value of the stock.

In the same way, it's actually bad outcome for a company to have their stock jump up after the IPO : it means that the company missed the opportunity to raise even more money (for the same amount of dilution for existing holders).
Yes, I do. Just out of principle. It has little to do with concealing porn purchases; I just don't let anyone see my bank statements or other sensitive information. Not friends, family, boss, coworkers, nor the waitress bringing me my drink.

I unwittingly close completely harmless things all the time just because I'm wired that way, even if there's nothing to be guilty about. Ingrained paranoia, I guess. I guess I was born with a quick Ctrl+W (a superpower activated when modern, tabbed browsers came onto the scene).
I would +2 if I could.
>Amazingly, it even renders stock charts, something the blind have never had access to. Sold.

Can someone explain this to me? How can a chart be "rendered" for a blind person?
I am not sure why you think your points would be unpopular - you are exactly right.
This is correct. I have a Wifi-only Kindle and have never been charged for an Instapaper transfer.
Thank you, but that's unnecessary. Also, some people are downvoting it, which is predictable but makes me sad. I understand we have moral feelings, but condoning theft and crime is actually bad for honest needy people. The vast majority of people will never commit crime, and when needy people do commit crimes, it's frequently against others who are also in need. I get scared for a society that condones or excuses street crime - no matter how bad things are, we all have individual responsibility not to do wrong against fellow humans.
I feel your pain, I was robbed earlier this week and they took my laptop (among other things). There are two things you can do.

1) Report the serial number and your police case number to the genius bar. If this guy ever goes for service they'll call the cops. This isn't apple's policy but it seems to be an apple store thing.
2) Renters insurance.
Digg Tries to Regain Its Momentum
That I do too.
>While I would have been furious, she was completely okay with it. She calmly told me, "The person who stole it clearly needed it more than me."

There are at least a houndred thousand people in every single country in Africa, who needs your retirement money more than you do. In fact they properly need it just to survive.

So why don't you give it to them?

>After all, giving him a computer could change his life. Think about how much your life has improved by merely owning a computer; something most people on HN take for granted. You could turn a bad situation into one you're really proud of.

If you are giving in to blackmail, why should you be proud?
When I'm in a non-chain coffee shop, I make sure to tip well and to make sure to keep an eye on how active the shop is. Plus, buy a coffee or a small thing to eat every so often if I plan on being there for awhile.

If it gets busy and its been a decent amount of time (30-45m-ish) since my last purchase, I'll just head out.

The exception to this rule is the coffee place in my college's library; there's plenty of seating in the rest of the building. If I'm on a couch there, I tend to stay there until I'm done with whatever I'm working on.
Wow, that is awesome. I'm doing it. Starting now. When it's done, it'll be free - if I can afford it.

Thanks for the brilliant idea I hope I do it justice.
Anybody can say "yes". Somebody needs to say "no". -- Linus Torvalds

http://www.realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?action=detail&...
I can tell you first hand the police don't have the manpower or knowhow to track people on the internet. They're good but they need help.
You're about 15 years late; IIRC there was malware that claimed to upgrade your modem to 56k and your CD-ROM drive to a CD-R drive.
> I would bet it's the original thief emailing you.

I have to agree: if it was an "innocent" third party, I imagine they would have offered to just ship the laptop back. S&H certainly can't cost more than a new hard drive. Clearly, this person wants to keep the laptop, and it seems they think the laptop can be sold for more than enough to cover the cost of sending your stuff back.

That said, this person isn't that smart... They could just offer to use Dropbox.
Egyptian Pyramid Wallpapers And Photo Collections
The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt.The Pyramid of Khufu at Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence.The Great Pyramids of Giza are some of the most famous manmade objects in the world, The Giza Necropolis stands on the Giza Plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. This complex of ancient monuments includes the three pyramid complexes known as the Great Pyramids.The great pyramid is believed to have been built over a 20 year period. The site was first prepared, and blocks of stone were transported and placed.An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 workers built the Pyramids at Giza over 80 years.
I would beat the crap out of him
Google Sibyl: A system for large scale machine learning [pdf]
Arrr, Matey Code Like A Pirate – The #rstats Appliance (Cutlass Optional)
The FBI will not be any help at all. Their backlog of cases is completely unworkable. Based on interactions with them from previous work I've done, there has to be monetary loss. The (unofficial) threshold to get them to investigate a crime involving monetary loss is at least $100,000 I believe. These guys are chasing criminals stealing millions, they won't be bothered with somebody who's laptop got stolen from his car.

His best bet is local law enforcement, but even this is likely a waste of time. What can they possibly do? They have a better chance of solving the crime from physical evidence than they do from electronic evidence.

He should file a police report for insurance purposes. Then just learn his lesson and move on.

Some thoughts for next time:

- Encrypt your hard-drive, especially on laptops or other portable devices. Check out http://www.truecrypt.org/

- Install a program to monitor/track your machine. Check out http://preyproject.com/
Does the firmware password also cause the hard drive contents to be encrypted? I don't think so. Anybody with a screwdriver can take the hard drive out, pop it into another box, and bypass whatever password you've set up. After all, why would a thief care about voiding the warranty?
This is a good time to point out the non-value of insurance. Insurance companies make money on selling you insurance most of the time. That means, statistically speaking, you will give them more money than they give you. Take the few bucks per month and put it in a savings account.
It's even possible for the lower-priced chips to make a loss, as long as their volume is sufficient to pay for a large share of the development costs that make the high-margin chips possible.
A really long winded and melodramatic way of saying how differences make individuals unique and special and how empathy is a good thing.
Granting that it's human nature to want to send a 1-click agree/disagree signal, and that signal can then be noise which hides another valuable/punishable signal we want to collect, I'd like to see HN or another site like it try a two-axis voting system:

up-promote vs. down-demote: affecting order-of-presentation and karma

left-agree vs. right-disagress: a mini-poll per comment, with no censorious effect on presentation or numerical-reputational effect on karma
As much as I hate to quote my own comment:

"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."
Consider this for next time: http://preyproject.com/
The Hardy Boys - The final chapter (1998)
" ... and they were about as easy to get to as Customer Service at Google."

:)

Thank you for that.
f/5.0, the link said.
That would be the Loongson.

It's a reasonably performing MIPS clone, and the project is still active.
"Certain words and phrases captivated him, and he would loop them aloud endlessly: trumpet vine, business, chrysanthemum. "

I want to know more about this idea.

I think we can agree that words like BIZ-en-Ness and CHRYS-ant-THENUM have a strange ring to them compared to the rest of the English language when pronounced aloud. (Also that word, "ALOUD")

From my experience, I'd expect most people as kids had at least one pet words that had nice ring.
A coffee shop isn't a sit down restaurant so $/table/hour isn't a very good metric. A friend of mine owns a coffee shop and he's told me that most of his business is walk in and outs. He doesn't mind if people buy a single drink and hang out for a few hours (IIRC he said 1 drink/2 hours and he comes out ahead). He even has one room that groups can 'reserve' for an hour or two if they want to meet in a more private setting. Keep in mind this is a very local shop with great coffee, and he runs it with 2 other employees.

His biggest complaint/cost/profit issue is the price of milk and how much is used in a latte.
Yeah, essentially. Hipmunk's "Agony" metric is one you use when you've already decided to compromise. I wouldn't need it if I had the money for my preferred airline (there's lots of good airlines if you can afford them). A "choose your nemeses" draws the line on the other end; the limit at which even a lower price won't make you compromise to fly on that airline.

And I really hate United and Air France.
Ask HN: How to Optimize Your Site for Smartphones
I've seen a few sites begin to optimize their UI and UX for that of the iPhone and Android phones - even circumventing an application.

Are there any best practices or resources around to optimize your site for the mobile experience without creating the application?
Sort of a side question, but what do you (or others) do when all that fluid makes you urn to the bathroom?

Do you leave your laptop at the table? Pack the expensive stuff up and and take it with you? Find a pal and ask them to watch your stuff while you go pee?
HTML5 localStorage benchmark
I'm researching HTML5 localStorage performance and the more people does the benchmark, the more accurate results I can publish. It takes 1 click and few seconds to run the benchmark so please do it :)
It's not even a physical jumper, most DVD players can be switched region by means of codes sent to the IR port.
Funny, I thought I was about to get a lesson in what words I should be using in our advertising copy. Was the most powerful word 'free' or 'you' or 'sex' or something else? Oh, and then I re-read the article title: 'perspective' and then the article itself. I guess I approached the article with my own very skewed perspective...
I wish I could agree with you. I love to avoid bullshit money traps perpetrated by large companies preying on the fears of consumers, but this is legitimately a good deal.

To insure both my own and my girlfriend's laptops (both mid-range MacBook Pros), it costs me about $9 a month.

We're talking about $3,200 (USD) in coverage. It would take about 29 years to save up that much (at $9 a month). In the event that my laptop is destroyed/stolen/dropped in a bathtub tomorrow, that savings of $160 since last year isn't going to do me much good.

Speaking from experience, the ability to walk into my agent's office, report the loss, and have a check in my mailbox before the end of the week is a truly powerful thing.

edit: And, it's worth pointing out, I'm pretty sure that in the space of 29 years, something terrible is going to happen to my laptop. In which case, I've come out ahead.
Mimicing Photoshop's overlay effect with canvas
"The most dangerous species of owner ... is the one who gets into the business for love."

That is a powerful quote.
Since when do you make a copy of those parts of the chip to use them?

Copyright is about the right to restrict copying - the clue is in the name. The software case is fundamentally different, because your computer must make a (temporary) copy of the software in order to use it.
I'm in Saigon right now. This morning I had breakfast with an older guy who is working to stop trafficking and AIDS in Cambodia. Three weeks ago or so, I was walking through the slums of Saigon - literally, no exaggerating, dangerous very poor slums. They were past the train tracks by the canal, if you know the city.

> Growing up in the Western world, most of us are used to the luxuries that we receive on a daily basis. And no matter how hard we try, we still take these things for granted. If we truly appreciated what we had, each and every one of us would wake up and start jumping up and down because we are living with shelter, have instant access to electricity and can eat anything we choose.

This is indeed true, but people often don't ask the question - "Why?" Or, if they do, they come to the wrong answers. Why? Why do we have shelter, electricity, and food? Why do we have technology and all these amazing things?

Last week, I committed to giving 10% of my income to charity henceforth forever. I figure it's a good thing to do. I'm researching starting my own charity, hence the discussion I had this morning. I'm aware that we're lucky. And my question becomes - "Why?" "We're so lucky" - yes, we are. Now, let's figure it out. "Why are we so lucky?"

I thought about this, and I looked into it.

And the answer is, we're lucky and we have all these wonderful things because someone worked to build it. Our ancestors, our family and countrymen typically, if you live in the Western world. By and large, everything you use, you get to use as the result of someone's effort. I say this, because I see a lot of charity going about things the wrong way. They give a man a fish, instead of teaching him to fish. Whenever I see the, "We're so lucky..." line of writing, first I completely agree and I'm so incredibly grateful for all the amazing things we have. Second, I'm amazed at the people who built them and sacrificed, and I want to build and sacrifice for the future. Somehow, a lot of people feel guilty when they read something about how good they have it - don't! Feel strong, feel good. You have these things because hard work was paid forwards to you. Do the same for others. No guilt - guilt is crippling, guilt ruins your thinking and emotions, guilt ruins your rationality. Feel strong, feel proud, be grateful to the builders who came before you, and build as well to help others. This is the way forwards.
The problem with most conventional approaches to those who deviate from the norm is to put them in boxes and label them, but they're human beings! This outlook directly results in dissociation from them and confining them to the label of other-ness.

On the other hand it is very, very rare to find complete therapy for an autistic child in most countries. It takes a lot of patience to teach such children, or adults anything. Unfortunately, if someone has a conventional model of behavior in their minds then they tend to get really angry really fast. So, what if we could make something, an interactive toy, that taught these skills to children?

I've always wanted to make touch sensitive panels with a display on them to teach kids vital social skills through play. If we make them smart enough to encourage safe interaction then it should be possible to teach social interaction skills at an early stage, but to do any of this we need to move beyond the disorder model and cookie-cutter attempts of making such kids fit in.

Why? In the conventional point of view Donald could never have a future like this and, hence, there's no point of even trying which is simply heartbreaking. I believe that there should be a path for such children which goes beyond such things. They're unique and no matter how different from the norm they may be. They deserve to be loved and cherished for who they are. Not who we want them to be.
Plain old HTML pages can still run all kinds of scripts.
* like that you have to have 200 rep to downvote*

This kind of thing also tends to change. I think I got my downvoting privileges at 50 or so. Like words after a long night of drinking, voting has flowed a lot mre frequently of late. Pg usually modifies the caps to compensate, but they aren't usually announced. I noticed, for example, that /leaders is no longer in the top bar. I think that was a while ago, but just an example of how the site changes.
The most popular place in the world to commit suicide
> This is the first I've heard of your product, but I agree it does solve all the problems I mentioned.

That is what every startup founder wants to hear. :)
Why does it have to be Pro-Piracy and not Anti-MPAA?
It probably does depend a lot on what distro you target - Ubuntu being the most "consumer-focussed" one, that's the one I'd suggest. They also have their Ubuntu Software Store, which allows you to sell apps through a desktop application, something like the Ubuntu version of the iTunes app store. It's early days yet for that though, so hard to tell how it'll go.
True enough. Yet, in the end, it's inarguable that these truths are taken for granted. Absent the provided evidence, would we even consider them?
Trademark infringement gets business owner's goat
There are a number of issues contributing to the shortage of competent teachers, some of which are addressed in either this post or in the linked post and its comments [0]:

- teaching certificates don't necessarily have adequate testing built in. Teachers can go through the programs without learning the material.

- teaching certificates don't always teach the necessary material. Teachers can get into a classroom setting without even taking a course covering the mathematics they'll be expected to teach.

- teaching certificates take extra time and money to acquire, and are often required even for those with education degrees. My sister has a B.S. in elementary education, but her local school district won't let her teach unless she goes through a certification program too. I have an M.S. in applied mathematics, and was told the same -- despite a massive shortage of math teachers.

- teaching doesn't pay all that well, the schedule is brutal for about 9.5 months of the year, and issues like class size and lack of supplies add to the stress.

- many school environments are extremely unfriendly to teachers with certain political leanings. When I was a classroom assistant, I was warned to hide my political views, and berated for views one teacher assumed I held. This is not the norm, but it's much more common than it should be.

The net result is that many who go through teacher training aren't competent, and many competent people who would like to teach get turned away for unnecessary reasons.

[0] https://www.learnboost.com/upcoming-teacher-crisis/
Clojure looks beautiful. How long am I going to put off learning it? Not any more...
I used to think that a lot when I was younger, and vowed I'd never pay for insurance. The math certainly checks out.

However, the point of insurance isn't to come out with a profit in strict dollar terms, at least not for the customer. It's to protect yourself against differing marginal utilities of money. A dollar when your livelihood is stolen or when you're in the hospital or when a loved one has just passed away is worth a lot more than a dollar that would otherwise get spent at Starbucks.

The point of money is to have enough that it'll never become the limiting factor in doing what you want to do (unless you're one of those folks who defines their net worth as a human being by their net worth). As long as you have enough, it's all good, but when you don't have enough, that's bad. It makes sense to trade more money when you have enough for less money when you would otherwise not have enough.

Incidentally, many financially-irrational decisions can be explained by this reasoning. Like the lottery. For many people, an extra dollar a day means no practical difference in their standard of living, but an extra few million dollars leads to a massive improvement. Or the financial industry: on the face of it, the financial industry shouldn't exist, because money is a completely fungible quantity and each party has the same yardstick for whether a transaction was a success. However, they don't, really - it makes sense to pay more in interest later if receiving some capital up front lets you capitalize on an opportunity now.
And you will trust the person who buys stolen laptops to call the amount of money (s)he wants for it? I bet it will be very close to retail price :)