skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wouldn't derive any particular benefit from FourSquare if I used it, as my movement from place to place is fairly routine and predictable. However, I don't think there would really be any drawbacks if you, me, or anyone else was simply GPS-tagged and stuck in a public-queriable database.

Think about this: whenever you go out in public, there are people you don't know all around you watching everything you do, and any of them could choose to stalk you in the literal, physical sense, following you from place to place without your knowledge. Putting your location online just helps people that already care about you to find you; it doesn't increase the probability that someone who doesn't care will arbitrarily start caring (in either a beneficial or malicious sense.)

Internet location publishing just makes getting information more convenient. Nothing that was previously impossible is now possible; the barrier to entry for some things (like stalking) has just been lowered, so that people can do it without investing their whole day in casually hiding in a crowd nearby you.
Polarizing is much better for selling books than being 'meh' : a 10% following by motivated people is better than 100% of people who can't be bothered...
Here's a variant on this that is actually true: I took Professor DiCenzo's "History of Japan" course at Oberlin College, in we he assigned several 5-page papers. There were a variety of topics to choose from (or make up your own); one of those topics was "Zen". Professor DiCenzo was famous for saying "The first student who chose the 'Zen' topic and turned in five blank pages got an 'A'. You will get an 'F' -- please try to use words."
Are you really that literal?

My one sentence response contains a comma. The "No" is a response to your query. The rest of the sentence does not in any way contradict what I said before.
> A heat-sensing infrared detector monitored the terrace,
> but he approached it slowly from behind a large,
> homemade polyester shield. The low thermal
> conductivity of the polyester blocked his body heat
> from reaching the sensor

"Out of the box" thinking at its best.

> An automatic electric pulse constantly shot into the
> room and back out along these wires. If any of the
> sensors were tripped, the circuit would break. When a
> pulse shot into the room, it expected an answer. If
> it didn't get one, it activated the alarm.

> Once the copper wires were exposed, he clipped a new,
> precut piece of wire between the inbound and outbound
> cables. This bridge rerouted the incoming electric
> pulse over to the outbound wire before the signal
> reached the sensors. It no longer mattered what
> happened further down the line. The sensors were out
> of the loop. It was now safe for the others to enter.

In hindsight it seems like sending pulses with different signatures down each channel would have fixed this problem. I wonder how many sensors out there are infected with this bug.
> thirty million emails sent by tens of thousands of users every day

Damn! Are these all spammers?
Well that and unchecking "Show me in the 'Who's here' list in the mobile app" on the settings page.
Most of us are IRL outsiders. Maybe back when HN was started it was an inside club for YC folks, but now no way. The top 4 guys on the leaderboard--and probably four of the most respected HN users--are a security guru in Chicago, a couple freelance developers from Pittsburgh and Europe, and an expat living in Japan making his living from a bootstrapped bingo card software company. It's way more respected here to be an interesting person than to be a YC insider, or failing that, to be a person who says interesting things.
Alternatively, Amazon will be offering a "free usage" tier (starting November 1) that has pretty generous usage limits to help you get a project off the ground. If it outgrows those limits, you're already running on reasonable infrastructure and can move into the next paid AWS tier.

http://aws.amazon.com/free/
Link broken? Try http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diamonds
Nope. It's coming. Now more than ever. Why? Because of Android.

For the longest time people tried to get linux from the server market to the desktop market and failed. But now we're seeing the opposite starting to happen. We'll start to see Android tablets and netbooks, and when that starts to become accepted...mini computers wil follow. Will it ever dominate? Probably not. But it isn't a fantasy either...
I started a separate Ask HN discussion in hopes of getting more feedback and getting some of this out of this thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1824406
Clever marketing campaign by Subaru
Ask HN: How expensive is living in Silicon Valley
I thinking on moving there next year. I really want to jump in the tech action right away.

Where is the best place to move? How expensive could cost every month of living on average?

Thanks
Your Man - Signs He's in Love With You
Not all men are good at communication so sometimes it’s difficult for women to know exactly what their men are thinking. In this article you will find out that there are signs that you can recognize, even if he's not expressing them very clearly.
Why? The iPad has an awesome browser and is probably worth it for that alone for very many people. You don't need apps to use the iPad.
STACK: MySQL, RoR, Nginx, Mongrel, Monit
Fun. We use:

- Newrelic

- Engineyard: http monitor

- Hoptoad for errors

- Some custom daemon scripts that fire emails when background processes aren't working.
The house edge for a Red/Black or Even/Odd bet in roulette is about 5%. Meaning that if he on average walked out with €400, you would expect that he walked in with €420 in coupons
I'm surprised that Google isn't just selling a raw, white-box cloud-services layer (like AWS) that other companies can then resell with convenience and support on top.
Thank you. Both neat companies I'll keep an eye on.
I don't think of android as a "desktop". I don't see it as being useful for workaday stuff -- in the same way my iPad isn't really great for that. I'm doubtful, but I hope I'm proven wrong -- just because it'll be interesting to see it evolve towards that.
Polarizing and provocative lead to increased sales and marketing capability (see 37 Signals).

I wouldn't count writing something like this as 'easy', but it's definitely do-able.

The self-help field is full of crap; you sound like you might have something useful to add!
Unfortunately, not for 64 bit architectures. Finally game developers are capable of crossing operating system platforms, now they need to cross hardware platforms as well. I guess there will always be something to cross.

Anyway, after watching the demo I wanted to give this a go on my Ubuntu desktop (never played a game on it in 5 years). But it wasn't meant to be...

Nonetheless, great effort though.
I haven't wont ever create an account. I'm 25 and as eager to jump on the next cool thing as the next guy, but I just cant fathom how this would be of any use for me. Why would I want people to know where I am? If I wanted to meet with friends I can just send them a group/broadcast message and ask who wants to meet up. I can choose whom I want to meet up with and who I don't want to provide my current location to that easy. I enjoy social media and sharing to an extent, but this type of sharing just leads to creepy situations like the ones in the the article.
The U.S. also does not negotiate with, or pays ransom to terrorists. Does it also show where their interests are? That it, say, is focused on money saving rather than saving their citizens in immediate danger?

Why I'm saying this: the DoD perhaps has an idea (true or not) that legitimizing the leaks channel would make things worse in long run than any short-term security gain for the people on the ground.
I opened an account so that I could ▲ your story. Thank you.
Good old Presentation Zen. I didn't even know that they still exist. That article is from 2005 and as such somewhat outdated. Bill Gates has been giving quite a few great presentations after he left Microsoft (for example: http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2005/11/the_z...) and even Microsoft's presentations have improved, well, at least visually. Steve Ballmer is just no Steve Jobs.

Edit: Oh, Presentation Zen has also written about Gates' transformation recently: http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2010/08/the-n...
We did the same thing. BK even changed up the codes after a while but we just kept at it until we had a key for the new codes. I bet this is still a story they tell at BK about how that stupid promotion cost them 100x what they thought it would.

I wonder if they ever got any value out of it? BK did become the high-school hang-out after that. I just wonder if that's a good thing for people trying to run a business.
Agreed. I work at a company in a similar space to App Engine, and we see this a lot: people are astounded that we reply to them quickly (often in minutes), on anything from "I can't find feature X" to "how do I do Y in SQL?"

It seems to me like support is a huge part of the value when you're selling a complex service like this to businesses.
It is unfortunate that copyright and patent protections exist in the form they do today. Not only is the span of copyright a complete joke (if things continue as they do now, nothing published after 1940 will ever enter the public domain) but the span of many (if not the majority) of patents is completely unreasonable given the pace of today's innovation.

Example: software patents. For an industry that moves so quickly, the patent protection, which was once supposed to foster innovation by giving the inventor time to bring his invention to market without worrying about it being stolen, is now used mostly to stifle innovation by patent trolls who do not bring anything to market themselves, but just sit in wait so they can sue someone who does.

The marketplace brings about authentic business models that may thrive within it when they make sense, but not forever. People have to move on and old industries must give way to new ones through the action of the market. Just as the luddites futilely tried to hold back progress during the industrial revolution, just as the printed newspapers are fighting to survive in a world increasingly dominated by democratized internet news, so too must the industries -- that once depended on copyright protection -- reinvent themselves. The record companies and publishers of the world must realize that with the new technology, the cost of publishing has gone down to pennies. And therefore, affording copyright protection or any other protection is something that may not be in the best interest of society anymore. Is this done to promote the creation of magnificent works of art (which otherwise presumably no one would undertake) or is it done to cater to the lobbying of a select few (e.g. Disney lobbying Congress to keep extending the copyright protection)? Why don't we draft an alternative proposal that fits the current times and let the people decide?

I have nothing against government protections that make sense. But it seems to me that these days, such long-lived copyrights and patents are doing more harm than good.
It might also be worth noting that works published prior to 1923 are in the public domain only in the United States. In Europe, the "life + 70" rule makes no such exemption.

Given this situation, the famous Prelude in C♯ minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) dates from 1892 and technically is still copyrighted in Europe until 2013. At the same time, there is a public domain recording made in 1919 (by the composer himself!) that is available on Wikipedia, where it is presumably legitimate under US copyright law [1].

Meanwhile, various machinations by parties without the best of intentions, coupled with a special case in French law to extend copyright because of the world wars, make it such that Boléro (1928) by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) still won't enter the public domain until 2015, with royalties sucked up by a "management agency" while the composer's own home falls into disrepair [2].

On the other hand, it looks like Ottorino Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances No. 3 (1932) would be public domain in Europe while not in the US because of the automatic copyright.

[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sergei_Rachmaninoff_perfor...

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2001/apr/25/arts.highere...

EDIT: Argh, it took me a half dozen tries to get the first URL right. Apostrophes seem to get dropped from URLs HN comments, rather than encoded with %27.
So proof that people who know physics grow up to crash cars.

Kids if somebody offers you Newtonian mechanics - just say no!
That's exactly the point, if a kid actor can be excepted, why can't a kid programmer (or bug hunter) be allowed to do so? I placed some conditions on this because it really comes down to if the kid wants to work, if the kid's parents are encouraging and not forcing his behavior, and if it will not affect his studies and development.
At 7th class we started studying computers. Like using MS-DOS commands, then - norton commander, then, eventually - programming in Turbo Pascal.

We had some old IPX based LAN, where every's pupil's disk was remotely hosted on the server, and once you turn computer on, it asks you for your login/password. After you are logged in, you have your own D: drive where all only yours files located. This had been done after several pupil's claims that they had done some task before, and someone just deleted their files.

Our teacher had "admin" login password, which allowed him to access all files on server.

On the first class, he explained all of this to us. Friend of mine tried to do jokes and asked "And what if some pupil will hack somehow network and will get his hands on admin login/password?". Teacher told, that he will give A mark for the rest of length of this course (i.e. from 7th class to 11th class - 4 years!)

Long story short - I have wrote small program on assembler, which was essentially what today called "keylogger". It was running residentially, intercepting some msdos interrupt (used to execute program), checking which program is about to start, and if it is "login.exe" - log all keypresses into a file.

The problem was - there were no floppy drives (for security reason), and at this time - no USB too (it was back in 1997). So I printed out the whole source on small peace of paper (1/4 of A4) and entered it line by line in Turbo Pascal IDE. Luckily, I had TASM there, as a part of Turbo Pascal. That's it - entered and compiled right on machine.

I had to wait a bit until teacher used machine I was studying at, but eventually he did it and I had his login/password.

I disclosed in full all of this to teacher and he kept his word - I never attended this class and had A mark till end of the school =)Freed some time for "real" hacking =))
Germany claimed Poland invaded them.

The invasion of Poland was supposedly a counter-offensive to protect German civilians from Polish border raiders, too.

Germany had pictures of the dead bodies of the Polish border raiders in Polish military uniforms and everything.
I convinced my dad to get an iPad when our old family PC (which, last I heard, took about 15 minutes to start up) finally died.

He's downloaded one app: Google Earth. He was a Google Earth fanatic on the PC (he's an urban planner), so it was a no-brainier. Besides Google Earth, he uses the YouTube app, and occasionally uses Maps, but he spends the vast majority of his time in Safari. He reads the New York Times and Toronto Star, checks his Gmail, loads up recipes, and generally does the same things he did in Chrome on the old PC.

I've tried to convince him to check out some other apps, but he has almost no interest in doing so, and for what he does, why should he? Safari is a consistent interface, sites work the same as they do everywhere else, and he doesn't need to learn a bunch of different interfaces.

This is why I don't get why people seem to have this impression that Apple is somehow anti-web. The iPad is, for the average person who doesn't need to do very much data entry, the best browsing experience around. Hell, Apple has pioneered WebKit, which has near-single-handedly brought mobile browsing into the 21st century. They know how important the web (as in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) is, they just aren't putting all of their eggs in one basket.
i've convinced 40 year old adults to use foursquare and loopt because of the money they can save by redeeming the in-game coupons (these people are now #1 on my leader boards). it's actually fun if you try it out, although i didn't get truly hooked until i started traveling around a bit more.
Glaring error in the article: author thinks Android is JavaME.

Wrong.
does this also apply (my simple sanity check test):

"The US gov't are real scumbags for risking people's lives. They claim their real purpose is to protect against threats against democracy. Isn't it interesting how they behave when they get a little bit of power - autocratic, capricious, and meglomaniacal? I wonder what sort of behavior that they could rationalize in the name of the greater good."
The two founders of Kayak (Steve Hafner & Paul English) agreed to be 50/50 partners and write checks for $1M each within an hour of meeting through a VC intro. Hafner likened it to speed dating in an interview.

Not exactly the same, but a pretty awesome example of two founders working well together with no prior relationship.
To say that dynamic typing is dumb is rather misguided. I mean you may not like it, but it is very powerful, and a lot of languages are based on this principle (not just python and ruby).

The argument that there are hundreds of bugs because of it does not mean anything - you make the wrong assumption that everyhing else is equal. Of course, if dynamic typing was only about not checking types, it would be dumb. But it also gives you flexibility and avoids a lot whole lot of other kind of bugs, so you are trading one kind of bugs with another kind. For me, complaining about dynamic typing is like saying that exception cause a lot of bugs compared to error codes, because your application crashes if you don't catch exception. It is true in some sense, but the argument is rather stupid.

As for memory consumption: running an application in 64 bits, even if programmed in C, often requires much more memory, at least statistically speaking and in my experience. For example, running a simple ubuntu desktop in 64 bits takes easily 50 % more memory than in 32 bits (and it is not because of python :) ). Int, floating points are indeed the same, but structures, pointers and alignement requirements almost inherently increase memory in a significant way.
His ego shines through in all interviews. Even through his choice of his last name, you can see dude read too much Bond novels.
Sounds like you went in the Atkins/Paleo direction, rather than the 'whole grains' direction of this study. (The 'whole wheat' servings mentioned in this study still have plenty of gluten.)

I, too, lost about ~8% in ~2 months when I eliminated most complex carbs and sugars, while retaining (and probably increasing via whole milk and cheese) my dairy intake.
Typing was required in my high school. As I'd been touch typing QWERTY since I was 11 or so, this made me a bit grumpy. On my first day of class I opened the textbook to the last assignment and completed it in a few seconds.

My teacher was a good sport about it and demanded that the department transfer me into computer science. I spent the rest of the year ignoring some over-engineered OO fishtank.
I think people often pre-judge others on their typing ability like some judge the intelligence

You're likely correct, and I've found myself doing this with some of my coworkers, however, over time I've come to understand it for what it is: There are many occasions in coding where I do not find it necessary to type quickly. I can type at the speed a typical person speaks -- and accurately -- and without effort (including symbols, numbers and other elements that are uncommon in spoken language but common in programming languages). I have never met an effective developer who is a "hunt and peck" typist, but I've met plenty that land in around 30 wpm.

The distinction, I think, lies in how much effort it takes our 30 wpm individual to produce 30 wpm. Touch-typing (which I define as being able to type without looking at or for the key you're looking to hit) means not having to actively "think" when I type. I know where the keys are by instinct/muscle memory. I can keep my eyes on the screen, or on my hand-written "napkin note", or on my white-board (and often a mix of the three) and transfer that information to implementation without perceivable interruption.

Like it or not, the keyboard is a bit of a tool of the trade. That doesn't mean you have to be a perfect typist (I don't use my pinkies to hit the letter "p", and until I purchased a split keyboard, I always reached with my left for the "y"), but a reasonable analogy would be one of a chef who can't properly handle a knife. Successful chefs don't always cut the way you're taught at the CIA (or wherever), but they handle the knife with precision and accuracy (and without effort or injury). They don't have to think about it, they just know what the finished ingredient is going to look like when their hands are done with the motions.

For example someone with a slow southern draw to their speech, relative to the listener, is often assumed less intelligent.

I couldn't resist responding to this one: I remember having a calculus teacher with a serious Southern drawl and I recall thinking he was very unintelligent. It was an error in judgment because I could barely understand him in a lecture setting and struggled in his class as a result (this was remedied by taking advantage of office hours and tutors). After a while I got used to it and it had a sort of accidental side-effect. I had to actively listen to understand him which resulted in my actively paying attention. He was a brilliant individual, and a gifted instructor (as well as a patient one ... willing to explain things one-on-one with a student (me) who was struggling at the time). Maybe teaching with a serious southern drawl in a northern state made him less effective, or maybe not. I'm not sure. Food for thought.
It’s Not Just Facebook: MySpace Transmitted Personal Data
I really like python, and FWIW, I find the whole python 3 saga a disaster. The small improvements really did not justify breaking backward compatibility.
Not always. Students get 1 year free.
Introspectr Searches Your Social Streams
literal about what? your explanation was poorly phrased, how was i to interpolate what you really meant if you didn't clarify it fully? my parsing of your sentence is valid, as is yours.

and i didn't say or intend to imply there was any contradiction. just pointing out that you changed your "he's a scumbag because..." def'n. moving goalposts (no matter how small) in a conversation typically isn't cool.

"Assange is a real scumbag for risking people's lives."

"I think that Assange is a scumbag because he's a hypocrite."
again, same type of question:

are all hypocrites scumbags?
He uses Buildout in conjunction with Fabric as recently as http://github.com/jacobian/django-deployment-workshop also linked on this page. I think a fair assessment is that buildout is much more powerful but also more complicated than using pip alone. It greatly reduces boilerplate for spinning up new sites for me now, but I could also see myself switching to creating some snapshots of pip only skeleton projects in the future.
Aren't the thick off-road tires worse for wet weather?

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tires.html

"Car and truck tires need tread, because these vehicles are prone to a very dangerous condition called "hydroplaning. At high speeds, hydroplaning is just possible for car tires, but is absolutely impossible for bicycle tires."