skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A few random thoughts:

1) While it is true to say you are protected under First and Fifth Amendment rights from having to disclose a password here in the US, it doesn't cover border inspections (including airport custom/immigration, where it is considered you are in 'no mans land'). The legal issues of this are currently going through the courts based around the number of people who have had their laptops searched (passwords are requested at the time of the search if necessary). But even if this is resolved, it probably will only apply to US Citizens and not visitors.

2) The chap who has gone to prison for not disclosing his password will go back again for another term if he doesn't disclose the password when he is released. Someone mentioned "maybe it's better to server 90 days in prison for not disclosing the password then to be caught with something more incriminating on his hard drive". That is mitigated by the fact that each request is treated separately so he could be in prison indefinitely if he doesn't comply :/

3) I've always thought a great defense would be to have your password something like "gofuckyourself" or "obvious". That way if someone asks you for your password you can say "go fuck yourself" or "dude, it's obvious". When you go to court you can say "no, I fully complied. The password was 'gofuckyourself'"
The song being played in the video is Clocks, by Coldplay.
New Java trojan attacks Mac OS X via social networking sites
What you have said isn't true or accurate.

On December 17, 2006, defendant Sebastien Boucher was arrested on a complaint charging him with transportation of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(1). At the time of his arrest government agents seized from him a laptop computer containing child pornography. The government has now determined that the relevant files are encrypted, password-protected, and inaccessible. The grand jury has subpoenaed Boucher to enter a password to allow access to the files on the computer. Boucher has moved to quash the subpoena on the grounds that it violates his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The district court held that Boucher could invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to comply.

http://cyb3rcrim3.blogspot.com/2007/12/court-upholds-using-f...

They later worked around it by requiring him to provide the decrypted contents of the drive instead of the password itself since a border agent witnessed some of the files on the drive and he wouldn't be providing new evidence.

http://cyb3rcrim3.blogspot.com/2009/03/5th-amendment-bummer....
Tenets of a Software Architect
I can imagine submitting a link from the shell. What if I blog to posterous in mutt, then want to submit the link. A shell script is still invoked by a human.
Everything anyone tells you about how having kids changes your life is greatly exaggerated. Probably including this. You have an additional constraint to solve for, but it can almost always be solved for. Having a kid doesn't have to change things that are important to you.
Part 2 of Zach's ILC 2010 notes
On the other hand, the reason it's work and they call you a professional is because you get paid. By definition.

I don't see anything wrong with showing some gumption and savvy to approach directly. For one, it shows that they understand how important context is. For another, it shows that they are willing to think outside the box in order to make more money -- which is something I would really want in an employee.

I'm not of the mind that addressing salary/pay first off is a bad thing. The employer already knows that you wouldn't be working for them if not for getting paid. Why should they object to sending their money to their employee rather than a third party recruiter?

[sorry if this double posts, having connectivity issues. but it looks like i'm in the clear]
How could you possibly suggest that those doing this are doing it out of a secret
need to build their public profile. That's a pretty cynical worldview.

I think it is a valid concern. I don't say for all of the 'Offer HN' threads but some of the them just don't sound right. (I would be the first one to admit, I am not the best when it comes accurately judging intentions from just a couple of written lines.)

Case in example - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839507

Sorry if I misunderstood this poster, but from a genuine offer to help in one thread, it quickly went to offering of services here. (I hope the person corrects me if that really isn't the case.)
That's ridiculous, of course there are downvotes. In fact all it takes is a very small minority to flag something and it goes off the site. This happens all the time.
This looks cool, but doesn't do much to automate my process(es). It doesn't support import from source code control, like Git, and doesn't support SSH/SFTP for secure deployments...
>There is an implicit expectation that the knowledge for the sake of knowledge will have the potential to provide real, tangible benefits for the people who are really paying for these experiments.

This is the thing that most laymen don't understand: in terms of potential for applications, the LHC (and the past 3 or 4 accelerators) are different than the pure, curosity-driven research which preceded them. In the past, scientists studied things because they were generally curious, but the things they studied were actually accessible at sensible energies and distances. That means that the knowledge they discovered was potentially useful, regardless of motivation. However, modern accelerators operate at energies which are inconceivably far from the real world. The chance that they produce practical knowledge is much, much lower (though of course not zero).

>If that expectation wasn't there, scientists wouldn't bother justifying the expense.

This is wrong. There are large incentives for scientists to not expend much effort making it painfully clear to the public how impractical the LHC is.

>I believe that many (maybe even all) scientists working on these kinds of projects feel this way. The people who ultimately fund the projects do not.

This is kind of true. Yes, if politicians and the public knew how unlikely it was that the LHC would produce anything useful, they would be less likely to fund it. But don't forget that the US federal government funded the Apollo program and still funds things like art.
In my experience as a game developer at least, the best entertainers absolutely would play around with ideas and work on projects for their own gratification.

And on the other hand, Facebook succeeding or not is by definition it having an effect on its audience - if people like it enough to keep using it, it'll work. So if anything it's probably more like making a movie than a technical hack.

I think you're drawing a distinction in motivations (audience/no audience) that doesn't really fit. If we're talking about the best of both industries, I think they both work on each type of project.
The diversity of GNU/Linux distros is turning into something similar to rule 34 :

"If X exists, there is an X-themed Linux distro"
I might also answer some questions here. I'm a post-doc in NLP, but more from the linguistics side of things --- less business focussed, and less of a hacker.

(Hi Joseph --- we met briefly at ACL. I was one of James Curran's students. My name's Matthew Honnibal.)
Yup, I did this a couple years ago when working on a javascript-based bookmarklet that would reformat the live hn site to look better on iPhones. One wrong semi colon and it was upvoting every story on the page. pg sent me a 'What are you doing?' type of email, to which I replied and all was well.
I've been doing this for years to prevent various network providers (from employers to coffee shops) from inspecting my traffic, although I typically use OpenSSH, and AutoSSH for restarting in the event that I change networks throughout the course of a day on my laptop:

http://www.harding.motd.ca/autossh/

On Linux, they're both obviously available without any drama. On Windows, I use both from Cygwin.

I used to use a home-based system, but I've been slowly trying to simplify my "home computing experience", and moving anything "hosted" to external providers. They can offer much better uptime than I can these days, and with much less personal frustration, especially if you consider the cost of a low-end VPS.
I've got a copy and will definitely read through it. I've already gained a great deal of pleasure despite having only read a small part of it so far.
At least it needs to be added to: http://news.ycombinator.com/lists
I'm not referring to corruption, but suggesting that we can apply the "I think the ideas which originate from the creator of neo-liberalism ought to be judged against the evidence of its actual implementation in real life before recommending its architect's theories on dealing with just about anything." to communism/socialism.

Of course, that standard is always rejected when it comes to communism/socialism.
Yes, but it was for a 24 hour period only, so I decided not to include it. Besides I think that was relatively easy for me to do, I think todayiamme deserves some credit for putting out a basically unlimited offer and starting the whole 'Offer HN' meme.
I think these Offer HN posts are a great way to see junior startup groups pitch their services to the community, and the passerby audience as they grow closer to (a) launch or (b) YCombinator! application process.

It gives them a real, tangible idea of how well their application/product/idea will do, and it's an excellent way to test the waters, get feedback and make even the most minute refinements to their services that could mean acceptance or rejection from prospective investors.

Good luck to you all!
On the other hand, this is exactly the level of quality of most merchandise displaying the Hannah Montana brand.
I don't understand. Nobody says you're just in it for the money, but once all other issues (competence, cultural fit, start date, location, &c.) have been agreed, isn't a candidate supposed to negotiate for the highest possible compensation in good faith?

far be it from me to lecture Americans about their culture, but isn't that the American Way? Or is it really that companies pretend everyone is coming to work for the excitement of doing fun stuff and having vintage pinball machines in the lobby, while the founders of the company get rich?

I'm not singling you out personally, but if anyone ever told me that the money is not supposed to matter, I'd tell them that since it doesn't matter, they can jolly-well give me what I ask.
Ask HN: Programming Language for Ambitious MBA
A friend of mine is a non-technical MBA and has asked me for advice for which programming language he could learn. He has a few ideas he wants to hack and wants to do it himself as opposed to outsource or hire, at least in the early stages.

As a PHP guy to bone, I am hesitant to set him on this path just yet and thought there must be better languages for him to start with. I'm thinking either Python or Ruby (focusing on Rails) but don't know how to help him decide.

So which language is good for a beginner and what resources are best for him to start learning with?

Thanks.
What learning? You're asked to paste something into a terminal, not to understand it. That's not learning.
Don't worry. Even if the trend doesn't die, I'd be shocked if it didn't level off within a week or so. That's just how things like this go. At first it's cool and exciting, so lots of people want to do it. Then the novelty wears off, and it it drops off sharply.

But I'd love it if we were to reach an equilibrium where we get one or two good Offer HN's a week.
Foursquare and MongoDB: What If?
So what time did the story conclude was the best time? Just curious.
I don't buy this. I got into a few Ivys, but I'm not black, and I'm not a virtuoso instrumentalist. I just wrote about how I really liked CS and math. I got good grades and scores too, so I'm not disregarding those, but really, the world isn't full of perfect children, and even if it was, I don't think that colleges would prioritize them
I'm pretty sure that HN users would find a way to make their displeasure known about those that abuse the 'Offer HN' format.
It'd be interesting to hear if this works out, i've tried this model before myself as i hate looking for work, unfortunately i got no where, but thats probably because i didnt know the right people.
Oh no really I understand the implications and everything... but let's say you do forget the password, what can they do realistically? It seems highly immoral to throw you in jail because you forgot a password.

Now let's say you're in the middle of a murder case, and it is about to be thrown away because of lack of evidence. So they ask you to provide the key to your encrypted drive, but you've forgotten the key... So now do you go to jail on a life in prison sentence because of it? Do they let you go? Do they keep you in prison while they try to decrypt it which might take millions of years?

I can always say "I forgot, this whole ordeal has affected me psychologically and I can't seem to recall the key because of it". Then what happens? I go to jail for 4 months? Which might be a total injustice since there's a possibility it's actually true. Or maybe it's a loophole for a crook because he might have had to serve life in prison, and now he's only doing 4 months thanks to encryption.

A judge can easily send you to jail if there's proof you did something. The same way your girlfriend can easily send you packing because she has proof you cheated. The question is, can you send your girlfriend packing for cheating if you have no proof? If you have no proof then you're sending her packing because of an idea on your head (not real fact and you might be wrong), which is hardly fair and will probably be looked at with contempt and frowned upon by peers (read the rest of the world). Now can the state send you to jail because it thinks that you have child porn on your hard drive, without ever proving you have it?

What happens then when the state has the power to lock you up without proof?
If you're using Firefox, the CSS Reloader addon is nice because it gives you a hotkey.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/46211/
Serious question... how do you post to these sort of things? Do you just start your subject line with "Offer HN:"?
I'm agreed that most so-called analytics has little value. Your customer segmentation idea is a good one. You could also approach this as a classification problem, where you attempt to classify customers as purchasers or non-purchasers for each product or product group. Another idea is to look at high and low value pathways through a site. If you can identify pathways that don't lead to purchases that might suggest where design effort should be spent.
I absolutely apply the same standard to communism, socialism or any political/economic system.

There are alternatives to extremes, which both communism and neoliberalism can safely be described as I think - a Keynesian approach has a great deal of evidence in the positive behind it (the new deal for example), and I am sure he has had (I know far too little to comment myself) opinions on corruption.
Interesting point. But those "features" existed (albeit in a mediocre form). So maybe "implementation of features" or "quality of features" sells a product...?

Speaking just for myself: I don't use SO (or reddit) because of the features they offer. I use them because of the communities involved. I think that's the point here -- there are loads of sites that can compete on features (reddit, meet digg...) but lack something else. It's that "something else" that drives success (partially; I'm not suggesting it's entirely based on some esoteric quality, but that the specific quality can be different for different applications).
let's hope they will put HN on the map as a place where people do more than just talk

Really? I think HN was already a lot more than that. People are always helping each other on here in one way or another, from advise to reviews. I think the "Offer HN" is great, but it really is just an extension of what was already there.
I'm sure glad Hanna Montana Linux Distro[0] still made it to the front page.

[0] http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/Site/Home.html
It's not about making the drive understandable. Everyone understands it in a general sense. Every 'lay' person I've ever met has some hobby they 'geek out' over, as its own reward.

For movies, it's a matter of making the story entertaining for the larger swath of people who (by definition) don't all geek out about the same things.

E.g. I'm a geek. I'm a gamer. I can't even get up the motivation to netflix King of Kong, let alone watch it all the way through. I understand and respect that those guys geek out over Donkey Kong. But that doesn't hold my interest.

Hollywood would have as much luck trying to make people understand the joy of hacking as we hackers have in trying to make people understand privacy and security.
Ah, I presume from this comment that they are all gone then? Dang, that's what I get for spending time studying in the library, instead of on HN...!

Still, your kindnesses are much appreciated and make HN a great place!

Thanks!
Why PHP Is Fun and Easy But Python Is Marriage Material
I forgot the other thing: One good thing about recruiters from the company's perspective is that provide plausible deniability about poaching. While perfectly legal, if I personally start cold-calling developers around Toronto when I need to hire, I'm going to make a few enemies.

But everyone knows that recruiters are going to be aggressive about finding candidates. For whatever social reason, it's perfectly acceptable to hire someone away from another company through a recruiter, but depending on how you do it you can step on toes doing the same thing directly.

FWIW, almost any intermediary or pretext takes you off the hook. Meet someone at a conference? Hire them away. Meet someone at a developer lunch? Hire them away. Meet someone through a blind date service? Hire them away. But cold-calling them... Tacky and taboo.
Are there any specific libraries or features that would be particularly salient to this endeavor?
Submitting a story with a script doesn't mean it's automated, he could be writing his own client.
> Maybe not, but I certainly perceived it to be ominous at 3 am,

If you're freaked by getting e-mail at 3am, you shouldn'
t be doing things at 3am that might result in e-mail.
Entirely or not entirely? (suggestions on rewording?)
> The issue of "what if you forget your password" is covered in the law, which basically says you have to know and keep control/ability to decrypt all encrypted media you own.

Heh. Would love to see them take that at face value. "But officer, I need this list of Blu-Ray disk keys. Otherwise, I can't decrypt all my movies the way I'm legally required to!"

And that would explain why I heard of people emailing him encrypted documents / random bits. I'm sure he knows how to decrypt those.

So you're right, it is crap.
Designing Nebulous Notes: 2.5 has more support for programmers and more
There are always outliers. Congrats.
> you're just in it for the money

Well yes it's a job. Someone will agree to do a task they wouldn't otherwise do in exchange for cash. Withdrawing a job offer because someone tries to negotiate is crazy, negotiating is just part of doing business.

Proactive employees are the kind of people you want to hire, they're the people who are going to push your company forward rather than just doing the work required.

Frankly I think you're crazy if you don't try to negotiate salary when you've been made a job offer, you're in a better negotiating period at that stage than you'll ever be. Often spending half an hour negotiating salary can results in a difference of thousands of dollars.

When you go to buy a car do you pay sticker price or do you negotiate ? - your time is the single most expensive thing you'll ever sell. Don't make the mistake of not negotiating the best price you can for it.
Where is #startups?
Can we turn them off as a user configurable option?
Yes, that is exactly the way to do it.
You can do greedy feature selection: make a stable train and development and test (and maybe another truer test set, for use later) sets and define an appropriate quality measure. Then implement the simplest thing you can think of, train on the training data, calibrate the results on the development set (tuning hyperparameters, etc) and look at the performance on test data. That's your baseline. Now think up of a nice new feature you'd like to add, implement it, and see if you can get the error on the development set to go down. If it goes down a lot (you can decide an appropriate threshold, maybe depending on the computational and human cost of using those features), keep it. Otherwise throw it away. Now repeat this process for every set of features you can think of, documenting the combinations you've tried as you go to see where is the best effort/performance tradeoff. Then test your best model on the test set to see if the performance has really improved.

If your model is linear, you will probably see diminishing returns as you implement more, different features. It also helps to look at model errors to see which features are pulling things the wrong way, and then you can add other features to compensate.

(feature engineering + linear models feels a lot like writing an old-school AI heuristic program, except you have a computer program give a numeric weight the rules you're writing, so you're free to write a lot (millions) of rules and still get a manageable model)
I'm pretty sure it is just a KDE theme over Kubuntu.

Apart from the trademark infringement, copyright infringement and the headache inducing colour clash on the website of peach and lilac and the fact the theme creator thinks they made a new OS, apart from that it all looks great.

I'm curious about the "Truth" page in the SourceForge site, that page can't be viewed, does it tell us that the rest of the site is a lie?
I think that Python is really fun and readable and easy to learn, and a great place to start! But, he probably couldn't go wrong either way. As a similarly not-ultra-technical person who wanted to jump in, I found Python to be a great fit, but both have well supported communities and lots of great tutorials etc.
Hi Camz, I'm a non-resident alien under a student visa and own a C-Corp in Illinois. I sell software as a service and would like to know if there is anything special tax-wise I should take care of being a non-resident alien. Also, any general strategies on how to minimize my tax exposure as a non-resident alien?
It's an IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

See: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#altuis