skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you think the naked picture machines are going to be limited to airports, you're just not paying attention.
I've said it before- take a train, bus, or don't visit (or live in) the USA. Well, looks like the last option will soon be the only one.
I'll say it again- Americans, fix your government. The rest of the world is laughing at you. (and again, yes it's a nervous laugh. You scare us a bit too).
It is just basic policy on how classified info is handled by the government. The only time automatic declassification happens is when its time window expires (and that can be overridden too). It is usually about 10 years. Otherwise surprisingly it still stays classified even if it leaks all over the internet.

Those who hold a clearance have agreed and signed, under strict penalties, not to process, view, or download classified information on unauthorized machines (their home laptop for instance). In doing so they would be committing a willful security violation -- a serious offence according to the current laws.
Foursquare is the Friendster of location based services. First in the space to take advance of the technology but having trouble moving past the initial novelty. We're still waiting on the Facebook of location based services. (And Facebook isn't it)
> "WikiLeaks' illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world," he told AFP. "No responsible company—whether American or foreign—should assist WikiLeaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials."

I love templatizable statements like this where you can just replace a key slot and the result gives a refreshing clarity to the moral context of it:

"The Bush administration's illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world," he told AFP. (...)
Isn't alpha-beta pruning a type of optimization you can do to a search algorithm, but not the base algorithm itself? I only bring this up since I helped make an Othello bot that used Mini-max _with_ alpha-beta pruning to help reduce the number of branches it needed to follow down a tree.
Nanoc has excellent, comprehensive documentation with great typography and style in the layout:

http://nanoc.stoneship.org/docs/

backbone.js docs are concise and easy to follow, also well designed:

http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/
Because they are essentially giving into a massive bribe, often at a very young and vulnerable age. And keep in mind, the vast majority of musicians out there do not sign with record labels. Furthermore, only a small percentage of those who do actually become successful. It's essentially like playing the lottery.

It used to be that record labels provided powerful marketing power in addition to the initial cash bribe, but these days superstars are born on myspace and YouTube. I think record labels will be replaced be smaller, more agile PR/management teams who understand how to nurture viral growth and also manage the business side of making it in the music business.
Scale.com. You stand on your laptop and it tells you how much you weigh.

http://www.jakeandamir.com/post/6758808/website-ideas
I do not think a large amount of bands were promoted in the old days, just that the ones that did were made into gods by the talent pushers. I think you have a much better position these days, especially with all the free testing (samples and such) on the web sites.

Music has always been a social thing, so take advantage of that. Your fans should have a reason to create new fans. Cool shirts can be conversation starters which lead to iPod demos. Maybe you could find similar bands and cross-pollinate the fanbases. Maybe you could run a promotion for the holidays where a fan buys a bunch of CDs to use as gifts, and the buyer gets some sort of trinket. Just some ideas.
We're trying to fix it, problem is that the people who actually make decisions are more powerful than we all thought.
Yes but they are "too expensive". We like our contractors to be willing to work for $20/hour not $120/hour.
Can someone give me a Hacker News that is based on the last time I saw the home page? So if I haven't been around in a week, it shows me the top articles of the last week, but if I was around one hour ago, it focuses on what happened since then?

Imagine I have been out the week of Thanksgiving. What did I miss? A site should be smart enough to adapt the top stories to my rythmn. Store a cookie.
Even 1 SSD disk could hold all of that for cheaper than a 5gb hard drives back then.
I don't think small developers would be as successful on the app store had there been a record label equivalent in place. The app industry was virtually created with the app store. By the time iTunes came around, however, the music industry had already been operating in its current form for ~50 years.

If there was a Warner Music of app development, their products would muscle out indie developers just as record music does for indie music.
I agree, the law does need to change.

Sure, maybe you'll spend thousands of dollars to build your itunes collection over the years, but let's hope you backed your songs up. It may not seem likely that Apple will shut down the itunes store, but if they ever did, or changed their redownload policy, you'd sure be pissed to lose all of that music in a hard drive crash.

Services like Grooveshark offer what users really deserve, which is as much music as they want for a flat monthly rate.
Hmm .. maybe I should consider settling in Hungary.
Writing Apps the Google-y Way
I'm quickly becoming disturbed with what is happening in the US.

I was reading the last few chapters of 1984 last night, for fun, and with what has been happening in the past few months, particularly with the TSA, I am starting to feel as though we are headed toward an Orwellian future. I really do not want to be unnecessarily inciting, but these incremental changes that are occurring are becoming more unsettling as time passes.
I'm glad Sanofi-Aventis is moving forward with an iPhone accessory that will be a medical device, and will be really pleased if they're able to get it through FDA. The Agency has put a lot of scrutiny on mobile platforms in the past, which is one of the reasons you don't see all kinds of medical technology running on smartphones and tablets. Trust me, it's not because those of us in the medical device industry don't want to utilize these platforms. (Note: this is distinct from EMR/EHR, which medical staff can put on whatever they choose)
Bank of America had a round of layoffs today
Don't listen to whiny voices about how you need to work hard. You don't. You need to manage your time well and be very persistent and consistent in work you output.

Good luck.
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Just "fix it"? Care to elaborate on how ordinary citizens can pull that off?
I have in other fora predicted that in future, the Olympics will be reduced to geneticists submitting the genetic profile of individuals in their country.

As an Olympic-style weightlifter I can tell you that genes play a distinguishable role in outcomes at the elite level. Muscle vs tendon length, tendon insertion point geometry, muscle bundle geometry, ratio of fast-twitch to slow twitch, neural drive efficiency, length of limbs vs torso, size of hip bones ...

But for ordinary human beings like me it's mostly about practice. You might never beat Phelps in a pool, but with dedicated practice you could beat, say, 99% of the human population. Being in the top percentile is as good a definition of 'excellence' as you might want.

Likewise I will never beat Hossein Rezazadeh, but there's a reasonable chance I will wind up as one of the strongest 5% of people alive.
A Bushel of Open Resources for Web Developers
Never underestimate American zeal for non-public transportation.

edit: some biographical information might clarify this comment. I'm a 21 year old male from the midwest and budding car enthusiast. Additionally, I have a thing from making tongue-in-cheek comments that are absolutely non-obvious to everyone besides myself :)
Startup Quote: Andrew Mason, founder, Groupon
AppEngine for Business now supports SQL, SSL
The BillG pick up reference is probably a bit obtuse to anyone who hasn't read Accidental Empires... :)
I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur before I started this. I just like to build things.

- Andrew Mason (@andrewmason)

http://startupquote.com/post/2068292907
Excellent use of 'so what?'
Open source microcontroller TCP/IP? I give the Makers 6 months, the manufacturers 2 years, and the general public adoption 3.

Welcome to the future. Once again. It still blows my mind all the futuristic technology we have already. Here's yet another key to leapfrogging us ahead again.
Hudson Moves Away From Oracle
As a small-L libertarian, I have no issue with Microsoft offering to me voluntary entry into a licensing agreement for use of an xBox with the restriction that I not modify it. And, any supposed violation of this agreement would, as with most (all?) contractual issues, be civil rather than criminal matter.
Incredible. This is first rate trolling. Almost every point in this article is fallacious or inflammatory. I'd expect to read an article like this in Billboard, not Wired. Touting that bands (are supposed to) get a whole 20 cents to the dollar in the callout makes me wonder if this is some kind of overly dry satire.
one way of looking at it is, ask yourself how many new products/services has Google launched this year, due to internal development? And then compare that number to their total employee count of about 22,000. Do you think if say you split off just 50% of those folks, took them and spread them out between hundreds of small little startups each with a fresh and independent entrepreneurial drive and vision, and all legacy process/culture/tradition/rules stripped away, the end result would be way way more new products and services and innovation released into the market? For me, the answer would be yes, I'd expect that. Purely on a people numbers basis, and speaking in general terms. (Of course, it would depend on lots of other factors like the nature of the individuals, etc. But you get the idea.)

A software startup only takes 1-4 decent people to get off the ground, and sometimes it doesn't take a heck of a lot more beyond that to scale it up. Now compare that to Google's 22,000. Yes lots of hard-core optimizing of hardware and software going on there, which I respect. But most of them are just polishing corners on Google's legacy products/services, and minding the store, not creating or bringing a fundamentally new and distinct product or service to the market.

Also, based on everything I've seen, I think Google hires mostly for highly academic engineering-focused types -- not entrepreneurs and not highly creative types. They mostly get those kinds only through acquisitions (or acqui-hire, as some have called it) lately, not hiring. This is my impression from afar anyway.
VB Goes Mobile: Announcing “Visual Basic for Windows Phone Developer Tools - RTW
In the Netherlands your only option to move around 'untracked' is to use a bike or to walk, any other mode of transportation is monitored. And better leave your cell phone at home because telcos are required by law to keep location information for quite a long period.
Is this the right avenue for getting their attention?
Blitty or Blippr or Dipshoite or whatever that credit card one was much, much stupider.
Kind of makes me feel real bad for those who can't pass High School today.
I'm mainly thinking of companies like Eli Lilly or Ford. How much of their public /8 space are they really using?

If/when the ipv4 crisis happens, yes, it should be worth their while to redo their networks to sell off a /8. Even with some of the tech companies with /8s like HP (who has two, since they own DEC) or Apple, it probably will (but not yet) make economic sense to sell.
I used foursquare for about 3 weeks. I comment on HN because I want people to start recognizing my name. I post to twitter because I want a large follower base I can bounce ideas off and tell about things I'm working on. I answer questions on quora because there are a lot of wealthy, influential people on there and I want them to know I'm a developer trying to make his way in this world. The point is, I need to get something back from these services if I'm going to dedicate my time using them.

Foursquare gave me nothing in return. There's no value in being a mayor, and because theres only one mayor per location it's nearly impossible to maintain. None of my friends in town use it, so the potential value of finding out where my friends are and what they are up to at any moment is nonexistent.

I would use Foursquare if it would tell me if my buddy is going to the gym without him having to do anything. I would use it if it would actually keep track of the number of times I've bought a coffee at my favorite coffee shop so I don't have to keep messing around with those stupid punch cars that I lose every other week.

The first location based service that solves either or both of those problems will be the first one I use consistently.
They haven't rolled over. They've bowed out of an argument that is very risky to have a public viewpoint on.

There are some influential people carrying big agendas here and I think Amazon doesn't want to be in the gunsights. Maybe it isn't noble, but I think they are entitled to steer clear.

It is very likely that privately they agree with WikiLeaks' cause. Hedging your brand on it is a different story.

HOWEVER it would have been fantastic to see them make a stand.
Up front money, and connections (which they use to further screw you over) if you're one of those 0.1% who make it big enough to need the connections. Lots of groups sign out of necessity - it's that, or break up. That they break up later due to the crap they signed themselves into is another issue.
From a website called "AllFacebook"...
we're both trying to make the same point. I used 'power and memory' because I consider those to be the equivelant of 'form factor'. Computing won't reach etherealism until we no longer have to consider this form-factor over that form factor, just like we no longer consider memory or speed.
Alpha-Beta pruning is, to my knowledge, only really defined in a mini-max setup. By definition, it leverages the mini-max framework to prune areas of the search space.

You can apply the core concept -- refusing to expend computation effort when the result of that effort is guaranteed to not be used -- to any number of other methods and approaches in Machine Learning and AI.
Ask HN: After years at BigCo I feel like I'm becoming unemployable. Now what?
I've been developing software professionally at the same large company since graduating college several years ago. Over time I've come to realize that there's no such thing as stable employment, so I'd like to keep my options open as much as I can.

The problem is that at my job I've been repeatedly thrashing because direction keeps changing so suddenly. I've written "production" code in PHP, JavaScript, C#, Java, C, C++, Perl, Python, and ActionScript, but I don't think I've developed any meaningful level of expertise in any of these. I feel like I'm a jack of all trades, master of none, and I'd never even be able to hold a candle to anyone who has deeper experience in any subset of these.

On top of that, the company I work for has a very high degree of Not-Invented-Here syndrome, with lots of home-grown tools and frameworks of dubious quality, leaving me with completely non-transferable skills. Projects are rife with mismanagement, and the only things I've learned from the pain points in my job are that they are social problems, not technical. It feels as if I've only accumulated one year of experience, repeated several times.

In spite of this, I'm getting glowing reviews from management and would rate myself above the median among my colleagues, but that really doesn't count for much. After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

I've been trying to devote some effort to hobby projects and open source but never seem to have enough time to really get anything meaningful done there.

How should I try to escape this stagnation? I'm getting the feeling that the best way out may be a different job with better learning and development opportunities, but it's also somewhat disturbing to me that my skill set is scattered so thinly that nobody would ever want me (particularly the sort of startups that are frequently discussed here on HN).
There's nothing wrong with a bit of honesty.

You need to be mentality prepared for the difficulties inherent in starting a business all by yourself. It is a different set of challenges then corporate life and the more you understand that ahead of time the better off you'll be.

I appreciate advice like that over a superfluous "good luck", "you made the right choice"< etc.
For the love of god, let it die?
I think the author is kind of missing the point, having not used Foursquare himself. I think you could remove the "broadcast my position to friends" feature and it would still be useful/fun. It's still cool to become the mayor of the corner coffee shop, or get badges, or see how many other people are checking in at the bars around you.

(Note: I am not a Foursquare user either. Maybe I have no clue.)
I'm impressed by the number of commenters on the article defending 4sq. A friend of mine regularly meets up with people when they are nearby on foursquare. I don't really hang out with internets people so don't receive that benefit.

When I did use it, I found checking in a little antisocial and obnoxious.

Who uses foursquare?

People who want to be perceived by others as the things that they do (Gym, Tanning, Laundry), the places they go (Fancy Club, Expensive Restaurant, Coffee Shops), and the people with whom they associate (@Famous_Guy28).
> Why should Portland not use those tax dollars to cultivate its local economy if that is the goal?

The goal is a noble thing, but good intentions are not enough. "Sheltered workshop" policies lead either to feeble industries or rent-seeking or both.
I'll just jump in now before the rest of HN gets here and say "Leave your job".

See, among others, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1960437 for an excellent discussion of "why".

(Specifically: you will suddenly find time to devote to those hobby projects you can't focus on right now, for one. That will lead to at least some degree of skill set specialism or broadening, which will rejuvenate you, which will help you decide whether to continue hacking around and turning it into a consultancy gig -- or finding another, better job.

That or you run out of money and end up at Starbucks, which would at least be a change!)
"Oh, did you really just eat lunch at Subway? Why the hell do you think anybody cares to know that?"

Thats not an uncommon opinion of facebook or twitter.

Coming from a facebook fan site, the vitriol throughout the article seems misplaced, and the facebook exceptions at the end ("Granted, Facebook was built so we can see how boring everybody else’s lives were, _but_") just seem like apologia.

I don't use foursquare, and don't see the point, but that hasn't stopped anyone from using it, and if he doesn't like it, he should do the same.

Also, his conclusion seems to completely contradict the rest of his rant: if no one is using foursquare, then why is he so annoyed that all of his friends bombard him with status updates?

If nobody is using it, why even bother writing the article, let alone be so mad?
I'm sorry, but even though I'm an American (or USAian, if you prefer) and support public transportation, wish it was better and more widespread, &c.-- it's simply shortsighted and simplistic to ascribe it to zeal for private ownership of automobiles. Although enjoyment of the private auto is a distinctly American and capitalist thing, the fact is that it's drastically less expensive and challenging to leverage public transportation in Europe, which is a much smaller land mass.
I'm guessing the title name was meant to complement the usual "Who's Hiring" posts that show up every month or so.
Not sure these fill your needs for http://sendgrid.com and http://postmarkapp.com were two I was looking at recently for transactional emails.
Let's say that we had machine vision software good enough to not need a human to look at the scanner images unless it discovered undesirable objects on the person (I don't think that's so far fetched technologically). What percent of people who currently oppose these machines would do so if they were completely automated?

Personally, I still would, as I am more concerned about the government scanning me and finding other things that it finds undesirable. I have no intention of blowing stuff up, but if these things become widespread, I think they might well be used to search for things other than weapons. Constantly being searched for illegal objects when I go out in public would disturb me. That's why I don't like these things. But I bet most of the people are just opposed because of the naked pictures.
Write a story about each of the projects you have worked on.. The problems, the discussions, the plan of attack and the outcome, cost savings for the company, technology used. As though they were all separate consulting jobs.

Take out company names and specifics.

Have an objective look at what you have done and assess it again, because now you've taken the emotion out of it ('repeatedly thrashing' etc) and you are left with cold and useful facts about your projects.

You then have a portfolio that you can show new potential employers. I am in a similar situation and am currently doing the same.
I'll say it again- Americans, fix your government.

Where are you from? I bet I can find some problems wrong with your country that could be solved with "Well, just fix it," too. Especially if I get to be vague and use a 1 minute newsclip as proof.

// edit: After watching the clip, it sounded more like they performed an exercise, in the event of a real situation. Not that they planned to do checks at greyhound stations everywhere, every day. And its good that they're performing exercises, rather than treating everything as a real situation.
>A few years ago, audiophiles dismissed iTunes’ 128-Kbps resolution as anemic, even though it supposedly passed rigid blind testing against full-bandwidth CD tracks of the same song. The sound is compressed, connoisseurs said. The high end is mangled. Good work, audiophiles: Online stores have cranked up the audio quality to a fat 256 Kbps. To most ears, it’s indistinguishable from a CD. (Actually, most ears are listening through crummy earbuds anyway, but whatever.)

There is so much wrong with those sentences, I'm not sure where to start.

1) Who the hell did they test their 128kbps on? I can tell the difference, even with crummy earbuds. With my Grados, 192 is still distinguishable, and I'm far from skilled in audiophile terms.

The rest of the article seems to miss a major point in this whole affair: how we got here.

Thank you, pirates and audiophiles, for allowing me to buy high-quality, DRM-free music. Could you go after the video industry now, pretty please?
We need to institute a process to manage the memes of excessive bureaucratisation. They take hold too fast and with insufficient oversight.

I propose we form a working party to thrash out a draft proposal for such a process, to circulated to all the relevant stakeholders in due season.
Cars are amongst the easiest of things to track - cameras with license plate recognition, and potentially with the capability to also photograph the driver are widely deployed, in many places in Europe; I don't know about the US. With an infra-red flash, you'll not necessarily know you were photographed.