skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm referring to enemies of the West. If you live in the US, UK, or Eastern Europe and don't believe we have common enemies, then you are sadly mistaken.

I've met them. They don't like us.
I agree, but this is harder than it sounds. Why? If this is your first time building such a system you don't even know what is protocol and what's not.

There's an old saying that you need to build three apps on your framework. That first app shows that your framework works for something. The second app shows that its more general than just the first app. The third app shows that you weren't lucky.

Curious, how was Facebook designed? Are there any post-mortem docs on it? I know that MySpace seemed really ad hoc. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook was more ad hoc than we imagine it to have been
Holiday Reading List
WikiLeaks Can Still Get Cash – Thanks To Pirate Bay’s Co-Founder
Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it's 'crazy', an 'illness', or even remotely illogical.

Of course, I wouldn't know what to characterize it other than sheer sense of adventure. I can totally understand going for the highest achievement one can pull off, and it certainly might seem like lunacy to many.
Great? 300 ms in response time would make it slow as dirt in many many situations.
The Greatest Stories Never Told - Samizdat in modern literature
Lessons from launching a web product
Arsenic-based bacteria paper fails to convince experts
I was with him in releasing information about war crimes. He lost me in this one though.
3:57 (talking about whether the map would also run on "other people's operating system")

Have a group of engineers, they can only do so much.

I have feeling that the Maps app on iOS will not be updated for a long long time after Honeycomb. Apple was wise to look into building their own map app, just like it was wise to purchase Final Cut.
Can Robots form human-like societies? Maybe yes, with robot evolution
Innovation can cripple your business
Can interview puzzles help find startup ideas?
Sounds like a great way for scientists to get their competitors' grants slashed.

(Not advocating this, just imagining how you could game the system)
GP was responding to:

I want to earn money just for the heck of earning money

So we're operating under the premise that he's not in it for that stuff.
I think you are underestimating the power of public opinion. Nuclear power was a contender to replace coal and fossil fuel until the Three Mile Island accident. Since then there have been no new nuclear power plants constructed in America. The average age of nuclear plant operators in America is around 60.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/RDS2-26_web.pd...

While GM foods are very far from the reputation nuclear power in America has the framework is set so one public scare will deter people from trusting GM foods for a very long time. Almost all grocery stores now carry 'organic' foods that are aggressively marketed.

For people to adopt GM foods they have to be introduced slowly. Take a look at Butter and Margarine:
http://www.margarine.org/historyofmargarine.html
"1902 - Amendments to the Federal Margarine Act raised the tax on colored margarine five-fold, but decreased licensing fees for white margarine. But demand for colored margarine remained so strong, that bootleg colored margarine flourished."

So yes while arguing about which replacement is best will delay the process ultimately public opinion will determine the fate of GM bananas.
You are conflating the right to personal privacy with the need for government transparency, they are two entirely different subjects.
As can many other languages. However, when I use .NET, I find myself wishing for maven and all the libraries immediately available. Without the VM, there would be no point in having the source. However, even with a great VM, other languages fall short of Java, IMHO. YMMV.

There are also areas where the Java VM totally sucks, frankly. How is it that we only have decent IO after more than 10 years? Sun and now Oracle hold the Java community hostage with the VM and runtime. Time to move on.
It's thoughtful to me. I believe in being clear and concise. We're dealing in subjectivity here, it's as simple as that.
The "Bitch" Evolved: Why Girls Are So Cruel to Each Other
In general, any problem you are having has existed before. Any issues you've had during development other programmers have had as well. This is especially true for any popular language/framework/design problem. The programmers that have had these problems before you will often blog about it, open issue tickets somewhere, or be vocal on the mailing lists. Google should be able to answer just about any issue you are having, since it already exists on the web somewhere. If the search results are slim then chances are you are doing it wrong or not thinking about the problem correctly.

Of course you may discover a bug or some edge case. In that case feel free to go out and post about. However, if this is happening once a day, or even once a week, you are most likely doing it wrong.

Just remember - other people have been in this spot before, what did they do to fix it?
Agreed. I'd like to see more detail. C.f. facebook's recent post-mortem (http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/more-deta...). Lots of detail. When a downtime blog post is so vague like Tumblr's was, my first instinct is that there's something they are deliberately not telling about what went wrong. Or maybe they haven't figured out exactly why it went down yet. I hope a more detailed postmortem is coming.
What is Imperialism about then?

It's always about resource acquisition.

One can argue that some resources are not equal to money -- say China's imperialist expansion into non-resource rich areas as a method of buffer zone acquisition against strong foreign powers -- e.g. resources = security model.

But from before Rome on, most empires adopt an expansionist policy as a method of acquiring resources to turn into money. Kill the inhabitants, take their stuff, everybody gets rich.
resource = money model.

Here's some relevant background

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire
During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia.
Whether the API is REST is irrelevant. In most big data use-cases on real systems, you have special dump/export tools to get your data out. In this case, the question is whether such a tool/API exists, how fast and practical it is. It can be simple though, eg. do they have a button on the webconsole that exports your dataset to a CSV file that you can then download per FTP.
> I'm referring to enemies of the West.

Oh my!

> If you live in the US, UK, or Eastern Europe and don't believe we have common enemies, then you are sadly mistaken.

I guess I will have to take your word for it.

> I've met them.

In what capacity did you meet the enemies of the West ?

> They don't like us.

Did they specify any reasons ?
Nice to see stuff come in from India!! Awesome. Mumbai,Chennai,Delhi or Bangalore?
http://www.nsf.gov/about/congress/107/highlights/cu02_1219.j...

Long story short: Republicans go along with the minimum budget increase possible.
Oh, wow. He seriously needs to dump that info. IMO, this would be more important than the state dept cables, and more justified.
Different people measure value in different ways. I can't speak for anyone else, but as for myself, I would be driven suicidal by a long, boring life. If the risks that I take in the pursuit of memorable experiences and exciting ventures results in a shorter life ... that's OK with me.

Also -- risk of accidental death aside -- climbing and mountaineering are probably the two singularly best ways to maintain great physical conditioning.

Anyway, that's enough HN for me for a while.
There are also some heavy downsides in Xcode/Obj-C development, such as hunting down memory leaks and crashes,
---------------------

As opposed to hunting DOM leaks and having your script silently fail?
The two he listed sound ridiculous, but he cites no source, so I don't know if they are fair descriptions or not.
The amazing story of the woman who took investor millions to Vegas
As a quick side note, under the $8/month plan, it's "up to", not "upto".
However you look at it, that split screen does remind iOS' UISplitViewController and universal binaries do exist for iPhone and iPad. The question about supreme commander was indeed pointless.
.Net, Java, Ruby and PHP but no direct Python support?
You know, while it's funny you mention that, the research done to develop those scanners, if continued and put in the right hand, could have actual benefits. Security? No. That's needless, infringing, and potentially unsafe. However, the things learned from that research could be used in future research for some sort of medical examination.
94% is not science. If you do 15 random experiments, there's a good chance one of them will succeed at the 94% confidence level.
I'm not sure there's really anything to report back. Tynt is fairly widely used, and is really nothing more than a piece of javascript that watches copy and paste and inserts a link back to the original story into the paste buffer. It's annoying, but there's no profiling going on and is far less of a tracking system than say Google Analytics. It's just more annoying.
Bangalore
Indeed; all theoretical research will get squashed. After all, it's usually not exactly known how the outcome will be useful in the future.
Bad idea to let every hillbilly decide on what is useful research and what is not. Another push toward incrementalism and mediocrity. Go USA!

Luckily for researchers, black-ops research is also publicly funded, and the budget for that is increasing every time.
A Day in the Life as an Engineer
You could have chosen a better title for this submission. Why editorialize it with "Contempt and Confusion"?
That was my immediate first impression, but remember it's rendering vectors, and they're in 3D!
Thank you. Will correct it.
Why links are indispensable for a website?
This is likely the first grant "$750,000 to develop computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players":
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117162&org...

This may be the second grant "$1.2 million to model the sound of objects breaking for use by the video game industry."
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/Sound/
(although the dollar value isn't the same as cited on the House Whip site)

[edited to include 2nd grant, suggested from Science Blogs @ http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2010/12/congress_critters...]
Yeah I've never had a native/desktop app exhibit any of these behaviors...oh wait...
Core disconnect: what is source controls role: is it a journal of all history, or is it a tool to find code.

I fall on the tool side, which means I rebase & amend and keep history semantically organized, and such. All that makes it easy later to find exactly where I made XYZ change. BUT, I admit that it does ruin the journal aspect of every change. rebase -i does in fact change history, and can make things appear out of order.

I think it's ok, the author doesn't.
s/Chinese/Indian/g

Would still be true. Personal experience here.

edit: I mean, I'm not one of the 'smart' ones. Bog-average performer here, going by my test scores.
I hadn't actually read that Q&A - very interesting and a reasonable point in his answer to the figurehead question (although I would suggest that Wikileaks could simply lower its profile and become an anonymising conduit, thus negating the need for verified comms with the public at all).

Keeping with my 'The Matrix' / Philip K. Dick geek fantasy rant though, check out the last few sentences from his interview:

"History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you."

Love the drama!
What business do you run? Is the stolen CC # problem greater with certain kinds of businesses than others?
Just because he turned himself in doesn't mean that he wouldn't flee afterwards.

Wikileaks is in a very large part about influencing perception. Everything has a purpose. Again, someone who has been trekking around the globe because many government are after him is hardly not an escape risk.
The article is now available at:

(Article)
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-me-s...

(Single-page/printable version):
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-me-s...
I'd read that comment, which is in this very thread (!), I just don't see why you'd want to do that.
Unfortunately, that means we hackers with desk jobs had better be taking our aspirin (or getting a lot of colorectal activity, I suppose--refuse the scanner next time you fly).
Couldn't agree more. I'd like to see more devices capture/sync (rather than merely display) data.

I've been hacking on a project like that -- WiiScale is a Mac app that sends your weight (captured from a Wii BalanceBoard) to Google Health. Since it knows your height, it gives a realtime visualization of your BMI while you're on the scale.

Video/Download here: http://snosrap.com/wiiscale/
Source: http://code.google.com/p/wiiscale/
This article says a lot about HTML5 but I don't think the author actually knows what it is. He's not a programmer and he seems to start from the position that programming languages are things which can be "owned."
Well, the only difference you see is that you call GC_malloc() instead of malloc() (and that can be redefined, even link-time), and that on some platforms (at least Cygwin and AIX, maybe also Solaris) you need to call GC_INIT() from main().
One of my main reasons for planning to do a start up soon is the freedom to work on what you want, and the freedom to work toward creating your own vision.

I think a healthy goal for money is to have enough money to not have to worry about money.
That he turned himself in is (mostly) irrelevant in the UK legal system. Here we don't have laws that cover what the swedes have supposedly charged him with, instead he's being charged with rape. If he successfully fights to be tried here he'll walk because what they're claiming in Sweden doesn't constitute rape in the UK.

He was unable to give an actual physical address. Under the UK legal system you have to be bailed to an address. A PO box isn't enough. The chances of flight are high if the shit does hit the fan (compared to most people bailed) and (for example) the US decides to invoke the extradition treaty we signed in 2003 on the grounds of the espionage act 1917. That would be my move if I was a really stupid American FBI Director looking to alleviate political pressure from the senate and executive.

The other thing as well is that a rape charge generally doesn't get bail here, so he was already on shaky ground to start with.

Personally I think him being in the UK was a bad move to start with, this is probably the last country you want to be apprehended in if you're on the run from the states, just ask Gary McKinnon.
FathomDB is much closer to Amazon RDS - MySQL-as-a-service. Every customer gets their own MySQL instance, and accesses it over the MySQL protocol, using normal SQL (the MySQL flavor at least). Database.com looks to be Salesforce repackaging their wrapper which lets them do multitenancy in Oracle. You'll be stuck with what the wrapper exposes, which isn't very SQL like, and certainly won't be a drop-in replacement for any existing SQL applications. They aren't offering Oracle-as-a-service.

In terms of latency, Amazon RDS and FathomDB both target applications running on the same cloud as the database. I would imagine that would be the sweet spot for database.com as well, but there are some applications where the Internet latency could be tolerable.
Security issue in Google Website Optimizer
I would agree, if I couldn't think of lots of other exciting activities with lower risk.
There are plenty examples of corruption in the cables, but most of them are about other countries, not the US. But still, some examples:

- The US spied on the UN, including credit card numbers and frequent flying numbers of its leaders.

- The US wrote Spanish new IP law.

- The US pressured Spain not investigate the killing of a Spanish journalist in Baghdad by US forces.

The leak degrades the image of the US government, but not as much as it degrades the images of almost any other government (at least so far).
Hybrot
Tips to Make Writing Literature Term Papers Trouble-Free
Literature term papers will require in depth understanding of the literary piece assigned or selected. Writing literature term papers can be a tiresome task as a result of this. However, with the right tips, writing literature term papers will be trouble free.
I won't argue against that, but she just seemed to act like a child. I wanted to smack her hand when she was reaching for the thing. Walt was a bit more reserved, but that could only be because he wasn't within reaching distance.
I wonder how well the caching will work. I currently use MapDroyd ( http://www.mapdroyd.com/ ) for cached vector maps. Maybe now I can just use Google Maps and not need a second maps app installed for when I lose my data connection.
Robert Greene (author of 48 Laws of Power) on realism and entrepreneurship
Have you ever seen a rape trial? They're not known for being level-headed.

This isn't exactly to the detriment of Assange. It's easy to get away with rape if you're willing to completely tar your victim's reputation. And if you're a popular public figure, your fans will completely go along with this. Just ask Kobe.

EDIT: Although, Swedish culture might be different in this respect.
And from the looks of it, for submitting a link to a YouTube video.
HTML5 Recipes: Geolocation
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested and refused bail by UK court
My pet peeve with Salesforce is that getting to the data can be difficult especially from other systems.
I'm going to go ahead and judge. 1 in 10. Your have a 10% chance of dying if you attempt a summit, right? How much pain is your untimely death going to cause if it happens? How many everest orphans and widows are there? Include in that the considerable cost and time investment to do this when you could be creating something, exploring something that has a conceivable chance of helping humanity, or just plain investing in helping others.

No, this is a hugely selfish act. Other folks are right that people are indeed wired to get addicted to these types of feelings, but every day people choose NOT to give into their wiring. I respect THAT a lot more than climbing Everest.

Anticipating a straw man: No, we don't have a duty to eliminate all unnecessary risk from our lives. But a single act with a 10% mortality rate seems reckless.
Two dozen is only about 10% of the 208 YC startups to date. I'm surprised that that few have done a Series A. I would have thought it would be a much higher percentage.
If you're curious how SalesForce is pulling this off from an architectural point of view, check this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MZZDI18opk

It's mostly built on Oracle RAC.
Makes it pretty hard to make money that way.

You say that as if it's hypothetical...but actually their numbers are great. http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/Crm

$50/month means it pays for itself if you save that user ~1 hour in that month (ie less than 1% productivity increase.)

If you take a cab from A to B, it costs way more than driving yourself, but you don't have to own a car or know how to drive.
The 'risk' would be that he would flee abroad, and last I checked England was an island.

Also, fleeing would make him look pretty bad in the eyes of many and I personally don't think he would be stupid enough to do so (that's not much of a guarantee, I'll give you that), since capture (see 'island') is almost inevitable.

I wonder if anybody has access to what those maximum penalties of the charges brought are (under Swedish law), and how they relate to being jailed pending an extradition hearing. That would be interesting because I read in one uncorroborated source that the punishment for the circumstances described is actually a fine, rather than jail time and it would seem that if that is really the case that any jail time at all (such as pending this hearing) would be excessive. If Assange fights extradition do they plan to hold him in custody during the whole time ? And if so how is that different from using this as a ploy to simply lock him up because he's a 'risk' ?
Though Shalt Not Lie: a stupid article title, idiotic advice, and other lies
Android Applications Website Designs
Maybe they cache it to improve performance :-P
Wikipedia: "it is alleged that while having consensual sex his condom broke and he either did not disclose the breakage to his partner or continued after his partner asked him to stop."

"Continued after his partner asked him to stop" is rape by definition. "Did not disclose the breakage to his partner" may not technically be rape, but I'm comfortable characterizing it as sexual assault. In either case, it sounds like an allegation worth prosecuting--and that's totally besides my views on Wikileaks, Julian Assange, or anything else.
I think Mosaic actually used the CERN libwww library and I'm pretty sure that the CERN HTTP server was the standard at the time Mosaic was first released.

It would be interesting if there was an equivalent for social applications... a common server component, an application library and maybe a reference application but with plenty of scope for people to innovate in the UI without the need to continually reinvent the core communication components if they don't want to.
Wikileaks Assange in custody, held by UK authorities until Dec. 14th
How did they get two numbers at once to work? Does one just run off the SIM, and the other (presumably business) run off a VoIP/SIP thing? GSM only allows one number per SIM right?
Sorry, let me clarify. It makes it hard for me to make money using their platform if I have to pay them $50 / user / month.

Clearly it's very profitable for Salesforce.
Here's the soccer research in question:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...

It's actually quite interesting. The real question is how do you judge the merits of individuals in a team where there aren't a lot of individual measures. That is, in basketball there are a lot of individual measure, rebounds/assists/points/steals/blocks/turnovers. But in soccer far fewer (and occur with less frequency). So the question is, how do you model this sparse data. Pretty interesting IMO.

The second research, sound effects, is just downright interesting: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0905...

It really is how do you model the sounds amoung interaction in a 3D modeled space. I think this is darn near basic computational science, although one that I've never really seen anyone study before.

If these are the two shining examples of poor research funded by the NSF then the NSF has done an incredible job.
When you hear the words, "Think of the children," do you expect a rational discussion to follow?

I'll do my best. Is "GM Bananas or starving children" a false dichotomy? If the world had no bananas, couldn't we use the plantations to grow something else?
Yes, that was intentional.
When I was in Afghanistan in 2008. I could name countless reasons, but you know them already.
The Importance Of Customer Feedback, Getting Designers In Front Of Users