skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The bit about the patent is a little depressing. I wonder how many novel bits of technology were shuttered because some big company had some similar patent that they'll never use outside of lawsuits and as an asset for mergers and acquisitions. "We have the 'read security card with optics' patent. Its worth a lot!" Government mandated monopolies on ideas is just a bad idea.

Everytime I think about starting a company or investing in tech, stuff like thinks makes me reconsider.
Show HN: Dropdo - file upload site that tries to display the files
This was a side project to give me a chance to use Flask for python.

Most file upload/sharing sites make you download the file to view it. Dropdo tries to display it on the site so you don't have to download it to see it. It also has a link to download the file if you wish.

It'll currently display images, videos (a few formats), audio (a few formats), plaintext, markdown, source code files (everything supported by Pygments which is a lot), and anything that Google's doc viewer supports (Powerpoint, Word docs, Excel files, PDFs, etc.).

I'd love your feedback. I'm not looking to monetize this (unless there's overwhelming support of it), but I'd like for it to be useful to people, as it has been for me.

http://dropdo.com
This is a very good article that really gets you thinking.

I would have to say that Holocaust deniers should be heard, and measured based on their arguments. To shut these people out before their case is heard is (to me) completely irrational. I might not like such people, but if these people can present a rational argument that challenges my view of events, then I've gained something. Either my view holds up on the basis of rational debate and my view is reinforced, or I'm forced to question it by a greater logic. To remove the voice of holocaust deniers is to remove that opportunity.
I hope Google News adds support for hiding sites that put their articles behind paywalls (perhaps manually on a per-user basis, like they've added support for in search results). I see lots of WSJ articles on Google News, and oftentimes I click on them before looking at the source, only to end up facing a paywall.

This problem's only going to keep getting worse as more sites start erecting paywalls, and there are plenty of people like me who have no interest in paying for an online news subscription and would appreciate the ability to completely hide those sites.
Commodore Releases Prototype Photos Of New Commodore 64
I'm unfamiliar with browser design. What parts of this need to be implemented by the ad networks, and what parts need to be done by the browser? I would have thought that clearing your cookies goes a long way.

Is it technically possible for a browser to activate a TOR service for a "Do Not Track" feature?
alternatively, a way to accurately measure their accounting week by week?
Good opportunity to short sell the stock?
OOP describes the real-world in the same way that the metaphor Raganwald is a diamond in the rough describes your ability to act as a piece of jewelry.
Fortunately, we're not in another tech bubble, or this would be ridiculous.
It's hard to take the author's claims of infringement seriously because of his laughable claim that third party applications such as Angry Birds running on top of Android would have to be open sourced under GPL if actual infringement is found in Android.
Great advice from Marc Suster.

I think a lot of people get too fixated on "hire only A players" and forget about "attitude over aptitude" and "culture matters". If the only A player you find for a role is an asshole, keep looking -- or be more flexible in your definition of the role.
Coming from a small European country, it's one of those things that you think it's really weird about countries like United States. Here you can withdraw money without paying anything from any ATM. I never even saw a ATM asking for a fee.

When I went to NYC it wasn't easy to find ATMs without fees (and then there was the problem of my card being part of the Maestro network which isn't available everywhere).
I'm not sure that's true. In OOP, a methods belong to objects. In a natural language, a verbs don't really belong to nouns. To me, the structure of OOP is very different to how people typically think.
As someone who doesn't use the NYT as a primary source of news, but frequently ends up there through links, I'm curious to see if/how soon I'll reach the 20 article limit.
All you need to do to read those articles is to paste the title of the article into Google and click on the first result from wsj. it will take you straight to the full article.
Google is not going to pick that fight.

They only have one competitive risk: government regulation. The only way that happens is if their PR as cuddly bunny hugging geeks in bathrobes made of organic llama hair get destroyed. People hoping for good PR cannot afford to be an existential threat to the NYT.

Now if you or I did it, on the other hand... well, maybe their First Click Free policy covers us, but I wouldn't bet my business on it.
Dirty Secrets: 5 Weaknesses of Cloud Storage Gateways
The Distribution of Library Book Circulation Is Not a Power Law
Wait, where do you work? Are they hiring?
The article suggests that they're pissed off that congress is considering limiting their overage fees (which IMO are purely predatory/opportunistic, no way an overage actually costs the bank 150 bucks, I could be wrong though).

So they're retaliating by saying "yeah, well we're just gonna stick it to you another way, then". Emotionally-driven economics at work.

I mean, it's not like they could actually make the system more efficient. Less people to manage, harder to justify your big paycheck for managing a simple and efficient system.
I wonder if this method could extend to character transposition and weight-able costs; e.g., allow "hello"/"ehllo" = distance 1, as logically this is a single typing mistake of whacking the 'h' a bit early.

I've used the perl String::Approx module to great effect, but it takes a lot of resources to blast through a large dictionary.
Wow, the pricing seems incredibly steep. I'm used to thinking twice before subscribing to magazines, since $12/year per magazine adds up. But they are talking about $8+ a week - wow. Good luck getting enough people to pay that. And before someone starts talking about lattes, I don't buy lattes, for the same reason. And I have a really good income.
Or possibly it's what happens when developers who don't understand legal stuff try to circumvent software licences.
I stopped reading after "Early NSA partnership."
Adios, NYT. You won't be missed.
Things We Learned At Dinner With Ben Horowitz
PHP 5.3.6 Released
The problem that exists is that none of the issues are binary:

- "Yes allow it a voice" doesn't define what form that voice takes (taught as an alternative, and example of denial, etc.)

- Holocaust denier is a broad term that covers those who outright deny anyone died to those who question things like the scale, or the culprits/responsibility, or other facts.

- Some Holocaust denial is simply anti-Semitism in a new package, some of it is rather more genuine questioning of history

And then throw in the fact that overwhelming public opinion is that the holocaust did happen largely as recorded in mainstream history books and you have a situation where "Yes" isn't a very meaningful answer.

I guess that is the point of the paper; to reach that conclusion critically.

I wonder how much your response is born out of critical thinking, and how much it is born out of an ideal that people should not have their voices repressed just because they hold a view that is diametrically opposed to the mainstream. And if the latter is true (I don't wish to make assumptions :)) I wonder whether you would write an unequivocal yes after taking this course, it being apparently designed to address such attitude.

As I read it, the point of this post is to say "students are useless at critical thinking until taught it, and the way I do that is to introduce them to the idea of holocaust denial and force them to make their own critical assessment". Extending that to a general idea of teaching holocaust denial without the accompanying tutoring in critical thinking is another consideration entirely :)

It's an interesting debate for sure.
I hate to say it, but the question "It's impossible?" is my kryptonite--but in the opposite perspective.

I accidentally established myself as a capable and competent worker at my job and have unfortunately given management the confidence that I can do anything. I'm using a negative context here because I've lost the ability to say no to them. I suppose since my job as a programmer is to give them what they want I should never want to say no, but I'm a sucker for elegance and I really try to avoid solutions that are overly complex and convoluted. Unfortunately, there are occasions in which a feature requirement requires such a solution. Or rather, not the actual feature requirement, just one of the "tweaks" they like to nitpick on to make it perfect. I.e "This is great, but you know what would make it perfect?" syndrome. Usually, I'm fine with these but when the tweak requires a complete overhaul or reimplementation--potentially days worth of coding to implement I'll try to dissuade them from it. Inevitably, if it's something they are really stubborn on when I say "well, I can't really do that--the system doesn't support event callbacks which is what would be required to implement...." I'll get back "It's impossible?".

And thats it, cat's got my tongue. I want to say yes. So bad. But I know the answer is no. I know they are confident in my ability, so they think they know the answer is no. But, seriously I'm gonna have to write a third party application in a different language and write a service protocol to communicate between the main ERP suite and the third party app to accomplish this and it's just so they can get an extra description feedback to an auto-complete feature. I know there are more important, more critical, more exciting issues that I could and I think I should work on. Whats worse, is that if I were a little less proficient, if I knew one less programming language it would impossible for me. Then again, it still wouldn't because I know I could just learn that one language and it would be possible. Arrrggghh there's no way out of this question.

"Well, no it's not impossible. I can probably do it. But it's going to take an extra couple of days.."

"Okay, let me know when its done."

[grit teeth].
You cannot compare it to Amazon/Netflix. They are not creating any of the content. NY Times is. The price includes the cost of content creation and delivery.
CANDU doesn't chemically re-process it (no purification). It just physically breaks it up into fuel rods that it can use. A CANDU reactor can run on unprocessed, raw (just-pulled-it-out-of-the-ground) uranium, which light water reactors cannot do without chemical reprocessing.
The mountain of evidence pointing towards the Holocaust actually happening means that we should indeed let deniers speak but any position they take is so indefensible that it's more an exercise in observing human stupidity than considering two sides of an argument.
Thanks for clarifying that. Yes, let freedom and pluralism ring.
This is a motivational article, which is fine.
Some people (depending on their personality and their current state in life) need motivation: 'you can do that'!

Some other people, the born dreamers who are overly motivated and naive by default need experience, need to fail a lot to learn that some things are harder than it seems. (I am more in this category.)

But in reality there is a market for the belief of whether 'they can do that': (angel) investing.
If someone bets that people's capabilities are undervalued she should buy into the market (invest in early stage enterpreneurs).
If someone bets that people's capabilities are overvalued she should sell (not invest).

Saying 'you can do that' is cheap. If you really trust he/she can do that you invest. I think the market is balanced in Silicon Valley (some say overvalued) and undervalued in some countires where there is virtually no angel investing in technology startups at all. (Like where I live in Eastern Europe.)
No, they shouldn't be heard. Just like any person with an irrational and illogical argument based on lack of facts should not be heard.

Period.

Argument for the sake of argument is pointless. It's a meaningless waste of time. There is no "other side" to this debate. "Other side" to a debate usually implies that they have a different, but meaningful view of a scenario based on the same set of facts.

In this case, these people bring nothing to the table of any substantial quality.
Here is the letter sent to current digital subscribers.
http://www.stanford.edu/~allison/nytimespaywall.html
Ask HN:  Storing and Processing Large Amounts of Temporal-Spatial Data
As part of our research group, we're collecting large amounts of location data. Our data essentially looks like (user id, lat/long co-ordinates, timestamp). There's other metadata involved too, but that's not relevant here.

We're collecting about 2-3 million records a week, and expect to collect about a year's worth of data in due time.

I'd really like some advice on techniques on storing and processing this data. We'd like to be able to answer queries similar to:

(1) For a given location, who was near that location (within a specified distance) over a specified period of time?

(2) Which locations are near each other?

That's the general idea. We don't need a real-time response, but what are good databases (or other data storage software)? I've come across people talking about k-d trees, does that work at this scale? What kind of hardware do I need? I'm hoping to get pointers towards general strategies. How do we store this data? Does it even make sense to store it all in a database? Which data/software/packages lend themselves well to distance/radius calculations?

We're most familiar with Python/Linux, would prefer to stay away from Java and prefer open source/free software. We're new to all this, pointers to books and papers would also be useful. All and any advice would be greatly useful.
I find it strange that no one seems to be talking about what his does to NYT's google-juice/clout in the link economy. NYT peddles influence by being widely read/the paper of record, but doesn't putting up a paywall directly mitigate that? Ad-supported model seems to (for the most part) complement that; a paywall opposes it.
How did you make that image? If I had to, I'd create an awful custom profile for my monitor and work with that in Photoshop et al, but that's kind of a kludge. Did you use a tool to change the ICC profile behind it?
I've never personally found the holocaust denying evidence to be at all worth parroting even for the benefit of theoretical discussion.

That's a stance a lot of intelligent people take. The result is that people who are bad at ‘critical thinking’ hear more nonsense than well thought out argument.
I'd recommend switching to a bank account that refunds ATM withdrawals at other bank ATMs. My bank - Ally Bank - has free ATM withdrawals at any ATM. This easily saves me $20 a month in time and money.
Data Collection Debate: How FTC Privacy Measures Could Impact IT Security
Japan and the rest of the world
I don't know really - if limitations are documented like they are apparently, it's really not an issue for me - I don't feel cheated (but it's really an opinion!).

Your mileage may vary as they say: I used the GIS since 1.6 and it was very helpful for me in this form already :)
A few examples (adding as a comment so links are clickable):

Source code - http://dropdo.com/H/html_matcher.py

Markdown - http://dropdo.com/x/cowboy-readme.md

Text - http://dropdo.com/A/ycombinator.txt

Image - http://dropdo.com/B/Chaos.jpg

Audio - http://dropdo.com/C/02_-_Flim.mp3

Video - http://dropdo.com/E/bully-gets-owned.m4v

PDF - http://dropdo.com/F/HTML_Cheat_Sheet.pdf (just uses Google's doc viewer, same as with Docs, Excel, and PPT).
It is because <small European country> only has one bank? ;-)

In Spain these charges are quite common too, but are grouped into competing ATM networks: servired, telebanco and 4B being the main ones.
Are there any other notable examples of free speech that are banned by Western-European countries?

I believe Holocaust Denial is officially a crime punishable by jail in many places in Europe; was just wondering if the laws there had any similar stances on other "free-speech" issues?
Some people definitely write me off. The key to engaging them is not coming off as if I believe it too much. Then they think that they can convince me. When I come off as either an asshole or a conspiracy nut then people just laugh it off.

I feel like its a good conversation starter and usually don't beat it into the dust. Ask people if they really think we could go to the moon in 1969, before we had personal computers or the internet and it at least makes them stop and think.
> The solution seems to be to re-licence Bionic under the LGPL, which is what the C libraries of every other linux based OS do. Although that does seem to suggest that one can always work around the GPL linking restriction by creating an intermediate LGPL library, but I'm no lawyer so maybe there is some reason that is not allowed.

Seeing as this is exactly what GNU's very own libc does, I don't see how it could not be allowed.
I can never figure out why people complain about ATM fees. Especially when those same people proceed to take $20 out of an ATM, thus maximizing the fee ($5/$25 = 20%!)

The math is not particularly difficult: Always take out the absolute maximum that the machine will give you. $5/$505 =~ 1%. That's close enough to zero to ignore. Feel free to stash most of that cash in your sock drawer if you don't want to carry it around.
I'm sure that Linus does not think that programs that run on the Linux kernel should have to be GPL'd. I doubt if Angry Birds or Flash use kernel header files -- they call the kernel, yes, but as userspace programs not as part of the kernel.
Saw this announced on network news. The anchorlady said a $5 fee on a $100 withdrawal was like a 10% tax…
"The reason for the capstone paper is to prepare students to recognize the methods employed by malicious or unhinged deceivers: 9/11 truthers, religious cultists, UFO abductees, and so on."

Like ad hominems?
Now if only the content would improve...
... Most people who complain about said fees don't have the sort of funds to do that. Not to mention not wanting to walk around with $500 (which you will have to do unless the ATM happens to be in your sock drawer already).
There's a list of changes on the Google group. http://groups.google.com/group/raphaeljs/browse_thread/threa...

• New transformation API and implementation, dramatically faster and flexible (full support for matrix transformations)
• New animation API extension
• Fix for subpixel rendering in IE
• New arrowhead attributes
• Improved getBBox calculation
• Fix for HSB and HSL
• Added viewBox support
• New built-in event system
• and lots of tiny bug fixes
One of my favorite lines from Fight Club: You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile

The real world is cold. It takes time, especially out of college/uni, to realize this, but you have to keep on pushing. Best of luck to you.
Maybe you are - or not aware - But if you hit a NYTimes article via Google News you will not hit the paywall (unless you go over a certain number).
Long time coming. Great product and great service. They're fighting for the survival of the paradigm.

What is that paradigm? I think some news outlets, mostly business, have proven people are willing to pay for valuable news, the WSJ comes to mind.

The NY Times has a mix of hard news and soft opinions, their main problem is that almost the same news is available from many free sources around the Internet.

So I am genuinely perplexed as to what the paradigm is?
What shouldn't be heard? For example, should reincarnation be heard? What about telekenesis or other psychic abilities? What about more off the wall things like murder is justifiable if you don't get caught? Or that cheating is actually a good thing if you can pin the fallout on someone unsuspecting? Or that most Blacks are werewolves who need to be staked in the heart for the sake of the world? Or that WWII never happened, but was invented by Marvel comics to sell Captain America? Or that Santa Claus is not only real, but its he who delivers the babies, since he killed all the storks?

At what point do we say, that point of view has so little evidence that hearing it is a waste of time, given time is a limited resource?
Hate speech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
Fork it here. https://github.com/0xced/SpotColor
Linus Torvalds says that "normal system calls" are allowed, but once you use the original kernel headers, you're subject to the GPL:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/5/13
The way to avoid this is to use glibc.
For comparison, a major national newspaper delivered to my door was just offered for $1.50/week - six issues per week.

So: dead trees delivered to my door, six times per week: $1.50/week.

Bits which I have to go fetch myself, paying rather usurious bandwidth rates: $8.75/week.

Hmmmm. Something seems off here.
My main problem with this is the fact that it's actually a crime punishable by jail sentences in many places in Europe.

Call it an observation of human stupidity, sure. But, last I checked, we don't jail people for being stupid or saying stupid things.

edit: Something interesting I just thought of.

A lot of Islamic & Arab countries have laws in place that punish "insulting Islam". A lot of these "insults" (see Jyllands-Posten) seem to come from Europe, who advocate a huge amount of free speech. How can the laws ban one instance of hate-speech and not another? Is Satire or Humor allowed?

Again, if anyone can shed light on this matter, I'd appreciate it, but in countries like France or Germany, are there laws in place to protect against all kinds of hate-speech or just specifically Holocaust Denial?
Not necessarily, a corporation always is looking for ways to grow its profits, preferably through easier methods, rather than more difficult methods. That doesn't mean they're necessarily hurting in other revenue streams.

I met someone who once worked for Proctor & Gamble in marketing. He told a story of how they had a goal to increase a certain fabric softener's revenue by a million dollars in 1 year for a certain market. They looked at the stats and discovered that a certain percentage of customers always came back to purchase due to brand loyalty.

Then they did some more research and redesigned the fabric softener bottle's cap and spout. You normally pour the fabric softener into the cap, and then into the laundry machine, right? So they made 2 changes. First, they made the cap a touch wider and the line a bit higher. This way, customers thought they strangely weren't putting in as much fabric softener as normal, so they would pour in more. Second, they made the spout easy to overdose fabric softener accidentally. In market tests, customer test groups said that the spout made it so much easier to pour. So they released the product and marketed it as having the new easy-pour spout. It guaranteed faster usage, and therefore faster repurchase rates from loyal customers. Bam. They made their numbers and increased the stock price that little bit more.
A-ha, I think this is what I was missing. Thank you.

That said -- I would think that a random blob of data sitting around on the hard drive is still highly suspect. Aren't hard drives zeroed from the factory? And wouldn't any true "garbage" data be decidedly not random? (Even if it's compressed... you would still expect to find headers etc. somewhere.)