skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Nobody in their right mind should credit this to Obama." Why not? He gets the blame for the last administration's screw ups so why shouldn't he take the glory of finding bin laden? (Not that I agree the last admin did anything to help find Osama). Additionally, he's the commander in chief of the military--so the head of the military shouldn't get credit?
The downvotes aren't for the idea of decentralized terrorism (which is correct to a degree), but I think for the possible misinterpretation of the sarcasm at the end of the post as being not such.
Good point. I just found it interesting that perhaps there was a recent push to go after him. The article does state if the push just started on the 28th or that's just when he wrote about it. I searched and wasn't able to find any other articles that confirmed it.
If coming up with an objective measure of quality was feasible, the voting system could be scrapped entirely, and instead of making a site that allows users to submit links, pg could have written a web crawler.
I wonder who they'll find next to blame for world terrorism when they have the TSA do some other crazy weird stupid shit.
Cause everything needs a face.
It's interesting going back and looking at google realtime search and seeing how the story broke.

It appears that @rawls on twitter was the first to call it http://goo.gl/6FMtV
For interactive use - yes, it's good enough. For use in scripts - it's probably too slow. But you can use compiled binary. It is saved under /tmp/<user-name>-scc
I forget who noticed this (perhaps it was George Orwell), but the bureaucracy of the British Navy kept growing even as the British Empire collapsed.

That was Cyril Northcote Parkinson, whose writings on the issue are summed up as "Parkinson's Law,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."
Ask HN: Find the tweet with the earliest time stamp mentioning Bin Laden's death
Is there an easy way to do this with the API? Long term, would be very cool to see a visualization of the spread of this still evolving news break.
Usama Bin Laden is Dead, Say Sources
FYI (and somewhat OT), the plots produced by matplotlib[1], python's plotting library, are also quite nice looking (in comparison to, say, Matlab's.)

1: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/
Ok, I won't. :D
I posted the link to the video stream because it had not already been posted.
Bin Laden Causes Big Traffic Spike for new Group Messaging Startup
Yes, but you'd certainly know by tomorrow.

I like HN being about news for hackers, if it gets clogged with mainstream news that has really nothing to do with tech, startups, or the usual HN topics, it will attract an audience that appeals to mainstream news and then we'll have the usual mouth breathing commentary that comes with mainstream appeal.
Consider this, had HN been around in 2001, would the World Trade Center news have been flagged?
Posting this at 11:30pm, before any press conference by the President, but some reports state he was shot in the head by a CIA operative. No drones involved.
There are new techniques wrt to garbage collected languages and hard deadlines (eg, every period has a dedicated amount of time to garbage collection, whether it needs it or not).
Well they could offer something with a significant marginal cost.

Even if Sony thinks it's sold gold, everybody knows it's BS to offer "free" some bits off of a server you probably wouldn't have paid money for anyway. (77M PSN subscribers, 10M CCs)
Sorry, I don't get your comment.
The live feed just came on air at 8:35pm PST http://www.whitehouse.gov/live
It's taking longer than anticipated to round up a big enough spontaneous crowd to cheer at the White House gates.
It's not bizarre. The kids who's parents wouldn't give a shit about choosing a school for them are the kids who need the most help.
حظك اليوم 2-5-2011
حظك اليوم 2-5-2011
حظك اليوم 2-5-2011
حظك اليوم 2-5-2011
http://www.almstba.com/vb/showthread.php?t=19119
http://www.almstba.com/vb/showthread.php?t=19119
http://www.almstba.com/vb/showthread.php?t=19119
It so happens that Twilio's posted on the "Who's Hiring" thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504127.

You have to at least give them the chance to reject you. It's tacky, but the only motivational poster quote that's ever resonated with me is "You miss every shot you don't take". Truer words have never been spoken.

Go get 'em!
I hate you for saying that, but I fear that you're right. I forget who noticed this (perhaps it was George Orwell), but the bureaucracy of the British Navy kept growing even as the British Empire collapsed.

And I hate to say it, but the same is almost certain to happen with the "National Security" bureaucracy as the USA empire collapses.
I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's the single strongest proof I know of for the equivalence of mathematics and software.
I don't think anybody old enough to care about their personal info really falls for that.
Hey Zach,

I'm 25 and a college drop out as well. I work at Twilio. Shoot me an email, I'd be happy to chat. jdb at twilio
Awesome capitalization on the bin laden news to give it a startup spin.
I'm not sure you understand what Dunning-Kruger is. Or I certainly don't see why that quote is an example of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
(Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8120236576648647371#

Also the fact that his recent 'yearly videos' do not contain any new footage of the man. Experts in the EU have declared the videos 'fake' so the CIA stopped sending them the videos for analysis.
One year after iPad: Is Adobe Flash still relevant?
At a tactical level, you are correct: the credit goes to the US military.

But you have to give credit to Obama too. Bush had his eyes focused on Iraq, and let BinLaden escape a few times. I still vividly remember, at some press conference a couple of years after 9/11, Bush was asked: what about Bin Laden? He callously replied, "I don't worry about Bin Laden. I don't care about him."
So, if Obama had continued Bush's policy, we would not have got Bin Laden. Obama changed the policy and made Bin Laden priority #1 again, and you have the results today.
The President just said that this, in fact, did occur, but it was actually two years ago and not recently.
I'd be voting against the Conservatives in this election if it weren't for the fact that my right to vote has been taken away from me since I haven't resided in Canada for longer than 5 years. So much for "citizenship". http://www.letcanadiansvote.com

Edit: Someone seems to have assumed I'm not Canadian. I am. I've got Loyalists and Quebecois for ancestors. My family's been in Canada since before there was a country called Canada. Nor do I have dual citizenship (although my children do).
Yes, let's hope this spells the end of the TSA. I know it's a non sequitur--but so was forming the TSA in the first place.
Important news. But,

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Flag please.
He was killed in Pakistan, if I heard correctly.
Sorry, I have updated my profile now. You can reach me on lakshmipathi DOT g AT gmail DOT com
So your contention is that they're killing themselves because they're rich and comfortable?
Looks like classic police/intelligence work, not work of the military. Which plan, by the way?
I have been seeing quite a few posts in this vein on HN and they really disturb me. While I think its clear to everyone that there are problems with the education system, I have a real problem with encouraging people to drop out of, or not attend higher education. Questioning the value of your education is one of the many privileges an education affords you.

The experience we have as IT people is really deeply skewed. The IT industry really barely existed ~25 years ago. Saying that education doesn't matter because a handful of high-school/college/university dropouts made it big riding the coattails of an enormous technological change is really misguided. We get away without credentials here and there simply because so much of this stuff is so new. This is a quirk of this particular moment in time. It won't last. Once that change settles down, degrees will be required for just about every IT job. Hell, that's getting to be the case already.

This statistic about 17 million Americans having degrees in jobs that don't require them has appeared a few times in various articles. It's said as though the people went to school _intending_ to be an overqualified waiter. If that were the case, I would agree that is a terrible waste. With years of aggressive outsourcing, the effective destruction of the manufacturing sector behind us, and a recession all around us, can we really accept that statistic just as it is offered to us?

If student loans have just surpassed credit card debt I agree that is a problem. But if education is to expensive then do something about the cost of education. Don't go telling people to drop out and have their world view shaped by something as meagre as a job or a bit of travel. The only way to develop your brain is to have someone push you to think. Hard. Yes there are examples of this happening outside school but not as many as you think.

Really I think uneducated people are social equivalent of infected PC's on a network; they make things bad for everyone. More education, not less is crucial if we are going to make any progress as a society.

Just my two cents.
Thanks. I was pretty disappointed to see my success story pushed down the "new" page so quickly, but this works as even better news.
How The Osama Announcement Leaked Out
@jberryman

You're certainly right, Jack is talking about limitations, and a bit about deadlines. The reason I used "deadlines" rather than "limitations" in the title was deliberate though. I think for many creative types, having a firm deadline is one of the best, and sometimes only, ways to get something shipped. It's hard to produce art. There's a lot of ego involved. It's real easy to keep polishing, trying to get it just the nth degree more perfect. Deadlines eliminate this.

This applies elsewhere too: in most mediations and negotiations we set a hard deadline. The deal is inevitably made minutes before the deadline. It doesn't really matter how much time is allotted: whether you have 40 hours or 4 hours, almost all of the time will be chewed up by bickering and arguing over positions. The deal is almost always made in the last 30 minutes or less.
Obama mentioned Abbottabad, Pakistan. I found this interesting 6 day old article: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gIlvWfWJc...
Not even a whimper of cheer for Osama's death from me, given the abysmal foreign policy and national security state failure of the last decade. As another commenter said, "Osama bin Laden's legacy lives on with every traveler being herded through body scanners, with every illegal search in our 120-mile-radius Constitution-free zones, and with every warrantless wiretap."

Besides that, it's simply not like me to cheer for anyone's death, in principle, especially a figure the TV adamantly asserts we're supposed to hate. It's not that I doubt the veracity of the reasons given so much as I loathe demagoguery and spectacle.
Tupac.
People who know a little bit ("mastered a language, or know some unix commands") are more likely to be confident in their abilities (and accordingly, arrogant about them) than someone who knows a great deal. That's the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Sure, but this is only true if the operating system knows the correct ppi for the display (not guaranteed) and only useful if you know the physical dimensions of the client (almost never).
San Francisco, CA
Flywheel Networks is hiring full-time Ruby/Rails developers.
We are located near Union Square.

Checkout http://flywheelnetworks.com/jobs/web-developer for more info.
Bin Laden is dead
Why dont you put your resume up for HN to review it for you? (Hide any identification information.)
There seems to be some confusion over the meaning of the word "epic".
I never ceases to amaze me how when interviewing candidates, people often can't see the forest despite the trees.
That would have been so cool. Now thats a movie I want to see.
http://www.vicoapp.com/about.html
Summary (from the speech broadcast on CNN):

* In August '10 a lead was uncovered. Obama directed followup.

* Lead was strengthened over time until it was isolated that bin Laden was in a compound in Pakistan.

* Obama gave the order and an American commando team went in, had a firefight, and killed bin Laden. His body was brought out.

* No Americans were harmed, and civilians were attempted to be protected.

* The Pakistani government was notified (speech did not say if this was pre-event or post-event).

And, transcript! http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-de...
As an Australian the direct effect of 9/11 on us was tiny, but the effect of the US's reaction has been huge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS-FoXbjVI
Look at it like this, you're already a success and if they want to dick you around because you haven't had a "real" job then it probably isn't going to be a fit.

I'd recommend not filling out a resume and just talking directly with the people you'd like to work for. If they have an HR department it's probably already too late.

You're different than most candidates, embrace it.
I am pretty impressed that Twitter is still up right now. As far as I can tell there was no fail whale during this whole news break. Big moment for the site I think.
The way things are going, who knows perhaps this will mean ordinary travelers will now have random mandatory body cavity searches before being allowed to board a commercial flight. Like the saying among politicians goes, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

If I'm too cynical or sarcastic for your taste, I apologize preemptively and profusely.
As usual, Al Jazeera English has excellent coverage and a much broader perspective: Live video http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/
> We try to keep students around who have no interest in learning because it "keeps them off the streets."

The reason this is done is because they are children -- not adults. They are immature and may be making bad decisions. They might have a rotten home life with bad role models. The point is, you try to help them anyway in case they do indeed see a reason to turn their life around.

Why do you think schools have so much sports education? One reason is because it keeps some kids around who otherwise would simply drop out. And every good teacher knows that you can often get a problem kid in your class to focus and learn something by having one or more of their coaches get on their case.
Their interview with Robert Fisk was highly educational.
Yes that is all too true. When I can get on a commercial flight without having to take off my shoes, have my toiletries inspected and having an intrusive full body xray taken, then I'll know we have finally defeated Osama bin Laden and his compatriots.
I'm listening to it now, I'm hoping to get it added to my cable package so I don't have to follow it online or on my phone.
Thank you for giving the most informative and least speculative post in this thread!
Bin Laden Dead
He was staying in a mansion in the capital city of Pakistan. Pakistan has fooled United States for so long and American blood is on their hands. Hope US shows courage to punish the Pakistani army and rest of the Jehadi complex.
> Is there any good evidence that the main problem with our schools is bad teaching?

Not to my knowledge.

Ask any teacher (and they are the ones who know) what the main problem is, and they'll tell you that the problem isn't necessarily the schools, or teachers, or administration -- it's the parents. If parents do their job and make their kids' learning a priority, that would make the biggest improvement to the situation by far.
Osama Bin Laden Killed
This is open to interpretation. I would say a customer who comes along asking for something you don't already have may present itself as an opportunity. If, in fact, you're already planning to do X and X is the thing the potential customer is asking for and you charge him double what it would have cost you to build it anyways (and it was in your list of "features" all along), then why wouldn't you? It ends being "free" money and you land a new satisfied customer.

While I agree with the article, there are, as always seems to be the case, many exceptions.
Cognitive Archeology of the West
and accordingly, arrogant about them

The Dunning-Kruger effect doesn't necessarily imply a narcissistic personality (or any other personality traits); overconfidence in ability is something we are all vulnerable to.
The firefight took place in Abbottabad, Pakistan:

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbottabad

Maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=safari&q=ab...

Google Earth (copy/paste): 34° 8'48.00"N 73°12'59.00"E
I'm glad to hear it, thank you :-)
Actually, I've noticed that there's a lot of arrogant assholes in the collegiate Computer Science atmosphere, maybe more so than in other fields.

But it has nothing to do with the gender issue. These "jerks" will be jerks to anyone who isn't at their level, male or female - I even caught myself sounding a little condescending today during a group study session.
> I don't think anybody old enough to care about their personal info really falls for that.

I would like to think that, but have you ever tried to read the comments on Sony's blog. They love Sony and I'm sure Sony likes to encourage _that_.
It is to Obama that you should give prime responsibility, even if the strategy and tactics are by others.

Consider this: a retired military friend was telling old Army stories. A sergeant lost a full-auto weapon, which is a gross violation of Army policy. This led to his chain of command up to the Colonel being court-martialed, and the General was formally reprimanded. It was their responsibility to ensure that their subordinates performed correctly. The same applies to Obama.

Even if you disagree with what he did - upon his shoulders is the responsibility.

The buck stops with the President. Always.
Although, I have always doubted the omni-tentacular, ubiquitous, far-reaching character ascribed to Al Qaeda as an all-powerful international terrorist conspiracy. It's not that I doubt its existence per se, it's just that I know damn well that every shadowy international conspiracy ever raised by any government has been vastly exaggerated into a comically gassy caricature of its real self, vide the International Communist Conspiracy of yore.

Edit: In a way, bin Laden's death is probably a net loss for the American military and foreign policy establishment (does there even need to be an 'and' there?). So much propaganda mileage was squeezed from him that I am sure there is some ambivalence as to whether he's more valuable dead as some bullshit "vindication" vs. alive as a perpetual bogeyman.
Is Osama Bin Laden Dead?
A minor detail, but the word used to describe his location was "compound", which might give a very different interpretation than villa. Not saying villa is wrong, just offering the source material for people to consider.
According to the New York Times[1], https://twitter.com/#!/keithurbahn/status/64877790624886784 broke the story.

[1] http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/how-the-osa...
There is no way to get a handle on comment and submission quality without content analysis.

You need a list of properties that define good comments and good submissions, you need some way to quantify those properties and then you need to invest obscene amounts of work coding those properties.

All of this is hard work and full of uncertainty. Different people want HN to be different things, there can’t be one list of properties that does them all justice. Who gets to define what a good comment or a good submission is? Is it even possible to exhaustively translate someone’s understanding of a good comment or a good submission into a list of properties? Can those properties be quantified, in the best case with as little work as possible? Does the coding process scale to the amount of content that has to be analyzed?

This is a Ph.D. thesis worth of work. I wouldn’t try to do it as a hobby.
erl> c(wordlistmap). wordlistmap:distance("causes", Word).

I hear Bin Laden dies 10 seconds. thats some parallelism right there.
SEEKING WORK

Web app dev and mobile dev.

Currently working professionally in C#, asp.net, objective c (ios), beginning to use java (android dev), js/jquery, html/css, mssql, mysql.

Have also worked professionally with python in the past. Hobbyist rails programming. Willing to learn just about anything, and quick.

In Minneapolis, MN. kyledr at gmail
"""The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."""

I think if you "master a language", you don't get lumped in with those who know "a little bit". I think you're just talking about arrogant people in general who think that because they know X, they can berate those who don't know X.
HTC Sensation  A True Sensation Eeagerly Awaited
How can the author be "missing" his own point? This isn't a reply to anything.
There is a masochist bent to many CS programs, where students are basically told that they need to "sink or swim", then get pushed into the water. I saw more than a few people just hit a wall and give up.

I think that in general, women tend to thrive in different circumstances than men. A big part of the way that CS is presented to students is that it is a "lone wolf" endeavor, and students are expected to just figure stuff out. That appeals to the hardcore, anti-social nerds and feeds the male ego. It's not appealing to women or most men.

The IT team that I run now is probably 60% female. They rock, and only one of them has a degree in CS. It's a real shame that in a field where top companies claim to be short on talent, keyword filtering is virtually eliminating half of the potential workforce.
"Even if the property market crashes, you can always choose to default." There is always someone who loses here (investors who have put money in mortgage backed securities?). Intentionally defaulting is not the most ethical thing one could do, and this kind of thinking has partly helped bring the recession upon us, which no-one could escape. No?
I think this says something sad about the governing college. I don't know what it's like for a "general CS" student at my University, but I'm fortunate to be part of a community that is VERY inter and intrasupportive of each other, especially when someone is behind or deficient in knowledge. This really doesn't seem to suffer at all across gender lines as well.

But then again, this community recruits based on business skills and computer programming skills. I don't know that sexism and arrogance would come off well in an interview.
Text objects aren't implemented (:h text-objects). This alone is a deal breaker as I can't live without them. Please add this.
It will be very interesting to know if Pakistani military was completely unaware of his location until the US got this intel, or if this intel was obtained through a section of the military/govt who was somehow pressurized to give it up. There has always been some suspicion that there were elements in Pakistan sympathetic to Al Qaeda who were harboring bin Laden.