skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I deeply love emacs, but its crustier elements really bite on a regular basis. The amount of effort required to make it non-ugly is just... unpleasant (a problem I've noticed with a lot of gnu ui stuff, both with applications and websites - appearance matters guys), the lack of namespaces in elisp is quite horrid (though it's very nice to have a lisp as the language of choice), the weird annoying regex conventions, and just lots of little things (I'd have to sit down and record them as I go to be able to list 'em) which degrade the experience.

By the way, take that as intended - I love emacs very much, but as with people so with software - the little things a beloved gets wrong can be unbelievably annoying... :)
Why do you shred junk mail? Does it contain any information that isn't already public?
Wikipedia puts it straight on the US and Israel

I agree with your overall conclusion about who wrote Stuxnet, but Wikipedia is not at all a competent source for information on any such issue.
Having been poor (not 3rd world poor, poor by American standards) I found the most difficult thing is leaving the poverty stricken network. You don't feel like you've made it until you reject the entire mindset. Until then, you feel like you've sold out. My mother still makes me feel guilty and shames me every time I see her. Until you've had a parent who shames you for doing better than they did, you'll never understand the trap. I tell my upper middle class neighbors about this and they can't imagine parents who wouldn't want their children to do better than them. While I still talk to my parents I've dumped the rest of the network. I protect myself and my family from my old network. Their whole way of thinking is poison. With many of them you risk violence, drugs, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc. Even if you trust one or two of them you can never trust who they will bring you or your family in contact with. No amount of mentoring or example setting has helped, it just breeds resentment. Their world view traps them right where they are and their rejection, resentment, and hostility to a better way of life creates their poverty and isolation. Sending them to Harvard isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. Well, MAYBE if you sent one or two, but if you sent enough, they'd just ruin Harvard.

I came to the conclusion many years ago that in America poverty is a contagious mindset, nothing more. But I do understand that it is a difficult mindset to escape due to social issues. In all honesty, in most cases the middle class and rich have good reason not to network with the poor.
You should be utilising the maximum amount of the RAM that is available, while still requiring a minimal amount for the thing to run fast.
I enjoyed this article. I'm familiar with JavaScript but haven't really had the time to learn about these server-side engines. Great use of analogies to explain how some of them work.
A Web Developer’s Wishlist for iOS 5
> Skype's encryption algorithm is not, itself, broken

Skype's encryption has not been cracked, but it is broken in the sense that it preserves exploitable structure in the ciphertext. The ciphertext should be essentially random, shouldn't it?
Or maybe Lynn knows the US had nothing to do with it, but admitting that would make it easy to tell when they do have something to hide.

This is indeed a reason that a standard response about national intelligence issues when questions come from journalists is "We neither confirm nor deny that . . . " That does a little, at least, to reduce the signal given to foreign intelligence agencies about the underlying facts by responses to journalists.
Talking about earphones, good earphones can give quite stunning results. You'd be very surprised.

I have been gradually working from the soft stuff (~ £20 earphones) to the crazy, crazy hard stuff these days (~ £400, Shure SE535's [1]), but the difference is worth it.

[1]:http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/headphones/shure-se535-review-4930...
I'm not sure you can buy a carrier-unlocked CDMA phone. I think that's only possible with GSM.
Conclusion:

In the 13 countries McKinsey studied, the Internet has contributed on average 3.4 percent to GDP, weighting more than agriculture, energy, and other better-established industries, and it adds considerable vigor to economic growth. Perhaps surprisingly, the brunt of this impact (about 75 percent) is from industries that are not directly linked to the Internet, except of course by their computers. This value comes primarily from increased productivity.

Understanding just how much the Internet contributes to national economies should spur government and business leaders to seek ways to optimize their participation in the global Internet ecosystem. Encouraging usage is an unavoidable first step in leveraging public spending, but leaders must also focus on providing human capital, financial capital, infrastructure, and the appropriate business environment.
I agree with you across the board, but I have to point out that you used level-of-education as your comparative metric, which seems suboptimal in making your point. How were you vs your friends in other metrics of success?
I read a lot of fantasy and I've always been bothered by the decidedly bad maps found in the frontispiece of most of them. I wonder if there is a method to go from gross features to a polygonal 'state' and then forward again?
Good stuff about laying out maps/levels; harder to see how it would guide 3D rendering or game mechanics.
I worked with TI320 in the same time period quite a bit and remember the Tartan compilers (not Ada, though). It's easy to believe that a compiler beats a naive assembly code writer. The pipelining example is a good one, it can take hours poring over the manual to figure out how to best arrange your assembly instructions to keep the 320 pipeline flowing. The compilers at the time knew some of the tricks but it was still usually possible to hand-optimize the compiler output quite a bit.
Youth Is The Power Of Tomorrow: Renewable Energy
Ada holding up F-22 Raptor upgrades
You mean to lay out things roughly, then 'fuzz' it to look more natural? Maybe if you hand-draw the original polygons and biomes, then use his noise algorithms from the end of the article.
You think 20 years from now people will still be voting up articles about Emacs and Vim? just curious
Steve Blank - The Gigaom Interview "Entrepreneurs As Artists"
It appears that a defense against this approach is to use a stream cipher with constant blocklengths. Does that sound like a reasonable interpretation of the paper?
Lean startups vs. fat startups
Excellent article, although a bit too long to make the point.

I enjoy the jokeless comedy a lot, but precisely because of its common irrelevant stream-of-though kind of dynamic and its lack of punch lines or gags in general, I can usually recall very few parts of these movies. I thought I was having memory problems!
A lot of modern IDEs provide features that are pretty close to magic, compared to what emacs sports. The emacs user response to this generally seems to be something like, "Code navigation can't be as good as M-x rgrep", and "How can refactoring ever be as good as C-M-%?"

This reminds me of various people I have worked with in the past who have wondered why I ever bothered with the complexity of searching and replacing with regular expressions, when you can just do a normal search and replace, watch for matches that match the more complicated thing you're actually looking for, then replace them by hand...
> My jaw is on the floor. It drives me nuts when people go from 'We can't explain that yet' to 'The only explanation is God.'

I don't think anyone mentioned God, and, to be fair, the problem of what exactly constitutes reality and what would be the best ways to imitate it is quite complex. We, as a species, have been trying to find the rational answer to this problem for at least 2,500 years (since the pre-Socratics), but as far as I know we haven't come to any definitive answer, we don't even know if there is such an answer.
This is such an interesting story. This guy has quite the gravity labratory.

I like the analog rover, even if it doesn't run Python. What a difference 30 years makes.
It didn't work, because most users were completely unaware they were being tracked.

More like, most users just plain don't care. So now, the regulators respond with: "we don't care what your personal priorities are, we're going to force everyone you interact with to conform to our values rather than your own".
"If you are 30 or older and thinking of starting a tech company, don’t do it."

Ahahahhhahahah...sorry but I love hearing this. It's something so many 20-somethings tell each other and is a complete myth. I love taking on kids in business, it's the guys my own age I need to watch out for.
can use virtualbox+windows. not ideal, but one way.
Noor in Umer Sharif Show 27th May 2011 Geo Tv 
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Validation of Dunbar's number in Twitter conversations
My bank in England is keen for me to "Go Green" and accept PDF bank statements in place of paper copies. I wonder if they allow new customers to open accounts without paper documentation...?
That was one of my favorite parts of Langner's TED talk, he was like "You really want me to go there? Fine, yes I think Mossad was involved, but only the technological superpower in the world could have coordinated this, and that is the US."
Thats how you xfer 280k bitcoin aka 2,4m $ in the information age
In this case it would be free labor.
If that were true, an unlocked phone should cost less per month in subscription fees since it is not being subsidized by the carrier. No US carrier does this.
> More like, most users just plain don't care.

If you are right, then getting their informed consent isn't going to pose an issue at all. So there's no problem here, right?
Emacs-lisp is near non-negotiable if you want to have full org-mode.

You can use sandboxing to limit the security brain damage. I like LXC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LXC
This isn't really a startup acquision - more like a talent acquisition. Google can easily create a similar service, and since they are the gatekeeper, they could just pump their site in front of everyone else in the rankings (like they do with YouTube).

Of course, I'd sell out too if I knew Google could accidentally punish me after a single algorithm change. No freaking brainer
It would be fantastic if someone would release a capistrano/rails plugin that lets you specify when to build the assets and where to send them, for those of us who have static assets on different servers from production Rails apps.
Networking doesn't happen exclusively among people who overestimate their importance. Just about any kind of volunteering can lead you to something worthwhile. If one wants to get into an "elite" circle, they can get into a political campaign as a volunteer for a good start.
Yes. They are bound to be discovered and re-discovered by every generation. They are the kind of tools that get the job done. There's also still a lot to be discovered about those editors themselves.

Besides, to quote Wikipedia:

EMACS: initial release: 1976, 34–35 years ago

Vim: initial release 1991, 19–20 years ago

vi: was written by Bill Joy in 1976 (as extension of `ex' editor)

The debacle's been raging for way longer than 20 years.

----

On the other hand, if you want something more modern: http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/acme
Vulgar Baby Born Amazing Effect Video clickjacks Facebook users
Paranoid how? You're basically right: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.ha....
That’s what I’m saying, sure.
For the fun factor -- emacs page from Section 1 of the plan 9 manual: http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/emacs
But as the Universe approaches 100% entropy, how would you determine the order of events? The only mechanism we have of determining the arrow of time is by measuring increases in entropy.
Senate panel approves controversial copyright bill
What you are describing is not American vs UK attitudes, it is the joys of being a foreigner encountering government bureaucracy designed to remind you that you are a foreigner.

I had the same treatment you are describing when getting my H1B visa in the USA from the UK. And things got even worst when my employer started to apply for greencard, and so I just left the USA.

From a private sector perspective, I had more things paperless available to me in 2003 - when I moved to the USA - in the UK than I did in the USA. And during my time in the USA, I was able to run all of my UK business and government transactions online.
I don't know their official answer, but the value of the information FAR outweighs the cost to retain the data, so you'd have to assume they do. Their entire businesses are built upon their ability to use what they know about their customers to generate revenue, and the terms a person has searched for are a component of building this profile.
Actually you can make $10,000 from nothing weeding or mowing. Of course, you have to be willing to do hard things like get rejected door to door, but it's extremely possible.
> I never said protection should be abandoned.

It didn't sound like it.

Education is great. However, no amount of education will remove the need for real protections. This doesn't mean you disobey a you keep trying to suggest.

Look to the real world of examples. Education doesn't trump protection. Take anything you need to pass a test for or need a license for. Their are still protections put into place to prevent abuse. Hunting license, gun license, driver's license. All have protections on top of education because people make mistakes.

Finally, quit trying to suggest that protection means it prevents a user from doing what they want. Again, it's a false dichotomy and continuously trying to argue it devalues any point you are trying to make.
"Very Bad Things" was a much funnier take on the exact same plot as "The Hangover." The latter is almost a bowdlerized version of the former. All the edgy material has been removed for your protection.

Some bros go to Vegas. They cut a little too loose. Consequences and comedy ensue.

In "Very Bad Things," the consequences constitute a hilarious tragedy. The bros' wickedness comes back to bite them again and again, and we laugh as their lives spiral into doom. The laughs aren't in Vegas, they're in the plausible consequences of partying too hard.

In "The Hangover," the consequences are puerile gags featuring overgrown man-children. There is nothing that could possibly depress you in the film. After all the mayhem, nothing happens.

After waking up to the evidence of multiple felonies and life-threatening situations, the broheims just walk back to their old lives. Everything that was funny about "Very Bad Things" is absent. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."
Hey thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I am pretty positive I can learn from the tutorials. They seemed pretty geared towards beginners to which is great. And learning Git would allow me to be active on github?
Of course they do. They even let you see your search history: https://www.google.com/history/trends?hl=en
Official Price Announcement for New 2012 VW Passat
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Heart Disease - Raising HDL Levels Doesn't Reduce Heart Attack Risk
Thanks for this. I had the exact same thought when I read it. After a brief moment of offense.

I think I could write an essay or several on the ridiculous misconceptions I hear going around in some circles, and this is one of my favorites.

When you hit 30, have a kid, etc., the popular ideology in some circles seems to be that somehow your ability to spend time working on your passion is gone.

It's been my experience that this bracket is, on the other hand, more efficient, selective in their projects, determined, and shows a remarkable intolerance for wasted time.

It's extra amusing to me, also, that the major culprits of these stereotypes are older men who routinely tell this to the young as they break into the industry.

I wonder if it's a deliberate attempt to light a fire under these young folks?
And why exactly are myths, religions or philosophy better at answering questions than science? What’s the justification for that claim?
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It is not about "white guilt" at all. This isn't even about racism as much as it is about classes, so I think the statement is off...

Growing up poor, I know firsthand that parents don't stress education enough, in my opinion. Most of those parents have no idea about how to change their situations or they would do it themselves. This is what the outreach programs and access to different ways of thinking, a view of how easy it is to get ahead, and access to opportunities that their parent may have never even knew about address.
Another trouble is that human beings are innately probabilistic when it comes to language. A sentence written/spoken by humans does not have to be gramatically correct, to convey it's meaning, and does not always follow the strict rules that Chomsky talks about.

It's not the language that defines how we communicate, it's how we communicate defines the language.

But I also disagree with peter when he says the why is not important, it is this why or the understanding of the matter that separates us from the machines like watson, since our sole purpose in life is not to win at a game, but play/enjoy the game and most importantly "reuse the understanding" gained in some other facet of life, a feat that I beleive no machine is capable of.
Motors cannot control computers. Computers can control motors.

Motors do not require an operating system.

There is something else that bothers me with this analogy...

The computer (as the 'average person' uses them) is a synergistic experience between both the hardware AND the software.

Without the software, it would be useless. Without the hardware, the software would be useless.

For the motor analogy, I assume the motor is the hardware, and the belts are the OS?

Motive power and computer power are 2 different things.
I've found it depends where you get the phone. All the phones I've got from Carphone Warehouse have been unlocked, all the ones from operator shops have been locked.
> Helping customers, or creating something a customer wants may be a welcome side-effect but it's not the _reason_ a business exists.

For many small businessmen I know, that is the reason a business exists. If they just wanted to make money, they would work somewhere on wall street and reel in bonuses. Why do they work longer hours for less money running their own business? For some, it's freedom and not having a boss. But for others, it's because they have some sort of vision for how they want to change an industry or society; and they want to leave a legacy of having done so, not just make money.
"Listen" to the HN front page on your phone
its at http://www.gumtowers.com and it works for US numbers.

text hn to (585)326-0631 and we will call you back and read out the news to you.

you can search for news by simply texting in a keyword.. for example: texting osama will get you the latest news on osama

other reserved keywords:

reddit, digg, top news, technology, movies, business, politics, health

first few calls are free!
Put it on a public website.
"they could just pump their site in front of everyone else in the rankings (like they do with YouTube)."

Is there any proof of this? The same thing was said about knol/wikipedia, and that wasn't true at all.
getting their informed consent isn't going to pose an issue at all. So there's no problem here, right?

Wrong.

First, you're forcing anyone with a web presence that currently has cookies (and that's probably most of us) to spend time and developer resources addressing this -- time that we could spend really servicing our customers.

Second, you're still not going to get their informed consent. What makes you think that somebody's going to actually read the site's warning (assuming that there is one, and that it's written well enough to be comprehensible)? If they don't already care enough about web privacy issues, they're not going to take the time to read about them now.

Third, the regulation completely forbids a potential business model built around targeted advertising. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that business model. It may be distasteful to someone sharing your values, but there are certainly a lot of people who don't care (and there's no fundamental reason that they ought to care). You're preventing people from doing business one way not because it's wrong, but simply because you find it distasteful.
"If Chomsky had focused on the other side, interpretation, as Claude Shannon did, he may have changed his tune. In interpretation (such as speech recognition) the listener receives a noisy, ambiguous signal and needs to decide which of many possible intended messages is most likely. Thus, it is obvious that this is inherently a probabilistic problem, as was recognized early on by all researchers in speech recognition..."

This is the money shot especially since speakers are aware of the interpretive activity of listeners, and effective speakers play constantly on the ambiguities in their statements - structural (i.e. grammatical) ambiguities as well as semantic ambiguities. Listeners in turn are aware of speakers' awareness of this.. There is, effectively, an infinity of mutual awarenesses of structural ambiguities. In any instance of communication.

I think most technologists and (especially) businesspeople see this intuitively. I think many academics do not. Not sure how to articulate what I mean but I think I am saying something non-trivial about academics and their perspective on language.
They know. At least, they have a rough idea. Of course, it wouldn't be much help to have your mother say "learn to read" if she can't help teach you. The other problem (which will be well-known by many hn-ers) is that trying to get out of is discouraged.

Would you make friends with a guy who wants to study in another zip code, or a guy who wants to stay in the 'hood? If you think you are going to stay in the 'hood, then you are best hanging out with a fellow drop-out.

That's the economic explanation for the jealousy and sometimes hostility that social climbers get.

Whether or not the economic explanation is correct, it's hard to argue that a black kid in a black school who acts white may get beat up for it.
Consumer freedom

Is that an oxymoron?