skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Might as well kill all the flowers and plants too and just make food directly from organic chemicals in processes powered by solar panels and cut living organisms out of the equation completely.
Jail time for computer access violating company policy? EFF says bad decision
They may not default to it, but Youtube[1], Vimeo[2], and a few other places have HTML5 players available; I have them all turned on. HTML5 video is still in beta, but it's somewhat easier to build into a page than Flash and its development environment doesn't cost $500. The fact that it edged into Flash's market in the first place says something.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/html5
[2]: http://vimeo.com/blog:391
> In most of western Europe, maximum is 20 to 30 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Oury_Jalloh

"In 2007, two officers were charged with causing bodily harm with fatal consequences and with involuntary manslaughter, respectively, but were acquitted in December 2008 for want of evidence."

In Western Europe, the cops can still get away with killing you if they don't believe that the penal system will properly punish you. In the UK, they kill more than one person per month:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Deaths_in_Custody
Citation?

Your comment seems to imply that the police are responsible for causing the Mexican drug war, but I believe that if the Arizona police were to resign en masse and move to other states, it would probably make the situation worse, not better; the drug cartels would expand to fill the power vacuum, and they are less accountable than the police.
I have stated that marks are not everything. I am just curious on how a (high) moderately intelligent student could do it, because some exams are impossible to get 100%; it seems like hack to me.
I had just heard about this today, and I'm excited to give this a shot, but I'm struggling right now to pick a project I think is cool.

I'll probably end up trying my hand at an Erlang-based game of some sort with the Nitrogen Web Framework.
I sometimes think that...

Then I remember why corruption isn't good for business.

1) A corrupt rent seeking company that depends on the government makes huge profits and has lobbying as a necessary expense in this process. Companies in competitive industries would have a hard time matching those money levels even if the industry itself was larger and created more jobs.

2) The corruption of the current US government is not simply on the level of buying people but rather based on the "revolving door" - congress people become lobbyists become industry executives become regulators etc. This system, again, benefits the most concentrated, rent-seeking companies/industries which depend on the government long-term (defense, health, etc, etc). These have the lifetime jobs available and have been milking this approach for ... a lifetime.

So a government up for bid is definitely a bad government, no escaping it.
You have to publish your work to make yourself protected.

Undisclosed prior art is not a defense in first to fiel systems
In your anecdote the team pushed themselves to the limit and succeeded. Contradicts your advice.
Don't you think it's surprising that some pocket of non-homo sapien humans didn't manage to survive on some remote island without getting found until at least after reasonable boats were invented (~5000 years ago).
People who download illegal torrents might be profiled and the information used against them later.
I hadn't looked at it from this perspective, thank you for the enlightenment. I'm just too impatient.

What irks me is that the IETF keeps banging away at protocols to solve issues like the transition from PSTN to IP (e.g. ENUM), or IM interoperability, but then nobody really implements them, or as in the case of ENUM, the incumbent telcos, at least in the USA, sit on it forever. Or some startup cooks up their own solution and kills it, like Skype.

I'm all for interoperability sorting itself out, but it does not seem to happen in the messaging/real time communications space. We still have SMS, a gazillion IM protocols, and many isolated islands of video calling. Skype, Qik, MSN, Yahoo, FaceTime, Google, I could go on. On top of that is the confounding issue of different audio and video codecs and whatever patent issues surround them. A formidable gordian knot, of which it will be interesting to see how it will be cut - if ever.
I wonder how they got the top effects and scene mode numbers. Do they send usage information from the app to their servers?
Interesting startup, scorebig = priceline + ticketmaster
> Some cops are crooked so screw them all? Some cops are crooked so screw them all?

However if most of them are crooked, it is pretty safe to informally say "screw them all" (as opposed to linking to scientific studies and then proclaiming that "screw 59.45% of them" or something like that).

And btw, those that are engaged in cover-up of abuses of fellow cops are crooked just the ones engaging in abuse.
You said family's names. I argue that their names, addresses and phone numbers shouldn't have been released. The fact that some of them have wives with name X is just another piece of personal info that shouldn't have been released, but it certainly isn't all of it.
I've actually always hated this tendency for enterprises to require so much time to accept changes. This isn't the damned Space Shuttle. And this kind of over-caution means exactly one thing: "support" people who generally have no idea how to respond to a real crisis, because they've had little experience dealing with actual issues and spend all their time trying to avoid these minor inconveniences.

When you take your car into the shop, sometimes you find things are a bit worse than you thought and you need to adapt to a loaner for a couple of days. It's not the end of the world, either way you have a car and you end up where you want to be. People have been adapting to minor issues for a long time. Computer users are not completely stupid: if the new version of Firefox breaks something one morning, they can be told "okay, please use the old one for a few more weeks" and they're on their merry way. In the meantime, with a side copy someone can figure out exactly what's broken. It sure doesn't require weeks upon weeks of revalidating who knows what "just in case" there's a problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War

Honestly, having the mexican drug violence spill over into the border states is probably the best thing that could ever happen to this country.
I still remember reading about how the Google vs telco lobbying on net neutrality turned into a mess.
> In other words, billion dollar companies get all the SW patents.

All? No, they only get patents for those things that they invent.

It cuts both ways, the bigger you are the more liable the newly empowered patent bureau is to say that you could have easily found the existing patented invention.

On the other hand, since multiple parties can hold patents and subsequently re-licence them it will be easy for a a company, large or small, to protect other parties from patent trolls.

The something obnoxious like the famed "one click" patent would have multiple holders, and any could simply give a universal grant to it.

In the worst case scenario, which I don't think is plausible then the current status quo is maintained for some patents. A large company invents, files it, then publicizes it.

P.S.

I think that business form patents patents like the one-click should be null-in-void in any country.
Winklevii Suing Facebook Yet Again With A Different Argument
Facebook vs Google : The War Is Still On [Infographic]
Surely, it's a case of each person only having 10 or so apps that matter to them, but it's kinda a different 10 for everyone.

Like the old, 80% of users only use 20% of the features. But it's a different 20%.
But what if I invented something, published it, don't intend to ever file a patent for it and someone comes in and files a patent for that invention?

Your published prior art blocks them.

If they can't get a patent, then "first to file" seems meaningless.

First to file is really about the windows between filiing and inventing. The argument for first to file is generally what you state -- that it helps clear up ambiguity.

The argument against is usually small businesses who believe that they may not patent (because they're expensive) until they have something in practice. So imagine you invent some new high efficiency light, and spend the next year getting it working. And once it works and you're convinced of it you file. But you find out that GE patented it a week earlier. But only discovered it a week before that and hasn't made much progress on it (it's only been a few weeks). You still lose the patent, despite the fact that you may be able to prove that (a) you invented first, and (b) have spent the past year implementing it.

With that said, the first to file vs invest, IMO is a small part of the reform. The bigger part is the grace period, which now has the following change. In the past you could build an iPhone, ship it, write a paper about it, and file a patent within the next year. Now you can write a paper about it, but can't sell it. Once you sell it, your grace period is over.

At least that's my IANAL understanding. And the other big thing in it is they've expanded the timeline of challenging patents. I'm surprised the EFF doesn't have a more coordinated effort to challenge patents when granted.
Humanlike Computer Vision using heat flow simulation
I don't think it is. I frequently voice opinions in irc that I wouldn't dare mention to most people I know offline.
Yeah, and watch your database IOPs fall by 1000x.

It's not feasible to run databases on encrypted block devices. Some databases let you encrypt certain tables or columns, though.
They can just confiscate those servers too, where the content is most likely also in plaintext.

I imagine that many companies are better prepared to deal with the FBI than this data center was. I have a hard time imagining the FBI going into a Google data center and easily walking out with a few racks. But even if that's too optimistic, I doubt the FBI could go about seizing servers for very long. If nothing else, this would eventually piss off big companies who will lobby Congress to curtail the FBI.
That's an awfully specific number.
> Q. What is Peoplegraph ?

> A. Peoplegraph is a Facebook app for iPad.

That's a real good description....
HowTo: Generate QR code for your site
I think it's worthwhile remembering where direct attacks on the authorities led to last time around. It started World War I, ended economic globalization for decades, and delegitimized anarchism to the point where it was essentially exterminated worldwide. In the US, new "conspiracy" laws were enacted which allow you to be prosecuted for talking to someone about how you could hypothetically commit a crime if they later go off and execute one of the steps in your plan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed#Timeline...

I hope the kind of violent rhetoric they're spewing doesn't end up provoking similar violence this time around.
How larger font size affects reading
Yes, it's terrible that Apple wants you to register for free to download the videos about developing for their platforms from their site; they owe it to you to provide the videos without a login, which is indeed free.

All of the videos are available without paying Apple anything.
Thanks, I do coding, not really good with descriptive writing:-)
It also seems clear that VARA doesn't apply to the photograph in question. From your link:

"Under VARA, moral rights automatically vest in the author of a "work of visual art." For the purposes of VARA, visual art includes paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and photographs, existing in a single copy or a limited edition of 200 signed and numbered copies or fewer. In order to be protected, a photograph must have been taken for exhibition purposes only."

In addition, the Fair Use doctrine in the US makes things not as clear-cut as you make them out to be. Even if the creator doesn't like it, it's sometimes the case that she doesn't get to prevent her work from appearing in certain kinds of criticism, even if it involves distortion or modification of the work.
Looks like they didn't really get enough traffic to do this (and idk how easy it is to do with FB and google analytics) but it would have been interesting and probably smarter to also measure each ad's effectiveness by how many conversions it led to on their site rather than just click-throughs to the facebook page. With their "most successful" ad they spent ~$500 to have a bunch of 21-year-olds click on a picture of beer that says nothing about what they do - I doubt these people will respond to a future marketing campaign any better than a random set of the population.

In any case, the analysis was interesting enough to make the front page of HN, which I'm betting will bring them a lot more than 139 visits. So well done with that.
I think the problem is that you interpreted the headline as meaning it could convert all waste heat to work. This is, of course, impossible. Converting some of the waste heat to work is entirely possible.

When there's two possible interpretations of a headline, and one of them is physically possible and the other one violates the second law of thermodynamics... it's probably best to assume the former. At least until you read the article.
Instapaper server is back online
> "You need to use Safari to view this video." Grr.

Tried changing your browser agent? (if possible)
I was at a linux user group meeting recently where a talk was given by a Google sysadmin where he talked about hard drive reliability. Someone asked him about SSDs to which he replied that he couldn't talk about it. My take is that they are definitely trying out SSDs, but either 1) found SSDs provide a huge competitive benefit and don't want to publicly share that knowledge or 2) they simply don't have enough data yet. I'm leaning towards #1.
Vein Removal northern Virginia
Looks like it's back:

http://twitter.com/instapaper/status/84106275796946944

"As of 2 minutes ago, my DigitalOne server is back online. The logs indicate that it was off and not booted during the time it was missing."
Step back from the problem, focus on developing your analytical/problem solving abilities. Any engineering, math, or science problem is just logical reasoning. Don't focus on the subject matter so much, focus on the process. Then you can solve anything
Out of context I like the rootlessly paranoid feel of the phrase "the false cloud", makes my stomach queasy.
Lawbreakers feel that they are in a war against the state and the police are the soldiers of the state.

In this case, they feel justified to 'shoot' the enemy soldiers even if they didn't individually start the war.
Non paywall link: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2739198/posts
Let's keep our fingers crossed that this actually helps our economy in some way or another (even if it is just the lawyers ;)
where allowed = "Get caught by an unaligned third party", probably
A more apt comparison:

Say you're a game programmer and you wrote an addictive platformer for the 486-era IBM PC. It's a game that brings warm nostalgia to the average 30-something gamer. It's the best game you ever wrote, but a lot of time has passed since then.

Some guy comes along and writes a remake for the ZX Spectrum 48k and releases it for a nominal charge. How do you feel? What can you do?
When you share a picture from the app to Twitter, it's uploaded to campl.us. Along with the picture itself comes the metadata of the various filters used.
> Honestly, having the mexican drug violence spill over into the border states is probably the best thing that could ever happen to this country.

I understand your point, but would tend to disagree until AZ gets a new governor. I vainly hope that the international drug war is ended in the next decade.
Tips for get free beats online
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I've agreed that the hypothetical search warrant you outlined would be too broad to be enforceable, but I disagree that the search warrant in this case was necesarilly this broad.

I'm not saying it wasn't, I'm saying that it is not a requirement that it was.

I disagree that siezing adjacent blades is just as nonsensical as seizing adjacent computers. I think it's unfortunate, and suboptimal; but I don't think they are the same.

If the search warrant had nothing to do with computers, let's say it was for a silver Motorola Razr. The FBI enters the premises and finds a bucket with ten silver Motorola Razr's. Their job is then to try and determine which specific Razr they are looking for. You can be sure that it's within the realm of possibility that they'd sieze all of them, and then later determine which ones are unrelated.

You can argue, "but then the search warrant should have to be more specific, it should have to have the serial number of the specific Razrs on it", to which I'd agree, that'd be nice. Computer-related search warrants are almost always executed with only the originating IP address and the location to which the IP address was established to be at.

Assuming that they took all the blades (which again, we have no idea one way or the other), I agree it would have been nice to know ahead of time that the specific blades associated with the target were X. I'm not sure that the lack of that specificity of information makes it impossible for them to execute the search warrant.

But basically we're lambasting the FBI for something we have no idea if they've even done, without any actual information about the contents of the raid. I'm trying to keep in mind that it's actually possible (even if not likely) that their actions in this raid were not incorrect.
An excellent talk, but the thing that I disagree with is his defense of having functions with thousands of lines of code in them.

It's true that breaking up a function into smaller ones just for the sake of it doesn't make sense, but if you have a function that needs to be over 1000 lines in the first place, it makes me think that the code wont be very reusable in future projects.
Will someone volunteer to create a proper site for Jimmy McMillan?
I would vote for Jimmy McMillan, but his site sucks. Would someone volunteer to create a proper site for Jimmy McMillan?
But that would mean that the FBI weren't bumbling morons who salted the earth after tearing out everything in the datacenter with a power supply...

I'm not sure I can deal with the possibility.
I like that explanation.
I don't think you should have to have a solution just to make an observation. Further, no solution on this topic is going to be timeless, so in fact the question was rather pointless.
but I'm assuming that if they have the code base, the plaintext user names (emailaddys) and the salted password, then they would have whatever the per user salt is.
Third Front against Islamism Jihadism
Julian Assange stated that the feds have backdoor, no court order access to gmail, yahoo, facebook, et all.

Why worry about this?
The incredible journey of NASA spacecraft Dawn
I disagree.

If the police are protected under a clause of "just following orders", then the home addresses shouldn't be shown. Neither should individual policemen be called out. Rather the system is at fault, and the law makers behind it.

If the police are morally at fault, then this extends past their work-life sphere. If you kill and abuse at work and that is considered immoral, you are not simply allowed to go home and claim sanctuary.

In the view of Lulzsec, there are two sides---we the people, and they the State. Revealing the information of the officers to the people is analogous to the FBI keeping records of the names and known addresses of who they consider criminals.
Bingo. Brinqs to mind Columbia University advising some of its students not to discuss the wikileaks cables since it could hurt their employment prospects.

http://oudaily.com/news/2010/dec/06/our-view-dont-talk-about...
But Nokia have an app store, and there are plenty of apps on it. I bought apps from the Nokia store and some of them I use everyday. s2putty, the app I used the most, is free (and a million times better than anything you can kludge on iOS).

Apps are better on Symbian than they are on iOS they're just not as shiny.
My current GPA is 3.95 (Purdue CS - not sure if it is top-ranked or not) and I try hard to maintain it. I focus a lot on grades because back in high-school, an accident in grade 10 destroyed my grades and closed a lot of education opportunities (I was restricted to the bed, couldn't go to participate in contests, exams, classmates attended top quality after-school sessions for math and science and I could do none of that - I had very shitty internet - a session would never last long enough to download Vim let alone Linux)
When it was time to apply for college, my high school GPA was enough to deny me entry into schools I had dreamed of attending.
That humiliation has stuck with me forever. This is one thing in my control, I try my best not to screw things up.
"Only when the last tree has died and
the last river has been poisoned and
the last fish has been caught,
will we realise that
we cannot eat money"

Staff shouldn't be treated as some kind of natural resource to be burned through and discarded after 12 months just to make a few bucks for investors when you flip. I'd classify that as the hollowest form of "success."
They sure have the rights to their small foibles and paranoia just like I have the rights to call them on that.
No apostrophe on "family" sir (you change meaning by taking that liberty), though I should have placed a comma or a slash between family and names. Unless personally involved in any wrongdoing, I don't think it makes any meaningful difference to have the officer's names.
Ask HN: Do you need someone to fix bugs / add small features to your webapps?
Hi everyone,

I would love to fix bugs / write smaller features on a part-time basis for your project for $$ (rather than equity). I was wondering, with the recent crunch in finding programmers, if anyone would be interested in what I have to offer. I have experience with:

- Ruby On Rails (built a webapp for a startup, as well as fixed bugs for another start-up).

- PHP (fixed bugs for a handful of websites).

- Perl (worked for two years for a firm that ran the Linux-Apache-PostgreSQL-Perl stack).

- SQL, HTML, JavaScript, CSS.

- Specifying systems, getting requirements, managing projects.

I can communicate with you via:

- Instant Messages (MSN, Google-talk etc..), Skype, E-mail, and Phone

- For personal meetings, I live in the SF Bay Area, so somewhere close would definitely be most convenient. That said, I'd prefer to work from home.

For billing I work based on completed tasks, or by the hour.
So, what do you think? Is this a fair deal?

Thanks!
- V
Is it just CSS?, I am on an iPad, can't look at source.
> And yet it should be the artist's choice on how THEIR work is used, regardless of how you, or 99.999% of the people feel.

If an artist makes a work of art and nobody ever pays any attention to it, is the work still valuable?

To a certain extent, the attention that people give to a work of art gives it value (in my opinion). People's attention is a limited resource, one that certain artists fail to duly acknowledge when they attempt tyrannical control over their works. Artists: if you want absolute control over your works, keep them to yourselves and never show them to anyone else, ever (please!). Otherwise acknowledge your debt to the (mostly-free) cultural environment(s) you drew inspiration from and to the public mindspace your works occupy. At least pay back our attention with your gratitude, instead of IP-thuggery.
Excellent resource for any Rails beginner.
Did anyone who has a subscription read this? Any thoughts?

It looks interesting, but not $32 interesting, to me.
How the demands of a Stanley Kubrick led to two new cinematographic tools