skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
IANAL ( Edit to include a reference for my opinions[1] )

The general argument for forcing someone to turn over the key to a door once compelled by the court is that it is commonly known there are other reasonable means by which to access the content the door protects that do not require the key:

1) Locksmith
2) Break the door down
3) Use a different door if one exist

These are reasonable methods as neither of them take a considerable amount of time, in many cases a reasonably consistent amount of time between unique cases, and are methods that are readily available in all markets and jurisdictions. This makes the case that the contents behind the door can be accessed through various methods, some of which do not require my involvement, therefor my not turning over the key is only nominally delaying the inevitable.

In the case of an encryption key that protects data, which once protected is only in the possession of the individual who also posses the key, this is very different IMHO.

It is very different for this simple reason:

If proper procedures have been followed, and certain encryption methods have been utilized, there is no reasonably consistent method for acquiring the original data other than information I posses in my mind.

I say reasonably consistent because if you had limitless resources and limitless time you could try every possible combination and at some point gain access. That is, however, unless the mechanism that relays the encryption key is not designed in a way as to destroy the data after N failed attempts.

In either case, no court can be reasonably certain of the time it would take to access the original data or if they would ever gain access at all. This directly conflicts with my right to a speedy trial and certainly conflicts with my right not to incriminate myself as I'm the only one who can provide access within a reasonable amount of time.

[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html
Very nicely done. Thanks!

Just scanning the code, I think showing C++ rocks is pretty much a no-brainer (ducks to avoid food fight) but part of what's happened here, I'll bet, is that you've stayed within the default heap size allocated by the compiler.

It's just a nit, and it's an easy fix too, but I wanted to point that out. The .NET examples are probably doing some mem-safe allocations each trip around, while the C++ is just burning through what it already has.

Also there's another point that needs to be drawn out: your code is much cleaner in imperative because you've solved it functionally first. Most imperative programmers wouldn't write anything that looked like what you did. OO guys would still be constructing object graphs. The language you choose plays a major role in how you solve problems.

As far as the F# speed difference, I've struggled with staying with F# or moving on to OCaml. Right now, I think I'd rather have more libraries and slower speed, so I'm staying with F#. For some reason OCaml seems to be a tougher language to pick up -- the community is a bit scattered and finding help on easy topics isn't easy (at least for me). Plus I like the fact that a lot of stuff developed in Windows for .NET can just plop over in linux and still work. That's worth a bit of speed.

And in any case, if it wasn't, if your code is clean you can move fairly easily between OCaml and F#.
What the Debt Ceiling Really Means
If the government feels the information they want is on a laptop, the laptop's owner would suddenly find themselves forced to prove a negative (there are no more hidden volumes), lest they be held in contempt.

I think it will still be a requirement for the gov't to show that there's cause. In the same way that the gov't can't hold you if they suspect you know where a kidnapped victim is held, unless they have evidence that you do know where they're at (it's similar in that you don't have to prove a negative, rather the police must show that there's reason to hold you).

So they must have evidence that suggests there is another volume.
An obstruction of justice charge, probably.

Here's a pretty decent page about the charge:
http://www.federalcriminallawyer.us/2011/01/12/federal-law-o...

tl;dr: "18 USC 1503 is a felony offense for which the sentence can be 10 years imprisonment."
the "n" is awkward and too small. Glad they changed the name to nodeo though, sounds a lot more exciting.
Yeah, I guess it is google's attempt to make a go at twitter AND facebook. Unfortunately they are very likely to fail at both.
The Apple consortium with Microsoft, RIM et al. can afford to go much higher up (have up to $100billion combined in cash. Intel+Google do have large deep pockets but how far could they take the cost up? Also wouldn't making it more expensive provided an added incentive to litigate or impose a licencing scheme to pay for the costs

At the end of the day, Google has to start to have a far more proactive approach protecting Android and Android related cases that essentially are forcing manufacturers to pay up for licences essentially for patent protection via Microsoft :/
I'd rather make it into a LARP. One with pitchforks and torches.
Nobody has the right to avoid a reasonable search in the United States. You are protected by the fourth amendment from unreasonable searches, but you aren't going to convince me that a detective has no right, with a warrant in hand, to search a suspect's home for a murder weapon.

Similarly, you aren't going to convince me that a prosecutor, warrant in hand, has no right to search a computer for evidence of credit card fraud.
Thank you for your kind words. To your points:

- You are right about measuring the startup time of the binaries with "time"; but in this case, where the execution time for F# is measured in the order of ten seconds, the comparisons are still valid and useful, especially in the context of seeing what kind of an impact switching to imperative-style has (10->8, 1.7->1.4, etc)

- Passing the whole board as arguments has little (if any) effect on the execution time: e.g. you can see for yourself that if you pass NO arguments (i.e. clean board) the time ratios between languages remain the same. In a game like Score4, the human has to think anyway - and you can see that using C++, even the nasty cmd-line interface leads to response times of less than a second.

- About F# exceptions: in the absence of "break"... can I do anything else to abort a loop early?

Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.
Finding top talent before they become stars
What we are actually seeing is how far behind the DOJ and FBI are behind in having competent computer forensics professionals as part of their human resources..

We saw the same thing with the Patriot Act..do not have proper staff? than by God make sure that the US constitution suddenly does not apply if traveling outside the US..
Well, although I am likely in the minority, there is no Kindle or Nook app for my phone of choice (and certainly no iBooks app). I can read Google Books editions on my phone and there is a Kobo app for my phone.

Does Google Books do it better than Kindle, Nook, or iBooks (or Kobo)? No, but it does it just as well and works for me.

That said I'm still kind of torqued that the four volume paperback of the first four books in the "A Game of Thrones " series is ~$20 while the eBooks are ~$30. I know they are just trying to move the inventory to make way for the 5-book version that is sure to come along but still...
See, here's the issue. The burden of proof, in our court system, lies with the prosecutor. If I could just say "I know you killed that person, so bring me to the murder weapon and body", and charge the accused with contempt of court if they said "no", then there's a massive potential for abuse. For example, if the accused didn't actually do it, then they would get charged with contempt (or obstruction, or whatever), because they have nothing to show.

Passwords to encrypted containers are slightly different - they're not as simple as a key to a safe, and not as obviously protected as my above (contrived) example. However, the same problem exists. If I compel you to decrypt an encrypted volume, and you don't actually have the password (i.e. it's a friends', or whatever), then it's similar enough to the example above.

I'm not a lawyer, nor am I well-versed in law. But I know enough to say that it's not nearly as cut-and-dried as some people think.
When a little guy with no resources comes up with a brilliant idea he would try to implement it, the big guys would see it and use their near infinite resources to copy it while adding features and you would be cheering for them?

Out of curiosity when has this happened in the startup world? I don't ever hear about anybody registering patents or fending off the big guys.

Also easily copy-able ideas can't really be that brilliant, can they? If Google can steal your idea and your customer base easily then that frees you up to work on something more difficult/important.
it shouldn't be a feature, but a prerequisite. But that's a hopeful dream... Defining for whom it is easy to use looks more like a feature
Twitter's Biggest Rival Thinks Google Plus Could Become Fastest Growing Network
"Write your most important code in a different language that lends itself more to shooting yourself in the foot."

Yeah, how about no?
Well, it is:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2698635
Agreed - I'm interested in watching how Google+ plays out in the long run, but I'm not sure it will end up being the Facebook killer it's being positioned as today.
Great idea. My two biggest/immediate suggestions:

Allow Twitter signup (and FB, I suppose - I say Twitter b/c that's the one I care about.

Create a really, really, really good mobile experience. Seriously, if you want users to actually use the site, let them do it while they're drinking a beer, no matter where that is.
Includes an entertaining quote from "a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University who studies privacy in social networks" who believes that text content -- tweets, specifically -- can actually be deleted from the internet as long as the Library of Congress doesn't archive them:

"'This is the nature of these systems,' says Mr. Stutzman, who has criticized the Library of Congress's Twitter project. 'Maybe in three years, we'll look at public tweets and say, Oh, my God, those weren't public. A lot of people that are using Twitter nowadays may actually want to go back and delete their accounts or take those things out of the public at a later date, and they no longer can.'"
Agreed - on all your points. And... glad you liked it :-)
Parasites may have given birth to sex
This is what I do in my cubicle..
Then how can they compel someone to unlock a laptop to enable arbitrary access? Wouldn't they be limited to requesting specific documents?
Ask HN: How to be involved without becoming an employee?
About a week ago I met a guy who was in the early stages of a startup (just him and his co founder working out of an apartment with no funding). I am in love with the idea and it is something I have thought about in the past. I really want to be a part of this company but for financial reasons I can't quit my day job to join them. I don't have a lot of connections to help them raise money but I am an engineer which they are currently missing. Would it be wrong for me to help them in the evenings and weekends while still working at a start up (the two would not be competitive)? Even more, my current CEO is a well connected person in the valley, would it be inappropriate/wrong if I tried to connect the two?

I really want to be a part of this company because I am really passionate about the idea and see good things for it. I just don't know to what extent I can be involved.
The article doesn't say "Don't build features", it says "Don't compete on features". In other words, what is your focus when it comes to selling your product or service? Andrew is arguing that the focus should be on a unique experiental aspect of the service and not raw features. To that I would also add "Don't compete on price". That's not to say that you shouldn't have a price, or that the price shouldn't be competitive, but simply, that price isn't your primary differentiator. We differentiate on service, but we've also got some great features and competitive pricing - we just don't dwell on it. Decent features and good prices are just table stakes - service is our ante and we're all-in.
If you call GoDaddy, they'll spend most of their time upselling you.
Autism and Agile Software Development; pt 4
http://www.startssl.com/ will give you a free ssl certificate for a single domain (actually, they'll give you one that covers a domain plus a single subdomain). Handy if you want to setup your own mailserver somewhere: the root certs are in all the main browsers & mail clients. You'll need to have your (web|mail)server serve up the intermediate cert as well as the leaf cert which can be a slight pain to setup, but apart from that it all works just fine.
The fact that your last sentence is uncontroversial is really depressing. Everyone accepts that 'lobbying' is a polite word for 'bribery' and should be unacceptable in a modern democracy. We should all be on the damn streets about this.
The point is that the rule should not actually be a rule. At least, I took it to be a simple reversal of the original 'rule' post.
BMW is not a good example. It might be an illutrative marketing and positioning example, but as an owner of one these ultimate driving machines I can certainly say - never again. They set the plank very high and failed to deliver. From firmware that was antiquated on a delivery to spending few days in service every few weeks - that's just not one typically expects from a brand new 100K car.

In other words - if you are not competing on features, make sure you deliver on those ambiguous marketing messages you use instead. Because the less precise you are the more your customers will assume and the greater their disappointent will be.
I can't find any indication that it is Sony hardware. Have you a link to such info?
Social life is Balkanized. Who's facebook activity isn't already watered down to mediocrity of international-politics level of nothingness?
This reminds me of a piece of trivia.

The reason that NY subway stations were originally painted white was to make them feel clean and safe so that women would go inside. Because they knew that the success of the subway was assured if they could get women to use them.

Considering that subways changed people's relations to time, space and other people, they were wise to tackle that problem first.
> it's sexist (makes some women feel uncomfortable in a situation because of their gender).

We have a different definition of sexism. If a person feels uncomfortable, it does not necessarily mean they are being discriminated against.
Congrats on the launch/pivot/revenue/etc

I have to say as a designer this site seems like a nice change of pace....Looking at design porn all day that I can never afford can be a real drag and a turn off from the industry in general.

Having a place to go where I can put my ooogling where my wallet is definitely nice and the domain name (for whatever reasonably priced means) is very sticky.

Are the order size limitations influenced more buy the capabilities of the designer/distributors or on keeping with the Woot like discount feel?
That seems to be imply that she is lying, though.

What if she actually doesn't know the password? For example if it isn't her laptop or the password was written down and lost or it is an old encrypted volume which she doesn't use anymore, etc.
Certainly not without two bottles of hot sauce, anyway.
I don't agree that "the energy is not being emitted"; the Sun is roughly in thermal equilibrium, and the energy emitted equals the energy produced by fusion. The same would happen to a "bright light inside a box" - the box would emit the same amount of power once it's in thermal equilibrium, only it would presumably emit in infrared.

The power produced by nuclear fusion inside the Sun turns out to be very small compared to the mass of the Sun. I don't claim that this is some kind of a discovery, and I am sure that this is obvious and intuitive to astrophysicists, but it's not intuitive to laymen, who think that the Sun emits a lot of power relative to its mass. That's not misleading, it's only unintuitive.

In their immediate experience, anything this bright is indeed producing tens of thousands of watts per kilogram at least.

And I never doubted that you would get a whole lot of power if the energy contained in the Sun was released on a human time scale; this is something where intuition serves us well.
Nice. But why so slow? I'm talking about the animation and the delay for the description, close button etc. to appear (and when they do they move the image so it's kind of annoying (not mentioning that you have to wait to see if there's a next-button or something)). It took about 3 seconds from click to being completely done (for a cached image).

Anything but at fraction of a second for a animation can destroy an entire site, in my opinion.

Also, when the browser loses focus the image disappear (chrome 12) :( Just to reanimate when focus returns.

/rant

Sorry, a demo doesn't deserve the rant above, but it really bugs me that this is so popular and I guess the only reason for why it's popular is because the default values for lightboxes are slow just to show the effect.
I hate misleading graphs. First off, that graph should be logarithmic to show true changes in year over year percent terms (otherwise everything looks exponential in the long term) and secondly, the y-axis should extend to near the origin.
GoDaddy's UI is terrible.

I use Dreamhost for all my domain registrations and most DNS. Great admin interface compared to the competition, still very cheap, domain transfer codes plainly visible, no unlocking or calling or any of that. You just transfer it away. They are the most honest of the bunch and you can move each part of your service off them as you outgrow it.

Easiest to setup a domain for Google Apps too, just click a button.
Gif Shop for iPhone.  Brilliant.
He should have clarified what he means by decimated, but in some ways the word choice is suited:

47 per cent of Americans can't raise $2000 in 30 days without selling an asset...with nearly one quarter of $100k-$150k households reporting they wouldn't be able to find $2000...Only the final one-fourth said they definitely could find a way to make the payment: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/17/could-you-come-up-w...

The statistics cited are from the Brookings Institute: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/Programs/ES/BPEA/2011...
Thorough and detailed commentary here in yesterday's thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2744688
Exactly!
ps. check out the blog post comments if you want to see some insightful, and some dumb comments too!
I didn't, but that's really good news :)
Cheap until you get roped into an auto-renewing thing with 3x the price you first paid. Why support a company like that? It's so slimy. Your cheap domains are effectively subsidized by GoDaddy preying on others.
Depends if you are a RIM shareholder or not!

From a OSS point of view, Google don't release changes to the GPL kernel immediately until the hardware makers have actually produced a phone. Perfectly in keeping with the licence but annoys the "I have to have the latest source as of 2seconds ago" crowd.

Android's claim of Open Source is a bit moot if you can only run HTC build X on HTC version X hardware, either because they have their own non-GPL drivers, or they have deliberately locked bits of the hardware
Car Shipping synopsis
The terms 'nigger' and 'honky' are inherently discriminatory because they are frequently used to describe membership of an entire group of people. They're not looking at individuals based on their own character, but judging them based on their group. These terms are occasionally used for individuals, but less commonly so.

'bitch' and 'bastard' are more commonly used for individuals, though they are occasionally applied to entire genders.
I use Voip.ms for this purpose. I had a number through AT&T, which I then ported over to these guys for $25. I then set up call forwarding to my primary phone, which costs $0.0205 per minute.
Stephen Howell: Using Scratch with Kinect for Education | New Tech Post
Makes sense to me. I remember a wonderful article in HBR (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/04/make_your_competition_irrele...) that made a similar point.

I think the one main point is: if you compete on features (and please don't argue semantics), even if you succeed, it'll likely only be by a small margin, and you'll have to keep reinvesting into your product, inhibiting or denying it from evolving into a cash cow.
A closer look at the RIAA's sales numbers
Here's what I find most interesting about what has happened to the middle-class in America:

When the middle-class in America was booming, you would have had to be crazy to leave America. Good job. Nice car. Family and a house? You're set! Why leave?

Another way of viewing what has happened in the US over the past 20 years or so, is that the US middle-class is falling back to earth. Now the average middle-class family in America could move to just about anywhere in Europe and enjoy a pretty similar lifestyle to what they currently have in the US. Sure, gas is still more expensive and clothing is still a bit pricy, but it's nothing like it was in the 80s and early 90s. (I still remember seeing electric razors advertised for the equivalent of $150 on my first trip to Germany when the equivalent model in the US would've cost no more than $50.)

Take that one step further, and the average American family could now potentially consider a move to one of the BRIC or CIVITS nations, and they would find themselves with only slightly less access to the luxuries they might expect in the US.

Why is this important? Because I think that for the first time in the history of human kind, we might just be reaching the point where the choice of where to live and work could be made based solely on things like the climate or the culture instead of on things like "Can I eat?" or "Will I have a roof over my head?"

That would be a world I would want to live in...
I can't believe I forgot to mention this, there is a mobile web version available that I have been working on, check it out at http://www.hadthatbeer.com/mobile

Should auto redirect if I support your device.
Those $.59 3x5 memo pads fall apart after a couple weeks in my back pocket. Moleskines are/were more durable. They seem to be getting worse and worse quality now, so I use a binder clip + a dozen blank white index cards.

I prefer them to a notepad/moleskine now. They're thick enough that i can jot stuff down using my hand as a backing.

Once I don't need a card anymore, I can snap a photo of it with Evernote and shred or toss it in the recycle box. I replace it with a shiny new cheap white index card. Thinning the herd, so to speak.
Raleigh, NC; Westford, MA; Mountain View, CA; New York, NY; Tysons Corner, VA (full time): Red Hat

Several positions available. Information on open positions at https://careers.redhat.com/ext/search

Working at Red Hat means working beyond the borders of obvious and ordinary. This is a global company growing fast and bringing open source into the mainstream.
If Google wants to abolish patents, they'll need a lot of companies to support them. But surely some of these companies will want to help:

http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/mobilelawsuit...
"Decrypting the data on the laptop can be, in and of itself, a testimonial act--revealing control over a computer and the files on it," said EFF Senior staff attorney Marcia Hofmann.

I believe this is enough to get protection under 5th amendment. Giving password or providing decrypted content is already testimony against yourself saying that you control these files..
Hivemind devops alert: nginx sucks at ssl
Overcoming Halfhearted User Adoption