skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Y'know the problem with conspiracy theories in general? They never make any fucking sense on a psychological level.

The average conspiracy theorist starts from what they want to believe (generally that the US Government/The Bavarian Illuminati/the Jeeeeewwwws/Citibank/Oprah Winfrey is responsible for all the evil in the world) and work backwards from that.

What they never do is stop to consider "If I were so and so, and I wanted to achieve aim such and such", how would I go about it?

For instance, suppose I'm George W Bush, it's early 2001, and for some reason I've decided that I want to invade Afghanistan. (Possibly so we can build that oil pipeline which last I heard still hasn't been built.) What do I do?

Well, the most obvious thing to do is to invade Afghanistan. Circa 2001 there were already some pretty decent reasons for wanting to go to war in Afghanistan in order to take out those objectively-dickish Al Qaeda (who had already attacked the US on a number of occasions) and the Taliban (who were just plain assholes). The US public could probably have been convinced to go along with this, even in the absence of another terrorist attack. We went along with Obama to Libya, and with Clinton to Haiti and Iraq (Desert Fox, remember) and the Balkans.

But let's suppose they decided that this wasn't enough, and that it was totally worth killing thousands of US civilians for no particularly good reason, in a conspiracy involving hundreds or thousands of other ostensibly-patriotic US government employees, despite the fact that if anyone ever found out about this then they'd all be executed for treason and the fact that everyone involved in this conspiracy has every incentive, before the attack happens, to blow the conspiracy open, save thousands of lives, and become a hero.

At this point I'm gonna skip several paragraphs from my originally planned response, because I'm getting tired thinking this hard about this much stupid. I'll ignore the "wouldn't it make more sense to pick another target" bit and the "surely a smaller scale attack would have worked just as well" bit... and even the "if you're already crashing an airliner into a building WHY THE FUCK would you also need to go to the ridiculous expense and difficulty of doing a controlled demolition AS WELL? Like the war couldn't have happened if we'd ONLY seen the crashing planes and the buildings HADN'T collapsed?

Instead I'll skip straight to my conclusion. The minimum bar which a conspiracy theory has to pass, in order for me to take it seriously, is that it has to make some fucking sense from the point of view of the people who are supposedly the conspirators.
I'm not sure that's obvious. (And by the way, we're talking about conception of the idea, not actual implementation. You can patent something that you haven't yet prototyped.) Anyway, the entire rest of the world uses a first to file system, so bear that in mind when you say that first to invent is obviously correct.
Do you seriously think the only evidence linking UBL to 911 is a single video?

The US captured hundreds of enemy combatants and interrogated them all. A lot of them mention and talk about UBL and the role he played pre and post-911.

Try reading wikileaks.
You can actually download[1] an updated version of Ubiquity that works with even the nightly versions.

The commands I personally wrote seem to be broken now, but I think the main pre-installed ones work.

[1] Get tip.xpi at https://bitbucket.org/satyr/ubiquity/downloads
You're essentially a money transmitter and the location hook is a facade. How have you tackled the uncertainty around the Money Transmission Act? (ref: http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/In-Fifty-Days-Payments-...)
I don't know what experience you have with online game economies, but saying they've done a good job "managing" their economies is misleading. World of Warcraft has had a good go, not because of any economic management, but because of innovative economic planning... to an extent. The economy in WoW is very artificial, and they've eliminated the majority of their economic issues by releasing new armor sets, and using the bind-on-pickup system.

More so than any other game, I've found arbitrage to be most difficult on WoW.
This could be used like a turbocharger for your electronics: Scavenge heat energy that would normally be wasted in order to perform additional work.
Rock Bottom BluePrint Review
Rock Bottom BluePrint Review
I am in fact. If I remember correctly (I may very well not!) Mac OS 8 or so (maybe 8.5) was the height of the let's-never-ever-deviate-from-the-HIG days.

This also included a glorious commitment to the desktop metaphor, when that phrase meant anything: you really could map your mental representation of virtual objects onto their real-life analogs and expect things to work remarkably like you expected.

Now, I don't know that a desktop metaphor is the right way to interact with a computer (I certainly avoid it like the plague), but it seems preferable, in my experience, to the hodge-podge of mixed metaphors that the modern desktop UI has become, in both Mac and Windows.

I'm reminded of the scene in The Big Lebowski when the protagonists encounter a group of nihilists: say what you will about the desktop metaphor, but at least it's an ethos.
If a good fit we are happy to provide sponsorship.
Really, you get "southern slaveocracy" from "oversee"? Oversee just means to watch over, to monitor.

Edit: Seriously, do a search on the term "oversee". It's a common term and it's related to slavery the same way "driver" is, which is to say basically not at all.

http://www.google.com/search?q=oversee
I've been working with Perl programmers for just about ten years now and the one thing I've sadly learned is that while many folks claim to know Perl, but only a small group can do it well. (although granted you can apply this reality to any other programming language)
Veracity looks interesting; I had not heard of it before. I have a question about one of the items on the comparison chart here:

http://veracity-scm.com/

What is an "immutability doctrine", and what does it mean for one to be liberal/conservative?

Edit: I found a FAQ on this question:

http://veracity-scm.com/qa/questions/71/what-is-veracitys-do...

Edit 2: I just noticed that the Veracity command is a nice, short "vv". Must be an homage to the emacs "ctrl-x v v" binding. Nice touch!
I'm not talking only about the people that put their advertisments. I am talking about both sides. why is it not working for all at the same time? People that see advertisments should see what they want to see . and not see crap.
Maybe in theory this is how advertising is envisioned but it is not working in practice. Proof: I'm always seeing garbage in ads on facebook and google. therfore it is not working for all.

there can exist advewrtising as today but. there will also be this other thing that works for all, we don't have to call it advertising.
I assumed your parent post did not mean Chrome the app, he meant chrome the UI concept. Of Firefox. But I think I was wrong and he does mean Chrome the app. So, wtf? Off topic, and confusingly so, since Firefox suffers the same problems, and worse.
You're surprised because you haven't been on a college campus in the last five years. I'm amazed it's that low.
Actually shockwave and flash did the same thing, except at the time shockwave (Director) was actually more full featured with a programming language called Lingo (this was well before actionscript).
30 Questions for a Cloud Computing Service Provider
Jhalak Dikhla Jaa Season 4
Github's hg-git plugin ( http://hg-git.github.com/ ) is built with this, and so manages to avoid a dependency on the git binaries.
> How would comex rid Apple's entire development process of error?

That's why I hedged with "temporarily". If he's the best that's working on jailbreaking now, just taking him off that project would already help. And asking him to work to secure phones would be a great help, too - he could spot potential vulnerabilities before they're shipped.

This won't make the iPhone into a space-shuttle, but it will make jailbreaking harder, perhaps significantly so.

> Plus, if he jailbreaks devices because he believes people should be free to do with their hardware as they please why on earth would he effectively join the dark side?

They'll drive a dump-truck full of money up to his house. Or maybe there's something else he values more than the belief in free hardware.
This sounds to me as a case of what PG refers to as a "hard problem". Maybe worth a shot?
For people who care about such things, you can customize the toolbar and enable "Small Icons".
> (Word of warning: historically, Thrift has not been consistent in their feature support and performance across all the languages, so do some research).

Conversely, we chose Thrift over protobuf for this reason. Protobuf's python performance was abysmal — over 10x worse than Thrift.
Why an opinion makes software more intelligent
Even easier:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=d64a84456adc959f56de6af685d0dadd+-fresh...

and

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=8d8a1b73876ca678cc3afa372e5199de+-fresh...
We believe in rule of law (when convenient).
A look at the Adobe Edge preview
Were you previously a Perl programmer at all? And are you learning it for any particular purpose?

I've always wanted to give Perl a go but can't find something I want to use it for.
Hacking & Security Complete Movie List (updated)
The more you know:

UIViews are basically event-handling abstractions above CALayers, which in turn are a relatively thin abstraction above common OpenGL actions. Core Animation simply manipulates these layers in the hierarchy, of which there are three per view: model, presentation, and render. The model is the one you interact with. When you change the location of a view, it changes the model, which is then reflected in the presentation. When you animate, it tweens from the beginning state to the end state. Fun fact: when you start a new animation and start it from the current screen state, it uses the presentation layer, instead of the model layer. If you don't start the animation from the current state, this is why you might see jerking - it tweens from the model layer instead of the presentation layer.

The render layer, the last of the three, is rendered by the render server, which is hardware accelerated, and shown to you. Fun fact: CALayer's renderInContext runs on the CPU, whereas UIGetScreenImage uses the render server, which is why it's so much faster - it runs on the GPU.
I would guess that Delaware tops the list in paying more than is spent on it just because so many corporations are registered there, so the corporate income tax they pay appears to originate from Delaware. Minnesota in second place surprised me though.
How is that the root of all dysfunction? If trolls can't buy patents, they will cut some other deal with inventors that has the same effect. Or they will just "invent" things themselves[1].

[1] http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/patent-reform...
It's a difficult problem to explain in a typical narrative journalism style. Patching security is a good thing, yes. Being able to do what you want with your own phone, The Man be damned is also a good thing. Now, try to present both sides in a catchy article written for general audiences about a member of the jailbreak community.
Facebook has 12 Million Paying Gamers, says PayPal
I don’t understand this argument. Why would advertisers only bid if there is enough search volume? For each venue you advertize on you have a fixed cost that is the cost of setting up and maintaining your ad campaign on that platform. So there is an incentive to use high search volume sites, but this hardly qualifying as a natural monopoly.

Or am I missing something?
Yes, but less fun than cracking it yourself with software you wrote.
Google+ Stumbles Over Identity
It's hard to draw any conclusions from this, apart from everyone's favourite conclusion "This graph totally supports my existing political opinions".

One thing seriously missing: the District of Columbia.
Why you can't search for phpBB on Bing
They don't want you to post the solution. If you're interested in the job, it shows that you have a basic level of competence in figuring things out. There's another teaser on the job page they link to.
I can imagine the bug report... closed and marked WONTFIX
Not only would they have to steal ALL of Google's income, they would have to steal ALL of Googles network. Highly unlikely at any point in the future.

Not to mention the google search product IMO is better than any other available.
So is this a paid spot on HN? Can't reply to or upvote/downvote their posting? Yet it's on the front page.

Edit: They should do better than md5 if they want smart people to solve hard problems.
If it makes you feel any better, this article really misunderstands a lot of things.
Actually I was specifically mentioning the OSx86 project. I just figured that if Apple insiders are helping the OSx86 project they might be helping the JB community as well.

No, you're right I can't list names. Apple does not approve of the OSx86 project.
HP makes a really good budget keyboard that i love over the $100+ boards out there. its called the HP Wireless Elite Keyboard... link:

http://www.amazon.com/HP-FQ480AA-ABA-Wireless-Keyboard/dp/ta...
An interactive music video in browser from Japanese indie band
This is the library that Google used for Google Code's git support.
Definitely something fishy going on, at my side it briefly disappeared from all pages..is this a new type of article ban?
There's a much longer interview with Knuth posted originally at http://www.webofstories.com/play/17060. The transcript is probably interesting reading for anyone interested in the man; I imported it into Git and started formatting it into paragraphs at https://github.com/kragen/knuth-interview-2006, although I haven't finished.

I think it would be worthwhile for more people to (a) clone the git repository to reduce the risk that this primary historical source will be lost, and (b) reformat more of the transcript if they feel like it.
Thanks. I don't use Firefox much anymore (I keep it setup to use the corporate proxy for the few things that need that), so I'd forgotten about that option.
I'm curious how conservatives will find that this supports their existing political opinions. "Red states deserve more of those tax dollars that are evil and shouldn't have been paid?"
SEEKING FREELANCER:

Web designer who can knock out great looking landing pages, like:
basecamphq.com
sproutsocial.com
cotweet.com

Can you knock out different comps of our current product pages? Can you create some visually delicious banners or other web graphics?

E-mail me: iman@trainsignal.com
Ok, I agree that providing a better ad experience makes it more likely that people will use those ads. Would you agree that that might be expressed by saying, "If the probability of someone clicking on an advertisement is X then increasing the number of people who see/visit the page proportionally increases ad clicks by factor X ?"

If you agree that this restatement adequately captures your claim then I'd like you to consider the difference between "creating a desirable web site", versus "getting someone to click on an ad."

Using examples, someone who designs an advertisement to 'appear' underneath my mouse as my mouse traverses a trigger point is "trying to get me to click", whereas someone who designs a web page on widgets which includes an advertisement for something associated with widgets off to the side, they are not working on 'trying to get me to click.'

My claim is that engineers at Google (and presumably Facebook and Twitter) are working on making your experience with their products the best it can be. This increases the number of people who use their products, and if the probability of someone clicking an advertisement is fixed, the higher traffic rates will result in more clicks. And yet, unlike the original author's posting, they worked not on 'getting people to click' rather they were working on 'being more useful to more people.'

Its important to remember that advertisements are not 'evil', not even a little bit evil. I used to subscribe to BYTE magazine and Computer Shopper in part to get access to the advertisements. These represented companies who had things I would likely want to purchase and knowing about them was a service, not a burden. The consumer 'cost' of advertising relates to how much the consumer cares that its 'part of what they are looking for' or not.

Abusive use of advertising decreases your readership which reduces the rate your desirability as an advertising platform. Its a negative value coefficient in the feedback loop so it self corrects.
No I dont buy advertised products. Except razorblades. I really do not buy mass market consumer products in general. Oh I bought an iphone, not because of the adverts though.

I have read a lot on advertising, it is very interesting. I simply do not buy the types of product that are advertised, and I am geeky about the stuff I do buy. If advertising was aimed at me it might work, but it is not, that was the point I was making, and why I think many geeky people are averse to advertising.

My views on German engineering are from time spent in Germany, and reading.
should be in my profile
I could very well be wrong, but I doubt you heard enough through word of mouth to get you in to the store. You need quite a bit of information at a pretty specific time to go to a grocery store you haven't been to before, everything from location to a serendipitous follow up thought for "I need groceries today".

Assuming you did end up there without seeing/hearing any advertising, you went in and bought products with "advertising" stamped on the front of them, right? Even store brand products have labels that feature a message the store would like you to consider. Otherwise we'd just buy things in brown cardboard boxes and stamped burlap sacks like the good ol' days.
Discussion for this is on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2825402

Also on http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/54506/is-this-batman...
Pretty crazy that this is allowed. It sounds like the odds are too tough normally, and then a few days a year everyone who got screwed all year long lose their money to pro gamblers.

Congrats to the winners.
Ask HN: Any hackers on the Central Coast (CA)
Are there any hacker meet ups on the Central Coast between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara?
Depends on your definition of failure.

Looking at sales figures for the app store and iTunes, would you honestly say that Apple's code-signing and other DRM techniques have "failed"?
The problem also applies if one inventor invents something, then another individual gains access to it before the inventor distributes it publicly, and files a patent on it.

But in the more general case, I find it difficult to believe that the notion of Prior Art is unaffected by the elimination of first-to-invent. Under the new rules, if the PTO considers two patents determined to cover the same invention, they will accept the one filed first and decline the one filed later, even if the first-filed invention was invented at a later date. If a patent lawsuit can reverse this decision by finding prior art, then how can these be reconciled?

Maybe the idea is simply to shift the burden of determining the earliest invention date from the PTO before the patent is filed to the courts after the fact?
Especially given the number of times the US military has lied to the public.
Anti-Stalking Law Threatens Protected Speech Online
Google will be in the transportation and shipping business by then.
Another thing about Linux: eventually someone will make an easy to use programme that captures the stream and saves it to a file, this open source programme will be useful to people and will be included in the main software repositories. It will then be easy to save the files, and open source developers will proudly promote this software and will not take kindly to netflix telling them to pull it.
This story provides some interesting new information about the client experience on Airbnb. I wonder if other press accounts will confirm this information.

Note to onlookers: a CNN new report submitted by another HN participant, which I found interesting, and which included the new information that Airbnb "is working on a 'response to our community' that would be released Monday afternoon," has now been made dead.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2834066

That's too bad, because many of us who are curious about the future prospects of the Airbnb company are trying to gauge whether the company is successful in keeping ahead of the press cycle or not.
Airbnb Apologizes and Offers $50,000 Guarantee to Home Owners
Ads don't annoy people, people annoy people. Would it be hypocritical if his company advertised to get customers? Where does the author think we'd be without advertising in terms of the internet? Very odd logic for not wanting to work at said companies.
> America’s most quintessential inventor did without them and thought they were foolish.

Right, but he also didn't care about selling his inventions to feed his family, having other sources of income. It's easy to give away something you don't need.
Sam, you've certainly made an enemy out of every member of the Perl community with this sarcastic and incomplete post.

Once you've gotten through OReilly's beginner Perl books and "Programming Perl", if you truly want to learn how to scale Perl in the enterprise, read Damian Conway's Object Oriented Perl. Once you can write solid consistent OO Perl, read "Apache modules with Perl and C".
Unlimited Detail releases new video about their game engine
Our Commitment to Trust & Safety
If it's an automated system inducing the error state, it suggests that you could poison Bing by creating a similar error for popular keywords.
Paris, France - Stupeflix [http://stupeflix.com]

We're looking for one front end and one back end engineer to join our team of five and help the world create awesome videos via our web app (available on Youtube.com/create) and our API (producing millions of videos a month). Come work on the GPU rendering engine, pixel-refine an advanced web app, and challenge us on Kinect.
Send your Kinect Sports highest score to contact@stupeflix.com
I'm constantly surprised by this response to these sorts of questions. My understanding is that it's simply an initial filter - this isn't the hard stuff. My own experience is that there are many people who can't solve this sort of thing, and yet think they're great. This sort of question is just going to cull the obvious non-starters as an initial phase of the triage. The teaser on the jobs application page is similar. It's only after passing those - and showing that you care enough to try - that the interesting bit starts.

Sadly, by posting this submission you've simply negated the whole point, and now they'll have to think of something else.

And with regards paid spots, again, my understanding is that job posts by YC companies can't be replied to and simply drop linearly down the front page. They are treated as a special case, but equally, have to adhere to specific guidelines.
A --no-ff merge also makes reverting a change from master easier because there is just one commit. You don't need to dig through the log to find the first commit from the merged branch fast-forwarded onto master.
And, 50 years ago, how many normal US citizens knew FDR had polio and was in a wheelchair?

It's 2011. Nothing exists unless it's on Facebook. The media has changed everything.
Not requiring a schema isn't necessarily an advantage. If I'm receiving data from something that isn't in the same security domain, then I want a schema.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaking about future plans to Mars
to sell more products.

This could be added at the end of your sentence. You are right it may not be strictly advertising, however, if the goal is to find better ways to understand customer behavior it is so you can reach them...to better advertise to them.
though he humbly suggests the opposite, this is a great example of how to deal with a crisis
Juice recipes for health care and beauty