skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is so right on.

I've always expressed it as

There are two types of innovation: Aspirational and Reactionary

_Aspirational Innovation_ - Where you, as the creator, aspire to provide something to customers they don't currently have or can't do. You believe there's a great new thing customers can have/do that they currently don't have/do. It solves a problem that customers don't know they have (yet).

_Reactionary Innovation_ - Where your product addresses existing customer pain. It solves a problem that customers have today. It makes pain go away for the customers.

Both types of innovation are hard. I have built products along both lines. Windows Media Center was Aspirational ("People want to record and watch TV on their PCs"). The challenge here was convincing the market that this is what they wanted. Windows Home Server was Reactionary ("Multiple PC's in the home are painful to manage"). The challenge here was convincing the market that the product actually made the pain go away.
For all you know, bowl manufacturers could embed GPS tracking devices in there.

I don't carry my bowls around ;)

There comes a point where you just have to trust people selling you stuff won't be evil.

I don't like that word. It oversimplifies the issues. Whether Google is evil is subjective and irrelevant. The fact is that their entire business revolves around collecting personal data, often without being clear to the user about the details.

Is this for evil purposes? Were they discussing in dark rooms on how to fuck the user over? No, of course not. But does it really matter?
Will you be doing this again next year?

How do you think the CCW and the 2010 Raynes conj fundraiser will impact the success of this one?
Also, Greece’s original accession to the EU was motivated in part by geopolitical considerations; Greece applied for membership shortly after a democratic government replaced seven years of harsh military rule.
To be fair, it's pretty standard for smaller nations to collaborate and share resources with allied larger nations when it comes to embassy matters.
This statement confuses me:

>On most Android phones, this firmware has so much control that it could turn the product into a listening device. On some, it controls the microphone. On some, it can take full control of the main computer, through shared memory, and can thus override or replace whatever free software you have installed. With some models it is possible to exercise remote control of this firmware, and thus of the phone's computer, through the phone radio network

There are a few things that I find odd about this argument:

1. Phone network firmware is supposed to control the hardware. That's it's purpose. It's supposed to be able to turn the microphone on and off. On CDMA networks like Verizon, it should stop the user from attempting to access data when they're making a call. It should be able to be updated when the carrier makes changes to the underlying protocol(s). I don't see how this is "malicious"
use, especially if it's a technological restriction on the carrier.

2. Also, Stallman seems to be attacking the OTA update capability, which one of the main features of the Android OS. I can understand why he's ideologically opposed to it, but as a practical matter, it's a great feature of the OS. Plus, this is only done at the user's request.
>Your distinction is not relevant, and outside the meaning of the legal definition. //

I say it is relevant. It probably wouldn't be to a legal case. However, you say that you can't discriminate against someone because of an abstract label and then go on to describe behaviour that can't be discriminated against. That was essentially my point that behaviour defines a person (before the law that would be the actus as well as the mens [rea]).

>only legal because religious are except from those laws //

It's legal because you live in a democracy where a marked percentage of the population don't hold the same morals as you. I'm pretty sure the SA won't tolerate all sorts of sexual behaviour from their members (I don't know if they really have staff) not limited to homosexuals. If you can't tolerate this then that would be bigotry, FWIW.

>Pointing out that the SA will provide soup and compassion to all people, homosexual or otherwise, is irrelevant. //

You said they were discriminating negatively against people. Showing that they provide "services" without discrimination appears to be relevant.
What would make Google release the source?
for those looking for free reference, this is the best I have found: http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596155957/index.html
not a great book but if complemented with blog posts here and there and the exercises from http://aperiodic.net/phil/scala/s-99/ you can get started.
What point are you trying to prove?
This is an oversimplified perspective, though it does have some underlying truth. The issue of poverty reduction is a complex one. I reccomend anyone truly interested to read this World Bank comparison report from a couple years ago(pdf):

http://elibrary.worldbank.org/deliver/5080.pdf?itemId=/conte...

It is excellent.

And here is the thrilling conclusion:

“China clearly scores well on the pro-poor growth side of the card, but neither Brazil nor India do; in Brazil’s case for lack of growth and in India’s case for lack of poverty-reducing growth. Brazil scores well on the social policies side, but China and India do not; in China’s case progress has been slow in implementing new social policies more relevant to the new market economy (despite historical advantages in this area, inherited from the past regime) and in India’s case the bigger problems are the extent of capture of the many existing policies by non-poor groups and the weak capabilities of the state for delivering better basic public services.”
You are not alone and you are correct. Politicians take these abstract deficit numbers and use words like "unsustainable", and "our grandchildren are straddled with debt" to try to make them meaningful when they are not. What is the difference between 1.7 trillion , 20 trillion, or 5 trillion and what does it mean to joe schmo today? Read Mosler for more.
> It's the "without comment" that is the poison here, IMHO.

No, it isn't.

Stop worrying about votes and karma. And if you can't stop worrying about it, at least stop posting about it.

There's always someone who doesn't like you or something that you wrote. (Yes even special snowflakes like you.)Votes merely expose that.
An Epic One-Day Erlang Conference in Washington, DC
That doesn't work either, even if you get rid of your american citizenship, they still come after you for the past years.
However, all you'll do is reduce the average employee skill to can-just-about-do-FizzBuzz levels. That is not good at all. And since you can raise the 'average skill of the programmer' by just allowing jeans & tshirt (which costs nothing), it seems like a sensible investment to make.
F# 3.0 – LINQ + Type Providers = Information Rich Programming
in 20 years we will look back at our "work" and not see a "life" around it. I burn the midnight oil and watch the sun come up once a week, but turning off the desk lamp at 5pm to engage in life is critical for me to be recharged for the next days' opportunities and challenges.
Identified: shows you how your Facebook profile looks to recruiters
Squeezed light a small step forward toward detecting gravitational waves
FWIW, entering the U.S. for a vacation with a Canadian passport is trivial. (Unless you're the wrong colour or on the wrong kind of a secret list - but I imagine those troubles would apply to U.S. citizens as well.)
What exactly are the laws and protections afforded by a U.S. citizenship for a Canadian citizen? If they're common and useful, maybe more of us should get on that.
Two Android privilege escalation vulnerabilities
"... We hope Congress and the Supreme Court are paying attention ..."

Instead of hope just contact your representative:
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

We have enough people on HN to pull it off.
According to the article, she left the US when she was 11 and has never lived in the US since. And now the US government wants a significant amount of all the money she has ever earned through adulthood. Is that fair?
Further information: http://lifehacker.com/5842029/identified-is-a-new-profession... (lifehacker.com)
What matters to HN readers is 10% of Indians own 52.9% of the wealth in India. http://www.livemint.com/2010/10/13203814/Distribution-of-wea...

So even though the country at large is poor, 130 million people could become your potential customers, spending on par with other wealthy nations in the west.
I think there is an address listed on the About page. Get in touch with Brenda.
F# LINQ Support With Query Expressions
"The very essence of Facebook was to recreate the joys of college life in the virtual space."

Maybe back when it first started. It hasn't been the 'essence of Facebook' for a long time now.

They've evolving, as they need to if they want to stay in the lead.
And there is the cost to the public itself, for the courts and such, which the article did not mention.

Maybe the Government should change the law and require all patent disputes settled via mediation before anything can even go to court.
I received my Green Card only some months ago, but the requirements that you have to report on your accounts is pretty obvious, once you check what things you have to do.
Anonymized gps data can be troubling. For example:

If I was an insurance company having to pay a claim. I could buy the GPS data, look at some anonymous GPS device that constantly goes to/fro the house of the person in the accident, followed by noticing that this person was speeding a few miles an hr and denying claims or claiming more responsibility, even if it is not warrented.

The flip side is that it can be a good thing. Funny thing about speed traps though... Guy gets pulled over for speeding 10mph above limit. Claims that hes moving with traffic (60mph). Gets ticket. 10 min later gets pulled over for creating traffic going 50mph, the speed limit, and gets off with a warning after showing the original ticket.

End of the day, this is very tricky, can be good and bad for society. However in the end OnStar is profiting so its not intended to help anyone but OnStar.
The problem, I believe, is that politicians use the laws as messages instead of as legislation. When there's media outrage about some subject or the other, the response of the clever politician is to reply with a new law that "helps" for the issue at hand. Once the crisis has passed, we are left for a ad-hoc law that doesn't make much sense anymore. And we end up paying fines or going to prison for some old telegram.

What would be good is more succinct Penal Codes, and to make it much harder to add laws in response to isolated events.
Judge:  neither Oracle or Google has defined an "API"
The problem with down-voting over disagreements is that the person who made the post now knows that someone disagrees, but has absolutely no idea why.

I participate in discussions because it is a great opportunity to learn. If I have said something that is wrong, I would really like to know why. I might even agree with you. Karma serves absolutely no purpose. The loss of a point means nothing. Insightful discussions, on the other hand, hold a lot of meaning and value.

If you disagree, formulate a thoughtful reply. Save your down votes for the obvious spam.
I built and sold a company that focused almost entirely on this one task several years back :-) It's still going though I can't personally vouch for it as I don't use it any more. Nonetheless: http://feed.informer.com/
Green card holders have to report on their accounts. I know this because I am one.
Disclaimer: I work for GM, but do not know much about OnStar, especially internals. My reply is purely speculative.

I can't speak as to what OnStar actually does with this data, but I CAN tell you that GM wants to use it as a platform for the best customer service platform in the business.

Imagine that the "marketing" they do with this data is something like selling it to dealerships ("affiliates"); the marketing call being something like "Hi Mr. Smith, we noticed your fuel pump is going bad. You pass by our Main St. service center daily; would you like to schedule an appointment?"

They could also "sell" that data to GM engineering, to make future (or current, through controls software updates) products better.
Show HN: Proby - Task monitoring made simple
Hello HN.

We were occasionally running into issues where our scheduled tasks would not start when expected. There were many reasons for this (environment changes, lock files not being cleaned up properly, etc). So, we created a simple application to monitor our scheduled tasks, and notify us if they didn't start or finish when expected. Now we're notified immediately (via email or SMS) when a scheduled task isn't kicked off when it is supposed to.

The app also keeps track of the run times for past task executions, which has been useful in tracking down unexpected changes in task run times.

Proby is currently in closed beta, meaning we're letting people in slowly. It is currently running on a VPS with a few other services. We want to see if there is an interest in the app before purchasing better/additional hardware.

Use of the app is currently free. At some point, when it is out of beta, we may begin charging a small fee for the service (although I'd imagine we'd have a free plan of some sort). But, all of that is still up in the air.

What do you think?
I hope you realize that it's not hard to come up with other examples of technology that is not 'open' in any way, yet could be used for malicious or undesirable purposes, right?

Sure. And if I could, I'd buy open versions of them too.

mean, I love open-source and everything, but I honestly don't give a sh_t whether the 'firmware' of the plane I'm flying, the playback device and amplifier pumping out my tunes, the microwave oven that heats my lasagna, the ECU controlling my cars engine or the software in my satnav system is 'open' and 'free'.

Well, then we're different. I give a shit. Not enough to refuse to use a closed version, of course.

For probably around 99.9% of all people using cell-phones, the exact same reasoning holds for how they think about them, and how they would prefer it to just work well and have more functionality, instead of carrying this (to them) abstract notion of being 'open'. If 'closed' means they get a better product (which is very often the case), then closed is better for them.

Possibly. But that still leaves 0.1% of people. And that includes me.

And 'better' is hard to tell. How much money and effort was spent rewriting stuff because it was tied to closed platforms?
People are usually bad at looking at the long term or at evaluating the far reaching consequences of such decisions, in my opinion.
Even if it wasn't he still has one important thing under his belt: a conscious decision to go on for the 10000 hours, made before he even started practicing. This is, as far as I know, rather unique.
So if a poster says something you think is really stupid and offensive

If I think a poster is trolling, I'll ignore him/her. I encourage others to do the same. Trolling is no fun if somebody doesn't take the bait.

If the person doesn't seem to be trolling but is just posting something "stupid and offensive," call him/her out on it and say why. The poster may not realize how "stupid/offensive" the post is. That's the value of this community. You can learn here.
60 Bold Typographical Statements from Wordboner
You're right, apparently I did not understand the issue.
By the way, you can find loads of disgustingly miserable poor places in the rich USA too. Maybe they all have sewers and electricity but that's about all that separates parts of the rural US (deep south) or bad urban poverty (right nearby me in NYC) and some villages in India.

Please, just stop. You have no clue. I've lived most of my life in poor parts of the US. Now I live in a posh area of Pune and jog through slums fairly regularly. There is no comparison.

Just one stat for comparison. In the US, 70% of poor people own a car, and 25% own two cars. In India, 1.5% (as of 2006, it's probably more like 2-3% now) of all people have a car, and marginally more own a scooter.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf

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

The 5'th percentile in the US is richer than the 95'th percentile of India.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...
Please steal this idea: Foursquare for takeout food
The guy attempting the 10,000 hours (supposedly, I haven't been following him to determine if it's true) is specifically talking about this latter form of practice.

Yes, he's very deliberate about it. IIRC, he has a top coach guiding all of his training, and the plan has been careful working away from the hole. So the first couple hundred hours (!) were all putting and then some chipping, doing careful drill after drill. Finally he can play most of the hole, albeit with only shorter distance clubs so far.
New physics?
The VBScript from hell: typed vs. typeless languages
What was your initial tech stack? Did it scale? 
I am a technical co-founder for a new startup in the midwest. I am curious what tech stack others have used to initially launch their product and how that changed as their audience/product grew over time.

Our stack: Ruby on Rails App, MySQL, Passenger, Apache hosted on a Linode Debian6 VPS. We are considering using Node JS for some evented stuff etc.
>My advice to other entrepreneurs? Save your cash, Disrupt is dead.
... Don’t get me wrong, Disrupt is a great platform

Huh?
Market forces can't be /destroyed/. Market forces just /are/. These forces don't always lead to market efficiency (which is called market failure), which I think is what you're thinking of.

Most often, market intervention leads to unexpected consequences, as people have a great deal of trouble predicting the effects of market forces.

The government deciding by fiat how much something should cost is more likely to lead to removal of consumer surplus, rather than a race to the bottom, if the government maintains competition amongst its suppliers. If you know you're competing on product quality at a certain price point - rather than on price - you'll likely be motivated to produce the best product possible at a price point that maintains normal profit. That's what I think anyway, but as I've already said, it's remarkably difficult to predict how market forces will play out.

I do note, however, that most of the developed world gets significantly better health outcomes for significantly less outlay than the US. This suggests massive market failure in the US health market.

This may be because while the US market is in theory a free market, in practice, it's anything but - it's an oligopoly with absolutely massive barriers to entry and no end of government interference.

Hopefully something for you to consider!
Why I Prefer Testing Over Coding
No reference, but I'm a H-1B holder and I file FBARs. I am part of a German Expat forum and the opinion there is pretty cut and dry that H-1Bs have to file. Every year that forum has a big thread to make sure everybody is aware of it. Having my savings confiscated for screwing up FBAR reporting is literally my number one fear I have about living in the USA.
Get UK inbound voice numbers here http://www.twilio.com/uk-voice Current wait time is ~1-3 business days for getting into the beta.
Speaking for myself, if I saw a COBOL tattoo, I'd most likely think "Duuuude, old school... respect!" ;) Not so sure about JS though - is it perhaps more likely to seem like Visual Basic in 40 years? As a JS monkey myself, though, I like it* :)

As for alternatives... would a Lisp tattoo be better?

* Apart from the i coming out of nowhere, which keeps setting off my this-is-a-bug alarm ;)
Orbit the Earth in One Minute Via Fascinating ISS Time-Lapse Video
You'll see links to F.lux [0] occasionally on HN, but I can't overstate how F.lux has changed my life.

Before F.lux, my laptop would suck me in. I would browse HN, Metafilter, and Twitter even as my eyes stung and my head felt like a bag of sand. Eventually I would go to bed at 3am, confused about how time flew by so quickly.

The next morning was always rough. Some days I would wake up at 8am and arrive at work on time with a headache. Sometimes I would jump up at a quarter to nine, arrive an hour late, and chug two tall cups of coffee before noon. I'm embarrassed to say that I called in sick a few times because I was too exhausted to get out of bed. This was a terrible existence.

With F.lux I feel myself getting sleepy. After a certain hour, my body kills any running mental processes and orders me to sleep. I always get sunlight and exercise, but eliminating blue light in this controlled experiment (with F.lux and a Kindle for late-night reading) has dramatically improved my quality of sleep.

My only problem with F.lux is that I can't find the "Donate" link on their page.

[0] http://stereopsis.com/flux/
Nice work John! My favorite feature is seeing a graph of historical run time. Really helpful to figure out how a job is doing performance wise.
Watch 90210 season 4 episode 2-3-4 online megastream free
So if this is a problem with subsequent IVs, wouldn't turning off SSL session caching server side mitigate the attack as well? Highly loaded servers wouldn't be able to handle this, and it degrades the experience for high-latency users, but it does force a new session on every connection.
Well, Facebook corp enroached on my privacy, and apps spammed my feed with useless crud. People posted high noise, low signal updates.

So I left.
Casio paying Microsoft to use Linux in new patent deal
GIS Cloud Starts HTML5 Mapping Revolution
If I were stuck in Cairo I would just drive to the airport by myself, where my country has organized flights to extract the citizens. No problem at all. If you live in a neutral country that does not attack other countries for fun, people around the world are quite friendly to you.

And even the sitation in Cairo wasn't as bad as reported in the media (at least according to what I've heard from the people who've been stuck there).