skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This strikes me as a rather poor excuse (if it's intended as such).

I didn't really intend it to excuse the quality of the content, only to assert that it's allowed to be one-sided. My view (biased, but not self-interested) is that the piece is both well researched and biased, and that the research produced the bias. The author isn't author casually writing scattered thoughts, but rather reiterating the book that she's spent the last year writing. She may be wrong or misleading, but she's spent a lot of effort learning about the subject.

Well, we can't know all their reasons...but based on the facts so far...no they didn't.

You're right. I'm presuming that Tallbloke was merely an running a blog that allowed comments, rather than a conspirator. I conclude this because there were three blogs being investigated simultaneously, and I find it highly unlikely that all of them are colluding. But I guess we'll have to wait to see how it turns out. If they have inside knowledge not yet released, I'd have to revise my thinking.

I hope climate change denialists don't hold this up as some sort of proof of their conspiracy theories.

I'm sure some will, but I don't think there's any monolithic set of denialists. On the blogs in question (http://climateaudit.org/, http://noconsensus.wordpress.com, and http://tallbloke.wordpress.com, all more skeptical than denialist), most of the commenters seem to be concentrating on the civil liberties aspect. It's seen as a precursor of the potential downsides of SOPA. There's a lot of libertarian beliefs among the skeptics.
The issue addressed is not one of judicial efficacy or reliability. It is, yet again, another instance of placing limits on systems that apply "rule of law". So the specimen of a "clearly unjust" action being ignored by a jury of "one's peers" is a red-herring. A people deserve their government and structural forms such trial by jury are designed precisely to deliver them that government, without undue oppression.
In addition to not being easier to read at all (in my opinion), its complete dependence on the `arguments` object means your code will be less likely to be traced/compiled by the JIT.
If you throw enough money at the problem, the private sector probably could figure out a way to open ancient WordStar documents. But it'd be so much easier to avoid the problem in the first place...
Thanks for the feedback. I've also wanted something like a daily checklist that's fresh every day. This app doesn't do that automatically, but if you clone a list it keeps all the items but unchecks them. In general, I'd like to be able to nicely handle checklists which are used repeatedly.
Karma-based communities lack innovation
What about something like this:

fn = compose(truncate.flip().curry(20), trim, sanitize);
output = fn(input);

Better or worse?
Hacker News - home of the Android Zealots, can't say something even slightly bad about android without being voted down. To me that phone looks very similar to an iphone 4. The apple iphone 4 has the outer rim as the antenna, looks like a similar design here.

I suppose the german court that claimed "the overall impression of the tablet was too similar to the design of Apple's iPad." totally took that out of the blue. Hire some designers, do something innovative like the nokia N9 and come back.
Out of curiosity, what sort of things do you tend to do in your consulting engagements? You tend to label it as engineering, but based on your descriptions (e.g. the Fog Creek writeup), it sounds like mostly marketing for engineering companies. Do you think that's an accurate picture?
Hmm I have just started working with RoR. Would jump at this but the DC part is turning me away.

I know you guys said you had an office in Seattle any chance of a similar program there?

Edit: And I also would like to add that I wish there were more programs like this. So many companies want to hire elite,rockstar,jedi,ninja,etc programmers and not willing to give people like me with no CS background a chance. I can't even get an entry-level/junior position since they all require a strong skills these days.
I was called up for jury selection in Manhattan, and this was my experience. They asked if anyone had a problem with the law in question (it was a drug case) and then asked if I would be able to return a guilty verdict.

I was not paneled on the jury. In my case, a large number (>100) jurors were dismissed for what did not appear to be any reason, so it may have been something else I said or something I wrote on the questionnaire they gave us. I was also surprised by the number of dismissed jurors, since I was led to believe (mostly, I think, by Law & Order) that there was a limit on the peremptory dismissals.

On the elevator on the way out, other dismissed jurors congratulated my on a novel way to avoid jury duty. This annoyed me, since I would have really liked to have been on that jury. Although I agree with the article that juries should have more powerful, I don't see how a believer in nullification can get on a jury without lying.
Some ideas: pdf.js, jsmad, h.264 and webm in JS, webgl visualizations, useful libraries, etc.
Let me offer a counterpoint: I started out with Word 3.0 for DOS, in 1987. From there, I went through lots of office software for PC, Mac, and Atari. A good ten years ago, I installed OpenOffice, which I have been using ever since. I never had any .doc compatibility problems.

Today, I'm working for a small retail company in Madrid, Spain: Ten people, running Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. All of us are using OpenOffice. It already was that way when I came here a year ago. Until now, I heard nobody even mentioning our office software. And these people are not "computer geeks" by any measure; we sell clothes.

I guess it is the reliance on Excel macros, which are not compatible with OpenOffice Calc, that prevents lots of companies from switching. If you don't depend on any of those, I honestly see no advantages in using MS Office.
Lessons learned from 3 months on YC and 3 years in SF
One big motivation for the video is that it's much harder to fake. It's easy to have my friend write some BS essay for me and submit it for a job, it's a lot harder to do it on camera.

Effective development teams are powered by communication in code, writing, and face-to-face. To be a really excellent candidate, we need all three.

If face-to-face is something people feel uncomfortable with, there are still SO MANY great opportunities to be a developer -- they're just not the right fit for our team.
Thanks for your insights..
Actually, i seem to be in the same position as you are.. I love the Nexus One form factor (it's a good size.. Nexus S has a nice size, too).. But after all that flashing i have a very, very low in-call volume. Now, i was looking forward to the Galaxy Nexus.. Where is there no current smaller mobile with decent hardware? Now i'm alternating between Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus... perfect size vs newer hardware... mhh, tough.. :(

(In the end i hope Googlorola will release a smaller ICS mobile soon enough ;) )
Do you have an example of a better idea?
No contest in my opinion.
http://bellard.org/jslinux/
It's hard to imagine a more self-entitled group of complainers than the RIAA.

I have valuable stuff in my house; it is my job to protect what I own. If I feel the items are extremely valuable, I should be prepared to personally pay substantial amounts to keep them safe. So I buy insurance, door locks, whatever. And for the betterment of society, we all pay taxes so that firemen can do their jobs and give us general protection of all property.

What money has the RIAA paid to keep things safe? Their only contribution so far seems to be raising the blood pressure of everyone else. Lawsuits count as raising blood pressure.

The RIAA has the audacity to complain that Google spent "only" 60 million protecting things? Is Google a security company that advertises protection services? Even if it was, shouldn't the RIAA be footing the bill? If you want 200 million dollars worth of protection instead of 60 million, RIAA, then why don't you pay Google 200 million?
Unfortunately, we can't know this without analyzing drop-out rates. Anecdotally, I was a PhD student at Berkeley and I personally know grads of IIT and elite european universities who did drop out (including one student who failed even the MS exam). So I'm skeptical, but I don't have the data. I would want to analyze drop out rates, as well as time to completion, and see if they are far better for international students.

I did feel at something of a disadvantage, not because my math education was poor (I was a math major), but because US students specialize later. In college, US students do much more general ed. I spent some time in France as a teenager and was surprised to discover that at age 13 I was going to have to pick a track (letters vs science)... I returned to the US at that point, so I completed my high school in the US.

I think that a broad education can be helpful in STEM fields in ways that are not predictable, but if you're hitting advanced stochastic processes for the first time, and the student next to you did this course already as an undergrad, you're at a disadvantage - but that advantage may be a temporary one, and the benefits of a broader education may well kick in later. Hard to say.
There's little point in making a career more appealing for someone if they lack the basic background for it. The explosion in college remedial math courses is good support for my argument, I believe.
Interest on loans/credit is reported in terms of annual rate, not monthly. This loan at 3% per month is 36% per year. You won't find a credit card in the US at an interest rate that high.
WebSockets vs REST… FIGHT
I would recommend a card game called Dominion.
20 Heads In a Row - What Are the Odds?
Tech tribes need to vote as qualification for StartupBus 2012
Yahoo Opens Content Analysis Technology
5 Minutes on The Verge: Robert Scoble
Ask HN: Looking for freelance animators
Hi all,

Looking for freelance animators to help a friend with a startup explainer video. Budget is quite small (~$400) for a 1 min 30 sec video. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Goodbye Symbian, Hello Belle
The "jury of your peers" concept isn't part of United States law at all. It is a part of British Common Law, but the governing rule in the US is the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which provides only for "an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed".
OP had a 3% _per month_ rate.
Testing Storm Topologies Part 2
> shouldn't a jury of his peers find him not guilty

that depends on whether or not he is guilty of jury tampering. wikipedia says that it is "attempting to influence the composition and/or decisions of a jury during the course of a trial". i don't have all the details, but it sounds kind of like that's exactly what that guy is trying to do.
Oh, it's about SOPA, trust me.
I felt defenseless when the DMCA (and the "European DMCA", 2004/48/EC) were introduced (I went to a couple of demonstrations, but that only goes so far), and SOPA is even worse.
It's nice to work at a place where you can have more of an impact, and take a stance that has an actual chance of being heard.
Thats bad, because the Samsung discs had a much better quality than Seagate or Western Digital. We now have a monopoly of two low quality discs.
It's called impartiality and is the notion that you should be judged based only upon objective criteria that is delivered by your accuser. In the US, impartiality is guaranteed by the 6th Amendment. Note, that the US Constitution does not say anything about a "jury of peers."
However they can't stop you from changing your mind.

If they didn't ask if you "won't have a problem when it comes to deliberations" you can reasonably start disagreeing with the law the more you understand how this law is applied to real people in real cases.
Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?
"Does free work sound like a bottomless pit of time expenditure, with no chance of compensation?"

I hear perspectives like this a lot. I'm glad the author of this post got it by the end of the article, but many don't. They complain about working for free.

Plenty of people do things, including volunteering for no money, because they want to.

If you don't want to do something, don't. If you do, do it and enjoy it or learn or get from it whatever you want.

If you're going to worry or complain about not getting money for it, you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons. Don't do it or figure out better reasons.

Then enjoy it.
I love Mixergy but sometimes I do not agree with some of the assumptions the questions are laced with. When Andrew Warner asks: "Where did you get the confidence ... to get into the storage space?" the assumption is that it required any confidence at all. It misdirects. Drew answered perfectly though: "I just wrote some code"
The author is delusional, at best.

| There’s never been a better time to be a developer.

Let’s take the internet wayback machine before the dotbomb days.

Companies provided the hardware and software to work on. Required travel was reimbursed. You had your own work area and it was for working in. Productivity was measured in new features and bug fixes. Bonuses were plentiful. Salaries were good (100K/yr with about 5 years experience and a high level security clearance).

Today, companies expect you to provide your own hardware and software. Travel isn’t reimbursed. Work areas double as company storage areas. You often have to time-share a cube. Productivity is measured by the number of lines of code produced. There are no bonuses and experienced developers get 80K/yr, maybe.

Today is the golden age? Not to people who’ve been doing this for a few years.
GuideGuide: Photoshop Grids that Don't Suck So Hard
You might be biased because you work in the industry probably most effected by SOPA. The movie & music industry are pushing this piece of legislation through because it will give these companies a lot of power to "protect" their work.
Just remember that the people who vote for the bill are getting funded by the same companies protected by the bill.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/12/21/sopa-supporters-are-c...
Disgruntled employee? Oracle doesn't seem to care about Solaris 11 code leak
works for me in firefox 8 on linux.
It seems like it would be easy for them (or someone else) to make a module for the furnace end that buffers these pulses while supplying the 24V power through the existing wiring. Some relays and some timing logic to only close the circuit going to the furnace after a few seconds.

It isn't ideal, but it seems better than cycling a unit which might not be prepared for it unnecessarily.
The project that I'm working on has functional abstractions, contexts, and node-fibers flying all over the place. It gets hairy at times but (I claim) it's nonetheless workable precisely because I don't use libraries like Sugarless -- every abstraction is designed for its specific purpose.

If input processing is complicated enough to have annoying syntax, it gets its own special-purpose class (if not a separate module) written in the language of the domain. Frankly there's probably several things that look like Sugarless in the codebase already. But I consider this a Good Thing:

If I want to change the way operations distribute over an Input object, I can do it in an arbitrary, appropriate way. If I'm using someone else's convenience library, I'm limited to what the library author decided I should be able to do. This happens surprisingly often in my use case and more often than not it means going back to throw away the library in question, and reimplementing what I needed in the first place.

This isn't actually a comment on Sugarless itself -- I haven't gone out and used it. But I'm quite jaded by all of the times I've had to deep dive into other people's 'convenient' JS library when it was subtly broken (or wasn't working as I'd like) to the point that I try to avoid them as best as I can.
Actual title: "Hackers and Fighters".
I believe the solution to much of the problem lies in Riak. It is erlang based, has Map Reduce, is document oriented, has Free Text Search built in, is Solr compatible (though sketchy on details there) and is very scalable, and importantly, operationally easy for a small team.

I too found an impedance mismatch with CouchDB for what I'm working on (which is much like a search engine, but not quite), and found Riak to be a good solution.
Second Batch of Crunchies Tickets on Sale Now
I'm afraid most of what the government does is theater - meant to distract us while they line their own pockets.
when you get that first 1 byte frame there's no way to know how big the resulting message will be

So that's a design tradeoff. I've implemented protocols that did it both ways and it's definitely easier on the guy trying to implement a library or other receiving application if he can get a reasonable upper limit on the size of the messages.

But on the other hand, by not requiring the total message length be known in advance, it eases the logical (and memory) burden on the sender. Often the sender will be an overloaded server.

Nothing can prevent a higher-level protocol on top of WS from negotiating its own max message size.

So the design choice that was made would seem to allow optimizations for the overloaded server case without prohibiting other optimizations. This is typical of W3C protocols.
This is awesome, more companies need to show this kind of initiative.
I'll be applying, we'll see if i qualify as an "exceptional candidate"
John Resig: JavaScript as a First Language
Buffer gets $400K funding — and tells exactly how they did it
I am a bit sceptic if LibreOffice or OpenOffice would be well received. There has been companies who have tried it but in the end returned back to MS Office. I think tools like Google Docs have brighter further.

However, As a tax payer. I would love to hear € savings on licenses over next 10 years if they would do it.
Lansing’s third annual DemoCamp showcases area talent
I think we have arrived here, in some part, because of how much some sites relied on safe harbor provisions. They were added to protect a host which had a tiny bit of inadvertent infringing material. But people have been (ab)using that as a free pass to deliberately host copyrighted things until they get caught. If everybody claims to be indisputably multi-use, the net effect is that no one is.

Since the DMCA appears to have failed (in the eyes of copyright holders), and since that failure appears in large part to be due what they consider a loophole, don't be surprised if the next round of legislation is not going to include the loophole.

If you don't want the government regulating your business, a little preemptive self regulation often goes a long way.
We just rolled out a new feature over at http://tripl.com
If you look at the top comment, I was originally responding to "Would it be possible to be a beggar if everyone who passed you on the street did their utmost to help you out?", and the answer is clearly "yes". Furthermore, if everyone who passed a beggar on the street did their utmost to help out, there would be an explosion of beggars, as I demonstrated in my previous comment.

I still fail to see how you demonstrated that. You have failed to take into consideration important variables that I have attempted to address. In particular, you have applied a type of thinking that some people have today to a situation that would necessarily require them to have a different type of thinking. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to simply transfer it over as such. Granted, we don't have a whole lot of experience with a society where everybody is individually motivated to help, but I think you'll find at the very least that the people who are altruistically inclined to help the homeless or what have you these days don't really decide to swindle everyone.

Also, it does not require everyone to think the same way for this to happen; in fact, very few people have to think this way.

I'm not sure I agree that 1 in 100 is "very few", but point taken.

I don't mind other people giving to beggars, but one thing I have noticed is that beggar-friendly cities tend to attract far more beggars (San Francisco and Vancouver are two that come to mind).

This point is simply irrelevant unless you mean to suggest that the increase is due to people trying to take advantage of the lucrative beggar market rather than working.
The native JS h264 decoder was pretty awesome.

https://github.com/mbebenita/Broadway
Your major mistake (and there are many...) is believing that only "true geniuses" bring great benefit to the country. For every Sergey Brin who can create Google, there is a thousand of engineers who can "only" implement Google; if the latter are too rare or too expensive, the great innovators or entrepreneurs (either immigrant or native) may not have much success... also, very rarely a "true genius" possesses that status before immigrating. Albert Einstein was already a Nobel Prize winner before coming to the US, both that's the exception not the rule. (And he only settled in the US due to Hitler and the war... most people of a certain age, already successful and wealthy, don't bother with the pain of immigration.) Sergey's family would only qualify as "regular" H1B-class immigrants (a Math teacher and a climate scientist).

Finally, it's very funny how people like you are favorable to a closed working market (let's say this is possible) but an open, fair and competitive market for everything else. Will you be happy if all foreign countries fight back with unfair commercial practices? This is not a theoretical question, as you already have at least one important commercial partner that's strong and ingenious enough to screw you -- China -- and this is apparently bad enough already. The fact is, the globalization cat is out of the bag and there's no way back, and no way to play only half of the music.
> If almost no one is in favor of a piece of legislation, and there are millions vehemently opposed to it, why in God's name is it still being considered?

Because our 'representatives' don't really represent us. Never have, never will, IMO.
You do realize you could say the same thing about pretty much every company in existence. No-one ever stays on top forever, it's a question of how long you can stay on top for and how much profit you can generate over that period.
Ooh, I got kicked off a grand jury a couple years ago for telling my fellow jurors about jury nullification. I pointed them to this etherpad -- http://padm.us/jury -- where I was researching the question. I wasn't even sure at the time what the right answer was.

I'm now very much pro-nullification.
Sad to hear it was money that kept you out. You couldn't even have paid on the 5-year schedule? I would have lent you the money to cover the first few months (albeit at interest) once I confirmed you were accepted.

I think we'll see more of this general kind of thing in the future, where organizations "cut the fat" out of getting people into software development.
I served as a juror on a ten week murder trial, and one thing I learned (to my extreme exasperation) is that you can't ask questions. I mean, you can ask, but every time I asked anything the judge gave some roundabout non-answer, and it was obvious that she was required to do so.

In particular, the verdict hinged on some technicalities, and we got about 40 pages explaining the law. I attempted to clarify the exact meaning, but in the end eleven others and I were forced to decide for ourselves.
Sounds like an useful service. Though, I'm not sure whether email bombarding is a good idea. You used the example of AppSumo but I unsubscribed after 3 emails sent too close together. Most people don't unsubscribe but rather just ignore the email.

I don't need an email every time a small feature is released, or pushing me to come back... there's a reason I don't revisit, and it's not because I forgot. What I like are emails that give me something of value whether it's free content, a story, a free tip, etc. Teach me something new.