skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most of the press is happy to support SOPA. They've been mostly mum about it so far, with a few minor exceptions.

They're not working for you; they're working for the advertisers.
Show HN: "Command Line" for the Social Web
Hey HN, this is a side-project I've been working on for my senior year independent work in CS. Would appreciate any comments or feedback.

www.aperator.com

Thanks!
I think that's a pretty bad idea. The benefit of calling in person is that it shows that you really care enough to have an actual conversation with a person. If you're just getting 100 robo-calls it's going to seem like astro-turfing (which it kind of will be).
Google scrapes business listings DB and mass contacts businesses
I see the input expand vertically now, cool! Looks like duplicates are allowed, which probably shouldn't.

On the tag items I meant that in your demo code you have:
tagsItems : [ 'jquery', 'plugin', 'tags', 'autocomplete' ],

Which is a listing of the items to include by their visible text. My suggestion is to use an ID instead (if they're objects). I ran $('input#textarea').val() on your demo and didn't get any value, how do you get the value out of the input box?
Absolutely. This is the first thing Joel has ever done that gives me pause. Any kid with the cognitive horsepower to code well has the chops for Shakespeare and Lincoln. I don't care if they aren't interested, if they knew what they needed to learn and how to learn it they wouldn't need a school.

This will very likely be a +1 over the status quo for 400 to 500 kids, at least over a 4 to 10 year period. But I expect that success will have more to do with the quality of the leadership than the soundness of the model -- which means this won't scale past the supply of Zamanskys and Spolskys.

And I'm afraid the characterization of the various symptoms skates around the deeper and touchier problems. (Some kids, in _school_ are struggling b/c their English isn't there yet, so let's focus them on subjects they can excel at anyway? Umm . . . ) That is understandable, it's a constructive effort, no point in picking fights and many people seem to believe those problems are beyond the reach of policy in any case. It seems Joel doesn't even agree with me about all of those. But the larger system ain't going anywhere until we tackle those issues. The larger problem is that we can't even discuss any of that without the whole thing turning into a food fight.

I admire the generosity here, I sympathize with the urgency to do _something_. But I really worry that efforts like this will divert a lot of valuable concern into sideroads without much potential for the larger system.
(1) How does viewing something as a craft rather than as a Mind Product undermine its worth? Your statement tells much more about your value system than it does about reality.

(2) Read. The school is not structured like a vocational school.
Irony: guy uses "Chinaman" term in his article.
Ah, but it's not theft/stealing is it? "Piracy" is in actuality copyright infringement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Theft

You should also be wary of confusing legality with morality. Notice how in no part of the post you have responded to has OoTheNigerian denied committing copyright infringement. In fact, he describes his actions himself not once, but twice as piracy. He is not denying that he did it. He is however suggesting that he is a moral person, which I suspect is what you find so confusing (make no mistake about it, you are quite confused.)
This needs to be at the top. Google confirms that it was their representatives who pulled off the scam, not someone posing as Google. We can all stop making excuses for them now
Actually, as soon as the seller as a decent amount of feedback, I switch to wire transfers, if available. Why should I make an hardworking person pay to get paid?

Truth is: PayPal is too big to care about the little guy.
The problem with Spreedly is that I still have to do a lot of stuff on my side.
Spreadly would just give me some hooks, but then I have to handle these hooks myself.

For example, I need to put on hold premium benefits of temporary non-paying users. Spreedly (or Stripe for that matter) cannot do it for me.

I don't know if Spreedly can send notification email to my users (Stripe cannot at that moment), but even if such notification can be sent, there could be issues with email deliverability or with mismatch between my website name and spreedly "from" email field.

User expresses the intent to upgrade or downgrade on my web site.
In order to communicate that intent to Spreedly/Stripe/PayPal I have to make a call that reflects that intent.

If the change is as simple as switch to another plan - then it may make sense. But if it's an edge case (e.g. discount), then I have to use more complex version of API.
If I go through all that complexity anyway - why not just communicate with my own database and drop third-party dependency whenever possible?

Fortunately with Stripe it's quite possible: I just charge credit card whatever the right amount is at whatever the right time is.
That's it. No researching Stripe/Spreedly/PayPal subscription model. No dealing with arbitrary restrictions of these models.

Another problem with Spreedly is that it does not support Google Checkout (most of my existing customers are from Google Checkout - my first payment processor).
So I need to maintain all my Google Checkout customers myself anyway without any Spreedly help.

Bottom line: if you want to polish subscriptions UX for your customers - handling subscriptions in-house is the only viable long-term option. (Keep only subscriptions in-house. Payments processing should be outsourced).

Yes, it takes time. That's the cost of doing subscription business.
Well, let's give him credit. That staffer was at least honest. These congressmen aren't stupid, they well know that they support censorship and that's what all these PIPA and SOPA are about - censorship. And the fact that they don't openly speak about it doesn't change the essence.

But they are scared of publicity still. So thank you for publishing this encounter. It really needs a broader coverage.
How do you buy bandwidth as part of a group?
The Newest Revolutions in Metamaterials Bring Invisibility Within Reach
It's great to hear from someone with some (positive!) firsthand experiences. Thanks for that insight.
but the soundtrack did fit the zeitgeist quite well
Unfortunately, Schumer just got reelected. He won't be up for election again until 2016.
Banks Start Playing Games With Your Money
It was about 5-6 dedicated very focused hours per day, 5 days per week. I didn't have the stamina to go beyond that each day because there's so much learning and the mind (my mind) needed time to absorb the new material.
A Student's Guide to Startups
(This essay is derived from a talk at MIT.)
Oh, please don't! I like native controls. They actually work well. Every site I have ever seen that has reimplemented popups and scrollboxes and whatnot, has missed many of the little UI tweaks that help our experience and took three decades to get right in the first place. E.g.: if I veer briefly outside the width of a native popdown menu, it doesn't go away. At a lot of sites with some sort of popdown menu, if you go one pixel outside the boundaries, the menu goes away and you have to go up and re-select it. And if the site gets that bit right, there's other things they've missed. Reimplementing a GUI OS in Javascript is not a good use of our time....
Thank you for the comments. I am going to repost them in the original as well.
A Better Javascript Comma Convention
To me, being "passionate" about things seems like a very American thing (USA), or at least the extent to which it's encouraged.

I'm not sure that "passion" is usually a healthy thing at all. It's good to like things (playing the piano, going out with friends, writing novels, coding, etc.), and it's good to arrange your life in a way that you have the resources to do what you like.

But when I hear the word "passion" I think of CEO's who neglect their wives and families because they're passionate about their company, or of 35-year-old painters who realize they need to forgo ever having a family they can support because of their passion for painting, or musicians who write things only they themselves like, because of their passion for being authentic and non-commercial. Basically "passion" seems like unhealthy navel-gazing which is the antithesis of a healthy balance of things in your life.

And I think I'm at least somewhat justified in saying this, because passion comes from romantic passion, which is by definition a short period of time when you are infatuated by somebody else, usually to the detriment of other things in your life (friends, hobbies, etc.). There's a reason it's called "love sickness".

So maybe it's a semantic thing, that people now say "passion" when they actually just mean "things they like" -- but which cheapens the real meaning of "passion", because then how do you express that? And if people seriously encourage people to be truly passionate about things, I think that can be very unhealthy, and lead to a great deal of unhappiness.
Very nice, being able to see the CSS applied to some generic HTML before downloading would be cool too!
Thanks for the nice work.
Source?

edit: source is in boingboing article
We don't need more Continental philosophers. We need all the Analytic philosophers we can get. A curriculum that emphasizes rigorous thinking skills and logic is an invaluable foundation for CS as well as every other valuable human endeavor.
subed this to reddit and they acused me of trolling
The site with the bad statistics is likely bad.

This http://www.internetpulse.net/ is a much better site to see what is actually happening.
I died laughing when I read, "Point is, SOPA sucks."
Wait, wait, wait. So this was specifically about censoring "illegal" content? That's not in your post at all. in fact, you present it as a direct quote without mentioning illegal content at all. “Senator Schumer is in favor of censoring the internet.” Generically censoring the internet is much more sensational then specifically censoring illegal content. (However you define that, and yes I understand the nuance between how do you determine what's legal/illegal and what's not vis a vis copyright etc., but: the average layperson reading a sensationalized piece does not.)
PIPA Senate whip count
I also don't understand the negative comments here in HN

I bet many HN'ers are remembering what they were like at that age. Sure, plenty of geeks started programming in kindergarden or what have you- but I know I didn't pick engineering until I was twenty, and when I was fourteen I still had no idea what I wanted to do. (Besides knowing that I liked woodshop) If I had been forced to decide back then, I probably wouldn't have discovered engineering before it was too late.
SASS & LESS formats maybe?
long time coming, and glad to see it.
"It's worth pointing out that none of the CS classes qualify for any graduation requirement."

Wow.

I've commented with others about the dangers of hyperfocus -- the flip side is denigration of CS by folks who are ostensibly guardians of "general education".

[deletion, material sent in email to poster, probably should have been so in the first place]

But at this point Zamansky has probably gone too far down this other road to have patience for that.
About time!

I would actually accept a much lower wage than in industry (as long as I could live off it - which I doubt would be very low in NYC haha) to teach at such a school
I recently released a JavaScript parser for Ruby that uses Evan Phoenix's kpeg library: https://github.com/wycats/parsejs
Of course the all-important question is, can it run Hot Ruby (http://hotruby.yukoba.jp/)?
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/13/google-were-mortified-a.htm...
You should make more prominent the link to the official site in the zero-click box and don't display it twice. Right now the zero-click box header links to the Wikipedia article. That should point to the official site. (If the user disabled the zero-click box then list the ad links first, then the real results.)
ISC seeks wider input for BIND 10
Obsessions over face recognition are really a red herring compared to "warrantless wiretapping", logging of mobile phone geolocations, who has access to Facebook's database and ISP data retention. Even if face recognition were perfect and instantaneous, the other kinds of data logging are far more revealing.
Transferring to a specialized super-school is probably not the best way to find out if you like it.
20 Useful CSS3 Graph and Chart Tutorials and Techniques
The CSS3 based charts or graphs are quite simple to create and generate static harts and we could also style them according to our requirements.
There is no "Gospel" when it comes to programming. There is a lot of code out there that isn't pretty, but it works and brings money into businesses.

I think we can all agree that Notch didn't make any mistakes. Minecraft is a huge success.

They are called "best practices", not "the only practices". But good for Notch to want to be like everyone else.
The premise of the author is the separation of economical benefits from what you are passionate about. Sure, if you are making money (more than just making ends meet) by doing what you love, you can have your cake and eat it too.

The simple truth is do you want to enjoy the journey following your passion, knowing very well there is a slim* chance of financial success or do you want to find a comfort zone and derive "borrowed" happiness. The borrowed happiness is from all materialistic things, safety, comfort, peace etc.. that you can afford/buy.

-*I am sure there are people who have passions that also have tangible financial success guaranteed. Good for them!
While also anti-SOPA, this rally is primarily aimed at PIPA (the Senate version of the bill), which has been getting a free pass. Can you change the title to reflect this?
hey eddy, what's your background in programming? I see you have a degree in software engineering.
"startup" as a term of trade might be accepted within certain circles. Beyond that I think it sounds really dumb to anyone who's been in business for more than a few seconds.

One of my favorite WTF? phrases is "start a startup", particularly when uttered with the "gummy" California speech pattern of a 17-year-old.

Hmmm. "Start a Business", that's what you want to do. What the hell is "start a startup"? Some kind of a recursive call? Does it imply that you are in that mode forever?

When are you done "starting a startup"?

I can see someone saying "We are going to launch an experimental business to test an idea" or "We are going to test an idea for a business" or "We launched a business to test a few ideas". Now that make sense. The term "startup" is amorphous and "start a startup" sounds even dumber.

Oh, yes, then there's "do a startup".
Well some people at Google were dishonest, like in any other organization in the world.

I wonder if its also dishonest people working in search results...
Yes, America can rightly be called corporate ruled for the most part. So he doesn't really care about average public. He cares about corporations and their money.
Computer Engineer here- while I would selfishly argue that Computer Science is not more important, the CS field is even now still growing, while our field is contracting. I do not expect ours to ever go away entirely, but the answer is not to make everyone a CE.

I think maybe what mjwalshe is thinking about, is the Computer Scientist graduates who cannot even program.
The divide exists as a matter of practice; I do agree with you. But I think it a disservice to steer young people who gravitate to the field [from casting a wide net as far education goes]. My formal education background is BSEE (through which I learned to reason about systems) and MArch (through which I learned to think about total design of artifacts subject to orthogonal concerns). I have been happily coding since 16 years of age (20+ years professionally), but my one regret (as far as software goes) remains not hitting the CS fundamentals earlier, and I have been addressing that for the past few years. (I'll admit that back in engineering school we used to make fun of CSs ("is computer science? /snicker") Turns out the joke was on me!)

If you haven't seen this, I recommend this lecture by Dr. Alan Kay, that does address this issue (besides being a phenomenal talk):

http://tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/
I don't understand the significance of this point. If I called and heard such things and they said "well that's just a flunkie who knows nothing, not the voice of the senator" I'd reply "How is this my problem? I call your office, this is who you chose to have answer: this person is speaking for you." Excuses like the one above only reflect even more poorly on the subject, "I have no idea what my staffers are saying to people, I'm unable to communicate effectively with my constituents, etc." None of these points reflect well on the senator.

When I called my reps (repeatedly) their staffers/phone-answerers would say absolutely nothing about SOPA to me. One (I forget which) said "he supports net neutrality," but beyond that it was "he's issued no statement, I don't know his stance, what was the name of the bill again?" I'm disgusted with all my legislators on this... each office (besides Brown, I think) agreed to follow up with me via email or phone when they find out more, none have. I live in western MA.

I am so tired of this sort of shit. Communicating your stance on an issue to your constituents is part of your job, legislators. If I call and you can't tell me your stance on a major issue like this, you are not doing your job, just like a dishwasher who throws plates in the trash. Raah.
I asked twice. The first time he said "censor the internet" and then I think he heard the shock in my voice when I asked him to repeat and he said "he is in favor of censoring illegal content." So perhaps worthy of a clarification.
Vashikaran mantra for love
We steadfastly think that sage discipline of Vashikaran clasps the important thing to matters of Associations and Vashikaran mantra for love, it is really an utilized very carefully. We cultivate the well-being from the intact soul forefathers by marketing pious considerate and prominent measures towards an enhanced globe.
I'm all for circumventing the government and stiffing big brother.

Will that actually work? Whats to stop the evil America Empire from shutting it down or forcing compliance with the courts.

Even if you put the root servers in other countries friendly to our cause, how long before they bow down to pressure?
After playing around with Bootstrap, I realized what a huge boon it was to my projects (programmer lacking in design skills). One thing I like about it is I don't have to pick colors. It does the border, button, text, and nav-bar colors for me. I don't trust myself to pick my own colors! I would really like a way to preview or be able to pick some other colors other people have made. Maybe you could expose a perma-link to a set of config options so they are easy to share.

I'm also amazed at how often I spot it now. Seems like it's everywhere.
Having started someone along these lines, you would need a human element in between the raw data and the emails, translating each bill's name and purpose into human-speak. They are so shrouded in legalese that it's extraordinarily difficult to parse out the intent of many of them, and "bad" parts seem to be very difficult to locate at a casual glance. Even reading over the text of SOPA, it isn't immediately obvious to the layperson why it's a bad bill. The way it reads obscures the truly odious parts of the bill. Were it not for analysis and coverage done by third parties, you and I would probably read SOPA and say "Yup, that's a good idea, upvote".

You'd need a full-time staff of lawyers translating this stuff for the rest of us to make something like that worthwhile/
Where Do Your Members of Congress Stand on SOPA and PIPA?
Big Content: the frenemy of consumer electronics makers
“I worked harder than I had to. I gave up time with my kids, with my friends, to do what needed to be done.”

You know what one of the absolute best ways you can give back to the world?

- By spending time with your children and raising them to be good productive people so they can become contributors as well.

- Another way to give back to the world is to spend time with the people you care about which hopefully makes them happier as well.

Thinking that you are a martyr to build software for the greater good is somewhat laughable. In fact you may find that when you write your software what you really have done is put some people out of jobs - that seems to be one of the things software is really good at.
if vcs don't risk (avoid failure[by all means]), they wouldn't be rewarded. anyway they sometimes say 90% of startups fail... moderate income may be better than complete failure

http://www.brighthub.com/office/entrepreneurs/articles/78553...

i heard people say that the Valley beats other places of the world in creating Suns, Googles and Facebooks because [one of the reasons] it risks more and considers failure as experience

(harm too, but not that deadly)
For anyone that's still using the iPhone's default Camera app, Please go buy Camera+!! I'll Paypal you the dollar if you need it. Aside from being better in almost every way, you get the bonus of filtering pictures before they go to you PhotoStream. My PhotoStream hasn't had a single out of focus, poorly cropped, or accidental photo since I bought C+.
WTF? Astigmatism can be a good thing?
This thread stands as a testament to the strong pro-Google bias in the comments section of Hacker News. The bias is hard to prove, as any cultural bias is, but it's nevertheless a tide ebbing against every discussion here.

The majority of comments, including the top rated one, were extremely dismissive, e.g., "malarky", and glossed or contorted the facts repeatedly to make it seem as though scammers could have easily been responsible for the evidence trail. It was always beyond unlikely that scammers could have access to a a Google corporate headquarters IP. Nor is, as was claimed in the BoingBoing comments, spoofing IP addresses something that can done without some vanishingly unlikely access to Internet infrastructure.
My initial reaction was "wow, good point; there's no way that the government would ever make the airlines buy completely new barcode scanners everywhere, for the simple purpose of improving security checkpoint effectiveness".

But then again, they threw down millions per unit for those back-scatter machines, so all bets are off.....
You are right about Z and this other road, but it's sad to see other high schools be left in the last century. However, aside from Z, I don't know of any other potential champion who is inside Stuy to pick up the baton.
Next-Generation surveillance robots can analyze their environment
Well, I wasn't trying to argue against going to college. I went to college for a year, and I would have stayed longer, but it wasn't practical to do that while running my site as it continued to grow. I would definitely like to go back at some point.

I'm not clueless about the world around me, but I'm not as well-rounded as I would like to be. However, I'm not sure I would have fared better if I had gone to an American public high school.
I know Travis and yes he knows those things.

What he means by "being dangerous" are things like os.remove(), os.removedirs(), os.chmod(), etc. He wasn't talking about crashing your own Python code, but being able to do dangerous things to the OS you're running it on.
Words With Friends Helps Save Man's Life
Google: Ability To Block Sites From Search Results Will Return, But When?
Hiring Logjam Breaks as CEOs Plan Fastest U.S. Growth Since 2006
Auto-detecting Credit Card Type With JavaScript
I have completely agreed with this to date, which is why it has remained a select box. But the problem is you can't really style them effectively cross-browser and so now it sticks out like a sore thumb.