skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
With type level naturals recently added to GHC, statically checked arrays are already implementable in Haskell.

* http://hackage.haskell.org/package/vector-static

* http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hmatrix-static

A nice next step would be to optimize out additional runtime bounds checks.
Debugging for the Erlang Programmer
GE's Innovation Barometer: USA, Germany Are Champions Of Change
I think you're misinterpreting me here. Windowed theatrical / home video release strategies are orthogonal to PIPA and SOPA (to which, for the record, I am staunchly opposed). Theater groups and studios would still employ a windowing strategy absent PIPA and SOPA, and vice versa.

And yes, you are entirely free to opt out of the windowing system by not buying the same movie twice. While I agree that the industry employs many deplorable tactics in an attempt to stave off technological change, there are plenty of things the consumer has freedom to decide for himself. Nobody's forcing you to pay for a movie in theaters and then pay again for it on DVD. Nobody's forcing you to buy a DVD, and then buy the "Special Edition" of the same movie 6 months later. Just as nobody's forcing you to buy Gilette's newest razor model, then buy the newer version a year from now. Or to buy the ten different "pre-workout," "post-workout," etc., versions of Gatorade currently on the market. Or to buy the "Limited Edition" Nike sneakers at inflated prices in December, only to find out that the edition becomes unlimited and goes on sale in January.

We can call these practices annoying, and they certainly are. But they're common to all consumer products industries, they're consumer-avoidable, and they're nowhere close to the same ballpark as PIPA and SOPA.
Live Blog (AJAX) from Apple's Education Event
Yes, both sides are playing with semantics and what's more important is that, like a lot of questions of law breaking this boils down to question of rights and doing something which you clearly have no right to. Im not supporting the recording industry in any way but nobody has the rights to intrude upon someone else's, be it a recording company, and if you dont like the way they do things you have the right to refrain from doing business with them, not pirate their stuff.
> You should also note that the US Treasury ended up making $12B on that deal after repayments.

Never rely on reporters from CNN to do arithmetic. This is the daily TARP update:

http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/brie...

From
http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/brie...

Edit: And for the record, that is from the US Treasury, who you know is going to put it in the best possible light(ie, least loss of $$).
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Isn't a Chapter 11 technically protection from bankruptcy?
I agree with you 100%. I haven't felt the need to be as extreme as you have gone, but any media I consume I either buy it or go without. More often than not, I find myself going without because I don't feel the price is worth it.

If people really wanted to take a stand they wouldn't buy OR pirate and would simply not consume. If everyone stopped consuming then changes would happen quickly.
That's not the same thing. Burn Notice (and more notably, 24) use that technique for very short periods of time to change things up. And during that time there is never anything important going on in any of the 2 scenes--no one is going to risk half the viewers missing a relevant plot point just because they happened to be focusing on the wrong half of the screen at that moment.

Try going to Fry's and finding a spot where they have 2 TVs next to each other that are showing different channels. Try just watching one of them: It's maddening. To me it's equivalent to animated ads on web pages--it just makes it impossible to concentrate.
The reality is that you need both. Getting 4.5 million people to sing the anti-SOPA/PIPA petition and blacking out Wikipedia to so that lots of users notice is part of getting them to wake up. It's not everything, by all means. You also need to have smart people who are playing the inside game, which means donating money to organizations who can play the Washington D.C influence game. Yes, it's dirty; yes, you will have to compromise from time to time, including donating $17,000 to Lamar Smith over six years (although to be fair the last donation was a year before Smith started working on SOPA, and it's nothing compared to the $94 million dollars the pro-Internet-Censorship forces poured into trying to buy this legislation). No question, the sausage making factory is ugly; but like the patent system, sometimes you have to play the game with the current set of rules, even as you work to try to change the rules. (Which is why companies like Red Hat and Google are filing software patents.)

So the big question is: what have you done on both fronts? Yes, anti-SOPA blackouts for the day are not effective, at least not as a standalone thing. But have you donated to the EFF? If you work for a computer/internet company, have you urged them to set up a PAC to try to influence legislation in Washington in the correct direction? And then have you donated to that PAC? I've personally donated to both the EFF and Google NetPAC. If you haven't done these things yet, today, the day after the anti-SOPA protests, is a great day to start.

By the way, if you think fighting SOPA is hard, just do a bit of research how much money big pharma could pour into defending the patent system as it exists today. If we all aren't pushing to make sure there are lobbyists working just as hard to influence legislators in the other direction, patent reform doesn't have a prayer.
A pattern Matching Library for Elisp
They have tried to destroy the internet, remember yesterday? As long as they exist they will keep on trying and as an existential threat to the internet I can't see how anyone can excuse continued support for them in any way. Better a boycott, but failing that piracy is still more ethical than feeding the beast.
My indie band's self-produced CD cost us only $16K in 2001 (we were signed to a small label), but to be completely candid, we cut corners all over the place:
1) We dropped two tracks because the live lay down (which we used as the base for all overdubs and re-tracking) just didn't click. We recorded live over three days and we just got burnt out. If we had been signed to a major, I would have appreciated the ability to spend a whole day on each track until the vibe felt right.
2) Overdubs and re-tracking were done quickly and efficiently, but again, felt rushed in order to save money.
3) Multi-tracked vocals, guitars and percussion were sparse. We had played these songs for years (true for most "debut" albums) and it was hard to experiment in the studio without feeling we were going broke. Add a jangly 12 string playing double stops ping-ponging in stereo over the changes? Sounds great we'd tell the engineer, but we can't afford it.
4) Mixing (which took 50% of the total studio time) was painful. The permutations -- even considering the sparse tracks we had -- all begin to sound the same after a while. Ideally I'd like at least a week to mix each song: producing variations that we could collectively listen, get used to, and then debate.

So, although 500K sounds like a lot, I think the studio wants to rightfully allow the artist enough freedom to track, experiment, and mix without worrying about hitting their budget ceiling.

Oh, shameless link to our CD:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/future-perfect/id4478315
Foxconn Chief Equates Employees To Animals
Many people think that way about their own morals, that's the problem.
Bloggers in China sound off on SOPA blackout
Great post - more action oriented. I created my own list of things to avoid using the above list of companies. Everyone create their own list and post it on your blog, facebook, google plus https://plus.google.com/u/0/103713120145925411926/posts/CbLD...
ArticlesBase.com: Bootstrapped And Makes About $6M Annually
My list of things to boycott SOPA
Indeed. Sure I vote with my wallet, but I don't see why that means I shouldn't also vote with, you know, my vote. Or speak with my voice.
My point is that they shouldn't have to write articles at all if that's not what their business is about. How good you are at writing (or how much you have to spend on it) and how much you've written isn't a good indicator at all for judging how good your product and customer service is. It's actually a pretty horrible one.

The Google algorithm is heavily biased towards the big guys who can afford to buy content, publicity and links. I'm obviously not talking about content/information businesses (where content obviously should be king), I'm talking about the small businesses who are creating small niche products.

There's only so much you can write about door stoppers for example until you start repeating yourself. Then you're already in greyhat territory since you're essensially spinning content. After a while you start realizing that nobody is ever going to link to your articles about door stoppers, so you start building links manually. Then you're already blackhat.

For a lot of small non-content businesses the choice is often between blackhat or not making any money (from the internet at least). You can't blame them from chosing the first option.
There is nothing ethical about pirating.
I can't imagine that the comments from the anonymous commenter can be accepted as evidence or testimony in any sort of lawsuit or deposition. Wouldn't that violate all existing precedent regarding the right to cross-examine your accuser?

Edit: Nevermind... it appears that the Confrontation Clause only applies to criminal and not civil matters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause
It's worth noting that banks and similar organizations put safeguards, controls and extensive auditing on the data that limits the data tourism that any employee can engage in. You trust the organization because the organization knows that humans are fallible and essentially doesn't trust its own workers.
Please create your own list based on what you use and buy for daily usage. Post it everywhere on blogs, facebook etc
Challenging the Antidepressant Severity Dogma?
SOPA Protest: The C++ Standard Library Publishing Maybe Cancelled
I think it's liklier that Kim Dotcom runs the whole thing and Swizzy is just a face.
How not to do URL redirects (… the way Quora does)
Yes, you actually can decide that you're not going to pay content distributors. If you regard IP as an illegitimate idea, then you can act on that.
Courtney Love my have done some math but it adds up to an empty argument. She conveniently leaves out the fact that most records, major and otherwise, sell virtually nothing and leave the label holding the bag on costs. So they structure the contracts to get the bulk of the revenue so they cover the cost the money losing releases. This objective reality, it's just how the business (has) to work. Really there are few viable alternative music business models.

As an indie musician this is frustrating. I've actually produced a pretty good record. It's available as a free download on my site:

http://sunshinefortheblind.com

Like many musicians I'm driven by love, if I could figure out how to make money with it that would be swell; as it is I just want people to listen:)

I would guess similar tensions must exist in the tech/VC space where a few hits got to cover the costs of the losers for the VCs. I would expect a similar disproportion in the way the individual deals would appear weighted in favor of VC against the companies they invest in. Im not familiar with how the investments are structured though.
We granted a limited legal monopoly to certain parties in order to encourage the growth of certain industries.

Over time, that bargain has been severely corrupted by those industries.

Piracy is the consequence.

I'm sure that with time, and a more balanced approach to the granting of such monopolies, piracy will become less and less of a problem.
Haha! Believe it or not, I had that story in mind when writing the previous comment. Really the only way to be 100% sure is to manually "bit bash" the compiler together without using ANOTHER compiler (like you would do if you're building a toolset for an entirely new architecture).
Don't forget that Sweden also has 25 days minimum of vacation time annually. USA is, from what I gather, one of the few countries in the world that does not have a legally required minimum annual leave.

To be let go earlier is not only a problem of asking, it's also that you are entitled to three months of salary. So, most of the time, they would like to keep you in order to not have triple the salary costs (one for you, one for the new guy and (virtually) a third for whomever is occupied with training the new guy instead of doing their regular job).
Because basically, I don't think that the trouble they go to creates an obligation in me in regard of my network, my hard drive, my screen.
There is even less ethical about financially supporting companies that tried to buy laws that would destroy the net as we know it.
I did create my list of things to avoid and some alternatives. Everyone needs to create their own list of alternatives and post it for others benefit
https://plus.google.com/u/0/103713120145925411926/posts/CbLD...
Your argument makes no sense. If my boss doesn't pay me, I'm not working for him. Thus, he is no longer my boss. How is that relevant to the morality issue of piracy? Do you mean in the sense that if I pirate something, the creator of that something doesn't get paid and thus doesn't create the thing that I pirated? But that argument is backwards. If you mean that no more things will be produced in a world with piracy, that's demonstrably false. We've had rampant piracy since the first printing press, the world we live in now is not free from piracy, yet there's more creative work created every year.
The Apple QuickTake 100 and 150 were also Kodak designs.
Would you mind if I copied your comment (with attribution and link) verbatim on my blog? I've never seen this line of reasoning before, complete with math :)
> We protested, we marched, we did whatever we thought it took to affect change. We took the side of the oppressed: blacks, women, gays, the poor and homeless, the environment, and most of all, we protested an illegal and immoral war.

If by "we" you mean some of the baby boom generation, then you are right. But let's not pretend that a huge group of people like the baby boomers have a unified approach to injustice and oppression. After all, many of the baby boom generation and have and continue to support oppression in their communities and as official state policy, but that doesn't mean that every baby boomer supports those things.

Also, the struggle against oppression in the US has a much longer and deeper history than prior to the late 60s, so don't pretend that the baby boomers were the saving grace to these movements as that erases the hard work and suffering that many people had to go through.
Researcher squeezes photovoltaic cells behind smartphone OLED screen
Hey dude!

For RoR:

1) Have you seen the free Rails for Zombies course from code school? There is a part 2 which costs money ... but might be worth it if you enjoyed part 1.

2) There are a few screencasts on peepcode that might be useful. I think there are two on Rails3/3.1 for 10 or 12 bucks. I thought they were worth it.

MVP advice:

1) I am not a successful entrepreneur so take my advice with a grain of salt. I've learned after several MVPs that just writing code and putting it up on the web does not translate to cash. PG wrote an article relevant to this recently ... http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html

So basically, my experience has been that building an MVP is part of a much grander process. Do build a quick an dirty MVP to explore your ideas and get feedback. But also do think of the bigger picture and iterate.

For learning to code:

1) I'm not a fan of these bootcamp events that are quite popular these days. That said, I have a CS degree and code for fun. After attending a few of these events, I felt these events were pretty useless. You cannot learn to code in a weekend or a week. But so what? My suggestion is to pick a language (if you will do RoR, Ruby is a perfect choice; if you want to do server side stuff, I'd recommend Python). Once you picked a language, write code! For fun! Yes ... it sounds insane given you have an MVP to work on. But do it for fun! Write a sudoku solver or whatever strikes you as a fun toy problem. After a while, writing code will be as natural as thinking.

2) Go to Hackathons on weekends/evenings. There are ton of events all the time. Usually, they are very cheap to attend. Work with other developers. I picked up RoR from a dude at a hackathon (I was using Python and being too slow). Same thing for choice of programming editors, etc.

Have you thought of combining your biotech with coding? This is a different path than web programming. It might become very fruitful over time.
If you are looking for a service like tarsnap (client side encrypted file storage service) you should check out Wuala (not affiliated, just a personal recommendation). It has a nice (cross platform, Java) GUI client and all the features dropbox has plus encryption. It is operated by a Swiss company and therefore is subject to strong privacy laws.
You can also access it through your browser (Java applet) and they have native iOS and Android apps.
<The political process can only be corrupt as long as people aren't paying attention.>
I hope it will be like that forever: here in Italy politicians don't even need to fake the formality of democracy, the dialogue with the "real world".[referring to the facts of 15th november 2011]
I think the big drivers of music consumption must still depend on traditional media and corporations in a big way. Otherwise we'd have tech specialists hooking up directly with musicians and together they would have delivered the death blow to the traditional music distributors already.

I think what's missing is the combination of talent-search + promotion. Most users just won't be proactive about searching through a bunch of no-name bands to find some music worth listening to.
I think that the root of the problem is not that generic "people" are unaware of anything(in this case that SOPA ).
I think that the problem is money in politics through lobbyists, they sustain at the top of the hierarchy the corporations' will against what common sense wants or even urges.
A New Power Hits Washington ("Web Protests")
Get your priorities straight
Task Prioritization Matrix is a useful technique you can use to set your priorities straight. New online tool just launched by usabiliTEST.
If you think Fox is the most biased news network, you clearly aren't watching any of the others. I say this not in defense of Fox, but because news coverage with slant in some direction is positively ubiquitous.

If you think you're looking at something that's unbiased, it's only because that news outlet matches your own world view more closely.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's impossible to produce news that's entirely without bias. So I wish they'd stop pretending to be even-handed, and just come clean with what their editorial views are. It would make our job of filtering a lot easier.
What big data and smart thermostats can reveal about us
Ok. I hope I'm not going against the rules of HN discourse here but I'd like to go out on a limb and say any article in which the author doesn't bother capitalizing the first word in his sentences is not an article I'm going to bother to read. One of the few things I miss about the world before the internet is a proper adherence to grammar. If he were ESL, I would be more forgiving, but this post just smacks of lazy writing.
Nono.. Quite the opposite, deprivation is key to what "theft" entails. If I haven't deprived you of an object, I haven't stolen anything. I might have copied it, used it without your permission, or infringed your copyright, or pirated, but I haven't stolen it.
Apple Provides a Service of Gadgets Disposal in Europe
Germany, France and the UK residents can now make use of service of disposing the unwanted “apple friends” who have become useless after having known better days.
Apple Announces iBook 2, A New Textbook Experience For The iPad
> The industry kept moving to better and better formats

These formats were never made available outside "the industry". I've seen almost no artist (outside of Bandcamp which does it by default/for free) providing lossless downloads, let alone HQ tracks or 3+ channel tracks on normal albums. Reznor is the only one who comes to mind (he released multitracks and 24b/96KHz of Ghosts I-IV in the Deluxe editions)
Most of his stuff these days is probably ghost produced. Also, it seems like his tracks are extremely simple (though, they still somehow are fairly good). He had a beat on a Lil Wayne album a couple years ago that sounded like nothing was done other than sampling 2 or 3 loops from an old song and repeating them.
Point of order, Kodak didn't exactly file for what people traditionally associate with 'bankruptcy'. Chapter 11 is an entirely different beast. In the future, it's best to mention that.
Would we get the right referer if 302 is done via quora redirect?
What if the file was "kiddie porn.zip" or "TOP SECRET: asassination details for operation 'kill obama'"

Aren't there some instances where they'd be justified looking at data...
Exactly.

I've run into more jaded baby boomers than anything else. And they justify it by "well, now I have a job" or "I'm too old now" or "The Internet is over my head." Their pie is the 401(k), come what may.
Well this is interesting but unfortunately i see the information gap broadening here. In my country (India) most of the restaurant owners don't even know what WiFi or smartphone is let alone maintaining their online presence.
Alicia Keys is his wife? Fuck, that dude does have everything.
> The "IP infringement is not stealing" line is just what people say when they want something for nothing and they don't want to feel bad about inflicting financial damage upon the original author.

That doesn't make any sense. I don't think anybody is seriously arguing in this thread that copyright infringement is correct or ethical - what we're instead arguing is that, despite the best efforts of the *AA groups, "stealing" is a different crime than "copying without permission". The fact that there's a supreme court case backing this line of reasoning up (in plain language, no less) makes this conflation of terms even less forgivable.

Call the crime what it is.

>When I create software and someone "takes away" my ability to earn income from it..

Except if I copy something of yours without permission, I haven't taken away your ability to do anything. And I challenge you to prove otherwise.
What does Medicare's failure mean?
It's not complicated to distribute public keys. They're public keys, so put them in a public S3 bucket.

Private keys are marginally more complex, but not much. If a password is sufficient security, then the private key can be stored remotely (in S3 or whatever) but encrypted (symmetrically) with a password.

So say Alice wants to share a file with Bob. Alice's client downloads her encrypted private key, and prompts Alice for a password. The private key is decrypted with the password and stored in memory. Alice then downloads the file she wants to share with Bob, and decrypts it with her private key. Then she downloads Bob's public key, and re-encrypts the file with Bob's public key. She can now send the file to Bob securely without the server being aware of the content.
Perhaps worse is better.
The point is not that his product is better, it's that his method of ensuring customer privacy is better and should be industry standard.