skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
CoffeeScript changed my attitude toward client-side development. In spite of the significant amount of time I invested in learning Javascript, I felt like I never fully groked the language like I did Python or PHP. As a result, I avoided it wherever possible, and cribbed other people's Javascript code wholesale when I absolutely had to use it.

CoffeeScript has changed all that. It has made client-side development so enjoyable that I am finally starting to write full applications for client-side deployment (using spine.js). I've even gone back and learned the parts of Javascript that previously eluded me. If you've avoided doing much client-side development, or missed out on exploring node.js, all because of your dislike for Javascript, then CoffeeScript is for you. Anyone with a strong background in Python or Ruby can learn to use it fluently in a few days.
-Megaupload never got to state their case

-There was no trial (and probably will not matter because their site has already lost all its traffic and revenue)

-It is not a US based site

-The majority of its traffic did not come from the US

-There is not much evidence that that they were doing anything illegal by US law. They had a system in place (such as youtube) to remove copyright infringing content if found.

The fact that the majority of their traffic came from pirated content (I am just assuming, no facts) is irrelevant. I am pretty sure that if the media companies put as much effort into reporting copyright violating content on Megaupload as they do on youtube, it would have none.
What's in a name database?
First of all, we do have a "real name" system in use offline ("legal name"), and effectively online when it comes to anything credit-card linked as well.

As for squatting, that only works if you assume the real names are enforced to be unique, which I don't think anyone has suggested will happen. The only group that does that (as far as I know) is SAG and similar unions.
When online gambling is legalized, Facebook will be $100 billion company
Frequent arthouse cinema-goer here. Even though I love love love indie films, I can't help but pirate some of them out of several reasons:

- If I can choose between watching them now illegal and buying a DVD which will be released in half a year, guess which option I'll eventually choose? If the dvdrip is already going its rounds, why not release the movie online? If you are indie productions, you are not bound to all those country-releasing restrictions, are you?

- Say if I'm interested in a movie from Iceland. I am so not willing to pay 30-40€ for a single movie DVD just because of shipping/handling costs etc. I, however, would happily pay around 15 bucks for watching it online or dl it somewhere digitally but LEGAL. The motto should be if YOU want to watch it, no matter where, you can do it NOW, LEGALLY, for say 10 bucks. That I'd do without any second thought. But seems like the idea of that hasn't gripped on within the indie movie world. I don't want their DVDs no more, if I really would want that physical medium I could easily burn that disc myself (if the movie is available in high enough definition), I don't wanna pay 10+ more bucks for that. Plus, If I like a movie, I will most likely buy their poster or something, so they even get around 50 bucks more for that.

As for cinemas: I frequently (about 1x a week, depending on which movies are in cinemas) visit our local arthouse cinema, and while the selection here in Switzerland is incredibly good (yet sometimes about 2 years after the releases.. but better late than never I guess), the tickets costs about 10-15€ which is hell-a lot, especially comparing to Germany where I've been to cinemas for 3 bucks. I don't mind though, I like the cinema atmosphere with the comfy seats and the big screen.
IANAL, but I feel pretty confident that you are egregiously misrepresenting that ruling. When you say "works can be retrieved into private possession," that makes it sound like you can pick out a public-domain work and claim it for your own, which is not at all a fair summary of what the court said. It's like hearing that locking somebody up without food or water counts as torture and false imprisonment, and then proceeding to tell everyone, "It's an open question whether you can legally refuse to give someone your food when he asks." I do not believe the question is all that open.

As anybody who takes the time to read the ruling will see, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the power to make laws that retroactively extend the copyright of certain works that had fallen into the public domain, and specifically said that Congress was empowered to do so if a treaty required it. I do think it's a bad ruling, but it is a far cry from a private party being able to swoop in and snatch works out of the public domain.
Smooth and effortless -but I had no idea where it was going. So I bluffed. Finally I was asked for tasks to be performed - entered one and couldn't continue. That was the end for me.
For HTML 5 All you need is:

<script>

The type isn't necessary anymore. We know it's JS.

See http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/scripting-1.html
How about a career in medical informatics? If you're interested in technology and have a medical background, there are many interesting opportunities for innovation out there.
RedMine (Ruby on Rails) and Trac (Python) are nice, for technical projects.
I've only recently started to look at D as a number-crunching language, but it certainly sounds like you know a bit more than me here.

Let me ask you a question or two: is there anything at all that makes it possible to interface D with Python? I'm aware of PyD [1] but it looks like it only worked with D1.

If I wanted to stick with D and Python, would it be the case that I'd have to (re-)write something like PyD from scratch, or is there a simpler approach?

[1] http://pyd.dsource.org/
A company can't ban a user from one service because they believe they're underage (to comply with COPA), then pretend to not know they should be banned from other services of the company where COPA would also apply.

It's not "easier" to do that, it's just what you have to do since it's so difficult to make any social / messaging service COPA-compliant.
AGPL redefines what distribution means. It's an EULA, very unlike the GPL.

Also, some might say that GPL software was successful precisely because of the server-side loophole. That's not necessarily bad, because the cost of starting your own Google or Facebook is much, much lower than 10 years ago.
Most of that software has been rewritten several times over now, but the competition lives on (it's called Battlecode now)! We actually open sourced a bunch of the code base last year if you're interested in checking it out [1].

Additionally, the competition has since been opened to outsiders so you can participate even if you're not at MIT. We never publicized that fact very well, but I imagine it would appeal to much of the HN crowd. I also recommend checking it out if you've got some time to kill [2].

[1] https://github.com/battlecode/
[2] http://www.battlecode.org
So you don't think kids should be taught to read if they don't have an interest in it? What about math?

Computing is a basic skill on the same level as math and literacy. It's only getting more important. You don't have to be an aspiring author for reading and writing to be relevant to your life. And you don't have to be an aspiring software engineer for basic computation and programming ability to be important in today's digital, networked world.
Because if the company can get away on spending under budget for you, they can either spend more of that fixed number on someone or something else

I think the recent trend in hiring software engineers is to pay what they ask, because if you don't (e.g. offering $60k instead of $100k), you're going to have to hire again in 6 months to a year when they leave. Just searching for a software engineer can cost $30-50k in downtime, recruiter's commissions, and learning curves.
Their design appears to be quite deliberately taken from UK IaaS company Brightbox: http://brightbox.com/

We've asked about it on twitter but no answers from them just yet.

I presume an outsourced design someone pinched without them knowing (or quite the coincidence).

(fulldisc: I'm a brightboxer).
2012: The Year of Live TV on Tablets?
Washing Machine Repair
Surprisingly best practices dont last much on the web
Why Bother With Cucumber Testing? | Jack Kinsella - Rails Developer London
If you're a dev you should be capable of using a proper unit testing framework. Leave cucumber for people who can't read code!
If he wanted to appeal to emotion he'd use murder or child molesting.

When the police decide to arrest someone it's commonplace for all evidence related to the crime to be taken in as well. The fact that said evidence is needed for continued operation of your business is, sorry life's not fair, sucks to be you.

If you're a kinkos accused of committing a heinous crime with your copy machines and they need to take the copy machines as evidence oh well sucks to be you.

If you're a baker accused to knocking people on the head with your rolling pins, oh well no more rolling pins until case is resolved.

If you're an internet company accused of massive piracy and they take the servers, oh well sucks to be you.
> This tool demonstrates that Google is already accessing and indexing the data it says it needs to improve its search results. This isn't rhetoric; it's code.

It doesn't really demonstrate that. It demonstrates that Google can show G+ pages related to a topic, and that it can show high-ranked social pages linked to the owners of those G+ pages. But it doesn't show that on a broad, scalable basis Google can dependably link from a topic to a highly relevant 3rd-party social page. Demonstrating it on a couple of easy, celebrity-focused queries isn't proof of anything.
Basecamp has a free tier.
Anyone working on any gambling apps for Facebook or in general on web/mobile?
Ireland's SOPA: A FAQ
Are there TVs that can run apps? Would be great to run "Shhh" app to mute commercials.
Anatomy of Credit Card Numbers
It must be really great to live in a world where you can impute arguments to other people - guaranteed correctness, without any hassle!

Since you didn't make an argument I won't do the same disservice to you. The relevant laws in this case are anti-trust. I support them, generally, as did TR who introduced them. Regulatory capture is a problem to be battled, not a reason to throw your hands up and say "oh well, guess i'll just let myself get screwed by a couple people who managed to lock up an industry through collusion".
Eye3: An Affordable Flying Robot
> they also take away your Gmail access when you violate the terms

Are you sure? This seems to be a persistent rumor, but other than COPA-mandated takedowns of accounts belonging to children, I haven't seen any such reports like that which stood up to scrutiny.
IBM Gives Birth to Amazing E-mail-less Man
Hmmmm....the article prelude, and points 1 and 3, and the rationale document linked for point 2, all seem to be about optimising TCP for HTTP/the Web.

The thing is, a heck of a lot more runs over the Internet/TCP than just HTTP/the web. Also, it can very well be argued that a lot of the "end-user" perceived problems they are trying to fix (e.g. HTTP total request-response round trip latency) are acutally problems with HTTP, rather than TCP - notably the fact that for "small" web requests all HTTP effectively does is re-implement a datagram protocol (albeit with larger packets than UDP) on top of TCP, with all the consequent overhead of setting up and tearing down a TCP connection.

It's an interesting set of fixes. But are they the right fixes, at the right level? Would moving to SPDY instead of HTTP fix the problems better, at a more appropriate level? With less chance of impacting all the other protocols that run (and are yet to run) over TCP?
Thanks for the heads up.

The requirements listed on that page are still kind of silly, though, especially for a commercial project, where it requires you to list the attribution right near the use of it. For example: "If your product is listed online, you must include the proper attribution on the same page next to the item you are selling. "

That kind of requirement is just begging to be ignored completely.
Will they forcibly detain you?

(I can see a valid security argument for not letting people do test runs against the security system without consequence, but it's probably not a bigger benefit than the civil liberties lost in doing searches.)
The tool isn't limited to celebrity queries. Install it and use it on whatever queries you wish.
At a previous job I negotiated an 80% raise and double promotion 8 months after joining. This was at a huge, very bureaucratic, very political company. This made me the youngest Senior Analyst ever at the company. Here's how I did it:

Work portion: I focused my work on what provided value, not what was difficult or what was in my job description. One of my big achievements was saving the company roughly $1.2MM with a week of work.

I also found out who would be responsible for approving my raise/promotion (my boss and his boss) and what they valued. My boss pretty much just valued results and didn't care how long you worked, where you worked from, etc. But his boss cared a lot about office presence, face time, filling out mandatory reports that no one read, work hours, etc. So I made sure to satisfy both of them, even though I could easily accomplish all my work in just a few hours a day.

Negotiation portion: first, I found out when budgets were set, which was in September. Since performance reviews were done in December, that meant that by the time a performance review came about, your raise would have already been decided.

Then in May, I had a meeting with my boss where I told him something like "I'd like to have a meeting to discuss compensation sometime next month." So he knew it was coming-there was no surprise. Also note the timeline, the actual discussion was in June, giving my boss and his boss plenty of time before budgets would be fixed in September.

Then I made two write-ups: one presenting the value I'd contributed in terms my boss would value, and one presenting the value I'd contributed in terms his boss would value. I then made my case to my boss, focusing on the value I'd provided, and asked for the double promotion so that I could fall back down to a single promotion if that didn't fly.

This was not a perfect approach, but even this much was enough to put me in probably the top 95% of engineers trying to negotiate a raise.

I should mention that pretty much the entire approach above came from Ramit Sethi's book I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
I think the problem is that you don't have a verifiable skill that will increase sales by X%... Because if you did, then you'd be silly for only asking for an extra $4000 based off of increasing sales by millions.

I think software engineers can come up with a few skills that makes them more valuable than other applicants by a quantifiable amount. In my case, I have extensive experience with streaming audio and video across web and mobile devices. Having built and maintained the streaming video infrastructure that powers RushLimbaugh.com, JimRome.com, CoastToCoastAM.com, BobAndTom.com as well as their corresponding mobile sites and apps while I worked at ClearChannel, I have the experience to cut months off of similar projects for my current company. That alone was worth the 37.5% increase over my last salary to them.
Great site, however hate the infinite scroll. Makes it impossible to bookmark your place in the list (and is very disorienting). Also the animations of new tiles coming in are choppy and distracting.

Would work much better as a simple paged list with an option to set page size for people who prefer more options/page.
Well that's what's in question. Nobody is sure yet, but the question is: did the U.S. overstep their boundaries on this one? That's really all it is on the surface.
Ask HN: isn't Youtube very similar to megaupload?
But how does this dialog progress if the salesman gives the number first? I can't envision a scenario other than them offering $10,000 at which point we're back in your final scenario there.
One of the bad things about the TSA is that government officials with a security detail (cabinet members, congressional leadership) are allowed to bypass security. Their security details should be allowed to bypass security, perhaps, if they're authenticated law enforcement (usually US Marshals or attached to specific agencies e.g. FBI for the FBI Director), but the principals should go through exactly the same screening, including before flights on government aircraft. IMO this should apply to the President as well (conducted in some kind of secure environment, sure, but just as invasive) -- only by keeping the issue of invasive airport screening something personally relevant to those in power will they have any reason to limit it.

Same goes for any other perks government people get in the name of "security" -- entry/exit to the US should require waiting in lines and putting up with random ICE officers, etc.

(http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/2010-11-23-tsa-politician...)
2-Hour Crowd-sourced Star Wars
Concurrencys Shysters
I live in NYC... think this article may have just lit a fire of curiosity in me to track down this guy.

http://vimeo.com/18280328
Great bundle. Makes plugin installing much more efficient
Patent reform implementation updates
Interesting, just checked and this is the same for the style tag (no longer requires type), never knew that they have defaults now. :)

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/semantics.html#attr-style-type
That seems like a typical softball question.
The language looks ok. If they are going for world domination a more likely path seems to be evolving C very slowly. That is they should start from C and then every few years add a few new features and take out some old crummy features until they finally reach Rust.

Lots of people probably don't like rewriting code bases wholesale and new languages take a while to become trusted.
44-year Nintendo employee Nobuo Nagai dies
Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops
I think you meant to comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3502528
Spoke to manager today, basically they really want me to stay since I'm the only one doing it and there is no documentation. They even said they'll move me to what ever project I want, if I just train a new guy for the role. I told them tomorrow when I come in I'll decide.
Sandglaz: http://www.sandglaz.com
I'm the Co-Founder and we use it ourselves internally as well. It's a freemium model (so there is a free version and a paid version). The paid version is 50% off until end of January.
In my experience, the difference between the first wave of users (the alpha geeks) and everyone else is huge. Alpha geeks are hugely passionate, they can easily digest programmers-documentation..they just get it. The group of users that comes after that is far more diverse and many of them need to be carefully and gently introduced to new technologies. For example, you might get people who want to learn Redis but won't be 100% sure about the set command from seeing something like "set users:leto '{....}'" and from reading an explanation.

The fact that I bring up duplicating values shouldn't tell you that I don't grok Redis. It should tell you that you and I differ in how we think new users will approach Redis and how the story needs to be told for them to better understand it.

I really do appreciate your feedback. Your example on set-usage is good and I'll look at adding it. But, for the rest, I think you are projecting your own understanding/knowledge onto the masses.
I'm sorry, it probably would make a better argument if I hadn't used the $70k example. It would have been more believable and everyone knows that coders love symmetry.

Except I just couldn't resist, because... truth is stranger than fiction, and I really have been offered 40% less than my desired salary.

(Remember, to a nonprogrammer, programmers look like clerks. When you tell them how much you expect to earn, and they flinch, they may not even be play-acting: Why, for that kind of money they could have hired three clerks! People will generally not hesitate to offer you the median salary for white-collar workers of your age range, either because they're actually clueless or as an opening feint in negotiations; you need to be prepared for that.)

Anyway, now that I've led us here, your scenario: You think you can earn $130k. A company opens with an offer of $70k. Do you really counter with $180k?

Well, maybe you do! If you're negotiating with an experienced software engineer at a mainstream software company, you could certainly try it. The message you'd be sending is I recognize that you have just thrown me an embarrassing lowball, and I know you know how low that ball was, but I'm going to take it in good faith by assuming it was an obvious joke, and play along by lobbing an obvious highball right back at you. You should probably open with a hearty laugh, though, and make your counteroffer with a sly smile and maybe even a wink.

But I, being excessively polite and fairly bad at broad back-slapping humor and pretty much a coward, would probably not do that. Instead I'd play it safe and assume that my counterparty is a babe in the woods - if they've just lowballed you by 45% they're certainly signaling that - and move them up more gently. I'd flinch (Dawson: "always flinch at the first proposal. Practice flinching. A wince, a cough, a pregnant pause, a slight chuckle, but flinch") and say something like "you know, the average starting salary for a Google programmer is far higher than that." Then talk about that for a while.

[EDIT: In my first draft of this I named a number at this point. A number which was lower than my target. A rookie mistake! I really am bad at this. Perhaps it would be better to try and coach them closer to your target number before naming any number of your own.]

But it will be hard to salvage a negotiation that starts so low. Give up and take it as a sign: You'll need to start marketing yourself to a higher class of employer, because you've made a mistake. Either you're ridiculously overestimating your earning potential or you're targeting the wrong market with the wrong message. See: patio11's other essay.
Create Your Board of Mentors – January is National Mentoring Month
I'm assuming you mean deduplication among your own data, in which case, wouldn't compression take care of it? I haven't used tarsnap, what's the benefit over duplicity?

EDIT: Oh, you mean deduplication of files between separate backup sets? That is a nice feature, true.
Me and my son (aged 15) are trying to develop our first iPad app but he is not interested in the programming side at all. He is happy drawing out stuff on paper for the levels etc... So am not forcing the programming no him, if he has no interest. I just want him to have the experience of getting a app on the app store and knowing he was part of it.

We are using the Corona SDK (in case anyone is interested).

Dave
The stated goal is to use Rust for prototypes of new browser architectures.
Hey there, keep that to yourself :)
patio11: just to play devil's advocate here, you have posted in the past that you have never made more than $60k per year[1]. This prompted a much attacked post [2] that is actually sort of structurally similar to this one (how to get more money for engineers), but aimed at you specifically rather than others, which made it strange.

Can I ask you the extent to which your points are field tested? Within the last 488 days, have your salary negotiations actually paid off, and who have you been negotiating with given that you are an entrepreneur with your own company?

This is not meant as ad-hominem and I like much of your writing. But you are like a sports trainer recommending a workout plan, and it is not unreasonable to ask whether you are actually in shape.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1716991

[2] http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy-of-p...