skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Time for Ubuntu to stop dicking around with all the UI stuff and go back to making something that is solid."

Yeah, no kidding. Their problem isn't that they're just not X steps ahead of everyone else, it's that they aren't even close to the same level as OS X or Windows. They need to stop trying to be so clever and focus on the basics.
The Grains Review
>Grooveshark are of questionable legality and use this model, yet they have not been shut down

Except they're being sued by every single major label - and some internal emails from them are pretty damning. Same case as it is with Megaupload.
(Related article the likely prompted this link, but has since fallen off the HN front-page just in time for the American audience is:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3503866
)
Corporations are banned from donating to individual Federal candidates and have been for several decades.

Corporations are allowed (after Citizens United) to spend as much money as they want to get a political message out, but hey, that's what the New York Times does, too.
[video] One newsfeed for productivity apps like Github, Dropbox & GDocs
Compiling cx_Oracle for Oracle9i & Python 2.7
well done on launching,

If you've not launched anything before, be warned that your traffic is going to drop like a stone now. What are your plans to keep the traffic going?
The 12 Best Places in America to Get Brunch
Sili would have been a better name :p
Devops for Everyone - Beanstalk's hosted deployments now can run SSH commands
No, MegaUpload was shut down after years of investigation, not because big music companies got wind of their recent plans and bribed the FBI or something.

I'm a bit concerned as to how things went down, but honestly, MegaUpload had it coming. I'm sure there's lots of people who used it legitimately, but I've personally never seen one person or link to a MegaUpload file online that wasn't meant for piracy.
Congrats - it looks like a great app.

I like your approach to repetition, the design looks engaging and the fixed scope of the app makes it seem more accessible (learn 230 words for the price).

Is this your first app? How long did it take to develop? What's your coding experience? (I checked your about page first, but if you have time I'd be interested in this, too)

Xie xie!
Private use includes, if I'm not mistaken, the right to copy it to close relatives. And for that I don't think that it's unreasonable to compensate the artist.

However this is now very obsolete and the current implementation is horrendous. But the idea (back in the day) wasn't that terrible.
Bad form nevertheless. We should be outraged still.
Yes but Megaupload was taken down completely with FBI involvement, grooveshark are only being sued. If "the labels" could have Megaupload taken down like that because "the labels" were scared of this new "industry disrupting" feature why wouldn't they do the same with Grooveshark, why would they do it the "proper" way?

If you have a power drill you don't use a screwdriver, although maybe it can be argued that they didn't want to "show their hand" with Grooveshark and figured it's small enough to sue into oblivion?
> If they are guilty of the charges against them

And what is that?

> If they are guilty of the charges against them, it's very possible that their new venture wouldn't be "legit" at all.

Sounds... speculative.
Legend has it that Casual Friday in that golden age of IBM meant that you could work that day with your suit jacket unbuttoned.

Since we're all tossing out our favorite lines, I'll nominate the Prolog entry. I know nothing about Prolog but it still gives me a laugh on every read. His goal is to create a language with the intelligence of a two year old. He proves he has reached his goal by showing a Prolog session that says "No." to every query.
Well they need to get over it and begin to be upset about people using skype.
العاب سيارات 2012 
العاب سيارات 2012 العاب سيارات 2012 العاب سيارات 2012 العاب سيارات 2012 العاب سيارات 2012 العاب سيارات 2012 العاب سيارات 2012 العاب سيارات 2012
Assuming this is what is in the latest Ubuntu 11 The thing I found the worst about this interface was how slow it was in operation.

I don't know if it's iterating a directory of softlinks or an SQLite database but it was slowww on two computers I use that run Windows 7 well.

And before in case you question my love of Linux.. my solution was to boot into Fluxbox.
A lobbyist can give a candidate for Federal election the same amount as you or I: $2,500.
Right. Or OS X's Help menu search functionality, or Quicksilver plus menus, or Alfred plus menus, etc etc etc. This has been the future for half a decade now.
The reason this debate rages incessantly is because government, like any institution, grows over time. It takes constant dialogue to evaluate when it has gone too far and then suddenly shrink it when that time comes.

Mindless it may seem because of no resulting action 99% of the time, but the same can be said of pre-flight engine tests.
What if the total contribution was capped? You could even add that he first $50 of everyone's taxes would be appropriated as that person chooses (Lessig's proposal).
> The headline is a bit sensational, over simplified, and speculative

and the YC article header is in desperate need of a question mark on the end.

edit: thanks mods :)
Just a minor suggestion.

When I signed the petition, the link that says "Find out what else you can do" at the bottom does not work for me. (Windows 7, Chrome 16)
How to Hire a Security Genius
The Management Team
If it helps to know, I am running a dual core i3 @ 4ghz with native graphics from the IGP in the cpu.

Not cutting edge by any means but no slouch either. http://bit.ly/zOkben

It's not maxing out the cpu either for what it's worth.
Ubuntu's current (11.10 oneiric) menu cleverness breaks things for me using a non-standard window manager. (The gnome-terminal menu appears even when set to hidden.) Solution: purge every package with appmenu in the name and reboot. I hope it remains as easy to opt out from the next batch of little-tested, slightly buggy innovations.
I couple of bots, one left and one right, could cover 90% of political argument on the Internet.

It will be a lot easier to pretend the bot is human if it refuses to talk on other topics. And politics on the internet is a horse beaten to a smooth pulp, so the bot could have a HUGE library to search for both question and argument.

A sincere implementation could actually educate a lot of people. Not change their stance, but elevate their arguments.
Sensational, yes, but it is possible that being more than just a pr0n collector made Hollywood pay more attention to them as there is some strategic advantage to shut them down. They may have assisted with the investigation to speed things along for whatever reason. I would bet they were more than enough reasons to arrest mr Dotcom but the complexity and the cost might have made it a tough target vs other 'low hanging fruit' law breakers (FBI has limited resources too).
Perhaps they can only call in so many favors so often? The first one was getting DMCA passed, this one is just a show of power.

Ha ha, only serious.

Then again, this investigation has been going on for at least two years.
I think that we should be trying to limit what incentives there are today for politicians to become corrupt. The biggest one IMO is the campaign as it exists today. They are long lasting and very expensive, hence a politician has no chance other than to find ways to fund their campaign.

The resulting factor is that this attracts the attention of parties that do have large sums of money and that comes with an implied exchange of favors.

An option would be for campaigning to be restricted to low cost media such as the internet and maybe government provided TV time.

Another alternative to be considered. Every cent spent on campaign should be divided equally between parties, where if you buy a 20 second ad on TV than that time will be equally divided between your campaign and all other oponents.
I could see online education supplementing, rather than replacing the college experience. Based on my experience at a large public university (UCLA), my first two years was spent skipping classes that were held in large lecture halls with 200+ students. I ended up learning 10 weeks of material in the week before midterms and finals. A lot of this lower division coursework could easily have been replaced with online lectures. Maybe what we'll see emerge is an online junior college with the ability to let students "transfer-in" to finish their degree in 2 years.
I was just commenting on the existing open access policy (edit: I noticed you opened the subthread by prescribing, sorry for derailing).

Open science/sharing the data can work as a voluntary movement, it has not been captured by private interests, but I'm really interested in seeing Open Access pan out before that. The current policy, if I'm reading it right, is saying that the manuscripts must be submitted to PubMed Central, but PMC or the researcher (whoever decides to trigger it first I imagine) only has an obligation to release them after twelve months. If PubMed Central doesn't release the research instantly and the researchers aren't aware of their rights or are subjet to some pressure/contradicting (possibly illegal) agreements, there's a loophole in the policy as written.
I switched to DuckDuckGo about a month back after challenging myself to "switch for a week". I didn't think I'd survive and I still use Google search a bit, however, for the most part I do all my searching through DDG.

The accuracy of DDG is not as good as that of Google, that's for sure, however it is good enough a lot of the time. Strangely, DDG is actually superior for accessing Google's non-web-search services. It's quicker to type "!gm London, UK" than press your homepage button, click "Maps", then search. Same goes for Google News and Google Shopping.
And, if you can't find what you're looking for on DDG, you can just type "!g" before your search to check Google instead.

Highly recommend people give it a go - just for a week. You might like it :-)
For once I read "dicking around with all the UI stuff" and it's really "dicking" not "clicking".
Congratulations, you've empowered the permanent bureaucracy.
I think skynet is smarter then the average two year old though.
Nozick vs Rawls.
Cloud Pushes Further Into Financial Services
Articles like this make me wonder why more manufacturing isn't robotocised and pulled back to domestic shores. Why are blue jeans destined for Western markets made in China by hordes of human automatons? Couldn't stuff like this be made locally in almost-fully automated factories instead?

China, India, Vietnam, etc. have a significant dependence upon cheap, semi-skilled labour. Surely the future is uncertain for these countries as programmable robots become the norm and there is little reason to outsource most types of manufacturing.
I have no idea about anything having to do with the Megaupload case, but private business influences the actions of government agencies all the time. It isn't as simple as a number you can call, or paying a bribe (which I think is rare in the US). It has more to do with relationships and influence, and yes, influence with a Congressman does play an important part in that mix. It isn't that easy to spot when legitimate influence (which all large lobby and business interests have) steps over the line and becomes corruption.
If you are really worried about this, I recommend surgery.

Me too -but in a more literal way.

Sorry for the downvotable comment, but cannot resist a pun, especially when it kinda makes my actual point.

The thing is, whether the MBP is "always listening" or not is of little consequence, in an age when we know that governments look into the wires, have taps into ISPs and can listen to any and all mobile phone conversation.

Btw, my iMac 27" 2009, doesn't seem to register any sound with the internal mic set to the minimum volume. And there's also the "Audio MIDI setup" program, where you can disable it completely.
File-sharing sites feel Megaupload heat, scale back services
Me too, I used zenburn before, but I slightly prefer solarized.

I love solarized so much I even use it to read the web:

http://goo.gl/jISPf

ps: I minified the URL because the real one is extremely long.
When I think of limiting the size of government, I don't necessarily think about capsizing the physical size of it, but limit the amount of power it has via laws.

It'd be ideal if a couple of laws could be passed to limit or restrict the power of the government to regulate markets, intervene in private matters other than property rights and (to an extent) citizen protection (don't let them get as big as the TSA is, for instance), etc.
On loyalty
"12:30AM -
I go to have a celebration lunch for finally launching. And I get absolutely stuffed! Hmm… lunch special fajitas"

You time traveled!? I do the same after a lack of sleep. :)
Salman Khan To Act In Sanjay Dutt's Home Production.
Yell, a Yelp Exporter, and the problems with TOSes and Scrapers
Basecamp: Starting Over
Thanks! I like the Cherry site. The plan is to make a landing page with this information (targeted to one network, like craigslist), with that design :)

The fee is based on the ticket-selling price. After sleeping and reading your comment, you're right: I should definitely be more obvious about that...
Here in the UK there are tough restrictions on political advertising, and our politics is much less silly, and much less about money. We don't have free speech (UK libel law is infamous) which for once is advantageous as one cannot engage in the gross misrepresentation of opponents which is all too common in the US.
Cloud Hiring Reaches New Heights
I think wise politics is about wise decisions that are based on todays situation but reach out in the future. The worst case scenario are politicians who make up their mind today and change it 180deg later on. While some may say they may be uneducated, lack experience, etc, corruption is also a big deal.

what I would love to have is a website like politicopedia where i could see all politicians enlisted and each vote on each bill with date they voted and why they voted this way. this would be a great tool to run statistics down the line: see who voted right/wrong way on certain issues, etc.
Even after shipping costs humans are cheaper than robots, plain and simple.
Mindless it may seem because of no resulting action 99% of the time, but the same can be said of pre-flight engine tests.

Terrible analogy.
If engines were intelligent beings constantly plotting and trying to fail, no one would dare fly, no matter how many pre-flight checks there were.

All large organizations, not just government, have a clear and strong tendency to grow.

The sad fact is, there is no good solution. Switzerland's direct democracy might be one, however:

1. Switzerland is tiny.

2. What are the chances the US, or any other country, will radically reconfigure its constitution and system of government.

A more realistic scenario is what has happened in other places. Like in the UK in the 1970s or Sweden in the early 19th century. Government grows so big and inefficient that a radical shrinking of it is forced upon everyone. It is an ugly and painful process and occasionally goes horribly wrong. But it's pretty much the only proven way governments have significantly shrunk in the real world.
I don't believe the final text has been released yet but my understanding is that it wouldn't effect Facebook anymore than it would effect a website which doesn't have a base in Ireland. The law is 'SOPA-like' because it gives Irish courts the right to tell an ISP or hosting service or other third party to block the site.

It is unclear at this time if infringing websites will be given notice that they are about to be blocked. Again, the final draft hasn't been released.

The scary thing is that they are trying to get this passed without a vote in parliament.
I "sidegraded" to mint 11 right after the dubiously-named "upgrade" to 11.10 which broke the ubuntu 'classic' desktop. Mint had a normal interface and behaved as one would expect. Given how close the base was to ubuntu, the transition went smoothly. And I like green better than whatever undefined color ubuntu is anyway.

I recently upgraded to mint 12 and they are picking up a bit of the gnome3 suckiness - but it feels like they are really being unwillingly dragged into it and are fighting tooth an nail to keep it at bay. It is a bit worse than mint 11, but still a lot better than ubuntu 11.10. Maybe I should give that MATE thing a shot.

The only thing I kinda miss from ubuntu is the inplace upgrade process. Mint community seems to have some philosophical rejection of it and recommends a reinstall.

I am feeling that Ubuntu is pushing realy HARD to get into tablet space - throwing-users-under-the-bus-if-need-be kind of hard. I can see the advantage of a Unity interface there, but come on, i had to manually tweak the laptop with powertop to even get close to the battery life I was getting with windows. This will never work for an average-joe-grade tablet.

I know, I know It is free, if i dont like it, I can switch to something else. Guess what? I did. According to distrowatch i'm not the only one. It is a real pity to see a good distro go down like that.
While I'm sure that the tablet is the future of personal computing, I don't think this is the 'year of the tablet'. If that were true then the next 5 years will be the year of the tablet. The first true evidence of the change is when college students are buying them instead of laptops at a significant rate.

I do believe that any programmer should be using standards but there are still questions when it comes to video.
Thanks for the reply Jason, a new and interesting twist from 37signals as usual :). This seems awkward from a branding point of view, like new users can sign up for Basecamp or New Basecamp? Or old users can use old Basecamp but new users can't signup, or it really is completely different and maybe I'll be using old Basecamp and new Basecamp?
You're correct regarding (3) -- that's the main reason unique pointers were added to Rust in the first place. We call the heap of unique pointers the "exchange heap" for this reason.
Hey all - Alex here from the Widlbit team (the company behind Beanstalk). Happy to answer any questions you might have about our newest release.
A glimpse at the state of the art in CGI
It's true that a small number of people are installing the excellent CyanogenMOD (1 million out of 170 million), there are believed to be far more people who have jailbroken their iphones. Just like CyanogenMOD, this will always be a niche product for a tiny group of enthusiasts, as most people can't rely on their local friendly hacker to perform upgrades and maintain their phones.

I suspect the bloatware that networks routinely install on the phones is one reason that the iphone will continue to be so successful, despite the significant cost premium. Networks have been doing this for many years and for some reason believe that it gives them a competitive advantage. Perhaps they know something we don't.
I have a tremendously long commute to work. An hour and forty five minutes, one way.

Reading is my only salvation on this commute.

I am saving up for a down payment on a place that I can call my own, and I can single-handedly credit reading for making it easier to grin and bare it. That, and having an awesome job helps a bunch.

Hell, check out the number of books I've read in the past year alone:
http://www.jonlim.ca/books-ive-read/

WARNING: They're affiliate links! Don't click through unless you feel like giving me some money for a cup of coffee. :)
Three Major IT Trends Will Shape Life Sciences in 2012
I tried to switch to Mint 12. Turns out that they have awesome bugs with fglrx integration (bugs neither Ubuntu nor Fedora have).

I was kind of sad. In between the corrupted fonts and flickering windows it actually (no sarcasm) looked really really great.
Facebook Hacker Cup 2012 Qualification Problem Analysis, esp. #2: Auction
I'm not sure how that would work , the majority of the economy and employment is driven by business (there is also public sector and charity of course). Students need to get something from their college experience that makes them more valuable to someone who can pay them money otherwise it would be difficult to justify the fees and debt, especially to those from lower to middle income backgrounds.

I'm not convinced that academics are better qualified to predict the needs of society regards knowledge and education any more than the free market is.

Regards to helping students evaluate themselves , there is no reason that a professor cannot provide feedback in addition to assigning grades indeed I'm sure many would be happy to and it's more likely a case that many students are simply happy to get their grade and move on rather than evaluate themselves.
How the market failed school ICT
I'd go further: why not have a "Wall of Fame" section on HN to which we can nominate submissions that deserve a permanent link somewhere?

UPDATE: I've submitted this comment as a question here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3505201
GPS, Smartphones, and the Dumbing Down of Personal Navigation
still drinking my coffee, but the one odd part was that, on theprefs screen, with mic input all theway down, it was still regisrering audio. something is wrong there....all other arguments about security aside,

i tried this on my mid 2009 mbp, and dont get the same results... turing volume input all the way down should result in muted audio input. nevermind havkers... what if i just want it off for a sec while i say something i dont want someone to hear (mute buttons aside.... and are they working filly if rekying on the same api)

suggest trying on multiple units... and as others have said, those guidelines are just best practices, not guarantees. if you want guarantees, you dont have conversations near microphones... and sweep theroom for transmitters, assuming thats still possible. one would assume some agency with an unfathomable budget could probable fevelop some kind of ultra liw power ulta wideband bug we are nor goingto detect. or it will just record and theywill tell it to transmit later. or just pick it up... thelist goes on,

theoriginal question is valid though, i would like to know that, absentmalicious intent, when my mic is muted its muted, and inthe samevein, that the camera light is an absolute indicator of activity.

when i get around to buying a new mac (or something) which shoukd besoon, ill be doing someexploratory surgery n this one i think.
Curving Text with CSS3 and jQuery
Why are big sites like CBS.com still getting hacked?
I'm trying to figure out how the websites of big companies are still getting compromised and defaced. Many of the attacks don't seem that sophisticated. . . thought this community might be able to help clarify. Thanks
Whitehouse to answer most followed questions about Policies on Quora?
Same here - Chrome 16.0.912.77 on OS X Lion.
I haven't tried this myself but it definitely sounds like a great idea. Very similar to the purposes of Quicksilver, Alfred, or Launchy. Only instead of searching for applications, you're searching for functions within an application.
This feature will be new for Ubuntu 12.04 (it is not in 11.10).
It's Google vs Yahoo on the menubar! Currently we use the Yahoo method (hierarchical information based on someone else's curatorship), Mark is proposing the Google model (everything through a single search box).

Either one will not be as universally useful as combining them.
Cmd, not Ctrl. Cmd-?

(? as in help)
Code Metrics: Who uses them
Meanwhile, a new iPhone jailbreak was downloaded over a million times in three days - http://9to5mac.com/2012/01/23/a5-jailbreak-absinthe-installe....

But really, infering the intentions of the users d/l-ing Cyanogen is ridiculous. A million downloads is exactly the tiny fraction of the population that you would expect to tinker and modify.