skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm surprised by the amount of cheering going on over this article. I found it in very poor taste, resorting to ad hominem attacks and slander. Even if it were in good taste, I don't agree with the general idea behind the post.

I don't understand this pent up hatred for Arrington, M.G. Siegler, and the other TechCrunch writers who, despite what people continually say, do genuinely seem to care about startups. Is this a case of wanting to knock successful people down a peg? Is it jealousy? What is it?

Sure, they are biased, but everyone is. At least they make it clear where their biases lie.

Please help me to understand this anger.
Scala looks a lot more like Ruby than Java does. It makes people feel more comfortable with the language. Also, a lot of the patterns, like collections, are more similar between Scala and Ruby than Java and Ruby. This will change with JDK 8, but for now it is true.
Ew, blogger fights. Avoid.
> I mean, he's JUST NOW writing about Arrington's conflicts??

That is because he wanted to work at Techcrunch (there was a perennial discussion within TC on hiring him, and his wage demands were massive). now that Arrington can't give that to him any longer, he can speak out against him. Speaking of conflicts.
apologies, and I'm proving your point, but there's no such word as pedanticism. the word you were looking for is pedantry.
Paris Lemon and the No Good, Very Bad Day
This site is almost a showcase of things not to do when designing a content site... inconsistent navigation, surprise interactivity, low contrast font/background combinations, inconsistent typography, icons thrown all over the place. I'm sure there's some useful stuff here, but I can't stand to decipher the navigation and focus on the text long enough to find out.
Learn | DomainTools
Who knew that PayPal subscription change/upgrade amount can only be increased by 20%? So a merchant cannot have a $30 plan upgrade from a $10 plan. What a joke.
>Remember, slippery slope is a fallacy.

Not arguing with you on the merits of the OPs argument, but a slippery slope argument is not necessarily a fallacy.

It's only a fallacy if one doesn't logically connect the first event with each subsequent event in the chain.

You can check wikipedia if you'd like some examples of fallacious and non-fallacious slippery slope arguments.
What PR firms are good for web startups?
My buddy and I had this exact same idea less than two weeks ago. Nice job on the implementation!
A lot of the folks that I referred to are actually independent consultants, or switching consulting companies regularly.

That phenomenon transcends the typical consulting firm loyalty and is more of a culture around Microsoft products.
‘Stand with us or with the child pornographers’
GNOME Human Interface Guidelines
At least it has the Konami code.
Ask HN: What's an alternative to Project Euler?
Project Euler is based too much on math for my taste. I'm looking for a set of programming challenges in order of increasing difficulty. Language agnostic is best, if not, Python is second best.
I'm fairly certain any Thinkpad made in the last two or three years has a multi-touch trackpad AND a trackpoint.
That's when they deliberated for all of 30 seconds, decided they liked the million dollar checks and banned /r/jailbait.

Yesterday's announcement was merely a formalizing of that policy and application to a number of other subreddits in response to a second wave of negative publicity.
Apple files suit to block sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus in California
I've been using http://psionides.github.com/Gitifier/ (which can keep an eye on any git repo not just github) but I might have to give this a try.
Learning about if/elif statements .. placement is important
>Again, why were those illegal and not the examples I gave? "Artistic value" is not a criteria of the Dost test. Why they were posted isn't either.

Probably because the photograph wasn't meant to elicit a sexual response, nor were her genitals the focal point of the photograph.

>If those subreddits were illegal, then so are: many magazines, Wikipedia, Facebook (where a lot of them come), Google (try a search for 'jailbait' images), a huge number of movies, various TV shows and more.

Erm, no. No they're not.

>The only reason you gave (artistic value) is irrelevant to their legality, according to the test.

From the Dost test article:

>>Not all of the criteria need to be met, nor are other criteria necessarily excluded in this test.

>I very much doubt you could tell what most of 11600+ people said.

I could tell the general attitude of the subreddit from the majority of the comments posted. This isn't hard. When you go into /r/trees, you understand they are pro-marijuana. Maybe not all 100% subscribers feel that way, but that doesn't matter. So saying "Well you can't know what all the subscribers think!" is completely meaningless.

>But in any case, if I derive sexual gratification from your posts, do they become obscene?

No.

>I brought them as examples which are relevant to the point being discussed - whether the images are illegal or not.

And taking photos from a child's account and posting them all over the Internet are illegal.
Really? I remember reading about all the crap between Apple/Microsoft/Xerox (in the late 80s/90s) none of it could be described as even close a 'gentlemen's game".

Are we that different to any other industry?
My point is that collective "worth" is not the only value that people may wish to judge these actions by. People may have strong individual reactions to what's being saved. If an Interstate is built through my backyard, or a cemetery or whatever it might be worth it, but that doesn't mean that people directly affected won't try to argue that the worth of a project does not necessarily justify it.

If -- as a teenager -- I wrote something that I'm now embarrassed by (which I did), or if -- totally unbeknownst to me -- some unflattering pictures of me show up on Facebook (which have), I may not wish for them to be saved, but for them to disappear, along with the day, week or month of my life that produced them.

And frankly, I'm not mocking anyone. I'm trying to ask a question which I think it's totally fair to ask, who "owns" user generated data? Does the act of putting it out there make it effectively public domain, or can I, when cooler heads and soberer minds prevail, choose to recall it?
Tech journalists sure do love writing about themselves.
Why are there so many laws in Congress protecting Companies, but so few protect People? Or, in today's politico lingo, are the two synonymous in the eyes of the government?
Do you list your degree on your resume? Do those approaching you with proposals for work know that you went to Stanford? I agree with your view that a degree itself isn't inherently valuable, but I wonder if you are able to measure its benefits so easily.
I'm not well informed, but according to John Quiggin[1], yes:

(PV is photovoltaics)

the cost of PV has already fallen well below that of nuclear and
is set to fall further. The average retail price of solar cells as
monitored by the Solarbuzz group fell from $3.50/watt to $2.43/watt
over the course of the year, and a decline to prices below $2.00/watt
seems inevitable. For large-scale installations, prices below
$1.00/watt are now common. In some locations, PV has reached
grid parity, the cost at which it is competitive with coal or gas-fired
generation. More generally, it is now evident that, given a carbon
price of $50/ton, which would raise the price of coal-fired power by
5c/kWh, solar PV will be cost-competitive in most locations.

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-end-the-nuclear-r...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quiggin
I think this article is remiss in not mentioning the dozen or so P2P live streaming systems that have been in production for years.

Without any details (really, any at all), it's hard to connect this BitTorrent Live with the idea of killing TV. I agree that "people love what they see on television, but want it accessible from the Web", but one of the main reasons why is that people don't want to watch TV live (other than sports, which has even more geographical licensing problems than regular TV).
Welcome to the real world. Oh you let kids in your site? Kids have parents. Parents demand standards for places their kids go. Want to startup a reddit clone with no standards? Have at it! Let us know how it works out for you.

You know, perhaps it's ok for us to suggest the parents do the parenting, and let us grown ups hang out at the reddit?

Oh wait, right its actually just a strawman argument so you can be the morality police for the world. Sorry for the confusion.

It's also the case that once you set up an infrastructure to prosecute murderers it becomes easier for the government to move from arresting people for murder to hey let's just arrest some people we don't like for reason XYZ.
That's not a legitimate argument for not having an infrastructure to prosecute murderers though.

It is however a fantastic reason to talk about the potential consequences of that infrastructure, and perhaps to arrange for safeguards against the unwanted scenarios. This is what some of us are trying to do here while you are clamoring to (extending the metaphor) put everyone in jail who may one day murder someone.
That's pretty awesome. I'll definitely play around with this.
Or all the recent nonsense about non-compete hiring practices between top tech firms.
They aren't upset that you are browsing HN but they are upset that you see the word fuck?
Protips for Aspiring Developers
Hm...

Assumption #1: 100k+ loc codebase in X == 10k+ loc in Y (somehow... magic)

Assumption #2: Assumption #1 is the primary reason not many huge codebases in Y

Assumption #3: Static type implies upcast/downcast objects (despite the presence of generics...) == simplifies code == simplifies tests.

Fact: Less code == less places a bug can hide

Fact: BTW! we all are using tried-and-tested libraries to cut down code to be written

Fact: FindBugs (or static code analysis) does actually find bugs to eliminate most technical bugs and leave you with business logic (and quite possibly race condition bugs).

Argument: Compiler isn't special, see, I just show you it doesn't proved your code to be correct, there's the logic bug in your Business Logic. (Except that happens as well in dynamic language, AND on top of that you gotta work a little bit extra since you ain't got no compiler).

I think this has become your typical nerd holy war between static vs dynamic with no end.

Here's my biggest problem with Ruby or Python community: your libraries tend to have short-lived (i.e.: orphaned).

When I looked at Java community, they're quite stable and rock solid since 2004-2005 (Apache Commons, Maven, Ant, FindBugs, Eclipse, EclEmma, Spring Framework family, JUnit, Hibernate). Newer libraries tend to have good internal codebases (GWT, Google Guava, Mockito). Most APIs are stable and solid.

The stupid ones tend to get kicked out of the crowd (i.e.: Struts, JSF)

This is what I'm looking for. I can focus on writing code that matters, instead of refactoring my code once every 4 months because things changed and I have to keep up.
Isn't that just a back button? I supposed the issue is that opening a new tab doesn't duplicate the back button history into it, but I think there are extensions for that.
I have some experience with solar energy at the small scale (1-2 kwh arrays) and I can say that at the consumer level, the cost for a solar array is now dropping to roughly $0.50/watt. It's still nowhere near the scale/cost of nuclear/coal but it's definitely more feasible than it was ten years ago.

Using the figure of $0.50/watt, to construct a 50MW plant would cost $25 million for the panels alone; bring in the infrastructure, mounting, and remember that the panels lose roughly 10% of their capacity every ten years. Plus account for cloudy days (not as much of an issue in, say, Arizona) and you start to realize that solar isn't a very viable option.

It works really well at the consumer/personal/business level but fails horribly at large, centralized setups. For those about to mention the `good sunlight' requirement, I will provide some refutation for that: my panels are located such that there is a good 30-degree angle to the east the sun has to peak before the light reaches them. The only time that power becomes an issue is the three weeks either side of the winter solstice; at which point I have to start watching my power consumption and regulating computer use etc.

I've assembled the array (roughly 1.5KWh) over the past ten years or so; the cost has been small considering what the equivalent would have been to purchase electricity from the power grid.

I have rambled on for quite a while here, for which I apologize. I guess the TL;DR version is: I don't think solar is feasible at large scale, but it seems to be at a small scale in my own experience.
I don't have an argument. I have a complaint, and I lodge it with sarcasm and parody because I don't think it's worth discussing. If somebody had something meaningful to say other than "I am disgusted by these pictures and a vague reference to a guy ravaging his girlfriend like a 14th century asian warrior!" maybe we would have something to talk about.
This discussion will probably result in full blown blog post of my own as well.

Thanks for helping me be a bit more balanced. :-)
Since you are unhappy here, do us all a favor and just stop coming to the site. The same posts are linked and discussed many other places on the web, where you can have discussion with people who either agree with you, or don't mind you overreacting to disagreements.
The private memory column is likely a better measure when looking for memory hogs.
TC and their over the top headlines. If we had a nickel for every time they proclaim a killer of any entrenched industry leader, we would all be millionaires.
More likely is that you'll be expected to pick up the pizza from the street, instead of having it delivered to your door.

Imagine having the choice of two pizza places - both charge the same price for the pizza, and taste just as good. One uses human drivers who drop it off at your door - but expect to be tipped. The other uses robotic delivery trucks; you have to pick the food up at the street, but you don't have to tip. Which would you choose? Or rather, which would the median pizza purchaser choose?

This is analogous to how a lot of automated or "self-service" services work, such as grocery checkouts[1], or petrol stations[2]. The automated service is often inferior in every way but price...but that's usually enough.

[1]: This is a bit of a special case; in my experience the automated checkouts aren't cheaper, so I only use them when they'll clearly save me time due to shorter lines. Still, time is money, so I think it's still an example of an inferior -but-cheaper service.

[2]: I understand that concerted lobbying has resulted in laws preventing people from pumping their own gas in some US states. For the sake of this post, pretend you live somewhere where self-service stations are the norm, as the are in most of the world.
You think nuclear is cheaper than renewables?

Not sure what you're getting at with the "retroactively" bit. What I mean is renewables are feasible now, and next year they will be appreciably better, and the year after that even more so... this is not a pace of improvement I see in nuclear power, and yet I am supposed to be amazed by its price (cough) and potential (irrelevant since reactors are built to last 50 years; renewable stuff can be upgraded far more easily, in pieces)
I notice that you aren't mentioning any either. Cohen is quoted as saying that current P2P protocols aren't good at handling large events.
" But in future, the university says, there will be mechanisms for checking identity and verifying work."

This increases the value of the certificate as proof of knowledge and competence. Let's imagine that MIT offered 20 engineering courses in this format. You go through the effort of honestly taking these courses and add them to your resume. A potential employer says:

"Well, these courses are really rigorous -- much more so than those for-profit online 'universities'. While MIT will allow me to verify that a single online account holder claiming to be this person completed these courses, there's no proof that you didn't cheat or pay people to take the tests for you. Just look at how many CS homework projects are listed on Rent-a-Coder! I have to bring this person into my office and check them out myself to be sure."

I have argued previously that this "checking out" process isn't so expensive that an impressive resume would be passed over, and I still think this. However, what if a student had the option of paying a fee to take a test at an approved testing center which would check identification, take a photo of the student (available on MIT's site along with the course certificates), and ensure that this person took the test himself? Those taking actuarial exams and such already take tests at such locations. For those who didn't want to pay, lived somewhere without such centers, etc., certificates could be given which would have a lower level of authentication. If you are taking the time to complete a course and want to prove to others that you did not cheat, wouldn't it be worth paying an extra $100?
The problem is, and always has been, on the client side. It's easy to dream up all sorts of amazing technologies if you're okay with making users download a new browser plugin or app.

Flash sucks, but it's on every single PC. Netflix has the power to get users to install Silverlight -- Microsoft made that pretty easy. Unfortunately you probably don't have their library and will live to regret it[1].

Adobe is also working on this idea with RTMFP (their newest streaming protocol)[2]

In fact few years there's been a company already doing this with a Flash Plugin (Yes dawg, there's a Plugin in my Plugin).[3] CNN use(d) it for quite a while.

I wouldn't bet anything on BitTorrent adding anything interesting here. The technology may be difficult but it's not as difficult as overcoming the huge barriers to entry.

The best we can hope for is that they create an open protocol the way they did with BitTorrent that browsers can implement over the next 5+ years.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost#Application_discontinued

2. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cirrus/

3. http://www.octoshape.com/addin/about.php
What Would The End Of Football Look Like?
HTML5 makes my 2560x1440 Chrome window drag a quadcore CPU to its knees. Feels bad, man.
True, but in this case it's Bram Cohen saying it, which lends a lot of weight to the words.

Still, I'd love to read about how it's supposed to work.
It's important to realize that this is how many industries work because it's practically human nature. The article basically boils down to "influential people in tech can be greedy/power-hungry." I often get the impression that those involved in tech are viewed as more advanced or more noble than in other industries. This is false, and a dangerous assumption. Tech is not full of angels - it's full of people. SV people are just as capable as politicians of being greedy or underhanded or even selfless.

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." -James Madison
I wouldn't really blame TC in this case; they're just quoting Bram. (It's an irresistible quote; GigaOM ran with it too.)
Ubuntu 12.04 To Offer 'Locally Integrated Menus' Option
It depends. Some state needs to live, some needs to go. Long-lived processes should ideally do few state manipulations, or be easy to replace (so they store less state). Risky or frequent operations should be done far down in the supervision tree.

The processes with complex state, things that can't be lost, might tend to be long-lived. In these cases, they should either only do very simple operations, or be isolated from the operations on that state.

These processes will generally live higher up in the supervision tree structure and delegate the risky work to processes lower in the hierarchy; these short-lived workers will thus have their impact limited, but will also have their state known before some unit of work, a bit like an invariant. If the short-lived worker dies, then restarting it with its short-lived state is a cheap operation.

Restarting the long-lived process is a difficult thing because the state might be a) possible to re-compute, but complex to do so, or b) bound to events that cannot be repeated, and can't be lost.
Very nice app. Just curious as to the distinction of this among similar apps such as Stamped and Oink?
Unfortunately what we nowadays call "regular expressions" aren't the regular expressions from math class -- they can match against much more than regular languages. I believe PCRE, i.e., the "regular expression" language for most regex libraries, is Turing-complete though I can't find a citation for that right now.
The interesting thing to me here is how the story is no longer about Path and whether their actions were right or wrong. In the course of attempting to defend their portfolio company, Arrington and Co. have created a new debate about the role of journalism in the tech world, pitting the VC-backed insiders and their well-oiled hype machine vs the hordes of unconnected outsiders seeking to break down the gates. This dynamic is reflected by the passionate reactions coming fast and furiously from both sides. It could get ugly, but in the long run it's probably a good thing for everyone to have this discussion.
It's pretty scary considering what just happened to Megaupload. I suppose one could implement some sort of community-driven screening process for sellers.

Thanks for posting this!
The framing is designed to minimize the use of wood, while this house uses extravagant quantities of it.
I would. They didn't just quote him. Here's the first para:

"Television is going the way of the dinosaur, and the deadly comet is called BitTorrent Live. Today, Bram Cohen, the author of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer sharing protocol, demoed his latest creation at the SF MusicTech Summit."

Nothing indicates that first sentence is a quote.
This archive isn't of all the Google Groups messages, but instead of the separate file upload area that each discussion group had.
I view all of that kind of thing as noise and try to filter it out.
Indeed, the noisy background with thin, un-aliased fonts make for a really bad reading experience.
>1) Some of these subreddits may have contained CP, the illegal ones were being actively removed by admins.

CP was posted in the same subreddits. The admins were tired of spending their time determining if reported images were illegal or not.

>2) Calling pictures of 16-year-olds in bikinis CP is not very useful and dilutes the term.

A 16 year old in their swimsuit at the beach isn't CP. A 16 year old posed in their swimsuit like a porn star in a bedroom is CP. The latter is what was posted in these subreddits.

This isn't an issue with unfair application of sex offender laws or the vilification of accused sex offenders. This is Something Awful forum members forcing reddit admins to finally remove at best objectionable content, at worst illegal material.
What renewable energy source are you thinking of as "feasible now" at a scale of 1000 MW?
>Comparing the content of /r/jailbait to child porn is akin to comparing the sights of an average day at the beach to the set of a hardcore porno shoot. It's completely bogus.

This isn't about /r/jailbait. This is about the other subreddits which much worse content e.g. /r/preteen_girls and /r/asianbait.

The content posted to these subreddits was, for the most part, child pornography. The rest was absolutely child erotica. To compare what was posted there to children at the beach is a gross misrepresentation.
Ya, it says AP level physics is strongly recommended, but I won't even start grade 10 physics until March! I really want to take it, though, so I'll have to see what I can do.