skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The legal dept at bigco where I once worked indicated that emloyee fraud was most often reported by the ex girlfriend/boyfriend. The Great Wall of China was breached by bribery. Getting caught doesn't prove incompetence. And, again, I don't see that in the remark made.

Thanks.
There are many theories. But lets look at what they are doing:

- They dont care about their spending (US national debt is insane).

- They dont put any money in improving the country (almost everything goes to the war machine).

Only a country who knows none of this is going to matter in the future would do this since its suicidal, obviously.

So why is it not going to matter? I dont think we want to know... but the survellience is there for them to feel safe against us when it happens.
37 Data-ish Blogs You Should Know About
I hope you're right and I was meaning to find common ground with the perceived majority to avoid the personal attacks I've gotten in the past (it didn't work, see the top voted response to me.) I apologize to any non-liberals who feel the characterization was unfair. But also, please recognize that I said "liberal" not "democrat", the former being a broad ideology while the latter being a specific party. If there is a better term to have been used there, I'm happy to learn it and use it in the future.
Some people (like myself) are working on that. See: https://www.laconicsecurity.com

Disclaimer: I work for Laconic Security
agreed don't give up - keep at it!

Not many start-ups win the startup lottery immediately. A small margin do but most need to work hard to figure things out and find their niche.
My plan to be a mompreneur
Sequoia Confirms Existence of “Stealth” Scout Program. Who’s Next?
Startup success is a lottery: 82% (or more) of entrepreneurs never succeed. [1]

That said, I personally think that 40% is a high success rate compared to other things in work and life, so I pretty much disagree with the op.

[1] http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/79/Six-Interesting-Stat...
CEOs Across US Say Texas is #1 For Business
Can you recommend a good introduction to the theory of conciousness, especially one that relates it to physics and the Universe? I've seen the term "consciousness" in relation to these topics used before, but have a hard time getting information beyond "human conciousness" and how the brain works. Definitionally.
Nonprofits & Social Media - Have You Friended Your Favorite Cause?
Spotify Crop Circle Appears Near Stonehenge
Indeed. Having to respect any civil rights protections (the need for a warrant, habeas corpus, the right to silence, the right to avoid self-incrimination, the ban on torture, etc) makes life more difficulty for the authorities. But history shows that those societies that have no civil rights protections are not happy or prosperous over the long term, and a government that rids itself of all checks and balances is a government that must necessarily be authoritarian and unaccountable.
Congrats! I just gave about 30 electronic items to someone on TaskRabbit to sell for me. Used ebay to correctly price them, but priceonomics was spot on when verifying them!
Facebook IPO day : pic
> They are not going to accept data that is unintelligible to them (certainly not for free).

Why not? You can store two gigabytes of random noise with Dropbox for free. 5GB worth on Google Drive. Storage locker services don't care if files are encrypted either. I actually can't think of a service that does care.
Big congrats guys! I feel assured knowing we won't be eating top ramen all summer.
JS Library/ OO Inheritance Pattern Performance
Ask HN: Any hack/anti-hack resources/experiences?
I and my project mate are currently building an android application for some banks. Application connects to a https server to validate the device plus another server to retrieve data. We write any server and application stuffs. I'm asking you for some nice resources and your experiences. Thanks for any help.
Ask HN: What to learn to create amazing sites
I want to create a commercial website.
I have knowledge in programming but never used it.
I am trying these days to learn Python on my own but my time is limited.
Just bumped into this amazing website 42floors.com
and i thought to myself that this is exactly what i want.
So my question is- What should i learn? how do you think I can learn it? and if you know good sites for that purpose?

Thank you all
Now, please tell me where in the Constitution it states we can have an Air Force.

Black and white, chapter and verse, if you please.
As I said, I literally stopped reading. This is a matter of principle for me, because
it in almost all cases, this analogy either means the writer is dishonest and tries to
invoke an appeal to emotion, or that they are uninformed/a victim of industry propaganda -
and I really doubt the latter is the case. This might just be the exception that proves
the rule.
Then you must not read HN very much. Political stories are constantly making their way to the front page, and the responses tend to be fairly predictable.
Which is still way better than any lottery I've heard of.
Oracle vs. Google jury reaches partial verdict
This is a great resource, especially for being free and the source being available, but in case miek is reading... what is with the left margin on even numbered pages?
Did you ever have a word with your history teacher?

Did anyone in your class ever stand up and contradict the history teacher, about anything, and not get slapped down for it? Did the history teacher ever once say, "Huh, I guess you're right about that"?

You are exactly illustrating the point. Your history teacher is the one who gets to have the word.
The 42 floors website is JavaScript heavy, so if you want something comparable you'll want to be well versed in the three web languages; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Codecademy.com is a great place to get started, and there are plenty of free resources online to help you along. With focus and determination, you'll be building JavaScript apps like 42 floors in no time.
My own future certainly is. I've written my own language Fexl http://fexl.com for very specific purposes in my work.
To me, the notion that 99% of a code base is dead simple is like the notion that Human DNA is 99% similar to Chimpanzee DNA. There’s only 1% difference, but oh what a difference that 1% makes!
Dangerous is "lying to these kids to keep them under control now might destroy trillions in future economic productivity and expose the country to financial blackmail by foreign interests, leading to the decline of our entire culture/civilization".
FastEver does something similar, you swipe the screen and the cursor moves on spot in the directions you swipe.

Look under features: "Swipe to move cursor (iOS4 or later)"
http://rakkoentertainment.com/fastever/
Is it just me or does the demo screen just freeze up halfway through? He talks about clicking on things and showing changes, but I just see his screen nothing happening.
That was my fear while I was writing the post :\

The problem with Rx / RAC is there's a big learning curve, especially coming from procedural programming. It's much bigger than 1 blog post can cover. My hope at least is that it will drive at least some people to dive deeper.
I feel this story demonstrates one of the "emotional vulnerabilities" of Lean Startup/MVP movement. You're going to crank a product out and then you expose it -- whether it's deliberately marketing it, pitching it to investors, showing it to friends, etc. You expect to hear something back like, "great concept, bad implementation," and so you just gradually improve the implementation until people stop thinking it's bad.

But sometimes you'll hear, "terrible concept, so I don't even care about the implementation," and that can be very demoralizing. Really, it should be taken as, "your implementation is so bad that I don't get the concept," which requires the same iterations of "improve the implementation." But it's too easy to basically just hear, "you guys don't know what the hell you're talking about so why don't you stop wasting everyone's time, including your own."

As we so often quote to ourselves: "your startup idea idea is worthless by itself." But that's not entirely true. Startup ideas indeed have no value to anyone by themselves. But they must have worth to the startup founder, because without that burning desire to solve that particular problem, how can a startup founder have the mental fortitude to persevere when their first iterations get very negative feedback?
Yes. At one point in our history the criminal justice discussions were about how best to rehabilitate the offender rather than punishment. Punishment that neither makes the victim whole or rehabilitates the offender is just useless vengeance.
Choosing cohorts that won't rat you out happens to be an important part of not getting caught. In the case of Ex's someone who won't hold a grudge or seek vengeance, bribery well pick someone who has morals, then make sure to pay them enough to make bribery a non-issue.
Nokia being sued by investor for fraud after share price tumbles
Yup, same here. Still, the overall concept is interesting and potentially useful enough that I'm going to try it out.
Raising venture capital seems not to require building a secure product:

http://tinyurl.com/7pad22b
(Click the search bar to execute the code)
And no publisher or any intermediary to rip off both the author and the readers.
It's very true. By far the worse thing inside is the boredom.
When you see it on TV/movies all you see is the drama. You don't see the endless hours of _absolutely.nothing.to.do_
It's mind numbing. So you try to sleep as much as possible to make the time pass
Yeah, or maybe the backdoor "accidentally" has a lot of null-reference bugs and other crappiness. It isn't adding business value in the first place, why try to make it any good.
Will it? Criminals know they can be wiretapped, but that hasn't stopped them from using phones for communicating.
I expect this will get thrown out, but if it doesn't the discovery phase could be interesting...
Misspelled my last name. :(
Thank for the quick response.
How long does it take to learn these 3 languages (consider the fact i had 10 years ago CS degree but never used it)?
This is partly off-topic, but I think it is interesting to rewind the clock to the year 2000 and remember the reasons why people, at that time, found PHP so interesting. I recall I was drawn to PHP at that time because it made it so easy to make a change to the code and see the change instantly. Not much else offered that, at that time (other than Perl). The world of the JVM seemed burdensome: you had to recompile to see a change. Only Perl and PHP allowed almost live editing of your code, and instant refresh. It is interesting to think about how much tools have advanced, and especially tools in the JVM world. Some of the advantages that Perl and PHP seemed to have in 2000 are advantages that no longer exist.

One can argue that PHP is easier to learn than any language in the JVM ecosystem, but still, I think it is important to think about how much things have changed. The JVM eco-system has largely caught up to script languages in offering ease of editing/ease of seeing one's changes.
Amazingly bad article, riddled with inaccuracies. Is it because the stat/math has to be toned down so much becaudse otherwise the average Forbes reader can't grok the content ?
First he says, "mean and standard deviation define a normal distribution". They do no such thing. You don't even know what probability distribution attendance at sports events is when you compute mu and sigma. Then he says, ok its not normal, its power law. But the reason he attributes for power law is all wrong. Its not normal because there are no "negative people" to lower the mean ?! Ha ha ha!

His second example on the height weight regression line has little to do with whether there is a physical relationship between height and weight. If you really went to know, your weight might be a function of some two dozen variables like body surface area, bone structure/density, genetics, food-intake, income levels, nature of work ( sedentary vs active ) etc. Even if you gathered data on all those, 24 dimensions is a lot. So you do a principal components, and what does that do ? The first PC from the PCA gives you a conflated component that explains say 90% of your weight. That conflated component is going to be a linear weighted sum of many of the 24 dimensions. That conflated component is just a math object, doesn't exist in reality. If you want, I can easily connect your body weight to the attendance at your local sports event and a residual, and that regression might even be a good fit :)

In any case, none of this has anything to do with R, so his title is pure linkbait.
Thanks. I am indeed the author. Didn't realise I was banned!
Article 1, section 8: "The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."

Article 2, section 3: "He [The President] must... take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Article 2 also expresses that the President has power to head executive departments and delegate powers thereunto.

While you're at it, you might also want to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem . 'Ad hominem' is a particular type of invalid deduction. It's not a fancy Latin name for when you feel persecuted.
I just heard a BBC news spot where one of the interviewees, a law professor if I recall correctly, indicated that the support for CISPA by Facebook and other prominent startups was in order to provide legal cover for just these types of requests.

Under current rules, it was stated, while these companies can be pressured by the FBI to release certain info and give certain access, they have no immunity from litigation - so they can still be sued for complying with the requests by their users and other concerned parties.

The interviewee indicated that CISPA gives them the legal immunity they need so that they can comply with the FBI while being able to fend off potential lawsuits.
Good catch -- fixing now.
My bad:(

Fixed:)
At first I thought this was a non-sequitor, but I see now you are trying to make the argument that my claim that there is no enumerated authorization for police is silly, because the constitution doesn't enumerate other things-- like the Air Force.

Let me introduce you to The Enumerated Powers Clause, specifically:

"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;"

So, clearly it is constitutional to have an Air Force (which is an "army" and in fact started as the air wing of the army) but it is not constitutional to have a "standing army" which is why the appropriations are limited to 2 years.

Interestingly, and going to my original point, one of the reasons for this was the past abuse of the existence of the army as a federal police force, that the revolutionaries wanted to avoid.

Unfortunately, this restriction has been dispensed with, so you can say that the existence of the Air Force is authorized, but not it being a standing army, by the constitution.

Here's a convenient list of the enumerated powers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_powers
IIRC, The Great Wall was only breached once over hundreds of years.

Competence != total invulnerability. I can't fathom why anyone would argue it should.
"To serve and protect." Is that even true anymore? Was it ever? Was just reading about an apparent increase in cop-on-citizen sexual assault among Occupy Wall Street protesters:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/david-graeber-new-pol...

Why aren't our law enforcement professionals more accountable to us, the citizens they purportedly "serve"? The transaction ought to be that we, the citizenry, grant them privileges - go through red lights, carry firearms, right to detain people - in return for restraint and considered application of those privileges. I no longer believe in the integrity of that transaction.

Maybe I'm overreacting to propaganda. But what reassurance does our law enforcement ever offer us that they are not abusing their privileges?
Engadget Podcast 292 - 05.04.2012
https://skitch.com/matthewbeale/82y5t/car-used-price-850

Admittedly, searching for "car" is vague, but this is just too funny of a result to not share :-)

Exciting!
> "RIAA controlling a government investigation"

Several ex RIAA lawyers hold top Justice Department posts, as was pointed out by Ray Beckerman back when they were appointed.

> "secret extensions as they wait for their masters"

The case was delayed for about a year because they were waiting on the RIAA for proof of infringement after seizing the site based on an RIAA complaint.

But I can see your point about the way they phrased it.
Interesting idea. To set prices, etc. there'd have to be "buyers" and "sellers" of some sort, and some way of attracting outside parties (or perhaps other startups) to do the buying and selling even if it's not for real money.

The main thing to keep me from participating would be the distraction factor- rather than going through the unsexy fundamentals (making a good product and keeping it good) I'd be tempted to drive a different set of metrics. $10k is a powerful motivator, but not as powerful as making a living or hitting a grand slam.

The key to making this work is making it require very little additional effort on the startups themselves beyond what they'd ordinarily be doing.
You just described Kickstarter[1]. :)

I personally like this approach because it doesn't rely on distribution
as a business model anymore. By the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's 2012
and we're still forced to pay for flipping some bits because an industry
thinks it deserves to be saved from having been made obsolete through
technological progress by ridiculous and increasingly draconian laws.

[1]: http://www.kickstarter.com/
Omar, Priceonomics should have a price page for itself
"There's no reason that DRM could allow the easy transfer of a book from one person or platform to another."

You've inadvertently hit onto the core issue. DRM isn't about copy protection, it's ultimately about power. If DRM were only about publishers wanting to limit consumers to the same rights and capabilities that physical copies have it would have a much different form that it does today. Instead, DRM as it exists in reality is a tool to leverage even greater control over sales and wrest the very idea of "ownership" from buyers. It's no coincidence that almost all DRM schemes refuse to allow buyers to transfer their purchases to others.

All the talk about DRM is misleading, in reality it's just a power grab. Ultimately (much like software patents) we have to confront the way it exists in the actual world, not some hypothetical perfect ideal that has never been realized.

Today DRM is not a good thing, and for that reason we should strive to get rid of it.
I don't think I'm disagreeing with the gist of your comment, but a couple of the ideas you put forward as givens freaked me out.

We have to leave aside two unanswered statements in your comment: how many people in prison actually deserve to be there, and how many of their rights prisoners surrender by being convicted of a crime. I'd argue that one's human rights don't ever get revoked, but that's just me.

What is the purpose of prison? I'd argue that it's a dual purpose: punishment and rehabilitation.

Being away from everyone you've ever loved or known is a terrible punishment. Once you walk out of a prison years after you went in the world will have changed out from under you. Your babies are grown and won't know you. Your parents might have died. Your friends' lives have moved on without you. The rhythms of daily life are now foreign to you. The particulars of any specific penitentiary system might make this easier (visitation, parole, etc.), but this is pretty horrible.

Why does someone commit a crime? Unless they are mentally unbalanced (which, in the US, is served by separate processes... e.g. pleading insanity), they have behaviors that are unacceptable outside of a set of social norms. Giving someone the opportunity to learn what society expects of them should be part of being in prison. Isn't education a great way to figure that out? Why should we be against someone trying to turn their life around after making some terrible choice? (Again, leaving aside questions of over-eager judicial systems e.g. the US' war on drugs)
[NSClassFromString(@"WebView") _enableRemoteInspector];

2) Start simulator

3) Visit http://localhost:9999 in Safari for a full-featured WebKit debugger.

I like competition but I'm not really sold on the advantages of this platform over its one-line, built-in alternative.
I would love for there to be a way to help prisoners not commit future crimes but this seems like a huge stretch.

First, most prisoners are not drug kingpins, they are people that do drugs to the point of not being able to control their lives, or people who commit violent crimes for nonsensical reasons or people who steal large or small sums of money. Many are people you would literally be scared to see in public.

Second, entrepreneurial prisoners like drug dealers are dealing drugs because they do not view risk the same way normal people do. They are in prison because they decided to take an illegal path toward making money knowing that it was easier than working.

Third, VCs will have a tough time explaining to their LPs about how they finance criminals. Even worse would be a VC’s risk if they finance one and the business fails and they have to explain it to their LP.

Forth, a really tough thing about starting a business is getting various people in the industry to work with you. Being a past prisoner is likely to be a burden in those relationships.

Fifth, them getting state/national licenses that may be required to start various businesses will be very challenging.

There are exceptions, like there are with every rule, but this is a tough sell. I could see a very small number of people being helped this way, but I genuinely feel like it would be tough. There are so many great people working toward businesses with no criminal background, it seems strange to try to put the effort in to people that have made no effort for themselves.
Great article, very lispy, very fp.
Lead me to question myself about more abstract problems.

Anybody knows other articles of this kind ?
It is thought that photosynthesis uses quantum computation to determine how to move energy internally within a cell. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2007/May/Photosynth...
Kickstarter of Doom: Hoax Site Funds Torture Bus, Death Drones
Interesting. I talked about this with a friend, who did her BS in Math and Physics and now is a PhD in engineering. What we finally agreed was that physics is just so vast, that the `practical' aspects have spawned engineering branches. i.e mechanics == mechanical engineering, electromagnetism == electrical engineering, atomic physics == nuclear engineering and so on. Maybe we should do the same with Computer Science
I'm not sure that's true. http://users.stat.umn.edu/~geyer/lottery/

Summing up our conclusions, it's much better to play in a week with a big jackpot than a small one (duh!) but even in a week with a near record jackpot (second largest in history) the lottery is only almost but not quite a break even proposition.
... What is that "car" in the picture?
Selling your time and skills isn't selling pickaxes. That's just offering to dig for gold at a cost above what you'll find when you dig.
Jury in Oracle v. Google has reached a verdict on all questions but one
Like others have pointed out, the latest daily version is at the bottom of the list. But I dont know enough of Go to know if the book content is up to date with the latest changes.
As a matter of principal, I downvote anyone who comes onto HN and comments 'I stopped reading after ....'.

If you didn't read the article, then you have no value to add to this discussion. The fact that the guy agrees with you just makes it comical.