skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, using this just reminds me of how much I hate copyright law and geographic restrictions. Netflix is great, but the Netflix movie selection in Canada is... paltry, in comparison.
Yeah, this is like using Wikipedia as a starting point in researching an unfamiliar topic. It might be poorly written and do more harm than good but likely you'll get enough from it to pursue further.

"Don't trust stuff you read on forums", as PG said; use your head and maybe you'll find something worth pursuing.
WWDC App may be Showing a new UIKit iPhone theme for iOS 6
Not all people have fast internet connections. Seeing a background image loading 2+ seconds just isn't a good impression.

There are file specific things where imdb wouldn't help me:

What if I want to browse all 720p or better h.264 science fiction movies with a german audio track?

Stuff like that.
It's called an "analogy". He didn't try to make them out to be the same. Personally, I feel it's an apt comparison and one that has occurred to me too many times.

The fact that each field has its "own set of requirements, regulations, practice, and repercussions" is obvious to everyone.

Perhaps a better way to respond to such an analogy is to explain how the similarities and differences make his analogy valid or invalid. That could be interesting and informative.
But there's negative value in telling people what you're really up to. I first heard it from Derek Sivers who said that Repeated psychology tests have proven that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen [1]. And it actually makes sense...

So it might be better to engage in some little public self-embarassment than go around telling what you're up to...

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...
from dod import air_force

air_force.launch({"f22": 3, "b2": 4})
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I was trying to figure out how to implement this well. One of my principles for this tool is to stay simple, and avoid trying to compete with the 'professional' tools like DUATS, ForeFlight, etc. While pulling and parsing TAFs for large airports is only a moderate work item, I fear the complexity I would add by trying to locate the nearest airport with a TAF and then trying to interpolate it.

Are you looking for something like--'should I fly in 4 hours?'. Knowing what people are looking for could help me keep the solution simple and effective.

Again, thanks for taking a look. The audience for such a tool is small, so I appreciate and any all feedback.
it's not as if we were purchasing one language. It's a stretch goal, with python as the reward. The goal and the difficulty of implementation are not related.
On my first year in a startup
Nice.js Warps Javascript into ASCII art
For those of you watching this unfold and wondering what "post hoc ergo proctor hoc" means, check this clip (from The West Wing) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL_vHDjG5Wk/

(I would also like to say that this is in no way legal advice and should only be used as background material in research) I had to :)
can anyone clarify "There is no guarantee that removing a point increases the area of the adjacent triangles; thus, the algorithm considers the effective area as the larger of the associated triangle and the previously-removed triangle" - it does't appear in the original paper (afaict) which seems to emphasise that the method is point-based (implying no such "memory"). and i can't see why it's needed.

it's clearly there in the source, but i don't understand the comment there, either. what am i missing?! (i understand the lack of a guarantee of increasing area - what i don't understand why the algorithm should "care"; once the point is gone, it is gone...).
I actually run a company that creates names, so I'd love to help :) http://www.nomvilla.com

But if you'd rather do it yourself, I still recommend reading our methodology and case studies - there's a lot of good info in there, in terms of finding the right name.

http://nomvilla.com/methodology/

http://nomvilla.com/case-studies
In C at least, pushbutton could be strictly greater than one and still be treated as true, but that would be a different result in the arithmetic versions of the statement. It could be made identical by using "!!pushbutton".
Have you experimented with topologically consistent simplification? In my experience, that's the hard part - otherwise when simplifying (e.g.) state borders, the borders no longer match up.
Twitter expected to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2014
In my eyes (and maybe this is unreasonable of me, anyone else?), you lose credibility when you state, as fact, your own opinions that you know other people disagree on.

You begin your comment by saying "You make one good point…" Is that a fact? No. Did you state it as a fact? Yes, in that you stated it without qualifiers. Does that mean you have no credibility? Of course not, come on.

For the rest of it, let's rephrase your own logic a bit: "I don't know if sending people to the back of the bus is wrong, but I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the foreseeable future" would be a pretty weak argument against declaring segregation unethical.

It hinges around the idea of whether or not you're hurting people. You started your original comment by saying that "clearly unethical" is a debatable point, but then you tried to draw an equivalence between piracy and a three more victimless acts. You then say "ethics don't matter" and follow that up with "I don't hurt people." I'm saying you do hurt people. It's debatable, but you dismiss debate of it by trying to argue that ethics don't matter and you're not going to think about it. That's not a good counter an assertion that piracy is unethical.

(As a side note, the Stanford Experiment and related studies suggest that both of us would beat and murder women if it were socially acceptable. Creepy stuff that, which is one of the reasons why I think it's important not to tie "ethical" too closely to "socially acceptable." It's also why your notion that "ethics don't matter, I don't really have to think about it" upsets me, perhaps more than it should.)
Journalism: The best of times, and the worst of times
Each language is rolling out its own GC. Why not share some efforts in a common library?
Full Show 5/31/12: Bye-Bye DOMA
Oprah’s back with a digital book club
This is a surprisingly different algorithm from Douglas-Ramer-Peucker. Visvalingam's algorithm gradually removes detail, while Peucker gradually restores removed detail.

I'm really curious, too, how Visvalingam performs when the variance of the heights of the triangles is large. Intuitively, it seems like it'd be much more aggressive than Peucker about removing spikes in data, which, depending on what you were aiming at, could be good or bad. Imagine processing a polyline whose coordinates are:

[0,0],[4,2],[8,0],[9,-9],[10,0],[14,1],[18,0]

Peucker would preserve [9,-9] until very last. It seems like Visvalingam would remove that relatively early.

edit: Either way, it's a nice algorithm to add to the quiver.
Fervor, a simple multiplatform application autoupdater inspired by Sparkle
That's a rather simplistic view and a slippery slope.

Spending time on a pretty dashboard is one of the easiest ways to get drawn into vanity metrics and fapalytics.

Proper monitoring is important, but that usually means completely different things for different departments.

The CEO doesn't need to see database performance charts because he can't make sense of them anyway. Likewise the admin doesn't need to see conversion charts because they are not relevant to his work.

Trying to squeeze unrelated data into a common dashboard often leads to false correlations and entire herds of shaved yaks.

You provided a nice example for a false correlation yourself: The conversion-rate almost never relates to database performance in any meaningful way.
Generally, how does a computer catch an exception?
My best guess is that in the initial 3 months they wont be doing just the page, they will be outlining the efforts in order to comply in the next 12 months with the executive order, buy any hardware they must buy, and delegate any work to any branches they might need to
Plus the rotation thing is nice.
My understanding is that the "practice of law" is to essentially act as a lawyer. In the United States, every citizen is guaranteed the right to practice law in their own defense. "Practice of law" on someone else's behalf when you are not a lawyer may incur fines, as most jurisdictions try to protect their citizens from being represented by someone who has no idea what they're doing. The line between talking about someone's legal troubles and "practicing law" are somewhat fuzzy, however. Is it really that common for someone who has not represented themselves as an attorney to be held accountable for providing bad legal advice in a posting on a message board?
The problem really is that all three of those fields(law, taxes, and health) are highly personal. To get to the right answer in most non-trivial situations, a lot more personal information is required.

Because of that, while anecdotes are very helpful in making a person feel better about their situation, they might not be the right information that the person needs.

It's better to consult with experts who should be able to assist with the specific situation.
DevOps Borat, consider this a job offer to work at HelloFax (YC W11)
Let me rephrase that for you:

"Considering how lightweight the Google homepage is compared to Amazon's, their responsiveness/uptime feat seems less impressive"
I think you're thinking about this wrong. Python support appears to be an incentive/carrot to help raise more money in general, not just for that feature. So Chris probably thought "it would be nice if we could raise even more money" for all sorts of features and picked one of them (built-in Python support) to use as an incentive.
As good as Wolf's points are, it doesn't change the fact that more and more Mac developers are starting to shift to a MAS-preferred market.

At this stage, even though I would rather buy most of my apps direct from developers, I'm often half-afraid to do that because of the inevitable "what happens when they shift to MAS-only" question arises.

It's already happened with 1Password, Coda 2, Pixelmator and a number of my other favorite Mac apps -- it's hard, as an end-user, to support the old regime when maintaining two separate software branches continues to be a PITA for developers.

And that's the real problem. Developers retain two branches because they want to offer customers options (as well as legacy support for regular pre-MAS releases), but most of the Mac developers who are both selling direct and in the MAS are seeing much more income from MAS. If forced to choose, I can't imagine a developer picking the option that gets in front of fewer customers.

Still, there are some very, very real concerns for Mac software due to the new Sandboxing rules. Fortunately, now that the deadline has passed, we'll actually get to see just how bad it is.
As is obvious to most on HN, requiring an API (as opposed to a CSV file release schedule, etc.) is fairly meaningless, and most definitely not a presidential-caliber dictate. Some agencies' data might be far better suited to publication in a CSV and posted on a web page, for example.

If a president could have a meaningful impact on this sort of thing, it would be in setting a high bar for the quality of information released by agencies. Any sort of requirement of this kind is completely absent from the announcement.

So rather than being about transparency as it's being touted, the announcement is a celebration of high tech obfuscation. Soon the same sort of insulting, opaque, useless information spouted by officials in press conferences will be available via HTTP. This is at best a neutral day for democracy.
Social interstitials / floating elements are rapidly becoming one of my least favorite elements of current Web design.

"Remove It Permanently" plugin rocks Firefox. No such love on mobile browsers, unfortunately.
hope we can apply for H-1B similarly real soon
No problem. Have you guys considered adding a search by date added feature? I'm not sure how often I'd use it, but it just feels like something is missing without it, kind of like if Google didn't have the I'm Feeling Lucky button. (Though I definitely would use it at least once in a while, because sometimes it's nice just to go through the archives of your lifestream to be reminded of stuff that you've completely forgotten about otherwise.)
Increase Brain Power and Improve Memory by Playing Games
How can you increase your memory power? Simple! Play mind games! It can be fun! The article discusses how can you enlarge your brain capacity, boost and improve your memory. As 80% of people are classified as average intelligence, most of them are fine with it. There are people that want and now they can be above average at least. So if you are in this category, read the article you'll find how to improve brain power and increase your memory.
Big parking spaces just subsidies and encourage car use. (At least that's the line of the UK government, and the reason why they basically require you to have less parking spaces than household units in new residential developments.)
Awesome service and great team. Much deserved.
They'll simply report they haven't been able to implement the report, someone will get a slightly lower evaluation score and life.gov will go on as usual.
http://paulisageek.com/imdb-250-netflix/
Schools vs Startups
Not necessarily. There are many more moving pieces to this, especially considering DRM.
IANAL, but here are some other things that others involved in the system have related to me:

A lot of what the lawyers do is to prepare the case and documents in order to save work for the judge. If there's a amateur doing it, it can mean a lot more work for the judge and he may not be real thrilled about it.

Be prepared to explain why do you don't have a lawyer doing it. It's hard to know how well the answer "because I didn't want to pay lawyer's rates" is going to go over because the judge and all of his professional peers are lawyers.

In a smaller city it's quite possible that everyone in the room (including the opposing lawyer) will know each other well and lunch together on a regular basis. Except you.
I've worked with Neil, and he is indeed extraordinary. I'd say he's who I want to be when I grow up except it's not clear he's grown up. See, for example, the centrifuge in his living room (http://neil.fraser.name/hardware/centrifuge/).
From the definition you've linked to (emphasis mine):

"The following is an example of one state’s definition of legal advice:

"An _attorney-client relationship exists_ and one is deemed to be practicing law whenever 'one undertakes _for compensation_, direct or indirect, to advise another, not his regular employer, in any matter involving the application of legal principles to facts or purposes or desires.'"

I'm unclear at what point nirvana entered into a client-attorney relationship with the OP, and at what point he was compensated for his legal advice.
A New HN-Based Home Page
I have my own ideas about how to do this, and I'm glad someone is moving in this direction, but I must ask, is this a stepping stone in a grander vision? Enemies of software development today are:

1. Code Comprehension: Can new people quickly understand a complex code base enough to implement significant features.
2. Fault Diagnosis: When is the last time you spent less than 50% of a project's time on debugging?
3. Code Transformation: Have you ever actually tried to factor a mega-function into separate functions? How about creating a set of concrete classes when you realize that your hierarchy abstraction breaks down under new requirements. Now do all that without introducing new bugs.

These are the hard problems, and it excites me that people are thinking about how to solve them. This tool will not solve all those problems, and maybe one tool shouldn't, but nevertheless I hope people will start thinking about the entire development process and how to improve all the tools of our industry.
Epictetus: Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable
> You are in a very small minority there. Sorry.

I'm fine with that.

One last point worth considering - exactly what is the evidence that it is unintentional? None as far as I can tell other our leaders assert it constantly. And then turn around and do it again, repeatedly. To be clear, I don't think likely almost ever is. There's simply no advantage to it, especially in the modern information age. It's willful disregard in my opinion, which is debatably marginally better, but only marginally.

And the reason I focus on the actions of my society, the US, boils down to partly because it's my home, and there's no where you care more about than your own home. As much as I condemn the actions of Iran, or any other state, there's zero I can do about it. I'm not Iranian. I can, however, affect change here, again in the most powerful state, where it matters most. And the most fundamental principle of any moral framework is that you hold yourself to the same standards you seek to apply to others. More stringent ones, in fact, if you're serious about it.
This will likely go down the same way the original IPV6 mandate went down, before it was postponed, and before it likely will be postponed again when nobody's met the mandate.

The issue is far more complicated than the comments I see in here are giving credit for. Don't get me wrong, there's going to be delay as the PHBs get themselves wrapped around what an API even is, but they'll have the directive routed to their CIOs before that, and they will understand the requirement, and how impossible it is.

The biggest issue is that the data isn't really owned by the government entities. I mean, the data is theirs, but it's locked up in their vendor provided tools, and/or their custom, built-by-vendor products. If they're using Oracle AquaLogic (or whatever it is now) to host the majority of their portal content, they're dependent on Oracle to either come in and show them how to implement the feature (which is a significant service dollar cost) or they're going to have to wait until Oracle builds the ability for API exposure into the product if it doesn't exist yet.

If they've got custom-built portals, they'll need to consult with the vendors who wrote them or maintain them now and get them to add that in. That means that they'll have to modify the contract originally bid for the project, which is going to eat up a couple months of the timeline alone. Then they'll have to figure out what sort of things actually make it into the API, how to segment sensitive data reliably, get it through ISSO testing, etc. It's almost impossible for a project of any significance.

On top of that, they'll have to do it with a budget they don't have, and with resources allocated elsewhere. The only way the government really gets anything done is by committing large amounts of resources to it in an uninterrupted fashion. They don't have the capacity to be agile, and to some extent, that's by design.
You have plenty of responses. But you are probably right. I'm the problem.
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I'd be very interested in coming along as well, if at all possible. I'm near Michigan State often, doing UX Design at TechSmith. Feel free to email me at bulletsvshumans@gmail.com .
Manufacturer disputes backdoor in military chips - researchers disagree
It isn't necessarily hypocrisy. It makes sense for them to be leery of acting without first talking about the limits they believe should be applied to cyberwarfare. A single act may be consistent with many different interpretations, and the United States could easily be blamed if one of their allies committed some heinous act and justified it using a doctrine they extrapolated from Stuxnet and other acts condoned or committed by the United States.

As an analogous example, parents, knowing that many people think in crude categories such as "drugs" and "illegal," would not simply pot in front of their children without explanation. They would not want to discover later that their kids were doing meth or shoplifting and hear, "What are you angry about? You smoked illegal drugs right in front of me. How is this different?" The parents would likely find themselves accused of hypocrisy, by their kids and by others who honestly or disingenuously failed to understand the distinctions the parents drew between smoking pot and doing meth, or smoking pot and shoplifting.

I don't know if the United States has an official stance on the acceptable use of cyberwarfare, but the fact that they chose to leak their involvement in Stuxnet rather than openly admit it and justify it suggests that they have no official policy to cite (though it may also be that they don't want to officially acknowledge responsibility for Stuxnet's collateral damage.) If there is no official articulation of policy, we really are setting unpredictable precedents that are likely to implicate us in future disasters.
I like Guava, which at least lets me write the functional version before I try to figure out how to write idiomatic Java. Being able to do fp is a nice "fallback" option, compared to the always having to think imperatively. (for loops for mapping and filtering? Gag me with a spoon.)
I disagree. Certainly some agencies may have data that ought to be examined holistically via CSV (at least for researchers?), but having data available via API is better than the status quo.

While this might not set a "high bar for the quality of information," the President's effort shows a level of commitment to both technological streamlining of government agencies and to transparency and is, at the very least, a step in the right direction.
Facebook IPO Most Successful In History – You Idiot
The two issues are completely orthogonal.
The issue with law is that laws are dissimilar from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, in meaningful enough ways that giving advice based on the laws for one jurisdiction might be entirely useless in another. Moreover, even I were to live in that jurisdiction, unless I am intimately familiar with the aspect of law questioned about (which is highly unlikely, even extremely experienced attorneys do legal research), I will have to spend time researching. If I spend time researching, I expect to be paid, generally because the tools used to research are not, themselves, free, like Westlaw or LexisNexis. Moreover, I generally get paid to research to begin with so, in not doing paid research for other clients, I am potentially losing money I might otherwise be making.

Not to say that lawyers can never give good legal advice to legal questions without researching--but the paradigm that I just described is a big reason why people, including lawyers, answer legal questions with "hire a lawyer."
Congrats, Chris! I waited until the last minute but I'm very glad to have contributed to your KickStarter. Looking forward to seeing what I can do with and without the paid license.
Java + a good modern IDE like IntelliJ are far from the last word on all these questions, of course, but they're much better than you might guess if you have't worked in that world for a while. I was astonished at how powerful the combination of a simple, statically typed language and a good IDE can be. You can almost completely stop thinking of code as a bunch of text and start thinking about it as an organically evolving structure.

The tooling around dynamic languages is almost laughably primitive and limited in comparison.
Anonymous Taking Credit for Facebook Outage?
How about this

http://georgenava.appspot.com/demo/hn/index.html

Let me know if you like it so I can post it in "Show HN"

* better seen in modern browsers like safari, chrome and firefox

* nothing works, this is just a mockup, stop clicking on links