skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I get a sense you're actually arguing the tragedy of the commons"

Above all yes. One can only be punished if one has broken a law, a law can only exist if someone cared to argue in its favor and have it created, the motivation to care exists only when the interests of someone are threatened. It doesn't work like that 100% of the time but it's a consistent basic rule of humanity.

"the first world simply steals Africa's wealth"

Simply steals it? The wealth of an entire continent? That's unsubstantiated rhetoric used to simplify a complex problem to American viewers. Many African nations have mineral deposits, land, even diamonds. But don't have wealth because they lack the ingredients to harness the power of their natural resources. Historians have studied America for a long time to try to determine how out of all the world's nations, the West has dominated. It's influence, it's money, it's language, it's ideas, inventions, and culture are everywhere. Why not China? Why not Europe? Historians boiled it down to more or less 5 things. With Land Ownership being one of the most important things that leads towards a democracy and free market. Advancement in Science, freedom of expression & religion, follow afterward. Even countries that are growing in power and influence are doing so by mimicking the values that got the West where it is. Land ownership + Freedom of expression + consumerism + free markets + Scientific, educational, and technological advancements.

Land ownership and democracy go hand in hand. "Up to 90% of sub-Saharan Africa's land area is currently untitled. Without legal owners, this land falls to the state, which makes it easy to lease to foreign investors". The whole point of a democracy is to make it difficult for dictators to make massive decisions affecting an entire country. Without land ownership in Africa all you have to do is bribe one or two officials to get massive amounts of land. If Africa had stronger land ownership rights this would not be possible. Land would be sold by the owner with it's owner benefiting from the sale. Thus giving locals power and the ability to accrue wealth. Instead the people of a land work to maintain and live off of it but can lose it through no fault of their own due to a decision by someone they don't even know.

"a more traditional 'communal' view of the land has been associated with a broader and deeper connection with the land, and a healthier sense of custodianship."

You're thinking of the Native Americans from hundreds of years ago before the industrial revolution and consumerism. That doesn't work anymore, Neither in country nor continent. The poorest countries in the world use the communal land system. And it's that system that keeps them poor. They can't build or sell anything because they don't own anything to begin with.
> The only instance in which I’d really urge caution is that public Wi-Fi scenario, particularly when you’re in an environment surrounded by other people with technical know-how.

The first condition is satisfied whenever you're in a coffee shop, airport, hotel, university campus, wifi-enabled public transportation ... i.e. pretty much everywhere except your own home and possibly your workplace. Some of these places use WPA, but most I've seen don't use any encryption. The second condition shouldn't be too easy to satisfy, either, particularly when you're in a place like the Bay Area.

Blacklisting isn't good enough when it comes to security, we all know that. So the advice should rather be: Anyone can steal your Stack Overflow session at any time whatsoever, unless you're using an Ethernet cable or your own secure Wi-Fi. (Even then, your ISP or a three-letter government agency could see your traffic, but they're probably more interested in watching you than impersonating you.)
Crypto for Pentesters Video - Tom Ptacek - Spring 2012
A couple more tips:

Topical ideas are great. The judges can better identify with the problem that your hack solves, and it seems more relevant.

Hardware hacks tend to steal the show, e.g. a touch-enabled chalkboard, hardware "facebook", or a tweeting microwave. At three of the last four hackathons I've been to, a hardware hack has won. But be wary - at some hackathons they'll specifically tell the judges that the winning hacks must balance being awesome with being useful (specifically the facebook hackathon).

Fake it until you make it. This is a lesson I still need to take to heart. If your app doesn't look like it's going to work and you have an hour to go, hack together something that will give a good demo.
ATMs don't scan a deposited check or cash. They wait for someone in the bank to open it and determine whether it is legit, then the account is credited. But after a while your account becomes "trustworthy" and any deposits are credited to the account before it is checked.
You're missing the point. Clients can't justify hiring him for such an exorbitant rate because his claim to fame is somewhat mediocre.
^moot
If the old version of X11 will not function on 10.8, it does.
Has it been 17 years since 1995? OH MY
Russia Dumps Linux for Windows
The personification of the CSS Box Model,
There are a number of changes in the last two releases of OS X that concern me.

But removing Java and X11 from the base install doesn't bother me as long as they remain easy enough to obtain afterwards for those of us that need them.
a hacker camp is such a great idea. they should check a few club mates so nobody has to sleep...
http://www.club-mate.de/

(german drink - german homepage...)
Open Source Initiative claims infringement on part of Open Source Hardware logo
I was only replying to your "here's error handling without goto". And I'm not implying that it is impossible - just that your solution does not scale as is to more than one level of scoping.

There is nothing that absolutely needs goto (including error handling), because Turing completeness does not require goto. so you might wait forever; I'm not sure what it is that you guys are arguing about with respect to state machines.

(of note, I keep waiting for TCO proponents to show me an example in which the guarantee of TCO in scheme makes the world so-much-better. The claim always comes up, and every example I've seen so far requires at most adding two more lines in Python, and no adding of TCO)
True, although it's interesting to note that Google is also an investor in IV. (http://gametimeip.com/2011/05/19/the-intellectual-ventures-i...).

Not to say I agree with any of this, but I'm always wary of how the press frames "good" and "bad" guys. The details are usually murky.
It's not up to date - he's also not living in Vienna anymore AFAIK :) With their 2 products churning out big $, I'm not sure Thomas would do consulting at the moment.
State of Haskell, 2011:

http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/08/results-from-state-of-ha...
Letting go of 20 domains, HN members get first chance to buy.
Because Chas is awesome? :)
If you loved using DROP.IO for sharing files then you will love this.. 
moonberri.com
I agree. There are people with far superior resumes who will work for less. Frankly, I think he realizes that he won't get much work charging what he is going to charge. This seems to be a publicity stunt and nothing more.
> What language did you use just prior to adopting Clojure — or, if Clojure is not your primary language now, what is that primary language?

This is just a silly question: almost every single day I am using all of bash, HTML, Python, Objective-C++, Java, C, C++, JavaScript, and SQL. This is required because I do work on a mobile application targeting iOS, Android, and "the browser" that has a server part and native components on the clients (using a mix of custom and off-the-shelf open-source codebases).

So, what is my "primary language"? I'd simply argue I don't have one, and I haven't had one for a decade. The idea of having a primary language honestly comes off to me as a sign that the developer hasn't spent much time programming yet: the real world has so many languages in it, and many times the practical choice is constrained by that of the platform or existing code to interoperate with.

The question about what language I used just prior to adopting Clojure is also not going to work very well: it was probably bash, as I used that language to download and setup Clojure. It may have been something like Haskell, as I might have been in an experimenting mood that day. It could have been any of the above "used" set (as I probably just had "learn Clojure" on my todo list right after something else random). The result of that version of the question doesn't really have meaning.

A much better question might be, "for the tasks that you find yourself now using Clojure, what language do you now feel you are most using less often?" (although spending some more time on the poor "most/less" phrasing that I left in that might cause problems with non-English speakers). This question better handles people who are long past the idea that they primarily code in some specific language.

It also lets you answer the question more precisely: a person even working in only two languages, JavaScript (client, 70%) and Python (server, 30%) who started using Clojure on the server as a replacement for his current usage of Python is a different kind of user than the person who started using ClojureScript on the client as a replacement for his current usage of JavaScript.
I'm inclined to think that such amounts of money aren't paid for some things you find out in systems, but they are paid for you knowing every last bit of the system and giving advice on how to exploit it.
The first hackathon I attended was won by some very uninspiring use of the last.fm API and some other simple tools. It was basically a dashboard to listen to music and get information about the artists with some geolocation stuff. It was interesting to see them win first place, because to the 'hackers' at the event, the project was pretty lame, but since they were done with the functional part of the project after just a few hours, they could spend the rest of the day working on making it look nice. They clearly had the best looking product of the day, and they won because of it. Second place went to a twitter bot that responded to tweets with jokes. I think that a lot of hackers (or maybe just me) go into these things, especially if they haven't gone before, expecting to win by way of being innovative and smart, only to find that what counts in a world of non-technical judges (ie, the real world), isn't necessarily new ideas, but aesthetics, humor, and more generally, human appeal.
I don't have it blocked by opendns and I have quite a few filters active on the network.
Best Buy founder in takeover offer
I have had much the same experience. In a way, programming for its own sake is a skill that’s worth it to have, but not worth it to learn. The up-front cost is high, and you get very little payout until you’ve progressed from journeyman to master. It’s very like writing in that regard, rewarding perseverance—and, by extension, addiction.
Nigeria yet to have an olimpic medal, isnt that worste
I think I addressed this pretty well already. Read the whole post.
30 Linux Kernel Devs in 30 Weeks: Arnd Bergmann
This seems rather knee-jerk.

XQuartz is X11.app. Percentage-wise, not many users needed X11 and the ones who do should be smart enough to follow the instructions they give to get XQuartz.

Apple effectively removed engineering redundancy. It allows for a more aggressive release cycle. Apple engineers still oversee XQuartz. Many of the main committers are Apple employees working on Apple's time, for example, Jeremy Huddleston.

I liken it more to the Java distribution transition as opposed to something like Messages.app obsoleting Mail.app.
MongoDB performance SSDs vs Spindle SAS Drives
Comparison of Web Browser Engines
It's worth noting that OSX does provide VNC support, transparently, as "Screen Sharing". AIUI this should be compatible with other desktop machines that run a VNC server and Bonjour.

While I wouldn't want to defend Apple's decision to drop X11 support, I should note that X11 is a minority pursuit on that platform, the Apple X11 server never worked brilliantly (Apple's use of the Alt/Meta key mapping for accented characters made for a messy collision with X11 world), and if there's a more seamless screen sharing system built into the OS, why not go with the path of least resistance?
Guess on 1 million difference: 2.5m citation is dated 2009, 3.5m citation is dated 2010.
Pageguide.js  An interactive guide for web page elements using jQuery and CSS3
Prediksi Angka Togel Laos 7 Agustus 2012
prediksi togel kali ini saya akan memberikan informasi mengenai Prediksi Angka Togel Laos 7 Agustus 2012, dengan adanya prediksi ini diharapkan para togeler semuanya dapat mempunyai acuan dalam memasang angka togel secara tepat dan akurat dengan memadukan prediksi yang ada pada prediksitogel.info dengan sumber yang sobat togeler miliki
Paying down your technical debt
I've won a couple of Hackathons recently, and the two keys I found were:

1) Make sure your presentation is flawless
2) Don't take on too big of a challenge.

We saw plenty of people that had great projects, but when they went up to present, they had the worst speaking skills I've ever seen, and failed to get their ideas across to the judges. Similarly, we saw plenty of people who took on too much in one weekend, and their presentation consisted of "Well, we wanted to finish X, but we ran out of time" or "This is cool, but doesn't work yet".

The projects we won with were never very complicated, but they were highly polished and you could instantly wrap your head around them.
Interview with a seasoned and successful entrepreneur Mr Inderjit Singh
Apple should remove Terminal.app and replace it with a stub that prompts you to install iTerm2.
Ask HN? What's the right balance of security on Q&A-type password reset systems?
This question is inspired from Gizmodo's recap of the Mat Honan hacking incident:
http://gizmodo.com/5931931/hackers-got-into-honans-icloud-account-with-deception-no-password-required

Particularly this point:

> If the hackers didn't answer the security questions, but merely managed to socially engineer their way around the questions with other bits of personal information, that lays a bit of the blame — a lot of it — in Apples lap

I don't think I need to recap the frequent HN posts that decry how hard it is to get a human to fix an automated customer service screwup. I don't have any experience working customer service but I have a feeling that there a good segment of users, especially of the just-off-the-AOL boat, who regularly forget what they put in their security questions. For example, I'm sure for the "what was your first car" question, people do things like "Camry", "Toyota Camry" or "96 Toyota Camry". All of those answers would be considered wrong if one character was out of place (and I'm being generous in assuming that all Q&A systems strip white space and are case insensitive) by a computer, but a human operator could resolve this.

But how much leeway should a human operator give? If the person entered "96 Toyota Camry" but misses by one year the 1996 part, does she deserve to be locked out? What if she got all the other questions right, including SSN? Yet in that case, that still leaves a sizable hole for social engineering.

I guess in Apples case, they can institute an in-person auentication system, thanks to the ubiquity of their service and retail centers. But this is not feasible for most other services. So what's the line or the solution here?
Oh come on, suggesting to drop vi is practically flamebait.
<Godwin's Law>

First they came for the communists...

</Godwin's Law>
I don't think it's a safe assumption that the only parties upstream from you are ISPs and TLA government agencies. If script kiddies are hacking major corporations I think it's a safe bet that ISPs are vulnerable, too. Your Stack Overflow "identity" may not be of great value, but it's worth keeping in mind that any cleartext traffic is vulnerable. Being cognizant of sending data over the Internet in cleartext is a good thing, to me.
The secret history of the iPhone, as told by Scott Forstall
Unfortunately, as already pointed out, we are being screwed in the USA and have been for about a decade now. This extends, not only to mobile data, texting/SMS, and calling; but also to land data.

It's not just AT&T that is the problem there is an unspoken wink and a nod between the carriers to maintain an, essentially, monopolistic cartel on the market. More so on land, but also in the air.

As much of our economy, choice in mobile and land data is nothing but a facade.
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/xor0j/i_asked_steam_...
Where to Buy Kindle Gift Card? | Amazon Kindle Gift Card
The Zahlschein that is still very common in Germany isn't really any more modern than a check.
The headline on HN is misleading. The whole article is about how Google and Facebook actually had a role in choosing who the beneficiary of these court ordered donations would be, which allows them to give money to the EFF without showing up as large corporate donors on the EFF's donor list.

The actual text of the article's headline is:

"Google and Facebook's new tactic in the tech wars"

With the subtitle:

"Google and Facebook are using a controversial legal doctrine to channel money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and other groups that share their hostility to online copyright enforcement."

This quote explains what's happening:

"These payments to the EFF are being made in suits the EFF played no role in bringing, and the defendants themselves -- Google and Facebook, in these instances -- helped select EFF to be their beneficiary."
The Science of Habit
I believe that the final bullet is the primary feature WebGL has been looking for:

"a multi-application robustness extension that ensures that an application that causes a GPU reset will not affect any other running applications."

AFAIK the only remaining WebGL security concerns are DoS related, where misbehaving content can crash your drivers. There are no currently known leaks of data.
Private torrent tracker site, Demonoid, might be down forever
I enjoy reading Groklaw's coverage. It gets a bit over the top at times but I see that as passion more than prejudice. I find the stuff where pj and Florian go after each other a bit soap opera like and tend to skip over much of that stuff.
> If users object to showing their address publicly, add a free-form text field so they can tell you which name they want to use.

Although I mostly like it, there is a potential identity theft security issue with that approach. Anyone could pick "jmillikin" (or your email address if you have chosen to display that) as the display name.

It is usually possible to set any image as an avatar, so this point might be moot anyway.
One possible answer is to use encryption of some sort when uploading/downloading files. This is annoying to implement though.
Checks are widely used for rent, payroll when direct deposit is not setup, and by the old person in front of you at the grocery store checkout when you're in a rush. In the US, checks are basically a paper method to "order my bank to withdraw said amount from my account and transfer it to the destination account." The laws regarding what makes a valid check are (or at least were) rather loose. Someone once paid his taxes by writing a check on the side of a pig and delivering it to the IRS.
It all depends on what you define as the "cloud" and where your data actually lives.

Would I worry about all my data living in one enormous datacenter in the USA right next to everybody elses, all owned by one gigantic corporation? Sure.

Would I worry less if it was hosted locally by a company in my home town with a datacenter that I can actually go and visit and some agreement in place so that I can have take a copy of the raw data myself and have their copy deleted? Certainly, not to mention that the latency would be better.

I think fast upload is the answer to this and I believe that google fiber plans on providing this.
In that case you can simply have a home server which is basically a NAS+Router on steroids with a static internet IP (thanks to IPV6) , this server could provide a pretty web interface for "normal" users and a unix shell for l33t h4x0rs. Since upstream is fast enough the service is going to be indistinguishable from something like dropbox in terms of speed and I will have full control.

The issues here are data and power reliability , what happens if the disk in my home server dies? There is only so much redundancy you can cram into a small low cost box. I guess the solution would be third party backup services that take advantage of fast upstream to sync the contents of your local box and perhaps can also perform as a "failover" box if your local node fails. The difference here is that you would get a choice of third party backup suppliers, though I imagine most ISPs would provide this as part of the broadband service.

One thing that does concern me somewhat on HN and other development oriented websites is that people do a lot of talking about stuff like APIs and Web services rather than protocols and standards.
Web APIs provide the illusion of data portability since you have some way of interacting with it, but the reality is that you need a way to dump all of your data and you also need 100% compatible software to move it to.

I guess it's difficult to make a business case for designing Email 2.0 unless you know that you can monetise users through some kind of lock-in. Otherwise you could design a fantastic open service only to have someone copy it , undercut you on price and steal all of your users. For example if you could set up your own third party "facebook server" that allows users to interact with FB users without agreeing to facebook TOS or seeing facebook ads.
Here is few more updates: http://goo.gl/7rw7o
The processor is an embedded, radiation hardened, version of the PowerPC.
Two-trick pony
Not sure where you live but auto part stores in the US accept used oils for recycling free of charge.
Minecraft + Node.js + Socket.io = Awesome
On sharpening the saw
High resolution images and file size
Star7 Touchscreen UI Demo by Mr. Java from 1992
This Touch-Screen UI Video from 1992 by the inventor of Java invalidates the so called "IP" of most companies…
Sun Star7 Demo - The Video that makes Touchscreen UI patents look like a JOKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CsTH9S79qI
Thanks for that link. I had no idea BoA offered it. Now if only I could convince myself to use Bank of America.
Inspired by MappedInIsrael.com, entrepreneur Jordan Coeyman built his own.
“Any invariant enforced by the type system is guaranteed to be correct throughout your codebase.”

Strictly speaking, this is only true of languages with sound type systems. C++ lets me enforce immutability with “const”, yet I can deliberately subvert the type system with “const_cast” if I know better than the compiler, or if I just feel like invoking undefined behaviour today.

“I strongly believe that a reason we're seeing people moving to dynamically typed languages is because the popular statically typed languages have given static typing such a bad name.”

This is my perception as well. Static typing that doesn’t actually give you any guarantees is just a nuisance. And developers are notoriously busy, and lazy—it’s only when you can conveniently apply a tool that you actually will apply it. In that regard, Haskell is excellent: it makes me type without making me type.