skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You do understand that the compromise is that everyone is free to call their relationship marriage, and that gay and straight couples would both enter into a civil contract that has a different name than marriage?

A word only has a meaning insofar as a culture decides to use that meaning. So yes, the preferences of individual members of the culture taken collectively are by definition relevant to the debate.

So hopefully we can agree that the current definition of a word is solely about preference.

We are having a problem coming to a consensus over the meaning of the word "marriage."

Group A says it means "one man and one woman"
Group B says it means "two people"
Group C says it means "any group of consenting adults"

If you are in Group A, using the word marriage in a legal document, in the context of "any two people", means you think the government sides with the preferences of Group B, and vice versa.

Two (or more) sides disagree, so a compromise is proposed--we don't use the contested word, we create a new word that everyone can agree on.

Imagine if 2 groups argued about the definition of the word "planet."

Group A says a planet "is spherical"
Group B says a planet "must clear its neighborhood"

The governments starts using the Group B definition, but almost half of the people still use the Group A definition.

In order to avoid a huge fight we compromise and come up with a new word that includes objects that fit both definition, solely for use in legal documents.
This is the essence of take-out. Except, on the phone instead of calling, faxing(!) or ordering online. See: chipotle
I know of plenty of Software Engineers in New Zealand making the equivalent of the US minimum wage.
Sure, it's a combination of skill and luck. But there's definitely luck involved. Are you saying that, in the eyes of the law, there is no luck?
OpenCount, California's Election Auditing Tool, is Open Source
well its called "smart" package manager so perhaps the team believes NPM is a "dumb" package manager? But isn't a package manager suppose to be dumb? Sounds like over-engineering already :P
These seem to be becoming more and more timing attacks. For any given concept in software, it seems there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of overlapping patents on various applications of the idea. It might be a login authentication, a gps location or an in-app purchase. The point is, it doesn't matter. The actual patent is irrelevant. Trolls have something that's going to work, they just need to wait for that golden moment when a company just starts becoming successful. Big enough to pay out, but too small to defend well enough not to be easy money.

Perhaps we need a law firm that specializes in cheaply delaying troll cases long enough for little companies to build some defenses. Perhaps trolls are more like a manageable chronic disease rather than something that needs an immediate cure.
Khan’s definition is fine. Karim Kai Ani is being foolish by insisting that “slope is a rate that describes how two variables change in relation to one another.” No, that’s a rate of change. A “slope” is a commonly used rate-of-change in which there’s a reasonably clear “rise over run” relationship implied between the variables of interest.

But when that relationship isn’t so clearly implied, sensible people don’t try to describe it by calling it a “slope.” Instead, they say what relationship they really care about: Is it the instantaneous rate of change at a specific point? Or at all points along a curve? (Or surface?) Or is it the average rate of change over some interval? Or the weighted average rate of change over some interval of varying density? Or the weighted average rate of change over constant-width intervals centered at certain (or all) points along a curve? Or is it really that they care about—?

You get the drift: If you care about rates of change, you’ll use the term “slope” to describe them only when the context implies a clear “rise over run” relationship between the variables of interest. Kahn seems to get this; Karim Kai Ani, not so much.
I'm actually not very taken with oh-my-zsh. It seems to add a layer of complexity while not really adding anything you couldn't just paste into your .zshrc. If it eliminated tinkering overhead that would be one thing, but in my experience it just gave me a new layer of software that needed tinkering.
The BlueHat Prize V1.0 – And the Winners Are…
It's not entirely a problem with job applicants.

A lot of companies throw "Linux experience preferred" onto job descriptions and what they really means is that once in a blue moon you'll ssh into a Linux server to do a restart or deploy, but 99.9% of the time you'll have to use Windows. Maybe it's just my area, or bad luck on my part, but last time I was looking for a job that's what most "Linux experience preferred" requirements meant.

Does your job description explain exactly what type of Linux experience you want (shell scripting, coding, admin, ...)? Are you emphasizing that that they'll spend all/most of their time using Linux?

It's a real drag being a Linux user stuck on Windows, and if your job description gives the impression Linux is an afterthought, a lot of serious Linux people will pass it over.
OK, but I don't understand where you're going with this. Some people think digital piracy is bad, maybe even "equivalent to theft" of real world artifacts. Most people familiar with technology don't agree with them. As such, our society is not obliged to grant these unnatural monopolistic "rights". Do you want to argue that copyright is equivalent to theft, or do you just want to point out that people who hold an alternate view of copyright are going to be upset when the laws inevitably catch up with society? Of course, there are some people who are going to be unhappy no matter what happens.

I recognize your point that even though the artists feel they are making equivalent or more money than previously, they can still feel wronged when something that is contrary to their concept of copyright occurs. But like I said, I'm not really sure where you intend to go from there.
The number of people who claim 10+ years experience with Linux and cannot write even the most basic of shell scripts is simply staggering and quite depressing.

(literally: "I want to run this command on 100 files. Write me a for-loop in the shell of your choice to do it.")
Unless your parents are very young, or exclusively drove sports cars their entire life, that's almost certainly not true. Front disc / rear drum was a standard design for a long time.

You're more likely to notice disc brakes -- they are more visible from outside the car and require slightly more frequent maintenance -- so you may not be able to think of many cars with rear drums.
That depends on how many kids you have, and how far away the grocery store is (i.e. how much you buy each time you go).
It's fairly obvious to me that an open system, that incorporates Twitter-like functionality as a subset of a greater whole, could take over this space in less than 12 months, leaving Twitter/Facebook as AOL-like also rans.

Big statement. How do you get critical mass when practically every journalist, celebrity, and person you went to school with uses Twitter or Facebook and not your new open system?

While I definitely think an open solution could eventually "take over the space" and leave Twitter and Facebook as "AOL-like also rans," it's far from obvious to me how one would do it in a year.
Quite. I think the whole article can be abbreviated to "Facebook large but not very profitable".
Possibly a naive question:

These LGPL clauses say the binaries for the work that uses the library must be released with the modified source code of the library itself. Does that imply that people would be free to use binaries (and thus the product)? Am asking for the general case, not specifically for Sparrow.
They exist in the UK. They essentially amount to working towards java certs (http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.ge...) or .net certs.

Not exactly a well rounded education in cs...

I would hate to miss the cool stuff in cs, and just become specialised in corporate software...
Widespread Rights Violations in Policing of Occupy Movement
From a new report by the Protest and Assembly Rights Project, which includes civil liberties experts from law clinics at NYU, Fordham, Harvard, and Stanford:

[A]cross the United States, abusive and unlawful protest regulation and policing practices have been and continue to be alarmingly evident. This report follows a review of thousands of news reports and hundreds of hours of video, extensive firsthand observation, and detailed witness interviews. In New York City, some of the worst practices documented include:

• Aggressive, unnecessary and excessive police force against peaceful protesters,
bystanders, legal observers, and journalists

• Obstruction of press freedoms and independent legal monitoring

• Pervasive surveillance of peaceful political activity

• Violent late-night raids on peaceful encampments

• Unjustified closure of public space, dispersal of peaceful assemblies, and kettling
(corralling and trapping) of protesters

• Arbitrary and selective rule enforcement and baseless arrests

• Failures to ensure transparency about applicable government policies

• Failures to ensure accountability for those allegedly responsible for abuses

These practices violate assembly and expression rights and breach the U.S. government’s international legal obligations to respect those rights. In New York City, protest policing concerns are extensive and exist against a backdrop of disproportionate and well-documented abusive policing practices in poor and minority communities outside of the protest context.

http://www.chrgj.org/projects/suppressingprotest.pdf
For iOS, at least, this is a requirement to conform with the license.

Since you cannot dynamically link with libraries on iOS, sparrow is using static linking. The letter of the lgpl requires that you provide the application in a way that it can be relinked - either using dynamic libraries (4.1) or providing the object files to relink (4.0) [1].

Taking a look at the OSX app, it looks like they link with only static libraries there, too, which puts it in the same boat.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
The switch wire is hardly enough unless you want to suddenly slow down for a light press of the brakes.

But teeing off of the brake line with the pressure sensor is hardly impossible.
Do you have concerns about keeping your documentation in sync with your source? I find that when I'm working with examples that if they don't work I first assume that it is me or something in my configuration. The last thing I think of is that the docs are out of sync with the example.
Les misérables
in 2010, the US Department of Education budget was $47 billion [1]. That's between 1-2% of the total budget. The problem with education in the US is not cost, and even if it was, the solution is not 'get rid of a few percent of teachers."

Where did you get that $900 billion number?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budg...
Slime Molds- single cell organism solves shortest path algorithm
Scientists arrange food sources around a slime-mold as major cities in Japan. The slime-mold grows and creates a nutrient transportation network that's almost identical to the rail-system in Japan. Mind blowing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNAxrpzc6ws&#38;feature=player_detailpage#t=3830s
Who's the most important person in your software development shop on any given day? The one you're interviewing. This person is, hopefully, your future.

What's the most important part of your job if you're a software developer in a pre-revenue startup? Hiring people who are smarter than you.

If you don't believe that, do your colleagues and investors a favor and quit.

I'm serious.
How eBay Defied Convention and Turned Itself Around
This, in a Capitalist society where housing and cost of living so high, why would you want to work for free if you can work for money?

Now if we live in a Resource Based Economy, then that is possible, but until then, money is king.
Ha! I really hope none of these techniques are in vogue for iPhone 10. Or iPod 10, for that matter.
I disagree that critiques from those with vested interests should be dismissed out of hand. I do believe that their points should be reviewed more carefully, though.
Ask HN: Why is Google tiptoeing around the Olympics?
Today's Google Doodle is clearly Olympic inspired to go with today's opening ceremonies. Yet, when you mouse over the image, the tooltip which would usually explain the doodle lamely says "hooray for sports"

More interesting and worrisome is that when you click on the image, Google has carefully crafted a query that doesn't say the word "Olympics" anywhere - instead opting to search for "opening ceremony london 2012" and let the results explain themselves.

Strangely, on the results page, there's a whole information and schedule box dedicated to the Olympics, presumably build in cooperation with them.

This seems like overreaching to me - I understand that Google shouldn't be able to use the Olympics brand for free, but they can't even link to search results about the Olympics? Doesn't that set a terrible precedent for whether linking can be construed as trademark and/or copyright infringement?

I'd love to hear opinions and thoughts.
Well, you only need one for it to be annoying!

Just about every album I have has one song that I will routinely skip over, because I don't like it much.
What Is The “Pink Ghetto” and How Do Working Women Get Out of It?
Dave also has a proposed notification standard of his own, called RSSCloud:

http://rsscloud.org/

There's been some drama between the developers of the two systems in the past:

* http://scripting.com/stories/2009/07/22/snappyRetardedAnswer...

* http://brad.livejournal.com/2405147.html

* https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/23404535816912896

(Drama being nothing new to the RSS world, alas. Sigh)
Ubuntu: Unity

Mint: KDE, Xfce, MATE, or Maya [1]

1. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2031
If it makes you feel better, my typical experience with online ordering systems is arriving at the restaurant, walking up to the cashier for pickup, saying "I ordered online" and getting a blank stare while they go back and check the computer, and then waiting around for 10 minutes while they make my order (after everyone else already in line, of course). So in practice, it may not be so frustrating for non-users. :)
>People want to do the easy stuff, the hard stuff is putting yourself out there and picking up a phone.

"Most people don't get those experiences because they never ask." - Steve Jobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkTf0LmDqKI
I've been on zsh for ages, and the thing that always kills me dead when stuck in bash is the terrible default command line editor. Whereas in zsh, if I go back to edit a multi-line loop or something, it preserves the white-space, bash by default presents the commands as a semicolon delimited list on one line. That's ass. Is there a handy bash shortcut to mimic zsh's behavior here?
A lot of people claim to not be looking for "application drivers" yet ask for years of experience in multiple specific applications in their postings.

I've come to the conclusion that the only way to consistently work is to narrowly focus on a couple of specific, widely used applications, because general facility and a resume that covers a wide variety of areas for less than 2 years at a time are worthless. You get filtered out before the interview, even for pretty low paying positions.
Well, given that the Supreme Court punted on the question of software patents in Bilski, I'd say the best way would be to call your Senators and Congressperson and ask them to draft legislation to abolish software patents.

But, good luck on that. Bilski is over 2 years old now, and the status quo is still in place.
TLDR: It won't cost that much but we really don't know how much it will cost.
Question: Who really gave that order?

Answer: Control.

Question: If Control’s control is absolute, why does Control need to control?

Answer: Control… needs time.

Question: Is Control controlled by its need to control?

Answer: Yes.

- William Burroughs - Ah Pook is here

He may have been onto something with this one.
White blood cell transplant can cure many previous incurable things, including quite a few type of cancer. Too bad you'll have to go to China for the procedure...
> I would imagine that the same accelerometer could notice that the car is braking.

It would not be able to tell the difference between braking and simply slowing down, for example going uphill - or worse, driving in water - hitting the brakes when going through standing water can be disastrous.

As for the accelerometer detecting moving forward it has some nasty feedback going on there, since it detects its own motion. Plus imagine going downhill and the read engines think you hit the gas so they cause you to go even faster.

That said, it should be possible to interface with the engine there are plenty of signals that can be used (throttle, rpm, etc).
Google open-sources Sparrow for iOS and Mac, soon after acquisition
"Treatment" provides a steady income stream, while cure stops all profit.
I agree entirely. But identi.ca is the most popular implementation of status.net and it hasn't taken off. identi.ca, status.net, etc, need to offer something else that twitter.com, other then Freedom.
kind of. They are obviously vague predictions, which is kind of a cop-out / cheating. But after reading how silly all the specific predictions seemed, even when correct, I got to thinking about things with a strong historical precedence- things that would likely remain true. The language used makes it sound kind of like the platitudes you would see in Barnum statements, but those lead to the Forer effect because some number of them _do_ apply to lots of people (leading people to confirmation bias and to assigning some weight to a non-existent authority). I hope that the imprecision in my predictions make them boring and obvious because they're true for the majority of 25-year spans in recorded history, not because they pretend to be tailored specifically toward individuals reading or toward this coming 25 years.
It depends on the profession. In some professions, college is useful, in others, not so much.

What colleges should NOT be used for is a proxy to measure the intelligence or diligence of people (unless you're in one of those very few jobs where a college environment mimics your work environment).

It is dreadfully inefficient, significantly inaccurate, and in net, almost certainly reducing overall economic output.
Does it require the entire build environment (as in all the tools used for building) or just the binary objects?

In other words, do the build scripts become subjected to the LGPL?
This is funny since one of General Assembly's first blog post was about how this concept of skipping lines wasn't a viable lean start-up idea. Take a look.
http://generalassemb.ly/blog/a-case-study-on-getting-started...
I mean yeah you can bolt a toaster onto a fridge but I'm not sure why you would want to do that :)
My comment was a bit sensationalist... I agree with you 100%, I just stated it a little more black and white than I should have.
It's worked in the United States. Random threats from your ISP works wonders. In the rest of the world, not so much.
I can't help but be reminded of PG's essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular," where he talks about teenage apprentices in the Renaissance. Also, his point about specialization seems appropriate here.

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Old old stuff, this was already decided in 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Bilski

More at Groklaw.net, this is the complete story on the site from where you lifted the PDF

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081030150903555
I've never used ZooKeeper in production, so pardon my ignorance, but everytime I see a project using it I get a little bit turned off because it seems like alot of extra complexity and another SPOF. Can anyone share their experiences?
For the vast majority of his students, including those other points when they're first learning about slopes would do more harm than good. He shouldn't be judged on his rigor, but on how effectively he enables learning and understanding. They wouldn't know what to do with gradients.
Now You Can Build Your Own Infographics with Venngage
And I knew (self-taught) more about compiler theory than my college lecturers.

Self-taught implies a lot of motivation. What people learn depends on where the motivation was directed. And on the other hand, I'd be willing to bet a majority of people going through college treat things like compiler theory and more advanced discrete mathematics as ordeals to be endured, rather than tools to be used in the rest of their career.
I'd say about 500mil... We're a relatively young company still.
> The majority of vehicles sold have drum brakes on the rear

The majority of OLD cars. Modern cars are switching to disk brakes all around. The best design is actually a hybrid brake - it has a drum brake in the middle used only for the emergency brake, and the outer edge is flat for the disk brake.
This is a terrible idea. If you read the AMA from the patent examiner on reddit, he described that an shitty patent passes because, even though its obvious to the examiner, they can't mark it as bad unless there is prior art that they can find. They can't conduct exhaustive searches for these prior arts and if they can't find prior art then they have to validate the patent.

We need to change the system from the ground up. Not start to make liable some poor fella who happens to work at the USPTO who would have no idea that a legitimate patent would cause a multi-million dollar case.
Hey Steven,

ZooKeeper is actually a proven technology for solving distributed configuration. It's widely used by Yahoo! and Netflix among other large companies. It's a proven PAXOS-like implementation, and definitely isn't a single point of failure. Check it out!
Im anti-college, I believe that engineers and computer scientists should go to college, but programmers shouldn't. The majority of programmers aren't computer scientists.

I am anti-college for two reasons:

1-I didn't have the outside-the-class experience you did. In fact I think this is a situation where the top students naturally congregate together, in college and then on HN, and don't really have an understanding of what the non-top students go through. Most of them aren't making connections with other tinkerers.

2-I got a EE degree, but in my late 20's I become a professional programmer. I was instantly better than almost every other CS major I was working with. The majority of programming is closer to craftmanship than to Engineering. I don't think the knowledge learned in a CS degree is applicable, or even useful in day to day programming. The bits that are, can be learned.

(by the way, if your counter-argument is 'well I did VERY_HARD_THING_X within my companies app, and I would never have learned how to do this without my CS degree', I would say you may be a computer scientist, but also the vast majority of programmers arent doing this.)

The fact is, you go to college to earn a degree that says 'you are properly trained in this field to get a job'. Any profession that can be learned outside of an expensive college environment, should be.

Any argument that involves 'well you also get these nice benefits on the side' is irrelevant. If you are a smart go-getter, you would have met those tinkerers no matter what path you took. You would have done the same as an 18 year old apprentice programmer at Google.