skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd say marginalized. Current crop of "folk heroes" now are mostly non-political figures turned politicians: corruption fighter Navalny, writers Bykov, Akunin and so on. Older politicians like Yavlinsky had their chance and failed spectacularly so their support is fairly limited. If you want to know the most influential political figure from Russian opposition, that's Navalny without doubt.
http://forrst.com is another.

And also http://geekli.st/ - even though it's not technically programming oriented, all of the top communities on there are programming related.
It is a classical Russian propaganda defense: answer an accusation on human rights violations with "and you are lynching Negroes" or similar.

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes ,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Kremlin is paying bloggers and commenters in Russia to post positive things about authorities:

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/06/10/russia-networks-of-... ,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/07/hacked-emails-na...

Russian authorities may also be paying or employing some users of HN.

That's how I get it. I was expecting to find the "lynching Negroes" comment upvoted high by just seeing the title. It does not mean that the user who posted it is employed by Kremlin, but you know, the message will be upvoted...
There are already a bunch of ways for programmers to "socialize" - Stackoverflow, Geeklist, Coderwall. This site doesn't strike me as something necessary for a programmer to join nor does it introduce anything new or special.

But I have to say, love the domain name. :)
Github is already my favorite 'social' network. No need for cheesy photographs. I realize that it's probably considered humorous among some, but to me the landing page is really cheesy and off-putting.
Also Geeklist, as of late.
This is a puzzling comment which makes me wonder about your perception of both the US and Russia.

Can you really imagine a punk rock band in the US getting two years in prison (a felony in any state in the US) for a stunt like Pussy Riot pulled, involving absolutely no property damage or physical harm? Or journalists critical of the regime being assassinated pretty frequently (with little hope of those murders ever being solved)? Or gay protesters being beaten in the streets?

Where are you living in the US that the exercise of government power seems somehow similar to all that?
FF Chartwell: Create beautiful charts with type
It's sad that people now remember Kasparov as "that guy who defeated Karpov", because he'd been absolute best in chess for a long time. It's actually even sadder that he dropped chess over politics altogether.
Don't take it literally. But it's a very illustrative concept. A single blog post is often enough to uniquely identify someone, if they give a couple of incriminating facts about themselves. (Which school they've studied at, which year, what sports they play would be enough to would narrow your list down from six billion to a couple).
If you're talking about the allied victory in WWII, the soviets inflicted the vast majority of damage against the Germans.

It's also quite disingenuous to bring up lazy stereotypes in a discussion.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4508901.stm
They're mocking themselves?
Cached copy provided by Yahoo: http://74.6.238.254/search/srpcache?ei=UTF-8&p=http%3A%2...
>France and Germany are not so two-party. In the 53 years of France's current government, they have elected presidents from four parties.

It's really two and a half.
De Gaulle - Pompidou - Chirac -Sarkozy were part of the same party that morphed and changed names everytime there was a new leader.
Miterrand - Hollande are the other.
Giscard was a one-term president from a party that has always been a junior partner of Main Right-Center party. So he's the half.

And German presidents don't count.
You have to look at the Chancellor. It has been CDU or SDP since 1945 except for nine days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chancellors_of_Germany
But did it have paying customers ?
I have visited Turkey in the past briefly, and it was nice, though I did not notice any special hospitality not encountered in other places. Maybe I just wasn't lucky.

Unfortunately, since I'm Jewish I'm not sure it would be wise for me to visit Turkey again now, due to recent developments... it seems like the hospitality for me might be a bit limited now.
http://www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalDetayV3&...
http://jcpa.org/article/present-day-anti-semitism-in-turkey/

Maybe sometime in the future... Sorry for getting a bit off-topic here.
Places where illegal content is shared and people communicate for nefarious reasons and tools that create these places are just magnets for those wishing to find such people.

Anyone that chooses to take part in such things is at a heightened risk, no matter what they are doing.

There is no guaranteed right to privacy, regardless what your government decrees or what the tool you're using claims to do.

Those using Tor will be caught and charged as if they are enabling what the others are doing.

Be warned.
I'm sorry but I couldn't relate the model used on home page anyway with myself or any of my programmer friends
Sure, but that's all irrelevant when you lose access to all your games. Like when the company goes bankrupt.

If you bought a copy of the game and then you could play on their service with a proof of purchase (and a monthly fee, for example), I wouldn't worry. But their service was just more lock in.
As noted in some of the threads that GFischer has kindly linked to, voluntary response polling is not a reliable way to gather demographic data about HN. The HN webmaster may (or may not) have automated gathering of data about browswer and OS, although my wild guess would be that HN's participant population includes an unusually large number of persons who hide or obfuscate such data on the client side.
Note that if you have

int foo = 42;
NSNumber* boxed = @foo; // fails
NSNumber* boxed = @(foo); // works

One thing that isn't supported but would be extremely useful is a shortcut for NSValue boxing. Fortunately, it's really easy to solve using a short macro, e.g.:

#define BOXED(val) ({ typeof(val) _tmp_val = (val); [NSValue valueWithBytes:&(_tmp_val) objCType:@encode(typeof(val))]; })
CGRect rect = {{ 0, 0 }, {100,200}};
NSValue* boxed = BOXED(rect);
How is it inaccurate to state that the morality of military members was the same as the general population, but not inaccurate to suggest that only degenerates who need constant supervision join the military in the first place?
You and I may understand it as performance art but next time you're feeling particularly creative, gather a few of your artsy chums, go into a Manhattan synagogue, put on Balaklavas over your faces and start to scream out profanities against Israel and capitalism. Then proceed to enjoy the hilarity as NYPD hauls you away and FBI puts you on a no-fly list.
With both Moscow's and New York's experience with large-scale terrorist attacks I'm not surprised by how jumpy their citizens might be.
They seem to be going for the modern cutesy "nerd" label more than actual programming, their Facebook page is the same type of content: https://www.facebook.com/ProgrammingCom
What does "powerful" even mean? Lots of money? Knowing people with lots of money? That's nice, but hardly relevant -- why do they call an embeddable, centrally hosted forum "a new way to communicate"? There's already Disqus which I don't use, now this. Seems mostly like a marketing thing for simple people, once again; they already lost me with the still frame of that video.

In short: "because people are slowly wising up to snake oil and middle men". I hope that's the reason at least.
Off topic indeed, but this year's Eurovision singer from Turkey was Jewish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_Bonomo). Not to say there isn't anti-semitism, but I think it is much less in Turkey than you might think.
I've told people to leave the US before on HN, and got downvoted, so I won't.

America's #1 problem is that solutions that work are often fairly labelled socialist, because they are, and thus they immediately lose all popular support, because for some reason, you are all mentally still fighting the cold war?! (So are the Russians, but that's beside the point.)

"Socialism" needs to stop being pejorative. You're trapped by political language as much as insularity and self-regard.
I wish Github had some sort of discussion system. At the moment everyone seems to be using google groups but that'sa pretty awful place to discuss code.
I don't get it, really, I don't get it. Is it combination of GeekList, Stack Overflow and LinkedIn? Not a single word of explanation anywhere on the site.
Why is Kik free AND ad-free?
Nope. They never figured out the right pricing model for their API :)
While it is often unjust, it is often extremely just also. Personally, I don't know if the tone has really changed. I do know that I see less demonstrations of work done on the front page. That's a shame :(
Romney and Obama are not the only people in US politics. There are multiple proponents of single-payer model (which is obviously modelled along the same lines as in countries where it currently exists), and they keep being elected. Of course nobody would just say "we are going to copy France" - that'd be stupid, US and France are different countries with different traditions, legal systems, economic and political systems, etc. But many politicians I've heard compared favorably health care systems in Canada, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, etc. to American one and I don't see why they would suffer electorally for it - the idea that American system needs reform is a commonplace among both left and right (they of course disagree as to what kind of reform it needs) and comparing favorably to certain aspects of foreign experience is nothing unexpected - in fact, in this case, there's not much choice to compare - if you want to argue "we want to change it", you'd need examples, and since you won't be able to find enough examples in the US (state experiments don't have enough timespan and may not scale well) you'd have to go international. If you wanted to show, for example, that single payer is a workable model, you won't have much choice but to refer to the experience of the countries where it was introduced.
Yahoo trying to snatch shout.com for cheap
'Launchrock' style landing page - check

Completely clueless stock image - check

I left in a hurry.
Well, you are definitely right that people should go on the top of rockets, not near the middle.

The Challenger explosion could have hypothetically been survivable though. In fact, the explosion itself was survived, likely by all of the crew. The crew cabin (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/42/Challeng...) remained intact and possibly pressurized after vehicle breakup. The crew were almost certainly alive (and if the cabin remained pressurized, could have been concious as well) for nearly 3 minutes until it hit the ocean at over 200 miles per hour.

At some point during those 3 minutes, I don't know if the SR-71 ejection seats used for the first few Shuttle launches could have improved their chances of survival, but it seems at least somewhat possible that it could have. A parachute system for the crew cabin probably wouldn't work for the same reason the launch abort system on the proposed Ares was flawed (flying burning solid fuel going everywhere in the air is bad for parachutes)... nevertheless I think it is conceivable that you could build a Shuttle that would allow the crew to survive an accident like that.

But really, just stick the people on top. It makes way more sense. I know it is hard to compare the two accidents (though from what I understand, as far as solid fuel rocket failures go Challenger was pretty tame), but the contrast between Challenger and T-10-1 is something that lessons should be taken from.
Ah busted! I'll have to go report to Putin that my cover has been compromised.

Not that I have to validate my objectivity to you, but I am typing this from a comfortable home in Toronto, Ontario and my paycheques are signed by a B2B publisher for my services rendered as a marketing specialist. It must be too shocking for you to accept that someone might actually have an opinion that doesn't perfectly align with the western media narrative.
Apparently HN traffic killed the site. That right there makes it unfit for purpose.
CodeMirror's vim support is fairly limited though. Here's the list, in comments at the top of the code here: http://codemirror.net/keymap/vim.js

Also, "Because CodeMirror's internal API is quite different from Vim, they are only a loose approximation of actual vim bindings"
http://codemirror.net/demo/vim.html
I wouldn't buy a macbook for linux regardless of display. Mainstream linux window managers expect two mouse buttons. If you want an ultrabook, there's a great new Thinkpad just released made out of carbon fibre. Lenovo hardware tends to work well with linux/unix. http://gizmodo.com/5935723/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-review-...
no answer whatsoever, not even a "it will be charged but we don't know how much yet" How can I start to develop something real there without knowing that ?
Needless to say, but this would be illegal in the European Union. Unsolicited text messages and all that. If this is true, facebook should be very careful about doing it in EU.
If you are requesting a very high-level description: https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en . Basically you send an "envelope within an envelope within an envelope" over TLS (formerly SSL) to some node, they open it, read the address on the envelope inside, and send it on, until it gets to the last letter-opener who happens to also be the sort of node which follows instructions on a sheet of paper. Those instructions may be an HTTP request for example, or you might ask them to communicate part of a TLS negotiation with a secure web site, so that they cannot eavesdrop. The envelopes themselves are encryption containers, so that you can't open the envelopes en route to see where they're going.

If you want to understand more details about how exactly you create these "extending" routes and "circuits", the design docs are here:

https://www.torproject.org/docs/documentation.html.en#Design...

In particular, the above picture is a little naive because you cannot send three open envelopes to the exit node for the return trip without the exit node learning who you are by peeking inside.
Preview lectures published for Coursera "Gamification" class (login required)
A proposal to improve Hacker News: shut it down for a month.
Good post, Reg! I think you made Steve's day, and it is good advice for everyone on HN as well. I would be in favor of allowing people on HN to downvote overly negative comments. That would help I think. Not allowing everyone to downvote is a problem. HN karma != helpfulness.
Alternative resource to track DjangoDash
What qualifies as "hate speech"?

I'll give you a UK example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United_...)

"On 4 March 2010, a jury returned a verdict of guilty against Harry Taylor, who was charged under Part 4A of the Public Order Act 1986. Taylor was charged because he left anti-religious cartoons in the prayer-room of Liverpool's John Lennon Airport on three occasions in 2008. The airport chaplain, who was insulted, offended, and alarmed by the cartoons, called the police.[11][12][13] On 23 April 2010, Judge Charles James of Liverpool Crown Court sentenced Taylor to a six-month term of imprisonment suspended for two years, made him subject to a five-year Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) (which bans him from carrying religiously offensive material in a public place), ordered him to perform 100 hours of unpaid work, and ordered him to pay £250 costs"

Not quite 2 years prison sentence, but a (suspended) jail term nevertheless. But then again, it was not a desecration of a main cathedral either, it was just a cartoon on a wall in an airport prayer room...

Maybe Pussy Riot gives us a case to abolish hate speech laws altogether? So nobody should be threatened with arrest or fine for saying bad things about Muslims, homosexuals, Christians, Jews or whoever, as it is the case now.
It's not about IQ, it's about actually wanting to understand something intellectually, and objectively.
For some reason, I personally feel bad about this. Being a newer member, I feel like I'm somehow contributing to Steve's hatred of hacker news. I am entrepreneurial and love seeing new projects being released, but I didn't know about HN until I moved to San Francisco a year ago.

Hopefully I help make this place better instead of worse,
Sorry Steve
Excuse me for a one-off useless comment, but a Communist country never existed. USSR was not communist.

Communism is being described as "A communist society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions."[1]
Hence, no rulers. Communism in its essence is a form of Anarchist society.

[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#Etymology_and_termino...
Bush the Younger won in 2000 with fewer votes in total than Gore because of the "winner take all" electoral collage system. If you don't live in a swing state basically your vote is not even counted.
Leave more than one screenful of scrollback in the buffer after your program exits, like a well-behaved command-line app should.

If you hate this, you can tweak your terminal definition so curses apps don't do it. http://fixlog.blogspot.com.au/2006/09/stop-gnome-terminal-sc...
Perhaps they are talking about the mobile application, but what is the section on their home site named "Apps That Kik", that seems like an advertisement for those applications.

Perhaps they are applications which their company also produce, so I could be wrong.
"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it." -- Oscar Wilde
Sleepbox
"Android" in 2005 was a Symbian/BlackBerry-style OS that was being prototyped on a QWERTY device with no touch screen.
I don't suppose there's much motivation to write Linux mouse drivers that detect the second mouse button and/or scrolling and swipe gestures on the Apple mouses the same way Apple does.

But it's too bad, Apple went from making subpar mouses to some of the best I've ever used in the last five years or so. The trackpad is pretty great too.
How a Tick Bite Made Me Allergic to Meat
When you give, your intent is not to pay for a bunch of mailers to be sent out, killing trees and increasing the world's CO2, and your intent is not to hire some Ivy+ grad with a major in making themselves feel better about helping people as they sit at their desk and drink their Starbucks mocha. You want to free slaves, feed the homeless, feed the starving children, cure cancer. Don't give to those that waste that generosity, and don't support sites that don't tell you where your money is really going.

In this case, supposedly the overhead is 16%. That isn't great, but it is in the "meh" category for me. I'd rather give to the Salvation Army that only takes ~5% overhead. In addition, I'd like to see what the 86% going to programs and services is really accomplishing.
It must be unbearably frustrating building this stuff to work around the limitations of 10+ year-old technologies when the superior tech inside even the phone in your pocket could achieve so much more.
According to the blog post there is one they use for interviews occasionally in New York and one in Seattle they do not use. So saying "they don't actually use it for interviews (ever)" is incorrect according to this article.
It's obviously a joke, which I can take... as long as the designer who made it was a nerd ;)
I am merely commenting on the scale and spin of the reactions to news stories like Pussy Riot and the execution of miners in South Africa (or Gitmo, or US choppers in Iraq indiscriminately gunning down civilians). Instead of joining the chorus of rambling about the corruption of the evil Putin regime based on one out-of-context news story which is clearly being used for PR purposes, I just find it much more interesting to look at the larger narrative which might give me a more complete and more informed picture of the global political landscape. In the same vein I refuse to blindly focus on Obama's birth certificate or the issue of Romney's income taxes. No I am not being paid by the KGB to do this, as someone suggested. It's just critical thinking.

Edit: also by doing this I am not choosing to ignore corruption in Russia. It's clearly there as it is in any country, but there are more serious and more glaring examples of that corruption, albeit not as glamorous or news friendly and digestable.

Edit2: also you need to acquire some more information on that Omahr Khadr case.. it is definitely not as cut-and-dry as you've been led to believe.
My favourite is Locomotive.js [1] (extends express.js) simply because it doesn't try to do too much, it just gives you a solid base and you're free to use whatever parts you need.

Another that shows promise is Flatiron.js [2], but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

[1] https://github.com/jaredhanson/locomotive
[2] https://github.com/flatiron
Apparently OSX 10.8 and iOS 6 bring support for subscripting to native NSArray/NSDictionary, but I think you can add subscripts to your own classes already just by implementing the following methods:

-(id)objectAtIndexedSubscript:(NSUInteger)index;
-(void)setObject:(id)object atIndexedSubscript:(NSUInteger)index;

as weiran has shown for NS(Mutable)Array/NS(Mutable)Dictionary.
There is quite a difference between the US and EU countries with regards to hate speech laws.

A guy in the UK was arrested and given (suspended) jail sentence, a fine and 100 hours of unpaid public labour for leading anti-religious cartoons in an airport prayer room. All because a chaplain felt offended by his cartoons... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United_...

This is actually quite funny: the people behind Pussy Riot campaign now have to explain to Western liberal public why Russian hate speech laws are bad, but European laws that forbid insulting Muslims and homosexuals are good.

Because if Pussy Riot sang their anti-Putin song not in the cathedral, but, say, in the street, they won't get get the press.
I've always viewed Forrst more designer than programmer
No matter what you label it, people with like ideas will end up working together.
Punchey, Payments & Loyalty Rewards Startup Launches and Raises $1.7M in Funding
In your opinion what is the overall impact on children safety of something like Tor? Positive, negative or neutral? I realize this is tough to answer.
I don't see any constructive comments except few for this post. Why is it so? If you don't like this sort of site , you can help them improve it by giving some helpful comments . They must have worked hard to came up with this .As a fellow programmer , we should respect their work first .
Maybe there is actually a conspiracy between the big hardware/software manufacturers to force lawmakers to review patent law.
A bug fix for traffic jams: learning from bacteria
I know right? So let's try anyway :P

The background image looks pixelated on a big screen. What's worse though is that the face of the guy is always exactly behind the black thingy. Use a differently cropped photo, or offset it in some other way.

May I also suggest that a single, confused looking guy in front of a laptop isn't as great as, say, photos of two people on a date, preferable two people who actually like each other? For maximum bonus points let it be a couple that actually got together through your site :)

Also, personally I'd never sign up for something that doesn't have a detailed description of how it works, preferable including screenshots, up front. So I cannot say anything about what is beyond the signup page.
Oh please, will you stop this already?
Unstoppable JBoss 'mafia' has big biz tech in its crosshairs