skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That isn't a comment on whether they are right, just that what you are describing and what they believe are very very much different.
No, I agree. This idea is braindead because it's much more effective to focus on a device you plug in between the outlet in your wall and the devices you want to control power to. A standard already exists for half the project which is called x10.
I hope he wins his case.
I recommend you read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Four-Agreements-Practical-Personal-Fre...

I'll send you a copy if you like...
He's facing criminal prosecution for abusing JSTOR and MIT's computers. More of the charges go to JSTOR systems than to MIT systems.

This is right in the indictment, which is linked from the last 'aaronsw post on HN.
Information overload exists, but I don't think it's the problem here. There are plenty of garden paths on the internet, Khan Academy being just one, where a path is set for a student to follow and learn something with their hand being held by a competent teacher. You can also find willing and competent tutors (usually free!) by googling for a forum on the subject of interest.

I think the problem is closer related with bad genetics and laziness, and these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. This isn't the whole picture but it captures a lot more than "information overload".
> He knew what he was doing, and hew knew what he was doing was wrong.

He might have known (and even the extent of this is not clear) that what he was doing was illegal.

But that doesn't mean it is wrong, law and morality are two very different things.

Me and many others would argue that what he did was almost a moral imperative, he tried to free human knowledge (mostly paid by tax dollars!) from the artificial monopoly of some corporate leeches.

And if you need more arguments for this, just read up on what Thomas Jefferson had to say about it: http://harmful.cat-v.org/economics/intellectual_property/
* Work out - Exhaust yourself

* Meditation - Empty the mind. Inculcate thoughtless awareness

* Yoga - Stretch the stress out of the body, let it relax
If you aren't into money enough to watch your runway, though, you'll end up like: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4526915
dreamhost has failed for us so many times in the last 5 years that I don't care to keep count. I'm guessing more than 10 major fuckups. Even things that I thought they couldn't possibly screw up, they have. We have finally moved everything away from dreamhost. I now use it only for things that can go down for days on end and nobody will care. dreamhost is definitely not to be trusted with anything more critical than that.
#2 seems reasonably certain, since aaronsw.com has been Aaron Swartz's domain for a while now. As for background: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528083
sure, it can be forked. Not even Google is disputing that. They're just saying that, if you want to fork it, you don't get to be in Google's "handset alliance" anymore.
Not better than all other countries in Europe, but a substantial number.

Italy's awful University system is well documented eg http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/family-fiefdo...

Look at these rankings for example, the UK is right up at the top, followed by Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and France, but many other countries are right down the list. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki...
Do you think his actions [0] merit 13 felony charges and the decades in prison they could lead to? I don't, so I donated.

[0] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/21/aaron-swart...
No way.

I want to read email from projects and people I know.... and I wouldn't want them to pay.
What does the pledge of allegiance have to do with wealthy people?
If something is illegal, and you do it, you are at risk of being prosecuted.

If you believe something shouldn't be illegal, then campaign to get the law changed!

Are people video-camming movies in cinemas "just freeing human knowledge"?
Were wikileaks publishing secret sensitive hacked info "just freeing human knowledge"?

I don't need any more arguments, because I absolutely disagree. If you believe a law needs to be changed, the way to get it changed is not to start breaking it. We live in a civilised society here. It's this kind of "political activism" I detest.
You can't guarantee a reply unless you FORCE him to read it and lock his inbox until he replies. Who would be stupid enough to run THAT software?

LinkedIn has a feature called InMail, that allows you to connect directly with people like Paul Graham, but does not guarantee a response. I've had some success with it, but it does heavily rely on your own ability to craft a cogent message.
I agree there is a tension for customers. However, what I'm objecting to is the HN community's reaction. We're the people who are pro startups, who think failure is OK, who encourage pivoting from unsuccessful products to markets we discover along the way.

The grandparent is the opposite of what this community is about.

And attaching their name to it is worse. Saying "I'm starting to not trust this startup" would have been much more acceptable in my opinion.
Different roads have such widely differing conditions that it's not possible to discuss speed limits in general and come to any meaningful conclusion. Since the implicit point of an argument is to come to a meaningful conclusion, it can be assumed that arguments which do not terminate in a meaningful conclusion are excluded. "In principle" is also not an argument that will fly with a lot of hackers who reject deontology.
I worked as an IT Tech in schools for about 3 years and worked a lot with educational software & platforms that schools use.

Most of the software that gets sold to schools actually adds a level of complication to teaching kids. Setup time, difficulty logging in. Simple really matters a lot.

Anything you make that enables a lesson to flow better is a win for a teacher.

I guess it depends what age you are aiming for (I've worked mainly with those 10 and under) but there are many things for that age range that would be useful.

For example in a lot of primary/elementary schools YouTube is filtered and not accessible (if it isn't, it should be!)

This poses some annoyances for teachers when they want to find a useful video during prep time at home (e.g of a science experiment, interviews etc) and then take it into school.

I think a video playlist would be useful, where teachers can import videos they've vetted to be safe for class. It would have an added element of interest if teachers/schools could tag their videos and share on a global scale.

It could be sort of an app version of SchoolsTube.com

I've got quite a few ideas in this space that I won't get chance to implement, drop me a mail if you'd like to chat. My e-mail is in my profile.
Thank you for sharing this great response! I've been tempted to look into Camus, perhaps I will revisit that undertaking. Any recommendations for literature?
You shouldn't have to sanitize if you quote your variables properly. If general, the rules for "$foo" are "parse first, expand afterwards" while those for $foo are "parse, expand, parse again", so

foo="hello world"
echo $foo # prints "hello world" [2 arguments]
echo "$foo" # prints "hello world" [1 argument]

Note that you can't trivially inject a command this way, though you can inject arbitrary arguments:

foo="; ls"
echo $foo # prints "; ls"

I would recommend never using test ([) with more than three arguments. Once you start doing -a and -o, then people can inject confusing values for variables, making it impossible to parse:

foo='!'
bar='2'
[ "$foo" = 1 -a "$bar" = 2 ] # -bash: [: too many arguments

Since test runs a subprocess, it can't tell the difference between data and arguments. Instead, you should do something like this:

foo='!'
bar='2'
[ "$foo" = 1 ] && [ "$bar" = 2 ]

(This also has the advantage of being way more legible.)
Not all states push creationism on the curriculum, and some states, like California, are both economically productive enough and populous enough to be their own nations. Despite that, California has some of the worst average educational attainment in the nation. How, exactly, would nationalizing improve the situation?
Glotz Builds Starbucks
You make an extremely good point. NYC and SF rents would not be nearly as high if there were more supply, and there isn't more supply because the housing market is so over-regulated. Manhattan is cramped, but outside a few places in the UES and Financial District, it's filled with block after block of low/mid-rise construction, mostly 80+ years old. The reason is that it's extremely difficult to tear down this crap and build new high rises because of regulations.
It seems that the companies coming out of YC now are scratching a very diversified set of itches, for example YourMechanic.
I don't believe so; the "free" in the URL seems a bit cheeky. The trial is scheduled for February 4, 2013.
Smashing Node.JS By Guillermo Rauch
The simple answer is to make better tools. There is still no single, awesome, dedicated tool to migrate from MySQL to Postgresql. (side note: Did you know that Postgres can actually act as a replication slave for SQL Server ? ).

Again, there is no official Mysql Workbench for Postgres, let alone things like SequelPro. (although a member on the Indian HN - Hackerstreet - is building one at http://pgxplorer.com/)

Second - documentation as compared to other database vendors. No, this is not flamebait - by itself, it is very good and adequate. But for people used to MySQL, SQL Server - it feels...scary.

Check out http://dev.mysql.com/doc/ (sidenote: has docs in epub format as well) vs http://www.postgresql.org/docs/
We've been using Ceph and the S3-compatible radosgw at a small scale while building http://www.pogoapp.com and I have no real complaints. It's a very new technology and even things like running a cluster backup aren't yet possible, but Dreamhost has been providing its customers a free beta for a while now, the program is under heavy development, has Dreamhost and Shuttleworth providing funding, and the devs on IRC are quite helpful and responsive. And it's being integrated into OpenStack

It looks like Ceph is still waiting on stable btrfs to truly shine (http://ceph.com/docs/master/rec/filesystem/), but overall the technology looks very promising and works well today, with a small number of groups running large multi-rack storage clusters (e.g. I believe it runs DreamHost's entire backup system)
Now let me see if I got this right:

1. Brilliant programmer gets chance of a lifetime.
2. Turns that into lots of money early in life.
3. Decides to change the world in his own way.
4. Consciously & purposefully breaks the law.
5. Has a webpage to get others to pay his legal bills.

I've never met Aaron but I've always enjoyed his writing and looked forward to meeting him one day. But there is something seriously wrong about this.

Aaron should man up, take responsibility for his actions, and pay his own bills.

And if this is his idea of changing the world, perhaps he should reconsider his choices and find a better way of paying it forward to other brilliant programmers who never got the breaks he did.
The pirated app thing was brought up after the fact, and really has nothing to do with the original issue- that google is strong arming a company to prevent a competing OS from being released.

Besides, claiming that Alibabi supports piracy because there are pirated apps in their store is the same as saying Google supports malware because their stores have sold infected apps.
If you wish to pay me to read your email, I will gladly pretend to read your email for a price of my own choosing.
> If you believe a law needs to be changed, the way to get it changed is not to start breaking it.

Is that because you believe it's not likely to be effective, or because you'd rather see an unjust law than an unruly populace?

Edit: ...or some third opinion that I can't think of
This is an interesting novelty, but it can't ever be used in the real world, no matter how far along it gets, because bash is much more susceptible to security holes than normal programming languages.
I think it is unhealthy to think that only rare achievements are worthwhile. That leads to misery and warfare. I don't want to live in a world where 99% are losers, even if I am in the 1%.
Maybe he can't. Maybe he is broke already. Maybe his fortune from previous enterprised wasn't that much. Who knows .. there must be a good reason. I'll support him.
Human heart itself is a machine built by evolution. So of course there is nothing wrong with the idea of using machine as a replacement for the human heart. The author is trying to imply 'artificial mechanical machines' compare to 'biological machines'.

There are certain disadvantages to artificial mechanical machines.

1. Body's rejection to metals/plastic made objects. Patients who use those devices must take medicines to suppress their immune system to keep those machines functioning inside their bodies.

2. Mechanical machines are also very expensive because they are built rather than 'grown'.

3. They have moving parts which make them less reliable.

4. Many of those devices need external source of power instead of using body's energy (unlike biological machines that are highly 'plug and play') which makes them harder to maintain. It also increases costs because patients have to routinely visit hospitals to replace the batteries or fix them.

5. Even if you build highly advanced mechanical heart with non-biologial materials, it could have magnetic interferences and software level problems which are non-existent with biological machines.
This hits a little too close to home.

I have GERD and daily I think about cancer, already I feel like I'm being strangled all the time. My doctor said it was a one in a million chance but constant irritation and a daily proton-pump inhibitor drug isn't my idea of being healthy.

Add to that my dad was diagnosed last January with IPF, an incurable progressive scarring of lung tissue, a cause of which is GERD; stomach acid splashes into lungs and over time can cause damage. Lung cancer seems like a walk in the park compared to IPF.

It would be fantastic if specific organs could be replaced it would solve my problem and for most diseases people develop other than entire body, systemic diseases or diseases of the brain.
I am a big time Feynman fan, sure we've had our share of great thinkers and awe inspiring intellects, but Feynman is just the perfect combination of that and a likable character that remains human for the rest of us. Einstein was also like that in many ways but he was the child of another time and while he was always humane and simple, Feynman was much more likable, full of funny and witty anecdotes that connect with people. Also if you have not seen Feynman lecturing on Physics then you haven't seen a great educator, see [1] and [2], just plain wonderful.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3pYRn5j7oI

[2] http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/
Spanner : Google’s globally distributed database
The human story can explain a lot about history. For example, Hitler's rage, Bush's vendetta against Saddam, and every proletariat revolution ever.
It looks like a solid app and I think your feature with in-app purchases will work good for the audience. However; outside U.S. so I can just wish you good luck with the sale.
Amazing, Can the same trick be used for latex=>html? It would be better than tth which is also very good.
"Apple's first use of an internally-designed ARM core" : ARM itself was a joint venture including Apple, for just this reason.
Could you explain the causal link between any of the factors you've mentioned and education?

Among other explanations, the correlation between these factors can easily be explained by irresponsibility (more precisely: high discount rate) of the people exhibiting these factors. There is very little evidence that a lack of education causes these other negative things.

I.e., do you have evidence that educational interventions can actually prevent criminality, gluttony and craziness?
The troubling thing I see in all this is that, if Google gets all contract hardware manufacturers to join the OHA, then there will be nobody to manufacturer your Android OSP hardware.
Born and raised in a conservative, predominantly Christian Philippines, baptized and raised Catholic, hell I never went to a non-Catholic school my entire 23 years of life. Turned out to be agnostic, or whatever, I don't care. I just don't pretend to know what I really don't.
You're making statements which depend on information you don't have. How do you know grove.io was dropped for the new hot thing? Perhaps they weren't making money. Perhaps they were being destroyed by the two larger startups in the space?

Why do you assume the worst of this company? The rest of your statements in this thread are really aggressive, and rely on very negative assumptions, which do not seem to have a basis in fact.
Kristi answers you below (No, it's not a problem, at least, one I never experienced with any banks I ever dealt with). I will, however, say this: each bank is different. Trust contracts to define. Beyond that, get second opinions on everything. And then get contracts to back it up. You are dealing with money. Probably a lot of money. Spend the time to understand exactly what you are told. What you assume Braintree said may not be what they mean. And always get a contract.
I don't really disagree with anything you've said there, but I don't think what you're describing scales to the entire population. I believe it's important to give every child a solid foundation to build on as they grow and develop their own specialised interests. I believe that doing that efficiently and effectively requires, and probably always will require, a systematic and professional education system at school age.

Of course it's good for children to have other options and to take advantage of whatever unique opportunities they might have, but if even 10% of children interested in a subject started asking elementary questions about it on Internet forums the way they can in a classroom, the forums would collapse. Likewise, if someone wants to educate their own children in subjects they know well or to hire excellent personal tutors, I'd be the last person to deny any parent the right to do what they think is best for their child, but most children aren't lucky enough to have parents so academically gifted or wealthy and so won't have those particular opportunities.

In fact, it seems to me that the only conceivable way to fix that, so that relying on a specialist teaching profession wasn't as fundamental as it is today and every child could enjoy that kind of personal attention, would be to educate the previous generation who are now parents to a high enough standard and then make sure that they had enough time to spend with their children that they could take on more of the role that school teachers play today. I don't know if that could ever work in practice, but for sure it would require a ground-up rewrite of basic societal norms that would take generations to achieve.
It won't affect Polygon
Thanks! I wrote that on an iPad at 3am and tried to check if I'd goofed, but it had no within-page search.
I love the concept of "faith-investing" and making it conscious. I believe that bringing consciousness to any choice makes the choice better; especially when it is something so deeply entrenched like faith.

Also, I feel this idea has merit in the realm of Entrepreneurship... In some ways it equates to risk. We can blindly take risks or we can carefully take risks. Realizing that there is an element of faith behind all decisions, being aware of "faith-investing" may make us less blind to the risks we take and allow us to be careful instead.
Facebook and Twitter (and Dropbox, and WhatsApp, and you mention it) 'integration' works so much better on Android than iOS, I don't even know why they mention it.

Try sharing a picture from your camera roll to any other service than the ones baked in the OS on iOS, tough luck.
Communities still are human-powered. The only difference is now keeping people informed is easier, so building the community is easier, but it's still largely offline.

Couchsurfing, autocross, bdsm, ska, anime, hiking, slacklining... all communities i've become involved in with human beings at real places because the internet made it easier to find out. I still needed a human to show me it. But then the community was opened up to me much quicker through the 'net.

The next counterculture, to me, was 4Chan's /b/ and Anonymous. As stupid as it sounds, those retards brought a new kind of rebellion to people's lives - even if it was largely online. But it's not the method the message gets out that matters. It's the culture that develops. I think it's clear that the internet isn't holding anyone back.
of course you can compile latex to pdf first
One of the most important points. The only party you could really claim was "injured", does not want any further prosecution.
I broke the law. Please pay my bills.

No thanks.
> I run a XMPP server at work and costs us nothing for the basics

It sounds like it costs at least 1 server, plus your time. Those are not free.
I understand that sentiment is popular on HN, but not listing prices is pretty standard for B2B. At least in Japan (where Patlite is based), most businesses will not discard a potential vendor just because they don't list prices on their webpage.
iPad Dr. Geo 12.10
Sure, you could put it that way. Unions, as they exist and operate today in the USA, are a cancer that is eating away our country bit by bit.

Either they have to be dissolved by simple making them illegal or they have to change the way they operate. This will either happen by law or by union leadership realizing that they are on a collision path with the non-union citizens of this country, a collision they will not survive.

The first option is unlikely to happen. However, the second scenario is in play right now. Politicians can try to confuse people all they want, but reality is reality. Eventually it comes down to simple math and, as many cities in California have discovered, math is a bitch. You just can't hide from it and you can't bullshit your way around it. Enough of this happens and unions will self-destruct from the inside out.

I live in a nice middle-class neighborhood. I know quite a few of our neighbors. All hard working people. Times are tough and you can feel it when you talk to them. However, there's one neighbor that is living an alternate reality. He is a fireman. Unionized, of course. He barely works. He is always home. And he is the only one on the block with motorcyles, boats, jet-ski's, campers, multiple trucks, quad ATV's and all manner of "toys" that are obvious and ostentatious. OK, this is one data point and it might be skewed, but it is not lost on the people who see it. I know other government union workers around town and, again, they are living in an alternate reality that is completely isolated from what is actually happening to the country.

If you want to talk about the one percent-ers, well, I'd rather talk about the ten-percenters: government and private unions who are living the life at the expense of everyone in this country. That's a crime.
As far as I can tell, this is almost the exact same idea, but makes some optimizations by flattening the tree into an array ahead of time (since we know every leaf will be present) and changing the bookkeeping slightly.
It would be really nice if there was somewhere on that payment tag to click to verify it at stripe.com.
I am also wondering the scenarios that I may need.