skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1/ It's 2012 and Windows 8 has decided it can't play DVD movies. Yes, that's right. You now NEED to install third party software just to play a legitimately bought DVD movie !

VLC is even more necessary than ever.
this was posted on HN a while ago... only undersea cables tho.
http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

and if you've got an hour (or two) to waste
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html
Cellulose is only 40% carbon.
Have you been able to do that in a way so that power consumption doesn't get high? I try to run my laptop so the fan doesn't kick in in normal operation, and when I've tried linux under vmware I've found it gets hot fast.

I've got a thinkpad and have also had trouble getting the trackpad stuff configured the way I want it to work with extra utilities. That's the only problem I've had with it though. I wish the bios just had a way to switch off the trackpad, but leave the buttons above it functioning.
Rapt.fm, Chatroulette for rap
Feature request for MMA 10. Bayesian classification and bayesian networks.

and a bunch of spit and polish on the Mac notebook interface - undo as people have mentioned, scrolling performance, responsiveness, etc.

Thanks from a 17 year MMA user.
Twitter in legal battle over 3rd party access to its data
Yes. You are unhireable. At least by the type organization that would make decisions based on a technical interview.

You need to find a place where you can hack for a living. Find someplace where you can make a mess of great ideas and then hand the mess over to trusted co-workers to cleanup. (There are people that like that sort of thing!)

What about a consultancy that builds prototypes, proofs-of-concepts, etc? (Can't think of one off hand but I'm sure they exist)
Your scenarios are about knowingly transferring illegal goods. The Tor operator didn't know that illegal data was being transferred over his equipment. In the same way a webhoster isn't liable for the data his clients are hosting.
do load testing?
the plist is only for external app, internally it uses a sqlite.
"And besides, the climate here in America has turned so decisively anti-small business that not only is it not fun anymore; it’s almost dangerous.

And who knows what’s up with health insurance now. I don’t have the energy to dig into that cesspool to find out what my small business has to do to cover itself in that department. Think I’d rather just chuck the whole thing."

I think that these two paragraphs are the most interesting part of the whole post - I've occasionally tossed around the idea of joining a scrappy startup, or even running my own company, but I always come to the conclusion that I'm not confident that I could cope with that much risk. I'm admittedly much more risk averse than the HN community, but sometimes I wonder if I would have the nerve to do it if it weren't for an environment that seems so toxic to small business.
Read books. I'm a Maths grad now at my first Software Dev job. Yes, I'm a Software Developer not a Coder.

You need to learn the basics. Use C/C++, learn why Java is crap and why PHP takes up too much memory. Make sure you get a few Signal 11s and learn what you did wrong. How do you protect yourself from it next time?

The particular choice of languages is irrelevant of course. The point is there is a lot more to software development than hacking out code. There are principles of development. There are advantages/disadvantages to each of the tools we use. There are mathematical underpinnings of data structures. A brief understanding of it all is important. A deeper understanding may be required.
Ask HN: What are good books for advanced topics in Python? 
I have been programming for almost a year and full time for 5 months. Looking to add to my holidays reading list. So far I've seen recommendations, eg Think Python(http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html) and Programming Python (http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Python-Mark-Lutz/dp/0596158106/). Thanks for any tips and advice!
Thanks for sharing. I've been looking for a book like this for a few weeks.
This topic needs merged out.

What is a picture of child exploitation? Perhaps, a picture of a baby naked? Or how about a kid doing somewhat lewd acts fully clothed? Or how about pictures by others of those child beauty pageants?

Who actually describes lewd? Or is it in the eyes of the beholder of the picture for those gray areas?

Next, "child porn" pictures are a possess-only crime, no mens rea required. So, how do we tell if a picture is a legal 18 yr old, instead an evil completely morally corrupt (but legal to fuck) 17 year old?
Sounds like a case of impostor syndrome to me, or maybe an unrealistic estimation of how good working programmers tend to be in practice.
maybe it'll be good as a backup laptop.

i just bought an X1 Carbon that needs to be sent back for repair.. i have done away with my desktop years ago so now i need a backup whilst my X1 is in repair.. the Surface Pro seems to fit this pretty well...
Honestly, with resume fodder like SEO software (yes, I'm in that market too!) and "PHP Programming for Affiliate Marketers", I think you would make a strong living selling info products and sites geared toward the IM (Internet Marketing) market.

Run a few WSO's (Warrior Special Offers) on the Warrior Forum, and teach marketers how to code and build software businesses. That's where many marketers want to go anyway. Heck, write a course about what to look for in a programmer or how to hire a programmer. That crowd eats that up.

I think you're more suited being a Tech God in the IM world vs. being Yet Another PHP Guy in the HN world. And you'll make more money doing so.

(Also: Add some contact info to your HN profile now that you're on the front page, so people know how to contact you here.)
Really depends on the type of code you are writing. If you're writing a Mars Rover, you're probably not using a single dynamic feature and static analysis works quite well in this case. So long as you're writing 'dead' software, you're better off with static analysis.

As soon as you try to write living software, that is, software able to evolve over time without restarting, static analysis goes out the window. Design by contract and test suites are your friends in this case.
What Einstein Figured Out About Software Architecture
With the bundle already at $1M, it could go up to $10M, which is the current THQ market capitalisation.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATHQI

So instead of purchasing some games, gamers could've purchased THQ, and released the games for free and without DRM.
How to build an Antifragile career and why we need a national entrepreneur day
How many routers do you think need to be reconfigured to do this? Is it a lot, or would it be easier to simply choke the lines or turn them off?
Why isn't everyone (developers, at least) turning on Super Cache or one of the many great caching plugins for WP by default? This is just a blog, not a full blown-out CMS with lots of dynamic bits.
I agree with you.

I'm surprised that you replied to my comment with this comment, as I fail to see the thread that links the two.

I was saying that the value of the steak comes from people, and not from the steak.
Will FB ever invest and move off PHP? Hiring talent at FB has to be getting harder and PHP probably isn't helping.
Apart from hosting DNS myself (which I gave up on - not worth the effort), I have been using DNSMadeEasy - $30.00 for 10 domains is pretty good and they are rock solid.
>I’ve created unique and intricate php heavy, mysql powered websites with ease

When I hit the site first time I got "banner-widget.php out of memory" or something :P
Developers have been complaining about the 1366x768 screen resolution in the Ars comments. Shouldn't developers be designing for (and on) the resolution the user is most likely be using?[1]

1: http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/11/statcounter-finds-1366-x-...
Not All Apps Can Be Instagrams, But Someone Might Be Willing to Buy Them
Available Public Data Sets on AWS
"Most of you will fail, disrespected, impoverished, but we are grateful for the risks you are taking and the sacrifices you are making for the sake of the economic growth of the planet and pulling others out of poverty. You are the source of our antifragility. Our nation thanks you.”
Bumblebee works well for me on a Samsung QX411. Once installed, just prepend 'optirun' to any command (like when running a game) and it will use the discrete graphics card.
What happened to Hillary Clinton's giant wi-fi airplane?
Zynga and Facebook no longer close
ion3 is the high water mark for simplicity and actually getting things done.

We are all poorer for Tuomo Valkonen no longer producing this.
The best mistake I ever made
+37% today. Investors think this was a great move.
How well it works, or even how well it competes with other online offerings isn't important. The most important thing about this development is that there's going to be a sign in the store advertising this service.

Regular people asking "What is this '3d printing' thing" is a huge step towards mainstreaming it.
DOA. Buy an iPad and a good laptop for less money.
How are custom drivers set up there? I.e. can one use other distros there easily (let's say Debian or Fedora), or it's tied to that custom version of Ubuntu only?
Really enjoyed your post. I'm in a similar situation and have been reading up on how to learn the formal CS concepts necessary to ace a technical interview and thought I'd share what I've found.

This answer on Quora summarizes the general topics to look into: http://qr.ae/1h6xx
More thorough summaries can be found here: http://www.starling-software.com/employment/programmer-compe...
and here: http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors-should-know/
Out of a 5-year computer engineering degree, the "technical" bits of most developer interviews draw on what I learned in one class. One.

Go take an undergrad algorithms class at a local university. Make sure it covers "big O" notation. Read a book or two on data structures.

You're now equipped to handle CS interview questions.
I don't get why you're comparing consumer devices with platforms with pricing?

It shouldn't matter the company providing the PaaS also happens to sell cheap tablets with their logo on it.
So you'd rather them sell NOTHING than THQ games? These games are stellar. Company of Heroes is one of the best tactical RTS games of all time. Red Faction Armageddon is very good. Metro 2033 is very good. Saints Row and Darksiders are very good. These are not crap mainstream games thrown together with a Humble Bundle tag, these are brilliant pieces of software.

And anyway, you don't have to worry about this for long, there's not a lot of mainstream publishers out there that are going to give you a bunch of triple A titles to sell for donations. The money is still going where it used to go. I see no problem with this.
This doesn't necessarily explain HOW the network was taken down but, it does highlight the conflicting evidence between a "terrorist" style fire-sale attack, and a state-imposed outage to limit communications between dissidents.

Unfortunately, non of these hosting companies want to give an alternative to HOW to bring the network back up...

Anonymous seems to be the only group oriented at actually helping the citizens of the nation of Syria regain communication via alternative methods such as TCP/IP over HAM radio, and satellite links, personal wireless mesh networks using WiFi on mobile devices.

Everyone can bitch about HOW to take DOWN a nations internet but, it takes real humanitarians & 1337geeks to consider & implement HOW to bring a nations communications infrastructure back UP.

So, what are you waiting for...

HELP.
Is this an extension/re-packaging of AWS-SWF? It looks like a simplified version of the workflow engine with a nice GUI. Would love a response from someone at AWS, since I always thought SWF was the most under appreciated of AWS services.
I see it comes with Ubuntu 12.04 - did you try upgrading (or replacing) that with 12.10? I understand the appeal of the LTS versions, but I'd rather stay up to date, and I'd like to know if things continue to work well if you stray from the officially supported OS version.
>Actually, depending on the laws of the country, the prosecutor might only need to prove that they "knew or should have known" the nature of the material. Or it might instead be sufficient to prove that the operator "had a reckless disregard" for the nature of the material.

Obviously we can theorize whatever laws we want and there may even be countries that have them that way, but I'm not sure how that distinguishes the Tor exit node from the ISP. Telecommunications services don't generally inspect the content of the packets they route. I wouldn't want to have to argue that that is "reckless disregard" or whatever, though you can certainly imagine overzealous bureaucrats doing so when it suits them.

>Or perhaps the operator "failed to comply with the regulations for running an Internet service provider, including maintaining logs of customer connections." Which itself might not carry a very harsh penalty, but might also make him liable for criminal acts that others carry out using his illegal ISP.

Or maybe there is a specific law in a particular country that outlaws anonymizing services. Or maybe a license is required to operate an information processing device. Your mileage may vary, etc. Consult an attorney.

But it's worth pointing out that keeping logs doesn't get the government anywhere: The only thing a Tor node has available to log is which nodes it's connected to, and those nodes have a high probability of not having any logs or, even if they do, of being in another country where you can't get access to them. That's kind of the whole idea. So if all you're achieving is to get exit nodes to keep useless logs to make them safe from prosecution under some kind of safe harbor, you just end up back at square one.

The question is, do you want to ban anonymizing services or not? And if not, stop harassing the operators.
I'd say that's more unlikely. It's just a lot easier to sit at your desk and issue a couple of commands, which will guarantee getting the job done. Unplugging things is messy and unreliable in contrast, with redundant links, rings, and who knows what.
At one point when I was looking to see what was available in the job market, I saw a posting that I was a suitable fit for with their organization (netsweeper). It got me curious, being tangentially aware of their organization and content filtering focus. Their perspective was very contrary to my own, and I was interested in having the opportunity to have them pitch what they did to me. I hadn't really had the chance to talk face to face with what I considered to be an "evil" organization before. Maybe it was unethical for me to waste their time, when I didn't have the intention of working for them, I don't know.

The interview itself was interesting. The technical tests etc were relatively trivial, mostly stuff you'd expect about load balancing and responsiveness (as would be required for routing software). But more than half of the interview was them pitching the company to me -- they're quite aware of the reservations people might have about working for a company whose direction is to suppress free speech.

Their basic pitch was that they believed all 1st world governments would have internet filtering technologies in place in the near future -- that governments would legislate the use of it to stop the proliferation of things like child pornography, and eliminate the zombie-computer defence -- that if there were child porn on your computer, you went and got it.

We talked a little about the technical challenges of instantly shutting down the internet of an entire country, like Egypt, but they more or less blamed that on "improper configuration" of settings. At one point in the interview, the interviewer told me that you have to believe that the people that make the weapons aren't the ones firing the guns, and that dangerous tools can be used for good, but that yes, there were nights in which he cried himself to sleep.

Super interesting interview.
How Can Linux Gain (Even) More Enterprise Acceptance? (Video)
I feel like the parent, and not due to communication skills per-say, but because that kind of thought requires self-reflection and doesn't just come up naturally while in conversation. If I went away for a while to think about it, then I could explain it to you just fine, but I've never been in an interview that operated that way.
Oh please, don't buy it then. I'm sure you can find another charity online you can send $5 to.
I work on backend Linux systems, as do a huge percentage of Linux devs. Other people's screen resolution is irrelevant to me.
Which one of those has a real digitizer and comes with a pen to take meeting notes on?
The reason for the stock climb is rumors of a buyout, not this bundle.
Idea for pricing the Surface Pro or other new devices
How would it work if, instead of pricing the Surface Pro at $899. Microsoft priced it either higher or lower and then varied it as sales came in.

e.g. First day it is released at $500

Sales spike, they increase price to $550 etc..

or they go in reverse:

e.g. First day they release at $1500

No sales, the decrease to $1450 etc...

I understand you'd probably increase buyer remorse if you came down in price, so maybe going up in price makes more sense.

You might lose some initial margin from early adopters but you'd be able to define the market better.
In the area of "will this work with the god-damned printer" OSX is by far the most polished unix distro.

More than any usability feature or GUI design element, the aspect of "OSX UNIX" that stands apart is the ability to interact with plain old consumer hardware...
Isodrive - isometric game engine for HTML5 Canvas
PeopleBrowsr has restraining order over Twitter data
Why is THQ failing so hard? Is it simply because of how poorly the company was run for decades beginning with the Nintendo era where they foisted tons of licensed crap games on kids? I know I still kind of have negative associations with the THQ brand, even though I know for a fact that they've been releasing very good games for more than a decade now.

Is it just a matter of spending too much money on games like Saints Row that are huge money losers?
I'd expect to see the first signs of results in a couple years. For example, how many companies from the first batch are still around?
HHVM was pretty far along when we started talking to the PyPy folks; it was already able to run the site, and hosting internal development at Facebook. Our interest in PyPy wasn't an immediate, drop-everything-and-change-to-PyPy kind of interest. It was a research project, which had a positive outcome. Making a production-ready, PyPy-based system for PHP would still be an enormously big undertaking, though.

PyPy is taking a radically different approach from what HHVM is doing (and really from what almost all other dynamic language systems are doing), and it's a fascinating system. Part of what's exciting about it is that it seems like it should be applicable to other languages with less effort than most other JITs, and we wanted to understand its potential for a language like PHP. We asked Maciej Fijalkowski (hi, Maciej, if you're reading!) to help us do a research prototype to see what the first few roadblocks would look like, and Maciej did a great job. Just because we didn't scrap our current project and shift all our resources to PyPy should not be seen as a negative reflection on PyPy at all.
Agreed. The issue is that people are getting upset with the police seizing the computers, which would seem to be reasonable in the given situation.
A history shutting down unviable services is a glass half full. On the upside, it means they won't permit a service to limp on, viewing its customers as burdens and providing terrible service in the hopes they go away.
This. Communication skills seems to be the real problem, specifically technical communication skills. In addition to comments, try reading "Code Complete 2" to build vocabulary or giving short talks at your local user groups to practice technical speaking skills.
Thanks for the feedback Eric.

As a long time fan of C# and how it evolved (started with .net beta 1), and even more so of Roslyn, I for one would be very disappointed to see C# not being considered from Microsoft as I consider it.

Good luck in your next position, I heard that Coverity for .net is using Cecil :)
All right, most of these comments seem to be about how he went the completely wrong direction looking to get hired and how each of us would have done it completely differently. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Would he have done better if he had just "launched something himself"? Perhaps. How about being a fantastic coder and orator too? Certainly. That's not the point. He had persistence. When it comes to running a company and trying to be successful, there are few traits more valuable than persistence -- and he has more of it than the majority of extremely smart people I know.

I know a lot of absolutely fantastic coders. Many of them are very creative too. But the lack of persistence and drive is what will prevent them from dealing with the emotional rollercoaster and disappointment that is running a company.

Somebody with persistence and intelligence can learn any skill. And most importantly, they can keep performing their skills when everybody else -- even those 50 times better at it than they -- have quit.

EDIT: And I should have included: Amar, hats off to you. You're going to go far.
caller-id ?
IAMA former Amazon.com warehouse employee.
Only way to know for sure is to apply for some jobs and see what happens :)

I have no doubt you could get a job, the question is, can you get one doing what you want that pays what you want
The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe
The TV scene people now use H.264 in MP4.
Miscellaneous Thoughts and Observations on iTunes 11
This applies to any type of interviews/beginnings. Since op listed himself as an entrepreneur who has sold companies, I'd expect this concept to not be novel. Probably, just a matter of regaining some confidence.
The UN has recognized Palestine as a nation state 
By a vote of 138 to 9, 41 abstaining, Palestine has become a nation state (a non-voting member state specifically) in the eyes of the United Nations.
Syrians can still dial an international number and get online via modem. So you are better off sending money to aid organisations to pay the phone bill.
One of the authors of that book taught a class earlier this year at Berkeley. If you learn best listening, the lectures might help. I found them a bit easy, but a nice overview of the book.

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/playlist#c,d,Computer_Science,EC...
I would imagine that some traffic could get through via modems, or does no-one use them anymore?
If technical interviews are a problem that the author is aware of, why not take action to shore up the missing knowledge? Take a few hours to read about some data structure, then try implementing it. Read Programming Pearls. Interview somewhere and see what they ask, then read more on those subjects.
If you dont mind me asking how large your revenues were at its peak? Or more generically were you well of or dragging along?
> I can build software that’s happily used by millions of people, but I couldn’t describe how I did it, and if I looked at the code later – I probably couldn’t make heads or tails out of it without really studying it for a while (comments? who has time to bother commenting code!).

Pretty much like every legacy project I've ever touched, wrote by people who got the job. Sounds fine for me.
As someone who has been in the position of maintaining code written by someone who 'can make it work' but doesn't understand why, yes. Yes you are, because you're not the only one who has to work on your code.