skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The river metaphor probably made you think of Plato. The famous quote "You can never step into the same river twice" is attributed to Heraclitus[1], but it's Plato who (first) tells us that Heraclitus said it[2].

Plato's theory of forms (or ideas - they're two ways expressing the same theory in Plato, not oppositions) is arguably a response to earlier theories of Heraclitus and Parmenides[3]. In a Heraclitean world, everything is always changing; nothing stays the same, and there is not even an underlying substance that undergoes the changing and stays itself (the way we might say there's an underlying me that was once young and is now older). In contrast to Heraclitus, Parmenides said almost the opposite (maybe - people argue a lot about what the hell Parmenides said): nothing ever changes; the only reality is being, which is always (and only) what it is and doesn't change. Heraclitus denied the reality of stability, and Parmenides denied the reality of change. Plato is trying to bridge these two theories: he wants to agree with Heraclitus that the world shows massive change, but also with Parmenides that not everything changes, and that something must subsist all the changing. Forms help to explain permanence for Plato: a form is an eternal, immutable, non-sensory X that all the concrete particular x things participate in. For example, the form of Beauty (which is permanent, unchanging and perfectly beautiful, but non-sensory - a funny combination) is what makes actual beautiful things (which can change and become ugly) beautiful. When put that way without more context, Plato's theory sounds bizarre and obviously false. But he was struggling to understand what later philosophers call "properties"[3] and "the problem of universals"[4], and it turns out that that problem is not easily solved.

[1]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/

[2]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/#Flu

[3]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/

[4]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties/

[5]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/universals-medieval/
Its like with food-like objects, like plastic decorative fruits, pickled decorative food, and small candy like objects. With clear labeling, everything is fine and those objects do fulfill their role. Without clear labels however, they are a risk to people. Pickled decorative food is a special notable case here, in which if it was eaten, is indeed very poisonous.

And while I hope, really hope that people will figure it out based on what information they get back from first time using the search box, I somehow doubt the majority of people will realize that the information is actually based on what they themselves wrote in the box and thus someone now has a record of it. A large portion of people dont even figure this out when using search on the Internet. Maybe that's a bit pessimistic, and its only a small fraction of people that do not know that every word they type in Google and Facebook is saved for all eternity. The data I can gather from observing people I see around me however, sadly support the more pessimistic view.
Then the car probably won't pass vehicle inspection anymore and thus cannot be driven legally.
In fact it turns out that 12.04 has some lens making queries to different services when I was searching stuff using the dash, and I didn't know about it.

I fixed it with: sudo apt-get remove unity-scope-musicstores unity-lens-video unity-lens-music

(I couldn't find how to disable it)

It's not like I agreed to this when I installed the system, because I upgraded from a previous version (and a previous version, etc), and that behaviour wasn't there.

I don't know how Canonical could advertise these changes, but in the Amazon lens case I think RMS did it right.
If your code ends up like that you probably missed having a sustainable rate, pair programming, code reviews, refactoring and writing testable code. So you missed a lot.
The root cause of the problem here is that users should never assume that their distribution is going to protect them. Other systems have remained closed or become like Ubuntu because that's how they thought they could deliver the best product to their users. The reason the FSF believes that free software protects users is that users have the right to view, modify and redistribute the source code. You also have a responsibility. Don't assume that because your distribution is on a list that it won't include spyware - look at the packages, see what they're doing. Be vocal as soon as you see a trend you don't like. Ubuntu's been headed in this direction for years. Nobody has time to view the entire distribution, but seriously - put more effort in than this.
Projects would have to pick a language that makes sense, given their goals. Perhaps some would be keener on optimising mainly for the existing set of contributors?
Financial Times Deutschland laid to rest
Adventures with House Cleaning
"...we have made it dead easy to switch the online search tools off with a simple toggle in settings."
+1. I liked the framing of this entire thing. Wow.

Thank you for writing this. I wish more people upvote this so it can move somewhere close to the top to provide a much needed perspective on things.
What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro?

I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that."

As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche?

Is plain Debian really something that people feel comfortable recommending to non-supported strangers? Something that you would not be embarrassed about if they looked you up and told you what happened?
I'm following :). I'm really glad I posted my question on HN, I received really good advices. Thanks for yours!
ITU Leaks And Hacks: The Internet Strikes Back
All of this presumes that MS has a five-year runway to figure out the consumer market at their leisure. Do they though? If neither Surface and Windows Phone have any traction through the holiday season, I don't see how they'll find it in 2013.
AFAIK you do not need to pay for aliases - only mailboxes.
algorithmmonkey hit the nail on the head: this sounds a HELL of a lot like WSDL and the WS* method in general. I HATE the WS*. However, I'm not going to knock what they are doing, because it is certainly a noble effort. Could someone who is much smarter than me explain how this would avoid the pitfalls of past attempts at abstracting service layers?

It's interesting to see the approach of abstractable APIs, vs. the other way of making usage of data more automatic, via machine readable semantic markup and embedding metadata into the data structure aka linked data/semantic web.

I think its all awesome.
Actually, as far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with "official" GitHub. It's some guy with the GitHub username "letsmake" using GitHub pages [1].

I really wish GitHub would start doing something about people using that feature to make it look like they're part of (or speaking for) GitHub. It's incredibly misleading some times.

[1] http://pages.github.com/
>The Linux kernel

Its 100% obvious from the context of my post that I was using linux as a shorthand for this distro.

I really hate this disingenuous rhetorical trick. When people start talking about stupid things distros do suddenly its "OH WAIT, LINUX IS JUST A KERNEL!" Err, no one is just running the kernel. We're all running some distro.

Its like a 'god of the gaps' argument for geeks. You get backed into a corner and suddenly its "wait wait, its just a kernel, how dare you criticize it?! Its pure." Yeah but we're still all running some distro. Why do distros like ubuntu and mint have these privacy issues and have ads in them? Lets not sweep these important issues under the rug of technical minutia.
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Quite interesting that Bitcoin appears to be making inroads into the mainstream financial system (which being registered a bank would seem to imply). The primary issue with Bitcoin is that because it is issued by no one, and is no one's primary currency, there is no incentive or ability by any organization to regulate it through monetary policy. It's value is set only by the market. The flaws with such a system is obvious, and Bitcoin experienced it itself when it went through that massive devaluation a few years back. Even with automated banking systems, the market structures used throughout the world are based on currencies having a measure of stability to them in terms of pricing, or, at the very least, that a central bank of some sort will give ample notice before a massive change will occur. With Bitcoin, that all goes out the window, and pricing becomes a major challenge. As such, I don't see anyway Bitcoin can move into the mainstream marketplace. It has to be a niche provider. So this step is very interesting and counter-intuitive.

Should note, when I say no regulation, I mean it can't be regulated according to market movements. It's regulated by a pre-set system of release, not one that can react to changing circumstances.
Real-Time Tech News in Dynamic Grids
I recall complaining vocally about that and seeing others do so. It's still the only reason I don't use Chrome.
Yes, but it's somewhat less of a privacy violation, because you usually expect to send out the URL you type over the internet. That's different from trying a local search on your machine and finding it ended up on the internet.
just because he doesn't talk and write the way you think he should

If he can't communicate his ideas in a calm and balanced way, perhaps those ideas don't have as much value as he thinks they do. Sorry, but method of delivery counts for a lot.
>>> I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street.

Classy. You get my vote for that and subsequently pointing out that "They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off". This.

I also liked the way you ended it. We definitely need RMS, but he definitely needs to choose his battles wisely.
This reminds me of several things.

The first is the essay, "The Anti-Mac User Interface" which everybody ought to read. But that talked about a UI that let people send commands in natural language then the computer would use completion and Thesauri to make suggestions as to what precise commands the user might have meant.

http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html

There's also the shell I use, fish (the Friendly Interactive SHell), where there's traditional bash style tab completion, but it also looks for common commands I've given in the past and if I type 's' say it'll show 'ssh -t linux.mit.edu screen -R' in greyed out text because that's the most common command I use that starts with an 's'. And then I can just pretty Ctrl-f to fill in the completion. Or I can keep typing to 'sc' and it'll come up with another auto completion based on those two letters.

http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/

Or there's Ubuntu's HUD, which lets you select things from the menu's using fuzzy matching and remembering which commands you use most frequently and presenting those first. Basically the one thing that keeps making me think that maybe I should go back to Unity.
The Hardest Thing to Accomplish at an Early Stage Startup
We only query amazon if you are in a country that has a local amazon store.
Explaining coder's block to non-coders
Code. Think (on the toilet). Code.
First of all, it's too expensive. $7 for 5 repos? I'll use bitbucket instead and keep github account for opensource projects. Probably price should depend on a number of collaborators and some special features.
Nvidia  GeForce Experience App Aims To Simplify Game Settings
Strange how a lot of the comments on that story show that the readers have already judged the contractor as guilty of everything the woman said. This just proves how damaging these comments can be. Not a single person here or reading that article was there to see what went down. For all we know this woman is a psycho and just wanted to make this guy's life miserable. Free speech is all good and everything, but we do have laws that are meant to protect people from having horrible lies told about them. If he really did do those things then let the court decide (which is going to happen now that he is suing her). But the court of public opinion doesn't have the same rules as the court of law. People are just taking this woman's word for it as if they have never, ever read something online that was just the ramblings of an idiot.
It has a lot to do with what time of day you post:

http://hnpickup.appspot.com/
Shinto Chinese?
Richard O'Dwyer's two-year extradition ordeal ends in New York
Which would put it at about inflation, so no growth.
Yeah, should've probably put a caveat in that!

I'd argue that even a hacked system is intractable though, as it still rigidly follows the rules no matter the outcome. That's usually what black hats are exploiting in the first place.

If the problem with bureaucracy is rigidity, then replacing human agency with computed agency would only exacerbate that in my opinion.
Obligatory Penn & Teller:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
I recommend Xubuntu. And if they run Windows, install it as WUBI.
It's a plainly and openly partisan site, and you haven't addressed the other (substantive) part of 'rayiner's rebuttal of your point.
Golden Spike unveils plans for private moon trips
Page fails on iPhone :

http://i.imgur.com/MQ0IU.png
I suggest read-only SSH keys for deployments.
With the two current wars winding down America's Heros(tm) need new villains to fight. War is good for business, remember?
Did a check last night, with 4/5 bars I got 600 kbps down, 350 kbps up. Not spectacular, but I'm not watching YouTube in the car or anything.
Indeed.

If spyware is a continuum from onerous to innocuous, then at the moment Canonical's string sending/sharing is somewhere near the innocuous end of the line. But it's still within the continuum.

By excusing it as innocuous and (for now) flippable, we shorten the line.

And then shorten the line again for the next thing that finds itself happily closer to the innocuous end of the line.

And again.
Lots of people minded. There was a huge shitstorm when Google introduced it on the search front page, there was one when Firefox enabled it in the search box and there was one when Chrome was released without a separation between the location and search box.

At least the search suggestions are genuinely useful, in stark contrast to the Amazon ads.
Performs better than the JS versions. Could be good for SaaS services that target developers that you know have a high probability of running *nix systems.
Me too. I just set up a client's email with Google Apps a couple of days ago intending to use the free version. Its going to be a big headache if they can't use the free offering.
The one ideal characteristic of your startup’s first customers
I hate to point out the obvious, but for people who don't click the link: that bug was filed in irony (and by somebody who didn't "get" the home lens as a global search tool, but that perceptual problem is ours more than it is anybody else's). The global search functionality could be queried from the commandline (by writing a tool that talked to the backends over dbus, as the dash does), and I half expect somebody to implement a kludgy version of "grep" that did exactly that, it is in no way something we're going to ever ship.
Watch HN: Gymnast Doesn't Give Up
China's Steve Jobs Is Building A Company That Walks And Talks Like Apple
The underlying point is the point - which is that the best documentation of coding standards is the code itself. Automating code generation, analysis, measurement, etc are just some other benefits that come out of standardizing code if one chooses to implement them.
Entertainment & Media was the bracket I pulled from, but the content industry is larger than that, as was pointed out elsewhere on the thread.
Sigh.... you mean well. But you'll never win this battle/war of words... Someone summed this whole thing on another earlier thread on.... (wait for it......) Ubuntu, a few days ago...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864591

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864615

And the argument continues.....
我会讲中文。
Of course its not the primary purpose of the Kindle to destroy information. They have however made it their goal once before in regard to one book.

The original blog post could be interpreted as claiming what the kindles main purpose is, but I doubt RMS would defend such interpretation. A one time act, while notable, does not equal primary purpose, and he and everyone else knows that.
I mean something not derived from Ubuntu.

Yes, Xubuntu (which I currently run underneath XMonad) does not (yet) have this and future related features, and that's good.

But by using an Ubuntu derived distro, you lend credibility to Ubuntu and Canonical.

I would prefer to recommend something higher up the derivation line between Debian and Ubuntu.
It still refused to show me any content until I logged in. I was trying to imply that I refused to.
Code quality is the least important reason to pair program
One person once said that engineers are slaves of 21.century.
"Linux" is not a valid shorthand for "Ubuntu" when you are saying things like "Linux costs privacy". Using such unannounced "shorthands" makes you appear to be a troll, and because of Poe's Law it is exceedingly difficult to rule out the possibility that trolling is exactly what you are doing.

If you want to avoid these accusations, be clear and either type out Ubuntu instead of saving a single letter by writing Linux, or explicitly announce your "shorthand".
Touch performance is pretty weak on iPhone 4S. Though that could be due to webkit, I think it might make more sense to increase the touch region (at this point, it seems to only respond when you touch the text.
Yeah, but beeping when a car is about to T-bone you is pretty bad-ass. More features like this that make the car feel like a fighter jet, please.
An Office to PDF API built with 3scale
What the hell were they expecting?
Good old Fravia. Like Stallman, Fravia seems to have been "hard to swallow" by the community at large. However, just like Stallman, when you dug into Fravia's stuff it turned out to be pretty great.
The One Thing You Need To Know About Bang Methods
Just because you have to have a GMail account to log in to Google services doesn't mean you have to use it as your primary email address.

Plain-old GMail is no different (from a UX perspective) from being the sole user on a Google Apps account, so admins haven't really lost anything in terms of being able to evaluate Google Apps. There's nothing particularly interesting in the free version's admin panel.
This is such bullshit. There is a big difference between googling and searching your own files, while the anecdote you give probably accounts for only 1% of that computer's usage or even less. Reading this opinion I even pictured a stock-photo with family members gathered around a laptop, stupidly laughing at a photo of "bread pudding".

Your sister could be searching within her own files for strings like "last year debt", "ass ventura crack detective", "bondage", "dvdrip" and "office keygen".

I'm sure your sister doesn't do that, but other people do. And searches can express and hint to your deepest desires/taboos and things that might lead one to think of illegal activities.

My non-technical wife asked me one day, during a funny conversation about sex gadgets, if people at Google can see what she's typing and I taught her how to use incognito mode. At some point I also made her aware that Facebook sends and publishes her lat/lon coordinates when typing a message from her phone. She understood the dangers of online activity and took steps to protect herself, without me even trying too hard to explain, but this required some amount of education which is out of reach for most normal people who either don't have a technical friend that understands such issues, or that technical friend thinks it isn't a problem, such as yourself.
And all distros have malware? Or just Ubuntu?
Plenty of services offer unlimited accounts for $5/month. The amount of services offered in a Google Apps account needs to stop getting minimized to just email in this thread as it skews comparisons.
I like the way this article seems to think that the only attacks that exist are those that are reported. I'd figure the most effective attacks are ones that no-one notices or reports.
Utilities to backup (and restore) your Gmail account to your desktop via IMAP
Yep you're right, they just haven't gotten around to updating the copy on the form.
No, I am being ironic in order to try to diplomatically say that the comment I was replying to is not hacker news worthy (especially in its original form).
Yarnbomb alert issued for Newry
People in the world speak several different languages. When they want to talk in a way that will be understood in many nations, they utilize a language widely known, at least to the portion of the society that is more literate. At a time it was Greek; later it was Latin, then French. Currently it is English.
Personally, while I generally agree with rms, in this particular situation I think he went overboard. Not in expressing his opinion, but in the way he did it.

I say this as a free software advocate; this situation arises from a sad reality, and one that rms doesn't even address: it's really hard to make money from free software. I don't think Mark Shuttleworth was enthusiastic about sending users' information, the deal with Amazon is just a way to try to monetize an OS which its users mostly don't pay for.

So, instead of rallying the people to boycott Canonical, rms should be more understanding of the situation. After all, the Free Software Foundation is well aware of the difficulties of obtaining money in this space. Have you noticed that the three biggest patrons of the FSF are companies whose money comes largely from non-free software? I'm talking about Google, Oracle and IBM. What does it tell us about the free software movement.
https://www.fsf.org/patrons

We are close to 2013, many years ago, when I started using Slackware Linux, I would have expected that by this time there would be many thriving companies offering free software solutions for the desktop and competing for my money based not on lock-in, but on quality and innovation. Where's my flying car?

I understand and completely support the "respect user's privacy" argument, but we should also understand the "money doesn't fall from trees" argument and seek acceptable solutions, otherwise the year of Linux on the desktop will never come.
Xbox 360 Sold More Units Than The Nintendo Wii U In November
> but the comically awful managers who watch terrorist attacks on TV and then think, "I'd like to do that to a company!"

What's that mean? They'll fly planes in to buildings? Strap bombs to themselves and blow up their buses?

> I would give them the gory details so they are prepared for what may happen

It sounds like you discovered office politics. It doesn't sound particularly unique to Google.
>Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy

What a nonsensical statement.
By all means.
Xubuntu is a WUBI option now. Works a charm.
Code search is available - if somewhat hidden. Add /search to the end of the repository url on github (eg. https://github.com/rails/rails/search ).
Baldurs Gate Enhanced Edition for iPad available
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it's MS, maybe 80% marketshare
a minimal setup by Daniel Cid
Yet, instead of singling out the offending distro (Ubuntu), you implicated all Linux-based operating systems. It's not 100% obvious what you meant by painting with such a wide brush.