skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
More law enforcement power is not a good thing for America. We already arrest more people each year than any other country, even more than China (a notoriously oppressive government with several times more citizens than the US), and most of those people never actually have a trial (the courts cannot handle that many cases; if even a fraction of those arrested demanded a trial, our court system would be completely overwhelmed and unable to handle the burden). The police will not use better access to information to make better decisions about who to arrest; they will just use the information to increase the number of people they arrest, most of whom will technically be in violation of some law (not hard, given just how many laws are on the books and how broad, vague, and easily violated those laws are).
Your tax dollars at work, powered by machine learning(tm)
@Xylakant then you have to pull an "Petraeus" and just keep the emails unsent in the draft folder. Not sure if this is still a viable option.
> My naive non-american mind

Does this sentiment not exist where you are from?
I just want the point out that the reason that this is so scary is that your reasoning can be taken the other way. It's always a slippery slope. How much is too much? Anything that's now illegal to obtain, can be made legal and the process starts over.

If you begin to allow your freedom and liberty to be eroded bit by bit, you're not going to notice it when it's totally gone. There's a reason why the freedom to privacy is important, and there are reasons why it was (and is) a good idea to follow the "innocent until proven guilty" line of thought.

Now I'm unsure where I stand myself, between the 2 extremes: allow a murderer walk due to lack of evidence or allowing the government to lock up innocent civilians just based on an algorithm's "suspicion" without charge. There has to be a middle ground somewhere. What I do know is, with the way things are going, it's moving faster and faster towards the later...

I don't have the answer but I think we agree that the citizens of the country that will be put under surveylance should have a say on whether they are OK with it, not signed into law behind their backs. I mean, I thought that's what democracy is all about.

In either case, since I don't live in the US, all I can really do about it is talk. It's up to you guys to have meaningful discussions and take action (or not) on this. But just know that this will end up affecting the way other world power treat their citizens. The world will definitely be keep an close eye on this.
Myers-Briggs: Does it pay to know your type?
Jamphel Yeshi died: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/28/tibetan-protester...
Bobby Kotick of Activision, Drawing Praise and Wrath
Yes, of course. And I did it with RSS 2.0, froze the format so we'd all have something to shoot for.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#roadmap
Wordpress handles load pretty badly without any caching enabled.
That's right. Most of the development done with Flickr was finished a long time ago, and the apps are deployed and there's no one around to deal with deprecated APIs.

That's of course assuming that it's possible to do with a new API what you could do with the old one. We've seen with Twitter that's not necessarily true.

But thanks Dody for thinking of users. That's often pretty far down the priority list for developers, esp at big companies.
Simple way to attach a breadboard to an Ardiuno or other microcontroller
Twitter Starts Rolling Out Option To Download Your Twitter Archive In One File
> can you actually run a modern app stack on just 128 MB of RAM

Depends on what you call modern.

I think fitting nginx / embedded lua / redis should be possible (considering your dataset fits into 32 megs).

Actually, that sounds like an interesting challenge!
You don't need that kind of gear to build a board like this. You just need a good set of EDA tools and to read all the datasheets carefully. Stuff like trace impedance and the performance of high-speed lines should be done in simulation tools before you ever send out the board to be fabbed. It's only in cases where people are really pushing the limits (networking gear, RF gear, for example) that high-speed physical measurement hardware is necessary.

A board like that, with a Spartan6 and ARM processor, is actually fairly easy to make work "out of the box" with minimal attention to pre-build simulation, as long as you carefully follow the datasheets' recommendations for signal routing, bypass, etc.
C#: "If my code in this language successfully compiles, there is a good chance my code is correct."

Gave me a good chuckle, but now I can't work out if I'm supposed to take this site seriously?

And all of the PHP statements were negative, of course...

/goes back to his PHP programming
Happy Birthday, Programmers
open jdk?
Police patrols are not one thing. It is not just "officer friendly" with a nightstick. In New York City, there are paramilitary teams wandering around in subway stations -- one can only recognize them as police because of the word POLICE written on their body armor.

Things have gotten excessive:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-gear/a...
Of course that's why we should break everything -- because it seems "weird" to someone whose name is Know Theory. Right. :-)
Neener neener.
Arguably the other JVM-hosted languages are exactly this.
Have you opened the news in past two years? governments can fall in weeks starting with stones. don't kid yourself.
I think as a general rule, I do agree with this. When you don't have mandatory vacation, you start asking yourself the question, "Should I really time off work?" Motivated, hard-working people have a hard time saying "yes" to that question. So far, we've all taken time off for vacation this past summer, and we're getting a couple weeks for Christmas, but I can see how such a system could have negative impacts.
I'm not sure quite what they're using it for, though. I suppose some sites block .gov IP ranges, but you'd think they could easily proxy via some innocuous host provided by a commercial provider.
Makes sense, you want to make it as clear as possible to see that they're different. My thinking was that if you're already differentiating by size and weight, why introduce another variation that will take an extra fraction of a second to process?
It's not drawn from Holmes, it's just illustrated with an example lots of people are familiar with.
Gave up after seeing how many steps were actually required.
They don't. Once the activity pattern matches with "not ordered by the hierarchy", it goes automatically in the "no good" bucket. Rationalization like this "extracurricular" pretext may follow, but the actual decision is based on a very quick, perceptive, and biased judgement.
Do you mean this series of attacks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010–2...

If Wikipedia is correct, this was a whole series of attacks, sometimes with multiple assailants, with each attack having far fewer fatalities, so the point about reducing the damage stands.

Still awful.
I enjoyed Visual Basic's top few:

* I am sometimes embarrassed to admit to my peers that I know this language

* I am reluctant to admit to knowing this language

* The thought that I may still be using this language in twenty years time fills me with dread

* This language is frequently used for applications it isn't suitable for

* Code written in this language tends to be verbose

* This language is likely to be a passing fad

* This language has an annoying syntax

* I often get angry when writing code in this language

* Developers who primarily use this language often burn out after a few years

Is Visual Basic still used in industry? I haven't touched it in years.
>I've learnt a good technique where I just work on being angry. Doesn't matter what about, even just at myself for being depressed. When I get to angry, I'm not feeling despair anymore. I allow myself to focus on being angry for a while but then that turns into frustration. Then I just become annoyed. And before I realise I'm not depressed anymore.
I try to do this, a lot and trust me it works!
I'm guessing you don't get out much on the Internet.
Nicely done video.
"If you have a record then isn't it understandable that you might attract more attention than someone with a blameless past?"

Not when we have people who were charged with sex crimes because when they were 17 years old they dated a 15 year old, and who now have to register as sex offenders. The law has become completely out of control -- saying that someone has broken laws in the past is no more of a justification than saying that a person breathes air.
Not another one!
I find this site depressing itself.
Apple, Google, Microsoft: Screw You
(from 2006, so not sure what it's doing here, but anyway..)

This "oddity" is how every C compiler and linker behaves (that I've used)
You need it behave this way to have some control over what gets linked in the face of multiple definitions.
When innocent until proven guilty is removed (folks are presumed to do something that breaks the law in the future by this) we are heading down the wrong path. Many might say, "If you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about". Except we don't know what is considered "wrong" so everyone has everything to worry about. "But we're a democracy so we don't have to worry about losing control!" others will say. I will point you to the wonderful "democratic" elections that are held in North Korea... that is the society and structure you get when utilizing "thought crimes and thought police".
A serious alternative to Jekyll is Nanoc[1]. It is absurdly easy to compile any format to another format using a simple 'Rules' file. I for example have pandoc -> HTML with custom syntax highlighting and LaTeX -> pdf on my personal website [2]. Everything is customization and configurable so you can have your own conventions for posts, etc.

[1]: https://github.com/ddfreyne/nanoc
[2]: https://github.com/zmanji/zameermanji.com
Lot of this is presented in a confusing manner:

Clojure ranks low for having annoying syntax and usually being verbose.

Java ranks low for being terse.

Python and Java both rank low for easy to shoot yourself in the foot.

With the presentation this ambiguous, I am not sure how those taking this survey interpreted the questions.
Ask HN: How many servers did you have/need at your startup's launch?
Did you have enough disk space and bandwidth at your launch? How much space did you have?
As the publisher of said site, an honest, genuine question to you both (or any who share their opinion) - what is it about the site design that turns you off so much? What 'work' does it need, in your view?

(Edit: typo)
Are we so spooked as a nation that we're really considering precognition-style crime fighting? Liberties aside, this really makes me wonder what the atmosphere is like inside the government. With all of this paranoia, only two paths come to mind: 1.) They're aware of a future threat so large that it threatens the stability of the country, or 2.) They're planning something internally to "take over" the country one way or another.

In another view, you have to ask what this would do to society? A public so paranoid of being harassed by the government that they barely do anything, or, actually do go out and commit crimes. Despite our "intelligence" we're still animals and will behave so put under the right amount of strain. This is a time bomb.
The guy is clearly just working in the wrong lab, and should find more suitable co-workers. In my lab, I love that everyone works long hours and their main interest revolves around the science we do. It makes for a fast-paced and exciting workplace. That's not for everyone, and prospective scientists should think carefully about whether they will fit in with the ethos of a group before they join, rather than bitching about hard working people wanting to be around other hard working people.
Agreed, but I think s/he meant 'JVM' rather than 'Java'.
> yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons.

I guess you don't count child soldiers in Africa.
Hi stranger, the best remedy I found is tango, no not the one you see in a media, but real, social one. It heals your soul and let your body take care of yourself. When a stranger will embrace you as a normal human being without asking anything back it's a great felling. Go for it.
Why is the Fracking Industry Worried Sick Over Matt Damon's Promised Land?
you have to be an idiot to use any email provider for something like this, without PGP encrypting your content.
Tested: Frank & Oak a clothing club for gentlemen
I only feel good when my blood pressure is extremly high compared to a normal person. How is your blood pressure when you're happy compared to when you're sad?? I'm really curious if it has an effect on the mood. Because it definately has a dramatic effect on my mood. (It's around >170sys/120dia and higher for me when feeling good)

Reference: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167876012...
Very confusing presentation.

It is a collection of statements about the language. So ranks low in 'easy to shoot yourself in the foot' means that most people did not think that java or python was 'easy to shoot yourself in the foot'.

ie. the low ranking statements mean that the language is not like that statement.
I believe it is a one-time $37 investment, not monthly.

If I understood the discussion elsewhere in this thread, he states that the investment is a form that gets converted to $37 worth of shares at the next fundraising valuation.

So if you raised venture capital at a million dollars valuation, he would own $37 worth of shares, which later if the company was sold for a billion would give the investor a cool $37,000.

Basically he is trying to make a point rather than make big profits.
Mental illnesses are not understood at all, I'll agree with that.

I would be hesitant to assume that they're not genetic, though - I've personally decided not to have children entirely due to the fact that mental illness is so prevalent in my partner's family (about 50% of the current < 30 year olds in the family have either been hospitalized or tried to kill themselves, and I'm not willing to subject a child of mine to those odds). I frankly don't believe that this family has just been randomly unlucky, it seems far more likely that there's something genetic behind it, especially since even the "sane" people in the family tend to be so unhappy that they probably should have been treated for the same things that the "crazy" people have been hospitalized for.

DNA may only be one piece of the puzzle, but I think it's a big enough piece of that puzzle that we need to look into it a bit more. I can't recall the last truly "crazy" person I've interacted with that didn't have something messed up in their family history...

That said, epigenetics definitely could be the issue here, my partner is of Irish stock and that's one of the classic cases of epigenetic poisoning (the famines caused all sorts of epigenetic nastiness, a lot of which has been shown to persist for generations). I totally believe that some lineages have seriously detrimental baggage associated with them, and I believe that hers could be one of them.

In the end though, I don't know that there's much difference - a person's heritage, one way or another, ends up determining their children's susceptibility to mental illness, and if that susceptibility is high, a responsible "parent" should perhaps choose not to have the child.

Just my opinion. And to be fair, if everyone followed it and was a "responsible parent" (i.e. not having kids if your family history is fucking nutters), the woman I love would not have been born, so I don't hold it that dear...
From the article: "Yet despite its widespread use and vast financial success, and although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung, one of the most famous psychologists of the 20th century, the test is highly questioned by the scientific community."

Yes. Here are some references about that.

http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html

http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/person...

"Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: 'at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs,' the very thing that it is most often used for."

http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve...

http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie-Murphy/...
It's a question of adoption. Asking people to install a browser addon is easier and less hassle than a whole new application.

I use Thunderbird myself, but if we want email encryption available to everyone - not just us geeks - then the simpler we can make it, the better.
Still used heavily - but not in industry exactly. It is used mainly for creating little button macros in Excel documents to do some calculations in the document.

It is generally not used directly - Excel lets you record a macro, where it will transform the user's clicks and actions into VB script directly. Users can then add this script to a button, and can repeat their actions by clicking on the button. So not a programming language, but more of a macro language.
Nobody cares if you're "well-rounded". It's a gimmick that's been used for generations [1] to preserve the ethnic / cultural make-up of various groups. A simple way to verify this is by noticing that not all extracurriculars are created equal. With e.g. sports, you'd have to go to East Asia to find a place where, say, badminton and tennis are equally highly regarded. And good luck equating leadership in a WoW guild of hundreds of people with captainship of the local lacrosse team.

[1] At least since early 20th century Ivy League admissions got switched to the "interview / recommendations / extracurriculars" process in order to keep out Jewish applicants http://www.amazon.com/review/R2CVQUI4C0VDUQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_per...
Thank you.

There is a big difference between saying that people need better access to diagnosis and treatment, and saying that people need to be locked away before they've done anything.
Well, the Brits seemed to have been smarter than to create a new law. The Brits just confirmed the existing law. Of course, the Brits were interested in peace, quiet, order, and efficient exploitation, so I understand their motivations too ;-)
No way, dude!
I'd say leave everything behind for few days, go find someone who is in need of help and simply help them without expecting anything in return. It could be a poor old lady working in a grocery store hurting her back just to make few bucks or some parent worried about their dying kid.....just go out there and help someone in need of help.
Most warmly recommended, please do sports or bodybuilding.
It helps overcoming the bad feelings!!
Do not trust your feelings when you feel sad about something. Just try to think about the same topic when you feel good. You will see that part of the depression is only body chemicals. That you need to stay confident that life matters.
It's like navigating in the fog, you need to find again your points of reference.

What you can do too is to write down the reason you feel good when you feel good. Often, being depressed, lead to question everything's worth. When you get to a good conclusion, write it down and read it later when you start wondering again about the same thing.
This is another way to create your own points of references.

And yes, it is not easy to get through it, but you can do it. Even though, the day you'll get out of it you won't even notice it. Really, it's like being in the fog, sooner or later, sun rises above and peak through.

Last but not least, you're doing the right thing : you need to TALK about it. Not to everyone, you need some people not to be aware, just to be able to feel normal with them, but still, talking about it is solving half of the problem.

BTW : IMO Meds are the worst thing possible when depressed. I'm no doctor, ofc, but my meds drove me deeper than I was. They destroyed my perceptions and my points of reference.
This. I think this form of non-judicial "punishment" and its effects in terms of people being afraid and hence modifying their behavior can be a form of censorship and political repression that is rarely discussed.

This also has a bearing on discussions whenever someone talks about freedom of expression.
My mother's family traveled all over Europe while she was growing up, and she picked a new boyfriend in each new school. She told me, she just never really considered not having a boyfriend, even if everyone involved knew it was pretty temporary. So it's not a purely US thing.
Our society would be extremely foolish to believe that we've not already been under deep surveillance by the government for quite a long time.
I'm not throwing up my hands and saying do nothing. I'm suggesting that we address the fundamentals, which in this case is mental illness.
Depression is a hard feeling to cope with, in the moment it seems like it will never go away, but the truth is, that it always does. One of the things that helps me in the short-term whenever I get down as an entrepreneur is watching videos of successful entrepreneurs because you see that even they have their dark days. Elon Musk, for example, was at his wit's end, almost bankrupt from tesla and space x and could not get further investment and had to literally borrow money from friends to pay his rent. http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184-elon-musk-profiled-b...
I also like watching ted videos on happiness http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h... (that one has a good point about how nearly everything is based on comparisons and nothing effects us beyond 3 months).
In terms of daily inspiration, definitely check mixergy, that will always inspire you as well. http://mixergy.com/homepage/

I have to run out now, but I have a lot more to tell you. Exercise is key, whenever I am in a bad mood I realize that it has been too long since I've exercised. Your body will actually generate new neurons while you are exercising and your brain will release endorphins and other neurotransmitters that increase mood. I know it seems hard to get there if you haven't been in a while, but for a longterm goal and short term boosts of energy, definitely do it. You can try to start with a yoga class or something like that, because at the end of the day yoga is mostly meditation and focus on breath. Meditating is also extremely important in welfare for everyone, especially entrepreneurs and founders. The daily stress of running a startup can not only get you down, but also lead to feeling lost.

I don't know what drugs you are on, but I can recommend some supplements and nootropics that will definitely elevate mood. Try tyrosine.
And the fourth amendment says that protection against unreasonable search and seizure is also a fundamental right that protects the people from their government. But that was gone in a flash.
I am running out the door with my family, but I will try and post more later, sorry if there are any grammatical errors in there as well...
This is pretty awful analysis. It conflates aggregate statistics (e.g. GDP) with per-capita ones (birth rates, cost per child). And it's headline is a clear lie designed to draw clicks.

Demographic change is a real challenge, and all industrial societies are heading for that kind of cliff. Japan's is larger than most (but smaller than China's), and they are going to get there first. But this isn't the kind of disaster being posited. It means, broadly, that for a generation or so society will be burdened by a disproportionately large elderly population, and caring for them will require resources that we'd prefer to spend on other things. But eventually things will return to a steady state, just with fewer people. We'll manage.