skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So you want gun owners to voluntarily add a GPS tracking device that is accessible by third parties to all of their guns?

I don't like to outright dismiss projects, but I'm sorry you are never going to get enough people to do this for it to be worth anyone's time.

And how is an alarm system going to help if the guy starts firing as soon as he walks in?

The vast majority of gun homicides are committed by felons with handguns not unauthorized "assault weapons". GPS trackers are going to be easy for criminals to remove anyway.
> Retargeting and optimizations will be hard.

What evidence do you have for this? I have evidence to the contrary: LuaJIT is a one-man effort and yet is one of the fastest and most portable JITs around (x86, x86-64, ARM, PowerPC, MIPS).

> I'm looking forward the next installment, where (hopefully!) one generates target independent code via LLVM, then uses one of the LLVM backends to generate the final assembly code.

LLVM is very cool, but it is an absolute mistake to think of it as obsoleting all other JITs. LLVM uses an IR that is well-suited to some things but not others. If LLVM fits your problem, great. But many problems it does not fit as well -- just look at Unladen Swallow, and notice that none of the mainstream JavaScript JITs use LLVM (not V8, not IonMonkey, not Nitro).

LLVM's design tightly couples an IR with a machine code generator. If you use DynASM, you can write your own machine code generator that accepts whatever IR is best suited to your problem.
I posted this on /r/bitcoin, but this might be relevant here.

It seems Bitcoin is moving from the innovator phase of the technology adoption lifecycle to the early adopter one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle

The community and services around it is maturing.

As long as it keeps it's "slow and steady" adoption, it may be able to find some mainstream adoption. But that will still take many years and will entirely going to depend on some vendors and markets accepting it.

With acquiring bitcoins and some stability in the market due to volume, the only remaining question will be what can I buy with bitcoins?
The Income Rich Take One For The Team. Thanks!
Well, you have viewed the responses to them negatively. My point is that you're providing an anchor for others to detach you from whatever professional goals you're attempting to reach here. Sometimes it's useful to discuss where you came from as a starting place, but it's not often necessary. Just focus on the specifics of where you're going and it'll be easier to be productive without concern for what internet people think of you ~personally~.

I hope I'm conveying that properly.
IMHO it is the NoSQL databases like Redis and MongoDB that seem to be the most popular amongst newer platforms e.g. NodeJS.
I think it would possible if it becomes a law.
Android app that provides a run-time platform for Windows binaries
You know I think I may have seen this guy's videos/post before. Seriously one night I was just totally going around YouTube and just watching all the cool stuff people were doing. It's contagious!
"I still think Canonical should do like many successful startups these days: make a large userbase and only then start to deploy the business model."

But isn't that exactly what they are doing? Ubuntu has been around for 8 years now, would many startups last for 8 years without being profitable? And when should they start deploying their business model? When we are happy with it?

I think that many of us are being two-faced about Ubuntu. We want Linux to succeed, but not Ubuntu. We want to prove that you can make money from open source projects, but object to Ubuntu doing so.
Fiscal-cliff deal: Who are the winners and losers in the bargain?
You're wasting your time. 3D printers are going to make gun rights as inevitable as your right to download Cat Steven's greatest hits--and approximately as deadly. Just give it up.

Also, if it makes you feel better, try to keep in mind that a Ford Escort is more dangerous than a boxful of 357 magnum revolvers, statistically speaking.
I'm saying that if it's impossible to publicly thank someone for a sincere kindness without retribution that perhaps a better solution is revamping your social/professional circle?
Ever hear of a booster bag? [1] Faraday cages aren't hard to make. It wouldn't shock me if a gun locker blocked signals too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booster_bag
Only one true sideproject for me in 2012:

CallMeMae.be: http://callmemae.be

Business Card sharing and exchange. Built it at an eight hour hackathon and won the grand prize, making it my only profitable project to date! In the new year I'm hoping to rewrite from the ground up as a telephone proxy service, but still need to do the customer validation.
This is a voluntary option, for parents and people who dont want their guns to me taken out or misused without their permission.

We already have electronic safes and gun safes, adding RFID or NFC based sensor would be practical, we would also need to add a sticker or embed a small chip inside the Gun.

if a Gun is removed by unauthorized person it should raise a alarm
I'm so pleased tef is blogging this stuff. It's fun to see it in one place.
Currently using Punch to build up an MVP and loving it so far :) Hoping to contribute back a few boilerplates and helpers in the near future
Simply prying the device off or smashing it with a hammer would also work.
Marketing a Kickstarter Campaign
Good one. Is there any forum, where I can submit my designs or websites and designer around the world review it. Its hard for Startups to afford designers and harder to find good ones.
It's a great concept and extremely viable. All you need to do is ask 20 gun owners and you'll get some positives. Don't listen to the naysayers.
"That along with the horrible architecture of Windows systems that just about invites malware. Vista failed miserably in both architecture and privileges and in an attempt to fix that in Windows 7, the privilege of accounts is nullified as it was in XP."

The fact that third-party software tops malware charts and absence of Blaster, Sobig, Nimda, etc. kind of pandemics doesn't back up your claim.
While I certainly don't think we'll need to take advantage of the 2nd amendment anytime soon, the purpose behind it is to keep our government honest with the threat of an armed populace.

So why would anyone in their right mind give the government the ability to track them using the very instrument that is intended to protect you from them?

If such a law were enacted, it would surely be the most idiotic piece of legislation in the history of our nation.
for driving a car you need a driving license and you should not be drunk to drive on roads. none of those apply to owning or using a gun
> There's something to be said for instructions encoded into structs instead of raw assembly

I'm confused, what is this in response to? Are we still talking about BPF's JIT vs DynASM?

By "instructions encoded into structs" are you referring to BPF's byte-code? I'm certainly not arguing against a byte-code approach at all -- byte-code obviously has numerous advantages, including (as you mention) ease of inspection. Even LuaJIT (the project that DynASM was built for) uses byte-code pervasively.

The question is: at the point that you decide you want to generate machine code from your byte-code, what's the easiest way to do it?

The BPF JIT's code is functionally identical to a DynASM-based code generator; the only difference is that the BPF JIT requires a human to put the machine encoding of every instruction directly in the source file. DynASM saves the human from performing this step by using a preprocessor.
If your're talking about an RFID tag that lets the owner know when something has been removed from the safe, I don't think anyone will have a problem with that.

However, the site mentions GPS tracking and access to the tracking info by third parties (alerting a school when a tracked gun gets too close). That's a whole different ballgame.
Full disclosure: I'm a hardware hacker and I own many firearms, including so-called "assault weapons".

A couple of thoughts here:

1. Keep your firearms in a @$(@$ safe unless you can put your hand on them within a second or two at any given time. If you can't physically control it at all times, it needs to be locked away.

2. Don't give the safe combo to your children or anyone else. Don't let them watch while you open it.

3. Don't buy a crappy safe. Hotel-style 4-digit lock codes won't cut it.

4. Once a weapon is out of the safe and you're not there to witness it, it might as well be stolen. In other words, what you want to watch is the status of the safe's door and not the location of the individual guns. See #1 and #2.

5. There are already many wireless solutions to track door status. That NinjaBlocks appliance on HN the other day comes to mind. I don't want to invest in an entirely separate system. I want something that integrates w/ my existing home security.

6. You're not going to get much milage with the firearms community by calling them "assault weapons". That's a loaded term and I don't like it. Your potential customers are guys like me: considerate, caring people who happen to enjoy shooting guns and who own a few, but want to keep their collections safe. I'm not assaulting anyone and your use of that term is enough to keep me from buying your product.

7. You're wrong about mass shootings. Most, including the most deadly (VA Tech), were committed with handguns, not long rifles.
Yes, that does seem to be the trend. However, that's all it really is: a trend. Schemaless databases are good for certain tasks, but are also really terrible for other things. It seems that people interested in using new tech like to use as much new tech as possible for the sake of it, rather than because it's actually the right tool for the job.

I know multiple people who have lost literally months of work because they tried to use Mongo in a place where a relational database made a lot more sense (incidentally, they're also using Node), and ultimately had to rebuild and migrate their entire data model layer to Postgres.

That's not a knock on Node or Mongo, just an observation. They're the right tools for some things, and the wrong tools for others. If you're choosing your tech stack based on current trends rather than spending a few minutes thinking what problems you're trying to solve, God help you.
we have lot to cover, just of the drawing board, we will build the API,web and mobile interfaces. It needs working closely with manufacturers, parents, authorities and lot of good will to move this. I expect a 80% failure possibility but it is still worth a try.
I just moved to the states and clearly, I don't know the laws well enough. If laws can't stop deadly weapons, I guess there has to be another meaningful way to do that.
Anonymous: Expect us in 2013
I understand that guns aren't hard to make - never mind 3D printing, any machinist can make a submachine gun. [1] But what about ammunition?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2624298/sten-mk2-complete-machine-...
I understand that you want to help people and save lives, but the reality of the fact is that your target market is going to universally hate your idea and the rationale behind it.
Three Months to Ramen Profitibility
I also love Postgres, but since hstore can't do nesting, but is only a flat map of strings to strings, I've been reluctant to try it out. Still, I'm glad to see it's getting support in Rails.
Are you saying I should "spec out the HN demographic" in terms of the questions I ask? (as in this one) ;)
PostgreSQL horizontally scales in the same fashion as MySQL. What are you talking about?

http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/10853187575/sha...

http://postgres-xc.sourceforge.net/

http://www.pgpool.net/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page (you can use this to transparently shard)
The digital copy offers something the physical copy doesn't, e.g. portability. Some people might be willing to pay an incremental sum for this added benefit.
You could really gamify meditation by recording things like heart rate, perspiration, time between beads, frequency of practice, etc. Like a Buddhist Nike+.
Congrats to you too!

What you said prompted me to think of a tweet I saw from smashing magazine:

"It’s good to share what we know. You needn’t be the first, you’ll just help if you’re the first that somebody finds."
https://twitter.com/smashingmag/status/278041226622668800

Whilst it's not exactly what you said I think the sentiment is the same...
I'm impressed he read to many books! Makes me wonder what I'm doing with my time :(
Thanks so much for sharing your experience. 3 kids (including twins!) wow.

I especially appreciate your comments on "what worked".

I've been listening to Quit since episode #1; loving it.
>for driving a car you need a driving license

No you don't. You need a driver's license to operate a vehicle on a public road.

You don't need one to keep it at home and drive around your backyard/dirt road. Most states require a CCW permit to carry a gun around in public as well.
You're going to parties with too many people if you're marking people as do-not-communicate at a second's notice. It's not like you're in public with hundreds around.
Nathan: I'm eager to hear what you learn!
CCTV does not stop crime, but helps in conviction. if Sandy Hook kids had one minute prior notice, atleast half of them would be alive, I am a parent myself with kids in same age group, so every possibility still excite me
Google's Currency Converter and JSON API
It's pretty impressive for someone running a fund to call publicly for the end of the carried interest loophole.
>But what about ammunition?

Not terribly difficult considering you can reuse the casings. The primer is by far the most difficult part, but not impossible. Propellant is no more difficult to make than meth.
Why Grouping Your Thoughts Will Make You A Better Public Speaker
Thanks.

I agree: it seems like blocking out a specific amount of time, and focusing during that time, is key.

I'm a big fan of Startups for the Rest of Us. They answered one of my questions on episode 111.
That's just a bad idea all around.
I hope you get eaten by a bear.
Wow it's rare for an article to make me angry.

If you're lucky enough to have the skills to build your vision, why would you work for someone else? And I say this as someone who has failed repeatedly, horribly, and most often through lack of effort.

The various unsuccessful ideas I've had over the last 7 years after quitting my .NET developer job have only strengthened my resolve to never code for anyone else ever again.

I ran out of money a long time ago, so the last few years I've had a $10/hr part-time job in the service industry. I live in a shitty apartment with a roommate I don't like. It doesn't matter though... I'm in love with my ideas, and I'm going to keep at them for the rest of my life. If you're like me and working on your ideas makes you happy, don't listen to this douchebag business guy. Listen to Einstein...

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." ― Albert Einstein
Just to clarify and since the author is being cool and replying to individual comments...

The reason I asked about a 'clean' version is this: we serve kids from relatively low-income households. The goal is to increase high school graduation rates and college attendance. This is a long-term goal that conflicts with short-term needs. Often times it might be better to have a 13-17 year old boy or girl go to work with a family member, instead of spending time being tutored or participating in athletics.

In this situation, I can't send a kid home with this book if they want to check out the new approach. I love profanity and curse more than I should, but there are certain situations and audiences where it's not appropriate. Perhaps much of the audience for this book could use a cleaner approach.

Thanks and good luck!!
Do you think he went back to being a pick pocket?
we might open source a version which is linked to SMS only and which does not talk to a server, it can be done.

bringing sensors to school and malls is lot cheaper than having troopers everywhere, but it needs political will
I'm assuming that emitting "movzx edi, byte [PTR]" is using x86 as the target, thus retargeting for ARM will likely require a complete rewrite of the brainf#ck jit. In that sense retargeting is hard. But I may be wrong! I am looking for a further article that shows how the brainf#ck jit can be retargeted to ARM without a full rewrite of the jit code.

From the jit code that generates assembly tied to a specific architecture and register allocation, plus the code generation process encoded as a preprocessor step instead of a library I can only deduce that optimizations aren't the focus of this work. But I may be wrong! Perhaps the preprocessor is syntactic sugar over a library that build the code representation as a data structure and there are ways to programmatically manipulate this data structure to implement optimizations. Looking forward for a further article with more details!

I'm not suggesting you necessarily use LLVM, but LLVM is the closest to a assembly generator library I am aware of. To the best of my knowledge, you'd have a harder time extracting the code generator of, for example, v8 as a standalone library.
Thank you. My first thoughts were a lot less polite.
I heard of bitcoin forever ago, but I had no inclination to use it as a currency. I'm now using it somewhat frequently. Turns out it's becoming the standard currency in "affiliate marketing" worlds that are... we'll say not quite "white hat."
Is this your only product? Or do you have multiple streams of revenue? (BTW: is your site ad supported, or membership supported?)
there is a free draft copy online if you search the name if you want to check out what the books like before your purchase
> Sounds like they haven't really broken apple's DRM

Yes and no.

No, in the sense that they are abusing the pay-for Apple developer services in order to get the software pushed to non-jailbroken devices. As such, they are still playing within the DRM system.

But in the case of Zeusmos, yes, Apple's DRM (FairPlay) is broken in that "re-signing" involves signing a copy of the (App Store published) commercial app that had its original DRM removed.

See here: https://github.com/stefanesser/dumpdecrypted

These techniques were how tools like Crackulous worked, which allowed for the stealing of iOS App Store apps in the first place.
Top ten algorithms preprints of 2012
Marco Arment spoke about the hoops he went through when going through DUNS on Build and Analyze (#93, 24:48 in[1]). While his discussion isn't as accusatory, it might be worth a listen for his experience in dealing with them.

[1] - http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/93
My feeling is that they dumbed down the books to appeal to more students.
Study Suggests Lower Mortality Risk for People Deemed to Be Overweight
Expanding a little more on my #5 point:

The secret sauce here is not an API, or a cloud-based service, or SMS messages or any of that. The secret sauce is the hardware that goes inside the safe.

Contrary to popular belief, the primary reason to own a gun safe is for fire protection. Many of us have tens of thousands of dollars invested in our guns. Fire is the most probable undesired outcome and so a safe must protect against that. Your hardware device needs to be inside the safe so that it can be safe from tampering, but it /can't compromise the integrity of the fire protection/. Furthermore, it needs to be able to communicate to an outside station. This may be a problem if the device lives inside this big steel box.

I hope that you guys don't try to re-invent the wheel. There are already a number of home metrics collectors similar to NinjaBlocks and I would much rather use a platform that I can also use to monitor things like fire detection, home security, electricity usage, environmental conditions, lighting, etc. Build us something that works with most quality safes and have it integrate into the existing systems. Sell us the hardware.
there are lot of people who hoard good domains, wanted a .com domain which tells the intent. I would have very well called gun safe tracker, but I am not building a tracker for it.

I would like to get ninja blocks, they look interesting

banning high capacity magazines can reduce the fatalities, but even that is tough to achieve

it is a matter of time there is going to be another shooting somewhere, and we will again discuss and forget it, we have blood in our veins not just water, hope we can make some progress
Christian couples therapy
Safe, confidential and compassionate environment where individuals, couples, and families can develop solutions, and find healing.
First of all, that sketch does not define assault weapons, making me wonder if you've paid any attention to the counterarguments to the "ban assault weapons" hysteria. See: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-g...

Second, short and vague hand-wavy descriptions are not going to cut it. There's no description of where these trackers would go. There isn't a lot of empty space inside a gun; places where this might go are inside pistol grips or at the bottom of magazine wells, but those are both easily accessible. Furthermore, anywhere these trackers go would have to be accessible. Otherwise, how do you replace the batteries?

It would be challenging to design circuitry relying on solder that would stand up to the shock of being attached to a gun that's fired dozens or hundreds of times at a range, or thousands or tens of thousands of times over a typical gun's lifetime.

What does your tracking system accomplish? Guns that are stolen are going to be checked for GPS and NFC trackers, which will be removed or disabled. Guns that are bought legally (Cho) for use illegally (VA Tech) are going to have the GPS and NFC trackers removed or disabled, too.
my belief stems from this link

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1227-gun-buyback-201...

even a couple of percentage adoption can be a big step
I'm assuming you want to do some low-level hardware integration with your Pi, in which case I would suggest starting by taking a look at this page:

http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-level_peripherals

It provides some information on how to interface with the GPIO pins with a multitude of programming languages. Granted it may not be an absolute beginner guide, it still has a lot of useful information. If I can find another guide I'll comment back here.

I'd also want to echo something that the other reply to your comment mentioned, which is that you should seriously consider starting with an Arduino if you want to do some lower-level programming/interfacing with hardware. From my personal experience, there's a little more documentation on that sort of thing with Arduino than the Raspberry Pi. Additionally, the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins are not fault tolerant, which means you could damage your Pi if you wire up your hardware improperly. If I remember correctly, Arduinos typically have some voltage fault tolerance (at least there are variants which do), and even if you fry the actual microcontroller chip on the board, it can be removed and replaced for a couple of dollars.
Once you've got some experience on an Arduino board, then I'd recommend doing some of the low-level stuff on the Raspberry Pi.
A much, much more palatable version of this would be a simple local RFID tag that communicates with a fob in the safe, and which signals when a firearm is removed from said safe--that is, after all, the MVP for the problem you claim to want to solve.

Adding GPS is overkill, plays right into wingnut fantasies of the evil gubbernment man tracking their guns, and most of all is useless once I peel the damn thing off the weapon.

Start simple, use an RFID tag.

Oh, and check the copy on your site.