skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree. I don't think child porn is at all a good thing. (I also agree with the current age of consent laws, which some people think are too overstrict.) But I don't condemn the people who make it in their entirety. Everybody has a story talking about where they got to be where they are, and most of them aren't stories of pure evil.
You don't need any specific mathematical knowledge, but it is vital to practice and understand mathematical thinking. Your goal should be to finish a couple of proof-heavy undergraduate theory courses, such as 400-level analysis and algebra.

Along the way you will learn lots of useful math, but that isn't the point -- other than the math you encounter in your CS classes, there is no specific mathematical knowledge required for programming. However, you need to do a lot of proofs and understand the power of mathematics, and you need to have the mathematical background to tackle whatever your specific interests turn out to be. (For instance, if you become interested in data mining, you will need to have enough mathematical maturity to study statistics by yourself, starting with any requisite calculus and linear algebra you happen to lack.)

Some people will correctly point out that you don't have to know jack about mathematics to be a good programmer. While this is true of many programmers, you sound like an especially smart kid, and you will not reach your potential without studying high-level math.
Further, the metric system offered universality between conflicting measures. However, people around the world already use the single measuring system of hours, minutes, and seconds (that last being a SI unit), and UTC is a global standard.
Oops, I stand corrected. All the news I read skipped that part. But I too can't imagine how the original hardware would not be able to handle it...
And filtering/tracking software seems to be pretty naive. So if the network administrator uses tracking software, that article will probably raise a red flag. I would be somewhat surprised if a person thought that this article was inappropriate.

But I wouldn't be very surprised if this article got your internet history reviewed. That is at least an invasion of privacy.

And I think this would be most likely to happen on a network with a strict internet policy, like at a company. Also, if your history is checked, there is a possibility they will be reviewing how much time you spend on non-work related websites. But I'm probably being somewhat paranoid.
Would this book be any good for a Computer Engineering student? I'm laking good Electronics background, so a good and solid reference is sorely needed!
It would seem you don't have a very clear understanding of the definition of "anecdotal":

not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research

Let me put it another way: Pick for us the very paradigm of what you consider to be fantastic hardware. I could find for you -- anecdotally -- a few hundred people who have had problems with it. Does that mean you're a) a bad judge of hardware or b) that there's bound to be some small percentage of problem cases when dealing with mass-produced electronics?

Apple shipped 2 million Macintoshes last quarter alone. If even only a tenth of those were Air sales, "hundreds of posts" doesn't even add up to 1% of units sold that quarter. Any consumer electronics manufacturer (including Apple!) would kill for a defect rate of under 1%.
(I knew I would be modded down, alas)

I don't think hiring a bunch of kids to go stand in line to get around ticket limits so you can buy up all the tickets, thus preventing other kids from getting them is that valuable of a service, no.
Not saying you shouldn't be able to be notified when you get a response, but when I used Reddit I hated that little red icon, and would have loved it if there was a setting to disable it.
So this is just a huge RSS page? What's so special?

(Further, considering they choose to open with a site as bad as Copyblogger, I rather doubt their taste in RSS.)
The VC world needs more awesome people like Chris Hughes. This is a win for the startup community.
Let me try to keep this "Hacker News":

It seems that the only way to even put a dent into child pornography is to basically outlaw any kind of network privacy hardware and software. As long as you have privacy you will have this kind of thing. If somebody starts a popular service with (close to) 100% anonymity and 100% data privacy (e.g. server provider doesn't hold encryption keys), they are virtually guaranteed that it will be used for this kind of content. In other words, any truly private service is almost certainly an unwilling accessory to this kind of abuse. Further, users of such services are going to be stigmatized for sharing a service with kiddie porn consumers/producers. That is very unfortunate.

Also, since apparently this kind of content is easily available, we are all one click away from becoming criminals. Imagine somebody posted a link to some kiddie porn on news.yc with a title like "Apple Announces iPhone 4G" on some non-alarming domain. Anybody that clicks the link to get their daily Apple rumor will instantly become a criminal.

Eventually, nearly all of us will probably have some kind of incident like this. And, as companies and governments start recording and analyzing everything we do online, this means that we will all eventually get caught. At any time, any of us could be instantly arrested and (nearly) instantly convicted. This is just like how cops claim that if they follow somebody long enough, eventually they will break a traffic law because it is nearly impossible to follow the laws.

Somebody that can solve these problems would be doing society a lot of good. I wonder if they could make any money in the process.
There's actually a very depressing (but really good) documentary about suicides at the GG Bridge entitled "The Bridge" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0799954/
Through AIG banks could lend more since their investments were insured, so they didn't have to hold so much in reserve. Banks around the world used AIG so the AIG bailout is propping up banks everywhere, not just the US.

AIG is on the hook for such a large sum of money, I can't imagine they can be bailed out forever.

I am curious if AIG is writing more of the same contracts that took them down this path in the first place. I wouldn't be suprised if they are because the people behind this bailout believe deep down that CDO's and other similiar contracts are still good for the economy.
Good point ---- altough somewhat exagerated ---- but all points to that software development, after years, might finally catch up the hardware development a little bit.
No matter what your opinion on porn is, it's obvious that it is viewed as a moral controversy. If it's child porn, it's virtually guaranteed to be viewed as immoral.

And people treat others differently if they are viewed as immoral. I know I'd treat someone differently if I thought they were involved with child porn.
Often, EIR's are paid to sit in VC firms waiting for a company that could use their talent. By virtue of their position, they get to see every cool company in the community and pick where they want to go next. If they aren't dropped in as an exec in a single company, they divide their talent amongst many companies -- working with them to develop the business. Of course, no titles are clear at VC firms.
I used to feel exactly this way about Wolfram until I actually talked to some of my professors about him... they pointed out that this framing is unique to student's experience - where some of our peers really do know more than others. But most professors have been passionately studying their fields full-time for longer than you've been alive (some, probably longer than the two of us, combined)... at that point, not being able to communicate is a matter of misusing or misunderstanding jargon, not of "knowing more" than someone else or "going over their head".

As brilliant as he is, it seems Wolfram is rather guilty of disregarding a lot of the work already done in the fields he works in - coming up with his own jargon for parallel (published) ideas, and hyping up his unreleased work instead of publishing and just letting it speak for itself (like alpha).

Research is more about advancing the understanding of science in the community than it is about doing something brilliant on your own (because as brilliant as it is, if one can't communicate it, it'll die with the individual), and so Wolfram deserves quite a lot more criticism than he gets.
As usual, there is a continuum there. While some young teenage girls (and all boys ;) might be interested in sex, at how young do we put the limit? 13, like in Spain? 12? 11? When does it becomes really uncomfortable to talk about their "sexual drives"?

When it comes to teenage sex becoming criminalized, though, the author is right on the money: this is just crazy. When I was a teenager I knew some girls my age who were having sex with young men in their 20s. None of us thought this was creepy. They were boyfriend/girlfriend, and that was it. But it was in France in the 80s, and I'm not sure people would be so understanding today.

Ultimately, this should be a case of "has there been violence or coercion?", and "how did the minor perceive the experience?". Anti-rape laws should suffice for this, with the youth of the victim as an aggravating factor. As to when to decide that the child was unable to give consent, that, ultimately, should be in the hands of the judge, as advised by a psychologist. Not a perfect system, but far more humane than automatically putting a 18-years old behind bars for boinking his 17-years old girlfriend.
David Stove: cuts through philosophical bs like butter
Is it just me or is Chrome just not as exciting as we'd hoped?
Teens capture images of space with £56 camera and balloon
It's actually not that difficult to write a text database from scratch (without libraries like Lucene). Most text databases are based on inverted indexes at their core.
Implementing basic boolean operators turns out to be pretty easy to implement as well.

It's one of the exercises I like to do when learning a new language. I'd recommend giving it a shot if you haven't tried it before.
Treasury Secretary Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs. He went to save his own buddies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Paulson
Device API is what interests me the most! (even if I'm nowhere close to be a hardware engineer) I feel like it really opens a new field for the iPhone.

I'm not quite sure what would be a great application for this yet (the examples were ok but not ground-breaking), but I really like the idea of the iPhone being able to control a bunch of stuff...
IPhone OS 3.0 Preview Presentation
No major ones that I know of.

A few years back Pearl Jam tried to do its own ticketing (instead of using Ticketmaster)and it was a disaster. The site couldn't handle the thousands of requests per second.
Just curious, what were you hoping for?

I don't use it but it does bring features to the table that browsers either don't have or didn't have at the time.
i don't believe it. i read a lot of apple-oriented blogs, all of which say mac sales are doing just fine, thankyewverymuch.
I couldn't finish this article. Not because it was written by a sick person -- it was -- but because it didn't seem to have a lot of interesting things to say.

As a libertarian I'm all for wide-ranging freedoms, but I'm also a parent and not a complete moron. I retain the right to have moral opinions even if I think it is wrong to impose them on others. As a parent, I can see that kids don't have the cognitive abilities to make decisions until later in life. I don't want my 9-year-old joining the army. I also don't want my nephew with Down's Syndrome to be sold life insurance, or my senile grandmother in a nursing home to open a credit card account. We limit freedoms based on cognitive ability -- that's just common sense. We should not provide the tools for kids to do things they will regret the rest of their life. CP, from our experience in many past cases, is something that leaves lasting scars.

I was especially amused at his fierce stance against fundamentalist Christians, those bastards. Seems like he is convinced they are the only ones keeping law-abiding perverts from their child porn.

If that's the case, you can count me in as a fundamentalist Christian.

With the technical angle, I'm sure its HN, but I'll let somebody else dig out the good pieces. I feel like I have to go wash after reading the small part that I did.
It is a type of "art" book showing how to build circuits. If you are going to program or do digital design this will probably not help you. If you're going to build AM modulators and power supplies then it would be useful.It is also fairly old so this is mainly for electronic engineers.

I got mine for about $15 (special 3rd world edition). You can also get one cheaply by permanently loaning from someone.
Probably incremental update such as more RAM (many apps have a hard time because the OS uses most of the RAM, leaving very little for apps) and faster CPU (more responsive, faster web browser).
The contracts themselves are good in principle, they were just executed stupidly (and the stupidness was rewarded with a bailout).

But there is no reason that I shouldn't be allowed to sell you a guarantee that "X" won't happen (for any value of "X"). But, you are responsible for making sure that I'm liquid enough to pay in case "X" does happen - because if I'm not I'll just go bankrupt and you can try to claim your share of my assets just like everyone else.

These sort of contracts help hedge risk - as long as they are done responsibly. When they are done irresponsibly, the involved parties should be made to suffer, not bailed out with tax payer funds.
It's a little off-topic, but does anyone else here feel like Spitzer kind of got a raw deal from the media?
There is also the fact that you need to get along with the other monkeys in your tribe, no matter how neurotic and panicky they may be.
Computer Generated Facial Transformations
JotNot Turns Your iPhone’s Camera Into A Document Scanner
The industry also tried fan clubs and pre-sales but that just created sites where people swap "pre-sale passwords".
That's why it's very, very important to make sure you've got a good tribe to begin with.
great app. These same guys just won an award at SXSW.
Or people sell them on Ebay. Hannah Montana presale passwords were going for hundreds of dollars.
It would be nice if it made IE disappear out of its sheer appeal to the masses.
I just finished typing out a transcript of the video on justin.tv. If your interested, check it out at http://tinyurl.com/d8tpzd
I don't see unions ever becoming necessary for hackers. Such organization might become for someone with highly-specialized, non-transferrable skills, such as operating Ford auto plant equipment, or engineering Amtrak trains. If you've devoted your career and livelihood to a single company, the thinking is that that company has certain responsibilities to care for you (whether this is indeed the case is an argument for another day).

Quality programmers, on the other hand, are highly mobile, highly sought-after, and can quickly and easily upgrade and alter their skillset. They aren't married to a single company, or even a single industry.

I think unions can be can't be considered even marginally feasible unless available labor supply outstrips demand. In this case, the situation is reversed, and I can't imagine what benefit unionization could possibly bring to the programming industry.
is iphone 3.0 only for the iphone, or is it supported on the ipod touch too?
AngelConf Video Transcript and Quotes
Here is the AngelConf video from Justin.tv including a transcript and quotes from the speakers
link-jacked. the real article is here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/30/...
I find web interfaces a perfect fit for erlang, with lightweight http servers you can add to your application at little cost, startup a web server with your application and you can code the gui in xhtml / css / javascript, you get can use the app remotely for free :)

quite a few of the erlang standard tools can be ran this way
I'm also slightly curious who gave him the tracks. It sounds like he got them anonymously over the internet. It would have been somebody with deep connections to GnR. And I'm sure that the person did not just give tracks to Cogill.

And I'm really interested in whether his streams were actually the source of the files. Most private torrent sites are really particular about quality. I don't think a song normally streamed would normally meet those qualities.

Also, I'm sure the song was not streamed in a lossy format. So song data would have been lost. And while you can convert a lossy format to another format, it won't be as high quality as if it had been converted from a lossless format. And there are signs that an album has been transcoded. And most private sites also have problems with transcodes.

So if other, non-transcoded file versions were released on the internet, and the stream was a lossy format, I'd really have a hard time believing he was the only link.
Your earlier post said, "Effective lobbying turns welfare or health care programs into cash cows for government workers or health care providers."

I took that to mean that false inefficiencies were being created to divert public money into private hands.
So does it still constantly crash or is that fixed?
Totally worthless. Out of beta and no Mac? C'mon guys!
let us know how many users you get via the coverage.

Edit: pricey app!
Would this be legal in the US?
We'll probably never know, but the timing sure smelled fishy. Right before all the initial bailout drama, Spitzer gets taken down for paying for hookers with a credit card. Dirty little secrets like that are generally kept in reserve just in case you need someone out of the way.
Looks like it is legal, against my intuition on the matter.

From http://vpizza.org/~jmeehan/balloon/:

Part 101 of the FAA Regulations covers balloons, kites and rockets. The
first section of Part 101 spells out exactly which kinds of devices the rest
of Part 101 applies to. Regarding "unmanned free balloons," Part 101 applies
if the balloon:

(i) Carries a payload package that weighs more than four pounds and has
a weight/size ratio of more than three ounces per square inch on any
surface of the package, determined by dividing the total weight in ounces
of the payload package by the area in square inches of its smallest surface;

(ii) Carries a payload package that weighs more than six pounds;

(iii) Carries a payload, of two or more packages, that weighs more than
12 pounds; or

(iv) Uses a rope or other device for suspension of the payload that
requires an impact force of more than 50 pounds to separate the
suspended payload from the balloon.
sure

people do this all of the time -- its a neat experiment for kids of any age

EDIT: It's even more fun with a lawn chair and a person in it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters
30 seconds processing time without ocr?
3.99 is pricey? Not for something useful.
"A quick search of popular bittorrent trackers reveals that a torrent of many of the tracks in question was available in March of 2007, a full 13 months before Cogill's supposed initial leak."

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3638184/Chinese_Democracy_-_...
Funky FireBug Bug You May Have Noticed
If you don't trust the free game you just downloaded, you might not want it to be able to see what's on the clipboard. Some number of people will copy their passwords, credit card numbers, etc. If an app phoned home the contents of the clipboard every time it ran, eventually it would pick up some private information.
If you have noticed websites hang sometimes when you have Firebug running, this is probably why.

The solution is either to:

a) download the patch linked on the page
b) roll back to Firefox 3.06
c) or, if you don't use the script tab much, you can just disable it
Chrome is much more than I had hoped for. There are only 2 disappointments with it for me:

* where are the plugins?

* where are the linux / mac builds.

In both cases the waiting has gone on too long to be credible any more. However everything else about it has been wonderful and despite its low market share it has really set a new benchmark for speed and responsiveness that all the other vendors are paying attention to.
30 seconds? Really? I'm surprised. On our development phones it took 10 - 15 seconds.

Although OCR is something we're looking at it on the phone, although you probably wouldn't be happy with how long you'll have to wait for THAT to complete.
I'm no expert, so take this with a grain of salt:

1. Find a niche. "Start an online business" is not a niche.

2. Try affiliate programs and SEM to drive targeted traffic. These work best in a smaller niche (see #1)

3. You've got a lot of links on your page that take people away from the page, which drives down conversion, which drives up your cost per conversion, which hurts your ability to do #2

4. You're selling the steak, not the sizzle. Why do I want to start an online business? What's my core goal? What problem does your book solve?

5. A "huge list of resources" sounds like a lot of work. Google provides me with millions of links on this subject for free. What's valuable to me is that someone has culled those millions of links down to just what I really need to know, not 11,000 links that I then have to pick through.

There are other issues, but fixing those would be a big step in the right direction.
Chris is a brilliant, down-to-earth guy. If you have a great deal and want VC backing and a great guy to join your team, definitely consider going to him. And to the guy who posted something about how hiring a Facebook co-founder is a stupid move -- you, and the rest of the haters on HN, need to get over your utterly obvious jealousy and insecurity. None of you have any clue what you're talking about (including that guy from Harvard).
Negotiating with Customers
Hughes was also in Fast Company today branded as "The Kid Who Made Obama President."

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ellen-mcgirt/strike-indicato...
Ann Arbor hackers blocked by city for scraping public parking data
Where you use "cool" I'd use "expectable"...
NBA player in trouble for Tweeting during halftime
From http://www.silverspider.com/2008/sxsw-accelerator/:

Winners of each category “can receive two badges for the 2010 SXSW Interactive event, a write-up in the April issue of SXSWorld magazine, plus additional prizes yet to be announced.”
I'm not, but I've turned the handles and made chips in machine shop or three. I do know a few real old-school experts, however.
The one sad thing about the app store is that people are now conditioned to expect that applications that take hundreds or thousands of man-hours to develop should be available for less than the cost of a cup of coffee . . . people that would plunk down $6 without thinking for a beer at a bar or a cheap bottle of wine balk at the prospect of paying $3.99 for a potentially useful application.
Of course you're going to get downmodded, you didn't even make an argument originally!

Nobody is buying tickets so kids can't get them. They're buying them to re-sell them at a higher price because there is a market for tickets at that price. They're not buying them to hoard them for a rainy day or something.

The reality is, for most events you can get tickets for face value, through the primary provider, if you do so in a remotely timely fashion. The other reality is that for most events that have a large secondary market you can get tickets well below face value.

Real "scalpers", the people who stand around at games, are providing a service. They are selling tickets for cost + a convenience fee to be paid by whoever found it too inconvenient to get tickets earlier (or felt like "playing the market" or whatever).
The answer they where looking for was "2". They where not trying to insult you just quickly discover if you where stupid like most other people sending in a resume.