skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Don't read too much into your first encounter. Chances are you do need to "rewire" some parts of your brain and experiences to the physical sensation, so just keep at it. So far you have only been at it visually. Just keep at it and focus on the sensation, focus on your partner. In my own experience, there is a distinct difference between just the physical act and actually making love, where you feel close to each other. The former usually comes first, the latter takes time to become familiar and especially comfortable with each other! So, give it time, relax, don't stress yourself like that.

I don't understand why sex has become this generation's absolute number 1 priority, the one thing everyone defines themselves almost religiously through and reads way too much into. Everyone has seen "group action" and gets off on borderline cartoon rape and, to quote SouthPark, Japanese girls vomiting on each other... at the same time people are so alienated from each other they can barely look at others in a pub or start talking to people, so then they flock to "pickup artists" and countless self-help books teaching them yet more ways of "getting into someone else's pants" and then all they are left with is the urgent, defining feeling of having to "perform" and live up to an allegedly commonly-agreed-upon standard - instead of valuing actual human interaction and truly accepting one self and others and feeling welcome and whole in another person's presence.
Another Tech Entrepreneur denied a US visa. Where is this going?
Dear HN community,

This story might sound somewhat familiar to you.
I travelled to San Francisco three months ago under the Visa Waiver to build my dream company.
I worked non-stop, every single day, building my prototype, networking and seeking investment.

In the past three months, I have achieved an extraordinary amount, made so many new friends and was ready to launch my company.
My startup SkillPitcher, is one that actually creates jobs. I had set it up to eliminate deficiencies associated with the hiring process.

After my waiver period was over, I travelled back home to Amsterdam to get a Visa, so that I don't have to go in and out every three months.
Today I was refused a B1 visa under section 214(b).

I do not know what to do now. I can only write and hope that someone will hear my story.

I would appreciate any type of advice or help with this matter.

Thank you for your time.

Kind regards,
Elmar Gasimov
Founder at SkillPitcher.com
Speaking as a Canadian, the Senate is little more than a retirement program for friends of the party (which party is of little consequence). The party that currently holds power spent years talking about Senate reform, only to revert to the status quo once they got into power. Thus, the Senate rubber-stamps legislation, but no one seriously discusses what goes on in that body, because I think that it is generally understood that it doesn't make a difference.
Whether or not the actions of the US government via the DOJ was the direct cause of Aaron's suicide will be debated at length.

However, as both a cause and a "martyr" of sorts, Aaron's death has become a rather large stick to hit both government and the copyright lobby with.

I hazard a guess that Aaron would have been happy for us all to use that stick with a vengeance.

We should keep hitting these powerful lobbies with that stick until they break or the stick breaks.
On the state of Windows on the desktop
Living with Control Freaks Is Frustrating and Not Easy
Control freaks will not be here in search for a solution to their problem. You are here searching for a solution because someone in your life is a control freak. You need to learn to cope. If you cannot, then break away and move to some place far away.
Are you facing prison time? Who knows how the prospect would play on your mind. Perhaps you would be able to compartmentalize it in your mind and be able to handle it.

It may not be so easy for others like Aaron. Everyone deals with these issues differently.
Hm.

It makes me think of civil disobedience. And it makes me wonder: hackers today are used to tinkering with machines, whereas earlier hackers often worked with people. It feels like we lost something there. So many hackers today look at the world and The System and say, "It's too hard. Let's not try."
This website is quite fun, except it has (for me) one fatal flaw - if I use the automated stuff I am stuck with whatever name someone else decided to give the alias.

For example, http://alias.sh/open-any-file-default-command-file I find so useful I shorted the alias to 'o'. Now, I could make another alias with a different name, but that seems like a bad idea..
I'm going through the exact same thing. I've been upset since Aaron's suicide and I just cannot figure out why it's affecting me in such a way. I didn't know him, and like the author, I have a difficult time feeling emotions for distant (yet immense) tragedies, including war and natural disasters. But this just fucking hurts.

Maybe it hurts because seemingly reasonable, well educated people are behind this. This wasn't some looney that snapped and walked into a school with guns blazing. The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Supposedly good people. But they can do this (thanks to the wallets of hard working American people) and will probably get away with it? They have this kind of power? They can ruin a person's life for a victimless crime, even when the alleged 'victim' chooses not to pursue legal action? That's a devastatingly scary thought. And it's not just Carmen Ortiz and Steven Heymann. Our justice system is wrought with corruption, and that's scary, because it's probably the best justice system in the world (or at least touted as such).
Tagmint - find the right people
At tagmint we are shaping a new way to help people find each other. We believe that tags can describe a person more than anything. So let's create the world of tags!

Short video intro :http://vimeo.com/57131877

Press release: http://tagmint.com/tagmint_pr.zip
Let us look at the front page of today’s New
York Times....there is a story about
Republicans feuding among themselves.... a
photo of soldiers in Iraq. A stock exchange
chief must return $100M... a concern about
some doctors over-selling a nerve testing
system... a threat from China against North
Korea... a report that violence in Iraq is
rising. And there is concern about virtual
science classes replacing real ones.

None of these stories have relevance to my
life. Reading them may be enjoyable, but it’s
an enjoyable waste of time. They will have no
impact on my actions one way or another.

Considering the defining cause of Aaron's life, and apparently the straw that pushed him to end, turned out to be information liberation, including freeing access to legal and science documents, the latter strongly tied to "virtual science classes", I'd say Aaron misjudged the relevance of news to his life.

I absolutely agree that most news is immaterial. That said, having lived over twice Aaron's age when he wrote this essay, what I've found is that sometimes the news does affect me, occasionally directly. Not terribly often, but I've had bosses nominated to government office by presidents, companies I work for turn up in major fraud investigations, former colleagues sentenced to Federal prison, acquaintances convicted of murder. Understanding economic patterns can help guide decisions and actions. Even weather and traffic can be useful at times.

This doesn't mean that Fox News blaring in the corner is the best way to assimilate this information. Even selecting more fair and balanced (to say nothing of appropriate and informative) sources, I find myself switching from voice to music (increasingly classical) simply to avoid driving myself to distraction.

But a brief, well-curated, reliable news source can be both broadening and useful. Key is to let it serve, not drive you. It need not be a daily habit (though it often is).

I've also had numerous inspirations from "softer" programming via NPR and similar outlets -- culture, arts, and science programming can re-frame or contextualize problems I'm working on, and remind me that there are worlds outside my own experience (check your biases, always a first source of errors).
> It terms of performance, we also have seen a significant (about 25%) bump in terms of feeds processed by second per server.

They rewrote the entire codebase and obtained for just a 25% gain? It doesn't sound like they are very happy to be coding in javascript now either.

Everyone: please don't rewrite your code, it's almost never worth it. The one exception is rewriting a core part of an algorithm in C for speed (the last 10x speedup).
Do you live in a place where $10,000 is not much money?
>My pet peeves are all around voting systems. For instance, voting in most countries is voluntary. That has well-understood failure modes.

I'd contend that voting itself has failure modes, and that making it mandatory is asking for disappointment. I'm not accusing you of this, but I find that many who call for coerced voting expect that this will turn elections towards the results that they'd prefer (their favoured party, in particular). In the end, I'd say that the right to not cast a vote can be as meaningful, if not more so than wasting the time to go cast an actual vote. For many, it is the closest that one can come to a "none of the above" option that they might otherwise prefer.
Valentijn: zélf masseren kun je leren - Plazilla.com
I support them, as long as they do the right thing afterwards and make the owners aware and do not do anything destructive or that violates someone's privacy.
Py3k status update #9
It is as relevant, if not more relevant today than when it was written.
Yeah, I'm having problems too.

The server seems to be overloaded, lots of HTTP requests for graphical resources (PNG files) fail. Check the Javascript console for errors. If loading resources has failed, the game is rendered with incomplete graphics.
That was a very, very long time ago. Do you really think that with the way that the U.S. is now that Aaron would have won?
The fact that it was 'perfectly legal' definitely does not make it right.
Sounds like the Nick Szabo's argument: http://szabo.best.vwh.net/tradition.html

<blockquote>
Post-Hayek and algorithmic information theory, we recognize that information-bearing codes can be computed (and in particular, ideas evolved from the interaction of people with each other over many lifetimes), which are

(a) not feasibly rederivable from first principles,
(b) not feasibly and accurately refutable
(given the existence of the code to be refuted)
(c) not even feasibly and accurately justifiable
(given the existence of the code to justify)
</blockquote>
It's quite easy to calculate the likely sentence. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide for a base level of 6, plus an 18 step increase for fraud between $2,500,000 and $7,000,000. The sentencing range at this level assuming no criminal history is 57-71 months. Expect supervised release (no computers) for three years. The fine would be up to the sentencing judge within statutory limits.
The government estimated the value of the JStor documents at $5 million. Even if the government's estimate was exaggerated, the documents were worth something--and this figure would drive the sentence to be imposed. The judge could also depart upward based on aggravating factors such as PACER and a lack of remorse. Swartz faced with no good choices. When he did not take the offered plea, they superseded and racheted up the counts. The number of counts doesn't really matter for Guidelines purposes but there is always the risk that the sentencing judge could impose the sentences for each count consecutively.
China growing at 13.9% pa puts it as doubling CO2 output every 5 years.

The US's 7% decline is likely an artifact of the coal -> natural gas transition, but if sustained would see the country halving use in a decade.
Indispensables: zero knowledge http://www.clipperz.com/security_privacy , offline copy http://www.clipperz.com/support/user_guide/offline_copy , one time passphrases http://www.clipperz.com/support/user_guide/onetime_passphras...
3 sites web pour convertir vos vidéos Youtube en MP3
Cliperz (https://github.com/clipperz/password-manager) is another alternative for an open source online password manager. A key feature is that it encrypts all information locally via javascript so the master key is never send over the wire.
A friend of me had such a document. Both his grandfather and father died from a hart attach so he may have been more prepared then most for a young death.

When the family opened his safe (!) there was an envelope with documents describing several online accounts and a letter of attorney.

The gay had quite the active social life on the net. The family received about 100-150 phone calls from people, that for them was totally strangers, the first couple of days. Most was basically wondering about what was happening. Updating his social media status helped a lot.
>whereas earlier hackers often worked with people.

There's a book detailing the rise of hacker culture. There's a bit about hackers 'borrowing' tools from someone. The contempt they showed that man, and his tools, shows that working with people was even then not a skill that all of them had.
t's quite easy to calculate the likely sentence. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide for a base level of 6, plus an 18 step increase for fraud between $2,500,000 and $7,000,000. The sentencing range at this level assuming no criminal history is 57-71 months. Expect supervised release (no computers) for three years. The fine would be up to the sentencing judge within statutory limits.
The government estimated the value of the JStor documents at $5 million. Even if the government's estimate was exaggerated, the documents were worth something--and this figure would drive the sentence to be imposed. The judge could also depart upward based on aggravating factors such as PACER and a lack of remorse. Swartz faced with no good choices. When he did not take the offered plea, they superseded and racheted up the counts. The number of counts doesn't really matter for Guidelines purposes but there is always the risk that the sentencing judge could impose the sentences for each count consecutively.
What about 35 or more years prison sentence threat ?
Whether law was breached, is apparently not contested. What is weird is this sentence.

In France, murder gets you usually at most 20 years jail. The sentence seams totally disproportionate to the harm.
Will Mr Orin Kerr also discuss this aspect ?

Another point is the harm done just by the trial. Going for trial is in itself condemning someone to pay a huge amount of money. Even if if that someone is finally proven innocent or the charges excessive and abusive.
I am not quite sure how those 2 lines interfer with my rails 2.0 app (we are using XML features). What exactly is being disabled here? What features will i not able to use anymore after applying this fix?

Thanks for the help!
Often when I begin writing a comment the ideas I want to get across are only half-formed. Once I've written out a bunch of text exploring an issue I often hit themes and conclusions that weren't clear to me before I started typing.

It seems bad to admit this, but I'm either too lazy to go back and rewrite or I just don't care enough about the audience to give them a well-formed read. Occasionally I think I'd feel "dirty" going back and putting the conclusion at the top, as though I'd be pretending that the insight came to me fully-formed, that my stream of consciousness just happened to dispense a perfect micro-essay on the topic.

That said, many of the best comments I read are "well-composed", and the posts made without relfection or consideration probably contribute to the decline in tone.

TL;DR: I'm conflicted.
CNN Acquiring Zite Now Sees Benefits
Zite technology allows the readers to browse hot topics in form of new Trends section. It helped to get insights that users care about what’s trending overall. Zite CEO Mark Johnson, who uses Zite both on his iPad and mobile phone, calls it a “lean-back” reading experience, meaning it drags articles you didn’t even know you would like to read.
Masajes eróticos Madrid
Feels like a Ludum Dare entry. You should enter LD26!
Reposting my comment from a forgotten thread, because I think the sense of loss many of us are feeling should be channeled into actions that may conceivably do some good:

---

1. What concrete steps can people take to prevent cases like Aaron's from happening again? What enduring commitments can be made, and to what causes or organizations?

2. Who should we be listening to and supporting who is of like mind with Aaron, and has been neglected so far? Who is doing good work out of the public eye, like Aaron was?

I join you in commiseration. I'm going to look for a local organization to join in support of online freedom. Perhaps find a club to mentor promising youth in tech. I hope the Americans here will take every feasible step in correcting overzealous prosecutors (and nonetheless calling for justice where it hasn't been meted out). Aaron's passing must not be in vain.

---
> If others are going to follow in Aaron's footsteps, they will have to make one particular change: be better at remaining unidentified.

Either that or be fully aware of the consequences and do it anyway but in such a way that the genie can never be put back into the bottle. Aaron paid an extremely high price for something that eventually did not succeed.
If you are living normal life in your mid-twenties, the idea of spending rest of your life in prison for nothing must feel worse than death. Even without prior mental health issues.
Yeah, sorting your bash history helps highlight what you spend most of your time doing and if that can be cut down at all.
> It is worth reminding everyone that a vanishingly small number of criminal defendants in the US commit suicide, despite whatever injustice they feel about their charges and despite any accusations of prosecutorial overreach.

That's interesting. Do you have any cites for the numbers of suicides amongst the charged and the imprisoned?

I'm not sure of the US definition of suicide (is it the same across different states?) nor how deaths are recorded, especially for people charged with but not yet tried for a crime.

I mostly agree with the rest of what you say. The US criminal justice system is barbaric and inhumane. It is fantastically expensive. Reform of all of it would do the US a lot of good.

More interesting to HN is, perhaps, how to hack a system that has become locked because of politics. Anyone suggesting drug reform or criminal justice reform or immigration reform is going to face, very early, huge entrenched well-funded campaigns of opposition. "How can change happen?" could be an interesting discussion.
Team GBR 2013 Avon Exclusive Triple Incentive
Your sarcasm detector had just had a glitch.
Letter to Cloud Workers
Sorry, it didn't look like it had gone through on my system.
Technically that is the max sentence tied to the statues and does not depend on the prosecutors. Aaron would have probably gotten a few years in jail, but as a felon life would have never been the same. After jail some are probation for 1-10 years and some are prohibited from using computers for example.

Being a felon also makes travel outside US very hard unless you're a superstar and very hard to get a job or associate with "regular" people and companies.

It's a horrible label: convicted felon, and very few ask why and how you got it.
Hang on, so you were in the US on the visa waiver program, working on your company?

You are not allowed to run a company on either the visa waiver, or a B1 visa. That requires a working visa. You said it yourself - "I worked non-stop, every single day". So I have no idea what you thought you were doing.

You ask where this is going. I guess that aliens who work illegally are unlikely to get a visa, and that sounds pretty fine way to be going to me.
There are other reasons for rewriting like getting to a more easily maintainable code or when a previous solution has simply outlived it's usefulness.

Also, C is not the only language worth rewriting in.
I'd argue that decisions in government should be made by a majority vote, with each person's vote being weighted by the impact the decision will have on them.

Proposal: the government should take $1 from every person and give to me.

Determining the weightings is straightforward: I get 300 million votes, each individual besides me gets 1 vote (since the impact on me is 300 million x greater than the impact on them).

An exaggerated example to be sure, but your proposal will drastically increase the power of special interests.
Well, the reason we rewrote was not to explode all benchmarks. The reason we rewrote was to be able to ease the maintenance of our code =)
> You can't blame a prosecutor because Aaron reacted violently to them doing his job

Perhaps they cannot be blamed for his response, but a myriad of evil things have occurred in this world at the hands of people "just doing their jobs". The mere fact that someone is being paid for them doesn't justify vicious, cruel, and/or outrageous actions that have predictably bad outcomes. Further, it could easily be argued that their pursuit of this case went beyond the normal scope of their jobs.

While federal criminal cases are technically brought on behalf of the government, in many cases the charges are dropped when the victim expresses disinterest in having the individual prosecuted. In this case, they were attempting to lock someone up for decades in a case where the alleged victims didn't even want the perpetrator prosecuted. Since the victims had no interest in it, the only remaining motivation for such an aggressive prosecution would be to put another notch in the belts of the US Attorney's office prosecuting the case. That is hardly an acceptable use of taxpayer resources. It is an abuse of power aimed at furthering the individual careers of the lawyers involved.
Aaron was also a vocal critic of the Obama administration, specifically the 'kill lists'.
They did not say anywhere that the 25% speed gain was the reason they did it...
For those interested in this timeframe and what it looked like being tracked and caught at that time, one can turn to The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling, a non-fiction work incredibly reminiscent of the events currently of interest to us.

Free (as in beer) in its electronic version ([0], hosted at MIT), and available as paperback on Amazon.

[0]: http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html
I kind of agree that 25% gain doen't justify codebase rewrite, let along language/framework switching. Perhaps they are doing this with future traffic peak in mind. Premature optimisation, I know. Probably they've already cleared up other important items on their todo list.

What interested me most is the community part. I've always thought ruby/rails community is awesome. Maybe I should start learning some JavaScript now.
Geoff's site: Node.js: Dealing with Errors
The twelve steps are only suggestions in AA. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking (and that you act reasonably civil towards others in the group) You don't have to believe anything, pay money, look a certain way, there is no authority beyond the immediate consensus of the group. You actually don't even have to stop drinking. The practitioners are fond of helpful aphorisms, repeated almost as mantras. One of my favorites: take what you need and leave the rest.
I tried Node, because it was the new hotness and trying new things is great. It was distinctly Not For Me, for many of the same reasons that they've found; many tutorials are out of date in subtle ways (I like to think of this as the Rails effect from way back in the good old fun days), the language is just painful to structure and read over for my syntax processing.

There's definitely a lot to like, and like they said it's still a very new world with a lot of exploration to be done.
Aaron Swartz investigation ordered by MIT