skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem here isn't that programmers aren't like other engineers, it's that a software "design" is closer to what other engineers would call a specification. A better comparison to the finished non-software design is a finished piece of code, because that's the point where both pieces can be turned over to some non-engineer (either a compiler or a factory, say) to be made.
I don't understand the "Branch is an elitist Quora" analogy (which is one that I've heard before).

Quora is for monologues. Branch is for dialogues.
"why downloading JSTOR articles on MIT's network isn't the same thing as hacking into Bank of America's servers to steal credit card numbers."

Everyone I know, technical or not, is completely capable of understanding these things are different just based on that sentence alone. I don't know anyone at all that would say the two things were equally serious.

If my mom were still around, I'm 100% positive she would see the difference.
The 'several federal laws every day' angle is there to remind each and every one of us that we could be treated like Aaron Swartz, whether we think we're violating a law or not.

You mean "convince", not "remind". You're trying to persuade people here, not remind them of something they already believe. Bear this in mind when trying to refer to what you think "the real problem" is, else you might say things that only sound convincing to people that already share your views.
How to grow an email newsletter (part 1)
After reading your comments it seems that you are mostly trying to get in touch with people interested in your project/idea. It's been a long time since I sent an email to a service to register or at least show interest.

Why not add a field to add my email info as most launchrock pages do? It would be a lot easier than copy/pasting your target email address to email you.

(EDIT: You might also want to use a dedicated email address for your project instead of one based on you HN tag, mainly because I want to remember why you are writing me back later if you do and your address should provide that which it does not)
Show HN: LazyPub, Cloud Publishing so easy it makes you lazy
I find the fall of Dell a pretty fascinating story. In part because Dell killed Compaq and a bunch of other PC 'clone' companies with a build-to-order / operational efficiency model.

Apple, a company that Dell never saw as a rival, was 'doomed' with its bespoke computer design according to the best and brightest at Dell.

But what really put a crimp in Dell has been their dependence on Microsoft and Intel. Being constrained in responding to changes in the world (like the rise of non-Windows OS-X) by what Microsoft did, and early constraints by Intel that prevented them from capturing some server market with AMD chips, when Dell hit tapped out their ability to wring more value out of the supply chain, they lost their growth engine. And then they looked at adjacent markets, but with a clock ticking.

Trying to go too far afield into storage, briefly pumping up the music with 'boutique' computers, then committing a cardinal sin of using their customers against themselves by creating a 'lock in' strategy with Dell custom parts (motherboards, power supplies, and chassis).

So what keeps a company, when winds shift, from being nimble enough to shift with them? I wish sometimes I could go listen to the discussion that happened during the Opteron event, the Vista event, the first signs of OSX in the enterprise, the Canonical/Linux discussion. That story probably won't come out, and its too bad, I would love to read it.
Aaron Swartz Faced A More Severe Prison Term Than Killers...
Well, that particular exercise was something like: You have $P and the interest rate is I% per month, what would you have after 1 month, 2 months etc. It was easily doable at the level that exercise required by hand. However yes, if the formula had been more complicated then calculators would've made sense. From talking to the teachers though, the sense I got at the time was that calculators were never restricted regardless of the difficulty or ease of the exercise.

EDIT: Did mention complex interest, that part made sense to use the calculator for. My observation was merely attempting to point out the ubiquity of the calculator in the classroom. I'd be interested to see the capability of students after a curriculum like that at doing mental and hand calculations, my understanding is that here in Georgia the various classwide exams they take also permit calculators so the students would have little occasion to demonstrate that skillset.
Thanks I will resubmit once I have a repo setup
and I will repost it under "Show HN"
(I thought there was more windows users then linux,But I guess times have changed)
In the Wake of Aaron Swartz's Death, Let's Fix Draconian Computer Crime Law
I would recommend Alex Maccaw's javascript Web Applications. Sure it's about Javascript, but how really big can your HTML/CSS get before you modularize? :) What I like about the book is that it explains the fundamentals of MVC in a framework agnostic way, which I think is helpful if you are trying to refactor and MVC-ize your code base without throwing in a heavy dependency like Backbone or Spine.
CBS are pros at getting lots of free media coverage for their competitors.
So you're serious? You think the US laws were written by postmodernists and that most US citizens are relativists? Really? This seems like a weird version of a tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
I don't have much experience with C++ codebases, but is this really "exceptional beauty"? The majority of the things he comments on could be enforced with a code-formatter.
Is there a way to search for groups you may be interested in joining... other than guessing the URL? Or is that somewhat missing the point?
We're talking about open access stuff like PLoS, though. They don't charge licensing fees to universities, they don't typically demand copyright transfer, etc. Try to stay on topic.

Basically.. the question is, is it possible for an open access journal to be run for orders of magnitude less money than every existing open access journal currently in existence? You seem to think the answer is "definitely yes", but you haven't explained why. What is your insight that has been missed by so many others?

Furthermore, thinking of finances of open access publishers, even PLoS has its issues at its current prices http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080702/full/454011a.html
I contradicted your assertions

I didn't make any of those assertions. Other people in this thread might have, but I didn't.

it is not the prosecutor's job to question whether a law's penalties are in proportion to the crime it proscribes when deciding whether to bring a case.

I didn't say it was. I agree that the prosecutor doesn't decide what the possible charges and punishments are; those are taken as given. But the prosecutor certainly does decide which cases to prosecute at all, and how aggressively to prosecute them. As I understand it, this case was prosecuted extremely aggressively.

under what reasonable standard can a prosecutor be held personally responsible for the emotional state of the defendant?

I didn't say he was (I realize others in this thread have, but I didn't); I agree he isn't. But that's irrelevant to whether or not this prosecution was way too aggressive for the actual harm done; IMO it was.

The potential price of civil disobedience is that you will in fact end up punished for it.

This is quite true. But it doesn't make the punishment fair or just.

to say that the prosecutor abused her authority...runs counter to the very idea of a criminal justice system.

Maybe it runs counter to the idea of a perfect criminal justice system, but the one we have is far from perfect, and prosecutors know that. In a perfect system, every instance of a given offense would be prosecuted the same, every defendant would get a fair chance to defend themselves, and we would have a reasonable expectation of a just outcome. In the system we have, because so many things have been criminalized, there are far more offenders of the letter of the law than can possibly be prosecuted, and defendants are at a huge disadvantage vs. the system. So who actually gets prosecuted, and what chance they have at a fair hearing, ends up being decided by the prosecutor's judgment, which is often colored by their personal beliefs or political leanings. Under those circumstances, IMO it is quite legitimate to question a prosecutor's judgment when a case is treated far more aggressively than seems warranted by the actual harm done.
This is non news. What else were they going to do?
>What about MIT?

You see, omission is fun! Needless to say though, I am looking forward to hear what Abelson concludes concerning that.

> Do you think ordinary people draw an ethical distinction between changing a MAC address and more complex measures?

No, I do not think that ordinary people would. Once again, part of the problem.

> How about cultural differences?

I am not sure comparisons to the war on drugs does anything to alleviate my concern.

> Now whose being the lawyer?

Omitting MIT's position didn't tip you off? That's your trick, not mine.

> Does the fact that the trespassing charges were dropped change the fact that MIT didn't want people going into that closet?

In your one-sided "prosecutor sits down with his mother for some tea and justice" system? Yes, I think it is very relevant.

> 1) A prosecutor abusing her discretion to target someone for activity that people think are harmless.

> The correct answer here is (2).

Here is the deal. I think the prosecutor acted legally. I have no reason to suspect otherwise. More importantly, I think the prosecutor acted typically. I have no reason to suspect that this was the prosecutor lashing out in any sort of 'personal' way.

But more importantly than both of those, I think that the prosecutor acted unethically.

That position may be uncommon, but that coupled with your personal or professional disagreeance does not render it incorrect. The correct answer is (1) and (2).
But you're not making any sense.
Developing an API? What’s Your Strategy? A Resources Round Up
New book on reaching product-market fit. Advice from 68 founders
Recently published on Amazon. Don't miss the perspective of 68 founders, investors and specialists on the tactics you could use to achieve product-market fit.
> I've yet to see "Columbine: The Game".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Columbine_Massacre_RPG!

That exclamation point is part of the URL. -_-
I'm not saying there'd be no rape without porn. What I am saying is that rape and violence toward women increases with it.
Anti-Surveillance Clothing Line To Thwart Cell Tracking and Drones
Interactive overview of global house prices and rents
Aaron Swartz Was Gifted and Brave. Too Bad He Wasn't 'Too Big to Fail'
boy you are late!!!
welcome to the party.

just figure out whether you are using any software which comes only for windows (you will need to find a replacement for that), but my guess is that there will be none.

Rest, obviously there will be hiccups but eventually you will love it.
Looks like you just read the title, thought it must be crypto-creationist and decided to dump in your link collection. The article is not anti-Darwinian, it's a survey of criticisms of the "ultra-Darwinian" position on gender differences. The criticisms come from evolutionary psychologists and such respected biologists as Stephen Jay Gould. The title is not link-baity since it pointedly refers to Darwin's position that men are more about "inventive genius" and women about "greater tenderness".
That very link was at the bottom of his original response.
Doing so encourages you to have mutable data.

If instead, a variable is assigned to only when it is defined, you're moving (in a small way) towards functional programming.

Also, I often use scope just control the lifetime of a resource. These look like meaningless braces in the middle of a function to the uninitiated. It's RAII.
Very true. To be honest, something went wrong in our backend, just as we posted, so the email form field didn't work. So we had to go old school with email.
After the weekend weather, I got to work and cannot get any of the old files (about 10yrs old now). So, I will go from memory.

We used the "Denver Developmental Screening" as an initial test. You probably will remember it (or something very like it) by the use of a small bell rung near the infant to get a reaction. It covers a number of little things to check for problems.

Early Learning Accomplishment Profile or ELAP or E-LAP was use thereafter for 0-3 (LAP taking over from there). It is based on "Domains" and Skills. The domains are Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Cognitive, Language, Self-Help, and Social Emotional. Each Domain has a number of Skills (not the same number for each Domain) number from 1 to N where 1 is the "simplest" and N is the "most complex". An example skill would be "picks up spoon" in Fine Motor. As a child develops s/he should be able to work their way through all the Skills in the Domain.

Testing consisted of going through the skills until the child couldn't do a certain number of skills (I think it was 3 of 5, but I cannot remember). At which point a lesson plan was written (really, it was generated by a Visual Basic program we wrote). The lesson plan was keyed to practicing skills that the child couldn't do.

If the child fell behind what was age appropriate progress, a team looked at what might be wrong or if some physical problem was preventing progress. The amount of money that could be saved by taxpayers if just basic hearing problems were dealt with is mindblowing.
I disagree. Try writing fully async Java - it's much, much harder without functions as first-class objects and true closures.
The Economist obits are indeed wonderful. It's almost always the first thing I read in it. But, as a point of clarification, this article is not the weekly obit. It's part of the Babbage blog. It remains to be seen if something about him will make the print edition.
Admittedly, I dont know anything about the law but I have a couple of questions:

1) If convicted, would that have set some precedent that could have affected others for years to come?

2) If the "Suggest of Death" papers were filed, does that mean that the courts cannot convict him of any wrong doing, thus preventing any precedent from being set?

(Though it sounds like one.. this is not a conspiracy theory.. just a legitimate question)
Walmart's new plan: 'Full primary care services' within seven years
Call me crude, but this is just a thinly veiled ad for thoughtworks attached to the tragic topic of the day
Thanks for your reply, much appreciated. Would you still consider allowing Bridges and/or Middle relays? These don't generate any abuse emails at all.
> This is non news. What else were they going to do?

Dig him up, put his corpse on trial, cut off three of his fingers, re-bury him in a graveyard for foreigners, dig him back up, and dump his body in the Tiber?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod
void up_front_decls()
{
float some_var;
int another_var;

some_var = get_some_var();
do_some_calculations(some_var);
maybe_something_else(&some_var);

some_var = get_another_var();
do_some_other_calculations(another_var);
blah_blah_already_broken();
}

void as_needed_decls()
{
float some_var = get_some_var();
do_some_calculations(some_var);
maybe_something_else(&some_var);

int some_var = get_another_var();
// compile-time error
// ...
}

Also:

void poor_style()
{
up_front declarations;
also encourage;
this_ridiculous *block_style;
that_is a_royal_pain;
to maintain;
because_some_long_type inevitably;
screws_it up;
}
But MVC, a templating system, and ActiveRecord/ORM are not obstacles to learning Rails, so much as they are the whole point of learning Rails. Rails exists because these design patterns are so powerful and well-established that we all wanted a way to get them "out of the box" instead of having to roll our own implementations of them.

Rails is not a good starting point for beginner web developers who don't understand these software design patterns and aren't interested in learning them. If your goal is to just start making websites, like right now, then clearly something like Sinatra is a better choice.
...the system, and more specifically the laws, are the problem.

Not "more specifically", the right word is "including". And the system includes a lot of other broken things.

Such as the way that prosecutors habitually overreach. And no, they don't "have to" do that. They have discretion, but don't get ahead in their jobs unless they do overreach.

So yes, the laws need improvement. But so do prosecutors.

Lawyers have feelings, too. Ortiz almost certainly went into the prosecutor's office to do good, to see justice done and to protect the innocent.

I believe this to be true.

I also believe that Ortiz completely lost track of that, and has become something that she hopefully would have hated when she was younger. Unfortunately for Ortiz, I further believe that having her bear real consequences for having lost her moral compass and justifying her actions with "that's just my job" would be a very useful step on the path to fixing the broken prosecutorial culture that lead to Aaron's suicide.

She will spend the rest of her career second guessing herself with every defendant--both the defendants like Swartz and the murderers and drug dealers that form the rest of her caseload.

Yes, she likely will. Furthermore this is probably not the first tragedy she's been involved with, nor is it likely to be her last if she continues. However her very success in the broken system she's in is direct evidence that this incentive is not enough to get her - or other successful prosecutors - to behave in a humane fashion to those she opposes. Therefore the fact that she feels unhappy about the result is clearly insufficient deterrence.
I am inclined to believe he is a lawyer. He sure sounds like one. I'll even concede him to be a better source of opinions pertaining the law than others.

Of course that means fuck-all in a discussion about ethics.
I'm not challenging that it's a useful data point. I'm questioning why you couldn't resist the urge to close the tab if you're going to bother to offer feedback. Time is finite and it's a perfectly valid reaction but not if you're going to attempt constructive criticism.

I'm also challenging that "we're doing just fine". Progress is always welcome and needed.
Every hardware manufacturer except Apple that didn't go with Windows got crushed. And Apple very nearly went bankrupt too.

Even after Apple's comeback they have an almost negligible presence in enterprise, which is Dell's main market.

I think that Dell would be well served to try harder at building Linux machines, but to say that going with Windows/Intel had anything to do with their problems is way off the mark - it was all the other things they got wrong.
I don't see any advantages of declaring variables up front. Not all variables should be at the function scope. Often I have a local variable that is only used inside one branch of a conditional, why should I declare that at the top? Declaring things up front also separates the type from the usage, which makes things harder to read and takes up twice as many lines in some cases.
I've always been told that the get, set() idiom is to allow the author to change the implementation at a later date.

I always resent doing it but I can see how if the body of the function is not declared in the header file, but instead the associated .cpp file, that an author can change it, without introducing a whole recompile overhead.

Writing code that may not be needed is bad, but it's a trade off vs. preventing other users writing code that depends on it when their code should not.
I like it when I get linked to a started convo/branch, but I am having some issues with discoverability. Mainly, I can't seem to discover anything.
Wow, that looks stronger than expected from the low-key presentation. I hope they can interest some other labs to attempt to double check their samples.

"The universe, not humans, must have the final say to declare what the world is really like" indeed.
Not too good today, actually!
Worked when IBM spun-off its typewriter and dot matrix printer business and the PE turned it into Lexmark; or the recent Leica turnaround (which is going pretty well given the current economic climate).
Not signing up for a service that wants significant OAuth access to my Twitter (or any other) account without giving me neither a reason nor an alternative.
That is what puppet or a similar configuration management solution is for (or doing it by hand I suppose). There's not really a realistic scenario I can think of where you'd be wanting a built-in nginx function to service this requirement.
A "sort by license" option would be nice on this page (ala the existing code/no-code switch):

http://selection.datavisualization.ch
The Persecution Of Aaron Swartz
"Cubicle Island"

Um, no. NOT anything like what I want my next office to look like. Some good stuff there, but I would never knowingly subject people to that. Knowledge workers should have private offices, with doors, that close.
Ask HN: Is my startup unethical?
Thank you! I do not feel right about adding it myself. But maybe somebody eventually will do it
They don't just reflect it, they reflect it, distort it and magnify it.

Video games produce versions of the violence in society which are unrealistic, in which everyone can get up off the floor after being shot by being reloaded and start again.

Video games produces thousands of times as many violent events as in real life.

The amount of resources (money and time devoted) in creating and playing video games rivals the amount of time and energy people spend practicing at making real life into a safe experience. Much more than a distraction, they are the centerpiece, a devotion to delusional destruction.
> I don't see how this actually teaches how multiplication actually works.

[snip]

> It's a clever method to avoid solving the problem the classic way of using a memorized multiplication table

Do you think multiplication actually works by means of a multiplication table?
Remove US District Attorney Carmen Ortiz for overreach on Aaron Swartz's case.
Why would it be a surprise that people change their opinion or become more vocal after something serious occurs to the people involved.
I think the difference is that Aaron is considered, directly, a member of this community, which is why there are different reactions than for Darfur or other injustices. Also, the issue, freedom of academic information is one that is very popular here in that it is a common topic of discussion.
Give Google access to all of the raw documents, and they will gladly cross-reference, index, etc all of the cases. I'd be willing to bet money that they will make it available for free, and wouldn't be surprised if they do a better job than Lexis Nexis or West Law do.

The one thing that Google likely wouldn't do is edit. But that's because they can't do that by algorithm.
A lot of the practices here are enshrined in the Google C++ styleguide:

http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x...

The author's first point about establishing conventions so that you can re-use the code that works with those conventions is very important. At Google, nobody writes code to serialize/deserialize bytes, because the default answer is just "use protobufs". Nobody writes low-level communication protocols (well, outside of some very-specialized infrastructure teams), because there's one RPC system. There's one standardized naming system, and a mostly-standard logs format and method for analyzing logs. If you do batch computation, there're two solutions, and there're only a handful of different file formats and storage engines, certainly less than in the open-source world.

I think Rails and Django (and Lisp) discovered the same principle: if you get everybody writing their code & data files the same way, you can write tools to manipulate those files, and that saves you way more in productivity than trying to get the perfect file format.