skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So, how long until someone engineers some 'helper pumps' to assist trees in pumping nutrients around. Be nice to see some 1000-foot trees in manhattan to crowd out some skyscrapers.
George Church Explains How DNA Will Be Construction Material of the Future
I agree with you but I think instead of lies it's likely ignorance or people blinded by emotion.

Ever since Aaron killed himself people have been saying the most logically unsound things about this case and others. Such as: he was a hero, he didn't commit any crimes, others who did similar things were not criminals, copyright shouldn't even exist, MIT is evil for not not caring about the breach, calling other cases bogus because the perpetrator was a young programmer, and so on. Many of the people commenting seem so out of touch with reality that it looks like trolling.

It's all the emotions. Makes it hard to write a sound argument.
Actually, that's not entirely reflective of reality. You would have to access www.python.org in order to download python, so you'd have to write some sort of TCP/IP handler to connect to that interface...actually let me back up, you first would have to solder together a few million transistors to create a CPU before you could do that. You're making it seem way easier than it actually is, please don't go exaggerating the truth so blatantly.
this page [1] seems to suggest that the service predates 1997 by a good number of years.

[1] http://www.sciconnect.com/staff.shtml
There's a nice two step shuffle here. On the one hand, people say "JSTOR is keeping this vitally important knowledge away from THE PEOPLE!" and imply that Swartz was going to rectify that by releasing the JSTOR archive. Then, when I point out that releasing the JSTOR archive would completely undermine JSTOR's viability as a going concern, the same people argue that "there's no way that the JSTOR archive Swartz was going to release could possibly substitute for the service JSTOR provides now!".

Well, if that's true, then I can't see how Swartz's actions were going to help anyone. After all, if the archive torrented is completely inferior to the JSTOR service, then no one would find it valuable. It wouldn't help anyone. So why exactly was Swartz interested in it?

Aaron's intent, as expressed by the manifesto, was to increase access to knowledge.

I doubt he particularly cared about destroying JSTOR one way or another. But he did care about making it so that everyone on earth could have completely free access to every single JSTOR article. If he had achieved that goal, there's no way JSTOR could function as a going concern now. I mean, maybe JSTOR could continue as an company charging $1/month for a search index, but it wouldn't be scanning in new material like crazy right now.

Making a particular business model obsolete is not in itself criminal.

Of course not. But violating the CFAA is. Copyright infringement, on a large enough scale certainly is.
* "Aaron was just violating TOS"

* "They were pushing for 35/50 years in prison"

* "This is just like using my neighbor's Wifi"

* "They were trumping up charges to make an example of Aaron" (before you downvote, read Kerr's posts).

* "They were aiming for harshest possible sentence"

* There was also the very nice individual who doxxed Ortiz, who I'm sure is a fine representative of all that is right with hacktivism.

And on and on.

And in the meantime there has been very little commentary over the major (not only, but major) cause of this (untreated depression), presumably because that doesn't play into the agenda. Likewise there is little discussion on ways to amend CFAA to make it better-aligned with what we intuitively feel would be appropriate (because in the hacktivist mold the only good change would be to repeal CFAA entirely). Feel free to say I'm seeing it wrong, but I don't think I am.
It sounds like you should complain to the developers of Stylish or your browser.

You could also try writing a user script that deletes all font-related styles from all elements.

Does running that post through the Readable or Readability bookmarklets leave the inline styles intact?
It's the low end of the U.S. spectrum, but it's a much better comparison to the U.K. than the U.S. as a whole in terms of demographic profile.

Yes, much of the disparity is from drug laws. I think if you decriminalized common drugs, places like Mass. and Minn. would fall below the U.K. About 50% of our federal prisoners are drug offenders, and less than 20% of state prisoners are drug offenders (20% overall). So decriminalizing would cut our incarceration rate, but not by enough to make up the gap (~750 per 100k versus 150 per 100k in the U.K.)

Europeans really have a hard time, I think, appreciating America's unique challenges. Look at the states with the highest incarceration rates in the U.S.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarcer...

The top 6 are, in order of decreasing incarceration rate: Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Arizona. Three former slave states and three states at the epicenter of mexican immigration.

Note that I'm not trying to make a racist argument here. It's just that class, social standing, and race are deeply intertwined in America in a way people in homogenous European countries really have trouble appreciating. The U.S. has more income inequality than nearly any Western European country, and that income inequality manifests heavily along racial lines. But the racial divide compounds that inequality. It takes the inherent problems with income inequality and adds a vicious "us versus them" dimension to the problem.
Commodore 64 game 20 years in the making
Wow, downvoters really don't want anyone to know about how JSTOR is free for institutions in Africa or prorates its costs for poorer institutions the world over!

I wonder if Swartz, who was very concerned about information access in the global south (according to his manifesto), knew about that.
Quite different Guatemala is chaotic and dangerous, DPRK is the exact opposite: repressive and actually very safe (as long as you know..you don't do something the gov hates). Or in D&D terms, think about the differences between Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil.
Agreed. If we don't nip this abuse of power in the bud, it will only escalate. There are legit ways of solving problems and then there is this.
Wow, talk about a blast from the past. Had forgotten he'd .plan'd about that. "Onethumb gets all of our old black NeXT hardware" (note my nick still, to this day, here on HN).
Napster, the Movie (“Downloaded”)
Clannish, exclusive, cliquish, myopic.

Thanks for the advice. I'll keep my distance then.
By the way, if your BIOS doesn't support "Secure Boot", forget it.
From the MLA Style Manual[1]:

"Begin the entry in the works-cited list with the author’s real name and, in parentheses, user name, if both are known and they differ. If only the user name is known, give it alone.

Next provide the entire text of the tweet in quotation marks, without changing the capitalization. Conclude the entry with the date and time of the message and the medium of publication (Tweet). For example:

Athar, Sohaib (ReallyVirtual). “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).” 1 May 2011, 3:58 p.m. Tweet."

[1] http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq/mlastyle_cite_a_tweet
You're misrepresenting the article. It explicitly states:

> The process was fundamentally corrupt and shameful. But observers of the American criminal-justice
> system also know that it was a common one.

The tragedy highlighted the common issue.
Since when should any of us care about what happens to those leeches?

Can you give me a list of entities for which copyright law no longer applies? Or do you think copyright law no longer applies for everyone?

Better yet, just give me a list of laws that I can now break with impunity, because you said so.
Don't want to change everything. And my intuition about selectors tells me that catch-all selectors are bad.

My selector works on just about every other site. I assume most of them do not have inline styles on every paragraph.
I am not, but if the purpose of a reference is to allow others to verify and find the original source, using anything but the original link is ridiculous. I added the JSON link to prove the point that you can get exact dates/times for a tweet (including info about the currently active timezone for the author's account)
It's useful to single her out because it makes it personal. And personal makes it emotional.

But the real problem is checks and balances. IANAL, so I'm curious what reviews are done on prosecutions at the federal, state, and local level in the US.

She played the typical game of "charge with multiple felonies, make 'em sweat, hope they don't want a trial because that is time-consuming, and hope they cop-a-plea"

That's just a big bowl of wrong (Jeff Garlin reference). The system needs to be revised so that prosecutors are ready to really go to trial...not this dog-n-pony show.

If there's one thing the US government should be doing for the people is checks-n-balances against itself.
Totally agree. At the very least, she should fired, but definitely not in the name of revenge and not to make an example, but because she didn't do her job. Making an example of someone implies over prosecuting someone in order to discourage others. In some industries, certain acts bar you from working in that industry again forever. Lawyers can be disbarred. Doctors and other licensed professionals can lose their license to practice. The same should happen to any and every prosecutor that abuses their power for personal gain. Removing people for violating the responsibilities entrusted to them isn't "making an example", but simply removing any and all that shouldn't be practicing in a certain professional area because they don't adhere to the ethical standards of their position.

However, an investigation is merited to determine if Ortiz and Heynmann were willfully negligant in applying their tactics. The same way we hold other individuals accountable for harm caused by bullying, she may merit the same. My gut tells me that an investigation and possible trial would exonerate her of any criminal wrongdoing (unless some other over-zealous prosecutor treated her as she treated Aaron), but would leave her open to a civil lawsuit, which she probably deserves
Somehow I was half expecting some kind of "Hey, John Carmack here, you can...". This is the internet after all
I'd be interested to read how your own views of people contrast with the ideas in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...
> Trying to throw every possible crime at someone no matter how tenuous in order to extort a plea bargain or get just one to stick to improve your prosecution record is an obvious distortion of the original intent of the system.

Except that a grand jury has to sustain that the charges are at least "better than tenuous". Once the case is resolved one way or the other the defendant can't be tried for it again (Constitutional 'double jeopardy') so the prosecutors have to bring any charges that can hold up (this is why Federal sentencing is wonky as well).

> Avoiding trials altogether because of the structure of the legal system is the wrong approach. Improving the expediency by which the legal system can provide justice is the right approach.

Uh, plea bargains are the #1 way the system is made more "expedient", you can't have your cake and eat it too. Feel free to continue putting words into my mouth about "sanctioning miscarriage of justice" though.
I think this tagline will explain it:

Manifestos of Future Leaders - Like You

Again, lots of potential here if you play your cards right.
It might help you to know that 'id' is a real word, part of the mind (in Freud's theory) along with the ego and super-ego.

Many apologies if this is patronising, just the way you wrote rhymes with lid rather than just the word id made me unsure if you were aware of it.
If you go for this sort of deal you should always have some anti-dilution protection. Otherwise as is pointed out the equity is essentially worthless. You can use some sort of full ratchet clause or ensure the majority shareholder can not issue more shares (though some special resolution requirement). You'll need a lawyer...
We didn't have many games on our first computer, but Zork was one of them.

For some reason none of us could get past the swamp at the witch's house. I was 5 or 6 at the time so I don't blame myself, but when I figured out how to run it via DOSBox I was very very careful to poke everything with my walking stick (or whatever it was).
Ask HN: Don't you think we need to redo the way freelancing websites work?
Hi guys,

I'm Arash Milani, a web developer from Iran that has been doing freelancing once in while since 2004 and never been happy with freelancing websites. The idea of improving this area has been bugging me for a while so I thought to share it with you to see if you feel the same or not.

I've been a user of scriptlance, never could get used to freelancer.com (formerly GAF). Then we had odesk; the interface was great, the process seemed to be promising... but...

IMHO they all got the whole process of getting things done WRONG.

1) I think the most important part of a freelancing website should be "ease of communication" between buyers and freelancers. In this aspect freelancer.com is the worst of all. the site is a big mess. May be we should bring in some simple things like "conversations", "to do"s per project. (the same as is in basecamp)

2) Some of them like freelancer.com are offering experience points to freelancers. pay $5 and you can take a test and have "Intermediate English badge" or "ASP.NET Expert badge" or blah blah... Hey guys I'm not here to prove myself to buyers, I'm here to help them; and to help somebody you don't need these stuff. All you need is to listen and provide a great solution. (Again Communication)

3) Their (freelancer.com) support turnaround is the worst of all. after at least 3 days you get a half answer of what you've asked and to get you full answer you will need to reply and wait another 3 days for them to get back to you! in a perfect world I will get a response the same day.

4) They are trying to be everything to everyone. They want to have programmers, designers, accountants & copywriters all together!

You may also have other experiences / pains that I would be happy to hear them.

Thank you for reading so far :-)
Rails isn't a silver bullet, but this doesn't show that it is any worse than anything else
I agree; these two were the toughest.

However, Taren's remarks at the funeral were more enlightening than heartbreaking. I ended up thinking of Aaron's work in a more enlightened way than I had in the past. The heartbreaking part was seeing Ada come up to Taren after her remarks and hug her.

(I didn't really know Aaron--I met him when he was two or three; what I know of him is what he published online and what others have said about him.)
Terrible decision. A tweet is just a string of 140 characters or less on a web page. Rules already exist for citing web pages, they seem to work fine.
Okay... You're overriding font-family, not font-size or any other parameters. This means that you'll override the font shape, and no other parameters. If you really need to have a particular font to help you function despite your condition, then you really gotta ensure that you have it.

What limited knowledge I have of CSS selector precedence tells me that a top-level override is the only way to ensure that the fonts that you require to be able to read the internet without raging are applied.
You have a good point, but some problems really are easy.

That doesn't mean they aren't worth doing. Actually, things which are easy to do mean less time and cost to develop, which is a big upside if you are trying to get something done. Which hopefully most of us are doing, most of the time?
Show HN: Take My Paycheck - geeky items, gadgets, electronics (side project)
We live in a world were comparing government action to government action seen in 1930/1940s Europe is considered "losing the conversation" and is just met with screams of "but Godwin's law!", but where it seems to be perfectly acceptable to compare the public calling for the firing of a public official to a formerly widespread practice of brutally murdering members of underprivileged minorities.

When the comparison is made against governments, that is bad, but it is okay to make such comparisons against the people. Sickening.

The cause of this discrepancy is an unhealthy worship of the law and government that many people seem to have acquired.
Iirc albatrosses actually can't take off from the ground. They need to jump off a cliff with an updraft. So they're very careful about where they land.
And stop the Earth from spinning, so we can get rid of that pesky oblateness and gravitational delta between the equator and poles.
I'm going to post this again, because I'm simply getting fed up with well-intentioned advice that tries to pass in subtly some kind of manifest authority (ageism, expertise, moral high ground):

"One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong."
-- http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someon...

What makes you right and that ^ wrong? Given that you are trying to guide me, for some reason, I think this is an absolutely fair question. Why follow your advice and not Adrian Tan's? I'd absolutely love to understand where you are coming from since what I have quoted, and then twice, outright contradicts what you are saying.

And it actually fits well within the framework of this entire thread, even if it does not get my dyslexic-accessibility agenda further.

Further, it might be amazing software. But that is an opinion. Plone is amazing software, but I wouldn't work in it. Diazo is amazing software, I wouldn't work in it. Drupal is amazing; wouldn't work in it. Joomla, etc., etc., etc.

I know things can be fixed. My concern is right now, what are the consequences of architectural decisions like his software? -- In my mind, immediately: larger Web footprint, inaccessible to dyslexics, more costly (even if it is tiny, but that is relative total footprint).

I'm not calling you names or insulting your intelligence. I'm being critical, and expressing frustration in an intimate way. The all caps are a rare thing, but as I said: I am mad. I want you to know that. So please stop re-iterating that it is not "effective." I don't think anyone here has the background in sociology or communications to really support their arguments on that matter. Just one programmers' opinion to another.
I loved the NeXT. It was one of the first Unix based machines that I ever used and have fond memories about hearing "this web thing" and Viola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW)

I'm bummed that Apple didn't bring the shelf over with the Finder.

I wonder if ddt would want one of them.
Whois tells me it's a white-labeled "launch your own dating site!" site from http://datinglab.net/
Interesting, I like the tagline quite a bit. Fits with the concept quite well: Make sure you stay true to what you set out to do even after you've made it.
> So basically, charge someone with something ridiculous, and then be offer a sweet sweet deal, such as "only 6 months jail time and confess to 15 felonies. Oh and if you want to go trial it will cost you and your family years of drama, all your savings, and risk 50 years in prison".

The charges weren't ridiculous. If Aaron wanted to avoid the trial he could simply have avoided repeatedly breaking into MIT's open network to access JSTOR. The charges (even the amended ones) were approved by a grand jury. The prosecutors were never pushing for 50 years in prison.

See, this is all part of what I complained about in my other comment about prevarication.

But either way, the point is kind of moot. Aaron chose to be in that situation, they didn't change the legal code just to suit him. Taking the plea would have been the smart thing but he was never under any obligation, as the sentence he would get in a jury trial would be based on the Federal sentencing guidelines (and his expensive attorneys could tell him that too).

Regarding the Sixth Amendment, plea bargaining is one of the tools used to ensure that those who do need jury trials have a chance at getting them expeditiously (or do you really think that Google really has a 5GB hard disk partition sets aside for everyone with a GMail account?).
The race of the defendant isn't a salient part of this. We don't have to wait for a black Aaron Swartz to act, on the far-fetched premise that the only thing that will be noticed by prosecutors was his color. This is a far-fetched idea.

Federal prosecutors are certainly intelligent enough to understand many of the factors which make this sensitive, including a suicide, internet backing, the specific alleged crime and the open access issue. Without deciding that the whole problem is that you can't prosecute white people. So many white people are prosecuted without fanfare that this would be an impossibly irrational conclusion to draw.
Mr. Selfridge And The Crockery
Just disable page font styles completely. I had white tahoma on dark background since 1999.
Would appreciate a critique of my new startup
We're still a ways from the final product, but have recently launched as a test trial and have roughly 100 registered users. Would love some constructive feedback. The URL is: http://www.entfusion.com. Thanks!

The pitch:
Our goal is to provide entertainment vendors with one central platform from which to create a personalized profile and market themselves. LIkewise, we provide customers who are looking for entertainment vendors, with one location to find these vendors, read and leave reviews, and interact with the vendors all from within the site.
I'm sure the Kochs and their pet lawyers are every bit as awful as all the law-and-order fans (and political participation critics!) here on HN contend. On the sliding scale of evil scumbags, however, they'd have to travel for miles to catch sight of any federal prosecutor one could name.
This article looks very spammy at first sight, but is actually a solid article on a number of common SaaS errors that are still all too frequent, with examples and suggestions.

Good stuff. Worth a read.
Perhaps if you know an IP lawyer that likes the lime-light you should challenge for the iRobot trademark on lack of distinctiveness to generate some press.

That is a terrible, terrible idea. Don't do that.
Parsnip soup is such a win. Wow. The pig feet help.
Using violence to do away with something that you don't like is not morally acceptable.

Um...are you arguing that states are fundamentally immoral?

Because I'm fine with using laws (read: state violence) to do away with things I don't think are morally acceptable, like, murder, rape, child abuse, etc. Really, I'm totally 100% fine with it.
How do you stop it from being knocked over?