skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Android Hacker? Come take on the Telecom Giants
SendHub (YC W12) is looking for an Android Developer.

Skills:
Java (2 years experience),
Android (1 year experience)

Nice to have:
Experience with Google Guice (Or other Dependency Injection Framework).
Experience with Cordova/PhoneGap.
Javascript

About us:
We’re making it faster and simpler for professionals to communicate.

Founded to help educators reach students and parents in under resourced communities, we’re taking on the Telecom giants. Hate your phone carrier? Us too. Telecommunications is a duopoly dominated industry, which has systematically suppressed competition over its 150 year history, in order to keep prices unfairly high. We’re going to change this, starting with business phone service.

SendHub has over 50k customers across the US in SMBs, politics, faith groups, sports, education and many more; making hundreds of thousands of calls and sending millions of texts each month.

The Role:
You’ll be involved in every part of the software life cycle from specs discussion to implementation to testing and releasing. You’ll work on challenging problems that require deep knowledge of the tech stack and work with fun technologies such as VoIP and Bluetooth.

Our Philosophy:
We believe in building a wonderful product and taking care of our people. We understand the importance of personal growth so you’ll get autonomy, recognition and regular feedback. We move quickly. Working in short iteration cycles, we release our apps to market at least once a week. We expect a lot of each other but we wouldn't want it any other way.

Benefits:
Health, dental, meals and we don’t track vacation days.

We're based in downtown Menlo Park, CA (very close to the caltrain station). If you're interested, please drop us a line: jobs [at] sendhub [dot] com.
Wow, that is a pretty stunning change. Granted it wasn't another 5x boost, is the "within 30 days" requirement also new or has that always been the case?

The only thing that would have made this change remotely reasonable if it included language that the administration would, in the presence of a 100K sigs in 30 days petition, actually respond to the petitition. But I noticed there wasn't any more commitment above "official response" for which "no comment" is sufficient apparently.

Reminds me of the Steve Martin spoof on DUI tests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_183855...
hey Mike,

I don't mind, it's long ago and I'm not at all ashamed about it.

In the Netherlands, where I was born lots of people were doing it. There was the threat of jail time and there was a bunch of military police sent to pick up people to force them into the army. Lots went to prison or were forced to do a replacement service. I managed to stay ahead of them for quite long but I did have a regular place to stay so that wasn't a tenable situation in the longer term. It also made my mom quite nervous. Finally we got a summons from the regular police, I could choose to come in to talk with one particular officer or I'd be picked up. I went there nervous as hell and fully expected to be arrested but in fact the guy was very reasonable.

I explained my issues with authority (this was at the time that our military was sent to the middle east), and that I have a pretty bad streak running through me from a military point of view: that I can't handle injustice and that putting me in a situation where injustice is perpetrated on an ongoing basis is likely going to blow up sooner or later, likely sooner. I was 17 at the time, I'd just quit school and I still didn't have my aggressive streak bottled up (much better now, and it should be, approaching 48) and I really foresaw trouble.

The guy said he'd see what he could do, he asked me to call him in a few days. And so I did, he asked me to come in and sign some papers that essentially came down to me not being able to reverse my decision later or become a police officer and that was the end of that. No jail time, no formal court case or hearing.

I realized later that I got off really light compared to some in my age group. This was one of the last, if not the last year when there was still a draft in the Netherlands.

The thing that bugs me about the military and this is something that I really don't understand is the blind obedience expected of the soldiers. I have no doubt that I can be pretty nasty to people if the circumstances would push me that far but to blindly follow orders is not in my genetic make-up.
He didn't "test some limits". He did what most people interested in computers have done at one point. Connect to a network you aren't supposed to connect to and download something you aren't supposed to download.
yeah but out of those 50 you may only want 10 that are knowledgeable about food, and in the greater 500 list you may want 10 that are knowledgeable about tech. Just because you're close to someone doesn't you mean you value their opinion as highly on every subject.
> And they won't get them in for you?

Perhaps, but they don't live on startup time. Or perhaps I'm an impatient beast. Both are possible.
Good questions. I think they only promise to acknowledge the petition, not necessarily do anything about it. If they're raising the minimum number to 1 million signatures, I wish they would promise a bit more, though I don't know what.
That is a good argument for why Heymann would not be a contributor. That is, Heymann has clean hands because the defense failed to make the court aware that Swartz was possibly unfit to stand trial. Thank you.
My perspective probably differs, since I used to work for the public defender and never lost a jury trial, so I can see how most people would find the situation very stressful.

But I do stand by my point that most defendants do not commit suicide.
Is Aaron Swartz-related petitions the main reason for the recent peak in the total users number or is it just the service getting popular these days? If it is aaronsw related then the acceleration should slightly decline after a few days, hopefully I'm not assuming wrong.
"no proven link between his suicide and the criminal charges he faced, and any claims to the contrary have so far been entirely speculative and coming from people who never met the guy"

Please stop spreading lies and disinformation.

'killed by the government,' father tells mourners [1]

'depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful.' from his mother [2]

[1] http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-...

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398
Alright, the Piers Morgan one I understand, but the Death Star one was awesome both because it was inherently funny, and because it gave the administration a chance to show a more human face (which those in the WH should appreciate). I find it odd that they'd look at a gift like that and decide it was a problem.
He never had to go from being rich to poor or face years in prison if he had just plead guilty to the crime that he plainly committed.

The choices and the risk that he faced were entirely of his own volition. It's very sad, but it's not the government's fault.
No. It seems unfortunately another one of these initiatives, that pretend to take concerns serious - by putting them in a file. But it is a smart buffer to channel the voice of internet driven activism an direct it into a digital nirvana.
We Snap Love: Share photos of your kids privately with friends & family
It seems to me that there is a fine difference between admitting you did the act, and admitting you did the act and conceding the act indeed violated the laws the prosecutors assert.

For example, presumably Aaron's lawyers would argue that while Aaron did in fact use a fake name on a captive portal, but that doing so was not wire fraud.

Why should you abstain from arguing if your actions violated the law just because they have hard proof that you did in fact perform those actions?
Unfortunately, because they can. Though generally, "loser" cases are handed off to younger lawyers as training exercises. The lawyers aren't expected to win the case but get the experience of trying a case before a real jury. It's a lot more ethical on the defense side than it is on the prosecution side (because prosecutors are theoretically ethically obligated not to bring a case to trial if they don't think they have a better than 50% chance of winning).
Lawmakers slam DOJ prosecution of Swartz as 'ridiculous, absurd'
How do you know that that's what special blend is? I haven't been able to find anything conclusive from OkC regarding that.
Public debt is just bonds, i.e. the private sector savings. Why is it problematic that the private sector has savings? Why would we need to inflate that away, rather than letting it continue to exist to support people during their retirements?

Private savings (public debt) is not inflationary, private and public SPENDING is inflationary. If it's too much for the capacity of the economy to absorb it, then it bids up the prices goods (demand pull). If the economy is running below capacity and extra funds are injected to facilitate demand, then economic activity revs up to meet the extra demand.

As to the CPI, I'm sure it has its flaws, but I'd trust it more than a website offering $150+ newsletter subscriptions. The CPI changes over time because people buy different things, and tying inflation estimations to a static set of goods carries its own problems.
Had JSTOR and MIT both agreed that a non-custodial plea deal was acceptable, the government could (obviously) have moved forward with that deal.

Without the agreement of one of the injured parties, it was ostensibly materially harder for the prosecution to come to terms with Swartz; the "victim" was, in effect, demanding that the prosecution not be too soft on Swartz.
Another poster has said the same thing, but it's worth repeating: take a long hard look at California first. We have that here and it hasn't really worked out very well. It would be worth your while to visit CA in the month before an election, and look at the incredibly low quality of the political advocacy here (bullshit 30 second TV attack ads on every conceivable topic). The ballot pamphlet mailed to all California voters lays out the text of all proposed laws as well as arguments for and against, mentioning sponsor and source. Hardly anyone reads the whole ballot pamphlet.
Political reasons? i.e. the governor/president/mayor/&c wants to make a big mess, and the prosecutor's boss wants them to look good for the mayor.
Oh they've promoted it. They shut down all pictures on OkCupid for the day to promote the new app. People are PISSED. Hah.
Yes I'd say about 20% of them get a well explained no, 20% get a yes based off something already happening, 10% get a yes on their own, 20% are things they can't comment on (active legal cases for instance), 20% get stupid responses, and 10% are really stupid petitions to begin with (like states leaving the union). More than anything I think the petitions let the administration know how to prioritize releases. It informs them what is 'hot'.

Some highlights:

Obama administration backs down on Marijuana Legalization: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/addressing-legaliz...

Army Stops using monkeys (this actually happened in response to this petition as far as I can tell): https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/army-no-longer-usi...

National Guard Joint Chief of Staff created: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/chief-national-gua...

This petition (and opinion polls probably) helped prompt the administration to appeal SOPA and PIPA: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/combating-online-p...

This petition (and some campaign promises) have slowly resulted in increased digitization, recently the house put much of their data up in XML: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/digitizing-federal...

This petition is well written if nothing else: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/doubling-and-tripl...

These petitions happened at the same time as (though it's debatable if it resulted in) the president declaring he would not defend DOMA: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/greater-protection...

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/repealing-discrimi...

This petition coincided with a policy change on student loan burden reduction: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/taking-action-redu...
Thanks for your contribution.
But, regarding the first paragraph, I need to ask – are you sure? I cannot sense the distinction you describe.

As for the second paragraph, I completely do not understand what it means.
> I think the first new petition should be to require petitions to return to 25K threshold.

Given the increase in the number of unique users since late 2012 it makes sense to move the threshold, otherwise the signal to noise ratio will be too high. If the trend continues it would take only a few days to get the required signatures for Knee-high Socks With Shorts to be a compulsory uniform for the nation.
I regretfully disagree with you, in regards to the case playing out actually being helpful to the cause. The public, by and large, doesn't give a damn about this kind of thing.

His suicide, tragically, appears to have helped the cause - the media loves the wild speculation and gossip that it brought about. So while his end goal may now stand a chance of coming to fruition, he won't be around to witness it.

The number of things that went wrong in order to generate this outcome is just astonishing. While I knew nothing of Aaron or his cause prior to this happening (see? media effects sigh), I at least hope the public outcry brings about what appears to be some much-needed change.
(tutorial) configure Burp & Chrome on OSX for SSL packet inspection
My PhD in PL tells me your right, but I'm always on the lookout for a more intuitional vs. technical definition of language, even for programming.
No it isn't. If anything it shows that he didn't want to endure his potential punishment. If he didn't understand the potential punishment there would be no need to commit suicide.
Twitter Oscar Index
Really? Those seem like PR gimmes. You can't ask for better softballs.
If you are writing server software, I recommend Michael Nygard's book "Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software". Measuring event loop lag sounds like Nygard's "Circuit Breaker" pattern to avoid cascading failures.

The book's examples and text are all Java, but the lessons are applicable anywhere. He offers many scalability patterns (resource pools) and anti-patterns (runaway log files) with interesting stories from his experience debugging real systems. I especially liked his story about debugging a crash in an Oracle DB driver that caused unexpected Java exceptions to be thrown from java.sql.Statement.close(), which quickly blocked a DB connection pool.

http://michaelnygard.com/
Additionally, 2.1 million signatures (responded to) divided by 162 petitions (responded to) is an average of 12,963 signatures per petition.

That assumes people only sign one petition. I bet you could find plenty of people who have put their names to 5 or 10 petitions right here on HN.

Also, when you looka t the other petitions, it's obvious that a lot of them are a) duplicative b) bullshit and c) ignorant - like asking the Executive branch to 'repeal Obamacare,' when repeal is a legislative function.

I'm all for the petition process, but I'm also all for some kind of filter against teh dumb [sic].
> he still wouldn't get anything approaching a 35-year sentence.

You don't know that.

As tptacek and an actual computer criminal defense lawyer points out:

Granick: Important to remember much lower burden on prosecution at sentencing; “reasonable” loss claims on “preponderance of evidence”. Net-net: If charged with 13 felonies, you can’t lose on ANY, because even if acquitted on 12, they strike back at sentencing.

From this I conclude the game-theoretic payoff matrix is the message: don't bet on a fair trial, even if you're completely innocent. Prisoner's Dilemma indeed.

ref: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/291344549601742848 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/291344675305037825

> You could just as well be saying that the taxpayers are paying for Sandra Fluke to have sex.

Now who's talking hyperbole again?
You know, there's a difference between 'introverts' and 'extraverts'; those people who stand around and feel awkward if no one is saying anything?

You know? The ones who want to talk to you in elevators? Or just come and stand next your desk while you're trying to do work and talk? All socionormative, smile and handshake?

Maybe you should watch this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts....

Here's a thing: If I dont know you, and you want a conversation, catch my eye. If I smile, sure, lets chat.

If I look away, look at my phone, stare out the window.

dont talk to me

Your social obligation to engage is unwelcome

In all seriousness; you need to re-evaluate if you honestly believe "People love being bothered by strangers."

Some people may; many do not. You enjoy bothering strangers. There's a difference.
> Your post makes me angry. You are privileged and you have no idea. You're on the goddamn internet. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money if you get your shit together. STFU

Sorry to have upset you like that. I meant the comment as something to reflect on (I myself have thought "How can I be more minimal")...

As a side note:

Australia (in general) doesn't have 'shitty public schools'. If you were to compare its schools on a global scale. You were born into privilege and became more privileged. It is difficult to see it that way (as I'm sure things were never 'easy') but the "bottom" in Australia is much much much, higher than the bottom elsewhere in the world.
Of course if you're just professionally involved, you're not the one that is possibly going to be in a cage for three decades. And if your livelihood not only depends on the existence of these situations, but in fact becomes even more well-compensated as the complexity and therefore stressfulness of them increases, you may even find a way to conjure up justification for the whole charade under some guise of morality and justice, even if for no one other than yourself. And that's a large "part of the reason so many lawyers on HN having been defending Ms. Ortiz".
They have protective custody for this and he would absolutely have gotten it.
“Love each other” is almost certainly not the main idea of Christianity (rule? perhaps). The main idea of Christianity is that you are inherently in a state of sinning, and that Christ has sacrificed himself to atone for your sins: if you accept Him, you will be forgiven your sins and accepted into the Heavenly Kingdom. If you do not believe in (or know of) Him, you will burn for eternity in the pit of sulfur.

That's the main idea of Christianity.
The evidence is comments by Aaron's lawyer as quoted in the Boston Globe.

See http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01/15/humanity-deficit... for the article.
I say this as an atheist, so that we are all in a hug to begin with :)

Disagree that Chomsky is demonizing the US by being critical of our foreign policy.

Chomsky is very specific with his criticism of foreign policy, and one of the things that impresses me is that he seems to read more of 'Foreign Policy' and the Wall Street Journal than most of the right-wing, and certainly more than most of his critics.

Have you read much or any of his political writing? The dude is huge on footnotes and resources.

Often in his political lectures, Chomsky will quote very non-lefty sources for quotes and context, to demonstrate the rather matter-of-fact nature of what they say their true goals are.
The scientific pedigree of Chomsky is beyond doubt. From a purely academic POV, with all respect due to Norvig, they are in a different league.

(that does not mean that Norvig may be wrong and Chomsky right on that point you are quoting. It seems you're suggesting that Chomsky is not a great linguist because he disagress with Norvig - that would be a mistake).
Loved this essay. I think pg nailed it when he said that after some point, it's like you don't own stuff anymore. They own you. And the stuff we keep may become serious dependency in our life, which reduces our flexibility and freedom to do new stuff.

I just read this article, glad I did in a point of my life where it really makes a huge difference.
Right on.

Interestingly, I've always found impatience to be a huge factor in stuff accumulation.

i.e. Can't wait for something-or-other, so just buy it.
I do not see many lawyers on HN defending Carmen Ortiz. Additionally, gotta remember that part of the problem with the Ortiz witch hunt is that Ortiz isn't the most important target. Stephen Heymann, who managed the day-to-day of the trial, isn't just a very senior prosecutor; he's also a national authority on the prosecution of computer crimes.

Moreover, outside HN, I see widespread condemnation of the behavior of the US Attorney's office in Boston. See this story:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064128

Jennifer Granick has defended federal computer crimes cases in Boston and goes farther than questioning the behavior of the prosecution, but actually comes out and says that she believes that particular prosecutor's office has a reputation for immorality.
Here is the reality. Serious concerns will get few votes. Things such as building a death star that are completely stupid and not serious get lots of votes.

So what this is really saying is, "We're going to raise the threshold so we won't have to waste effort replying to your death star petitions, and btw we don't give a fuck about the little man and never did. Fuck you. Case closed. Now if we can get the media to sponsor some petition we really care about like banning all assault weapons or raising the debt ceiling, then you can vote on that, and we'll be glad to tell you why you have a great idea."
Congress Is Investigating The Prosecution Of Aaron Swartz
I realize that. I'm just struggling to find one that seems unreasonable even out of context. It reads like as a list of valid opinions the curator disagrees with, which comes across as more than a little bit pissy.
I recently recommended a dentist to a friend - in a thread on his FB wall. So yes, it happens.
Haven't there been lots of problems with doxxing the wrong people?

I don't think anyone will know, actually, who is responsible without the investigation that MIT is already doing. We can speculate, but we'll probably get it wrong.
Wow, and I don't say that lightly I'm disappointed at MIT. That will never change the utmost respect I have for their scientists, nevertheless I think I won't be able to forget the role of some of them in this tragedy before a long time. Anytime I will read 'MIT' written on a paper there will be something tainted/broken, these three letters lost a lot of credit in my mind in this episode.