skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly

IF he did what is alleged, it is pretty hard to see how it could not be knowingly. He had access to JSTOR as part of his work at Harvard. If he didn't know what he was doing was violating the rules, he would have done it at Harvard. He would not have bought a new computer, went to MIT, used a fake name and email address to access the guest network, used MAC address spoofing and a second computer to evade MIT and JSTOR's attempts to stop him, or trespassed and connected his computer directly to the wired network to bypass the guest wireless network.

Here's the indictment: http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pd...
Show HN: Simple bookmarklet to look up words
indeed, but the job is not about working with the person who is asking the question, but with others, and in a big company, not always, one guy recruits all alone, based on one question.
Would you stand up and leave on hearing that question? really?
Nope. You can't knee-jerk exclaim "Betteridge's law" when you see a "?". It's meant for news articles. This article is an introspective "life story" article and doesn't meet the preconditions.

For example, the previous life story article ending with a question mark on Salon was "Can I date a Republican?", and the clear answer from the article is "yes."

The one before that is "Should the terminally ill control their deaths?" and the author's statement is "A year after my mother's uncomfortable decline, it's a question with which I'm still wrestling", but it's clear that the author supports people learning more about the options for palliative care over attempts at staying alive for as long as possible. I'll put this as a "yes."

Then there's the quoted question '“Are you on the cover of a magazine?”', where the answer is definitely "yes", but this too doesn't fit Betteridge's law.

And "Was I selfish to have fertility treatments?", where the author states "I honestly don’t think my choice was any more selfish than anyone’s choice to have a child." So that's a "no." But there wa s a while when she worried about the question.

I think you get the idea.
MIT is a lot more similar to NASA than to the banking sector or the federal government.
Some of it. For example, the average American watches 5 hours of TV a day. That will kill you. I watch about 1 hour

Video games are very addictive to me. After playing Starcraft for 16 hours straight one saturday, I carefully watch and moderate my video game play and have deleted most games from my system.

In your battle to live a meaningful, purposeful life, the peddlers of superstimuli are your enemy.
802.11n on the 5GHz band (most implementations use 2.4GHz) already does this. The real problem is the 2.4GHz band, which is simply over-saturated. 2.4GHz also penetrates walls really well, which is a drawback in apartment situations because it introduces more interference from neighboring access points (and many other devices operating on or near the 2.4GHz frequency - wireless phones, microwaves, etc.).

I've used a 5GHz 802.11n AP in my last two apartments; it's worked great every time. Most of the time I don't even see any other access points in range. Even if there are other APs, 5GHz has many more frequency bands available, so avoiding interference is simple. The only drawback is that so many devices don't support 5GHz. My smartphone didn't until I upgraded to the SGS III, and my Nook still doesn't.

Also, 5GHz is faster because the spec allows 40MHz channels.
Think about it, answering the question: "What's your weakness" politely is "toleration of incompetence". Programmers are not hired as cheerleaders or sensitivity assesment personnel. We are not expected to beat around the bush and be "feel-good" companions. We are expected to get in, get shit compiled, get it working, get it fast and get the hell out. WTF are they doing asking us questions more suited for a hired female companion/prostitute?

The lack of toleration for complete incompetence is what people need. If not-tolerating incompetence loses you out on that interview, seriously, you DO NOT want to work there. They will steal your soul away, and you'll wish you were dead after a few years of working there.
Even it cost him a million dollars to gain his freedom, wouldn't the fact he's free be more important than how much it would cost him?

Considering how intelligent he was and his earning potential (given his young age) as well as the community which obviously adored him - I find it hard to believe a million dollars would be a hardship for him.

I mean, if an internet cartoonist can raise over 100K in less than 24 hours, certainly someone of his stature could raise exponentially more?
"...and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge."

Does anyone know what laws prevented Aaron from fundraising for his own defense?
Indeed. This leads to weird things like the R. Budd Dwyer incident. He was a Pennsylvania Treasurer who was accused of a crime. He called a press conference and shot himself on stage. Hence, he died without being sentenced (and before being fired), and thus his family got a full pension.

The band Filter's song "Hey Man, Nice Shot" is about the incident.
Betteridge's law applies. Better than an even chance the author will one day die, so won't be warped then. Answer is no.
Google's ultrafast Internet draws startups to Kansas City
Second only to (I invest too much in my work|I care too much|I overcommit myself).

I find it hard to be honest on this kind of question without sounding cheesy or insincere. Revealing personal weaknesses to complete strangers is extraordinarily difficult. Ironically, answering dishonestly can itself be quite revealing.
Only two to one? The only phones which have sold over 100 million handsets are low end devices manufactured by Nokia, and Nokia has made EIGHT such phones [1].

Sure, the Asha series are basic smart phones, rather than the feature phones of the above models, but it wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption to think that the people in 'emerging markets' who bought basic feature phones in 2005 are now moving to basic smart phones.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_pho...
I think it's funny that the article about the news being irrelevant ends with the cliched tagline: "You should follow me on Twitter."

Because that would be relevant.
And I have a converse anecdote: after having had sex, I don't enjoy porn anymore. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
Ah, thanks for explaining.

Is the "moving internationally" issue a question of travel or permanent residency?

I get how a felony conviction might be a big deal for someone with a GED and no money and no connections. But Swartz had lots of connections and lots of money and was widely respected in professional circles. I really can't see any startup that he wanted to work for rejecting him over his felony conviction. And while some owners might not want to rent to people with violent felony records, I'm having trouble seeing many owners reject an accomplished man with money and recommendation letters from Larry Lessig and Cory Doctrow.
So would pushing for 5ghz N be better than 60ghz?
I remember reading just a couple of weeks back about how this issue goes away after abstaining from porn for a month or two. They called it "porn detox" I think.
As to why some sets of notes sound good or harmonious and others sound "bad" or dissonant, we find that frequencies with the simplest mathematical ratios tend to sound the most harmonious, while frequencies with more complex ratios sound more dissonant.

So for example the simplest ratio 2:1 corresponds to an octave interval. Notes which are an octave apart sound so similar that we describe them with same letter. So concert A is 440Hz and the "A" note one octave higher is 880Hz.

The next simplest ratio, 3:2 corresponds to the interval known as a perfect fifth. So given the example of concert A at 440Hz again, one perfect fifth above concert A is the note E which has a frequency of 660Hz as (440 * 3) / 2 = 660.

We find the simplest ratios of frequency intervals present in music from cultures the world over. The traditional classical Western twelve-note scale consists of the 12 simplest frequency ratios. In some Eastern music we hear a pentatonic or five note scale, which consists of the five simplest frequency ratios.

So this aspect of music we can attribute to innate psycho-acoustics or even physics rather than cultural bias.
I up voted it to cancel your accidental down vote. I have never understood why HN does not let people change a mistaken vote.
It looks like that link is no longer available.
Bash Script to Download Music from 8tracks
or just accept that TLDR means more than what your narrow definition and current pet peeve would otherwise allow?
Let's pretend we figured out porn is kinda bad.
Our next steps?
That's just Nokia's icon grid. Later versions of Symbian also look like that. Meebo (and the Nokia N9) was great, but it wasn't amazing. Honestly I doubt they would have sold enough units to create a reasonable ecosystem anyway, so it would have still been a dying platform, just one where hundreds of millions of marketing dollars had been spent.

At the time when the N9 came out, people just weren't interested in the N9 at all (and this is in Australia, where Nokias used to be best-regarded manufacturer). They had a few disasters with Symbian (the n97/n97 mini/C3/N8), and even Nokia die-hards weren't prepared to recontract with another Nokia handset (I was working in telco at the time).
Good for you--I mean that. My addictive superstimulus is learning new things with no practical relevance my work, like orbital mechanics or calendrical calculations. When I catch myself going on extended binges, I try to extricate myself by consciously directing my time and energy elsewhere. But it would be silly of me to indict textbooks as harmful objects. Any hardcore procrastinator knows that the focus is incidental and essentially arbitrary.
This sure was an interesting first JavaScript project. It turned out harder than I expected, but I've learnt a lot, from JavaScript/jQuery basics to free dictionary APIs and JSONP format.

Obviously, there is still work to be done, but this is a basic functional bookmarklet. The goal will be to fix some bugs to enable it on as many websites as possible. Also, there are many ways to expand this (translation, more dictionaires, ...), but it obviously depends on available free APIs.

I'd love to hear some feedback from you (especially on speed, compatibility and user-friendliness)!
Is this the result of some kind of organized DDoS (Anonymous or some other hacktivist group), or merely a coincidence given their recent exposure re: aaronsw?
It is risky, but unless you are desperate for the job (and that shows to the interviewer) any company asking this I probably don't want to work for anyway.

BTW I have said this a few times. Usually I get a laugh out of it.
TL;DR: self-love heals all wounds.

From the outset (and still at the end), he frames porn as deviant so you know what his overwhelming internal language is. (Porn didn't put that in him, he was taught it.) He then takes a cold-turkey approach to change and self-moderation (and why not - everyone's made a New Year's resolution...). Like abstinence (and over eating, and anger management, and the list goes on) though, extreme denial often (though not always; everyone's different, but often...) leads to extreme periods of indulgence followed by acute shame (remember that New Years resolution?). I think his thoughts and feeling say more about his environment and his ingrained attitudes than they do about the effect of watching porn. (I and every guy I know watched more porn than TV during their early teens. Their respective perviness has more to do with their self-image than anything... The ones who think of themselves as freaks, present themselves as freaks, even though they have identical interests to others...) It sounds like he thinks he has to hide, even from himself, which sounds like a self-acceptance issue to me. For starters, it might be productive for him to seek more relationships that give him stronger feelings of acceptance. (Which he is: "What helped the most was talking to friends, particularly women, who have had more positive relationships with masturbation." In other words, he needs a companion who likes similar things sexually... No surprise there.) He even admits at the end that he has an addictive personality, but ultimately assigns the blame on porn when he's in full control. Or at least he would be if he came to terms with having genitals like everyone else. It could have just as easily been food, or coffee, or the Sears catalog... He'd still have to learn to live with himself. At 23 that's still happening quite a bit, but his article is a social commentary. Unfortunately he's too close to the issue to see that he's the only one responsible for his own self-image and feelings of self-worth.
God exists. God controls pairing. Who's better -- deaf pure-bred dogs?

God says...

like the work of the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies; and it
received and held three thousand baths.

4:6 He made also ten lavers, and put five on the right hand, and five
on the left, to wash in them: such things as they offered for the
burnt offering they washed in them; but the sea was for the priests to
wash in.

4:7 And he made ten candlesticks of gold according to their form, and
set them in the temple, five on the right hand, and five on the left.

4:8 He made also ten tables, and placed them in the temple, five on
the right side, and five on the left. And he made an hundred basons of
gold.

4:9 Furthermore he made the court of the priests, and the great court,
and doors for the court, and overlaid the doors of them with brass.

----

If they abandon their alphabet and language and use English, then we might have a problem.

Relax -- God is just.

God says...
falling Within Unto supported every capacities burn attentive
proceeded BBC require woe salt raises urgedst mainly Those
beholdest marry peace-makers compelled really convict
struggling bad_ol_puddytat tides ardent fairer cower liftedst
Highness case leaves I_can't_believe_it scratching thou
given lethargy hair affirmed bad_ol_puddytat gratefully
waiting confidence safer MS pant looked doer uproar contain
borrow watched lucre mentally calculations broke royalty
data unbelievers dwellers shameless fluctuating prefect
fathers' gives salt parley compressed aged Eternity shook
rocks reached Thailand mimic ran Sierra_Leone air faileth
jealousy perchance after_a_break assume recollected different
music Self continently manfully I_quit widow Hortensius
pluck prayers watch Much gratuitously harass tune Zimbabwe
echoed joyful universally rigidly sealed sleeping jeer
graceful -Spiritual perverseness soothed Lay cheap abhor
so_let_it_be_written arguments exuberant Although predestinated
Nothing wishful_thinking ours Orderer shop mire thirtieth
record supposed forthcoming rudiments re-collected gladness
interrupted settle knots slightly bestow irons bestowed
appointment amazed not enquiry sign IV manna torture eye
deriding stripes burnest take secret pronounced what's_it_to_you
Out Jew recognise unintermitting banished somewhat learned
write worlds guilty fervently angels basically clingeth
because this is not reddit or slashdot?
I agree that this is what an interview /ought/ to be, but anywhere that is going to ask 'what is your greatest weakness?' with a straight face is unlikely to value said openness and honestly.
Most of the time you get a baleful stare because it's off-script.

Would you want to date a person or marry a person who was physically unable, or grossly offended by you raising a discussion about the idea that an interview question isn't optimal? If not marry, then why work with them 8 hours a day for the rest of your lives?
> If any of them are stationary, or mostly stationary, you might just want to run an ethernet cable. Even long ones are dirt cheap from Monoprice. For instance, I wired my iMac, my girlfriend's iMac, and leave a wire at our kitchen table, where laptops are most likely to be used, for about $12 shipped.

I think the issue for most is not the cost of the cables, but the inconvenience (and safety hazard!) of having cables running around the house. They also typically tend to look untidy.

For me it'a a decision between a wireless router (which I would need anyway) for $180-odd or an additional $200-$300 to get CAT6 wired up to two (2) rooms in the house w/ 2 sockets per faceplate (and a cheap switch to aggregate it all).
Felt the same way this morning when I caught a few minutes of This Week, covering the next "fiscal cliff", the lack of women in Obama's cabinet, and so on. What a waste of time.
"I don't react charitably to bad interview questions. I tend to get pretty indignant and perhaps make a mockery of it. In some ways though this can be thought of as a positive since it tends to act as a filter against me taking bad jobs."
You have made a couple unfounded assumptions. One, that the GP, abstains from porn and two, that the fact that it's not clear that it's harmless is the reason for it. They were responding to a specific claim of the GGP, that porn is harmless.

Respond to what people actually say. If you really need to respond to something unsaid, make it explicit. Anything else is a strawman fallacy.
Show HN: Java Mini Profiler
It's back up now, so if it was a DDoS it was a pretty ineffectual one (time between post and this comment is 20 minutes).
Hacking Super Mario Bros. with Python
If I heard a BS answer like this, and I do from time to time, interview would instantly be over. Sure I might carry on out of a sense of decorum, but you just lost the job. Good luck with your search.

And by the way, your answer did in fact reveal a weakness. What your answer just told me is that I can rely on you to give me patronizing answers instead of being direct. And that, my friend, does in fact make you unqualified to work for me.
I'm speaking to the assumption that promoting an agreeable person will necessarily have a favorable outcome. There's a huge presumption that Abelson's role in this precludes unfairness.
> Yes, involving the USSS was the first seriously questionable decision MIT made.

The unknown intruder evaded several attempts to cut him off. The volume of downloads was so high that it was causing problems for JSTOR's servers, and JSTOR finally blocked ALL of MIT for several days.

MIT was suffering serious harm. Calling in the Feds for help doesn't seem all that questionable to me under the circumstances.
Please.

If you are accused of being a child molester, does it mean that we should all consider you guilty? But we should not quibble about such technicalities as you so blithely claim.

"Innocent until proven guilty". That's how the law works (and should)
Right. "Widely respected" implies a presumption of a valid outcome. He may have been chosen to be the person most able to sell the results to Aaron's supporters.
China's one child policy has had debatable effect and a number of unintended side effects. If China wants smart people to reproduce more, then skewing the population towards a male majority is only going to work through repression of large numbers of men who no longer have hopes of reproducing.
Yep, that's me! I'll send you email. :)
NYC is about as first world as it gets, and they still use the steam system from the 1800's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system
He had no money left, was already bankrupt after defending himself to this point...Besides, this is the wrong question - on what earth should it even be possible for a prosecutor to threaten thirty five years and a felony conviction for this sort of thing? That kind of sentence is for attempted murder, it is a few years short of life in prison. This was wrong, this was not right. Prosecutions like these mean that we lose our humanity.
TLDR mostly shows up in places like Reddit. The communication that happens on Reddit is unlike anything we've ever had, millions of people all gathering to casually talk with each other. There is no expectation of depth (anymore, anyway), nor do people put much stock in Reddit comments. Thus TLDR helps people's ideas get across and also probably improves readership of comments (people read the TLDR, and then realize they should go back and read the whole thing). It's a new construct that has evolved for a new form of communication.
I always tell them the truth:

I don't "work too hard" I just manage my time poorly. I see failure as a flaw in my work and I don't like to give up on something, I'd rather work it until it's done. I'm putting a reasonable amount of effort into overcoming this obstacle and I will do whatever it takes to keep this from interfering with my performance and output.

Their facial expressions usually tell me that that's the kind of answer they're looking for.
This needs to also happen for case law (free as in beer). How absurd is this:

"Pursuant to common law tradition, the courts of California have developed a large body of case law through the decisions of the Supreme Court of California and the California Courts of Appeal. The state supreme court's decisions are published in official reporters known as California Reports. The decisions of the Courts of Appeal are published in the California Appellate Reports.

The content of both reporters is compiled and edited by the California Reporter of Decisions. The Reporter maintains a contract with a private publisher (as allowed by Government Code Section 68903) who in turn is responsible for actually publishing and selling the official reporters. The current official publisher is LexisNexis." [0]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_California [0]

http://www.lexisnexis.com/clients/CACourts/ [1]
How I launched 3 consoles (and found true love) at Babbage’s store no. 9
I have willingly traded convenient browsing, email [1], apps and all that shit for a phone that actually works properly when I need it to.

Wait, are you one of those fabled people who use phones as phones? :)

Jokes aside, maybe I'll have to upgrade to one of those. I've got a $20 dumbphone right now, and it is almost good enough. Some good 'ol Nokia durability might be just what I need.

Can you sync a calender to it over USB? Calender sync is the only "feature" I miss about fancy-phones.
Godwin's Law is designed to deter inappropriate comparisons to fascism/Nazism so as not to weaken or otherwise besmirch appropriate comparisons to fascism/Nazism. The United States government has been getting steadily and incrementally more fascistic for at least the past decade, and I would not be so quick to dismiss summarily a comparison between how the US government operates and how historic fascist governments have operated.
My answer to this one won me my current job;
THEM: So what would you say is your biggest weakness?
ME: Well, I think it's rather obvious and rude for you to ask that...
THEM: <Shifty, uncomfortable silence>
ME: <Comic eye-roll> Clearly it's food!
THEM: <Laughter>

I'm slightly overweight (probably a lot of devs are), so it worked well...feel free to steal my routine...mileage may vary based on condifence/comic-timing.
Archive.org: Aaron Swartz Digital Archive
W3.org still appears to be down https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052503
Ditto.

In addition, usually when I do something wrong in an embedded system the only way to recover is a hard reset and reload. Mishandled interrupt, corrupted stack, jump to a random location, etc.

In embedded systems, there are an infinite number of ways to crash such that there is only one way to recover (reset and reload). There are very few ways to crash that leave a non-reset recovery.