skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I do not agree. Beyond that, I worry that what geeks hope for is a situation where the plain language of the law protects them from "overcharging". That's never going to happen. A zealous prosecutor is going to be able to make your life miserable no matter what. That's the problem we need to address.

Count me among those who think what Swartz did could reasonably have been charged as a felony, but should never have been charged as multiple felonies.

Swartz' attorneys tried to arrange a plea deal and were told that Swartz would need to cop to all thirteen felonies, and would still serve prison time. If all we know now is all there is to the story, that's a gross abuse on the part of Stephen Heymann's office.
I've been reading (read mostly lurking) on HN for about 2 years. I've seen new products get released and bashed down, others turn into incredible successes and I've been through the roller coaster that is my own startups. Still, I respect the HN community because at the end of the day they care about each other (e.g. the comments on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5048132).

I like to read through comments on threads like that and appreciate the importance of an awesome community.
> Stocks the size of Apple are never "extremely" under/over priced.

Size has nothing to do with whether a stock is over or underpriced. Apple could rather conservatively be valued at $600 or even $700 per share. I'd say that's an extreme underpricing, particularly given the difference in market cap that would make.

> The market seems to believe that the level of sales and/or profits per sale are unsustainable in the medium term.

There are other reasons for a stock to be depressed that may in fact have to do with the size of Apple. For sure they are in a fickle market and there is risk.
Java still contains security flaws, experts claim
At times this place does seem like an anti-MS Rails circlejerk.

Most of the guys here that foam at the mouth against MS and tout Rails as the second coming have never even used the MS stack for non-trivial applications.

I just wish they would open their minds for other ideas and platforms and not be hypocrits.

A classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
> > “It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan,” Graham wrote. “In those countries, people color inside the lines.”
> That may be true.

Except that it isn't.

> But those countries also don't torture people, inprison people without charge, or start senseless wars.

And neither is this.

I don't know which part of the EU you're from, but we've got a bit of a longer history to have made all those mistakes that you name, and so we've made much more of them. Colonialism comes to mind. Or if you're looking for something more recent, the secret (US) prisons in Poland and other East-European countries. And what they needed those custom-built metal cages for.

Then there's Sweden, throwing that TPB guy into solitary confinement for 2 months, before even officially charging him. Did not result in suicide, but you can be certain psychological damage has been done and that guy will never be the same.

See while you are not wrong about the atrocities committed by the US both inside and outside their borders, it's really really really important to first be aware of the horrible things that are being done at home, before you point your finger at an easy target on the other side of an ocean. Because those are the ones you have the best chance of affecting real change upon, the far away ones you can just yell about, or at best send money/aid or something.

(and before anyone points out possible hypocrisy, I'm very aware that I've probably fallen for this same trap in some of my earlier comments on HN. It's such an easy trap to fall for, that it therefore bears pointing out anyhow! I suppose it's similar to what I tell the kids I teach, "I don't care who started it, you both should cut it out!" ;-) ... a lesson that is really hard to make stick. we've got a built-in mental circuit for "fairness" and "guilt", and in situations like these, it really gets in the way of rationality and "doing right". Personally I find compassion (metta) meditation to help tremendously ... but I digress, sorry)
I know very little about patents so I can't offer another topic, but I'd be very interested in everything you listed.
I've accepted it as life. You are unlikely to realize how much or how little you've affected people on the other side of the world too. I mourn Schwartz's passing, but I am not at all surprised that someone great has passed away. On a planet of 7 billion people, people pass away all the time, great, horrible, and mediocre. I try to recognize everyone's contributions, but I will not fret over making sure everyone gets their due recognition. In the off-chance I become great, I do not expect anything more in the sure-chance I pass away, and I hope that the attention I get is only to reflect on what still needs to be done, much like the attention we are currently giving Schwartz's passing.
"I only found out about hacker news maybe… 6 months ago? This place is like 4chan for the IT Community[.]"

Hyperbole much?

The author complains about people making biased sweeping statements, then makes biased sweeping statements about HN and the "IT Community", whatever that is.

"People need to stop being so negative towards others in the community" doesn't jibe with "[t]he IT Community is a joke[.]"

If you find yourself writing "The [whatever] community ..." you should pause to ask yourself just how you happen to know so much about so many different people.
My three daughters go to doyogako (Saturday Japanese language school) which follows the standard curriculum which is why I knew. I haven't seen them use the kuku though. I'm actually working with the youngest on flashcards right now.

I've always thought it very valuable that they do math both there and at their regular US school in the hope that it will mean they aren't dramatically slowed down when math appears in a conversation like second language learners are. They certainly are crazy fluent in both languages otherwise compared to any second language learner, but I recently discovered my oldest tends to think of multiplication products in Japanese first even when in an English context. The brain is tricky :-)
Apart from the "asshole" stuff which is neither here not there, the point of the article appears to be "when considering a technology, the originating company/ord is irrelevant".

I don't know if I really agree with this, groups have track records.
There can certainly be real disadvantages to hitching your cart to one particular horse, especially if it's one that you have known to have bitten you in the past.
"Welcome to the Internetz"?
The world is full of jerks. There will never be a semi-popular hangout online or in real life without a few jerks. If you're waiting for a utopia where everybody is nice all the time and human emotion and fallibility don't exist, then you're going to be waiting a pretty long time. You gotta ignore the jerks and--at the risk of sounding like an insensitive jerk myself--just deal with it.
Clarity:

Swartz wasn't seriously threatened with 35 years. The prosecution told his attorneys they'd seek ~7 years.

7 years is still ludicrous. 1 year would be ludicrous.

The prosecutors can't fairly escape the blame for the "35 years" publicity, because they themselves bragged about it.

Swartz's own lawyer predicted that there'd be minimal chance of him serving any time even if he'd been convicted. First time offender, no commercial purpose, no malice, no lasting damage.
Well said! I think I'm going to make this comment into a poster :)
I've been toying with this exact idea and started some ground work on developing an iPhone version of this. Is this USA only?
Box-Muller Transformation with Numpy
This post shows how to generate normally distributed random numbers from uniformly distributed random numbers using the Box-Muller transformation in Python.
Ask HN: Easy HTML to Wordpress conversion?
I have a lot of HTML files that I want to make available on the web on a Wordpress website.

Is there an easy solution to upload them and convert them to Wordpress?
CloudSigma and ICCLab Establish Strategic Partnership
A step ahead!
I completely disagree.

I think HN has the highest quality comments of any tech-related forum site. There are consistently tons and tons of great comments from people that are very well-informed.

Reddit sometimes have a lot of very great comments, because of their reach they can get comments from a lot of experts on a wide variety of topics. But it also has a lot more noise, and a lot of "joke" posts, something that HN actively discourages, and which keeps the signal-to-noise ratio high.

EVERY forum is going to be filled with trolls and assholes. HN certainly has its share, but I would say for the most part, the signal-to-noise ratio is the highest. This is the reason why I left Slashdot after being a member for so long.
"Also, C is not the only language worth rewriting in" Agreed!

I would really like to see someone write a node.js and Go back-end for the same front-end and do a head to head comparison.

As someone who spent a fair amount of time rewriting node.js prototypes in Go, I'm probably biased. I feel like javascript is a much less maintainable language. Perhaps is was the original node.js implementations (I don't think it was), but the Go versions were always faster, used less memory and IMHO were more readable.
That's exactly the kind of attitude the article is about.

There are several aspects that can be analysed, yes, vendor is one, and other aspects.

The world is not black or white, people can legitimately pick C# based on its merits and capabilities as it may be the best solution for them.
Something I find interesting is that geek news communities have a tendency to self-criticise. It's good to be self-aware I guess, but I've noticed that such meta-conversation is often very negative, unreasonably so, compared to similar conversation in other communities.

I'm not sure why. Sometimes I hear people talk about self-effacing behaviour as a type of false modesty, but I have no real opinion on whether that explains it.

Personally, I find Hacker News to be very useful and constructive. I've been reading it for less than a year, and I'm very grateful for all the interesting posts and comments people make.

So - thanks all! Move on to the next, more constructive, post...

RS
I found these statements surprisingly polite. I don't know in what sheltered environment OP grow up, but I have another definition of "assholes".

It seems he just is insulted because his worldview is targeted in a totally reasonable manner, his argument

> Yes C# is created by Microsoft, does that make C# bad? No. Does it mean you shouldn't learn it? No.

has exactly the same tone. I don't get what the problem is.

The people on HN can get "meta" really fast, a lot of people are not used to that. If you state a public opinion it's never in a vacuum.
B2B Conversions Require More than SEO
The "Red October" Campaign - An Advanced Cyber Espionage Network
That's a libertarian value, not a conservative one.
I "break into" computer systems all the time.

Since I do not follow the EULA/license agreement for each website, and I send a handshake requesting files over a webserver, I am in violation of federal law for unauthorized computer usage.

That's fucking bullshit.
> IT Communities like Hacker News are full of assholes

No they're not.

Instead, the communities are full of amazingly helpful and polite individuals, and also have a small population of assholes. (Some of the communities. I mean something like Hacker News in particular, not 4chan.)

But a small percentage of the participants in those communities are not so helpful, or somehow manage to offend others while providing commentary they think will be helpful. And it only takes a small percentage.

The best solution is probably social pressure: speaking up when you see a comment that does not represent the quality of discussion that you want from the community. (But beware the other danger of filling the boards with meta-discussion about what is and isn't and appropriate way to discuss, because that will QUICKLY kill the quality of the community.)
Aside: I, for one, am extremely disappointed in the iPhone5.
Its WiFi sucks ass, to put it delicately. I just got back from traveling abroad, and when I'm there, I rely heavily on WiFi. My 3GS had no issues; it use to work like a champ. But the iPhone5? Lord! It couldn't hold the signal; it wouldn't log in to the (WPA2) network even though it would see it; etc. etc.

Apple's response so far? Try disable WPA2 and remove all authentication. Really?!?!

And the problem got worse after iOS 6.0.2

After seeing my issues, several friends of mine have decided to hold off upgrading till they're sure the issues are worked out (in iOS 6.1.0?). At least 1 person I know picked the Samsung instead.

Sorry to threadjack.
HN doesn't seem to be full of assholes or trolls (especially when comparing it to 4chan or reddit). Some of us just have a strong opinion. That said, I don't think sites like these are for everybody. Top voted comments/stories can definitely stir up emotions.
Does the G train suck?
I think that's what he was getting at with saying "best you". Being the "best you" that you can be would presumably mean reaching beyond the "you" that you currently are.
>Windows is free to download and try

Lots of ways in which windows isn't quite as expensive or has better things available seem to exist but be hidden. I believe you when you say a trial exists, but it's not easy to find - not only is that not on microsoft's homepage, it's on some random other domain (digitalrivercontent.net? Really). It's the same with bizspark/dreamspark/etc. - there's a lot of ways to get microsoft stuff cheap or free if you know them, but they're not easy to find if you don't.

>Drivers. Windows update always handles these for me at least. I haven't had to bother with driver fiddling for years. Not only that, 99% of hardware I've worked with recently just works out of the box anyway.

Only last week I had to track down some realtek drivers for the microphone on my parents' laptop. Not only had they been unable to find them themselves, they'd paid a guy to install drivers on that computer and he'd missed the microphone. I'll agree that usually it's easy to get drivers once you have an internet connection - but quite a lot of wireless chipsets won't work out of the box without a driver. I haven't bothered with driver fiddling for years either, but that's because I've stopped building my own systems and been using ones that come with windows (and drivers) preinstalled; try installing retail windows on a computer and you might be surprised.

>Everyone installs K Lite Codec Pack and media player classic these days (or VLC) almost as a first item to install.

Sure, "everyone" knows about twenty different things you download and install as soon as you get a new windows machine. I see another post pointing to nlite as a solution to all this. But you only know this because you're familiar with windows. Many of the problems windows users trying linux for the first time complain of are of the same nature, and easier to solve.

>Same as you install win32-codecs on Linux.

That hasn't been necessary for years.

>Maildir import. You stick an IMAP server on your Linux box and copy all the shit to your PST.

Seriously? That's supposed to be a user-friendly solution?
> Size has nothing to do with whether a stock is over or underpriced.

The reason why size does matter is that there are thousands of analysts constantly monitoring the stock, and companies are constantly trading based on their informed opinion of the value of the stock.

A small, relatively infrequently traded, stock is far more likely to get out of line with fundamentals.
I'm guessing its slightly cleverer than the dev having to find the DL link for every version and manually update the entry somewhere.
No, the article is about the attitude of saying "it's bad because it's vendor A" without explaining the reason for it.

In this case, I explained the reason. Microsoft is too entrenched in intellectual property assertion, and therefore they didn't make C# free. It's not the fault of the language or language designers. It's the fault of Microsoft. So if someone says don't use C# because it's made by MS - they are right, but they should explain what it means.
IP/MAC spoofing is not intrinsically a fraudulent activity

No, it's not. But doing it to get around people blocking your computer is. Likewise firing a gun isn't illegal, but attempting to hit someone when you fire a gun is illegal even if you miss. Intent figures into guilt and inncense in most matters of criminal law.

Swartz clearly knew that his IP address and then MAC address were being blocked specifically. You could argue he might have thought that it was just traffic shaping, but that wouldn't explain the MAC block.

EDIT: Clarified by adding 'criminal' in front of law.
> I think the vast majority of photos which people place a lot of value on are ones they share with specific family and friends

Hmm, perhaps, but this is still sharing just the same, no?

I guess I don't understand the value proposition here. Maybe I'm not the target audience. The way I see it, there are three things I want to do with my photos:

1. Look at them myself.
2. Back them up.
3. Share them with other people (publicly or privately).

I can do #1 without uploading them to the internet at all. I mean, I can do that right on my camera. Or on my smartphone in the Gallery app. This is kind of a built-in feature of taking photos.

For #2 I don't need a service that's specific to photos. Direct to Dropbox works fine, or a generic backup solution like Carbonite, Mozy, etc. And backups aren't as exciting as sharing, for about the same reason taking out a new insurance policy isn't as exciting as going to a club.

And #3, you don't really do.

Granted, I'm thinking like a young person. I think that for the under 25 crowd (which I am not quite a member of anymore), most photos are impermanent, like teardrops in rain. They have meaning in the moment, which is squandered and lost if they are not shared. On the other hand, if I were a parent saving pics of my kids growing up, maybe I would want this. You've solved use case #2 above and put a somewhat more convenient browsing interface on it. It still seems a little unclear, but maybe I'm just not the target audience.
Awesome Guideeee!!!!!!!
Yeah you have all the answers.
I currently only have US colleges/universities.
I believe it's wrong to characterize people as assholes and to stop there. People learn, at least smart people... sometimes.

OTOH, if someone bothers you, you can ignore them or, if you feel talkative, calmly explain why you find their behaviour unacceptable. You can set the tone.

Simply saying that a community is "full of assholes" is... well, not very constructive.
I agree with you that, "most meeting places in the world, both online and off have their share of arseholes." You could argue (and I think there is some research to back this up) that the anonymity of the net inclines people to be more badly behaved than they otherwise might be. But at any rate, I don't think trying to disprove his argument by arguing the meaning of "full" really works. If I say "the sea is full of fish" I doubt think anyone takes me to mean that the sea is constituted of at least 50% fish.
"The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side."

-Goethe
I disagree, he isn't wrong. He isn't wrong until Microsoft does one of these bad things you automatically assume they will do.

Plus, even if Microsoft did do something to make C# not viable anymore that makes Microsoft bad, not the language. For instance, if someone came along with a patent claim that somehow shut down the viability of one of your free languages, does that make the language itself bad?

Now, based on the concerns you bring up there is a valid debate over whether C# is a good choice for the future, but not whether it's a bad language. You could easily say that C# is a good language but I wouldn't use it because of reasons A and B.
The State of jQuery 2013
Except in this case it is ok to single out something that is produced by a single company.

I am weary about non open source dev tools lately. I was burned pretty badly by MS when the killed managed directx and said - learn XNA. Or all those guys with silverlight experience or the ones that knew flash and become hostage of the Apple/Adobe war. The moment some other entity can kill the technology that you make your living with you are in a trouble.

The decision to adopt new MS tech is like a Russian roulette. So I don't see any of the comments as assholery.
Interesting and timely. I've been thinking about getting into some simple game development as a side project. Is there a demo online somewhere?
You lost me at the fade in.
I tutored a student who counted on his fingers. He was 21.

Within 6 lessons, using Khan Academy, I had him adding four digit numbers in his head, multiplying large numbers, and doing algebra.

He would learn a technique from me or the video, then apply it in practice drills, then review at the next lesson.

Total instruction time was 12-20 hours. I think he did a bit on his own.

I concluded that no one had actually checked to see if he could understand math. North American students hardly try calculations now; they're given calculators at a very early age.
Yeah, I wonder what that even means?

You can't "return" data. You can either delete the data, or hand over the media that it's encoded upon.

It reminds me a bit of David Thorne's famous "spider" email exchange http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html (fourth email)
Politeness still (?) seems to be the majority and snarky comments are frowned upon and as a result, downvoted quickly..

There's also a certain bluntness that is appreciate by some for its directness and lack of pomp but (mis)interpreted by others as rudeness or hating.

I've seen comments that begin with, "That's an absurd idea", followed by a clear explanation of why the idea is absurd, with replies from people complaining that no one should call an idea absurd because it was not nice.

It's a big world.
A few great Sublime Text tweaks
So force the prosecution to pick the appropriate charge?

(Or are the prosecutors not versed well enough in the law to know which law/crime is the correct one that was violated?)

What do you think about this: if the prosecutor thinks the big charge might not stick because the evidence is questionable then charge the lesser crime?

Or perhaps (I know many don't like this, especially the government) a separate trial for each charge. Yes, the cost to prosecute goes up (if all charges are going to be charged) and that's why they combine multiple charges into one trial. But psychologically, if the jury see that a person has been charged with 13 crimes then he must be guilty of one or some of them right? If the state had to try each charge separately and the big one didn't stick, then if the state truly thought the next one would stick do that trial.

Our legal/justice system has a flaw and that flaw was to let a few guilty men go free to safe guard and protect innocent men from going to prison.