skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Emperor's New Mind by Sir Roger Penrose. It's a very accessible and highly fascinating discussion about whether machines will ever be able to emulate the human mind.
It's not obvious who you represent when you have list an employer in your title or bio. The point of listing it is that you're adding that affiliation and connection. Worse are not "just words". If that were true, libel wouldn't exist.
Libel can cause significant damage and the connection between your twitter account and your employer makes them a target. So you might want to ask the University's legal department before you assume that they're ok with being connected to you on twitter.
Show HN: Bitcoin price alerts via SMS
This is fantastic news. Hopefully this gets overturned and narrows the scope of the CFAA to where the government can't put people in prison for exposing security flaws on unrestricted areas of the web.
Interesting perspective and good food for thought.

My one point would be perhaps the way things are now is because it's good enough. Using the web and building for it is good enough for a lot of people, the speed bumps and systems in place are good enough for the majority.

But I do agree, we've gotten to a point where a handful of corporations dictate how everyone else get to do the neutron dance and that the bleeding edge needs to be examined and worked on so that change can occur.
I don't believe this was a Python problem or an issue of the Python community, it's a general issue plaguing technology. We're all trying to figure our way through it as best we can - and when things like this happen we need to do our best to stay calm and rational and keep everything in proportion. I think no matter who's "side" you were on in this debate, everyone can agree that most reactions were overblown for the actual events that occurred.

So I think as long as the Node community remains aware of the gender issues and goes to lengths to promote a friendly and tolerant environment that's the key. But to put it in perspective, I think that everyone should be doing that no matter your language of choice. :)
Uh, as far as I can see, that article is from 2006 and Podzinger.Com is no longer active.
That's less than I was estimating. Is this custom development? Do you need more capital?
When people stop using bitcoin, this value will disappear.

That's true for everything. Whale oil was extremely popular for more than a century, now it's barely used. That doesn't mean it wasn't an useful thing at the time.

It is not intrinsic value.

There's no such thing. Value (market or use) is always relative to someone or some group of people. And even if the item is still useful in itself, the existence of better and/or cheaper alternatives may still drive its market value to zero.

It is value assigned by group psychology, like a bubble.

I think you're just not seeing Bitcoin with the right point of view. Instead of thinking of the speculators trading it like a commodity, think of it as a service, like Paypal.

When I want to send money to someone else online, how can I do it? I have to use it some kind of service (bank transfer, Paypal, etc), and those services can be "convinced" to prevent my transaction (like when the CC companies prevented WIkileaks donations), or it can freeze my funds (see Paypal again), etc.

Now, if people are willing to pay Paypal some percentage for that transfer, it means the service has some value. If Bitcoin can do the same, it stands to reason that it must have at the least some value as well.

Now, this is different from the (real or not) value one gets by trading and holding Bitcoins, but that's just part of the whole system. For the record, I have zero bitcoins.
Comparing private email to public Twitter is asinine (even if the Twitter account was not used for professional purposes).
There seems to be a massive trend of people getting in hot water because of Tweets, then going into damage control mode to provide context for their remarks. Part of the problem is the medium itself. Arguments, especially those that are interesting and meaningful, aren't always meant to be condensed into 140-character snippets.

Take this story, for example. While I'm not taking anyone's side, I think that if Adria had been able to provide context for what happened (i.e. saying more about the nature of the employee's comments and why it offended her), this discussion would have been more meaningful from the get-go. Maybe it wouldn't devolve so quickly into speculation.
Oh really? Well the question is, I am currently not sure how the person in question would react to a "Fork you" shirt. So...... that's the problem, that was my point.
Where is the line?
Because apparently that triggered.

But somehow, "example" is a foreign concept to you, since you sorta got stuck on the "crude joke" portion.

Way to go to miss the whole point.
Thanks for the talk! I was there; it was pretty awesome.

One question regarding djorm-ext-pgarray: is there a cleaner way to search inside of the array? The where(SqlExpression) works, but it really feels like a chore.
This is by far the best post I read about this whole sordid affair. As suspected, Richards, did indeed exhibit this pattern of overreacting before. The balance of this article was amazing!
Incredibly awesome. I have been waiting for this!
It's relevant because it proves that she wasn't really offended, and that she just felt like throwing a tantrum. Her tantrum got someone fired, so people can and should call her out on her hypocrisy.
How we built Jam for iPhone
Love how the acronym for human intervention is "Hi".
They are encrypted but I remember reading somewhere that you lose your rights after data has been stored (not accessed) on a server for over 180 days.
> Richards should be absolutely commended for what she did, documenting and publicizing the abuse against her. It’s extremely hard to do, and it’s incredibly valuable to the community.

From what I understand, she wasn't subject to abuse until after the tweet went live. She overheard some slightly lewd jokes not directed at her and decided to use a public forum to shame the jokers instead of more appropriate means.
"She has no right to do that."

Perhaps better way to phrase that is that she has every right to do that but then has to understand the consequences and ramifications of her actions at least job wise. In this case sendgrid apparently has updated their code of conduct. But not every situation can be spelled out (because it hasn't happened yet).
I do hope it's that easy, or at least, we can keep making it look that easy :)

In the last 3 years with Node, I've seen it go through some definite changes, and we have had to respond to those. I suspect that will continue.
>Unfortunately for Sendgrid, if she files a sexual discrimination lawsuit they will probably be forced to settle or lose.

She gave Sendgrid a good and legitimate reason to fire her. She stated in one of her tweets that Sendgrid supported her recent actions.
Not the original poster, but I think his comment was meant to be interpreted as "Somebody should remind our current government of its original vision"
Mir discussed on #wayland
This is much more likely to be the result of FinCEN ruling being favorable for the Silicon Valley Bank/MtGox partnership, paving the way towards easy bitcoin purchases in the future.
Re " How the hell do we measure a police department's effectiveness?"

I don't think it's that hard. There are a set of crimes, like burglary, mugging, and armed robbery that are at the core of the quality of life in a city. Clearance rates for those crimes, plus a survey that measures reporting rates, should give a pretty good measure of a police force.

Arrest rates, unless they are in these categories, tell us very little.
«These things indicate that accounts should have transitory, one-to-many relationships to email addresses, rather than email addresses serving as a key.»

The only requirement for the email to be a key to the account is the association of one email to one person. A person can have more than one email, at different times or at the same time. The only thing that can't happen is one email mapping to two individuals. Full circle: the majority of emails do map to one individual and the cases where they do not map, are not enough to preclude the use of emails as keys.

Perhaps the confusion occurs because you think I'm defending email as a primary key for the account. I'm not. It's one key, not the primary key.
There's nothing either for me. And I'm in the US, in the heart of Manhattan, using my Time Warner cable.

Nothing on the linked page, nothing in my account settings... so I have no idea how this works.

EDIT: never mind, it's completely hidden behind "Password and Security" in your account, and then you have to answer your security questions to even SEE what things you can do. ARGH. It took me several tries -- security questions should NEVER be character-matched. How am I supposed to remember if I typed in "Mike" or "Michael" or "Crazy Mike" for my childhood best friend, or "Honda" or "Accord" or "Honda Accord" for my first car? (Those are obviously not my actual answers). Security questions should ONLY ever be "matched" by a human operator over the phone. And God forbid you should ever mistype your initial answers! There's ZERO warning that these will ever be used in a "password"-style sense. </rant>
Some of the reactions to her have really gotten way out of hand. Seriously.

I was just browsing through her YouTube account and it's now spammed with tons of overtly racial and sexist slurs against her. These aren't "dongle" jokes. They're the real deal.

This is really just a tragedy. Adria Richards is not the only one who is showing her sensitive, human side here. I think she made a mistake, a big one, and I agree with the decision of SendGrid. But, oddly enough, I think some of the reactions are showing that maybe she was right all along. Her example of sexism and racism in the developer community was a terrible one, but ironically it has led to lots of legitimate examples.
Yeah, it's a kind of ad hominem, because it says, "This person's arguments are not worth listening to because this person's behavior is not in line with what they are arguing for." But if arguments are rational things with inherent truth then it doesn't matter who says them. Her argument about overheard dongle jokes being sexist is weak enough as it is. The added hypocrisy just makes for sadly entertaining drama / gossip / whatever. In a way, by focusing on the hypocrisy, it lends credence to her claim of sexism, because there's the subtle implication that if she weren't a hypocrite then the sexism claim would be valid. Anyway, whatever, her reputation is kinda ruined now, I hope she makes it out of this okay.
Google to Congress: Time to change email laws
> http://imgur.com/5tbXR2c

Wow. I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks that minorities in any group can't be racist/sexist/____ist is more than likely a racist/sexist/____ist him/herself and doesn't realize it. All it takes is discrimination against that other group because they are a member of that group.
California is at-will, but with a good-faith rider. Arbitrarily or maliciously firing someone would probably be grounds for a dispute.

I don't think that dispute would be successful in this case, where some demonstrably poor judgment with predictable consequences was used, but IANAL.

Edit: but as pointed out below, this company is in CO.
What's up with the recent burst of EmberJS, Angular, and Backbone stories on HN?
"Needless to say, a heated public debate ensued. The discourse, productive at times, quickly spiraled into extreme vitriol."

Live by the sword die by the sword. Probably one of the reasons that many people decide to stay anon on HN and online I'm sure. One minute you're the darling and the next minute everyone is in your grill and judging your actions. (Remembering what happened to edw519 recently..)
Evolving Capistrano Deployments
Such extreme ignorance to post such a thing. I'm surprised she kept her job as long as she did.
THE GAME (that's what she is calling it) already has a release date of July 2013 despite there being no evidence of her having written a game before...

Without appearing cynical, can I ask why there is a $10000 pledge band?
Not sure I can agree with this letter.

1.) From what I can gather she wasn't the direct target of abuse, so to frame that was is disingenuous. I understand that making "dongle" jokes at a conference is inappropriate, but its nothing more than inappropriate.

2.) How she handled it was completely wrong and unprofessional. Again like Amanda Blum[1] states, she has frequently sidestepped the right channels and has taken issues into her own hands. This has caused considerable trouble for PyCon, SendGrid and PlayHaven. SendGrid, should not be DDoS for several hours over a dick joke. People lost money. More than anything that is the take away here. I doubt Adria would have lost her job if she took it twitter after coming to the conclusion that the men won't be apologetic and PyCon wouldn't do anything about it.

[1]https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
She's not exactly a struggling mother who needs the money to make her child's dream come true. She could probably stretch to a laptop or even a 100 of them. Is this meant to be educational? For whom?

There are quite a few projects by people who do actually need the money to have a chance for their dreams to come true.
FYI http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/in/germany leads to a 404
Right, that's not 'fantastic' design-wise, but skeuomorphism has a clear function in this case. That's my point.
I don't think it matters because Kerr is just arguing that the district court interpreted and applied the law incorrectly. An appeals court has full power in these areas. It would only be a problem if they wanted to introduce facts or procedural/evidentiary arguments not presented to the trial judge, or if they want to overturn the trial court's decision on procedural/evidentiary/factual matters.
In the light of the ugliness of the last 24 hours, this couldn't have come at a better time.
Actually, it won't. You'll OpenID auth into google.login.persona.org, and then get a straight up Persona certificate signed by that fallback, along with all of the privacy safeguards that has.
> I don't believe this was a Python problem or an issue of the Python community, it's a general issue plaguing technology.

Obviously broader than the scope of this conversation, but let's not forget that /society/ is bad at this. You carve out a subsection of the larger culture, and, surprise! Sexism is still a problem. I find it absurd that anyone would think the larger tech community /wouldn't/ have this problem.

Thus, I'm pretty happy that, fex, the Node community seems to have a decent grip on keeping things under control, at least in the early days. There will be occasional trolls, newcomers, and people that don't "get it" yet, but I think the community leaders are leading responsibly.
Yes, I recognize there are some narrow exceptions such as libel, and I'm perfectly fine being held accountable for libel. If I post something which actually libels someone, i.e. something which a court will hold me accountable for having posted, then that's fair, and I'll take full responsibility.

What seems to be in question here, however, is whether people may post truthful comments on twitter, which under U.S. law are by definition not libelous.
It's completely valid if you take into account the fact that anonymous and other groups threatened to DDOS sendgrid (and AFAIK they even suffered an attack yesterday). But then again..you've never really been one to take a minute to know facts before you pass judgement have you? :)
How would use of those cards have changed anything?

Let's make this between you and me. You make a joke about how "dalke"s are just mixed up "dalek"s. I turn around and give you a yellow card. Message received, you apologize, and the system worked, right?

Next, in remembrance of the Thals, I make an black velvet painting of you, with the title "jagermo is a dalek lover", and display it at the poster session. You see it and give me a yellow card. I get the message, realize I shouldn't have done what I did, apologize, and I take it down.

That captures the essence of what happened, right? Or rather, the essence of what you would like to happen. The card system worked, end of story?

But of course, many people saw the painting, some took pictures of it, and a few of them learned from me what happen. The story spreads beyond the control of any card system, and the ancient antagonisms of Skaros rise again.

And that can't be solved via cards any more than it can be solved with +1/-1s or thumbs-up/-down on various social media sites.
True, despite my joking tweet earlier, I don't think that this is at all a Python problem, except insofar as the "python community" is a huge community of people who (by virtue of its size) mostly are strangers to one another.

You're right that it's not about the language of choice. But a community is made of people. I think that the Node community's niceness has little to do with JavaScript, and more to do with the fact that there were folks like you, mikeal, maxogden, nexxy, polotek, ryah, substack, janl, etc, who imprinted the community with your sense of values and a culture of kindness early on.

But keeping that ball rolling, as the community gets bigger, is very challenging, and it does stress me out a bit. It takes such a little match to set the whole thing on fire!
"At what point does the start-up world help the business world evolve past the point of such corporate-speak bullshit."

In favour of what, startup world bullshit ? ('pivot' and so on.) Any time a corporate entity tries to address people it comes out sounding like bullshit
>> So you publicly fire your employee? You hypocrites!

They didn't have a choice. The situation was being followed by the media and if they fired her privately it would be leaked and would give other people the opportunity to spin it. She publicly pulled her employer into the situation on Twitter - from that point on that had no choice but to make their position clear publicly.
Um... thanks everyone.

- Mr. Lacker
:-) Thanks for catching that.
One odd thing is that it won't let me enable two-factor without setting a stronger password.
Good to hear. I have quite a lot of respect for Kerr; he's one of the foremost experts in this area (the intersection of the 4th ammendment with computers and networks), and I think Weev's case is a serious injustice.

As an aside, I actually think it's clear that Weev's case is a vastly larger injustice than Aaron Swartz's case.

Swartz clearly violated the law in an act of willing and knowing civil disobedience. The law restricts people from unauthorized access to a network; Swartz and the MIT network admins played a game of cat and mouse as they kept banning him, and he kept finding new ways of gaining access to the network. There's no way to argue Swartz didn't realize that he was gaining unauthorized access to a network. At one point he was hiding his face from security cameras; there's no way to spin that as "oh, he thought he was doing something perfectly allowable!" And once caught, he was offered a reasonable plea deal.

In contrast, Weev...fairly clearly did not gain unauthorized access to a network. It was a publicly available website, and no one ever tried to stop him. His actions were at worse borderline, and yet he ended up with a sentence MUCH higher than Swartz.

I have a lot of sympathy for Swartz (not least because of his tragic suicide), but at the end of the day he knowingly and wilfully violated the law in an act of civil disobedience, and was offered a plea deal of less than a year. Weev probably did not violate the law, and was sentenced to years in prison.

Weev needs and deserves help. I had to cheer a bit when I saw Kerr was going to be helping him.
I agree with the author when he says, "Fundamentally, you only need to know one thing: To build wealth, you must spend less than you earn." But there remains one other thing. To build wealth, you'll have to keep your money somewhere. That somewhere is going to be some form of investment. Hence, to build wealth, you must make more on your investments than you lose. Now ask yourself: had I kept my money under the mattress instead of investing it, would I have more now, or would I have less? How much more or less? Funny thing is, most people don't know. This tool can tell you: greaterthanzero.com
My understanding of labor litigation: This post will cost the company at least $150K.

IANAL, would be curious to hear the readout from someone who is in the field.
Documenting a problem is completely different from public humiliation. This company did the right thing. You say Adria received abuse, but out of all I have read, including her own blog post, she was not abused. She was the aggressor. These men didn't even know she was offended. If she would have asked them to be more polite, I am confident they would have done the right thing. You, I must say, are causing an issue with a company in the right. So maybe they are better off without you, Heh?
> What happened to Adria could happen to any of us outspoken women.

Only if by "outspoken" you mean "inept witch hunter with a messiah complex".

> ... many people have taken up a "burn her at the stake" mentality.

The chief occupational hazard of the witch hunter is being caught out by one's followers. The disciples possess only the paranoia and lack of mercy drilled into them.
"Does anyone really believe this?"

Perhaps use of "danger" was a bit strong but they've identified an area of concern (that might be future concern as well) and have decided to cut it out now.

This statement makes plenty of sense to me. The fact that it might sound like corporate-speak bullshit doesn't detract from the point being made.
Ask HN: What can a potential startup founder do living in the US on an H1-B?
[Sorry, this is a repost, but I had no responses for the first one]

Hey guys,
I figured HN would be a good place to ask this, as some of you may have encountered similar situations. I've been living in the US since I was 14, and studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering at Cooper Union in New York. My mother was a diplomat, and until I got a job, I was staying in the US through her with the A1 visa. Once I got my job at Amazon, I switched over to an H1B visa, and have been on that since.

I've also been working on my startup idea with a few others for the past 7-8 months, and we're getting to the point that we will soon be pitching investors for funding. I've been working on this for most of my available free time, but I really think it's shaping up, and would love to quit and concentrate on it full-time. And even if that's not possible, if somehow we're able to make this happen while I'm working full-time at the job that allows me to stay in the US legally, I'd certainly want to stop working my job and concentrate on making my startup succeed. However, I'm not aware of any options for an immigrant to legally reside in the US without an employer sponsoring him for the H1B (unless I get married of course, but I'd rather not explore that route right now ;D). And since I'd be a stakeholder in the company, I don't think I can sponsor myself.

Do you have any advice for my situation? I'd be incredibly bummed if I had to give up my baby to foster care.
She's going to RPG camp and they finish the game during the camp session.

The 10k reward level seems more humorous than an actual attempt to get someone to pledge 10k. I'm doing a kickstarter soon and we have the exact same thing, a huge reward level with a somewhat comedic prize attached.
Please stop fuelling the fire, we don't need to rehash the same stuff every time something connected to the event is mentioned.