skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1) I agree you'd have to include that in the weighing of pros vs cons. I think many people who argue that this weapon should be illegal for the average person would concede that it would make sense to legalize it for people with a disability.

2) Come on, seriously? You say "even every day items". It makes less sense to ban every day items than it does to ban extravagant items that very few people, if any, need or even want. I can kill someone with a fork. More people have been killed with forks than with this weapon. Are you willing to (digitally) stand here and suggest to all of us that it doesn't make sense to ban this rifle until we ban forks?

And where is your line? Every rational person has a line at which they say "X weapon clearly should be illegal for every day people to own." So where's yours? Do you not feel high explosives should be regulated? If farmers decided sarin gas (since it was mentioned elsewhere in this conversation) was a good pesticide, would you be all for it? Wherever you draw your line, it's just as arbitrary as anyone else's.

3) I'm simply not seeing any novel technology here. Motion tracking? It's been done. Servos being controlled by a microprocessor? It's been done. Distance gauging? Trajectory adjustment? Where is the new technology that we'd all miss out on?

Regarding the note about the bill of rights, what a horribly conceived piece of writing is the second amendment. It asserts the right to "bear arms" but doesn't give any hint as to the definition of "arms". An H-bomb classifies as an "arm" just as perfectly as this firearm does. We've outgrown that short-sighted text.
Ask HN: Is Google Nose an April Fool Joke?
Has any one tried Google nose http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/nose/help.html?
to me it looks like an April Fool Joke, What is your take?
The suggested commenting system was sorta implemented by Microsoft a long time ago (IE5?). Internet Explorer had a plugin called "Discussions" or "Discuss" or something to that effect. It let you have comment threads on any webpage, without involving the actual site.

I'm not sure if there was a public service, or it was more of an Intranet type thing. I do recall seeing the Discuss button in IE much later then IE5, and a quick search shows plenty of people asking what it is, so it mustn't have been too obscure a feature.
I really wish some things were real.

It would be neat to trade (nice) scents.
Thnx. How about this: http://domtree.breckyunits.com/
It says ON THE PAGE that it's April Fool's...
Can you elaborate on what you mean by key deletion problems?
Since the point of hellbanning is to not let the afflicted in on it, is it frowned upon to inform others of such status?
I think you're not giving nearly enough credit to an automated, laser-guided range-finding and compensation device. I agree that it isn't nuclear fusion, or in any way related to the Higgs Boson, but that doesn't make this in any way less noteworthy.

Regarding ATF guidelines on remote firing, the wording of their rules seem geared towards actual remote firing, not aided or delayed firing, as this is. The difference is, I think, as large as the difference between a Google automated vehicle and a car with by-wire steering (or perhaps a better example is a drone to a traditional aircraft).

In cars with by-wire technology, I still have to steer, brake, accelerate, etc., but there are technologies in place that mean I am still physically driving it. There are assistive mechanisms in place that help me brake faster, or alert me when I'm crossing lanes and what have you, but I'm still driving, and presumably, still free to wreck the car, at least in most cars.

I don't believe that the potential for misuse should be a valid reason to make something illegal

That statement's so clearly wrong to any reasonable person that it's simply not defendable.

Why? Look at the dangerous potential of a baseball bat, or a crowbar, or a javelin. Should we not ban all those things? Cars? Airplanes? Ice Picks? By your argument, how are those things legal? Are you honestly suggesting that everything with dangerous potential should be legislated out of existence? Isn't that exactly what the DMCA and other digital legislation has tried to do with crypto?
Just curious. Is your roommate a programmer? If so, has he tried applying for freelance jobs?

I would think that if he has eight years of industry experience, he could probably pick up an in demand skill like Rails and get freelance work.
Are you serious? You think there's a chance it's real?
Website monitoring for people, using people...by people.
This could be a useful tool, are you planning to add zoom and pan ability, some of the elements are rendered off the page and I can't scroll down.

Cheers!
I think the biggest problem is that it doesn't look like an input form.

---

Okay, I was mocking up an example but saw that you implemented exactly that on a refresh. Looks much better now.
When in doubt, build a to-do list.
I'm happy to see someone independently digging into frequencies and that sort of data. In that vein, you might also be interested in this report:

http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/pdfs/publications/Firearms...
In terms of age this system isn't a dinosaur - the problem is the hardware architecture as stated in the article: Cell is now obsolete, noone wants to program new software for it anymore. X86 systems on the other hand, even older ones, can still be targeted by new Software without problems, so it may still make sense to keep them. To be blunt, the accelerator market simply moved to NVIDIA Tesla.
http://www.teslamotors.com/ <-- updating website set to wow us with a funny april 1st joke... please stand by :)
We should not be surprised to find strong relationships between the universe we observe and the formal system we invented to describe it. Mathematics is not static, we are constantly extending the formalism to explain new things we discover. We have invented plenty of bad formalisms (and beliefs) it's easy to focus on what we got right. This essay is an attempt to disguise mysticism as mathematics.
Tipping point?
My argument is more along the lines of, "There is a list of things we should worry about. Somewhere, on that list is Y. Ahead of Y, there are 250 other things, that, if we really wanted to change the world for the better, make it safer for ourselves, and our children, we would focus on.

If we wish to act rationally, and make the world a better place, there will be far greater return on our effort, lobbying, and resources, to worry about items higher up on that list, as opposed to some incredibly unlikely events that will occur because of Y.

For some reason, Y grabs our attention though - and I was just trying to pull us all back to realizing, that, in the grand scheme of things, Y is irrelevant to the safety of ourselves, our children, and our community. As such, little to no effort should be put towards worrying about, or legislating Y."
Good thing I've been learning Hebrew.
EuRuKo 2013 CfP is open
No dude it's totally legit. What are you having trouble smelling? Maybe you should get checked out.
This is a great point. "Just start" can be bad advice. People thrive on constraints.

Build something that you do every day in your job. Build something where you click a button and you get a response.

Build something that makes your current job easier.

Build a piece of your favorite app, a very small piece.
Same experience, only I randomly bumped into their showroom in my backyard when I went to the mall (Garden State Mall in NJ). They mentioned a 6 month wait. Sitting in a Model S was very cool!
It seems disingenuous to compare sarin gas to bleach and ammonia. We all draw a line where we think something is too dangerous to be legal. And obviously the usefulness of something is to be weighed against its danger as well. As I asked elsewhere, I'd like to know where your line is. You keep on bringing up things like "baseball bats" as if they're the same thing as this rifle. You know they're not.

So where's your line? Are you claiming not to have a line?
Lambda the Ultimate is moving to Facebook: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4709
You might feel that way, but I doubt if the Founders would, considering that the majority of firearms, munitions, warships and cannons used to win our independence were provided by civilians. In short though, I don't have to draw that line, as the Supreme Court has effectively already done so, as they define arms being man-portable and "in common use" as a protected class of firearms for the purposes of this debate, though as I recall, Atonin Scalia did make a casual reference to rocket launchers as being too exotic for protections to apply.

US v Miller, another landmark case regarding the second amendment, defines protected weapons as those being of use to a militia. Before we go down that rabbit hole, a milita is defined by 10 US Code § 311 as all men aged 17 to 45, and has been expanded by the Supreme Court to include women as well.

As for the tech, I agree that the individual components are nothing new, but the aggregate of the parts is something new and noteworthy. For what it's worth, I also consider the Gibson robot tuner as noteworthy, as well as the Raspberry Pi, though clearly neither was exactly groundbreaking on the grand order of things.
Kotakus Posting is real.
"meh, we're upgrading the 4% who didn't choose that way" isn't going to work if a ton of people 'hope' for it. "30% of people chose the lower option, so there's still demand".

If you get grumpy because you try to game the system and fail, it's your own fault.
I'm curious to why "recording" and "playback" of scent/smell is still not mainstream as sight and sound.

Why is not a part of movies or games?

What are the limiting factors?
Downvoting well articulated arguments because they disagree with your own? Cowards.
Show HN: Cookie Audit Tool - A web app to see if your app does cookies securely
The article seems to imply that, in an ideal world, all of these student would stay throughout the course. But I don't think it's clear that the churn is bad.

There is some lower bound to the amount of time that it takes to learn something (absent some educational revolution). Many people aren't even willing to pay that lower bound simply because they have other priorities in life. But they do like to sample (which is good), and potentially finish out a course if nothing else gets in the way.

Online courses are great because they lower the cost of sampling, so we shouldn't be surprised that there are more samplers, and fewer people finishing out the courses. If 1000 people complete an online course, then that's great, even if 99000 people signed up and disappeared a week later.

That being said, I'm pleased to see the specific criticisms offered in the article, and I hope they lead to a better balance for more people.
So we're entering a phase of micropayments on material objects now? In-app payments, but for your car. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest.
It should not be assumed, for things that have valid, legal uses, that illegal uses will be the de facto use. That kind of thinking is a side-effect of the fear-driven society we are currently living in. Knee-jerk reactions are almost always wrong.

Yes, this could make it easier to shoot a person (it makes it easier to shoot anything); but there is no evidence that it will make it more likely that a person will be shot. Even if this was used to facilitate a murder (unlikely, given the cost and the background checks for gun ownership), you have to prove that the murder would not have been committed if this technology didn't exist.

I think that would be difficult to prove.
Ask HN: What is the best way to get good at linux shell commands?
Specifically I'm a web developer that wants to setup databases, and servers, etc, but feels totally inept for someone who has been doing web development for so long.
I did reply in the other thread, and just now noticed that we're arguing in multiple threads, so in the interest of HN civility, I'll let that one be the conversation of record.

That said, I will acknowledge that I believe that the right to bear arms is meant to prevent against tyranny, and as such, my line is arguably going to be much higher than I sense yours is. I will go further to state that I disagree with the national firearms act of 1934, which bans new, fully automatic machine guns for sale and import to US citizens.
Looking at the source, this does seem like a hoax. Look at the source of http://www.maxhardcore.com (SFW, but you might not be able to explain the logs); it's much more like what we would expect from our government:

<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 11">

<o:Author>lamn</o:Author>

<o:LastAuthor>itmadmin</o:LastAuthor>
I'd say a lot of them. The reason is that we are early adopters not trend setters or followers for that matter. When we see the future we buy it and use it. Were the people waiting in line for the first iPhone setting a trend? No, they just wanted the best phone ever and the model for all future phones.
I just employed this technique to comment to this thread.
Not to mention swimming pools, bathtubs, and lakes:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6119a4.htm

"....Results indicated that each year an average of 3,880 persons were victims of fatal drowning."
Google Analytics - Subtle April Fool's Joke
You don’t want to be in a pile
So, this firearm and its particular technology not being "in common use", it would then seem reasonable to argue that it should be illegal.

You may not think the automation this gun provides is exotic enough to warrant being illegal, but surely you can agree that reasonable people could interpret "in common use" in that way?
What every web developer must know about URL encoding
Even though I know its a joke, a part of me still raged inside.

And can we put an & and a $ somewhere in Python? I think these feel very cool to use, and are easily one of >the best things I miss from more advanced languages like C and PHP.
Let's be honest, doesn't this:

$item->method();

Look a lot more professional than:

item.method()
More obviously, maxhardcore's name servers are all usdoj.gov while defcad's are not.
This would be a hilarious April Fool's Day prank, but it would also be highly illegal.
I'm not sure about books, but I can offer a bit of advice.

Try and get a friend who is good at Linux. Standing over the shoulder and watching someone using Bash, vim, etc helps a lot. I share some tidbit of system usage almost daily with my roommate and its done wonders for me.
You mean easy to write security exploits?
Lein-droid author here. A few commenters asked about the performance and maturity of Clojure for Android, so I decided to answer in the top level.

The main problem of Clojure for Android right now is the large size of Clojure runtime. This leads to two issues:
a) long loading time (can take a few seconds even for the basic app),
b) applications often gets closed by the OS once switched to another, in order to free that memory.

Since ProGuard is no help in optimizing Clojure-compiled code, the issues should be addressed in some other way. One that is possible is to write source-shaking compiler that will strip the final APK of the unused functions. It's pretty hard to do with the current compiler, but if we eventually write Clojure-in-Clojure compiler (there is a proposal for this year's GSoC by the way), it may be feasible to add these optimizations to it.

And finally a shameless plug: if you are interested in trying Clojure for Android, here are the links to get you started:
https://github.com/alexander-yakushev/lein-droid
https://github.com/alexander-yakushev/neko
Without trying to come off as a paranoiac, my genuine suspicion is that banning these 'scary rifles' that, by your own admission, you didn't know much about until you performed a LOT more research than the average person is likely to ever do, that it's the first step in eventually banning more and more categories of guns until eventually, they're all banned.

The other points I'd like to make that I feel are somewhat relevant is that you should very much read up on DC v Heller, which is the most recent Supreme Court decision on the matter (except for Heller II) that specifies weapons "in common use" as a protected class of weapon from government bans.

I would go further to suggest that I honestly believe (though I cannot substantiate) that the AR15 is able to be categorized as 'evil' because of its use in some of these high profile, but otherwise unlikely mass shootings, but what I really think is that they're most likely being used because they are just so popular. The AR15 is the most popular rifle being sold in the United States, and has been since 1994.
I'm saying "I should worry about X" does not mean "X should be illegal." Clearly everyone should worry more about cars than this firearm. But the usefulness of X has to be weighed against its potential misuse.
OP, of this comment thread, was clearly trying to make the point that removing the element of skill significantly increases the possibility for menace:

"The reason we do not get more sniper mass killings is that it takes a lot of skill to hit a target at a very long range with a sniper rifle ...
This rifle of course removes the skill element and allows for shooting at an extremely long range."

... in such a way as to suggest that the increased possibility for menace is so enhanced that it is irresponsible, nay, indefensible, for this to be available.

I was pointing out the fallacy of that line of reasoning. Skill requirements don't correlate with deadliness. I did not mention legality and neither did the OP, at least not in the way that other subcomments touched on.

edit: RE: The argument at hand is obviously whether a particular thing should be illegal because it is deadly.

No, that was not the argument at hand. The argument was whether high skill vs. low skill vectors of attack somehow change the ethical judgement involved in allowing something in the first place. I don't care that you hijacked the thread in this direction, but I do think it was a hijack.
This article isn't about blogging software. To me, it was about the challenges of starting any project. Whenever I have an idea, I find that implementing that idea produces a fractal of ideas for how to make that implementation easier -- I always want a blogging platform that "just does this bit automatically", or I want my development tools to behave exactly the way I want them to, which ends up hindering my actual doing of the damn thing.
> C also makes memory access and device driver code very easy.

Like any systems programming language, nothing special about C.
It's not too different from adding an exhaust or new stereo. Not really the same as in-app payments.
And even better: they can offer the upgrade when the 40kWh runs out. "We've noticed you've run out of software-limited range in the middle of nowhere. For $5,000 we'll permanently upgrade your range, instantly!"
> The customers who ordered this option will instead receive the 60 kWh pack, but range will be software limited to 40 kWh.

can't see anybody hacking that.
Scents are caused by numerous chemical compounds distilled in certain portions in the air.

In order to create a scent recorder, we'd need a machine that can detect every single one of those compounds at all possible concentrations; for a scent player we'd need a machine capable of forming those compounds at the proper concentration.

Turns out, it's much harder to do than record/emit photons or record/emit sound waves.
The limit is obviously sensors and output device technology.

Profit would be limited, hence little development.
Bright Minds of Kazakhstan outrunning Russia in forming mutual projects w/ SV
Google Nose Harnesses Your Sense of Smell for Search
1) start using Git and Github for all your projects. This will force you to get good at command line basics

2) Make your own dotfiles with shortcuts. Here's mine:

http://github.com/dylanized/dotfiles

3) Get a VPS server and set it up. This will require you to learn a little bit of everything - FTP, web server install, libraries, more. I'm doing this now, it's a bitch!

Here's a great VPS deal I found recently, I'm setting mine up now:

http://slickdeals.net/f/5915440-StillGoing-ChicagoVPS-2048MB...
Yup. I'm a whole lot more excited when I see an (original) Beetle, or a nicely-restored Karmann Ghia, or a Jaguar E Type, than yet another Model S or Fisker Karma or Ferrari/Lambo.

I guess we're jaded.
For beginning programs, there are two classifications that I remember being taught way back when. First, there were the class of problems that can be summed up by "Write a program to generate a sequence of Fibonacci numbers". These were all algorithmic / somewhat math based problems. They usually came from classes that were sponsored by the Engineering side of the school. The second classification can be summed up by "You have two files, each containing a list of [data items]. Produce a program that generates a third list of [data items] [having a given characteristic]". These seamed to me to be more practical / instructive.

So as a marketing person, think of some types of reports you would like to see given some data that you have. Remember that the input data should consist of a number of items (records or lines) that have consistent characteristics, somewhat like you would get from a spreadsheet. Maybe you want to get a list of how many customers from each zip code bought a blue widget vs. a green widget. So in this case you would write down a mock up of what your resulting report would look like, then figure out what manual steps you would do to get there.

When going through this exercise manually, pretend that you can't remember anything but your current thought, and that you have to write down everything else. Each thing you write down on paper translates to a program variable. Then, every time you have to change what is written down, make sure that is done via a repeatable list of steps. That then translates into an algorithm, which directly translates into lines of code.

Most of the first programs I had to do in "the real world" consisted of simply taking data from multiple sources, and making reports that others in the business could analyze. In some cases it was simple compound interest reports based on employee deposits/withdraws in a company savings account (kind of like an in-house mini credit union). Other times it was something like an Inventory Turns report for our head of purchasing (a report of how many times each product would completely cycle in inventory in a given month). These were all done on a Unix command line, using a combination of shell scripts, sort, join, uniq, and awk (this was well before perl came out). Eventually this type of work became second nature (so i didn't have to think through the logic), and I was able to move on to more advanced programming.
They've got Google employees to thank for this blessing. There are fields of Tesla Model-S vehicles at Google HQ in Mountain View.
DNS Amplification Attack Alert from Homeland Security
A Good Website in Online Business
Could you explain to me the logic by which you suggest some things should be illegal and some things should not? That is, what logic do you use to categorize a weapon as being protected by the Second Amendment?

We know your line is not established law, since you disagree with the national firearms act of 1934.

Where is your logic? This is what frustrates me with the Second Amendment. No one seems to have any logic behind their categorizations.

At least my point of view is rational. Make all firearms illegal. It may get me downvoted in this intolerant place, but it's at least consistent. Could you explain to me what your method of categorization is and how it's rational?
Just think how many they could've sold if the mean journalist hadn't said all those bad things about them.
I've dabbled in BR (rimfire and airgun) and while yes, wind doping is quite challenging, a lot of the satisfaction behind a good shot still comes from the aggregate effort: breathing, trigger pull, muscle control. For me at least.

The guys with the rail guns tho, that's a whole 'nother level.