skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Boston authorities grossly over-reacted when they were attacked by the Cartoon Network too

Prosecuting the marketing guys for a "hoax" device? Yeah, that was an overreaction. The actual police response response? They shut down the roadway, removed the devices, and reopened the roads. That was an entirely appropriate response. And no, that wasn't a "9/11 changed everything response" - in my occupation (acoustical consulting) we often leave equipment in the field for long-term data collection. I've heard stories going back to the 1980's about consultants going back to retrieve their equipment only to find the bomb squad had been called. As such, it's always been good practice to a) get permission/inform the property owner about what you're doing, and b) leave contact information on the equipment so someone with questions can call/email you. The ATHF marketers did neither, and I'm not surprised authorities freaked.

I'm just relieved that they haven't managed to kill any bystanders.

The "stay home" suggestion (it wasn't mandatory, folks I know in Boston/Boston-area who had reason to be out had no problems being out) probably helped a lot here.

shut Boston down for days

I have no idea what you're talking about. Bolyston St on Monday after the bombing was shut down, but that was pretty much going to happen anyway because of the giant marathon that was happening there. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were normal days. Because of the events that occurred late Thursday night/Friday morning, most of Boston was shut down for much of Friday, but normal operations started up around 6pm (before the manhunt was over). Given that the suspects were engaging in gun fights and had a propensity for using explosives, asking folks to stay in for 12 hours (we're not talking martial law here) is not an undue burden.
The bad guys are also generally more likely to kill the police officer because they know he will kill them as soon as he figures out they would.

The general citizen, even when armed, will often run for his life instead.
You appear to be angry and marginally psychotic. Willing to bet you have numerous high powered assault rifles. God bless America.
No, walking around in Hazmat suits would be completely rational. Logic dictates you need to start with the higher probability safety issues and start working down so long as a mitigation strategy exists for each type of event. Flu is the 9th leading cause of death in the U.S. A Hazmat suit is a perfect and completely rational barrier that completely eliminates that issue from your life - it's better and more full proof than a flu shot.

Here's the list and mitigation strategies if any:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

1 - Heart disease: don't eat foodstuffs that are known to increase the probability of heart disease, get plenty of cardio.

2 - Cancer: avoid all known carcinogens, refined sugars, etc. stay out of the sun (made easy by being in a Hazmat suit all the time)

3 - Chronic lower respiratory diseases: avoid exposure to transmission vectors, hazmat suit solves this.

4 - Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): Similar to 1

5 - Accidents (unintentional injuries): Don't participate in risky movements or behaviors, wear a helmet at all times, keep a comprehensive first aid kit on your person with all modern emergency responder equipment. Follow the buddy rule, but don't stay too close, stay away from high probability of injury transport methods.

6 - Alzheimer's disease: no known mitigation strategy

7 - Diabetes: mostly diet, see #1 and 4

8 - Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: no known strategy, but don't eat foods that might challenge your kidneys

9 - Influenza and Pneumonia: Hazmat suit, solved

10 - Intentional self-harm (suicide): don't do this, solved

and then way down the list...

NNN - Death by terrorism with a probability so low that even during an active terrorist attack RMSs conjecture is to just keep on keeping on with your normal day-to-day routine.
If you expected anything from Stallman other than to say something socially tone deaf and head slapping, well... you don't know much about RMS.
2nd year Comp Sci student that just now figured out I have ADD
I hope they file a counter claim. Though this DMCA takedown is unrelated to software patents, could it possibly help establish how obvious some software "inventions" really are?
http://piwik.org/
I assume it would fall under commentary[1], esp. as it's one a single image and it has literally been written over to show the material that the comment is referencing.

[1] http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/...
I'm also a little surprised at the "WE GOT HIM" and the "its the suspect".
Pretty obviously everyone behave with this as 'hes guilty', so he's not a suspect anymore.

While he very well may be, everyone is supposed to be innocent til proved otherwise by trial and judgement. That goes for everyone. Murderers, thieves, rapists, politicians and rich dudes alike. Oh, and you and I. Hopefully.
It should also be noted that in some European countries, suppressors are required when shooting in a close enough proximity to a neighbor that the loudness could be an inconvenience.

Suppressors are dead easy to make out of household products as is, they just aren't worth more than 2 shots. Likewise, any individual sent as the imaginary "hitman" that everyone seems to believe exists, would probably be aligned with a group with enough finances to either buy legitimate suppressors, or procure them from the black market.

The only people that cannot purchase automatic weapons and restricted modifications (suppressors, grenade launchers, etc) are the poor. The legal roadblocks are overcome (perfectly legally) with money.
But when hear people cheering "USA" in the after math, it makes you think in a couple years we will be having our own Nuremberg Rallies.

Questioning the State™? Thats a no-no.

But then again, i'm just a lowly peasant, what could i possibly know about anything?
Yes, which is why we don't hold large public events in the middle of a thunderstorm. And when a thunderstorm rolls into major public events, we do evacuate them.

Unless you're trying to say that the odds of being struct by lightning while spectating the Boston Marathon, on a clear sunny day, is high.
So years later you can get content restored?

Are there lawyers who will take on cases for consignment only?

It's a calculation that little people will not be able to take on the big people.

This is why corporations have zero fear of incorrectly killing individual content on youtube, little chance of penalty and they can smother any attempt to fight them.
At some point someone will run the numbers, and conclude that good safety practice isn't that necessary. That's a recipe for disaster. Most everyone here should be familiar with the Challenger explosion and the runup to it.

That's a fair point in a sense, and I'm not arguing that it isn't beneficial to have some independent eyes looking at things and helping avoid bias. I would argue that it's not necessarily required to regulate that sort of thing and make it the job of government to try and prevent every possible contingency though. I think working to develop a voluntary certification process, something akin to ISO9001, where being certified would be a "badge of honor" and - eventually - all but a prerequisite to doing business, would be preferred.

In an ammonium nitrate plant there is a risk of explosion; they quite simply do not belong anywhere near a town.

That was definitely a sub-optimal design, for sure. I'd be curious to know the history of how that setup happened, actually.

OTOH, to play devil's advocate a little bit... how often do ammonium nitrate plants explode? One could probably argue that the industry actually is very safe if you look at it over the long-run. Or not... I don't actually have those statistics. Just a point of discussion.
if I'm not mistaken RMSs concepts about security are to have essentially none.
> So you are saying the 27 people killed by a bomber in Iraq today were worth less than the 4 killed in Boston?

No, the United States Government is saying that, by using the Value of a Statistical Life that they use. So I'm telling you that (by their own terms) they can justify spending a lot of their money on catching someone who has killed several people and intends to kill more.

I do not agree that it makes sense to value US lives at $7M each and developing world lives at apparently less than $2000 each (the approximate price of saving one according to GiveWell). But that's what the link I cited says is the case here.
Most concealed carry people I know use a normal sized 9mm. It's only been very recently that mouse guns have become trendy. Kahr has only existed as a company since the mid 90s. However, I wasn't talking about concealed carry when I made my comment.
I'm not very convinced by by your slippery slope argument with regard to the US, at least in domestic affairs. (foreign is another matter)

It's probably not a good idea to mix the emotional with the analytical, but when it happens, the emotional wins; we're human beings.

I hate to get moral/philosophical, but utilitarian motives, in the eyes of societal norms, usually is the loosing position. The canonical example of this is the man waiting by the railroad switch who must decide whether to divert a train to certain doom or let the train run over an individual. According to society the man must always divert the train.
My first reaction was similar. I started thinking of all the things in life that would be easier to just go, hmm I'll stick this tool here in mid air, space, whatever, and this can go here, etc... But alas, I'll likely never get to experience it.
I think it was worth it. The police reacted quickly and caught him alive. Now they can get valuable information out of him, which they couldn't do if he was killed/died from wounds.
I think you're confusing HN with Slashdot. :p
(At least, I always hoped the level of discussion was more nitpicking... I mean "detail-oriented.")

Also: "The data indicates that use of silenced firearms in crime is a rare occurence, and is a minor problem"
( http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v08n2/44.clark/clark.pdf )
Anyone who went to college in Boston can probably find a connection in a couple degrees.
Except that 512(f) of DMCA is practically unenforceable [1], since the standard is to prove that they "knowingly materially" misrepresented:

[1] http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2013/04/another_512f_cl...
Not years. It's back up ~10 business days after you file a counternotice or the service provider loses their safe harbor. The DMCA is designed so that disputed content is not taken down permanently without an actual injunction signed by a judge.

YouTube is not responding to DMCA notices, it's given media companies direct access to take down content through their own system, and it can do this because it has no obligation to host your material for free in the first place, infringing or not.
I am supposed to buy tools for analyzing writing from people who cannot write?
This post-mortem from the Plancast founder which I just came across is also worth reading for those interested in events: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/22/post-mortem-for-plancast/
It could be food-related. Look into an elimination diet ... Also, look into innerchild / regression therapy. There's usually an underlying reason why our behaviours lead to procrastination. Good luck.

Edit: Oh, and yoga's good too. You can train the mind to be more focused. Everything takes practice to get good at it ... focus isn't any different - though with computers and multi-tasking, we sometimes think we're "focused" because we're working, but really we're not focused on any one thing.
I have never understood what does the exercise involve? Can you please tell me what is it that you "do" in those five minutes that you meditate? I want to try this. Thanks.
I know what you're saying, but if you're not concerned about what DHS or d-bags like Lindsay Graham or Obama or police might do to erode rights, you're falling right into their trap. Shock doctrine works. I'm not suggesting that this was set up, but never let a good disaster go to waste.
I'd bet 90% of gun owners would support virtually anything after being subjected to four months of corporate gun industry propaganda. You know, bullshit like how owning a gun "empowers" you.
Even though there is some rather sharp back and forth here, I think it's awesome that this discussion is happening. The points on both sides are really good.

Personally, I don't think this is purely emotional elation. I live in Boston, the bombing happened down the street from me. I think it's important to point out that the disruption here should not just be measured in terms of number of dead or injured. It's the threat to the way we are used to living our life every day, and the perceived threat to the future way we will live our life.

This week, I have..

* Closed down my office because I was afraid for the safety of my employees
* Heard from one of my best friends that his former colleague got killed on-duty (Sean Collier)
* Listen to my friend express fear because she is planning to take a train to the waterfront for dinner
* Had my mom show up out of nowhere to meet me at the airport because she heard there wasn't a way to get into the city

I didn't lose my life. My friends didn't either. I have nothing to complain about. But I want to make the point that there isn't an easy metric to put around the way life has ground to a halt here over the past week (at least none that I know of). We all experienced a type of stress that is hard to capture in numbers. And, we're happy to get our lives back to normal.
Hitsniffer isn't free, but great value nonetheless: http://hitsniffer.com
and wait 8-10 months for the NFA background check.
> So years later you can get content restored?

Nope, all you are supposed to have to do to get the content restored is submit a counter-notice. And it should be back in two weeks, not years.

But you can be sued by the rightsholder for posting infringing material.

The DMCA is really about protecting the ISP/host. The ISP can't be sued for hosting your infringing material -- so long as they take it down when receiving a takedown notice; and even when they put it back up after receiving the counter-notice from the original poster.

But YOU (the poster) can still be sued.

I am not sure how often ISPs/hosts have clearly identified counter-notice procedures, but that's the way the law is written.

See for some further explanation: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/responding-dmca-takedown-not...
The post I was replying to is largely correct. Criminals don't have suppressors because there is no secondary market for suppressors due to regulation. That said, I would guess they wouldn't need or use them even if they were available.
That's disappointing. Thanks for the heads up. I never understand quite why some in the programming community don't appreciate how exclusionary their childish or sexist/sexually inappropriate behavior is.
Who cares! There are many skills that go into creating something. There is no reason to edify hacking over other skills and abilities.
I think you're misinterpreting my comment. I found it odd that we were advised to stay indoors all day and then told that we no longer needed to stay indoors at the exact point at which danger seemed to be more likely. My comment wasn't saying anything about my opinion as to whether or not the stay-indoors request was reasonable.

But I think it's also worth noting that the stay-indoors request was a request, as far as I know. Every notification that I received was something along the lines of people being asked to stay indoors with the doors locked, and I know people who chose to go outdoors before the request was lifted. The city shut down because people chose to honor the request out of confidence in the judgement and good intentions of the police. I personally chose to stay indoors because I thought the suspect was probably wandering around on foot in the Watertown/Cambridge area and I thought the inconvenience of staying inside for a day outweighed the risk of running into him.
Competition usually invites antagonistic response. That's not really what I want to see.
You and your neighbors packing assault weapons does not make you "free". It makes you "the Taliban".
> I just wanted to avoid a boring, eye-glazing headline.

The word is "factual".
Obviously undetectable isn't true, but i'd guess that kbeast is likely to go undetected in all but the most prepared operations. Forensics shouldn't count since you already know you're fucked by then.
> However, lifting the stay-indoors request turned out to be crucial, because a man spotted the blood on the boat only after going outside for the first time all day.

And I think that was why they might have decided to allow it. Most people would NOT have felt comfortable going outside until he was caught and by letting people go out they had more eyes and a better chance of spotting him. It worked, and quickly.
For another take on gun-control issues from the LEO perspective:

PoliceOne’s Gun Policy & Law Enforcement survey was conducted between March 4
and March 13, 2013, receiving 15,595 responses from verified police professionals
across all ranks and department sizes.

http://ddq74coujkv1i.cloudfront.net/p1_gunsurveysummary_2013...
I would have to include the economical cost of shutting down a city for an entire day in the cost of the operation as well, I am not sure what that would be though.
The suspect hiding in the boat was found directly because the police finally told people to go about their business.

Alternatively, if they had lifted the shelter-in-place order earlier, the guy would have gone out in his yard and noticed something going on in his boat sooner.
Absolutely agree. He'd been seen with another IED, home made hand grenades and automatic weapons in a metropolitan area.

What the fuck else could the police do?

This isn't 'fear of shadows', as Stallman puts it.
Why just put it in the documentation? Documentation is liable to drift from implementation, and AFAIK no compiler or runtime verifies the accuracy of comments. I'd feel much better about adding asserts to the original code, leaving it for a few generations of testing and exposure, and then eventually remove the conditionals. The assert calls then function as executable documentation.

Depending on your user-base (i.e. if you distribute headers to other developers with precompiled code), the documentation may be necessary on its own... but it's much weaker than an assert.
It doesn't matter. People can go indoors if thunderclouds form. Terrorist attacks freak people out because such attacks make people feel powerless to control the risk.
There are many services that offer a great house hunting experience, but in practice, searching for housing means wading through many false positives, stale listings, contradictory information within a listing, horrible or missing pictures, and scams (mostly limited to CraigsList). Demographic information (crime, schools, etc.) from Zillow and Trulia is difficult to navigate and not well organized. The space is definitely better than it was a few short years ago, but there's a lot of room left for improvement.
>> I don't think selling a company is a bad thing.

Neither do I see it as an inherently bad thing. There are valid and compelling reason to sell a company. E.g., There might be no "family successors". Your heart may no longer be in it. You might want to do other things. You might feel that someone else might take it to the next level better than yourself at the helm.... etc., etc..

>> building a company with the idea in mind that one must sell [........] is bad

And that's exactly what was being implied here.... "The moment you start a company, it is for sale… at the right price". And I have a problem with that one too!
...without having any actual knowledge of the subject. That's what real hackers do, right?

Not at all. Real "hackers" are intimately knowledgeable regarding the systems with which they work.
Disclaimer: the following text is written for non-American readers. If you are in fact an American and your statement was simply hyperbole, feel free to ignore.

America isn't the wild west. We value our right to keep and bear arms, but not that many people actually carry weapons with them. Most gun owners keep their guns at home.

The best numbers I could find [1] indicate 8 million active concealed carry permits; so at most ~4% of the adult population has a permit to carry a gun outside the home. And most of those (anecdotally) don't do it often.

[1]: http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/articles/2012/7/new-federa...
> There also is no expectation of getting struck by lightning while spectating at the Boston Marathon, yet that is much more likely to happen than getting hit by a terrorist's bomb.

Not sure where you're getting your data from.
The Tragedy of Perfectionism
If you know that people will die, but are simply indifferent to it, the difference between that and actively wishing to murder is at least arguably academic. You are killing people with your choices in either case.
Businesses? Depending on the industry a $10K invoice isn't exactly huge.
Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?
Obviously it depends on the GDP of the city -- in this case, perhaps we could ballpark $100M.

I'm not sure this adequately captures it, though; the bombers are said to have talked in front of their carjacking victim about planning to escape to NYC. Shouldn't we include some expected value term of the cost of shutting down NYC, in case they moved there and had to be hunted there too? Seems like the entire country/world has an interest in seeing them caught here.
Afar? The MIT police officer was killed outside Stallman's building.
I'm surprised that Yahoo! directory (http://dir.yahoo.com) is not in the gang of six.
Where I grew up everyone had a shotgun and/or a deer rifle in their truck. I guess I wasn't equating being armed with having a concealed carry permit.
MightyText is Legit - get it
The actual police response response? They shut down the roadway, removed the devices, and reopened the roads. That was an entirely appropriate response. And no, that wasn't a "9/11 changed everything response" - in my occupation (acoustical consulting) we often leave equipment in the field for long-term data collection. I've heard stories going back to the 1980's about consultants going back to retrieve their equipment only to find the bomb squad had been called. As such, it's always been good practice to a) get permission/inform the property owner about what you're doing, and b) leave contact information on the equipment so someone with questions can call/email you. The ATHF marketers did neither, and I'm not surprised authorities freaked.

Even after it was obvious that the Mooninite devices were harmless, they persisted in the charade with all the melodrama they could muster. I'm sure they wanted the devices removed, it would have been a potent embarrassment for them. As for asking permission and leaving contact information, yeah, bad form on their part, but still no reason for hamming it up the way they did.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Bolyston St on Monday after the bombing was shut down, but that was pretty much going to happen anyway because of the giant marathon that was happening there. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were normal days. Because of the events that occurred late Thursday night/Friday morning, most of Boston was shut down for much of Friday, but normal operations started up around 6pm (before the manhunt was over). Given that the suspects were engaging in gun fights and had a propensity for using explosives, asking folks to stay in for 12 hours (we're not talking martial law here) is not an undue burden.

Fair enough, I'm far from Boston. The news coverage has been getting a lot of mileage out of the "lockdown" as they call it. I did hear one interview of a person being held at gunpoint for some time who was merely trying to return home.