skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm working on getting back to hosting my own content now. I had a wordpress blog for years but I got rid of it because I thought it would just be simpler and easier to offload everything to social media sites since that seemed to be where people were. But lately I've come to realize those sites have a kind of (I won't say insidious because that's too strong... troubling maybe) way of branding and controlling your identity through the way they control their UX, determining what content you see, how it's clustered, and what you don't see. Plus yeah, there's not much you can do when they decide what you thought was your content is really theirs and they'll do whatever they like with it to make a buck.

Dealing with the administration is hard though. Hosting comments is easy, brain-dead CRUD stuff but then you've got to manage spam control, post rates, SEO and questionable content.
Absolutely. Kudos to Spark and I hope the others follow.

And PG, thanks for changing the world. You made the currents swirl in a way that in some small way influence all the ripples like this downstream.
ناروتو شيبودن 310
My actual~/.bash_profile file is very minimal, it just sources each file in ~/.bash/ in turn.

You can see the organized contents of that directory here:

https://github.com/skx/dotfiles/tree/master/.bash/
Where are new Windows Phone users going to come from except other platforms? This app is not useful to anyone that hasn't already switched; it merely helps you set up your new phone you already bought.
Why? Because they're not as multicultural as the rest of Europe? Because they dare to live in a way that suits themselves?

The promoters of diversity ueber alles certainly are in touch with their inner totalitarian these days.
ObFuturamaLaughHarder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FopyRHHlt3M

Instead of showing me a graph of gold price versus bitcoin price, at a time when analysts say gold has declined due to a lack of inflation in the world, as well as the Cyprus crisis, you should show me a graph of total amount of gold held as a store compared to total amount of bitcoins held as a store as that would demonstrate people actually switching out of gold for bitcoins.

Until then, I'm going to assume this is either a post of ignorance or perhaps just HN spam.
Are you on the Facebook datascience team? Your profile is pretty sparse.
FBI denied permission to spy on hacker through his webcam
> One of the properties of a good currency is that over time it’s value must slowly creep downward.

Isn't a big part of the thesis behind bitcoin that this mainstream economic belief is false? After all, mainstream economic theory since at least the Great Depression would also say that central authorities (generally governments) should be very hands-on with their control of the money supply, which is another belief that bitcoin is clearly designed to challenge. I know very little about economics both mainstream and heterodox, but I think it's unfair to make this claim without at least mentioning that the designers of bitcoin are almost certainly aware of the belief and are deliberately challenging it.
You're right. 99% of the bitcoins owned today will never be spent on purchases. I wonder if this is simply due to ease of use. What can you really buy with them? If they were accepted everywhere would this be different?
The Internet will always be part of mankind's future in one form or another. Given its infancy, in this sense, everyone online today is an Internet pioneer.
Someday somebody is going to realize they are in possession of a trash barge full of 5 million discarded smartphones and break into the top supercomputer list with them.
>But if it's not delivered they get their money back. . .

Nope.

Backers get refunded if a project doesn't meet the stated funding goal [1]. Once the goal is met and the money has been collected it's between the backers and the creators. [2]

"It's the project creator's responsibility to complete their project. Kickstarter is not involved in the development of the projects themselves."

1: Seems to me that lowballing the base goal while piling on a bunch of stretch goals would be a questionable way of gaming this as a creator.

2: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/accountability-on-kickstarte...
Hmm. I'm a bit surprised Microsoft hasn't created a Windows Phone launcher to go along with that.
Some people seem to think that whatever is good for the stock market is good for the country, because the country IS the stock market.
Busted is awesome - really nice test framework.
Unicorn becomes Unirest
As touching as the story may be, it is not that different from billions of other children who are starving right now, all over India, China and African continent. I find it amusing that how we Americans love to bash North Korea and Iran.

Does anyone know, that the Indian Government (under pressure from the World Bank to reduce poverty) just lowered the poverty line? According to the new poverty line, anyone who makes more than about 0.50 USD is not poor. By lowering the poverty line, they brought down the number of poor people in India from 42% to 35%. 66% of people in India live on less than 2 USD per day, in conditions similar to those in which the author lived. And India in not under any sanctions, or trade embargoes.
Federal government is already using a secret program to monitor online traffic
He probably doesn't. patrick@[any domain he owns]
Also see http://www.kalzumeus.com/standing-invitation/
"...depression and that was the primary reason of his death. "
His legal battle had bankrupted his entire family, over a matter that could have been handled as a trespassing charge by the local police and a clerk magistrate.

I also don't see any nobility in persisting in becoming a willing victim of what he was up against.

It prompts one to ask: What have you done to prevent such abuse from recurring?
But I love empty calories. Look at my comment history.
I found the methods very interesting and thanks for the work.
Have you thought to add the Surprise method? http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...
It appears to solve the resolution limit of modularity.
How did you get your hands on this?
Since they can increase the sales of certain items versus others by showing these exercise stats, it would be an interesting experiment to toy with the pricing to find the sweet spot where people will pay the most amount of money for those healthier items before they switch back to eating the higher caloric items.
Exactly. I was in North Korea early this year and even in the rural outskirts it isn't comparable to the poverty you see in Africa.

I guess Africa just isn't interesting enough.
Pinobo.com (digital social board) meets leap motion technology
Well, you can put emacs into server mode and then connect with emacsclient, provided you tunnel X. I got this working once but I didn't like using the X Windows version emacs over the native desktop version. Sorry I don't remember the details, but I don't recall it being tricky.

My goal was to connect a local emacsclient to a remote emacs server over TCP... if this were possible, I would be fairly ecstatic.
I couldn't make myself keep reading after this:

"The Federal Reserve, ... increasing the money supply ... by simply creating money out of thin air ..."

Ok so far...

"... which the Treasury then dutifully prints out as paper notes."

Um, what? Most money in circulation is never printed.

Also, bitcoin is NOT anonymous unless you're extremely careful about how you get it and how you spend it.
I noticed that the description of the article said '(2012)' so I figured it might have been posted around the time it was written.

I searched for 'mind management' on HNSearch and found the original posting on the first page of results.
Learn the management side of things, not just the technical. Get certified in project management - either PMP or Agile/CSM. When you offer value on both the technical side and the management side of things, businesses are far more apt to pay you more.
The idea that coding algorithms into something executable is "menial" labor is pretty insulting to all of us currently coders, but even given that women invented multiplication routines, using human-readable commands and the IDE. That originally all of what we now consider "programming" was assumed to be menial labor is beside the point; they were doing what we're now paid good money for.
Two Indian students tried to test the new poverty line set up by the Indian Government. They tried to live on 0.65 USD a day. Here is the story. Its an interesting read.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15542957
OT: If Storytlr were to integrate Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Google+ and all the other popular sites as a POSSE scheme beisdes Twitter, it'll be the next open source buffer-like solution.
The bad old days are still alive and well in insurance and banking. Bankruptcy is even worse.

Eight years in the insurance world has shown me that the two biggest law firm "bad behaviors" are excessive billing and multi-party meetings. Both of which, as noted, VCs will be in a stronger position to refuse to pay.

I call this version of the principal-agent problem the "new boat problem." When a partner wants a new boat, she/he bills more hours.

Even more pumped for YC interview on Sunday after reading the comments.
Not to mention the fact that referrers are an optional part of the http spec, so requiring them is bad form to begin with.
Moral answer or legal answer?

There is a reason why we do not charge Soldiers with murder when we tell them to go fight for us. It is the same reason we don't charge weapon makers for the deeds there weapons/tools are used for. In the first case, the responsibility lies with the people who elected that government that gave the order. Not the Soldiers following legal/moral orders. In the second the same applies, the tool maker can not be responsible for the actions of the tool user, that falls on the tool user no where else.

In the case of the person in the article, he just got screwed over by the government, by lawyers shifting the personal responsibility to the tool maker instead of the tool user.
Kind of reminds me of the re-adjustment of BLS statistics q/q and y/y that are then touted as improvements.
It Takes a Small Artistic Army to Bring a Pixar Film To Life
The issue I think is that even if it were accepted everywhere, if it's value was going up, I won't want to spend it. Just by waiting I am guaranteed a solid rate of return. This is similar to deflation in the broader economy - people stop spending when they can buy more in the future for the same money.
Why would they have a balance sheet if they don't/didn't make money?
This posting has generated more points and comments than the first posting so no need to apologize :)
I just think its rather silly to do code reviews this way unless you're writing software to power a space shuttle (ie stuff that should never fail/break), It would simply take too long.
I agree with your comments here, particularly bits about detecting drive in someone that young. I may have taken my personal experiences (I did say my original comment would be anecdotal!) and applied them too broadly to the difficult and complex issue at hand.

What this boils down to, to me, is the inability for admissions boards to release their exact criteria for admitting a prospective student. If, say, MIT released the exact formula for their perfect student, then people would immediately game the system (more so than they do already).

As some other users pointed out, and as you alluded to here, how can we tell the difference between 'drive' and 'trying to appear well-rounded'? How can we tell if a high schooler wanted to do those five-hundred hours of community service, or if they were coerced into doing so by a parent or school?

I personally believe that there is more to a successful academic (and professional) career than grades, so my initial dispute was the use of standardized test scores and GPA to indicate discrimination when it may have simply been another variable skewing the results.

It would be a very interesting case study for a university to release their full (objective) admissions criteria, however--while, sure, it would result in applicants trying to game the system, would it end up resulting in a more cohesive student base? What would the main factors be? How do you weigh passions vs., as you stated, ambitious parents?

I don't have any of the answers to the questions I posed in this comment (nor in my earlier ones), but it's an interesting thought experiment nonetheless.
"The crime" is not "writing software," which is what the article makes it out to be by burying the details about Watt's knowledge on the second page. The crime is "knowingly aiding massive identity theft and fraud by writing software."

The law, for obvious reasons, defines your guilt in aiding and abetting cases based on the seriousness of the underlying crime and your knowledge of the nature of that crime. Helping some guy break into a 7/11 knowing he intends to steal beer is a lot less serious of a crime than doing the same exact action knowing he intends to kill the cashier.
Isn't it strange that middle easterners have to go through life being treated as non white and dealing with all sorts of social issues around that - especially in the past decade - and yet get no "benefit" when it comes time for admissions?
Thanks for pointing that out! Didn't really know about that. Going to pitch in. Would love to see it more focusing on trolling and the culture of lulz. But if it has to be on the serious side, that's good enough for me to support them.
3) Men can make it a more pleasant place for women who are already here, so exit rates fall.
I don't understand either of the prior two comments. The article clearly wasn't written to garner sympathy, rather, to retell a personal experience that is likely foreign to most people, given the cloistered nature of North Korean society.

As though only the most tragic stories possible are worth telling? Please.
White Indians
Ask HN: Best resources to practise recursive programming questions?
I recently had an interview where I realised I suck at recursion problems and general interview questions. What good resources are there to practice with? Would be helpful if they had some tutoring built in too.
The BitTorrent Acceleration Program: Supporting Startups
And if you go to some parts of India, its even worse than Africa. People don't have access to clean water, sanitation and food. Some people walk 25 miles a day, to fetch clean water to drink.
For a critique of Unz's data analysis, see Andrew Gelman's blog post here: http://andrewgelman.com/2013/02/12/that-claim-that-harvard-a...
Do you want free migration or do you want a swiss people to actually exist?
This is not a "toolmaker" case (i.e. suing gun manufacturers for murders). Because of his knowledge of the crime, it's a straight up "aiding and abetting" or "conspiracy" case. He didn't just make a tool. By making the tool knowing what it was going to be used for, he participated in the actual crime.
Do Mainframe Computers Still Exist?
What exactly is jcfrei's birthright? Or yours, or mine for that matter?

I'm going to get out my raclette and chillout for a bit...
Can someone please help me understand what I'm missing? When I calculate the Net/Profit Loss on the first income statement I get ($521) and not ($548).

I don't see anything in the article that accounts for the missing $27K. What kind of accounting is that?
In today's economy, gold is rarely used for its intrinsic value. Most of the gold in the world today is used simply as a store of value. The value of gold on the market today is not tied at all to its uses outside of investing.
Project-less scripted C# with ScriptCS and Roslyn
As much as people feel negatively about Java, it really has fantastic static code analysis tools. PMD, FindBugs, CheckStyle are all very helpful when properly configured. They're basically on the checklist level.

I think checklist level thinking for code reviews is bad though. It ends up being a pretty soul destroying experience when someone tells you that you need to validate arguments to all methods as not null (for the 100 you wrote), or that you should take the data in your test cases and put it in a text file. Or that you've re-used the same string in several places and should make it constant. Robots can tell me that, and I can get their feedback while I'm developing or choose to ignore it. People are invaluable for helping you step back and see how to re-organize your code, introduce new abstractions, re-interpret requirements, and see actual bugs that no QA person or tool would ever discover (likely affecting some unlucky user who would hit an extremely rare bug that couldn't be reproduced easily). Those types of reviews are invaluable. Put down the checklist and automate it instead.
You can write notes to future people for after you're dead but trying to control the world beyond your grave is futile at best and megalomaniac at worst so the best course of action is probably to simply let it be.
Yes. It was over 10% when we got our mortgage, and although we negotiated down to 9.89%, its still pretty steep.
When wages are so low and houses so expensive here (470k American dollars is average Auckland house price, arrange wage is 42k ish).
I am slightly old fashioned and, well, wrong I suppose, in my aversion to debt. Right now out rates are a a bit of a low, but we are paying off debt when saving would actually be more profitable.
If 20% of your jobs are beyond 1.5TB of RAM, ideally you want a heterogeneous environment. Some scale-up machines , and some scale-out machines. Mix and match as appropriate, and don't give in to the siren song of scale-out where it isn't appropriate.
Sharing OPML/RSS Subscriptions
Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFA) are becoming more popular in the insurance world. An insurer will hand over substantially all of their plain vanilla cases in a certain line of business (usually workers comp) in a specified geography to an outside counsel firm. That firm is paid a fixed fee per case, not per hour. To protect the firm, the firm is allowed to "opt-out" of some number of claims each year and bill those claims hourly.

Insurers are reporting significant savings. Law firms that get the work are happy. The rest... not so much.
Probably by way of South Korea. South Korea accepts North Korean defectors and grants them citizenship and various resettlement benefits (after first determining that they are not spies). South Koreans don't even need to apply for a visa to get into the US anymore, they are granted a tourist visa upon landing.
Typeform makes forms and surveys awesome
Btw, this goes great with the concept of @hoodiehq, @ownCloudcom, @remotestorage, @unhosted, @MozillaPersona, BitTorrent Sync, where all your content is on your computer so if the electricity goes out, it doesn't matter.
"Watt, by contrast, evidently earned no money from the scheme and didn’t participate directly in the breaches or possess stolen card data. His primary overt act was to code the sniffer tool for Gonzalez, for which he received no payment

But Watt refused to cooperate with authorities to help make their case against Gonzalez — aside from the fact that he was resolved not to snitch, he also maintained that he had no specific knowledge of his friend’s hacking scheme. His defiance may have been what did him in"

Sounds like a tool maker to me.
Lies, damned lies, and, in this case, not even statistics.

To me, the recent drop doesn't look much different from the one around July 2012. It may show some plateau after the initial drop where the July 2012 already started edging upwards, but I doubt any statistical test would support the claim that there is a definite drop recently. But convince me.
The joke "My other car is a cdr" also works in Common Lisp and Scheme but not Clojure.
Easy to get your revenge on me once I'm gone by writing "John would have liked us to call him Graham-Cumming" :-)
AFAIK, gold's value for non-investment use (i.e., "intrinsic" value) is a small fraction of its actual price today. I don't have a citation for that, but investment buddies have told me that. (Maybe someone reading this can give a citation?)

So, basically, gold has ceased to be priced at all based on intrinsic value, and entirely based on the projected fact that people will continue to want to use it as a store of wealth in the future, so therefore, you will be able to trade your gold for something else valuable. (Which is exactly the projected fact that is keeping Bitcoin going.)

Arguably, Bitcoin's property of being easily transferred and stored greatly outweighs the property of gold that there are real-world uses.

But if everyone in the world decided tomorrow to stop investing in bitcoin

If.

At this point, it's pretty clear (to me) that that will never happen, short of global government intervention. If there is a major dip in Bitcoin price, investors will buy it back up. Bitcoin has established itself as a useful way to store and transfer value for investors. For everyday transactions, I think it's in the process of proving itself.
Yes - my choice as always been to go for more later - even when its far from clear that more is actually more. What is clear to me is that less debt is less debt, and that's a gain right now.
How Much Sweat It Takes From Zero to Billionaire
I think you misunderstand. What I am saying is that there used to be a role similar to a scribe- someone who toggles switches according to a paper someone else wrote. Someone who feeds into the machine, punch cards someone else wrote. This is the "menial labor" I speak of.
There are several problems with corralling peoples of varying regional backgrounds into a neat label or two.

This poses a problem for the sake of consideration of applicants for admission into institutions of higher learning not unlike it does for consideration of peoples for any other purpose.

The immediate problem is of the question of homogeneity.

Although both Asian, are people of Filipino extraction similarly prone to academic excellence as their Chinese counterparts?

Although both Black and hailing from much the same coordinates, do Haitians benefit from a culture that values the merits of higher education as do their Jamaican and other Carib brethren?

Although all White, are the rates of adoption of fields of study uniform among Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans and all other non-Hispanic white Americans?

( The former president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers has famously commented on how few numbers of Irish-Americans, as opposed to other whites, are to be found in high-finance. He has made more controversial statements about women in science and mathematics which are less relevant here. )

The more sensitive problem - and one that the universities seek to handle delicately - is the problem of producing a class of pupils that is deft at handling problems of the larger world that are not entirely limited to the narrow confines of their chosen area of study.

Over the course of hundreds of years, universities have come to learn that a purely academically flourishing candidate, otherwise deficient in certain key qualities that make for a ringleader, is less than ideal for those larger missions.

This has led to the emergence of the much vaunted, deservedly so, "well-rounded candidate".

The candidate who sets himself or herself apart in matters of moral earnestness, social conscience and a world view. He who is not just driven by an achievement trophy-besotted vigor that sees education as a means to a higher rung.

I'll leave it to the discursive minds here to explicate on the matter of how various groups including “piano playing, hard working" Asians fare in this regard and if that positively accounts for the disparity in acceptance rates for those groups.