skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
All reporting is biased in some way; reporters have to choose what facts to report about a story and what sort of wording to use when reporting them. What I responded to was a broad claim that nearly every story about abuses of police power is misconstrued and distorted. That is not merely an accusation of bias; it is an accusation of deliberate bias, and it suggests that the police and prosecutors are victims of a hostile media.

There is nothing wrong or outrageous about assuming that someone who makes such claims has far-right political leanings.
It is an old problem. I think it's in the classic "Concrete Mathematics" by Graham, Knuth, Patashnik but I doubt it's the original source.
"Google, shut down the Reader service."

"I'm sorry Eric, I'm afraid I can't do that."
As far as I can tell all he's threatening to do is be a really famous rapper, so famous that the Boston Marathon bombings are second-page news in comparison? Are you claiming that his music is so bad that this is some kind of imminent threat? Please explain what line he's crossing and why you think that line has any legal or moral relevance.
If your MVP requires you spending 6 man years building a framework, that's not an MVP.

An MVP doesn't need autoscaling, or most of the rest of the stuff you mention.

I always remember 37signals launching an app without writing a billing system, because they didn't need it until the end of the first trial period.
Managing Smart People
I'm not a black hat or anything even close to that nature. I just happened to see it and it concerned me greatly. I am really starting to think about running a vps through linode or something.
I can't say I can fully side with the natives, but there is one particular set of quotes I couldn't help but reflect on for their mix of arrogance and ignorance, the ones from the anonymous software engineer.

"We feel what we're doing helps make the world a better place. Helping people share information is a force of empowerment for individuals."

That's highly debatable. A good majority of the world lacks internet access, information sharing doesn't sound very empowering considering many companies essentially milk you for your data, and I really don't want to talk about how absurd it is to think that your average arbitrary SV startup is a force for social good.

You know what's empowering? Self-sufficiency. Independence. I'm not talking about homesteading, just being able to provide oneself with a comfortable life with all the basic necessities and then some. Most major tech companies and startups can't really be associated with that form of empowerment unless you really try and fib a little. I have to admit, first thing that came to mind was Airbnb, because it allows ordinary people to collect a little extra income from their home. Anyway, lets continue.

"Software engineering is like building something, like a craft, you become completely absorbed in the task. I really like that."

I can actually agree with our anonymous software engineer on this statement. Most people on HN probably can as well. If you say that to someone with no coding background though, they'll think you're full of it and that you're an entitled jerk.

Yeah, they probably cherry picked this guy's quotes out of plenty of much more boring yet appropriate quotes, but at the same time this mindset seems pretty typical, and probably plays an appreciable role in the grievances of people with more physical professions.
>Half of software engineering is communication and the other half is typing in code.

Needless to say, I don't really agree with this. First, ‘half communication and half typing code’ leaves no time for individual creative problem solving, which, unless you're stuck writing the nth me-too implementation of the same CRUD form-filler, is essential. Yesterday's ‘open-plan’ discussion <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5767414>; is apropos. Half communication? It wouldn't be half if everyone would just STFU long enough to get some work done for a change.

Second, I dispute the idea that relevant technical communication needs to be, or even can be, done primarily face-to-face or verbally. We have writing and mathematical notations for good reason. Feel free to pop over to a site like Vocaroo and comprehensibly present Tarjan's algorithm, say, or the stdio API, or the VPUNPCKHDQ instruction.
So money created by the people for the people will create monetary inequality, where as Fiat currencies where the monopoly of money creation is given to handful of super-rich central bankers is not? Not to mention that US Dollars for example are created by a private institution called "The Federal Reserve" and lended out with interest. Or that HSBC has the blood of tens of thousands of drug war victims on their hands for enabling the business in the first place, and get's away with a <10% fine of the profits.

The curve is modeled to mimick that of Golds, because that's what Bitcoin in the end is: Virtual Gold, where tangibility is replaced with knowledgeability. And because all that Bitcoin "wallets" are in the end is information, it makes things possible that we could have never imagined before.

Just because you missed the first Bitcoin opportunity doesn't mean that Bitcoin would be inherently bad. Please educate yourself.
Wow. I had no idea about git pull requests, so I even googled it, and didn't see it on page one. My mistake, thanks!
The first part is nothing new, and the second part is standard conspiracist pseudo-thought, which is also nothing new.
I agree with most of your reasons as well. Especially the first one. Many people might think they're all set because they made it without a degree. An economic downturn could put them on the street and their resume in the trash any day.
Evernote and Linux user here. Their web app is quite good, and their Android and iOS apps are fantastic. Having also messed around with their native app on Windows, I didn't feel like I was missing too much since the whole point is really the content of the notes.

For what it's worth, there are a couple clones of the native app for Linux including Everpad and Nevernote. Haven't tried them because the web app does everything that seems necessary for me.
Because Godaddy usually ignores these type of concerns, unless its brought to light via other credible sources.
This is a great little program, but I'm curious why you're marketing it only for the Raspberry Pi? A low-memory system monitoring script could be useful in many other areas, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing RPi specific in the source.
This will annoy the libertarian crowd, but a truly anonymous and untraceable medium of exchange is not only most likely impossible, but also undesirable. The failed war on drugs aside, a lot of the things people want to do completely anonymously are illegal for good reasons (CP, human trafficking, etc).

Does child pornography make cameras "undesirable"? How about USB external hard drives? Or the Internet?

Does human trafficking make chains and locks "undesirable"? White cargo vans with blacked-out windows? Freeways?

Seriously, let's focus on attacking the unjust behavior itself, not blaming tools and implements that have no inherent intent or character, for good or for evil.
You missed (C): That the overwhelming majority of politicians in power right now sit on the same side of the political spectrum, and that the debate has not been two sided for a very long time.
I wrote a command line program that evaluates jinja2 templates (jinjafy.py), and then a script that filters a directory of html files through it, copying any other files. Works ok so far.
The credential is good for things other than getting a job. It can help you emigrate to another country, as well as enroll in a master's or phd program.
I've been excited about discourse ever since it was announced.

If anyone knows how to build an infrastructure for online communities, it's Jeff Atwood.
Unless, of course, he "insulted Turkishness" in Turkey or insulted the Holocaust in Germany.
Summary (...practicing expository writing):

Google's buses have been the focal point of much discussion, related to urban development, social equality, civic engagement, taxes, and business culture.

While the point remains contested, many critics believe that Google's buses represent a tech elite, that has "invaded" San Francisco with its high salaries. The critics say this influx is driving up the cost of real estate, and hurting the greater sense of equality in the Bay Area. Critics claim the buses are unfair because they use public infrastructure, like roads and bus stops, but are not public. Critics explain that companies exacerbate the issue by wiggling their way around corporate tax codes, to minimize tax paid to governments.

In contrast, the proponents of Google's buses espouse a general admiration (and at very least, an understanding) of Google's choice to use a private fleet to help its employees commute. The buses replace cars and their emissions, thereby decongesting roads; they enable longer work hours, making employees more productive; and they facilitate a social city-life for many of its young workers. Proponents recognize that an overhaul of public transportation in the Bay Area would indeed lead to greater public good, but concede that this is neither practical, nor Google's responsibility. Further, while not solving the whole problem, proponents claim the private bus fleet at least helps.

The debate over the merits of Google's private bus fleet even expand to a question of social equality, and whether a capitalist nation should expect equality. While it's clear that only a small fraction of Bay Area residents enjoy these perks, the notion of equality is not lost. By some opinions, the magic of American capitalism is not equality of possessions (or abilities), but equality of opportunity. In this sense, Google and its tech-giant siblings need not provide services for the entire community, but merely give each person a fair chance at being hired -- a fair chance at taking part in their employee benefits programs.

Finally, if deemed worthwhile, Google may choose to make more overt gestures of friendliness to the community to soften any ill-will from the public.
This. I don't know any french developer not being on a day rate instead of an hour rate. An awful lot of people on an hour rate have a number of extra hours factored in their salary by default.

It's still better than the US, "cadre" status (but not top management) is officially around 180-190 day of work per year (depending on the unions).
I'm increasingly worried that the features of crypto-currencies sought by cypherpunks (like me) are basically identical to the features ideal for money laundering.

I don't see the problem. Living in a free world is dangerous, and undesirable things (might) happen. But how is it justified to restrict the freedom of one individual, because of something somebody else did (or worse, might do)?

Money laundering is just a sequence of voluntary transactions between consenting individuals. No reason that should be illegal and there's no reason the government needs to be able to trace every financial transaction back to its source.

Organized crime? Feh... government (or what passes for government these days) is organized crime.
Only if you insist on applying the European spectrum to American politics. The thing to keep in mind, and this is absolutely critical, is that Europeans cannot vote in American elections. Therefore, the center of American politics, where practically all American politicians sit, is not in the same place as it is in Europe.
Basically, they were hipsters before it was cool.
His /Geeks Bearing Gifts/ http://www.lulu.com/shop/ted-nelson/geeks-bearing-gifts/pape... http://hyperland.com/ccynPage.htm is well worth the money too.
Nathan, I am just curious how you selected this particular to write about - is this something of interest to you personally or you did some sort of a market research that revealed a need in such a book?

Thanks!
Good stuff.

Also,

The picture of Klein’s quartic curve was made by Greg Egan, and you should also check out his page on Klein’s quartic curve.

For anyone curious, Greg Egan writes interesting hard scifi. A particularly interesting and hardcore piece of scifi which rests on a significant pile of graph theory et al. is his novel "Schild's Ladder." [1] (one of these days, one of these days I am bound to attempt to finish it..)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schild%27s_Ladder
Shit, I Graduated. Now What?
Tell them. If you can't win the market by being better than them, exploiting it to make them fail means you already have.
Poll: What to buy?
What is the single biggest obstacle preventing robotics from going mainstream?
Javascript microbenchmarks don't really matter for browser performance on realistic workloads at this point.
Worth clicking through for the hilarious "$89 gangster" pic alone. That's not even enough for a memory upgrade at the Apple Store behind him.
I used to do .NET development. Polymer and other things like it such as AngularJS remind me of WPF/XAML. I also feel as though recent developments with C# and other languages have been influenced by JavaScript.

To me it seems like there is a little bit of convergence.

I know this is going to be controversial but -- I actually believe that eventually web, mobile and desktop platforms will be the same thing. Because they actually share so many goals, use-cases, and especially, technical challenges.

For example, new UI frameworks and application builders coming out, at least for the web, are definitely trying to provide a one-stop shop for web _and_ mobile devices. Or another example: Google Now voice search functionality appearing in Google desktop.

One reason for this is because a large portion of the problems that developers need to solve are actually the same on each device. I will even go so far as to say that desktop machines will start to become identified and have persistent payment systems the same way that mobile devices do. Because most desktop devices actually are used by only one person and there is a huge convenience win there.

You can already see people moving away from desktops and towards laptops. Or people using their mobile phone almost as if it were a laptop with a tiny screen and slow keyboard.
You see people working on the go from coffee shops more and more.

With more and more capabilities coming to browser applications, pretty soon people will start to realize that the only important thing that their browser can't do is break out of the confines of the browser tab and create notifications. Browsers already have convenient APIs for key devices.

So I believe that the remaining limitations of browser applications will go away, and we will see a component-based web application framework that doesn't even show an actual web browser.

But really, being able to take a laptop with me is nice, but I would rather not have to carry anything. That's why I think that Google Glass is a look into the future of computing. But I think within 10 or 15 years we will go even further than Glass. We will end up with one web/desktop/mobile/brain platform that interfaces directly with our brains.

I think I am rambling again sorry :)
Corollary: Be careful attributing to stupidity that which can be explained by laziness?
> If using named branches is a problem just tell your devs to not use them and use bookmarks instead!

but they do, because all the devs know git and are only using mercurial because they want to send you a pull request, and now their feature branch is forever.

Mecurial is unforgiving of mistakes - once in the repo, they are forever.

As for MQ, I've really tried to understand it, but it's just profoundly awkward IMHO. Mercurial's main benefit is that it's much easier to use and understand than git, so if I'm going to need to fire up the extra brainpower, I might as well learn git where these advanced patterns are extremely commonplace, and are part of the core functionality, not as a series of optional extensions that have been bolted on over the years. I've almost never seen anyone using MQ or rebase with mercurial (or even bookmarks for that matter).

I've tried carefully in my post to express that my points are all based on an overlap of social with technical issues. I am aware that technically, hg has answers for all these things. But these answers don't pan out in the real social world, for better or for worse. If git didn't exist, I'm sure there would be a much larger knowledge share for mercurial, and I was even betting on that in the beginning (certainly the "easier" tool will be more popular?) but it hasn't turned out that way.
I am sorry....I feel no sympathy.

People need to understand that words have meaning. Just because 'free speech' is protected by the constitution doesn't mean that you can (and should) say any crap, at any time, without thinking about the consequence.

When you say stuff like:

fuck a boston bombing wait till you see the shit I do, Imma be famous for rapping and beat every murder charge that comes across me.

Let's take a step back here, and assume for a minute that he REALLY was planning something - and not just talking tough. If he did it, and he posted this stuff on Facebook, and the FBI didn't do anything about it.....what would the fracas be then?

The FBI is incompetent....they knew he would do it, yet they did nothing, etc, etc, etc.

It's really a lose-lose for them. They can either take preventive measures, or do nothing in the name of 'free speech protection' and risk the chance that this latest bozo is actually going to follow up with action.

Kudos to the FBI for taking this seriously and showing people you can't just say crap like this without any consequence. Living in a free society comes with a cost. Not saying that a recent terrorist event was "nothing" is one of those costs.

It's simple really.

Also, if you think you aren't living in a free society, try moving to Saudi Arabia, many countries in Africa, Cuba, Bolivia, many S. American countries, many eastern european countries, etc.
I would just use http://selfcontrolapp.com/
Unfortunately in my job I need Facebook :(
Thanks, rjd - I'm doing that now. In case anyone else wants to do the same, here are two email addresses I found:

contactt160k@gmail.com from the linked page and ross@mtolympia.com from http://t160k.org/volunteer/ , which was linked from the first page.
Tell them, very anonymously. You don't want to risk them accusing you of anything. Or, just forget it about it completely, which is probably the safest option.

Do not do anything destructive. It would be highly illegal and you could very possibly end up losing years of your life in prison. It's not worth it.
I WANTED TO SCREAAAAAAM

That's useless, the right reaction would be to shoot them.
They didn't have to pay him.

Still very poorly handled. Should've gone something like:

1. "Hey, that's awesome that you found that, thanks!"

2. "For very good reasons (a), (b) and (c) we can't actually pay you, that really sucks :("

3. "But hey we like your style, so how about we fly you over for an internship when you've finished school / investigate if Germany has different rules / look at scholorship options and a great reference / [one of a million other things you could do to help a kid out"
Make a car computer to log ODBII data (post 1996 cars).

http://www.thinkythings.org/obdii/

http://icculus.org/obdgpslogger/obdsim

http://freediag.sourceforge.net/
Firebug: A love story
Hmm, according to http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger Tesla now promises to charge 150 miles of range worth of battery in 30 minutes. This isn't bad, though of course far from perfect. But yes, parallel charging of sub-batteries sounds like a good idea, one I was also thinking about at some point. It definitely sounds like (and I hope it's no more than) an engineering problem at this point.
It says on that website "20 minutes to 80 percent [at their special charging stations]"
Google Considering 'Wireless Balloons' to Deliver Internet to Countries
The Capitol Factory would be a good place. They help startups and have a coworking space. They also host most of the Tech meetups in the city. The only thing is they probably arent open this weekend.

Im also a fan of the East side so you can find food trucks there, lots of great bars, and of course live music (White Horse is a must). Check out www.do512.com and you can find some of the fun music happenings around town.
And were any of the stream of thoughts useful, or was it just an exercise to calm an overactive mind?
Ask HN: What are the specs on the dedicated servers/VPS' you rent for dev work?
Hi,

I'm considering a shift in the plan I had for my startup, superspeedyservers.com.

In this new plan I would aim to serve tech startups, with dedicated server offerings.

But I need to know what kind of dedicated servers devs need to know what gear to look for deals on to outfit the startup with.

It would help to know what you're paying for your setup, too- if you wouldn't mind sharing that as well.

What can HN readers tell me about their setups, desires, & needs for dedicated servers?

Thanks,

-c
I read his novel Incandescence recently which was also really interesting. It's about a seemingly primitive civilization of non-humanoids who have to work out relativity quickly to avert disaster. I can't claim to follow it entirely but I enjoy his work nonetheless.
is this 4chan now?
I agree. The problem lies with how people are defining success. If you choose to define success as a "wild level of user and developer adoption thanks to the service being free, fun and bankrolled by investors with hundreds of millions of dollars", then yes, twitter is successful and owes a lot of this to the open api and ecosystem that grew up around it.

The problem is, this isn't success. Everyone (users, app developers and twitter itself) has been enjoying a free ride for the last x years, courtesy of investment money. It's been one big successful party... except for the fact it's been anything but for the investors. And when it comes to judging a company's success, the latter is the only kind that matters.

Taken in that light, it's hard to feel sorry for those who were caught out when the music stopped and the party was over. The investors are free to take the company in whatever direction they like in pursuit of real success (i.e. turning a profit) and if that means strangling the third party eco system, then so be it. Whether or not that's a good idea (I'm not sure it is) is irrelevant. It's their call to make.
Too young to be a hacker, but not too young to jail for being a hacker :D
ISO filesystems can also be used on DVD so the size shouldn't matter much. I believe the upper limit is 4GB and then you would use UDF.
Additionally, a lot of power users use 1password or similar app to manage their passwords
Can you categorize the next non-special number in the same way? Now k+1 is no longer non-special, but the reason why it is special still exists, so you can't use it a second time.
Multiple Research Teams Unable to Confirm High-Profile Alzheimer’s Study

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130523143004.ht...
and living in USA
Anyone's free to build that product. Of course, not anyone is capable of this - surely Google leverages immense computing power, complex software and its knowledge graph to do this analysis? You'd need to replicate all that in competition.

But seriously, how paranoid can people be? If anyone really wants to get your data, do you really think it's safe on your server or on your local machine?
If you didn't discuss terms you cannot ask for more than what you gave.
But local governments are hopeless.

I'm not making an anti-Google post here. I'm saying that there are a bunch of companies who could be doing interesting stuff but they can't because of entrenched industries and weird regulations.
The whole of humanity?