skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First place to start is with a self-assessment, I'd think. What skills do you have outside of programming that can be helpful? What training have you done on other subjects? I also think that, before you say "I want to be something else", you need to defined what the "something else" is. It might be that "what you want" and "what you are currently" are not that close. It then falls on you to identify how to add those skills to your skill set, all while making sure your team knows your ambitions.
I think you do understand it correctly, but I find it very disturbing. The difference between these two situations is night and day: the complete synthesis of naturally occurring small molecules is unique each time, and can require dozens of PhD-level chemists and a decade or more to complete, if it's even possible. It requires a huge amount of invention, and a huge amount of discovery.

Making cDNA is a standard kit, on order from any number of vendors, and is a standard molecular biology technique.

So basically, the Supreme Court, or at least Justice Clarence Thomas, is completely clueless.
Most of the top links are just teasers which link to the paywalled story.

Here is a complete (I assume) version. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nsa-could-smart-fast-235100722...
Support is quick to reply but often there is nothing they can do. I've tried contacting regarding both technical problems and billing issues and in both occasions they couldn't do nothing to help.
VC investments in China high, however, acquisitions/exits are rare..
Weather.com showing debug info to world
Update on GC issues in Go 1.1 and beyond
Not at all. The more projects you have attached to your name, the more you are worth. If you spend two years writing apps that don't go anywhere, but you finish them, and you can preview them, and you throw them on your portofolio and market yourself you can land a really good job.

I really don't see a downside, this is the worst case scenario.
What the hell does this have to do with hackers?

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html]

There are so many categories that this story (and most other stories currently on the front page) fits. While it is an interesting article, what is it doing here with 49 upvotes?
Idiotic decision. DNA should not be patentable.
This is Jacques idea, but hell, I'm happy to speculate.

How about a double-blind authorship trust built into the http protocol? Put something like an anonymous secure PR inside the packets instead of sitting on top of the entire page transaction and being managed by one party.

That's plenty of hand-waving, I admit, but I think there's probably something there worth exploring.

As far as the "are we worse off" question, I'd love to show you my inbox and spam folder on my servers. The economics of this is driving us to the point where we are paying hundreds of thousands of intelligent people world-wide to spend their lives doing silly things so that Google can evolve its algorithm and we can have better search. Better for me, sure. Maybe you should talk to one of those guys who made enough to feed his family for a few months then lost it all on Panda.
No, not licensed. Not according to most non-Mac sites, nor Malcolm Gladwell: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_...

Not one mention of any license. Another remark:

"They did not license the technology. Xerox had invested in Apple and owned 20%. As one condition of the investment, Steve Jobs got a tour of Xerox Parc.

As another part of the investment, Xerox asked Apple to buy business and liability insurance from Xerox's insurance subsidiary. Apple did.

Xerox management later learned that they could sue Apple for huge amounts of money - most of which would then be paid by Xerox's own insurance company."
> NSA shouldn't pressure people to comply with gag orders, but that doesn't excuse Nacchio

I agree with you, I just think what the state did was worse. Not only that but that kind of behaviour is par for the course for them rather than an exception to the rule that they resorted to in order to deal with a situation not of their own creation.

You are right though, he was no angel.
Once you are born with synthetic DNA, is it not "existing in nature?" An interesting point, but cloning is not very popular among bioethicists.
Parse Grows 25% Month-Over-Month To 100K Apps Since Acquisition
So this is the crux of it for me - why is testing for some of these genes not covered by any patents, and yet others are covered by patents?

Part of me thinks "of course genes can't be patented, no one invented them", and then part of me thinks "using the patent system to protect gene isolation is an interesting legal hack because we don't have a better way to protect the investment involved with gene discovery." And surely it's got to cost something to figure out which genes are interesting to test for, which is the real value in the gene test, right?

But if that's the case, how is anything on the 23andme test cheap? Publicly funded research? Benevolent release of research from private labs? Old research that no one thought to patent? Much more reasonable licensing terms? Oversight by the current patent holder?

How realistic is the specter of "No one will do gene isolation after this decision?"
If I read that correctly she could be charged with treason and a felony.
Makes me wonder why there aren't more jobs for Django; Ruby on Rails still seems to be far more popular for new startups!
Are you sure that FISC only applies to surveillance of foreign intelligence? I thought the FISC Verizon phone record ruling applied to US citizens and domestic phone calls?
Is it always raining where you live or something?
If you want to use Nacchio as an example of the unscrupulous tactics of NSA, I have no objection, as long as you don't try to rehabilitate Nacchio in the process.
welp if the PLA has a backdoor on my Shenzhen-made electronic goodies, I need an NSA backdoor in order to keep em honest. Also any conversation with "backdoor" could get dirty fast...
Should you be able to wear blackface?
Right, so the point is that there is enough people talking at the same time that it becomes noise..
I won't speak for anyone else who takes an interest in Nacchio, but I don't care a bit for him personally. (Well, I guess if he and Ed Whitacre were both on fire, I'd piss on Nacchio first, but that's it.) His significance is more related to what it tells us about how the various parts of our government collaborate, take decisions, and act when no one is looking, and how the three-felonies-a-day phenomenon enables that.

To enforce insider trading laws in a "fair" way would require a massive expansion of the SEC and related agencies, which expansion would be funded by the general fisc for the specific benefit of investors. There are arguments to be made for that, but they seem similar to the arguments one hears for more aggressive enforcement of our drug prohibition. Those who argue loudest are interested parties. I'd prefer we reverse our many-decades trend, and experiment with less enforcement rather than more. I doubt we're capable of that, but sometimes I indulge in optimism.
Actually, there are lots of stories of millions and billions being blown!

http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/

I have this book, and I'm sure there are plenty more like it.
If protesters in the US defended themselves with guns, the police would simply respond – fully legally (shooting police being a crime and all) – with bigger, better guns. The end result would not be pretty.
>but I believe they are also responsible for providing guidance on how the U.S. can secure its own electronic communications

How can anyone find them credible in such a role with such huge glaring conflicts of interests, and their demonstrated lack of trustworthiness?
Taking funding from a vc o angel comes at a cost - maybe 20 or 40% of your future profits. Nice to have an office, hi end equipment, and a developer or two. I am not judging, just pointing out the other side of the coin.
I stabbed the upvote button so hard I may need a new mouse, in particular for the encouragement for the side project to sustainable business trajectory. I did that. It was, no lie, lifechanging. (And I started with a business which many, many people assume must be a joke.)
To build on gtcameron:

The call comparison is bad -- the first one is when the phone is "unlocked" and the "new" one is when the phone is in a locked state. Also, the previous version would show a picture if you had a picture associated to the contact.

And, if anything, with weather, and in general iOS was the first mobile OS which allowed you to horizontally scroll through screens -- I feel that that is the bigger "design" element stolen than a particular font/color choice.

Let's not forget about the pinch to zoom, etc.

Lesson here? Everyone borrows from each other. But I don't think the examples here are that damning. I think iOS borrowed much more from android than WP7/8. (Look at the modal dialogs -- other than rounded corners, they're nearly identical to Android's)

AND Chris Miller got his dates wrong -- the multitasking in windows phone and iOS was stolen from WebOS -- which came out in 2009. Not 2011.
Wait, you lose connectivity or the VM goes down? They're very different things...
I find Java to be perfectly reasonable (if not great) for some classes of web based applications. I mean, I wouldn't use Java for a generic company website that was mostly static HTML with no interactivity. But for a web based application that requires talking to databases, pushing messages onto a message queue, consuming web services, etc., I like it. Note that I'm not saying it's perfect, but that's half the point of what I was saying above. A language doesn't need to be perfect, it just has to be "good enough" AND meet a few other pragmatic criteria: availability of libraries, documentation, compilation speed, whatever it might be.

That said, Java also strikes me as a good choice for things like text mining, machine learning, data mining, etc. It also fits well where there's an emphasis on integrations with other systems, but that is, again, partly down to the availability of libraries. And just based on it's popularity for such applications, I think it's safe to say that many people find Java a good fit for building things like database engines, message queueing servers, etc.
Yes, that seems quite obvious, which is why it puzzles me that you took the time to post it.
The Advanced Guide to Link Building
We're a software security firm, and when promising candidates reach out to us and tell us they're worried that they don't have a lot of exposure to web app security, we buy them _The Web App Hackers Handbook_ (I invariably apologize for the stupid title) and _The Tangled Web_.
Well, there are some things we could do for 1. - switch to an algorithm not vulnerable to quantum computing, for example. I think NTRU would be an example of this.
I find this strange and short-sighted (and also a little naive). Does the "hacker skillset" now suddenly include the ability to navigate complex regulatory environments, deal with sales, irate customers and the myriad other things that come from running a business (since that's what most of your examples are about)? I've no doubt that people can learn those skills but to presume that they're the default skill set of "hackers" is unreasonable.

Also, if no-one with technical skills ever goes into public service, how can anyone expect the technical competence of those services to get any better?
Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you consider their redesign "flat"?
I made the switch from FF to Chrome about a year and a half ago. Here's my two cents:

What sold me was better memory management and better (in general) CSS3 rendering. I normally work with two windows open, one that has all my cookies and stuff so I can do web searches, and another with a blank persona so I can do development. Having two instances of Chrome running vs. one instance of Chrome and Firefox running seemed to lead to less crashes.

Regarding the dev. speed of Firebug, the lead dev on Firebug went to lead up work on Chrome's Dev tools[0]

I still find Chrome's dev tools lacking and the interface hard to navigate. I also miss the plugin ecosystem that Firebug had (I could send xdebug messages straight into Firebug, which was amazing!)

[0]http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20080338-264/firefox-world...
This Game makes $3.76m a day and we haven't heard of it
Cheap(er) iPhone surfaces on assembly lines, in time for Sep release
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/not-intended-to-be-a-fa...

I don't think the various departments that have been getting killed on budgets for the last 15 years "magically" became more efficient -- I think they did, objectively, do almost the same job with less resources in terms of headcount and pay freezes. No magic about it, that's based on actual numbers.

You're alleging that something being private or public is a bigger deal than the normal organizational dynamics of bureaucracies. This is the attitude that leads to us writing blank checks for the F-35 no matter how many times they double the cost, while furloughing civil servants across all layers of government because there's not enough money to go around.
Limit access in the firewall/load balancer/webserver to whitelisted ip addresses. If you don't have static ips at your office or a vpn, include the ip of a VPS or dev server, and use ssh forwarding (-D for a socks proxy) to access the admin site. And if you're running everything from one server, you can even limit connections to localhost and tunnel connections through there.
As numerous commentators have pointed out, treason is a ridiculously high standard that has rarely been met. It has been misapplied so often by politicians using hyperbole that most people don't understand the meaning anymore.

It requires not just "aid and comfort" to the enemy, but also "adherence to the enemy" actively waging war against the United States, according to Supreme Court precedent. You cannot accidentally commit treason.
I'd like to clarify the bit about his Special Forces 'training'. He did not receive any.

There is a program that he signed for called the 'X-ray' program (18X). It affords the enlistee a pipeline directly to Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS). There is no faster way to go to SFAS than the 18X program.

The 18X program begins with 16 weeks of Infantry training followed by 3 weeks of Airborne school. This is not Special Forces training, however. It isn't even around Special Forces personnel- not even in the same state. Those 19 weeks encapsulate the period of time leading up to his "training accident" that resulted in his separation.

Had he completed Infantry OSUT and Airborne, he would have been sent to a 4 week preparation and conditioning course and then given a slot for SFAS (which is another 3 weeks). At that point, he STILL would have had ZERO Special Forces training. He's only been assessed for toughness and fitness generally speaking. Were he selected, he would begin the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC). During the time he enlisted, had he actually entered the SFQC, he would have begun with a preparation course for Small Unit Tactics (3 weeks). The closest to Special Forces training he'd have at the conclusion of that course would be land navigation and patrolling. No guerrilla warfare. No survival school. Nada.

His tactics are not so novel. He's taken "by, with, and through" from indigenous personnel to state agency.
America's Worst Charities, Ranked By Money Blown On Soliciting Costs
Yes, it's pretty reliable.

We (mailgun.com) use it in production, our deployment handles thousands of requests/sec, we have not seen any flask-related issues so far in 2+ years.

You can use pool of flask + twisted powered services behind nginxes:

Nginx ---upstream pool--> twisted.wsgi + thread pool + flask app

Something like that:

https://gist.github.com/klizhentas/5775158
Anyone have experience with vertica?
I'm looking into using the free community edition of Vertica for a project, wondering if anyone could share their experience/impressions of the product. Thanks.
Twitter Thursdays: Twitter Performance Analytics Are Live
"No one" is completely unrealistic. There are all sorts of foundation and government dollars interested in treating diseases.

I have no idea about estimating the actual impact on spending.
Although this approach is obvious, there are complicating factors. The Coriolis force makes high-RPM centrifugal gravity unpleasant and perhaps dangerous to humans. So, to achieve 1g, structures would need to be very large (224 meters). Nonetheless, this is probably the best approach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity#Rotation
i believe it's because Rails is as easy as grabbing a shovel to dig a hole for yourself.
I think people's problem is that, beyond the copying, its the articles like this calling Apple and innovative geniuses and worshipping them for the redesign and implying only Apple can do such great innovations.

Please show me examples of articles calling inspired copies as great innovations.
Do they allow patenting a DNA sequence specified by a regular expression or a grammar? Also, what happens if the synthetic DNA is later found to exist naturally?
DuckDuckGo gets better results than Google, especially for research, but I've been extremely spoilt by Google's extra features like images, maps, and YouTube integration.

I know you have "bang-cuts" like !g and !i, but it's kind of nice to have map results show up when you just search.
Upcoming revelations speculations
No, the Tulsa of Japan is 11 minutes away on the train. I live in the Norman, Oklahoma of Japan. (Come over and I will give you the tour. It, uh, won't take long.)
The Roman Emperor Elagabalus was known to employ a prototype of whoopee
cushions at dinner parties, although the modern version was re-invented in
the 1920s by the JEM Rubber Co. of Toronto, Canada, by employees who were
experimenting with scrap sheets of rubber.[1]

Perhaps Elagabalus came up with a new idea, but I'd like to see a historian's opinion.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopee_cushion
It's hard to draw the line. Cynically:

What part of yourself (or anything else, really) is not the product of billions of year of evolution? To what extent can your actions be considered "original"? Can you prove that all of your actions, inactions, beliefs and ideas are an original and non-obvious product of your "self"? Can you prove the discontinuity between "you" and billions of years of evolution? All it takes is a reasonable doubt.

I don't like the Supreme Court decision, but one has to break the circle somewhere.
I probably should have clarified in my post. I'm not sitting here crying that I'm not funded to the moon. I'm just simply wondering how it works and why so many seemingly mediocre startups get so much funding.
VIDEO: Getting Hired as a Software Developer - Mike Saffitz
There are highly skilled and better financed tech companies with huge R&D teams. Why would the NSA be able to outperform them?

More to the point, they don't (presumably) have some secret pipeline of highly talented people. I mean, the pool of graduates in mathematics, statistics, computer science, etc., year in and year out, is available to everyone, NSA, other public sector, other private sector, etc. And while the NSA probably prioritizes hiring brilliant math wonks and what-not, so do wall street hedge fund companies, tech companies, etc. And given that at least some small percentage of "really smart people" would probably refuse to work for the NSA just on ideological grounds, I don't see any reason to believe that they have a monopoly on smart people who can do crypto research and what-not.

As for their financing, however... I don't know. I'm not real big on conspiracy theories, but I don't doubt the existence of secret budgets and "off the books" stuff to fund certain government programs. I mean, just go back to the Iran/Contra affair[1] and you can see that some sneaky stuff does go on, at least on occasion.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
I don't think GP was arguing that it would make for an actual legal defense, but instead that when the same light is shone on everyone's activities, it becomes much harder to single out individuals.
Thank you ! Best laugh I've had all day.

I actually suspect that total surveillance is in fact, inevitable. Or possibly already here. All the NSA seems to be doing is pulling together existing digital records. There seems to be little original surveillance if that makes sense.
Back in 2008, FF was on a downward spiral. It was getting bloated, slow, annoying... And then Google came out with Chrome.

It took FF less than a year to get their st together and fix their browser. Today it's great, but the harm was done. Most of the people who moved to Chrome never looked back, and still remember FF as a slow, annoying browser.
Example of unit testing R code with testthat
He's consistent, which is about the only nice thing I'd want to say about him.
I was thinking about including the Leiningen dependency line, but I don't want someone including the wrong version later because I didn't update it. Install info is usually pretty prominent on the github pages of the projects (which I've linked to).
Two modules separated by a tether requires much less mass. It makes Coriolis effects hard to notice.

I readily admit they haven't done any of this. The lack of engineering work into making spinning structures is criminal.
I totally agree, that's why I believe the requirement was shifted from the airlines' responsibility to the TSA directly. Now you are not being asked for ID to travel, you are being asked ID to pass a security gate.
The parents would have bought the license for their child when they agreed to have the DNA modified. By the time that child has children, the patent would have expired.
>But if that's the case, how is anything on the 23andme test cheap?

23andme is actually doing original research. It scares me a little bit that I did it though because 1) I am afraid of genetic discrimination even though some states have made this illegal. 2) I found out genetic disorders that I did not know I had. Fortunately none are horrendously serious but I found out what will probably kill me at some point like it killed some of my grandparents.

For research, they ask as many survey questions as you are willing to answer - anything from "Do you have psoriasis?" to "Do you cry easily?" and many many more. They are then able to correlate answers to these questions with your genetic makeup. The final result should give additional information when aggregated among all their customers.

Beyond that, I assume that many genes aren't patented just like many business processes are not patented. The person that first discovered the gene didn't go through the time and expense to patent it (for whatever reason) and because there was prior art, it's not a good target for other people to patent either.
There's a new TV series that touches upon this - Orphan Black.

---- Spoilers, obviously ----

So they're clones, and they have a "special repeating marker" of some sorts. One of the clones is a biochemist, and she manages to decode it. Turns out, it is a copyright message covering those organisms and their biological offspring as property of X corporation.
--------
Spooky, but wouldn't the message get diluted after reproduction?
>Actually large private enterprises don't usually make this kind of mistake.

Are you new or something? Do you know how many projects I've been brought in to rescue? Do you know how many times my advice to "Stop throwing good money after bad" has been ignored for one reason or another?

Big enterprises fail in exactly this kind of way. All. The. Time.