skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm guessing the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Yes, his fellowship expires in 1 year. And yes, it's easier for NYU to expand into China if they let it expire.

I'm going to speculate that if he was on the tenure track, he wouldn't be let go over this, however. But since his contract is conveniently expiring, it doesn't make much sense to suffer any financial inconvenience for him.
I've dealt with similar institutions before. They have to be seen to be playing by the rules, but they use every possible lie and excuse to wriggle out of their obligations. Here's how to beat them:

* Understand that your relationship is entirely adversarial. Play by the rules, but be an asshole.

* Your adversaries will mostly consider themselves decent people, who are forced into a corrupt role. Use the cognitive dissonance against them.

* Create a cross-referenced paper trail so strong that it is impossible for them to pretend that they don't have every document they need.

* Hound them relentlessly on every promise and every lie.

By the time you're done with them, they won't care about their performance bonus. They'll just want you to leave them alone.

For example, here's how you send them an important package of documents:

1. Add cross-referenced meta-data to the package so that, if anything gets "lost", it will be immediately, undeniably obvious.

2. Send the package by registered mail.

3. After the package has arrived, call them to confirm that they've received it.

4. They'll probably "lose" it the first time, so go back to step 1. (Eventually they'll catch on, and stop "losing" things so often.)

5. When they confirm receipt, also ask them to confirm what will happen next, and when. If they don't give a date, tell them that you'll call them back every week for progress reports.

6. Send them a follow-up letter in which you tell them exactly what you sent them (repeat the meta-data), when they confirmed receipt, what they said they'd do, what you said you'd do, a summary of previous correspondence, and so on.

If you catch them telling lies on the phone, you have a golden opportunity. Ask them whether they'd be willing to confirm their statement in writing. When they say, "Yes." grab a pen and get them to agree an exact wording with you. Send them a copy of the wording, remind them that they agreed to these exact words, and ask them to sign it and send it back to you.

Of course, you won't get your signed statement, but they're not going to admit that they lied to you either, and the cognitive dissonance will make them deeply miserable. Hound them.
I would be honestly surprised if it started as late as 1980.
You're right, we should discourage people who are actually building things from posting (even if it's nothing earth shattering) and instead encourage folks to post more regurgitated NSA articles and Wikipedia links about crypotography standards or secret government projects.
No - I assumed that I was under surveillance based on the number of security cams I see walking around downtown Denver, and things I'd already read about ECHELON and "Stellar Wind". Also, the visible security state seemed all too willing to do stupid, stupid authoritarian things (anything the TSA does at airports), so why not a dragnet surveillance?

I bet the NSA gets a lot of good porn, phone sex and celebrity gossip that way.
I'll be a bit coarse here.

"I want to build something that goes beyond NASA's Curiosity."

Ain't nobody stopping you--build the thing. Metal doesn't care whether its machinist is a doctorate or a dullard, it responds the same way to the bite of a tool.

"However, the field fascinates me. It's getting to the point where I'm reading papers on the subject in my spare time."

There's a world of difference between being fascinated/lusting after something, and actually taking steps that will culminate in the achievement of goals. Idly reading papers and things is well and good, but you need to start actually designing things, hacking on little projects, and doing something other than intellectual voyeurism. Real artists ship, my friend, and do so without thought of whether they are qualified to do so or not.

To your beginning point, near any technical field nowadays was started by academics--and that doesn't matter a hoot in hell. The biggest advances in electronics and power generation were made by people screwing around in their free time (Edison, Marconi, etc.). The best driving work in video games was done by people that never finished college (Carmack).

Get out there and do something, credentials be damned!

At the end of the day, most successful companies are started and staffed by a bunch of people whose works finally caught up with their promises.
If they picked 32 words in a book and gave them an alternative word to swap with they can uniquely identify about 4 billion books. That's not much work/not very difficult to uniquely identify and control for quality.

Of course the only payoff is that pirates now need 2+ copies of the book so that they can't be identified. You can push it harder and identify more words to get the pirate to buy more books but the return (in books bought) becomes much much worse and identifying them becomes more infeasible.
I haven't looked at ARMv8 in depth but I doubt it's a "from the ground up" architecture, let alone one specifically for servers. I'm pretty sure that ARMv8 is a microarchitecture anyway, which means it's probably stuck with a ton of the same (or incrementally improved) IP cores except for the critical peripherals (memory manager, cache, etc). The flexibility that ARM has because of the speed of their microarchitecture iteration process is fantastic but I don't think it's enough to compete with Intel's x86/64 architecture (and Xeon microarchitecture).

I agree that Intels are overgrown for simple stuff like that but there's no other option. You either make the general commodity cheap or increase the cost across the board for specialized designs. The question is though, until ARM chips are as hefty as Intel's, is this legacy overhead from personal computing enough to wipe out Intel's advantage over ARM longterm? I.e., if ARM can't get yields as good as Intel's (which means that ARM's silicon chips have to be smaller in physical size), this lack of overhead might be outweighed by the overhead of communicating between more processors or running more operating systems per [whatever] of computing power.
SoGoodx -crowdsourcing for social good. The mission is to get everyone involved.
API Economy : The Giant Has Awakened
> Is memorizing the list of "professional-grade"
> hardware that works with Linux -- or perhaps just
> the list of exceptions if that's the smaller list
> -- worth my time as a professional?

Why the focus on 'memorizing?' When you research the best appliance to buy, do you complain that you had to memorize the specs of (e.g.) different refrigerators? Or do you just do research/comparisons, buy the thing, and promptly drop all of that from memory?
While I use backtrack frequently I found the pwnipi distribution to be lacking in many things and actually ditched it to complete this project. Perhaps I'll revisit that distro again when it becomes better.
Salvatore, the author, is the lead developer on redis, very interesting perspective on a visit to SF from Europe for a person that is globally connected.

He met up with a good crowd one night: http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Redis-Meetup/events/1231...
I first read about it in an old Tom Clancy novel.

A short bit of googling led me to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap

So the technique was well known by 1987, which certainly qualifies as typewriter days. Apparently it was used in fiction as early as 1972.
This was an interesting take, too bad it got drowned out.
Persuading David Simon (Pinboard Blog)
I remember installing Windows Something (server 2003? can't recall) and the EULA was presented in a box four lines high, and progressing past that activated the license. I found the EULA later on and it was a 5000-word job. Yes, you were 'expected' to read 5000 words in a box 4 lines high. Sucks to be you if you need to cross-reference.
Does the fact that they're contractors and not employees absolve the contractee of some/any liability/culpability? Perhaps, further, even recursively as the contractors themselves wouldn't be able to discuss the contractee's business to the extent a direct employee could?

It does seem absurd if there isn't politico-judicial rationale.
It's worth noting that, with "gov on gov spying", identifying enemy agents isn't all that easy and effectively requires well... a surveillance state spying on its own citizens.
When I was shopping for apartments before my Masters program, NYU charged more for dorms than many available apartments in South Village.
The way that I understand it, a lot of the propaganda that the Chinese see in the media is known to be propaganda (i.e. it's not fooling anyone). Why would this be any different?
If you want to go exploring the rabbit hole regarding spying on diplomatic communications, read about Crypto AG: http://rense.com/politics2/crypto.htm

That drunk Swiss guy that Snowden knew about may be some distant echo of this exploit.
> would-be pirates could just use a non-traceable method of payment when acquiring these eBooks.

what? since when do digital 'pirates' pay for ebooks?
What's the point of assigning an address to every node on the Internet if you can't connect to these addresses.

The advantage of IPv6 is that any computer can act as a server again. NAT makes it unnecessarily difficult to build simple peer to peer applications such as for telephony, remote access or file transfer.
Yeah, I totally get why someone would go to the Bay Area. For me there were some particular reasons to stay in Houston. (1) I didn't want to leave my girlfriend behind; she couldn't have easily followed me if I had left at the time. (2) I really like the company I work for; amazing people, unique problems.

I lucked out in this regard; the biggest problem with Houston for developers is not the weather but finding a cool place to work. :P It's really a city for chemical engineers, not software engineers.

A lot of people here end up at Schlumberger or doing contracting for the oil and gas industry, which is decidedly not sexy. But it can pay well--there's an unfathomable amount of money flowing through the oil companies here. Not my cup of tea though.
This would have been an excellent comment if you had just left off the last sentence.
Copyright in most cases and most places is still a civil matter, so the standard in many places would be more like "balance of probabilities" rather than "beyond reasonable doubt".

In other words, if your personally marked copy of a work was found floating around on the Internet and you got sued for copyright infringement, you'd probably have to convince the court that it was more likely that someone had stolen the work from you and redistributed it than that you had redistributed it in some other way yourself.

This isn't a completely safe position even then, because if someone has suffered substantial damages as a result of the work being distributed (and copyright law is infamous for inflated claims of damage caused by infringement) and you have potentially already admitted to being negligent in protecting your copy of the work then you might just find yourself jumping from the frying pan to the fire.
I was looking for more of a list of topics it omits that are absolutely required to implement a functioning processor. A sufficiently simple little register-based RISC CPU with memory-mapped IO, no interrupts, no caches or TLBs, and so on is a functioning (if gimped) computer.
I'm not an Android user, so I'm curious: what's so bad about the Facebook app?
He could be forgiven for not understanding what a formal declaration of war is, because the US hasn't issued such a declaration for the better part of a century.

That hasn't stopped us from starting or entering numerous wars, of course... they're just "undeclared." Cuts down on the paperwork, dontchaknow.
Italian startups flock to Berlin
Marc Maron on Patent Trolls: “What Was Your Relationship With Your Father Like?"
Not to mention they missed the whole subprime mortage crisis and never questioned the weapons of mass destruction ruse for invading Iraq.
If you want to find some DVD's that won't play due to scratches then I recommend that you borrow some children's DVD's from your local library.
OK, to clarify, this is a cool book/course. I don't mean to disparage the author, they've done an excellent job condensing a large body of material. However:

The title is very ambitious. This is not really building a computer from first principles, there are some steps skipped. This is a high-level overview of modern computers, it's worth noting there's a lot of depth to be explored.

Everyone agrees custom languages are not great. They don't really give you a lot of transferable skills, it would be cool if you really implemented C or Lisp, and did it in Verilog or VHDL.

This style of course may suit a particular type of student, who enjoys a broad overview or wants to specialize in only one area. Personally my preferred way to learn is in depth, serially, so this doesn't really apply to me. My degree also covered most of these topics anyways, so picking wasn't really a problem. I realize this doesn't apply to everyone.

A lot of comments say 'a motivated student will just learn that on their own'. This material is a good jumping off point, but (once again, in my experience) the theory is the hardest stuff to learn on your own. I would rather do the 'dull' stuff in class, then teach myself how to make games out of it (as opposed to being taught how to make games, and having to learn best practices, design techniques, theory).

Some commenters were also saying that this is unique, or it should be taught everywhere. It is unique in that it's a single, very dense class, but the material is definitely available elsewhere, in a format that I find easier to learn from. I wanted to make it clear that, if this is interesting, I think a computer engineering degree will let you learn the same stuff, but in much greater detail. Taking this class first might motivate some people, but I would find it redundant.

In conclusion, this is great, but it's not for everyone. If you like all the content but you're disappointed by how brief it seems, try computer engineering.

edit: I forgot, a lot of comments implied that understanding this material helped them do higher level programming. It's certainly cool to have a soup-to-nuts knowledge, but I still don't really understand how it could help without the topics that actually impact performance like caching, pipelining, I/O, etc.
Well, I stand corrected. My point was that not-so-long-ago, such a thing would be unheard of. Seems not-so-long-ago would be prior to that 2008 speech. It's worth noting that what he said in his campaign speech, and what he does in office are two different things. That said, it even being in his speech would probably bump it out of conspiracy theory territory.
There are actually a lot of kids, and people with average jobs in SF. They just aren't white so tech people don't notice them.

This, 1000x this.
There's a experimental one: <http://www.tslimi.tk/myblog/admin/write/>
SAS is huge in financial services. I have come across it quite a bit. I have statistics knowledge, but not programming skills really. I know of many jobs requiring SAS. I have never seen a HTML programming job listing. R is mostly used in academia. I do not know of anyone in the private sector using it.
off topic. who knew usa today has such a nice website?
Interesting. I see you analogy. I read that assuming you meant the next Hollywood in the sense that its the nexus of where people move to make it big and be cool in their industry, regardless of futility. Funny how it can be read both ways.
I'm a bit late to this, but I'll give you my experience. It echoes what others have said to some extent.

In every instance I've applied for a job, it began with my casually (but assertively) stating interest. Here is the process I go through (you could call it my job hunting "workflow"):

1. I read about an interesting company or meet/talk to someone with connections to an interesting company.

2. I learn what I can about them, researching for a few hours, deciding if I'd enjoy it (on a cursory level).

3. I contact people with decision making ability and politely but assertively state my interest. Note - I don't send a resume (you can, I don't).

4. Most cases, I've gotten through an entire hiring process without being asked for a resume. If they happen to ask, it generally suffices to show them my portfolio of prior work. This is in fact as simple as linking the list of projects I've authored on my blog with corresponding code.

5. Technical interview(s). Negotiation. Wrap up. Bam, you're done.

I highly, highly suggest you read patio11's "Don't Call Yourself a Programmer"[1] and "Salary Negotiation"[2]. No, really, read both. Absorb every kernel of knowledge.

The importance of a resume is grossly overestimated, as is the importance of a transcript. Don't show a piece of paper, show the knowledge that your education provided you with. Connections are important, and will field you the most significant leads in finding a job.

[1]: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

[2]: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
Bloomberg Plan Aims to Require Food Composting
State terrorism
A tor hidden service with ssh is a great way to set up a reverse tunnel:

https://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services.html.en
LA still is where you want to be to make movies or TV shows.
> Microsoft have similar rules to Apple for their Windows Phone Store.

Only because Microsoft learnt from Apple's success and have moved away from their earlier open Windows model to their new Apple like closed Windows model.
The most impressive video you'll see today, "In The Eye Of The Storm".
Which is funny, because I thought mandatory access controls was the key feature that the NSA added in SELinux.
Right. I have my email address posted there, but I suppose it is not prominent enough.
| Perhaps even more important to note
| "before 9/11."

To me, at least, that's basically how I read "before the PATRIOT Act." I looked it up and the PATRIOT Act was signed into law on 2001-10-26; for some reason I thought that it was quickly pushed through a day or two after 9/11.
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I live in the Village. NYU charges above-market prices per sq.ft. compared to Craig's List room rates. They can, because parents are willing to pay for the security of a school dorm vs. a random building with random roommates in the big city.
Don't forget to put vegetarians options for food, and clearly mention that is is vegetarian.
A native Chinese is in :-)

It is always tough for new graduates to find a good job in recent years. Given the housing cost got really high in big cities like Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou, there is a so called "flee-away-from-tier-1-cities-campaign" word made up by new graduates.

When I graduated a decade ago, there are a lot of proud new graduates whom sincerely believed that they have a bright future ahead. But nowadays, most young people seems not thinking so anymore.

It is difficult to change your social status by education and hard-working. That is something really bad and it is more than faltering economy of this year, it is about the meta-rules of how society running. Most of the traditional Chinese dynasties failed because same kind of problems.
DRM where I can still email my favorite books to friends. I support this.
Work for 15+ years in high-performance computing, have 3+ references, and give a nice but concise (45-minute) technical presentation.

That's how I got a job at a national lab, after being a college dropout, but self-taught and still motivated. Once you get in, Ph.D. or other labels matter less than results.
Agreed, remember a story, but can't place it. The technical term for this apparently is a "Canary trap" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap
The very first element of the chain of distribution still has to acquire the original somehow.
If offer content in a way cheaper for you, and better for me then you might increase your revenue.

Our family buys DVD's and watch them.

DVD's are a pretty costly way to sell movies. Retailers take a big slice. You have to create packaging, deal with inventory, distribution costs etc.
isn't there some other mortgadge provider that people could use? competition is usually the way to stop this sort of problem.
That is a pretty naive point of view.

I think the exact opposite of what you posit is closer to the truth of things -- a more carefully planned economy would have resulted in better conditions. If China was straight up laissez faire capitalistic economy it would be a total mess right now.

Read Albert Einstein's take on this, http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism for why and how (long read, but I promise it's worth it).
As an alternative data point to some of the answers, everywhere I've worked looked at resumes and did not really consider cover letters. I believe this is also the case at Google and most Wall Street tech jobs.
Cover letters are the most important part of getting an interview. If you can find the right balance of assertive, interesting and enthusiastic, you're almost guaranteed a response at the minimum.

By contrast, resumes are spam. I've gone through most hiring processes on my cover letter (and tech interview of course) alone, without ever being asked for a resume.
>> What I am sure of is that a system that is less complex and easier to use is better engineering.

I agree. I think this is what made the success of very popular libraries (such as Jquery), but also protocols like email and the web.

I've been trying very hard to use Ember on a couple small projects, and I found it very hard not to get frustrated by how difficult it is to execute some trivial tasks.

Part of the problem, I believe, is the way I learn. I usually read a quick tutorial, hack a little bit, read a bit more, hack more, read the full documentation, hack a real project (and getting into the wire of the API at this point). It's a bit oversimplified, but I believe you get the picture.

However, with Ember, it seems to me like it's hard to get started and running without having a full understanding of the full system and how everything fits together.

So yeah, in the end, maybe if you know every part of Ember and how it intrinsically work, then that's an awesome framework to work with. But for the others, like me, who learn in a more spiral-ish way, I think Ember makes it very hard to get shit done and appreciate the value of the framework.

And please, don't get me wrong, I admire programmers who can read the full documentation first.. A good analogy might be the manual (man) on Linux. I know people say RTFM all the time. But for me, it's really more about googling non-stop to get a feeling on the quickest solution for my problem.

I guess it's just a different way to learn and approaches solutions to problem. I know a couple excellent programmers who would just go reading the man and figure everything by themselves.

That being said, not sure why you're being so aggressive in your statements.. I feel you had very valid arguments but these are totally buried under this arrogance.
| requires

It doesn't require anything. The government didn't need Big Brother powers to play the spy game during the Cold War.