skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think in terms of UX, iOS 7 will be a win. But in terms of graphical design I think it's much less successful.

Ive may be a master of industrial design and user interaction, but it's looking like that mastery doesn’t translate to graphic/user interface design.
Have you seen the spin the mainstream media is putting on this issue?

It's sickening.

If the issue is covered (earlier, CNN felt it necessary to talk about oversized rubber-duckies and some phenomenon called 'crazy ants' instead), coverage NEVER questions the existence of the surveillance itself. Instead, the WAY the government handles the surveillance is questioned (contracting it out, etc).

So, yes, in a perfect world, people would see this news and question it, where 'it' is the existence of such egregious surveillance measures.

Unfortunately, the majority of Americans aren't that thorough in their thinking, and instead will ponder the questions the mainstream media feeds them.

And these questions just so happen to be pure bullshit.
"Paul may just have alienated a large chunk of the millennial base he has been trying to reach out to with his latest “fetal personhood” legislation, the Life at Conception Act, which would fully outlaw abortion in the United States."

http://www.policymic.com/articles/30223/rand-paul-abortion-b...
The Losers of WWDC
I don't get why it's even a big deal to "live off bitcoin". Locally, it's quite easy to find restaurants and bars that take bitcoin. You can find an online merchant somewhere in the US / World that sells the other goods you need. And for the stuff you absolutely cannot find, just post on craigslist and buy it overpriced locally from some hacker who wants to make a profit at your expense.

pretty dumb
It’s Not About Your Cat Photos
And this is where an free and independent press comes in, ideally one not beholden to the institutions, government or corporate, on which it reports.
It's peculiar that you cite Ioannidis's work as having "proven" your utterly defeatist position. Your point is that there's no way anything could be learned with nutrition studies, his point is that there's very much a correct way to learn things with nutrition studies and a method for evaluating the quality of such studies to make sure they're doing it right.

He doesn't advocate that we give up, crawl into the fetal position, and stop trying to understand the world any more than any of the other popular statistics skeptics do.
7 months later: He votes to retroactively grant immunity for warrantless wiretaps (among other provisions).

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/110-2008/s168
For one thing, it's the only interesting thing that has happened in American politics since... Watergate, maybe?

Second, if the resolution doesn't go far enough to restore confidence in US cloud and telecom technology companies, it could have a large effect on the tech economy.

Third, the only practical solution may to adopt real security measures: End-to-end strong encryption. Encrypted storage. Audited open source systems.
Amazon RDS Price Reduction - On-Demand and Reserved
Could Jeff Bezos please state whether the government has access to spy on EC2?
All I see is some thing that looks like a cross between the monolith from '2001' and an ashtray from the local Greyhound station. Clicking all over the page doesn't do anything (FF 20.0 on Windows 7 x64).

Guess I'm not in the target audience for whatever it is...
Really? I have yet to see many restaurants that accept bitcoin, especially in Provo, Utah.
I agree that we need radical transparency in government, but I think this goes too far.

First, we have to recognize that these are still people, and people do not function well with zero privacy (which is part of the problem here).

Second, any information the government keeps about me should be kept secret from others (though I should be able to pull - and contest - it, potentially with a time delay if I am being investigated).

However, we really do need to open things up. Secret programs in particular are fundamentally broken in a democracy - supposedly, our elected officials have oversight; but we have no means of assessing how good of a job they are doing in that capacity.
I love my NanoWatch to pieces, and eagerly await any company that can make something better. But it's not really something I see fitting into the Apple way.
Rather pretty, but I see two big problems. First, http://validator.w3.org/ points out some coding errors. Markup that doesn't validate can have unpredictable behavior. Second, the flower.jpg that you use as a background image is over a megabyte in size. I'm sure you can easily compress this further, especially as you scale it down anyway. This causes a large and entirely unnecessary delay in your initial page load.
I've been running the beta 1's since iOS4, and while they can be glitchy, buggy, and crashy, the UI is never really incomplete.

If Apple substantially changes the designs (iconography included) between now and shipping, it would make for a first.

I feel similarly to the author. Overall I like the design and think it's a much-needed step forward for the OS, but the iconography is distracting. The removal of any kind of affordance in the slide-to-action bars is also a step back.

There are lots of places in the OS where I'd expect, under normal circumstances, some pretty substantial redesign, but Apple has never been known to overhaul their designs significantly between beta and release.
Cipolla's Before the Industrial Revolution (again).
He worked as a "technical assistant" for the CIA. He probably picked up a few tricks during his tenure but he didn't go through the clandestine service trainee program, which are the people you're thinking of when you think of spooky CIA types.
Hah, I just mused on Twitter about how it would effect Apptopia! Great to hear.
Is "bankrupting the U.S." his end game or a part of his strategy? Because as far as end games go, it's a pretty dumb goal.

The war in Iraq (and even the eventual occupation of Afghanistan) are far, far more costly to the American taxpayer than an NSA data center and staff.

But either way, if bankrupting the U.S. is what OBL wanted then his soul should hope that AQ digs deeper: Even WWII couldn't bankrupt America.
Google clearly got fucked the hardest, but I still highly doubt anyone is about to jump ship from google maps to apple maps.
I guess what I'm asking is say I have a device that can generate a stream of numbers, integers, nothing fancy.

I want random integers with no limit to the size returned, a truly random number and by that I mean a true random integer without any limitation in size.

Really I guess I'm trying to grasp how a true random anything could exist or more to the point how a person could make a device or even be able to know if a random number or anything has been returned as a result.
> I can't stop the local government from looking at my data if it wants to. I can stop the US government from looking at it.

I doubt that.

US government intelligence gathering within the US is being reported on right now and controversial because their are strong expectations and at least some legal restrictions that suggest that such surveillance is exceptional.

But if you think keeping your data overseas means that the foreign intelligence gathering apparatus of the US government isn't going to get at it, then you may have failed to think things through clearly.
Substance? You think Mitt Romney had substance?
More importantly, it mean we just have one more person saying "trust us" - we have no means of telling how good a job they're doing in any secret oversight role. I'm sure your congressperson is fantastic, but the notion that congress broadly will reliably serve our interests over those of potential donors with more access is far fetched.
For one, globular clusters orbit galaxies. They are found in galactic halos.

If a globular cluster got flung away from its parent galaxy, I suppose that it might raise the question of whether it could be classified as a galaxy in its own right.

EDIT: On further reflection on the posted article, though, I'd have to say not. I think the absence of a dark matter halo and a central black hole would disqualify it from being considered a galaxy. These things are, presumably, important clues as to the formation process for galaxies.
Ask HN: Why for APPL/MSFT/FB/GOOG/AT&T it is okay us and not NSA?
The fact the NSA or any other governmental institution will have data about us which is stored and processed on those companies' data centers only means that there is a 3rd party which is the the government that they share this data with.

But I wonder why it is okay for them to store this data in the first place?

Why is it okay for them to share this data with 3rd parties - such as for ads and sales promotions?

In other words, with or without the NSA the current state of affair is a total mix of chaos and anarchy. Everyone is doing whatever they want, and collecting whichever piece of information they want about us, including locations, likes, page visits, etc. all over the "apps ecosystem" even key-logger were found in all smartphones.

Take a your mother's smartphone, which is set to the default privacy, and loaded with top 25 "social" apps, and sniff its communication for about an hour or two, and you will be shocked how much data this device sends out without having the owner typing anything or searching anything.

This is all well known, and yet, widely acceptable by the public, they all "check-in" restaurants, bars and shoe-stores, instargramming and facebooking all day, and all are fine with it.

So I think, if you are okay that your personal life activity will be "map-redcuced" for shopping recommendations, it should not bother you that much if it will be "map-redcuced" at the same time for the sake of "national security".

Either take the RMS way of avoiding cloud and social apps at all - or join the game, but be aware of the facts.
Retiring but I hope not disappearing since it would be a shame to lose all that momentum to inspire kids, or anyone.
If we collect enough signatures, he'll have to revisit if he wants to retain any credibility. Of course, "enough signatures" might well be upwards of 300 million...
The correct response is, "This isn't surprise. This is anger."
Ask HN: What are some good books on graph theory in software dev?
Hi,
I am a self taught programmer and I have as of late stumbled upon graph theory as a mathematical component for abstracting problems and finding easy solutions. Keen on applying what I learnt to my profession(programming), I set out on learning its applications in computer programming/software architecture. My CS friends have recommended a couple of their textbooks but they seem pretty bland. I was wondering if the HN community would be able to provide me with a good source for learning graph theory's application to programming.
Timelapse of a supercell near Booker, Texas
Note that the (in the beta at least) the auto-update feature can be turned off in the Settings\General\Background App Refresh page
>> 1. What books are you currently reading?

Well, I'm one of those people who has a bookmark in about 15 different books that I'm "currently reading" but some are higher priorities than others, and some will never be finished (probably) and others I'll have to start over since I've forgotten what was happening when I sat it aside, etc. But offhand, I can think of:

Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore - re-reading this one

The Prime Solution - Jeff Thull - 3rd Jeff Thull book on selling that I've read lately, and I'll probably reread the entire series when I finish this one

The New Solution Selling - re-reading this - can you tell I'm starting to try and move into sales?

Selling to VITO - more sales stuff.

How to Create A Mind - Ray Kurzweil

Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter - set this aside over a year ago; about halfway through, will probably finish it, but FSM only knows when

A New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram (see above about GEB)

Madame Bovary - Meh. May finish one day, may not. Would have to start it over at this point.

REAMDE - Neal Stephenson - set this aside a while back, but intend to finish it eventually. Will probably restart from the beginning.

The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Stephen Gary Blank - I'm kinda in a perpetual state of reading and re-reading sections of this book.

The Dispossessed - Ursula K. LeGuin - sat this aside quite some time ago, will have to start over at some point.

The Man In The Moss - Phil Rickman - another one that I sat aside for a while, and may or may not ever bother finishing. Weird, because I usually really enjoy Rickman's work and just tear through his books, but I got stalled out on this one for some reason.

>> 2. Which book has helped you the most?

The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Stephen Gary Blank.

Also, The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki and Crossing the Chasm by Moore.

Of all these sales books I've read lately, I'm really starting to buy into this "Diagnostic Selling" stuff by Jeff Thull, so I'd endorse Mastering The Complex Sale, Exceptional Selling and The Prime Solution by Thull. Also, The New Solution Selling.
I'm on this Buckminster Fuller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller#Bibliography kick lately. Reading everything of his that I can get my hands on. Pretty insightful and prescient stuff considering he died 30 years ago.

His insights from the 1930-70s seem to apply more to the world we live in today than the way things were in his time.
Or so they're telling us.

Not that I disbelieve on this count, but who was doing just what in the CIA seems like something we don't tend to know with certainty.
I'm currently reading these books:

1. Journey through Genius

2. Principles of Uncertainty by Kadane

3. The Golden Ticketprint
>coverage NEVER questions the existence of the surveillance itself. Instead, the WAY the government handles the surveillance is questioned (contracting it out, etc).

So true. I saw a headline today that read "Booz Allen contracts in jeapoardy after NSA leak?" and I thought really? that's what's what we should be asking for?

Well at least in my family the dialogue has been: wow, what a young, smart, brave guy.
Why is 3D printing such a powerful way to make solid objects?
Very cool, thanks for sharing the source, too! What's future plans with this app, if at all any?
Apps Don't Flatter Mobile Devices
The real losers are anybody who has to use the new "flat design"
Dude, I can't even get my computer program to not crash on malformed MP3 files, and the computer program + computer does exactly what I tell it to do.

There's no way to get a legal code that is both very exact and useful in the face of humans who have to implement it.

And even if we could, I don't think revising it every n years is good policy. We should change the law when it's broken, but more importantly changes to the law must necessarily lag several election cycles behind the needs and expectations of society. A court can actually make the change quicker if need be.
"... to high bandwidth data acquisition tools...."

I see what you did there.
You have a funny definition of "none of these issues existed in the old style Windows system" when MS was known to not just one-up third-party apps with built-ins, but to do so without actually ever producing said software (vaporware).
I can see my view is already unpopular but you asked a fair question. It's several key pieces of logic jammed together on one line. That's not the part that bugs me though, it's wondering how this is going to play out. I can imagine multiple threads servicing the Lambda stuff and it reminds me of trying to debug Camel code hopping around debug screens trying to stay up with all the async stuff going on just to find a simple bug. Maybe ... maybe I'm wrong ... I could be, I don't think I am but it's going to have to be more deterministic than what I'm afraid it will turn out to be.
The entire frontpage was Aaron Swartz links when he died earlier this year.
All these stories seem to be a journalism ploy to rekindle readership.
>I'M MAD AS HELL...AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!!

I understand your anger.... and i am curious: what actions are you planning to take?
Missing from this timeline is the insidious shift of surveillance power from formal state security to far shadier private contractors.

The most damning fact to my mind is that, outside a very small circle, details of NSA spying are "too sensitive" to share with anyone in Congress. Meanwhile, nearly half of Booz Allen Hamilton's 25,000 employees have Top Secret clearances.
"I don't know in what twisted stretch of the imagination someone can consider Snowden a traitor, unless he is blatantly lying."

So you couldn't imagine X would be true about Y unless Y did something that many people do all the time?
What the hell is wrong with you? The 'if it were android' bit just shows how completely Apple has made us expect the web to not be open. The whole fucking point of web standards is that it doesn't matter what you browse from - if they were conformed to. But no, apple violates them every which way (and gets praised for not being the shittastic company it is to boot) and fucktards like you just accept that 'sure, apple doesn't have to write standards-complient code which will work on competing devices'.
People like you are directly responsible for the horrible state of the web. Every time you make a comment like this you undermine the openness of the web and further catapult us towards the dictator-state where Apple creates concentration camps for open-source software developers and, eventually, users. Do you use any open source software? SInce you have an ipad, probably not. You probably shouldn't even be on this website considering it's "hacker news", not "hipster fuckhead who has a shiny but useless tablet that leads to the fall of all hackers news". People like you are the reason I'm considering leaving this site.
Out of curiosity, I signed up for a daily weather text from a Show HN a couple months ago. I love their imaginative texts.

But I want a friend to sign up and have no recollection of what service it is. I'm guessing not this one as this says it doesn't get sent on weekends. Ideas?
Yeah, that's like design 101. One thing I really like about the default Android UI is that it's mainly black/gray with blue, which makes it easy on the eyes and nice to look at in various environments (at night, for example).

I was actually really looking forward to iOS 7. I'm currently on an old feature phone and I haven't quite decided between iOS or Android. I've messed around with an old Galaxy S 4G and an iPad 2, and after seeing iOS 7 I think I'm definitely leaning towards getting an Android based phone.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Whangamomona
Please take all my upvotes. This is the first useful article I've seen about PRISM, with the _possible_ exception of the scoop itself, but not excluding the existing analysis from the Guardian and WaPo.

For $20M, you can't do what Prism claims to do for $20M. Even suppose you limited your scope only to Google, AND now you limit only to GMail, AND your development and installation costs are free, and all you're spending on is bandwidth and servers and cooling and maintenance staff, I still doubt you can read all of GMail for $20M/year.

Then there's the bit where they claim that analysts, what's the phrasing, "quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type". Seriously, think for a second what it would mean to be able to do that. Think of how that would work, in terms of network protocols. Now go install wireshark and open a gmail window and start composing an email, or writing half of a chat (without hitting Enter). I haven't done the experiment; maybe you can be the first and break a scoop!

Obviously the people who reported on PRISM have told some lies about what it does. Either it can't do what they say it does, or it cost a lot more than $20M, or both.

(I don't want to minimize the seriousness of the accusations... they should be given due appraisal. But they basically cannot be literally true as written.)

And look. Google gets about 100 "requests" (legal demands) from government per working day, and responds (under legal duress) about 30 per working day in the US alone. You think maybe some kind of workflow management software might be appropriate here, or you're imagining this all goes back and forth over email? Or maybe you're imagining an anonymous FTP server somewhere? Obviously the right thing to do is build a secure custom ticket-tracking system, to manage demands, push-back, authorization, fulfillment, etc. If we want to believe it's all okay, here's a plausible story. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not.
Steal your source code? Examples please... maybe you mean steal designs? I won't argue that one.
immaterial. He said "too boring to get support". Presumably he meant "too boring to get [across the board] support [from citizens of all walks in the nation]". I say this, as a supporter of the EFF.
How are these companies losers? They still have their product and their current user base; if they couldn't stand a little competition, then they weren't meant to last anyway.
It's not clear which color is enabled versus disabled. Huge mistake.
A woman next to me on the plane yesterday was reading that. I vaguely recall reading it (or at least being assigned to read it) in 11th grade, but I can't remember a damn thing about it now. Is it any good?
Are there ways to randomize IMEIs on startup the same way you can with MAC addresses, and still have the phone be usable on:

(1) Cell networks
(2) Wifi networks
Pandora as a standalone company is worthless. Whatever profits they make will be taken from them by the record companies. However, as part of another major internet advertising company (Facebook, Google, etc.) Pandora's product is interesting. That opens the door to audio retargeting ads, and other decent ad intelligence. So long as Pandora is an independent company, they will never make a profit, but they will always be an acquisition target, so that is why I don't short their stock.
Thanks. I'm not being snarky or anything either. Just genuinely curious and would like to learn more on the topic. That said, I just looked at your first source and it doesn't support the conclusion that the DHS is exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act. It says that the US Coast Guard is exempt, and that the US Coast Guard operates under the DHS. But it does not follow from those statements that the DHS is exempt.
A weather app is really a 3-hour project; a rudimentary exercise in retrieving and parsing some kind of structured data. To say that any part of this supposed app was "hard work" is disingenuous. Furthermore, the concept of photorealistic animations for weather isn't new, so really this person added nothing of value to the Apple ecosystem. And, wouldn't you know it, the App Store rejected this weather app for exactly that reason!

That's not to say that there aren't instances where this has happened to devs, but I feel like your indignation is a bit wasted on an app this inconsequential.
Picture of a nuclear explosion 1 millisecond after exploding
wait a few months.
Doesn't this actually destroy bitcoins (of which there will only ever be a finite amount)
Manning's own statements to Lamo that the Army put him up for an award for his counterintelligence work which was used to identify and 'break up' insurgent cells.
I can't believe everyone is going negative about this. In my opinion, the skeuomorphic aspects of IOS (and OSX) are among the biggest technology related annoyances I experience in 2013.

Imagine if Google Voice appeared as an antique telephone in the lower corner of the gMail app, and if each message was displayed as an envelope addressed with comic sans.

Flat design is simply, objectively better. The version shown today will likely evolve subtlety as Apple puts its unique stamp on flat.
The Most Awesome Feature in iOS 7