skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hastily-transcribed transcript for those who can't watch the video:

Q "NSA and PRISM - what's the sentiment in the valley?"

A "Maybe this is indicative of the fact that I live in New York; that I've never really been part of that herd. We are as citizens I think really upset, really frustrated because we have an expectation that whether it is our private property offline or online, that it will be respected, and that's what the Fourth Amendment protects. And needless to say it was rather disappointing to see all this news come out and apparently much more on the way."

Q "You're building a startup that could become the next Reddit or Facebook: At what point do you say, 'I think I got to get a Lawyer?'"

A "Yeah it will certainly come up a lot sooner for founders and founders who were maybe thinking, 'move fast and break things' will now think 'move fast and break things but don't break the constitution.' And this is an opportunity for us as citizens to start to draw a line in the sand for what is off-limits and private in the digital age."

Q "If the government asked you for information, what information could you give them?"

A "Well there really isn't any. When people use reddit as a platform to publicly share links and publicly have discussions. So the primary use of the site is that is in public so there really isn't a ton of useful data there."

Q "What advice do you give these young folks who are building these companies and this is becoming a reality?"

A "There's my investor hat, my founder hat, and my citizen hat - and that citizen hat trumps everything else. And I want to make sure that the environment we are starting companies in has a government that respects the our right to privacy so that these kinds of discussions going forward aren't even a factor or an issue and I think the ability for us to use this technology has sort of outpaced - unfortunately - some of our legislator's understanding of what kind of laws they should be writing. Whether it's making sure our elected officials understand the internet and understand technology is just as important though as making sure we get more of these people who inherently and innately understand this technology into office. I think the other interesting thing is more and more founders are really rallying behind companies now that are themselves built on a model of respecting privacy. One that I know rather well is called duckdduckgo and it's a venture backed by USV here in New York - a search engine competitor to google and their core business proposition is 'we don't track anything you search for on our site.' And so I imagine more startups to kind of take that lead."
In Kim Stanley Robinson's 1993 sf novel "Red Mars" a member of the first Mars colonization mission also works for news agencies back on Earth and wears "camera glasses". I forget the exact arc of the subplot but as I recall they resign and refuse to wear the 'glasses' anymore because they were ostracized by the rest of the crew.
Why We Play This Crazy Game Of Poker
> Win98 machine

That's another issue. I still have no clue what (outdated) OS/software are used in labs. I've heard so many things (that usually point to older stuff) that I can't say what dominates. Hints?

P.S.: At least they don't use COBOL. :)
Ruby + Rails because reinventing the wheel is painful and risky.
We have a political system in which the only way to win is to destroy your opposition, discredit them, shame them, find hidden dirt and upstage them in media clips. The ignorant voting masses are manipulated daily by our partisan media (all sides) and they mindlessly vote across party lines as they are told.

If any of you were living in this political jungle you would have to resort to the same tactics in order to get anywhere and climb the ladders. You would engage in the kinds of analytics and optimizations that would lead you to quickly conclude that the issues don't matter as much as showing the ignorant masses --who's support you need-- how righteous you are against the other side, no matter which side of the isle you inhabit.

That is the problem with the devolution of our political system. It's not about issues. It's not about rational consideration of mutually beneficial ideas. It's not about long term planning. It's not about fiscally sound policy. It's not about stopping to fuck with the rest of the world to focus on our internal needs. No, it's about the next six months, year, two or four years and the elections we have to win for the party. It's bullshit and it is exactly what is sinking this great nation.

Regrettably, this mess has also created a positive feedback loop that, with every passing moment, makes the problem worst. This is what scares me about where we have been, where we are and where we are going. I am far from a political strategist, but I don't see this self-correcting until we suffer a truly catastrophic set of failures that cause people to wake up to the realities of what we have created.

It's like the three hundred pound overweight man who can't stop eating until he gets to 600 pounds and then has a revelation. How do you get from 300 to 600 pounds and not realize you are killing yourself? How do you keep making the same flawed decisions? One pizza slice at a time. One lie at a time. One excuse at a time. Looking the other way a million little times. Ignoring the need for the "fiscal balance" of food intake, exercise and caloric needs. Talking about fixing it and not really doing anything about it. Put another way: Death by a thousand cuts.

As a country we are probably well past the analogy of a 600 pound man who is dangerously overweight. We are on our way to 1200 pounds. The problem is the feedback loop. Nothing can stop it until the machine breaks. Or so it seems.
Good to hear the positive plans currently. It's hard to separate the image of CenturyLink away from a small and agile customer-focused PaaS provider. Hopefully the benefit they provide to you is financial and infrastructure and not in corporate bureaucracy, shitty service and worse customer service that CenturyLink excels at currently.
I certainly enjoy reading it. I've always found his articles insightful and well-reasoned, and if I happen to learn a new word or two in the process then all the better.

Generally when I read something and judge it to be pretentious, it's because the author is using words that are out of his/her depth, in an attempt to impress the reader. When Jerry writes I get the impression he's choosing his words carefully and with equal intent to entertain and to inform.
Why just the Dems? I dislike both parties but find myself hating Republicans a little less than Democrats -- mostly for fiscal reasons. I've got to believe there are similar people in both parties that are fed-up with what the government has become.

If you ask me, both parties need 'agents' like you're talking about. People that are rational and don't party-line vote. Take each issue into consideration. Dragging the leftists/rightists to the middle to actually discuss items in a civil manner -- total consideration for the citizens that elected their asses.

I fear this country is toast within 50 years if we can't get away from bipartisanship and party line votes.

-Frustrated
Since we're quoting Franklin, this one is also relevant:

(...) I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.
Hiring a freelance website designer can work well if you know what you like and have a tightly scoped plan. I assume you just want something that doesn't look bad as opposed to something awesome, because awesome is very expensive.

I like to use the template method. Give the designer 2 - 3 generic wire-frames that mirror your site's major "views" or function. Also request a generic template for 'leaf' or low level pages to use in the future for new content pages. Deliverables should be valid PNG/HTML/CSS/js files. Next map these new templates to the various pages in your site, and put the content and navigation together. This is old school webmaster work and any staff person with HTML skills should be able to do it.

I prefer the above method to giving designers free reign. But the decision makers must do their part: commit to a design and not allow feature creep. It also ensures that you can maintain the site going forward yourself or with just an HTML hacker.

Contact a local university or use craigslist.
Symfony2 ( PHP )
javascript definitely needs to be in there!
It has never occurred to me to call the way Jerry writes "pretentious." Most of the time I would call it "comedic" (specifically, containing great amounts of bathos)--he makes very creative, unexpected, and over-the-top use of the English language to convey relatively normal opinions on relatively boring subjects, in a way that makes me want to read his thoughts on things I couldn't otherwise care less about.
Other: Haskell (Happstack framework)
The thing is that books DON'T cease to produce money when copyright lapses, the copyright owner just loses their exclusive monopoly on the work. If they continue to offer the most compelling reproductions of the work (in the case of a book: form factor, bindings, indices, appendices, cross-references, etc.), they will continue to make money. The competition would greatly enrich the consumer experience.
But can you see if someone else's Glass is displaying them something or whispering them something? At least with a phone it's obvious.
T-Shirt Printing API
Depend on the timing - if NSA gets info less than a patch tuesday before me it is no big deal. If it is more than it is huge and will hurt them in the long run.
Definitely Java!
I'd imagine that 100% of politicians are afraid the NSA will harass them if they opposed the NSA.
Without any real data, and widely varying estimates of reporting rates, why do you find it difficult to believe?

Gut feeling is not a valid scientific method :)

Yes, murder is definitely more accurately reported, because, well, in most cases, it's always investigated (if you are murdered, generally, the police investigate). Males commit ~90% of murders in the US.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

However, most of it is of other males :)

Male offender/male victim 67.8%

Male offender/female victim 21.0%

Female offender/male victim 9.0%

Female offender/female victim 2.2%

In fact, it shows that males kill females only twice as much as females kill males, which is a lot higher than most people expect females to be.

Males also get killed by strangers (relevant to the original discussion) at a rate >2x higher than females:

Male Female

Stranger 25.5% 11.9%

(Sadly, none of the source data is in that PDF, and honestly, for a mostly side-argument on hacker news, i'm just not willing to go looking very hard :P)
I think that's the key point here. The sheer amount of data being stored is surely almost completely useless when it comes to preventing crime, but would be invaluable when it comes time to investigate a crime, or if you want to target a specific individual to harass.
Agreed. I can't shake the feeling that, while a UI / UX refresh was absolutely necessary, this lack of polish and consistency would have never made the light of day with Jobs at the helm.

And the gloss on the Game Center icon is just downright bizarre!
JavaScript.

And, why no JavaScript?
What, no love for Groovy?
I applaud these DIYers. If there's one thing my PhD stint taught me, it's that the high stakes nature of dead ends in one's science career has forced most scientists to be extremely conservative in what they write grants for. I fully expect the next large advances in biohacking to emerge from people working in their garages and hackerspaces while collaborating online, not from a lab on NSF funding.
Python, using Django or Flask. Flask if I want to get it out fast, and Django if it's complex enough to justify the overhead.

I simply like how Python gets out of my way when I'm trying to write something. I have yet to find another language that does that for me as well as Python does.
This is presented as a an objective take, yet it is entirely subjective subject matter. While I do take issue with the inconsistency of the new iOS icon design (gradients going each direction, residual depths and multi-generational design philosophies mixed together), in this case the proposed "better" icons simply aren't better...in my opinion....because it's subjective.

And then there's this-

Just like you don’t want to use pure black, you also never want to use “straight from the tube” colors. They come off as tacky and cheap.

(followed by some thing about bros and neon)

All colors are "straight from the tube" in this medium. There is no additional complexity or uniqueness with any variation of reds, greens and blues. Applying what can only be considered colour hipsterism diminishes the message enormously.

Maybe the colors simply aren't right among their peers, or for the purpose, but the notion that they're simply too easy or "bro-ish" is silly.
I'm building one in Haskell at the moment. I don't know that I'd go so far as to recommend it yet; the available libraries for web related work are fairly hit and miss IMHO. Some leave a lot to be desired, others are fantastic.
I totally get the argument. But in my experience it's rarely the first idea that you end up running with, or that will work on the market. It's generally significantly different project in the end if you're able to get to where the market is telling you to go.

This leads to the idea that unless the code is conceived well up front it's highly unlikely you're going to be able to learn from the market and adapt to what it's telling you if you're working with a bunch of ill conceived code from the get go.
RoR and some frontend nonsense in JavaScript.

You really ought to specify "What language do you develop your backend in?", as that's a bit more clear in your intent.
Python here. I really enjoy working with it and recommend it often... I'd love to start using Clojure, which I keep false-starting on learning, but it's hard to find the time (which is a good indication it's just not as important to me as the other things I spend my time on; oh well).
Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything in here. And I also imagine that the icons (and general new "flat" look) will get refined over the next months/years.

Also, though many of the icons are a bit odd (and some, like the calculator and camera, frankly suck), upon use, iOS 7 really does feel like a natural improvement upon past version of iOS and not some attempt to make iOS more like Windows Mobile or Android.

I'm excited that Apple's shaken things up a bit visually. It'll force app makers (self included) to think in fresh ways about their interfaces. Which will lead to more novelty, innovation, and (hopefully) better products.
Not at all. Flat is not a better design than Sku. Sku was just a way to fake static 3D lighting and dimension, and flat is the needed halfstep to get to realtime 3D rendering for the OS.

Pure flat design is IMO inferior, but necessary.
SimCity using Optimizely for A/B testing
Why would build a prototype to only throw it away? This seem naive.
Node.js. Surprised it's not on the list.
Natural Security Agency ... hah!
Heyzap Says Its Mobile Ad Network Has Grown To 800 Games
But if you're collecting a billing address (probably more common, since many places bill but don't ship, e.g., for digital goods, but not that many ship without billing), and are trying to expedite filling out the form by guessing the city and state from the zip, I doubt the payment processing would succeed if you got the city or state wrong. All depends on the situation, I guess.
Some Foreign Telcos Reportedly Defied NSA Phone Spying Order
Try Ruby! It's like the best of Perl, without the rest of Perl! :P
I scanned this multiple times...

Where is JavaScript???
Yes, actually. The screen lights up and it's pretty obvious. Most of the people I talk to while wearing glass notice it immediately when it comes on.
Read Jobs's biography (or talk to any of us who worked with him) and decide for yourself 1) whose personal decisions were behind the actions of Apple down to a "micromanaged" level of detail, and 2) whether that guy was better described as malicious or incompetent.
A plea to Miscrosoft developers in charge of the real-time clock driver (2001)
I doubt the loss of sympathy or more serious charges will make a difference in America's efforts to prosecute him. But revealing that the NSA was hacking targets in Hong Kong may make a big difference in Hong Kong's willingness to cooperate with that prosecution.
For small stuff CouchDB directly (with Jade as templating) or Smalltalk's Seaside, for larger stuff build for running the next decade Perl due to boring stability and backwards compatibility and least surprises.
Python, because Python rocks! No, seriously, if you haven't tried Python, try it. It's getting better every year.
Part of it was probably local encryption using iTunes' AAC DRM stuff, which would be hard to replicate.
... the intelligence branch of the Department of the Interior?
It's the same problem with Office. MS are using Office to help keep big business on a full MS stack - Windows, Sharepoint, Windows Server etc. And it's business that really matters to Microsoft. If Office were to be split off, they would be more likely put it on all smartphones, Linux, write a better OSX version etc, but it could weaken Microsoft's position wrt its other products.

It would probably be great for consumers if these companies took the attitude of making their products work best in a full stack, but still play nicely with everyone else's products, but they seem believe (rightly or wrongly) that it is in their own best interest to push for vertical integration and implicit or explicit lock-in.
Jeff Atwood Law:
Any program that could be written in JavaScript will be written in JavaScript
I know that some people really don't like JavaScript but seriously... Dart, but JavaScript not?
It's an in-house version of Myriad.
So if I refer my link in this discussion will that be spamming or is it allowed to be referred as I am trying to let people know some SEO guidelines which I feel like sharing here.

http://webmasterfacts.com/google-webmaster-guidelines-seo/

But since the original Google page already explains much, I think there should be no provision of building pages with "verified" keywords as well. Now that official T&C directly states that one cannot take control of the content but one can sure take control of the spam words. What if I had an added service to the link above to some SEO company?

Would that have been ethical link building strategy? I don't know much about how things run around the Google cubicles but I know one thing for sure - No one is going to tell that for the next 100 years.

@Matt: Keep the fight on
@rest: Keep the questions coming.

Good Luck.
I'm not sure why this is a problem - do you feel conversation with you would be boring enough that people would want to escape to Glass? If a conversation is interesting, it has my undivided attention regardless of what loud music, landing airplanes, or waving shop attendants are doing. If a conversation isn't interesting, I'm already looking around for other more interesting ways to get away from the conversation.

Glass is hardly the problem there - if the conversation is interesting, people will turn off any music being played and ignore whatever is happening on Glass.
Arc. I've just finished adding scrypt password hashing to it, actually.
Python, and to be more specific: Tornado.
No, it's not the same. If the old narrative is that the administration itself was involved in the bad actions, but facts emerge that the administration wasn't involved at all- then yes, the executive should look better. It has been one of the conservative talking points that if obama didn't know, then he is an incompetent leader. This is also false and bad faith argument- the low level employee didn't think he was breaking the rules with his queries, and his direct manager stopped the activity when she found out. This is so far removed from the white house they don't deserve to be in the same sentence. Plausible deniability still connotes a connection when there isn't one- the IRS's involvement in campaign financing has always been awkward and needs reform.

Hopefully, these facts should inspire you to question the anti-obama narrative rather than come up with your own. In changing the subject and making an argument like above without addressing the new information, it looks like you're figuring out how you can protect your beliefs from criticism without actually having to address those criticisms.

Please understand this is meta and isn't a criticism of you personally- but it's important for a working democracy that conservatives learn to "understand a complex topic, weigh competing values and considerations against one another, and eventually get behind" the facts. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/06/in-which-i-feel-sorry-...

I sometimes get accused by my Fox news addicted family of being "arrogant" when I go meta. But it's frustrating when "obviously fraudulent arguments get made; get knocked down; and soon pop up again, as if the original discussion never happened. This makes a gentlemanly issue-centered discussion essentially impossible.

If someone says the sky is green, you prove that it’s actually blue, and the next day he comes back once again insisting that the sky is green, and this happens repeatedly, you eventually have to acknowledge that mannerly debate about the color of the sky just isn’t enough; you have to go meta, and talk about the fact that this guy and his friends just aren’t in the business of honest discussion.

Inevitably, there are some people trying to turn the conversation meta in a different direction, and make it all about civility. But bad-faith arguments don’t deserve a civil response, and if the attempt to be civil gets in the way of exposing the bad faith, civility itself becomes part of the problem." http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/bad-faith-and-ci...
He never presented his blog post as objective. The word objective is nowhere to be found. You misinterpreted.
Re: iOS7
Scala. The Play! Framework offers some terrific features for asynchronous web applications, especially coupled with Akka.
Why is VB included but not JS or Go?
Hmm...the writer of the article almost echoes the exact same narrative of Defcon 18 Changing threats to privacy - Moxie Marlinspike http://youtu.be/eG0KrT6pBPk
After using iOS 7 for a few days I can say that the icons are the least of our worries.

Using ONLY color to differentiate clickable things is a travesty for colorblind people. I'm colorblind and iOS 7 is proving really frustrating.

The weather app, for example, is almost impossible for me to read.
You seem to be missing the blatantly obvious fact that the president himself authorized this program, and as such, is one of the only people who deserves to be snooped on under it (in contrast to a member of the public who was kept in the dark about it).
Why is there no option for Node.js?
I think the prototype in this case is more to flesh out the idea and its associated functions, without concerns for code quality or security.

It would help a lot in building the road map for an application, but you definitely wouldn't want to use any of it in production.
Music Biz Refines Technique, Large-Scale Web Blocking Just Around the Corner
Cached version: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk.nyud.net/~mgk25/mswish/ut-rtc.html
perl.... as an APP without a framework.
Then i would plug that APP into a perl framework ie: Perl Catalyst. And if im not happy, i can change to Dancer or mojo
And then JS for client side.