skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>While Snowden isn't a monster, the surveillance programs are not evil either.

"Evil" is a BS religious term.

It obscures political issues.

Those programs are: far-reaching, constitution breaking, targeted as dissidents, useless for real terrorists, and, in a word unacceptable in a proper democracy.

Nobody cares if they those doing it are "evil" or not.

I also take offence with "Regardless of the cynicism you bring to the topic, the primary goal of these programs is to save lives.".

Surveillance programs have been with us long before terrorism -- they have been traditionally been deployed, along with secret services, state police, etc, against dissident citizens -- and they have a long history in the US and in all Western countries (and, it goes without saying, in all third world dictatorships).

So that their "primary goal is to save lives" needs a ton of citations. Why? Because some politicians say so? They might even believe it -- though politicians are seldom as naive, except while they are not in office. That doesn't make it true.

Any huge bureaucracy such as a government, that supports trillions of dollars in private interests, finds a way to perpetuate itself and squash those that want change to the status quo and "make waves". People don't have to be "evil" -- they just have to do their work and show some zeal. Real "evil" is banal and ordinary, not like in the movies.
DISCLOSURE: I wrote that blog post, I work for SE, I AM biased.

Thanks for the general support.

You raise two concerns, though:

1. Upvotes - this is tricky. The problem with never allowing questions with lots of upvotes to be closed is twofold:

- Sometimes, what's allowed changes over time. Communities start out allowing almost anything "What's a good snack to help programmers stay awake?", but eventually decide that they need to limit things to a narrower focus. If communities who do that can't close those questions, they'll attract more like them.
- Some popular things are way off base to start with. You might be able to attract a ton of upvotes for an xkcd post, but you really wouldn't wan't the site full of them just because they're broadly loved.

2. opinion based questions - the changes are designed to help a little with what you're worried about: "primarily opinion based" now explicitly acknowledges that many good answers incorporate some expert opinion. But you still want some limit, no? "Which is better, Ruby or PHP?" isn't good for anybody, and the new reasons are designed to make it clearer that some opinion is ok, if it comes from expert experience or can be supported by facts, references, etc. Where that line belongs is for each community to decide.
I just read his selected bibliography on wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Martin_(author)#Publicat... ) and I somehow never realized that all these foundational works of computer science were written by the same guy. "Design of real time computer systems" in particular is part of the bedrock of modern computing.
Just how many lives has terrorism claimed in the past decade?

It's easy to answer that question now. No one knew the answer to that a decade ago. No one knows how many lives terrorism will claim in the next decade. The government does have to plan for the worst case scenario.
> You are advocating for arrest first, charge second.

No, I'm not.

> You seem to think that keeping the desire to arrest and prosecute Snowden a secret would somehow help the government's position.

No, I said that not making the kind of public threats they are making would improve their ability to serve a particular, clearly specified national security interest, if it was their goal.

> What kind of precedent would it set if this information was kept secret and folks could then seek asylum citing a presumed yet not stated threat from their government.

People can (and do) seek asylum on those grounds now.

> When asked about it, how should the government respond?

They could point out that they don't share information about ongoing investigations.

Or that confirming or denying anything related to the matter could potentially adversely impact national security.

Or...
McDonald's HTML5 promotion site
I would add one more thing. Before you do all this, take 2 to 3 days of absolute vacations (no email, no TV, do absolutely nothing) - this might be just a "dip" and you might be able to find a way to make things successful.
This is a feature of your editor, not the PHP site.
I've been working through the beta version of your Rails 4 book for the past couple of weeks, and it's been an absolutely stellar experience. As an experienced front-end web developer, I've not had proper experience with TDD before, but your book emphasises it's important while keeping it relatively easy. Only rarely have I transcribed some code without really understanding why or what it's for, and I feel like I genuinely get how my application (thus far) works.

My only concerns are with a few of the Rails conventions, which are probably due to my own conventions with JS and PHP.

Thank you for your awesome work. I'll definitely be buying a copy asap.
Not really. :-) A society needs an objective process ("trial") to determine whether someone's acts were good or bad. It also needs need an objective process to determine whether that trial will be fair. That process, which must be independent from political pressures, rests with a judge in the United States and/or an appellate court.

One can't excuse flight by waving one's hands claiming "unfair process", without subjecting that process to objective scrutiny (via a judge and appellate court). In Snowden's case the process hasn't even begun yet. If that's all it took, every criminal in the would use it to successfully flee their respective countries.

Nor does the determination of "unfair process" rest with a banana republic which hates the United States (as in the case of an asylum request), or with wannabe superpowers with axes to grind.
Was waiting on this version to start reading your book and start learning rails. Excellent news! Looking forward to reading this.
That's going to happen on any popular subreddit that allows memes. This comment explains how it happens:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/o1zjo/ban_memes_...
It wasn't there when I tried it, but now it works.

Small things like this matter.
Deslidify HTML
We don't even need to evoke Hitler. Let's look at a more recent American president: Nixon.

From Wikipedia:

> Nixon and his close aides ordered harassment of activist groups and political figures, using the FBI, CIA, and the Internal Revenue Service.

Imagine empowering Nixon with the abilities of today's intelligence community.
2) Fine, but functional paradigm is suitable only for a subset of real world problems, so it shrinks the usefulness of the language.

3) Sometimes mutable state is the best way to go. I'm not in the "mutable state is wrong" religion :)
They keep plenty of information on you even after the account is 'deleted' (not deactivated) - this much is evident from recommendations, etc. if you ever create a new account a year from now, showing up again as if it never went away

Facebook is private surveillance
The PG-13 Rated Sales Rep Survey
This is infuriating. What can we do?
We wrote our own tools to monitor our components. I suffer a little bit from "not written by me syndrome" and the fact that our system is a little different. Keeper is the primary uptime monitor. We use mandrill to send out emails and twilio to send out SMS to us.
If you do any JavaScript development, you'll need to search for "mdc keyword" constantly which is annoying. Having a context-specific search is always better, especially if you bind that to a hot-key in your browser to launch it quickly.
For anyone else looking, I just found Foreman. This seems to do exactly what we're looking for, but it uses Puppet instead of Salt. Even if it requires a Linux server, making our solution more complicated, it appears to meet our needs very nicely.

http://theforeman.org/
They could have just offered the least untruthful answer instead.
another alternative:

Computing Legend, Dr. James Martin, dies at 79
TIOBE Index is being gamed
You left out half the message.

> Questions on Stack Overflow are expected to relate to programming or software development within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here.

The second part links to a section of the FAQ (now the Help Center) that explains why questions are closed.

http://stackoverflow.com/help/closed-questions

The off-topic bullet links to a detailed section on what kinds of questions you can and cannot ask.

http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic
Strangely, "no big deal" is only the top post when it concerns open source. When it concerns the Tea Party, the top post is some political rant.
I actually agree with this argument. I do believe terrorism shouldn't be ignored, but terrorism isn't about killing. it's about terror. we are terrified of terrorists and anything that resembles them. therefore: the terrorists have already won. when we give up our basic civil rights to protect ourselves from them, that's terror. I'm honestly more threatened by my government than terrorists. Terrorists have one thing they can do, kill. They know it will probably cause their death and the death of their citizens. The government can torture you, ruin your life in many ways, and still kill you, and there seems to be no repercussions. Look at the NSA guy that lied on live television under oath, and got caught on it two weeks later. where's the purjery? I fear MY government... that's messed up
FWIW "Kim Kardashian is fat now" has been a top news story for weeks and week. The vapidity of our "news" is stunning.
My only point is to offer hopefully helpful advice to the legions of folks who come to HN wanting to learn how to start their own business for the first time. Many unintentionally assume they need to operate like a startup to their own peril, when in fact they could have had a successful business if not for chasing that label. Certainly no intention of being "mean-spirited". The fact that it might come off that way likely speaks as much to the aforementioned prestige which we place on the term "startup" as anything.

I think creating a business can be one of the most rewarding things a person can do, and I want as many people to find success in that as possible.
The comparison to automobiles is interesting because this is another example where we do sacrifice freedoms to enhance safety. At the state level we have licenses, registrations, speed limits, mandatory seat belt laws, insurance mandates, etc. At the federal level we have safety standards. Not sure it's terribly relevant just an interesting parallel.
It's a relatively new idea, but I don't think things have changed in a bad way in that sense. The sort of people you speak of typically have plenty of experience using the sort of products they develop. Is it a problem to let people try to start business while they're relatively unencumbered and near peak creativity?
Ask HN:  How can we improve our website?
Hi, my name is Weston and we've built a sports news site called http://swarmsports.com. We're looking for feedback from the HN community in how we can grow our startup to make it successful.

We're showing users the most viral sports news articles every day.

Even if you're not a sports fan, any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks!
"Targeting" was a misleading word with regard to the Tea Party groups, too. IRS wasn't trying to shut them down, it was just paying more attention to whether or not they have to pay taxes like everyone else (including groups with certain forms of political activity)
Clickable: http://swarmsports.com
"Is TIOBE really important?": to that question I would answer "No"
It's relevant to the idea that if an email enters Google, it's probably accessable to the NSA, even if you delete it. I was directly responding to:

"is it indisputable fact that the NSA has all your email, or, is it more like, we can't be sure what they do and don't have access to"

They don't need to have second hand copies of the mail when they can just tell Google to give them access.

"implement a webmail service without storing emails." is not relevant to anything I said.
The explanation of what the "model" is has always been there, linked in the close reason.
Nasa sets Grand Challenge to public: find earth-destroying asteroids
Putting Trees on Skyscrapers: An Interview with Lloyd Alter
Firefox Delivers 3D Gaming, Video Calls and File Sharing (Firefox 22 Released)
Firefox 22 Release Notes: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/22.0/releasenotes/
Thanks, this deserves an submit on its own in HN :-)
Self discipline, psychology,startups - Why?
One of my favorite lines from Men In Black: "We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor that we are aware of."
Sexbots, Ethics and Transhumans
It's not about the number of lives but it is about the state of fear that grips the state afterwards. That anything can happen and government has no power to stop that.
{{infomercial}}
I also feel that I should avoid mentioning my years of depression (I wouldn't be using a secondary account if I wasn't).

As for not fitting people's ideals... Come to think of it, there's no way to satisfy conditions that are outside of my field of influence (I cannot stay forever young, for example) so I'll have to accept that and carry on.
I've been using PGP from early 90s and most of my friends use it actively too. Just set it up once and after that it's seamless.

Btw. It's time to upgrade the DSA signing key to longer RSA key. Soon GnuPG should have ECC support allowing much shorter keys.
When we started working on Filmgrain, what became clear was that it wasn't so much that the popularity told you if the movie was good or bad, it was that it worked remarkably well at highlighting the movies people care about right now. I know many of us watch critic reviews to see if a movie is any good before going, but I don't think this is the norm. Many people just get excited about a movie and then go see it.

The other cool thing that Filmgrain captures that's different from quality is insight into what people liked about a movie afterwords. For example, people were divided on if Great Gatsby was good or not, but people couldn't stop tweeting about the soundtrack. I'd have never known how much people cared if it wasn't for this feed and it's this type of meta information we want to bring forward, as we can.
> The government does have to plan for the worst case scenario.

No more so than the government needs to consider all other scenarios, and the costs of any policy choice in those scenarios, and use the likelihood along with the potential costs and benefits of each scenario in assessing the desirability of the policy.

Otherwise, planning for the worst case scenario just becomes a convenient excuse for policies that make life considerably worse for everyone in the most likely scenario.
I would be surprised if a definite case could be made that scientists are completely unvested in their theories. I think it's a lofty ideal to strive for, but it's often the case we'd like to have our intuitions and theories proved correct.

Like the GP post said, the intentions or motivations (emotional or intellectual) are of little concern as long as the scientist changes their views/theories based on experimentation. I could be emotionally invested in what I believe to be a life-saving cure for cancer, and I'll be emotionally pre-disposed to see the medical trials prove that, but that won't mean I'll fix the results to prove that.
What I learned from teaching a class
That's interesting. I had the exact opposite experience. I was part of a small startup that received exactly what you describe as "support, advice and endorsement" (like you, we did not receive funding) for developer tools.

We developed Java software using Eclipse. Most of our team used Linux or Mac OS, only one of our developers used Windows. We shipped software for HP-UX on HP-PA RISC and IBM mainframes. Our web site was written in Ruby on Rails and backed by PostgreSQL.

Microsoft liked this arrangement enough that they acquired us. (Full disclosure, I remain a Microsoft employee.)
> A question that receives answers fits, I don't know how you could say otherwise.

Yeah, if you're trying to re-create Yahoo! Answers.
Video Games, EdTech, ABA and Autism: The Perfect Storm of Teaching Tools
Yes, just to join the echo chamber for a minute.

For someone new to Rails, but not to OOP/web dev/sysadmin, Hartl did a really great job on highlighting how to work through the many decisions that are already made for you in Rails, but also some nice Ruby tips. He would also be really good about keeping it up to date and adding errata where needed to fix minor inaccuracies.

Totally worth the money, from a guy who learned Ruby/Rails from him and Obie Fernandez's book and struck on independent contracting.
especially when you consider that Alpha Centuri is 4.367 light years away, and that is the closest thing, 5 times that is pretty damn nearby.

If your friend lived 5 houses down the street I think that'd qualify as nearby.
Since he's apparently now deep in debriefment with the Ruskies, this would have been a brilliant counter-intel maneuver, leveraging the prejudices of all of us chattering morons to fake out everybody in the world.

That it would have been brilliant, is how I know that General Surveillance and his minions didn't do it.
I had my ouya shipped to Israel and iirc it only took about 5 days to get here.
If Brainfuck syntax was half as powerful as powerful as S-expressions that would be a valid comparison.
Ah yes, the "joys" of analysis paralysis. It's a bloody pitfall that I know all too well and I'll have to get used to walk out of it on my own.
Use Fakeblock
Doesn't it seem like the United States has gotten too big for our Democracy to function correctly anymore? Maybe it is time to break it up... Or at least move authority back down to the smallest level:

Solve problems in your local township.

If can not resolve:

Go up to County level for resolution.

If can not resolve:

Go up to Sate level for resolution.

If can not resolve: iterate as necessary.

(Edited for better formatting).
With regards to opinions, I think SO's stance is that they want the site to be a medium to exchange mostly facts, and as little opinion as possible.

The problem with opinions is that, to someone who is not knowledgeable, it may not be immediately clear which opinion holds more weight. In turn, this may end up confusing the reader even more, or worse yet, it may mislead them. This is especially true because even when an opinion is correct, its correctness may be context-sensitive, and this may cause the reader to make the wrong decision based on the correct opinion.
I'd be interested too. Thanks!
That doesn't make much sense. What's the objective? If it IS saving lives, then a lot less money than the NSA burns up can be spent saving a lot more drug addicts, cancer sufferers, typhoid, HIV, and so on - there are millions more deaths than those caused by terrorism - no matter how unquantifiable those are.
Very roughly, if you had a ship capable of accelerating at 1 g (I know of no way to do this), you'd experience a decade of ship time to cross that distance.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/one-g_spacecraft... has other examples. They are round-trip, not one way, hence my describing my math as very rough.
Efficient bit-scaning in Lisp
The first line of text on your post bleeds into the sidebar and is not readable.
Stack Overflow has had problems in the past where unclear or otherwise low-quality questions get migrated to sites where they don't really belong. If a question is clear and you know for sure where it belongs, you can flag it for a moderator to migrate.
Ten years at the same company sounds like a nightmare to many of us. I don't ever want to do that again (I hit nine years once), and I don't ever want to inflict that on people I like.

I'll happily take that $12k over the usual $1k, however.
I sometimes amuse myself by thinking about how Nixon would be far too liberal to get elected today. Of course, a Nixon coming of age in today's climate might be quite different.
Yahoo 2013 Annual Meeting of Shareholders
Rackspace Cloud Outage Resolutions
Oh I see. Didn't realize the touchpad is just the background plate. Neat.
Citrix Brings XenServer Back To Open-Source Community
Business success from mental illness
I think this complain only comes from people who are too lazy to learn git. It's really not that hard.
Skynet rising: Google acquires 512-Qubit Quantum Computer; Works with NSA
I was in a similar position 4 years ago, before my first startup.

On reflection, the books I got the most out of that actually shaped my behaviour are...

THE PERSONAL MBA, JOSH KAUFMAN

Was blown away by this. Couldn't believe how much stuff I didn't know about. It covers everything you've asked about and more...

It's also written a bit like a Software Patterns/Recipes book, which I love.

I've read the MBA book about 5 times.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Personal-MBA-World-Class-Business-Ed...

PITCH ANYTHING, OREN KLAFF

You'll hate reading it. It will make you cringe. It's uncomfortable.

But it changed my attitude to business, my products, and deals a LOT. Which is REALLY important.

Applying some of these techniques had amazing results in any dealings with 3rd parties (sales, partnerships, deals). That's because I'm a softie engineer, not a battle-hardened business man. I still read this before attending any significant meeting.

http://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-P...

HOW TO BE THE LUCKIEST PERSON ALIVE, JAMES ALTUCHER

Covers everything in one way or another...

I keep coming back to the epic rule list in this book. I keep ignoring them in business, then learning the hard way that the list is right. He shares his failures and successes in a humerous way.

It's a real down-to-earth, eye opening book.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1461120705

OTHER

I'm reading Lean Startup, and have read Made to Stick, Letting go of the words, Ignore Everybody, Spin Selling, and tons more. All good books, but the 3 above were the biggest impact for me on all levels.
The key word being "tries". they need to be a bit more effective with their trying (if indeed they are trying to do good things).
Your Guide to Wisconsin Cheese Tours
But how do you know a foreigner is a potential threat if you're not spying? If a government has a mandate to protect its citizens from foreign harm, it easily follows that the government would attempt to datamine the communications of the entire world. Why did you expect it to be any different?

This sudden outrage is odd, honestly what did people think the NSA did with their tens of billions of dollars per year budget?
Finally, a major corporation webpage that can be viewed on a tablet!

[Edit: I should say major food or otherwise non-tech consumer-facing webpage]
I like how they replicate the jiggle of belly fat. Quite fitting! But in all honesty, that's a pretty slick UI.
I actually think he has a valid point. The world changed.

There was a time where people made a fortune by digging for gold, then the world changed and now it's really hard to make a living by digging for gold. You can cry and say how unfair it is but that's not going to change anything.

Musicians today have to make a living through concerts, merchandising or whatnot. I personally think that this is actually a good development. The web allows musicians to cut out music labels and without much investment reach a large audience, increasing chances of building a fan base and making money from concerts, etc.
HN secretly closes accounts so probably not an ideal place to ask.
Heck, my company's 401k becomes fully vested over 6 years, and I find even that quite awful. :)

Fortunately, it's not the only thing that's keeping me here.
Will You Make it Past Being a Founder?