skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Both Git and Rsync are incompetent deployment tools for many reasons I will not go into in a comment as there are quite a few articles expounding on the virtues of not using your VCS. There are also numerous reasons why rsync is inappropriate too (what if you push up a nasty bug and you have to revert? Op, better go revert to my tagged release then rsync again - this is ugly in comparison to versioned releases combined with proper use of the operating system's dominant package manager where you can upgrade/downgrade an application based on its version...)

I generally see four stages in the devops maturation of a programmer:

1. I rsync my code using pre-built commands in Fabric when I'm ready to push.

2. I write code and have hooks on the server to pull the repo when I tag a release in my VCS.

3. I use my language's package management system to build a source distribution that includes all of the necessary static assets, the web application, and any database migration code; I also use a sane versioning scheme to keep track of releases. When I want to push I use a build system that hooks into my continuous integration server and builds a distribution whenever the senior programmer tags a release. It is then made available to the production server in a deb or rpm repository where the senior programmer can then just run an update command (that updates with the new distribution and runs any necessary database migration or post-upgrade hook scripts).

4. You are so big that you've got a custom deployment system built on-top of BitTorrent (ala Facebook) or something similar.

It should be obvious where I'm at - I progressed from being an adherent to VCS deployment, to rsync only, to a proper source distribution release system. I haven't managed the devops for a team/application the size of Facebook yet but I'm sure I will get there soon.
If people store their coins on a central server it can happen like any other data.

Bitcoin, however, can be used without the use of a third party storing your coins.
His job ended because he knew he didn't have jurisdiction to start this trials but he proceeded anyway and because he asked for money to a banker who was judging at the time (the infamous "dear Emilio" letter)
The 3-step guide on what to do about the surveillance state
Don't let me get in the way of you casting aspersions on people you've never met and know basically nothing about. I concede the high ground to you.
You mean like: `honeypot = Entrapment.new`?
"The founding fathers made sure that the Supreme Court was not just a bunch of kids playing tag on a playground."

The founders actually chose to be extremely vague as to the exact role and powers of the court and for the first several decades of the US, SCOTUS was irrelevant and weak. The Court led by Chief Justice John Marshall, solidified its role as the third check on federal power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
This is a brilliant move on his part. He knows the FB architecture and security apparatus, and he is going to contributing immensely to NSA's endeavors on how to effectively data-mine social media aggregates. Not to mention the relationship he's already built with the FB alumni. He'll have enough clout to influence decisions over there.
> As far as the subreddit, I subscribe(d) to several quite different ones so that wouldn't explain why my comments in all of those would be downvoted.

Your comment history across all subreddits is one click away.

To give you an example of how quickly it can escalate, I once saw a comment that was completely incorrect, of the form "Wow, it's interesting that X is caused by Y!" I left a simple comment, "X is caused by Z, not Y." and left it at that.

The original comment subsequently received a single down-vote, and not from me. Likely someone who saw their comment and saw that it was wrong.

The original commenter replied to my comment, "Thanks for the reply, but it the down-vote was totally uncalled for." A few minutes later, before I could even respond, they deleted their comment and then every one of my 100+ comments were down-voted. Most of my comments prior to that had zero down-votes at all.

That's just my anecdote, and it's still possible you were subjected to coordinated down-vote ring, but you said this was the result of an isolated incident of 1-2 small disagreements. It seems more plausible that you were just tagged by a vindictive Reddit user than something particularly sophisticated.
Nuclear aging: Not so graceful
One of the problems with all this crap is being able to draw clear lines between conspiracy and bureaucracy.

I don't believe there is a secret group trying to build the IT infrastructure to subvert democracy and throw us into re-education camps a la Pol Pot version 2013.

However, the bureaucracy is essentially building that very same system regardless of which administration is "in charge".
> "Preventing all terrorism" is both impossible and wildly impractical: to even get close, you must eviscerate the freedoms in your society and undermine the rule of law.

Preventing all terrorism isn't actually the goal though.

Just like our vaccination regimes are not intended to completely eradicate disease, merely prevent epidemics and pandemics, the anti-terrorism programs are intended to increase safety and security for Americans (and by proxy, other nations who would also be targets of the groups aligned against the USA), in a way such that terrorism does not happen so often that the people demand the police state we all claim here to despise.

It is recognized that completely eradicating terrorism is probably impossible, but the U.S. can make it almost impossibly difficult to form large enough terror cells to repeat things like 9/11.

And unlike your rather defeatist attitude, I think that can be done without "eviscerating" civil liberties, as long as we employ ample doses of transparency, watchdog groups, and organizational structures designed to keep those programs directed to the mission and provide accountability and oversight. Of course it can be done; how do banks holding billions of dollars of their customers funds manage to provide strict accountability for those?

Pretty much every prior technological breakthrough has made tyranny in the U.S. more likely, and the U.S. has managed to pull through in each case (though sometimes with roadbumps...).

And, if you're really concerned about the rule of law you will do everything possible to avoid "a 9/11 every year". When the state fails to protect the people, the people (armed by the 2nd Amendment) will take matters into their own hands, and it won't be pretty for many innocents in America.

But again, if you have better ideas I'm sure the NSA is listening...
Given that the first $500 million of Facebook investment came from In-Q-Tel, a CIA company that invests in deep data mining systems, it isn't hard to wonder whether Facebook's security officer could have been an employee of the NSA all along.
The most interesting aspect of this is that immediately after the NSA seems to agree that it lets trainees listen to random phone calls it claims it "absolutely does not" spy on citizens. What is spying, then, according to the NSA definition?
"Just remove it" is hard, because:

* It may be hidden in some old commit (e.g: some password)

* You'd need to rewrite all history from that point

* Force push doesn't necessarily clean the data from the remote
If there was ever a time to be self-congratulatory, it would be a 25 year anniversary.

If what he says is true--the fundamental architecture of Mathematica has been fairly consistent over a 25 year period--that's an exceptional thing in the software world. It's rarified air, so I'm going to say he earned this one. :)
The Other San Francisco
Of course they are in bed together. Heard of these guys?

http://www.iqt.org/

Clarification Edit: "They" = SV & government, not FB specifically.
Analytic engines that factor in security labels (Accumulo / Sqrrl)
What a pussy! I've been working on my c++ compiler compiler for 6 years now and will complete the 1981 c++ specification any day now. I think can get up to 1995 around 2015 now that I've defeated regex. I'll have my certification within the next 5 years! And you'll have what? A regular paying job? Ha! Pussy!
I've found the paralysis can have the opposite effect.

On several life-changing occasions it lead me to say to myself there's something I'll never be able to do. As soon as I said that, I was able to have stress-free thoughts my subconscious had not allowed me to have before.

The closest term I've found for this curious effect is: paradoxic intention. You try to do the opposite of what you fear, exaggerating it to the point of humor if possible.

Whatever the source of "history of illusion" is, paradoxic intention might be its desired outcome. Or in simpler terms: you have to let go.
The unraveling of the American Republic

Hyperbole much?
As a very simple example of that, you use variables that behave like mathematical unknowns. When I run the following line of Mma code, x, y, and z are undefined. It finds values for these unknowns. That's kind of different than many languages.

Solve[{x + y + z == 3, y + x == 4, z + y == 7}, {x, y, z}]

gives: {{x -> -4, y -> 8, z -> -1}}
A very nice article and intro to concurrent programming. 10/10 would bang.
What It's Like to See the Aurora From Space
Fabric is great for running commands. But what a lot of programmers do not realize is that deployment is a process. That process involves running automated tests, packaging all of the assets, using package managers to upgrade/downgrade based on versioned release schemes, database migration, post-upgrade scripts, and quick/painless rollback (downgrade) if there's a major blocking bug for users.
But you didn't defeat regex, they didn't add it to the std until C++11. Don't look forward to that mastery until around 2084. And like the author says, you aren't a true C++ master until you write your own regex parser in order to write your own compiler. Or the other way around. It gets messy.

Also, I don't think you ever master regexes. When you think you know what you are doing you see a 5k character text parser in one giant regex and want to slam your head on a desk.
As I work through the Project Euler problems, I'm constantly amazed by the Mathematica solutions. Very often, I look at their answer and think "that's cheating... it was way too easy in Mathematica".

So as a non-Mathematica user, it certainly appears to be a very effective technology, and in the right hands and right domain, it seems like it could pay for itself very, very quickly.
Silver Sequin Dress
Guessing that you will remain who you currently are is probably the maximum likelihood guess.

You probably are more satisfied with who you currently are than with any of the other possible "yous" that you might envision. That's why you choose to be who you are. (You might not like your station, but that involves things outside of your locus of control.)

Therefore, there is not a different, preferred "you" that is trivial to imagine. This makes predicting that you will remain the same seem, to me, to be a good guess.
Well, there's a reason, it doesn't matter if it isn't good: other curious drivers. Here in Israel, traffic reporters on the radio routinely implore the listeners not to slow down and take a look, since it causes jams.

My point is, whatever causes a segment of the road to only allow x cars/sec will cause a bottleneck if there are more than x cars/sec incoming flow, regardless of whether it is inherent or not.
In-Q-Tel never invested in Facebook.
To prevent cheating, I assume.
It's a well-known marketing gimmick to make people climb the self-created, artificial ladders to "prove themselves".

This approach is one of the most efficient "sucker baits" where "sponsor" or entity behind the certification benefits most.

Congrats to be the one who called the bluff. It takes the guts + intelligence combines to see through the smoke screen.
You passed! :)
Though the tone and relevance of your post may not have been spot on, I have to agree. I spend an inordinate amount of my free time reading news and in-depth political commentary, but I've found myself returning to HN less and less as sophomoric legal analysis and cyber-anarchist hero worship is regurgitated to the front page ad nauseam.

This is not to say I agree with "Prism" or dragnet surveillance, but I've found HN to be the last place I've found actual insight on the issue as of late.
"Building a native-code-generating Lisp would not be an unreasonable learn- a- new- language project."

Eh, I do not think it is terribly hard if optimizations are not a concern. Yeah, CLtL2 is rather lengthy, but the bulk of it can be implemented with macros and functions if you just want something that will work. I suppose implementing those macros/functions might teach you the language, but I think you would learn a whole lot more implementing something else (say, an email client).
> I don't think anybody is arguing that there should be no response to a terrorist act. But why can't the response be to bring the terrorists to justice as international criminals, and not to let it change the fabric of our society?

Why not both? I've yet to be convinced that warrant-based searches of Internet traffic by a resource-constrained agency would actually appreciably change the fabric of society. Especially if we force better transparency and accountability controls on what is now present.

But also, while we're itemizing potential terrorist activities, am I the only one who is worried about MANPADs?
Whoa, weird. Nope, I didn't post this on reddit.
This is also how fiat currency works. Which is all well and good.
I understood exactly what had happened the moment I read the title. I don't think it was sensationalistic at all.
The thing is that it’s easier to predict the personal value of a real-world item. You don’t know in advance whether you’re going to get $200 of value out of a particular development product, because there’s no reasonable standard of comparison.

You would pay $40 for a T-shirt if it were some sort of collector’s item you could resell. You would pay $100 for running shoes because that’s less than $15000 for knee surgery, and you like having comfy feet. You would pay $150–300 for an ounce of weed because you know what weed is like, and you like it, and the price is driven up by legal issues. But what justification can you come up with for spending $200 on what is essentially a productivity tool, if it won’t necessarily make you more productive?
How is my comment in any way related to math, let alone taking an antithetical position to it?
I'm wondering why I should care. Is completion of this course considered de rigeur in C++ programming circles or is this just a case of someone changing their mind and writing off some course fees?
"Practically nobody" has been caught up in NSA shenanigans either. What people are worried about is the possibility of this destroying our Republic, but we've actually watched the planes fly into the Twin Towers. So one of these concerns is more concrete, if that's all you're worried about.
I am sure you meant well but I found your write-up somewhat scattered and lacking a logical conclusion supported by prior points. This is easy to do if one is writing with passion. I've done it too.

If your point is that we will ultimately be protected by the Supreme Court, I think you are wrong. This is the same Supreme Court that enabled Obamacare, a law that allows the Federal Government to force every american to buy something. And, if you don't or don't pay a penalty the IRS will come after you. Beyond that, this is a law virtually nobody read and, per Nancy Pelosi we had to "pass it to find out what's in it". I can't remember a greater perversion of authority in my adult life.

I am sure there are other examples but IANAL.
What We Have Learned From Afghanistan
If 37 Signals developed a workout, this would have been it
I did say difficult, not impossible.
Those who contribute share in the profits of the pool! Most things that are in the interest of the pool are in the interest of the miners.

Also, as hardware gets more specialized, the cost to entry gets higher and power concentrates.
Well, if you generate a deterministic key based on a passphrase known only to you, and send the bitcoin to the corresponding public key, you can store bitcoin using ONLY YOUR MIND.

Seize that.
Even between Sutter, Stroustrop, and Alexandrescu you will find completely different approaches and styles.

Use what makes sense to you, and by makes sense to you, I mean you know exactly what you are doing, if you are starting or managing a project.

If you aren't the lead, follow the leader, unless they have some glaring issues in their style and technique. This happens most of the time, though, because C++ is a huge beast.
I like to think different people can express things in different ways. For example, if you can simplify a piece so that it is more understandable to a wider audience, is it still mediocre?
How do "comment commits" work on github? Are they just using git-notes?
Yes. See Blackhawk down, or the angle on the New Zealand involvement in Iranian hostage crisis movie Argo. http://www.3news.co.nz/NZs-role-in-Iran-crisis-tainted-in-Af...
The U.S. has done that before (and is doing it now; witness Egypt and Pakistan). It normally has come back to bite us in the ass though.
Simple proposal that I think everyone would agree is preferable to what the NSA is currently up to:

What the NSA is doing, but properly implementing mandatory access control (like what they added to Linux over a decade ago with SELinux) to ensure that admins do not have more access than they should.

That said, I'm not eager to let them define the Overton window and just settle for that - I'm leaning a little further on the "radical transparency" side of the spectrum - but clearly, what the NSA is up to is not treating our data with the care it merits.
Dealing with the lack of regex engine^ is such a tiny part of the monumental task of implementing C++ compiler from scratch - it's like quitting Mt. Everest summit expedition because a three-story hotel on the way there doesn't have elevator.

^ - which he probably didn't need to begin with
Hacker News is a place for news relevant to hackers. This is relevant, as evidenced by the fact that its members continue to upvote and discuss it. If you don't want to read about or discuss it, don't, and submit and upvote other stories instead.

I'd love to see solutions submitted as well. Let's see more of that. But discussing it is also valuable, as it helps build momentum and prevents the story from dying out and fading away like it always has in the past when similar revelations came out.
The only way that this would be "interesting" is if you started off with the assumption that everyone that works for the government is brain dead.
Do you have any other nice interviews with Chomsky like that? I find it very hard (as a non-native speaker) to hear and understand what he says in interviews, so text is best for me...
I think this touches on something important - rather than writing from scratch some asinine limited use case software, make useful software. You can prove your worth in the useful products you produce, not in the bravado you accrue saying you wrote a compiler from scratch - it is the difference between using a dozen programs a day that I know I've commited patches to and seeing the fruits of your labor or having your standards compliant C++11 compiler rot in some directory on your PC while you still use clang/gcc because the program said you can't even put it in a public git repo and instead of spending 10k lines improving the current best of the crop you reinvented the wheel as a stone brick while major players are comparing rubber treads.
I think it's highly relevant to HN, but agree that the quality of discussion here has been abysmal. Just because you think logically as a hacker doesn't mean you automatically understand law, for example.
Why a Nvidia GPU? That would require using Nvidias binary blob, or the unstable open-source driver. You could go full-RMS http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
I just remember them.
As a digital marketer who has shared responsibility for PR I find Twitter has helped bring some good PR contacts.
I especially find the list feature of Twitter the most useful way to consume from the fire-hose ! I have multiple personal lists I maintain of influencers (journalists, execs, and developers) in the domain I track - SaaS, SaaS marketing, multiscreen video, and mobile marketing.
You put the aggregate for Hong Kong, which is a region and not a city, alongside the numbers for San Francisco, Tokyo, and Manhattan. Was the point I was making.
Growing Up And Finding Identity
These are transit related, but good transit is intimately linked to urban structure.

* Get rid of free parking and "parking minimums" (not sure if SF has those, but many American cities do, and they're hugely destructive). When possible, get rid of on-street parking entirely in favor of non-car uses for the space.

* Stop widening roads (this mainly applies to more suburban areas). Start narrowing roads and widening sidewalks, adding separated bike lanes, etc.

* Bike infrastructure. This is not just good bike routes, but bike parking (which is orders of magnitude denser than car parking, and far, far, more flexible and easy to integrate into the urban environment without damaging it) near popular destinations and transit.

* Figure out why American infrastructure planning and construction is so dysfunctional (costs way, way, too high, planning often quite poor) and fix it.

* Allow transit agencies more flexibility, e.g. let them take advantage of the synergy real-estate/retail has with transit, the way east-Asian transit operators do.
I'm confused. JPS checks whether an adjacent node is a "wall" (or otherwise-arbitrarily-high cost node), and uses that information to either keep going in the same direction or add more "open" nodes.

It seems that it assumes each node has "local" information about local nodes. I think JPS's main contribution is that there are fewer "open" nodes added over the life of the algorithm than A*, right ? The number of open nodes is roughly the "branching factor", and reducing that reduces the total amount of work done.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics

Most, but not all. And some politics-related stories have always been part of HN, like software patents.
You made a map, then someone used the map. Isn't that nice? If someone using the work you published on the internet is a big problem then contact them, and if they won't remove it then file a lawsuit. This comes off as the rantings of a childish whiner.
I do that with my browser bookmarks, but not with Pocket, I usually read everything I save there.

You are essentially building an anti-library: http://www.ryanholiday.net/building-your-antilibrary/

I have had numerous problems come up that I knew immediately where to look for a solution, even I haven't read all those articles.
"the entire point of bitcoin is circumventing seizure"

[citation needed]

There are many reasons to want to use Bitcoin.

Plus it is much more seizure resistant than centralized systems like banks.
It looks like the reddit user "kaax" is taking insightful posts from HN and posting them on reddit [for karma?]. See the Bitcoin comments at http://www.reddit.com/user/kaax and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5929622 .
No. This would be a sting.

Read this to find out what entrapment is (and isn't):
http://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-wa...
Getting into Russia on the cheap