skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Been using Insync for a couple of weeks from AUR, works better than nowt, though the flat hierarchy of Google Drive is annoying.

Encryption would be a really nice feature. Anyone got recommendations for related solutions?

* other backup systems; https://wiki.thingsandstuff.org/Cloud#Storage
Indeed, it is also worth mentioning that it is only free during the beta. Something which was not obvious from the download page.
Backtracking a Facebook hacker
> On Thursday, Foxconn said it was looking to hire between 2,000 and 3,000 people in order to bolster its research into software.

Looks like those 2-3k people might be for a wider effort than just Firefox OS.

I think it is a smart move to make such a big move, as anyone wanted to get in the market needs to do so now. If they continue on their current trajectory, the market is looking very much like Windows/Apple in the 90s (except now it's Google/Apple). If Android becomes the Windows 95/XP of the smartphone world, then it will be very good for some and very bad for others - and it would become increasingly hard to break into the market.
I'm surprised to learn that modern codecs are so conservative, incrementing on the tech invented decades ago. I expected this field to be rampant with cutting-edge research techniques. As the article says, the lapping transformation dates back to the early 90s. And it's considered "the next-next-generation" today. Why is it happening?
"Plants seen exploiting quantum physics" or "Quantum physics seen operating on plants" might be more accurate but less attention-seeking.
Building a Successful Remote Team
Not a neuroscientist but final year med with a strong interest in neuro-

This will certainly be useful for attempts to recreate the functionality of a brain in silico - big research efforts such as the blue brain project [1] have probably been using even early forms of this data.

Having said that, in some ways it won't provide the useful information that will enable the functionality to be restored to the connections.

heres why.

Current efforts involving simulated brains rely both on older, less precise versions of what this nature article talks about - let's call that the roadmap, as it is a map of where all the neurons sit and where they connect to. This project drastically increases the resolution of this roadmap.

However the additional information needed is what traffic is carried by each road.
The brain as we understand it today consists not just of the connections between the neurons but also that each neuron, and each different network of the brain, secretes it's own neurotransmitter. Because some of these neurotransmitters are depolarising and some are inhibitory, and they connect widely across the brain and are much more closely related to the actual information processing, we need to have this information before we will be able to better approximate a brain.

In all likelihood this is information gathering is probably underway right now. From what I understand the 'BigBrain' project aims to do for the human brain what the Allen Brain atlas did for mouse brains, that is not only provide a map of the connections but also stain for gene expression and (from memory) neurotransmitter presence.

With this added information we will be closer to our goal of getting skynet sentient.

[1] http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/
The swap will cost between $60 & $80[1].

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-idUS...
This is what happens when lightning strikes sand
Been using the new 11" for days. No problems with WiFi, but I have noted a few recurring themes about WiFi connectivity.

802.11 b still works pretty well for most people.

802.11 g has better in-house or building range than 802.11 n

802.11 n can be faster. but I haven't notice that being true...ever.

5 Ghz spectrum connections sucks at penetrating walls.
Better Place has been trying to do the same in Israel and Denmark, and is looking to expand into the US eventually:

http://www.wbur.org/npr/159355676/dont-charge-that-electric-...
Now, zendesk doesn't own the word zen do they? Does this mean anyone in the world now can not use the word zen anywhere in the name if they are in the SaaS business?

I believe they also had a problem with a company named FreshDesk which was a direct competitor.

http://www.ripoffornot.org/

I just see a company being bully here.
Backend-free geospatial apps with Open Source Leaflet and CartoDB
I think about it as not work life balance but more not letting other people dictate how you spend your time at work.
Does Foxconn have any similar investment in other OSes? I've never heard of Foxconn-developed apps or UIs, so I'm wondering what sort of software experience they bring to the effort.
Scalagen - Java to Scala conversion
all modern high tech things are somehow unique implementation of different basic techniques.

A russian hook, for example was considered ultra modern in martial arts at some time, but in principle it used the same old muscles, with some basic steps, but new implementation.
Peter, good idea, thanks so much!
indeed, I never knew this stuff.. and since CS is not my field, I might have never understood this.
Ten TRILLION bytes...

It's okay, Nature, the word terabyte doesn't scare people and is indeed now part of common parlance...
If filling up your tank takes 2 minutes (1 minute filling + 1 minute overhead), you can tank 350 miles per minute. The Tesla S gets 265 miles in 1.5 minutes, which is 175 miles per minute. So your car can be refilled twice as fast as the Tesla S when measured in miles. Furthermore, you need to recharge the Tesla more often.

At least, Elon is honest about it and says "this is about convincing the people that are skeptics". (And not about making a fair comparison.)
This is a joke, these people are good at hardware OEM, but they don't understand software. They are using hardware OEM thinking to build software. Maybe they think crafting software is all like to pipeline components and make cheap labor assemble them. Good try, but it won't work.

You never know how low IT salary it is in Taiwan, 20K USD is a pretty good annual salary for a new graduate Computer Science student as Software Engineer You can also see 8.8K USD annual salary for software engineer title everywhere here. How can you find talent with that shitty payment? All they can find is cheap labor.

Try to pay really good salary and find few but pretty top talents. It is better to have a 10 members elite team rather than 3000 not-so-good developers. Otherwise, go back and do your OEM.
Healthbox Healthcare Accelerator Holds Innovation Day
More Data is not always better- Nate Silver
Depends. First, a biological network is not just connections of neurons, it's weighted connections of neurons. And even saying that is a huge approximation.

It's not just about mapping the topology of the brain, just having a neural network of 1e10 vertices and 1e12 links will not give you an artificial intelligence. It's just not that simple. The connectome paradigm is not sufficient. It is hip because of computer scientists using artificial neuron networks to achieve awesome stuff. But that doesn't mean that the complexity of the human brain only resides in the number of neurons and interactions. It's not guaranteed that we are getting closer of the goal just by adding billions of neurons and connections.

I find this wannabe holistic approach a bit confusing as it is horizontal whereas I am convinced that what we need is a vertical approach : up from graph topology down to an accurate biophysical understanding of synapses and information transmission, all across multiple scales, from the angström up to microns.

That's the key : multiscale modeling, not single-huge-scale modeling.
so basically how much it would save : Cost/Time/Space over a 100 MB file, compared to current codec ? A example would have been nice for non-CS people like me.
> Abstraction layers don't necessarily need to produce lowest common denominator results.

Except in the special case that you can build the functionality not provided by using other functionality that is, I think they do, since otherwise it's leaking. A leaky abstraction is often worse than none.
Still need to get out to clean the windshield.

Whats the big deal with getting out anyway?
I also think this brings to light the fact that we have a rising fidelity stake in the politics of other nations and I'm left wondering if in the absence of a Pirate Party here in the US, maybe I ought to at least be contributing actively to these efforts overseas.
Thanks for the reply. I must admit, our resources are quite limited at this early stage as we’re just two of us with day jobs.

[quote] if it is easy to use and solves a headache for your target market, it should keep people coming back. [/unquote]

We have aimed to do so, by providing decent information such as crime stats for the area, at users fingertips, and also having an intuitive approach to the search experience as a whole. Yes, the market is saturated, but we thought there's an opportunity in there if we approach it cleverly, but are short of ideas on how to make our website viral
Cynical me thinks "it's time to _monetize!_"

How long till it follows expert sexchange.com's model?
Government of South Tyrol (Italy) converts to LibreOffice
Roughly 9.09495TB for anybody interested
Google never, ever used brainteasers in interviews (unless you count coding exercises - which you shouldn't).

More interesting was the fact they have given up screening on academic credentials.
It is somewhat like reading a magazine before you actually submit an article for publication. Many new users don't bother reading through some of the upvoted questions in the category they are seeking help on and hence never bother understanding what makes a good question. However, it is true that some of the users are brutal towards new users and downvote and move on without ever going back to see if the question was ever improved. It takes an even understanding on both sides to provide a meaningful -- and sometimes enlightening -- experience.
It's a good time to be a software developer
Orange to EE upgrade up to 12months early
Amazing will be 30 years from now when I'm watching a plane fly over using a Fong-type engine ;).
Better Place actually filed for bankruptcy about a month ago: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/anothe...
Tesla X is built on the same chassis (and therefore, battery pack) as Tesla S.
This is why I'm so glad this NSA dustup happened during Obama's presidency (note: I voted for him). I think if this had happened during a Republican administration, particularly the last one, even less would be made of it. I think there's a really good chance it would have been reduced to a partisan scuffle and people that identity Republican would have been less inclined to find it offensive. I think the hilariously consistent approach to our privacy and the Patriot Act by both administrations creates an opportunity for the public to react to the facts relatively independent of their party affiliations.
The model he fills up looks to be an A8. The A8 fuel economy is around 15-18MPG. So 20 gallon tank only gets 350 mile range on it.
WhatsApp Surpasses 250 Million Active Users
When people blog about don't use default bootstrap template, I often take it with a grain of salt. Now i'm absolutely positive.
You've figured it wrong. After 37500 miles of long-distance driving, you have paid as much as a battery pack. Do you do less than that many long-distance miles in a normal car lifetime?
Been a member for over 3 years I still think it's the one and only. Like the usenet groups for programming used to be, but better organized.
While the moderation of quesitions works very well, which is what probably makes it as good, there's two things that bothers me: the vast amount of questions that shouldn't be there but don't reach the close vote threshold. Not a problem per se, but annoying when searching sometimes, and more annoying when you're like "hey lets review some and see there's 55k of such questions" :] Second, sometimes it doesn't feel fair. I've ansered questions with one-liners that are a no-brainer and gained massive amounts of rep for it, while I've also answered questions spending more than an hour and trying to pass on some deeper knowledge about a large topic and got only an accepted answer, not even knowing if it really helped the author.
I am consistently dissappointed with links pointing to medium.com. I wish there was a feature of HN to block webistes from view. I no longer want to see any articles referencing medium.com.
Title should be: The one "feature" that will cause users to practically insta-close your website and not read the article.
Cryptocat Developer: How to fight PRISM
Good, this is exactly what I hope happens. Javascript is a ridiculous language to be the only choice for web programming. Also, as more and more code has to be ran client side, how can I protect my investment for the code I need to not be so easily copy-able?
Google Science Fair 2013
I'm particularly surprised about Germany's reaction. Obama was scheduled to speak this week in Berlin, in the same spot where Kennedy gave once a famous speech (the Branderburg Gate). Now, I won't pretend that I'd expect the German government to cancel his speech, but I'd hope at least some hard questions would be asked.

I mean, Germans know exactly what happens when surveillance gets out of control - the Wikipedia page about the Stasi [1] is pretty good, including lines such as "counting part-time informers, the Stasi had one informer per 6.5 people" and "As the GDR began to fall, the Stasi did as well. They began to destroy the extensive files that they had kept, both by hand and with the use of shredders. When these activities became known, a protest erupted in front of the Stasi headquarters". Can anyone imagine US citizens storming the NSA, or the FBI? Even today those files are being reassembled, because people wants to know what happened.

And yet, what happened during the conference [2]? Angela Merkel essentially stepping in defense of Obama. She could have said she didn't agree. She could have remained quiet. And yet she speaks (mildly, though) in his favor, even while by her own admission "the questions have not yet been satisfactorily addressed". That was disappointing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG0D3A8FkPo
There are browser extensions that let you filter by keyword (maybe even domain). One of them is HackerNew (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...)
I have a 4-gallon motorcycle and I love not getting off / taking off helmet at pumps where I pay through a terminal at the pump :-D
Bush-Era Whistleblower claims NSA Ordered Wiretap Of Barack Obama In 2004
> Free and equal access to private property has been bandied about for decades

There is no such thing unless the property is something like a restaurant or hotel and you discriminate based on a protected characteristic (race, mostly).
Re cost: My girlfriend and I managed to travel South East Asia for 3 months for £1200 between us. Flights to Malaysia were £350 return each from the UK. That included travel, accommodation, eating, activities, etc...

We had a £10 a day budget.
"Metadata is our context"
Yes, it always felt a little weird that the "beacon of freedom" has only two parties to choose from :) And they're slowly converging.
Death Ray.

Fundamental Science THIS!.
Are smartphones killing memories?
I love these guys. Was an early tester!
The Russians are Coming...Back
Maybe have a requirement that at least a site/mockups be made?
I'd be beyond shocked if this wasn't already happening. I suspect one or two "discoveries" (e.g. a mayor smoking crack with a prostitute) were probably really from one of these sources and everyone else is simply shown what is out there on them and they avoid rocking the boat.
That's not the case, you have to either come back and pick up your battery on the way home, or you pay for the new one.

It is however very encouraging for people worried about battery performance that you can get a new one pretty easily.
It's a misdemeanor just like a CFAA violation by itself.
I fully support this idea - but you might be best approaching the GDS and working out ways to apply pressure to local government. Indeed, check out the alphagov github at https://github.com/alphagov - much of the groundwork for digital government services has been laid-out, and we should build on this where possible.
Congrats on shipping! However:

You don't prove the validity of a startup idea by asking a community of startup enthusiasts whether they think it's valid (except if it's an idea targeted to startup enthusiasts).

It's the same as getting validation from your friends and family: next to worthless.

People who make up the Upboat community and the potential customers of your startup idea are very probably different. And they're going to have wildly different opinions on the validity.

What you should find out is whether your potential customers think it's valid.
"We are appalled to learn of the unprecedented surveillance of Internet users worldwide through PRISM and similar programmes."

There has not been a shred of evidence that PRISM gives the government any capability that it did not already have with FISA. All we learned was the name of the system that some companies use to respond to FISA requests, a name that they weren't even aware of. There is no practical difference between the U.S. companies listed on the PRISM slides and U.S. companies that are not; FISA covers them all. The initial claims by Glenn Greenwald that PRISM gave the NSA direct access to company servers have been refuted a hundred times over and walked back by Greenwald himself. If you were just now appalled to learn about the changes made to FISA with the PATRIOT act, you are 12 years behind the times.
I have wifi problems with my MacBook Pro retina since I bought it. It's probably a recurring software issue.
While i find icon to be a nice language, imperative string operations with implicit context is a huge turn off. I'd rather use regexps.
No one is looking for the truth, but rather results. If the phone records, email and so on prove the person is innocent, that data simply won't be used unless they also find an even better candidate for conviction.
Why are you disappointed with links to medium.com?
I only brought that up since here where I'm at in NorCal, there were tons of bugs when I filed my tank recently.

Also if you have kids in the car, it's convenient, it's like asking why are there drive thru's at restaurants, car washes, and atm machines.

Not sure that #1 applies to everyone...I remember on a road trip, in Oregon it's against the law for me to fill my OWN tank.

EDIT: Added wife's 2 cents
Thanks or the link.

While I agree it is not really relevant, it reminded me of the kind of articles some mass media produce that are basically along the lines of "scientists discovered [whatever]". Reading those is basically a waste of time, so seeing a similar sentence at the start of HN submitted post was a bit unexpected to me.
Neither is native.

And frankly, if your app is actually worth something, you should have a web version. Not everyone can afford a shiny new iPhone. And that does a thing far worse than harm the UX. It prevents those that would benefit most from using the app.

You make it seem like the battery life is the only thing that matters.
> But there are those nagging questions where you pondered two days and researched and then pour everything you know into a long, elaborate question, asking for help. And then, nothing. 16 views, no votes, no answers.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Even worse when a moderator comes along and closes it, as if it would have cost him something to just leave it open in case some kind soul came along and responded.
A bigger concern will be that "Lawyers" will realize that the NSA data came from internet companies and ISPs, and these companies often still have that data.

There is no national security shield for that data....

"Lawyers" just need an enterprising startup to build a private version of PRISM to do analysis and reporting on the data they extract from the companies via court orders.

OTOH, my understanding is that the defence has a special right to this data in criminal cases if the NSA has it because that means "the prosecutor" (ie, the government) has the data.

"The NSA is not above the law. It's a government agency, just like every other government agency. Just because it has this Harry Potter-like disappearing cloak, it's still an agency that is subject to the law"

Call me cynical, but I'm yet to be convinced that is the case at all.
Why Humans and Robots Will One Day Date Each Other
This really depends on the topic. I mostly stick around the functional programming tags (Haskell and OCaml) and have seen all sorts of difficult questions answered, often very well. Sometimes SO is basically the only place to find an answer at all. Especially in the Haskell tag, even extremely involved and non-trivial questions rarely go unanswered.
I go the other direction. I believe a person can be evil and do evil while believing themselves good. The results of your actions are what matters, not what you thought when you committed them.
A LaTeX-Package that comes up with synonyms for 'Therefore,'
Just to close the loop on this thread, this summary by Zack Kohane is pretty spot on: http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2013/06/more-surveillance-healt...
How do I support this? I'm a Swiss citizen living in the UK.
How to succeed in crowdfunding: interview with platform FundedByme
Why You Should Demand More Surveillance — Of Your Health Records
I have never used an open-source project that is on BitBucket.
They do not :(
The FISA court is acting like a legislature, and that’s a problem
About cost: I did 9 months in Asia for 12K$ and never felt stressed for cash.
My main problem on the go was motivation for side projects. It is so easy to get caught up in meeting locals, doing activities that it can fill up your whole day. There are so many interesting distractions.

If I wanted to travel and get work done now I wold probably revisit some of the same countries.
Too bad it's limited to the Netherlands.
It is not transported over HTTP, although it does make use of HTTP at the Application Layer. It is transported over TCP, which is a Transport Layer protocol.

Yes, I'm being pedantic and annyoing.
Money is simply a manipulation of language backed up by force. The paper coerces sharing (whether fairly or unfairly) of resources (whether labor or physical resources like trees and oil) in a way that does not spontaneously happen without the paper.

A simple example would be without money you barter which is also a manipulation of language expressed through physical items. You need this I need that so we exchange. With money the equation becomes you need something, and you can buy it with money, here is some money, now give me what I want. The intermediary form of this was gold, because people can agree that gold is reliable. We replace that with simple language backed up by force, a dollar. A piece of paper that initially will stand in for gold to establish its value, but eventually will stand in for itself. Eventually we replace this with something like Bitcoin, no coercion simply an agreement in language justified through a market.

Quid pro quo.
I just return from a year of traveling in SE Asia and 10 GBP per day seems like really low. Transportation alone could eat that amount easily.

My budget was something around 20/day, which buys me dorms at nice hostels (no bugs, aircon and usually hot water), food at local restaurant (I usually stays out of hawker stalls), transportation and occasional sights (like Angkor Wat and such).
Here's an related talk by Jeff Hawkins at Google, where he gets into his ideas about the structure of the brain, and what he's done to reconstruct it in software/hardware.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y43qwS8fl4&list=FLgNLujlOCEu...
The Penguin’s View on Instagram Video for Brands and Users