skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> As an aside, I think If IT workers had become unionized, I think I'm not far off in thinking that we'd still be using DOS and system7 or System V.

If IT workers were unionized, as in other industries, this would only matter in large shops where non-unionized IT managers were making the substantive decisions about what got done, and the unionization would affect working conditions, not strategic direction. To the extent that this influence on working conditions somehow made things less attractive for innovative workers (IME -- having worked in large organizations both in union and non-union IT shops -- its more likely that most large organizations would do that than that unions particulary would, but lets not worry about that for the moment), that would just mean an even stronger trend for innovative workers to move to small shops like startups.
Malware Analysis Slides from TakeDownCon in St. Louis
Not to thread hijack, but my dad is interested in genealogy. He turned up a letter written in 1883 from a relative to his sons who had just left home for school. I found his language really interesting, so I transcribed it.

One part I liked: "The world is open to you, and you can be anything that an honorable ambition may aspire to, if you are but true to yourselves. To be true to yourselves you have but to meet in a manly way and conscientiously discharge the duties of life in any and every sphere, that you may be cast."

Letters from fathers to sons, good stuff.

https://gist.github.com/bsl/7344f9e0b76b60440061
IANAL and I don't have any business to sue, but my mind wanders about "creative" approaches to patent trolls.

1. I live in Houston, which is a reasonable drive from the eastern district of Texas. If I got sued, I'd probably show up in court just to make them show up in court.

2. I wonder if a layered defense would work? "Every problem in computer science can be solved by yet another level of indirection." I've read about holding company structures where Company A holds the trademarks, code, IP, etc. for a business and then licenses it for use by Company B. Company B is a shell that passes back everything to Company A. The only one doing business potentially "making, using or selling" the potentially patented IP is Company B, which can string the troll along, then close up business overnight and reappear as Company C, with new licensing agreements from Company A. Probably doesn't work long term, but it sure would slow them down.

3. What about "patent troll delayers" as a service? These would be people who live near the court that are given, say, 0.01% of the company. As "owners" of the company, they may appear in court pro se, without hiring a lawyer. I think there are requirements to be in the patent bar before appearing in patent trials, so pro se is not an option, but just showing up, acting pissed off, and demanding your rights might gum up enough of the court's docket to be some major friction in the troll's process. We aren't talking about million dollar judgements here, just enough friction to cost more than the settlement amount they were looking for. Imagine if the federal judge had to take time to throw out pro se defendants in hundreds of cases. There goes the court's schedule, and it would make great television.
I highly doubt it's even close to 90%. If it were, I think you're right that it's much less likely it would have been shut down. There are many very technical people out there that just don't find RSS fits with their workflow.

Personally, I have a list of blogs I like to read in a couple bookmarks folders, and when I feel like reading them, I'll go to the bookmarks and see what's up. I don't really care if I miss posts, so I have no real need for a system that will catalog them all for me. I have tried a couple times to get into it, but just found it wasn't for me. (As a means of consuming media. I do use RSS for automating various processes, as well as the occasional RSS-to-email when I really need notifications for something (like rare classifieds posts I'm searching for).) Anyway, my point is, I'm pretty technical - I run a web based company and embrace plenty of modern technologies - and I never got into RSS. I'm fairly certain the majority of Google employees don't make regular use of an RSS reader either. (Although I imagine a significant minority do as well.)
T-Mobile actually does DPI over unencrypted HTTP, and throws up an error in your browser if you're using tethering without paying for it (Galaxy Nexus + Macbook Air + HTTP Everywhere works though).
I doubt it. And I get why you might find the thread annoying. But I believe people mostly use the term "conspiracy theory" to reinforce the assumptions of their own worldview. The comment to which I replied seems like a good example of that, since it didn't react to anything specific about this case (disavowed any knowledge of it, in fact), only the form that it took.

One piece of evidence for this security-blanket interpretation of "conspiracy theory" is that we're much more likely to invoke the term about things that happen close to home, and much less likely to resort to it about things that happen abroad. Also, the ridiculing language that invariably accompanies the term is a social ritual. It has no content; its function is to enforce consensus belief. The human need for consensus belief is profound and we're largely unconscious of its influence on us, which makes it that much stronger.

I think this phenomenon is fascinating and I wish it were possible to study it at a more-than-anecdotal level, but I don't know of anything like that.

p.s. I think it's cool that this thread contains comments from not just an actual firefighter, but (if I'm reading correctly) a firefighter-programmer. As my sister-in-law likes to say: you barely ever get that!
reading this while accidentally listening to the awesome TRON Legacy Soundtrack by Daft Punk :)
What is the other direction to to skeptical in? And how does bugging that embassy relate to terrorism? A fair portion of terrorism comes from quite close US allies (Saudi, Pakistan arguably Israel depending on your politics), so I suppose bugging them may be helpful.
This narrative gets played over and over. People get ahold of public workers' salaries, see that they're getting a decent wage, and get all huffy that those public workers are personally stealing their hard earned taxpayer money. It's another version of people getting all upset when they see people buying nice things with food stamps.

When I see those salaries, I think the following:

* I'm glad to see that there's people at BART making a decent wage.

* There are certainly other groups not making as much money.

* What are the forces keeping other groups from making as much money, and how can we get them more?

* San Francisco is in one of the richest regions on the planet. Why shouldn't its public employees make a good livable wage?

* As a public transit user, I like knowing that the person I'm trusting my life with has enough money to keep their blood sugar up and their cortisol levels down.
Link for UK readers: http://web.archive.org/liveweb/http://www.bbc.com/future/sto...
> It still leaves the direct question - while less important - unanswered: when we do go to vote, what is the optimal approach on this kind of issue?

Voting is a blunt instrument that's very rarely useful -- especially in one election -- at affecting change on any specific issue of this type (that is, one on which the major parties have no real distinction, though they exploit any opportunity to take PR pot-shots at the other party.)

If you haven't changed the landscape by political action before the election so that the issue you are concerned about is no longer that kind of issue, then there isn't an effective voting strategy available.
It's best to stay away until you have a chunk of time, because it sucks you in so much..
Frame of Reference — Medium
Given that it is technically feasible, I'd assume it's possible for a mobile phone base station to geofence something like an embassy, or park bench, and have all mobile phones entering the geofenced perimeter go into surveillance mode, and return to normal on exiting the perimeter. Given that phones have a precise GPS locked timebase, I'd even assume that it is possible to beamform the signal from multiple phones, allowing conversations to be picked out from background noise. Continuous monitoring, as long as there is a continuous stream of mobile phones passing by.
Has anyone else tried reading that article on an iPhone? How many different sorts of bad is that experience? Banners, nav bar, non realizable, scrolls left to right and up and down.
Any reason why this wouldn't work with WebOS devices or other non iOS?
Because political alliances are impermanent?

It would be pretty hard to bug Ecuador's embassy the day after they were deemed a threat to national security.

>>> I'd understand Chinese or Russian embassies

"We've always been at war with Eastasia".
If the history of Dwarf Fortress interests you, I recommend you check out the history of roguelike games (probably the nerdiest of all my passions.) Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, for example, is a beautiful illustration of applying open source software development tenets to a massive game, as dozens of contributors have continuously evolved and enhanced it over time (and its massively fun to boot.)
I don't see any unread counts either, despite turning them on in settings (the FAQ mentions that there's such a setting, although it implies it's turned on by default, whereas it was turned off for me...).

In fact, I also don't get any icons—or text, they're just blank space—for buttons... to even open the settings dialog I had to click randomly in likely-looking blank spaces on the main page. ><

I get the feeling they really rushed this out, and maybe didn't do a whole lot of testing...
The pebble is also a much smaller mass to move around so the motor has a bigger effect. I find it great also, especialy when I'm in a loud train station for example where you can't hear your ringer and would miss vibration when walking.
Sounds like people working in terrible conditions like that could benefit from forming a union. But they'd rather pull everybody down to their level rather than work to bring their own working situation up to something that isn't absolutely fucking abysmal (unpaid overtime (!), no cost-of-living adjustments -- why should any company be allowed to treat their employees that way?)
The point is that allies are aware they're being bugged. It's just an accepted truth.
I completely agree with this, however the tact could have been a bit better. I wouldn't mind having something like this officially added to the HN guidelines.

Use IIRC or AFAIK when you remember something, but don't remember exactly or cite a source for anything stated as fact.
Well done. This will work quite well with Vincent Driessen's "A Successful Git Branching Model." http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ And with nearly all sensible git branching models for that matter.
that's exactly what happened. The biggest reason this was a bad mood for Google was because the entire tech journalist brain trust was so dependent on it. They spat on the people who can be the most fervent defenders of the company.
I think the first paragraph of the page linked explains why that code is so impenetrable. You will not have to read or write Haskell like that, ever. Good find though! On a similar note, the Haskell community is amazing. You can learn absolutely everything between the Haskell wiki, freenode irc and hackage. How great is it that EVERY lib/package/framework is documented on hackage in exactly the same format? Very great. Coming back to JavaScript is a bummer :(
If his primary concern had been Google Reader staying alive, he arguably had "false sense of comfort" back then, and this is exactly what I am saying. He made a mistake in evaluating risks.

The news is not for him, of course, as it would have been useless. The news is for anyone else who feels like safely innovating within a big company with _any_ culture today. There is a trade-off that you always take. Know it well when you make it. It can be much easier to leverage a big company's resources; on the other hand, your product may not follow your initial vision or get a bullet in its head. "The culture seemed cool back then so I was fooled by recruiter propaganda telling me I have control, blah, blah..." is not an excuse.

EDIT:
To clarify, all of this post presumed it would have been successful if he'd done it outside Google, something he seems to imply by his statement. I want to reiterate that I personally object to this very assumption, so I think he made the right trade-off, in which case, it's all fine, but he should not post a rant that implies doing it outside Google would have been catch-free.
Ever since I read the NY Times article posted here a couple years ago (see below), I have had a similar response. I love reading about Dwarf Fortress, but I'm hesitant to actually try it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of...
If you are just curious about the game, there are many "Let's Play Dwarf Fortress" videos on YouTube. Expert players talk through the game features and progression.
I would love sort of a timeline that documents how Google is slowly abandoning the once embraced "open standards". Federated XMPP for Google Talk, RSS in Google Reader for Google+ feeds etc etc.
Twelve Tones - Vi Hart Video
Nope, the worst nightmare is being kicked off the store, so you can no longer make any money. Rit has happened to me before, for submitting too many apps.
Made with alien technology. (Common Lisp) ;-)
Simon Peyton Jones on Adventures with types (Podcast)
Can you link to something where this scientific concept is from?

I've only ever seen this in the cute not scientific video linked elsewhere here, and have taken it as false. A nice cute plot for a story but not true.

I'd be interested to see something backing it up.
Unarrested Development
The strangest thing about recent leaks is how people are shocked that the NSA spies on foreign countries. What are they supposed to be doing?
http://cryptome.org/eyeball/mmp/jimmy-carter.htm
Why viewers aren't 'appy with a second-screen sell
If you dig around long enough on the Team Liquid forums you can find JTV's customer service that eventually won all of the business from Ustream and Livestream. Back in the summer of 2010 Ustream was the primary site for streaming sc2 tournaments/community stuff.

Emmett and Co. reached out to the community and won everyone over about a year before the rebrand as twitch.

This is kind've a shoutout to tl and the sc2 community that no doubt had a major role in snowballing twitch into what they are. Emmett keeping in close contact with the user base notwithstanding!
> If you mean the self-insertion, I think that's not too bad. Yes, Harry's reasoning is similar to Yudkowski's, but that's kind of the whole point of the fic. It's not like Harry is a copy of EY himself.

FYI, Eliezer has explicitly stated that Harry is sometimes wrong and that he disagrees with him. He hasn't given specifics AFAIK.
Yes in simplistic terms for a specific metric I'm sure other providers have better hardware than AWS, if that is all one wants to base their value of "better" on then so be it, but that is pretty naive.

Many argue that the AWS ecosystem (25 services at last count) and the extensive featureset of AWS outweigh the bare bones "fast" metrics of other providers.

I think like the poster above is mentioning...there is generally more to it than a simple metric or two sampled a few times from a single endpoint. But I guess it all lies on ones definition of what they consider valuable...
"Automation will not decrease the value that BART brings
to the bay area..."

But it may increase the value by being more efficient/effective.

"and it will not eliminate all positions,"

Nothing wrong with that. I would imagine that we'd at least try to do the best we can.

"it will simply concentrate that value in fewer
individuals who could also demand high pay."

I don't see why that is a problem that is any worse than the status quo. People in the BART are not paid according to the value BART brings, they are paid what the market will bear, with one side of that market bargaining collectively as a union.

The same value divided by half as many employees should have no bearing on the salaries plus benefits paid out to employees.
As a European I feel very sad that many national governments are so much under the thumb of US. To divert the plane of another nation's leader without due legal justification is a big statement about the lengths our governments will go to satisfy US government policy. I know a great number of US citizens also disagree with these policies. Another sad day for democracy.
How are You Reading This?
Several articles indicate it's also the jurors: http://www.thejuryexpert.com/2010/03/east-texas-jurors-and-p...
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-patent-plaintiffs-win-in-...

So I think the parent post might be on to something. Let's mess with Texas!
It also doesn't say much except that the submarine can launch a little vehicle that goes down and taps the cables; tapping an already-installed 192 strand fibre cable without breaking any of the strands or disrupting communications would be impressive even even on land and there's no hint as to how the NSA is able to do this once they reach the cable.
For anyone unfamiliar with Dwarf Fortress and wondering what all the fuss is about, I recommend the classic 'Boatmurdered' chronicles:

http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/

It's a fairly long read, but as always when Dwarf Fortress is involved, it's well worth the effort.
Your father was abused into better handwriting and I feel sorry for him. Similar or better results can be achieved with patience, a kind word and a good instructor.

Huge public works projects that served a helpful purpose involved the death of countless workers in the past (I.E. the Panama Canal). We're grateful the end product exists, but who would tolerate a lock or dam that consumes that many lives today?

Just because things "were", doesn't mean they should "still".
Google App Script might be what you're looking for it's an app development platform that can use internal resources (like GMail)

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/
Neat things do come of it though. Code Search, for example, ended up as an technical explanation [1], which I found fascinating, and example implementation [2], which I found useful.

[1] http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html
[2] http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/
Experimental results or GTFO.
This was published in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" this weekend. It's behind a paywall. They make it really hard to find, this is the only link I could come up with: http://fazarchiv.faz.net/?q=menschenrechte+daten&dosearch=ne...

Original is in german, sorry for the crappy Google translation.

Little info on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter

EDIT: original article in german: http://pastebin.com/Sy8q4gmT
I suppose my original post was needlessly ambiguous. I was a bit apprehensive that the entire comment section would resemble the first few comments, where people would uncritically blame the US and insist that the government was out to get Snowden.

What is the other direction to to skeptical in?

Many on HN are very skeptical of the US/UK governments (generally for good reason), but seem to lack a similar level of skepticism for stories that make the governments look bad. That's the 'other direction' which I was implying.

If some percent of stories that make the government look good are misleading / planted / etc, then logically, some percent of those which make them look bad are likely wrong too.

And how does bugging that embassy relate to terrorism?

It doesn't really, the response to articles like "FBI busts terror cell" was just the first example of government mistrust that came to mind.
> but haven't had the guts to invest the time into it given its steep learning curve

And by steep, you mean vertical.
You may find this post by Wade Cosgrove of Panic interesting

http://www.panic.com/blog/2012/12/itunes-11-and-colors/
You might look into over the counter Lithium Orotate. Google for it, but there are some neat studies on naturally occurring Lithium levels in tap water and things like rape, murder and violent crime. It's theorized most people are deficient of it in some level. Also, get checked out for bipolar - it's like having a seizure but instead of muscle spasms, you get mood spasms (they actual treat BP with antiseziure drugs). And yeah, see a psychiatrist if you can afford it / have insurance or look for a free clinic. Good luck.
Particularly bad.. incentivisation schemes create proxies for success and inevitably get gamed. Why bother with all the hard stuff when you can shortcut your way to success?

Good incentives are life really.. look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I believe most people work because they have to, but most people who work hard, work hard because they want to. The pay off is growth, progress, self-actualisation.

As an aside, this is why I question the whole gamification thing. The best games life-ify the game. Why would you want to remove meaning and complexity from work?
I'm tryna ball, hook it up my dude.

I'm graduating May 2014 from a top 10 CS school, lemme get that dope co-sign outta college.

Lemme know more bout that job a.k.a. #daily #hustle.
To me, it reads like the conclusion and summary of a big statistical paper but ... there's no statistical paper. When I saw "Pair programming costs about 2.5 times as much as one programmer working alone" in the abstract I was really looking forward to seeing the data that led to that conclusion since the main problem with pairing discussions is the lack of data and surfeit of anecdote.

But there wasn't any useful data because the source, timing, measurement practices, and sample sizes for the grand summary tables were not mentioned at all. It's like reading an article that states very firmly that the moon is made up of precisely 89.24397% green cheese. It sure sounds very specific but where DID that number come from?

I hope the author publishes more details about how these numbers were calculated because we need more data about pairing but I don't really expect that he will.

More heat than light, really.
This can't really work on the long run / at scale, ya know... Someday someone will make a script that does the equivalent of the above, then somebody will make an alternative app-store GUI that leverages that script to get anything that's open-source for free. And you can't really sell as SaaS <$10 "apps" - so in the end you have two options: (a) classic closed source and (b) pay for subscription / user account (ok, there are the adds/in-app-purchases financed ones and they could profit from the "paid open source model").
This is a (poor) translation of an article that ran last weekend in the Sunday edition of a German newspaper[1].

It does not appear to contain any new information that was not already publicly available: see, for example, the Wikipedia entry for the USS Jimmy Carter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_(SSN-23)

1. Behind a paywall at http://bit.ly/12cXRi9 ; full original text at http://pastebin.com/KFhVj2X1
Does anyone else get an endless recursive loop of google translate when clicking this link?
None of the online-only sources are yet at a level of quality where I, wearing my hiring-manager hat, would take them seriously enough to justify the money spent. They'll get there eventually, but they're not there now.

Is there any reason you can't/don't want to attend a physical university?
An Open Letter to Craig Newmark
I was confused why one needs this but it is because in some places tethering costs extra dime i guess ?

I dont have that problem, but i only get 750 Megs unmetered traffic in my EUR 50/month contract anyway, so i hardly use tethering.
Treat your Employer as your First Customer