skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Either I'm wrong, or reality is unpopular on HN. It doesn't take much to google for the TIC data[1]. You really do finance this stuff. Average net purchases represent nearly 30% of the US Government's budget. The USG would have to curtail its programs by about this much if you didn't consistently buy our toilet paper.

[1] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/ti...
Neither flattering nor patronizing, I can see, merely a description of what the author saw. However a bit of condescension might well be in order from some quarters.
Show HN: Air Code
Help build a better matplotlib rcparams: PlotOrNot
Must be my fantastic writing.

Seriously though, assembly isn't all that hard, mentally. It's difficult in the same way that unloading a truck full of sand with your bare hands is difficult. Which is to say, it takes a long time, but all it really needs is time, not deep thought.

People get scared away from it because they don't know where to start with it, or because it looks really hard, or because it just takes too much time to understand what's going on, but it can be really rewarding.
This is one of the few (only?) python packages that can read and write files in NASA's CDF format - http://cdf.gsfc.nasa.gov Installing under OS X is fairly straightforward following the directions in the documentation.
I agree with you that many of the things that America has done are gross and contradict "American ideals", but I think you're underselling the power and influence of European nations. Why are they so easily bending to the will of such a belligerent turd?
I disagree that it's off topic. Patrick's email/article gave an example of how easy and valuable it can be to automate something within a doctor's office, then added this:

"Many things are easy for software companies in a way that they just aren't for non-software companies... doctor's offices don't think of APIs for the same reason that developers think that free soda is a wonderful thing to treat your employees to."

I read that as encouraging developers to look at doctor offices as a valuable market without warning them about the importance of HIPAA/HITECH compliance. And I believe that can get folks into trouble if they aren't careful.

Perhaps I should have simply phrased it that way instead. Thanks for the feedback. I deleted my prior message and I'll email Patrick with my concern.
That's a good question. I just attributed that to general corruption during the run, but never checked it out in detail. Presumably the calculation of the string pointer was sometimes being offset by a few bytes somehow, but I don't know exactly why.
That's a very nice idea! Maybe we'll just upgrade our longterm fans or something like that. Thanks for that; we'll go think what we can do in that direction.
> A legal system as only as good ad those who control it.

Bingo!
What I mean is, Federal pensions generally require some * number of years, and if he were to quit the CIA to work for the NYPD then he might lose out on that. So taking an "extended leave of absence" avoids that.

Plus he probably gets to maintain all his contacts at the CIA and leverage them for whatever messed-up stuff the NYPD is up to, like their surveillance of innocent muslims, mosques, etc.
Just to put it out there, while I agree that the sheer volume of snooping being performed by the NSA, why is it a surprise to anyone, anywhere, that any government is snooping on as much foreign traffic as they can? This is, and has pretty much always been, standard operating procedure for every major intelligence agency in the world.
WW3 over Syria will never happen.
If everyone's goals were pure, you're correct. But if I continued to farm and then caused the people around me to become indebted to me in exchange for the food, then I could perhaps force them to farm for me in order to pay their debts; of course, eating any food would put them farther into debt so they would never get out, but I wouldn't have to farm any more yet would still own everything.

I could enforce this by picking the meanest, biggest people in my town and feeding them in exchange for their protection.

You should remember that prior to the invention of capitalism and profit as a calling in the 19th century, many people in the western world lived like this.
Agreed. Was married in the courthouse. No wedding. Been happily married for 7 years and expect many more to follow.
I know plenty of people in Europe that would have trouble locating major US cities on a map, but I wouldn't be so bigoted to say Europeans don't know geography.
It's an interesting idea. The number of 'throwaway' accounts on HN suggests there might be some value to a network where now and then a comment or thread couldn't be traced back to an account.

It doesn't mean at all that you would necessarily get more valid answers to your questions. If that were true, the boards on 4chan that aren't /b/ would be glittering beacons of civilized discourse. People given the mask of anonymity can act more truthfully but also deceptively because they don't bear the consequences of identity.

Of course, there's public anonymity and there's anonymity to the mods and anonymity in the database. If the NSA wants to know who's who in your network, encrypting messages and hashing IPs probably isn't going to keep them at bay. What will the server logs tell them, for instance? Or packet sniffing? Or planting a mole on your staff?

If you allow file and image uploads by anonymous posters, you WILL inevitably wake up one day and find a ton of child porn, that's just how anon rolls sometimes. How will you deal with gore, porn and copyrighted material? When someone makes a threat against another user and posts personal information about them, will you go to the police? Under what conditions would you as an administrator violate the anonymity of your users?

Maybe only allow the anonymous posters to post text, or make certain that the mods can tell which account it really is (although this by definition makes the system less secure for users.) Either way, I think you'll need to be prepared for trolling and mischief, have your moderators ready with a clear set of guidelines, and even a few rather fascist options available like blocking Tor if need be.
XORing Elephants: Novel Erasure Codes for Big Data [PDF]
Yes, I was going to add a note on that but then I realized this problem (people cheating) would exist anyways as long as there isn't a trusted third party to handle conflicts. I don't think this would be a common issue though as most open source developers are not driven by the money and I don't think there would be enough money to attract scammers (would someone really get into the trouble of writing an open source software hoping to one day cheat people out of their money when they submit bug bounties?).
Upvoting for the meme support.

Also, it could be occasionally useful even. :)
Try scandinavian countries.
It is, but their idea of society differs from the norm...
We don't wan to read an English essay either.
I'm not expecting them to find the city on a map (aside from their own), but you'd be hard pressed to find a European that didn't know that New York or L.A. was located in the United States.
This is only partly true, and in a limited way. Fortran is still king for simulations or anything that needs to be fast. Other possibilities are C and assembler, and that's about it. Python + numpy has become very popular very fast for exploring data and the results of simulations, and it's a great environment for this. Note that when you use numpy you're calling fortran (and C?) routines. The fortran languages and compilers continue to evolve, and fortran will probably remain the language of choice for large-scale computation for some time. Other languages, such as Java and lisps, are sometimes used for big simulations, but Python is just too slow to be used for anything but prototyping.
Ask HN: Can A Video Playlist Over The Internet Be Patented ... Comcast has one
So for a project that I'm finishing up, I recently did a patent search for some of the methods and features.

Unless I'm reading this patent wrong, Comcast apparently has just been issued a patent for the concept of Video Playlists on a network (link below).

Anytime I work on a project, I was taught to check patents before my ass gets too far along and sued. I really hope that I'm reading this patent wrong (which was just issued June 25). I welcome anyone and everyone's opinion please.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=%22Video+playlist%22&OS=%22Video+playlist%22&RS=%22Video+playlist%22
"Python is currently embedded inside of LLDB and available through an interactive interpreter." Nice.
http://lldb.llvm.org/python-reference.html
I would have to respectfully disagree on this one and at least say that this is highly subjective.

For me personally and based on my values I would be crazy to give up my EU passport for the US one when EU passport gives me right to live in countries like Finland or some other European countries that seem to be not only more free/democratic than the US but are also wealthier and have better health care, education, lower crime rate etc.
Top Nations that spy their citizen using Google.
That's the ID case, btw, not the border search case. I'll try to track that down today.
This is a familiar story for this type of software. It has consistently been my experience that installation on OSX is likely to be a headache, whereas on linux it's effortless. Never tried Windows.
Don't listen to the naysayers. It was a nice interview and article. I found the fonts perfectly readable and I liked the interspersing of images.
Done @ http://www.radioformac.com/stations.html
I don't know how I can do that, even though I courageously freed some mine from some monster or thieves (can't remember what it was exactly) a while ago.
My small home town in Georgia has one of those. I really like the fact that they are doing a lot to take drivers that have no insurance, no licence, or registration off the road. Those people are why we pay so much for car insurance. From what I heard the local PD took out a combo 30k loan/grant to buy a set of those. They wrote enough tickets in the first week to cover it.

On the other the idea that they are logging every time, and place they see your vehicle is very disconcerting to me.
To be fair, the US has an internal geographic complexity that other places don't have, though admittedly it is still irksome that so many people support a war when they can't find the enemy on a map.

He actually asked 'how do you know that' and I wanted to say because I'm not a zombie.
I occasionally get the similar question 'how do you know these things', and my response is, depending on context of course, 'how do you not know these things?'.
How to Recognize Smart People for Your Startup Team
In 2004, some friends and I got together to check out one of the Free Speech cages at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. The whole experience was surreal.

It was sparsely populated by a handful of disinterested people. It was like a cross between a Starbucks queue and a shelter. When we arrived there was a man who had taken to the makeshift stage and was reading something into the microphone. I don't remember what he said, but as best I could tell no one was paying attention whatsoever.

Emboldened by the attendees lack of interest, we took to the stage after the other fellow had finished his speech. I also don't really remember what we said. What I remember, very distinctly, was that a man piloting a riding street vacuum, drove back and forth in front of us as we tried to speak to the assembled. Even running into the stage repeatedly and easily drowning us out with the industrial street cleaner.

We wrapped up whatever we were saying, took another lap of the cage, and wandered off.
I'm saying from general interactions with American neighbors, people on the street and my own family, they don't know geography. Mine's not great - pretty elementary compared to the rest of the world.
I wish I had some authoritative references for this. Hopefully somebody else can write authoritatively or correct me. Based on my readings, slavery was always a problematic aspect of America.

Even the founders debated whether to abolish slavery, but ultimately punted because they felt uniting the states was more important.

That is, it was a tough compromise.

Take a look at the book The Long March (about Lincoln). There was a several-decade long movement before 1864 to abolish slavery.
Applescript know in place @ http://www.radioformac.com/#mediakeys

Thanks for the suggestion.
>> "This interview was not about Ruby."

There was nothing in the title or article to indicate it would be.

>> "I don't know why Matz always starts his computing/programming journey from 1993 ?"

He mentioned it once when referencing how long Ruby had been around. He wasn't telling his personal journey, he was talking about the future of computing.
> Its all "USA, USA, USA". (Which, BTW, sounds to many non Americans like "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil". We even see the the fist punching the air, which again looks a bit like a Nazi salute. If Americans reading this can change one single thing, please stop that. It a very scary thing to see. Or do average Americans know this already, and like it as much as the Germans did?)

I hardly ever hear the "USA" chant outside of sporting competitions that involve some type of US national team, and just about any country is prone to outbreaks of patriotic fervor in those situations: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/World_Cup...
Freedom: The Big American Lie
Maybe automatically upgrade long term accounts and allow shorter term accounts to apply for approval until some deadline. After the deadline, allow access to content already uploaded on non-upgraded existing accounts, but not new uploads. That way, everybody gets treated fairly, but not equally.

The mistake would be to upset people who have trusted your brand.

Good luck.
Resolution Sports: It's On Blindfold Boxing
With out a doubt.
The Bernal Heights Piano Incident(s)
Being a subversive undemocratic prick is being a subversive undemocratic prick whether you do it to US citizens or to Chinese university backbone router users.

Also, Ecuador's status as free/not free is a red herring - he should be granted asylum simply so that he can avoid being tortured while in US custody, something they have demonstrated they are more than willing to do to leakers.

Also, it is difficult to concede your point about facing the US legal system even if I agreed with your basic premise, considering the embarrassing and reprehensible treatment of Bradley Manning.

From months of torture to a show trial (he was publicly declared guilty by Obama before his trial even started), even if we were in agreement that Snowden MAY have done anything wrong (which we aren't), to suggest that the US legal system at present is in any way resembling something that can produce justice in these matters is disingenuous at best and maliciously jingoistic at worst.
Spying on foreign states is't a very moral pursuit in my book.
And your comment on Ecuador is completely irrelevant to your argument.
Nice and easy with Gnome
> I don't know why Matz always starts his computing/programming journey from 1993 ? Its as if nothing existed before that magical year.

What a strange criticism. On the one hand, he really doesn't talk about specific points in the past very much in this interview. One of the few times that he does, he mentions programming languages designed 50 years ago.

On the other hand, Ruby is the main thing Matz is known for, and the main thing he has focused on. It makes sense that his observations about computing would be tied to his experience with Ruby.
Quantum computing means breaking Bounded Quantum Polynomial, not NP. Integer factorization is in NP, and also in BQP; but some problems can just as well be in NP and not in BQP. And NP-complete is not a subset of BQP, as far as anyone knows.
This depends very strongly on the nature of the simulation. Lots of simulations are handled just perfectly by modelling your system as arrays. Consider, for example, nonlinear waves. Your simulation typically consists of FFT -> k-domain operator -> IFFT -> x-domain operator (repeat for i=0...T/dt).

No reason whatsoever not to do this in python, though of course the FFT is just fftw/fftpack and the x/k domain operators are numpy ufuncs (all written in C/Fortran).

On the other hand, for particle simulations, you need more complicated logic/data structures to handle multipole methods, so the python array model might not work so well.
I wonder how much of the drop in crime rates can be attributed to Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn increasingly becoming a haven for the superrich and poorer people being priced out. An "outsize share" of the violence is in East New York, Brooklyn, and South Jamaica, Queen.
It's curious that you mention libertarianism in your first comment, but the leaders in most of those lists are the social democracies.
The validity of your criticism aside, some of which I don't agree with but will get to later, I think you could deliver with a lot more respect. Treating people in this way is unnecessary, whether or not you don't like how Matz was interviewed or how it was translated. You are right, you do sound aggressive, unduly so. If you're aware of that and you're actually sorry, why haven't you made steps to change it?

Secondly, he probably uses that as a starting point because that's when he produced the work he is known for. He isn't saying computing didn't exist before this date, it's just a frame of reference. "Back when I first invented Ruby 20 years ago...". What is wrong with this? Would you rather "Back when Guido invented Python 20+ years ago..." or "20 years ago"? It's an irrelevant detail.

If you're on CentOS 6.1 and your browser is Firefox 10, why are 5 images on a page such a problem? I didn't think it made things any harder to read at all and certainly didn't affect performance.

The increase of font size on the answers puts emphasis on the answers. I don't think this is a good idea but the intention is good and did not make the document anymore painful to read.

To finish, my eyesight isn't great and I read the article without my glasses.

Please man, you can deliver criticism without being a jerk. It's purely subjective and delivering with such disrespect makes you look arrogant, as though your opinion is law.
Microsoft (the source of most of the results in the case of DDG) is not exactly poor.
Not that this is much of a surprise. You'll have a hard time reconciling France's last 200 years with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen it birthed
Ask HN: Where do iOS/Android Dictionary Apps get their Data?
There are plentiful of Dictionary apps on iOS/Android, to name a few :-
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.nghs.android.dictionnaires&hl=en
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bravolol.bravolang.englishchinesecdictionary&feature=search_result
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.movinapp.dict.enes.free&feature=search_result
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sedevelop.dict.enesen.free&feature=search_result

Where do they get the dictionary data to make those apps? Do they license them from somewhere or there's an open available data?
On your village tab, you can assign tasks to villagers (such as mining).
Handrails are to prevent accidents by people not trying to hurl themselves off.

You are confusing safety with coercion.
And a normal, non-technical, rational 5-year-old has an expectation of Santa Claus.
> Python is just too slow to be used for anything but prototyping.

Hardware time is often cheaper than engineer time, so Python may be faster/cheaper if you consider total time to value.
I found it hard to read too.

I'm on Firefox 21 on Windows 7 here but that's not the issue.

I find it hard to read simply because of the random spattering of bold-face and indentation.
Nice! I'll have to give Codea another try (never really had the patience to code on the iPad)

How did you manage to get around the appstore rules on downloading interpreted code? Does it not count if the code originates from a local network?
I used to work on compilers, C/C++, COBOL, PL/I, Java, a whole bunch of them. This is actually somewhat similar to my favorite bug I encountered while implementing some stack mapping optimizations.

The compiler itself was crashing out while compiling a SPEC2000 test case (perlbmk I think?) with an illegal instruction. This was already quite suspect since it was branching to somewhere WAY outside of where the program usually resides, and the compiler was compiled with a compiler that's known to be nearly rock solid. I got quite lucky in that I managed to find one level of the stack trace, and it pointed me towards sprintf. Using some awesome tools some coworkers and I had developed over the years, I managed to narrow down the test case to about 5 lines of code that involved long doubles. So I grepped the compiler source code for sprintf, set breakpoints on the ones that I thought would get called, and just kept stepping through them until it finally crashed hard. Then I just reran, and stopped at the final breakpoint and started stepping through the assembly. What I saw happen just blew my mind, the code was just a simple:

sprintf(buffer, "fold: %Lf", result);

But what was happening is that the buffer was only 200 characters long, and the long double was roughly 1000 characters long. It was just a buffer overflow, that was so long it ended up overwriting the register save area, and the return address pointer. So the sprintf completed, but when it went to branch back, it loaded some characters instead of the return address. Just hilarious, and good thing I was working on stack mapping and was familiar with the stack layout of this linkage convention.

The solution of course was to just use snprintf instead. No sorry, that's wrong since that platform doesn't have an snprintf (yay mainframes!), and so I had to use %0.6Lg instead of %Lf.

Compilers are fun!
This is a remarkable conversation. Never gets too old to watch.

Also I like how Steve Jobs tries to play down all the questions that he is asked about Microsoft.
Probably some of it, but probably not a lot. The very poor are not actually priced out of NYC. NYC heavily taxes the middle class and rich in order to pay certain poor people to remain in the city (including very desirable areas).

The main people being priced out are the middle class, not the poor.
Well that is a very cynical way to look at it; you should remember that overall crime rate has been dropping for a couple decades now.
I'll just speculate my concern, if this patent is the way I'm viewing (real)...then I can see YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple (ITunes) having some problems. I don't think a patent can be retroactive, but maybe Comcast can do a cease and desist.
> If you think he hasn't learned something in the span of 10 years

He's learned to keep his little narcissistic mouth shut.
Manning falls under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Snowden does not. That alone means that he cannot be treated the same before his trial. It especially means he cannot be tortured or denied legal representation.

I still have faith in the US's civilian courts to deliver a fair verdict in Snowden's case, despite its flaws.
I'm really glad to hear this since as far as I could diagnose it, sublimelint was probably the biggest contributor to my ST's slowness :) ...but it's a great plugin to have, so kudos and keep up the good work!
Yeah please tell us what you have got over to? Twitter? Facebook?
Economics Is A Lost Field
Bottled-water purchase leads to night in jail for U.Va. student
I don't think that trend has sped up considerably since 2012 to affect such a large drop in the year over year number.
It's really cool when you first find the alien alloy, but the spaceship sequence is pretty unexciting.
Given that description, I could see you working quite effectively in a technical sales role (e.g. sales engineer).