skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting that you would choose this example. Yes, the US gets data on airline passangers and I'm not happy about that. On the other hand, many European countries are a lot further along the way to total surveillance. The UK is a prime example but also German authorities were recently caught illegally installing spyware on PCs. France even banned the personal use of encryption software (much of it is still banned). The EU data retention directive mandates telcos and internet providers to keep all metadata for 6 to 24 months.

So there is no significant difference in opinions between EU and US authorities where spying on its own citizens is concerned. Airline passanger data is a minor detail.

Obviously, no negotiator wants to be spied upon and my opinion is not that it is OK. I'm just saying it doesn't matter much at the end of the day.
Reaching Sustainability — Building Gittip
>I think Google Now is really interesting, but it's more like a "pre-emptive search" engine than a "task completion engine."

It's both? Is there some "task" that Siri can do that Now can't? Because it has intuition, it's bad?

>it was about how Apple is screwing up the opportunity to do something really awesome with Siri

And my point is that they have none of the data necessary to do the real smart, amazing things that Now already does and will be able to. Even now, I guarantee (okay, not really, I can't say this as inside fact) that the Bing team isn't giving Apple query data unless it goes through Siri, so they're still never, ever going to have the full picture of their user like Google has.

I guess my point is, why would Siri try to fight Google on this, they have no unique leverage or technical or data advantage, it seems like any money spent trying to compete with Now's intelligence would be foolish unless they're really just going to go full-frontal on all Google services which would be utter insane suicide based on iCloud.

I mean, when you say "task based", what is more task based than a service that automatically notifies you about tasks like flights or shopping lists or package shipping notifications or directions to your destination, all without you never lifting a finger, based purely on your email and search habits (this already exists, today, with Now). That's as "task" driven as I can imagine. Each "card" is basically a task.
Wow, this is one of the most arrogant comments I've ever read on HN. How does this story highlight how titles work in "a proper company with true meritocracy"? A true meritocracy assigns titles based on if the CEO shares the same background as you? You might be a great developer, but have you considered that you could be even better if you have a good foundation in CS as well?
Is it just me, or is the site making you sign in through twitter to read the article?
Not to mention the amount of time spent circling city blocks in SF to find parking. I hate myself every time I need to drive to SF and find street parking. I remember spending 30 minutes circling blocks around pacific heights to find street parking, only for the purposes of eating at a restaurant near there.
You can blame the web at large for moving in a direction that assumes JS is enabled, but that doesn't make the UX better.
Many articles on Medium have all external links shortened to bit.ly URLs. Is that an option in the publishing interface? I find it extremely annoying, you can track outbound links using javascript without hiding the actual url.
Long tail app store discovery solved?
I am always surprised how quickly individuals will give up control over their own content.
Siri doesn't do much well (besides set geo-fenced reminders), but the underlying technology enables a much broader set of use cases.

When I say "half-measure" I don't mean that Google Now is worse than Siri. I mean it's not really an all-out assault on the existing model of Google Search. It's more like a complement to it, rather than a disruptor.

A real task-completion engine would be disruptive, and not a half-measure.
And for share counts https://gist.github.com/jonathanmoore/2640302
It seems to me that the crowdfunding trend puts allot more power in the hands of entrepreneurs who now have access to outside funds and a product runway. The true test will be when (if) the Jobs Act ever goes into effect. That should have far greater ramifications than reward based crowdfunding.
Is driving really safer than public transit?
Whoops, it's in the profile. Sorry about that. (last time I linked directly to my website in a HN comment as an example of the implementation it was accused as self-promotion.)

It's not super advanced JS but it gets the job done.
1. Click "Home".

2. Direct your eyes to the sidebar on the right.

3. Click the clearly visible link labelled "Introduction to Dylan".

4. Click "Why Dylan?" at the very top.
Yes, the noscript tag can be used. In fact if you see Rails' implementation of unobtrusive javascript, the application defaults to its html behaviour in case javascript is off. However, not all frameworks take this approach.

Moreover these days, developers don't develop for 100% of use cases. they start with implementation of say 80-85% of use cases. Folks not wanting to use javascript never come into that category, which means that noscript approach is almost never taken except may be in the case that the web application developed is targeted at that user category.

Lastly I would suggest this simple solution (http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/) to block all those pesky ads and pop-ups.
Ask HN: I am 35 years old with no degree – can I still program?
I am 35 years old and have been in a totally unrelated career for the last 13 years. I have always loved tech, and computers. And in hindsight, feel I should have continued school in this area. But alas I did not, and now I wonder if it is too late to realistically have this career change sometime in the future.

I am not even a programmer now, and there is no way I could afford going back to school for a CS, or any type of degree. But I do have the free schools and information available on the internet. I have started at the beginning with web development in one of the free online schools. And I enjoy it. I know I have a long way to go... I know that the chance of me developing the next twitter or facebook is remote. But There is no chance if I don't try to learn about it.

Realistically, I am not planning on quitting my day-job....

But my fantasy is, if I do stick with this, and learn about web development, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc etc in my free time. Maybe it could happen. Maybe a door or two would open for me. Maybe I would create an app, or be part of one's creation. If this hobby becomes more than a hobby, and I crate web pages, web apps, and contribute to the community... Maybe I would be confident in my skills to apply to some tech jobs. Or do some freelance work. And don't get me wrong, I really feel like I missed my calling. Now 15 years later with a family I am not in the position to quit this job and go to school. And of course the money issue, I would probably be able to make more than I make now if this happened. But that's not why I am interested.

What do you guys think? Is this possible or is this a pipe dream? Should I just play more Halo and quit doing exercises on the web?
Not really as it gets cause and effect backwards.
You give people way too much credit. Keep in mind most people still blatantly deny changing anything when something goes wrong for whatever reason. "I didn't even do anything, it just broke."
This feature will probably be removed at the next Google search "upgrade". Just like allinanchor: OR allintext: OR allinurl: OR allintitle:
yes... limp bizkit MIDIs. I used to have Break Stuff on my neopets store.
One of the more depressing things is that the conversation around transit is so frequently: "But... [horrified whisper] other people!"
You are so missing the point it's hilarious.

I'll post a few articles and I'll let you figure things out.

"Google earns 80% of its mobile revenue from iOS, just 20% from Android"

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/29/google_earns_80_of...

"Despite Smaller Share iOS Devices Generate 67 Percent Of Mobile Internet Traffic"

http://marketingland.com/report-despite-smaller-share-ios-de...

"More (Local) Searches Coming From iOS Than Android"

http://searchengineland.com/more-local-searches-coming-from-...

"Two-Thirds of Google’s Mobile Search Traffic Comes From iOS Devices"

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/two-thirds-of-googles-mo...
one factor is "search for keywords that the user didn't search for"
> Why should I have to expose myself to various security and privacy problems just because some web development framework cannot keep an old version working?

For a lot of sites and everything else coming up there is no old version. It's a Javascript app. Noscript could at best display an error, but if you're browsing around without Javascript you probably know enough that the error is on your end.
> If there really is a problem, it may be worthwhile to move it to an "advanced settings" panel, but removing it entirely is a terrible idea.

Is this not the equivalent of 'about:config'? In reality it is the advanced settings panel, just without the pretty dialog to go with it.
>You are so missing the point it's hilarious.

I'm happy to provide humor. Cool links, bro. Nice how they all refer to the same old, stale data, but you list them so nicely in a list as if there's some obvious conclusion that is somehow relevant to this discussion.

Siri's a gimmick and everyone knows it. I'm baffled by the attribution of some magic to it that is going to allow people to stop using Google. If anything, those ridiculous links would indicate that Google's not going anywhere, anytime. I want to know how Siri is going to do all of this magical nonsense when Apple hasn't done any of the work to make themselves available to the data necessary to do so. As I've mentioned basically from the beginning. Sigh.

Oh and several of those are "total mobile revenue". We all know people buy through the App Store more.
I do this on the side. I currently work full-time at Run Games, a small indie game studio.

I started out doing freelance web development for people I knew personally. I'd set a price, usually ~$300 because I'd feel guilty if I took any more, and spend the time to make a custom website for them. They'd recommend me to a friend and I'd do the same thing over again.

I quickly realized this wasn't sustainable, so I experimented with raising my rate substantially and doing Wordpress sites with a theme for people. As it turns out, my clients didn't notice a different in the quality of my work and liked having a CMS they could use (over a Jekyll-esque thing I had set up for myself).

So, to sum it up, I recommend starting small with doing themed Wordpress sites for local businesses and offering low rates. You're going for recommendations at this stage. Once you have clients approaching you, you can start to raise your rate.
What? When was the last time a car could be converted from a sports car to a capable tow vehicle with an add-on? You can bolt a tow hitch on just about any car, but tow vehicle/sports car/commuter/weekender runs so much deeper than that- at least if you want it to be better than "poor" in all of the above categories.

The same is true with manual transmission, you can't find it on the market ANYWHERE.

Patently false. Manual transmissions are not as common as automatics, and certain vehicles no longer offer a manual transmission, but they can still be found in many different vehicles.
100% agree and it's vile showmanship, but there's enough of a kernel of truth in that academic training is such incredibly poor preparation for making this stuff go.
> "Give me a public transportation system that runs on time, doesn't spread disease, doesn't have punk kids who confront you for no reason, is safe, and has sane time schedules and I'll be happy."

The problem is that you live in San Francisco.

The biggest problem in that list (safety/perceived safety) has more to do with the city than the transit system itself. It's not a brokenness in the transportation system (though more can be done to curb it, certainly), it's a brokenness in the society it serves.

It's always a little depressing to think about how so many other cities - both bigger and smaller - on this continent put the transit of San Francisco utter, complete shame.
Well, I will take your word for it - the wiki article is only talking about additions and multiplications and only counting them, even though it mentions that it uses up to four times more memory I don't see where it's been accounted for.

>Only for small problem sizes. As the problem size increases

This is the difference between software engineering and computer science. The real problems do not grow in size quite often. If I am writing a 3D engine I do not expect my matrices suddenly grow. Ditto if I am solving some linear system derived from a real model - it's unlikely that the model properties are going to change any time soon.
There's a recent update to this here: http://bwongtech.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/car-hud-version-11....
Can't wait for the next nodeaz meetup... would be cool to get a demo on the use of domains...
Hell yea you can do it, you just need to stop day dreaming and start applying.

I learned to make apps in less than a year with no CS education. Granted, I dedicated my days and nights to it.
You don't need to learn ABOUT web development, you simply need to just DO web development. Make a form on page with HTML. Stylize it with CSS. Make it insert something into a database with PHP/MySQL. There are tons of simple tutorials for these kinds of things.

If you've seen the very first iterations of Facebook and Twitter, they are so simple that any modern beginner programmer could actually clone their features. You could even make that your first project, a basic twitter page that stores form data.

Build the simplest versions of your ideas. What's important is that you hack enough to get shit done, and have fun doing so
Release them to where? Their home countries don't even want to take them back now I believe.
If you happen to recall where you learned that acrylamide is found in raw foods, I'm curious to read about it. My understanding was that it was associated with the maillard reaction (i.e. cooking above 120F)
I'm kind of amazed nobody has mentioned MAPS yet (http://www.maps.org).

Psychedelics are a tool like any other. There is no such thing as "safe" use, which is why organizations like MAPS, DanceSafe, Erowid, etc all encourage the phrase "drug harm reduction." I have personally witnessed LSD destroy someone's life, and yet I have witnessed the same with alcohol (and am happy we have AA) and tobacco (cancer). The key, as with anything, is moderation and education.

That said, there has been a long trend of disinformation in the US, that has permeated all over the world. As a starting point, if people want to learn more about the crusade against cannabis (marijuana), check out Hank Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger). For a more recent example, take a look at Rep Jared Polis questioning DEA Administrator Leonhart about why some drugs are illegal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFgrB2Wmh5s.

With regards to scientific inquiry into measuring the effects of these drugs, thanks to the efforts of Roland Griffith at Johns Hopkins (and others), we're beginning to overturn 40 years of prohibition with studies into the effects of psilocybin (shrooms) and MDMA (ecstacy) for end of life experience and PTSD therapy.

Some links to that research:
http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/
http://www.maps.org/research/psilo-lsd/

If this interests you and you ask "why hasn't this been done before?", I recommend searching for interviews with Rick Doblin, PhD (founder of MAPS) where he explains his long battle with the DEA, and how they eventually turned to the FDA, which focuses more on the science than the politics.

So yes, it is fair to say that there hasn't been much scientific research done into this, but to no fault of the scientists. I look forward to the next few years as the results of these studies come out and the US hopefully begins to permit these substances to be used in therapy.
It is absolutely possible to pick up enough programming skill on the side to be dangerous. It makes you substantially more valuable at virtually whatever you do, assuming you're in some sort of knowledge work. A reasonably smart person can go from knowing nothing to knowing enough to build things people will pay for in probably under a year.

Traditional education is valuable for programming but is neither necessary nor sufficient for doing it commercially.

This is very untrue of playing video games, by the way. Trust the voice of experience: if you have enough time to run a WoW guild, you have enough time to build a business. Less dragons, better loot. I'm assuming the same is likely true with Halo.
It is hopeless, but I still can't accept it
I went to school for 4 years and worked for 7.5 all to save up about 1.5 million. I probably would have about 2.5 million if I didn't try to live like a badass for a while. I've always thought I would be rich and have over 100 million dollars. I see now that it is going to be impossible. I saw pg's post, and it made me suicidal. All the brightest minds in the world (of which I am not) with all the help in the world (which I don't have) who actually went to school for this stuff (which I did not), are STILL not able to make things work, except for a select few. 8 companies out of 547? made the majority of the money. I feel hopeless, I don't know why I can't just accept that I'm going to be one of the lower class the rest of my life, but I guess that day will come soon enough. I wish it wasn't true, but I know that it is. I am honestly thinking about just giving my money to charity and moving to some foreign country to volunteer the rest of my life. I feel like I am worthless, and I always will be.
If it doesn't work without JS, is it going to work in a screen reader? Should developers have to implement extra functionality for the < 1% of people who are blind?

Nobody is forcing developers to give a damn about accessibility, but it's a bit sad that so many have thrown graceful degradation out the window.
Stuck at "Wait for someone else to join."
When I was hired by my current employer I was initially frustrated with my Junior Programmer title, but once I got to know the other three programmers on the team, I was blown away. I didn't know anything.

I cannot stress how important it is to keep an open mind and to not let your ego get the best of you.
In San Francisco? Probably yeah. Some of the routes are extremely rough, especially at night.

On many bus routes the conditions can be positively third world. Graffiti everywhere - seats, floors, windows. Human excrement. Urine. Addicts. Homeless. MUNI buses are one of the less fortunate places you can find yourself anywhere.

Having lived there in the past, I can sympathize with residents who want to drive, or take Ubers everywhere. The public transit in the city can be a very foul experience - though this is largely a reflection of the city rather than the system itself.
How Search Engines Work
"Software Businesses for MMO Addicts: The Dragons Wore Suits"

There are also numerous similarities between progression raiding and marketing. Replace phases with funnel stages, try different strategies until you figure out which one results in fewer wipes...
It's not a speed optimization. It just allows you to process a much larger dataset than you can fit in main memory. It will be slow because it's hard disk I/O, but you can do a sparse matrix multiplication on terabytes worth of data in a database with SQL. You couldn't do that in Python or Java without running out of memory, unless you used a MapReduce job distributed to many worker machines--and then you'd get a bill for the EC2 time or whatever.
I don't know about anyone else's experience, but these assumptions are pretty dead-on in my own personal experience. Non-techies(my mom, or somebody who only uses home computers for email & turbo-tax and some super-locked-down PC at work) don't have a clue what/how it's doing what it does. The blue "E" on the desktop is the internet, sometimes it's even the whole computer when they say "My computer doesn't work". They most _definitely_ don't have a clue what HTML or javascript is, or what that blue "e" on their desktop is. That being said, not to come off as some arrogant know-it-all, I admit I know very little about how my car works. I just take to the dealer and do the suggested maintenance. I'm sure I'm paying more than I should somewhere but I don't care... however, I'm starting to think it's more dangerous not to know how a computer and the internet work than it is to not know how your car works.
don't get hung up on this linked article alone (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/motoring/the-modular...) , but modular cars - cars as platform for add-ons based on need - should have arrived long ago. They haven't materialized yet.
IANAL, this varies per jurisdiction - but an NDA can prevent you from working (at least from where I am from) if there is a real risk that the information may be misused.

However, it may not even be a legal barrier, there are some companies who won't hire or engage conflicted individuals due to risk of litigation.

Definitely consult a lawyer in the appropriate jurisdiction though.
I think it's pretty inaccurate to say this article ignores the negative effects of drugs or pretends that LSD is harmless. Quoting verbatim:

This is not to say that everyone should take psychedelics. As I will make clear below, these drugs pose certain dangers. Undoubtedly, there are people who cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug.

and

Even if drugs like LSD are biologically safe, the potential for extremely unpleasant and destabilizing experiences presents its own risks. I believe I was positively affected for weeks and months by my good trips, and negatively affected by the bad ones. Given these roulette-like odds, one can only recommend these experiences with caution.

and

But as the peaks are high, the valleys are deep. My “bad trips” were, without question, the most harrowing hours I have ever suffered—and they make the notion of hell, as a metaphor if not a destination, seem perfectly apt.

It's pretty even-handed, overall.
I used to wish for this every single Stargate episode. Stargate needed a race of Q's.
Who's that "Germany" Bertelsmann is talking about. The government? The people? Maybe just Bertelsmann and their buddies?

Those 181k new jobs: Will they be propped up with social welfare like many of those "newly generated jobs" in Germany of the last years (Hartz-4 Aufstocker)?

Which part of the work force benefits from the 4.68% income spike - those in the millions-of-euros range (who can easily pull up the medium income because they're so remote from the median)? Or those earning 370€/month (and then will receive a fabulous 387€, leading to no more money in the wallet since most of it came from social welfare anyway)?

If you want to make a point, please don't try to prove it with Bertelsmann "research", most of that is 100% politics.
That's an economic issue, the roads in beijing are most likely croweded too and to boot most of those people are using public transport because they can't afford cars.

(I am using genaralisations about China to make these statements)
You claim it's a tautology, but I think it's inevitable.

Communication is the act of exposing information, and if any persistent, well-audited system will, used for long enough, allow you to expose yourself.

Your online and offline relationships do not have to align, but good luck hiding information in every single one of your interactions.
"certain vehicles no longer offer a manual transmission"

Exactly right.