skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great idea. Putting the static site on Rackspace Cloud Files would also be advisable as an alternative to S3 in the event of an AWS outage.

EDIT: It also takes like no effort to turn on Akamai CDN option for Cloud Files as well.
One of my favorite tomfooleries in Python is this:

>>> True, False = False, True

It doesn't have much practical effect, since most logical tests don't use the True and False constants directly. But it's a good way to perplex the unwary.
L2P.co Learn to (Play, Program...)
You are right, that was a typo. I changed that yesterday.
In your first post, everything is "linq is bad" in generic terms except for these two bits:

> "it falls apart in real-world persistent code with considered algorithms and storage"

> "it makes it so easy to do [grouping / sorting / etc] that developers start to resort to that as a catch-all magical solution that is costless because how much could a line or two of code cost"

With hindsight I know your issue is with LINQ's deferred non-memoized execution. It's really easy to enumerate a sequence twice, but every place you do that might add a factor of 2 to the runtime and so there's a danger of exponential blowup that must be avoided. But that's not what I see when I read the above.

The above reads as complaints about easy composability and worries about code monkeys failing to consider what the code they're writing will do. Those are standard "functional / high-level programming is bad" complaints. With hindsight I know that's not what you meant, but that's what it reads like.
The US wouldn't need to execute him. Look at Bradley Manning: they could just lock him away in a foreign country until the world forgets about him.
As someone said in the comments, just keep in mind that S3 is just for storage, not serving. You'll need something like CloudFront for that, although I don't know at which degree of activity it's going to save you money to use it. Maybe from the get-go?
You are right, that was a typo. I changed that yesterday.

Best Regards
Google Doesn’t Care if Glass Succeeds
What is the point of having it be bipedal?

Would not the dog/four legged system work out better? You could still have it manipulate items with forelegs if you wanted but keep the inherit stability
I can't vote in the US as a resident in Sweden, so I'm in the exact same positions as the first colonists in America.

I guess my only option now is to rebel.

But sure for those living in the US they can do that. And they did that with Obama. However that just increased the surveillance.
Meet Terry Myerson, the most important man at Microsoft
I do not think he is considered a whistle-blower. I think he is considered a traitor.
Thoughts on our Mini-Open Online Course
Thanks again!

what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger!

I expect you'll visit my website often, now that you've contributed to its success :)
It's not this administration or the last administration. It's almost all politicians. The next time we have an election, we will get to pick a new one out of a pool of several hundred people who are almost universally just like Obama, Bush, and all the rest.

As a whole, American voters have a really short memory. After 8 years of one party running the country into the ground, they will gladly elect a member of the other party, and then repeat the cycle after another 8 years of the same.

The worst part is that while even a bad plan can achieve marginal success, completely changing course every eight years guarantees failure.
The sectioned titled "Inconsistent get interface" compares get() to getattr() which are two unrelated functions. getattr is the same as a property lookup on an object (person.name, person['name']), get() is a method defined by some types which returns a stored value.

In the provided example he calls get on an empty dictionary for the key 1, then calls getattr of 'a' on an int. Finally he calls it again with an optional default argument of None.

The difference is made apparent by the example:

In [13]: test = {'values': 1}

In [14]: getattr(test, 'values')
Out[14]: <function values>

In [15]: test.get('values')
Out[15]: 1
There have always been restrictions on speech -- specifically as it relates to threatening others -- for time eternal, having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. I'm actually Canadian, and here we have limits on hate speech, and I'm entirely for that.

We all need to live together, and rote recitations of absolute rights -- cast as if it's stark choices of blacks and whites -- doesn't match a reality that the world is a series of grays, and that your rights are perpetually in conflict with the rights of others (the rights of someone to make ill-conceived threats, versus the right to live peacefully and safely).

I also find it remarkable how many people cast this individual as a "kid". He is 19. At 19 many of us were living on our own, attending university, and there was no absurd notion that threats to schoolchildren would be treated as a joke, lol jk rofl.

Neither of us know why the police, judge and prosecutor decided to treat this so seriously, and it may absolutely be a gross overreach of the law, but at the same time the reflexively opposite reaction that holds his as an innocent joke of constitutional protected threats seem ill considered.
It is really quite hard to think of a reason why the US Ambassador to Russia would "[ask] her to relay to Mr Snowden that the US Government does not categorise Mr Snowden as a whistleblower and that he has broken United States law".

The fact that he has been charged with a crime is a pretty good indication that the USG thinks he has broken the law.

If you carry out Wikileak's line of thinking here, then anyone in any country who has been charged with a crime, no matter how severe or small, brutal or kind, should have the right to seek asylum from another country and that no state should interfere with that right.

Also, they continue to make the false claim that he has been made "stateless", which shows a purposeful ignorance of how laws actually work.
The Skill of Self Confidence by Dr. Ivan Joseph [TED VIDEO]
The Western European countries are actively standing in the way of him going to Venezuela, and are actively opposing his asylum.

So what do we do now?
"...honestly they haven't really done anything that even qualifies as evil."

Firstly, how can we be certain?

Suppose, for a moment, I had the data that the NSA has. To whom could I sell that data? If I could prove to questioners that I had such data, to what ends might they go to get it from me(Ans. there are entities that would take it by force and then kill me and my family to remove the traces)?

NSA is sitting on a goldmine. Many, if not most, large corporations, businessmen, academics, organized crime members, politicians, or bureaucrats would sell their home (and possibly their family into slavery) to obtain that information. How can the NSA possibly ensure that it is safe ? How can they ensure that their employees do not pass some of that data to the above? What if a significant chunk of that data is copied and enters the black market? How could it possibly be recaptured?

Snowden has, by example, shown that all the above can and indeed did occur.

As we speak there are undoubtedly hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals who are attempting to gain access to the NSA's treasure vaults. Some groups are smarter and better organized than the NSA. It's merely a matter of time before huge leaks occur. They may or may not be leaked publicly.

Neglect can be criminal too.
I agree. I am personally very supportive of what Snowden has done and I want him to remain free (the torture that has been inflicted on Bradley Manning is totally unconscionable). But at the same time, I do recognize that there is always danger in playing realpolitik ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend", in this case), at any level.
Social Network Analysis of the 112th Congress (Python/D3)
Disaster recovery, assistance and space applications (asteroid mining?) are the only real applications of these robots.

This is not going to be useful in the military. The only advantage it may have over humans is increased accuracy, and even then, a mobile gun platform on wheels will do a much better job.

This robot is less mobile, less reliable, less endurable, much less smart and much less flexible than any average soldier. The only applications I can think of are extreme weather conditions (i.e. Antarctica and the Sahara desert), and even then it would probably fail fast.

I don't think it's complete garbage, it's just that I don't see it being close to useful in real military applications this century.
God this is awful. Just a matter of time before these beasts are used to serve search warrants, deal with "difficult" protests, etc.
Is The Current Networking Funnel Effective?
> Are people really not bothered at the irony in this sentence? Russia, as a country that stands against abuse of the powerless by the powerful?

I'm more bothered by your sentence. Russia and China are undoubtedly worse offenders than the US when it comes to human rights (well, at least historically, in this day and age the US seems to be racing to catch up). However, this alone is never a valid reason to discount their criticisms of US actions.

I know you're referring to Snowden's inclusion of Russia on that list, but in this case, they (and maybe China) are the only ones who can stand up against America. Clearly Ecuador fell with a single phone call.

I don't think it's hypocritical for you to point this out, but it simply should not detract from the rest of his statement. Russia has not handed him over---the least he can do is not bite the hand shielding him. I, for one, am glad that people aren't bothered by it.
Have you actually played golf on a course? It is a park. It's quite nice and relaxing, so long as you don't care about your golf score...
LibreOffice does footnotes and cross-references just fine

Sure, and it's a set of desktop applications that run locally on your own computer.

Did you realise you're supporting my position here?

The combination of cheap and easily accessible on any platform, without any lock-in whatsoever, is extremely powerful. Couple this with devices that are designed to be portable and always connected and you've got a killer that will cannibalize everything else.

We've seen thick client vs. thin client before, and no doubt we'll see it again. Today, however, we're still a long way from the utopia you describe.

Things like Google Docs / Google Calendar / Google Maps / Twitter / Wikipedia give me a hell of a lot more value than anything a desktop app could. Are you saying that you could build these in a weekend?

Well, you're obviously picking contrived examples, because most web applications aren't in that class. And of course no individual could literally build a replacement for those services in a weekend. However, it is interesting to consider some factors that would stop them:

1. Hardware resources and network bandwidth to serve so many users at once

2. Large volume of data behind the UI

3. Many import/export options, in some cases

Notice that of those, only the third has anything to do with how hard it is to write the software itself, and even then it's not core functionality. Providing compatibility with existing data formats is often extremely expensive in terms of developer effort, which is part of the reason that competing with the likes of Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite is such a high barrier and why incumbents tend to change their file formats every five minutes.

On the other hand, if you were asking whether I could create a Twitter clone to share with friends at first and grow as friends-of-friends joined in, then sure, about a million people here really could write that in a weekend. The core functionality for most of the other services you mentioned could be implemented by a small team in times ranging from a few days to a few weeks, too.

The most interesting thing about this, IMHO, is that it means the core functionality for software with a completely different approach to solving the same problems might also be implemented fairly quickly, and isn't the factor limiting competition and the advancement of the technology. We're being held back by lots of other factors, but most of them are driven by commercial or marketing considerations, not the technology itself.
If you expect it is possible to find a perfect government on this planet, think again.
now I have a test for the "too abstract" problem.
Also - bonus points to the author for pointing out at the end that general practice != abolute truth
This is amazing. My mom is on dialysis in India so I can
appreciate the perspective of the person in the article. This guy is really gusty and much respect to him.

In Mumbai where my mom stays, It costs 1500 Rs per session ( around 25$ per session) now, it used to cost 700 rs couple of years back. My mom doesn't have a travelling issue as the dialysis center is within walking distance of our apartment complex. There are lot of people who travel 2 hours by bus/train everyday to reach her center :( . I really feel for them.

It would be awesome if someone manufactures a portable dialysis machine and / or a artificial kidney . I know there has been some progress but not sure how far is it from actual productization.
Maiken - Maven like build tool for C/C++
Documentation - https://raw.github.com/Dekken/maiken/master/README.md
Mechanical/Aerospace Engineer. Not very challenged at work and fascinated with what some people on this site are doing.

While reading news articles I usually google whatever I wanna know more about, that's how I stumbled upon HN and I've been a regular reader since.
I've been an independent business owner and freelancer for the past 8 years. For many of those years I ran my own websites and supported myself from recurring income through affiliate links. That was great, but I didn't like the business of customer sales and felt what I was providing no human value. It was basically SEO and affiliate sales. I got out of that and moved to freelance to provide more of a useful service to humanity. This has been quite a change, but it is much less stressful than keeping up with Google's search engine changes.

If you're looking for more free time, expect to earn less. In order to earn full time income you'll need to sacrifice your time. I'm fine with this. I earn enough to support the family, but not enough to buy a fancy new car or even to live in a nice neighborhood. I'm happy living lean and don't want a life of luxury. I find a more humble existence much more fulfilling. It really comes down to what sort of lifestyle you're after.
Developing with Bottle - part 2 (plot.ly API)
They don't have access to other, cheaper staples. These are geographically isolated farmers in countries with poor infrastructure.
Ill-advised or not, at lot of countries are considering e-voting.

I think it's a bad idea as well, but like you, I think it's weird to be upset that there are people who want to help achieve the best solution/compromise, in the event that your country's government vote to implement something like this.

I'm as pro-government as the next European, but we can all think of horrible government project failures.
I see a large difference in not biting the hand that feeds you and labeling that country as "stand[ing] against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless".

It turns his crusade from one which is anti-pervasive-surveillance to anti-US-government.
They could also just send someone in there to steal the keys... Either way is plausible. But this is just one example of how open source peer-review improves security over proprietary implementations.
Isn't one of the reasons that a web app won't respond immediately to a button click is because of a built-in delay on the browser level on touch devices? The one in place to allow for some time to know whether the user intended to do a touch event versus a drag event?

For instance, I've made a simple tic-tac-toe app that I have on my phone through Phonegap that uses nothing but canvas for rendering. It doesn't seem to have this built-in delay and the buttons are quite responsive.

I don't think your example of the carousel works because the article, I believe, was referring to the programmers that are working on the browser itself. You can't necessarily hold them responsible for performance issues derived from what other programmers are doing on the platform that may or may not be a good idea. Besides, I would imagine you could build a rather snappy carousel these days on modern browsers using CSS3 features as the bulk of the animation as they are native to the browser.

You are also comparing today's Javascript endeavors to those of native developers that have already had their issues worked out, as you say. It would only be fair to wait until current Javascript issues are worked out before doing a proper comparison. It would be like saying your car is the obvious choice for the race because it outperforms my car even though I've yet to put the tires on my car.

Native is the proper choice today, but who knows what tomorrow may bring?
Surely with every year that passes you move closer to a more technically minded majority.
It's a defender of human rights in this case.

You're implying US is a better country when it comes to human rights, but I don't see US defending his human rights. In fact, it's breaking many international laws trying to get him.

Also, I have to wonder what would've happened if there was any other weaker Russian president in place. I never liked Putin, but seeing how so many "democratic" countries were so quick to follow US' commands, and break international laws for US, just sickened me.

There's a difference between a partner and an ally, and a master. You can still stand up to your allies or partners at any time, if you disagree with their actions.
When we link freelancing rates with salaries, we can easily get led astray by: "OMG $200 an hour — that's like $400k a year full-time! That's insane!"

If you're looking to augment staff as a contractor, whoever hires you is going to want to compare your hourly rate with what they're paying their team — so it's going to be tricky to break through that ceiling.

But if you're working with clients who have problems to solve, and you're hired to solve one or more of their problems, what you charged should be tied to the financial upside that business will experience when all those problems go away. (e.g. pricing for them, not you and your former salary.)

I gave a talk last night on value-based pricing for my local Ruby meetup, and covered some of this: https://speakerdeck.com/brennandunn/value-based-pricing-for-...
I do industrial maintenance management for a living. I make sure the machines work as intended, media flow trough pipes and wires from small to rather big ones. I lead several people, do some office work, look for some more or less obscure spare parts.

In my spare time I look for methods to make work easier for people like me and sell these methods as a product or a service.

I found about HN on Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror.
I think your HN card must now be turned in. If you don't think that Snowden has anything to do with technology -- then maybe you don't even know what the definition of technology is.

This has everything to do with technology.
The Human Rights Watch representative...had received a call from the US Ambassador to Russia, who asked her to relay to Mr Snowden that the US Government does not categorise Mr Snowden as a whistleblower and that he has broken United States law.

That's just...hilarious, and absurd. What purpose does that call serve; what goal is it working toward? Is it some sort of legal requirement? Can we just do without the inane posturing, for once?

Edit: apparently there is some dispute as to whether this conversation actually took place.
Cornell NYC Tech & Girls Who Code: Computer Science Summer Camp for Girls
Welcome to Brave New 1984.
"Real" military applications, perhaps not.

"Pseudo-military" operations, i.e. in our rapidly militarizing civilian police forces, perhaps not so far off.
Large-scale industrial farming operations. That was the case in Kenya, anyway.
We've been through this before, many many times. The agrarian revolution, the industrial revolution, etc. Each time we keep getting more time off (the 40 hour work week would sound ridiculous to someone in 1860).

The problem as I see it is that we haven't lowered our standard work week to match our new productivity. We should be working around 27-30 hours at most.
I'm talking about our identities here. I do some charity work on the board of a non profit. When I give talks and attend events with others in that particular field I am an advocate for a cause like everyone else there, not a developer. To take it even further I'll add some details.

The charity is involved with educating the public about the recent heroin epidemic that's been hitting the country pretty badly. Now lets suppose that NIDA or the DEA was involved with a scandal having to do with letting dealers off the hook or fudging some study. And lets suppose the prevention and treatment community, in response to this, announced that no Feds are allowed to attend our annual event (which is real) where we always invite speakers who work in the area of prevention, treatment, and law enforcement. That would not be the right thing to do. Those Feds who normally come to our events have a genuine concern for the cause and offer valuable insights. By not inviting them the organization may make a strong political statement but its really not doing anything except allowing a small group of people to pat themselves on the back and say "yeah, we showed them". Meanwhile all of our attendees and guests are missing out on valuable insights they may have otherwise gotten had the organization not taken this route.

There are betters ways of making political statements. DEF CON themselves could have tried to do something to address the NSA leaks issue at the event without barring a group of people who most likely don't even consider themselves as Feds when they're in the context of a security convention.
Given that the US has been caught in lie after lie on this topic, for once I find Wikileaks to be more credible.
I'm not sure that's functionally any different than what Gladwell did here.
Why mod the parent down? There is no proof that it won't, is there?
If Microsoft come out with a clear statement (no doublespeak), then I'll believe them. Until then, burden of proof required from Microsoft.
As of today, I trust none of the big players, and your venacular of "scare mongering" won't change the burden of proof either.
Look, I understand that government spying through technology is an issue that belongs here. Every time Snowden eats a sandwich is not. There are a million places you can discuss this that are not here. Can we please stick to technology and hacking?
The original / incorrect title was definitely more interesting than the new / correct version. It's no surprise to me that Microsoft have a number of data centres and a million servers seems believable. But the original title was so far fetched that I was fascinated to read how the numbers were comprised.

But going back to your original question, I wouldn't like to say if you'd have made the front page or not. It would have been less likely - but there's still a possibility enough people might have been interested to up-vote it. If I'm honest, I wouldn't have - but then I didn't up-vote your incorrect title either as I read then vote; and once I spotted the issues, I was put off voting - sorry :(

I've never really understood what drives articles to the front page though. I've read some cracking news items that failed to gain more than a couple of votes but equally I've read some extremely dull articles (and even Twitter statuses) that have made it. I guess it just shows how individual we all are.
But that's wrong. You don't need anything else, S3 is for serving, and they deliberately added support and documentation for exactly this use case: hosting static websites.