skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is the kind of crap that makes me not want to be in the software business. Every time I read about a software patent incident and go off to read the patent my jaw drops to the floor. None. Not one of the hundreds of software patents I have ever reviewed should have been granted. Not one. These things are not inventions. They are implementations based on choices and decisions made by an individual or a team. The patent office is a lunatic asylum. Unbelievable.

I really think we are at a point where the tech community needs to send a super-strong message to both create awareness and catalyze rapid change. This issue could be resolved in one session of Congress with the invalidation of all software patents, current and future.

What to do? All web companies and game developers ought to agree on a date and have a carefully crafted message displayed to every one of their users. The message should be blocking. In other words, for a full minute (a minute of silence for the killing of innovation) you cannot play your game, cannot search the web, cannot use a service, etc.

Taken further, those who have the balls would suspend the entirety of their services for an hour. How much of a stir would be created if Google, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and others all displayed a page explaining the problem and demanding action for a full hour. I can't think of a better way to force the issue and quite literally have every human being on this planet and every media outlet pickup the topic.

Everyone would learn about the damage being caused by software patents. Politicians would have no choice but to seriously address the issue. I would further suggest that this protest become a monthly event until such time as the issue is dealt with sensibly.

Can this be organized? What else could we do? It really is time to force a national dialog about this. How much more of this do you guys want to endure?
> Thousands are in Iraq and Afghanistan

Those are not humanoid.
Not just in MSP430s, Ramtron (now part of cypress) sells standalone serial and parallel FRAM up to a few megabits: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cypress-Semiconductor/FM...
Really, how can they get away with the word "unlimited" in the title there? The limit is mentioned in the first paragraph: 360TB/disc (whatever a disc is... though I assume it is something which does not exist in unlimited quantities).

Still, nice work! Data storage capacity is a great metric of our digital quality of life.
We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantities and, while we're yet to fill the positions, I genuinely am not bothered if the successful person is male or female.

Reasons for this could be:
1. I'm 25 so I wonder if I haven't experienced enough to bias me one way or another (what that experience would be I've no idea)? (don't claim I'm being ageist, I'm not it's just one possibility)
2. My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that.
We're on the verge of losing the some very key values the internet provides here. We have to take our heroes as we can get them. Snowden has his flaws, but compared to the beast he's fighting it's clear who's worse.
"How does a voter or independent voter know that the code that has been verified is actually running on the machine that they connect to?"

You know, there is a technical solution to that problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_computing
That was my first thought too, but let's not kid ourselves as to Russia's motives. The longer Snowden is stranded, the worse USG looks and the more Russia gets to tease out and align the countries that aren't entirely in the pocket of USG.
Deep Thought will answer your questions about life, the universe and everything
No go for RTP— as thats not the standard and an additional container doesn't provide anything useful, but its fantastic for HTTP streaming.
You can't edit the URL on HN submissions. A mod must have changed it.
This one is quite good at maintaining balance. It is demonstrated in the video.
Yeah this is how one actually participates in the public discourse, when one's opponents operate from cozy sinecures of secrecy and corruption. It's different than what we "learned" in junior high civics class, which assumed that "good people" exist, and that they naturally rise to positions of authority in a secret bureaucracy.
I think the best solution is to have the better ones mentor the lesser ones. It takes time away from coding in the short-term, but it is a good investment in your people in the long-term. Metaprogramming is something that any good programmer can understand if they are just taught well, just like all the other difficult parts of programming that people routinely like to ban: pointers, goto, lambdas and functional programming, C macros, Lisp macros, etc. Using them correctly really helps a lot, using them incorrectly can hurt a lot.

The solution is to learn how to hit the nail with the hammer, not your thumb.
Huh, I guess I'm old-school (though I think of Firefox as relatively "new school")? Command-K and Command-L are burned into my hands, and I find it jarring to have the address bar acting like a search box. That, the lack of an "Awesome Bar", and no multiple shortcuts for refresh made switching to Chrome nigh impossible back when it was compellingly faster than Firefox.
Anyone asking him to come back and face trial under the current conditions is either naïve or a fool. However, I think that he should at least put conditions on the table under which he would return to the US to face trial.

The most important condition would be strict adherence to the 8th amendment, which means no possibility of solitary confinement or other cruel and unusual punishment and reasonable bail, so he is afforded the same rights that Daniel Ellsberg was after leaking the Pentagon papers.

The other required condition would be changing the jurisdiction in which charges are brought back to where they should have been filed, which is Hawaii, not Virginia. Cherry-picking a jurisdiction where many of those that will be on the jury may work in the IC community or have close ties to the IC community is not justice. In fact, it is a perversion of it.

Lastly, (and I know this would never happen), but I would love to see a Frost v. Nixon type debate involving Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Barack Obama, Gen. Keith Alexander and James Clapper live on national TV unrehearsed.
The Science of Two Minds, One Machine in 'Pacific Rim'
The Fall jams your gun on jailbroken iOS devices
> I can't really blame that shop for this choice, it is a rational one.

Allow me. It's illegal for an employer to discriminate against applicants based on gender when it doesn't serve a direct business purpose. (Actors, Models, Priests, etc.)

While I can sympathize and understand their reasons, I can not condone their solution.
> there's now no emergency facilities available in the event of another emergency happening

They only have the ability to deal with one emergency at a time? That strikes me as sub-optimal, especially if the "emergency" is contained within a single parked aircraft. Diversion is probably costing all the airlines involved a ton. I think it would be worthwhile for emergency facilities to have a backup.
I don't think Australia has the same protected class aspect as the US, so it may well be more acceptable there.
So are you a facebook employee who decided to put their ...

Whoever did this, heroes act in the shadows...
I would have a lot more regard for what Snowden is claiming about United States government actions if he would come back here to the United States and stand trial. More and more of what is being said in his statements to the press (which plainly are receiving editing help, at least, from Wikileaks) are not making sense in the overall context of how different countries behave in the community of nations.

When all the smoke is cleared away from Snowden's allegations, and there have been congressional investigations into the data-gathering and surveillance practices of United States government agencies and private companies, most Americans will still be quite supportive of their federal government (in the usual complaining United States way) and tens of millions of people around the world will still desire to settle in the United States.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-drea...

To date, I am persuaded that United States government programs related to foreign intelligence need more effective oversight--not least because they hire snafus like Snowden. I am also persuaded that most countries with governments subject to the discipline of a free press and free and fair elections largely are willing to cooperate with the United States in the kind of programs the NSA intends to run, because there are genuine threats from terrorist plotters in those countries.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Boston+Marathon+bombing&sour...

I'd be glad to see NSA programs reviewed by Congress, and possibly curtailed in their operation to ensure their lawfulness. I'd also be glad to see Edward Snowden go on trial according to United States law to weigh his actions against any defenses he may be able to assert at trial. I've lived elsewhere twice for long stays in my adult life, and after talking to people from around the world about this, I'm still glad to be living in the United States at the moment, and still mostly glad that the United States system of rule by law operates as it does.
>I think it's wildly hypocritical of him to run to China and Russia because he's so opposed to government spying.

What a stupid complaint. He's opposed to his country spying, so he blows the whistle on them. Now what is he to do? Stay and become the next Manning, locked away in torture and forgotten about? He obviously has to go, so where? It has to be somewhere that can stand up to the US which, as we've just seen, isn't very fucking many places. Russia and China are pretty much the only realistic options here.

But no, he shouldn't be practical. He should be more concerned that some dumbass on the internet might call him a fucking hypocrite.
The cost of training a human pilot is higher than a shoe-store clerk. Software already pilots planes very well, but working in a shoe store is very hard for a robot.
Does he have any other options? Do you think he would do this if he had any other choice?

If he doesn't accept them he is going to be sent into US and tortured. It's either asylum from a non 'free' country or torture.
I say this sincerely: don't feed the troll.
What are the grounds given by Chevron for the conspiracy ? It would have been interesting to know from the article.
> Happily married and all of that but men are visual

What does that even mean?
You might be surprised. Many times biases like these are subconscious.
Firefox has built-in support for Keyword Search bookmarks. You don't need to install an add-on to create aliases.

If you bookmark any website's search results page, you can add a keyword and edit the bookmarked URL to include a printf-style %s placeholder. When you enter the keyword plus some string, Firefox opens the bookmarked URL, substituting your string for %s.

For example, I have a "w" keyword search for Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?search=%s and a "yt" keyword search for YouTube https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&search=Searc...
The point here is not that metaprogramming is universally bad, it's that it should be used as a last resort ... and you should feel bad

you could just refactor your code using static idioms

you or someone else will kill some runtime optimizations of the JIT.

syntax matters way less than people tend to think ... astonishment [sic] cute syntax

Many intelligent, design-savvy people would strongly disagree with you. Besides the obvious gains in the ability to create DSLs, there is a power and fluidity in metaprogramming that is not possible any other way.

Speed (as, say, provided by runtime optimizations from a JIT compiler) is not always critical. If it was, one probably should be using a language other than Ruby or Javascript; they're meant to be flexible, powerful languages, and their emphasis is not on pure speed.

Syntax is not "cute." Humans are going to read and use this code, and the more it reads like English, the more likely it is to be understood.
"My suspicion is it would just cause people to overconsume San Francisco real estate relative to their latent preferences."

Which seems like it would make the situation worse, long term. We can increase density further, but there's a limited amount of SF to go around, so driving overconsumption would raise prices, and then we'd need to raise the subsidy we give SF further.
Maybe he could provide a quick sample/prototype of VisiCalc ported to iOS as a web-app? After all 2013-1979 = 34 of innovation, so HTML5 and JS _must_ be a pinnacle of programmer's productivity, right? An if-it-compiles-it-is-correct kind of thing?
You know something.. In the past I used to do a lot tech interviews and phone screens. And I think I would actually give you bonus points if my company found you via your fake profile and we ended up chatting. After about 1.5 seconds of confusion, I'd be thinking, well, this lady has some resourcefulness...

Did you ever follow up on any of those offers via the fake profile? I'm curious to know the reaction. I know I'd look at it favorably. But I might be in the minority. Don't know.
The separate process per tabs feature has different drawbacks. Notably, it means Chrome uses more memory and can handle way less simultaneous open tabs than Firefox.

I'm glad both approaches exist.
Yeah, I'm still on Chrome on various Windows VMs and PCs with no problem.
> terrible memory leak issue

I don't think this is as terrible as you think anymore (or if it is really even an issue anymore). The MemShrink[0] project has made huge progress. See also: https://areweslimyet.com/

[0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink
Thanks.

One suggestion I would make: Once your things are set up, you shouldn't have to go to the settings screen to log in. Maybe there could be an 'account' button on the main screen or on the buddy list and from there you could sign in and out directly. I think that would make it more friendly to non-techies.
Is there any question whether the USA military would have stopped the plane if they had really believed Snowden was on it? Why would they care more about international law than the Fourth Amendment?
Tie Your Ego to the Product, Not the Process • Cap Watkins
Yeah if I was from the US I would have to renounce my citizenship, but there's no doubt in my mind I would have done so if necessary. Also it's the US and some African tinpot dictatorship if memory serves.
Russian backed Grishin Robotics invests $300,000 into American nano-satellites
>I would have a lot more regard for what Snowden is claiming about United States government actions if he would come back here to the United States and stand trial.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 180 times, i guess Snowden feels that even a couple times of such simulated death experience would be too much - look at how Manning looks - like a ghost (and i suppose Manning had it clearly explained to him that if he mentions anything else that was done to him beyond solitary confinement - it will be repeated in double amount)

note: while there is incomparable difference between Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's actions and Snowden's, there isn't much difference from the POV of the ones who have and would be "handling" the former and the latter - between terrorism and high treason, high treason have been punished by the powers to be equally or even more harsher.
Right, but the grandparent suggested that we'd see such robots in police applications before military. I'm asking why he thinks this is so. We are not seeing this with the non-humanoids.
Eqall.com

Gradhound.com

Email is in my profile.
Possible HB Gary Sockpuppets?
> The flipside is that a lot of developers don't have enough hobbies to draw from with which to start a business.

This was (is?) definitely me. I have a grand total of three hobbies: Building software (also my job), playing WoW and reading.

I couldn't think of any business idea that I could build off of WoW (and I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't allow that), so I took a different route for finding a problem to solve:

I surfed through small business forums and picked the problem that most people were complaining about. That happened to be inventory management.

(I'm happy to say I've since quit WoW, on account of the nonexistent IRL returns).
"OMG $200 an hour — that's like $400k a year full-time! That's insane!"

I had a recruiter try this with me. The rates were much lower (I'm not in a top 5 market), but he still tried to convert it into an annual rate.

I think I was being negged so I would lower my rates and they could more easily make the sale.
The fact that this post is getting so much attention is baffling me. There is literally nothing in this story to indicate that the name made any difference.

It's blatant confirmation bias. Nothing more.

Allow me to state, once again, there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists and that it's an issue that needs to (and eventually will) change however this article adds absolutely nothing new to the debate.
"Chrome Inspector is nice and all, but Firebug is clearly superior. I no longer recall why I hold this opinion. I'm looking forward to finding out."

For some reason, I also think this exact thing.I also know other people who share this sentiment. I wonder if it comes from Firebug just being the first to the scene?
Do You Have Enough Hustle to Build a Successful Startup?
Do US Universities not have a language test/requirement at entry?

UK Universities do I think [1] is just the first example I came across

[1] http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/international/english/postgradu...
The Changing World of Enterprise SSD
I tried Chrome last week, but I still think the FF has a better UX, so I switched back. My biggest problems was that, out of the box, Chrome's address bar is just plain bad. It only shows 5 possible targets, while in FF I can go through my whole history, and the most used page comes up first. I didn't really noticed that I used it that much, until I tried Chrome.

This goes for the Android versions as well. If I click the address bar there in Chrome, it will go to the edit mode, which I rarely use. In contrast FF goes into edit mode + it shows relevant possibles from history underneath.
If your metaprogramming is happening at compile time, and your AST savvy tools are savvy enough to work on the final (all macros evaluated) form of the code, then I don't see why they should fail?
> The perception presented by the US press/propaganda is that these are "paper democracies" [1], in the sense that an election was held but the implication is that the outcome of that election was pre-ordained

That's nonsense, though. Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, and Argentina all have powerful, organized opposition parties, which have real differences with the current government and a real chance of winning elections — in a way that the US really doesn't — and also substantial restraints on the power of the executive, in a way that the US, again, no longer does.

Venezuela is the only member of this list that even conceivably approximates a "paper democracy", due to the current lack of limits on executive power, and in their case it's more because the opposition parties are pathetically corrupt than because they're illegal — but those opposition parties still govern several of the states of Venezuela.
Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male.

This has been addressed a couple of times. Note that 1) the 216,000 number is for victims of "sexual abuse" which doesn't necessarily mean "rape" and 2) not all inmates of penitentiaries are male.
We don't consider handing a letter to the post office as "knowingly reveal[ing] to a third party." Should using a phone company to carry your private conversation not have the same protection?
I'd love to continue this but I have garbage collection to attend to.
Thanks for taking a guess.

Actually though, it's rather difficult to run into Mono incompleteness when making a web app these days. Mono's mostly lacking Windows-specific stuff like WPF (UI-framework). Used to lack Entity Framework but that's solved since MS open sourced that. You can take an existing ASP.NET app and there's a very high chance you can just build it with xbuild and host it with Mono's xsp server.

More generally, I do see your point but I believe it's a little outdated; the time that Java apps just had to be built on 200k lines of XML is long gone as well.

It's obviously a matter of taste, but I find it difficult to accept that well-written Python would be easier to read than well-written C#. C# is more verbose in places and less verbose in others. Writing crap code is about as easy in both.
Whole messages are a better way to communicate
Wouldn't acceptable rates depend on geographic location? Or do we assume everyone here is in SF?
I have a couple of those:

webtimetable.com

printive.com

postiquette.com

I am open to talk so feel free to email me if you have an idea that could fit one of those...or just reply here.
One man says, "Make your whole site static! Load content with AJAX instead of generating HTML on the server!"

The other man says, "Your site doesn't work on my browser with NoScript."

These two men will never like each other.
If you don't mind teaching yourself a bit of Clojure, you can use it as a REPL for Java with little difficulty.
He's stating fact. The HR industry is absolutely dominated by females. That's not a matter of opinion.
As long as that trial takes place in Hawaii, instead of Virginia and the US respects the 8th amendment (no cruel and unusual punishment or excessive bail), then I agree. Everyone crying for him to stand trial in the US needs to acknowledge that the game is rigged against him as it currently stands.

Bringing these kinds of charges in Virginia is like filing a patent suit in East Texas.
Declining Electrical engineering employment
Disgusting, but it's only natural. The little guys don't have the resources to fight it out in court and keep their heads above water, so trolls can extort a small settlement or licensing fee from them. Ironically analogous to trolls in fairy tales that would extort characters under dubious pretense.

Trolls are weak against fire and acid. Just sayin'.
I'm glad to hear you're going back and refocusing the original project. I have to admit that when I got to the "Iron Conversions" part of the blog post, I was flabbergasted that you'd pivot towards an aspect of the business that you were apparently not good at. What you said about Iron Conversions was vague enough to leave some doubt, but it sure read like "My product failed, partly because I can't convert customers to save my life. I know, I'll start a new business helping people with conversions!" Put this way, it sounds like a pretty delusional plan, unless you learned something magical about conversions that for unknown reasons you just don't feel like applying to your existing business. Hope that doesn't sound too harsh.

Good luck on phase 2.
> It is a difficult choice, not a false one.

Please state your case for this. VikingCoder stated theirs.
I think he has done something very important for everyone but really don't know about the smarts involved.

In hindsight, just wondering if running around the world is any better than giving yourself up to the local police. Given the media spotlight he is under, I doubt if there would have been a repeat of what they did with Manning. He might have got more support too.

I mean if you are passionate enough about your beliefs to throw your life away why not face the consequences head on. Sort of like a King or Gandhi. I realize what an unfair thing it is to say, but it would seem that sitting in some South American country or Russia, without knowing anyone and constantly looking over your shoulder would be equivalent to sitting in a cell in the US.