skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The guy was slammed with 3 counts: for soliciting prostitution (misdemeanor), stealing time from work (felony), and 'unauthorized computer/network' use (ie, 'hacking', also felony). They thoroughly nailed him with a misdemeanor and a felony which are arguably reasonable, hence there's no need to apply a computer hacking law in a plainly unreasonable way.

As applied here it means that any use of a computer "beyond the scope of the express consent" is a felony. Twitter and ebay use at work could be felonies under the same reasoning. I understand juries are a safeguard against unreasonable laws (go founding fathers), but I'd sooner have reasonable laws to begin with.
The article is quite wrong. Learning Java does make you a Java developer. You don't have to know any particular framework to be a Java developer, because there are dozens of popular frameworks in use, and different projects use different frameworks.

There's no point in learning J2EE if you don't want to work on J2EE applications.

There's no point in learning Swing if you don't want to work on Swing applications.

I think what this he meant was, "Learning Java alone doesn't qualify you to apply for most Java jobs," or maybe, "You will not be immediately productive at your new job if all you know is Java."
Actually, I made an HTTP request to the main page, and then selectively loaded the rest of the page. How can you possibly argue that it's somehow my moral responsibility to load a web page in it's entirety? It's a patently ridiculous notion, and if your business model cannot support people that do it you're fucked.
This doesn't exactly explain what happens to users actual data when a startup dies though. I know in the case of Pogoplug no user data is actually stored, but in many cases there will be huge databases of user data that need to be destroyed. A more appropriate title would be "What happens to code when a web start-up dies?"
I'm on the 2nd generation Touch with OS 2.2. Here's what I think the problem was: I was on wifi shortly before I tried out Numbrosia so my iPod thought it was online. I can reproduce this at home by turning off my wifi. It goes to the "Syncing with server..." screen for a full minute before deciding it's timed out, during which time it's non-responsive. I didn't let it go for the full minute before; I assumed it was hanging. I would have preferred that the app was responsive during that time -- touching would being up a "Cancel" option or something.

I've also figured out that "Solve new puzzle" on the high scores menu is a button. In retrospect that should have been obvious but at the time my attention was focused on the "Tap row to redo puzzle" instruction -- I expected a list of levels to choose from. I guess you can write that one off to user error.

I've played through a few more levels. The controls, which were awkward at first, are becoming more intuitive. You're right, solving lots of puzzles is easy once you get the hang of it, and the challenge lies in trying to match the world record score. My preference would be that the levels get more difficult to complete as you progress. I'm just brainstorming here -- maybe the player could only have a certain number of moves to complete the level in? That's kind of what it boils down to anyway, trying to match the world record. Aside from that I don't know how much more difficult the levels can get without changing something fundamental to the game mechanics.

I'd say the game looks complete and polished as it is. The puzzle space is a crowded one where users are hesitant to learn a new set of rules unless they know it's going to pay off with rewarding gameplay -- and they often won't know the gameplay will be rewarding until they've tried the game. What I've been trying to do myself is to produce app after app rather than work on revising an app after it's out -- I've found I improve the quality of my output more rapidly by starting new projects from scratch rather than improving on already-finished projects. I look forward to seeing what you do next!
I would suggest that:

- fiber is relatively more expensive than simple copper strands;
- hanging a cable from a telephone pole to the house is not resilient to weather;
- fiber can snap easily, and needs to be wrapped in thick protection: see point 2
- most of it comes underground now so it'd be a waste to break out into the air

and: wifi from cabinets in the street would be weird. :)
what's really interesting about this is how BT are going to be pushing through their ADSL2/fiber upgrade- they need to make it commercially viable so are going to be requiring some strict resale restrictions etc. :(
Who's in for some salvage? I wonder how many startups we could incubate with $26m of silver.... :)
Small mobile software house in San Francisco looking for two interns
Gravity Mobile is looking for two summer interns to work on mobile software up to but not excluding: iPhone, Windows Mobile, Java ME, Blackberry, and BREW.

Applicants need only have ruthless C, C++, Obj-C or Java skills. We're willing to help you with the rest.

Paid or for college credit (we apparently aren't allowed to do both)

Those interested should email a resume or CV to haseman [at] gravitymobile [dot] com
The Story Behind Mint.com
Ditto. I'd much rather go to a Hacker News event generally. Despite covering a wide range of topics, there's something a bit proprietary/Microsoft-y about Stack Overflow that I can't put my finger on. Besides, I much prefer the wider range of non-programming stuff HN covers :) Thumbs up for HN events!
Learning the language and the du jour APIs will also not make you a skilled Java developer, which is what I think the author means; doing that in any language X will not make you an X developer of any reasonably high skill.

The problem I have with posts like this is that they seem to be focusing entirely on the wrong way of learning to develop software. They work from the assumption that becoming a developer is a matter of memorization, and the reason they aren’t there yet is because they haven’t memorized enough API definitions or acronyms.

Approaching anything from this level of abstraction results in needing to learn most everything as if it were a completely new area of knowledge. And it is an incredible timesink, as the author has already confessed

Instead of realizing the need for a hash table to solve a problem, and researching what options are available in this language, they either perform a scan of all of the options and pick the one available that looks best, or they rely on some mnemonic to decide what data structure to use without really understanding why it should be used. Both arrive at approximately the same place -- hopefully -- but they approached it from entirely different directions.

The former developer already knows the metaphor he is looking for, and thus his search will be very limited in size and when he finds class/library/etc. he needs the API will already make some intuitive sense provided it implements what it claims to.

The latter developer has no metaphorical basis for what they are doing, and thus even when they find something that works, they’ll have to rote memorize the API, because to them it’s just a formless black box.

To answer the author's question about what APIs one ought to know, my response is that the author is asking the wrong question. I’d like to ask what has convinced them that APIs and acronyms are the thing most worth knowing. It seems to me the author's time could be far better spent learning the metaphors and theory behind those acronyms and APIs, and then realizing that finding and learning new APIs and class libraries aren’t all that tricky once the fundamentals are understood.
I don't think it has much to do with population growth. I think it has more to do with planning in advance where you want your growth to be. In the US we just let developers put new houses pretty much wherever they want, which turns out to be where land is cheap, which is usually far from existing developments. In Europe the govt has more direct involvement and only allows development to happen where they want it to happen.
Oh, actually that kind of thing sounds cool. I just haven't been. Stanford is great and is worth going to an event there if you're in the area.
There's an observation in value investing that if a company buys a gorgeous new headquarters the stock is going to do poorly, presumably for similar reasons as this guy. I think it was Peter Lynch who commented on this.
AFAIK fiber follows the other utilities whether they are aerial or underground.
That's a good discussion to have, and I tend to agree with you, but my point remains: nobody is going to get locked up for checking the weather at work. There's nothing to justify the Redditesque hysteria being eagerly upvoted on this page.
And licenses probably won't help prevent well-meaning people's accidents, either.
Happiness? Not that simple. Where does happiness come from? Most rationals would answers evolution. If that's the case, then it should have a function. Figure that one out and you will also learn how to become happy.
I've always thought they were a little too dismissive of semantic web structures, Peter Norvig in particular. But I also thought it was a ploy.
You can always get a full refund at any point in time. The London event is already half sold out and Joel announced it today (no post on blog.stackoverflow.com or carsonified.com yet either).
It's collections like these that make me sorely tempted to purchase the new Kindle when it's released. Imagine having every one of these books in a portable, readable, display.
The new ones aren't dangerous because you can't actually do anything with them. As soon as I can send an email (or affect the outside world in any way) from the location bar, it becomes just as dangerous as the unix command line.
um ok. Thanks for the heads up ... ... Kind of odd that Jeff Atwood is only going to one of the things isn't it?
And if Facebook was banning them for being cranks, that would be one thing. I usually downvote crank comments on Hacker News because we're a specialized community that values rational thought.

To me, singling out Holocaust denial as the one prohibited form of crankism on Facebook smacks of exceptionalism. You can have conspiracy theories or contrary opinions about any other historical event, no matter how many people were killed—just not that one.

Notably, you can become a "fan" of Ataturk or Genghis Khan or Andrew Jackson or Christopher Columbus on Facebook, but not Hitler.
I've given up on fighting the Twitter hypsters. They think it'll change society as we know it and they'll latch on to any good news as proof of that. But needless to say a bunch of people checking out Twitter the month Oprah dedicates a show to it doesn't necessarily mean it will take hold with those people.

I recall a time, not to long ago, when everyone was talking about Friendster. I even remember it being mentioned on Fox's "The O.C." which, at the time, had more viewers than Oprah averages in a week.
Like Gladwell points out, you have to be extremely well-conditioned to press for a whole game. It takes a lot out of you. So it could be counter-productive if your team isn't in excellent shape, because a poorly executed press (say, if your team is tired) makes it easy for the offense to just blow by you and hit layups.

That said, a team of good ball-handlers can beat a strong press if they stay calm and pass well. Patience and poise.

(Which is probably why the press is so effective in younger leagues: players at that age get frantic under pressure and just don't have the dexterity/skill to keep the ball under control)
My point is that such a statement is absolute nonsense; it conveys no information at all. You might as well have been discussing the "jabberwockyness" of a company. What would it even mean for a company have atherosclerosis? In what sense could a company be said to be stenotic? What elements of the company would correspond to the various components of arterial plaque? What about a company could be said to correspond to a transient ischemic attack? How could you identify a company whose 'plaque' is characterized by the presence of lipid-rich necrotic core vs. one that has juxtaluminal hemorrhage or one that is calcified? Can you mitigate the symptoms of an atherosclerotic company via administration of rt-PA or via endarterectomy? No obvious analogues for these features of atherosclerosis exist in the context of a company. The analogy is not just a leaky abstraction; it's a broken one.
"Every now and then, someone tries to find them. So far, no luck."

my first thought: i wonder if someone has already taken them....quietly....
I prefer paper books also, but I also like having electronic copies for searching for specific information. I wish more publishers included cd-roms with their books.
As it turns out, startups are not just about what you can walk away with (though that's certainly a plus).

It's nice to be able to share the experience with others that you like and respect.
"21. Toilet Paper, and All That Goes With It
When there’s a rainstorm, far more water goes into our drainage system than sewage-treatment plants can handle. So the overflow pipes open wide, and all our wastewater—including the untreated effluvia of 8 million people—goes straight into the ocean. The day after a storm, the harbor is brown and thick with stirred-up silt that is shot through with human waste. Sometimes you can see shreds of toilet paper. When divers emerge from the harbor on those days, their suits have to be scrubbed down with bleach or kerosene before the men can strip them off."

This happens along the coastline around America quietly many times a year. Generally the outflow pipes are 1-2 miles offshore so if you aren't in a boat you don't see it, but as a sailor I see it two or three times a year in my home waters. This is why I always scoff at people who talk about MPG or global warming or anything else - we don't even separate storm run off from sewage in this country because a lot of towns saved some money by running one set of pipes - why are you worrying about possible effects of CO2 when there are massive effects happening from something we have the technology to solve today.
Unladen swallow: accelerating Python
It is a basic lesson, but one that doesn't hurt to hear over and over again. While his example might seem 'obvious' and 'extreme' it is all relative.

All startups make mistakes like this. Especially if it's your first one, your doing kinda ok, and your twentysomething. The startups that survive are the ones that don't make that one mistake big enough to tank the company.
I'd suggest Startup2Startup that's held in Palo Alto.

I attended the most recent one while I was out in the valley, and I thought it was really good.
Sometimes, Nice Guys Finish First
I never understood how someone ACTUALLY sleeps "under" a desk:p My desks have too many power cords to make any kinda sleep possible.

I went with this: http://zaid.posterous.com/me-office-and-bed
Mainly they use Facebook for organizing perfectly legal events, as well as keeping in touch with other Nazis.

Regarding illegal activity, incitement would be a better way to describe what I've seen than blatant organizing.

The loose cannons among them (of which there are plenty) also have a propensity to use social networking sites for self-incrimination. Here's a guy that uploaded pictures to Facebook of himself Nazi saluting in front of worlds-lamest-hate-crime:

http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2009/02/meet-richard-m...
yep I've had quite a few MRI scans and I doze off every time. I usually come out feeling very relaxed and refreshed.
I agree it will be hard for Twitter to deliver on the hype, but, wow, wouldn't you love to have their buzz...I mean @astro_mike Twittering from space?
In this case it's mo' money mo' problems :) If the government spends the money you don't get the same result as if it is spent privately.

Economics is a social science, not a natural science such as physics, nor is it pure math.

Part of the argument was that the government taxing the population and doling it out as "social benefits" leads to better health. But if government pays people not to work more people will not work. Common sense if you want. In general people who are on welfare are less healthy.

Denmark is probably the place that pays the most for not working. Off the top of my head it's something like 80-90% of your previous income for 4 years. And as previously stated life expectancy - on average - is relatively low.
found yasnippet some days back, also that Chrononaut provides snippets “automatically converted from the TextMate repository” to be used with the yasnippet.

blogged a tiny howto to get it running. http://is.gd/ruUx
Gosh Courier font with Courier text in the background image is a bit hard to read.
One thing's definitely weird: of the people I know who've worked through actual adversity (eg: swam their way from north to south korea), very few get their back up about other people's whining; if kids today have it easier, great (that's why you made the swim in the first place; why should things be hard?) and if the whining's justified, it's easy to relate to adversity, b/c you know what it's like.

This is an interesting point in itself. In general, I think people can react to having overcome adversity extremely differently. From the kind of identity & pride you mention (the falsifiers feeling) to extreme shame. My instinct is that the relatively harder cases tend towards the shame.

*BTW, Well said.
I've often wondered this myself, seeing as though when I was somewhat in the pirating scene the only game that ever even remotely resisted it was XIII (in hilarious ways, might I add). It always seemed like a waste of time and money that they would bother attempting to prevent it, as well as developing the protection itself. Also, the author of the article brings about a good point regarding the horrible DRM that Spore contained (limited number of installs):

"Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy," he explains. "What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold."

In the end, the DRM is still about the money - or more specifically, who sees the money.
Actually, I don't think they used either in the original article or title.
Because I think it was a human on Earth interpreting data from a machine in space, rather than a human tweeting directly from orbit.

Though I guess these tweets are emailed from a human in space and then interpreted/posted by humans on earth -- so I dunno: do these really count, either? ;)
I don't think it's gonna change the world or anything, but I think that Twittering or something like it is going to be with us like email and instant message for quite some time.
'Chemical robots' swarm together
Ahh, its KIM-oh. As in Eskimo (their mascot).

The Halls are good folks. If you've got some old PC's laying around that still work, send them their way. They will be put to good use. The world needs way more of this type of thing and way less sheep-chucking and ifarting, imho.

This is a better link to the project on the new host.

http://www.qimo4kids.com/
Chocolate Covered Grasshoppers... Snack or Marketing Genius
cd /
rm *

essentially renders your machine useless. Surely it would be easy to make it less dangerous than this.
VC Cash Is April Showers on Web Startup Flowers
I would disagree with the argument that there are lower bounds. That precludes the possibility that there are more efficient ways to solve the problems addressed by say, the fire dept. or the police dept. For example, let's say marijuana were legalized and officers no longer needed to enforce drug laws related to marijuana. This could reduce the required outlay to the police department and judicial system. I'm certain that all sorts of systemic changes are possible that would make the system more efficient, but without downward pressure on tax rates, they will never be implemented.
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ - solves that problem nicely :-)
im looking for another google app engine java hacker if anyone is interested
Good thing he's not using SMS to tweet. It would be more expensive!

http://www.physorg.com/news129793047.html
I think this resonates with some because the line is unclear. I've had boobs show up on my work machine before when I followed innocent seeming links. Heck, last week one of my new twitter followers was porn spam that had a full frontal nude as a profile pic.

Where I live prostitution is legal (though I personally find it rather icky). I don't know what my response would be to co-workers looking up info on a brothel at work, but it wouldn't be to call the police.

When I worked at SAP of all places, on their list of entertainment venues in the area of the headquarters, one of the links on the intranet wiki was to a gay club that has dark rooms. If an SAP employee in the contested jurisdiction clicked on that link, would they be a felon?

This guy was clearly over the line, but I'd find it hard to say exactly where it is. If what he did made him a felon, I'd be hard pressed to say where the line is between him and the cases above. Since only one of the "nasty" activities that he committed was illegal (and that not even universally in the US) it is chilling that the legal system was rigged to find a way to convict him on a serious count that was put in place for entirely different reasons.
How social links fare vs search links in traffic growth
The government is absolutely choked with useless people. It's not the police who are going to get cuts. Consider, for instance, the fact that only the coast guard materially defends the United States, and it's the joke branch of the military.
Of course it would be, my point is that less dangerous necessarily means less powerful. Though I'd agree that there are cases where the trade off is desirable, like `rm -rf /`.
I avoid listening to music and other things while I am traveling - I find that when I have plenty of time to think and daydream I come up with more ideas and solutions.

It's too bad that HN takes up some of my idea time, though thankfully I learn enough while here to make up for it.
The law firm could have chosen not to take this stupid case. Before thinking that I'm exaggerating or infantile or whatever, I would ask you to think about Richard Stallman and his "obsession" for free software and freedom in general.
When I think of someone really busting ass I think of immigrants working 3 jobs

There is one thing that we can be certain of: for every person complaining online, by very virtue of their being a part of the privileged class of people on the planet that has a computer, the world provides an almost infinite number of people who have it harder.
Save Money On Auto Insurance
A gecko wants to provide insurance coverage for your cars, but before you make the switch I have 5 tips that can bring about significant savings via your current provider.
1) This looks awesome. I can't wait to try it!

2) The interviewers are surprisingly immature and unprofessional. They are downright rude to the demonstrator and are clearly ignorant about the amazingly cool technology that they are privileged to be seeing.
I am getting a strong feeling that Google is genuinely concerned about Wolfram Alpha, which makes latter that much more interesting. In the end Google's hyperventilation may create an exact opposite of the effect they are going for.
> But there's a few simple things article writers can do to improve readability. -Summaries (explain what the reader can expect to get out of the article) -Sideboxes (highlight key passages or points from each paragraph) -Descriptive paragraph headings

Dude, the magazine has a cover story about Spongebob. (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/spongebob) Perhaps you're being a tiny bit silly in expecting them to "highlight key passages or points from each paragraph" for you?