skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I know its fashionable to bash Microsoft but give me a break.

Why focus just on tech what about all those financial transactions flowing through Wall Street. Is everyone going to start banking in Antarctica now?

What has happened with American tech companies wrt the NSA can happen to any company anywhere in the world holding data. If the government walks in one day, and says give me the keys, lives are on the line, most people I know will hand over the keys.
Just a curious takeaway:

> Frequent visitors to this blog will notice that I use the term “Programmer” here a lot, as opposed to the usual “Developer” – that’s simply because Fred George uses that term, and he probably uses it because he’s American.

Does anyone else think this has anything to do with being American? I use programmer. Developer means real estate to me. I suppose a programmer could be in broadcasting, too, but I just don't find that usage in the common vernacular nowadays.
- You get exposure to big expensive technology you might not otherwise get to play with at a cash strapped startup
Mission Creep: When Everything Is Terrorism
I've stayed out of this debate so far for various reasons, but there is a specific privacy issue with Glass that I haven't noticed anyone else raising yet.

It is inevitable that Google Glass will have real time facial recognition, whether Google wants them to or not (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/11/google-glass-...). Or, that a similar product offering that capability hits the market once Glass becomes popular enough.

If you are a felon, or have ever been arrested on an accusation of a serious crime, that is a future that you're not excited about. If you've ever been in the media -- even on a purely local basis -- for anything salacious, that's not a future you can be excited about. You can probably get Google Image Search results for "[your county] arrested" (worked for a couple of counties that I sampled at random); there are websites like mugshots.com that republish mug shots and details of the arrest.

As it is now, the only thing that ex-cons and others in similar situations have going for them is the relatively short attention span of the public and a vanishingly small support network of other ex-cons and people willing to give them another chance.

The rest of society, for the most part, regards them as unequal citizens (and in some cases, sub-human, depending on the offense).

An apartment complex might choose to rent to an ex-con for some reason; once the technology is available, management will have to deal with outraged neighbors and many apartment complexes will simply stop renting to them. An employer might give someone a job but not disclose that person's personal history to their co-workers; if the technology becomes ubiquitous enough, that will stop being an option too.

I don't think the technology itself is inherently bad. But, I don't think society has yet reached a point of maturity where it can gracefully handle this.
Maybe a gittip feature (I don't know if it already does this) is an option to make all donations anonymous so that the recipient does not know the source. This should remove the conflict of interest then.
Bountysource raises $1.1MM to expand funding platform for open-source software
Are you serious?

Most big "enterprisey" customers who use MS servers or exchange or office etc. aren't even remotely contemplating about switching to anything else. That's a pretty safe business for MS at this moment. That will likely change, but it's hard to predict when.
You're being the "I'd buy your product if..." guy.
A large company profiting 7 figures per employee is probably out of ideas and milking the business.

If I had such a business, I'd be trying to figure out how to plow 25-50% of that profit into experimentation and expansion.
I'm sure the EFF will now be branded a terrorist organization by people who don't deserve to call themselves Americans.
As whit537 mentions in a sibling comment, all Gittip donations are already anonymous, but blog posts like John's here end up removing the anonymity for particular donations.
How about tricking the server into generating the payload like this?

https://www.idontplaydarts.com/2012/06/encoding-web-shells-i...
Can you imagine if they decided HIPAA didn't consider "metadata" private? Sure, the doctor's notes are private, but the list of every procedure you've had and every drug you've taken doesn't count.
I've made it a point to migrate away from Google services. I don't want what they're selling.
Yeah, it will support edits soon (I just got this much done last weekend...) Adding updates is next on the list - it should be easy since gists are editable/versionable. When this happens, the redis cache will be invalidated so that readers will always see the most recent version.
Correct. (I have no strong opinion for/against remote working.)
Calling Live a 'legacy desktop app'?
Bias? Go on then, I would dearly love to know; which government is known for not lying to the public?
Are you a Software Engineer in the United States? I've never heard of unionized programmers (at least within the Bay Area, which I shouldn't presume you're in.)
Ask HN: How do you structure your Node.js apps?
I'm working on building a REST API in Node.js which I will use to power mobile and web apps. I'm asking for a general structure guide since I haven't found anything good online.

My personal use would not consist of any web views, or tempting. It would consist of the data model, connected to a database, and routes for http requests.
I second that. Very cool!
And what, do away entirely with reviving old topics? I thought it was rather poignant to consider the old news article about Geocities' acquisition by Yahoo when Tumblr was recently acquired. Who knows what links submitted recently will still be interesting in several years? There is value in allowing duplicates.
A von Neumann probe should be less of a challenge than faster than light travel, so I think a slow moving ship is more likely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft
Love Linus's answer - "fake civility" in the workplace.

Before anybody takes umbrage at Linus's response, watch a couple of episodes of The Apprentice - either the Donald Trump (USA) or Alan Sugar (UK) versions. Whilst they don't drop F-bombs, their language is pretty "vigorous".

Board rooms, like kitchens are .... "If you can't stand the heat ..."

Might be better to focus on how not to raise the ire of the BDFL!
Some of the best corporate managers I've ever worked with were veterans. Contrary to popular belief, the military is not an organization that uses abuse as a management tool beyond boot camp.
I'm actually a huge fan of Rust's memory model and wished Go had something similar, since it's faster to use smart pointers, and less calls to the garbage collector are required. I also love how rust uses three different kinds of pointers depending on how the memory is managed, and although it adds some complexity, it gives more semantic value to the data you are working with.

Unfortunately for me, the rust compiler is written in rust, so I would have to adventure to grab a Linux and try my hand at a cross compile before I can play with it on my OpenBSD box.
I was just thinking how close we must be to "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" (see: "Diamond Age", by Neal Stephenson, referenced by me and seiji here. GREAT book.)
We have much bigger problems than not as many humans being born (assuming the study is correct).
Sadly it's not possible to have CouchDB make that happen for you! You can very easily allow unauthenticated requests to create users, but there's no way to create those per-user databases without writing some trusted code that runs separately from CouchDB.
Sort of, there's an evil flip-side to that.

Often you end up burdened with expensive corporate-friendly technology as well as "official internal tools" which are in every way vastly inferior to open source stuff but you have to use them because that's what the company has chosen to use.

A great example in this vein is sharepoint. Other examples might be, say, team foundation as source control versus git, or IIS vs nginx, etc.
The only work I consider 'dirty' work is work that doesn't help the final product. User documentation, support documentation, test plans, etc... all help the final product. I actually enjoy doing them as part of the process and as a break from heads down coding.

The only work that I genuinely consider dirty work is useless work. Things like status reports or faux process fall into the useless category.
I don't understand why they would ever be getting closer to Earth. Wouldn't they be launched at a time of the year when Earth is moving in the direction the they are supposed to go in order to give them maximum speed?
Wolphin
They don't fly in a straight line away from Earth:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=214...
We can. I am often happy are for others. If you are my friend, I had much rather hear about your successes than your failures. If I don't care for you, your successes will get at worst a smirk, more commonly a shrug.

And I really don't think this attitude is unusual.
Just like how the 3.5 inch floppy disk has become the iconographic symbol for 'save'...
The biggest reason to work at a big company is that you can have an opportunity to work on "stuff that matters" fairly quickly and you get introduced to ways of dealing with processes around working with important things, which can give you skills and confidence you might not otherwise attain.

You're not going to acquire the experience of knowing what it's like to jump headfirst into fixing a build break during the runup to release on a billion dollar product unless you're working at a company that has a billion dollar product, of course.
1) Not sure I can answer that properly, but a the more things change the more they stay the same.
2) For me, 40 seems like 30 + 10 years of experience.
3) Soft skills - dealing with people, selling my skills and networking. Also, not having to feel desperate - if someone underpays, I leave.
Microsoft has gotten the worst of it so far because of NSA documents explicitly describing the relationship with Microsoft. Presumably similar documents exist for the other companies involved, but they haven't been leaked.
If you enjoy speaking or attending conferences, I've tried to use some of the money (since I'm also in the "have a full time job" boat) towards going to conferences I normally wouldn't, and trying to be an asset to the community there.
Hi Mzs, thats a really good question and you're right I don't directly address it.
Basically it's impossible to examine for that at the moment because 'games' etc would rely on a person's recall of, say, how much they did the cross-word, that sort of thing whereas education is verifiable and, in this case, statistically meaningful.

Regarding onset of dementia.

There are early-onset dementias that can start from the late 40's to 60s. These are usually of a genetic variant (For example, 2 copies of ApoE4 gene, Amyloid Precursor Protein or a presenilin mutation, or Down's syndrome). Diabetes is a big risk factor as well.

There are also a number of dementias that are of early onset that are not Alzheimer's such as Frontotemporal dementia and Semantic Dementia which are awful diseases and it's terrible to watch patients so young with such severe pathology.

>Also what if dementia already has some effects early in life, just more subtle.

Just to focus on the most common dementia, Alzheimer's -
We know that it doesn't have more subtle effects early on. When you start to develop it, you start to develop it. The following things are the features of Alzheimer's, in order of progression:

- Memory

o Impaired anterograde episodic memory

o delayed recall of stories

o ‘Sparing’ of Working memory

- Attentional and executive deficits

o poor concentration

- Language and Knowledge

o Impaired semantics

- Visuospatial and perceptual disabilities

But It definitely is not apparent so early for example in people at 20 or 30 years of age.

We know this because brain biopsies from post mortems of young people don't show the neuronal loss, amyloid plaques and 'tombsones' of Tau protein tangles on histology which is pathognomonic of the disease.

In fact, Education seems to be so important at preventing the march of the disease not because higher levels of brain activity somehow decrease deposition of the characteristic histology findings, but because increased education increases so-called 'cognitive reserve', meaning that even when the damage starts to occur, the person is still able to function at such a high level because the decline in global cognitive capabilities has not yet been so great that the characteristic signs and symptoms have begun to manifest.

Could you argue cause vs effect with regard to education and cognitive reserve? Sure, and I haven't examined the data closely enough with regard to education to know how or if they controlled for it. However I have read extensively from the original literature with regard to the origins and pathogenesis of the disease and trust that something that is trumpeted at being a major factor in delaying the development of AD, by way of the quality of the reporting literature (Lancet, NEJM, Nature and Nature Medicine) to not have been missed after extensive peer review over the course of several decades (?the argument from authority? I feel it is well enough established to be fact)
If you live in most of the US, you have a fair chance of finding out some day for a week or so after a violent storm blows through.

If you live in one of these parts of the US in an all-electric house, you may find that there are things you miss more than the internet--even at 39 degrees north latitude it can be pretty cold without heat in the winter. And in any sort of weather it can be pretty dry when you are on well water and have no power for the pump.
Rails Tutorial Rails 4.0 ebooks and supplementary screencasts
+1 for Honeybadger. Moved away from Airbrake and we've been happy campers.
> The little guys simply can't play the same game.

Not on anything like the same scale.

I only rarely mention this on HN because it's like being a particularly obnoxious lightning rod in the tropics, but I have a patent pending at the moment. It's been a slow and expensive process.

So far I am about AUD $17k into the process. This has netted me a WIPO PCT filing, which I have now parlayed into an Australian filing and soon a USPTO filing.

What nobody tells you at the beginning is that it all takes much longer than you think it will. And costs a lot more, because you have to file in each country independently. If I am granted a US patent, that's the lynchpin, the key element that would make a portfolio of patents worth a damn. But then I will still need to stump thousands more dollars per country to file elsewhere.

A company like Apple doesn't have the problem of fretting over the cashflow implications. They are not carefully shepherding a single filing that cost-wise represents a meaningful fraction of their revenue and assets.

Instead, to many companies, patents are a pipeline. A factory. They have on-staff lawyers to pump a constant stream of applications into global offices. They have economies of scale and generous cashflows that I simply don't.

Because of the economics of the situation, patents favour wealthy incumbents, not upstart inventors. There's been a priority inversion.
Decisions and Will Power
Snowden's Contingency: 'Dead Man's Switch' Borrows From Cold War, WikiLeaks
I've wondered why the businesses from which the government gets this data don't have a right to privacy. It seems like that since corporations were given the right to contribute money to political advertisements on the grounds that they are people then they should be extended the same privacy rights as well.
But then... why wouldn't he say that more precisely?

If I had my documents encrypted with keys that I'd distributed to multiple parties, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops: "No point torturing me, the key is in three pieces and if I don't sign in every week the data will be destroyed so realistically you can't possibly seize all the pieces in the time-frame you'd require! Of course, if you can get all the pieces, just stick us all together in the same room and I promise to give you my piece, so no point torturing me then either."

Seems like there'd be a really strong incentive to have people know you had a mechanism that ensured it.
IMHO 100 people isn't a big company at all... two dozen programmers can still comfortably fit in a room and know eachother. My current company has 200k employees, we spend a large amount of time just looking for whoever is responsible for something...
Exactly. I think it boils down to the fear that we don't know when the camera is active. When we're holding out our smart phone in a certain way, people know we're taking a photo. Google could build glass with a bright flashing on-air light, which would help, but absent obvious physical gestures, we'll wonder wether the device has been rooted to disable the light.

Don't get me wrong, I do think its unfortunate, because there are real positive sides to the device, and you touch on them in your blog, but for me, unless I feel better about the hair raising on the back of my neck, I'm going to be hesitant to accept the devices. (Caveat: I'm a bit of a privacy nut, that has never used Facebook, twitter, uses brivate browsing whereever possible, uses SMIME to encrypt most of my emails, etc., so my experience may not be very indicative)
> That list is always dominated by Apple's applications

I haven't looked, but I bet the Microsoft equivalent is (will be?) dominated by their apps, like the Office suite. It's not unfair, it's just the reality of such markets.

A supermarket's home brand would probably also be the most successful brand in their stores, too.
> pushing it towards amateurs who want to easily piece together their musical ideas from other people's sounds

Ableton Live is even more centered around building music around loops and samples. Obviously you can track and mix recorded instruments in it just as well, but the live composition view (as opposed to the more traditional, linear arrangement view) that gives Ableton 50% of its name cannot be understated.
"Because Earth moves around the sun faster than Voyager 2 is traveling from Earth, the distance between Earth and the spacecraft actually decreases at certain times of the year."
I'm genuinely curious: why don't you want to be recorded at malls et al?

What's the difference between such surveillance and a security guard wondering around looking for suspicious activity and/or protecting shoppers/businesses?

Surely, it can be abused, but it can also help protect "suspicious" individuals from being profiled/targeted maliciously by such security guard, for example.

What if you were hit an intersection and said cameras helped to identify the individual who hit you and then ran, would that change your mind?

I don't think surveillance is the problem as much as who does it and the laws they implement.
And possible good news about Alzheimers:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/bittman-is-a...
Yes because you've given me a reason to do so that makes a lot of sense from my perspective. (One of the distinguishing characteristics of money is that it appears advantageous to everyone's perspective.)

Edit to add:
So because it's so well-compensated, I don't think that's a good example of equanimity. Equanimity means remaining calm and pleasant even when I'm not being paid--or if I'm being asked to pay.
It's not incompatible, that's just what the shills want you to think.
Totally off topic, but why don't laptops come with twin cameras already?!?!?
I'm assuming he's referring to Firebase.
Isn't desktop legacy by definition? ;)
I don't think supports the original claim at all.

FTA: All three pollsters asked their respondents how closely they had followed the NSA issue, and all three found just over a quarter of Americans following the issue “very closely,” while they found from about a third to half not paying close attention at all.

So, how could they report 90% or more of the public with a meaningful opinion about the NSA tracking program? The answer: They all used a “forced-choice” question format, which pressures respondents to make an on-the-spot decision, regardless of how committed they might be to that view. Thus, many people with no real views on the matter had to come up with one, and were thus highly influenced by the priming they had undergone during the interview itself.
The Trouble With Testing Mania
I've heard of payment processors marching to the drumbeat of sanctions --- but this is a really stupid way to do it.
Agree I could care less about marketing. The less the better, I'd rather have basic 1990s html than obviously purchased templates which are needed to peddle snake oil. It's like when I see a site that uses those standard images of business suits pointing at a screen or models pretending to be tech support I don't use them.
Nah, wasn't me, but thanks!
I don't see it as a measurement of Snowden's honesty or integrity particularly. It could be that his judgment about the degree and nature of data collection is wrong. I try to avoid making guesses about people's motivations because there's really no way to measure that objectively and it's far too easy to project your own views onto the actions of someone else.
> It's only fair that the people making that software are incentivized to keep doing so.

Give me a break. The incentives that coaxed popular open source authors to create their projects in the first place is still there. If people feel compelled to give money for something that was designed to be free, that's great. But I've yet to see anything that suggests that people will stop making OSS if they aren't given $50 a week.
I think you understood my point perfectly well. I don't feel like having a discussion where you keep changing the subject.
Since you ask, I happen to run my own asset-backed digital currency w/ an open REST API. See profile.
If this interests you should check out gist.io as well as an alternative. Slightly different concept, but still equally interesting.

http://gist.io/

source: https://github.com/idan/gistio
I agree with you, I was a gnome shell user before 12.04, but after I switched to unity I never looked back.
Wow. This definitely changes things a lot. Businesses can now store credit cards safely without ever having to worry about PCI compliance. That saves a lot of time and money!
Well, with that consideration, the advice is moot since it isn't outside government regulation.

Hmm...good point. We really need an open-source ISP for privacy to start to work. A fool-less system where the executing code is available to the public with read-only access with write permissions to appointed admins.
» Oldest Record of Time-Keeping Found in Scotland
Using multiple keychains would also help.
FundersClub rewarding investors for referrals
> Then your point has no merit, or place, here.

Considering you were wrong in the first place, how the fuck do you know?

> The rest seems like a completely different argument, and your original post, an ad hominen attack for no reason.

What? The rest seems like a completely different argument, and my original post? What? WTF are you trying to say?
I have never looked at human passage in that way. One point for this website in bring that to light. Other than the risk of infectious disease I do see and agree with your point @terrykohla. The problem them becomes what, a forest full of "trees of life"! And the laws that would be birthed from foresters wanting to cut trees down for profit would be yet another war or even worse, create the proverbial forest fire. Great gesture, just too many people on the planet to suffice. I'll have to wear this one on the chest and stick with cremation even though there is great merit to your idea. Thanks for your reply.