skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Perhaps it's not that the McBookstores (and K-Marts and WalMarts and Bust Buys and Circuit Cities) were the problem but symptoms of a larger problem.

Back in May, Marc Andreesen and Peter Thiel were hosted by The Economist in a panel on whether or not technology offers us a way out.

While I'm generally not predisposed to agree with Thiel (my view, substantiated by much recent research, is that Libertarianism is grossly flawed), he hit time and time again on points that I've been becoming aware of in recent months:

- That energy use and economic growth are very high correlated. And we're facing an impending shortage of cheap liquid fuels, and eventually of others (as well as environmental concerns over their continued use in any regard).

- That virtually every post-WWII recession was preceded by an oil price spike (the 2nd early 1980 recession seems to be the principle exception).

- That technology is underperforming and is delivering diminishing returns.

- That older technologies: indoor plumbing, cars, phones, trains -- were vastly more profound in their societal impacts.

- That government involvement is a mixed bag. Sometimes it detracts, but often it delivers (rural electrification & phones, highway system, Internet).

- That the tech industry's scale is much smaller than is commonly believed. As Thiel puts it: it wouldn't be able to bail out the US government or even a state, it might be able to bail out San Francisco.

- That we're developing a growing high-tech rust belt, companies such as Cisco, Intel, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Possibly even Apple.

- That post-Google, there really hasn't been a major new player in the tech field (and no, Facebook doesn't count).

- That if you look at the Forbes list of wealthiest people, there are a handful in tech, but most are in highly price-inelastic sectors which do well when the economy is in decline.

- The only recent growth sectors of the economy (1990-2013) have been financial services and tech. And the financial sector looks to be hurting.

I'll toss in a phrase of Andreeson's here: software is eating everything. What finance and tech have in common is that both have been hollowing out other fields. Perhaps this has been providing for greater efficiencies in some cases, but it's also been resulting in weaker structures overall.

None of this changes the situation for B&N, but it does suggest that the company is less the author and more the player of its fate.
This is why even CS students should study humanities. "A Modest Proposal" is the opposite of obscure; it's one of the most famous pieces of satire ever written.
It means the same thing that this license means everywhere else: Medium can do whatever they want with your submission, and so can you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhNWwFu1Qjs

DefCon covered this topic (albeit tangentially). The link above actually shows several power plants (IIRC they were dams, but drowning vs blowing up, IMO it's a draw) and that one can control the system remotely. All of the systems that are shown ONLY had the default User/Pass on a control system exposed directly to the internet.
I think this is in response to that female evangilist from SendGrid getting those two guys fired a couple of months ago at a Python conference.
I think what he's saying is we had unicode in the form of UCS-2 but Silicon Valley programmers refused to use it because it was wasteful.

When Thompson and Pike finally invented UTF-8 was when things started getting moving.
Grrr, the Boing Boing article just links to Forbes.
The NSA statement - "Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true."

As a great man once said - "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
I think re:banning - you're not telling the whole story.
Speaking of love of and devotion to games, if you want to see what the original Diablo team has done lately take a look at Torchlight II - it still has that something that D3 is missing and D1/2 had.
It's not. Jacob and I started working on a code of conduct for the Django community months before PyCon.
...which is something people have done [1]. The goal of these extensions is usually to have the best of both worlds. E.g. block selections in an editor you can script with elisp.

[1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil
Apparently, I'm not cool enough to be invited to medium. If anyone has any pull..
3D Printing as Easy as File-Print in Windows 8.1
Narrowly read, an Author or Inventor would retain exclusive rights and would only be allowed to grant a temporary and nonexclusive grant of that right to others.

An excellent argument.

Likewise, when the standard copyright term exceeds the median human lifetime, the 'limited time' effectively becomes 'forever.' One of the few things I like about the patent system is that the term is 20 years, which is a reasonable period of exclusivity for a genuinely patentable idea (vs. the abusive attempt to patent the obvious or prior art for litigation purposes).
Yup. They could use a fair, non misleading chart in the WaPo piece and still make a good point about copyright.
> Since it's aimed at line-oriented code, it does line-based diffs

You can do word diffs with git:

git diff --word-diff=color
That sounds like batching to me. It's early days in the multitasking revolt, but I define batching as having "finished" a task. If a FOR loop is one of those tasks and you finish that before emailing a client or something, then that's batching.

BTW sorry for being slow on replying, I'm just starting to get into this hacker news thing ;)
Obama has not targeted for execution a single person without a trial who wasn't an enemy combatant.

I find it really hard to believe that a drone strike inside Yemen is justified on the "he's shooting at us!" grounds.

For the death penalty, I'd like to think that the USA would demand more than an administrative designation. In fact for any legal penalty, I'd like to think that a public trial with advocates for both sides arguing the matter.
i rewired our how last year, and just last week i finally flipped on the breaker for the master bedroom (was too lazy to move the dresser to wire a receptacle for all that time). for 16 months, no laptops, phone chargers, etc. just kindles and my wife's iphone (alarm clock). i'd charge my phone in the kitchen each night, so there was no temptation to reach over and check email/fb/hn/etc. i loved it. now, within a week of having functioning receptacles, my wife and i both have iphone / mbp chargers on our nightstands. i actually had trouble falling asleep a few nights back; it's been 5-6 years since i've had trouble sleeping. i think the freedom from temptation had a lot to do w/ it.
Ask HN: Would you use a site for meeting programmers at Starbucks?
HN:

I recently moved to Santa Monica and have been having a hard time meeting programmers and people in general who have similar interests.

There are a few Starbucks within walking distance and it seems that they are all over LA. (Most big cities and even suburbs this seems to be the case)

I'm thinking about building a super simple app that asks you for 3 interests (ex: programming, heavy metal, gym) , a schedule, and your zip code. The app initiates the meetup by matching your availability and links you to the nearest Starbucks to meet up. Because the app initiates the meetup, I believe it would take the friction out of fear of rejection and forcing people to take initiative.

Would you guys use something like this?
It's being switched on the type of v (string or other, in this case), though in a more complex case you could easily have several different types. The assignment basically redefines v to be the matched type inside the case statement. You could easily just add a "sv := v.(string)" as the first statement of "case string", then use sv in place of v within that block, but this does read much cleaner.

I think it gets more interesting when using several, often complex (struct) types in the same switch statement.
There's an insurance scam just waiting to happen here.
Fortunately, for everyone (Android and iDevice), 802.11u, aka "Hotspot 2.0" neatly solves the problem by doing away with c(r)aptive portals.

802.11u is supported today on some Android phones, and has been (yes,publicly) announced for iOS 7.
> I'm not clear on why undermining compile time type safety is an feature.

I think this is what people will ultimately focus on when considering Go. Many of the complaints are a product of type weaknesses in the language, voiced by people who had assumed that a modern static language wouldn't have that fault. Others tend not to mind because they lack that expectation, and regard the dynamic behaviour you can get as a feature. The argument about shared mutable state goes the same way, but for some concurrent but non-parallel code it might be convenient.

I can easily see people picking Go when moving from Python. But not when moving from a static language with a stronger, safer type system.

Also, as burntsushi points out, it does require more sophistication in the type system. I doubt they're trying to sell a naively simplistic type system (sophistication often makes it easier to use), but when Go was announced the feature they seemed to be selling the hardest was short compilation times. I think that feature is the seed of this behaviour.
He has to fill the court with federal judges that have been appointed by a President and approved by the Senate. That's a somewhat higher standard than whoever.
One of my favorites is the German title for 'Die Hard', which is 'Stirb Langsam'. The literal translation of this is 'die slowly'...
For real usable ham radio SDR there's always

http://fivedash.com/

aka the former kb9yig operation.

I have a liteII combined kit built for 30 meters. Works pretty well! Wide enough BW that with a 192K sound card (or was it 96K?) I would listen to one of the aircraft weather transmitters.

Note this is narrowband low frequency rx and tx gear, whereas there's two separate "cultures" of SDR people and one lives to demod wifi and the other lives to do advanced DSP on 160 meters or whatever. And the two don't often meet.
So can I transfer money into my Dwolla account with ACH, and then wire transfer that money to someone's bank account (possibly oversea)? That way the whole process would be free.
I was just about to get on this thread and post about how reasonable and measured his response was. Your comment is one of the better ones I've read on this whole topic.
Definitely. Thanks for pointing that out! I didn't mean to imply either way, but looking back, I did use some unfortunate phrasing.
As mglukhovsky has mentioned RethinkDB Cloud has a plugin in beta at the moment. If you would like to use/test it let me know at cam@rethinkdbcloud.com. We recently launched free shared instances at https://www.rethinkdbcloud.com/ for people to use.
Sorry, my comment wasn't very clear. I was comparing the behavior of the two audiences more than appearance or socioeconomic status or anything else. When the video comes out, people are likely to be reminded of the people doing Mic Checks at board meetings etc. And for many, that sort of thing is just rude and out of bounds.

Notice how he wore his uniform this year instead of something more casual like he did at last year's Def Con. I agree, this was very carefully orchestrated to help discredit his detractors.
This reads like lightweight stoicism to me and that's a good thing.
For 99.9% percent of people, this is exactly what will happen. A few shocked moments, quickly followed by returning to all of the important things in their life. No one has time to protest all of the hundreds of wrong things we supposedly should be protesting and there aren't any clear or easy to implement steps to avoid NSA spying. There is simply no reasonable actionable item here for casual news readers.

The real consequences of this news will be seen in the actions of companies. As 'cloud' (oh I hate buzzwords) technology becomes increasingly more efficient and cheaper, as Amazon, Microsoft, Openstack and VMware duke it out over cloud customers, will those customers trust them with their data? Will companies invest in private clouds for increased security, or will large public cloud service providers be able to win over and keep their trust? How much money have public cloud service providers lost since the leaks began? How many companies are now unwilling to use cloud services from US-based companies?
Fascinating. Ok that is disappointing but understandable I guess.
Hear, hear! When the top brass evoke these deaths, it's like they're saying "if our sainted dead soldiers followed these orders, how can you possibly disagree?" Frankly, the last general worthy of making that sort of comparison was Eisenhower, and he would have been the last man in the military to do so. He was already sickened at this leadership culture when he was President. If he were alive today he would cross the street to avoid a conversation with Alexander.
A Satirical Pitch on a Social Network for Thieves :)
I would say "found as" is a little misleading when the size is so small. Maybe "initial evidence suggests" or something would be more accurate.
Starbucks dumps AT&T
GPars 1.1 Is Out
It's not about reconciliation with hackers, it's about creating a picture that will be portrayed to the rest of the country by the popular media.

News shows and websites will tell the story about a reasonable-seeming establishment guy going to give a speech, and a bunch of weird-looking hackers acting unruly.
"Dwolla now supports wire transfers for deposits."

It looks like wire transfer is only supported for depositing money into Dwolla.
The Derisi Lab at UCSF has a repository of 3D models for parts they use in their (bio) lab: http://derisilab.ucsf.edu/index.php?page=3D

(Press release from 3D printer manufacturer: http://www.stratasys.com/resources/case-studies/medical/deri...)
From the article:
“Everyone’s thinking this, but no one’s saying it public, so everyone thinks they’re alone,” he said. “Ninety-eight percent of society has issues with this…But no one speaks up.”

While I think some people don't how to speak up, beside calling/writing my congress person, many don't care either way. In fact, many older people I have talked to (I am in my twenties) dont have a problem with what the NSA is doing. They dont really mind if their data is being sifted through as long as its being used to "Find Terrorists or what have you."

My problem is the lack of oversight and the fact court that has approved 1,789 out of 1,748 requests (97.7%!!!!). Not only that but they have legal justifications for what they are doing, therefore since its legal its allowed, forget the morals/ethics involved.

Who's to say they won't turn this around on the public at large because it will prevent smaller crimes instead of terrorists. Also whats to stop the government from calling people who oppose their views terrorists and then just spy directly at American people.
That's true, but all FISA proceedings are classified, so there's no way they would allow cameras.
Ask HN: Interested in taking over a haskell/yesod app?
xposted to /r/haskell http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1jg0nj/interested_in_taking_over_app_with_one_customer/

Found customer, built app with intention of finding other customers; never got around to it, been over a year, first customer happy but not paying anymore. Happy to open source it; but would prefer someone take over it with the intention of capitalizing on some of the potential.

Not sure what to do with it; code is probably mediocre at best.
Microsoft literally lost millions on Surface Sales
Many languages call it unit or ().
My experience is probably not typical (I move around a lot and rarely go to the same Starbucks more than a few times) but I'm only about 70% sure that any given Starbucks will have a connection at all. So I only go in if it's really convenient or I have no other options. That's to say nothing of the speed or reliability - both of which are typically mediocre to terrible.

If I knew with certainty that every Starbucks had a fast and reliable connection, I'd probably patronize them 50-100% more than I currently do. Hell, I'd be on my way out of this hotel in search of a Starbucks right now if I knew that!
The Android app is over 9MB and can't be moved to the SD card. Too large for me, uninstalled.
I'm not sure.

Over the years just kind of casually observing the placement and layout of the stores, it seems that they are maximized to be easy to access by the morning rush crowds as well as the lunch and after work rushes. Also, a pronounced increase in drive-through locations.

I could imagine that the majority of a location's revenue comes from walk-in/out business during peak times, and the tables could stay full with little rotation all day without appreciable impact on revenue, while solidifying the chain as a go-to "third place", especially for the business class.

Any former employees here to chime in?
Yes and if you run the numbers for a couple dBm out and spread across a 6 MHz ATSC signal, compared to the actual stations (depending where you live, I guess) you'll have a range of perhaps feet. Maybe tens of feet.

Shannon's law is not to be denied! (And what decade did it rename from "Shannons Law" to "Shannon–Hartley theorem" anyway?)
Funny how Alexander says he's read the Constitution, and implores the heckler to do the same. If one can read the Constitution and square the NSA's mass surveillance with the 4th amendment then one can square a circle. There really is no point in debating people like this on the technicalities of the Constitution. What they understand is power. He has it and we don't. He knows how to pull the levers that matter, and which Congressman and executive branch bureaucrats to lean on to make sure his bailiwick is not reduced by a single inch. The rest of us, sadly, are left flailing around hoping that pointing to a piece of paper is an effective check on evil.
What are the problems with checked exceptions that don't apply to go's approach?
I don't eat carbs when I start eating again for the same reason. Try eating per the Atkin's diet for a few days and gradually add carbs back in. As an aside, I've used the Atkin's diet to lower my cholesterol and the "keto-strips" indicate a light ketosis after 3 days or so.
Is anyone collecting a list of the surreal, absurd, or kafkaesque events surrounding post-9/11 national security?

This episode reminds me of the red warning light from ksm's gitmo trial that would sometimes light up and cut the gallery feeds on its own: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/01/secrec...
I have no problem with you being frank.

My goal is to become more efficient at editing files, the typing/changing/refactoring part especially. I don't want a new way of opening/saving/handling files, search/replace, version control or debugging - it would just be too much to learn all at once.

So I thought Vintageous would be a great opportunity for me to learn the text editing part of vim without burning down my ecosystem. You're right, it's probably part of what leads to my confusion. Still, I thought I'd ask, maybe someone took the same route and managed it somehow.
This article is full of fluff. How exactly do each of the acquisitions start to solve the core problems of Yahoo?
Sounds straightforward to me -- Google is subsidizing the installation of faster, free wifi at all Starbucks. If you are asking what Google gets out of it, probably good PR, their name in the network SSID, and of course, the more people use the internet (on average) the more money google makes.
Maybe. The idea of an app to meeting new people and helping make new friends sounds cool "on paper" so to speak. But in reality, my schedule is usually so chaotic, that I'd probably never actually wind up filling in a time that I was available. I think I just prefer browsing a list of meetings that somebody else has scheduled (or proposed) and then deciding (as late as the last minute) if I want to go or not.

In practice, doing that for Meetup.com meetups is how I "solve" this problem.

Still though, this sounds like it might have some potential. And, hey, if you get some traction for it, you have a very obvious acquirer (if they don't already have something like this) in Starbucks themselves.
Can you clarify... does this addon simply store the Wordnet data inside Postgres, or actually let the postgres full-text search do query-expansion-to-synonyms?
MS Office on Android phones
Well he's got it printed on a roll of paper that hangs next to a seat he occupies twice a day, so he's had ample opportunity to read it.
And people denigrate portals...
How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet
I don't see the obsession with calling this feedback harsh. I'd kill to have the feedback shared on this site (it's not like you are obligated to listen to anything), and it doesn't offend me in anyway. I actually like when people get straight to the point.

If someone were to have a mightier-than-thou attitude when giving the feedback, then maybe that would throw me, but I would more likely get annoyed because feedback from people like that tend to be redundant or just complete shit.
a feature 'discovered' every month by email users for a over a decade at least.
Zynga sues “Bang With Friends” for trademark infringement
How can you still believe that guy anymore? He could be petting bunnies, while he sings with an angel's voice about how they're protecting the nation and that their spying is really not that bad - and I wouldn't believe him.

Obama's promises sounded very compelling and believable, too - until we learned the facts of his actions after he already won his 2nd mandate. I think it's important to remember that whenever you hear a politician speaking nicely without anything real to back it up. Otherwise we'd doomed to repeat the same mistakes, over and over and over again, fooled by master actors.
Good to hear. Our long nightmare will finally end someday.
How about civil disobedience rather than childish disobedience?
Linode begins Longview Beta
> If you tried to draw that it would be unreadable, but it is perfectly fine code

You seem to be implying that no one could figure out how to apply the "7 +/- 2 rule"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...) to a visual programming language.
I agree with the basic argument that Alexander is a savvy SOB and knew what he was in for...

BUT, you're making it sound like getting heckled on stage was desirable. I don't agree. I think it is more appropriate to say that the NSA is between a rock and a hard place. They could either...

* Get heckled and look culpable, but maintain the illusion that they give a shit what the general public thinks, or...

* Not attend and completely look like assholes hell bent on violating civil liberties.

Keith Alexander didn't win any friends by getting heckled. He just made fewer enemies.
Ask HN: Python open source projects i can contribute to
I would like to boost my programming skills by contributing to an open source project in python. I can say I'm at an intermediate level of programming(wow, still loads to learn).Not a web developer but wouldn't mind contributing to parts that don't require a deeper knowledge of web dev. Thanks