skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Will Ubuntu Edge commit to using only free software? If the project succeeds and has $32 million available to spend, this is surely possible, but there is no indication in any of the promotional materials that this is part of the plan.

I think John Sullivan is grossly underestimating how much it costs to develop a phone, let alone one that is totally open. Convincing companies to completely open source their drivers requires tons of effort, and there has to be a benefit to the vendor beyond just what you believe to be "right". In some cases that benefit is money, or purchases ("we'll only use your product if..."), but I don't think this fundraiser has near enough leverage via either of those means to both build a high quality device and manage to make it totally free.
Why don't you help do something about it then? At least a bug report?

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/bug/
short facebook?
What do you mean "random people?" What sorts of sites are you posting the survey to? If people like my mom aren't part of your survey demographic, your methodology is flawed.

The Washington Post-Pew survey is detailed (through a link) in the article, specifically this question:

"Q: As you may know, it has been reported that the National Security Agency has been getting secret court orders to track telephone call records of MILLIONS of Americans in an effort to investigate terrorism. Would you consider this access to telephone call records an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?"

58% responded 'acceptable' and 41% responded 'unacceptable'.
We're making it easier to find reliable answers to tough questions
It is reasonable to expect a contingency plan. Is there any evidence of people using PRISM-style web scraping to influence politics in their favor? Not really, but that hardly means I trust the status quo.
I don't think Mr White does that, but his blog is well worth following in general. Here's his RSS feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Popehat?format=xml
This is awesome, I just donated and tried it out.

If you guys are open to some conversion rate optimization testing ideas I saw a few areas that would likely respond to treatments - drop me a line via my profile and I'd be happy to have our team put together a free breakdown and help out where we can resource wise.
Hmmm, is this still happening to you? Is it happening to anyone else?
... and where the private sector has also failed to date.
Analog, 1966 - Well, I guess he didn't get the idea from me, then.

Melancholy synopsis from Wiki:

While on vacation, they visit a slow glass merchant and notice the man's wife and child through the window, playing inside the house. When they enter, however, the house is deserted; only then do they realize that the window is made of slow glass, giving the lonely man his final glimpses of his long-dead wife and child.

It's funny how stories from your youth can permeate into your memories.
I just tried to donate and since I use 1password to pre-fill the CC info, their form validation didn't kick in, and the "Confirm Donation" button was still ghosted out. I had to do some sleuthing and simulate some KeyUp events before it was enabled.

If anyone from Watsi is looking, please look into this (might be an edge case though). I was close to a "eh, let me do this later." - which is bad.
It couldn't be any worse than inkscape's official website[1], targeting designers no less!

I wonder how many thousands have chosen not to install Inkscape as a result of this home page. The first time I went I assumed it was a URL squatter.

[1] http://inkscape.org/
A species, the lowest taxonomic classification on the tree of life, is defined by the ability to crossbreed. [0]

Previously, any crossbreeding between plants, by necessity had to belong to the same species. Since this is the lowest taxonomic classification, the vast majority of the genome was shared.

Now, a plant can be crossed with any other species on the tree of life. That's a significant difference.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species
Marketing with Asana: The Tools We Use
Web-Hosting Project Hopes to Help Students Reclaim Their Digital Destinies
Public-key cryptography is a tool.

Yeah, I believe the author mistakenly conflated public-key cryptography with the public-key infrastructure (PKI). One is a technology and the other is a set of policies built around a trust model. While the technology remains sound, our confidence in the policies may be weakening. To prepare for this, we may need to look at alternative trust models such as web of trust.
Indeed. Why didn't they bring up potential guests beforehand?

Oh, you think the onus is on him? Weird.
anybody can sue anybody for anything. it doesn't mean they'll win.
If OVH ever brings that $27 i5 dedicated to the US (CA) datacenter, VPS providers are in trouble.
Serious questions:

1. Do you think there may be selection effects in this type of donation model? How do you plan on preventing discrimination against the less photogenic?

2. Do my dollars, etc actually go directly to specific individuals, or is there a layer of intermediation a la Kiva (over which there was some confusion and "controversy" [1])

3. In a world where watsi-like treatment model becomes successful, do you believe that creating these individual-to-individual dependencies is a net positive improvement for society?

[1] http://pages.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2009/11/11/kiva-transparen...
The Shortage of Mentors for Technology Startups
Show HN: A Ruby command-line tool for checking Apple Dev Center status
Seriously! and $100/mo.??!?!

... but the govt. shouldering their responsibility? Psh!
Incredibly the donate form was so frictionless it not only didn't complain when I.didn't fill in the email address it also didn't complain when I didn't give a name either. No other charitable platform I've seen has let me get away with that, they want an email with which to track and leverage, so props to the Watsi team for making donation feel like donation and making it easy.
Yes vaccination is NOT a billion dollar business, vaccines do not kill people, and its perfectly logic you need to get shots against other peoples diseases BUT at the same time those who don't become a danger to you, yes.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/199...

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/03/1...

http://vaccinedangers.com/

http://www.mercola.com/article/vaccines/neurological_damage....

http://vactruth.com/2013/02/23/17-examples-of-vaccine-failur...

I could go on and on here like the vaccines business is create problem & offer solution infinite loop, but I hope you can do a research on your own.
I was in the same situation a few months back and I remember reading about mounting an Amazon S3 Bucket on a VPS. Did you consider that?

I never actually went through with the idea, but it's definitely on my things-to-do-when-bored list!
>Trust the private sector to take on poverty, where the government has failed to date.

The government has been pretty succesful in taking on poverty in Nordic countries, but it requires taxes.
Hit backspace, reenter last digit.
Wow, much faster startup than 4.0.

I liked

> don't parse fourteen thousand lines of label descriptions on every startup, defer them until a sheet of labels is used
He didn't ask for a ticket. He asked for her to be allowed into his own talk for the hour while he was giving it. That's a pretty tame and reasonable request.
Isn't the longstanding scandal that Yelp will filter negative reviews if you pay them, making it a kind of protection racket?
Feds tell Web firms to turn over user account passwords
Changing the modulus to use known constants is an awesome trick! Great read
CouchDB merges in BigCouch
OVH dedicated server at 3€/month: 2GB ram, atom 1.6GHz processor
Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Here's an analogy. Computers have been abstracted enough that I have no idea how a compiler works, what assembly is, or what the difference between a Flash Drive and a SSD is, but I can still code as I please. Is this practice wrong? No, and I don't need to know (nor do I want to). This book tries to abstract inference (read: programming), from mathematics (read: compilers, assembly etc.).
We have considered this a few times, but I always come back to the fact that our app is specific to us. I don't think it's useful to others, per se. Also, most startups don't open source their core business code. Some do, and I think it makes sense for them. I don't think it makes sense for us though.

Open source is hugely important to me, and Watsi wouldn't be what it is without all those awesome people out there writing code for the masses. Props to them!
Thanks so much! Really appreciate the kind words.

Re: media strategy. Broad, national, mainstream outlets will be our next big challenge. Today would be amazing. Good Morning America, Frontline World News, 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper, Fareed Zakariah, Ellen, Diane Sawyer, Nick Kristof, Al Jazeera...any of those would be a pinnacle :)
If you don't feel like putting in a serious effort into presenting your argument, then I see no reason why anyone should take it seriously.
Small correction, the support library which has ActionBarCompat only goes back to 2.1 (each version has a number representing the API version it supports, in this case v7)
These criticisms of technological solutions always miss the obvious: both approaches complement each other.

If I send my aunt a letter, I am assured that unless there is a warrant, my letter to her will not be read by my government. She doesn't live in my country though, and her country gives no such assurances. More-so, even if it did, I would have no particular reason to trust her government. On that note, what if I don't trust my government?

Instead of sending her a regular letter, thanks to technology I have the option of mailing her a message encrypted with her PGP public key. Now I have to trust that my government will not beat me with a wrench or compromise my computer to gain access to the pre-encrypted letter (if I posses it), I have to trust her government to not beat her with a wrench or break into her computer, and I have to trust our governments to not outlaw PGP.

So which is preferable, finding political solutions to the "my aunt and I are being beaten with wrenches" problem, or finding political solutions to the "my letters are secretly being read without our knowledge" problem? I assert the former is preferable. Beating people with wrenches is a far more extreme action, it is easier to trust governments not to do something that is more extreme.

All of the problems with technical solutions are ultimately political problems. You can either abandon all technical solutions and only go for political solutions, or you can find political solutions to the shortcomings to technical solutions. Technical and political solutions complement each other, providing assurances that the other cannot. Both need to be pursued.

Don't want the government to read your mail? Encrypt it. Don't want your government to ban that? Lobby your position.
I did not in fact refer to these concerns as specific to GMO (though the UOCS series places it under "genetic engineering"). I'm a lot more concerned about Monsanto's monopolistic role within the global food supply as a whole rather than GMO specifically.
Is there a way of using your own custom distro or image; vs the ones they provide?
I know. If you go to the link, the first thing it asks is for your zip code to give you a list of your representatives. The reminder would contain that list.
Indeed. And patenting genes should not be allowed. I have no objections about GM I object to patents on genetic material and the rent seeking behaviour associated with patents.
It's ridiculous to say that because we've been using genetic modification techniques for three decades without catastrophe, GMOs are safe. GMOs encompass a large and expanding range of techniques and implementations, and it's never too late for someone to screw up and give the entire field a black eye.

The question I have is largely of containment, given the potential delay between the time a GMO product is introduced to the market, and the signs of health problems appearing. If by the time a serious problem is discovered, the genetic material in question has spread to the entire gene pool for that species, then it becomes extremely difficult to address. If the unwanted presence of a modified gene prevents farmers from labeling their product organic, or exporting to certain countries, as was recently the case with Oregon wheat farmers and Japan, then it's currently having some very real consequences for people which shouldn't be dismissed.

I'm all for progress; I'd just rather let others be guinea pigs when possible, and always keep an exit strategy.
> Would you expect to get your wife into a movie theater free? A music concert?

If it's opening night for a movie I'm in and the studio invited me to attend, or I'm going to be on stage playing during the concert, you better believe I'd expect my wife to be allowed to attend with me. That doesn't mean she she get to watch other movies in other theaters, or get to watch the rest of a weekend-long music festival for free.
YubiHSM[1] seems much more reasonable at $500, but it's still not "cheap."

A COTS implementation would be interesting. Securing SSL keys would require very quick public key crypto and probably a PCI-E interface to talk to the server, the PCI-E interface making it much more expensive (FPGAs with PCI-E hard blocks have gone down in price, but are by no means cheap, not to mention the increased cost of the PCB). Prototypes probably wouldn't need VC for a proof of concept, but after that you typically need to put up a bit of money for any manufacturing.

I'd be interested in a way to securely generate and store a Root CA certificate and sign other keys with it. Ideally using something like secret sharing so that no single person can access the Root CA as well without having n out of m people.

[1] http://www.yubico.com/products/yubihsm/
All you need to say is that without modern methods of direct gene alteration (and perhaps mutagens), organisms had to be able to breed to have their genes crossed (fertile offspring make the cross more interesting). Talking about species just muddies it up.

Of course, GMOs can also pass the tests of successfully maturing and reproducing.
Anyone use it along with Apache's OpenOffice? Which one is (in your experience) less buggy/more stable in its current incarnation?
Keep in mind that's not RAID disk, so if that hard drive goes, so does all your data.
And perhaps anti-notification-spam apps, if I understand this right?
This is a known issue with tools like 1password and LastPass. I'm not sure how to fix it. If you have any ideas, please hit me up on Twitter: @jc00ke.
460 hours of practice seems like PLENTY of time to learn to do that.
I'm trying to charge $50 as a designer & developer.
I have many requests from US who are willing to pay this amount but they want me to be there, to meet personally first. Is that a common request or just an elegant way to say bye?
I put something like this on my to-do list a couple of years ago, but haven't made it to that project line item yet :-(.

Thank you for sharing what you do have, even if it's rough!

RE: "You may have to install PyQt4." - Yes. When I './run.sh', I received...

| Traceback (most recent call last):
| File "main.py", line 4, in <module>
| from PyQt4 import QtGui, QtCore
| ImportError: No module named PyQt4

Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to find PyQt4 and install it.
Will Ubuntu Edge commit to shipping a non-working brick? There's no way free drivers could be developed within their schedule and budget.
Ask HN: hey data scientists, have they invented a better mousetrap than CSV?
I'm always happy when I get data as a CSV - is there anything better, ever?
Try this experiment on your baby to test response to bullying victims
They don't need consent, they just need to give notice.
Why would anyone use them over DigitalOcean? What's the advantage? Am I missing out on something?
Actually, it would cost food manufacturers a lot more than otherwise since the majority of food would have to be labeled.
Indeed, the downvotes seem bizarre to me. This response just looks like somebody sharing their experience in the matter in a coherent way. It could also be someone who doesn't want attention drawn away from their post.

Anyhow, I'm in Canada right now, and am in the next few years probably looking to change careers. I have good contacts with several top-tier tech companies in the US, and also with the auto industry and big oil. I've never really had much of a desire to live in the US, but now more than ever I'm finding myself looking to other potentially less lucrative positions just because of my distaste, much like the post above.

It really doesn't feel like a good time to be living in the US as a foreigner with an engineering degree, a very foreign sounding name and very liberal views. :-/
Awesome. Thanks for donating!

It's pretty incredible to think that by connecting people, we may be able to transcend systems that aren't working.
They are creating monopolies (cartels) and creating artificial demand by cornering the market. Things most capitalist systems regulate/limit.

They are speculators. People have instinctive dislike for speculators as they produce nothing and in scalpers case provide no benefit (such as liquidity) to society.
The media didn't break anything. Snowden gave them the story, which they have mostly ignored in favor of hit pieces against him as a traitor and a coward.
"However, I have little use for a heavyweight office suite. For example, most of the text-based documents I create are either plain text files or "serious" work created with more powerful tools than Word."

What field are you in, if you don't mind my asking? I really can't figure out based on this statement whether or not you're in MS' target demographic.
What does payment have to do with it? A little common sense & a little respect for people is not nullified just because money has paid hands.
Pellicle is a simple and beautiful way to share video messages with others.
"Until half a year ago "we" (geneticists) thought that upwards of 80% of the genome was junk DNA... oops, I guess not."

That wasn't my impression when I left this field for chemistry in 1989. Back then "we" were saying "this doesn't code for specific proteins, is it junk, or does it have function?" The consensus then was "junk", and the recent claim otherwise is speculative as I read it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#Junk_DNA

The flip side is by then we were realizing that DNA moves around a lot more than we'd though, and transgenic organisms were common in nature ... or at least tries, Nature is much more a script-kiddie than us and most of those "attempts" fail.
A "random" button (super smash bros style) which picked a random from page then post donation confirm showed you who was picked would help address the photogenic issue.

Also, some UK localization allowing gift aid would help you scoop up my tax with the donation. (Unless I missed it already, I'm only browsing on mobile.)
As a fellow Linode user, I find this to be a pretty silly comment. This will save some customers a little bit of money and provide some storage breathing room. It's an important latest step to firm up their offerings, and I commend them for consistently doing so over time.

If you think Linode is a good value for the money, continue using them. If you don't, go somewhere else. I don't think anyone here cares whether you're impressed.
It's common but sort of an indicator of a project that is going to suck. There are outsourcing firms in the USA who are staffed entirely by remote workers and pay $50-$65 an hour.
This is the same as CPU Ready in VMware?
Drat. I failed that quite badly.
Yes, a prime number would be needed.
If someone knows why a prime must be used or knows of something which explains why then I would be very interested to find out why this is.
Once you know a vote isn't going to happen, the voting gets rearranged to look good. Since the outcome is the same, it doesn't really matter how the outcome happens, so long as the 'yes' or the 'no' is still a 'yes' or 'no'.

And it's probably one of the least improper things that happens in US government.

I'd also like to take a moment to explain why this vote doesn't have a chance, ever, and it's the exact same reason all spending cuts to defense don't generally go through - all it takes is one bad thing to happen, and suddenly every single person who voted to reduce defense spending/the NSA budget is at risk in their district.

It's the easiest attack ad in the world to construct: "My opponent was one of the people who took away the NSA's power to defend this country, and as a result we were attacked again!" That's a guaranteed and immediate hit that's very easy to understand. What's much more complicated is the 'yes' argument. It's nuanced, confusing, many constituents don't even want it, and in general a big risk.

The biggest win for members of congress is if no change actually happens, and yet they still get to have a voting record that shows they're against what the NSA is doing (exactly how it turned out). Those "yes" votes were probably pretty damn expensive for the congresspeople who got them, but they'd be HUGE liabilities if the vote actually passed.

In other words, 'yes' votes were worth more if the 'yes' lost.
Thanks; so basically if you bork your box your options are (1) netboot, and failing that (2) reinstall the OS. Reasonable enough, for the price. I suppose that this is why we have Chef and Puppet
Out of curiosity, what's your preferred vps provider?
I've had the same issues and it's preventing me from using it for anything serious. A lot of the other things with DO (provisioning, backup, snapshots) are great but the network seems to the biggest issue at the SF datacenter.
I don't see it follows. If anything, self-signed certs just make it easier for the NSA (or anyone else) to capture your traffic. Organizations should probably set up their own CA instead.
When I used OVH about two years ago, on dedicated servers, it was possible. And I think still will be in those.
LibreOffice has had more development time (both features and bugs) than OpenOffice. OpenOffice was entirely dead for over a year and then Apache put the effort into redeveloping features so they could be relicensed under the Apache license instead of the L/GPL.

The one big addition to OpenOffice was the contribution of IBM's Lotus Symphony sidebar properties dialogs. LibreOffice 4.1.0 adds these as well but considers them 'experimental' as they are new and largely untested. LibreOffice has a larger and more active development team and can pull bug-fixes and features from OpenOffice as the L/GPL 3.0 is Apache compatible. OpenOffice can not pull features and bug fixes from LibreOffice unless they re-license as L/GPL.

The projects are unlikely to merge. Every major Linux/Debian/BSD distro now ships with LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. OpenOffice may still be more popular on Windows, though, due to name recognition. I don't know what the public numbers are in terms of downloads for the same period to compare.
I wonder what Apple hopes to achieve by following a policy of no Android-related content on the iOS app store.

It's not as if it will prevent people from learning about Android's existence.
Looks intriguing! Sent in a beta request.
On Hacker News, most people know what Free Software is, but thank you for the AMA tidbit.