skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I really like the idea of tracking myself (e.g. books read, weight, steps taken etc.), but as a hacker I'd never let anyone else hold this data. I mean, Facebook is one thing, but highly personal details about my personality is another thing.

That said - it would be cool to see something like this open sources. Currently I'm using excel to track most of the stuff I'm interested in, but I know that there must be a better alternative.
Yet another startup is lost to the land of irrelevance.
by the same way of thinking it also could do more harm than good.. like how many nasa technology its being used to kill, to spy, etc..

creating something with good will, and with a good purpose at least can do us less harm.. but even than.. it always depends of the intentions of human beings..

(a plain could be used for fast transport or to kill)
(discoveries about the atoms can cure câncer, energy reactors or to create atomic bombs)
Your response accounts only for one piece of the experience, which is the muscle memory. Perhaps you move like a robot, and muscle memory is enough for you to precisely strike the small tap targets of a keyboard, but you are off target to tell someone they are wrong based solely on that.

Tactile feedback is a big advantage to physical typing which allows you to know your fingers are in the right place prior to making a keystroke. Without it, you don't know until after the touch has registered. Ignoring that and saying it amounts to nothing is short sighted at best. Even beyond that, there are plenty of people who aren't that coordinated and/or stable, period, which amplifies this deficiency.

Additionally, this doesn't account for the fact that in most scenarios, the person using a mobile device is, in fact, mobile, and may not have a flat, stable area to place the device, but rather they are balancing it on their lap or holding it with one hand and typing with the other. Nor does it capture the fact that when you have the device in your lap, the screen isn't going to be at an ideal angle to view at the same time.

So sure, the same concept applies, but to pretend that the experience isn't inferior is just turning a blind eye to reality, imho.
Funny, and I was wondering why so much people still insist in using .NET ...

Personally I avoid .NET like the plague, after learning it first of course (not for servers, I don't do server side stuff) because of its horrible windows dependancy, and mono is NOT a adequate substitute.
RIght; in fact, in my last job, it happened in exactly that way. A 2nd or 3rd rate Beltway Bandit got bought by a big foreign company, and because of the latter any units working in national security had to be acquired by a US company, and before the acquisition. My unit was one of those, and we got a document with a bunch of demands, like the last N years worth of non-competes you'd signed, and then in theory they'd hire you. If you didn't sign it, you'd be laid off (in this case there was a successor organization, that wouldn't be true in these aquihires).
> (btw, they gave themselves back the right to do the insider trading)

I've seen that claimed with regard to the amendment passed to the STOCK Act a few months ago, but those claims were wrong. Is there some other change I missed?
Apple instead making gimped software or drivers for other platform?

What ??

"X" instead DO not even make software or drivers for other platform ( Mac and Linux ), what do you consider those company then?
So here's an idea: it's in Microsoft's interest to buy, or clone, Xamarin, and make it work on WP8/Metro as well.

That's because, frankly, platform lock-in is killing Microsoft's chances now that they're the distant third-place touch app ecosystem, for the same reason it helped them as the strong first-place desktop OS. App makers will target the top platform or two, and only those, as long as it's much extra work to go broader. Solid, free-as-in-beer tools to target WP, iOS, and Android all at once make it less work to support WP so more devs will do it.

Having built or acquired the tech to run .NET off Windows, maybe they should release some more of their ecosystem to make it viable for more startups to use .NET. Someone small using some free compilers/libraries and MySQL may eventually be a prospect to buy VS and SQL Server. (And whether they ever sell these startups anything or not, folks releasing .NET libraries make the ecosystem more attractive.)

Who knows; they decided Azure should support Linux and Office should be on every platform, so anything's possible. Times have changed and maybe the argument for closing off ("fully integrating") their dev ecosystem is weaker now.
What do Stack Overflow developers care about and use?
If you really want to know you should go deeper down the rabbit hole.

Other then that I can say nothing more.
> Data is not code

All code is data, but not all data is code.
Technically, I believe it's parchment, not paper.
Actually I think the idea of the 4th is to get in the way of law enforcement and the government, insofar as that obstacle is necessary to protect the rights of the average non-suspect citizen.

Not sure there's any such thing as a non-suspect citizen these days.
Yes, sorry - I was pointing out the "one dimensional" typo.
Has Yahoo ever tried to offer $500,000+ to rockstar mobile devs? Until it tries that, it is lame to argue that it must get talent from deadpooled companies.
An update on our Bug Bounty Program
If properly done in hardware, it needs no help from anything. Think about CPU "data breakpoints" - breakpoints that trigger if a specified if a specific value gets written to a specific range.

It's really a no-brainer to make such breakpoints that watch data in memory or registers that will be triggered by (e.g.) just processing a specific DNS packet.
They'd basically be using an expert to testify that doing something didn't require said expert. Like having an auto mechanic testify that changing your oil is dead simple.

I mean, it is probably possible to convincingly make that case, but it seems a bit tricky.
Sure! I can release it as a library if there's interest. It's basically a go-client querying a redis instance which has been pre-fed with the NLTK categorization for most common words (about 8000 or so).
I could see the logic in buying up end-of-their-tether companies if Y! was getting them at a fire-sale price. Being able to buy undervalued assets at fire-sale prices is exactly why anyone buys a company that's about to fail. But there's not a lot of evidence that they're getting the kind of prices you'd expect them to be able to get from people whose alternative to selling is going out of business, which is (to put it charitably) puzzling.
Centzy - Software Engineer - NYC of SF - Full-time

Centzy is a search engine for services. We help consumers find, compare and buy local services like haircuts, oil changes and dog groomers. We are tackling big challenges in gathering, structuring and mining this messy set of data from online and offline sources. We are well funded but early stage enough that we can offer significant product and equity ownership and competitive salaries (plus full healthcare, free meals, etc).

We are looking for another smart engineer to join our team of seven. We are looking for someone who is thoughtful, driven and fun. You should be able to engineer solutions that scale as our data, users and team grows. It would be great if you had experience with Ruby or Go, but its not a hard requirement. Email me: jeremy at company name.
I am using the google drive app for Windows (in a shared folder that my Linux VM sees). When I save a file with Vim it creates a duplicate copy on the GDrive server.

I couldn't figure out how to turn off Vim's file saving behaviour, so I will give this a shot and see if it works better.
Other than Tumblr, it seems like all the other acquisitions were of companies that were on their way down.

Edit: Also add Lexity to the list with Tumblr.
> Actually I think the idea of the 4th is to get in the way of law enforcement and the government, insofar as that obstacle is necessary to protect the rights of the average non-suspect citizen.

I'd say its more to get in the way of government insofar as that obstacle is necessary to protect the rights of the average suspect citizen, as well.
It's great to see more and more people adapting flat structure, financial transparency and so on.
> Gödel's incompleteness theorems, which tells us about the gaps in theories we can't fill

That's mathematical, not physical, so that would mean that in the parent universe somehow _something else constitutes a formal language_, which requires changing what it means to be a subset, which requires changing set theory. So if GITs are invalid in the parent universe, it means, roughly either that you can compare something to itself, and find that it contains different things that itself (absurd), or that list comprehensions are logically impossible (not as obviously absurd, but still "whaaa?").
Without any strong collaborating evidence, they probably should be inadmissible. Plenty of people confess to crimes they had nothing to do with; there are a lot of crazies out there.

"In 1666, Robert Hubert confessed to starting the Great Fire of London by throwing a fire bomb through a bakery window. It was proven during his trial that he had not been in the country until two days after the start of the fire, he was never at any point near the bakery in question, the bakery did not actually have windows, and he was crippled and unable to throw a bomb. Nevertheless, as a foreigner, a Frenchman, and a Catholic, Hubert was a perfect scapegoat. Ever maintaining his guilt, Hubert was brought to trial, found guilty, and duly executed by hanging."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_confession#Voluntary_fals...
If you're going to joke around about handcuffs, you can't misuse "free market" at the same time. The offer doesn't exceed "free market", it simply exceeds market.
John Carmack's keynote at Quakecon 2013
Ask HN: Wordpress plugin to create custom fields
I am building a wordpress site for local music events (the mvp from a non-tech fouder). I am looking for a wordpress plugin which will let me create custom fields and tags to add multi-day music events. A typical event may be 2-4 days long and will have information like:

Event name, Day wise schedule, Music Genre, Bands, Band Members, Venue, city, Book Ticket button,

Any plugin/theme recommendation will be highly appreciated as this will let me get with my customer trials really quickly.
That is very sad, I had lots of hopes for them, and for the rocket racing league too!
DOJ Calls for Apple to End Book Deals, Link to Rival Bookstores
I think there would be some interest in both the NLP as well as the tracking in general (many say they want to track themselves but privacy is an issue)
It should be noted that "win" is a relative term in Rockmelt's case, since there was only a $60-70M return on a $40M investment.
Well, I'm sure they'd find some other, equally ridiculous way to interpret "Git" - obviously the programmer was making a statement about the stupid "gits" in charge of the company...
Almost rolled my own D3 timeline before adopting TimelineJS. Saved a bunch of time and still got a look that matched the rest of the project: http://bulger.wbur.org/story/1977/?location=44444
Can only recommend this. Caveat: getting it to be responsive down to the phone will require some work on your end.
I just gotta say, you were awarded one helluva filename there!
Can you quantify "slightly"?
Honestly I think it really is as simple as what he answered in this talk: he doesn't want to risk the money.

Elon on the other hand, has been willing to double down on bets involving 100's of millions of dollars or more. That speaks to a very different view of risk/reward between them (and not one I think is negative to either side).

Also, while Carmack is certainly enormously respected in his field, he hasn't worked much outside that. Elon's track record has diverse successes, and I think that means it's a lot easier for Elon to convince investors to join his endeavors.
I think it's a cop-out to say that the problems are the result of the government's priorities. I think the problems are the result of peoples' priorities.

My view is that you can't have functioning, stable societies without strong social ties. And in the U.S. much more so than in Western Europe, those social ties have broken down, especially across racial and socio-economic lines. And when middle and upper class people have no personal investment in the social institutions that lower class people depend on, there is nothing the government can do to fix that.

I'll give you a concrete, personal example. I'm moving to Wilmington, DE because my wife is starting a job there. Wilmington is one of the most dangerous cities in the country, adjusted for population. It's also about 60% African-American, and 25% of the population is below the poverty line. My wife and I have identified one of the few neighborhoods in downtown Wilmington where we'd be willing to live, a new development by the riverfront. The development is literally walled-off from the rest of the city. I-95 divides it from the neighborhoods to the north-west. The Amtrak line, built on a raised stonework viaduct with only a few points of access underneath, separates it from neighborhoods to the north-east. The river and a wildlife refuge separates it from neighborhoods to the south and southeast. None of the people in the city who work for the law firms or the banks, or DuPont, etc, send their kids to the downtown public schools, and as a result have no investment in the quality of those schools (even though its overwhelmingly their tax dollars that fund those schools). The two groups of people live in a city where the downtown core is just a mile across in each direction, and yet somehow live and work in a completely disjoint set of residential areas and workplaces, segregated by race and class.

So tell me how the government is going to fix Wilmington, DE? Or Camden, NJ? Or Baltimore, MD? This is a situation that is replicated all over the country and it's intractable.
Ah, so I low-balled the apartment indeed, but was high on the car and probably somewhat low on the food. ;)
Part of his complaint, though he didn't state it, is that it's just too damn hard to get the elected officials to ACTUALLY REPRESENT the people who they SUPPOSEDLY REPRESENT. And I think that's a fair criticism of our government, the officials answer more to their corporate sponsors (who largely don't mind tending towards actively support) this kind of thing, rather than to the people.

Furthermore I shouldn't have to weigh in with my Congresspersons on whether I think something is Constitutional or not. Their job, literally, is to make law in accordance with the Constitution. Here's the oath they take:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

Many elected officials have broken their oaths by passing the Patriot Act or the FISA Act as those authorize blanket warrants; something that the Constitution implicitly prohibits by virtue of the Fourth Amendment.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[1]"

That's the text and you don't get to judge the current laws based on the original text plus all the intervening laws too; the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and if any law contradicts it, guess which one is considered invalid?

So given that the Congress collectively doesn't seem to answer to the people, and collectively doesn't uphold its oath, I would argue that his whining is incredibly justified.

It's not productive in that it doesn't change a congressperson's mind about anything, nor does it get any of those criminals fired or impeached or un-elected. But it's not invalid.

EDIT: Congressmen -> Congressperson
The guys getting a fat payout and corporate safety net while working on some random project they didn't even agree to work on are no longer the same guys who made the startup.

Yahoo shareholders should pool together and stick this on a billboard outside Yahoo HQ.
Honestly, that would be amazing. but I think Microsoft right now is too focused on their own stuff, even more than before. Windows (including Azure) and Office is their focus. .Net seems to be wandering off a bit.
I've heard and like the term "leveraged income" more.
yeah, it could. the business could also fail for 500 other reasons.

if he thinks he's so smart, he should try it. i dare him.
Does anyone have any real insight into the strategy behind all of these acquisitions? Apart from blasé speculation about acqui-hiring (for what products?) and supposition that Yahoo executives are merely stupid, I'd be interested to understand the broader pattern. It's a real news story, and something is going on.

There is a strategy. What is it?
That's just a touch snobbish, don't you think?
I thought JSON is mainly for machine to machine consumption.. who reads comments?
A couple of months ago I switched to Firefox for my daily browsing needs because of its smarter handling of tabs. The following two features made it worth it:

/1/ Tab groups -- I have a tab group for my work,
another for general comms, and yet another
which serves as a "to read" buffer.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-organize-tabs
The default shortcut is command+shift+E

/2/ Tab unloading. Firefox is smart about unloading
from RAM tabs which have not been used recently.
Upon focusing on the tab it comes back to life
as it was before.

Thanks to /2/, my Internet addiction can go on unabated for much longer periods now despite the fact that I have only 4G of RAM. With Chrome I used to "max out" at 20-30 tabs, but with Firefox I can go to 50+ tabs, especially if they are in a tab group that hasn't been unloaded from RAM.

I still use Chrome for web dev though. The developer console, and tools are superior.

update: I HIGHLY recommend y'all try out this tab group thing. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:
http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/firefox-tab-group...
> The only reason there's bad neighborhoods is because people have stopped caring, and the only reason they've stopped caring is because they're powerless to change anything.

If they are powerless to change anything, then them caring or not is irrelevant.

The reason that there are bad neighborhoods is that the people that aren't "powerless to change anything" (who may or may not live in the neighborhood, but nevertheless influence it by their power, including the power to direct resources away from it) have either stopped caring or, more often, have active interests that are served by actions which hurt the neighborhood.
Every good comic author does that. Read up any of many of will eisner's instructional books on comics.

Also, it's a very cheap shot to get nerds, as every nerd is found of this. This is the characteristic in writing/playing RPG stories that i like the most. Thinking of the backstory for every single little thing.
I'm not sure I follow your point then. Could you elaborate?
@iM8t - list of open source quantified self tools at http://quantifiedself.com/guide/search.php?keywords=open+sou...

You might also ask the people I @-mentioned in https://twitter.com/skram/status/363367826326695936
its worse than that. these guys are just going to start in on their next startup, but with benefits, all while pretending to turn the bigco wheel.
>only the government (via prosecutors) can charge anyone with criminal offenses.

That's almost universally true, but some states still do in fact have the right of private prosecution. E.g. New Jersey allows you to swear out a criminal complaint directly to a magistrate, and there isn't a damn thing the police or a prosecutor can do about it.

Private prosecutions used to be the norm. It's actually a very powerful force against police corruption, and I wish it hadn't gone away in so many states.

Also, in cases like this, the prosecutors will generally defer to the desires of the victim, especially when the victim is one of the world's most powerful corporations.
xkcd truly elevates the web comic genre to an art form. Mr. Munroe really should be considered for a Hugo or a Reuben.
U of California Passes Open Access Policy for All 10 UC Campuses
First: what the heck is going on & how is this possible? Second: Note - THEIR sites are not down. So who the heck is THEIR server? ; )
Not sure what level of talent is left at Rockmelt other than their founders. It hadn't been doing well for a long time so I imagine the cream of the crop had already left. (I know one such person who had already left for Google)
I listed an example, not the only example. Most spies, after all, only gave up their information to a single "enemy".

Like inductive reasoning, one example is all the law requires here, and for good reason.

For stuff that was actual whistleblowing of war crimes (i.e. the stuff actually beneficial to that nation of 300 million) there can be no charge of aiding the enemy. But for all the rest, there could have.

Luckily the judge threw in an extra element to the UCMJ (which was written for a pre-Internet age). But that still didn't help with most of the rest.
Travel Alert U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 2/AUG/2013
It is a mystery to me why Rails.logger _takes away_ the timestamping that default stdlib Logger adds by default usually -- and further than this, makes it harder to customize the Rails Logger output than it should be (or has Rails finally fixed that?)
The part I find fascinating about Carmack's comments are the 'sliding into NASA mode'.

NASA, and contractors working for them, has this culture of how these things are done. And if you hire people with experience, then they probably got that experience in a NASA shop, and when you get enough of them your culture tends to revert to what they are comfortable with, and that leads it into the same "zone" as NASA.

I see that in startups and small companies, where the employees bring their 'imprinted' culture with them, whether its a power point heavy culture from Oracle or a 'lets try this' sort of culture from Google, or the "secret sauce" culture from Apple.

I was convinced this was going to be what happened to SpaceX but they seem to be resisting assimilation so far. I hope it can last as I think they need to break some of those cultural binds to get to where they want to be.

I hope John gets a chance to write up the good and bad aspects of how things were done to help future space company employees avoid the bad ones.
We made one of those at HP/Palm for building webOS applications in Enyo. It was called Ares. It was rad.

Alas, HP's CEO in 2011 was mind-bogglingly stupid and of course, killed off Palm
I actually agree that that's exactly the jihadists' objective. However, it's silly to say that this can be achieved with random acts of terrorism.

1) 9/11
2) ???
3) Sharia law!
Has anyone else installed Ubuntu for phones? Am I the only person that finds the interface beautiful but useless? Absolutely nothing about it seemed intuitive.
Tethering plans are such robbery in broad daylight. I don't care what their excuse it. You paid for a certain amount of data, you should use it however you want.
I'm using my nexus 4 to tether my laptop almost daily with no issues in Seattle.