skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Our government is sending gangs of armed men to perfectly innocent citizens' doors to interrogate them

I don't think hyperbole is necessary. In this case the facts are scary enough (i.e. most people don't consider the police an armed gang).

Who wants the government to have virtually omniscient awareness of their activities?
Yeah, absolutely. I got into issues when I was trying to parse the comments for the top 20. If you hit the top 20 and pull down the comments you'll get banned. I ended up giving up on my iOS app because once any real usage started the server was instantly banned (even with 5 minute delay between updating). I ended up realizing that I would have to parse it client side (in obj-c). But then again, I'm not that smart so maybe I was over complicating it.
Depending on the font sometimes even 5 and S and 8 and B too.
Device for Medical ID in Developing Countries
Don't like how they use one image at the top which is from a completely different event, as explained at the bottom. The image seems to be chosen to generate a specific emotional response but I'm not sure it actually represents the events covered in the story very honestly.
Part of the challenge are the mindsets within a food bank.

The first is that the food bank's mission is philanthropic, so any suggestion that "you should consider operating like a well-run restaurant to be more efficient" is usually dismissed.

Secondly, most food banks are under-resourced, so they're always "stuck in the weeds" by just trying to get everyone served, and that prevents them from taking a step back and thinking about how to make things better.

The third is simply human nature, people who have been doing things for a long time are resistant to change and perceive advice from outsiders as a threat. This is usually illustrated quite well in those "restaurant makeover" types of shows, when the celebrity chef and/or restaurant consultants try to talk sense into the struggling restauranteurs.
The Genius Marketing Behind The Bachelor(ette) - Content Strategy Hub
You talked to wrong libertarians then, or didn't listen very carefully. Spending less money on government functions is a consequence of less government, but far from being the goal of it. The goal of it is to lessen government intrusion in private lives and transaction costs for private persons caused by it. If the government does not regulate how your health insurance policy must look like, and leaves it to a contact between two private parties, you do not need a huge law that meticulously describes what such contract must cover and what the sides must do in order to be allowed to enter into a contract. If, however, the government wants to have a say in it, creation of such a law is inevitable.

Not having certain laws trivially prevent abuse of such laws - if there's no law prohibiting possession of certain plant, cops can not extort somebody in possession of such plant, can not hide such plant in somebody's vehicle in order to incriminate them, can not force one to perform illegal acts threatening that otherwise they'd be found guilty in possession of such plant, can not seize one's home, vehicle or money because they suspected him in possessing a prohibited plant. This made possible only by existence of the law that makes certain behavior a crime. If less behaviors are made a crime or deemed worthy of government intervention, less complex laws will be needed and less abuse of these laws will be possible - you can only abuse a law that gives you a power over somebody, but you can not abuse law that does not exist.
I agree with sensible skepticism and reserving judgment to wait for more facts.[0]

tptacek, on the other hand, led with "I don't buy this, at all", and "if you're trying to sell a hoax", and many more sentences and comments that attack the author and the story.

([0]: The real life complication is that in most cases you will never get all the facts, and so reserving judgment forever ends up being the worst kind of inaction.)
This is really cool! Are there any open source libraries to do steps 2 and 3 - auto type detection and error correction/detection?
They are lucky they weren't harmed.
I don't buy this. If, as the article maintains, there were 100 of these a week, I think we'd hear a lot more about these sorts of incidents.
It's a very simple concept that shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. That said, I spend a load of money on adverts every day, am regularly sending over JS snippets which I'm well aware will be executed on the machines of millions of people, and yet the thought of using adverts for this sort of thing never occurred to me.
What Is a Blerd? (Black Nerd)
> The proposition is not to remove the framework, but to de-monopolize it.

To demonopolize it is to remove it. The monopoly is the essence of the framework.

> We currently have a government framework of law, but nothing (except people not realizing it's even possible) prevents us from having multiple frameworks, each operating on its own client base (even when those clients physically live on the same territory) and negotiating with each other when disputes between clients of two different agencies arise.

This kind of patron/client system is not novel, and most people do, in fact, recognize that it is possible.

> The major difference in this situation would be that clients of such firms would voluntarily pay money to be protected by them.

Unless there is some supervisory entity that does have a monopoly enforcing it (in which case, this remains a monopoly system with low-level enforcement farmed out, not a demonopolized system), voluntariness seems, well, dubious. You've just invented a system competing warlords (well, invented is too strong a term, its the basic model of primitive feudalism.)
> most people don't consider the police an armed gang

Because the militarization of police, and the increasing use of SWAT, are trends that argue against this.

What if next time instead of sending regular officers they send in SWAT?
I thought that now all the google search were over https, so how they were able to track the guy (without direct access to the search data from the google server)?
Many people believe we are (sooner or later) approaching a 1984-style dystopia.. So that may not be fear mongering, depending on who you talk to.
So you still "don't buy this, at all"? Despite a credible news organization's confirmation that the FBI was aware of a local PD's visit to this family?

The mind boggles.
Definitely by design. They want to keep you in there shopping as long as they can so that hopefully you will buy more.
Mark Cuban The Edge
Your "classy" insults aren't exactly screaming non-troll.

If you really are a non-troll wanting to seriously discuss a subject's pro/con, don't start with insults and then act innocent. I was polite to the first dozen language war trolls on HN claiming things were shit they have no clue about. That was a long time ago.

(Also, the net is full with Moose info -- I gave you my favorite reference and suggested you'd ask others. If you really wanted to read about roles, typing of attributes etc and build a serious opinion.)

PS For the third time: Have fun explaining to Lisp people your theories about flexibility's cost being too high. I'd love to see your insults to their reaction... DS
Los Angeles, CA - Auryn, s/w engineer, mobile - [FULLTIME, H1B]

http://www.auryn.com

Kids’ picture books are being redefined as a mix of animation, story telling, interactivity and a social networking experience between parents, children and teachers. We are looking for one strong, generalist developers who can help us realize the vision of the next generation kids’ app.

Main responsibilities include

- Design and build a platform for kids’ storybook apps based on the Unity3D game engine and targeting Android and iOS tablets.
- Use the storybook platform to create immersive storybook apps combining gaming, animated story telling and reading.
- Use and extend Auryn’s non-photorealistic rendering technology to create unique visuals and experiences for storybook apps.
- Write tools to streamline the storybook app production pipeline using Python, Unity3D and other technologies.
Develop the client side of a storybook app distribution platform including storefront apps written using native Android and iOS APIs.

Skills and Requirements

- Ability to learn new technologies and problem spaces quickly.
- Strong computer science background.
- Strong experience developing software for mobile devices. Knowledge of C/C++, Objective-C (for iOS), Java (for Android), Unity3D, and/or Python a plus.
- Strong system design experience. Knowledge of game engine design a plus.
- Strong background in computer graphics, image processing and mathematics. Knowledge of OpenGL, image processing toolkits, and/or physics simulations a plus.
- Commitment to creating the best storybook app experience for kids.
Strong written and oral communication skills.

Who we are

We are passionate about creating the best storybook apps for children. We have a flat, open company where engineers and artists work under the same roof and have a blast doing it. Excellent benefits including health, dental, vision, 401K, friday donuts, lunches and a well stocked liquor cabinet.

If you are interested, please write to me at amit at auryn dot com.
This is an issue with CJK characters and probably just one more reason why UTF-8 adoption has been slow where JIS is good enough.
It might even be a nice way to get "standing" so you can qualify to sue the government on these issues. (IANAL, but in the past I've seen "standing" being an issue that disqualifies lawsuits, and people doing stunts like this to get standing so they can then sue.)
Still the demo that defined the genre...can't believe it was 20 years ago.
Yea, my daughter's name is a bit unusual, and so the transliteration produces a different name than english. Her name is Thamina. It's an Arabic origin name, so in Arabic it's : ثمينة. Not that she's Arabic at all, she's part Russian, and was born in Russia, so her name is Тхамина in Russian. They transliterate her name in a standard way to Tkhamina on her Russian passport, but on her USA passport it's Thamina.
Do the performance gains depend on how many digits before or after the decimal point there are?
Day 1 of using DuckDuckGo... starts now.
Alright, let's do a group experiment. Choose one of the links below:

http://www.google.com/search?q=pressure+cooker+backpacks (insecure)

https://www.google.com/search?q=pressure+cooker+backpacks (secure)

and report back if you get a visit from a squadron of men dressed in green wearing helmets and holding guns. If any reporters clicked on the https link, it's PRISM because the leak is from inside Google, otherwise it's XKeyscore. If we get results from both we are really fucked.

Or were you too scared to search? I know I was...
Isn’t it the NSA who does the mass-surveillance? Why whould they share their findings with e.g. the FBI?
This makes current intelligence practices seem reactionary, and maybe it has fallen pray to some of the weaknesses Bruce Schneier pointed out in TSAs procedures. Have anyone seen a comparative analysis of cost towards success of targeted local investigation vs investigations prompted by big data analysis intelligence programs?
SEEKING WORK - Remote (Kenyan resident)

Experienced software developer with a history of successful deployments especially for startups.
I've worked on a lot of things: websites & web apps, mobile apps,sms platforms.
I like using stuff like:

* Python (App Engine, Flask, Django)
* Javascript (Backbone), HTML, CSS
* Java
* Android
* MySQL, PostgreSQL
* Git

Also, If you want a simple proof-of-concept I'd love to get in touch.

Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/samkariu/

Github: http://www.github.com/samkariu

Mail: skariu21 at gmail dot com
My home municipality on the west coast of Norway sends their waste to Sweden to be burned. Before we did that, all households had to sort the waste into separate bins for plastic and organic waste. The organic waste were turned into compost locally. It changed because Miljøverndepartementet (Ministry of Environmental Protection) changed the regulations for depositing plastic waste. So many municipalities have trucks going "over the mountain" with waste to Sweden to be burned. And we actually have the ability to burn waste for energy here on the west coast of Norway, but I guess simply sending it to Sweden is cheaper. And it actually isn't quite as bad as it sounds like because many trucks also deliver manufactured goods from Sweden and would have return empty.

I have no idea what the net environmental benefit is (or if it even is positive (or if anyone really knows)).
The problem is that many people and many editors conflate the 'tab key' and the ASCII TAB character.

Both Emacs and Vi correctly allow you to indent by 4 spaces rather than foolishly inserting a TAB and indenting by the standard 8. Other editors like Sublime Text stupidly insert a TAB and expect you to muck with how TABs are rendered in order to indent correctly.

Since many people don't understand that distinction, they map TAB to 4 columns which is incompatible with most formatters (including all printers and HTML). Switching to spaces is the only solution which really fixes this.
Ah, but what if the object is handed over to some other deep end of the code? We want to bake the null behavior into it so that any Foo knows how to think itself--calling code just needs to be aware that any Foo object will always have a valid think callback defined.

This is basically the null-object pattern.
Using that comment as a springboard:

CRIME is one of The Great crypto bug classes to be found in the last 10 years or so; it's a side channel leak based not on timing, error handling, or power consumption, but on pure traffic analysis. Seriously excellent work.

Importantly, and I think this a point Juliano and Thai undersold, the big issue with CRIME wasn't simply that it impacted TLS, but that it implicated an entire cryptographic implementation technique (one that I'd add Applied Cryptography recommends). The immediate feeling I got when I learned about CRIME was "this is going to take out a lot of systems"; it's a serious threat anywhere you have chosen plaintext and compression.

It's not surprising that there are other scenarios in TLS where CRIME works, but the big thing to learn from today's talk is that you should go out and look for other places that compress before encrypting.
Happy Birthday Percona!
SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote or SF Bay Area

Our company (www.theshoppad.com) makes a product that turns eCommerce desktop sites in to a compelling SPA experience for tablet shoppers done entirely in the browser with HTML5 + JS. We're now in the early stages of developing a version for mobile phones (targeting Mobile Safari & Android).

What we're looking for:
* Experience building mobile-web single page apps
* Able to write high-performance JavaScript that performs well under the constraints of mobile devices
* Familiarity with JS frameworks (Angular, Backbone, Batman, etc) preferred, but not required
* Attention to detail

If this sounds like it might be a good fit, please send me (aaronw@theshoppad.com) some examples of work you've done similar to the above requirements and we can schedule a time to chat further.
All we know is that the local police visited her house. That is the entirety of what has been confirmed by The Guardian.

There is absolutely nothing with waiting for definitive evidence before making your mind up about something.
There is no actual proof that this was due to web searches, also the picture the atlantic is using is misleading and terrible, and the article was silently changed after someone else pointed that the alleged visit wasn't actually from the FBI but from local law enforcement:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police...

The story boils down to: "a lady claims to get a visit from the feds after googling some stuff".

She herself says that:

They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to. https://medium.com/something-like-falling/2e7d13e54724

This is lazy and exploitive reporting by all parties.
... an article which of course assumes that the costs of the (not spelled out) alternatives are zero...

My parents do this and it's not like it's very onerous.
Growing up, my parents called me by my middle name, as I share a first name with my dad. (I'd rather be an Edward than a Ralph anyway.) When giving my name to someone, I tell them I'm Edward <Lastname>, as telling them I'm R. Edward <Lastname> just sounds pretentious. But if I'm beginning a relationship with a doctor's office or lawyer, or filling in a tax form, it's Ralph E. Lastname, because that's what's on my birth certificate and SSA record. It is quite annoying when the phone rings, and I don't recognize the calling number, so I answer with a guarded, "This is Ed..." and hear the caller ask, "May I speak to Ralph?" and have to explain to them that I really am Ralph, even though I said I was Ed. But I have to say, my problems are nothing compared to yours!

CSB: My mom signed me up for a book club when I was 6 or 7. For the Firstname field, she wrote, "R Edward" for reasons known only to her. For the next three years, every couple months, I'd get a package addressed to Redward <Lastname>. I could just imagine the shipping clerk in that company reading my shipping label and saying to himself, "Redward... what a goofy name."
please create a second triple of screenshots with a blank page showing two divs with background #093 and #12c. perhaps it's a color managment problem on client side.
I actually think this promotion was extremely on-brand for what this startup is (or was) doing. I can't speak to the regulatory compliance angle, but the fact is that this was clever, effective, and well-placed customer contact. It's not the risk profile that I would personally look for, but it is a little sad to see so many on HN rushing to condemn it.

We can't have nice things when people who claim to be "disruptive" are actually busy pursuing safe, risk-averse targets.
Here is how to empower your online self-employment
No I am not. I'm getting righteously tired of this ridiculous conversational tactic, in which the other guy takes what I say, then speeds about six thousand light years in a random direction using a warp drive built on speculation and assumptions, then attacks whatever random space junk he finds there.

If you think I said it, then go find it and quote it for me.
Instacanvas. (http://instacanv.as/p/jobs)

We're a 13-person team in LA, building a photography marketplace for Instagram photographers! I'll refrain from posting the whole job description, but we're using Ruby on Rails and JavaScript. We're really looking for a SENIOR, server-side developer with good Rails experience right now. We'd consider doing an H1B transfer for the right person.

Feel free to email me: john@instacanv.as
I'm sure someone has already given him an allowance. Given the level of fame he is bound to have financially endowed supporters by now.
I don't even live in your wacky country and I'm scared to do that search :D
More Creative Backdoors - Using Filename Typos
I don't think they do; however, it seems to be possible.[1] Googling "batch oxidation" gives back this PDF[2] describing it. Answering your question again:

"Unlike incinerators and other thermal processes, the BOS™ does not use a high temperature, turbulent processes to reduce the waste. The “quiet”, non‐turbulent smouldering of waste during the gasification phase means that the production of fly‐ash is almost eliminated, and the process does not suffer from temperature peaks and troughs, thus reducing problems with the formation of NOx and dioxins. However, many waste materials contain chemical components which can cause problems in any thermal process. Acid gases and metals must be neutralised and or / removed, and dioxins, furans, and particulates must all be reduced to minute amounts in order to meet the stringent EU legislation and compliance requirements. BOS™ achieves this by the use of a comprehensive Flue Gas Treatment (FGT) system through a dedicated Best Available Technology (BAT) program. The injection of sodium bicarbonate and activated carbon in a powdered form neutralises the acid gases and absorbs heavy metals and dioxins. Urea, injected into the Secondary Combustion Chamber, reduces NOx levels dramatically, and a bag-house filter system removes any last traces of particulate before the exhaust goes to atmosphere."

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/energy-environmen...

[2]http://wtecanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/WtEC-BOS-Web...
Hopefully the OpenBSD members will reach out to the FreeBSD members, who can share a lot of knowledge about their transition from GCC in the base system, over to Clang/LLVM.
First: On your assertion that federal government agencies (or agencies that work in tandem with them) act in line with mathematical probability like the base rate theorem and that they necessarily allocate resources in a cost-effective manner.

Has a federal agency ever been funded to the tune of 8 billion dollars a year, infringed on individual freedoms, harassed innocent civilians, all of which are tangible wastes and violations while based on a premise that also completely ignores the base rate theorem? Has such an agency been scrapped even though they have failed to negate the base rate theorem after billions of resources invested and negative collateral effects?

Second: On your point that revealing their methods in this case "burns a source" How is this burning a source?

1. As others have provided citations for, the FBI has already revealed that they surveil communications.

2. One would assume that competent terrorists are not in complete ignorance of the possibility that the FBI utilizes a domestic surveillance system. Thus, the "secret source" does not really provide the element of surprise.

3. If by burning you mean revealing to the masses and compromising public opinion, the federal government of the US has already shown that they believe in the checks and balances of their system (such as warrants, blanket or otherwise) and this is one of their major defenses of these practices. If they wholeheartedly believe that the system is legal (as they have demonstrated), then they would not feel the need to hide this kind of investigation.

Regardless of whether the story is true or not (I haven't made up my mind on this yet), I don't think the arguments you give for discrediting the story seem as strong as you present them.
1621 ABBOT KINNEY | Venice, CA
ZEFR is HIRING ENGINEERS - All levels, all programming languages welcome!

Why work here?
Game-changing products, great pay, stock/benefits, solid team, awesome perks- oh yeah and we are three blocks from the shore!

Products: http://zefr.com/brandid/ , http://yhoo.it/12zElO1 , movieclips.com

Innovation: http://bit.ly/17Fd8he

Culture: http://bit.ly/WEfCZQ

Perks: Catered food, beverage bar, basketball court, bikes, surfboards, paddle boards, team sports, weekly music jam sessions

What We're Working With:
python-2.7 javascript, node.js, backbone.js, angular.js, knockout.js coffeescript, postgres

JOBS:

Python Developer: http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?aj=omqlXfwO&s=HackerNews
Mid-level Software Engineer: http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?aj=opDQWfwy&s=HackerNews
Senior Software Engineer: http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?aj=otDQWfwC&s=HackerNews
What makes my mind boggle is that idea that people would rely on a single blog post to assume the conclusion that the FBI is dragnetting Google searches for lead generation for suspicionless searches.

No, wait, that doesn't boggle my mind at all.
By having a modicum of intelligence. To know that, almost no people living in USA have visited South Korea and China.
I am not an accountant. But the labor cost would be payed by the company and handled as a regular expense, indirectly reducing profits and taxes.