skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In the late 90's, the CEO of our startup told us about a raid on his Palo Alto home. His daughter was away at camp for the summer and his wife had mailed her a care package that included laundry detergent. As they later found out, detergent can be used as a masking agent for drugs.

A few days after the package was sent, Law Enforcement (DEA & local police, IIRC) surrounded the house. Luckily, back in the good old days, they didn't break the door down and start shooting, at least not in Palo Alto. They knocked, were let in, and asked the CEO's wife to open the package that the police had intercepted, upon which the laundry detergent was discovered.

The point I want to make about this whole category of problems, that seem to mock the 4th Amendment (NSA surveillance, civil asset forfeiture, militarization of police, etc.) is that we should be far more worried about incompetence than malice. We keep getting warned that these things are a pathway to tyranny but frankly, that may or may not happen. Horrific incompetence that ruins people's lives is with us today, at scale, and the problems grow with the power, money and technology given to those that wield them. We now have no-recourse no-fly lists, police raids on wrong houses that kill homeowners (so often it's no longer newsworthy), and sick elderly parents fighting for their house because their kid sold $20 worth of weed from the front porch (the latter from Sarah Stillman's other excellent New Yorker article).

Back in Palo Alto, it would have taken almost zero competent police work to determine that the care package containing laundry soap, sent to a summer camp from the home of two working professionals was almost certainly not masking drugs. But instead, complete careless incompetence.

We've talked a lot lately about the danger that we are on the road to 1984 or Brave New World. Right now, I'm much more concerned that many of our fellow citizens are already living in the movie Brazil.
I included the bit about the keys/ignition not because it's in an odd place, but because it's a mistake I make fairly often due to carelessness. Most people blindly reach for the ignition and that's fine; most people also don't immediately quit when they miss the hole on their first try.
The point is that you should be able to cook, even if you don't bother to actually cook. Hell, even if you don't have a knife and cutting board, you should still know how you could get those, if you wanted them.
Challenges edtech startups need to overcome
In this article I discuss some of the problems I think have slowed down innovation in education, and that edtech startups need to overcome to be able to thrive.
I've spent quite some time looking at those histograms, but I haven't found a good way to display it usefully yet.

The most popular commands are 'git', 'ls', and 'cd', and the table of most used commands is too long to be able to easily digest. Any suggestions would be appreciated, though!
I had major problems with Strider's web interface (running from a Docker instance) just dying on me. I think it's got a long way to go before it's a viable replacement/equivalent for Travis-CI.
There have been campaigns to put logic above all other human pursuits. As if only logical things are pure, and anything less rational is beast-like or uncivilized. Artists and poets naturally rejected this idea, but many also rejected the whole subject as hostile.
That Moment When You NEED To Start Your Own Business
Time to play 'privacy theater‎'?
Reddit style humor is discouraged on hacker news. Comments that aren't thoughtful are also discouraged. I even think meta comments like this are discouraged.
Sorry, but the financials of the Concorde programme are indefensible, except perhaps as a bold, Apollo-mission-style experiment. It sold 14 aircraft total, to two operators politically invested in its development and receiving discounts on the models that wouldn't shift, despite being the only aircraft in its category.

The Skylon is completely different in that supersonic speed is a prerequisite for space launch, it aims to vastly improve on the economics of a well-established demand for satellite launches, and could theoretically dominate the sector (or totally fail: space programmes are very all-or-nothing)
With "Javascript" i mean meta-languages that compile to javascript, too. I prefer coffee, but typescript may be fine, too.
Military style gear and SWAT training requires resources. Resources that could be spent on community policing.
It used to be that police were members of a community, serving a function as a part of that community. Now, they are often more like soldiers of an occupation force. Their weapons are often getting deadlier, they are wearing body armor, and often armored vehicles and helicopters are involved.

What we need is less show of force and more community involvement. Just like in Iraq & Afghanistan, we need more "hearts and minds" won to bring the cost of enforcing peace and the rule of law down to reasonable levels.
> The only threat this weapon is aimed at is the people.

Downloadable 3D-printable isotope separators are coming. We will want to have had extensive surveillance decades before they arrive.
The Tueller drill distance only applies to holstered handguns.
I would hope that Tim Berners Lee, Lawrence Lessig and Eben Moglen would all be there. Even Stallman should be present, since he most often is right despite coming across as a madman to some, and because he drops the anchor so far in the direction of privacy that people like TBL and LL look like the rational moderates that they are in this conversation. Unfortunately the radicals in favor of the surveillance state already have the ear of the President and Congress in this conversation. The presence of Stallman would add a much needed balance.

Who else does the HN community think should be present advocating on behalf of the free and open internet?
The Obama administration was also planning to release a previously classified legal analysis explaining why the government believes it is lawful under a provision of the Patriot Act known as Section 215 for the N.S.A. to collect and store logs of every phone call dialed or received in the United States.

Good idea, let's concentrate on phone records and ignore the collection of worldwide internet traffic.
My friend's mom still connects via dial-up to AOL to check her email and read the news. Until my friend told me this I was completely unaware that AOL still offered internet services.
Combine that with discontinuing PWM controlled brightness. Some monitors can flicker badly, especially while warming up. http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pulse_width_modulation....
He's a liar. He will announce that a panel will look at the issue. Nothing will actually be done.
I don't think this is the case.

But on a smaller scale: The Bush administration would put out a piece of legislation that was a hyperbole, watch the public/democrats react, then ram through a "less worse" bill in the guise of compromise.
The four points are:

1. Vague stuff about 215 ... details - none

2. Vague stuff about FISC ... details - none

3. Transparency - some real stuff here. Seems like NSA infor will be released. And a website.

4. Vague stuff about audit from independent comitee ... details - none

Vague general purpose stuff.

Lets hope he delivers something concrete in the next few months.

Edit: Snowden is not a patriot according to Mr Obama.

Edit2: Putting full employment as priority and admitting inflation is not a danger right now. Some "very serious people" got a stroke right now.
The police broke into our home when I was 12 based on an anonymous tip from a kid I didn't know at school that I was selling cocaine.

They let themselves in our home after waiting for my parents to leave one day, confronted me, then attempted to plant evidence in our garbage can (and didn't because I was smart enough at 12 to question why they were putting something IN our garbage can).

All because of another kid at school (12 years old!!!) I didn't know telling one adult that I sold cocaine, without any evidence.
Do you think oil companies and banks look at a law, say "gee" and then throw their hands up in the air and cave?
Vint represents the interests of Google - a giant corporation who's very reason for existence is to track every aspect of your life. Google is Big Business and Big Surveillance all in one. At its core, Google is opposed to anonymity and privacy.
The lack of accountability for incompetent authorities is part and parcel of tyranny.
Definitely less free than under Wilson. Prohibition was a failure on all fronts[1], and did significantly increase the prison population. But it has nothing on modern drug policy[2].

[1]: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_rates_1...
1. Make some cheap meaningless concessions

2. Let people fall asleep again

3. Continue to build the surveillance state

4. This time, hide it even better
His is the only second case I'm aware of since 1934 of a legally owned NFA weapon being used in the commission of a crime. I'd strongly disagree with the claim that two criminal incidents in 79 years is sufficient reason to put additional roadblocks in front of the 2nd amendment.
Keep Your GitHub Email Address Private
Those are totally reasonable arguments, but the original article didn't make them.
They were doing perfectly fine before the leaks, getting cooperation from major tech companies and other countries and their reach was constantly expanding.

Has anything changed? Has the people involved even noticed any difference, aside from some black ink in newspapers?
London's New Recycling Bins Will Be Watching Every Step You Take
Indeed, title changes (by either submitter or an admin) which improve the original title, without adding spin or sizzle, should be welcomed.

The mechanistic insistence on original titles often gets things wrong, leaving a title in place that "buries the lede" (the actually new nugget in a particular story) or includes its own misleading spin. People then either miss or waste time on stories, when a few reasonable extra words in the title would have helped.

Possible experiments to address this might include:

• Adding a separately-voted 'title tournament' for each story, in which the original title, submission title, and others audience-submitted compete. (They're not competing for which gets the story the most upvotes, but which best describes the item.)

• Allowing a subhead per story, where either the original subhead or some other pull-up excerpt can appear for context. (This could be from the OP, admins, a group tournament, or even just wiki-style.)
> Obama has dozens of generals and spy chiefs and policy "experts" telling him that if he veers off course the sky will come crashing down on his head. So will the next President.

True, but it's actually worse than that. Imagine how the public itself would react to a president who dealt with emerging security threats by saying things like "that's a real threat but we're not going to create anything new to deal with it."

The public would not be kind to them, even though it's the right answer in most cases.
Any way to file returns for the previous years?
It's that they can't THINK. They do not understand what critical thinking is, or how it works. They do not know how to approach problems or explore solutions.

http://arachnoid.com/lutusp/crashcourse.html
Show HN: My first side project, Scala Tutorials
Even better: write an engine that ingests tax laws and generates tax software.
It's much wider than "a few fringe groups", the sorts of media sources you'd see that take a step back and try to look at the "big picture" are de facto organs of the state and aren't going to portray those of us getting ever more skeptical about the state in a favorable light, let alone accurately estimate our numbers (for fear they're getting really large).

It is a cold civil war, mostly getting steadily hotter (there are reverses, after the Waco and Ruby Ridge massacres the FBI took so much heat they largely reversed their direction).
Unless I misunderstood the Edge campaign, you can ONLY get it by contributing to the campaign. It won't be available for purchase.
Alternatives to Lavabit, with no physical ties to the United States?
Lavabit shuts its secure email service, is there any alternative secure email service with no physical ties to the United States?
I run arch on my laptop and you are definitely right. It took me days to configure everything and that required having a 2nd computer available to search things. However, it did teach me a lot about terminal and how things worked compared to installing Ubuntu. Another downfall is when something breaks during an upgrade. However, 90% of the time the solution is on the Arch news site.

There are a lot of reason why I love it though. Very quick boot time on a spinning disk and small memory foot print when running. I run awesome wm (window tiling manager) which is great for coding with a small laptop screen.

I am not sure if I would run it on a production server though.
Almost nobody wants to listen to your lecture. They certainly aren't going to repeat it to others! They want you to do it for them, because it is beneath them.
This really, really hits close to home. I'm the oldest of 3 brothers, me 26, the youngest 21. I was always an 'experimenter' with computers, meaning I had no problem toying with the settings or clicking through unknown menus to find the solution to a problem. I toyed and tweaked until something worked, and that willingness to explore has helped me innumerable times throughout life.

My brothers, for some strange reason, did not develop that ability. The second something goes wrong on their computer, they freeze, deer in front of a lighthouse. Everything from installing apps, to fixing wifi settings, to customizing their desktops, to updating their iPhones, is a situation that causes panic. These guys are otherwise very functional, and very educated. One of them went off to grad school the other day with a new macbook, and after already having one for 4 years, asked me to "set up" his computer, which consisted nothing more of going through the walk-through for new OSX users.

It is one of the most frustrating and mind-boggling things. You can often hear me yelling at them, whether in person or over the phone, "You need to figure out yourself! Just play around with the damn computer! It's not going to explode!"
You say that kids who know how to jailbreak their tablet and run a GBA emulator understand computers?

It's usually just people downloading mystery software (could be malware but oh well) onto their computer which promises to have a button that says "jailbreak" and then they jailbreak their device with it not knowing what goes on and then use a magical 'jailbreak app' (cydia, etc) on their device which in turn gives them magical 'free' software and GBA emulators.
Reviewing free-to-play games is turning me into a nervous wreck
> Why not actually help us understand the useful aspects of continental philosophy?

Sorry, I thought you were trying to understand what Chomsky is saying here, not get an introduction yourself.

> You're after all assuming that the philosophy he criticizes is Haskell.

I'm not assuming; I've read most of these people, or at least have a basic grasp of their ideas.

> And why pick that one particular paragraph?

I thought it was the one that was most illustrative.

> How about the one where he mentions meeting some luminaries he criticizes, like Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva?

Uhhh I replaced "Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault," with "functors, arrows, hylomorphisms, monads, etc. --- even first-class functions". I'm not sure how I could more directly engage there.

> What about when he requests these philosophers [explain themselves]

They do. There is a wealth of introductory literature. I think you're taking Chomsky too literally here; this is rhetoric.

As an incredibly simple, basic introduction, here's an eight minute video on postmodernism and Community http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YanhEVEgkYI

And here's a 5 minute introduction to Zizek, who Chomsky has been reviving this spat with in the press as of late: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZDNhKBxgTw
Incarceration rates aren't the only measure, though. Prohibition agents invaded the privacy and property of ordinary mainstream Americans in a way that in the drug war has been limited mainly to minority communities.
Why is this guy so nice to people? Is he British?
He'll just buy gold with it.
ΒΓΑΛΤΕ ΧΡΗΜΑΤΑ - John Divramis Paramarketing Blog
I rather suspect that the lifetime cost of a new officer (pension, healthcare, etc.) greatly exceeds the toys of a SWAT team.
That's fine, the problem is Obama is a liar and a hypocrite. Yes he didn't know that he was making empty promises, but usually when you sign up for a job you know ahead of time whether you can do the job.

Lying during the interview process usually gets you disqualified with prejudice, but he was elected again.

It'd be nice if he apologized after discovering that his promises were a bit excessive.
This is damoncali's point. There is a huge opportunity here for both sides. The NRA gets to shine a light on illegal surveillance (or whatever you want to call it) without having to simultaneously fight the battle over guns. They can fight that battle separately, while at the same, any major wins for privacy are generally wins for the NRA in general. It goes both ways too. The NRA is extremely influential (imagine the impact the NRA announcing it would score the vote on Amash Amendment?) and are possibly the most savvy group of lobbyists in the history of democratic politics.
One of the characteristics of a police state is the police can get away with most anything. Nor do they have to be very careful about getting and convicting the right suspect.
I detect a lot of resentment in your post that could all be avoided by just saying "No, sorry, I can't fix your computer."
The story so far
They should.

In elementary school, children should be introduced to the bare essentials of vehicular mechanics, say with simple rubber-band powered Lego cars. Over time, increase the sophistication of the science, engineering, and even social aspects of vehicles - eventually building go-carts and learning to drive them as a subset of state driving regulations, and working up to real cars and getting a driver's license. BTW: most jurisdictions only impose driving age limits on public roads; kids certainly are allowed to drive on public property (I've known kids who learned to drive at 14 or earlier).

They should also learn cooking, sewing, carpentry, welding, shooting, fieldcraft, and every other variant of the Boy Scout Handbook and Heinlein's "specialization is for insects" quote. Dang straight they should learn the essential basics of driving early on.
Another suggestion: http://archive.org/details/TheWorldOfMathematicsVolume1 (and volumes 2, 3, and 4).

Lots of interesting stories, many of applied mathematics. And, to my surprise, available for free from archive.org.
I suppose, but looking at it another way: for the first time in human history we can imagine a world where this wouldn't be the case. We are closer to that world than we've ever been, even if right now the west is moving away from it again.
linux is completely described by its source code.
With a lot of help from Guillaume Massé of Scalakata, I wanted to build something inspired (hopefully not too inspired) by tour of go. This is my first side project, so I would love to hear your honest feedback. (On the landing page, and on the tour)

Guillaume managed to make a very fast scala execution engine as a service, which made this project possible.

It's still work in progress, but the goal is to try and make Scala a bit more friendly to people new to it.

(It's free with no commercial intentions)
"Michelangelo decorated a ceiling, but I’m sure he
had loftier things on his mind."

That's almost Douglas Adams levels of dry wit.

This is a fascinating article, as someone who's never really contemplated the playfulness of maths....I mean, for sure the wonder of maths or the power of maths - I've just never really put the pieces together to link that back to my grounding in maths, beyond the practical, functional stuff I incorporate into my daily life, without considering it's mathiness. Very interesting.
Reasonable, but that's a blurry line. If a meta-language gets traction it might get support for other compilation targets MSIL/bytecode etc.
There are three main ways of doing this in lab now 1) letting live cells recolonize a structure that mimics a whole tissue 2) with 'many hundred cell' resolution printing cells in 'close to the right structure' and letting them use their own systems to resort themselves out (what was done here), and 3) single-cell resolution of very fine structures that make up the individual units of an organ. Each have their own difficulties. And once they converge (single cell->rapid->entire organ) you will see some pretty cool stuff.

One major impediment is similar to the 3D printing world - we need and rapid access at single micron levels. Right now most 3D printers get down to about 100microns. We need better.

We also need creative ways to mix cell types - your organs use many (but a finite number) of cell types dispersed in an organized way. Coming up with a clever way to use different 'inks' of cells in an organized way would be extraordinarily useful. As others have said - a primary reason is vascularization, but there are a number of cell types you'd need to worry about.

Definitely moving quickly though - we've seen pretty fast progress in lab keeping cells alive and starting to use different cell types for small structures. We can do any given manipulation. We now need to combine them to make the entire process fast, micron resolution, high viability, natural scaffoldings, with many cell types.

Futher - as this article points out, there's a LOT we can learn simply from being able to recreate and experiment on small portions of tissues and organs properly. The first results won't need to come from 'make a new liver' - but 'what does this thing in the liver do', or 'can we fix a liver just by doing this to it?'.
Hacking Startup Growth with Brands and Why You Should Never Use Agencies
AOL CEO Fires Somebody for Pulling Out a Camera in a Meeting About Layoffs
"Okay, but seriously guys this time we're telling the truth."
Anonymous' secret presence in the U.S. army
His "4 steps":

1. Work with congress to enact reforms to PATRIOT Act. He said the US is not allowed to listen to any phone calls without a warrant.

2. Work with congress to improve the public's confidence in FISA. Consider changes: a judge reviewing a request only hears one side of the story, but we could allow an outside party to defend civil liberties and privacy "in certain cases".

3. Be more transparent. Create a website to provide more transparency.

4. Form an outside group of intelligence experts to review surveillance technologies.
Obama to call for changes to Patriot Act, surveillance of Americans
At the same time, the N.S.A. was expected to release a paper outlining its role and authorities, officials said. The six- to seven-page document was described as setting up a “foundation” to help people understand the legal framework for its activities. Next week, the agency will open a Web site designed to explain itself better to the public amid Mr. Snowden’s disclosures.

Legal != Right. This whole article makes it sound like their plan is to put lipstick on the pig so it looks more beautiful to the public, where the correct solution would be to find a new pig.
ViaCrypt - Client-side encrypted, ephemeral messaging system
Just make up any wild story you want, that's great.
I'd correct: If she succeeds, she will be praised to the moon, and if she fails, most people will say "heh, Yahoo! was doomed to irrelevance anyway" and forget about it in a few months.

I'm starting to believe more and more (although not fully convinced yet) that the former is the most likely outcome; she's in a good position right now.