skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
OK, that's a pretty good counterexample. Touché. :-p

GAE just avoids it alltogether (except locally, where you have CPython and use it to stub out core services hosted on the cloud runtime). You simply can't import sqlite3 on GAE when running on cloud runtime, nor can you really use it as an external dependency.

I'm not really up on the details, but the PyPy website claims they've gotten around this by implementing a pure Python equivalent of the CPython stdlib library (http://pypy.org/compat.html).

I would put forward that SQLite3 is probably a pretty easy include in most C projects compared to whatever numpy would likely require. That said, I'm not qualified to assess this, being neither a numpy, Python core, or sqlite3 dev.

All of this aside, it's worth mentioning that the entire standard lib includes and depends on some other C-only libraries. So it's not unprecedented. In principle, you'd want the standard lib to have as much pure Python as possible (PyPy kind of takes this to the ultimate extreme from what I can gather), but this isn't always practical (great example of "practicality beats purity" if you ask me).

Speaking of which, if it's cool to have `sqlite3` in the standard lib as part of the included batteries, why not mean and variance and the like? :D
I was lucky enough at UW when I was an undergrad for our PL course to be of the buffet variety: LISP, ML, Prolog, Smalltalk. These days, most PL courses tend to focus on PL semantics, while we were taught the languages in the environments and contexts that they were meant to be used in (quite important for Smalltalk, but even for LISP).

I've also designed and implemented a few procedural, object-oriented, data-flow declarative, and logic meta-programming languages over the years. It is quite easy to get carried away with any of these paradigms, which is why I try to ground myself to working mostly with procedural imperative languages with aspects of other paradigms sprinkled in.
> The contrarian articles you see linked here on HN or published in the NYT are not a substitute for professional psychological and psychiatric advice.

Say what? Would that be why the director of the NIMH has recently decided to phase out the DSM as scientifically worthless, saying "Patients with mental disorders deserve better"?:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...

> That the mechanisms are not completely understood and that some studies show a strong placebo effect does not mean that ADHD and depression can't be diagnosed or treated.

No, it only means that diagnosis and treatment claims are anecdotal, neither scientific no reliable. Surely you are aware that health service providers are rapidly moving toward an evidence-based practice model, which when fully enacted would eliminate the majority of psychological treatments across the board, both drugs and therapy?

> The preponderance of evidence is that for most cases a judicious combination of pharmaceutical and therapeutic interventions can lead to long term improvements in quality of life for both conditions.

Unless you choose to count the placebo effect as a treatment success, that is absolutely false. The current literature shows that neither diagnosis nor treatment is efficacious in any scientific sense. As to cognitive-behavioral therapy, it has recently been shown to be indistinguishable from the placebo effect:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23416876

Quote: "These analyses, in combination with previous meta-analytic findings, fail to provide corroborative evidence for the conjecture that CBT is superior to bona fide non-CBT treatments."

Meaning: CBT, indistinguishable from any other therapy, is also ipso facto indistinguishable from the placebo effect.

As to antidepression drugs, a recent meta-analysis that includes studies the drug industry chose not to publish, shows them to be clinically indistinguishable from placebo in most cases:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...

Quote: "Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance."

> I encourage you to consider the possibility that you are deterring others from seeking help that could save their lives or significantly improve their quality of life.

I encourage you to learn science, and bring yourself up to date on the present self-inflicted plight of psychiatry and psychology. You clearly are living in denial, ironic given the fact that you may be a mental health professional.
It's not like that data can't be aired up with credit card RFID data, or the time of purchases. Have some imagination, it's slumbering out there!
Looking through the changes that mpv introduces, it looks like they've brought back encoding. The primary motivation for yet-another-mplayer-fork, is that they are explicitly removing complex, obsolete code in an effort to encourage fresh blood to join the developers; given that what they are removing includes 'teletext' support, this is probably not a bad thing.
Failure to introduce democracy is not the same thing as failure of democracy. Just like a failure to implement encryption doesn't mean that encryption is a failed concept.

Can you provide example of democracy brutal to minority? Which actually allows the minority to vote as well? That could be prevented if only political elite of the time would have say in the matter, then it wouldn't have happened? I don't think there is a historical example.
Isn't this roughly how it works now?
You implement legal rules for when and how protests can occur and allow people to protest within those rules but a protest is no guarantee of policy change.

I guess a truly benevolent dictator would have some objective principles to decide the best course of action and use those. What those principles would look like, I have no idea.
Actually Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
"This article is not alone in having a very narrow and technical conception of democracy as solely a method of election and legislation."

That is an argument about words and not ideas. The article says that voting is not enough, and so do you.

"That this in itself is not sufficient for a flourishing and liberated society seems obvious."

Some things bear repeating.
We are in the dog days of summer, so the amount of good content to report here has probably gone down, leading us to puff pieces like this with very little content.
Surviving a data centre outage
And don't have to transmit your images over the net.. and.. and... Frankly, I don't understand how anyone would want to pay USD 250 per year to get a service which albeit behind a beautiful website just can't match the experience and control that you get when running things locally.
Happy to discuss ;)
Inability to work out how to deploy later versions of IE and push out compatibility view lists using group policy (I'm no windows networking expert but this has to be possible right?)
I'm against this. Either you have to create a new statistics module or you would have to include numpy/pandas/statsmodels into the standard library. In both cases it would essentially freeze the modules for further development outside the python release cycle...
I believe the new filter infrastructure is now in ffmpeg. Infact they added many filters lately (1.2 and 2.0 releases) and ported most of libmpcodecs (mplayer's) filters.

mplayer still doesn't support mkv segment linking.
"Teledildonics" is my new word of the day.
Good hack, now I'm following your github!
If the piece is modest, I'm guessing this part is sarcastic?

> So I had two tasks: pick an instrument, and pick a sequence of notes. Simple, right? Yeah, says you; everyone's an armchair musician...
Seems to have an incredibly easy interface. Will test it. Well done!
> have SIM cards with unknown carrier installed apps on them

SIM cards don't have apps on them! They just have the IMSI, a key, some prior data about which tower it last connected to, and some miscellaneous data (such as a PIN number, etc), together with a data area that's used exclusively to store a limited number of contacts and SMS messages. This was useful when phones (think Nokia bricks) didn't have much (or any) storage capacity.

Carriers can, however, create their own firmware images that contain their crapware apps, which is why they're uninstallable.
Really an awesome book! It not only teaches you about the programming language itself, but also how to use it well and idiomatically. Also, it is very focused and compact, which is a great thing in a programming book--although it makes for kind of a dry read.
True, although having an excellent product or at least a unique and interesting product can multiply the effect of your marketing spend and effort.

There are examples of products which have sold extremely well despite having close to zero spent on marketing.
I'd love to see a pay as you go option. I run a SaaS where the user can select a profile picture, however, we usually get users with 100-150 at a time, then maybe nothing for a month. I'd be happy to pay 0,03$ for each picture. Also, looking forward to the CDN partnership, that will only make it better :)
Isn't "true democracy" a form of civilized mob rule?

Why should individual sovereignty be forfeit in favor of the group sovereignty that is democracy?

East Germany was another "Democratic Republic," which didn't turn out so well.

Is the fault with "democracy," or the "republic?" (these terms have little relevance to America's present political parties) Or is it some other aspect.

In my estimation, if a nation's citizens have no individual sovereignty, that nation cannot be properly referred to as a republic, yet such nations do fit the definition of "democracy" by virtue of the sovereignty enjoyed by the collective majority.
Lua's function definition syntax is really the best one I have seen yet. One simple statement that combines all the flexibility of lambda and def (in Ruby/Python-speak). I wish Ruby and Python had a powerful statement like that.
If we really lived in democracy, it wouldn't have to be that way. We would just accept defeat if majority would disagree. That's what people in Switzerland do.

You just hid the contradiction of "benevolent dictator" into "objective principles I have no idea about". That's the reason why you have no idea - such principles don't exist independently of subjective values of each person!
All religions have their embarrassing secrets. I doubt that one would find the term "inquisition" mentioned on the Vatican's website ... (long pause) ... I was wrong, it is:

Google: "inquisition site:www.vatican.va" (61 hits)
Just a small example, as I didn't see it mentioned in other replies.

Often when I write stylesheets for a site, I like to have a default table style. Type, possibly border/spacing, padding, etc, depending on the site. Even if there are multiple visual "types" of tables to display, typically they will all have a common set of margin/padding at the least.

If you wanted to use a table for layout in a site with default table styles, you would have to have a whole set of style resets to get it back to zero layout, before adding your custom layout stuff. This is ugly, and a pain.

One point of using a div for layout style is that it is always "zeroed", and you can assume when styling one that there's nothing that needs to be overriden.
As soon as the CDN integration is there, I will become a member. :)
I've been working on a console-mail client which is configured and scripted entirely in Lua:

http://lumail.org/

While I cannot pretend it is significant, it is new/fresh/recent. I'm just going through a transition to the GMime mime library, but beyond that the code is stable and I've used the client for the past few month or so, replacing mutt as my main client.

Now that I'm using it I'm finding interesting things to do all the time, using Lua has allowed me to move from having a mostly-extensible client (mutt) to having a __very__ extensible client.
This was a Windows machine apparently. He used zip to compress, pointed to sharepoint links... looks like an all-windows operation.

Looks like he downloaded and installed wget himself.
Yes but in this case the 'embarrassing secret' is core to Scientology itself. It'd be like a search for 'Jesus' on the Vatican site returning 0 hits.
> humans actually evolved to go at lengths to punish anybody who does defect

They might have initially, but I'll make the argument that probably since the dawn of agriculture, and the generation of large societal surpluses, evolution has been pushing humanity towards defection.

I think recent experience in the US shows quite clearly that votes don't really matter, only money does. Moreover votes can be manufactured through the media (money).
East Germany was only called "democratic republic", in reality it was neither. The fault isn't within those terms; the fault was that calling it that way was simply a lie.

You also ask:
"Why should individual sovereignty be forfeit in favor of the group sovereignty that is democracy?"

Because we want to agree on certain things. Human societies have evolutionary advantage over independent sets of humans.
I noticed that as well, they should just ditch the seperator to avoid any confusion.
I am sure that there will be an outcry among teletext users how the devs dared to remove their favourite feature!

Let’s see when/what Debian releases…
These break not only EU law but the UK Data Protection Act. They also break a couple of laws as the data capture is non consensual. When Google did this they were investigated and condemned by privacy related groups.

Expect this not to last long at all.
Wikipedia Co-Founder Refuses to Comply With China's Censorship
The government role in the internet was considerably deeper than just funding the early protocol work, though it was definitely not the only player. It's a fairly good example of the public/private innovation networks thesis the book being reviewed here is arguing for. Abbate's book Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 1999) has a pretty good account of all the various players and how they related.
Hoe gezonde voeding en beweging best combineren?
I think that the closest you could get would be to define some formula for quality of life or happiness, possibly based on neuroscience and predictive modelling that is far more advanced than we have now and govern based on that perhaps based on median happiness or some such.

Of course you will still get people under such a system who would be worse off than they would under others. You also have questions about whether you let some people be happier than others if their actions are likely to cause the average level of happiness to increase. Similar to the conversations we have about wealth now.

However I don't think the choice would be between implementing majority rule on every micro decision and tyranny.

Perhaps it makes sense to think of such a system as a representative democracy where every election is won by the same candidate because they are so vastly superior to the others.
Where is that game "cursor war"? Looks cool, easier on the eyes than dwarf fortress.
The start of america's Exodus? Made In Germany
Not to mention, it's trying to put paid to all those who think that th government shouldn't be involved in research. There are a hell of a lot of those sorts out there.
Ask HN: Tips for marketing a *good* app?
Hi there,

I'm a student, and an iOS app developer; I've published a couple of apps in the past that have been mildly successful. However, nothing I've published has come close enough to making enough revenue to live off for when I leave college.

After improving my skills a lot over the last year or so, and teaming up with a designer, I think I may have an (in development) that could achieve some sort of success. However, I am aware that marketing and PR are key in the 'app game', and so I was wondering if anyone has any tips for marketing an app? (I'm not experienced in app marketing practice at all)

Thanks!
No, I can't. Scientific theories should be testable, but they should also be explanations, not merely predictions.

This came up at Galileo's trial. The Church was happy to accept his theories as mere predictions of astronomical observations. What they wouldn't accept was that the earth actually DID move around the sun. But Galileo was adamant on explaining what as actually out there. "According to popular legend, after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase And yet it moves." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves‎)
Ubuntu Edge Price Drops Again, Canonical Now Needs Even More Backers To Succeed
You can't disable DRM in KDP if you upload a book with it enabled, so authors can't change their mind later.
I discovered it few days ago. Currently trying to set up Xmonad to work with it's fullscreen.

What are the main pros comparing to, lets say, VLC?
Most, if not all, of those are not written in Lua.
Judging by the screen shots there's some talented people involved in the project, and probably a lot of care. On the other hand there's something broken with the decision making process when you wind up borrowing Apple's Dock[1][2].

[1] http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html
[2] http://archive.arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/macos...
Google Enhances Chrome Developer Tools
I mean that as time goes on and we get better at making technology, we also get better at making moral decisions. For instance, most people in the world today think slavery is wrong. Even 200 years ago, this wasn't the case.
vim-instant-markdown is an excellent plugin if you edit a lot of markdown content.

https://github.com/suan/vim-instant-markdown
Show HN: rpair.co - Hire Coding Partners
How to Stop Blocking Pop-Ups in Mozilla Firefox
> 1. Some unknown phenomenon is defying everything we know about physics.

You have entirely missed the point if you are arguing about physics when discussing this. It is like stating tornadoes occur because the wind moves faster.

When one has data a theory doesn't explain, you hypothesize, and re-test. That's science. Regardless of whether you have convenient correlations like your 1 and 2, you don't assume those correlations are causation and stop researching. What you don't do is dismiss the outlying data and call it a day.
Silicon Valley Legend Paul Graham Reveals 5 Things He Looks For Before Investing
Just curious, how did you arrive at a 5am EST Sunday morning post time for your Show HN?

I'm finishing up a project I've been working on for quite a while, and I would be really interested to hear if anyone has any advice on best times to post?
I think this is it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lcauMH70cA

http://internetistschuld.de/

edit: Could have used a sock over the microphone.
No, I am not 'trolling' at all, I am just expressing my opinion and trying to provide some feedback about newsworthiness of the article and related HN post. You might disagree with me but that does not make me a troll and I find the accusation highly offensive. And although aerodynamic drag is important part of cycling tactic, the goal of the sport of cycling (ideally) is to determine who is stronger, has more stamina etc. It is obvious that the speed could be increased by technical means like specially built cars serving as aerodynamic shields - but that is not what the sport is about, is it? That is also why this is not allowed in races and why I claim it is not valued by racers. You are comparing apples and oranges.
While I have VLC installed, I think I haven't used it for ages, constantly relying on mplayer2 almost since its inception, until today that is. :)

In the past VLC used to display wrong colors or downgrade video quality for better performance, not sure how it is now (possibly a bit better).

Relevant:
http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=Media_Playe...
KeyCzar is pretty great! It's the kind of library most people that write some crypto should be using: abstracting away all of the gnarly details that they're more likely to get wrong than right.

NaCl gets a lot more attention these days, but I'm convinced both are fine. On the one hand, NaCl is pretty hardcore DJB-ware (poly1305-aes, salsa20...), and normally I'd err on the side of conservatism. OTOH, it's also really really good DJB-ware, so I can't blame anyone for using it :)

I personally prefer sodium's Python versions. Whether to deliver libraries in the Python packages or to use shared libs remains an open problem: I am somewhat convinced the former's better, but I can certainly see the cases where it'd go wrong.
Here Are ALL MY PASSWORDS Says Google Chrome
Maybe you're talking about José Meiffret:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Meiffret

He rode to 130mph / 200km/h back in 1962
The Earth's seasonal heartbeat as seen from space
Didn't know this project (gnunet).

I see it provides file sharing and vpn.

VPN will fix some ISP level tracking issues.

Private file sharing will protect some cloud surveillance and limiting laws.

This is great, to minimise surveillance. It's nice to be able to share files properly, but it's not my "typical" internet usage (neither it's on my family members). It's nice to be able to go out through a sane VPN.

Still I miss important things to fix my "internet":

* DNS and search.
* Email service.
* Browser.

These are my main problems today. I can workaround my ISP when I want, and I can share files in the way I like... but I see the problem in my previous 3 points.

Also I wish so many interesting initiatives could be separated of the "pirate" "trademark".

It's not a problem for me, but I think it's not a proper "image" for general purpose projects, just because of how people brain works in "general" (in special people not literate about what this really is).

Nice talks, and thanks for the link.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of a true national direct democracy in the modern age. Pretty much all of them eyeballed the ancient greek example and decided to stick to representative democracy.

About the closest you get is citizen-initiated referenda. The experience is mixed. Some people reckon it's wonderful in Switzerland. Meanwhile in California, the state budget is unfixable because of previous CIRs.
I like that the player gives out (right click) the location of the video and even offers an option to download it. That may be more important than the permissive license.

The server, however, seems to be a bit overloaded at the moment. Is there a torrent somewhere? Maybe an HD torrent?

EDIT: Fist English talk starts at 4:10.
What I would like to know is, is caffeine consumption a zero-sum game? I.e. assuming you consume a constant amount of the stuff (let's say two cups of coffee a day), once your brain has adapted to this intake, is there any advantage in the habit compared to me never drinking any? Or does it effectively make your now adapted mind work just like if you had never consumed any caffeine at all?

I've gone clean a few times now, and the effects and time-frame given in the article seem head-on. I have a feeling that I function no worse without any caffeine than when i was drinking regular doses, except my mental performance is more even throughout the day (no spikes after a cup of latte and no tiredness in the evening after I stop drinking). Also, I sleep a lot better.

Additionally, being completely off caffeine gives me a powerful tool strictly for emergency use - if I really need to drive all night without falling asleep at the wheel or push out a new release before going away for a week, one cup of coffee works like magic. I do reserve it for really important cases only, and made it a rule to not drink any for at least two weeks after that to clear up again.
I am forced to agree. Recently I was looking to buy a few books and the reviews had a recurring theme: The e-books had a lot of typesetting, grammatical issues etc. while the print books were fine. I bought printed copies for all of them.

This gives the impression that the publishers don't give the e-books as much priority as the print editions. Given this fact, I don't see how they can complain if e-book sales are hitting a plateau.