skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What I want to know is who gives them this much money, and why?. I thought the US economy was still in pretty poor shape, and they pretend to argue for months of stuff like $80 billion sequester, when they're probably giving more than that per year to police departments to buy military equipment like this and be trained by the DHS and the Israeli military.

Again - why? Why is the police becoming para-military? Do they fear another major protest and want to respond in force? What's the motivation behind all this.
The whole issue with the industry (specially here) is that the drive to just make it work completely obliviates the user. Maybe we should strive to better inform while making it just work.
Saw an interesting re-run of the U.S. news magazine show "60 Minutes" on my DVR yesterday. It was about how some police agencies are starting to us counter-insurgency techniques in an effort to control gangs in the cities. Many of those advocating are former soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan eager to apply lessons learned.

Good COIN is as much a PR game as anything, and to the degree that the police make friends and help out the local citizenry by going out of their way to be friendly, that's a great thing. But at the end of the segment, it showed a bust on a couple of small time drug dealers. A bread truck pulls up, and out pops a team of guys armed for a firefight: tactical vests, boots, helmets, night-vision, assault rifles. Looked like part of a badly-orchestrated marine amphibious landing.

I love the idea of community policing. Get the cops outta the cars and walking around. But after 9-11 we're turning police departments nationwide into clubs for retired and wannabe assault troops. Policing is dangerous specifically because you're supposed to be one of the community. The second you switch into an "us versus them" attitude, or start thinking "I'll do anything necessary to make sure I make it home safely tonight" then you're violating the public trust. Cops are the guys walking up to traffic stops carrying nothing but a holstered pistol and facing god knows what. They're not just another armed gang out to control public opinion by showing off their cool toys and weapons.

There's a difference between good COIN and good policing. I think we've forgotten that. Same goes for the difference between good close quarters combat and good COIN.

I also have a simple question: if SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics, then what's so special about it when you're using it tens of thousands of times a year? It's just SOP Weapons and Tactics. That's whacked.

I wonder where the hell the politicians are in all of this and what happened to our country's mores. It used to be that police who took their job so seriously they wanted to act like paratroopers were ridiculed by the community, many of whom were just as trained as the cops were in the organized use of lethal force. Now we've created a system where only a very few folks get combat training in the military and then automatically filter into jobs where such training can be "transferred" Meanwhile the community, including the judges and politicians, are too afraid of being the guy who caused the next terrorist attack and too ignorant of what techniques are actually necessary to perform the role of supervisor.

The 60 Minutes reporter was very impressed by all of this anti-gang activity. You can tell a lot by the kinds of fluff pieces the media runs, and it's a bad spot we've gotten into.
This project is interesting, and I preordered one because the last time I had to transcribe measurements of a room into modeling software, I was quite frustrated at the time and complexity of the task.

One thing I'm not happy about is that I did not see any information about software currently in compatibility testing or plans to support specific software.

I won't be satisfied if the device is delivered and I can't actually use it for anything other than a simple measurement that my current laser distance meter can perform.
I blame "Safety First".

A police department that puts the safety of it's officers first has a rational incentive to bring overwhelming force to bear on every situation every time.

The doctrine of "safety first" needs to change. It needs to apply to the community MORE than the officers charged with protecting it. Clearly, the doctrine of overwhelming force puts the interests of the police ahead of the community they serve, which is plainly evil, even ignoring the potential for abuse in a full-blown tyranny.
They know how to use but have no understanding of it.
EBay supports girls who code, hosts graduation
Why do we need to remember these people? Car manufacturers don't have to say "wait, what if they don't know what a door handle is."
Dude gets down in heals and with sexy back up dancers
Injecting add-ons and plugins into non-AMD libraries, with RequireJS
This really resonated as I am probably technology illiterate in a lot of things and I would hope my son isn't. Thanks for some ideas.
An interesting and related HN thread:

“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6001843
I loved the TL;DR.
Many people don't struggle to understand how to use computers. They don't understand them particularly well, but they don't struggle to understand them either. They rise to a level with the problems that they want to use the system to address and then... their understanding is adequate until something goes wrong.

What possible motivation would they have to learn more? Okay, they might use a computer in their job - but inefficiency there is often their employer's problem, and considering you can't run arbitrary code on most companies systems (their IT policy generally excludes this) they benefit nothing from learning a programming language.

What does that leave them with? A games machine perhaps, a glorified typewriter with some telecoms capabilities to all intents and purposes.

The concept of computers as a general tool simply does not exist to many people. Consequently it's little wonder that they know next to nothing about them.
Bloggers can't use language...and this is why it matters.
"At first, she thought the raid was an armed robbery."
ah, but wasn't it?
>Can a Police officer walk up to me on the street and take my wallet and keys? I don't think so, so why can they do it here?

I'm pretty sure they can. And more than that, they can do it in such a way that it would cost you far more than your wallet (possibly your car) to fight it in court.
> I wish the culture of our police was based around community development and not militarization.

There is something funny about that sentence. We have police imitating military yet the US military, during the current Iraq/Afghanistan "military operation", came to realize that a "knock-and-talk" approach was/is more effective than "kick-in-the-door" night raids while looking for insurgents.
The problem isn't that these people can't use computers. 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. They don't know how to do it with their computer... or their car, or their vacuuming robot, or their television, or their oven or their relationships or any thing in their life. They don't understand why the world is the way it is, they don't know how to figure it out, and they generally think that trying is a suckers game.

You mention that there are always 1 or 2 kids a year who have already picked up programming or know how to build a computer... I think I would live for them. I was one of those kids, and I would be so excited for them that I would bury them in whatever help they needed.

For the other kids, I'd put aside the computers for a bit. I'd teach them critical thinking, because it's really the only skill they need to learn (see the documentary "High School" by Wiseman for an excellent example of how reformulating every single class as being centered around critical thinking led a poor latino high schools students to accomplish the highest percentage of students to attain college degrees in the nation... while preserving their youthful exuberance for learning).
I agree that regular people shouldn't touch the terminal, UX has come a long way to try and simplify the way we do things. Unfortunately there are things that people either don't understand and most likely don't care/want to understand (even with the simplest UI). It's up the tech savvy guys to change interface and dumb it down for folks. It's bad enough having to explain to someone where to do certain things in Windows 8; I don't want to have to explain to them why their wifi doesn't work on linux. Windows 8 is a huge pain, it's hard to understand when there is more than one way to change something. Then mixing what are essentially mobile apps with desktop apps just muddies the water. Uninstall in Windows sometimes doesn't even work. This is not to pick on Windows but it's usually what people have.
Your Bash + Dropbox combo inspired me to clean up my 1Password hack I've used for the past couple of years and put it online:

https://github.com/opyate/1Bashword
I am pretty sure the company here is Applied Language Solutions, which was ran by Gavin Wheeldon and was featured in the UK version of Dragon's Den.

ALS had a Sofia office, a free translation tool that was mentioned on Dragon's Den and sold for 67.5 million pounds.
Two senators are trying to close backdoor into US communications
SnapTax was awesome—until it got acquired and killed.

Ever since then, I was really frustrated with the state of tax software in Canada. The fact that over 6 million people still do their taxes on paper, and that most people turn to expensive tax preparers for even the simplest of returns, drove us to build http://simpletax.ca. We're lucky in that we have a non-practicing tax lawyer on board.

There is so much good technology can do in this space.
> "TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with it’s head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. “num num”. This blog post is not for you."

But apt, ne? Lots of people are like that.
The only thing I found annoying was his pet peeve about "the internet being down". I might tell someone that to get the idea across. Of course, I could say that "I was unable to establish a TCP/IP connection with the web server", but saying "the internet is down" is much simpler.

Then again, I correct people when they call the computer tower a "CPU" or "Hard Drive", so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Go back and read the article and come back when you've got something useful to say.
Is gun industry bigger than Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, eBay, Rackspace, Godaddy, etc. combined? The latter are directly affected by the government policies regarding privacy and certainly their clients would appreciate their companies standing up for their rights. The users should just be more vocal in expressing it. Maybe if you're just a hobbyist who nobody knows your voice won't be heard, but if you're a known person in tech would, people would take notice.
We need a non-profit turbotax-alternative that won't sell out to Intuit.
TLDR is a concession to terrible human beings. They deserve the snark.
> a kitten with it’s head in a toilet roll

its head

If your plan is to insult readers before they even start to read your rant, can you at least make an effort to spell your insults correctly?
A selfish Silicon Valley must learn from history
The presence of an "eval" makes it pretty obvious that there was something going on.

The only clever thing here is putting the code after the GPL text that usually nobody reads.

Does not Joomla community code reviews the contribution to their code base?
"What I want to know is who gives them this much money, and why?"

Nobody gives the police this money. The police take the money from people they arrest. It is called asset forfeiture, it is legal, and it is widely used by police departments to pay for all that expensive military equipment they use.

"Why is the police becoming para-military?"

To gain more power over the population, to arrest more people, and to funnel more money to the well-connected corporations that benefit from this sort of tyranny.
They can use computers but have no understanding of them, geeks understand them.
Chris Hayes basically wrote this book already - Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
$80 million cash out for 4 years of servitude? Bad deal.

I wouldn't sell my baby for that.
This is great. I love the folks at Freckle and personally found it really valuable the way they structured this article as problem, solution goals, solution in practice.
Heroku Labs: Pipelines
Avoid Co-Working Spaces With ‘Brogrammers’
I get the feeling that the author was judging the person he was helping far more harshly than the perceived judgement she might have passed on him.

Maybe she was tired, clearly she was frustrated, but it wasn't obvious that she held the author in any disdain, though the author seemed to perceive it. What we're sure of is that the author held her in such low regard.

I wonder if she picked up on that. I suspect she did, and I suspect it contributes to the negative stereotypes that the author wanted to rail against by mentioning all this.

> ‘Do you know where the proxy settings are?’ I asked, hopefully.

> It took me about ten seconds to find and fill in the proxy settings.

Well for Christ's sake don't ask her something she almost surely doesn't know if it only took you ten seconds of looking. Look for ten seconds first.

The first rule of any educator is to never, under any circumstances, make someone feel inept. And it was so easily avoidable here.

~~~

Of course people can't use computers. They're not trying to use computers. They're trying to get X done. The computer is a device that, most of the time, just gets in the way of doing X.

Just the way that cars are a device that get from point A to point B. Few poeple get in a car to drive. They get in a car to locate themselves to point B.

In this case, the person can't use a computer because people like the author condescend a bit, fix the problem in ten seconds, and don't set them up to be just a bit wiser for next time.

The important part of the story is the part where the author explains that on some networks, you need to set extra settings so the office network can communicate with the outside world network. I hope the author explained what it took him ten seconds to do, so that she might be able to help herself next time. The omission (and disdain) leads me to suspect not, or at least that actually helping her was not an important part of the story.
A lot of people are bashing the author and the article saying that the tone is condescending, kids do know how to use computers etc. I think his point is that kids do know the "what" part (browsing,texting,fb etc). The question is: do they know or care about the "why" and "how" part ? Should they care ? Should they not care ?
yeah, it is understandable to be annoyed when a good idea (even from a decent open-source company)doesn't get enough financial
backing when shitty ideas and products get funding from left and right.
It's cheaper and fun. Just unscrew the bolt on the oil pan underneath the car. Drain. Change screw on filter. Close bolt. Add new oil (usually 4 quarts for a 4 cylinder). Don't dump oil on the road or grass but I'm pretty sure I didn't have to mention that.
I'm in disagreement with Bill Gates on the quote... Personally, I think getting us off of this rock is one of the most important things we'll ever do to improve the living conditions of humanity. There are only so many resources, and so much space here on Earth. Being able to spread beyond, find new resources, new places to live will reduce competition for the Earth's limited resources.
It sounds like you want everyone to be a system administrator. That is not going to ever happen.

The human history of inventing has one very consistent theme: making things easier for ourselves. "Computers" will only become easier to use, and require less knowledge of the humans that are using them.

When "computers" go wrong, a human with that specialty will fix it. You have that specialty. Why can't everyone fix their own cars or HVACs or bake their own bread?
TruBrain gave me a month's supply to try it out (http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#trubrain) and I'd say that, as one would expect since it's not including any heavy-duty stimulants, the effects are weaker than modafinil or nicotine. I think it's more effective than just a normal piracetam+choline stack, but it's hard to be sure. (But on the plus side, it's legal and doesn't come with any concerns about legality (for modafinil) or addiction/social-disapproval (nicotine).)
>I'm wondering where this backdoored version of Joomla came from.

It probably was inserted using another vulnerability, and put there to hide it from site owners who were only looking for files that weren't there before.
Snowden fallout claims second email service
If you add ?share=1 to the URL, it won't have a sign-up requirement.
It's not like these things have labels on them. (Well Win8 finally has a button that says "Desktop".) "Window" and "cursor" and "icon" etc is really just jargon.
Oops. I'm sure you'll find lots of other grammar and spelling errors.
500 Startups Live Stream
I'm going to preface this by saying this meter looks great and I realize that it's much easier to critique than encourage.

Overall, I think it's an interesting implementation, but I felt the tone of the video did not match the nature of the product. The video feels produced towards something with more breadth and importance than essentially a contractor tool. Not that I'm downplaying what Senic built, but the presentation gives off "toddler in a business suit" aesthetic.

Having said that, the implementation looks great.
Even this "you only need to type just few letters from site name" escapes many of these people. They'll continue typing the whole search term, or the whole domain name, even if Google has already auto-filled it. I've seen it happen.
"num num" !!!! WTF, it's nom nom

if you're going to be snarky, at least be right.
How to Use Passwords and Be Safer Online
That's specifically the reason I was harsh about it - why is he able to talk down to an entire generation when he admits, in the same article, not to be able to do something LESS esoteric and MORE central to day-to-day utility.
I think, no manufacturer has committed to making Ubuntu phones, so they have to do their own hardware first to "break the ice".
Another example of MI5 dropping the ball was in the Irish War of Independence in the early 1920s. The "old" IRA was able to infiltrate it, execute various secret agents, manage to convince them that the IRA had much more guns and men then it actually did, etc.
The fact that I am working in the same industry that has these characters as stereotypical archetypes depresses the hell out of me, the fact that this is an attitude thats likely being passed on to impressionable children outright scares me, sometimes I wonder if I got into computers for the opposite reason of everyone else.

Most people dont care about using an open source phone that is entirely useless as a phone, most kids dont need to know how to format a boot partition. The kids that are interested in it are amazing and get so much done precisely because they arent worrying about how to patch their graphics driver.

Also if you are going to be so exceedingly patronising[1], at least learn to configure a network that doesnt need you to manually enter a proxy.

[1] no, even if you do do that, please dont be so exceedingly patronising.
Maybe change a tire, but I see no good reason _everyone_ needs to know how to change their oil.
Mozilla is a global non-profit organization dedicated to building a public good -- an Internet that works for everyone.

Google is a giant multi-national corporations that measures revenue in the tens of billions of dollars per quarter.

That means that Mozilla's responsibility is to the people of the world and Google's responsibility is to maximize financial returns for the the already well-off financial class that invested in Google stock.

Does that help you see the difference?
Windows RT has not been successful - ASUS CEO
From what I know of the time, it wasn't just an imperfect system, it was an imperfect system with rampant opportunities for abuse.

Have you ever read about the Magdalene Asylums?

To my knowledge it wasn't the less-than-perfect parts of institutionalization that caused us to get rid of them, it was the abuse of aspects of those systems that caused us to abandon them, and thus it is the abuse of those systems to which we should probably compare our current solution.

One possible missed opportunity of course- institutionalization has been marked, and may never be seriously considered again. Yet it's possible with sufficient oversight it could be a useful system.
Remember that the browser game is not just about features, but also about speed. And the fastest way to do something is often not the shortest code.
Twitter #music
No, this is why it worries him: his salary depends on it.

Frankly, I have never seen a good reason why kids need to use computers or the internet aside from peer pressure, especially in elementary school. There's nothing that requires it until at least high school, at least as much as they should learn to frame a house because they might be a construction worker some day.
He's right though this article is complete garbage, having a blog does not automatically validate your opinion. All people can be inspired to learn in some way, and this guy is a teacher, wtf.
Chrome Web Lab is Open Source [github]
Learning New Programming Languages
Pearltrees: Mindmap like bookmarking
> Why is the police becoming para-military?

Becoming? In the 1990s, when I was in college, state and local police recruitment information overtly described the organizations as paramilitary. Armed police forces are inherently paramilitary organizations, and always have been.

They're getting another influx of military equipment and personnel with combat experience (and expectations shaped by that experience) because the US military is gearing down after a over decade of greater-than-usual war.
"So I take it the author can fix any brand of car and would, without missing a beat, answer questions like "where's the expansion tank?"

Maybe not, but people don't equate ability to drive with knowing how one works. But people do equate being able to surf the web with being "computer savvy".
Thank you! I was missing some serious context.
Best CMS Ever
Article could benefit from a blog post version of the Wadsworth Constant.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-wadsworth-constant

By my count the first 15 paragraphs had nothing to do with the title and served mainly to illustrate the author's projection of his disdain for others.
It's astounding how many people just don't know the facts of this.
Because it is trivial to do, and regularly required? Would you say they don't need to know how to change a tire too? Add more windshield fluid? Wash their windows by hand? Open their glovebox?
My point was that people who use Gmail get more than a free mail service in return for their privacy.

The things that Gmail does best – search, spam filtering, scam warnings, simple attachments, innovative labs features like undo send – weren't offered by Schnail Mail, which invited you to trade your privacy for free postal mail alone.

Trading privacy for free mail alone would have little appeal to most. But Gmail offers more than that. A feature-matched physical mail equivalent to Gmail would make an ad-supported postal mail service far more compelling.

I suspect you'd also see more hands stay raised if you flipped the pitch to place the negatives up front ahead of a long list of potential benefits.