skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Since we can't, according to your methodology, insist on the general principle that slavery is wrong (because general principles don't exist)

No - we can insist on anything we want. There's just nothing general about it. Our principles are ours, not the universe's.

You've actually picked out a great example: that one generated some absolutely immense conflict.

Maybe most of us share an opinion that we feel so strongly about that we're willing to accept and to engage in that level of conflict in order to ensure that our position dominates. When matters of life and death, freedom and slavery are made into political questions, then the possibility that the political process will succumb to violent conflict certainly increases. Perhaps you feel that the cost is worth it to eliminate slavery or to destroy tyranny, and I'd agree with you. But how many questions is it really worth it for? Can you name a single modern political issue that you'd think was worth a civil war?

I'm merely pointing out that principles aren't general: they belong to people in particular, and when people with conflicting principles attempt to universalize their values in the same space, the result is escalating conflict. For the vast majority of modern political controversies, I prefer the "agree to disagree" approach, finding viable ways for people with incompatible values to live by their own values within their own space, enabling them to peacefully coexist with each other, and to enjoy the benefits of interacting with each other to the extent where and when their values don't conflict.

NB: the example of slavery is actually even more interesting here, because in a famous ruling in 1772 (in a dispute known as Somersett's Case), slavery was determined to have always been illegal under the common law. It took positive law enacted by colonial and, later, state legislatures to legalize it where it historically existed.
Show HN: FollowLetter - Follow your favorite newsletters by just one click
A few days ago, I started working on a Rails based CMS:

https://github.com/cmpolis/zencms

I've been working with a design company for a while and haven't been satisfied with the CMS's that we have been using, mostly Wordpress. I feel like there's a better way to do it, so I'm hacking!
Heh, I'm at the Digital Ocean stage of your flowchart, I just have to build something to fund that $90/month...
some sub-reddits are by nature very focused and high noise/signal ratio (/r/netsec is a good example of this), while something like /r/funny will have multiple posts that won't appeal to everyone. Definitely something that can be done better.
Yahoo Blog on users with JS disabled (stats as of 2010):

http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/many-users-javascript-d...

For clients in the UK, it's a legal thing:

https://www.gov.uk/definition-of-disability-under-equality-a...

http://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/webaccessibility/lawsan...

FYI: Screen readers nowadays can run JS, but there are hiccups abound. Also
I don't recall seeing "never do this", though I did see this: "JavaScript isn't evil by any means, and it's really important for creating cool shit, but it should never be required" from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6176036 . Which, in context of the article, seems pretty reasonable to me.

This all started with when kintamanimatt mentioned that the article's technique breaks Progressive Enhancement, "JavaScript is useful, but nobody should assume it's present."

Obviously, I'll need to get an Xbox to play an Xbox game. I'll need Flash enabled on the browser to play a game built on that. Same goes for JS. But, again, the OP makes no mention of "applications" or "web sites" so I'm not sure why you're bringing up "the latest interactive experiences or web-based gaming" into this.
'Chicken Farmer' Bots Steal Secrets From Government Worldwide
> For example, the gay couple would not necessarily be credible experts on all, or even most, gay relationships.

So?

> Membership in a group doesn't qualify us to speak on behalf of all the group's members

The boundaries of groups are usually pretty arbitrary in the first place.

No one is ever speaking on behalf of anyone else, unless that someone else explicitly invited them to do so. When people express their opinions, they're expressing their opinions, so it's likewise an error to interpret one party's opinions as necessarily being those of anyone else.

I agree that no one should presume to speak for others, but this has nothing to do with the notion I'm arguing against here, that being that people's political views must somehow be validated by data in order to be credible.
> Unless we see a mass boycott of the next election that forces both parties to radically change their approach

A mass boycott would do nothing in terms of change. It is the political equivalent of letting a child eat as much ice cream it wants because you think it'll somehow think "too much" for you is "too much" to them.
The fee seems to have worked for Metafilter. That and active moderation.
The financial aid system shouldn't be pre hoc means tested, it should be post hoc means tested. 18 years old is old enough to vote, marry, and enlist in the military. The government ought not to be looking at parents to foot the bills for legal adults.

Something like the Harvard Law School debt repayment program: http://www.law.harvard.edu/current/sfs/lipp/participant-cont...

If a given college is worried that such a plan will bankrupt it, perhaps it should reconsider the value of the education it is providing.
How can I get it once it comes out? It seems really interesting.
Surely you see the difference between someone copying all of your passwords without your knowledge, and someone resetting your password for a single website that you would immediately notice when you check your email? They are two completely different types of attacks.
> When people hurt themselves lifting heavy things, it's usually because they try to lift with their back.

It's got more to do with a weak back, actually. Folk with strong backs can lift very heavy weights safely.

In terms of the analogy, I dunno what I'm saying. Just fulfilling my HN nitpick quota.
Show HN: A new website for cultural critique
No, it doesn't answer the question, it suggests more questions to ask to make an informed answer. It's just a short cautionary tale to make the user consider what type of app he/she is building, and to consider if significant activity within the app is, or not, likely part of the GC/JavaScript (or HTML/CSS) that would suffer in some cases vs local, native, code.

Personally, I tend to agree with the original article that GC is an expensive thing to put in most apps. BUT, you need to be pragmatic about determining if the additional margin of execution speed from not having a GC justifies the coding effort.
I also felt like he evaded the question he posed to himself.
Hacker news webapp for mobile - http://hn.premii.com

I wrote this client. It is as fast as most other native HN mobile apps, but mine works on iOS, Android browser, and windows phone 8. It also works on regular browsers.

I have wrapped this in hybrid app using phonegap, but only submitted to Google play. One day I will submit it to Apple too.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn

But it is not a simple task to make fast performing HTML5 app that works on all mobile browsers.
Having said that... you're right in that mostly this posting is to fulfill somebody's job requirements, rather than a substantial amount of content :-)
graycat, would you mind putting an email in your "about" section of your profile so I can contact you? I have some questions about trouble I'm running into in regards to some of the examples you presented.
That's correct; via wiki -

For example ZIP code 42223 spans Christian KY and Montgomery TN, and ZIP code 97635 spans Lake OR and Modoc CA.

Zip codes are also non-contiguous in some areas, and not bounded-polygons in others which makes them really bad for geo purposes.
I'm in the exact same situation. Except in my case, in Canada, and (only) after 1 year of full-time courses.

I also did a paid internship, for $18 an hour at a major software company in Vancouver, B.C. Now the Canadian government has decided that I have more than enough (assuming a cost of living of 0 for a 20 year old that has to support an elderly mother).

So basically, I have an income of 0 (aside from my freelance work), costs running at ~$1600 CAN per month for basic shelter + food for 2 people, AND the Canadian government is constantly on my back for student loan repayment. I did not choose to dropout of college, I was (essentially) forced to by the government.

Best part is, now any employer I talk to asks about the 1 year I spent in college. I'm sure they assume that as a 20 year old, I am either lazy, stupid, or irresponsible. But that couldn't be further from the truth. I've worked 18~22 hour days everyday of my life since I was 16, and I'm tired. Not tired of a (somewhat) difficult life, but tired of the assumptions people make. People in the government, people who have power of employment, people around me who judge a book by its cover.
N.B. To typeset italics on HN, use asterisks, not _underscores_.
For fractions of a cent an hour, Its just as comfortable not to be tying up my local resources.
I don't see how HECS is a lot better than the US system.

"Poor" people still have to pay 10% (accumulated) interest on the loan (it does not matter if the interest is called 'discount') and you still leave the system with a loan of $18-30k.

If a country wants to advance technologically or academically, it should have cost-free universities like there are cost-free schools. Why do people not understand that?
Many stores let you enter your phone number on a keypad if you've forgotten your loyalty card at home. If you don't feel like signing up for a store's card to get a discount, just try entering 867-5309 (from the Jenny song) in your local area code. 99% of the time it works!
Timezone — is not just offset! Proper use of timezones is not so simple unfortunately. And browser usually doesn't provide correct timezone name that could be used reliable (like Europe/Berlin).
I've been waiting for someone to build something that would let me ditch Heroku and handle deployments and on my own infrastructure! This seems very promising
Neophyte question: Why do investors have to ask founders who else is investing? Is it not possible for them to check this themselves, via public records? [There are some sites that even pre-package the SEC filings for consumption by journalists, etc.]

It makes perfect sense to me why investors would want to know who else is investing, for a number of reasons. For one, standing on the sidelines knowing that most startups will fail is not a reasonable strategy. This is because some startups, no matter how unlikely, will succeed, and some VC will, despite our better judgment, have invested in them. If other VC deliver higher value for their clients than we do for ours because we cautiously and prudently stand on the sidelines, then we stand to lose the confidence of our clients.

But I do not understand why anyone would rely on the statements of founders to determine who else may or may not be on board as investors.
Mine should be here on Friday. I am without a desktop for the summer, but I'll be playing emulators on it until then. Glad to hear the streaming works well!
This looks incredibly useful!

In the repo (github.com/sendhub/shipbuilder) I see that it is written in go-lang -- which is quickly becoming my favorite programming language.

It also uses HAProxy, which I've used many times in the past and it is easily the most powerful software load-balancer in existence.

What a potent combination of technology...will definitely be keeping an eye or two on this!
They have stated that it is okay for them to assassinate US citizens abroad though. If people don't recoil from that, I don't think cell-phone snooping is going to have much effect.
Law Enforcement Wants To Weaken Section 230: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
I can't imagine the weight of shutting something down which you've spent almost a decade on. While this is a tail of not getting to product market fit it's the struggle of every entrepreneur.

Knowing how long to stick it out and when to call it quits. There is no right answer. The right answer is when you reach your limits. Most people's limit is much less than 10 years.

Getting to the point where shit hits the fan (out of money with a family) has to be one of the hardest experiences outside of losing loved ones.

Congrats to the OP for their determination. At the same time I share my condolences at the time, energy and money that the experience cost.

He has this to hold on to...

> I’m glad I had the courage to try, and I’m grateful for the insight it gave me into what it takes to build a business.
Why "Login with Github" button only get username and e-mail address? It would be more useful.
Q&A with Fred Schebesta from Finder.com.au
Bitcoin is now a declared currency in Texas.
Facebook’s new feature – Embedded posts
I'd call it "avoids reporting stories that hurt their funding partner" more than "pushing the agenda" personally. Very subjective opinion, though.
ShipBuilder - Open Source PaaS written in Go
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Nice to see Wired rewriting HN submissions about blog posts.
This jives with the overall process advocated in one of my favourite books -- The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing.

Identify value to the customer first.
This is really great advice. I'll have to talk to potential first customers and maybe even just ask them "how do you want to pay" to see how much of a priority this is to get rolling.

Thanks!
Awesome I'll look into those two.
Cloning Hacker News (or something like it) in Laravel 4.

All I can offer is a screenshot, which is objectively terrible because I just started more or less recently: http://imgur.com/RI9GM5r
I've heard it said about jazz and poetry that masters and beginners both break the rules. The difference is that masters know the rules so well that they can decide which rules ought to be broken, and when, and why.
There is also an informational site: http://shipbuilder.io
Big thanks for the offer, just sent you an email.

I started out asking for a CC before the trial, but on a small adwords test campaign that converted exactly zero out of a few hundred people. Then again, that may have been because the entire site was a single signup/cc form and had very little information otherwise.
I'm not sure about that. I mean, this whole place is inadvertently an advertisement for the Ycombinator program. And people click the YC company job ads all the time too.
What does this mean in practicality?
Ah good call. Maybe it's just my very maleable Javascript side talking, but if I were making this API in Javascript I'd probably have a "body" and do a super simple check if the first character is a "<", which will solve the 99.999% case for HTML vs. text emails.
A Bible Of Color Theory Is Now An App
There was actually a timely article a little while ago on Wired (http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/08/qq_netflix-algorithm/) that talked about the Netflix recommendation engine and how it has had to evolve since the days of the Netflix Prize. Interestingly (to me) was that they have actually had to move away from ratings comparisons with the shift to a primarily "on demand" style of viewership. As there is so little personal investment in a choice when viewing streamed content (you can just switch 5 seconds in) people are far less likely to reliably rate material. Instead, they've had to develop algorithms which rely primarily on recent viewing habits (clicks, content seen to completion, left early, time of the day) for their recommendations. Which then sounds very similar to the goal of recommending viewership topics based on prior reading, rating, and participation in threads. However, as was noted above, there's the issue of "genetic diversity" to your viewing pool, so you'd probably want to do something like Pandora and cross-breed your interests with those of similar, but non-identical viewers to suggest topics that might interest you. Giving a profile of how they are balancing you that you could also edit would help further.
Did anyone see a listing of the stores at which the trial is being run?
Honestly I didn't even see the "cc_addrs" and "bcc_addrs". Those are horrible. Now you have complex abbreviations that are pluralized! I completely agree.

And while we're making them accept lists or tuples, change their names to: "to", "from", "cc" and "bcc". Very clear and still a tiny amount of characters.
Yes. http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-mobile-web-apps-are-slow...
But then your emails can't have HTML and a plaintext backup.
Well, except that it only plays games on the OnLive service, not any PC game with controller support.
Really blown away by not only the design but by the content. Really surprised that it was developed by Yale University Press, in-house?! Hmmm...
Implementing a Destructuring Bind in Scheme
Brainwashed is the right word. Have you seen any of thr old drug propaganda videos? Check them out on YouTue. Also look up and watch Referrer Madness. In D.A.R.E my brothers kid learned that LSD stays in your system forever and drips acid down your brainstem, among a whole slew of other non-factual information.
That you have to declare bitcoins received as income to the IRS?
He's right that people think they can have an opinion on politics or religion without actually knowing anything, but this is something they are taught to believe in school and church. It's a result of widespread poor upbringing and education, it's not an issue of "keeping your identity small".
While I like the principle... Expensive for who? The government hasn't ever really shown much concern for how much things cost.
Yeah, he'll probably die sometime before the end of the sentence. I'm mostly ok with that.

(It's going to be really weird if life extension tech becomes pervasive, and can't be denied to inmates. People who were sent away for 200-300 years, thinking that would be "well more than life" might end up released after...200-300 years in prison. That's going to be...interesting.)
Ah I should have clarified that "body" would be a shorthand of sorts. I'd still have an "html" and "text" alternative to satisfy the case where you want to set both, and in that case "text" and "html" are very meaningful. But the "body" makes the simple case, and the examples extremely clean too.
You're no better then Russia then, just think of it. Only you don't enjoy the general public' understanding that the government is your enemy and friends must be protected from it.
It also applies to dating; indeed, any human activity where you are selling your own self.
Shh! Don't tell anyone but all computing is numerical computing.
Compact disc
Google leaves your Chrome passwords unprotected to promote security
"Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto probably didn’t think that even the U.S. government would treat it as a currency and try to regulate it."

Citation needed.

From the opinion: "The question currently before the Court is whether the BTCST investments in this case are securities as defined by Federal Securities Laws."

This case was about whether a dude who was accepting deposits of Bitcoins and paying interest on them was in the securities business. Of course he was.
You mean "how'd that link get upvoted?"
yeah..
I've had this exact printer for 2 years and rave about it, recommending it to everyone.

I was tired of years of clogged inkjets and not doing much actual color printing.
Steven Spielberg: Film Industry Implosion Lies Ahead
What do you mean "now"? If you have ever done any illegal drug in your life you most likely have heard of this happening. Fucking duh, guys.

They're not quite "in the business of lying", but they certainly will hold back the truth if it makes them look bad (see: marijuana) and they have been known to bend the rules to get people behind bars. It's happened, and continues to happen as long as most people in this country don't give a shit about the war on drugs as a major atrocity.
Another idea is to allow following certain people. It is easy to create PageRank algorithm that would follow the followers and rank the submitted stories. This can be very robust and explainable system compared to other algorithms.

As others have mentioned, recommendation systems end up creating filter bubble which is not a good idea for "news" site. However enabling downvotes at the least would prevent community subgroups hijacking the frontpage.
declaring Bitcoin as currency is too narrow. FYI there's dozens of other digital currencies, collectively termed altcoins, such as litecoin and ripplecoin. See http://www.cryptocoincharts.info. Anyone is also able to create their own blockchain.
That was true long before this ruling.
pretty quick to dismiss community college. I took lower division classes at one, my math classes were taught by PhDs or people with three decades of math and statistics experience. The rigor was pretty good, I transferred to a very good school from the community college and was well prepared.
You have to declare anything of value received as income. E.g. if you get paid in shoes, it's still income.
So is it filter bubbling when content from People Magazine is kept from entering the pages of The Economist?
This is a critical part of our high availability infrastructure.
Are you so sure that the data couldn't be useful in the future? Perhaps the grocery and health insurance industries might team up to identify folks with unhealthy diets, or unusually high consumption of prescription or OTC medications.
The future of mobile gaming is IOS. Ports of KOTOR and XCOM have shown its potential.
Why digital cameras will die
With respect, it seems wrong to suggest kidnapping people and threatening to kill them unless they indirectly finance your education.

There are real expenses associated with running a university. Professors and staff have to be paid; buildings have to be maintained; supplies have to be purchased, etc.
Well Turing is an annual event (http://turingfestival.com) and I usually organise something on the Fringe @ Turing - it varies from year to year. Last year it was a CEO to CEO event, the year before there was a mini-Erlang factory and a Lean Startup day. Best thing is to follow @turingfestival on twitter and me @gordonguthrie and mebbies @mostlyfuns. Mebbies we will do 'it' again, mebbies we won't, prolly something(s) else or related...
this would be a crushing blow for anyone just playing around with btc. innovation and creativity halted
Well, you don't get to use the handy apps with the cool UIs the 3rd party devs have made. But yea, I suppose you can consume it all on your own too.
fwiw i find that "well set up for the track" means "unpleasant as a daily driver" - i'm trying to set up a car that i can drive to the track and back. i am fast enough that i need harnesses, which aren't compatible with the regular seats, etc etc etc.

also, check this out: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto/3985270257.html

it's nice to pass people. it's more fun when you can do it with 200 less horsepower.
I lost out on an otherwise positive interview for a plum job because I hadn't encountered the acronym 'ITIL' before - which was a shame, because I'd effectively done the same thing at a previous job that made medical gear and was frequently audited by the FDA.

My man on the inside said that it wasn't so much that this one thing killed the prospects, but that it caused enough uncertainty that the decision was delayed... during which time they decided to go another way.
Magnets - How Do They Work?
I've used screen for donkey's years now and since I'm also an emacs user, the C-a as the prefix (default for screen) was out of the question. C-] was my solution and has worked dandy so far without ever clashing with any keyboard shortcut from any application.
DigitalOcean now hosting over 64,000 domains