skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd be ok with even really mundane things -- great video on demand, Internet access, and a marginally more comfortable seat (Economy Plus or old style business class) would be worth more to me on most flights vs. a faster journey. There are even routes where if I could get a real bed onboard and a shower at the airport in arrivals (so, cheap), I'd take twice as long a flight (turning a late night flight into a true redeye).

Being productive onboard and immediately on arrival (which, for domestic routes, is actually more about the airport than the aircraft) would make up for a lot.
The FBI director publicly assured Rep. Nadler (D-NY) in June that FedGov needed a "particularized" order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to target U.S. citizens:
https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/jQ71osLy...

Someone's lying. Right?
If it's the "Information Assurance" training then yeah, we pretty much all have to (at least in DoD). I don't think it's been modified for years now though, so it can even seem antiquated in some areas.
This has been going on for a long time:

https://www.google.com/search?q=3d+print+body+parts

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=3d+printing

http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidn...
What is Koding? - Koding in 2 Minutes
A few years back there was an amusing instance of a blog post overtaking the facebook login page on google when people searched for "facebook login"

http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...
I have a lot to say in response to this article, but for now I'll just share a quote from one of my computer science professors that I'll never forget:

"Just because you're a computer science professor doesn't mean you know how to use a computer."
In case Ubuntu folks are reading this.

I am from India, working on our startup - our running costs are USD 500 per month, thats what we are running on. If I was in a regular job, I would surely contribute to your campaign, but I cant afford it.

If I want to download Ubuntu Desktop, you are asking for donations, which I would love to give, but are taking payments through Paypal. You need to setup a payment gateway here in India - use the same systems we use to top up our mobile phones, so we can contribute to you, instead of going through Paypal (because I am not credit worthy, and there are govt rules too).

We might not be able to make big donations, but India has 1 billion people, and I am sure, India has quite a few Ubuntu users, and I am definitely a Happy one.
Let's not take one throwaway analogy I made (to help illustrate someone's point), and base an entire post on highly leaky programming analogies. Why not actually help us understand the useful aspects of continental philosophy? I cited explanations, not shaky analogies. (I'm sorry for using an illustrative analogy, because they serve as good rhetorical targets.)

Why not pick a technology made by a charlatan, and see how it sounds? You're after all assuming that the philosophy he criticizes is Haskell. What if instead, it's some closed source, obfuscated "artificial intelligence" snakeoil which barely even compiles?

And why pick that one particular paragraph? How about the one where he mentions meeting some luminaries he criticizes, like Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva? Does the aggressively ignorant C programmer go so far as meeting the Haskell implementors, trying to understand their perspectives? Does anyone go around citing the ignorant C programmer's debate with a famous Haskell implementor, where they mostly agree?

What about when he requests these philosophers "to do what people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc. These are fair requests for anyone to make." Does anyone think Haskellers don't do this? Then as programmers, we need to focus some efforts on that. Because in the software world, that's a sign of charlatans!
Or being build in America in the late '80s or early '90s, but that's how I learned to fix most things on a car.
Check out this book as well.

http://amzn.com/039306204X
" The parents seem to have some vague concept that spending hours each evening on Facebook and YouTube will impart, by some sort of cybernetic osmosis, a knowledge of PHP, HTML, JavaScript and Haskell."

It's pretty common for anyone who is truly disconnected from tech to be this clueless. I'm surrounded by people that understand what I do, but every once in a while I'll be in a situation where I explain my job to a stranger or date or something and facepalm at their responses.
Man, how do people do stuff like that in Excel? And does it feel like a design problem that's a good fit for Excel? Just curious.
Does Length Matter? It Does For Video
> A previous officer involved shooting, on my street, was also reported as a 'charged with weapon, officer defended themselves and shot the suspect.' which was also reported very differently by the people who were standing on the curb behind the guy that got shot (and nearly caught in the cross fire). This guy had a knife and was 15 yards away from the officer when they were killed.

A knife is a deadly weapon. I think that's downplayed quite a bit when everyone is worried about guns. 15 yards may be a bit a a distance to start shooting, but there's a lot of information left out that to assume is negligible would be a mistake. For example:

Did the suspect advance from behind cover or were they in plain view for a period before advancing?

How far was the suspect from other bystanders? Were others in possible danger?

In this case, what does "charged" mean? Running full-tilt, or advancing at a quick pace?

Were the bystanders looking at the situation from the beginning, or talking among themselves until someone noted something was happening and they all redirected their attention?

These are all just some of the details that may or may not be noticed by individual bystanders, and may or may not have affected their view of the situation. Eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable for other reasons as well (discussion can make people believe they saw things they didn't).

That's not to say the police accounting is infallible, just to suggest that all testimony needs to be examined closely.
Obama to Offer Plan Meant to Ease Concerns on Surveillance
Is the Fourth Amendment Now Illegal?
What is a Universal Customer ID (UCID) and why does your business need one?
Sounds like an interesting idea. Learning is much easier if you can find someone equally interested and at your same level.
The iOS Maps problem
The NYPD suffers from a severe lack of a local gun culture---the city has a bit over 50,000 each of legally registered handguns and long guns, and there aren't many places to shoot---as you note does very little proficiency training, I myself shoot around 200 handgun rounds per range visit, their leadership is notoriously gun ignorant and saddled them with Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) rounds for a long time, and still uses the heavy New York trigger modification, and the force is notorious for a very large fraction being poor in gun fights.

There was a recent incident where ALL the civilian casualties were from the cops, and most specifically we believe from one who screwed up big time, the other did the right thing for himself and others, to the extent we could determine.
To be fair, there's never been another presidency with the current combination of technological and societal factors on the scale there is today, so a direct comparison isn't easy to make.
"Are the ideas of math that inaccessible to the general population when compared to a work of Art?"

Yes, if only because many (if not most) don't want access. Been there, done that, got the medications to prove it.
Proxy settings, I don't expect anyone to know about. But a lot of the problems he described are like taking a huge dump in your toilet, it not flushing properly, and just giving up when the plunger is right there.
Yale's new technique for measuring electrical activity in a living neuron.
I order TP and paper towels via Amazon prime and the other day I was shipped gratis a bar of soap. It wasn't an accident, it was listed as a gift on the invoice.
I just don't at all understand why you're frightened of me not knowing how to do something that I'm not interested in, almost surely never will have to do, and can always easily learn if either of these situations changes.

You learn the things you're interested in, the rest of us will each learn the things we're interested in.

You can be frightened about that, but it's frankly overbearing.
It's time to start calling them "collaborators".
YouTube debuts 360-degree controllable camera
This analogy is pretty spot on. I don't know how to get rid of viruses, etc. But when people ask me to, I know how to google the problem. My experience with cars is basically identical - I didn't know how to change the brakes on my car, but I knew how to look up instructions and follow them.

So much of "computer literacy" these days is typing things into google and following instructions. The fact that that is beyond so many people is frightening, honestly.
>Cynical and unfair? Sure. That's how it works, though.

That's how it doesn't work. Except if you sell bricks or something.

In the IT industry it's a surefire way to replace loyal and precious employess with talentless slobs, while you're thinking you're getting a better deal for your company.
Thanks! It is next on my list now.
This.

Retired infantrymen have already been in combat. Furthermore, they've already received a lot of training on rules of engagement and counterinsurgency. Many of them have an aversion to combat situations because they've experienced them and know that they suck. Wannabe troops, on the other hand, have Hollywood and tough-guy fantasy as their preparation. I'll take the first, thanks.
On what planet does the seizure of guns count as an atrocity? I support gun rights absolutely, but you're looking at what I said through single-issue glasses.
> Simple test to see if you currently live in a police state: You've freely typed this critical comment about the government on an internet message board.

Actually...no, I did think about posting it. A month or two ago, I wouldn't have. I am actively engaging in censorship. I still posted it, but I did hesitate for a while. What if I have a defense related project in the future? Will they read back to me this comment? It did cross my mind. So by that test well, it got worse certainly.
Journey through Genius is an absolutely fantastic book. I took History of Math from a professor in undergrad who had a conjecture named after him and this was his choice of textbook (along with a few other materials) for the course.
Researching discussions of that quote, I was amazed at how many people think the sentiment is completely unattainable, and honestly view achieving just 2-3 of those points is a major achievement.

To the contrary, I do expect myself and others capable of doing anything (including learning how as needed). I do expect the average joe to know how to unblock an occluded pipe; I'll understand if said Joe chooses to hire someone else to do the job faster, cheaper, and as leverage to free up time for greater personal productivity...nonetheless, I expect Joe can if need be grab a monkey-wrench and a bucket and proceed to unblock that pipe somehow.

I'll admit I may not be able to do all of those things well, but dad gum I'll get 'em done. I'll also admit "comfort the dying" is by far the hardest.
"... conveniently don't mention that every new airplane design costs billions to start producing"

The author does. In the sentence immediately after what you quoted.

The British government’s financial contribution to the project is just a small fraction of the billions needed to complete it. “Just to do a run-of-the-mill, state-of-the-art subsonic aircraft engine, you’re talking a $1 billion bill,” says Stephen Trimble

If the engine is $1 billion then it's easy to infer that "every new [state-of-the-art] airplane design costs billions to start producing."
Wait, where are the HN bigwigs to tell us how we're over-reacting and this is all bullshit from two months ago? Strange, all of them seem to have shut up and sauntered off as the leaks have continued.
FAQ

HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO SAY WORDPRESS AND EPISERVER?

This CMS is vastly superior, because it runs a much more flexible templating system called HTML, and still performs better than most other systems.
> Author is a jerk for the TLDR at the beginning

> Sure--it's unfortunate that such a red herring was thrown into an otherwise excellent article.

No, he comes across as a jerk for about 75% of the entire condescending article. "I'm better at this stuff than some people and thus these people are less than me" is the overriding theme here. There is a kernel of an excellent point here — that we would benefit from better teaching computer literacy — but it's buried under miles of condescension, dismissiveness and outright animosity.

Many of his "This person can't use a computer" statements are overly dismissive and imperious. "This stupid kid saw a dialog box saying he had a virus and thought it might mean he had a virus! What a numbskull!" "A teacher doesn't know off the top of her head how to set some stuff that nobody ever needs to set! How embarrassing!" It is no wonder that his point gets lost when he goes on for paragraph after paragraph deriding people and impugning their character for such silly reasons.

If you want greater computer literacy, my experience is that one of the first steps is making people feel comfortable working their way around their computers. This "h4h4 n00b" attitude is counterproductive.
This just sounds like the rantings of a disgruntled "computer guy" (sorry for the gender bias). The suggestion here is that the ability of users to handle their own inane tasks EQUALS the ability to use a computer. Nothing could be further from the truth.

FWIW, my kids can use their computers quite ably. They use the command line, they know the difference between wireless vs. physical connections, and they know their file system. And, wouldn't you know it -- sometimes they still ask inane questions for help.

Reading some of the comments, it's apparent the author takes his teaching seriously. I hope it comes through as teaching, and not as disdain for the future.
Back when I was in academia, one of my favorite student evaluations from an abstract algebra class had the following comment (paraphrased from memory):

"This course was like climbing Mt. Everest. It's difficult, and sometimes slow going, but at the end, it's breathtaking how much you've learned and accomplished."
I know we all trust pg and all... but are there non-US-based alternatives to Hacker News that we should be considering?
Now that it's dawning on people that this is going to kill the US's international cloud computing business the big money lobbying will kick in and we'll probably see some action.
My home air conditioner stopped working a couple of weeks ago. I turned it off and on, but that was about the extent of what I felt I could intelligently do. I called a technician, who spent 15 minutes or less in my basement diagnosing the problem and replacing a capacitor. He charged me $115 to replace a $17 capacitor.

I'm not complaining. I called him, I wrote the check, and I have a functioning air conditioner again. But it did make me wonder if I couldn't take a $115 class at the community college to learn air conditioner repair. (And I imagine I could get the capacitor for less than $17 too.)
Less free than under Lincoln, who essentially governed under martial law? Less free than under Wilson, during whose presidency Bureau of Prohibition ran roughshod through the nation searching for illegal booze? Less free than under Nixon, who initiated the "war on drugs" and Reagan, who really militarized it?
LulzSec hacker sentenced to 1 year jail
> I don't know and I can't even begin to debate it, I'm not smart enough.

Well, no. You lack the knowledge for having a useful discussion about it. Spend time brushing up on pedagogical techniques, neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology: all the fields that touch on growth in the mental dimensions of a human being. My own expertise is pretty minimal, but just seeing the cutting edge of the research is fascinating and can help keep you honest when making claims.

This isn't a political/stylistic discussion. It rests on factual foundations, where people have actually looked at fMRIs or done longitudinal studies on schools or scrutinized the brain composition of different age groups.
Hi all, I'm one of the Koding developers. I've posted this as a comment but thought It would be helpful to the question of "What Koding is?"

Basically, http://koding.com offers full vm with root support and a web-terminal (again just like a desktop terminal) to access this it. What does it mean? It is a full featured Ubuntu where you can install any stack you want. Want to play with Redis? No problem just do apt-get install redis-server. Want to try to use vim? Just type vim and enter. You see that only your imagination stops you here.

Not only this it has the concept of "Apps" that let you install custom webapps inside Koding, which can access your VM. For example there is the Rails Dashboard app that let you deploy and setup Rails instances with just one click. There is the Teamwork app, which is a collaborative way to work with your friends, basically you can share and play together on the same editor and terminal! Just think how great this is, you basically can mentor someone, you can get help to develop your app and so on.

Well not only this, there is also Groups where you can work and share your with your friends,class,team, etc.. Groups are awesome because they are totally separated from Koding and you can control and give access control to each of the member of the groups. This are basically subreddits with their own members and culture. Also VM's can be shared amongst the members, which makes it awesome to work together on projects.

This is just a sneak peek and many other features are on the way. Just give it a try please and see yourself how many great things
Execs -> Obama
"You said no one would find out about this shit if we played ball! WTF! We pay you assholes a lot of money!"

Obama -> Execs
"Relax, we have the NSA working on Lavabit to get Snowden's emails right now. As soon as we have some truth to mix in with our lies we'll have him discredited with false allegations of CP or some other horse shit. The pleebs' short memories and NFL football will take care of the rest."

Execs -> Obama
"It had better or the Secret Service will fall asleep on the job one day."

Obama -> Execs
"Cocaine and hookers on me!"
Probably the fact that it is a very low-power laptop helps it run only with solar power. If it can't run on sun alone, I guess that it's not very useful at all.
Wow, I didn't expect this to upset so many people. Just trying to inject some light-hearted humour.
I think part of the problem is that with the advent of the Internet, no computer comes with proper documentation that you can read to learn what a system does and how it does it. DOS was probably the last OS that could be completely described in its paper manual. Now learning about a new system has to be done through Google, experimentation and thoroughly inadequate help systems where it's very difficult to find an answer if you don't know how to describe the problem.
Unless you know exactly who each person is on the team, that's making a lot of assumptions. I've seen enough companies that have key people who aren't co-founders that don't get a lot of public recognition but significantly make major contributions to the company. Some would even later become CEOs.
Thats why you have a cover story allegedly :-)
"Are the ideas of math that inaccessible to the general population when compared to a work of Art?"

I'd guess at least some fine arts (composing classical or modernist orchestral music, modern abstract painting and sculpting) would also be pretty inaccessible to general population.
> Only my computer teacher was in his first year of teaching computers, having been drafted from the math program because "computers use math". He was completely just learning about computers.

Same here. My senior year independent study in programming was converting all the C++ projects and notes to Java because the AP exam was switching over. I think the idea was that the next year instead of helping she could say "look at what it should look like" or "well, this version here works".
The car analogy falls apart though, when you consider the complexity of the tasks that he's complaining about.

We would rightly laugh at anyone who complained that their car wouldn't 'turn on' when they jammed their key into the gap between the ignition and the steering column, or because the car was out of fuel. We'd laugh if they complained that they can't see at night because they didn't turn the lights on, and needed reminders every time they drove at night to find the light switch.

We'd laugh at someone who burned the car's engine and transmission up because they stomped on the gas pedal while the car was in park, because "when I press it the car usually goes forward but this time it didn't." Repeat, so on and so forth with every 'common' function in a car.

The problem is that people aren't learning about these basic functions that are required in day-to-day operation of a computer, like they do with a car. The wifi is a good example: Someone who owns a laptop should have a cursory familiarity with the wireless networking functionality and be able to find and connect to networks, because a laptop is made to be portable and will therefore be expected to use unfamiliar networks. Granted, the proxy settings are somewhat more forgivable as that's a non-standard setting, but it still doesn't excuse the person's total inability to find the network.

And the main point of the article stands as a rebuttal of the truism "Kids are better at computers", because they significantly aren't. They're only slightly less clueless than their parents.
That's what bothers you?

He even fucking stayed after the horrible discussion with the boss (a reasonable person would have quit then and there), and he agreed to fuck up the other (Ian) guy for a measly five thousand quids!
>> Most jetliners are more efficient than an SUV. It's not hard, because SUVs are so incredibly inefficient. The proper comparison is to other jetliners. The Boeing 747 gets about 100 passenger-miles per gallon. That's 5x as efficient as the Concorde, at 20 passenger-miles per gallon.

The Concorde was twice as fast - which is why it was worth a premium over a 747. Just like it costs more to send a package next-day than it does grown.

It's also 'worth' the fuel penalty. Just like you car burns twice as much gas going 100mph as it does 65mph, but you get there faster so it could be 'worth' it if you're in an emergency, or poor planner.

Speaking of efficiency, what does a Greyhound Bus or Amtrak train get as far as passenger miles/gallon?
Previous discussion- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6167099
President Obama press conference on NSA reforms (live, starting around 3pm EST)
The Most Important 45 Minutes of My Day
We have had the tech ever since the internet was invented. Don't fool your self and try to find another way to defend our current sitting president.
Merci pour ca.