skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
BBC.com is ironically unavailable to Brits due to the fact we fund the BBC but not BBC Worldwide.

So whereas the rest of the word can access BBC Worldwide content Brits are not allowed to.

Shame, sounds like a moderately interesting article. I'll never know without tunneling to a different location to access the content.
I signed a nondisclosure agreement and upholding it is part of my demonstration of integrity. I would never go back on an agreement that I signed, and were the legal framework not in place anyway, I'm not a "fuck me? Well fuck you" sort of person. I only mentioned it at all because most of those motions have been expressed publicly.

The direction is folly. I'll just say that.
I'm simply claiming that black and white are not so different from each other, despite appearances. You are just as bound by the strictures of philosophy X when you endorse !X as your philosophy. We might not disagree about this, it's difficult to tell. If I've made a distracting argument, my apologies.
From the beginning I've quietly predicted that if App.net is ever going to succeed, they will eventually end up going with a more traditional business model where they charge developers for the capacity their applications use (in my mind, they would end up resembling Firebase).

Dalton will write up some charismatic blog post about why this is the right move, and how it was really part of the plan all along. Some people will eat it up; others will call bullshit; and the world will keep turning.
> Then your definition of politics satisfies you assumption of what politics means but that doesn't mean that those acts are not political as understood by many if not most others.

I believed that it was quite clear from context what I meant by "politics." It should be obvious that I was not talking about all forms of social organization, as in "office politics." I don't believe it's reasonable to believe I meant that all social interaction should be avoided, but when several people claimed to take this interpretation, I was very clear about the definitions I was using.

> By your understanding of politics, only governments and those participating to elect/support them are political entities.

Yes, that is correct. This is also, to my knowledge, the standard definition of the term outside of obvious casual adaptations of the term like "office politics."
NSA Using Copyright Claims to Crush Free Speech?
FedEx is about business documents mostly, as far as I know.

Not to mention, they're a middle man. Amazon gains a lot by cutting out the middle man.
This is what happens with the Appharbor t-shirt I won in a contest a while back. People ask what the logo means and I explain, if it's a developer I get a bit more in-depth in how awesome it is.
Psychadelics like LSD may be good for mental health
iTunes Connect remained up, but developers couldn't create new App IDs for a while, so if you were uploading new apps (as I was) you had to wait until that particular portion of the developer portal was back.
They wanted to build an open, paid version of the Twitter API/ecosystem. But the value of the Twitter API lay in the access to their 100 million+ users, and all the valuable social data generated by those 100 million+ users. No amount of "open infrastructure", no matter how clever can ever replace that. It's like buying 1000 data centers in every country, and building an entire system that can handle a billion concurrent users, and saying "Yeah, we can take on Facebook with this", then realize the hard part was getting users, not scaling the infrastructure.
The things you need to know about Postgres indexes to keep Rails fast
They should be sued for this. The only reason the request for so much data is "unreasonable", is because the very collection of it is so unreasonable. If they went through the trouble of collecting so much of it, then they better be ready to respond to FOIA requests for it.
> People your you you you your you you you they You them you they

People who do not understand technology to the depth and detail that you do are not halfwits or children. They know what they intend to accomplish and giving up their most personal information for perpetual archival is seldom a property they are asking for. If the technological tools they possess do not faithfully obey their intentions with a minimum of unintended side effects then the problem is with the technology or the services not the user.

Technology is neat and important, but it exists to serve the user. Faithfulness to the users needs and intentions are the only criteria by which we can judge technology.
> The problem is expecting a candidate to have them memorized and be able to rattle off a particular algorithm from memory in a 15-30 minute interview window

I get the feeling that we're talking past each other. It certainly seems that we have different kinds of interviews in mind. I'm referring to about an hour long session where a candidate is asked to solve a basic problem with a linked list. The candidate shouldn't be expected to have the algorithm memorized. Competent developers should be able to work out simple algorithms manipulating a linked list given an hour's time.

> you look it up or grab it from a library instead of writing a busted implementation yourself.

Usually. Sometimes there is no library. The point is the candidate should be able to write the library themselves if needed. The beauty of many linked list questions is that no reference is needed to work out the optimal answer (Flynn's algorithm being a notable exception).

> There are lots of ways to evaluate critical thinking and problem solving skills that don't rely on a candidate having memorized the contents of a CS textbook.

Again, I don't think that linked list traversal and reversal require some kind of arcane CS knowledge. Interviewers shouldn't be asking for e.g. on-the-spot implementations of Dijkstra's algorithm, the Hindley-Milner type inference system or the max-flow problem.

> A better interview question is one that focuses on solving a real problem for a hypothetical customer, because that's what most engineers actually get paid to do.

This is a good complement to a basic algorithmic / coding test. But it doesn't replace such a test.
Drupal 8: An Introduction to the New Production
Explore some of the new D8 features with a dead simple module implementation.
Good call on the other groups. We're lucky enough to have @idangazit designing ours, so I believe they'll turn out alright =p
Well, it really depends on your goals. If it's onboarding a new user, a horizontal nav can distract instead of helping to guide and educate.
> One particular one: Insurance companies audit for such employees, and either cancel insurance or raise it to unaffordable rates.

Never been to the States, but shouldn't there be a law against this?
I want to build this as an angularjs directive too, but knowing me, it'll probably be not until winter when I finish. (So I hope you make it sooner!)
I couldn't agree more. The mini-USB connector was solid and well guided, while the micro-USB connector's male component is flimsy and the housing (as others have stated) is vague (I have to use a bright light to be able to see which side has bevels).
I'm glad I have a touchstone (inductive charger), as my touchpad (with micro-USB) already only charges with a couple cables (and I use the touchstone 90% of the time for charging).
My N900 (also micro-USB) is even worse... very flakey trying to get it to actually take a charge, pretty much since day 1. I'm lucky though, as many (MANY) have had their micro-USB port rip right off the board on which its mounted due to the "clips" that are supposed to be such an improvement:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37107
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=75920
I feel like the text is the most important part for an encyclopedia. Some images are needed, but not a huge number.
You can't just say that Google+ is not empty when it is so tied to your social structure. I have 3 friends on Google+ and 300 on Facebook. My Google+ is completely empty. Could well be the same for the OP.
coould be good for mobile apps as well!!
Announcing New Relic support for PHP apps
MIC: Military industrial complex.

It is a real thing.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-mili...

>I dispute your CIA conspiracy theory and suggest such extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which you have failed to provide and which is not supported by the historical record. Also, I'm not American and didn't grow up here

Yeah, so you really are unaware of what has happened in the US. Everything I said IS a part of "historical Record" -- but not the one you'll find on CNN or FOX. You'll actually have to do some investigation and discovery.

Start with Smedley Butler, Operation Paperclip and work from there.

I'd be happy to lay out more info - and you can find some in my comment history.

Just because YOU have no idea what happened doesn't mean that what I say is false, nor that it is suddenly my job to educate you.
Agreed, the article is a little thin.
Stuxnet Leaks Came From Administration Itself
I've been totally conversed back to "C" from "C++" after working on a port of Metal Gear Solid to PC in 2000. I've had no problems understanding and reading through the code the Konami developers have written, it was using some kind of generic OO system in "C" with TCL-like passing of arguments (object* obj, int argc, const char*argv[]) - and passing text messages. Yes that was okay even on Playstation1 I guess.

Now I still prefer C++ at work for certain things as I'm simply too lazy to do it correctly in "C" - give me STL, Qt, any UI framework written in there, and it's easier to use. But for core/system libraries (zlib, png, jpeg, tiff, zmq, libpq, etc.) I'd rather have it in "C", at least on the interface part, but I've seen what hiding of C++ or .NET can do with a crazy debugger :)
This looks similar to the one on Youtube, I was wondering though, why is youtube progress bar only compatible with Chrome ? does it rely on a new HTML5 feature that doesn't exist in firefox ?
+1 to this. Captures it eminently.
Agreed - I enjoyed my Google interview. HR showed me around the building when I arrived. All the interviewers were friendly and not intense at all. In each interview we did the random algorithm question, and then had 10 minutes or so of talking through my questions. Lunch was good. It was a long day - the whole experience was basically tiring but I wouldn't call it stressful.

Most importantly HR told me in advance exactly what to expect, and that is what happened. I wasn't expecting much discussion of my experience or previous projects - but the algorithm questions turned up right on schedule, and they were on the topics I'd been told to review.
Then 4 years later, he'll write a blog post on why selling the company to Twitter/Google/Facebook will be the best move. And how burnt out he is, and how he's leaving to pursue "other dreams". And people will congratulate him.
This is great, especially since it removes the TCO limitation from running on the JVM. I will definitely give this a try.
"allow the person with more leverage to lead"

Hmm... I'm unemployed that means they have leverage, I'm employed and looking that means I have the leverage?

Now that I think back over the years, as a stereotypical break the ice event is at the start of an interview, they usually thank me for taking the time off from work, at which point I mention I burned a vacation day to meet them and I've only got X left this year, at which point I tend to feel a little arrogant, I'm burning a rare limited day off for these guys, they'd best make it worth my while...

I know they're just fishing to see if I'm ethical enough to burn vacation instead of calling in sick, or maybe lying about being currently employed...
Those that are predisposed to build slow sites despite all the evidence about how detrimental it is don't really need any excuses for some reason.

In all seriousness, given that there are a lot of use cases where an app might be fetching external resources without clearly informing the user as to (i) what's going on and (ii) the current progress, I'd wager the benefits of providing some sort of indication would be measurable even if it's rather fast. I don't really see the presence of an indicator, in any case, enabling an app to get away with slow/slower results.
A BUG has been found in THE SYSTEM
Hmm. A lot of people supposedly operated under the belief that an omnipotent, judgmental entity was watching their every move, in its own interests, to decide their eternal fate.

Turns out, a nearly omnipotent judgmental entity is watching a big handful of things, working in your interest, only looking for terrorism and national threats.

Suddenly faced with this kind of thing as a reality instead of just paying lip service to the idea, a lot of people... don't like it.
We are clearly in a different industry. Even asking for code samples in my industry opens me up to potential legal liabilities.

I've stopped interviewees during an interview when I felt like they were treading on what we would consider protected work product.

It is entirely possible I can't pass your technical interview, but I'd be surprised if everyone in my industry couldn't, and they are all as restricted as I am.

Finally, I hope that is a typo. Asking for 10k lines of code is beyond the pale for anything I've ever heard of. If you want 10K lines of my code you better be prepared to pay for it.
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/316445-d...

The Justice Department on Friday released its legal rationale for why all U.S. phone calls are "relevant" to terrorism investigations.

Same applies to emails. You may not know it, but USDOJ thinks your emails - all of them, including github commit notifications - are relevant for terrorism investigations. Because they can. Remember - "yes, we can!"? You've been warned. Did you listen?
Why the need to sell hardware? I can accomplish what AdTrap does using a USB stick or SD card and any old i386 hardware I might have lying around. You might call this a "System on a Stick". It boots from the USB/SD media and runs in RAM (no hard disk is needed). You set your other devices (running your favorite graphical OS's) to use it as a gateway/router.
It can block ads. Easily. I do this via DNS and it works like a charm.

But that is only one of many things it can do. Could it establish secure end-to-end connections with other people running the same System? Of course. Could you form your own overlay networks? Yes. Could you run email on top of these overlays? Yes, you could. In fact, you could run almost any program over these networks that you could run on a LAN.

This has all been possible for many years. More than a few people know how to implement it.

Whether there is consumer demand (cf. enterprise demand) for this solution is an open question. At least, so I thought.
Looks like the screwed up tagline for SpoonRocket - "reviews for everything" looks like a copy/paste from Toutpost right above it...
Dolphin browser for android does it too.
HALF of air passengers leave phones on
You really think they have a special state-security list for nerds?
Prim: interesting and I'm sure useful for a lot of people. I hope they're right that they can eventually lower prices though because that seems very expensive. Also is there a trend towards or away from using laundromats? Where I'm from it's unusual not to have your own washing machine and I wouldn't move anywhere that didn't have one.

RealCrowd: Really interesting startup but with the recent housing crisis they may have trouble convincing people it's a worthwhile investment and not a total gamble. I'm really interested to see where this goes and if it ever moves to include the general public (i.e. non-accredited investors).

StatusPage.io - I'll be using this immediately. Useful product and it looks like they already have quite a few high profile companies as customers. Hard to have an opinion on the pricing as I've no idea how many users would subscribe to these notifications.
This guy make fun of it in his flash games (progress bars go forward then backward) http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/

Brings lots of memories, I used to make flash games in school when I was 15. I always liked those little games. /nostalgia
very informally, they're good for the kind of problem where it would be nice to structure your code as if you're using threads, but you have a simple sequence of actions so don't need the asynchronous aspect of threads or the worry that goes with them + mutable state.

for example, in the matasano crypto challenge i needed to simulate a message protocol between various actors (and then break it). i could have written client and server as separate threaded entities, but it was simpler to just have them each be a coroutine.

think of them like thread, state and bi-directional queue, in one easy package.

another example is lazy sequences. you could start up a separate thread that generates the sequences, but then you need to talk to it, throttle it in some way, and close it down. using a generator (a simple co-routine) you can still have your code for generating the sequence in one clean place, but it's easier to call and control.

if you've ever thought "it would be kinda cool if threads were simple, so i could structure my code like..." then you probably would have appreciated a coroutine.

[update: blog post on the protocol bit - http://www.acooke.org/cute/UsingCorou0.html - although really it doesn't say much more than the above]
You're succumbing to slippery slope hysteria.

The slippery slope is a logical fallacy.

Trouble is, government is not a logical entity.
Github, Webhooks, Octopress, and Python
I see three grammar problems with this post. If you're launching a journalism site, better get used to comments like that. Cleaned up version:

I'm building a new journalism startup called Journalium (www.journalium.com) and I am looking for long-form articles about technology and science for our launch in a month or two.

If you're interested, just send me an e-mail at: aleksi at journalium dot com and name your price ;)
New Microsoft Tech Turns Any Surface into a Touchscreen
Thanks, I really liked your response.

I fully understand why laws are put in place when they are done so in an empirical fashion e.g. for your safety, ensuring certain codes are followed that ensure structrual soundness of a building, etc.

The problem is when we get people like Holder talking about how it is "legal" for the POTUS to use a drone to murder people in a foreign, supposedly, sovereign nation - even when those people are citizens of the US.

This is where I get confused on the value of "legality".

Insider trading by members of congress is "legal".

Fraudulent foreclosure has been "legal"

When what banks and governments do, while wrong, is called "legal" -- I cannot bring myself to respect anything they represent.
While I'm not a fan of the recent direction of Groklaw (probably irrelevant now), I think it is a stretch to claim that PJ has done ethically questionable things without some citations. What things?
It may have been a good idea to try to get them to acknowledge your prior issue as insufficient grounds for firing in your contract.
No. At a different level from the other "no"s.

You are a good developer if you make stuff that helps people. Not if you have an impressive résumé, not if you make a lot of money. Not even if your stuff is really technically impressive or shows off IQ or promise.

Really, that's important. There's a lot on this site about being the cleverest, the fastest, knowing more comp sci than the next person or handling trickier interviews or proving there's something wrong with some other ecosystem, program, language, etc. Sometimes I'm not sure everyone feels they have a job to do that can improve people's lives.

Whether sideprojects can sometimes help you reach career goals is a more appropriate question. For applicants I think there's an initial threshold of whether they can ship nontrivial stuff. They can demonstrate it with their past jobs or by actually building stuff. A sideproject could certainly help you get hired if you have no experience and the credentials aren't getting you there; it might be smart to do if you're having trouble finding right work out of college, say. Likewise, it might help you show you have potential in a radically different specialty that your past experience has no bearing on (e.g., you used to write Ruby on Rails but want start to writing code for microcontrollers).

And if someone has unrealistic expectations about how much of a rockstar you need to be, maybe you don't want to work for them. If a potential employer wants you to have a github account that shows you spend all weekend every weekend hacking, maybe you dodged a bullet when they didn't hire you.

I say this having just taken a bunch of time to build a side project. It was fun and stuff (building from scratch instead of tweaking a giant codebase! learning golang! making things go fast!) but there's no possibility in my mind it makes me "better" or I'd be "bad" had I not done it.
'and visiting a website called hacker news'

Right...because with all their super-surveillance powers, they're going to be blinded by that title and miss the fact that HN is a fairly pedestrian community consisting mostly of entrepreneurs, technologists on the make, and few artists and oddballs. This reading of things requires us to believe that government is both omnipotent and incompetent, neither of which are true to the extent that people like to imagine.
Yea, I agree with you. "Yes" to "you are able to work here" but no "you're hired!"

I don't care about it anymore, but 5 years ago when this was my first job prospect out of school, I was really excited.
Yeah - we were a blog first, then a consultancy, then moved into software in 2007. Glad you like some of our old posts!
How Many Cups of Coffee Per Day Are Too Many?
I had been a paying Google Apps customer for personal and corporate use since the service was in beta. Until several weeks ago, that is. I was about to set up another Google Apps account for a new project when I stopped to consider what I would be funding with my USD $50 per user per year

This is exactly how I feel about Google Apps. I used to recommend it to customers, now I hesitate to recommend it, even though the alternatives aren't as easy or fully-featured without a lot more work. Thanks to the author for setting this lot up, I'll definitely be looking at it, and possibly using a few of the pieces.

Ansible is great though; even if you're not setting up your own private cloud it's worth taking a look at for deployment. AnsibleWorks really should set up an extensive library of playbooks like this, each isolated so that they can easily be mixed and matched. Their examples were a bit limited and specific last time I looked.

Does anyone have any tales of using Dovecot (good or bad), as I'm considering installing it?
Author here. I have another active HN account, but I don't want it associated with my name.

If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know. I'm pretty new to this whole "blogging" thing.
Question for people using these progress bars: Are you actually doing the computation to accurately estimate the time it takes to complete the action indicated by the progress bar, or are you simply showing a progress bar as a visual cue to any loading in the same way people have been using spinning AJAX loaders?
Sorry if I was unclear. It's not taking the system down that I am surprised at... it's keeping it down for weeks. How many people have software jobs that would accept a sev 1 outage for that long? I know we would get escalated to the CEO. But I guess that's the benefit for Apple... they don't have to care about their developer customers.

And steps to reproduce should help you bring the system up faster.
Small Firm Creates A 3D-Printed Scale Model Of The Hyperloop
How can you compare two different requests without knowing the payload?