skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>1) It's not only elected officials who've abused their power. Employees of the FBI are not elected by citizens and the citizens have little power to change the makeup of the organization. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03....

I agree. It's an elitist culture of special agent assholes and "everyone else". Trust me, I don't like the FBI. But, people within the organization also have very little power to change it -- they're extremely reticent to any kind of change regardless of efficiency gains. It took months of planning for them to even consider using an excel macro I wrote that could save millions of dollars per year.

>2) Institutional culture plays a large part in abuses that continue through administrations and even changes in departmental leadership. Institutional culture doesn't simply change because the head of the beast is re-appointed. (And even in the case of the current elected head of the Executive, many things have not changed though changes were promised, but that's a slight digression.)
You talk about people with different moralities, and then mention that "people are much too lazy to be putting that much effort into a government job." I read that as regardless of people's personal opinions, they're too lazy to challenge the status quo and would rather keep their heads down and receive their paychecks. Without whistleblower protections, that's exactly the environment that's fostered.

I agree, whistleblower protections would be a massively positive change in how governance works in the US, and would make people accountable for decisions which have significant impact on national policy, security, and economy. That being said, I don't see either Manning or Snowden as whistleblowers.

>Finally, in my opinion, all this is moot. We should necessarily question those in authority, we should necessarily limit the power given to those in government, and we should necessarily suspect those in power to have anything other than our own best interests in mind.

Definitely. I'm personally hoping that this stuff spawns a legitimate third party as a true representative of what this generation's ideals are heading towards. The smart money, though, is on incumbents commandeering the messages and subverting them a la Tea Party.
| I wonder if new insurance files will have any influence on the actions of their enemies.

Even without that, no effect. Blackmailing a bureaucracy... it's not like dealing with a single rational actor. That's the Hollywood version of Washington.

It's like coming upon a traffic jam and deciding you should bribe those responsible so you can go on your way.
There are any number of reasons why service-people don't give their full names or unique identifying information over the phone; surely, this is one of them.
That was then and this is now. Budget wars aside, all those co-operate constantly anyway.

So you don't have a historic example? Your ignorance is amazing.

Its about damn time someone started calling people out on this crap, and I'm starting with you. YOU DON'T KNOW what you're talking about. So shut the $%## up, and do some basic history research.

Listen, I could demolish my own argument in one second. I've only partially reported the facts in my post, and I'm not telling the complete story. There is a big history in the 70s, and anyone who has studied the Church Committee, COINTELPRO, Nixon Administration, and FISA courts should know where I'm going with this. Its basic 1970s history, and the NSA was all wrapped up in that controversy from years ago.

Right now, you are making up bull$* based on ignorance. You use weasel words, "what if" scenarios, and suppositions to "support" your opinion. On the other hand, there are some _FACTS_ that we can discuss, but only if you can prove to me that you aren't a dumb, ignorant sheep of the masses.

EDIT: Here's a hint. What is St. Patrick known for?
This is so absurd. There is absolutely nothing sexist about this statement unless you WANT it to be sexist. If a woman said this, would it be sexist? No. But a man saying it would make it so. What if a female programmer said "something your Dad can use"? Would she be sexist and ageist also?

Probably not. I'm a left-of-center guy, but I'm so sick of this politically correct bullshit coming out of left field. The complete inability to understand that not everyone is thinking of the broad, social contexts of oppression everytime they utter a statement.

You KNOW WHAT HE MEANT when he said that statement, but in the typical, annoying trait unique to yuppie white assholes, you seek to distance yourself from a heritage of being an oppressor by constantly pointing out racism/sexism/ageism. It's a game, and it doesn't matter whether what you are pointing at is REAL, AND AFFECTS SOMEONE, it just matters that you score your points to prove to the professional victim class that you're not one of the bad guys, even though you look like one.

Please, feel free to protest the JIF peanut butter slogan: "Choosy moms choose JIF". But no, there isn't an organized professional victims organization around single dads, so nobody will be protesting that, because why would you? There are no points to score.

Newsflash: Your parents and grandparents were probably racist bigots like every other cracker in this country. Your game does nothing to help. A woman who is being denied a promotion at work because of her gender will get zero help from your bullshit game. She will instead be hurt by it, because of the "crying wolf" that idiots like you do for your game that causes eye-rolling in 95% of the population.
At this point in time we have plenty of evidence that the NSA has not been staying within the lines. If nothing else the "parallel construction" collaboration with the DEA shows that the line between the NSA and the corrupt sharing of information with agencies that are not entitled to collected intelligence is happening. The executive branch has come up with a number of ways to shield programs of questionable legality from legal scrutiny outside of it's own chosen framework of understanding...

So the obvious answer is that we need an independent congressional commission, preferably headed by Ron Wyden; to provide a complete accounting of what has been happening in the past decade. Such commission would need the power to unilaterally declassify items of concern and would be tasked with coming up with a framework of oversight and accountability that would enable legal and necessary signals intelligence functions while preserving the constitutional rights of American citizens and the privacy concerns of rest of the world.

Secret laws, secret courts; wholesale and indiscriminate data collection paired with indefinite retention of all data as potentially culpable are not reflective of American values.
Nib (CSS3 extensions for Stylus) released in v1.0
I'm not American but I thought Berkeley was prestigious and yet this graduate's job is to cold call restaurants touting coupons. No wonder Andy's mad!
That's exactly it: we do not have a commonly implemented lossy format that supports transparency.
I appreciate that you want access to their content, and I may personally agree they ought to build an API. But isn't it up to them to decide whether or not to do so?

Otherwise isn't it just stealing?

(Fully expecting this to be a controversial comment, but I'm curious what the prevailing sentiments on scraping without permission are these days. Good, because all content should be free, especially crowd-sourced content? Or bad, because the contributors didn't agree to such third-party usage, and it could limit Rap Genius' ability to build a business?)
Tracing functions was available in Lisp shortly after the big flood, when mankind killed the last dinosaurs.
They are changing the encoder in such a way that the resulting PNG does not decode exactly, but instead approximates the original image. This turns it into a lossy process. It doesn't really matter if this process happens before or after the PNG encoding step (in fact, from how they describe it, it sounds like it it is integrated into the PNG encoding process, not simply a pre-processor); the combined process of any filtering and PNG encoding is lossy, as in it does not preserve all information necessary to produce a bit-identical output.
And for watching porn...
>I'm typing to the people who want actual facts to back the discussion.

Don't forget to disclose any conflict of interest, ie your former, and perhaps even your current employers! Also, instead of mere claims of fact, try supporting the claims with credible data.

>so in the case of the "20"->"202" mixup.... Sounds to me like people legitimately trying to do their jobs,

Sounds to me like the kind of thing that an automated system ought to be able to flag/prevent.
I would assume they are at least thinking about an API, as it's fairly easy to construct/what they are doing is easily portable elsewhere (Think Medium like comments all over the place).

With this said, nice work.
Mac or Thinkpad?
I am a software developer , and looking for alternative to my laptop. Which one does most developers use?
Interview with Ricardo Semler of SEMCO in Brazil
I wonder what this guys week will be like starting monday morning?

Is this HN story going to do anything negative to his career?
if you do something like:

wait for data from fs.readfile 'test.txt'
print data.toString

and readFile calls back with an error (the first argument is non-null), the error will be thrown just before the print statement. So print will not execute and you'll get a stack trace. The cool thing is that you can do these async calls within try blocks:

try
wait for data from fs.readfile 'test.txt'
print data.toString()
if data.length > 0
wait for data2 from fs.readfile 'test2.txt'
print data2.toString()
else
print 'too short'
catch e
print 'there was an error'
wait for resp from db.save()

Will do what you expect - abort after either wait for if it fails and run the catch clause. Think about how you'd do that in JS:

var error = null;
var data, data2, resp;
fs.readFile('test.txt', function (err, data) {
if (err) return handleErr(err);
console.log(data.toString())
if (data.length > 0) {
return fs.readFile('test2.txt', function (err, data2) {
if (err) return handleErr(err);
console.log(data2.toString());
return closeout();
});
} else {
console.log('too short');
return closeout();
}
});
function handleErr(err) {
console.log('there was an error');
return closeout();
}
function closeout() {
return db.save(function (err, r) {
if (err) throw err;
resp = r;
});
}
We actually don't, WebP can do this, but it's by no means common yet. This is actually a reasonable use of PNG still, it's optimizing the contents for the lossless algorithm. You might be able to take the difference/error and put it in another image and layer them to make it give back the detail.
I'm typing to the people who want actual facts to back the discussion.

And you still haven't explained why anybody would accept your unsubstantiated assertions as fact.

What they don't post is how many firings/missed promotions that has led to.

Who cares? That the incidents are happening at all is the point.

If that was a contractor that was responsible for that, they're already gone. If it was a government employee, they're likely not an analyst anymore.

Again, assertion which might be true, or might be made up from whole cloth. Without some sort of evidence, your audience - regardless of who they are - have no way of evaluating the veracity of your claims.

If the NSA was so trigger-happy to violate American rights, why would they even keep track of the number of violations?

Fair point. I'd suspect it's because they have to maintain at least a veneer of legitimacy in order to avoid having Congress starting to dig deeper and deeper into their operations, and potentially even pull the plug altogether.
Well, that is the whole point of functioning regulations - if someone doesn't care, then you simply bill them until they bleed and can't ignore it.

If "don't care" is a reasonable option, then that particular DoNotCall regulation is defective by design.
OP here. It's a fair point. I'd love to hear the thoughts of other HNers.

I tend to think that this kind of thing is okay for personal use, whereas it wouldn't be en masse - for instance, if you were using it to power and advantage a competing music site. Others' opinions may differ.

For instance, I've previously built scrapers for banking services (American Express [https://github.com/timrogers/amex] and Lloyds TSB [https://github.com/timrogers/lloydstsb]) and the UK's university application system, UCAS (https://github.com/timrogers/ucas) and none of these organisations seem to have had any problem with it, but the library has been really gratefully received by users.
Obviously, I hate to be negative (always a lie), but mentioning GNU software under the title of open source really isn't helpful.

I see the author does call it free software, but it wouldn't hurt to make it clear there is a big difference open source and free software.

Open source means you have the option of delivering source to the binary's recipient. Experience tells me that a very low % of developers take this option when the software as a whole that they deliver is not open source or free software. This means, as you look from the start of the software food chain (the lowest level libraries) to the top, the rate of passing on of source code drops very quickly.

If the GNU toolset/libraries had not been GPL, I very much doubt the Linux kernel would have been GPL and I very much doubt you'd have an operating system that's as robust and heavily used as GNU/Linux.

Normally, I'd let it pass, but when an article talks about ethics of "open source", I think the distinction needs to be made.
Yeah I only asked because I agree with the above poster that we can't consider WebP common yet but was unsure if I was forgetting something. I can see the utility in this then, at least as a stopgap.
Number of tokens is a better metric than number of characters.
National Security threats to be detailed at 'The Hackers Conference' 2013
Thoughtful reply, I really appreciate that. Thank you.

And don't get me wrong—I love APIs, I build them for a living. And I know how much users love them. Unfortunately, not all companies love providing them, or have the economics of doing so fully worked out.
What I always ask: what freedoms? I can't think of really any activity I am not paying for. One can't even escape having any single piece of land without havig to annually pay a license to the government to keep it.

So when we are told others hate our freedoms, I want to know specifically which ones those are.

If they say "religion" I don't count that as one as I am not religious. If they say "speech" I'd like to point to "free speech zones" and other direct limitations.

I can't think of anything that is truly 100% free.
Groupon is one good class-action lawsuit away from nonexistence. Here's hoping it comes sooner rather than later if this is the kind of tactic their salesmen need to resort to now.
Food:Perfect item to FENCE on BLACK MARKET?
I don't like callbacks but I don't have anything to add to the discussion except this irony:

Do you want callbacks? why instead of writing var a = 1 + 2; don't like to write:

var a;
sum(1,2, function(result) { a = result; });
It might not be extortion, because one of the elements of extortion is coercion, and the sales rep's mail wasn't coercive, but instead spiteful.

Had the rep instead said "maybe all this could be avoided if you would simply make the time to talk to me for 15 minutes on the phone tomorrow", it might be more cut-and-dry.
Thanks. I'd imagine an API is on the cards, but I could be wrong. As far as I can see, beyond the website, their data has two markets:

- Embedding in personal blogs - this is probably best achieved by a simple embed code (which I'm planning to use my gem to build), rather than a full API

- Commercial use - for instance, Spotify (or competitor) might like to display rich lyrics in-app.

The situations which would demand a full-on API, I suspect, would be commercial use. Thus, I'd imagine that any API they build will be private and commercial, providing a (first?) revenue stream.
By definition, a CODEC starts with some series of bits (source) that encodes information into a new series of bits (encoding). A CODEC is said to be "lossy" when the results of the decoded encoding does not match the source, ie. information encoded in the source stream gets dropped.

Various techniques are used to accomplish this. One side of the scale is to simply degrade the quality of the original. The other is to use visual/acoustic changes humans have difficulty in recognizing. For instance, the human hear has a minimum distance between frequency and loudness of two tones. The softer tone is dropped in MP3 depending on "compression" level; thus, from a source fidelity standpoint, the quality is "lossy" since the encoded form no longer has the original's content. From a human ear quality standpoint, the quality is barely noticeable to most people.
People lie on their LinkedIn. You had one class at Berkeley or you interned as a Genius and you worked for Apple.

LinkedIn is a massive circle jerk of buzzwords and whores recommending other whores.
In many states you can be given a citation for soliciting people who have expressly told you not to.
No problem - great to engage with people's opinions. HN has such a wealth of knowledge.

You might find my response below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6229617) interesting, on that front. My guess is that for Rap Genius, the only API that will make real sense is one offered on a commercial basis.
More like- has any business had any?

I would love to see how many times a business that tried groupon after the first time.
Well here's a site… www.pictobar.com

But I'm not sure if this is what you mean. I'm curious to how you think one can be quantified/qualified on a site to be useful to others.
Well, obviously, there's no way of telling or he'd simply crack the file and say it was random.

His point is based more on softer considerations like "they never used the previous insurance file yet, have they?" and "Wikileaks pulls a lot of stunts" and "this is just the sort of thing that would appeal to a cryptogeek like Assange whose avowed purpose is to throw sand into the gears of secretive organizations" and "so how did they get 300GB+ of leaked stuff since the site has been half-inactive for years and Assange completely distracted by his legal issues? Who would trust them with it? eg. Snowden didn't go to Wikileaks".
It's not only on HN, obviously. The FB commenters don't seem to happy.
Break out a shell, I live in the shell?

Servers don't have a GUI and I do about 90% of administration from the command line on the Desktops/Laptops (the only time I use a GUI for configuration is to configure the GUI..meta).

Linux isn't Windows or Mac, The command line is expected to be used for administration (and this approach has lots of benefits, script-ability, reproducibility, the ability to send the same command to 50 identical servers to name a few).

The unix (linux/freeBSD) command line is one of it's stand-out features (others been stability, cost and ease of deployment.

I've yet to find a GUI that allows me to manipulate files and data in a general way that matches the linux command line, take this for example.

#!/bin/bash

php artisan routes | grep -i $1 |sort -k 4 | cut -d '|' -f 3 | sed 's/ GET //' | while read ln;
do

filename=${ln//[\/]/_}.png;
echo $filename;
cutycapt --url=http://metaflow.co.uk"$ln" --out=/home/dev/screenshots/$filename --min-width=1280 --min-height=1280;
done

(not this script is a hack job, bash-aficionados can wince now)
That dumps out a list of all the routes in my currently developed webapp then loops over them converting the url to a sensible filename (/add/customer becomes _add_customer.png etc) then it uses a command line utility to visit that URL and grap an image of the page at 1280x1280 (using the webkit engine) and saves them in a folder in my home folder.

With a single command I can dump 50 mock screens to png and name them with the URL and I can do this every time I change them automatically.

This is what my home desktop looks like on a typical day http://i.imgur.com/vLMVAI8.png
Maybe pointed out elsewhere, but it looks like Andy J's Yelp Friend Stephan S was compelled to write a 1 star review on the same day. So it looks like he followed through with that.

http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=BfVinuuuFVCAr77TnI9k...
Well, now I feel silly.
You would have to demonstrate that this was an encouraged practice, and supported by management. At the very least, you would have to show the company was negligent in responding to accusations of extortion.
I consider Open Source as personal growth. Putting out code there to be questioned, scrutinised, discussed or even used.

I use my own open source stuff constantly so it does serve a purpose apart from above.

For the summer I looked at (what I consider) poor open source implementations of libraries I use and made better ones myself. (Yes I did look into making PRs, but they were usually denied)

150 days of commits, pull request and comments - still counting.

I call it allmännytta.
It would be interesting to see a correlation between positive reviews and groupon relationships.
0xfe your account is dead. but your comment is accurate:
> Interesting. He just got one of his cronies to write a review: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=BfVinuuuFVCAr77TnI9k...

I wonder how long it's going to take before he realizes he is fucked?
Well, at first: which os you prefer? Are you goind to use w8, os_x, linux, bsd, solaris? What?
In which language do you code? Which are your main needs (battery, nice screen, a touch screen, a lot of usb to connect a lot of device, space, upgradability, low weight, etc)?
Chrome 30.0.1573.2 dev on OS-X 10.8.4. It was on the fifth.
Great catch. Flagged
If you follow the link the author set on the NSA asking "My NSA" to stop offering semi-automated filings, it's clear that the NSA isn't trying to coerce or intimidate, but rather is simply pointing out that the service doesn't actually work, because it generates noncompliant filings that NSA is prevented by law from even acknowledging.

That's one hop away, on a link this author chose for the story, and yet I'm left wondering whether the author even read it.
What is the cost of showstopper bugs in software?
Why California Per Capita Energy Use Flat While Rest of U.S. Has Increased 50%
To put it another way, the SQL standard doesn't guarantee any particular ordering. This does not mean that table storage must be unordered: it means that a database can store them in any order it wants, which might not be any order at all, or it might have some particular kind of order which the DB depends on to do its work.

But as a database user, you cannot count on that order matching what you, personally, would have implemented if you'd had a chance. ORDER BY clauses allow you to tell the database to sort the results of a query according to something appropriate for your particular needs, but this has no effect on how they are stored.
I like this. I'd would wish it was a demand that Gov services used open source. Sure pay a company to build whatever, but make sure they publicise the code.

Would make companies that take government missions more transparent. Writing tests, decent docs.
Mac using whatever OS you like.
Do we really need another nomad tutorial?

Sorry, I couldn't resist.
You need to download the extension, open the extensions settings, then drag the .crx file into there.
He's definitely only paying off the interest on all those student loans.
Haven't checked, but it may not apply to businesses - I'd be surprised if a company could opt all of its phone numbers out of all potential vendor calls.
Isn't this really an error in the spec though? Based on what the words mean, isinf and insnan logically should always return false when called with an int argument.