skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's kooks out there who think the DEA is captured too. Obviously that's a ridiculous paranoid notion. It's not like there's any money in illegal drugs or anything, and everyone knows being a middle manager at the DEA pays the big bucks.

What I'm fundamentally getting at in my OP is elite deviance:

http://www.amazon.com/Elite-Deviance-Edition-David-Simon/dp/...

The NSA will not protect us from the deviance of those with real power, because those with real power can fight back. Those with real power are also those who have the resources to execute a real worst-case-scenario attack-- exactly the kind of terrorist attack this is supposed to be protecting us from. If somebody nukes New York it will not be an anti-government windbag with an Internet connection who just got fired from their job and decided to search for "how to build an atomic bomb." It will be an elite deviant, supported by a network of elite deviants and powerful ideological sympathizers. Someone with the motive and the means to execute on such a thing.

This system might detect motive with some probability of success, but it will not be used against those with means because those people (and their supporters) will pull strings and hire million dollar attorneys. (Or turn agents, pay off managers at government contractors, etc.)

I also have serious doubts about whether it'll stop the next Boston bomber or Timothy McVeigh either, but for different reasons: small players easily vanish into an ocean of false positives. There are mathematical limits that come into play here-- it's why undirected fishing expeditions in seas of scientific data are rarely successful.

This project is a dangerous, politically and socially irresponsible pork-barrel boondoggle that creates far more opportunities for crime and corruption than it prevents. Limits to government power and requirements for judicial oversight (a.k.a. peer review) aren't arbitrary whims or kooky notions supported by paranoids. They're a lot like the OSHA rules put in place at factories and industrial facilities. They are there to keep people from getting hurt and to keep expensive, dangerous accidents from taking place.
The second best way to hide something is by saying it vaguely.
alan_cx is not describing a scenario that fits with the explanation of being "flagged to death."

Alan is speaking about the "new" page, where you will routinely see dead articles if you have showdead enabled. In fact, if you reload the new page frequently you can see many articles that become dead the moment (effectively) they are posted. This isn't flagging; it's an automatic mechanism. It may be an automatic mechanism informed by previous heavy flagging of other articles from the same domain or any number of other heuristics, but it happens too quickly for it to be the result of user action on the specific article.

As far as I can tell, flagging affects the sorting algorithm for the home page (use of the user script "HN Slapdown" allows you to visualize each article's score versus its rank order, providing color coding to indicate heavily-flagged articles) but I have not in my admittedly short HN experience ever seen an article become dead as a direct result of flagging.

I have my own misgivings about the rigid title-normalization policy so I appreciate him and the op taking the time to ask some questions.
Wait, what?

Commercial providers have been making and supplying these foods for many years, and they've been used in a variety of settings for a long time.

How are these worse than Soylent, a product created by people who don't know what they're doing in their kitchens and advertised with a variety of probably illegal claims used with no medical supervision?
Tower Tips & Tricks: Viewing History
The game is especially fun to play with this running in the background :)
How Google Ventures does rapid prototyping ‘design sprints’ with its startups
I've just added one :)
Interesting, Nice work Pete!
They're made by people who know what they're doing, in clean factories, with quality ingredients.

I'm not surprised that products created by people who don't know what they're doing, in a kitchen, using god knows what ingredients, mixed in unsuitable ways, to be cheaper.
If you're doing typical e-commerce -- as opposed to, say, SaaS -- the cost of payment processing seems especially important, since it might eat into your (typically low) margins. Why would you recommend Stripe over an established, cheaper processor?
Did you read the whole thing? They call it an 'ersatz' currency. Look up the word ersatz it has pretty negative connotations it's hardly a neutral statement.
If you have untrusted input, XML has it's own issues [1].

> JSON is fundamentally a dump of a data structure, not a document format.

Exactly! IMHO, it's unfortunate that mark-up documents can be used to represent other data structures. It isn't what they're meant for, and there are (or "should be" if you're not fond of JSON) better tools for human-readable serialization.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_laughs
Let's Give Every NSA Employee an Anonymous Whistleblowing Opportunity
Turns out they aren't actually that cheap. To get a real EEG from Emotiv, it's $750 just for the device - the $300 version doesn't seem to actually be an EEG, they call it an EPOC, and don't exactly explain what it is, but do mention that it will not give you access to raw EEG data, which is what you need for any sort of legitimate experiment. On top of that, if you want to use the SDK, licensed properly, you need to pay an additional $500 or more. So if you want to play with an EEG and it's API, the minimum price you're really paying is $1250 - far from the $300 mentioned in the article.

In addition, these cheaper consumer EEGs don't produce research-grade data, so while they are good for messing around and experimenting, if you want to get serious, you'll need to upgrade to a more expensive headset.
this xml vs json debate is getting tiresome but as someone focused more on getting things done over optimizing processes here are my rules of thumb:

for data transmitters: lean towards json unless your data structures are deeply nested.

for data receivers: be prepared to handle both (as even in cases where json clearly makes more sense) as large orgs tend to lean towards xml. When an API offers both serialization options, choose the better one so through log analysis you can nudge the producer towards the optimal solution.
Attract new customers with local ads on the Google Maps app
If I understand correctly, when I make a nice app for a friend and you find out how much did he pay me, you will take out your gun, point at me and force me to give you money to sponsor some people who you believe earn less than you think they deserve? This does not sound libertarian at all.

How about: you do what you think is good for people and I do what I think is good for people. And we don't try to force each other to change our opinions. If you have something to say, put your gun down and make your arguments. Like we do here, over the internet.

Edit: if you propose some tax system, who do you think should execute it? Who should carry a gun to force people to give money? Who will watch the people who carry guns? Who will decide when the force was applied incorrectly? Will you have a moral system when 50%+1 majority can switch morality of murder by 180 degrees?
I have gone for half a year or longer exercising on average 5 times a week, sometimes more. Excercise is often physically draining for me afterwards. My experience is opposite of it taking a "long time to [feel?] benefits": it just takes 10 pushups to a 7 minute circuit workout for me to feel great and invigorated. A longer workout often leaves me feeling drained in the hours after. My circulatory system might feel much better, but my body feels tired.
I've actually had a different experience where clients are now requesting Stripe. My situation is unique in that across various sites clients got to experience PayPal, Braintree and Stripe. Due to a range of reasons with the flow of PayPal subscriptions to the phone nature and fee structure on Braintree (they might have simplified it now), Stripe is turning out to be the favorite even with the 7 day transfers.

There are also cases where developers do have some say, especially since many clients don't even care as long as they can accept payments--the fee is more or less on par. It's a favorite for me because when you look at Stripe.js + the API you can tell it was developed for use by other developers and not as an after thought.
A "pentaquine"
I just finished my first semester in C++, and as someone formerly familiar with PHP and javascript I was surprised at how much of an issue this is when you don't have operator overloading and bounds checking and have to manage memory and types yourself. I was spoiled by just expecting "string"+int to work.

I ended up taking all user inputs as strings then trying to cast them into floats with atof() to avoid overflows... which I'll probably learn is a terrible idea next semester.
> it depends on how people value the way you're making your livelihood

So if someone doesn't value how you make your livelihood, he's free to stomp on you?

You do realize, writing/music/film/art and other such forms of information do not spontaneously spring into existence? This article didn't just fall into the author's lap.

Here is an alternative: you go and do all the legwork that the author did, arrange the interviews, spend days or weeks writing the piece, and then release it for free to the world. That's a perfectly viable option.

But you don't work for free, do you? No, you prefer to let other people do the work, and then you shit on them from behind your computer screen.

"Here's another example of this: is it more ethical to disclose the ingredients of a drug so that millions in Africa can have it made cheaply and be treated"

That's definitely not an example of "this", it's an example of something that's very different in a lot of ways.

Again, do you think clinically-tested drug formulas just fall out of the sky? On average, it costs between $500M - $2B to develop a new drug. Whether you choose to ignore this or not, these are huge costs that companies need to recoup in order to stay in business and develop new drugs. If the formulas were given away, the companies would have to eat the costs of development and this would not be sustainable.

That doesn't mean we should be happy with the way things are. Our medical system is a mess. We should look for new ways to reduce the costs of drug development. Perhaps we should restrict drug developers from charging exorbitant amounts far in excess of the development costs. But, in my opinion, subverting the people who put in the effort to create is not the answer.
Related examples here: http://www.snopes.com/rumors/lottery.asp (one of the rare "true" Snopes articles).

Briefly, on the first anniversary of 9/11, 911 was a winning three-digit lottery number in New York. However, 5631 people chose that number so the payout was comparatively small.
Seriously? Do you eat meat? Try going for 40 days without eating it. Or wheat.

Changing your habits is hard and requires thought. I've recently given up meat and am suprised at the changes I've felt and at how difficult it is to socialize (restaurants, buffets, etc.) Does that mean I had an unhealthy relationship with chicken?
Vtalkie – Video Messaging App Review
With Vtalkie, it is easier to record and send text as well as video messages to friends, family, co-workers or just anyone using Vtalkie on iPhone, iPad or even on any android device.
You don't need composite tanks for SSTO. There have been normal rocket stages that have had high enough mass ratio and specific impulse big enough for SSTO, like in Titan, but they weren't used as SSTO.

One of the secrets is dense propellants which increases mass ratio considerably. It also makes higher thrust to weight ratio engines easier to implement (because pumps primarily pump volume rather than mass), and with identical initial acceleration, the dense propellant higher mass ratio lower impulse vehicle gets lighter faster and thus has higher acceleration towards the end of the flight, meaning less gravity losses. (Also air drag is less with a smaller vehicle, but it's not a big effect, though it is proportionally bigger for smaller vehicles.)

Hydrogen has the best specific impulse but it is non-dense. It is also hard cryogenic, meaning potential complexity in the vehicle, ground infrastructure and operations.

Also, big vehicles might be more expensive, even if their contents (the propellants) don't weigh much.
Am I right in thinking that Stripe has no option for a hosted payments page? This makes it much clearer to users that the site they are in does not process their credit card details correctly. I am aware of Stripe Checkout.
Time to first byte and search engines
Welcome to europe. Been waiting for you for a long time guys.
Ask HN: What is the right way to advertise side projects on HN?
I seem to be more scared by advertisement than I should be. I'm working on a few really small projects, not yet close to release and some of them probably only getting money from one ad. But right now I'd be happy to squeeze even $1 a day out of one. And of course some of them are merely open source projects.

I've seen peoples submissions dropping instantly just out of sheer bad timing (which seems to have a heavy influence on nearly everything here, especially if you're not living in the US), deleted or people beeing shadowbanned, probably because posting the same link twice because the first one got no attention isn't a good idea anyway. Or attention mongering in general.

I'm just wondering what steps I should take and if such submissions actually proved of any worth for people. I have no blog/github/personality in general/friends (yet) to get any traction or exposition anywhere. Though I write most of the code for enjoyment I know how I'd feel seeing 0 Stars hovering above my github repo for months.
People that are fit tend to have a higher tolerance towards alcohol.
Support the AES GCM cipher suites for TLS
Defining people as "sociopaths" is a stupid pop-psychology trend. Any human can be a "sociopath", simply cause someone to feel disgust towards another and watch the empathy fade away. Put personal gain in the way, and it's not even a question. There is nothing sociopathic about acting "cooly rational" around someone you don't like as it is standard human behavior.

The article could be rewritten with one sentence: "don't be naive".
You seem to be mistaken.

There is one combination with 6 Heads.

There are twenty combinations with 3 Heads and 3 Tails - therefore 3 Heads and 3 Tails is twenty times more likely to come up, true.

However, the specific sequence HTHTTH itself is no more likely than HHHHHH. It's just that a sequence with the same distibution of H and T is more likely.

If HHTHTT comes up and you picked HTHTTH, it might look similar but it's no good.

==

It's more likely that a lottery will result in a non-same-number sequences than a same-number sequence: true. This is because they are a much! bigger group of numbers.

However, an individual member of the same-number group has the same chance as an individual member of the non-same-number group.

2222222 is just as likely to come up as 2449776 is just as likely to come up as 9667224.
Great post, thank you. I'm wondering, when you "manually contacted the best developers", was this a telephone call or an email? I'm having a hard time finding the "fine line" of annoying telemarketing call or not. Although the service I provide would genuinely be useful to the one I contact (as useful as your service), it's hard not to sound like a telemarketer nonetheless.
I believe the actual issue was that messages started with very predictable greetings.

"we relied on the fact that the greater number of messages began with the letters ANX—German for "to", followed by X as a spacer"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma

Compressed files (indeed ANY files) having predictable headers is, of course, a major problem, and the argument that you could just omit the common stuff won't work very well either. (Let's suppose you leave off all the static parts until you get to a length stamp -- lengths are a classic example of not-very-random numbers (more significant digits are prone to be lower-valued).

In general, you want your cryptographic system to be reasonably foolproof when used by bored, careless people. For this reason rolling compression and encryption into a single implementation is probably the best option.
I taught myself and I believe it works for me.

My 2 attempts at going to university ended up being noise with little signal and I dropped out after building up some depression due to that. I had the similar issues with prior schooling and turns out building products with others seems to be the most effective way to learn for me.

It may very well not be the case for everyone so universities have their place, but there were many other flaws in the small subset I've experienced that should be fixed before I consider recommending them.

I also still have friends from that university, and most of them had to learn to self teach as soon as they got out.

So I think... in Computer Science, some people going to universities should self teach instead or find a better university. Showing childrens to teach themselves at an early age and having a school system supporting it could also be a good improvement for the future.

In your quote, the 'all' is probably an over-statement. But more people could give it a try.
Also noticed some people using - ____ wizard
Wow. That's a bad title. The rule doesn't make sense when the submitted title is accurate and nonsensational.
For those who are not familiar with Phusion Passenger: it is a Phusion Passenger is a fast and robust web server and application server for Ruby, Python and Node.js. It works by integrating into Apache and Nginx and turning them into a fully-featured application server.

You can compare it to (G)Unicorn, Puma and uWSGI. The difference is that Phusion Passenger integrates better with Nginx, is a lot easier to setup, and provides useful deployment, stability and security features such as process supervision, I/O concurrency protection, good admin tools for providing lots of insight, multitenancy, etc.
The beauty of stripe is that you CAN keep users on your site and process payments via a great API. Hosted payments would defeat the purpose.
Would that not bundle all the USD payments for the day into one conversion?

I would be very keen to have an individual conversion on each card payment as that is how our internal database sees the world.
Avoid these 6 common startup content marketing problems and you'll be golden.
The creator of Soylent addresses this. He says he now treats eating 'real food' like he does drinking alcohol -- an enhancement for social activity.

I am curious to try Soylent or something like it just for that 'Oh, this is unusual! What a pleasure!' kind of effect when eating regular food.
Interesting take. The missus often reminds me that the body does well to have a little time out from alcohol. At least a couple of days off between drinks. Which could allow for weekend and mid week drinking or some variant. It's easier said than done though.

For me I'm really crap at switching off from work, and I can easily torture myself at the thought that I should be working. However when I drink, I pretty much say to myself - that's enough. And likewise if I'm on my bike.

So when I'm not drinking or not exercising, I'm not relaxing, and that's just a recipe for disaster for me - the knock on effect is that my programming really suffers. I find it a very difficult cycle to break away from, despite there being a simple solution.

At least you might be giving your brain time to breathe when you are exercising.
I just gave an invited talk at KDD about deep learning in which I covered this algorithm, so it's great to see this code appear now.

For anyone interested in text analysis: PLEASE study and use this code and the referenced papers. It's importance is hard to overstate. It is far, far better than all previous approaches to word analysis. These representations are the dimensional compression that occurs in the middle of a deep neural net. The resulting vectors encode rich information about the semantics and usage pattern of each word in a very concise way.

We have barely scratched the surface of the applications of these distributed representations. This is a great time to get started in this field - previous techniques are almost totally obsoleted by this so everyone is starting from the same point.
I may be wrong, but legally Coca-Cola had to protect the slogan, otherwise they would lose the copyright, no? The "our advertising will help you" defense doesn't hold up in court.

Can any lawyers confirm?
Damn.

Between Stripe and gocardless we finally have a viable zero-friction way of taking payments.

This is brilliant!.
Authorative: http://minsvyaz.ru/common/upload/prikaz_16-01-2008_N6.pdf (sorry, the document's in Russian and I can't find any translation, nor skilled enough to do that myself) - I'm not a lawyer, but in my understanding (as I was explained) this decree contains requirements to networks that ISPs must conform to (otherwise they can't get the license and provide services), and it states (in thick legalese) that all subscriber-generated traffic must be mirrored to operational search activities control ("пункт управления ОРМ"), which is usually (but maybe not universally) a black box sitting in a rack.

Non-authorative reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM#SORM-2

From what I've heard, SORM-2 hardware is a secured 1U *nix-based server (peer was not sure whenever it was BSD or GNU/Linux variant), running some kind of sniffer (probably pcap-based) software with some FSB's in-house tools. They are supposed to be dormant for the most of time, but nobody except FSB knows what they're actually doing (and they don't have to report when they're doing a lawful intercetion).
I like json to, because its lean and mean. But with a schema you can built a connection from system A to system B without having to deal with the underlying XML. However protocolbuffers would be a better choice then. :p
Beginner’s Guide to Objective-C: Language and Variables
Not quite; they add another 2% fee to convert to £GBP unfortunately.
> Why would someone down vote this parent comment?

I didn't (I can't downvote) but I would guess it's because it's wrong. See sker's comment above:

Right now there's a good example of this problem on the front page. The article about the Android/PRNG security flaw is aptly editorialized as "Google confirms Java and OpenSSL crypto PRNG on Android are broken," but the original article is titled "Some SecureRandom Thoughts," which is meaningless and I would never have clicked it under any circumstances. Thankfully the mods left this one alone.

And quadhome's response shows that he's the one who edited the title, so edits can be made that could be seen as putting words in the OP's mouth:

I revised the title for that link several times. My final edit lifted the style of the Ars Technica[1] headline, but specifically added the more technical "Java and OpenSSL crypto PRNG" that I worried would be incomprehensible to the layman...
It's payment systems that are supported. Not debit or credit cards.

My debit card is from Visa, and Visa is a supported payment system.

I think that's why he makes a point of saying American Express in the blog post too, it's one of the more obscure payment systems in the UK.

On a side note, I remember my mother, who runs a corner shop, giving anyone who pays on AmEx the evil eye because they have a higher merchant fee in the UK and it takes a few extra days to clear.

I wonder if Stripe UK have the same fees for AmEx...
Which lotteries use single bin? That seems to have a non-uniform distribution. All of the ones I know use one bin per digit.