skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have yet to see evidence that he has lied. Keep in mind that the personal data being mined by these systems was already recorded, legally and gathered legally with the contracts you agreed to with these companies. I've read the EULA and every single one of them states they will cooperate with authorities for data requests. Without evidence of abuse, there is no lie here.

>How is that coherent with your first sentence?

you can't have it both ways. People who live in USA and are technical would know about these systems. People external and non-technical would not necessarily. Is that so hard to understand?

>What checks do you think are built in, exactly?

Read the article, please, before commenting.

>effective checks on the NSA's power are not in place.

There is still no evidence that your statement is true. The article shows that effective checks are there, but like all defenses, they can be flanked. Thus Snowden had to abuse his trust to get around them. This is just reality. There will never be a defense that can't be flanked.

You can say that this article is proof that there is ineffective checks, but then you have to admit that this article proves that Snowden had a ulterior motive when he accepted his contract with NSA. You must accept that if the goverment broke some rules to do their job (which so far I have not seen any evidence for) then you must also accept that Snowden broke some rules to steal these documents.
A nice way to put it: "extendeding the concept of screen to the network in a transparent way". Thanks.
There's nothing to stop the next administration from challenging it. This is the biggest problem in my mind. I'm happy that things are moving in a direction I agree with but I view the patchwork of state and municipal legislation as sub-optimal and largely a work in progress.
Yes, but unlike most programmers, people (restricted to bank employees in my original example)

1. Love windows, even though they may use an Iphone.

2. Find it very productive to get work done. That is because it IS a brilliant operating system for all categories of users (including programmers).

3. Have jobs (a lot of them) because of Microsoft Office. As of today, there is simply no alternative - anyone who claims otherwise is lying or has an ulterior motive. And no one cares that you can write Python macros in OpenOffice/LibreOffice.
A vim plugin pack could work very well—I think the problem is with many of the plugins, which were built to scratch the author's itch and inadvertently dig their tendrils into half of vim's functionality. That's sort of tolerable when installing them one at a time (and figuring out how to loosen their grip one at a time), but every time I've installed a plugin pack I've suddenly had a vastly different vim that was both buggy and much slower.

gitgutter, ctrlp, and pretty much anything from tpope are all great in this regard: they do one localized thing and it Just Works. (Downside is when that "one thing" is a shortcut or function, and with no other cues I forget I even have the plugin installed.) On the other hand I've had pretty terrible experiences with SuperTab, which required a lot of fiddling and still breaks my Tab key sometimes, and ctags is such a pain that I've never gotten around to making it actually work. But those are useful enough that they end up in most plugin bundles, so you get a Cartesian product of the interference and brokenness of all of them.
I was looking for something like that (hosted) yesterday and I stumbled upon cloudinary[1].

The do the resizing part for you as well as the hosting.
But the best thing they offer is face recognition. It's incredible! I haven't been in live with a service since guthub.

Their free tier is probably enough for smaller projects (but without backups in your S3 bucket)

Thumbnails with focus on the face looks fantastic!

[1] http://cloudinary.com/invites/lpov9zyyucivvxsnalc5/bwrrdazeh... (affiliate link. Without: http://cloudinary.com)
I was thinking about this too -- but if they compromised your encryption JS couldn't they also compromise your checksum JS?
These discussions are always rife with political undertones and ethical hazards.
For those like me who want to call it from their zsh, add the following to your .zshrc:

explain(){ curl -s $(echo "http://explainshell.com/explain/$1?args=${@:2}" | sed -e 's/ /+/g') |
sed -n '/<pre/,/<\/pre>/p' | sed -s 's/<[^>]>//g' | sed -e 's/^ //g;s/ *$//g' | grep '.' | cat }

and call it, for example like:
explain git status -s
Coffee script may compile (or transpile, depending on your preferred term) into javascript...but it isn't javascript.

Misleading title...
whaaa? they pay no federal income tax. they pay lots of other taxes like fica and everyday sales tax

they make so little that do not qualify. let's punish them even more??

this comment is indicative of terrible elitist attitudes that plague HN comments nowadays
This is a perfect use for http://www.docker.io, btw. I'd love to be able to run 'docker run pillbox' and have it download and install all the dependencies.

(The point of docker is that everything pillbox requires on can be separated completely out from the rest of the system. pillbox requires many libraries. it could require nginx + a special config for proxying. I don't want to do 'apt-get install pillbox' and have it install all this stuff system-wide. I want to keep everything pillbox needs in a separate environment and communicate with it via a port.)

I think nginx should be included for a proxy cache in front of pillbox. Docker would make this simple to setup.
"just a manager and marketer?"

You realize that late 70s and early 80s were full of 100s companies trying to do the same exact thing as Apple right? Just like there were 100s of competitors to Facebook, Dropbox, Reddit and anything you can think of.

Building a successful business is much much harder than building a product - I'm sorry, but speaking as someone who codes, there is no shortage of good technical people really, there is a shortage of people that can build multi-billion dollar businesses from nothing.
The number of exit nodes and bridges hasn't changed nearly as drastically [1].

I'd wager it's a mix of publicity post NSA debacle and more botnets coming online.

[1] https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html
Liquor & Tobacco companies probably spend more money lobbying to keep it illegal. Marijuana is a direct competitor to those two products.
>Why trying to understand implementation in the language that will never be used in the production?

Because the end goal is understanding the algorithm, NOT writing production code.

Those reading the article will never even write a FFT function anyway, since you can use ready made highly optimized versions. So knowing what the production code looks like is totally moot to them.

It's like you're arguing why ever use pseudo-code. Because it's readable, makes the process easy to follow, and doesn't contain all the boilerplate junk you'd need to get performance in a production implementation. Python serves this role very well, with the added benefit that it's not even pseudo.

Plus, ever heard of prototyping?
Five things your prospect wants to know before they will purchase from you
What is superior in windows explorer? Is that sarcasm?
What do you guys think about a service (think pingdom) that you set up to periodically request a js file from your server and check it against a known good checksum?

EDIT: to spell this out, you would, self host the stanford library, for example, and have this service verify it against a known good checksum.
>Another possibility is that Snowden had the ability to create login credentials and just gave himself the ability to log in as another user.

This is called "seperation of duties" and it's covered in the RBAC security model.
Open Source applications in iOS are nice for developers to help them build better applications, but given iOS is such a closed locked system, it is meaningless for users. A part of the open source idea is that users can know and have some control over the software that runs on the hardware that belongs to them. As long as iOS remains a locked proprietary walled garden owned by Apple and carriers, open source on iOS is meaningless to them. Maybe we've all just given up on that idea though.
Ah! Ok that makes more sense then
The purpose of measuring productivity is to manage it.
There are two categories of factors that decide the overall productivity: the factors within the developers (capability, motivation, etc) and the factors outside the developers (tools, process, support, etc).

True, it's hard to objectively measure the overall productivity using a universal standard, but it is relatively easier to measure the productivity fluctuation caused by the external factors. Velocity measurement in Agile practice is mostly for that end.

For the internal factors, the best way, and arguably the only effective way, to manage it is probably to hire good motivated developers. I think most top level software companies have learned that.
deception is what Snowden used to gain roles he couldn't have otherwise. It perfectly fits the definition of impersonation. By using someone else's credentials he broke the separation of duty enforcement of the RBAC model, thus he could probably escalate his privileges once he had that access. The superior who gave out his credentials probably didn't comprehend RBAC and thought he was just cutting out some red tape to chase down terrorists.
So in order to get marijuana rescheduled, there is a broad consensus that at least medical needs to be legal in 26 states. (To either get the Supreme Court to review the issue or force action by congress.)

Right now most state officials want to legalize it in their states, but they are afraid because of the conflict between state and federal laws. This is especially true since the government has not until now said that they would not prosecute government employees for administering state programs. This has dissuaded a lot of state reps from voting for reform who otherwise would. This issue is completely gone as of today, so you're going to see support at the state level going from around 40 percent to around 60 percent overnight. It's impossible of overstate how huge this is.
Where should I continue learning?
Hey, I need some advise.

I started learning programming a few months back. I know commands, how functions, data types and all that stuff works. I've worked with Javascript, Python, Ruby, CSS and HTML.

I created a couple games with simple algorithms on python on the promp so I think I know enough to make my way around to creating a program.

My goal is to learn to develop web apps which is where I get stuck. I don't know where to continue, for example how to use WAMP with Django, or HTML with Django or RoR, or if it even works like that...

Any website or book out there to get me started on this?
>In addition changing a header file can at times trigger a lengthy build.

Well yeah, but that's true for doing it by hand too. If it's that slow, you won't have automatic builds on anyway, and you can usually cancel it if you need the CPU for some other reason (in which case, again, why do you have automatic builds on).

And even if it were only a 90% thing, that's a 90% savings. I mean, literally, if you change the name alone, change the header name. You get immediate notification that other locations might need changing if/when the build fails. Similarly for argument order / name (type will probably cause build failures).

But all those build failures would happen anyway if you changed it by hand, so it's not any different, just faster. Isn't faster the goal here?
I agree that there should be some bar that specifies if you get to vote or not. I am not a fan that someone who doesn't work and gets subsidies from the government has the same quantity and quality of votes that I do.
This is basically the inverse of Caja.

Caja lets you safely run untrusted code in your app.

Defensive JavaScript lets you run your code which contains secrets in an untrusted app (assuming you're able to load the code without the app seeing it somehow)
The point is not that you can't find them, but that you are less likely to be able to reliably filter and hire only people that are loyalists and will remain loyalists in the face of learning what the agencies actually do, including when you're placed in situations where you might incite reduced loyalty such as when firing people.

Not only might they be facing a less loyal generation as your pool to hire from, but they can also expect to hire much more than they did a generation or two ago:

These services have grown, and the average time people will stay employed there has nosedived, and the usage of short term contractors have skyrocketed

Given that, it is not unreasonable to believe that the odds of slipping up and hiring the wrong people is rapidly rising, and also that the number of events that are high risk to maintaining loyalty, such as people feeling they are passed over for promotions or raises, or firings or other personell issues will go through the roof simply due to the increased number of people involved.
I wonder what they use for the face recognition, and if that could be added to pillbox?
Try Drew Neill's book- Practical Vim. It's the best vim book I have read. There is just so much information packed into that book, it's astounding. It made me go from a vim beginner to a vim semi-expert.
Not open source - not possible to trust it. I switched to duplicity and a cheap storage (shell) provider accessible via ssh.
Couple of things you have wrong here:

1. RedHat make pretty much most of their money from support, training/cert and consultancy services, not selling F/OSS.

2. Your comment:

"There are tons of people who are perfectly content to use unsupported, unlicensed versions of their software, in the form of CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora"

RHEL is licensed under the GPL, they can't really change that and they can't not release the source, so CentOS, SL, Fedora (and Oracle Linux) are not actually unlicensed, they're GPL licensed distros from the RH upstream. Yes they may be unsupported, but they're certainly not "unlicensed" (or illegal/rip-offs if that's what you meant by unlicensed).

RedHat have no choice but to make the RHEL source available. You also forget that the Fedora folks feed back into RHEL a lot of cutting edge stuff that's stable.
Fairy Nuff

I suppose he ends with throwing his hands in the air and saying we cannot do it. Well actually we can achieve a measure of literacy, just not perhaps fluency.

We know if a child can read and read well. It's possible to take their written work and assess or mark it. We can (and do in code reviews) do the same for code written by adults.

The problem he is stating is IMO in two parts - measuring basic competence (is a person of net benefit, can they write competent code, are they literate?) which is possible, and how good are they compared to their peers, which is much more subjective and based on taste as much as anything.

So I agree we should not try to measure productivity, I disagree that that's the end of the conversation, mostly because I disagree that productivity is one thing - I see it as more Hygiene/Motivator
Why are people as short sighted to always say there is a limited number, and expect they define every possibility.
Toyota reveals details on 4th-gen Prius: 55 MPG goal and likely 2015 release
A lot of people are moving their hacking attempts under tor. They want to brute-force your ssh server, rdp, etc. but they don't want to go to prison.
I'm cheering you on, babuskov!

I've used git with my sci-fi novel, Planet Oz, since I first drafted it back in 2008. Quite glad I did since it makes the editing process much easier to track.

Can't wait to begin the Kickstarter in October.
And 25 years ago they had those jobs because of Lotus 1-2-3. Until they started demanding Office.

And 35 years ago they had those jobs because of VisiCalc. Until they started demanding 1-2-3.

Etc.

50-100 years is a long time, is my point.
Linking this to racism is absurd.

The main reason why racism (or other discriminations like sexism) is bad, is because the disadvantaged person cannot change it.

Accent can be changed, culture differences can be learnt, connections can be made.

The world is not a fair place, but as long as individuals have ways to improve their situation, it is fair enough.
Entropy leaks, and pirates aren't the only beneficiaries. It's just a fundamental fact when sieving that entropy is cheap that life will be less private.
Introduction to AWS OpsWorks
We used to face multi-megaton hydrogen bombs aimed at population centers. We used to face the prospect of thousands of tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap into Western Europe. These were real The End of the World As We Know It threats. Real existential threats.

Had we scaled back the military after the Wall came down, we might not have been tempted to fight optional wars (not to say wars of aggression) that cost trillions of dollars and have yielded literally zero benefit in security.

The only plausible theory of institutional collapse I can think of is the end of the petrodollar, and that will happen anyway. There is no cruise missile that can blow up that threat. It might have been handy to have those trillions spent on war to build our economy in other ways so as to withstand the end of the Oil Age.
And let's be clear that the attack ruined a lot of people and took parents away from their kids for ten or more years.
lol, i love the way modding works on this site. " I DO NOT FIND THIIS FUNNY OR STRICTLY INFORMATIVE, -1"
Thanks for reviewing it.

I definitely went into this with a 'let's start with something good and useful for as many commands as possible', so I haven't focused on accuracy for those edge cases. But from what I played with it so far, results have been pretty good.

Agree again on the pipe et al. support. It's not easy, hence why I haven't added this right out of the gate. I basically have to build a parser for bash, although I can probably get away with handling only a small subset of it that is interesting in this context, such as pipes, redirections, etc. I still have to figure out how to display multiple commands, because chunking them all in one page isn't going work visually.

I'll be happy to hear more about turning this into a learning environment. It might not work for this particular tool, but maybe it can use the foundations.
as an anecdote, i've been using Vim for almost 10 years and i've never used plugins. the extent of my customization is setting the font/color scheme in the vimrc
Pilbox looks great. Added it to this list of such image resizing services:

https://github.com/adamdbradley/foresight.js/wiki/Server-Resizing-Images

Many, many implementations, and each goes about it differently. There's unfortunately no widely adopted standard for constructing a URL to request a resized/altered image.

It would be great to see traction on something like this RESTful Image API Specification:

https://github.com/riapi/riapi
Meanwhile, Roger Christie, a "cannabis sacrament minister," remains in pre-trial detention, without bail, for over three years. The Federal Magistrate in the case said that Christie is "a danger to the community."

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/three-years-after-his-arrest-h...

Then there's the current administration's attacks upon medical cannabis dispensaries in states where medical cannabis is legal.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/barack-obamas-...

Is this another example of "flip flopping?"
Securities and Exchange FTP has been barely responsive
Who are you using as a VDN?
You're right about Windows being very profitable up till now, but there's something clever in this idea...

Businesses pay for Windows, but ordinary consumers by and large don't, they get it for "free" when they purchase a computer. But hardware is now getting so cheap, that Window's license cost is really starting to show. This will only get worse.

To stay competitive Microsoft will have to do two things. 1) Compete in the consumer marker with attractive devices (phones, tablets, Xbox, netbooks), and 2) Remain the "obvious" choice for business.

In order to do #1 they either need to copy Apple and build premium devices by themselves or compete with Andriod/Chrome. Either way, their current OS revenue model of selling to OEMs is going to die.

To do #2 they need to stay as ubiquitous as possible. You may not think that having a few MacBooks and iPads around the office matters to Microsoft but once they're there all of a sudden things like SharePoint and Lync and maybe even Exchange start to look less attractive because a big part of their appeal is built on how it all works together with Outlook and Windows. A few years ago quite a few Microsoft products had web interfaces that only rendered right in IE, they've had to stop that kind of thing more recently because non Windows devices are becoming more common - that trend is only getting worse.

Open sourcing a Windows core and then selling server management tools and premium editions enables them to keep charging business while ensuring Windows stays relevant and as widely used as possible.
> Vundle > Pathogen

I disagree on that front. Managing git repos is easier for me to do the way I always do it than with a slightly auto-magic system specific to those sort of git repos. Pathogen does a little, but does it flawlessly. Vundle does more, but the more it does is far less elegant.
Looks like pilbox already supports some sort of facial recognition. From the changelog:

0.5: Facial recognition cropping
"Stupid keys" PgUp/PgDn??! I wonder how people navigate and read through their source code if not using PageUp/Down. Scrolling with mouse? When one key press can bring you exactly one page forward or backwards. Irreplacable keys for me. I can't code properly on a keyboard which doesn't have these keys under my third and middle finger (making short jumps from the set of 4 arrow keys).
According to Google translate it is Arabic appears to be gibberish: Smoouhkh ̷̴̐ x ̷̴̐ x x ̷̴̐ Amartykh ̷̴̐ x

I was kind of hoping it translated to something more nefarious and appropriate for bricking an computer lol!
I wanted to be either a designer, wearing stylish heavy-framed glasses, or a lawyer. Ended up being a UI consultant (very close) with a degree in Legal Software Development. Had a Lasik to get rid of those stylish glasses :)
⌘Z — Add commands history support to your web app
I can't speak to the cause of the jump, but a single entity controlling a large amount of the network is a known weakness in Tor. Essentially, Tor is designed to be a low-latency system. This means that if someone controls both the entry and exist node you use, they can correlate the timing of your packets and de-anonymize you. Having internal nodes problem helps, as would having ISP access.
Ha, cute! I'll add an API soon enough to return some JSON, so command line tools could wrap it more conveniently.
Your argument is ridiculous. One half of a two person team is certainly permitted to say "we". Sheesh.

What he clearly meant about the Apple I was envisioning the end-user version of the computer, not how the transistors were laid out. My goodness.
SODIMM-style COM runs Linux on Freescale Vybrid SoC
Great advice for entrepreneurs!
How does pedantry hurt people?
This is one I really enjoyed on WebOS developed by Palm.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-insid...
I'm starting out on Grails, do you suggest I shouldn't?

Our requirements are that whatever I choose must be Java-based, and have some nice framework.

Within those constraints, is there a good Grails replacement?
I'm by no means an expert but here are a few thoughts.

Python or Ruby: pick one and focus on it.

Django: ignore it for now. It makes doing what should be relatively simple harder than it should be, in my opinion. Start with a micro framework like Flask or Bottle. For database interactions you'll also want to learn to use an ORM like SQLAlchemy.