skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are a ton of embargoes and sanctions against Syria from both the US and the EU.

Don't assume racism when the problem is government.
Thanks, that seems to be the only reasonable explanation.

Comparing the prices of a book on oreilly[1] and bookdepository.co.uk[2] seems to suggest a print book has about 50%(just a guess) margin while the ebooks sells for almost 100% margin once it is produced. So knocking the prices of ebook down to 50% to drive sales would make sense.
Thanks again,

[1]http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596529321.do

[2]http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Programming-Collective-Intel... I assumed that these guys buy the book for 20 dollars and sell for 20 euros and make 25-30% profit. Great site btw with free worldwide shipping although delivery takes anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks.
Wow, what a great response. Thank you for sharing that...
What is correlation and what is causation?

Is it possible that less intelligent people are shunted (through education, etc) into lower-paying jobs? Thus, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He's correct. Pronounced "lo" and "cain" respectively (reading left to right, that is).
DuckDuckGo gets its revenue through Bing Ads
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/refugee-influx-r...
That's called a warrant canary:

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

Rsync.net does this:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

It's not clear whether the secret courts that enforce NSLs could consider this a legitimate loophole or too cute to get away with, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Open question: as a startup grows and matures, even if it is originally entirely designed with honest user objectives in mind, where usability and simplicity are paramount, at some point there will be calls to increase revenues - either in response to declining growth, market saturation, or simply to maintain existing growth.

Is there any way to structure the incentives of a business to prevent this from happening as a business grows?

Intuitively there is an argument that maintaining simplicity will improve word-of-mouth and conversion rates, but in reality it (unfortunately, perhaps) absolutely is the case that revenue can be massively increased by introducing all kinds of additional advertising, up/cross-sells, and ultimately, dark patterns.
That is an extreme point of view that I don't agree with.

That's your prerogative, of course, but we're talking about the past now. It's not theoretical anymore. It has really happened, it is really happening.

I'd like to point out that theses abuses weren't done by the data holders but by the government...

You are drawing a sharp line between private enterprise and the government, but it seems like an increasingly irrelevant, imaginary distinction.

From a practical point of view, for the average user on the modern web, there never was such a distinction worth making, as it turns out. The "data holders" will rat you out to the government and the government will give orders to the "data holders" that they simply have to comply with. In many respects, the "data holders" may as well be another government office, from a privacy-minded point of view.
People should be concerned about privacy
Works like a charm in Chrome. Not so in Firefox. I'm on a Mac.
O'Reilly uses a department store pricing structure.

There's almost always a sale, and for eBooks, the sale price is usually not much cheaper than Amazon.com's (or other sellers) "everyday" price. Only suckers pay full-price for their eBooks.
Ask HN: Are there any VCs that fund ideas or MVPs
Hi all,
Most VCs pick funding on existing products which are already bringing in some traction or has some users at least. Are there any VCs that supports a Business plan or an idea which is not a finished product yet or at best is a MVP?
I am asking this because I have talked to quite a few VCs and none of them even go beyond the question of # of users or traction.

Thoughts?
Jews were about 20% of population in Poland before WW2. Some cities, like Krakow or Lodz, this number was closer to 50%.

Go to Arizona or California and tell me if it is difficult to find people who hate Latinos who don't make even such a big minorities there as Jews used to in pre-war Poland.

This has nothing to do with Jews specifically. Look at this how Arabs are treated in France (Paris) or London.

Once a group that has different language, religion, customs, and its own ghettos is large enough - my guess about 1/3 of total population - the natives will react the way the do. Poland or US, doesn't matter.
Youtube search: 'Quakecon 2013 part 1'. John carmacks keynote from a few months ago. The guy talks and you feel your IQ jump 10 points.
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App temporarily locks you out of Facebook to boost your productivity
Well, he's right. Expectation of reasonable privacy does not match reality, and therefore is foolish and shouldn't be done.

Not to say that we shouldn't _demand_ privacy.
mailed!
Apple launches iPhone trade-ins
As far as I see, it happens the following way. Some people see some article on HN, their mind flashes in dissonance. They upvote the next article which opposes that one.

So that's why, right after we see an article defending X, we see one defending an anti-X, or not-X.
Super Mario Brothers Parkour [In Real Life]
> I would recommend skipping seeking asylum.

+1. You were probably just using the wrong term, that may also be why your Google search did not turn up anything. Asylum is only for political refugees. These are not allowed to work, need to live in provided (usually very bad) residences, their children are not allowed to go to school, etc.
Yes. And nope, I'm not referring to 'sudo brew install'.

The main homebrew page says, 'run this ruby script'.

The ruby script is available at: https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go

The script includes a sudo command.

To be fair, I hadn't read the script in detail when I wrote my post, just far enough to see there was a definition of a sudo function. On review, it looks like they either call it to chmod/chgrp HOMEBREW_PREFIX (sometimes), or run sudo to create the directories.
> The BNP are a different bunch of racist morons

Yes, although I'm sure there is a good deal of overlap

> Given that about 75% of the Syrian population are muslim [1], it's exactly the sort of thing the EDL would make a fuss about.

The EDL say they are an anti-Muslim organisation, but I imagine most of their supporters are motivated by a more generalised xenophobia, so would dislike Syrians of all religions and none.
Link not working, looks like the last period was not included in the URL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_....
Information like this, and some of the other documents that have been released from the Snowden leaks recently, seem to be more than just "whistleblowing" and appear to do serious damage to the US's counter-terrorism and security efforts.
Nice catch, noted.
Facebook hasn't been a PHP shop in a long time. PHP is only used on the front end site. New projects that come along are written in whatever language makes sense. Like facebook chat being in erlang for example.
A large percentage of email is never sent in plaintext. Few senders use external relays, and the overwhelming majority of mail is sent directly from sender MTA to recipient MTA. Most recipient MTAs support and encourage TLS.

Of course this is a "probably" type of thing, but just worth noting. Assume it's plaintext, but it probably isn't.
Jeff Atwood's Code Keyboard Review
New Canadian App BikeWatch Wants to Fight Bike Theft
Farmigo Launches Avon For Local Food
See my comment above. I'm not referring to running 'sudo homebrew ...', I'm talking about the installation, which has to run sudo to change some permissions in HOMEBREW_PREFIX.
I really like the design, it's much cleaner than Spotify or Rdio. A few things though:

- I have an error icon next to my name in the sidebar, that says I need to complete my profile. I really don't think not having a bio should warrant a this kind of warning. (Maybe a notification instead?)

- I logged in with Facebook, and my country and profile url weren't auto filled out. That's a little weird.

- No last.fm (or libre.fm) support. For me this is a deal breaker. If it doesn't scrobble, I don't listen to it. I'm sure there are other people out there who feel the same.

What formats are the downloads available in?
That's what I figured, but the title is overly broad. It's not actually about NDAs, it's about clueless cargo-cult entrepreneurs who probably have yet to start executing on their first idea. Saying "I won't sign an NDA" in bold face type out of context appears to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Most NDAs (especially the ones with any likelihood of being enforced) don't come from the type of person this article talks about.
I'm more worried about LinkedIn being infiltrated and national intelligence employees -- be it government or private contractor employees -- becoming targets for reconnaissance.

It stands to reason that enumerating a list of past and present employees wouldn't be at all difficult, be it an automated or manual process.
You've set up something for Amazon links that adds your affiliate link on the end? I don't mind affiliate links, but that's pretty sneaky.
Six months ago the idea of a team for hacking foreign evil-doers was awesome, and though I'm not an "elite hacker" I would've jumped at the opportunity. Now that we know the NSA is spying on everyone and collecting everything I don't think I would even consider working there.

It makes me wonder what these hackers think about their jobs now, and how much more difficult recruitment has gotten for the NSA.
I feel like we've identified this problem to death.

I think now the real question is, as an internet community, what are we going to do about it?

Are we going to build something that 'routes around' this? Are we going to protest? Or are we just going to keep identifying the problem and complaining about it on Twitter?

I'm not saying that I'm not one of those people too - I'm just saying we need to start thinking about action and not identification.

I'm hoping that's the next article Bruce writes.
The admin group is what it's used for sudo by default.
> I believe you missed my point. Most people outside the tech world have no idea who Edward Snowden is...

So your point is basically that you think "most people" are stupid? Good luck with that.
In other news, the light bulb in my refrigerator is always on, anytime I've cared to check.

In other words: chances are that you only check power use when your display is on. If the display is off 80% of the time and all other components stay on full time, that would sink the power use of the display to around 25%-30%.
Re: 1, I guess I use myself as an example of a technologist who is aware of the moral implications of his work. I don't deny that there are sellouts and such. A technologist in the next decade is free to choose the work that catches their fancy, and free to have moral objections to their work and leave for more satisfying work. I also believe that wholesale surveillance is on the wrong side of history, and in the long run, people who are free to choose will not support the surveillance state. Thus the surveillance state will get the dregs, plus or minus.

Re: 2, I'm actually responding to this point in the parent, which says the source of the next generation of NSA recruitment pool is: talk-radio fear mongers who continually generate a stream of xenophobic, america-fuck-yeah types who will happily spy on their countrymen. You may be able to see how I connected the dots to Fox News.

I will connect them further. Fox News has an aging viewership for many reasons. Watching talking heads, as a model of receiving information about the world, is on the way out. Fox has committed to ideologies that, for one reason or another, are not believed by young people. In parallel to the changes to work noted by Stross, there are changes to media consumption that are also driving younger generations farther from the baby boom culture.
Awesome.

One important improvement: If you're going to use a "metal hand" as the icon for your Like button, you really need to add a :hover{margin-top:-2px;} to it so that pumps up and down as expected when you mouse over it.

Like the example here:

http://www.blogabond.com/Photos/PhotoView.aspx?imageID=21691
I think the threat went beyond domestic terrorism; it was bordering on armed revolt and revolution.

We don't need that now (and it would be hopeless vs. modern police/military unless you had an issue, like 2A, supported by most of the individuals in police/military, combined with a constitutional justification like an unambiguously unconstitutional move by one branch of government vs. the others, like a hypothetical future President closing the Supreme Court), but a similarly forceful threat, like removing $100b/yr of business from the US or a mass expatriation, could probably work.
Glad you asked...

Definitely image recognition: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/imagenet.pdf

Speech recognition: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/RNN13.pdf

Natural language processing: http://www.socher.org/index.php/DeepLearningTutorial/DeepLea..., http://aclweb.org/anthology/N/N13/N13-1090.pdf

If you're into kaggle competitions: http://blog.kaggle.com/2012/11/01/deep-learning-how-i-did-it...

I don't think there are going to be any further major advances in eg SVMs or random forests (famous last words maybe...) Neural nets, on the other hand, are just scratching the surface of what's possible. So right now they are state of the art in some historically very difficult areas. But these are early days still.
Occupy Money Cooperative: an alternative to Big Banking
I see the issue here. You think your rights extend outside of your body and your property. Not sure where you got that idea, but insisting so does not make it true.
Be a better community member and you will get down-vote rights.
This was years ago, so I can't remember any of the assignments, but I remember they were mostly simple changes to the kernel - but we had to actually re-compile the Linux kernel, make sure it booted up and worked the way it was supposed to! :)

In some cases it was data structure changes, in some, it was small improvements to some algorithms.

Quite challenging in the beginning, but by the end, I was actually having fun playing with the Linux kernel and watching a custom kernel boot up and work perfectly!
I've been using Bluetooth earbuds since I got my first A2DP-supporting phone in 2006. Having a cable snaking down into my pocket was always a bother and I'm pretty clumsy so I'd always get it caught in door handles etc. Nearly all Bluetooth headphones have music controls, some even have an LCD screen to show the song title so you can leave your phone in your bag.
Props. I've been considering the same move. It takes guts to make it happen.
Brilliant idea. Thanks!
It is, in fact, possible to make a process immune to the OOM killer:

echo -17 > /proc/$PID/oom_adj

where $PID is the process ID you want to protect.

oom_adj can be tuned with other values to make a process more or less likely to be killed.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-d...
Thanks!

I'd say that Germany is still pretty safe, but I admit that there are places that even I as a German feel uneasy about - mostly the rural areas in former East German states.

Also the way asylum seekers are treated here seems pretty bad. But that refers to the way the government handles the issue, not to the attitude of the general population.
First Official Trailer for Grand Theft Auto V is here
And they "forgot" about Firefox users, it seems. I still hate Google for that move.
It's a perfectly reasonable choice. It's better than Excel for that sort of work and Government IT policies usually ban any real scripting language or database.
Thanks :) Genre on what's hot seems to be a popular demand.
Unlikely. The terrorists have known for years that all of their technology was compromised by the US government. Osama Bin Laden would send his people hundreds of kilometers away to make phone calls on his behalf.

Also, it was Eugene Kaspersky that pointed the finger at the US and Israel over Stuxnet and Flame.

The only thing these documents do is make it clear the NSA has been lying or spinning much of the denials about these programs to avoid public scrutiny.
How, precisely, does this information do "serious damage...", as you say. We already knew that the NSA can hack computers and cell phones; the article is simply more of the same.
Yeah, I never click anymore. I have a login, I could probably ask them for it, but I'd have to log in every time because I never stay logged in to anything but HN, so meh.
Shameless plug: A friend of mine down here in Charlottesville, VA is doing a related project ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302124 ). It's Pandora-like internet radio for local bands and bands coming to town for upcoming gigs. Thought it might be of interest.
Relax, all he said was that it removes the personalization, which it does.
Hm, I get no music and no indication why.

Any chance that you would add free music aka music by people who want their art listened without anyone having to pay?
This non-bug was discussed last year.
Just use myedu.com's class schedule tool. No need to over-complicate things. Just check to see which classes are full before you fall in love with the schedule.

College tips: Get an internship(s), be active/involved on campus, be social, get good grades (duh).
Your app is free right? Why would you need a demo button for a free app?
In your case you have an established business, and you have a class of customers you understand and therefore who you can extend tailored win-win credit policies to. As you note in your edit, that's a different thing than the stuff that changes your life, like all that went in to establishing your companies up front.
Root can do anything. If that's a vulnerability than the entire system is a vulnerability.
ok, what are you going to do differently from the Garage band lessons, which i thought were well done.

Like how many camera angles will convey all the nuances of fingering, pedals, "letting the weight of the arms fall on the fingers" etc
Wow, so someone would sign an NDA for the purpose of having a free consult and nothing further? How is this some sort of bold statement that is making it to the front page of hacker news? "I won't incur risk for nothing in return". So brave.

Many relationships start with potential clients shopping around. They get a free consult. If that's not what this guy is referring to, then my mistake. I wouldn't sign the NDA either, but I could just as easily named this article "I won't stab myself in the eye".
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I would say don't go to former East Germany, including Berlin. Bayern and Baden Württemberg are one of the most peaceful and safe regions in whole Europe, though a bit conservative. I absolute love leaving there, although I'm a foreigner which still can't speak proper German or Schwäbisch.

Though, as a white man, my experience about behaviour of natives might lack first hand perspective of how it looks for black people.
I think we're talking at cross purposes here.

You keep coming back to the idea of sending unencrypted data over the general Internet. Of course it's not realistic to secure that.

I am more concerned with privacy violations where people do make reasonable efforts to keep their data/communications private, for example using encryption, but where those methods are then thwarted through abnormal means: untrustworthy infrastructure providers who give up root certificates, organisations with data centres the size of a small town having both access to vast quantities of data and the power to brute-force the decryption, government agencies holding you at an airport for hours under anti-terrorism laws and demanding all your passwords or very unpleasant things that would be illegal under normal conditions will be done to you, that kind of thing. (The last example is not intended to be a political statement, just an obvious topical example of how powerful organisations can circumvent otherwise competent encryption and thus breach otherwise private communications.)

[Edited to add:] The other big issue, IMHO, is whether people using services might think them to be reasonably private when in fact they are not. There's not much value in debating points like the ones I made above if the reality is that when Joe sends Jane an e-mail he erroneously believes it is already reasonably secure and private. This is, of course, primarily an issue of education and in particular of "honesty in advertising", rather than a technical failure, but it's still a big part of the problem today: why would people look for better solutions to a problem they don't realise exists?
Good Developer, Good Googler
I think hardware buttons is not very expensive. Typical Android phone cost is about $300, price for dumb phone with hardware keyboard started from $30.

Hardware keyboard on my Nokia 2630 still works without problems after about 4 years of daily usage.

Lack of hardware buttons is on of reasons, why I still don't use smartphone.
What is best practice for designing form error messages?
On the Fast Track: Paul Graham's Top Tips for Start-ups
TL;DR: Poor people are 13 IQ points below non-poor because they spend "brain bandwidth" thinking about their poverty instead of doing other brain activities.
The usage report is cumulative, not instantaneous. The act of checking probably isn't a significant fraction of their phone usage.

So if for a given usage pattern the screen does consume 60+% (which is what I often see) then keeping it off all the time certainly helps ... but also makes the phone a lot less useful!
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As soon as you involve Amazon, that's surprisingly not true. Really.

O'Reilly makes more on e-book sales directly through their on-line store then they do on print. However, every e-book they sell via Amazon, their margins are very, very different. Here's a rough guide for a $40 book:

* O'Reilly E-Book Online Store: Approx 99% margin or $39.60

* O'Reilly Store selling print book (bulk print discount assumed): 95% margin or $38.00

* Amazon selling print book (bulk print discount assumed): Approx 90% margin or $36.00

* Amazon selling kindle e-book: 35% margin or $14.00 (minus the Amazon processing fee so it's actually worse)

Odds are the bulk of O'Reilly e-book sales are probably done on Amazon, where the margin is AWFUL. The constant huge sales by O'Reilly are a way to recoup the painful margins insisted upon by Amazon.

Yeah, Amazon makes boatloads off of kindle book sales.
> On the other hand, if actual core IP (like code and business documents) is going to be seen in detail

This is what I always look for in an NDA or I don't sign one. People generally take some generic NDA contract they found online that is so vague you're probably in violation the minute you sign it. I'm guessing this is why others say it's hard to enforce, so why sign one?

Bottom line: unless an entity has specific IP and other trade secrets they want to protect and it is spelled out in the agreement then I'm not signing it, and if it's required I'm not interested. It's probably a good filter IMO.
No way. You can be compelled by the courts to actively perpetuate a lie? I don't think so.

The deal with the warrant canary is the guy signs a new message every (day?), actively affirming that he hasn't been served with any such secret warrants.

What if he gets tired of it? Same with running the business? You can't be compelled to work forever, neither for free or otherwise.
Taking Geocoder To The Next Level
- software development is an in-demand job ("Mangelberuf")

- €39,192/year [...] is above the standard salary that you'd find for development positions at Berlin startups

Are you sure about that? Somehow these two statement don't sound like they can go together, I think. Wouldn't that be a ridiculously low salary for a European capital, even for startups?