skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not suggesting that activists here could actually use them, as that would lead to very bad consequences.

I see it more as a statement. For example, in high school I used to carry around a bootable USB stick on my keychain with a little Linux distro that would automatically remove the root/administrator password on any Windows/Mac/Linux box at which I could sit at the console. It was never used for harm, but it just seemed like a cool thing to have.
Thanks for the explanation. What do you actually upload the JSON into - is it a proprietary NoSQL technology, something built on top of Akka, a wrapper around HDFS or something else?
AndrOpen Office: First port of OpenOffice for Android
Any manager of a high profile/pressurised project has to answer 'stupid' questions all the time. That doesn't mean they all react like children. In my opinion managers tend to earn more respect when they don't.

Linus has earned the respect of the tech community for other reasons, but that doesn't mean you have to defend everything he does.
Am I spamming? I am trying to answer questions individually. And yes I am one of the devs.
> Attenborough said he was not optimistic about the future and 'things are going to get worse'."

How right he is. The Logistic function says mathematically what Sir Richard says with words:

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

In the beginning, at the left, the logistic function (a way to mathematically describe the evolution of a biological colony) shows a species struggling against having too few members. In the end, at the right, the function shows a species struggling against having too many. We humans are at the right-hand end of the curve.

But the risk in speaking out about this issue is that sensitive, intelligent people will listen and reduce their numbers, while less sensitive, less intelligent people won't. The result will be fewer sensitive, intelligent people in Earth's future. That, by the way, is an idea I call the "Population Paradox":

http://arachnoid.com/evolution/index.html#The_Population_Par...
I guess "do things that don't scale" can't really work forever... Sad.

I think it's unfair to compare Exec to TaskRabbit, as the former offered a much more curated experience. I believe the problem lies right there: it's really tough to intermediate supply and demand for broadly define "services", this just doesn't scale... Beyond the initial phase in which you are working really hard to amuse early customers, that is.

I for one have been amused by them in multiple occasions, Execs have helped me do things as diverse as assembling furniture and moving stuff around.
Collective .PSD
I’ve decided to restore an old but still relevant lecture on why order is important in Adobe Photoshop files, particularly in team environments.
Yes, it is more fascinating. Besides what MichaelGG said that the Amish do use modern technology when they think it's useful, there are way more documentaries about the Amish than about people living like 30 years ago.

It's worth realizing how much our world changed in those decades.
Nope - good guess though. :) Funny story about marching cubes: in 2004, when I was creating my first major game engine, I "invented" the marching cubes algorithm without knowing that it already existed (and at that time, was patented) - a testament to how stubborn I am about learning on my own.

I am actually using ray-cast volumes, rendered to a hexagon (6 tris). Each vertex in the hexagon contains two points, a front and back location of the equivalent cube. (If you look a a cube in isometric perspective, it looks just like a hexagon which is why I used this technique -- another thing I'm sure that has been done before me). :) Another optimization over a standard cube is that a cube contains 12 triangles, and would have double redundancy on fill time.
I think when someone has been "right" for long enough, argumentation tone and attitude tend to deteriorate. As such, I wonder who from a linguistic viewpoint has the least abrasive way to express themselves, Linus Torvalds today or Richard Stallman 1997.
You could try uninstalling the italic version of the font.
Whose to say she didn't install linux on the MBP?
Seeing engineers in leadership positions (and being one myself), I've learned you can't use this kind of language when you're in a position of power and respect. It doesn't end debate (like Linus probably thought he was doing), but shifts it to his behavior and just creates more distractions.
Are there any reliable Bitcoin ASIC providers at the moment? Butterfly Labs is shipping units now, but it's all in a trickle. Also, the difficulty rate is going to go way up once those machines come online.

Seems like if you bought the FPGA miners at the right moment, you earned massive ROI, but that now the market's too mature and mining profits are in a race to zero. If bitcoin sticks around, mining is destined to become a large-scale low margin business, with companies with investing large amounts of CapEx into massive farms of specialized hardware, thus squeezing out the remaining profit through scale.
Yes, renting in Germany is very different to the USA or UK. In Germany, if you pay your rent the landlord pretty much can't legally get rid of you. Similarly, the amount they can increase your rent is legally capped. It's very much set up to encourage long-term rental and your rights while renting are extremely strong and well-protected.

In the UK (and I assume the USA) the landlord can (with a few months warning in most cases) throw you out, raise the rent arbitrarily, pretty much whatever they want. It's their property, after all!

When I moved to Germany there was significant cognitive dissonance when I was asked to provide a copy of my work contract to prospective landlords, to prove I was worthy enough to pay them money. It turns out even if you stop paying them it's extremely difficult for them to legally evict you, hence the caution.
It is built with GWT. It does not have a standard FOSS license since it is not (yet) open source. The license is included with the download, it still fairly standard, the product is free no strings attached.
While I doubt it's an issue in practice, I have a real hard time believing that a compromised source of randomness actually improves the function. If it does, the algorithm is presumably not well designed in the first place - which would be similarly concerning.
Chinese Researchers Make An Invisibility Cloak In 15 Minutes
Because a large, complex site can be intimidating to navigate, it's always desirable to have an easy way to return to the home page from anywhere within the site's structure. This avoids the problem of people getting so lost and frustrated that they bail and go somewhere else.

But you know, you can establish this for yourself by performing an A/B test, one with, and one without, a home link on each page. See which design holds onto visitors longer.
This is true on a micro, per-interaction scale. On a macro scale, it can be more beneficial in the long run for people's egos to be hurt when they're wrong. For someone like Torvalds, the macro scale of interaction matters a lot.

You're basically supporting the "everyone's a winner" mindset. Sure, on a micro scale, tell the kid they were a winner for participating, guide them, and for that particular interaction everyone comes out ahead. On the macro scale, it's better to feel the sting of being wrong so you can learn from it.
PHP has an "INF" (infinite) double constant
I feel like I should come to the defense of mixed-gender schools here a bit, even though I realize your comment doesn't necessarily advocate gender isolation (but it does sort of imply the benefits of it).

I went to a mixed-sex high school, albeit you might choose to take this anecdote with a grain of salt since that was 20 years ago in Germany. There was certainly some bullying, although not on the scale I discovered much later in life was common elsewhere. There was almost no intra-school violence. I feel pretty confident in saying this because these things were taken very seriously by both staff and students alike, and the few cases where there had been confrontations between students quickly became very public and a matter of much water cooler talk afterwards. I can also say with about the same level of confidence as you that there was no rape, or other forms of gender-based violence. And coming back to the article's subject, CS class was mandatory for everyone at first - and even though in later years the course became one of those that could be voluntarily dropped, the gender balance stayed the same after that.

That said, school wasn't ideal for me as I was in it. CS class wasn't exactly great, mostly due to utter disinterest by 90% of the students who took it. At the time I had the feeling the school was a bad choice for individualists like me, though in hindsight I would revise that conclusion a bit (as a humanist-themed middle/high school it was actually much better than any other school I could have gone to).

I think it's important to bring young people up together and not artificially separate them into two groups. Of the many social problems present in my time studying there, gender issues were not one of them. There was no us-versus-them mentality, and informal social groups were almost always mixed. I can't help but wonder if that sort of normalcy is something single-gender schools actively campaign against.
Building your own elevation API is absolutely trivial; I don't know why anyone would even want to pirate Google's API for large-scale usage.

Firstly, the data is freely available. It's NASA's SRTM [1], downloadable from a zillion mirror sites.

Then just take some code to calculate a lat/long offset and find the right position in the right tile. Bob Osola has some easily portable PHP for this if you need it [2].

Free hint: Putting both your tiles and your (Lua) lookup code in Redis, then calling the latter with EVALSHA, is a really neat and fast way to do this.

If you really need ocean depths, higher resolutions than SRTM offers, or stuff above 60 degrees latitude, then it gets a little more complex. But for 90% of cases doing it yourself is eminently practicable.

[1] http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/
[2] http://www.osola.org.uk/elevations/
CSS Length Explained
Only girls have a bad time at schools. For boys it is just fun and games all the time. They also never target jokes at each other. Imagine if there hadn't been a girl in that class. Who would those boys have directed jokes at? It would have been a very dreary affair.

Can you imagine a boy losing interest in a subject because school is so awful? I can't.
Note: this is chip orders of 10,000+ only. Avalon shipped stand-alone Bitcoin miners (each with several hundred chips in them) several months ago.
Classical music can move me to tears. Can be piano music on my iPod or a live performance. No snobbery involved.

Snobbery is when people don't get it and try really hard to do so.
> and at that time, was patented

Is it no longer patented today? Who held the patent and was it released or did it just expire?
Docker All The Things - Coder Radio
Matrix Effect Using HTML5 and Javascript
It is sad to see promising (usually young) people dazzled by the myth of an ivory tower in the sky.

Most of academia simply sets fire to money. The more given to one bureaucracy, the bigger the flame. Fusion research (DOE). Or in this case, not. It would be rather nice to see Skunk Works and or Polywell reach Q > 1, it would be one of the greatest engineering feats ever.

Also there needs to be some support for communities of art and philosophy, where those may get by better.

Finally, all profit or all conjecture makes Jane a dull girl. (Jack was out sick today.)
Ha! Conspiracy. Is apply working for the NSA?
ASICminer (disclosure: I own shares in ASICminer) is shipping smaller miners, powered only by USB. Their larger miners aren't shipping yet in large numbers either.

I agree, at some point this'll be a race to the bottom.
@sspiff (can't reply because it is nested too deep I guess?) -- I think it expired in 2005 or 2006 if I remember correctly.
Adobe debuts open source Generator in new Photoshop update
I am curious which one of the large players hasn't joined, Coursera? Is there a counter-alliance to this?
The patent expired in 2005.
That's because economic principles aren't scientific theories, they are political opinions (and weapons). That's why you have left-wing and right-wing economists, and a broad range of theories on how things work, but no agreement on the premises.
There's also the fact that real-world economy is a much more complex beast than any existing models precisely because there are so many variables. Which is why most economical "predictions" are just post-hoc justifications.
If you're referring to the linked article: it's true I haven't read her books, but I hope that a leading UK scholarly expert on the industrial revolution would have taken your point into account!
Why Would Anyone Want To Host The Olympics?
Don't worry, nature will always balance population.

If men try to do it, it's called EUGENICS and it's immoral.

I'm very disappointed Attenborough joined the eugenics club of Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Rockefeller and .. Adolf Hitler.

These people want population reduction: why don't they start with themselves ???
I think they factored into the cost the two free games and identity theft protection that they voluntarily offered.

The two free games were nice too. They gave us choices from top rated titles.
CycleStreets (UK cycle-based journey planner) are on the verge of open-sourcing their code - as in, in the next day or two. It's a highly fine-tuned cycle planner based on OSM data; here in the UK, at least, the results are streets ahead of Google, which will merrily send you down busy, fast trunk roads with no cycle lane.

You could either take their code and run an instance for NYC, or smile sweetly at them and ask if they might host one themselves. Github link: https://github.com/cyclestreets
Quote: “What we’re doing uses the same frequencies as Wi-Fi ...”

So they're charging batteries from a 30 foot distance using an RF field at multiple gigahertz? What's to prevent interference with other devices in the same frequency band? Let's say the emitter emits one watt of RF -- it's probably higher, but just for the sake of argument. A typical Wi-Fi access point uses 50 milliwatts, or 1/20th the power of the charging transmitter. This means existing spectrum users would be overwhelmed by wide adoption of these devices.

Also, there are legitimate health concerns about being near a cell phone emitting 100 milliwatts of RF power. How can a device that emits ten times that power level, or more, be assumed to be safe near people?

> If they can deploy this device city wide, then we don't need any more chargers.

Yes, but we won't have any more wireless access points -- they'll be overwhelmed by higher-powered competitors.
Android Kitkat contest now open
Seriously, you can get fired for making the sandwhich joke? Sorry, but the US is really fucked up.
He might be gay.
Why the Microsoft-Nokia merger is doomed
Very cool space to be in.

So what's the projected ROI on your units? Which of the units are shipping?

(Caveat that you've got a vested stake understood.)
Google for: "microsoft connect clickonce ie9"

Look at connect and the forums. Oh and stackoverflow.

Then look at how many people get screwed by the lack of proxy support (to get around this we actually rewrote a chunk of clickonce!)
I have one comment and one question.

Q: Are OSM/Nominatim good for most countries now? When I tried it was very good to good enough for developed countries like US or UK but for others clearly not.

C: I really dont get Google mindset. They sell geoservices. OK. How much money that would bring 1mil, 10mil or 100mil in over 20bil company. What is the logic? Creating barriers? I dont know.
That's a really awkward name.
Aaargh. Not sure this belongs on HN. So this guy has a problematic relationship with women for whatever reason. Maybe she left him and he isn't over it yet ... I am pretty sure if he meets that unicorn in a tech interview, he will hire her anyway.
Microsoft Launches Xbox Music on Web for Free
i already told that it's possible but "connecting to local terminal from chrome" is not that possible. maybe you can do it over local SSH connection.
At least this one has a download link.
Do you know why ecvonomic development leads to dropping birth rates? Is thast really a law of nature? And what if economic development doesdn-'t keep up?
Do you also agree that a person infected with malware also accepted it just because he clicked "Ok" or "Yes" on some of the dialogs?

There is no signature, there is no proof of identity of the signing party (copy of personal ID, witness, ...). Usually no confirmation that other side also accepted it. No copy of ToS received after "accepting". We all know that it could be that, for example, my 4yo child clicked on it when I went to the toilet after reading first few paragraphs of ToS, and now I'm somehow bound to it? Also, it happens very frequently that you "accept" some ToS, and after two years you find on some forum that Google, or PayPal just changed their ToS without sending you the updated copy for acceptance.

Sorry, but too many things that are really different between ToS and a real acceptance of a Contract.
Thanks. The gender of a poster seems very important to you. It's not important to me.
You really want to post a link that locks up people's browsers? I can think of a dozen ways to do this, but why would I inconvenience people just to show off a trivial self-evident fact?

And "crash" is an exaggeration. The browser is prevented from functioning until it figures out that its processing power is being absorbed in something pointless, for example by badly written JavaScript:

function loop_forever() {
while(true) {
}
}

A modern browser assigns a thread to each process and monitors each thread, so it can act to stop unresponsive threads. That's what happens in this case. It's not a "crash", unless bringing a car to a safe stop at a red light counts as a crash.
So I'm not the only one that is irked by the term "coders" or the even sillier "I wrote a code".
The end of Windows as we know it
A solution to this problem happens to be my thesis topic, and yes it is a very difficult problem. We achieve this by a mechanism to randomly test functions in binaries without knowing the function call signature.
Thanks. Sorry for attributing the wrong gender to the poster.

Yes, I've tried to read the parts relevant to the headline because that was the reason for me to follow the link and skip the parts that described something else from the link bait headline.
Apple's innovation problem is real
A desktop or mobile, running "Free" software, can be in practice secure enough for reasonable trust, but not a captive phone.

Yeah, but there's a reason why rms uses a MIPS laptop; it's extremely difficult to find a full machine that can run completely on Free Software, and the non-free parts are often critical (kernel-level drivers and firmware).
"It is contrary to the ethical obligations of cryptographers, computer scientists, and engineers to participate in the development of technologies for mass surveillance. It is also a violation of professional codes of conduct."

I agree. All of us developers have obligations that are higher than achieving personal wealth, or being a family breadwinner. We are the literate elite of our times. This status gives us the potential for great monetary benefit doing something we like, but it also comes with its social responsibilities.
>That's too bad.

>Best of luck as you move forward as a cleaning company.

I'm sure that was said with the best of intents, but it could also be the most withering put-down ever issued in the dotcom space. I'll be saving that phrase for special occasions.
I laughed out loud at several of those tweets. The guy has great humor.

By the way, on the incompatibility of women's suffrage and individual freedom: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfiles/LottKenn...

(Summary: Women's suffrage doubles the size of government in real terms within 11 years.)
5 Things Facebook Ruined
This allows me to simplify the code a lot in all that cases I deal with non-bounded ranges.
Even with my famous design issues with Go, I find this project quite interesting.

The only way to move embedded development into safer languages is with real products developed in such languages, otherwise the hardcore C guys will never be convinced.

It cannot be generalized for all types of embedded hardware projects for sure, but the use of C, C++ and Assembly should be reduced to the bare minimum type of projects where no other technology is possible.
It's a great font but having tried it and many more, I always find myself going back to good ol' Terminus.
Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" doesn't get the mention it deserves; it's alluded to, together with an interview of the author, and then back to "Blink".

But if you're interested in these subjects, Kahneman is a much better read than Gladwell, if only because he did most of the research himself (and got a Nobel for his efforts).

One takeaway is that so-called "System 1", the intuitive, immediate and "blinking" operating mode of our brain is usually super-effective, but takes shortcuts that can can result in flawed conclusions. Those shortcuts are consistent and can be highlighted by research.

"System 2" is the slow, rational operating mode where we analyze and weight all available evidence; System 2 is expensive to operate and takes a long time to produce results, so for most tasks it usually doesn't even start.

One example from the book that struck me is the famous observation that 90% of people think of themselves as "above average" in driving ability. This is usually quoted to show that people think highly of themselves.

But when asked a different question, such as, for example, "do you think you're above average or below average in your ability to initiate a conversation with a complete stranger", a great majority of people evaluate themselves as "below average".

The actual explanation has nothing to do with self-esteem; it's just a "System 1 shortcut". Answering the question of how one's ability relates to the "average" performance is extremely difficult (for a start, it would imply measuring said average). So what System 1 does, it substitutes a simple question to the difficult one.

System 1 doesn't even attempt to answer the initial question; it changes the question to "am I good or bad at this task". Most people think they are okay drivers, and most people think they're not good at starting a conversation with a complete stranger, hence the answers.

The relation to the average that was part of the original question has disappeared.

The problem is that the substitution is silent and unconscious, and that we still think we're answering the initial question when in fact we are not.
Rape.
JIT at installation time?
My Landlord Ratted Me Out to the Cops
> If bitcoin sticks around, mining is destined to become a large-scale low margin business

Large scale, yes. Low margin, no. The dedicated hardware will replace software mining, just like GPU mining replaced CPU mining. But, mining is only initially funded by the direct reward, and is meant to transition to a transaction-fee based reward structure. (It's like starting a fire with lighter fluid.) With the decrease in miners, increase in network transaction activity (and thus transaction fees), and a rise in the bitcoin's value, the people who invest in the network will get the most out of it. I think of it as aligning incentives.
I agree; at this point you pretty much know what you're in for when you engage Linus in a discussion in which he's likely to have forgotten more about the subject than you'll ever know.