skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I shaved half of my hair and half of my beard so that I'd have an interesting driver's license, and posted the photos on Reddit. So I can't really complain about someone else appropriating my image. But it did get big in a way I didn't expect.

My mother found out when she went to yahoo.com to log into her email and I was on the front page. My father-in-law was watching the local news and saw me giving an interview. Two years later, I can bring out my driver's license at parties and people remember it. But they don't remember me, just the photo, so no harm done. (And happily, my domain has enough precidence on google to at least appear first for searches of my name).

On the upside, if I ever meet Greg Proops or Ellen DeGeneres in person we'll have something in common to talk about.
And still they released a phone with antenna issues. People complained just as they are now. Apple did something relatively rare and issued a "mea cuppa" in the form of a free case. Life went on.

My point was that controversies like these design hiccups, the shape of the case, etc. are not new to Apple.

In some ways the design issues are significantly less severe since they can be corrected without new hardware.
The fact that you are concerned about this is justification for attendance.
What do you think of our latest redesign?
Hello guys,

Recently we've launched the latest version of our website. I'd love to get some feedback as well for the whole project. We showcase the coolest Gadgets of the web http://thegadgetflow.com
This is really a matter of personal style. The point of this approach is that if you want to break out Python or whatever, it integrates with the rest of it just like any of the "built-in" programs.

It's usually quicker for me to iterate on building up a complex program using existing command-line tools -- up to a point. After that point, I switch to something like Node or Python.

One reason it's faster is that they're designed to be composable. They're flexible in just the right ways -- record separators, output formats, and key behaviors (like inverting the sense of a filter or whatever) -- to be able to perform a variety of tasks, but not so flexible that you need a lot of boilerplate, as with more general-purpose languages. They defer unrelated tasks (like sorting) to tools designed for that, keeping concerns separate.

Take an awk script that reads whitespace-separated fields as input and transforms that, adding a header at the top and a summary at the end. awk's got a really nice syntax for these common tasks, and at the end you're left with a program where nearly all of the code is part of the specific problem you're trying to solve, not junk around requiring modules, opening files, looping, parsing, and so on.
Einstein vs Feynman Quotes
It doesn't surprise me that the Redditors responded with some contrition when this guy confronted him while the commenters on the feminist blog didn't. This kind of pack bullying behavior is only encouraged when you give the bullies an ideological identity to justify their behavior.
Google makes Quickoffice for Android and iOS free for all
I'm surprised the article missed the single biggest problem with requesting copies of "identity documents" - the company you send them to has no way to verify them!

In his example they wanted copies of utility bills and a driver's license either domestic or foreign. Clearly they have no way of verifying the authenticity of foreign driver's licenses from arbitrary countries. At the very best they might have a book that shows samples of valid licenses, but no way can they verify the data on the license.

And if they could do it that would be a pretty serious breach of privacy. The government agency that issues licenses has no business telling arbitrary people if so and so lives at a certain address - back in 1989 the actress Rebecca Schaeffer was shot point-blank at her front door by a stalker who looked up her address at the local dept of motor vehicles precipitating a major change in privacy of license records.

Basically any of these documents can be photo-shopped or even made up completely from scratch and the company requiring them would not be any wiser.

So, these policies don't improve security for anyone - legitimate customers become less secure and the company is just as susceptible to fraud.
How to attract software engineers as a startup
Naipaul wrote about this when he was talking about post-colonial societies that ended up as brutal as the white man they replaced. "Hate oppression but fear the oppressed."
The most tangential looking OS ever. Maybe iOS 7s would fix it.
Great project/post!

FYI, I've written about a bunch of TTGs for Wired, if you're not talking to Game Salute yet, you might want to—they seem to be a common through line in my stories. They help a lot with logistics/pricing/etc.

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/05/game-salute/
Intuitive Automata Chooses Hong Kong as Birthplace of Their Robot Startup
British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
Agreed and there is so much beautiful sceneries around here it could be flying for ages and amaze
Depends on your definition of "hipster". Some people just look like hipsters because they don't actually care what you think, not because they're trying to stand out.

You want to use a typewriter at the local coffee shop? Rock on.
At a previous job I rewrote a (~9k lines) Java app in Java and ended up with a 77% reduction in lines of code! So it would appear that the "smart programmer effect" is likely larger than the effect of most languages.
Dan can probably give better answers, but as an early backer I know that I was quite eager to get in before those "early bird" copies sold out. I also recognized, though, that if I'd missed them I would have been significantly more hesitant to pledge at that point (both because the price felt higher and because it was comparatively a much worse deal). That makes me think that his (accidental?) strategy of including an early bird tier and then regularly increasing its limit might be the best of both worlds.
Even themselves.
Agreed, I had a hard time getting the behavior described. Googling for "orange verse tangerine" finally did it. Other things that don't make as much sense to be compared, such as "giraffe verse tangerine" only produce a suggestion of "Did you mean..." but still it searched for my original query.

Seems Google does this for things that are likely comparisons (e.g. oranges and tangerines), which seems reasonable.
There is actually a lot more to HIPAA compliance than what you see on the back end of your application. You have to do Risk Assessments annually, assign a Privacy Officer, have policies & procedures in place, implement employee training, and execute Business Associate Agreements with anyone you share PHI with.

These administrative parts are frequently forgotten when implementing a HIPAA compliance program.

Disclosure: my startup, Accountable, automates this process. http://www.accountablehq.com
We're going to be helping to organize rideshares and bus trips; would you be interested in helping coordinate that in your neck of the woods?
It's a slightly case than what's presented here: different in that my previous company was paying for Gluster support - when RedHat purchased Gluster, they created a "storage product" and refused to support it unless we used "RedHat Storage Server" on Redhat and not Ubuntu. That was inconvenient.
You sound like a newspaper journalist from the 90's when you speak of Reddit as "they".
Kim Dotcom sues New Zealand over electronic snooping
(Emphasis mine)

..it was dozens of someones—*faceless and impossible to control*

Strike 1.

I asked...if she would *let me read a draft before she sent it*
to her editor... ...I ranted back to her, *mad that she hadn’t
sent me the article*

Strike 2.

...the hipster label is a compliment, a devotion to a *self-
evident truth*

Strike 3.

This guy isn't hipster, he's sinister.
I haven't played with Scratch in detail, but expect to graduate my kids to it (or something similar?) as soon as they can read. I won't claim expertise in age 8+ since I haven't dived in depth.

One anecdote: I learned BASIC on my C-64 at age 7 sitting on my dad's lap, writing simple 'games' out of if-then statements. I think that traditional programming languages like Logo and Basic may be viable with mom/dad help as soon as they can read.
What's up with that comment at the bottom?
Catania Roma
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You are trying to make fashion into something objective; it really isn't. I can line ten people in reality who can hate on your fedora. At the end of it, wear whatever you want to, I guarantee there will be people hating on it and loving it. Such is the nature of things.

Hell, I have worn a suit to a friend's place and gotten hate from it.
You can talk about Reddit as a hivemind because it is one.

Reddit can turn into an angry mob in a nanosecond, tear someone's life apart, utterly destroyed, and then a nanosecond later flip around because of the discovery of guilt and empathy, to try and repair what just happened.

It's not any one person, but the collective does have certain predictable patterns of behavior. If you're part of Reddit, you're part of that super-organism, like it or not.
Looks like HK has been stepping up its startup efforts. The government runs InvestHK and also was at TechCrunch Disrupt promoting the Cyberport (a 10 year old white elephant which now may have found its purpose).

> "Autom is a complex product using sophisticated hardware and software. It made much more sense to be based in Hong Kong than in the US so we could easily travel and work with the engineers in the Pearl River Delta that have helped us develop and will be manufacturing Autom,” says Cory. “It is very easy, straightforward and quick to set up a company in Hong Kong and in comparison to the US the cost of doing business is much cheaper in terms of hiring staff and office rental"
Interesting use-case. For keeping all of these sites and up to date I don't have anything directly making it 100% perfect, but take a look at http://www.wibki.com/ or https://kippt.com/ as a way to store/share the content.

Thanks for the submission!
You are correct, but that's not the issue. The issue is not that people are not able to jump to the right conclusion, it is that they jump to the wrong conclusion.
Artilley is the platform/engine on which game is built and it is also name of the company behind the platform and the game (https://artillery.com/team)
Howdy -

We think of ourselves as Parse for healthcare sites/apps/devices.

One can absolutely build their own Parse to power their own stack, but it may not be time/resource effective. Behind the scene, among other things, we provide unique object encryption and automatic object re-key and re-encryption -- mechanisms one would have to be custom build for a homegrown HIPAA environment (event on AWS).

We make sure the Protected Health Information our customers collect is always in compliance with HIPAA despite the ever changing healthcare regulatory landscape.

But you are absolutely right. We do not absolve the developers/covered entities from all HIPPA liabilities and responsibilities. We just take care of one aspect of HIPAA so they can focus on other things.
European Space Agency Wants to Send Robot Snakes to Mars
so let me share this -- I've watched prominent HN users (top 10 leaderboard) attack a user's company because they disagreed with that user's posted opinion about software. Given their willingness to drag employers into a pissing match, not posting under your real name, or at least making it difficult to find, is perfectly rational.
What happened to biofuels? Do they have a future?
What does being a "hardcore RTS" mean?
That basically explains PHP.
Hiroshi Yamauchi: The Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove
I have no data, but this Wikipedia article explains the theory:

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

"Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. During decision making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor. For example, the initial price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the negotiations, so that prices lower than the initial price seem more reasonable even if they are still higher than what the car is really worth."

If you wanted to do an early bird special, one solution might be to add something extra at the early bird tier (but keep the same price). Or even charge $1 more for something that seemed to be worth >$1 more but was unavailable otherwise. E.g. the early bird copies are signed.
I'm not a professional programmer by any stretch, but wouldn't this problem completely go away if the C and C++ compilers detect a single = inside an if statement and outright refuse it. Either that or automatically substitute the assignment with checking for instances inside the if-condition.

The reason I'm asking is, because I don't know if there's ever a case where you'd want to assign right inside the if-condition. Is there?
Tesla Working Towards 90 Percent Autonomous Car Within Three Years
This is great. Outrage over government surveillance seems to be fading among the "mainstream", but this seems like just the thing that is accessible enough to get the general public on board.

What's the best way we can contribute if we can't be there in person for the rally?
> GTA V shares literally nothing with GTA IV

So they threw GTA IV out and did everything from scratch? I very much doubt it.

That said, we're talking about GTA here, the game that outdid itself with every single iteration. Why should we expect any less this time? I want to see what they'll come up with now that they have the power of PS4 behind them.

Rockstar Games is famous for a reason.
The article doesn't give any information on the technical detail. As a 2600 programmer, I can make some assumptions.

Looks like the major constraint is sprite inventory. There's only ever one other object on screen besides Sonic/Zippy. This covers enemies, springs, powerups, rings (which are done with a hardware register that repeats copies of a sprite.) So the levels look and feel really sparse.

The 2600 has only two hardware sprites, so that's not unexpected. To get more on screen, you have to reposition a hardware sprite in the middle of each TV frame while the electron beam is drawing it. The 2600 literally uses the phosphor on the TV screen as the frame buffer. So the 2600 can draw many sprites that march in vertical lockstep (Space Invaders, River Raid) but it's hard-to-impossible to draw sprites with full freedom of movement (famously Pac-man's flickery ghosts, which are each drawn only once every four frames.) It's possible with smart sharing algorithms - do reposition and reuse a sprite whenever it's possible, otherwise flicker when you must when sprites overlap. But doing that along with the fairly complicated playfield manipulation will run out of cycles very quickly. You only get 76 machine cycles per scanline -- just 20-some instructions in 6502 assembly.
I've been running CCCP for years (I think at least 5 or so), on multiple computers, and have never had issues with CCCP. The only reason I have to update is for codec features, like hi10p.

I agree with your comment on licensing. I haven't ever looked into CCCP's reuse of codecs.
that's really beautiful, and pretty useful as well
CEO here: Thanks for the feedback. 'Console quality' and 'AAA' are very subjective and we totally understand your points. Our job is to make Atlas and anything on our platform objectively feel amazing and please keep in touch with us.
Could you point to more information about domain testing, or even what the domain concept means in this context? Is it about what I've heard described by "SMEs" as "business rules"?
I, myself, would have started, and stopped, with the last sentence:

I prefer to let these little cesspools of cyberspace fester and then stagnate, forgotten as they should be, secure in the knowledge that I am doing something that matters to me.

As reddit is nothing other than a festering cesspool of cyberspace.
Soldiers Can Get Emotionally Attached to Robots
This is going to sound inflammatory but I basically consider anyone younger than around 25 to be functionally insane. They're in a period in their life where they seriously believe that they cannot spend the rest of their lives with someone who doesn't have the same taste in music as they do. You're busy cultivating a sense of identity, I get it. But more often than not you grow up and find yourself in love with someone who likes everything you used to hate and you find it endearing. It's not a bad thing and I try not to treat anyone differently because of it... but young people pick on each other for these sorts of things. That's pretty insane IMO.

Update I could probably justify this comment by making a point other than, "young whipper snappers be cray, yo."

Hipster hate has been around for years. I find that it comes from young, self-conscious people posturing and picking on other people based on the way they look, the music they like, and other trivial things. It's cruel to pick on other people for something so utterly trivial. There's nothing thinly veiled about it, IMO: it's just bullying and it seems to be a phenomenon I strongly attribute to young people.

Maybe that makes me an old, ignorant, ruddy-duddy but I seriously haven't really heard someone over the age of 30 or so make snarky remarks about how so-and-so is such a hipster douchebag. They'd get funny looks and people might think, "What is this, high school!?"

I think someone should make this a youtube video. Old people picking on other old people for liking obscure bands young people have never heard of in forty years. Calling them hipsters (a term that originated in the 50s beat movement, no?).
This is impressive and cool, but I think web-based gaming will never catch on with the 'hardcore' for a few reasons.

For one, C++ and the native toolchain is still more efficient. But it mostly comes down to perception and convenience. The perception of web-based games is that they're casual and cheap. And most hardcore gamers like to have a copy of the game on their computer - they paid for it, they want a copy that they can keep (and at least store on their hard drive) for years. They don't want to stop playing a game because the dev decided to end its life...

This is why platforms like Steam, Xbox, HumbleBundle, etc..., still rule for distributing games (both AAA and indie).
Why Open Data Matters More Than Ever
it's not that programmers vary - its that the same mistakes are made across the board:

1. memory management is hard - this is mostly a solved problem because the difference between C and $GARBAGECOLLECTEDLANG was great enough that it outweighed most differences in programmer ability. The mass move to web servers put paid to the need to develop for Windows APIs and Linux Syscalls and the a erage software project actually got better. (well ... worked)

1.a. business rules work better in languages that treat functions as first class objects and even better in languages that are logic based and really well in DSLs. most programmers don't reach the first so ... well we await the next mass change if languages.

2. Choice of algorithm. For loops are nice. just not everywhere. O(n^2) hurts. You can see the same in Unindexed table scanning queries.

3. Metrics. measure your own programs. write dynamic do s that update profile information in them. if you are not measuring then ... how do you know you improved? passing another hundred tests does not tell you if those tests measure what is valuable. tests are regression. metrics are progression.

4. I'm ranting too much today, blood pressure is rising :-)
I saw this over on /r/starcraft the other day; as a massive fan of Day[9] I hope his input will be enough to create the F2P RTS that so many want. Balanced, fun, reasonably fast paced... We don't know much about what he's planning but we'll see!

Meanwhile, back to the ladder. Grandmaster can't be too far off... ;)
Proper utility: Do not use.

I've seen people try and fail to use Cucumber effectively.

Now, Cucumber is a really impressive implementation, but it's a fundamentally flawed idea. You cannot pivot your requirements from business talk "As a blah I want X" into functional tests without a lot of shear.

You may as well write your test descriptions in Farsi or Russian for a team that only speaks English. They make no sense.

Functional requirements should set the groundwork, but they shouldn't serve as the template for construction. You convert these requirements into a format and language understood by developers. If you can preserve some kind of mapping between the original requirement and the myriad of things that had to be implemented to make that feature work, you've done something amazing.

Sadly, Cucumber doesn't let you do that.
Anybody have references to the technical details behind this change?

One way I can think of would be to use ETag headers, which are intended to be used for caching but can be abused for tracking purposes[1] since by definition the browser is required to send back the server-provided ETag value.

Alternatively (or additionally), browser fingerprinting[2] seems like the perfect candidate technology to replace cookies for tracking purposes, since it can't easily be "cleared".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags
[2] https://panopticlick.eff.org
We will on a case by case basis. But there are other contractual indemnification options as well. Ping us and we can tell you all about it.
There was a time that you could have said that github was just "a schmoozy web site on top" of git.
I wish for the same features you describe, both as a creator and backer. That said, they have a very specific vision for their company and business, and have decided not to follow the money when it points them away from that vision. Hats off to them for that.
Life is constantly surprising us, it's well known that there is bacteria on the outside of the ISS, it could well be that life is falling down rather than up.

I'd like to see a DNA sample that doesn't point to existing earth life, for me just seeing diatoms seems a little too early to reach this conclusion.
> And that's not even starting into the sheer ludicrousness of claiming people's consciousness is pure software when we know that all kinds of enzymes and hormones affect our personalities!

That's a bug to fix in implementation accuracy. I'd obviously prefer more accuracy, but if it comes down to a choice between less-than-perfect available implementation accuracy or dying of old age, I'll happily take a less accurate implementation, especially one that preserves enough information to fix that issue later.

The much more serious bug I am concerned about is the continuity flaw: a copy of me does not make the original me immortal. I'd like the original me to keep thinking forever. Many proposals exist for how to ensure that. The scary problem that needs careful evaluation before implementing any solution: if you do it wrong, the copy will never know the difference, but the original will die.
No. Think prism to the 8th power or more. Yes!