skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I (an American) was having a discussion with some European friends recently, and we had a bit of a disconnect. I was trying to convince them that, contrary to their perceptions (they are fooled by the architecture) the United States is very old, and their countries -- France, in particular, are very young. We in the US have the oldest constitutional democracy in the world, or possibly the second oldest if you misinterpret what the British Parliament was in the 18th Century. We are stuck with a government created by a bunch of agrarian colonists in the 1700s, and most of Europe has governments created in the 20th Century, created with knowledge of the labor movement, high capitalism, and totalitarian movements. And also, they've been able to observe the disasters caused by our pidgin compromise of a political system.

Compared to you guys (Swiss Federal Constitution: ratified 1999) we aren't even driving horse and buggies. We're on some wobbly farmer's cart pulled by a mule.
I'm a big fan of basic income, and politically very much a leftist, but I also think basic income goes very well with a flat tax rate.

If you consider progressive taxation as a high tax rate with a discount for lower incomes so they get enough money to live, then basic income, which provides enough money to live, can replace that discount. Just like it replaces welfare, unemployment benefits, etc. It's going to make social security and the tax system both a lot easier, and cut down a lot on bureaucracy.
That's the pressure of a start up rather than the specifics of the project though isn't it?

Going it alone and giving up the security of a steady pay check is going to be hard whether you're setting up a software company or a sandwich shop.

I suspect for every entrepreneur blogging about how being self employed has given them a great work life balance, I suspect there are 20 in the same position as you. It could be that you're not suited to the life but, more likely I suspect, it's just part and parcel of the early stages of setting out on your own.
The NSA gives a lot of advice to civilian cryptographers. It used to be tinfoil to assume the advice was deliberately bad. Now we know (some of) it is.

The NSA also has been found to give good advice sometimes, so just doing the opposite of what they say doesn't work either.
I don't think the plan will work either (for many of the reasons you've given), but I'm not as sure about this one:

The market value of a $200k mortgage for a $100k house is NOT $80k, or even $100k. Even if the mortgage is currently in default, it still represents ownership of a house worth $100k; by definition that makes it worth $100k, no $80k...

The market value of the mortgage is whatever it would actually sell for on the open market. I don't see a strong reason to believe it would always be equal to the price the underlying asset would sell for. Sometimes owning the mortgage is more valuable than the underlying property, because you've locked in a good interest rate and cash stream. Other times it's less valuable, because you have potential hassles over eviction, damage, etc., or because you've locked in a bad interest rate (the latter being the same reason bonds can be worth less than their face value).

In a situation like Richmond's housing market, with high default rates, it wouldn't be too surprising that an unencumbered property could sell for more than a mortgage on the same property would sell for. If I were buying, I would certainly demand a discount on the property to compensate for the risks of taking over the mortgage and a house with a resident in it, versus the situation of buying the property completely free and clear. That's not even specific to mortgages; any asset with a contract attached to it will be valued by taking into account the contract.
it seems that you think that while anarchy would better achieve a true national welfare

No; I don't think there's any such thing as "true national welfare".

True welfare somehow is intrinsically unmeasurable.

No, that's not what I said. "Welfare" is a much broader term than "national welfare". I only said "national welfare" was unmeasurable, not "welfare".
That may be the line in that script but it wasn't in the actual film. He just says something about making the "phase conjugate tracking system mirror" or something to that effect. That must have been some sort of "working script" as I recognize many other lines that were different or omitted in the final film.
It was not intended for the weapons system, which is a completely different beasts. There are many other things for a destroyer (which is a type of ship) to do. Good discussion here: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1eyfk0/til_sqli....
Personally I can't see a path forward for me from high school till now without open source.

I own a home, stock, work a great job, have gotten to travel the world, and do exactly what I want to do for a job. Purely as a result of having the tools and instructional material I needed available libre on the internet.

I can't help but think that without that kind of alternative, dropping out of college would have sunk me for life - I'd probably still be working odd jobs in my hometown and living with my parents, no career, no future, depressed. I could even imagine an alternate present where I had enlisted in the military and gotten deployed.
huh, I've been using Ubuntu, Gentoo and Arch and I never have had any problems. You usually just have to ensure your wireless card has a linux driver. It was like $30 for me to just buy a wireless card that was supported. If you think about it.. Windows = $200, wireless card = $30, clearly the wireless card is cheaper.

I even went and installed it on my girlfriends laptop and it works fine.
The new Razuna translation system is in place for everyone to help translating -
Replying to myself, there is a good discussion on Reddit about what that actually meant: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1eyfk0/til_sqli....
-ve array index in JS.
When you've already built the infrastructure for mass spying, it's very easy to find excuses and opportunities for using it. It's too irresistible for the government not to use it.
Do these cheap Ubuntu laptops have a Windows key on the keyboard?
> What kind of "shamans" is Ethiopia supposed to have, anyway? Aren't they a Siberian thing? Ethiopia has one of the most ancient Christian traditions in the world, you know. I agree with some other posters that this whole thing is some kind of a politically correct cringe which somehow tries to compliment Ethiopians for something they have nothing to do with, and only ends up insulting them. And every reader's intelligence, to boot.

You are flailing at windmills here. Sure the country has a long history of Christianity; however that part of the world has a long history of overlapping animistic traditions too.
Sounds like you've misunderstood the purpose of this.

I usually just use a single password across most services, so they all know your password, even if you trust them not to store it in plain text. It's infinitely more secure to use something like PW, never entering your main/master password into any other services and then have a generated hash that really means nothing to anyone (can't be decoded or anything stupid). The length factor here makes very little difference, and only you need to know that you use 40 character password (yes, 40, which I bet is longer and more secure than your current password(s))
Being quite familiar with Kirsty Wark and Newsnight, my impression of this segment was that she was playing devil's advocate, almost doing Greenwald a favour by allowing him to easily rebut some of the more common charges against his handling of the Snowden leaks.
No pressure, I have long runway and dozens of job offers to fallback to. And I just turned profitable.

This is not a rant, I love what I am doing and freedom it brings. I just want to point out that being OS nerd, does not always line up with being "better man".
Over 100 long-lost Doctor Who episodes found by dedicated fans in Ethiopia
Why not just soft limit it? If you think a vanishingly small percentage of people are going to run into the limits, just put a note "You've reached the end of the internet! Please click here to email me and let me know you've found it" and wait until you get a response, and do the cost-benefit analysis then.
Pity if it will be blown to pieces by bearded men with dumb phones and no Internet connection.
> No mortgages = 10x lower property prices.

Without mortgages, housing would simply stabilize at the rental value. This will be lower than the current price -- but not anywhere close to 90% lower. The price floor would be the cost of new construction -- in other words, all the value in the structure, zero value in the land.

Instead of buying MBSes, investors who wished to have real estate exposure would simply supply capital to REITs that owned the properties directly. Banks would run these REITs for a fee, equivalent to the mortgage origination fee.

The equilibrium condition would not be objectively worse than the current equilibrium. You may have a subjective preference for an ownership society, but Germany does just fine with a rental society.

The problem is that it's socially costly to move from one equilibrium to another. If you go from the German model to the US model, then you hurt the renters. If you go from the US model to the German model, then you hurt the owners. You don't start out with a blank slate, so you cannot just pick an equilibrium.
I'm currently using Nightly UX. I've been using it for quite awhile and I haven't had any problems with it. That being said, you should keep in mind that this is a pre-alpha release and it wouldn't be surprising to run into some problems. If your browsing experience heavily depends on extensions, I'd recommend you not to use Nightly, though. I only use NoScript and AdBlock Edge as my extensions, but if you install 10+ extensions, you're not gonna like Nightly.

In any case, you can just install it and experience it yourself. If you're like me who started using Chrome because you were sick of how slow and unstable Firefox was, you'll be amazed how good it is now.
It is also dangerous to inhale these powders. They are very fine and very abrasive.

One needs to maintain a clean-room environment, both for the protection of the mirror from dust, and of yourself from the abrasives.
This is one of the major intersections between CS theory (big-O notation, etc.) and usability that many self taught programmers are missing, or don't take into account.

Being conscious of the structural decisions you're making at a low level, and abstracting them out so that they can be refactored goes a long way to dealing with performance issues along the way.
Ask HN: How and when do you cultivate new skills?
Hi,

I'm not sure if this topic has been already covered. I've searched HN, didn't find any links, so posting it.

I'm a computer graduate good with Java, and now planning to move on to other languages like Python and Java script.

Every time I start a new project with Python, I feel it difficult to work because there is so much of Python out there. Stack Overflow questions do help me for the time being, But I'm
still not getting a feeling that I'm good with the language.

So my question is, What is the best way to learn a new language? Is it directly getting your hands dirty working with it or you understand the language and then do your projects?

Also, How many hours do you spend learning a new language( I know this depends largely on IQ too)?

Thanks for all the inputs.
They do some of it:

1. Automatic drink maker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgiT5b8Z5UE

2. Automated drive through machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxz6DSwL17s

3. Electronic order terminal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB4wqyVRn7o

4. Full on vending machine convenience stores: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/us/vending-machines-don-t-... (Failed, or were reduced to Redbox?)

Some projects take off, some fail. I like the automated order machines, but maybe they confuse too many people.

They probably don't roll all this out super fast, because being as large as they are, there's enormous risk in changing everything over night. I'm not sure, they may have to balance the shiny new methods against the interests against franchisees, who don't want to constantly retrain employees. But probably (hopefully) most of the good ideas are being tried out in some McDonald's somewhere.

They probably don't yet have "the robot that makes 360 gourmet burgers an hour,"
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/meet-the-robot-that-makes-3...

But maybe it's easier to experiment with things on the margin at that size, so replacing your entire burger process probably lags a few years behind the technology.
I understand how password managers work. Do you understand why a constant length password is bad?
It might - I've skimmed it, and I think I can find everything I need in there. Thank you.

I fully recognize that me spending time on a bug report is a way of contributing to open-source. I have no problems with that, and I look forward, in some sense, to doing so. My comments are, as I say elsewhere, trying to help as well, to try to help make the system better by recognizing that it is currently optimized for people who already know a lot, and are willing to spend a lot of time trying to work out how to do stuff.

Most of the world isn't like that, so maybe something can be done to help make Ubuntu fit the world better.

When I get time I'll move over to the laptop and get started. I'll also log my time, and see what actually happens in the long run.

Many thanks for your response.
The Last Lesson From Steve Ballmer
Awesome :)

Easiest way to start is file a bug. There are a few ways to do that, but in this case one of the following two are great.

1. $ ubuntu-bug network-manager

This will gather information about your card and any crashes related to networking etc, send it to LP (Launchpad) and star the bug filing process.

Or

2. Go to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+b... where you can see if any bugs match what is happening to you. You can then say 'yes, this also effects me' by clicking near the top of the bug. If you don't see a bug that is right for you, you can file a new bug via 'report a bug' on the right hand side near the top of the screen.

Both ways will require an LP account (sorry!), but it just takes seconds to create.

If you just do one of those two (and give me the bug number), we can start taking a look. Obviously we'd love for people who have the time to test potential fixes, though we know this just isn't a realistic possibility in most cases. If, however, you do have the time and are so inclined, that is a great way to also help us figure out what is wrong and how to fix it.

Either way, having a Bug # is great and where we should start. Also, if you have a bug # and are still posting in those forums, having people 'me too' the bug raises awareness of the issue for us in Launchpad, meaning, the more people the bug effects, the hotter the bug and the higher it will be on our (or in this case, my) priority list. In this case, though, if you have a bug #, I'll add it to my list directly ;)
I'm pleased you didn't have a problem. In my case, the laptop has been supplied by my institution, so I didn't have the luxury of doing the research on which card it has, and whether there is a Linux driver for it.

Your response is a common one. To me it sounds like you've just said: "Well, if you'd done something different then you wouldn't have problems." That may be true, but it's unhelpful for me.
This is much needed, although I'm not sure about separating your services and directives out by page in the directory structure. These are generally going to be shared components that can be used by multiple pages.
IT experts question architecture of Obamacare website
To be fair, although I really dislike the idea of fixed length passwords, with this many characters it's not too bad.

A full search of the password space that this outputs would take ~10^50 years at the moment, on high end hardware, and shouldn't be susceptible to attacks on patterns, assuming SHA is working properly.

One thing I would say is that with something like this you might as well just remember a really long password and tag on the name of the service at the beginning, that will give you (arguably) more security. Something like hackernewsFe26476e75256504234fC7CbBcE05aEd704b94A2.
> No mortgages = Detroit. The end result of this idea is not pretty.

The lack of mortgages did not cause the collapse of Detroit. The causation runs the other way.

The collapse of the auto industry led to the collapse of housing prices in Detroit, which in turn led to the collapse of the mortgage market. Who wants to issue mortgages for houses that are dropping in value?
It's a nice touch to provide a local application to run as there is no way people should be doing this in the browser. You might want to remove the tracking from the local app though, even if it is for analytics purposes, I don't want something that deals with passwords like this to be phoning home.
Yes, but it's by far the lesser of two evils. You can easily take a substring of the generated password.

How would you randomise the length of the password in a repeatable + secure manner?
Putting an artificial limit and forced human interaction into software is problematic.

I encountered a database once where there was a hidden limit on the number of categories for customers. Specifically, you could add more categories over some very low number (16 or 20) the program would fail to open - it would hang on a loading screen.

We didn't have source, so we ended up having to find and pull the developer out of retirement (it was a 16-bit windows crystal reports program), who found the error after looking at it for a few weeks. It was a one line change that bumped up that limit to something like 1000.

Most of the time the limit you may have aren't realized, and you assume that the programmer is smart enough to note and communicate with the user about all possible limits.

Don't cripple your software. It's better if it runs poorly than it not running at all.
I read the article before I comment, and actually there's only two sentences about the problem.

Apple BETA devices around the world have been receiving the error “Activation Required”. Apple has placed an expiry date on their BETA versions, this forces users who are still running BETAs of iOS 7 to update to the current version.

WTF? You said it was BETA.

Still, you're blaming other people for your fault. You're developer. You were recognizing what will be happen with BETA OS in worst case, and you just didn't prepared for it. Dedicated testing machine is required equipment for BETA OS. You didn't bought it because you treated it optional equipment. That's right for regular development, but not for BETA OS. So you thrown your primary phone into the risk of the test machine.

If you're work for a company, blame your boss who forced you to use your personal device. If you work for yourself, then blame yourself.

And welcome to Android. You don't need to worry about Apple's parenting, but instead, you need plenty of different devices for test. Good luck.
Thanks Jason. Once I finish my current tasks and can reconnect my laptop via a wire I'll do that. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6504268

I'll get on it ASAP, but it's Sunday evening here, and I have a few other commitments looming. But I will do it, and thanks again.
Welcome to the beautiful open world of Android!
Don't forget Google Shopping Express!
№ 2: It doesn’t matter which side runs the village.

№ 6: It’s run by one side or the other?

№ 2: Oh, certainly. But both sides are becoming identical. What, in fact, has been created, is an international community – a perfect blueprint for world order. When the sides, facing each other, suddenly realize that they are looking into a mirror, they will see that this is the pattern for the future.

№ 6: The whole Earth, as the village?

№ 2: That is my hope. What’s yours?

№ 6: I’d like to be the first man on the moon.

— № 2 & № 6, The Prisoner, The Chimes of Big Ben, 1967
I can echo a lot of what the author is saying. While I have seen less financial success, my project (respondcms.com, if interested) has taught me a lot about writing code, designing UI, and dealing with complexity. I am definitely a better developer for doing it, and at the end of the day, it is definitely a good feeling when someone finds value in what you are doing.
> echo "service-password" | openssl sha

This is a quick alternative that should work on Mac OS and Linux, and Windows when openssl has been installed in a similar way.
The current problem with the BBC is that the current UK government is looking for a chance to destroy the BBC and there have been several significant scandals around the BBC lately, all of which lead it to be significantly more careful that some might like.

That said, I don't think there are many critisims that the BBC hasn't had leveled at it[1], and my personal belief is that it's unfortunate that the disproportionate and (often) agenda fueled critisisms get as much concideration as they do (in short, fuck the Daily Mail).

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC
I agree with you on your concerns about inflation. Personally though I think there is this (unhealthy?) competitive culture in America that would drive people to work the same amount.

It's like comparing now to the 50s. Almost all our households are dual income now. Surely that means each parent would work half as much, right? Nope. People are too busy competing on how fancy their houses are and therefore drove up housing prices sufficiently high that in many cities two middle class incomes are now necessary to swing the mortgage payments.
+ might have worked perfectly, but most people didn't use it, and of those who did use it most used it incorrectly.

(http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your...)

> we found that users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly.

Check my arithmetic but that means only 1 in 600 searches used + correctly; 2 in 600 used it wrong, and the other 597 searches didn't use it at all.
If our "democracies" were sane, we'd cancel or at least boycott these games.

And there lies the problem now:

Since the US together with the EU have become too corrupt, there is no one left to guard the moral high ground. The conclusion would be that this misery is now the new standard - unless we begin to act.
> And since when Richmond is a state? You can read the constitution by spirit or by the letter. You cannot have both.

There is no local sovereignty in the United States, except for whatever a state chooses to delegate to its municipalities. (This is why you hear about states that take over failing cities' schools and finances. The city possesses no sovereignty.)

All of Richmond's powers derive from the State of California. If California is prohibited from doing something, then so is Richmond.
The idea with a basic income is that it's taxed back from the wealthier. There's no way without knowing income distribution and tax rates, but I would imagine that someone making $150k pre basic income is not seeing any change in their take home salary post basic income, and someone making $500k before basic income will actually come home with a little bit less (that is just my hypothesis - I don't know the details surrounding this).

Basic income is just a redistribute tax mechanism, but it's one that tries to remove bureaucracy and politics from social security programs surrounding qualifications, etc.
That's a decent idea, appending/prepending the service name to the hash would probably help.