skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I never understood this rationalization for what is essentially a corrupt behavior. People find excuses to keep the corrupt system going. I see it as a collective madness.

Those companies, being a huge influence on the internet culture and economy, a trend-setter, one might even say the internet gatekeepers - I think they not only should disclose and vehemently oppose any attempts on user rights, but it is their moral obligation to do so.

How is it that individuals and small parties are scrutinized and put down for a single misstep or a character flaw, while enterprises are forgiven, or worse - go unnoticed, for systematic violations of our rights.

Also, keep in mind, that being a big business like Google, inevitably puts you in a close proximity to government and politics. One thing is certain, they do not lobby on our behalf. Though they could. If Google and other giants had a moral compass resembling one of Lavabit or FastMail, perhaps PRISM would fail or never happen.
Andreas Mueller is one of the core devs of scikit learn.

He is active on Kaggle.com too.

For more practical ML projects see: https://github.com/amueller
We are using LastPass for credentials to external services (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Twilio, Tropo). It has the advantage that all encryption/decryption happens on the client, so passwords are not stored in cleartext on LastPass's servers.
I think the country that is going to win will be biggest exporter of clean water in about two decades.

Meanwhile China makes more solar panels than anyone in the world yet has the most filthy air.
If earning money is your sole criteria, then you'd be better off doing what you already have qualifications for.

You can learn about assembly, compilers, etc by reading a couple of good text books. There are some excellent video CS courses out there if you prefer that sort of tuition.

Yes, there will be a period while you are learning and not earning. But that's how it was with your original degree - wasn't it? If you have a keen desire, then you will accomplish your goals. Read some Anthony Robbins, e.g. Awaken the Giant Within. Everything is possible, and you have to work for it, which means you really have to want it.
How to Reduce the Cost of Home Automation by an Order of MAgnitude
We wrote our own app with defined security levels etc.. It had to be audited for security/finance reasons etc, so we had to control it.
An abstraction that can land you in jail ceases to be an abstraction.
Here's how i see the whole "influences" discussion. What the students did was the same as you looking at a piece of software and asking what design pattern was used? Which algorithm? Which Data Structures? How did you go about building it? Can you show me the Sequence Diagrams, Class Diagrams, ERD? Stuff like that. An amateur/hobbyist who hasn't had professional training would probably not be familiar with all this. He might have written a lot of code and might have done that by reading online tutorials etc etc. He might have written pretty good code too. But A professional would be abashed if none of the above were used at all. And they'd feel their moral duty to inform the person of these things. Is it because the professional is pretentious? Of course not. But all these things exist for a reason, and it's most useful to know about them, and apply them.
I was curious as to how the cash prizes [1] for this challenge compared to playing the lottery. Consider the next smallest one left: RSA-768. By my very rough estimates [2], $1 worth of computing time on a typical desktop gives you a probability of 10^-58 of factoring the prime by picking random numbers smaller than its square root.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge
[2] https://www.google.com/#q=%241+%2F+(%240.09+%2F+kwh)+%2F+100...
Obligatory link "I will not do your tech interview" by Ike Ellis https://medium.com/lessons-learned/80ba19c55883
> I have another curiosity about the FBI's intent to seize his bitcoins- is it fair to seize all of them? If half of these bitcoins were earned while bitcoins were only worth 1/10 of current value, should only 10% of that half be seized? This might be arguable in court.

I'm fairly sure there must be precedent for this. It's not like Bitcoin is the only currency that undergoes inflation...
By this argument, from solipsism, I can kill you because you are imaginary to me. However -- your poor arguments notwithstanding -- I do not wish to, but instead try to understand how on earth you can think society is imaginary when it has constructed your roads, schools, constitution, social values. Yes, you have social values, even if they just consist in denying them. And, oh, language. You didn't make that up. Nor did your parents... but a whole huge historical arse of people conjoined, like it or not, into collaborating into creating (and often destroying) their common world and experience.
Twitter ads are never going to produce a substantial profit. Google and Facebook have the ability to mine a ton of data that will eventually allow them to provide perfectly targeted ads that 1) don't annoy you, and 2) produce a ton of profit. Twitter knows when you last went to the bathroom. I'd expect the ads to increase, become obtrusive, and people leave in masses if that is their monetization end-game.
All the various scandal just showed the regular people that the investment market is a professional market with lots of insider privileges. If you play, you play by rules you do not control through the proxy of institution that do not have your interest at heart.

Combined that with a depressed real-people economy (money economy is doing fine, working people economy, no so much) it is a lot safer to build a good interest rate on your savings by simply saving more.
What are the genuinely useful ideas in programming?
Bitcointalk reopens.
>That's not to say that all rules in their current incarnation are sensible

We should be having that debate rather than shooting first and asking questions later.
We used to use PHPChain
Indeed. The rhetoric says "evil landlords". The practice is more likely the low-hanging fruit. A bit like zero-tolerance policing: hits the human pawns and ordinary people the hardest and the actual putative bad guys get a free pass, as usual.
The article is a little light on the details which data was used and compiled - are the majority of Google hits due to that being a persons default url when they open their web browser?
Beefs with this article:

1. Runtime-linking _is_ dynamic linking, and it's a PITA that Java doesn't have an option for static linking, especially given the inherent fragility of the CLASSPATH.

2. clang and gcc have compatible command-line option syntax.

3. The options example he lists for gcc is a pure strawman. Maybe they are necessary to compile that particular source file, but it is not necessary to use all these options in the average case.

4. The article title says "now more than ever", but there's really nothing about recent developments here. This article could have been written ten years ago.

This really just seems like crappy linkbait.
That's just shocking ad hominem, and very bad ad hominem at that. So the parent company of the company that contributed less than 2% to this guy's election campaign offers luxury apartment rentals? Call the presses!

Seriously, your naked aspersion doesn't even make sense in this context. AirBnB isn't competing with luxury apartment rentals. To the extent that a luxury apartment rental company might be interested in the issue, it's because they're worried about the impact on them if their tenants or the tenants of neighboring buildings start treating their properties as hotels through AirBnB. That concern is a totally valid one as a property owner.
Mostly agree with minor exception of ask them to debug something not code something. More time is spent fixing changing (for the sake of change of course) and updating and upgrading than plain blank sheet starting.

Also, debugging code is harder. Any idiot can write something that occasionally works with some limited simple input and doesn't need to scale or do much error handling or recovery or cooperate with the OPS guys and their designs in any way. If you hire a guy who can code but not debug what he wrote, you're in big trouble sooner or later.

Give em a fizzbuzz with pathological parenthesis which mess it up, or half a fizzbuzz and ask them to finish it. Or give them a mortgage amortization calculator or similar with an obvious fencepost/off-by-one error (this is almost more of a spreadsheet problem than a real programming problem, but...). This is almost too stereotypical of a classroom task, but give them an OO design of a simulation of an elevator (literal, not an analogy) and ask him to add another floor to the elevator design, or add a fire dept override keyswitch, or maybe implement those door sensors so it doesn't move if any doors are open. Given a really crude simple importer for CSV text files, make it smarter so it can handle embedded commas inside quotes. Here's a crude simple roman numeral to decimal translator which handles I and V, now either add X or add prefix notation or whatever its called where IV = 4 not 6. Here's the worlds dumbest prime number checker which tests all positive integers smaller than the test number for divisibility... your task is make it faster.
It's a competition set up with prizes for factoring some 'semiprimes' (numbers with exactly two prime divisors). So unless the challenge organizers had messed up, they were guaranteed this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge
They are inevitable, which means everybody should expect tham and plan for them. Basing risk calculations on the assumption that the price of an asset can never go down is a bad idea. Borrowing to cover non-essential operating expenses is a bad idea for both countries and individuals.

If anyone could accurately and consistently predict these movements, they could and would be acted against for great profit. That is a simple market indicator that it is not possible.

No, boom and bust cycles are not made on purpose. In related news, the Queen is not a lizard.
It's surely only a matter of time in this situation before the FBI start using rubber-hose cryptanalysis [1]

[1] Obligatory XKCD http://xkcd.com/538/
Great. So now the US'll just run out relatively sooner than they would have done compared with those guys. WTG short-term thinking with finite resources.
Humans are idiots.
I wonder how much this could've been avoided had Airbnb built in tax collection into the system? Yes, the pain of doing it by jurisdiction is one of those unscalable tasks, but you only have to run through it once (i.e. look up the state tax laws) every few years, or hire a single lawyer/accountant to do it full time.

I did a Airbnb stay in Rome last year...the gov't there has been trying to better enforce its tax laws, even to a comedic degree (you, the customer, can get in trouble for walking out of a gelato shop without a receipt). My host made very sure I signed the right paperwork after my stay...and I'm guessing as long as the state gets its share, it has less incentive to crack down on it.
You're right in the way most people try to apply the meme, but the meme is true. What's best for the shareholders is supposed to have a very broad interpretation where nearly anything a company officer does short of fraud would count.
Passwords are protected under his 5th amendment rights. The government would have to come up with a much stronger reason to force the password from him other than "we want it"

The interesting part is if he does have a backup, and if he does access the funds in there for his legal defense. Would his attorney consider that money to be tainted, and thus refuse to accept it?
Considering the number of Russians I know from Kazakhstan, it doesn't surprise me that it's a Russian site. However, it's interesting that its mail.ru and not Yandex. And why VK in Belarus and not Yandex? I realize that VK is enormous and at least in the top 5 most visited sites in Russia.
If he had done the deal in a foreign currency, in gold, or for modern art, they'd still seize all of that, regardless of its current value. Bitcoins are no different, even if you're considering them a proxy for real dollars.
What online mode? SimCity, SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000, and SimCity 4 all still work offline.

Oh, they mean SimCity Online! Why would they want to remove online mode from SimCity Online? Surely they didn't bill it as a single player game that needed an online component!/s
Pentagon-funded Atlas robot refuses to be knocked over
While I use 1Password myself, a few companies I've worked for now have been using Passpack (https://www.passpack.com/en/home/) which provides a neat way to "share" passwords securely in the event that an employee leaves so you don't lose any accounts. This is in addition to AD or Google Apps depending on the company's infra.
Please read some of Paul Graham's articles. The key is to create VALUE that people will pay money for. So look for a $1000m problem that get's you excited/passionate. Chip away at it. At 10% you've got your $100m.
If gold is not moved, it's as good as a promise of the vault owner that holds it for you. History shows that this promise was constantly broken before and after invention of central banking.

To own either bitcoin or gold you need to move it in your personal vault. But in case of bitcoin, it's many times cheaper to move it and have many vaults with extra protections.

Arabs will happily ship oil for bitcoin when both buyers and sellers of oil will no longer be able to use USD or trust banks standing in the way. And, of course, when they learn about bitcoin and we have better infrastructure to support secure storage and trade.
Still it's pretty fair. We drink a lot. We exported a lot of our Puritans to the New World. For better or worse.
IT job seeker exercises his right to see files
He has only done one competition as noted in his slides.
Hotel regulations at least partially benefit me as a customer. Hotels are subject to health checks for example. B&B places are exempt from some of the regulations, but not from all. So why don't AirBnB-hosts just go and apply for a B&B license - or maybe AirBnB handles the legalities for them. There's no conceivable reason that AirBnB-places should receive a preferred treatment in that matter - so I must admit I don't see and rebellion from the regulatory structure. They're just enforcing the rules that every other player is bound to as well. I also fail to see that adherence to health and fire code unfairly favors established players - quite to the contrary, those not adhering to the standards take an unfair advantage.

One of the price differences between AirBnB and other establishments is that often AirBnB-Host don't factor in taxes just because they consider themselves exempt. Why should tax avoidance be tolerated? What's unfair about cracking down on those that cheat?
Fighting for you in New York
To your first question, yes.
Good point(s), especially #4. The article compares an 80s language (C++) to a 90s language (Java), not to more recent compiler toolchains. Admittedly, there aren't many options here, and e.g. Scala (which I hope will be covered in future articles) relies on the java toolchain.

Edit: C++ and Java also have different cultures. The simplest compilation with g++ is "g++ foo.cpp -o foo", which isn't much more complex than "javac Foo.java". The fine-grained options clang/g++ give you are part of the “you pay for what you use”-mentality of C++.
Most importantly, his gcc example is taken from OSX... ugh.
> 1. Runtime-linking _is_ dynamic linking, and it's a PITA that Java doesn't have an option for static linking, especially given the inherent fragility of the CLASSPATH.

It is possible to roll a 'fat' JAR with all your dependencies baked-in, which is as close to static linking as it gets in Java-land. I prefer this for stand-alone applications as it makes deployment a cinch at the expense of the size of the build artifact.
No wonder why Google is trying to push Google+ so badly. Although I don't know what is worse, a world dominated by the New Google or by -the always full of controversy- Facebook.
Current world population
That's not really the argument I was making but it is one I will make.

Where drugs are concerned, hell yes we want regulation and bureaucracy. I want to buy from a store (maybe even a pharmacist) who sells products from a well known, traceable and accountable chemical/pharmaceutical company. I want guarantees from the manufacturer that any contaminants are known, non-toxic and biologically inert. I want someone to sue if it's not the case.

I don't buy alcohol from some forum member with half a dozen good reviews, who claims there's no methanol in his moonshine. I buy it from a store that's well run and well regulated.

Edit: tl;dr - SR, to me, is not even close to a good model for legalised drug sales.
Biggest thieves of the block, what else can be said.
I've had a question that I"m curious to hear the community's reaction on: Doesn't the FBI wanting to seize the bitcoins do more to legitimize the currency than anything thus far? Isn't it tantamount to saying "Yes, this is like dollars, francs, or another legitimate currency that we need to seize."

I'm wondering if that conversation has come up among management at FBI and what the outcome has been.
Moreover, their own banner ad at the bottom is ironic. "Java is cured, suffering from redeploy madness. Get your cure".

http://zeroturnaround.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/660x122...
My tone was partially poking fun and partially genuine interest.

On the one hand, I find the rebranding to be self-aggrandizing and kind of funny. Your dad went out and worked in the garage just because he wanted some time alone, and probably enjoyed working with wood, and got some satisfaction from building something. It seems this narrative is no longer good enough for us, and the same act elicits a greater investment of one's identity, one that partakes of the cultural mystique of the artist: One is not merely a hobbyist furniture maker, or robot builder, or computer programmer -- one is.... A Maker.

On the other hand, whether you think this is a shift for better or for worse, I do think it's worth noting and reflecting on. It is recent -- I've only really been struck by it within the past few years -- and it seems related to the ever-growing ascendancy of computers and technology within mainstream culture, and an attendant rise of power for nerd/geek culture.
Are you sure the majority of it would be for export?

A big driver of exports is simply the fact that lots of places don't have refinery capacity. People in such places are willing to pay more than people in the U.S., with its relative abundance of refineries.

The rest of the 'not consuming our own content' is just a logistics thing, the cheapest oil is generally used, not the oil that crosses the least borders.
> Firstly, Facebook is supposed to provide information about you.

I thought it was supposed to help me stay in touch with people and stuff, like they claim on their homepage. I'm adding false information related to my location to confuse their nosey advertising probe.
If you steal money and invest it, should you be allowed to retain the capital gains?

And honestly, when it comes to America and drugs, I'm pretty sure that they have the legal authority to seize and sell the router at the coffee shop computer they traced him to once.

edit: humorous typo.
50+ sites that can help build your pre-launch list
India too
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/indias-incoming-solar-plant...
"It's not like Bitcoin is the only currency that undergoes inflation..."

You mean "deflation"? ;)

The nice thing about BTCs (aside from anonymity) is that you can always subdivide to tiny increments.
It's both:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

There are people that do not pay taxes, but they are compensated by those who pay. The net effect is actually that the tax burden vs GDP in Italy is higher than in places like, say, Germany.

The reason Italy has a high public debt is not tax evasion, is excessive public spending. The reason many business are failing is not tax evasion, is a crazy tax law that kills many to reward few. That is why many Italian hate taxes, because they are unjust.
Norway is far from being a poor country but I see your point...
Sumo Jerky: $1000 in 24 hours
> An FBI spokesperson said to Hill that the “$80m worth”

The FBI gave the number denominated in USD, so the journalist had to estimate the true number of BTC. The 600k is almost certainly calculated from that $80m number.
WTG short-term thinking with finite resources. Humans are idiots.

Shale and gas is added to the thinking probably, enviro issues and all. Finite but it lasts 100+ years...
Under Australian Privacy Principals, he can indeed request to see his any personal data on file and request to have it modified if it is inaccurate. [1]

However, they can charge a "reasonable fee", but they cannot charge to get access to his information. [2] PeopleBank are charging him $75, and he must come into their offices. That is not reasonable, and I would be reporting them to the National Privacy Commissioner. I most certainly hope they haven't charged him to gain access to his information!

1. http://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-act/national-privacy-...

2. Note that it states it in item 6.4 http://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-resources/privacy-fac...
One had labeled him as "arrogant", a judgment he believes has resulted in automatic blacklisting for jobs through that agency.

I've seen a hell of a lot worse in regards to recruiter notes on particular candidates. That being said, personally I don't see anything wrong with that particular agency labelling him as arrogant. Maybe he is? Maybe this comes across during interviews and makes it difficult for him to connect with recruiters or employers.
North Carolina tried back in 2010:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20020680-281.html

It was denied as a violation of privacy.
Or because their listing under their real name and real address has too many negative reviews.
All this is only worsened by the ‘black box’ nature of the optimization level switches.

Doesn't the JIT do all sorts of crazy stuff that's not always reproducible and thus hard to profile? I know this is the case with V8, but probably also so with Java. I don't know much about compilers, but the author seems to know even less.
If Ross Ulbricht is really the guy who ran this site, why in the world was he doing his work from San Francisco? His alleged job was the pinnacle of "work anywhere". He took so many precautions to keep his identity secret that he must've known that his activities would at some point gather focused attention from the authorities.

Living in San Francisco allowed the feds to pick them up on their lunch hour. Even just hopping the border to Mexico would've required them to get international cooperation and extradite him.

He'd likely be a free man if he were in Croatia or Kazakhstan.
Statistics Show Why WordPress is a Popular Hacker Target
Here's a good video of a modern plant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJzqP5pnOF0
Interesting.

Meanwhile, does SMTP have something like HTTP Strict Transport Security? It would be nice for an impartial party to compile a list of mail servers that pledge to accept encrypted connections, and for sending MTAs to treat it as a connection failure if the destination is on that list but doesn't appear to support encryption.
There is something deeply concerning about a criminal justice system in which prosecutors are elected politicians but in this particular case I highly doubt that the $40,000 or 1.58 percent matters much for this Schneiderman's decisions. Also, AirBnB is not competing on long term luxury apartment rentals so I don't see the connection.