skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am really excited about both projects, but that's only because I struggle with my current package management system. Corruption is common, dependencies break easily, and the lock around every operation is irritating.

Honestly, the first one (of Nix vs. Guix) that can replace dpkg on my (non-NixOS) system is welcome! For now, having this "unstable" in the default nix channel (http://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable) is scary.

Also, the selection of packages in Guix is way too small. 600 advertized, vs. nearly 10000 for nix. Is Firefox even in? (no. Icecat is, whatever that is. Don't ask if Chrome is in.)

Another thing: Guix seems to default to per-user package installation, unlike Nix. http://xkcd.com/1200/ comes to mind.
In the case of Nix, "you can steal my cookies, but you cannot list Nix packages I can install!"
This piece of advice only applies if you choose to go on.
The main risk here is having your client blame your work for the likely failure of the app, even with no proper ground for that.
Imagine that you propose some design improvement over his specifications, this could be (from his point of view) the reason why the app is failing!
So stick to specs, validate and transfer the responsability of every design choice to him.
For anyone who isn't ready to completely turn off the news spigot, consider switching to a weekly (or monthly) source of news.

I get all of my (non-HN) news from The Economist's audio edition. It's released weekly and they have a section right at the start about big things happening in business/politics around the world in the last week. It's no more than a couple minutes to scan, and 10-20 in normal speed audio.

The rest of the articles are at least one step back (since they summarize a week of what's happened). Many others are looking at some larger event or trend, sometimes with a recent event/anecdote as a lead in.

I like the audio edition in particular since I can put it on while I'm doing chores or commuting and I'll pick up bits and pieces even if I'm not fully paying attention. I can also have only the sections I care about included, which lets me skip the ones I really don't care about.
No, this is a terrible idea. It will be a huge and tedious effort, and it cannot succeed - you simply will not be able to write a specification that is watertight enough to prevent the client coming back and asking for changes. It will also eliminate any trace of the flexibility which gives the project even the slimmest chance of success.

The right approach is the exact opposite: make this a time and materials contract, where you bill every month for the hours of work done that month. He will be able to ask for fixes to things which are outright bugs (depending on how the law and the contract specify the warranty provisions), but tweaks or enhancements will cost him money. Using this kind of contract makes it very easy to stick to your guns over this.
What is the motive for a newspaper to tell people not to read news? Reverse psychology?
Like the old proverb goes, ignorance is bliss.
The problem with predictious is the same as the author identified unfortunately - the currency used is bitcoin, so if you're right and the price falls, you could still lose money.

I would love if one of the major european bookies (e.g. Betfair, Bet365, William Hill, Paddypower) would let you place bets on the price at a given time in the future, in your local currency like euros. Bet365 already let you do this in major currency pairs, as do other bookies:

http://imgur.com/vMnFhe9
> by any stretch of the imagination

You do realize they do stuff like this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24557333), right? No stretch of the imagination? I'd also say fomenting a culture of fear is a terrorist activity (and by definition, their end goal). Right now the US government are experts at creating such culture.
Reveal.js https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js/
I wholeheartedly agree with this - it's been 3 weeks since bitcoin "disappeared" from my account and still no response from Coinbase despite multiple requests from me.
What data format are you using for your sparse matrices, and what's the INSERT performance like?
There's an overwhelming chance that she won't, I think you should try to contact her!
A warrant might just mean that they're asking for the information legally, so that they can use it, rather than relying on their illegally gathered hacked information.

A warrant might mean that they do not ever illegally hack sites, and that they only ever obey the law.

RIPA is problematic law, and it's nice to see discussion of RIPA cases involving GCHQ.

Not avoiding the problems of RIPA and GCHQ (I certainly think it needs better oversight and I'd prefer better law) RIPA has been abused quite a lot by many other organisations for stuff that US readers may find really awful.

Local education authorities spy on parents to ensure they're actually in the catchment area of a school that they want to send children to, for example. Or councils spy on people applying for parking permits to make sure those people live in that area, and aren't just selling the permits on. Having that activity regulated is important, but RIPA is less regulation and more encouragment.
They're growing very quickly.
Using more than one property file in Spring MVC
What's most troubling is that it will most likely used for passive consumption, not unsupervised play.

My kid is quite sharp, but she couldn't use the computer mouse before 3 and touch screens before 2 years of age. Assuming that this is normal, what could children < 2 possibly do with it except passively consume?
Unless the judges presiding over the inevitable lawsuits are complete fools, I don't see this patent ever holding up. The position of a camera inside a room is neither an invention nor patentable, and attaching a new word to an old (and pervasive) methodology does not magically constitute novelty -- in this case, appending "yoga" to "streaming video and audio over the internet."
Just read a few paragraphs on Dokku and Docker to get an idea. He has included these convenient things called "hyperlinks" for those topics in the article. Those solutions aren't particular to Python, for starters.
I'd love to know where the fact(s) that support this "majority" come from.
I'm wondering how much of this money is invested in Bitcoin itself - how much Bitcoin Coinbase is holding onto or own.

It is a smart way for investors to start gathering Bitcoin.
Drop shadows in all the directions!

I like the idea obfuscating the location of the containers of the data as well as the content.

Shred, encrypt, disperse. You send a token to the recipient and they are able to use that to build location requests for the containers. Once they have the parts, they can assemble and decrypt.

So, in which country can this be developed?
Do mobile-friendly redesigns run the risk of frustrating desktop users?
Bitbucket would be great too!
No problem. Note that there are currency arbitrage opportunities in the Bitcoin market, but they're rarely as obvious or large as the one you see in the Mt. Gox market.

Also, note that the money transfer problem does not exist with Bitstamp or Coinbase, both of which are relatively easy to transfer money in and out of once you're verified.
This is a rather ignorant stance to take.

I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?"

Instead of blocking things out and being happy with our ignorance, we need to change how news is done. If you whine about something, change it. The Guardian can certainly make an attempt to change the dynamic.
Containers are easier to deploy when you have more than a couple of servers, they provide better separation between services, are simpler to move, and you can have the same containers in testing as you will later use in production. All that without the performance penalty of virtualization.

I haven't used dokku and don't know what it specifically adds.
I think what happens is that we start viewing the world in overly-simplified political narratives, say left versus right, that can fit inside a typical news story. So if there's a shooting, it's a gun control story, and we have the same old assholes on TV saying the same old things. We become conditioned to think of everything in the world in cartoonish terms. Media outlets are only too happy to fill the space with people arguing. And it's always the same arguing. Arguing has become a commodity for consumption.

This makes the reporting itself really bad, since the only context the reporter needs to fit the event into is some off-the-shelf political bullshit, and it makes the outlets try to drive up viewership by having presenters who more and more have these recurring populist rages. Every night on TV there's somebody getting mad about something. So the reporters dig up enough to fuel the machine -- usually fed by the political parties, PACs, or other interested groups -- and the pundits and reactionaries do the dance. The viewer is left constantly seesawing from topic to topic. Are HMOs out to kill people? Will a child molester living five miles take my kid? There's no context to any of this because nobody gets paid to provide context. They get paid to make viewers frightened and angry, which drives up ratings.

That's unsustainable, in my opinion.

In printed media, without the branding or signaling, authors are required to provide a thesis and support it with an argument. The reader can choose to engage or not. There's no "if it bleeds, it leads" nonsense. I can read great commentary that I disagree with -- and not feel angry or somehow moved to outrage. Or I can read commentary I agree with that's a piece of junk. I'm no longer taking sides. Instead, I can separate my consumption of events from my characterization of the reporting itself. That's the critical piece that's missing for most news consumers.

Just guesswork on my part, though.
that is one of the coolest things I've ever read.

We're getting closer....
I started with Scipy Sparse. I ditched it for a custom solution so I could support variable-length integers, run-length encoding etc.
Maybe instead of following web-native properties and cable news with 24/7 coverage, newspaper editors wish we all could go back to a daily digest (and a weekly recap with more soft news) of yesterday's events.

I know I do, sometimes.
Sprockets has had native Bower support for some time. In Rails 3.x, there is a version restriction that prevents upgrading to the latest version, but there is a 2.2.2.backport2 version you can use to get at all the new features: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16266528/how-to-manage-ja...

You can add a .bowerrc and bower.json file to your project and you'll be able to access those components easily: http://dev.af83.com/2013/01/02/managing-rails-assets-with-bo...
Interesting article, but it doesn't seem very balanced as it only focuses only on the negative. Also, it is an excerpt from a dude's book which he is trying to convince you to buy for £7.99.
we had the choice to make - either architect the world's most secure encryption system on the planet, so secure that CertiVox cannot see your data, or spend £500,000 building a backdoor into the system

So, just like Lavabit as 'moxie keeps pointing out[1][2], it wasn't actually secure. Still, I like the principled stand they took.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6672442

[2] http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/lavabit-critique/
this may be a little facile, but the article reads like a "psychologists have found..." version of "ignorance is bliss"
According to Engadget it isn't based on Ubuntu or anything?

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/valve-steam-machine-hands...

But I assume it'll be Debian, but we'll see.

I'd love a Gaming OS which I can do a few things in a terminal, e.g. media server.
Yes, basically.

Two nitpicks:

1. Money is created by normal and central banks, which are somewhat different types of organizations. Central banks can directly "print" money while banks can buy IOU's for future money (loans).

2. Now the difference that is created with the loans is indeed payed back and increases the money supply. It's not destroyed.

Here is a chart of money supply of USD [1]. As you can see, the amount of money in existence is increasing continuously. It's one of the core elements that influence inflation.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#United_States
Yes, Update 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 address this :)
Glitch in the Afterlife
So they will burn endless amounts of fuel (venture capital), rise high but deliver exponentially little, and promptly fall back to burn up in the atmosphere?
Defining some terms: Alice, Bob, the company, and GCHQ (Eve).

Alice sends Bob stuff, via the company.

GCHQ sends RIPA requests to the company, which means that GCHQ get Alice's communications. Neither Alice nor Bob are aware.

So, a new scheme where Alice and the company need keys to decrypt means that GCHQ send RIPA requests to the company, and to Alice. Now Alice, and the company, are aware of the RIPA request. Bob isn't. But at least Alice can stop sending things to Bob.
Mobile App User Retention: 3 Things You Can Do To Improve Yours
99 per cent of Quebec kids using iPads in school find them totally distracting
Pinterest just figured out how to make shopping awesome
Google AdSense Now Allows Publishers to Set Custom Ad Size
As it mentions at the bottom of the article, this is a shortened version of an article Rolf Dobelli wrote in 2010 called "Avoid News" ( http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par... ). The first one was longer under the immediate challenge that people too mired in news would probably not finish it, so it's interesting to me that he shortened this prose specifically to post it on a news site.
http://pgexercises.com/questions/basic/where3.html

The query I used was "select * from cd.facilities where name ~ 'Tennis';" which got me the tick, but the page didn't detect that I hadn't used LIKE and the feedback was therefore wrong. You might want to think a little more about different solutions to the exercises.

Other than that it's slick and impressive so far, thanks. I shall be sending the URL onwards.
Whether news is bad for you or not probably depends more than a little on what the source is. I don't watch television—for years our TV was in a box in a closet, brought out mostly just for watching the Olympics. But I do look at Google News and try to train it to give me mostly long-form suggestions about science and world issues from diverse sources with professional reporting and editing. That helps.

The claim that giving up reading news will make you happier is a medical claim in the article that is not backed up by reliable medical sources,[1] so I call baloney on that. The newspaper opinion writer here (promoting his new book with excerpts from the book) doesn't report the issue the way a competent reporter would report it, but just makes a bunch of broad general statements with no nuance. In other words, the medical claims about happier human life in the article are just like the made-up opinions we can all easily find on the Internet, and the article stands as an example of how we can find blatantly misleading "information" inside or outside the professional news media. I have no reason to suppose that the full-length book is a medically reliable source (the publisher of the book is identified at the end of the article).

Anecdote alert: I'm a curious person and I like to learn, and so one of the reasons I come here to Hacker NEWS is to find out new facts about the external world that I didn't know before, including facts about current events ("news" in the narrow sense). My personal experience—which, to be sure, may differ from yours—is that I am a happier and more productive person when I know, from good sources, what is going on all over the world and the broader context of expanding human knowledge. But I'm sure you can find an opinion column somewhere based on a popular book with a different opinion from mine.

AFTER EDIT: Good catch! Another participant here on HN noticed that the author of the article kindly submitted here has credibly been accused of plagiarism by more than one published author who works harder than he does. I upvoted that comment for what it added to our understanding of the article's background.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MEDRS
one of the incentives for refraining from a 51% attack is the exchange rate of bitcoin itself. such an attack being carried out and publicised would very likely deal a major blow to the currency exchange rate. as these pools make money from mining bitcoins (that is after all their very reason for existing) they would then lose out financially in a big way. in order to make up for these losses they'd have to doublespend a shitload of bitcoin in exchange for stable assets. and the greater the doublespend problem gets, the more confidence in btc is eroded, which then, once again, makes the price plummet.

thus, from my amateur perspective, this seems highly unlikely atm.
So what's the difference between 'money' and 'currency'? If you start thinking about what either of these words mean exactly, and then start researching it -- you'll discover that even economists aren't sure and there are several competing theories of what 'money' actually is.

'money' is the more complicated concept. If bitcoin is 'money', then whether it's 'currency' or not mostly just depends, I think, on whether you want the definition of currency to include digital certificates or only physical objects. Not a very interesting question, just a matter of definitions. Now, what 'money' is, that's an interesting question.
Thanks FRONT! We love you guys!
The irony of reading this article on a news website.

My man Rolf became a journalist, worked his way up to the Guardian, and wrote a story about how busted up news is.

I look forward to the similar press release from Jony Ive telling us to stop using those blasted iPads.
> That, plus the fact that in countries like Sweden and Denmark intelligence agencies have already abused the directive to go completely NSA on their own population is just adding nails to the coffin.

As a Danish resident, I'm interested in information about this (I already know about Sweden). Do you have any source?
‘Homeless coder’ saga shows connections matter more than coding skills
I'd rather be uninformed than misinformed!
While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb.

http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm

http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-do...

EDIT: For another take on not reading the news, see http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
from the article: "Mobile-friendly doesn’t have to mean desktop-unfriendly."

moral of the story: don't just do shit because it is trendy and cool-looking, but do your homework and things will be fine.
And so a whole bunch of money will be sent to lawyers without anything of value being created in return. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the patent system creates more harm than it does good.
This is a mini-Heroku until you hit some database or routing issues. Then it is just another server you have to manage yourself.
parse5 is a fast HTML parser for Node based on the WHATWG HTML5 specification
From YogaGlo's blog [1]:

"Our patent application clearly outlines that the
“look and feel” of a YogaGlo online streaming class
is comprised of the following elements that all must be present in conjunction with one another: position of
camera, position of the teacher, position of the mats relative to the camera and the teacher, an open corridor down
the middle, the teacher must be facing the camera,
the students must be facing the teacher, etc. We are
not seeking to patent a camera angle. We are not
seeking to patent the placement of a teacher in a
room (online, offline, in your private studio, in
your public studio). We are seeking to patent this
one very particular combination of elements for a single online class."

This is so ridiculous.

[1] http://www.yogaglo.com/blog/2013/09/yogaglo-response-to-toda...
You could. You're carrying encrypted data across borders. That shouldn't be anything that raises flags, and we need to campaign to make it normal. (After all, US businesses need to protect the US by stopping US technology and trade secrets and etc from getting into the hands of foreign spies).

But sadly we live in a world where carrying encrypted data is a flag, and will get you more scrutiny, and get your name put on lists.

It also doesn't help if you carry the passphrase on you with your encrypted data.
If you go the agile route you'd just repeatedly specify two weeks worth of features and implement them. When his money runs out, his changes run out.

Your phone ringing off the hook will only happen when he thinks he might get what he's asking for; which is a different problem altogether.

Generally I've learned to never dissuade someone from chasing their dreams, no matter how unrealistic I feel it is. I have learned to tell them what I feel they would benefit most from focussing on.
Are there any technical reasons that they want to drop landlines? Any benefits like the cable providers dropping analog channels?
Why is it extremely unreasonable to not comply when there is a gun at your head but not in this case?
This is just wonderful. About three and a half years ago I booted the first real computer from my childhood as well: a Commodore Amiga 500. I had one mission and that was to clone the hard drive so that I could get all the stuff off of it before time had its way with the bits (there are excellent Amiga emulators that can actually run old OS). Not having any experience soldering, I would have been crushed if I had experienced the failure of a capacitor. Fortunately, fate was kind to me.

In that experience I learned how incredibly difficult it is to get things on and off of computers this old. Even though I lived through all the advances, my mind has a much rosier picture of the capabilities of old hardware than is actually true. Similar to this author, I had to rely on serial connections and some utilities developed by the Amiga emulation community running in Windows on an old PC to actually get it to work. And boy was it slow to move data. It took something like 48 hours to move about 80 megabytes of data. I was worried that was too long for such a machine to be running, but it held out. One of the partitions did have a tiny bit of corruption, but I was overall surprised to find most of the data intact.

Sadly, my shoebox full of disks is probably never to be recovered. Both floppy drives seem to be failing and reading Amiga floppies on modern hardware is possible, but an expensive pain.
is it just me, or is this article just a (possibly unpaid) advertisement for target and pinterest?
Me and my colleagues have created a company around validating clients ideas.
So far we had some small projects and now are working on a bigger one. To tell you the truth it is fun, but it is more responsibility. The business part is the hardest, and takes more time then we thought.

But we are operating only few months, so it may be only the learning how to do business and communicate it that is hard.

Company web: http://6artisans.com
If you've invented a way to conclusively differentiate between what is a bug and what is a change/new feature when you're talking to a client, the entire IT industry needs to know about it. :)
"Secondly, pair programming is proven to increase code-quality and clarity, while reducing the number of bugs"

Isn't it true that its only shown to slightly improve these metrics? At 2X the cost of development, perhaps there's a better way.
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