skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Pardoning Snowden has practical upsides for the President and NSA apart from morals, ethics, or scoring popularity points with tech execs. Namely, by pardoning Snowden, there's a good chance they can get him back on U.S. soil and possibly prevent more leaks that are damaging in other ways.

It strikes me that much of Snowden's original leaking was protecting civil liberties for U.S. citizens--let's call that patriotism. And it seems that reasonable people and federal judges agree that knowing about and fixing these abuses is a Good Thing.

As it stands now, the heavy handed government rhetoric / smear campaign, combined with the threat of legal (or worse, extra-legal) penalties at home, might make anyone skittish. And a skittish guy with a whole lot of government secrets seems like a Bad Thing.

So, let's bring this guy home and throw him some parades before Russia, China, Iran, and everyone else knows everything about our cyber warfare capacity--i.e. "legitimate" spy stuff that all nations take part in.
Actually, C++ and JavaScript (and Perl) are the languages I dislike the most besides PHP.
Why are we being encouraged to teach programming to a 3 year old?
Why are we increasingly trying to teach 3 - 5 year old toddlers programming?
Foursquare grabs $35 million in funding ; 45 million+ registered users
Now if only they'd do something about that garbage collector.
And today most people I know who mention it keep saying XP when they mean pair programming. Not as if it's one of many practices in XP, but as if the two were synonymous. Please tell me this isn't common.
40 Million Credit Card accounts affected in massive data breach at 'Target'
Basically just a small form PC. Pretty much every component that will be messed with is just an off-the-shelf part. Not really any surprises here, but it's nice that it's all confirmed.
I think it's more a "no one can get away with the old shitty UIs anymore". Touch screens and iOS were a better way of doing smart phones, and not adapting was suicide for the companies that chose not to.
The fatal problem with the notion that the code is the documentation is the fact that the code only tells you what the code does, as opposed to what it's designed to do. How do you know a behavior you observe by reading the code isn't a bug which is going to be fixed next week? Or an arbitrary implementation detail that isn't guaranteed? That is what docs and interfaces and specs are for. "The code is the documentation" only works if the code is immutable.
I've had this discussion a couple of times, but have failed to identify any pristine examples of essential documentation 'in the wild' myself. I'd like to know of a couple - I'm sure they are out there.

Edit: Not project documentation, strictly code comments.
Available For Mac and Windows
Linux available early 2013 :>
Could this be done if this was a startup going after a phone?
Actually, I think Posner's position is backwards and untenable in a modern globalized context. If we assume that human rights must be respected regardless of nationality, then national borders must be subservient to human rights.

Reading the universal declaration of human rights, these articles jump out at me for specifically this context:

Article 6: Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Therefore, you cannot exclude people from due process because they are foreigners.

Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.

Therefore, you cannot have one kind of due process for your own people, and another kind for foreigners.

Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Therefore, the U.S. system of law is obligated to protect foreigners from undue interference by the NSA, to an equal degree as U.S. citizens are protected.

Now, you can say that the human rights declaration is just a bunch of words without legal weight, and that in a realpolitik context it's simply impossible to give everyone their human rights in the current world even if you wanted to. And you would be right. When you read the UDHR it is depressing how far we have to go. But ... on this point, at this time, we can make genuine progress. So, why not? If what the NSA is doing is wrong when applied to U.S. citizens, it is wrong when applied to foreigners.

In the long run, people like Posner will be viewed as those who held back the tide of progress. The social struggle for equal human rights for all is not done, and it won't be for centuries, but you definitely want to be at the right side of history at each inflection point, and this is one of them.
Two researchers send a text message using vodka
My close encounter with a pay-to-pitch investor
You encounter lots of crazy people while fundraising for your startup. The results can be entertaining. Here's my favorite:

https://medium.com/p/872e3afdec9f
No. In college, I followed the c2 wiki where XP was crafted, out of the ashes of the Smalltalk-based Chrysler payroll system.

It was a bunch of practitioners sick of being told by MBA-types (or modelling "architects" that couldn't code) of the proper way to write software.

Almost everyone in modern software development has been impacted by XP, if you think through some of the practices that almost no one mainstream had heard of or were discussing in 1999 until XP:

- Customer is on the team (Often the biggest factor in IT projects)

- Test driven development (now BDD)

- Continuous integration (now Continuous delivery and Devops)

- Design improvement (refactoring)

- Small releases (now "Lean Startups")

- Planning game (or estimation without Gantt charts and WBS)

Detractors focus on the controversial practices like pair programming as if they were lunatic. Or on consultants making money flogging a crap methodology. I don't think consultants could make money on XP back in the day - it was too foreign and extreme.

Agile was born off the fumes of XP, to give people methodological freedom while agreeing to the same principles. This unfortunately enabled legions of consultants to invent their own whatever-the-hell method for their client and subject employees to it. But it also helped some teams to deliver faster and higher quality than they would have otherwise.
As someone that has a lot of Apple products I'm glad they have competition. I don't think any one company should have a monopoly on the modern touchscreen smartphone concept. That being said I wish more Android fans would accept that Google directly copied a lot of ideas from their competition. And that's okay. It would be one thing if Android looked like a direct copy of iOS but it doesn't. It just uses the same technologies. On the other hand, when unscrupulous companies like Samsung try to capitalize on Apples success by directly copying the product they should be slapped down and reminded to do their own thing. It's all about balancing the rights of innovators and the protections for consumers.
Online store of the company

http://www.grapheneshop.pl/en/products/graphene-on-sic

http://www.grapheneshop.pl/en/products/graphene-on-copper

Previous news about their production method - supposedly it's cheaper and produces bigger (and more uniform/pure) graphene waffers than other methods: http://phys.org/news/2011-04-team-material-graphene.html
Not OP. But someone who's also in a country where an average salary would be around 3 USD per hour. If you work and charge local rates you're pretty much restricted to either saving longer time for new average, not high end, laptop or shorter time for used one. Ordering used hardware online is much cheaper because prices are much lower, but there's about 50% chance that it will be "caught" by customs and then you have to pay ~27% (tax+customs) of the purchase price, additionally. Prices of new stuff locally is pretty much the same as in other countries in my experience. For reference I'm in Bosnia right now and prices are same or very similar to those in Italy,Germany and Austria.
Supermajority is sufficient for changes, and it's worryingly easy to get that level of support with the enormous mining pools.
toString() blows up on a null value, the + operator does not.

I've written similar Java code for that reason.
Need to store TiBs of backups on portable HDDs offsite, encrypted; update/remove them incrementally, with TimeMachine like interface
Most programmers have trouble coming back and reading their own code, much less other programmers' codes

Really? I was just poking through some code I wrote several years ago looking for something I may re-use and I didn't have any trouble figuring out the intention by reading the (largely) uncommented code.
It really didn't take long for the Chinese phone modder contingent to clone the iPhone:

http://gizmodo.com/377601/crazy-popular-asian-blogstar-prefers-fake-chinese-iphone-to-the-real-thing
Don't worry about the "inequality", they've always been spying on US citizens too, and still are!

In fact, US citizens are their priority, because they're the ones the US government needs to control and keep in check to maintain their power.
One of the best things about corporations and the product development cycle: the general public's reactions that not even a company like Apple could predict, and to what length they will go to make sure you don't forget that unintended perception.

Great work.
I got a similar request to write a book for Packt. They offered almost zero money upfront, and when asked could offer zero reasons as to why they thought there was a market for this book.

It really seemed their plan was "James takes almost all the risk and does almost all of the work but James does not get almost all the money."
Be genuinely interested to hear what others think about this. I have contacts who do this (often sharing links) and it makes me cringe - I'm quite capable of discovering my own news - and I find it a bit too attention-seeking. I tend to hide such people. But, I am a grumpy old man these days :-)

I would find original content, infrequently posted and of decent quality, much more impressive.

I guess like so many other things this can be done well, or done badly, and there's a skill in doing it well.
This is sooo damn cool!
It's not just about solving a problem, and I'll reiterate what Guy Kawasaki says (whereby solving a problem is 2):

1) "Increase the quality of life. Make people more productive or their lives easier or more enjoyable."

2) "Right a wrong. A variant on the above. Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem."

3) "Prevent the end of something good. Preserve something classic or historical. Save the whales."

So it's more about creating a value proposition, in which solving a problem is only part of that proposition. Thus, building something people will use entails a carrot and stick: carrot for being used, and stick for not being used. Simply solving a problem can ignore other benefits.. ideally, it's about replacing the system that created the problem in the first place that needed to be resolved (thus solving a set of problems and potential problems). Solving 1 problem only is a good start, but having a vision to lay on top of that can provide extra inspiration.

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/gettingstarted/a/guykawasa...
I get it. This is why people have co-founders.
Engagement & Customer Care via Social Media in 2013
This is one of the reasons if I see anything "rational" about a job post I ignore it
1 Gbps Internet speed for $18 a month in Romania.
It requires thought for the customer to realize they can do that, and thought equals friction in a transaction, it costs you customers.

You could get the same effect without the friction just by offering the first issue free and then putting the "Buy Now" buttons on the following issues. That lets you put the word "FREE" next to one issue, which will indicate to people that it's safe to click on if they're uncommitted. No thought on their part required, which should translate to more downloads.
You can build your own steam machine without a $500 graphics card.
gossip magazine diet plan

In four words you managed to perfectly encapsulate the problem I have with so much writing about development processes and tools.

It's not good enough to claim to be just incrementally better than what you're probably doing, you need to be the best most super awesome EXTREME thing ever!
I'm intrigued by Jolla, if not enthused by it.

I'm not sure what it gives me that Android doesn't - can anyone enlighten me?
Darpa Robotics Challenge Trials: What You Should (and Shouldn't) Expect to See
Shipping Estimates for Mac Pro Online Orders Slip to February 2014
Some companies did use it. But even at the time (before Beck's book), it was known in programming literature to be a dumb idea. XP didn't introduce the idea that Waterfall was nonsense, it was just the catylist for it's removal.
Mostly just wanted to confirm you know about this site tracking the articles.

It is hard to tell whether the percentage you mention are nuked by an admin or the penalty kicks in after enough users flag the post... I'm far from an expert.
why not use unison
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
Spamchat: Snapchat Users Subjected to Porn and Secret Admirer Spam
So is there some way to unlock an iOS app if you give it a rating?
Nope, 100% real. Copy pasted as is from a project I work on. Legacy code from 5? Years ago... No idea who the original author is. But it worked. It now uses newtonsoft.json library now.

About 6 years ago I wrote something similar, but that was before newtonsoft.json was super popular.
I'm pro- paying for software, but...

Has anyone used this and maybe found it's easier to set up than SparkleShare[0]? Maybe their deduplication technology beats git?

[0]http://sparkleshare.org
Note for those reading: that says pro-gamer, not programmer.
Well, in my case my projects are never that large - I'm just a designer who does small high-fidelity prototypes and lets people who are supposed to be more capable do the large scale implementations. So "being easy to make quick-and-dirty hack from scratch with" is more important for me.

Also, have you tried Julia? It's homoiconic but looks more like Python. Haven't seen any refactoring tools for it though.
Yeah, I was coming here to say that.

I've done two kickstarters for comic books, and my print run has been about 4x what I actually got from the Kickstarter. I've sold the extra copies of book 1 over the past year; I'll do the same with book 2 over the next. Basically I walk away from a Kickstarter with about $0 cash profit, and a nice pile of inventory to sell.

Of course, the margins on graphic novels are a LOT better than on board games. And they're easier to stick in a closet, easier to ship to a convention, etc.
I'm living through it RIGHT NOW. I'll give you one guess who pushed it on us. And I'll even give you a hint: it almost rhymes with "rubbermint".
Even if someone can successfully go "off the grid" never using a cellphone or computer, and paying for everything with cash you keep stuffed under your mattress, mentions of your name and images of you will inevitably appear in others' emails, Facebook posts, and whatever else.

In addition, eventually with facial recognition and the high density of security cameras, going anywhere other than the middle of the nowhere will be building a database of your movements.

This is all more than enough to build an accurate profile of you.
php prevents you from having a good page structure?

I'm no fan, but that's going a bit far, don't you think? What's a rickety syntax and inconsistent naming have to do with page design?
And, after you've watched the original, check out "Erlang The Movie II: The Sequel", by Garrett Smith (aka gar1t):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRbY3TMUcgQ

(You are likely familiar with one of gar1t's earlier videos, the classic "Mongo DB is Web Scale":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

And he's got more on his YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/gar1t )
Is there any particular reason why you didn't do the usual thing and submit the actual link, including your "descriptive" text in the actual article?
You don't judge moral actors actions by outcome, you look at their (the actors) expected outcome.

>One thing we have got to change in our strategy—allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples [sic] browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends [sic] on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy Windows.
Yeah, I just came here to post the same!
The problem is I don't want to buy print right after I bought the ebook.... I want to read it a bit first . I hope they keep the sale at least for a week.
>The notion that nation-states are allowed to run rampage and be as anarchic as they please, internationally, is stupid.

A world government sounds nice in theory (let's call it 'The Federation'), but I don't think you could even joke about one without peeving off more than half of the global populace. We simply aren't at a place in human history where international law can actually be binding or where nations can put aside their differences and work together (also known as a Power-of-Friendship-ocracy).

So, yeah, a total lack of enforceable international law/government is a stupid idea; I'm just not sure anyone has a better idea yet.
Run Docker on any OS in a Headless Hypervisor
I often purposefully avoid TJ modules because many of them end up being unmaintained. Before using a TJ project check the outstanding pull requests: are there a large number of open useful looking PR's? Is there somebody besides TJ merging into master: aka has he delegated a maintainer?
Ah - that makes more sense.
Google cache while the site is down: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?safe=off&client...
Boris Johnson missed the point on IQ—gifted children failed by system
Fortunate for Apple, the iPad debacle was short lived.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsjU0K8QPhs
Hah, phone manufacturers, agreeing on a standard instead of gouging people by selling expensive chargers!

I think that there was a draft EU directive to standardize on mini-usb, but it was scrapped after manufacturers voluntarily complied. Apple argued that their usb cable to lightning/doc connecter (which can charge from any usb charger/port/etc.) was required for analog speaker docs and the like, and the EU let it pass.
"Most programmers have trouble coming back and reading their own code"

Hogwash! maybe if you're writing assembly code or similar low level language, but one of the express benefits of high level languages like python, scala, ruby etc is that they read (to a competent developer) like english (or whatever your native tongue might be)

Maybe you and "most programmers" you know don't write decent code, but I can easily read others or my own code if its well written. The last thing I want is a bunch of comments everywhere. I am all for the occasional comment (as an exception) because my eye will be drawn to it, but in general, unless your code sucks, it should perfectly legible without the need for excessive comments and documentation.
Very cool stuff. But do I understand correctly, that Rust doesn't have any built-in functionality for starting executables? How did a language which the start was meant for low-level systems programming, go so long without having that built in? I guess one could call into C libraries to do that, but that seems quite unpleasant...
I can't recommend No Starch Press enough.

Still, some of their offerings have been pretty poor (there was at least one Ruby book that was ill-informed) so the best bet is to check reviews for any given book.

Same for O'Reilly. Used to be I would just assume a book from O'Reilly was properly vetted and worth getting, but after buying a few clunkers I learned to do some homework before shelling out or trusting the content.
No one ever read Royce's paper, they just accepted the PMI/PMBOK interpretation of it as sacrosanct.

Which was a gross misinterpretation to this day. We still have naive PMPs running $100 million IT projects in the faux-Waterall style.
If you're willing to run a custom android rom, Cyanogenmod has a feature called privacy guard which can blocks apps from accessing your contacts, even if you grant it permission when installing.

In short, it just feeds an empty data set when the app tries to get your info.
Make Time for Awe
CRM application:

- Converts English notes into organized data.

- Zero navigation interface: Everything on one page.

- Code in natural language: Make quick buttons for anything.
The guilt and shame is so spot on. Living though such projects illustrated so well the "the beatings will continue until morale improves" project management school of thoughts.

This school has its agile proponents too, though. But compared to the common practices of the penultimate decade, XP and Agile at least acknowledged that failure was the default mode of software development projects, and made contingency plans for it.
How does insect protein compare to plant protein with respect to cheapness and efficiency? What's the argument for inventing an industry when an industry already exists which provides plenty of healthy, cheap, and efficient protein for humans?
Well, I was (genuinely puzzled).

What you are saying make sense, but that's the thing when you are an author trying to bootstrap in the publishing business. You don't get everything right at first. So I forgive the poor landing page because they are very good on what they do best. I am guessing that if this experiment become profitable, for a next series they might improve the marketing skills or hire someone.
On axiomatic systems in mathematics and theories in physics [PDF]
If you have the chance, it really is worth going back and watching the original iPhone release video. It's pretty amazing to see some of the things that were so new and exciting a few years ago now so much a part of the phone landscape that we can't even imagine a phone without them. It's almost more amazing to see how basic it seems compared to what we have now, just 6 years later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ
the blockchain is public evidence, and should be admissible in court.
Probably because it is not actively developed anymore and does not support S3 and all these wonderful backends promised on their page (like Rackspace CloudFiles)
Transfer money between two users
Waterfall is only mostly dead. I'm told that the reason why the public sector prefers price-and-scope-up-front is that the alternative of "we'll keep delivering things as long as you keep paying us" sounds to them far too much like ways that they have been ripped off badly in the past when buying tanks, bridges, etc.

However there is hope. www.gov.uk is a notable recent success story.
https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/agile

The difference is that in the early 1990s, most of us thought that larger software projects were just like that. We didn't know any better.
Thankfully, no proprietary HPU (hat processing unit).