skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't say I understand this attitude. It's analogous to cutting off your nose to spite your face. Both Python 2 and 3 are actively supported, and there's a clear migration path defined. The migration isn't complete yet, but it's progressing at a development friendly pace.

I say this as someone still on Python 2.6 due to environment restrictions.
The author's main problem stems from his desire to use Stack Overflow as a mechanism for gaining internet points - as is illustrated by his confession that

"I saw a simple Java question, hit Google, read briefly, then
synthesized an original answer."

Why bother? Instead, I use Stack Overflow predominantly for three reasons --

1. To ask interesting questions that I think will get a better answer there than anywhere else (eg [0,1,2]).

2. To help educate other programmers about languages that I like very much, and would like to see in wider use. I endeavour not to just give a "how to do X" answer, but instead explain what the different approaches are, and why some approaches are better than others (eg [3,4,5])

3. To stay in touch and build a reputation among the wider community of Haskell programmers - not by amassing internet points, but by asking interesting questions and giving interesting, thoughtful answers.

If you just game Stack Overflow for imaginary internet points, it's no wonder you don't find it very fulfilling.

[0] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9190352/abusing-the-algeb...

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10753073/whats-the-theore...

[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19177125/sets-functors-an...

[3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11684321/how-to-play-with...

[4] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12968351/monad-transforme...

[5] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20857165/move-or-copy-in-...
No I meant removing the DRM that is Steam. i.e. They'd effectively need to enable a permanent offline mode.

Also:
http://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg
> The Simon PJ question: is there any typewriter font?

On the other hand, a paper that is 80% typewriter font (or 80% mathematics) is a paper for putting down and leaving alone.
I think you learned a valuable lesson here, you should not try to create apps that work with the music industry if you don't have some sort of licensing agreement with them.

It doesn't really matter if it is strictly legal (under DMCA and other relevant legislation) or not, they can and will use lawyers to intimidate and/or sue you. It doesn't matter if you're linking to third party hosting or what the technicalities are, if your app can play back music or video that is "owned" by the big players (RIAA/MPAA/MAFIAA) you are under threat.

You made the right choice (thinking practically, not necessarily morally) in not trying your luck in court, you have very little chances of winning and could possibly ruin your future by having a nasty lawsuit on your records.

I don't think it is fair or approve of it but that's the way it works, unfortunately. Google and YouTube can get away with it, not because of DMCA and other laws but because they have (secret?) treaties with the copyright holding parties.
It's in O'Reilly's online subscription service/library, Safari. Books therein are also downloadable in DRM-free formats (PDF, ePub, Mobi) (although at least the PDF's are "marked" with your identifier).

This particular item costs 40 tokens to download. That's pretty pricy; IIRC additional tokens used to be US$10 for 5, making that approximately an $80 purchase.

As the previous sentence touches upon, Safari used to allow subscribers to purchase additional tokens. IIRC they discontinued this a few months ago; now, you get so many tokens per month, and that's it (5, at the unlimited access level).

I have no affiliation with O'Reilly. But I describe this both because it is an ebook source for the title you mentioned and because O'Reilly was one of the earliest and most consistent supporters and providers of DRM-free ebooks.

It's unfortunate that their "model" and practices appear to be "shrinking" or becoming more constrained. No longer can one buy tokens in order to acquire additional titles. For example, I have several Addison-Wesley titles that I acquired through O'Reilly Safari tokens, DRM-free.

I guess now we're increasingly stuck with Amazon and the like, where our "purchases" are DRM-ed and subject to constraint and "revocation" at the whim of the powers that be.

O'Reilly still allows DRM-free purchase of their own titles (outside of Safari). But other publishers are perhaps heading in more restrictive directions.
At this point, it's mostly about preservation. Kwai is one of a zillion war movies produced more than 40 years ago; unlike the bridge, that movie will forever endure, but so many of its contemporaries will disappear -- a fate entirely avoidable in this age of long-tail hyper-specialized scholarly studies, unlimited data capacity and worldwide p2p redundancy. Art will be lost because of unbridled greed, and this is the real tragedy.
more often than not it seems that quantity is just as important. And it's not hard to see why this is the case -- there's an inherent risk in typing a well thought-out (read: time consuming and potentially long) answer

This is what turned me off from SO. The strategy to garner points (at least in the topics I'm expert in) is to lurk waiting for quickly-answered questions. Pounce on these, by entering a rough, approximate answer, so you can score the credit. Then, if you're feeling charitable, go back and flesh it out properly once you've got the karma in your pocket.

Time and again I've entered a correct and complete answer, to score nothing because somebody beat me (and I'm a very fast typist, btw) with a quick one-liner that provides little value - and in many cases, hasn't even been completely correct. On more than one occasion, after reading the "winning" answer, I've been left frustrated, thinking "come on, that sample you posted won't even run, let alone do what you claim".

I suppose that part of the blame lies with those seeking answers. The user interaction is such that they'll allocate upvotes when they see something that looks promising. Once they've actually tried it, and found that answer wanting, there's little incentive to go take back the undeserved rewards.
Great write up, I think this point is crucial: Founder roles and expectations.

Even if the goal/role is to be the non tech founder, it's important to learn the basis of html, CSS and Javascript. It will give you another perspective when you think about how to implement an idea.
How would Linux success have been accomplished without integration into the current platforms de jour? This is a specious argument, to be sure. You are saying 'Linux did not succeed on its own because it required hardware vendors to pick it up and push it out there' - well, how else would it have succeeded? Linus building a hardware company?

The intention behind the developers of the Linux kernel have always been: build it, use it, let others use it if they want to. There has never been a 'commercialized Linux effort' that didn't involve some vendor capable of making its own hardware - and this is what happened with the mobile take-up.

>We all know that the goal was for Linux to take the desktop.

Linux has been a very viable desktop for over a decade. And besides that - Chromebooks are not a desktop to you?

>Linux isn't something people want, it's something they use without being aware of it. Is that a victory or a tragedy?

Its a victory of course. Linus didn't start a fashion company - he started a kernel project. That kernel powers more devices than any other kernel out there at the moment, across a more diverse range of product types.

And I rate that total success, personally .. but then I've only been using Linux since the day it was available on funet.fi ..
That quote referred to an interpretation of the initial public draft of GPLv3, which was radically different from the final version published in June 2007, including with respect to the so-called anti-Tivoization provisions. Of an interim draft of GPLv3 in March 2007, fairly close to what ended up being final, Linus said "Unlike earlier drafts, at least it does not sully the good name of the GPL".

However, you're correct that Linus clearly does not like even the released version of GPLv3.

[edited slightly]
> Use CVS to support collaboration

o_O
It's a shame how easily people get offended these days. Calling PG sexist is totally unwarranted, especially when what he said was taken out of context. I suppose these days certain kinds of people get off on controversy, especially when there's none to begin with.
Quick, find me a replacement at an online retailer. Then tell me how reasonable it is. There is currently only one supplier and they charge a fortune.
There are many shades of gray in manufacturers helping the NSA to hack their products: from outright creating back doors, to using gimpy RNGs, to revealing bugs to the NSA before otherwise disclosing them, to using peripherals with back doors. Deniability and cover stories are part and parcel with such work. It is naive to claim it simply isn't happening.
As another passive observer, I am grateful for all of the time that security researchers spend on proving that many cryptographic implementations found in the wild are flawed. If they did not do this, all implementations would be closed source ROT13 with a $50k pricetag.

I'm still waiting for simple, usable crypto - but I'm not willing to settle for evidence-free, warm assurances of safety from borderline incompetents in the field while I wait for it.

>I can't help but think if security researchers spent as much time on creating usable, secure software as they did in proving that other's implementations were flawed we'd be in a much better place.

Can this comment be part of the HN crypto thread drinking game? It's in every thread x10. I can't help but think if commenters spent as much time learning how to use good crypto as complaining about the time researchers spend picking apart bad crypto, all of their issues with the current implementations would disappear.
> plagiarism rather than unauthorized copying

Isn't that the definition of plagiarism?
I think you underestimate the massive changes in attitude that have come about due to the environmental movement. The very fact that your examples are eating meat and driving, and not dumping waste into parks, throwing trash on the ground, pouring used oil into streams, using lead paint, burning leaves and grass, etc is a testament to the changes that have occurred. All the behaviors I listed were commonplace in the 1950s, now they unthinkable and strongly disapproved of.
SO must change their rules to make those who downvote or vote to close to give their reasons, and they should give the OP enough time to amend the question or explain themselves if the question is not clear enough.
The OP complains that he got 5000 points for doing "nothing". On the contrary, I think those are the most valuable points. If your answer is still useful to somebody 2 years later, that's a great indicator on how useful your answers were.
I wouldn't prefer that, but I'm also not as convinced that Cryptocat is as "clearly broken" (i.e. plaintext is trivially recoverable) in its current state as a lot of people on here are. Most of the attacks that I've seen so far were against the group chat implementation, which, granted, is significant, but not against the primary component, the OTR chat.

I think it is somewhat naive to believe that any mechanism other than a one-time pad will absolutely keep your communications safe, and that it's a little dangerous to insinuate that Cryptocat leaks information about the plaintext but X or Y doesn't.
> Linux hasn't succeeded on its own merits but as an economical way for companies to bootstrap their own products to fight for Apple's leftovers.

This has been one of Linux's merits for a very long time, something they embrace.

> Sure, Linux has spread far and wide, but most consumers still have no idea what Linux is, and nor would they care. Linux isn't something people want, it's something they use without being aware of it. Is that a victory or a tragedy?

This benefits Linux desktop users as well, for example better hardware support.
I wish he also recommended that every research paper needs to have a date on it. It seems to be the golden rule never to specify any date on research papers, which makes it really hard to evaluate the paper based on when it was published.
Ask PG: How to Download My Data from HN?
I think web scraping HN consumes more web resources than giving an option to download the saved articles and comments.

Can HN offer this feature?
You might find it helps to mentally (or programmatically) replace every instance of NSA, and its various expansions, with the name of that agency's direct lineal predecessor, which existed in a time when bureaucratic circumlocution was far less pervasive, and which could therefore rejoice in such an ominously portentous name as "the Black Chamber."

To see the effect, let's try it with some headlines I've just cherry-picked from a Google search results page for purposes of demonstration:

"Black Chamber team spies, hacks to gather intelligence on targets, report says"

"Appelbaum: 'Scary' Black Chamber will spy on you – every which way they can ..."

"Black Chamber Secret Toolbox: ANT Unit Offers Spy Gadgets for Every Need ..."

"Black Chamber 'spying on Europe-Asia undersea telecom cables' - Yahoo News"

"The Black Chamber Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center"

"Black Chamber can spy on offline computers wirelessly, says security expert"

"A Peek Inside the Black Chamber's Spy Gear Catalog"

"Report: Black Chamber intercepts computer deliveries"

"Black Chamber targets foreigners, catches Americans: Column"

I mean, how can you not love a name like that? You can't even say it in an ordinary tone of voice. See for yourself! No matter how you try, you'll find yourself saying not merely "the Black Chamber," but...the Black Chamber.

I think an official change of name is long overdue.
So how do national parks work?
> I don't think sales skills are completely fungible across domains

My experience across a fifteen year business confirms this. Year one I had to sell. As an engineer I was a horrible sales guy. A couple of my dealers took me under their wing and over approximately a year a made notable changes.

Years later, as we grew, I had to hire sales people. That's when I learned the lesson. If someone is good about selling product A it doesn't necessarily mean they can sell product B. I hired around a dozen sales people over the years. Most were collosal failures. Some of the most memorable ones came with huge contact lists and years of selling other products in the industry. Based on the advise of other entrepreneurs I ended-up hiring someone with little sales experience and training them over a year. She was my best sales person, by far.
MaternityCompare Helps Expectant Parents Find Healthcare Providers
Same with reddit. People tend to forget about well curated pinboards or subreddits.
Knowing what you have already tried is useful from a troubleshooting perspective...not to mention that if I suggest something you've already tried, it is wasted time on both our parts; mine for suggesting it and yours for waiting for me to make the redundant suggestion.

Many times there are multiple potential causes for an issue. Ruling out what has already been tried is what any competent troubleshooter is going to do.
that idea has come up on many occasions and was seriously discussed some years ago. I don't think it's ever happening in that specific form; mostly because it would require that the Django ORM's behavior and usage contract not change at all in order to support backwards compatibility. This would be a very large task, at the very least for Django and probably for us as we make adjustments to support them. The feel and behavior of Django's ORM would invariably change quite palpably - even if you can get every function input and output to match, you still have what it looks like when you get a stack trace, an error message, etc. Django users would see lots of unfamiliar "sqlalchemy" lines in these stack traces and tracking down issues would then involve both Django and SQLAlchemy devs. Performance would also be a concern - keeping behavior exactly as is within Django might require some odd workarounds or additional logic which could prove to be complex and/or less performant.

That said, I have on occasion floated an alternative idea, which is to basically port the Django configurational and query system to SQLAlchemy entirely, doing away with full backwards compatibility and essentially providing a "transitional" platform, where you take an existing Django application and basically run it on top of a new ORM layer that actually uses the SQLAlchemy Session and unit of work model, but the majority of the Django configuration and queryset behavior remains available, thus making porting a relatively painless process (but still, there'd be a porting process). This approach has two advantages. One is, it's actually doable, we're providing a new platform and not trying to duplicate an existing one. The other is, we're actually delivering to a Django application some of the biggest advantages SQLAlchemy has, which are namely the ORM features like unit of work/identity map, the instrumentation model including collections and eager loading support, and inheritance support.

Nobody has time / motivation for that idea either, but I think if it ever happened, it would be more pragmatic.
Maybe I know how it works. Maybe I said that to highlight exactly what you are talking about and to underscore the fact that he did not have to shutdown his service if he was compliant with DMCA takedowns, just like Google.
In this combination SQLAlchemy feels a bit mismatched because it is heavier than Flask itself, somewhat negating the joy of using a micro framework. On small projects I enjoyed using things like the web2py Data Access Layer, a single module sweetening access to a large number of databases.

https://code.google.com/p/web2py/source/browse/gluon/dal.py
Show HN: Using RAMBOOT to build a diskless home router OS
I agree.

He's young enough and clearly sharp enough to get some promotion out of his ordeal (front page HN isn't too bad) and will move on to certainly bigger and better things. No reason to start out your dev career in the hole a few hundred grand to lawyers and the RIAA and get nothing out of it.

Like Kenny used to say, "You gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them."
3D processors

memristors

improved parallel processing

graphene

quantum

spintronics

optical

Did I miss any?
Ironically, tptacek spends a large amount of time criticizing crypto, but a lot of the time it's useful criticism (i.e. actually provides some kind of a solution.)

I have nothing against criticism. If there's a flaw in something, let's talk about it. But I don't care for "I know how to do it better," and nothing more.
FWIW:

pprint = functools.partial(print, end=' ')
pprint('hi')
do_something()
print('there')

print('hi', 'there', sep=' ')

I appreciate the fine grained control, and the ability to do things like `functools.partial` on it.

fprint = functools.partial(print, file='/var/log/foo.log')
fprint("I'm writing to a file!")
fprint("So am I")
ASCII by default is only an accident of history. It's going to be a slow, painful process but all human-readable text is going to be Unicode at some point. For historical reasons you'll still have to encode a vector of bytes full of character information to send it down the pipe but there's no reason why we shouldn't be explicit about it.

The pain is painful [in Python 3] primarily for library authors and only at the extremities. If you author your libraries properly your users won't even notice the difference. And in the end as more protocols and operating systems adopt better encodings for Unicode support that pain will fade (I'm looking at you, surrogateescape).

It's better to be ahead of the curve on this transition so that users of the language and our libraries won't get stuck with it. Python 2 made users have to think (or forget) about Unicode (and get it wrong every time... the shear amount of work I've put into fixing codebases that mixed bytes and unicode objects without thinking about it made me a lot of money but cost me a few years of my life I'm sure).
Definitely. I'm really interested in the progress of OpenPGP.js. It could possibly replace a lot of the sketchier parts of Cryptocat.
Linux has changed the world. Yes of course I'm talking about the kernel, that's what Linux is. It's what it's always been.

Without Linux there would be no Android and Apple would by now own 95% of the smartphone market(1). Server infrastructure across the industry, including Web hosting, would cost an arm and a leg due to proprietary Unix license costs. Services like Rackspace and AWS would likely be barely viable, if at all. A generation of geeks would have grown up probably on Windows without Linux to cut their technical teeth on.

Linux success is a bit like that of SQLite. There are probably over 50 SQLite databases in the room with me right now, on the smartphones the other people here have in their pockets, but you'd never know it. It doesn't matter if anyone knows it or not, in fact the technology being invisible is the point. It's why even the fact that OSX and iOS are unix under the hood is such a triumph.

The goal might have been Linux on the Desktop for some, as a back end guy for me that's always been a distraction. Mobile is making the Desktop almost irrelevant, or at least a niche market, and Linux and Unix are right there, out in the lead. They run the client devices in people's hands, and most of the back end services those devices rely on. They own the future.

(1) I'm a happy loyal iPhone user, but I'm not stupid enough to not realize that would be a bad thing.
Governments are "now in a Cold War with the [citizens of the] entire rest of the world."

Better?
It would be nice if we could see the results
> I can't help but think if commenters spent as much time learning how to use good crypto as complaining about the time researchers spend picking apart bad crypto, all of their issues with the current implementations would disappear.

Not really, because each commenter here interacts with 10's if not 100's of people who have little to no chance of learning to use good crypto.
> Check out my new project, catchyurl.co, a url shortener that creates memorable shortened urls like catchyurl.co/EskimoHill

Do you know if this is being used by http://gfycat.com/?
@lukezli any thoughts on opening or providing the source for catchyurl? Looks great!
It looks like user Tobu already fixed it, but that is quite ridiculous.
The TSA does aggravate it, by increasing the level of road traffic.
A Computational Logic for Applicative Common Lisp
Seriously, this is what I want as well. I don't want to read a years-old forum thread full of whitespace and content-less replies or, god forbid, EE, to figure out the answer. I'm glad SO is filled to the brim with direct answers to a myriad of questions. Saying it's ruining pedagogy is over-thinking the site's purpose.
tptacek's comments are usually interesting and insightful, and he seems like a good person who does his best to interact in meaningful ways here, rather than simply channeling the Comic Book Guy as is the custom in crypto dick waving forums.
You want a study that says that someone cares about things they own?

If the farmers actually owned the land they hopefully would have complained about near by factories, or stopped paying taxes on the land by now.