skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think I would ever recommend anyone to drop out. If they do, it must be because they are really sure it's the right thing for them.

I never finished my 6-year CS college degree. I had been making commercial games since high school, and during college I was collaborating with researchers, working part-time at a bank and also doing freelance videogame work in whatever time was left. Once I realized I would never pursue an academic career and I had been exposed to "enough" different subjects (I had already completed the first four years and some stuff from 5th and 6th year), my motivation to keep studying for grades disappeared. Something had to give.

Funnily enough, I have been involved with projects, lectured and taught subjects at most universities in my city, but never the one I studied at.
I suppose that sort of thinking is helped with "sign in with google" and "sign in with facebook".
Urgh, #makgammon is every November :(

The lab has a public open night every Tue and Thurs though. General hacking then. The game things is a once a year special event. (check out the Doodle app for this year)

Join the mailing list, or just email me if you want to visit.

Oh there are bitcoin talks on the 3rd of Jan I think. (check the mailing list)
6 Major Google Changes Reveal the Future of SEO
i decided to learn drawing 4 years ago, and have been working on it since then. once you realize that it is about seeing as much as drawing, and that the drawing part is actually really technical and a skill, it gets really fun (and frustrating too, of course).

this is halfway recent stuff from last year or so (not very good at scanning my things):

http://31.media.tumblr.com/48180b9cea9e0876e4d37abcb4d50f81/...

http://24.media.tumblr.com/060a76d8bd81e04aea194885f685e370/...

http://24.media.tumblr.com/8d75e199fe914e8c95fff78c900638d8/...
(Full disclosure: I've been working in analytics since 1999 and founded a web analytics business as well as consulted many fortune 500s and non-US government agencies on their management and usage of data. I'm naturally pre-disposed to not trust Google. I have a technology background in systems design engineering, as well as a business and economics background)

There's one major problem that many people don't realize: The value in that data is immense and Google has corned the market in both analytics (recording the data) and advertising (using the data to profit). This profit comes directly at the expense of businesses - This means lower margins because they must pay higher ad prices to be competitive and attract or retain (see re-targeting on doubleclick) their existing customers who Google knows more about. The customers are worse off because the products they know and love get out-competed by similar knock-offs who invest less in the product/service development but more in ads. This tends to make prices for people higher over the long run and the benefit they get lower over the long run. It's like a Google tax which also reduces options.

Heh, and that's saying that the NSA isn't already paying Google for their https private certs and using the massive mountain of customer data already. I'm tending to think that the NSA has already though of that one.
Inside Codex Seraphinianus, the weirdest encyclopedia ever
Interesting. A couple of years ago a company was going to move me to the states on an L1A (executive transfer); even though I was "only" the tech lead they seemed confident it would be fairly easy. Then again, they then proceeded to go bust in the GFC so what would they know.

Any hope of being transferred under that category instead?
yes I know what they are. Use them all the time. But since the post is about if I imagine it's about things like

if( x < 0 || x > 5 )
throw new ArgumentOutOfRange();
if( y == nullptr )
thwrow new NullRefException();

which should imo be something like

Contract.AssertInRange( x, 0, 5 );
Contract.AssertNotNull( y );
Take a look at https://www.sideprojectors.com
Some possibilities:

- The implication, stated or not (usually not), is that some people (i.e. white men) hold their jobs in tech because they took a position that rightfully should have gone to a more qualified person of a different group (i.e. woman / racial minority). With the attendant implication that they aren't actually competent and that they only got their position through in-group affiliation.

- Men (white or not) who have worked hard in their education and their profession to be able to work and succeed in tech feel frustrated when their efforts are downplayed or dismissed because they are alleged to be 'playing the game on easy mode'.

- People (male or female, of diverse races and backgrounds) who believe in the value of hard work and have actually seen such work pay off in their profession - i.e. who have experienced meritocracy in action - are frustrated by those who claim that a meritocracy (however imperfect) does not exist and that all tech hiring is biased by some sort of 'old boys network' (which is an insult to women who did well, without whinging, by their own efforts in intellectual labor and networking)
Here's a newsflash for ya: DON'T BREAK THE LAW!!! If they weren't breaking they law there would be no need to send them to jail. I grew up around a bunch of potheads and saw by their example that I never wanted to be involved with drugs. Instead of spending my time getting drunk and high I spent my time in the library reading. I grew up in a trailer park, and now live in a middle-class suburb. Because I was interested in video games, I learned about computers.

Poor people are held down by the chains of their own bad habits, not by rich people.
Oh, it was David Bacon. Thanks for finding this link.
Not a chance. It's easy to be disillusioned by our little tech bubble. We have it easy, others do not.
The pro-DO bias of HN is showing again. If this was Amazaon or Linode, there would be endless hand-wringing and calls for lawsuits. When its DO doing something incredibly stupid and short-sighted, its 'blame the customer.' This is penny pinching at the cost of security, which is something we often complain about when it comes to other companies. Why does DO get a free pass?

"Oh, there's an option for that" to stop default dangerous behavior should not be excusable. This is further proof on why DO isn't enterprise ready and still a toy for barely stable dotcoms.

Thank god for EU privacy laws. If these guys have any EU presence, they'll be forced to clean up their act via regulation. Clearly, the invisible hand of the market and "there's a option for that" is the fail its always been in regards to security.
Do you really believe that the job market for artists satisfies all of the underlying assumptions of the economic model you are using?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Basic_struc...

Infinite buyers and sellers (infinite patrons)? Homogenous products (all artists are fungible)? No barriers to entry and exit (anyone can stop what they are doing and become an artist, tomorrow)?

Two semesters of undergraduate economics can make you very confident in things that are utterly wrong, if you're not careful.
I wonder if they meant to fine them the number of the beast as a way of sending a strong message.
Awkward to say... These companies (at least RIPE) are non profit making - you join for a fixed fee and then you get as many IPs as you need.

It would be a good idea on one hand and a pain on the other...

I am trying to think of a counter to it in my head, but, I can't really... a small fee is easily absorbed in per user costs and so many companies use public ips for internal routing when a private ip would do a good job...

Then again, you could get big companies asking to rent out more than they need and refusing to hand back...

Even if there was fool proof way of provisioning and managing, I personally think it is far too late to do it :(
Become? Not really, now that they're bigger its just getting more attention. Apple has always tightly controlled prices of their product.
If we assume that one of the values of a society is to give chances to a middle class life even people who are born into poor families, then if you actually discover that it is not often possible, maybe you can change something that it becomes possible. You could do things like vote for politicians who drive for lowering the cost of education.

From another angle: if you keep saying that "it's easy to become middle class even if you are poor", then the article has points that say it's actually not the case. The article also argues that rich people don't understand their advantageous position.
Okay, so the PlayHaven guy got fired. Adria had death threats made against her, was the subject of a beheading picture, had her home address and phone number publicized, her employer was DDOSed, and she was ultimately fired, like the PlayHaven guy.

Neither one is acceptable. The mob action is obviously worse, but both punishments were wrong.

What should have happened (wishful thinking I know) is that AR could have told the guys to knock it off, or gone to staff without tweeting a picture to make a complaint if she was not comfortable with a one-on-one disagreement.

In that case the very competent PyCon staff would have mediated the complaint, and no one would have heard about it beyond a small circle of a few dozen people.
If you're admittedly ignorant, how can you tell whether the answer is ridiculous or there's something critical you're not understanding? What happens if the answer is not ridiculous but is utterly inconsistent with your current picture of the world?
Thanks, but that's exactly what I wanted to avoid. With my little unscientific "experiment" I wanted to get a practical taste of how big the IPv6 Internet is right now... "really small" would be the answer :)
I had a friend that chose to go to a $27000/year out-of-state university. She left school with a graduate degree and $140k in debt with the prospect of making around ~$40k/year.

Meanwhile, I went to my tax-subsidized home-state university. Paid for everything with Stafford loans and Pell grants. I left school with around ~20k in debt. Paid it off early.

Shouldn't we hold people accountable for their choices? It is possible to get a decent education and leave school with a manageable debt. People do it all the time.
You didn't "wait for google's answer" before attacking them and asserting your own theories.

The rest of your comment tells me all I need to know about you and the type of blog you're running. Have a good day.
Ask HN: Who is working on/knows of WebRTC based projects
WebRTC is supposed to be revolutionary and I know there have been a few projects and even startups using it. Of course the biggest challenge is getting all browsers supporting it and IE does not support yet ? What are some projects/startups using webRTC and what problems are being solved ? Do you guys see a brighter future ahead ?
Speel het gloednieuwe South Park game op Unibet | Online Geld Games
Where does the parent comment even mention racism? This is just a drive-by snipe attacking something that the parent didn't even say.
There are so many laws in the US that everyone there is committing several felonies a day.

It's the poor and minorities the cops choose to scrutinize and enforce against most.

Few times have I seen such obliviousness to white middle-class privilege on HN.
In fact, the whole American system is built to prove the opposite. Space at the top is NOT limited.

By definition, it is. The question is whether one focuses on absolute or relative prosperity. Like you (I presume) I also prefer to focus on absolute prosperity because nothing can be done about relative prosperity's zero-sum nature.

However, it would be good to see less inequality. I'm not a hard-line "everyone-should-have-the-same-amount" egalitarian because that's a terrible idea-- people would lose the incentive to do the work that society needs-- but inequality has gone far beyond the point of being valuable or productive. Now it's just self-perpetuating and exists for no other reason.

Total wealth is NOT limited.

Sure. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people (95+ percent) end up working below their ability (a loss to them, and to society) because they lack the scarce social resources, credentials, and connections that have congealed "at the top". There are also inefficiency problems in a low-mobility society where (as we now see in the US) the wrong people are making the decisions.

Anybody who works hard (and smart!) can get there.

Total bullshit.
I feel a little bad for Telegram, but at this point, I think what they have is marketecture.
Yeah, I totally agree. Many failures in marketing this year. Weird thing is, PooBarr the pooping bear has some great reviews out there but it dosen't seem to catch peoples attention.
Disingenuous maybe, but the painting apps have changed dramatically through each release, my tech is now 5 times faster than at the beginning of the year. As I've been pushing ahead with new products I've been keeping the updates going with my older ones. Also I don't think 20+ illustrations for each one is a meaningless effort. But yes, I really need to come up with a better marketing strategy for my paint! ta!
Scientists Petition U.S. Congress for Return to the Moon
3D Printing Houses on Mars
FPGA 101 is very informative: http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5185_-_en_-_...

ps: CCC is awesome, every hacker should plan of attending at least once in your life! :)
Argh, blast. I did see it this year, but was a bit too busy to jump in.
I'll endeavour to come along on the 3rd. Awesome, ta!
Using A Microcontroller To Keep Your Plants Alive
I know that this is a problem, and I don't blame you.

However, one of the admissions committee members of a top-10 US university told me how they deal with this problem.

That they keep track of good universities in India, and what GPA is considered good in India. Occasionally, they take a chance with a student with an interesting resume from an unknown University, and continue selecting from there if that student does well. Repeat this process, and over time they end up with a good list of sources of good students from India; and they ignore applications from all other Indians.
So in other words productivity might skyrocket for the participants.
Did you do this by hand or use a tool and then touch it up afterwards?
Speaking of latency: one of the big IPv6 news for me in 2013 is that now, on average, IPv6 when it works gives better latency than IPv4:

https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/
I confess. . .I'm one of those parents - almost. No, I'm not nearly as old as your parents and my kids are much younger than you all, but. . .my kids don't understand how I could have worked - literally - as a rocket scientist (well, engineer). . .but still struggle sometimes with consumer devices. I have no problem with web apps. . .coding and testing. . .but consumer devices are not my forte.

The user interfaces and interfaces between the devices do not seem at all intuitive to me. And learning those particular tech intricacies does not pique my curiosity; I just want to use the tools. So I just hand the devices off to my young kids, nieces and nephews and say "show me how to do blah-blah".
Aleks replied about contracts (in the comments below the article):

We definitely tried to learn from Eiffel. Our contract
system really isn't revolutionary at all; we just tried
to take the simplest and best parts of Eiffel, and
distill them down into a format that would feel familiar
and comfortable for C# developers.
the blog post asked if google is involved in the conspiracy but did not say that for sure they are. and i am not revealing my identity
-----
Maybe you can answer a question for me - why is that the hackerspaces in the UK are not open to the public all the time? I've been quite surprised at how difficult it is to get involved in the hackerspace scene in the UK - but I guess I'm kind of spoiled with the Metalab/Vienna situation. Is there some law in the UK that makes it difficult for hackerspaces to maintain an open door policy for the public, or is it more that the hackerspace is not as vibrant in the UK as it is on the Continent, and there aren't hackers there all the time?
Ask HN: What Are Your Productivity Tips & Tools?
I'm a developer and I recently started to work from home. I've already developed some habits around certain tools but I'd love to hear about others' productivity tips & tools.

Are you using a Web-app like Trello?
What about a remote-team tool like Sqwiggle?
Do you have a read-it-later list on Readability/Instapaper/Pocket?
Do you have a note-taking tool? Mind mapping, maybe?
Do you live by the guidelines of some time management technique?
Do you talk to your rubber duck while debugging?

Anything, really, that can give me and the others something new to consider in our quest to be more productive.

Thank you! And happy new year!
I'm noticing this app is not open-source in anyway.

That's game-over with the types of threats HN is concerned about these days.

Of course to some degree, the smartphone is so compromised in so many different ways that it's basically not even worth trying. Your SIM card runs code against you, the OS reports back in dozens of ways to 2-3 different entities, app stores can't be trusted, advertisers...
You should definitely watch Weis' German talk "Cryptography after Snowden". So good.
And that's why it feels so good to block all hits to `google-analytics.com`. There is a choice of extensions that do the job. Sites which do not work because of that blocking are probably very rare.
I'm curious, did you consider a 3rd factor – something like enthusiasm or interest – where a language may be neither in wide use nor necessarily gaining much adoption but nevertheless garners a lot of attention? I'm thinking maybe Rust or Haskell?

Edit: I don't mean to slight those two languages, by the way. Both, I'm sure, are gaining actual adoption at non-zero rates. I just chose them to illustrate that, perhaps, the level of interest around them may be a bit out of proportion with either their adoption or their acceleration.
I really enjoyed this talk on Wii U hardware hacking - http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5290_-_en_-_...
Iowa State researchers examine media impact in multiple countries
Deeming certain errors to be unrecoverable in a component means that software will be designed such that "components" will be bundles of functionality with tight dependencies. This is interesting, and forces a separation across component boundaries that we should do anyway.

Consider a web server. If we tried to make the entire web server one component, then hitting an out-of-bounds error when handling a request would take down the entire web server. That is bad. But if the main event loop of the web server is a component that depends on a separate component that handles requests, then the main event loop could recover from the out-of-bounds error in the page request component. This is what we should always do, of course, but it's being forced (or, heavily encouraged) by the programming model itself.

I'd like to see how "components" are defined to understand this better - or any code, really.
That's much better. You're welcome.
however i feel strongly there it is a conspiracy that Google is part of to cover up the truth, since there is no other explanation and i wont buy their words if they said they were deleted by Mistake. and btw who said that they violates google TOS? you are just assuming.
Is this for good or bad in the Taiwanese market? I can't imagine carriers in the UK trying to lower prices or give a better deal without persuasion from outside.

When the first iPhones were introduced it had the first affordable data plan I'd ever seen in the UK. I think o2 we're asking around £50/month for some tiny data plan on my Nokia N95, on top of the contract cost(there was no data bundles). The iPhone was £35 month on contract, phone and unlimited data.
Bitcoin is the Linux of payments. And its killer apps will be for US dollars.
Biology > Technology

I don't know why technologists and physicists underestimate and neglect nature as "not good enough, we can do better" every single time. There is so much ignorance that causes unnecessary friction and hate. To me nature is the most powerful thing in existence and consists of more than our universe, it is responsible for the laws of physics, life and everything. There is so much we will have to discover and what we will discover at the end is that all of what we found out has existed already for aeons and is mostly in use already by nature (if efficient, from it's perspective) somewhere out there.

Let me explain that argument by an example why our whole technology evolved only because of bio- or natural mimicry. Physicists who are amongst the most disconnected individuals from nature, were actually those who first learnt by "observing" it. Newton, Galileo, Einstein and many more, have used their incredibly unique perspective and way to observe the nature of the things they wanted to understand. By that, they have evolved or discovered ideas, concepts and later the logic that explains the things they observed.
A hobbyist's enterprise integration - dig it!
Thats fair that you do not want to push them. However if she likes english teaching. Maybe she would be interesting in the problems of lingustics computing or educational computing. Half the time people learn to program to do stuff with it.

They can learn regex expressions to search through 1,000,000 lines of primary sources for several different spellings of a word, or they can sit back and think of a different way to teach a classroom of kids maths.

If she likes english, find out why english teachers are learning programming (cos they are) or which area she is interested in and what tools they are using.
There is a wider debate that deserves to be had about analytics - not just Google Analytics but about web tracking in general. A debate about what data is collected in the first place and just how "anonymous" that data is. Is it possible for companies to respect user privacy and collect user data that helps inform improvements to their business or website at the same time? How can we answer this question when we don't even know what companies track and record in the first place? Google cetainly aren't telling.

It's interesting that Google does not display the IP address to Google Analytics customers citing privacy concerns, but it does of course capture that data for itself. Put another way, Google believes displaying the IP address to analytics customers would be a privacy concern, yet you could argue that Google capturing that data for itself is a greater privacy concern because, unlike the indiviudal analytics customers, Google can aggregate all the phenomenal amounts of data it captures to build a much more detailed picture of online behaviour across multiple sites.

Google are not collecting this information for nefarious purposes, but no company should be allowed to collect such phenomenal amounts of data about users' online behaviour without scrutiny. For example, consider how little comment is made on the privacy implications of using ChromeOS where your online behaviour is not only captured by Google, it isn't even anonymous.

No other company has its digital fingerprints all over the web like Google. But Google gets an easy pass on matters of privacy and online tracking. Why?
The CCC is one of the oldest hacker-oriented computer conferences in Europe. Many wonderful things have sprung from this font of hackerdom.

Glenn Greenwald is the guy who broke the Edward Snowden/NSA story this year. He was invited to do the keynote address at CCC, and he gave us all many important things to think about. I strongly suggest you take the 30 minutes to watch the keynote, and gain your own understanding of the issues he brings up - this is vital to our future.
Illegal for a completely different reasons though. Discrimination vs. fair trade.
Are we all Germans now?
Stop pretending to be big