skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a brilliant example of a comment, anywhere but particularly here where technology and our relationship with it is fundamental.

Respond. Think about it out loud. Explain how your primary response is still valid. Use the word 'awesome'. Think some more. Then go away, do more research, and update your post with a self-qualifier and the words 'very, very cool'.

Thanks. Very, very cool.
I hate to be all Ron Paul-y here, but I can't help but point out that a much simpler solution to this problem than anything posted thus far is to simply not invade countries in the first place.
I think you are right, but that picture is pretty blurry.

A very interesting read on IEDS here: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007046.html
The federal reserve does not control the price of oil for example. Controlling inflation is one of its function. Again: controlling it, not setting the inflation rate. For example, there are/were fear of deflation when the inventory was high, and the demand low. With a interest rate set at pretty much 0%, there is not much else the reserve bank can do.

So I stand by my statement, the government does not "inflate the prices by 3-5%" a year.
Neat -- watch out though, can be NSFW depending on what people are posting.
Do you mean that if you call any function which is part of a GPL'd library then consequentially your work is a derivative. Going by that logic can anything running on Linux be a non-GPL'd commercial product ?! I am really confused right now !
I think it was. Twitpic emailed me asking to start caching. I may have killed twitpic.
I'm in New York, but I posted it this afternoon from work. There are no guys, it's just me and a little bit of code I wrote in 30 minutes, or 40 minutes tops. I had never seen picfog or any other service - this was just something I wrote because I couldn't sleep.
I'm having trouble seeing your point here. You seem to be saying "features present in my language of choice are right and proper, while features not present were omitted for good and sufficient reasons and were a Bad Idea to begin with."

Also, there's a real muddle in your third paragraph. Are you claiming that Ruby culture is comparably proscriptive to Java or C++ culture? If not, it's tu quoque and the original author's point stands. But if your intent is to refute the central premise of his argument, you should really say so.
This is actually a very practical question, as IIRC Editline was readline compatible on some levels.

What follows is all my hazy recollection.
If memory serves, the answer was this, although obviously if you ask RMS you get slightly different answers depending: you have to GPL your code (if you distribute it) if you link to GPL code. If you can plausibly link to several different libraries, not all of which are GPL, you don't. So when readline was alone in the world, everything that used it had to be GPL. The BSD folks wrote editline specifically to avoid this--initially, editline was extremely lame compared to readline and I think might still be, but because the API was equivalent they could say "We're BSD licensed through and through; use our code for anything you want" and still have a non-horrible CLI and yet at link time decide to use the good library.

I think the reason this works legally, although I'm not a lawyer, is because yes, when you link your program with readline that executable cannot be distributed except under the terms of the GPL. Because you have multiple potential targets for this sort of thing, nobody can argue that you are trying to technically evade the requirements.

But apparently this is still contentious.
Twitter vs Google is a bit like Lucille Ball vs IBM
India prays for rain as water wars break out
Or a salt.
Not quite -- the GPL makes exceptions for that in Section 1: "However, [the "Corresponding Source"] does not include the work's System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally available free programs which are used unmodified in [generating, installing, running, or modifying the work] but which are not part of the work."

Basically, system stuff is exempt.

But you're right to be confused. If bright, prominent developers like jacobian and jnoller can't definitively answer these questions, then there's a problem with the implementation of either the GPL or the US legal system. After all, if the developers themselves can't fully grok the GPL, then who is it for?
Passwords always should be salted. (meaning a -different- nonce for each password) This prevents rainbow tables from being useful. Instead of a raw hash function, you should (for maximum security) be using something specifically designed to be expensive: read pbkdf2, bcrypt, scrypt; This will make even dictionary attacks very difficult. If someone has cracked your db they also probably also have access to your HMAC key, at which point cracking can still be parallellized and is not significantly slowed.
Maybe you can't decide on which "creative" type of work to do. One day you want to write iPhone apps, the next day you want to play prog guitar, the next you want to learn lisp, ad infinitum.

You can't do that. You have to decide on one thing and concentrate. Make it your bitch. Practice it well for 20,000 hours. I can't stress this enough, you have to commit to one thing. If you can't do that, you'll continue to backpedal (and continue to feel unhappy, per your definition.)

You'll also need some sort of motivation. It might be a person you don't want to disappoint who is asking about your progress and who is there for you when you want to quit. It might be some internal drive for perfection... It doesn't matter what ''it'' is, but that thing has to exist and you have to be emotionally tied to it.

Of course, let me know if you can figure out how to find the one thing to focus on... I can't.
For those considering TT:

* Do not use Tokyo Tyrant in a production setting without replication. Make frequent backups.

* as far as I can tell, you have to call sync manually.. if you don't and the writes fill up your memory, writes slow to a crawl and there's a chance that the db file will corrupt when you finally sync or terminate the daemon.

* if you run out of disk space, your db will become corrupt

* if you accidentally start two instances of tokyo tyrant on the same file, it may become corrupt

* If you're using the hash db, be sure to tune the bnum param. If you're working with a lot of data, tune xmsiz as high as possible.

* 'putlist' stores duplicate records for b+ tree, which may or may not be what you expect.

* "bulk loading" the db is much much slower than mysql's select data infile
Some no nonsense anti- procrastination/perfectionism tips:

Structured Procrastination
http://www.structuredprocrastination.com

The Cult of Done Manifesto
http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-mani...

Merlin Mann on Doing Creative Work
http://www.maximumfun.org/sound-young-america/maxfuncon-merl...

Beating The Little Hater
http://www.podtech.net/home/4760/beating-the-little-hater

Ze Frank on Executing Ideas Vs "Brain Crack"
http://lifehacker.com/5142776/ze-frank-on-executing-ideas-vs...
to clarify #2 - the question is whether businesses can be crafted somewhat similar to how open source software is crafted, which is democratically. Somehow, entrepreneurs could get together and butt heads and form small idea-groups that go off and talk on their own, with features like the software figuring out how much each person's contribution is worth, etc.

With free software, say someone has a good feature they want implemented, they have a means to affect that change in theory in a way a user can not do with closed source software. If they can't win the project over, they can fork the idea and start their own variation. the theory is that these kinds of mini-democracies lead to the most efficient software, could this work for businesses as well?
“Without Haste, Without Fear. We Will Conquer the World”
Thanks for your confirmation. I feel like lots of science and engineering projects could benefit a great deal from having a veteran on their team. Your insight is truly valuable.

As for the rest of the hacker community, I can see no better example of the importance of the "release-early-release-often" motto. It's frustrating for me as a scientist sometimes working on technology that has years of development time, when people's lives are immediately at stake.

I sincerely hope the military is getting more of a hacker-mindset.
All my competitors :-)
If the headlines is accurate, at least people are learning an important lesson - if you don't want anyone to read something, don't put it online.
PostgreSQL Development: Lessons for Perl?
Nonsense, working on a modern vehicle requires specialized tools (in some cases), a computer (in many cases) and patience. If you enjoy working on cars, then you get whatever you need to get the job done. If you don't, then you just complain about how expensive it is to take your car to the shop.
What would keep you from frying your own equipment?
Speaking of which, my idea was to use the current tech in detecting nude images to create a site like this that ONLY displays the NSFW pics from twitpic.

Lost interest in it though.
The seinfeld method is amazing. I rarely flossed my teeth but, for some odd reason, really wanted to make it a habit. I used the seinfeld method for 2 months (guess I'm a slow learner) and now I floss every single day no matter what.
It wasn't open in the same sense as Twitter is - you could make your profile private, and only allow people who are your "friends" to view anything besides the very basic information.

Of course, this lulled people into a false sense of security; Anna made her profile private to make sure that Bobby wouldn't read her diary, but her friend Cindy would just login and let Bobby read everything from her account.
Man that's heavy stuff.

So many people and such a basic requirement for life being scarce, that's going to be major trouble if there isn't relief in the immediate future.

Doesn't stuff like this fall under the red cross ?
It would be pretty dumb if all you had to do to set it off was ring the phone. One wrong number and you're done.
I think this is generally useful, but I would prefer to see each version of the code. By making this a wiki you will end up with only one version, but if you could see each version you can see different approaches to the problem. The history attempts to address this, but it is difficult to use.
Small correction: should say just "NATO" not "US and NATO". US is part of NATO isn't it? I'm tired of Canadian and other NATO countries getting the shit end of the stick. The US didn't start to pull its weight until this year because they were side-tracked by Iraq...
The complexity is a feature. Simply put: if you want to work in the open, noncommercially, with maximal sharing, use something other than GPL. If you ever intend to commercialize your work, use GPL.

I disagree. All of my work is under the GPL, not out of any concern with commercial use, but to ensure that any users have the same rights to the code as I do. The complexity of the GPL is undesirable and unwanted, though currently necessary.

I used to use the BSD license for my personal projects, under the reasoning that having the source "somewhere out there" would be enough. Then somebody modified my work and passed it on to users without the source. It was a very minor project, and there was no legitimate reason why he couldn't have provided the modified source to his users. After he stopped supporting it, the whole mess was dumped in my lap, with several miserable people wondering why I couldn't help support their "BSD-licensed" software.

The fundamental difference between the BSD/MIT and GPL modes of thought is in whose rights are more important, the developer or the user.
It would be a terrible way to write an academic paper - which I'm not doing, I'm just mentioning the content of a related talk I'd heard. Please avail yourself of the primary sources.
Worlds Largest Solar Project for the Sahara Desert
I've been doing this for myself in one form or another for years. I've tried logging my weekly life in hourly chunks via a spreadsheet. I've set up multiple blogs for the different facets of my life.

Lately, I've just been going by the maxim of "go to bed better (at something) than when I woke up." The only thing I'm tracking in detail is my daily weight and the progress of my web app.

I'd love to be able to use something that could track all sorts of my personal data (mood, health, food intake, etc.). The biggest hurdle is gathering and retaining the data. My iPhone is probably the best tool that could be used for this at this point, but it's still not convenient enough for everything.
Here's one:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/05/amazon_lovefilm/

I think it's a stake.
I'm not necessarily saying the features omitted from C++ were omitted for "good and sufficient" reasons, and I certainly didn't say they were a bad idea. What I am saying is they were omitted for reasons other than the author states. (The reason I'm not saying they are good and sufficient is that starts a discussion about the design of C++, which I think is too far off topic.)

I can't speak with confidence about Ruby's culture. But the talk I've seen about not freely modifying arbitrary classes seems to run counter with the author's main point, since that is the sort of freedom he's talking about. That sort of proscription reminds me of warnings against global state in procedural programs, and shared state in parallel programs.
The spirit of the GPL and BSD licenses are different, especially for libraries (ignoring people who accidentally use GPL instead of LGPL).
great tips, kudos!
Without failure, there is no success.

Thanks for the insightful story and sharing your experiences. I'm hoping it provides me the fuel to take a few more risks in social settings than I typically do.
> C++ avoided reflection

Not really, its architecture simply didn't really support reflection. C++ actually lets you do almost anything imaginable and then some.

Overall, though, I agree with the premise in part. Certain languages (Java, C#, and to a much lesser extent Python[1]) try to remove features they consider "evil", rather than let the developer have all the rope to tie themselves. What they fail to account for is that we're developers, we should be competent enough to know the dangers of certain features and we should be competent enough to avoid them if they're not needed.

Languages that let you do whatever the hell you want aren't a new thing, though. C, lisp, etc have existed for awhile. If at all, the idea of patronizing programmers is new.

[1] Guido van rossum has said many times that there should be only one way to do anything, and I think you see that with the crippling of lambda in Python (Guido favors named subfunctions). However, Python still has many "dangerous" features if you need them.
Solved as in "That's good enough for now, we'll keep working on it."

Certainly more feasible that random flybys.
Instead of the unsubstantiated (ad hominem) implication that the poster is irrational, you may wish to consider the simple equation of "who benefits".

Clearly, Iranians are not sitting spell bound behind their computer screens waiting for motivational instructions pouring from Twitter. It is certainly possible that some degree of organizational support was provided by Twitter, but given the total control of the government over the infrastructure, it would have been a risky proposition.

On the other hand, the world outside of Iran was, to the extent that was hyped on MSM, in thrall of the of #iranelection tweet stream. Here, in fact, we do have a case of an audience that could have been manipulated.

So who benefits? Ask yourself if you feel more inclined to support armed action against Iran by US/NATO to "save" the Iranians.
Lisp has been one of "the newer breed of languages" for over 50 years now, and that run does not seem likely to end anytime soon.
Share ownership in an Internet domain name
> Yes, there are ways the government could have mitigated or prevented both of these disasters (funding upgrades to the New Orleans levee system

The upgrades were funded. The money was spent and the upgrades supposedly happened. The levees were inspected.

And the good people of New Orleans re-elected the govt that did this.

> a better job at regulating the finance industry,

Banking and insurance are the most regulated parts of the finance industry. AIG was regulated as both, in multiple countries.

> not encouraging homeownership

Talk to Barney Frank - he's back at it.

How many times does something have to fail before you give up on it?
Transparently contriving to escalate keeping a secret to making a positive declaration would, I think, not impress a judge very much. After all, it is rsync.net who is intentionally placing themselves in a position where making a false declaration is the only way to comply with the law. The judge does not need to force them to make a statement; he only needs to observe afterwards that they have communicated the fact that they were served with a warrant and thereby failed to comply with their legal obligation to keep the warrant secret. It would be up to rsync.net to argue that they had freed themselves from that obligation by taking these actions.

Frankly, this is the kind of thing a five-year-old would come up with. "Yo, warden, I just created a new religion that says I have to have steak and hookers every day! Respect my religious freedom!" The law isn't that brittle. It's hackable, but you have to respect judges' latitude and legal sense.
As an experiment, I tried changing a life-long habit: from the time I carried a wallet, I always put it in my back left pocket. Did it without thinking. Always put my keys in my left front pocket (without thinking). I started putting my wallet in my right-back pocket, and my keys in my right-front pocket. It took a looong time to break myself of the habit. It was so easy to use the left pocket that I'd do it without thinking, and realize what I had done minutes later. After a while, it got easier, but I would still regress if I didn't pay attention. Now, putting the articles in my right pockets is reflex, but every once in a while I slip...

It has taken years to get to this point, and it was a learning experience: I'd read all the '30 day habit' books too. I guess it's easy to start a NEW habit, but changing an existing habit is hard work.

HTH
"Yeah, somebody finally figured out how to make flash work in Chromium" - maybe somebody has implemented it, no?
How Teenagers Consume Media [Scribd]
Linux made an exception to the GPL so that Linux programs don't have to be GPLed.
Really nice to see a modern (kind of) foundphotos.net
So they'll find a new way - timer after loss of signal, FRS radio, long-range cordless phones, IR sensors, etc. Worse comes to worse, they'll do it manually and blow themselves up in the process.

This isn't the kind of problem that you can solve with technology - sure, you can make it more difficult, but the people who make these things do nothing else during a day but make IEDs; they'll find a new way to blow things up. Nothing encourages people to tinker with electronics like the perception that their country is being invaded and that they can fight back with bombs.

So take control of their cell system (which, by the way, will do wonders for the perception that the US doesn't run the country) if you want, but don't expect that to change much. The way to beat IEDs is to make it so they don't want to set IEDs, or at least so that you've got enough people who don't want them set that they can report when others are.
sorry if i am repeating, but

http://lifehacker.com
They already have an obligation to keep the warrant secret. If the court rules that they (obviously intentionally) violated that obligation, they will bear the consequences, right? The whole point is to try to avoid legal responsibility. Otherwise they could just post the details of the warrant on their home page.
+1. living in another country helped me expose and get rid of some of the bad habits i've wanted to get rid of, and start doing new thing i've wanted to do as well.

you probably won't know many people, and this removes a lot of the obligations and expectations that are placed on you by the people you've known for a long time back home.

this doesn't seem like such a big deal, but try changing your behavior and see what kind of reactions you get. very often you'll get negative reactions because your changed behavior threatens peoples' own understand of the world and their place in it.

a bit OT but one of the best things i've heard about someone's reaction to something you said or did: "it's not about you, it's about them". and 99.9% of the time, it's true.

anyways - yeah, live in another country :)_
Joseph Needham did gather a lot of interesting source material from ancient Chinese literature on developments in science and technology in China. I studied Chinese and sinology as his lengthy book series was published, and have read many hundreds of pages of his books. The general view of the historians of China whom I know best is that Needham did a fair amount of axe-grinding with his primary sources to prove ideological points and bolster his theory of history that other historical sources would not support. The primary historical literature in Chinese (literary Chinese) is VAST--the usual statement is that ancient Chinese literature outnumbers all other ancient literature from all other world cultures combined in word count by a considerable margin.

What I find most disappointing in Needham's work is his too Marxist explanation for what historians of technology think is what is most remarkable about the historical comparison between China and the West. Until the late Western middle ages, China was plainly ahead of the West in technology, and arguably very much ahead in science. Historians of technology refer to the West in those days as having "precocious technology" that couldn't be explained at all by Western science of that day. But as the Western middle ages gave way to the Renaissance, there was an explosive growth of science in the West, and ever since the West has been ahead of China in both science and technology, for reasons that I don't think Needham explains adequately. And of course the development of political freedom in the West in the same period has very much been world-leading all that while.
Torrents hidden in PNG images
I'm sure the Iraqi people - let alone the Russians and the Chinese - would love it if the US set off twenty or thirty EMPs every day as they went about their daily business.
I can definitely say your dilemma is nothing new.

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%207:15;&#...;
LESS 1.0 released. Rewritten in Treetop, now with namespaces & accessors
Interesting take; it'd be a little bit more interesting if you could supply a source image and steganographically hide the torrent within it, so it didn't look so suspicious..
Its hard to disagree with the premise - people don't care - but don't you think there is a bit of a tragedy of the commons situation here ... i mean its not like there are any options for the non-super wealthy to support research of grand projects (space travel, anti-death creams...)
i think its referring to the command structure rather than making a political statement. if the US troops are operating apart from NATO command then they should be referenced that way