skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And youtube has a sophisticated detection system setup that scans uploads for copyrighted content automatically. I'm thinking with the press this app is getting they are going to be forced to do something similar and block illegal content, or take it offline soon.
Xen brings its virtualization goodness to more ARM chipsets
Getting more investment if you are more attractive is hardly a surprise, what does surprise me is female attractiveness did not count.

We tend to infer intelligence to attractive people. "They are so attractive, I know they must be smart too" (subconsciously, of course). So what might that say?
And today, I read this oldie-but-goodie over at Martin Fowler's blog...

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SoftwareDevelopmentAttitude.ht...

In Fowler's terms, the intent of the original Agile Manifesto was EnablingAttitude, but the result of the term "Agile" in many environments has been DirectingAttitude. It's a nasty cognitive dissonance - that "Agile" has in many places become a heavy, clumsy, tool-driven process that gets in the way of developers rather than helping them work efficiently.

And I'm not saying this in the "just let us hack" mindset either, because I pretty much despise that sloppy, careless mentality. It doesn't work in environments larger than a few people, much less genuinely large projects. But process needs to be scaled to team size, talent, and risk tolerance. A broad-strokes "Agile" process that restricts competent teams is worse than useless.
Seems somewhat unethical to release something that is essentially designed for piracy.
Logistics and support remain a huge resource intensive problem for any organization.

To summarize a lot of arguments had internally in the project at that time: it was better to outsource as much of that as possible to keep the organization's focus and few resources on deployments and technology development, and the partners chosen for that role disappointed the staff, volunteers, and donors immensely (twice). Technology development went quite well, the deployments were wildly successful, and the "get XO laptops to rich world children" part didn't really get as far.

The Vivitar tablets seem like a much better plan for the North American market and seem to be pretty successful so far. they are available (or were) at Walmart and can be ordered online from Amazon, et al. Of course the technology (and cost of parts) to do that weren't available then, and can many believe be credited as a success of OLPC.

I just wish they ran Sugar.
Recursive Type Signatures in Scala
> "If the government wants to give them permission to steal our signal, then we will come up with some other way to get them our content and so get paid for it,"

I can't believe he thinks that capturing a signal they are freely broadcasting over the air is stealing. That's insane. There's definitely a better way their argument against Aereo could have been made.
New SDK Shows Google Really Wants To Get On Your Body
Hello World in Node.js is broken
Yeah, they'd be facing a MAJOR class-action lawsuit from their affiliates (many of whom are part of not-so-small conglomerates) if they actually attempted anything like this. I have serious doubts they even have the power to do this, as much as they want us to believe they do.
So much of "Agile" is an attempt to "patch" the top-down, closed-allocation organization that is simply incapable of hitting technical high notes no matter how much it spends or how many people it hires.

Since organizations are tough to change and all dysfunctions have champions (some deeply hidden) the "Agile" ends up having to make smaller and smaller motions while its desire for control, as the velocity in an irrotational vortex, gets stronger. Then it devolves into micromanagement, as discussed here: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/ssssh....agile-is-a...

The reality is that the future just has no use for closed-allocation tech companies. Every tech company needs to decide either to play for real and try to excel (open allocation, highly selective hiring) or GTFO and do something else.

Scrum is a formational hack, but closed allocation is a foundational problem and, if technical excellence is needed, a show-stopper.
Except this will result in massive bandwith charges for all nodes included.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=103330
Might be of interest to you.
I disagree, the tools (or, well, Ansible, which is the only one I'm familiar with) are declarative, as he describes. He says "these tools are not enough", then goes on to say that you need stateless package management, through a non-sequitur.

You can specify the packages you want in Ansible, and it will abstract away everything else, giving you what you asked for. Ansible's config language wouldn't look any different if it were using nix (and it probably can), so what he says doesn't follow:

Ansible (et al) aren't enough => We improve a part of the underlying system => Ansible looks exactly the same, but is magically now enough.
Should you launch more than once? I’ve got $58,332 as evidence
Grouper is Hiring a Backbone/Coffeescript Contractor in NYC
Hey HN,
We're looking for a contractor to work with us to clean up an existing single-page backbone app.

The tool in question is an admin-facing task management system. Imagine a collaborative gmail for emails and texts. To prevent conflicts, when an admin opens a message, all other viewers of the message are shown that it is claimed.

The tool should be fairly simple, but as it's grown, it's become unwieldy and hard to debug. We want to add structure and a more extensive test suite.

We'd like to work with an developer who's built several production apps with backbone, as well as more opinionated frameworks like marionette, angular or ember. You should also be experienced with javascript testing (jasmine, phantom, etc).

This would be a contract for at least a couple months, and we'd want you to come in to work the rest of our team in our SoHo office.

We're happy to pay competitive day rates ($700+ per day) depending on experience.

Email me at tom@joingrouper.com
Adobe launches new ecommerce product
Well, the downloading is legal in Netherland (we already pay a fee for that). The uploading not so much. Not sure if it matters that you only upload what you downloaded, so you aren't distributing anything that wasn't already distributed.
I hope they do this, and good riddance if they do. The thing we need more of is old-content companies going out of business. Hopefully they take their outdated models and rent-seeking, extortionary copyright models with them.
Right. But enforcing state in the packaging system is only one facet of what configuration management tools are used for. Building a better package manager won't remove the need for configuration management tools. The problems that gave arise to these tools extend far beyond package management and cannot be reduced to package management as a root cause.
This jibes with an anecdote in "Peopleware". A client staffed new projects by posting them internally where anyone could apply. The authors studied how projects were chosen by applicants, because the client was worried that important (but non-interesting) projects, would not get staffed.

Being friends with an existing team member was more predictive of choice than project interest, and for many of the reasons the OP's article cited (job satisfaction and trust)
Graphic of the Day [Reuters]
I worked on the OLPC during my undergrad at MIT (worked on mesh networking their DSP engine and ported cocos2D to Sugar/PyGTK/PyCairo).

Things that impressed me: the ambitiousness of the project, the fact that they started with some definite opinions and made something that matched those opinions, the group of talented people that flocked to be part of it and the energy in the building.

Things that did NOT impress me: Negroponte's aloofness with the team, his refusal to see the corpo-political implications of the project. I've always wondered what would have happened if had been more aggressive in defending his project by generating bad press about Intel's and Microsoft's attempts to tank the project.
It's the right advice. If routine communication and storage were encrypted, the value of dragnet surveillance would be degraded, perhaps to the point of losing all practical value.
Meanwhile, I'm watching helplessly from the sidelines as "DevOps" becomes the next "Agile", tasting bile in my mouth and wondering when a brilliant concept for reworking the culture-clash problem between developers and operations got reduced to a "knows how to use Chef/Puppet" for recruiters.
(ToS;DR project lead here)

We’re a not-for-profit. And all our code is at https://github.com/tosdr/

I’m all fine to see other projects tackling the issue. But I’m not a big fan of closed-source services that exploit people’s participation.

(Or maybe I completely miss the source code to tldrlegal.com, in such case I apologize! But then, don’t hide it ;-))
There is no post-mortem because OLPC isn't, contrary to this always-hostile "news" site's headline, dead.

Yes, the founder has, after several years, moved on to start other things as those skilled at getting things moving often do once things are well underway. Yes, the HQ isn't in Boston any more. Yes, the original XO-1 series has been replaced as the flagship product by the XO-4 series. None of these are even loosely equivalent to the project being dead, especially the last.
looking at torrent peers ... and is far better proof of piracy

It's not proof of piracy. It just proves that some bytes were downloaded. What, for example, if you could prove that you paid for the movie you're downloading? Lets say you buy a movie using the Video app on the Xbox, but want to watch it on your old Windows XP desktop, or on your Android phone?
How likely a scenario RNG compromise is really?
Sure! As a disclaimer, I'm one of the developers of HashDist. There's a longer explanation here: http://hashdist.readthedocs.org/en/stable/faq.html but the crux is that Nix enforces purity, whereas HashDist simply defaults to pure.

As an example, if you'd like to build a Nix system, you're going to need to compile or download an independent libc. HashDist is capable of bootstrapping an independent libc as well, but we default to using the system libc.

We choose to seat our "pure" system on top of the system compilers and libc, but by default, install our own Python and other high-level libraries. We also can integrate with other package managers, and there's an example branch in our repository right now showing integration with Homebrew.
>>Or whether it's okay for you to stream a movie you can't find on the market anymore.

That would be a great idea. However, the Popcorn Time website states that they only use torrents from YIFY. A brief perusal of the YIFY website tells me that they only have recent or big blockbuster films. I tried searching for "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Intolerance", and neither showed up. As far as the status of the service goes right now, its main purpose is to stream pirated movies. This could change in the future as Popcorn Time opens up to accept more sources.
I'd be interested in seeing the lowest winning score, highest winning score, and lowest losing score (!)
Ooh, nice! I thought about writing some sort of AI to play for me, but never got around to it. (Plus, it felt weirdly oroborous-like.)
I think the author is pointing out that an applicant is more likely to believe that a job is interesting and a company is good to work for if their friend works there and is recommending it. So, those other things are taken into account, but the interviewer's view of them isn't necessarily important to the applicant.
The project was never about the laptop as a panacea, which is why the project wasn't limited to the hardware, but has always been about educational content, instructional methods, and support infrastructure, as well.
I'm about 50-50 in-between you folks.

> Assuming that there is avaliable internet for your internet connected laptop

You don't need internet to have a communication tool. Mesh networks can actually work pretty well. OLPC had mesh networks. And they don't need to eventually reach the internet, either. Being able to send a text message to your neighbor, even 100 yards away, could have been pretty powerful. Connect a few of those together in a mesh, and you might be able to communicate MILES away. I don't actually know if the OLPC was any good at this, but it was built out of pieces that could have enabled it.

> Assuming there is available electricity for said laptop

You don't need electricity for a hand-crank laptop. OLPC had hand-crank power.

The fact that you bring up these factually incorrect arguments makes me think you don't actually know anything about OLPC. It's worth educating yourself, they made some interesting and good choices. They also made, in my opinion, some TERRIBLE choices.

Oh, and you said "lighting." Since the OLPC was hand-crank powered, it was often the brightest light source available to the families that got them.

...and on to your next point...

I think that OLPC computers COULD HAVE HAD instructional videos, like Khan Academy, in how to improve water quality, preserve food, deal with pests and diseases and infections and wounds, reproductive health, building good shelters, identifying cloud patterns. Kind of like a US Army Field Survival Guide. All tailored to the local language and culture.

In that respect, it could have been like air-dropping a Peace Corps volunteer with engineering know-how, into a community.

Sadly, the OLPC project didn't address those problems.
Hi contactmatts,

I am the author of the post. You raise a valid point.

Just having your friends work there shouldn't be the only reason, but them working there and being happy is a good proxy for the work and the company.

Re: friends leaving, if you review the research in the post, it suggests that like refer like, i.e. your best performers will recommend others at a similar level. It's also symbiotic in that the presence of friends makes them stay longer.

Of course nothing is guaranteed. This approach just reduces the odds of disappointment on both sides.

Shailesh
That's a great argument, I'm convinced.
XO-1 teardown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoiECE3qlDI

This was the first netbook. Asus followed with eeePC a year later.

Hardware was ok'ish for the time. Nokia was already shipping ARM tablets running full linux, but OLPC went with x86 because Nagroponte loved playing golf with AMD and M$ sales people (M$ promised free XP licenses).

Software was a total GARBAGE.
I clicked "12 years a slave", a movie I have not yet had an opportunity to watch and it started streaming in less than a minute in high quality.

I immediately quit the application as it should not be so easy to benefit from someone else's hard work without compensating them.

Please, movie people, let me pay for this.

You might kill the cinemas, but you'll still get paid.
Is it less ethical than corporations lead by "the man" that refuses to use new technology for fear of not being able to wring every drop of profit out of people?

Look at staggered releases of Movie/DVD/rentals/redbox and the fake scarcity to protect profits.

I know companies need profit... but on the same time, if it really is THAT easy to get movies to people - then it's time for a shakeup that moves the industry forward.

MP3s and napster led to iTunes and other avenues to get music easily AND "Support the Artist".

Maybe we'll get better options out this - other than Netflix (Which I love, but damn it doesn't have a lot of titles) or pick-your-flavor digital locker that may or may not exist next year?
10 Best Websites of the Week
The Schiit Modi is double the cost of the Wolfson card and has no audio input capabilities. Seems like for uses outside of an HTPC the Wolfson card provides a lot more flexibility.
I think that's the quote of the day. :)
Is there a Thinkpad model you would recommend for day-to-day use (mainly Java programming and LaTeX writing), that is light enough to be carried around daily?
That's exactly the point: they cheat, because it makes code faster except in the small percent of code it breaks.

Let us all now bow our heads to the almighty SPEC gods ...
And I'm not saying this in the "just let us hack" mindset either, because I pretty much despise that sloppy, careless mentality. It doesn't work in environments larger than a few people, much less genuinely large projects.

There's a surprising low upper limit on the size of a closed-source codebase before which it becomes a lead weight. Why? Because large projects (beyond about 6 devs in 2 years) without modularity generate a lot of maintenance work. (Modular design is to pay that maintenance cost upfront, which most executives don't like.) Maintenance needs to be done well, but the only thing that motivates good people to do it (instead of hopping to another team, changing jobs, or demanding a $500k+ salary) is either (a) caring about the module as a client, which means they typically aren't more than 25%-time maintainers because their main project is whatever uses the module, or (b) the possibility of gaining a national reputation in OSS.

The open-source ecosystem can motivate the kind of work that large codebases need. (That doesn't mean they never turn to crap. It means that it's not inexorable.) Corporate codebases don't have that.

Twitter hasn't open-sourced, for one example, Storm because they're nice guys (not to rag on them; this is one of a million examples I could use). That may be a factor, but the main reason is that they don't want it to turn to crap, and the open-source ecosystem is more robust against that than anything in the closed-source world. If you rely on something but it's not extremely proprietary, you should probably open source it for its own health. Proprietary stuff should probably be kept as data, not code.
Good point. CBS owns/operates only 16 stations and affiliates with 200 others.
How we deploy code to production at GoSquared
Welcome to the 21st century. Burying your head in the sand will do nothing, you can't un-invent the technology so either embrace it or fade out.
A decade ago CBS said they'd refuse to support HD unless the broadcast flag was mandated. They're bluffing again, poorly.
There's one thing both parties can agree on: taking money from Comcast
"but then they didn't cram a ton of books in each OLPC!"

Why do you say that? The content packs used in the deployments are customized to local language and culture. Translating and sourcing the included materials was and continues to be a huge undertaking and the burden of that fall mostly to the local team and government liasons.

You'll hit language barriers pretty quickly trying to keep up with most of those teams, but the links are around.
EG: http://www.olenepal.org/, http://www.olpcmexico.org/

well, I do. apologies for projecting. Looks like Mexican school kids might get XO-4 before me. #firstworldproblems
Then enlighten us, what were the goals? Because based on my reading over the years (I've followed the project with some interest, having worked in the academic technology field) the goal, from a very high level, was to provide kids with laptops, which were then supposed to catalyze various other improvements in their lives.
How does Netflix?
Why We Turn Away Millions In Revenue
Laura Boldrini non comprende la satira la satira comprende Laura Boldrini
Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama
I pretty much did the same, I started with OpenElec because my pi shipped with it, changed to raspbmc because I liked the fact it was debian-based. There really doesn't seem to be much performance difference.
Seems like they would have donned O2 masks, lowered altitude, and made for an emergency landing.
Anonymously send Truth to your friends
I will never understand why the networks are whining so hard about Aereo. Their content is already FTA and the customers still see advertisements. If anything, this helps the network since it increases ad penetration!
What's the big deal? So long as they've got nothing to hide they shouldn't be worried.
Why would CBS care about how people access their junk? They get paid by advertisers who care about eyeballs. More eyeballs, more money for CBS. Unless I'm mistaken and the cable bundler services of Time Warner / Comcast pay big bucks to have CBS in their packages.
reproducibility. consistency. scale. And the ruggedness of the instrument doesn't hurt.
So you prove my point :-)
There is a little bit more color on some of the PR write-ups, see eg

They recruited 60 experienced and affluent backers to view video recordings of 90 randomly-selected verbal business pitches made by entrepreneurs from various sectors at three entrepreneurial contests in the US.

Investors were asked to rate the looks of the entrepreneurs and comment on the pitch.

Researchers found that men who were deemed good looking were 36 per cent more likely to be successful than those viewed as unattractive. However there was no difference for women.

In a separate study they asked investors to listen to the same pitches delivered by a man or a woman.

“We found that male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based that were the same pitches narrated by a female voice,” the authors concluded. . .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10688645/Goo...
Most of the big off-the-shelf engines (Unreal/Unity/CryTek/Source) do. If you look at first-party engines, though (Square Enix has Crystal Tools, EA has Frostbite, Monolith has LithTech, Activision has their IW engine for the CoD games), they're likely to be DirectX and console targeting. Valve is giving those kinds of engines the capability of targeting OpenGL through their existing DirectX support.
Sadly given the silly state of copyright in the digital age, you'd still be guilty of copyright infringement by doing that.

Which is why copyright needs to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern age.
I find her to be extraordinarily repulsive. I'd put her on the top 10 list of worst standing politicians in America. She has been one of the strongest supporters of the military's domestic espionage programs. As a powerful US Senator, that inherently makes her one of the biggest supporters of the rapidly expanding police state, with all the violence and broad Constitutional violations that entails.
She's a hyper statist.
CBS and other broadcasters are suing Aereo over its service using antenna and remote DVR technology to let subscribers watch live, local over-the-air television broadcasts, without making any payments to the creators of the programming.

...

CBS is the parent company of CNET.

You can tell.

Isn't their whole business model built around free tv stuffed with ads? By very design their consumers do not make any paymnets to the creators of the programming.
This is just ill-informed big talk. They could never go Internet only and get both the advertising revenue they currently do, and the government breaks they currently do.

They would be giving away drastically more than Aereo costs them, and they know that. Mark my words, even if Aereo becomes wildly popular, this will never happen.
Capital-I Industry, perhaps. But I argue that it's because it's a lot harder to sell garbage albums with just one or two hit songs when you can go to Bandcamp and find a better artist, preview a whole album, and buy it for $5.
This news post is from January. Nadella was appointed in February. Although he's been leading that department for years, so I guess you could say that, but it's not due to him becoming CEO.
That's why I like to make the distinction between little-a agile (the non-dogmatic vision of the original manifesto) and big-A Agile (rigid, sold as a product methodologies backed by expensive certifications).
Prime time is time-zone dependent.
It's the uploading, not downloading that's proof of piracy.
VLC player has a plugin that can do this for you. It's called Vlsub. It doesn't check for synchronization, but you can try out about 3-4 subtitles in less than a minute, so it works very well in practice.