skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I voted neutral because he released information that while classified was also IMO fairly common knowledge making his action closer to a political statement vs treason. I recall reading about a similar database the FBI had which was leaked and used to out several undercover drug agents which where then killed.

As to mass surveillance my objection is it's mostly an ineffective and massive waste of resources when applied to terrorism. The FBI's use case is actually far more reasonable because drug's are a much more common issue. However, there is simply not enough terrorists to get a good signal to noise ratio. Sure, you will 'find' terrorists that way but like 9/11 and the Boston marathon bombings demonstrate if all an agent see is false positives 99.9% of the time he is going to treat that 0.1% signal as just more noise.
Melodyne works really well for extracting actual sheet music for polyphonic audio

Here is a demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFCjv4_jqAY

It works best with single-instrument signals - not so much with a mix of multiple instruments.
We use Google Groups a lot. The Techcrunch article was not very clear. What would be the main reasons to switch Threadable from Google Groups?
I started using this in all my node projects a couple years ago. It has been my favorite email library in any language I've used. I love the pre-configured services for gmail and sendgrid, etc. Surprised to see it posted - I figured everyone already was using it.
The "meaningful" part is somewhat irrelevant due to the bias invoked by asking solely the HN demographic.
It is really trivial, there are several programs that automate UIs, I remember them from trying my hand at automating trading for a game which didn't provide an API :) .

Automate 7 was really impressive, and they're at version 9 now

http://www.networkautomation.com/automate/automate/
Taxis in the US depends greatly on the city. I live in a small town, the taxis are for the people with no license (DUIs) or who can't drive (elderly/infirmed). No one else uses them and they aren't practical to catch (you have to call them to pick you up). But in downtown Indianapolis last summer I had no issues catching a cab at least until 9 or 10pm (I wasn't far from the hotel after that time). Boston was a similar experience a couple years back. Atlanta and Raleigh seem to be like big versions of the small town I'm in now.
I don't know where to ask this question. So I'll post this here. It's likely an unpopular theory.

Where did Der Spiegel get their information about the NSA (specifically TAO's and ANT) project names and projects? Is it likely that it came from the Snowden leaks? If so, isn't that treason? Let's not cherry-pick whistleblowing on PRISM or X-Keyscore but also look at all the other NSA projects that have been leaked. If he is the source, I have a major problem with that information being leaked by him.

Specifically, I'm talking about these articles:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-ns...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-secret-toolbox...

And the most damning piece of treason is this:

http://leaksource.info/2013/12/30/nsas-ant-division-catalog-...
I think your second point is spot on. I would think a much more valuable service would be helping find a co-founder or commissioned sale person willing to work with tech guys to validate would be more important. I need a sales guy for my idea. I'd be willing to pay someone to go out and kick some doors down but would need some long term solution as well.
I agree, email is sort of a morass of old, incompatible clients and aging protocols. They need work, but the installed base is huge, so it's a hard problem. The solution is probably to build a layer on top of all that to simplify it, much like jQuery did with incompatible DOM implementations.

So far, a number of companies are doing well with abstracting the protocol layer away to make focusing on building good apps easier (see mailgun.com for SMTP, context.io for IMAP, etc).

As to Threadable's long-term strategy, it goes further. :) Right now, we're building a great mailing list. As it gets further along, we plan to make it into a platform so that other app developers can use us to do all the difficult parts of managing threaded discussions, client compatibility, etc. The idea is to turn every app and website's isolated comment stream into a threaded email discussion, so people can engage using the tools they're already used to.

There's already millions upon millions of mailing lists out there, but nobody's made major changes in this space in a decade or more. We think we can add enough value that people will be happy to pay for it, and make group email collaboration more popular at the same time.

Our overall goal is the engagement and inclusivity that comes from making key information available in the way that people expect. Team collaboration tools only work well when the whole team uses them. The mailing list is just the best way to get there.
So that's reason to treat employees like lepers and impose your paranoia on them? You weren't taking his feelings into a count, you simply declared them as something to be managed, and you as the authority. Did it ever occur to you that you might've been wrong?
Ran an email hosting service and used zimbra. Email migration (through acquiring failed shops that were tech clueless) and replication is nontrivial because of edge cases. Backup, backup, backup and test a zillion times before doing it for real. Rolling anything your own or using OSS as-is rarely scales. Neither are commercial products.
Troll: Is Edward Snowden a traitor or a hero?
They'll be infinitesimal faster for the server which will sit idle most of the time anyway... and much slower for you when you make a minor header/footer mod locally, and then you need to re-upload all pages that have a header (i.e. all pages).

I'm sorry, but this project feels more like "art" than a practical tool.

Plus, with a few basic lines of PHP (available on every shared host) you can pre-generate your site statically as well (and on the server, to save you the re-uploading).
Istanbul is a city. The 'states' is a country.
What about it? Patent and trademark law are two things the typical valley "hacker" acutely oppose.
But since it's their internal infrastructure they can't not lock it down. Anything that is cloud-based has to be locked down. If at all possible, APIs for interacting with cloud-based services should be put into AOSP.
Probably a more relevant poll would be a random sample of the US public. Here it's not at all surprising that the verdict will be overwhelmingly "hero".
The fact that this "poll" is at the top spot after only 15 minutes is quite a disappointment, and a testament to the deteriorating quality of the HN's voter base.
I think he meant factorial rather than sum.

The sum of the numbers is O(1) - you can calculate it algorithmically.

N*(N+1)/2

Ref: http://www.wikihow.com/Sum-the-Integers-from-1-to-N
This was discussed on Hacker News about 5 months ago:

How to get rid of old stuff, sell it for more, and use Amazon as cheap storage

http://benguild.com/2013/10/20/store-sell-old-stuff-with-ama...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6587539
Unfortunately that ship has sailed. The B with the two vertical lines through it (akin to the dollar sign) is "the Bitcoin symbol", no matter what other kinds of symbols people come up with.
Can't someone be both a hero and a traitor?

Definition of traitor: "a person who betrays someone or something, such as a friend, cause, or principle."

He betrayed the trust placed in him by the NSA, because he believed (rightly) we deserved to know the excesses that were being conducted. He's a hero because he knew the risk would be a long term prison sentence, or as it stands effect exile from his home and his family. It's not a binary, the world isn't black and white.
Does it make a difference either way?
If there weren't so may multimeters with the same color scheme out there I would agree with you but there are.

Fluke is not the first one to use the color scheme they were just the first to apply for a patent on it.

Even if they were they didn't enforce it until now so it became the general color scheme of all multimeters not just Fluke multimeters.
"Traitor" and "Hero" aren't mutually exclusive.

Like most people on HN, I fall into the "hero" camp. However, I have a really hard time justifying to the "traitor" crowd his decision to leak information about the US spying on friendly countries. Of course the US spies on other countries; leaking that information isn't in line with his goals (and is pure treason). That's the biggest sticking point I can't get over when defending him to others.
Everyone seems to be directing their hate at Fluke, which was not at all related in this. People seem to believe that Fluke sued/did something to cause this specific shipment to be seized, when this doesn't seem to be the case.

They applied for a trademark on this, and got it. Now CBP is enforcing the trademark. CBP certainly doesn't ask Fluke before seizing a shipment. The issue here should be the trademark process, not Fluke.
Maybe, but regardless I would prefer he finish "spilling the beans" before he turns himself in. Information is still being released (a slow release is really the only way to keep the issue front and center) and I would hate for that information to stop getting out.
Healthbook app details revealed in new Apple iOS 8 rumor
I clicked on traitor.
Security: if you're mega-paranoid or unwilling to keep up with patches, going static reduces your attack vector. Performance: your web server will be able to handle more traffic without the overhead of php. Of course, if you need any kind of dynamic processing on the server, you'll need to move beyond static pages.
High voltage doesn't automatically mean expensive. We're talking about low-speed battery-powered equipment whose only I/O is through buttons and an LCD, not something like a USB oscilloscope that needs high-speed galvanic isolation. Getting the details (shrouding, creepage, plastics) right (and keeping them that way) is going to take design time and vigilant QA, but the parts themselves aren't inherently expensive.
This falls under the "shit you know you don't know" category.
One might also be inclined to vote "neutral" if he/she finds the words "traitor" and "hero" to be gross exaggerations, unhelpful, and a bit melodramatic.

For example, a less overwrought question might ask something along the lines of, "Did Snowden's actions result in a net positive or a net negative?"

Obviously that question could use work, too, but at least then I (as just one example) could make a vote that says, in essence, "Yes, I think Snowden performed a valuable service which, on the whole, was positive, even though I don't buy into the notion of 'hero' very much and am not at all sure that even if I did that Snowden would qualify."
The correct answer. Life is a continuous process.
A bit of context, maybe it will be helpful for some:

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Mar/170

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Mar/294

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Mar/291

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Mar/286

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Mar/298

And a full email exchange:
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Mar/index.html#123

My personal favourite (in a positive way): http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Mar/160
Actually, even on HN, I'd expect a Bitcoin question to be split more evenly.
If you're Mexican/Canadian, a TN Visa might be a better option than H1B since there's no annual limit.

I'm currently in Silicon Valley from Canada on a 2.5 day trip, with 4 interviews in that timeframe, and it's quite fun yet intense.

I'd also say that if you're a self-taught programmer (I'm an EE), it's worthwhile to read a book like Intro to Algorithms[1] cover to cover before you start doing technical interviews. There are just too many CS101 concepts that you'll never run into even after years of programming.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H-Corme...
Hey Swanson, I'm Jared, another Threadable founder.

The email buttons are HTML. We test them using Litmus, and they work well across all major clients. We need to do a bit more styling for older versions of Outlook, though. That's on the road map in the next week or two.
It's a bit late to enforce it now then isn't it?

It's not associated with your brand anymore.

I for one never associated that color scheme with that brand didn't even hear of Fluke before this but i did associate it with multimeters in general.

So what's the point of defending something you don't even own anymore.
What's new in Xcode 5.1?
I'm probably being too prosaic, but do note that plants don't actually use any matter from the soil they grow on besides water plus some minerals and micronutrients. The carbon that constitutes most of the plant matter is literally taken out of thin air via photosynthesis. Also, most of the molecules that were a part of you a year ago are already a part of something or someone else.
Bitcoins are like 'glass beads', warns Danish national bank
20 times more votes for "hero" than for "traitor". Wow, I wasn't expecting that at all on HN...what a useful poll, thank you.
The funny thing is, whether you're right or not, you're going to be perceived by people who agree with him as having been duped by the people in the second, dangerous category.
This is incredible! Mobile GPU does 300 million rays per second without using any shading GFLOPS? This is the GPU that is going to be on the next iPhone, right? Brigade 3 does 750 million rays per second on Nvidia GTX 580 with full power. I just wonder what this thing could do when scaled up.
I think it's fairly likely that someone who is using this multimeter while working with e.g. Arduinos, would be the type of person who, when some piece of electronic equipment in their home isn't working, would say "I have this multimeter, let me check and see if there's voltage on the outlet"
It reminds me of some lines along those found in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHE_XGtUNx4

(Wear Sunscreen)
"Traitor" is mainly something that would be relevant to Americans. People in other countries can still think that what he did was in poor judgment, but this is not captured by the word "traitor."
Flash. Somebody just came out from under a rock :)
I highly doubt that someone that does not know what binary search is, that cannot think for a minute and come up with a small implementation, is going to "google and quickly learn" algorithms and the related thinking.

The issue isn't if you can write on simple binary search (considering such a search is a intro-to-programming task[1], that should be a given), but if you have an understanding of the topic in general.

When your project calls for a certain performance bound, will you flail around or have some idea what you're looking for?

1: "Guess my number between 1 and 100!"
The people being scammed here are the other musicians. Spotify isn't paying more in total royalties, it's just paying less to other artists.

Good job!
I think that puts YC at around 19 full time and part time partners. I'd bet S14 is going to be the largest yet.
If you need text only bitcoin identifier why not use "btc" as everybody else does.
"Send me Some Bitcoins or the Data Gets It"
the $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and make it free to start. The money they make is on the 5% not $19
I don't know for sure, but I remember seeing a list of supposed NSA (CIA too?) projects with names that matched programs that were confirmed later, way before the Snowden leaks.
I am now fairly involved in my company's interview process and Im constantly surprised that none of the resumes I get mention anything about the applicants character or professional demeanor.

For all the fear of being "culturally unfit" for a company, highlighting what kind of role you play and how you interact with your coworkers is fundamental.

Are you diligent and consistent with your work?
Are you the kind of person that bursts through work in a flash?
Do you prefer to work alone or in a team?
How do you feel working with people below your position or above it?
etc.

These questions have the issue, however, that you rarely ask them in an interview. You just gauge them from a conversation, that really doesnt speak to any of them. If someone is a complete technical ace, but is silent 100% of the interview besides technical points, i still get red flags. A co-worker is not a cog in a machine, its someone you will be spending 40 + hours a week with.

I disagree with hard theory NOT being important. Im a drop-out but i still went through all the algorithms and data structures classes out there and they gave me knowledge to communicate about hard problems, even though Im not the one solving them (we got some phds for that). And above all, at least in our case currently, several of the algorithm questions we do are actual problems we had in our product. In particular i wouldnt even call O(n) "hard". Its maybe the single most important performance computer science knowledge you need, and its not hard to calculate for the vast majority of applications.
Presumably the 're-upload all pages' bit can be automated. As far the reset, the trade-off depends on how often you're updating content versus the amount of traffic coming to your site; in many cases, a tiny saving on frequently-occurring page delivery is well worth a big delay on one-off page generation.
Obviously the top graphic (Octocat as Mega Man) needs to be a t-shirt. Sooner rather than later.
I think this is the right idea, especially since the symbol's already in unicode - regardless, I think the two vertical lines on a B has gained too much traction to topple it at this stage.
Hi, I've been working hard on my startup: Raven. It attempts to make email simpler to deal with by letting you separate your messages however you like: by sender, by tag, by group of people. Furthermore, it can aggregate all of the sources of a message (email, SMS, chat, etc) into one contact so that you can see all messages from one person in a single place. For more information, see the website. I would appreciate any feedback that you might have to help me improve on it.

Thanks!
Reminds me of the Russian [1] who had a tree growing in his lung

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169861/Shocked-Russ...
I'm surprised that we haven't seen more of a coordinated public relations effort to destroy Snowden's character. Sure, we've seen some fluff stories about his girlfriend and his teenage years, but it's nothing like the well-orchestrated campaigns that changed public perceptions about Afghanistan and discredited the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I wonder if you could somehow get Google as a sponsor too?

Maybe someone could convince them to adopt your multi CDN technology for web fonts? The reason why I want this is because in China the GFW periodically hangs connections to Google's IPs after searching certain keywords for 90 seconds. This causes any site that uses Google web fonts to hang until the connection is resumed.
Agreed. I have mixed feelings on this issue, but the argument that he should have reported internally is laughable.

Right or wrong, the only way he could have feasibly remedied the situation he perceived was to go the public route.

The only question is whether or not he accurately evaluated the situation and its solution.
Technically, in the USA, treason and traitor have a very specific meaning. Article 3 section 3 of the US Constitution defines treason as:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in war,
or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony
of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession
in closed court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason,
but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or
Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
> Sampled raytracing is the most natural approach to indirect lighting

Its been a while (~15 years or so) since I looked very deeply into this, but at that time I thought that radiosity was notably superior to raytracing for indirect lighting, and everyone and their cousin seemed to be doing hybrid ray tracing/radiosity systems for realistic rendering.
Learning C and Clojure In 2014
that's what I said "constant time"
Wondered what Justin would do after Exec. Congrats to both.
So the watcher only writes files that have been edited unless there is a change to one of the repeated tag files?
One Second After is a novel describing the possible outcome of such an event [1]. It's a pretty good read.

Months before publication, One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future...and our end.

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4922079-one-second-after (note that the synopsis given is wrong, I think. I recall that the event in the book was from a war, but simply unexplained because the normal folks had no way of knowing what the source of the EMP was.)
I think a poll on his lawful/neutral/chaotic good/neutral/evil alignment would be a bit more interesting. My guess would be lawful neutral.
As citizen for me he is a traitor.

But as free person for me is an hero.
The 5% is a bit misleading too because it's 5% of "sticker price" (what they call "gross revenue" which means purchase price not including sales tax). So for a $10 iTunes game they get $0.50 (5% of what Apple gets) and not $0.35 (5% of what you get).

This is particularly bad for retail games where you're getting 30% or less of retail price (and that's hardly pure profit).

Unity, in comparison, costs more per month (or $750 per upgrade cycle) but no revenue share at all.
> “How does everyone feel about the B symbol with the two lines through the outside? Can we live with that as our logo?”

Yeah, let's just stick to what Satoshi recommended.
[browserify-cdn](http://wzrd.in/) and http://requirebin.com/ are heading this direction.
> A wife asks her husband, a computer programmer; "Could you please go to the store for me and buy one carton of milk, and if they have eggs, get 6!"

> A short time later the husband comes back with 6 cartons of milk.

> The wife asks him, "Why the hell did you buy 6 cartons of milk?"

> He replied, "They had eggs."
$20 is just the tire kicker filter... all those people who would never actually ship a game (most devs) are not going to waste the time of the unreal engine team with their beginner requests.
Plug a cheap, transformerless, USB charger into a socket that's wired backwards, and touch the shield of the connector by accident when plugging it into your cell phone
Ask HN: best approach to writing a Windows service?
I need to write a native app that runs on recent flavors of Windows which can talk to a hosted API service and make changes to the local PC. It's a very simple set of tasks that need to be completed, but I'm at a loss for where to start. The last time I compiled something for Windows was using Visual Basic 6 and Windows XP -- things have changed since then. Any pointers are welcome!
Your second question is entirely irrelevant in the context of this discussion. "Become President" is just not a reasonable minimum measure of "success."
Yeah, but you still have to list it, which is work. I actually used a service like this to sell my book collection before I last moved. You ship them a box of books and that's it. After 3 months they tell you which ones they sold, give you 50% of the profit and ask you what to do with the ones that didn't sell.