skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Awesome, just awesome. Finally. Yay.

Thanks dudes and dudettes.
When you make a comment like this, please specify what operating system you're running the software under. I think Netbeans looks quite good on OS X. Much better than Eclipse (low bar) and competitive with other IDEs.
You forgot:

- Bill Gates is awesome because he saves lives.

Sure, cause paving the way for an electric future won't be saving millions of lives.
New Jersey Car Dealers Don't Like Tesla (No Kidding)
> The nation-state is an ancient concept

Actually, its not. The alignment of "nation" and "state" which it represents is an extremely recent thing. I suspect that, among other potential errors, you are confusing the idea of the nation-state with the idea of the state; the two are not equivalent, in much the same way that "automobile" and "wheeled vehicle" are not equivalent.
Beware of following ancient advice—or you may get ancient practices.

"God Almighty, in fashioning his most useful men, often works slowly with quite common stuff. Now and then He turns out a quick job of superfine materials -- a genius who really delivers the goods. But most of His better grade line is ordinary in everything except the extra effort, and dogged determination, which have given it a finer texture and finish."

This tells me of a belief in the innate quality of man, of some who are simply born better than others. Surely only half the story. We know better today.
https://i.cloudup.com/BdsYF1nusy-1200x1200.png
I'm inclined to think they're doing this for public perception and they're not actually making it significantlly harder for the government to eavesdrop.
2048 for Vim
Minimal nginx configuration for front end development
I read 'slang' as buzzwords, and I think that statement is equally valid today.
If you disagree, can you provide a desired end point that you believe actually protects privacy, and a roadmap to get to this point?

I personally don't see a path to an end point where there is no collection and aggregation of personal data, be it by state actors, corporations, or private citizens.

The actual most likely outcome that I see is official regulation of personal data collection and aggregation by corporations and private citizens as in the EU. Those laws explicitly allow state actors to actively collect and aggregate tracking data.

However, nothing technical actually prevents corporate and private actors from doing so, at the cost of a fine if they are caught. The actions that might have some effect on data collection (like obscuring license plates) are prohibited by laws that ease the collection of data by state actors.

This will continue to be exploited, although additional resources available to certain groups - the wealthy, those associated with corporations and state actors, and (to some extent) the technically skilled that put much of their available skills and resources toward staying private - will enable concealing of some private data.

This is already essentially the current state of affairs, though. Anyone with the required resources can use either legal, quasi-legal, or illegal means to do this sort of thing. Note the recent discussion of the system for intel available to repo operators.
Ask HN: Have you beaten 2048? What's your strategy?
Yes, I want this too!
I tried that and got no responses. Maybe because I specified Canada? I should have just gone with the US. It's close enough!
s/do good things/be rich and successful/
Summary of events leading to this response:

SparkFun has been selling a type of inexpensive digital multimeter since 2008.

About two weeks ago, they were informed that a recent shipment of 2,000 units (a $30,000 value) was seized by customs due to a trademark owned by Fluke (granted 2003). Specifically, their units violate Fluke's branding (gray face, yellow border).

The Chinese manufacturer won't take them back (prohibitively expensive due to import tax) so SparkFun has to pay to have the units warehoused ($150/day) and—very shortly—destroyed ($150/hour).

Moving forward, SparkFun will change their DMMs to be red instead of yellow.
Learn to Speak or Teach Better in 30 Minutes (by Andrew Ng)
OTR has deniability.
you can track server side events with google analytics too (if using universal analytics).

I would have no idea how to add the data if you hadn't been tracking it already though.
A single human decision generally has higher variance than a group one. (Not to say that group ones are always reliable.)
2584 Fibonacci
Are the collisions at least plausible?
> As I see it extinction level event would be a tragedy on account of the deaths of billions. But the human species, as a whole, is not an individual; it does not think or feel or suffer. Its cessation has no moral value beyond the death of the individuals which make it up.

Right. So technology that provides humanity, or some part of it, the means to get people out of the way of what would otherwise be an extinction level event saves the actual, individual lives of all those people that would otherwise have been in the way.
Banks pay out interest on deposits and lend money. Mtgox was an exchange, not a bank.
Facebook hasn't used plain old Apache/PHP in production for several years (HipHop for PHP was announced in Feb 2010), so it is hard to compare.

HHVM is its own web server (although it supports FastCGI for easier use with existing infrastructure like nginx), and that's how we use it in production. It's hard to compare memory usage, except at scale, where it benefits from not having a whole bunch of interpreters (in different processes) running at the same time and some other benefits by using more appropriate types to store values through type inference.
I mean,

If I repeatedly get fucked up and crash Fords over the course of my life while having much better luck with other cars, I might start looking for a causal relationship.
I think everyone should be highly suspicious of charisma. Charisma is a skill, not a trait, and it's developed by spending a lifetime practicing on people that one thinks are largely beneath one's self.
Very good points. In fact, transparency legislation in California failed by one vote just this week. Check out California Clean Money Campaign (who are also working with us on the hackathon event).

My point here is that the system is locked down as long as money controls it. We cannot release state control over the economy until we get money out of politics.

The corruption goes both ways: politicians depend on donor money, but to get the donor money they have to create complex legislation to extort with.

There is a great story in Republic: Lost about Al Gore and early internet regulation where the senators essentially say: "If we leave this unregulated, how will we make money off these guys?"

From where we are now, we have to work to reduce the influence of money on politics before any other reform can be approached sensibly.
Colleges whose graduates most frequently work in Silicon Valley
He's too brilliant to read such a long article.
I think this means not all outages tracked affected all users equally. Some users would have seen more or less downtime than the 2 hours mentioned.
They are getting much better, especially Iris.
Am I the only one that's not that impressed by 2 hours of downtime a year? I've worked at other companies where I was responsible for running a service and 2 hours of downtime a year was considered a failure.
Precisely this? When is this not precise?

this

1. Used to identify a specific person or thing close at hand or being
indicated or experienced
1.1 Used to introduce someone or something
1.2 Referring to the nearer of two things close to the speaker (the other,
if specified, being identified by ‘that’)
2. Referring to a specific thing just mentioned
3. Used to identify a specific person or thing close at hand or being
indicated or experienced:

More: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/this?q=...
From your own link

>“Outlook.com does not go through the contents of your sent and received email messages in order to display targeted ads. ... Outlook.com does not go through the contents of your incoming email from other email service for the purpose of targeting ads. ... Outlook.com does not go through the contents of your entire inbox for the purpose of targeting ads.”

Google does all of the above, are you claiming there is no difference between the two services?

The new lawsuit against Google for building profiles of children using its free Google Apps for Education service has even more info:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/google-data-mining-...

>A Google spokeswoman confirmed to Education Week that the company “scans and indexes” the emails of all Apps for Education users for a variety of purposes, including potential advertising, via automated processes that cannot be turned off--even for Apps for Education customers who elect not to receive ads.
I work at Moat and they gave all of the engineers UpDesks. They're pretty great - the desks are motorized, there are settings you can save and they're powerful enough to lift you up if you sit on them.

I really enjoy my desk - being able to alternate quickly is nice.
Ridiculous, I thought this fad was over already.

This is a single platform, and in the video you see (naturally, young) people using either a laptop or an imac on it. It's ergonomically unsound unless you put an adjustable monitor stand on it. The brogrammer at the end talking about "productivity" caps off the video nicely.

Here's my equivalent. One box of the correct height (depends on person and access to boxes). To raise, place box and put laptop on box. To lower, remove box and put laptop on desk. To lower even further, remove desk and place laptop on floor. :-) Effect: The same, ergonomically. Cost: If you take lots of shipments, literally priceless.
Upvote, then ;)
Rather than mess with disk encryption, just host your own server or get a VPS and connect to it from your laptop/netbook.

This makes your laptop disposable and you can get the cheapest hardware and be fine...You'll never lose work due to your laptop failing on you and you don't have to worry about people accessing your data.
I have a modtable with crank, and it works quite well.
Indeed. But given that the law is what it is, this is a fairly good response from Fluke. More than I expected, TBH.
> What was the stupid decision "made back then"?

Using PHP to begin with was a bad technical decision. Failing to establish a reasonable migration strategy was a bad business decision likely rooted in bad engineering management that fell out of starting with bad technical decisions.

It's much harder to hire people that can pull you out of a mess like PHP when, at the same time, you have to hire people that can keep writing PHP for you.

> That the initial team didn't rewrite Facebook in Python/Perl/Ruby/Haskell during the fast growth phase?

That would have been a good time to bring on new engineering blood as part of scaling out, which would have provided opportunities to enact mitigation and transition strategies. Imagine if the massive amount of talent currently devoted to HHVM had been devoted to Facebook's actual business?

There are migration strategies other than "rewrite everything immediately", and in fact, I'd bet that's exactly what HHVM is. It's just a shame they waited so long that the most cost-effective migration strategy was to tackle an enormously difficult computer science and engineering problem that the world's biggest software companies already invest hundreds of millions of dollars on and provide to the world largely for free.

> If you have ever experienced the growth phase, you understand how ludicrous the idea of rewrite would be.

Yes, and I've also (repeatedly) been the team brought in to rewrite the mess of a code base that was about to torpedo the growth phase.

There's not much correlation between funding, initial success, and engineering talent. Which is why you so often wind up with a mess that has to be cleaned up once you can hire people who know what the hell they're doing, instead of the ones you happened to be stuck with because you didn't know how to grow an engineering team.

> We underestimate how much hidden wisdom a production code base has and that the messiness is often there for good reasons.

Messiness is never there for good reasons other than that replacing it is more expensive than not touching it. You don't strive for hidden wisdom and inescapable messiness -- that's just what you get when you let engineering slip up.
Mt. Gox annouces they still have 200k BTC of the 850k reported lost
So the end result is still an enviromentally unfriendly destruction of 2000 perfectly fine multimeters. Just because they are yellow.
No, actually, if everyone chooses "invest in other things" over "invest in technology", then it won't happen. If it will happen, it will be because of technology investment, not as magic that occurs independently of them.
I wish I could, but I'm 6'2". I calculated my height needs to be about 46"-48" (would have to play with it when I got it assembled). The legs go max 42 1/4". I'd rather have the desk itself be at that height and not have to put something else on it (like smaller desk or box).

I can't find Ikea legs that go that height.
Wow, what an amazing and generous response from Fluke. I can't remember a better response from a company, ever, in a trademark / patent / copyright / licensing dispute.

And it's all written in straightforward language without a lot of marketingese.
OMG I AM LOVIN' IT! (TM)
Larry Page Lays Out His Plan for Your Future
Some people slack of laziness. Some of boredom. A brilliant guy needs a lot of infrastructure and support to not steer of course.

It is much easier for me to do 80 hour workload in 40 hours than 20 hour workload in the same 40. Probably I am not the only one. If I have even ounce of non challenging time at work I am always searching for the next great feature/framework/whatever. And shipping slips. I finally managed to find my stride but a few projects ... lets say they were hard on everyone.
"It seems as if he's making a larger point, which is that the right company run by the right person can have a major effect."

Benevolent dictatorship is an excellent form of governance. The problem is it doesnt scale well and is hard to extend beyond the life of the dictator.

Instead of going to mars, Page could just buy houses for 1 million poor families in the U.S. That would probably have a greater effect.
I dunno. I think the system of laws by which we elect people, they set taxes, build a road, and if we don't like the exchange we turn them out, is as close to "mutual agreement" as a city or larger-sized group of people can come up with...
dmix is roughly arguing that the existence of regulation incentivizes people to game the system by manipulating regulators, whether by il/legal, not/transparent, or other means.

He's not wrong, per se, but it's also not a relevant point when the problem becomes immediately unsolvable when you think about it a little more.
Any recommendations on mats? I have looked around but most of the ones I have found in local stores tend to be rather small.

My next thought was to look into kitchen mats as line cooks tend to stand for long periods of time.
Apps are now memes
I read it more as aspirational.
This is an awesome project, and I'm really impressed at a quality automatic adjustable desk for so cheap. I almost can't believe it.

The website looks great, too, however it has one big problem for me: I felt frustrated to have to sit down and listen to a 4 min. video to even find out what the product was.

In the first 10-15 seconds I was on your site, I actually couldn't figure out exactly what it was (there are so many variations on standing desks these days).

I scrolled way down and I can see there are tons of benefits, but no description of the desk. I had to eventually click play on the video[1], and then when it didn't visually get to the point immediately either, I had to put on my headphones and go and find my music player to pause.

I think it would be great if it had at least one of A) a short intro video that shows the whole desk and automation within 1-2 seconds or B) just some headlines describing it ("An electric adjustable standing desk for under $400") and pictures of the product.

P.S. There is a weird, loud audio glitch/background crowd noise in the video at 2:01. :)

[1]: To be fair, the Hacker News title does say [video]. But still, it's the home page, it should get immediately to the point.
Sorry, but how did MacWrite solve the text-editing problem? I'm guessing you don't mean the actual dead program, unless it exists under another name. So what module could you be referring to? And is it part of Windows platforms?

And how does your process handle the checking of URLs? I've done newspaper pasteup with PageMaker since high school...as far as I remember, there was not a simple way to double check URLs. Actually I don't even remember there being such a concept as embedding hyperlink URLs into what would be print newspapers, but that's besides the point...

And correct me if I'm wrong, but where does the MacWrite magic turn into Web content? You ended your description at "designer brings it into Quark". That's not the Web. that's not even...anything.

And of course, I'm talking about a lot more than the Web here, I'm talking about a portable format that can be read without any special text editor at all. How does MacWrite fit into that?
In the summer, things are somewhat similar on this side of the pond. There are lots of one week day camps over the summers.
http://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/050...

But honestly, if you think 20 seconds of pushups, lunges, and running place are "dangerous" I'm not sure what to say (seems like we all survived gym class just fine). Just go at a reasonable pace, and if you get exhausted, or if something hurts, take a break.
There really are two questions hiding here, and most comments are only answering one.

1. Could we allow users to modify the TOS for themselves and have a quick round of TOS negotiation?

Yes, for a large enough price. In most cases, the cost of having anyone even acknowledge a new customer means that customer is unprofitable. Quicken (Intuit) was the poster child for recognizing that a customer ever asking for customer support was unprofitable. Usually, a minor round of contract negotiation for a $50K product happens, and always happens for contracts greater than $250K.

2. Can we ask the user why they balked at the TOS? If there are enough common reasons for balking we might change the TOS.

Yes, absolutely. Lawyers I work with often complain about products, some aimed at lawyers, that don't understand the diligence implications of "we may change these terms without notice". Any lawyer placing client confidential information on any service with this clause is failing their legal duty to take reasonable measures to protect attorney-client privileged information. Having a feedback mechanism might distinguish the set of "didn't sign up because of your TOS" versus "didn't sign up because product failed".
Very interesting, but I think the website doesn't explain it enough(I got the idea after reading TC). Do I really need to sign in? If I were homeless I would be ashamed of using it with my real identity.
> It's a software engineering company.

This sort of implied a generalization.
National Auto Dealers Assn gives more to AZ politics than Ford and GM combined
I am planning on building a Haswell-E machine when it comes out. The new procs are supposed to have 8 cores (16 threads). The chipset also supports 64 GB over 8 DIMMS (8GB sticks) and 10 SATA III 6.0 Gb/s connections. I plan on just adding 256gb or 128gb SSDs in raid zero. You could even throw in a Titan Black for CUDA and gaming and still get it for cheaper than a loaded Macbook Pro Retina.

I currently have a 2012 MBPR with 16gb and 512gb of ram that has served me extremely well. It drives my 20 30 20 PLP monitor setup just fine. I work at home now so I just need a desktop. I plan on picking up MBA 11 to use as a netbook when I am on the go. I want to get it setup so I can run Android emulators etc on my desktop over the network when I am out on my MBA.
... and militarized police swat teams would never be used to, say, raid a barber shop and enforce up-to-date barber licenses. Oh, wait.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/13/the-swat-team-would-li...

That's right. Floridian police raided several barber shops, with a warrant to ensure the barbers were licensed practitioners, and while they were at it they handcuffed people, held them at gunpoint, and even arrested several for unrelated crimes (coincidence?!).

And if only such an event were an outlier ... sadly, it's become common, around the country.
Oh, I found the other stuff too cool to notice any text :p
I actually think this is quite clever. It's not a tech improvement but its a domain shift that fits well. I took something from it, in a different way than other clones did.
For a non-fiction account, "Newton and the Counterfeiter", by Tom Levenson.
Show HN: Silent Butterfly – Food Planner by Recipe
Ask HN: Best example of mobile app's which present a lot of data?
We are currently building a mobile app which has to have a lot of (human rights and security lessons mainly) content in it. More than would normally be in a mobile app.

Does anyone know any mobile apps that manage the problem of lots of content particularly well?
My wife and I (mainly her) just finished planning for my son's first summer of camps, and it was a pain. So much so that I remarked that I should build a webapp to manage it for us and his classmates.

Thanks for building this, I can't wait to look at it.

Unfortunately, it's probably a little late to launch to target this summer. Planning has already started and been done for most. For a lot of camps, you need to put down deposits pretty early to secure a spot. But, for the couple of weeks we might need to fill in, I'll certainly take a look. (Bay Area)
I worked in the adult industry for a decade and I can tell you, the technical challenges were huge.

First, you are under constant attack. DDOS, scams, hacks, password guessing bots, SQL injections - 24 hours a day, from around the world. So, security is a never ending battle.

Then you have to deal with content thievery (rate limiting), credit card processors who want to run you out of business, and other generally hostile business partners who do not want to be associated with adult content.

As far as employees, when we were starting up a secondary non-adult side business that would be sharing office space and we asked potential employers if they had an issue with adult content in the workplace, over 75% said "yes".

Add all that up, then consider the razor-thin margins due to the massive competition in the marketplace, you can see that it is a very difficult business to maintain, but does offer many interesting technical challenges.
>I think the best solution is to make charity cool again

Both charities and corporations are political economic vehicles. Inherently preferring one over another isn't rational. Charities incentivise participation through altruism and the promise of political access. Corporations through self-interest and power. Corporations can make water pumps as easily as charities can find frivolous ends. If we are saying charities are less efficient than corporations, that is one thing.

I think the statement is more about time horizons. Governments and foundations have long inherent time horizons. But short electoral and fund-raising cycles turn them myopic. Charities, similarly, must raise funds on an on-going basis. This makes them, on average, more short-sighted than even corporations. Particularly corporations backed by horizon-seeking visionaries such as Elon. Page is not denigrating the work of charities per se. He is observing that today is being kept at the expense of tomorrow. The portfolio deserves balancing, and the best way to do that, he thinks, is through long-viewed companies.