skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> There is no U.S. law that gives the government the right to compel arbitrary third-parties to modify their products to make wiretapping easier

This is an interesting claim. It would be more interesting if the U.S. government publicly said its interpretation of the law is the same as yours. It has not. :)
Twitter New Font
Take a look at Racket.
Seems like I can't edit my post, but I just re-read a bit and I meant to say
"goto the next line of code if one of the previous points of entry in the lines above is not called within 10 seconds"

not

"goto the next line of code if one of the previous points of entry in the lines above is called"
Dripping stuff on buckets?
look down on the floor, there is one!
>I now have 10+ conditional flags in my book: ifPG13, ifPRINT, ifEBOOK, ifEREADER, etc. I'm looking to add more, but the basic \ifthenelse macro in LaTeX won't be enough...

Makefiles can be your friend... in the file `Makefile` put

.PHONY: all pg13 print ebook ereader
all: pg13 print ebook ereader
pg13: book-pg13.pdf
book-pg13.pdf: mainfile.tex
pdflatex "\setstuffforethisversion\input{mainfile}"
print: book-print.pdf
[etc...]

Then type `make print` or `make ebook` etc at the command line. (This version is almost certainly too simplistic, but I hope the point is clear.)
Yes, this system is also prone to 'fuzzy' states due do slight variances that would multiply quite a bit if used for a full computation. It'd be cool to see a rectifier for this system, which will guarantee a full 1 or 0 state given a marginal state, though I'm not entirely certain how you'd build one.
I love Norvig's writing. He has a way of writing in concisely and make code appear effortless.
I remember a similar talk by Miles Osborne @ CMU. Any chance you're from his lab?
> he \emph{believed} in it

ftfy
They're talking about this kind of "die": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_%28integrated_circuit%29 ; "dyes" are substances used to color things. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye )

The book referenced as the first source on the "die" wikipedia link claims:

> The plural of die is dice. However, it has become standard practice in the industry to use "die" as the plural.

As a native speaker of English, I'd find any of "die", "dies", or "dice" to be pretty reasonable as long as it's clear what's referred to from context. (I'd prefer "dies" over "dice" if it's not immediately clear that you're not talking about playing dice, for example.)
I'm not quite sure a wall of text and big ideas such as understanding intelligence is the best way to ease someone into AI.
Same on Windows. I tried using it some time back but it didn't feel fast.
Uh, no.

A user probably already has email, thus it usually isn't required. Unlike openID
> box1!box2!box3!userhandle

That's called Source Routing, and is what cjdns [1] does, although in a more federated and private manner. There's an OpenWRT firmware called meshbox [2] that works on the same devices as PirateBox (and more).

There's no apps shipped with it, but instead you get a secure, adhoc, near-zeroconf mesh network.

[1] https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns
[2] https://github.com/SeattleMeshnet/meshbox
Practical WWDC
i'm not a huge football fan but i've always really loved the new technology they bring to the show. the yellow line has always impressed me, and the fly-by cameras they introduced are really cool too.

i think i've seen something similar, but it would be cool to have full on video-game style indications. player markers, etc.
I would love to know some examples of 12-to-1 language design arguments that Jean Ichbiah vetoed. What is a good source for the Ada design process?
Stanford's Response To The Snapchat CEO's 'Demeaning' Emails
I'm glad the audit is moving on and I really hope Truecrypt 8 sees the light of the day. Back in October'13 when the funding link was posted, I remember feeling a sigh of relief. Thank you to all those who are contributing to this.
Welcoming Google's self-driving car and the end of driving
You have a 'truly cryptic' way of thanking people for their time & effort /sarcasm
a non-religious religion is what I dream about too!
After many years despising religion (I am Italian, I know what Rome actually means) I traveled the world and learned that religion actually serves some high purposes.
I really miss being religious, so if you build a non-religious one, count me in!
sounds almost like a good start-up idea :)
This is really relevant to my interests and I've been meaning to go through it for a while, but I can't seem to find much documentation on getting started with Coq (the actual using of it, like how to run the compiler, etc). I'm sure the information is out there, but it's at least enough of a PITA to keep me from getting started... :(
Don't be me
Just an interesting aside, measurements in construction are almost always given in either metres or millimetres, never centimetres (at least in Australia.)

So that would be 914.4mm and 1219.2mm respectively (or 1.2192m I guess).

The wisdom of this was explained to me by my builder father that metres and millimetres are orders of magnitude far enough apart that you can usually figure out which is which without too much difficulty in a specification even if they are not annotated properly. Centimetres fall close enough to inbetween that it can be confusing. Plus only using two standard units of measure (one for small stuff, another for large) is less potential confusion then using three.

---

In Australia we started metrication in 1971[1] with 1974 being the effective tipping point when all road signs were changed.

Being born in the early 70's, I have a rough understanding of imperial measurement units. I can roughly understand if something is a few inches or a few feet, but can never remember how many inches in a foot, and have no concept of relation between feet and miles. Miles I understand as a bit over 1.5kms. The only length measurements we tend to still give in imperial is a person's height in feet and inches. The concept that over six foot is tall, and under five is getting to be short (for men at least) has such utility that it's stuck. Official documents will use metric though, usually centimetres.

Weight is similar. Kilograms rule, except when talking about the weight of newborns which will still often be given in pounds and ounces informally. But give me anything else in pounds and I have no idea (very frustrating when that happens in movies.)

Similarly Celsius rules. I know 100°F is a hot day, but wont boil an egg, and 0°F is colder than a mother-in-law's kiss, but those are rough approximations, and anything between those two I have to convert.

Gallons is a foreign language.

However all the colloquialisms such as giving an inch and taking a mile are still common.

And yet somehow despite all this, the world continued to spin.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia
Beware subclassing Ruby core classes
In university I actually tried to get into Ada, especially since I studied compilers with professor Ploedereder (great guy!) who was working on (and at some point chairing) the standardization in ISO. I loved the story about how the committee was in a seriously fight about whether Sunday or Monday should be the first member of the week enum.

It just wasn't my thing, although I deeply admire the language. There has been fantastic new stuff in the 2005 and 2012 versions. Like the Ravenscar profile for embedded and safety-critical systems.

And just like the "Young Lispers" did with Lisp, Ada had some sort of renaissance, where a lot of Ada stuff was going into Debian and young Open Source people dreamt of re-writing the Internet. :-)

I think it was partly the tool chain that repulsed me. There is really only one compiler in existence if you're a hobbyist: GNAT.

Nowadays Adacore are pretty open, having a big Open Source compiler download page and all, but back then, you could get GNAT, as shipped with GCC, or "big GNAT".

GNAT, as shipped in GCC, was always at least one version behind, and since Adacore always hired everyone who got familiar with the GCC frontend, it was highly dependent on Adacore. So no "second source" where GCC maintainers could step up if Adacore ever left. The Ada frontend just was a second class citizen.

"Big GNAT" was something everyone would have liked to use, but it was expensive. So that was out of the question.

Well, I got it, as part of a special University cooperation program, but only after signing that I would only use it for the assigned coursework, that I would never distribute it to anyone etc. pp.

Oh, and how did Adacore manage to keep it closed? I mean wasn't the predecessor, on which GNAT was based, GPL'ed?

Yes, and "big GNAT" also was. Kind-of.

Rumor has it that Adacore basically told all of their customers unofficially "sure, you're legally free to distribute it, it's GPL after all. Just don't be surprised if we don't pick up the phone for a few hours when you need support".

As far as I know it never really leaked. For some time I was actively looking for some "big GNAT" archive on the net, but never found one.
3How  To Watch Television for Free Without Cable Or Satellite
If the legislators want to give people the right to be forgotten, restrictions on name changing should be the first thing to fix, way before forcing a corporation to burn books.
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp14/proj/scheme/sc...
How I Earned My MBA in What Not To Do
Big Money, the Koch Brothers and Me
The amount of nuts and screws measured in inches that you use is probably inversely proportional to your geographic distance from the last remaining non-metric industrial nation in the world.

We don't come across them quite as much in the Antipodes. :-)
Google Analytics and Double click intregated
really like it. did some research before on how to generate colours that would be good for some simple visualizations, but found it difficult. This is great for a quick retrieval of colours that you can use!
on a thread dominated by insightful comments on religion history and art I hate to do this but ... I can't get pinch to zoom to get in close on the iPhone - is the image only "as seen from ground level" or can you really get up close if using a PC?
PSY Gangnam Style Video Crosses 2 Billion Views on YouTube
American Football.
Ask HN: Open Courses vs. Master degrees value in the IT market
Hello,

I am getting my degree in pharmacy soon. I’m seriously considering to pursue a “Master’s degree in CS” at the Greek Open University (EAP). Costs 3.500 euro/year but I noticed that their course material is exactly the same as the ‘coursera’ courses. For example “introduction to algorithms”, “design patterns”, “networking I and II” and “cryptography”.

Both are remote but coursera doesn't have a structured path, which is something that I like, it’s free BUT does NOT hand you a valid degree. Just a verification that you successfully taken these classes and passed.

If I ever wanted to apply for a job in IT, do you think that a series of “Coursera” courses would be an acceptable skill-set? (Say I take math I/II, algorithms I/II, crypto and classes like design patterns).

ps. Googling I found this[1]. It’s Master’s degree in CS by Georgia + Udacity. If anyone got accepted, please share your experience. I don’t think I would be accepted, but I’d like to know the total cost per year, I was not able to calculate it on the fly. Thanks

[1] http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program/
That's an awesome page, thanks!

I happen to see VGR1 pulling down data at "159.00 b/sec" right now.
New Directions, by Debbie Graber
By then the damage was done. I'm talking about early to mid 80's.
Never seen hockey before and had a look on youtube.

The blue glowy bit is ok I think but that red tail comet is atrocious, it is completely distracting, covers up waaay to much of the screen.

Would you have been happy with just the blue glowy affect?
In your jewellery store example I think it may be reasonable to prosecute the person.

In increasing levels of seriousness:

1. The person is walking by the store and, in the course of their everyday activity, sees that the door is ajar; they then contact the owner. This seems fine to me.

2. The person is walking by the store, sees the door ajar, and then altering their normal activities decide to actively test the door to see if they can break into the store; they can and then contact the owner. This seems dodgy to me.

3. The person chooses to visit each jewellery store in town to see if any have a door ajar. This definitely seems inappropriate.

The reason I come down opposed to the person in the second example is two-fold.

Firstly, ignoring intent, where do you draw the line on an acceptable level of 'break the security' activity?

- Thinking that the door is ajar and pushing on it?

- Seeing that the lock is vulnerable and picking it?

- Finding a ground floor window and breaking through it with a brick?

The resolution I choose is that if you have gone out of your way to subvert the security of my stuff without my consent then you have crossed the line. Gray is black.

Second, I don't care about your intent. Every security system will break at some point, and so I view the existence of doors and locks as mainly being about roughly outlining the boundaries that I expect to be respected. If I want to improve my security then I'll hire someone to advise me on how to do it. If I come home tonight to find a stranger who has broken into my house in order to prove that it's possible then (1) I already know, and (2) they have just caused the harm which they are nominally trying to protect me against.
Huawei claims successful 10G WiFi test
Well technically Backtype open sources storm as part of the twitter buyout of backtype.
That's a good question. I think that his interest in dissection was not driven by any desire to know anatomy per-se, but mostly by a desire to be a better sculptor. From his perspective (or at least, from what I know of his perspective, which is very much limited by what we know about him) what was in the head was not all that interesting. But muscles, the skeleton, the locations of internal organs that gave shape to the abdomen and such were of great interest. He could use that knowledge to depict people in a more realistic way.

The inside of the skull is not shaping the skull in a way that it will come out 'wrong' if you don't know about what's in the skull.
'Candy Crush' Made More Money Than All Nintendo Games Combined Last Quarter
Since when does the Catholic Church have a say in U.S. broadcasting standards?
I'm 90% sure the vatican did this basilicas 3D browser in VRML more than a decade ago but I can't seem to find any proof on archive.org :)
A former McDonalds. At first I was thinking you meant they were using McDonalds' free wifi for connecting to the satellite.
Which also shows the evolution of the yellow line idea: another line (usually blue) for the line of scrimmage, which turns out to be really useful. I think I've also seen a line for maximum field goal range.
Adventures in Smartness, Assassin's Edition
100GB isn't that big a deal. If you have at least 16GB of RAM it should be a breeze. There are much larger data sets in OpenLDAP in production around the world.

But I wouldn't choose python for large scale data processing work. The python CPU/memory overhead is like 100:1, compared to C. (This is why I worked on rtorrent and ditched the original bittorrent client ASAP, and why I hate bitbake....)
WWDC 2014 Roundup: fresh details
It's also an era-fitting and socially acceptable way to humble-brag, if I'm wearing my cynic hat.
As the size if the pin decreases and the frequencies go up the advantages of gold plating relative to the increase in price look better. Quite possibly there is a point where this balance tips over in the favour of gold. Zinc is not used in a sacrificial sense here, just as the main contact surface.

There is gold in a few more places in a CPU, typically the bonding pads surface and the wires connecting them to the pins.

It is quite possible the skin effect is at play here and that gold's superior resistance against oxidation is what gives it an edge. (we're talking GHz after all!).
I don't think you can attribute most incredible art to be inspired by religion, considering that during those times, art (sometimes just ideas) that lacked religious conformity were dealt with severity. Perhaps the reason there is so much art that is inspired by religion because not much else survived.

This brings a famous bit by George Carlin (I think) to my mind - ...It start's when we are kids, we are told to be creative and to colour within the lines... (paraphrased)
The Flinstone House
Little Boxes of Decision Avoidance
CureCoin: a CryptoCurrency coupling Mining and Folding@Home Protein Folding
Pendulum clock.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/clocks-watches/...
Was the best illustration of a simple one.
[FULL] Caught on Camera: Security Guard Attacks Sisabled Student
The Oakland Unified School District has fired a high school resource officer who is also facing a felony charge after he slapped and dumped a student out of his wheelchair.

Horrifying surveillance footage shows school security guard beating wheelchair-bound student and dumping him on to the floor

Startling surveillance footage has revealed the horrifying moment a school security guard punched a wheelchair-bound student before dumping him on to the ground.

Francisco Martinez, who has cerebral palsy, said the attack by Marchel Mitchell at Oakland High School on May 19 has left him in pain. Mitchell, 23, has now been arrested for the attack.

'He slapped me,' Martinez, 17, told KTVU after leaving hospital. 'He hit me so hard, it threw me out of my chair. I hit the floor with my chin first.'

Photos his mother took after the attack show scratches to his chin and head and bruises on his arms.
We learnt Ada at University in the late 90s. It was OK, but nothing amazing.

Then I went into the real world, and !y first job was with Delphi (Object Pascal).

It's surprising no one discusses Delphi with Ada, because it had many of the same features with the same Pascal ancestry, but better tooling and aimed at commercial as opposed to defense work.

For a while it was very successful. It lost because of commercial reasons, but for a long time it was a better Visual Basic.
Human perception in general is an extremely complex topic. Just as colour is complex because of the ways that the eye and brain process light, sound is complex because of the ways that the ear and the brain process pressure waves.

In both cases the underlying physics is trivial; it's only when humans get involved that things get messy.
The Sunday Assembly [0] might be of interest. I've only read of it recently but it's an interesting idea. Church for the atheists.

[0] http://sundayassembly.com/
On gender: are those meaningful differences? Does it make sense for me to ponder about why those with unspecified gender have better results?
Great question and I imagine many people have been in similar situations. I can offer a few lessons I have learned over the years.
1. When I found myself in a situation where I didn't connect with the mission or purpose of company/project, I would eventually hit a wall similar to the experience you described above. If you can't find any way to connect with the cause, I would at a minimum be open to making a job change.
2. There have been many occasions where I felt like I couldn't influence something to make the outcome more in-line with my ideal outcome. Two changes in my behaviors greatly reduced situations like this for me. First, Be open and honest with your manager. Explain to he or she that you feel more connected to a task/role when your input is valued. Keep in mind someone valuing your input doesn't always mean it will be implemented or acted on at any greater frequency. Second, I used to focus on what I can do to produce positive results without much consideration for others needs. One of my mentors suggested I spend an equal amount of time learning what is important to my managers/leaders and peers. Doing so enabled me to think more deeply about the outcomes I was striving for and how those would resonate with the folks calling the shots. I started to proactively address concerns I new would be present and any proposals?ideas I shared were positioned in a way that would show consideration was given to all the main issues that were important to them. Over time, I earned a greater degree of trust and my leadership team started to take my advice/input more seriously. One final thought and related to what I previously shared. Your situation above makes it seem like the spec for a feature was handed to you after it was already determined it would be implemented the way it was provided to you. In my experience, that has almost always been to late to influence change I viewed to be favorable. Circling back to my first point above, being more open about the need to contribute and share ideas will hopefully open the door for you to get involved before all the details have been finalized.

I could share several other examples from my work experience. On a more personal note, I noticed you are doing this for your BF. In the short term this might make him or both of you happy. I was in a somewhat similar situation before and the resulting unhappiness from doing work for an organization that had goals/mission I didn't connect with started to negatively impact my marriage.
I remember how unpopular it was when it came out. It made a lot of sense to try; not being able to follow the puck around really was a common complaint about hockey, and the NHL, as ever, was trying to expand its base. But if you watch even a fair amount of the sport, following the puck (even when it's out of sight against the boards) is really easy, so for the majority of the actual audience, it was distracting and unhelpful. To add to it, the implementation itself was corny and overstated. So part of it was problem was that it traded power users' comfort for new user friendliness, and part of it was execution. Compare to the yellow line in football, which is both helpful to everyone regardless of football watching experience, as well as simple and clean.
Are people thinking that a 24 hour time is metric? I saw a couple of comments that make me think this.

In Australia we use 12 hour am/pm almost all the time, even on official documents. We've been metric since the early 70's. I still have to pause and convert when I see a time greater than 12 (or, sadly, less than 1.)

It seems much more a cultural thing, that one.

Now if we could only stop anybody using m/d/y date formats...
Run JSLint from console with custom options?
Not really. I think you can easily special case the classless act of taking a design made by a community which has already stated their abhorrence of patents and then to patent some slight improvements on that design to force that community to either forego your improvements or to buy your product (or license your improvements).

It would be akin to someone adding some improvement to say GCC, and then to stop others from making that same improvement to GCC based on some government entity giving them license to do so.

I can see a few really good cases why patents are useful (even software patents, but those cases are fewer still). This isn't one of them.

This case was more about timing than about actual research, a sneaky trick to stifle innovation on progress that would have most likely happened anyway without MakerBot. Maybe it would have taken a little longer, but probably not all that much.

There are already a ton of patents in the 3D printing field, so people active in that space are walking a minefield already. Makerbot basically joined the opposition on the backs of the community.
I think grandparent refers to what appears to be gratuitous verbosity, i.e.

procedure Foo is
begin
...
end Foo;

vs java

void foo() {
...
}

Even if one wanted to be explicit about indicating what "End" refers too this could have been

proc Foo
...
end Foo

EDIT: when I write "appears" I mean "there may be a perfectly good reason for it but isn't obvious", not that it is in fact gratuitous.