skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting. Looking at Michael O. Church's premise, I wonder if it might be possible to bootstrap a professional organization by (initially) inviting only those engineers who already work at a level we'd consider professional: basically, the false negative rate here would need to be <~5%. One option might be to pick only those who have worked, for 2+ years, at a level above "terminal" levels: http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Ladders

So the initial invite would be for E6s+ at a few organizations (Google, Facebook, others?). Those people would know others they can vouch for, at either the "senior" level (the E6+ level) or at a "junior" level, but who are on a trajectory to make the "senior" level, eventually. At some point, this group would need to establish either which schools, or which certifications (i.e. MOOC programs) qualify someone for "aspiring junior" or similar roles, much like the bar. Or it could be entirely "project based", i.e. you show the organization some work you've accomplished, and the source code, in order to qualify. I haven't fully thought this through, so I don't really know how to get this right.

Given enough cachet, this should allow SDEs to form partnerships, with relatively little "reputation verification" required from their clients, much like how for most lawyers and doctors, people don't really care which one they go to (at least at first), just that they're seeing someone qualified.
There is a list of whistleblowers who "went through the right channels" for blowing the whistle. Notice that we don't hear about many (if any) of them in the main-stream media. Sibel Edmond (one of these whistleblowers for the FBI) had some very apropos comments about him.
Thiel: We are in a government bubble of massive size
> For example, a wide majority of Americans believe he should return to the US and face trial.

More than 80% of Americans thought that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do, when questioned back in May 2003, and that Saddam had access to WMD. My point is that it doesn't matter what the majority thinks, it matters what's the right thing to do. And speaking about "facing trial" and the US justice system in general, all I can see is that Keith Alexander has not had to answer for his fault of perjury (I've never been to the States, if it matters).
IMO: the snowden documents have shined a spotlight on methodologies, and were released to established journalists. Manning, in contrast, released docs and lists naming names of men and women in the field, a major threat to the wellbeing of an active operative.

I am all for transparent dealings and in principle i agree with both of their actions, but snowden was inarguably more meticulous and conscious of his actions.
Seems like voice control commands would work well.
Lone Geniuses Are Overrated
Star Wars Battle Pod shows that arcades aren't dead, they're just very different
CODE is my favorite non-fiction book, but I actually don't think "useful" is the right word. I do think that no matter how experienced you are, it is an enlightening and joyful read. It is less about what the book covers than the approach it takes.
Show HN: Dreamlance – A Trusted Platform for Freelance Professionals
Ask HN: Blogging vs. Coding – which is a better use of time?
To give this a little context:
- I've got experience in both, but will never be "great" at either (compared to those who are truly great in these fields).
- Coding-wise, I'm learning Swift (fun, but a challenge for me), and know some PHP and JavaScript. And Pascal, but that doesn't seem to be as useful these days. ;)
- Blogging-wise, I've blogged for a decade at www.livedigitally.com.
- I have a full-time job, so in either case this is just an activity for limited free/tinkering/hobby time

Reason to code more: have fun building things. Best-case scenario is make working prototypes of ideas I have.

Reason to blog more: have fun writing about things. Best-case scenario is increase visibility as an industry thought leader.

So knowing I'll never be a FT blogger or coder, and that neither are really for financial gain, I'm curious as to others' opinions on use of time.

Thanks!
I guess that wasn't clear. I surf methods, not by opening files, but by going directly to the definition or declaration as needed. Sure its in some file, but I deal with 1000 methods and sure don't make any effort to memorize where they are - since its entirely irrelevant to the correctness of the code.

To make it clear: I favor factoring APIs into classes.
Feedback needed: Cronnection, P2P marketplace with its own virtual currencies
Can you talk about the stack? How are you getting this info?
I wish the Linux Foundation would be more progressive with naming the project. One of the member orgs, Skyward, has already switched away from the word 'drone' to a much more descriptive 'aerial robotics'.
I attended Xamarin's Evolve conference last week - there were 1200+ attendees. I think they are definitely a growing community.
What can the Myo armband actually do?
The no-signup is really good ! It would be even better if you added client-side encryption and a rudimentary support for folders. The use-case I have in mind is sharing photos of an event: there may be a ton, we may want to organize per uploader (so as to not mess up with names) and I'm not totally comfortable with all my pics being in clear on Amazon's servers.

Neat otherwise !
PyDev of the Week: Ben Rousch
I was really interested when I saw this the other day and it is an awesome idea but as others have mentioned I wish they would give some details on how they plan to address some of the key issues.

Most importantly and an issue which seems to have been affecting drones in general is battery life. Even current commercially successful drones only last a matter of minutes before needing to be recharged and they are several times the size of the nixie and dont have cameras to deal with. What happens if you are climbing as in the video and 3 minutes later the battery starts dying while you are stuck on a mountain face?

I've liked the concept ever since I heard about quadcopters though and I think it has a lot of potential. From the video I think they're suggesting that you could have an option which sets the Nixie up so that you basically just throw it in the air and it will track + record you. This is obviously a big software challenge (motion tracking the target) that they will have to face although still arguably easier than battery life or flight stability in bad weather conditions.

If they launch it as a glorified selfie taker though I think it would be a shame as it could do so much more. As shown it could compete with the GoPro - hands free and a much desired camera angle - for filming sports, as well as things like amateur TV/film recording, surveying, mapping, etc. That extra functionality could all be added with software updates, its the hardware and physical design which I'm hoping they have a secret answer to.
Yeah its all about being lazy and scared, sure. Lets just put some loaded words behind it, to mask a total lack of anything interesting to say.

Folks do what they do because its good enough, and convenient. Which is a matter of taste, which I think might have been your actual point?
Batteries also hold PbSO3 or smth, which mixed with aluminium powder makes very loud bang.

Oh and then the acetone peroxide we used to make from washing liquid. Don't even ask me how I managed to source nitric acid as I just kept it in my room until mason jar lid just disintegrated...
But does the link make that distinction? I didn't think it did.
They say they encrypt them. They are not?
I declare the Bayesian vs. Frequentist debate over for data scientists
"Download to mac"? Lemme know if they ever get out of the hipster startup phase http://i.imgur.com/DTKz15Z.png
That's awesome! Glad you all enjoyed it.
Hmm - how well controlled is this as an experiment?
Be the First In-House Front-End Engineer at Shoptiques (YC W12) in NYC
Avoiding private self.methods in Ruby
C has added few features worth a damn in 15-25 years. It hasn't even bothered to augment the standard library, which is just dire in terms of API design, capability and performance. Some of C++s worst stdlib components are modelled on libc (e.g. streams and locales)
You are able to use transducers on any datastructure that implements the protocol. Which means usually implementing it yourself.

for/of solves this in JavaScript. I don't see the usability improvement this presents. I'm not being a naysayer. I hope I'm wrong here, I'm just asking.
not sure if this is the correct headline. finance overall is less popular but in 2008/9 most investment banks where either bought by "normal" banks or where simply allowed to convert their bank type from investment to "normal":

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley "abandon their status as investment banks" by converting themselves into "traditional bank holding companies", thereby making themselves eligible to receive billions of dollars each in emergency taxpayer-funded assistance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_investment_banking_i...
C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup proposes unified call syntax
Tracking altitude is usually done using a fusion of GPS and barometer. This still isn't perfect because a barometer is highly susceptible to atmospheric conditions, wind, etc, but it's a lot better than GPS alone and tends to work pretty well.
No, no, you really can't.

As mentioned elsewhere, consider exception handling, or use of Boost or STL--in many cases, libraries will leak such implementation details during stack traces or interfaces or what have you.

From a coding standpoint, using the hottest new sexy library can mean breaking compatibility with older compilers. This might be surprising, but a lot of times shops still use old versions of compilers because they're a known evil.

For all these cool new features, consider that C++ has yet to standardize on a standard library file system interface (though one is, kinda, in the works). It only just introduced hash maps into the core standard library.

It still does not deign to handle time in a useful fashion: Javascript gets this right out of the box, whereas C++ doesn't even have a way of parsing or generating an ISO-8601 datetime string without having to pull in Boost.

~

The language seems to have abandoned all of the programmers that need to get actual work done, which is fine, because they've all moved to more productive languages like Java, Python, Ruby, Javascript, Go, or PHP.
Both released them to Guardian journalists.

In Manning's case those journalists removed the names before publication.

Snowden released a lot of sensitive information to the exact same organisation who decided what to publish. It was essentially just an internal Wiki dump. He didn't personally curate it.

You'll have to cite cases where Manning published the names of people directly which put them at risk. Last I heard everything went through third parties before publication.
This seems a little fishy. As someone who grew up in south Florida - you never get something for nothing in the swamp. Applicants should background-check their financiers and read the fine print.
Built using PhoneGap and Parse. Quick app that scrapes the Colbert website and sends a push notification when there are tickets available.
Losing 58.3 Lbs for Science
There are two serious problems with this:

- Many "Managerial" people flocking to Tech only and solely because they see it as a shortcut to making a quick buck. When a field becomes inundated with people who are not core to the field but still wield power - guess what is going to happen

- Many MBAs are convinced that there is some mystical science of "Business Administration" that applies equally well in any company irrespective of size, type of business, types of customers etc. This has led to some spectacularly BAD decisions and programs that could be ruinous in the medium to long term but look good on the shorter timescales.

A crash in the "Tech Sector" has now become a real possibility in the next 1-2 years
Using the wrist thingy as a beacon, and assuming you can detect the angle and distance with decent accuracy, wouldn't it be possible to detect where you are relative to the user? Then you could film her/him from a few meters away without really caring where you are relative to "the world". You wouldn't even need GPS, just the beacon sensor and a 3-axis accelerometer.
We can wait, sure. But it is a fair question to ask why they haven't put the stage they're at on the web page somewhere right now.
I wonder how they "confirm[ed] out of email that the keys we exchanged were not intercepted and replaced by your surveillants." Key exchange is the hardest part.
Maybe it's slightly fuzzy deduplication?
They want it to be able to go a decent distance away from you. I don't think voice control would be very intuitive if you have to shout at it
WikiWand – Wikipedia experience with a modern interface
No matter how incredible the software is, I don't see a solution for the core problem that they will need to solve: battery vs weight. It's revealing that there are no prototypes shown at all.

Very curious what their weight goal is and how they plan to deal with physics.
The exact wording he used was "Citizen Four", two words.
Very useful! Have been thinking about the same idea recently!
I use Bootstrap for four of my sites.

What I like about Bootstrap is that you can change the look by trying out different themes, but regardless of which theme you use, users will recognize the layout and know how to navigate, etc. For me, having a familiar looking web design that users already know how to use is a big win.

BTW, what is with articles about 'Why I don't like technology X'? I like positive articles about what people like and use.
Show HN: Snapception – Intercept all snapchats received over the network
The Pentagon itself said that nobody was put in harm's way as a direct result of the cable leaks.
* I assume you mean 2x3TB :)

I use dropbox+drive for friends/family or if I'm not going to be at home. My upload connection is decent for where I am but it can't handle multiple HD streams (3+) so moving content I know people want into Dropbox means faster streaming for them and less congestion on my network. I have 4x3TB + 1x1TB drives currently (no raid, yes, yes, I know I need to do it) and those are about filled up and my media server has no more room in it for more drives so if I want to add more it would have to be external (I do have a couple eSata ports though).

I am currently looking for a replacement, I've considered buying one of those 20-drive server rack mounts [1] and filling it with 3TB drives which at Raid 6 (zRaid 2 really since I would just use ZFS soft-raid) would give me ~54TB of space. That should last me for a while yet :). At that point I would also start looking into colocation (That way I wouldn't need the Cloud Sync) but then I lose the VERY nice local speeds I get by having it all 10ft from my TV.

[1] Something like this http://smile.amazon.com/NORCO-Mount-Hot-Swappable-Server-RPC... (First result on google, I would look more before I decided of course)
This is incorrect. The entirety of the NSA's budget has to fit "within" the existing government budget. And other departments do use money. So it is not unlimited. Defense and International security assistance is $643B this year [1] not a trillion dollars, and certainly not two trillion.

[1] http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258
Remote Work Is the Blue Ocean Strategy for Hiring Talent
How Remote Work can help companies to fill their talent gaps
How does one include real footage when the product does not exist yet?
You don't use classes only to get RAII. They are also useful when you have data with invariants, which the constructor establishes. And of course, if you want to use private data.
The US is currently in controversy about this.

The FAA (US aircraft regulation organization) has issued 'notices' and 'guidance' for model aircraft operators dating back to the 1960s and 70s, but none of those notices have been legally binding 'FAR regulations.'

The FAA also claim that 'model aircraft' must be operated non-commercially and that once they're flown commercially, they become 'aircraft.' Using this reasoning they tried to fine a famous first-person video flyer for flying for money last year.

He won his case (FAA v. Pirker) with the judge finding that the FAA's regulations for model aircraft are indeed, non-binding, and that the distinction between 'model' and 'aircraft' does not include commercial use. However, the FAA appealed the decision and because of the procedure for transportation courts, the appeal immediately stays the decision.

To complicate things even more, our Congress passed a law in 2012 requiring and authorizing the FAA to regulate drones specifically. The FAA's rule-making process has (as usual) been very slow and they have yet to issue any final guidance or FARs.
New pulsar burns brighter than 10 million suns but is only size of Boston
It's ecology in a really large national park. You don't get to do much controlling there.
I haven't tried any of them personally, but I've seen several Ruby gems to easily add full admin/crud interfaces to a Rails app. Sounds like it might be about as easy to create a quick Rails app, point it at the database, and get one of these admin gems up and running.

https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/rails_admin_interfac...
They visited him with a SWAT Team. That's different than a copper in a squad car.
What's new about our open-source humanitarian crowdfunding platform?
The much-delayed war on procrastination
Following a Select Statement Through Postgres Internals
There's a wonderfully entertaining moment around the 16 minute mark when Lorinda Cherry demoes a talking calculator with pipelines. Not satisfied with it saying "five" after evaluating 8-3, she commands it to raise 2 to the hundredth power, providing ample time to finish her coffee.
This article could use some nice infographics and charts. The way it is written makes it hard to see exactly how things have changed over time.
I believe the 1 trillion is in reference to the "one trillion guesses per second."
The press will cover it for a week and then something else will come up and he will never be mentioned again.

A group of news agencies should create a scoreboard of unresolved or forgotten stories of great importance. This scoreboard should be mirrored in different places, and have competing scoreboards hosted by different groups, to prevent ninja editing of its contents. The scoreboard history could be tracked and shared in Git with signatures on every change.

This way, even if the front page forgets and the headlines change, there is an ongoing reminder of everything we should still be concerned about.
> Someone1234 says: Are you sure you're measuring the right things? All that proves is that MBAs are able to convince other MBAs or investors to give their startups money. It doesn't prove an MBA's value in an existing company.

So now MBAs are poor performers because you think they are only helping each other do well?

Sounds like a case of confirmation bias.

Edit: And now you've deleted it to hide your confirmation bias on HN. Bravo.
Huh. Why make this wearable? Isn't that kind of an insane design constraint? I mean, what's the battery life on something small enough to wrap around your wrist - five minutes?

I mean, you go and do whatever you want. I'm just really enjoying imagining that meeting.

Is this something the lead was just passionate about? Are they serious about the "friends walking around in a park who casually want aerial selfies" use case? Are they serious about the "people who go adventure sporting but can't plan ahead to carry an extra couple lbs of gear" use case?

Do any of them regularly think "geez, if only I could spontaneously capture aerial footage at any given moment of any given day"?

Did they assemble a team of experts, and this one guy just stonewalled them because his flexible wing design was a pet feature and they had no other way to incorporate it into the product?

Did they approach an investor, and the investor said "Nah, someone's already working on next-gen brain-dead easy adventure drones. You know what's sexy? Wearable next-gen brain-dead easy adventure drones".
Personally, the ability to wrist-wear this doesn't intrigue me at all. I have several small flying things (Blade nano qx, mcp-x, msr-x), so I'm somewhat familiar with what's currently possible on a production scale in terms of battery life, weight, etc. It shouldn't be a problem for them to get ~10-minute flight times out of this, or keep it stable in wind (though larger, heavier craft with gyro-stabilized gimbals will have a large advantage).

What I see as the biggest problem is exactly the thing that doesn't seem to add any value for me: being able to wrist-wear it. While small-scale RC flying things are incredibly durable these days (material scaling and all that), I think it'd be much too heavy, much too fiddly, and much too fragile to also make it wrist-wearable.
jailbreak iOS 8.1and iOS 8.1 Cydia install
USB/IP is a project that provides a general USB device sharing system over IP network. To share USB devices between computers with their full functionality, USB/IP encapsulates "USB I/O messages" into TCP/IP payloads and transmits them between computer. Original USB device drivers and applications can be also used for remote USB devices without any modification of them. A computer can use remote USB devices as if they were directly attached.

Considering the recent BadUSB exploits that have come to light, is this really something we want? It just seems like the risk could outweigh the benefit.
Sure, if by "visited" you mean "surrounded the house with a helicopter, a bunch of police vehicles, armed officers and a dog". It's true that it could have been worse - it wasn't a "no-knock" raid - but it was still a raid.

And they did take some of the plant material, so "seized" seems appropriate too.

Unless the homeowner had the option of saying "Sorry, I don't grant you permission to invade my home and garden" whereupon the officers would all just go away, it was a raid.
One messy death is not in the same ballpark as balancing.

But retribution is dumb; reparations are far superior.
Because it's hyperbolic generalizations about a group of people without statistics or data to back it up.