skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How to Deploy a Rails App with Unicorn and Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04
Artist/author here! To be clear, when I said her body is like a whip cracking, it's because a kung fu artist doing that kind of movement in real life would look like a whip cracking. When I said arms don't work that way, I mean that his anatomy is literally deformed to the point of not even looking human.

I am not using a double standard. Though, even if both figures were deformed beyond what is absolutely realistic, there could still be well-executed and poorly-executed iterations.
Notice how it was OK for him to be mean while Facebook was growing up it's infrastructure. Being right unfortunately is a necessary evil for the first wave in any project. In the nascent stages a project often needs firm almost machine like guidance. As the project matures the sense of stability trickles down organically to it's members. Some make the transition well while others dont. Often the best of our champions don't make the cut. The author has rightly pointed out the importance of Kindness, but that's not enough. The leadership should also be kind and help these mean incumbents make the transition.
The US still ranks among the best nations on earth when it comes to low corruption in fact.

The civil forfeitures problem is non-trivial, but you're drastically exaggerating. The whole of the US has a very highly functional, low-corruption judiciary system, and a mostly still intact and strong property rights system.

Most of America is low crime, low corruption, the opposite of what you're implying. In fact it's because of that, that most Americans are unaware of what organizations like the DEA are doing.

The US is less corrupt than France for example:

https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results
Reputation no, but the behavior itself? Quite possibly.
This kind of hearing wouldn't be extremely expensive unless it involved some complexities like an "innocent owner" affirmative defense.

Bennis v. Michigan, 517 U.S. 1163 (1996).

There is no "innocent owner" defense for civil forfeiture.
Are you saying you haven't noticed the systemic pattern of baking soft language into laws?

Have you not noticed the names they put on bills to get them through Congress (state or federal)? Right to Work? No Child Left Behind? DOMA, Internet Freedom Act. Hell, the Affordable Care Act (I SAID IT, sue me!)

These guys have it figured out, and when we figure it out they just change tactics. If they're that brazenly Orwellian on the title page how can they not be spending time softening the text in the middle?
A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why.

I wonder if the DEA agent followed him on the train after having found out the bank had reported a bunch of "suspicious" cash withdrawals and given up the victim's identity.
The loudness wars aren't physically possible on vinyl, they aren't prevented by customer preference but instead by physics.

Photographing in black and white forces the photographer to concentrate on light, shadow, and texture.

There are several art forms where the artist picks a set of restrictions to work in and that exploration can create great things.

The demoscene creates mind-blowing works because they have to work in such a small data space.

If every organism survived and reproduced without any restriction, the sum of life would be pond scum.

The punishing negative feedback of restrictions drives creation – just as much as breaking those boundaries.

Less is more.

Worse is better.

Everything in moderation.
I couldn't name 10 Animes. I'm not weeaboo by any metric. I will say that I think Japanese art tends to be finer, but not always. I think our culture grapples with being macho, or gritty or realistic. I think it rubs against "the rule of good."

Anyway, whether or not something is old is immaterial. Pixar is making some of my favorite animation period, and they keep getting better. AND they're American.

By all means, dismantle my argument. I would be happy to discuss. I don't think ad hominem is the best place to start.

Thanks a lot for reading, either way!
Snap Judgment did a story this week about how the DEA will pressure child slave drug mules into becoming unpaid informants, and send them into large drug deals with armed cartel heavies, under threat of deportation, in exchange for fake promises of US citizenship.
Has anyone tried Loving Kindness meditation? "Empty your mind" type of thing never did much for me but Loving Kindness meditation featured in New Scientist so I gave it a go out of curiosity.

I found it remarkable. If you spend deliberate concentrated time imagining someone you know or might meet and them becoming happy, you later get a weird sense of joy when you do meet them. You anticipate and look forward to nice things happening to them and unconsciously strive to make that happen. What's fascinating is that it works with people you dislike/have trouble with. It really does foster empathy.

Kindness when treated as just a behaviour will be an uphill struggle, there will be conflict between what you want to do versus a correction. However when your first instinct, your desire without thinking about it, is to be kind - its no bother.
Wait, wasn't this how democracy was supposed to work in the Land of the Free(TM)? I mean, he had guilty money. I am sure those money passed through the hands of drug dealers at some point in their existence.
I'd like to offer a different perspective.

Suicide is a violent crime, the killing of a human being.

Now, if we believe Wikipedia, then around 90% of homicides in the US will be committed by males. It seems reasonable that the male-female ratio should be about the same in the UK.

Then a 0.8 ratio of male to female suicides could be accounted for by the increased male homicide rate alone.

The Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime
> Taxation today is theft.

You say "theft" like it's the typical "take" act that the word normally implies. It's more like someone stealing $200 and giving you a bicycle you didn't ask for, but you're likely still going to use it anyhow. ie. it's complicated, so it gets a new word :)
I never understand when folks get upset over this kind of thing -- how would you do it?
Superb strategy with the post - I've to applaud for that. Personally, after that email exchange, I would have made a personal visit with a baseball bat, seriously. I hope somebody posts the competitor's name so we can all publicly shame them in social media which will show up in the search engine rankings so anybody considering them will be directed to Cushion instead of rewarding those asshats.
Well, if none of it matters, might as well stick around. It's not like you have anything better to do.
> Guess who defines who the rightful owner of property is? Government.

A compelling argument. In that case this appears to be a non-story, and I'm not sure what the fuss is about.
Shark project: we are building a modern performance management system
Author/artist here! Thank you so much for bringing it back around. And it's important to point out that I am in no way proposing that we "dumb down" or "pander." I think we should always be pushing as hard as we can and producing ambitious, excellent work as much as we can. We should sacrifice money and time to see it through and really add something of value and enrichment to the world! I just think we should do that in a language people already speak. That's a lower level than all these finer points, fun as they are to discuss ;). Thanks for reading!
Civil forfeiture abuse and DEA criminality has been in the news for over a decade. Though it may be getting more attention now.
I understand the claim that people with money could just use it all to buy a one way ticket to nowhere and never be seen again. But it seems to me that there's a very very wide line between "Use your money to keep doing bad things" and "We don't know if you're guilty but we're going to take all your money anyway and good luck with those legal costs"

Certainly putting all of their assets into escrow and only allowing access for approved uses (like say legal fees) would achieve the same results without pissing all over the sixth amendment.
How Do You Annotate in Your Class?
This article points out something I've felt intuitively for the last few years.

Can anyone recommend any vacation destinations or some other form of a get-away for a week or two? I've been getting really stressed out lately, probably a burn out. Have been thinking about some sort of a vacation anywhere from a cruise to meditation retreat, can't make up my mind. Any recommendations?

Not to derail this topic but this article outlined some symptoms I have, feel like I need a break.
> It's more like someone stealing $200

Sounds like we're in agreement then. :)

> and giving you a bicycle you didn't ask for

s/bicycle/war. No worries, I make that typo all the time. ;)
Did happen with the Silk Road bitcoins, 30K BTC of which were auctioned off before the trial.
How fast can this go? Can I throw it out my car window and go down a street? A highway? What does it do when it's lost the homing signal -- hover? Land?
No he didn't miss the point, you did. You didn't read his link and your comment shows that.
When public servants can directly fine citizens in cash, corruption pervades.
Are they making you say this? Blink once for yes, two for no.
I skimmed it, but it appears the Court is saying that Michigan is not required to have an innocent owner defense. That isn't the same as saying there can never be an innocent owner defense.

But many jurisdictions do allow such a defense.

US federal civil forfeiture does: 18 USC § 983(d)
Couldn't muster up a mental model for formal analysis so thought I'd give google a try... first result is a very interesting resource.

http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/building_lessons/for...
Isn't post-parametric architecture all the rage these days (at least in all of the architecture talks I've been to, I know next to nothing about the field)?
For what it's worth, the mid-eighties was peak (male) crime in the US. Remember Bernard Goetz?
AFAIK, before the war on drugs, civil forfeiture had seen significant use during Prohibition, against cars used to transport contraband. Which means most of the targets would have been white bootleggers.

But I'm being pedantic. I do agree with the spirit of your comment - it is vital that we immediately divide along race lines, lest any actual change take place.
Author/artist here!

I'm sorry you're not into Auro's art, but I just popped in to clear something up.

At no point do I laud my own work as all that great. I can't speak to how good I am. I do my best, and that's all I can do. Full disclosure, the only reason I included it at all was to plug it. We're a small, new company and need all the help we can get.

I also think it's a little strange to hear that I spend no time on my art's issues when the whole article is basically saying the entire art direction was a big mistake.

I'm not a graphic designer, yet I had to make every art asset in the game. I have to wear many hats, and I wear some better than others. I'm always learning, always pushing, always questioning, always trying to improve. Pretty much every example I gave of pixel art is insanely better than I am. That doesn't bother me. There will always be someone better, and there will always be someone worse. Besides, even if my work was the most ghastly thing you've ever seen, it wouldn't make my arguments any more or less valid. If you think my positions are incorrect, I don't see how that has to do with how much or how little I discuss my own work. That said, I'll be the first to fuss and fuss and fuss over the flaws and shortcomings in my work. I'm my own worst enemy. Does it make you feel better to hear that?
That quote doesn't justify seizure. Certainly not permsne t seizure with no trial.
That's a good idea for a blog.
It has, I completely agree. I remember first reading about it in the early 2000's. However a $300 million problem doesn't garner the attention that a $10 billion problem does.

It's similar to why the patent trolls are increasingly getting so much attention from D.C. 20 years ago when they were vastly smaller in their impact and scale, they simply didn't garner the attention of most pundits, journalists, politicians, etc. They didn't impact most businesses at all. Now they've become a vast parasite, and when the dollar drain on the US economy gets into the tens of billions, people start noticing.
What about someone who has not been indicted? The man in the article was not indicted with a crime.

It seems to me that any asset seizure should be at most tied to a fair trial. Once an asset seizure has taken place, the clocks starts ticking on "speedy trial" as if the defendant himself had been arrested. If the defendant isn't convicted within a reasonable time, the assets must be returned, with a burden on the government to show that the assets were the proceeds of a crime.
I tried to make it very clear that you can pick up the knowledge-based part - or that part that you can learn at school or using books, which is also the part that is tested in exams - quickly. In that respect it is indeed easier.

What may not be that easy is the experience to make good decisions. But there is no clear path for that, except being an engineer for a sufficiently long time. This piece was targeted at students and you can't just tell them: "Keep working somewhere else for 10 years".
>I think the central moral argument is that having giant empty houses in the middle of a city

Raise property taxes if you don't want property to be left unoccupied.

I sympathize with people who are already living there but it just doesn't make any economic sense to give tax breaks to benefit a small population that's already living there. There is no benefit to the population at large to prevent an incumbent population from getting priced out.

The goal should be to increase the supply of cheaper housing and make it abundant. I doubt it is possible in Manhattan today. Why not do it somewhere close by where they are not likely to be priced out? Instead, we build things like the east rover ferry which is clearly intended to raise the rent in apartment complexes midtown and first avenue...
Where are you, what's your budget and what do you enjoy?
Nobody is good enough to warrant being a torvalds-esque dickhead.

"get away with" is entirely different.

I think the world would be a better place if Torvalds took a couple martial arts classes and 1) got his ass handed to him a couple of times and 2) felt physically self confident enough that he no longer felt the need to verbally beat every body else up before they got a chance to do it to him.
Everybody in Andy Grifith's idyllic town was white. Meanwhile half the country lived under legally sanctioned apartheid.
Facebook’s new ‘Instant Articles’ program poses dilemma for publishers
Yes, or why withdraw it in cash at all? It could be kept in the bank and a debit card used to withdraw it.
It's dangerous to make assumptions about why a comment was downvoted. Such assumptions can lead to a growing gulf of misunderstanding and resentment, even to seeing enemies where there are none.
I agree with you 100%. They waste time and energy in a toxic way. Do you or anyone else on here have any ideas on how to fix it?
As a potential tourist or traveller (I am not to be fair), I wouldn't risk travelling to the US. I'm not sure if there are actual tourists who feel the same, but I'm sure there are other avoiding the US.
There is a lot more than simply voting that a person living in a democracy can do to improve things.
From Tower Bridge to Sydney Harbour, Welcome to China’s City of Clones (2014)
Anglican – probabilistic EDSL for Clojure
I am in TX with a budget of ~1500 for a week or two. The longer and cheaper alone time is better. What do I like, you know I've been so slammed and in my head that I can't even pick a vacation spot or remember what I like. I think I'd enjoy just some peace somewhere, disconnected from it all for a week or two.
I think today it's much, much more effort to make a decent pixel art game than to make a generic Unity 3D game (which look all the same to me; I hate them).
If the prize was higher then the cost of the solution - then there would likely be no prize (and they would simply spend the money on developing that solution).

The prize money shouldn't be the incentive for these solutions, more of a by-product.
> a mostly still intact and strong property rights system

The practice of civil forfeiture on people who can't defend legally, like this guy, sure doesn't indicate that.

Maybe for the HSBC guys who laundered $378.4 billion over several years there will be a small fine, their profit for a few months. But no bank was forfeited. No board members were sent to jail for it. It seems property rights are solid, if you are rich.
US federal civil forfeiture does: 18 USC § 983(d)

Thanks for that.. that was part of the reform passed in 2000.
Going off of that Vice article, sometimes I think that a 40/60 ratio of men to women would be favorable... it'd probably reflect the proportions of our hunter gatherer ancestry, and a lot of psychological benefits would come with that I'd imagine.

But everything else she said was extremely misandrist and sexist.
I'll agree with the others here - you've shown an exceptional attitude in dealing with this situation. I'm rooting for your app to do really well.

As an aside, this is first time I visited the blog and I have to say that the way you've been open about the product development & expenses[0] is truly amazing. Just by skimming over the list, I found a couple of great tools that I could use for my projects. When (if?) I ever build a SAAS app, your blog is where I'm coming straight back to.

> but this community is built on sharing what we know.

Thank you for living up to this. You, my friend, are doing a great service to the community. Wishing you all the best.

[0] - http://cushionapp.com/expenses/
Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
We shouldn't use technical jargon because it obscures the plain fact that they are stealing.
Having node_modules/X@0.9/ and node_modules/X@0.8/ would allow it as well. Yet each dependency would not keep a private copy of its own dependencies.
Yes.

And you'll know more and save more time for better things.
On Rust Hate-Writing
This article says what money WAS. What it actually is now is a form of credit statement. The more "money" you have, the more debt you created in the society. It is interesting how value is separated from money now. Equity is more "money" than you think. And @msellout is right - "Money" is technology.
How to be kind?

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Kind
Fax errors lead to data breach at Northumbria NHS Trust
Can I just lock up all of some politician's fund right before an election and only allow access to fight the case which will likely take months? Can I do the same with a business? A multinational corporation? Freeze up all the assets of a bank and deny access to funds for any reason including payroll while we investigate?

Where do we draw the line?
My biggest suggestion would be to get out in nature. Unless you are really opposed to spending a decently long time without creature comforts then I think this is one of the best things.

Another piece of advice is to stay away from crowds like you pointed out. There is a seemingly infinite amount of destinations that could satisfy this requirement too.

Best of luck! I hope you find something suited to you and feel refreshed after getting back.
> Most of the time there is no trial because the person they took the money from doesn't go back to claim it. Why? Because it was illegal money.

"Georgia brought in $2.76 million in forfeitures; more than half the items taken were worth less than six hundred and fifty dollars" -- http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken

There's no trial because they go after tiny amounts, generally with no evidence of guilt, knowing that it won't be worth the owner's time to fight back.

Read that article I linked if you haven't already, it's quite extensive and well-researched. And then tell me that this is something other than straight-up highway robbery.
I built my first iOS game[1] last year using Amit's original hexagon guide. This new guide would have been useful too. Still makes for good reading now.

[1] http://hexiledgame.com
Then the govt can seize it directly from the bank because your cousin has a phonetically similar last name to someone who attended the same church as a suspected terrorist
People will copy a good product almost anytime.
It's "easy to do", but the thing is that they can't copy the drive to innovate the market, which is way any good product was built in the first place.
If he keeps innovating like he already did with Cushion, the copy will just sit there without value, and that's the price for being an imitator.

He (the owner of Cushion) also handled everything perfectly.
It would be easy to just be shouting about the cloning, this is a really great answer that should let us learn a bit.
With hatred he would have gotten on the bad side of the game.
With a post like this, he stayed on the good side and also earned a bit of traffic ;)

Awesome.
> I wonder how the story would have gone differently if the man had refused to consent to the search.

Probably taze the guy, then shoot him 7 times in the back as he runs off
My point was; if you carry cash in large amounts and lose it, then you did not prepare. Carrying around your life savings in cash is a very bad decision, because _anyone_ can take it and you have very little recourse.

I ask because there are a few ways to avoid this particular situation; fix government overreach or stop carrying your life savings in cash. Doing both seems safest, but if we can only do one, then itis obvious which is easiest.
What was the one credible plot? I have only ever heard of plots initiated by undercover FBI agents, often involving mentally ill patsies.
Yes, the DEA forfeiture racket is vile, and yes it needs to be stopped. Nobody should undercut how terrible what they're doing is.

The reason the US still ranks high on the low corruption index, is because you have to take the value of the whole, not just one small problem such as this.

It impacts an extraordinarily small percentage of Americans today, and the dollar sums are extraordinarily small in such a large economy. Put another way, on that 100 point corruption scale, the DEA program would represent a negative deduction of 2 or 3 points.

What's actually important here, is stopping it before it gets larger. If they don't stop it, it will get much bigger, and graduate from being a small problem to being a serious threat to the average citizen.

If we're talking about rights violations, civil forfeitures are a joke compared to the war on drugs for example and the incarceration that has been going on since the 1970s.
It is my understanding that all the federal civil forfeiture statues included their own innocent owner defense since the 1970s when civil forfeiture was applied to drugs.

The new statute removed ambiguities and created a uniform defense for all federal civil forfeitures.