Hacker News Reader

At last.

arcadeparadeon SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google Cash

It's possible that Elon counts in Mars years.

arcadeparadeon Apple to build huge €850m 'data centre' in Ireland's fields of Athenry

Actually it turns out corporations pay more tax in Ireland than they do in countries like France or Canada: http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/ireland-tax-haven-1796050-N...

arcadeparadeon Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

arcadeparadeon Ask HN: Suggest me some good materials to learn AI programming from scratch?

http://intelligence.org/courses/

arcadeparadeon Ask HN: What's the best programming book you've read recently?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_The_Hidden_Language_of_Co...

Really good introduction to computers from relays up.

arcadeparadeon Wehrmacht Veterans Created a Secret Army in West Germany

There were plenty more secret armies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

arcadeparadeon Every Country Will Have Armed Drones Within Ten Years

Interesting, I took it to mean that this journalist is like most others, in that he starts from the assumption that the U.S owns the world and has the right to rule it as such.

arcadeparadeon Every Country Will Have Armed Drones Within Ten Years

>What’s worse, say experts, it’s too late for the United States to do anything about it.

This is an extraordinary comment to make, when they have used drones more than anyone.

arcadeparadeon With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time

I'm being serious. I come from a farming family and see companies selling new technology at huge prices, and other areas where nothing has been done.

Once I finished some other projects I'll looking into Arduino or something similar to start hacking at some ideas I have.

By the way, you are indeed right that farmers have already done most of the hacking themselves.

arcadeparadeon With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time

Yes, although in Ireland at least, it's common for farms to be split up and require a lot of driving on public roads.

arcadeparadeon With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time

There's already a prototype robot that brings cows in to be milked http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24955943

Once driverless cars are perfected, driverless tractors will be right there with them too, they will be hugely popular.

arcadeparadeon With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time

I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit for hackers to make improvements to agriculture.

arcadeparadeon What should a self-taught programmer study?

Nice list here: http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors-should-know/

I've so far done a 6 month part time course in computer programming, which has made self-learning a lot less intimidating.

For the last few days I've been learning C and Lisp with www.buildyourownlisp.com after that I plan to learn all about computers from logic gate up with www.nand2tetris.org, then algorithms on Coursera. There is so much to learn! But it's easy to be motivated in such a huge and interesting field.

arcadeparadeon An Introduction to x86_64 Assembly Language

I enjoy the 68k tutorial: http://mrjester.hapisan.com/04_MC68/Index.html

arcadeparadeon Industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?

Is capitalism compatible with human survival? You can't have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources.

>Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/18/worlds-to...

It's true that massive regulation to account for all the externalities of the market is vital, but with 200 species a day going extinct already, and serious crises on the horizon, it should have happened a long time ago.

arcadeparadeon Industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?

Guy McPherson has a disturbingly well sourced and pessimistic summary of how climate change will affect humanity in the next few decades. In his view it's too late to stop it and we're finished:

http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-u...

arcadeparadeon [dead]

>Examining examples of preventative war waged by the United States, he notes that all of the nations that have been attacked have shared the same three characteristics: 1) they are "virtually defenseless", 2) they are "important enough to be worth the trouble" and 3) there has been a way to portray them as "the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival."[27] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony_or_Survival#U.S._Imper...

Russia, along with China, are the only two countries with the potential to oppose the United States. It looks like Ukraine is been used by the to continue the attempted destabilisation of Russia.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the current president of Ukraine, has a foundation with some very interesting partners: http://openukraine.org/en/about/partners

arcadeparadeon [dead]

>During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. 'I have to tell you,' said their spokesman, 'that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?'[71]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pilger#Criticism_of_the_ma...

arcadeparadeon Ukraine’s Leader Flees Palace as Protesters Widen Control

One "what" down? Democracy? I encourage you to watch this Democracy Now interview before thinking that the opposition are democrats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROTwyP5no08

arcadeparadeon [dead]

Ironic when the other man on peoples minds this week ended a different apartheid.

arcadeparadeon The Next Ten Billion Years

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528151/Humans-tried-and-fai...

arcadeparadeon Oldest Human DNA Yet Found Raises New Mysteries

And carbon dating showed that some paintings were finished many hundreds of years after they began.

arcadeparadeon Bitcoin Reaches 1000 USD

As someone who bought a single Bitcoin at $20, I think I'll hold on and enjoy the ride :)

arcadeparadeon Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation

Because of the sanctions in the 90's there were also up to half a million excess deaths of children aged under 5. It was called genocide by both men who were in charge of it, both of whom resigned in protest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimate...

I also find it interesting that many people who deny that this many people were killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion will have no problem believing the 100,000 figure of people who were killed in the Syrian Civil War so far, which has been a much smaller conflict than Iraq.

arcadeparadeon The Russia Left Behind

This is fine but kind of getting away from my main point, which is that the NYT is denigrating Russia, not because of it's economic and social problems which are real, but because it is an independent country that is rich in natural resources, therefore a target for the West. But it is too powerful to be threatened militarily, hence articles like this about its problems instead.

arcadeparadeon The Russia Left Behind

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia#Putin.27s_fir...

Nice little graph there.

arcadeparadeon The Russia Left Behind

Relative to Yeltsins Russia that is a success. And far more stable.

arcadeparadeon The Russia Left Behind

Your comment adds nothing of value.

arcadeparadeon The Russia Left Behind

Yes, this article is a disgrace. Putin has built a relatively successful and stable economy, which worst of all for the NYT is both pursuing an independent path and is rich in natural resources. If they weren't able to defend themselves Russia would fulfil all 3 of Chomskys criteria for Western Intervention, however they have a capable defence and cannot be "Iraq'd" or "Libya'd", so instead of missiles they have to settle for black propaganda instead.