skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>both of you deserve upvotes...

Yes. I am as likely to upvote someone with whom I disagree for presenting a thoughtful argument, as I am to upvote someone with whom I agree.

Been argued a million times, but downvoting as disagreemnt is silly IMO--unless you just want groupthink or a high school popularity contest. But, if you want thoughtful discussion, then reward thoughtful comments.

Now, of course if I care enough, then I have a choice: I can either stop using HN, or I can try to get the government to regulate it. Heh.
I don't think so. India would be crippled without us and they wouldn't be able to wage any war.
Why is build quality not relevant for desktop machines?
It matters enormously in financial transactions for regulatory reason. Companies that want to process transactions need to have at least a defensible mechanism for identifying their customers.
My favorite: map caps-lock to left mouse click.
If you want me to not block ads from your site, don't have ads that obscure content, deliver malware, or abuse my browser to make life difficult for me ("no do not close this browser window! Come back!").

If your ad network delivers autoplay video with sound, it gets blocked. If your ad network delivers annoying animated graphics, it gets blocked. If your ad network delivers malware, it gets blocked.

If your ad network is The Deck, you are fine.

Part of the social contract is that your ad network shows me ads, not distractions and malware.
Anyone that wants DFS to go away is almost certainly going to wind up disappointed. Unlike sports gambling, all of the major sports leagues have bought in and decided that this is going to be a major portion of their revenue. DraftKings and FanDuel, in conjunction with the NFL et al will use lobbyists to help draft legislation that makes everything appear kosher while blocking future competition. There is simply too much money to be made, and donated to reelection campaigns and PACs, for DFS to be legislated out of existence.

Exploit loopholes and break rules until you're big enough to block others from following in your footsteps. That seems to be how true Internet empires are built. It worked for Facebook, whose massive growth was fueled by deals with large email providers that gave their spammy friend invites a 100% inbox rate. It's not hard to get a billion users when the average new user is (in many cases unknowingly) spamming 500 or more people with an email invite to the site.
Not really, it is mostly just more media coverage and observation bias.

As an example, it used to be that you could just dump whatever you wanted into the local water table. Now everything is picked over with a fine comb.
Oh my god this is hilarious. It reminds me of the Cloud To Butt thing.
Well, the Nylas engine doesn’t provide any authentication by default. It just assumes if you enter the username correctly, the account is yours.

Which makes it hard to self-host without building a different auth system around it.
"You can choose to keep in touch with your circle of friends, get invites to their parties, and so forth; or you can choose to remain concealed from your violent ex-boyfriend. Pick one."

That's kind of a douchey thing to do to people, even if you're a private company.
Your UI Isn’t a Disney Movie
In addition to some of the other comments, another factoid of dubious understanding is "that 5 percent had to be so bad it pulled the other 95 percent of observations up into bad territory". No, that is demonstrably not the case, and it's even referenced earlier in the article that the sample graph only saw movement in the 90% and 95% lines.

It feels like the article has taken a philosophical position, then gone through a lot of confirmation bias to support it.
I'm a high school teacher in a public school in Austin, TX. I plan to teach at that school until I retire and write and sell books along the way.

If I ever find myself employed in Eastern Europe then something dramatic will have happened.

The difference in culture is interesting, though, since I don't have to live/work there!
I think you will find this historic legal case of considerable interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yick_Wo_v._Hopkins
Do you have any sources to back up what you're saying, or is that your hypothesis?

Also, from your tone it sounds like that is what you hope will happen. I hope that not to be the case.
That's just fear mongering. India is far more dangerous to us than ISIS.
New YouTube iOS update brings stretched phone interface to the the iPad
That'd be rubout on a Symbolics keyboard isn't it?
Yes, it's definitely possible, I've personally done that many times and we do that at my current company as well. It ends up being a few hundred lines of code, and you have pretty much full understanding of what's going on and you can fit the code to your needs.
The NSpire OS is significantly more usable than the 83+ and 89 that I went through school with. In one case, I was able to put a dataset acquired from measurements into the spreadsheet editor, run a linear regression, get the r^2 for the regression, then draw the graph of points and line and save it in just a few seconds of menu choices - without ever having done that on an NSpire before. This would have taken me significantly longer on the older models if I hadn't already memorized the procedure.

So I wouldn't say that the NSpire has any radically new features, but I think that it's a lot more approachable then the older models. It feels less like something that you have to specifically learn to use and more like an intuitive software package - which is perhaps what our author is really getting at when they talk about apps.
That's the whole point, India needs to be hampered so that we can save ourselves. I have my own language and culture. I don't have to be an Indian first. I am free to be whatever I want to be.
Their transaction costs have got to be sky high. Payment processors consider this high risk. So if it's any consolation, the payment processors take a significant slice of the rake.

This is why you see fantasy sports succeeding where previous "games of skill" wagering failed. Fantasy sports draws on the real event for some of the value to the player, and players will put up with a high rake. Not so much for a poker room.
Unfortunately, you are correct. I am paying for all the evil deeds of India.
Very interesting that you've actually experienced this first hand while doing research for a class. I find that the difference in reporting on the same subject matter can be so wildly different, and I find that so confusing. It's so easy to twist stories for your own purpose. I wish there was a better solution.
Sam's audience and customers will either like the "like," or not care.
Researchers discover a way to make quantum chips with silicon
How do you deal with this in real life? Do you recognize your friends' voices, or have they learned that they just need to identify themselves when you meet?
Does anyone know why pricing of utilities like water and electricity doesn't follow a steep exponential curve? I.e. it gets really really expensive to have a 10 acre estate fully watered during drought. Seems like either the excessive users will curb their usage (what we want) or they'll pay a huge amount that we can plow back into infrastructure.

Or are these excessive users a drop in the bucket when it comes to total usage and we shouldn't even worry about them?
Hey Lasse and team!

We just signed up and are giving it a spin. So far we love how simple and light everything is at the moment. All the features were intuitive as well, even those not explicitly stated i.e. dragging tasks around to reorder for example. Super cool and looking forward to a mobile app ;)
I don't think going to HR is the right approach. HR works for management, and they're much more likely to side with your manager (who likes toxic-guy) than you. Also, it doesn't sound like toxic-guy's behavior breaks any laws, so HR might prefer to ignore him since he poses no legal threat to the company. They could just throw the problem back at you and tell you to work it out between yourselves. Or you could end up getting branded as a "troublemaker".

Similarly, your manager's boss is much more likely to side with your manager than with you. And complaining to your own manager may backfire if he values toxic-guy more than you (which seems to be the case).

So I'd suggest that if it really bothers you, start looking for a new job. Otherwise, ignore it. If your manager is already talking to him about his behavior, he might eventually improve his attitude.

For more on HR's role in a company, you might want to read this book (which I read after it was recommended a while back by someone else on HN):

Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Know---and What to Do About Them

By Cynthia Shapiro

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312337361
Basically namespaces operate at a different level. You can almost imagine it like Macro expansion -- the namespaces are fully resolved for all the symbols in the file and then the compilation happens. This is necessary for a host of reasons. They can't co-opt an existing operator because all the existing operators work at an entirely different level.
As far as I can tell his use of the word is totally appropriate and not even close to high schoolers "like". Trust me, I have one at home.
Just in case if you can't see the iPad screenshot, here : http://m.imgur.com/Q6nPjaY

Their own guidelines: http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Screen...

It's like they decided that if their tablet apps are going to be bad stretched out phone UIs, the other platform can't have a dedicated tablet UI either.
That's a disturbingly clever way of putting it. :)
Who wants to do that every day? Also, how long before we can out-calculate it? Right now we can already match things like gait patterns and multiple biometrics (eg height, relative length of limbs) well enough for many purposes using probabilistic systems (eg your metrics match 3 people but the other two are on different continents so I'm 99% certain it's you).
That is cool until every man uses it on you daughter.
I agree with you 100%. What role do I, as a man, play in this discussion? I want to criticize this practice, but I also don't have a place in telling a woman what she should or should not do.
What about a two-tier system: flattr/contribution for casual visitors, and a monthly/annual subscription which removes all ads (including Contributor fillers)?

As a new visitor I might click the flattr/contributor button (equivalent to "+1"), then when reviewing a statement I realise that I am visiting your site a lot, so switch to subscription instead.

The core issue is people recognising the value of good journalism or tech writing in terms of dollars, and being willing to pay for stuff that is worthwhile. After that the problem is only removing "friction" in getting a payment to the publisher.
But why can't Google enforce trust between AT&T and Samsung to ensure updates are received in minimal time?

As a platform vendor, IMO that's their job. At a bare minimum , to ensure their users get the security updates they need.
I added it to Pocket and now I can read it on the website or android application in a single page.
Is there an easy way to migrate content into it (e.g. my wordpress site that I've thought about migrating to jeykll many times but I want to retain control of the comments). Also, is there a way to get comments back _out_ again easily?

Great work!
Sure, but users who are legitimately concerned about privacy would be pretty foolish to rely on Facebook's settings, which was the comment I replied to. It's not like we're talking about behavior from 20 years ago.

To be fair, I don't think those users should trust any service's privacy settings. Facebook is almost certainly better than, say, Ashley Madison. But I think most of us would ridicule a "real names only" policy proposed by Ashley Madison, even though they haven't had a major privacy violation since their last CEO.
> As for newspapers: today's Sydney Mornig Herald is a few dozen pages, with multiple articles per page. Let's call that 100 articles (current affairs, technology, finance, sports). It costs about a dollar per day. So each article is worth about a cent, for a paper newspaper delivered to your house.

> The same articles on the web at 1/3 of a cent each read doesn't sound beyond the realms of realistic pricing for a sustainable distribution.

That demonstrates perfectly how the micropayment model is fundamentally different than the subscription model.

The assumption with micropayments is that you're paying only for what you view – not for everything the website produces.

With a subscription, you're paying for everything, whether or not your read it.

Say you 10 read articles in the paper each day. That works out to $0.10 an article, not $.01 an article, if you're being charged just for what you read. A huge difference. $0.10 would possibly be sustainable for micropayments, especially if you guaranteed the publisher a minimum payment each month. 1/3rd of a cent is simply out of the realm of reality – unless you're agreeing to pay, in advance, for all of the articles they produce. In which case, I don't think you're talking about micropayments anymore.
Modern PHP code rarely uses the global namespace, so almost everyone who cares about correct handling of the new exceptions will have to prefix them with a backslash anyway.
Bills are like diffs. They are not law, they merely make changes to the laws that exist. Some bills will add new files to the working repository, others will delete files. The diff isn't the code.
So I'm guessing this gear is well out of the range of the hobbyist hacker? Is there a virtualized one I can play with instead?
>If we can't stop the state from killing a person known to most likely be innocent...

It's difficult to believe this is true when he was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in two different trials.
How do you get blocked? I changed my account to a ridiculous name and I know a couple of people that have changed their equally ridiculous pseudonyms multiple times. Maybe they only block you if you have a real-sounding name?
I don't think people click into everyone's profile before they go to articles, so I don't really think this is true.

It would be different if it showed your total points next to your name at all times.

I think that someone who has been around longer will know the type of things to post to get a response more than a newer person who just posts what they find interesting.
Putting $100 on a specific football match at 1.5% rake is both more fun and more profitable than DraftKings/FanDuel.
Why didn't this same link I posted earlier get picked up when peterthomas submitted it? I think they are the same? Seems like HN had a glitch? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330573
One should factor out effectively uncontested cases, like the Tsarnaev trial, which wasn't about whether they did it. What do you think the numbers will look like then?
Snowden Docs Show British Spies Used Sex and 'Dirty Tricks'
kid from Newtown was on meds
Seems like if they did some other metric, it could overcount the number of CPUs instead, right?

What about changing GOMAXPROCS once per minute in a goroutine that calls NumCPU()?
If you're not looking forward to doing the soldering yourself, check out the Ergodox EZ campaign (funded but still open): https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ergodox-ez-an-incredible-...
the similarity between Force's setup and these ones is just striking. That crap would never pass a jury and probably many of judges would kick it out too. No wonder that these cases don't even have a status of formal charges.

The judge dealt Ulbricht additional punishment just on the base of preponderance of evidence as seen by the judge. Thus effectively punishing Ulbricht for the alleged crimes of murder-for-hire. Such loophole is a clear violation of :

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury,..."

and

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury ..."

Ulbricht wasn't indicted, nor prosecuted, nor convicted by a jury for these 5 alleged murder-for-hires. Thus he can't be punished for them. Whether he actually did it or not, what happened in those proceedings isn't a justice.
I don't know. They may think it's impossible to have an advantage, but there's always an incentive to find that loophole. Forbidding employees to play on others' sites at least disincentivizes it a bit.

Also, I don't think it's too surprising that FD or DK don't enforce their rules too harshly. As long as they are making a lot of money, why do they care?
For sure - we are concerned w/ the API times. I'm not sure I agree w/ this article.
> Because the choice exists to either accept their terms and use them or reject their terms and not use them. But, what you are saying is that you reject their terms but, rather than disengage, you insist on using it, but believe the government should forcibly change those terms to your satisfaction.

How is this any different than unenforceable EULAs or employment contracts that overreach? You can ask me to sign something that violates the law; I can still use your service or become employed by you; that does not remove my protections granted under the law, but nullifies the parts of your contract or agreement that are unlawful.
> I doubt things would be much different if Microsoft wasn't around.

The man-hours wasted working around the bugs with Fat32 and NetBIOS and the slew of broken MS implementations can never be recovered. MS Office is STILL an endearing testament to what has been spent cradling flawed MS technological choices. The idea that the world would be the same without MS is nonsensical. The question is if we would have developed things like VMs a decade before (we would have through Sun filling those gaps with their existing tech). Maybe Sun would have burned down anyway, but that's besides the point.

> Yet all transactions that contributed to his gains were voluntary.

They were often coerced. They were tried and convicted in multiple arenas, for abuse of the de-facto monopoly.

Where does this revisionist thinking get incubated?
If Theo ever criticised my code I'd frame it and keep it at my desk!
perhaps, but I counted like between 4 and 6 likes, that were, like, totally unnecessary :)
Show HN: Tell your friends why they're awesome
No praise for the tech division. I feel sorry for NYT Technology departmemt. They are quintessential for making this happen. I see outside of tech companies, this kind of treatment for technology folks is common nowadays.
I think they are implicitly challenging peoples ideas how startup works. Both for people who are "waiting for the right moment" to start a startup and people already running a startup and feel they have an advantage.

While I'm not a big personal fan of them I think competition is good. US startups need to step up their game and not coast until getting acquired.
Show HN: New interface for Reddit – What do you think?
> In your example, the person is making a profit from willful copyright infringement.

No, the person is not. Removing DRM does not infringe copyright. A jailbreak does not infringe copyright.
I wrote a whole load about my own experiences, but deleted it, because it could be bad advice.

I say that because I don't know your organisational structure and culture. I've done all you've written above, and sometimes it went well, other times not so well. 5 in particular.

Something I recommend for everyone to do is find someone to be a mentor. I have a couple, one a former boss I stay in contact with, the other someone that just took a liking to me. I'm sure I'd have more had I been aware of the power of simply making an effort to stay in contact. For you it could be someone that goes to the same gym, restaurant, or any common connection to bond over. Cultivate that relationship, but don't make it seem like sucking up, because it shouldn't be. No mentor likes sucking up, but they all like being able to share some wisdom and like seeing the results.
> Who decided that the world shall enforce white backgrounds for everything, while eliminating user control?

You can trivially root many Android devices and do whatever you want.
Did you seriously said the word "renegade"?

Even if their superiors did honestly not know that they were loading fraud-ware in the vehicles, this is most likely the result of systemic social dynamics and perverse incentives. Mutually exclusive goals get set with no regard to the laws of physics or reason. Everyone who dares mention this self selects outside of the management hierarchy, so the whole chain of command becomes an echo chamber of overconfidence.

Then, at the end of the day, something has to give. It was the emission control testing in this case. It could have been much worse.
I don't have a Facebook account. Many of my friends and family apparently do. I manage to text, email, call, or visit from time to time. We have things to catch up on and talk about when we do, in part because we are not voyeurs into one another's life. Could you replace your online social network with more first communication channels? I don't intend to sound hollier than thou. I could be missing something amazing by not being on social networks, but I have not noticed it.
The ceo has already fallen on his sword at volkswagon
Cancel your Comcast in 4 minutes
This is the only explanation that makes sense to me. All explanations where that are saying knowledge of ownership %ages in general gives some sort of edge don't really add up.
I'm surprised to find questions like this on HN. These are fundemental concepts that drive SV; while I don't expect the world to understand I expect it here.
If you take a blurry photo of a license plate - it can be possible to enhance it (e.g. using sharpen) to reveal the license plate number - just because your naked eyes can't extract that information from a blurry photo doesn't mean the blurry photo doesn't already have enough information to encode the number precisely.
Virus hardens routers, Internet of Things
That was Microsoft's original plan for Windows NT: Win32, OS/2, and POSIX would be different API servers running on the NT microkernel.
Joel Spolsky published a blog post in 2000 named "Things You Should Never Do" (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)

It's about why Microsoft with IE6 won the browser war against Netscape who made the single worst strategic mistake a software company can make by rewriting Netscape 6.0 throwing out all the code from Netscape 4.

Netscape was working with extremely buggy and convoluted code in the older version and trying to save the development community from the nightmare that is IE6, ended being late to the market with a superior product. Joel makes a very good observation that often people want to throw out old code because they think it's a mess, but the truth is counter intuitive that the old code contains vast amounts of knowledge.

A company can be first, best, or cheat and in this case while Netscape was trying to be best, Microsoft was first.

This is the reason iterative code development is best. Speed of iteration beats quality of iteration 9 out of 10 times. Boyd's Law of Iteration (http://blog.codinghorror.com/boyds-law-of-iteration/) The best software is software that released most often, not released the most correct.

If I was to release a browser in say 2008 to compete with the dominance of IE, what is the single most important feature I could put into that browser? I'd put a feature for forcing iteration, so that the browser can automatically update on the client finishing a development cycle rather than release the update preinstalled unable to remove on newly bought computers.
A sobering reminder of the disproportionate power of professional sports leagues. MLB antitrust exemption, anyone?

(disclaimer: I love MLB, but c'mon).