skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Plea bargaining should not exist. It makes a mockery of justice, turns the legal system into a marketplace where you bid for relative degrees of guilt and are rewarded for "copping a plea", and occasionally snares the innocent.

I confess that I'm somewhat naive regarding the larger context of this. I have dealt with the criminal justice system, and I was very thankful for plea bargaining. I was, without a doubt, very guilty of what I was accused of doing and I knew that the state would have zero issue proving that and convicting me, and my lawyer tended to agree. I did not have the money to post bail (at the time I was very poor, the bail was very reasonable), and my lawyer told me that a jury trial would keep me in jail for far longer than my sentence would be if I pled down. With my plea bargain, I spent 22 days in jail. I likely would have been in jail for at least a month and a half, even if my lawyer pushed as hard as he could for a speedy trial.

With that out of the way, while I understand that the plea bargain process is abused, isn't my case an example of why plea bargaining should exist, at least in a limited context? It saved everyone involved time and money.
Their logic is faulty, but opportunity costs are very real and routinely analyzed in many domains, ranging from systems engineering to advertising.
You know, quite a lot of us do use NoScript, so that reduction to absurd is not really that effective. As for using electricity, that's why stan_rogers added the caveat of "do things the server ought to be doing at its own end".
No, what Lambda does is take your equivalent of CGI script, init it once and reuse the snapshot afterwards. It is completely oblivious to the process. As far as it is concerned, your script is just "take this from STDIN, do the magic, write on STDOUT and exit". There is no notion of keepalive because the script itself isn't supposed to stay alive. All the magic happens in the execution of the script.
Failed Architecture
How many Purple Heart winners have you seen be dismissive of their awards, and throw them away at the first convenient moment?

> You’ll know because your peers have told you so.

One way they tell you is, you know, with an award.

> You’ll know because your employees are happy.

As a counter-example, consider someone who internally blows the whistle. Often that person will be snubbed as being disloyal, even if the end result saves the company money and keeps it out of legal trouble. One of the best practices is the company to give a 'meaningful reward or recognition for legitimate whistleblowers'. (Quoting http://corporatecomplianceinsights.com/problems-with-the-cur... ).

This sort of award can be oil for troubled waters.

> If you are doing great work. You are doing great work. Period.

No. Period.

McConnell's "Rapid Development" has a chapter on programmer motivation, and a section titled "Rewards and Incentives". Quotes from it:

> "Developers grow tired of working for unappreciative companies, and rewards are therefore important to long-term motivation. But monetary rewards have to be handled carefully. ... It's also important to present any reward purely as a gesture of appreciation rather than an incentive ... The work itself is the greatest motivator, and the more a manager stresses an external reward, the less interested the developer becomes in the work itself, and the more potential motivation is lost.

> Here are some possible gestures of appreciation that are often appropriate: [I've abbreviated the list]

* Sincere praise directed at a specific accomplishment
* Humorous or series awards in the form of plaques, certificates,
trophies, and the like
* Special events to celebrate significant accomplishments

> In In Search of Excellence, Peters and Waterman (1982) report that the companies that manage to stay in the top halves of their industries over 20-year periods make extensive use of nonmonetary incentives.

Under "Morale Killers", McConnell includes "Lack of appreciation for development's efforts" and "Heavy-handed motivational campaigns".

It's easier for me to believe this author considers these awards to be "heavy-handed" than to agree with the conclusion that awards are bullshit.
SXSW announces online harassment summit
Ah balls, here's the correct link https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/29/from-side-project-to-...
But did you read the article. So let's say plea bargain doesn't exist, then you spend years in jails waiting for a trial as opposed to copping a plea and maybe get timed served.
30s Germany was a completely different situation; it was the Great Depression, combined with the humiliation of total defeat in WWI and onerous terms of surrender. Germans rallied behind a strong leader and were willing to forego liberty for the sake of national pride.

The 60s backlash against Vietnam was largely because they began drafting college students. It was an outlet for restless, idle youth who were the most pampered, spoiled generation in history. And it did nothing to shorten the war; in fact it gave moral support to the Communists at a time when they were very frustrated, e.g. the Tet Offensive which was a military failure for the North.
How to interview at YC when English is not your first language
That was my point, it would be totally impractical. Nevertheless you would have to find a way to compress all those considerations into higher level votes and also recover them from there. I could certainly vote for more cars but how would that vote reflect my preference for an electric cars, a more fuel efficient car or a really fast sports car? And how would you recover individual preferences from such an aggregate vote?
The same way as desktop developers do.

Well, did - I regret to tell you that desktop developers are now using analytics as well, using stuff like DeskMetrics and Trackerbird.
Yes, I read the article. Didn't you read my comment? I'm saying we need to reform the entire system, not just ban plea deals.
Snapchat’s new ‘scary’ privacy policy
HackRF: https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/ ~> $300

HackRF Blue: http://hackrfblue.com/ ~> $200

rad1o (HackRF from spare parts): https://events.ccc.de/2015/07/10/rad1o/ ,
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/12/cccamp-2015-rad1o-badge/ ~> $100?

##

That would only give us half duplex. If we want to simultaneously transmit and receive, I guess we could add an RTL-SDR. ~> $10

Plus antenna(s). $ $ :)
Still, the Boston head of cyber said that organizations
that have procedures in place for regularly backing up
their data can avoid paying a ransom at all, by simply
restoring the infected system to a state prior to the
infection.
I am slightly confused by the screen-shot of an ubuntu OS with a windows XP desktop. :)
Except now everyone knows a lot about the capabilities of the NSA, and every serious criminal is already using the strongest encryption available and doesn't have any course of action for when the NSA is onto them.

It would be like if the British "blew their cover" and the Germans could only respond by completely ceasing all encrypted communication. Not the best possible outcome if they do, but still a positive outcome.

It's an even better outcome for cybercrime, since ceasing all communications would mean ceasing everything. If the NSA did this, the criminal would probably just stop operating, which means they might not be brought to justice, but at least the attacks would stop.
I'm being absolutely serious.

Send me a 950 + Band 2, I will make it my primary phone and gadget, I will use the almighty shit out of it and publicly post about it frequently, the good and maybe a tiny bit of the bad if it's a true game stopper and needs to be fixed to further Windows Mobile adoption.

You buy loyalty by telling someone like me "We think our new phone is better than your Nexus 5 (which is considered the best Android phone ever produced), and we will prove it by showing you how well polished Windows 10 Mobile is (compared to Android 6) and that we brought our A game to hardware production by giving you a Lumia 950. This is how much we stand behind our product and our hard work." You buy loyalty by having the balls to step up and try to adopt the vocal users.

Now, otoh, if Apple approached me with a free iPhone 6S + a basic iWatch? I'd decline their offer. They have not impressed me with their new phone, watch, or iOS revision. I see no reason to switch, and since they have not shown any reason to switch I shall show them no loyalty in return.

Microsoft, otoh, has actually impressed me with what they've done, and they may be worth showing loyalty to. I just want them to prove it.
Battery research news is on par with cancer cure and rapture day news these days.
The Dotty experimental compiler for Scala now bootstraps
Well, regardless of guilt, there is the matter of responsibility. It's absurd to suggest he deserves jail time, but there is an argument to be made that there should be some consequences (e.g. loss of driver's license). It's your responsibility not to put people in danger, even through no fault of your own. If you can't react in time to a reasonable foreseeable event (somebody being careless in traffic such as that kid walking out from behind the bus), then you're taking a risk by going that fast. The speed limit is a limit, not a minimum, nor a right.

There's no way to avoid all risk, and there's no way to precisely define when someone is taking "too much" risk. But consequences similarly don't need to be an all or nothing afair. Jail is too much - but community service may not be (say, with traffic victims?). Or a fine. Or a temporary suspension of the drivers license.

Let those best placed to prevent tragedies like this bear at least some of the consequences, even if it isn't always fair. But even if you agree with that sentiment, it's hard to imagine that years of jail time a felony conviction are proportionate to the responsibility this guy carries.
But are the criminals in this case targeting specific individuals? You can't teach them you're a good target if they're just firing at random anyway.
Exactly my thoughts. NSA was supposed to provide measures to protect the network of the government. But see the OPM's breach as one example.

Seems NSA is obsessed with penetrating everywhere using 'terrorism' as a means to ensure continued funding. Thus the 'defense' nature is quite boring and sadly ignored.
I've had 2 discussions on this topic, I'd love to hear you thoughts on them.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9510919

TLDR, If you believe values (desires) are subjective then any centrally planned system will be inefficient.

[edit: formatting]
Many people seem to think that human rights abuses is something that only happens in dictatorships, and not democracies. I wonder, though, if you compare say the US with China, is China any worse? Or the US compared to the old monarchies in Europe, on a per capita basis?
I look at this and it reminds of drawings from the late 1800s of people doing things with mechanical devices that we now use electronics for. It just seems very contrived and impractical.
Even firing at random is a better strategy in a target-rich environment compared to an environment where your targets either don't pay out or attempt to fight back.
An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attack on an argument made by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, rather than attacking the argument directly.
I am trying one now. There is one obvious annoyance coming from a Fitbit; why can't the Band 2 detect when I am sleeping? The Fitbit detection is pretty accurate and the Band has many more sensors to work with. It is almost a guarantee that I will forget to mark my sleep a few times a week with the Band 2.
Why Private C# Variables Are Not as Private as You Thought
Fair enough :-). I just assumed everyone knew who the Stasi were! I can't recommend the film The Lives of Others enough. Really is a scary insight into the end game of a surveillance state...
It's irrelevant advice for society in general, because just like with spam, the costs of producing this are so low that even if the FBI had convinced 99% of people not to pay, it'd still be worth it for the scammers.
the user interface is gorgeous. Quick bug report:
When I typed in "monserrat", it showed me two results and on clicking the second result, I saw this "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bananashavings/unityGame/e.... Help please!
i work in the medical device field and go to a ton of these conferences.

nothing was better than the year we had a show in chicago at the same time there was an "adult film" conference. talk about subcultures...
That's a valid point, comparing to no child left behind. I'm not sure how to solve that issue- but at the same time, we currently have a system that incentivizes causing recidivism rather than preventing it.
I recently went went public with something similar - www.cadwolf.com

Mine is similar in that it does math in the browser. However, the goal of cadwolf is to do math and documentation on the browser and remove the need for the user to know a programming language.

I really like what you guys did, but why would someone use blabr to run coffeescript instead of just running their own program? What is the use case outside of a learning tool?

Also, I would love to know what you think of cadwolf.
very interesting write-up.
is there a way to subscribe to future posts of this sorts?
Thatneedle: Semantic Search for retail
Brilliant idea, it's essentially you are giving a permanent license to your info; the problem below is a real one though, the investments we are seeing are often clearly hedged against resale of data... A rather scary market when Stripe will just charge credit cards if you have a users token!
There is already one contradiction in there - you say planning would have to act quickly and planning happens for extended periods. That is of course not mutually exclusive because you could usually do some longer term planning and resort to quick interventions when needed.

But could you really isolate those? Wouldn't quick interventions in one area not likely also have indirect effects on other areas making at least some smaller adjustments necessary? This looks to me like you would become pretty busy doing quick interventions and propagating the ripples through the rest of the plan at which point you are back where you started without any longer term planing.

It seems to me that any form of longer term planning incurs a cost by not being able to react in a timely manner, effects propagating asynchronously and as fast as possible in markets would propagate way slower over a couple of planning iterations because they are unnecessarily forced into lockstep.
Clessie Cummins Made Diesels the King of the Road, and Almost at Indy Too
Uber Officially Confirms Its Plans to Launch in Pakistan
The bid ask spread is a measure of how far behind you are the moment you buy a stock. If the ask is $10 but the bid is $9.75 you've lost 0.25 per share the second you make a trade.

That makes some sense, but who have you lost it to?

I was thinking about it the other day, and it seems that the "liquidity is good" argument can make some sense if people are not willing to make a transaction immediately. If I want to sell a bag of apple for 1$ _right now_, and someone else is willing to buy that bag for up to 1.50$ in a week, then I can appreciate that there's a middleman (providing liquidity) willing to hold the bag for me during that time and that he makes some profit from the spread. However, if the buyer and seller are both willing to make the trade at roughly the same time, then it's much better if they do it themselves (splitting the 50 cents of value amongst themselves) than if a middleman gets into the picture.

More or less the argument made here: http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3890
I've seen level 2 data called "depth of market" more than anything.
Posting for a guy I met on reddit (ikr!). I liked their simple interface, tho the lack of documentation makes me think they don't plan on being a biz-to-dev solution. If signing up is not your thing, here's a direct link to something you can try out: http://www.thatneedle.com/filterd
Well, I've included in my TOS that the product is not for use there. Maybe that will help (not released yet).
You realize that Python, Perl (cgi), and even C, can do the same things? mod_xxxx
Is it a scary policy? Most have that paragraph verbatim to ensure they're able to use your content.
OK, you don't seem to understand the primary role of the state, which is protecting you from other states.

Before states, you had endless raiding. Each farmer didn't have the resources to maintain an army to protect him. You can crowdsource that protection, but then you have a standing army, which is a necessary evil in a violent world.

Without a state and an army, some other state's army is going to move in and conquer you, therefore, there's no getting around the need for a state and the necessity of funding it. Being conquered is no fun.

States are still every bit as necessary now as they were before, aggression from other states is still a thing. And you can't fund a state with voluntary taxation, you won't raise enough money. Therefore it's compulsory. Your moral argument still boils down to "give me what I want for free." You may not think you want a state, but all that means is that you're blind to what would happen in its absence.
Good old free enterprise competition! It's interesting that Amazon has decided that the strategic value of limiting access to these products by removing from Amazon is more valuable to them than the revenue and engagement from people purchasing them. Amazon Fire hasn't done well at all, so I'm not seeing the end-game.
I did exactly that in software (web site) that is nearing release- so no results yet.
The people talking about what the NSA got up to before Snowden weren't engaging in conspiracy theories, they were basing what they said off prior whistleblowers and limited, logical extrapolation.

A lot of what Snowden put out wasn't new at all, it just gave us particulars on what we already knew or had very good reason to suspect based on that information. (e.g. if they have one fiber tap, they probably have many fiber taps.) [1] [2]

'The Government' is not one single unitary entity. It's a massive, sprawling bureacracy, with most agencies almost completely unaware of what the other is doing. Interagency cooperation is a rarity.

US Attorneys are certainly not the NSA's minions.

[1] http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
It seems to me that "hot or not" style ratings, where the user is asked to pick a preference between two items, would be more informative and easier to interpret than star ratings or thumbs up/thumbs down ratings. I wonder why it isn't used more often.

Star ratings have problems with compression of scales at the top and bottom. You'll never know which item is someone's favorite (or least favorite) with star ratings, because typically there will be several items with the maximum or minimum number of stars.

Pair-wise comparisons are also more fun and easier for users. When I'm doing star ratings, I often find myself trying to remember what star ratings I've given to similar things that I liked a little more or a little less so that I can try to be consistent.

Pair-wise comparisons probably make more sense for items in similar categories, though. It makes a lot more sense to pick a preference between two novels than it does to pick a preference between an ice cube tray and a camp chair.
I assume then that you only travel at walking speed when passing cars waiting at a red light on the other side?

By the way, it's people projecting absolutist opinions just like you've done here that have led the the travesty that is the Rikers Island part of the justice system - where four hundred people have been imprisoned for two years or more without being charged.

Stop injecting your own biased talking points into other people's stories and show some empathy.

> I would assume blame if I hit one while riding or driving.

What a nice, safe assertion to make from the comfort of not actually facing a murder change based on that assumed blame.
Design systems that rely on human conversation instead.
Quoted from article:

“You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods,” the Terms of Service state.

This is what it takes for the company to start monetizing seriously. I certainly expected it. Facebook did this like 20 times.
600 Upvotes Later: The Story of Our Product Hunt Launch
Damn, that was a thread I always wanted to reply to but totally didn't manage to in the end.
I assume part of the problem is that it is hard to quantify successes or wins in defense.

What is a good way to protect against ransomware? Symantec buries the lede with the answers (possibly because of conflicting business interests) which are

1. Limit end user access to mapped drives

2. Deploy and maintain a comprehensive backup solution

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/ransomware-dos-and-don...

But really, how do we justify spending thousands of dollars on hardware? I hate myself for saying this but there are real risks of doing too much as well. We could have our own mini tyrannical regime of secure computing a la the TSA security theater.

Effective user education is challenging. Even developers are prone to use elevated user permissions where none is strictly required just for the sake of convenience. I know I've found myself right-clicking visual studio and clicking "Run as administrator" reflexively after just a few months of working on ASP.NET and IIS.

This is a little off-topic but I imagine the whole funding offense vs defense might be a little more "natural" than we like to admit. Imagine you're a defense manager and there's this other guy who is an offense manager. Just as a football analogy, how do you justify your team's worth when the other team says that there is no good way to quantify the worth of the work you're doing and there is a good way to quantify their team's work? I guess what I'm asking is how do we put a dollar and cent value to defensive cyber security? Can we just ask "How much does the business stand to lose if we lost all our data to ransom ware or worse to a competitor?" or would business think that is overreaching?
Whatever positive you will have to say about devices will be tainted by the fact that you got them for free.
> The game right now - as this article, this mail shows - requires you to learn about finance systems before you even start playing the game. It's a game where the rule book is - from this pov - too long and already uninteresting.

Given that Starfighter's business model seems to be helping filter programming talent for recruiters, filtering out developers who aren't interested in programming financial systems is a good first step. My day job involves understanding the finance "rule book" and translating part of it into something that developers can understand and build to. But, even with my translation, the developers still need to be capable of understanding a certain amount about the "rule book" so they can delivery code/functionality that actually fulfils the requirements.

If a developer isn't interested in (or capable of) doing that, they're not going to be of interest to someone who's looking to recruit developers to work on finance systems.
I don't use or know anything about Snapchat, but the article makes it sound like this update to the policy is a complete 180 on one of the service's major selling points. That is indeed scary.