skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What do you think about the laws that were passed in the Jim Crow era? Suppose the United States had Jim Crow -esque laws at the federal law, would you support them because of "the stability that the rule of law gives to a free society"?

As you've said say you are not an expert on immigration rules; I can give you a super-quick summary: in 1965, they changed the law to allow non-Europeans to immigrate. But they made it so extremely restrictive that practically no one could immigrate legally. Their objective was to ensure the ethnic composition ("whiteness") of the United States didn't change significantly. Which is why I don't see a family coming here seeking a better life as morally wrong.
Changed formatting isn't a problem IMHO. You can ask git to skip whitespace changes, and you can (and should) enforce consistent formatting anyway to make history cleaner. And even if for some reason you don't want to do either - you can just click "blame previous revision" if you do encounter "changed formatting" revision.

I envountered it a few times and it was never a big problem.

The problem with comments in the code is - they have to be maintained "by hand", and they are often separated from the context after a few independent changes.

When you change a function called inside the foobify function because of another change request you will most probably forget to check all the calling places all the way up the callstack and fix the comments refering to foobify function. And then comments may start to lie.

I encountered lying comments a few times and it usually is a big problem. I started to ignore comments when debugging, and I'm not the only programmer that I know that does that.

I do think there is a place for comments in the code, for example for documentation of some API, but IMHO commit messages are the perfect place for explaining reasons of particular change, and I prefer not to repeat that.

http://cdn.meme.am/instances2/500x/4310914.jpg
I think people are overestimating the word "language barrier". People often forget that the language barrier is not a one-sided problem. Communication is a collaborative effort (unless we're just spying them). I bet that something like keyword spotting for commonly used 3000 words is already pretty feasible, and that would greatly reduce the language barrier. Perfect translation is neither possible nor necessary to induce mutual effort.

(By the way, I've seen so many US tourists in Europe who don't even try to speak a single word in their language. They don't seem to know that a simple "thank you" in their native tongue would greatly reduce the barrier and change their sentiment towards the US. In this sense, I believe that technology is more or less neutral to mutual understanding, because not knowing a language (or the idea that not knowing a language is acceptable) can have adverse effects.)

Edit: a few grammatical errors. Damn my Japaneseness!
A front-page article announcing that a piece of software (that just formats a usb with a specific iso) got added to the apt-get repository?

What am I missing?
Dude, come on. That's from George Mason University- basically a libertarian think-tank.
Why HEVC is even better than you think
That's GM.
it is just slow full stop. Had to sign up an account the other day, the signup process just repeatedly failed for no reason. Eventually figured out, "ahhh the 2mb background gif has to download before can signup"....

Same issue for logins
>There is definitely a pullback in using Python in performance critical conditions where Go seems to be making huge progress.

I work a regular gig, but also have a home business built on Django. I would do it as Dropbox does it- run the company on CPython2.7 and then CPU performance critical services on PyPy. GVR noted they have at least 1 thing running on PyPy.

I wouldn't personally bring another language into the stack unless it's absolutely unavoidable. When starting from scratch, I'd probably still go with Python.

...Or maybe Ruby. I'm starting to see the Ruby guys as being luckier than they think. You can run an entire Ruby shop and transition new services over to the Rubyesque Elixir. Which has significant benefits over anything the Python ecosystem has. I've never used Ruby but may give it another shot, due to Elixir's existence.
Warning Adobe Creative Cloud Deletes Data in Your Mac Root Directory
Sure, it's better - in the "pre-MT" and "post-MT" systems (although it's called "crowdsourcing" these days). For standalone MT, the output is just-about-recognizable; nowhere near the babel-fish-like gadget WSJ is presenting as "just about to happen."
> A restricted subset of your native language is something which you already understand, and learning to speak it is easier than a whole different language.

It's interesting to note that before machine translation, there have been attempts to try to standardize restricted subsets of English as a way of making it easier for non-native English speakers (for example "Basic English" and "Basic Global English").

However, I think both in the case of communication with non-native speakers and in the case of machine translation, it's actually not that easy for native speakers to anticipate what phrasings will be problematic.

These existing efforts have had the problem that reducing vocabulary can actually make the resulting language more reliant on things such as verb colocations that are actually harder for non-native speakers. Machine translation has an advantage that it can presumably understand a rich vocabulary, so it might be possible to get somewhat better results by using as precise words as possible while keeping the sentence structure simple. Still, especially with modern statistical machine translation, and perhaps even more so in the future with recurrent neural network-based translation, it may not be that easy to predict potential pitfalls in an attempt to work around them. It actually might have been easier to train people to get better results (at least for specific language pairs) with older, rule-based translation systems, since they were more predictable.

In either case, there presumably needs to be a certain level of accuracy before people can start attempting to tweak it by their choice of wording. I don't think we are there yet, especially for English <-> Japanese. I just tried entering "I'm not going to tell him that." in Google translate, and it gave me "私は彼のことを言うつもりはありません。" ("I'm not going to mention him.") This is a fairly simple sentence, with no colloquialism, and yet Google Translate fails utterly. This is much more concerning than something that can be easily worked around, such as not knowing colloquialisms such as ”じゃねー".
SSL and HTTPS Part II: a comprehensive (sort of) beginners guide
I think you will find tumblr is mostly porn
Compensation actually makes sense and is useful after receiving it. As diamonds are an extremely poor store of value, the only purpose it provides is a show of status, as far as I can deduce.
>On the second, I have little sympathy for the category of people who intentionally break a law and then cry foul when that is discovered and addressed.

So homosexuals put in prison because homosexuality is illegal in places (including the US not even 20 years ago)... no sympathy for them? OR... do you think not all laws are equal and that there are bad laws?
As much as we want to have equality between the sexes. This explains why we always end up with double standards. It is an asymmetric relationship at the biological level.
This guy doesn't seem to get what an 'accelerator' is besides a check. There are some valid complaints about Chile's bureaucracy to be had, but he's not making them..
@imaginenore's comment below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11103063) has a detailed list of the 29! new filters.
Except that it's not just a hidden folder in the root directory. It's the first folder sorted by name in the root directory...
Wikipedia creating search engine to rival Google
The argument that the Worse is Better solution is flawed imho is incorrect. It's far more perfect than The Right Way, its just a solution to a more perfect problem. Instead of increasing the complexity of the program decrease the complexities of the problem itself and you end up with a much more reasonable result.
People are animals, and I agree with facepalm that in many instances, it does boil down to economics. However, with diamonds, it seems as though many people are (in my opinion of course) overvaluing the utility of having something shiny to show off one's purchasing power.
So where does the money come from? The tenants?
People in tech are suspicious of mass surveillance because most people in tech got here by way of Science Fiction, which was in a dystopian phase when we were highly impressionable.
The change in demand for diamond engagement rings may therefore be explained by an
increase in need for such a bond because of the abolition of a cause of action for breach of
marriage promise. My guess, having apparently found a reason for the change in demand for
diamond engagement rings, is that many other mysterious demand changes could be accounted
for as well, given some though as to what the commodity might mean to consumers and some
exploration of the legal or other changes of the time during which the demand change occurred.

Interesting, indeed. Thanks for the read!
[I work at Mondo]

>at the expense customer experience and true security

I always call this "lazy security"[1] and it's what you get when you hire some security professionals to "make it secure". It's a mistake to separate security from product design, the two should inform each other to come up with a compelling product that remains secure. Separating them misaligns interests, the security team will push for a change that improves security irrespective of any impact it may have on user experience.

I think Touch ID is a great example of how a novel solution can improve both security and usability.

At Mondo we are committed to investing time and energy into finding these solutions, security at the expense of user experience is a last resort.

[1]https://medium.com/@danielchatfield/lazy-security-32acc31fbd...
App Stores: winner-take-all markets dominated by rich countries
I use ffmpeg for housekeeping stuff like converting videos from one format to the other, and cutting clips - mostly from the command line. Can some advanced users share if there is anything to look forward to with this release? Better performance? Some convenience features? Thank you in advance
A number of prepaid providers are offering data roaming plans now. See this list: http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/European_Union
> (the idea that not knowing a language is acceptable)

It's not? I'm in big trouble. There are more than 6,000 languages I do not know.
For comparison, Notepad++ has (https://notepad-plus-plus.org/) several crypto plugins and is FLOSS
The entire world*, sure.

(the part of it inside my social bubble; smartphone and internet connection strongly advised, other terms and conditions apply, void where prohibited.)
Our ancestors were drawn to diamonds and gold obviously because of their sparkle but also their immutable nature; no rust or decay.

But this modern spurn of diamonds reminds me of people who say "I'm a vegan", "I do Crossfit", "I don't own a TV" if you don't like diamonds don't get one.
This is an easy problem to solve, and others have pointed out what needs to happen.

1. Provide automatic contract and deposit protection flows into the middle

2. Renters and landlords should both be credit-checked and reviewed by others. If guarantors are necessary, manage that process and credit check them too.

3. Provide check-in/check-out inventories that can be ticked off and checked by all parties.

This is 90% of the value letting agents provide.

The rest is about better listings themselves: commute times to key locations; what broadband options and speeds are available in that location; the average price and food safety rating of local pubs, cafes, restaurants and takeaways; crime rates; ambulance response times; council tax rates (everybody forgets these and then gets surprised unless they move to LBH&F which has some of the lowest in the country); parking details and costs; night bus routes in the vicinity; voting histories in recent elections; and so on.

All of this data is out there, and easy to build tools for and it's the only way to make things better AND get rid of the letting agency model that needs to happen almost urgently.

Just providing a veneer over the letting agent? Doomed to fail like so many that have come before it.
JavaScript exploit allows eavedropping and premium calls on nearby Voip phones
Title is misleading since that bug only happens on some systems and will not introduce any remote execution.
This bug also has a Priority of 'high' and not 'critical', since you could actually just go back to the latest kernel.

Edit: I have 10 systems on this kernel and all of them are working.
Absolutely, imagine that you are applying for a government contract or position and that you are vehemently against (pick a topic) and have made a few comments on Hacker News about how bad this politician is. The politician pops up that you are minus on supporting them, maybe you do not get priority on the contract.
I hear what you're saying about Apple stores being focussed in urban areas.

Regarding problems that can be resolved by flashing the device, the same solution can be applied to iPhones BTW.
Menaje del Hogar
The article spins a yarn about DeBeers single-handedly inventing the tradition of giving expensive engagement gifts, but stumbles when it gets to talking about India, where it has to clumsily avoid mentioning that Indians have been spending huge amounts of resources on (gold) jewelry for marriages since time immemorial.

I find a lot of anti-diamond talk hypocritical. Folks who will drop a ton of money on a fast car that spends 99.9% of its life sitting in traffic suddenly becoming ascetics when talking about buying diamond jewelry.
> This is mostly a political issue.

Let us not forget the reasons for libav. The ffmpeg development process was having a lot of problems due to very controversial decisions that its lead dev was taking. The libav fork has resulted in a restructuring of the ffmpeg development workflow. In this regard, libav is about as important as egcs was to gcc.

Further reading:

http://codecs.multimedia.cx/?p=339
Ask HN: [UK specific] is the Y Combinator SAFE or an equivalent SEIS-compatible?
I'm hoping any UK-based HNers might have experience using "advance purchase agreements" [0] in early-stage funding. In my understanding these would basically be instruments akin to the YCombinator SAFE [1], and their benefit would be that they're compatible with the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS).

It would seem ideal to just use the SAFE (because it's a well-established document) but of course it's not clear whether it's advisable to employ these under UK law just like that. If anyone here has used them, or a similar document that's UK-specific and that they're in a position to share, that would be awesome. I'd be super-grateful for any and all pointers and advice.

[0]: this is a term found in a letter from the Treasury, who suggest they are compatible with SEIS, but there's very little information to find about them - https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/340079/Consultation_Tax-advantaged_venture_capital_schemes.pdf (section 3.26)

[1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/#safe
I think a lot of the marijuana and peyote drug policies were also "fear of non-whites" driven. It's a real thing; I agree.

To answer your specific Jim Crow law question, prior to the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendment, yes, I would support those chartered with the enforcement of those laws while seeking to change the law at the legislative level. (These are morally repugnant laws to be clear; the choice is between an orderly society with some bad consequences, or an anarchic society with different bad consequences. I choose order.)

After the 14th Amendment, those laws are unconstitutional, and I do not support the enforcement of unconstitutional laws.

Those states who had Jim Crow laws or even plantation owners who bought and sold humans; I can't understand it and can't support it, but it clearly was the majority point of view at that time and place.

This issue is running up against the fundamental challenge of democratic society: how to have a government that expresses and supports the will of the majority of its citizens without unduly restricting the freedom of those citizens who find themselves in the minority.
This post is basically a rewrite of this one from 2013:

http://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bullsh...

They could have linked to it I suppose.
Elixir is so interesting (to me) because if a company does adopt it, there's almost no risk. I always view tech from business-tinted glasses. Elixir is a winner from both sides.

It's built on technology older than Java. I'm not sure most people need what it offers immediately, but it's certainly a safer bet than most new things. Including CPython3 and Perl6.
> Remember that time Valve had a bug in Steam for Linux that would wipe the user's hard drive? [1]

Counter-point:

* Let's be honest, Linux is not a first class gaming platform. Linux is not going to be Steam's #1 platform. Whereas here it's an Adobe product on OSX.

* The Steam bug was triggered by the user moving ~/.local/share/steam. That's not something that users will be doing regularly. Whereas this Adobe bug wasn't caused by any uncommon behaviour.

> Developers don't have them because they understand the unix way and know they shouldn't be putting files there.

Developers are very definitly going to have dot-files. .ssh, .vim, .bashrc, .local, .gnome, .mozilla, etc. etc. If something wiped my SSH private keys on my desktop, that would be a massive problem.
The first comment starts with z-Stream releases are not reproduced by CentOS - you need to buy those

If it's in the kernel doesn't it have to be GPLv2? So only one person has to buy it, and they can share it with CentOS. Does CentOS have a special deal with RedHat that they won't do this?
Slightly off topic but the general hacker community seems to somehow missed it-- the creators of CouchDB formed a company and merged with the creators of Memcached, and the new company is called Couchbase. This is the best NoSQL database going. Memcached built in, CouchDB views, scalable (really actually scalable, not mongodb "scalable") etc.

I've long thought the hacker culture ignored databases and just picked something because it was popular (eg mysql) even though there were superior (objectively superior- we are engineers after all) solutions out there.

Erlang is one of those languages that is objectively superior -- I've yet to meet another language that does concurrency right-- yet many hackers just ignore it because it's not got java's syntax. Which is silly.

Don't make the same mistake with next generation databases.
Retail tech startup Salesfloor raises $3M seed round
The big driver for small diamonds (< 0.25 carats) is that the price of cutting/polishing diamonds has plummeted in the last 10 years. Before then, diamonds were predominantly cut and polished in Antwerp and Tel Aviv. The price (measured in $/carat) was around $80. 10 years ago, Surat, India started to dominate the industry, and the price fell to $10. It's common in Surat for a family to get a bag of rough in the morning from a company, take it home and have the entire family cut and polish the bag, and return it for cash at the end of the day. The result of this price drop is that small diamonds suddenly become profitable.

There's been other references to the Atlantic article from 1982, but the diamond industry has changed tremendously in the last 10 years. There's 2 good books to read about the recent changes: will find their names and edit this post with links.

* http://www.rough-polished.com/en/analytics/77889.html

Here's one book - http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-History-Cold-Blooded-Love-Affa...

Here's the second book - http://www.amazon.com/The-Heartless-Stone-Journey-Diamonds/d...
Compared to diamonds, gold is a very good store of value, especially when paper currency and governments aren't reliable, as it was in relatively recent Indian history.
I wouldn't exactly call the author a libertarian mouthpiece[0]. But I wouldn't call her an economist, either.

However, if this was truly a libertarian talking point, I would posit that libertarians would see the topic "Diamonds are expensive because of marketing, not inherent value." and think, "So what?" That's the free market. If the diamond has no value to you, don't buy the diamond. It's not a necessity.

Note that I'm not an economist and definitely not a libertarian.

0 - http://law.nd.edu/directory/margaret-brinig/
I'm not clear how that would be different to the top-down economy and moral pretensions of bankers and investors that we have now.

When phrases like "moral hazard" are used to describe gambling risk, "amoral" is hardly the most apt description of a system that actually tries to define social and political morality for the entire world of work and business.

The reality is that mainstream economics has always been more a branch of moral philosophy than of empirical science. It's a tool of persuasion that tries to propagate its values through rhetoric and the use of economic, political and physical force.

That's quite close to the usual definition of a priesthood. It's only "amoral" in the sense that the ethics of the priesthood are quite alien to those of many adult humans.
Could you share your experience with FFMPEG+ Lambda ? I ran into trouble with this when dealing with large files, especially when some of the files were being pulled off non S3 sources. Also what EC2 cores were you using. ?
The Norwegian Meteorological Institute Provides a CLI for Weather Reports
The Importance of Star Power in ESports Marketing
There are absolutely bad laws. There are also unconstitutional laws. I have no support for the latter, of course.

For bad but constitutional laws, we have a process for challenging and changing them. While they're in effect, I believe that if you're going to break them publicly, you should not expect to escape consequences.
I took a brick and mortar automata class a long time ago and a classmate who clearly wasn't reading the text before lecture, insisted the prof called it the "plumping lemma" because it was about growing wider strings. That might have been the only funny thing that ever happened in automata class, unfortunately.

Education by satire / humor is a sadly under-explored field. "A satirical approach to linear algebra"... not sure if I'd kickstart support that, or turn around and start running. In the eternal spirit of "anything that sounds interesting and impossible is a great startup opportunity" I propose that someone ... etc etc, you know.
> very controversial decisions that its lead dev was taking

I have seen this claim frequently, but have never seen an actual list of such (and that link doesn't supply one). I get they didn't like the guy, but what were the terrible things he was supposed to have done?
True. But still, I think the problem lies more in the fact that mathematicians skip too many steps in their prrofs (see another comment of mine) than the inherent abstractness of mathematics.
Looking at the sample newsletter, there seems to be more content than can easily be digested in one sitting, and it is hard to distinguish what is good from what is really really good.
Zuckerberg has a higher hit to miss ratio, it's true, but don't for one moment think that Facebook does a great job of acquiring smaller companies. You only have to look at Parse to see that even Facebook just can't seem to do it well.
> writing programs is actually equivalent to doing a mathematical proof

Only in the sense that writing in brainfuck is equivalent to writing in Python...
It's a little over the top, but I do agree that python has succeeded despite van Rossum, not because of him.