skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article is good, but it underscores how fast and catastrophic China's collapse is.

- China's total debt risen to 346% of GDP in 2015. http://seekingalpha.com/article/3852886-chinese-debt-problem...

- China exports fall 11.2% in January, imports down 18.8% http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/14/china-releases-trade-data-for...

- China’s $6.7 trillion bond market is flashing the same danger signs that triggered a tumble in stocks http://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2015/10/10/...

- China Capital Outflows Rise to Estimated $1 Trillion in 2015 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-25/china-capi...

- China's Net Capital Outflows Probably Hit $113 Billion In January http://www.actionforex.com/analysis/daily-forex-fundamentals...

- "Chinese banks will lose approximately $3.5 trillion of equity if China's banking system loses 10 percent of assets" (all of its reserve would be gone) http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/10/kyle-bass-china-banks-may-los...
Probably small. China's financial system isn't entwined with the US/European system as much (the Fed buys bonds from the ECB, and vice versa). Commodities will be hit the hardest, because China will stop importing them.

Alan S Blinder estimated that a very severe recession in China would affect the US GDP by .2% So that kind of gives you an idea.
Messaging is eating the app store: New Tribe app growing 80% weekly
That was my impression too. I'm not an expert on Windows hardware/devices but from what I hear the Dell XPS 13 is an excellent machine if you don't want a MacBook. Not even mentioning Dell tells me this guy misses a few things.
There are other books on R programming: John Chambers published "Programming with Data: A Guide to the S Language" in 1998 and "Software for Data Analysis: Programming with R" in 2008.
Anybody find a download for the dataset? Would prefer to take a look at it locally.
Interesting point on (1). I wonder if that could trigger relaxed repatriation taxes for corporations in the US. Bringing a few hundred billion home would be great in a liquidity crisis.

I wasn't thinking of (2) that way, but in that case you're right that southeast asian competition is a bigger factor. If cheap manufacturing leaves, China would need to shift to consumer growth, which American companies thus far haven't really cracked (except Apple to an underwhelming degree.)

An interesting aside on (2) would be if a trade-protectionist president is elected in the US. This would re-prioritize from cheap manufacturing overseas to better jobs at home—triggering or accelerating what you were talking about. The New Yorker had a great piece today on how both Sanders and Trump are of that mindset.[1]

(4) might be a case of six in one hand, half dozen in the other. Turned out that the US government did (indirectly) hold all that mortgage debt when it bailed out the banks. That said, it looks better externally to institute QE to bailout companies who backed bad debt than to print money to pay off your own debt.

Either way, I'm not sure we are or aren't at a crisis yet, but they also haven't fixed some basic structural problems.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/22/trump-sanders-a...
Are there any DVRs in the consumer space that aren't terrible? I bought a Dahua based on some recommendations, but in the end am disappointed.
I think if you are spending more than 10 hours per day on your laptop, price shouldn't matter.

On a side note, you've missed the retina thing, it's making a true difference.
> the government prints it's own money. Thus, when there is a credit crisis the government just recapitalizes the banks with freshly printed Yuan and sells off the bad loans at a discount.

This has been tried by many governments and has a well-established track record as a disasterous solution. I believe the following is a well-established consensus in economics (though I may misremember some details):

Printing money on this scale doesn't add wealth to the economy, it just vastly increases the number of yuan available to buy each unit of actual value, increasing prices. For example, if you were in a universe of 10 people with $50 each in currency, and one day that increased to $500 each, you wouldn't be any wealthier: You couldn't buy any more; the numbers on the price tags would merely increase by a factor of 10 - inflation.

It creates high inflation, even hyperinflation, which has further consequences for savings (whose value is greatly reduced as prices shoot up - your $10,000 no longer can buy anything), receivables (which lose their value just like savings), people on fixed incomes (your pension's value drops just like savings), investment (what good is an investment that loses value quickly just from inflation?), interest rates, exchange rates, and international trade (when your currency is worthless, and is expected to lose more value tomorrow, few will take it as payment for anything).
I feel compelled to bring up how cheap, modular and abundant bad-ass second-hand thinkpads are. Not to mention that even the new-generation keyboards are amazing, and put the shallow crap on my macbook pro to shame.

The money you'd spend on even a 'cheap' macbook pro will get you something solidly built with a nice screen that's plenty fast for devlopment work AND money left over for an extra battery or 2 + a brand new fat SSD + 16 GB brand new RAM + a nice dinner (maybe even with a date).

Just be careful not to get one from the awkward phase recently where they didn't have individual clicky-butons and this strange ceramic trackpad.
I am not saying you're wrong. I was hoping there was a way to provide more security that I overlooked, however that doesn't seem to be the case.

Most people likely use their dominant hand, probably thumb maybe pointer. In this threat model, someone lifts your phone and opens it with a fingerprint. Assuming they can completely replicate a print and get one (fairly non trivial assumption) they could probably get through with 5 tries.

Genuine question: How secure would you rate:

* TouchID

* 6 char password

* numeric 4 digit pin
The new ThinkPads are indeed awful, get the X220 aka the last good one. That should do you well until something worthwhile comes to replace it (maybe HP?)

- Last old-style ThinkPad with great build quality

- Last one with the classic keyboard

- Small form factor

- Sandy bridge i7, still kicks butt because it's not undervolted (check the benchmarks)

- up to 16 GB memory

- 10 hours of battery with a new 9-cell battery (+ tlp package on linux)

- Linux or Windows works great
The ghost cities are indeed filling up, at least last time I read about it. You'll probably still have problems with misplaced building sprees when you build at that scale, no matter what. But it doesn't seem like a real crisis
The root cause of 08 financial crisis is not simply 'subprime loans' that can't be repaid. It's because of trillions of derivatives that those banks hold, and lack of liquidity when banks are making wrong bet.

China doesn't have many complex financial engineerings as US did in 07/08.
Leo’s Red Carpet Rampage
Brute force beats premature optimization
Why should senior engineers balance trees in an interview?
With the exception of me missing that they were not scare quotes but rather direct quotes, I understood all of the referenced text. I just wanted to point out that the way it is written is not the best way to help inform the general public about cybersabotage and espionage campaigns. While using such language directed towards an expert crowd for giggles doesn't do any harm it contributes to the general atmosphere of panic to tell a general audience that Russia and Iran now have "the secret formula for the most deadly version of the virus". My parents don't know for sure that that virus won't kill you, computers are very scary for them, they might think stuxnet is in their car trying to kill them now.
Famous last words, we live in a global economy now.
The declining software quality is nothing more than a meme. None of you you seem to remember the horror that was 10.0. Or 10.1. Or 10.2 Or...
That gets posted every time we publish our stats. It was an...entertaining read ;-)
It was broader than subprime and derivatives even. It was a general real estate (housing) bubble. Home prices became massively inflated and the various investments tied to housing came crashing down. A similar result can be expected in China when the music eventually stops.
Because incompleteness.
Yev from Backblaze here -> Not ALL the hard drives, but yes. In fact we explicit told anyone that was out buying hard drives for us to leave some on the shelves for the average consumers going in to the stores, hopefully they listened.
He is a great scientist. I think he is a bit naive in politics. Maybe going to US was what he wanted and was good for him. Nobody knows.
Fear of Women’s Chest lead to the Discovery of Stethoscope: Rene Laennec..
http://goo.gl/P7xc2s
Free Software Download
Buy bitcoins and ammo
WORLD'S CHEAPEST SMARTPHONE: FREEDOM 251 TO Launch IN INDIA AT RS.251($3.66)
I've heard others say that, but I don't understand: Other than the 2008 recession, which was a much worse one than its predecessors, what is any worse than earlier periods?

If you are thinking of 9/11, before that we had the Cold War, against an enemy many orders of magnitude more dangerous and damaging.

I almost think that conservatives who sell crisis, to justify all sorts of things from civil liberties restrictions to wars, have unfortunately been believed.

I do think our government has functioned extremely poorly since 2000, as the GOP has put ideology before responsible governence. I know people will think I'm partisan, but how else can you characterize voting, multiple times, to not only shut down the whole government but actually trying to make it default on its debt?
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It's not my job to pick a definition but Twitter's (and other social sites'). In fact, they already did (defining "hateful conduct"): "You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease." Pretty basic stuff.

If it was my choice, I'd pick a wider definition, accepting that there will be an area of uncertainty and errors. However, I think that it is still far better to exclude some people (for a while?) than to e.g. subject many more people to constantly being called pejorative terms (including implications to being a slave, an animal or an exhibit)/belittled because of identity/violently threatened etc.

You could also see it this way: up to now the officially used definition was in effect that nothing is racist/sexist.
re: statue of limitations - if we are talking exponential levels of difficulty to crack vs. exponential increases in computing power (Moore's law) I wonder whether "we won't have the computing power to crack this for X years, so a statute of limitations of (X-1) years to solve this means that we are functionally unable to answer the question within the allotted time" becomes defensible as a reason to call something "impossible", i.e. it's improbable to solve during the statue of limitations
The American media seems to jump at any opportunity to dismiss China as an economic threat. It makes us feel more secure but leads to a public informed only about one side of China's story. Namely the part our ego can handle. China has regularly surpassed the US in number of cars sold since 2009. China also holds more US debt than any other country. Another way to put that is the US government owes China over 1 trillion USD. This, I believe, is the real reason the American media trips over themselves to write stories that sooth away the nagging fear that China is, or even already has surpassed us economically.

Edit: more interesting facts.

- China's percent GDP growth is more than twice that of the US. (7.4% vs 2.4% in 2015)

- China's government has $3.9T in cash reserves vs the US' $434B.

- China has twice as many children enrolled in primary and secondary school and 50% more undergrads than the US.

We can only say but, but, but for so long.
Ah yes, that worked great for Asimov.
I am surprised that the author did not consider Dell. I T410i user, but I will not be buying another thinkpad based on the current line up. Plus I have many issues with Linux drivers. Windows is no more reliable and I am forced to move on. Mac is great but the inability to modify is bugging me. I have a MBP also.

Of course, nothing beats a PC but its tough while travelling or when you just want to move around while working.

Micheal Dell making the company private will be good if he planning to focus on making quality hardware like Dell Developer Edition XPS + Project Sputnik, which is an interesting project. But still needs to mature.

So if I have to buy a machine today, I am lost. There is a need for quality machine for developers as we spend long time with it. It needs to be durable, light, matte screen(its very tough to get that now a days), low heat, good keyboard (mechanical like old thinkpads), good driver support for Linux, decent battery. PLUS have a higher score on iFixit. I like the rating of XPS 13 @ https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Dell+XPS+13+Teardown/36157
When price go up it doesn't mean a it's a bubble.

Getting loans is way harder/regulated in China than 06/07 US. Currently 25+% down payment or 70% for 2nd home is required. -- Comparing in 2007 banks only asks for 3% down.
No that's not it at all. The fundamental problem is that everyone wants to live in the same few square miles of London, exacerbated by the fact that London property is seen as the new Swiss bank account by ultra-rich foreign investors from let us say less than stable regimes that might simply annex their wealth one day.
I love my ThinkPad X220 and highly recommend ThinkPad X series.

I remember the day UPS delivered it. I had a flash drive with a Debian 6 image ready to be installed, didn't even boot up the windows to check if everything was OK.

~2.5 years after using it for about 10 hours per day USB ports started to randomly disconnect and reconnect it was very annoying.

I had no idea that ThinkPad X series has 3 years of warranty and still cannot believe that Lenovo sent someone to my house (3 days after I contacted them!) and changed the motherboard it's basically a brand new laptop. FYI, bought it directly from lenove's outlet website for ~$700.

My thinker is ~4 years old and it's still one of my most beloved objects in this world.
Callbacks, arrow code, error handling, and the daily shifting sands of the JS landscape really pained me when I was first getting my bearings with node but I was determined to build a continuous deployment server with it until I was happy with my feature set and comfortable with node. I was going to be building the system no matter what, but I figured it was the best time to learn node and that the async-ness of the language would be a huge benefit (it mostly was).

Eventually, I found my rhythm and I now really like node (it's been three years). It has a lot to do with picking packages that are stable, or at least have responsible leadership, and a modicum of documentation. You get used to minimizing arrow code, and you learn to pass errors until you run into that one obscure darned library that throws them (or leaks them) and you have to write a bunch of stuff to seal it up.

The deployment system runs great, and I really like writing tiny to medium sized worker applications, parsers, scrapers, and web services with node. I find running node in production to be a bit of a chore compared to Python, PHP, and Java- but like all things JS it's evolving and I'm still learning.
Yes the transport issue is a big one for the US, however I'm talking globally. It's myopic to simply look at the US when talking about things that affect the US. The US doesn't grow its own food, and we should keep that in mind when reading stuff like this.

Rather, I'm trying to take a look at these percentages of farming workforces by country: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS and trying to see what is this new monster of globalization + automation going to do to countries like Egypt, Pakistan, and basically any country that registers anything over 20% on that website.

It's my opinion that the next 20 to 40 years are going to be formative when it comes to introducing technology that could radically change a country's class system - Automated transportation in the US being that technology case study. Others will look to the US to see how and if a technology that is developed in large parts in the US is allowed to take over US jobs. At what rate does the it take place? Will there be limitations? Will it be mandated by your Congress? What will happen to your economy?

There was a really good AMA on reddit recently about the economics and ethics of automation and when it came to transportation, the writing was one the wall: it's going to get worse before it gets better. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/45k2pv/science_ama...
China holds more US treasury bonds than any other country. How are we not intertwined?
I got my XPS 15 from two weeks ago from JB HiFi on Elizabeth street (Melbourne), and $1000 cheaper that what you've been quoted ($2999). It's an awesome machine and everyone in the office is envious - to the point that we'll probably get more soon.

At the moment, the only thing that doesn't work yet in Debian Testing is the wifi... but I'm happy to wait - currently on a Ethernet-to-USB dongle.

Edit: oh, just noticed you were after the 13". It's nice, but I'm pretty damn happy with the 15"
|Plus I have many issues with Linux drivers.

Which is unfortunate, since Thinkpads used to have the best support for Linux in earlier generations :-(
I'm not sure I get it? Why not just buy a Macbook and install Ubuntu? you get the nicely designed hardware and don't have to run OSX if you don't want to.
Well, I did add that I do have a desktop that I use for more demanding tasks.
I guess it's the matter of doing the right thing on right machines.

Though, I do understand there are plenty of people out there who requires a laptop with decent capabilities. A $300 machine that "surprisingly usable" can be a good compromise in some use cases.
Agreed. My personal laptop is a Pixel with Crouton to run Linux for development.
So all the FBI has to do is desolder the flash chips and hope it was a weak passcode?

Seems like they're just hoping to use this as an opportunity to set a precedent. Never let a serious crisis go to waste?

Also hasn't Apple been able (and previously willing) to unlock pre-Secure Enclave phones for law enforcement for... ever?
> You keep switching between legal and normative requirements.

If I did so, it was a mistake. My reference to the 4th Amendment, for instance, should have said "how the 4th Amendment ought to protect us". I did not mean to imply that I am trying to predict what warrants the justice system will or will not grant.

> You have a fringe understanding of it

I think I mentioned the 4th amendment just the once. I have been trying to stick to normative arguments.

> The point of a search is to gather evidence, requiring the evidence that would be the result of a search is obviously a non-starter as a system.

I think this is a point where we truly disagree. I think a system can function in which some evidence that a search will yield results is required before the search is conducted. I do not think that the evidence must be airtight. Note that I am speaking about what I think is possible and just and right, not what the law says now or the justice system does now.

> The only way to read this in light of our previous discussion is that saying "I'm in ISIS!" and then shooting up a bunch of civilians is insufficient to prompt a post-mortem search of the attackers' affairs

Did the shooter say she was "in ISIS", or that she pledged allegiance to the leader? There might be a difference in this case. I have read that there is religious significance to a pledge of allegiance in ISIS's theology that might make a pledge indicative of ideological alignment and a membership "in ISIS" indicative of being in actual conversations with ISIS.

> Bravo sir, I have been well and properly trolled.

Please, let's try to be civil.
That would be the thing right? Clearly they can compute their marginal cost per subscriber, and they know what the lifetime value of a subscriber is, so they budget what to spend on EC2 infrastructure and movies at Sundance and still meet their net income goals. They would also know how much difference it would make if they needed to add or reduce their EC2 footprint.

Sadly I don't expect them to share what those costs are. I have always felt that Amazon could, in theory, always out compete with NetFlix with their Amazon Prime Video because they would only have to charge the marginal rate for the hardware. However to date it seems like the content contracts have kept NetFlix on top.
> If we want a language with fast loops we have to rely on C or Fortran and forget about vectorised notation.

Fortran (Fortran 90 specifically) got vector notation 20 years ago.
Is it right that China owns a lot of its own debt AND a lot of US debt as well? And also heard that China supposedly has the largest gold reserves in the world, dwarfing any other country in comparison. Could that count for something?
Well, the VAIO Z returns soon after a brief hiatus. Maybe look into those?

[0]: http://us.vaio.com/vaio-z/

[1]: http://us.vaio.com/vaio-z-flip/
But, as Schrodinger says, this is not about your fingerprint; it is about a bit of information you have that the government does not have: which of your finger(s) this device knows about.

"A bit of information you have that the government does not have" is a password.
Sidenote: Fingerprints should most certainly not be used as passwords at all and only serve as usernames (imo).

Mostly because it's pretty hard to change your fingerprint which is a desirable feature for passwords ;)
Haha so true. And then the mix of chronology just to mix things up...

"But Jean-Denis didn't always live a comfortable life in the suburbs. The first seven years of his life he grew up with his grandparents in Transylvania. The potato crop wasn't always good, and the long winters taught him about patience. A trait he's been needing in the search for the MH370."
Lots of discussions do. The trick is not to post while heated, or at least to edit the excesses out.
>Personally I prefer using the caps-lock key as control, which can be set in the system preferences on a mac.

Actually that can be set on Windows as well. But my fingers know the bottom-left corner, and Ctrl-ZXCV would be much worse from the caps-lock location. It also messes up the symmetry; I use right-ctrl a lot as well, usually with arrow keys.

Which is another thing the Mac keyboard control gets wrong without plugins. Sigh.
nature is so ingenious, i love it. (exo-)skeletons serve as both structure (anchor points for muscles) and protection (absorb/transfer energy that would otherwise rip up soft tissue). here, it's showing us that there is no reason that exoskeletons have to be rigidly shaped to fulfill these two purposes. this is a dynamic solution for a dynamic problem.

("full" disclosure: i did an internship with bob full many moons ago =)

another interesting place that we see this is in modeling locomotion itself. our intuition tells us that it takes active control to walk or run, and that's the way we try to build robots. but nature tries to leverage passive dynamics as much as possible (see andy ruina's work in this area: http://ruina.tam.cornell.edu/ ), and by doing so, minimizes both active control and energy use.
Google has terms and conditions to be listed in search?
For now, thankfully.
But go dynamically links against libc by default