skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Casinos have an edge on blackjack. It's not a symmetrical game. They choose to not use the edge to its fullest extent sometimes, up to a point where it can be locally profitable to play if you count cards. That doesn't change the fact that they can at any given time choose to shuffle the deck after each hand, which will return the edge.

If we're being technical, shuffling actually lowers the house edge a bit if you are not counting cards, but completely restores the edge if you are trying to count cards. This happens because for each hand of blackjack it is more likely that the last card played is a high card (you are more likely to draw again on a low card), so the remaining deck is slightly lower on high cards on average if you don't shuffle compared to shuffle, and high cards are good for the player, so not shuffling is better against non-counters, but a lot worse against counters.

They most definitely have an edge on slot machines. The fact that there are at times local maxima that favours the gambler doesn't impact the overall edge. This is the same as lotteries with a carry-over jackpot etc. The jackpot is paid for by other gamblers who played against really bad edges, not the casino.
How is this possible? I'm sitting here with an i5-4690, 32GB RAM, Firefox 50 with about 50 tabs open 1.5GB RAM usage, about half a second to get a usable new tab, and it crashes at least once every few days.

Literally the only reason I'm on Firefox is tab groups, but my performace is basically identical with tab groups disabled.
Should you socialise with your colleagues outside work?
Games are the target niche - but really - anyone can use it. At the end of the day - it's just a chat product - that has some gamer centric features.
I think the different between redis and webserver like nginx is that all the operations in redis is almost the same, it is about less than 1ms. However the request to nginx fall in a widely range, some request need 10ms, while some request need 10s. Since nginx need do some file operations.

So the single model work well for redis, but it doesn't work well for nginx, since if there is a request in nginx that is blocking for about 10s, people can't tolerate this situation.
Facebook messenger even tricked people into being the default SMS app on Android... And given all the permissions they ask, they can read the phone number themselves.
Answered in asm.js FAQ:

"Q. Why not just keep optimizing JavaScript JIT compilers instead?

A. No need to stop! But JIT compilers have less predictable performance based on complicated heuristics. The asm.js model provides a model closer to C/C++ by eliminating dynamic type guards, boxed values, and garbage collection.

Q. Isn't it inefficient to have to run the code through a JavaScript interpreter before compiling?

A. Because of the directive prologue, a JavaScript engine can immediately recognize asm.js code at compile-time and immediately compile it to assembly language, with no need to ever run the code through an interpreter."
A retail bank would already keep tabs of ALL changes to an account anyway, if not in this format, then in separate logging tables. They don't just keep only a final tally.
It won't apply outside the USA. International people never get such payouts, yet get the same treatment
Absolutely, but one tool is better than two tools. If it's good enough for most cases, then great, stick with the std library. It makes testing it and deploying it easier. When it gets more complicated, add Nginx.
If they lie about this in general(and enable blanket surveillance), it would be relatively easy to detect , and hurt Amazon's brand.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

— (Mis)attributed to Edsger Dijkstra, 1970
We use the same phrases in German, "fünf vor halb" and "zehn nach halb". It's quite useful, there's a description for every five minute offset to the hour: five/ten to/past the half hour or hour, quarter to/past the hour, and of course the infamous "half to". That's before adding in regional time formats, which mostly require reconstruction of missing words ("viertel sechs" is 5:15, "dreiviertel sechs" (three quarters six") 5:45 in my area)
Ask HN: Whaw are funny things in JavaScript from your view?
For me, the hostory of JS kind of funny, that designed in 10 days (as they said!)

or like []+{} or {}+{} or something else...

What are things from your view that we can make jokes by them :)
Obviously everybody knows that the house as an edge. The question here is if that is fundamental or an implementation detail, ie can the casino give up its edge in certain situations and still be considered legalized gambling.
UK Government is breaking the law by collecting everyone's internet data
Not for long - https://blog.discordapp.com/year-end-teaser-search-screen-sh...
Fellow dane here. I think the direction the mainstream political parties are moving is a national shame.
Snow in Sahara
The efficiency challenge with serializable transactions comes mostly in the context of distributed transactions.

Netezza/IBM had a reasonably efficient implementation. Instead of broadcasting individual locks, they shared ordering relations between transactions as they were discovered.

Essentially, when transaction A reads a record and concurrent transaction B modifies the record, then B serializes after A (even if B's modification occurs before A's read in real time). These ordering relationships form a a graph. If a new ordering relationship between transactions causes the formation of a cycle, then some transaction must be aborted.
Funny, that is the same guy that in his youth cold called a CEO asking for free samples and he got it.
NetBricks: A new network function framework based on Rust
If you're talking about HEVC torrents, you should admit that they look like ASS.
Are you genuinely arguing against helping people in need?
9 ways to save on closing costs
Best of the Best 2016 Top 13 UI/UX Design Posts for Reference
Like, say, Prolog?

A = [a | A]

Prolog implementations provide destructive operations and mutation, but here above this is done with unification only. Arguably, you could say that unification performs mutation (but only once).
And you think human beings should be acting on instincts, or what?

Where are you going with this analogy, besides comparing people to animals in a zoo?
> I don't know any of the people involved, and I don't remember this. But reading the first few paragraphs have me siding with Glenn.

Well, that might explain why you side with Glenn, since he's guilty of tactics like this himself. Which is exactly why the website was set up.
Tapdo – the ingenious button. Maybe the smartest way to interact with technology
At large companies like MS, Google, or FB you can roughly divide security into "infosec" and physical security. The latter org will run everything from the door guards and video/badge infra to executive protection services and employee investigations. I am guessing that Mr. Katz runs this org at Google.
> If I were setting up an automated abuse-report-receiving system that could automatically disable accounts, I would run some sort of filter for "is the account reporting the abuse itself a newly created account, and/or one with suspiciously low and non-human looking usage patterns?".

That does not help against these kiddy vandals mentioned in the article.
> the costs (filtering & moderation)

or, don't do this, and make seeing comments optional.
Professional DevOps Training in Bangalore
My Firefox instance has recently picked up the nasty habit of every time I move to a different tab, the web area is white save for a spinning grey loading icon in the center for a good half second. I've never seen anything like this before recently and it's a real bummer on speed
Fifa: the video game that changed football
As I said, it's driver issues that make the Linux desktop/laptop experience horrible, not the diversity of desktop environments.

I don't think it's a good idea for Linux advocates to deny or downplay the effect that driver issues have on the overall desktop/laptop Linux experience.
> good journalism in general pisses people off

Not so much as bad jouirnalism
Surely this is the other way round: plug-in electric vehicles are starting to take off on batteries, having the upper hand in the short term. While hydrogen hasn't quite taken off because of the handling difficulties.

I think it's more likely we'll see a renewables-to-methanol/ethanol solution than a hydrogen economy. There are various proposed processes for this, including the USAF's nuclear-to-jetfuel one which claims $6/USgal amortised cost.
"Illegal refugees". What a lovely phrase you've come up with. I'm sure people will stop fleeing a war if you tell them that it's illegal.
Very interesting read.

For people who know the history and believe in human stupidity to repeat its mistakes, there is much to reflect. There are people who think that, whatever happens, they will be on the safe side, but you never know how things might evolve and one day you might be on the "unsafe" side.
Storage. 1TB+ SSDs are still quite pricey.
The consensus seems to be that hydrogen fuel cells have never been competitive for cars, so any future reduction in battery costs and building out of charging infrastructure is only going to make that worse. So it's interesting that you think they have a short term advantage.

There's also plug-in hybrid cars which would fill the gaps that pure EV don't yet cover better than fuel cells, by allowing short commutes or restricted city centres to be pure electric with no emisions, while still allowing for quick refuels on longer journies and defeating range anxiety.
Ask HN: What are the attack vectors for a mobile app?
I've got an idea for an app that would require it to keep a private key. If this key were compromised it would have severe security implications for the user.

I'm wondering how possible it would be to make such an app secure. What attack vectors should I be thinking about? Is this something that should only be attempted on a hardened handset... or not at all? Any ideas or feedback greatly appriciated.
yes, exactly why it's a hard problem to solve.
I feel like this could be fixed very quickly if someone wanted to invest the time and was a bit on the chaotic side. 1) find Skype IDs of Microsoft managers, known people, big businesses with ties to MS 2) create 20+ fake accounts 3) start reporting abuse...

It's the same issue as in any big system - people on high enough positions are isolated from all the crap normal users have to deal with. If you can interrupt their business call though... I expect the fix will be coming soon.
Yeah, Postgres's implementation of SERIALIZABLE is not efficient (at least compared to the default).

I'm not really sure how any implementation can be particularly efficient. It seems that either an implementation would have to maintain a huge number of specific row locks or you have to start locking whole tables.
The idea of using different parts of your hand to control things is interesting but very few people want one more thing to wear on their hand. They could make it a standalone device but then it becomes a glorified switch. Wonder who their primary target market is.
Hangouts is not a bad idea actually. I think the chrome plugin actually makes it look like a decent desktop app too (?)

I very much prefer not to have to use a browser window for chat/voice/video.
Do we really need a new language for this? We already have things that run on both server and client, javascript being the obvious one, where there's already a blending of computation for webpage rendering happening (pre-rendered on the server then the code for updating sent to the client).
The problem IMO is the limits. Humans can only read so many tweets and follow so many people. Beyond Dunbar's number (150 - 1500 depending on selectivity) they just blur into a big mess. Twitter's added some tools for curation (likes, user lists) but they aren't really powerful enough to filter tweets in real-time. They need something like Reddit's automod or a machine-learning filter.

The point of Twitter & other social media is empowering the user; they can encourage community members to step up and take civic responsibility, but Twitter's responsibility as such is to provide the platform rather than to run the show. I guess they could openly declare Twitter to be part of the DNC platform, but that would lose a ton of users (although not so much in terms of content). They're better off following a policy similar to Facebook of attempted neutrality.
Informative about the Eastern heavy cavalry, thanks!

But it was 500+ years between the fall of the Roman empire and heavy cavalry owning the battle field in Western Europe?
> One story, all credibility, huh?

Yes. The "story" made specific criminal accusations.

> You must live in a world where nobody is credible.

Publications are held to a different standard.

> New York Times... but that doesn't necessarily negate all the work

It just means you can no longer trust the publication.

> putting it on the same level as Breitbart

Here we go. Tell me what's wrong with Breitbart?
I can recall at my first job (muble years ago) being considered a bit flash because I used Mixed case in my Hollerith statements for prompts ;-)

The Fixed code format went away a long time ago (it was to fit on a 80 col punched card) any one using F77 and later in the last 30+ years will have used free format

And the MAGIC is REAL unless declared INTEGER - professional Fortan programmers declare everything! (well apart form loop indexes I j etc)
Uber drivers call for blockades at Paris airports
Hmmm... I think this article is politically motivated and misrepresents the evidence in a number of ways. IQ is a real, accurate measure of ability- it isn't a propaganda tool designed to legitimate inequality. IQ isn't a perfect measure of intelligence, but it is a pretty good approximation. IQ is around 50-80% heritable, which explains the inequality of mental ability and therefore income.

There are problems of 'old boys' clubs' which keep top jobs limited to middle class networks. Highly intelligent kids from middle class families still feel intimidated from applying to the best universities. However, it is important not to let partisan biases affect your views of this topic.
sometimes the action is not illegal, but it will still looks bad after discovery

So, are we discussing ethics or legality? If Google's official policy is one of "we like to skirt the law well into looking-bad territory, and that is fine" then they really need to abandon their "do no evil" motto.
How to Discover Hidden Value in Your Customer Journey
This is very true. OP can contact me for some MS employee Skype usernames. :)
I've been looking for a Skype alternative since the security of Skype was weakened after it was acquired by Microsoft. I've had my account stolen multiple times because their support has changed the primary e-mail address of my account, I had to use the same method the social engineers used to get my account back. Since then I've avoided sharing anything slightly sensitive over Skype, as chat history is synced with anyone who accesses your account.

Finding a replacement isn't easy, but I've used Wire (wire.com) for a year now and find it good enough feature-wise, and excellent security-wise. It has its quirks and can be a resource hog at times (the desktop app uses Electron IIRC), but it's worth switching from the security disaster that is Skype.
Resubmitted as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13227480, currently on front page.
Show HN: MaChat: An open source chat server written in Go
Unimaginative, non-technical rant. Please find the bottlenecks, and provide a technical solution. The code is open source for you to read, and your patch will be constructive and helpful. Your idealist blog-post, not really that helpful.
Original in Russian: https://habrahabr.ru/post/316912/

Original submission by author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13225939
Scientific polls have participation and subjectivity flaws, 'expert' opinion begs the question.

No one addresses the obvious weaknesses, they just say "this is the best we have", but then act with confidence in the predictions, rather than admit we don't know.
It's for gamers, but it's just chat and voice. I think it's smart of them to capture a niche because they have integration with streaming to Twitch. For example, it hides the names of contacts/server invites when you're streaming video online.
Hey Hackers,

what do you think about our product? Do you have any ideas for use cases? Do you have ideas to improve our product? We are keen to know your opinion.

Best
Markus
It's an e10s (multiprocess) thing. Shame that you don't percieve the overall performance as improved, since that's something that e10s promises. But I know that the tab spinner stuff is something they're working on actively, hopefully it'll improve with time.
Personalize a tela inicial e aumente o desempenho do Android
> This complaint seems pretty silly. Just taking a single point [...]

You cherrypicked one point out of the complaint, hence you cannot say anything about the validity of the entire complaint. Do the other points, summarized by randomdrake [1], also seem silly to you? And when considered as a whole (not as individual points), does it still seem silly?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13226767
All of these anecdotal benchmarks people are doing are silly because you're overlooking so much detail:

* SSD or slow spinning disk (makes a massive difference if your computer is swapping out tabs to cache).

* Have the tabs been loaded or not (a new browser session will open placeholders for the tabs without loading the site, but an older session will likely have dozens -if not more- of those sites loaded)

* Frontend code. Are we talking low footprint sites like HN or dozens of JS and CSS heavy sites like Facebook, Office 365, etc)

* Similarly to the above, media content. Streaming videos? Flash? etc.

I bet you a 100 active tabs of MS Excel Online would perform crap in any set up while 100 inactive HN tabs would stand a better chance of not crippling your whole system.
While time is down, it's the time of a hypothetical user entering the command, not the time at which commands actually affect data in the table. I think that's pretty intuitively clear to the reader, especially since the article is about counterintuitive behavior.
>400 tabs
>like gMail and two copies of Slack, a gDocs or two, sometimes the godawful work LMS.
>under 10% CPU, under 2GB of RAM

Any proofs? Stock firefox can't go further than 100 tabs, and you can't do literally anything else on your computer at that time.
> c. Any person who violates this section is guilty of a crime of the fourth degree and subject to the penalties therefor, except that the amount of a fine may be up to $50,000, and in the case of a person other than a natural person, the amount of a fine may be up to $200,000.

This para seems to say that it applies to any person, including corporate persons.
If they were smart grown-ups they would be advertising the hell out of this: there's a lot more than $10 million to be made by allowing players to believe that a sufficiently smart "system" can beat the house. A really smart marketer would realize that a court case like this gets printed up in the newspapers and shared on websites (meta!) and might intentionally try to lose the case in a spectacular fashion.
Real Time cloud VMs is a thing -- soft RT using Linux, running on OpenStack. There was a talk about it at the KVM Forum (http://www.linux-kvm.org/images/0/0d/01x03-Jan_Kiszska-KVM_R...) although I'm not sure if anyone is really using it at the moment.
> Wow this tab madness... I want one row of tabs, and I want to see the page title on the tabs. I get an itch when I get enough tabs that they just become little favicons so I can't see what the tab is doing (By that time there is a 99% chance it's garbage and I don't need it- but now I don't know!).

I have the same feeling, but judging by all the others keeping hundreds of tabs open I feel like I am missing out on a big reason.

Could anyone explain why they keep all these tabs open? None of the sites I frequent do I care about page load times, plus often I would want to refresh for latest news anyways. Most documentation sites are very fast to load. I guess I could see SPA apps that auto update as being something to keep open..

Do you just type into the address bar and switch tabs based on url or tab title thus not caring if you can see the titles or not?
So you were okay with Steve Jobs personally stealing your ideas but not with his assistant doing so?
More eadable as in "I can read english"? Yes.

More readable as in "I want to read code fast"? No.

I much prefer C style languages over Pascal style languages.
You could fund a kickstarter, say...
And why is this newsworthy?
Teamviewer 12 Crack Patch Full License Key Serial Key Keygen by Zarah Khan – WHI
Unfortunately mine is usually climbing to 2.5 Gb with 20-30 tabs if left open for several days. As a side effect it starts using 12% CPU constantly and any script heavy page load just sends it into (Not Responding) state for 30-60 seconds. uBlock and LastPass only now, too lazy to reinstall all the other addons :) .

But it is still better then Chrome performance vise. Chrome is just generally laggy and unresponsive often (no idea why).
Yeah I suppse more like the tree on, but I was kind of hoping to see it stacked in a horizontal row of tabs still, which i suppose is really silly since screens have gone from wide to wider to ultrawide so there is ample space on the sides.

Yes, I'm using chrome and edge, only because FF sucked at the time I switched and even though I have heard good things about FF recently I tend to only switch every 5 years or so. So I guess I'm not really a power web user, as I seem to rather not switch browser than be able to customize it.
It is obvious for me that Satya Nadella never uses Skype (or Lync, cough cough, Skype for Business). If he were using Skype he would write an e-mail like this Bill Gates rant: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an-... about Movie Maker.
So the emergency ruling has been classed as illegal, but the 'Investigatory Powers' act has not.
Python Django based online cop system
My reading of that is that at least one party has to knowingly use the marked cards. If neither party is aware that the cards are not symmetrical, there is no unfair advantage and the game is fair.
Thiel really did see a lot of things long before this election took place, notably a libertarian may feel the need to dismiss the wage stagnation and energy crisis as temporary aberrations, but Peter didn't factor that information out of his model. In hindsight I was originally fooled into believing some weak-form Kurzweilian junk of unremitting technological progress. Now we know we have a deadly fight on our hands if we are not to stagnate.
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I found "resetting" my timeline to be helpful. Post-election the entire Twitterverse felt like an indignation machine, but then I realized it was a machine I had made.

This Chrome extension worked perfectly for me: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-unfollow/m...

I've unfollowed everyone (eight years worth of following!), and have been slowly rebuilding the timeline. Strangely cathartic, and the FOMO fades quickly.

It's also nice to start from zero again, rebuilding your interests and filling your universe with thoughtful people in a deliberate and considered way. I wish more social networks made un-collecting as intuitive and organic as following/collecting.
Before e10s this would likely have been a temporary hang, simply displaying the old content until the new finished rendering.

That said, there are improvements for that on the nightlies.
Requiring phone number or credit card is an extremely effective way to have a large class of (legitimate) users nope out of your service
An officer has authority to sign contracts on behalf of the company.
If you have 100 tabs doubtfully all of them are relevant. That's more like a user problem.