skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
US Soldiers in IRAQ are being warned against reading wikileaks
> The program is not designed to create profitable businesses, it's designed to get the unemployed doing small scale businesses that will support them and make then un-unemployed.

I both agree and disagree with this: a business that feeds one man and his family is profitable and is also a success.

I've seen it in action personally: My father went through this program about 7 years ago and is now independent, pays substantial taxes and is therefore a 100% success in terms of what this program seeks to accomplish. I am certain that every cent spent on getting him started has since been recouped.

A big VC style payoff cannot be the goal, because the government does not take a stake in the business. Instead they're looking to create long-term stable livelihoods.
Japan style stagflation? Japan has been suffering deflation during its recent period of stagnation. Indeed, the Japan central bank has long worked hard to insure that inflation in Japan remains roughly 0%, and they have on average succeeded at this, with some years the yen increasing in value and some years decreasing - but generally these changes cancelling out. Indeed, many people like Milton Friedman have blamed the bank's insistance on 0 inflation for playing a role in Japans economic problems.
> The next batch of units will ship no later July 30th, 2010. Based on your pre-order date (11/24/2009), you should expect your WakeMate no later than 07/30/2010, but probably significantly sooner.
Yes, when Oracle buys Google the absolutely bog-standard BSD license text accompanying this open source project will spontaneously transmute into a mystical poem written in ancient Aramaic. This poem, when read backwards, will summon the demon Yog-Sothoth from the depths of Larry Ellison's underpants to remove my right to use the code however I wish provided I retain the copyright message and license text somewhere in the accompanying documentary materials.

Oh wait: no it won't.
I am up for it. Where do we start from?
You are incorrect that this is California. From one message at the link: "Thanks for the advice, but I don't work in California."

California law is pretty clear, if you do it on your own time, on your own equipment, it's yours. Most other states have a "unless related to something your employer does, or maybe might do, or they feel like" clause, but California does not allow that.
If you're on a Mac, Option+<hyphen> gives you endash. Shift+Option+<hyphen> gives you the longer emdash.
[Edit: I wish people would stop voting down the parent. It is a legitimate point of view and down-voting is supposed to express a lack of value, not disagreement with content]

Child pornography is basically the trump card of the pro-censorship argument. Nobody is in favour of it, everybody thinks it's awful, even really passionate freedom-of-speech types often think an "except for child pornography" clause is an allowable compromise.

But the truth is that anybody who wants child pornography on the Internet can already get it, if they try hard enough. Many of us who've worked for large web companies are aware that one of the first forms of abuse that happens to any service that allows image uploading is that it starts getting used to distribute child porn. Shutting down domain names will do nothing because the people who deal in this stuff have been having their shit seized and shut down for years already.

By the same token, DNS is not essential to preventing censorship. We can send each other IP addresses through social networks, distribute shortlinks to servers that change every hour, or any one of a hundred other methods.

The balance to strike is: is censorship of material we think legitimate happening often enough right now that we want to make it easier to route around, knowing that doing so will make it harder to censor stuff that we find universally objectionable? A month ago I'd have said no, but today I'm not so sure. And that's a dangerous consequence of the actions the US government is taking in response to these leaks. By cracking down, they risk provoking a revolution that will make it impossible to control these things in future.
>> * Low latency GPU-CPU interaction via L3 cache
> Intel's GPUs kinda suck so I'm not sure how much performance
> you're going to get out of them even with the so called
> "low-latency" interconnect

Sure, Intel's GPUs are not as good. But latency and interaction with the CPU cores is the main problem at the moment for parallel programming out of corner cases like HPC or multimedia. You show animosity on Intel, this architecture has not yet been released.

> On the AMD side, they have better GPUs, but unfortunately
> Ontario (and I believe Llano as well) don't even share
> northbridges, leave alone L3 cache.

Llano is not the real deal with AMD Fusion. That will be Bulldozer and Bobcat. Everybody reports at least Bulldozer will have L3-level communication.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3865/amd-bobcat-bulldozer-hot-...

I would question AMD's gamble on OpenCL and lack of tools compared to Intel who acquired MIT's Cilk and absorbed other projects. Also I haven't seen anything close to Intel's SIMD sort algorithm yet (with regards of technical concepts, elegance, and sheer record-breaking performance.)
Freenet / other darkwebs trivially demonstrate that child porn isn't so easily stopped. And it's not like taking down a website participating in illegal activity is actually doing anything to stop that or enforce the laws around it; it at best sweeps it under the rug.

As jrockway points out, let's keep this discussion to the specific issue at hand. If we generalize we go to very undesirable consequences.
> And you were complaining about someone else's hyperbole in an earlier comment?

That's just it - people toss Marx's name around casually. I wonder if they've actually read his stuff? Or studied history? I can't find a semi-prominent ideology that's done anywhere near as much damage the last 100 years.

If you said, "Nazi ideology destroyed much of Europe and cost millions of lives," that's not hyperbole. If you go through and point the vast amounts of atrocity under communism, things like a full 1/3rd of the population being tortured to death in Cambodia under the Red Khmer ("Khmer Rouge" in French), the Cultural Revolution in China which killed three times as many people as the Holocaust, the massive armies of slave labor used in Russia... it's not hyperbole, that stuff all happened.

> your economic model is independent of the government's control.

This is not the generally agreed upon consensus of anyone - Marxist, free market, mainstream or alternative economics, political science, civics... I can't think of anyone that thinks that way.

> In most of Europe (eg. Sweden) there's socialism, but not a lot of fascism.

Sweden's a mostly free market country with welfare programs. That's not socialism, unless you've redefined socialism to mean "anything the government does," which doesn't seem right.

Denmark is the most socialist country in Europe, but:

(1) Most of that is the government-controlled energy industry.

(2) They have the second lowest growth rates in the developed world, and their model is in danger of collapsing if and when alternative energy obsoletes their energy deposits, unless they somehow stimulate entrepreneurship and growth in the state-owned system (which has never been successfully done).

Even then, it's a mixed economy, not pure socialism. The last pure socialist country left is North Korea. The next closest countries to the socialist model are probably Cuba and Libya.
tl;dr version:

"There are things you can do in one state or online that will get you in the fucking klink for years in another state. That Jury wanted 25 years of a man’s life because he sold CD-ROMs they didn’t like. They wanted tens of thousands of dollars from him after he got out. Meanwhile a woman stole images from Playboy, Disney and who knows else, sold those same CD-ROMs by the truckload, and made millions."
I have contract work that needs doing. Email me your CV and rate.
>And installing it elsewhere isn't exactly rocket science.

You install random convenience utilities on all of your production servers?

I didn't think so.
While I obviously agree that child porn is unacceptable, who do you propose stops distribution of it?

The FBI? ICANN?

There are always going to be bad things in the world. Maybe we should be trying to focus on the problem at the source (mental health, law enforcement, etc.) and not when it's too late online.
Firefox 4 beta is already faster than Chrome.

http://arewefastyet.com/
I wouldn't bet on inflation. Inflation is most directly caused by people's expectations about inflation - and the market's expectations as seen in the difference in price between inflation protected securities and securities that aren't inflation protected (the TIPS spread) is still that inflation will remain low.
>We’re still a long way from real wetware (direct brain-computer connections) . . . but last week an NYU professor had a digital camera implanted in his head. It’ll be many years (if ever) before that goes mainstream, but the line between the mind and its tech is growing finer.

So, really, here doesn't come the wetware. But the author is correct to disclaim "if ever." The simple reality is that medicine isn't anywhere near the point yet where sticking something in transcranially is anything apart from a major, expensive, and risky operation (the NYU prof's camera implant is transdermal, but stops well short of the cranium). The popularity of breast augmentations and the like may prove the societal acceptance of elective surgery, but until medicine has advanced to the point where you can do a brain job as routinely and safely as a boob job, it's not going to happen.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1185478 said the first batch was supposed to ship last March. I'm glad they've reined in their marketing to reflect reality (they also added a compatibility list, much more honest than the "all phones" claim which was never feasible).
As I understand it that is the case. When the payments from the compulsory unemployment insurance end in less than ninety days you are no longer eligible. You get six months of unemployment benefits from the insurance if you have worked for twelve months, the maximum is a year if you are younger than fifty (just to give you an idea of how long you can expect to get unemployment benefits in Germany).
Based on that logic we should leave any child porn that's available online up there to avoid governments over-reaching into our privacy?
Who is your ISP?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_cache_poisoning has definitely been exploited in the wild. A friend of mine in AWS had to investigate cache poisoning attacks happening on certain ISPs a few years back that were hijacking images.

Edit: Are any affiliate params or headers being passed to the forward page?
You're arguing with the wolf that it's a little bit unfair to eat the stray sheep. The wolf retorts that only 25% of the sheep were eaten, and the entire 75% were allowed to safely return to the flock. That, and the system generally benefits everyone - wolfs and sheep. Don't you realize the futility of your argument? The wolf will continue to eat the sheep because that is what wolfs do, and they will come up with any requisite PR to make it look decent.

The only answer is to stop being meaty while within the reach of a wolf, and stop being within the reach before you're about to grow some meat.
On the topic of Erlang books... does anyone know what the story is with Geoff Cant's "Mastering Erlang: Writing Real World Applications"?

It was due out around October from memory, but seems to have slipped into limbo.

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Erlang-Writing-World-Applica...
I worked on the redesign of a Lasik machine in 2005. As part of this work, I spent a few weeks just watching lasik operations in various locations around the US. I saw several events that made me very wary of the procedure-- specifically, a technician accidentally setting a microkeratome to the wrong size and thereby detaching the corneal flap. I also talked with several patients who were back for 3rd and 4th sessions to fix problems that had occurred previously. It appeared to me that while generally the machines work well, there were occasionally drastically bad outcomes, often due to human error.

Overall, my impression was that the surgery is more risky than one is led to believe. I can't give you any good statistics on how risky it is, but I would not consider doing it myself until I saw credible statistics that suggested that the error rate was very low. From what I've read, approximately 1 in 20 lasik patients are not satisfied with the outcome of their surgeries, and this is from one of the big lasik doctors[1], who I presume would have a strong interest in describing the risks as minimal. But as far as I know, there haven't been any large-scale studies of lasik outcomes.

You might also ask the doctor what machine will be used to do the surgery. When I was watching surgeries, the doctors generally thought that the Visx machines were the best, but they were excited about the arrival of "wavefront" machines that can correct for variations in the geometry of your eyes. I bet that's mainstream by now.

[1]: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/103194.php
I recall reading, at one point, that the FBI is the largest distributor of child pornography in the united states, with the goal of identifying individuals who are interested in it and either keeping an eye on them or arresting them.
Just for the record, I'm not saying that my concern would stop me supporting a non-ICANN DNS system, but I don't think that "they can do it anything" means it isn't something worth thinking about in any topic about moving the internet away from governments, even if only regarding DNS systems.
Any recommendations for Doctors around Bay Area?
Hmm... I uploaded a version of their own icon, but flipped horizontally ( http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/6198/robbyn.png ). It couldn't find it.
It did find it when the image was not flipped, though.
The Thing with the Two Heads
I'm not proposing anything, nor saying that we need to stick with ICANN because of it, just thinking about the problem out loud.
Ok Comments on site are now back on
You know, porno is just an excuse for the government to do censorship. Before Chinese government cracked down the majority of opposing voices on the Internet, they did it in the name of anti-porno. They officially banned Google.com because they found porno there (but we all knew the real reason).

Australia learned the trick and started to do the same. Looked at how screwed it is now.

Don't be naive.
Ask HN: Can you help me find a Kevin Hale article about logo design? 
I remember an article about how good logos should look good in one color, as a silhouette, without shading. I thought it was by Kevin Hale and posted at Particle Tree but I can't seem to find it. Can anyone help me find this? Thanks.
FYI, the price doesn't seem to matter. A bid for $.50 isn't being fulfilled either. I still don't understand why a bid higher than the going rate isn't being fulfilled. :-/
Can people stop reading opinions into what I said please - I said that it could be a problem, not that I think we need to keep government control because of it...
I have a question: is there an age limit for Lasik? Can someone who is, say, 80, get Lasik?
Also: can one get Lasik if they have some glaucoma ?
My employer's been trying to hire a tech writer for two months now. You happen to be located in Philly?
Those graphs compare only the JavaScript runtimes on two standardized tests; hardly a measurement of overall browser performance.
I'm now in my 40's and I no longer wear contacts because the long hours staring at a screen caused too much dryness.

Other than taking lots of breaks, what else can be done to reduce dryness?
Unpopular and inconvenient as it might be this is a valid point and certainly one that needs to be considered. Freedom always comes at a cost, which isn't a bad thing as long as we don't forget that cost.
I did this at a Japanese megacorp (which are, ahem, not historically known for their embrace of flexibility in employer/employee relations), as a condition of my accepting their offer of employment. My bosses were supportive.

I also got them to OK my ongoing participation in OSS.
Predicting computer architecture in five years
I don't think OP was referring to JavaScript speed, but to user adoption. Chrome is rising fast and Firefox share is pretty stable. Chrome's got the momentum.
Less Software - Lessons from the Front Line of the War on Bloatware
You can use http://www.sumooptimize.com to perform you A/B test and even multivariate test.

For the test creation, you just need to point to your website address and you will be given a preview of your website on the visual editor. And you begin your test creation using the visual editor.
Startup Quote: Arianna Huffington, co-founder, The Huffington Post
Web of things

that term will not take off
ACMA - Online social networking: Could what you’re doing online be illegal?
You're ascribing enormous competence and foresight to the people who are themselves virtual slaves to the company. :)
Why is this being downvoted? While a position that I disagree with, it wasn't presented in an unreasonable way. This is the exact same question / concern many normal people will have, and what politicians and law enforcement will use as scaremongering. Might as well face the question here...
Good article.

I'll nitpick by disagreeing with his assertion that asset allocation decisions weren't analysed for skill vs luck. We were certainly analysing our performance into decision types and their results for skill or luck. The results were pretty conclusive. We started to (mildly) overweight our skill decision types and underweight our luck decision types and the result was some very successful portfolios for our clients.

I can't say whether all investment houses were doing it, probably not, but I'm pretty sure the houses known for their quant work would have been.
You can do not just twice as much but 200 times as much when you have a good partner.

- Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff)

http://startupquote.com/post/2102350240
This post got me started thinking about computer hardware, and I made some predictions for the next five years, along with technical explanations of what they mean and why they're likely:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970884

tl;dr summary: More cores; optical off-chip interconnect; network-on-chip interconnect; 3D integration for better yield, as well as memory bandwidth and latency; tighter integration of CPU and GPU. Widening gap between server and desktop/mobile processor designs. Also solid state drives, but that's pretty obvious.
SumoOptimize add a new feature - Split URL test
SumoOptimize has released a new feature - Split URL test.

So now, apart that you can perform A/B, Multivariate test, you can perform Split URL test also
The cost imposed in dealing with (and maybe falling to) a major concerted denial of service attack should also be included -- if Amazon went down for a single hour during holiday season (or even was slower in responding to customer queries), it would cost Amazon a lot more than they could earn in money and goodwill from wikileaks.
I've seen a number of employer agreements indicating that they own everything that you do, whether on the clock or not.

Would those companies want to have ownership/copyright assigned to everything I do automatically, even if I created child pornography, or created some IP-violating software, or broke some US-export restrictions? It seems a pretty dangerous position to take - "we own everything you do" - which assumes that everything I do is legal/safe in the first place.
I had blade-free Wavefront LASIK about 3 months ago. I had very bad vision (-7.5, -8.0) and it is now perfect. The procedure was quick and painless. The doctor said that I had large pupils and that this would make halos likely - he was right, but they are getting better rapidly and I very rarely notice them now.

It was expensive but worth every cent.
Asymmetric Relationships Between Your Users
Some don't enforce it. If a claim is not enforced it loses validity over time, so check with your lawyer - these will be some of the best $500 you spent.
This must be awkward for government workers who have already read the cables.
There was no indication that this is harmful to the bees - just to the honey.
Mayhap 'beseech', m'lord.
I think they are upset because of the honey, not because of the bees.

Honey is normally concentrated flower nectar after all, but these bees are making concentrated corn syrup, which I have much easier ways of getting.
"Fuck" as an exclamation is not sexual language. You could argue otherwise, but you'd just be being literal-minded.
WikiLeaks site's Swiss host dismisses pressure to take it offline
A sexual joke would be appropriate? Not IMO.
Yes, exactly. Censorship is censorship.

Child porn is illegal because its creation damages the child. Its continued distribution is not the primary problem, the fact that it was created in the first place is. So the solution to child porn is to find it, use good-old-fashioned police work to find who made it, and use the legal system to remove that person's access to children.

No need to break the Internet and restrict free speech for this very-special case. Let's spend the money we want to spend on censoring the Internet on more detectives, so that child abuse can be eliminated!

The same goes for "counterfeit goods" or whatever the DHS used as rationale for seizing domain names. Don't break the Internet; just buy one of the fake watches, ask UPS where it was shipped from, get a warrant, and bust the guys! Right?

(I fear that in the US, though, the problem with child porn is not that children were abused, but that people like something in a sexual way. Consider the person who was mailed a box of comic books that depicted "under-age" children in a sexual context. The government wanted to put him in prison for 15 years. For receiving a box of books.

"Sexting" is another example. It's doubtful that one can abuse one's self, but the government still wants to put people in prison for it.

What I find most amusing is that all people look pretty much alike when naked. I don't understand why naked pictures are such a hot-button political issue. It seems like the government just doesn't really want any depictions of sex [children, adults, tentacles, or otherwise] around at all.

But I digress.)
Jason, you are right. The title, and perhaps the content is classic Calacanis-HN link-baiting. But, quite frankly, you make it too easy.

Naturally, I am not surprised that you think that someone that disagrees with you (and actually voices an opinion), is a 'whinny, entitled kid'. Further descending into personal attacks about the likelihood of whether or not I complain about a bunch of tiny things, is also not surprising and I will not take them personally.

The unfortunate reality is that when you are a public figure, like yourself, and you spew consistently 'controversial' comments, you are likely to get these types of responses.

The next time I am in Santa Monica, although I don't know when that will be, I would love to come to Mahalo and have a look-see. I don't think that will change my opinions based on what you portray, but I will keep an open mind.

Perhaps the next time you are in Jamaica, I can show you around.

Not because I don't like your stances on many things (specifically your opinions on the ways to conduct business), doesn't mean we can't be polite without getting personal. Disagree while being agreeable.

As a general rule, I tend to wish everyone all the success in the world. But, to be quite honest, it seems to have gone to your head - although, I don't know you personally, so that could be a superficial judgement :)
This is them being dicks! What are you waiting for - Larry Page to come and take a dump on your lawn??
Completely off topic, but I typically open ~100 tabs – there's nothing wrong with that. It's just how I work most efficiently.