skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Don't the Mafia use tactics like this? It's a protection racket!
This is not 'printing a gun',

But it (kind of) is, specifically with regards to US law. I mean, that's the point. There is a huge market for AR-15 upgrade parts, and everything else can be acquired easily with no regulation.

And yes, this could be made at home with old technology, but it requires a fair amount of dedication and skill. Downloading a file and clicking 'print' is a significantly different process.
IANAL, but mere possession of an automatic weapon is prohibited, is it not?

I thought the idea behind the receiver for the AR15 is that with a slightly different receiver that the AR15 becomes an automatic weapon (aka. an M16)? Or are we talking about the semi-auto (AR15) receiver?
Depends on your jurisdiction.

Here in the UK, just being in possession of a home-made handgun is going to get you a hefty (mandatory minimum: 5 years) prison sentence.

Being in possession of part of a rifle or shotgun might be legal, depending on whether you have a firearms license for that particular device. But I'm pretty sure AR-15s are blanket banned (semi-auto rifles have been illegal since the aftermath of the Hungerford massacre).

Now.

Is it legal (or not) to merely download the 3D model over the internet in the UK? What if you, for example, printed it out ... but after applying a distortion that renders it unfit for use as the receiver of an AR-15? What if you've scaled it up by a factor of two, so it could in principle be the receiver of a 1:2 scale (large) copy of an AR-15?

(What if, in the USA, you download the file coding for the magazine and expand it to hold 30 rounds?)

Edge conditions: chewy!
Advisors have a 30-day half-life
Legally, I'd think this would be the same as if a gunsmith were to make a lower receiver for himself. If that activity would be regulated in a given jurisdiction, is there any reason printing the receiver wouldn't be?

This article doesn't really get into the question of printing then subsequently transferring a receiver to another person. Were that to occur, I assume that the person who printed it would be regulated in exactly the same manner as any other gun manufacturer.
Best unsubscribe I've seen yet - Punish Derrick
I'm not cheap ;)

But seriously, you requested that someone make the t-shirt, implying you were willing to reward the effort; I figured I might sell 1, and get, what, $4 for 20 minutes of work I did at 1:30am?
I think their recommendation system is too limiting. At least give me a random button so I can see what else is available besides the same 37 selections they constantly shove in my face. Selection is king in on-demand streaming. Some people like to discover their own style instead of wearing the clothes their moms lay out for them.
Beautiest privacy policy ever
Anybody that wishes to pretend that the legal line has been blurred will find themselves sooner or later in an excellent position to try to prove that to a very unrelenting judge.

If the legal fiction is that the lower receiver of that gun is the gun, then legally that didn't change so the method of manufacturing it is not relevant.

Hiring someone to produce it while obfuscating the intent is not gray, it puts you in the docket. The printing house is acting on your explicit instruction, and if they don't review the orders (hard to do, after all, you can't know each and every prohibited item) then you are still on the hook.

Trained machinist or 3D printer operator the change is only in the material of the produced item.

As for not being able to whittle that part from wood, there are many kinds of wood that are much stronger than the ABS wire that a 3D printer uses.

And if it can't be made out of those kinds of wood then it certainly can't be made out of plastic printed ABS (if you expect the gun to function).
And somehow we manage to outperform our office counterparts. PG talks about how some people can produce 10-100x more than others and that those who produce 100x should start their own companies. The idea is that you will be rewarded for your huge productivity with huge rewards. The flip side of this is that you could work a normal job from home and work 1-20% of normal job hours and make a decent wage with tons of free time.
If it's true that the widespread HN resentment over Google Apps[1] and other issues is overblown, then you must consider that the widespread HN excitement over Circles and privacy features is irrelevant. Regular users don't care.

[1] And you can count me as another victim, here. I'm frankly dumbfounded that they'd keep thumbing their noses at the users over this, and I can't believe they either 1) still didn't understand that this would be the first thing folks commented on or 2) don't think it's important. To me it just smacks of unprofessionalism.
The point is it's a bad rule. Making the line 10k is guaranteed to pick people soldily 'middle class' and not just "rich" people.

You seem to imply that a good policy would be to screw the wealthy people and let those of moderate means flout the law. I don't think it's healthy to have a different set of laws depending on a person's income.
The point was more subtle than that. It's not merely "most people" in this case, it's a public account for a celebrity. The overwhelming majority of people, and essentially all of the target market, have no earthly idea what his real name is and don't care.

Regardless of what you think about whether this is a good or bad rule (and I tend to agree it's a bad one), no one is served under any interpretation of the rule by disallowing celebrities from posting under their stage names.

Basically, if it's an exception to the rule, then it's a sane and well-justified one. If it's a subtle edge case, then so be it. I think it makes very bad evidence of hypocrisy on Google's part.
Contracts tend to be as vague as possible when it's in the author's favor, no?
The products are, but considering the "dance monkeyboy" moment, he is a failure as a human being.
It's interesting to me to see the antagonism from the staff towards the customers. Focus on the customers is, in my opinion, one of the reasons why Amazon has been so successful compared to traditional bookstores.
Yeah, because Facebook is SO private, and completely devoid of impostors and stalkers.

Honestly, if this is the worst that anti-googlers can come up with, well... it isn't much.
The receiver doesn't make any difference at all whether it's full auto. Or rather, the legally designated lower receiver contains the firing mechanism (which can be full or semi auto), but the receiver itself is just a piece of steel and you can change out the actual mechanism.
Interesting insights here: http://www.quora.com/TechCrunch/How-do-you-get-TechCrunch-to...
Richard Dawkins has done more for women that the femiskeptics have ever done.

"Doing things for women" has absolutely nothing to do with feminism. That's like claiming that someone isn't racist because they've "done things for black people", and shows a total lack of understanding of what sexism (or any sort of discrimination) even is.

Just like racism isn't only about black people, feminism isn't only about women, and "doing things for women" does not exonerate you from being sexist any more than having a black friend, or giving money to a historically black school, makes it completely okay to be racist.
Ask HN: How do you prefer to differentiate people at a networking event?
I've been to some networking events where people have different colored dots on their name tags. Green for developer, yellow for designer, orange for founder, blue for marketing, etc.

Do you personally get use out of this at networking events? Or is it too confusing to remember what all the colors mean?

Have you seen any other effective ways at networking events of helping people connect with who they truly would like to connect with?
6 Week Starcraft Experiment
Facebook is set to pass $4 billion in revenue this year, thanks to Credits
> But it requires a fair amount of dedication and skill

To specifically address that point, you could use a 5 axis machining center and a standardized control sequence ('G-codes') to do the exact same thing.

I think the bigger difference is the amount of funds that needs to be put on the table for the machine itself.

Once you have the rig set up for a part the major operations are mounting the blank, hitting 'start' and removing the finished part (assuming it can be made in one pass).
And Xbox runs the Windows kernel and .NET on PowerPC.
Yes, Italians are some dangerous drivers. Much more so than French, swiss. Roughly on par with Andorrans.
I see your point, but I am more thinking if 3D printers became household item then the cost, time, and specialized knowledge prerequisites that exist currently to make your own gun are all gone.
Unfortunately those sex references kinda took away any chance of me taking what you said seriously.
My company (Fohr) pays people to work on the ray tracing side (path tracing actually, we have the first physically-correct real-time virtual lighting and camera system).
We have four queues, DVD + streaming (for a family of four). We may ditch DVDs altogether, and switch to 2 separate streaming-only accounts. Maybe this is what Netflix is hoping will happen.
Oh, thanks. F.lux doesn't work on my 11.04 Ubuntu netbook, probably because of display drivers.
I still think the separation of the DVD and streaming businesses was to "firewall" the cash flow of the DVD business, so that content providers couldn't use that against the streaming business in negotiations. This would severely limit the amount of money that a content provider could charge Netflix streaming.

But it's fairly obvious that this plan was too qwikly put in place, without proper due diligence. They didn't even bother to get the rights for @Qwikster on Twitter BEFORE announcing this, which was a huge PR blunder. 2 weeks ago, they could have bought the name for $1000 from this pot-smoking kid, but now I think it's worth at least 6 digits to them, just to end the embarrassment.
Google Wallet released in the US -- but how is it better than contactless cards?
My biggest problem with WebMD and other sites like it is that they often give me the following kind of result using their diagnoser: "it's flu, allergies, or a rare and deadly cancer, see a doctor".
Where I work we had contractors that were contractors because they didn't fit into company wage scales, i.e. they made too much money. Some of them had been here more than ten years. After that suit all of them were let go or converted to employees at substantially lower wages.

Thanks, Microsoft permatemps. Litigious bastards.
That's the second time I've botched their name while trying to type it correctly. Guess I'm proving my own point.
I really think they should define 'work'. Creative work is much different than, say, assembly of radios. A lot happens when you're away from the computer.
The problem is everything wrong with the Netflix changes makes sense... if you're Netflix and hellbent on selling off your DVD business. Of course they didn't consider the users in all of this - the whole point is to shed Quikster as quickly as possible, probably by selling it to Redbox or Amazon or something.

That's why we can't have a shared queue or keep the same name or keep the pricing unified on the bill. All of this is simple to do if Quikster is a subsidiary but I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix already has a buyer for Quikster lined up. These changes have the stink of "buyer requests".
As a fan and customer of Amazon, I am sad and disgusted after reading this article. I will have to serious reconsider my Amazon Prime membership, which expires in a couple of weeks.
Show HN: Bootstrap your startup with high end gigs
Hey guys, we just launched a platform to match top startups with high end projects. We're focused on supporting startups that would rather take on a short term consulting gig than raising a round of funding. We'd love some feedback. Thanks!
>(What if, in the USA, you download the file coding for the magazine and expand it to hold 30 rounds?)

The assault weapon ban--the federal law banning (among other things) magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds--sunset in 2004. Thirty-round magazines are perfectly legal once again, except in a few states, like California, with their own assault weapon bans.
My father is a truck driver, and he refuses to work with Amazon for many of the reasons listed in this article. Amazon also refuses to pay detention time for drivers that have been at their facility for more than two hours (an industry standard).
In Massachusetts you can't hire someone as a contractor that is in effect an employee. It's really tricky to get right. But they're extremely strict about it so employers can't evade payroll taxes, workers' comp., etc.
Netflix has handled this so badly for customers and investors, and so obviously badly at that, that I can either believe they are incompetent, or that there are hidden factors (lawyers) at play.

The conspiracy theorist in me leads me to suspect it's somehow related to cost of licensing content for streaming, and negotiation positioning with Hollywood. That by burning the DVD bridge, Netflix can somehow lower costs dramatically or make their position in negotiations better. (But don't ask me how.)

Otherwise I have to believe Reed Hastings picked the wrong week to start sniffing glue.
Well, I think it's inevitable at some point to switch to ray tracing; it being much simpler. Moore will do it's job in a couple of years, and maybe some architectural changes will help the change. The article talks about primary ray rendering vs. rasterizing, but I'm not sure if secondary rays (reflections) are feasible at all with raster engine. Thus, the complexity figure could also mention number of bounces and the advantages of ray tracing therein.
New Contributors to HugeCollections
Full Tilt Ponzi
Another flaw in this assumed "advantage": It assumes that said documentation is actually created and maintained, and apparently assumes that doing so is free, or nearly so.
Gruber can be very partisan, but this is one of his better posts, written respectfully and intelligently with none of the partisan slant people often complain about. IMO, this is an example of why he shouldn't be banned on HN.
How Different Groups Spend Their Day
They are (sort of) if you precompute things, and fake it in the shader. See Precomputed Radiance Transfer for one technique.
Garcia Electroconstrucciones
Ask HN: What were the 'hot' dev environments c. 1999
I know that today, almost everyone who reads HN understands when I say 'rails', 'node', 'clojure.' "Hi I'm a textmate wielding rails hacker in the valley...". These are considered the 'hot' technologies that are used today. I want to know what the technologies were pre-bust, in 1999, in the days of pets.com et al.
That is really cool, gkoberger. Thanks for sharing. :)
I thought about a legible signature. My reasoning was that it was too specific. When you're drawing an icon of a coffee-cup, you're drawing abstract shapes that will hit as many people with a 'coffeecup' concept. Compare this to a life drawing of 'coffee-cup on a bar in Starbucks at 9pm in Seattle on 5th avenue'. Who gives a shit who's signature it is?

By drawing an abstract shape of signature I'm letting the user fill in the gaps ('yay, it's my signature'), without forcing a specific context on his mind ('oh, it's John Doe's signature').
SEC Proposes Ban on Magnetar-Like Deals
I hate it. I think it's desperately unfunny, and I thought so when it was submitted a year ago, and when it was submitted 20 months ago.

Juvenile, stupid, and guaranteed to make me never go back.

Do people really think this sort of thing would attract a customer back, or make them think twice about leaving? It would just make me absolutely certain I made the right choice. Completely unprofessional.
Well comparing GINI across similar sized countries: India (36.8), Russia (39.9), US (40.8), China (46.9), Brazil (49.3), India is the lowest of the group.

While its true that most european countries have slightly lower GINI, they also have a higher 10% ratio (highest to lowest) than India.

So it's pretty hard to argue from the actual statistics that inequality is the outstanding problem of India as it is often made out to be.

But it's perhaps true that the contrast is more visible in India than elsewhere - with slums next to high rises.

I think the reason for this is that growth is relatively narrowly focussed around a few metros, which then attracts a big influx of job seeking rural population. The other big countries never had such a big rural population to begin with.
Much like using a high-quality printer to counterfeit money, it's not the technology that makes it illegal, it's the act.
I think this article and the link below should meet, perhaps this weekend. They may find much in common and space to improve together.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019351
SmartWage Payroll Card
Just go with Whitespace, will you? ;)
A path-traced game: http://raytracey.blogspot.com/2011/09/720p-video-of-unbiased...

The blog is pretty sweet too.
Likewise, this is all good stuff. I think we've exhausted the dialectic limits of the HN comments section. As a parting shot I'll point you one last time to the Jonas essay, "Is God a Mathematician?" It cuts straight to the question you just broached.
Are your groggy mornings after only sleeping a few hours? I only use melatonin if I am able to get at least 7 hours of sleep, or maybe 6.5 in a pinch, but with or without melatonin I'll be groggy in the morning with less than 6.5 hours of sleep. I take 1mg doses, although I initially took 3mg and didn't notice a difference. This study seems to show that 3mg is overkill, and that .3mg is probably sufficient:

http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/86/10/4727
I am a bit disappointed that Google has seemingly reversed itself on its openness. While I would want someone poking around in code but I felt wasn't my best work, I feel that this excuse for Google is dubious at best. I believe it is done to stifle competition.
They say they want to protect users experience, which you might be able to believe on face value if it weren't for the fact that anyone who had the skills to manipulate the code would inherently know that they are going to change the intended "Google experience". This is not something that a hacker would hold Google responsible for. If he actually could start the glass of milk you don't get mad at the cow because your milk is brown instead of white!
Google is afraid that if they allow their code to be in the wild, hackers innovations will outstrip their own. They forgot what made their platform so attractive in the first place. Android OS benefited immensely the beginning from being open source people added features there were leaps and bounds ahead of Apple IOS. For people who are well-informed and made a comparison between the two a no-brainer. If they continue to do this it'll be like going to her door and closing it. And I will be their fault because I've been around long enough to know that there are infinite pathways innovations can take.
Yeah, you mention it, but I think you're vastly underestimating licensing costs. Hollywood / content producers have them over a barrel, especially now that they're spinning off the DVD business.

On top of that, those servers don't run themselves and those infrastructure costs you so quickly dismiss are significant.
I'm in. My email is in my profile and is loganfrederick@gmail.com
An interesting point about the name Quikster - they took the ONE weakness of the DVD by mail service (you have to wait a few days) and made it the centerpoint of their name. Completely tone-deaf branding. Not to mention archaic domain naming (-ster? Friendster was a long time ago and doesn't have a nice shine anymore). I don't work in marketing, but I couldn't imagine much worse unless they tried on purpose. Maybe "Shitster."
Absolutely. While "Office Space" and "Dilbert" are parodies, they are based on a lot of real-life scenarios. Some days I end up spending the day answering the phone/email/IM or attending meetings that interrupt my programming work.
This is surprisingly good.
I'd say 1-2hours of productive work a day is quite common (it fits with my current experience). The difference is when you're working at home you don't have to pretend to be working. So when you've got no work to do you don't have to pretend to read a document. You can go for walk, do the dishes, play with your kids, work on side-project/ learn a new language. Same productivity, happier worker.
I'm pretty sure the gov't would look at printing the receiver as precisely the same as milling one on a CNC machine.

Transferring it is going to be treated the same as any other firearm transfer in the U.S. as well.
Sounds like your company needs to rethink their wage scales instead of using contracting as a way to loophole out of their own policies.
"I don't know the law by name, but a contractor can only be kept on for a period of 6 months to a year. After that, they must be made full-time or removed. After a cool-down period, they can be rehired."

Is that true? I know of contractors from other countries who have worked in the U.S. for the same company for more than five years. And these companies are Fortune 500 so I assume they have a pretty rigid legal team.
When has a PR gimmick ever translated into long-term success for a social network? I can't think of any instance of this.
Yeh, it sometimes breaks and shows you posts from years ago. Normally fixes itself after a while though.
Same with me.

Except for going back to Facebook. :) I got bored with that after about 2 weeks, too.
Relevant: http://www.fastcompany.com/1560194/microsoft-and-amazon-sign...
thehindu.com is reputed. They are independent and practice quality journalism
WSJ Social, a Facebook news app
Note - this isn't "20% of full-time telecommuters are skiving off". Some might be, others might telecommute 1 day a week and use that to do their chores (which might be sanctioned by their manager). Some are freelancers who are effectively unemployed. Others are self-employed, and procrastinating. Some might be students, who have a part-time job they do from home. Some might be full-time mothers, who do the odd job on Mechanical Turk.
The US census releases anonymized location data.
Robert Heinlein had a novel, I forget which, where the legislature was bicameral, but in a different way than the current American one. In his legislature, the first house was responsible for passing legislation (but required a supermajority to do so, IIRC). The second house was responsible for repealing legislation, needing only a simple majority.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1752384
About posting techy stuff: what do you when you don't want to bother your non-tech friends with posts like that, but you _do_ want all the people (that you don't know) following you to be able to read these posts? Have you manually put everyone of those in a circle as well?
In theory, it might be a detriment. The brain is fairly plastic (i.e., can be reshaped and rewired constantly), but reinforced behaviors get pretty firmly hardwired. This is why "old habits die hard," and "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." Quite literally, the neural pathways we use most frequently and automatically become the hardest to rewire.

Ergo, if you've learned the game up to a certain skill level -- and then coasted at that skill level for decades -- you're going to need to rewire significantly engrained neural pathways in order to relearn the game and break through your plateau.

It also helps to be able to start young. Not only do you have more time on your hands when you're younger, but you learn more quickly. Your brain is much more plastic in childhood. Interestingly, in most of the "10,000 hours" case studies I've seen, the subject started practicing as a young kid. It's entirely possible that the learning curve is steepened or elongated for people who start as adults. A child might be able to go from beginner to master in 10,000 hours, but an adult might need many times that number of hours.