skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Speaking from personal experience, my employment-based green card had been delayed by about two years because of so-called "FBI name check". Not because of the quotas. So bureaucracy plays a part (based on what I know, it has been reduced somewhat after Obama took office).

I am not so sure about the statements on family-based immigration. First, even close family members often spend many years waiting. More importantly, though: we all ideally want future Sergei Brins just to come and start next Google and hire thousands. But let's don't forget that he came to states as a young child (just as some other founders mentioned in the CNN article) with his well educated parents. By the time he started Google, he was 20-something and effectively an American. Would he be able to do this if he just came as a foreign student? Not so sure. So, we need to get families too, but those who have not just hopes, but also education. We need smart families, smart parents. We need to make America attractive to them.

P.S. I am stunned by all negative comments on CNN site saying immigrants take American jobs, and America educates foreigners, but not its own citizens. It seems to me many people don't realize that foreign students are in fact paying for Americans to get to schools by paying much higher tuition fees that make schools profitable and able to offer scholarships to locals.
Payments for Your opinions
Bravo. Next I shall settle disputes with solid demonstrative examples.
I can imagine it now, this is the first step in human evolutionary divergence between the Eloi (programmers) and the Morlocks (Mechanical Turkers).
Legitimate Work From Home Jobs And Home Based Business Opportunities Is Sweet
Well, I see a solution around the first reason. Just flag anything that is worded in a suspicious way. The example, "Obama has the worst ratings in modern times" sounds suspicious. You shouldn't need a fact checker to know you need to check that fact. If you could implement the same sorting method common sense has to a fact checker, you might be able to make it work.

However, I admit, you might be faced with the problem that an overwhelming number of statements would be flagged. I'm not sure how you would get rid of false positives.
Security researcher demos Windows 8 bootkit bypassing UAC
Reset the thing finally, thank you Tyler!
I don't understand why people aren't doing bank runs. Is it really because, as the article states, people believe leaders will solve the problem? For an individual, that seems like an unreasonable/unecessary risk to take.
At Princeton University, undergraduate math degree is A.B. (Bachelor of Arts), but undergraduate CS degree can be either A.B. or B.S.E (Bachelors of Science in Engineering) depending on course of study.
> so why is this bias? why isn't it simply that palin and bachmann are liars?

I hesitate to get into this, but Peter Orszag has only been tagged by Politifact once[1]. Yet at the time he was CBO director, there were many people stating that CBO was distorting long term projections to show that Obama's health care bill saved money. And recently the administration appeared to acknowledge that these projections were (at a minimum) indeed inaccurate[2,3].

By scrapping the CLASS Act, HHS is losing about 40 percent
of the savings healthcare reform was supposed to generate.
The Congressional Budget Office’s most recent estimates
projected $210 billion in total deficit reduction from the
healthcare law, $86 billion of which would have come from
CLASS.

HHS officials emphasized Friday that the healthcare reform
law is still projected to cut the deficit, since about
$125 billion of the most recent savings estimates are
still intact.

Now, you can determine for yourself whether you believe HHS and CBO's other projections given that this program was found to be insolvent before it was even launched. Please also note that there was no shortage of people vociferously opposing[4] the healthcare bill before passage who called out this particular provision as unsustainable due to adverse selection effects.

The CLASS Act looks like a gift: It brings in $58 billion
in net tax revenues by 2019, lowering the deficit by an
equivalent amount because only minor costs will be booked
during that period. Under the CBO rules, the CLASS Act
technically covers one-quarter of the $250 billion
shortfall in funds needed to pay for health-care reform.

The gimmick lies in looking only at the CBO's ten-year
budget window. The extra revenues are an illusion because
of the disaster lurking just beyond that horizon.

In fact, none of the $58 billion is available to pay for
the House bill. The CLASS Act is so poorly designed that
the $58 billion reserve and all future premiums won't come
close to covering the generous benefits it's promising.

Here's why the mechanics of the CLASS Act assure its
eventual collapse.

You may disagree, but this is one relatively cut and dried example in which the critics of the healthcare bill appear to have been proven right. Indeed, evidence-laden, numerical critiques of this particular "CLASS Act" provision were all over the web along with charges of falsehood by Orszag.

Yet at the time when it might have moved the needle, Politifact was silent on this issue. This may be what OP is referring to in terms of a selection issue. They simply did not engage the CBO's projections, even though they were far more amenable to classification as "true" or "false" than standard political statements. They were also inarguably important.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/personalities/peter-orszag/

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/health/policy/15health.htm...

[3] http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implement...

[4] http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/03/news/economy/health_care_cla...
However, there appears to be a set of common denominators
that can be used to represent all possible
data-structures: Maps or dictionaries, lists, strings,
numbers, boolean and null.

I'd add sets to this list. You can kind of simulate them using a map where the keys are the members and the values are anything, but they just work more smoothly when you have real support for them (like in Python and Clojure, but not Javascript/JSON).
Instead of subsidising jobs, subsidise education.
Germans worked hard producing goods which they turn around and send to people outside Germany. This is a net loss for the Germans.

Except that they did get paid for said goods, and if their currency had been independent and stronger, they would not have sold so many of them in the first place, since they would have been more expensive.

I think veyron has it right.
When Selling is the Worst Way to Win Customers
The result of a bank run would be a fistful of Euros. I don't see much point in running a bank, as the way they're going to take the value away from you is to inflate away what you've got, be it Euro or $LOCAL_CURRENCY. They can do that with it in the bank or it in your hands. (Progress!)
wtf. If you live in Europe, you should be selling Euros and buying property in London/Germany/USA, and prepare for the collapse of fiat currencies.

if the ECB prints to bailout the PIIGs, it'll cause hyperinflation, and the disparity between the 99% and 1% will widen.

Already the drums of war are beating for Syria (a proxy for Iranian war, and control of the oilfieds around the Strait of Hormuz) to distract the masses from the inevitability of economic collapse, whether it be in the short, or medium run.

#occupyWallStreet is the shapes of things to come.
Australian Casino Control defaced by Anonymous
Some providers, I think you mean.
Printing money to pay debt is a form of default that would result in loss of credit ratings. The US is still within the realm where they can be reasonably expected to pay their debt through conventional means (taxation and reduced spending), which is not the case for some countries in the eurozone.
The only part of this screed I can strongly disagree with is the "emulate other countries" bit.

As idiotic as US work/immigration policies are, most countries are far worse. Europe particularly. Commonwealth nations possibly excepted.

In the developing / BRIC world, it's less bureaucracy and far more petty (and not so petty) corruption you have to deal with.
Alright, I concede the point to your personal experience.

Agree about the need for "long-term investment" in smart families, but I think the political importance of strict immigration numbers and the short-term pressure over the talent war is going to shift US immigration policies away from families and towards talent.

Re: PS - ugh, completely agree. This is one of the better argued articles in terms of foreign immigrants = US jobs rather than purely abstract foreign immigrants = stronger US economy, so the comments are less rancid but still vile. Compare to Rey Ramsey's piece on HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rey-ramsey/open-americas-doors...
Whenever I read one of these articles I'm struck by how disconnected the vast financial abstractions we've constructed are from reality.

Essentially they just discuss problems with the shared illusion (debt, bonds etc.), but not problems with what those abstractions actually mean.

What's going to happen in a few weeks to cause everything to come crashing down? We'll still have the same people working, the same infrastructure / factories etc.

I'm not saying the issues aren't real. Just that they're always discussed through so many layers of jargon to essentially be meaningless to someone who doesn't work in finance.
The Schengen zone has nothing to do with the Euro. We had "open" borders before the Euro and non-Euro states (UK, Sweden, ...) are part of the Schengen zone. Even Switzerland is part of the Schengen zone.

EDIT: The UK is only partially a member of the Schengen zone.
But then why not just change your euros into dollars?
Coastal Puglia, in Italy. Southern, very beautiful, cheaper because it's not one of the main tourist attractions like Rome, Milan, Veneto, etc.

As for within driving distance...try www.jalamabeach.com. Quiet, uncrowded, inexpensive, and on the beach. 3 hours from LA. Technically driveable.

Also - El Capitan and Refugio State Beaches. Not quite as far, but still quiet, scenic and uncrowded.
I doubt a modern bank run gives you a fistful of anything. It probably means converting the currency to usd and maybe having it leave the country. It's pretty common in other countries to offer us dollar bank accounts. If you don't trust the political leadership, you can transfer your money to a safer banking center too (Switzerland?).
As a user of Clojure and an onlooker of things like mustache (and handlebars) who has used neither of the latter, this post left me incredibly confused. I like the points about destructuring and having something like a let binding. Those seem like useful addition.

However, about half the post discusses how "looping and conditional branching are conflated", and the end focuses on adding a separate branching construct to what's supposed to be a logic-free templating language. So I guess what he's trying to say is he wants to add logic to a logic-free templating language. It seems like he missed the point of Mustache: Looping and branching are conflated by design to eliminate logic from the template.

About the only way I see the connection between Clojure and Mustache at all is through the potential value destructuring could bring, and destructuring isn't exactly a feature which is unique to Clojure (CoffeeScript, Scala, and Erlang come to mind). Otherwise this post is apples and oranges: Clojure macros are about as far as you can get from a logic-free templating language. I'm wondering if the additions he proposes are sufficient to turn what's supposed to be a logic-free templating language into a Turing-complete one (see this example of why XSLT is Turing-complete: http://www.unidex.com/turing/utm.htm)
Lohnsteuerkarte fuer Nebenjob als freier Mitarbeiter noetig?
"Do you think in 50 years, 100 years, the world will be any different? It'll always be kings, Mom, even if we don't call them that."

8:27 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZMWoR4oIc8

Just give us another 100 years, you'll see. :)
Wikileaks: SSL is beyond repair
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

I didn't say that a single data center employed thousands of engineers, or that the software industry is dying. But don't let that stop you from having an imaginary argument.
1. Equipment deployed and supported by the organization most likely has additional applications for encryption, can be managed remotely and updated on a regular basis. It is far more secure, and costs less to the organization as a whole.

2. I doubt it was for security. Most likely they don't have the resources to support multiple browsers/versions for business applications and settled on a single one. It sounds like the "failure" to block USB devices is more for user convenience. Blocking USB devices, while much more secure, is extremely difficult to justify nowadays.

3. Sounds like a State issue, not an IT issue. It is probably as much of a pain in the ass to them as it is to you.

4. Such a minor issue probably sat in a queue as other higher priority items were being dealt with. Approving a text-editor for a single user does not usually end-up on the plate of the CIO for consideration.

I'm not trying to defend all IT policies and practices. Some of them are less justifiable then others, and some are outright stupid, but a mantra I repeat over and over is that:

"Given unlimited time and budget, anything is possible. Anything else is compromise."

You are a "super-user". Recognize that you are not the majority in a large organization and limited resources are, by necessity, focused on the largest impact. Often, these priorities are not even determined by the IT organization and staff and left in the hands of committees, meetings and third-party vendors/consultants.

It is not ideal. It is a pain in the ass. There is a lot of room for improvement.

On both sides.
Why not take your Euros and buy GBP or USD? I don't understand how currency controls work. Is the assumption that if Greece, say, goes off the Euro, then "New Drachmas" will have a fixed "official" exchange rate that disadvantages anyone who moved their assets abroad prior to the shift?
Solid rockets are bad for the ozone layer, and some launch vehicles use solid rockets, though not all do. The damage is generally only temporary and far less significant than CFCs. Solid rocket exhaust destroys ozone in a one off process, and the ozone will quickly be regenerated via UV dissociation. CFCs catalytically destroy ozone and can reduce ozone levels for extended periods.
Yes, exactly what I'm getting at. That's the point of my parent...people should do it now BEFORE mass-inflation so that they can convert it to a more stable currency (USD/GBP/CAD).

I agree that once everyone starts doing it there isn't a point, but now...geezz..I don't see what you have to lose.
There are three big problems with IT departments (IMHO):

1. Anyone who is sufficiently skilled to be good at his or her job in the IT department is almost certainly overqualified so the system self-selects out good people; and

2. Like any other support role people only tend to notice you when things go wrong; and

3. My general experience with DBAs, sysadmins, techs and the like is that they generally resent you for asking them to do things, making the entire experience unpleasant. I'm not sure if such people are attracted to such positions or such positions end up making such people but whatever the case, "surly" is a commonly appropriate adjective to use. The cliche of the bearded UNIX purist exists for a reason.

At Google, I've generally been very impressed with our support people, both the field techs and the SREs. I would hesitate at calling Google's recipe a success for running IT because it may simply be that we're picking the cream of the crop, which obviously not everyone can do.

It is worth noting that field techs do have a career path in operations (possibly management) as well as being an ex tech (a field tech assigned to a particular executive). If Alan Eustace's computer stops working his ex tech basically needs to drop everything and get it fixed. Such people not only need to be technically good but they need to exert their (considerable) influence. It's amazing how quickly things can change when it's "for Larry" or "for Alan", etc.
Little hotel called Oasis in Granada, Nicaragua. Internet's not great and neither is the elec but it's a very old, very colonial little city on a giant lake and with nearby volcanos.

Or a small town called Cahuita in Costa Rica, it's right on the Caribbean, very peaceful and beautiful but again, internet and elec are not great. Near Cahuita is another town called Puerto Viejo which is a total party town which is heaps of fun.

Buenos Aires is also lots of fun, we're based in Palermo in the capital and there are three coworking places within a couple blocks of each other, and a fourth one a mile or so away.
To me, the scariest thing (which seems to be overlooked) is that this particular strain of Avian Flu is only 5 mutations away from the Avian Flu in the wild.

While we're fretting about whether this will get out of a lab, it's not entirely unlikely that a similar strain will evolve in the wild (now you know why they burned all those chickens in China).

Edit: "A genetic study showed that the new, dangerous strain had only five mutations compared to the original one, and all of them were earlier seen in the natural environment – just not all at once."
I think H1-B waiting times to green cards should be reduced. But H1-B is a fairly reliable way to see that person is skilled/qualified. No reasonable employer would keep someone on a payroll if the person is not good, even as a "serf" (a paid serf, more accurately).

Not so sure about green cards for recent students based on revenue/income of their business. We then have to ask the government to audit a lot of financial papers from people who have a great interest in showing higher numbers than there are in reality. Someone with family resources can "make" high revenue/income be shown on paper. It's not that difficult to do. But green card based on number of employees with some minimal wage limits makes sense.
Personal Flying Machine
Ive always hated roads, cars and traffic jams.This planet used to be beautiful and pristine, now it looks like a mess because of air pollution from cars and congestion on the roads. Always wondered if it is physically possible to create a personal flying machine, something that you can ride on and which maybe levitates a few meters off the ground - this would allow the user to avoid traffic jams and many more people can travel to work with less hassle. Im an engineer by training, interested in meeting others who might be interested in working on such a project. Thanks !

Victor Cai
SSH case studies
This is really smart advice :) buying property in London.
Handlebars (handlebarsjs.com) solves several of these issues:

Items in lists don't have to be objects with fields; you can display primitives like strings and numbers by using {{this}}:

{{#each tags}}
<li><a href="tags.html#{{this}}">{{this}}</a></li>
{{/each}}

Shadowing properties from parent context objects isn't a problem. Handlebars allows you to reach parent contexts with a '../' notation:

{{#each comments}}
<h2><a href="/posts/{{../permalink}}#{{id}}">{{title}}</a></h2>
<div>{{body}}</div>
{{/each}}

Regarding looping and conditional branching, Handlebars has an {{#if}} helper that does not evaluate to true for empty arrays:

{{#if authors}}
{{#each authors}}
{{firstName}} {{lastName}}
{{/each}}
{{else}}
No authors to display.
{{/if}}

I don't fully understand the complaint about recursive data structures. I usually just register a helper that can invoke itself recursively.
Hall.com Is Your Answer To Simple Real-Time Collaboration
This doesn't always help as much as you would think it should. Often times I've seen a fork with a lot of recent commits, but it's actually a bunch of pseudo-private changes against an old version.
Svankmajer's Alice is indeed a thing of awesomeness. Utterly unforgettable. His other work (primarily shorts) is equally dark, weird, and worthwhile.
They use upgrading to IE9 as an example. However, many companies are still running IE6 and IE7. Windows XP was replaced in 2006 and it's still pervasive on corporate desktops. 16GB of RAM is $100 and it's useless in the average corporate desktop.

Sorry, but I think corporate IT departments just try to grow large and be as risk averse as possible.
Looping and branching are conflated by design to eliminate logic from the template.

That doesn't eliminate logic, it just makes it annoying and obtuse.

You can still branch in mustache templates, and you can still loop. No particular kind of logic has been eliminated. But now you need to know what a particular item happens to be in order to know what the magic branch/loop operator is going to do.

About the only thing it prevents is saying "show this if X is truthy", but only prevents it when X is a list! Removing the ability to do something for some arbitrary objects doesn't make the language clean and logic-free, it makes it annoying and complicated.
How To Put Up An Online Profile
I think that in this case the reporter doesn't understand what's going on behind the abstraction.

One thing that might happen is that some country's equivalent of our treasury dept will realize that they're not going to be able to make the next set of payments on their bonds.
Sure science and art are compatible, and often found together in people or things.

The anti science points in this thread seem to be of the "please don't come in my garden, because I will never be able to go in yours", type.
General principle: Avoid doing business with people who use the same techniques as telemarketers.

An exploding offer is just as low and dirty as "Call within the next 20 minutes and you'll get a bonus set of steak knives, absolutely free!". It's an attempt to take advantage of a basic cognitive bias, loss aversion, in order to coerce you into acting irrationally.

If a company really does have a legitimate business reason to take on people in a hurry, they will negotiate. If I need a rush job from my printers, I pay extra. If I need a package sending next day, I pay extra. If I truly, desperately needed an extra employee to work on an urgent project, why on earth wouldn't I pay more to get the best possible candidate?

You have no ethical obligations to someone who is trying to deceive and exploit you.
I think what you will usually see as you work your way through the different layers of IT, is that IT workers on the lower rungs, especially help desk, have to deal with all of the irritating IT requests. The guys towards the top usually don't have to deal with end users, because whatever comes to them is filtered on the lower levels. I'm not saying that there aren't incompetent IT workers, just that you should realize that a lot of IT requests are mind-numbingly stupid.
But then I think you are giving up the main advantage of using mechanical turk over just roughly matching pixels. It is possible matching pixels will get the wrong answer where a human, with the context of being human, will know what the image is supposed to be and get the write answer, captcha style.

Example: an iron fence with a scenic view behind and where the slices are too small for someone to match only two.
An fun exercise is to ask random people you know why changes in interest rates are so important and so diligently reported by the press. My own experience is most people have no idea.
The claim of the article is much stronger than that-- the claim is that if we don't let them in, they will form their companies abroad, and there are simply just not very many examples of that (sure, we can all point to foreign clones of American companies, but it's not likely/possible that those could have been feasibly based here, due to market access, regulations, operations etc).

> " Innovative individuals will move their operations abroad to cultivate next ideas."
Smart, young and broke
What if SMTP and Sinatra Had a Baby?