skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes I believe that because as a libertarian he would oppose using state power to give one group an advantage over another.

A libertarian is happy to allow any two or more adults to marry should they wish to do so. A libertarian just asks that no one's marriage is recognized by the state because it's not a matter that the state should be involved in. Can you really say that after gay marriage is legal everywhere (which will never happen) that marriage is actually equal? What about polygamists? I'm perfectly happy to allow them to obtain licenses to get married but it seems easier to just say government has no proper role in what is a private affair. This seems to make your case even better because it just removes from politics what is not a political issue.
Just watch, they'll just obfuscate the wording and re-add it on Tuesday. "Data transmission surcharge", or something.
As a hybrid user who reads many books in both physical and digital forms, I have found that my preference for Kindle is directly related to how much I have traveled in the last month or two.
Kindle -> fiction/non-fiction text

Real books -> books needing many illustrations (e.g. art books)

But, I really appreciate the issue of "What do we put on the bookshelves?" my wife and I have bookshelves filling a wall where we have our combined libraries - and that is aesthetically very pleasing for us. What will our children do if they only have electronic format reading material?
I love it when the news prompts flashbacks to Umberto Eco.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Day_Before
Yes, the hypocrisy here is just screaming...

The US and/or the WTO could have created trade/tax structures that would have penalized environmentally devastating activities like poor mining practices and removed the incentive to shunt these things to poor countries. This would have also removed the "monopoly" that China is now "exploiting". Crocodiles tears all round...

Edit: typos
It appears as though they have learned from Netflix and GoDaddy how important internet PR is.
To claim that Ron Paul endorses murdering homosexuals because some random religious guy who does, endorsed his campaign is a lie.

That's like saying Ron Paul is pro-choice because I'm pro-choice.
It is not mentioned in the docs, but not only EBS performance is unreliable, but it is also not uncommon to get a "stuck" EBS volume, where no I/O operations go through at all. So you have to a) monitor and be ready to take action on "dead" hosts stuck on IO and b) not completely rely on EBS as perfect (it is possible to recover data, in most cases, but it is much easier if you can just create a new one and kill the misbehaving volume, automatically).

So in case of running custom data-intensive setup you could:
1. create a RAID out of several EBS volumes, maintain that - predictable speed, much better reliability
2. easier if you need a small scale solution - regular ebs snapshots and be ready to lose some inbetween snapshot data. Also, I think performance of disk is not a big issue in MongoDB case, so case 2 might be enough for your application. EBS failures are rare, afterall, so unless your data is critical and there is no way to do replication, snapshots would do.
Bats isn't a port of anything, and sometimes Bash is the right tool for the job.

I maintain two other projects written in Bash (rbenv and ruby-build). I looked, and couldn't find any suitable testing tools for Bash, so I created Bats.

My criteria for deciding what to work on in the open-source world is: do I need something that doesn't yet exist, or something whose existing implementations are unsuitable? If yes, I try to fill the void as best I can, and package it up nicely so others can use it too.
I think it is a rational take on how the US generally views him.
I agree http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3409045
My reaction to your question might be telling:

1. I dimly remember that The Shallows had something thoughtful to say about the topic;
2. I pull out my kindle and search the full text of 443 books for "carr kindle";
3. I wait 3 seconds;
4. I re-read Carr's take and mull it over.

Perhaps not fundamentally different from looking it up in the index, but it certainly feels so.
Can Smiling More Make You Richer? This Entrepreneur Says Yes
Yet he co-sponsored a bill that would make DOMA impossible to get rid of in any way. That doesn't count as much as voting for it?

Also: "If I were in Congress in 1996, I would have voted for the Defense of Marriage Act," So there's why he didn't vote for it or against it, or even abstain.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070207225148/http://www.house.g...
Here's a couple of reasons not to buy a home: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/03/why-i-am-never-going-to...
Works on Ubuntu 11.09 with Chrome. Hypnotizing!
My first instinct is to treat this as what it is: a ridiculously transparent political piece that has no business on hacker news.

However, since I see these things coming up all the time, and there doesn't seem to be any great movement against them, I'm going to attempt an intelligent response.

First, as said already below, this graph compares eight years of the Bush administration to three years of the Obama administration "projected" into 2017. To anyone familiar with Washington projections, not only are they usually embarrassingly inaccurate, but they are also based on rosy assumptions. See the recent healthcare projections as an example: I don't have enough time to go into detail, but because of the way the CBO operates, their forecasts are constrained by what is actually in the bill versus what they think will happen. Simply put, if the bill says that it will reduce the deficit, then they have to put those assumptions into their forecast even if they don't think that it will come to pass.

Second, the graph seems to ignore the fact that Obama is not powerless in the face of Bush spending priorities.

A couple of examples: True, Bush started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the "surge" in Afghanistan was all Obama's idea, and it was also his idea to keep troops in Iraq for several years into his first term.

Also, the "Bush" tax cuts are essentially now the "Bush-Obama" tax cuts, because as of recently, the bill has Obama's ink all over it. He certainly didn't veto the renewal of the tax cuts.

Third, the Obama graph does not include all of the additional spending that he wanted but did not get (high-speed rail, more infrastructure, green energy, student loans, etc.), including his most recent request of almost half $1 trillion of stimulus.

I would not disagree that we have a spending problem, but this graph does not contribute to any meaningful discussion of a solution.

Also, since everyone knows that Ezra Klein is at best left-leaning, please allow me to link to a equally right-leaning opinion on the same matter:

http://keithhennessey.com/2011/11/21/the-presidents-missed-o...
Ah, the joys of SSL VPNs it seems.
I read very specific types of books on my Kindle.

Thick classics that are too big to carry around, New York Times bestseller page-turners, interesting books with an intriguing synopsis or something recommended by a friend. Things that I will read once, and maybe twice. Even though the ebook selection is still appalling with my local library, I've found it useful in this.

What I don't buy: textbooks, and the favorites I've probably read at least ten times. Those are the books I want to keep in physical form--eReaders don't flip well, and no amount of slick e-ink and shiny devices is going to have the same soothing effect on my nerves as my much-loved copy of The Hobbit.

Kindle, et al, at least for me, is dramatically streamlining the way I consume one type of book--the ones that before, I would go to the library, read, and return without a second thought. But not a whole lot else.
Should the federal government give states the right to ban Islam?

Actually... Paul's "We the People Act" seeks to expressly place state laws on religion, sexual orientation and abortion outside of any possible constitutional review (essentially it's a repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment, targeted at the issues that provoke the most frothing at the mouth from social conservatives). So if he gets his way, yes, a state could pass a law banning Islam and there'd be no recourse.
This is the missing piece for me. I still want to own the physical book, but I would love the convenience of being able to load a bunch of books on my Kindle and take it on a trip or something.

Plus, think of the lock-in that the stores are missing out on. As a Kindle owner, if Amazon offered me bundles, I would probably never buy another book at Barnes & Noble.
Chart of the year: The investment drought continues
First off, Wikipedia is not a credible source. It is controlled by a group of editors who are leftists, and in many cases factual corrections are undone by them simply because they disagree with the editors politics.

Secondly that page agrees with me:
"Paul opposes all federal efforts to define marriage, whether defined as a union between one man and one woman, or defined as including anything else as well. He believes that recognizing or legislating marriages should be left to the states, and not subjected to "judicial activism".[197] For this reason, Paul voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004."

"He says that in a best case scenario, governments would enforce contracts and grant divorces but otherwise have no say in marriage.[201] Paul has also stated he doesn't want to interfere in the free association of two individuals in a social, sexual, and religious sense.[202][203] Additionally, when asked if he was supportive of gay marriage Paul responded "I am supportive of all voluntary associations and people can call it whatever they want."[202]"

Thus, Ron Paul, directly quoted, endorses gay marriage. Something you can't say for Barack Obama.

"Same-sex marriage
In a 2007 interview with John Stossel, Paul stated that he supported the right of gay couples to marry, so long as they didn't "impose" their relationship on anyone else, on the grounds of supporting voluntary associations."

I cut all the parts which contradict these because they are due to misinterpretations or assertions based on legislation that don't include any statements by Paul, or an explanation for why Paul might support some act. Paul has to pick and choose legislation carefully because most legislation contains both constitutional and unconstitutional provisions.

You can't cite him supporting some bad legislation unless you give the reasons he supported it, especially when it conflicts with direct statements. Well, you can, but that's just spin.

Now, I've spent time debating a wikipage, when you didn't provide even an argument for your position.
This is unusual, and it would likely only happen with a respectable registrar if there was a dispute with ICANN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4&t=1h42m05s

(skip to 1:42:05)

Thorium comes up with rare earth minerals.. we can use it as a sustainable source of energy.
...we find out that it isn't a matter of conviction or fearlessness but that the collective power of interest groups...

The collective power of interest groups is indeed the key.

The horror of slavery wasn't abolished by President Lincoln's stand on principle. It was an alignment of the industrial North's economic/geopolitical interests with the principled stand of abolitionists. Lincoln merely walked to the front of the parade and raised his baton. The Emancipation Proclamation was pragmatic, not principled.

Even Gandhi was doing this. He was able to align the interests of the average Indian villager with the principle of Indian independence, and get the population to understand it through clear material examples. (Cloth and salt.)

"The collective power of interest groups" is the reality, the landscape of politics. Those who fight battles and wage campaigns on this landscape had better be aware of its shape and implications. Wars are not won by those who "want it" bad enough. The energy of fervor needs to be directed in the most effective fashion.
Facebook no longer supports IE7
I've been reading a non-fiction on my phone. I like how easy it is to highlight/annotate, though I haven't yet tried to go back and review my highlights...
This is a fantastical framing of the incorporation doctrine. Do you even understand the debate or how historically your position is wrong? Do you realize that as of today not all of the Bill of Rights apply to the states, only some?

I don't think states can legally violate natural rights and I think they should adopt and ratify their own Bill of Rights but this hyperbolic sensationalism overlooks the historical context and distorts the original intent of the Constitution.

Ron Paul is not against the incorporation doctrine so the states can legally discriminate. He's against it because it's not how the Constitution was written, see history. Our rights pre-exist the Constitution and the states.
This is true, and it makes me thing of all of the private sector solutions that are already available. The market creates the solutions and does not need government interference slowing it down or making dispute resolutions more complicated.
The 10 Smartest Pot Smokers on the Planet… Cool Enough to Admit It
During my math undergrad, the natural numbers were always assumed to start with 0, the rationale being that the natural numbers should enumerate the cardinalities of all finite sets (the empty set, of course, being finite). I guess it depends on one's background.
Oh hah, I wasn't even thinking like that.

Yep, it's a good idea to save your work.
Ask HN: EC2 spot price history site to replace defunct cloudexchange.org?
There used to be great charts of the EC2 spot price history at cloudexchange.org, but the domain has expired and the author hasn't responded to an email I sent asking about the site.

Are there any replacements? Does anyone want to maybe fork the site? The code is available from https://github.com/tlossen/cloudexchange.org . I think it could also use some updates to add the newer instance types.

The charts provided by this site are a lot nicer and more responsive than the charts built into Amazon's EC2 console.
I guess...

Another thing to notice is that Hawking's system is hooked to his home automation system, possible in a fairly complex way. That is something you'd want and you'd want to think about how to do it an OS independent way (or again, choose an OS that at least aims for backward support) - my shallow Googling seems to indicate there's no standard support in "HTML5/CSS3/CoffeeScript" for this.
You're confusing principle with ideology. We're discussing central planning verses distributed planning. I'm for a distributed economy that resembles a p2p network. I support p2p networks because it's robust and lacks a single point of failure -- and it's difficult to corrupt. You're saying, p2p networks will never work, because it's too ideological. Ok, cool story bro. But why is a centralized protocol better? That's what I want to know. There is no "hybrid" protocol, if a protocol is contingent on a centralized aspect, then it's a centralized protocol. Just because you have no principle doesn't make your ideology "moderate".
Ask HN: What's the name of the real time js charting library
The one with the awesome tutorial. S3.js or J3.js - something like that. I can't remember. Thanks
Some limitations. You can't redirect to a data:// url, e.g. <img src=http://tinyurl.com/44c8ctt > or <a href=http://tinyurl.com/44c8ctt >link</a> gets stopped by Chrome as an injection attack. So you can't use data:// to (ab)use a link shortener as a CDN.
Link to site: http://cloudexchange.org

Link to code: https://github.com/tlossen/cloudexchange.org
My Brother HL-1250 was rescued from a skip outside a closing-down local authority office where a relative worked. There were at least ten just thrown out in the street. I got it home, it worked perfectly and has done ever since, with no toner change. This was FOUR YEARS ago--they must have thrown it out with a full cartridge. (I still feel a bit guilty when I look at it and see "Property of Cheshire County Council" stamped on the front, but they shouldn't have skipped it!)

I agree, the thing is built like a tank. It's not the fastest machine in the world, and it's about as elegant as Kryten from Red Dwarf's head, images are an indistinct mass of foggy grey, but for what I do, churning out black and white text documents, the quality is perfect. It works flawlessly under Ubuntu too. You can't argue with the price, either--but even if you can't nick one from a skip, they're about £20 used.

(I've been beaten in the "beater" printer category, though. The workplace I left this week has an HP LaserJet 5 of a 1995 vintage still clunking away in the corner printing news scripts for the radio, with a page count in the 300,000s. I believe it could soon be coming to the end of its life, though, not because it's knackered, but because they've stopped selling the cartridges. I love using old tech like this, for some reason.)
> And actually, we already have a working energy source that works by annihilation of matter: nuclear energy.

Releasing energy stored in nuclear bonds between particles is NOT annihilation. Nothing gets annihilated in nuclear reactions.
The same thought occured to me. Is it possible to style the new <progress> elements?
I could see this being very useful for testing little scripts and even small c command line applications i have written.

In the case of the small command line applications this is probably the ideal way to test them. Obviously if the application is even remotely complex you will want unit tests too which probably should be implemented in the language (so you can test your procedures directly) but there is a case for integration tests as well.
> And you will be doing so in an exact replica of the machine, minimizing the bugs or issues introduced when an staging or test system had changes applied. Another one: it is simple to resize your server as needed. You can start with a micro instance when developing and then scale to bigger instance types as needed after you on production

VMware? Assuming you are limited to on-premise options, isn't this kind of flexibility addressed with in-house virtualized instances? At a previous employer (who was too paranoid about cloud) I could easily pull a snapshot of prod into a test/dev environment with a few clicks and coffee-break worth of lagtime (likely possible with command line too), then use my deployment process to push changed code/metadata changes back out to prod if need be.

The only downside to this approach is you need to have IT ops that's up to snuff on virtualization (not guaranteed)... with cloud you cut this out, and your devops guy can manage everything.
You can read PDFs on a Kindle, so the step from an ePub format ebook is not to much of a hassle I'd say.
Anonymous To "Destroy" Sony's Online Network for SOPA Support
While it's better than nothing, doesn't solve the problem of the future legislation. Real example from the corporate life (specific software in this case was Exchange/Outlook): meeting is scheduled between Seattle and Beijing locations, US changes start date of the date-light savings time. One of the meeting times needs to be updated, so people would still meet at the same time, but whatever time you update you move meeting by one hour at this location, creating conflicts and upsetting users.

Even simpler problem is not so easy to handle in software: if you save dates in UTC, once DST start date changes, all your meetings move one hour, but most meetings are scheduled in "local" time, i.e. dentist still expectes to see you at 10am.
libswift.org is a nice place to start. It compacts and simplifies the tcp/bittorrent stack into 4k lines of cpp. I'm working through an educational port at the moment and will blog about it as I go.
Because? Also, you could actually name the track. Even better give a link for us to listen to it?

It might be awesome but you're not on reddit now; downzoat.
There is also the possibility that the mortgages rates will hike. This seems unlikely right now but if you take a 30 years mortgage... it's longer than the average marriage these days so anything can happen
Some publishers offer the ebook + physical book combo for less than buying them separately. For example, you can get the following deal on a particular book from O'Reilly:

ebook: $31.99

print + ebook: $32.99

print: $29.99

Ref: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018414.do
I think that even at the 10,000+ employee level, there's a very heavy correlation between how open & accessible the CEO is and how successful the company is. No, you can't compare a 30,000-employee multinational with a 10-person startup. But within size categories, the correlation holds pretty well.

The Google founders host TGIF every Friday where anybody can get up and ask them anything, no matter how inane. When Lou Gerstner took over IBM, he spent his first 90 days just talking to people and getting a pulse on the organization. Hewlett Packard (in the 70s, before Fiorina destroyed it) popularized the idea of "management by wandering around", where managers would learn about how the organization actually works just by walking up and talking to people. I think there's some other company where the CEO makes it a point to go and spend a day in each job function (eg. he answers customer service calls for a day), so he gets a sense of what it's like to actually be his employees.
> I've come to almost despise the hipsters

Can you give me a concrete example of one of these hipsters? I'd like to know because I work at a company where we use rails and related tech exclusively, so we'd probably fit right into this camp.

> who are too cool to do things the standard, time tested way. It's one thing to go bleeding edge for the sake of experimentation and furthering your knowledge and skill but when you're off using some esoteric language or framework or whatever just to be different or cool then that's really... Well... Lame for lack of a better word.

If you're happy with PHP, use PHP. If you don't like PHP and want to learn something else, then learn something else. But no one builds or uses anything just "to be different", they use it because it helps them produce working code quicker.

> Like wearing some ridiculous outfit "to be different" and claiming its just fashion that the rest of us are too uncool to get.

The hipsters that you refer to don't think you're too uncool to get it. In fact they don't think anything about you at all. They're too busy making things.
New Orleans Saints vs Carolina Panthers live stream
New Orleans Saints vs Carolina Panthers
Match schedule:
Week 17 NFL Regular season
Date: SUN, JAN 1 2012
TIME : 1:00 PM (ET)
Venu: Mercedes-Benz Superdome
watch and enjoy New Orleans Saints vs Carolina Panthers live
streaming and also watch NFL full season live streaming online here.
Get the best online sports coverage on the net directly on your PC.
I used to be more of a supporter of J&J (since I have to buy something in a market segment that they cover). But, they seem to have been up to more and more questionable/bad shit, lately. (E.g. one of their subsidiaries' illegal marketing of anti-psychotics for suspect off-label treatment of children -- apparently pushing any and all uses that would boost market share, regardless of efficacy/suitability.)

I don't know the specifics of SOPA support and J&J, but if it's not simply a "mistake" as darth_static postulates, it may be a matter of seeking to control physical counterfeiting. J&J has its hands in many things, these days; in fact, drugs may enter this topic, as well -- a focus of much counterfeiting effort. I believe many if not all of the pharmaceutical companies have been reported to be supporters of SOPA.
Yup, or even easier, a simple fork bomb. http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/understanding-bash-fork-bomb/#c... has examples in 5 languages, all shorter than this. :(){ :|:& };: in bash is the shortest example.

On the other hand, and machine with properly configured limits will mitigate either one.
Seasonal Inequality