skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Defenders of the Post Office like to say this, but it is at odds with reality.

The prefunding requirement only requires them to have the NPV value of future payments for everyone who currently or formerly works for them. This is how everyone should accumulate pensions: the alternative is an accounting gimmick in which you promise unsustainable future payments today and then make yourself scarce (or ask for the taxpayer to clean up your mess) when they come due tomorrow.

(The minimum requirement for all employers is that they implement pay-as-you-go, which means that someone's pension should be fully funded at the point where they start drawing benefits. This means that, if you hypothetically have 100k employees who are 5 years from retirement, you can report a pension fund with no assets as fully funded today. This gives you five years to look under the seat cushions for the $25 billion you need to come up with to avoid insolvency. Congress has decided to not let the Post Office implement pay-as-you-go because Congress anticipates that the Post Office will, if allowed to do that, report "The Post Office is profitable on its own revenues and receives no support from the federal government" reliably every year until their pension fund implodes with a 13 figure uncovered liability.)

They're separately required to produce accounting projections for the next 75 years, but those don't have a funding mandate attached to them.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/...

The part most relevant to the discussion is the paragraphs surrounding: "Under current law, PAEA (P.L.
109-435) requires USPS to determine the actuarial present value of future retiree health payments for
current or former employees and to amortize that liability over a 40 year period."
Twilio adds volume discounts
One notable difference is that you cannot give Google money in order to get private repositories.

For private work I've been doing Google Code by far best matches our needs. (Your needs will be different.) One place we use Github and the other is Bitbucket. I really wish Google would take our money.
Finding with Git
There's also a really nice pre-existing library for this: PathJS.

https://github.com/mtrpcic/pathjs

Been using this for a while, with a lot of success.
Maybe we should. We like to say you can't put a price on a life, yet our actions do not agree with our words. I'm sure any of us could come up with a long list of ways we indirectly place a monetary value on a life. The difference is we rarely acknowledge it out loud, and when someone does we collectively feign indignation that someone could be so callous.

It's time to end the hypocrisy and address these issues head on. Health care is so expensive because of insanely expensive treatments we use to extend the lives of chronic or terminal patients by months. It seems gravely immoral as a society to spend millions extending the life of one person while letting another die from lack of health care at all (whether or not the person is paying for it with their own money is irrelevant).

I'm not saying I know where these lines are, but we need to have this conversation.
Is "Move along." the default message for an empty repo? It seems.. unfriendly.
I'd wager that BASIC on a modern machine would outperform python. There are fully compiled versions of basic that are quite fast, but they aren't cool.
Substitute a 4 year old by a 2 year old and let me know how Windows 7 works for you. If you give me another counter-example, keep going lower in age. I guarantee there is a point when touch beats click for toddlers.
In all seriousness, I’m happy for them to index my public repositories, but no, I don’t want my email program to show me “relevant” ads based on my private repositories or integrate the contents of my private repositories into their profile of mine.
You are conflating "evil" with "unprofitable" and obviously missing the point as a result.

Also, you can opt out of ad targeting, not tracking. Huge difference.
It takes some work to get used to the change in flow control, but it seems to be worthwhile (at least it has been so far for my project). Coming from a real time/embedded background seems to have helped me because typical those systems are heavily event based. I don't know if node.js will change the world but I think it's worth at least playing with just to get some experience with the programming model.
My first impression of Rubinius internals
Agreed, but after Engineering studies you want to make "big money" if you go to SV. And if you read the article it is worded as such:

> "Her more than $70,000 salary, stock options and personal investment portfolio, though, go a long way to alleviate any parental concerns. "
Which seems to be so much money that her parents forget their worries. What I am saying is, in term of SV salary that's not much to have 70k. Actually 75k in S.V. ~ 55k in Atlanta for example.

Personally I have a very good salary (> 70k) and I have way to much money per month. I don't buy gadgets or anything so yeah I am way below $1500 / mo.
What about the simulator?
I wouldn't want to have to use my real name via a Google+ account in order to commit code.
Unfortunately, things like privacy policies and appropriate use of personal information aren't as straightforward, even for children. "Theoretically, there's no difference between theory and practice," right?

Also, if you think the concept of evil is easy or straightforward, well, let's just say I'm a proponent of a broad liberal arts education.
Prof. Thrun: "There is a misrepresentation about my tenure situation"
"If suddenly every Linux laptop anywhere in the world turned into a MacBook, everyone would smile quietly and start configuring it"

I have call BS on this.

As someone who uses all three - and made the switch from Windows to Mac - the whole meme of "it just works" or "is simply superior" is a load of crap.

Mac are fine products. The physical design is nice. The trackpad is definitely top-notch. The keyboard? meh. The display? meh.

The OS? least impressive of all. It's fine once you get used to it but I have had as many problems getting the Mac OSX to work with stuff as I ever did with Windows or Linux. Sure - it's a different set of problems, but Mac OSX most definitely doesn't "just work".

All OSes are good at some things, great at some things and are complete and utter junk in other ways.

You just pick you poison learn to live with it.
A new kind of corporation that can put social concerns first
This is an excellent point! As "technologists" I think we believe that a meritocracy of technological prowess should decide who survives, but that view threatens to really short sell the social ramifications of such moves.

We replaced phones with the internet, but in doing so lost common-carrier protections because we were paying attention to the technology not the law. If we replace mail with email and don't retain the same legally protected status on private communications, we'll have only ourselves to blame.
I'm guessing these guys have several years internship experience and a load of side projects coming out of school? I know a few guys who came out with just a degree and 0 exp starting at around the mid $50k range.
That implies that Google is going against the user's best interests by providing less relevant search results today with SPYW.

Which I'd agree with. In my own network, Fb > Twitter > G+
Do you have a citation or example of this? I've also read the opposite about Japan: that they are increasing automation in order to compensate for declining birth rates.
Motorola Seeks Injuction Against iPhone4S & iCloud With Google’s Authorization
I think the point is that people who don't enjoy what they actually spend time doing are fundamentally different employees than those that do. If you are in it for the cash instead of the technology, if the company falls on hard times you'll be out the door. If a hard problem comes up you might begrudgingly come up with a solution, but some people would be excited and invigorated by solving it.

There are many jobs out there for people who are willing to program for money. Those top companies, though, when they aren't desperate for talent, can afford to wait for people who will be enthused by the work, rather than enthused outside of it. Even being motivated by success doesn't mean people will dig in and be motivated to get the day-to-day work done the way people who are motivated by the work itself.

Side note: at least home sausage making is quite fun. Squeezing tubes of oatmeal-constancy meat product is awesome in a kindergardener sort of way. Even if I didn't get to eat the product, I would still be entertained. People who aren't? They buy sausage at a store.
My take on this post is that the author was calling Node a giant leap backwards because he believed all code should have the look and feel of Python.

But now, he's not so sure.

Did I miss anything?

ETA: I understand that coding for Node looks and feels weird, but so does coding for Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell and a long list of other programming languages.
I use O2 with my iPad 2, and this really doesn't surprise me. The 'adult payment' restriction on half of the Internet made me quickly find out that VPNs offer a practical workaround.

I don't trust O2 as a bearer, so I use a VPN instead, which also comes in handy for hotel room/café wireless hotspots.
But at the moment those ads ate only email-relevant when served to your email- that's my understanding
Safari's Share Button
>think the point is that the iPad is sluggish and it shouldn't be
The OP is arguing the opposite-- the responsiveness of the iPad demonstrates that we can have responsive systems even with all of today's luxuries
I think the numbers from Harvard B-school grads isn't really that shocking or terrifying. Of course the US is losing ground to the BRIC countries. They were bound to make progress eventually. Also, the 21% that felt America is "falling behind" probably didn't mean to suggest that the country is finished. They're reacting to events of the past year, such as the demotion of our credit rating, which, as that particular snippet states, reflect a negative trend worthy of greater public attention. Nice article overall though, especially the point about the country successfully deleveraging.
I find this a curious statement. I don't necessarily (dis)agree but how can it be proven? What if Piracy really does have a huge impact on sales? I see his point but it's a gesture of disapproval not an actual point because piracy and the supposed resulting lost sales have no quantifiable measure.
...true of all cryptography systems.

Meaning: my proposed system is no more or less vulnerable than any other, in this regard.
I think that's a fair point. Some people like the simpler search results. Does the SPYW toggle solve that complaint for you, though, or is there a deeper problem that I'm missing?
Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions
Murdoch-backed music startup bankrupt before launch
You know this is a movie reference, right?

If you still doubt it head your way to http://github.com/2394157ysajkfhkly5husdafjkasghf
which produces an astoundingly familiar 404 message...
> They want to control what apps can be installed simply to keep out malware and porn, so that they can do right by their customers who don't want malware and the parents who don't want porn apps.

That's simply untrue. Many apps have been blocked from the iPhone apps store that were neither "porn" nor malware. If it were just about blocking "porn" and malware then they would continue with their (excellent BTW) curated apps store, but could still allow side-loaded apps for those who wish to use them. Instead they block sideloaded apps to ensure complete control of the iOS ecosystem and render impossible any kind of credible competing app store (like the Amazon App store) on iOS.
Both standard quantum key distribution (QKD) and device-independent quantum key distribution schemes assume that the two parties share an authenticated classical channel. Without authentication, of course you cannot prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

Authentication can be established using a shared secret (which is why purists sometimes refer to QKD as a key expansion protocol). Or, it can be established using signatures and certificate authorities. It is worth pointing out that man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks must be made online; if you break a signature scheme a year after the QKD protocol finishes, it does not compromise the key.
PhotoBooth Style Live Video Effects in JavaScript and WebGL
Wheaaatoooooooon! rage
Yep, it's ironic how things changed. The big brother in that clip is exactly Apple today.

Someone even made a parody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdVzboF2E2Q
The list of trusted partners is interesting to see what happens if you spoof mobile phone numbers. They've already said that it's involved in payment in some way...
I read about this in WSJ - my friends at docracy applied
I think you'll find that it is a federal offense in your country to hack someones email.
> I really wish Google would take our money.

they'd have to start offering support - I think they don't like to
How Great Coaches Think
Try in Chrome Canary with the --enable-media-stream flag to see the effects applied to live video from your webcam! :)
I work for a large organization. What I've learned from interviewing people is that you should beg, borrow, and steal in order to experience being the interviewer.

First, it really will boost your ego if you're competent at all. Second, you'll realize how ridiculously difficult it is to hire quality people in a large company. Third, you'll learn what answers you are giving in interviews that are identical to 97% of the rest of the candidates.

And finally, you'll get good at picturing people by reading resumes. In most cases, I can read your resume and know exactly how your interview will go. There are always surprises, but if you read enough resumes, you will know a bit better what yours says about you.
1) True. Buy a few of them, and XOR them all together.

2) I can always have a Message Digest of my message included.

3) If the Message Digest doesn't match, the message will not be accepted as valid. The receiver will not be out of sync.
The point is that, the particular rules of the system that reward person A with wealth is arbitrary. They essentially reward the genetic lottery and luck. Person A was able to invent hoverboards because of a million things in his lifetime lined up exactly right for him to be in the right place for his invention, most notably accident of birth and genetic lottery (genius, work ethic).

In a different time the rules would have rewarded the best hunter, still largely based on the genetic roll of the die. When you strip away the fallacy of the self-made man, you realize everything is arbitrary; who makes it big is greatly dependent on the rules of the system. Thus is makes sense for the system to have an in-built limit to how much it rewards any given individual.
I believe he was saying he would not have accessed his email on his work computer at all, he would then log into Google for other reasons and not open his mail. But Google would then go ahead and show him something related to his email account that he did not want.

Leaving his computer logged into his Google account and his employer sitting down to go through the account, such as sent mail, is a different matter.

The solution to all this is to never use personal logins for anything on a computer you do not control 100%.
Transforming functional or imperative code into continuation-passing style isn't that big a deal. If javascript weren't such a pain in the ass just to parse, there would probably be tools to do that. Maybe coffeescript will do it, but this is why macro-extensible languages are a big win—I'd have the right hooks to easily do it myself rather than waiting for the implementors to officially update the language (or get elbow deep in their internals and hope they accept a huge patch).
I kinda like the em-synchrony for Ruby. It handles the callbacks with fibers, so my actual code doesn't have the callback hell of Javascript. Although the implementation of Ruby fibers is not-so-nice at this point. I hope they'll fix it in the next versions.
And what exactly is wrong with that? You've gotten 'consume entertainment and goods' confused with 'do absolutely anything they want'. Maybe that's making movies, or writing, or painting, or travelling, or maybe spending their time getting to know interesting people. And even if this person really prefers sitting at home watching TV (even though they haven't spent their energy at some demeaning, labour-intensive job), well, who are you to say that's a problem? Let people decide for themselves what they want to do. Increasing their free time and decreasing scarcity can only give people more options.
Welp, I need to work more. Google is quickly creating my customer base.
In other words, the general circumstance. There is no reason to say "potential in certain circumstances" other than deception.
Gizmodo is the Tech World's 'Weekly World News'
When Larry met Sergey
Byte Beat - music from very short programs
The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer.

No. They charge the same amount to send those two letters. It does not cost the same amount, however. Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable. Period.
True, if I'm allowed to treat the quantum crypto system as a black box mirroring the DROBOs should be considered a black box as well.

But can you trust yourself to not take a large enough bribe?
What if someone hold someone special in hostage?

If you only have to convince yourself (quite limiting scenario) I see no, major, problem with your setup. This of course assuming you have eye-contact with the DROBO at all times etc. etc.

Most scenarios however you can't have as much trust in the carrier as you have in yourself.

But I agree. When reading quantum cryptography and its issues I often get the feeling that its all a bit silly. But I totally get the motivation about it, it's extremely enticing. However, I see why some likes to claim that quantum cryptography is just a way for physicists to get paid :P

But there seems to be a market for it and I have no idea how far it can go.
And then use reload!
This is a good point.

A problem with public keys is that they rely on math that we presume is hard.

One Time Pads do not depend on that.
"They go hiking rather than clubbing, look with a hint of impatience at their less social-media-savvy elders, are picky about their sushi and unhappy with iceberg lettuce."

There is nothing necessarily wrong or untrue about this statement, but it's definitely an unflattering generalization that made me chuckle during my lunchtime HN binge.
It's possible to structure "quantum communication" (meaning passing qubits back and forth, basically) so that if someone in the middle reads them at all, the recipient is aware of it. It's not really possible to prevent the interception but it is possible always to detect it, at least in theory.
AT&T’s Q1 2012: HTC Titan II coming March 18th; Sony Crystal tablet, Xperia Ion
> It seems they can't win either way

People like to bitch and gossip about whoever's on top. It's why celebrity tabloids exist, it's perversely why shows like Jersey Shore and My Super Sweet 16 exist, it's why people complain about Apple or Google or Microsoft back in the day.

Couple the innate tendency towards bitching with the prospect of ad revenue from eyeballs, and you get the kind of tabloidy trash we've seen from pandodaily et al. It's just people capitalizing on some of the seedier aspects of human nature.

Google will survive this "controversy" (which 99.99% of its users haven't heard of), just as it will endure the cyclic cries of "you're being evil!". Sarah Lacy will continue to write sordid tales of no-goodery, and the Internet will continue to lap it up. Bloggers will continue to seize on the latest controversy to get pageviews, and so on.

> I do have to ask, though - if you have an issue with Google's having access to your data, why do you use Google services?

Because no one does have a real issue with it. They might be bugged by the abstract thought of it, but they certainly aren't bothered enough to do anything. Empty words, floating on the wind...
>Today it just picks whatever it believes is what you are searching for and wont budge. This is especially annoying when you are just starting out on a search of a topic you know nothing about and need a random factor to get going.

Preciously the reason why I've started using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. In my experience, it almost always provides unbiased results.
s/loose/lost
So if I am not logged in when I use GOOG search I won't have the tailored results, correct? If that is the case, what are the privacy concerns? Will the results of my search still be "inferior"?
This is really old - discussion from 6 months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2848239

Basically, async I/O gives you more options than "block the whole world while you go read this stuff", and that means that old idioms aren't effective.

You gain more control: can choose when to block, when to limit concurrency and when to just launch a bunch of tasks at the same time. At the same time, you need to adopt a few new patterns, since you can't/don't feel right blocking execution every time you use an external data source. It's definitely a tradeoff and not a magic bullet.

For my longer take on this, see http://book.mixu.net/ch7.html
Mobile Drives Apple's Monster Quarter
I'm aware of the government requirements on USPS but I believe that's irrelevant. The USPS would still be in the decline it is today regardless of whether or not they had to stash away all that money today, 5 years from now, or never.

They would still be in decline, but they actually run an operating profit right now. If/as mail volume further declines they can cut & consolidate facilities to a point where they can still be reasonably profitable.

Any time I go to the post office (which now is maybe once every year or two), the employees are extremely disgruntled, not happy that you're there, and not very interested in helping you get what you need done

We all have anecdotes. My business uses USPS for shipping packages worldwide and I am a very happy customer of their services. I go to various Post Offices (01139, 06096, 01095, and 01803 among others, depending on my schedule and travel) 6 days a week to collect mail and ship packages. At this point the workers all know me very well, so it may be that my experiences are atypical, but I find them all to be extremely hardworking, friendly and willing to go the extra mile for me - for example, I mailed a letter once and didn't put enough postage on it. One of the postal workers put on the extra postage and left a note in my PO box asking me to reimburse her when I got a chance.

But again, these are just anecdotes.

However, even when I visit Post Offices I don't normally go to, I'm still largely happy with the services. The only complaint is that sometimes when a Post Office is very busy, I've had employees be curt with me, but in those circumstances I can understand why.

They have "tracking" that doesn't actually track - it simply tells you the package has left the origin and arrived at the destination - nothing in between.

Wholeheartedly agreed. They need to do better here.

Mail is consistently lost, delivered to the wrong address, or opened before delivery (by who knows)

I've shipped something like 2000 packages in the last 3 years to all 50 states and over 40 countries. I've had a grand total of two packages lost (and I'm pretty sure that only one of those two packages was actually lost and the other one was just a customer who wanted a free second item).
Allow me to be a little grumpy:

I hate tabloidy headlines with question marks. As in "Queen Elizabeth: Is She a Transvestite?", "The Moon: Is It Made of Cheese?" or "Linkbait: Will It Ever End?".