skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Are you really attempting to say that going to war is just as serious as public education or elderly care-giving?

The gist (which seems to be going over your head), is that the decision to go to war is not one that should be made lightly. If you don't have any 'skin in the game,' then you're more apt to make the decision lightly (or just be apathetic, letting others make the decision).

Instituting a draft increases the chances that someone you know may die as a result of the decision to go to war. It's easy to make the decision to go to war if someone else's friends/family are the ones making the actual sacrifice. For example, how many politicians are willing to put their kids on the front-lines?
I'm not sure that the math doesn't work out. I'd think that 80% of the part of the military that actively engages in combat is well below 5% of the population. I'd consider it obvious that psychopaths would be much more likely to join a group of people where they would be tolerated, perhaps even glorified while also giving them an outlet for their tendencies.
Focussing on the point and shoot is 0.2 to 0.4 seconds. (Latest model is 0.1 seconds). Note the comment I was replying to claiming the lytro market is amateurs with slow reflexes. I don't think the lytro is even close to a good fit for that market even for amateurs with slow focussing and reflexes. An auto everything point and shoot is far superior n every aspect. Note how the review does mention you have to contrive shots to make the lytro functionality worthwhile.
Windows 8 will have kill switch
I'm looking at the original posts that inspired this:

http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2012/02/26/analyzing-re...

http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2012/02/28/analyzing-re...

In particular, the "same grade, different subjects" plot looks like a good correlation. Some noise, but otherwise exactly what you'd expect. Anyone know where to get the raw data so I can do more careful plots (e.g., a density plot instead of a scatter plot [1])?

Note that noise simply means you need more than a single year's data to make a decision.

[1] In a scatterplot, if two points overlap (which they likely do in this data), the apparent density is understated.

[edit: found the data here: http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/156599/now-available-... ]
Am I crazy for thinking these sorts of things are absurd and in 10 years we'll look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking?

I want music. I want a phone. I want cell phone service. I don't want Verizon selling me a phone. I don't want them selling me music. Or ringtones. I want them to provide me with quality, economical cell phone service. These multi-tier one-off annoying-to-negotiate media deals boggle my mind. It's the reason that despite having Amazon Prime, Netflix and more, I still can't watch half of what I want to, let alone where I want, when I want (actually, I'm on Linux, so I'm screwed either way).

It just reeks of absurdity and politics. Maybe I'm just naive.
Nice! That looks quite interesting. Is there any particular reason why the iPad was targeted first? I wonder if Android would have been a better choice because some manufacturers offer rugged tablets these days which seem like a better fit for this industry.
It does explain how obvious and obviate got to mean conflicting things.

It's pretty cool when a word evolves into its opposite meaning, but I can't remember any right now, other than slang examples like "wicked" and "sick" which don't get to count.
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On a similar note: I recently watched the movie "Act of Valor". I had no idea it was one big propaganda piece before I got in. As soon as the movie started I thought "Yep, here we go. 110 minutes of pure army PR".

What I thought was more interesting were the comments on the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. You can check them out for yourself here: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/act_of_valor/
It is a shit movie; no doubt about it. What I find interesting are the comments on the reviews that the critics gave.

Critics of course correctly pointed out how this movie is basically an advertisement paid for by the Navy. However, any critic that dared to give a bad review or even mention the word "propaganda" was attacked by countless posters that were shouting how he is a "damned liberal" and how the soldiers "die for [him] everyday to protect [his] freedom".

I do not understand the glorification of soldiers and I probably never will. War is a horrible, horrible thing. Soldiers are professional killers. As Voltaire said: "All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets"

There is no glory or honor in war (more specifically the current situation in Afghanistan/Iraq). The soldier sure as hell did not die for you. He most likely died protecting his comrades that he has been living with for the last 4 years. The soldier probably doesn't even give a shit about you. The Army is not defending America's "way of life". Terrorists do not hate you because of your "freedoms".
As a Canadian, I really don't understand why my opinion is so frowned upon in the US.
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Attacking the Washington, D.C. Internet Voting System
Excellent. Inspiring. awesome.
When I was younger, I remember playing a game called Aces Over Europe. I took a pilot character through to 1943 or so. Then he got shot down, and he was dead. Weeks of playing. No respawning. I spent about thirty seconds wanting to cry about him being dead, and then remember my grandfather surviving world war II, just, and spending the rest of his night waking up screaming from the memories, and didn't play war games after that.

Maybe things have changed, game wise. I can't say whether that means anything though.
iPad is the dominant tablet platform (phones might have been different). We may do Android eventually - our backend is written to support web and iOS already.
Money quote:

Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near complete control of the election server. We successfully changed every vote
and revealed almost every secret ballot. Election officials did not detect
our intrusion for nearly two business days — and might have remained
unaware for far longer had we not deliberately left a prominent clue.
Sure! Here's a research group in Glasgow that has a great site: http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/Optics/play/photonOAM/

And here is the lab where I did my undergrad research (Colgate Univ.): http://departments.colgate.edu/physics/research/optics/oamgp...

happy to offer up my phd thesis as well:
http://shel.tv/henry_thesis
I spent a lot of time near Beaufort, SC on a nearby island after college. All the marines from Parris Island would go to downtown Beaufort on the weekends. Most of the marines were dicks looking for a fight. Some were cool but I remember thinking they were the exception not the rule.
> your ATM will still work even if you sever its network connection

Do they?
If you rate teachers based on the number of their students pass a standardized test, the teachers will focus solely on the contents of that standardized test and put a huge amount of effort into educating the few students who Don't Get It, at the cost of all the students that do.

Your issue here is not with standardized tests. Your issue is with the goals of the school system.

I.e., you want schools to maximize mean(performance_data), but they are actually trying to maximize len([p for p in performance_data if p >= pmin]).

Gathering good data is not the problem, it just reveals the problem.
I get things for free that were made for free. Seems like a pretty good deal on both sides to me.

by made I mean manufactured, or in this case, duplicated digitally. I'm not talking about the artist's efforts actually creating the music. I'd be happy to send them a 10 spot if I like their music and they asked for it.
It is the leader in sales but I'm not sure that will matter in this case. This is domain specific so the choice of tablet is determined by the availability of the software. Just my thoughts, great idea though :)
But you're not understanding - the artist can't decide because piracy is unpreventable. It's over, just stop with them moral battle. The floodgates are open, and it will never close unless we all agree to compromise the internet. So it's either adapt or get a real job.
Assange accused of leaking uncensored Wikileaks files to Ukrainian Dictator
They don't just want to avoid talking about it, they are actively working to spin it. If they had said nothing about jobs in the US, which came completely out of nowhere, I would have a lot more respect for them. They are acting ashamed by trying to distract everyone. Yes, be proud that you created jobs, but be honest about why you're suddenly trying to draw attention to that fact.
You believe it is your right to get someone elses hard earned work for free, just because it is only a few clicks away and without consequence, and also ignore their wishes if they ask to be compensated?

Logical conclusion: We can consider whatever you do 9-5 to pay the bills also as your 'art'. I as your boss now decree that you are entitled to $0 compensation this month.

You are extremely happy now yes, because 'art wants to be free'?
Download Holi 2012 Desktop Wallpapers & Pictures
Holi is a beautiful festival celebrated by Hindus in all over India. It is also known as festival of Colours and joy.
How to Multiply Numbers that are Close to base 100 in just one line
http://mathema-tricks.blogspot.com/
Ask HN: What is the best Windows 7 Anti-Virus?
I think you're onto something here. Its hard to give an honest opinion without sounding like an asshole or whatever you put at the end of "I don't mean to be". Even moreso when you're on HN. Its quick discussion, even though we're all techies we don't have all the domain knowledge and the different cultures here doesn't always approach things from the same standpoint.
Slicehost Forum User database compromised
Given this phrase alone, it only states that bootstrapped companies have to profit FASTER - which is true, anyway...
Interesting commentary. How do you store anything of value at a SP (i.e. anything worth more than the compensation value?) without regulation of SPs? Like banks, the value of customer trust in a SP would have to override the losses they might incur to make someone whole. Otherwise it's hard to see how you store something like bitcoin in any SP.
> When was the last time you heard of laws being repealed

For the most part, laws aren't 'repealed' anymore. They just pass a new law that says the old law doesn't count anymore, making the legal code even more obtuse.
I work for Google's Developer Relations department. My team just moved their technical Q&A to Stack Overflow, as have other DevRel teams. We have several sponsored tags on SO and make the effort to help respond to questions tagged in our area of expertise.
Thanks - among our first 20+ companies, all our users have iPads. We haven't seen any Android tablets in the field, actually.
How to, uh, turn Windows 8 off
It's far from a settled subject. Nobody is (or at least I'm not) quite sure how to treat those old questions (other than the cartoon/joke threads, of course); if you check http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes, you'll see several questions that were undeleted today, not just the Alan Kay question.

Boats, of course, are always off limits.
Isn't S3 really expensive?
The idea itself sounds completely horrendous from every angle.

The business model for pretty much every music-related startup sounds horrendous from every angle. Mostly due to the ridiculous fees and constraints imposed by the labels and partly due to relatively high infrastructure costs.

Most of the products in the space operate on the premise of reaching "exit velocity" as fast as they can. The goal is to either get bought by an established player, or to make ends meet on the razor things margins by the virtue of mass market scale (which in turn gives you leverage to negotiate slightly less ridiculous deals with the labels. slightly.).
They've set up exactly those before at Ted, but no, they didn't do so this year.
The bad thing is that it remembers what certificate you want to use and logging out and loggin back in doesn't ask you what certificate you want to use :-(

I've had this issue with the fact that I have two CACert accounts (due to not remembering I had already created one before) and I just recently moved all domains to the newest account...
Unfortunately, from what I understand, Krav Maga students don't practice against resisting opponents. Because of this, it has been criticized as more of a "dance" art, where the student and the opponent are just going through a "kata" or predefined motions without meeting real resistance.

Of course, it is rare to come across a situation in any martial art where your training opponent will be resisting 100%, the way a real opponent would on the street.

However, there are some martial arts where opponents do give a significant amount of resistance both during training and in competition. I have heard the claim made that this factor makes the students of these other arts more ready for real survival situations than something like Krav Maga.
It was faux-clever enough that I decided to take the risk. :-)
Current accountability reform places too much faith in the power of incentives and hence many metrics (not only teacher effectiveness and not only the NYC accountability system) are not directed to offering any sort of guidance towards improving schools. The NYC Progress Reports, which give schools grades, are another prime example of this. Personally, I hope that the next stage in accountability will see a shift to making the data more actionable from the perspective of practitioners and it is something I have been encouraging for a few years. I think part of the obstacle, though perhaps not the primary one, is the criticism that measurements are not accurate. So given the option of re-thinking how to make actionable reports or measurements vs. just improving what exists (via extending and revising statistical methods, refining business rules, improving data quality, and including additional data sources) the latter is winning out even in areas where there may be diminishing returns to doing this.

On the other hand, one could argue that the issue of how to improve the schools is addressed by other projects or other areas in the system, and it sufficient for these tools just to make clear and accurate evaluations. We are dealing with a big problem, both in terms of depth and significance. So there is room to approach this from many angles.

Regarding the issue of making the data public (i.e. Gates' Op Ed), there are competing values at play. Yes, it will be misused and some folks will be unfairly hurt. I would rather have data public (not just the teacher effectiveness data), and allow everyone the option to create there own diverse conclusions, perform their own analyses (like the one linked to), and as a society we can become more sophisticated and knowledgeable about these issues. The alternative is that the only people that will has access to this data is bureaucrats with a specific policy agenda and a handful of academics. Broader society, especially parents, has a right to weigh-in on these issues and be a part of this discussion and they cannot do this effectively without open data. To reiterate, I don't want technocrats driving education (that is part of the broader problem with current reform); hopefully open data such as this can limit that.

The solution is to do a better job of disclosing the information and providing the necessary context rather than just hide it. NYTimes did a pretty sweet job in this respect . I like where they are going with schoolbook.

I would like to see the media and public consistently push government for better open data. Right now that is not happening, and agencies are not going to make big changes in this area in the absence of that pressure.
So true. I think the sign of a great PM is the ability to see all the imperfections but the self-control to focus on the things that matter and to de-prioritize the things that don't.

It's easy to make a list of everything wrong with your product and spend eternity trying to fix it all. It's harder to reconcile imperfection with the reality of limited resources and business objectives.
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Then the question becomes how do you know your product is good enough for release despite all the shortcomings you know inside?
Facebook Coffers Fill with More Underwriting Money, Says Bloomberg
Given the nature of how bitcoin works, however, they can easily move the money through exchanges in foreign jurisdictions, effectively laundering it. There'd be a trail, with logs, but it'd be inaccessible to investigators.
They work as a pair. If you access from a different machine you need the private key on that machine. You can't just copy the public key over to that machine and expect it to work.
Need a technical co-founder? Start by creating a prototype.
In the context of this article, it is only true for people who care as much, have spent years caring about their work and continue to do so. Surviving sufficiently long enough in the world where you get to a point where you are truly awesome at your craft and still get to make these choices and worry about them and think about them and have those choices bother you is the realm of very few fantastic people.
It creates a support headache. I have rolled out client certs on a number of projects, the first over 10 years ago. I now know the perfect project that suits client certificates: authenticating work computers in high-risk transactions where you have a small base of users (500-5000).

In one scenario even with 500 users we would get 2-3 support calls per day regarding the certificates. And having Verisign set us up as an intermediary with an ability to sign client certs was very expensive.
Really? What government in the world allows "nobody" to be elected?
My God... it even has a table of contents.
My 2¢:

If it's a software product, and you're debating whether it's time to release, it's probably time to release.

If your customers try your product and quickly abandon it because of it's imperfections, you prioritize fixing those imperfections. If they complain a little, and a few of them leave after a while because they're fed up, it's probably worth fixing those imperfections at some point, but you may want to focus on other priorities.
Finally! The world needs more creative explorations of the HTML medium.
Was it your decision to re-design EE so as to put any real content so far beneath footer material, that people often fail to see it, but (of course) Google does?

If so, thankyou. This change prompted me to to install a browser plugin to remove your site from my search queries, and I have been ever so slightly more productive ever since.
Are you really attempting to say that going to war is just as serious as public education or elderly care-giving?

I'm addressing this reasoning: "In my opinion, it's unlikely that $POLICY is just if the citizenry is unwilling to submit to a draft [to provide necessary labor for $POLICY]."

Nothing leot said is specific to war, so I don't see why you are attempting to contrast war to other policies.

Also, regarding the chances someone may die, forced labor on construction projects increases the chance that someone you know may die as a result of the decision to engage in construction (to select one particular non-war policy with real physical risks). It's easy to make the decision to build roads if someone else's friends/family are the ones making the actual sacrifice. So should roads be built with forced labor?

For example, how many politicians are willing to put their kids on the front-lines?

This is unknowable, since we (thankfully) don't allow parents to enslave their children.
A bit over a month ago Graham "declared war" on Hollywood — and while it's a bit early to see how that turns out, I would like to know if he's started investing in that direction and what feedback he got as a result of that push
It would be much harder to overwhelm with multiple missiles.

You have to place Phalanx systems all around the ship in order to provide 360 degree protection. However, an enemy could concentrate multiple missiles on a space covered by only 1 Phalanx.

If radar detects multiple missiles inbound, more drones could be easily be routed to the appropriate area to intercept. To overwhelm the defense you'd have to fire more missiles than the ship has drones (and since drones could be made much more cheaply than supersonic missiles, that would be fairly hard to do).
I was just going to say the same. I'm very happy with the new design :) I just wish the admin panel did get the same attention, but it is great anyway! Congrats!
If this is true then it appears to be a change in the MO of Anonymous generally they have targeted groups such as Scientology, MPAA/RIAA that actively attack critics and abuse laws and systems to victimize people. Actively perusing organizations that are voluntary in nature and that are not actively abusing anyone outside of their organization who voluntarily associate with that orginization seems like a step in the direction of the oppression that they claim to be fighting against. Kind of like becoming the thought police, where if you don't view the world like Anonymous (or at least a segment of them) well then you are "Fair Game". There is a lot of hypocrisy in their statement if this is now their new mantra and this is in the end the problem with vigilantism. absolute power corrupts absolutely, Anonymous is not immune to that reality, if they are attacking organizations that mind their own business then they themselves have become the aggressors and oppressors.
DNA computing: Computing with soup
Actually I do find the DOM oppressive, especially at 4am in the morning before a deadline ;)

On a serious note, there is no historical precedent for standards committees to competently steer the technical underpinnings of a platform as dynamic and fast-changing as the web. Web development is unwieldy right now because of this.

I never asserted "that HTML, CSS, and JS somehow have some predefined subset of things that were intended to be built with them." At the end of the day, software performance is based on architecture. The architecture of a platform or a language or a framework is intertwined with it's intended purpose. Anything otherwise is just bad engineering.

HTML and CSS are reasonably well engineered tools. They just rely on the web from the 90's, a set of interconnected documents. Not the application and data driven web. The architecture is not designed to handle these new paradigms.

And JS? JS was designed to do form validation. Nowadays it can run your entire web stack, it was NEVER designed to do this. Can you build awesome web apps with HTML, CSS, and JS? You bet. But don't kid yourself that it's easy. Tools like Cappuccino, and Sproutcore, and Blossom are awesome and help sort of solve this issue but they do so at huge performance costs.

Someday the web will be written using the tools and frameworks that don't drive developers to frustration. How soon that day comes will have a lot to do with how attached we are to the outdated architectures used by the web today.
Reasonable is subjective, I believe all hosts should use an NIDS and a HIDS if they don't I in my opinion consider them amateur. Regarding resource utilization sampling connections periodically would not take much.
All the ones without elections. They just appoint people instead, which is what you'd eventually be forced to do in an elective society if everybody was apathetic.

Although, if everybody was that apathetic in this fictional society they might not appoint anyone at all and just go and eat some donuts instead.