skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hypothetically, if Myriad were able to synthesize and market genes, could they patent a synthetic analog to a naturally occurring gene?

e.g. If they isolate a gene that makes a person immune to a specific desease then found a way to package and distribute that gene, could they patent it? It occurred in nature, but something new would be created in packaging it for distribution.

Also, nature can create new genes. If Myriad has a patent on a gene that nature produces later (1 in a bazillion chance), what happens to Myriads patent?
>The briefing was meant to convince lawmakers that the surveillance programs are legal and necessary in fighting counterterrorism

The Government/NSA is now a terrorist group?
Are they fighting themselves?
Why not just use the secret surveillance system called PRISM to discover that the enemy has a secret surveillance system called PRISM?
I'm not talking about "doing good" in the abstract sense of making a net positive contribution to the world. Lots of traders on Wall Street can sleep at night because they believe that creating liquidity is a net benefit to society.[1] I'm talking about "doing good" in the narrow sense--tackling specific issues that hackers as a group care about, but issues that won't be solved through the market.

Creating a technology startup might provide employment for people, and might be a net positive good, but it's not going to expand privacy protections, reform plea bargaining, end the drug war, end de-facto segregation, save the environment, etc. Think of the issues that have raised HN's ire over the last year. These are social justice issues that aren't going to be fixed simply by founding a startup to create some cool website.

[1] I think it's true, but at the same time the (small) subset of those people who go from there to claiming that working on Wall Street == saving the world are (rightly) criticized for being arrogantly delusional.
So they're not shipping to the US or am I reading it wrong?
"It's easy to forget"? I think most people can't help but think of that every time they look at it.
Anyone know how many rails apps a $5 DO can handle? is a $5 DO = 1 heroku dyno?
They're all a part of the US government.
I'm using a 1gb droplet, ubuntu 12.10 with a LEMP stack, PHP5 and MySQL 5 for a low traffic site (Xenforo-based forum) as well. Maybe the difference is nginx vs Apache?

edit: I also added an additional 1gb as swap space, which helped prevent my mysql instance from falling over with low memory at times.
They didn't really catch on in North America, but they're big down under...

http://www.chrisco.com.au/Catalogue/Hamper-2013.aspx
Same. Not having to look at your phone since you get all updates right on your Google Glass.
Members of Congress Go Silent Over Prior False Testimony On Surveillance
Is it people?
> If they isolate a gene that makes a person immune to a specific desease then found a way to package and distribute that gene, could they patent it?

Aspirin became newly protected because of a distribution method Bayer invented, so yes, regardless of whether the sequence itself is patented.
What are some examples of exciting new SNPs they could test for? Besides BRCA.
The number of people driving 80mph through a residential area each year would be about the same as it is today: approximately zero. There are far fewer psychopaths than you think, and psychopaths are largely undissuaded by laws.
I agree with the first part of your comment. But let's not play up his self-experimentation as anything more than whimsical. His result are not significant in any way. Ffs he has been on it for how long? Months? Maybe a year? And n=1 as well.
Couldn't you also serialize the resulting model to JSON (including weights/values), stick that JSON hard-coded into your source, and deserialize at runtime to execute the model? This is how I typically deploy neural networks and other machine learning models.

For example, http://colorbot.herokuapp.com stores the optimal model for the neural network in JSON, right in the code.
I'm really interested in learning more. I like the concept but am also wary of the science behind it. Is there a legitimate/credible scientific review of it out there?
Absolutely. It's one thing to experiment with your own body, it something else entirely to sell a product with no scientific backing as a cure-all for all variety of ailments.
Kim Dotcom opens up about extradition fight
This was around for at least a week or two, what's news?
That's because if Ensure tried to the parent company would get sued/fined into oblivion the first time some one wasn't close enough to their assumptions on nutrient needs/uptake.
"They needed the practice" is possibly the worst excuse I've heard for the overwhelming force used here.
Like Bilski, this represents a short-term victory for those favoring patent protection but also shows that the Supreme Court is at least trying to impose limits on the Federal Circuit's idea that basically everything under the sun should be eligible for patent protection.

Here is an informed summing up by Dennis Crouch at PatentlyO: "What are the consequences [of the ruling]? My immediate reaction is that for most practical applications, the Court's holding means that even though the broadest possible biotechnology product claims (to the isolated DNA itself) aren't going to be patentable, the key elements in making and using a biotechnology-based invention are still going to be protectable via patents (Part III of the Court's opinion makes this especially clear). This will allow researchers and competitors a little bit of wiggle room to design around biotechnology patents because they can use the basic isolated sequence but there will still be substantial limitations on what they can do with that isolated sequence. For this reason, I'm skeptical that the Court's opinion will have a negative effect on the incentives for creating biotechnology-based applications. To the contrary: by affirming that cDNA can be patented, it may strengthen the incentives for investing in research in this area." (http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2013/06/myriad-isolated-dna-...)
Not saying it makes Soylent better or not, but Ensure isn't great. In one study, where Ensure was used instead of the standard glucose solution for an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test, some subjects ended up with 2 hour blood glucose levels over 180 mg/dL. It's marketed as having a low Glycemic Index, but the GI of chocolate cake and ice cream are actually even lower...

AFAICT, though, the only "better" about Soylent is that it's, like, disruptive.
Using Social Security Number as Login Usernames: Benefit Resource, Inc
My company uses them for commuter benefit management and I just realized that they use social security numbers as usernames to login to the site. How absolutely bad of an idea is this and how can I get my company to stop using them?
More on Feudal Security
This was changed to https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Werkzeug

See https://github.com/mitsuhiko/werkzeug/commit/6e74b5be39d2409...
most people working in tech aren't focusing on problems that are anywhere near as important as those that public service tackles

FUCK. YES. This is exactly the point that should be made more. Can you imagine how much we could improve the quality of life of everyday people if everyone in Silicon Valley focused on economic, environmental and social issues for a couple months? There are so many problems whose solutions are dead simple for hackers, but hackers aren't working on them! Quick, someone go make an Uber+Match.com for volunteerism.
Google to sunset Adwhirl
Thanks for the catch - much appreciated. We'll get this in our queue :)
Microsoft opening 600 ‘Windows Stores’ inside Best Buys in U.S. and Canada
Since his sight seems to be down I'm left commenting on the headline [1](sigh) but my guess is that the arguments are the same as they are for the 'decline and fall of Microsoft' or any other company where their relative standing in a market that changed dramatically over their life, also changed the way in which folks perceived them.

Not to get all Grey Beard on y'all but back in the day IBM was the big behemoth and startups like Sun Microsystems or Microsoft even were the challengers. IBM was created when computers filled rooms, businesses ran on paper processes, and "uploading your database" consisted of tens or hundreds of young women typing on mechanical contraptions called "card punches." And they are still here and still making money.

And that last bit is what amazes me. Look at the 'big names' when they started, Rand, Sperry, Univac, Cray, Control Data, Digital Equipment Corporation, Etc. They are on track to become the first 100 year old "computer" company. (depending on when you think of it as becoming one) and they continue to dominate in patents issued.

What IBM has created is a very durable technology corporation, which is up there with Corning Glass and DOW Chemical. Somehow I suspect they will prove Cringley wrong.

[1] Ok so I read the cached copy and as I expected Cringely is extrapolating out from a few point changes into some apocalyptic demise. Previous columnists in Datamation predicted that once IBM's monopoly over peripherals was broken (1977?) they were doomed as well. Didn't happen of course.
I'm not liking how they are going about this at all. They should ensure it is safe first before trying to sell everywhere. I don't like the perception of their intents.
Twitter launched Twitter Analytics tool for free
I tested it and it was nice. The feedback was both encouraging and providing some hints of strong and weak points of my idea.
You just sold me on trying it.
I agree. I buy local from the farmer's market and I buy raw and fresh, I have lost more weight just eating like a caveman than any fad diet has done for any of my co-workers or friends.
The following is ideal for me:

1. raw/fresh food
2. general fitness every day
3. intermittent fasting once or twice a week

Food has a lasting effect on the body, some of which science is yet to understand, I'll stick with what I can hunt and pick from the wild.
Mods - I noticed the title got changed to just "LaunchSky" and we're now #53 -- in a matter of seconds, and off of the front page instantly??

HN posts mean a lot to apps like ours. Can you please let us know why the title was changed as so and what caused the downvotes?

While it's very disappointing to jump from the top 10 to way behind in all rankings now, it's also something we would like to avoid in the future.

Please let us know what caused this.
How can I convince my company to stop using them for benefit management? I think it's a terrible idea to use social security numbers as login usernames
Could you publish non-anonymized SSD reliability data?

When Google did publish their extensive HDD reliability study they removed all brand/model names, so it's pretty useless for consumers.
Just to make sure you didn't miss a simple step (like I have before...) after you spin up an instance, they email you the ssh login details. Did you check your email?
Rob Rhinehart's bio starts: "Rob is a Y Combinator alumnus with professional experience in electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship."

If he had some powerful degree in nutrition or a medical degree, it would be mentioned in this sentence. It's not. He doesn't.

And he's not experimenting on himself. He's selling a product that he's advertising as a food replacement with all sorts of health benefits.

As far as "it's cool if a few people get sick..." Are you insane?
Seems like the key element is modification (such as removal of exons). The court specifically referred to patenting modified bacteria.
what is this, 1998? weak sauce
Thanks! These are the kinds of things we love to hear, but please let us know what suggestions you have for bettering the experience and/or idea validation process from your side.
How the heck are people enthusiastic about this? Are there really that many people that take no enjoyment from the flavours, colours, textures and smells of the food they eat? And that's not to mention the fact that the body craves variety, the need for which it manifests by making you feel sick of eating the same thing over and over again.
A D3 visualization of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004
Yes, the way kernels are managed is also something that annoys me. But it seems they're working on it: http://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-ocea....
Navy's new messaging system to finally allow lowercase letters
"If I were to leave Google and found a web business, I would spend very minimal time on SEO, despite knowing (in broad strokes) how the ranking algorithm operates and having a huge leg up on the competition."

This is a critical point and needs to be underscored. Chasing SEO from a technical perspective is a fool's game. I think SEO can inform your choice of person-to-person marketing activities, but can never take the place of them.

I agree with everything you've said, but I would add one thing: as the complexity of Google's algorithm increases, there's more and more collateral damage. So, for instance, I had a micro-site I made several years ago. Back then the thing to do was to make sure you tweaked your on-page content so that the search engines better understood it.

Flash forward to today. Now if you "over-tweak" (who knows what that means) you get penalized. The same goes for a dozen other topics. They used to either be best practices or work well. Now they're either considered bad practices and you get punished for them. It's completely unrealistic to expect that I am going to have time to go back and re-honk around with stuff because in the great search engine wars the rules change every year.

As far as the protocol thing goes, who knows? I think it's important to realize that we all have the power to do whatever we want on top of TCP-IP. Let a thousand new ideas bloom. See if any of them gain traction.
Amazon creates 3D printing store
Idiots guide to moving it from one machine to another?
> (they have automatic backup, which costs a bit extra).

They lost that as well in this case.
Thank you for taking the time to write these comments. I've found them quite informative.
Gatekeepers of Cable TV Try to Stop Intel
I would say most competent. I still think that it is a terribly conflicted set of roles, and that they've poisoned their position of trust. They still have the incentive to protect US interests from foreign enemies, including commercial ones as in the IBM example you cited; but, there is no longer any reason to think that those interests are protected from government agents with access.
Update - they changed the title to just "LaunchSky". Less misleading, yes - but also not very encouraging for a click through or upvote.

No one knows what LaunchSky is yet, that's a part of the reason we're posting here.

I'm very disappointed with how they handled this.
Using Rails I18n translations to solve dynamic content
I think that the article is misleading.

The question is not "Who these pesky hackers think they are that they can dismiss social niceties, establish law, and office smoothness". This misleads because it assumes that normal people should just accept authority, and questioning authority is dysfunctional.

The real question is "What makes people recognize authority?", and for this question there is a spectrum of answers that goes from Pure Label to Pure Proof.

Pure label would be the people that recognize authority because there is a piece of paper that say that you are authority, and you can inflict pain, so I should obey you, if not by recognition, then by fear. (The lion is not scary if it doesn't have teeth)

Pure proof would be the people that put others to test before acknowledging labels. You are authority because you ACTUALLY know the domain where you claim authority, you are authority because you care about the consequences of your decisions on the all people affected by them. I obey because I saw that you actually are better than me in the context, and pain has nothing to do with it.

Pure label people look at pure proof people as disorderly, rebellious, dis adjusted, and they don't comply but hack their way around. The sense of comfort for pure label people comes from a well known establish order, and they feel that without authority society will spiral into chaos. Order is more important than people. I think they are correct.

Pure Proof people look at pure label people as sheep, drones, overly compliant people that are too lazy to try understand what actually works. The sense of comfort for pure proof people comes from objectively understanding the context, see how it is supposed to work regardless of the current implementation, and once an appropriate solution is found, then passionately support it. They feel that with excessive authority society will be for a few, hence just another form of chaos. People is more important than Order). I think they are correct.

(I know that for a dualistic mind agreeing with both is non sense... you will have to stretch your brain if you want to understand how this is possible and is OK)

This is an spectrum, so most people is in neither pole, but somewhere in between.

I believe that the truth in this case, is in the balance. And society to progress needs both. Our current society implementation massively favors Pure label people for historically or manipulative reasons, and to the point of almost looking at pure proof people as pathological.

Since the situation is out of balance, our current implementation of society 3.0 is faulty. But this is not a hackers problem, actually, more hackers would be the solution to restore the balance.
I refuse to believe there's that many people doing searches in this "real time" search list and there's nothing pornographic...
Furthermore, the character of 'well-actually' comments are that the orignal comment was close to, or intended to be close to, a certain fact, and the well-actualer is pedantically correcting the original without adding any substantial value to the conversation.

This is not what happened here. rvkennedy did not make a statement of fact, he made an off-the-cuff remark. eldude challenged the substance and tone of that remark in order to prevent further misrepresentation of the point. He corrected and clarified the remark in a clear and substal way, thus falling well outside of the 'well-actually' category.

Oh dear. I've spent way too much time reading SCOTUS rulings/blogs today.
So lets say if the government was Syria and they requested the tweets of Jewish users from their country be removed and that their user information was turned over; Pretty sure there'd be more outcry. While I don't think France is going to put these people to death, I'm certain its not to give them a free speech award.

This is why we have the 1st amendment in the US, its too bad we can't have it on the internet too.
Retiring Chrome Frame
Probably, as the $5 instance is only 1 core. You might be able to squeeze more on if you aren't using much memory, or don't mind adding swap space (ssd swap is fast enough for me...)
"Isn't a press release announcing you got funding tantamount to a press release saying you got a mortgage?" - @stevenf
I'm not sure if you are assuming that I'm a naive guy who is fresh out of university or not. In case you are, I am not. I worked for a small company (I was the 6th employee, and it grew to 150 people) whose largest project was an ERP implementation for an extremely large enterprise which I shall not name, but you would immediately know them. I was not involved on the project directly, but was frequently pulled in to advise those who were. Said organization went down a rabbit-hole trying to map out all of their workflows so that we could customize the ERP for their needs. What a nightmare. I am now witnessing a successful ERP implementation in another large organization. The first priority is to minimize customization.

General Electric is a model of how to implement an ERP. They followed the minimal customization model, and forced their workers to change their workflows to take advantage of the tool. The key is to identify all of the data an org needs, and make it accessible. If your developers don't have an excellent metadata analysis/storage tool (homemade or bought) they are screwed.
Pivotal One and vFabric Suite 5.3 Live Webinar
According to barb.co.uk, BBC 1 (the flagship TV channel) had some 45M viewers over a recent week. We could consider other channels, radio stations and the website, but that's already well over half the UK population. By cost per customer, that's more than an order of magnitude better than your newspaper example.
Saying the program was scrapped is a bit off. It makes it sound like nothing has come out of the project at all.

Choose and Book is widely in use, the Spine exists, as well as the N3 network.

Data format and transfer standards are coming into play now. So instead of one system to rule them all, it's working towards interop. Which probably should have been the overall goal to begin with.

People like to think of the NHS as a monolith, but it's really hundreds of tiny fiefdoms.
I think this is a great idea. In many ways they're positioned to become a more flexible/performant version of Heroku. On the complexity scale from Heroku to AWS, they definitely sit right in the middle. It will be interesting to see which direction they tend towards as they add features. Personally I want a version of Heroku with the price/performance of digital ocean. In other words, by default you could use it like Heroku but it would allow you to SSH into machines and customize your software/configuration when you ran into problems. Maybe DO could offer a load balancer that would make it easy to deploy horizontally scaled application servers really easily. A nice DSL to describe the node configuration would go a long way... I suppose this is kind of what Vagrant is solving but they're approaching it from the development perspective, not deployment.
Looks as though they are making an IE plugin for chrome, rather than a chrome plugin for IE.
I'd love to know where these ideas come from. All the way from the top? Product? Developers with a 20% time window? They've always been innovative and despite size/growth/scale seem to be able to keep that up.
The search expression "go programming language" gets http://golang.org/‎ as first hit.

How hard is that?
I just finished the most recent session of this class and I found it incredibly frustrating that there was no discussion of the homework assignments after the due dates had passed. What's the point of having homework if there's no way to get the correct answers and get feedback on your solutions?

And take the "in Scala" part of the course title with a grain of salt. You're only taught enough to complete the exercises.
That truly is mind-boggling. I see cops turn their lights on to run red lights where I live and it makes me just as mad. One of these days one of them is going to get T-boned.

I wonder whether this "protection" happened at the state or local level. License plates are given out by the state, so if you had traveled 100 miles in some direction but not left the state, and had a different city look up the plate, would they have told you the same thing?

Your story paints articles like this in a whole new light - http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Florida-Highway-Patrol-Tr...
> WPScan

We are also working hard to keep an updated internal database of all vulnerable plugins and themes, so update it often ;)