skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No one is suggesting that the NSA or these system should or would go, even many would like to see that happen.

The whole point is over-sight, and making these spooks follow the laws of the land.

See, the point is we can all see and debate these laws and rules. We don't need to know about the operations of the NSA as long as we have confidence in the rules, over-sight and enforcement.

Here is my problem: When was the last time any of us, US or non US, heard of a senior spook employee sacked and jailed for breaking the laws governing their work, with out it becoming public first as an accusation in the media? The real problem is the closed loop shop which only respects the law one some one out side of the closed shop discovers the law breaking.

The over sight is totally broken, and worse still there is literally zero incentive for it to be fixed.
Surely we want them to stop doing bad things? :p
This. To paraphrase a favorite Daniel Dennett quote: don't mistake lack of imagination for insight into feasibility.
no, you don't understand. when Apple copies people it is "amazing" and "revolutionary". when other people copy Apple it is a "lawsuit" and "evil."

get with the program. :)
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.

From Ginsberg's "America" (http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/america.html)
Great to hear. This is a "country of laws" as every lawmaker likes to say, so sue this program out of existence.

Within the USA this is a clear violation of the right to free-association (which should also work against drone tracking).

The Atlantic is really churning out great articles on this, another good one from yesterday:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-obam...
What's the MIPS for this CPU?
Ask HN: Where does Google Chromium in incognito mode get me?
I have been using Chromium for a long time, without really thinking objectively about it. I use it in incognito mode 99% of the time, and I am logged out of my google accounts always -- unless logging in to check my email. I am the least paranoid person I know, actually, I just do the above because I want Google to know little about me. However, is this even true? Does my setup do _anything_ for me?
AMD is behind, and they'll use gimmicks where they can. Though since nvidia came up elsewhere, note that nvidia effectively advertises their "turbo" speed as the base and max speed, but in practice you'll often find it regulated to lower speeds for heat reasons.

In this case, however, it's an 8-core chip. Very few current workloads will saturate 8 cores (even on heavily taxed database servers), meaning that there is a good chance there is always thermal availability for individual cores (and thus individual threads) to be run at 5Ghz.
How about downranking sites that do not redirect back to their desktop variants when a mobile URL is shared and then consumed by a desktop user? Mobile sites can be consumed on desktop browsers, but the experience is not always as good.

I find it odd that the redirect is typically only unidirectional.
Show HN: I made a physics-based Windows Phone 8 Game – Happy Birds
Not that I like roaches, but this seems cruel in a way I can't quite describe. Watching the video made me sad.
Even if this was granted, it would be easy enough to defeat with prior art references from all over the place. Windows WMI management framework includes transport over http for example.
To you it may be tangential, but my large amount of time in the Middle East (and I happen to like it here) has taught me that, unfortunately, stateless states should implode on themselves. They will anyway. The only reason they are able to cause damage is we shorten our proximity to them with forward operating bases and less legitimate covers in countries where the population does not approve of our presence, even nominally. That dislike is because of those very same FOBs, which are there to make the stateless stateful.

If we can learn anything from networking jokes, no amount of guns will make UDP TCP, just like forcing Yemenis to accept legitimacy based on your definition of the need for stateful intervention to prevent stateless chaos and terrorism (the biggest fad word of the decade) and will not work (I would not be surprised, knowing my history of ancient Greece, if the terrain and disconnected government are not so uncommon, see Afghanistan also).

I agree on the should-can dichotomy. The problem is that I was under the impression the should was important in the betterment of society than the can, and that has recently changed. But maybe because I was raised by lawyers, I was taught the should was more important the can, hence the idea of constitutional powers. I am under the impression that is the outrage with PRISM/FISA/general government malfeasance these days: like a cop who badgers someone he pulls over and does not follow his legal obligations, the USG in Yemen, in signals intelligence, in everything to be honest, does what it can and worries about the should later, and will find any excuse in the should category that is exceptional to justify a "can" they knew to be a "cannot." It is disgusting.

It is ok: my time abroad taught me all governments are shams, and we best tolerate them just to make them pleased with themselves. The USG is like all other bullies, and any government bully must be convinced in its total allegiance of the flock or it must (can) flex its muscle even though it knows it should not. Unfortunately when the bully beats too many people, they gang up and trounce on him.

Sorry, end rant. Not meant to be directed at you. Your last point is really good, but it defines exactly what makes me want to be Scandinavian. I do not want to support my government even tacitly anymore.
State of the art ASIC bitcoin mining product using the OpenRISC processor
Would you be happy to keep up with our updates? I'm putting together a website and mailing list about the work we're doing. My email is in my profile.
the results you report are in line with other similar fb ad case studies. but I would suggest you 'declutter' your landing page, especially above the fold. there simply is way too much there and not enough empty space to attract the eye. an A/B test that pits a more spartan landing page against what you have right now would be helpful

good luck and keep us informed
I'm a big fan of HN (I don't post much though) but I just wanted to show off my new WP8 game, cheers!
Not really. Actually you can create an empty object by:
var a = Object.create(null)
Don't let the numbers fool you, though. POWER6 achieved those speeds due to a change in chip architecture that actually wound up making them worse processors than the much lower clocked POWER5s in a lot of situations. IBM reversed course and changed the chip architecture back for the POWER7s, which are clocked lower and outperform the POWER6s.
8 months in Microsoft, I learned these
My first summer job in 1990 was with a company than had then contract (then) to digitizing all USPTO patent applications.

As a shipping clerk I got to see a lot of hair-brained patent apps. Picture a diagram of a shoebox decorated to look like a mailbox and the words "KIDDIE MAIL" scrawled on the side. Yeah, somebody was trying to patent that. Most applications were like that one--complete wastes of everybody's time and money.

Seems like we've replaced "Kiddie Mail" with "RAM" and "ROM" but not much else has changed, except, presumably, the volume.
The name is FX-9590. It has 8 compute cores. AMD's internal designation for this generation is "Piledriver". They've chosen to name their high-end compute family after construction equipment (their previous were named after racing tracks). 5 GHz Max Turbo is also not part of the name, it is a description of its performance. It's "baseline" performance is probably something like 4GHz or something (pulling out of my ass). The Max Turbo refers to that using their thermal management system, they can peak at least one of their cores to 5GHz for some period of time. The "Max" is in there because there are intermediate turbo speeds for varying thermal situations and CPU loads.
> "All the way to the legal limit."

Too bad the NSA doesn't observe legal limits.
Obviously as the site/article is about the UK. LoveFilms is a UK company, and this is about UK Netflix.
University of Michigan study links social media and narcissism
> So, you "have better things to do with my free time" but the people doing Linux kernel work should implement novel things for your amusement?

Why should it be for my amusement?! I was only stating a fact.

> (As for "coding before Linus could even think about doing Linux", should we be impressed by the timespan alone? Tons of dabblers and mediocrities have also done that).

No, it just means I use GNU/Linux like any other OS and I don't care about OS religious wars.
Ubuntu Touch: First look at the Linux smartphone OS
An MD who is in it for the right reason is hacker; I think Ron and Rand are hackers.
So you are saying git gets in the way? I'm curious about why that is the case.
Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi
If you read the guidelines, it's pretty clear that simply being "newsworthy" is not really what this site is supposed to be about:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That US immigration is f'cked up is not exactly new or interesting in any case - and certainly not "intellectually gratifying". Do you remember when Linus Torvalds had bureaucratic problems with his green card?
Oh I appreciate all of that. But in combination with all of the other superlatives, it's frankly ludicrous.

AMD Exec 1: "Hmm, which superlatives can we use to sell this 'slightly more powerful chip'?"

AMD Exec 2: "Err... hmm... how about... ALL OF THEM?!"

AMD Exec 1: "Do you know, you're a freaking genius!!"
a bit like a government. If it find that doing X is frown upon by its citizen, it better hide it before the citizens make it stop doing X any more.

edit: this is obviously false, since by taking the monopole of violence, the government also has to drop some barbaric practices. And this is all due process and defense rights are about, limitations of the government power. Call it unfair, but drones are unfair too.
The worst one I know of was when they wouldn't let Nelson Mandela into the country because some computer had flagged him as having ties to terrorist groups. Condoleezza Rice personally went to the airport to wave him through security. She was so mad, she might have single-handedly taken the teeth out of that system.

Edit: more info, and some evidence that I was right :) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchli...
Because the people we need to elect are branded as "dangerous" and "naive" by the media. And people listen.
Thank goodness the gov't protects us from crass tourists. Totally worth the billions spent and the invasion of everyone's privacy.
Open Source Bug Library
I know a retired NSA analyst. When I asked him what he thought of the NSA wiretaps, etc, he was silent for a bit. Then he said one of the most important things I've heard politically (paraphrased, I wish I wrote it down):

> The organization is only as good as its administrative head, and the NSA I served in was widely different from the one that exists today.

The problem is that the administration, the Congress, the Senate, the Judicial System, and the intelligence agencies (with some of the law enforcement agencies) have lost their integrity. The ends do not justify the means. Lying to the American public which put them in power is the ultimate breach of faith. Not only are these things usually secret, but when revealed they are outright lied about.

Why would we punish intelligence agencies for something we don't hold either the administration or our elected officials to? They're all dishonest.
"piledriver"? Good grief! What are the next models called? Doggy Style? Missionary?
They used to have such a service in Sweden too, but this week it was announced that they are shutting it down. Very annoying.
Better yet, if I recall correctly, inflicting this malaise upon malignant actors that engage in this kind of bad faith behaviour was one of the stated side effect objectives of wikileaks, by forcing their targets to close ranks and become less and less open and in touch with the real world they cripple their ability to interact and interface with that real world, and trust counterparties in conspiring and analysis of the data that they have access to in putting their plans and foreign policies into action.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but eventually, hopefully to the point that one day they just disappear into irrelevancy.
Canadian Startup PasswordBox Surpasses Gmail for Top Productivity App
So they like to say...
IOS 7: Apple's war against jailbreaking now makes perfect sense
"If such objective criteria were known, journals would apply those criteria to the papers themselves, hence, filter only the quality ones and problem solved."

If only. Just like currently, there would be second-tier of journals that will accept papers that are not the best of the best because all those papers make it into the top journals (Nature, Science, the Lancet, etc)

Similarly, there would be third-tier journals gearing towards third-tier researchers, ad infinitum. People would send papers to them because their employer tells them "publish or perish", and a half/quarter/tenth-decent reputation is better than no reputation. Similarly, publishers would offer such journals because there is money to be made there.

So yes, we need objective criteria for quality, but that will probably not be enough to get rid of the zillions of journals.

Maybe, the real problem is that modern scientists are paid by the government. 'Scientist' used to be a hobby. People did it in their spare time, or found a patron who was willing to sponsor them. Nowadays, scientist is a profession, and the main sponsors (governments and governmental institutions) try to be fair in the way they distribute their money. To do so, they have to make scientific output measurable. Quality often can only be objectively measured after decades, so they go for quantity instead. The patrons of centuries ago did not have to defend their choices; they just sponsored whoever they wanted to.
Yes, but this will stop them from doing EASY TO CATCH bad things. It's like anti-bacterial soap. Think about how badass that 0.1% that ISN'T killed is.
Stolen iPhone? Bet you wish someone was taking smartphone theft seriously
Exactly.

It's only a useless feature, if you think people who don't think a service by BitBucket will ever be used by people unfamiliar with git and programming.

I for one am very pleased with the opportunity for crowd-sourcing fixes and improvements to open-source websites and projects - especially for people whose interest in them is not grounded in the programming aspect.
Yep, its for on-demand content in the UK only
Mozilla, Foxconn confirm Firefox OS partnership
It was a wrestling move before it was a sex position. And the wrestling move was named after an actual tool to drive piles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pile_driver
This is pretty important for AMD because they've been having a terrible time matching Intel at per cycle efficiency. Basically, ever since the core i series started, AMD has been behind at single threaded performance, especially when going clock for clock. They've been trying to make up for it by both offering more cores/threads than comparably priced Intel components, as well as trying to scale their clock rates. Unfortunately for AMD, their last few generations have actually been falling short on their attempts to boost clock rates, as a result, when comparing comparably priced AMD and Intel chips, while AMD would typically have a clock speed advantage, it would often not be enough to overcome Intel's efficiency.

This product release is kind of an attempt to show that AMD can actually deliver on their planned strategy.

As for why AMD is going for this route, rather than trying to beat Intel in per clock efficiency? Probably because AMD's resources are severely limited compared to Intel, and this approach offered lower risk at lower cost.
How BlinkBox compares? Any ideas?
Well, it's not recommended to quit the job before you're sure you can go (securing the visa, etc)

I'm not blaming you, but visas have a non trivial chance of being denied
A Business Requires Collaboration But Not Consensus
> Unless you walked through Alaska on a land bridge, you too are an immigrant.

Uh... isn't that also immigration?
New Malware Exploits Android Vulnerability To Block Removal
I would. Any secrets we allow the government to keep are a license to be abused. They're barely capable of following their own laws under the microscope. I doubt they even try so long as the citizens aren't aware of their activities.
Zynga's Mark Pincus Is What's Wrong With Silicon Valley
I Hate Entering a Date
It's only a good practice if X is very, very highly correlated with (and only with) being a terrorist.

It's not really that great security practice if you're missing a ton of real terrorists who don't do X, and you're catching a lot of non-terrorists who do do X, and no one can figure out what's going on since no one knows what X is. That's not protecting our methods; at that point, it's really just picking people out randomly.
"I doubt a judge would take it seriously"

That seems to make some sort of sense but I don't think that's how it works. Judges have to enforce the law. They can bend and play with interpretations but there's a limit to that.

In these patent cases, they're supposed to figure out if the patent is not supposed, not questioning the validity of the patent when someone sues for patent infringement. There is a separate process for invalidating a patent, but the judge is supposed to assume that the patent is valid.

The courts are too far from where the problem is (laws, international treaties, patent offices) to be of much use.
Well, this "problem" with sort out itself, eventually. Taking the ridiculous border controls, the economic situation, disregard of human rights (specially for foreigners), it means that the US is rapidly becoming an unattractive place to work, study and even go on vacation. Before long, you won't have many people trying to get in.

Guess where the entrepreneurs, scientists and highly skilled workers will go? Hint: not the US. What that means for the future of the country is left as an exercise to the reader.

I can't believe that in 2013 we are still worried about which piece of land someone were when he got out of the womb.
New tasks become as simple as waving a hand with brain-computer interfaces
This App Wants To Help You Find Cheap Alternatives To Really Expensive Wines
Apple is finally allowing developers to sell their apps to other developers
yaay, I am eagerly awaiting for intel to catch up :) (so I could buy quality stuff that does not hang or overheat)
Technically, the special API is because arrays extend Array.prototype. You could create an object that does the same, and push(), pop(), etc would work.*

Try going to http://www.objectplayground.com and putting in the following code, selecting the "Show built-in objects" option, and evaluating:

this.array = [];
this.object = Object.create(Array.prototype);

this.object.push("foo");
this.object.push("bar");

*Well, they sort of work. They use and modify the "length" property, so you could see some weird behavior under some circumstances. Not recommended for production use. :-)
While I agree about missing the technical articles; I appreciate seeing these, as I actually had no idea about the seriousness of some of these re-entry issues.

Maybe the solution is a dedicated HN technology page, and a separate, dedicated "Of interest" page.
Spy stoppers: meet the companies benefiting from the PRISM privacy scare
This roughly mirrors my experience with the libraries on offer here. Unfortunately both companies are fucked over by Sky, who have exclusive contracts with pretty much every publisher and block anyone else from getting new movies for roughly a year after release. Netflix threatened to take them to court over this a year or so ago; kinda hoping they follow through on that.
BlinkBox has a lot of movies, and lots from the last year or so where netflix + lovefilm tail off - but obviously you're paying for every movie on BlinkBox. We can post a similar graph for them if there's interest.
Also, I think there are some physical limitations that keep chips below a certain clock speed. Besides, the bet has been on "smarter instead of faster", i.e. producing chips that suit our computing needs, which are more adequately supported by parallel processing.

High performance cores are useful for problems that are hard to paralellize, but so far it seems that the breakthrough only occurs when a new approach to the problem makes it feasible on multiprocessing platforms (e.g. graph processing is hard to paralellize due to dependencies among graph nodes, Pregel and similar offer a different approach)...a 50GHz CPU won't save you if you need to process a huge graph (i.e. billions of nodes) on a single thread, it'll always take a lot of time.

As to the "record", I think IBM already had a Series Z that is over 5GHz.
>There will be a minor flood of papers pre-registering sketchy theories

Does pre-registering papers somehow cause all journals to lose all editorial control?

>Some authors will publish their negative results, but many will forget them and move on to more fertile grounds.

Why would they forget about something that they have already publicly accepted an obligation to publish, and how would that effect their careers?

>The bulk of these maybe-so works will be taken as positive evidence even if positive effects are never found or if negative effects are published.

First of all, right now the media (and other scientists, and regulators) jump on the single published vaguely positive result, unaware of the 99 negative results that were never published. It would be an improvement to reduce this list to only the media, who are intentionally being fooled for the sake of a good linkbait headline.

Lastly, there should be enough of a volume and normalization of pre-registrations that if you want to pretend like the statement of a question constitutes the answer, people will laugh at you.
bitbucket can ping a web hook on every commit. set up a hook that pulls the code to your test server and runs your test suite.
FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE Available
Eclipse Community Survey Results for 2013
Terrifying. Really.