skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why does this same magic crystal storage article keep poping up every 5 years? They always claim they could be very close to commercialisation and that it could change the world forever. Yet 25 years later, I fail to see any progress.

EDIT: I don't pretend I can understand the technical details, does anyone know if this is actually anything different from that old holographic stuff?
I and my wife posted comments to the author's blog and the comments were deleted.
It's useful for memoization though and is where I've typically used it.
Given how contentious the environment surrounding audio codecs have been over the years, Opus (and Silk, too) just seems too good to be true. Am I missing a devil in the details?

Otherwise, I'm excited at the possibilities this provides when used in open source projects that utilize open protocols to deliver audio end-to-end (peer-to-peer) over the network.
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See a Manhattanhenge on any night of the year with this map
Worst-case big-O runtime is therefore O(n^2), and best case is O(n log(n)) :)
NASA, Industry Test Additively Manufactured Rocket Engine Injector
I can't believe someone misses Chrome's "Tiny Tab" thing, I think it's the single most broken thing about the browser. In Firefox I used to use multi row tabs and then Tree style tabs when I had too many tabs. In Chrome all I can do is open a new window. I don't see what's useful at all about having 20 reddit icons.

(pretty much switched to Chrome entirely because of web development and Firefox taking too long to reload, but might switch back once I don't need to do web dev for a while).
As far as I know and observed applications to TA positions are fairly democratic. I know of a recent instance where the professor had to accept the only TA application he received because no one else applied. If you still have a problem there are many readdress systems in colleges to challenge such situations.

It would be more constructive to provide proof to your claim.
They're not? Why not?

Seriously; unsolicited negative comments on pretty much any aspect are not ok. Sexually charged comments are not ok in most environments. But I don't want to live in a world where complimenting someone on their appearance is a bad thing.
Pictar - using only text and colors you can create simple avatars
Ah. I wasn't aware of this. Graphite/Carbon/Statsd are much more "basic" in that respect.
Study: Diet soda doesn't help you lose weight
I drop that sometimes as a invitation to discriminate when I don't know alot about the organization.

If you're going to be giving me dirty looks for working less than 50 hours, have an unspoken mandatory happy hour attendance policy, 24x7 oncall, etc, I don't want to waste the time of both parties by interviewing with you.
For what it is worth, I worked for ten years for the physics dept at one of the universities for which statistics were listed in the article. I got to know a lot of professors, a few deans, administrators, you know, the people who decide which students get admitted. I've had, and overheard this conversation with them a few times. It always comes down to money. American students won't live six deep in a one bedroom apartment in the low-rent part of town, like many of their foreign counterparts who come from a developing country. I got downvoted yesterday for saying it was about the money, but it's about the money. If your family is well off and doesn't mind footing the huge bill for you, then you can do it. Most of the kids who are smart enough to do post baccalaureate science work, can see that they will never get out of debt, so they don't. Other American students who I have seen make it to a PhD in Physics, had a supportive spouse, and often enough go into geophysics since there is money there.

PS It's about the money.
A company I worked for recently had a 50/50 split. We also had one team of a dozen that was all LDS. I liked everyone of them, they were all personable and highly proficient. Management had no problems until it slipped that during the process of hiring a new teammember they had discriminated against an applicant who had indicated support for gay rights in her facebook profile. Ironically, while gay marriage was definitely being talked about, the biggest gay rights topic at the time was housing and workplace non-discrimination for the LGBT community.
Crowdsourcing self-confidence (the struggle of an Perl project maintainer)
Rendition
Situational democracy. Democracy that is more democratic for select few and rest have to suffer injustices and rights transgressions of quasi-orwellian - in Russia and US. Somewhat like equality of proletariat - where some are more equal than others.

Such is the sign of the brave new world.
Why would you size for multiple incidents? One is rare enough, but you have to deal with it. Two guarantees a whole set of people and equipment that will never have a use.

Anyway, I suspect the real reason is that an emergency is a dynamic situation, and an airport is a large complex barely-controlled environment. Sure, probably parts of the airport could stay in use, but it would take a lot of coordination and analysis to do so safely, and there's really no time to do that. So you just shut it down.

You know what's going on now, so it's easy to say; but if you're running the airport and all you know is "aircraft on fire", what do you do?
Slightly, but not entirely. I wonder how many Chinese people want PhDs per year vs Americans? I'd expect the former is larger, partly due to sheer population size and partly due to the must-get-credentials culture that I've not seen in the US as much.
This obviously only applies when grep is all you have to find-who-calls and find-definition.
> It turns out that we're so much more advanced than other animals that there's a lot less common ground than traditionally assumed.

Not sure the scientific consensus is "turning out" that way at all.

... new discoveries about animals’ cognitive and emotional complexity ... have blurred the bold lines traditionally drawn between humans and other species. Some animals are now known to exhibit a number of qualities once thought exclusively human, such as self-awareness, abstract thought, and altruism. -- Boston Globe, July 13, 2013

See the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness from last summer, or DDG any of the reporting on it for more points and counterpoints.

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConscious...

TLDR summary: http://io9.com/5937356/prominent-scientists-sign-declaration...
I made this switch myself recently. The web dev tools in FF are still a bit weak in pseudo areas and media queries but I'm living with it for now. BTW, why doesn't Firefox have "paste & match style"?

DDG is also my go-to search engine.

Personally, I feel better supporting Mozilla and DDG more.
Disaster Recovery. It's called a Disaster Recovery Site.

https://www.google.com/search?q=disaster+recovery+site
If you join a larger company, yes you'll get less. If you stay in a company while it grows larger and you then negotiate for more options, maybe you'll get relatively many, as you're now rather uniquely valuable to that company. What people do instead is decide that options aren't worth it any more because how much the price will rise at this point, and ask for relatively small salary increases instead of relatively large option grants. This is doubly wrong since their salary is already pretty high at that point and there's a ceiling on salaries for various reasons that I don't fully understand but which certainly exist, while there's much less of a ceiling on option grants.
This is interesting too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQp1QaW_onk
Yes, setting up graphite can be confusing and painful. Looks like the author created a Docker app that should also make it easier.

Another alternative and a shamless plug - I've created an open-source fabric script that automates the graphite install processes (on debian-based hosts). See https://github.com/gingerlime/graphite-fabric
Actually all but remember the milk is currently available as a channel.

However, I agree that additional actions would be nice. My favorite would be extracting links from emails, so that I could send them to pocket (from reading list newsletters).
So long as we're being pedantic, the original logo used Wendy Std Bold with a slightly modified "C": http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/wendy-lp/
Snowden wants Russia asylum, lawmaker says
I like Jabber (XMMP) w/ persistent 'chat rooms'.
AFAIK, a program written for X will run unmodified on an Ubuntu box running Mir.
I'd like to nitpick that "magnitudes" depends on your base. Base 10 is commonly used, though base e is probably more accurate. So if 33/e^2 == 4.46 incidents happen, I'd probably call it "magnitudes".

4 years per accident sounds reasonable.
Here's a guy who's in the TdF right now: http://app.strava.com/pros/laurenstendam

On individual rides (e.g. http://app.strava.com/activities/66583736 ) there's a chart below the map which you can switch to show "Performance", check the "Power" checkbox and you'll see his watt output. Looks like today he cracked 1kw momentarily about ten times, and for an hour starting around ~1h30 in he never went below 200w.
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Mir's only aim is to fragment the Linux community

This Linux community, is a fragment of the Unix community.

That Linux community is further fragmented within itself.

The BSD community is decidedly less fragmented than the Linux community.

At this point, who cares what Ubuntu does?
If they come up with some better ideas, then those ideas may gain traction within the greater Unix community, and if not, I don't care.
Russia Reportedly Goes Retro To Keep Kremlin Secrets
It's just a conceptual link. Think about the higher dimensional symmetries in quasicrystals and how one might encode information using a mechanism that exploits that property.
Since the post was about privacy I'd like to point out that unifying the address and search bar means that you can't search through your history/bookmarks (or do keywords searches) without sending the information to your search engine (so that it can show result propositions) which is kind of a privacy leak IMO. Also when nothing from your history/bookmarks/keywords searches have matched in the awesome bar, it does act like a search bar. You just don't have result propositions as you type.
I'd change the dynamic a bit. Do the right thing, and (continue to) network and explore alternatives.

If "they" do come after you, they may think more before attempting to lower the boom of "punishment" and "example". Particularly if your skills are still needed/valuable. You're that much closer to "fuck off", and it can be useful for them to know -- or intuit -- it.

TL;DR: Don't wait for "them" to "do something" vis à vis termination.

This also applies to some degree to waiting for them to address the original problem; however, there is a chance you are wrong, and the commonly cited problem that "people think they are smarter than they are".

Good outfits take the time to have open, involved discussions on such points. It's good to have your people proactively thinking about and attempting to mitigate bad scenarios.

If that's not what you're getting, do yourself a favor and move on (assuming you're lucky enough to have a career that allows this).
Genuine question: how many idiots write about "unconstitutionality", without offering analysis? Its that much worse when said idiot is writing under the guide of Lawyer and Law Professor.

"Unconstitutional" has a very specific legal meaning. Its a shame that Mr. Barnett didn't feel like explaining himself on this matter.

I've got a thread of discussion here on my thoughts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6032777

It is clear to me at least that the program is legal and constitutional.
you're stating a general argument which everyone can agree with. but how is it tied to this post about Microsoft helping with breaking encryption?
That Patent Tool - Troll Tracker
Fires ARE a thousand times more dangerous at 30,000 feet, but they don't use the batteries in the air. They're purely for use on the ground.
Chemical lobotomy is always an option, somewhere in jail something happens - no one would know for sure. He wouldn't speak against the corrupt and perverted establishment and he wouldn't die.

I think it is better option to be pain in the ass and be always there like a sore spot distracting the government.
I had a similar experience in an Algorithms class, where the TA had a firm grasp of perhaps 70 % of the material she was supposed to teach. This person was an American citizen, though.

When I was discussing the quality of TAs with the Instructional Director in our department this episode came up, and she was deliciously cynical. "The students are resilient", she said.

This is true. At university you are supposed to work yourself and to create learning networks with your fellow students yourself. It isn't highschool any longer, especially not at Berkeley.
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They aren't. Most or at least some of tuition is waived. Students get a stipend, since you are often prohibited from taking employment. If they take employment, it is often paid by grant, and related to research in the field of study. Some get TA work. As I said in another comment ITT, American students won't work for the meager stipends that most schools can offer.
Oh yeah, let's downmod the only comment that points out spying on international phone calls is inherently different from domestic spying.
This is an issue with jerks in any situation that entitles them to some automatic due process or protection. That might be gender/race/disability or union affiliation or nepotism.

People who are skilled in manipulating the environment use whatever tools are available to get their way. When you decide that an entire class of people, say women, are unwelcome because you're worried about dealing with chickenshit complaints, you are discriminating illegally.
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Sure it's a universal language. It's also a simple one that I talk myself and I don't need anyone's help with. I'm at a mixed AI/semiconductor company. We don't need brilliant minds explaining us the obvious (or, conversely, entirely opaque) financial consequences of having written this code or that. We need people who'll do it.

Now the question is how many people there are who need you to translate their dollar concerns into the language of bits, vs how many people there are who don't have trouble doing it themselves but what they do need is people who can then write the bloody program. I have no stats and I sincerely want to see some.
It's worth noting that Startup Engineering is basing its payment platform on Bitcoin whereas this Mozilla article covers Balanced Payments.

I also get the impression from the lectures so far that Startup Engineering isn't covering databases to any real extent, whereas the article covers MongoDB.
Precisely why I'm annoyed at the author.

Please tell me why Mr. Barnett's rant about 5th Amendment rights in Colonial America is relevant to the conversation... but Smith v Maryland isn't.

Yeah, that's not a typo. Barnett begins to rant about the Fifth.
So if the user has Javascript disabled, what happens then?

It seems so many exploits rely on Javascript.

Would a user ever be willing to sacrafice a little "user experience" (accomplished with Javascript) for protection against easy exploits?

Is that question ever left to the user?

Not if a website provides Javascript-free means of interacting with it; and demands that the user enable Javascript (=you "must" enable Javascript to use this site).
Do-it-yourself glaciers: The iceman cometh
You can save your sessions at log out.
> I know millions of Lithium-based batteries are in use

You're wrong. Billions are in use. Billions of laptops, tablets, cell phones, smoke detectors, and other assorted gadgets are sold every year with these batteries. There are several within easy reach of my chair right now. I bet if I tracked down every lithium battery in my house, there would be at least a couple dozen accumulated over the years.

Just today, the New York Times said[1] "The Consumer Product Safety Commission has documented more than 350 fires involving lithium-ion batteries since March 2012".

350 fires out of the hundreds of millions of these batteries that must make their way into Americans' hands every year.

Perspective: In 2012, 28 Americans died from lightning strikes[2] (a below-average year, at that). In 2010, over 4,000 pedestrians died being in the US[3]. You don't want to know how many people died in 2011 to tornados.

I can't think of a single death that has been attributed to a lithium-ion battery fire, and only a handful of injuries.

If lithium batteries aren't safe, I don't know what is. Boeing has done something deeply wrong.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/business/lithium-ion-batte...

[2] http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/light12.pdf

[3] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/story/2012-08-02/...
Show HN: Anonymous IRC
If there's one thing I've learned from Rob Walling and Mike Taber's podcasts[1], it's that marketing and customer development are by far the most important parts of building a successful SaaS business.

> the product is not as bad as you think

This is true. I know that I'm a developer, and as such I can easily see the mistakes that my competitor has made. Meanwhile, the average user just thinks it's a run-of-the-mill program, put on this earth to torment them like any other software.

[1]http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/
Book Review: Sum by David Eagleman
What if US presidents passport is revoked? Will he be able to enter any country? Do they go through passport control.

I think there is a double standart. Now the president looks like perverted nasty bully - throwing a tantrum because he and his friends were found out.
One stereotype used as a rhetorical device doesn't imply he actually thinks worse of "middle-aged men" than any other group. That was just the relevant stereotype for the situation.
> Schools have almost gone through this stage and fully gone over to mixed classrooms.

To their detriment. As a product of both coed and all boys private schools, there is a stark difference in teaching and disceplin in single sex schools that research shows improves outcomes. Hit http://scholar.google.com/ with "single sex education." There is a huge discrepancy in male performance especially that most teachers admit a preference to teaching girls as they "behave" better.

Bigotry and sexism exists, but the "problem" is an effect of the US obsession with political correctness and an overly sensitive and litigious society. There are cases of systematic discrimination in organizations, but they are not as pervasive as a few decades ago, so there has been progress, especially in corporate environments. An example is a female cousin with a law degree. Being a women of breading age, she was specifically asked if she intended to have children in the next 5 years which was a non-starter. These were small firms that couldn't afford to have a junior partner off for maternity leave. She had no problem with that at a large corporation.

On equality, if you start giving men maternity leave in the same way as women, and effectively change societies views on gender roles in the home, you might start seeing that form of discrimination disappear as in the scandinavian countries.

There is much to be said about differences in men and women's personalities. Normal banter between men about women kept on the "acceptable in a sitcom" when not directed at any specific women, in my view is not sexual harassment, but clearly some people disagree with that. So as long as the kid gloves are on...
Chinese Uni's are PhD mills. Every student who attends, and can put up with indentured servitude for n years gets one. That's not to say that there aren't some very smart Chinese, and some good Uni's in China, just that the average Chinese PhD is meaningless. edit: (not meaningless, but that the avg Chinese PhD isn't equivalent to one from the US, Europe, Russia, etc.)

source: Colleague with a PhD from China, and living/working in China for a couple of years on a research project.
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There are legitimate criticisms you could make of the comment in question, but "I was curious what you looked like" is assuredly not a comment on someone's appearance.
46 Quotes From The Power Of Concentration
Hopefully your load balancers are still responding and they'll failover to an alternate working site. If not, having multiple load balancers in your DNS round robin config could allow the client to retry another record to see if it works, which is hit or miss in my experience, but others have said it works reliably. Like someone else said, low TTLs help. Or Anycast, or advertising your ASN from a new router/DC. None of that should be necessary as Amazon will take care of that for you, but only if you pay for and configure all the right services.
Yeah, that's terrible. I'm all for anti-piracy measures that mess with the app when it's pirated, but to assume that "jailbroken" means "pirated" is dumb. I've jailbroken several iOS devices and never pirated any iOS software. You can pirate iOS software without jailbreaking.
>this happened under a legal theory that would not apply in Snowden's case

how can he be sure that there isn't other legal theory secretly approved by secret court that would allow to subject him to simulated death (or something even more devilish) without leaving any evidence on his body? After all Snowden had security clearance, had friends in these agencies, heard stories, so he do knows better what is waiting for him...

>(it is impossible to consider him an enemy combatant)

why? isn't it is just an at-will designation by the executive branch without any roots in domestic or international law? And even if not enemy combatant, "enemy of the US" or "enemy of freedom" would work fine as well and would qualify him for "enhanced interrogation techniques 2.0 freedom deluxe edition" (nice movie "Dictator" btw)
Because there is someone of the big publisher that is consumer friendly?

Only indies seem to treat their customers with respect. That is why I buy all bundles for at least a buck even if I have the games already.
Here's the actual source: http://jonnegroni.com/2013/07/11/the-pixar-theory/

Personally seems like a stretch to me.
Dept of Energy:Proposed Determination of Computers as a Covered Consumer Product
Perhaps, but the problem is that the FedGov's equipment may vacuum up far more than it's supposed to, or disrupt the network, or do a MITM attack not authorized by the court order, etc.

From my article: "A federal magistrate judge sided with the government, despite the fact that 'Carnivore would enable remote access to the ISP's network and would be under the exclusive control of government agents.'"

If you're running a company and care about your users' privacy, would you want an NSA black box with "remote access" -- remember, you can't log into it and don't know what it does -- inside your firewalls? It might be better to say: Okay, here's a process through which we'll give you a .tar.gz file of the account via Secure FTP. Just keep those NSA black boxes the hell away from us. Hello, PRISM.
It pisses me off to no small extent that the best I can say when China issues their yearly report on US humanitarian abuses is, "yeah, pretty much...."
Yep, I think it has too many dependencies and the architecture is over complicated. I've built a standalone stats collection/storage daemon that just works with any charts packaging - google charts, or whatever. Works great and doesn't require 10000 dependencies.

https://github.com/lsh123/stats-rrdb