skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Are you saying that, as Bitcoin doesn't have a publicly stated problem definition, its immune from any criticism of its design choices? That's a bizarre argument."

There is nothing bizarre about it. Let's put it this way: if you cannot identify the problem Bitcoin solves, why should I not be able to criticize Bitcoin for not improving the fuel economy of my car, or solving the traveling salesman problem, or computing missile trajectories, or any number of other ludicrous demands that Bitcoin obviously cannot meet? Clearly there needs to be some concept of what Bitcoin is supposed to do before there can be any criticism about it.

"First off, Nakamoto's original paper has a section on Privacy"

A section that does not bother to define the meaning of "privacy" in this context, so what is your point?

"there are expected standards of operation of a car, even if there isn't a formal spec"

In fact, real engineers do work off of specifications when they design cars. That is why, for example, I could not sue Volkswagen if I destroy my car by putting gasoline in the tank rather than diesel: the specifications of the engine assume diesel fuel and there are no guarantees about the car working without that. Engineers design systems that meet specified requirements under specified constraints.

"If you write an informal section on privacy in your paper, and your system compromises user privacy, criticism is absolutely fair."

Not when you do not bother to define the meaning of "privacy." There are a lot of privacy notions; you cannot criticize Bitcoin for failing to meet your preferred notion of privacy if nobody ever claimed that it meets that notion.

Let's put it this way: I call a cryptosystem that can be attacked in polynomial time insecure. Bitcoin can be attacked in polynomial time, and that is mentioned in the Bitcoin paper itself. You want a privacy property, I want security against efficient attacks. The Bitcoin community dismisses the "51% attack," and with it the notion that polynomial time attacks are a thing that should be prevented, and the argument simply boils down to the fact that nobody claimed that Bitcoin can protect against such attacks. Well, that applies to your demands as well: nobody claimed that Bitcoin meets your privacy requirement either.
I understand why the author is upset, but it's perfectly reasonable to think that medical providers who are still storing your health records on paper on a shelf can't get you a JSON feed of your cholesterol results.

If we want access to our health data on this level we'll first have to get all medical providers into the digital age (and do it with open, compatible solutions before proprietary solutions become the norm and set us 50 years back).
Exactly why I cringe at every one of these "my awesome interview tips/tricks/hacks/etc". The very fact that you publicly stated it makes it lose significant value. Most forms of testing are high value until the test becomes the goal, then its worthless. I guess having a handful of hits on their block one afternoon is more valuable to them than a useful hiring signal.
Marc Cuban (owner of the Mavericks) is big on sensor technology. He talks about it alllll the time on Shark Tank.

edit: clarification.
If you're an ios developer, file a dupe of rdar://15160891

If you're not an ios developer, visit http://www.apple.com/feedback/

If Apple never hears from people who want this (and they don't) nothing will get done.
The only reason FTP is insecure is because system admins still allow unencrypted FTP connections.
POP3 and HTTP is also insecure- it's up to the system admin to block insecure connections.

With most FTP server software I know (such as ServU or FileZilla Server) once you force SSL connections, the server will disconnect users on the USER command (before sending the password) if they are connected insecurely. So only if your system administrator wants to allow insecure connections, will you be allowed to transmit the password insecurely.

Why do people still connect using the old insecure FTP standard? It's the software.

I personally think FileZilla should connect using SSL Explicit by default. IQBox defaults to SSL, and prompts the user for a fallback.
So again I think it's a software issue, not a protocol issue.
Marketing = Hacking the Human
Oreos may be as addictive as cocaine, morphine
Switching my Life
Focus on finishing what's on your docket--perhaps do a few weekend projects (hackathons, or find people to work with--shoot me an email if you need somebody to kick around ideas with). Get that stuff done, and lower the stress in your life.

Once you've graduated, split the following few months between relaxing, programming around, and finding work.

Solve the burnout problem before you try anything else--that's what will make your first gig hard, not experience.
My guess is that the Chrome team feels pretty good about the cross-platform framework bits of Chrome and don't expect to make major changes to it for a while. They're still going to have a lot of Win32 code in there to support newer versions of Windows since it is extremely unlikely they are going to migrate it fully to WinRT (or anything other than basic Win32 APIs), so it isn't like they'd be able to drop a huge amount of code from ongoing maintenance by dropping XP support anyway. It's probably mostly just a bit of extra release engineering work to them at this point.

Given this, the cost of continued XP support is pretty minimal and the PR from supporting XP longer than Microsoft does is good for them, so why not? I wouldn't expect them to really drop XP support until they eventually go 64-bit only on the desktop (which may be what the continued sunset-date they are giving is a hedge against).

No matter what the reason, this is good for adoption of newer web technology. If you do get stuck with laggards still running XP, tell them to use Chrome. They might not want to bother, but at least you're giving them a better potential solution than "fuck off".
So modern Chinese consider their country to have been stagnant during the entirety of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties? I've read a number of Western books about Qing-era China trying to understand the same questions the linked article discusses - why China doesn't already rule the world. The way things are presented, the Qing rulers and court just seem to be generally incompetent and isolated from their contemporary reality.

So within China the understanding is that the problems go back to before the Qing?
I'm working on something that's sort of the opposite called Strapper[1]. The thing is, when I'm trying to launch a new product, I don't even want to build a website. It's a huge distraction. And I don't want to build on a CMS like Wordpress, because I'll just have to replace it with Rails when the project scope grows.

Different strokes for different folks though. What someone needs to build a blog or portfolio is going to be different from what you need to build a startup.

[1] http://www.strapper.io
Blocked from my work. Bluecoat likes to categorize many of these .io domains as "Suspicious". It's annoying.
Tesla's chasis and body are made of aluminum. There is very little steel in a tesla model s.
Notice that how, after being explicitly asked about your product, you still won't even mention what it is? Give that some thought.
and it's all about the absolute number of top hackers that you breed. the ratio doesn't matter, it's all about your top teams going head to head.
Sexcamgirls Homepage
Do those salary numbers include the benefits like retirement? Public jobs are one of the few pension gigs left. Also their health insurance is pretty good.
The Government Shutdown Has Revealed Silicon Valley’s Dysfunction Fetish
> They don't really have a clean comparison to military ranks, that I know of.

They do, but you have to start going into the enlisted ranks for best comparisons. GS-7 might be E-6/E-7, GS-5 would be E-4/E-5, etc.
And rare earth metals are not rare. So it's completely different.
I have yet to pass the willing-to-pay barrier, but my experience launching Cursive has really echoed his first two points. Developers really appreciate attention to detail in a product and my experience working with the beta testers has been that most of them are willing to spend a lot of time helping find and fix bugs and are generally a really friendly and accommodating bunch. Plus I'm scratching my own itch all day - it doesn't get better than that.
> Being the only supported browser after XP EOLs

Don't Firefox and Opera also support XP?
Spooked by NSA, eBay founder plans hard-hitting news site
Most people would have said that most of the recent revelations about the NSA were not credible hypotheses. Yet here we are.
It improved both mechanical and aero grip at the same time, but the primary purpose, as per Toyota's senior chassis engineer, was to be able to stabilize the aero platform, specifically around pitch. Which makes sense: same reason active suspension came into being, even at the expensive of grip. Aero gains are more productive, on balance, than mechanical grip gains, at least in Formula 1.

It was moveable ballast, plain and simple. In its early guise, was totally unconnected from the suspension. So that's a pretty easy distinction to make vs. springs/dampers/anti-roll bars.
Except for the iteration over the vector this would be the same in C++98.
on an aside, what a great website, the background video and colorization all work so well.
This is well travelled ground. And everyone hits the same obstacle: It's very difficult to guess what will be "useful" in 10+ years, when the students will be applying their knowledge .
Your examples demonstrate the point, because the Persians, Arabs, and Mongols did not conquer in the colonialist model common to Western powers.

The closest would be the rapacious Mongols, who burned much and built little. That is not exactly colonialism either.

The Arabs did not really have any kind of empire to call their own until the Caliphate, and that was not colonial conquest either.

The ancient Persians invented the concept of empire, and were greatly influenced by the benign tendencies of Zoroastrianism. They preferred light taxes and light tribute, and good roads to promote trade. (For a point of comparison, when the great and mighty Rome's legions attempted to elbow in on the remnant on the Persian empire, the Parthians, the legions were utterly annihilated. Rome learned its lesson.)
Well it simply depends on the scenario of the given agency/unit. In the Navy an O-6 may very well have a "Major" command that still doesn't involve more than 180 people and an individual ship.

Likewise just as D.C. has peculiar effects on the military rank of typical workers, so does it have peculiar effects on the civilian grade of workers, due to the position classification principle of "scope of effect".
Meet CGI Federal, the company behind the botched launch of HealthCare.gov
Somehow my occasional entry into the command line on a production server, opening up vi, and snapping a new configuration tweak in place and testing it – it doesn't seem quite so brave or adventurous any more…
I think people sometimes feel compelled to combine auto and the range based for loop when they shouldn't. In this example the range based for loop adds clarity but the use of auto doesn't. I would have written something like:

for(const string &s : data) {
ofile << s << std::endl;
}

which is a lot more clear about what type of thing you're getting out of the vector on each iteration.
"These days, the person doing the development is often different from the person doing the visual design, is different from the person structuring the content, is different from the person actually writing the content, is different from the person reviewing the launch, is different from the person writing the check to pay for the whole thing"

...uhhh, not unless you work in a bloated enterprise shop. Most of the time, it's a one to three person show and one person CAN do it all (albeit maybe not everything equally perfect). I launch websites (whole platforms actually) - from server to web services to content - all the time, every few days. It is entirely possible and you get accustomed to it.
Build a Trustworthy Design Process
Costly CRO Mistakes To Avoid
Agreed on this point. Although I do Ruby now, I did e-commerce for many years and could provide a sounding board.
That's like saying Facebook isn't charging people yet.

There are monetization strategies which don't involve charging the end user anything for the service provided.
Wouldn't a thread still have to block somewhere? How would you call the synchronous code without blocking on any threads?
The only efficient way to combat such tax loopholes is to abuse them. I'm not claiming that Apple or any other of these behemoths is doing it for that purpose of course, but smaller companies should do the same until it hurts governments enough to get them to act. They don't care about a few huge companies avoiding taxes as long as all small companies are paying theirs.
Not very relevant - a lot more people use Windows and Linux than Mac OS.
Why Did 3rd Ward Close?
I have a spare ticket for Web Summit 
What will I do with it? I could sell it I guess - I'm sure I'd get at least €500 (its now sold out!). I'm trying to think of something more imaginative though. I have a startup... http://wyldsson.com/. Maybe you could trade me your service or something? Just putting it out there!
Defined behavior is a subset of undefined behavior. Specifically, "raises an IndexError" is a perfectly legal thing for a C++ implementation to do in this case. Approximately zero real world implementations do this, but nothing says they can't.
We should do nothing. That'll work for sure.
Show HN: Secure private hosting for your Docker repositories
This looks great but it seems they have no plans to support Internet Explorer (https://togetherjs.com/docs/#browser-support). That's a shame because most of our users who need this level of support all use IE :/
I guess I can't fault that if you're running a lifestyle business, but hiring programmers on the basis of how entertaining they are isn't really defensible on the basis of delivering results.
> - Birth control pills?

Exactly the kind of thing teenagers should be able to buy without their parents' consent.
Give-and-Go with PostgreSQL and Sequel
I don't think you can really argue either way on Government code quality. It depends entirely on how the project was set up and who did it.

There's plenty of Government software projects with the usual lists of WTF-generators like lowest-bid contractors, poor requirements communication, incompetent managers mostly concerned with covering their own asses, etc.

And there's plenty of other Government software projects made by a tight-knit core of highly skilled hackers with good goals under good management. See Stuxnet, etc.
Reconciling the 2 Worlds of Windows 8
That was really the first step to working beyond the capacity of our minds.
I can see both POVs, and they definitely have merit. In my own interview for my current job, I was very happy to not have to code anything - the team leads who interviewed me already found it obvious that I was extremely smart & knowledgeable despite having less than a year of experience.

Not that I would have minded coding on the fly or answering stupid brainteasers - I grew up figuring those things out. Those leave me with negative impressions of the company though, and may lead me to demand a higher salary to accept a position.
This solution takes O(n) additional space...
Wow, very interesting site and very hot.
I have no idea. But animal feed in the UK used to be poorly regulated until the BSE scandal. Where it transpired that cattle offal was being fed back to cattle. I couldn't quite get why a ruminent herbivore was being fed meat in the first place. But it seems they were being fed loads of crap. I remember reading that even cement dust was being used to give them more weight. There was a recent TV program that was trying to push for waste foods like canteen waste to be fed to pigs - but the regulation was so tight it wasn't possible. Clean regulated insect feeds could help there (maybe..)
> I'm using FTP/FTP-SSL because it's the easiest and most common for the end user.

That's quite a bit different than your original argument (which was the self-contradictory argument that FTP is the only standard for file transfer, and that WebDAV is the only other standard for file transfer.)

> It's still the most common and easiest to set up for a novice user.

I don't think there are many "novice users" that can setup an FTP server that would fall down at setting up an SFTP server.

> FileZilla Server does not support SFTP.

There are plenty of open-source SFTP servers for windows and that support linux (not necessarily the same server for both windows and linux, but see the next point.)

> So it needs to be simple and free: FileZilla Server backend (runs on Windows or Linux)

According to https://filezilla-project.org/ FileZilla Server is Windows-only.

> HTTP-1.0 was a mess. POP3 was a mess. All these protocols were insecure and evolved because software makers put up with their madness and made great software.

Right, and once HTTP/1.1 and IMAP were widely available and well supported with F/OSS servers and clients for most platforms, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to tie a new product to HTTP/1.0 or POP3.

There's a difference with putting up with a protocol that is suboptimal but the best available for the role that has widespread support and, on the other hand, doing so when alternatives that address its problems have been well established.
Woooh. An unfit 55 - 70 year old isn't going to do 100km's after a couple of weeks. They'll blister and cramp out at a minimum even if it's really flat terrain. However, they could get there in a couple of months with the right training/dedication.
CHARGE - Largest Genomic Analysis Performed in the Cloud
Lux can do a better job, if you also install the Nexus 4 plugin from the same developer. Of course, you'll need a Nexus 4. If you don't have one it still does the same sort of transparent overlay.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux
If he became a Colombian citizen, doesn't that mean he has voluntarily given up his U.S. citizenship? If he was born a US citizen, he just gave up one of the most valuable things anyone could have (and he got for free) just to pursue some pipe dream that still may not be realized. Talk about selling your birthright for a mess of pottage.
i wonder if life expectancy estimates change much when conditioned on the fact that you've had children.

or if you've had children who can read english and can access the internet
Show HN: Hacker News Talk, a Chrome extension for real-time commentary
Iterators can get very ugly. I like this when there is a need to access elem a lot inside the loop:

for (size_t i = 0, iEnd = elems.size(); i < iEnd; ++i)
{
Elem &elem = elems[i];
// deal with elem
}

Of course the new C++11 syntax is king.
I think the airline industry is the biggest winner.
That's IE8 at most, which has been keeping the same compatibility bugs since its release. MS was giving IE the same minimal support the rest of the OS gets, because XP is old and paid for and shouldn't compete with their current products, so I wouldn't expect them to go beyond the call of duty now.
The three options you listed don't even begin to describe the multitude of reasons that a person might choose to work for the government.

There are people who enjoy public service, that doesn't make them better or worse than the rest of us. I served in the Army for almost a decade, it doesn't mean I'm better than anyone.

The "can't make it in the private sector" argument is ridiculous. Everyone who has ever worked at a sizable organization, both for the government and in the private sector, has known someone that was completely incompetent yet still remained employed. Sometimes people just slip through the cracks, it doesn't matter where you are. What's funny is that on one hand we have civilians saying that federal employees couldn't make it on the outside, and on the other side whenever someone gets out of the military, there will be those who say its because that person "couldn't cut it." It's childish and counterproductive nearly all of the time.

Two reasons that come to mind that you haven't mentioned are free travel and a stable employment situation. Right now things are kind of screwed up, but generally speaking, government jobs are stable. You might have to move, but at least you know that you'll have a job unless you give them a good reason to let you go.

One of the smartest people I know has been a software engineer for about 5-7 years, he gets treated like crap at his private sector company, and makes well below market value. I honestly have no idea why he stays at his company, but I do know enough to realize that I won't be able to explain it with a mathematical model.
Soooo, what are you going to do about those facts?
A very interesting article. However it is sometimes possible to overlook the basics and over-theorise about things:

1) Having ~50% of the population forcibly disabled probably did not help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding

2) The importance of glass cannot be underestimated. Particularly when it comes to spectacles. It is something like two thirds of the population that wear glasses or contact lenses in the west. Being able to see is a prerequisite for so many things like being able to read. Being able to read is a prerequisite for so many things like being able to do science. Being able to do science is a prerequisite for an advanced civilisation.

Sure it took a while for glasses to be available to all, however, in the West it was feasibly possible to get glasses - not the case in China.
Was referring to the general idea of last-minute fixing mentioned at the beginning of the post: "We all have stories, as engineers, of fixing some crazy thing at the last minute right before the demo goes up."
Announces a website launcher thing that deemphasizes configuration without preference for dynamic/static or local/cloud. (Not sure how precise that is. Says site will be file-based and has browser site editor.) Mentions capable with AWS and Google cloud. Allows collaboration. Launch can be specified for a certain date. User controls. And git is the vcs.
Perl5 v12 and up:

use v5.12; # enables strictures
open my $in, "<", $ARGV[0];
open my $out, ">", $ARGV[1];
print $out sort <$in>;

Perl6:

sub MAIN( $in, $out ) {
spurt( $out, open($in, chomp => False).lines.sort.join )
}

[EDIT: fixed typo in first example]
I've done a fair amount of cross-country skiing, and am a locally-competitive distance runner. My guess is that if you've never even seen snow, your skiing efficiency will be poor enough that you can't finish (probably because "what's the point", not because you can't make the distance) or end up last against good skiers. Give it a few years, maybe your form will improve enough to be competitive. But it's not like running where you mostly just run.
Because they want to have DC motors, while Tesla uses an AC motor. There are various advantages disadvantages to both. DC motors require permanent magnets. The AC motor on the other hand has the problem that the power coming out of the battery is DC. So it has to be converted back to AC in order to be used in an AC motor.

The Tesla has a large inverter that converts the DC to AC. Most other makers choose to have a DC motor in order to remove the need for an inverter.

Some people joke that Tesla chose an AC motor, because that was the motor invented by Nicola Tesla. But the AC motor has other advantages such as its excellent torque curve. The latter ensures that the model s has no gearbox while it features amazing acceleration at all speeds.
> Do we need to compile to machine languages

And then, everything always eventually compiles to machine code, some just do it at runtime!
I don't personally use any of these products but I know Northwestern University did a very similar project with their football team. They had success with the normal consumer level product (either the flex or up, don't remember which)