skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why can't the feds force each state to figure out a single-payer system?

Our constitution, politics, and culture don't let "the feds" easily dictate such things. The federal government can nudge with some mandates and grants (as with the ACA itself), but forced nationalization of industries is hard, especially so when most states (by count) would prefer otherwise. It's also especially hard, if those in favor of single-payer takeover only barely or temporarily have the legislative majorities necessary (again, as with the ACA itself).

That much larger and more diverse populations, economies, geographies, and institutions are harder to govern via a working consensus isn't "bullshit", it's a political and historical reality. (How many government shutdowns has the UK had recently?) You can stomp your feet over this, and perhaps wish that some more-powerful central government could just "force" everyone to enthusiastically implement your preferred policy... but that's not the US way.

Maybe you could get a single-payer constitutional amendment passed. That'd establish clear legal authority, and prove a broad consensus that would help with implementation. Why don't you try that?

I dislike national single-payer (and the baby-step of the ACA) because I don't think it can work well here. It'll have the cost-efficiency of the pentagon, the compassion of the INS, the simplicity of the tax code, and the innovative pace of the FDA.

What would be a good decentralizing alternative to this current forced-march towards unprecedented-scale nationalization? Leave more details to the states. Use national action mainly to undo existing distortions, like medical cartels/protectionism and the tax-preference for non-portable employer coverage. And, provide direct payment assistance to the neediest/sickest, rather than new regulations on the shape and cost of policies for everyone.
I think that both phenomena exist and that both contribute to the problem. Which is more significant is hard to tell. In my experience, the talent gap is a bigger problem, but I'm sure there are plenty of people with the opposite experience.
Common enough. Skills are so specialized thhough that it doesn't always make sense to switch though. Its a different career track, not a promotion. Top end trader will make more but top end developer will make more then the average trader. You should focus on what you are good at.
"I can roll my eyes and stop having to think about it for a while (or forever, if I wanted to), but people of color don't really have that luxury."

This gets straight back to the guilt thing, though. This idea that it's a luxury that I have, sure. True. What actions does this observation imply, though? None, as far as I can see, except feeling bad. Should I go listen to people of color voice their experiences because they don't feel listened to? I do, you know, and I do listen with some sympathy, but I don't think it's ever done anyone a bit of good.
I don't know a thing about religion or theology, so take this with a huge grain of salt.

But I still don't really buy the accuracy of these numbers for the matter at hand here. I suspect that when asked by a pollster, someone who answers affirmative to this question is doing so because their religion has told them to believe that.

The pollster probably doesn't ask a follow-up question of the form, "C'mon, really?" I suspect the answer would often be, "Yeah, not really. But the priest/minister/religion-dude/whatever says it a whole bunch, plus it's in that book we are forced to read over and over."

People like to have their pet beliefs that they know to be factually incorrect. I like to believe my taste in music is superior to just about everyone else's. But it's not.

Apologies for my sacrilege here if you are religious.
This is true for some companies, sure. It doesn't tell the whole story, though. As a counter-anecdote, I've had no trouble being hired in engineering roles with no CS degree, and nor have several acquaintances of mine.
Waste Lands: America's forgotten nuclear legacy
The Correlation Between Music and Math: A Neurobiology Perspective
Thx again for the info.

I see why the 10MB limit.

What's the Pro/Con of this compare to just use sqlite on a dropbox volume?

From what I read, the API doesn't do any operational transformation such as merge, delta the changes' etc. The client app is expected to do it.
Speaking for myself on the specific points you've raised: We're a django shop, but being a rails dev doesn't rule anyone out. A demonstrated record of shipping product and solving hard problems, regardless of language, is generally better than a lot of buzzwords that happen to be on point with the tech I'm working with to day. That candidate will probably get a phone screen, at least. A list of job responsibilities or technologies on a resume won't get you an interview if that tech isn't a good match for what I care about today.

But that's rails... ruby is a pretty strong language, and it's a much closer map to python than other options. As for your other languages...

Someone who's spent their life in PHP with no experience outside that language? At this point, I'd probably pass on that resume. The problems I deal with require a breadth of experience in deeper software engineering-y topics: networking, storage, maintainability... my assumption would be that you haven't been given hard enough problems that require you to get outside of the PHP box, if that's all you've ever done.

Similarly Java vs. Scala. I see a lots of J2EE resumes, and my experience with interviewing those folks is they may understand the J2EE/Hibernate/SOA/webapp stack, but when it comes to non-webapp problems, they're lost. I'd be more likely to talk to someone who has Java, C and Python experience, but no Scala, than someone who's got a broad Java base but has never branched out of that particular language. Scala experience, whether or not immediately relevant, is more likely to be correlated to be harder problems, self-development and exploration -- at the very least, that someone is trying to keep up with industry trends.

Maybe my J2EE and PHP judgments aren't fair; but they're heuristics developed over some time.
- Very few people believe the world is 6000 years old. Again, I'm sure such people exist everywhere.

It's not as few as you think, and here, they are given lots of power to influence public policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Broun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_McLeroy
The maps here are bananas. The world's first nuclear reactor is apparently buried walking distance from my parents' house!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

It puts tabs on the side, where they take up low-value horizontal screen space instead of high-value vertical screen space. And you can read the tab titles them even if you have lots of tabs open. And it groups them into trees -- links opened with a middle-click from one tab become children of that tab -- and you can collapse/expand trees.

Try it, you won't regret it.
PRICING:
I haven't decided anything on the pricing yet (will be roughly around $0.030 per minute of transcoding - which includes hosting as well). Interested ones can get free access for now Before moving forward with it, just wanted to know if anyone is interested. The MVP is ready for testing. Please fill the form so that I can create and send you the account IDs manually!

Read more about it here:
http://amritbera.com/journal/why-i-built-transcode-io
I have to object to the negative depiction of "theocratic country". The Law is essentially a list of forbidden behaviours, with optionally sanctions for engaging in them anyway. The idea that the only one who is allowed to extend this list with new forbidden behaviours, is someone who may not even exist, has become an attractive proposition again. In my impression, the alternative, that is, letting the politicians and their servants manage this list, has now become seriously discredited. Such politically-controlled alternative is simply a guarantee for an incessant and continuous assault on our freedoms. So, yes, according to the theocratic alternative, the one who has the right to further restrict our freedom may not even exist. That is indeed how I like it too.
Yeah - awkwardly put. Some Unixes are free some aren't...
The problem can be fixed by emptying the recycle bin..er..litter tray.
I guess you are suing them for good service. Sorry HN for lack of insight, I really needed the laugh.
This is true but I take it in a different direction than you probably do.

Most of the help we give to the unemployed is contingent on two things:

1. They don't have income and

2. They are looking for a job.

That seems like a great way to test for unemployment benefits but what it fundamentally does is ensure that if you are unemployed and need the help you can't try to supplement through self-employment. Thus our current unemployment assistance largely works to discourage new businesses from starting.

A better system would be a mandatory severance system where if you find yourself unemployed, you get a lump sum. You can look for a job, become self-employed, try to start a business with it, or any combination of these. But when it is gone, it is gone.
Everyone criticizes Mises, whether they've read anything he's written or not.
I know you tried to be funny, but this "150" actually means something very specific. It's +125 of those steps.

That's way more meaningful than +7 major releases. Just look at other software. Sometimes it takes 1 year. Sometimes 6 or even longer. Sometimes the changes are very minor or purely cosmetic. Sometimes the changes are very drastic. Sometimes it's even a complete rewrite.

I don't see how that's any better. Basically, it just means that someone thought it would be a good idea to increase the major number by one.
Hi! Haven't decided anything on the pricing yet! Roughly it will be around $0.030 per minute of transcoding (including hosting of the transcoded files)
Google Plus Aims to Become a Photo Storage and Editing Hub
We are all humans in some intermediate category, and to say a human of some category (like a fetus) has no claim to its right to life is pulled out thin air.

This is all word play. If you look up the etymology of the word, fetus at one time even referred to the newborn. The only thing distinguishing a fetus from a human these days is a fancy, made-up definition.

Last though, if we change the definition of fetus to mean "full human being in the womb," would it then make it morally right? It's interesting that the morality of this issue hangs on what Merriam-Webster has to say.
In my experience it is the general rule (there may be exceptions) for companies which have HR do resume screening unless you have an in with the employer or manager.
Different kinds of IP have different properties in different places. In particular, in some cases, the rights continue until they run out unless they are deliberately relinquished, while in other cases the rights must be defended or they can be weakened. Just because you've seen organisations let copyright infringement slide in the past, that doesn't necessarily mean they would let something like trademark use go unchallenged in the same way.
Proposal for script-hash directive in CSP 1.1
A friend in college had one of the new beetles and I always found this hilarious since her aspiration was to be an elementary school teacher. Really strange stuff though.
I was wondering how long it would take someone to find this.
You're right, this article doesn't go into much detail. However the expert witness' testimony does, and it's not pretty: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wnzqidngrtj8y2l/Bookout_v_Toyota_B...

He found massive failures in all of the safety systems, and successfully demonstrated that a single bit flip could cause the task responsible for controlling the gas/fuel mixture to stop running, preventing the driver from decelerating the car. The safety mechanisms in the car would entirely fail to catch this, and at this point Toyota wasn't using error-correcting RAM, so it's not entirely implausible.

He found many possible buffer overflows, stack overflows, race conditions, and unsafe casts that could lead to memory corruption or logic errors. He went on at length about bigger-picture design flaws in the way that their failsafes were implemented, rendering them often useless. They explicitly ignored error codes from the operating system which indicated that things were going wrong, as well as from their own code which was warning them that the CPU was overburdened and necessary tasks my not have been completed.

He testifies that Toyota has no real bug tracking system, no consistent code review, and had countless violatings of both their own safe coding standards, and other standards which they had had contributed to.

The corresponding Reddit discussion at http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1pgyaa/ may also be of interest.
This was recently implemented in chromium: https://codereview.chromium.org/26481005
I don't have a strong opinion on abortion.

But two replies to refurb's comment and both ignore the matter at hand in order to change the conversation in a new direction.

The matter at hand here is whether or not it would be considered breaking the law to abort a fetus, not how that process is financed or whether the population understands that intercourse can lead to pregnancy.

And in that matter—legality of abortion—refurb was pointed out that the US is not necessarily less "free" than elsewhere. I think the point still stands.
There is no point to making a forecast unless you either say the "sky is falling" or "utopia ahead" since no one will remember your prediction otherwise. Nuanced predictions are only for those not selling something.
This would only be expected in cars where the brake pad is necessarily engaged when you press the brake pedal.
They think only the government should have guns. They bring it up a lot.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2012/12/gun-control
For what it's worth, wine enthusiasts refer to this cat pee smell as 'boxwood' and pay extra for it.
A usatoday article? C'mon
Wow. After reading through the original letters and explanations, just wow.

They better have a damn good explanation, besides "WE ARE REALLY RACIST AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OLD PEOPLE." which seems to be the one I am seeing now.
A Survey of Practical Verification Algorithms
I'll double on this. I had an SLK230 ('03) and noticed that when at a stop light it would sometimes rev up to about 2k rpms and come back down. I started watching for it and noticed that it happened right after the rpm needle dropped into the 500 range so I think it was an anti-stall feature in the car.
I want to use the same data structures for

- Passing small messages around

- Doing streaming of large content (occasionally)

I'm probably doing these over different pipes, but the data shares a lot of the same characteristics and I don't want to use two totally different APIs to get the job done.

"Large" can be "I need to transfer something on the order of megabytes using a 4K intermediate buffer."
Officials Say White House Knew of Spying
Bypass this if you dislike jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M

I have to post this clip from "Yes Minister" every time there is a discussion about political bias in the media.
I would just like to thank the OP for being brave enough to compete in that space of music publishing. The big guys are all but handing the industry over to pirates by failing to adapt to the marketplace... it's nice to see smart people taking advantage. :)
"The keyboard smells like piss, therefore it's Dell's fault"
> Cisco, Google and SAP are among the other tech firms reportedly weighing bid

Fascinating. All the while we here at HN thought Blackberry was just done, done, and done, we see all these companies lining up with interest to buy? While we thought it wouldn't be acquired by any serious buyer, the 'Warren Buffet of Canada' makes the move?

We just live in another world don't we. Does anyone want to comment on this -- the big difference in our line of thinking (the typical HN reader) and that of the finance world on the outside?
A setback for the hygiene hypothesis
I have a very large inbox (40,000+ messages) and it just behaves weird. It will get new messages about once a day, then mysteriously freeze up and spend the rest of the day, according to the connection doctor, re-syncing random old messages.
Show HN: League Warrior - Pick-up sports when you want them. Find your game.
Second-gen Google Glass looks even dorkier than the original
Well based on what you said, the claim that there is a "talent shortage" seems baseless, given that companies are unable to judge talent.

I suppose the salaries of engineers are evidence enough that there is a talent shortage. Though, I've been perusing for a job and would not respond to maybe 85% of job postings because companies can't clearly articulate what they do and what the position they're offering is. I've been to plenty of interviews where they clearly haven't looked at my github, and then ask me odd, incredibly domain specific algorithm questions, and then turn me down as untalented. I've been to plenty of interviews where they think I'm talent, but in all their bragging about how talented their team is, I see signs of lazy engineers.

I think your judgement of how small the hiring problem is is way off. Coupled with companies' unwillingness to hire and train mid-level engineers to senior level (which really only takes a few months with an interested candidate) is the bigger problem.
>>here is a legitimate criticism that people have swung too far into these kinds of identity politics, and that they're ultimately more divisive than not. Ultimately, they prevent the formation of a communal polity that can work together on shared incentives rather than splintering into a fractal set of identities.

This is a really good articulation of my feelings about it; better than I've managed so far. :)

>>It gets trickier because a lot of white dudes parse this as a personal attack and thus get (appropriately, from their perspective) upset. I'm not personally, consciously responsible! What did I do wrong?

Often it is a personal attack. "SHUT THE FUCK UP CIS WHITE MALE" isn't satire; it's something I've seen written by someone I personally know to someone else I personally know. The hostility is exhausting and alienating. It's bad because people confuse that hostility with making the world a better place; it turns into a group bullying activity, and people form identities around performing their animus towards some individual members of a group.

That animus has been poison in my life and my community, and I'm taking steps to permanently separate myself from activism because of it. I know several other people who have quit for that particular reason. Capitalism is destroying the biosphere and immiserating most of humanity on its way out and this is the best we've got. I just. I can't deal with it.
>We like free enterprise and tend to favour deregulation and privatisation. But we also like gay marriage, want to legalise drugs and disapprove of monarchy.

Sounds like they're libertarian.
The main pro is the automatic merging. "The API" is a fuzzy term here. There's an interaction between a client and a server, and the client is running an SDK. In the case of the Datastore API, the server doesn't perform any merging or OT, but the client SDK does. Your code just gets conflict resolution for free. The Python SDK is a bit of a special case in that it doesn't implement this logic, but the others (JavaScript, iOS, Android) do.

In contrast, if you make a change to a sqlite database on two different devices, you now have two different files and no way to merge them. (There are people who have used Dropbox to sync sqlite databases this way, and they've ended up writing diff/patch over sqlite to merge changes. Using datastores is a lot simpler and more likely to be correct.)
http://www.paulgraham.com/first.html
Also, abortion is continually made more difficult to get by many states, going as far as regulating it out of the state.
One state has one clinic in its entirety, and they are doing everything they can politically to get them out.

Abstinence based education is another notch in the belt of "its legal, but we are going to do our damndest to ruin it" and you can see skyrocketing aids infections in countries where the united states only provided funding if they taught abstinence.
The Logic of Stupid Poor People
Also I believe you should alert us as soon as you find out how long your servers have been compromised for.

As a company we are now trying to figure out how long our access tokens have been out in the wild.
Some JS engines already disallow security-violating operations from happening (such as inserting evil hooks into document.location). These same protections could apply to any Crypto object.
Thanks guys! Plenty here to research.
Apple Macbooks smelled like body odor in 2005:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/207887
> ...and it is doubtful that Smith and Ricardo would have supported them.

Examples?
I'd suggest putting an email address somewhere to get more responses.
Fartcast
A Fartcast is a video enhanced with fart sound overlays.
And its even funnier that cyrus-imapd (which is what fastmail.fm runs, and contributes heavily too) is what I think (please correct me if wrong) is what is shipped with OSX Server. So the one IMAP server that apple likely uses for their own things, was potentially well tested, and its the one company thats running it has called them out, and now has to bite their words.

I use/run cyrus-imapd for years and have never had an issue with mail.app. But it is pretty frequent that I hear people with other imap providers (especially gmail) that have issues with it.
But what if we train them up then they quit? We can't afford to do that. It's Too Risky (tm). Plus training is expensive.

...12 months later...

Why do none of our employees have industry standard skills? Lawd, it's so hard to find good people!
I was a passenger in a 2005 Prius going at ~65 mph when the driver tried it. It didn't work. Needless to say, you can switch into neutral when stopped, so I gather there is some speed threshold above which it doesn't let you switch into neutral.

Edit: this made me curious, so I did some cursory research and found this:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100204083409AA...

According to one commenter, to shift into neutral when driving you can do one of the following:

1. Press the park button

2. Shift into reverse

3. Hold the shifter in the neutral position for 3 seconds

A video posted by a different commenter shows the driver holding the shifter in the neutral position for not quite 3 seconds, but still longer than is required to shift the car into other gears (and if my memory is serving me right, longer than is required to shift into neutral when stopped).

In any case, the most obvious way to shift the car into neutral did not work for us, and it's unlikely a panicked driver would think to try any of the methods listed above.
We make up for it at the higher levels. ;)
If it were on Apple boards they would have deleted the message I guess, and pretended nothing ever happened :)

EDIT: in case people who downvote me don't understand the reference, see yesterday's news regarding Larry Lessig's complaint being censored on Apple forums, apparently for the interest of keeping the forums clean. Wouldn't that kind of "cat piss" complaint fall in the exact same "unhelpful comment" category ?
I think it is extremely important in emerging markets.
RIM has lots of patents. I imagine this is why they are strategically interested. It's obviously not for their product lineup.
> it's clear they will exist

???? Based on what exactly?

> But both a Mars trip and cryogenics seem pretty reasonable to me.

You think those are similar? We could do a Mars trip today with enough money. Every bit of money in the entire world would still not get you cryogenics - it requires a new idea that doesn't exist right now.