skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know the world of drug dealing. But I can say that this article's point of view on academia is mostly wrong. I am myself doing a PhD right now, and I know a lot of people who have done PhDs, who are currently PhD students, or who are going to be in the coming years (before starting my PhD I was in a school/uni, the École normale supérieure, in which almost 90% of the students do a PhD since the school's goal is to train future researchers). The reasons to go for this career paths are not money or wealth at all. Not at all. People chose this path because they love physics / philosophy / computer science / literature / math / history… And because they value freedom above many other things, among which money clearly is.

Doing a PhD is fun and interesting, and that's the main reason to go with it.

The pay during the PhD is indeed not good compared to what we could make by working in the industry, but it's not that bad: we certainly make more than we would by working at MacDonald's (I don't think it is a relevant comparison but that's the example at the beginning of the article).

We do a PhD because we enjoy our life with it right now, and because we want to do research (and possibly teaching at uni level) as our job later, without thinking about the salary (some PhD students don't even really know what are the salaries in academia, only that it's not as much as in the industry).

The position of a PhD student have nothing that is comparable to the drug dealing field as described in the article. It's sometimes hard, but it's not risky/dangerous and you're not exploited by your hierarchy, or have to fear it in any way.

[EDIT to clarify my point] There's is no trade-off such as "I'll take risks and live poorly for now in the hope of becoming rich and famous later" when you choose to do a PhD. If you get to do a PhD, you already have what you want, which is freedom to work on the subject that interests you, very flexible work-hours, the possibility of teaching if you want to (and have some more money for that, which is a nice plus but I guess most PhD students who teach would do it anyway). [/EDIT]

I recently wrote a blogpost which did not get any traction here [1], in which I present a quick overview of my PhD work until now in the hope of showing how much I'm enjoying myself as a PhD student :-), and this in order to try to balance a bit the tendency that HN has to present PhD as a waste of time or generally with negative connotations.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6755727
Could be regional (I know it from Nürnberg area), or new vs. old customer.
Maybe just maybe because of all the embargoes by the rest of the world?
My favorite FireWire hack was when a guy took a friend's laptop, which did not even have FireWire. He plugged in a FW card at the boot prompt. The computer auto-installed the driver, and the attack proceeded...
I can't say that I've actually used any of those. You can do the same with CREATE [USER|SCHEMA|DATABASE] quite happily and ignore the rest.

I tend not to use the CLI though as anything that presents a readline interface is a POS to work with when you have a verbose statement to type in. I'll type it out in VIM then throw the buffer through psql.

I wouldn't run anything on OSX bar some Cocoa apps myself. Same with Windows. Everything Unixy happens inside a virtual machine. I don't care if OSX is Unix certified or Windows has cygwin - they're both a pain to deal with on a daily basis.
Hopefully not too late but:

I think it comes down to reliability. We offer a service with very little downtime (only a few hours in 2013 during a large, planned transition we were doing).

Additionally, we do a lot of support for folks, usually with fast response times.

I've talked to a few folks coming from community hosted bouncers and I hear, anecdotally, stuff in line with the above.
I am a big skeptic of a lot of things but not Bitcoin.

Because even if you take away the bitcoin to dollar conversion, you still have a huge number of people who would be willing to trade bitcoin for goods and services because they have a huge investment in the hardware and power it took to make their bitcoins.

I was curious if Bitcoin would become a good solution to the quest for a micropayment system but it has been a victim of its own success and has become too valuable. However if its value dropped but still held some value, it would then return to a valid micropayment system.
This may be of interest to some-

One of the authors of Learning from Data, Hsuan-Tien Lin, just started a Coursera course on Machine Learning taught in Mandarin Chinese (with English slides).

https://www.coursera.org/course/ntumlone

One thing I really like about Learning from Data is that it gives Machine Learning a certain "framework" instead of just being a hodgepodge of different techniques. The book is quite clear on the mathematical underpinnings, while at the same time introducing various "rules of thumb" for practical considerations.
Please stop live tweeting people’s private conversations
It's already collapsed twice after major price increases, first from (iirc) about $30 to $3, then from about $240 to $60. It looks to me like we are having speculative bubbles, but it's on top of a major long-term growth trend.

I think most people heavily into bitcoins understand it only has real value if it's spent as currency, and there's been a lot of work on getting merchants involved. The easy way to handle things as an investor is just to keep your investment, but when you want to spend money on something, buy additional bitcoins with your dollars and spend those. This wouldn't be an option if bitcoin were the only currency, but if you've got dollars too then the bitcoin deflation isn't a problem as long as conversion is easy.
From a quick glance over the code, it just seem to proxy TCP streams over one channel or another, probabilistically. Most trivial form of load balancing possible.

This approach certainly won't work for typical media streaming, as it usually uses a single connection. Particularly, because streaming over multiple connections is tricky because as they don't guarantee delivery order, so you'll probably get your packets "scrambled" and will have to reorder them by yourself (implementing your own flow control).
I think there are two big deterrents for our development team in switching to Vagrant. The team currently works on a single m1.xlarge development server so that they don't have to download the mysql databases to their laptops. That's one. The second one is that they frequently send links to their sites for client review.

I love the concept and would love to make it work for us if we could somehow overcome these.
1) With a telephone and a banker, all it takes is 10 minutes to do the same wire transfer. At worst, it would require a fax machine to sign the paperwork.

2) This is wishful thinking. Large currency transfers by law need to be reported by most states, whether Bitcoin or not. A thousand dollars is not large ($10k is typical).

Your scenario here is effectively saying it's easier to break the law with bitcoin. All you are doing is putting the legal burden on the exchange.
PC issues never look like a "big deal" to most of us. Changing terminology is a "hassle" and why can't people just "get over it?" Aren't there bigger things to worry about? Political correctness is just another form of oppression!

That's essentially how every discussion goes. But this is of course because we're mostly highly educated white males from the richest parts of the world, and it's hard to emphasize with something you don't directly relate to. We don't face much (if any) oppression so things that may not look like a big deal to us can be a big deal to other people.

Master/Slave may one day turn into completely neutral words but today for many people they're not. We don't lose anything by switching to less objectionable terminology -- the right to refer to things as slaves is not a right I mind losing -- so why not make the switch?
> All money is a bubble, IMO.

Not really -- between the US government and the Federal Reserve banks, there's enough assets and turnover to unwind all the US dollars in existence in a fairly short amount of time, if there was a long-term decline in demand for dollars.
What if, in the future, "master" and "slave" would refer first to the current computer terms, and then only, after much thought, to the old practice we know ? Couldn't we change the first intended meaning of those words that best describes the relationship, without implying anything toward actual human slavery ?

Similarly, as a non-American, when I hear/see the word nigga, it's always used as a word to show respect towards someone else [0], never to diminish the other person. I actually find that word nice-sounding, and I wouldn't want to stop using it because in some contexts it used to mean something else.

For the original issue, if master/slave is an issue, I don't think we could ever find any politically corect replacement words that equally describe one entity that governs and other entities that listen and obey without asking questions.

[0] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/denzel-mah-nigga
The bible wasn't originally written in Latin.

The Old Testament is mostly written in Classical Hebrew (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew#Classical_Hebrew), except for large sections of the books of Daniel and Esra - these are written in Aramaic (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic)

The New Testament is originally written in Koine Greek (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Testamentum_Graece and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Greek#Biblical_Koine).

The Latin versions are just old translations.
Python Displacing R For Data Science
Can someone summarise? Once again, as a Brit I'm unable to access content from BBC.com.

Thanks :-)
How do you ensure security of Vagrant images?
Can I install my own private key on a TPM chip I buy? That makes sense for my ssh security.

Using a preinstalled Intel+MS private key for my ssh does not make sense.
Robot isn't czech for worker. It is derived from czech robota: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robota
They is, not they are. Oh wait, you meant they as a group.

It would be better if one could use a pronoun that is gender neutral and unambiguously singular.
Excellent point, thanks for making it.
No, the whole economic system is the biggest Ponzi scheme.
What the author seems to miss is that while the features of Bitcoin might seem close to a Ponzi Scheme, Bitcoin was never meant to be a commodity to invest in. Bitcoin is useful and solves a real problem, and even if 1 Bitcoin goes down to $1, there will always be people using it as payment method for its features.

Also unlike a Ponzi Scheme, there's no single person that has the power to stop the whole operation. It's more like a drug than a Ponzi Scheme. And Bitcoin just hit the streets.
Xbox One with Faster Hard Drives – Cold Boot and Load Times Tested
Yes, I realize everyone with huge datacenters are a huge threat, too, but I still don't think it's as big of a threat as the alternative. Can the NSA own more than half of the world's CPU performance? I don't think so. Could they own 10-100 quantum computers that can mine at say 1 PH/s each? Definitely. It would be much more cost-effective for them, while prohibitively expensive for everyone else (a D-WAVE goes for $10 million a pop right now)

Granted, that's not actually viable yet, but if the world is going to move to a digital currency like Bitcoin, that implies it will be here for decades or centuries, and I think such a threat needs to be considered before it replaces most of the world's financial systems.

Even with ASIC's they could easily buy 1-10 million of them. It would only be a fraction of their annual budget, which will no doubt increase in the future, if nothing is done to rein in on their power. Normal people aren't going to buy ASIC's just to keep NSA in check.

Also, botnets would be there with or without Bitcoins. If they mine, at least they aren't doing something even more dangerous with the botnets, and keep them busy mining. Plus, it should be relatively easy to figure out you have a virus in your computer if your CPU is 100 percent 24/7 and the fans are spinning like crazy.
It's weird, I somewhat agree but somehow I find them very entertaining, do you think the damage is that bad, especially if there are no names?
Is this a science project, or a status project?
Science would be best, but even as a status project, better Mars Orbiter than more nuclear warheads.
Tell why 2 JS values are not considered equal
At the New School’s New Building, a Sign Isn’t Just a Sign
Wonder how much Apple paid their lawyers to write this brief and if they actually come out ahead even if they win.
Don’t Limit Your Startup Marketing To Social Media
that's more than a year ago... thanks for surfacing it up.
True, and bitcoin does stick to this norm. The rate of bitcoin production is predictable for the next 100+ years. More can be produced with more effort, it's just not as easy as printing notes.

So it is adjustable and it is growing. The price rise is caused by speculation and demand, not because new bitcoins aren't being produced.
People enjoy movies, which alleviates suffering, which ameliorates poverty. If poor folks get to watch movies, that is. Movies have very low marginal cost, making them among the most cost effective forms of entertainment.
Some choice quotes that sum it up nicely:

"The anechoic (meaning echo-free) chamber at Orfield Labs in Minnesota absorbs 99.99% of sound, making it the quietest place in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records."

"While a human can normally hear sounds as low as zero decibels (an average conversation runs at about 30 decibels), the background noise in the anechoic chamber has been measured at -9.4 decibels."

"Companies use the chamber to test the sound levels of products, such as washing machines, refrigerators and Harley Davidson motorcycles. NASA uses a similar chamber to perform stress tests on astronauts."
I think the most important lesson is that traditional economists are just going to have to learn to live with the fact that their theories don't explain bitcoins.

or they might just be kicking themselves for not buying coins sooner. lol.
On the day you are born, we know the least about you. Maybe you have a pre-existing condition that will be revealed in weeks to come. One of the few known vaccine court payouts went to a young girl named Hannah Poling, who had a mitochondrial disorder, and there are likely others with the same condition. Now that we know that a certain mitochondrial disorder may make a child more apt to vaccine injury, testing could prevent future injury.

This is only one specific case, but the point is that the more we know about a person, the more likely we are to make informed decisions about their safety and health.

Only some kids are allergic to peanuts, but we don't give kids peanuts until they are two or so. We know more about them at two, and they are less vulnerable.
Or perhaps they do and have quite a large number of them.
Reintroduction of fascism: My money's on the brits.
"The anechoic (meaning echo-free) chamber at Orfield Labs in Minnesota absorbs 99.99% of sound, making it the quietest place in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records." - followed by fluff and tour information.

What is the deal with BBC.com anyway?
Whether or not you call that 'consultation time' is splitting hairs.
Thanks, I was in that same position—but after all, why would I be able to view British Broadcasting Corporation content from Britain.
Limited, not fixed. Bitcoin's supply is growing, just not near as much as demand. The dollar is limited by not allowing everyone to run printing presses. Admittedly, Bitcoin's growth rate isn't adjustable.

In any case, I think there's no way to start from zero value, as Bitcoin did, and go to real value, without some serious price appreciation. The first transactions have to be for quite tiny amounts.

Aside from that, I see the deflation as a clever hack to drive adoption. Arguments that it prevents use in transactions would only really apply if it were our only money.
I'm fairly sure that this bunker is still in use.

Since someone reading this might have similar interests, I have a question. I have recently seen a document, which I think must have been part of the Snowden leak, but I'm struggling to find it again. It s a map of all of the listening points from the Tempora program. They were all common first names, differently sized boxes on the map.

If anyone knows what I'm talking about then I'd love a copy.
Going gtom "interesting" to "bullcrap" in 2 sentences:

(It will never rival Social Security, however.)
School of Economics
I'd love to explain it but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. Some kind of law saying that the BBC can't make profit from us in the UK, because they are funded instead by the TV licence fee[0]: we pay the government/BBC about US$250 per year to be allowed to watch television broadcast by anyone, BBC or otherwise.

The message we get when visiting this URL:

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com.

"If you are looking for travel news in the UK, please visit the Travel News site."

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...
Another way to see this is that everybody is subsidizing rural lifestyles by bearing the cost of their externalities.
It solves 2% credit card fee. It's enough for success at the level of at least Visa & MC. (And as a bonus it solves a lot of other problems too).
Are you sure it will reduce the pollution (genuine question)? The cars will stop polluting directly but the electricity producers will start producing much more electricity (which is much more pollution) to feed the cars. So, which of these two pollutions is better - nuclear waste/pollution or co2?
This has been submitted several times already to HN, with more detailed articles. (A question, how do you dudes find these duplicates?)

tl;dr is that there exists a chamber so quiet that people find it extremely uncomfortable (for various reasons, feel free to speculate), at Orfield Labs. It works simply by reducing echo (anechoic chamber). There will be an award for anyone standing in there for more than 45 minutes. And it's in Guinness Book of Records as the most quiet place on earth.
I asked for a refund of the VMWare plugin the same day I purchased it, over a week ago and have received no response. It doesn't work reliably compared to the virtualbox one and requires windowsesque multiple restarts to make it work at all.
The n word and its variants are still used to denigrate people.
Thanks guys.

Still baffled as to why the beeb IP restrict this. I can acknowledge it's part of BBC Worldwide, and therefore not covered in the licence fee, but what harm it would do to let Britain have the same access as the rest of the non licence paying world is beyond me.
NK's problem isn't so much socialism as it is a horrendously managed totalitarian state and poverty.
HN encourages people to comment for karma without much regard to whether they have anything to say of consequence. I wouldn't have written this if I could downvote.
What is criticised (especially from French or German native speakers) is that most European languages are more exact in their wording and grammar than English. Thus translating from English into such a language (French or especially German) often involves interpreting what the author probably meant and express it more exactly. This especially makes automatic English -> German translations particular dreaded for computer-generated translations.
Important to note:

The author of the article, Gary North, is the same guy who predicted a "failure of the global Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and that it would precipitate severe disruption and the complete collapse of the international economy, leaving American Christians to restore society following the collapse."

Also, he "favors capital punishment for a range of offenders; these include women who lie about their virginity, blasphemers, nonbelievers, children who curse their parents, male homosexuals, and other people who commit acts deemed capital offenses in the Old Testament. He also favors capital punishment for women who have abortions."

Everybody reading his article should take this into account.
It still demonstrates a lack of concern for the privacy of the people you overheard
While we're at it, remove FreeBSD logo, no BLACK chocolate and the world will become a better place.

Oh, and please remove linux kernel, because I'm getting results with `grep "fuck"`.

Sometimes I feel offended with the people who feel offended. ;)
Many naive people will be hurt by Bitcoin, yet people who promote it will not be punished.
Having just watched <I>Catching Fire</I> last night (I read the novels a couple years ago), and reading this piece this morning, I can't help notice the similarities between DPRK and Panem. Careers that are decided for you, fear-based policies, total control of the press and communication..

The difference is that in the movie, there's a sub-plot of all-out revolution, but in real life, the only thing we hear about that are in the dreams of North Korean ex-pats. I wonder how realistic revolution is, and how it would play out if it actually happened.
dateline > 23 October 2012
> Not that he accepts pull requests

Of course he does. He does not accept github pull requests, for reasons he's explained at length in, amongst others, https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17
A large company like Apple has policies and training in place to ensure that lower-level executives and employees don't violate the law in the course of their jobs. In the antitrust context, executives and employees responsible for purchasing or interacting with competitors must be trained to know what kinds of communications are legal, and what kinds of communications amount to collusion or price fixing.

Bromwich's job is not to passively monitor the kinds of deals Apple enters into. Instead, the court ordered Bromwich to help restructure Apple's internal antitrust policies. Like any major internal policies, they are promulgated and implemented by the high level executives. That's why those interviews are necessary.
what? People talking in public places have privacy?
There are a range of people out there, all of them on all kinds of spectrums. Empathy, privacy, personality disorders, stress, oppression, rage, kindness, selfishness, selflessness, love, hate.

The thing about 'real' friendships is that you can form into groups of people that you broadly correlate with. I think some people are naturally always going to be in conflict. With the internet you can't avoid this. Everyone is thrust together, and we realise that the spectrums really wider and more diverse than we realised. This is a story as old as long-distance communication and was very well illustrated yesterday in the whole Joyent "I would fire this man if I had the chance" thing.

I have come to realise that there are people who really are happy to share very private things. I wouldn't dream of doing that. I haven't really associated with them 'in real life' because I don't think what I had for breakfast, or my medical or sexual history are anyone's business but my own and those close to me.

How does this relate to TFA?

There are a lot of people out there. They're all different. I find the examples in TFA abhorrent. I would feel violated to have my personal conversations broadcast. But we're all humans and we all have to get along, because we're all only humans. It's the price we pay for society and this wonderful Internet thing.
Maybe it's because of specific decisions on the part of the government to provide resources to the military before anyone else in society.