skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Joseph Tainter. Very familiar with it, and it's excellent.

You'll find that Diamond cites Tainter and draws much from his model of collapse.

The funny thing is that I'd started evolving a theory of systems complexity before running across Tainter. It runs basically like this:

⚫ Proof of concept. Works for the creator.

⚫ Refinement: Incremental improvement of concept in function, reliability, efficiency, and utility.

⚫ Embellishment: Layering complexity on top of an initial design. Though initially well intentioned, the end result is fragility, impediments to usability, and eventually, rot. A baroque era.

⚫ Recaptitulation or replacement: An overly complex design may find itself refined back to a more functional one (e.g.: the car tailfin era recaptitulated into today's econo-box and performance sedan market, though SUVs perpetuate the meme of ostentatious nonfunctional embellishment). Or it may find itself replaced entirely by a more appropriate technology, as may be happening now with PCs being supplanted by tablets and mobile devices offering much of the functionality required by users.﻿

Posted to G+ here (and yes, that's before I encountered Tainter). The idea had actually been percolating for at least a year prior.

https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/NFEFMZdk...

It's not specific to any particular technology, and I've seen examplars across a wide range of cases: software (utilities, GUI apps, Web design, OSes), cars, audio equipment, aircraft, architecture, etc.

I think that what Tainter has to say corresponds strongly with this, though his point is also that complexity is undertaken, when it is, because it adds value and/or capability.

He also notes that complexity generally isn't undertaken for its own sake -- that there's a resistance to it.

Another correspondence with this is noting that a great many technical tools (high level programming languages, IDEs, revision control systems, etc.) are all effectively means for coping with complexity and that in the IT world, people are constantly working at the complexity frontier -- the reason software still has bugs isn't because we're not getting better at it (though sometimes I wonder) but because when we do get better, we make ever more capable -- and complicated -- systems. With more failure modes and hence bugs.
Fill in the Blanks. What Microsoft & Yahoo do best.
1. Handsdown, no one knows internet better than Google.

2. Noone knows, Hardware, Design, User-interface and Experience better than Apple period.

3. Microsoft___________________________?

4. Yahoo!_____________________________?
There will be absolutely no consequences.

It can be said unequivocally that the US government will not punish people for signing an online petition. Believe it or not, members of government like to see people getting involved in the political process. Even if said people are actively protesting against the current administration's policies. As they say, negative attention is better than no attention at all.

We live in a culture of political apathy. Most people understand government in terms of caricatures only. Any issue that grabs people's attention can lead to more involvement, which is generally good for everyone. Many of today's political figures, including Barack Obama, John Kerry and Hiliary Clinton got their start by protesting and signing petitions.

The biggest outcome from this NSA kerfluffle might be a new generation with a passion for politics. This could be the Vietnam of our time.
> A physical shops selling CD's is indeed having troubles, but its has verifiable nothing to do with pirates.

I'm sure many that still own independent record shops will disagree, including my friend who happens to still work for once which is still surviving.

Americans didn't just somehow stop listening to music and buying it around the same time that the mp3 came out in the 1990's because they became enlightened and said "all of this music is crap, I'm not buying it anymore." No, most physical sales have been replaced by piracy and also digital purchases thanks to itunes, amazon mp3 after these stores were finally setup and gained traction, but music sales are overall down and that in part is due to piracy.
Unseen War - invisibility of US drone strikes in Pakistan [film]
I don't think the, "We trusted the NSA" explanation makes them look stupid or negligent. This article does reference the fact that people are now retroactively claiming understanding of some of these revelations, but I think the writer forgets that this might apply to him as well.

NOW it makes perfect sense to see how terrible this is, but we haven't always just blatantly assumed the NSA was out to get us. They used to not have the worst reputation in the world in the security community, right? I'm not the best authority for this, but from what I could gather they played a kind of spooky-but-helpful role prior to the Snowden leaks in the intelligence community - that is, you could generally trust they were thought to have the community's best interest at heart, even if they couldn't say why.
BitTorrent Is Building An NSA-Proof Chat Product
I'm tired of having to correct people on this, but here goes: Snowden is not leaking anything anymore. He leaked most of the documents he had to some selected journalists a long time ago and it is now up to them to analyze them and responsibly report whatever interesting information there is to be learned from them.
Jack Dorsey Elected to The Walt Disney Company Board of Directors
Grab our 'Experimental' build where we have way more cores including Atari 2600. We'll continue to add more in the future, though not sure how we'll handle the old 8-bit computers just yet.
My gut tells me EMC's stock price does not directly correspond to what's actually been going on here, and that this is not limited to RSA.

Let's briefly assume that the RSA issue is just a tiny piece of a giant EMC public-private pie. Can anyone knowledgeable on such issues speculate as to how significant profits from intentionally secretive corporate public partnership might be visible or non visible to the public eye?
The FE exam is to become a licensed professional engineer. It is certainly not required to be considered an engineer, and is considered a waste of time if you are doing work that does not require it. The license is most effective for civil engineers, because building/bridge/etc designs need to be approved by a licensed engineer for regulatory purposes. It was pretty common for mechanicals to take the exam too. I assume it would be beneficial to get it if you are doing any sort of government related work.

I studied computer engineering and have no desire to take the FE exam, as being licensed is almost entirely useless in my field. As far as the difference between "engineers" and CS majors, at my school basically the only difference is math requirements, and how math is used in the higher level classes. In ECPE (computer/electrical) we differentiate ourselves from CS by studying circuits, systems, physics which are very calculus-intensive. The area where it crosses over into CS is when you get into computer architecture, digital design, assembly, which is like programming, but due to being so close to the hardware level (working with raw digital logic) it ends up being more math intensive than most high level programming.
Exactly the same thing is happening in Russia. They started with "child porn" and "suicide propaganda", then added anime, politics and copyright enforcement.
I'm not sure how he treats his 'subordinates'. I recently read 'Hatching Twitter', in which he's portrayed as a ruthless manipulator.
That is what is interesting to me, investors in theory should be complaining about this from a business perspective.
This could be accomplished by applying a label to the conversation and modifying the script to look for that.
“It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties,” Sotomayor wrote in 2012

Sotomayor gets it. The Third-Party Doctrine is the cornerstone of bad privacy policy in the US.
How these 50 famous websites looked in the past?
Napoleon changed war with interchangeable people. Eli Whitney changed war with interchangeable parts. Kalashnikov changed war with interchangeable nations.
That means that every person who reads your code also must understand "this" correctly in order to interpret your code correctly.

In certain team environments, I avoid 'this' because the programmer who is looking at this file next may not understand it's proper usage.
That's a pretty cushy salary - isn't? Anyone know how much a new Disney board member gets paid?
The text-only cache looks OK (add &strip=1 to the URL)

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cobra-l...

(The default Google cache still attempts to load images from the original site, which for a site under strain seems not helpful. Wonder if Google will ever change the defaults.)
No BlackBerry Live in 2014
Thank you for clarifying, Mike.

Deciding what is responsible is likely a coordinated effort. I think the same argument applies. Do we think someone might be being irresponsible here? Sensationalism, or real problem?
Lots of these guys learned new languages like C aeons ago and have since moved to Java, Scala, Python, etc. The folks who are stuck maintaining legacy COBOL apps are there because they want to be there. The very competent people quickly learn how to use new tools, but can still deep dive and find bugs related to memory leaks and race conditions when it is needed. At the same time, these old guys are likely to demand that everyone around them use TDD so that they don't introduce that kind of bug in the first place. Case in point, Uncle Bob.
Such a 'ton' of codes and dumps in that form is the problem in itself. George, if you happen to read this once, I hope you'll get what I mean.
You're Building a Women-Focused Adult Entertainment Platform Where?
35. Even when HSBC Mexico determined a relationship should be terminated, it often took years for the account to actually be closed. In December 2008, there were approximately 675 accounts pending closure based on suspicions of money laundering activity. Closure had been approved for 16 of those accounts in 2005, 130 in 2006, 172 in 2007, and 309 in 2008. All 675 of these accounts remained open into at least 2009, with transactions being actively conducted through them despite facing pending closure based on suspicion of money laundering activity.

36. Between 2004 and 2007, HSBC Mexico exported over $3 billion U.S. dollars per year to the United States through Banknotes. In November 2007, Banco de Mexico, the central bank of Mexico, expressed concerns about the volume of U.S. dollars exported by HSBC Mexico back to the United States. Specifically, Banco de Mexico wanted an explanation as to why HSBC Mexico’s U.S. dollar exports were significantly larger than its market share would suggest.

37. In February 2008, HSBC Mexico’s CEO met with the head of the CNBV and the head of Mexico’s financial intelligence unit, Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera (“UIF”). Again, the volume of HSBC Mexico’s U.S. dollar exports was raised as a concern. Specifically, HSBC Mexico’s CEO was told that law enforcement in Mexico and the United States were seriously concerned that the U.S. dollars being deposited at HSBC Mexico might represent drug trafficking proceeds. HSBC Mexico’s CEO was also told that Mexican law enforcement possessed a recording of a Mexican drug lord saying that HSBC Mexico was the place to launder money.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/hsbc/dpa-attachment-a.p...
Arne Beurling - breaker of German WWII crypto
As of 2011, about $250k/year.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001039/0001193125120...

But they were in the process of increasing it by about $30k, so probably closer to $300k/year now.
I reallllllly think this author misses the point of firefox os. it is not meant to "take on android" it is meant to take on feature/dumb phones. People who store their contacts on their sim card, and pay for things using SMS.
>Gilad provides a humble deconstruction of common myths and claims of the FP culture

He argued with a joke from a comic and lost. Even he would laugh in your face at the notion that there was anything humble about his talk.

>He is skeptical and I didn't find any of his conclusions to be dismissive

That is precisely the opposite of reality. He doesn't even understand functional programming, he is thus not skeptical, he is dismissive.

>He was there to break through the hype and I think he was successful.

The fact that both he and you believe there is "hype" is indicative of the problem. "Hey, you should learn things and improve your skills" is not hype.

Most of what he says is outright wrong. He talks about smalltalk inventing all of this FP stuff that was in ML before smalltalk-76 "invented" them. He pretends smalltalk predates FP, except again, ML predates smalltalk-76. and smalltalk-72 didn't have the stuff he is talking about. He talks about things "FP languages can't do", but that I do all the time in haskell with no issues. He repeats the oldest most worn out fallacious arguments that have been debunked over and over, and pretends that since nobody is allowed to interrupt the talk to correct him, his arguments are correct. Everything about his talk is an example of the exact opposite of what you suggest it is. If you want someone to convincingly lie to you about how FP isn't all that, look to Erik Meijer. Gilad sucks at it.
Little late there, eh?
After programming for 30 years (and upwards of 20 languages) I've come to believe that you really only "need" to learn 4 languages to complete your Jedi programming skills and become a master. You need one each from the following categories:

"Machine" language - this is anything turing complete that's close to the hardware, ie that forces you to think about and understand the underlying circuitry. Candidates: Assembler, C.

Static/Imperative "Object" language - put this one off for as long as you can, for it is easy but not simple, and will ensnare your mind with the belief that you are special because you are among the elite priesthood of programmers who can grasp levels of complexity mere mortals dare not even dream of. Down this path lies years of frustration, all in service of the darkside. Chances are that this category will be forced upon you first, by naive, shortsighted fools who little realize the evil they are spreading. Learn only what you need to disable the tractor beam and escape with the Deathstar layout, so that when the time is right a well planned rebel assault may remove this abomination from the universe.

Candidates: there are no candidates here, as that implies choice. One of these languages will be heaved upon you whether you like it or not - C++, Java or Visual Basic (if the darkside is particularly strong in you).

Dynamic "scripting" language - this is for that category of problems where most of the needed abstractions are well understood and well tested. Using them should involve as few words as possible.

Candidates: Ruby, Python, Perl, Lua, bash (or any bourne shell derivative).

And finally, what should be every programmer's last language,

A "language" language - these are usually known as Lisps, but I think both Alan Kay's original bootstrapping Smalltalk and Forth are acceptable here. The key feature is having a small core of concepts that can be infinitely composed into higher abstraction commands that are treated no differently from the compiler's perspective. Once you have this power, all of the interesting behaviours of languages like Haskell, Erlang, Prolog, etc, are available to you.

Candidates: Scheme/Racket, Common Lisp, Clojure, Smalltalk, Lisp.
Better late than never, I suppose. Assuming this is a legit leak.
And Bitcoin isn't? And what stops banks from entering, like some (say that they) are planning to do with bitcoin?
Seems a bit onerous to have to do a deep dive into a contract that covers everything that zoning laws and the like would have to cover just to see if that area is suitable to my needs.

You would have to do the same with the zoning laws to know whether they are really meeting your needs, not to mention whether they are effectively enforced. For example, there is an industrial building within earshot of our house that likes to switch out trash dumpsters at 5 in the morning, when my wife and I would greatly prefer to be asleep. We complained to the HOA, but since the industrial building is not on land owned by the community, they can't do anything directly; all they can do is appeal to the county government to enforce its zoning ordinance, which supposedly prohibits such activities within a certain distance of residences. Did the county actually do anything about it? Hollow laugh.

how do I check if that insurance company is legitimate every time I decide to use an elevator?

How do you know the government inspector is legitimate?

Neither did the residents of Times Beach, Missouri.

And who hired the waste hauler there? The city government.

it is far easier and cheaper to allow the wisdom of those who came before stop problems before they start in the form of laws and regulations

I'm sympathetic to this argument. However, I don't see governments actually doing this. I see the "wisdom of those who came before" embodied, not in governments, but in social structures and organizations that people create and join voluntarily. For example, whatever your opinion might be about religion as a belief system, churches typically do far more to help the needy than governments do.
Show HN: Spacegray — A Hyperminimal UI Theme for Sublime Text
Looks neat!

How does this compare to gekko or cryptrade? (Other node bots)

https://github.com/askmike/gekko

https://github.com/pulsecat/cryptrade
"Killed by an AK-47" implies that, had the weapon been made unavailable beforehand, the killing would not have occurred.

This must be why all the armies of the world don't bother supplying their soldiers with firearms, since they're just as able to kill people with other methods, like perhaps a knife. Knives, of course, are much cheaper and easier to maintain. Facilitating something generally makes that thing more common.

It's curious that you've retreated into a polysyllabic fortress of formal logic, yet rely on absurdist analogies like banning carpentry, as if there's any demographic that even slightly wants that. The reason why it's hard to find something appropriate to compare in the common modern experience is because there's nothing else like firearms; nothing where the general public can have one member exert their will so forcefully over another. There's no such analogy to be fairly made.
Sometimes a reply may be contingent on getting some other bit of information in the near future, such as a response from some person or entity that is required before the response will be useful.

In the end, not everyone's usage pattern is the same, and people end up using email for things other than direct communication (such as tracking future work items). While not ideal, for some it's easier than dealing with a completely separate application that integrates to various degrees.
It seems to me that she addressed those exact concerns:

> So, yes, it is possible that, in 2004, nobody at RSA had any articulable suspicions about Dual EC. They may have taken it on faith that this was another DES situation where the NSA knew it was better but couldn't disclose why. Okay. Is that fair? I think that's fair.

> If that were the end of the story, I would be standing here saying “poor RSA! How cruelly the NSA mistreated them!” But, guess what, it isn't. In 2007 the possibility of a backdoor was made very public, and after that “everyone knew” not to use it. None of us knew for sure it was backdoored (even if some people retroactively pretend they did) but that was kind of a crazy risk to take when there were other RNGs to pick from with no known risks and were faster to boot.
FAQ emphasizes a lot on OOP what about immutability and pattern matching?
About a year! I wrote about the first nine months at http://wiwillia.com/post/41810471731/our-path-to-1m-in-sales
KeePassX 2.0 Alpha 5 released
Which database does it scrape game info (covers) from?
Not only that, but they also give people the impression that they did something useful and meaningful. So they are doubly dangerous.
Not the worst, but not the best. A lot of people haven't forgiven them over DES key size reducing it to 56 from 64 bit and S boxes. Fully story [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard#NSA.2...
I think one of my countrymen wrote a perfect song to play at Mr. Kalashnikov's funeral: http://youtu.be/cHfpSx3N-nY
Kitten cotton (sustainably sourced of course) sounds like a billion dollar idea if I've ever heard one
Free B2B Wholesale Marketplace
We've evaluated our options for influencing Feinstein's office directly and there is no precedent for a citizen movement causing the Senator to change a publically announced position.

We are trying to adopt a strategy more like the 2nd Amendment groups to discredit and delegitimize.
The difference being that you probably have worked with most if not all of them.
AngularJS website is down
That is actually kind of happening. People are becoming their own front-end doctors by Googling their medical problems. In fact, this is how I've handled health issues myself. I haven't been to the doctor basically since high school (just optometrist). I assume this is similar to the way a lot of people become "software engineers".
"Patent Pending?" iA's Militant Stance on Syntax Control in Writer Pro
I hope this is real - but can anyone prove this is legitimate?
I stand corrected. I have quibbles with the argument you present, but overall I find the gist of it compelling enough that I won't bother haggling over them.
I haven't used Firefox OS, but I've wrote PhoneGap apps for iOS and Android, and the biggest problem is just that it puts the developer experience before the end user experience and that seems backwards to what makes a great product.

Yes, using the same code everywhere is cool, but if it takes longer to load, is less responsive, and has a worse experience, you have saved yourself time, but made something worse.

I imagine it like a 3D printed plastic hammer. If I want a cheap toy for my kids maybe it's great, but if I'm putting a new roof on my house I want a real hammer, forged in steel, etc. You know, so that I can have the best tool for driving nails into wood. I don't care that it would be cheaper/faster to make a plastic hammer, I care about a tool that is great.

I know that properly executed and with enough processing power, maybe performance is a mostly non-issue, but in my experience mobile JS dev isn't there yet and it's not remarkably better this year than last.

I hope this Firefox OS thing works out for Mozilla, but until the perf issues are solved, it's not going to be too exciting.
That would indicate that either strong encryption has been cracked, there was something on the inside of their datacenter for processing, or they weren't using encryption right?
3. Microsoft creates the best bloatware.

4. Yahoo smells the most like a dying dinosaur.
You're not the first. There have been several women in indy before you, and there is at least one, Simona Di-something-or-other, who is already in the series. Coming on a tech website with your blatantly false spam isn't the way to make fans.
This document looks fantastically fake.

UK bills don't tend to use a fake cursive font, they don't tend to have common language like "Greetings!", there is no court at Sandringham that I have heard of, and the bill to pardon Mr Turing is not through its full process in the house of commons.

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/alanturingstatut...
By paying more for it than all you can eat for $8/month on Netflix. Want a brand new movie that just came out on DVD via streaming tonight? Pony up and pay $15 to buy it digitally, or $8 to rent it via on demand etc.

IE: Brand new content is more expensive and always will be.