skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I worked at TCI prior to the certification of Docsis 1.0. Back then if you wanted to go from 512k to 1M we would "roll a truck" because we needed to check that your signal was good enough that you would not only get service, but that we wouldn't go broke every time it rained and the signal would degrade.

Basically you needed to have 20% better signal than was needed for the service so that you wouldn't fall off-line when something created a small amount of interference.

I suspect Comcast is doing something similar. Not really charging to do the "install" but charging to certify that you have enough signal for the service.

It can also be that they want to check if they need to pull a new cable to the edge of your house, or upgrade the Amplifier at the "block".

You probably can convince them to not do all of these things, but your service may suffer in the long run.

Back in the day we would do "no SLA" installs and if your cable went out it was yours to deal with. When your choice was that or a modem, lots of time you took that rather than having a 33.6k connection.
Quite frankly, not sharing GNU's goals is a bug, not a feature. The less the source code is encumbered by onerous political restrictions, the better.
An extremely subjective outline of the economics job market
Every time I see these X0-work week (where X > 4) posts I keep on thinking of this: http://visitnormandy.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/1mai.jpg?w=...
It took us a long time to have the right to a 40 hour week, lets not give that up especially for salaried employees.
It's worth noting that Git's hashes guard against accidental corruption; they aren't widely thought to be strong against attack by an intelligent adversary.
Thank you for bringing some sense to the debate. It's typical that threads on this topic result in a pointless debate about <40 and >40 work weeks (I'm in the > 40, but am a founder) in which neither side understands each other, and this thread has not disappointed.

I work like a madman, but unless you asked me about my hours, you'd never know. I work for a result, and if I ever do brag, it's about the result of the work. The hours worked are the natural side effect of achieving said result.

I would never take a job in which I was required to work 60 hours per week (unless I believed the pay made that sacrifice worthwhile), nor would I expect 60 hours per week from employees on a regular basis.

You'll find me breaking from this sentiment near the 40 hour point (I've been vilified for this on this very site), but I'd rather hire more people than burn them out, which is inefficient and leads to resentment.

People are self-renewing resources, and a manager can either choose to cultivate them as assets, or treat them as a battery, throwing them out when they've run out of juice. I'd prefer the former.
+1.

I suppose today his call to arms will cover OS X and iOS too. Not sure about Android though. Some people consider Android a free OS, some don't.
Though not really an IDE, IJulia is kind of neat, reminds me of mathematica in some ways (like IPython).
> It is guaranteed to return after either inserting or updating. Most implementors terminate the loop after some arbitrary number because an error elsewhere could prevent both insertion and deletion, and it is nice to get an exception rather than a hang in from your upsert.

Which is why I said multiple times that this needs database support at which point a lock. That would guarantee that the contention at the lock is fair. With a loop around that section the winner is chosen by network latency and retry speed if high contention happens. Also there is not even a guarantee that it will ever finish.
That's true, and AFAIK Linus says much the same. SHA1 is used for practical purposes and not security in the face of a determined attacker with cryptanalytic ability.
> Not even worth replying to, in my opinion.

I agree with this, so I hesitated to reply... BUT I feel it's important to point out one thing.

You're using the term "Open Source" (capitalized, even), which is a related ideology, but still distinct. It's jarring to read:

> If you don't support the latest views of the GNU committee and Dear Leader then you are against open source

when the FSF discourages use of the term "open source"[0]!

That said, you're right that this is all pretty silly factionalism. People love to focus on less important differences[1], while ignoring the more important larger picture.

Even the FSF doesn't consider "open source" (or the GPLv2) to be bad; they consider themselves both fighting for the same result, just with different motivations. As far as they are concerned, the GPLv2 is fine; the GPLv3 just happens to be a bit better.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.htm... (Don't be fooled by the title - the FSF views "Open Source" as an ally, not a rival).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...
Macbook Pro 15in i7, 16 GB RAM. and and iMac 27inch i7
OSX Mavericks
Mostly Python, Javascript, PHP
Git
Sublime Text or VIM w/ tmux (too many plugins for both to share). Also occasionally
Transmit app for remote file managing
VMware for virtual machines (usually ubuntu dev)
I'd love to be proven wrong on this. Considering that their figurehead regards closed source software as unambiguously evil, I don't see many other ways to interpret their behvaior.

But:

>Picking licenses that explicitly forbid incorporation of your code in modern GNU projects

By GNU fiat and nothing more. Some of us would rather code than get involved in tiresome political disputes. (See also the BSD class of licenses)
That is quite informative, and also quite bizarre (for C). TIL.
Yes. And it's implemented on the client and suffers from contention problems. I already have that :-/
Reminds me of the tagline for Datomic, a "database of time-based facts".
Awesome! Saw the team pitch at AngelHack, one of the more technical teams I have seen amongst all of the "Me Too" consumer social startups. Congratulations!
> More specifically if this company came to you as an employee (I assume you are an employee) and they said "hey we aren't making money and we need to reduce your salary" how would that fly with you?

This does happen. And at that point, you get another job. Unfortunately, the analogy doesn't hold up with ISPs because there are many areas where there isn't another ISP.
"Is Adobe obligated to make the price of Photoshop commensurate to the cost of burning a DVD or downloading a file?"

Of course people who have never run a business and don't understand the total cost of running a business will always relate "cost" to one thing what you pay for a particular item which when factoring a host of other things is either not relevant or not easily determined.

I just read where Tesla (an HN favorite) gets tax credits of something like $35k (tradeable to other mfgs) for each car they sell. Forgetting whether that number is right or not (maybe it's less/more who knows) does that mean that they should somehow in ratio reduce the price of their car? Of course not (unless they want to). Even though one could make an argument that it isn't fair that they don't. To me all this is nonsense. But fully understandable if someone has never operated a working business.
I don't understand the article, but does that mean they'll at least start getting rid of the us bases? I keep waiting for that to happen. It's the most visible and real thing they can do in my opinion. I'm not sure how anything else can be viewed as progress if they're happy still happy to host the camps and equipment.
No, but requiring you to re-sign a 2-year service agreement is.
I'm the same, no retina support yet unfortuantely
hg's equivalent of stash is shelve:

http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ShelveExtension

It does pretty much exactly the same thing.
* Bitcoin. Don't tie something completely unrelated to a networking solution.

Why not? We've seen plenty of good ideas that were inspired by Bitcoin (P2P DNS system, platform with a built-in Turing complete language, true P2P Twitter alternative for the first time, encrypted e-mail without PGP, P2P back-up solutions where you pay others to keep your data, rather than on a centralized place that can be hacked or abused, etc), and we're going to see a lot more like this.

The only problem is that unfortunately Bitcoin was never meant to be a platform on which to build other "apps". This is why all these "Bitcoin-based" or Bitcoin-inspired projects are actually heavily modified versions of Bitcoin, and not apps that work on top of Bitcoin. But I think Ethereum will solve this by creating another "Bitcoin-like" platform on which you can build anything you want, and everything is P2P by default.

http://www.ethereum.org/
A large scale mesh network is interesting to me for a couple of reasons:

* Consumers would no longer be dependent on monopolies like Comcast for internet service (OSI layer 1)

* It is much more resistant to eavesdropping and censorship (OSI layers 2-3)

These seem like two totally different problems to me, and I'm still struggling to understand how the physical layer part can work on a large scale.

I get how they could work on a small scale. For example, you could easily set up an ad-hoc wifi network in a college dorm for, say, file sharing purposes. But in most other settings, I don't get how it could work. Most people don't even talk to their neighbors, so even if you lived in a neighborhood that had a high enough density of nodes for this to work, why would you want to share a little ad-hoc network with your neighbors?

Of course, wireless networks alone aren't going to be sufficient to build a large-scale mesh network that could disrupt existing ISPs. The latency alone makes this infeasible. So you need someone to invest in physical links, especially physical links that cover long distances. That's why the BTC part of this proposal is so great -- it provides a way to compensate these people. Of course, this is just a slightly different problem than the one we have today, but instead of being stuck with Comcast we're stuck with whoever runs these physical links.
Google Developing Internet That’s Over 1,000 Times Faster Than Yours
Has no reference implementation.
AudioPress – Listen to your news
Fuseproject Designs Public Furniture With Cyclists In Mind
That's true, in a way, until someone tries to force CVS on you. Yes they are all sideline tools but once you get used to something, its the best thing in the world, until you get used to something else. Change is great, but not quite appreciated enough.
Code Is Law: On Liberty In Cyberspace (2000)
I understand the argument, I just don't believe that surviving elders were actually helpful for the procreation and survival of their offspring during most of evolution. Not beyond an age where cancer and heart disease start to play a role.

Older men can have children in principle, but older women can not. So those men would have to compete with younger men for the remaining fertile women. The birth rate of a woman would probably not change just because there are more old men available to her.
At 12 I was playing Diablo II like it was going out of style. Oh how our minds are wasted. GJ kid, bright future in store for you.
Can probably be said about most places, but a common joke is that true Londoners both think London the best place in the world, and also the worst.

(Personally I spend 1-3 days a week in London, have done for years, absolutely love it but wouldn't want to live there.)
My b, I just get really enthusiastic about products that improve my life.
I don't know the specifics of his case, but there could be several reasons.

A likely one is that the benefits of a switch wouldn't outweigh the costs, at least not within a reasonable timeframe.

Another is that there may not be resources to dedicate to such an effort, even if the return would be suitable.

And yet another could be management buying into all of the git hype we've been subjected to a lot lately. Git (and GitHub) today are like Ruby on Rails was a few years back. Even though there are several alternatives, some of them much better in some ways, they just don't get the media attention, and thus don't get hyped, and thus don't get onto the radar of managers who decide which VCS to use, and thus don't see as much use, and thus aren't even seen as viable options by said managers.
I think it will work out fine if the members stick through for enough time. Kinda like the United States - the states have almost gone to war several times after the Civil War...
> How actively is it developed?

It's a simple tool that does a simple job. It's pretty much done.

> How reliable is it currently?

No known bugs.
In my city they always send both an ambulance and a fire truck when an ambulance is requested. Perhaps they think that the caller may have forgot something and they could always use the extra help.
Exactly. Git has one way to refer to commits: hashes. Mercurial has two: hashes and revision numbers. If you don't like revision numbers, ignore them, and you're in exactly the same position as with Git.
It's for a few reasons.

One is, as you mention, because it's nothing more than a button click to downgrade. Less than a 1 minute call with a CSR. How they can justify $50 for that is anyone's guess.

The second is they're saying things like "it's to cover the cost of having CSRs, printing bills, etc." But actually, the $110/mo charge covers that, and always has.

Third is because the company is making plenty of profit, but the parent company wants more, so they're pushing it to do stupid stuff like this.

A large percentage of employees are looking for work elsewhere, it's just unfortunate there are not many options where we live (quite remote)
> I assume it uses rolling checksums to create chunk boundaries, just like bup?

That's right.
The examples you're giving are mostly about stored data. We're able to foresee why you may need more, photos, videos, etc. On bandwidth, it's harder to imagine. With 50, you can stream multiple HD videos. What would 105 would give me? I don't know. May be Google Fiber subscribers can provide some insight since they have access to much more.
Sure, but (based on anecdotal experience of places I know along the Thames) there are lots of places where houses are built to expect at least some level of flooding - steps up to the door, etc. - meanwhile cars left on the street can go very quickly (e.g. overnight) from fine and dry to completely screwed.
Two European Leaders Want To Build A Communication Network That Cuts Out The US
Alienware m11xR2, windows 8.1/scientific Linux, Emacs, Python, Visual Studio 2010 C++, Boost, svn, php, perl
Well I Googl'ed:

gnu fsf "you're either with us or against us"

And it turns out that the idea shows up more than once. So it must be at least believed by some to be true.

That includes this interesting post on Slashdot from 2001:

http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/01/12/13/0242205/miguel...

In particular, a comment by ukryule seems especially applicable:

"Taken in the spirit intended. I accept that the GNU principles are quite clearly defined - but is it really the case that "you're either with us or against us"? The original post was asking about Ximian "abandoning it's GNU values" - to which I think pointing out the open-source work it is doing is a perfectly valid response (it shows that the company at least has common ground with GNU). To be fair, I don't know if Ximian (the company) ever supported GNU values ... but if they continue to spend say 80% of their time on GPL'd sw and the other 20% on prorietory sw does this imply they do or don't support GNU values? "
Any links/info on people making them? I was just looking for some, and didn't find any reports of such things in a few minutes of looking. Seems like the overall field is light, partly because there isn't any large company to pay out rewards for exploits, the huge variety of distros in the installed base, and the weak ecosystem as a result of the previous two.

There probably are plenty of holes, but they might be only found by big-money efforts aimed at compromising particular computers, meaning essentially government spying.
Not too long ago, the internet measured top speeds in tens of kBps. So first off, give it time. Engineers are good at solving problems like this.

Furthermore, mesh networking is a fundamentally different architecture solving a different problem than the internet. The current internet works great for high-bandwidth applications like commercial video streaming, but is terrible in terms of protecting itself from concerted attack by powerful actors. Mesh networks solve the single-point-of-failure problem.

http://gizmodo.com/5912383/how-to-destroy-the-internet
I actually think Portal would be a better killer VR app than HL or LFD. It would appeal to a much larger base, including more casual game players.

If we're talking mainstream breakthrough.... If EA weren't so backwards, and assuming the hardware were ready, The Sims VR would cause an earthquake.

Also, a next generation incarnation of Minecraft would be a prime candidate. A world you can 'live' in, that is easy to randomize and wouldn't take five years for devs to build first (ala Skyrim).
LOL. I'll save that idea for next weekend. ;)
It would be cool if it compiled either LCC assembly or QVM bytecode to LLVM IR. Now you have all of LLVM's optimizations! Finally, spit out the JS using Emscripten like the rest of the project.
> you can't easily have local branches [2]
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8995598/can-i-mark-a-bran...

I don't get it. As a citation for your assertion that you can't easily have local branches, you link to a StackOverflow question for which the accepted answer explains how to easily have local branches.

What were you trying to say with that link?
Thanks for explaining this so well.

I constantly see people misinterpret "opportunity cost" in a situation like this, and you cleared it up nicely.
Human Factors (in software)
Good and accurate judgment usually only comes after years of direct and relevant experience.
i3wm is amazing. The documentation is awesome and config files are in plaintext. Believe it or not, that's a selling point for minimal window managers.

I had a look at a bunch of other wm's and some common themes I found were that configuration files were in a programming language and documentation was "the mailing list and irc". If I had to learn a new language or have an irc chat room open for every piece of software on my machine, I would never get anything done.
You answered your own question. How does the data get on those high capacity disks? The faster your pipe, the more content you can fill quickly / easily.
To add to this, transpiling is a kind of compiling where the source code and target code have roughly the same level of abstraction. asm.js does appear to be more "low-level" than quake bytecode, so this is compiling, and not transpiling.
BitShares X Product Roadmap – Feb. 28 Snapshot Deadline
> The people who avoid the GPL3 do it because they do not share the goals of the GNU project.

Not necessarily true... it might simply be that they feel the goals of GNU are better pushed for via means other than GPLv3.

E.g. read a statement by Linux kernel devs regarding the second draft of GPLv3: http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/9/22/217

Has nothing to do with not supporting the goals of GNU, and more to do with not introducing end use restrictions (which is a significant restraint on software freedom), the risk of balkanizing the FLOSS community (which has actually come true to some extent), etc.
Looks like the poster copied Chrome's translation word-for-word. Although to me, "counter-espionage" == "counterintelligence", which means steps taken to prevent intelligence gathering. And that's close enough to "defend against USA spying" for my taste.
http://www.satview.org/?sat_id=12054U
Rüyada Abanoz Görmek Ne Demektir
User testing your mobile app – a simple setup
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7245349

There are several others:

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=kickstarter#!/story/last_24h/0/kic...
>> scientific Linux

That's a very interesting choice. Do you mind mentioning if you do belong to one those organizations that I thought (as a kid and still do) I'll work for.
> You seem so confused, and you seem so angry at the world.

I'm neither of those things. I've commented on one very specific topic - RMS/etc and their cult-like dedication to anti-developer, anti-corporate software licences.

My comments on this have not varied, so I don't know why you think I'm confused.

This issue is also a tiny fraction of what makes up the world, and while this issue concerns me, I'm hardly angry about it. Even if I were, how does that equate to "angry with the world"?

> The goal that RMS has been striving for are: The users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

I'm well aware of his stated goals.

> BSD or MIT provides software to anyone, including people who use it for good, and people who use it for bad.

"use it for bad" - if the thing they want to do is so bad, why would they be bothered about breaking a license in the first place? Let's come back tot hat later.

> non-profit aid organizations try to provided money to extremely poor people. Their goal is to help people not starve to death and help improve their lives. However, they do not want their money to go to criminals, thieves, and drug cartels as that would hurt their overarching goal.

Ok so first off. You just compared a HUGE community of software developers who use BSD/MIT licences, to drug cartels and thieves. Seriously? Besides the ridiculousness of the comparison, its downright fucking insulting.

A better comparison would be a charity run by a church group, that puts its idealogical belief system before the goal of raising more money for the poor. This actually happened in Australia a few years ago. Basically, the Salvation Army complained because a song given freely by a comedian for a Christmas CD (to generate funds for them to use to, you know, help the poor) makes lighthearted jokes about christianity (i.e. saying he doesn't believe jesus is magical).

This is no different than RMS (through the GPL) alienating hundreds if not thousands of companies who are willing to contribute to open source efforts, but also expect to be able to viably sell a product based on said code.

RMS goal is explicitly not "better code". If I wrote a 100% compatible alternative to GCC tomorrow, that produced 500% more efficient binaries, with a 200% speed increase in compile time, but released it under the BSD license, RMS would say "we can't use this" - not because its not better. Because someone else might ALSO take that product, package it up somehow, and make money from people willing to pay for it. Does that other product prevent him from using the original? No. Does it prevent me, the original author from using, improving, or even making money from the original product? No.

I'm not telling you that you shouldn't use the GPL license. Not at all. If you feel its right for you do that. I'm saying don't get on some high fucking horse telling people who choose not to use GPL, that what they're doing is "wrong" (either directly or indirectly, or via comparison to thieves, drug cartels and other criminals) because it doesn't fit with your specific ideology.
I'm with you, I'm currently trying to get into freelancing.