skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Actually, regulation was part of the problem - specifically the Community Reinvestment Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

This encouraged banking institutions to increase the number of sub-prime mortgages with the stated goal of increasing home ownership among lower income communities.

Changes to this regulation made during the 1990s, specifically the 1992 change to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (USG-sponsored entities) to devote a percentage of their annual budget to securitizing (read: buy the loans made by other banks and bundle them into securities) these sub-prime mortgages.

This, among other factors, eliminated a lot of the risk for banks - there was always going to be someone to buy the sub-prime mortgages, thanks to this regulation.

And as long as housing prices went up they could afford to keep issuing predictably bad loans, since the assets that would fall under forfeiture would have a greater value than the principle of the loan.

When housing prices tanked in the mid-2000s, after a solid 10+ year housing bubble, all of this mania inevitably caught up with reality as home values went under water.

So let's not pretend that regulation is some short of magic wizard armor that prevents human stupidity and greed (on all parties: the banks, the Government, the realtors, the home builders, and the consumers who took the loans).

Regulation doesn't guarantee anything other than unintended consequences and should be looked at as a tool of absolute last resort when it comes to addressing market issues.

Consider the FDIC, often held up as an example of successful financial regulation - it's enabled plenty of new forms of reckless behavior on the part of financial institutions (see the Savings & Loan crisis from the 1980s) and more or less guarantees government bailouts to the depositors.

Laws are not magic patches to the fabric of reality and human behavior. They often don't even achieve their stated goals and aren't always so easy to correct.
The Fed and a government that likes to spend has proved otherwise.
ah, somehow I missed that.
It seems that OP thinks the asynchronous nature of JavaScript was meant as a performance optimization. Let's go back to its origins. It was originally a scripting language for the browser. If it were to be synchronous and/or allow blocking things, such as `sleep()` or whatever else, it would have created an unusable web experience. Web pages would be constantly locking up. It's only recently that it's moved to the server where the asynchronicity on I/O isn't so mandatory.

I personally still think it's a good thing, but that could definitely be debated on the server side. Unfortunately, if you want to have the advantage of writing one code base that can run on the browser or server, then it must work the same in both places.
How is a DDOS attack going to help with that?
There's a good piece of journalism (EDIT: see the reply to this comment for the link), in which someone who was being DDoSed went into the various black-market forums where such people as would DDoS hang out, to see if they could find their attacker.

What they found was that, at one forum, there was a convention where new, as-yet-untrusted sellers of DDoSing-as-a-Service are expected to take down some big, technically-respected target (e.g. GitHub) to prove their mettle, before anyone would hire them. And conveniently-enough, some new DDoSaaS seller was advertising right then, telling everyone to "look and see that _________ is down. That was me! Hire me now!"

It further turned out that the site-owner doxxed the account, found them to be a thirteen-year-old(!), and called their parents to tell them what their child was doing on the internet.
It would appear that they were threatened with even more drastic measures.

Brokenshire suggested that the government was also pushing for a "code of conduct" for internet service providers and other internet companies, which might include changing search algorithms to downgrade "unsavoury" content in internet searches.
Somewhere in the dim and distant past I was told (or read) to use:

"sync; sync; sync; halt"

Presumably so you had thinking time before automatically restarting a possibly sick system.
Nope. "Facebook said it will pay WhatsApp $4 billion in cash and $12 billion in stock. WhatsApp's founders and staff will be eligible for for another $3 billion in stock grants to be paid out if they remain employed by Facebook for four years. Koum will also join Facebook's board of directors."[1]

[1]: http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/19/technology/social/facebook-w...
At most LACs, you can't get a BS degree. With that being side, my experience with liberal arts CS education (at Wesleyan) is ironically that it was too much CS because "liberal arts is suppose to be self-enrichment and theory". We went into a lot of theory and math (e.g., functional language, language design, automata, algorithm proof of correctness) and even the "practicum" courses was fairly academic (information theory analysis on genomic data, cryptography) and not "web development" or "J2EE".
Yes it is true, if your app is CPU bound, the event driven model has limitations. But many applications are not CPU bound.
Not really. They're not creating a new standard, but forcing everyone to use the same one; whether it's the best one or not.
Sure, those are in poor shape. Is soulseek any better? (This is an honest question I don't know the answer of, not a rethorical device.)
IBM Watson's forays into mobile, healthcare, online shopping and food
I've never found these "brain plasticity" arguments very compelling. I had no motivation or context for learning when I was young (0-20) and while I might have done well in school tests and read a lot of books, I don't think I really absorbed anything in any depth, or thought in any particularly interesting or challenging ways - I certainly never achieved anything which would have required so much willpower and focus as learning to program modern computers.

And now that I am older (mid-20s) and my brain is supposedly less plastic, but I have motivation, context and determination in abundance, I feel like I am really learning and developing for the first time in my life.
Theneeds Personalized News App Now Available On iPhone
Except in that example the author is choosing E based on the observed difference between two means (which is the exactly the unknown you're trying to determine, so it makes no sense to use it as a constant in a formula), rather than the threshold for the minimum distance you care about.

If you're going the classical statistics route the entire point is that you need to determine your sample size before you peek at the data. In that post you would need to replace E with a threshold of difference that you care about, then calculate n before you start the test and not look at the results until you had reached n observations.
Show HN: HOT Caching very slow queries in Python
JAPAN – PaulStamatiou.com
I was reading somewhere (maybe Hackernews itself?) that synchronous programming and/or blocking are actually features and not disadvantages. After working on a huge Node.JS project, I regret taking on anyway (I had to do it for the moolah, aka money). I am now convinced that migrating from Rails to Express (A node.Js framework) was a total mistake. Please note, I do not mean to advertise rails in particular, infact, you can replace rails with anything else thats fits the analogy - perhaps maybe a python framework.

However, this mistake has taught me something(s) very valuable -

1) Don't trade in a tried and tested framework for something like Node.js, that will open up a different level of problems altogether.

2) No matter what language you use, you WILL face issues at scale. Be it Node.js/Scalatra/Rails. You might as well face it with a tried and tested framework.

3) Don't re-write your own framework in something like Go or Haskell or C or C++ or etc. thinking it will be scalable, etc.

You will -

a) Waste massive amounts of time re-inventing the wheel,

b) Open yourself to possibly dangerous security vulnerabilities (Eg: Handling encrypted cookies),

c) Waste your time on things that don't really matter instead of on something that actually matters - The product itself.

4) Anything that you can scale by throwing more money at it is for the win[1]

Why am I talking about scalability, when the discussion is about Async. vs Sync. programming? Because of the reasons many people cite using Node.Js and the like. It's just not worth it. Focus on the product first and the architecture later. This comes from someone who wasted a year of his life doing everything above.

[1]http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/4/15/scaling-pinterest-...
For mobile we should support the nice work of the RoboVM guys, which are doing a native code compiler for Java based on LLVM.

http://www.robovm.org/
Nightmares, Night Terrors and Potential Implications for Pediatric Mental Health
Really? Would you think that those people would also be offended by mentioning the war[1], making fun of "Mr. Hilter"[2] or the idea of Kamikaze Scotsmen[3]?

Also, it is a fact that most games only let you play as one faction that usually have some very bad luck[4][5][6], be them real or not.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0

[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlmGknvr_Pg

[3]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es0t50H44IE

[4]: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/02/20

[5]: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/04

[6]: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/10/22/
This is what we did with contentactivator.com. We wanted to promote our app through the sites we built. We even used it for our support site at help.contentactivator.com.
This is getting as pernicious as horse thieving in he old west. We should do what they eventually did about it: Concentrated law enforcement. (though the interim plan sounds attractive)
Probably not by itself. However, it looks like Google is doing a very good job on managing the costs in terms of physical disruption, custom hardware, etc. I suspect that they aren't losing much and probably are turning at least a small profit.

However, Google doesn't care. They identified Comcast, Time-Warner, etc. as an existential threat that can get between them and their customers. As such, Google doesn't really care about losing some money as long as it wipes out the monopoly position of the big ISPs.
yup i kindof had this same realization as well once cuz i didn't want to sign up for private repos after i'd left the company that paid github subscription...

hard to recreate the logic tho O.o
but it was something in the vein of "if i learn to set up git correctly, i shouldnt need a unique root, so what is it then.... a backup with vizualization? I dont need that for a private repo i can use offline tools"
Google Docs Users Targeted by Phishing Scam
This appears to be using AES-CBC without any authentication:

https://textshredder.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest

(HN breaks the link directly to the code, but add this fragment to go straight to the AES.cs class: "#Code/Release 1.0/ClientLibrary/CryptoProviders/AES.cs")

This is not secure and should include authentication. As far as I know, .NET does not include authenticated cipher modes by default:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryp...

I recommend using a second HMAC key and computing a HMAC over both the IV and ciphertext. Keyczar does something similar:

https://code.google.com/p/keyczar/wiki/CiphertextFormat
"Harvard is in the business of..." is not in any way an anthropomorphism. GP is using "anthropomorphism" incorrectly, but they are consistent, and your question is unjustified.
That's assuming that the RDBMS can tell. The disks may lie:|
That's the theory. In practice, ageism is rife.
I think it's a stretch to say the article is "based" on that coincidence. The line is a throw-away.
Welcome to the internet; if is is supremely easy to form an opinion, it will happen. If it is harder to actually educate yourself, that original opinion will always win.

It's why sites like reddit and slashdot (and to a lesser extent here) have comments that steadily degrade over time. I read your comment that forms my opinion. Now I feel less obligated to actually research it myself. Apply circlejerk, rinse, repeat.

Then you get something similar to the vocal members of the BTC community.
9007199254740992: A 2048 clone
Why do you use the term "anthropomorphize"? I think a better term for what you're describing Harvard as doing is "trading on mystique".
Show HN: Solvers.io – use your skills to improve our world
This. When you do something in the name of political correctness (and a completely economically (and risk free) biased one - i.e. almost nobody cares about the lack of female truck drivers) you still have to measure what are you inflicting damage upon.

- Is rejecting someone more fitted for this career path something good?

- Are you assuming everything is a societal result and there are no biological differences between the female/male psyche that makes them look for different hobbies and careers?

- It is know that women care more about socializing than men, and sitting in front of a screen for countless hours is pretty much the opposite of that; even when you work in a team, meetings are usually not something you look up to.
Thank you for this link it is really interesting and I had never seen it before!
so... you want customizable metrics/views for your github page?

how far til this becomes `myspace for code`?
Ring Wearable Tech Device Puts Control of Everything at Your Fingertips
As much as I hate gamification, I feel like it's probably been used for worse things...
Yes, and not exactly.

Git is federated, as in Jabber. A branch has a place where it lives. If you do something with a particular branch, you need access to the place where it lives but not to anywhere else.

Monotone is distributed, as in Usenet. A branch may only exist on certain servers, but it is not logically tied to any one server (or set of servers). There is a global namespace for branches.

I think other systems (hg) tend to be more like the Git model, because permissions handling is far simpler.
Immarsat Says Its Data From Jet Could Offer Location
The time will come. Google is now under control, the control will tighten.
It's definitely hard to see. That's part of the problem. But if you look at the number if programmers under age 18, I suspect the gap will be even wider than > 18. Something about society is pushing young women away from it.

Some of my suspicions:

1. The internet is generally more hostile to girls. If you stumble into the wrong chat room or forum, you get "show your tits". When I started programming, I got on the internet for help and met some amazing friends who helped me become a better programmer.

I absolutely hate when gender topics come up on HN because I generally like this website, but gender topics tend to bring the assholes out of the woodwork. I got a female CS student friend of mine reading HN regularly, but when she ran into one of these sorts of threads she was appalled. And rightfully so. And HN isn't nearly as bad as the internet at large.

2. It's tied to video games being male majority. I played computer video games a lot more than any girls I knew as a kid. This exposure to computers (and config files, etc) set the stage for programming.

The video game realm is making a lot of progress in getting girls playing (I think more or consoles than PC, but the general trend is up everywhere), and I've seen this positively influence girls' predispositions towards programming.

3. There is a positive feedback loop in social circles, particularly in formative years (middle school). Kids encourage the status quo. So it's hard for a kid to develop hobbies outside of their clique. I think this relates to the gender problem because girls at that age tend to be even more exclusive than boys (at least in my experience and everyone I've asked).

But those are just suspicions and the real problem could be more fundamental.
Every driver on his cellphone or sending text messages is willfully putting cyclists at risk. Considering how common both those scenarios are, I would say that many if not the majority of drivers put cyclists (and pedestrians, other drivers and themselves) at risk on a regular basis.
I would argue that in most cases, the BA/BS distinction is a meaningless artifact of what credential your university happens to offer.

For example, MIT only awards BS degrees to undergrads, so you could major in French Studies or history and get a BS: http://mitadmissions.org/discover/majors

In contrast, a school like Amherst only awards BA degrees, so you'd wind up with a BA in physics, chem or computer science: https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments
Sure, but we are still talking about Zuckerberg trying to make a moral argument about vast personal data collection.
If you keep taking a single point and drawing a line through it, you'll regularly fail to understand people.

I think Google Reader should have either a) taken their product seriously, or b) shut it down as soon as they decided it wasn't a priority.

Put another way, Google should have recognized much earlier that their giant presence means that they can accidentally ruin markets and done the responsible thing. The more power you have, the more responsibility you have.
Perhaps in this case it's advertising - a proof of the power of the bot farm that a cracker somewhere is trying to sell?
> What do you have to lose?

Two years.
Is it for the L0lZ?

But laughter == good and I don't have to think about ethics and things, right!?
Rails is fast, if you've never dealt with anything in HPC.

Also I was more referencing that if you rebuild an app you expect it to be faster.

However:

100 Requests a second and at 20% CPU. Really!?

Considering basically all rails/node.js/php/etc apps do is add frilly bits to data held in a database, there is no real reason why it should be slow.

To put it into context, say you are serving a home page, its maybe 150k of HTML/JS of which 90% of it is the same regardless of who visits the page. (hence why proxies are so effective) Thats 15Megs a second.

Not exactly Uber fast, considering its effectively a dumbarse file server.

To put it in context, your standard linux fileserver will (over NFS) push out 1.1gigabyte a second at 30% CPU (assuming disks allow) From a ZFS file system (which is computing the checksums of each 4k block....)

so yes, rails is slow.
Rails 4.0.4 has been released
I wonder if, instead of new blocks randomly showing up after you make a move, if they just showed up after a period of time. If a new block showed up right on top of an old one some kind of rule would take effect, like add them together, or the larger wins or something. As "levels" progressed, the rate these new blocks showed up would increase. The goal would probably have to be changed, instead of just getting to 2048, get to, or exceed, or come in just under some arbitrary number for the level or something.

Might add new strategy elements to the basic idea. You might not want to make a move, hoping the next blocks add to a block that's already on the board...maybe even "hint" where the next blocks will appear, but not the value. Tetris after all shows you the next block that will appear.
Why do you ask me that when I'm not ignoring them?
and I havent missed it a single day. I'm sure 98% of google's users feel the same.
Thank you! This is exactly what I am looking for.
I'm not entirely sure why this question was downvoted. How exactly would a DDoS attack help attackers compromise the target system?
Is this an honest response or are you trolling? This is not a troll question, as I really don't know the answer.

You can't decry government spying while simultaneously ignoring spying by large companies. They're both equally wrong.

The only message I got from this website was, "We don't get it."
The fact that it is possible for a motivated 25-year-old to be better at learning something than the same person as an unmotivated 10-year-old does not refute the fact that human brain development is such that certain forms of learning are much easier at 10 than at 25.
It's not at all obvious that you would leave. Not knowing the specifics, a lot of us would lean toward asking for a pay raise rather than be promoted to the level of our incompetence.
But at step 3, you've already validated the code change. You know that the name only code works as intended, and you're just cleaning up old code at that point. I do agree that there is a potential for failure at that point, but I'd think it to be reasonably mitigated in comparison to making the change and needing to then roll back.

Step 4 is non destructive from a data perspective, as those columns would be "zombie" data. they'd exist, but nothing would be referencing them at that point, and the data would simply exist in a different form.

If you're talking about representing the data differently, yes that would happen, and in a case like the above, you'd be much better off by preserving normalization and using a view to combine into a "name" entity. Th
I wrote a short essay on my experience with transitioning from the humanities to web design and development. In short, I think it can be done... and that there are even certain advantages and unique skills that a liberal arts degree provides... but ultimately it comes down to some innate skills combined with lots of hard work. Here is my full essay for anyone interested: https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/d609c1770dd4
Surprise twist: Google policy only allows them to review the relationship once per decade.
On iOS front, there are a few native code compilers available for Java, like RoboVM and Codename One.

On Android, there is the issue Clojure is still a bit fat and uses too much reflection during startup. ART might make it harder as it is a AOT native compiler.

On WP, there are currently no efforts for Java support, other than maybe via ikvm.net. Or Clojure-CLR.
As people leverage the deployment API more and more for production use-cases, an attack on github might come to represent an attack on the ability of MANY products to push changes and respond to their OWN attacks in a comfortable manner...
>but I'd be very curious to hear a defense of "async-first" thinking for problems that are typically solved on the server-side

Because if your web server blocks every time it accesses a file, or talks to a database, or communicates over the network, then it won't take many requests at the same time before it's completely bogged down.
Yes, I expect to use statistical models/ML. I am more comfortable with Python rather than Java so I will look into the NLTK first. Thank you for your response!
Only one charger for all phones - will be a long wait to get your phone charged - must be a communist plot coming out of Europe.
American regulators should block Comcast’s proposed deal with Time Warner Cable
i always just look at it.

i could just as easily do the same with MessagePack or BERT and see nothing of use.
Which is sadly a good thing for many people because there are non-hard workarounds if the video is visible in many locations.
The problem is that SSL (transport security) is the only "NSA-resistant" feature that can ever be added to a website, or incrementally added to an app. And it only works until you (or your hosting provider) gets big enough that NSA demands (or takes) direct access to you, the man-in-the-middle.

Unless your application is open source, administered by a user-controlled package manager, based on end-to-end encryption with user-managed keys, and takes steps to obscure communication-graph metadata, touting the addition of "NSA-resistant" security features is selling snake oil.
I think in most cases BA vs. BS is meaningful -- schools that offer only BS degrees have different kinds of core programs than schools that offer only BA degrees, and there are plenty of schools that offer both kinds of degrees, sometimes in the same major field of study.