skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
problem is that privacy/anonymity runs counter to the core Google business with is advertising and collecting personal data.

Well, that's the thing: you don't have to be anonymous to Google. Just let people create a few separate 'profiles' that they can post with (like Reddit's throwaway accounts, but integrated).

In the end, this would be even better for Google; Facebook can build a profile of who you portray yourself as, but they can't get any behavioural data from other aspects of yourself that you might want to keep off Facebook to avoid attaching them to your real name. If you want an example, check out FetLife; a giant fetish/kink version of Facebook. People post updates, photos, events, etc. there that you almost definitely wouldn't post to Facebook, because you don't want your real name attached to that (because sometimes people are careless and might give away aspects of your life that you don't want revealed).

Imagine if Google could make use of that information, those friends lists, those interactions, those posts and comments and connections. They would have a huge data harvesting advantage over Facebook, because they could see aspects of your life that no one else could see, as well as aspects of your life that you're open and public with.

The same goes for celebrities. They could have their 'celebrity' account (i.e. their 'real' account), but also create separate personas that they could use to read, post, comment, etc. As it is, if +Vin Diesel used Google+ like a regular person, he'd get flooded with comments; as another example, Jewel Staite, who is not even super-famous, posts pretty much any tweet and gets hundreds of retweets and favourites, and dozens of worthless replies.

People like that can't use social media the way everyone else does; a secondary profile feature tied to your primary account only via Google's anonymized data collection processes, would let people like that use social media normally, be marketed to, interact, and get value that they just can't get right now.

There's probably lots of other examples, but those are the two extremes that came to mind.
I sympathize and get it. As a Fed developer I feel your frustration, trust me. I love coding, though. Wouldn't want to do anything else. After all the meetings and strategizing, levels of management and Scrums, nothing matters w/out capable devs pushing code. I think the key is finding a group to work with that acknowledges and appreciates your value.
> So yes, you can accept science and religion, but accepting the later can not be based on reason (because there is no logical method to disprove the existence of god)

Reason doesn't rely on falsifiability (science does, but science is a subset of reason, not the same thing as reason.)
Why did I get -4 downvoted for this? I was asking why.
TDCS also has a pretty active hobbyist community, although I tend to be a little more risk averse than most of its members.

http://www.reddit.com/r/tdcs
Based on some initial discussions we think that it could be characterized as independent research, but it's a somewhat unusual circumstance so tough to say with certainty. We're happy to work with the selected applicants (if they're from outside the US) and put them in touch with our immigration counsel to figure out what will work.
It seems the psychologists are getting antsy to find a replacement for Asperger's (they hate losing diagnoses):

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/health/idea-of-new-attenti...

Quote: "With more than six million American children having received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, concern has been rising that the condition is being significantly misdiagnosed and overtreated with prescription medications."

"Yet now some powerful figures in mental health are claiming to have identified a new disorder that could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems. Called sluggish cognitive tempo, the condition is said to be characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing. By some researchers’ estimates, it is present in perhaps two million children."

The article goes on to say that drug companies are partly behind the push for this new diagnosis. Surprise, surprise. :)
"Also...is anyone else surprised by the 1,000 - 1,200 employee numbers for Google+?"

Yes. Even more so in the context of the supposed freedom Google employees have to work on the team/product of their choosing. Though I only know that anecdotally and it may have been one of those benefits that got phased out as it conflicted with business reality.
We will be launching our summer intern program next week, July 7th to mid September based in London (will fly in non-UK based interns).

Project just funded but still under partial wraps, deals with Religion (almost all of them), technology, big data, behavioural design and all sorts of interesting stuff with a diverse range of colleagues.

Will be immense fun, drop me a mail on emad@ananet.co.uk if you'd like to receive the info once it becomes public.
Perhaps we should interpret this article in this way: The government wants to be able to track everyone, all the time. And here's a justification that will let this idea slip past your defenses.

Something to think about.
I didn't think that was correct but it does say that down in the 'How It Works' section. Its interesting how the skate over that one little detail.
Is It OK to Invest in a Company if Its CEO Beats Women?
Speeding up and strengthening HTTPS connections for Chrome on Android
But therein lies the problem: people clearly want Reddit. Companies succeed when they find a significant niche where their interests happen to align with that of their users / customers in a significant way. When a company starts putting its own needs ahead of its users that's a huge danger sign for its future. Google arrogantly thought that they could put their own needs first and if they just shove it hard enough at people they can win with brute force. I think that's a terrible mistake.
Sony's project Morpheus was announced last month and is doing VR for PS4: http://www.sony.com/SCA/company-news/press-releases/sony-com...
They're doing all that stuff with Google+ but this one guy leaving means it's dead? Someone's writing out of both sides of their mouth.

Interesting how I couldn't get the people in my business or my family to even look at G+ when it first came out but, this past week, my employees made a circles just for them and that's how I found out my wife and kids had all joined G+.

I'm starting to see this everywhere, at least in the circles I run in, so it looks to me like things are looking up.
I'm aware of the Chrome sync passphrase. If I used Chrome on Android (I don't—I use Firefox), would Chrome back my passphrase up to Google's systems? I dunno.

Is the crypto behind Chrome's sync anywhere near as good as that behind Firefox's? Not last time I looked.

I'm also aware that email often travels via SSL—but it's always cleartext to the sending and receiving hosts. I don't see that I'm suffering an especial risk with Gmail, since someone will always have plaintext versions of all mail I receive; I would be were I backing up data to them which I would never back up to anyone.
The primary article source, Claudia Goldin's research paper:
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/goldin_aeapres...
here's a profile of a 0-day broker [1] I read a few years ago

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/03/23/shoppin...
This sounds fascinating, I'd love to hear more. Incidentally, that makes me wonder if the backhaul cost problem could be something Google could see their way to sell to local ISPs at closer to bulk rates. It aligns with the general goals of Google Fiber, while allowing Google to pressure big telecom companies with less capital outlay.
The correct way to look at this is to think of the drones as very low, maneuverable satellites, not airplanes. They're up in unregulated airspace above airliners and above most weather.

The lower you are, the lower the latency. Think of a laser-based optical network that connects the drones, with laser links going down to earth as well.

When you think of the control required to ensure a quality of service and full coverage, the balloons seems like a terrible solution.
The real problem is the diversity in hardware and software from one district or department to the next. I live and breathe this stuff everyday and have given it some serious consideration. I think that it is high time a 911 or emergency protocol was developed. A network level interface standard that would enable data sharing across the board. The other problem is $$$... there isn't much money to spend on this at the municipal level right now. I don't think it will be like this forever, but it is certainly a problem right now.

Edit: Another issue is the people making the purchasing decisions on the public safety side do NOT understand technology. The men and women who are Chiefs or Directors were not born into technology. They are "old school" firefighters/paramedics and with that mindset comes a lot of baggage. Most of them are downright scared of technology. This is rapidly changing as the demographics of the fire/ems service are in total flux. Baby boomers are retiring because the job is physically demanding and your body wears out. Newer guys/gals like myself (9 years) embrace tech and are active to find ways to leverage it.

I have lots of ideas that I am working on for Android and the fire/ems service, but are mostly related to education, reference, promotional exams and such Ie. one man projects. These big problems are complex beasts that would require me to quit driving a fire engine (sometimes, I can't believe I am actually paid to do that) while improving my programming ability full time to gain employment in the software industry... its a conundrum that I've wrestled with for some time.
"Truly fair" implies that regulation would not be needed, and that is only something that would happen in an ideal world.
Greg Leppert on Reading.am
It wouldn't cast an umbral shadow at all. It would cast a incredibly faint penumbral shadow.

Look at it this way, at the sizes that are commonly talked about for these, at the orbital heights being talked about, the occlusion of the sun would be on the order of a very minor sun spot, and only for very brief periods of time.
at least my ISP term of sales is clear about it, the guaranteed bandwidth is close to 0.

I do agree though that nowhere in the commercials it is said that you are paying for a peak rate.
I am not a battery scientist, but from everything I've read, using the supercharger should have no effect on battery life long-term. So long as it's kept within certain charge and temperature ranges, the only thing that counts down the lifetime of the battery cells are actual charge cycles, which you can pretty conveniently measure in miles of normal driving use (expected up to 30% loss after 100K miles, and the 5+ year old Roadsters actually averaged just 15% loss after 100K miles with older battery tech). The supercharger doesn't do anything that would reduce that life expectancy; it communicates with the battery about its health and charging speed begins to slow progressively after about 50%.
while this pessimistic perspective might be factual[1], those who do have a choice should be encouraged to switch.

[1] 30% of Americans can't choose their ISP http://www.extremetech.com/internet/178465-woe-is-isp-30-of-...
I never said it was an effective strategy. I just said that it is seen as a means of fighting piracy. People go to large extremes to protect themselves from a perceived loss, even if their actions are more harmful in the long term.
It does mention depression, but it doesn't go into any great detail.
I'm generalizing here but I would hazard to guess a good majority of OSS project maintainers (myself included) do so in their spare time and have full-time jobs. It's unrealistic to leave a job for a 3 month "retreat", regardless of how great the opportunity is.

I'm not suggesting it won't work, I think it's a fantastic program and I'm rooting for its success. I'm just suggesting you may want to consider remote opportunities (maybe with occasional visits for in-house tech talks) for future iterations which would undoubtedly increase the talent pool and presumably be more effective at delivering your end-goal.
I don't know how you can compare them. G+ has had a massive support from being tied into every other product, in some cases taking features people already use and making G+ mandatory for continuing to use them. Not to mention getting tied to search such that not having a G+ presence could significantly adversely affect your SEO. Buzz certainly had its problems but it doesn't mean G+ was the right way, or that real names had anything to do with the difference.
All internet services pay transit providers but they don't typically pay last mile networks for access to their subscribers.

Comcast is able to fight with Cogent while their own customer's connectivity suffers precisely because the customers often don't have an alternative ISP. Netflix argues that if the TWC merger proceeds the situation will get even worse.
This reminds me of the stories about TECO, where programmers of the time would play a game "guess what happens when you type in your name in command mode".
We pay dues (they're not required, but they do come with some benefits. For example: in order to get 24/7 access, you have to be paying at least $50/mo in dues).
#growup , I mean,the story is over,let's talk about technology,now.I wish Eich well.I'm sure he'll be joining a startup or something soon.
LibreSSL nearly able to build on OS X
Reading GR gave me a chance to be ultra geeky one evening in one of my fluids classes by correctly identifying a lump of crumpled metal as an A4 fuel pump.

I went to college in Bedford which is next door to an RAE R&D station where they brought back captured Nazi tech – and half the course worked at twinwoods.

Though I never got to go round the black museum at Cranfield where they had loads of v2 bits - I did see the sad TSR2 they had there though
The trick is you don't let the microwave beam get very strong. If you keep it at a fraction of solar power (say, a few hundred watts per m^2) then it won't be that dangerous. And yet because it's RF energy instead of solar energy and consistently at the same power 24/7 it's much, much easier to build the ground based infrastructure to collect and use the power.

Also, it's pretty easy to keep the beam away from populated areas.
Cynically, so they can sell more phones by keeping theft rates high.
Fractal free energy landscapes in structural glasses
The author is missing the fact that the world has adapted to the requirement for centralised trust. That makes it very hard to see the value of a blockchain system - you automatically think about problems and solutions within another constrained framework. It's similar to e-mail before people used email. It seems laughable now, but it wasn't obvious why e-mail would be useful ("I need to switch on my computer every time to check if I have a message!? A phone is so much easier..."). The value of a blockchain system will become more and more evident over time as we use it to solve problems that are hard to see in our current paradigm.

Comparing the blockchain directly with centralised switching systems is like comparing e-mail with phone calls, and using "ability to speak" as the metric of comparison. E-mail allows you to do something else, but it took us a while to realise that something else is incredibly valuable. The blockchain will be the same. Simple example: we don't even think in terms of individuals or corporations issuing their own currency. It's not a "problem" that we generally acknowledge to exist. We'll certainly see it as one worth solving when companies and rich individuals start using blockchain technology to compete with countries in terms of issuing currency.
Why is a state even debating this to work kill switches need to be introduced for the entire NANP area - let the FCC do its job.

A waste of CA taxpayers money - motion should have been moved next business inside 30 seconds.
I've noticed this in the UK in the last couple of weeks...

Normally a "next-day" package would be delivered by a number of different UK courier/delivery firms (Royal Mail/DPD/Yodel/etc.).

Nearly everyday, we've had deliveries to our office from unmarked white vans. I know this because our office is hard to find, and they generally phone me to say they can't locate us. Whenever I've gone outside to meet the delivery driver, I've seen the van full of Amazon packages and asked if he does deliveries for anyone else. They've have told me they "only" deliver for Amazon and won't really be pushed on the matter.

I think pretty soon those vans are going to have Amazon branding on them and a few courier companies will be wondering where their business went...
Heartbleed, 2 Weeks Later: A Graphical Report
This is just an excerpt from another article, with nothing added by Schneier. The full original article can be found here:

http://www.infoworld.com/print/239815
As far as I'm concerned, any good is full undermined by a mission statement like "Each is expected to aspire fervently to the Great Work; to dare, with courage undaunted, to perfect that Work;"

It is doctrinaire philosophy, and regardless of any benefits it may bestow on you, on the whole it is just as dangerous to thought, reason, and humanity itself as any other system which undermines rationally based systems of deriving belief.

Sorry, I asked for justification and hoped for better. Christianity and Islam also help lots of people, but on the whole they are designed to erode reason and instill faith, and in doing so are net destroyers of human culture and progress.
..english letter frequency table based remapping did not help me here (and that was the extent of my effort).. I'm beginning to think that this might have been one of those autoironic fourth wall story-narrative-mocking jokes! Did you just pull a Derrida on me?

(Thanks for the tvtropes article; it links to another one (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MinovskyPhysics) which mentions "Schild's ladder"; which makes their arguments ex vi termini pretty great!)
A couple of months back I gave my feedback to Vic about how G+ is in a limbo zone between Facebook and Twitter, and that the needs of none of the use cases are met on G+. In his sincere attempt in trying to do his share of keeping the conversation vibrant on G+, Vic would (bad call, in my opinion) post pictures of his kids for thousands of his followers to see and comment on. I think this is where the non-clarity of the platform emerges. First of all, why would you post personal pictures of your family for thousands of strangers to see and comment on? And what do you do with the responses you get? Are you going to read/respond to all? What's the point of someone saying 'awww' or asking you a personal question, to which a response is not really warranted - as the askers are complete strangers. A lot of people follow others on G+ to get professional insights (as in this case) and Vic's usage of the platform as an example confuses the value proposition. My 2c.
PC history timeline–lots of pics/info of PCs from the 50's to the early 90's
New Android Trojan hijacks SMS 2 factor auth to steal stuff
This malware sample can solve CAPTCHA challenges, emulate user’s behaviors, parse SMS’s content from different vendors, and then automatically reply the confirmation message accordingly.
You make two points:

1) You do not want to "fork over any money' to WSJ.
2) You are frustrated by paywalls.

Notice how it is all about you? :-)

Have you considered that other people are here to discover great and high-quality content and are not frustrated by paywalls and are gladly willing to support quality writing?
I finally gave up and just blocked all cookies from youtube.com

It nicely solved the annoying google+ problem, with the added benefit that I haven't seen a youtube ad since.

Apparently if you block youtube cookies, the ad server mostly just gives up.
Tokaido 1.0 Released
I completely agree with you, but don't forget one other hugely important decision wrt to G+ that was controversial at the time: the refusal to release a full fledge API. To this day, the only real client for Google+ is the one made by Google. We've all come to accept it at this point, but back then Google was a company entirely built around the concept of APIs for all their services. No matter what the service, you could integrate with it. G+ was really the first time ever that they said "no, API for you".

Had Google skated around the identity issue AND enabled an ecosystem of 3rd party APIs similar to how Twitter developed, I think G+ would own the entire social network ecosystem by now. Instead, they've got a small piece of the pie, which some will claim is more valuable because it is full of "real identities" and completely controlled by Google, but to my mind is far less value because it intersects only a tiny cross section of society who use it.
Any battery has a hard time storing an amount of energy that costs the same as itself during its lifetime. This is opposite to combustion engines, which can pump infinite amounts of dollars through their cylinders.

It's an insanely smart offering.
AgLocal Goes from Meat Marketplace to Meat Subscription Service
Yes, I've noticed this as well. It's the same ridiculously simple workaround that you use on paywall sites if you've used up your 'free' views.

Is there even any point to linkedin these days?
This was created a few months after they got forceful about merging people's YT and G+ accounts (maybe one month before they turned off non-G+ comments?)
> modern science is like a religion in many respects

I'd disagree with that, in that science when practiced purely is inherently self doubting and does not claim to know anything. However as practiced, it can sometimes take on the doctrinaire culture of religion.

As far as the 14 open-minded hippies, do you have some evidence that the disciples engaged in drug-fueled orgies? I'd be curious to read about that.
The Completely Insane Saga of CoinBet.cc – Bitcoin's latest "rotten apple"
This is the story of one of the biggest bitcoin scandals as of late.
Players of Coinbet.cc have lost an estimated $ 5 million in bitcoins at a rogue bitcoin casino
> Comcast wanting Cogent to pay more to transit all that Netflix data

That doesn't make sense to me. Comcast's customer isn't Cogent; Comcast's customer is the end user who sends them a check every month for access to the internet, regardless of where it comes from. If Cogent is being paid by Netflix on the other side, then Cogent and Comcast are exactly aligned (each wanting to deliver the Netflix packets because their respective customers are paying them to) and should peer without any money changing hands. If Comcast wants Cogent to pay it so that Comcast's own subscribers can get access to Cogent's customers' content, then they're being shady.
No, its awesome and deletes your browser history when you die.