skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1. In this incident, I'm not sure Sen. Leahy caved into Lobbiests? He probally did, but not sure.

2. I think the real reason is,"Our general view is to be good rather than to be fast," said Dana Rao, Adobe's vice president of intellectual property and litigation, told National Journal last month. It's especially important to get legislation just right, he added, because "we're not going to get a third shot at a patent bill in Congress," referring to the America Invents Act that Congress passed in 2011, which overhauled some aspects of the patent system."

3. No matter wat the outcome, I feel it will be challenged in the Supreme Court?

4. I hope this passes though.

5. I would like to see one clause added to this bill, and yes, I know it's too late, but the clause is; If you, or your company are below the federal poverty line--fees for patents, and trademarks should be
drastically reduced. Right now they give micro-entities a break, but it's not enough. Poor Americans should be able to file for patent protection. Lack of money shouldn't be
an reason. I don't think millions of poor people would flood the patent office with patent applications either, but
you might get a few poor boys, who had an original idea, who
filled out the papers correctly--get protection for their idea.
You emphasized Google, but you should have emphasized apparently, because nowhere in the actual email is the OP's conspiracy theory about Google mentioned (or even the word Google!). It's quite likely they noticed a penalty and are just going through all their back links to find shady content.
Drones are already widespread, which I discussed in a previous comment.[0] Like all technology, Pandora's Box has been opened and there's really nothing that can be done to stop people from developing ever more sophisticated drones. America did not invent drones and it has never been the only source for the technology. Countries like Israel and South Africa were using modern tactical drones in combat long before the first Predator took to the skies.

But drones aren't the real issue, they're still relatively unsophisticated aircraft that, even when armed, are not any more deadly than manned combat aircraft and the array of sophisticated weaponry that most countries have access to.

The real issue is the rapid development of robotics, of which UAVs (aka drones) are a subset, that promises to dramatically change warfare. The first robots equipped with AI software to automatically identify and shoot at targets will probably be ground robots like the Talon or SWORDS, not UAVs flying 20 000 ft above the battlefield. Russia is already experimenting with such autonomous AIs on their Taifun-M robot, as are others.

At the current rate of development it's difficult to even imagine how far this technology will go and what robots will be capable of, but suffice to say we're already seeing levels of capability most believed were science fiction just a decade ago.

Point is, arguing about armed drones like the Reaper and Predator is not going to solve anything and it's a distraction from the real ethical debates that need to be happening around weaponised robotics.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709420
In this case the energy that goes into creating the e+e- pairs far outweighs the energy you get out. For example, given that this is Quantum Mechanics, there is a non-zero but not necessarily close to one probability of creating a pair from a given pair of photons. One could imagine the other light that didn't interact would just escape to the environment. You can conceptualize this as an photon produced to pair created efficiency, and I don't see it for any reason being very big.

Then again, I'm not sure I understand the experiment, for example, I'm not sure how a blackbody spectrum helps in the breit-wheeler process. I think that the light colliding at a perpendicular incidence helps, but other than that, I can't see how the spectrum of radiation matters...like how is using a blackbody spectrum is better than, say, a monochromatic laser? I think I'd have to look at the paper once it gets out.
Exactly. Instead Google should suggest that they investigate the link and appeal the way it was categorized if the search engine was wrong in its classification. Anything less is tampering with the natural way links should work.
What a terrible hosting provider you have. Who are they?
Yes, truly Google's rules held no sway over the SEO world until 2014.
While my kids don't ask for much, one thing I wish I had the money for was to take them to see some of the amazing sites of our country. We drove cross country from PA to Colorado and it was fantastic. Would love to have them see everything from there on West.
App Constellations
Everyone is learning to code due to this massive movement of programming as of late, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will be learning to code effectively nor efficiently.
Sure, this is all hearsay and second- and third-hand information, and the article is really sparse on details.

> It's quite likely they noticed a penalty...

Yes, and where would they have noticed that penalty?
Did anyone else think Star Trek replicator when they saw this headline? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)

We're definitely a long way from "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot", but it's cool to see people looking into these sorts of things.
It would be nice to make a upnp version of this for when you're on the same network, you just don't want to mess with finding your ip
Fast run and pullups all that matters anyway
Can I, the potential reader, chime in? I hate this tactic because it results in lower quality content getting further up the search rankings. If I'm a gardener, I want the blogs of well-respected gardeners who have real-life community standing and mutual respect to link to each other. What I don't want is two amateur gardeners with crappy writing skills who have made side-deals to link to each other getting on the first page of a Google search.

The situation you mentioned can start out as innocuous but quickly become downright shady. Hmm, you're asking them to link to you, but what do they get in return? Oh, here's a thought, you tell them you'll link to them as well if they link to you, that way you'll both get a ranking bump! Totally fair and win-win for everyone except for the people who are trying to get quality information.
Yes and that's exactly my point. The email doesn't mention anything about Google, it just says they are cleaning up their links and if it's not a big deal please delete the links on your site. This isn't uncommon, just like it's not uncommon to get emails soliciting links.

The OP has come up with a theory about the backstory and then used that theory to blame Google for ruining the internet (ignoring the fact that the entire "credit" he wants is Google's invention in the first place).
The disavowal tool really isn't that hard to use. Yes, it is more work than no work, but if you depend on a search engine for traffic, you're going to have to do some work to optimize for it (like, sign up for webmaster tools).
A true patent troll doesn't let little things like prior art stop them...
Looks interesting!

However, when posting a new package it is most useful to discuss it in comparison to established packages. Specifically, what are the pros/cons of this package compared to numericjs [1] and jstat [2]?

Also, in general, I think it is a mistake to mix plotting and numerics in a single package. These are two quite different things and are probably better served by more focused packages.

[1] http://www.numericjs.com/
[2] https://github.com/jstat/jstat
A simple quick reader view for Android.
ok ok ok - stop with the downvotes, it was a silly joke.

But, as Udo kindly did, if we took it seriously, what would a civilisation have to do for us to detect its (warlike) actions and if we did, more importantly, would we believe it?
It pretty much is if organic hyperlinks become feared entities.

No hyperlinks = no internet.
> Google's customers are its users.

No, Google's customers are its advertisers. They're the ones who pay money to Google.

I agree with your general point though, the algorithm isn't perfect and sometimes it goofs. What I think people are having a negative reaction to is Matt Cutts' seemingly obtuse responses, as though he doesn't even understand the issue at hand (Google's actions distorting natural behavior), so he just keeps explaining the anti-spam policies in general terms. It's not a conversation, it's people talking past one another.
> Google's customers are its users.

No, Google's customers are primarily its advertisers. Optimizing advertising revenue has some overlap with pleasing users, as you note, but if a decision needed to be made between pleasing users and increasing revenue, there's no doubt about which way it would go.
I get a regular drip feed of these requests. Depending on my mood I check the outgoing link. Usually it's from someone recommending the service or product that the site asking me to remove the link offers. I've mailed quite a few of the requestors back. I explain that I've set all links to be nofollow and that it was a real person that created the link. Only 1 person has ever understood this. The rest all demanded the link still be removed with varying degrees of politeness. I just don't think site owners get it and to echo several comments here perhaps Google could make some clearer instructions about what they want.
It can (and I thinkt it is) both; you get a feedback loop, and such tend to steer the whole system in a particular direction.
Something like 50% of them have Crossfit signs on the wall behind them.

So, kip much?
i don't totally disagree with the article, but it's probably worth pointing out that this guy is apparently a "proud homophobe." great. one might question his judgement after reading this drivel.

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/05/washington...

http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html
Furthermore, the "credit" he so desperately wants publishers to receive is only a thing because of Google Page Rank in the first place.

That makes no sense. Citing an original source, such as an article that inspired your own work or with relevant background for ideas you're building on, is common courtesy in any field, and it's directly useful to your readers in the Web case.

Amazing as some people apparently find it, it is still quite possible to "surf" the web, following links from site to site without relying on a search engine like Google to find anything interesting or useful. The fact that Google appear to be promoting policies that could threaten to this alternative is rather the point here.
I know Alan and have been using Ngrok for months now. This is the first time I've noticed a seriously long outage. The site seems to be back up now, FWIW.
Ohh the irony of them being a "Link removing service". I wonder how it would have affected the credibility & guarantee of their service had you told them no.
> Yes, and where would they have noticed that penalty?

In a drop in incoming traffic, so with whatever they're using for analytics.

In all honesty it's probably just a new SEO consultant trying to clean up past sins and move on with whatever the latest grey hat strategy is.

IMO it's a gross overreaction to a form letter that a high percentage of webmasters have received.
He probably sends emails synchronously.
The Price Is Right: For Early-Stage SaaS Companies, It Needs To Be
"Verifiably random" is a strategy to obtain the property Bernstein terms "rigidity". Curve25519 uses a different strategy; from safecurves:

Prime chosen "as close as possible to a power of 2" for efficiency reasons ("save time in field operations"). Prime chosen "slightly below 32k bits, for some k" for efficiency reasons ("no serious concerns regarding wasted space"). k=8 chosen for "a comfortable security level". 2^255-19 chosen above 2^255+95, 2^255-31, 2^254+79, 2^253+51, 2^253+39 "because 19 is smaller than 31, 39, 51, 79, 95". Montgomery curve shape y^2=x^3+Ax^2+x chosen for efficiency ("to allow extremely fast x-coordinate point operations"). (A-2)/4 selected as a small integer for efficiency ("to speed up the multiplication by (A-2)/4"). Curve and twist orders required to be {4prime,8prime} for security ("protect against various attacks ... here 4, 8 are minimal"). Primes required to be above 2^252 for security ("theoretical possibility of a user's secret key matching the prime"), ruling out A=358990 and A=464586. A=486662 chosen as smallest positive integer meeting these requirements

Each of the parameters of the curve has a straightforward explanation; they're explainable from first-principles.

I'm not sure what the "non-prime order" objection you're describing is.

The leading 1-bit on the key prevents a potential timing attack.

The rest of your objections seem to boil down to "Curve25519 isn't a NIST curve, and NIST curve software doesn't naturally support it". That is indeed a valid objection if the only curve software you can use supports only the NIST curves.
Your comments on this post are a great demonstration of the attitude that is driving me off Google properties, as quickly as I can find viable replacements.
Google's users are the product, the customers are the advertisers.
Shouldn't software optimally always use the newest version of all the libraries it depends on? It's a security issue if they don't. And as far as I know, only Linux distro package repositories even have backports, not application package repos.
My understanding is selling links is an SEO scam. Are my "ads" a SEO scam or are they real companies to trying to sell real products to real people? How can you conflate the two?
how difficult or easy was for you to change field?
Thanks for the feedback.

There is some overlap between those libraries. However, it does one thing that none of the other JS libraries (from here: http://jster.net/category/math-libraries) really focus on: to support the full complex domain for all the functions.

About numerics vs plotting: They are in different js files, jsmat.js and jsmat_plot.js. The plotting file depends on the numerics one though, as it needs to use its Complex type. The main focus of the package is the numerics, the plotting is a demo, and especially, debugging device.
Well, to be fair, dumbbell training is a lot more dangerous at heavy weights than barbell training is because with barbells, there's a lot that equipment like a power rack can do for you. It's probably not the presses messed you up, it's getting the dumbbells into position, getting them off and back onto the rack, that sort of thing. You can't just lower them onto pegs after your set is over.
The current URL is far more interesting with its links to his colour photographs.
Except that I and it seems many commenters here have seen similar things occurring with non-spam sites. Regardless of the specific domains referred to in this post, a general pattern is being talked about - the fundamental criticism is that we are getting a google-shaped web rather than a web-shaped google, due to google's de facto monopoly position. If this wasn't the case, it wouldn't be a talking point here.
You're in dangerous territory and are not selling "complete ads". You're selling links.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminde...

> Please be wary if someone approaches you and wants to pay you for links or "advertorial" pages on your site that pass PageRank. Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations.
I enjoyed reading your comment more than the article.

I don't have any real advice though, be strong and try to fight procrastination, it's more of a mental status than anything else :-)

ps. You're not the only one who has fear of failure. I do too, I guess it's a natural state for most people ;-)
9/11 Memorial Name Placements Reflect Bonds Between Victims Thanks To Algorithm
Thanks, and I agree. But... it doesn't resolve the problem that publishers who always fought spam, who stayed as far from the SEO battles as possible, and who have largely spam-free sites, are now subject to a constant and increasing flow of link removal requests as a consequence of Google's pushback against the merchants who did use the more spammy SEO tactics.
I understand your point and I'm in no way advocating homophobia, but isn't your point still ad hominem?
If I'm a gardener, I want the blogs of well-respected gardeners who have real-life community standing and mutual respect to link to each other. What I don't want is two amateur gardeners with crappy writing skills who have made side-deals to link to each other getting on the first page of a Google search.

That might be the ideal result, but it's hard to see how anyone could achieve it with a purely automated system. To make the kinds of distinction you're describing, in general you probably need some form of manual curation by genuine experts with uncontroversial opinions, assuming such people even exist in the field of interest.
"If you read the original post closely, it's clear that this is a site asking for a link to be removed--the quoted email isn't from Google."

Matt, this is beyond disingenuous. If Bing or Yahoo responded in the same way, I doubt we would hear a ringing endorsement from Google on the subject.

You've indicated in other comments that basically your algorithm is everyone else's problem to deal with. You can use whatever words you like, but the actions are what matter.

At this point, it sounds more as if Google is concerned with "being right" more so than "doing right".
The subway speeding past photo is interesting- the door is clearly slanted to one side. Is this an artifact of the camera scanning line-by-line relatively slowly? Or something else?
How is that relevant???

Just because you have very extremist and incorrect views about something outside your profession, doesn't mean that you are automatically incorrect when talking about your profession.
The Internet would naturally be a tragedy of the commons - and entropy fighting is something Google seems to be doing well.
I first read about insulin's role in weight loss in Ferriss' book "Four Hour body", and the results from his approach have been pretty impressive (tracked 3,500 people and 84% of them lost weight)

http://fourhourworkweek.com/2013/01/22/is-the-4-hour-body-a-...
It seems like a reasonable task to create a package manager which is able to interface with the "standard" package management tools for a particular language to avoid the need to worry about the details of each tool. I'm not sure if I'd use such a tool myself, but I could imagine some would find it useful and it doesn't seem like it would be a huge challenge to create.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter

Common on certain types of digital cameras today as well (especially smaller ones like mobile phones and P&S cameras).
But the scientist generally wins less than a programmer who has a moderately good year making a website to help people find other people who would like to walk their dog.
I don't really see any reason to know the specifics or to investigate further. The authors point was simply that lots of organic links are requested to be removed to play it safe.

I don't think Google needs to spend resources to turn around and tell this guy, "got'ya"...

Personally, I don't see the harm in having organic links being asked to be removed. I would never remove a link that sends referral traffic, and I see no reason to keep a link that doesn't send me visitors. I have no problem having someone no follow a link that sends me traffic, because it will send me the same traffic...

so I think the issue here is less about actually breaking the internet and more about how it makes people feel when they thought they were helping you by linking, and then they get accused of destroying your rankings by asking for the link to be removed....
Totally right. Polarizing/absolutist proclamations like the OP tend to start noisy, unhelpful discussions on HN. It's even worse when (as here) the OP concerns a general topic where most HN readers have anecdotal evidence, but only anecdotal evidence.

This kind of outrageous statement can be kind of fun in a small group, at dinner or a bar, but not here (IMO).
It happens. I think the longest I knew was someone who was there 11 years without being promoted. I also know folks who are promoted reliably every 2 years, all the way up from SWE 3 to Distinguished Engineer. My personal story was in the middle...I was promoted while at Google, but I didn't particularly want to climb the corporate ladder in a big company.

As for tactics - they aren't actually all that different from what you'd need to manage a successful startup. Get yourself put on a big, important project, and execute successfully on it. How do you get yourself on a big important project? Make yourself an expert within a department in one area, so that when that project is looking for people, they really need to have you. For me that area was Javascript, although I also picked up a lot about all aspects of the search stack from working on a bunch of projects (this is the "success begets success" phenomena: if you're an expert in one area, you can leverage that to get your pick of projects, which you can use to become an expert in more areas). It also helps to have a good relationship with your manager, and to pick a manager who is "plugged in" to Google's priorities and aware of the top priorities and opportunities around.
"Read Phone State and Identity" should be two separate permissions
That's very different. I license Google to use my idea, it is still my idea. I can still do whatever else I want with it.

If I transfer it then it belongs to Google now.
It's probably because a few of our lecturers are actually from/did their PhDs in the US :)
Cat vs. Dog
No, but if you're selling something that transfers PageRank you are (in the eyes of Google) selling links. It's that simple.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminde...

> Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations.

It's an easy test: if the advertiser isn't OK with you not transferring PageRank you are selling a link and not advertising. It doesn't matter that it's good content or that it's not spammy (that just makes you the publisher feel OK about it), you're selling links.
The net cost/benefit of military conflict in economic terms is almost impossible to calculate.

Your run the gauntlet of variables from military-industrial production as a constant of GDP, through to the net benefit of conflict related inventions and leaps in medical engineering and hospital care.

You would also have to contend with the possible benefits/costs of reduction in the human populace. None of this includes the climate change impact, huge ecological impacts on local terrain and ecosystems.

Most modern conflicts also present huge employment opportunities for the local populace. In Camp Bastion/Leatherneck in Helmand Province, combat and support troops are outnumbered 3 to 1 by local recruited workers and locally employed civilians.

I am not convinced war destroys more wealth than it creates but it is an interesting question...
Better yet, switch zsh to use vim keybindings and not have to ever worry about those keybinding clashes.
The book covers functional programming because Clojure places a heavy emphasis on functional programming, and learning it is essential to learning Clojure. The book is not "Functional Programming for the Brave and True, with Clojure as the Medium." That doesn't mean that I'm merely "going through the motions" and am "not fully committed" to helping people understand functional programming, and it's bizarre, presumptuous, and rude that you would suggest that. At this point, it seems to me like you're merely being argumentative.