skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If the researchers accept government funds, they should accept government conditions on how they make results available to other researchers. Freedom of speech (the body of law connected to prior restraint) is freedom to do what you want with a printing press you own and pay for. If someone else owns and pays for the printing press, you honor the owner's freedom of speech by printing what the owner says, or you go buy your own printing press.
In fairness, I think a case can be made that it's not a good idea to make too many radical changes to a UI design all at once. I'm not necessarily saying I agree with the author, but I can see where he's coming from.

With that said, I personally tend to think that the way of thinking above is the smart way to do things. On the other hand, you can't really innovate without being willing to try something stupid.
Huh? A book review? And why I am supposed to care about what some random ZDNet doofus thinks about one of the greatest authors in SciFi? This reads like it was written by a high-schooler.

I didn't find the book confusing at all; I suspect Mr LeMay's outing himself as a little bit slow. Try glanding intellect.

Ah, the killing blow:

Why, for instance, does The Culture need to employ fallible human agents from other societies against each other? Why doesn’t it just deploy the invincible Skaffen-Amtiskaw with a nuclear bomb tucked under its wing and an ultimatum to stop fighting or the galactic police will pull the plug?

Ha! Take that, Banks! Game's up! We all knew your reign of brittle pretence could only last until the day Renai "The Mastermind" LeMay found you. Also, why didn't Bilbo just ride the giant bird straight to the mountain, drop in the ring, and ride back? It would have taken half an hour! God, I can't believe how stupid Tolkien is!
The wheelchair shown has an emergency stop feature where you puff out your cheek and it stops (accelerometer taped on to your cheek).

I think that the idea here is to provide something that has a fairly high barrier before 'recognition' takes place.

From the demo video I think you can gather that it takes a while to hold a thought 'steady' before the system responds.

That is probably why the wheelchair moves slowly at the cornering points.
Oh, gosh, where to begin ...

Actually, most of what I did are standard techniques that assembly programmers know, C programmers have seen, and web programmers don't need to bother with.

I can't actually post code here because it's commercial in confidence, yada yada yada, but I will mention the techniques.

Firstly, they were processing an entire image, then transforming it, then getting the part they wanted. We tranformed the program flow to be demand-driven, which meant that large amounts of the image weren't processed at all because they weren't needed.

Then we analysed the data and deduced that by taking logs we only needed a dynamic range of 6 bits. We therefore took the entire image into a byte map with the top two bits of each byte set to 0.

Processing 4 bytes at a time in words saved enormous amounts of memory access, and avoided register spills. Unrolling loops by the right amount meant that we stayed in cache, but had less overhead.

Once the processing had been re-worked, we looked at the assembly produced, and found that most of the time the processing could be separated into a double indirection.

Finally, by further reducing the resolution of the system, computing an approximation, then reworking those parts of the data where the errors were too large we managed to halve the work being done.

It was a good two days of analysis, and the code shrank by a factor of 2, but it's now tough to understand. We have documented the results. It's embedded work, and yes, we finally went to assembly to get the last 30% of performance.

Every part of it is standard in its field. I think some of my programmers hadn't created routines to work byte-wise eight bytes at a time in a 64 bit word, and others hadn't done the transform via logs to throw away unnecessary resolution. Another had never analysed unrolling a loop as compared with staying in cache. We used tricks such as (x & -x) to find the least bit of a number, although in 32-bit space that becomes something like (x & (!x + 0x01010101)).

And so on. A large collection of esoteric tricks, all at once.

Let me finish by saying that programs can't be made to run faster, they can only be made to do less work. An interesting aphorism when "optimised" code.
that's three 'keepingthedoor.com' links spammed in a single day now.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=807730
But let’s not pretend Banks didn’t have quite some development to go as a writer when he put it together in the late 1980’s

Considering how crap his review was this closing remark is staggering.

He should read the Wasp Factory and then for the benefit of all of us he should not write a review about it.
Not really. He says it's possible to become more disciplined, but there's no support for that in the text beyond just the statement. On top of that, there have been all these HN links about how the traditional ways to make oneself disciplined only serve to make the willful types less likely to do them. Nothing kills one's desire to accomplish something more than trying to force oneself to do it.

All in all it's an unhelpful essay.
A static version of your blog? That would be all well and good if it were not for comments...
You can try stupid ideas. You should just avoid trying them with your cash-cow products. There is also the insight that focus groups and user behavior research can only go that far.

I was reading a very old article on the Acme editor/IDE/shell and one remark in it is very profound: When people become aware of the user interface, it's because it's distracting from the task. Ideally, users should not even be aware the UI is there.
Obviously not. Otherwise he would have known about WordPress' automatic upgrade feature: http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress

Plugins can also be upgraded with a single click.
Robin Hobb's next book: Dragon Haven
Hack Your Brain, Hack Your Mind: The inner conditions for happiness
Dragon*Con brings out enthusiasts' inner geek
It would make more sense to call mt_rand simply rand, and the current rand to fast_rand.
I do know though that if I break one of my fasts because I got hungry it will be very easy for me to break the next.

That's how I quit smoking :)
You are arguing that the obligation to releave the hardships of the poor falls narrowly, landing on the shoulders of those who provide the goods to the poor. Your argument would show that if a cripple is unable to afford a wheel chair, then the wheel chair maker must reach into his own pocket to pay poor relief. Your argument would show that it is the greed of the bricklayer and the roofer that is to blame for homelessness.

If you have a claim on others, for the funding of your medical treatment as an act of charity, it is a broad claim on society as a whole. When we agree with you, (as when we approve of rent controls and thus make the burden of housing the poor fall narrowly on the owners of rental property) that is due to our hypocrisy: we are glad to dump our collective burden onto a scapegoat.
Diabetes Can Be Reversed With the Right Treatment
It looks like they did a lot of research about how to best layout and setup a course in a book

It looks to me like they try to cram as much stuff-that-looks-like-content in as possible so they can justify charging $100+ for the book. The disease is particularly bad at the first-year level where the publishers need to compete against dozens of other damn-near-identical textbooks; this is why every first-year physics textbook I know weighs half a ton and has lots of pretty pictures, whereas the actual content could probably be whittled down to a hundred pages or so.
I get a Google Groups nag screen when I try to view this page. Can someone stick the one post we're interested in on pastebin or something?

It's not that I have any problem with Google Groups, it just interrupts my "open 40 tabs and wallow through them" routine when one of the tabs asks me to sign up for a service.
well, that could make some sense, but mt_rand is significantly faster too than basic rand.

edit: what I meant was that imho there is not really any reason to keep that old, broken rand function lying around
Long term this shouldn't be an issue at all. All our systems are currently controlled by our brain - why would next-gen machines be any different in our ability to control them?

A guy I once met was partially blind. He decided to learn how to see again as he was sick of feeling his way around. He took the "evolutionary" option, by starting to walk extremely fast everywhere. For the first few weeks he had a few knocks and bruises as he ran into doors. Gradually he got back his ability to detect objects at high speed.

I think our brain can adapt much better than we realise with the right stimuli :)
Below link shows some WordPress security tips and hacks that you can easily implement on your WordPress blog.

http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/wordpress-security-tips-and-hac...
I would like to see the code that breaks if PRNG is swapped. I mean, like is there code out there that relies on the unrandomness of current rand?
I don’t know if the story is that easy. Sure, as time progressed there were more custom parts. I played with Lego from 1992 (4) to 1999 (10) and remember that trend quite vividly. But it didn’t really get all that bad until I stopped playing Lego (no causal link there, by the way). Starting 2000 things really got out of hand. But when looking at current Lego sets I think we are back to 1999 or so levels of custom things. It has gotten better. Bionicle is a somewhat strange last remnant of that time. All the rest is pretty much normal again.

I would argue that there is nothing bad about current levels of custom things in Lego sets. In the 90s they simply became part of the brand. Lego sets are mostly standard blocks, but for good measure they will throw in a few custom things. I always liked that. I don’t think I would have enjoyed playing Lego so much with only standard blocks. The only thing I truly hate are stickers which glue together big parts of a set. I want custom printed blocks for that.
Yeah. Random is hard.

BUT when you actually already have far better implementation of PRNG, namely md_rand in PHP, there really is no excuse for defaulting to broken behavior.
But they've got a point. Even if it takes "only 10 minutes" to upgrade, there have been so many new versions and so many security issues that it gets kind of old after a while. Especially if you have multiple sites all running it.
Street Racing на Facebook
I think the single best thing you can do with wordpress is to run an SVN install. They're usually pretty good about tagging updates, so for example the update to 2.8.4 consisted of this:

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.8.4

Which is about the acceptable level of hassle IMO. Much more and I'd be outta there.

Oh, and don't have many plugins, they all suck. Just stay nice and stock.

By the way, if anyone is wondering why this seemingly helpful comment is marked dead, it's because I've been banned! Very subtle, isn't it. I'm not supposed to notice, btw.
The fact it's been written in PHP is meaningless. As for "designed without security as a goal", I think you'll find that's true for most web apps.
So basically PHP keeps the slower and worst random generator as the default.

Great minds in action.
This would be a good point, except that Banks is Scottish.
I look forward to seeing some new screencasts on that site. The last one is from May.
> you can definitely learn self-discipline;

How would you go about that?
The problem that you see here is mostly that rand() gets the range in a way biased towards the lower-order bits, which in more LCGs are less random than the higher-order bits.
It's WP's fault that he's not aware of how much easier it is update current releases, not his.
The issue is not with making 30% Y/Y gains for a while, it's the mathematical challenge of doing it for a sustained 60 years.
How is Typo's security?
Having fun helps a lot.
I have a static blog and used to have Disqus for comments. I've since disabled Disqus, no fault of theirs, I just decided that I didn't want comments.
Sounded like an interesting proposition. Would it be possible to do this and use Disqus?
Anyone interested in this at all, or desktop UI design in general, should really read Jensen Harris' fascinating series of blog posts that were written during the development of the Office 2007 UI:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F...

They've got loads of detail on the thinking behind the new designs and give tons of examples of the work in progress - and go into the reasons for all the design decisions that went into the new ribbon UI. Well worth a read if you haven't done so before.
If you made $4/hour at age 15. 30% Y/Y growth would have you making over $21,000,000 PER HOUR at age 74, 60 years later.

You really think you could command that kind of pay increase, not adjusted for inflation?

Not a chance.
So can you put Disqus up on HTML pages?
That may actually have to do with not upsetting peoples unit tests that depend on this 'broken behavior'.

Let's say someone wrote an extensive body of statistical software that gets tested with the known input from the PRNG in php, if you then change the random number generator all the output will be different.

Or if someone used the PRNG in PHP to encrypt a bunch of data replacing it would break the decrypt function leaving the user with inaccessible data.
The recommended procedure for "automatic" upgrades, as described on that page, is to back up your entire database and disable all plugins beforehand.
I use a lot of Gmail, with one Yahoo Mail, but I use Gmail as more of a client for my server; all email is sent and received through my server.

Also, why aren't self-hosted options like Horde and Roundcube in this poll?
Testsets + known output, spots where the PRNG has been used as part of the seed driving cryptographic code.

The fact that a given seed makes your program deterministic is a great way to 'lock' the variation that a random generator would otherwise give you.

So, say you have a series of steps that produce a result given a random number as the seed.

You come up with a bunch of cases where the run output has been saved and checked by hand to conform, you now use that output to verify against when maintaining the software.

If you should change the behavior of the PRNG then output will change and the test will break.

A database with passwords that were 'encrypted' (I use the word loosely) using the PRNG with parts of the password as the seed. If you change the PRNG under water none of those users can log in.

There are probably lots of other examples, these are just two simple scenarios where code would break.
You should be able to pull in comments from an outside service using a <script> tag. And if that service doesn't exist, hey, startup idea!
Nokia Doesn’t Care About The Iphone
Ok, let me phrase my question more carefully, to avoid getting into a listing of detailed differences and similarities between sex and employment.

There is a commonly stated principle, "two consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own bedroom." This principle clearly has an unstated limiting clause: "two consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in privacy, except when ___").

I'm asking what to replace the "___" with.

[edit: also curious why I'm being downmodded for asking.]
Would the real VC please stand up?
Fonts for web design: a primer
Neat to see increased innovation being carried out in the steel industry.

The last innovative steel-related thing that caught my eye was ConXtech's Portable Tower at Burning Man 2008 (see http://www.theportabletower.com/ for a video on how they built a 10-story tower in 3 days using compression joints)
Sure, its even easy. Go grab jekyll http://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/tree/master, which can turn your haml/sass, textile or even markdown into static html pages with links. Host it yourself or on github, and use one of the comment hosting services, or throw a link to any technical-ish post here on HN, and people can comment on it.
more spam.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=807717
Not this:

You are arguing that the obligation to releave the hardships of the poor falls narrowly, landing on the shoulders of those who provide the goods to the poor. Your argument would show that if a cripple is unable to afford a wheel chair, then the wheel chair maker must reach into his own pocket to pay poor relief. Your argument would show that it is the greed of the bricklayer and the roofer that is to blame for homelessness.

But this:

I want a wheelchair but can't afford one from the legitimate supplier. I know how to make one myself and have all the tools and materials at hand. I've made a good-faith attempt to negotiate a hardship discount with the legitimate supplier and have been spurned; failure to get a wheelchair means I'll die soon. In this circumstance I think it is moral to make a wheelchair for myself using my own tools and materials.

Even more precisely, the scenario (with India vs rest of world) is pretty much:

- GSK et al would like India to crack down on offlabel pharma shops

- India clearly prefers letting offlabel pharma companies operate

...and neither on their own can force the other other to stop what they're doing, which is why each party:

- GSK et al

- India (and other countries in similar boats)

...are appealing to the rest of the world for sympathy and support; each of these entities has valid moral claims on their position, so how is one to decide which claim is more justified?

I've argued my position. You're arguing against a different position than I took (or really, drawing false generalizations that I don't hold and then taking me to task for holding those positions, which I only hold in your imagination; if you want to talk to yourself count me out of it).
Not as bad as phpBB's "automatic" upgrade, which gives you a tar-ball of changed files which you're supposed to unpack...
He includes links to code on the site. There is a GitHub repository with all code in it.
I wasn't aware that POP3 wasn't offered on free accounts. Even so, it's only $15 per year, and the other features a paid account enables are worth it. Nothing wrong with paying for added value. :)
That convolution situation holds about all programming languages in corporate environments. This situation is even worse in Java though, because it lacks good tool support (yes sure eclipse rocks...) and it is overwhelmed by millions of libraries that do the same thing (but none of them does what you want:D).
That should take, at most, a few additional clicks, since plugins can be disabled en masse and databases can be backed up with another plugin (or done automatically at the server).
Regular Expression examples in Java
Exactly. I give WP a lot of credit since it's the only web application I know of that can be upgraded from its own interface without the need to ever login to a shell or manually FTP files to the server.
http://dpaste.com/90292/
Certainly. Setting aside whether or not quantum (instead of classical) physics is necessary, it certainly seems to be sufficient to explain everything that a person does. Given that, how can a person not be considered to "merely follow a set of rules"?
A new Internet communication protocol for Mars
3-D printers: a factory on your desk
No one is talking about making you take an unpaid internship that you don't want. We're talking about whether Joe Q. Eagerbeaver should be prevented from taking an unpaid internship that he does want.

Yes, I agree, this isn't about me. I have the luxury to avoid unpaid internships, which not everyone does. There are situations where unpaid internships are good, and situations where they're bad. I'm arguing that the bad heavily outweighs the good.

Whatever happened to treating people like mentally competent adults capable of making their own life decisions?

Strawman. By that logic Ponzi schemes should be legal.
php, now with goto!
OpenSSH has had more than its share of vulnerabilities.
I guess I am the outcast - I spend 4-7 hours / day in excel / word / powerpoint, and love the new ribbon.

It took me quite a while to get used to - as I've been on office since the Windows 3.1 days - but once adapted I move through the applications quicker and have an easier time finding what I need.
Exactly....it's not like the employer wants to be nice and give you more money, it's that they have to, or someone else will.
On Releasing Your Company's Software as Open Source
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome
I'd agree that for web development, assembly is almost certainly something a typical programmer won't have to know. I'd argue that C is a good idea for various reasons, but that argument's been had already.

That said, "learn it when you need it" is problematic because of the case where you don't know what you don't know. In my own experience, I've learned lots of things and then thought back to previous problems and had little epiphanies on better solutions. People that don't experience that probably aren't improving very much.

Perhaps it would be useful if various communities (like webdev, etc) put together curriculum guides for "things you don't know you don't know, but should know." Of course, what should be on the list would be a source of bitter contention I'm sure.
Cross-referenced to
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806893
yep, it's what I do (Jekyll + Disqus) and it's actually very easy.

example and instructions from someone else's blog:

http://dcreager.net/2009/08/07/disqus-comments/
I think our difference of opinion really boils down to our views of companies at large. Not every company is ethically responsible and many companies don't put enough thought into the hiring process at all. Once some kind of work becomes free, companies will do less and less diligence hiring for these position, simply because the value of the work becomes trivialized. This ends up hurting the workers and the company in the long run.

There are some great articles at http://www.no-spec.com/ that describe a fairly similar problem.

Let's say I'm starting a business and require a large amount of data entry. I categorize this work as grunt work for the most part. I get free interns to do it since I don't have the capital to pay anyone for it. Let's even say the availability of free work prompted me to start the company in the first place. I sit all these interns in cubicles and have them populate my application. What I'm not doing though is keeping a really good eye on the content their grabbing, copyright infringements etc. because to me, this work is free, if one of them messes up I'll just replace them. I don't have the time to babysit this free work because I'm busy running other parts of my business.

Now, if I was paying for the work I would value it more, and keep a closer eye on it. Why? Well beause I'm paying for it and if I'm paying for it, I want to make sure I'm not getting ripped off. We only value something when it costs us something. Just like we only value the poker pot once we've invested in it. I wouldn't value a free intern nearly as much as a paid intern. This will be reflected in the way I treat the free workers (lack of respect when they are easily replaced, because if I actually respected them, well then I'd pay them), it will reduce the interns sense of pride in their work, and it will definitely degrade the quality of work.

Now there are definitely exceptions, and maybe this article is one of them. However, by and large I think free workers is a really bad idea, and therefor I agreed with laws that prevent this practice.
ZFS RAID recommendations: space, performance, and MTTDL (mean time to data loss)