skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Non-speculation is not necessarily any better than speculation. The wisdom of crowds requires people to think for themselves[1] rather than subscribing to the status quo; only a democracy of independent thinkers avoids groupthink.

In this case, we don't have any choice. People are voting, they're voting about changes, and they're voting about changes now, so it's good to see that people are coming up with original thoughts, because this aggregation of opinions is the only solution available to human society -- nobody, not Alfred Wohlstetter, not Noam Chomsky, not even Ludwig Wittgenstein -- knows what the world will look like in 200 years, and really, there isn't any[2] scientific knowledge on how borders ought to be drawn.

"If you don't know how to vote, vote for nothing" -- this impulse will be the death of democracy. Simple ideas are better than no ideas; intuition is worse than reason but still better than nothing.

The opinion I am espousing in this post stands in direct contrast to many previous arguments where I called for rigor and caution. This is because I think elections are a fundamentally different process than top-down policies: an election needs to incorporate the information possessed by every individual in the society, if I'm working for the NSA and -- even if I have a family to support, or ideological opposition to pulling a Snowden -- if I know what we're doing is wrong I can vote against it, because the sanctity of the voting booth is the cornerstone of [every] democracy[3].

So it's also interesting to wonder if the Internet -- all this connectedness -- might lead us into social biases that would never have previously affected us. The ideas which become popular these days are the ones that you can learn about in five minutes.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd#Problems

[2] it's not rigorous

[3] http://www.tv.com/m/shows/the-wire/margin-of-error-898885/tr...
With that sentence, I meant that bankless people suffer hardship because they can't get access to basic banking services like savings accounts, currency exchanges, and money lending.

Simply because a financial institution that provides those services transacts in bitcoin doesn't make it any more ethical/moral than a traditional bank. While it's true that bitcoin doesn't have a central monetary authority, you still need a gateway to exchange currency for BTC (currency exchange), some way to safely store your private keys (savings accounts), and lenders.

For most bankless people, a trusted third party is going to be involved somewhere along the way, BTC or not.
Chase, Watsi's founder, spoke at start up school last year.

Donate first, then watch his talk and then donate again. Make sure you look for the tip option on the checkout page if you want to help cover Watsi's operational costs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlT3UhC7NwQ
Although the number of people involved is relatively low, there are some loud voices in various parts of the US that would like to secede.

Hawaii - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_sovereignty_movement

Texas - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_secession_movements

Alaska - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Independence_Party
My Mythical Vacation Sprint
What Twitter Followers Tell Us
Google Hires Quantum Computing Expert John Martinis to Build New Hardware
IIUC both ZFS and btrfs require that you be root to work with file system snapshots.
They're not nearly on the same scale. There are estimates that the US has, in its entire history, produced about 56 thousand metric tonnes of high-level radioactive waste as of 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_ma...). On the other hand, the EPA estimates that in 2012 alone, the United States produced 6.5 billion metric tonnes of carbon emitted due to transportation.

Obviously, a tonne of carbon and a tonne of radioactive waste aren't really comparable. In fact, I'd argue that the radioactive waste produced by a fission power plant is better for the environment: it remains in the reactor facility, where it can be easily contained and buried in geologically stable rock formations, or reused/reprocessed to extract further energy from it.

The carbon produced by burning fossil fuels is dumped into the atmosphere, where it can't be easily collected, disposed of, or reused.
I'm an engineer with Chef who for the 12 released has focused on the upgrade process from the Open Source Chef 11 server, as way of background.

We've had no problems working with Erlang and Postgres. We use epgsql as our Postgres driver (https://github.com/epgsql/epgsql).

That being said, Chef doesn't tax the db heavily and our Postgres needs are not complicated. We did write our own db abstraction layer, called sqerl. It's open source (as all the server is): https://github.com/opscode/sqerl

For version 12 we did move more code into Erlang. While version 11 put most of the code into Erlang, the multi-tenancy and RBAC system remained in Ruby and on CouchDB (At the time this was Enterprise only, with 12 this is all open source). A big push for 12 was moving this into Erlang and Postgres. With this complete the entire server is now all Erlang and Postgres (except perhaps for some small periphery tooling).

We don't regret moving to Erlang at all. We have no plans to move off of it and are very happy with it. By making the change to Erlang the scale of the server improved tremendously and there's no compelling evidence that switching technology stacks would offer us anything Erlang doesn't.

That being said, we're not going to use Erlang just to use Erlang. If there is a compelling reason to use another platform for something, we will, but the server isn't switching anytime soon.
Sorry to sound cynical, but this just seems like an over-inflated sense of saving that doesn't reflect reality. Sure, I could add in no Starbucks for the week and feel good about it, but then I don't usually have Starbucks anyway. Now, instead of doing something proactive and saving money, I've tricked my mind into believing I am saving money while I am not, thereby hindering any progress towards real goals that need actual savings, not 'mental accounting gimmicks'.
Looks like they're using Counterparty which runs on the Bitcoin network and blockchain.
We shouldn't conflate the language with the implementation [1]

[1]: http://dept-info.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/~strandh/Teaching/Langa...
This looks like a fantastic concept. My only question is in most internal pastebins you can see the pastebin history on the client end. In termbin its a single div. Is there a way to make that happen here?
The idea of a Merkle tree[0] is used in Git and Bup[1] actually splits files into ~8k blobs, using Git as its data store.

Edit: what would be the state-of-the-art Git store format ?

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree
[1]: https://github.com/bup/bup
Call me a cynic, but I suspect many people browse/monitor certain sites for things that might do well on HN.. and the recent outpouring of love for Anand might have put the site on their radars.
The strictest UK border check I've gone through in a few years was putting my (EU) passport into an automated passport reader and looking into a camera for 5 seconds.
Some view it as a best practice: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/content-m...
This is a pretty generic way of showing your pricing, I wouldn't look into it too much..
here is an interesting one

http://i.imgur.com/C835B8N.jpg
Is Bitcoin being used there? Even among friends or something?
Have you used https://speakerdeck.com/? And if so, what about it sucked and prompted you to make slidr?
Hottest Web UI Design Patterns in 2014
You should check on that. I'm pretty sure I've seen lots of encrypted drafts on the server after I finish composing an email. I think it's bad at deleting them when it's finished.
Yes, your site could drive traffic to the review sites. Have you seen tvtropes?

Amazon used to have an API for reviews, but it was discontinued, http://mkcohen.com/amazon-pulls-the-plug-on-review-data
I agree that we do not disagree.

Your post is simply applying a different definition to the terms I used.

Your reply is a case for righteousness.

I don't think you have considered the implications of the use of such words as "good". I agree with you that experimentation is futile in the absence of ethics.

Why are you presuming common application of the use of the word good and useful? For example, the science behind the atomic bomb and it's usage, was it useful? To whom was it useful, those devastated by the blast or those who set it off?

I urge you to reevaluate your basis for righteousness.

Don't you understand that morality requires certainty?
Tangible example from p14 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/8423/intel-xeon-e5-version-3-u...): looks like it can do a kernel compile in under 3 minutes in a two-socket config.
Show HN: Cotopaxi – Gear for Good
Honest would not be an appropriate word to use to characterize Seth's portrayal of events.

Likewise, overdramatized would not be an appropriate word to describe a piece that accurately describes a pattern of willful and deceitful behavior. Mr. Bannon's "writing about his own mistakes" is an extension of this pattern of deception. Indeed, rather than over dramatize, the New Republic article limits in scope and fails to mention many other instances in which Mr. Bannon lied and misled; abused employees to the point of quitting; and put his own ego and interests ahead of those of his company, investors and customers.
I had to go check if it does '--', but yes it does all of those things you listed. My parser is similar to getopt, but it's less clunky and avoids the duplication that getopt_long results in.
There doesn't seem a lot one can do against that kind of attack, other than maybe introducing a convention for a reminder on each login page that the user should check that the URL starts with "http://%SUBDOMAIN%.%COMPANY%.com".
Bitcoin != Democracy.

BTC could allow an anonymous party to control a currency, given enough % of that currency in circulation. Compare that to the current system. You may not like it, but currently the central banker (who creates policies for the good of his country) is appointed by the governments (ECB/FED).

The later sounds extremely more democratic to me. Now BTC is owned mostly by techies and small, adventurous investors. Once countries and investment bankers step in, hell will break loose. You don't want to seriously depend on something that you don't have a clue who controls.
> So chargebacks due to fraud simply wouldn't be there.

That is far from the only reason there is credit card fraud. Actually most credit card fraud is linked to identity fraud (a hacker stealing someone's financial credentials or posing as them on an online/offline store).

Most of the credit card information stolen from Target and Home Depot is not used but sold as quickly as possible on underground forums to "the greater fool" who is willing to take a risk to use it (if it still works).

Because of the chargeback system, those millions of credit cards stolen are not a huge issue for consumers because they can immediately lock down their card. Cards are replaceable keys. If you believe that you've been compromised, chargeback for whatever amount was stolen from you and change cards. It's a pretty incredible system for consumers when you think about it.

Contrast that to bitcoin. Your third-party bitcoin storage service gets hacked, your bitcoin are gone forever. You choose to store your bitcoin locally and you're exposed to physical theft (like keeping cash under your mattress).

Bitcoin does not solve the fraud/theft problem. I facepalm every time I hear that argument. Chargebacks are omnipresent today because they protect consumers because theft has always been and will always be part of any financial/payments system — simply because thieves don't target "how" you pay (push vs pull doesn't matter) but target where you store your wealth.
From the comments to the article:

>"My broader point stands: there is a precedent for a constituent nation peacefully leaving the UK within the past century." //

Has he forgotten that the EU started about 30 years after this? That seems the main reason that this situation is completely different - the geopolitical landscape has changed entirely, ignoring that seems rather strange.

Currently we enjoy the CTA, so no obvious border controls with Eire. But UK + Eire are not in the Schengen area. EU have decided that all new countries will be in the Schengen area, Scotland thus will not be able to be in the CTA without the rUK (and Eire) effectively accepting the Schengen Agreement. Now I may have misjudged the current political temperature but with the rise of UKIP I can't see the rUK voting to relax immigration policy.

If Scotland don't get in to Europe presumably rUK will be required to maintain border controls whether we acceded to the Schengen Agreement or not.

Peacefully?

He does at least mention the 2 year war of independence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence. There was a lot of violence besides, I'm sure the PLA/INLA/[provisional] IRA and the likes haven't been forgotten but those considerations probably aren't relevant _what with all the differences between the situations_.

The lesson to learn from Eire is probably that if a unified region vote No then don't try and keep them as part of the Union. But that doesn't really work, if there's a land border it makes sense (Borders or D&G). Also for the islands, if Orkney and Shetland voted No, then there's far less chance that rest-of-Scotland will form a navy and start attacking them as their first action? The geography is different, the age is different, the politics are different, the modes of government are different, we're 100 years further away from feudalism for starters.

It's worth making the comparison but concluding the situations are the same seems disingenuous at best.
> I hope they sign packages...

And defend against attacks that trick you into installing a known-vulnerable version of the plugin (which of course has a valid signature, since it was believed to be good at the time of release).

And avoid using error-prone package signature algorithms, like the one Android uses that originates from Java and has had several vulnerabilities.

And don't send any personally-identifiable or private user information to the server when checking for updates.

And... actually, no, just don't distribute software over HTTP, even if signed.
An independent Scotland would supposedly join the EU which would give it the basics in terms of a bill of rights. Until the EU the UK as a whole never had a written bill of rights so it would be no worse off.

In terms of the SNP, what happens to them in an independent Scotland might be the most interesting thing. They'd undoubtedly do well in a first election but after the glow has worn off and without their current USP (independence, the only party which is just about Scotland) it'll be interesting to see how they define themselves - after all, politically it's not impossible to view them as to the right of the Labour party (they're not the Tories but they're certainly not socialists), and in another few years time they're going to be very much part of the establishment.
Coffee shop bans laptops and tablets, business grows
> Regarding JSON, it is annoying to work with in Swift, but when you get down to it, it's a fault of JSON in general and the available parsers in particular. There ought to be ways to describe and validate the desired structure to the parser, or failing that, ways to tell the parser to fetch a value of a particular type and nicely produce an error if it doesn't match.

That's what XML had and has. JSON became successful because it did not do this. Discuss.

> In the ideal language, anything that's hard to write is so because the problem is hard.

In my experience with Smalltalk, it made problems that I thought of as hard easy.
Before anything else, Bitcoin is a way of transferring value anywhere cheaply, quickly, and without chargebacks, counterfeiting, or relying on a line of credit. If the exchange price stabilizes to the point where things can be priced only in Bitcoin, that's just a bonus.

People get too hung up on the idea of using Bitcoin in exactly the same manner as they do dollars. It may happen at some point, but for now it is used as a means of transferring value. If we consider only this use case, the advantages are abundantly clear. Then, we can start debating and speculating on Bitcoin's merit as a full currency.
You can easily make the converse point and claim that SHA2 has a higher probability to resist future cryptanalysis than SHA3, given that SHA2 has already had a lot more research than SHA3, but is still not broken. "Old" is a feature in this sense. The only issue I know about with SHA2 is its length extension property. And that is by design.
Thanks for reading the paper, the publish date is October 2014, I'll present it at onward! next month. It's a lot too go through so Ill need to pick through this more carefully. But the feedback is most definitely useful.

Haskell is data race free because they just avoid state. If shared state is involved, it has the same problems and needs to deal (e.g. Via STM). Glitch also gives you far more guarantees than data race freedom (consistency being the buggy).

(3) depends on the technique. There are bondage approaches, but there are approaches that allow more flexibility. Glitch is in between that.

Transactions have no notion of replay: the transaction fails and then what? Also, transactions are atomic, whereas tasks in Glitch are continuous: if something changes over time, a task will be replayed..a transaction has already been done and you have to manage change very time your self. This same replay mechanism also washes out data races.

Glitch doesn't suffer livelock problems because effects are not undone until "after" a replay (removing effects that haven't redone) whereas transaction just undo everything when they fail. This is a huge difference in terms of making progress! Glitch is not coming from the database field, but rather from general programming semantics where effect ordering requirements are quite common.

The problem with optimal orders is that you don't know what they are usually appriori. Many systems, like flapjax, require optimal orders because execution is not idempotent. Rather than make that requirement, we instead make execution virtually idempotent through logs. We "could" execute in a more intelligent order as an optimization, but it's not required (I've indeed found some tuning in scheduling necessary for performance).

The past is only remembered as long as it's needed for computing a consistent view; it can be thrown away after. You could also remember the last to do Bret victor style debugging, which is why the feature mostly exists (we could just make sure everything was consistent before processing the next event otherwise), or for distributed processing where computers might proceed at different paces (and therefore will have to agree in a baseline time where none has a task to replay that could change state before it). This is all quite standard in virtual time systems.

Pardoxes will cause continuous replay, like writing x = !x, it has no consistent interpretation. It doesn't freeze up the system, you can always change the statement to fix the problem (the UI remains responsive).
The idea isn't that they can't get a job or contribute and thus need to leave. The point is that Americans should be preferred over foreigners for these jobs. Not supporting or denying this logic, just explaining that your point isn't really addressing the argument.
Which services do you mean?
> Also, an independent Scotland would be adjoining exactly one other country (the UK)

For certain values of adjoining. They have been making common cause with the nearby Nordic countries. I was going to add Ireland but only the UK part of it is actually visible from Scotland. Carndonagh, Republic of Ireland to Port Ellen, Islay is only 50 miles as the crow flies. There's EU to be found to due East, West and South of Scotland; you can't say that it's not in-amongst the EU.

The "no fast track" argument is I think one of those "will be settled in a few years anyway" arguments that cstross dismisses; there is a plan b to the fast track and it is the regular track.

The argument about the dangers of breakaways regions to other EU states is something that bears watching; it remains to be seen how strong it is in Brussels.
> significantly changing our biology or having the unlimited resources to terraform and build synthetic atmospheres

> build superhuman AGI to help us optimize our decisions and activities, and become blended with technology such that our biological limitations are removed

We are pretty far away from being able to do either of those, far enough away that there could be a major barrier stopping us from doing one or the other that we haven't really seen yet. If that is the case, maintaining both research tracks in parallel seems perfectly rational to me.
Nice spoof, hadn't seen this before. It would have gone really well with the RTL address bar spoof (CVE-2014-1723) I reported in Chrome back in February (since fixed in Chrome 34), it would have made the tab very close to indistinguishable from the real thing.
The choice is only obvious because you tailored the question to the Haskell type name. But that's not the question you're asking. The question is "What result will this function give me?". The Haskell answer is "Maybe a". It will give me something that might be an `a`? The Swift answer is "Optional<T>". That makes a bit more sense than "Maybe".

The name makes even more sense when you talk about function arguments instead of function result types.

Q. What argument does this take? A. Maybe a.

It takes an argument that might be an `a`?

Q. What argument does this take? A. Optional<T>

Still not natural english, but the interpretation here is a bit cleaner: It takes an optional value of type `T`.
> I get 1.5% back on all my credit card purchases

But that money has to come from somewhere, and that's the 2% credit card fee (can be a bit less, can be a lot more) paid by the merchant. And the merchant needs to make a profit, so he pays these fees by raising his prices 2%. If the cost of the transaction would appear on your bill, it would become obvious that you are not getting any "cash back". The perverse part is that the people not using credit cards are punished because they usually pay the same price.
Simple Finance took a different approach -- saving bits away every day, and assuming you wouldn't notice anything but the lower day-to-day balance and could adjust accordingly.

Maybe the right answer here is to couple this app with a bank account -- so that when you say you didn't spend $3 on a coffee today, that the $3 ends up in an earmarked savings account (or at least deducted from the "safe-to-spend" balance) for that special something you're saving up for.
I'm curious if anyone knows:

How did Facebook do the "messages are no longer available in app after a certain date" switch? I manually update so even if they did have a kill switch it was in there for a month at least?
You can't blame people for not being thrilled about nuclear. At every stage people have been assured that "this design is perfectly safe" and then something happens and people die and regions are contaminated. Once bitten. Twice shy.

Seems like the far better option is to exhaust the renewables option as much as possible and then fall back to nuclear.
This is pretty insane. We have overcapacity in colleges (outside of elite institutions). We should offer all foreign university graduates visas whether or not they have a job right this moment, and regardless of whether they are chemical engineers or lit majors. We've been handed the best and brightest students plus hundreds of thousands in tuition for each one from all over the world. Not keeping them is willful self-harm.
Now I think you're trolling me, so I'll stop the conversation here.