skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Welcome to problems with social science!

>this is really just making up numbers and calling it "wealth distribution".

We can go deeper. Almost everything you hear about the "economy" is based on a mathematical model that makes a variety of assumptions. What is income? What is wealth? Who are the people participating? How does information get transmitted? What is a "good" outcome and what is a "bad" outcome?

Further, "waiters undereporting tips" is a tiny problem next to "wealth is somewhat unmeasurable since we don't survey it or tax it".

The best we can do is measure what we can and try to make reasonable inferences. But it's not an exercise in making up numbers. It's an exercise in interpreting what the numbers we have are saying.
UX Critique (On flat design issues)
> Other than that, I guess you don't follow the news much. Harry Reid changed the Senate Rules in 2013 to disallow filibusters of appointments.

Which lead to Republican senators using another procedural technique (refusing unanimous consent) to slow down appointments.[1] This means appointments were delayed for days, and even weeks, after which time the same obstructing senators often voted for the appointee anyways.

It's disingenuous to claim that appointments would go through scot free after Reid altered Senate procedures.

1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/21/senate-filibuster-r...
Yeah their anti-DDOS is actually to null route everything to your server

No, it's not. They have a proper anti-ddos solution in place for attacks from outside of their network[1].

[1] https://www.ovh.co.uk/anti-ddos/ddos-attack-management.xml
See also Patrick Leigh Fermor and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnap_of_General_Kreipe

To read about similar people, I would suggest getting a copy of this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daily-Telegraph-Book-Military-Obitua...
> 1 When in doubt, wear a suit

As general advice, this is wrong. There are a lot of positions where wearing a suit to the interview would automatically mean you won't get hired.

Of course, it depends on the locale, the position, &c, but the idea that a suit is always safe is somewhat outdated.
> An explicit ban on paid prioritization is the only way to preserve the system we have today

Errr... no, it won't preserve the system. Because the system right now, at least at the interconnect level, already has paid prioritization. See: the interconnect fight vis a vis NFLX, Level 3, Verizon.

> The goal with this move is to AVOID common carriers and AVOID competition.

Not sure where you're getting the competition thing, but it's absolutely not about avoiding common carriers. Title II is very, very specifically a common carrier.

> Our cable lobbyists and therefore our government will do anything to avoid common carrier legislation being passed.

No need for legislation; just a reclassification. No legislation needed for that.

> Banning paid prioritization will do nothing to address the actual problems with American ISPs.

Nothing? It'll do something. It's a step in the right direction. One of the requirements under Title II has to do specifically with interconnection: this bullshit between Verizon and Level 3 and NFLX would be patently illegal.

> Common carriers would not be allowed to control the content on their wires at all -- they would be forced to let ISPs purchase bandwidth and compete on the same wire. Granting wire ownership and content control to one company is a natural monopoly: In almost every locale new ISPs cannot use the wires someone else owns, new ISPs cannot dig trenches for new wires, and new ISPs have no common wires to offer service on. Therefore, no new ISPs can form under normal conditions, and competition cannot exist. The only logical conclusion is that we are being denied a free market, on purpose.

I think you're kind of missing the point of what common carriers actually are. You're hitting some things, but completely missing on others.

Nobody is calling for granting wire ownership to a single entity. That's not what common carrier status means.

Read up a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
I'm no expert, but that does not seem to make any sense. Is there any merit to what he is saying?
Exactly. It's what happened with banks. The government passes regulation after regulation, and pretty soon it's hard to tell the difference between the bankers and the regulators except for what kind of car they drive (now), and gets harder for new competition to enter the market, so banks consolidate and eventually become too big to fail, leading to obscene profits for very little risk.

Entrenched market players LOVE, LOVE, LOVE more regulation. All they have to do is hire more compliance officers and pass the cost on to us, while at the same time raising the cost of compliance for smaller and would-be competition.
Mozilla Research VR website
Exactly. Sometimes less is more.

Hit me up if you ever need anything with the project. :D
The thing I don't get about approval voting is when do you stop voting for your second choice? It seems like every vote with approval voting is a strategic vote, whereas with IRV you just always vote for your preferred candidates in order.

Yes, favorite betrayal is possible, but it requires a very specific set of circumstances, and the only gaming of the system is people throwing their top vote to the opponent, which is very risky and requires a freakish amount of insight into the race to know if the conditions of a spoiler are even possible.

To me, strategic voting seems much more likely with approval voting than it does with IRV, and it's that strategic voting that is maintaining the two party system. I think the possibility of a possible spoiler effect under IRV is small, and that its chances of actually allowing 3rd party victories are much higher, and thus worth the risk, especially because, to me, approval voting doesn't really remove the spoiler effect, but just delays it.

I like approval voting, but IRV seems like a better solution, overall.

Also, I disagree that approval voting is much easier to understand. IRV isn't significantly more complicated than approval voting, and neither are significantly more complicated the current plurality/FPTP system.

TL;DR - In my opinion, IRV's rewards outweigh its risks and IRV > approval voting > FPTP.
Be careful what you wish for. I don't think you intended to push the boundaries, but I'll do that for you.

Again, I consider this quite a stretch of your vision. But, imagine having supervision include things such as:

- ...Vehicle sensors. Exceeding the speed limit, making an illegal turn, failure to maintain safe distance, littering or any other violation automatically relays infraction details to relevant government agency and ticket is automatically issued

- Direct supervision of every trade (whether monetary or barter) for taxation and violation purposes

- Supervision of normally private / personal (i.e., at home) things for medical, safety and potential criminal behavior

I am not sure where the line should be drawn, but I would not feel comfortable with pervasive, unlimited supervision.
NEC smartphone tech can spot counterfeit goods
Idenux – Unlocking the World with Your Heart
> 1. The Firefox Tools Adapter ("Valence"), which lets you use the Firefox dev tools to inspect and debug pages in Chrome for Android and Safari for iOS. The goal: one set of tools to debug any browser.

That's amazing. I can't wait until we have standard wire protocols for all of this so that I can stay in an IDE while writing GWT/Coffeescript/JS/etc., e.g.:

https://github.com/sdbg/sdbg

(AFAICT both the FF and Chrome teams seem hot on building IDEs into their browsers, but, sorry, that's a step down the all-in-one Netscape Suite road IMO. :-))
No they aren't. There is a difference between being required to do something by law, and being allowed to do something by law.
> the default iPhone settings has "Send as SMS" off

I don't think this is true. I have a phone here I only use for development where I don't think I changed that setting and it's on.
It's quite beautiful when the camera finally falls
CSS Media emulation like in Chrome.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that feature is still not included even though there are feature requests for it. I am interested in it in order to emulate print.css . I'm sure it's not the highest priority.
You don't get it. That would only be wrong if a republican president did it. When a democrat does it, it's fine.
This can be good, but is job specific: http://workinstartups.com/job-board/jobs/programmers/
Hi HackerNews,

I'm a co-founder of Idenux and we are excited to show you our ECG (electrocardiogram - your heart signal) based biometric and healthcare technology.

Idenux ECG is a software and hardware devkit on which you can build security and healthcare applications. We are now taking sign-ups for the first batch of devkits and are looking forward to any comments, questions or ideas you might have.

Thanks!
These are automated _systems_, not individual note books. They don't operate in silos.

If no historical data is recorded, I report car stolen, my Car registration is added to a "Something has actually happened to this car" list. Cameras start actively looking for my car's reg, cameras find my car. Done?
The Darkhotel APT
We'll just have to get used to it, then. Tinier and tinier cameras get built every year. Imagine a limit - dust motes that record and relay, blown by the wind and carried by your clothes, hair, pet into your home. Anyone can tune in to anyone, anywhere.

The only hope I see is new social rules. Can't stop people from peeking into everything; but CAN have taboos against mentioning it. So the illusion of privacy maintained, which is all people need to keep sane. Already cultures have rules like this, especially where folks lived in close confinement.
hmmm - you're not married are you?
I think witcher2 is a good example of how good gaming can be on linux, I had very good frame rates and the game looks amazing. I was playing this with an nvidia card using nvidia drivers. But as the article points out, we are at the mercy of the developers supporting OpenGl which there is apparently not a large motivation to do so.
Cool to see this on HN. If anyone wants to learn more we have a really great community at discuss.nubits.com if you prefer the reddit look join us on /r/nubits
Free Software Downloads – JoyDownload
Texas Utility Plans $2B Battery to Stabilize Wind and Solar Power Output
Comcast and others are against Net neutrality.
They want your $50 startup to have to pay for a "fast lane".

For comparison, the electricity company can't restrict your wattage just because you are a business.
>>- ...Vehicle sensors. Exceeding the speed limit, making an illegal turn, failure to maintain safe distance, littering or any other violation automatically relays infraction details to relevant government agency and ticket is automatically issued

I am afraid that this is already happening with trackers fitted by insurance companies. Going over the speed limit, or flooring it from the traffic lights is not going to get you a ticket, but your insurance premium will go up(and that can hurt more than a ticket). I hope that there always will be a choice of policies without trackers.
"Under his watch the surveillance state has expanded and has become downright creepy"

According to Snowden's documents, several mass collection programs shut down under his watch (including email header collection), and no new mass collection programs were added.
This is a most interesting philosophical question. How do you know that "evidence based reasoning" gives you access to the whole of reality, instead of an (admittedly large and very useful) subset of it?

You do not have to answer that question to me, but until you have produced a satisfactory answer, you will be like the drunkard who lost his keys in a dark alley, but keeps looking for them on main street because "there's light there".

You basically accuse people of dogmatism but in my experience, the dogmatics are those that get pissed off upon hearing some taboo word mentioned, ignore what other people are actually saying, and instead of respond resort to cheap rhetoric tricks such as name calling and repetition of litanies.

Christians are at least (painfully) aware that theirs is one amongst many competing faiths. Scienticists on the other hand just believe that the World is exactly like they think it is, and that everyone that thinks different is plainly wrong. This makes them dangerous because there is always a subset in every group that would burn every "other" man, woman and child at the stake if they thought they could get away with it. The more you affirm the "otherness" in people you dislike, the closer you make this scenario to play out in your reality.
Thanks for the link to "Mad Jack" Churchill. That guy could easily be inspiration for "The Most Interesting Man in the World" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Interesting_Man_in_the...)

After escaping a German concentration camp and walking 93 miles to Italy he was redeployed to Burma, but Japan surrendered before he could make it to India: "If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years."

...

In later years, Churchill served as an instructor at the land-air warfare school in Australia, where he became a passionate devotee of the surfboard. Back in England, he was the first man to ride the River Severn's five-foot tidal bore and designed his own board.

Seems like the only reason no one has made a movie about him is because no one would believe it.
When iMessage fails you get a notification and next to the message appears a button which pops up a menu with “Try Again” and “Send as SMS”.

http://tidbits.com/resources/2013-10/iMessage-failure.png

(Unfortunately that didn't work for the issue fixed by this tool, since the iMessage never actually failed from the sender's perspective)
Not only is surveillance a different issue, this is extremely hyperbolic.
If you were happier back then, why don't you go back to doing that?
No, I mean... emulation isn't building a garden. Emulation isn't building anything. Emulation is... the kindest way of putting it is that it's preservation. You're preserving what someone else already built. Maybe you're restoring it, cleaning it up, adding value to it, but you're still relying on the thing you're building upon.

My point is, it's really hard for the OpenPandora to be an alternative to the proprietary consoles so long as its sales pitch is that it can run software written for all the older proprietary consoles. You can't be an alternative to something you're wholly dependent on.
The infamous Google story too...
Agreed - overdressed loses no points; underdressed can. (
So Pascal's observation holds?)
This is just my opinion, but I think every guy should own a suit. Sometimes you want to class it up for various reasons, whether to show respect, or indicate status. When I'm giving a presentation at work, I class up my look a little bit, and I think it helps people take me more seriously.
Collection of free software and shareware programs to download.
In my opinion, Firefox for android is vastly superior to chrome.
This is revised and updated from my original post nearly 4 years ago on Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246457

I've now compiled this into a book of 82 letters showing my progression from ages 14 through 30. I started with classic self-help books like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (great book) and Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (not-so-great), but eventually got into what I believe is the ultimate self-improvement: meditation.
Does it support multiple browser profiles? Can I easily switch between Gecko/IE 8,9,10/Webkit/etcetera?
>If I ever again have quite some money to spend

Sounds like voice of experience from both sides... ?
Obviously there is no one rule for everyone but personally in 20 years working in IT I've never left a job because of money (and I've left a few). I've left because of uncertainty, because the work was bad, because there were too many arseholes where I was, because my skills were rusting but never for money.

In the past five years a fair number of people have left the company I work for and I'd estimate about 25% were money related.

As I say there's no one rule but I've seen developers put up dreadful money for a job they liked and take a pay cut to get out of somewhere they hated and if I had to generalise I'd go with that over them following the pay cheque.
America's artificial heartland
That may be true but almost no-one does it.
They buried the lede a bit -- since I doubt organized attackers are after the personal information of postal service employees:

"It is also possible that the Chinese were after other types of data, analysts said. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, at the request of law enforcement officials, takes pictures of all addressing information from envelopes and parcels.​"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai...
>> Do you (or anyone else reading this thread) have advice for current college students looking for internships or their first full time job?

Do something and write it down. Most coursework is not relevant here, but classes that involve a large project - put down the what you did for it. Did you design something? Build something? Discover something? Win something? Lead something? I'm not talking about regular lab projects here, I mean big things that take at least half a semester.

This has been my approach, YMMV. People can appreciate if you demonstrate an ability to DO stuff.
And then you can never foresee what that data is going to be used for in the future. Nazis used "completely innocent" records held by countries to find out where Jewish families lived so they could find them and put them in camps. The less the government knows about you the better.
First-Order Logic (and therefore SQL, which is based on it) sucks at describing graphs and highly heterogeneous structures. If you're working with these, you should have a better representation.
I don't think Title II classification requires a vote from congress, just an action by the FCC.
Lex Cryptographia
Multiverse Collisions May Dot the Sky
The erratic flame plume tells me there's probably something wrong with the internal pressure regulation.
Didn't England experiment with never closing the pubs so people weren't all dumped on the street at the same time, with the idea it would reduce fighting?
Net neutrality isn't a blanket term for "anything the government does relating to the Internet", it's focused on a specific issue.

I guess you could argue that net neutrality would make it easier to pass pro-surveillance laws, but I'm having a difficult time connecting the two.
So you are also saying as a former mechanical engineer there are no applications were tighter nuts are needed?

Well personally I know a few scenarios were the nut has keep steady when its hard to do. But for that case I prefer two nuts stacked on top of each other.
The people I like to follow on twitter most are those that are laser-focused on producing content related to one thing. Conan O'Brien, for example, almost exclusively tells jokes. I don't want to read his re-tweet of some fan's comment, for example. These make Twitter a lot less useful. A complement to your service would be to remove these less useful tweets from my feed, and just show in aggregate the links that were tweeted, as you currently do. I've spent very little time on Twitter; maybe this kind of service was first offered years ago.
Yes, as it also makes it impossible to deregister number from iMessaging service from those countries (my included).
A New Version Control System for a Niche Use Case
That`s what it supposed to be like and we wish it was. In reality, starting with Iraq war, Patriot Act, Health Care, Bailouts and much more, didnt have time for debates in Congress. President pushed it, Congress approved.
President is Executive branch of government, therefore can pass a new law just by signing it without approval of Congress. Example Executive Order 13233 (signed by Bush, makes President an exception from Freedom Of Information Act)
awesome tnx! will definitely do
The world's first emoji domain (2011)
Agreed. Given the knee-jerk reaction of "Anything that Obama supports is bad", Ted Cruz is now tarring this as "Net Neutrality is the Obamacare of the Internet". I like how "Obamacare" has become the new Communism. A lot of people know hardly anything about it or what it's policies actually are, but it's baaaaad.

I like the Digg headline about this: Ted Cruz is the Uber for stupid metaphors.
Ok let me use another analogy here.

You have organised this conference. You have an audience of millions of Windows users. It's likely once-in-a-lifetime for the majority of them. You are going to give them a hands-on presentation detailing the value of free software and Linux, you will have their undivided attention for a week.

One problem: the organiser fell through with the chairs. There are unassembled ones ready to go, but the company who made those parts require that their guys assemble the chairs. You have some real smart fellas around that figured out how to assemble the chairs, only it's not perfect and there's a bit sticking into your butt.

So you start off the event with everyone standing their respective venues, no chairs in sight. You start off like this:

"We had a problem with the chairs. If you don't want to sit on the dirty floor you'll need to use one of these chairs one of our guys put together." (Not telling them about the bit sticking into their butt, which you don't)

"We can get the manufacturer to build the chairs for you, however, because we don't know how they did it we don't know if the chairs will break. If it breaks you could snap your spine, turning you into a paraplegic."

"Or you could remain standing, or sit on the floor."

How many people will walk out right there and then? Would you?

Some people, who no have reason to trust you over the manufacturer (keep that in mind), might use the ones your guys made. After a day sitting with a pokey bit in your butt, what would you do?

If you had a fully functional chair how long would you stick around for? Who provided that chair?

What have you just done to your potential audience?

The message is important, maybe one day people will understand but never if this hardline approach is maintained.

An honest appraisal of each option is needed for users, up-front during the installation process. They must not go in search of it:

- Open source drivers: poor performance, very stable, likely to not crash.

- Proprietary drivers: high performance, we don't know if you should trust them, if something goes wrong there is nothing we can do.

> Change always comes bearing gifts. ~Price Pritchett
The Smart Alternative to DIY Infrastructure or Cloud Services
This scenario assumes that the value of ads would be driven completely to zero if tracking were not possible. For any non-zero value advertisers will still back out as they stop seeing returns, at which point ad-space-sellers will be forced to lower to their rates. This is still fully capable of effectively driving low-margin ad-supported websites out of business, but it's not a doomsday scenario.
Yeah on all this stuff.
I'm glad to hear that your situation was handled well.

With that said, would you like to take your camera for a stroll by the Grosvenor Park Hotel?
Tom Wheeler was a cable lobbyist from 1977 through 1984. He was a cable lobbyist before the consumer Internet existed, let alone cable Internet. His status as an anti-neutrality lobbyist is a powerful Internet meme based, so far as I can tell, on very few facts.

It's sad how much force a tiny factoid can pick up in a public policy debate on the Internet. Public policy facts are about as reliable on the Internet as Google symptom search results.
This was a positive statement on an issue we all feel strongly about. Don't listen to all the B.S about the president being a "lame duck", he is still the most powerful man in the world. So give credit where credit is due. And stop listening to all the negative B.S.