skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why in the US is ADSL not more prevalent? The Australian broadband sector is very competitive and generally (unless you are very rural), there are hundreds of companies competing for your business. As a result, prices have consistently come down over time (when I first got ADSL in 2004 I got 1GB of data at 256kbps for $50 (1)), now the same buys unlimited data at the fastest my phone line will allow (14MBit)*. There are also no slowdowns during peak periods - providers ensure sufficiant bandwidth is available. It seems strange to me that the US is apparently locked into cable internet where only one or two providers service entire cities.

(1) This is still fairly expensive but it is primarily because the majority of traffic is international and must come through fairly limited bandwidth undersea pipes. I would imagine the majority of traffic in the US is local and therefore cheaper.
Here's my router: http://shorewall.net/XenMyWay.html
I once went 450 days without restarting it :)
Nothing wrong in my book with charging, so long as the pipe is open, free and clear. - meaning net neutrality, and no filtering, or dns funniness - like a common carrier.

We're the only country in the world (mostly) with largely unlimited broadband, many countries seem to have quota - and its not as if an unlimited option doesn't remain, I have Business Class from them, which is and will remain unlimited, but it costs, 120, including 5 statics.
Isn't what's being called revenue in this article comparable to what ebay recognizes as "gross merchandise volume"?
ADSL is quite common, but its a 1.5-20 meg pipe versus a 10-1000 meg pipe.
It's basic OpSec. You disable the services you don't need. You always build security in layers.

Some devices, e.g. a Dell All-in-one PC, come with a little latch that you can pull in front of the forward-facing camera. It's often not just the mothership that is the target of these measures. It could even be family who misguidedly install spyware.
It set off the flamewar detector for a while but we overrode that.
This is old news.

Comcast, TWC, and AT&T are all doing bit bucket tiered service now.

10 bucks for 50 gigs seems quite reasonable to me, honestly.
By that, I meant 95th percentile. That's the number you'd usually add your safety padding to.
Very impressive. How long did it take to create all those demos?
Also, I'm generally ok with tags that other people created for the same repository. Not sure why I would want to do all this busy work.
I'm not sure where you're coming from with this because there's a long history of journalism based on leaks and confidential sources. It's not a matter of throwing out "any old information," since vetting sources is also a part of journalism and a reporter's reputation is indeed affected by bad stories. The repercussions you speak of simply don't exist because things like this are part of the very definition of journalism, but if you have anything that speaks to the validity of the sources in this story I'm sure we'd all like to hear them.
Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8639038
Have you ever read your electricity bill? They do just that. Your first 1000kWh cost 0.07$ apiece, your second 1000kWh cost 0.12$, your third 0.14$ (for example)
Ah crap, I don't know what I was thinking.
Given that most of the Bay Are is AT&T territory, and Verizon has pretty much stopped FIOS rollouts, I don't think it's very likely that Verizon will be overbuilding the Bay Area any time soon.
I use Lyft all the time and almost always just hop in the back, say hello, and... do whatever I'd be doing in an Uber or a taxi, just with a nicer driver and supporting a company I actually like.

Drivers don't seem to mind at all. If anything I get the sense they're kind of relieved not to have to put on a show.
Well, I hadn't considered academic books as art. I was automatically thinking about literature and other types of art like painting or music as I think that is what she was referring to the speech. After looking up The Jungle on Wikipedia [1] it seems like exactly what she was referring to. Thanks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle#Federal_response
A note -- if you're linking to arXiv, it's better to link to the abstract (http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.1954) rather than directly to the PDF. From the abstract, one can easily click through to the PDF; not so the reverse. And the abstract allows one to do things like see different versions of the paper, search for other things by the same authors, etc.
There are all sorts of market reasons but I think a very important reason is the death of the landline (POTS).

That is, many people have cut the POTS service, which means ADSL costs extra (have to reactivate unneeded landline service)
HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT ALL THIS MONEY INSTEAD
That's a really great example, thanks!
It's actually a nice feature.

everybody needs line of sight. You, the FBI, the NSA, the local PD. Being able to kill a connection by closing a door is a win.
You've been able to apply cpu and memory limits to entire jails since 10.0 was released through the rctl mechanism.
further reasons to do everything you can to not support this company.
Obsessive girlfriends sing dark horse
Nooo, is it any good? Sorry pushing sarcasm too far. Of course I have to agree on that one.
Direct sales CPMs are substantially higher than remnant inventory CPMs; Google is "competing" with the latter here.
what you are doing sounds pretty useless.
I agree this is a major motivation for most of the people arguing against it. It is certainly mine. I switched to a business plan just to get away from caps.

At the same time, I do think they're a bad idea for everyone. If we had usage-based billing ten years ago, I don't think there would be a YouTube or a Netflix. Electronic distribution of games would probably not exist. Major image sharing sites like imgur would not be nearly as popular. Webapps would be less common. People would be much more likely to delay software updates or forgo them altogether.

I think that usage-based billing does represent a major impediment to the continued advancement of the Internet. This is certainly a major blow to any future where cloud-based backups or video sharing are more common or see new applications.
Businesses pay tax on profit, not revenue.
In the actual implementation of Minecraft yes, regarding the concept i disagree. I'm no game designer, but I imagine that having a block based game with similar mechanics could be implemented a lot more "down to the metal". Procedural terrain generation has been around for a while, the crafting system is simple (maximum of 9 items => 1 item), and vanilla minecraft only uses less than 700 ids for blocks and items. Tool effects on blocks are relatively simple, and a lot of the other complexity can be done without (say rendering arrow flight paths or items dropped onto the floor). Which doesn't mean the current implemenation isn't somewhat cludged together, much to the chagrin of the modding community who don't allways appreciate coding decisions made within the vanilla game. We'll need to see how long the game lasts, since along with the development company Mojang being purchased by Microsoft, they don't always handle interactions with supporting projects such as Buckit, Forge or Cauldron too gracefully. Since they often rewrite and restructure portions of the game without providing the long promised modding API devs and modders have to completely rewrite their code between versions, which leads to high developer churn. There's lots of drama in the community, and Mojang is invariably connected to it due to several of the senior devs stemming from the community.
Right, but the entire point is that companies like King are continuing to do it because it is profitable.
Google came up with a formula for deciding who gets promoted
A lot of industrial processes generate immense interference - electroplating and arc welding spring to mind. I guess those would be a logical starting point.
It's not even close to unregulated capitalism. in many areas Comcast has a legislated monopoly.

Google is not some magic unicorn that's going to save us from old bloated mega corps like comcast. the only reason google rolls fiber to the places it does is cause the local governments are willing to play ball. and the bay area isn't known for it's streamlined government. in fact, you folks are at the bottom of a very long list. (http://pando.com/2014/02/25/having-being-burned-once-before-...)

The only thing that will save the US internet market is competition, google's efforts are great, I'm not convinced it will be enough. I think innovations in Wireless tech, that will allow more reliable and widespread WISP's will help. The old guard of the wireline providers have built the walls quite high and it will take time for even big players like google to wear them down.
The decision about where to incorporate shouldn't just be about taxes - you're signing up for a body of corporate law and procedure and the differences can have a big impact. And CA vs DE is just night and day in terms of user-friendliness. Sure you could save a few hundred dollars in taxes by incorporating in CA, but you'll burn through those savings on the first day your corporate lawyer has to address one of the many strange/frustrating things about the California Corporations Code. Or when you need to pay a rush filing fee to amend your charter in CA because otherwise they'll sit on it for a couple weeks.

If you're running a lifestyle business that never has any corporate legal activity then maybe it won't matter, but I think most folks would be better off minimizing legal fees (measured in hundreds per hour) instead of taxes (measured in hundreds per year).
Is this "Flexible Data Option" supposed to be a joke?

Reduce your data cap 98.3% (300 GB to 5 GB) for a 12.5% ($5) bill reduction, but you forfeit the bill reduction if you go over the cap and pay an additional $1/GB for overages.

That's worse than a cellular data plan.
Shapiro's bio is hilarious.

"The Hon. Mary Schapiro was chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2009 to 2012, capping a distinguished career in government and private-sector regulation. Ms. Schapiro advises companies on corporate governance and compliance standards that meet regulatory and investor expectations."

Why is this so funny? Because she was running the SEC when Jed Rakoff, the judge overseeing its settlement with BoA, publicly castigated her agency on the grounds that the deal they brokered (token fine, no admission of wrongdoing) did not "comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality". So much for "advising companies on corporate governance and compliance standards that meet regulatory and investor expectations."

And that was hardly the only bank-friendly failure on her watch. 2009-2012 is timeframe in which, famously, nobody responsible for the global-economy wrecking implosion of securities fraud on Wall St. went to jail. The DoJ said it was because the didn't have the evidence needed to bring anyone to trial. And whose job was it to gather that evidence? That's right, Mary Shapiro's.

Usually, when people talk about the toothlessness of "light-touch" regulation and the rank corruption the begets regulatory capture, they cite Shapiro as an example of everything that is wrong with the system. You are literally the first person I've ever encountered who has held her up as an example of something done right.

Seriously, this is like getting upset about unjust sentencing laws and using Charles Manson as a case in point.

Also, about your boy Ben Lawsky? All of his high profile enforcement actions were foreign banks (Paribas, for example, is French). Hometown banks (GS, JPM, etc.) went largely untouched. I'm sure he'll have no trouble landing a job, but not because he was tough. He was selectively tough. Big difference.

>"So after one does public service, they should not be allowed to work in the private sector? How is that not okay?"

Dude, spare me the bullshit straw man, okay? That's not even remotely close to what I - or anyone else who has a problem with regulatory capture - has ever said. What people who follow this stuff do say is that high-ranking officials responsible for setting policy or directing law enforcement should not be allowed to accept lucrative jobs from the specific companies or industries they oversaw. Why? Because those jobs are a thinly-veiled vector for outright bribery.

At minimum there needs to be a 5-7 year cooling down period before they can go to work for one of their former charges. Others say a decade, at least, if you're serious about maintaining trust in the government.
Nope, it's contrary to GAAP for Uber to recognize the full fare as revenue so long as Uber stands by its claims that drivers are independent contractors and not employees and Uber is just facilitating payment. (By definition, an independent contractor is not an agent.)

If Uber is only entitled to X% of the fare, then under GAAP it can only recognize that X% as revenue. This is the exact same funky accounting that Groupon used. (Note that customers of Groupon would also take their problems to Groupon, not the merchant.)
Most of the carriers now sell unbundled ADSL now (AT&T, CenturyLink and I believe Verizon in non-fios markets.) it has more to do with distance limitations having too much of a downward effect on speeds. More than less subscribers are around the 5.5kf+ (kilotfoot) range, which usually means sub 15 megabit speeds - and a limited upload (inherent to all ADSL types).
Surprising, I used ISETL back in the late 90s a part of an abstract algebra course. It was quite good at demonstrating the concepts, and served as an introduction to programming/computers for a few of the pure math students.
Fun to see it pop up here.
Umm even still, you can train it on more horse photos in order to increase its performance specifically on horses. Furthermore, you can study neron activation levels on said horse training data in order to reverse-engineer the neural "ravines" which the activations settle into. And run comparison tests about those ravines against the ravines for say zebras.

This is something actively being done by nn researches. And it lets us do things like take the low level audio processing part of a neural net trained on english voice data, and use it to train smarter neural nets on Portugese voice data than you couldn've without the English voice recordings.
I was the software guy, and I have to admit I weaseled out of taking a thermo class in college, so unfortunately I don't have an answer for you.
Don't you mean over-regulated, crony capitalism, government granted monopoly? Pure evil?
Unfortunately you won't be able to snag a copy easily, apparently this has been out for 3 days.

Interesting watching the supply and demand effects of this. It was a previously unknown 3DS game, ~$5 in whatever your local currency. Now it's $50-100 if you can find it.
Uber CEO Profile: The Smartest Bro in the Room
thanks for the links. I've been meaning to kick the tires and read up on some probability/stats stuff, and this seems like the perfect way to ease back into it. Bookmarked!
Feast, my friend

https://www.ibisworld.com/industry/home.aspx.
The article says they are using 5 milliwatt LEDs for this, so it doesn't seem like you need that much brightness at all.
It's always good to ask for help, but sometimes the help is useless unless you know the basics in order to have a strong intuition for the various account and legal tips you'll receive. Left field suggestion: Take a quarter of Business Law or Accounting 101 at a local college like De Anza (a junior college in the Bay Area). This can be more fun than reading articles online.

When you finally do get a lawyer or accountant down the road, the advice you receive will have good context.

Tech analogy: it's easier to build a website for someone who understands what a "CTA" is.
AWS bandwidth costs are grossly overpriced.
This is exceptionally clear writing that can give someone who doesn't know what a Web browser is an interesting glimpse into Web standards and why they matter. I hope that a business model for quality journalism can endure.
You neglect one side of the equation, the amortized cost of the network expansion required to accommodate delivery of that data to the consumer - AWS has no such issues, the cost of OSP is tremendous compared to a datacenter - and thats just to install it, nevermind the OPEX to run it, fix it, maintain it.
The magic of the silly pink mustache and the fist bump is to disarm people – disarm them from something that is otherwise weird (getting in a car with a total stranger).

SF and NYC are very mature markets - both in ride sharing and just these types of tech in general - so I can see how it's less useful and/or run it's course. However, I think this is something that might serve them well as they expand internationally.
Corporatism. There are laws that prevent true capitalistic competition from happening.
Valid point, but clearly even the smallest changes upset people. Re-arranging furniture is a change. Changing the colour or number of cushions on the sofa is a change.

A-B testing won't reveal how many people reluctantly embrace the change, rolled their eyes and cursed your service as they completed the task. A-B testing is not all-knowing. It's suitable for colder functional changes, not things such as key separators on a virtual keyboard.

None of this would be a problem if users are simply given choice and meticulous control over the changes and how or whether they're applied. Choice, control, options and user preferences - those should be the key features. I wish for innovation in changes, such as inviting and allowing users to preview for themselves a particular change.

Fortunately we do have lots of options in our settings for a lot of things, but it doesn't go far enough. Their new "material girl in a material world" design philosophy is a distraction... and personally I think is weaker than commentators are declaring.

Who wants reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality? Um.... try everyone!
This lecture is from YCombinator and may be a bit self serving. I would take it with a grain of salt. I have noticed that YCombinator prefers multiple cofounders, and in this video they are now saying the cofounders all need to have the same amount of stock regardless of how much work you have put in in the past. That's very surprising advice. You may have slogged for a couple of years before taking on a cofounder, and you should both have the same amount of shares? This is not in your interest, but may be in YCombinator's: if they need to separate you from your company it is easier this way.
I just spent ~15 minutes adding a bunch of tags and really hope its a good pay-off (as in I remember to come back to this and actually use all the the useful plugins/libraries I starred previously).

I wish tagging was easier and simpler though, like literally just typing, pressing enter, and then tab to go to the next project. Also I turned the auto-language tagging setting on, nothing happened so I tagged a project "Python" then it auto-tagged 38 repos python but when I tagged more repos nothing happened

Edit: Also I wish the tags on the left-side were able to be sorted by # or abc
Solaris does not use systemd. It uses systemctl. I'll leave it to others to debate their individual merits, but I personally like the Solaris system a lot.
In San Francisco, Comcast residential service has no data transfer caps.
Part of the problem is adding capacity in an HFC network is expensive and difficult, eventually adding more carriers is not enough, and you needs to break the broadcast domain down even further, which means adding a new node - sometimes that can be just adding cards to a cabinet, others its a new physical box that must be permitted and placed - a process that can (and often does) take years.

xDSL has it easy, they can just turn up more backhaul at the CO, which is often a process that takes no more that days, if not hours.
My comment was apparently moved.. this was very confusing. Wish there were notifications for this type of thing ;)
There may have been some, let's say workarounds, the long distance charges.
Scientific Tips for Peeing Like a Proper Gentleman
The first link shows no data, just some general sense of validity based on some other claimed psychological effect. I don't mean to sound snarky, but lots of things can be made to seem plausible if certain effects are taken for granted. The second link seems to invalidate the study, as you say.

Granted, how close cars pass cyclists is only one factor affecting safety. I suspect that the most dangerous or critical situations are the ones where the driver is either minimally aware, or unaware, of the presence of the cyclist. I doubt there's a special brain circuit that influences the driver's behavior based on the cyclist's helmet without alerting the driver to the existence of the cyclist.
> If you're a software engineer, you are paid to deliver working software.

No, you're paid to deliver solutions. Often the best way to get the solution you need is to make sure the N engineers around you are being productive.
Whatever happened to UWB? Ten years ago, there was so much talk about UWB, and how it would provide so much bandwidth, etc. And now it's nowhere to be found. One huge advantage of radio is that it can work through walls; "Li-Fi" won't.
I'd disagree with you - I'd bet there are a ton of general telecom folks floating around - I've done work for the yellow carrier, as well as magenta, red and orange, plus a regional RBOC. I get the technology, and strongly think internet service should be a common carrier.
Utah Considers Cutting Off Water to the NSA’s Monster Data Center
The IV doesn't start as zero; it starts as a random number.
How about medical instrumentation/telemetry? In the ER, ICU and other bedside locations ability to communicate high bandwidth data is very valuable. Wireless transmission allows greater flexibility choosing devices to measure various parameters and freedom to set them up optimally around the patient.

Another idea is having a completely sealed Li-Fi transmitter in an isolation chamber send experimental data through a transparent port for analysis. (My guess is Wi-Fi would be harder to package for the purpose.) I'm sure there are many other situations where high-speed short-distance transmission would be advantageous...
I wonder how you say 'no' to HN.
Google to Help Publishers Make Money by Blocking Ads
I would start as a Delaware S Corp, which avoids the double taxation you're afraid of from a C Corp.

But it also has the benefit of being easier to "switch" to a C Corp later if necessary.
Apple ends patent war on Android, deal suggests
Worked out pretty well for the medical profession
The company pays taxes on its income, but the salaries are generally deductible from the income that the company is taxed on (as are a whole bunch of other expenses).
Again, that depends on your role. Very often (usually depending on seniority) you actually are paid to deliver working code.

There've been times where the most productive use of my time was to answer questions all day long and not write a single line of code. There've also been times where my job was to shield the engineers on my team and intercept anyone who tried to talk to them. But a lot of the time - I am writing the code. If I don't write the code, it won't get written. The guy being paid to deliver solutions is an executive several levels above me on the org chart who's been with the company since he was the one heads-down writing code, and then it's my manager's job to shield me from everyone who wants to talk to me.
And on different OSes. For example, many designers work on Macs and don't bother testing on Windows, then get surprised when users complain that the type on their website is unreadable -- OS X's rasterization makes light fonts look much bolder than Cleartype on Windows.
I collected them from my guides: http://tuhdo.github.io/, so it's quick if you don't account the time to write the guides.
Sleep's Link to Learning and Memory Traced to Brain Chemistry