skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Note that the decoder is 68K compressed. That's not much, and of course can be cached, but considering that the improvement (from WebP, anyway) seems to be most notable for the <50K images, it may not be terribly practical...

Considering that the page says it's based on a Daala comparison page, it would be interesting to stick a Daala snapshot in the mix for comparison using the same images (reencoding to PNG like it does for WebP, I'm not suggesting porting Daala to emscripten). A quick browse of the original page shows Daala sometimes beating x265, sometimes losing to it, but I guess both x265 and the Daala {encoder, codec} may have been improved in the last six months.
Especially with games, gameasutra runs postmortems with devs frequently to talk about both successes and failures in their projects.
Is there a way to run Netflix on Linux?
It is hard to know without a full trial. This is the one thing that should happen, but if torture can be swept under the rug with nobody being held responsible I am not too hopeful :(
EU VAT Changes Can Kill Your Startup
How is abstraction unsafe?

Additionally, raw pointers are not dangerous. If you're passing them around as const pointers, the receiver can't do things like deleting them. If you are writing a container class (instead of using one of the existing myriad of containers in the STL) then you can use raw pointers.
But typically you would not need to write your own container class; just use one of the STL's and the move semantics. You can then use references everywhere instead. Or const references. Everyone forgets about const correctness in their C++ bashing.

For concurrency, you may wish to see http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/thread

There's even mutexes in there.
Well some of us do respond emotionally sometimes.
This will keep happening around the world. We came so close to eradicating polio for good and to see it all thrown away is heartbreaking.
Uber Accessed BuzzFeed Reporter’s Information Because She Was “Late”
Syntax highlightened cat – A must-have tool
But I can't be a Bellard and keep up w/ HN, reddit, facebook and twitter.
+Infinity points for targeting the good old Speccy.
I think you're right there about the differences between C and C++ and the root of the anger towards it. C is completely alien to me - I wouldn't be able to competently write a decent program in it. But C++ is a different matter.

I have worked with people who write C++ in "fancy C" style too.
Why does the comparison use x265 instead of the reference HEVC encoder? Fabrice Bellard recommends that as it produces better quality encodes at the expense of CPU time.

I'm interested in seeing the result of using 4:4:4 with BPG. If you have the originals to compress, of course (meaning, the original is not chroma subsampled).
Ember.js to Implement Server-Side Rendering for SEO
Distributing the Build Token with Hubot
I just wanted to point out, that BGP in "tiny" mode changes the image quality in a way that is strangely reminiscent of film. A lot of details get blurred out, but in a pleasant way.
It's a shame because you don't want to be cruel to Mammals who after all are pretty similar to us, however you also don't want to lose rare and endemic species. So its a moral dilemma, the problem is that 1080, and most poisons, are particularly horrible ways to die. It's not the animals fault that they are here, its purely our fault, yet the animals suffer.

Saying that I live next to http://www.visitzealandia.com/ which is an inner city pest free zone in Wellington, since it was completed in the late nineties years ago the bird life in the area is amazing. It has about ten kilometres of fencing around the perimeter which is three metres tall and extends under ground.
Especially considering it was done alongside a job. I wonder how much time he actually had per month to work on it
But Thatcher was on the hard-right socially and economically. Being pro-thatcher and claiming even a smidgen of a left-leaning stance is laughable.
I've learnt a new word yesterday: sophism.

You can argue as well that breaking windows employs the glass makers and destroying cars employs the car makers. Yes, starting wars as well because it employs everyone.

You forget that, as a whole, the community is left without a window and the money to replace it could have been used for something else.

No, there is no utility in breaking windows and in digging holes just to bury them back.
Create a pattern in your head. Let me try to explain what I'm using.

1. Create a prefix that will be in every password, like: MniJ33 -- quite easy to remember "My name is John, 33 years old".

2. Based on the service you want to use, apply that to the password as well, like: Hnews

3. A suffix with some special chars is also nice, to make it more complicated, like: #$%

The final result would be "MniJ33Hnews#$%". Better than giving your password to anyone.

Edit: Forgot the numbers in the final result.
Compcert C, also written in Coq, is another interesting C compiler:
http://compcert.inria.fr/
I'm not an expert, but I nevertheless will give my opinion.

This is based on a peer review article in an indexed journal. There is a lot of crap in peer review articles in an indexed journal, but the proportion of crap is much lower than in a random internet article. This is a good signal.

> The physicists' work builds on previous research that has shown that anyons can arise due to the fractional quantum Hall effect. To realize this effect, a 2-D electron gas is sandwiched between two flat semiconductor plates. When cooled to temperatures near absolute zero and exposed to strong magnetic fields, excitations form in the 2-D electron gas and give rise to anyons. [!] So far, only Abelian anyons have been detected in fractional quantum Hall systems, but studies suggest that non-Abelian anyons might also be realized.

I went to a seminar talk in the university about the fractional quantum Hall effect and anyons about 20 years ago, so up to the [!] mark, it sound very legit (more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_quantum_Hall_effect , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyon ). I'm not sure about the last past of the paragraph, but it sounds good.

Anyons are quasiparticles, they are not actual particles, buy some arrangement of the electrons and atoms. They only live in 2D layers. In solid state physics is usual to treat quasiparticles as actual particles. (This is strange at first, but this is a good idea.)

The rest of the article discuss about anyons tunelling between two 2D layers and forming braid patterns. I really don't have more information about this part but it sounds reasonable. I'll not be surprised if an expert says that this is true. (This is published in a peer review article in an indexed journal, so I guess they are experts :).)

As usual, there is probably a little of hype in the research article and in the press coverage, so remember to use the standard conversion table http://xkcd.com/678/

> Can anyone with more knowledge opine on whether this is genius or quackery?

I'm classifying this as "interesting".
There are many approaches:
1. Reducing the scope of government

2. Push governance down instead of centralizing, do more at the local and state level

3. Develop quasi independent institutions to carry out certain tasks and allow competition between them.
C++ Compiler Benchmarks
>Which is to say, the various experiments and experiences we've run all point to the reality that the only stable state is one that's run on neoliberal principles (which is ideologically a rationalistic Rawlsian state and materially a state dominated by powerful, propertied interests). All others fail, from either internal or external competition.

What have been the experimental failures of social democracy and democratic socialism?
I'd say marketing reasons, but yeah, that's what I meant as well.
"The patent pools come before the standards. If your patent doesn't cover what's in the standard then nobody will use it, and if you're not one of the cool kids then nothing your patent covers will get put in the standard"

Also the patents in the standard are often broadly written to cover whole genres of techniques. If your new innovative idea is excluded from the standard and you create a new competing standard, then your new standard is illegal because all the patents in the pool that might affect your new standard are unlicensed.

And the licenses the pool sells strictly apply only to uses of the established standard. There is no license available for your new standard at any price.

That's one of the reasons WebM was crippled for years; it had to design around hundreds of established techniques. Now that Google has spent years and billions on legal fights and patent acquisition MPEG-LA has opened up innovation legally to WebM and future versions might be good.

Your innovation isn't probably backed by Google, so good luck ever getting permission to try it.

And remember that even trying patented techniques in the lab is illegal if you have commercial applications in mind. There is a pure research exception, but if you want to develop a new codec or encryption idea built on older ones, you're skirting the law at best. The incumbents don't especially want to encourage your competition.
Two psychologists' role in CIA torture program comes into focus
I wonder if anyone has real world experience of Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drives? I saw a talk by Red Hat's Ric Wheeler about a year ago, and they seem both interesting and pretty strange - as in, we may need new filesystems to cope with them.
How would that help NASA?

It might help you as a taxpayer, but it doesn't help NASA, so they would never do that.
I understand the article is about series vs parallel but I'm sort of... Taken aback by the premise setup in the beginning that:

A.) Its hard to find the burnt out bulb(hint its almost always the one with the broken filiment)

B.) You should just throw the strand away

Maybe I'm just too old at 30(?) or I grew up underprivileged because I recall untangling lights and replacing burnt out bulbs well, as far back as I can recall. 7 or so? And throwing the strand away is just wasteful.

I understand there is an article to write but on one hand we have some guy writing about creating a sou-vide oven and on the other someone suggesting burnt out light bulbs are too hard to find. :|
"We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry,"
>So I've speculated a little about some sort of "transhumanist socialism" that would attempt to address inequality at the biological level by making both germ-line and postnatal enhancements universally available. The idea would be to transform humanity itself into a runaway self-improving AI by siphoning off some percentage of GDP and applying it to the artificial redistribution of beneficial adaptations and the augmentation of human intelligence across familial lines. By far the best thing to be taxed here would be inheritance, since the whole aim is to break heritable inequality.

Technically speaking, "anarcho-transhumanism" is an existing ideology, but...

PLEASE DO THIS. I'm freaking salivating. I mean, screw "runaway AI", but yes, hell yes, let's go ahead and slaughter inequality and injustice at their source, and unleash everything that people can be and aren't allowed to right now because their "betters" wouldn't get to feel a hierarchical status difference in their retarded ape-brains.
This article is rather lacking in details.
It's easy to get about 40%, the hard part is doing it cheap enough, and using materials that are not rare.
Where I live in Dunedin the peninsula is the site of one of the few breeding colonies of yellow eyed penguins, and the only mainland alabtross colony in the world. They've eradicated possums back to the city limit.

The Aussie possums we've been infested with are not at all like their American namesakes, they make great coats, sadly the fur-is-murder people wont make exemptions for ecological devistation.
Can you explain which appropriate x utitilies are needed? Tried that several times but never got that working.
Lookup the concept of turtles: Netlogo http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/dictionary.html and Python https://docs.python.org/2/library/turtle.html
From Robin Williams to MH370: This Was Google's 'Year in Search'
I couldn't imagine they'd want to do that after all this time.
Can I fight against the code like in the movie?
What on Earth is the map supposed to do? I click on it and data appear along the bottom? Am I missing something? Why is it all red? My eyes burn. How useful is this data without quality control? How sustainable is the project? Did it come out of a hackathon, or is it part of an organisation?
Wow, this and the "Apocalyptic Libertarians of Silicon Valley" post in the same day! Hacker News is really doing some reflective self-questioning now, eh?
Saving “many-to-many” in Yii2 through behavior
Hi all - I'm the director of Gaza Sky Geeks. Great to see this conversation taking place. Thanks to all of you who have supported our work! A new piece was just written about us by NPR, and if you Googled "Gaza" yesterday, this was one of the top search results: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/12/14/370139...

Our crowdfunding campaign has been extended until January 8. If you haven't already supported and told your friends about it, please do! It's at http://www.gazastarts.com.

I'll also be in the Bay Area from Dec 22 - Jan 6, and while I'll be primarily focused on friends & family, I'd be happy to set up a coffee side chat if entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley want to hear what it's like to launch startups in Gaza.

For those of you in Israel, I pass through Jerusalem frequently and Tel Aviv occasionally, and can also meet up there.

When I arrived to Gaza over a year ago, I had no idea what I'd find. What's made me so dedicated to Gaza Sky Geeks is the untapped potential I see. As we nurture startups in Gaza, one of our goals is to develop expertise in launching startups in frontier markets more broadly. Do reach out to us at info@gazaskygeeks.com if you'd like to engage with our work.
Would love to hear any feedback you guys have.
He either made his judgement based on non-obvious criteria or, more likely, looked at x265 at the "wrong" moment. Right before libbpg was announced, x265 had several commits fixing large 10bit and 422/444 bugs.

As far as intra-prediction goes, x265 should be better than the HM by at least a few percents MSE-wise and around 10% SSIM-wise[0].

[0] https://github.com/strukturag/libde265/wiki/Intra-Prediction...
1. Is money really speech? If so then there's a lot of laws that need to be overturned. Not to mention you can't hold 'free speech' up as a sword to swat away anything that affects speech (libel? slander? copyright violations?). The idea of a constitutionally protected right to free speech is to stop the government from silencing debate. But limiting people from handing money to members of congress isn't stopping your ability to voice your opinion at all, it's just limiting your ability to influence your member of congress by donating more money than the next guy. If anything it increases freedom of speech - it allows all people to voice their views in a marketplace of ideas where the amount of money in their bank accounts is irrelevant, and they are assessed on the merits of their arguments alone. The current situation allows every person to speak, but one person to hold a megaphone.

2. The problem you've identified is the fact that there is a government, or that powerful people exist. There will always be powerful people, and hopefully there will always be government, and it will always be in your interests to influence those powerful people so that they can help you out. So in any system where there is a government, there needs to be a robust system of checks and balances to ensure that representatives act in the interests of the public (which is the idea behind representative democracy) rather than the interests of their private funders.

3. Yes, of course it does, but again, that is just a symptom of checks and balances failing. In a system where there is a perfect representative democracy and a strong constitution, the people will never vote for a federal government larger than it needs to be. In the system we have now, the federal government swells in size no matter which party is in government (just depends whether it is the public service, or the military that grows). Private interests fuel this effect and governments wave their hands to make it look like cuts are being made, but they're not.

Lessig has nailed the arguments around why campaign finance reform is necessary - whether he's going to be successful is in question but I think most legal experts can see that the system is broken, with money being the core of the problem.
I believe the comment was meant to motivate, or provoke a bit of self-reflection; not for trolling.

Many people are unwilling, or can't or look for excuses to not take the first step because fear[1][2] might be (secretly) hindering them.

I was offered a great job and I was afraid/unwilling to take the job because of the responsibility in involved (even though, I would've loved the job) and was afraid I wouldn't be up to the task or my own expectations (now I realise I would've been more than capable).

Although, my issue was a consequence of a much bigger emotional problem, I wouldn't have ever resolved it, if it wasn't for a tactless and stubborn friend who forced me into helping myself.

Just my two cents.

--

[1]:Atychiphobia

[2]: or Jonah's complex
Your examples include destruction of property which negates their social benefits of improved earnings and reduced unemployment.

Digging a whole is a metaphor for unproductive, but also not destructive work where the social benefits are not negated by other factors.
RBS OneAccount Logon (notice the “Important Information”)
Cool, will check it out!

There are lot of recommended books about a selection of languages regarded as more powerful/expressive/safer than the mainstream, but there's not so much good information about APL, I don't think. Every now and then, I hear different people give a hint about APL's power (not too noisily though... as if they did not want to completely give away the secret :).

I keep wondering what problems are good fit for it. From far it doesn't look like a general purpose PL. To my untrained eyes it looks like some sort of query language that you can somehow bend into doing other things (in the same vein you can use SQL to render the Mandelbrot set [1] :).

And then there's the whole clones/successors/spin offs situation. If I were to learn APL today, I wouldn't even know were to start. ELI looks like a good candidate.

--

1: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
Here you go! https://github.com/JuliaLang/FunctionalCollections.jl There is a nice talk by Zach Allaun, of Clojure background, about persistent data structures in julia, http://www.infoq.com/presentations/julia-vectors-maps-sets
FYI, the actual problem they have is TLS extensions intolerance:

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=https://servi...

To be honest, this was not exactly well known.
In the game industry it just means analysis after launching a game.
I just went back and re-read some of them. They were pretty damning of her imperious style and sytematic undermining of colleagues in her later years as PM, and her handling of the poll tax debacle. Her disastrous market inspired reforms of the NHS were also pointed out. She made plenty of mistakes.

As for her overall economic policies, the thing is she's been pretty comprehensively proved right. Britain was a basket case in the 1970s, crippled by a decade and more of misrule. The alternative at the time was the Foot Labour Government. Who honestly thinks they would have been a bettter choice for Britain? By the end of her reign Britain was an economic and financial powerhouse. Even on the issues she lost power over, refusing to support Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson's desire to shadow the Deutschmark and join the single currency, it took more than a decade for her to be vindicated but she was finally proved absolutely right. Who now thinks joining the Euro would be a good idea?

When Tony Balir and Gordon Brown took over in 1997 they inherited a Thatecher economy and they didn't touch a single one of her landmark reforms. That's because it's a system that works, and they knew it. The mistake they made was to overindulge in debt because they misread the timing of the economic cycle, but fundamentally the british economic engine is pretty strong. That's why we're powering ahead of Europe again despite the ongoing effects of all that debt.
I don't understand your phrase "the threshold for my using it should be the same as for my handgun"

I'm going to buy pepper spray soon, and I understood that it was basically nonlethal. I've been mugged a few times already, and I do believe it would have helped in at least one case (in which I absolutely would not have used a gun).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_spray
Reading the abstract on arXiv[0], it seems that what's new here is not the idea of the Fibonacci anyon, which it was known could yield universal quantum computation, but rather a possible scheme for realizing the Fibonacci anyon. I say this explicitly because I didn't find that clear from the article.

[0] http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.3383
If Lab B can find a part of the process of developing A's original idea that Lab A has documented without covering every possible detail and contingency, Lab B can document that step and apply to the patent office for a patent on it.

Such patents are often granted because the standard patent lawyers have demanded is that a patent must issue unless the patent office can prove that every single detail and step ("limitation") is documented in the prior art. Also, patent officials have very little time to search for prior art, often just a few hours; the average time allotted to examiners in the US office is under nineteen man hours for all paperwork, documentation, and searching. That is why you see so many obviously redundant and unoriginal patents. There is an official requirement for non-obviousness but the patent court -- knowing where its judges' power, prestige, and lucre lies -- has made non-obviousness a dead letter by usually declaring nothing obvious except the exact prior art itself and raising the standards of proof sky-high.

So Lab B is probably not looking for substantive improvements. It's looking -- at least where computer, information, radio, video, software, and such patents apply, but probably with graphene also -- for a loophole where it can block Lab A's product by getting a patent on a necessary but incompletely documented part of the ordinary original product. If Lab B can accumulate enough of those, then Lab A will have to negotiate with Lab B.

Only then can Lab B's actual improvements have a chance in the market. And new patents on those improvements will then be promoted by patentability. But the cost of making such a system work is astronomically higher in the sciences HN usually deals with than any benefit it ever might offer.

You should hear the patent bar talk about how lost we used to be without them to regulate us and how software would collapse without them because patents are the only way to promote true innovation in the industry and how all research would shut down because the only reason it's viable is the patents you can acquire. And they're the ones that make the law.
Of note is that since Backblaze is a backup company, their hard drives will probably not see a lot of churn / activity - write once, wait until something happens. Maybe refresh the data every once in a while.

I'd like to see similar tests from companies like Amazon and Dropbox (although the latter probably uses the former), in various use cases.