skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Wearing a suit is a sign of respect to the court, and there's a rational justification for the convention.

Courts, you see, and federal courts in particular, don't really have any power. They have a few marshals, but by and large they're not directly in charge of the people with the guns. Courts have power only because everyone agrees to abide by their authority. Wearing a suit, standing when a judge enters the room, addressing the judge as "your Honor," is all part of a ritual where we acknowledge the solemnity of the proceeding and collectively reinforce the binding authority of the court and its judgments. The details of the ritual are, of course, arbitrary. What matters is that everyone partakes in the ritual.

The practical significance is this: if the judge rules against the government in this case, the executive branch will have a choice to follow the order or not. It is indeed a choice--the executive branch has all the guns, after all. The price of ignoring the order is a loss of moral authority and public support. The purpose of the ritual surrounding the proceedings is to make this expensive. You want people to be offended and feel violated that anyone would ignore authority that they collectively sanctioned by engaging in this ritual.
If you mean to say that people who don't like guns would have a hard time agreeing, then just say that. There are plenty of people with children who have no problems with guns.

Unless I missed the point, and there's some reason I can't fathom why people with children would have a hard time agreeing with a reserve of foods and medicine.
Using goto as the only loop construct is too easy, you can statically know where your code is going all the time. It would be more fun to use setjmp longjmp from C, where you can dynamically assign where a label is pointing to, and it works across scopes.
Minor correction on income tax:
0-10K: Untaxed,
10-40K: 20%,
40K+: 40%,
I like that last part, I'm going to start doing this.
The Sony Hack – A Lesson in Cyber Terrorism
There wasn't a whole lot of evidence that MS was trying to explicitly kill for-profit TCP stack vendors.
I wonder how tough it is to compete with Google Glass considering it has failed to get popular.
Recurly (https://recurly.com/) have done a great job to quickly roll out all the features and reporting required for us to be compliant with these changes by the 1st Jan. I'm not aware of any other payment provider that this is true for (but I haven't looked very hard.) They've made it very easy for us.
Thanks very useful, I was just writing something similar.

INterested in: syscall32_from_64.c

What's does that do? I know in IA32 emu mode on a 64bit kernel from running binaries using strace that they make gettimeofday etc syscalls rather than use vdso.
Thank you molecule. I checked the FAQ and didn't find an item about deduplicating links. Do I just search HN first before every post?
Maybe not once it becomes an ancient relic: https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do
There's a difference between thinking you can tell the difference or convincing others that you can tell the difference, and actually being able to tell the difference.

Nowhere is this difference more strikingly demonstrated than in the studies that have been done on wine tasting.[1]

An example from the article:

Hodgson isn't alone in questioning the science of
wine-tasting. French academic Frédéric Brochet tested the effect of
labels in 2001. He presented the same Bordeaux superior wine to 57
volunteers a week apart and in two different bottles – one for a
table wine, the other for a grand cru.

The tasters were fooled.

When tasting a supposedly superior wine, their language was more
positive – describing it as complex, balanced, long and woody. When
the same wine was presented as plonk, the critics were more likely
to use negatives such as weak, light and flat.

[1] - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tas...
It's not PR speak, it's their generation. I'm only a few years older and can't even relate to it. My peers have even noticed this in our younger male siblings - they're only ~3 years younger, but they would constantly get into emotional fights with their good friends (lasting several days), cry all the time, and generally are a lot more sensitive and emotional. We don't understand it at all.
Why wait until after a world apocalypse? Insects are plentiful and nutritious and we should be eating more of them now.

There's plenty of evidence that insects are high quality protein with low fat. In many traditional societies around the world, termites, grubs, grasshoppers, and other creepy crawly things play an important nutritional role.

Years ago, my wife and I read a beautifully illustrated travelogue "Man Eating Bugs" written by a husband-and-wife team who traveled the world to see (and sample) insect cuisine in many cultures. Fascinating stuff.

It's a generally well supported view among paleontologists that primitive humans ate lots of bugs. We were opportunistic foragers from way back. It's only in recent centuries, in "civilized" places, that we have regarded bugs as a repulsive thing to eat.

I would imagine that in and after a nuclear winter, animal and vegetable life would dwindle to a tiny population that would take hundreds if not thousands of years to replenish. Probably we should be caching genetic material, sperm, and seeds of every species in some safe, underground arkology, so that two hundred years after the meltdown, whoever's left can restore some biodiversity.
Dominance is always bad even if the product is good. ( look at Steam )
Elearning 2015: what’s in store for elearning in the year ahead?
Estonia’s Taxify, an Anti-Uber Taxi App, Raises €1.4M
I have worked for two consulting firms. Neither of them had any budget for work that wasn't billable directly to a client.

At the first, Medior Inc. of San Mateo (later acquired by AOL), I invented a novel, lossless bitmap compressor as a result of our running out of space for the "assets" on a multimedia CD-ROM.

However my invention was purely conceptual. I needed time to actually implement it, as well as to design the file format.

I had quite a hard time convincing the management to let me do that. Eventually they came around because they realized the expense of my time could qualify for the US IRS Research Tax Credit (not a deduction, credits are better).

However, they gave me precisely three weeks. While I did get my code to work really well, I could have gotten it to work a lot better, had I been given more than three weeks. For example I only supported 8-bit images. It would have been straightforward to handle 24-bit, but Medior didn't give me time to look into that.

I myself am a one-man consulting firm. I spend a lot of my own time on "lab" work, that's not billable to a client. I regard that as a good use of my time.

Working for a larger consulting firm has its merits, but I'm not so sure I'd ever want to work for another one, for the specific reason that my value to my employer, is regarded as whatever hours they can bill to our clients.
How do you cluster in postgresql? Serious question, my prefer noSQL is cassandra and clustering is pretty easy.

I ask this question every year and postgresql have not deliver this. If there is any, there are hardly any documentation on it.
Oh look, another dumb "but but USA" comment.

Anyway, why would you think I'd consider those to be beyond the judgment of foreigners? Or are you just seizing the moment to make a sarcastic comment without regard to people's actual thoughts on the matter?
The title seems a little misleading

>Jewel was filed in 2008 on behalf of San Francisco Bay Area resident Carolyn Jewel and other AT&T customers.

This isn't a new lawsuit, it has just taken forever to even get to this point. The main focus of this case isn't from the Snowden documents but the Snowden documents did open up the case to actually go forward without State Secrets censorship.
How is VAT regressive or hidden? For a start, I'd say that just about every EU citizen is aware of it. Plus, prices in shops have to show VAT-inclusive prices to end customers, unlike some states in the USA where sales taxes can get magically added on to the final bill.

Secondly, it's not regressive because the more goods and services you buy, the more you get taxed. If I buy a luxury yacht, I'll end up paying more VAT than someone buying a toy boat. Same tax rate despite the increased bill.

Now, rich individuals may well try out all kinds of tax avoidance schemes but that's not a problem specific to VAT...
I stopped doing them, but I noticed that for me fasting for 16 hours is pretty easy, much easier than doing portion control of very tasty things that appear in front of me...
They're charging $7.99 for one-hour delivery. That's about on-par with on-demand courier fees that I've seen in NYC. Presumably the two-hour free delivery will be phased out once they've reached some metric.
So what? He provides interesting material. Why the need to attack?
> the 4th Amendment clearly talks about searches and seizures

Not to nitpick, but how exactly is making a copy of something a seizure?
That was my recollection of the crux of it as well.

Oh, you want to bundle Netscape with your Windows PC? Each copy of Windows will run you $80. If you decide to not bundle Netscape, it'll only be $30.

I'm also reminded of Linux/desktop bundling. IIRC, MS tried (and I think succeeded) in their licensing terms require Windows licensing based on PCs shipped, not Windows PCs shipped, so even selling a Linux-only desktop still required an MS-tax, meaning it was more expensive to sell a Linux desktop than a Windows desktop (at least for some of the big players like Dell, HP, etc).
I think it makes people believe that it's ok to have mass surveillance capabilities if "only the good guys" use it.
Bucket Copter is a new addicting arcade game
They are not a "Japanese company." Sony is a massive corporation in the US. Any company that wants to do business in the US needs to setup US-registered entities. There is no question of jurisdiction here.
Remember to put aside half for taxes too :-(
PG has async/sync/hybrid replication for years already. It's not as tooled as MongoDB but there's some tools like http://www.repmgr.org/ to amend it.
Google Open-sources Cloud Dataflow SDK in Java
In established tech companies like Google or Facebook, what percentage of equity goes to newly-joined engineers?
>>>>

The court thus faulted them [the ACLU in ACLU v. NSA, 493 F.3d 644, 648] for “assert[ing] a mere belief” that the NSA eavesdropped on their communications without warrants. Id. This failure of proof doomed standing. Ultimately Jewel may face similar procedural, evidentiary and substantive barriers as the plaintiffs in ACLU, but, at this initial pleading stage, the allegations are deemed true and are presumed to “embrace the ‘specific facts’ needed to sustain the complaint.” [0]

>>>

EFF is on a fishing expedition. I am not unsympathetic. But this judicial arm-twisting and absurd twisting of language / law needs to stop as the road it opens is not helpful to our democracy. They will never be able to justify their claims with anything that will pass evidentiary muster.

Supporting the EFF is all fine but generally a waste of time and money for effecting real change. The only way these programs end is if Congress is full of people who want this to stop and will ensure that it does.

If an obscure libertarian like Grover Norquist can dominate electoral cycles with a "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" why can someone not similarly dominate electoral cycles with a "Privacy Protection Pledge"? Demand every presidential candidate sign it, etc. Make it a real wedge issue.

I wonder if the answer is that US citizens don't care because they don't really see how they are harmed? They believe the Govt is protecting them by doing this?

[0]: http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/12/29/10... [pdf]
> The only important number is government spending as % of GDP.

Globally. Still here might be cases where a particular group funds an unproportionally high part of the spending. And you might be the edge case where you earn the money in country A to save and retire on it in country B, so A's sales tax doesn't affect you this much.
How long till someone creates a library with the mongo api?
Anyone has a performance benchmark and/or has experience on the scalability on this version?
I obviously have no way of knowing, but I suspect the compensation package at those places is much more dependent on the amount of impact you have to those returns than to when you joined the firm (for better or worse) and that people that impact those returns in dramatic ways will get compensated in a similar manner to early stage employees at startups.

The big issue I think with the equity based model, is the golden handcuffs it applies to early employees. Not only do they frequently forego market based compensation for long periods of time, when they make the decision to stop doing that, they are asked to take on more downside in order to keep any part of their deferred compensation. For all it's downsides, the trading environment would never ask someone to do that.
That may be true, BUT I'd wager that the probability of a book not chosen by the NYT is even closer to zero.

It's not that the NYT is bad, it's that predicting fads vs. classics at the time of release is a hard problem.
Ken Macleod's books have a some of this kind of stuff in them - people having to maintain old space stations that run Oracle DB's and stuff like that.
Me Too.

I'll be 51 in a couple months.

Age discrimination is widespread in this industry. I get lots of interviews, but quite commonly I find that my interviewer starts finding reasons not to hire me, the very instant they see me in person, and so can see I have grey hair.

Discriminating against employees or candidates over 40, for reasons of age, is flatly illegal under US Federal Law, as well as the laws of all the States that I know about. However, such age discrimination is quite widespread.
>> "imo the major f-up is removing the tax threshold for selling digital goods - even if you sell a £1 kintting pattern you have to register for VAT now."

You mean you have to pay VAT even if you earn under £69,000 (I think that was the threshold last I checked)?
CIA transnational human rights actions
Postgres-XL, Postgres-XC, pg_shard...
"Fast and lightweight" is 200ko?

We have so many choices when it comes to WYSIWYG. My favorite is https://github.com/daviferreira/medium-editor.
Outside observer: Man, I figure setting up a "decently performing" Postgres instance on AWS would be such a common thing to do that it would either be known to be impossible, or have cookie-cutter instructions, if not a script. How is it that it's "difficult and annoying" still?

Not trolling, genuinely curious :)
My 6 hour workday
Wouldn't you need to take something first before copying it?
A Perl 6 Timer: Ready, Set, Go
I like Mailbox (though some more transparency into the roadmap might be nice), but I'm not sure of the point of this. Kind of like an Instapaper-style thing for reading later I guess?
EventMobi 2014 in Review
nah, not really true for my experiences. For general IT geeky introvertish people, traders are exactly on opposite side of personality spectrum.
99% jobs are worse than hedge fund jobs? again, simply not true
This supposedly "snoozes tabs for later". I still don't know what it does. Could someone explain? You can assume I know what Chrome is.
Well, I don't know about the basis for a different "legal treatment", but I know that today the browser is the effective plaftorm/container/"VM" for the most popular applications. The browser capabilities and features will actually affect users and web applications - besides the ability to use this as leverage for other products, a single player with browser monopoly will have an unhealthy preponderance in the shaping of the web. I don't believe we can make an intellectually honest comparison with the calculator or the file manager...
Amethyst – A tiling window manager for OS X
Dolphin Emulator: Best Bug Fixes of 2014
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7899637
spoilers...you obviously haven't been watching this season homeland. The cia is backing a known taliban "terrorist" and the US is made to look weak, disjointed, and behind the ball.
The casual dress code is still a dress code - tech is generally biased against those who dress up, which is not any different from those who stick to more traditional formal dress codes except that casual is cheaper to shop for, is more comfortable, and easier to maintain. That doesn't make anyone who adheres to one or the other dress code any better.
Did you take a look at Slony-I?

http://slony.info/
Language is a slippery thing, and meanings of words change over time. Here's a short story illustrating how absurd it would be if we insisted all the words were used in their original sense:
http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/blog/2014/08/quest-pos... "The lord, the bishop, and the harlot: an etymological fallacy"
What's Haruko Obokata's current status? Is she still trying to reproduce the results or has she conceded that mistakes were made?
I'm confused at why you are being downvoted. This is a reasonable response explaining the comments covered by the parent post. You aren't even arguing for or against! Ridiculous.
> In 9.4, Logical Decoding supplies a new API for reading, filtering and manipulating the PostgreSQL replication stream. This interface is the foundation for new replication tools, such as Bi-Directional Replication, which supports the creation of multi-master PostgreSQL clusters. Other improvements in the replication system, such as replication slots and time-delayed replicas, improve management and utility of replica servers.

See also, ye manual: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/interactive/high-availabi...
Just do vnode-based consistent hashing on the client side.
The theaters backed out when Sony let them back out. Sony had contracts with the theaters that said that they would show the film. After receiving the threats Sony told the theaters that they were no longer bound by those contracts.
Wouldn't four hours or anything same day be just as good? Why not save some costs there?
It's one of many progress videos by http://vimeo.com/itoworld
Not sure what to say -- Steam is horribly slow, as it is Firefox.
The technically correct term is "eschaton", but no one uses that and everyone uses "apocalypse". I don't think this is a battle worth fighting.
Keywars| the global speed-typing challenge game
"Read and change all your data on all websites". No thanks to the Chrome extension, but EFF is now my charity on Amazon Smile at least.
I think his issue might be with "enjoy the good life while it lasts". That attitude might work well if you're alone. But if you have kids, you generally want them to have a good life too.
I agree; it would be much more accurate to say that they both taste equally good, not that they taste the same.

Boca Burger patties taste absolutely nothing like meat, but I still like the taste.
> The last three have some form of nationalised healthcare though, which the US does not.

Plus a much better retirement plan. In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. And unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement.

In the US you're lucky to get 3 weeks vacation a year. More than that, you need to quit your job. In EU countries it's generally 6 weeks by gov't mandate.

The greater taxes are probably a good deal.
I keep seeing this kind of thing, but it goes directly against my personal observations. I've seen people blindly identify any number of wines, down to the exact vintage at times. There are people who can do this, I've seen it done.
Good comment. Deleted my original, inflammatory comment.
I don't know, is the death penalty also something to judge?
Even executions of teenagers in places like Texas?

We sure don't have those were I live.

Maybe the greatest incarceration rate in the world?

...that part of it is even run for profit?

...and that's also predominantly for black people?

Or how about seggregation (until the sixties !!!! and de-facto even now)?

Or abducting people and taking them to a remote non-legal prison -- without a trial or anything? And then torturing them for years.

How about one of the most ruthless and anti-democratic police force this side of a dictatorship? One that can kill you just because you got out of your car when they stopped you? (!!!)

How about talking the land of native americans? To the point that they've been reduced to live in "autonomous" shitholes?

Should some third country have invaded to put an end to those?

(Haven't even mentioned the huge abuses of foreign policy, because this is about internal stuff).
Top open source interviews in 2014
If we assume that a) the 1h delivery is break even for them and 2) the 2h delivery would allow the courier to do a couple of extra deliveries on the same trip, then I think the per item cost for 2h delivery could be only a couple of dollars, making it competitive with UPS and thus maybe free for prime members indefinitely.
Heh, the twist is that he discovers the secret, which is that Candy Crush is really a giant conspiracy to cull the feeble. He decides not to fix anything.
Paranoia over the FOUC is the bane of my web browsing days. Any time you use unstable internet (hostels in poor countries), designers' prude paranoia over their naked content being shown without the proper styling or font, it ruins modern web browsing. I stopped timing when every other page I saw was literally > 1 minute of waiting. Started using view-source: to just read the damn content.

Please, for the love of God, stop hiding content behind styles. Please. Please please please.
And just to minimize friction, the crowdfunding campaign itself: https://snowdrift.tilt.com/launch-snowdrift-coop

I gave a while ago. For me, it isn't that I necessarily 100% believe this is guaranteed to work, it is that it is good enough to be worth a try. My long-term hope is that this takes off enough and attains enough credibility that I can go to my employers and say with a straight face that we ought to be participating to a significant degree, but with life and the world working as it does, the project is first going to have to bootstrap the credibility to do that before I can even bring it up, let alone get it approved.
It is different because they are actively misleading people that do not understand the internet. They are using scare tactics and sensationalism by saying stuff like "net neutrallity is the obamacare of the internet".
Although normally algo trading is equated to high-frequency trading, there is - from what I understand - more to the term, including long-term investment.

And in general, the objective of a market is to allocate capital in the best possible way.

So, for that, I think that eventually an algorithm - or a market of algorithms - can get to be more fair and more efficient than a bunch of meat-based traders and investors. I'm pretty sure that we are not still there, but, assuming a future in which a huge, benevolent, fair capital allocation system exists, having people working on that might get to be morally good.
Sony Hack Emails?
Curiosity killed the cat.

Can't find any of the original emails or where the threat letter was posted first. Anyone know where I can find these things?

Cheers.
It isn't "difficult and annoying" anymore, it used to be before SSD backed EBS and/or provisioned IOPS because you had to RAID0 together a dozen or so magnetic EBS volumes to get decent disk performance and then deal with the annoyance of sorting out a way to take consistent snapshots of the RAID array for backups.

Now you can just toss a single 1TB SSD backed EBS volume on an instance and get ~3k iops, or use provisioned iops to get almost any performance level you need.
Oracle: carelessly broken SSL to download the JDK