skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nicholson Baker wrote a book presenting a similar hypothesis about the preservation of library books (Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper). A core idea of Baker's book is that librarians and the general public drastically underestimate the longevity of printed paper books, in large part because of their experience with newspapers and especially cheap paperbacks, which are often printed on very acidic paper. But books printed on higher-quality paper (including most books from centuries ago) will commonly last centuries under normal archival conditions, so there isn't necessarily an urgency to switch their format from paper to something else. Baker was outraged that librarians were cutting open ("disbinding") perfectly serviceable books in order to microfilm them and often then discarding the original paper editions.

Baker's point matches my experience fairly well; I have some cheap paperbacks from the 1970s that are yellowed and brittle already, while I have several books from the 1700s (some nearly 300 years old) that are in great shape and that you can read normally with your hands. They haven't been stored in an argon environment in a freezer or anything, just on normal bookshelves at room temperature. The older books were printed on low-acidity paper ("before that was a thing", we might say) and are likely to last for centuries more if they don't get lost to a fire or a flood.

But the main villain for Baker at the time he wrote Double Fold wasn't digitization so much as microfilm, which isn't always archivally preferable to acid-free paper and which is horribly inconvenient for search or reading. (Baker did prefer paper card catalogues to digital catalogues; I think he was probably right about the serendipity aspect but wrong on almost every other practical dimension.) By contrast, digital books have been great for usability, great for search, great for academic research, great for disability accessibility, great for distance education, and so on. They even have a fairly strong preservation story when copyright considerations don't obstruct it. (But it's really important for people to remember that optical discs are probably not an archival medium. It looks like "mirroring stuff regularly from one hard drive array to another" is the archival medium.) I cherish, respect, and continue to acquire, collect, and read paper books, but I think the idea that paper is the uniquely best format for preservation and accessibility purposes is no longer right when the competition is computerization rather than microfilming.
Flagged.

Don't drink and post kids.
I actually find email exchanges far worse than voicemails.... I use google voice, it's in one interface, and voicemails are few enough... 5-6 a day.

Emails, I see many... Some I bucket off and group delete daily.. others I have to spend half an hour a day to sift through... it's a pain. Especially reply chains... Though I'd just as soon use IRC, getting people to use slack hasn't been so bad (there are hipchat and others)... I'm not a huge fan of IM either though.
Yep, I'd heard browsers wanted to use Shaders instead of WebCL. I think there's a couple of node packages that implement WebCL, but they're not in the browser environment and they're really only used with trusted code.

Looking through some discussions on Google Groups related to chromium development, it looks like they thought WebCL might be safe to use eventually, but not in the near term.
Could you expand on that please? I understand the iniquitous history of the Opium wars, but not the economics especially switching from silver to gold
You missed the part where voicemails are emailed to you transcribed, integrating nicely with Gmail. All of my voicemails are in Gmail, which is perfect for Inbox Zero GTD.
Meet the Sony hack truthers
Would prices not rise so much that the constant factor of the basic income pretty much becomes the new 0?
I agree the logic of the threats makes no sense. There are very few state actors that are this detached from objective and logic. In-fact it feels like the work of a troll, aka anonymous or a reincarnated Lulzsec. The same people responsible for the last Sony hack and whom some might be still sitting on the data trove from that attack. Then again, N.K. could claim to be the original troll.
I was given some old BBS session logs and I scanned them
Does anyone know how widely this is being used in production? Turf looks pretty good and I've had my eye on it for a while, but I'm not willing to get too attached to it if it has performance issues, and I'd like to hear about other people's experiences.
Performance Decline OS X Tiger – Yosemite
Yes, I do consider myself a georgist.
It is sad that substantial part of this lib assumes flat Earth; it will work well on a city scale, but one has to expect spectacular fails on a longer distances and near the poles :/
In 2014, much like 2014, we saw America only solidify its economic dominance http://greyenlightenment.com/?p=1556

The US dollar and S&P 500 has outperformed all peers

US GDP growth has exceeded nearly all counties, including emerging markets (adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile Russia, EU, Australia, Canada and Japan all having problems due to falling oil and stagnation.

Yields still rock bottom due to huge demand for low yielding debt

America is not just pulling ahead of the rest of the world, it's running circles around it.

I hate to be the bearer of good news, but America, for all its flaws, is still the envy of the world. Its fastest-growing, most innovative tech companies and its most prestigious institutions of higher learning, such as the Ivy League, Caltech and MIT, are inundated with applicants from foreigners. Foreigners also can’t get enough of America’s most expensive real estate, nor can they get enough of America’s low yielding debt. If we really were in a ‘post America’ era as the left insists we are, none of this would be happening.

The US economy has hardly been in a slog, especially compared to the rest of the world. The last quarter of GDP was revised to 5% – the fastest growth since 2003.
Why the ‘Best Places to Work’ Often Aren’t
that is subject to interpretation
M-discs claim to last up to 1000 years:

http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/
> America was a byword for urban graft, mismanagement and greed-fuelled politics, as much as for growth, production, and profit,”

Given my laypersons knowledge of Tammeney Hall, the early 20th century labour gangs and so on, it seems incredible that America is not subject to more such problems - but what did it do right - and is it still doing it right?
I created a slightly-unusual-CV (www.hireme.link) for that purpose, posted a link on a few resources and sent to dozen companies. I may say, that the effect is almost absent.
Of course that's up to your person, but that's my case.
Supposedly, 95% of Americans were killed by diseases, so it didn't feel as bad. Especially if your perspective on the matter was (and it really was) that "God has given America to us and the proof is that he is is killing the Indians to make room for us"
Ask HN: What is the difference between a programmer and a developer?
Whoa, Elm is a language? And here all along I thought it was an MUA: http://www.instinct.org/elm/
Looks awesome, I've been wanting to do something like this for a while. Thanks for putting the code online!
I meant in the country India. I didn't even think about the Native American situation, though now I consider it, it does seem to illustrate the dangers of making payments that are socially exclusive (similar to the problems Australia has faced with its aboriginal people).

I think the following links has more details on India, but I've not read through it as it's late on Christmas Eve for me and I'm worried about collapsing the Santa wave-function so I won't get any presents!

http://isa-global-dialogue.net/indias-great-experiment-the-t...
How will anyone verify that the information being sold is valid?
The most straightforward way of enforcing the exclusive sale model I can think of is to use reputation and reviews similar to how the online drug sales sites work. Create a financial incentive for the seller to build a positive reputation and deliver on their products quality and promises (exclusivity in this case). If the seller creates a name for themselves and they can be trusted to sell information exclusively then that will add value to the information (buyers would pay extra to ensure it's exclusive). That model will incentivize sellers to hold up their end of the bargain and prevent duplicate sales.
Would love to see some examples of how you put these concepts into practice.

I'm familiar with the concept of duck typing and generic interfaces, but I'm not sure that's quite what you're getting at and I'm curious to see what an implementation of what you describe looks like.
Maybe so, but when you take on a role associated with the media, you take on the responsibilities associated with being the media.

Assange wants it both ways: he wants to be a media-like outlet, but not have the moral responsibilities. It doesn't work that way.

Worse, by all accounts its mostly because he knows it would be a lot of time and effort to safely disclose the types of things he did/advocates should be. There's a very great personal convenience for him to "believe" he's no responsibility to safely redact documents.
The majority of valuable Chinese coin was minted in silver (with some attempts at paper money as well.) The west, especially Spain after its conquest of the New World, transferred silver directly to China en masse in exchange for consumable goods. Gold had very little value in China in comparison, and as I understand was used in more artisanal ways than silver would be.
As an alternative, I'm using a dedicated KeePass container to keep some files (scanned contracts and medical records). It's not super browseable, but for a secure storage of a few files, it's fine.
Interesting. If so, then the FBI does have information the author lacks, and that information does sound like something which could help pinpoint the culprits.
I'm all for voting with our wallets. Just about the first thing I want to know about a hotel is if it has good wifi. If it doesn't, sorry, I'm checking out. This is especially important on a business trip. I want the wifi to be ubiquitous and built-in to the room charge. If you charge separately for wifi, or if you meter the wifi, you are doing it wrong. You're also pushing people to use their personal wifi. There is no aspect of this that the hotels are going to win until they start taking customer service for tech people seriously.

EDIT: Actually, not only tech people. Normal people probably hate this stuff, too.
This has happened to me during every OS X upgrade/reinstallation I can remember. The first time, I also assumed that it just wasn't working. I've since learned that the 99% is deceiving in terms of the expectations it might give you. You just have to be patient and it'll eventually work.
How could an independent bot (legitamately) earn bitcoins? A cheap vps to live on would be $5/mo, so it wouldn't take that much. It would need to provide some sort of service that doesn't require human intervention, and is worth paying for.

Darknet markets take bitcoin, and at least some VPS providers do as well, so no need to get "real" bank accounts and evade know-your-customer.
While this may be true, I have to wonder how much of this is to the benefit or detriment of US citizens. We still have some very real economic problems; consider a shrinking middle class and the high rate of unemployment for recent college grads (both STEM and non-STEM).
Nearly 200 comments in yesterday's link to it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8791370
Is it possible the FBI/NSA/XXX agency is suppressing evidence in order to protect an informant?

Example scenario: US intel has agent or informant in NK, working high in cyber command. That person shows US intel code used to hack sony, and/or simply tells them that yes, NK did it. Consequently, FBI is confident NK did it, but cannot reveal reason for confidence without jeopardizing safety of informant.
> I think that's a fallacy with all these calculations.

All what calculations?! The whole point of me bothering to come up with these figures was that there were multiple comments that no-one had bothered to do even a simple sketch of what it would cost. I did.

If you've got better figures, then show them. Better still, find out what the essentials are on Social Services/Protection and include them. I'd be happy to include your amendments for the next time this topic is discussed. Consider it an open source comment :)
Say, why is the population of Andean countries (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolovia) so high in natives and 'mestizos' compared with North American countries?
The disease hypothesis puzzles me because it cannot explain the reality of such countries, where I come from.
Moreover, I'd argue that a factor was the idea that English settlers came as families instead of as unmarried men, like the Spaniards.
At any rate, I am not saying you are wrong. The evidence seems to point towards a different idea, but it is possible that I am wrong or stuff.
Please recommend a book to read. List for 2015
I want to make a list of books to read in 2015. Can you please recommend some that you think are most impactful or you like the most? Thanks
I've often thought about how long until an entire system can be automated to the point where zero humans are involved - not in the running, maintenance, making money to hire the servers to run it...how would the law deal with such a system? How would society?

The closest analogy I can think of is legal trusts, that have a stated purpose with little room for interpretation, but still has a human performing the operations.
fabulist, I kind of agree with you that this tool has a low chance of success, but...

...all I see is a tool that allows secure communication and protects people's privacy. If we want to avoid living in a future where a police state monitors everything people do and say at all times, we have to somehow allow for people to maintain privacy and communicate privately.

Your attitude seems like a really slippery slope: If I write an email to someone and PGP encrypt it, as many people do today, would you similarly say that I'm being "covert" and "dark"? Where do we draw the line?
Wherever possible, a company would have three workers filling out a shift rather than one.

I thought we have less than 66% unemployment?
There's also a broader picture -- that this effect arises because we use discrete, independent words to describe inter-dependent phenomena. The concepts of momentum and position are not good 'factorizations' of reality, so trying to talk about it in those terms leads to structural problems when you increase precision.

It's the same kind of problem you get when you try to talk about objective/subject morality, or whether science can prove things.

Another example I give:

The Sun revolves around the Earth -- True from Earth's perspective.
The Earth revolves around the Sun -- True from Sun's perspective.
They both revolve around their center of mass -- True in Newtonian model.
The both follow straight geodesics in spacetime -- True in Einsteinian model.

Everything is true in some approximation. The idea is to increase your precision so that you can find truths that incorporate more information and thus provide greater insight and generality. If your language doesn't have enough 'bandwidth' to carry the information of -- that is, mimic the structure of -- your experiences, you have to develop more structured abstractions, or you'll lose clarity and expressive power.

So, for instance, you wouldn't have to prove that unicorns don't exist: you just have to show that providing more specific information doesn't result in a lack of clarity in a general model. A theory of three-legged unicorns offers no advantages over a model of n-legged unicorns because unicorns don't exist.

But now I've gone off the deep end...
They mean the same thing. Another word would be Engineer.
Exactly, though movies often aim not at realism but something better. How to achieve that?

So far, it's taken a lifetime of trial-and-error in every aspect of movie making to find what works (which happened to be at 24fps). 48fps might too.
In my opinion they are two words for the same thing: Someone who builds software.

The word programmer refers to the literal act of writing the code, while to me the word developer implies writing the code, but also all the other "software engineering" aspects of developing software. If you wanted to be technical, you could say a programmer just codes, while a developer codes but also determines requirements, develops a specification/scope, etc.

I refer to myself with both interchangeably, and I assume most others do as well. I really don't consider them to be different in any meaningful way.
Google tipped off the FBI to arrest Colorado man
Judging by their github, they have a lot of work to do.

https://github.com/u99/slur/
This is a press release, the actual law / regulation is slightly more nuanced. It is perfectly OK to operate a jammer in your premises, given that it doesn't interfere with authorized radio communications outside your premises.

For example, every time you operate your microwave oven, you operate a 1kW RF jammer in 2.4GHz band, but because of the Faraday cage built around it (in theory: infinite attenuation; in practice: 30dB attenuation), it doesn't interfere with authorized communications outside your premises.
The arguments being made here are absurd.

There's a huge difference between "causing interference to other signals" or "managing [a hotel's] network in order to provide a secure and reliable Wi-Fi service," and willfully sending malicious packets designed to disable other wireless networks. The latter is buried in the text, but is what they are asking for permission to do. It's somewhat unclear how such behavior is an FCC interference issue rather than a criminal matter.

It's amazing that this is compared to "a homeowner using her cordless telephone that interferes with a neighbor's phone" and "a housewife whose use of a baby monitor device causes interference to a neighbor's garage door opener."

It does lead to an interesting question: if seeing a wireless network, which an automated system will not be able to confirm is actually on their property (consider the plight of nearby homes and businesses!), constitutes a threat that can be attacked, is it allowable for an adjoining property owner, or a guest with a wireless network, to see the hotel's network as a threat, and attack it in the same way?

The "alternatives" that hotels might be forced to implement if hotels aren't allowed to attack other networks are similarly entertaining:

>For example, a hotel could decide to prohibit guests from bringing Part 15 devices on the hotel's property. Alternatively, a hotel could limit the areas where Part 15 devices may be used, for example, by restricting their use to guest rooms or common areas.

I would love to see any hotel attempt this, even for one day.
In a product or marketing sense?

Sounds like the product side has been figured out... the essay is pretty thorough.
NYT facing $50M deficit, digital subscribers flat at 800,000
This is very interesting, but of course who (aside from art students) would want to do this? If you make a piece of autonomous software (a bot) that can earn its own money, why let it keep it, spend it, and live its own weird little bot life?
I am not sure how I feel about Assange hiding in the embassy. I've read about the circumstances leading up to his extradition request, and I can understand why he would believe that the prosecution is at least in part politically motivated. Please review the evidence below before you make up your mind.

Timeline of the scenario: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11949341

An arrest warrant was issued on August 20, 2010. The next day, Stockholm chief prosecutor Eva Finne reviewed the charges and canceled them. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11049316

> Chief Prosecutor Eva Finne dismissed the 'rape' investigation altogether: “I have discontinued the preliminary investigation of the charge (sic) originally designated as rape. There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.”

https://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/Affidavit_of_Julian_Assange.h...

Assange is interviewed by police, released, and allow to leave the country. After he's left the country, on September 1, the decision was overridden by the Swedish Director of Prosecution, who reopens the case against him.

> The woman of whom Mr. Assange is accused of the offence of "lesser rape" (a technical term in Swedish law) sent an SMS to a friend saying that she "did not want to accuse JA [of] anything" and "it was the police who made up the charges". The other woman tweeted in 2013 that she had never been raped. Both women’s testimonies say that they consented to the sex. [S]enior prosecutor [Finne] already dismissed the ’rape’ accusation, saying that there were no grounds for accusing Mr. Assange on this basis. But a third prosecutor, lobbied by a politician who was running for attorney general, took over the investigation and resurrected the accusations against Mr. Assange.

https://justice4assange.com/ [note that this is not a credible news site, but it links to further sources and legal documents such as https://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/Affidavit_of_Julian_Assange.h... ]

That politician is Claes Borgström, a also a lawyer. He allegedly applied pressure to reopen the case and become the women's lawyer, and was interested only in media spotlight:

> One of two women who accused Julian Assange of sex crimes moved to fire her controversial lawyer Claes Borgstrom late last month after she lost faith in his ability to represent her. [She] charged that Borgstrom was more interested in being in the media spotlight than providing her legal counsel, and has often referred her inquiries to his secretary or assistant.

http://rt.com/news/assange-prosecutor-judge-speech-992/

There seem to be a number of unusual or suspicious aspects to the overall case, that give me the impression that its motivations include something beyond the pursuit of justice.
if (test)
{
body;
}

if (...

So, 5 lines each. Not 6. I miscounted.

if (test1) body1;
if (test2) body2;
if (test3) body3;
if (test4) body4;
if (test5) body2;

Between the two formats, I greatly prefer the second. It is understandable at a glance and makes the possible error in the last line stand out much more. In practice, I usually encounter the first style -even in cases as trivial as single-function-call-per-if.
North Korea does not have the sophistication to carry out this attack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hUegMTSh0U#t=59
Film may last longer than the hardware used for delivering DCPs, but that's surely a matter of optimizing costs. The DCP delivered to a theater is not intended to be archival. Indeed, given that it's lossily compressed (via JPEG 2000, of all things), it's not even appropriate for an archive.

What should be archived instead is the DCDM, which is uncompressed and unencrypted. And it shouldn't be archived on a mechanical HDD which will obviously fail within 10 years.

But I digress. The point is that we have better long-term storage options than HDDs; they just wouldn't be economical for delivering content to theaters. There just isn't any reason for archiving and delivery to be coupled.
move over thepiratebay, kickass.so is my favorite torrent site now!
Flic: The Awesome Smart Button
AppYourCar – Easy and Safe Way to Use Your Phone in Your Car
lol! Am I the only one trying to understand why Stripe felt reason to give moralist post? "We’re proud to work with organizations defending digital freedoms such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation ... We don’t always endorse what businesses sell through Stripe, but" I mean props, but are you doing this because you figured out the vibe on the internet is that Sony is an souless and shallow company or is it you don't want N.K.'s elite hackers to get an idea you're gun-ho-america on this release and target you?