skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thiel's view of the future is pretty aligned with the Singularity people.

As for the future of nanorobotics, I recommend you watch this interview with Robert Freitas, an expert in nanotechnology and nanomedicine [1]. The implications of nanotechnology will be huge.

He claims that nanorobotics will emerge in the late 2020's and become dominant in the 2030's. They won't just cure cancer. They'll be able to a cure whole host of other diseases that are seen as incurable today, including aging.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UVet-OCFdI
That's a shame. I'm not a huge fan of Rogen's, but I saw a screening of this a few weeks ago (the first public screening, actually), and it was probably my favorite work of his so far. It's weird to read it framed as "a movie about the assassination of a sitting foreign leader," because it didn't feel that way. Yes, that plot is technically true, but it feels like its just background for the comedy. It's actually very light for most of the time, with James Franco joking around with the leader and learning his more human side.

I don't want to give anything else away. It's just a shame.
Take a look at my discussion with mindcrime for more details on my stance.
To some extent I blame the Silicon Valley cult of recent grads, where "25 is the new 55" as someone once put it to me.

One of the things you get from doing something for decades is a very broad and deep understanding of the entire system. If you've been a developer for 35 years you've not only seen fads come and go, but you've also had a chance to use numerous systems from numerous perspectives and on both sides of the user/developer fence.

It only works if you've kept learning though. I've found that older devs occupy an extreme "U" distribution -- they're either utterly outdated or they're super-brilliant and can leverage tons of experience.

Another source of the problem is a lack of emphasis on -- or even contempt for -- UX among systems level (so-called "neckbeard") type developers. "Real men don't need ..."

Last but not least you've got the business models of many infosec companies which revolve around "streaming" constant "definition updates," patches, and selling loads of different one-off fixes for little problems.
Maybe they should use AI to block the non-stop spammers I seem to get on the service that drained my account of credit.
I think it takes a lot of courage to say "No, you can value us at $800 million instead of a billion." There are reasons to do that, but it means some money is being left on the table either via dilution or lower capital raise.

There's a secondary question (can someone answer?) of is it tax advantageous to do this? Does it benefit the first a lot to issue options at a cheaper price?
Those among us with a bit of perspective would be. Do you imagine that the leader of our nation would call for the movie to be banned? Don't think so.
I still really can't figure out how you characterised that particular post as 'snarky'. You complain of 'massive politics', but you're contributing to it with heavy mischaracterisations like that, turning an apologetic, helpful, and informative email into 'a snarky reply'.
So....Sony issued a false threat supposedly from the hackers, or otherwise convinced all these movie theater chains to not run the movie?

I'm failing to see the beauty of this plan, or even how somebody with a room-temperature IQ could think this is a smart move even if the original Sony hack was legitimate (which I have no reason to disbelieve is the case).
That's like saying "a transporter would allow you to instantly teleport an object from one place to another". You're describing something that has no basis in existing technology. Currently nanomachines are simple mechanical devices like gears or wheels. To "identify and remove cancerous cells from the body more intelligently than the body's immune system" would require technology that can't even be imagined right now. Nobody can forsee the distant future, but what you're describing has no basis in scientific reality, at present.

There are two reasons why cancer is so difficult to treat: (1) cancerous cells ARE your own cells that are behaving differently, so distinguishing cancerous cells from non-cancerous cells is very difficult. And (2) cancer cells are constantly evolving, so even when you do identify such unique features, the cancer mutates and changes this identifying feature. Decades of research has been devoted to identifying such "Achilles heels" of cancers that allow them to be uniquely and sustainably targeted by therapies and the number of successes can be counted on one hand. We already have technologies that allow you to identify unique features on cancer cells (e.g. monoclonal antibodies) and deliver chemotherapeutic drugs just to those cells (e.g. antibody-drug-conjugates) and they don't work too well.

Cancer is hard and nanomachine research is in its infancy. I can't predict the future, obviously, but I can guarantee you that people won't be using nanomachines to treat cancer for the forseeable several decades, if ever.
I am pretty sure you would have said the same thing about infections right up to the discovery of penicillin.

There very well could be some breakthrough in immunotherapy, where the treatment is to send a cancer biopsy to some lab that makes a custom drug, and the cancer is held at bay indefinitely.
My initial thought was the opposite. There's no way this is a credible threat, but the theater chains can pretend it is and use it as a negotiating tactic against Sony for better terms.
(Going to take some downvotes today)

The incident is likely to be remembered as a failure of Hollywood leadership. As the attack progressed, both studios and the industry’s Washington-based trade associations — the theater association and the Motion Picture Association of America — remained in a defensive posture, and ultimately found no way to save the film or to stem the flow of Sony’s private data, which has been released online by hackers in waves since Nov. 24.

How out of touch is NY Times with the times?

The Oscars are a joke and, come on, so is Hollywood. The latter is good at providing vacuous entertainment and the former is a self-congratulating organisation. It's an incestuous industry that only seeks out an opportunity where there are millions of dollars to be gained. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. However, don't expect Hollywood to do the moral/ethical thing. With Sony getting sued, they saw this was no longer their big profit making movie they wanted it to be, so they pulled the plug.

Nothing to see here, folks. Low revenue = no movie. It takes a lot of money to make films these days and they don't want to risk losing (more) money.

The movie itself was most likely not going to bring some insight or analysis to North Korea or Asian history or political dynamics, so I don't understand why so many people are up in arms about it--no pun intended.

People are saying "terrorists won" and some Republicans are making a big stir on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339504803196928

https://twitter.com/hughhewitt/status/545346735510257664

America's low point in film history happened a long time ago, and yes, it was caused by Hollywood.

Also: "This Is Cyberwar, Not Tabloid Fodder", http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/12/17/this-is-cyberwa...
Rumors of threats against the theatres that showed the movie. Understandable that they'd pull it, but dangerous precedent indeed.
Thankyou for clarifying.
Undoubtedly related in some way, but it's hard to tell how much and in which direction. Microsoft is a huge organization and for the most part (from what we've seen from their behavior and from Snowden documents) they are for the most part on board with the US using the tech sector and their technology to gain intelligence and decision advantages overseas.

Essentially Microsoft wants the best of BOTH worlds. It wants to comply with government requests and it wants to win on the technological front.

Microsoft does NOT want to lose customers and their unique place in the market, however. It's going to be a very careful balancing act for them to both comply with US government requests and to maintain a veil of innocence to both domestic and foreign customers. So far the damage to their reputation could have been a lot worse and their PR has more than proven its worth.

I feel Microsoft is fighting on both fronts.
Another suggestion: OS upgrades. The best feature of the google branded or owned android lines is that the get unencumbered OS upgrades.
> It appears that Sony pushed really hard for a Christmas release when it would have made more sense to wait until summer when the furor would have most certainly died down.

This is pretty clear victim blaming, this is not clear. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis )
Too slow, gave up.
First touchscreen phone was the LG Prada, not the iPhone, fyi.
> On the other hand this movie just seems needless, tasteless and unlike say Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator", serves not to be properly satyrical, but rather just as a disgusting empowerment fantasy.

Based on what?
Simplyburgers hacked. 52.000 emails, phones, usernames, passwords leaked
If you haven't seen the movie (which she probably didn't either), then what's your basis for calling it "despicable"?

FWIW, I did see it at the time, and thought it was a fairly intelligent and sensitive depiction of what might happen to American society if Bush were murdered. In any case, why should such a "what if" scenario be off-limits to artists?
I'm from infosec, and I understand your point. However let me provide the infosec side of the story.

Any infosec veteran can tell you that defense is so much harder than offense. If you defend a system you need to be perfectly vigilant, know all the threats, have full knowledge about _everything_ that goes on inside your company/network, you can not let a _single_ system be compromised because once "they" have a foothold inside everything is possible.

Some examples I have seen over the years include dropped usb sticks in employee parking lots, internal taps on traffic disguised as (functional) laptop adapters, bugged phones, hacked printers punching holes in the firewall, mass spam emails that _someone_ is guaranteed to click. And that's just getting _inside_ your network.

Let me ask you, would you open an attachment sent to you by a coworker? Would you ask a "coworker" who's not wearing hier/her company badge/id to identify him/herself? Would anyone notice an abandoned nondescript black box plugged into the wall somewhere?

If you answered any question with "no" I'd say your security is not up to snuff, but then that's my job.

This is why infosec is so pervasive in everything that even comes near to computers these days. No chance should be given to the attacker, no matter how trivial it may seem and no matter how _inconvenient_. Security should be inconvenient to the point of almost preventing you getting any work done, because anything less is sure to fail you when you need it most.

Just my two cents ;)
The way I'd put it is, "Exercise changes how our bodies interpret and express our DNA to build healthier bodies".
I do it once a week...Usually starting on Wednesday (I'm starting again now) and either go till Thursday or Friday. Actually there are times I'm less ADD and a lot more productive.
The vast majority of infosec gives zero thought to any concern other than security, resulting in systems that are insanely complex with incredibly poor user experience.

At Ruxcon last year, one of the speakers mentioned that security 'recommendations' from infosec come so thick, fast, and complex, that not even security specialists (who are up-to-date and fully aware of all the issues) use them all. He then gave a few examples of security specialists ignoring their own recommendations because it was 'too hard to comply'.
> others got to Chile

At the south of the continent, it is far more common to travel to Argentina, to get free health care. As Argentina has a large public health system, (that has been gradually loosing a lot of quality in the past 20 years) it's common that poor people from Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay travel and get attention for free in Argentina's public hospitals.
Make your legacy code self destruct in Rails to force technical debt clean up
Epic Fail: 100 Years of the Fed
When in the middle of long refactorings, I'm notoriously terrible at going back and removing deprecated code. So, I made a gem that allows me to mark somewhere in the code to self destruct on a particular date. Prior to that date, you will see warnings in your test suite letting you know when and why the self destruct mechanism is there. After the date, it will start throwing exceptions in your test environment to basically self destruct the build. So far, it's been a great incentive/reminder to go back and clean up after myself.
permalink
I think for previous flights they've had couple of ships outfitted for stage recovery, in case they were able to pluck them out of the ocean. Presumably one of those can go pick it up off the barge. Or maybe just tie it down and tow the barge home.
I can't believe people actually take the NK threat seriously. I mean these hackers sold the information to journalists. If these were state hackers wouldn't they have just released everything immediately?

Some people seem to really live in a bubble
This is the new normal. The US government does this, the French do this, the Chinese do this, Syria does this, North Korea does this... etc.

As with other new frontiers of geopolitical leverage there will be a painful learning and a growing period for the internet. There's so many ways it could turn out and I fluctuate between being hopeful and pessimistic and what I will temporarily think is 'realistic'.
> Cancer is hard and nanomachine research is in its infancy. I can't predict the future, obviously, but I can guarantee you that people won't be using nanomachines to treat cancer for the forseeable several decades, if ever.

Want to make a Long Bet [1] on that? Years ago I would've never thought a private citizen would be delivering cargo to a space station with the goal of landing on Mars, but here we are. Reality can be unpredictable.

[1] http://longbets.org/
I don't see how he was wrong.

Transactions on the web exist, there are improvements to the UI but it is a social problem (I am afraid of my credit card being stolen) and business problem (Don't worry, trust us we won't let anything bad happen to your credit card).
The dictator was aired in 1940 when Hitler was still well-alive and the US was not at war against Germany.

I pretty sure some people were making the exact same comments back in these days.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Dictator
And they say North Korean hacking is often done from China. And the US tries actively to infiltrate North Korean computers... Sorry, I don't trust any source, it's just finger pointing.
Wired offers a different perspective of the same story
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-p...
And there I was, thinking it was all for the lolz.
I both agree and disagree. :)

The problem is that nobody's looking for deeper solutions to security problems. For most vendors, even enterprise and well financed ones, security is a bolt-on afterthought (along with privacy, a form of security). For most infosec people, infosec is a game of patching dams full of holes with chewing gum. (Or whack a mole if you prefer that metaphor.)

These two problems are related in that there's a feedback loop at work -- vendors don't prioritize security because infosec is bad for UX, and infosec is bad for UX because vendors don't give them anything to work with other than blocking things and hole-patching. There's also the reverse feedback loop in that vendors don't build in good security because infosec isn't delivering well thought out and deep innovations that don't wreck UX.

The whole situation is utterly pathological IMHO.

I gave a mostly theoretical talk on this at a conference called border:none last October in Germany:

https://www.zerotier.com/misc/BorderNone2014-AdamIerymenko-D...

[warning: big honkin' PDF]

I don't consider the ideas there entirely baked and they deal almost entirely with the networking domain, but I think the same "race against ourselves" argument applies to other aspects of infosec.
"Much of North Korea’s hacking is done from China."

If the hack was indeed state sponsored as this article claims (based on comments from unnamed intelligence officials), then it seems much more likely that the hack was done by Chinese hackers than North Korean.
I like what the prediction graph is trying to do, but the choice of colour makes it harder to interpret than it should be (some of the shades of light blue indicating a chance of a ticket in that price range actually stand out less than the default light grey). The thick grey outlines for the price average doesn't help with gauging the contrast either; perhaps a dotted line would be better?

There's a small visual glitch on the date picker in Safari which renders the "1/2" in 31/2014 as a unicode fraction glyph.
Interesting. I am not getting that error message, tried with Safari and FireFox on a Mac.
@bitL is correct. 48-74 hour fasting has shown to regenerate new immune cells [1]

Also as others have said it, you go over a bump and it becomes easy. Also, there is a window where I'm rather productive and less ADD when I'm fasting.

[1] http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/277860.php
I just read the book instead.
This is the correct answer. Venezuela is begging China for loans presently to delay an inevitable default. They were already in disaster mode before oil plunged. It's a smart move on Cuba's part to reconcile with the US.
Sony is not a political entity, they're a global multimedia conglomerate. It's not their job to make "awesome" statements defending free speech, or to turn against their distributors, or to rage against the machine. Their job is to make money selling, in this case, a comedy which has turned out to be more trouble for them than it's worth (which given the unlikely franchise potential of comedies, probably isn't much.)
Which censors don't claim that the objects that they wish to censor are needless, tasteless, and harmful to the good moral character of the people?
Once you start picking and choosing what deserves to be censored or not, it's already over.
There are interesting "free speech" implications to this too. E.g. North Korea seems to have succeeded in scaring off all the major theater chains from showing "The Interview" in theaters.
Google Is Going Through a Rough Transition
Right. I can certainly buy a joint China/NK venture with China providing the talent and resources, but I can't imagine NK has the ability to pull of any decent hacks.
This has to be a troll post. Cuba has operated under a violent, murderous, strict dictatorship for five decades. The exact opposite of politically free. Fidel was never afraid to murder his competition, or anyone that dared to oppose him in fact. If your country hasn't seen a leadership change since the 1950s, and you have zero freedom of speech or press, what you have is not freedom.
If they release everything immediately, there would be no leverage to make demands.

It is a valid question whether or not NK has the capabilities to cause harm. But if lives are at stake, why take the risk? It is just a movie after all.
Unless Business Insider has Japanese assets or employees that Sony could go after under Japanese law, yes.
North Korea's previous leader, Kim Jong-Il, was killed in 'Team America: World Police'. Impaled, actually.

So not only has this precedent been set, but it was done to the same country's leader by producers and directors in the United States.

Edit: This was done a decade ago.
This happens to pretty much every movie of a couple of actors in my home state in India. Random group makes threats to bomb theaters -> spineless theaters refuse to run the movie -> 2 weeks of negotiations with politicians -> movie comes out. There are two paths after that. Either it runs well because its garnered enough publicity, or it has already been leaked on DVDs. Sickening to see that happening in the US though.
Smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy'
I like how they clearly used blender to construct the model of where the lander ended up. Someone should tell them to turn on smooth shading, add a lamp and render that sucker.
It was an offensive stupid movie anyway. In the era of youtube and the internet, making a movie is no different then posting a youtube video. See Youtube comments to see what happens when you post something.

You have the right to upload a video, others have the right to tell you what they think of it.
I've been getting a kick out of North Korea's response: "Nah, we didn't do it, but who ever did, righton! <thumbsup>"
I really don't buy this. Attribution of anyone is incredibly difficult. It's easy for the US to officially point fingers and turn it into a geopolitical play. There is every incentive to do so: it's plausible, the media buys it, and it buys major points in the Us vs. Them narrative.
I'm a fervent leftist--I don't know if "liberal" is the right word--and I've long since abandoned the notion that US Democratic party is a group that speaks on behalf of my interests.

If it helps, I cherish this clip of Ron Paul and Ralph Nader discussing their similarities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J3-YoVPckk

That it's on CNN and Wolf Blitzer is just an inconsiderate ass is just the cherry on top to the larger point: you can have people from "different groups" that share some strong ideas. Personally I'd love it if both groups of people concentrated on their similarities over their differences to topple the status quo. After that we can quibble on the smaller issues. A single regime for a considerable length of time is rarely, if ever, a good idea.
They've stated their decision not to copy certain features such as rampant operator overloading. Is this what you mean by "Scala-bashing"?
> The attacks at Sony were routed from command and control centers across the world, including a convention center in Singapore and a computer at Thammasat University in Thailand. But one of those command and control servers, a computer in Bolivia, had been used before, in a limited set of cyberattacks on South Korean targets two years ago.

The evidence has to be better than this to make an accusation against a state. Botnets overlap a lot because the way they are built is with automated scanners that take advantage of common vulnerabilities. It isn't uncommon to find a botnet client that has been hacked a half-dozen other times and has had rootkits installed each time. A large part of sophisticated botnet droppers is removing all the previously installed botnets on a server where a vulnerability has been found.

Having one client in common with another attack network is a low or insignificant figure.

Similar applies to common modules found in other malware. Authors reverse engineer and re-appropriate techniques or libraries from other successful malware all the time. That is also not evidence of a link to North Korea.
Actually it looks like your entire commit history has been preserved in git, at least starting from 1997:

$ git log --pretty=oneline | wc -l
4753

$ git log ada086d0cec0be47811b3d686017e84e041a5201
commit ada086d0cec0be47811b3d686017e84e041a5201
Author: Repo Admin <nobody@gnupg.org>
Date: Tue Nov 18 14:06:00 1997 +0000

New repository initialized by cvs2svn.

The stats from my comment above were just from the parents git log start..end timeframe though.

Here looks to be the stat report from the entire history: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/352d28b459d0fc286dab