skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> faulty intelligence is to blame for the Iraq war, it's difficult for me to encourage less intelligence surrounding foreign intelligence gathering

How about - how would you rather spend your money, spying on foreigners living in destitution, or fixing our roads? The international spy network the US maintains is probably a paltry drop in the bucket of the preposterous defense budget in this country, but honestly anything to curtail that black hole of taxpayer dollars is a win in my book.

If we weren't destroying the lives of millions around the globe with our imperialism, we wouldn't have enemies to suicide bomb us with planes to require massive spy networks to try to catch American dissenters planning to commit jihad against us. The military industrial complex only exists insofar as the American people are complacent to being global police forcing their will upon anyone who does not fall in line with what the US wants. And that is after we already have trade sanctions that can decimate countries overnight.

This isn't 1970 anymore. We don't need to have a dick waving contest with the next largest nuclear arsenal trying to ruin the lives of billions of people in a juvenile game to show who is the coolest kid, whose god is the best, or whose economic model should rule the world. Maybe its time to just back the fuck off and take our tendrils out of every nation on Earth for once and maybe try to be good to our fellow man.
Lots of things here so my response is going to be a little jumbled :)

Yeah, regression to mean definitely a thing. It can topple justifiably confident people and/or prop up frauds.

In my experience, decision by committee has never worked when times are tough. When times are tough you just need to be able to trust your leadership to know what they are doing and not micro manage them (and not have them micro-manage you).

When times aren't tough, then anything will work :)

Really, there is no such thing as full-disclosure of information or decision-making. But, you should have full-disclosure of goals so everyone is pushing in the same direction.

Your CEO will have info you don't have. Second-guessing him when times are tough will just lead to poison. And anyway, even in decision by committee you'll have people who exude confidence being able to sell their ideas better etcs. They will just do so with no accountability.

I'm not sure people tolerate setbacks any better in the long-term regardless of whether they were part of the decision or not. Humans are revisionists. I've definitely heard comments in the line of "He's the CEO, why is he asking us?" and "I said that would happen. " when things are going bad.

I think of "confidence" as complexity-hiding rather than information-hiding. Basically, it's saying "you can trust me to do my job. Worry about yours."

At the end of the day, working in any team is going to be based on how much you can trust everyone else to do their jobs. If you can't, time to move on.
Python: We Still Can't Do Generalized Linear Mixed Models, So Call R.
Haha I feel you on that. It's very important for people to understand the basic way C.C. works: a security target or protection profile with the security features needed (can't leave anything out!); an EAL that shows they worked hard (or didn't) to implement them correctly. I'd explain what EAL4 means but Shapiro did a much better job below [1]. That most of the market has insufficient requirements with EAL4 or lower assurance shows what situation we're in. Hope you at least enjoyed the article as I haven't been able to do much about the market so far. ;)

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20040214043848/http://eros.cs.jh...
xlwings looks absolutely amazing. Thanks for pointing it out!
We understand machine learning itself, it's the problem space that needs to be understood. That's why it is such a black box - you never know the complexity of the model you need to build before you tackle it.
Speaking for GP: The problem with the word 'culture' is that it has an evaluating component (more culture = good), which I don't think is what GP meant. Maybe a better term would be "amount of hard rules in society", i.e. how many rules do you have to follow as a member to be accepted. In those terms, from personal experience, I'm pretty sure that Japan >> Western Europe > USA - correct me if you think otherwise.

Edit: I recommend watching the making of "Aliens" [1]. Young American (J. Cameron) goes to England to direct a British film crew, experiences surprisingly big cultural clash and the whole project almost ends in chaos, even though everyone was working at a very high quality level.

Edit2: Just to preempt here, yes I know Cameron is Canadian, but he clearly comes out of American movie making culture, so I took a shortcut there.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V--gH9ayR-o
I suggest checking out the blog at https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/.

He has written a ton of stuff about VCs, programmers, etc. His riffs on the Gervais Principle are really good. He followed that up with some other gold.

The scale-of-10 stuff is his concept of how there is a mismatch of skill and power in the tech business world -- particularly between the programmer and the business folks. For example, highly-rated business people don't even work in tech -- they do other finance like private equity or hedge funds. That means that most of the top VCs are maybe 7s, and they're bitter about their relatively low status among their B-school peers. That also means that the top tech people (the 10s) struggle to find business people who are their equivalent of awesomeness. This is a short summary.. read the original stuff on the blog.

Some folks on HN do not like MO, so they seem to downvote him out of principle rather than based on the content. While I think that his tone can be terse at times (it seems to have gotten better in the past year or so), the content is often frighteningly spot on. I think that this makes some people uncomfortable.
I am somewhat familiar with the history of these cases, and I would disagree that most lawyers thought it settled because this case is subtly but significantly different. The Sega etc. cases were about binary interoperability, which I'd agree is well-settled law. The thing that most of us programmers get confused about is, APIs are for humans to design systems that interoperate with other systems. They are not necessary for binary interoperability, at least for Java.

To understand what I mean consider this: You can design an API for file handling that looks nothing like the Java API and yet compiles down to exactly the same JVM bytecode. Case in point: Jython and JRuby. It is the byte code level interfaces that cannot be copyrighted because they are purely functional. The human readable Java API on the other hand are just one form of expression of that underlying functionality.
Or use pymc 3 for the bayes equivalent. It's Better anyways. Yes one can also use rpy2. I think glmm is a gsoc project or an upcoming pr but not 100% sure.
You're in for a treat, then. A blockchain is a world computer. Each program on the computer has its own storage that nothing else can write to, so anyone sending a transaction to the computer knows exactly what the result will be. (Most blockchains only have one program, like Bitcoin. Others have multiple programs that can call each other, like Ethereum.) This shared, unforgeable platform can be used to coordinate interactions between individuals, corporations, or other entities.

This technology gives mankind a new superpower: we can interact with anyone on the planet with predictable results and near-zero transaction costs. Interactions that only involve information, like financial markets, can be guaranteed to follow the rules of the blockchain, which will eliminate all financial middlemen you pay fees to today. Real world interactions can't be governed by software, but they can be guided by software. Reputation systems that run on blockchains will tell you exactly how likely you are to be satisfied with a real world interaction, so you can interact with complete strangers who live anywhere on the planet.

I think most trade will be blockchain-mediated in the near future.
Yep.

It's impossible to have actual modular code in C. A real shock for people coming from higher level languages.
fair enough, that's been my experience
Talk to them early now. I still distrust about the consultants. Understand there may be other reasons for desire to outsource (personal connection, returning favour, step towards more work with consultants in future.) Make your offer not just something that will make you look great and will also make your manager look great and their life easier. Here's an idea: offer to be the point man for interfacing with the consultants. Do you take charge of the interaction, get on their side as well, and then when all things go sideways, step in yourself and clean up the mess. After all, by that time you'll be the only one who knows how to fix it.
So we stop spying on people?

Let me ask you: do you think it is better or worse that we _know_ about ISIS?

Mind you, Obama knows enough about ISIS that he is confident to keep troops out of the Middle East. Would he have that confidence if it weren't for the spy network?

Or would it be closer to a George Bush ordeal with Iraq War. George Bush was working off of a CIA that was cut by 20% to 30% by Clinton. He was practically flying blind. (Yes, when you lose 25% of your _workers_ between 1990 and 2000, the CIA will begin to make some pretty crappy decisions)

Here's another question. Do you think Israel would have continued to stand down against Iran if it weren't for the intelligence sharing programs between US and Israel? Intelligence stops wars. Intelligence tempers decisions. When leaders fly blind, they instead make hasty decisions and over-react to threats. Lets say the US stops spying on Iran... what do you think Israel will do without any information?

Hell, there's a reason why the US spies on Israel, and Israel spies on us. Even allies spy on each other: its the most reliable source of information. Even _with_ information sharing agreements, countries will spy on each other behind each other's backs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

Frankly, I'd want to know what Israel's plans are if we stopped giving them information. Don't you? I mean, yeah, we support them and all... but lets hope they're not gonna do anything crazy (like... use their nukes, or something).

Or do you think Israel will actually tell us these details, even if they are our Allies? Nah man, the only way you make decisions as a leader is to spy on other leaders, figure out what they're thinking, and then make plans based on that.
Uber will let drivers track your location, but only if you agree
Haha. Yeah, often times it does feel like the grass is greener on the other side.

Which is why having an actual offer is great to bolster your asking number and your commitment to your current employer.

Either way, it's win win :)
Same-ish experience (in DE) -- I hadn't taken down my temporary plate from my window and had my real one. Meter-cop walking by offered to throw it out for me and told me I couldn't have both.
Great point, my bad!
Why would any business want to use a system like this? I don't think I would want everyone knowing all of my suppliers, especially my competitors.

On top of this, it could bring un-needed attention to something you have absolutely no control over. I don't want random groups of social justice warriors nitpicking everything in my supply chain and boycotting my business..and neither will anyone else running a business.

Anyone that does use a system like this will have their business pulled out from under them.
I realize this is sarcasm; what's the underlying point? That there are no GLMM libraries in the Python world?
While agreeing faulty intelligence was probably responsible for the Iraq war I don't think it was the spy agency kind.
Type 'git open' in Terminal to open the GitHub repo in the browser
Interesting! It's almost as if we've evolved out the need to have children (no need for free hands working the fields, the ability to have sex for recreation instead of procreation, and children typically providing limited financial return compared to their historical role).
The EFF felt it needed to mention it's fighting this since 2006 but they left out the name of one Edward Snowden. I feel this is a dick move.
He wasn't convicted, so in the eyes of the law he is still innocent.
Note the difference - "technologies used in Bitcoin were in development for X years" vs. "Internet as a whole concept of network of network was in development for Y years".
Thanks for that excellent explanation of the terms in question about North-South, etc. It gives me a good visual perspective of it, too. Awesome. :)
Why do people think that surveillance is going to thwart real terrorist attacks? Terrorists are not stupid. Bin Laden stopped using his satellite phone in 1999 and the NSA did not intercept a single piece of audio intercept data from Bin Laden ever again. The 9/11 hijackers were mostly engineers and barely even touched technology. HUMINT is the only way to catch real terrorists IMO.
What is the xhamster link to URL of the video?
Works fine for me without holding. The price doesn't change much in the 30 minutes it takes to exchange. The swings of EUR/USD are larger in the days it takes to make a traditional transaction.

Converting to currency is instant here and so are intranational bank transactions. It's also possible to pay utilities with BTC.

Cheaper and faster is enough to win me over regardless of historical price development.
> Jared Diamond speculates various reasons for why the people there didn't develop into a post-hunter-gatherer civilization (or much beyond that). While much of his work has been disputed

So it would be a waste of time to read Guns Germs and Steel, since it is mostly disputed? What would be a good alternative then?
Going by CPI it's actually about $2,800 in today's money. Still a significant amount of cash though.

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=666.00&year1=19...
Yes, but I was referring to the making up a method section of their complaint.
Takes me back to my Casio Databank watch... now that was a serious piece of geek equipment. :)
Could you elaborate on the stability part of your comment?
Remember the Franklin Rex? It was an organizer in a PCMCIA slot?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REX_5000
I've seen this argument several times. The flaw with it though is that it confuses growing resource needs with centralization. Even if a large percentage of people are no longer capable of easily hosting a full node, the benefits of decentralization are there. The resources required are not insane, so "normal" people (read: not power elite) are capable of running a node, and so there is still enough decentralization so that no entity can corrupt the blockchain. Besides that, the rate of transaction growth is slower than growth in bandwidth and disk space costs, so things will likely get better.
Most people can tell a crackpot when they see one. Symptoms include incoherent rambling, wild exaggerations and a lust for attention.
Intelligence also overthrows societies and destroys lives for raw material gain in the hands of those who would use it for such.

Can we assume white knights are in charge here?
The technologies used for both bitcoin the internet have been in development for thousands of years.
> Bitcoin whitepaper was released in 2008. Before that even the concept of cryptocurrency hardly existed.

Digital currency was, as I understand, the application usually highlighted for secure (cryptography-based) distributed capability-based computing, as typified by the E programming language in 1997. Not sure if there are precedents going back further or not.
Thanks. This was very helpful. I had no idea it was even possible to get a new SSN. Mind if I ask:

- Did you find any 3P services like AllClear ID compelling/useful? Sounds like Consumer Reports isn't a fan of these types of services vs. self-monitoring.
- You mention snail mail > phone. What about email?
I'd say it's still there, it's just running on a background thread. :)
The 68000 really took over from the 6502, even though it was completely incompatible. There is a 16-bit 6502, called the 65816, from WDC. They are still in production today and were used in some very high volume applications, like the SuperNES game console, but only really in the Apple IIgs personal computer. By the time the 65816 came out the 68000 was well established both in workstations and in the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and the Macintosh. The 68000 family had a long life and competed quite well against x86 for a while.
Intelligence does jack diddly crap. If a spy spies on you, you'll never know your entire life.

CIA moves a bit beyond "intelligence" work with Seal Team 6 and the trigger on drone strikes. CIA is closer to "Paramilitary". But the pure HUMINT work that the CIA does is extremely important to understanding the world.

Can we assume white knights are in charge here?

Elect a good president in 2016. Lets keep the white knights in charge. Warmongerers are definitely vying for power.

With the presidency comes command and control of the largest, strongest, most advanced nuclear missile stock on the planet. And control of the largest navy. And control of the largest army.

Believe me, intelligence is needed to keep those guys pointing their guns at the right targets.
Goodbye jsonb_replace, hello jsonb_set (Postgres)
You haven't really said anything at all to support your comment. You merely trash bitcoin then leave it at that without any explanation or facts.
iPython Notebook is great. Making it the norm for exploring/teaching ideas in a coding context is a great trend.

One other thing I hope comes along is annotated mathematical formulas/expressions. Any time I see a mathematical symbol I want to be able to hover over it and get its definition (in the context it's being used) and other relevant information. So often I see formulas in articles/books where they don't explain everything. It makes it really hard for outsiders/amateurs to catch on to the ideas being discussed.
Yahoo has actually regressed in that respect. Previously, Yahoo mail, like Hotmail, did not mine your email content for displaying targeted ads. In 2011, Yahoo changed their policies and started displaying "relevant ads".
Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling (2013)
>>Let me start by saying that unlike Mr. Shaw, I am not a writer. I'm an engineer.

Zed Shaw, whilst his approach to certain issues may be questionable, is not "a writer rather than an engineer".

Zed is known as one of the most prolific and capable software engineers around and I have heard his C code for Mongrel 2 server https://github.com/zedshaw/mongrel2 described as being amongst some of the best examples of C code to study, learn and understand (trying to find the link that said that). I hold his work in high regard.

I don't agree with everything that Zed does and think it's a pity that his combative and dogmatic nature detracts from the core message about his work, but the author of this blog post is off track if he is trying to suggest that Zed doesn't know what he is doing and is "a writer" rather than "a software engineer". Zed is a (cantankerous) software engineer and a writer.

The attempt to discredit Zed's credentials just discredits the blog post and its author. When criticizing, criticize the work rather than the person.
Of course the problem is, if you're passing a pointer to a data structure to a function, the function doesn't know the size of the data structure unless you pass that as another argument.
These slides are great, I was thinking of presenting something similar to a bioinformatics lab group I am a part of. Could I adapt some of these slides?
Sci-Fi worth consuming
I agree, I like R and python for certain things. (python for most things and R for statistics and visualization).

However, I really don't agree with the "X works best for me but Y might work better for someone else so let's not fight" argument. Doesn't that imply that the question "Which is better, X or Y"? shouldn't be asked? On the contrary, I think that's often an important question when you need to practically get stuff done, choose between libraries, etc, and I want to know people's opinions.
It lets you interact with a version of webkit via python. Useful for writing programs to interact with websites that normally require a user to press buttons.
Part 3:

"Wait a tic... Where's the Makefile? I've got just about as much chance of finding it as the FBI does of finding Jimmy Hoffa. Am I just supposed to imagine it into existence?"

I think the point is that the make command can use implicit rules even if there is no Makefile. It knows how to compile C source files. (This could be confusing if you know about "make" but don't know about implicit rules.) For example:

$ ls
hello.c
$ cat hello.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
puts("hello");
return 0;
}
$ make hello
cc hello.c -o hello
$ ./hello
hello
$

Later: "So, I'm just supposed to poke in some code, go to my terminal, type this magic 'make' word, and expect a built and working program, right?"

Yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to do. Try it, it should work.

Part 10 mentions strncpy() as a safer strcpy(). It isn't. http://the-flat-trantor-society.blogspot.com/2012/03/no-strn...

(Disclaimer: I haven't read Zed Shaw's book, and I don't intend to.)
Or, you know, old-school 'programming' by combining Unix utilities from the 1980s.

$ wc foo file.txt
To be fair, in Linux, X window GUI sucks in general. For Mac system, everything besides Quicktime sucks.

Also NPAPI sucks compared with ActiveX.

Flash in its original popularity was its vector animation streaming capability, think SVG withe a timeline with streaming. Plus a decent ECMA scripting environment, and later hardware accelerated 3D apis and C++ compilation support. It's a good platform past its prime time and caught in a marketing controversy in an unfortunate mobile age.
This is not going to work unless it is enforced by software running on the HN servers. Many of the hiring posts are posted by non-hackers who don't give a flying roomba about specs and correct formatting. The ideal format would be something generated by a set of dropdowns and textareas, but then again, would it still be HN?
My advice as a random person on the internet, let it go.

1. If it is nine women making a baby in a month, then it's doomed. Your boss may be protecting you and your team by outsourcing responsibility for delays and failure.

2. If it is doable, it may be worth the extra cost of bringing it online faster using consultants. In addition, the consultants may be able to get out in front of the similar work in the other project you are working on...a pseudo-spike maybe...and add value to that project as well.

3. Part time consultants for full time projects aren't a good idea. Solo consultants for team projects aren't either.

4. The idea of undercutting the outside consultant's price is a bad one. Consultants are valuable because of their experience and expertise. And anyway, without knowing the structure of the competing offer, there's no way to make sense of reduced pricing. Some consultants low ball and then add extras.

5. The idea of employees negotiating big bonuses project by project probably doesn't feet your employers business model. Awarding you the project means losing capacity on the other one. And as you note, they could just require you to work overtime and not pay you anything else.

6. You simply don't have enough information. There may be many sound business reasons for outsourcing the work or internal corporate politics.

7. Bottom line is that the higher ups have looked at the situation and made a decision. If they had wanted your input they would have asked. If they had wanted to pay you extra to work on it, they would have approached you.

Wait and see what happens and learn. Maybe at the retrospective there will be an opportunity to set up future projects if consulting is really what you want to do.

Good luck.