skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nope. Not even in the slightest.

There will always be those who are marginalized on the edge of society. That doesn't mean we shouldn't work to address those issues, but trying to reach some sort of utopia where everyone is perfectly included in society is delusional at best.

On the other hand, the NSA revelations present a pretty clear path to totalitarianism for 100% of the population. It would be pretty hard to argue that such a result can be outweighed by much more that doesn't include some sort of large swath of death.

I know from your past comments that you probably disagree with my "clear path" statement, so just to make sure... At it's absolute highest projection the transgender population is ~10% of the US. It would be extremely hard to argue that the NSA's overreach in power effects a smaller percentage than that, and even harder to argue that having a governmental organization with no accountability would be a positive influence on any portion of the population. And that's not even addressing the butterfly effect of so many of the NSA's programs.

A quick thought experiment: The two issues might be more intertwined than you think... any society that accepts transgender/transsexual individuals must contain some semblance of privacy. The NSA is an active opponent of any kind of privacy we hope to have. Thus, you could draw a straight line from NSA abuse to the further acceptance of LGBTQ individuals in society.

Edit: I hate calling out anon downvoters, but I'm gonna break my own rules and ask anyone to challenge my assumption that any kind of social reform takes precedence over the subversion of our fundamental political system and basis upon which we derive civil rights. (Pro tip: you can't, because civil rights are a priori a requirement of social reform)
This is very interesting, do you have any sources of information where I can read up about this?
Even a general site where information like this is curated.
As long as politics is not one-dimensional, there are completely reasonable cases where you get a rock-paper-scissors situation between 3 top candidates if voters select whomever is closest to them. That in turn violates the criteria that says the election result can't change if you add a non-winning candiate (rock beats scissors, but when paper enters the race now scissors is computed the winner).

This criteria is called "independence of irrelevant alternatives". A common criticism of Arrow's theorems usefulness is that it is a bit of a stretch to call paper an "irrelevant alternative" when rock-paper-scissors forms a cycle of preferences like that.

If politics is one-dimensional ("single-peaked preferences" in the article), then you never get this situation.

It's also important to note that a much more reasonable criteria exists called "local independence of irrelevant alternatives". This is the idea that total losers joining the race don't affect the result, however someone who is in the top rock-paper-scissors cycle (the "Smith Set") can still affect the result even if they don't win themselves. This is far more reasonable, as it's fairly arbitrary which of the candidates in that top cycle should win.

When there is no top cycle, the Smith Set is a single person (the "Condorcet Winner"). When there is a Smith Set, most reasonable voting systems will pick their winner somewhat arbitrarily as a member of the Smith Set, since everyone in the Smith Set beats everyone outside the Smith Set.
I would ask, what makes the resulting design different from, say, Datomic?
Depends on what you mean by "important" and "newsworthy". If you mean a topic that people will care about and that will sell papers, then hell yes. The general principle is, the more important (in affecting individual, social and planetary future) a topic is, the less mainstream cares about it.
You're just proving my point here. Wickard was a bad ruling which should have resulted some sort of correction (either impeachment or a change in the law)

I know how laws are made, that's why I want to make sure information gets to the people who need it to make good decisions. They may ignore that information, but at least they'll have it.
Tony Fadell: The first secret of design is  noticing
The Soviet empire was literally industrialized on the backs of slaves, in the truest sense of the word.

As a pedantipoint, this isn't really the case.

The Soviet coerced labor system was expansive and multifaceted and it's fair to say that much of the industrial and practically all agricultural work in the period was coerced. Penal forced labor (what you'd perfectly reasonably call slave labor) was a fraction of that. It was used for certain industrial and transportation projects and played a major role in raw materials extraction but, beside being murderous, it was also even more inefficient and corrupt than the rest of the Soviet economy.

The Soviet Union could not have industrialized on the backs of its slave laborers alone, even if it had wanted to.

Wikipedia's section seems to have references to fairly recent studies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Economic_role_of_the_Gula...
I'm in doubt about any real negative diplomatic or economic repercussions that prolific Chinese computer espionage has yielded for China. The strongest American responses to Chinese espionage have been from the Google and Github corporations. The U.S. government issues tepid responses [1] [2] [3] to incidents that would be considered some of the most impressive and extreme acts of espionage. (The U.S. government issued indictments for the operators behind [2], but this is essentially a no-op since they need to be on U.S. soil to be arrested.)

The fact is that the major powers of the world conduct espionage and that disclosures are not handled as acts of war. Discovered spies are typically placed in a persona non grata diplomatic status and granted safe passage back to their home countries. See U.S. spy Ryan Fogle. [4]

I don't mean to pick on China; I addressed it because it was the example you gave. Every major power has had at least one widespread computer espionage campaign discovered by Kaspersky, Symantec, Mandiant/FireEye, etc.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29817644 (White House computer intrusion by China)

[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-21502088 (U.S. Defense contractors' networks intrusion by China)

[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-21271849 (New York Times network intrusion by China)

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_declared_persona...
You think only one of them is in 3D. That is not correct.
How to Store a Zip File inside a Picture
So what does the US law say about spying on your own citizens? Wasn't the NSA acting within its powers too?
Blockspring Is Hiring a Lead Product Designer
This is the stuff of nightmares. My nightmares, anyway. A fair and speedy trial in which you are not allowed to argue against the charges you face.

It flies in the face of everything American and everything decent. There's a reason jury nullification is a thing - it's a check against the unbridled power and resources of the prosecution, and any laws that may be unjust by existing.

Seriously, it's crazy to me when shit is ruled inadmissible when the information clearly has everything to do with the case. And if I put myself in the shoes of a juror, if I pass a verdict and later find out part of the truth was withheld, I'm very much going to feel that I was used - a pawn in a broken system, and not at all a participant in justice.
I don't see how using propaganda would imply that the same information are being sewn multiple places.

Propaganda is merely the focused government effort to understand and engage key audiences to create, strengthen, or preserve conditions favorable for the advancement of government interests, policies, and objectives through the use of coordinated programs, plans, themes, messages, and products.

Different audiences are going to require different messaging.

The US's propaganda is quite different than China's propaganda when it comes to the exact physical end product, although the countries are starting to share more and more common tactical forms and procedures.

Of course what the US wants US civilians to think is different than was the US wants China to think is different from what US wants Chinese civilians to think is different from what China wants USG to think is different from what China was US civilians to think.

Propaganda is not a blunt instrument. It has to be and is targeted to specific audiences.
Just FYI there's been a huge devaluation of the yen/strengthening of the dollar. ¥500=$4.
Let your Car talk back to you with Fuel Book
I believe the battle in the Pamlico sound is where Blackbeard was finally defeated ... the sinking of his other ship occurred on the Atlantic side of the barrier islands.
Honestly, I'd be significantly more likely to know Snowden's name than the vice president. I feel like he made a major impact on society that will be written about in history books for years to come. If you don't follow politics closely, the vice president is simply not relevant. The only way you'd know their name is by remembering it from the last presidential campaign, where the his and the president's names were everywhere, or if a vice president happened to do something extraordinary, which if I'm not mistaken is not super common.

I hear people citing this specific stat all the time as a proof about how stupid or uninformed americans are, and every time I hear it it bothers me. Knowing the vice president's name is something that is neither useful nor relevant to most americans, and therefore not knowing it makes sense entirely. I honestly don't see how that makes them uninformed at all.
I think there's a distinction to be made between complexity/expense of production and complexity/depth of gameplay. AAA games seem to be maximizing the former and minimizing the latter. The average single-player AAA experience is a two-to-ten-hour long series of cutscenes and linear gameplay areas, with the multiplayer more than likely some reskin of Counter-Strike. Or look at iterations of the same/similar games - Firaxis' AAA Civilization: Beyond Earth felt shallow and lifeless next to their inaugural almost-indie Alpha Centauri, despite BE's fully voice-acted and 3D-animated leaders and AC's mere static portraits.

Or for the ultimate in non-AAA gaming, Dwarf Fortress. Looks like Nethack, plays like AutoCAD, devours time like nothing else.
Maybe you're right and those decisions are the best compromise given the circumstances. And I'm sure plenty agree, but they are also plenty that don't agree and nobody cared to explain the situation and ask for their opinion.

It reminds me one of the presidential debates. Question of national defense was briefly discussed. Both candidates agreed that it was important to "catch the bad guys". Then they disagreed on whether more ships were needed in the navy or something like that. Obama came up with a good joke, and that was it!!

In that context, I find it salutary that guys like Snowden provide some additional information on what is actually going on.
How is this different than hadoop?
A better way to collect StatsD metrics from containers
I use standalone SourceTree on windows, even though I develop in Eclipse.
Wow, I had no idea this law forbid women and minorities from getting concealed carry permits and/or carrying on campus (for better or worse, an alien generally has to be a permanent resident to get a permit).

You don't suppose some of those women want to be able to protect themselves from the real rape culture?

I also wonder how these "women, minorities, foreign students" would even know that others are carrying concealed weapons. (Further, a lot of us wonder how these special snowflakes will cope when they graduate and are in the real world, after being coddled all their lives.)
> Illegal: telecom metadata, various personal abuses by employees

Note that warrantless metadata collection is not illegal, per Smith v. Maryland.
What about testing? And working with large teams? I imagine large software and teams would be abstracted into separate interfaces. Is communication between teams just more difficult to manage? Is reality different from theory? Shouldn't each segment be testable and debug-able? How do you effectively execute a large project? Is mashing it all together more of a proof of concept than the final product? As an investor am I on the hook for more than I bargained for? Is technical debt a non-issue?
I'm so excited to score how many points?
> Granted this doesn't invalidate the Arrow paradox in any way, I'm just saying the paradox isn't true to life because one of its core tenants doesn't quite hold.

However, this plays rather fast and loose with the principles behind Arrow's theorem. First, you're violating the nondictatorial condition (you are the only person voting on your own choice), so it's kind of silly to apply the theorem here in the first place.

Secondly, you're saying that, as soon as Communism becomes an option (but only then), you'd rather die than serve the royal family.

I can see how this might be the case, but if so, you're fundamentally changing the meaning of choice B. It's no longer just the default state ("die of starvation"), but rather dying for a cause (Communism). It's not that the introduction of choice C suddenly means that you're now choosing B over A; it's that it also introduces choice D ("die as a martyr in the name of Communism", as contrasted with "die for no particular cause"). Your ranking is now C > D > A > B.

You have to understand that Arrow's theorem came about as the result of an effort to understand the way that firms make decisions, and the ways that voting structures of boards can influence corporations to make non-optimal decisions for the corporation. Your situation doesn't really apply to the definition of independence of irrelevant alternatives as implied by the context in which Arrow's theorem is applied (or the formal proof thereof).
Google official announced the open beta of HTTPS Load Balancing
considering that there are 30000 vehicle fatalities in the US a year, you have a 1 in 10k chance every year of dying in a car accident.

People dying in car accidents are a thing that happen with a much higher probability than winning the lottery, so maybe this is nature imitating art more than anything else.
Well, Datomic actually says they're CP, so that's one difference. (Linearizability of transactions)
I will try to explain, though I think it's obvious - at least, once you've read that comment (which is why I like it so much - maybe to others it was obvious beforehand, in which case I apologise for being dense).

Here is an article about this guy discarding beliefs that he's held for a long time. These are beliefs that I suppose you might call his doctrine, in that he held them without really questioning them. Well: great! Unquestioned beliefs, questioned and revisited, changed in the face of the evidence, or whatever. And he seems happy with the result.

How many similar beliefs might he hold in total?

If changing one set of beliefs for another is worth doing, what about some other set?

Would it be worth his adopting this as more active process, rather than simply waiting for events to demonstrate that some arbitrary set of beliefs are worth changing?

Is there a wider lesson here?

(Etc., etc.)
1. RRSP & TFSAs have limits much lower than the assumed contributions, so there are tax differences between the two alternatives.
2. Even slight tweaks to your assumptions (e.g. reduce investment returns to 6%, increase condo returns to 2%) equalize the two scenarios. If you're going to use such an ill-conditioned model, you really must spend significantly more time justifying all of its assumptions, or else show sensitivities to them.
It does breakdown. Twitter done right is a marketplace with network effects. ISP is an easily replaceable service. If I'm CNN I can't just pick up and leave Twitter for another Twitter at a lower cost. Same thing all the way down to a tech company with 10 people who use it to communicate outrages. People are already there. They expect you to be there too.
"Building a monolithic app allows you to crutch bad behavior and poor design without having to understand the realities of software. You can ignore scalability, clean architecture, concurrency, data modeling and graceful failures."

I 100% agree with you. I have found that monoliths, no matter how militant the architect is, will eventually have bad behavior slip in. It is the path of least resistance/junior programmer where someone will eventually shortcut the interface.

In micro services there simply are fewer ways to cheat. The only access a service has to another service is through the defined interface. The service providing that interface must also now support it as is going forward - the opposite of brittle. As you mentioned above, when dealing with another micro service the programmer must think about failure all the time, which is what they should have been doing anyways!

Thinking in micro services from the start is not that hard, but untangling a monolith can be very hard. Micro services came out of people realizing that huge monoliths are impossible to change because over time all the bad practices that crept in make them impossible to reason about.
I don't believe that it's AMD and Intel decision to provide crippled drivers to them. After all they never really updated these drivers after hardware become "legacy" and you won't find any package without OpenGL except what Windows 8+ installing via Windows Update. Anyway I had no intention to blame Microsoft there as likely they removed GL support from those drivers not to "harm GL", but just because they won't able to test it as it's not exist for them.

Other issue is that Windows 8+ had default behavior to replace manually installed drivers with GL by newer "Microsoft version" without GL, like that: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-...

In the end it's only Intel and AMD fault that they don't care enough to put pressure on Microsoft or at least release proper installers. BTW Intel's "The driver being installed is not validated for this computer" bullshit only prove how little they care about GL on Windows.

So comment above stated "opengl is basically fine on windows". No, it's not. Any person that tried to ship or support OpenGL-powered software know that.
> So what does the US law say about spying on your own citizens?

Given the hierarchy of law (e.g., the preeminence of the Constitution over other laws) and matters of interpretation, that's somewhat in dispute (see, for interpretation issues, e.g., the 2nd Circuit ruling finding that the mass metadata collection program was, contrary to the government's claims, authorized by Section 215.)

> Wasn't the NSA acting within its powers too?

Again, that matter is, at best, considerably in dispute.
It's easier to retaliate when the target lives just next to you than in another country. But (unless Snowden starts messing with the government again) more likely than intentional government-sponsored execution (er, "accident") is that some nutjob (er, "patriot") will take matters into their own hands. And that is vastly more likely when you're in the country and not abroad.
GFS is so dead few people even remember using it. But to say that something is "based on GFS" or "based on Colossus" is to say very little. If it stores data it is eventually "based on Colossus". You could say just as much if you said it was "based on ext4".
What? Only one of what is in 3D?
That's what so many said about Manning and look where he is now. Though I'm with you that if this happens, it would be great.
Cops Use DNA Analysis to Prove Chili's Waiter Spit in Customer's Drink
Humiliation as a Tool of Blackmail
^ Could not agree more!
If the parent commenter was actually supporting discrimination against foreigners (hint: said commenter wasn't), you wouldn't have needed to phrase that as a question.
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TANSTAAFL.

If I were a pure business person, I'd let you work for equity with the intent of structuring any exit, and as business person that would be my job, in such a way that the value of your equity would be as small as possible and mine would be as large as possible for what else could "pure business" be all about?

And if it makes me sound like some kind of sonofabitch, well that's how the Venture Capital funds would probably be treating me without a guardian angel on Sandhill Road. Which to my point is what's the normative case for any naive approach? It's that the naive person walks away with nothing because "being naive" means the person is vulnerable to the wolves, and wolves being wolves and not lapdogs aren't really interested in letting you step in their pudding.

Good luck.
Ah, you're right!

I misread "This section [...] illustrate[s] how replication and distributed transactions have been layered onto our Bigtable-based implementation." in the paper as meaning that Spanner is partly layered upon BigTable, but what it really means is that the implementation is based upon (as in, inspired by) BigTable.

Spanner actually has its own tablet implementation as part of the spanserver (stored in Colossus) and does not use BigTable. I've amended the diagram to reflect this.
No, Notes, No
Startups, Azure SQL DB team needs your help
Elon Musk is the highest-paid government employee
The overwhelming majority of US prisoners do not do work for the direct benefit of the population at large.
I'm pretty sure that Quadratic Voting is a way to assign prices to votes, whereas this theorem is about the features of a system in which the results are determined by vote. So the results of quadratic voting will meet this criteria because after the votes are bought they can be thought of as emanating from discrete voters who align their preferences with those of the buyer.

That is to say that the issues solved by Quadratic Voting and those presented in Arrow's theorem are orthogonal.
Eh? NFS-mounted /home is an age-old staple of corporate system configuration.
Is the dot-com era coming to an end?
An interesting exercise in blind men describing the elephant.
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10 Rules for a Better SQL Schema
Really interesting thought experiment... At first I was disappointed that the first major comment threads covered bringing back pieces of art. Is that all that we can think of that has value from the past?

Then things got more interesting - variations on taking knowledge from the present and applying it to the past: buying successful stocks, investing in successful companies, etc.

Finally, comments hit upon my favorite definition of "present gain" - making the world a better place by saving lives, curing diseases, etc. Someone mentioned teaching the Mayans to repel the Spanish, bringing medicine to help American natives cure smallpox, etc. How many wars could be prevented, injustices righted, and inequalities balanced with a bit of know-how and modern biology, chemistry, and tactics?
Given Joe Biden's long and fairly distinguished career in the Senate, I would think most adults should know who he is, at least in outline, and know that he's the Vice President. And I don't follow politics any more closely than I think any basically educated American should.

But then, there's that "basically educated" thing, isn't it? Our aggressive willingness, as a society, to not know things about how it actually works, and then excuse ourselves for it, troubles me pretty deeply.
I think you touched on something that really has recently (last few years) made micro services possible for everyone - tooling. All of the CI/CD tools have matured to a point where they are somewhat easy to use and setup. They are also improving everyday. Docker, Ansible, Kubernetes, cloud servers etc... all are very accessible and possible for regular dev to setup and use.
Still no ePub version. What a pity.
Positive day and more points?