jsnathan

This is just a question of what you take pleasure in. Boredom does not count as pleasant.

I would expect that if you take aesthetic pleasure in highly complex art or science or mysticism, that is perfectly fine with Epicurus.

It doesn't make sense to try to reduce 'pleasure' to something you consider unpleasant.

I wonder what ever happened to the dream of Perl 6 running (or interfacing with) Perl 5 code out of the box, and thus having access to all of CPAN from the get-go. Does anyone know if that is still a goal?

I always thought that would make a world of a difference.

If I read the article right, it looks like the investors already think that :)

Seriously though, if you use enough buzz-words, like crowd-sourced virtual incubator, or Kickstarter for Innovation, or whatever, I'm sure you could sell the idea to all the stakeholders somehow.

Well I can't speak to their internal culture, but if it's either take advice from outside, or go under, maybe management over there needs to re-evaluate its priorities.

I think a good idea would be to host an innovation challenge.

They are already bringing in outside consultants from McKinsey, but in this day and age, how about turning to the crowd for help? If they posted significant cash prices (say $1m total) and let their users vote on the best ideas, I bet they could find some fresh directions.

Also bet it would cost a fraction of what they pay McKinsey.

Edit: In fact, why stop there. How about making it a quarterly challenge. With follow-ups on what ideas they decided to work on and progress reports. Make Yahoo the People's company. Just my 2 cents.

When I read the title I thought they were hosting a huge treasure hunt, and I thought hey, that's a really cool marketing idea..

Not sure where you're getting this, it clearly says it's licensed Apache 2.0

Edit: Ah I see, in the footer they mention that the code of the website is released under CC-BY-SA. The code of the project is Apache though.

Who is psychotic here?

IBM decided to invest the same number in Watson last year [0]. Not sure if that helps.

[0]: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/us-ibm-watson-idUS...

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10390459

If I understand this right then these 37 'situations' are to be composed into specific 'plots' by mixing and matching.

This would be in contrast with the '7 basic plots'[1] and would yield much more specific results.

I wonder if they can be combined at random.. almost seems like they can be for pairs.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

I was literally just thinking about this a couple days ago as a way that things might reasonably develop with mass surveillance, while going horribly, horribly wrong.

Almost can't believe it's real.

If they go ahead with this, what is next?

'Spiegel' isn't a Portuguese paper though. Are you suggesting this is an instance of willfully bad reporting, or just bad reporting?

Also, do you have a better source for those numbers?

The article does not compare it to today, but to a possible upcoming state of affairs.

> only technology and not humans

I think this is very short-sighted. Technology has much greater potential for censorship and oppression; sentiment analysis and similar techniques are only going to improve over time.

And remember that it is not about making people feel bad, it is about being effective. It always has been. That is what is scary.

tl;dr: While those pushing for more surveillance can use the events of terrorist attacks to rubberstamp new surveillance powers, the privacy advocates of the future should use the events of hacks and data breaches to help the people come together to push legislation in the opposite direction.

Previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10286569

Could someone maybe tl;dr what is going on here?

I've tried out Julia a few years back, but didn't find it ready for serious use (yet). Am I right to assume that this means the language is still in serious flux?

Just because a government is overthrown doesn't guarantee that the new government uses less repressive policies than the old. But it worked here because the new government had a different vision for life than the old.

I am not hoping that violent coups are necessary - or even possible in many places. But the fact is that not all governments around the world are as cordial as the Western ones, and mass surveillance has a terrifying potential in many places around the globe.

I do hope that democratic states can avoid these outcomes when enough political will has been gathered to affirm a way of life that values privacy, and a transparent government.

Not all states have these kinds of programs already running. And even if all states interests are aligned, that still leaves the people demanding change. Does democracy have no chance in this instance?

Remember that this is not the first time that mass surveillance programs have been defeated. East Germany might be a good example. Of course it's different - but also it's the same. I hope we don't need to go further down the Orwellian rabbit hole before we realize the problems and stand up to fight them.

I wonder what the chances are for something like this taking off. On the one hand it is popular for politicians around the globe to criticize the U.S. surveillance programs - on the other hand, most governments probably want the same kind of power over their own citizens that mass surveillance can give them.

Governments which don't currently have the technical means to run these kind of programs might be more likely to sign up.

I really hope some country will step up soon and get the ball rolling.

I just took a quick look at WP [1], and it looks like they have over $350b in assets. Don't think it will bankrupt them, either way.

Not to mention that they are probably "too big to fail" [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail

> Companies have to operate within the parameters of the law.

This does not seem to apply in the context where companies are lobbying for / supporting new laws.

previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10255821

I cannot find a complete list, but it has been endorsed by the BSA trade group. You can see a list of its members on WP [1]. Besides Microsoft and Apple, it also includes Adobe, Intel, IBM, Oracle, AVG, McAfee and Symantec (and others).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_%28The_Software_Alliance%2...

If you're in the U.S., please do what you can to help stop this beast 'CISA'. Here is a starting point:

https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-cybersecurity-informatio...

I think I like the menu UI improvements in the screenshots. Those tiny symbols were a major pain for any new user, and it's good to see words next to them now.

But is it possible yet to make the project files show up in the default view for projects? Many user interactions with a project don't go beyond browsing the files, and I wish I could enable GH-style default views.

> Some startups that seem poised for greatness go on to crash-and-burn, while others that are slow to get off the ground surprise everyone with their triumph. There is no formula, expectations are often wrong, and each success story is unique and unprecedented… but that doesn’t mean there are not patterns worth paying attention to.

> Our analysis did reveal one clear, underlying theme:

> There are large companies to be built by offering new, innovative and superior customer experiences to large markets, regardless of how competitive the sector already is or how successful the founders have been before

Looks to me like the author understood the limits of his investigation perfectly well.

> For example, The Wall Street Journal recently bought 22 items from Jet. Twelve were shipped to the Journal by retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., J.C. Penney Co. and Nordstrom Inc., according to sales receipts.

> Jet’s prices for the same 12 items added up to $275.55, an average discount of about 11% from the prices Jet paid for those items on other retailers’ websites. Jet’s total cost, which also includes estimated shipping and taxes, was $518.46.

> As a result, Jet had an overall loss of $242.91 on the 12 items. Mr. Lore says the loss is unusually large, partly because the items’ cost was low relative to shipping charges.

Wow. They must be playing a long game.

Can anyone explain how they expect to get that money back?

You might be right about this. I found no mention of this at all in the Norwegian constitution, and I found various clauses explicitly giving immunity for votes cast during their tenure in several other constitutions I looked at. This presumably also applies to laws later ruled unconstitutional.

It is not what I would have expected, and strikes me as an oversight. Moreover, it reeks of entitlement.

There should never be any necessity to pass laws that even come close to violating a constitution, so no, I do not believe it would slow down the legislative process.

Instead, it would provide an incentive to avoid passing laws which will hopefully soon be struck down again, some 2-10 years later, but may cause damage to society in the meantime.

If politicians need to be afraid of the constitutional court for passing a specific bill, they should not pass it. There is also usually a way to demand an opinion from the court before a bill is passed, which might absolve them in this regard.

Surely the incentives should be set up to avoid unconstitutional laws from ever being passed in the first place, and not to only be active for "short" periods at a time?

Contrarily I would expect a clause prohibiting unconstitutional laws in pretty much every single constitution ever written.

As you say however, constitutions rarely define crimes, and so making the passing of unconstitutional laws a crime would be an unexpected outlier. This is not however what I am talking about.

In passing a law that knowingly violates the constitution, the politicians are acting to _enable_ crimes, or rather, actions considered crimes under existing legislation. This action takes place before the new (later to be hopefully struck down) law is passed, and should be considered a criminal act.

As far as knowing what they are doing affecting their conviction or punishment, I fully agree that not understanding that their actions will lead to "necessarily criminal" consequences, should be considered a mitigating factor.