Hacker News Reader

shirederbyon GOOG rolling out pagespeed to mobile Chrome users?

I was offered this option in June or July.

I don't know how to evaluate its trustworthiness, but I use PIA too and like it. Quite fast, servers in many countries, and support for L2TP (so you can use it in Android without a client -- though they provide one).

shirederbyon Ask HN: Best paid VPN?

There is an updated version: http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your-anonymit...

shirederbyon Google is defragging Android

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29

shirederbyon It’s a Myth That Entrepreneurs Drive New Technology

> It is understood that you don't talk about how the government takes the risk out of business by funding R&D efforts through taxpayer-funded grant allocations to research institutions, subsidies to business, generous patent monopoly grants and other measures.

I don't know why you think this would upset libertarians, myself included. Much of the problem we have with public funding* is that it privatizes gain and socializes loss, thus distorting market outcomes.

IP is more controversial among libertarians, and I will grant that many libertarians support it on psuedo-Lockean grounds -- though many oppose it in whole or in part because of the market distortions it can create and because it restricts the peaceful behaviour of others.

*I do not object to all public funding.

shirederbyon Why Wal-Mart Will Never Pay Like Costco

> Walmart is in business relationships with more poor people than just its employees

"more" here refers to "a greater number than", not "poorer than"

shirederbyon Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers. He was wrong

Was he "wrong" or was he lying?

It's possible that he was misinformed by his advisers and indeed did not actually know. But I am not optimistic about that notion.

shirederbyon How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

> 3. It's compatible with Libertarian/Tea Party beliefs, as military spending tends to get a free pass from the balanced budget brigade.

Tea Party, maybe, but not libertarian. Reason, Cato, and the like are highly critical of military spending and very frequently chastise mainstream Republicans for focussing on discretionary and entitlement spending while ignoring the military spending.

shirederbyon This coupon code is a slap in the face

It depends on the store. I've had Fry's match a Newegg price before.

shirederbyon Ways to Save Barnes & Noble

> Over the past several days, commentators have burst forth with a cacophony of competing ideas for your revival. The following list contains some potentially promising options for you to consider:

shirederbyon LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

> Port Agenda Wizard from Java to python. Removed 11 files, 5345 lines of java code (Xisco Faulí)

> Port Web Wizard from Java to python. 140 files changed, 5076 (+), 11416 (-). Removed 55 files, 10426 lines of java code (Javier Fernandez)

So it looks like they're trying to scrub out the Java parts (except perhaps in Base). Does anyone know if this is the case?

shirederbyon PHP 5.5

Line 11 is "Added simplified password hashing API"

shirederbyon What's a good replacement for Google Apps in a NSA-poisoned post-cloud era?

The flip-side of relying on smaller companies, of course, is they may not have the cash available to challenge specious searches that a company like Google does -- assuming it wants to challenge requests, of course.

Then again, from what we know about the FISC it's hard to say whether legal challenges make much difference.

shirederbyon Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

Android doesn't require a Google Account to operate. You just won't be able to use Google services or third-party apps that use them.

shirederbyon Why is science behind a paywall?

>If you can't fully fund science out of philanthropy, then it will be behind a paywall. Who'd have thought you need to pay for some of the most valuable information on the Earth? Wow.

>People will pay for a half-assed book on PHP, but if you want to sell a journal on astrophysics the internet gets all riled up about it.

Those examples are not analogous at all. Research isn't funded through the subscription fees to the journals, it's funded through tuition (via faculty salaries) and grants.

shirederbyon Google Search Terms Can Predict the Stock Market

The "Salmon study" was an illustration of the necessity of correcting for multiple comparisons in voxel-wise testing. The problem it's addressing isn't itself data dredging, based on the definition linked above on Wikipedia.

Uncorrected multiple comparisons are, of course, a big portion of the statistical dubiousness inherent it "data dredging"

shirederbyon Facebook buys Parse

His issue seems to be a fear that Parse will be "integrated" into Facebook and its walled-garden-philosophy, rather than presented as a serious B2B offering. That wouldn't be as much as a problem with Microsoft.

shirederbyon What is the international arms trade and who are the major players?

It isn't, and I don't know why you're being downvoted for asking.

shirederbyon Why is there only one Elon Musk?

>Whether it’s transparent batteries, flexible displays, nano bots, affordable and effective VR headsets, highly-accurate and highly-portable motion sensors, self-driving cars, doors that unlock when you walk up to them, swallowable computers, affordable genetic testing

I think it's worth noting that many of the areas are saddled with burdensome regulation, with the caveat that this is certainly not the only or even the primary hindrance, and that the fact they may be hindrances doesn't in itself mean they aren't warranted.

shirederbyon Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

Cool, when did that happen?

shirederbyon Texas, where science and history have become ideological battlegrounds

The Independent Lens blog mentions some (IMO) key points that are left out of the Ars piece:

1. "In 2011, the Texas Legislature shifted authority to order textbooks from the state to individual school districts with Senate Bill 6. The law deprived the board of its final say-so."

2. "Now, [textbook publishers] only have to meet 50 percent of the standards…Textbook publishers have a little more wiggle room."

Those details seem quite important for giving context to the TEA members' attempted or realized changes to the curriculum in terms of what actually threatens education vs. what ultimately comes down to grandstanding.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/revising-the-revisio...

shirederbyon Texas, where science and history have become ideological battlegrounds

From the linked article:

"Dunbar claims she's a "big fan" of Thomas Jefferson, but thinks a "secular humanistic ideology" has clouded current interpretations of his work. So she cuts him out of the standards on the Enlightenment and its influence on the US' founding documents, instead substituting in pre-enlightenment figures like Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin."

From droithomme's comment:

"When this story first came out last year claiming that Thomas Jefferson was removed from the curriculum because he was an atheist (which he was not), I went and looked at the actual differences made to the state standards so I could have a laugh. [...]"

They seem pretty related to me.

shirederbyon Thinking the unthinkable

Wrote this before I saw InclinedPlane's comment.

shirederbyon Thinking the unthinkable

> yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons.

I'm getting very tired of this. If you want to have an informed discussion about gun violence you need to acquire at least a modicum of information about firearms, especially but not limited to different actions, e.g., single-action, semi-automatic, and automatic.

Virginia Tech? 2 semi-automatic pistols. Sandy Hook? 1 semi-automatic rifle and 2 semi-automatic pistols. UT Austin? 1 semi-automatic shotgun, 2 bolt-action rifles, 1 pump-action rifle, 2 semi-automatic pistols, 1 revolver, 1 semi-automatic carbine Columbine? 1 pump-action shotgun, 1 break-action shotgun, 1 semi-automatic carbine, 1 semi-automatic pistol.

What do those have in common? No automatic weapons.

Almost no crimes are committed with legally owned automatic weapons. There are very few of them available and many are quite old, so those owned by non-LEAs are very expensive and largely collectors' items. And even with illegally owned automatic weapons, crimes committed with them barely even register. [1]

If you want to argue that semi-automatic weapons are "bad enough," fine. But please have some idea what you are talking about.

[1] http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcfullau.html

shirederbyon 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

Would you mind expanding on this?

The genealogical data is one of the main things I'm looking for; 23AndMe has been "OK" and AncestryDNA has just been a waste.

I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to pay for a data import onto FTDNA.

shirederbyon Senators pass ECPA reform requiring a warrant for cops to read your e-mail

Headline is literally true but misleading. Only a Senate committee passed it.

shirederbyon Republicans Repudiate 40 Years of Tougher Copyright Laws

If you don't want to subsidize health, go live in Somolia.

Opposition to government-subsidized healthcare is not anarchism.

So yes, it is silly, to put it nicely.