skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd like to clarify a few points around my post.

The reason I posted the log verbatim, me being pissed off and all, is that I wanted to make very clear that I was accurately representing official freenode policy, and that requesting help through support leads nowhere. My gripe is with freenode policy, which is asinine, not with the particular person I spoke to, who was merely being useless and patronizing.

The reason I got pissed wasn't because of the nick loss, which I find mildly annoying, but because channel ops got blown away, causing me to have to deal with this bullshit instead of just giving ops to someone else.

Yes I can be blunt. If you value the superficial affectation of politeness over the essential point of what someone is saying, you can shove it. I don't appreciate people saying that I'm this way because of asperger's, it just causes other people to whine that they're being oppressed because they can't criticize me. The whole line of argument is stupid. People are free to criticize me for not being polite, and I'm free to respond that they're being petty and superficial.

The whole 'it's free so you can't complain' argument is bullshit. There are plenty of free things which are of negative value to society because they suck up or distract resources which could be working on a much better alternative. I've provided lots of support for free stuff myself, both via employees and directly, and never have I claimed that a problem won't be fixed because the person airing a legitimate gripe hasn't gone through arbitrary bureaucratic processes, or that the person complaining should implement it themselves because they're a programmer, or refused to acknowledge that some pain a user experienced through no fault of their own really was unfortunate. And I always prioritize up users who matter and problems which need immediate fixing. That's the way you run things if you actually care about providing a valuable service.
ADBOC[1]. Your statement is technically true, but I disagree with the subtext.

Factually, workers with no marketable skills don't have them because they didn't acquire them as students. Factually, it's not Walmart's fault that its workers have no marketable skills and thus no alternatives. However, those two facts don't imply that it is just (or societally optimal) for us to do nothing about the problem.

Workers are being paid below market wages because their switching costs are too high. This is both inefficient (market prices are efficient prices) and unfair (the very poorest workers are being paid even less because they are poor). Therefore, it is right and good that we should pass laws to help improve that situation and return wages to their market values.

Now, there's the separate question of what the best laws to do that actually are. It seems unlikely to me that allowing employees to sue for something as nebulous as "infringement on free speech" is a good idea. But I hope I've made a strong case for why some legal intervention in this situation is reasonable.

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/4h/when_truth_isnt_enough/
Not quite.
Placebo response: "I think this will make me better, so I get (or feel) better"
Nocebo response: "I think this will make me sick, so I get sick"

Interesting (if somewhat anecdotal) article on the nocebo response in relation to voodoo hexes, etc:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227081.100-the-scien...

I thought I discovered this article via a comment thread on HN last month, but can't seem to find it, now.
we'd all be better off if suicide were socially acceptable

millions of years of evolution can't be wrong about how to fool otherwise intelligent creatures into sticking around.
How long until you get a product/service that cuts your old SIM to the micro SIM size and gives you an adapter so you can continue to use it in your cell phone?
Ive dabbled in Haskell and F# myself; I found Haskell to be the amazing mind awakening experience people talk about, but it also frustrates the hell out of my sometimes. All the syntax around types confuses my simple brain.

F# on the other hand felt a lot like a functional python for .Net. Complete with the syntactic whitespace and a light weight class syntax that feels very similar to pythons classes (completely with explicit self).

Both worth exploring IMO. I've not look at yeti, so i'm going to check that out, thanks!
Q. Did you hear about the constipated mathematician?
A. He worked it out with a pencil.
China Is Leading the Race to Make Renewable Energy
Has the Xbox division been profitable over its lifetime? I realize that they are supposedly profitable now, but have their recent profits exceeded the previous losses yet?
Google search has been almost useless for me since they dropped implicit AND for implicit OR.

As in, the query [random trie] is now (random OR trie). The query [+random +trie] returns much better results (random AND trie).

I've seriously been considering starting a search engine just to get back to a ~2002 era Google level of usability.
Allowyoutube.info
I agree, plus their word mangling/assumptions are out of control. I often have to use double quotes to make it clear that yes, what I typed in is what I'm searching for.
I'm still not sure why everyone desires 3G so badly. Even when you have a great signal it isn't particularly fast. WiMax service is finally available in several areas. This is what I was hoping for.
My Ruby on Rails Tutorial book isn't finished yet, but the first five chapters are done, with a sixth to be released this coming week. Check it out at

http://www.railstutorial.org/book

and let me know what you think.

N.B. Most of the other resources recommended on this thread assume that you already know the basics of Rails; Ruby on Rails Tutorial aims to give you exactly the foundation you need to move on to these more advanced materials.
This falls into the same category as the inclusion of an iPod app. The device really doesn't excel at music playback, but it's capable, so why not?

Seriously, you'd replace your iPhone with an iPad and just carry it around in you backpack? Get over the single-device-to-rule-them-all philosophy. We're moving toward purpose built devices that do one, or a few things well. Your iPhone is most definitely the best device for telephony, text messaging and audio playback; just as the iPad is for web browsing and video playback.
How many of these 10 sites do you visit daily, TheHenry?
And they didn't really "do" youtube, they bought it. The core of the service has remained exactly the same since when it debuted.
A statistician is shooting arrows at a target. The first shot flies by the target, missing by exactly 2 feet to the right. The second shot flies by the target again, this time missing by exactly 2 feet to the left. The statistician exclaims, "Bullseye!"
Pretty much everyone I met at Microsoft was very smart. But at least within my division, the available energy was never utilized very effectively. I always compared it to a muscle car, sure that V8 has a lot of power, but boy that car can't handle for anything.

With that said, you just can't apply blanket statements to the company. "Microsoft isn't good at the web" just doesn't really mean anything. The Bing team is for all intents and purposes, a completely different company from the IE team, from the Xbox and Zune teams from DevDiv... How a given team at MS does largely depends on how effective its management is. Some teams have really effective managers, PMs, and developers that can execute. Others don't. There is very little (almost none) energy, process or direction that gets applied across the entire company.
It's certainly the only explanation that fits the facts. The only one.
Also, many (most?) of their customers are in California. An accessible factory is a good marketing tool for high-end vehicles.
Or just clones the old SIM and writes out the data to a blank micro SIM.
37signals' approach to business is not at all paradoxical. It represents little more than tried and true business sense applied to the web. It's only that we've long been brain washed into thinking that the web is so different from other forms of enterprise that we've come to think that old style business models won't work there.

Work in a business you're passionate about, build something that you want and that people want, charge money for your products, keep your costs low, start simple, don't overwork yourself, etc. These bits of advice are nothing more than common sense in the brick and mortar mom and pop business world, yet somehow they sound like revolutionary, radical instructions when applied to the web.
If there were more public bathrooms there would probably be a lot less shit on the streets.
"Making a call on the tablet and talking through a light headset is much more elegant."

To place this call you're going to need a method of input that fits in your pocket, allows you to select recipients and screen incoming calls in addition to sending and receiving the audio. Essentially, a iPad lite, also known as an iPhone.
What's the problem? Would any of you actually want to work for these people? No. So you're better off that they disqualify you.
An infinite group of mathematicians walk into a bar. One says to the bartender, "I'll have a pint please." The second says, "Half a pint, please." The third says, "Quarter of a pint, please." Just as the fourth is about to open his mouth, the bartender says "I see what's happening" and pours 2 pints.
f(x) walks into a bar and the barman says "We don't cater for functions."

sin(x), cos(x) and exp(x) were at a party, and while sin and cos were having a great time, exp was sitting by himself. When asked why he wasn't joining in he said "Everytime I try to integrate I just end up with myself."
The iPad is Bad for the Consumer
You know, it's possible that people know what's in their own best interest more than someone else does.

If you disagree with me about what's in my best interest, it's far more likely that you're wrong than it is that I'm wrong.

Something to think about.
Good point, but you don't necessarily need this input device to be in your pocket, and it doesn't have to come in the form of a phone. For example, here's one solution: accept/decline calls right from your headset without taking the iPad out of the bag. Perhaps the headset will tell you the caller id when you press a certain button so you can choose whether or not to take the call. Dialing can be done through voice as well, or take out the pad and make the call using the touch screen.
It is said that papers in string theory are published at a rate greater than the speed of light. This, however, is not problematic since no information is being transmitted.
The jokes on Singh's page are pretty lame. There's a selection of mathematical jokes at http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1083/do-good-math-jokes-ex... (I thought I originally saw that link on HN but may be misremembering), of which the cleverest are very much cleverer (and to my mind funnier) than those. However, they're mostly submitted by, and rated by, actual mathematicians, so many presuppose quite a lot of mathematical knowledge.
Does anyone know the average meal price in Japan?

"set off the price war by cutting the price of its standard beef bowl to 320 yen, or $3.55"

In the US fast food restaurants all include a "99c" menu. You can get burger, fries and soda for $3. Seems like $3.55 isn't a shocking amount for a leading fast food chain.

Certainly the margins on a beef bowl are different than a burger and fries, but it struck me that these amounts aren't as low as I expected give that it's becoming national news in Japan.
Because they engage in a high-risk activity on purpose? Hardly unusual.

You might be surprised at how thoughtful and considered the advice that you receive from BASE jumpers is (apart from perhaps the comment above).

Certainly, the successful execution of a BASE jump, especially on a closed site, requires much forethought, planning, skill, knowledge, and also good execution. Most serious BASE jumpers are not at all foolhardy. They will have several contingency plans and also have set predetermined safety parameters outside which the jump will not take place.

In the case you are forced to jump from anything, with or without anything, a BASE jumpers advice may be the best you can get.
When the SIM card size we have now was introduced everyone had to cut them down (SIM cards were as big as your normal credit card back then). You could buy special cutters. No big deal.

I also have no doubt whatsoever that the next iPhone will use a micro sim card.
Gmail also ignores a "+" in the email address and everything after it, so mail to example+foobar@gmail.com is received by example@gmail.com.
That reminds me of the sad case of the amateur statistician, who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches.
It all started with ProjectEuler :)
You know what also sucks at the web? Blog posts with a pointless blurry 330 kilobyte PNG at the top.
You're generalizing from 1 (incompetent) example, & that's despite lots of counterexamples. Someone earlier mentioned Blackberry development.

In theory yeah if you run your own code you can run bad code, but it should be up to Apple to ensure that newbies never have to leave the app store. I can't remember the last time I went hunting for code instead of using apt-get. Sandboxing isn't hard either.

With luck Apple will look aside as everyone jailbreaks it. After all they sell hardware, not software.
Q: What is the volume of a thin cylinder of height z and radius a?
A: pizz*a

The Buddhist monk asked the master to explain the Dirac delta function. The master slapped him and he was enlightened.

A Buddhist walked up to a hot dog vendor and asked for one with everything. The vendor prepared it and said, "That'll be 5 dollars." The Buddhist handed over $10 and the vendor said, "Change must come from within."
On the contrary. The text book industry views 2nd hand text books as theft.

Legitimately so, effectively. 2nd-hand sales net them nothing. That said, it frees up more money for the person who was the early-adopter, who is more likely to buy more of the same, but that's not money "in their hands".

That said, making new versions each year is effectively stealing from students who are already strapped for cash. I'd argue that's less ethical than any stretch involving 2nd-hand sales. If they'd put out good books, students would keep them (I keep my good ones), and encourage others to buy them, increasing their sales. * gasp * unthinkable!
And if you're looking for office furniture, look no further than American Seating, Steelcase, Haworth and Herman Miller.
Suppose the following idea was put to vote: Confiscate the wealth of the top 1% of Americans and redistribute it by dividing it up equally among the remaining 99%.

Each of the 99% would get a check for about $500,000.00

Would it be in the best interest of the 99% to vote "yes" on such a proposal?

Only if you look at the short term outcome. After a while, the economy would be seriously harmed, not just because others would not seek wealth if it could be confiscated like that, and also because in capitalism wealth flows to those who add value by helping others get what they want.

The healthcare reform debate is similar. While in the short term health care reform will help people who can't afford expensive care, it will slow innovation (propelled by the profit motive) and will encourage people to engage in expensive (in terms of healthcare costs) lifestyle choices.
Hmm ? Gmail, Docs, News, Reader

Successfully bought and developed

Analytics, Blogger, Google Earth, Picasa etc
I don't want to imply a lot but it's important to note that Toyota's bad press is coming overwhelmingly form the US. Of course this is not 100% relevant since the US is a bad market but Toyota in particular and Japan in general have quite a history of taking safety serious. It's unlikely for them to ignore a matter of safety over economic concerns.

In case we are dealing with a cover up we would at least see some resignations at a top level. Japanese take their job very serious and probably some would commit suicide if it would be proven that they didn't do their job properly and people got injured because of this.

Could it be that we are dealing with economic protectionism though propaganda?
Shameless plug: if you're looking for something a little more full-featured but maybe not quite as small, take a look at Kitten https://software.sandia.gov/trac/kitten. It's still a minimal OS (LWK: lightweight kernel), but it has thinks like.. disks and networking.
Is there any reasons why the Japanese government stubbornly stick to supporting the "Bridge to Nowhere" project instead of trying other solutions for fixing the economy, including doing nothing?
A friend of mine, in view of the joke above and the (more famous?) one about Zorn's Lemon, decided to attempt to classify all mathematical fruit jokes. I believe he found only one other; unfortunately it depends on more specialized knowledge than the other two. "What's green and determined up to isomorphism by its first Chern class? A lime bundle."

Curiously, I think I have never before heard the abelian grape joke told with a green rather than purple grape.
How many digits of π have you memorized? http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1777#c...
It seems clear that this was a negotiation point for AT&T to create artificial lock-in on the 3G service, in return they were willing to go month-to-month.

Even if you were able to tether the iPad to the iPhone, AT&T will chart a similar monthly fee. It will be interesting to see if Apple is willing to create separate models to work on CDMA, etc.
I really wouldn't know if you're right or wrong about healthcare reform, but in the context of the BBC article, I wonder: do you think many voters made their decisions based on the sort of arguments that you put forward here?

I'm inclined to believe that indeed they went with a gut feeling that had very little to do with economic analyses.

I should note though, that while the article's theory seems very plausible to me, the supporting evidence is merely anecdotal. There must be more meaty research on voter behaviour out there, I hope...
A joke of the first order was told to a Scotchman, who was unable to see it. The person (X) who told this joke told the story of how the joke was received to another Scotchman, thereby making a joke about a joke of the first order, and thus making a joke of the second order. X remarked on this joke that no joke could penetrate the head of the Scotchman to whom the joke of the first order was told, even if it were fired into his head with a gun. The Scotchman, after severe thought, replied: "But ye couldn't do that, ye know!" X repeated the whole story, which constituted a joke of the third order, to a third Scotchman. This last Scotchman again, after prolonged thought, replied; "He had ye there!" This whole story is a joke of the fourth order.

(from "The Philosophy of Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll", by Philip Jourdain)
Actually that's a good point. JS+Canvas will get there at some point soon. Especially with HMTL5 web workers. Check out an example of a WebGL Game (not HMTL5).

http://nitobi.com/yohei/cube_defense_alpha/

This only works in the latest WebKit/Firefox developer builds but it's pretty awesome stuff. This would really eat into the reasons for Flash.
Dunno about the U.S., but over here I was able to play a MMORPG over a 3G connection reasonably well while my regular cable connection was being fixed following an electrical fire. The latency was a bit high, but survivable, and in many uses latency is a negligible factor. It is certainly a viable option for browsing and various other things.
So you told them to go blog about their practice and then went with the most established law firm for venture capital there is?

I think what people are missing here is the huge difference between interesting blog posts for founders etc and the real reason why everyone goes to Wilson Sonsini et al - because they have the reputation of being the best. Any VC guy will probably stick with the default option - #1 firm on reputation, because you just trust them to do the best possible job - instead of taking risks with an upstart, who writes nice blog posts but where you have no clue to the quality of their work.

You can't "fail often, fail early" with legal documents. If you make just one important mistake, there are huge consequences. That's an important reason why people select for reputations on the legal market.
I think the last one (which I love, though I don't think it has anything to do with mathematics or science) usually begins with the Buddhist saying "Make me one with everything". The pun is lost in the version above...
For technical papers in two-column format, I've thought of just chopping each page into four. (Brute force, judiciously applied. ;-)

If you feel like testing that, I'd appreciate to hear about it.
Hitler Reviews the IPad
Principles? Ideals? Ideology?

There's much more to decision making than peoples' immediate material interests.
Q: what did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? A: make me one with everything.
Exactly why is that more likely? When you're in hospital, would you say the same thing to your doctor? Why would a trained political scientist / economist not know what's good for you - within the domain of their expertise?

I'm not saying you'd be wrong in most cases (plenty horrible politicians about), but I don't see convincing logic in your point.
> Only if you look at the short term outcome. After a while, the economy would be seriously harmed, not just because others would not seek wealth if it could be confiscated like that, ...

This line of reasoning only makes sense if your premise is that wealth can be created from nothing and does not correspond to actual resources available/needed.
I think this book is relevant to this discussion.

http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Polici...
Doesn't excuse them for making Acrobat installs that are clearly marketdroid-devised bloatware. For heaven's sake, they once installed stuff with Acrobat that wasn't VBScript malware but might as well have been! (Yes, they had VBscript background processes bogging down Windows.)

Thanks in part to them HTML5 is seen as a blessing by many, even as late as it is.
7 billion is quite a bit of VC money :).
When reading this article, I was reminded of a passage from Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground":

"But I repeat for the one-hundredth time, there is one case, only one, when a man may intentionally, consciously desire something even something harmful to himself, something stupid, even very stupid, namely: in order to have the right to desire something even very stupid and not be bound by an obligation to desire only what's smart. After all, this very stupid thing, one's own whim, gentlemen, may in fact be the most advantageous thing on earth for people like me, especially in certain cases. In particular, it may be more advantageous than any other advantage, even in a case where it causes obvious harm and contradicts the most sensible conclusions of reason about advantage - because in any case it preserves for us what's most important and precious, that is, our personality and our individuality.
...
I believe this, I vouch for it, because, after all, the whole of man's work seems to consist only in proving to himself constantly that he's a man and not an organ stop! Even if he has to lose his own skin, he'll prove it, even if he has to become a troglodyte, he'll prove it."
iPad is bad for the nerd. iPad is great for the consumer. I'm a nerd, so I've already got an iPhone that's jailbroken to all hell, and I've got a decked out laptop I can't live without. I don't need an iPad.

My mom, on the other hand, reads email, watches Youtube, and plays Sudoku on a computer. She doesn't have a smartphone, nor would she want to shell out 1000+$ for a decent laptop. iPad is great for people like her.
3) Tv sites like Hulu wont work (based off of the example?)

I don't suppose Silverlight is going to get on the iPad either. It's how I started to watch Netflix streaming on OS X. I see now that it's used on the PC side too.