skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seems like OpenStreetMap has more (accurate) resources w.r.t. latest Haiti map changes:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti
I disagree. I don't even want to start the thing if I don't know that there is an ending. If I buy a couple of chapters and then it peters out, I'm cheated out of my ending.

Also, I'd want the writer to produce a complete book. I imagine that sometimes developments in later chapters will force some revision to the earlier ones, as plot lines are fleshed out. Releasing a chapter at a time won't allow that.
One thing that struck me reading this article is that innovation seems to have outgrown the one size fits all nature of the patent system. Given the huge difference in capital expenditures required between engineering software and pharmaceuticals, why are they treated the same?
He is a practicing patent lawyer.

I doubt a patent lawyer would be so crazy to argue against a system that give him his job without good reasons.
The soft maximum often comes up when dealing with probabilistic models and in neural networks. I'm surprised that a blog that has been highlighting numerical issues hasn't pointed out how the soft maximum should be computed.

If x is vector of values then the naive code is:

log(sum(exp(x)))

where exp operates elementwise. However, if even a single item of x is large (1000 say) this will return Inf. If x are log probabilities, where you want the log of the sum of the probabilities (common), the elements of x might all be less than -1000 (also common) and then the function will return -Inf.

Many people have a function called logsumexp() kicking about to compute the softmax robustly. It will do something like:

y = max(x);
return y + log(sum(exp(x-y)));

One example, slightly more elaborate, Matlab implementation is in:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/minka/software...
Love for LuaJIT
Do you think he's actually writing/doing all this himself? (vs. having an intern or something like that be his social media face)
Ask HN: Looking for Android Programmer
We are a start up out of Santa Barbara. We are looking for some help with Android development and a few other projects.

Please review our site for more information and contact us at team(at)phonehalo.com

http://www.phonehalo.com

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01/09/ces-never-lose-the-crackberry-again/

-Chris
You may want to take a look at Against Intellectual Monopoly.

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi...

The thesis is that all patent and copyright, contrary to popular belief, does not actually increase innovation.

I have mentioned this book on several occasions but it seem that hackers continue to remain ignorant of books like this.
If it's a digital work, the ability of the owner to control the distribution and price is an ability provided by social contract, social constructs, and law. It is impossible to physically limit the distribution of digital works, short of not releasing them at all, so any position that this control can exist in any absolute form is going against reality.
Demand, in economics is represented as a graph of purchases versus price. By definition, a change in price does not change demand; it simply represents a different point on the demand curve.

What does change demand is customer perception that they're being ripped off. A $515 ticket and a $500 ticket are fairly close on the demand curve and probably don't represent a huge difference in sales. A $500 ticket plus a $15 checked bag fee is perceived by the customer as an attempt to conceal the true cost of the ticket.
It still grates me a little when they talk about "factoring large primes". I realize that what they mean, "factoring the product of two large primes," is a bit long-winded, but why not just "factoring large numbers"?
I agree with this 100%. My own opinion is that the biggest myth is when VC talks about building team, they always talk about recruiting A players, with the idea that only A players could recruit more A players whereas B players would recruit only C players, etc. Having taught at UCLA for nine years, my own experience is that there are two kinds of A students. The first are nominal A students who on occasion receive A+'s and the second are really B+ students who on occasion receive A-'s. The A+ students tend to be extraordinarily smart but interestingly, most are also extraordinarily generous. They don’t worry too much about competition and they don’t mind others in their class also receiving A’s, doing well along with them. In other words, they have no problem sharing oxygen. The B+ students who work hard to get A’s are smart as well but they tend to be very competitive and in comparison less generous. In other words, they are passionate but not necessarily compassionate (like me). My experience is that they tend to carry more emotional baggage and they are high maintenance (like me). In summary, it is not enough to recruit A students. Unless they are generous as well, they tend not to be good team players.
Make sure to pay attention to the details in your screenshots. For example:

- slide 1: there are no expenses

- slide 2: same price listed for 30 or 3000 boxes of paper

- slide 4: improper capitalization: "Box Of paper"

The basic idea is that if you can't pay attention to detail on your screenshots, then maybe that flows through for other parts of the app.
What if Information Does Not Want to Be Free?
Ask HN: Rate My App- Trendsta Raffle- Monthly prize for reviewing products
I don't think the ease of downloading files is at all comparable to the ease of shoplifting.
For your googling: "easing function"
Why do people have a problem with being charged more for using more services? Wouldn't a college kid flying home for the weekend with only a backpack like to pay less than somebody taking a two week trip with three large suitcases?

Let's presume that the airlines will price in a profit optimizing way and that, in the long term, competition will limit their overall take. So, compared to a model where all passengers pay an all-inclusive fee, those using fewer services will pay less under the a-la-carte plan.

We don't think that hotels should be required to include dinner in the cost of the room, but we get mad when the airline charges $5 for an in-flight meal. We're happy to pay per-lb to ship stuff via UPS, but we don't want to pay per-lb for the bags we check? I don't understand.
Mike Pall's annoucement on Lua list: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/62316
I never said anyone was entitled to anything. Except I do say that someone is entitled to not have their work stolen from them. The only difference between stealing music and stealing groceries is the music is significantly easier to steal. The convenience and low likelihood of getting caught is the only reason its so rampant. But it's still stealing.

Accept the reality of it? Accept that things are just going to be stolen and that's that? What kind of society is that? I'd like to think we can rise above being selfish vigilantes who only choose to see things through their own eyes instead of work with society as a whole.
Ask HN: Rate my startup: beepl.com
At this stage, it's only a prototype running on a single 0.5GB server instance. Be gentle. :-)

Thanks for the feedback!

Bonus wallpaper on http://twitpic.com/xyyd0
Maybe this war would be a good thing. It would make a lot of apps a lot more secure. Who knows who is using the vulnerabilites out there already?
Fashion yes, the best industrial designers barely understand fashion. The only thing I can remember where a fashion designer attempted to incorporate tech is those sneakers with the LEDs in the heels... and since they were a fashion, they provoked strong opinions, had their time and went away.

As far as air travel security goes, very few people fly that often and it will be dealt with like we deal with laptops and mp3 players now. Just don't show up with some homebrew contraption (MIT student LED shirt reference).
I think it seems unlikely because we all think of BillG as a business man and not a hacker. Maybe I should only speak for myself, but the thought of him tinkering away into the early morning on his new site is such a wonderful juxtaposition of my image of him.
I don't accept the notion that copying is equivalent to stealing. Nor do I accept anybody to have the right to potential profits.

As such, you cannot derives ethical justification for it.

I support property right, and see copyright as a violation of such rights.
The service has stayed the same, it's the pricing structure that changed.

A year ago I could fly on the same airplane to the same destination and not face a baggage charge. Nowadays I'm faced with a baggage charge, when I got the exact same service for less in the past.

So no, the problem isn't with being charged more for using more services. The problem is being charged more for the same service.

And to expand on your hotel example, many hotels offer a complementary breakfast. If that were to be removed my appreciation of that hotel would fall based on that change.
I suppose it is important to note that we're talking about the subjective quality of the person. You're lying if you can't look at someone and tell me whether they appear to meet your personal criteria for physical quality.

My suspicion is that there is a correlation between self-esteem and ones comfort with the word "quality" when applied to people. I know that anyone whose judgment I respect would view me as a "quality person", so I have no problem with the term. If I was insecure and didn't think of myself as a person of quality, then I might have an issue with the concept.
Profiling: Sketching the Face of Jihadism
"2) I'm a inexperienced programmer(actually learning Python/Django)"

and

"that helps me with the difficulties I've right now"

I think a job is to help the company with difficulties they have and not difficulties YOU have.

Or for what do they pay you?
I'm as much of a believer in the power of entrepreneurship as it gets, but I disagree. Having his brain power, management ability, and billions of dollars directed towards helping humanity's least fortunate is just about as optimal a situation as I can imagine.
The U.S. Isn't As Economically Free As It Used to Be
actually, I completely disagree.

What Bill was truly good at, was hiring smart people and getting them to all work towards something big. Putting a computer on every desk was a big goal. Eradicating Malaria and the other things the foundation is working on are big goals. And to be honest - I'm impressed by the way he is going about it.

This site isn't about him resting on his laurels - looking back at the success he had. This is the posts/information on what he is working on now. So it wont have the deep insight that he would have about software/corporations. But the fact he is applying that insight to Philanthropy and to the world of NGO's is fantastic and I applaud him for it.
Independents Day
I think you are trying to understand too much at once. Rather than trying to understand all of the "convex functions" page, focus on the first sentence or two and the first picture.

Convex functions: if you draw a straight line between the points (x, f(x)) and (y, f(y)), then f(z) is below that straight line if z is between x and y. (The green line is below the red line in the first picture.)

Optimization: find x so that f(x) is as small as possible.

Convex optimization: Same as optimization, but now you know f(x) is a convex function (e.g., the soft max).
That is a lot like most systems where once there is a successful matchup, the partners are removed from the system.

So, most likely there are fewer suitable long term partners left in the dating pool on any successful site.
Parallel.For for pre C# 4.0
Same syntax as System.Threading.Tasks so now[1] us poor enterprise drones, who can't see Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 being installed anytime soon, can get our feet wet.

[1]I admit that it's kind of a stretch to use the word now for a blog post that old.
I knew that was a Dave slide just from the colors.
This is the case only if you believe the law defines fact. Since some law is contradictory, it's clear that there is room to disagree with law, in at least some cases. But maybe you only meant to imply that legal damages were being awarded, which I can agree with.
Actually, I kind of do think it's like the $10 IPod scam - yes, the fees are disclosed, on another page, in small print. It's not like it's right there along with the price
"Only $50 each way, and, oh yeah, and on top of this, you'll be paying $25 per checked bag". Yes I know we should probably all be aware of it, but it keeps going up.

I wonder how long it'll be before they start charging "boarding pass handling fees", "seat cleaning fees", "oxygen fees", etc.
It reminds me somewhat of the old patronage system. Why did Mozart write so much music? Besides the fact that he was born to do it, he had a family to feed -- he had a patron. The patron paid him to write music (and operas and whatnot).

With the internet, couldn't we all be micro-patrons?
I'm not familiar with it but there is an article on his site about it: http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Learning/article.aspx?ID=29
The general reaction I see to airline baggage fees is that people who frequently travel with no checked bags don't care (or think it's a good thing), whereas people who travel with checked bags are upset. That much is obvious, and it's kind of net neutral overall.

However, I think there is a far worse side effect of the change in pricing structure. The side effect is that nobody wants to check a bag, so the volume of baggage actually entering the plane's cabin has significantly increased. It makes boarding take longer, makes everything more crowded, and in general it's a huge hassle for everyone, including the luggageless travelers.

For that reason, I try to avoid airlines that charge baggage fees, even when I am flying with no bags at all.
NYT execs' memo to staff about plans to charge for NYTimes.com
This is a list of some of the songs Joel is accused of sharing:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/files/2008/11/j-01-2.p...

Funny thing is if I type the names (e.g. Nirvana "Come as you are") into Google in a couple of seconds I can listen to all the songs on YouTube. I would have thought Google would be a better target than Joel. If the music industry are justified in their cause they could do at the very least do a better job of communicating why.
USB

Universal - No

Serial - No

Bus - No

leave the USB alone, seriously, that's my advice
I'm surprised that username "billgates" was available. Did some poor schmuck or imposter get the boot? Or did MS or his own PR lock it up early on?

Edit: (Hmm, or did someone make a tidy sum?)
In industries where copying is accepted, like with cooking and fashion, the level of creativity is very high. You could argue that a high fashion brand "loses money" when a low price retailer, like H&M or Zara, produces more or less the same design, but very few do.

I recommend reading "The Pirate's Dilemma" which is available from $0.00 upwards at http://thepiratesdilemma.com/download-the-book

Edit: The difference between the high fashion brand and the low price retailer clothes are quality, perceived quality, recognition/brand, legitimacy and cost. Which is more or less the same difference as between a pirated copy and an original one.
LuaJIT 2.0 is an amazing achievement. On the programming language shootout's "flawed benchmarks", LuaJIT outperforms almost every other dynamic language (including JavaScript V8, Python, Ruby 1.9, JRuby, VisualWorks Smalltalk, CPython, PLT Scheme), and is competetive on many benchmarks with highly-optimized language implementations like Sun's JVM, and GHC:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/which-programming-lan...

Mike Pall wrote LuaJIT and now LuaJIT 2 as essentially solo efforts. Thanks to Google and the other sponsors for helping him continue!
This is just as much a story about what "man + computer" equals. THIS is what early computer pioneers dreamed a computer could be to people.
Well, you clearly have to drag your weight in any job, but I think what would be best for him is a job that offers learning and a community as part of the range of benefits that any job provides.
Trying to learn math from Wikipedia is like trying to learn English from the dictionary.

As far as the subject matter goes, a convex function can just be thought of as a function with a global maximum/minimum and no other local maximum/minimum. I.E. The derivative is zero in only one place which is the global max/min. These functions can then be easily optimized by taking their derivatives and finding the zero. It is a really nice way to optimize a problem.
If your fixed costs are high and your marginal costs are low as is usually the case with software, your incentive structure is often strange.

Giving stuff away doesn't cost you much. The downside is that if people already got it free, they won't want to buy it. So, vendors look for little worlds where they can give away software without cannibalising other sales. Let people use it, get comfortable to it and develop a preference for it. When they move on, the vendor hopes they will keep using the product, even if they have to pay.
So you're an inexperienced (but learning) programmer. Clearly you're interested in programming, and want to improve.

What skills do you already have? What training do you have? What are you interesting in? If an employer had an opening, what could you do for them? Describe the ideal job, not in terms of what it can teach you, but in terms of how it will make best use of your current skills and abilities.

Unless you offer something, no one will buy. If I were an employer, what could you do for me? If you answer that you might be able to find someone who will employ you, and provide an opportunity for you to learn and grow.
USAID: "Hey army, stop doing our job better than we can. You are making us look bad."
As much as I'd like his feedback on my Twitter clone, I'd rather see him continue to work on extreme poverty.
sadly, the proof of distribution is almost always very circumstantial.
For a date, duh. Didn't you read the article?
> Because Facebook know very well that people don't read things, they should but they don't, and they take advantage of this.

As far as I'm concerned, if you log into a website, and a modal dialog comes up, and you don't read what it says and just click "yes"... you deserve what you get.

I don't see anything wrong with things defaulting to public, either. Most things you do on the internet are public, or at least associated with your username. Such is life.
Stop thinking - find your passion
Need Volunteers To Help With 1M/1M
I am looking for volunteers to work on the 1M / 1M project - help 1 million entrepreneurs reach 1 million in revenue. Tomorrow morning, at 8am PT, I will be hosting an online roundtable to discuss the strategy.
We use Lua internally at Google

Interesting! Anyone know details?
If you're looking for something less pricey... I highly recommend Stephen Boyd's book (free here: http://www.stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/), as well as his cvx matlab toolbox. There are also some video lectures which might be less mind-numbing (http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee364a/index.html).
Deep-Sea Snail Shell Could Inspire Better Body Armor
it makes me wonder why languages like ruby are so slow.
Pretty sweet, but I can't use the registration.
It works for both versions.
> Too much jeans and sneakers when I met her

I have what I call the "running shoe filter". If she doesn't wear running shoes, it's very unlikely that I will be interested. But I agree with every other point you make.
What's the purpose?

At a quick glance, it's still got a lot of testing bugs showing publicly:

1) Your question Test is top of the front page

2) Top Members are "ad sd asd dasda" etc

3) The top links (including 'About Beepl', which would have answered my original question) still have the template # link in them

4) Some of the questions appear to have been overrun by spam (note the Star Trek question)

5) Also worth noting that I did know "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet", but only because I'd seen it before.

Congrats on putting it out there. I look forward to learning more.

Edit: Here's the direct link to the front page - http://www.beepl.com/

Unfortunately, the text here doesn't really explain what it does either, and the only options I have are either emailing you (not likely) or registering (also unlikely, for a website I don't know when it's not clear what it does).

It seems to be suffering from the same issues as your last Rate my Startup - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612319 - mainly too much marketing speak, and not enough demonstration of the problem it solves.
link bait articles get you more traffic, just the fact of the web
>> per-capita income in the US is still only about $21,500.

You're way off. It's $46,900.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
Forth has made it to 1986!
I can't tell - is the title a typo or a pun?
For some reason, most news sites don't like including links to other websites. This is standard policy for a lot of places, and has to do with being run by morons who still don't understand the internet. They fear it will lead people away from the site.
This reminds me of John Harrison's invention of the chronometer. In both cases, a modest Briton brought a solution to an "impossible problem" to the officials, who rejected it because it was too simple to be correct.

(John Harrison also had the problem that one of the officials came up with a rival, astronomical solution before his was accepted.)
But all of those are impacts on expenses, and therefore profits. This article is about a decline in revenue. Yes, you can make the case that the things you mention indirectly relate to people choosing Southwest and JetBlue over the other carriers, but I think that's a stretch.
What does any of that have to do with declining revenue?
Erm, I did put up a comment here explaining that we are testing the results (references) beepl provides. No idea where that go. There won't be any spam on beepl - we're working on it (crm114 discriminator - still in works).
Ask HN: PR Tips or books for Startups?
I'm currently working on a startup with my boyfriend and I don't have much experience in PR..I only have experience in social media marketing, email marketing and branding. I really want to make sure we have a "big splash" at our launch so I need to perfect my PR skills.

Does anyone have any PR Tips or books for Startups?

I'd specifically like some ideas on developing relationships with reporters and where/how to get tips/stories to give them. Thanks for your help!
You sound as this is unimpressive. His motive was the right timing for a product. Knowing about the computing power, UIs, a.s.o. at the time of market launch is essential. There are enough developers (and especially academic organizations) who get that wrong or ignore that totally.
Really? I never knew that. (I was in Grade 6 when Port Arthur happened I guess). I love media watch. Great show.
Of course you do--the idea of all people being equal is pretty strongly ingrained in our society, so the idea of some people being fundamentally higher or lower quality is difficult to accept.
> it might be a good idea to bring some game along

Like a wild boar or some venison? Really? Do chicks dig that?

Seriously, though, it depends if you're talking marriage or sex. Most guys will use any tactic for sex. I've never used one of these sites, so I'm just speculating. (I met my wife the old fashioned way - in person.)
Larry Ellison to Unveil Oracle + Sun Strategy at Company Event on January 27th
Ask HN: Rate my startup - TwellWishes - Well wishes and virtual gifts on Twitter
Rather than just the simple ranking of all countries shown in the article it would be quite interesting to see some sort of graph showing the scores actually achieved. In particular I'm curious whether the scores achieved are fairly evenly spread out or are grouped together in somewhat separate 'tiers'.
Just as well that no other hardware manufacturer is having an event on that day.