skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Beats is to headphones as Monster Cables are to wires.

That's actually far truer than you might think:
http://gizmodo.com/5981823/beat-by-dre-the-inside-story-of-h...
Tough to be unbiased here – I walk through that neighborhood every day during my commute, and feel that a description like that is hardly a useful constraint. Especially in the few blocks around the art school (which leads toward two other undergraduate colleges), you can't tell which folks are professors, which are students, and which are leeching off the zillion hospitals within three blocks.

To some, that may mean it seems appropriate to just stop and question everyone. But, in reality, being questioned by the police appears to passers-by to be an indication of guilt, and that's not something you want colleagues and students seeing.

So, again, if you see a guy matching a vague description, see if there's another reason why you'd suspect him.

Have a rock-solid, specific description? Maybe that's a different story. But I'd like to err on the side of caution and respect – there are consequences even if you don't charge the guy.
I don't see a lot of "debating" going on. If you want to point me to some constructive debates, that would be nice.
Help us find the coolest educational apps
The next version of D3 will be modular, with the different parts broken out into separate packages (i.e. shape utils separate from databinding utils). Currently I'm using D3 piecemeal with React with a good deal of success.
How much of that increased agricultural production is fueled by synthetic nitrogen fertilizers created with natural gas?
When schools were recently asked in a survey what areas would they increase their ICT investment, they said, ‘assessment’. We listened to those teachers and worked with schools to create this amazing assessment platform to track their students progress. We are currently in the process of finding the coolest educational apps for our community of 10,000 teachers.
More likely, bureaucracy AND incompetence.

Each begets the other forever.
Warning from Prince Charles that artisanal cheese could disappear
Auditing ISIS
They may be increasing the quality of the bean they source.

But their beans are stale by the time they get to the store (once you roast the bean, the clock starts).

And they notoriously over-roast their beans, giving it that distinctive burnt taste.

I'll continue going to my shop that roasts their beans daily... and doesn't think that a flat white can come in three sizes.
Apple’s legal fight with Samsung revealed a gold mine of top-secret information
Huh? Digits (for example) supports over 200 countries - https://get.digits.com/international-growth

Twillio also enables this if you want to roll your own - https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/01/mobile-passwordless-sms-...
Right up until they have their first pedestrian incident.
The separation of "bitcoin" and "blockchain" is not only correct, but further more it's a good thing people/media are becoming aware of the distinction between the blockchain as a protocol and bitcoin as an application (one of potentially thousands) based on this protocol.

Big finance doesn't give a sh*t about bitcoin. They don't see it as a threat, it barely registers. What they do see is the enormous applications and potential cost-savings that blockchains could enable - in areas like settlements, transaction signing, new products and so on. Hence coverage is moving from "Bitcoin" to "Blockchain".
I really feel for the person in this story. Given the heightened media lately, it's hard to feel totally secure in any interaction with the police. I don't feel completely secure talking to them or interacting with them when I see them.

I however, do think the police did just an ok job handling this situation. It clearly could have gone worse, but they could have de-escalated this even further. Why isn't it possible to simply say clear statements like "We intend to respect your rights." or "We have no intention of escalating this situation". When it comes to the officer seeming to reach for his firearm at the beginning what's wrong with saying "That's something we do for our protection, and is not an intent to use?"

I'm sure people in law enforcement have answers for all these questions, and I'm sure they make sense. However, something in me will probably always wonder why we as a society find it easier to blog about police encounters, or make police wear body cameras, when it might just be easier for two people to talk more openly.
> I don't know any people of any race who have never had a negative, frightening interaction with police.

Eh, I can only speak anecdotally but almost all white people (who aren't active drug dealers) that I know haven't actually had bad experiences, modulo "the TSA at the airport patted me down!".

The single time that I've had any sort of negative interaction was when crossing the Canadian border and it was directly because my friend in the car had brown skin.
The banks are still extremely limited in the ways they can utilize that cash. 194 billion dollars held by a handful of banks will be far less optimally used than 194 billion dollars spread among, say, a million individual entrepreneurs.
Ask HN: Can I use TensorFlow without knowing even Elementary Algebra?
I'm fascinated by Machine Learning World of possibilities, But whenever I want to start studying the topic, I always hit a wall with the Math prerequisites. E.G: Probability, Linear Algebra, Etc.

I've been been programming for a while without understanding of Turing Machines and/or Lambda Calculus.

Do you think it is feasible at all that someone could use a library like TensorFlow and do some meaninful programs without knowing the Math I've just mentioned.

Thanks!
Unicode, Perl 6, and You
There have been several examples of anarchocommunist societies that failed because of external forces, i.e. they were conquered, rather than internal forces.

Catalonia in Spain and the Free Territory in Ukraine are the big ones. They lasted for a few years each. Catalonia failed because the Stalinists in Spain betrayed them and that allowed the fascists, backed by Nazi Germany of course to win the civil war. George Orwell fought with the anarchists in Spain. It's very enlightening to read about the social institutions they developed before they were defeated militarily.

The Free Territory was a model of extreme democracy where power was decentralized to an extremely fine-grained level. It was defeated by the Bolsheviks after Trotsky invited anarchist leaders to a joint meeting and then summarily executed them.

Implementing communism does not seem impossible due to internal factors. After a few decades of build-up, both Ukraine and Spain saw the birth of egalitarian communist societies that flourished in the brief time that they were allowed to exist. They were crushed by external authoritarian conquerors.
>While reading it I was pretty much annoyed by how the writer didn't respect my time and couldn't just spit out what their main idea was. Like I shouldn't need to read three or four paragraphs to find out if the topic is something I already know about or interesting to me.

And yet, you did the same thing for your comment.

Anyway, your preferred style of writing does exist and its called a research paper. Thankfully, the world is big enough to accmodate other styles of writing.
My business has a set of 4 public websites that run (mostly) on PHP. As the lead developer it is up to me (in this company) to decide when we upgrade.
I hear this often but I'm not sure I agree. With almost all of these charting libraries you quickly run into the law of leaky abstractions. Most of the examples of things you'd want to do are written pretty clearly by Mike himself. They are easy to adapt by changing a few things around, instead of sticking with an inflexible abstraction.
So much for "liberté"... which precisely seems to be what gotchange was talking about.
How so?
Shouldn't liability costs be be factored into the financial accounting part of any such operation?
I dunno, it doesn't seem like a huge leap to stop investigating someone as a burglar once you notice they're a college prof. Especially if you've stopped them for nothing more specific than wearing a knit hat and "puffy coat," and they're not wearing a puffy coat (did you not look at the picture? or read the article, for that matter, he mentions that he was wearing a blazer).
You might find SMSSecure, the SMS-only TextSecure fork, useful.
It's the springfield monorail in real life
Also German. Ich heiße Bob / I am called Bob; wie heißt du / how are you called?
I've been thinking this for some time lately, that while the notion of radical right is known and avoided in the modern world, the radical left is actually more harmful :

- it's not that known to deal with it, since if you raise questions, you're labeled as right,

- with this it powers the actual radical right.
Software finishing
Science is the religion of the 21st century.

I think it's quite funny that the so-called hard problem of
consciousness has been with us for millennia, yet so few of us tackle it in the right way, instead choosing to wait for others to give us all the answers
or (at worst) endlessly chewing and regurgitating the same useless conjectures and pontifications.

Geeks and math nerds (and anyone who is seriously interested in tackling consciousness) need to be doing more psychedelic drugs, I feel, and looking INWARDS, but how often does that happen?

Drugs are the easy way there. There are other ways, but require dedication and commitment and possibly utter disregard for material concerns and "consensus reality". As the ancient wise ones said regarding mysticism (direct experiential knowledge), one needs to know, will, dare and keep silent.

The answers are here, the consciousness problem has been solved more than 2000
years ago, across cultures and civilizations. As Aleister Crowley once said,
"By doing certain things certain results will follow."

Yet very few feel the need to do anything these days.
The police had to protect the COP21 and the visit from more than 150 head of states. They also have to protect administrations, newspaper offices, jewish organizations and others potential terrorist targets. There's just not enough police forces to handle all this, plus marches and anarchist protests
It wasn't about this one interaction, it's about the relationship that police have with black people, and vice-versa.

If you are white, your expectation is that in this situation the cops would have taken you to the victim, she would have said it wasn't you, and you'd go on with your day.

This man's expectation, as a black man being questioned by the police, was that he has a 50/50 chance of being falsely accused; that the woman who was going to give this testimony might just see "black man" and say "that's him officer". In the article, this college professor was so sure of that that he was going to resist arrest!.

It's not about this one interaction, it's about the culture of fear we have in this country between cops and black people. You're not supposed to figure out these particular cops did wrong in this particular encounter - you're supposed to empathize and understand what's generally happening for/to people in different circumstances than yourself, and hopefully have an impact on changing that over time.
The DevOps Initiative Starter Guide
Subways are a lot more expensive than streetcars, while buses are cheaper (not that much once you have a dedicated lane) but slower than streetcars.

PS: I live in a city with an extensive streetcar network which is still expanding (Zurich)
really, buncha skids in the trenches perpetuating victimless crimes. non-news.
Thank you, I'm off to look for Shostakovich quartets.

Any particular recording you would advise? I mean a specific record of known-good quality, preferably on iTunes, Amazon, or similar. I often find myself spending a lot of time listening to different records of the same piece, just to make sure I get a good one.
TL;DR:

1. Quit your insurance job

2. Learn to code all by yourself

3. Work as a free intern for a startup

4. Work really, really, hard

5. Already have motivational friends (??)

That's it guys! 5 easy steps!

This blog is just one person's success story and should not be written as a guide, because it's not.
Thanks for the new five dollar word. Genuflect was one that gave me no clues, nothing, even in context. I should have taken Latin it would have lasted longer than my other foreign language choices.

Latin genu knee + flectere to bend
to bend the knee
to touch the knee to the floor or ground especially in worship
Luckily this guy didn't act like an idiotic internet tough guy, acted perfectly reasonable, so did the cops, and they all went on their ways. Just like things are supposed to and normally do happen every day.
Polymer partially polyfills CSS Custom Properties:
https://www.polymer-project.org/1.0/docs/devguide/styling.ht...

Also, for what it's worth, not all new JavaScript features are polyfill-able. Proxies, for example, are impossible to polyfill, should they not have been added? WeakMaps are also only partially polyfill-able, are they overdesigned too?
VoLTE is becoming fairly prevalent now. With the new wideband codecs, quality can be quite good.
> Can someone point me to what exactly did police officers do wrong in this story?

I can't point to anything the officers did 'wrong'. The tragedy of the piece is that the author brings two sets of prejudices to the encounter that really strongly negatively affect him and his perception of the treatment he received:

1) He's special, obviously not a criminal and the cops should know that

2) He's persecuted because of his race.

Neither of these things are objectively true from the content of the article, but the fear he experienced is real.

I can understand what caused that fear - the constant drip of police abuses occurring to people throughout the US, but it's still a sad state of affairs when a man must fear the police in this way.

It's also disheartening to see him take up such a self-involved perspective. The author entirely fails to understand the motives of anyone other than himself and instead ascribes a set of his own prejudices upon the action of others. Far from simply highlighting the prejudice he perceives he endured, he's actually revealed himself as guilty of the exact same charge whilst simultaneously lambasting those for not understanding his motives.

I wonder if this 'victim mentality' is justified given the abuses certain demographics do suffer, but I also wonder if it doesn't also fan the flames of discontent, distrust and ultimately lead to a worsening of relations between civilian and police. If all encounters have this undertone of anger, arrogance and persecution it's no wonder casual encounters can regularly devolve into conflict.
Are we talking about trolls as generally known on the internet or the definition feminists use which is anyone who disagrees with them or points out factual incorrectness?
The cumulonimbus cloud of creative destruction
I'd bet even autonomous cars will kill more per year than terrorist attacks.
Cell culture is very finicky and costly. It's profitable when used to produce fancy new antibody drugs like ipilimumab or denosumab, but when it comes to producing meat, the gooey stuff in animals that Westerners won't eat do important jobs and are good at them. Tissue culture protocols generally discard the culture medium after a day or two, with barely any of the energetic substrates consumed when too much lactate accumulates, because there is no liver to keep pH balanced. And you need to keep the whole flask drenched with a cocktail of antibiotics because there's no spleen doing whatever it is that a spleen does. A chicken gets feed conversion ratio of 2-3 these days in modern factory farming, and I'll be impressed if they ever come up with an in vitro system that outperforms that.
I found myself in a similar situation, sharing the same name, not profiling. I was asked to come in to 'help with a case'. It was really an interrogation of my involvement. I had the same feeling of uncertainty and the thought I could do nothing to argue my case, based on the continued, escalating questions.

It was assumed that I needed to prove my innocence rather than they prove my guilt. Luckily I happened to be across the country on that day so it was easily dropped. I was denied to see the police report after multiple requests, which I thought I was entitled to.

This one experience greatly changed the way I view police and their tactics. I can empathize
Cell quality of GSM/CDMA or others isn't good but the article ignores all the Wi-fi calling, FaceTime Audio and VOIP type calls you can make on a smart phone now. I've found that those are substantially better quality than any landline or cell.
It seems to me that the cops did everything right here, aside from perhaps drawing a gun (which it seems he may not have, only undoing a snap perhaps?) too early. They can't just take his word for it, they need to verify the eye-witness ID. This should be obvious.

His paranoia is a likely a result of his previous encounters with other police officers and hearsay from other encounters. This particular encounter sounds right.

They thanked him repeatedly for cooperation, apologized for messing with his lunch break, etc. This is their job, what could they do better? Not investigate since he said "it's not me, honest"?!?
So here we get to the crux of the issue – the author very clearly didn't see it as a fine interaction. You see it as a fine interaction.

That means one of two things – 1)The Author is completely off base or 2)You don't understand why it's legitimate for the author to feel that it wasn't an okay interaction. (Or, I guess, 3 - Some middle ground between the two)

It's easy to say the other side is just wrong when you don't agree with it. It's more of a challenge to say they're not completely off base and that we don't understand their experience, and then try to find understanding, try to make sense of what might not make sense at first.

The thing is, if you take the first path, it doesn't do anything constructive. You've got your side, they've got theirs and the conflict will go on. If, instead, you try to understand where they're coming from, it might make it easier to bridge gaps and find common ground. Worst case, you decide you were right to begin with... but, in my experience, there's often something to be learned from every person... unless you out and out think they're lying.
Radio Shack’s Original TRS-80 Family of Computers
Liquid Sky: collaborative cloud cost communication for software teams and DevOps
No. the amount each person produces does not increase, certainly not because scientific advance.

You see per capita productivity increase, where "productivity" not necesarily means "producing more". If you can cut your production in one third and get away with doubling your prices (inelastic market), that couonts as productivity increase: you are producing more Profits with the same Capital investment. If on top of that you go and lay off 40% of your work force, you get the per capita part as well: You are running the same Productive Assets with less Labour.

That last is always a goal of Management, because of (19th century) reasons.
"99.9% of activities which brain controls..."

s/activities/known &/
> Maybe a bit offtopic, but could you elaborate on why you think infinite growth in a finite world is possible?

This argument assumes we are restricted to a finite world. There has been significant discussion about mining asteroids recently, and some very talented people are currently working on plans to settle Mars.
I would, depending on the implementation. Basically, can I just have a "wipe-and-go" policy? or do I have to manage user-settings/profiles/etc.

Things are much easier if you "embrace" the idea that you'll be infected, and that machines aren't special snowflakes.
I think that argument is pretty weak. Many of the millions that the Soviets sent to the gulags were socialists and communists, but that action doesn't make the Soviets or those they imprisoned and murdered not-communist or not-socialist.

Communists and socialists have a long histories of bloody internecine conflicts.
The Kurds in Rojava have adopted Murray Bookchin's decentralised and democratic system of “libertarian municipalism” which prevents this kind of opportunistic authoritarianism. Hopefully Turkey's dictator doesn't destroy them and we can see what real democracy looks like.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/50102294-77fd-11e5-a95a-27d368e1dd...
They did miss the TRS-80 Model 200 which was an enhanced, clamshell version of the Model 100.
The User Illusion by Norretranders discusses this in depth. He relays an estimate that our conscious bandwidth is roughly one millionth of the total bandwidth of our subconscious mind. Incredible!

It's literally one of the most fascinating books I've ever read that completely changed my view on a lot of things. I wish there were an updated version based on more recent research.
Social media companies step up battle against militant propaganda
No, none of you make a very strong argument, since it reaches nearly 9km in height.

(damn this IS hard)
Be still my beating heart
This article honestly reminds me of nothing so much as why I stopped reading current science-fiction, and why the science-fiction I wrote took more inspiration from Douglas Adams and DC Comics than anything from the "proper SF" sphere of the last few decades.

It seems like the whole genre has become the demesne of nitpicky amateur astrophysicists instead of about humanity through the lens of projection and symbol as it used to be.

I don't care how "hard" your science is, I care what your book has to say about humanity, or at least how well it manages to entertain and enlighten.
I think they just will outsource everything to third world countries.
This is nothing compared to what we spend on car infrastructure.
So this was from last year it seems. These days there is "HD Voice" on voice calls on t-mobile. Sounds quite good to my, nominal, ears.
The blockchain is only useful if you need decentralization across pseudo-anonymous actors. This doesn't apply to Big Finance. The blockchain is also only useful with a large mining base, because security is achieved through having a large aggregate hashing power that cannot be overpowered by a bad actor. That is why almost all Bitcoin competitors are worthless -- they have nowhere near the hashing power, and are thus nowhere near as secure. The network effects here are huge. Having multiple blockchains is like running multiple competing power distribution networks across the country operating at different voltages. It makes more sense to standardize and have everything operate on one good one. And that's what Bitcoin already is.
> Is it really a "stop-and-frisk anyone you like"?

Given some lady saw the person through a window on the screet, do you think that description at all rules out someone who is 5'9" and 145 lbs from being frisked? Or 6'1" and 180 pounds?

That description becomes "stop and frisk the majority of black males". Once you can frisk a group of 3+ people based on the description of one matching then you will statistically have carte blanche.
A lot of people don't understand this about the American system. It's not supposed to be easy to push through new law. It's supposed to be so difficult that only law that reflects wide consensus can get through, under the theory that this will prevent bad or dangerous laws from going on the books. If there's a problem in the system now, it's that people have stopped trying to reach that consensus, not that the process is slow when it's being actively pursued.
Worth pointing out that everyone's favorite example of decent mass transit in the US, the NYC subways system, was largely constructed by private companies, or constructed by the city and immediately leased to private companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_S...

The subway wasn't brought under full public control until 1940, after which there was very little expansion.