skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
GoalSmashers/css-minification-benchmark: A  – GitHub
Map of rail station usage in the UK: 1997 – 2015
Ask HN: First time pitch in front of a big company. What do they want to hear?
Hi,

in two weeks i have the first opportunity to talk in front of a really big potential customer (together with other 20 startups). Everyone has 3 minutes. We definitely solve a problem for them - so there is a use case, a problem, a solution and we provide value.

How do i make sure to stand out of the others?
I customise mine so it's not as red - just apply enough tint to match my lightbulb. Without Flux the screen feels off because every other light source from inside and outside the house has a warm tint; The screen just stands out too much.

But I agree, the default setting is too much.
There's another issue with stage lighting, which is that they draw enough power to flip most residential circuit breakers and possibly to cause electrical fires as well. You're looking at 500W per lighting unit; 575W for the more modern ones with bluer hue. Most theaters are specially wired from the mains to a bank of "dimmers" that safely provide at least 2000W per circuit.
Great advice, great comment. I appreciate this, thanks for sharing.
Wouldn't it be better to set f.lux to a latitude of 0 degrees and a longitude of 0 degrees?

I live at 59°N 18°E so the opposite hemisphere would mean I currently would have daylight between 02:29 and 19:31. While 0, 0 gives you roughly 06:00 - 18:00.
what 'revolution'?
Occasionally (3-5 times per winter) I go to the nearest tanning bed room in the nearby gym, choosing the bed with the least UV and the most brightness.

Yeah, I know, tanning beds are imported directly from Hell to give us skin cancer and stuff. But a sunny day in LA or Barcelona summer will give you much more UV than that. And it really helps with the aforementioned SAD.
Where can I buy a ChromaFlood200 at? A quick search didn't turn up anything... What does it cost?
The idea that money laundering can happen in Bitcoin because it's not controlled by banks is particularly good. Maybe we should get a large, trusted bank like HSBC to regulate Bitcoin? Oh, wait: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Money_laundering
Obviously this is purely anecdotal. I have the same habits as the author with respect to light exposure regulation. I live in England and take an hour walk every day around noon regardless of weather. At night I avoid computers for about two hours before bedtime and although I do not read paper books (I should find my local library...) I set a screen filter on my amoled phablet and often invert the text so it shows white on black. I exclusively use a red LED at night for lighting. This all helps a lot, bit the thing that seems most striking is vitamin D. Sometimes I feel down and realize I haven't had exposure to many sources for a while. A few days of heavy doses and my mood improves. I don't take it orally all the time, just as I imagine I need it. The effect is sublte but it would be cool if someone could figure out how to quanitfy.

As a result of all this care about light I haven't had a SAD winter for most of a decade. I feel "cured" of it enough that spending time in even more northerly places in the winter does not trigger unpleasant depression. That said, us northern peoples should slow down in the winter. Thousands of years of selection has driven this home, and it is nothing to be upset about. We will make up for the slowness of the winter in the long days of summer.
Living Off Hackathons: The Possible Rise of the Pro-Hacker
It is Russian, and it delivers reactor containments and other heavy machinery for nuclear industry and military.
Super interesting, and a not just a bit worrisome. I was reminded of how some ancient societies had periodic forgiveness of debts, perhaps one limited form of redistribution, though as we all know most societies historically have been made of a small wealthy minority lording over a mass of the poor...

The "transactions" might not have to be purely monetary for things to work out this way. We could include interactions where the winner gets privileges and status, later to be translated into economic wealth.

Btw Jupyter Notebook is so cool for things like this.
> If I publish a paper people want to know what the data I found suggests and that's it.

What they're going to get, is what your data and your modelling assumptions suggest.

If you're taking just as much care to make the rest of your model unassailably objective, then fair enough. But a prior is usually just one modelling assumption amongst many.
> Why is BitCoin often associated with money laundering, as you say:

Because it's the 'unique' element of the story.

i.e., a million money laundering and fraud schemes are reported on every year, but the specific currency isn't mentioned. No article states 'ten arrested over dollar money-laundering allegations'.

But if it's bitcoin, it's interesting to mention. It's quite similar to how say minorities are reported on when it comes to criminal news, in my country for example you'll never hear '5 white men robbed a person', but if it's an immigrant, a muslim, a refugee, it's much more likely that somewhere his heritage is reported. Because it's exactly this element that separates them from the 'regular' news of the majority ethnicity. In the same way, bitcoin is the element that separates it from the regular money laundering news, so it's highlighted in the reporting.

None of it is untrue, but it's quite easy to appreciate how this frames the issue. Anytime there's financial fraud in dollar-denominated accounts, it's 'just financial fraud', when it's in bitcoin it's not 'just financial fraud' but 'bitcoin fraud'. So now you have a world in which majority currencies aren't specified or highlighted in negative reporting, but minority currencies are.

For example, the article is on the Netherlands, in this particular case about $20m is estimated to have been involved, part of it laundered through bitcoin, part of it through various fiat currencies and luxury goods. Is $20m significant? Well let's go back 6 years to 2010, when a bitcoin costed $0.04 (today around $400) and was virtually non-existent. At the time the Netherlands invested about $100m into improving the ability to track and prosecute money-launderers. (already you can see, if a government invests $75m to fix a problem, you can be rest-assured that $20m is a tiny part of the problem). At the time the police also estimated that in the Netherlands alone about $20 billion was laundered. As such, this bitcoin laundering case, the first of this magnitude I'm aware of in the Netherlands in years, consists of just 0.1% of the annual money laundering.
I'm the guy Chris mentioned who noted 5.0 feeling noticeably faster than 4.4 (because they cleaned up the VCL timers) and how fascinating the details of a project doing an apparently-boring job can be :-)
I was very pleased yesterday to see someone posted one of his articles. When I first discovered him a few years ago I read them with great enthusiasm; all the electrical theory I learned came together and clicked (for audio anyways)
Maybe he is talking about Stallman specifically.
Uh, Pure is not news? Already have a few years on its back, and development seems stalled.
Author here, what a fun project! :D
I don't do UI code but backend systems. Basically ETL and Middleware adapters and the like. I have the tendency to want to keep working the code to make it better. I have however found that my code usually works well long before the I get to the stop fiddling point. I don't work in a team that supports my code, it is just myself. So it is all about my own meter to gauge when to stop tweaking.
I'm going to take a more middle-of-the-road view - Some people are not creative.

I think the main problem with the computer revolution (if defined by everyone programming) is that many people don't like to program. Even those who could learn are really trying to accomplish something else as their primary task. Commercial and bespoke software is a faster way to get to work on their primary task.
Moss Hills – My Story of the Sinking (2013)
Strategies of abstraction
That should be no problem in Europe, Australia, etc. There are portable 3000W appliances, like kettles, heaters and (Old) vacuum cleaners.
Another way of thinking about it is if your performance metrics, error logs, or unit tests are always 100% green/perfect with no failures or spikes or anything, then it's probably a pretty good sign that your metrics/logs/tests are broken.
The argument is that Xcode isn't free because its use requires a previous purchase of a computer from the same vendor.
I scraped several 10Ks of math syllabi, so I know they're in there. Not sure why the field got zapped as a filter. To be fixed in v.5
"Bitcoin’s reputation was also damaged when US authorities seized funds as part of an investigation into the online black market Silk Road."

If by "seized" they mean "stole". Notice how they spin the fact that US authorities were charged and prosecuted for STEALING bitcoins while investigating Silk Road into the fiction that it damaged the reputation of Bitcoin, but not US authorities.
Yes, but that's just large scale structures. This wouldn't be simulating any of the features which most people find interesting about brains, i.e. the personality. It's important to make that clear. This is not a brain upload.
There was a fascinating RadioLab episode on similar not too long ago.

There are indications, too, that these microbes may affect/control things like depression, bipolar, etc.

We may see some amazing medical breakthroughs in this area in the coming years
At university I had to study one of his books, but I personally didn't like it at all - it did't click with me. The book was mainly about an iterative development system IIRC.

Still, RIP, apparantly a lot of people here liked his books.
I’m going on a tangent to the topic of the article: MLM companies are getting wise about this though.

If you search YouTube for some MLM companies you’ll find many of them presented as an independent opinion/study on whether a specific company is a scam or not. They’ll point out surface-level flaws in a company’s business in the beginning that would suggest a pyramid scheme. They know they can’t hide certain dirty laundry so they put it out there. But then they start talking about other studies, without citing references of course, showing these companies are not a scam. It goes on from there and sadly a lot of people still fall for these when they’re trying research these companies.
I'd be willing to bet this is the case; this only covers 8.8.8.0 to 8.8.8.255 so not 8.8.4.4 so it wouldn't be that effective at blocking Google DNS; only 1 IP would be blocked.
I disagree. Children are a good argument against this (actually, teenagers are even better - children go to play piano, but it's teenagers who make quite a big part of the content on the Internet), but you can stretch it even further - generally people have dreams and hobbies, they just don't have the time/capacity for advancing them. It's easy to paint "general population" as a bunch of mindless zombies, but think of any person you spent more than few hours interacting with in the physical world. Even the most stereotypical GenPop member. You'll discover that they have their idiosyncrasies and do lots of little creative things (and dream of doing more).

(Also note that some popular activities are creative even though we don't usually think of them this way; cooking is no less creative than web development or graphics design, and lots of people do creative side projects when e.g. baking gifts for friends, or throwing a party.)

I see having to work for a living as a biggest obstacle to creativity. For most people, their job takes most of their time and energy. After that, commute, making dinner and doing maintenance tasks, there's so little time and energy left that it's no surprise people are not very creative, and opt to watch TV or go to a bar instead. We're being forced out of creativity and into consumerism. I believe that things like Universal Basic Income are worth it because they could reverse this situation.
Look a week or so back in my submission history, there were some slides by CCC people about two of their hacker spaces.
AI alternative – the science behind 'artificial swarm intelligence'
Oh? Would love to be enlightened!
I think his simple test somewhat accounts for this. Botted reviews usually don't bother with the sophistication of generating noise in their ratings, banking instead on the possible sale from a spendy shopper instead of trying to convince the already skeptical.

With the assumption that most botted reviews aren't going to be any lower than the two highest options, the same suspicions the article raises should come into play here as well, botted responses or shill responses.

Though, reviews in general are not really all that good. Southwark's Yelp episode was a long but cute take on it, but keep in mind that almost everyone sees reviews differently. On Newegg, it's incredibly common for a part/device to get 1 egg because it didn't work for whatever reason, even when it's the buyer's own fault (e.g., buying an incompatible CPU/mobo, which happens). DoA items, misconfigured computers (e.g., forgetting to plug in a power cable), and so on all warrant 1 star, even though they have nothing to do with the performance of the item in question. (DoA being an exception, though I would argue a device being DoA by chance is not the same as widespread DoA, and that the rating system should have a special category for DoA which gets its own tally and is independent of the ratings)
The only words I can write are about losing my words
Look back at your teenage memories too. Personally, I was more consciously creative then.
It's certainly an issue in Europe, especially in older buildings. As an example, my apartment has two breakers - one for the oven, and one for everything else. Which means that in terms of appliance use, I can run my washer, dryer, microwave, or vacuum - attempting to run any two of those at once practically guarantees tripping the breaker.
TrumpScript – Making Python great again :D
From the wiki article[0] on HMI lamps:

> 85–108 lumens per watt of electricity.

Sounds pretty good!

> With HMI bulbs, color temperature varies significantly with lamp age. A new bulb generally will output at a color temperature close to 15,000 K during its first few hours. As the bulb ages, the color temperature reaches its nominal value of around 5600 K or 6000 K. With age, the arc length becomes larger as more of the electrodes burn away. This requires greater voltage to sustain the arc, and as voltage increases, color temperature decreases proportionately at a rate of approximately 0.5–1 kelvin for every hour burnt. For this reason, and other safety reasons, HMI bulbs are not recommended to be used past half their lifetime.

Oh.. Then again, burn-in is something all lamps suffer from, right?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrargyrum_medium-arc_iodide_...
Not my doing, I just found it [scoured HN's FAQ to check if it was kosher to post something that isn't mine, didn't find anything, if it isn't let me know, I'll be happy to comply and remove the post].

Obviously good for a laugh, and if you wanna feel like Trump while coding Python :D
I had no idea! In most kitchens here you can flip the circuit breaker by running the microwave and toaster at the same time. I've also occasionally done it by turning the oven light on while both (gas) oven and microwave were in use. Sigh.

What does a kettle need 3000 watts for?
This story by Moss Hills about the Oceanos shipwreck is incredible. I can't believe I've never heard about it before or that there hasn't been a big blockbuster movie made about the wreck.

The ship MTS Oceanos had a crew of the most craven, selfish, cowardly Greeks to have ever gone to sea. When the ship started sinking off the coast of South Africa, the captain and crew all deserted the ship without even raising the alarm to alert the passengers that the ship was sinking. They snuck off, leaving the passengers in the dark to fend for themselves. They lowered a half-full lifeboat as soon as all the crew and their luggage was on board, despite people screaming at them not to.

Moss Hills was the guitarist in the resident entertainment team and after checking the state of the ship (finding that the captain had lied in his announcements) he went to the bridge and found it deserted. Here is the video footage Moss took when he went down below deck to verify his suspicions that the boat was indeed going down: https://youtu.be/9BFux2AAMso?t=57s

Hills tells how he contacted another ship on the radio:

"By radio, I spoke to Captain Detmar aboard the ship "Nedlloyd Mauritius" a few times and the radio reception was clear. Captain Detmar was extremely calm and efficient sounding and was very reassuring. At first he asked me a few technical type questions and wanted to know our exact position, how many people were still on board, our angle of lean and current strengths, etc. When I was unable to answer he wanted to know my rank. I answered that I wasn't any rank, I was a guitarist. After a short pause to digest this he came back on and was extremely supportive. In fact, South African newspapers picked up this story and ran a cartoon of me as a small figure on the bridge of a listing ship in pounding seas, captioned with "Attention, attention, this is your lead guitarist speaking". The artist sent me the original of it which I still have."

He and some of his entertainment teammates organized getting the passengers rescued from the heavily listing and sinking ship by helicopter. Hills was the last man to be air lifted off the boat, minutes before the ship sank. Most impressively, despite the captains best efforts to be utterly derelict of his duties, not a single life was lost.

Moss Hills later also survived ANOTHER shipwreck a few years down the road.
CheckPoint firewalls do DPI (Deep Packet Inspection). i would imagine that to make sense of a packet purportedly carrying a piece of a video stream you'd need to perform operations amounting to decoding the stream.
there should be one set of diffusion imaging scans in there. as for the strength, I'm not sure.
thanks for the pointer Tomte

https://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/attachments/100...
"BEEP BEEP BEEP! A door is ajar. SLAM! Thank you." -Zoltan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYGYUtv18Gg
They're being sold in the UK here for GBP £70 (probably excluding VAT at 20%).

http://www.limelitelighting.co.uk/product.asp?code=PulsarChr...
Some people don't use both.
For the record, the title was taken from the title of AKay's 1997 OOPSLA keynote, which is well worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY
Talking from experience if you want to stand out:

go straight to the point and stop.

One thing you will notice when going on stage with 20 other startups is that everyone stops listening after the fifth or so startup. Everyone does the same "Problem, Solution, Team, go-to market, bla, bla, bla".

Put yourself in their shoes. At the beginning they don't really care about your team nor about anyone else's problems. They care about their own problems, so don't be generic and say "80% companies have this problem". Say something like this when possible:

"You have this problem since 2014 and it costs you over 400k EUR/year, here is how we can solve it for you".

For this to work, it needs to be targeted for that specific big company.

If you really need to be more generic and explain what you do and how big the market is then do it, just remember that the human attention span to hear you will be around 90 seconds. And they will only remember the first 10 seconds and the last 10 seconds of whatever you say.

So, score points by getting in contact with the potential customer to investigate real values (talk with an engineer, someone in management, etc). If you know nobody, usually what I see working is picking up the phone and calling the company. You will talk with their secretary, if you are sincere and explain what is happening she might be able to connect with you with the person that can help you succeed (preferably not the person in the audience watching your presentation).

Don't show animated slides. Only show 3 to 4 slides. Might seem hard but reality is that you don't have much attention from them anyways.

When concluding the pitch, end with something memorable such as "this is the type of thing that we are good in solving, come and talk with us after this presentation"

Good luck OP.
Not an issue for newly built apartments, perhaps, but I've been living in an old one for the past year and the electricity is just really poorly done. I've had the circuit breaker fail on me while doing laundry (1kw) and warming up some pancakes in the microwave (1kw). And that's without my neighbour being home, as (go figure) we're on the same circuit breaker.
Project Rosie – Do you want to win a Florist business?
And so it was in the late 90s / early 2000s. I first touched code when I was 6-7, but otherwise started seriously programming when I was 12-13. The only thing you needed was a computer, a library in town, and parents who didn't limit your computer time very much.