skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For as much as I love the dream of high-speed rail linking our great metropoli, the thought of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build out a network like that is daunting, especially when a flight from BOS to DC already costs $36 and only takes 1½ hrs. Not to mention what autonomous cars might do to the picture.
Show HN: Seedling – Snapchat for Gifting (Cat Lover Edition)
I almost started to say I don't understand the military's obsession with fixing things that aren't broke, but then I remembered defense contractors, campaign contributions, defense spending, and egos.
> if the courts and the White House wouldn't keep moving power from the states to the federal executive

What are recent egregious examples of this in your mind? Are you talking about ObamaCare?
Contrary to popular belief, real estate is literally never a good investment. At best, prices go up faster than property tax and you profit modestly from the misfortune of others for a couple of years before the bubble bursts. At worst, your investment is rapidly eaten away by depreciation and maintenance costs.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natural-vs-sy...
How to Make an HN Messenger Bot with Go and ECS
We don't need to take the Internet back from the various platforms, we need serious and strict legislation about what they do with both what we share and what we are. There is nothing wrong with a Facebook inherently; the simple fact is we as users have been extremely complacent in what companies like Facebook are allowed to do. I think that's starting to get better as the population gets more savvy but at the same time we're still nowhere close to where we need to be.

I think it's a fundamental problem with how you approach the relationship with a service like that: They give you a Terms of Service, or what you're allowed to do to be able to use that service. I think we need to flip that around entirely and instead mandate that Facebook has to ask, explicitly, for everything. And more importantly there need to be serious consequences for when those rules are violated. Every relationship with a network of any kind starts at a position of they own everything, and then they tell you what you actually own and I think it's backwards. We should start from a position of we own everything, and this is what you're ALLOWED to take and use.

I think that's far more feasible to do than a distributed Facebook. Not saying it's impossible, just saying it's a shorter route and betters the relationship we have with the things and companies we do business with overall.
How about looking at it from the flip side.

Things you put in your body can have a pretty massive effect on you. I would rather err on the side of paying $.05 too much for the corn that people have been eating for 50 years over the newest GMO strain.

You only get one body. I do not want to beta test things in my body if I don't have to.
Yeah, the private sector has been such a steward of my interests over the past century, why do we even need the government.

/s
> what is the size of business in Japan compared to the US?

It's about a third the size of the US economy.
Cool - at this rate, 3498 years from now, I'll be able to sing songs that I've sung from the time I could speak in front of people without paying the great-grandchildren of someone who stole the copyright of somebody who learned the song from somebody he met busking, then eventually died in poverty 80 years ago, having been paid $25.
Also I'd like to add that I am not saying the plan I proposed is necessarily good. It is only at least as good as the proposal to split California.

Speaking of elections and democracy, we have more problems when it comes to state and local governments. At least many people can name who they'd like to vote for POTUS and some can even name their state senators. Given this, I think it is ridiculous to say that state legislators get to decide replacement for US Senators. I am also not a big fan of the way we do things in the house.

As an elected House member of District n of the great state of X, how do I approach any legislation? What's best for the nation is not always what's best for the businesses in state X and definitely what's good for the nation isn't always what's best for the businesses in district n.

If I am supposed to look out for the whole nation, not just people in a particular district, why am I being voted in by just people in a particular district in a particular state?

If I am supposed to look out for just my district, is this the best way to look out for the interest of my district? Anyone with one ounce of naivety removed from them can easily see that although all of our House members and Senators are supposedly equal, some are more equal than others (and not just because we have two major political parties).
Spending on make-work projects would probably be GDP negative at this point. The diminishing returns on such projects have probably completely diminished. Everyone has roads, electricity, plumbing, etc.
I would hope that the message is 'Disputed Territory', however it probably depends on where the uplink is.
Or, I'm gonna go out on a limb here -- how about open up fixed wing close air support to the Army? The Marines are already free to run whatever they want, but they've banked on the F-35 as well.

Since the end of the USAAF and the formation of the USAF, it's been sacrosanct that the Army isn't allowed to do fixed wing aviation. It may be time to look at changing that.
Nothing to see here, it was a hoax/troll: https://meta.serverfault.com/questions/8696/what-to-do-with-...
> I would love to see something open source like this for voice recognition.

have you looked into CMU Sphinx? [0]

I've seen a few tutorials around the net for Amazon Alexa-like functionality using CMU Sphinx, although i'm sure none of it is as polished right out of the box.

[0]: http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/
This smart mattress knows when you're hooking up with your neighbor
On Writing Well When You’re in a Damn Hurry
I think a better approach would be to start with a more opinionated model of cognition, and then look at how the space defined by the model is getting coverage in research.

"The brain is a Von Neumann machine and our ability to model it tracks with Moore's law" is demonstrably false. There are better models than that.
It's amazing what you can do with redstone these days. YouTube effectively turned into the GitHub of redstone. I can't imagine how much more powerful this could be if you could "fork", "clone", and "pull request" red stone designs and compose them as easily. Most people rebuild each and every single bit from scratch.
On the one hand, yes, the overbearing and excessively taxing nature of the Feds is a problem for local governments trying to do things, nowhere moreso than in the northeast, home of state such as New Jersey, which pays an enormous amount of federal taxes and receives something like $0.50 on the dollar back.

On the other hand, it's sensible to have the federal government make transfer payments between the states in an attempt to equalize development and keep the beneficial union together.
It just means that a rail line to the state border is less interesting than a rail line between two cities. Agreeing to invest in the rail line (or just working to establish compatible easements) would be an arrangement that might enhance both economies.
Not even close. More like they dropped to a few months ago. 1.8% seems like a rounding error. Probably the middle to high end is seeing most of the drop. In the 2-5 million range, houses have been staying on the market longer. Houses around where I live are still selling for $100,000 + over what I paid in 2013...
Maremma Sheepdogs keep watch over Little Penguins
The government isn't the most efficient organization in the world, but for some problems it's the only kind of organization that can reasonably address the problem. If there isn't a plausible alternative organizational structure to solve a problem, then by definition and despite its problems government is the most efficient organization we have.

Take for example national infrastructure, it's hard to imagine a way for private corporations to be incentivized to create roads to even the smallest communities. The individual roads aren't going to be profitable enough on a reasonable timescale. However the value of the whole network of roads is greater than the sum of its parts.

Even if you had a private corporation that was willing, in infrastructure you have essentially natural monopolies. It's very valuable to build the first road from A to B. It's far less valuable to build the second. Look at how we've done internet infrastructure, and how little competition there is to a single one or two providers in most areas. Observe how it's hard to get high speed internet to rural locations. Tons of problems fit this structure, probably the best example is water infrastructure. Build once, use forever, structural challenges to competition.

Government is essentially the only solution to these kinds of natural monopolies that ensures that more than a tiny population benefits from their services at a reasonable price.

Other things government does that no private system is able to replicate at the same scale:

- Funding of basic (not obviously practical in any timeline) research

- National defense

- Enforcement of contracts

- Mitigating environmental externalities

Government sucks. But let's make it better. We need good government not minimal government, those two things aren't always the same thing.
Japan has the 3rd highest GDP with a population that is roughly 40% to that of the US.

With that said, business in Japan is quite difficult if you're not Japanese, though that's starting to change in recent years. Some say their startup ecosystem is 10 years behind that of the US.
Out of curiosity, I just googled around and found some code samples: https://www.google.com/#q=David+Cutler+davec+site%3Apudn.com...
It was sort of a rhetorical question :)

My point was that if you are raising a family in metropolitan Tel Aviv you are either wealthy or, more likely, live in the suburbs.

In which case transit & traffic matter a lot.
How are people interviewing for (presumably) admin positions without this knowledge?

Because once you've logged in to the box, administration via telnet and SSH is exactly the same. It's not that they don't have admin skills, they just don't have updated security skills.

It's not awesome, but if the interviewer doesn't think to ask about SSH skills, and the interviewee doesn't realize their skill is out of date, it's easy to miss.

How often is the focus on what to do once logged in, as compared to how to log in in the first place?
Ego's a big part of it here. The Air Force has historically demonstrated disinterest in programs that aren't "sexy," which is high-end fighter aviation in a nutshell. It's not just fixed-wing close air support that's hurting. It also manifests in the USAF not buying enough tanker, airlift and other assets to do the job.
Open refereeing: Why I sign my referee reports
Which is completely different than both Shaq and Kobe's multi-year $70 - $100 million dollar contracts. By doing so, it freed the Bulls up to sign better players and deepen their bench a LOT more than other teams.

FYI - The NBA has had a salary cap since 1985.
How exactly does your model propose to fix the issues of, say, states refusing to fill the gap in health care coverage because of their opposition to the entire existence of the federal government?

Some things need to be guaranteed for every American citizen, and that can't simply be left up to the states to "experiment" with. We're talking about government here, not scrum teams.
Not even just territories but two entire states.
yeah,it was wonderful as long as it wasn't your neighborhood that got bulldozered. There are not that many functions which require that level of government. The Federal Government should insure States cooperate with each other, not hold States hostage to cooperate with the Federal government.

For as many benefits of the Federal Government it sure incurs a cost and penalty in many other areas. Federal rules and regulations drove health care costs up because it prevented sales across state lines. The Feds help cause if not were the main cause of water crisis in California by selling water so cheap that it exaggerated growth of water intensive businesses. It forces companies to see alternatives to sugar to protect a few business interest in limited states. The list can go on and on. Oh, it also lends aid to and gives court backing to search and seizure.

I am quite sure we can afford to live with a much more limited government
You could have saved a few bytes and just said: "Hey everybody, I'm a libertarian!"
Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions.

Well, okay, but you'll end up with most of the red states declaring bankruptcy while the blue states do significantly better. Take a look at which states are subsidizing the others... http://taxfoundation.org/tax-topics/federal-taxes-paid-vs-sp...
Apple Begins Promoting 'Live Tune-In' Feature on New Apple TV Splash Screen
Same here. Born into a Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 household, grew up on PC/DOS and spent the majority of my life on Windows, deep inside the Microsoft galaxy, but now I've settled into Macs and OS X.

I think games used to be the big differentiator for many people, more so than office software, but now the gap is decreasing rapidly on all fronts. Apple needs to revisit the Mac mini as a low-cost entry into their ecosystem and make it an attractive PC in its own right as well. I know they're going to be adamant about GPU upgradability, but they should at least promote the Thunderbolt-based external GPUs and help them be a viable solution.
How to remember 90% of everything you learn
Anyone know why this outage caused all my kubernetes pods to restart?
All the devs I've talked to at demos strike me as fanatics; meaning in my opinion they're obviously obsessed with the tech and unable in a rational way to explain why.
I couldn't disagree more. People matter. States don't.

New York, California and Ohio don't get votes. They have no say in setting national policy. The people living in them do, and they deserve to have an equal say in setting national policy as the people who live in small states.
Artifact of a pre-digital tax/legal system?
The SSD is replaceable and standard-sized for modern computers, so I wouldn't say it is extremely bad. You can get a 512GB one now for $200.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KLTPSKM
Sometimes the only way to fix systemic issues is via strategic planning.
The long shadow of chernobyl, a retrospective photo book by Gerd Ludwig
Why not? A lot of them were moved there from SF in the first place - may as well keep moving them south:

http://www.7x7.com/arts-culture/dark-history-san-franciscos-...
Can they not just import the schematics with WorldEdit?
This is like the opposite of central planning. It appears to be proposing that we should manage political/economic regions as they actually exist, along naturally occurring boundaries, rather than imposing arbitrary boundaries (like state borders) and managing that way.

> decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies.

Wow, no thanks. There are already plenty of differences from one state to another. Having to deal with a radically different regulatory/trade environment from one state to the next is not helpful to business.
Btw, publicly available isn't the same as open source. You probably just want to look at this code, not modify it, redistribute it, or sell it. Right?
Carmack wasn't the only one working on the code. But yeah, once the bugs are highlighted here, they're pretty glaring. Hindsight and all that... ;)
Top Things to Pack for Your Vacation Rental
I think the guy felt bad that there weren't any big cities in the northern half of the great plains, so he bent the border to get Minneapolis in there.
Truckers Forum: What do you think of self-driving trucks?
Windows 10 Redstone 14316 ISOs Activated
I am generally a fan of international trade. It is the force that has lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty.

I also believe it makes sense to have international IP protection to the degree that The IP metaphor actually promotes useful arts and sciences. But I am really displeased with the fact that the TPP makes the 70-year copyright term a (likely permanent) fixture of international law.

You can find the full text here:
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/tran...

The offending language is Article 18.63 within the Intellectual Property section.
1900s science has a number of well publicized tragic tales relating to scientists promising something and missing side effects; or government/business entities misusing scientific products.

It thus behooves us to be have some concern and caution regarding the food supply.

I was at a demo farm once, where a set of 5-6 corn plots were laid out in farming practices from 1850 to 2000. While the 2000s plot had almost no weeds, very little pest damage, had tall and strong stalks, closer together, with high levels of nutrients, the 1850s plot had far more weeds and a large amount of pest damage. Now, what struck me the most was that the 1850s plot was integrated into the ecosystem in a way the 2000s plot wasn't. The modern view is "kill weeds, kill pests", because that increases yield. Much like we view software bugs and filing pointless paperwork. But I think that there's an ecosystem problem arising with the giant fields of corn that are hostile to other life. This is understood by the US Federal government: "Refuge" crops must be planted in the field to help keep native life around.

So I'm very ambiguous about this approach, recognizing the advantages of cheap food, but concerned about the second and third order effects on the flora and fauna of the farming regions.
Analyze Viewer Engagement with Video Delivery Insights
Artificial Intelligence: Marketing Buzzword, or Reality?
This reminds me of a joke I barely remember... the sum of which was, nobody considers themselves a yankee, it's always someone else. Southerners think of the North as yankee. Northerners think of New England as yankee, New Englanders think of New York as yankee, etc.
Very good question, considering how abstract of a term "the market" is.

I suppose in a "normal market" if a surplus of supply exists affordability should increase as prices should decrease. That's Economics 101.

But in a market controlled by a monopoly/oligarchy, the price system is dictated by the recidivist whims of the super admins, rather than by the needs and desires of the user base or the physical reality of the resource(s) in question.

So in the current state of housing surplus, affordability has decreased as prices have increased.
Jupyter Notebook 4.2 Released
72-year-old Tucson woman, dog survived 9 days in Arizona wilderness
WhitestormJS –Web game development made easy
Whether the state or federal level government controls planning won't change the problem of displacement. Opining your views on small government makes it seem like you personally just don't want the rail, for which switching the project to state-level control is non-sequitur.
WW3 THE EU , IS THE NWO -/
Couldn't the moderation be distributed as well? Pick the moderators you want and the posts are filtered with their moderation actions.
I think putting San Diego in a different group than Los Angeles was also rather odd...

Edit: now that I look at it, I would also question their "Urban Corridor" from Los Angeles to Las Vegas... unless they mean people travel between them easily. That corridor is mostly desert.
T. Rowe Price Writes Down Dropbox, Uber, Others
How is that evidence that GMO's are toxic? It doesn't mention GMO's at all. I guess I am supposed to just speculate? "connect the dots" as Jesse Ventura would say?

Edit: I gave you an upvote tho, because you did go thru the trouble of finding a link. (Even if it missed the full context of the thread, imo)
I wouldn't compare it to mobile. IMO, current gen VR is best described as a new content medium. VR is to video what video is to recorded audio what recorded audio is to written language. Written language describes an event to an audience's imagination, recorded audio lets them hear it, video lets them see it (scaled either smaller or larger than real life, and viewed through a flat, square window), and VR astrally projects them there, for lack of a better phrase (I'm hesitant to say "takes them there" until we have haptic feedback). The immediate applications have mostly been gaming-related, but it goes beyond that. Think films that are more like stage plays where the audience member can float around and see events unfold from any angle, conference calls that give you the ability to see body language, CAD modelling done by actually walking around the object in question you're designing and manipulating it with your hands, the ability to walk around on stage at a concert next to your favorite band, to scuba dive or mountain climb or go on a safari without leaving home or being in danger.

That's part of the reason that so many people talk about needing to try VR to understand it. The experience just cannot be fundamentally conveyed via a flat screen (though I think this ad for the Vive does a great job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYfNzhLXYGc).
This reminds me of the argument for free market capitalism. In theory it seems like a great idea, but in practice it is just abused to death. Proponents will just say "it wasn't implemented correctly", because short of founding your own country and creating all the rules from scratch it can't be implemented correctly.

In reality is far easier to take away rights and discriminate on the state or local level. In a perfect world, people would have high mobility and it would be feasible to move from a state that represents you poorly to one that represents you better. Over time, presumably, people would prefer states that took better care of their people and protected their rights more.

In reality, the people that need the often late and insufficient protections of the federal government are the exact people that have the least mobility in society. In these cases, the federal government can serve a useful purpose, however bloated and inefficient as it may be.

It reminds me of monolithic kernels vs microkernels. Microkernels may be more architecturally appealing and may have many benefits on paper but where the rubber meets the road, monolithic kernels have won out. You can create all kinds of hypothetical circumstances where a microkernel wins, (free market capitalism, libertarianism, etc), but without some nonexistant force to enforce some kind of level playing field, you end up with what we have: a big monolithic patchwork of one off fixes and workarounds.

Designing a society is hard, designing a huge software system is hard and there is a reason why so many corners have to get cut to make shit work. The system evolves all the time and giving lots of power to the states just helps the powerful in their divide-and-conquer campaign against the rest of us.

Now if you excuse me I have to attempt to figure out whether it is easier to move to another state or another country.
Interesting. You could have one house with 33-past-the-post and one with proportional representation, though I guess the difference would be more meaningful if it was less than 33.

Another thing that would be interesting would be choosing the government by first-past-the-post and the parliament by proportional representation, preferably in the same election, i.e. proportional representation with no coalitions allowed.
Railways, maintenance, public transit, electric grid upgrades and expansions, there are a ton of public works projects that could be done.