skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They would have likely used a collection of East-is-Up maps to get from destination to destination. The medieval maps were maps, however they were designed to allow you to navigate from natural markings as there was no such thing as a compass, you only had the sun to tell you was going in the right direction. Similarly many of these maps were point A to point B maps, with the destination at the top, you found the path it was describing and simply followed the route.

Notable objects were used to navigate, for instance the Tree of Ténéré is still frequently drawn on maps as it was the only tree for 200km (now it's simply a statue to where the tree once was). It was a key marker for trade caravans.

They would also have likely used a great many of local navigators, as explorers still do today. Our great explorers were merely bumbling idiots who got incredibly lucky in finding amazing local explorers who had lived the land for decades.
A narrower hole, which would take less time.
Do you need someone to explain why this is unlikely and not worthwhile to brood over?
Top 5 Customer Retention Marketing Tactics
I wonder if the red/green difference is partly due to that blues and greens for sign-ups are getting common, so red stands out. Could it just be an example of staying with / ahead of the curve?
What do you mean? Is it the layout, the content or something else? I was able to read it just fine.
Why can't a huge concrete block stop the leak?
Most people today are interesting in 'exploring' exceptionally populated areas of the planet that they've heard to be great places of interest. While these places are fascinating, it is hardly 'exploring'.

I hope that within my lifetime we will be able to convert enough of these people to want to explore places like the moon and Mars. Before long, we'll have people demanding we explore Alpha Centauri and going out with a battering-ram to see if we can find life in the universe rather than playing with a ham-radio to see if the neighbours are in.
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Three things:

I will never be unable to unsee this (a good thing).

I am now buying a print of the Creation of Adam.

What does this mean for the Spaghetti Monster parody of the painting? In the parody, His noodly noodles and meatballs definitely looks less brainy.
Last time I checked Skype's user count was above 500 million and they have 50+ million daily active users. Their network effect is pretty huge.
Go To University, Not For CS
No, most libertarians are against government action to prevent non-externalities.

For example, motorcycle helmet laws do not prevent any external cost. Motorcycle drivers pay extra for insurance (except when the government prevents insurance companies from doing this), and the only other "externality" is caused by government action (forcing ERs to service people who don't have insurance). I don't know enough about sarbox - what externalities does it prevent?

Libertarians may differ on things like regulation of drilling. Some believe the externality only exists when the harm actually occurs (and should be handled by tort law), while others believe the risk of harm is an externality(I lean towards the latter).

But I'm pretty sure the boundary between libertarian and anarchist is when you call for the government to stop protecting people from the bad acts of others.
(very much not an expert)

I think the reservoir itself it much deeper than the effect of the explosion would reach.
First, why does it matter what "originated" there? Many of the projects that didn't originate at Google wouldn't have seen the light of day if Google or someone with comparative capital hadn't acquired them. And actually, it's a bit ironic that you make this complaint here given the subject of the article, since acquiring startups is a way to hire people who are both smart and get things done.

"Originated" is also somewhat ambiguous. There are at least a couple of examples where Google was working on a project internally and saw a similar external project that they decided to acquire and merge with the internal project. Did the resulting project "originate" at Google? Even if you answer no, I think at least half of the items at that list still "originated" at Google.
San Andreas-like fault found in eastern U.S.
mice. its the mice.
This reminds me of a story in Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams illustrating psychological denial. It's about a man who returns a borrowed kettle that had been broken to his neighbor. To explain the damage he says "It's not broken; when I borrowed it, it was already broken; I never borrowed it!" In other words, three mutually incompatible explanations for what happened to try to avoid the facts. Here, you say that Wikipedia is not an oligarchy; and also, it is an oligarchy, but it's justified. The claim against my argument is that it's both too superficial and also an elaborate conspiracy theory, a complicated mindfuck that defies logic. Are these arbitrary outbursts not evidence in themselves of a refusal to consider the facts?

This logic of "Democracy is great! But of course we have to have some standards..." has been used to conceal elite power for centuries. In the US, political participation was originally reserved for white, male property owners, because it was thought that the standard for voting is rationality, which women and lesser races don't have. The elites permit democracy, but they reserve the right to decide what the standards for participation should be. Who decides what "good-faith" means? This isn't conspiracy, it is ideological delusion: elites become corrupt because they're convinced of their own benevolence, that because they stand for Democracy and Decentralization (today's empty signifiers, replacing God, Nation), preserving their elite position is justified. It is definitely not because they cynically manipulate, pulling the strings behind the scenes while laughing at the deluded masses. It's a natural human tendency to see yourself as acting only for the greater good, and to adopt an ideology that explains why what's good for you is good for all.

As I mentioned before, my preferred solution to elite power is not some fantasy of "true democracy", which only ends up concealing real power. Nor do I think that elite control is necessarily a bad thing, only concealing elite power behind mask of democracy. Scientific knowledge is an obvious arena where we are best served by having an elite. But if they abuse their power, we should be ready with the (metaphorical) guillotine. In the case of Facebook, the real response is not a different, more decentralized system, but the guillotine of strong privacy regulations. Or government enforcement of net neutrality, and so on. The libertarian & anti-government leanings of the tech community is more evidence in favor of my argument. Is this not just another way to defend an oligarchy? I think many sincerely believe that this is the best arrangement, but avoiding the facts might cast some doubt on this.
Ugh: "provide a basis for improved interpretation of the internal structure"

I wish less people would use them fancy words. What's wrong with simple english?
Physics problem:

Assume of a wave of water 1 meter wide, 3 meters tall, and which hits at least 80% of the coastline of the gulf of mexico. Compute the gravitational potential energy in this wave. Now compare to the energy of a nuke.

(I haven't bothered to do this calculation. But last time I did it, when dispelling conspiracy theories about the last tsunami, it was several orders of magnitude too small.)
This is typical for papers like this: take a toy algorithm, show it's kinda as fast as C/Fortran if you do something really odd, then declare victory. This works better if your C compiler lacks important optimizations, like a loop nest optimizer.

If you really want to impress people, take a significant algorithm, preferably one of the SPECcpu benchmarks, write the whole thing in Lisp, and then see what happens.
I am surprised no one has mentioned Godzilla. Seriously though what about the effects on marine life if they miscalculate?
I liked your idea #5 (Website visualizer) and have been looking for an excuse to play with the Raphael javascript library.

Just hacked together a little initial demo (still needs a lot of work), but think it will look decent when I'm done with it.

Posted on github.com at http://github.com/qix/Sitemap
The oil pressure is so high that a 5 mile tall mud (twice the density of water) needed to be pumped into the well, as its own pressure was not enough. The involved forces are incredible.
http://www.skype.com/intl/en/security/safety/safe-payments/

Skype-to-Skype calls will always be free
The scribd version is pretty bad.
I'm sure you're good, but the writing on your site is terrible. Just from scanning a random paragraph on this page http://www.confiz.com/company/engagement-models:

"We follow strict non-disclosure policies at Confiz which makes us credible." => that doesn't make any sense. How does a non-disclosure policy make you credible? Credible in what?

"Therefore we stand truly commited to delivering quality on time." Spelling mistake: "committed". Plus, everyone says that. That doesn't mean anything if you just state it like that without proof or explanation.

"There are two ways in which we work with our clients" => and you go on to list three!

And that's just 1 random paragraph. In short, spend some time on the writing, or hire someone, or remove some of it. A native English speaker (which I'm guessing you're not? I'm not.) will be turned off by this.
I highly suggest going the technical route. Ask yourself this: would you prefer to be a software developer in a start-up (including your own), or a manager in a more established firm? If the only sort of management you see yourself doing is in your own company, I don't see an MBA as being very useful to you. You need to be some self-sufficient, meaning you should know how to code and not just how to manage. It's easier to bring in outside managerial talent to a purely technical firm rather than vice versa (I personally would never be the first programmer in someone else's company, many other hackers are similar).

You already have a strong background in a quantitative discipline (CEng). It means you'll have an easy time picking up either. Don't forget the advantage that this gives you. That means you'll have an easier time with statistics, mathematics and numerical analysis: this opens up a whole new world for you that's closed to many programmers who are only good at programming.

That being said, there's a lot you still have to learn. Start with learning C (you might not develop your application it, but a) you need to understand how physical memory works in order to be a programmer b) C is the lingua franca of programming languages which means you'll have no problems learning whatever other language is better for the task at hand), then learn algorithms and data structures and at least three of (compilers, operating systems, databases, computer networking). Then specialize: machine learning/NLP/IR (given your "real engineering" background, you might have an easier time here than most programmers), further into systems, further into databases, etc...

That's a multi-year project and you have to be ready for it.
Don't under-estimate the value of experience (by experience I mean working in firms whose product is software i.e., not consulting or internal IT development) in doing a start-up: it's possible to start without "having done it before", but several years of work experience (alongside people much smarter and more experienced than you) is extremely useful. Experienced developers have a huge role to play in a start-up: partly by making it possible for apt junior developers to be recruited (they want to work alongside "hard core" hackers) and mentored.

If you join a start-up, it's also a chance to be exposed to the "business side" as well -- although certain types of established firms (in my experience, those who build software for other developers) will give you exposure to customers and sales/support cycle as a developer too.

If you prefer a more structured environment in which to learn (as do I -- there is absolutely nothing wrong with that), an MSCS will serve you well. It's also a chance to meet hackers, show your "worth" to them (they'll have collaborated on lab projects with you) and make connections without looking like a "shmoozer". It will also give you credentials for employment (getting initial experience), although I'd have zero hesitation in hiring a self-taught hacker with a degree in Civil Eng (software development is really an engineering discipline rather than a science).
I admit to not having read the paper all the way through, but Figure 2 only shows Common Lisp as being noticeably faster than C in one instance, and I suspect that's due to an anomaly of some kind (it's totally out of line with the other C speeds).
The scribd version is nearly unreadable, but the pdf is fine.
Corporations are held to be capable of engaging in political speech; so to the extent that they can enjoy the benefits of legal personhood, I see no reason why they should be able to offload the responsibilities of same onto their individual officers. I agree that a corporation lacks an actual brain, nervous system and so on, but in practice we treat the collective decisions of the board as equivalent.
I posted it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1034958
Ah, you're right, that is bad. I had only looked at the raw PDF.
There have of course been some since the 2008 credit crisis and the various bans on short selling and according to The Wall Street Journal the effects weren't good (but take that with a big grain of salt). The example of commodity onion trading is supposed to be the classic one showing it's a bad idea.
Freelancing, selecting projects with shorter durations. Saving enough money to be able to bootstrap a startup and determine one's own working conditions.

Though I might be unique in feeling uneasy about quitting a job after a short amount of time (like a month). Maybe for other people it is not as much of an issue.
Interesting that Twitter places above Amazon.com, and Bit.ly places above NYTimes.com.

Also interesting that Scribd is the top-ranked YC startup, significantly ahead of justin.TV (which was the second-ranked that I knew of), and I couldn't even find Reddit, Digg, or Hacker News on the list. Though the data set is likely biased: geeks are far less likely to have Google Toolbar installed than the general population, and less likely to opt-in to allowing data to be collected if they have it.
I'm about as ADD as you can get, but I can watch Youtube videos for a long time without losing interest.
Isn't it based on the ads they serve?

Was also posted two days ago:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1386244
Anyone else find it creepy that they've removed all of their own websites (Google, YouTube, Gmail), but stil feel it's fair to publish this data about everyone else (including their competitors)? "Do No Evil". Hmm.
You're right that it's pretty easy to write the individual tests.

But on the whole, I disagree: in my experience, compilers for non-trivial languages have an extremely large surface area, especially when optimization is involved. Language features have the habit of interacting with each other in non-trivial ways, and the combinatorics can quickly get overwhelming.
Modern nukes have very precise control over their yield. The idea is to explode it deep in the rocks under the bottom of the ocean.

If they miscalculate by a couple percent, nothing weird happens. I doubt they could miscalculate by the orders of magnitude required to do real damage to the ocean.

It would be very unlucky to hit a natural nuclear reactor...
Seeing shorting as "making a bet against a company" is an accurate, but overly simplistic view of modern financial theory.

Say I want to buy a stock index that includes BP, but don't want to expose myself to their current volatility. I could buy the index and short an equivalent amount of BP to replicate the risk I am looking to take on.

Or maybe I am bullish on BP, but don't feel like I have good knowledge on the Oil&Gas industry. I could buy BP and short a basket of stocks that collectively represented the performance of the industry.

This is what people talk about when they mention "complete markets" - the ability for investors to create any desirable risk profile - insuring themselves against events they deem overly speculative.

When the government bans short selling, it's essentially saying "oops, shit has gotten so bad that everyone insuring themselves would risk the collapse of socially important businesses... we got this one (ie bailouts). don't worry, we'll just take it out of your taxes/currency".
This is what the Sun looks like with 43 spots
Semantics - I just don't see any point in calling Skype users "mundanes". They had the incentive to learn how to use the technology because of the cost savings, they'll have that incentive again in the future if it becomes necessary. I think we're basically in agreement.
Maybe you are right -- is see what you mean.

But no idea is a bit too much for me. And I don't like the nationalist approach. Yes, it is always shocking for me to realize that universal health care is not seen as a basic human right. But I can also understand this, based on the history of the United States.

I would go as far as to say, that it is very difficult for an American to see why Europe is acting so strange sometimes.

But to the point: commenting the Europeans have no idea, is discriminating.
Do Animals Dream?
Maybe they thought it was unfair to list their own sites.
Depends what exactly they mean by 'ice (or iced) coffee'.

When I was on holidays in Italy we discovered the 'cafe freddo' almost by accident. (Needing to buy a coffee to use the cafe bathroom, my wife didn't want a hot coffee, and in my limited Italian this was the best I could think to ask for). They made an espresso, and poured it over ice.

Quick. Easy. And the same price (90 cents) as an espresso. In other words, there was no price difference or mystery.

Back home in Australia, an Iced Coffee is a very different beast. There's probably fresh coffee in there ... plus milk, ice-cream, cream, some chocolate syrup on top. It's twice the size of a flat white. On a menu it is always associated with iced chocolates and milkshakes, not hot coffee.

In this context, comparing ice coffee to hot coffee is almost like comparing buffalo wings to buffalo mozzarella. The similarity in name doesn't necessitate similarity in pricing.
I didn't even no rapidshare was a real site. Any HNers use that? Occasionally my software shows up there on Google Alerts but I thought the site was bogus.
That really depends on the average size of someone's network. How many networks are only composed of 2-3 endpoints? (most common example - talking to family "back home"). Compare to Facebook's 100+ average network size.
Sub-array indexing
I always notice microsoft.com on these lists and don't understand how it gets so much traffic. What am I missing?
Github is probably representative of C# and Java among hackers.

But it isn't representative of hackers language preference for all languages. Github will almost certainly underrepresent both python and haskell, and bitbucket will overrepresent python.
#985: dropbox.com — myth & folklore

Congratulations on achieving mythical status!
"Blind speculation" on positive outcomes is I'm pretty sure fantastically worse, that's a cause of the worst sort of bubbles, the ones that destroy money wholesale (deflation), with sobering examples like the Great Depression and Japan's two Lost Decades (and counting ... and only WWII broke us out of the Great Depression).

Whereas covered short selling pretty much by definition has limited effects; for the purposes of the below, A > B > C

It works by someone borrowing (I don't remember the details so I'll accept Daniel_Newby's calling it renting) something and selling it at current price B. The short seller hopes that the price drops, so that he can buy it back at price C and make a profit on B - C - transaction costs etc.

One limiting factor is that unlike normal investing there is no theoretical limit to the short seller's losses. If the price goes up, he has to buy it at A and he loses A - B - etc. So you need to exercise greater care in taking a short position.

Short positions must be reported in the US and that sends information to the rest of the market. As Daniel_Newby points out, covered shorts make markets more "efficient", an important term of art and an important goal.

I've never come across a defense of deliberate naked short selling that made sense to me (it can also happen in "oops" situations, or so people say); as far as I can tell the only legitimate debates WRT it is how extensive the non-accidental type is and how hard should the latter be cracked down on.
Unfair how? Facebook gets more traffic than YouTube. Why not let the public make up their mind? Or publish two versions? Or somehow otherwise make data available about THEIR sites that they've made available about everyone elses?

Seems like a slightly pointless list otherwise... "Here are the top sites in the world!... except for the ones we've taken out."
Thanks for the links. For your yahoo link, what does "BRK-A" vs "SPY" mean?
So I have built something that already exists...now what?
So this is actually cross posted from r/startups at reddit. I trust you guys more than the hive mind on this one.

Well, it turns out that the project that I've been working on for the past few months in hopes of escaping my cube one day has complete feature parity with another company's product! In fact, not only does it have complete feature parity but the other company's product has all the features that I wanted to implement. The company in question is squareup.com.

Question is...what should I do? Should I try to out-innovate them? Or are they so far ahead of the game that I should move on and find something else? I think I see some room for innovation in this space still; however, they've got capital, man power, etc. and I don't.

As of now I have a prototype that's good enough to show off, basically, that could be grown in to a beta pretty easily. So I don't have a huge investment in terms of time at this point; however, starting over on something else sounds kinda scary...

Anyway, I'm only any good with the technology part of this stuff, still learning the business/management end. Any advice that you guys can pass along would be great!
Random thought: default IE home page.
My local coffee shop (Bollo's in Blacksburg, VA) charges the same for iced coffee as they do for a house mug and a small to-go.
Microsoft beeing the biggest software producer in the world and 95% of computer users running Windows and/or Office. Plus Xbox, Zune, Windows Mobile and thousands of apps. Plus millions of developers - http://bytes.com/topic/net/answers/121861-how-many-net-devel....
Not impressed at all. We started looking into building one ourselves and we started working on the ftp part of it, but then we got slammed with clients stuff so it ended up in the back burner. I'm waiting to see a Coda for iPad, that would be awesome.
IMO (La)TeX output looks professional when printed on paper with a decent laser printer. You need to look very close. Difference is in very small details. I would guess that it has more accurate font face calculations and positioning as every character looks perfect.
This reminds me of Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an underground coal fire has been burning since 1962. It will probably burn for another 150 years or so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania