skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Does Amazon AWS EC2 Spot Instance in US-East 1-B take forever to spawn?
How to make a minimalist user interface design intuitive
Actually, Mad Men uses extremely little background music. In this sequence it's there, but very subtle.
An interesting way of dealing with flags depending on the kind of app you are developing, I wouldn't use that technique often.
I'm an environmental studies major, so I have heard before that plants communicate with each other via chemicals and also apparently "scream" when injured (some pulse or other they measured - not something humans can hear). So I have long joked that if I were a vegetarian, I would probably favor a bumper sticker or t-shirt that said something like "I don't love animals, I just hate plants".

(Just trying to stay on-topic and not stray towards the topic lower down on the page, which may be a very bad motivation for commenting. <whistles innocently>)
I agree with you from the point of view of people doing proper statistics. Mean is not good enough.

Then again - let's say I'm a user of some library and I trust the developers to do the right thing and test the new implementation against the old one. The thing that is of interest to me is whether on average on my random test I still see the difference. He did. Sure - the whole test is flawed, may be incorrect, etc. In reality - he just verified something he already knew/expected against his random data. No matter how much we care about correctness, he's still right on some level. There's a visible improvement even on this random test and if he tried it at least 3 times we can assume that the new GC is worth looking at if you had issues with the previous one.

"if it's not done well, it's not worth doing"? I'd say - if it answers your question, it's worth doing. If you assume the question was - "can I verify that the new GC is better in my random not-scientific test on a specific dataset", then everything's all right.

And I do hope that the person writing the new GC will publish some better stats.
Software development is different because software developers who have blogs love to have a circle-jerk about how special software developers are.
So why did the recommend it so highly in the first place, despite the antenna problems?
Not sure if your document could be considered a "book", but a number of services will render physical versions of your ebook for a percentage; you could make it onto Amazon's best-seller list like Gever Tulley: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1526479
Interesting. It reminds me of Zope's Page Templates. I find Spark's syntax to be dirtier, however.

Has anyone implemented ZPT for .NET?
Google's "Parisian Love" ad is an extremely potent, real world example of using similar emotions to sell a product:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU
Why All Rainbows Share an Identical Angle (The Optics Inside a Droplet of Water)
> The title suggests this is usefully related to pitching

Yes. In that it might make you understand that you need to find your product's emotional appeal (if it has one) and play on that.
Possible, but probably not practical.

And especially in case of .NET which offers pretty tight integration with unmanaged code, you can have various stack frames with layout completely out of your control on stack (I'm not sure whenever such stack frames must be scanned for pointers, but they will certainly complicate any attempts to analyze stack structure).
"metrics are are hard to do and easy to game"

That is the painful truth with employee measurement in general (hm, perhaps another knock against software dev being different). I would still say that the junk "objective" metrics provided in the original article aren't generally used in any competent dev shop.
The advert was for Hanson, the junk-bond takeover conglomerate founded by a guy from the same town (in England) as me.
The cost of living in most places outside of the coasts is very reasonable. I currently live in the Metro DC area and most people here retire to PA, WV, or farther to the midwest.
You made a very strong claim: "blacks commit a lot more crime (~ 10x) everywhere, not just America". (In fact, that claim is so over the top that it suggests 'troll', but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.) DOJ statistics do nothing to back up the "everywhere" part. And citing a summary table of countries with black populations does next to nothing.

As for the rest, you're projecting (I don't believe the things you're objecting to) and resorting to rudeness. It would be better to shrink the scope of your claims to what you can actually back up, and tone things considerably down. That doesn't mean not saying controversial things. It means saying them in a way that's cognizant of the context, makes respect a high priority, and resists venting.
My only qualm is that it gives advice on how to use arguments.callee, which was depreciated in ECMAScript 5, for recursive anonymous functions.

Since they already give an example of how to use a named function recursively, the arguments.callee example could just simply be removed.
Why doesn't the totem work if someone else touches it, though?
Shrivel, yes; away, no.
There's a straightforward way to resolve this once and for all: if Thesis is indeed GPL, then it doesn't matter what license Pearson uses - anyone can legally copy/distribute/modify/fork/sell Thesis publicly right now, even if Pearson continues to opine that the code is distributed under a different licence. GPL is GPL.

Pearson will most likely sue the first person who actually does this (and refuses the Cease-and-Desist that precedes the suit). The courts will then determine whether or not Thesis is indeed GPL, or whether the distribution was in violation of Pearson's intellectual property rights.

Until someone actually does this, the debate will continue - there's enough ambiguity that the issue won't be resolved until ruled upon by the courts. I really doubt Matt/Automattic will push the issue - there's a lot to lose and almost nothing to gain. (Matt said in a previous thread he thinks Thesis' code is "junk" and doesn't want it in core.)

Until Thesis is publicly distributed and legally challenged, the status quo will continue: Thesis will effectively be private code, and Pearson's position will prevail.
Modern historians estimate that ancient Egypt had a population of only 1-2 million; major American cities have many times that.
Yeah. But this has always been a risk, ever since the Air Force discovered strategic bombing.
If you wake up and discover that all the money belongs to a handful of people who have gamed the ruleset by which money is distributed, and that they are failing to use their giant pile of money to direct the economy to keep everyone else fed, clothed, housed, and entertained to the correct extent: You change the rules, or you stop playing the game.

Do you think that every rich person has simply gamed the system and that none of them have actually earned their money? To make a blanket accusation against every rich person and simply say that their taxation is the cure is nowhere close to being an American.
Relevant paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073%2Fpnas.131090498

PubMed search: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&DbFro...
NASA appears no longer to be shooting for the stars
Only in relation to one bullet point out of four, requirements gathering.

That particular bullet point is perhaps the most disturbing flaw in the article, I might add. All the projects that I've seen go off the rails are the results of -poor- requirements gathering.

Granted, poor requirements gathering seems to be the rule more than the exception, I have worked on plenty of projects that had excellent requirements that went extremely well, even with the usual set of unexpected scope changes.
Has nothing to do with race inherently, and everything to do with history. Let's see the countries you listed:

USA
South Africa
Jamaica
Haiti
Brazil

Now, what do all five of those countries have in common, historically?
It turns out I can do a maximum of 2 things at once.

Huh. That reminds me of a rule I figured out a long time ago: you have two cards to play. As in: Job, school, family, startup, pick 2. (Though startup really wants both.)
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has decided that you folks dont need deposit insurance, because it doesnt prevent runs on banks and you would have to wait to get your money anyway, pretty much ignoring that deposit insurance is to protect small depositors. In the US, deposit insurance is rarely used, because the fed usually arranges for a takeover of the failing bank, but it is nice to have in as a last resort.

I admit I didn't do a deep analysis, but I dont think I would want to opt for lower moral risk and less prudent supervision at the expense of not actually getting my money back
If you haven't already, you could pick up a copy of "What color is your parachute?" which has some good tips on how to effectively switch fields. Also, although I think it is a great idea to ask for feedback here, do keep in mind that there is a recession on. Job-hunting tends to take more time in a recession.
I don't think we'll come to agreement. There are bad FA's out there. Your wife got bad advice, and bad advice is out there. I certainly agree that a lot of FAs are meatsticks who should be locked away.

But I think our dissonance comes from a place you might not expect. I view the prime contribution of a financial advisor to be the construction and adherence to a financial plan with clearly stated assumptions and goals.

I don't think most investors can do this on their own, and I don't think reading "A random walk down wall street" will help them.

Personal investors are poorly served by a mentality which suggests aiming for the highest total return is their goal. They should instead seek to generate a return which will provide for their needs.

Also, equal weight indexes tend to broadly outperform cap-weighted indexes, fyi.
He referred to his own comment. He cannot upvote it.

Regarding down votes: some people click them because they disagree, some because they think the post may be irrelevant. Sometimes it is not clear which is the case.
I'm currently working on a project devoted to hooking up devs and developers based on projects that they want to work on - what sort of work are you looking for? Have an academic interest in what sort of criteria you're using to choose what to work on.
I can tell if he's guilty. I just look at SCO. Emporer has no cloths. I can tell how much Microsoft has sinned by how much piracy.

God does justice.

It's almost like laws of physics. Atheists are the stupidest animals. Get smacked all the time and can't figure-out why.

24
20 When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
25
Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt.
26
21 At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.'
27
Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.
28
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. 22 He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, 'Pay back what you owe.'
29
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
30
But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt.
31
Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair.
32
His master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
33
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?'
34
Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. 23
35
24 So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart."

Hello! This is how God's world works, ya animal morons.

11
8 Give us today our daily bread;
12
and forgive us our debts, 9 as we forgive our debtors;
13
and do not subject us to the final test, 10 but deliver us from the evil one.
14
11 If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
15
But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.

Why is it you can't sell your hobby software or music?
I'm partial to treasurydirect's t-bills program. No fees (except if you sell early) and short maturity.
If your not considering the sex, race, or age of an author then you are not considering all aspects of the article especially when the article is an opinion piece. We already know that the sexes think different, maturity matters and the races have different perspectives so why ignore a pertinent bit of information?
That sounds good, but whats your definition of an oil producing nation? I'd guess the meager amount of oil produced in the US is consumed by the US.
Thanks! I was sure this was a great fit for here, but I'm not sure how to attract attention to it.
>unless of course you store that "random" salt in the database, which would defeat the purpose if your database is compromised.

Not true, a plain hash can be compromised with a brute force attack. To do this all the entries in the dictionary(used in the attack) must be hashed using the same hash algorithm.

If each password entry is hashed with a random salt(with the salt being kept for password comparison) the attacker must rehash the entire dictionary(not a computationally cheap thing to do) including the random salt, for each and every password.

This doesn't make it impossible to brute force a hash+salt, but makes it a LOT more expensive and time consuming.

At least this is my understanding of the whole point of random salted hash.
Erdős the math-addict

There, ftfy.
Unfortunately, from my perspective its still an 'employers market'. Meaning, there are still many senior developers out there with degrees and experience really needing jobs. Employers are able to get those folks for less than they could only a few years ago.

I'm a .Net developer and the market is pretty good here in Utah for us. Employers seem to look first at the experience and then for a degree. At my past jobs I worked with some awesome developers without a degree.

So, questions. Are you willing to move? Are you just looking for consulting work or a full-time job? One of my last jobs was building healthcare information systems for hospitals. Shoot me an email and I'll check out your projects.
The point of the totem is that only you know how it behaves, and how it feels and how it's weight is distributed.

If someone else has held and seen your totem, they can possible recreate it exactly in a dream. If they can recreate it then they can trick you into thinking you aren't dreaming when you actually are.
That structure is often called a Tontine. It's illegal, because after a while it's basically a massive monetary reward for offing your fellow investors.
Either di.fm's eurodance or vocal trance offerings, Streaming death and black metal, or gaga face radio, which is all lady gaga music

Stop looking at me like that >_>
First, you can't really judge a person's happiness just by looking at them.

Second, you can't really cheat your biology in the long run, because your brain will always compensate for any psychoactive drug you consume. Take dopamine for example. If you take a drug that increases the amount of dopamine in your brain, then your brain will decrease its density of dopamine receptors to compensate. If you take a drug that decreases the amount of dopamine in your brain, then the density of your dopamine receptors will increase. If you take a drug that decreases the uptake ability of your dopamine receptors, the amount of dopamine your brain produces will increase. And if you increase the ability of your receptors to bind to dopamine, the amount of dopamine in your brain will decrease. The production/reception system for every psychoactive drug works the same way.

Most people who drink coffee or alcohol on a daily basis are only staving off the low level depression caused by using the substance. (Because if you take a drug that increases the amount of the a neurotransmitter, then your receptor density will for that neurotransmitter will decease. Then once you stop taking that drug then you get all sorts of problems because suddenly there isn't enough of that neurotransmitter in your brain because of your low level of receptors.)

Now I'm not trying to suggest drugs are bad. Just the opposite; we're literally made out of drugs. Everything we do from the moment we get out of bed until we go to sleep is designed to get us high in some way or another. It's literally how we survive and reproduce, and because we're essentially the latest iteration in a 500 million year old line of psychopathic paint huffers our brains are extraordinarily well evolved to prevent us from fucking with them.

The only reason why big pharma is even allowed to release their drugs is because the FDA only makes them show they are safe and effective for six weeks. Virtually every longterm study on every pharma drug shows that you are worse off in the long run than if you'd never taken it at all, but the government and pharma industry go to extraordinary lengths to hide that information from both doctors and consumers.

No matter what you do, in the long run you can't win. You can't even break even. And the worst part of the low level depression induced by something like caffeine or alcohol is that you can't even notice it. Gradually colors will be less bright, jokes will be less funny, emotions will be duller, etc. But you'll never even realize it because it's so gradual and subtle when you're just using daily at these low levels.

Especially with alcohol, because not only do you have the normal receptor adaption, but the alcohol itself also causes the bacteria in your gut to produce inflammatory compounds. If you Google for both alcohol + inflammation, and also cytokine theory of depression, it should be pretty obvious why even small amounts of daily alcohol are really bad news for your mental health. (Although good for your heart and a few other things, so it's a trade off as usual.)
Actually a much stronger argument. Anyone who has been taking drugs for that long is going to have serious withdrawal issues. This is analogous to a heavy coffee drinker complaining he is exhausted and has a headache because he missed his daily dose of caffeine; it isn't so much that people can't operate sans caffeine, it is that his brain has become wired to expect the daily stimulant.
>> The large number of claims caused a computer program that tallies who should be getting benefit checks that week to run too long, Winter said. Another program that deposits the checks directly into recipients’ accounts started before the first program finished. That caused the computer to be confused about which claims were paid and which weren’t.

Checking the preconditions for running the next program was a bit too much strain on the old brain cells?
Regardless of his lack of scientific method, I would agree that most stimulants do decrease creativity to some degree. However, some nootropics that enhance utilization of acetylcholine DO enhance creativity, specifically piracetam and aniracetam. My problem with the article is mis-titling it "smart drugs" if it is only about Provigil.

The wikipedia nootropic article has almost everything you would want to know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic
qixxiq: Take a listen to http://radio.hbr1.com:19800/trance.ogg :)
The problem with having the government do it is that they can be collectively less responsible. Think about it: instead of having a system you trust, you need to have a system that 51% of the voting public trusts. When that voting public consists disproportionately of old people, that means a system that pays out more than it can afford to, and redistributes income from young to old.

In other words, you get what we've got, which doesn't even work.
Do you mean this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoPbMMzrLss#t=2m21s
Looks like the second presenter starts at 22:47. The interesting part (looking for a need to fill, etc.) starts around 26:15.
Yes, that does seem clearer. Thanks for the clarification. LOL on the "extremely suave, charming men" as it might describe one of my brothers. My mom says he could "charm a nun out of some stuff" ;) And I do think he is a bit manipulative (of my parents at least, he's the baby boy), but I do think he tries to maintain some sense of integrity. Hopefully he notices how straightforward I try to be, and that has some influence. I agree little white lies can put anyone on a slippery slope. It's interesting to imagine those may be more attributable to women than men, in general.
The G20 protest in Pittsburgh was the first time the LRAD (sound cannon) was used on US Citizens (me included). It wasn't bad - people brought eye plugs, but I see no easy way to combat this either - short of tin-foil hats that is ;-)

Scary times ahead!
Excerpt:

They were partly inspired by Randall Munroe, creator of the online comic XKCD, who used a coded message to invite fans to gather in a certain park at a certain time. Hundreds of people showed up. To Hwang, who later became a Berkman Center researcher, there was something curiously powerful about hundreds of strangers gathering in physical space to bond over a shared Internet obsession that most people had never heard of. “Wow, this is a culture in a real sense,” he recalls thinking. “It’s not just people fooling around online.”
Love that movie. The format may have introduced flaws but it is still the best documentation of that period for those who lived it. Saw variations of that story played out dozens of times with entrepreneurs I met while trying to raise money.
First: Social security is solvent, it will be solvent for years, and to fix it will require a minor tax increase decades from now. Quit believing propaganda.

Solvent in the sense that next month's check won't bounce? Or solvent in the sense that if it were an independent entity entitled to its current revenue streams, and nothing else, you'd happily buy someone's future SS income at 100 cents on the dollar?

Or, wait, solvent in the sense that if I had a balance sheet that looked like theirs, and I made the promises they make, I wouldn't be going to jail?
The totems seem to be pretty vulnerable to trickery, but the film didn't explore that much. For example, (spoiler alert) replace Joseph Gordon-Levitt's loaded die with a fair one. He'll think he's in a dream and kill himself. Making an ever-spinning top would be harder though.
The other problem would be that only a minority of insects are pests, and others are beneficial. You wouldn't necessarily want to deter all insects.
http://www.last.fm/user/phoenixsol
Don't discount the wisdom that can be found in television. Most of what I know about roadside beet sales came from Dwight Schrute.

"First rule in roadside beet sales, put the most attractive bets on top. The ones that make you pull the car over and go 'wow, I need this beet right now'. Those are the money beets."
I watched this video a few times over the past couple years. Of course, schools kill creativity, but the real sad part is that schools were always designed to kill creativity and the nature of mass education will never change.

Excelling in school is training to be a worker/consumer. I won't knock this lifestyle, but I wouldn't expect the most innovative artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, and leaders to be people who fit in really well in the mass education system.

School is simply a detention center for the masses, and we all know this, even if we're not willing to accept the facts and the consequences.
Some inspiration: I would sum this up visually by borrowing from Hugh MacLeod. I imagine the combination of "the white pebble" and "three keys."

-White pebble: http://gapingvoid.com/2009/04/09/the-white-pebble/

-Three keys: http://gapingvoid.com/2010/02/14/three-keys/