skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let's not talk A/B tests and talk medicine for a moment, shall we? Here we have aspirin, here we have a placebo. There isn't a population of aspirin pills and a population of placebo pills. There aren't many different populations of placebo pills. The populations are of people. We're trying to make inferences about the population of people exposed to aspirin versus the population of people exposed to a sugar pill, but since it is not possible to bring all of them in, we make those inferences based on random samples of those two populations.

Now here is where I start getting murky: results for the particular things we're interested in are binary: the aspirin worked or it didn't. You converted or you didn't. The Central Limit Theorem says that, if you sample n individual unconnected random binary events from a population, and you keep repeating that sample, the distribution of your measured percentage of success will approximate the normal distribution, centered around (with the mean on) the true population statistic.

That is important for a couple of reasons, but the most immediate one is that it gives us a statistical figleaf to hide under for using two samples to make inferences about whether the population mean for the first distribution is highly likely to not be the same as the population mean for the second distribution. i.e. whether the A and the B are likely to be materially different.

So let's walk this back to where we were talking about potentially testing multiple different types of sugar pill. Do you get why that is sort of incoherent in this framework? There are key assumptions like "independence" that two different types sugar pills surely do not share, but I don't know if you can even get to that objection before you deal with the notion that there is no coherently cognizable population made out of sugar pills.

It is 4 AM in the morning. I am not sure that is stats class talking and not sleep deprivation. This is probably covered in a good Stats 101 book -- if you have further questions, they're likely more coherent than I am. (Or ask btilly -- he has a gift for explaining this.)
The fast-path TSA agents don't do the opt-out pat downs. They couldn't: the search happens in a semi-secluded area of the checkpoint, and the whole line would have to shut down if they didn't have people dedicated to that task. You do not in fact add 5 minutes for everyone else.

What is true is that you may end up in line behind 1 other person waiting for extended screening (if they don't have their ID, or if they got randomly selected), and you may add 5 minutes to those people's time. I have very little problem with that.

I'd refuse (politely) even if I knew I was screwing over the line, though. A strip search is a strip search. It crosses the line.
"The dangers of oppressing a radio astronomer": hacking OTA TV transmissions
People cover their ears when they find out a benchmark is synthetic, because it goes against cargo-cult "profile then optimize, no premature" type advice. Never mind that plenty of situations exist where the smallest-factors, one-at-a-time, scientific way is the best way to get good information. Or that said advice is based on the case of banging out a readable, working program, not making the best-performing program in its class.
You'll get the same pat-down search you get when you're "randomly selected for additional screening", which is not a big deal.

Just out of curiosity, did they actually turn you into 'selectee' (mark your boarding pass, etc) or was it just the extra search at the security checkpoint?
I've brought my K1 out two years in a row, and my K2 one year - 60+ hours in full Playa environment - I actually had to use my recharger _twice_ in one week on the K1, it got so much use - (Sun+Dust+Hot/Cold) - banged all over the place with no issues - just the Amazon Kindle cover for protection. Nothing else.
Thingler - real-time collaborative todos with Node.js & CouchDB
It's pro-intellectual, but it's also a bit stuffy and introverted.

If you like the quiet life, lots of academic options, and very tame social gatherings then Boston is for you. If you like excitement, extraverted social culture, and lots of new experiences then I'd look at SF.

Boston has some plusses: it's a walking city... possibly the only true walking city in the country (of any size). You do not need a car. It's ridiculously safe for a big urban area. Bostonians' idea of a bad neighborhood is one without a Starbucks in eye-shot. It's very economically healthy and has a lot of good high paying techie jobs.

But some of that could be said about SF too... just not the walking city part. (Well, SF proper can be handled without a car, but all the techie stuff is in the valley which is a car-centric suburb.)

Both are among the nicest cities in the country.
> These millimeter wave devices aren't being installed in a secret plot to eliminate everyone's civil rights.

There likely is no plot to eliminate civil rights, however, devices like these erode privacy, increase distrust in government, and, worse, increase the time and comfort it takes to get from point A to point B.

From the late 80s to today we've gone from a time when only metal detectors were required to get back to a gate, to requiring tickets (making it more inconvenient and less safe for small children to fly alone), removing clothing in public view (shoes, belts, outer garments), unpacking/packing luggage in public view, potentially being patted down, heavily paramilitary patrolling gateways, detainment for arbitrary reasons, etc.

I worry more about running into a TSA agent in a bad mood (potentially ruining my day) than just about anything else when traveling.
I think the temp and contract work has increased because the contracting and temp staffing industry has exploded in Japan in the last 15 years. There's also more fluidity in the labor market now, meaning that people can more easily move from job to job without being stigmatized.

For someone in their 20s who can't or doesn't want to depend on their parents for a place to live, then the prospect of making 2500yen/hr as a temp, instead of a paltry 200,000/month (and being overworked) as a salaried employee, is appealing.
The machines are never going anywhere; the government invested zillions of dollars in them after the underpants bomber. Too many career civil servants would lose their jobs if they got sidelined.

But you're right: things will improve if most people refuse the strip search; the TSA will get better at pretending to screen the opt-outs, and the machines won't matter anymore.
Blekko demo, searching with /tags (by founder/CEO Rich Skrenta)
I've been selectee'd before, and the search I got for "opting out" (that's what they said, "opt out! we've got an opt out!") was identical. They didn't mark my boarding pass or anything, though. In case you're worried that you'll get re-harassed at the gate... no.
You should have good responses to questions loaded with "stop energy" anyways.
I find it to be a spectacular device. The best part about it is that I don't feel it to be "forced" in any way -- sometimes with new gadgets you'll use them even if you don't necessarily need to. The iPad just fits at certain times.

For example, I was sitting and waiting for a friend outside of JFK yesterday, parked in a long line of cars. I wanted to go through some emails and resumes that had come in. Sitting in the driver's seat of the car, I found the iPad to be absolutely perfect for this task -- it was too cramped to pull out my MBP, and no reason to squint on my iPhone.

I hate to sound compromising, but the iPad really is the ideal "in between" machine. There are times when you only need the phone (on the go), and there are times when you need a full-sized machine (MBP or a desktop). The iPad is letting me discover those random times when an in-between device just fits.
Not too much. It would bother me some, of course. But not enough to take the extra five minutes for the alternative. (It seems you assumed I hadn't thought of the worst case, and then further assumed it would bother me.)

I would be embarrassed to walk around naked, of course. But there the embarrassment is mostly from violating social norms. The remaining part is, of course, exposed genitalia. The rest of my body concerns me not at all - I routinely go for runs wearing just athletic shorts.

Further, while that is the worst-worst case, I think the more realistic-worst case are a dump of images with no names associated with them. Given the process as I understand it, I don't see a plausible way for the scan-name mapping to remain.

I'm genuinely curious: why does the worst case situation bother you so much?
I'm fine with that too, but if you put your stuff out for the world to see expect to be criticised and learn how to respond with grace instead of with bile.

A lot of people have been thrown off HN for considerably less than what 'Zed' gets away with and it seems to me that if you write "I learned the hard way that programmers listen to the biggest asshole, not the calm reasoned ones." that you're on the wrong track.

Evidence beats arrogance and bullying any day. So, instead of responding in kind I decided to respond in code and with some figures as well as an analysis of what that utility is all about.

Turns out that the way Zed uses it is in no way representative of a real world situation, even in simulation.
If the US, EU, and Japan are doomed, who isn't? I don't think the answer is China and India. China's plan seems to be to lurch full steam ahead (no pun intended) into our style of entirely non-sustainable petroleum and coal fueled over-consumption.
Every time the TSA rambles on about how giving up this little bit of freedom saves your life from terrorism, I wonder why a journalist doesn't hit them up for comment on the (perhaps apocryphal) quote "Those who would give up their liberty for security deserve neither".
"Make an overall better product" I'm sorry but .. seriously, no shit?
Dependable and repeatable environments are essential.

At my company the issue is that dev/qa/stage/prod are all not ===. We end up with two options to fix something. Make a fix and send it through the deployment process (over and over again). Or sit in a sysadmins lap and try to fix it. Both options are extremely frustrating, for both parties, and generate a lot of animosity.
My understanding is that it's not about the desktop web client; it's about all the back-office web applications that rely on (shudder) ActiveX controls that expect to run inside IE6 on Win2K or, at best, XP.

Rolling out Firefox or Chrome or IE8 to the desktops would be expensive, but not a budget-buster. Replacing hundreds or thousands of proprietary server-side applications written over the past fifteen years would cost billions and take years, and in the middle of a budget crunch that ain't gonna happen.

(For example: I've heard of one widely-deployed town planning system that requires the users to download a proprietary ActiveX control in order to view planning applications on the desktop ... in PDF format. If you don't run the control, you can't download the PDFs; simple as that. Yes, this kind of proprietary lock-in is insane. Unfortunately, it was procured in the pre-Web 2.0 era when "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" looked a lot more solid than it does today -- and now it's out there in the wild, and replacing it would cost millions.)
Having had the experience of observing the frontiers of my civil rights while being searched on the train from Zurich to Rome, I find this notion that things are better in Europe amusing. From what I can tell, the situation Americans find themselves in at the TSA checkpoints is identical to the situation all Europeans find themselves in everywhere.

You realize that (contrary to popular opinion) Americans don't even need to carry ID, right?
Ask/Suggest to HN: Is there any way to see voting by 1 year+ members?
It'd be interesting to see how differently comments and stories would be rated by people who were veterans of a year or two ago vs. newly joined members. I think I'm seeing some changing trends in the site, but it'd be interesting to know more for sure. I know there's news.ycombinator.com/classic for submissions by older members, but it'd be really curious to compare voting patterns by people who used the site in the past vs. more newly joined people.
Why do you want to get involved in open source projects?

For me I never really got "involved" into any open source project. Rather I had ideas floating around that I wanted to do. That's what got me to code this (basically a Python based server for a wireless SD card):

http://returnbooleantrue.blogspot.com/2009/04/eye-fi-standal...

I open sourced it because I don't have much time to support it. Best way is to find something you like and stick to it.
I like the idea. The site seems most beneficial as a way to discover new projects, under the radar etc.
When you browse projects you should see the descriptions along with the titles. I think that could be more important than the tags.
Also should have a simple way when you enter a project to denote the status. Is it still in the early phase or getting ready to launch.
another issue is, would the projects stay there after launch? How long after. It could get cluttered with a bunch of 'established' start-ups as well as half-done neglected projects from years ago.
-could be a way other than following to "rate up" a project... like a thumbs up or whatever. so you can have some kind of hotlist.

also i imagine it could be a platform for finding collaborators/co-founders. So one part of posting a project could be to note whether you are looking for other people to help etc.

anyway. keep up the good work, let me know if you want some more feedback anytime :-)
The point is, there is a shortage of engineers, doctors and lawyers. This is why the market pays them higher starting salaries and higher salaries overall. There will forever be a shortage in my field, as current graduation rates go.

On the other hand, there are a glut of "enhanced worldview" liberal arts majors applying for jobs with little to no experience or day 1 vocational skills. They are not failures or cogs -- but from a hiring perspective there is little to distinguish one from another when sorting through resumes.

A liberal arts degree, from an employment perspective, is ubiquitous and a commodity. Specialization is worth more.

If I told members of my generation they could get a job in Pittsburgh, PA starting at $55,000, requiring 36-hour work weeks in 12 hour shifts, with city benefits and pension, and that it started 15K higher than my first job out of college, most would be interested.

When I told them it was working as a Pittsburgh Waste Disposal job (aka Garbage man), most would tell me to kindly fuck off. Their "degree status" is insulted that a starting garbage man will make 20-25K more than them, despite the fact I could never pay them enough to do the job themselves.
Newest holy war in tech circles....
Cogntive Radio goes from the research era to the commercial era
I'd venture to guess that not upgrading from IE6 is more costly in terms of overall, sustained economic impact. Sure, it costs the government money to upgrade right now. But multiply the costs of continuing to support IE6 across all their vendors over time and I'd bet that number pales in comparison.
There might be federal or state regulations that govern the access to production data. Health and Financial systems are particularly touchy.
I'm interested in many areas as well, so I don't try to spend too much time in every one of them. In other words I do not try to become expert in one them, I'll study specific area as long as I understand specifics and how it functions, then as much as it interests me at the time.

After you understand how things work, only practice will make you better. So before you find out what really excites you, try to explore as many areas as you can.

I'm still in college (cs & it), one year left. Still interested in many areas, but now see that I spend more and more time in web. Social aspect of it makes it interesting. There are still many ways to incorporate social interactions on the web.
Not all MBAs suck at startups. Learn how to spot Durant MBAs.
My wife and I fight over it. She for games (Plants v. zombies, Super 7, etc.) youtube, and magazine reading; I for ebooks/pdfs, surfing, and listening to Podcasts (thanks to the HNer who recommended "A Life Well Wasted" podcast, friggin' brilliant) and NPR before bed. We both use it to stream our episodes with Air Video during mealtimes.

When I was on vacation back in June, I was floored that I needn't even take my laptop with me. An iPhone and iPad was all that was required (the iPhone was the GPS, too), and we could plot out stuff to do, read restaurant reviews, and check with work stuff all without feeling like "work", if you can understand that.

It's like the mythical "third place" of computing technology. That thing between the little smartphone and the big smart computer: A "smart" thick client, a mainline into exactly what you need. Even the fact that it doesn't do multitasking (yet, but even when it does, not really) makes you focus on what it is you're doing at the time, stopping "wikidiction" and other time sinks that persist when using a computer and all its multitasking splendor (and horror).
Japan does not have a culture of innovation (that kind of innovation anyway) and nothing in their life or education ever gave them the tools for this. Not to mention being an entrepreneur is a sure way to socially kill oneself in japan, this idea is still widely shunned and looked down upon.

You're looking at people who grew without arms and are asking how comes they can't tie their shoelace.

And it seems other people understood it.
I did not mean to make light of Japan's economic challenges in the past two decades - nor do I mean to imply that Japanese opportunities are equal to that of the US.

What I mean is, Japan is still an industrial power, and far from a decrepit backwater - while opportunities were not what they once were, they are still there for those who seek it.

If anything, a shitty economy and hard times should create people who fight harder and take less bullshit, not the other way around as the poster had indicated.
Are you trying to say that Google is more correct than Facebook, even though it's completely backwards wrong?
Different CSS techniques and their performance
Honestly I'm really surprised that the logo made that much of a difference in sign-ups. To me this indicates that you should try even more logos to optimize your sales. Maybe both logos are performing poorly and a "good" one might double your customers.

If there is anything to take from this experience it isn't that bespoke is better than generic designs -- its that the logo matters, potentially a lot.
I start with brain storming how it will be used. What are the use cases? This is easy if you are scratching your own itch. More difficult if you not.

Then pair down the ideas/use cases/requirments to what you need for an MVP.

Then I like to work on the data models and back end. But that is where my strengths are. If it is a complex problem, I like doing some design work to make sure a) its doable b) that I don't code myself into a corner.

That said, I'd like to all the above very quickly and get to the coding. I have found at times that I get stuck spinning my wheels. It helps to get input on any of the above from another person.
That's basically it.
Those are some amazing photos. Such a treat to have them in color.
I use mine to read books, mostly, though I'll sometimes play games on it when I finish a book and don't have another lined up.

There was a week or so where I used Instapaper a ton, and I also read a series of comic books on it.

I'm decidedly meh. You could steal my iPad and it would likely take me several days to notice.

Reading on it is not my favorite, I much prefer the Kindle. My wife has the same problem. :) When I get a new Kindle the iPad will likely be relegated to its dock for reference PDFs.
It makes for extremely tedious conversation. These aren't investors or customers I'm talking to.
1) Yup. Encourages saving/investing over spending, and credit for more spending. Not a loophole, this is a win.

2) Yes, a very rich person owning a farm, and the tractors to farm. No private jet, no Ferrari, no mansion. If someone is able to produce every luxury item they need, from scratch, then yeah, that wouldn't be taxed. But its such a tiny minority, I don't think it matters.

3) Um, ok? Sounds like the person that owned it for the one day got hosed.

4) I think thats good, too.

There are problems with FairTax, to be sure, but you listed none of them.
I said Graphite, but I really meant "K3" - the K3 has a $60 cover has support for night reading.
http://www.amazon.com/Lighted-Leather-Chocolate-Display-Gene...

I went through three (3) night lights on my Kindle(s), and was never happy with any of them. Glare was really annoying, which is tragic if you think about how well the Kindle normally handles (sunlight) Glare.

Here's hoping the Amazon Night Light solves it. Kindle + iPad have really inspired me to start reading again.
Firefox’s proposed Resource Packages spec blows
San Francisco is fun, don’t get me wrong. Compared to New York,
it’s boring. I have trouble even thinking about living in an
apartment in Mountain View, Cupertino or Palo Alto. Those places
are socially dead.

Mountain View, Cupertino or Palo Alto are not San Francisco. It is like saying...

New York City is fun, don’t get me wrong. Compared to San Francisco,
it’s boring. I have trouble even thinking about living in an apartment
in Staten ISland, East Rockaway or Westchester. Those places
are socially dead.
The British government is in the middle of the most savage round of emergency spending cuts since world war two.

They're trying to cut departmental budgets by 25%-40%.

They're trying to reduce the civil service head-count by 30% or thereabouts.

There is no money for replacing anything that isn't a life-or-death emergency. They just axed all new school building and structural maintenance across the entire country. Leaking roofs aren't going to be fixed.

With all due respect, upgrading ten year old computer systems (that still work, after a fashion) is the bottom of their priority tree.
Some of those images are almost haunting. The family living in the dugout home... those meals look just like the ones my great grandmother prepared everyday. One mason jar of green beans, a jar of milk (she always transferred store bought milk into jars), home made biscuits (key ingredient was lard :|), and a portion of rice. She was a nurse during the time of the depression. It almost gives a glimpse of where she got some of her habits. When you're the poor all you know to do is work and grow your own food... she had an excellent garden! She lived like this until she died at 93 in '98. (She was filthy rich from investing during the time of the depression and cashing out... no one even grasped how much money this woman had)

On a side note, the locomotives reminded me of the visual imagery that crossed my mind while reading Atlas Shrugged.
Telling someone why their idea is worthless and will fail is, while also useful, pretty negative. Telling someone how they can change their idea and informing them of the obstacles they'll need to overcome and being nice about is more useful. The first seems more haterish than the second.

It's my impression the guy wrote a somewhat scathing email.
The female to male ratio is an awesome point for living in NY, but if you're looking at it from the point of a good place to hack and build a startup - it's not really relevant. When you think about it, chasing tail takes time and energy that will distract your focus on your startup.

I'm from the east coast too. Been there, done that.
they can justify any security measure imaginable.

i wonder if there's a defense to this intrusion and if it would constitute a crime to bear one.

this is where things start to get a little scary.