skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At my employer, we've recently (as of the middle of last year) been making a considerable effort to use InfluxDB to track our KPIs. It's working out wonderfully for us, and I'm expecting it'll get used more and more as the year goes on.

What really floors me about Influx is how fast it is. A query that used to take hours in Oracle takes seconds in Influx. And the influx query is readable: rolling data up to various intervals produced nightmare queries in Oracle but is short and sweet in Influx. Want to take data gathered every 5 minutes and give a daily average? Yeah, good luck with that in Oracle. It's doable, sure, but I've seen the code. And the speed. Both are ugly.

The only problem I have with InfluxDB is it's still a little immature, and the tooling isn't where it should be. This isn't entirely Influx's fault; most third parties aren't aware it exists or don't care. Our reporting team uses Crystal Reports, which can't talk to InfluxDB. So I end up having to write a Python script that runs in cron every night to perform InfluxDB queries for the previous day's data doing all the rolling and average/min/max calculations and then inserting the results into Oracle, just so our reporting team can get to the data. For some KPIs I'm working on right now, we decided to not go through the reporting team, and I'm writing a webapp in Python/Bottle to display the report, and we're probably going to augment that with graphs from Grafana.

Grafana is beautiful, by the way.
Washington, DC has slug lines, which are exactly that.

http://www.slug-lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp
This reminds me of one of my favourite pieces of science writing ever: "Bands of Iron", by Adam Lee[0]. I don't think I've ever read something that better conveyed a sense of Deep Time[1] in the context of life on this planet:

> Unlike today, there were no oxygen-breathing animals to expire carbon dioxide and close the cycle, and so it quickly built up in the atmosphere as photosynthetic bacteria spread and thrived. To us, it’s the breath of life, but to these bacteria, it was a deadly toxin.

Luckily for these bacteria, there was iron that could react with this oxygen, keeping the atmosphere liveable for a while. That is, until the iron ran out and oxygen build up in deadly concentrations:

> The consequence was mass death among the planet’s abundant bacterial colonies – an oxygen holocaust that knocked life back down to nearly nothing. Only a few anaerobes survived, in isolated nooks and crannies where the deadly gas did not reach.

> After this catastrophe, the planet would have seen several million years of relative quiet. In this life-poor era, layers of silica minerals were deposited on the ocean floor. But in the meanwhile, erosion continued to free up iron atoms, which slowly scrubbed the atmosphere and oceans of oxygen.

> Eventually, the world was cleansed, and life bounced back, spreading from its refuges to once again cover the planet. Of course, this exuberance contained the seeds of its own downfall – bacteria still spewed out the waste oxygen that they could not abide – and the cycle repeated, not just once but many times. Each time, a layer of iron oxides was deposited, followed by a layer of iron-poor silicates in the aftermath.

It took almost a billion years before aerobic bacteria evolved and broke the cycle. Think about that: for about a third of the entire time life has existed on this planet, it was stuck in this self-destructive loop.

EDIT: What this story also shows is how much of Earth's geology is a result of the presence of life, and I recall reading articles of scientist trying to figure out if that could be used to detect the presence of life. Although I guess that measuring the chemical composition of the rocks on another planet would be even harder to measure than the atmosphere.

[0] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2009/02/bands-o...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time
Thanks for sharing. Their website is very neat and the video-transcript sync works great. I wish other online videos would have this feature.
Exactly. Let's say cops stop 10% of blacks for "looking suspicious" (aka, being black), but only 1% of whites.

Now say that 10% of both whites and blacks are criminals. And they always get identified if stopped, and eventually arrested and sentenced. An that the population is evenly split between blacks and whites.

(1) Criminal prevalence: 50% B, 50% W

(2) Police stops: 91% B, 9% W

(3) Criminals caught (reports): 91% B, 9% W

(4) Incarceration: 91% B, 9% W

Now remember that only (3) and (4) are available to the public, so one might look and say that the problem isn't that blacks are incarcerated differently, but that blacks commit more crimes, when they don't.
This raises an interesting question: Do US democrats think inter-state immigration is bad? For example some liberal friends when talking about immigration last year kept posting that poem on the statue of liberty:

> "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", etc.

The Republican controlled cities are giving huddled masses to the people who accept that immigration logic.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but would this not be a massive security concern? No calls in or out in the case of an emergency seems pretty frightening to me.
> Rich african americans get treated differently from rich white people.

I am neither a rich white male nor a rich black African American. Can you please elaborate on how they are treated differently?
It's mostly because they want to use their jokes for a special down the road, but if someone records them during a smaller venue with the same jokes, it'll ruin the special.
Original link is to the recode: daily article.

Direct article link: https://www.recode.net/2018/1/25/16897330/new-mother-mom-mat...
And with a wave of her magic wand and the enunciation of the magic words "Ceteris Paribus", the Free Market Fairy made hookworm in Alabama disappear.
In no sense do people start off with nothing. People start off with the abilities or lack thereof possessed at birth. Compare a child with fetal alcohol syndrome with one without it. Do both start off with nothing? No. Clearly one has something the other does not.

Why do people insist on believing nonsense?
Here we go again.

Race correlates strongly with socioeconomic background. Insofar as diversity initiatives are actually attempting to improve the lives of disadvantaged people in this country, arguments like yours amount to relative privation.

Heart disease kills more people than lung cancer, but there's nothing wrong with raising money to research lung cancer.
It's the Future (2015)
If your diversity initiative isn't providing all the different types of diversity you're looking for, you either expand it or start new initiatives.

It's worthwhile to push your company (or university)'s race balance closer into alignment with the overall population's, and it's also worthwhile to try and strike a reasonable gender balance, in hopes that you're not locking people out of opportunities based on race or gender. It's also worthwhile to make sure there are opportunities for people from lower-income backgrounds.

The fact that some people are "losers" in this society (by modern capitalism's nature as a contest to see who can accumulate the most wealth at the expense of others) doesn't mean that diversity initiatives have to be a contest. You can run diversity initiatives with the goal of helping people who are otherwise excluded, and one of those can absolutely be aimed at helping people from low-income backgrounds.

Likewise, once someone is in the workplace, they might still need help. Maybe your standard pay scale isn't enough for a single parent with 4 kids, because he doesn't have affordable access to childcare services for his kids. Maybe one of your employees is wheelchair-bound and you could make it a lot easier for her to stay at your company if you adjusted the office floor-plan so it's easier for her to navigate.

Laws and regulations are (at least sometimes) built with this in mind, but the results will be way better if you tackle these issues directly instead of getting forced to do it by government decree.
For AI to Get Creative, It Must Learn the Rules–Then How to Break ‘Em
Unfortunately, it's not a good showcase for React. This simple site is super janky (at least on my machine).
The order of priority is probably strongly influenced by the type of company b2b, b2e, b2g, b2c, or marketplace.

As mostly a b2e we have SLAs and reporting requirements to a lot of our customers and automating that, but still capturing/transferring disparate information is just a royal pain.
Doomsday clock moves closer to midnight (livescience)
I think the point is to get rid of the hierarchy altogether. If you don't have a system of oppression, you don't need to argue over who to point it at.
This Tiny Robot Walks, Crawls, Jumps and Swims. But It Is Not Alive
When is available in Canada? :/
Which paper are you talking about?

Do you actually mean the linked article? Because it contains the following:

> But replication alone will get us only so far. In some cases, routine replication might actually make matters worse. Consistent findings could take on the status of confirmed truths, when they actually reflect failings in study design, methods or analytical tools.

This is a strong criticism against the counting heads method you also object to.
What's with the incessant need to tell other people how to enjoy an experience?

I'm reminded of this xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/1314/
They do a pretty good job of explaining it in the FAQ - but this app is not exactly the same as Lyft and Uber. The biggest thing is that the Waze doesn't collect a fee, and the fee drivers collect is currently set not to exceed the IRS defined limit on per mile transportation deductions.

Also only in CA, TX, and Israel for now. If it comes to my state, this would be cheaper than a bus for my commute.
Five Cyber Risk Management Services in One
We found a great remote developer using Github. For a while I had been keeping track of high quality repos which mentioned that the author was for hire. When we finally needed to hire a developer, I reached out to the first guy on the list, and he's been working with us for more than a year now. I think a good open source track record is the best resume.
Greater control with new features in your Ads Settings
Three new ways to manage files and free up space with Files Go
I want this for movie theaters too.
If you haven’t, come visit Georgetown, Penang - I think you will like it. :)
And at the same time brain-draining developing nations. You gotta stay on top.
While I wholeheartedly agree, the devil's advocate within me likes to remind that we had been mobile phone-less for years with no major concern.
Way too long. Was this author on something? This reads like the rambling manifesto of a movie protagonist. We get it. You hate tourists. But check the mirror. I bet this guy has flown more places than most. It is the standard false sense of ownership, the tourist trying to keep all the other tourists away from 'his' favorite places.
And RethinkDB has moved under the Linux Foundation.
I'd almost rather be locked in to a cheap, may-deprecate DB than a really expensive one. The former at least forces you to move, the latter just costs your business a lot especially when non-doers run the tech show and will sink money over re-impl every time (as opposed to making measured decisions).
Show HN: How to protest big social networks
This is an absurd argument. Humans are social. Take two activities at random, one social and one not, and you'll probably find people feel better on average after doing the social one. (Obviously, there are counterexamples, but I'm talking about averages here).
I've always wondered why something like BlaBlaCar does not exist in the US. Or why BlaBlaCar does not expand to the US.

True, people are more used to taking domestic flights because of distances but I can think of routes, such as between NYC and Boston, where carpooling could be a good alternative to the train and cheap buses. I'm sure there are others too.
The short answer is probably "no".

Another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16231191 tried to even find the source of the number, more or less unsuccessfully. The purported origin of the statistic is the Current Population Survey, which has the following comments on "Income": "Data on consumer income collected in the CPS by the Census Bureau cover money income received (exclusive of certain money receipts such as capital gains) before payments for personal income taxes, Social Security, union dues, Medicare deductions, etc. Also, money income does not reflect the fact that some households receive part of their income in the form of non-money transfers such as food stamps, health benefits, subsidized housing, and energy assistance; that many farm households receive non-money income in the form of rent free housing and goods produced and consumed on the farm; or that non-money income is received by some nonfarm residents that often takes the form of the use of business transportation and facilities, or full or partial contributions for retirement programs, medical and educational expenses, etc. These elements should be considered when com-paring income levels. Moreover, readers should be aware that for many different reasons there is a tendency in household surveys for respondents to under report their income. From an analysis of independently derived income estimates, it has been determined that wages and salaries tend to be much better reported than such income types as public assistance, Social Security, and net income from interest, dividends, rents, etc."

The Census Bureau excludes capital gains/losses, noncash benefits, and tax credits in its usual measures of poverty: https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidanc...

If we had a Universal Basic Income in the United States delivered through the IRS, the Census Bureau and its poverty rate might not notice.
If I had to wager a guess, it would be due to international travel being a bit more difficult for Americans, what with large oceans between us and most the rest of the world.

That, and the fact that the continental US itself is larger than Europe. I feel like a lot of Europeans don't really realize how vast the USA really is.
And the dataset that this algorithm derives its predictions from is presumably a real-world dataset, i.e. one where black people form a disproportionately large portion of convicts and recidivists.

The point stands: using statistics to meter out justice IMO amounts to collective punishment. Of course that leaves the question if whether more conventional methods are any better, but now we're opening up a new can of worms, namely what is the goal of criminal justice systems and how should those goals be achieved...
I'm conflicted by the world "innovation" just as I am about describing products as "revolutionary". Like if I have to sit through another iPhoen announcement to hear some "journalist" bemoan that the iPhone N+1 is "evolutionary not revolutionary" I'm seriously going to go berserk.

The problem with "innovation" is it's actually kinda hard to define and somewhat subjective. Steve goes into this.

I'm not sure I entirely agree about his point about Google making competitors though. I actually think that's worse than it used to be. The height of it was Google Offers (anyone remember that?) that was a response to Groupon, allegedly when buyout talks failed (I have no inside knowledge of this; just what I read here and elsewhere).

To echo Steve's point, I do kinda wonder if there are too many engineers at Google now. Or, more accurately, more than is required for what they do to do. The problem with that is they'll find work for themselves to do, good idea or not, part of a coherent strategy or not.

Generally speaking (rather than Google specifically), the danger with this kind of situation with large companies is decisions tend to then become political rather than merit-based and also you tend to end up in situations of endless internal reorgs, which seems to be a defense mechanism by middle management (in that a given org structure can't succeed or, more importantly, fail if it's never given long enough before the next reorg).

Disclaimer: Xoogler.
Some remote sensing data models. Many population behavior data models; you discover that these are mostly garbage if you actually ground truth them unless you have completely unreasonable quantities of data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wctpI_QnHqo
Ask HN: How's Syracuse's CS department?
Hello, I'm considering pursuing their MS CS (online) and was wondering how is their program considered in the US job market? Please let me know.

Thanks.
> It is quite funny when you understand that 2 general believed assumptions are the root cause for all the strangeness in our psysical models

Eh.. no? That's literally the opposite of how it works: it's not two strange assumptions causing all this weirdness, it's two very strange observed phenomena for which these two models give the best predictions, so far.
The main problem is that your way of "enjoying the experience" is detracting from the experience of those around you.
A few other similar services
http://libretaxi.org most of it open source except dependency on telegram
http://www.twogo.com by SAP

For young adults
hopskipdrive.com
ridezum.com
zemcar.com

One thing to note is that there are two apps you need from waze.The waze app is for driver of the carpool.Carpool app is for the rider.
> At what point do you feel the USA will have enough immigrants?

When net migration into and out of the US approaches zero. Until that point it's about how fast we can acculturate newcomers, which judging from history is "pretty damn fast".
A suggestion. If entertainers ban phones at events they should at least record the event themselves and publish the video for the participants or everyone.

I noticed at the Mark Twain wards for David Letterman when my hero Bill fucking Murray came out a woman was literally watching him through her phone. And I was watching the whole thing on youtube at a much better angle and quality.

Of course my video was probably uploaded much later than her visual phone proxy experience but it occurred to me that these events should make the recordings available.

The ticket stub could have a url that will become active after the event with the video. Or if they're feeling generous, put it on youtube for everyone.
As a tool that touches the big problem indirectly, I'd want to have a good tool for data cleanup ("data wrangling") that felt more WYSIWYG.

Programmers have their sed and their grep and their regular expressions APIs in Python, but that doesn't help someone who doesn't know programming languages or how to build a precise expression to catch data, and prefer point-and-click and copy&paste.

I'm aware of OpenRefine, but it's somewhat hard to feed it data and create stable cleanup workflows.
Facebook Open-Sources ‘Detectron’ Computer Vision Algorithm for AR Research
A very good point, my age is showing. Personally, I can't imagine a world that isn't connected (even when I was a young kid, my dad had a pager and my mother had a brick cellphone for work).
If big pharma are fine with paying for shitty research instead of spending money on doing it themselves that's their choice I guess.
But how much of that is the result of foreign interference in the last few decades, with an attempt to forcibly install a new democratic government and replace existing social institutions, and how much of it is actually traceable to their traditional legal system?
Thanks to existence of the short and long scales I have no idea what people mean when they say "a billion" or something like that today in the globalized Internet-connected world. Please avoid using such ambiguous words at all costs, use scientific notation instead.
Yes, but that's the same in the Apple world. There seems no reason to believe mainstream apps are less vulnerable on Apple's or Google's app store. Nor that Firefox, say, is less likely to be exploited on one or the other.

Though granted the underlying OS might be more vulnerable once FF had been exploited. The homogeneity of Apple surely makes a greater target though, which I'd expect to balance it out.

Presumably you and the GP have done prior to the frugality claim - like people who don't just install any old shit get exploited in a financially more costly way on Android.
Ask HN: Anybody want to join the Solo Founders Telegram chat?
I have to admit I love Telegram more than anything else. It's a perfect tool for communicating to me. But alas, there are no chats for discussing technologies, news, growth hacks, startups, design etc.

That is why I've created an open Telegram room for solo founders. It's a community of talented solopreneurs, indiehackers & Product Hunters where people (will) chat and share their projects & marketing strategies, find partners and instantly get valuable feedback!

I also maintain a Google Doc with the projects of the members. There is a location field, so hope people will connect in real life too.

Since this message looks like spam, I will reveal the link in a comment once there is a demand of at least one man.
Ironic comment : Drug companies tell us we can't buy their products through other countries (at much lower cost) because "safety".
Yes, however we would value as gold those books, because they were the only source to the knowledge of the machine.

It was also what made demoscene competitions so interesting, there wasn't a web page explaining how to pull off those tricks.

It was curiosity and reading between the lines of those books that spiked out the curiosity to try out such tricks.
Why? Do you think it's outdated?
YouTube Gaming grew its streamer base by 343% in 2017, Twitch by 197%
It doesn't imply anything, it flat out says it, being poor in America is vastly more comfortable and healthy than Dehli. Notice he didn't say "So don't worry about our poor at all.", just put it into perspective. The facts are, if you want to help the most unfortunate human beings, they're more likely to be in Dehli.
List of great EE/CS books suggested by the world-renowned experts
But that is outside what someone starts with. When a child is born, those millions will be originally held in the same of someone else (perhaps the parents, grandparents, whoever). It may be transferred to the child, but it remains that the child started with nothing.

On the question of why some flourish and others do not, I think you're just echoing the point that has persisted through this entire thread.
Yup. I've had a number of bad experiences (packages not arriving, wrong thing delivered, etc), but every time, Amazon has made it right. They consistently produce a great customer experience.
Mmmh, they say they adjust the poverty threshold based on actual needs, yet they use a single $4 threshold for the whole of the US, and the whole of Europe...

And then they're not critical about their methodology when it consistently shows that warmer countries have a larger chunk of the population that is very poor.

Perhaps it's easier to live on $4 in Spain than it is in Denmark. And perhaps it's easier to live on $4 in California than it is in Michigan...

When it comes to extreme poverty anyway, we're looking at the very tail of the bell curves, so the stats are somewhat shady there. It's not very clean to compare tail stats between countries.

The thing that can be compared is the evolution of these numbers over time. If in the US more and more people are living with less than $4 a day, that is concerning.
Thank you! Haven't heard of those books; putting them on my reading list straight away!
Real time data here are two that are free:

https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/

https://iextrading.com/developer/docs/#getting-started

The majority of discount stock brokers provide API, here is one example:

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041

Historical data, the cheapest I can find 20+ years of data fro less than a $100 was on eBay, just search for: "us historical stock market data"