skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This does not seem wrong to me.

"Among other things it depends crucially on an important assumption about the laws of physics: that we ought to be able to understand why they work, not just observe that they do work"

IANAP but,

In assuming that there are discrete laws of physics, we also assume there is a subset of all 'possible' events; events that 'can happen'. (Given a certain arrangement of the universe at T1, there is a set of possible arrangements of the universe at T2).

If we assume finite time, the set of events that will happen is a subset of the set of events that can happen. This is because the set of events that can happen is infinite and the set of events that will happen is finite. If both are infinite, then they are the same set.

Infinite time makes it apparent that all of the events that can happen will happen an infinite number of times, because events that can happen are events that will happen, and an event that can happen is never eliminated from the set of events that can happen by having been an event that will happen.
Low upward mobility shouldn't be considered a bad thing -- in fact, it's a sign of a functioning meritocracy along with the fact that merit is at least partially inheirited.

Rich people tend to be smart, smart people tend to have smart children, smart children tend to grow up to be rich, and so rich people wind up having rich children. Rich people would have rich children even in a society where all children were taken away from their parents at birth and raised communally.

Add to this the fact that children also pick up financial literacy and values (good or bad) from their parents, and there's your low upward mobility right there. I doubt if the other effects (i.e. rich children inheirit wealth and can often get into better schools) are nearly as important as the genetics of it.
The U.N. has no liaison for extraterrestrials after all
What Should I Write About Next?
Hey All
I haven’t written on my blog (CurtisP.com) in a while, but I think that I need to re-initiate myself so, I figured I would let my friends pick what I was going to write about

I like to write about how things should work.

The topics are:

1<Segway : A Medical Viewpoint

2<How Startup incubators should Work

3<Ipad in Retail/Customer Service

4<Inside Business Meetings Ive had.

Vote in the comments. Thanks
It seems ironic that NASA would have something to say about information design, considering... http://www.asktog.com/books/challengerExerpt.html

But, maybe they've learned their lesson?
Well, it tries to hide that pretty good:

> Why aren't the bottom 99 percent marching in the streets?

> One possible answer is sheer ignorance.

And then goes on to demonstrate said ignorance.
Were these searches for the phrase "Google Instant" done with Google Instant? Probably.

This metric makes no sense in gauging success.
One thing worth noting about lower income wealth levels are that most households include expected social security benefits when making the wealth vs. consumption decision.

A thought process might go something like this: "Should I buy the CD or pay my daughters tuition? I expect Social Security to pay half of what it does now in inflation adjusted terms by the time I retire, so I need X in real income to maintain my lifestyle taking that into account. Running the numbers I can afford to help her"

Since social security is relatively tiny for the wealthy and large for the poor, it biases against wealth generation by the poor since they have better things to spend it on. This is absolutely a crude estimate but retiring at 66 making 45k pays 1235 a month. Assuming a median age of death of 85, and a 4% annual interest rate compounded monthly, that's 1235/0.003333-1235/0.003333(1/1.003333^(1220))~= $200,000 at the time of retirement or roughly $100,000 at middle age. If there are 150 million people in the workforce that's $150 trillion in uncounted wealth. The total household wealth as estimated now is $55 trillion. So by that metric 3/4 of the wealth of the US is tied up in expected social security benefits. That seems really high to me, obviously I've made some big assumptions about length of payments received, median income, etc. but I think it'd be tough to justify excluding a stream of payments that last until you die, even if we are expecting cuts to the program in the near future.

Also, it looks as though the middle class and poor are actually wealthier than is assumed by the survey respondents using this metric, the opposite conclusion of the article.
If we programmed computers by asking people to vote on how to implement an algorithm, then that would be a relevant study.

People vote and support policy based on how their perceptions. It's important to understand what those perceptions are.
I don't know. I'm not making any predictions, that's just an observation of past revolutions. The USA seems to be in a unique position right now, so who knows what will happen?
Even weirder, the secret that wikileaks secrets are being leaked was leaked. I question the validity of the chat.
Do I have to be into FBC to know what a RFS is?
Ask HN: What are some good Financial Q&A Sites?
What are some good Financial Q&A Sites?
Do Investors See Through Mistakes in Reported Earnings?
Would a sale in that region make Techcrunch a "dipshit company" in Arrington's parlance?

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/07/lead-investors-dipshit-compa...
Ah, it was pink, whoops.
Interesting. Are you talking about a continuous walk, or a walk on the integers? Is there an intuitive explanation for this? I get that in 1 dimension you will visit all points if you wait long enough, but two? And why does it change at 3?
Another vote for seeing a monospace version.
Don't overlook the impact of personal preferences/choices in the mix.

Some very smart people do things like found startups or become teachers or lit PhDs, marry a rich person, or decide to avoid the rat race.
That'd be awesome. With a little more speed, I could definitely picture that... maybe a multi-monitor setup with your web browser on an LCD, and your terminals and text editors on eInk displays.
FWIW. I never met someone, who worked for the FAA, who couldn't end my career because they were having a bad day. Pilots feel about FAA officials the way they feel about doctors.

That said, the FAA is the best and safest organization in the world, when it comes to doing what they do. It is bureaucratic, bloated and byzantine and I would take them over any other institution on this side of the Milky Way, any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Part of the problem is, everyone wants cheap tickets AND the best service. One of my advisors had a sign outside his door. It read: Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.
Wealth inequality is not the only thing that can lead to social instability. Angry mobs have formed and engaged in violence over many issues - interracial sexual relationships in the US (historically) and conversion from Islam in Afghanistan are two such examples.

If one advocates against wealth inequality on the grounds that angry mobs might engage in violence if inequality were too large, shouldn't one also advocate against X whenever there is a significant risk of violence by mobs?

If policy should cater to angry mobs threatening violence on issues of wealth inequality, should policy cater to angry mobs on issues of racial hatred or religious conflict as well?
DNSSEC is signed, not encrypted.
Fine painters will almost never use black. The pigment in black paint is very deadening and harsh, it's difficult to work with. It's much better to take the time and create dark hues from the rest of the color wheel. A standard exercise in color theory classes is to create black from the primary colors. Most people end up with brown, but a beautiful, rich black and nearby shades can be accomplished, and it's worth the effort.

It's an entirely different ball game though when you switch from a subtractive color system (which is what painting is, the primaries being cyan, magenta and yellow) to an additive one (which a computer monitor is, with the primaries being the well known RGB). In an additive system dark hues are only accomplished by removing light instead of adding pigment, so the problems a painter faces with black don't exist quite in the same way. So comparing website/app design to Monet is a tiny bit far fetched.

It seemed like a lifetime ago but I used to live and breath this stuff, even got a degree in painting. I guess it wasn't entirely useless :)
I'd pay $30. There's nothing romantic about waiting in an hour-long lineup at the multiplex for the opportunity to cram yourself into a crowded theater and watch a half-hour of commercials and trailers.
In theory, yes. In practice, no. It's easier to get rich in relative terms in a country with low inequality, but it's harder to get rich in absolute terms. Rich people in Scandinavia barely pass for upper middle class in the US.
OpenOffice Becomes LibreOffice and Document Foundation
Thank you! Was that listed somewhere on the linked font.ubuntu.com site?
When wealth inequity is huge, it causes social instability and eventually, revolution.

Interesting. That sounds like it's a problem with poor people being angry and violent, not with income inequality per se.

It seems like spending money on the military and law enforcement would be a better investment than reducing income inequality under your scenario. And it makes sense, too--if people threaten violence, and you can afford to beat them, why pay tribute instead? It's not barbaric, but it does mean letting barbarians rule your society.
Depends on what you mean by Financial - big difference between personal finance and raising money for a startup. That said, I would encourage you to take a look at Quora.com. It's a fantastic new Q&A site that covers a broad range of topics including finance.
Unofficially, I use this - http://blog.brianlane.com/2010/09/18/kindle-on-linux-using-w...
Actually, bash completion DOES help with long arguments or any arguments. It's true that you have to invest the time to write a completion script tailored for the commands you're interested in, but it can definitely be worth it (e.g. git completion).
Only temporarily. :)
well, to be fair, it's like someone complaining that their Honda Civic isn't worthwhile to them because the build quality sucks and it doesn't go fast enough.
The rubygems devs have asked nicely to get Debian to fix these issues, and have been turned down flatly.
Oh please! How many months, or years perhaps, working at it every day, would it take a normal, not-particularly technical end-user to get their C++ to a level they could add meaningful features to a full blown office suite? Or at a typical hourly rate, how much would it cost to hire a C++ programmer who's never seen this code before to do it, and how long would it take? Weeks probably.

You might as well say, there are books in the library, go build a rocket and fly to the moon.

But users, collectively, can decide what feature any commercial organization implements next, by indicating what they are willing to pay for.
Tell Your Senator: No Website Blacklists, No Internet Censorship
I understand this to be a merging of ex-Sun devs and the go-oo.org people
> I'm sure you could find plenty of fifth-quintile people in 1915 who'd be happy to switch life with first quintile people anno 2010.

first of all, THAT is a giant strawman.

and second, so that's your justification for less equality - "be glad you weren't born in 20s!"?
I wonder how close people's guesses as to wealth are to the actual distribution of income in the US?
This is largely a numerical consequence of a far smaller effect:

Middle class: Average real wages do not change much aside from slow moving meta-factors like industrialization, etc.

Lower Class: By definition has no wealth

Upper Class: By definition has invested/growing wealth. Wealth rarely grows at > 3% per year in real terms.

Now run the simulation for a few dozen iterations and simply because of returns on investments, the distribution gets more and more skewed.

This is actually the main principled argument for an inheritance tax (though there are, I think, stronger arguments against it).

Fortunately for egalitarians the rich suffer from: trophy spouses, bad luck, bad investments, and spoiled rich kids that throw it all away. Also the non-rich often succeed in an investment, startup, etc.

The two groups intermarry often since things like beauty, intelligence and luck are doled out by different (but analogous and equally un-egalitarian) lotteries.
Cute.

The consensus is of six successful and pretty popular serial entrepreneurs/hackers and five of my high up tech hacks contacts that's been reading TechCrunch even before '05, when Arrington published on his first site.

The hackers thought he was a startup hero but this is a sellout move to give it up like this. The hacks think the flacks must be effing elated. Now the process to get their bullshit published is streamlined when there's shareholders to account for.
Nah, we didn't pay just to relicense/extend Liberation. This pickup of fonts is a snapshot of a work in progress.
The hazard of trust in innovation investment communities
Michael Meeks and other Go-oo developers are on the board, as well.
"Conformity with rules or standards" is an established meaning of "fairness"; to make any other judgement, as the poster a few levels above did, requires one to take a position on Arrington.
Heh, no, the Olympics typically don't cause much of a bubble on their own. I present Sydney house prices from 1980-2008:

http://www.marshegroup.com.au/SiteMedia/w3svc627/Uploads/Ima...

Sydney, as you may recall, had the Summer Olympics (generally much bigger than the Winter ones) in 2000, and if anything that's just the start of another spurt of bubble.

Vancouver is bubbly for all sorts of reasons (and so is Sydney). Mostly I think it's the same bubble that hit the United States, but due to less crazy lending standards in Canada there hasn't been the sudden burst there.
The real problem with the clipper chips was the start of international communication - which meant the USA had to agree with Europe, Japan, China etc to share the keys.

Same thing here, if the US has a backdoor into https/ssh, then the Eu will also want one, and Russia, and China, and India and the middle east.
How long is your online shopping going to be secure when Nigeria or Somalia has the official government backdoor into your bank login.

SO we can thank Amazon/Visa/Apple for quashing this one.
Events happen at the same time. At any one given point in time, there are trillions (probably much more than that) of events happening. In fact, wouldn't the set of all events be uncountably infinite?

Now that I think about it, we're talking about all possible events, which is even bigger. For any given event, there is theoretically an infinite amount of alternative possible events. Therefore, for each of the trillions of events at any given point in time, there is an infinite set of other possible events.
Google’s Schmidt: It’s A Bug That Cars Were Invented Before Computers
You can have whatever opinion you want, my opinion is that is curious to post opinions on things you think are not worth talking about. If you don't get that, well, we have different opinions then. I meant 'feeds' not fees. sorry. we didn't publish anything, I just shared a link to a text I wrote on my own twitter account (not even @thimbl), somebody else posted it here. We have never claimed to have anything more substantive handy at this stage, when we do, which will be soon, we will post that. Every project starts somewhere. Not sure where you see a "plea for help" in what you quote it is an invitation, we want people who are interested in using thimbl to know they are welcome to contact us, and if they need any help, that we will help. Thanks for the comments.
Specifically, the zeromq.node library uses 100% of the CPU spinning in a busy-wait loop. There are plans to switch to a more reasonable architecture, but the author hasn't had the time to actually do it yet.

Wait a few months and I'm sure all this discussion will be horribly obsolete, of course.
"In assuming that there are discrete laws of physics, we also assume there is a subset of all 'possible' events; events that 'can happen'. (Given a certain arrangement of the universe at T1, there is a set of possible arrangements of the universe at T2)."

False. Possibilities can be mutually exclusive, so if one occurs, the other can't. Yet, after the fact, we considered them both to be events that could have happened.

(Unless you subscribe to absolute determinism, but I don't believe that's clear to be the case. Also, IME, discussions of determinism mechanisms in, e.g. quantum mechanics, tend to talk more about whether that's where Diety lives.)
Schmidt: Twitter Should Be Able To Monetize Hugely
In the UK they can imprison you for 5years for refusing to hand over the key.

You did log the key for that https session when you used amazon checkout didn't you?
> It's akin to showing non-programmers source code listings of merge-sort, quick-sort and bubble-sort and ask them what they think would be fastest, and then try to draw conclusions from the answer.

Isn't it more akin to showing programmers those source code listings, and then being appalled that so many got it wrong? We're talking about asking the relevant people who make decisions: programmers should know the facts about algorithms, or else it's likely they will make poor choices when writing software; and voters should know the facts about their society/economy/etc., or else it's likely they will make poor choices when voting.
The problem is that for this type of thing credible reports of failure carry more weight than reports of success. If you're making a big bet on the reliability of file system you want to mitigate risk, and for all I know either you haven't tickled a bug I would or you've just been lucky so far.

When I looked hard at this 2-3 years ago, it was clear to me that without a tape backup system I couldn't justify purchasing, ZFS just wasn't there yet. I've heard nothing since them to convince me it has been sufficiently polished to get over my threshold or required reliability.

ADDED: I don't think it can be said that ZFS is established to the same degree that the parent's examples are (Java, BEA and Oracle's DB).
The rate of the reaction would be the net, which is by definition 0 at equilibrium, as you described. So the answer SHOULD have been 0, but to be a question worth putting on a mid-term for biochemistry, the question should have specified starting concentrations of the various components (reagents and products) in the solution.

More to the point though, the person who wrote the exam didn't understand why the equilibrium part mattered...
I extracted the TTFs from the package, if you want to try them on other platforms: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B4NmQa1UbwBCOGMzN2U3ZjItOTI...
Timing is great in Opera.

Even though it seems like this basic idea "comes out" twice a month, I still waste 10 minutes being hypnotized by it every time...
Brendan Eich: (Javascript) Proxies are Awesome
The rich are benefited from an stable environment that they can make their wealth. It's only sensible that they pay to upkeep it.

I can see how that could justify taxation somewhere between "poll tax" and "flat tax", but nothing more "progressive" than flat tax.

If I have a hundred thousand dollars, and I'm paying for the government to protect my assets, maybe I should pay $N. If I have five hundred thousand dollars, and I'm paying for the government to protect my assets, that's logically worth 5 times $N.

The component of my taxes which go towards protecting my wealth can quite sensibly scale linearly with my wealth, but not super-linearly.
Bundler[1] is one way.

[1] http://gembundler.com/rationale.html
Yes, it is horrible formatting. The PDF version of the original article can be had at

https://danpetre.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/kevin-lane-kell...
Sorry, but wikileaks has stopped being a force for good and instead is a destructive PR vehicle for Assange.

I fully support the leaking of data -- far too many things are classified -- up and until it reaches the point where the leaks directly get folks killed. At that point the leakers become criminals and should be prosecuted. It's especially egregious when they act as if they are saviors of mankind.

From the recent news involving rape and now this, it appears that Assange has some personal issues he is working through. They need to get rid of him and put somebody else in charge.

You can lose credibility in two ways: you can publish lies or you can recklessly publish harmful things. There is a fine line to walk for wikileaks, and they are straying from the path. I could tolerate the messiah complex if the editorial quality remained high. But it has not.
Blob: "Your shares are worth a hundred and seven dollars a piece!"

Leela: "They are? Oh my god! I'm a millionaire! Suddenly I have an opinion about the capital gains tax!"
I suspect somebody said the same thing about GM or Chrysler
"Tim Armstrong and his team have an exciting vision for the future of AOL as a global leader in creating and delivering world-class content to consumers"

...and they also had a big wheelbarrow of cash.
wikileaksleaks.com is open! Someone make it happen!
Most of the texts with "gray on white" are very hard to read on my monitor. I know that on bad LCD monitors gray is easier to read, but not everybody has bad monitors.

So generally regarding light gray texts, one more example of "everybody has what I have."

Regarding the article: a lot of painters used black too. Even more printers. Don't you think that the books would be printed with gray or colored ink if that would be more readable? I'm sure enough experiments have shown that it just isn't. The arguments are very suspicious.
Over Quota
Cannibalism and genocide among the peaceful Pueblo people?
This is true as far as in the old days, the rich were able to live a different kind of life than the poor. One much more free of the fear of imminent death.

Nowadays, mostly being rich means you get a bigger chair on the airplane, a bunch of rooms in your house that you pay to heat but never go into, a car that requires more fuel, and if you got your money faster than sense, the idiotic practice of gold plating ordinary objects and gluing diamonds all over them.

This can change if the lack of wealth once again has the potential to threaten life. With the way we are cavalierly poking the health care beast, its not that difficult to imagine. If parents are ever told in a way that makes it clear to them that their sick children will be denied treatment that could save their lives because of a lack of money (that a richer person would think nothing of wasting on a weekend in Vegas), class warfare once again becomes a possibility.
This happens everytime a company is taken over by a larger one.
Except for a few VPs who are part of the M&A team - everyone at the smaller company always ends up beneath the same person at the larger one.

Everyone in tech knows this - which is why everyone who can leaves before a 'merger'. And why you never hear of the innovative smaller company's work 6months after the takeover.
Except that Google would probably do "algorithmic" collections. They already roam the streets with a fleet of cars equipped with cameras and face recognition software. Equipping them with robotic drive by shooting attachments should be simple enough.
BBone - running and testing code on forum
But there is no "strong cryptography is bad" rhetoric out there...

How about Tor being used for CP? That's a pretty prevalent and well known argument. Any competent lawyer is going to be able to spin the same argument for strong crypto.
Agreed; this sounded very post-hoc to me. The point about golf throwing back to projectile-hunting seems off to me, too. If anything, I would think we're wired for exhaustion-hunting... that is, running after prey until they collapse from exhaustion. That seems to be what we're good at, right?
Make The Revolution - Anil Dash