skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When I was nine I was playing with BASIC and wrote a simple program that would enumerate all colors of all pixels on the screen. I wanted to see all possible images "fly by" so to speak. First I got frustrated because it was running so slowly, only then I started to think...

If I can display a picture of a car on this monitor, then that picture would eventually also show up 'by chance' with my program! Mind blown. Then I realized it would have to show every picture in the world eventually, because every picture in the world could be displayed on my monitor. Mind blown again. Then I realized it would display every book in the world also, because a picture of a page of text is just another picture. Whoa. Then I realized the monitor would also eventually display all things that happened in the past that we had no records of and everything that was going to happen in the future!

Of course I couldn't grasp exactly how long the program was going to take, but I realized that if it had to go through infinitely many pictures it would have to take infinitely long to run.

But now I can do the real math. Should be fun:

Display 60 frames per second. 3600 seconds in an hour, 85000 in a day, 31 million seconds in a year. So 1860 million images per year.

How many possible pictures are there?

640 x 480 x 16 bits = 0.5 MB frame buffer. Kilobyte is 10 bits, megabyte is 20 bits. So there are 2 ^ 20 bits and each bit we have to toggle so there are 2 ^ (2 ^ 20) combinations.

1860 million combinations ~ 30 bits. Since we have 2 ^ 20 bits worth of statespace those 30 bits are completely insignificant. So let's assume there are a billion people with a billion computers each who work on the problem in parallel. Then there are 2 ^ (30 * 3) = 2 ^ 100 images processed each year. This still doesn't make any difference! 2 ^ 30 - 100 bits = 2 ^ 30 bits.

It would take over 10 ^ 300000 years for a billion people with a billion computers each that process 60 frames per second to enumerate the different values of a 640 x 480 monitor.

And that's just for a single megabyte. Mind blown.
Can anyone think of ways to speed the sociolegal acceptance of this technology?

At the end of the day, I have a feeling it won't really come down to lives saved even if that's how the media spins it. At the end of the day, it has to help pad the bottom line of one of the car companies and they will then have the incentive to lobby Congress and get the right regulations inserted into the right bills.
Microsoft Research offers 3-D Xbox add-on
I'm not so sure.

A "JVM" is not a Java language interpreter anyway but a Java byte code interpreter. AFAIK all those other languages only run on Dalvik by first being compiled to Java byte code format, thus it is arguable that they are all "Java" as far as the VM goes.

What Google needs is something that compiles directly to Dalvik's own native format which has no "Java" at all in the pipeline.
I hope you're joking, but in case you're not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Reznor
I am so lucky because I just started to shop around for payment system. I will have to switch to CheddarGetter which at least provide 20 free users. For those who stuck with Chargify, well, you have my sympathy.
A guide to Web Typography
I think they just generate code along with the page that uniquely selects an ad. Most sites just include some random javascript that asks the ad server to put an ad on the page.

Incidentally, while looking at the code Reddit sends, I noticed this gem:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
var ad = $("#ad-frame");
if(ad.height() == 0 || ad.width() == 0) {
$(".footer").append(
"<img alt='' src='http://pixel.reddit.com/pixel/of_defenestration.png?hash=0e31bc319d5b5882b0cddf147f4ce1da5ac9c731&id=adblock&random=" + Math.random()*10000000000000000 + "'/>");
}
});
</script>

Of course, pixel.reddit.com is adblocked also, so this has no effect...
I don't think it's about 'earning' enjoyment of music, I think it's about cultural signaling: when you fill out a Facebook profile, you're making a public statement about who you are. ~340k people _is_ pretty much an 'epidemic,' if you consider the actual audience of punk back in the '70s.

By putting "I like Joy Division" on your profile, you're making a statement that you're not a follower, you won't stand for authority, etc, etc.

At least, that's what people like to think.
Ask HN: Getting a non-technical cofounder up to speed
I recently started a company with a non-technical cofounder. He has been great to work with, and eager to learn. We are needing him to start meeting with clients, and want to make sure he "knows the lingo" of techies (example: difference between a native app and web app).

He's very self-motivated and if I could point him to some resources, he would really dig into to them.

Do you have any good recommendations of books, websites, articles, or blogs he should read to get a good grasp on general "tech stuff"?

Thanks!
I find it comforting. You look at that photo and all of a sudden your stupid problems and worries seem laughingly insignificant. It's better than religion.
Your reductio ad absurdum is another's straw man.

I think you're wilfully missing the point, so I'm picking straw man.

Anyway, I agree with your sentiments about those who disrespect private property, but only to a point. The endless messy 'tagging' on small businesses in urban areas is egotistical, mindless, territorial pissing. I agree.

My beef with your previous comments is that you're throwing Banksy into that category, when any basic investigation of his activities clearly demonstrates he's a subversive with a very deliberate set of social and political messages.

That quote is extreme (and not the full quote - sorry), but Banksy clearly makes the point that we live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by banal, manipulative, consumerist messaging, and he feels that individuals with messages should not be given any lesser right to societal messaging, even if it means currently breaking the law to do this.

Sure there's fertile ground to do a "By that logic, if everyone...". Boring.

Living in East London I'd say the urban culture was massively enhanced by Banksy pieces lurking everywhere, and felt far more intelligent than a Singaporean, Truman-show, world of perfect polished billboards making everyone feel inadequate if they don't buy that product. meh.

http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/banksy/banksy_another_crap_ad...
I believe millionaires constantly think in terms of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost while spending a dollar.
That in 1933 the United States declared bankruptcy and has been so ever since. Also, the original 13th amendment of the Constitution was simply deleted and replaced. And the 16th amendment was never ratified.
you really think he's still alive? the whole thing smelled so strongly of suicide, especially given the quantity and character of his output. many creatives go this way.
I launched a service to production last week that uses riak_core to distribute load/storage to 8 nodes. Documentation is a little sparse, but I was impressed by how easy it was to take my single-node service and distribute it using riak_core. Definitely recommended.
Why You Should Rethink the Colors of Your Website
Please leave your comments on the blog.
I was addressing more the type of a death by 1000 cuts and how it is a very frustrating experience on both sides. I personally don't have experience to make a judgement either way on Lisp.

But your comment illustrates the general point I was making. You say that there is no reason to hate Lisp.. It seems there is a perception that un-informed and plain ignorant amateurs hate your favorite tool for no apparent reason. However a death by a 1000 cuts occurs after someone has bought into the technology and gave it a try. They invest time in it, but eventually it doesn't work out. And that's the thing, there is no good _one_ reason why it doesn't work out. It is a lot of small ones. The parens, lack of a single comprehensive library package, the syntax, and so on. All silly stupid reasons. It is pathetic to enumerate them and it is frustrating to hear them enumerated and that's the reason I called this a nasty "death".
Hitler Hops...Eerie
Very good advice.
The KEY question here is, what are you?

Fed/State tax processes are dependent on what type of business you are e.g. sole-prop, LLC, corp, etc.

Since you don't know how to handle contractor income, I'm guessing you didn't file any business paperwork, meaning you are automatically classified as a "sole proprietor" (key term). Anyone in the U.S. who legally does business without filing any paperwork is considered by the IRS as a sole proprietor.

This means that you can use something called "flow-through" taxation. All profit (or loss) from your business flows through to your personal tax filing. There is no need for a separate filing for your contractor work, just an additional form.

So with that assumption, @hga is right. File a Schedule C EZ (you probably don't need the more complicated, full schedule C) form.

You'll end up paying a special little "Self Employment" tax that is an addition 7.5% on top of FICA taxes, since employers usually cover this.

As far as sales taxes, did you actually sell anything other than your time?

You will, of course, need to pay state income tax, but that is absolutely no different than personal tax. This is because it flows through to determine your AGI, which is then used to determine your state tax liability.

Taxes are actually a fantastic non-technical hacking area. I'm fascinated by it. I also have dated several tax accountants, which I'll admit comes in handy every year as an entrepreneur.
Sorry, but does Learning Python 2009 really have a single-device restriction?

Every single book I've purchased for my Kindle will work on my android phone, my Windows VM, and my Kindle. If I had an iPhone/iPad/iPod I could read on those as well. And they all sync, which means I am quite literally always have dozens of books with me. If I run down to the store and grab nothing more than my keys, phone, and wallet, I can catch up with my Instapaper queue while I wait on line.

If I go on a short weekend trip, I don't have to use up a fifth of my luggage on books so that I can have a book for the plane ride there and another for the ride back. If I'm stuck in an airport with nothing to read, I can jump online and download any one of over 600,000 titles (and that's just from Amazon! I also have the option of grabbing a free book from manybooks on my phone and emailing it to my kindle account.) If you want to talk about ridiculous pricing, go pay fucking $29.95 for a new hardcover in an airport and try not to appreciate having greater convenience and selection at under half the price in the space of half of a magazine in your bag.

I've been accused of being minimalist or utilitarian, and I can't wait for the day when I can afford to rebuy all of my hardcovers in an ebook format and dump the lot of them on a local library.
I have no experience in anything IT related (mostly fastfood and retail)

Since you've no experience, I suggest you take the job.
On step 4, AddRoundKey, shouldn't e5+17 be fc, not f2? Or is AES using something other than simple 8-bit modular arithmetic? It looks like the author did the arithmetic in his/her head, and accidentally used decimal for the second digit (5 + 7 = 12, mod 10 = 2).
i agree that the why is complex. but threating it as "math is complex, so let's treat it as a religion and never question or try to understand. just accept." is just plain wrong.

So, the first step should be to NOT start with the "Advanced" standard :) look for block cyphers.

And if you found your self blocked on this little presentation during the non-sense (and not explained) column transformation step, this may help you:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:H0QmIsUIBbkJ:w...

Understanding AES Mix-Columns Transformation Calculation
Kit Choy Xintong
University of Wollongong,
Yes, it is possible that a court would construe the action of placing this public domain mark on a work as evidence of an intent to freely and irrevocably licence the work to everyone without restrictions. I wouldn't advise a client to rely on it where money was at stake.

However the term 'public domain' refers to works where the copyright has expired or where the work did not meet the requirements to attract copyright to begin with.

This is the meaning used by the CC. They say in TFA that "The Public Domain Mark in its current form is intended for use with works that are free of known copyright around the world, primarily old works that are beyond the reach of copyright in all jurisdictions."

His website is not in the public domain in this (legal) sense.

I'm assuming exactly the same as you - that he wants to make his website as free as possible. The way for him to do this is to put his website under CC0 or CC-BY.
Loving T-Mobile Customer Service - so much better than AT&T
As a side note, rolling your own subscription code using Authorize.net's CIM service (where they hold on to the CC numbers for you) is cheap and not really that hard, and it gives you the ability to do whatever custom stuff you want at lower cost. The API is a bit annoying, but I don't think I spent more than a day integrating it.
This really isn't true, at least on the IRS/fed level. You don't need anything to be classified as a business. It's merely "how you act" -- are you acting as a business, or are you acting as an employee. There's a list of definitions/guidelines to be aware of, but there is no business license you can get to help with this...
After some years of working in "enterprisey" environments, I've recently starting a partial transition into something a little more freelance and self determined. Always glad to hear from people who are on the same wave length. :)
"Mr. Anderson, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service official, says the U.S. would do better to discard capital requirements and welcome any foreign national who can present a business plan that passes muster with the Small Business Administration."

The part about discarding capital requirements is a clear win, but why not go further and scrap the idea of having the SBA screen the business plans? It's an obvious place for the process to go Kafkaesque, and as step to keep people from gaming the system, it's easy to defeat. How about a visa for anybody who wants to come start a business here, period. (Maybe with the proviso that they're not allowed to draw welfare while on the visa.)
Honestly, if you're just an independent contractor without complex corporate structure and ownership, or depreciating assets, just buy TurboTax. It will be less than what you'll end up paying an accountant, and chances are you'll just end up watching them use it.

Of course, if you have any abnormal conditions (e.g. multiple partners, several large assets, etc.) then a tax accountant could provide some money-saving advice.
How did the space station keep its position?
that is amazing. Also, consider most of all rocks on the planet are in a liquid state.
From wikipedia: Since 1980, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has increased 67%, while median household income has only increased by 15%.
That 50% of step daughters will have some sort of unwanted sexual relationship with their step fathers. I don't know if this means actual sex or just unwanted advances. Either way is just mind boggling.

It's so gross on so many levels. I don't recall where I read it, and I hope it's false.
For me, when I finally grasped Einstein's theory of special relativity, that was a pretty mind blowing experience. It's not as easy to fully get as you might think but when you do it's an almost zen-like experience.
thank god(s).
Euler's identity blew me away when I first learned it a year ago:

e^iπ + 1 = 0
so THATS what it was all about!!!!
DRM on Kindle is optional.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10439335-250.html

And iTunes didn't go mp3, they just dropped DRM. It's still mp4.
That's not the only meaning of "public domain". You can also do it actively: http://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html

The reason CC0 exists is that placing something in the public domain is not possible in all countries.
Warning:MiWi will delete PDANet from your iphone, might mess up other things
Ok, I'll bite. What have they been?
Cantor's diagonal argument -- proof that the Real numbers are more infinite than the Integers (or Naturals). Slightly more mind-blowing than the algebraics are no bigger than the naturals.
Whoops just said the exact same thing.

OK how about the Axiom of Choice?
Diigo comes closer to this than anything else I've seen.

http://www.diigo.com/
The + in a circle means xor, not plus
I'd start with this, helped out my two biz partners:

So You've Hired a Hacker -
http://jonathanscorner.com/hacker/
you are sure that WP7 will get a massive market share? What do you define as massive? Over what time frame?

Ballmer said 30 million units by the end of 2011..I wouldn't call that massive, but I doubt they'll even hit that.
Walmart confirms iPad reaching its stores on Friday
Tell me why I should build a mobile app
From http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/

CC0

Use this universal tool if you are a holder of copyright or database rights, and you wish to waive all your interests in your work worldwide.

Public Domain Mark

Use this tool if you have identified a work that is free of known copyright restrictions. Creative Commons does not recommend this tool for works that are restricted by copyright laws in one or more jurisdictions.
Terrence Tao: The Cosmic Distance Ladder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin in Japan
This is so awesome. The potential of mobile technology to help people with disabilities get around better is huge and probably not explored as much as it should be.
This doesn't answer you're question, but I'm really impressed that someone was clever enough to invent hash tables. Lagrange interpolation is also something I'm not sure I could have invented.
C# Hidden Optimizations
30 million unites is massive market share to me. Maybe massive isn't the best word to use, since that almost indicates a majority, I'd say significant instead. Massive is relative. IE6 has massive market share... although it's like 15%, that's MASSIVE for what it should be...
c⃠

It "works" in Chromium, but selecting the text is borked, and so is navigating this text field after I pasted it..
Agreed; unfortunately, the people that will immediately imagine hordes of terrorists entering the country pretending to be entrepreneurs form a significant portion of the electorate.
> It's a wedding. In the majority of cases, the male point of view is irrelevant.

Which is probably why so many marriages end in divorce. If she's not mature enough to know the real purpose of a wedding and thinks it's about having her day to show off to her friends, then she's just not mature enough and she's selfish.

Catch her the second or third time around and see if she hasn't smartened up a bit and if the man's point of view doesn't carry more weight now.

> Recently married for the second time, FWIW.

Good luck with that!
No. He's talking about reading a page and having 'Ad Blindness' while he's focused on the content. Once he gets to a link, he'll click on it, and at that same moment, see an Ad that looks interesting (because he is no longer focused on the content). After the new page loads, clicking on the back button doesn't help because the original page will reload with all the ad spaces regenerated with new random ads.

Anyone need an idea for a side-project startup? This happens to me all the time and I absolutely hate it.
> Because you continue to ignore debt.

Actually, I'm not, because last I checked, debt was amortized in nominal terms.

>It's also a good example of how to lie with statistics. For a 50k salary, my expenses dropped 4500 a year, nice, but my 200k house just went 20k in the hole as it's now worth only 180k but I still owe 200k. I can throw the entire 4500 savings at paying down the debt, but the net effect is that I'm still down 15.5k; ouch. Debt and deflation do not mix well.

What? No. The assumption there is that you are going to resell the house. If your plan is to keep it, then your amortization is still done in nominal terms. So what, (I know home mortgages are usually 30 years but let's make it 20 with a fixed 5% interest so the math is easy), your annual payment is gonna be 20k without deflation and 20k with deflation. Backtracking your math... The person was spending 45k on day to day expenses, so each year was going in the hole (45 + 20 - 50) = -15k per the first year. The next year the day to day goes up to 49.5, so 49.5 + 20 - 50 = -19.5k. Maybe minus a smidgen on the interest... Too lazy to figure it out. Nonetheless it's getting worse.

With deflation, the first year the person is going -15 k in the hole that first year, and the next year (41.5 + 20 - 50) = -11.5k in the hole the next year. In a few years the person has a net positive cashflow and that debt (or savings loss) that they accumulated in the first two years will be smoothed over pretty fast.

With inflation, why the hell did someone sell that 200k house to the person, unless there was a crazy idea that the nominal value of the house would monotonically go up at a rate that beats inflation.

With deflation, it was probably still a stupid sale, but well at least there's a chance s/he'll pull out of it, if they don't sell the house from under, as indeed the nominal value has gone down. I feel like home tenancy (versus default, eviction, and turnover) creates for a stabler society, and I'm all for that.

Now, if I made a mistake in my math somewhere, let me know.

>And in a debt based society-which isn't going to change-continual inflation is the best option.

You haven't convinced me of that. I think continual inflation is the best option if you're a banker. Or a politician. The math I've written up above bears out the notion that deflation is good, even for those who are in debt, unless you are really rearing to sell your assets and jump like a hyper meerkat on arbitrage opportunities. There are reasons why deflation is considered 'bad', namely that it appears to coincide with the loss of jobs, and I think that's mostly because the broad-stroke reason why jobs are lost is because of technology and because technology causes deflation, and indeed, deflation is the mechanism by which technology causes the loss of jobs.
For me it is the fact that all life appears to have originated from one common ancestor and that life appeared fairly quickly after the earth formed and that there is an unbroken chain of life between me and that first molecule that replicated and transformed itself using energy from its environment.
i believe his point (or i liked to read it such as) was more towards the responsibility of not messing up other programmers head, just because the language gives you the power to do so.

should the next programmer (usually =you+T) see the loop and think "oh, a loop" or "oh, a loop. and it uses the assignment of the each var to the conditional block... great, now i will have to go through the data we receive to make sure no element get's a value of zero"
Sometimes I found solution in my dreams.
I used to have my own fancy screen script, but now "byobu" does everything I need.
And strangely, they actually all run counter to my experience. For hard problems, I generally work best alone in long blocks of time at night.
XMoto for me, but yeah.
Considering the obvious alternative to Java (for the sort of large company that still heavily uses Java) is C# and the Microsoft stack, Oracle ought to be careful not to even wound Java too much, and certainly not kill it.
Something tells me that the depiction of a windows 7 phone as a phone you don't use very much is probably accurate.
The second time I read Cryptonomicon, the implications of evolution finally dawned on me -- I have an unbroken line of ancestry stretching back 4 billion years. Most of my ancestors weren't even human...

(http://www.sffworld.com/authors/s/stephenson_neal/excerpts/c..., bottom of page)
Or in the case of this article, 100%.
The wind cries transmission