skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In the context of how I wrote it, I meant if you're providing me an explanation/solution to a problem, you better be able to prove that is indeed the case. Telling me that "concentrate on your chakras to reduce your stress" won't cut it. Mentioning the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atharvaveda or translations of it, isn't good enough either. As far as I know no chakras have been found during any dissection nor have we found any evidence of them indirectly. So any claims made on the basis of chakras are invalid as far as I'm concerned. I would be open to interpreting chakras as aspects of our personality if someone can provide a reasonable basis for them.
> The numbers you just put above mean nothing to me.

And they will continue to mean nothing because not even sciency articles bother to use SI. Save a concerted effort to learn, obviously. A meter is about 3 feet or one yard and a litre is about a quart, if that helps.

> Feet per Gallon is something humans can visualize.

Kind of a broad statement, no? Humans who are used to imperial units, sure. To folks not accustomed to them it seems at times that "imperialists" measure everything in football fields…

> […] but I really do prefer imperial measurements.

Do you prefer them in an objective comparison or out of habit? SI units are, I think, easier to use because of the decimal-basedness and simpler conversions.
If your really serious about developing stuff what will end up running on a Linux server, I think you should really be using Linux on the development machine. I know that is not always practical, but more people should do it. No one would dream of writing a Mac app on Windows, and I don't see why Linux should be any different.
I think he addresses this a little at the bottom with “I do have a problem with people who claim to have done SCIENCE and then when you dig in, turn out to have done no such thing.”

Calling something science is pretty much the way of giving it prestige these days. This is bad for the reputation of science, but it’s also bad for the reputation of useful non-scientific kinds of knowledge. Lots of good advice isn’t clearly falsifiable or rigorously research-based.
It pains me to see so many startups emailing me who have already spent months or even years building a product without thinking about promotion or validating their idea at all before launching. “Launch first, then figure out marketing” is a recipe for disaster.

This should be repeated again and again, and I think this is a point missed by many enginers. (Disclaimer: I'm an engineer.)

I've seen people spend months (or years) building that perfect website, wait anxiously for the proverbial "launch day," and then be highly discouraged when customers don't magically come. Figuring out who your customers are (and how you are going to get them!) is as important (or even more important) as picking the best framework, optimizing your code, or whatever else we spend time on.
Very cool, I think I'm going to sign up for the Ranger fitness training.
Microsoft pays $0.16 in dividends per share per quater and their share price is ~ $27. That's about 2.3% anually. Not bad.. but long term i would bet against microsoft stock.
Git From The Bottom Up (2008)
Here's the video of the approach: http://www.nasa.gov/mov/496646main_Aligned_Images_4_Full_Web...
I'm pretty sure the head Mercurial developer was subscribed to the Git mailing list and decided to build his own DVCS when he saw Git wasn't heading in the direction he wanted. Mercurial might have been released earlier, but it was definitely a reaction to Git rather than convergent evolution.
Bragging rights.

Being able to put this down on your resume could possibly overshadow any possible lump sum that would be offered. Long term, this is possibly chump change if you factor in what it could do for you career wise long term.

Also, I wouldn't be doing this for the money and I doubt many would. You do it because you want to, it's fun, hacking on things like this is just plain enjoyable.
Just a note, he may be talking about Learn You An Ruby For Awesome Power: https://github.com/krainboltgreene/learn-you-an-ruby-for-awe...

While LYAR(FAP) is similar in style, it's not a copy. LYAR(FAP) was actually started about 3 months before LPTHW, though restarted multiple times.
This is a specious argument. We might just as easily argue that it shows dolphins have a predilection for suicidal thrill-seeking, or that ti's a dangerous initiation ritual that only the bravest and cleverest dolphins can survive or (insert bizarre human social practice here).

Incidentally, you'll be glad to know that dolphin slaughter is becoming increasingly unpopular in Japan due to both high mercury levels in meat (and in the residents of whaling communities), and an increasing sentiment among the Japanese public that dolphins are cuter than they are tasty. At this point they're keeping it up for appearance's sake and to placate an increasingly small nationalist fringe that's still arguing they could have won WW2.
I encourage anyone to use Extractiv (http://www.extractiv.com) for this challenge. We're rolling out an On-Demand (local document analysis similar to Calais) Semantic Conversion service that could be helpful.
This sounds interesting but the main challenge here seems to be to define the question: What is a semantically related word.
I can think of three classes - variations (singular/plural), synonyms (thesaurus), contextual (occur in the same sentence/paragraph).
Once the definition of "semantically related" is established, it should be easy to find a clever algorithm to produce results. However, out of context the problem is a little bit boring - in order to find a good solution I'd like to know the real world problem the list of "semantically related" words is going to solve.
I really wish you could virtualize OS X. I would love to build a beefy Linux box as a base machine and virtualize OS X and Windows.

It's my understanding you can do it, but it's a bit hacky, right?
Realistically, something like 1% of Ubuntu users could fix their xorg.conf. Either it works or it doesn't, and in my experience a simpler architecture (Wayland) is more likely to work.
> Lots of good advice isn’t clearly falsifiable or rigorously research-based.

And I have absolutely no problem with that. When my dad told me "son, you don't have to step into every puddle to know you'll get wet," I didn't need a rigorous proof of the statement. When my wife says "wash the canned beans & chick peas before you cook them" I do it without asking (as I have been trained to).
Even in New Orleans after the storm, with my wife working in the public schools, I didn't see any 800x600 displays.

That, in the US. I think it's different in other countries.
Like Michael, neither have I ever experienced any speed issues, although I don't sort or filter things. Gmail loads in less than a second, and opening an email appears effectively instantaneous.
Ah ha - but there are so many things that cannot be "proven" to be true, yet are still helpful. Stress relief techniques are a case in point - most of us probably try lots of techniques and ultimately end up using what works best for us. There are also complications - e.g. meditation might work best for most people, but I personally may not have the time (or the patience) to do it properly.

Hence, I am fine with being given a non-scientific list of stress relief techniques - as long as they are not harmful or time-consuming, then I would be willing to try them.
Expecting a bad quarter, or bad future?

Interesting list and rankings
Great point about emails. At my last office, there was a guy named Robert who was a VP. He was usually a casual guy and signed his emails with "Rob"

But, anytime he'd ask someone for a favor or give instructions in an email, he'd always sign with "Robert M. Lastname III, Vice President"

Tacky, but material for countless inter-office jokes.
Up to a point. You can't vote on behalf of an incompetent relative, for example. Some rights are not delegable.
Thank you kind sir, I also agree that Martin was in the wrong, and that his actions after the fact where also douche like. All this could have been avoided if Zed had been classy enough to rise above his 'anger' and instead of being condescending and rude. Martin is at fault for making a stupid mistake anyone could have made and for being a jerk in his response, but the whole argument was started by Zed not being understanding and attacking a person who made no effort to wrong him and thought he was honoring Mr. Shaw's work.

If I made a mistake like this, I would gladly take down the work, issue a public apology, and submit salvageable content to the person doing the Ruby version of the book, but in no way am I going to be talked down because I wanted to do a good thing as if I was in the same league as a plagiarizer. It could have been a win/win situation for everyone.
I just made a giant banner that is randomly selecting a bunch of phrases. Yours is one of them. Also, you are awesome. Thanks for the idea!
I think the author's point is that an unfound and irrefutable truth is not interesting. If a person holds a belief and is unwilling to accept evidence to the contrary, then that person is not interested in truth. If a person holds a belief and has made no attempt to verify it with evidence, then that person is human ... but I, for one, am suspicious of their motives proportionally to their conviction.
Here is the official statement regarding the stock sale: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/nov10/11-05Sta...
Android announcement three years ago today
They'll probably use Wayland with SPICE.
I figured most here are actually building something, but hey worth a shot asking.

The main reason this thought came up is being out of work (You don't hire a Ruby guy and then say "Hey, make this PHP script, Magento, go fast on two servers so it can handle 1000 concurrent requests") I have nothing really exciting to do. Figured I could kill days while looking for a gig with screen fulls of pretty colored code.
Also a couple of usability notes:

- I can't click on the menu stuff at the top right to open in a new tab (using Google chrome on windows)
- It would be nice if the search results had paging options at both the top and the bottom so I don't have to scroll up to the top every time I want to go to a new page.
Microsoft CEO Ballmer to sell up to $2B in stock, 18% of stake
That is a very, very sad thing to say. I live in the valley as well, and I am not a full-time schmoozer. I suppose that makes me a chump in your book. Once a person's (or systems's) focus shifts to schmoozing instead of the original reason you became a lawyer, programmer, etc, it's probably too late to stop the decline.

Some things can only be done with many people. Connections help. But that's quite a different thing from "I am ALL about connections". Wouldn't it be better to be ALL about your customers, or your real passion?
Reading IJ on the iPad is the right move. My advice: make sure you look up words that you don't get, instead of following your normal reading instinct to pick up meanings from context. You have a dictionary a touch away.

I agree, read (at least some) of his essays first; not because the story will make more sense to you, but because you'll appreciate the writing more after seeing it deployed in a comprehensible linear narrative. Strongly, strongly recommend _A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again_.

Once you've done that, even at its gnarliest, you can look at IJ like a collection of essays that just happen to be unmoored from reality, and kind of surf the text until it starts making sense again.

Someone reduced IJ to a diagram a few weeks ago, which I translated to Graphviz and re-rendered; this has "spoilers", though:

http://yfrog.com/juxo0p
Childish vs. Childlike
I'm guessing this will be a common trend in the next couple months.
Very interesting, thanks! I know about Blue Brain, but did not touch on any code of theirs - seeing you did.

How fast is your code performance-wise ?

I think the point he is making is that his model is "good enough".

The code that I was running was able to emulate ~40000 neurons and their connections on a Lenovo T60 laptop in realtime. (the number might be off by an order of 2-4, I remember playing with different numbers, but do not remember the exact value).

Interesting thing was that the "waves" that emerged by themselves, and with a certain size of the network they were sustainable even when I removed the initial "random noise" stimuli.

I did not figure out a decent way to attach the inputs/outputs to this "soup". Since this capacity does approach the brain size of an ant, might be fun to toy with a "virtual world" "inhabited" by connected computers running the simulation.

Could be a fun project, even if a little impractical. (Though I sadly lack the knowledge in the domain to make it happen).
Burma knocked out of DDoS Attack
NoSQL Is for the Birds
This is actually a dramatic oversimplification. Green is what you experience when (roughly) the difference between the amount of light w/ those wavelengths and the amount of light w/ wavelengths outside that range is greater than it was a (temporally) little while ago, or in comparison with the light coming in from areas nearby, and strongly affected by reasoning about what color the object "should" be, and what the quality of light is that is hitting the object. As you say, green is a "feeling", not embodied in the light itself, but only meaningful in the brain. So the "color" of a neutral gray card (or even something which emits no light at all) surrounded by a bright red object or looked at just after a bright red object is just as "legitimately" green as the light reflected from a "green" piece of paper or emitted by a "green" LED.
Reuters has a very misleading title: "Microsoft's Ballmer sells 12 percent stake in company". In actuality it is 12% of Ballmer's 4.2%.
Don't see a bad quarter happening.
Then maybe the company should award him $65 million in shares to compensate. Or he should take the hit -- he can certainly afford it. It's not a good time for Microsoft to have the CEO selling such a large stake. It looks like he's leaving and/or doesn't have confidence.
I don't seem to have any reliability issues, however, it's probably because I'm a Google Apps premier user. If I'm not mistaken those accounts have higher uptime and reliability.
and how it was found she is sharing?
_Consider the Lobster_ has him subverting a Gourmet magazine writing assignment about the Maine lobster festival.

_A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again_ is perhaps his most famous, about the Illinois state fair.

_Host_ explores a conservative radio talk show; the original Atlantic article had an interesting layout to accomodate his footnotes.

_Big Red Son_ has him at the Adult Video Awards in Vegas. A bit TMI for me, but still well written.

The "This is Water" commencement speech is online at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html
So why not use those in ships?
Timemap - JS library for using Google Maps with a SIMILE timeline
If its impossible for me to remember wikipedia, I wouldn't mind having a third "eye" that has mobile internet browsing capability.
I think "reach out to" as a weird, touchy-feely synonym for "contact" is my least favorite business buzzword. I can't take anyone who says it seriously. I immediately assume they are full of shit.
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cove_%28film%29], the dolphins are herded into the cove, so they don't go in there voluntarily. Also, apparently it happens only once a year, so 364 days out of 365 that cove would be a safe place.
Hence the old joke about having a Ph.D. being most useful when you have to write a letter to your bank.
So it's a "Reverse Apple". Apple sold much hardware on the basis of their software's appeal (going to lengths to prevent people running OS X on generic hardware); Microsoft wants to sell software on the basis of their hardware's appeal (so they need to prevent people using their hardware with other software).
That's somewhat similar to my second mini-project of my NLP course (that I just delivered like one week ago).

What we had to do was, first to gather a large corpus (in this case) of portuguese. Then, produce the frequencies of each unigram and bigram. Then, process those frequencies and output the top 10 and bottom 10 collocations of the corpus. Collocation definition from wikipedia: "Within the area of corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance".

The method used to calculate the collocations was based on a chi-square test. The values with higher chi-square were the most probable collocations (if above the critical value that would reject the null hypothesis).

So, I actually have Ruby code done that I could change just a little bit for this, but there are probably more clever methods.
Oh god, next thing you know you'll have gif backgrounds and have your whole level middle management walk out. Don't go down that path.
This is really great. Congrats. I was just thinking that I wanted help naming my next startup idea.
I recall reading that Bill Gates said MS would interview anyone who'd read them all.
> Stress relief techniques are a case in point - most of us probably try lots of techniques and ultimately end up using what works best for us.

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could input variables like your personality, lifestyle, and preferences and get a reliable list of stress-relief techniques along with the probability that they'll work for you? Maybe it's impossible with our current standard of knowledge but surely you can imagine an advanced civilization that can do it by simulating "you" inside a virtual machine or just solving trillions of linear equations for every variable that defines you. What isn't provable today may be provable (within bounds) tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the problem today is that the moment someone shows that X works for Y in condition Z, everyone starts trying to sell X to everyone else for every problem.
Kids Timberland Pink Tall Boots
My rule of thumb is usually, I don't want to listen to somebody who got rich/successful by teaching other people how to get rich/successful. They have become rich before, and then teach others just because they enjoy doing it.

When I read self-help advice by Mark Cuban, or Benjamin Franklin, I tend to trust that a lot more than advice from Tony Robbins or Richard Kyosaki.

That is not to say I'd never listen to their message.. but I take everything they say with a big grain of salt.
I have an even better idea: animated gifs. Think about the revenue possibilities!
Mint: The Evolution from prototype to a Successful Web Service
Know When to Take a Break
How would this be any different to a business based on selling unauthorised printer cartridges/refills? (Serious, not rhetorical, question!)

(All under the assumption that making unauthorised use of the Kinect does not require copying a work that Microsoft owns the copyright to, of course).
If they were to agree, I think there is a way. How many people would you think might agree to pay monthly some symbolic amount, say, $5, if these folks were to help the neuroscience ? Only about a thousand needed to get them a decent living - though the number is mostly a SWAG.

This is probably the single biggest opportunity for mankind.

If there are some folks in Canada that could organize some kind of fund to help the kids - count me in. I hope they might agree to help us all back in return.
A hell of a time
UGG Classic Mini Womens Boot Chestnut
If the documents they provide are meaningful texts they probably should be contextual (such corpus would be mostly useless for finding synonyms).
He presumably made the statements to keep the sale from affecting the stock price in a bad light. Ironically, I think the stock may perform better if Ballmer did not claim he was sticking around.
But all of those are far more accessible than 29573.53L/100km, which most people would just round up to "a hell of a lot". Using conventional units doesn't really help when the magnitude is so high.
Slow down the rollout a little: your 'take a tour' page inline link to Semantic On Demand 404s, as does the inline link from your pricing page:

http://www.extractiv.com/tour-semantic-on-deman.html - missing letter in '...deman.html'

http://www.extractiv.com/tour-semantic-on-demand - missing '.html'

Also, the pricing page says users need to buy a plus or premium subscription for access to Semantic On-Demand, but confusingly says the basic plan includes 'On-Demand access to 1,000 documents / day' - I presume you meant to emphasize the unlimited usage available with the premium plans.
I'd be happy to talk about random topics, but it would seem presumptuous to offer that as an auction item.
no worries, thanks for your work on this!
This is the first post in the thread that makes me feel good about what's happened - perhaps this approach should have been the lead story, rather than what appeared to be "If you're using Pylons then say goodbye to all the cool developers - they've found something else new and shiny to work on".

( I've been watching this thread with keen interest - having chosen Pylons (vs Django, and RoR) about two months ago. )
I'll gladly accept, and congrats on the launch!
It's not that strange if you think of it in terms of improvements of models. For instance, I'm sure religion based civilizations are more civilized than cavemen, but at the same time, our standards improve as we acquire better models.
a less cheap workaround is http://www.motu.com/products/software/volta

it'll work with anything with DC-coupled TRS outputs, i.e. any decent quality soundcard.

very glad to see more music tech threads on HN. i think the iphone is gonna revolutionize computer music, the problem from the beginning has been the interface -- WIMP doesnt make a lot of sense for the way music works in the brain, imo
I totally love this! I had a lot of fun finding domain names.
I'm surprised at how good the names are :)
because science is about objective facts. facts are objective because they can be verified by different minds if they use the same processes.

ethics and morality are EMOTIONAL, vary widely between individuals, and must be arbitrarily decided upon by an entity representing tribal leadership.
Actually that might be a backwards bending demand curve. If a lunch conversation with PG cost like $100K, you'd have less people wanting/needing to talk startups and more people who were already rich who just wanted to talk about whatever seems intellectually satisfying.
It's still better than "ping" as a synonym for "call"
This sort of attitude (and the business model of Draconian control over third-party developers) is unfortunately, endemic in the console gaming industry, harmful to the console gaming industry, and something Microsoft is great at (which is why they were such a good fit).

Nintendo pioneered this in the 80s, with their connector patents and weird, proprietary chips that cartridges required, learning from Atari's "mistakes" of not locking it down hard enough. They were rewarded with big sacks of money and developers that got used to the rough treatment. The industry still hasn't recovered.

It's why I love GamePark so much. Fun little handhelds and open development. I've bought two of their products so far. But they file for bankruptcy more often than Shigeru Miyamoto flashes his trademark smile; it isn't an industry that is easy to break into, and there's not much incentive for the big players to start playing nice.