skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your thought makes me think of some tidbit from an interview on a show. It was an HGTV episode about extreme homes -- some guy with some ridiculously large house that cost gajillions to build. (IIRC) He had been a military pilot who flew more than 100 missions, all of which involved someone shooting at him. He went into real estate after he left the military on the theory that high risk, high finance real estate couldn't be more nerve wracking than that. Obviously, he made scads of money.

I suspect that successfully facing down death can do a lot to prepare you for making it in business. I have no real reason to believe the relationship particularly runs the other direction though.

Not that you were suggesting any such thing.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/07/groundhog-day-or-th...
This is not politically correct to say, but given the gap in revenues between white and black, I wonder how the US would do if they had better redistribution of wealth.
Electronic Digital Caliper, Vernier Calipers, Measuring Instrument | Anyi Tools
I wonder if this may be related to Aspirin's effect on inflammation.

Long term inflammation is supposed to be "bad thing". Taking low doses of Aspirin for long time may help with silent inflammations throughout the body.

This should be testable by comparing effects of Aspirin with other anti-inflammatory drugs (taken in similar regime).
>"Fuck you" is a brilliant song, a social media phenomenon

Hmm.

I found the article to be quite well written, clearly from a position of knowledge about several songs. Now so-called obscene words are not a day-to-day part of my vocabulary but I don't really find words offensive (though the meaning conveyed of course can be). I don't agree with their position entirely, but they made their case far more eloquently and with better support than you did. Indeed their points as regards the normalisation of profanity amongst the music fraternity and the racism applied to who can use the word nigger seemed good.

No place on HN? Well they kinda hacked YouTube by recognising that a catchy tune with expletives would play well to the YouTube demographic. But, yeah, otherwise probably better placed elsewhere - I guess though you'd find it hard to find a place that would give a serious airing to the views expressed in the article.

Brilliant? A social media phenomenon? It's a nice tune, the lyrics have a certain flow to them (I loved "Crazy" and this has a similar vibe for me); without the expletives I'd expect it to get close to a Number 1 anyway.
Say you have a prior probability distribution P(p) for the probability you think the coin is a coin that comes up heads with probability p. Your probability distribution P(p) will probably have a huge peak around p=0.5, but you can choose any prior belief. So P(p) is your opinion about the coin prior to seeing the experiment. Now we can apply Bayes' theorem to compute your opinion P'(p) about the coin after seeing the experiment:

P'(p) = P(p | H)
= P(H | p)*P(p)/P(H)
= p*P(p)/integral(P(H | p)*P(p)dp)
= p*/E(P) * P(p)

Your belief that the coin has probability p is skewed by a factor of p/E(p).

Here's an example of a graph of P(p) that shows how your belief about the coin is skewed after seeing a heads:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/388822/coin.png

The first graph is an example of a prior belief about the coin, the second graph is the belief that this person should have after seeing the experiment.

So the answer to the question is:

P'(1) = 1/E(P) * P(1) = P(1)/E(P)

i.e. your new probability that this is a coin that always comes up heads is your old probability divided by your expected value of the probability of coming up heads.

For example if your prior belief was unbiased, then E(P)=0.5, and P'(1) = 2*P(1).
Python futures - execute computations asynchronously
But surely that does not stop the US from charging him and issuing their own warrant - something much easier to do if he's already in custody.
Ask HN: What's so good about Coffee Script?
Coffee Script is getting good press on this site and twitter, but is it just about coding in a particular style, or does it actually save you from Javascript?

I love Ruby for it's clarity, and I'm probably still a novice at Javascript, though I've managed to use it for a few games. I'd love to use Coffee Script, but is it just another layer of abstraction? I was afraid, it would just add another layer to debug.

After reading the docs, my impression was that a coder would need to be pretty proficient at Javascript - and sort of translate what they wanted to do in their mind first into Coffee Script, only to have it compiled back to Javascript.

I'd love to hear if Coffee Script is saving you time. What about beginners? Is it more advisable to stick with Javascript and get really good at it first?
It can cause bleeding.
Is there an innocent reason why his bail would be £100k-£200k for an alleged offence like this? It seems incredibly high and serves only to reinforce the suggestion that this is merely an excuse to detain him.

Source: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Julian-Assange-Wiki...
While ad hominem attacks are never good, I don't think this is an ad hominem, but rather an argument based on knowledge/professionalism: A recruiters opinion on programming languages is like the opinion of my baker on medicine: It's nice to hear it, but I don't need a long discussion to decide on their usefulness.
Your point about science is roughly correct but cannot be taken too far. A country's average will indirectly influence the R&D activities of the top group as well. Democratic support, educational funding, social perception all influence science career to an extent. For example, it is so much easier to rest on your laurel when everyone around you does much worse. And when the average performance of a group is raised even moderately, the number of people who passes a certain threshold increase substantially (assuming a distribution not too far from Gaussian).

Also, there needs to be a critical mass of good researchers to create a rich ecosystem that in turn produces significant technology. The US lead in R&D is partially caused by its large number of active researchers and the collective amount of funding these scientists receive compared to other countries.
You could try Peter's route and ask Richard Gabriel for it.
Despite my low level of contribution to this site, I must say I'm tired of seeing WikiLeaks/Assange on the Hacker News front page. Granted, all this may be newsworthy, but going by the Hacker News Guidelines, it feels more "Off-Topic" than on, in that it's about politics and would be covered on TV news, like the TSA submissions a while ago.
URLs really have very little to do with REST beyond uniqueness, even though it is popular in "RESTful" APIs to encode objects in URLs. A POST /keypair/create or whatever could just as well be POST /1234567890123. The important bits of REST are representations, state(lessness) and relationships or links.

I think the best place to start from would be the Fielding dissertation: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch....
The DCG functionality of Prolog is very nice. I used it to write a crude XML parser just days into learning about the language.

http://pastebin.com/sUpPd5jb
"... Though not as morbid, I would imagine "stepping over dead bodies" and "leaving teammates behind" is a rather common experience in startups as well, though potentially frowned upon (but even then, it would depend on the situation). ..."

You're kidding right?

Working in a Startup, in a cushy office with access to water, food & external help is not in the same league as roughing it. Having said that the lessons you learn in the field can be directly applied to Startups. The constraints on resources, the stresses, the lack of knowledge and uncertainty. That's where the comparisons end. If you can't hack it - you can go home. In the field, you never leave anyone behind . Never!
NanoSail-D: Solar Sail Nanosatellite Launched by NASA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory

Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort: "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering".
The value of the Java community, for Oracle, is measured by those that are paid to develop Java for licensed (or sold) software products. If you don't to that then you don't get counted.

"IBM and Apple are both supporting OpenJDK -- Oracle is not the sole custodian of Java"
Whilst technically correct, they appear to be holding the TCK and patents as viable weapons in the battle for control.
Computer Geeks: Compete to Help NASA Explain Dark Energy
Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
GCC (as an example) turns () and ( void ) into the exact same output. I have some memory of long, long ago entering the world of C in the hands of the DICE compiler for the Amiga, that being clear in the declaration of functions is The Right Way: say void, or say inputs. Semantically I consider ( void ) to simply say "in this case, we're not going to be using any input vectors", rather than "this function can never have inputs; it's not supported". Clarity is never wrong.
Best Buy has announced that Nexus S will be available on Dec16th for $529 (unlocked) and $199 (with T-mobile contract). More info at - http://www.bby.com/2010/12/06/best-buy-mobile-partners-with-...
To be precise, it apparently cuts the risk of death by 60% for colorectal cancers, and 21% overall for cancers.

It is still quite significant, but it does not actually prevent the cancers, just reduces their fatality rate.
The Art of Travel by Francis Galton (1872) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14681

Captures human ingenuity brilliantly. A timeless book that makes me look at _everything_ with an eye to make it better. A must read for any hacker of any persuasion.
Thanks for the pointer. I read the Wikipedia page, but I found the explanation of the general concept too abstract. The definition of a RESTful web service further down the page is much clearer.

However, does it really make any practical difference whether the API makes full use of all the HTTP methods (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE)? Sure, it may be a bit of an abuse of the protocol to encode everything as a GET, but since you usually don't want any caching when using such an API, does it really matter?
>Does listening to shitty pop music count as a bad way to achieve happiness?

My answer is definite "yes".

When I ask taxi drivers why are they constantly listen to music, I often get an answer along the lines "but it too sad and lonely without it".

They change their natural emotions to those from radio.

PS
The best answer I get is "without music, there are all kind of thoughts starting to pop in my head".
Because Everest is on the tick list that non-climbers recognize and because a lot of the lower mountains are much, much harder and nobody will guide them. There is a reason Gasherbrum IV has only been climbed four times (five if you count the 1985 Kurtyka-Schauer route, which is still regarded as one of the most impressive alpine climbs ever), Gasherbrum III has been climbed twice, Khunyang Chhish twice, Bainthha Brakk twice, Latok I. There are lots of other "obscure" remote peaks with one or zero ascents that are way harder, more adventurous, and serious than Everest. Climbing Everest solo post-monsoon by a new route in 1980, or from the north as a party of two without carrying ropes or sleeping gear in 1986 is absolutely impressive. Trudging up the normal route with support does not count as climbing to anyone who climbs.
A low dosage of 75 milligrams is still a problem?
Alpinism, mountaineering's crazy sibling, takes this a step further. Often, cutting edge alpinists (the people who do dangerous, high stuff with little more than a pack on their back) don't climb for the summit--they climb to plumb the depths of what they are capable of. Sometimes, the summit doesn't even matter.

Everest is a trophy, for sure, and it is hardly a purely difficult climb (that's not to underscore the objective dangers, however). Stevie Haston, a famous and accomplished British alpinist, has compared Everest to doing push-ups with a plastic bag over your head.
Putting Industry Professionals in the Classroom part-time
So you don't care about those writing custom libraries?
Well, if you're one of the people who gets to live an extra 30 years because your colorectal cancer didn't kill you, i'd say that's a pretty damn big difference.
see the actual chance of dying from cancer here: http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerBasics/lifetime-probabili...

So for men the lifetime risk of dying from some kind of cancer goes from about 23% to around 19% based on the 21% reduction in overall cancer deaths found in the study.

Specfically for 'death due to gastrointestinal cancers' dropping 54%. Assuming that statistic would be paired with the chance of death from stomach cancer at the above site, happy to be corrected if more of the cancers described there should be included. However if is just that then your chance of dying from that specific cancer goes from 0.53% to about 0.25%.
Now if only Aspirin wasn’t so damn expensive in Germany (and other European nations): http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2007/09/prescrip...
Messner's solo ascent is generally considered to be the last time a climber was truly alone on the mountain.
> These were people who no mountaineer in the world would accuse of being irresponsible, inexperienced, unprofessional, or, even, unsafe.

This is what gets me about mountain climbing - you can't really be good at it, at least not in the sense that it will save your life. There are so many unknowable, uncontrollable factors that make the difference between life and death, to the extent that you play Russian Roulette with each climb, the only reward being a spectacular view.

I saw Touching the Void (recommended) a few months ago and it described how on one occasion two climbers basically climbed onto a snow overhang and when it broke it was too late to do anything about it. There was no way to know that they were heading onto an overhang at the time, it looked solid as anything else. This is not a skills-based discipline, just crazy gambling. I don't get it.
I don't think this story is off-topic. Most of us are interested in how technology is changing the world around us. That means something on-topic can be about how new technology is affecting medical practice (for example, potential advances against tooth decay) or about how it is affecting politics (in this case, increasing governmental vulnerability to widespread dissemination of secret information).
Not to be too much of a pedant, but: Turkish-Germans make up only 2.1% of the German population and while France doesn't have hard numbers because it's illegal to survey on the basis of race/ethnicity, estimates are around 7% of the population.

American blacks make up nearly 13% of the population in the US. That's a pretty significant difference and if you include all minority groups, America's a significantly less homogeneous place than any country in Europe or Asia that I'm aware of.

I agree with your (unstated) premise that this isn't the point, though.
Turn the real world in to a battleground
I posted this in the BBC thread linked:

Despite my low level of contribution to this site, I must say I'm tired of seeing WikiLeaks/Assange on the Hacker News front page. Granted, all this may be newsworthy, but going by the Hacker News Guidelines, it feels more "Off-Topic" than on, in that it's about politics and would be covered on TV news, like the TSA submissions a while ago.

Edit: I'll take the opportunity to at least explain my point of view to people.

I come to Hacker News to see people talk about technology, innovation, trends, start-ups and tiny projects that pop up that do things that seem so obvious in hind-sight, but are in fact really clever. This recent news about WikiLeaks and Assange I feel don't really fit in any of these categories.

The Hacker News Guidelines [1] may be open to interpretation, but it does explicitly state:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics

and

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

There is a bit after the first quote that states "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon," which I suppose is where I disagree with others. Nonetheless, if people feel it fits here, I'll respect your opinions.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Exactly, if there was a similarly priced alternative to AWS that has a fully RESTful API I'd choose the one with the RESTful API.
If you ask anyone who has been both places, they will tell you that the Trango rescue or the 1977 Bainthha Brakk epic demonstrate far more tenacity and competence against far thinner odds than these Everest scenarios. This statement includes one of my climbing partners who went back up from high camp after their own long summit day on K2 to rescue incompetent people who should have turned around when their own team members couldn't be bothered.
Mainstream printed media is much better with attribution in general.
Important to being a great developer. Languages and tools are interchangeable. It's the basics - the ability to problem solve, learn and adapt to new environments that are truly important and timeless.

Sure, being exposed to a new set of languages and tools can have some start-up penalty. But if it takes someone more than a few weeks (< 3) to be good at Scala, Ruby, Python, etc then there is something wrong. Running through a complete tutorial and solving real problems on a real codebase over a couple of weeks should be more than enough time to become proficient with a specific language if you already have the skills of being able to problem-solve.

Don't confuse choice in your ecosystem of tools for quality. Just because there are tens of thousands of libraries for Java and .Net doesn't mean they are all good or that you can automatically choose the good ones.

The beauty of a more recently popular languages is that smart people tend to be attracted to them and, in my experience, they tend to create better quality libraries and tools, even though they are less of them.
CSS defaults: essential knowledge
Know about Facebook app developers
Video And Screenshots Of Android 3.0′s Surprise Appearance
Actually, to be more precise, the difference in Pisa scores in Germany is not exclusively turkish, it's between people with "Migrations-background" and people without. I.e, ethnic Germans vs non-Ethnic Germans. According to this article, the difference is 56 points now (http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/wissen/0,1518,733188,00.h...). It was 90+ points previously.

Non-ethnic germans make up 20% of the population, far greater than the 2.1%. See here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland#Demografie

Same goes with France, I just used 'arabs' for demonstration, but the actual non-ethnic French percentage is higher than the ethnic blacks in the U.S.
Nobel Peace Prize faces boycotts over Liu Xiaobo
Tron Legacy review: picture Steve Jobs as a Nazi
I've also heard the abandonment attributed to lower overall fees from usage, especially say, when traveling.
It looks like more people agree with you than me, so I'll take the opportunity to at least explain my point of view.

I come to Hacker News to see people talk about technology, innovation, trends, start-ups and tiny projects that pop up that do things that seem so obvious in hind-sight, but are in fact really clever. This recent news about WikiLeaks and Assange I feel don't really fit in any of these categories.

The Hacker News Guidelines [1] may be open to interpretation, but it does explicitly state:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics

and

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

There is a bit after the first quote that states "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon," which I suppose is where we disagree. Nonetheless, if you and others feel it fits here, I'll respect your opinions.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Everyone here seems to be so much smarter than me at this math stuff.

I think I'll stick to writing accounting software.
Ask HN: Why is StackOverFlow obsessed with FAQ pages?
Top Weird YouTube Cats
Here are some of the best and weirdest cats.
اعتقال مؤسس موقع ويكيليكس جوليان أسانج
Do you think it's implausible that Apache could fork Java

I thought Apache already did that, that's how the Apache Harmony project started. This was all done before Java was open source and one needed a 'free as in speech' java.
Some Genes Are Activated Randomly
I don't agree, since wikileaks is all about freedom of information, which has the highest possible value for a hacker; while TSA stuff is more about law and law enforcement.

Both of those topics have nice subtle 1984-ish smell, though.
The RESTfulness of an API is of very low concern on how I choose a service to use and the quality of the service is paramount.

If the API lets me get things done and/or provides an abstraction library in my language of choice so I never have to see it, I really couldn't care less how it is written.

Does REST make more semantic sense? Of course, but if your app has no features or consistently loses my data, I couldn't give a shit.
How to guilt trip software pirates [Pic]