skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You have good points. On the other hand, there's a big gap between the folks who shout down Lawrence Summers (who, incidentally, remains a favoured Democratic insider) and the folks who actually deny evolution.

As one of these supposedly-mythical Republican scientists, I do find that the Bobby Jindals and Mike Huckabees of the party are a constant source of embarrassment.
P.S. Here's an artists rendering of various known KBOs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EightTNOs.png

Drawing the "planet" line on the other side of all of these certainly seems a lot easier than figuring out where to draw the line within this group.
I agree, and furthermore I'd say that if the one preceded the other (i.e. the Republican Party became anti-science first), it's sort of blaming the victim to say scientists should be more balanced. More balanced with what? We'll average 5k and 12 billion and posit that the universe is 6 billion + 2500 years old?
I really hope BlendTec applied for one.
Well,

At least such a letter would alert the candidate to those errors, information that would be useful for future application.
I took the survey but I wanted to share this thought here for some additional feedback. I work with some of the larger deals sites and having learned a lot about how they operate I cannot stress enough that if you are going to move into a niche market focus on value. This means potentially less deals and less often but in the case of your audience being focused on hackers, quality will win.

In the survey you offered time with Investors. This is something that I am sure would be in massive demand because this isn't something readily available to most people and could add tremendous value to any start up.

Other things to consider along the same lines would be a service less focused on regular deals but more on opportunities. We have access to Consultants who do x,y, or z. They could be investors, marketers, hackers, business develop folks or any other high value service. You would make those people available to a business for say 1 hour to discuss anything you care to. Now that would exciting!
the only problem is that chess says you have equal and opposite resources, additionally all potential moves can be anticipated.

While chess will allow you to learn about strategy, real world application may require additional skills or ability to create additional moves
Read the instruction card, you will notice that it contains not only all required information, but a lot of humor too.
Thanks. I do understand the mechanics, but the article seemed to imply that there are some flakes that people do use traditional cams to climb. I was more curious in how the line between safe and unsafe gets drawn than the theory behind why horizontal forces on flakes are dangerous. In other words: you pull on flake, and it moves - obviously, horizontal force is unsafe. But: how do you then decide a vertical force on the same flake is safe? Is it just feeling and experience, or are there actual rules people generally follow?
This is a problem, and it really has nothing to do with specific policies or parties.

Any democracy will evolve into a multi-party system. In the U.S. we've basically went with two parties, and it looks like we are stuck with it.

So in a two party system, any group that completely affiliates with one party, either by membership or just tradition, both damages that party and the group itself.

What I love about politics is that it shows humans at their most irrational: from the Nobel Laureate to the rocket scientist, when you get them talking about politics it's the emotional brain first, the logical brain second. People are like this in all areas of reasoning, it's just politics is the easiest to observe. So, for instance, watching somebody bullshit themselves about politics is a pretty good quick and dirty indicator of how they're going to bullshit themselves about whether or not you need a new server rack.

I don't think every issue naturally has two sides to it, but because politics is emotion-based and not reason-based, I don't think it matters. There should be as many scientists roughly in each party. It's a very interesting observation that there are not. I believe journalism is similarly skewed. So when story X comes in over the transom from NGO group advocating some cause, the reporter picks up the phone and consults with several experts. If the odds hold, everybody in that little scenario is a member of the same party, with the same prejudices towards how the story should be told.

Not a good thing.

I imagine -- without looking at any other comments on this thread -- that there will be a lot of "but the scientists are actually scientifically choosing to be Dems, because it's not logical to do otherwise" or perhaps blaming the Rs for being so bad that no decent scientist would support them. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about (and probably a good reason for the post to be considered of dubious merit for HN) It's a shame, because the larger issue causes all sorts of other problems.
Dear Java,

You said you wanted to be friends, but Oracle just wants us as fans. We need more in a relationship.

Love,
Apache
I've always made sense of it all as follows:
Science describes reality with theory.
Applied science moves science into practical application.
Engineering composes/commercializes applied science.
Nope. They make the money for the rewards by charging merchants higher fees if you use a rewards card vs a non-rewards card.

My standard merchant fee rate might be 2.4%, but if you use a 'airline miles reward card' with me, I may end up having to pay 2.9% or 3.4% (or more). I can't not take your card - against Visa/MC terms of service - so I'm stuck paying for your 'rewards'.
Well, fine, that one was mostly for yucks.

But the pattern holds - check out the AEI on climate change, or the Texas Board of Education on evolution. These aren't fringe institutions.
Avoiding a lawsuit is as easy as not citing illegal reasons for not hiring someone. E.g. “You’re a woman,” “you’re Indian,” “we’re uncertain how your disability will effect our workplace,” or “you’re too old.” (Or their codeword equivalents.) I think the author is just being civil and I commend him for it.
"Science is based on facts" is a nonsensical statement. Science is a method by which one tries to establish facts. The problem is that it is a process run by humans which have biases.

Bias can influence many things in science, not least of which is hypothesis selection. Through no fault of their own, scientists who have beliefs may not come up with hypotheses that contradict them, and therefore fail to test them. They will select the better of the two hypotheses they have, but they may miss something. This is a flaw in the scientific process that goes way beyond bias, by the way. It's the part that not anyone can do: that requires creative thinking, and is limited by it.

To emulate Churchill, science is the worst way to discover truth, except for all those other ways that have been tried from time to time.
Angry anti-science leftists are indeed a problem, but you don't really see them outside the academic left. The academic left is to the far left of the far left; to put it bluntly, these are the people Noam Chomsky criticizes for being too leftist. Once you get out of academia and don't have to deal with these people anymore, they're a non-issue. Unfortunately, that's not the case for, e.g. creationists.
The audience is not listening as your content is not entertaining
True, but on the other hand arguing against nuclear power or GMO crops isn't nearly as crazy as arguing against evolution. One is based on a misconstruing of risks (some of which remain a bit fuzzy anyway) while the other is based on being a complete fricking wacko.

To put it another way, you can easily have two honest and sensible scientists arguing about whether nuclear power is a good idea; you can't have two honest and sensible scientists arguing about evolution.
Ruby is disproportionately common in web development, and web developers are disproportionately visible on the web.

Anecdotally, I don't personally know anybody using Ruby that isn't at least primarily a web developer, either, but I know several Python users.
Chernobyl is ancient history when it comes to nuclear technology. Pretty much all of the problems with catastrophic failure of nuclear power plants have been solved, yet many on the left still oppose it, almost out of tradition, rather than because of any compelling scientific argument.
So what does this actually mean for Java and ASF?
Mentioning the average age is useful information. I read it more like a warning than discrimination. Now that I'm old, I don't want to be around 25 year olds, unless they are also attractive women.
...fail in catastrophic fashion...Monsanto's "Terminator" seeds getting out into the wild.

And the catastrophe was what, exactly? It was so minor that I must have missed it.

Incidentally, I don't believe your fear of catastrophic failure is the real motivation. I believe it's a post-hoc rationalization. My reasoning? There has only been one serious nuclear accident ever, and it was caused by deliberate negligence [1]. Various socialist policies, when carried out by people being deliberately negligent or malicious, have failed far more catastrophically than Chernobyl. Yet most liberals don't tend to oppose them.

[1] Go read about it. Seriously, they deliberately operated it way outside of the known to be safe parameters, and turned off all the safety systems (which would, if left active, have shut the reactor down safely). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Is Google going to follow suit? They were the other ones to vote against Java SE 7 on the same grounds and seem to share Apache's concerns.
Visitor retention: Birth vs. Compounding
I have no inside information but I'd assume this has something to do with automation. They ask for your Google Account when you fill out the application and they said outright that they were looking for people who "live on the web". Since we know they keep all kinds of usage data about their users it's just a matter of matching an application to accounts with heavy usage and sending them out accordingly. All of which could be done by a computer.
I think that's a rather shortsighted view of science. There are many discoveries that, for reasons of funding or just exposure, are reported by the media as groundbreaking or revolutionary... and never make it to market.

There are many reasons for this - maybe there are issues that are non-solvable using today's technology/knowledge. Maybe it's not economical, or maybe it's just waiting for the proliferation of something else before becoming feasible.

The knowledge is not wasted - there are many instances where things discovered (and had no real applications) decades ago become of incredible relevance later.

There's a mantra I heard of while in school - math drives science 50 years in the future. Science drives engineering 50 years in the future.
Well, I dunno about your analogy; "gun-banning" and "gay-marriage-backing" are pretty accurate descriptions of mainstream "liberal" policies, and "latte-drinking" is pretty much an accurate description of 90% of the population.
When you've got a party that's tied to a 6000-year-old earth and early man walking beside dinosaurs, how can anyone with a third grade or higher science education be excited to join?

The overwhelming sentiment among the Right in the United States is a perverse anti-intellectualism. Stupidity and lack of education have been enshrined as the height of authenticity. If you need proof, look at John McCain's running mate.

No one with a scientific mind can feel welcome among people who are tied to policies that consider common sense contraception as somehow morally reprehensible.
I am aware of that. I felt it warranted repeating for this conversation given what you had written up to my response.
...which won a Grammy last year for "Best Bluegrass Album", and for which he is actively touring right now.

So, yeah, his point is "here are the royalty riches you can expect when you make an award winning album and drag yourself all over the country promoting it."

Kind of explains the whole "Pink Panther 2" and "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" things.
I'm passionate about making money.

That said, once you identify a sector in which to make money, you need to master it. With mastery almost alway comes at least an appreciation or affection for a subject.
I use Anonymous Pro, which is available here:

http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html
The Most Honest Privacy Policy, Ever
Then everything falls into the entertainment business...
I was thinking about this while reading the other thread on this topic. I have no inside information but if I were Google what I'd do is have an automated system that profiles the Google accounts given with each application.

Since they couldn't have gone through all the applications that quickly I assume there is a triage system. Profiles that match exactly obviously got an automated shipment regardless of what else they put in their application. But I assume there's a "maybe" list that is gone through by an actual person (if not there'd be no point in asking all the essay questions)

Given that you might not know for some time (since you could not have matched the "instant shipment" list but might still be on the "maybe" list)
I think you need other people (either a co-founder or ideally, users) to be passionate about an idea in order to stoke your own passion. It's hard to stay passionate about something for very long alone.
This article assumes that people don’t want aesthetics, narrative, or style. It might be over-the-top, but the app has a point of view and a valid function.
The implication is that knowledge acquisition is co-related with left-leaning politics?

That's a very good question. If you don't mind, I'd like to tweak it a bit first. As a libertarian myself, and from my association with other libertarians, I believe that people of that political bent are also much more likely to pursue a rational truth. So I'd like to re-do the boolean algebra to refer to "non-right-leaning" rather than "left-leaning".

Anyway, the premise is partly flawed. I gave an example of economics, and other examples were cited such as opposition to GM crops, where those on the left are clearly in opposition to the best available scientific understanding.

But by my own observation, it does appear that as a generalization your premise holds strongly for the life sciences, and also holds for hard sciences like physics and chemistry. I think it would be interesting to pursue that.

HOWEVER, I think that while considering it, that we are careful to keep science and policy separated. Even if we are to grant that a certain point of science is correct, it does not necessarily lead to acceptance of a point of policy.

For example, it is well known that at the margin, minimum wage laws increase unemployment amongst the least skilled workers. But it doesn't automatically follow that such a policy should not be followed; perhaps with a proper safety net, those bottom-rung folks can be motivated into improving themselves. Likewise (and even more controversially), even if climate change is as serious as some claim, it does not necessarily follow that all efforts must be pursued: it may be that the cost of fixing it exceeds the cost of the expected damage.

It's just too easy to say "we have this problem, thus we must do something". The values that drive our actions are different from the science that allows us to understand the world.
It's interesting. Compared to most of Europe to many people in Europe the entire political scene in the US looks like a Republican scene.

I fail to see how that is a problem anymore than saying that most people who work on wall street are republicans.

The actual political position is only relevant in context not from an absolute point of view.
The real issue for the longest time was subsidy. We gave aid to African dairy farmers...but we subsidized American Diary so much that it was cheaper for Africans to buy our milk, and neglect their own domestic production.
aw it wasn't that bad! perhaps the piano music was a bit cheesy but it got the point across well enough that I installed it
For example, Democratic support of minimum wages and other price controls, and especially their opposition to free trade, fly against the wind of economic science.

The problem is that there are plenty of Republicans willing to oppose free trade as well. Lets also not forget that it was Nixon who imposed price controls in the '70s. You'll be hard pressed to find sound economics in either party.
The Democratic party has exhibited a ``pro-stupidity'' attitude on the same order of magnitude, just in more subtle ways. Instead of damning stem cell research, the Dems champion Keynesian economics, seek to implement entitlement programs, and push protectionism (``buy local'').

Which is more harmful?
As someone who has spent the last 5 years doing a phd in metaphilosophy and metaphysics... please just trust me when I say:

Don't read this article... don't think about the question... Don't go near it!

I can't remember exactly why though. However, I did see admiral ackbar around here somewhere - I think he knows.
In my experience, business use of the word "passion" is nearly always code for something better said in other ways (if one is to be plain spoken). Some examples:

1) Entrepreneur Joe might have a good idea for a business but "Joe lacks passion" is code for an intuitive hunch that Joe is going to flake out and get distracted.

2) Alice might need something (investment, a business deal, etc.) and "Alice is passionate about this" is code for "Alice is completely screwed without this deal. She is highly motivated to perform. We've got her by the balls, so to speak."

3) Martin might have a great idea and the drive to do the technical work, but "Martin lacks passion" is code for "Martin can't dazzle people into uncritically buying from him." (This is part of the "passion is contagious" bs meme.)

4) Kate might have a start-up idea that looks great on paper, but it would require her to really drive a few initial employees very hard. "Kate lacks passion" is code for the hunch that Kate is not sufficiently sociopathic to abuse employees into a submission that is against their own best interests.

People in tech business circles use the word "passion" with about as much care as they use the word "fantastic". As a first approximation, it means "uh... I thought I was supposed to be making some noise or other just now and that word is what came out of my mouth".
He might not be making royalties from a 2009 release, yet. At least with books, you don't get royalties until you've "earned out" your advance (ie, they keep your royalties until they've paid back the advance, after which you get them). If the label fronted the recording costs, they'd probably get paid back before he gets royalties.

Those royalty checks might be from old comedy routines being played on radio, if anyone plays comedy on radio anymore.

As I said, it'd be nice to know what they're for.
Many economists would certainly support the idea of a minimum wage, so I hardly think it's fair to portray it as a settled matter..
The problem is not passion but vision. If you don't have a vision about where you want to take something then you will end up burning lots off energy but not really going anywhere.

The rocket needs a destination to aim for even if it never get's there completely.
Well from what I know this "anti-cam" device is the only rock protection that would not have a horizontal force component This guy is the first person to ever try it. All the other pro I can think of catches a fall by wedging into the crack, either by expanding or by taking advantage of a natural choke point.
>Why is it that universities are left-leaning?

My father taught free market economics at a small private college. His students would regularly comment to him that they'd never heard that stuff before, that they didn't even know there was a rationale behind free market economics.
I would agree that it's likely not malicious, but it was a telling mistake.

And it's been removed from the page now.
Windows Phone 7 Developers Can Finally See How Their Apps Are Selling
For people confused about the impact of this:

Having Apache on the EC (Executive Committee) strengthened Java by giving an official voice to the (large) open source Java community. This was useful for Java because Apache often agitated to make sure specifications were licensed under terms that are compatible with open source implementations. Open Source implementations have kept Java competitive with .NET in terms of price, and many specifications have grown out of open source Java projects.

The Eclipse organisation remains on the EC, so Oracle can point to them as a voice for open source. However, Eclipse is different to Apache in that it is primarily a pay-to-play organisation, whilst Apache is a meritocracy.

In terms of specifications themselves (JSRs), Apache will no longer automatically have a representative. Individual experts can still be invited, but Apache's withdrawal (as well as that of people like Doug Lea & Bob Lee) makes it less likely experts will want to serve on a JSR committee.
"Which is more harmful?"

As a scientist, the damning of stem cell research.
Yes! It's not difficult to meet physicists or engineers with conservative politics. But thoughtful, intelligent conservatism has more or less left the scene, which means thoughtful, intelligent conservatives don't really have much representation. (In other words, American politics is deeply suffering at the loss of William F. Buckley.)
>Most companies in the land of the lawyer don't even send rejection letters, just in case the candidate decides that it contains some grounds to sue you over.

There are so many reasons I am glad I don't live in the usa anymore.
The Citizen Science Quarterly
I think you can take this one step further and talk about models that are actually false, but nonetheless work. Perhaps the best example would be calculus, which treats space as continuous, and in that sense is the polar opposite of the model of atoms. We now know that space is discretized (at the Plank-length scale, ~10^-36ish meters), but calculus nonetheless remains a remarkably effective and efficient model for making testable and verifiable predictions about mechanics (which itself is false but useful). So calculus is an example of the sort of "pedagogical device" that the 1860's philosophers were debating.

The takeaway from this is that models need not be based firmly in reality to be useful, and conversely that models that are useful and make correct predictions may still nonetheless be based on false descriptions. My favorite example of the latter is Lorentz transforms, which the author alluded to in the article. The math behind changing frames of reference in special relativity predates relativity itself, and were actually developed as a mathematical model of the now-defunct theory of "ether," the posited medium that light waves must move through and which happened to magically distort space with some sort of drag force. Despite the fact that its theoretical bases was completely false, Lorentz' (Lorentz's?) work nonetheless was an accurate model, and could be translated whole into a totally different theoretical framework.

Whether that new theoretical framework is accurate (i.e. "real") or not is hard to tell. It seems to be holding up to advanced scrutiny so far, but that's not a sure indicator.
I'm truly passionate about making something people actually want to use on a daily basis. Getting the first users to really love the product is what I care about. Money is hopefully a biproduct.