skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In any sport where power, speed, or endurance is a determining factor, everyone is using drugs.

I suspect he'll get a lot of "feedback" on that point. I'm no pro-sportsman, but that seems like quite the hot potato to throw out there.
That's what I was getting at with this quick stab at a weighing scheme:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1854195
Is it possible to run a web server like, say, Snap, directly on top of it ?
In case you're wondering who wrote this, they are closely connected to Comcast.

From digitalsociety.org: "Digital Society is an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organization, funded by donations from Jon Henke and from Arts+Labs."

From artsandlabs.com: "Arts+Labs partners include entertainment companies, software providers, telecommunications providers, artists and creators committed to delivering innovative and creative digital products to consumers." (including NBC Universal)

From Wikipedia: "As of August 2010, Comcast's proposed acquisition of a majority stake in NBC Universal is pending government approval."
I would argue that text will always be more effective that dragging icons around for similar reasons why C++/Java/etc are more effective than COBOL: C++/etc is closer to how computers think.

But don't get me wrong, LabVIEW really shines for its original purpose (Laboratory Visualization and Engineering Workbench, hence LabVIEW): quick data acquisition and visualization. But large programs just get tedious to read and debug. And I'm OCD about getting my wires looking nice :) which slows me down, obviously.
Exactly this, especially in markets where there isn't consumer choice (which is something I don't see anyone talking about on HN).

Conceivably an ISP could charge customers for a connection AND charge providers for access to that base. For instance, magazines charge for both the subscription and the advertisements.

However, I can decide if I want Harper's or US Weekly. If one provides value and the other doesn't, I get to pick. With ISPs, the same feature isn't at play: I either use Road Runner or I don't get high-speed bandwidth. At that point, ISPs have a larger obligation to protect the customers by not doing things like what Comcast is doing.
Level 3 found itself in Comcast's shoes back in 2005. They felt that Cogent Communications unfairly taxed its network and made the exact same argument that Comcast is making today, and even temporarily pulled the plug on its connection to Cogent, cutting off some parts of the Internet for millions of Cogent customers.
CHDK is amazing, not least because it runs on such a wide range of cameras. I'm doing some book scanning at the moment using a home-made scanning support, Tesseract OCR software, and an ancient A570 camera running CHDK so I can get a remote shutter. Setting the whole thing up was far less painful than expected.
This is an interesting exercise in building a very specific word disambiguator ('apple' the company vs 'apple' the fruit).

It is a testmanet to NLTK that this can be accomplished in less than 100 lines.
> These leaks are not specifically about the war(s) at all, and most seem to simply be a broad swath of the everyday normal secrets that a security state keeps from all but its most trusted hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance. Which is the point: Assange is completely right that our government has conspiratorial functions. What else would you call the fact that a small percentage of our governing class governs and acts in our name according to information which is freely shared amongst them but which cannot be shared amongst their constituency? And we all probably knew that this was more or less the case; anyone who was surprised that our embassies are doing dirty, secretive, and disingenuous political work as a matter of course is naïve. But Assange is not trying to produce a journalistic scandal which will then provoke red-faced government reforms or something, precisely because no one is all that scandalized by such things any more. Instead, he is trying to strangle the links that make the conspiracy possible, to expose the necessary porousness of the American state’s conspiratorial network in hopes that the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller.

A long quote, yes, but I could not think of a way to shorten it without severely hindering its meaning.

This is a perfectly articulated description of how I initially felt about cable release. Wikileaks (and necessarily, at this point, Assange) is not trying to reveal a huge scandal, to embarrass or to destroy connections. If one or more of those things happen then so be it. The goal is to reveal, to expose the standard type and content of information that is traded like currency amongst the few who govern the very many.

The leak is an attempt at provoking forced honesty; if Wikileaks exposes a vast amount of cables enough times, the veil and shroud of secrecy that governments use as a personal cloak will continue to shrink and shrivel until it is non-functional. And voila! Now governments can no longer act in complete isolation from its people and governments such as that of the United States, which promise to be of and for the people, are forced to live up to that promise, out in the open. If you force the government into that situation harshly and fully enough, eventually it has no choice but to act that way. And finally it can be held accountable for its actions, positive or negative.

In short, the goal with all of these leaks is first and foremost to poke and prod through the secrecy and conspiracy until there is a large enough hole for the public to be able to view what its own government is doing on its behalf. Whether or not you feel that this is morally or ethically correct is up to you; this is just my take on the rationale.
Above all else, Tim is a master self-marketer.

I've always found it interesting that I'd never heard of BrainQuicken until he got his fame from 4-Hour Workweek. Granted, that fact alone doesn't mean the company wasn't successful when Tim was running it, but it is curious.

IMHO, he comes across very much as a "famous for being famous" type of person and for that, I've never really liked the guy. Some of his ideas are interesting, but it's hard to take him seriously when he's practically Aleksey Vayner.
There are many disciplines in which many people have become known for their dedication and commitment: sports. art. music. People who are successful one of these fields are treated with reverence and respect for their attainment, and rightfully so. Yet I fear that hackers will forever stay the group where enthusiasm, talent and determination is met with stereotypical comments like this:

> “He was ahead for 98 percent of the competition. The question is,” Kolstad says slowly and with utter gravity, “will he die a virgin?”
That's because Pascal was predominant programming language used in Soviet academia in the 90s and in many schools that's still the case.
Sure, but what I am trying to figure out, as a relative layperson on this topic, is this: Is either party making some outrageous and unprecedented demand that will bring about the end of the internet as we know it? Or is this just business as usual?
Presumably the same way I did. I have 1 semester of school, and I took liberal arts classes.
I'm of the opinion that math is something between the two, really. At the end of the day, understanding math lies both in being able to construct and follow rigorous formal declarative proofs and being able to visualize and abstract what those rules have unearthed. Generally conversation switches rapidly between those two modes using each one in its forte to move the discourse along.

I won't argue that math is often taught very poorly, but I also want to bring up that most people only want unconnected heuristics. Number theory and algebra are far simpler and more beautiful than add/subtract/multiply/divide, but they're also not very useful in a grocery store. Most people are script kiddie mathematicians at best.

The final thing I want to mention is that much of math is discussed at a level that is very far from "formal" but still rigorous and constructive. At this level, there is exploration whereas the formalities tend to exist to fill in the gaps and understand all edge cases. Rigor seems to me to have less value in formal language manipulation and more in complete understanding of the assumptions and conditions required to uphold your theories.

So yeah, math can be formalized, but a lot of it exists as a notational convenience sitting upon oceans of convention that let us rapidly invoke and discuss abstract notions. This is why nigh every paragraph in math begins with affixing some temporary, useful notation to the abstract concepts you've introduced.
92% accuracy, unfortunately, isn't good enough.

Bag-of-words models perform pretty well at classification and search, and the main thing you need to improve search is to boost scores when words are close together.

You might think you could improve performance by using semantically better defined features, but even 92% accuracy adds enough noise to foil your plans.

It's a big problem in A.I. systems that have multiple stages. You might have 5 steps in a chain which are each 90% accurate, but put them together and you've got a system that sucks. Ultimately there's a need for a holistic approach that can use higher-level information to fix mistakes and ambiguities at the lower levels.
Yeah, this really has nothing to do with microkernels. They're great for safety-critical reliability and hard real time, but those aspects don't matter for phones.
true! every one of those 'Digital Society' paid promo links on memeorandum has the strong whiff of incumbent telecom corporate shilling. I have never seen one get popular there, and am quite surprised to see it #1 here.

The key to this argument is whether Level 3 will have the same the same terms that Akamai and other CDNs do for non-Netflix content. Comcast claims that is the case, but I am not particularly inclined to believe them.
I went with one who is also on the board of a local networking group for digital/creative industries. I figured I can't really go wrong with somebody like that and so far I seem justified, she's invited me to local events I didn't know about and all her advice seems really sound.

On the other hand my coworker picked the guy two doors down because he's local. So he technically does have an accountant, but they've never met except to agree they'll do paperwork together once a year. Now ordinarily I'm all for picking the local provider, but I know which of these two I'd recommend.
I like how we can have this comment on the same day as a post titled "Ask HN: Is Y Combinator basically just communism?".
Amazing Pumpkin Carvings
Awesome work.
CHDK is an awesome hack.

Last time I've heard of it, no DSLRs was supported, only PowerShots. It looks like they managed to get custom firmwares working for the 400D, 550D and the 5D mkII — still all very alpha stage, but that's very good news. :)
The real problem is, the time limit for most questions is 1 second, and pretty much all of managed environments take significant times to start, so they're out. But why ocaml or haskell aren't available, i don't know
"Lots of people want a dating site with a 'market' that doesn't heavily heavily favor women."

Yeah, they're called men. And given that history tells us that attracting men to dating sites isn't a business-limiting problem, it follows that building a (heterosexual) dating site that appeals to men is not a good business idea.
I hope they get inundated by "information" about this criminal. Here, look, he gave an interview to Forbes just yesterday.

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-intervie...
Is this going to support third-world countries? Will I be able to sign up and get the card and bank account running?
I'm just curious - what exactly is banksimple selling? Just regular banking + better UI?
Comcast statement - http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/comcast-comments-on-level-3....

(also crap IMHO - I am not particularly inclined to believe their claim that Level 3 got same terms as Akamai and other CDNs for non-Netflix content)
I like new design. Very cool. Good luck guys.
It'll have to be in the new year, but it'll come. Look for posts around Jan announcing the start.
That's one thing I think is worth rescuing from classical Marxism (ignoring the political prescriptions that the Marxists added on top). The "historical materialist" view that history is largely emergent behavior of structural elements like economic relations, not the result of either "great men" or conscious conspiracies, or some preordained macro-scale order, is still pretty relevant imo.

(It's actually out of favor in contemporary Marxist thought, oddly enough, which has gone more in the direction of analyzing the role of culture, hegemony, etc., following Gramsci. Perhaps some non-Marxists will have to revive the historical-materialist approach. Jared Diamond's work is sort of in that direction.)
Yeah, oneplusone loves Xero.com's design.
Could a Lottery Be the Answer to America’s Poor Savings Rate? (Freakonomics)
For Start-Ups, the Ultimate Goal: Becoming a Verb
> It would be quite a stretch to interpret this as meaning that the questions asked as a part of the interview, or Google's process itself, is "confidential".

As far as I've heard from anyone here, that's the interpretation. Questions are not to be shared, otherwise we'd spend all our time generating new interview questions and never actually getting any work done.

The NDA covers information, not experience.
Looks great, but scrolling is choppy on my computer
When I first started scrolling I got a little confused b/c I didn't realize the header was fixed. The sign up button disappeared and I couldn't figure out how to get it back.
I wonder if he would have any objection to posting internal Wikileaks emails and documents. In the name of transparency I'd like to see the behind the scenes thought process for posting the cables.
Mint.com now available in Canada
Yes. See also comment 32 by "Incomitatus":

2. Assange believes that what he calls ‘conspiracy’ is bad, that authority is bad. He regards these things as inherently ‘unjust’. He may not say it, or maybe the analyst who wrote this piece didn’t feel the need to draw it out, but his position logically requires him to regard the State as inherently unjust and evil. If he doesn’t, it can only be because he misapprehends the fundamental nature of the State. In short, Assange is an Anarchist, whether he realises it or not, and his agenda can be countered by every argument ever made for the value of the State as an institution.
>> It's just a hunch, but I suspect the root cause for European imperialistic domination was that they had a more accessible writing notation.

the greeks devised a fantastic writing system, including representations of vowels (which its predecessor lacked). aristotle was the first person to say words should be separated when written (before all letters were run together, leaving the reader to unscramble).

your claim is a stretch, but it's interesting to note that reliable and easy ways to communicate and sustain our collective knowledge have become unexpectedly critical.
They can still send packets to Comcast through a transit provider without paying Comcast. What they can't do is start sending 5 times as much data through their free peering agreement, and the renegotiation involves Level(3) paying Comcast. Obviously they will be paying Comcast less money than they would pay a 3rd party transit provider.
What do you do for including a subproject that already has its own Makefiles? For example, my huge build system includes a bunch of components, including the Linux kernel and a bunch of libraries, as well as my app.
In perhaps the most extreme undertaking, he packed on 34 pounds of muscle while dropping 3 pounds of fat in 28 days.

I could probably gain 31 pounds in 28 days if I wanted to too... In all seriousness, I'd like to see how he measured fat vs. muscle here. These self-aggrandizing lifestyle / diet gurus tend to make a lot of claims that fall flat when subjected to any sort of peer review.

... to compete in the kickboxing nationals... I weighed in at 165, and the next day I stepped onto the platform at 193.

So in this instance, he gained over a pound an hour... Is that really possible, even if it's all water?
That's a very good point; I'm very much that way myself, and more so every year.

Part of it is cynicism from being at the bottom of a pecking order that puts the braying salesman and architypal PHB at the top and consistently having advice and ideas ignored, while given impossible deadlines because people don't know how to manage a development process properly.

However there is also a very negative vibe among geeks in general, especially (but not exclusively) in the UK. No doubt American geeks suffer from the same idiots in charge, but say the hell with it, and go start their own companies. Here there is more of a resigned shrug of the shoulders.

It's not a univeral British trait; people in other walks of life seem to have a more positive attitude.
It's unclear what Bank Simple actually is. Hopefully (for their sake) it will be clear when they launch.
Also, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=hacker+news+search
I know that it is easy to dismiss this case as having political motives, but the facts at the moment are that two women have complained of sexual assault and have named Assange as the perpetrator.

Until we hear or learn more or he faces these charges it should be taken at face value and justice should be allowed to prevail and run its course.

The right thing for him to do would be to go back to Sweden and face the charges, otherwise this issue will be continuously used to denigrate wikileaks and the information.

Imagine the media with each instance of 'Julian Assange, Wikileaks spokesperson' suddenly being replaced with 'International Fugitive, Julian Assange, Wikileaks spokesperson'
Not sure if this is what you meant, but real transparency requires verification. If leaks are commonplace then "plants" will be too. All sorts of meta-games to play as well.
For Start-Ups, the Ultimate Goal: Becoming a Verb
When starting a new Web site most technologists aim to sell to a larger company. But for some there is an even bigger glory than cash: their company name becomes a verb.
KataSpace; a WebGL/HTML5 frontend to a multiuser 3D environment
find out more about the experiment with the original article in Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... but you need an account to view it all.

also re-reading the Guardian article I reckon it's pretty thorough and unbiased, esp if you read the whole thing and not just the headline...
He addresses this in his book - creating the original "muse" is something that requires huge amounts of work and time. But the objective is to only develop the kind of business you can later automate, thereby reducing yourself to only 4-hours of busywork eventually - not total "work", mind you - so you can focus on the things you care about. In Tim's case, that "stuff you care about" appears to be creating a personal brand as a sort of life coach / marketing guru.

Like all business and self-helpy books, you have to take the 4HWW's subject matter as a skeptic, but there are some great nuggets in the book.
I am not sure why what a government says about its own qualities should determine the level of responsibility its people bear for it's actions.
Not to mention the weird scaling.
Forget what you know about stretching
Thanks for the link. I see that the official statement is using much more measured language.

I'm pretty amused by this quote: "what Level 3 wants is to pressure Comcast into accepting more than a twofold increase in the amount of traffic Level 3 delivers onto Comcast's network -- for free."

Isn't Comcast paying Level 3 to deliver traffic to them? If Comcast is not happy with the price Level 3 charges them, can't they switch to a different tier 1 network?
Yes, breadth first traversal of the solution space is very similar in spirit to our approach.

I have since completely rewritten the Haskell implementation. You should really check it out, especially if you are thinking about writing one of your own.

(git repo)
http://david.darais.com/git/research/der-parser-3

This implementation no longer requires a special coded repetition operator to get good complexity for regular and LL(k) grammars. This is a result of our progress w.r.t. performance of the theory since the paper's submission. My technique to achieve this uses structure derivatives (context based derivatives, or pseudo-equivalently, continuations) to avoid taking unnecessary parser derivatives. It in a sense "focuses" the parser computation on a small sub-parser.

Ping me if you have any questions; this paper has been getting passed around quite a bit lately and Matt and I have made progress on certain areas since the writing of the paper -- like that of the Rep hack.
I think the correct question is "is anyone else here not skeptical of Tim Ferriss?"
What countries will they support?
Imagine the media with each instance of 'Julian Assange, Wikileaks spokesperson' suddenly being replaced with 'International Fugitive, Julian Assange, Wikileaks spokesperson'

I think he would like that.
I'm told that's what it's like trying to do a start-up in England.

That's what it's like trying to do anything in England.
Not to defend his actual results, as I am unaware of them, but this can be tracked by measuring your mass and volume (through water displacement), since fat and muscle have different and known densities.

You can also use a body fat caliper for more of an eyeballing of body fat percentage.
The US.

For the time being, we are concentrating on the US market. Banking regulation and service levels vary widely around the world. After we launch in the US, we may look at international expansion.
similarly, on a side note here... but if you post an AskHN post wanting feedback on your product and idea it would be great if you could also take time to respond to those who bother to feed back for you. often I'm left wondering if they've ever returned to pick up the fb that I and others have taken time to write.
Experiment HN: Crowdsourcing Tech Stock Predictions
Doesn't https://www.banksimple.com/faq/ help?
Conkeror: web browsing the emacs way
Apologize about the parking ticket thing. We actually did NOT do that PR stunt in a large scale. A couple people tested it at the train station and we had several complaints so we decided not to go through with it. Sorry for the inconvenience and that you were parked at that train station that day. My takeaway from the test is exactly what you said, it wasn't good for our brand and I told the team not to move forward with it in a large scale. Crazy because we only handed out a handful of those... small world. Send me an email and if you're really looking for a car, I'll comp your CarWoo! fee if you're willing to give us a second look. tommy@carwoo.com
Savannah and www.gnu.org downtime
Hasn't this always been the case?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_cover
> How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise

A pound of fat has 3500 calories. A 170 lbs. man needs something like 2500 calories per day if he doesn't exercise. (I think roughly 2000 for truly sedentary, 3000 for moderate activity.) That means that if you go without any food whatsoever for a month, you just barely lose 20 lbs. (And if you do this, you'll probably become so weak and lethargic that you'll start burning less than 2000/day.)

There's just no reasonable way to lose 20 lbs. in 30 days without drugs, starving yourself, and/or a very strenuous exercise regime. If you ran 10 miles per day (at 125 calories/mile) you'd still only be able to eat a very meager 1200 calories per day. You'd have to run almost a marathon every day in order to afford a normal calorie intake.