skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's a shame that cperciva's nonsense is being modded up.

> "Nuclear reactors don't hold enough fuel to form a critical mass."

Come on. Each reactor core holds over 100 tons of uranium, of which about 3-5 tons is U-235. Critical mass under perfect conditions is 50 kilograms. Conditions are not perfect for forming a critical mass, but you've got 100 times as much U-235 as is strictly necessary, and there is no fucking way of knowing what will happen when an entire reactor core melts and flows together, because no one has ever been stupid enough to try it. Chernobyl experienced a criticality event, and there is absolutely no guarantee that Fukushima will not.

Moreover, each reactor has a spent fuel pool with five times as much fuel in it as the reactor itself has. And no containment vessel. And no water being supplied. And when the water boils away from those pools, and that fuel melts and flows together...
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Also, from the photos of the stricken areas that I've seen; what are you going to loot? Everything is destroyed, there is no way to get around, there are rescue teams working around the clock. It's not a situation where houses were flooded but remain mostly intact. There are no houses anymore.

Photos of empty store shelves are from areas outside the disaster zone where people are preparing for a possible radiation disaster where they would be unable to go out of their homes for days. That's not a situation that is conductive to looting.
I would had thought a much simpler and more direct example of functional overlap would have been 'more' and 'less'...
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H2O Power radio runs on water from the shower
For all the people out there who like listening to the radio while they're in the shower, various companies offer waterproof battery-operated "shower radios." There's nothing particularly wrong with these radios, but ... why change or recharge the batteries if you don't have to? No, we're not suggesting running a power cord into the shower. Instead, you might be interested in getting an H2O Power water-powered radio.
A very compelling story! Raising your first $ has rarely seemed so easy.
foodfuscator.com is available if anyone is interested. :)
This is not really a problem due to the availability of these things called "maps", however.

And the availability of this thing called 'the periodic table' means everyone knows and understands basic chemistry.
Well, there aren't any donut shops in Queensland anymore either. They all got washed away by the recent epic storm that made Katrina look like a fourth grade spitball contest.†

†This is of course, patently false. Oh sure, the storm was bigger and nastier, but if you do insist on building your city below sea level, then route crucial funds from the Army Corps of Engineers who are supposed to keep the levees strong, to some Blackwater dudes playing 'choose your own adventure' in the Middle East...
kitsune_, wrong choice of words, IMHO!

The article is full of facts that make absolute sense and shed light on a large number of things that the news do not get right. My thanks to the author especially for a clear interpretation of the explosions. We need a clear head and should rely on facts in these situations. We also should not assume that nuclear reactors are not well constructed. I am sure they are. So it does not come as a surprise to me, that someone who knows the details is able to explain them in a way that it makes sense.

This does not excuse the fact that the reactors failed. This is a different story. But it helps to understand what really happens now. What the author did not stress is the fact that, as the Zircaloy structure may have failed, all subsequent pressure releases will be highly contaminated.

BTW, engineers are the ones who know best how safety is constructed, not scientists (I write this as someone who got his phd in atomic physics. So I am not an engineer).
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ANTLR is a parser generator for CFGs and allows for flexibility in regards to ambiguity and context-dependent grammar by means of predicates. But the generated parsers are LL(k) (with enhancements, LL(star) they call it) and this brings certain problems with it, like the rules cannot be left-recursive.

As Terrence Parr said "LL recognizers restrict the class of acceptable grammars somewhat".

PEG rules cannot be ambiguous, as rules are tried out in order until one matches. Also recognizing tokens is part of processing rules, rather than having a separate lexer (which ANTLR does - lexer rules are separate from parser rules, and the code generated reflects that) - which means it is easier to deal with certain kinds of ambiguities.

This can work to your disadvantaged however. For example languages where whitespace is significant, like in Python where blocks are delimited by indentation level, the lexer needs to be hacked by hand (i.e. you have to cheat somewhere, because that's context-dependent and a bitch to deal with).

In general, ANTLR generated parsers are more efficient and allow for certain hacks to be implemented easily, but PEG grammars are easier to write and allow for certain context-dependent rules that are very hard to implement in ANTLR. And PEG grammars need backtracking as an implementation detail and although memoization reduces the impact of that, the result will have less performance.

Basically for quick prototypes I would choose PEG grammars and for industrial strength something like ANTLR.

Btw, here's a cool Java/Scala library for creating PEG parsers, and it's much lighter and easier to setup than ANTLR: https://github.com/sirthias/parboiled/wiki

And the syntax is basically Java/Scala:
https://github.com/sirthias/parboiled/wiki/Simple-Java-Examp...

AND the Scala way of defining grammars is so cool I can't even describe it - basically you can create new grammars by inheriting existing grammars - say you have a general SQL syntax that you want to specialize for MySQL / PostgreSQL. Works like a charm ;)
> Imagine seeing syntax errors the moment you type them.

Eclipse does that. Or are you talking specifically only about C?
There is an off-the-shelf C++ parser. IIRC it costs about $100k per year.
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..and I am surprised at how good it feels. Its not much (just $12) but I feel it is a huge mental step forward for me, which I thought many here could relate to :-)
I work with a guy, long time ago, who would take code already split into functions and refactor it into one big function. I am not joking here, actually happened.
Indian govt. is try to handle a burning charcoal. they will end up burning their fingers in the long run.

It's almost like putting a duck tape on everyone's face. What next? A switch to create an auto vacuum so that sound doesn't travel?
It's pretty impressive for the few queries I tried, especially for "why" question types which usually are the trickiest to answer.

The answer for this question was amusing though: "who created android?" :D
(According to the IAEA) There was one measurement of 400mSv between reactors 3 and 4 [1], I think which actually occurred sometime on monday GMT (possibly Tuesday morning in Japan), which prompted the evacuation. It fell again, which probably prompted the authorities to allow workers back in.

The 1000mSv figure is most likely a misreporting of the transient 1008 or 1080uSv (I recall it had an 8 in it) measurement reported over the weekend, or some subsequent measurement... there have been lots in and around the plant that have been on the order of 1000uSv.

I really wish everyone in the media speaking about the nuclear crisis would timestamp their comments accurately, ideally in GMT. People all around the world are trying to follow events, and it's nearly impossible to know when some reporter says something about an event whether they're using Japanese time, their local time, or GMT.

[1] http://www.facebook.com/notes/international-atomic-energy-ag...
GOTO HELL showed up with predictable frequency. I don't recall if he used it for errors, though.
Congratulations!

Link? :)
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But the fact that readability is suggested, suggests that the site isn't readable. That's a hint to the author that it needs to be looked at, which is what the grandparent comment says.
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You're citing Emacs as an example of a program that does just one thing and respects "functional boundaries" unlike (say) the way that Word does some spreadsheet-y things and Excel some databasical things?

A standard Emacs installation contains, among other things: a Lisp interpreter, an adventure game, a mail program, a Usenet newsreader, a calendar, a calculator with symbolic-algebra features, and an implementation of Conway's Life.
Thanks. Here it is
http://www.trackthisnow.com/
The saddle is just as easily locked - get a light chain and a padlock, wrap it around one of the underwires of your saddle.

As for 'steering wheel'... a bike that unusual is asking to be stolen by a curious enthusiast :)
A bit of an exaggeration on 'you couldn't even have a $1000 bike in NYC'. I have one and lock it up outside - I see plenty of them locked up around town. But, yes, they're all locked with thick chains and heavy locks, and the seat should be locked to the frame as well if you want to keep that too. Having renters insurance is good too since that will cover you if your bike is stolen.
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60 Jazz tracks? That's what I mean with virgin ear.

You are not used to listen to Jazz so it's more likely to sound horrible to you since it's often rather complex.

Why do you think that parents of the 68' generation hated Beatles despite it being what we consider pop culture today.

You need to understand this in context rather than in absolute terms.
Frankly, yes. Do you realize that before CDOs were made Deutche bank and friends took precautions to make sure they wouldn't be classified as gambling? They knew the danger of what they were creating and sought to make sure it wouldn't be regulated.
Is netflix going to start having premium, extra-charge selections?

I won't mind as long as there is no tricking you to select stuff that costs more vs the all-you-can-eat stuff.
Jonas, are you looking at telecommuting applicants too?
Income equality? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA...

If you already have about the same amount of stuff as everyone else, stealing seems silly.
I haven't used any exotic OSes (like the Lisp Machines?), but I believe that Unix's "do one thing and do it well" philosophy was never serious, just an (ignored) guideline to programmers. Ignored partly because Unix isn't that conducive to it.

The Unix Way is to operate on lines of text with tools like sed/awk. These lines of text are poorly-serialized object representations.

Programs are big monolithic procedures (which take a lot of optional params as input — switches), which you're supposed to glue together under extremely weak programming environments (like bash).

I abuse Unix to get out of this paradigm as much as appropriate. There is a good idea hidden inside communicating with serialized objects (which I'm sure Erlang users understand better than I do), but it's a very primitive version.

(Maybe I'm wrong and someone will finally enlighten me.)
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20011108004210/http://www.a... < how http://apple.com/ipod looked in 2001.
Africans have been in Africa since the dawn of humankind. Do you think there'd be so many 'wallet' stories as in this thread if we were talking about Africa?
Is it though? They are developers, developing applications for the web. I don't think its a huge barrier to expect people to learn the basic protocols, and tools like curl reasonably well.
Egyptians have been a distinct ethnic group along the Nile river for longer than the Japanese have been where they are. Let's not attribute magical properties to long-lived cultures.
Well we are diverging from the theme, but the proper form of that is

#define O_HAI {
#define KTHXBYE }
http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty...
People use twitter (and other SM sites) mostly as emotional toilets, throwing out there whatever gets to their mind. This wil not change likely, it's sickness of the masses who are mostly not taking things responsible, some do but they get buried by this random nonsense.

Thats why I follow on Twitter maximum 50 people and only those who are focused on providing useful information and not whether they got drunk yesterday and today they woke up with huge headache.

Saying that you are sending prayers and light on twitter to people in need is just one big excuse for doing nothing and continuing with your breakfast while you feel good about yourself.
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1. The story about Obama' Os makes it seem so easy to raise $32k. Of course it does not always pan out the same way.

2. A VC/firm accepting their mistake and missed opportunity publicly is amazing indeed.

3. The best lesson was making sure the same is not repeated, aka Box on the table.
If you are interested, we are also on our way making Airbnb for individual's expertise.
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But it is just like the Airbnb story, start from nothing is always difficult.
I love working at home. I can concentrate so much better than in the office, where I get distracted all the time. Office is great for meetings and discussions, but when those are over and I really need to get things done, I work better at home.

Then again, I've always been pretty comfortable with internet-based communication, so I don't tend to get lonely at all.

Also, working at home doesn't mean sitting in the same place all the time for me. I sometimes go to the park, or other places, for some change of scenery.
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This must feel good indeed, congrats!
You just did the MVP of customer development. And a great prototype for brand monitoring. Good luck!
Well done, congratulations!
As is every technological and scientific achievement humankind has ever reached and is relying upon. Replace nuclear reactions with, say, human flight and your statement remains just as valid. I don't see many people crying out for abolishment of planes, though.
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The truly disturbing thing is that the felony charge can destroy peoples lives, and destroy peoples attempts to even run a normal life.

I couldn't work my job with most felony charges, because I'm in construction and I work on other people's property my employer can't have me on payroll unless I'm bondable. If I have a criminal conviction my job is in danger, but if it's for theft I'm gone and I'm either forced to work under the radar or find a new job.
If there are any Twitter API developers looking for a Nobel Prize-worthy challenge, now would be the time to devise an app that could bring the two factions together in a state of semi-contentedness.

I guess that's an app which Twitter would like, seeing their recent developer news.
I have the opposite take on #1.

If someone makes it look easy, watch em. Roger Federer makes tennis look easy, so easy you wonder why everyone doesn't just do what he's doing. The court looks smaller, the ball looks slower.
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Has the tech industry in SF generated huge job growth recently? From the scarce statistics I can find, it seems SF tech employment has actually declined over the past few years.
Thanks. It does and is also very motivating. I feel that if I can sell one I can sell more.

I am thinking of working on the UI and the positioning a bit more.
Only publishing articles that are deemed to be newsworthy is not the same as keeping it secret. You seem to think that I'm in favour of some sort of a cover-up, there's nothing to cover-up.
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Timeline of the Fukushima nuclear accidents
Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.

— Tom West, quoted by Tracy Kidder in The Soul of a New Machine (Modern Library, 1997). ISBN 0-679-60261-5

Note that Data General is defunct, so I take this quote as a warning.

References:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_West

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
You should try working with code written by hardware engineers. Those guys are extremely smart when it comes to digital and analog electronics, but never ever let them write a device driver ...
Having lived in cities on various parts of the city-services spectrum, I do think it overall improves the quality of life to have higher city taxes and more services (especially public transit). But fortunately people who think otherwise can choose where they want to live accordingly, since many cities are available on different parts of that spectrum. For example, if you prefer the tax/services tradeoff Houston makes to the one San Francisco makes, you can live in Houston (and many people do).
It is an indication that you need to stop.

As in "Thinking about AOL? Stop right there...".
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It should only need a couple of minor tweaks. I am looking into it (as well as OS X support) and will post on my blog when it's ready.
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Oh please. There are bacteria everywhere, or do they dip those Vancouver trains in Lysol everyday?
> So every time I saw it, I said to myself, "Really?!" I just had to visit their website again just now to make sure.

So for you, the logo worked. It got your attention and brought you into the site.
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How is taxing stock option gains more 'audacious' than taxing income gains? They both are taxing work. Why is one more 'audacious' than another?
I was having the exact discussion with a friend yesterday of what the default behaviour in real time should be.

My friend was of the opinion that it should be Enter to post and "Shift+Enter" to add a new line. What facebook did today basically.

My stand was the oppposite. Shift+Enter for a new comment and enter for new line.

The reason being that even if I press enter thinking it would post my comment, the error handling (forgiveness to the user) is minimal and I can either click the button or be informed that to post I need shift + Enter.

However if I do it the way facebook does and press enter thinking it would take me to a new line without me realising that I posted a comment that is half of what I wanted to say.

Lesson: Let you interface be forgiving and give it priority over simplicity.
that's what people need to know when using phoengap.

but i guess someone could write an encryption/decryption filter before passing data to webkit?
If you don't get a high, a rush from selling something to someone, you're not cut out to be an entrepreneur.

Congratulations on your first sale.

Last month I sold my first piece of software online and I literally woke my wife up to tell her. I also sell guns and gun accessories. Last night, a customer purchased $1100 worth of products. In an industry with tough and large competition, we somehow convinced him through our website to give us $1100 of his money. Two years later and my business partner and I still send each other texts when an order comes through.

It's such an amazing feeling.

Again, congratulations on your first sale and I hope many more to come for you.
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My bike doesn't have this, although my racing bike does. Unfortunately racing bikes as made in such a way that you can detach parts easily in a couple of seconds...so it's really necessary to bring two locks or one very long one to lock everything.
Refer to "Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media" [1] for an understanding how the editorial content of mainstream newspapers is almost universally influenced by advertising dollars.

[1] http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php
Yes good point. It's 100 shares.
We are all too trusting here.

Shares were "promised" but the vesting and unvesting never actually occurred.

My shares were allocated to me after getting very annoyed, 7 months down the track. :/ boink!

I raised that point you mentioned. "Why didn't the shares get spread across the remaining people when they were taken back?" Answer was, "this is my company." :(

What happened was, we started working together before anything was property allocated and signed. :-o not good. I recommend people that can't afford lawyers to, at the very least, write something down on paper in words that make sense to both parties and sign that. It's not great, but at least it's an interim until money is made, then just go straight to the lawyer when possible.

I look back now and also tell them, we should have just downloaded and signed a standard partnership agreement. All the hassles of this weird setup we have would not be with us. Note: there's a weird income / share of profits layer too that I didn't go into. Partnership, or JV agreement would help that side too.
love this comment. I did the same thing. I forwarded my wife the Paypal receipt the moment I realized I had a sale. Its her birthday tomorrow and I have quit my job to pursue my dreams for 4 months now, so its extra special.
Congrats! It is a big deal. Now while sales < 1000000 do ;)
What do i do with my web based Twitter client?
Back when twitter was really buzzing, I thought a web client was a great idea. I built one and forgot about it. I have ironed out some bugs and it's working at http://twitexplode.com
Apart from the narcissism points, what else can I do with it?
I must be missing something... doesn't the iPod do all the things he lists as being killer features for a "podcast player"?

What's so horrible about using an iPod for podcasts that there is or could possibly be a need for a dedicated podcast player?
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Very cool app
congrats! Just repeat a few times (!) and you're rich :)
I am on it already :)
Actually what you are suggesting was actually the take away and not that you don't do it since it does not always pan out this way. That while it looks easier you should also know it is not always this easy. So when someone is making it look easy learn all you can but with a pinch of salt