skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> For me, I don't think we should do the calculations by hand just for the sake of doing it. It should be done only as a means for understanding the core concepts.

That's always been my take on the reason for doing hand calculations, but sometimes it takes much longer than I expect to really grasp matters. I've seen in really well-written math books some questions bo a much better job of leading you to discover concepts "on your own" than the teaching material.

One of my favourite methods to learn is to write code to embody the lessons learnt. There's no better way to learn a concept than to develop it through to the end, imo.
This is an interesting start up and concept but it seems like there's a pretty high barrier to entry. In order to use this site you have to place a lot of trust in it to:

* Be secure with your credentials to sites
* Reliably figure out that you are dead
* Trust that your next of kin will figure out the key you've set up

It's certainly a useful concept and much better than hoping your loved one placed the credentials somewhere you could access them.
Non-blocking architecture is not the be all/end all solution for performance problems. By calculating large fibonacci numbers (pounding the CPU), he causes node to fall apart. Basically, there is no such thing as easy scaling, and any solution advertising such is lying.
The fact that they originated in Europe doesn't change the fact that they are also "non-European" languages.

Uh. Yes it does, and no they aren't.
awesome, could i do this on ubuntu ?
IOS vs. Microsoft: Comparing the bottom lines
Personally I'd restrict "super" status to a lot less than 20% or 30% of the population - certainly that's what the NYT article is doing. Fluency in two languages is pretty much a requirement for any but the most basic professional positions in much of Europe, and I wouldn't want to start calling every middle-level manager or accounts person "super."
Introspection: Libertarianism
If Facebook is "lying through its teeth" it will only hurt them in the long run. What is even more realistic is that they are getting (have become) so big that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. That becomes typical in a large organization.

This could also simply be a way for them to protect themselves in the future, as we've all seen just how heated the patent space is becoming for the big boys...
AAH ZOMBIES, RUN
I think you'd have to write some kind of CoreAudio stub.

But if you just want to play with this stuff, see the Javascript version here:

http://wurstcaptures.untergrund.net/music/
Hey there, so the point of the service is to stream the file from one computer to another. The transfer will work once between two computers. Also, the file size limit is determined by the limits of http (~2gb). Thanks.
It's a problem when the ad requires three years of Javascript, two years of embedded C, two years of C++, two years of Python, two years of Ruby, and five years of HTML and CSS, and yet is only offering college-leaver pay.
Do you have some code of the report engine? I'd love to see it.

For the accounting knowledge. I don't think that is the point. The point is more what accounting people need and how they think. Most of the accounting could be done with R or numpy or things like that, but that would scare the hell out of any 'normal' finance guy...
Br�llop V�xj�
Linguistically, they are indeed European languages. Culturally, if you tell people in Argentina, the U.S., Macau and Nigeria that they are European because of a language they can speak, the label will lose all meaning.
He suggested installing plan9port[1], which "just" ports some user land libraries and applications to different Unices, including OS X. So we're talking about native OS X executables here.

There's also the "Acme Stand Alone Complex"[2], which - if I remember correctly - is a "virtual" Inferno OS applet which includes the Acme application.

I'm not exactly agreeing that piping is the end-all, be-all of editor extensibility, but it's certainly worth giving it a try.

[1]: http://swtch.com/plan9port/

[2]: http://www.caerwyn.com/acme/
Information, Information, Everywhere… But Not A Lot Of Good It Does
An easy solution:

Encrypt your package using a fresh private key. Send the package to the will handler (such as PassMyWill), but not the key. Send the key to all the will recipients.

Upon the execution of your will, your recipients get the package that they can already open with their key.

The trick becomes to keep the package opaque to the will handler, and to keep the recipients from gaining access to the package prematurely.
How well they manage android version bumps has nothing to do with security updates.
I really don't see it competing much with having an envelope with a master password (e.g. my gmail password) in my safe?
> Learning any other language is largely a pursuit of fancy

What happens if you want to sell to, or buy from, some other country? Is business squeezed into the bit that isn't "largely a ..."?

I'm English. I speak no other languages, and it's something I'm a bit embarrassed by.
Pretty sure these guys have been doing something similar for a while now: https://www.lifeensured.com/

I wonder if PassMyWill has ever been audited for security vulnerabilities? LifeEnsured has:
https://www.lifeensured.com/faqs#security

EDIT: lol. The login form on PassMyWill gets POST'd over HTTP.

EDIT2: Nope, the entire server doesn't support SSL. facepalm
You're confusing two things. You are taking the fallacy, "the economy is zero sum" and attempting to lump, "wealth accumulation at the top reduces wealth accumulation at the bottom" in with it.

The former is demonstrably false. Simply open the aforementioned hot dog stand. The latter may or may not be false, depending on the circumstances.

A wealthy person opening a restaurant does not reduce wealth accumulation of a passerby. If, however, a wealthy person pays himself a fat bonus from his company, while cutting jobs in order to instill fear, increase production, and drive salaries down, has clearly increased his accumulation of wealth at the expense of those beneath him.

The point is, you can't take the statement, "economics is not a zero-sum game" and use it as a blanket counter argument to all statements about inequality of wealth accumulation.
To avoid this kind of problems, we need better privacy features in web browsers: better control on accepting / rejecting cookies, blocking trackers, hiding information which is usable for browser fingerprinting, etc. Today, this is possible with extensions, but I think, it should be default in the future.
One more reason that I'm awfully glad I'm running CyanogenMod on my Sensation.
I admit I skimmed through the article, but, "git destroyed my data" .. hum ... how come ?

Git is a versioning system that doesn't free you of making backups of your central master. And by master I mean the global central reference repository or whatever you call it.

So you screw up your repository using an unconventional workflow and now you and your co-worker don't trust git anymore ?

Well maybe you shouldn't have blindly trusted it in the first place. It's a better tool than many but still is just a tool you should use with care. As any tool. It has bugs.

That said, I feel your pain. Finding bugs in other tool can be a very frustrating experience. Well, shit happens :-)
Yes. You're quite correct. This application will be centered to places where data is cheap/free. Definitely not for Australians, New Zealanders etc.

With $41 million, you'd have thought they could execute anything. I thought everyone had a million ideas, but it all came down to execution...
One corollary to this, working off the same metaphor, should be that sometimes it's easier to just come in a redevelop the neighborhood than to try to fix its problems. This is my plan for a piece of software where making small fixes in it, only leads to exposing other more dire and deep-seated issues.
Eons ago i was listening to a Jason Calacanis podcast and he gave an amazing insight: You should always do your own PR. At first I thought this was unfair as Jason is a genius at self promotion which is a gift few geeks have, but then he spelled out his technique which I actually wrote down:

1. Make friends in the press BEFORE you pitch

2. Is your story better than anything on techmeme?

3. ...then look for writers in your space

4. Leave a smart comment on a story (i.e. linkbait)

5. Do a blog to linkbait (take your comment and blow it up to a post) this is because journalists obsess over the comments

6. ...do the same with twitter

7. Learn from cluetrain manefesto, it's about a conversation

8. Journalists hate PR people

9. Obsess about your market, know EVERYTHING about your space with anything less is more (don't do a long press release), use a casual tone and just write 5 words (i.e. a ping mail)
I started my coding on OS X with TextMate, in the time when releases were frequent. I spent a summer working a job where local development was not particularly easy and so I spent a lot of time in remote vim sessions over ssh. While it took a little adjusting and learning to get to the same level of productive as with TextMate I've never looked back. The ability to sit down at any machine and know that Vim is most likely installed is really really useful.
Seven Ways CEOs and Investors Can Promote the Long Term
Me neither since it requires root - my phone is rooted, but not the tablet.
===
A lot of accountants make a glorious, tragic mess of Excel. I've seen it -- over and over and over, again. But the big systems are seldom a solution, in good part because rather than looking at those people's problems, they impose a top-down methodology that nobody really wants and that makes a lot of work in and of its own nature. Feed the beast, rather than taming it.
===

And in fact the point is more on a substitution/integration of spreadsheets, than a shiny new system.

To be fair, I understand all what you say. I just disagree a bit on the new systems. I use SAP, cognos and hyperion and they suck not because they are new or badly implemented, but because they are closed and the csv they output is amazingly horrible. Also, those tools don't seem to have a decent api accessible from decent programming languages, so welcome clicking hell and goodbye automation.

If those tools where open source, at least you could hope in some kind of improvement or at least integration with your own way of working.

---

On the carrier side. Let's just say I don't do this for the carrier (I would like to consult on this things and leave corporate job). But automating, even at a simple level, tends to improve my output and reduce error, which is a huge advantage over the other employees that have to stay late because their look ups formulas are too heavy and files take 10 min to save or 'calculate' stuff.
It would be so much fun to work through the book by writing code to do all the interesting stuff. I've been dreaming about doing just this in K; I've wanted to properly learn K for years and this is a dream domain for it. Silentbicycle, who knows a lot about K, is planning to join in this group at some point too. But alas, I doubt I'll be able to do it. My main project takes up pretty much all my hacking energy and I won't allow anything to detract from that. I've never done side projects well. :(
Until webkit becomes the only rendering standard

This shouldn't ever happen. We've been there before and seen how much it held back innovation. It is our duty both as individuals and as a collective to make sure it doesn't happen.
What is the role of a CEO?
Of course I've received a package from the bankrupt and insolvent USPS and yes I also buy food from grocery stores that receive food over roads badly in need of repair.

I didn't say that the government does not do or provide ANY good things. However that does not mean that paying taxes to a government that IS inefficient and bloated can or should be called the "common good". The same government spent over a trillion dollars on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are those wars part of the common good? The same government spends half a trillion on welfare of various sorts. Is that welfare part of the common good? The same government got us almost 15 trillion dollars in debt. Is that debt part of the common good?

Different people may say yes to one, two, or all of the three things above. I, however, would say no to all of them. To me, paying taxes to the government is most definitely NOT the common good.
Double-encrypt the package with a key that you give to PassMyWill and that you give to the recipients. Give the package to everyone.
You might want to consider Debian.
I forgot, anti-TDD is the trend these days. Should have made a joke about TDD being an STD in the programming world. Much better then actually contributing or correcting those who are wrong.
Brain Hacks: How we read each other's minds - Rebecca Saxe
Well, you aren't excluded from applying as far as the people actually hiring for the job are concerned.

But sometimes you've gotta be prepared to BS the HR creature in order to make it past them and actually talk to someone human - it's not too uncommon for these folks to view listed job requirements as a hard filter that all applicants need to pass in order to be considered, especially when dealing with bigger companies.

And the fact that perfectly qualified applicants are often forced to embellish experience to make it past these initial screens is a very bad thing, it means that a certain level of dishonesty is almost required as part of a standard job hunt (i.e. one that doesn't lean on connections or direct relationships with people at companies, which is always a better way to go). This is part of why it ends up being so hard to distinguish legit programmers from terrible ones by their CVs: the crappy ones know they have to make up a ton of crap to get any interviews at all, whereas the legit ones know that if they can just get through the door and interview they'll get an offer, so they don't bother embellishing, and all the CVs end up looking about the same.
Br�llop Onsala
And you can share your favorite penises on Facebook!
Give your side-projects a home on the web
It also reminded me of paul graham's essay "after credentials" about cram schools in south korea. I remember watching a documentary about south korea where 3 year olds were literally cramming the times table.
The missing documentation:

/savers/delete -- suppress interest rates to ruin savings (aliases: /banks/addcash, /stocks/pumpup )

/banks/bailout -- returns the "banker bonus" object

/fed/audit -- 404
Editors for the New York Times don't understand brain imaging
How to Maintain a Notebook Battery
There are more than a couple of reasons while the comparison between Germans learning Spanish and Americans learning Spanish is a poor one. (Much less a comparison with Brazilian Portuguese)

1. The distance. Most of the US is actually quite far away from Mexico. As you get closer to the border (Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico) the rate at which non-hispanics speak Spanish rises considerably.

2. The economic and social relations between the US and Mexico are nothing like those between Spain and Germany. If I'm German, I can learn Spanish, move there, find work (okay, the example works better the other way around), and live with a minimum of hassle. It's another stable, developed country.

In contrast, parts of Mexico are almost literally war-zones (Juárez et. al.), and gaining a work visa, finding employment, etc is quite difficult, and even then it will be a dramatically different standard of living.
Part of the high GPAs is grade inflation. Nobody wants to be the one who says "No." Illiterate students are passed on to universities and into the workplace, where reality suddenly intrudes.
Isn't this the problem that data.gov is trying to solve?
> I find this hard to accept.

As did I at first, but it's true. There are several papers that show the math behind this (including one I co-authored called "Performance of ballast mats on passenger railroads: Measurement vs. projections") - unfortunately they are all behind paywalls.

> Just because there's a spring doesn't mean the weight isn't there, bearing down on the wheels, deforming the wheel and the track.

At rest, sure. Once it's in motion, the static load is insignificant (by several orders of magnitude) compared to the dynamic forces, and the dynamic forces are driven by the unsprung mass (and other factors such as the primary suspension frequency).

>Stand next to a train as it goes by, you can feel the ground move.

You're referring to ground-borne vibration (one of my areas of expertise). Again, that is a function of the dynamic forces, not the static forces. The FTA Transit Noise & Vibration Impact Assessment guidance manual (disclosure: I used to work for the firm that wrote the manual and I have a contract with FTA to teach cources based on material in the manual) touches upon this a little bit when it mentions that heavy rail and light rail trains have similar vibration levels (p 7-8, section 7.3, note that "heavy" and "light" in this context refers to train schedule not vehicle weight, but generally speaking heavy rail vehicles tend to be heavier than light rail vehicles) but again, all the good stuff is behind paywalls.

>All that bending/unbending of the track and bed contributes to fatigue damage, and fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the load.

That's a highway stat. Trains are different than roadway vehicles in that there is only one spring separating the vehicle weight from the unsprung mass. In trains, there are two suspension systems, the primary suspension with isolates the wheel/axle from the truck and the secondary suspension that isolates the vehicle body from the truck (and the wheels). When you look at the driving force behind ground vibration, the body weight has little correlation with the forces going into the ground (okay, there is a weak correlation in that heavier trains tend to have heftier axle sets, but the differences here between, say, the Acela and the TGV are minor).
In the US, unlimited data plans are in the $80+taxes range per month, where taxes add a significant amount. This makes the new Color a cutesy amusement to try out once and then delete.
Results from decades of research into evolution, cooperation, and competition
Right now it looks like a website that's down.
damn i mixed up the date :]
You're being disingenuous.

>Anyone putting their time and/or money to work on a risky enterprise where the expected value is negative

That's crap. If the expected value is negative, then it's irrational – clearly there is some outcome with a positive ROI. VCs don't act out of the goodness of their heart.

>you'd have to have all of those who behave in risk-adverse ways (with concave utility curves) subsidizing all of those who behave in risk-loving way (with convex utility curves). Which goes a fair bit beyond 'tax deductions'.

Are you familiar with the capital gain tax? It looks like we already do subsidize risk takers.

> the argument we're having really hinges on the definition of concepts like 'fairness' and 'justice' (...) progressive taxation is repugnant because it's neither fair nor just. It clearly violates the principle of equality before the law - even though all men are created equal, progressive taxation makes the property rights of the wealthy less important than the property rights of the poor. If taxes are a necessary evil, and I suspect they are, they should be proportional, not progressive.

This is a red herring. I'm confused as to how we are supposed to discuss economic policy without resorting to using economics.

I am in complete agreement that taxation needs to be proportional. I just think that they should be proportional to real purchasing power, instead of being proportional to income.

>Risk-taking behavior in the face of negative odds only makes economic sense if marginal utility of income increases, not decreases, with income.

You seem to be intent on misrepresenting it the concept of marginal utility. Making more money will always increase your utility; it just does so at a smaller rate.

If you have a yearly income of $20,000 a $1,000 raise is going to make a much more significant difference in your life than if you make $80,000. If it costs a minimum of $10,000 a year to clothe and feed yourself, a 10% flat tax is going to affect someone who is poor a lot more than it is going to affect someone who isn't.

This is what is unfair.

> the way people actually behave makes me think diminishing marginal utility of income is completely questionable

You've yet to present an argument against this idea. Casting it aside because it is ideologically convenient for you does not make it untrue.
Curtas get mentioned a lot because they occur in a couple of William Gibson books. But there are other nice bits of mechanical technology.

I used to work for a bus ticket machine company. The mechanical devices were amazing pieces. Really intricate and packed. I didn't work on those. I worked on "TIMtronic" (Ticket Issuing Machine electronic).

http://www.ticketmachinewebsite.com/apps/photos/album?albumi...

But see also Samuel Morland's adder, a device from 1680.
FWIW, I was once like you and resisted getting a smartphone for quite a while. Now I'm no longer chained to my desk. I can go on an epic bike ride, chart it with GPS, and never miss an important email. If anything, the smartphone has given me more freedom, improved my health, and increased my awareness of my surroundings (never get lost, locate nearby businesses/attractions, leave the house more often). The nice thing about a smartphone is that it spends most of the time in your pocket. You only pull it out when you need it.
Are online CS degrees taken seriously?
I'm a web developer who has been at it for over a decade. I have worked for startups and agencies as programmer and designer of both front and backend solutions, and have been maintaining a freelance business for about 7 years now. I have three BA degrees in humanities, including one in Music and another in Fine Art. I've never had a problem finding web-related work. Web development has given me the flexibility in life to pursue a variety of things, eventually to realize, happily, that doing this is actually my primary passion. However, I continuously see more job adverts - oftentimes the more interesting ones - requesting a BS in CS.

I respect this and can understand why a company would prefer a credentialed candidate for a job. At this point I would enjoy the process of working through a CS degree - there are some holes in my learning, especially in mathematics, that I would like to shore up, and I think that approaching a CS degree with my experience in tow would yield good results on many levels, as there is so much that I could learn and apply what I already know to. But at this point I don't want to spend the money, and living in a college atmosphere doesn't appeal to me either. All of what I currently know about programming I've gleaned from the web and on-the-job research. But now I'm wanting to push myself to a higher level; not necessarily only into a management position, but more as a person capable of executing great ideas.

I've seen a growing proliferation of online CS and IT degrees available from places like Western Governors. They can be completed from home and at a fraction of the cost of a regular 4-year university. Now I know that the education quality couldn't possibly be as good as what one might get at a place like Stanford (or?). But if I were to do this, it would be primarily as a means to an end.

What do you guys think - is it worthwhile wrt getting a great job (or better yet, to becoming a great programmer) to pursue a software development-related BS degree from an online university, or just a waste of time for someone who has been working in the field for a while already? I already have a hunch that it might be better to simply cherry-pick a few math courses at a local university or community college, and "follow my muse" along with my budget.

Would like to hear from anyone who has done it, or who differentiates between programmers at an HR level. Thanks.