skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So, I'm going to make one general comment that is sort of a reply to everything. We have to stop making bike policies based on the actions of uneducated cyclists and drivers. Nobody will learn anything without being taught. There are a lot of comments that say, "cyclists make driving dangerous". This is probably true; there are a lot of cyclists that can't bike safely on the road. The solution is not to punish those that can safely share the road; the solution is to teach people how to safely ride their bike in traffic. Then they won't be annoying, they'll be fellow safe road users.

Similarly, we need to educate drivers in treating cyclists respectfully. Don't tolerate running stop signs; that's illegal. But you must tolerate cyclists that are taking the entire right lane because they think they need it for their safety. Look behind you, change to the left lane, and overtake on the left. Don't be annoyed, because this is how roads work. There is going to be traffic and some of it is going to be slower than you. That's why there are multiple lanes. Relax, drive intelligently, and you won't even notice the cyclists because they won't seem any different from any other traffic.
Do you want to work somewhere where stickers are frowned upon? I don't. That said, I prefer a clean laptop myself. (except for the scratches it's earned)
"By double the mass, do you mean double the volume?"

Yes, that is what I meant. My bad.

"The latitude (or equivalent models) is thicker, but I see a benefit with removal battery, HD, etc. I'm not seeing as strong a benefit with thinness."

I don't see the benefits of having removable batteries and storage in an ultraportable. Why buy a light notebook when you're also planning to carry extra batteries and hard disks? To me, that defeats the purpose.

Low volume and low weight are the key characteristics of ultraportables. I want a light notebook I can put in my backpack with plenty of space to spare, not a notebook I need to carry in a separate suitcase because it's so bulky. The reality is, I could put two MacBook Airs in my backpack and they still wouldn't take up as much space as your E4300 does.

But from what I gather, you never really wanted an ultraportable, you want a mobile workstation.

"it is possible to get PC laptops on deep discounts and upgrade for far less than a manufacturer charges. I snagged mine in July '09 for $700. Doubled battery power for another $70"

That explains why the model isn't around anymore, doesn't it? Also why IBM sold its PC business and why HP is trying to do the same.
Adidas F50 AdiZero TRX FG High Energy with Electricity on Sale
How many users did it take you to reach profitability? What was the product or service fee and was it all paid or you made money via advertising? Basically what was the monetization strategy and how did you make it work?

Congratulations.
Yandex, the Russian Google Expanding Fast
Yandex, the Russian equivalent of Google has been expanding exponentially over the past 10 years and is the official search engine of Russia. Read more..
It seems as though you're suggesting that the movie studios that spend tens, sometimes hundreds, of million of dollars to produce a single film should be forced to sell it to companies like Netflix for pennies. The basic problem here is that Netflix is selling a total fantasy product that does not pay the rights holders enough money. Look at the math -- $8/month for unlimited access? How does that possibly work when your cable bill is $80/month, a DVD/BR costs $15-$30, and a movie ticket costs $10-15? HBO, which shows more recent movies, is about $20/month by itself. Just to offer competitive prices to the rights holders I suspect Netlix would have to charge between $50-$75/month.

I'm generally all for government regulation as needed but this seems absurd. Why would any film company produce movies anymore? People (un)happily pay a lot more for the content today in other mediums. We're going to force the film industry to charge them a lot less to prop up Netflix and other streaming video services? Again I have to go back to the simple fact that Netflix has always been selling a fantasy and their troubles today are totally self inflicted. They convinced people they could spend an insanely small amount of money to get a huge amount of value/content. Netflix is almost a ponzi scheme.
In Tampa FL with optimal tilt and no shade a panel rated at 1 peak watt would generate 5.3 watts a day X 30.4 days a month * 4500w panels = 725 Kw per month
It's how any species gets to iterate. The old have to die off to make room for the young.
That $60/month is over a 30 year period, which is a pretty long payback.

On the positive side, electricity prices will probably go up. On the negative side, the PV cells will likely deteriorate at a 0.5 to 1% rate[1]. At 0.5%/year, 30 years would be 86% original rating (not bad). At 1%/year, 30 years would be 74% original rating (still fairly effective).

[1] http://info.cat.org.uk/questions/pv/life-expectancy-solar-PV...
What's your linkedin ?
We monetize it mostly with AdSense, we tried other ad networks but nothing quite compares. Adsense combines near infinite inventory with the highest RPMs I have seem anywhere.

We were "profitable" right away because our costs were so low and because we designed the site to run in auto-pilot, requiring very little maintenance. Even so, it took 2-3 of years before we were generating enough revenue to consider quitting our day jobs.
I've done a few things after cancelling Netflix.

In my case, it was so rare that I got DVDs that it wasn't worth the cost of continuing that. I've just dropped rented DVDs from my viewing all together (though there's also a Redbox that I go by every single day so that's an option).

As for streaming, most of what I want to watch I can also get for free via Amazon Instant with my Amazon Prime account, which I would be paying for anyway and the occasional movie or show that isn't included free evens out to no more than I was paying for Netflix.

I also realized that I would watch a lot of TV shows on Netflix and then buy them on DVD/blu-ray at a later date, so I just buy the DVDs/blu-rays, which requires a little more patience (box sets are expensive so I don't buy them everyday) but it turns out that waiting a month or two has no significant impact on my life. ;)

Shows that are currently airing, some documentaries, kids movies, etc. we watch on Hulu for free. They only offer the last 5 episodes of the season on the free account, but if you don't get behind, that's all you need.
Yes, upon reading the obvious-flamebait title I asked myself, "What does it mean for a language to be accurate?", and "How could something randomly generated possibly be more accurate than something designed?". I did not expect my questions to be answered by the article, and in that I was not disappointed.
I'm just being ironic ;)
Ah, the copying part, yes - but then again if I'm doing that, I'd expect to be doing so in order to access A at which point I already needed that bit of memory.

The collection thing I can definitely see though.

One thing I've never quite worked out is - without reference counting, how do you handle timely destruction?

I know that if I do something like:

{
my $x = foo();
...
}

then $x will be destroyed at the exact point the } is hit, or that an exception unwinds the stack past this point. That lets me do all sorts of nice things like rolling back a transaction automatically, throwing a warning if some task was expected to be completed but hasn't been, and other bits and pieces.

In a mark-and-sweep GC language, presumably there's some other additional feature that needs to be implemented in order to provide this?
As a 20something who has been unfortunately intimate with Fortran, I can see why people in the past would have been fanatical about C, and heck even talked about the virtues of diving into assembly rather than deal with Fortran.
If we are going to put in more bicycle lanes with the bike owners having ownership and not just taking space from the already taxed car drivers, money needs to be collected. The US needs to start actually paying for things. Roads for vehicles (trucks) are at least used for delivery of everyone's goods, bike lanes and trails don't have that secondary use. Car parking removed for bike lanes can be a profit center.

I don't understand the "which" part. Wouldn't it be all bikes that are legal on the bike paths? That's how motorcycles work for roads.
No, no, no. You don't understand. _I'm_ different. _I'm_ not part of the problem. Everyone else is, you see.
rather they reject the claim that what is commonly called empirical evidence actually is, and admit to the limits of empiricism in social sciences. Aping the physical sciences in some form of cargo-cult formalism is not only wrong, but leads to flawed conclusions.

Empirical evidence is exactly what it says it is and mathematics is exactly what it says it is. That's what makes them facts and mathematics. What you argue using those facts is completely different.

Austrians assert that the only way to empirically know a person's preferences is through observing their choices.

No they don't. Because then they could collect data on these choices, produce a model, and formally define it mathematically. This is the fundamental truth of falsifiable systems.

There is no objective meaning to graphs that rely on the assumption that people have these scales of numbers in their heads that say, "An apple is five utils, a banana is ten." The only meaning comes from decisions - either you prefer the apple to the banana, or you prefer the banana to the apple.

There are more systems of mathematics than ones based on continuous distributions. Consider the following definition:

forall people, exists pref : (fruit, fruit) -> {-1, 1} st. forall a,b in fruit => pref(a,b)

This is math. This formally encodes your statement. This is the kind of thing that Austrian economics should define and use. The fact that they don't is why I don't take them seriously.

Austrians further assert that any macroeconomic model must be a result of (or at least 100% consistent with) valid microeconomic principles. A macroeconomic model which concludes something that is not explainable in terms of human decisions is necessarily wrong.

So? I can both know that all quantum particles obey the Schrödinger wave function in all atomic structures and be completely unable to derive the properties of Si just from the wave construction of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Just because we know microeconomic models doesn't make them useful in a macroeconomic context.
> in terms of advancing the field of computing, he hasn't done a whole lot yet.

Theory, no. Practice, oh Hell yes. Facebook changed the game, for everyone. The "Social Revolution" has changed the face of business, investing, interpersonal communication, friendships, revolutions... the list goes on. Maybe Zuck was just in the right place at the right time, but he made the most of it and his company's impact has been enormous.
Come now, isn’t it obvious that they’re consolidating their bad press? I mean, seriously, who reads about a lawsuit against ex-employees and thinks “Well, I wasn’t going to buy the stock, but now that I see what massive, cast-iron balls they have, I’m going to call my broker?”

It’s not like they are suing someone who might pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and it’s not like they have a chance of driving a major competitor right out of business. This is a nuisance move at best but at worst it reminds potential investors that they have serious competition. I’m obviously the last person anyone should ask for advice on how to run an IPO, but I would think that reminding the marketplace that you have competition and boasting about how you are easily distracted from running your business is not a good move.
Crafting Your Own Costume Wigs This Halloween
This blog post touches that subject: How to Integrate Siri with your App? - http://blog.roveb.com/post/11855331044/how-to-integrate-siri...
My linked-in doesn't really have anything related to my web experience, but here it is nonetheless:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brian-farr/30/b67/b61
Work for Pie's Developer Chat Series Features Open Source Developers
That's interesting, I had the exact same thought when I saw this "what's that?" post.
I had a friend in college hit by a bike while he was walking on the sidewalk. There was a clear area for the biker to ride other than the sidewalk. Serious recovery time was required (almost blew his whole semester).
That was a surprisingly honest & straightforward article for The Register. Hopefully they'll embrace this style in the future once in a while instead of leaping head-first into click bait rag territory as usual.
We still don't have to cross those blasted bridges, or travel those incredibly congested and confusing roads.
This is why I really liked EmEditor. It had neat features like vertical selection and native CSV support. It's great being able to switch between filetypes and have the editor automatically adapt to what you're working with.

EmEditor also had better Find/Replace support. TextMate likes to freeze up while searching through files, and a lot of other editors seem to just shove the Find/Replace dialogue wherever there's some extra space. I think there's a lot of room for innovation here.

Besides that, I mainly just want a clean & configurable environment. TextMate does that well, since I have a project drawer, tabs, symbol jump list at the bottom, and nothing else.

Edit: For what it's worth, I've been using TextMate for about a year, and I'm in the process of switching to Vim/Vico.
this is so cool, I can stop going to google video search, image search , you tube all that and just use this one place stop!
Ironic then that Netflix is one of the best companies at letting you change / pause / cancel your service in just seconds.

Tivo, on the other hand, will make you cry before they let you cancel their service. Can't do it online, and it's a minimum of 20 minute phone call. I've had to do it twice over the years and it makes me really reluctant to turn on Tivo ever again.
شات الخليج
You've missed your calling, unless you are a visiting poet.

That was beautiful.
Absolutely, I am going to try to detail the process of securing our first million users with as much detail as I can :)

My biggest regret is that many things we did back them were motivated by the kind of "get rich quick" mentality that now I know does more harm than good.

I wish we had focused more energy on serving our users well instead of focusing so much on trying to rank well on Google.

However, the interesting question is: if we had focused less on SEO and more on the product as I wish we had, would we be having this conversation? (meaning, would we have survived?)
Ask HN: Which CMS for date (past) based stories by users?
I want to create a web app that allows users to write stories based on a date of happening. They would login using their facebook credentials. Enter a date and write a story with a title. They may add pictures and videos (link to YouTube). My skillsets are in Php, .Net and javascript. Please help.
He's making way too many assumptions. In 1894 a writer said that at then current rates of population expansion in fifty years the streets of London would be buried in horse manure.

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past-th...

Course he didn't foresee the advent of the automobile. Breakthoughs like the horseless carriage come out of nowhere. Something like Thorium could end up generating ultra cheap electricity and in fifty years solar might end up being thought of as a quaint technology like buggy whips.

Our goal for the US should be energy independence, not a slavic devotion to a specific technology.
I would argue that mathematics can only give you false confidence if you fail to understand it completely. A sound formal mathematical definition holds all assumptions within the definition itself.

Note that I think that if you can't encode your theory in mathematics than it is non-predictive by definition. If it is non-predictive then I see no use for it in any real sense.

I hold all economic systems to the same level of critique, by the way. If your Keynesian system doesn't encode its assumptions and predictions in mathematics then it is by definition useless.
Sure, a reasonable location (not Seattle), you might expect 5 hours of "peak solar equivalent" sunshine per day on average.

5 hr * 4.5 kw * 30 days/month = 675 kwh/month
Since when is how much we get from something tied to how it impacts us? Watching a movie doesn't change us physically, but we pay $12 for it because it entertains us, just the same as most digital goods. I don't pay $20 for a book because I want a stack of paper, either.

If that was true, you'd get paid to smoke and eat fast food, since they have a negative impact.
No problem, the confirmation email was in spam folder, found it and my account is active! Thx, really great API, can't wait to start developing with it!!
It took me a while to determine that the programming language this uses is Lua. Have you considered making that a little clearer on the main page?
Link to the eventual article or its location? 75% of us will probably miss the HN post as it floats down the new stream.
Poll: What are the biggest challenges for small software teams?
By small, I mean 3-5 engineers.
Communication and Coordination (efficiently working with other team members)
Prioritization (finding the most important thing to work on)
Scheduling (when to work on things)
Meetings deadlines (overcommitting or under-delivering)
McCarthy 91 Function
Jonathan Ive on Steve Jobs and the fragility of ideas
"US-based" means located in the US.
Using computation to predict terrorist attacks
Thanks. For optimal tilt that implies a sun tracking system, correct? Do most installations track? Do the sun trackers use much energy to rotate all the panels? Are they reliable, or do they add maintenance costs. The system costs we are talking about here do not include trackers or installation of trackers, correct? How much would that add.

Florida gets a lot of sun. I agree with you that a tracking array of new panels in Florida gives those numbers.

For people in other parts of the country and without trackers I find this site that has monthly solar radiation numbers to be useful for estimating output.

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/calculators/PVWATTS/version1/

Looking around I see that a 4500W system, no installation, no tracking, runs about $20,000.

http://www.infinigi.com/4500w-solar-grid-tie-system-20-sanyo...
The making of Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm
Really clever, especially when you consider this isn't at all connected to their main business (except for a little link to running shoes). I wonder if this was someone's 20% time...
Barack Obama Campaign 2012 Gets Official Tumblr Blog
Most drivers at least look where they're going. Nobody wants to cause an accident.
Why Native Technology Rules in Mobile Apps
The point is the homeowner saves money from day one, not even taking into account current rebates.

The utility bill savings more then compensate for the extra $60 in the monthly loan payment.

Most solar panels come with a 25 year warranty.
Absolutely awesome. I wonder how many people actually click buy?! It doesn't look like they're tracking that unfortunately...
Netflix loses 800,000 subscribers = Piracy gains 1,000,000 subscribers
IT trends of 2012 [video]
this.is.awesome.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I've seen a half dozen slide decks by GitHub about GitHub, and I can't remember a single shred of content from any of them. All I can remember is that too-familiar "I want those five minutes back" feeling whenever I get fooled into reading something banal and superficial. To me, that seems like an utter failure of slide design and composition.

A great presenter doesn't need slides at all. That's a good reason to emulate the presenter. It's a terrible reason to emulate their slides. Mediocre slides in the hands of a less-than-stellar presenter are a recipe for zzzzz. Make slides that don't need a great presenter. Make slides that don't even need you, that can be sent to people you don't even know exist and still convey your ideas well enough to invite further conversation. You might not get a reputation as a great presenter that way, but you will succeed in conveying information.
What kind of traffic/numbers did you need/have before you had sufficient revenue to consider quitting?

Thanks so much!
I think you've got it exactly backwards. By the time you've dealt with some of the various complexities manual memory management, for example:

- handling memory with a dynamic lifetime
(with cycle detection as an important corner case)

- improving allocation performance

- preventing heap fragmentation

- thread-local allocators (for multi-threaded scalability)

...

I think you're approaching a garbage collector. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say there is a memory-management analog for Greenspun's tenth rule:

Any sufficiently complicated, long-lived program that manually manages memory contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of a garbage collector.

I agree there's a place for some amount of "hinting" to the garbage collector about the lifetime of some special objects, but, to me, the important thing is that you only need it for the extreme cases.
What part of the business did you know without a doubt that you could do, and which part did you know without a doubt that you couldn't do (but you did it anyway)?

Is the original business idea living in the current site, or did you significantly pivot? How did you recognize when and in what direction to pivot?

How did you all and the business stay alive before profitability? Jobs? Credit cards? Sold your antiques?
For more in-depth info on slide design, see Nancy Duarte's excellent book slide:ology.
It seems to me that loop hoisting would also be easier with ((const)), because to do so with a ((pure)) function requires further assessing that the loop does not modify any global state that might be visible to the ((pure)) function. A ((const)) function can be hoisted out of a loop even if the loop modifies globals, or values through pointers that might point at globals.
Most people here are arguing that it isn't even wrong. If nobody's coming, you have clear visibility and lines of sight, there's absolutely no rational argument for this behavior being a "dangerous" action on behalf of either cyclists or pedestrians.

And before you start, it's not even remotely comparable for a car. In a car, you're essentially in a sensory-deprivation chamber, and you're several feet farther from the intersection — the difference this makes to your situational awareness is impossible to overstate.

On a bike, I have full range of vision, full hearing faculties (ride a bike for awhile, you'll be amazed at how much situational awareness you have from your ears alone), and the danger I pose to others in case of a misdjudgment is miniscule: either I'm the one who gets plastered by a car, or in the case of an unexpected pedestrian, my stopping distance is perhaps three feet.

I've done this for years and haven't had so much as a close call. On the other hand, I'm _far_ more concerned about pedestrians who step out into the road without looking because they don't hear a car coming. On the Georgia State campus, this happens to me maybe once a week.

In short, the time and effort devoted to this topic is nothing short of insane given the miniscule numbers of people affected. The number of people killed by _safe and lawful_ drivers per passenger-mile, per passenger-trip, or any other weighted measure is absolutely staggering compared to even the most dangerous cyclists out there.
Call me paranoid, but can you use a slightly different name in the registry to keep the prying hands of the state off your voluntary DNA sample? Has there been any known cases of the police using this registry to obtain evidence for prosecutions?