skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1. The Higgs Mechanism

Imagine a cocktail party of political party workers who are uniformly distributed across the floor, all talking to their nearest neighbours. The ex-Prime Minister enters and crosses the room. All of the workers in her neighbourhood are strongly attracted to her and cluster round her. As she moves she attracts the people she comes close to, while the ones she has left return to their even spacing. Because of the knot of people always clustered around her she acquires a greater mass than normal, that is she has more momentum for the same speed of movement across the room. Once moving she is hard to stop, and once stopped she is harder to get moving again because the clustering process has to be restarted.

When a drunk smelly hobo enters the room the members engage a cloaking device, so the hobo is able to accelerate to max speed immediately. The hobo has no higgs boson to attract the members, the prime minister does. The higgs field is the members, the hobo is the photons, the minister is the neutron. The LHC is finds out why the members gather around the minister.
What Content Should You Regularly Update?
"executing minors and the mentally retarded -> no health care for poor people who can't afford it, maybe they should be executed"

I'm not necessarily against "health care for all", but those two things are not at all the same

If society does not decide to levy taxes in order to provide health care for some people, it is not at all the same as deliberately killing those people. Not at all. Please don't use such extreme rhetoric.
Parsing is the best understood part of writing compilers; that's why it has tools, not because it is the "crappiest". (If anything, the wealth of free tools available gives a clue as to how fun dealing with it is.) But using the tools well requires some understanding of how they work; and if you're doing an industrial-strength parsing job, you'll probably end up writing the parser by hand, because what a tool gives you - speed in converting specification into implementation - is not usually the constraining factor; rather, functionality and performance of the end result are.

As to your question "why", nothing about the lambda calculus will tell you anything about why your program changes the coloured lights. There is only "how" and "will", by which I mean human agency. There is no answer to "why" here, and there cannot be, because the "why" resides in people's minds. It takes no more extra effort to believe in "if" than beta reduction.

Take that single example: implementing if as a primitive rather than a function with lazily evaluated arguments means greatly increasing practicality at the cost of the sparse beauty of minimalism. 'If' is very common; optimizing it, diagnosing misuses of it, etc. is a lot harder once you've lost it in a forest of function applications.
I remember an interview with Quincy Jones, where he was asked "Which song do you wish you'd written yourself?" His answer was "Strange Fruit," a tremendously significant Jazz standard (if it's new to you, listen to it without thinking about the lyrics, then read the lyrics and listen to it again).

I have to say, this is the essay I wish I had written. It's beautiful by every one of my standards of beauty, most especially in that the journey of writing it appears to be even more attractive than the pleasure of reading it.

I'm glad to read it today,

Thank you!
If I don't see the difference between these images (ok, some parts are slightly brighter), does that mean I have color deficiency too ?
Air Force looking for the ultimate massive bomb
This is really wonderful, and I felt like I was reading something Peter Norvig would write (modulo s/Ruby/Python/ not that it matters here). If you enjoyed it, SICP belongs on your reading list.
Strage Horizons is a fantastic speculative fiction publication. They're considered a professional market and pay their authors at professional rates. The archives are worth checking out. Clarkesworld is another similar publication and has won the Hugo award for best semi-pro zine two years in a row (http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/). If you enjoy this type of writing, support these places! They're run by small communities and often do quite a bit of independent publishing.
I think it's more along the lines of:

It's ok to discriminate when you're trying to
target/encourage a specific minority (i.e. women in
software), but it's not ok when you're targetting
a majority, because it looks like you're trying to
encourage the majority while discouraging the minority

Whether or not people say this out loud, or think it consciously is a different question.

"Ladies Learning Code" is discriminatory towards men, but it's less of an issue because it is in the furtherance of encouraging a minority (women) into the field. On the other hand, "Men Learning Code" seemingly discourages women, who are already in the minority.
If you go "one directory up", they already have PDF versions: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/
I like them, they have more character than the balsamiq mockup icons.

I'll probably use them for a notebook site I'm building.

If selling some of these icon sets covers your costs and allows you to keep doing it, then that's great! Plenty of people will get to benefit from any free sets that you do (like the Christmas ones!)

Also, paid icons will add a little something extra, instead of being ubiquitous like the freely downloaded icon sets, they'll add a little more charm & creativity to a project.
I agree with you but in how many other cases are stats so clear? It's not like we're talking about slight margins of significants. ~80% of women have children and most of them do in what would peak years of career development.

It doesn't explain why the female involvement for CS is so pathetically low compared to other traditionally male careers but I think it explains the values with which many woman are making lifestyle decisions.
File system access via USB will work on any computer with a USB port.

except when using the galaxy nexus on a mac.

http://www.theverge.com/android/2011/11/22/2579691/galaxy-ne...
What services exactly does a label continue to provide, now that the internet has made it much easier for artists to self-promote?

Promotion.

Artists can self-promote all they want, but they're up against thousands of other artists that are also self-promoting. Labels pay people to listen to artists, work out which ones are actually talented (or, in reality, which ones will make the most money) and focus their promotion on those artists only. The signal to noise ratio is totally different, and they can afford to put far more resources behind this smaller pool of artists. They also have a lot of experience in promotion, which up and coming bands simply don't have.

There isn't a tech startup solution to everything. Maybe you could set up a site that crowdsources this artist selection process but I wouldn't be optimistic- there is no personal reward in listening to hours upon hours of awful music. Maybe you could give those initial listeners a stake in the bands they vote for? That could be an interesting idea.

I've long thought that MySpace might yet have a life as some sort of band-centric site. Since it died a horrible death nothing has really come up to replace it.
Thanks for the link to Gregg's BASH guide. Useful information.
He's complaining about how iTunes works. No iTunes, no iPhone. Also, you can backup Android applications to an SD card very easily. A 16GB MicroSD card, probably enough for many people's needs, is only $15 these days.

except the galaxy nexus has no microsd card expansion, just like the nexus s.
Becoming a Critic of Your Own Thinking
"Today… increasing numbers of doctors — mostly women — decide to work part time or leave the profession. Since 2005 the part-time physician workforce has expanded by 62 percent, according to recent survey data from the American Medical Group Association, with nearly 4 in 10 female doctors between the ages of 35 and 44 reporting in 2010 that they worked part time.

This may seem like a personal decision, but it has serious consequences for patients and the public.

Medical education is supported by federal and state tax money both at the university level — student tuition doesn’t come close to covering the schools’ costs — and at the teaching hospitals where residents are trained. So if doctors aren’t making full use of their training, taxpayers are losing their investment. With a growing shortage of doctors in America, we can no longer afford to continue training doctors who don’t spend their careers in the full-time practice of medicine."

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/should-women-b...
For Startups, Patience Can be a Virtue
I have been working through SICP. In Chapter 2 they introduce Church Numerals. I wrote a blog post recently demonstrating by the method of substitution how arithmetic operators on Church numerals finally break down to work. Would appreciate your comments about it.
EDIT: Here it is: http://lambdapilgrim.posterous.com/numbers-without-numerals
New iOS prototyping tool - App in seconds
We all sometimes say and do stupid things, sometimes without knowing it. We're flawed creatures and that's fine. But there's a point where some people just can't be helped. If a single editorial article in a tech blog will change how an individual thinks towards an entire gender, that person is so stupid that they will probably believe anything (or at least anything that confirms their already existing personal beliefs) and a response like the OP's will do little to help this person become less stupid. But that's just my stupid opinion.
Juventus vs Roma live in diretta
Latisse Reviews | LashReviews.com
Latisse is a prescription treatment intended to treat hypotrichosis, or having inadequate or not enough eyelashes. Its promise mainly revolves around double the lash fullness in 16 weeks.
The article doesn't really say what kind of information this would affect...

Would this remove research articles from public universities from paywalls?
Template club get PageRank 9 with millions of hidden links
This is my first post, and I wrote it for Hacker News. Hope you guys like it. Last year I discovered a hidden link on a client site pointing to a template site with a PageRank 9. It turned out they sold templates with hidden links.
Facebook tops Google’s own offerings to become most popular Android app
Krugman: Depression and Democracy
The story of Computer Space, the first mass-produced video game.
Green Lanes Shopping Centre | Barnstaple, Devon
Super Water-Repellent Nanotech Coating
It's absolutely worth it. After many years, I don't even think about it any more. I just navigate using the home row. In fact, when I look at the keys, I can't tell you which ones go in which direction. I have to think about what my fingers do when I want to go in that direction. After time, it becomes sub-conscious, like playing a videogame.
I would suggest that 'maternity-leave' be exchanged for 'family-leave'. Why don't we allow fathers to participate in the care of a newborn baby, or rather, why don't we enforce it.

I believe that this is the case in many places in Northern Europe. From memory, in Sweden parental leave is 6 months and can be divided between the parents as desired. I believe there may also be a minimum for each of them.

Edit: Wikipedia says it's actually 16 months, with 2 months minimum for the "minority" parent, usually the father.
I believe that explanation was created to help William Waldegrave, the UK Science Minister at the time, understand the point of spending money on CERN:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Waldegrave,_Baron_Walde...

The Prime Minister in question was, of course, Thatcher.
I would be 100% behind this if it weren't for that stupid Kim Dotcom.
New Chromedeck is so fail
Also on the tldp site is a 'beginner's BASH guide' - in fact there are a number of guides:

http://tldp.org/guides.html

Unfortunately a lot of the stuff has not been updated in 5 yrs or so - but it is still fun to read through from time to time.

It is not exactly a BASH guide but another good guide is "UNIX for Poets" - I think there have been a number of news.ycombinator posts regarding it. This is a good intro for the text manipulation tools you would tend to use in a BASH script.

(see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2456929 )
OK, to be less glib and more constructive. A sustainable music distribution model needs to work for:

- the distributor (iTunes or Spotify, for example) or it is not sustainable
- the users, or they won't use it
- the makers of music, or they won't put their music on it
- the owners of music, or they won't put their music on it

If it works for all four, then things are aligned for a sustainable business model. If any one is missing, then the thing can't stay together.

iTunes, check, check, check, check. Four fingers fold in, thumbs up.

Spotify. Works for users, at its existing price point. Doesn't work for makers of music, unless the price point changes, at which point it won't work for the users - unless we are all missing that Spotify can charge significantly more and users would still be happy. Can work for large music owners, but as the original article points out the large owners can achieve this for themselves in a way that no longer works for Spotify.

Spotify is a valiant attempt at a new business model. If anyone can make it work, they are the ones and I salute them for trying. I just don't see how they can succeed.
Ron Paul's tea party 11
Davex - command line interface for Apple ProDOS and SOS now free
Though using curses or any kind of emotional outburst is generally frowned upon intellectually, this is ignored if the person doing the outburst is seen to be fighting bigotry. 'Fuck Node.js' is not an acceptable use of cursing, but 'Fuck Sexism' is.
Logical Hexagon
Windows 8 Store will allow open source apps
StereoPill
How to Get Bloggers Promote Your Small Business
Professor Ersheim = John Titor.
I have exclusively used vim as my editor for about 8 years. I'm efficient with it, but there are still many fancy things I don't do. My rule of thumb is this: if I find myself performing a task over-and-over, and being bothered by it, chances are good there's a more efficient way to do it in vim. Then and only then will I look up the better way to do it. Because I'm solving a problem I frequently have, I will learn the new thing.
How Google Can Quickly Update 200 Million Chrome Users
Shadowcasting in C#, Part One - Fabulous Adventures In Coding
>"having a product that is labelled confusingly is illegal regardless of what disclaimers you have" //

There's the rub.

The disclaimer is the label that [attempts] to remove the confusion of the product with anything which may have originated with the mentioned marks owner.

This statement belies a position of ignorance of legal reality. You're basically saying that in TM law there is no middle ground or gray area between confusion and clarity of use of marks. There is, of course, and disclaimers simply attempt to ensure that ones position on the right side of the line is made obvious. Why do you feel a disclaimer does not speak towards excision of confusion?

I note you didn't answer my question of your credentials?
Need for Secure SMS Protocol
Let me tell you one thing, I haven't committed any code to "popular" opensource projects yet. But, I've been closely watching one opensource project from its beginning. Dev team pushes new changes, there I am learning a bit more from it. That way it took me two years to build up confidence that now any code I submit to them would meet the code guidelines, standards and will improve existing system. I've been releasing small features on my own repo and contributing to community forum too. Now i think it's time to go ahead and surprise them with a new feature push.

You named >> mongrel2, Rails, Sinatra

I never understood this. Are there shortage of opensource projects in the internet ? I wonder why every one wants to commit to the already "established" and big projects. They have enough genius community backup to them. Why not give a shot to small projects just starting out in language of your choice ? I think, the end result will be more satisfactory.
I think the same way. If I want to do X and someone says "You shouldn't do that" or "that's weird" or "you don't have the skills" or whatever, I usually reply with a "OK", then go and do what I want to do.

I certainly don't waste my energy trying to make sure that everyone else agrees with my choices in life.
Get Satisfaction? Three Years and Still No Sticky
one of my favorite sci-fi short stories is The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke

http://downlode.org/Etext/nine_billion_names_of_god.html
You say this as if men haven't "outsourced" their child care for pretty much all of history.
The HN website can do what they want but it seems anti-democratic to muzzle opinions and debate by making comment box text unreadable making the text colour lighter, just because some people (a few downvoters) find the words uncomfortable.
It also emphasizes that inserting text is rare. You will spend more time not inserting new text, but navigating the file.
Ask HN: is fsbackup good?
Hi,
I was recently suggested to use fsbackup together with Amazon AWS for my dedicated server offiste backup.
Here in HN other software came up as a good choice: mostly Bacula and Tarsnap.
There's nothing about fsbackup.
What would you suggest?
Thanks even for a short reply, everything really helps!
This is n=1, of course, but I'm tremendously interested in the subject matter and superficially interested in Haskell. Yet, I don't work with Haskell on a daily basis, so when I see something non-trivial in Haskell, I skim it or put it aside to read later when I have time for study.

Whereas if it's in Ruby, JavaScript, or CoffeeScript, I try to read it immediately. So don't forget the class of slackers who mean to get around to Haskell fluency one day, but not today. We have a great interest in the subject matter and like Haskell in principle even if we're lazy(!) about evaluating Haskell code examples.
>I've long thought that MySpace might yet have a life as some sort of band-centric site. Since it died a horrible death nothing has really come up to replace it.

I don't know about that. I only really follow the UK electronic/urban music scene with any enthusiasm, but for what it's worth a lot of bands/performers use Twitter as their main point-of-contact, Facebook to post shows and releases, and Soundcloud for hosting online media.
All you have to do is look at Facebook and privacy settings.

And here there'll actually be extra revenue at stake, so there is more incentive
Rain and dust proof A1 tough book (Tablet ) of Panasonic features
Optimus Popularis
A great example of this for me was that modern art painting that is just a specific shade of purple or violet (I forget the name, might be "shade #456" or something). It would look like total BS on paper, but displayed in the gallery it had this very strange effect, like a black hole, or weird dead zone, a matte presence that was a distinct experience.
I'd love a browser without xul with native tab trees.
But from a promotional point of view, that's awful. If you think about bands from a pure marketing perspective, they need somewhere to carve out a "brand identity" and a single point of contact with fans would surely be more useful.
Small Ideas and SF's RocketSpace Incubator
A free 2012 PDF calendar that isn't ugly
Sometimes I wish PG had a few sub-editors that would go and ban people from having down-vote privileges. IMO you've been down-voted only for saying something (arguably) negative against reddit.

Sigh.

It seems pretty clear that in general redditors are anti-corporate and tautologous that the crowd at reddit would be different if ads had been there from the start.
Click: http://www.handdrawnicons.com/
Matt Might has some similar articles on his blog: http://matt.might.net/articles/ (see under "Functional Programming").
Congressional Investigations Into Dajaz1.com Censorship Begin
Making the (Higgs) Sausage
Century 21 Broker Properti Jual Beli Sewa Rumah Indonesia
Century 21 Broker Properti Jual Beli Sewa Rumah Indonesia merupakan jalan keluar yang tepat mengatasi permasalahan tentang perumahan. Pemilihan rentang harga rumah yang bermacam-macam dan tentunya mudah plus cepat kita akan ketahui, Dari rumah bernilai 10-100 juta, 100-500 juta hingga 500-1 Milyar, bahkan rumah yang bernilai lebih dari 5 Milyar bisa kita dapatkan di Century 21 Broker Properti Jual Beli Sewa Rumah Indonesia.
I prefer to read this as a parody of science fiction lacking internal consistency (e.g. most stories about time travel).
100 Million Downloads From The Mac App Store and counting
How to Analyze Web Stats to Increase Online Conversions
Mark-Jason Dominus did this for Perl, more than a decade ago.

http://perl.plover.com/lambda/ aka "How to write a 163 line program to compute 1+1"

Although I really like the OP's approach since he slowly morphs a program his readers can understand, rather than constructing a programming system from scratch.
I think this is generally true, but there are counterexamples---I'm sure many of us here remember some of our own teachers that bucked this trend. Speaking for myself, I do try my best to foster the creative ones; they can be kind of a pain in the ass sometimes but they keep me on my toes and exert a net positive influence on the class by hitting ideas from an unexpected angle (i.e. one unexpected by me and therefore one that the other students wouldn't have otherwise been presented with). That benefits everyone.

I do have to rein them in sometimes, though, e.g. "when I give you a spec you really have to implement that function, not something else that does something similar, however much more awesome that other thing is". Because sometimes you really do have to just implement the spec.
CoffeeScript implements def foo (@bar, @blitz) using destructuring assignment, a general facility that applies to assignment statements, not just function calls.
Microsoft to allow open source apps in Windows 8 Store
macuenca is not suggesting that you abandon common sense and veto power while choosing a name/logo. I really have no idea where you have gotten that idea.
I stand somewhat corrected, but you must admit you are in a very small minority in your home country, and your salary probably reflects that.

What I've noticed from working first-hand with outsourcing companies is that they promise degrees and accreditations that don't exist. They promise the developers working on your project will have 5-10 years experience, but for the most part you will get developers with 2-3. They promise masters level CompSci but you are lucky to get associates or trade school level. They promise systems and network engineers with MCSE or RHCE or CCIE but you are lucky to get MCP or CCNA.

I apologize for making blanket statements, but there is a lot of job hopping for qualified candidates in Bangalore (as I'm sure you are aware), so the outsourcing companies are usually offering those candidates that are new to the industry and have not had the time to generate sufficient experience and get a better job somewhere else. That is just the reality of what I have seen in my career.
Move to Ireland to work with a hot Valley startup
The Place You Need to Have Capital in 2012
With the continuing European debt crisis, slowdown in China, and debt problems in the U.S., gold continues to be the place to be in 2012.The market chaos continues to grip the stock markets. We have the European debt crisis and a concerted effort to fix it, albeit it will be extremely difficult and take years.The European Central Bank (ECB) cut the eurozone’s interest rate by 25 basis points to one percent—the second cut in five weeks.
Does anybody know whether PostgreSQL is going to implement UPSERT or MERGE support any time soon? I hate having to lock tables to emulate this.
Scientist creates lifelike cells out of metal
wow, great job.
Productised services: #1: Product companies