skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It staggers me that so much prevailing thought still leans towards the idea of complex, highly connected systems as inherently stable, with their natural state as equilibrium. It dates back to the victorians, with their "All things Bright and Beautiful" view of god's creation, which was shattered by darwin. How long it takes us to learn the important lessons.

This view was prevalent in the world of ecology for decades, and led to all that guff about "nature's balance" and "spaceship earth" that we had to put up with for so long. It turned out that these ideas were based on falsified studies.

Adam Curtis addressed these ideas and more in his recent series of films, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace. Specifically, the second episode: "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts." The other episodes cover Ayn Rand and her effect on US economic policy, and the Selfish Gene theory and its murky origins in the wartorn Congo. And a whole lot of other stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...

I highly recommend it, along with his other works, although you should be careful not to suspend your critical faculties in the headlights of his psychedelic filmmaking techniques.
This guy should have gone to Evergreen

http://www.evergreen.edu
> It's very easy to voluntarily blind yourself to ads.

So you do block ads, only with your brain ;) Fair enough, but can I ask why this is more courteous than blocking them in the browser? Are ad loads generally causing money to flow? I was under the impression that click-throughs cause revenue, rather than ad loads?
I also believe wooden frame homes are safer in earthquakes, but truthfully the reason for their use is low cost.

If I recall correctly, they're much safer than unreinforced (no rebar) masonry but not as good as bricks with rebar.
I've wondered about this as well. It seems to me that model selection must be based on the idea that a model essentially functions as a human coat hanger, and that models should look as much as humanly possible like an actual coat hanger.
Flashblock, but that was primarily motivated my the amount of CPU it sucks up on my e350 based laptop.
Bringing up a single piece of conflicting evidence and using it to declare the other side to be completely wrong is definitely denial.
The real question is why were the houses built so close to the firing range, not why was this experiment done in a residential area. I'd be willing to bet money that the base was there first.
How Eric Ries Changed the Framework for Startup Success
It can go either way. CPM ads are for display, and a lot of sites charge for CPM.
To run the demos from SBCL:
(require 'asdf)
(asdf:operate 'asdf:load-op 'academy)
(in-package :academy)
(help)
Pretty good list overall. And you can always dig deeper at that site for family/children games.
> Most homes are built on top of cinderblock basements,

Block foundations have been replaced in new construction with poured concrete in general (in the midwest, at least). The solid walls are less prone to settling, cracking, and most importantly leaking.

> A lot of commercial work is done in a similar fashion but with aluminum studs instead of wood

Steel, actually. Fire safety is one aspect but it also saves weight and can be lower-cost.
The server does have one way of getting an idea of what you’re looking for: the URL you requested. I’ve seen 404 pages that search the site from a slug in the URL and display the search results. There’s usually not enough in the URL for it to be useful, but I think once a site found the page I was looking for like that.

Also, if the 404 link was from another site, now that you’re on the site with the missing page, you can at least click their navigation and try to navigate to the resource yourself. Like if you follow a link titled “buy red yarn” from knitting-patterns.com to buy-yarn.com/products/8221 and get a 404, you can click Store and search for “red” and thus find buy-yarn.com/store/2539.
He's probably referring to A/B testing your browsing experience.
Wait, did economists think at one point that the distribution of movements in a stock market followed a Gaussian pattern? I mean, amateur statisticians approximate things to Gaussian distributions all the time to make the math easier, but that's hardly a problem unique to economics.

As to the Omori distribution, have they actually succeeded in making forward looking predictions with it, or were they just fitting a model to past data? Even if it is a real phenomenon, I can think of a way to extract money from the market by making it go away off the top of my head, so I don't imagine it will last long now that it's been reported in public.

The parts about equilibrium models being taken too seriously are well taken, though.
>I often see discussions freely interchange being overweight with being unhealthly, even though we only have data for some types of health conditions correlating with higher body weight.

It's true, not all health conditions are correlated with being overweight. However, a good many of the deadliest health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes are very well correlated with weight. Saying we should discount the effect of weight on health because my weight doesn't predict my susceptibility to car accidents strikes me as misguided.

>To my knowledge, there is no single score or data point that can be used to accurately assess an individual's health.

That's true, but it's also meaningless. There isn't a single score that allows you to predict everything. But, for most people, BMI correlates quite well with the "big-three" medical ailments: heart disease, stroke, cancer. I think that's valuable enough.
Apple doesn't use Chinese characters in their Chinese branding, so it looks like "iPad". Also chinese has adopted quite a bit of English these days, for instance a music player is an MP3, and a portable video player like and iPod touch is an MP4. The M and P are pronounced like English, and the number is spoken in chinese. Interestingly, "Apple" is almost always written and spoken in Chinese: 苹果 - ping guo - which has the same meaning as the English.
This seems rather inconvenient for the recipient. I'm shocked that a site like this is backed by 500K of angel investments.

"If you send $50 to a friend or loved one, there’s no way to be positive they use the money at the intended location"

What's the point of sending them money if you are going to force them to spend it at an intended location?
I guess it was a joke related to your A/B testing.
I expect JSLint was whining about using multiple `var` statements.

Using a single var and putting each declaration on its line is not incompatible:

var foo = 4,
bar = 5,
baz = 6,
qux = 'quux;
I block flash and popups which prevents a lot of advertising. IMO, professional courtesy only goes so far, and the fact I clicked on a link does not mean you can do whatever you want.
Its phone infrastructure in the cloud, which provides dead-simple server-side integration. They provide the telephone infrastructure, so you can focus on your application. This might include IVR style applications, SMS, voice mail, etc.

If you use Rails, try out @stevegraham's twilio-rb gem.
7 Startups Proving Berlin Is A Startup Badass
Well, your link lists concepts like "Five" or "Justice" as abstract, so the entire concept of "overweightness" instead of just "overweight child" is "abstract" by that measure. I guess I assumed you meant something more meaningful and less pedantic.

And I don't think there's much of a leap in terms of abstraction if you just jump from "compared to the other kids, my kid is ok" to "compared to this number on a chart, my kid is ok". That is just a change in what data point you prefer to reference, not a change in thought patterns.
The webmaster wanted you to see it. If browsers didn't show the content of a 404, webmasters would just send you the same "not found" page but with a 200 code, which would be even worse.
Can we really call the Burj Khalifa influential when it hasn't even been around for 2 years? As for inspiring, well I guess it's a matter of personal taste but giant needle-cock buildings never did inspire me personally.

Maybe something like the Giza Pyramids, Gaudi's buildings, Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera House would've provided a grander point of reference if you were going for that.
What a bizarre false dichotomy. "Either 500 million people will upgrade to Windows 8 and prefer the new interface style or nobody will use Windows anymore."

Most likely scenario in my mind: Most people stay on older versions of Windows for quite some time to come, those who do use Windows 8 prefer to stick with the Windows interface they've used for the past 16 years.
Can you expand on what "facility designed for such experiments" means?

Is it licensed in a certain way, or are all firing ranges used by the military reasonable to use for cannons, or what?
Do you really think they will count money they steal as part of their revenue? I'd be willing to bet it goes straight into some sort of bonus pool.
Former Google intern explains why UI lag occurs more often in Android than iOS
Scratch my back? Website launches as a marketplace for professional favors
EU/foreign governments hesitant to contract US Cloud firms due to Patriot Act
I usually attempt to ask a software engineering question. Sure it takes an educated guess on your part but if you know enough about the position to decide weather or not you want to take it, being able to ask about how they handled some generic technical problem ought to be easy enough.
Using Statistical Mechanics to predict consumer response to advertising
If you WEREN'T a prototype user (MochiKit here), you had to deal with their Object.prototype extensions. All frameworks at the time had specific checks to handle the prototype.js extensions because it was the most popular framework and (like jQuery today) people would just add it to your pages. Unlike jQuery, it caused things to blow up in not-immediately-apparent ways.
Show HN: Our tech blog, Silicon Prairie News, released a themed video game today
This is enormously impressive. But what cost? The press release claims "low cost", but fails to specify a concrete number.

If this can be produced cheaply, I can imagine newer laptops, especially those with constricting form factors like the Air or other ultrabooks, using just this and skip the entire SATA interface altogether. Perhaps even bundle the storage with the motherboard for better throughput.
Given that Digg's content was (at least in theory) community driven, there seems to be some sort of chicken/egg issue here.

The article is poor summary of the interview, which I saw replayed TWiTs live stream. While the quotes are accurate, the interview wasn't really about Digg
The Educational Debt Crisis: Why Schools Should Also Be Banks
LeWeb Day One: Tales of the Edge Case
Traveler joke-tweets at steakhouse, greeted at airport with 10oz fillet
I had a conversation with jashkenas about this - I don't think source-mapping alone will ever be enough. For the debugging experience to be ideal you'll want things like locals inspection as well being able to evaluate expressions during the debugging session. Perhaps tools that into WebKit's remote debugging protocol can get us closer, http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/inspecto...
I agree. And so when I go to a website that I trust, I enable its JavaScript. NoScript makes it easy to enable JavaScript from specific places and permanently ban scripts from other places. I prefer having the whitelist approach so that I can avoid accidents, such as clicking the wrong result from a search. I do have to occasionally play guessing games when I am on certain sites and want to enable media served by multiple other places.

With this policy, I have an awesome track record on my systems with regards to the number of "problems" that have installed themselves on my computer (number = zero, and I do not have AV installed, though I like to temporarily install several AVs and sanity check once every couple years or so; their overhead, constant updates, etc, just are not worth my time).
I used to use flashblock. Lately I've just uninstalled flash. There is very, very little value to flash from a productivity point of view.
It's a huge reason why I constantly miss NYC. Right now I live in suburbia and don't get to walk very often.

You don't know what you've got till it's gone... etc.
Here is a high level summary of the work, written by technology review[1].

Looks pretty neat!

[1] http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27394/
His biggest mistake is doesn't understand what is a developer. I have never seen a developer ONLY do PHP.
Good list. I'll just add that once your source code exceeds 5MB or so, you'll want the extra horsepower of a macbook pro or a desktop. Waiting for compiles destroys your focus.
At best, it's a stretch to go from in-your-face, unsolicited advertisements to "promotional vehicle" which we all use willingly. In addition, there is a value associated with this website that you just don't get from ads.
Thanks for the clarification!.

I have no idea of building, but I can concur that running cabling and piping through our style of building is a lot more difficult (I've networked some rooms a few times).

I should look up the typical Uruguayan house building style, but I know it involves a lot of Portland cement (for mortar and pillars), bricks, rebars, and stuff. No plywood or plaster, usually. Internal walls are, as a result, A LOT more solid than the usual US walls, and I'd like one of those "home improvement" teams to try tackling a redesign of one of our houses !!!
Except that all local TV news coverage on the major networks is bad almost without exception and cable news has degraded into celebrity news, opinions from Facebook and Twitter and heavily biased, uninformed opinion segments. If you get your news from a television news show you are likely becoming less-informed and more prone to emotional response.

PBS is one of the few organization that still broadcasts real journalism in the US and it is under constant attack by brain-dead politicians, cable news blowhards and some portion of the population whose minds have been dulled by television news.
Apple got religion about Sarbanes-Oxley when they were struck with a couple of major accounting scandals in one year.
Maybe, just maybe, the college system isn't as perfect as we'd like to believe. Maybe, just maybe, we've been learning the entirely wrong lessons.

Maybe, just maybe, this theme is a little tired. I keep hearing this, and I keep believing it. Cramming for tests does not a creative person make. But neither does sitting around talking about your creativity. Ultimately creativity comes from what we do and make, and college is nowhere near perfect for that, but then again college can't optimize for anything, because there are far too many things it might prepare a student for, however well.

Incidentally, I don't believe college should be placed on the pedestal it often is, to the point that wondering if it's "as perfect as we'd like to believe" is the wrong question entirely. e.g. http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html
What I want to know;
- Will they air this, please do.
- Can Jasper (the minivan owner) keep the cannon ball.
I can assert this comic has a very appropriate alt-text
That's called "Operator overloading" In this case the operator happens to look like a function, but it's not really any different than a + b -> a.__add__(b)
That's catfooding right there.

The site has something to do with javascript on the web, which is very close to html/css, and it does not ever use formatting as seen on many other sites (code coloring).

(Okay, I'm total html/css/js noob, never done a web page in my life, but I think it's wrong).

And in the past examples were showing just right in MSDN, along with way to switch between C#/C++/VB/etc.
For a little background on this debate:
http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~jdf/papers/farmer0606.pdf
Wikipedia?

"Like a service? Make them charge you or show you ads. If they won't do it, clone them and do it yourself. Soon you'll be the only game in town! "

If a free website service shuts down you can make your own.

Being competitive and ruthless may work financially but it isn't right and unlike a corporation in constant pursuit of profit an owner of a free website is free to act morally and avoid monetary perversion.

I'd prefer if websites were a little less stable than if the internet was exclusively for the rich by the rich.
College, and school in general, is a strange game indeed. Probably the only way to get through it unscathed (or with minor scars) is with an intense amount of perspective, that is, not taking it too seriously. If you mold your very being around "winning" at school, you are probably hurting your ability to win at life -- to be successful or even fulfilled.

I wish I knew then what I know now, but I hope to teach my kids healthy priorities and time management skills.
Facebook glitch reveals private photos, including Zuckerberg's
Have a look at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy

It breaks a lot of sites at first but once you've used it for a while, allowing connections to CDN's and such, it isn't that bad. It's probably a case of paranoia, but now I feel "exposed" without it.
I don't like the ads that pop into my face like someone threw a flier in my face.
Ads have always had their respective places on websites, but lately the aggressiveness of advertisement is out of control and those are the ones I block. When a website is supposed to be user friendly but it has a lot of ads in uncomfortable zones then I tell myself that the website does not deserve another user and I stop visiting.
The Right (and Wrong) Way to Die When You Fall Into Lava
My comment was in response to the fact that everyone is doing it, including software authors such as Sun.
مكيــــــــــــاج
But it's not an ingenious idea; malware has been doing that kind of thing forever.

Downloading and installing software is an activity that is fraught with peril. The authenticity of the app you're downloading is critical and almost all the security properties depend on it.

If you think that breaking app authenticity is a great marketing opportunity, well, your brand will do no business with me or those I advise.
The first two sentences of his last paragraph:

"Is college really a scam? Most likely, no."

Thanks for admitting your title was linkbait?

Also, it's fine if you're going to complain about the college experience, but please offer alternatives. It's much easier to bitch than to come up with solutions.
> when in full-auto it will automatically wave off (add power and climb out to go around and try again) when it disengages

Interesting. So it hasn't disengaged at all, it's just decided to abort the current landing attempt, and go around to try again.
Yes, but I use that option that shows me Google text ads. They're unobtrusive and sometimes they're of interest.

I also disable plugins (click 2 flash/java/shockwave/etc).
I don't frequent sites that have annoying ads. The sites I do frequent I have no problem "paying" for them by letting ads in.
6wunderkinder.de is definitly missing.

Also there is a huge split in between the copy-cat businesses usually operated by the samwer brothers and the next generation startups like soundcloud, 6wunderkinder, wooga and others.
Veto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugqu10JV7dk
All credibility was lost when I read Wordpress.

#capitalPdangit
I haven't used an adblocker in years; I do use flashblock and nuke anything (to remove ads that appear over content).

Just these two are enough to deal with the most annoying ones, the rest of the ads don't bother me too much.
I feel you, but it's not really unsolicited is it? You're willfully visiting the website, after all.
DARPA-backed start-up builds iPhone sized X-Ray machines
I agree with your first 2 sentences but I think that Adam Curtis's 'films' should not be watched by anyone. Especially someone trying to think about something like stability and connected systems.

His train of thought narration and brilliant music is just opium for people who aren't concentrating.
I'm not sure I get what this guy is getting at. I've been through 2 colleges in 2 different countries (BA and MS) and am on my second job right now right after my MS. Not to list my credentials or anything, but in general no matter where I go, it's always a systematic thing that we as humans created and we have to tackle. The biggest challenge in a job is not the job but the organization.

Organizations aside, even in startup land or various just small companies as you know it, there are restrictions, in different forms. Customer satisfaction, for one. Investor pressure, as another, and they can be restrictions, or challenges depending on how you see it.

My problem with college is that for most of the folks, when they get into college, they don't really know what they want, with the new found freedom and gets distracted by the various frat like bonding activities that goes on in the campus.

///

I don't think creativity exists in some sort of pure unadulterated sort of vacuum where an individual is "free". Philosophically speaking, no one is ever "free". No one wants to be either.

Truly successful people are successful despite of the system. They are successful because they know how to break out of the system. They understand (metaphorically speaking) the system and how to cross the line so that the create something new. That, is creativity.

Unfortunately, my opinion is that most people try the best to construct some sort of structure to "teach the young", so to speak; I don't think there's any malice in there. The truth is, you can't teach people to be creative. You can teach people to be different, but if different becomes the norm, then different is no longer different. To be truly creative, one needs to have a good combination of observation, introspection, good working ethics (i.e. slog through the details) and willpower.
Conflicting evidence? I honestly don't get what you're saying.
For those who are as paranoid as me about any sites tracking you, I recommend taking a look at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy

It breaks the Internet a lot at first, but it gets better once you've used it for a while, allowing what makes sense. Nowadays I feel "exposed" without it.
I don't visit websites that overly abuse ads. If I happen upon a site that forces advertisement on me, I close the window and move on. I'm generally consuming content that I can find on a variety of places. I'll simply try the next link in Google.
I block Flash, and a majority of 3rd party Javascript -- this tends to catch ads, but it's not an adblocker, per se.
Automate Install With AutoYaST Answer Files
for the best jobs (or cofounders!), it will be helpful to start off at an elite institution.

FWIW, I not only attended a state university, but I also dropped out of it, and still managed to co-found a few successful companies. I'm not sure what the parenthetical "or cofounders" is supposed to mean, since customers of most businesses don't typically ask for a CV.
Actually, the iOS model isn't that great IMO. Rather than relying on verifiably safe bytecode, Apple uses a combination of TrustedBSD-based technology on the phone, and human-directed testing in their labs, in an attempt to keep native code from doing things they don't want it to.

I think this is backwards for what they're trying to achieve, and I think that's part of the reason their app review process is such a pain in the ass.
If you were to have asked this about two weeks ago I would have said no. Sadly, performance and memory usage of javascript/flash has gotten to the point where I must use a script blocker. If the ad only contains a picture and does not load via js I will still see it; if the ad is on a page that I have explicitly allowed then yes as well.