skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Japanese Math Professor Excellent on Optical Illusionist
Japanese mathematics professor Kokichi Sugihara spends much of his time in a world where up is down and three dimensions are really only two. Professor Sugihara is one of the world's leading exponents of optical illusion, a mathematical art-form that he says could have application in the real world.

Three sloped ramps are aligned along three of the four sides of a square. Each ramp appears to be sloped in the same direction but when a marble is placed at one end of the ramp it seems to defy gravity.

It's called an "anti-gravity slide". Only when the the entire structure is turned 180 degrees, is the illusion revealed.

Japanese mathematics professor Kokichi Sugihara from the Meiji Institute near Tokyo, has made a career of creating optical illusions. He's devised and built more than a hundred of them, like this one called "Perches and a Ring".

[Kokichi Sugihara, Meiji University Professor]:
"Among these models, there are those which are reproductions of optical illusions, and others that seem like normal models, but when you add movement to them, they show movement that should be impossible in real life. This is done by using the same trick, and I call them 'impossible motions'."

Professor Sugihara's "impossible motions" have been recognized around the world. He won first prize in an international competition last year with this one, called "Magnet-Like Slopes".

Sugihara says the success of his illusions is tied to human perception. Because humans have the capacity to perceive two-dimensional objects as being three-dimensional, they can be fooled into believing that something "impossible" is taking place during the course of the illusion.

For Sugiraha the illusions aren't just for amusement. He says they have real world application. For example, he says misjudgments made by drivers on steeply curved roads could be mitigated by changing their perceptions of the immediate environment.

[Kokichi Sugihara, Meiji University Professor]:
"If we can find how drivers misjudge an incline, we would be able to construct roads where these incidents are less likely to happen. In other cases, we could also reorganize the surrounding environment so that drivers could more easily see the difference between an ascending and descending road, and it could lead to reducing traffic jams."

Sugihara says says his dream is to create playground amusements - even buildings with his models. More immediately though he has plans for an "impossible object exhibition", a venue to demonstrate that seeing really is believing.
Ask HN: What you think about our hiring management solution - unrabble.com?
Unrabble is a cloud-computing hiring solution for small and medium businesses who are looking to save time and money when hiring.
Why are we all assuming people would naturally have a large social media presence in the first place?

If I have a 790 credit score and no Facebook account, do I get a higher rate? Now you're looking at discriminatory practices based on the fact I don't engage in social media.

This is a VERY slippery slope these industries are going down.
Nice little write-up. I think I should take "This is an impractical standard to apply to everyday life" more to heart. In conversation I sometimes find myself adding unnecessary caveats to what I say, sort of similar to his "slept in one time in 2003" example. And he's right, trying to hold yourself to this standard of honesty all the time in real life will make people think you're weird.
I like this one: http://httpcats.herokuapp.com/599
And I would gladly take less if I could live somewhere cheaper. Let's say you offered $115k for me to work onsite in SF. I would take $95 to be able work from home in Los Angeles, or $75 to be able work from outside the US.
Nothing. But without having coded languages and competing to manipulate each other, sales and business folks wouldn't have much left to do. They call it "people skills". And while being direct and honest might be a good way to communicate, it's not nearly as challenging, so it's not a "people skill" and the Harvard Business Review would have nothing left to write about.
The problem is that people vote politicians in based on abstract esoteric social issues, instead of their stance on real-world issues that actually matter.
What has UTF-8 got to do with anything? I'm talking about 7 bit VT100 escape sequences for single keys (which in turn require millisecond-accurate timing code in e.g. curses to distinguish from just pressing the same keys.) UTF-8 is beautiful by comparison.

As for an API, see (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms68...). Java even uses the exact same virtual key codes for AWT KeyEvent. I suspect at some point they were just included from the equivalent Windows header but it's been a while since I looked at the Sun JVM source code.
Personally, I think its brilliant. Even though it was a bit of a hassle, I still signed up and gave them my information because I was enticed by the promotion. Now they have my information and I am more likely to buy from OReilly because I already have an account setup with them.
It's just ordinary courtesy for a company to acknowledge your application, and then send you a "thanks, but no" letter after a human has reviewed it.

But if you want unusual arrangements like remote working, you are going to have a hard time going through the blind CV channel. What works in these cases is either personal contacts, even over several hops, and/or establishing an online reputation that creates a virtual contact network. Your github projects, blog, JS experiments, history of patches to TeX [1] will make you stand out. Even a little contribution to an Open Source project will get you a CV line and maybe a reference from someone with name recognition.

You are a grown up with kids, so you don't have time to waste. You can't hack demos all day like an undergrad. But a little time spent this way might pay dividends in career development.

The point is not to be a CV in the pile. Get noticed some other way, and don't expect your CV to glow like Charlie's Golden Ticket. The more senior you get, the more important this stuff is. A few years out of school and you should forget about CVs until someone asks you for one, so they can tell their colleagues about you.

[1] Joke.
Why I keep on using Vim instead of going back to Textmate
Eh, I felt that way too, but it's just how they fit it into the existing system, which with them being a publisher is likely some ancient behemoth. So hey, a no-cost, no-DRM, multi-format book!
The problem with "it feels like a dynamic language" meaning "you probably won't hate it" is that it's somewhat insulting to existing statically-typed languages that are actually pleasant. It sounds all right if you've only ever been exposed to Java or C, but it's not like Go is the first language to have a good type system. It's especially odd considering Go's inference isn't able to handle all the types in even such a short sample.
(Unfortunately) yes, only some terminal emulators support it though.
And, I would argue that politicians need those social issues to stay the same to continue to engage their base.
I used to work at a place that used ClearCase and Lotus Notes. I can tell you that the only people who put any thought into that decision were the IBM salesmen.
Slightly paraphrased quote that I read somewhere: writing a compiler is easy. Writing a compiler with good error messages is the hard part.
This uses the images from this Flickr photoset: http://www.flickr.com/photos/girliemac/sets/7215762840946712...

I've tested this on my local machine but I wouldn't recommend using this in production.
Nice reply. Here is some additional food for thought:
make up the difference between a $5 sale and a $20 sale
This implies that Louis CK makes all $20 form that DVD sale. He stated in an NPR interview that he normally sees zero dollars from a TV special.

The author seems to assume that content owners aren't out to screw the talent and pay fair royalties, etc. This isn't the case. What we can learn here is that the Internet levels the playing field a bit. Contrary to what the author would have you think, all kinds of bands are making more money selling music directly to their audience than they ever could being jerked around by a record label. Yes, they aren't making as much money as a well established act, but they weren't going to anyway.
SOPA goes to the house tomorrow
True. This would be HP's first pure logo. I mean, it resembles vaguely what remains from h and p when you get rid of all horizontal lines...
The simulation they ran sounds really impressive:

To find out exactly how these supermassive black holes came to be, Di Matteo, Croft and Carnegie Mellon post-doctoral researcher Nishikanta Khandai created the largest cosmological simulation to date. Called MassiveBlack, the simulation focused on recreating the first billion years after the Big Bang.

"This simulation is truly gigantic. It's the largest in terms of the level of physics and the actual volume. We did that because we were interested in looking at rare things in the universe, like the first black holes. Because they are so rare, you need to search over a large volume of space," Di Matteo said.

They began by running the simulation under conditions set under the standard model of cosmology — the accepted theories and laws of modern day physics governing the formation and growth of the universe.

"We didn't put anything crazy in. There's no magic physics, no extra stuff. It's the same physics that forms galaxies in simulations of the later universe," Croft said.

"But magically, these early quasars, just as had been observed, appear. We didn't know they were going to show up. It was amazing to measure their masses and go 'Wow! These are the exact right size and show up exactly at the right point in time.' It's a success story for the modern theory of cosmology."
It's nice though too because now it's right there along with all of my other ebook purchases, so I can re-download it easily.
(Microsoft is making an app store for some future version of Windows, as a vehicle to sell said future version of Windows?)
But now the data available to the credit bureau consists of you being friends with others, then unfriending them just prior to applying for credit. Which sounds like an intent to deceive, which is worth -200 points on your credit score. You didn't think unfriending people erased your historical association with them, did you? "Deleting" data is so 1995. Facebook has never deleted anything, and they're not going to start. Google may be partially anonymizing some old data, but my guess is it isn't really anonymous - probably Google can reconstruct everything you have ever searched for, ever.
And, at least for the foreseeable future, there are going to be people for whom it is very difficult to pay for the content rather than pirate it (e.g. kids, teenagers, folks in countries without an online payments infrastructure etc.).
Is it funny? I didn't like the comedy special of his that is on Netflix.
My social graph doesn't tell you anything useful about me.

What it tells you about is people who like the books I write.

Someone sends me a friend request? I auto-friend them unless they're an obvious spambot. It doesn't mean they're my "friend" or someone I know IRL; probably 80% of my FB "friends" live in parts of foreign countries I haven't visited. I don't use FB for social purposes, I use it for marketing communications.

(EDIT: Paradoxically, it turns out that many of my real friends aren't hooked up to me via FB. And none of my relatives -- except one nephew -- even have FB accounts.)

This wouldn't be a problem except for Zuckerberg's sociopathic insistence that we all have just one unitary identity. Groan.
What Do You Do All Day?
"Over hundreds of thousands of years, our hunter-gather ancestors ate diets that were mostly vegetarian and low in fat, salt, and sugar"

Who do they think ate all the Pleistocene Megafauna? Hmm? Hmm?
Also, this gigapan image of the simulation is cool: http://gigapan.org/gigapans/76215/
So it's been 7 hours. Did you like it?
I love HN for that kind of reactions :).

Also, it's a great example of how you can create value (and earn money) by just combining few free tools into a useful utility for general audience.
Startup Dilemma: To Sell or Not to Sell
> So if we are to remove one of the critical steps to success (i.e., the marketing and promotional spend of traditional labels, publishers, networks, and studios)

This is still marketing. By removing the publisher, which specializes in marketing, we put the burden of publishing duties on the artist.

Note how financially successful, award-winning, prime-time comedian Louis CK is playing the little guy against the publishers, mentioning that he financed it all (much like a publisher would do).

Who knows who he's paying or how much. The role he's playing implies that all the cash goes straight to him, the artist, but did he pay anyone for the production? Does he have a future royalty agreement with an agent or, perhaps, a channel like Comedy Central? Is he paying for advertising, or has he hired a marketing manager/publisher to rustle up publicity? Is he calling in favors to get mentions on news sites (much like a publisher would do)?

I'm not being cynical, just that he's playing the game very well, he's using his fame/brand to leverage sales, and that this distribution method doesn't really change anything except move the same roles elsewhere.
Empirically what has been shown is that if you do an IAMA on Reddit leading up to the release of your "experiment", a lot of people will play along. It does not carry over to any other release, and says absolutely nothing about DRM or atypical release plans.

Lots of people sell videos online without the middle man. Most see no sales.
AeroFS (YC S10) is Hiring Smart Engineers
You've heard about us on Hacker News, and you've seen us on TechCrunch (http://ae.ro/oo9oUV). Located in the heart of downtown Palo Alto, AeroFS is backed by some of the world's best investors (Andreessen-Horowitz, Jerry Yang, Paul Buchheit, SVAngel and others). We are solving fundamentally fun and hard problems in the system software space. Not only are we building a world class fully distributed and decentralized syncing/collaboration tool, we're also trying to redefine today's view of the "cloud".

Our team is small (there are six of us today) and we're looking to double it in the near future. Because AeroFS touches almost every layer in the technology stack, you will have the opportunity to work on both incredibly low-level and high-level problems. Because of the size of our team, you will be "CEO" of whatever you create.

Currently we are hiring across a few core areas:

- Generalist Engineering (across the whole stack)
- Mobile Platform (iOS, Android)
- Infrastructure/Operations Engineering

If you're interested, shoot us an email at hnjobs@aerofs.com

======================================

Some fine print... You should have:

* B.S, M.S, or Ph.D., in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent
* Expert knowledge of Object-Oriented Programming
* Strong knowledge of Operating Systems concepts

For iOS/Android: You've built a well-designed app and are familiar with the dev environment If you have any projects you've done on the side, we'd love to see them!
Benefits:

* Competitive salaries and stock options at an early stage startup
* Medical/Dental Benefits
* Free lunches, snacks, and a fridge fully stocked with BEvERages
* Build your dream development machine
* Netflix, Amazon Prime, Foosball Table, Xbox 360
* Working in Downtown Palo Alto (goes well with the free lunches ;)
* Did we mention we work on hard and interesting problems?

Email us! hnjobs@aerofs.com
What if the person in receipt of the loan was selected with perfect accuracy but then his/her circumstances changed due to no fault of their own?

No loan is a "good" loan. Loans facilitate the reallocation of money. No net value is created and for the majority "value" decreases in fact.

I'd challenge the "leads to growth" assumption too but I'm on iPhone and I don't wish to hijack the thread. Essentially, it does not lead to sustainable growth for the majority (or the economy for that matter)
The point was that in a small town the banker knows who you are and can evaluate your risk just by being acquainted with you. If he trusts you, he might just be your friend, if he doesn't then he is probably not your banker.

(Yes the word "friend" is a bit hyperbolic in this case)
If I did find a comment like that, complaining about a predominantly male behavior on a forum for some female-dominated hobby/profession/interest, I wouldn't be surprised or outraged. Some patterns of behavior are more common among one sex than the other; some of those patterns of behavior bother the opposite sex; sometimes people complain about things that bother them.
Man... this is full of crazy talk:

For better performance you can use direct functions like $.ajax() than $.get(), $.getJSON(), $.post() because the last ones are shortcuts that call the $.ajax() function.

I've never written an app where the overhead of $.getJSON has been any kind of bottleneck.

Don’t forget about using .data() function to store stuff for your elements

How is this a performance tip?

Sometimes it’s faster to use $(window).load() than $(document).ready() because the last one occurs before all the DOM elements are downloaded

Say what?

If you want to save some bits on compressing your js plugin – replace the $(document).onready() event

Saving bits! The favorite optimization bikeshed of the JavaScript glitterati.

The best way to test a Javascript code is the human way :D But, you still can use some automated tools like Selenium, Funcunit, QUnit and QMock to test your code

I hope this is a joke.

The new HTML 5 standard comes with a lighter DOM structure in mind

What?

When styling a few elements it is best to simply use jQuery’s css() method, however when styling 15 or more elements it is more efficient to append a style tag to the DOM.

Or, if you're worried about performance and reusability, you could use classes and use addClass and removeClass.
Ah wow, I've never made that much. I keep hearing of developers I've worked with going to new companies and making double what I am now. It always astounds how people say what they're being paid, and how I am just no where near it.
Strictly speaking, "characters" in UTF-8 are not all 7 bits or 1 byte long, and they can be dumped across terminals. So my point is that another solution is technically possible without changing anything else.

Anyway, if the windows terminal stuff works for you, then right on. It is not adequate for many of us however. And for that matter, I agree with roel_v that the windows method is much more cumbersome for evenly moderately complicated things.

Edit: Also, delayed interpretation is a fairly common alternative to timing.
Crowdsourcing Promises Efficiencies for Global Poverty-Fighting Organization
This is the problem with how we deal with suicide. People seem to think its their "duty" to take the right to end your life away from you. Police and emergency services will go as far as tie you up and lock you in a padded cell to take this right away.

What we need to is make it clear that suicide is your right. Treatment should be completely voluntary at all times. I would wager that the possibility of being restrained for days or weeks prevents many people from seeking help that could actually have made a difference.

No, it isn't your civic duty to take the right to suicide away from someone. It's your duty as a friend and a human being to be a non-judgmental ear and shoulder. But in the end you have to respect their rights as an autonomous being.
Actually there are some compelling arguments for home birth aided by a midwife. There is a documentary about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Business_of_Being_Born

I think it's interesting that we've mitigated naturally occurring risks (such as disease) to such an extent that technology itself now poses risks of often similar magnitudes. Take preservatives: on the one hand keeping food fresh prevents various ills, but on the other hand continually ingesting chemical preservatives can cause disease itself such as cancer. The pushback against vaccines is kind of a manifestation of this... or perhaps the perception of risk as I think the science doesn't bear out the fears in this particular case. But in general, the idea that technology is always better seems to be increasingly challenged; often with a legitimate scientific basis.
Who is your target user? It seems like your copy on your site (for the home page & query language) is geared towards developers but analytics are typically used by the business/marketing guys.
It did sound like that from the description and some of the earlier footage in the video, but no, they're still capturing reflected light :)
Cloud Computing - The Great Equalizer (infographic)
"abstract esoteric social issues"

And taxes.
Bayesian Trees and BDDs: Knuth's Christmas Tree Lecture 2011
1.00, 6.00, IAP Matlab, IAP Python, I'm sure there are more, but those were just the options I considered when I was starting out (I went with 6.00).

Sure the catalog is very coding light, but they assume you can figure it out on your own if you need it or can apply what you've been taught in 6.00/1.00 to many scenarios and learn from that basis.

These classes are not required in EECS, but required for the other engineering majors (you can, of course, substitute 6.01 if you are ambitious).
Alleged drop in performance for some(+) R15A testers.

http://groups.google.com/group/erlang-programming/browse_thr...

Devs claim that it improved performance in their particular benchmarks. I guess the best is to try it for yourself.

(+) presumably those that tested and got a performance gain never bothered to write a ticket or a word of praise. so keep that fact in mind.
Those searching for the Higgs boson may at last have cornered their quarry
PEBCAK
But he worked so hard, don't you get it?
And who writes good GPU code generators if the libraries are poorly understood and / or closed source? Certainly, generators are the way to go for a lot of uses, but not all, and someone still needs to write the generators.
ASG Cloud Factory Helps IT Monitor the Cloud
Probably. Similarly, the Mac App Store is only available for Snow Leopard and above.
3 Biggest Revelations about 'The Dark Knight Rises,' So Far
I'm pretty sure it's just the bay area salary and cost of living inflation vs the rest of the US.
Poor cats, who else is going to live for a living if cat's don't?

I'm not even a cat person and I know that.
And all those are replaced with just one thing: Terminal :D.
We're pysched to be in on this one. http://blog.raaventures.com/post/14220926611/raaventuresinve...
Looking forward to working with Scott and Ilya
Eh, while I do think there's a lot of cultural-identity politics that goes on (especially over religion), I think plenty of people from both the left and right focus on issues that are "real-world", even if it's disproportionately a lightning-rod subset of the issues. For example, people who hate taxes seem partly driven by ideology, but partly just by a desire to pay lower taxes. And people who oppose restrictions on abortion are often driven by a practical desire to have abortion clinics available in the real world as an option.
Cost of living. $70k in one city is the same as $100k in another.
I think that would need too much hype for it to actually work. The easier solution is just to go out and meet people in real life.

Could be a fun weekend project though.
Its what I anticipate. I also anticipate it being a flop.

On the other hand, the Chrome Web Store is in-your-face when you start Chrome, and Chrome is reaching bucket and bucket-loads of consumers and business users running already-released versions of Windows.

This doesn't have to look and feel like browser widgets.