skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> (governments) regulate industries which work in ways they don't understand

Careful. Governments don't (or, at least shouldn't) exist in a vacuum. It's society's failure too if they don't represent or don't have an accurate notion of how things actually work. IIRC, the Office of Technology Assessment had this role since the 70's, but was closed in the mid-90's by decision of elected representatives, again, IIRC, as part of cost-cutting measures.

If you don't have independent non-partisan advisory bodies responsible for representing reality accurately, we leave that space to lobbyists who will certainly fail to present an unbiased picture.

> I think that the only possible solution is a technological one. I think that the only way to to fight them is with technology and disobedience to the very idea that they have the right to restrain speech or control the internet.

Remember, governments also can employ technological solutions to this problem - guns and organized violence - at scales most civilians would be easily overwhelmed.

No. The solution is not to disobey the government, but to fix it.
No they couldn't. If the statement was "the exam is going to be on a randomly selected day next week", then you'd be correct.

But that's not the case.

The teacher claims that "students won’t know exactly which day until the exams are handed out", whereas by the end of Thursday, they would be 100% certain that the exam was going to be on Friday. Therefore it is impossible for a surprise exam to be on the Friday, so that can be ruled out as a possibility.

Which means that by the end of Wednesday, the only possible day for a surprise exam becomes Thursday, and the same logic which ruled out Friday then applies to Thursday (if it has to be Thursday, it can't be a surprise, so it can't be Thursday), and all the way back through the rest of the week.
Open sourcing a realtime mahjong
It’s perfectly rational to hate meetings. But if you hate meetings, you should not be a Boss. In our business, part of the Boss job is going to meetings in order to protect your team from insanity.

If you hate something that is a core part of your job... This is a recipe for unhappiness. Now, I do not enjoy many of the meetings I attend. But I do enjoy some, and I get satisfaction out of doing the meeting part of my job well.

All that being said, I’m pretty sure I’ve said those exact words myself: “I hate meetings.” So yeah, it’s reasonable for a Boss to say those words. But not to believe them 24/7/365.
I bought it a couple of months ago while it was half price during the beta. It is not a tutorial. I think it's really nice after you've built at least one small-medium app with backbone. It's at that point where you'll have hit some of the pain points those recipes are meant to solve.
I guess that a hospital is like the military in that there has to be clearly delineated chain of command, but some points raised in the article could be solved by empowering doctors and especially nurses:

"chlorhexidine soap, shown to reduce line infections, was available in fewer than a third of the I.C.U.s. This was a problem only an executive could solve"

If nurses and doctors were empowered, that problem probably wouldn't have arisen.

I agree that other solutions are more in executives' territory: "they persuaded Arrow International, one of the largest manufacturers of central lines, to produce a new central-line kit that had both the drape and chlorhexidine in it."
I once worked for a company where our tech chief made various hacks to FreeBSD to allow it to have very large number of groups and users could belong to a lot of groups. This allowed each project to have a gid, so that people working on a particular project could belong to that group and the file permissions can be set accordingly. The company would have hundreds of projects per year, and this was used for many years. This was fine until Linux and NetApp technologies were being introduced, it did not play very well with the hacks to groups.
Misadventure: Demo game written with Faux and Backbone.js
Not directly, but the few Wrox books I've read made such a negative impression on me that I won't buy their books any more.

One of the Amazon one-star reviews says, "For a book of this size, I would have expected extensive coverage of key C++ concepts. However, I am very unsatisfied with this book, since the coverage of C++ is superficial at best."

Sounds exactly like a Wrox book.
I remember when this happened and I remember how pissed I was at Apple for the move they pulled. Amazon was essentially protecting the publishers from themselves (think music industry) and Jobs came in and threw the entire arrangement out the window.

Apple doesn't care about selling content, they care about selling hardware. Within that line of thinking, anything bad for Amazon's stranglehold on books is a good thing for Apple since it reduces the friction of switching from a kindle to an ipad. You could easily make the argument that Apple pulled this move thinking "Whats bad for Amazon is good for us" and totally screwed everyone else (publishers and customers) in the process. Apple's move was certainly unscrupulous and quite possibly illegal.
everyone has said what needs to be said, but this post is a few days old now so i'm going to say it again, in case you went back to your normal self.

just pick something, anything, and not major (as to discourage yourself), break it down to small parts and each part into a set of tasks. for that you can use [https://workflowy.com], i like it a lot. just tackle them. DO NOT stop when you're stuck. bulldoze through it, then stop at the middle of a printf or something (again so you will jump back on it because you know how to pick up where you left off).

just pick an idea that you love, and go with it. and never forget who you are.

take care, bud. i promise, you'll be just fine.
Tweet temporarily derails SOPA debate
The point is to prevent erroneous issuance of others' patents in the first place and to avoid costly and lengthy re-examination process needed to get such patents cancelled.
A 2D Tour of a 3D Printer Factory
It's a tradeoff. Some of my worst managers were former programmers; some of my best came in through some side door. Management ability--real management, as in getting people to get along and get the job done, not as in making Gantt charts and chanting buzzwords--is essential, and it's really rare to find it combined with technical skills.
That happened to me in Ruby, too: http://cl.ly/3x391Q1X2N3k3R030N03
Video -hosting- (and ancillary features) is included in what you pay for.

Access to other parties videos? Is not.

And the party you contracted with (Google) has contracts with other entities. Has nothing to do with "rights". If you have a problem with the contracts entered into, then act accordingly.
So if the minimum revenue expectation from a website is $10k ( with salary and other operating costs), how much traffic is needed to sustain that using the revenue source ? How many daily/monthly unique visitors would one need? do ad networks even consider you when you are starting out ?
Maybe, but getting organizational buy-in -- and preemptively clearing potential political damage to the project -- is part of the job, especially for 'the boss'.

The boss might not like it, but it's part of the job. And pretending that all meetings are terrible does not solve the problem. That's just a technical knee-jerk response to pretend that people problems will go away on their own, or that negotiations don't need to happen because it involves 'one of those meetings'.

And if it's part of the boss's job -- which negotiating peer buy-in is -- then it's not really appropriate to go around complaining to subordinates about how he hates doing his job, especially when doing that job protects the technical work his team will be doing.
Grover's algorithm
sbcl does it right:

* (* 1.15 100)
115.0
For what? Being denied their natural right to have content hosted by Google at no charge?

Wait, hang on...
I've seen this many times and it never gets old.
Weird, I'm on

$ irb --version
irb 0.9.5(05/04/13)

and it gives 115.0: http://i.imgur.com/gGLAd.png
"You had a bad experience with a doctor? Just go to med school and open your own practice."
We were acquired by a Fortune 50 company almost 18 months ago. I cannot really comment on the financial health of the division for which I work.
John Carmack's rocket reaches 140,000 ft
A "lifestyle" business with 30M uniques/month: the story of wikiHow
I wonder why 'famous last words':

- Did someone fire the boss for those?
- Did you quit your job and started a new one?

imho, famous last words should sound like: "I will not leave it nor depart it until I am buried in the ground." (rough translation) Mubarak 10th of Feb on TV.

PS: The most famous last word to quit a job in Germany is: "Ich habe fertig", you should note the wrong grammar here.
http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Giants-Book-Century-Trilogy/dp/04...

Kindle price: $18.99, paperback price: $16.50

That's pretty outrageous, if you ask me. The paperback has to be physically distributed, and I can resell the thing, yet I'm paying less for it.
Right, this is caving cowpaths. Most sites have this flow, so if we can lift that up into the Browser and your Primary identity provider, than you can stop doing this on each new website you visit.
I think that choice of editor, where you might do 80+% of your real work, should not be dictated by similarity to other tools. I'm certainly not driven from web applications when they behave radically differently from desktop applications, which are equally different from command-line tools, not to mention curses programs.

Vim bindings are used in `less` and `more`. Emacs-style bindings are the default in bash and zsh.
I've seen a lot of these drone stories and discussion threads. The most interesting thing about them is the assumption that America has the right to violate other countries territory.
+= does union-by-key: any keys present in the right array, and not in the left, are appended to the left.

`array_merge` will append all numeric keys from the right array to the left, under new key values, as if you used [] one-by-one; for string keys, all keys from the right are copied into the left, possibly overwriting what was there.

In real code, I either have all-numeric or all-string keys, and `array_merge` does what I want in bulk operations: it's essentially equal to Python list.extend and dict.update, respectively. `+` on arrays is basically useless for me.
Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)
Hello HN!

Every once in a while, I like to offer my time to help other passionate people be a little more successful with their goals. If there's anything I can help you with, just ask here. No strings whatsoever. I've done this before a few times now, and it's worked out well for everyone. Check out some of the previous "No strings" sessions I've done to get an idea of how I can help. (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=mikegreenberg)

A few requests: Be specific about what you're trying to fix/solve/accomplish. The more details you provide, the better I can help you out. I will try to help all requests made before the end of today and will attempt to complete by the end of Sunday. Be patient and check back. Please keep requests to tasks I can do in ~15 minutes. I'll spend more time willingly, but smaller requests lets me help more people! Thanks. :)

An idea of some of the things I've helped others with recently:

- Led an interview for a non-technical entrepreneur looking for a tech co-founder

- Advising two startups-to-be who currently have no technical lead (pro bono)

- Helping my dad how to use the internet to teach his skills to others

- Regular feedback on projects that people are working on in my local community

I feel like I should do something a little special for this one since its the holidays. So the person (other than me) who helps "most generously" in this thread will get a copy of Eric Ries "The Lean Startup" shipped to them from Amazon. (If you already own the book, I'm happy to substitute it.) This will be subjectively chosen by me, but I think you all know how to be generous. I'll use any information in your profile I can find to contact you for delivery info. If I can't contact you, I'll broadcast on Twitter (@mikegreenberg) to try to reach you there. If you're not listening and I can't reach you, I pick someone else.

Cheers!! (And happy holidays!)

PS: If you'd rather give than receive: Go find someone else to do something nice for...like give them a back rub. Or leave your $0.02 for someone in this thread.

PPS: If this sounds too good to be true, here are some of my thoughts on why I do this: http://nobulb.com/2011/10/on-manufacturing-your-own-serendipity/
Your envelope example is great because it sheds even further light on the problem: the surprise does in fact exist, it just exists before the moment the final event takes place. In your envelope example, once you open the fourth envelope and discover nothing inside it you can simultaneously be surprised that it wasn't there and that the fifth envelope will contain the heart. In other words, the two events collapse into one. Similarly, when going to class on Thursday you will be "surprised" to find that the test is not that day but rather the next. The only thing that makes the exam version "confusing" is that you then have a full 24 hours to ruminate over this fact, thus making it seem like its not a surprise at all -- but its actually equivalent to on the first day being told when the test will be that week (at which point no one would rule out Friday) - it may be surprising at that moment but clearly won't be by the time the test actually takes place.
IT Ops Looks for Ways to Fight Info Overload
The problem with the new paradigm is it destroys the old power structure. As the means of production are pushed to the actual artist, what does the label/publisher do?
Holy cow. Your weird support examples make me want to cry.
Well, I think the issue is that socialism (and capitalism, for that matter) means very different things to different people.

For instance, you identify "collective ownership of the means of production" as central to the idea of socialism, and the USSR as a society with collective ownership of the means of production. There's a tricky elision there, though, in that it identifies "state ownership" with "collective ownership." Chomsky and other anarchists raise hell at that idea because to them, the State is not an instrument of collective decision making.

For more context: anarchists played a major role in revolutionary socialist Russia, with the popular party of the peasantry (the Socialist Revolutionaries) being in some ways one of the more anarchist political parties in history (supporting, for instance, land and industry collectivization instead of land and industry nationalization). They were quite popular, having over twice the number of representatives as the Bolsheviks, the second largest party. They quickly came to oppose the Bolsheviks and were among Lenin's first victims. This is is in addition to a hardcore anarchist movement also popular in Russia at the time (and also heavily victimized by the Bolsheviks).

The point of all that? They all considered themselves socialist and disagreed that Bolshevism would lead to socialism, disagreeing strongly enough that it often led to their deaths. Chomsky isn't pulling the "the USSR wasn't socialist" out of a hat, but is bringing up an ideological point that's existed since even before the USSR formally existed. And to an anarchist, the idea that the USSR was socialism is as alien to them as the idea that the USSR was capitalist is to you. (The fact that the USSR called itself socialist they would argue was just a propagandist slogan, just as a Tea Partyer might consider Obama calling himself a capitalist as meaningless political rhetoric to take advantage of the less critically minded.)
Bradley Manning hearing – live updates
The design of BrowserID is more aligned with real user behavior in the wild. An example is users remember an email instead of a URL. The API/Protocol for an implementing website is much easier, based on implementer feedback.
Same, on an MSX when I was 8 :P
Well they didn't use StringBuffer in java...

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2000/jw-0324-javape...
False equivocation. Not liking parts of javascript is a different concept than being a doctor or a nurse and not be able to be around blood.
We all know that most of these people really are ripping off the illegal content just as they are accused of doing, and trying to weasel out of the consequences when they get caught.

And this is precisely the way our legal system is designed to work. Underlying it is the idea that it's better for 100 people to go unpunished, then to have used the state's monopoly on force to injure one innocent person. It's through this philosophy that we can all sleep at night, without guilt from the blood of innocents on our hands.

Of course, this is all a tangent, if the bit about this being a contractual arrangement between Google and UMG.

But if that's true, then UMG's argument that the court doesn't have authority under DMCA to impose an injunction is a red herring. If this is a straight matter of consumer and contract law between Google and UMG, and Google's users, then the judge may very well be able to intervene (depending on the details of those relationships).
yeah, I agree its a bit weird, at the company I work for people usually just resort to describing the issue when talking about it (when not in front of a computer), rather than reference the number, but jira ticket numbers are frequently passed back and worth to refer to specific tasks.
You can't guarantee it for even simpler reasons than that - the students might be irrational. If, from a group of 5 students, one consults his tea leaves and is sure the exam will be on Monday, the next casts runes and is sure that the exam will be on Tuesday, etc then you can be sure at least one student won't be surprised.
"The pursuit of eudaimonia most definitely can't amount to much in economies where those who trade accomplishment and raid societies earn thousands, millions, or billions of times as much as the creators and the builders of those societies..."

IIRC, Socrates was an artisan, not a wealthy man at all, though the rich youth such as Alcibiades did greatly admire him. Aristotle is said to have tutored Alexander the Great--anybody care to estimate relative wealth? And when Alcibiades and Alexander went raiding, it did not involve stocks and leveraged buyouts.

For that matter, what was Adam Smith's net worth next to that of Clive or Hastings or Pitt?
RIM is rotting from within
Zynga Goes Public
Proxy to make OAuth endpoints queryable with a simple GET
$ irb
>> 115.0 - 1.15 * 100
=> 1.4210854715202e-14

The result is the same; irb just prints the number to lower precision than the other shells.
The software developer's dilemma
Thats why its my opinion, I said IMO, IMO it is better that those sites and no one else can dispute what my opinion is
>I don't understand how enhancing value doesn't create value. Value is value, there isn't good value and bad value

He was saying that design is multiplicative, not additive. You could have an extremely beautiful and well designed app but, if the idea doesn't first provide value to your customers, you're just polishing the brass on the Titanic.
It seems like there might be an isomorphism between "You can't know the exam will be tomorrow" and "You can't know this sentence is true."
If my comment is not relevant, then why is this post at the top of HN?

It is my understanding that the post depicts the irony that those who do not understand are put in charge.

I should not be explaining my comment, but downvoting without a counter argument makes no sense to me. It is the equivalent of responding to an argument or statement with "I don't agree"

Though not a big deal, annoying all the same.
It's not rare in the Silicon Valley. Most managers in successful companies here are what you'd consider rare. Managers without real management ability don't last long here.
Mayo v. Prometheus and the fight over medical patents
Here's my favorite personal story. I was a consultant, brought in on a project on-site at a client's location. This is my first day, and I'm meeting the VP of Marketing.

VP: We need to get these Cognos reports up and running.
Me: Hmm, ok. What can you tell me about these reports?
VP: Mostly that we need them up and running.
Me: Who uses these reports?
VP: Not sure. Ask so-and-so.
Me: What information is on these reports?
VP: Look, let's not get buried in details. We just need these reports up and running, mmm-kay?
Project Follow Through contained several major problems...

For example?

...first, it destroys any possibility of differentiated instruction.

No, it merely destroys the possibility of ad-hoc differentiated instruction. I know a girl who teaches DI. She showed me her script and it contained differentiated instruction - "Try { block (a) } catch { try block (b) }."

Block (a) and Block (b) are different instructional scripts. They are also told to directly answer questions when the student has them.

Secondly (and related), it insures mediocre performance by students.

I'd love to see some sort of argument for this.

How many HN users would like to learn in this environment? How many of you think you could learn like this?

Actually, I suspect many HN users learn from a method like this. I certainly do, although I skip the middleman and just read the book directly.

This is also the exact same method that, for example, Salman Khan or ai-class.com uses. The only difference is that he performs the script as well as writing it.

However, you are correct that punishing deviation from the script is a bad idea. Rather, teachers should be punished for bad performance. This gives teachers an incentive to stick to the script, unless they are quite sure their ad-hoc methodology is superior to the expert methodology.
If you are willing to go smaller than iPhone, consider Sony Ericsson Xperia ray. It doesn't seem too exciting looking at the specs, but so far there have been quite a few pleasant surprises (camera, overall snappiness, solid construction) and not too much suckitude (unremovable Facebook and SE bloatware, lack of polish compared to iOS in places).
Ask HN: Why is everybody calling Zynga's IPO a failure?
Could somebody with more big-finance clue explain to me why everybody is stating zynga's IPO "a flop"? It seems that the company raised around $1BN today from their initial offering. The stock has remained flat which means the underwriters priced it fairly. Is it because the underwriters didn't make undeserved profits on the first day like the last few big tech ipos? Zynga still brought in a ton of cash, right? If so, how is that a flop?
Superflies bred to be the first astronauts on Titan
We can give life a much better fighting chance if we blow eachother up. Colinate titan with flies. Give it a few billion years and the DNA will give rise to sentient life once again.
C:\Projects>irb -v
irb 0.9.6(09/06/30)

C:\Projects>irb
irb(main):001:0> 1.15*100
=> 114.99999999999999

I don't believe it's a standards issue so much as it is just a facet of floating point math in binary. Since you can't actually store 1.15, you can just store your series of fractions which sum up to something very close to 1.15, I don't have much knowledge of floating point but I'd assume it stops at some value within epsilon of 1.15. When you multiply that value by 100 that sub epsilon value is now large enough to no longer allow the language to automatically round it for display.

irb(main):020:0> 1.15*100 > 115-Float::EPSILON
=> false
irb(main):021:0> 1.15*100 > 115-(Float::EPSILON*100)
=> true

I'm assuming older IRB just had a wider acceptance range than epsilon perhaps.