skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I voted for asteroids as the most statistically feared existential risk in one of the LW surveys and was shocked when the results came back:

"Of possible existential risks, the most feared was a bioengineered pandemic, which got 194 votes (17.8%) - a natural pandemic got 89 (8.2%), making pandemics the overwhelming leader. Unfriendly AI followed with 180 votes (16.5%), then nuclear war with 151 (13.9%), ecological collapse with 145 votes (12.3%), economic/political collapse with 134 votes (12.3%), and asteroids and nanotech bringing up the rear with 46 votes each (4.2%)."
We ask artists to redraw their childhood drawings.
Big Like for the fastest growing company ever.
Great passion and emotions...gotta love them
I'd say the happy medium is a SOA design. If you separate out the critical modules into a separate service, a rebuild to scale isn't much more than a refactor to scale, which you are going to have to do at some point in time no matter what platform you build on.
Nokia-like ... I think that was based on the MS Basic implementation. :)
<i> Selfstudy is great, but sometimes the best way to learn is from a structured class</i>
Well lots of people might like to be treated like grown ups and not like the structured classes and who knows they might even write a letter asking for refund
You can't google "jquery-style" and get helpful information.
"POF has one single employee: the founder and CEO Markus Frind. Makes up to $10 million a year on Google ads working only two hours a day. 30+ Million Hits a Day (500 - 600 pages per second)."

I find this more interesting than the parent article; although it seems clear hiring more people helped them expand (and handle that expansion) a lot, a single employee/founder doing that much is crazy impressive.

From: http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture
Brochures
Impresoras Copia Craft es Una Empresa de Impresión comercial ubicada en Lubbock, Texas. Empezamos Como un centro de copiado de auto-Servicio en 1985 y agrego ALTA CALIDAD compensar Capacidades de Impresión en los Primeros Años 90. En 2000, abrimos Nuestra segunda planta en Austin, Texas - Ahora conocida COMO capital Printing Co. A Principios de 2007, hemos Nuestras Ampliado Operaciones de la Empresa de Impresión MEDIANTE la adición de la Impresión Digital, asi de como Servicios de Correo. Also ofrecemos Servicios de Impresión PERSONALIZADOS, los cuentos de Como El diseño gráfico y troquelado de Especialidad.
Also some V variants are considered iconic Churchills V sign, which arguably could be considered rude to french people (it was a taunt from English archers to the french)
Take What the Defense Will Give You
My impression was that the course was designed to give someone with little or no background in machine learning a maximally useful amount of practically relevant information given a multitude of constraints (ergo the focus on Andrew Ng's favourite implementation tricks of the trade, learning curves &c.; each of dozens of such nuggets having the potential to save days, weeks or even months in real projects).

If that was indeed the goal, the endeavour should, in my opinion, be considered an amazing success.

An easy way to make the assignments harder (and maybe more fulfilling), if you have the time, might be to ignore much of the handholding (e.g. by porting everything to a very different programming environment).

Ideally, online courses like that would be "infinite" and personalized, giving everyone as much depth (and breadth!) as desired (with a "baseline" approximately equal to the 2011 class) and taking existing knowledge into account.

Eventually, we'll all get our Primer!
We're using QR tags at our office for the door locks sometimes.
People with 24/7 access get more robust RFID tags, but for time-sensitive access, we just generate their key & print out a QR code with it that they show the camera.
What's your primary goal? Having a MVP fast, or play with newer technologies? Unless your MVP requires very specific tech (let's say heavy analytics, websockets or whatever) JFDIt. It's hard enough to build something, nevermind the tech.
Recap of my few hours on HN
The issue isn't "evil AI". Very few people in the transhumanist/AI movement are concerned about evil AIs. The issue is that unless we are very careful to engineer an AI that cares about human values it's going to be completely indifferent to human values. Indifference is the enemy, evil is not.

To illustrate, consider the African Elephant. After it reaches 40 to 60 its teeth fall out and it slowly dies in agony from starvation. This is not because nature is evil or because natural selection is evil. This sort of thing just happens because nature is completely indifferent to human values. An AI, just like a process like natural selection, is just not going to care about humans unless we get it right. And since we have only one attempt to get it right, the stakes are so absurdly high.

Anyway, the guys at LessWrong have put a great deal of thought into these issues. If you're interested in this sort of thing, check out the sequences[1]. It's a few million words, but it has a terrific ratio of text to insight.

[1] http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=12774
> It's wild to me that people are giving you trouble for "can't" when "ponderousnessly" is clearly the more compelling target. (An odd choice even if rendered as "ponderously". "Clumsily unlikely?" Eh, okay, I guess you can have it.)

I completely missed that one (and it's much more deserving than "can't"). I assume the size of the word caused most reader's eyes to flow right through it.

You win, regardless; ponderously was the intended word, aiming to convey the implication you've described.

That said, I wish the focus was on N-Control as an organization and the seemingly bizarre shadowy world of business they may inhabit, rather than my small missteps.
An example of the simplification of this process. Over the holidays, my dad needed to buy an external hard drive to backup his music collection. He has one of these hi-fi devices that has a built-in hard drive and is slowly transferring his music collection to it.

We bought it from a retailer because he wanted it right then, so he could run the backup procedure and have me fix it if it didn't work (yes, family tech support is a joy). We went into the shop, and none of the USB external hard drive manufacturers actually tell you what speed the drive runs at. That is, they don't tell you what RPM the drives run at. As it is a backup drive, it's not like it needs to be fast (the first run may take all night, but afterwards, it will probably only be a gigabyte or so of changed files every few days). But the fact that none of the companies actually advertise the RPM slightly shocked me. Not just on the boxes either, but if I scanned the barcodes with the barcode/QR app I have on my phone, the manufacturers websites don't list the RPM either.
Rapture for nerds. Don't waste your money, or your time.
You might enjoy this article, then (I read it in a physical copy of Inc. a few years ago, and remember really liking it).

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol...
I completely disagree, recorded lectures are nowhere as nice as the stuff that kahn and stanford are pushing out.
I appreciate the effort they go to, and perhaps for typical home users they might consider it an acceptable risk. However, for my business dealings, Seagate's statement there has limited value, because I still have to release the faulty drive into some sort of postal/courier system with any retrievable data intact and trust that it reaches Seagate to be securely wiped. Unless they provide a specialist collection service with the appropriate certifications that they have taken responsibility for destroying the drive securely, nothing that only kicks in when something reaches them via a third party is likely to be an acceptable risk if you're dealing with data protection for credit card data, medical records, etc.
The mpqs code actually compiles unmodified (but with many warnings) if you use f95. When the code is run it complains of a missing file. One can create an empty file of this name to keep it happy. In fact it fills the file with data. Then it complains of a second missing file, however the same trick does not work here. It complains of missing records indicating that it expects this file to contain data. I've no idea what data it should contain or in what format.
What about it? There are several OSs written in C++. BeOS was one.
I agree. N-Control appears to deserve neither the loyalty nor cash of its customers.
The concern is over how to eliminate a certain class of bugs from our software as it becomes increasingly complex to the point that no human understands it. If you ask your robot to get you a glass of milk, and it finds you are out, you don't want it to rob the local grocery store, killing anyone who tries to stop it. Fixing such bugs by enumerating things not to do isn't viable -- we have to get machines that share our values or stick to Oracle type machines that just don't care about the physical world.
Ask HN: Is it possible to partner with your employer?
I'm in a unique position in that I'm a developer and entrepreneur working for a company (as employee) that lacks the man-power and capital to innovate in our field. In short, I see a huge market opportunity in our field -- and I have the vision and skills to create a profitable solution.

The company doesn't have the resources to develop this solution -- but I do. It would require a few months of long nights and weekends coding. In a sense, I would want equity in the product I built, but I'm not sure how to achieve that. Any advice in how one would go about structuring a deal or partnership in this situation?
http://web.archive.org/web/20101227190553/http://www.acceler...
I accept your point but reject the generalization. Not all registrars have embraced the prevailing approach you've identified - we've embraced exactly the opposite and work extremely hard to be as transparent and uncomplicated as possible.

I don't have a source handy, but there was an article circulating a few years ago describing the "evilness" of complication. The contention was that businesses that work hard to complicate situations for consumers are fundamentally "bad" and that the long-term win lies with simplifying complexity (the author made a distinction between complexity and complication - i.e. math is complex and best expressed in the least complicated manner.)

Anyways, I just wanted to point out that not everyone is working a variation of "the bait and switch" :)

/r
Really principles be damned, they are doing it for free
On (Startup) Chile
What a fun idea. Might as well add a Twilio-powered SMS login as well?
Combining Physics and Computer Science
> could it be that the sellers were _offended_ that someone would maximize profits with their possessions?

Friend of mine does the whole estate sale book thing, too. People have definitely gotten upset when they realize what the scanner is for.
This isn't anything to do with advertising. Try posting objectionable comments on HN, and you'll be banned.

If you don't like the rules, don't use the website.
Instead, some of us are working to turn Detroit into the next Silicon Valley(well, not quite, but our own thing).
"Evil" is a label for a particular subset of human behaviors, which are a subset of all possible minds. Thus it is said:

> The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.

The main point of the Friendly AI movement is that the vast majority of possible (stable) minds will not work towards a universe that humans would enjoy living in. An AI that values what we value is a stupendously narrow target - particularly since we can't precisely define our values yet.

If you're interested in this stuff, there's a lot more on LessWrong. Here's a teaser: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ld/the_hidden_complexity_of_wishes/
Fun With the Upcoming 1.7 Release of Git
While the article is interesting, it skips important things, which have high influence on practical GC speed - write barriers and finalizers. The following ancient article from Microsoft has better coverage of GC internals http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973837.aspx (somewhat biased to .NET :) ).
From the e-mail sent to S3 customers:

Today we're excited to announce Object Expiration, a new feature to help you efficiently manage data stored in Amazon S3. Object Expiration enables you to schedule the removal of objects after a defined time period.

You can define Object Expiration rules for a set of objects in your bucket. Each expiration rule allows you to specify a prefix and an expiration period in days. The prefix field (e.g. “logs/”) identifies the object(s) subject to the expiration rule, and the expiration period specifies the number of days from creation date (i.e. age) after which object(s) should be removed. You may create multiple expiration rules for different prefixes. After an Object Expiration rule is added, the rule is applied to objects with the matching prefix that already exist in the bucket as well as new objects added to the bucket. Once the objects are past their expiration date, they will be queued for deletion. You will not be charged for storage for objects on or after their expiration date. Amazon S3 doesn’t charge you for using Object Expiration. You can use Object Expiration rules on objects stored in both Standard and Reduced Redundancy storage. Using Object Expiration rules to schedule periodic removal of objects eliminates the need to build processes to identify objects for deletion and submit delete requests to Amazon S3.

You can start using Object Expiration today using the AWS Management Console or the Amazon S3 API.
The more Amazon's cloud matures, the more it feels like Google's internal infrastructure did when I worked there.

Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes it's not... ;-)
I agree that's a good thing to remember, but that isn't really the point of this article. If you wanted to write one with that angle, I'd probably upvote it. But any vacuous fluff piece likely contains some small nugget of wisdom you can infer (Lindsay Lohan's cell phone got hacked? Shows you the importance of security even in seemingly inconsequential systems), but if the article isn't actually aiming to educate us on the matter, it is still overall more noise than signal.
I think forums have served this problem for over a decade. Voting systems on comments and nested comments like slashdot and here and reddit are just an improvement on forums. So what are these formats lacking for you?

(I agree they could probably be improved by specific changes for online book groups)
Drew Brees record breaking brouht him appreciation from Dan Marino
Awesome Collection of Photoshop Tutorials To Design A Website
Software developers are paid nowhere near as much in the UK.
Hadoop reaches 1.0.0
Ask HN: Is working under pressure important?
I've become a little discouraged after talking to several startups about positions. The problem I seem to have is working through a problem under pressure. For the majority of my programming career, I have always known that I would not work well on a project if I felt pressured. It makes it hard for me to think and usually results in a sub-optimal product. For this reason I always started on project the day they were assigned to give myself plenty of time and to remove the possibility of having to finish work at the last minute. Now I seem to be coming up to a brick-wall when forced to complete a project or problem in a timed environment. Will not being able to work under pressure deny me my dream of working for a startup?
The very first paragraph has a link entitled "Microsoft Office 95 are still being fought over in courts" as an example of an IP lawsuit, but the current Novel/Microsoft lawsuit is actually antitrust related. Even the linked to article (on ZDNet) says that.

It's weird to me that the writer linked to that, unless I misunderstanding things.
Elegant and Practical Fashion Accessories for Women from Jessica Kagan Cushman
Yup you were right. After applying to get access to the zone files, I received this response,

"TLD Zone files do not show transfers between registrars. The zone files only provide current domains that are in OK status with their status of OK as well as the nameservers that are attached. It does not provide domains that are not in the zone."

The only way I found to get the whole database is through the whois API, which costs way too much for a novelty project - http://whoisxmlapi.com/#/whois-database-download.php?rid=2

Besides, someone already made a simpler implementation of the concept I was going for, and it serves the purpose well enough -- http://byedaddy.org/
You pay at the beginning. Whether you finish or not does not change how much you make.
Says who?

The market.

People who love Apple products understand the logic of having a gate-keeper. I've had an Android and an iPhone and one crashed more than the other. I don't need to tell you which one, because you already know. Not only do you know which device it is I am talking about, but you know exactly why that particular device needs to be rebooted more often than the other.

Now, broaden the conversation into user services.
I don't think you're using "cheap registrar" in the same way as I would think most people would. $10 is cheap. It's a lunch. If you are hunting for "the best deal," it is virtually guaranteed that you're eventually going to get burned at some point or another. Find a registrar who's not breaking the bank and who doesn't act like a dick to you, and stick with 'em. Your confusion seems self-inflicted.

(Namecheap actually does give you a free $8.95-level SSL cert with a domain registration.)
It would only work as a alternative (definitely a more convenient one) to something like Google's two factor auth app with one time passwords, not a complete replacement. If the phone was stolen, you'd need a way to get in and shut it off. Google's system lets you save a handful of codes for this case.
+10000. This is a trap that I've seen way too many hackers and entrepreneurs fall into.

Get out of the room. Talk to actual people. Find out about their processes. Understand their pain points.

Then, build, iterate, and build some more.
Sorry - I can't comment about any upcoming features or plans.

Is there something specific you're looking for? I could pass it on to the product managers.
I work at Google, but I am not speaking for them, I am just an engineer, not a PR guy.

If you pay attention to Vic Gundotra (the guy leading the G+ effort), you'll know that he just wants to make G+ an inviting, friendly place on the web. He wants to avoid G+ becoming like the cesspool of hostile idiocy you see in youtube comments. The ban on offensive pictures is consistent with his vision. It's the same reason he doesn't want fake names on G+.

Personally, I strongly dislike the censorship. A profile picture with just middle finger by itself is lame, sure, but if you are giving the finger to Rick Perry after his horribly anti-gay comments, that is important speech that (IMO) Google shouldn't censor. I'd vastly prefer people be able to make potentially offensive gestures, and censoring 100 idle middle fingers of idiot rage is not worth suppressing 1 middle finger to crazy political candidate.

Google still has a spine, it doesn't do everything for the advertising dollar. Pulling out of China could cost Google a lot of money, but it's the right thing anyway, and I am absolutely proud that the did.

But "you are the product" is overly jaded and misses the simple explanation. The G+ leadership believes censoring offensive gestures is best for G+ users and for the health and growth of the G+ network.
That's really cool. I'd love to see and learn from some of your past patches.
Costs for a service that performs extensive NLP on vast amounts of data?
Very interesting point if you read past the first line. There is definitely significant momentum in the interleaving of artificial creations of all 'mediums' with reality. Will technology turn the map into the territory?

I don't think it's primarily developers that have instigated this though. We are the implementors but we have been catalysed by all sorts of other people. And we won't be the last industry to substantially interleave artificial creations with reality. This I suspect the author meant to imply by talking about other industries that came before us but nevertheless I felt the article was particularly marketed towards developers when it should have wider appeal.

> This is why books and music and television and movies and photographs are all rapidly converging.

It seems to me that something which isn't converging is development itself. Diversity and variance correlate with creativity but over time cause complicatedness which leads to specialisation that eventually negatively feedbacks on creativity. Perhaps this is the natural state of things but I believe that it could be relieved through the further generalisation, cross-pollination and increased brevity of our principles, standards and best practices. (Actually, I just googled 'loosely-coupled' and it appears it was defined by an organisational theorist. Perhaps there is already further widespread proliferation that I am unaware of.)

Does anybody know a good resource for fundamental concepts and paradigms in systems, organisation, and structure? I suspect some are medium-specific and all will be intention-specific but either way it would be interesting to create some kind of cross-discipline toolkit if none already exists.
Pricing/billing strategy, monthly vs. annual? 
Using a freemium model, but deliberating on whether to use annual or monthly reoccurring billing for the upgrades.

In doing so, it would divide the annual limitations by 12, limiting the amount of content needed to populate the platform (which is based on community).

On the other side, is it true that monthly plans can increase user acquisition? I understand that they may, but in the case that a user values the product enough to keep upgrading each month, wouldn't they just as well enroll annually?

I see the pros and cons to both sides, what do you all think? (keeping in mind sustainability as well)

Thanks!
How to get more than opinions: Interview techniques and advice
...and anyone here can make a comfortable income from adsense.

Do not believe the hivemind here that advertising based income isn't possible.
Yeah I'd love to have a place or way to learn from free software developers.
Inventor flames Reg, HP in memristor brouhaha
I think the left side of the thermometer was the "excitement temperature" of the destination the Underground was taking you to. Fishing and museums were both sub-freezing, since they aren't high-excitement activities.
Helping fund development of ways to cure aging is also a thing that falls under saving the world, I think.

Interestingly, there's a great deal of overlap between this arm of the AI community and the most forward-looking longevity engineers. They go to the same conferences, seek funds from the same philanthropists, and for forth. (Aubrey de Grey, biogerontologist and now SENS Foundation CSO, even used to be an AI developer, back in the day when "AI" meant "incrementally better expert systems"). See, this, for example:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/08/artificial-intell...

The penumbra of people, funding sources, and networks surrounding the Singularity Institute and Less Wrong are much the same as the one surrounding the SENS Foundation and Methuselah Foundation - both of whom are making their year end pledge drives, by the way.

http://sens.org/node/2543

https://www.mfoundation.org/donate
Does POF still have one employee?