skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with you about calculators. People need an intuition about numbers that comes from actually thinking about them rather than pushing buttons in order to be able to notice when they make serious errors. Calculator trained cashiers take in a $10 bill on a $5 purchase and then return $95 in change because the computer told them to.
How is this different than saying "paper and pen has been known to work, has been debugged, and doesn't suffer from frivolous cutting edge theories... so why build typewriters... so why build computers... so why innovate from that which already works?"

Your argument is the antithesis of the reason for hackernews!
I like how the UK one directs the cord in a direction that avoids unnecessary bending (compared to the europlug-one)
Why didn't you just opt out of the ads? Google can subsidise their DNS service with their other profit making products. OpenDNS needs an actual business model, and they offer you a clean DNS feed if you want one.
Langton's Ants recreated in Javascript
Hamlbars Gem: Haml for Handlebars or Ember.js
> Just some solid-state electronics

Just so you are aware, the Palm V which came out in 1999 had just such a power supply. A bit bigger than 1 inch, but it's a switching power supply and doesn't get warm (i.e. it's efficient).
Okay,

I want to use entry-level employee information (had internship, graduate degree) about certain professions to graphically display hiring trends. Sort of like a Linkedin but without detailed questioning.

The job trends will be shown through images which are generated from questions to represent a worker's attributes.

If it helps:

http://www.resumeicons.com

yes,no?
Please use the original title where possible - even if	"OpenDNS warns about Google DNS" is going to get you more upvotes than "A Closer Look at Google Public DNS".
New quality journals would be great. Better: new journals with known-good editors, and a way to spread the word that they exist.

There are also emerging platforms that are less traditional, and that I personally like, such as simply posting on arXiv, or things like academia.edu. But it's much easier to move the math world to new journals than to an entirely new system.
This is a great idea, but one of the issues is that scientists don't like to release raw data - it puts their conclusions at risk of reinterpretation by other scientists. They'd much rather release figures that are formatted such that they only allow one to draw conclusions that support their research.
It's so easy to install a local copy of Unbound on your desktop, even on a Windows box. I'm surprised when I see hackers using Google or OpenDNS rather than using their own DNS resolver. Unbound supports DNSSEC too.
I agree with the author that some apps are overpriced. Case in point, how many people do you know that are running legitimate copies of Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop? For a true bootstrapped entrepreneur - who needs project management, site hosting, graphic design, etc. - it's near impossible to afford “top of the line” products. Instead you're left to use Open Source software that at times can be good (Open Office) or unusable (if you've ever used Fireworks, don't even try to use Gimp on a Mac unless you're masochistic).

You're other option is to become a pirate (ARRhhhhh). Here in NYC, piracy seems to be such a pandemic that they're running Ad campaigns for people to report software piracy at small businesses (https://reporting.bsa.org/r/report/add.aspx?src=us).

Here's a business model I've been thinking of that I hope developers will adopt. I call it “Entrepreneur lay-a-way”. Basically if someone is a-self described entrepreneur you give them a full 1-year license to your software for free. At the end of the 1 year you charge that users credit card for the full license plus interest. The thought being if the entrepreneur is successful, in 1 year he'll be able to afford your software with interest. The entrepreneur benefits deferring payment for a year, and can use that money for other purposes (marketing, etc). He can then utilize you're wonderful tool to create value for his users and the world. It's a win-win all around.
Would you please explain? What is the web, in your view, if not that?
All the windows gadgets. Even Xbox and WOW sideshow
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/
I've a few publications out there and if I had to release my code I would. However the reason I don't instantly publish the code is because its kinda embarrassing. My code works and it has some level of unit test coverage to make sure numbers make sense etc. But the code itself has a number of inefficiencies or ridiculous variable names... or in some cases serious example of breaking DRY.

However if everyone had to publish their code, I know the elements of my code which cause me distress would be nothing compared to a variety of other implementations people create.

Oh also trying to reproduce someone else's algorithm from a paper is so painful. There are a number of experimental values that exist which aren't really mentioned in papers as they are deemed trivial so you've to do no amount of tinkering to get similar results.
You really don't have a clue, do you? You're spreading complete nonsense out of total ignorance (akin to bigots trying to argue that "Palestinians" don't even exist).

For the benefit of others who might have had the misfortune of reading the above (you're too far gone to matter):

The Middle East has had civilisation for millenia (spelling?) before Europe had. Consequently, there have been a multitude of different ethnic groups/tribes/peoples who have held sway over one part or another. Hundreds upon hundreds of states & kingdoms, which were themselves swallowed up by one empire after another.

Today, you look upon the Middle East and see just one thing, Arabic speaking Muslims - and you blithely assume that they all came from Arabia.

Completely ignorant and false.

The final "civilisation" or movement (not sure what the right term would be here) which held dominated the Middle East was Islam. And it stayed, unlike all the others.

Most Middle Easterner's today are Muslim, and speak Arabic. But they are still descended from Phoenicians, Libyans, Egyptians, countless migrant tribes (many of whom are collectively labeled under "Bedouin"), Hebrews (yes - the Romans didn't ethnically cleanse the entire population!), Nestorian Christians, etc, etc.

The people never disappeared. They just now speak one tongue, and practice (mostly) one faith. Thats why we know mostly refer to them as "the Arabs".

Trying to pretend that they don't exist, or somehow became extinct, is ridiculous.

Where did the "Palestinian Arabs" come from? PALESTINE. Thats where.

What you'r saying is akin to fast-forwarding past centuries of continued European integration, and then saying that the people living in what used to be called France no longer have any right to that land, because they are part of a wider European state and they all speak Esperanto.

Anyone who would like to read a somewhat more balanced account of the origins of the "Arabs" would be well advised to read "History of the Arabs" by Philip Hitti.

And as for this gem:

"At least the Jews did not go into Palestine with weaponry and enslave ..."

(shaking my head) Is it possible for anyone who has not lived under a rock for half a century to write that claptrap?
The tumblr stats below the end of the post looked very out of place, after reading the content. 3 likes. 1 reblog.
Can't imagine it will cost you less to develop in house in terms of salaried engineering hours, and you probably won't get close to AskGeo in terms of performance. A fast spatial index is non trivial. Classic case of not properly valuing the cost of internal engineering resources.
It also helps to remap mouse buttons to some keys on the keyboard (moving left/right click to the left hand, if your right has rsi pain).
I don't see why we can't learn both. I really enjoyed AP Statistics. It was a class I took my senior year of high school because AP Calc scared me, and it ended up being a very rewarding and memorable experience, but I regret not having taken AP Calc alongside of it. Better statistical reasoning is something society might benefit more from as a whole, but I feel like that first (college) year sequence in Calculus is something that everyone should experience, be it in college or high school.

I know a lot of people who struggled in classes like Algebra 2 and Precalculus (which is kind of an abomination in retrospect) who finally learned to appreciate the power of mathematics by going through Calculus. Not everyone will walk away with that perspective, but I feel like society can only benefit from a greater respect for math.
Mom, Friend, & Co-Founder
Cloud computing and the “me versus you” problem
This is like saying a Lamborghini and a Kia should both cost $9999 because they're cars. Ultimately this is going to lead to a ton of low quality junk in the market. A quick perusal of the top 50 selling apps suggests we're already there.

Agreed. The App ecosystem may soon become a race to the bottom.
I suggest you find out how much someone makes pan-handling per hour. You may be shocked ...
The difference is that typewriters and computers are better than pen and paper in many ways. The "new math" being taught at many middle and high schools in the US is not better, from a pedagogical perspective, than the existing math.

In many schools today, math is taught as a "holistic" subject, where algebra, geometry, trigonometry are intermixed and taught as a "integrated" whole. In theory, this would let students appreciate that there are many ways to approach a problem and that the same theorem can be proven via many methods. In practice, all it ensures is that students have an insufficient background in three subjects rather than thorough knowledge in one.

Bruce Lee said, "I do not fear the man that has practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man that has practiced one kick 10,000 times." What our schools are doing is teaching different "kicks" (mathematical skills) but without following it up with the necessary practice required for students to achieve mastery of those skills. What we end up with are kids that know of mathematical theorems and mathematical results without knowing the results themselves.
Single molecule's electric charges seen in first image
> I did. See Karelia above.

Karelia? You think this bears any resemblance to the Palestinian situation?!!! I'm not at all for countries annexing other countries territory and moving their borders. But the situation here is worse than most other cases -- and sure as hell not at all similar to Karelia.

Here's a better example: consider Mexico demanding California back, establishing a state there, treating Californian's as second class citizens, and confining them in small areas north of Sacramento.

(Well, the difference would be that Mexico had California a couple of centuries ago, not a couple of millennia. And immigrants from there already consist of 30% of the population of the state. So, in that case, they'd have a slight right to want it back).

>And sure, the othodox jews have extreme subgroups that are as crazy as e.g. the Saudi government. But what the Hell does that prove? You know full well that you can find similar in any democracy.

Segregated women/men bus lines? No, you cannot find this kind of crazy sh*t in any normal democracy, especially in Western Europe. You might find religious nuts being able to impose such rules inside their churches, monasteries or homes or clubs. Which is kinda OK. But on a bus line??? In public roads?
All that needs to happen is that public research grants have to require you to make your paper available free of charge through a suitable system. Such a system is obviously trivial to provide on the internet.

Then we can save the time having to deal with retarded "open letters" or creating petitions like servants.
I mapped Esc onto one of the thumb keys.

That's a good idea, and one I hadn't thought of. Which one did you give up?

My bigger gripe is that it sometimes misses up-key events

I experience that fairly often with this particular keyboard, with the shift key. They have a note on their website about it[1]. Another not-uncommon problem is for a vertical row of keys to go out. I think that's due to a failing PCB trace. I've had keys get flaky on one side or the other, and it turned out that the ribbon cable connecting the hand pocket had wiggled a bit loose, so it was an easy fix. The worst problem I've had is when one of my keys just stopped working altogether. I emailed Kinesis and they sent me four or five Cherry MX switches, no charge. Ten minutes with a screwdriver and a soldering iron, and it was fixed.

recommended this Keyboard ... they always call me back in a couple of weeks and tell me that they can't believe I recommended this terrible keyboard

I should probably mention my own experience, for the benefit of HNers. When I first bought the keyboard, it seemed awful and I regretted wasting so much money. I went from being an 80-100 wpm typist to a snail's pace. I had to interrupt my muscle memory and force my fingers to their new positions. It wasn't as bad as learning to type the first time, but it was tough. Learning to use the new arrow keys (two rows under home row, no hand movement necessary) was mind-bending. My wrist pain actually increased for about two weeks.

After that, it became more natural, and I started to appreciate how smooth and consistent every key was. Spreading more responsibility to my thumbs, and changing the vector of thumb pressure began to feel much better.

I always warn people that the first couple of weeks will be difficult, and not to switch in the middle of a work crunch. :-)

[1] http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/tech_support/trouble.htm#q5
Can you elaborate on who you are / what your company is? I always find it infuriating (in a nice way) when I read of peoples success in a disconnected manner on hacker news. :)
Unless (as in the majority of cases) the startup fails, in which case you now have an already broke entrepreneur getting a large charge on their credit card, which they probably forgot was coming.
If so, that's a much weaker and not terribly interesting claim. The concrete example of counting with Catalan numbers is more compelling; it would be very challenging for children who lack experience with recursive definitions and inductive proofs. Systematic enumeration, albeit elementary, is distinctly modern.
So having no job is better than a low-paying job, in your analysis?

Brazil has a minimum wage. If it's not enforceable maybe that's because it's based on wishful thinking, pandering to those with an unrealistic mental models, rather than what's sustainable.

These 'vast marginal neighborhoods that no one wants to live in', they are empty ghost towns because no one wants to be there? I don't think so. And the favelas would just disappear if the firm-handed authorities were just a bit more insistent everyone get paid more (or nothing at all!)?

Rich societies can afford nice neighborhoods and rigorous building codes. Societies get rich by accepting every opportunity for voluntary coordination and incremental improvement. Societies stay poor by enacting showoff policies that appear generous but destroy more productivity than they enable, satisfying the aesthetic hopes of comfortable do-gooders, but trapping the really poor.
SockJS - WebSocket emulation
I guess I just much prefer the idea of a "paper" as published being self-contained, and "supplementary" material being separate. A paper shouldn't become incomplete if it is printed on paper or if the links are broken.

> It's just that once I've digested your results, I want to analyze them critically, re-use them, integrate them into my work, etc. Publishers should facilitate that.

I completely agree! But I think this is a separate process from just reading the results, and is best done with separate tools. I think all the things in your last paragraph should be easy to do, but I'm not sure if the best way to do them is to embed them in the same document that's published in the journal.

For example, suppose I publish the results of an analysis on genomes of 100 fruit flies I raised in the lab. Here are some things you might be interested in acquiring:

- the text I published (say as pdf, or some other format) with included figures, references, etc (the thing that appears in the journal) -- say 4 megabytes

- the document used to generate the above document (e.g. LaTeX file) -- less than 1 MB

- high-resolution pictures of the flies' eyes up close -- say 10 more megabytes

- high-resolution plots of data -- say 2 more megabytes

- raw data used for these plots and analogous plots not presented -- lists of genes and statistics -- call it a megabyte.

- source code used to generate this data from the genomes and plot it -- not more than a megabyte.

- raw genomes of all flies in my study -- in the 10s of gigabytes.

Now how much of this data do we want to bundle in as part of the original document? Keep in mind that 95% of readers are only interested in the first item on the list -- the 4-MB document that was published in the journal. Should we also embed in it an additional 15 MB of data for those few who might be interested, and make the document somehow interactive so that this data is accessible by clicking? (Of course, we definitely can't embed the gigabytes of raw genome data, so we'll need a separate solution for distributing that anyway.)

I'd argue that a better solution is to simply bundle all of this "supplementary" stuff separately in a .zip and make it available for download separately. Again, very large files or datasets will still need their own solution -- for instance, I might host the genomes on my website and just provide you with the link.

This isn't to say that pdf itself is the be-all and end-all of portable document formats (although I think it's very good), but I do want to argue against bloating the published report document with what I view as supplementary information, because it's hard to tell where to draw the line, and this imposes a large memory cost on lots of people who don't need it. (As a sidenote, if I want someone's code and data, getting it from within the document by clicking links also seems a bit odd to me -- where in a published article should these links go?) So I really feel like separate downloads is the best solution.
Over the past 15 years, my RSI symptoms have been extremely well correlated to how much I read and hear about RSI.

Now my wrist hurts.
Here is the proof that ΣΔF = F. First we define our "sequences", which are just functions from N to R; N includes 0. Next we define operators, which I will say always take precedence over function arguments. We define two operators in particular:

Δg(i) = g(0) if i = 0, else g(i) − g(i − 1)

Σg(i) = Σ{n: 0 → i} g(n)

Note that Δg(0) = g(0) by these definitions, and note that Σg(0) = g(0) as well. Call these the "zeroth element relations." (Also note that I am saying Σg(0) where perhaps [Σg](0) would be more clear.)

I will observe a very simple lemma which embeds Σg in a recursive form:

Σg(n + 1) = Σg(n) + g(n + 1) for any g, any n in N.

On to the proof. ΣΔF(0) = F(0) by composing those two zeroth element relations. Also, if ΣΔF(n) = F(n) for any n, then I claim that ΣΔF(n + 1) = F(n + 1). Proof:

ΣΔF(n + 1) = ΣΔF(n) + ΔF(n + 1), by the lemma.

ΣΔF(n + 1) = F(n) + ΔF(n + 1), because "if ΣΔF(n) = F(n)".

ΣΔF(n + 1) = F(n) + F(n + 1) − F(n), by definition of Δ.

ΣΔF(n + 1) = F(n + 1)

Since it holds for n=0, and whenever it holds for n, it holds for n + 1, by induction this holds for all n in N and therefore, by induction:

ΣΔF = F

The reverse argument is also pretty simple. It's also obviously true for n = 0 due to the zeroth element relations. For n > 0 we don't even need induction:

ΔΣF(n) = ΣF(n) − ΣF(n − 1), by definition of Δ

ΔΣF(n) = ΣF(n − 1) + F(n) − ΣF(n − 1), by lemma

ΔΣF(n) = F(n)

ΔΣF = F.

If you still don't believe me, here it all is in Python:

>>> sigma = lambda seq: lambda i: sum(seq(u) for u in range(0, i + 1))
>>> delta = lambda seq: lambda i: seq(0) if i == 0 else seq(i) - seq(i - 1)
>>> expand = lambda seq: [seq(i) for i in range(0, 7)]
>>> constant = lambda N: lambda i: N
>>> expand(constant(3))
[3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]
>>> expand(sigma(constant(3)))
[3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21]
>>> expand(delta(constant(3)))
[3, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
>>> expand(sigma(delta(constant(3))))
[3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]
>>> expand(delta(sigma(constant(3))))
[3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]

Enjoy. :-)
LaTeX3 versus LuaTeX: which is the future? Statements by LaTeX3 team members.
SOA will save the world! :)

Great overview on REST, specially for those who have heard of it but never took the time to understand it and end up making some honest "mistakes".
There were times when computers were big as a building and it required a degree to program them too, until the computer revolution came along.
Can't see why the same thing wouldn't happen with biotech.
Because this won't improve their lives one bit. It will turn them into drones working for the rich without dignity or respect. Not every transaction that is marginally beneficial to both sides is movement towards a global optimum. On the contrary, arguments like this, talking about improvement is simple "gradient descent". Instead of throwing the poor an insulting bone, using their desperation to gain beneficial work w/o treating them with dignity (benefits, appreciation), I suggest turning the bright minds of Silicon Valley for some true disruptive thinking.

Think about this: is this suggestion going to provide the poor with true social mobility? Is this something our society can be proud of - poor people working for machines, as machines and getting paid by machines? Or is this another way to maximize profit by forsaking gainful, respectful employment, that can be somehow justified by "well, they'll be slightly better off?"

Why not suggest a mechanism by which tech companies can truly offer the poor a hand that will last for generations and create a better society, one we can be truly proud of, even if it's at the cost of loss of some short-term profit? An investment in society's future, if you like. Surely this is something that will be beneficial for everyone in the long run.
I was imitating the original poster by extrapolating large claims from small differences. I work on Racket. What I really meant is that side effects are not predominantly corralled using monads, but this is not a technical discussion.
No I personally don't. For one why try to create a laptop with 2 iPads? A 500 dollar keyboard seems crazy if you look at it like that.

Also mimicking old things like a book with 2 screens does not make sense in my opinion - waste of resources?
Also, the data could have been collected by unsound methods in the first place, so running the same data through the same computer program won't really amount to reproducing a result.
Exactly. Flash sockets are TCP only (proprietary Adobe protocols aside), and it seems WebSockets ended up without any UDP support either.

The overhead of TCP is just ridiculous when you're trying to implement real-time game movements with dead reckoning, etc.
That was a joke -- calling all functional languages syntactic sugar on λ-calculus is just as ridiculous as calling everything with S-expressions lisp. Sorry, sarcasm doesn't translate well over the Internet.
I find it interesting that Apple promoted a culture of insular product development from soup to nuts, and greatly valued what most would consider small successes in execution, rather than have their product managers play it safe and go with off-the-shelf solutions.

Perhaps that's helped them keep a wealth of talent in-house throughout their span, ones able to do the heavy lifting required to pull off what might be considered truly innovative products from time to time. By employing their hot shot engineers like Rod Holt in "revolutionizing" power supplies, they have him around later to help design the Lisa and Macintosh hardware.
Theories abound as to what is really happening. http://maxstiegemeier.com/digital-river-server-blackout/