skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While I like to think that if you asked for help you would get it, how do you normally respond when people ask you to help them with computer tasks? Now I don't know about you, but my first instinct is to flee. Helping people with computers, a lot of the time, is annoying.

This is compounded by the condescending attitude that most computer users have towards "non-computer" people. If you ask someone to help you with filling out forms, or logging into facebook, or whatever it is you want to do, your probably going to be met with an attitude analogous to "You silly idiot...". I'm not trying to take the moral high ground here, chances are I've acted on this attitude just as many times (On average for years of life.) as you may have, probably more.

It's a very damaging meme. And very hard to eradicate.

EDIT: This was originally appended to my post above. But I eventually decided that was basically just a way of replying that bloated the discussion.
Running then with the library example, who then would be inclined to fund and run libraries in local communities across the nation (where companies may not be heavily invested or even able to afford such efforts)? In the libertarian stance, what would the alternative here be?

Don't get me wrong - I generally find the libertarian mindset quite agreeable but there are certain examples where I'm unable to reach the conclusions truer libertarians do, and this would be one of them.
Coolest Startups in America
What do you think of cython+python+numpy? I've used it successfully to do NLP work.
I'm also in some kind of middle ground. I like the power lisp provides and dont mind the syntax, but I also like and appreciate what languages with rich syntax provide. On the other hand, I dont particularly love either one. I think the only way I'll truly be happy is if the gap is bridged without really giving up on either sides advantages.

But there are other factors which would make me happier with a language than closing the gap between expressive power and great syntax. For example, I would love if there were a language with nice syntax and good metaprogramming (eg python) that also had an unambiguous visual representation (something like eg Max) that you can switch between at will. Dunno how realistic that would be without adding complexity or ambiguity or ruining code formatting)
No, currently it's an inline array of immutable 128-bit numeric values and we use bit-twiddling to pull the real and imaginary parts out. However, that's a temporary hack. (It's also why the mandel benchmark is relatively slow — all the bit-twiddling is not very efficient.)

The longer-term approach is still up in the air and that's what I was talking about above. My favorite approach at this point is to allow fields to be declared as const — which in Julia means write-once. Then if all fields are const the object is immutable and can automatically be stored in arrays inline.
AMD: what went wrong?
> I borrow a book, read it and enjoy it. What benefit does this create for anyone besides me?

That actually made me feel sorry for you.

Are you really this much of an island, or do you just enjoy trolling? Is there no possible benefit for me that you might have learned something, or that perhaps you might now be able to tell me something I didn't know before? Is there no benefit to me that perhaps because someone in a library showed you how to apply for your housing benefit online you didn't feel the need to break into my car?

And yes, much crime like theft can be related to drugs. But a significant proportion can also be tied back to poverty.

You're like a parody of all that's bad about the libertarian ethos. Or whatever you think you are.
"C++ REPL using Clang" gets me thinking...

I wonder if it'd be possible to compile Clang and Emscripten with Emscripten and make an (albeit slow) in-browser REPL for C.
You underestimate the importance of smalltalk. Gossip is the cornerstone of a moral society, moreso than laws. Gossip forms reputations, and reputations determine who we trust. News is just gossip in the large. Solve the reputation problem, and you solve the gossip problem.
Get Mountain Lion and Homebrew to Be Happy
I've been trying to get everything going with Mountain Lion so I can develop (I use ruby and rails, so that has been where I have been focusing). Let me know if this or something else is what worked for you.
Does the move to LGPLv2.1+ for libVLC, libVLCcore and libcompat allow for Applidium's VLC iPhone port (http://applidium.com/en/applications/vlc) to be resubmitted to the App Store after some minor changes?
Here in San Francisco, it's a whole different story.

Our main Library cost tax payers $109.5 million and occupies over 376,000 square feet, boasting six floors above ground and a size twice as big as the building it replaced.

What it has become now is a Country Club for the Homeless population in the Tenderloin, who use it to eat in, sleep in,pee in and pretty much live in.
Type the URL into Google search. NY times will let you view it as long as google.com is your referer.
US$6 Trillion In Counterfeit US Government Bonds Seized In Zurich
The 14% you describe are bottom 14% of the bottom 10-20% - i.e., the bottom 2-3% of the nation. They can be dealt with by a small, targeted program.

The rest can turn off cable and go pay for a computer at kinkos once in a while. Last time I was in NYC, it was about $0.10/minute, so if the "struggling" man skipped one or two big macs he could afford to pay for internet service (and he'd be slightly closer to a healthy bodyweight).

There are places where housing is cheaper. Those places are inevitably situated the furthest distance from locations of economic opportunity.

You seem to be holding the mistaken belief that the poor work for a living. Please educate yourself. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2009.pdf
TLDR: fool takes a mega dose of salvia, thinks it's dangerous and causes "brain damage". No, you just took many orders of magnitude too much. Stop spreading propaganda.

>Then, one night, I ended up taking several hundred doses at once… I was drunk, and the part of me that hates myself took control...

And from the comments:

>As for my claim at “several hundred doses”, I was quite involved in the Salvia Divinorum community during my use, and obtained some pure Salvinorin A crystal from an organic chemist.

Perhaps the title should be "Alcohol and Brain Damage", or "Alcohol and Self Control"...oh wait, we already knew about that problem, didn't we? Ridiculous how he thinks salvia's to blame for that one.
Boxed values are pretty much necessary for dynamic languages — that's where the information about what kind of value something is gets stored. It is a pain for this kind of thing, however. In a fully statically compiled language like C, however, you can eliminate the need for a box entirely. If you want dynamic typing, that's the price we've gotta pay.
Reminds me of Greece's "State flag on land, 1822–1969 and 1975–78"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Greece#Adoption_of_the_...
URDU SEX STORIES: Sex Ka Safar University Se Ghar Tak
I don't understand. Why would your ISP block your IP for bogus DNS requests? And why are they monitoring your traffic to public DNS servers? I presume this means they have to look at all traffic that goes over port 53. Is there a security concern?
Not necessarily. This could be done through most of the existing equipment customers own. An iPad app just needs the right IP address to tune a digital video stream that's arriving via your existing cable modem / router. Same thing for a stand-alone IP set top. I saw a demo a few years ago at Cisco on this exact configuration that was part of their early 'TV anywhere' development. The box they were using was about $50 and available on NewEgg.com at the time. Worked beautifully.
How To Make a 23" Android Touchscreen
So, there is a need for external assistance.
Agreed. I personally understand how hard it really is to be consistent across multiple parts of a website, through many changes and direction from the top and also with many new and rotating designers coming aboard. but that being said I have noticed also the lack of detail. The leading feels off, the backgrounds are different from page to page. The font sizes are slightly off, much of what you mentioned. The thing is, this started way before Steve left office or passed away.

I am sure they will fix it though. I imagine it is simply a case of somebody new stepping in and not paying enough attention and it will correct itself sooner than later. They have a good process and a good team.
A Key Ring That Won’t Kill Your Fingertips
We used to own air rights on property (Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad caelum et ad inferos), until the era of commercial aviation.

It's my understanding that in the US, planes today have to maintain a certain distance from people and structures (500 ft?).

I wonder if you saw a drone 50 feet above your house if you would be in your right to, say, get out your slingshot and defend yourself. Even if the done weren't hostile, a drone helicopter could be dangerous if it runs out of energy and falls on your head.
In late 2003 I was laid off from my job as a hardware/firmware design engineer. I spent the next two years away from work. During this time I spent nearly a year on self-study, got married, and then went travelling with my wife in Europe and south-east Asia. We worked on and off while travelling to be able to afford to continue our adventures.

If you are a self-motivated learner I would highly recommend a study break. The stuff I learnt during my break helped me secure my current job. I spent most of my time learning about web development, both client-side and server-side technologies. I now teach these technologies at a local college. I also do contract web work on the side.

As others have mentioned, be sure to pick some solid learning outcomes. Map out your study goals. Give yourself timeframes and be sure to reward yourself when you meet these milestones.

I'd recommend either blogging about your experiences or putting together a portfolio of work. This will come in handy when future employers ask about the gap in your resume. Working on one or two open-source projects might also be worth while.

Learning to live frugally and within your means is also key.
They are not delayed. I got emails yesterday saying they start Feb 20
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3604177
Only if it is in base .5
Not sure what you mean - I'm a two-time founder currently. Or do you mean going through the YC-style demo day pitching?
You're wrong and should stop hating people you're ignorant of.

I'll give brief examples in hopes you, recognizing you really were wrong about some basic facts, will either learn about the subject or stop making nasty, ignorant accusations in the future.

Ayn Rand did not have a policy of "never accept handouts", said so, and, for example, signed up for medicaid.

Ayn Rand's argument I cited does not consist of denying there are public goods. Whatever her position on public goods, if you read the chapter, public goods are simply not what she talks about, and your comments do not address the argument she did make.

Ayn Rand rejected and harshly criticized libertarianism. Calling her a libertarian is ignorant.
I just graduated from university and have been relishing in the sudden freetime. I can easily spend 8-10 hours per day just consuming and practicing new technology, or just reading unrelated literature that I had little time for. I've been more active in my sideprojects than ever before in my life.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the wherewithal that unversity might not be for me until I was 51% done with my degree. Sometimes I fantasize about taking the past four years of debt and expenses, going back in time, and using all that money to live in Bangkok for a fraction of the rent and work on my own craft/projects for a few years.
>I have a very conservative financial point of view in that if I got fired tomorrow I would want to be fine for the next year without working.

Having enough money for just 1 year isn't conservative.
Rand doesn't recognize a legitimate interest in public goods,...

This is simply false. In Atlas Shrugged, she explicitly acknowledges that providing public goods is a legitimate function of government, and taxation is legitimate insofar as at it used to pay for public goods. If I remember correctly (it's been a long time), it was Hank Reardon who states this point.

I believe a (fair) judge was also allowed into Galt's Gulch, though I might be misremembering this point. As I said, it's been a long time since I read the book.
Santa Monica (near where I live) recently re-opened its public library. A lot of shelf space was sacrificed for meeting rooms. They're basically white board equipped conference rooms with tables and chairs. You walk through there, and see all sorts of groups of people meeting in those rooms, talking animatedly. It's kind of fun to imagine what they're meeting about, I've seen evidence of startups, community groups, etc. based on what's on the board. The rooms are pretty sound-proofed, so you don't hear them as you're perusing the books. There's also quiet study rooms where you can do your business if you want to be absolutely quiet. A lot of space was devoted to a cafe area, which is nice for doing coffee-shop-style laptop work (except they won't kick you out).

Santa Monica is the position of being an economically well-off city (and thus able to afford such a lavish library) with a significant homeless/poor population, which is very well represented in the library. For areas in the midst of complete economic blight, I doubt there's as many niceties opening up--which is sad.

As is the point of the article, in the midst of all this Information Age online-this and online-that, there's a sad lack of civic-mindedness. How does the community as a whole uplift the people within it who are not doing as well? I doubt most of the higher-end property-tax payers in Santa Monica actually go to the library--and it is clearly servicing the people paying the least (or nothing) for it. Sadly, most of the rhetoric I see on the public policy level is, "I was in line at Albertson's and saw someone buying a steak with their food stamps!!! And a bottle of wine! How dare they? You should only be able to buy lima beans and tepid water with food stamps."
Surely as argued above, contagious disease prevention would qualify as a public good — it is certainly something that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Why do you agree with government provision in this case but not in the case of, say, free education for all?

That article doesn't seem to give much sway to the issue of transaction costs in letting people organise to provide a public good, which is really central to the issue..
Osfoora for Mac: A Comprehensive Review
Doubt all you want, but we shouldn't give up and declare it impossible without actually trying.
Hunters shoot down drone
Good to know, I'm starting a math degree with them too. Would you mind getting in touch?
If someone new did come in, this is precisely what they should be keeping an eye on. I hope they fix it.
Have you looked at the Haskell Ix class?
http://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/ix.html

It generalizes the choice of 0 or 1 to an arbitrary starting index. So when you create an array you specify
not just where it ends but also where it begins. This lets you do neat things (consider a filter kernel with range [-s,+s]^n instead of [1,2s]^n) and the extra complexity it adds can be hidden when not needed using for-statements or higher order functions.

Nobody uses it because the implementation is not very efficient and Haskellers have a chip on their shoulder about performance. It subtracts the origin and computes strides on every index, but you could easily avoid this by storing the subtracted base pointer and strides with the array. Of course when you go to implement it you'll see light on 0-based indexing :)
Weekly builds would be fine if the nightlies never broke. But nightlies often do break. So you end up using yesterdays or the day before. But going in back in time with weeklies pushes you back much quicker.
Thanks, I think I'll try to negotiate a little (not too much I really want this position, I don't want them to think I'm too greedy!) and see what happens.
Agreed! And there are lots of jumping off places in that list (e*vax is Evan Mast, half of Ratatat, Geotic is Will Wiesenfeld, best known for Baths, etc).

I just want to dump a handful of lesser-known artists to get people started...
I think this is actually one of the contradictions in Rand, and I'm not the first person to think so: http://www.isil.org/ayn-rand/childs-open-letter.html
It's also worth remembering that fires spread. If the house two doors down is on fire you better hope they and the house next door have insurance (and remembered to pay the bill this month).
The neighborhood watch can already commit citizens arrests in certain circumstances.

Private detectives provide investigative materials that are used in civil courts.

It's already happened.

---

Now libertarian thoguht doesn't say just because you can replace something by a voluntary institution then you should.

However, you should think about the scenario.

The alternative, more mainstream viewpoint, is that the government should provide for certain goods because it is assumed that the private sector won't or shouldn't do it. There's no reasoning behind it, its just taken as a given.
Is it reusable? Can the protein pores be cleaned and reused?

Even if it's single-use, that cost per bp isn't terrible considering the capital costs of 454 and Illumina machines.
Yes, the logical conclusion of libertarian thought is anarchy (in the sense of no government at all, not communism or syndicalism). Some people might think that is a horrible state of affairs. But, no taxes, right? And without pesky immigration and border control, you can just move if you don't like the way the people's justice system is treating you.
I honestly wonder how are going to received this new brand logo in some Muslim countries.

I'm talking about those who change the Red Cross for the Red Crescent or buy Barcelona soccer team t-shirts with the Sant Jordi (St George's)Cross deleted in their logos.

Even more, that article points out "Though Microsoft is showing off the logo in blue, in Windows 8 it will change color to match the user's preference." so a user can end with a flag with an Scandinavian cross or a St George's one.
Mega doses of many drugs do not cause life destroying brain damage. You can go into a month long alcoholic, pot or even cocaine binge and wake up fine a week later. There is clearly something different, and the widespread impression that some newer drugs like Salvia and ecstasy are safe is dangerous. These drugs really can fuck your mind - that's the warning.
My old university library had private rooms that you could use to get away from the crowds. They were sound proofed, but had a giant glass wall that faced towards the rest of the people. You couldn't turn tricks there unless every onlooker was in approval.
A great example of your network being just as valuable as your product.
Can you name the ISP?
"Chrome is light weight, unbloated"

Chrome might be fast, chrome might be clean, but with its one process per tab model it will never be light weight.
How long does building 1 ROM take on decent hardware? Are we talking minutes, or closer to hours?
What I took away the most from this article is taking things outside of your realm and applying it... Goes hand-in-hand with “Good artists copy, Great artists steal”
On the plus side, I don't think there are many hardline Randians. In technology, I would guess that libertarianism boils down to some mixture of: 1) being really annoyed about civil-liberties, EFF-type issues; 2) being moderately annoyed about regulations seen as unnecessary; and 3) being mildly-to-moderately annoyed about taxes.

Varies by person, but I think if you took a vote even restricted to people in Silicon Valley who actively called themselves "libertarian-leaning", over whether libraries should get some funding, the answer would probably still be "yes". Not too many people are actively against libraries; I think they get cut more because, unfortunately, their constituency isn't as powerful as other things that might be cut instead.
They've reached their goal:

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/weve-reached-our-goal
I was a fanatical Randroid myself in my younger years, and while she may not have gone as far as "never accept handouts", she did go as far as "never expect handouts", and in Rand's system there is explicitly no right or expectation to anything unearned.

Rand's opposition to "libertarians" was purely a personal dislike of the people in Rand's time who called themselves libertarians. Most sensible definitions of the word "libertarian", ranging anywhere from "an advocate for limited government" to "an advocate of the non-aggression principle" easily entail Rand's philosophy.

Finally, while I think Ayn Rand was irrational or just plain wrong in many aspects of her philosophy and in her personal and political dealings, and while I think her philosophy has frankly horrific consequences, I don't hate the woman. I actually have a degree of fondness for her, and her role in my intellectual development.
Not necessarily. You just store a pointer to the type info inline with the data (like C++'s vtables). You can have unboxed "value-types" (const structs, essentially) in dynamic languages. In fact, you could even differentiate between a "boxed" ref type and a value type at runtime, because refs don't need all 64 bits of the pointer. So a ref is a 64 bit pointer with the first bit set to, say, 0, and a value (struct) type always begins with a 64 bit pointer to it's type information, only it's tagged with MSB of 1. Since you can't extend concrete types, you can easily store value types inline in an array, and just have the type-info pointer (which must be the same for all elements, b/c there is no inheritance) at the beginning of the array. And if your structs are aligned OK, you could easily pass them to C by skipping the type-info pointer both in the single value case and in the array case.
But the poor might, gasp, enjoy their $100 a month cable. The horror, poor people enjoying something in their otherwise deprived and miserable life.
This appears to be the relevant bug: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5654
Just want to say I support your willingness to work and improve yourself. On the part of "a year's worth of weekend projects" might I suggest going for quality rather than quantity.

Back when I had a developer position, when it came time for hiring, my boss would hand-select his "top picks" from the resume pool and ask us (the developers) to give a general audit of their work.

For me, looking through all the apps, there was never anything robust. The codebases proved nothing more to me than the candidates ability to follow a ruby on rails "setting up a todo list" tutorial.

I got accused of being overly harsh but I think you need top standards when hiring.

Anyway the point is its very rare that a candidate will have production quality apps running in the wild. And its even more rare that those apps have any more substance than you'd get following a paint-by-numbers rails tutorial.

Don't be one of those guys.

Best of luck!
Apps and Security: We Need a Free Browser, Not Just an Open Source Browser
You mean periods of time where you earn little to no money, and learn new skills constantly? That's a startup.
Is there no possible benefit for me that you might have learned something, or that perhaps you might now be able to tell me something I didn't know before?

You are moving the goalposts. I asserted there is no "massive positive externality", not that there is no possible external externality.

I do concede that maybe people who spend time in the library are more interesting conversationalists. I just don't consider this benefit to be "massive". Do you?
There's an easy fix:

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#Copying_and_past...