skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On a related note, some years ago I read an academic paper -- alas, it was printed on a dead tree, and I can't find a link to a digital version of it -- which pointed out that the rate at which papers were cited was driven primarily by the rate at which papers were cited. This is not as much of a tautology as it sounds like.

Think about the process of writing a paper: you do some keyword searches for recent articles on related subject. You then look at the bibliographies for those articles, pick out whatever looks relavent to your topic, look at the bibliographies of those articles, etc. What this means is that apart from your initial keyword search, the primary criteria for including an article in your research is: "has it been cited already?". Relevance is merely a secondary filter.

This paper pointed out the effects of this phenomena: the vast majority of published scientific papers are never cited again; a moderate number are cited only a few times, and the remaining few -- having reached a bibliographic critical mass -- are cited thousands of times. The authors of the paper made a strong case that this was not a good reflection of the quality of research. In many cases, the process of reaching bibliographic critical was simply based on the almost random chance of acquiring those first few citations. The authors provided several examples of important scientific ideas which had been lost for decades, arguably because they had not attracted a critical mass of citations in the years immediately after publication.

In other words, humans suck at pagerank.

Anyhow, it occurred to me that this is a problem which could be solved with technology. Imagine an online word processor which -- in a sidebar -- suggests potentially related articles from ArXiv and Google Scholar. This would be based not on crawling bibliographies, but rather on semantic analysis of the adjacent paragraphs.

I think this would create some real benefits. It would remove much of the problems with citation bias, ensuring that important ideas aren't lost, and also that prior research isn't unwittingly duplicated. Wish I had time to implement something like this!
>it seems like this OS is stuck in the 1990s

Sounds like you're saying this solely based on what the GUI looks like. Yes, it's extremely dated and doesn't have all the fancy glitz of modern desktop environments, but the underlying system itself is quite modern.
Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?
I enjoyed switching from FreeBSD to Ubuntu 8.04 some time ago -- the FreeBSD went into the rack and I could do office work on a nice Gnome desktop environment.

Until now.

Gnome is broken and unsupported. Keyboard shortcuts don't work anymore. It's frustratingly slow to work with a mouse. I feel so babied around. There's no workflow anymore. I hate it. I so would love to ask them what kind of grass they're smoking... there's just no love anymore.

So, what's THE Linux distro developers might want to switch to?
Except that in this case they do, and have had numerous discussions about default fonts and wanting to not step on patent issues over things like ClearType (for RGB subpixel rendering).
GeForce GTX 690 Fastest graphics card | Gadget Magazine
Just use the term "string" to refer to utf-8, and the term "data in nonstandard encoding X" to refer to other encodings.

In the article he puts in in terms of std::string, but more generally I think this is what he means.
Thankfully, someone already sells that. http://indigo-xtreme.com/
I just disabled sorting for the moment until I figure it out
Great work and your reward went to a good cause. World needs more of you.
This article is quite interesting.

I thought it was good that the author restricted himself to a description of genius traits, instead of implying that applying these traits would make one a genius. At least, until the summary, where he threw that out the window.

It's important to not engage in some kind of magic thinking here: altering your behavior patterns to match "genius" behavior is self-defeating. When one is dealing with the kind of outlier that a genius represents, wholesale emulation is an insufficient strategy to duplicate their success.
I've heard Linux Mint is a good alternative to Ubuntu not tried it personally though.
XFCE http://digitizor.com/2011/08/04/linus-torvalds-ditches-gnome...
Before Android came out, each vendor had their own OS. Google doesn't care about the OS, they just want a platform that will allow users to consume their services.

In order to convince the manufacturers that they should switch from something they completely controlled to something that another company controlled, they needed to know that it would be cheaper and still allow them to generate a strong brand loyalty.

For example, HTC has the Sense UI which makes their Android phones look and feel a little different. You might think that this is a stupid waste of HTC's time, but in 2 years when you get a new phone, they want you to get an HTC, not an Android.

This is critical in understanding why Google cannot tightly control Android. If the phone manufacturers see that they're losing the ability to differentiate their own brand, they'll look at other options.
One could use the same logic to say the web is becoming deprecated, make an iPhone app or a Facebook page for your info. Basically, BS.
Brazilian here. I am surprised our senators are doing their job.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but this:

> People can today do useful and novel life science work for a few tens of thousands of dollars

makes me wonder if you've ever done bench work or furnished a lab. Sure, you can do a few weeks or months of work for tends of thousands of dollars (which doesn't produce a lot of useful results in that time frame, but can produce some), but that's assuming you have a functioning lab. It often takes $100K just to stock one, which is why most new investigators get special startup money just for that. To produce useful results often takes years at a rate of at least $100K a year. Equipment and reagents (especially enzymes) can be expensive. $300 for a gel box here, $1000 for a pipette there, $5000 for a thermocycler, $2000 for an enzyme, it adds up. And that's not even getting into salaries. Most people don't work alone.

I think it would be incredibly difficult to crowdfound science a la something like Kickstarter, especially with the amount of money currently spent on science (about $50 billion annually in the US alone). But maybe someone on HN will be the person who proves me wrong.
I agree, and an interesting corollary is that as details increase, the apparent AI level decreases. The monsters in Doom (the original) felt more intelligent to me than opponents in modern games.

I guess it's similar to how the vision interpolates in the blind spot -- the brain is really good at making this information up if it's convinced it's being served low-resolution material. The ghosts in Pacman seem convincing because they move around more or less like you do.
In the case of the laser, there may have been some sense that it was important, but at the time there were no immediate applications and it was called "a solution in search of a problem."
Indeed. Google was already "won". Anything more in the mobile space is just a cherry on top.

Even with tablets, Google is far better off with there being two players successful in this space, rather than it being just Apple and irrelevant "also rans" from Samsung, etc. Given the understandable lack of carrier interest in subsidizing tablet marketing, Amazon stepping up to the plate is probably the most cost effective win Google could hoped for.
Tell me, because I'm curious: what do you think will happen if the missiles are fired and hit their target? Will the target somehow vanish into thin air? If not, where do you think the pieces of it will go?

Yes that's a sarcastic tone I'm taking. I live in London and the thought of missiles being deployed around my city frightens me a great deal more than the vague possibility of a terrorist attack.
But which distribution?
Shameless plug, but here is something I'm currently working on: http://www.coursebacon.com/

I really like the "upvote" system you have. Let me know if you want access to all of the URLs on coursebacon (I can send you a copy of everything that's already on there).

Edit: My email is username @ gggmail.com
Meet the Mother Theory
I've sadly decided to unsubscribe from Charlies rss feed today, I used to quite look forward to his posts but it seems like his blog has descended into an echo chamber filled full of dull and pretty predictable diatribes. If that's what he wants to do with his blog then that's his business, but I'm not interested any more.
I am not a terrorist, but if I was and I would get hold of an anti-air missile I probably wouldn't use to shoot people on the ground. There's plenty of airliners over London at any time. The missile seems to have a service ceiling only 5km but it's still fairly big risk. Couple of guys with guns can't shoot down an airliner unless you give them a Starstreak
SloPro: Slow motion on iPhone [Free App]
The '>20 W/mK' claimed by this method, while a lot better than the 5 W/mK of regular TIM, is still a fair way off the 80 W/mK that the article claimed for a soldered solution.
A friend of mine had a course in RPG in his CS curriculum. He tells me it was…not pleasant, but not as bad as it might look.
I just wrapped up some code I've used in similar situations:

https://github.com/rcs/jQuery.relativeSelector

Instead of going all the way to the body, this will find a selector that works given the structure of the page.

For instance, a page like:

<body><div id="firstdiv">Target!</div></body>

you can get "#firstdiv" back.

For something like

<body><div id="#firstClass"><div class="firstClass"><div>Target!</div></div></div></body>

You can get "#firstClass div:eq(0)".
Sure, but certainly they had the same problems in 1959. My point was that CS is a branch of Mathematics.
ASCII and UTF-8 are too US centric. That's why adoption in places like China is so low.

Also, if there's variable length encoding why can't we just do a proper way and improve size for the same computational cost?
Kateray, this is awesome. I'm probably at the same place as you learning how to code and loving every minute of it. I couldn't agree more, everyone should know how to code - at least enough to be dangerous and prototype something up.

Great work!
I could see this as a threat to LEGO..
Adobe never cared about its plugin optimization or security

I don't think that's fair. Adobe released frequent updates for security, and less-frequent but still consistent updates for optimizations/new features.
No, every other GUI is akin to Node.js (single-threaded event-driven), while BeOS is more like Java servlets.
To build on this point, once stock versions of Android are generally available, having a non-stock version of Android would only be an advantage to manufacturers if they were adding something of genuine value to consumers, or to a segment of consumers.

Of course, the carriers will still find it in their interest to shove bloatware onto people.
Xubuntu ?
You must not be familiar with some of the history of Google's management of Android. It is documented beyond argument, including through leaked internal emails, that Google sets Android policies intended to control vendors. This is, for example, the reason for the "delayed open source" strategy.
I could also be that (if true) using the paste could meet their engineering/temperature requirements and using solder to conduct the heat was overkill. In this case, the only ones that would feel the pinch would be those that overclocked the chips.
Ok, let me be the first approving top level comment: This document is correct. The author of this document is smart. You should follow this document.

As jwz said about backups: "Shut up. I know things. You will listen to me. Do it anyway."
Yes, it happens when one reaches the limits of reason. Only one of two (a-rational) things can get you unstuck: an irrational act or love. Unfortunately, unless you are willing to lose it all, you'll probably have to rely on the former.
Considering the average wage is also includes part time work, and lots of non-skilled jobs, AKA student jobs which drag the average down. I should hope a skilled full time worker, would earn significantly more than the average wage considering they have to support a family.

There are tons of dodgy plumbing and electrician scam schools(http://www.plumbing-school.co.uk/), which perpetuate the myth of 50K+ wages. It's in their interest, and it's entirely false. You end with a crappy nvq and no work but they get government grants to train you. I wish people would actually do the research.

You also have to separate wages, and profits when talking about this. Wages are what you can sell your labour for, to other companies relatively risk free. However profits require risk. Most of these high achieving plumbers money comes from the profit his company makes and not via his wages. That's why they always mention their self employed.

What this means, you have to run business and take a lot of risk in order to get that sort of money as a plumber. You could end up bankrupt, and that would not happen via wages. While educated people can obtain a lot of money with relatively little risk via wages. For example the barclay brothers took on enormous risk in order to get where they were. While someone who went to oxbridge and then into a Investment banking graduate scheme doing underwriting took on relatively little risk. They will probably never be at risk of having their home taken away, and being declared bankrupt. However the barclay brothers had to use massive amounts of leverage(Mortgages, Business loans etc) and risk to come from home decorators to owning a business empire.

I also have to mention intelligence is fluid - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15369851. Trying to work out who's smart and who's not is difficult. Achievers may end being terrible, dumb kids may end up being pretty smart over the course of a lifetime.

I know lots of people who went to new universities, who have very good jobs(At my work place). Some of them went onto old universities to complete MSc and MBA degrees and ended up with distinctions. Don't be so small minded, it's like you've been reading right wing tabloid press.
You should add a link to yourself somewhere on the site so people can email you, follow you on Twitter, etc.

Again, great work!
Interesting, this is a task I've considered doing.

I've written a very basic lisp in Python and I'm trying to decide if I like Go by learning some.
You can do that on Github :)

https://github.com/kateray
"but current laws regulating legal organizations prevents the creation of an analogous organization"

Which legal/regulatory aspects prevents orgs like the EFF to be created in Brazil? I know foundations are very cumbersome to start and operate, as it is about everywhere else, but I thought it was pretty easy to start other forms of NGOs down here?

Could you clarify? I'm genuinely interested.
I'd love it if Facebook did this. But Facebook don't allow you to sync your FB friends' contact details onto your phone --- it's actually against their TOS for you to automatically extract your friends' contact details from facebook.com.

Would I use a standalone app that did this? Chicken and egg problem: you've got to make your app useful to me even if none of my friends use it.

If a particular friend also uses your app, can you mark their contact details as being guaranteed-up-to-date?

If a particular friend doesn't use your app, can you remember when I entered their details and keep track of how stale they are? If I text them and the text doesn't get through, can you highlight their number as possibly not working any more?
It might just be me, but I wasn't able to get the consoles working in Opera. I had to use Firefox.

(My apologies if I'm mistaken and it does work. I enable cookies & Flash on a site by site basis, and sometimes that causes problems. I turned them both on, though, and it just stays stuck at "Starting encrypted connection to consoles-1.pythonanywhere.com on port 443".)
I'd be happy with an extension to an existing language, that added a little new syntax. So you give the extended source to the new tool, it verifies type safety, and then strips the new syntax elements and passes it off to the original language's compiler. This can't be that hard, can it?
The Most Charming Pagan (Lucretius)
> "It's not fixed width" But for most text, it is.

What does this mean/prove? I certainly hope you don't intend this to mean "so just pretend in your code that it will always be fixed width". And if that's not what you mean, then I don't know what you gain from that statement.
Tesla Motors is a battery company
Does your community rally around a particular OS?
I spend most of my time programming in Ruby. In the Ruby community, Apple laptops are almost ubiquitous. The result is lots of good OSX tools and support information (a fair amount of which works on linux). Have other communities honed in on a preferred platform? I imagine for Microsoft backed languages Windows wins. What about Java, Python, Scala, Lua, PHP, etc?
The author makes a compelling case for UTF-8 in Asian languages.

I'd love to hear any specific counter-arguments.
Apple responds to NYT: "We're among top payers of U.S. income tax"
http://goto.ucsd.edu/~pmr/papers/liquid-types-pldi08.pdf

Probably should have noted submitted URL is Silverlight video, or large download.
Really nice work. I will add to my favs to see how it grows. I am working in a voting system similar to this, but about books. The way that you handle the "language" on the right sidebar is simple and effective.

I don't get what the "<-- Back to Index " means. Maybe something on the views / links / index.html.haml
Yeah, but

(1) presumably the airspace over London is going to be pretty thoroughly controlled during the Olympics, reducing the risk; and

(2) if terrorists want to shoot down an airliner with a man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) like Starstreak, there's easier ways for them to get their hands on one than by infiltrating one of the most heavily secured areas in the world and wresting one out of the hands of professional soldiers -- MANPADS have proliferated widely, and can be acquired on the black arms market for a few thousand bucks (see http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/asmp/MANPADS.html).
A more in-depth exploration of the topic is in Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

http://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Flow-Psychology-Discovery-I...
Young musicians attract fan funding to avoid reliance on record industry
Well done. A couple of observations though...

RailsCasts: "Early screencasts are free to watch, more recent ones require a $9/month subscription."

Not correct, Ryan still produces weekly free RailsCasts. Advanced topics and refreshed content require a subscription.

"all in the most soothing, wonderful voice to be heard on the Internet"

Steady there! And to my ear, it's a bit nasal (not intended as an insult, just an observation in light of the gushing comment quoted.)
I think not having fear of being "wrong" must be a part of it also.
Ask HN: Generating income solo?
Hi HN, I have the goal of earning ~$40K/annually through 'passive' means (where I don't have to babysit a community/do cust service/etc.) I've done affiliate marketing in the past... but I want to focus on building something more substantial and less predicated on my ability to drop links.

I have a 4 month period where I will be free/secure so I can wait a bit for the return.

I've been going back between market research, keyword research, app research, SaaS research, etc. and I'm just not sure on where I should focus myself. It's overwhelming.

Any guidance would be appreciated!
Florian Mueller at it again. From his Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florian_M%C3%BCller) he has multiple relationships with Microsoft and Oracle: he's largely just a gadfly on Google's behind. Most of what he has to say should be taken with a bag of salt.
> It's completely useless to their organization. Junk data to be deleted later.

At least one person at Google thought it could be potentially useful:

> The report, quoting the engineer’s original proposal, gives a somewhat different impression. The data, the engineer wrote, would “be analyzed offline for use in other initiatives.” Google says this was never done.

I think Google is guilty of arrogance wrt privacy, rather than a fiendish plan to spy on people.
And what might such a target be? As a comment on the article says:

> The real damage comes from the thing you're trying to shoot down; all the missile is going to do is to prevent a lunatic from hitting a stadium, by making it have a near-miss. If that means scores die when a plane hits a tower block, instead of thousands dying when it hits the opening ceremony or 100m final, then it's done it's job.

Now, that doesn't make it any less security theatre, the main component of which is announcing the presence of the missiles loudly, but Stross' article is still pure FUD.
I was just using that book as an example of how complicated the topic was!
Node-zip zip/unzip files on node.js (w/compression)
Thanks, guys! This was actually just a couple-of-weekends project - my main thing is http://scrollkit.com. It's a lot cooler than this.
Cloudflare's DNS editor warns with this when CNAME'ing a bare domain:

Root domain CNAME records are not allowed by the DNS specification.
Older recursors and mail programs may not follow this CNAME.
You may want to change this record to an A record if you plan to
use it as a MX or SRV target.
BBC documentary: fascinating history of electricity
Right, and I said if you could create such a test there wouldn't be objections to it being used. But it is hardly a solved problem! The especial sticking point is actually showing that some general test really correlates with how well you do the specific job.

(Go and read the wikipedia article about the relevent court case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.)
> One of the advantages of UTF-16 is knowing right away it's UTF-16 as opposed to deciding if it's UTF-8/ASCII/other encoding. Sure, for transmission it's a waste of space (still, text for today's computer capabilities is a non issue even if using UTF-32)

First of all, if you don't know the encoding, then you don't know the encoding, and you will need to figure out if it's UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-8859-1, etc. If you happen to know that it's UTF-16, you still need to figure out if it's UTF-16BE or LE.

> "It's not fixed width" But for most text, it is.

This is a dangerous way of thinking. One of the big problems with UTF-16 is that for most text, it is fixed width; so many people make that assumption, and you never notice the problem until someone tries to use an obscure script or an emoji character. This means that bugs can easily be lurking under the surface; while with UTF-8, anything besides straight ASCII will break if you assume fixed width, making it much more obvious.

> Sure, you can do UTF-32 and it may not be a bad idea (today)

UTF-32 isn't really meaningfully fixed width either. Sure, each code point is represented in a fixed number of bytes, but code points are not necessarily the interesting unit you want to index by. A glyph could be composed of several code points. Most of the time, you actually want to deal with text in longer units such as words or tokens, which are going to be variable width anyhow. The actual width of individual code points is only really of interest to low-level text processing libraries, not most applications.
That seems kinda pointless. If somebody is comfortable with "HTML" or "C++", UTF-8 is downright friendly-sounding by comparison.
Is it a tech bubble?
That blog post is just as wrong today as it was a year ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2593403
> Richard Feynman, who many acknowledge to be the last great American genius (his IQ was a merely respectable 122).

I've always wanted a quick, one-line, anecdote as to why IQ is bullshit. I think I just found it.