skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Long Now Foundation does this at their monthly lecture series:

http://longnow.org/seminars/

Everybody gets a question card as they walk in. At any point you can fill it out and pass it down for collection by volunteers. Somebody sorts them and hands them over to the moderator (usually Stewart Brand) who, at the end of the talk, sits down for a Q&A with the speaker.

It works really well. The moderator asks a mix of audience questions and follow-ups, plus asks a few questions of his own.

I strongly recommend the series. In person if you're in SF, and otherwise via podcast.
Russia Ready to Deal with the US Missile Shield Plans in Military-Technical Ways
It was more fun thinking of three-letter "I" words.
Skin cancer begs to differ with your analysis.
I'm surprised at the lack of discussion around the correlation between the decline of the hat and conformity and formality of appearance in general.

Prior to the 1950s, most men dressed in a uniform fashion. Your appearance might vary depending on your class, but within social classes, one man looked pretty much the same as the next. A neatly trimmed haircut and a suit were standard everyday wear, and a hat to go with it.

After WWII, the 1950s saw the invention of the teenager. Youth culture was more prominent than ever before, thanks to many factors, both social and technological. As those teenagers entered the workforce, they were filled with new ideas about individuality and style. Along with the Baby Boomers ideas about style also came changing ideas about hats.

The change didn't come overnight, of course, but by the time JFK became president in 1961, you could see a definite trend away from hats and suits and every man's hair cut well above the collar. It would take another decade or more for hats to really fade out, more or less along with the decline of suits in general.

Take a look at this film from 1967, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJgaaAfhR5I

Watch for the crowd scenes in Manhattan at the beginning. You'll see a lot of hats, just not as many as you would have seen on the street ten years earlier, but far more than you'd see in a crowd scene from the same area in 1977.

There was no single cause for the decline in men's hats, and it didn't happen all at once. Stories like "it was Ike with the interstates" are appealing and make good cocktail party conversation (although I suppose the cocktail party died along with the hat, now that I think of it), but reality is usually not that discreet and simple.
Hawkins' reasoning struck me as very misguided. I'm not an expert in the field and I'm not up to speed on what Numenta's current form is, but his concept of creating half an intelligence has always offended my sensibilities.

I wanted to say something useful here but I don't know enough about what Numenta's actually doing. I know much of what is not being done, and it basically amounts to willful ignorance in my opinion.

Edit: let me revise this, since I'm being voted down with prejudice anyway. Hawkins has stated very clearly that the only valuable part of the brain to ML/AI research is the neocortex. He's plainly wrong, it should be easy enough to understand this is the final touch on the evolution of our brains—the least important in a survival sense. More directly, without a motivating force there is no opportunity for an intelligent system.

My gut reaction is that the whole thing is a fraud, but I have up to now refrained from using such terms because I'd rather not argue from a position of ignorance (there are things I don't know about Numenta.) On the other hand, it's obvious this subject brings about the ignorant, so I'd like to take the opportunity to address these people: you are deluding yourselves, just because you want to believe something doesn't make it true. (That goes double for you Jeff.)

Have a nice day.
I wonder what are the odds that the OP has benchmarked both f * f * f * f * f and pow(f, 5) and found the former to be faster in his application?
Gov.uk's Design Principles
I kind of like this idea.

It has a nice tactile benefit too, in that the coin denominations increase in size as they increase in value. I always found it a bit odd that dimes are smaller than nickels.
Reverse engineering a drug is simple for a couple reasons. First, the compound is clearly described in the patent. Second, chemical analysis of so-called "small molecule" compounds is a basic skill every chemistry undergrad learns.

The most difficult part is probably designing the production synthesis process but even that is routine for people who do that kind of thing (chemical engineers).
A couple years ago some friends that I considered reasonably polite and well raised were shocked that you men aren't supposed to wear hats indoors.

I thought they were kidding. They swore they'd never heard that, and we're talking about guys in their 40s.
Where do you live that is neither sunny nor cold?
I agree, I think denormalizatuon is one of those things you do after trying to rewrite the query. After all, if you can get the optimiser to choose a different access plan that's quicker by rewriting the query to be more efficient, then you're better off overall. There's costs to denormalization too... Not to mention you need to ensure that your application code writes correctly.
I didn't think about it actually, but it sounds a good
idea.
What would you consider BIG? Most "liked"?
Interviewing is a perennial topic because it doesn't make much sense.

Case in point - over the past week I've interviewed for four positions. Three gave me offers within a day, with very little effort on my part. On the other hand, one told me that I had little idea of what I was doing and told me to study up and apply again next year. And, that was after wasting my time with 3.5 hours of interviews. Of the offers I received, two were well over 120k plus great bonus. The other came in under 90k but told me that I could work anywhere in the world, whenever I wanted, as long as I got my work done.

Over that same time, I flat out rejected three recruiters from large engineering companies because their recruitment processes would have cost me $700-1500 just in opportunity costs. And, they weren't even willing to give me the info I needed to help me determine my chance of success or even my expected pay.

Everyone these days seems to believe that their company is so important that they deserve or need a team of top 1000 engineers. When in fact a top 20-percent team who bonds well together would likely be sufficient.

The topic of interviewing is fascinating because there seems to be very little science behind it. Who knows what works?
There's a still a certain level of familiarity with the subject matter required to do a job. If the role can be defined as an "SQL job" (say something in data warehousing or reporting) - not knowing what types of joins are available could lead to terrible solutions.

I would agree with you if the interview question was more specific, say about Oracle window functions for example.

An SQL developer not familiar with full joins would be similar to a Java developer who is not familiar with interfaces, or a Javascript developer who has never heard of closures. It's a significant part of the language, not a piece of arcane reference.
Our success is predicated on hats being not popular, though.
Less frequent bathing -> greasier hair -> hat serves as vanity shield from greasy hair.

It's not the worst theory I've ever heard.
There was once a young apprentice named Julius. He was a painter in some far away land.

His master Alavis gave him a set of basic brushes. "Go and paint the most beautiful flower that you can find." - he said, while pointing towards the door.

Julius took the brushes and walked out. He decided that the most beautiful flower would be found in the forrest. And he was right.

For hours, Julius painted and painted. He stroked the brushes from side to side. Sometimes angry, and others with patience.

Nightfall came and Julius was exhausted. The painting was not finished.
He walked back to his master and slammed open the door.

"You have given me bad brushes. I have not been able to paint anything with them" -said Julius with an angry tone.

"Those brushes are the same ones I used to paint my most coveted paintings. They are very good." -said Alavis with the kind of tone that only a wise man can have.

"Tools do not matter. It is what you do with them, Julius. Go back tomorrow and the day after. Keep returning until you paint something that makes the flower justice." -said Alavis.

"But you have only taught me the basics" - said Julius.

"Yes. It is now up to you to learn how to use them properly. Only by painting every day will you improve." -said Alavis.

"But I should only paint that one flower?" -asked Julius.

"Flowers have short lifespans. When that one says goodbye find another." -answered Alavis.

And so, Julius went on to paint many beautiful flowers. Each more elegant than the last. He never quit.

The end.
Maybe you shouldn't call yourself "dev ops" if you don't want to focus on this type of thing?
It seems possible this guy just has an unusually good memory and regards anyone who doesn't also have a good memory as stupid and "not a good programmer".
I agree. Therefore, I think I'll add some snapshots or something like that. sign-up and try it once it'll release.
At the beach it is n-1 top and bottom.
I guess I'm damaged from working in agile projects for too long. But whenever someone starts rambling in a large group I can't help thinking about how many man-hours were just lost.
Hiccupops: A 13-year-old biological hacker's award-winning startup
http://priceonomics.com/search/?q=human+being

tldr: $37
I'll remain skeptical until it is determined how their "cortical algorithms" benchmark compared to, say, Naive Bayes. Good marketing though.
My half-baked theory: it's hair.

Lots of hair and hats don't go - the hat feels wrong, wears wrong. If your hair length fluctuates your hat size changes. A hat that fit you last month no longer fits right.

Keep your hair habitually short, and hat wearing is more practical, and comfortable.
Thats not what I was arguing. It doesn't matter that Google can absorb the cost. I was saying that can Google make more than 10 million dollars off of the data.
Really? You're not going to use the product because of its naming.

I understand possible apprehension at bragging about it and proselytizing, but whatever.

I do think it's hard to sell to non-techies, though.
I'm still leaning towards you all just being a figment of my imagination. I'm not crazy, but being the only being in the universe it's understandable that I would have imaginary friends.
Game to measure doodling skill (different take than Pictionary/DrawSomething)
Name it something more professional like Google or Yahoo or Bing.
to be fair, i think HN is pretty much the only place that the comparison is being made, and most of the support comes from DDG's support for 'hackers' and because a lot of people here really don't like google and microsoft.
There where a few mis-swipes because of the way i was filming/holding the phone, not only that but I have a lot of widgets, which add to the latency of home switching, which you can tell the difference when I'm switching in the app drawer. Also that isn't a low quality youtube video, it was filmed at 1080p. Finally Gigaom is an Apple news site/blog not exactly the place one would go to get unbiased news/reports.
Wow. That was good. Might just have to post this separately now.
"site:" query in Google searches Google index and filters results by domain name, while DDG actually delegates to the actual site and uses the site's search engine, which very rarely is of an acceptable quality.
A designated asshole is nearly mandatory, especially for mixed technical audiences and issues where someone can have an [opinion on the bike shed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_Law_of_Triviality).
Most people can't fill this role because they don't like conflict or have a reputation to protect (real or imaginary) but conferences should always assign a moderator to play the jerk.
"I certainly don’t mind a search engine using my previous search history to help me find better content."

I actually do. This, in fact, is a form of control over the information you get. Since I do not like that, I stick with DDG despite all the inconveniences.

Google should give people a way to opt out of the bubble.
Tools Don't Matter...It's The Way You Use Them That Does
There was once a young apprentice named Julius. He was a painter in some far away land.
His master Alavis gave him a set of basic brushes. "Go and paint the most beautiful flower that you can find." - he said, while pointing towards the door.
Julius took the brushes and walked out. He decided that the most beautiful flower would be found in the forrest. And he was right.
For hours, Julius painted and painted. He stroked the brushes from side to side. Sometimes angry, and others with patience.
Nightfall came and Julius was exhausted. The painting was not finished. He walked back to his master and slammed open the door.
"You have given me bad brushes. I have not been able to paint anything with them" -said Julius with an angry tone.
"Those brushes are the same ones I used to paint my most coveted paintings. They are very good." -said Alavis with the kind of tone that only a wise man can have.
"Tools do not matter. It is what you do with them, Julius. Go back tomorrow and the day after. Keep returning until you paint something that makes the flower justice." -said Alavis.
"But you have only taught me the basics" - said Julius.
"Yes. It is now up to you to learn how to use them properly. Only by painting every day will you improve." -said Alavis.
"But I should only paint that one flower?" -asked Julius.
"Flowers have short lifespans. When that one says goodbye find another." -answered Alavis.
And so, Julius went on to paint many beautiful flowers. Each more elegant than the last. He never quit.
The end.
Google is just misspelled 10^10. I don't see how that is "professional" more than google just built its brand out of thin air.

I can definitely give credit to Google for inventing the word though. So few people try making companies without their names having some second meaning besides "my company".
A few more things to discover:

- If you're not wearing a suit, and you're not Indiana Jones, you shouldn't be wearing a fedora.

- Fedoras never, ever go well with a terrible patchy little goatee.

I went to a tech school, I have stared into the abyss of fedoras and it has changed me.

Also, leather fedoras are the most terrible abomination ever created.
The ironic thing is that if Facebook also forbid irrelevant posts, it would become a vast, empty wasteland.
I was surprised that he found the introductory computer science class at Stanford difficult. If this guy can succeed, how can somebody like me who worked through half of SICP independently at age 16 fail? I don't think I'm exceptionally smart for an HN user, but I was surprised how little intelligence is needed before it stops being the main bottleneck (apparently).
The hacker's manual
fdx - for divine examination
the hacker's manual

1. interspace - forever's demons. it's the place in hell
where no hacker dares enter. except to save the innocent.

2. hell - a place where no heaven exists. there is no
hope for hell. try to avoid this.

3. conniving - a demon's worst nightmare. it's love,
innocence and perpatulude (inside information) rolled into
one.

4. patience - our best friend.

5. interrogation - here's where the friend comes in to talk
to you. be worried, absymal (trusting), and slightly
innoversive (afraid)

6. winners - these people are not your friends.

7. hope - this exists. there is a dream if you can find
it.

8. fuck - hell ya

9. done

postword -
that's it. don't fuck it. don't use it. and don't kill
it.
Which 3-letter word?

It's "ion" I'll ink? Ill imp inn? Ick.
Its ice ire? Ifs/Ins ilk?
The best thing is you can even configure Chrome to do the same thing for local files. My Racket repository is always in ~/code/racket. The "rkg" keyword (for racket-git) is set to file:///home/andy/code/racket/doc/search/index.html?q=%s, which allows me to easily search all of the latest racket Git docs in Chrome in just three letters + Tab.
Presumably the client either does or does not know how to send a proper request so if it is receiving the error message it might as well behave the same way as any other 4xx code.
If you are curious as to why you have been voted down: your position is "why do people care whether your data is in a specific normal form"? The answer, of course, is that if you don't normalise a relational database then you will find all sorts of problems down the track.

Enumerating the normal forms is important as you typically must do one after another. It's not just academic formalism to expound three normal forms. I suspect you don't know much about relational theory, which is why you feel that normalisation is a "mistake".
The same can be said for CoffeeScript (which I despise).
Apple iPhone 5 Spotted
I'm pretty sure this is brilliant. Not 100% sure...but pretty sure.
I've just taken to telling people that "I asked a duck."
April Traffic and Income Report (#2)
The problem is that Google came out and destroyed everyone in terms of search results relevance. Duck Duck Go won't steal the market until it does search better. The average joe that will cause the shift doesn't care if Google is tracing their history to target ads at them, and doesn't realize that information snooping is a slippery slope.
It's simple.

For brute force 'rgrep /internet' google has the scale and the technology to be way ahead of everybody else. But when I already know roughly what I want will exist, I apply duckduckgo.com, because they're less raw processing and more intelligently automated quasi-curation.
i wanted to say digg might be an example, but myspace was such a massive development that i didn't want to draw the comparison. digg's death was certainly quicker.
Who needs old journals? Doesn't the important timeless material end up in books?
Boy was I wrong. Thanks for the clarification, these are great critiques.
I agree with having someone who's already in the role interviewing you. Let the HR and managers interview the programmers last. This way you can filter out a ton of people before they waste everybody's time. One my last interviews the guy who interviewed me was a "change management" director. I thought to myself, "This is going to be a short, easy interview."

After being the industry for a while, I feel the best way to hire someone is still on referral. Developers know good developers and the good ones tend to stick together. They also know what their friends skills are, what they excel at, and what kind of work they would recommend.

Also, in the end, I learned its not what questions they ask, it's not about the stupid quizzes they put you through. Developers have to learn it's about you knowing enough about the company or asking enough tough questions to determine if it's going to be a good fit. Developers should have as much, if not more of a responsibility in vetting the companies they choose to interview with.
Not to mention the assertion that the U.S. government rarely gets health right!
Agreed. I use DDG as my default search engine, because most of the time my searches are for the form "find me the web site for X" where X is a thing in the world. I fall back to Google when DDG doesn't give me the result I need (rare, but it happens) and when I need to learn about a concept. For those amorphous "tell me about X" queries, Google is unmatched.
Maybe, but the data involved in this case is a pretty small smidge in Google's overall data collection and monetization systems.
> ... people seem to give Numenta a very dogmatic approval and anyone who seems to question it on discussion boards gets flamed in a religious manner.

I wonder why that is? Is it that Numenta is doing good nerd-marketing. It appeals well to the technical crowd (not AI experts but to people who love technology / programming ). I think among that crowd (and I am one of them) there is the hope that maybe the AI revolution is finally here. This one approach will take us "over the edge" into some kind of singularity. Over the years there have always been what seemed to be very promising "revolutionary" approaches that always made it seem a machine passing the Turing Test is "just around the corner". Wanting to have this hope and wanting to dream is what keeps these kind of stories going.

I am no AI expert but just judging from what I know and if I had to make a guess I would say this is mostly marketing. It seems to me AI is not a field where an "outsider" comes, gives TED talk, writes a book and now we have a revolution. In a way, to me this smells like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science type situation. Maybe I am just jaded and skeptical and good thing I am not involved in any such research (I would have given up and nothing would have been discovered) so I am glad people are researching and keep working on the problem, I just don't think this is "it" yet.
Hacker's war strategy
hacker's war strategy

1. always kill last
2. don't forget about the inons (bits)
3. deliver the recipe
4. forget about vengence
5. be forward but not regardless (impersonal)
6. always hunt
7. be proptive (figurative)
8. corroraborate (akin to) with the masses
9. perpetrate no one
10. always take the president's side
11. forget about diplomacy
12. work for russia
13. befriend the aborpo (protrients) (killers)
14. work alone or aside
There's elevated risk because the downloadable scripts use `sudo`. I think the concept is great, but asking users to allow `sudo` permissions to a foreign script site unseen is naturally bound to raise suspicisons. That said, I am thrilled that the site is protected by HTTPS, especially the install scripts themselves. You have obviously put a lot of thought into this product, and I see several ways to monetize it. The only problem for me is that I'm currently using a (cheap) webhost with restricted accounts and I cannot use `sudo`, but in the future I'll come back to see how your site performs.
Brain Scan Reads Your Dog's Thoughts
I really have to ask if your point is that because a feature isn't universally useful it's automatically pointless?
If Facebook Could Enter China, Here Are Some Of The Hurdles
Interesting Odesk Job
A pretty balanced review of the two search engines. I have had DuckDuckGo as my main search engine for almost a year now. I still find myself using the google bang (g!) for a significant percentage of searches. However, I don't find typing the extra 3 characters in my search query to be enough of a chore to warrant switching back to Google as default engine. From experience, I usually have a strong premonition when a particular query will be more appropriate for Google to handle, so I don't waste time hitting DuckDuckGo first.
This thing is trash; speed reading involves learning to take in groups of words at once, not reading words one at a time. Perhaps the authors may want to learn about speed reading before attempting to write an app that promotes the skill.
That is not a completely reliable measure of abundance when it comes to human purposes, after all it needs to be economical to extract these resources.

After all metals like lithium and most of the rest of the "alkali metals" and "rare earth metals" are relatively common, this issue is natural processes do not collect and concentrate them, as they are much more reactive and easily dispersed, so significant commercial deposits are rare compared to its crust concentration percentages.

Gold is a metal that naturally concentrates into deposits after aeons of time, as it is heavy and relatively non reactive, so there are many more commercially viable deposits than other metals with significantly higher abundance.