skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The VC has not only the right to determine how his fund's money is spent, but also the responsibility to do so in order to maximize returns.

That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that societies that tolerate an ethos that maximizes return on financial capital at the cost of burning human capital, are going to end up in evolution's recycle bin, to be replaced by societies that don't. And part of the point of ethics is to find solutions less cruel and drastic than waiting for evolution to solve problems for us.
It's difficult for men to breastfeed the kids, that is one of the problems... And why is it not a female-privilege issue? How many jobs are so great that they are preferable to taking care of your own kids?
Actually that doesn't work that way. In many states sharing the lane is legitimate, and biking no the sidewalk as well.

But that means, you're fine with all bikes claiming the complete lane right? That means you can't pass them at the stop, and you can't pass them as long as the left lane is not 100% free (just like passing a car).

When I do claim the lane when I bike (it happens that I need to, if there's no bike lane and it's a dangerous part of the road), I don't pass cars at the stop. But again, most of the time, I don't, and can't, claim the lane. This means I'd rather be in front of the cars at the stop (= they see me) than next to the cars 3 cars behind the stop (= whoever turn right, won't see me, and since they rarely use the signalization lights, or perform another stop before turning right, it means its horribly dangerous)
On the mammothness of the newborn, maybe whole the cloning idea is created on a wrong basis. We do use a "birth from a similar organisation" technique.

With the correct DNA and correct stem-cells we could replicate a "real clone womb" (Yes I love stem-cells). This kind of "fantasy" could lead us to a closer cloning.
A class action lawsuit over strain relief shows one thing: that lawyers see Apple as a nice juicy target. Smaller companies have made much worse connectors, but nobody cares, because there is no profit to be had from suing them.
I suspect they will keep this up next week. They will also work out a deal with facebook for facebook to buyback lots of the shares that Morgan Stanley is buying. That way the stock price can go up while the market cap is going down.
I think you misspelled "pedantic".
So you're just going to disregard the entire point of the article in your comment?
Why? Just buy the $1.99 gray-market gadget off the boat from Shenzhen.
"In Europe" / "in San Francisco" - that's a huge difference there - like between ~50 independent countries and one big city. It's a completely different experience between (for example) Netherlands and Ukraine. In Amsterdam you'd probably feel safer on a bike than in a car, while in Lviv you'd probably feel safer far away from the streets in general (unless there were some radical changes in the last 6 years).

Then again, I think the situation is slowly improving everywhere. At least that's what I'm seeing for some time. Higher number of cyclists is definitely helping in making them a norm rather than an exception.
Headline is completely misleading and unfair to the VC in question.

From his post where he voiced his thoughts on the topic- "Ultimately I decided to invest, namely because I gave a commitment to invest and decided that pregnancy shouldn’t impact my decision."

http://www.businessinsider.com/women-founders-2011-4
I don't think a laptop with a dead battery could be considered rare.
Ask HN: Gastronomy/Culinary History books
I am really interested in Food anthropology and the history of the food that we eat.

Do you guys have any good recommendations on this topic?

Thanks.
People should approach this with a grain of salt. The leading Korean scientist, Hwang Woo-suk, was discovered to have fabricated two articles he published in Science in 2004 & 2005[0]. We shouldn't completely disregard the work, but should definitely be more cautious when judging its veracity.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo_Suk
Most people would open a service request to get that thing pulled out rather than leave 120V exposed for whomever happens to be near that outlet next.

(I would have just pulled it out with insulated pliers, though.)
A right to discriminate? What you're advocating is a right to discriminate based on your unfounded feelings that a pregnant woman can't handle it.

You're basically a sexist but you don't want to admit it. That's what all this boils down to. Let's tell the women they're not good enough because popping out a sprog makes their brains go mushy.

Sounds harsh? Take a good look in the mirror.

What is your real problem with the women founder?

EDIT: I get angry at this shit as my sister, one of the most driven and talented people I know is at nearing this stage in life and I would bet on her a thousand times over other people. She's an amazing woman and I would happily bet on her founding a successful company in a heartbeat regardless of whether she was having a child or not.
Apple's goal is to make sleek, elegant, easy to use products. Repairability hurts every one of those goals. Products that are easy to repair have to make concessions to allow users to access the innards with ordinary tools. Apple won't stand for those concessions.
I've seen at least 2 iPhones breaking beyond repair just by falling.

I doubt this. Nothing in the iPhone is beyond repair.
Remember back around Antenna-gate, when Gruber was making the point that Apple wouldn't just give away iPhone bumpers cause Apple wanted that "bumper money?" His Argument was that even though each is small money, they can add up to a significant sum, and Apple doesn't ever leave any money on the table. As Apple did with the bumpers, I wouldn't be surprised if Gruber didn't want to leave any of that "t-shirt money" or "app money" on the table. He has always seen himself as the mini-Jobs.
>As long as P(big success | funds preggo) < P(big success | funds slightly less awesome non-preggo), it is the VC's responsibility to choose the non-pregnant person. He would be throwing away his client's money otherwise.

With that line of logic, where do you stop? Is there any variable on which its not OK to condition?

I actually think its fair enough to say that there are certain factors that we all agree, as a society, that we should ignore, when it comes to decisions like this.

Sometimes we might codify that agreement to ignore into law, like the hiring law you mention which prevents discrimination on certain grounds.
But the reason it has been so codified, is because we agree that type of discrimination is globally bad, right?

Would you really argue that VCs are supposed to absolutely anything to maximise returns, within the law, even something we all know is bad?
Yeah, you're probably right -- I went and had a look back at 2007. Xenophon won, but a Green also picked up a Senate seat (in SA). The Greens polled just 6.5% and picked it up off preferences.

I was figuring his vote would come at the expense of the Greens, but even in that case the major parties were marginal enough on the 6th seat to get the Greens in.

(Plus the DLP won a seat in Vic in 2010, off just 2.3% of the primary).

I expect the next election will be quite a shake-up, especially in the Senate - certainly can't see the major parties gaining. So, you're probably right that preferences will dominate the 5/6th seats.
This is in part because cops (indeed, nearly everyone) behave better when their actions are recorded.
Honda Jazz Hybrid Production Base in Thailand
I posted this link because I felt it merited discussion and response.

I should disclose that I'm writing this as a young (by most estimations) caucasian male, with an above-average earning power (compared to non-engineers of my demographic), and a relatively comfortable childhood background.

I’m surprised the author didn't mention the Dunning-Kruger effect (i.e. ignorance begets confidence). Growing up, I knew this by the proverb ‘the empty can rattles the most’. Looking back on my own short career, I certainly recognise that I was at my most arrogant when I was at my most naïve. If I'd known then what I now know I didn't know then—and mostly don't know now—I would have been a less outspoken individual. Perhaps most notably, I wouldn't have bullshat my way into certain situations which caused me to grow: had I known the limits of my own knowledge, I would have remained firmly within them.

There's a great verb in British English: to blag something. To blag something is to obtain it by deception or rhetoric, a kind of ‘sleight of mouth’. The darker side of the same coin is the con (or confidence trick), but blagging implies a less grave offense. I am where I am right now because I blagged my way into circles, positions, and jobs I had no proper right to be—I had no experience, little knowledge, and lacked respect for my elders (figuratively and literally speaking). But when you're thrown in at the deep end, your only choice is to swim.

I’d like to posit a hypothesis. It’s well-known that men are more abundant in the field of Computing than women, and maybe it’s precisely because women are more humble and rational—they aren’t deceived by the same arrogance that testosterone induces. Anecdotally, I’ve known more women than men refrain from applying for a job because they believe it’s beyond their current ability. But at the end of the day, none of us really know what we’re doing. The field of Computer Science is still going through puberty, and we’re wandering around in the dark finding out these amazing and heretofore unknown truths about these fabulous little machines.

I’m reminded of David Letterman's interview with Grace Hopper, when he asked her about her work on the Harvard Mark I. He said: “How did you know so much about computers?” and she replied “I didn’t, it was the first one.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0g5_NgRao)
A short, vastly incomplete history of Unix
I like that explanation, coming from the data side. I wonder if the article's author is working with data or a model for the data. There is a general rule that, especially for high-dimensional models, only a few parameters are important because eigenvalues of the sensitivity matrix fall off quickly (with logarithmic density). That means the data is well-separate, as you described, and only a few parameters control whether the model fits, while the rest are relatively unimportant. It's a different kind of pointy.
I;m sure many of thought of this, nice to see someone do it.

My idea for backup would use something like DIBS ( http://www.mit.edu/~emin/source_code/dibs/) but instead of peers, use many free salami slice sizes of storage from cloud/hosting platforms.
It is if you need to consider so many objects during a request that the memcached request and deserialization becomes too much time per API operation (requests like visible object ids in an unbounded folder with acls/permissions applied per item)
I would love to see a wikileaks alternative leaking assange classified documents.
It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman: starting up a company when you know you have twins on the way is a really ballsy move. Like, ballsy to the point that I personally believe it shows a lack of dedication to the company, the babies, or perhaps a bit of both.

A startup company is basically a newborn baby. It requires continuous attention and care, cleaning and feeding. Except, unlike in the case of twins, it can't be given a bath and fed alongside another baby. This baby is an attention-hungry baby with special needs and demands, which requires focused, dedicated care to thrive and grow.

And to reverse the analogy, caring for children is in itself a full-time job, just as hard if not harder than starting a company. When shit hits the fan and you get 3 hours of sleep every night for a week, which of your dependents becomes your priority? Are you going to care for your children or get hard work done?

I'm not arguing that it can't be done, but I also think there's little argument that taking on both significantlty drives down the odds of success, to the point that it's questionable why any VC would give them their money.

I say either found your company before you have kids and wait until the company is no longer a newborn, or have your kids before you found and wait until the kids are no longer newborns.
I've stopped updating it. It's at least a year stale.
Oops. I think I meant remembering reading the NYTimes piece in 2003. 9 years later and I'm still waiting for my thinking cap. Maybe Snyder needs VC funding?
Microsoft Research is something of an outlier, but I think it deserves mention here.
Fantastic news. I wonder how much of this is a result of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's war on malaria?
Because missing launch windows hasn't de riegeur since spaceflight's beginnings?
Shorter WSJ: The rich demonstrate that life is easy, so why is everyone else complaining?
$20.00/hour is not at all unheard of for an experienced checker at a major chain (it varies a lot depending on the area of the country, though).
C++ String Toolkit Library
The C++ String Toolkit Library (StrTk) consists of robust, optimized and portable string processing algorithms for the C++ language. StrTk is designed to be easy to use and integrate within existing code bases. Furthermore the library has a rich set of features that makes light work of any kind of string processing task.

A simple tutorial describing some of the uses of StrTk can be found: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/Tokenizer.aspx
I don't see any compelling reason why the choices of an entrepreneur are a variable that the VC should ignore. Could you explain why you believe this?

(As a side note, I also see no reason why shareholders of corporations should have any special obligation to subsidize parents. But that's a separate debate.)
People are gossip machines. We innately talk to each other, about each other. It's one thing that has led us to develop culture. Or it might be because of culture. Anyway, people spread good news: Good harvest!, job promotion, new baby!
But we also spread rumors, true or not. When you combine small village communication, then ramp that up to mega cities, it can seem people only pay attention to the bad news.

Also consider that this entire statement is false. We hear good news all the time. I generally consider much on HN to be good, like this story. I see good things even on regular cable news. We have to be careful to see if we set up our own filters unintentionally. If all you think you hear is doom, go out of your way to find the good. You might. E surprised what you find.
http://placekitten.com/
How is human capital burned by funding the person most likely to succeed?
I have browsed through the The Harvard Classics [1], but totally missed Cicero. I read XII. Lives, by Plutarch, but IX. On Friendship, On Old Age & Letters, by Cicero, must have seemed like a bunch of platitudes at that time. Now I know better and will read it.

[1] http://www.bartleby.com/hc/
Here's hoping. Under the Westminster parliamentary system you can say anything in parliament and not be held liable. Everything said is then transcribed and made available as a public record. It's the ideal soapbox.
The C++ String Toolkit Library (StrTk) consists of robust, optimized and portable string processing algorithms for the C++ language. StrTk is designed to be easy to use and integrate within existing code bases. Furthermore the library has a rich set of features that makes light work of any kind of string processing task.

A simple tutorial describing some of the uses of StrTk can be found: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/Tokenizer.aspx
Pricing is never only about quality. Suppose symsung produces an equally well made charger, it won't be able to sell well with same price. There is a trust in the brand that can not be measured by figures. That is not fanboism. Trust could bring in buyers who like pay higher prices to stay out of trouble. So even i know it is probably economically wise to buy a TP over MBA, i would still turn to the latter 100% of the time, because I don't want trouble. Trust is also very real. I have used quite a lot of laptops from various vendors over the years, and apple just stands out.

I am not saying only Apple could do this. Amazon has even bigger trust from me. I would still buy books from them even it is a little more expensive just because I have very few trouble over the years with them.
Thanking you for showing me the 'dis' module. Dis is going to be fun to play with!!
apple $20, 0.5Amp

samsung $8, 0.5Amp

HP, $15, 2Amp, plus interchangeable plugs for several countries in 1.4x size of apple's

Google, no option to buy extra power cords for nexus one, but who would? it's 1Amp and cheap components. with the cable permanently attached.
>> But people are abusing PHP to write large scale libraries and frameworks. Many riddled with security issues, and unpredictable performance bottlenecks, because the language wasn't designed to actually allow you to write well defined algorithms.
>I mostly agree with your post but you've gone way over the top on this statement.

You are right, i went over board.

>Frameworks written in PHP are no more likely to have security issues or unpredictable performance bottlenecks than any other language

I suspect there is a measurable relationship between average quality of ecosystem and how easily or difficult a language is to use. But that would not be a fair argument: a language being easy should be a good thing.

>Certainly nothing prevents you from writing well defined algorithms.

Well, not being able to guess the order of complexity of many of the core operations on datastructures, does make it a lot harder. It's generally undefined, at least by the language spec. And when the internal implementations of core datastructures change between versions, you can't even reliably implement the typical collection of sorting algorithms.

The reasons this isn't a problem at the smale scale, is that the most common operations are actually all build-in with good defaults.

>But ultimately there isn't much harm in it; it's just an extreme example of typelessness.

PHP is not typeless, just messy with types. Depending on the type, you can use different syntactical operators and you are unable to implement those same contructs for other types. Also dependent on the type, is the difference between value- and object- semantics. However, this logic is not consist with the actual algorithmic complexity. Strings are copy-on-write, for example. So you are technically passing a reference (from a performance POV), but acting like it's not.

PHP is a dynamically typed language, with lots of run-time type errors, when things don't match. We even have all kinds of functions to determine types. It's definately not typeless.
reject.ly and rejectly.com are available
What would you build? I am fighting my domain buying habit by putting this here instead of pulling out my credit card
the problem i ever had with the short outlet plugs in the US is the cable falling on it's own.

can't fathom it being stuck there in any circumstance.
The underwriter has no legal obligation or "duty" to guarantee or support the original issue price. Definitely, they have an economic and business incentive to ensure the price stays above the issue price. Failure to keep the IPO above this price could lead to a loss of credibility with their large institutional buyers and also with the issuer and their participation in future IPOs.
Twitter to launch weekly news recommendation digest
samsumgs is already as well made. have you read the fine article?
I've talked to companies doing interesting work in machine learning, bioinformatics, robotics and even type systems (I haven't seen any interesting work with type systems at big companies at all).

What start-up is doing work in type theory?
The commenter you responded to did provide a case for Apple trying to fix that though, didn't he? I'd expect it to be rolled out across the next refresh of the product line. Might be naive?
they were designing for 1yr of life. people complained, they changed the design to last 2yr of use.
The section on Legacy [1] is especially illuminating. Looks like Cicero is of the big guys referred to when they talk about the wisdom of the ancients.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero#Legacy
Which ecosystems actually get the love, impacts us all. That's why people are always so invested when it comes to topics like this: they are literally, financially, emotionally, technically invested in their choice. And if some other solutions gets more popular, their investement will loose it's worth.

>You may not like it. If so *you can just stop using it".

Or, you know, start a conversation, and maybe see, if I can convice other people, to also not like it. (or to have them convince me otherwise).

>"I don't like latin, so why on earth people still writing books on it? Why even they teach it at schools? Why do doctors still practice and learn it somehow? Just let it go die?"

Great example! I fully agree, that it in the long term it would be beneficial to just drop latin all together and perhaps standarize on a more accessible language. It would be cheaper for everyone. More funds to spend on actual usefull research, more time to actually spend studying the relevant and challenging aspects of that field.

It matters what an industry standarizes on. It matters what technologies are popular and which are not. And yes, we vote with our actual choice. We vote with our wallet. But it's not a bad idea to have these kind of discussion as a community.

It's too easy to just dismiss people as 'go use something else if you dont like it', because our field is very much a non-zero sum game.
pinboard.in does this too, in addition to its regular bookmarking duties.
Interesting tidbit: Modern long distance underseas power transmission is DC again (because it's more efficient, among other reasons).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
I broke a few DC plugs by tripping on the cable. Or stretching it to reach a power outlet and picking up the laptop still plugged in. Or getting tangled in the cable on the couch and such. These things break when you're not carful with them.

In fact I don't remember having a laptop charger break for any other reason. It's always the DC plug or cable.
isn't items more efficient than iteritems when you are going to go over all the items for sure on a short list?
Redundant Array of Independent Networked Storage or RAINS would sound so much cooler considering it is "cloud" storage.
Most of the article seemed to be pointing out that she could do it, regardless of what the VC thinks.

Or did you mean the "nobody questions an expecting father's ability to work" part?

I just don't think it's true. If I were going to invest money in a small business run by a man expecting a child, I'd question whether he'd be able to handle both running a business and having a baby.

Unless I missed it, there's actually no evidence showing the VC from the article wouldn't do the same thing.
I am but an egg, but isn't this the same but shorter?

def f(L=None):
L = L or []
His principles have changed several times as I have outlined. His core investment philosophy has not.

- Stick to what you know.
- Price is what you pay; value is what you get.
- Bet big.
- Focus, do not diversify.
I've gone through my fair share of Apple HW. I'll agree it's not without its failures. Broke a Powerbook G4 logic board, a MBP screen and one old iPod (abt 30% of what I've owned of Apple HW). What I've found which makes me happy though is they've always fixed it without charge and with no AppleCare, at least so far. I'll admit to only owning my own custom built PCs (and Nokia & SE phones) before that, at least for 10 years prior so I've nothing to compare with.

(Also an EE by education if not by trade, though that doesn't really count here)
Eduardo Saverin's Savonarolas