skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, because the players do not have complete information. The correct strategy is only obvious to those outside the experiment.

When you extend the concept to society as a whole, we are all players. No one is outside it. That's why I agree with HSO that it's not possible to state absolutely what would best benefit society.
You can combine the two as well. I keep high level, amorphous goals, a few specific (usually tactical) goals, but generally don't try and set too many goals. Having flexibility between fuzzy boundaries has served me quite well and I tend to enjoy work and life as a result. Of course, I know people who can't function that way, so it's hardly appropriate to say that it's the one true approach.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/335303/
Or Britain liberated India from a Mughal conqueror and put the Hindus back in charge.

American's also don't let Brits in because of Visa issues - and after we, almost successfully, taught them to speak English
I don't think it's yet even at the level where you can start debating socialism vs. other systems. In India, there are endemic problems with enforcing the law, especially with respect to the wealthy/privileged. Just ensuring that no one can flout the law and get away unscathed would go a long way in alleviating these sorts of issues.
While this certainly doesn't bother me in terms of violating civil rights or anything like that, I do think the concept is potentially flawed. It gives the police hot spots for where to send their cops, but if a criminal got access to it, or can build a similar predictive model, then they would have a very good idea of where the cops would be at any given time.

In theory this works out a lot like the old halting problem proof, but in practice we may not see such an arms race.
I've come to believe that the reason Hawking says what he does is because he knows being controversial and having an intelligent argument for your view, whether it is right or wrong, sells books, T.V. shows, interviews, and gets you money. I also think that he thinks he's all that.

Einstein was not such a dick.
Really bad governance. All the development and growth you hear about is driven by capitalism, private sector growth, and privatization of energy, telecommunication and other traditional government strongholds.

The country is held back by public sector mismanagement and obscene corruption.
Don't discount Ruby as just being focused on Rails. I think the only thing which makes python more general than ruby is that python has a larger community than ruby does. There are GTK+ and Qt bindings for both languages. They are very similar languages and I prefer python to ruby solely based on the larger community around python.

Re: Rails vs Django; I prefer Django because of the magic box complaint you have with Rails. I don't really feel that with Django although, of course, YMMV.
So, 139,999,999 users logging in to read 340 million tweets from one very active celebrity? ;-)

(I'm not saying that you're wrong and the OP is right; I'm saying that your numbers don't provide enough information.)
It is, the problem is "trained professionals in the field" don't review patent applications. Having a patent attorney file the application all but ensures that just about anything is patentable (provided you're willing to pay the legal fees).

Check this out: http://www.google.com/patents?id=OfwkAAAAEBAJ
It extends far beyond hate speech as well, if it was only hate speech on the table there might be a useful conversation. Religious people have had success with that same phrase against atheists to censor them. (There was a somewhat large "youtube scandal" a while ago.) But plenty of people just want to censor unpopular views regardless of whether the person with those views is emotional about them. Do you sense any hate in this?

"It never occurred to either the enemies or the apologists for slavery, that if no one would employ the free laborer, his condition was infinitely worse than that of actual slavery--nor did it occur to them, that if his wages were less than the allowance of the slave, he was less free after emancipation than before." --George Fitzhugh

Can one argue for the return of a more civilized form of slavery without being called evil, a racist, bigot, hate monger, etc.?

It's because so many views that "don't represent a populist movement" and "don't cater to the masses" also don't fall straight into a single bucket ("hate speech", "encouraging violence", "ignorant flaming", "hard truth", "trolling", "devil's advocacy") that I like the American view expressed by geuis. If you're not being forced to listen (because while one may have the right to speak, one doesn't have the right to be heard), change the channel. Starting from this point lets us discuss the potential exceptions like whether we ought to allow television personalities to ask the public to kill someone, and if we do, if someone acts on it does the asker receive some amount of punishment? I think it's important in having a useful discussion to start from a solid position rather than starting from "it's tricky".
India is an actual democracy (edit: should have said semi-capitalist or mixed economy, sorry), not a socialist state, mind you. The trouble here is bureaucracy and mismanagement. The government is trying to prop up farmers, but this comes at the expense of millions of its citizens. (Note that most other governments aren't anywhere as dysfunctional, in case you were thinking of blaming 'big government'.)

The Indian government is known to have very serious problems with mismanagement and corruption (worse than many other Asian countries). Witness what was practically the giving away of the communications spectrum to private companies a few years ago, due to sheer ignorance on the part of the minister responsible. India's government needs to be reformed quite fundamentally.
Is it possible that in another universe, time travel is possible and Steven Hawking had the most awesome party imaginable?
Ask HN: best calendaring app?
Hi all,

Now that my company is starting to have a presence in more than one place, we're having an issue with calendaring. I've been using Google Calendar for the last few years but feel it's pretty awful when it comes to time zone changes (we're on the East / West coasts and travel a lot, plus make frequent trips to Europe).

Does anyone have suggestions for good calendaring tools? Preferably ones that can push to a Blackberry (directly or indirectly -- e.g., through Google Calendar).

Thanks!
The New Google Gets In Touch With Its Emotions
I'm sad the Google/WR Hambrecht OpenIPO thing wasn't even a consideration for Facebook.
India is a secular country. Hindus are not in charge (Prime minister is sikh - minority, Head of ruling party is a christian, President whose position is large ceremonial is hindu, Vice President whose position is also ceremonial is muslim - Find a country with diversity at the top in entire world).

>>Britain liberated India from a Mughal conqueror
So called Mughal conqueror also thought he is a liberator.

Edit: Typo.
>If Honk Kong and Seoul were able to export...

This is true and it's true in SEAsia. In Japan, SK culture has pervaded TV and entertainment, moreso than American Entertainment. Go to Taipei and you can see the evidence of Japanese culture (well, this is two-pronged, Japanese legacy on the island as well as youth culture) along with SK culture. The only place American culture might have the upper hand in SEAsia is in blockbuster movies --but that's a minority of movies shown or seen.

In Africa, lots of the entertainment, while English language, is Nigerian English with Nigerian TV and music being very influential.
true, but belgium for instance has all that too, and you don't see it getting that sort of must-see tourist aura
The article mentions 15000 years of convolution. That's on the low end of the probable range. There is some good evidence for dogs being domesticated at least 30k years ago, and even some for as far back as 100k years.

There's a very good "Nova" episode on dogs that is well worth keeping an eye out for.
The Avengers and Illegal Orders
Not sure if relevant, but the Geopolitics of the United States article claims the thesis that one reason the US got such a strong economy was because the rich Mississippi Basin had more navigable waterways than the rest of the world combined. It mentions the Ganges River by saying:

"The Ganges River Basin is the most agriculturally productive in the world, but the Ganges is not navigable. The combination of fertile lands and non-navigable waterways makes the region crushingly overpopulated and poor."
Socialism is an economic system; democracy is a system of governance. India is a socialist democracy. It is not communist but it also not a liberal democracy à la Fukuyama et al.
Then it obviously needs a tower. Do you have the number for the Belgian tourist office - I have one that French want to sell!

Luxembourg is also rather overlooked as a tourist destination, very nice walking countryside and you are never very far from somewhere to eat/drink/sleep.
RIM Is Hurting, But It’s Not Dead Just Yet
interesting.. It works with HTTPS, but the certificate is not the original BBC one.
Where are the technical articles written by women? There are plenty of contributions complaining about oppression, while attacking men and claiming absurd stereotypes. Where are the technical contributions?

I think the author does a great job starting out by highlighting her own contributions via the linked write-up on Git submodules, but beyond the first couple of sentences on the topic nothing, and spends the rest of the article on a tear about the he/she dichotomy in comments.

While I can certainly understand the frustration when people get gender wrong, that seems to be the wrong place to focus on in this topic of women in tech. Is it possibly an indicator of the problem at large? Sure. Does it answer the question "Where are the tech articles written by women"? No.

It does play right into the exact same mold the commenter was talking about, that set this entire entry into motion:

There are plenty of contributions complaining about oppression...where are the technical contributions?

Instead of highlighting great articles from the women in tech, or linking to other women in the industry with well trafficked blogs and talking about their contributions, the author fell right into the category that perpetuates this problem.

Mind you, I agree that there is a rift that rises when people make the wrong assumption, but that's nil imo.
Governance in India consists of terrible mismanagement and obscene corruption. The country's growth has been driven by the private sector and privatization.

Its so entrenched in the billion person economy, there simply seems to be no way for the educated classes to have an impact and change this. Any ideas on how this can be changed?
The obfuscation comes as a result of the patent examiners whittling down the overly broad claims made by the authors. This is a process that goes on for numerous rounds, back and forth. Personally I see the result as "precision" -- an agreement between the authors and the patent office about what has truly been invented -- rather than any kind of purposeful obfuscation. (I make no claims that this is a good process, that the patent examiners are as competent as they ought to be, or that authors in general are not trying to scam the system).
Out of all infinite amount of different methods to communicate and broadcast themselves they could possibly be using. Including the ones we didn't even discover yet. Assuming they're using the same ones humans just found out in recent history. The ones SETI is measuring. Even then, assuming it's formatted in a way we would decipher and be able to understand its structure (as in Carl Sagan's movie). That just sounds so improbable.

Even if they are broadcasting it, we're probably listening to it with the wrong technology. Even if we happen to be lucky of listening with the "right" technology. We probably wouldn't be able to tell it from random noise.

I find it extremely unlikely humans will ever be able to watch alien broadcasts during our existence in the universe.
Codebender: An online Arduino IDE
But Karl, surely the masses can afford genuine opiates now that we have boosted the supply so effectively ?
This is a "re-blog" of an article that's been on Hacker News multiple times before:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2262437, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033433, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3032332 (and more)

Perhaps the conversations there will be helpful to those hearing about this tip for the first time.
I'm guessing the dead is as in deadweight --not contributory. For example, royalty and its traditions, its cultural baggage. The British still endure what's called "the Norman yoke". That is the Normas took over a culture and imposed it on the locals. This resulted in a sharp divide between the rulers (initially foreign royals) and locals (now landless and considered lower class commoners). This division is entrenched in British culture to this day.
Twilio is a good example. It boils down to delivering links with API results. So, given the root endpoint, a client can navigate/discover available actions for data retrieval/manipulation.

You could certainly argue that it is a "buzz word" or whatever, but there is a fundamental lack of buzz around the subject. REST is one of those terms that has been beat to death. Used/misused to describe so many things so as to be useless. Hypermedia adds a specificity to the equation that is useful, at least to me.

I like Fowler's description of the Richardson Maturity Model[1], which describes the "levels" of RESTfulness an API can have, with a full-on hypermedia API being the top level. Steve Klabnik's "Designing Hypermedia APIs"[2] is also shaping up to be a good resource, though it isn't free.

[1] http://martinfowler.com/articles/richardsonMaturityModel.htm...

[2] http://designinghypermediaapis.com/
WTF there desribing a vector processor. These were about and prio-art back in the 70's. INTEL have added instructions to handle this type of processing. This is not new and how they got that patent again highlights what a crock of shit this whole patent mess is.

Are patents realy down to wording a known process in such a complex way that it appears to be new - as thats how I see alot of patents.

Bottom line if you can't sumarise it on the back of a postit note without duplicating somebody elses work then you have created nothing new at all.

I think bad patents like this should be fined, submit prior art patent then you should be fined - big time. Help pay for all this courtroo bullshitting about patents.
> The catch-22 here is that if I choose to blend in, then people like the commenters above assume that everything they see was written by men, and use that as an excuse to dismiss the concerns of women in the tech industry

Couldn't this be solved by a little 'about the author' section at the end of your articles? Pull in your gravatar and add a couple of sentences about yourself. Now everyone knows you are a woman, and you didn't have to change your background to hot-pink to do so! :)
Trained professionals in the field don't tend to work in the patent office (it probably pays less well, especially in software), so the patent office errs on the side of granting too generously, and lets the courts decide later whether to actually let them stand.

How does France deal with this situation?
Heroku API or GIT issues again?
All our Heroku apps are operating, but on some apps Heroku is rejecting 'git push':

! Heroku Git error, please try again shortly.
! See http://status.heroku.com for current Heroku platform status.
! If the problem persists, please contact http://support.heroku.com.

We can push to some apps, not to others.

The status.heroku.com page says all is well, but I'm wondering they failed to get everything cleaned up after the mess the past two days?

Anyone else having trouble with pushing a new build?
There is also a school of archeology that thinks the reindeer was the first domesticated animal - by Saami and Laplanders >50Kya

However I can assure you that current deer show no empathy for my garden
That example of the cat light thing is a probably the best example of how patents need sorting I have ever seen.

Thank you djahng.
Katana カタナ スナイパー 4WD ドライバー
Oh, darn. A useless Google product is ignoring a highly profitable industry.

Next they won't let oil companies use Google Wave.
You're being incredibly bias here. You see 17 Magazine and scoff and teenaged girls see whatever it is you like and scoff. We each find value in the things we find value in and it's not our place to judge other people's choices.
Did you read the article at all? Her whole point is that women should not have to do this, that they face discrimination if they do do this, and that we should refrain from assuming that if we don't see one of these, it's by a man. The problem isn't that they don't know she's a girl. It's that they assume she isn't one.
I met some of the founders, the company is called PredPol

http://www.predpol.com/

They were pretty awesome and there is a huge amount of space for them to grow.
I'm surprised to hear someone of his intellectual caliber resort to ridicule when someone brings up UFOs. UFOs "appearing" to "cranks and weirdos" doesn't really describe the phenomena, as anyone who spent more than 30 minutes on the subject would know.

I'd would have loved to have heard him debate the late John Mack (Harvard Medical School, won a Pulitzer) on the subject. It's incredibly arrogant for him to think that he can ignore the research of other academics (or remain in ignorance of it) and still speak authoritatively on the subject.

I don't expect him to champion the field but since he's asked so frequently about extraterrestrial life and/or UFOs it would be nice if his canned response was a bit more intelligent.

It's incredible to dismiss so much theoretical/speculative physics in the interview and at the same time say that maybe M-Theory will tie up the loose ends in the Standard Model, but then again, maybe it won't and we'll be back to the drawing board. Even though we admittedly don't understand the universe with any degrees of completeness, obviously these popular ideas are false based on our understanding of the universe?
I see your point, re-reading your original post. The phrase "young culture", to me, carries a heavy emphasis of literal age.

Ultimately -- and semantic quibbling aside -- I think you're right that American culture is (and by extension, typical Americans are) particularly energetic and optimistic.

I'm not sure I agree with unsophisticated, unless you mean "less formal".
Foxied.com launches by giving away their services for free
> 40% of voters believe the Rapture/end of the world will occur in their lifetime. This is unprecendented in any secular country

This is unprecedented because it's simply not true. The best statistic I could find for this is 11%. Even 11% seems like a very high number based on my personal experience. As an American who has lived in different parts of America my whole life (and currently living in a high-tourist city with people from all over the US), I can say that most people in most parts of the US do not believe that the rapture will happen within their lifetime.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_US_0602.p...
To add, I recommend the book "Late Victorian Holocausts" by Mike Davis for readers interested about famines.
Not sure how that example is indicative of Socialism.

More generally I would say it was interventionist, but very poorly handled. The issue is because they don't know what they're doing, rather than that they are subscribed to a certain style of government.
If the USA was ever an overreaching empire, it was very reluctantly. OK, we picked some fights and managed to take a fair chunk of our own continent, but we were also isolationist to a fault until the mid-20th century. It was the Europeans who managed to rope us into both of their "world wars"--and in 1945, when you're looking at the whole of Europe spent and in ruins, and Joseph Stalin as the last dictator standing--well, would you really rather we just went home and forgot about you at that point?

People who say the US was imperialistic seem to forget that we didn't, for example, send tanks into France when they wanted to pull out of NATO, which is more than you can say about the other superpower. The British empire stationed troops and bureaucrats all over the world where they weren't wanted. They directly ruled over civilizations larger and more ancient than their own. Aside from the Philippines (whom we granted independence in 1946) and Hawaii and Puerto Rico (who both want to stay with us), we didn't really do that. It starts getting far more abstract when you talk about American imperialism via Coca-Cola and blue jeans.
People of all ages get cancer, including children.
1) Ebay / Paypal take too high a cut.
2) Forced use of the Paypal payment method.
3) The auctions aren't real auctions - if they extended the bidding time each time a bid was placed, it would eliminate sniping software.
4) Instead of fraud prevention via software triggers placing arbitrary limits, they should devote some money to a team that would buy and sell igconito and seek legal prosecution of people who commit fraud.
5) A specific kind of fraud, shill bidding, is actually in Ebay's interest in the current setup, because it tends to raise prices overall.

If you start a competitor, you will face the chicken-and-egg problem of all social or peer to peer businesses - no sellers will come if there are no buyers, no buyers will come if there are no sellers. You might be able to break through this by focusing on products that Ebay currently bans, such as guns or used software.

Another method of breaking in might be to focus on people who are doing well on Etsy but moving up and out of craftsman to small manufacturing. To get them you would offer a combination of capital ( pre-pay for the product, for example ), connections and advice in dealing with various manufacturers, and a fullfillment service. That presumes you can get capital your self, of course.
Didn't a similar thing happen during the Great Depression? I thought FDR ordered livestock, etc, destroyed in order to keep their prices up. I'm sure lots of Americans were going hungry at that time, so the outrage must have been huge.