skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I recently picked up a retina MBP for work-related purposes, and it's a good machine, but I wouldn't review it nearly as breathlessly as this particular review does.

It's attractive, it's got a great build quality, and it's decently fast. I can't really tell the difference (in terms of "omg, teh pixels are invisible") between the Retina display and my HP Envy's 1920x1080 screen, but that might be because I don't sit with my face six inches from the screen. Text looks better on the MBP, but I credit most of that to the fact that OS X's font engine just blows Linux's (I run Fedora 17 on the Envy) out of the water.

Despite that, my daily driver is still my Windows desktop, running an i5 at 4.3GHz, with an SSD for my OS and programs, 2TB of magnetic storage, and 16 GB of RAM. That particular setup ran me well under $1k. My actual dev happens on a Fedora whitebox on my LAN, again with an i5 and 16GB of RAM, which I built for about $400.

The retina MBP is a nice piece of tech, but it's not the orgasm-inducing Jesus-box that some people seem to think it is. I probably couldn't justify the cost of one versus the competitors if I were buying it for personal use.
> I said that to build the iPhone Apple couldn't just use off the shelf components, they had to invent new ones.

They made refinements to existing technology.

> I never said there was never a screen you could get a reaction from by touching before the iPhone.

It's hard to know what you're saying - it keeps changing.

You said that "touch oriented OSs don't exist until Apple develops them" - (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435702)

People have shown many examples of touch oriented OSs developed independently of Apple, released before iPhone.

The screen existed before iPhone. The software to drive those screens existed before iPhone. Integrating that combination into an "OS" has existed before iPhone. And the idea of multi-touch surfaces was shown in a movie (where characters interacted with both big screens and small portable devices) before iPhone was released.

You may say that I have ignored the rest of your post that I quote above -

> And having seen them, other companies can't replicate them well at all because they don't do the research.

> Calling them a lego assembler ignores all the real innovation they do.

Step away from the keyboard. Calm down. Maybe you'll realise that people don't feel the need to say "I agree with this bit" because they assume that they not talking to a rabid troll who'll accuse everyone of lying.
The other element is the fact that like Lilyhammer, all 10-13 episodes of the series will be released at once, setting fans up for epic marathon sessions.

I think this is the beginning of an entirely new format. So far we've been restricted to the video equivalent of serials and short stories with TV shows and movies respectively. Its time for the rise of the video long-form novel.

There are certain stories (like Firefly IMHO) that really need this format to work. They make terrible serials from a network execs POV (because if you miss an ep or two, it becomes really hard to get into it later) and movies that only a fan could love by jamming too much story into 2 hours.
> Biology is really just an emergent phenomenon after all.

You'll get a much better response to this idea if you remove the word 'just'. Much better.
I think the point is to really get a handle on emergent phenomenon. Really, this ties into the parents musings on mathematical model of the mind. Really, I think your views are entirely compatible with the stated goal (which is vague for a reason). The entire point is I believe is to be able to describe this emergent behavior without having to invoke all the underlying lower level processes. For example, looking at pharmacology, perhaps one day we can actually have meaningful models of what a molecule will do, without 'brute forcing' every single possible interaction.

Which kind of ties into the parent's musings into the mathematical model of thought. The point is to create models that avoid invoking as much of the underlying low-level processes as possible. It would be -amazing- if we could create a mass of DEs that would -think-, especially if those DEs weren't just a straight representation of a massive neural network that happened to be copied right out of our brains.
An iPad is not a phone. An iPod Touch is not a phone. Even on phones, many, maybe most, aspects of the lockdown have nothing to do with carriers' interests. Apple has decided it likes being like a carrier; its relation to users has changed from computer company to jealous boyfriend.

(I'm not getting involved beyond your first paragraph.)
A modest proposal for the establishment of an libertarian state:

Well there is Antarctica or Somalia. Unless there is a radical new technology that allows us to control the weather, Antarctica is out. Somalia is a possibility though, for some libertarians to set up shop there. I don't think there is much industry in Somalia though, maybe a couple alliances with local war-lords? Then you would just have to cordon off an area by the coast, hire some child laborers to mine the area you wanted, put up some barriers and razor wire, and BAM we have a Randian paradise.

Now we need hookers, industrially-produced Meth/Heroin/PCP/MDMA/Ganja along with every other drug available at the local quickimart. Mabey make a deal with a couple Chinese companies to build a deep-water port complex for their railroad out of central Africa to terminate at. Hire Blackwater/Xe/Academi/? trained fighters to defend the place. Who knows after a couple years you could develop it to look like Southern California and maybe attract some Arab princes to come down on from the Gulf on Holiday.

Oh wait, this is totally crazy and is something drunken Randian college kids talk about. There is a damn good reason that SF and NYC are as successful as they are even with the high taxes and corruption: they have kick-ass universities, established business networks, and are major population centers.
Your place of birth and genetics are two gigantic factors in the likely "success" of your life, and you zero influence on either of them.
This really shouldn't be downvoted because it's completely right. Improved materials can have the opposite effect as well. There are other factors besides location but that's the primary issue. Now, two houses in the same neighborhood, comparable view, etc could vary in price because one is new, more modern, more energy efficient etc.
You make a very good point, and if you excuse my snarkiness, I shall now describe myself as "an exclusive consumer of plant cells" instead of "vegetarian."
Kirby Ferguson: Embrace the remix
Don't take this personally, but can people please stop mentioning "Betteridge's Law"?

Somebody mentions it every single time a headline ends in a question mark, and it's not witty, clever, or funny any more. It's just annoying at this point. That style of headline isn't going away, and at this point everybody knows about "Betteridge's Law".
Maybe a better response, but I put the "just" there for a reason. That's really all there is too it. Simple laws lead to incredibly complex behavior. Of course emergent phenomena can be incredibly hard to study -- I'm not implying in any way that biology is easy (it's probably one of the hardest fields out there). Instead, I'm trying to point out than many people entirely miss the fact that there is a lower level to it. Enzymes and viruses don't have desires and I've heard it described/analogized this way by far too many biology professors. (Just bump the pH up a little and the enzyme goes and does such and such...)
It's all about getting the most of your time using the machine, unless you're doing CPU-intensive work (and why wouldn't you offload that to a server farm?). Convenience, reliability, usability, efficiency, etc.

After obsessing over pc parts since childhood, these days I don't give a shit about specs and am happier for it - unless I'm trying to play Counter-strike, even then I only wish I could use my PS3 and forget about it :)
You overlooked the word "merely". The point is to add more foundational math to neuroscience models.
Google distances itself from Apple-Samsung ruling
grooveshark.com?
>attractively low fees
Standard price around here (Perth.au) is $50/fortnight or ~$15 per use. Is that considered reasonable?
That computer is comparable to the 11-inch Macbook Air, which is around $1300 when all is said and done, not to mention it doesn't come with the stickers and bloatware of the Zenbook Prime.
With Google you'd never find out that your friend is using a particular "tool" if you weren't looking for it. Perhaps something would be extremely helpful to you, but you aren't aware of it and aren't actively searching for it.
That requires physical access, which is arguably more secure than internet access should your credentials be compromised. This is a major step in the right direction for Dropbox. I don't think it's Dropbox's job to encrypt and secure my local files. This would break many use cases, and there are other purpose-built solutions for this.

Dropbox made their business on an extreme convenience (your files everywhere through a dead-simple, familiar interface). Inconveniently, convenience is often the enemy of security. It's a "good thing" that Dropbox is now offering some granularity over the convenience/security spectrum.
Its too slow.
I am not sure of how the grading system worked at his particular school at that particular time, but it would appear that JFK received numerous C's and D's during high school (see: scores in the 60s and 70s on page four).
Twitter Joins The Linux Foundation
They should put up Obama's application to Harvard...or Occidental and Columbia for that matter.
Thanks! I am planning on moving there soon (once I get a good position at a startup) and these will be some great places to drop-in and get involved with the tech scene!
Due to OSX roadmap Panic's CandyBar is now free.
There's one thing I don't understand about the mystery of dark matter. I don't understand why the simple explanation for it isn't just that it's regular matter that is not stars. Maybe there are just bajillions of planets and dust clouds out there. Matter that isn't directly circling stars, thus not reflecting light. Why is the popular assumption that if the mass isn't stars or things in orbit of stars, that it must be a mystery substance? I assume there's scientific reasoning behind this, but I've never heard it explained before. If someone could fill me in, that would be awesome.
High effort but little reward, or low effort with high reward?
> Enzymes and viruses don't have desires and I've heard it described/analogized this way by far too many biology professors.

But it's such a useful mental model. It allows you to gloss over irrelevant low-level details while focusing on the aspects of the complex emergent system that are actually relevant.

> I'm not implying in any way that biology is easy

This is what saying it's 'just' emergent behavior comes off as, though. I understand (and agree with) your perspective, but being a little more tactical with your word use can head off pointless (as opposed to interesting) arguments.
Related: I generate an "Ask Hacker News Weekly" listing by scraping /ask the same way as my "Hacker News Daily" scrapes /news: http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-ask/
Certainly Gizmodo thought they were influenced by Rams [1] but that connections seems a bit stretched at points. I don't think Apple is a slave to his style. Ive is a talented designer in his own right.

That said, its not the design per se that made Apple so successful, it was Steve Jobs giving irrevocable support to the concepts he wanted built. In any other company, like here on HN, you can make an unequivocal positive statement about something and someone else will come out to tell you how wrong you are. They can be quite persuasive and influential too, and cause you to doubt your statement and lose your commitment to it.

I've been bouncing around the periphery of Steve Jobs wake my entire career, from dealing with folks from NeXT, hiring the previous head of the Newton division, "rescuing" people from advanced development jobs, working with Apple on their NFS port, etc etc. And you hear a lot of 'Steve stories' from folks. But I have never ever heard a story where someone told him, "Steve, I don't think your idea will fly." And he responded with even an ounce of doubt. In contrast I've heard lots of stores where people people said that and Steve told them they were an idiot.

Its a rare level of fearlessness that I suspect you can really only achieve when there isn't anything anyone can do to hurt you.

You see folks like Mark Pincus pull $200M out of Zynga which nets out probably north of a $100M and even at a sub-inflation return of 1.2% is $100K/month (tax free if its from treasuries). When you've got that sort of back stop, even if everyone hates you that is ok, they can't really touch you. Then all you have to do is be like Elon and be willing to throw it all away on something you believe in and people will take you seriously.

[1] http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secr...
Having read some of your (very many) posts (that were made after mine) it appears you're now saying that Apple does not just assemble existing parts to create iPhone - that innovation happened in software and hardware to existing stuff and that iPhone is not possible without that innovation. (I think this a fair paraphrase of the most important point you're making; please let me know if I've got it wrong, and realise that I made a mistake and that I'm not lying to distort facts).

If we limit conversation to the sentence fragment "assemble components like lego" then most people would agree that Apple does more than that. It's unfortunate that someone in this thread used that phrase; it's unfortunate that you wrote such a broad response.

So, now we discuss whether what Apple (and it doesn't need to be Apple, my view would be the same about other companies) did amounts to patentable innovation.

We're not going to agree on that bit. But for me that's fine. You think the money and research and work that Apple did, and the result, is a significantly different implementation and so is patentable. I think it's a refinement upon existing technology.
I used to hate Scribd when it was flash, but now that its HTML5 it is sometimes preferable to the broken PDF installations on borrowed computers (like, popping up Acrobat offering to update, selL me AV, etc). At home I generally prefer direct PDF, though.
We know this is not the case because intersteller dust absorbs light, while the dark matter does not emit or absorb light at all. The only effect we see is the gravity.
It's not a documentary, it's a docudrama.

So beware! There's enough Tesla hagiography going around as is. For example, the video update claims that he never received a penny for his work, which is not true in the slightest. His patents were licensed, he was paid royalties, he got salary when working for Westinghouse, and got significant funding for many of his large scale experiments. He was also definitely -not- the creator of electricity, and his name was not 'virtually removed from history'. Time magazine put him on the front cover in 1931!

Also, this movie called the Prestige?
I subscribe to Netflix streaming and Hulu+.
https://forgetfail.com - I had some clients request database backups. So I built a service for it.
http://www.heystartup.com - online pitching platform
Well yes, of COURSE you could build a desktop for less money than a laptop. Unlike some people I've seen at Starbucks though, I don't feel comfortable lugging desktops from place to place. Not to mention it'd take up a bunch of space while I'm trying to get work done on the flight in economy class.
Do we really need every thread that mentions the keyword 'President' to contain this kind of partisan rubbish? I don't see you calling for Reagan's, Bush's or Romney's applications.
I lost about 70 pounds without working out. Just moderating my diet.
It did, Thanks :)
Annotating Texts: Some Suggestions (with Pictures)
It doesn't take up any more bandwidth if you're properly concatenating your JS.
Ah, I see now. Page 6 appears to be the results of an exam conducted by Harvard, and I had figured Page 4 was probably related (in which case who knows what a "good" score is).

Now, the other question, how much did academics matter in 1935?
Well if Mitt & CO win, who knows Medicare vouchers might become a reality. Then when people are thrown out of hospitals by the ends of their colostomy bags and IVs, a single payer system might appear to be a bit better solution. All the VA (socialized healthcare for people in the military-industrial complex) and Medi* (socialized healthcare for old people/boomers) are doing is creating an insurance market for people outside these demographics, which constitutes the nations supply of genx/geny workers. If I did not have insurance under obamacare I would have to pay $4068.15 so far this year. This was for one emergency room visit lasting an hour and 2 doctors appointments. If I didn't have insurance I just wouldn't have paid it.

Do like Mitt does, keep your money outside the country where the Government can't get it.
Think of the "knee-jerk" reflex you get when the doctor hits you on the knee. It's a response to a stimulus, but it happens without even any involvement from your brain: it's just a round trip to the spinal cord.[1] I don't think that's what we usually think of as "awareness", which happens at the cognitive level. Reflexes like eye-blinking are even operational when you're unconscious.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patellar_reflex
This is actually suprising to me. I started out as a self taught programmer in middle-school. Very early on I ran into performance problems, and had to spend a fair amount of time making code efficient. I did, and still do, only explicitly try to make code efficient after I see it is a performance issue, but I wonder how anyone can do a large amount of programming without running into them.

Also, even if you never thought of efficiency, or algorithms. If someone describes binary search to you and you cannot implement it, you are still learning to code. If someone asks you to write an efficient search algorithm, I can see those types of people missing it (especially when you consider the fact that for the general case you also need an nlog(n) sorting algorithm.
VMWare will join OpenStack
I find it annoying that a vegetarian can draw the line in the sand and decide what is morally correct for everyone to believe.

Only some vegetarians do that, and it's wrong to imply that it's a defining feature of the demographic. I have vegetarian friends that cook me meat when I visit for dinner, despite me asking not to get special treatment. Other vegetarians just don't like the taste of meat, nothing to do with moral or health attitudes.

Unless the vegetarian is being vocal about the moral issue, it's pretty impolite to bring up the topic apropos of nothing - it's almost always just the questioner trying to score some sort of point.
I'm not convinced ants actually know anything. Just like we don't know how our brains work despite living inside them, ants don't know why they do things.
I would be interested to hear other's thoughts on JFK's answer to why he would like to attend Harvard.

I suck at writing essays but it seems his reason for wanting to attend Harvard is incredibly trite and superfluous, especially coming from a man who would eventually be considered a great orator.

For example, he states that Harvard " is a university with something definite to offer." Yet gives no definitive examples. Why is "To be a 'harvard man' is an enviable distinction" in President Kennedy's mind? Essentially every sentence lacks justification and specificity.

Sigh. These sorts of materials at least provide fuel to refocus on work and studies. Being born outside a powerful family may lack certain advantageous but they can be overcome. Right?
Dust absorbs light, blocking it (creating dark spots) and getting hot (creating light spots in a different frequency range). We know what interstellar dust looks like. Dark matter doesn't look like that; it doesn't look like anything. We only know about it because its gravity affects the things we can see.

NASA has a brief page on dark matter and something else we know little about, dark energy:

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dar...
> Biology is really just an emergent phenomenon after all.

Is that a settled question? I can see that the laws may be well defined, but what about the initial conditions? Can we determine the initial conditions precisely enough, assuming there are fundamental limits on what we can measure?

I guess that is equivalent to the question of whether if the initial conditions are approximately right, is there an in-built stability in the system, which makes a biological simulation converge to a to a meaningful result. Do errors get magnified or eliminated? (Presumably the latter, otherwise thermal noise would make us fall apart, but is this confirmed?)

As an aside, since you are in the molecular dynamics field, can you recommend a starting point for a novice that is interested in getting involved? Books? Open source software? I've always thought it would be fun to program an FPGA with the relevant equations, let it run, and see what happens.
> It is not a question that Science can answer.

It is, though: Science suggests that they don't exist because science favors simpler models to more complex ones, as long as the simpler model still accounts for all the evidence and makes correct predictions.
Bootstrapping a company from Zero to $7Mn in Revenue
Oh I see, perhaps I misread. In any case, from what I understand neuroscience needs better experimental methods, not better math, so still sort of an odd challenge—unless the point is have "brain-like" function without regard to how human brains actually work, which is something I could imagine DARPA being very interested in.
I wonder how they address radiation hardening and other space specific environmental drivers in this hardware.
Sure thing. When I posted that, I didn't even consider the possibility that it might be interpreted the way you stated, so I will attempt to assess my future posts in advance for potentially unfriendly perspectives.
There are plenty of comparable laptops for far less money, too. It's not like the only options in the laptop market are $2200+ MBP or nothing.

I like the MBP. It's a great piece of hardware. I don't think the retina display is the quantum leap in laptop technology that it's made out to be. I don't feel any particular need to justify my purchase by citing the need to have top-end specs, because if I need maxed out specs, I can get them in my desktop for an order of magnitude less money. I enjoy working from the comfort of my desk with my big monitors and my mechanical keyboard and my nice speakers (and frankly, dislike working elsewhere without them), so laptop vs desktop is a moot point for me.
I'm curious: does anyone know the context of the grades in the application? I saw actual grades listed in three places (pages 3, 17 and 26). He seems to have received scores ranging from 50-85. Are these out of 100? If so, it appears he wasn't a great student. He was ranked 65th out of 110 students (page 17).

I'm not questioning his intelligence, he was clearly brilliant. However, I find it interesting that he was an underachiever in high school (something I'm sure the HN community can empathize with).

The letter from his father (page 13) says:

"Jack has a very brilliant mind for the things in which he is interested, but is careless and lacks application in those in which he is not interested. This is, of course, a bad fault. However, he is quite ambitious to try and do the work in three years. I know how the authorities feel about this and I have my own opinion, but it is a gesture that pleases me very much because it seems to be the beginning of an awakening ambition"

I feel like this statement would've been equally accurate on my own college applications.
Use a shield.