skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The main factor that makes me think this is fiction is the math.

A 350x350 world seems pretty small, but that's over 120,000 blocks per layer, or over 15 million total blocks within the barrier (including empty/air blocks). Using stats from some of my other worlds, I'd expect a world of that size to have about 6 million stone blocks, maybe 750 thousand dirt, and 75,000 grass.

And two players out of 30 supposedly managed to mine/destroy basically all 75,000 grass blocks in the level without others realizing it and fortifying relatively large safe zones? Those who banded together around tiny protected grass patches didn't manage to surround them with more dirt, thereby allowing them to grow?

There was supposedly a lot of strip mining, so where are the giant cobble structures? "Oh, it all fell in the lava" -- how does every single player manage to drop thousands of blocks of cobble in the lava, exactly?

Thinking about other resources leads to similarly absurd conclusions. I'd estimate 1,500+ diamond ore in that area, or about 50 per player. That's enough to make 16-17 diamond picks per player, which is enough to mine about 25,000 blocks. Yet it's claimed diamond was used "only for obsidian" -- so where are the giant obsidian structures that took multiple players multiple diamond picks to create?

Similarly for iron, gravel, and all the other resources -- what did 30 players do with it all in only a couple of months?

Whoever wrote this little piece of fiction simply didn't realize how much stuff there is in a MineCraft world that size. Anybody actually playing in a situation like this, even with a couple of griefers, would find they were able to manage just fine. It doesn't take all that much to build a self-sustaining secret base, and once one is running, it's not that hard to build another and another and another. The amount of resources available in a 350x350 space are way more than 30 players could use, or destroy, in 2 months of playing.
So, any woman who wouldn't abort a Downs baby is a fundamentalist now?
So, we'd have to share all of our users emails with your service?
On one hand older fathers tend to pass on longer telemeres and likely longer lifespans, on the other there are likely these risks.

I guess you can't have it all.
If you could mouse over each scatter plot point and get a corresponding view that explains its position, that would be cool... for nerds...
When Cold Fusion Was Hot
Show HN: BizRake - Search and download US business list
In Google’s Inner Circle, a Falling Number of Women
I saw this as a speech and this was my reaction.

For the first half I was thinking this was an inspiring story about an entrepreneur who realized he was taking things too seriously and was working himself to death, finding success in peaceful and carefree execution of an exciting idea.

Then came the part about how he got funded, and I came to realize this was more a story about an entrepreneur who won the startup lottery, is happy about it, and realizes that having money and relaxing with a well-funded team is better than working your ass off alone and not being able to afford utilities. Which is of course a foregone conclusion.

Thus for me the final act ruined what would have otherwise been an insightful tale of perspective.
I abhor package management in my Emacs. I am also avoiding Emacs 24 for now.

Yes, I'm serious.
> another piece of closed source, proprietary infrastructure

No, the world needs a modernized view of the relational database model.

> an obscure language

The APIs are Java-first, Clojure-second. The implementation is a mix of the two. Java isn't that obscure...

> never, ever build your business on closed source software.

I agree with that. Ask any one of my new coworkers how they feel about this company's dependency on Oracle and they'll tell you that they learned that lesson.

I'm not proposing that you take a dependency on Datomic for your startup. I'm saying that there are a lot of enterprises who have no choice, but to take dependencies on things they don't understand because they aren't software companies. Microsoft's entire enterprise business depends on people who want to outsource infrastructure to somebody else, and those customers pay enough money to secure the future and direction of that infrastructure. Rich Hickey & co can capitalize on that group of people. He gets to help them and they'll pay him for it. Along the way, database systems will adopt the improvements and new ideas that Datomic is leading the way with.
Telehash would be pretty for the messaging, too. ;)

http://telehash.org
It's not just capital-intensive industries. Winner-take-all markets will be won by a company that focuses on expansion first, revenue second.

Not all industries are like that. Social networks and payment networks, though, are examples of winner take all markets. That is why it makes sense to raise a lot of money and try to capture the dominant spot in the market before a competitor does so.
Just curious, but do you think this gets creepy at any point? Is this your expectation if you sign up with your company's email for a service you're reviewing?
Hmm, what you choose to do the first hour of work can often inform your inner nature. Dave Hitz, one of the founders of NetApp, had put it into three groups:

1) If you look at the output of the build you're focused inward on what you are doing.

2) If you look at your email in general you're focussed on what the company is doing around you.

3) If you look at the web/blogs you are focused on what the world is doing around you.

Always thought that was pretty neat.
We're far away indeed from the "Learn how you can code how it's hard to learn new things to learn how you can code" kind of posts :)
Title of this HN post is great example of how to get attention of hacker minds.
Scientific journalism at its worst.

Really, this is fucking ridiculous.
I think I can answer that: here in australia, we have a lot of experience with all aspects of the nuclear industry, and decades of research and concerted policy development has finally led to a world class program to manage our small but significant legacy of radioactive wastes, that sets a standard : We're building a dirt track to a remote arid region, where the aboriginal traditional owners of the land are geographically isolated, politically underrepresented, and economically disadvantaged. Some fringe commentators try to make something out of the risk of transporting a range of materials (from contaminated soil to reprocessed fuel rods) through a jurisdiction that suffers an uncommon level of collisions and derailments, has minimal emergency service capacity and is the epicentre of the single greatest earthquake event in the southern hemisphere - but these concerns are effortlessly overrun by the brute application of raw political power. We're gonna build a shed at the end of the dirt road, and surround it with razor wire. What could go rong?
Whats Splunk?
Underscore.js and Backbone.js in WordPress core
flying has become a right

I think you need to lay out your argument in greater detail than you have done so far.
Thorium isn't soluble in water. (But there's enough thorium on land to last us for millennia, if we ran all of civilization on it at our present usage rate.)
Keep seeing that the deal is "now worth $747 million"

No, it was always $300,000,000 in CASH plus 22,999,412 FB SHARES.

That amount of shares happens to be around 1% of FB's stock.

I love those numbers.

Can you imagine the brass balls it took to ask for 1% of FB a month before they IPO'd on top of $300m cash?

That is an even more fun headline than "Acquired for $1b".

Stupid media.
this is an old non-story. the energy required to extract the low levels of uranium from huge volumes of seawater outweigh the energy that uranium can produce as fuel for a nuclear power reactor.
Why the Happiest Places Have the Highest Suicide Rates
From what I've read of the origins of Portal 2 (and I can't provide a link citation, it was in The Final Hours of Portal 2, a long form piece released as an ipad app), Valve did something very similar to this, all the employees went away to work on whatever ideas, came back and presented them. The coop model with two robots for Portal 2 came from that, as did a non-portals gameplay device that evidently got them excited enough to start building Portal 2 around, until they realised they couldn't do a Portal sequel that didn't have portals.
Lots of great points.
Mouthful of a post.
Thanks praveen!
Doesn't work at all with nordic (swedish) keyboard - it doesn't recognize the less than (<) sign.
Actually, the title isn't wrong, it's just misleading. When you read "new form of matter", your first thought was probably liquid, gas, solid, plasma, (something new here?). However, those refer to the "state" or "phase" of matter.

Form: the shape of a thing or person.

Basically, they have "formed" a new type of matter, which is simply the way in which the atoms are arranged in thermodynamic equilibrium. They are not referring to discovering a new "state" or "phase".
For 2) you can use tabs in Vim to provide different workspaces, with each workspace having a certain layout of windows.

I've just found out that dwm.vim doesn't work well with tabs just yet though - it copies all buffer windows to the current tab on Ctrl-f (make active window the master focus).
English GCSEs marked down to curb grade inflation, say teachers
PHP support is vital.
Why not check:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

There have been extensive (safety oriented) modifications to the design since the Chernobyl incident:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf31.html

The second article says the modified reactors account for almost 50% of Russia's nuclear power generation.
FlipCode is back, after 7 years
My two cents: http://stateful.net/joyent-refugee/
Using mTurk to interview 100 customers (in 4 hours)
Agreed, I've always wondered how it would fair from a regulatory perspective if such a thing was positioned as a 'nuclear waste disposal system', probably not much better.
How A/B Testing Could Change Online Gaming Forever
lol. I don't think it's necessarily that extreme. 37Signals just has a counter-culture mindset that leads them to experiment where other people just accept the status quo.

They're just trying to come up with solutions to intractable management problems:

1. Studies show that people aren't 100% productive.

2. Studies show that company cultures and the company environment tends to discourage (or at least not nurture) people from being creative at work.

So instead of accepting the status quo, they're experimenting with different ways to achieve these goals...
>Given that it's a lot easier to overeat than to undereat in today's USA....

Who said this was going to be easy? Why is everyone always looking for the "easiest" solution? We're talking about doing the right thing (TM), not the easiest.

I see what you're saying, I don't think that line of reasoning has to be true.

You're saying that if I choose to fill my gas tank instead of my weekly $40, I'll drive more and more and more. Not true. By filling my tank today, I'll still drive the same amount as normal, I just won't need to visit the gas station as often as usual.

Often when I'm cooking dinner, I'll say something like "I don't need a lot, I had a huge lunch" etc. The opposite works well too. i.e. "It's only 11am and I'm starving, because I had a tiny breakfast."

Limiting how many calories you eat by throwing out the "extras" is like limiting how far you drive by pumping "extra" gas onto the ground.
Totally agree. Some people are just not normal Joe users. It totally makes sense to give a bit of a pop to those in your VIP list. Also gives something for these extra Joes to inspire to. This dynamic totally exists in the real world so its nice to see it starting to happen in internet land too.
Reality Show: Be the Next Microsoft Employee
I'm now really looking forward to work finishing for the day. The first thing I did was email all the developers at work and challenge them with a race to the finish :p ....I'm a grad halfway through my year of QA.
Everyone here requesting a more vim-like interface or text editor integration should check out VimOutliner:

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3515
I've been using the opensource Keyzen to polish up those awkward coder keys.

http://wwwtyro.github.com/keyzen/

That being said, this also looks great. Love the idea.
Music vs Intelligence - Can Music make you Dumb?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tent_(protocol)
The socially acceptable edge-case here is interesting.

"Personalized Dynamic Product Offer"
=
"Personalized Dynamic Pricing"

"Price Discrimination"
=?
Ever become Just plain ol' Discrimination?
Disclaimer: I've never heard of Hipset before. That said, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't take off, for all the same reasons this blog post says it will.

The product itself appears to be essentially a 'simple' algorithm for Facebook, letting you avoid the pseudo-intelligent EdgeRank algorithm they use and letting you see an unfiltered stream of a specific subset of the content. If it really is that simple, the key questions are whether users will go to a third party to get it and if Facebook will refrain from copying it in-house. Call me skeptical. Taking the points in turn:

1. User Aquisition

> For Hipset, user acquisition is very obviously built into the product’s and team’s DNA. A well executed PR exercise this weekend generated a ton of interest from early adopters - who all signed up via Facebook auth. Meanwhile, the product aggressively (that’s a complement) integrates with Facebook’s Open Graph. Every time i engage with content on Hipset, it gets posted to Facebook. So all those early adopters using the product are actually busy sending notifications to their impressionable friends on Facebook about this cool new service. [...]

To paraphrase the blog, Hipset is better at 'growth hacking' than the blogger's product OneRiot was. It can go viral, and ... and what? It's positioned here as a feature for Facebook, so presumably a set fraction of the users would desire it off the bat. Getting in front of them is a recipe for an initial userbase, but there needs to be something beyond that. What's the long-term growth strategy, continue to hope Facebook doesn't provide a native view for this feed and growing alongside them? I don't buy it.

2. Users want it.

Again paraphrasing, the blog suggests that users want an undiluted feed. One benefit of this is that bands can directly email users who have subscribed. Except...what happens when a few are too chatty? Either they back down from that 'undiluted' idea, becoming simply a different algorithm, or users need to do all that micromanaging Facebook hides away, and get fatigued. There probably is a market for some who want control over everything themselves, but I'm not sure it's on Facebook in the first place.

The author also suggests that this is a perfect market for Mobile - where Hipset isn't yet trying to be. That's a significant pivot, although a reasonable one.

3 - Facebook doesn't need to copy Hipset, because it's complementary.

Facebook probably doesn't need to copy Hipset, no. But they have a vested interest in keeping everyone going to facebook.com, and not splintered into a set of micro-communities. Which means banking on their disinterest in the long run doesn't seem like a safe bet - and if Facebook decides to provide even half the features of Hipset, momentum and the hidden costs of each additional service will do the rest.

Now, there may well be a lot more to Hipset than this blog post is making apparent. I don't know. But there is nothing here to convince me that it's going anywhere, aside from a blip as the internet goes "oh, that's cool!"
That's great, but in this case we're discussing the environment around the Fukushima nuclear plant, where we have a distinctly abnormal radiological environment. The teratological damage we have observed in butterfly populations around that area is not necessarily going to show up in the human population or food chain, but I find it easy to see why people would lose sleep over the possibility: it is widely acknowledged that management of the nuclear plant and the Japanese government handled the situation poorly, so there is no reliable standard as yet by which to judge the safety of the affected population.

Now, I'm in full agreement about the filthiness of coal plants, and that many objections to nuclear power are the result of ignorance. However, nuclear advocates simply can't afford to be glib about the safety issues.
Hmm. thanks for the info.

Could McDonald's legally deny me entry to their restaurant if I was wearing a T-Shirt that said "I support Obama"?

Further, can they legally deny me entry for no reason at all?

(I'm not trolling, I genuinely don't know the answers)
I would be interested to read a 'big-picture' description of what Tent is. Forgetting for the moment how it compares with competitors, what is the idea? I read the introduction but I feel that I don't understand it.

From what I can tell, the idea is to create a standard set of objects and rules for interacting with these objects. Of course that is how protocols tend to look.

What are some of the new objects/concepts proposed by Tent? For example, is there a distinction between "home" and "users" akin to server/client? Are there several types of messages, compared to email? Is there a standard cookie-like object? What is the conceptual model for sharing? Any insight would be appreciated.
There's definitely an appeal to the idea.

What's a more powerful motivator than knowing that you're 90% towards your goal? That you'll get what you want if you do just this one thing?

This may also be the phenomenon that drives the success of "one weird trick" display ads.
Why do you want me to sign-in at all?
Catch-up radio is easy to share
I'm guessing: https://github.com/mashupbots/socko
"... This makes it easy for bloggers to link to live performances, or friends to share a song through social media or an email,'' he says. ''The share button in the player generates the URL for the moment they click the button, or people can contruct their own date-time value.'' So, if you're reading this and missed what happened after 6.30am on the Breakfasters show yesterday - hosted by the presenters Fee B-Squared, Jess McGuire and Ben Birchall - you can compose a URL based on the date convention of YYYYMMDD combined with six digits from a 24-hour clock made up of hours, minutes and seconds, such as http://ondemand.rrr.org.au/grid/20120822063038, by moving a cursor to a point in the show and clicking ''share'' ..."

Such a simple idea but it allows you to share RT radio across the web via a link.
I agree that the Register, and Lewis Page in particular, tend to roll some what fast and loose, but that is why I don't go to them for authoritative news, mostly for puns.

That said, this is inaccurate:

permanently abandoning several large towns.

As part of the process this risk is being evaluated, and while there are spots where some isotopes have concentrated (and will be cleaned up) the amount of radiation in all of the towns of Fukishima Prefecture is still less than the radiation the residents of Denver receive [1] [2]. So once the towns have been surveyed people will be allowed to move back. Reading the Economist the biggest challenge is that the Government would like to coalesce some towns to save money but that is causing complaints.

[1] http://www.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html

[2] http://isis-online.org/risk/tab7
I'll buy your grocery list app for $1 billion.
> Tent is specifically designed to be usable by high-risk activists and people in countries that block other social networks.

I can't help but read that and think, "terrorists." Then again, there will always be that tradeoff and you are probably on the right side.
It's a great concept, but here's where it breaks down: once data is given out, it can never be retracted. Whether it's an author's novel or a shopper's purchase history, once the data is released to someone in a readable format, they are unable to stop the recipient from doing something they don't like with that data.

Granted, the issue can be mitigated with trust networks, social conventions, or laws, but it comes down the same issues faced by DRM media formats: if someone can consume the content, they can find a way to duplicate the content.
Hey! Thanks for the feedback.

My level of happiness went up WAY before the funding event happened and is much more a result of my lifestyle changes and improvements in balance, clarity & focus then the other way around :)

The examples I gave at the end of "success" included working with amazing people, getting married and having a little baby boy.

Getting funding for my startup is at the bottom of my personal list and is in no way an indication of my personal financial situation (still having debt & working on a very low salary to be able to invest everything in my company and team). Not to mention anything about a "relaxing" new lifestyle :)

Being an entrepreneur will always be a stressful gig. I've just chosen to maintain a balance so I can do this for a very long time without killing myself and making everyone around me miserable :)
How does one measure happiness in the first place?
AFAIK they asked for $2B and Mark talked them down to $1B with the majority in stock.
It's been a while since I've done serious mathematics so I'm almost certainly wrong about this, but the "logical" definition for a derivative looks incorrect under the section "How do People Understand Mathematics?" (pg 3).

Shouldn't the distance between the quotient and d be less than ɛ?

http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/9404236v1.pdf
But how does this differ to StatusNet/OStatus? If we have several similar solutions to a problem it makes it more difficult for one to gain traction. Seems like reinventing the wheel, or am I missing something?
Steve Kirsch has a rather breathless but nonetheless informative summary here: http://skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm

Personally, I incline to the view that until we have a viable fusion option, it's worth building some IFRs.
I find your response to be a bit dramatic and troll-y, but you do raise some valid, common concerns which I will address now for the sake of others who might be curious:

[don't shit where you eat]
If things start to get uncomfortable, for whatever reason, I can get another job. I'm smart enough not to be 100% confident things will work perfectly. However, I have lived with Kyle and the other founders for 8 years. We have a long and stable history.

[your husband is your boss]
Kyle is a leader, but he's not my boss. We are a six person company and no one here has a boss. We treat each other as peers. So far it is working great. If we need to establish a hierarchy at some point, I trust we are capable of architecting it wisely. We are kind of obsessed with the organizational design of the company.

[two eggs, one basket]
I'm not too worried about either of us being able to find a job. We have valuable skill sets which are in high demand. Plus, I have savings from my previous job.

[why did you blog this??]
I put this on the blog because I thought it would be helpful to other people. It has received overwhelming appreciation.

Keen allowed it on the blog because we support a culture of transparency and because we think maintaining a blog that is useful to the tech community is helpful for our business. So far, it has worked very well.

[your finances will be joint, so why does it even matter what you get?]
I'm offended by this question. I have always been the high earner in this relationship, and I still am. My salary matters a lot to me. The only way your question makes sense to me is if you think Kyle is rich (he's not), if you think he makes all the salary decisions in the company (he doesn't), or if you are speaking in the context of antiquated gender roles.

[you're weird]
Thank you.
I was looking forward to verifying the P = NP proof on level 3, but sadly I don't have access to DARPA’s 1000-node testbed, nor does my phone have any optical storage space. Sigh :(

Anyway, love the challenge, the attention to detail is awesome :)