skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We don't know what those birds are feeling, but we have no reason to assume it's grief over other feelings. At face value, they are making alarm calls and gathering around the dead body. Of course we don't know how birds display grief and maybe this is how they show it, but again we have no evidence for that.

Thinking that their actions may be done to warn of poisonous food sources isn't as far-fetched as you make it out to be. It has a clear evolutionary benefit. As for grief, it is beneficial in tight communities as it helps strengthen social bonds. This is why people are less affected by the death of a stranger than that of a close relative. But blue jays are not highly social animals and the dead bird in question is one they have never seen before anyway. Scientifically, grief is actually one of the less likely possibilities as there doesn't seem to be any reason why they would grieve an unknown bird.

And does grief really make emotional sense? When a person finds a body on the street, what do they do? They call for help. Afterwards a crowd may gather as the police cordon off the area. But the crowd isn't grieving, they're simply morbidly curious.
Why join the navy if you can be a pirate? 
Realize that our brains, passion and intelligence are second to none in the world. If a Silicon Valley exists with brains of twenty something's creating some of the most exciting businesses and Fortune 500 companies, so can small town kids ride a buoyant economy, innovate and create successful brands and businesses.
Litigious bastards.
Now it seems like any post about the company brings out the Astroturfers. They all seem to be recent hires and so are probably still in the "honeymoon" phase where everything is sparkly and shiny and nothing could possibly be wrong.

Holy strawman, Batman!

You might also consider that others are quite simply stuck there, and are not going to jeopardize that relationship. Maybe they have one of the Valley's infamous sky-high mortgages, or perhaps they have one of those work visas which amount to legalized slavery keeping them bound to their current master.

Two thoughts. One, having Google on your resume typically results in an offer that is greater than what Google pays you, so anyone that has a "sky-high mortgage" can probably leave Google safely at their leisure. (This is not specific to Google, of course. Job + 1 always offers you more money than Job + 0, otherwise you would reject their offer.) Secondly, Google lets people on visas pick the type of visa they want, so there is no need to bind your employment status to your immigration status. (Also, it's tech: prove you have even the most minimal ability to click shit in Eclipse, and all the money and visas you can ever want are yours. If you feel trapped in a tech job, you're doing something wrong.)

Anyway, it's clear from your comment history that you didn't have a good time at Google. Everyone is unhappy with their exes: that's why they're exes. But it's silly to assume that everyone that does like it is mentally defective in some way or that they're all working at Google enslaved by financial or legal obligations. I may have only worked at Google for 8 months, but I still like it as much as I did when I started.
That strong arm CPU was way underpowered for web surfing ...
Gamification 4evr
Dear Apple,

Go fuck yourself.

signed,

a former iOS developer and Apple fan
In at least some cases, you can get by with having only the solution metadata committed to memory. For example, you might remember various data structures and their time complexity well enough to select the proper one, without necessarily being able to implement them all from memory.
I'm certainly disappointed in Apple's use of the patent system here, but we need to fix the patent system as a whole. Apple wouldn't have acted this way unless our patent system created the opportunity and the incentive. And if it wasn't Apple, it would have been someone else sooner or later.

So you can be mad at Apple if you want, but what's really messed up is a patent system that makes this behavior profitable.
It's as boring as saying "I love science fiction but I'm not a member of SF fandom."
They ask you in advance if there is something you don't like/are allergic to (my friend ate there), which isn't normal for omakase actually (I hate Uni, so this is a concern for me).
Even as a fan of Apple, I find this ridiculous.

It will be the consumers who lose if Apple wins.
The four new patents Apple is leveraging against Samsung include the '647 "Data Detectors" patent, the '721 "Slide-to-unlock" property, the '172 "Word completion" invention and the '604 "Universal search" patent.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/08/31/apple_adds_sam...

Just broad nonsensical software patents that shouldn't have been granted in the first place.

I hope Samsung fights this as I think they have a much better chance in winning even a jury trial against these, I mean why hasn't anyone invalidated these patents yet?!

P.S.

I'm not clear as to when Apple is hoping to ban these devices, at the December hearing? earlier? next year? I would appreciate a clarification.

Edit: trial date is set for March 2014 according to this http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044361860457762...
SkyCube reach its KickStarter funding
No. I have engineered wireless radios, and I've taken enough engineering to know that the "bandwidth problem" is a hoax made up by the wireless companies. Radio spectrum is not an issue, but they like to drum it up to prevent competition and camp other spectrum. AT&T and Verizon would rather have monopolies than deliver better services through research and investment.
Fair enough, but I think (a) skeptics aren't necessarily a group, and (b) perhaps skeptics should stand up and be counted as individuals. This view might not seem important in a society in which religious True Believers keep to themselves, or evolution deniers don't form their own political movements and try to change what's taught in school, but we don't live in that society.

Pollsters regularly tally up voting blocs based on the views people are willing to express -- like the religious, and like those who reject a scientific outlook. If skeptics don't ever speak up, society might miss the fact that the outlook even exists.

And reasonable people may differ.
With SSD, on OSX, it's pretty fast to reboot. Most OSes can now be tuned to boot very quickly; the big thing was getting rid of the BIOS for EFI I think.
If only those drivers were backed up seriously by their corresponding hw manufacturers, maybe Valve would consider trusting them a bit more. If Valve source code is spotted in the wilde, there will be only that many possible leaks, and all of them would be dependable (i.e. able to pay up in case of successful litigation). With independant teams of developers, it is very understandable that Valve doesn't want to take that risk. The only thing that Valve might do is contribute enginering strength to those other drivers projects, but I suspect that Valve doesn't have the workforce for that. Besides, that wouldn't necessary be seen as a keen move from Intel's perspective. I'm all for more open source drivers, but really it has to come from the manufacturers first and foremost, in this case at least. The only case I know of a game shop working directly on an OSS driver was when John Carmack helped with the Utah GLX driver effort, and that was a long time ago.
I'm absolutely mad at both. Apple wouldn't be using the patent system as a cudgel if it couldn't be used in that way.

Patent reform should be the top priority in the tech industry, but they're all too busy using it to batter each other to death. Apple's just the latest and highest-profile aggressor.

What I'd love to see, in place of this fiasco, is a tech summit, led by companies like Google, Samsung, and Apple, to thrash out a proposal for reform. Put all those high-profile, high-paid lawyers to good use.
Coffee, diet coke and music. I miss smoking.
Alright, so some skeptics can be pricks. Self-declared skeptics are mostly reformed Calvinists ... what do you expect?
I guess Apple is fearing Samsung's success in suing LTE in new iPhone 5 thus banning iPhone 5 sale in US.
Tacocopter Basics
Setup a service converting PSD files into Bootstrap layouts. Huge demand and you could easily do 5~10 a month and make $1000 (depending on what you charge for each one).
Would you believe that he's a well-known programmer and consultant who also happens to be the highest rated speaker at OSCON ever?

But if it helps you avoid cognitive dissonance to conclude that he has no clue, that's your choice.
Im certain t9's autocomplete could be counted as prior art.
Top 7 Vacation Spots for Year-Round Travel
(Shrug) Burying the lede has its risks. If you don't want to lose your readers, don't waste their time.
Thanks for the link! Very useful :)
How are developers disposable?
Help get this indie game on Steam
It's a business, and he probably doesn't have the same readership volume as wintel or apple dedicated sites.
I don't follow this logic. "I'm certainly disappointed in the pervert's use of the open curtains here, but we need to fix open curtains as a whole." Apple are still responsible for the ethics of their actions, regardless of the legality of those actions.
> We have a word for "sciences" that are unquantifiable

But as you say, the author isn't standing up for these "sciences" (in scare-quotes). Rather, he takes issue with the claims of objectivity and rigour for certain fields, one of which you appear to feel is unfairly tarred. You don't need to mischaracterise the author's position to defend computational linguistics though.
In what way are they bogus?

Because all software patents shouldn't be granted?

Because you have studied them deeply, fully understand their claims and believe there is prior art or no inventive step (the current requirement for the inventive step seem very low, do you think that this is not being met or you believe the standard should be higher)?

The patents have now withstood not only the flawed patent office examination but have been tested in court. The presumption should now be that they are valid and not bogus unless you provide justification or at least explanation of your view.

Samsung/Google should also presume validity and develop a workaround while the case is pending to strengthen their negotiating position and remove risk of a ban. This doesn't mean that they have to stop fighting legally.

Edit: A reply suggests I may have been wrong to believe that these are the patents that were tested in court. If I was wrong the advice would probably be to plan potential workarounds but not carry them out.
SQL Alchemy doesn't have an SQL parser, which I asked for.

See http://search.cpan.org/~rehsack/SQL-Statement/

It contains a parser and evaluates SQL expressions on lots of data sources(!).

The testing tools on Perl use a common infrastructure and can work with each others in a plugin fashion.
Your post gets a number of things wrong about Perl.

> For crying out loud Perl has pointers in it.

It does? Do you mean references? You'll need to use reference syntax when using nested data structures, but this is the same syntax that you'll find in Python and Ruby - you could think of those languages as using references by default instead of having array or list types.

> Perl doesn't do basic parameter checking in functions.

This is true - you'll need to deconstruct `@_` yourself. It is a shame. There is Params::Validate and Method::Signatures to fix this.

> Perl doesn't come with a decent repl.

Yeah, this is annoying. Get Devel::REPL and use that.

> Perl doesn't do sane type checking. print "abc" + 1; prints 1. It isn't a syntax error (like in Ruby or Python).

This throws a lot of people off, when they expect it to work like Python or Ruby and it doesn't. "abc" and 1 are actually the same type - scalars. A scalar can be a number or a string behind the scenes, and they're automatically converted, so you can just read data from a file and not have to worry about that. You want to use the dot operator, `print "abc" . 1;`, which prints "abc1" (which is what I think you want).

In those languages, it throws a type error, not a syntax error, which is an important distinction. Intergalactic law states that you're not allowed to complain about Perl if you don't know this.

> wantarray is one of most horrible things I've seen a programming language

Having list flattening means you can dump all kinds of data into a function and not have to worry about where it came from. Recently I wrote the line of code `highlight qr/regex/, @colours, @more_colours`, where I just dumped values from arrays into the function and didn't have to worry about destructuring them. If I wanted to pass the arrays, I'd put a backslash before them. It's sort of the opposite of Ruby's unary * operator.

Perl has warts just like any other language. Its warts are just more infamous (because Perl is used so much, a lot of people are having to maintain old codebases) and more visible (Perl has a culture of using the CPAN to fix things with the language (MooseX, Modern::Perl) whereas other languages' users tend to just put up with it).

I disagree that the average code is what counts. When I helped out on a Python cause, the lecturer barely knew Python, and taught it as though it were C (the students learned while loops first, then for loops, and never actually learned about generators. Yeah, I know). The code they wrote was definitely below-average. But not once did they turn to the Internet to see what proper Python code was like - they just followed the course, and did what it told them. If you learn Perl from a book, the amount of sub-par Perl code in the wild isn't going to affect you. Or, to put it another way: how can someone else make my language a worse one merely by writing in it?

I do agree that Perl is a bad choice for your first language: the choices it gives you and the amount it leaves up to you could get confusing when you're trying to learn it by yourself. Perl is a language for when you're a better programmer, and you've learnt to code at a higher level.
the scenes of the fish market shows the ugly side of over fishing our seas.

What do they show? I can't figure out how one thing could show the other.
You could try to apply your current learning pattern first; read books on color theory to get going.
Another thing that could be fun for you just to get going is to re-design services you like and try to improve them, in your eyes.
In the interest of fairness, minority whip Palosi, Obama, and many other Democrats were against SOPA as well. It was Wyden (D. OR) that placed a Senate Hold on PIPA.

Ron Paul opposed all legislation... ever. (/s)
> I stopped reading here:

Then please don't comment. It's considered customary not to discuss something you haven't thoroughly read; you're practically advertising that your comment adds nothing to the discussion.
Ask HN: Do you make your CV public?
In my corporate life, I have noticed that most of the senior/executive staff are quite protective of their CV's and profiles.

Even more, if they are members of linkedin, they usually only present their job titles with no further description of role or responsibilities. This would seem to me counter-productive as a potential recruiter would be less likely to find their profile using a generic search.

Personally I would have greater trust in a public CV because my feeling is that the respective person would be less likely to lie or embellish facts in a CV that be seen by their immediate peers.

Is your CV public or not? Why?
Do you fill in your complete linkedin profile or just job titles? Why?
This is how skeptics want to see themselves.

And yet self-claimed skeptics frequently uncritically accept all sorts of things that they have no actual proof for. (He calls several of these out.)
What the hell is up with Apple? I'm usually all for fierce competition, but this vindictive bullshit goes above and beyond that.
Circularia
That's very interesting. I wonder if Apple and LG ever got an agreement on the name.

Was LG's tablet ever released to the public?
> Islam gets called out more often because it does more damage.

This is shortsighted. I personally think all religious belief is harmful, but in the sweep of history, Islam has a record of much more tolerance than Christianity, to name just one other religion.

Over long periods of time, Islamic cities and countries were much more tolerant of other religions than Christian cities and countries. Christianity has, and deserves, a reputation for being utterly intolerant of other religions.

This is not to excuse the excesses of Islam, when and where they took place, and I personally think the world would be a better place without religion. But it's simply inaccurate to describe Islam as doing more damage from a historical perspective.

I speak as someone who tried to open a Planned Parenthood clinic in a rural area (where it was really needed), was threatened with death more often than I care to remember, and who saw clinics and doctor's offices set on fire with depressing regularity. But this can't compare to the Inquisition, a time when Christianity displayed its true colors.
I'm in some sympathy with the OP's idea that skepticism can be a shield against criticism of one's own prejudices, but when calling out the prejudices of particular skeptics, he seems to rely a great deal on extrapolation.

The OP's abandonment of skepticism does not seem to have turned him into a nice guy.
I haven't actually tried downloading it, but looking at http://elementaryos.org/downloads they definitely seem to have released something.

Also, it seems they've been working on this since 2007 according to http://elementaryos.org/team
Something that hasn't been discussed: Samsung Galaxy Nexus (aka Google's phone) is on this list as well.
Several European courts threw out the slide to unlock patent, as there was prior art with a Neonode phone. Judge Posner, with whom Apple tried to argue that a tap is a zero length swipe, and Judge Koh were skeptical of the validity of the slide to unlock patent.
Exactly what I wanted to type. Upvoted.
> yet self-claimed skeptics frequently uncritically accept all sorts of things that they have no actual proof for.

Perhaps, but they can be called out on them, made to squirm. Sort of like the difference between a bigot and a racist.
I don't really know why they are pushing IE10 since it's not even out yet (unless someone is sponsoring them). By the way the small demos are working in chrome, quite slowly but working
None of these software patents have been tested in court.
You have to know some subtext: those tuna take human lifespans to grow. There are dozens of them there, every day.
That sounds like conjecture to me. I mean it sounds good but ultimately it's just a story you came up with retroactively.
It is not IE only. CreateJS works well in the major browsers. The games work in new versions of all browsers. The games are only ad-free in IE and should work well especially in IE 10 as this looks to be partially sponsored by Microsoft.

Some of the links at the end also pertain specifically to IE.
The GNOME project has failed because they have hacked at things that don't matter. For example, what the world wanted and needed was a decent word processor. It got OpenOffice. It needed an easy to use flow chart creator. It got dia. It needed project management software. It got... Heck, what did it get?!?

Cheese and Gnome Shell are all very nice, but so what?
I think the sentiment there is that it's where the money is, so there's no shortage of developers creating apps.
There is an army of developers paying $99/year (and Apple hardware) and spending time on apps that may be rejected or suspended at any time in the appstore.
> Would you believe that he's a well-known programmer and consultant who also happens to be the highest rated speaker at OSCON ever?

Proving what exactly? Billy Graham is (was) also a well-regarded public speaker. This claim doesn't support the depth of his ideas, and can't compare to examining the ideas themselves.
I hope the people that have been dismissing Apple's recent win as a deserved and minor comeuppance for Samsung will at last see the light after this latest round of developments. Apple is clearly out to destroy Android, not just Samsung, and even a child can see that the S3 and the Note are not clones of anything Apple's made but instead products filling a demand Apple has refused to meet.
Presumably, the commenter I replied to was able to read this part, since it comes just before the line they quoted:

In the modern world, science, technology and reason are central and vital, and this is widely recognised

So I don't see how you can say that anything was buried.

Also, to disengage as a reader is one thing. To take the time to then comment on what one hasn't read, misstating the author's point-of-view and encouraging others not to read, on the basis of one's own lazy misunderstanding, is just wilfully spreading ignorance.
Physical stores may be able to offer expertise as well as seeing and trying out things in person. I imagine they might not even stock multiple copies of a single product to save space, and you just order the product to be delivered.
Couldn't agree more, my family has had macs for probably about 8-10 years. I was going to buy an iphone in December when my 2-year contract finished, but I almost certainly will not. Simply because I do not want to support such utter bullshit.
> Another thing many of those animals have in common with us? They eat other animals.

True, but we have the option of treating the animals we eat well. The problem is that in the pursuit of profit, many animals live miserable lives. In some countries they even skin the animals (dogs, snakes etc.) while they still live. The level of cruelty is beyond my comprehension. I'm a meat eater, but if I knew that the animal had been treated well I wouldn't mind paying a bit extra.

Another example is the fur industry. It is so meaningless that it amazes me that it has not been made illegal.
Slide to unlock doesn't seem broad to me. It seems easy to workaround by requiring a swipe but not moving the image until the end of the swipe or requiring a pattern of taps.

There may be prior art as another poster claims, I haven't studied it but it doesn't look too broad to me.
What makes me rage about this more than anything is that there is no viable alt (for me) to OSX right now - for what I do.

My next phone is an S3 though.

Must be painful for Woz to watch.
The author did not, by definition, bury the lede. It was an overall well-written, and mostly well-argued, 30-minute read. That may be greater than your current attention span, but you shouldn't presume that it's wasting anyone else's time.
Amazon does currently have to pay for the somewhat expensive delivery of single items to your house or place of work, so it's not all good.

Also the convenience that the parent talks about is not what I'd call convenient. Basically the last 4 times I went to a store, they didn't have the thing I wanted, or it was out of stock. And most of the time I want to go to a store, it's not open.