skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The author fails to understand the basics of Quantum Teleportation. Think of it this way: Alice has 2 boxes with the same unknown bit, and sends one of those boxes to Bob. When Alice opens her box she can see the value and Bob can see it too. Something like that.

Very good for cryptography (think untamperable shared secret keys) and for some cases of parallel computing.

Superluminal (FTL) communication would break Special Theory of Relativity. If anybody achieves that it would be an instant Nobel and front page on every newspaper on the planet. Even a mistake like the FTL neutrinos fiasco earlier this year.

Tech journalists tend to skim the abstracts and hype it to sell more clicks/ads.
The thing to remember is that "proven secure" doesn't mean that any real existing protocol specifications or implementations are actually secure! It means that some cryptographers used some (huge) set of simplifications and assumptions to define a model in which some aspect of the protocol has been proven to resist specific known attacks. Crypto papers assume their audience knows exactly what these assumptions are by reference to one of the standard proof models.

I think Matthew is doing something really good here by trying to bridge the gap between the proofs and the messy reality.
The ISM bands used by WiFi have about the same legal status as CB radio: by intent anybody can listen in.
The incentive for quick sloppy answers comes from the bias of voters towards what's already upvoted, which could be fixed just by showing them the answers in random order without the scores. Maybe change the display mode after the page settles down some, by some measure like time passed, pageviews, or answer accepted.

I agree there's a problem, and used to participate anyway because more fun or interesting questions were getting asked early on; I never seem to see new ones when I peek in nowadays.

Added (heh): people also vote for sloppy answers just because they sound good. I don't know what to do about this -- perhaps you could try to estimate a voter's average vote quality, and weight them.
Also worth watching: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116277/

It's a documentary about liking someone a little bit too much.
I would think that risk could be a part of it (or at least risk mitigation)...

If I were a photagrapher, I would likely want to charge more for a wedding then say the engagement pictures (or other portraits) which have a similiar amount of effort. If I have a problem with a portrait I might need to call them back in to reshoot. If theres a problem with the wedding pictures I'm stuck.

The workaround is better preparation, more people, more equipment, etc. All this costs money.
The Missing Amazon Glacier Cost-Estimator Calculator
I get annoyed when I go looking for the answer to a particular technical question and find that the most precise related question has been closed as "too specific", whatever the hell that is. Well, yeah -- after questions about geometric methods and proper etiquette are answered, you get into more specific stuff.

I do the only thing I can. Upvote the question (which can still be done on closed questions), and tell the questioner it's good, and the moderator is being an ass. Which they usually are.

The kinds of questions that annoy me aren't "do my homework"; they're real questions that focus on specific issues that I'm encountering and wasting time on. Some brownie-point seeking moderator is engaged in exactly the type of behavior that other comments note.
For me, the key parts of its success to emulate are:

- capitalizing on a meme at the peak of its popularity

- combining popular (LMFAO) with nostalgic (Offspring/Bloodhound Gang)

- catchy beat

- using the songs to differentiate the story (Offspring singing about the guy that thinks he has style, while showing the yellow-suited dancer)

- healthy mix of original song and mash-ins (keep the verse to one song intact, but layer the chorus)
It's a hard problem and the current attempt at a solution encourages un-'engineery' behavior.

Good work in a specialist environment should, by all means, be worth MORE than carelessly and impatiently fudging around until the problem seems solved at first glance in an environment you could pick staff for from across the street.
It's not cheating: it's collaboration. The old models of academic integrity just don't make sense in the digital age.

Don't pit students against one another - make them work cooperatively. Don't give grades, assign projects that translate into real world skills and fill real world needs immediately. Let students learn and work by contributing to society.

Students shouldn't graduate with diplomas. They should graduate with resumes and experience.

We shouldn't compete, we should work cooperatively.

What year is this anyway?
Yes, it is a by-product of food consumption. So there is no waste.

Its very sustainable, in that regards. [1]

Edit: citation added.

________

[1] "Some 70 percent of the world's supply comes from China, typically from birds killed for their meat. Most of the rest comes from Europe and Canada, from birds harvested for meat or pâté.", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_feather#cite_note-24
I understand all of that, and none of that contradicts anything I've said.

Technicolor starts with three monochrome images on black and white silver negative film, just as these images started.

So once we have the negatives, Technicolor uses a chemical process to do dye transfer, while these images were creating using scanning and computers to achieve the same goal. So what? We already knew this, of course.

Or are you asserting that Technicolor and/or modern SLR produce images that are vastly more accurate in their color rendering than these images are? And do you think that people here would be any less impressed if they'd been rendered using a "filmic" or classic Technicolor look, rather than a "Photoshop look"?

I've done a fair amount of photography, so I know first hand that the colors and contrast you get on your final print are often vastly different from what you saw in reality while taking the photo, and yet we still typically think that results are "good enough".

And no, the process you've described is not particular different from what occurs with any photography. It's still precisely

reality --> series of dubious technological steps
--> not-terribly-accurate but good enough representation of reality
Amazon caves in, will remove ads from Kindle Fire for $15 fee
Not at all, but wouldn't the benefits outweigh the risks? Security by obscurity really isn't security at all.
> Checked your profile and you seem to be smart, yet I think you are wrong again : ) (sure you have got enough sleep lately? not been talking to much to marketers?)

I am not sure why you decided to include this toxic, thorny little jab in your post. Please know that it's not appreciated.

> The most well known styles of programming (imperative, functional, object oriented etc) have been unchanged for two or more decades as well.

This is not true. The state of the art in all of these has advanced considerably, and many things that were once considered good practice have been discarded over time.

> And a 10 year old c or html tutorial still works and still lets people start solving real world problems.

I'm not sure what definition of "real world problem" you're talking about. Certainly nothing I learned 10 years ago directly pertains to my work today... Not pure math; its quite rare to use C for that sort of problem anymore. Not networking problems, 10 years ago you couldn't write servers the way you can today (nor should you save for perhaps embedded systems like microcontrollers?) Not UI either. Perhaps simple text munging? Doing that in C is pure futility compared to what we have today.

As for HTML, a 10 year old HTML tutorial would give you almost no insight into modern webpages, and a very large amount of it would be "N-hancements".

> No, but you directed it at a new programmer who shared something that a lot of people in that situation seems to struggle with.

I'm not sure what your point is. Nor am I a huge fan of Beck's philosophy in this.
Monopoly Board Game-Alan Turing Edition
It's sad that premature regulation moved this into the sphere of politics and mandated-purchases (from companies with an incentive to lobby). That means any attempt to learn what's really going on, or make any incremental changes, is gummed up by the fog of adversarial, zero-sum politics.

Without the inflexible mandate, the rule could simply be: label whether your product has flame-retardants or not, and have evidence for your claims. Then the industry could diversify, some brands emphasizing flame-resistance and others lack of chemical additives. And, this diversity would mean we would gather more real-world experience about whether the flame-retardant units are really correlated with fewer/slower fires and fewer fatalities, or with more health/IQ/behavior problems in children and pets, or both, or neither.

But because of the uniform monoculture imposed by the premature politicization, we face a data white-out and policy is flying half-blind... with only indirect data on costs and benefits.

Maybe a way out would be to compel a bisection of the industry output: you must make half your units with, and half without, these additives, and clearly mark the units in each category. Five to ten years later, we'd likely have much better data about real effects.
Boing Boing has a better picture of the board: http://boingboing.net/2012/09/08/alan-turing-memorial-monopo...
The discovery that atoms are not atomic (could be split) came after the term was coined.

On the other hand, in this case, a bunch of people decided to call something "teleportation" when it isn't teleportation.
Maybe the author could back up these claims by citing specific cases for each of the complaints?
One of the biggest problems I see on SO is repliers tell the OP they are "doing it wrong" and not answering the OP's question. Typically you'll see some smartass reply with, "Why would you want to do that? You're doing it wrong. Do it this way, here's how."

These replies infuriate me. The OP knows what his problem is and he's asking for an answer. He doesn't need a new problem to solve. He doesn't need to know what your opinion is about solving the problem. He needs a solution.

One example: I was searching for how to solve a RVM and rails configuration problem on OS X. I typed the error message from the console into google, and found a SO question that was exactly the problem I was having. But instead of providing an answer, the most upvoted comment was to uninstall everything and use homebrew because "you're doing it wrong" without homebrew.

That's nice and all, but I've had a rails and rvm setup on my laptop for 2 years without homebrew, and, like the OP, I don't have time to set that up now. I just want to fix this one configuration error and get back to work. I quickly went back to Google and found the solution on another rails forum.

Granted, this is a problem with a lot of internet forums, not just SO. But it drives me nuts.
Because the technical term is misleading and inaccurate.

If scientists started calling walking "human teleportation" tomorrow, they'd be wrong in that too. The term "teleportation" had a very well-established meaning before they appropriated it.

Scientists can make mistakes, labeling this process "teleportation" was one of those mistakes.
A CEO is a pretty busy person ... when one responds (no matter how it was escalated) it says something about his/her viewpoint.

Many CEOs would hand this off to their customer experience personnel (if they have some still) or maybe marketing department.

This was not a manager's or director's reply though. The wording indicates someone (relatively new to this president's post) who appears to see that change is necessary. He understand that his offer may not be accepted (he get's it) and still offers a direct link to himself.

I don't read this as a PR ploy or gimmick.

If a CEO offered someone a new car PLUS their ear, I'd be watching for changes. PayPal didn't burn everyone's car. Enough damage was caused to affect the brand though. If I was one of the affected, I'd be watching for more action.

I feel that the response was appropriate. There is something in the wording that gives me hope. Maybe I'm just being naive.

I'll watch to see how things turn out though.
The Vault: an incredible web series, made by two guys outside of work
I hate PayPal with a vengance. I used PayPal with my small online music business a few years ago. But when there was one dispute by one customer, they froze my account, not just for that one transaction with that one customer, but for all transactions with all customers. And they refused to answer my calls or help me resolve the problem. They sided with the customer, even though she was wrong (it was about a disputed shipping charge), and I ended up not only losing the sale, the cost of shipping and insurance, but subsequent sales and deals with other customers. My rating on Ebay went from 98 to 65 over night with angry posts from other customers. It was a horrible scene. I ended up refunding everyone that had their money frozen, even though PayPal never refunded me! I switched eventually to Google Wallet and have been happy ever since.
Good example: one-time pads are proven secure, but if I write an application that swaps OTPs before beginning encrypted communication with those pads, bad things will happen.
While the CEO has only been onboard for 5 months now, these kind of issues plaguing Paypal have been there for years now. I remember a good friend of mine had his Paypal account frozen a few years back because they thought it was suspicious he had received money so quickly (he was selling a popular marketing eBook). After making him jump through hoops to get his money (identification, financial records and scans of his passport, etc) he finally received the cash 7 months later, by that stage he was ruined emotionally and financially due to the fact it was his living (he couldn't pay bills or anything).

While I applaud the new CEO wants to make amends, for some like my friend who relied on Paypal to make a living by processing his business payments it's a little too late. Although Paypal is still the industry leader (because they have a stranglehold on online payments) the new CEO knows that offerings like Stripe and whatnot are making Paypal less and less relevant each and every day.

I would love to see Paypal change, the first thing they need to do is fire all of their customer service staff and train new staff with a new set of guidelines, implement a clean-cut way of contacting Paypal if something goes wrong and clean their act up.
I'm not sure how much of this is conjecture. My thinking differs from yours with respect to the following -

"Albums don't really have years either. Or at least they have publication years. The songs have years. Normal studio albums have a common year. Compilations and soundtracks do not."

An album that is released by a record label does have a year, as upon release it becomes a publication. By this train of thinking i would also say a soundtrack does have a year, too, as it is published as a collection timely to the context of its release. The same can be said of compilations, as they are a contemporary release.
I hate hate hate PayPal. They ruined my ebay business!
Yes.

Recently mercury-free LED light bulbs are getting more popular.

And you can still buy 100W incandescent light bulbs everywhere. The workaround is that they are marketed as for special use (shock-resistant).
AFAIK, it is teleportation -- something is going from one place to another without having to move through the space between them -- but it just isn't what you think of when you think of "teleportation".
In all fairness, they have a new CEO. Maybe that is their way of looking into systematic issues...
I just discovered this today and was blown away. I thought HN might find it interesting because 1. the show itself is one of the best I've seen, and 2. I think the big content companies of the future will start exactly where these guys are starting now. This show in particular is getting close to reaching a critical mass, and I suspect the people making it will be quitting their day jobs in the near future. Note I'm not affiliated with them in any way, so this is just speculation.
Ask HN: Wrong mindset is crippling my life.  What to do?
I'm in my mid 20s, and graduated a few years ago with a bright future ahead. Since then, I've done everything wrong.

I grew up thinking I'd be a scientist, but dropped out of grad school without useful skills, moved in with family with whom I have an unhealthy relationship, struggled to find non-trivial work, and let my personal relationships languish because I'm ashamed of my life. I've taken some more college courses just to be doing something non-trivial (I've done tutoring/odd jobs), but to little benefit.

Since finding HN, I've taught myself (some!) Scheme, C, ASM, Py/JS/Rails, and Haskell, but have no really interesting projects. However, one of the messages of HN is that passion, not foundational knowledge, matters most, but my passions are outside web/mobile, in fields that don't pay (perhaps I misunderstand the "passionate developer" trope). Regardless, my résumé makes this a moot point.

It's hard to set and work toward short- or long-term goals: I don't know which goals and I'm constantly aware I should be focussing on something with short/medium-term financial potential and by a sense of futility/mental fatigue.

I've fallen off the track and don't know how to get back on. But somehow my problem isn't not being able to get a job in some specific field but not knowing how to live. For example, dissatisfaction with my underachievement leads me to isolate myself more (obviously a self-reinforcing problem for which the solution is to be awesome, but it's not working out). Selling anything, particularly myself, is something I'm deeply uncomfortable with, and too often just punted on. This is exascerbated by my current lack of value to offer, but again ... a mutually recursive problem?

I'm in reasonable health, live in a first-world country, and some brilliant and talented people (wrongly?) believed in me ... but I couldn't do anything right, and now couldn't even get a job at a burger joint. How can I change my mindset?

Thanks.
AFAIK, there has been almost no exodus from Heroku since its acquisition, which is pretty damn uncommon (see Facebook/Google IPOs for example). In fact, there seems to have been an influx of new awesome developers, which implies it's not just golden handcuffs.

I asked a Heroku employee about this, and he attributed it to their awesome culture. It really seems everyone loves it there. Certainly, every Heroku employee I know (sample size: 12ish) has an excitement that doesn't mesh with the tone of this article.
If it was a mistake, it wasn't dishonest. If it was dishonest, they were intentionally trying to deceive people.
Last.fm is down
He quit to be a farmer? Is this the story of the fisherman and the businessman? http://www.lifeprinciples.net/SuccessatLife.html
Google marked it an unsecure website
The real value of an SO answer is probably best approximated by how many people it helped. In my experience, SO is incredibly useful when I'm learning a new language or framework, and I want to quickly blast through hurdles caused by non-intuitive syntax or functionality. In those situations I'm on there almost constantly. For popular languages like Objective-C for iOS, there are thousands of people who are in that same situation.

Surely there must be a way to capture the value-added for all those thousands of people in the reputation system? Many people get to these answers from google, so it sounds like a simple matter of pinging them to (sign-in) and upvote the answer that helped them out.

If, on the other hand, as the author says SO is no longer actually values reputation, and is screwing with their algorithms accordingly, that is a serious problem. Not sure what can be done about that.
For a lot of songs (and most popular new songs), you can download the "instrumental" version and the "acapella" version, the latter being the isolated vocal track. Most mashup-ers use these, as opposed to doing it themselves (which would lead to muddy/mismatched music).
What Drives Me Crazy When Integrating With a New API?
Would love to know too.
Obviously, it's not a huge problem. Like the author of this article, I am just annoyed at how difficult it is to conceive of and maintain a perfectly organized music collection. As for your specific question, however, it would be trivial to query your collection like SELECT * FROM songs WHERE song.album_id = 2, which would get all the songs on that album even if one of those songs is also part of album 3.
EDIT: You do have to assign = You don't have to assign
Yeah. Music is classifiable in some sense, but its a hugely complex and multi-directional thing and most 'classifications' really just scratch the surface. And while algorithmic recommendation services (lastfm, spotify, etc.) can be nice for a while, actually people are complex and always change their views and interests, so they are never always going to give you what you want.

Personally for my own collection - I have a loosely interpreted directory structure that I've evolved that is basically 'continent and/or genre'/'artist'/'album (with year recorded at the start if I have lots of them)' that works well for me and I don't have to constantly rename everything I download (theres some less-sorted directories of things I don't listen to much within this).

For searching, tagging and playing I use foobar2000 (unfortunately still windows-only) because it has plenty plugins which handle everything from tagging (eg. from discogs and freedb), through to searching (keeps a constantly updated and strongly index media library, which can be searched from a range of front-end UIs) and information finding (getting album covers, lyrics, artist biographies, etc. and displaying as you like). I don't do lots of retagging, but I do find it useful sometimes - for instance I have tagged some of my more listened classical music by composer and performer separately, so I can look at it from either direction when I want to.
Hellbanning is precisely why I have showdead on. There have been some notable users (creators of products and various websites) whom they were hellbanned for no apparent reason. Having showdead on shows even them, however you still cannot comment to them directly.

I think I've only seen 2 or 3 spam posts on dead. And a few 'special people' whom are hellbanned. In a nutshell, the S/N does not get noticeably worse with showdead on.
> cell phones also use encrypted data streams

My only point is that it's illegal to eavesdrop on them. And it seems they're not very well encrypted:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/technology/29hack.html?pag...
But nothing is really decided on Gentoo. You can easily use another init-system for example (all the common ones are in Portage). You can also use a different package manager. I recall that there was a famous replacement for emerge; forgot its name right now.

Otherwise, I don't see much difference between

./configure
make install

and

emerge x

Except that in the first case, you have to deal with some exceptions where it doesn't work that way. But not sure if that knowledge is really valuable.
You bring up an interesting point: the identity function for a song is not self-evident. Even if two versions of a song are from the exact same recording and mastering, one could have a bit of extra silence at the end, or if they're lossy encodings, different encoders or bitrates would yield different files. What I said would only work with songs that are declared to be identical, however you choose to do that.
For what it's worth there are no occurrences of "sorry" or "apologize" in that letter.
Yeah, it's not going to be a big storage hit in reality (and even if it were, you could just rely on file system level compression/deduplication). I, like the author, just enjoy musing about the "perfect" way to organize a music library.