skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The author seems more intent on Dawkins-bashing than anything else. What else can explain his deliberate mis-reading of Dawkins missive. "As is typical of hatemongers, Dawkins is careful not to name his target directly: instead, he works with insinuation -- though that said, calling the victim "Muslima" is particularly crass." Dawkins does not call Skepchick "muslima"; he addresses the missive to some "muslima" to ironically point out that there are women who suffer far worse sexism than being asked if they'd like a cup of coffee.

Two specific laws were passed in Britain in the last 25 years outlawing FGM. Yet there has not been one conviction. A report recently pointed out that there may be as many as 100,000 victims. http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-mut...

Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two. The only person to mount a campaign on it is the novelist Ruth Rendell.

When the female "Equalities Minister" recently appeared on the BBC's premiere news programme defending the status quo (along with a muslim man), it was an array of young muslim women accusing the authorities of racism and sexism in not bringing prosecutions.

It really is an appalling state of affairs. And in the last 20 years, FGM has barely been mentioned by British media. I would guess that the total number of stories in the last decade is no more than 20.

When I've brought the issue up with socialist feminists they claim that it is racist to get involved.

So, I think Dawkins has a point. And from my observations of Dawkins he seems to be far more concerned to offend christians than muslims.
As far as I can tell about the blog comment: Some left wing guy do personal attacks.

The post was from 2011 -- I thought most left wing people had stopped claiming evolutionary psychology was like frenology from racist right wingers? Especially after this:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/gould-morton-revis...

Edit: Please don't start post rebuttals to HN from the other end of the political scale, or something. Idealism is better kept off HN.

Edit 2: Clarity.
If I may ask, what is it you do?
I'm not a recruiter and have, in fact, interviewed a total of zero people at Google. But I'm betting we don't call people and say "you are not smart enough to work at Google". If anything, that's a bit too honest for a large corporation, don't you think :)

But seriously, interviews are very very subjective and interviewers have very wide latitude to ask anything they want. Individual interviewers pick the questions they'll ask, and everyone has their favorites. I have a friend that has a phone interview question that I probably couldn't answer correctly with an hour and a whiteboard: I just don't get it. So if I got a few more interviewers like that when I applied, I would not be working for Google, even though I'm theoretically "smart enough to work at Google".

Furthermore, you may be really smart, but that may not come out in the interview. If your interviewer asks you "what's two plus two" and you answer "four" and the rest of the interview consists of you making a latte, the interviewer may write "My candidate knocked the question out of the park. I asked him what two plus two was and he got the answer instantly. And then he made me a cup of coffee! Must hire!" When the hiring committee reads this, though, they might not reach the same conclusion: "It's great that he got an easy question and can make coffee, but is that really what we want?" In that case, you didn't mess up the interview at all: Google did.

So anyway, one should not be disheartened if they "fail" a Google interview. Hiring is a fine art and we are constantly learning. Please re-apply if you are interested in the work we do, and always give feedback to your recruiter. It's OK to call your recruiter after the interview and say "I was being hired to work on TCP optimization and they asked me questions about Java dependency injection frameworks, even though I said I've never used Java."
And at least by offering it, you'd get metrics on how many people use it. Like Patrick said, it's the most important 30 seconds of your relationship with the customer. It's worth trying whatever you can do to improve that signup process.
That was certainly an interesting if not completely ridiculous read... The author seems to spend most of his time generalizing and erroneously misinterpreting the view points of those he perceives as skeptics (the most heinous of which include his characterization of skeptics as people who "hate and fear" philosophy, which is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard).

He seems to have misguided views on everything from modern medicines use of the placebo, to the development of fields such as computation linguistics and medical science. Here's the deal, if the author can demonstrably prove that people who use homeopathy know that it is just a placebo, then they can go for it. But they don't. If the author can show that there exist better methods for researching language, then go for it, but he doesn't. In fact, as someone who is interested in the field and friends with many computational linguists, let me tell you they are trying to look for better models to deal with the uncertainty inherent in NLP, and I'm not even sure where his statement that computational linguists fear pragmatics comes from. That is complete crap.

Wrapping bullshit around some kernels of truth does not make it true. I.E. yes, the atheist community on reddit can have misguided views, and yes people like Hitchens and Dawkins and the like are subject to their own personal biases, but both those people and indeed most of these communities are acutely aware of this fact and spend a lot of time trying to come to terms with it (look at the recent furor about whether the glorification of people posting snarky remarks made to "fundies" on reddit constituted a positive step). His rant against the skeptic conspiracy against feminism is also something which I found incomprehensible, and as far as I can tell completely untrue.

I would encourage people to read this in its entirety, if only to convince yourself that the title is an attention grab, and that the contents, while pointing out some valid truths, are largely filled with conspiracy theories and facts which are not backed up, and based on vast generalizations and oversimplifications.

P.S. I did enjoy the bit about the skeptics movement being a neoliberal conspiracy.
Well its the difference between being skeptical about things, and being a skeptic. One is a gut feeling you shouldn't accept things, and the other is a mind state/religion. With one you can accept you where wrong, with the other you just change topics and begin the next assault why something is wrong.

I find most people who proclaim to be 'a skeptic' quite intolerable after a short period because they are always trying to find new ways to laud mistakes over people, always putting people down, and more often than not lifting themselves above others through humiliation. More or less just intellectual bullying, often without realizing it.
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What's your city and postcode? I can forward it to the devs responsible for the signup page.
I mostly read his paragraph on sexism, which frankly struck me as very silly. What has other skeptics being sexist to do with him being a skeptic? And what has Star Trek being sexist to do with skeptics? The logic was just very bad, so he didn't convince me as a skeptic. I assumed being a skeptic would involve being rational.

His ratings in an community unknown to me don't impress me at all. I mean it is cool, but I still look at what he says with skepticism. The world is full of famous people who are wrong.
I'm curious... why would America be fine with no president for 100 years, but a bad CEO means a company goes under?

I'm seriously having a hard time finding a lot of logic in your response. And I'm not joking. I find it incredibly hypocritical that our society just accepts political trash.
lmm is clearly thinking of the current situation, not historical score-keeping.

The past can be a wonderful source of inspiration, but we cannot parcel out criticism and praise now based on events far past living memory.
Samsung doesn't implement the slide to unlock action on a predetermined path. On 2012 phones, it's just swipe anywhere along any direction for a certain distance. IIRC, onn the 2011 phones it was slide the lockscreen wallpaper in any direction.
http://wikiloopr.com/Sigur%20Rós did I break it?
So isn't this like "prior art" relevant to the recent Samsung vs Apple "patent" trials?
Faulty patent system IS NOT an excuse for Apple. Aftern Jobs died - real company face has revealed, not even worth to spit at. My iPhone is last device from this manufacturer, Samsung is so much superior, they also act like humans.
Islam gets called out more often because it does more damage.

Surely countries ruled by Christians are currently doing more damage, Islamic run countries haven't generally tried to militarily invade and impose governments on any major christian run ones in a while, unless I am not following the news enough.
I really don't wish to seem like a snarky wise-ass, but for me,
coding is a vice. Getting into the code is a very addictive rush,
and time just somehow passes unnoticed.
We used to play this as a game back in high school. First one to find the loop won.
I suspect -- but can't prove -- that Islam is perceived as more dangerous because it is currently more foreign. There has been a huge and relatively recent surge in western awareness of it, but it is not a pervasively western philosophy.

So that means that our primary perceptions of Islam are going to come from the news, or from discussions of the news, and it is the worst, most backwards fundamentalist atrocities against people that will make the news.

This is not at all an apologia for those acts. There is no place left in the world for things like the stoning of a raped woman. However, we should also keep in mind that such acts are as much cultural as they are religious, and arguing that one religion is worse than another because of them is ignoring the cultural aspects of tribalism.

I'm not a fan of, say, homeopathy, but I'm also uncertain about the extent to which we should protect people from themselves. There is at this point plenty of easy-to-find criticisms of homeopathy; if someone chooses to try it anyway, either because they didn't do any research about it or because they did and ignored it, is that really our business? It's certainly not mine.
I found it funny when the jury foreman said "we only wanted to award a reasonable amount of damages". One billion dollars for rounded corners? I wonder if one billion dollars would have seemed like a reasonable amount of money before the financial crisis with it's monster bailouts.
To get competitive pricing on hardware.

If Nvidia have the only working drivers for Source on Linux, then they can push up prices on their hardware to Valve, safe in the knowledge that it could take months for Valve to port their entire games library to AMD or Intel. If Valve keep support for all three, then they can squeeze the hardware manufacturers for better prices lest they take their custom elsewhere.
Well, I'm guessing he's either developing iOS or OSX apps.
I love this. Thanks for putting it together! I'm not sure it will replace my beloved 3WK, but it is always great to pick-up new artists.

Well done.
I don't know if you're right but the article's explanation is very probably wrong (assuming the findings are right) -- we're cognitive misers, and don't do a lot of thinking unless we are prompted to do so, either by ourselves or by an experimenter in a controlled experiment. We usually hate to think (type II, conscious, reflexive thinking) and to process information.

On the other hand, we usually don't like risk, unless to save us from losing, because we have a big loss-aversion. If offered to take $10 now or a 50% chance to win $20 in a month, most people will choose $10 now; but when asked to "lose" $10 now or a 50% chance to lose $20 in a month most people will choose the later option.

I'm not sure how to square this with the findings reported in the article, so I'll leave it at that...
We are all Nirvana babies
Positives: 1. Generally great idea. 2. Very nice css, looks beautiful. 3. Really like the blank page section - it really encourages people to get involved. (make this more prominent).
Advice/Criticism: Just looked at it for a few minutes but here are my first impression thoughts:
1. You say on home page it is for practice and personal progress, but all I see is other people's are that is way better than mine. 2. You feature the practice engine but it only has two courses, and feels incomplete. (plus it looks like you are asking for my money before you convince me I should use your site / before I even fully understand the purpose). Maybe try to feature your best feed back coupled with the piece instead of your most popular art. Add more classes and make a couple of them (more obviously) free. Encourage me to upload art from the start - right now it feels like I should focus on other peoples art instead of my own.
I recently swapped out my iPhone 4S for a Galaxy S3 and I was a bit apprehensive given my pretty mixed impressions of Android from a few years ago.

But really I prefer the S3 in almost every way now and wonder why I put up with the limitations of the iPhone for so long. If you do switch I think you'll be happy.
Android is specifically not "GNU/Linux". It's a Linux kernel with an almost entirely custom user land, from the C library up. Sure, some of it is Open Source, some of it is even non-Google-created Open Source, but it's knowingly and specifically not "GNU" and/or GPL.
I don't think anybody's suggesting that Dawkins called Skepchick "Muslima".
Ask HN: Job prospect at my dream company, but I'm not 18 yet.
Using a throwaway account because I don't want to be identified. I am in a very new situation and confused.

I am 17 years old, turning 18 early next year. I currently study at a highly academic selective entry high school in Australia and formally taking first year undegrad uni as part of my final year program.

I have been working on an ambitious "mod" (it's actually an alternative version) for a game run by a huge company, similar to Valve. I found a bunch of exploits in the protocol and their game and reported it to one of their engineers. A few days later I received an email from a "Senior Recruiter" about a potential position at the company, referred by the guy I reported the exploits to. It sounded like the recruiter expected me to be a 25+ year old engineer with a degree in CS, not a high school student. He also wanted to talk about my "academic background/professional experience".

I replied but avoided talking about my age and education - I said that I was interested in the position and that while I didn't have formal education, I had the affinity for solving big problems, that I was passionate about the game and had experience in CS and SE (which I do). I got a reply within 20 minutes where he asked me for an updated resume and to arrange a call with him to discuss this further - he said had 5 calls that day, would be away for the weekend, so we would be able to continue this on Monday.

Continued at http://pastebin.com/MxHkVSdD because I hit the 2k character limit (barely).

I really really appreciate any help and advice you can give to me. This opportunity means so much to me.

I can also be reached at youngthrowaway@gmail.com.
As the author of more centithreads than God himself, you don't have time to reply to a comment on the Internet?

I'm kind of impressed with your restraint, actually.
Awesome design there!

I think you meant that sarcastically, but it actually is good design from Spotify's point of view. They really want people to link their accounts to Facebook, but don't want to lose the potential users who steadfastly refuse to do so. Tailoring the language and design to encourage the desired choice is smart, even if it might not be quite right grammatically.
A dream-wish: The people who developed the Harmattan UI (Nokia N9) design something new and refreshing for Desktop Linux. I know, that's probably improbable, but if it did happen...
This was the first (and only) UI on top of linux that I really found beautiful. Android does not have the same polish, unfortunately..
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Okay HN developers -- when you get done reading the linked article and are finished laughing at the thought of a little helicopter delivering a taco or a bottle of beer, start thinking:

* Little helicopters can now lift a substantial weight.

* They aren't very expensive.

* They're easily controlled, more so than a full-sized helicopter (primarily because of computer-aided controls and GPS guidance). So you don't have to be Chuck Yeager to fly one.

* All you need to do is mate the helicopter with a decent camera that can simultaneously beam a picture to the ground for guidance and preview, and take high-resolution pictures on command by way of the radio link.

* Uses: real estate (who desperately need a way to take high-quality pictures of houses from above), surveillance, art, video productions, etc..

This is an opportunity waiting for someone willing to take it on.
Javascript/PHP spell checker with feel of a word processor
In that case from my quick glance at the patent it already may not be infringing. If the wallpaper moves with the drag I would need to look at the claims carefully again.

I was not trying to give a total judgement on the case but argue against the claim that all the patents were ridiculously broad (admittedly the data detectors one looks very broad to me although if read in the broad way MUST have prior art).
You're falling into the fallacy of the excluded middle. Just because "black" doesn't tell you everything about a person doesn't mean it can't tell you something useful.

That typical (now there's an overgeneral term!) black woman will have a darker skin color than a typical white woman. She will be less susceptible to sunburn. She is more likely to suffer from certain genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia.

Now, none of these are absolute statements. They are all probabilities. That does not make them useless. If someone comes into the ER with severe pain in their extremities, it is very useful to know that they're black. They may or may not have sickle cell anemia - that can be determined conclusively through a blood test and thorough medical examination. But knowing whether they're likely to is very useful information, because it lets you determine whether it's worth putting in the extra effort to diagnose it conclusively. (Similarly, even if they carry the genetic marker, they might not be having a sickle-cell crisis, and it could be a blood clot or some other medical condition. But it's pretty damn likely.)

It's a fallacy to believe that just because the data you're working with can't tell you everything, it tells you nothing. Rather, you should recognize the limitations of what you know, and use them to determine what else you need to know. Race tells you something. It doesn't tell you a whole lot, because there's a lot of individual variation within a race. But that doesn't mean it tells you nothing, either.
I don't think there's a philosophical framework within which we can really assess which of two world religions is "more harmful". It sounds to me like you're picking the most salient examples to you personally, and choosing to generalise from them.

The character of a religion is not merely shaped by the principles of the religion but by the society in which that religion is present. The Islam of early medieval Spain is different to the Islam of 19th century Saudi Arabia, which is in turn different to the Islam of 17th century India or 21st century Sudan. The Christianity of the Inquisition is different to the Christianity of William Wilberforce, which in turn differs from the Christianity of Constantine and so on.

In reality, we can only really judge people by their actions, rather than their professed religion. Religion of any kind is no excuse for bad behaviour, nor should a person's religion detract from the good that they do.
> The past can be a wonderful source of inspiration, but we cannot parcel out criticism and praise now based on events far past living memory.

And those who fail to understand the lessons of history are doomed to relive them.
I bet I've listened to discussions of FGM on Womans Hour on radio4 at least twenty times in the last half decade.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying it currently receives enough attention.
Scalable and Modular CSS
Super love to it. Beautiful interface and beautiful songs.
> overhead and headaches and needless code-bloat

care to elaborate that? sounds like you are a clueless fucking idiot with a hip hat. ruby motion is a 1:1 projection of the "bloated" cocoa API you are whining about. only ruby's foo.do_shitWithKeyword(blah, anotherKeyword: idiot) syntax makes it really ugly and retarded.

> the elegance of Ruby and the beauty of simplicity

god, seems like you got a fucking huge brain tumor ... or are you really that retarded? drill holes into ruby and fuck it ...
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I hope I'm not misstating the author's position. In my reading, he goes well beyond pointing out that some fields, such as linguistics or medicine, have made stronger cases than their data can support.

He actually says "I do not believe in the primacy of the scientific method as a source of knowledge", and later, that [in order to successfully advance a particular scientific field] we need to "admit the presence and value of non-scientific knowledge". The nature of this non-scientific knowledge is not entirely clear from the essay but seems to be some mixture of culture and common sense.

He throws out several such claims without addressing the problems that come along with accepting non-quantifiable or non-scientific knowledge into a traditionally scientific discipline. For example, if you make a hypothesis that is not quantifiable, how can you determine the degree to which your data supports it?
The biggest patent troll of the past 10 years. I'm ashamed of all the Apple products I own after what's been going on.
Nitpick: Than most animals? I doubt it. Anything less than a gram (easily over 99% of all animals, likely even of all animal species) will barely notice the difference between a tree standing up and one that has fallen down.
It's quite possible that the skills needed to succeed at Microsoft or Amazon are different from the skills needed to succeed at Google.
Dawkins' main problem with your criticism of Christianity would probably be that it is too short...

As other comments have noted, he has criticized Christianity more than Islam.

For a less well known counter example, this is from a not so extreme Muslim country (a few friends are from Bangladesh, so I read up a bit).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_Property_Act_%28Banglade...

>> It is officially estimated that about 75% of all Hindu lands in Bangladesh have been seized by using this act

Edit: I have to ask -- why do left wing people have much less problems with the quite common Muslim antisemitism, than with Nazi antisemitism? Most of the arguments (except for the religious ones) and sources were copied from the nazis. It is even written in official(!) media in the Muslim world.
The article misses a key point: people aren't going to migrate to Python 3 unless and until the most common libraries have been ported over.

About a year ago I tried to mass-upgrade my many Python apps to 3, only to discover that about half of them required one or another library that was unavailable in 3 (and remain unavailable).

To me, the syntax and other changes are a small issue compared to the fact that many of my apps would simply stop working, and with no recourse.