skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Would you mind trying again? I did "Grantee: Everyone" but forget to check the Open/Download box in the S3 console. Looks like it's working now, but famous last words, etc.
What does the B in Benoit Benoit B. Mandelbrot Mandelbrot stand for?
Both in terms of perks and barrier to entry, alas.
Developer Successfully Created Fusion Drive on old Mac
A lot of philanthropists in the US seem to become interested in education. Is this as true in, say, Sweden? I wonder if it is largely an artifact of the brokenness of American schools rather than the universal importance of education. (Not that education isn't important. It's immensely important. But maybe in some places it doesn't seem like a problem.)
> a) these tablets are vastly more expensive than just hiring teachers locally - by orders of magnitude. This is not a remotely scalable scheme, and frankly research budgets would be much better put to use working out how to distribute cheap teaching materials through existing education networks.

I don't like to be harsh, but what is the quality of the teachers they are likely to get? A bad teacher can be worse than no teacher. By "bad teacher", I mean one who doesn't understand the material themselves.

> b) More perniciously, the tablets educate in English or Amharic: not in the local language of the population in question, which these children would otherwise speak; their parents are often not fluent in either.

It's a complex issue, but if people can only speak a local language they'll face heavy discrimination if they try to get a job elsewhere.
I think it's about as concerning as cell phones. There are plenty of places where you are not allowed to bring a cell phone, especially if you're going to be looking at or talking about something confidential. I think the same rules would apply to glasses. Both devices have a camera and can upload a recording to youtube or qwik or any other number of video services, and both devices can be used to secretly record videos.

I hope that Google will take measures to reduce the risk of unwanted recording, perhaps by having an LED or a shutter/record sound which can not be muted.
Having a laptop with a touchscreen is a surprisingly big deal. Big enough that I bought one for just that feature, and the Apple laptops without it seemed suddenly old fashioned.
Flying in and out of SFO is rough. According to flightstats.com, Virgis is on time 71% of the time, United and Southwest 63%, and American 58%.

In comparison, flying from LAX to San Jose: American Eagle 93%, Horizon 89%, Southwest 82%, and flying into Oakland, Southwest is 85%, Skywest is 82%.
Thanks a lot Thomas. I didn't know about this!

Having said that, my app is 100% static pages :) (may change in the future).

There's a JS library out there that can help me to achieve time normalization.
Sort of, not really.

The problem with flying is that it's a complex function that doesn't scale easily. Even if we assume there was a large enough number of people just flying, say, SFO-JFK to support a new entrant to the route, there is a minimum volume the airline must fly to remain competitive.

After all, no one is particularly interested in a SFO-JFK route that offers only 2 departures a day.

And guess how you dramatically increase occupancy on your main routes? With feeder regional flights. A flight from a small city to a large airport, connect to another large airport, connect to another small city. A much larger percentage of all flights in the US are of this nature than most people know.

The market for SFO-JFK only is not nearly as large as the market for XXX-SFO-JFK-YYY, not even close, and the legacy airlines, by offering regional short-hauls, stand to improve to the quality of their longer hauls by being able to do things like increase airplane size (therefore flight experience) and frequency.

There is a lot more to succeeding as an airline than offering the in-flight experience people are willing to pay for.
This whole article got me excited! Maybe Windows 8/RT and Surface aren't a miserable failure. I'm hopefully because at the very least, this will force Apple to innovate harder.
'Mindblowing' is nearly always a positive thing. I think your comment really made an impression. I did as he said, lounging here with my laptop, and it really was a nice feeling to have the option to reach up and scroll the page with my thumb. I'd like to put three fingers down and tap my left most finger to shuffle tabs but that's impossible now. I'm looking forward to future hardware.
That's hilarious. The Safe Harbor works fine for Dropbox, YouTube, and numerous others. That's because they don't have people on staff specifically looking for infringing material in order to reward the up loaders and encourage more infringement, and their responses when they are properly notified of infringing material is to actually deal with it instead of just trying to hide it from the notifier so he'll think it was taken down.
Why Facebook works for some companies and not others
Yep, thanks. Nothing I can do about it now :(. Actually caught that one while editing, but "fixed" it incorrectly. The public version is correct now, though.
If you don't get a full ride at school I'd recommend that you go straight into industry. It seems that you've already got enough skill to get hired, and once you do that you'll get paid to learn on the job.
The things he was accused of were illegal in New Zealand also.
Ask HN: What are your goals for November?
A problem shared is a problem halved. Or something to that effect.

What will you achieve in November?
Hi Mek,

As a hacker and freelancer I can tell you that I would not appreciate programming tests.

There are two reasons why I put up with computers and code:
1)I feel like it. I want to make something interesting
2)There is an incentive. Someone is paying me money for my skills and services.

Taking a test falls under neither of these categories. I see it as a waste of my time and there is nothing to show for it

Also, every single programming test that I have seen is just plain terrible. Not to mention there is no way to enforce against cheating. Therefore making the entire process pointless and a hassle for everyone.

Just my two cents..

Cheers!
I don't see how Google Glasses is any more of a threat than the average smart phone. Here's a video I saw just a few days ago that's just as invasive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTcvQSqE21g

And another one I saw a few years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbaDw7A6anA

I basically live my life assuming I'm being recorded unless I'm in my own home. Just wait another 15 years and I'm sure the military will have developed bug-size (or smaller) cameras that can fly and will be nearly undetectable.

"The age of privacy is over."
I remember reading once that they start by taking an image of the envelope, finding the zip and numerical portion of the address, then searching their database for possible matches where the numerical portion is within a particular zip. Once it has a list of possible matches the system then starts comparing the address on the image to possible matches within the list of returned matches.
Oh, I wasn't sure whether eupharis was being sarcastic. Thanks for clarifying that!
Find the needles in the haystack.
There might be something to this. Despite Jobs' statements about the usefulness (or otherwise) of upright touch screens, accessory manufacturers have been catering to people who want to use their iPad upright literally since day one. Apple itself is doing this with the Smart Cover. So if that's OK, does adding a physical keyboard laid flat to the equation somehow turn it wrong? Seems like a stretch.
It works for me, so it's publicly accessible now.
I don't know if you could say that the impetus is largely because of the brokenness of the American education system. Online education startups like Coursera, Udacity, etc. have a far reaching effect on the rest of the world too. I'm willing to conjecture that a majority of students on Coursera right now are not US citizens, and that the appeal of (quality) college material to the rest of the world is a big factor. There are huge implications for universities to take advantage of this to spread influence.
Good education in the US is very expensive, unlike in Sweden. For those of us who believe that quality education for everyone is good for society, it means it's broken. Other people believe that it's better to have excellent education for those who can afford it, and marginal education for the rest. Those people would not say it's broken.
Not a huge fan of their blog's redesign.

The combination of the serif font, text-indent on paragraphs and lack of separation between them makes reading it a chore. One of the first times I have needed to use Safari's reader mode out of necessity.
Sorry i should have been more clear. I meant that you can take advantage of PTVS's editor/intellisense/template debugging facilities for Django, but then take further steps to push to another cloud yourself. Some folks have used PTVS this way for their MPI debugging w Linux for example. Also, Amazon has a good add-in for VS to interface with their cloud which maybe of use in your scenario: http://aws.amazon.com/visualstudio/
This is an awesome project. Congratulations. Education needs to be reinvented all over the world. Research like this will help us discover how we really learn, and identify better ways to teach students everywhere.
This is a good elucidation. Still a crap product, though. And arguably the business practices of the Airlines are geared towards making informed decisions more difficult. The regulatory body should actually look at <this>, precisely because they are new (these practices were not at all common prior to y2k). Opaque pricing as a marketing strategy, in particular, is a policy concern. The net result is the cost of a trip -- in time and money -- are almost impossible to predict. Part of this is pricing, part of this is the assymetry of the ticketing terms. This makes reasonable economic allocation decisions problematic. And that is actually an issue, for the public and for the regulatory bodies to consider. I'm normally not a fan of bueracracy, but the ticket sizes ($1,000's per year) and the multiplier effect (cost of doing everybody elses business changes) is such that some basic frameworks would probably be productive. In particular, if the industry is on a level playing field, it wouldn't be distortive to competition (any more so then the current concetration issues or the impact of opacity on mkt efficiency).

The obvious problem with this is that one generations "floor" of minimum quality becomes the next "ceiling" when tech changes and innovation promises better/faster/cheaper ways of doing things. Once the power is given to write the rules, then the special interests will ensure they are written for their benefit. Etc. But its still worth thinking the problem through. To big an issue to not even try.

Look at the impact that Heathrow had. It provided London and the UK with a massive advantage over the past 20 years as the English speaking gateway to the EU. And thats despite all of its limitations and problems.
I think people are really missing the point of Surface if they think that the focus is on touch+classic. It's about supporting classic. And supporting touch. And it does, Metro-with-mouse takes getting used to, but it can be done.

The Surface RT can play the iPad role.

The Surface Pro can play the iPad role and the laptop role.

That's why what Microsoft is doing is risky but has the potential for user value: For some reason, people really want to use Android apps on their computer. Think about the number of apps and games that would be available? That's what Microsoft is getting out of this. Developers get to target both casual users and pro users. And pro users who are casual users after 5PM.

I don't plan to buy a Surface, but I see a lot more potential than I think others are really willing to see if they're honest with themselves.
That sum might go a long way toward alternative energy research. A significant breakthrough in solar energy accumulation, storage, and transfer could drastically change the way of life for everyone on the planet.
I always figured it was to match iOS.
My suggestion is a "Housing First" strategy. Getting a person off the street and into a safe home is an important first step toward solving the issues that made them homeless.
Does Tomcat bite more than it can chew?
How does Tomcat behave under a level of load that it cannot handle? One would expect connections to be refused - so that a load balancer in front can fail-over to another instance. But in reality one would see connections being established and subsequently reset, even after sending a partial or full request by the client, making it difficult for fail-over, especially when non-idempotent service calls are being made.
"This may seem like little more than an internal disagreement over taste."

Yup, you said it. A lot of speculation about a subject no one outside of Apple really knows much about.
I have read that windows 8 has certain features which can be used only by touch.Using a touch screen when I have keyboard and touchpad attached doesn't sounds good to me, so a mix of touch and keyboard combination is creepy. But if they can make the tablets something like either I can use only touch or only keyboard then things will be much more easy and less confusing
Yeah. The scuttlebutt at Google when YouTube was purchased was, "great, but what about when we have to take most of its content down for violating copyright?"
Jason Rohrer has also an interesting configuration.

http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/
I'm just imagining how many nights in a row I've committed more lines of code than exist in my project in a snapshot because it's so damn confusing, interconnected, and concurrent. The thought of doing it in a dynamic language is downright nauseating.
If I had this kind of money to fund education, I think I'd set up my own voucher systems in some inner cities. I think real choice and the real competition it can bring about are the only way to fix education in this country.
Forgot to answer part of your question - the Linux/MacOS Client Libraries are a set of Python bindings for the services that Azure provides. They're hosted on Github here: https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-for-python ; and you can see a video overview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvqNP_Ja5s&hd=1
I love what you're doing. I am curious though, about Negroponte's comment on making a "clean start" with a new village if the project gets funded. What will happen to the kids and the program in the original village?
Firstly I want to find a new job, higher paying is my main goal at the moment as I feel I am being undervalued by my current company and their refusal to bring my wage in line with my co-workers despite performing equally, if not better than the majority of them doing the same task. (I should mention they get paid 3 times what I do, the only difference being a degree, the fact that we do the same job, with the same deadlines and difficulty being irrelevant for some reason.)

Next, I would like to work on my relationship with my girlfriend, there has been a lot of tension lately, mostly due to the way I've been acting and I feel as if I owe it to my girlfriend to try and improve the person I am, there is no point in saying "it's all her fault" - I know I'm in the wrong and I need to do something to change that.

After that, I want to put aside some personal me time, I've been overloading on work recently and haven't really had time for fun. I don't remember the last time I went out with friends or even spent a day with one and that's quite a sad thing.

Next I want to save up some money to fly to Spain to see my newborn baby niece. When she was born she had internal bleeding and a myriad of other health issues, we didn't think she would make it, but she proved to be strong and my sister just took her home last week. Plus, I haven't seen my family for 7 months now and as lame as it is to say this, I miss my mum.

Outside of that, putting more time aside for personal projects would be nice but at the moment it isn't a priority for me, just one of those "it would be good to have this" things.
What's with the unnecessary injection of US presidential partisan politics?

We should be better than that around here.
Bump for the _balls_ to do this AND for opening it up for everyone to review (usually good preconditions for a good foss developer).
Didn't you know that most CEOs are sociopaths?

...sociopathy appears to be an integral/essential part of human organizations.

Sources?
Dropbox has already demonstrated that they play it fast and loose with user privacy issues. While I use Dropbox for many things, and admire what they've built, we'd do well to be more realistic about it around here.
Internet Rolls Into Bangladesh Villages on a Bike
Thank you. The official zoomable version loads far too slowly.
Startups news site bashing struggling company? Stay classy HN.
I don't know what it is about "side-projects". When I think about what I'm doing and why, it is rarely much different than any hobby I've had for as long as I can remember. But hobbies felt much less committal. Sure, I would get consumed by them, but I didn't really get these failure pangs when the plane or rocket sat unfinished for years. Now, it's different. The sludge of half or (worse) almost done projects cluttering my ~/dev folder is a source of some shame, and it can make it difficult to start new things. My best reasoning for why this is: a) there is a constant flood of "Show HN: My Before Morning Coffee HTML5 FPS" type news, which is simultaneously motivating and depressing to read, b) it is very easy to connect the dots between completing a project and some unrealistic outcome, usually involving money or some internet fame.

So I guess I'm basically agreeing with the author. If you want to build a salable product, then focus and do it. But if your really just screwing around because this stuff is neat and it's what you like to do, then call it a hobby and don't worry about it. At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself to do.
Sorry for the delay, I didn't realize you had replied (is there some global notification UI element I should look for?) I don't know if you'll see this, but I'll reply anyway.

I'm not from California, nor have I studied their tests, nor did I claim that standardized tests themselves are flawed, so your first demand is misleading, at best. I will grant that, having done further research, my first examples of teaching to the test were flawed; I'll try to summarize it (and my position) below.

Teaching for the test is explained pretty well here: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/teaching-test and on wikipedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_to_the_test ]. Note that this definition of teaching to the test isn't necessarily bad, only when applied wrong. Punishing/rewarding schools based on student performance on a small set of tests creates an incentive to have student "learn" by mercilessly practicing on those tests, to the exclusion of other approaches. As per the sources on wikipedia, this doesn't impart a "general understanding," nor does it necessarily raise test scores. Other people here have linked stories where teachers and schools actually helped their students cheat on standardized tests. Standardized tests themselves aren't the problem; we've had them for decades, and they can provide valuable insights in some cases. The problem is when we focus on standardized tests to the exclusion of all else, putting a perverse pressure on schools. I believe you previously supported evaluating by standardized tests because they're the only quantitative measure we have; maybe this means we can't reliably quantitatively evaluate the impact of a single teacher on a small set of heterogeneous subjects. Demonstrate we can, then I'll reconsider NCLB.

edit to add another thought: I'd liken this to the problem of overfitting in machine learning. You have a way of measuring the performance of your system, and try to improve the system via that feedback. It's easy to overfit it, making it work beautifully on the provided data, but lack generality. The problem isn't in how we measure "fitness," necessarily, it is in how we update the system based on that result. That is, standardized tests may be a fine measure among students with that "generalized understanding"; I've not been convinced we are using those results intelligently.
A Microsoft Touch Mouse with the latest Win8 drivers is a good stopgap - you can use the gestures on top of the mouse to bring up charms and so on.
I work for Airbnb and was involved in the discussions leading up to our decision to waive fees and generally reach out to our community to help those affected and displaced by Sandy.

This was 100% due to our concern for the community and the stories coming out of the East Coast about all those impacted. We all came together--multiple departments across the company--and rallied quickly to make this happen.

It was very, very cool to witness.
Highways – Is what you're looking for.

It's not sexy. No one will ever raise money for it. But nine out of ten African aid projects fail because the medicine or the personnel can't get to the people in need. Blanket the continent with highways and then maybe get started on plumbing.
These decisions at enterprise level are made by people who are also consumers. Away from the office, they own their own iPad or Android device, their kids own them, and they are used to them. Apple is showing us that you can take a backdoor into enterprise by capturing the consumer.
I don't see how this is a bug?

The bug reporter is using the wrong method, as identified by the first comment.
atpassos_ml told me an even cooler heuristic.

He was doing some research on detecting which comments are authoritative based upon textual analysis (no username or social analysis). They made a complicated topic model, but found that the following heuristic is almost as good for automatically detecting authority in comments:

Favor the person with the broadest vocabulary compared to other people in the thread.

This was evaluated on Yelp and Goodreads. IIRC it may have also been tested on HN data.

(reference: Alexandre Passos, Jacques Wainer, Aria Haghighi, What do you know? A topic-model approach to authority identification.)

The problem with disclosing these heuristics as part of your filtering algorithm means that people will try and game the system. They'll include URLs and expanded vocabulary to get higher-ranked comments. And then we win.
(Relevant: http://xkcd.com/810/)
I think the question above was referring to the new service they are building, not what they have already done.
This is a great point, but the logistics are daunting. I'm starting to think the idead "university" education is something like this: 2 + 1 + 2. That awards the equivalent of two degrees. Even one liberal arts and one more technical in nature. with a paid, internship for 12 months in between. You get credit for the work done in the field, and then this is more cost effective and time-efficient than 4+2+2 for a masters (saves 3 years of time and 2 years of tuition). By the time you are done, you are much more likely to be ready to "hit the ground running". [1]

_________

[1] This proposal depends on having a highly challenging and good quality work experience (not entry level garbage job), which might also be a conideration for many Uni's to manage. It might not be possible at scale.
Correction: I have.
Just on your remark : "I don't care how 'green' your laptop is, the amount of energy that went into making those teeny chips is absolutely ridiculous and I'm sure the 'energy footprint' of laptops is near the top of things we purchase."

You should feel more concerned about the energy footprint of cars, it's way worse than computers. Especially electric ones with their batteries full of rare materials.