skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> There is internal chaos in the game that forces the probabilistic distribution. Predicting an election based on polls is an entirely different matter. The election will turn out one way or another. If the same people voted for President 100 times without an external factor interfering differently across samples, the outcome would be the same every time.

This is a distinction without a difference. There is "internal chaos" in the game because we don't know its initial conditions exactly, just like in the elections. If we had precise knowledge about the particles in the ball, the field, and the players, we could theoretically predict the outcome with high certainty. Except for quantum mechanical effects, statistics isn't about true randomness, it's about modeling lack of knowledge.
@teopeurt "Thanks everyone. Just a heads up - currently, all posts are public to anyone. Bear that in mind. Private posts are coming." From Twitter.
There is no best in everything, only tools that meet specifics requirement.

For example, there many kind of hammers for so many different purpose. One doesn't just use a hammer for everything that a hammer could do. Some hammer you use for smashing, others for driving a nails in, some to shape objects, and some to bash the opponents' head in battle.

Likewise, there's no perfect single piece of flatware. The Victorians, for example, loves to buy tons of silverware just to make eating elegant and perfect for every single dishes. They could have solved the problem of eating by merely washing their faces and their hands afterward, but custom dictates. Instead, they spent thousand of dollars on the many variations of fork, spoon, knife designed to meet different challenges of each particular dish.
Sorry, I think I was a bit confused. Now I see that it is the same thing. Sorry for wasting your time :(
This has happened with other submissions that first had significant (democratic) support by the HN community, then someone/something came along and gave its strong undemocratic majestic downvote.
It would have solid lines instead of dashed for the shape of the case, the home button, etc.
I don't know any of these providers or how they operate, but since redis usually uses TCP to communicate it shouldn't be too difficult. You can set up different instances of redis, each listening on a different port and serving only one customer. Using SSL or SSH tunnelling can encrypt the connection between the client and the redis instance. Adding IP filtering to prevent access from only the client's server can also be added for extra layer of security.

Performance, which is very important in those circumstances might be impacted, but it might already be affected by at least some latency, and the extra security layer shouldn't degrade it that much more. In fact, SSH can add compression that can speed up things such as replication (see http://3scale.github.com/2012/07/25/fun-with-redis-replicati...). Not sure how much this helps on regular client-server communication though (sorry for the slight digression into performance)
When I saw the ads I just removed all the default apps. There will be a hundred weather app in a week, after all.
So what is to stop you making a deal with me, that if somebody writes "ARF" in your box on the ballot paper, that you will pay me £1000? It will obviously be disputed, so it will be shown to you as a candidate, and it is unusual enough that you can identify the vote as mine with >=90% confidence, but you have a good chance that if you show it to your opponents, they will agree that my "intention was clear."

I was under the impression that (in the UK) all ballot papers containing anything other than "X" in one box were always rejected for that reason.
> This is because the system is made up of self-aware human actors that respond to meta-information like Nate Silver's numbers.

The fact that agents use polling information to make decisions doesn't necessarily mean the system won't reach equilibrium.

But I do think it's conceivable that one candidate's predicted overwhelming chance of victory might have a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in a close election.

Ron Paul supporters presumably prefer Romney to Obama. In an election where it was reported that the race was close, they'd vote for Romney. But if it was reported that an Obama win was basically guaranteed, they might be willing to vote for the Libertarian Party or write-in Ron Paul (who isn't even running) as a protest vote.

I really think our democracy would be healthier if we switched to an instant runoff system [1], but the Democrats and Republicans have a very strong incentive to unite against anything that could strengthen third parties.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
Funniest Comments in Source Code devs have ever encountered
Yes

But what people are saying is not "Nate Silver's predictions 1 month before are spot on". They are saying "his predictions ON THE DAY OF ELECTION were spot on".

Which is not that hard to do. Does not mean Nate Silver is a hack. Means people are not measuring his success appropriately.

#NateSilver2016
Yeah. A few other things come to mind: Chrome OS, Android, most search engines, nearly all news channels and coverage, the vast majority of television shows, magazines, most so-called "'blogs," for that matter, most online content, most newspapers, etc.

One could argue that that's just how many of them are staying alive, injecting a bit more life into their business model, which is a reasonable analysis, but I can't help but think it's still sucking the soul out of it. How likely would they be to, say, run a story that will almost certainly cause their biggest advertiser to pull their funding? Or, put another way, if they pulled the ads out and charged a subscription, would people value it enough to pay, or are they more just a part of the stream of noise, largely indistinguishable from the rest of it?

It's sort of unreal how much we all just accept it, and may not even notice it. Call me crazy, but when I see some historical photos, it make me sad that most clothing worn now is either advertising or advocating something, and good luck finding a town largely free from the visual clutter of commercialization, and so on.

And the only cities I've seen that aren't yet like that are in places like North Korea, or places recently like NK.
Mr Curtis could do worse than watching Gladwell's Ted Talk from a few years back:

http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce...

tl;dr when one asks a question involving people, and you want the most fitted data, then you need to consider grouping/segmentation of the population into clusters of preference.

What is the best spaghetti sauce?

It's a flawed question, as it contains an invalid assumption.

Thus what Curtis seems to be describing is a (great/awesome/very good) etc set of knives, but not 'the best'.

Very good = a maximization of universal requirements

Best = maximization of universal && local requirements (population segmentation preferences, spacial and temporal context etc)

Example:
Those forks may be best for Curtis at his dinner. They are certainly not best for me, on my camping trip. Or best for a tribe in Africa with different shaped mouths and habits etc. Or best for someone eating Chinese takeout. etc
Looks like there are now three serious competitors in this space:

- Jetstrap (http://jetstrap.com/)

- Divshot (http://divshot.com/)

- Easel (https://www.easel.io/)

I could see a company like Adobe wanting to get in on this.
I stumbled upon the same dataset, so did the following map:

http://i.imgur.com/8YjOg.png

Here is some notes:

https://gist.github.com/4034954

Edit:

If anything, I'd say that the counties themselves are more divided than I thought. The one which surprises me the most is the deep south of texas, which is quite blue.

Also, I do not claim that I did this flawlessly, there is a chance I stuffed up and it is not showing the right data, but I don't really have the time to play with it for too long :)
Why would I spend time managing contacts on a network/service that I rarely use.

IE - some people use myspace to communicate with select people, but would never spend time to update a friend list on a service they rarely use. Imagine if they just imported all of your friends from myspace to fb.. disaster
Finding "the best" of a product is an obscure hobby. And I'm all for finding joy in an obscure hobby. But I have a hard time believing that Mr. Curtis is any more liberated by the flatware that he spent 6-months researching than I am by the set I happened upon at Crate and Barrel.

I wholeheartedly admire people like Sori Yanagi who work hard to create "the best" of anything. I also wholeheartedly believe that trying to pin virtue on the process of being a consumer of "the best" of anything is little more than pretense
Windows Store is another place they'll be making up that money.
Lincoln Putlocker
So why show something you don't really need? The day of the week makes things much more obvious.
I was surprised to see ads after installing Windows 8. I don't remember seeing any in the customer preview. Immediately changed my hosts file. I hates ads...
Relevant> http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/biolite-stove...
I took the subject to be advice for composing recursive functions.
Interesting observations about founder happiness (or lack thereof)
People who could have answered the YC application question on real world hacks
The impact of the election on Twitter’s web performance
Rent a storage garage (climate controlled), then put all your non-vital stuff into it. If it isn't worth storing you can throw it away - right away.

If its something you think you should have used during the year (not long term keep sake or legal documents), then figure out what your going to do with it. Don't do everything at once. Just pick some stuff out of storage and determine what to do. Slowly.

If you need it, just grab it from storage. If nothing else, a storage garage makes a fine place to keep your encrypted, backups.

[edit] put Rubbermaid shelves (or equiv) in the storage garage, do not pile boxes. That will defeat the purpose. The Rubbermaid shelves are easy to put up and sell / donate later.
Sayonara for iPhone pings you every time someone unfollows you on Twitter
This is noble!
The president bet all of his political capital, the House of Representatives, and potentially his entire presidential career on passing 'Obamacare'. I don't know of a better example of acting in spite of the political ramifications.
SVG ClipPath images
This is empty madness. It is, very literally, a celebration of total materialism.

What is ultimately important in life are people -- messy, filthy, bacteria-and-disease-laden, imperfect, emotional, sweating shitting cursing crying screaming laughing farting people and the connections we build to them.

This celebration of spending insane amounts of time choosing the perfect flatware or the perfect wallet is sick. Steve Jobs spent eight years discussing furniture with his family before buying a sofa etc (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_...). I will never do that, and I will never have flatware as nice as Dustin Curtis', and I will never have sound as good as an obsessive audiophile, or the perfect car.

I won't even write a particularly convincing Hacker News comment on this very topic. I've got to go. Life is too short for this shit.
Why do so many HN commenters seem to hate Marco Arment? The only reason I can think of is because he often writes posts that are favorable to Apple, and a lot of tech people have knee-jerk reactions to anything pro-Apple.
You haven't wasted my time. You've made me think harder, you've made me reconsider my explanation, and I've helped you become unconfused.

Not a problem, and you're welcome!
The weird thing is, those applications aren't "removed" when you uninstall them:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1099533-advertisement-in-m...
Translation, for people with a common form of color blindness:

"a brown-brown gradient would be much better. A "neutral" state would then be an easy to discern shade of brown."
Some stupid PCI audits fail you for having autocomplete enabled. I know it's completely absurd, but try convincing an auditor that's the case.
I hate to recommend doing something you don't really like, but in this case it might be worth it to make your life easier.

smegel is right, all recruiters and most hiring managers will filter resumes based on easily quantifiable criteria, and the school and degree are at the top of that list.

Also, to get through interviews at tech companies like Google, you need to have understanding of fundamental computer science concepts if you are applying to be a developer.
can I have your eggs if you get in?
UX Lab 013: ThreeJS Battery
Cool. Shoot me a note via the contact form when you get into it and I'll help you out!
Airbnb launches free housing program for Sandy victims
In Office 2015 you'll have to watch a 10 second ad before you can open a document..
My first webapp http://www.drawmics.com is like twitter for comics/images. I haven't got time to work more on it, but it's pretty good at the current state. It usually gets 50 views per day. Check it out.
Hint: You don't need to know the date to know which option to pick.
Simple Traffic Solutions Bonus Updated
This is empty madness. It is, very literally, a celebration of total materialism.

What is madness to you may not be madness to dcutis, and messy human beings are not all there is worthwhile in the universe. Would you want to watch a reality tv show that records the uglyness and pettyness of human nature?

I honestly rather discuss and learn about things rather than about drama-queen contestant #3.
That's what's fun. The electoral college is red blue, but the states are purple. But the counties are red and blue again (which some purple).

The most hotly contested states have (generally dense urban) blue city enclaves balancing against (generally sparse rural) red counties
“Who are you the King of Siam, you got to get the best one? Who cares? They’re all the same these machines. They’re all made from the same asian suffering.” - Louis CK
Not for all things. I presume no-one wants a hiking bag with zips that come undone, nor a wallet that deforms.

I would also rather let someone do that work for me, if they feel so inclined to do it, as I have neither the time nor the money to engage in such activities.

So please, post a list!
My understanding is that restricting the access is the tricky issue here.

When you take a redis instance provided by a given host (redistogo etc), and want to make sure only front/web instances from another host (dotcloud, heroku), unfortunately to my knowledge you cannot restrict IP easily (or secure with more useful means) etc, since you don't control the machines as much as in a LAN setup.

Using SSL is definitely a plus, but being accessible from the whole internet, as I seem to recall Redis is very fast, it is also easier to brute force, so one has to be extra careful to pick a very strong password.

I'd sleep better at night if the connection was only possible from the front/web machines, like in a close LAN, and I cannot see how to do that properly when the app and Redis are not hosted at the same provider.
It's amazing how even when buying a company, people can't be bothered to use proper capitalization or even spell out the word "please". Wow.

I must have slept through the English class where they told me this was OK.
Apple's latest iPad-related design patent is literally for the rounded rectangular front outlined in solid black.

Unfortunate use of the word "literally."

Anyway, this is what a rounded rectangle looks like: http://www.enfoportals.com/index_image953.png

I don't see a third dimension, a button, a connector, a camera, a screen, speaker holes, and so on.

The current state of patents, design or otherwise, seems to be at new heights of stupidity. But this article–below the standard Ars usually lives up to, title, body content, and all–makes me wonder if the thoughtlessness of discourse on the subject isn't also setting some new records.
The UX Design Process and Artifact Fidelity
Actually I already have a storage unit, which I don't think I've been to in over a year :)

I like the Rubbermaid shelves idea though.
I'd really like to see some sort of open-source or license-able tool like this that can be integrated into other apps or CMS tools. Something packaged up like rich-text editors are
Instagram introduces web profiles
Name Convention - A Better Approach
I hear a lot of people have gotten very rich by making reality shows that record the uglyness and pettyness of human nature.
Impressive. Dustin Curtis has now developed the ability to praise Apple without mentioning Apple.
This is amazing. It's exactly what I wanted to build when I was living in Japan, but I never got around to it. Congrats! I'll definitely be taking this with me the next time I go to Japan.
Thanks! This is much better than the article in the OP. It also links to a number of nice other pieces on the topic, including 2 Slate articles:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/...
More energy is given off from burning petroleum than it is taken from extracting it from the earth.
It is possible to enjoy owning things if you know what you're doing and own the right things. At least I think so.

Of course I also think that this obsession with the difference between matter and people is a little silly, especially when some of those people are the things you're arguing with.

Regardless, I've been thinking about the subject lately thanks to this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/eyt/how_to_have_things_correctly. Linked for the interested.
Of course it's different for everybody. But please do post more, and how you wound up with them, it's fascinating.
If the Apple store just breaks beyond even for Apple, why would it be more than that for Microsoft?
I have never even given flatware or towels any thought. They both have minimal impact on my life and thus don't need optimization. My laptop has a great impact on my life, so I think it's reasonable to spend time researching what you need and paying for the best if that makes sense. My wife is a terrible premature optimizer. She pinches pennies on the most obscure things like toilet paper, just to turn around and spend hundreds on a bag. My view is that I would cut that bag out of my purchases, and then it doesn't matter if I optimize my toilet paper or not.

Oh well, people are different.
Scala: An Experience Report
http://bushidotickets.com
I'm calling FUD. The service the article is talking about is Windows Ads in Apps: http://advertising.microsoft.com/ads-in-apps

It certainly is a way for Microsoft to make more advertising revenue in the same way that iAds does the same for Apple, AdMob does for Android, and AdSense does for Google Search. The only novel thing I see here is that the ads are for desktop apps.
Dustin thinks he's discovered something new, instead he's just a product of this generation. The generation new york times once characterised as "Would rather own one pair of $100 jeans than ten pairs of $10 jeans".

Our parents are mystified. Their parents much less so.
It's just like Android, they're part of a system image. No conspiracy here. It's likely due to some intricacies of licensing Windows Store apps which I'll not get into.
500% tax is isn't 4x revenue. Either the consumer pays the tax, so its 4x the product cost, or the vendor pays it, and prices the tax into the sale price, so the tax us 83% of revenue.

Take an example: water costs 2cents/gallon. a 500% tax would make water 10cents a gallon. That would be enough to promote agressive conservation, but not prohibitively expensive.

Soda costs <$1/quart at grocery, less at wholesale. But if you buy it at a restaurant, you pay >$1/pint, for 500% markup. Yet it's not prohibitve, because the baseline is sooooo cheap.
What's the difference between this and paying 100 bucks a month to DirectTV? I'm paying 100 bucks each month for the service, why does DirectTV bombard me with ads every few minutes? It seems logical that if DirectTV can behave that way and get away with it, then Microsoft can too.
Social eCommerce Site Zlio Joins the Deadpool: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/social-ecommerce-site-zlio-...
The city hotel tax is a way to sort-of-pick-pocket out of towners. In this case, the people are local. So the political purpose of the hotel (ie, "visitor") tax is not there. So, you are right this is a good way to find some common ground to work together. This can help them establish a relationship in a way that is not undermined from the get-go.

The problem for AirBNB in the long run that the concept of an <amateur landlord> and a massive bureucratic method of systematically creating liabilities for non-residents is not a compatible vision. The latter process requires that all "visitors" be documented etc. to be subject to the tax. The leverages (and pre-supposes) a quasi-corporate business structure for the hotel industry. etc.

So, there is an interesting political economy issue here.
"Different shaped mouths"?
What lines have you added?
I wouldn't call it great design. I'd call it lack of bad design. I feel like asking which day you're referring to is an extremely obvious step in selecting a time. The fact that we're surprised by it is a testament to how terrible most productivity software is.
Submarine (ROV/AUV) Startup
I don't see why someone would use their admin privileges to downvote this thread, though. Maybe just the effect of falling off the front page? We had no intentions of making this public ourselves (as to avoid feeding the troll) and we're just trying to get our perspective of the situation across now that the cat is out of the bag here.
Why You Are Destined To Fail in Trading and How You Can Avoid It
Nice app. But i dont understand the point.
In addition to "Remember where you came from," I'd also add: track regular, incremental progress. Entrepreneurs have a tendency to move from big win to big win, while forgetting all of the little steps that got them to that point.

Keeping track of daily or weekly progress (even as simple as iDoneThis), can help minimize the amplitude of the downswing. It will still be there. It's inevitable. But this can help take some of the sting out of the low points.
I absolutely agree. Of course it's ok to take pride in what you own, but this is obviously more than that. Relationships are the most important thing in life. Don't wait too long to realize that.
Thanks neya, we'd love to see what you come up with in Easel.

As for the tour, the feedback here has been strongly in favor of a more guided introduction so we'll see what we can cook up.
What's a bug worth, a case for Continuous Integration
Is there any poll that show that this founder unhappiness is real?

Are founders less happy than population as a whole? Or is it that we expect founders of successful companies to be happy?
Note that state law has no effect on the War on Drugs, which is a Federal effort. The feds have still been harassing marijuana growers/users that are in no violation of state or local law.