skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You clearly do not value the time of mathematicians like they value their own time.

The estimate that I was told for the average mathematician reading the average math proof is one page per day.

Thus the average mathematician facing this will see 750 pages just to becomes of the the 50 people who have mastered the basics of anabelian geometry. That's 2 years. Then you have to take on some unknown number of years to learn "inter-universal geometry". Then your reward for doing this is that you are qualified to read a 512 page proof, which is again going to be a year and a half. Along the way if you find a mistake in any of it, your reward is to confirm the immediate guess that most mathematicians have which is that there is likely a mistake somewhere. (But with this much math, you'll probably find several "mistakes" that aren't before you find a real one.)

This is years of work, that has nothing to do with anything that you're already working on. And believe me, a professional mathematician has no shortage of problems to work on, in areas that they already have the background for.

If you think that this is unreasonable, well, why don't you volunteer to fix it? Reading the proof shouldn't take you much longer than it would take to become a mathematician. And you can learn anabelian geometry during grad school, so that time is not all wasted.
Oh also, when you are done learning how to type. Check out http://oktypist.com/index.html . This seems like a fairly neat way of checking what your net wpm should be.

(The reason I recommend doing this after you learn how to type is that your net wpm might actually be much lower than your current wpm :) )
But categorically I would expect it to be a reasonable heuristic.
True. But you're only cheating yourself ;)
def further_proof(age, wisdom):

if (age != wisdom):

print "forensic"
None of these things happen if the government takes it instead.
100-300 years is a long time to build some dikes and flood barriers.
pretty inspiring, can't wait to see the full doc!
Generally if I type a wrong lretter, I prefer to type out the correct one immediately and then delete afterward finishing the sentence. Perhaps you could offer a scoring mode that counted only 1 mistake for it?

Also I didn't realize backspace was supported.

Aside from that, fun little game, well done!
On the larger scale of things it is going to be minimal. The proportion of Indians and Chinese in the PhD programs is so high and 50,000 visas is so much of a small drop in the vast ocean, that it may have a tiny effect blimp in the curve or not, considering that there are so many other latent variables that come into play.
The article said things were horizontally shredded so full text was visible in places. IANAL but I don't think you can be charged with seeing something that's as plain as day.
after a quick google search

http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/private%20prisons%2...
As if 'framing' isn't an important part of communicating ideas? In this case you chose to frame the discussion in the form of the government 'giving' its money to the people. I'm rejecting that formulation. That doesn't mean I'm rejecting the idea of taxes or more specifically progressive taxes.
For more context:

"You hear a lot, in books, in the blogosphere, among pundits that the middle class is being hollowed out, the incomes for all but the top 1% or maybe the top 20% are stagnating; that the gap between rich and poor has grown inexorably; that the American dream is dead"

"[these claims] are basically wrong. And that's what 10 years of research by myself and James Sullivan at Notre Dame has shown. If you measure incomes better, accounting properly for inflation, median incomes have gone up by about 50% since 1980. And if you look at consumption, it's gone up by a similar amount over that whole period--though exactly when it went up is slightly different from the income pattern."

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/10/bruce_meyer_on.html
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/the-history-of-c...

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/the-dubious-case...
I am a fan actually, and I don't think my views are incompatible with his. I do have reservations of the typical use of "natural law" arguments though. One can construct a natural law argument for just about any premise one wants.
Why Google Apps mail groups don't work
The notion that taxation should be predicated on whether the government or the person can 'better use' the person's money is damn scary.

Why is it scary? Your tax dollars go to the government because other citizens wish their tax dollars to go to the government, because they believe the government is the most efficient way to provide certain goods. Basically, they believe the government can spend their money better than they can, at least a certain amount of their money spent for certain purposes. Taxes aren't completely consensual, of course. They're government policy, and like any government policy, they can't depend on unanimous approval. However, the will of the people, as expressed through every democratic system on Earth, does support some degree of taxation and government spending. The natural question for a voter to ask when their vote affects taxation is whether it is more efficient to accomplish certain things through the government rather than through private spending -- essentially, whether the government can "better use" money for certain purposes than taxpayers can themselves. What's wrong with that?
> vBoth of these gems were originally in HEAD Rails, but David reverted them.

Will serializers be in the Rails 4 Gemfile at least?
Interesting just how little this matters to San Francisco (they'd need to put a wall around SFO, OAK, and maybe SJC, and not sure about the parts of Mountain View and Menlo Park where tech offices are).

Unfortunate that DC doesn't have more flooding planned.
There's a fixed amount of labor capital in the US. Who decides how it should be allocated? Let's pretend you believe we need to hire more teachers. Are you right? If you were the government, you'd wave your hands and make it so. But are you wasting labor on teachers we don't fully utilize? Perhaps we could have really benefited from additional plumbers. How can we know?

The only known way to answer those questions is by asking the capital markets. We all share the goal of best utilizing every citizen to raise our collective standard of living. More broadly, it is in everyone's best interest to efficiently use every type of scare capital resource we are afforded. Waste helps no one.

Now, the fact that the capital markets are distorted and borderline useless today is another discussion. Higher taxes won't solve that problem either.
for the record i think Dave is absolutely right it's easier than ever to build a consumer audience (albeit at times a niche one = time to pivot). at the same time, i think Fred's point is focused on the fundraising prospects for each type of business, and in this i think he's right: the "powers that be" (aka the later stage investors who, as Dave rightly points out, sometimes don't know whose tail they're chasing) are demanding enterprise deals right now. in response to Dave's point on the difficulty of scaling sales in enterprise, two trends are making that easier: a) BigCo interest in startups from every angle is very high and b) individual interest by traditional "enterprise types" (mba's, executives, etc) to get in on the startup pie is increasing as well. not necessarily a good thing on the macro level, but paired with a killer product it can make scaling more straightforward.
I hear these types of questions about many web companies from time to time in that the assumptions is you just need a small bundle of folks to run the website but in reality when a business gains traction the website is just the tip of the iceberg in many cases. The number of employees needed can snowball as the business starts to take off... legal teams, finance, accounting, QA, HR, BAs, management, ops, etc - it all adds up to usually more than one would assume. Additionally the customer facing product can be a very small part of the overall tech solution in that developing needed internal tools and systems can require large numbers of employees.

Typically your biggest numbers are going to come from sales folks / account managers in that, as an example, if the business model allows for a sales rep to sustainably bring in 200k on an 100k salary you most likely are going to hire as many as you can get. Groupon is a good example of this in action although it obviously has not been as successful as they would like.
One important aspect is to have a good idea of what the judging committee is looking for. Some hackathons are going to be decided by your polish and presentation. Others are going to be biased towards more technically impressive projects, perhaps with less polish. I've certainly seen both kinds.

Also, I've definitely seen some projects do less well seemingly because the judges didn't realize how impressive they actually were. If you're doing something that's very advanced but correspondingly obscure, you have to be careful to convey that in your presentation!

And, of course, as with any such endeavor, don't be disheartened if you don't win even with a great project. Having something that works at all is great in and of itself, and the judges have to choose from a whole bunch of projects in a very short time, which necessarily means they can't consider any of them too deeply.
It's surprising that Orinda/Lafayette are comparatively cheap now. They've been historically expensive places to live, they've each got good Bart stations, easy access, safety, and access to good food. But, people seem to ignore Lamorinda when looking for a place.
For the same reason that if someone votes for or advocates for a war, we don't say... "well, if you want to fight the (Iranians, or whatever), then go buy a gun and fight them."

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader why that is an absurd argument.
The fact that they are not making money on Android is cold comfort for those of us who bought into the promise of free ad supported hardware and calls that was the initial vision for Android.

When did Google or anyone else ever promise that?
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42
That's similar to when you subject working software system to new batch of tests or test it in some new way.

Usually a lot of previously known errors will crop up despite that the system already works mostly as intended.
How Turkish 'Dairy Boy' Hamdi Ulukaya Started $600 Million Chobani
"When a treatment goes wrong, if you can prove that their choice was made on shaky assumptions or doubtful logic, they can legally be sued and asked for reparations."

While doctors can and should be forced to compensate victims if they fuck up, the issue of how compensation works is only loosely related to the issue of fault. E.g. if a doctor leaves a pair of scissors in you then you're not at fault at all, but if a doctor tells you to take some drug and you don't look up the interactions and end up killing yourself then both you and the doctor are equally at fault, though you may still get a similar compensation in both cases.

"Have you ever read a clinical trial report? There is no way of telling that the results were not rigged, that it was not pure luck (as failed studies are generally not published) and that the results are applicable to your case."

While this is true, doctors have all the same problems; that is, the information they're going on is just as bad.
> Immigration policy in the US is ridiculous.
Why is this particular bill aimed at people with advanced degrees only? The majority of software engineers only have undergrad degrees and don't really need anything more than that. This is my case and I'm up for a wait of probably 3-4 years for an employer sponsored green card.

Do you realize how easy it is to get an undergrad degree in Asia? A vast majority of undergrad degrees there are a joke. What are we going to do? Use Fizz Buzz to evaluate who is qualified to get a green card? I sympathize with you but the problem is that "advanced degrees" is essentially code word for has a degree from a U.S. university which I suspect they want.

> The green card lottery is an odd beast and frankly I think is my best bet of getting a green card (coming from a relatively low lottery program participant country of Australia).

Agreed. If the employment based green card was my only option, I am fairly certain I would emigrate to Canada or some other destination rather than spend 10+ years tied to an employer waiting for a Green Card.

> 2) might well be true but this isn't a bad thing. Doctors in some countries are scarce because the de facto doctor's "union" seeks to constrain supply, raising the cost of health care. For example, by restricting the number of university places in medicine.

> As for (1), speaking just about software engineers, there is a worldwide shortage of competent software engineers. There are (IMHO) at least 10 times as many masquerading as software engineers. I am shocked when I see candidates with 10 years of experience who can't write a for loop in the language of their choice on a whiteboard.

I kind of agree with you but good luck getting a politician who is beholden to U.S. voters to agree to that. There are already rants about "immigrants stealing jobs" and depressing wages. Free market economics is not highly encouraged around these parts.

> Also, let the spouses of H1B holders have a job. I'm an Australian and on an E3 visa (specifically for Australian professionals). One advantage of this is the E3D (spouse visa for an E3 holder) allows that spouse to work. Just FYI.

Again, there is a reason that doesn't exist. It is hackable: One person comes in through an H1B and another person gets through the system and "steals a job from a deserving American". Also, how do you handle the situation where the H1B is technically tied to one employer and another employer is somehow gaining by being able to hire their spouse? I suspect the reason it exists for Australians is the low numbers of Australians coming which means the system has been hacked (yet).
Ask HN: How do I get a job at the LHC?
Hacker News is filled with a wide variety of people, so I am hoping someone on here might be able to help me out with regards to what the best route is for working at the large hadron collider.

I am a chemical engineering graduate student in the first year of my doctoral program. I've already done research in molecular dynamics simulations in conjunction with the supercomputers at a national lab in the US. I realize this is somewhat different than the work that most people do at the LHC, but there's always interesting niches that need to be filled.

My interests are more in the theoretical, physics-based side of chemical engineering instead of the engineering aspects, so a research career would be my best hope.

I will pursue the conventional means of trying to get a job at CERN, but as it seems like an incredibly exciting and unusual place, I am hoping that some folks on here may have some insight into a good route to get there. Thanks!
I think what both Dave and Fred echoed is something that that everyone here came to a realization few years ago (the time for startups without any revenue model is over).

But that said, there is nothing stopping the next Instagram or the next Pinterest from becoming really successful. Both these sites (I am sure I can think of more) broke out during the very same period VC's kept claiming they are not going to fund startups without any revenue model or whose model is based on ads (or ads related).

So personally, I don't think what Fred said (or Dave) is anything to be sweating about. Just keep pushing products out, that is what I think.
Different universes in mathematics play by different rules and have different components. Inter-universal Geometry is how these sets of rules and components can relate and is the bridge to understanding more complex theory.
Actually, the best way to improve is to just keep going, without correcting -- but to keep typing the rest of the word correctly. Eg, if you know you typed the 2nd character incorrectly, just make sure you get the 3rd right.
> Why is it more important for PCs to be important?

Woops, meant to say why is it more important for PCs to be open.
American colleges are not producing people who would be compatible for these jobs despite the millions of people who go into debt to get higher education.

Nobody is forcing students to study in fields that have robust job opportunities. Are you suggesting that student loans ought to be portioned out based on field of study? An interesting idea, though probably not one that would gain any traction.
Google shuts down dedicated Motorola Mobility sites
I'm not sure how representative I am, but as someone who doesn't really understand what meta-programming is about, my impression is that it's a combination of nonsensical comparisons (e.g. I don't understand the difference between text and data) and vacuous truths.

I suspect this is a reflection on me more than the koan, but I also think my reaction would probably not be uncommon among the unenlightened.
When you get to the end, it explains that it uses net WPM (NOT Gross WPM), which is error-adjusted to create an "effective" WPM.
> So, how many units?

Well, generally they have 50,000 on hand in December to give to employees. So I'd hope they sold at least that many to the public in the first couple days?
I don't think forking over extra cash is exactly on the same line as putting your life on the line in a war. I'm not sure that's a fair comparison.
I've been using Windows 8 on my primary machine for about a year. I couldn't imagine going back to Windows 7. 8 is a clear upgrade once you learn to use it (which takes very little time if you actively attempt to learn the new interface).
A more apt analogy would be, if you're for a war, why don't you enlist? But lots of people in favor of wars do just that. What Buffett is saying is essentially, "Let's institute a draft." Lots of wars have had that, too, of course—which is not necessarily a good thing.
Me too. I'm seriously considering the Nexus 4 but I'm not sure I want to give up the awesome saturation of AMOLED on my GN.
And, this is what he initially had to say about the iPad: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad-1st-study.html
You want downvoting privileges, but think insults are appropriate here, and even equate those insults with proofs!

comic.
I was born the same year as this guy . How do I reconcile myself to the fact that I may never achieve so much even in my entire life ? Is it a matter of lowering ones expectations ? If this is the kind of brilliance it takes to succeed in the start up world I'm quite discouraged.
Science knows what color is, how we perceive color, and it is trivial to show that someone can or cannot see color.

Firsthand experience from meditation is only evidence that using your attention in certain ways has various effects on the brain, it says nothing about the existence of chakras, qi, energy fields, auras, or the existence of deities or supernatural entities you were concentrating on.
So, if we limit the 'millionaire at 17' bit to 'those that made a non-cash exit for 6 figures and up' would that satisfy you?

To take cash or stock is a difficult decision for seasoned business people, I really can't fault a 17 year old for going that route and through no fault of their own see the value of that stock evaporate a short while later.

I've known quite a few people that went bust during the .com debacle in exactly the same way and none of them was 17 or even close to it.

It's easy enough to identify your mistakes after the fact (heck, I've made plenty, just this particular one I've managed to avoid), but the big trick is to predict them ahead of time.

How are you doing?

What company did you sell for any amount when you were 17?

And was that in stock or cash?
Show HN: Create calendar events on Android using natural language
+1 for awesome, I really like the added line

...but, AFAIK, a Koan tries to thwart understanding in order to communicate an otherwise impossible to describe concept. By preventing understanding yet asking for investigation, a koan communicates its actual content through your investigation, rather than the successful translation of the words into your thoughts.
There are a number of programming books that I use to prepare for technical interviews. These are

1. Programming pearls, http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley/dp/...

2. Effective C++, http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Specific-Improve-Programs-De...

3. Programming Problems, http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Problems-Primer-Technical-...

The reason for these texts is not because they are overtly insightful or well written, it is because they have a large number of problems with completely coded solutions. After working through these basics, programming interviews are much more enjoyable.
In my experience, I've talked to people who have paid many thousands of dollars for mediocre-at-best job board software. You probably overestimate the prospective market's capabilities and/or underestimate their willingness to pay.
>But what I really hate is the class warfare and populist messages driving fiscal policy.

This.

The thing that really gets me are the people who should know better, like Warren Buffet. You read the article and he's making straw man arguments about billionaires stuffing their cash in mattresses because their taxes are too high -- nobody is arguing that. The real problem is that taxation is economically distortionary and the higher you raise the rates, the greater the distortion. Because taxes are only due when assets are sold (and in the meantime the owner is collecting asset appreciation on the portion of the value that would have been due in taxes), capital gains tax encourages investors to hold their existing assets rather than seeking out more economically efficient ones. It encourages them to invest in more stable assets that can be held for a long period of time to defer taxes, rather than taking a risk on a startup that could cause tax to be due sooner when there is an IPO etc.

Or the tired numbers about how the rich are a lot richer now than they used to be and their taxes are lower, without providing evidence of causation rather than correlation. I mean sure, the richest might have 4.5X as much as they did twenty years ago instead of 5X, but is that really the big problem? Or is the real problem the regulatory capture and Wall St. shenanigans that allow the rich to double their money every five or ten years while Main St. loses their retirement fund to the same stock market?

At the same time, everybody just assumes that if you want to collect more tax money from the rich, raising the capital gains tax is the way to do it. Or the same with corporations and corporate income tax. But both of them are way, way too easy to avoid and for the same reason -- they depend on measuring profit, and it's gotten to be trivial to make an entity look unprofitable on paper. Raising the rates won't help that, it'll just push more people into tax shelters.

If you want to tax the rich and corporate entities then you have to tax the stuff they don't have a choice about doing. Sales tax, but the tax is paid by the seller not the customer. Income tax, but the tax is paid by the employer, not the employee. If you want to do business you need employees and customers, so they can't avoid paying taxes with shelters and loopholes. That's how you tax the rich. Capital gains tax is just a shell game that encourages accounting tricks and offshore banking.
Why, so your grave can be on the beach?
> there was a nexus 4 debacle?

If the iPhone sells out on the day it's released, it's a triumph.

If the same thing happens to a Google phone, it's a debacle.
In non-homoiconic languages I think this aphorism is more apt:

> Metaprogramming is the language feature that helps you write code that you won't be able to understand once the cocaine wears off.