skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great blog post! I wish someone has this kind of tutorial for Haskell.
They got a lot closer than that in recent times, but not quite as massive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

In the long run cometary impact is pretty much a certainty and close passes are a lot more likely than impact.

So even if this particular observation is probably attributable to something else there is a good chance that something like it did happen at another point in time in the last 2,000 years or so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater was 65M years ago, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin 1.9B years ago, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vredefort_crater 2B years and so on. The http://www.passc.net/EarthImpactDatabase/index.html Earth Impact Database holds currently 183 recorded impacts over a period of about 2.4 billion years.

2400M / 183 gives a probability of 7.6x10-8, but that's for impacts, and near misses don't leave any evidence other than people that happened to be looking in that direction. The question then is how many near misses before you get a 'hit', probably a fairly large number depending on how you classify a near miss. Anything closer than the earth moon orbit would be fine with me as a 'near miss' (according to George Carlin an accident is a near miss, but never mind that). The exposed target of the earth-moon bounded sphere is substantially larger (~2000 times or so?) and would increase the chance of a near miss from the impact figure to about 0.000167 for any given year, or about once every 6,000 years. And the base figure here is craters that we know about, which means they're likely on the land, that misses 2/3rd of the planet.

I'm sceptical about this but I would not rule it out entirely.
Athenian democracy
the Coursera course "Functional Programming Principles in Scala" just ended but they're keeping all the content online until the next run of the course

the lecturer, by the way, is the designer of Scala

https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun
No, I was just concerned about bare number. Hope this clears.
From the article:

"These internal Microsoft videos, provided to Wired by a person who worked on the project, show focus groups testing the ill-fated Kin. According to our source, these are pre-production models that changed very little from the shipping product, although “performance improved some prior to shipping.” Watch them, and you can readily see why the project tanked: Kin phones just weren’t usable."
Yes you do. When I first studied US history in the UK, I was surprised to learn that a massacre can involve as few as five people. (Boston Massacre) In Chinese, massacre is translated as "tusha", and is most frequently used with Nanking, where 200k+ people were killed. Still the Japanese standard was too low for us. Then I learned the word 'genocide' which I thought at first is on the Chinese level of massacre. However upon some more reflection it becomes obvious that Chinese killing Chinese in the name of making the starved live better doesn't fit into 'genocide' as well. Perhaps our deeds need a brand new name. After all, no one had seen this since the dawn of men.
Also see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4HL_-VT2Y
The critical figures here are what the relative speeds are, when the asteroid/comet is detected, what it is made of and how masssive it is.

After you've figured all those out the stage is set and you get a menu:

- party like it's 2012

- attempt to deflect it

- brace for impact and deal with the aftermath

Any attempt to deflect it has a large degree of uncertainty, including the trouble of getting humanity to pull in one direction for any length of time.

You'd have to develop the vehicle (and the fuel expenses to get the right velocity / direction are going to be terrible, they may be beyond current tech to make a manoeuvre like that, imagine meeting an oncoming bullet by matching speeds and direction where the bullet can come from any direction and you're sitting on a spinning ball), a plan to deflect the mass (by then you'll have burned up a lot of your time budget) and so on.

Maybe, for very small values of maybe.
I'll just leave this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEJ1n13soWU
what does it have to do with the article?
Thanks, added those :)
This email was sent yesterday, how come it's in Courier New?
Video of the Internet Archive's "10PB Archived" presentation
The time to initiate an asteroid defense project is long before a threat is even detected.

There needs to be time for technology development, deployment, and testing. Tackling an extinction-level event is not something we want to scramble for at the last possible minute, using untried technology.
The program might benefit a lot from better timbres. It's hard to appreciate (or not) other features when the tones are so pallid, so impoverished.
Just pick up the video series from Rich Hickey himself http://blip.tv/clojure

And 'Programming Clojure' (among others). It's a nice concise read. (http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Clojure-Stuart-Halloway/dp...)

Edit: blip.tv is terrible for navigation. You have to click a few times to go to page 5 of the channel. Start there.
It was an awesome course. I can't wait for part 2.
_Women under male custody_

Ironically US could not elect it's first Women President yet. On contrary several Muslim states had a female PM/President.
Or at least have the user set which will be their default. I think Metro is actually fine for most users who are only using web, email, media, etc. even if on their laptops (yes, their are many people who fall into this category).

I find I'm in the desktop most of the time and almost never go to the metro start screen, which is a shame, because I'd like to be able to use their innovations, but most of the apps I run only run in desktop mode.
One issue with this, besides the possible legality of it, is if they used their credit card they could just dispute the claim. Stripe for example charges you $15 anytime someone disputes one of your charges even if you didn't do anything wrong. So you'd probably end up being out more than if you just refunded the money. Not sure what PayPal, Google checkout, etc policies are on this although I'd imagine they're quite similar.
...Which is why you do server-side validation?
I still never understand why they close some questions. Quite often I find a very useful answer that's posted on a closed question.
So do some server-side validation.
It does seem plausible that we could in fact harm ourselves by attempting to launch a nuclear device out of Earth's orbit. We do have a record of failed launches, several of them recent. Once the nuclear device is out of orbit however, I agree that the harm it can do to us is negligible.

Edit: Also, it just occurred to me the possibility of deflecting a comet (which was never in our path) into our path, instead of away from it, which is really great material for a Hollywood comedy.
According to our source, these are pre-production models that changed very little from the shipping product, although “performance improved some prior to shipping.”

This is obviously not true by just watching the videos. In the videos the delay between typing a number on the keypad and it coming up is something like 5 seconds. Watch any hands-on video after it launched and you can see no performance issues like that. Kin reviews noted some performance issues, but nothing to the degree noted by these videos.

performance improved some prior to shipping

I think that would be an understatement given how poor the perf in these videos were. It would be like doing a test group on the iPhone where dragging and tapping was delayed by a few seconds. There's no reason to even test that, because it will break everything else in the UI.
Most Probably Saudi government will not need to come up with such steps like US government to safegaud American women?

http://www.womenshealth.gov/violence-against-women/types-of-...
I liked the social network for what it was, a story of mostly fiction. Wasn't the majority of its faults, however, a result of the source material and not Sorkin?
Previous title: "Do something useful over the holidays: Learn Scala"
I actually have a Kin One and I really like it. The web browser kinda sucks because it's based on IE 6 but the messaging and actual phone parts are great and I love the UI.
I had never heard that saying before but I fear I will use it much too often in the future
Execute/Ship Now - This guy's startup is making more money than yours
>As much as I dislike it, most of the times when you are on someone else's playground, you have to play by their rules.

It's too bad they aren't my kids -- I'd just let them homeschool on the computer all day.
This is a very solid and informative post. If you're interested about this period of history, I recommend reading "Thicker than Oil" by Rachel Bronson, a book which documents the U.S. - Saudi relationship during the 20th century. It covers all of these events and more.

Edit -- to clarify further, the OP was referring to the split in the Islamic world in the 60s-70s between traditional Saudi leadership (favoring strong religious fundamentalism) and a new, mostly secular movement termed Pan-Arabism or Arab Nationalism. Since the Pan-Arabists were usually more favorable to Soviet influence, we naturally supported the Saudis and actually fostered several initiatives to increase religious fervor & fundamentalism.
The coffee here in Victoria, AU is amazing, I've had coffee in probably around 15 - 20 different countries and while I get the odd good coffee here and there the consistent quality here is hard to beat. Many countries in general don't actually use espresso machines(north america in particular) so the "quality" of the coffee is questionable. But in the end I guess "good" also depends on what you're used to.

BTW: Coffee here in Melbourne(at least on the north side) is about $3.20AUD(~$3.35USD) to $6AUD depending on size. If you're in Melbourne and want a great coffee I recommend Proud Mary's or Dr. Java they are both excellent.
Probably yes. Once the doctors realise that they can make extra money by simply doing what they are supposed to do, they would stop performing their duties without extra tip. Who would tip if doctors do their best anyway? Since not everybody can afford tips, those who tip the most get the best service and those who don't get no service. This is extremely unfair to those disadvantaged, esp considering health care is already very costly in China to the point of bringing many families to bankruptcy. This is exactly what happens in the education system here and goes strongly against the very point of health care and education, that is, to provide basic services insuring everyone has fair opportunities in a society.
It means "I'm in the mood to bash Microsoft" and nothing more.
> The federal government could make it illegal to drive a taxi in Vancouver except while wearing a pink tutu and singing Christmas carols.

As a former frequent user of that particular mode of transportation, that would be 'business as usual', which makes me wonder if such a law (or at least one like it) is already in effect.
This kind of tutorial for haskell will be great! I think LYAH is a good starting point for haskell beginners.
As opposed to liberal arts majors becoming government bureaucrats?
I've lived for years in both Vancouver and in SF. I can't say I prefer one's taxi service over the other. At least in SF, I have the option of Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar.

I would love to have Uber back home, but not for $75 a ride.
That's exactly what went wrong with ancient China. Instead of choosing who's most capable of studying, they used it on those who can afford education in the first place to become petty bureaucrats.
Thanks for this. Currently I have a workaround by using data-tabindex instead of the standard tabindex but I've been trying to find a more robust solution to this problem so I'm going to take a look at implementing something like this.
Perfect timing! Learning Scala is exactly what I'm doing over the long weekend.. Great post!
Creative Commons is the one I picked
Yeah. I have to agree with you. It's alright folks in Silicon Valley saying "but it's not true" about the Social Network. To almost everyone else, outside the industry and outside of Silicon Valley this is not only the factual story of Facebook, it's the model for how Silicon Valley works. I really don't look forward to a fictionalized version of Jobs which similarly whiffs on all the key points and paints another false picture, entertaining though it will no doubt be. If he wants to write a fake Silicon Valley movie don't do t featuring real-life people.
Great resource. Thanks heaps for sharing it. I've added it to the blog as an alternative.
Right. He only won an Oscar for The Social Network and was nominated this year for Moneyball. Just terrible!
Report calls for 'killer robot' ban
CueLinks wants affiliate marketing to suck less
Apple store is getting ready for holiday sale
this is correct.
i = 0;
i+=i++;

(0) + (0)++ = 0
next time around
(1) + (1)++ = 2
I do hope you realize there's a ton more to successfully homeschooling your kids than just letting them on the computer all day...
Marsilya 0-1 Fenerbahçe maç özeti izle
What do you mean baseless? There were two provided links showing your distaste for Linux. One could be a fluke (had a bad day), but two shows a pattern. This, added with the mention of using Ubuntu (and not trying another distro) shows that Linux is not your forte.

I, for one, would not like to work for you. I'm not trying to be offensive; in fact, I respect the decision to cut bait when you realized you were over your head. I just don't think I, as a Linux user, would fit in your organization. Many of the good sysadmins also have this same viewpoint, so the above certainly is well founded.
It varies. Usually a trademark is specific to an industry or field so Delta Dental and Delta Airlines are okay because they are in a different industry. It gets funky when there are overlaps in industry or the two operate entirely in the same space doing the same thing.
25 Stunning Wedding Centerpieces
I absolutely _loved_ The Social Network. Forget that it was totally fictional and made up. But it was the first movie that _raised_ the status of geeks in the eyes of the average joe.

The Social Network portrayed how real world power and influence has shifted from the Winklevoss type to the Hacker-nerd type. Non-nerd friends of mine came away from that movie with a new found respect for geeks.
I was thinking the same thing. The key to a vibrant app ecosystem is making profit for developers. Possibly these apps are making ad money, but yet to be seen.
"""
Mary Polak ‏@MaryPolakMLA
Passenger Transportation Board is an independent decision maker so gov’t does not influence decision. #bcpoli #UberVanLove
"""

This makes sense, actually. At first I was angry because there was no system in place for the public to complain/appeal this, but this has nothing to do with public services. If it had to do with buses or other forms of public transportation, then there would be a way to publicly appeal.

However, this is a matter dealing with private companies- as such it makes sense that the PTB is outside the public domain. Unfortunately, this makes it much harder for anyone outside an UBER rep to affect things one way or another.

A cursory glance at http://www.ptboard.bc.ca/ confirms this- the appeals appear to be for the user/company directly, and the only contact to the PTB appears to be snailmail, which nobody on HN is going to use for any reason.

As for the actual rates information itself: http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/ptb/documents/rule_limo-min-rates.pd...

Best they could do is $75 * .15 discount, not enough to be viable.

UBER can appeal for the board to approve company specific rates, but I'm not sure exactly how they'd justify it or what's involved in the process. Worst case scenario is waiting until the rules end date comes (June 30, 2013) and see if a campaign to rewrite it is within the public domain.
Is there? I definitely learned a lot more from sitting on my computer at home than I did from public schools.
That's a very vague description: You're describing a technology, and not what the technology does or who it serves.
Or Arch Linux. Arch packages are pretty vanilla, so it would be a pretty good way to reduce the attack surface.

Also, with Arch, you get less by default, so you'll end up with a cleaner system. I didn't realize how much stuff I didn't need on a default install of Fedora until I set up an Arch system.
"As correctly pointed out below, there is a snapshot (alpha, incomplete, unstable) build of current Opera for Win x64." (c) JohnTHaller
"Update, November 22nd 2012: Please note that Opera 12.00 final shipped with 64-bit and OOPP support, and that as of version 12.02, OOPP is disabled for Windows 32-bit." (c) Opera.com
You are wrong :P
Good point, but the chances of a failed launch are fairly small, and the damage from accidentally detonating a large nuke on the Earth's surface, while bad, would be small compared to human extinction.

If we are sufficiently uncertain about the comet's path, we might accidentally deflect it towards us. Obviously, if this is just as likely as deflecting it away from us, it would not be worthwhile to try. But most likely we would be able to reduce the probability of a catastrophic impact even after taking into account the possibility of such an error.
Google’s help sought in email threat case
1. Should already exist. See the 'Update' button for the ajax demo.
2. Is on my list :)
And I hope you understand that throughout the history, there have been very few occasions that a government has done what its people wanted. Usually they either oppress them, or "fool" them.

KSA isn't very kind to political offenders. They behead them in the public (with a sword!). So you'll excuse them (Arabs) if they're a little less eager to rebel against extremely rich and powerful Saudies than we'd like...

(I'm not saying that there's a shortage of thick-headed, stupid, overly-religious arabs in KSA. Such stupid people are everywhere, even in best parts of Europe. But they're not a true representative of "Arabs", in general).
They're good things, but are they good enough to justify taking money from people by force (taxation) to pay someone to do them? Pink lemonade is good too, but I prefer a society where people who want pink lemonade choose to buy it for themselves.
How To Learn Haskell:
http://acm.wustl.edu/functional/haskell.php
Unfortunately this is not correct.

If you run

for (int x = 0; x < 10; x++)
{
i += i++;
Console.WriteLine(i);
}

i is always 0.
Entrepreneurship and Chess Clocks
If the Chinese can gain supremacy of world affairs while paying people more than Americans pay you will see the same flow from America to China.

Certainly at this point in time by most objective measures America is more free, but it is heading in a direction of less free as China heads in a direction of more free. I believe that both trajectories will accelerate in the coming years for purely economic reasons, as America's fiscal position declines it will head towards more restrictive policies while the fiscal boon to China's populace causes more liberal policies to be explored.

Like most organizations the Communist Party in China is more interested in preserving itself than whether a particular policy may be ideologically pure communism.
When US installed the Shah as a dictator of Iran, the social policies of Iran took a profound backwards step.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh
The sad story of modern Afghanistan (late 70's through 2001) might be also of interest to those who want to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(1978–presen...

If it wasn't for the damn Cold War, probably today Afghanistan would probably be more developed than Iran... :(
How does regulation make taxis safer? As cars, they need to have a license plate you can write down and give to the police. I can't imagine what aspect of regulation offers protections beyond that.

IMO taxi regulation in North America is generally designed for no other purpose than to purposely protect incumbents, so saying those are different things is a false dichotomy. Of course, since that might look bad to the voting public, sometimes they pretend there are other benefits.

I'm not a libertarian btw, I have no problem with the concept of regulations, I just call rent seeking when I see it.
I have been using rails-api for over a month in a large project, this is port of a older rails app, empirical evidence app loads faster and memory footprint is small, as dependencies are less.
I have made some additional changes,
i use it with RABL, test suite is now separate and uses curb/faraday as API client. I am also considering repacking all my gems to make bundle install faster and a smaller size for standalone installations
Thanks for mentioning the book, after reading your comment I looked for the book, and it looks pretty good, probably the next book I'm going to buy. Thanks!
need to prefix it with backbone- for the extra hype-factor
If you're a heavy browser user, or if you simply never close your browser, you'll frequently run into the scenario where 32 bit Firefox reaches the 2GB virtual memory limit, whereupon it gets killed. Yep, it's 2GB, atleast on 32bit OS (I'm on Win 7 32bit).

Just the convenience factor of not having to restart my browser frequently is enough to make me want to embrace x64. My blocker is that my corporate IT policy is to have 32 bit OS.
Would love Stripe integration. Possible?
It looks like they're some average of the colors in the app's icon. That's what Windows 7/8 (and Vista?) do for the mouseover highlight color of taskbar items too, though more subtly, so it would make sense.
y u no backbone-bootstrap-modal?
Just read the comments above.
I believe the potato famine would count as a famine occurring in a democracy.
Anyone has a good summary of Scala vs Go? I know a bit of the former (with typeface for high-concurrency) and was wondering what Go might have to offer.
This isn't really javascript specific. The idea is to have a way of telling the compiler (or VM) that a function has no side effect.
On the other hand, Angry Birds Space and Star Wars are more expensive in the Windows Store than on the iOS App Store (though I only checked on my iPhone, not on my iPad), and a ton of the top iOS apps these days are free but make their money through in app purchases. At this point, I just assume that an app that's free on iOS is going to annoy me to death with in app purchase gameplay mechanics and nags.
At least it'll take the heat off Zuckerberg for a while. Although it might make Jobs roll in his grave.
I got super-excited for a moment because I'm literally in the midst of a weekend project putting together, well, a simple online store (I'm a novice - yes, these things still take me a weekend ;)

But this is, alas, too simple. I'm actually taking the plunge and building a Rails app.

Anyone have some good/great/awesome JS shopping cart suggestions that are perhaps equally-simple in theory but a bit more robust?

I'm using Rails, ActiveMerchant and Stripe.js so far (been looking for a good excuse to actually use Stripe - psyched to try 'em out).

Something between this and Spree, which is massive massive overkill for my purposes.
like proxies and generators already implemented in IE8 ? we wont be using ES6 on the client until 2017 for sure.
That's like handing the cashier the wrong amount. Not a big deal. PayPal has operated like this for 13 years.
That sort of speculation is not productive. We could just as easily speculate that Google would prefer not to censor in foreign countries and is advocating the legislation to provide them an excuse to foreign governments for their refusal to censor, and to prevent their competitors from gaining an advantage in such countries by capitulating to censorship demands and thereby putting unwanted pressure on Google to do the same.