skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If there is indeed no distinction between the two, which might very well be the case, you would still need to supply a logical argument as to why there is no distinction between the two. Philosophy isn't about positing grand-sounding statements without proof. It's about backing up such statements with valid logic.

Something like: Hello, I analysed 12 different ways in which people use the word "self", and came up with precise definitions for each of them so that there is no room for ambiguity or vagueness. Here I demonstrate that each and every one of them has exactly the same logical structure as, and is therefore reducible to, the phrase "the sense of self", a precise definition of which follows: blah blah blah. Therefore, I posit that "self" === "the sense of self".

Neuroscientists can show how certain biochemical processes cause members of homo sapiens to confuse the self with the sense of self, but error theory is not a positive demonstration. So I maintain that a healthy dose of philosophy is still required.

Also, just because you can't draw a line between two things doesn't mean that there's no distinction between them. Is abortion the same as murder just because foetal development is a continuous process with no sharp boundaries?
Show HN: A web-based Excel/Database hybrid
Great stuff!

I have this idea for a long time to use this gesture recognizer (at the time I found this implementation https://github.com/preble/GLGestureRecognizer) to create an App prototyping application.

Today, sketching is the fastest way, but it's very bad quality. Apps like AppCooker let you create better quality mockups but are much slower to use.

Imagine if you could just draw a T and a tableview would show up, same thing for buttons, navbars, etc.

Anyways, thanks for sharing and I'll let you know when I use it!
Google has over 15,000 patents from their acquisition of Motorola mobile.
It may be things like getting large construction projects: Knowing someone on the inside who can help you win the bid.

Things like that.

Or what it takes to get a zoning variant - if you know the mayor you are probably more likely to get the variant.
>he gives not a single example of a question that those disciplines have answered.

Relevant:

"recent advocates of scientism have taken the ironic but logical next step of denying any useful role for philosophy whatsoever, even the subservient philosophy of the positivist sort. But the last laugh, it seems, remains with the philosophers — for the advocates of scientism reveal conceptual confusions that are obvious upon philosophical reflection. Rather than rendering philosophy obsolete, scientism is setting the stage for its much-needed revival. [...] In contrast to reason, a defining characteristic of superstition is the stubborn insistence that something — a fetish, an amulet, a pack of Tarot cards — has powers which no evidence supports. From this perspective, scientism appears to have as much in common with superstition as it does with properly conducted scientific research. Scientism claims that science has already resolved questions that are inherently beyond its ability to answer."
Can you still push instagram photos to Tumblr where they can be automatically appear in Twitter from Tumblr?
Why was it called $1 Gesture Recognizer? On the original project page they don't mention this.
Thanks for the pointer, that is an interesting discussion.

> Debating agency is very fun, and can be done at all times in all places

Yes it is and yes it can! I can't count the number of times I've had to backtrack and explain the concept of agency when having discussions where I brought it up.
I was under the impression you aren't able to downvote on this site. In the same way this site is Reddit except the fact you can't react negatively to anything (downvote), we now need to do the same for comments.

You either upvote or you do nothing. You either comment positively or you don't comment. Excellent job patio.
Yeah, you're right. I think the public votes on the intent to issue bonds, and once the intent is approved, the administrators duke it out. I would not attribute everything to incompetence or corruption though - a lot of California municipalities have negative ratings, and school board bonds are least attractive compared to general obligation and other muni papers, so that rate might be in line with market.
I prefer the Peppa Pig version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfMYw33jph0
> I think awk gets a pass because it's a programming language with a handy syntax for running small scripts

Even more than that, awk's orientation towards filtering text lines made up of fields makes handling many little pipeline tasks amazingly simple. In combination with being a very nice little general-purpose programming language with good string support, awk is a no-brainer first stop for a lot of things.

[Other more recent programming languages generally have many more features, much better implementations etc, but nothing has improved or really even matched awk's smooth integration into the unix pipeline. Perl, for instance, although it's long tried to bill itself as a replacement for awk, and explicitly includes special features for such usage, can be significantly more awkward (er... :) for the sort of tiny little filters awk's really good at.]
> "Ask HN" doesn't qualify as most basic research?

I think it does in some cases, but not in a case of this magnitude. It's a matter of specificity.
Henry Blodget loves Amazon, but aren't we all?
Wouldn't they only need to convince people to develop a Wine compatible version?
It's more of a resume builder than anything else. The more downloads it gets, the better it'll sound to prospective employees and potential clients. If it did "take off", we'd then look at a way to monetize it - perhaps with an in app upgrade to a new game play type.

And thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the blog post.
I wonder what the psychology is for founding teams.

Clearly, at one point on the spectrum, it's people who meet a second before the application purely for the purpose of working on the application to fake their way into YC.

At the other end on the spectrum, people who have known each other for all their lives (say, twin brothers).

The former might on paper have great credentials (if I were going to pick a "fake" cofounder, I'd pick someone who has already built something similar, has a lot of accomplishments, etc., all things being equal. And, to a small extent, being able to convince someone like that to join your team kind of means something.

The latter would potentially join your startup even if he didn't believe in the idea, or have any real competence, etc., just out of familial obligation. But maybe siblings had a lot of similar experiences and both got interested in and involved with a certain tech early on.

It's even more complex with spouses. Say I'm a great musician, and I spend all my time with musicians, and really respect musicians and music. It's entirely likely my choice of spouse would be another incredibly talented musician. But, it's also likely that if people are married for other reasons, one might want to do a startup and then pull along a less-qualified spouse.

I think the sweet spot is somewhere beyond "met for just this project", at least if it hasn't been going for a long time, but "met for professional reasons", not purely social or familial ones. But it's probably a pretty flat region after that, where individual variations matter a lot more.
I know on the xda dev forums plenty of people have complained about it through normal customer service channels (ie. where a person is involved, email/phone). It seems some have found success by logging in to their Google Wallet and canceling that way. Apologies if you've already tried this as it may seem obvious - but there are users claim success in canceling orders locked in a limbo state for weeks and re-ordering and getting a phone from a later allocation.

My theory is not they're trying to be terrible, but that they simply do not have the bandwidth allocated to handle a launch of this size... mistakes du jour.

To Google's credit, it does sound like for those who have received a phone with defects they've been pretty receptive in sending out replacements. I don't know why they have that part of the process covered but not the initial procurement.

I feel blessed my experience wasn't too bad (got a weird shipment notification 6 days before it actually shipped) but the phone itself it mostly spot on.
I've found plotting out call graphs and dependencies with GraphViz to be helpful in decoding and fixing spaghetti code, and as a big-picture documentation tool in general.

GraphViz is a tool that converts a text format to images, not a pointy-clicky WYSIWYG thing, so I'm not sure how much of a defense of visual programming that is.
Am I the only one that simply imports hi-res photos into Instagram then?
> science is useless for understanding the world in non-scientific, subjective terms

This is only true in so far as "subjective" things are poorly defined. Give me any subjective principle that is clearly defined and laid out and we can talk about scientifically.

> You cannot apply the scientific method to create art, but art is nevertheless created to communicate an understanding of the world.

This is false. People use scientific methods to create art every day. Record labels use machine learning and data analysis to understand what people find aesthetically pleasing in music and then go that route when they select bands to fund and songs to spend advertising money on (they have been doing this since the 1970's). Hollywood does intense studies of people and their tastes to guide script choices. They also use science directly to build art. Take Pixar for example. Blue screens.

Science is everywhere in the creation of art. Paint and pigment, we can go that basic, are the product of science. Understanding of light and art and perspective directly progressed art during the Renaissance, as did Leonardo's work on anatomy.
This looks useful, thanks. It looks like the $6 a year mentioned on Github is solely for Route 53 costs (0.50/domain/month).
There is no video footage as of right now. You can see a screen shot here:

http://www.randklabs.com/trifecta/
Upstart, Systemd, and SMF have many of these features now, but here's what launchd brings to the table:

1) It unifies several independent systems that shared a similar purpose:

- init

- crond

- atd

- inetd

- xinetd

2) It includes user-based daemon management.

- More structured than doing it in your shell's RC file.

3) Instead of writing a shell script, you set a series of properties in a plist (XML-based).

- It's parseable.

- Daemons can be interacted with programmatically using built-in tools like defaults, PlistBuddy, and launchctl.

4) It handles a lot of special dependencies:

- Network availability

- Disk or server availability

- Filesystem availability

- User Logins

- Kernel Extensions

5) It has built-in, live, event-based triggers with almost no overhead. It can watch for:

- Changes to a file or folder

- An item to appear in an empty directory (for queueing)

- A file system to mount

- A Mach message

- A connection to a stream socket

- Traffic to a datagram port

6) It manages respawn behavior. For example:

- Run when loaded and never quit.

- Run purely on demand

- Run once when loaded an on demand thereafter

- Run on demand based on a clean exit

7) Its strict conventions prevent processes from being disassociated from their parents.

- Easier to trace who did what (nice for security and troubleshooting)

- Easier for the OS to garbage collect.

- Centralizes a lot of daemon management

8) It has a defined separation of "execution contexts" based on:

- If it does something for the currently logged-in user or all users.

- If it will be used by one app or by multiple apps.

- If it needs to display a user interface or launch a GUI app.

For more info, checkout: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2005/tn2083.html

EDIT: Formatting.
Direct link to the game:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trifecta-blocks-challenge/id...
Assume for a second you are right (you aren't, it turns out)

Why does that matter?

IE what is the point you are trying to make by saying this?

Is it that they are self-interested?

Because if so, uh, almost all amicus briefs are filed by self-interested companies or advocacy groups.

That is in fact, one of the points of amicus briefs: To cover concerns not directly dealt with by the parties so that the court understands the broader implications of ruling one way or another.

Another point is to cover arguments the parties do not make.

The court is also free to deny them leave to file a brief if the court doesn't care.
Top 25 Facebook Games From 2012
I work at FeedBlitz and we have support (giant improvement over FeedBurner), analytics, integration with other social media for RSS distribution, easy-to-enable triggers and parsers to make the RSS part of integrated marketing communications.
Posting on HN might not scale?
You can downvote comments, assuming you have enough karma (100? 500? something like that). You can't downvote stories themselves, however.
Guild Wars 2 was the best in 2012 game selection
I'm sympathetic to the situation, but legally this is the wrong approach. The Supreme Court has clearly said that software patents don't fall under the exclusion for abstract ideas, and has also said that it's unwilling to entertain categorical exclusions on the subject matter of patentability.

You're not going to convince the lower courts to ignore Supreme Court guidance on this issue, and this is a particular argument that has already lost in a relatively recent case so the Supreme Court is unlikely to revisit it any time soon.

Companies like Facebook, Google, etc, are in a far better position asking for a reevaluation of the bar for novelty and non-obviousness. There is a multi-factor test for non-obviousness, and John Deere holds that secondary factors such as "commercial success, long felt but unsolved needs, failure of others..." can speak to an invention being non-obvious.

I think an argument that evidence of independent invention should create a presumption that an invention is obvious would be far better received as well as being more consistent with the statutory framework.
I live in Atlanta and work with startups here.

Compared to where it was a few years ago it is doing a lot better.

With that being said it still isn't there yet. All of the points that the author made are valid ones.

The plusses of being in Atlanta:
1. Costs are generally lower.
2. There are some good resources for startups if you know where to look.
3. We have had a few successful exits in this town and we are getting a better tech startup buzz.
4. You have a major airport hub and can get to anywhere in the country quickly and inexpensively.
5. We are beginning to get more traction with setting up hackathons and tech focused groups in the town.
6. There are a few quality companies that have recently come out of flashpoint.

Opportunities for growth:
1. Atlanta Has not traditionally been a tech focused town. Finance, Marketing, Retail and Media have been it's dominate industries. IT has been more of a support function of those industries.
2. Atlanta investors are not as savvy as investors from tech hubs like Austin, the Valley and New York which makes it more difficult to raise money locally (a lot of startups have gone to one of those cities to raise money).
3. The resources in Atlanta do not seem to be as focused on creating tech centered startups as they could be. If you look at the programs offered at the ATDC etc. they tend to be focused on business development, product development, operations (legal things etc.) and marketing. Many of the startup events are filled with non-technical people with no money looking for co-founders for their latest social/gaming/store based app.
4. The community feels like it needs to gel and circle around the quality startups in town to drive a culture of quality....there are some low quality (me too) startups in town with non-technical founders and no money who have received way too much press/buzz that predictably have or will fail.

Many of the opportunities for growth are not unique to Atlanta. This is probably also indicative of the small number of companies in Crunchbase that are out of Atlanta.

The trajectory is going in the right direction, and if we can reach the critical mass it could be great....so in a way Atlanta is still a startup of startups.
Ask HN: Service to add 'getting started' wizard to your web app
I saw a post on HN a while ago which highlighted a service that allows you to easily add a wizard overlay for your web app.

Can anyone remember the name of the service?
This is extremely good news for the startup world. Maybe Zynga can do one good thing before it dies?
I voted on Friday and the share this button "mysteriously" still doesn't work. I disagree that Facebook gave this vote a fair chance. Sure they sent out an email but they could have easily included a big "vote here" button but instead all they did was bury this link[1] in the email which takes you to another text filled page where the actual link[2] to vote is buried in yet another paragraph. All this vote does is provide plausible deniability so that in the future when people complain about privacy changes, all Facebook has to do is point to this vote and proclaim that people had the chance have their say.

But do I blame Facebook? No. They didn't have initiate any sort of vote and let's face it, at the end of the of they're in this business to make money. I take the stance of if you don't like it, don't use it.

1 - https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-site-governance/resp...

2 - https://apps.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance/
I just started doing that, but I have a decent amount straight from my phone-camera.
For me, the vertical scrollbar in my browser is a visual cue that I have the ability to scroll using the scroll-wheel.

If the news page hadn't explained that using the scroll-wheel will scroll the page horizontally, I wouldn't have known to try it.
Unrelated, but there's something at least mildly amusing about "shooting a tweet". With email it was just a metaphor for sending a message quickly/lightly. Shooting a tweet makes me think of picking off tiny birds (tweets) a la skeet shooting. Carry on ;)
This is not what the article states. The article says they will pay a total of $34 million to receive a $25 million federally subsidized loan. Presumably the principal and interest on the $25 million must be repaid as well, so the actual cost of that $25 million is somewhere north of $60 million.
Brian Blessed, awesome.
That doesn't fit when people complain about rising anti-intellectualism.

It's not one of the standard things that one generation always accuses "kids these days" of being guilty of. It's not like language choice or concepts of etiquette and politeness and changing social mores.

It's something that pops up in cultures constantly and when it gains a good foothold it royally fucks that culture up for a few generations before being stamped out again ... if it's not destroyed by a culture still embracing new ideas in the interim.

The whole premise of Idiocracy is as a morality tale about the dangers of anti-intellectual consumerism culture. Exactly what new ideas are being ignored if you find that a well suited criticism of contemporary culture?
I'm not sure the credit card will perform a chargeback in this case: it's not that Google is misrepresenting their product or the product isn't being delivered, it's that he's changed his mind.

While Google is being extremely uncooperative, that's not enough to warrant a chargeback.
The anti-intellectual nature is quite frustrating at times and outside of a few pockets is something that could benefit from more intellectuals coming into the area.
Agree, didn't know I can scroll-wheel to scroll until I saw this comment.
Even a narrow interpretation would exclude patents on math which are abstract ideas, making a particular category of software patents invalid which would help a lot.
You are right: It is condescending, and I downvoted it for that reason which has no doubt been cancelled out by like a hundred upvotes just because it is Patrick.

But, gee, how many other people get called by their first name instead of their handle? "Thomas" comes to mind, but I imagine it is a rather small club. Patrick is fairly introverted and gets super nervous when giving public speeches, even though he has experience doing so. On a much smaller scale, I have been in the kind of position he is in here on HN. I read his remark here as an attempt by someone with a lot of social pull and responsibility here but limited social savvy to affirm the good qualities of a forum he is very personally invested in. Yes, he did it less than smoothly. But his condescension is very likely a defense mechanism, knowing he is a big target and is very likely to be attacked. It is kind of him flinching, knowing it is coming and trying to steel himself for it.

I don't know what the solution is, either for HN or Patrick. But I do know how uncomfortable it is to be called out by my given name in public when most other people are hiding behind some anonymous handle or otherwise lower profile. I know how awful it feels to be delivered what amounts to a personal attack so very personally, by name, from semi-anonymous crowds. I don't think putting Patrick on the hot seat like that helps HN at all. In fact, it likely makes things worse.

One of the problems with HN is that it is a forum aimed at a largely socially awkward crowd. Most people who have the technical expertise to become influential here will be poorly equipped to perform crowd control duties, even though they essentially take that on as a de facto duty, like it or not. When they attempt to live up to that duty, it might help to cut them some slack and try to see the good intentions behind their sometimes mediocre execution.

I wish the leaderboard had 160 names on it. It is the top 150-ish people who have some hope of "fixing" the loss of quality that is so frequently lamented here. I don't know exactly how to do that on such a large scale, but I have a few clues about how to proceed. And trying to meet people like Patrick halfway is part of it.

(I apologize for how rambling this is. As is often the case, I seem to be running a fever.)
i'm not a mathematician either, but i think the mistake you're making is in neglecting the difference between "subset A of the sphere has as many points as the entire sphere" and "here's a way to cut a sphere into subsets, and reassemble the subsets into two spheres". intuitively, your mapping scheme involves stretching, shearing and discontinuous transforms on the subsets before you get two spheres out of it - it is pretty obvious from the mathematics of infinite sets that you can always do this, so there's no real "paradox" involved.
You're a con arstist.

Nothing more.
An unconditioned attic wouldn't be very good for film.

Having scanned thousands of my parents photos, the negatives and slides have held up very well, but the fun factor of a random slideshow and the convenience of managing a few virtual folders also bring a lot to the table (and it is much easier to backup the digital files, even if it is still hard).
wish i'd thought of that one!
It a certain degree, beauty is a better indicator than percentages when it comes to how functional a programming language is. Scheme scores high in that regard. Python does okay if you stay moderate in it's usage. Any amount of functional programming in Java tends to be downright ugly and unlikely to pass most code reviews.
Here's one from a.b.boneless...

"2TU4K75C6Z" (45 rars, 9 pars)

And here's one from a.b.multimedia...

"DTTBiAp23.101.by.NYCrules" (14 rars, 11 pars)

no .nfo included and no way to know what's inside. Does anybody know how people are decoding these titles into meaningful information?