skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness".

This concisely and aptly summarizes the reason for philosophy's low standing among intellectual disciplines.

Philosophers are manifestly unqualified to debate the scientific definition of anything, much less "correctness". Beyond this, a suitable definition is too short to be of interest to a philosopher, someone for whom the number of words uttered is always ranked higher than the intellectual content of each word taken separately.

A scientific idea is "correct" if it can be successfully compared to reality.

How hard is that? I hasten to add that no scientific idea ever becomes true for all time -- all such ideas are subject to falsification by new evidence, by new comparisons to reality.

> But it is very hard to convince followers of scientism...

Ah, yes, the "science is just another religion" gambit. It speaks volumes about the depth of modern philosophical thought.

Philosophers compare their ideas to those of other philosophers. Scientists compare their ideas to reality.
You make him sound like a fringe lunatic. After reading your comment I pictured a young hipster writing pseudo-science to suit his political agenda.

In actual fact, his "solo debunking study" is one of a very long academic career of studying wolves and other prey. Quoting from http://www.davemech.org/: "L. David Mech (pronounced "Meech") is a Senior Scientist with the Biological Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, and Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. He has studied wolves and their prey since 1958, as well as several other species of wildlife."

He has a massive list of peer-reviewed publications, going back 50 years (http://www.davemech.org/publications.html), and looks exactly like every serious academic researcher I've come across.

Yet he links to OWS from his personal site and all of a sudden that's all invalidated?
It's quite the improvement from last year's Dead Friday (or last winter's dead Thursday with Friday finals.
If you're interested in in-game economics, another very interesting read is Lessons From Habitat http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html, a game created in the early 80's by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer that ran on Commodore 64.

Despite being written more than two decades ago, most of the conclusions from Lessons.. are still fresh and applicable to game mechanics today.

Randall (@frandallfarmer) is also the author of Building Web Reputation Systems, published by O'Reilly - http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/3900. Another nice reading, if you're interested in the subject.
(cough.) Um, you're talking to an artist whose academic field of study specifically concerns why art, practically speaking, is vital to the well-being of a society. But judging from your username, Mr. Pony, I feel that you assume "art" refers to something different than what I do. The most valuable art is that which provokes a response: art is those creative acts which provoke creative acts in response. Similarly, the best philosophy is that which provokes responses from people who encounter it.

That's one of the reasons why the "philosophy should be practical" argument is weird. Philosophy is practical, but its practical outcomes are philosophical in nature: that is, it drives people to consider aspects of life and existence that they wouldn't consider otherwise. Saying philosophy should be scientifically practical is like saying that science should help people find a closer connection with Jesus Christ: science does indeed drive some people to deep religious faith, but science that's only designed to make people think Jesus was an alright dude isn't science so much as it's religious propaganda posing as science. That's what this argument is: scientific propaganda pretending to be philosophy.

The thing is, I love science! I really do! Science is amazing! But so is philosophy – so much so that personally I like it much more than I like science. Which is why I'd rather see philosophy stay philosophy, you know?

(Incidentally, if you're interested in talking art, please do email me – I enjoy talking about my work, particularly with people skeptical about whether art's practical. :D)
Just because of that I have disabled fb like, twitter and g+ from my blog.
I had also disabled google analytics but traffic started to go down. Today I have re-enabled analytics to see if that is the reason.

I did not have too much traffic from fb or twitter to think that is because I took their buttons out.

Anyway, I prefer to avoid those sites tracking my readers, savvy people can anyway share my content if they want.

So, if you want is http://www.garron.me :). Just kidding.
"This script walks from the Viridian City pokemon store to Oak's Lab in the most efficient way possible. The walk-thru-grass function guarantees that no wild battles will happen by manipulating the game's random number generator."

I've noticed similar behavior before in the Fire Emblem series.
http://m.ign.com/walkthroughs/520430
Here is my favorite example showing that effective societies in other species need not be ones we like.

Our closest relatives are chimpanzees. Their sexual strategy is to produce lots of sperm and have lots of sex. The average chimpanzee male has sex an average of once per hour. (This is the 24 hour average.) About 1% of the time, the female attempts to resist, this does not bother the male.

The result? The average chimp commits clear rape every few days.

Can we make this worse? I think we can. One thing every mother chimp wants is to have her son become dominant. She therefore begins his journey up the dominance hierarchy early. Literally juvenile male gets to have non-consensual sex with low ranking females because his mother forces the adult female to comply.

If you're going to base your system of morality on what evolution has encouraged, you're either going to be ignorant, or accepting of things that are extremely repugnant to any human society that I've heard of.
Why can't I find a company to work for with people like you guys?
Trying to strip all identifying bits from your browser is a fool's errand. Strictly speaking, all web users are uniquely identified by the combination of IP address and the timestamp of an HTTP GET. The only reason that's not practically an identifier is that web sites don't have access to the ISP logs necessary to resolve ('192.0.2.0', 'www.example.com', 1354989355) back to you. The question you should be asking is how likely it is that the specific website you're visiting, as opposed to a third-party partner, is snooping your Chrome plugins so it can later resolve your identity against the databases of other websites that you've explicitly visited, who also snoop such data themselves, so that both businesses could identify the extreme minority of users who go to this much trouble to protect their privacy. You're much better off with that risk vs. having dozens of third-party cookies hovering around you.
Meh. Meat is delicious, I don't want to eat less.
"I was led to believe that Descartes argued his new method should be added to existing ones rather than replace them entirely – am I wrong in thinking this way?"

Actually I think you are, but it is of course complicated. My read of the Discourse (certainly not original with me!) traces a sequence of subtle but nevertheless explicit rejections of each category of Descartes' own education: mathematics, physics, metaphysics, aesthetics, etc.

Descartes flatters his masters on the one hand while on the other "provisionally" rejecting every single one of them, never to return. This is the birth of modernism. The rejection of the past, the 'blank slate' of a hypothetical 'view from nowhere' acutely expressed in Descartes' notion of Radical Doubt (in the Meditations on First Philosophy). Descartes argues that, like a city built by multiple architects over many centuries, contemporary knowledge in the 17th Century was brilliant and confused all at once, at odds with itself and incapable of 'clear and distinct' ideas. Therefore he proposes that he himself embark on a provisional quest for certain knowledge, not because of his own genius, but because it is possible that a single philosopher with clarity of purpose can achieve what centuries of confused development cannot. It is an intoxicating proposition, and we moderns have yet to let go of its promise.
To take one example, philosophers have been more than instrumental in the development of logic, especially [informal logic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_logic#History). Don't want to get into a discussion on whether logic is itself a branch of philosophy.
> I assume you're saying that without having read it?

No, I am saying the author doesn't want to disseminate his ideas, he wants to become rich. US$75.00 is simply too high a price for any book (not to say there aren't even more expensive books, but the same reasoning applies to them).

The only place where authors get away with this kind of pricing is when a college professor requires his class to buy his book, in which case the students have no choice. Outrageous but true.

This is not how you change the world, it's how you charge the world.

Also, even granted an avaricious motive and all other considerations aside, the author would probably make more money by pricing his book more realistically.
It it possible to block/fake list of fonts and/or browser add-ons from being sent to a website?
Hypegram: Stream Unlimited Songs Gathered From Music Blogs
Tying philosophy to usefulness in STEM disciplines is a terrible idea.

Reading Kant doesn't "too much respect for failed philosophical methods"--if you read him properly it helps teach solid thinking that might even lead you to reject some of what he says.
You could probably write a library that did smart renaming of id's.

For example, <label id="R_../../checkbox1+_label"> would be renamed to the id of the first checkbox on the parent's parent with _label appended to it. The library could be smart enough to only recognize the R_ prefix as needing to be renamed.

Not saying that you should do that, just that you could.
The site is currently been developed and would be live soon. (It's been done by one of the close friends so I can assure that it is relevant).
Sign up to get notified when it's up and more information.
Leaked ITU DPI Document Available for Download
Just another reminder that anything is possible.

For those that are wondering if something like this is possible outside of computers/video games, I would recommend a study of Lucid Dreaming. If brain hacking is possible, this has to be the best method of entry into the system.
Kind of remembers me The Wall (Pink Floyd)
I don't think it's hard right now to get information on a visitor's company if they work somewhere large enough to have their own public IP block.

What I would love to know is how they take that and get an email address out of it. Which 3rd party are they working with that 1) had the IP -> email address link, or this guy logged in and 2) is willing to share that data with a 3rd party?
Tired of RequireJS? - LMD: new JavaScript module architecture
Pretty cool! This reminds me of this TED talk...

Sebastian Wernicke: 1000 TED Talks, 6 words
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ3nEK1qSkA
Please companies and managers, move to a results-based mindset, don't ask for your employees to look busy and work under pressure all the time.
I got the sense that he thinks of philosophers more in the fashion of scientists doing basic research in universities and R&D departments. People don't know their names, and they rarely have much direct impact, but their work is foundational to a lot of practical things that come later.

Philosophy is very happy to take untested opinion as true.

This is demonstrably false. Philosophy, almost by definition, is a process of rationally testing "opinion". Your post reeks of scientism and nothing more.
If you have an iPhone, there's news:yc. Great reader. Not perfect, but the best I found so far.
What is it with this modern obsession with not eating meat?

Meat is good. It's healthy, it's very sustainable, it's got an incredible protein:volume ratio, and it's delicious.
"[Philosophy] has been superseded by a specific form of dogmatic, reductionist science."

Not sure of the 'specific form' of science you are refering to, but I would hardly call science dogmatic. True, it dogmatically follows the 'Scientific Method', but that is a process to get at the truth. It does not dogmatically accept any ideas. It questions and tests, and if a cherished idea is proven wrong -- out it goes. Clearly, philosophy can't do that. They still teach Plato in philosophy, but they no longer teach Ptolemy in science.
Elon Musk’s SolarCity IPO filing
Hopefully I'm not the only one feeling uncomfortable with this. I mean it's okay for advertisers to know some info about me - but everything?
> Some forget that China is still a centralized communist country.

China was never a centralized communist country - it was a country that attempted to create a state-capitalist economy, to varying degrees of success over the years.

This isn't a matter of quibbling over terminology; it's a rather important distinction to be aware of for anybody who wants to understand modern China's economic history.
Can you name one modern rigorous and precise discipline that does not have philosophic roots? We don't know what science today's philosophy might produce in the future.
I see a lot of criticism that lukeprog is "shallow" or "surface-oriented" on the topic of philosophy. While I don't believe he has formal training, the guy had a long-running blog and podcast covering a number of philosophical topics, including interviews with professional philosophers: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1911

I think lukeprog has done much to provide himself with an unbiased philosophical education.
USB NeXT Keyboard with an Arduino Micro
How do you install meteorite? I can't get this working!

Frustrated!
Google vs Apple as Christmas shoppers snap up one tablet computer every second
What? This is being described as a "crisis"? It's the best news I've heard all year. We should celebrate!

The world's population is completely out of control, all estimates of future environmental catastrophe turn out to be overly optimistic, we're drifting into a state of perpetual war because of population pressures, and someone laments a decline in sperm count without the slightest grasp of how funny that is?

Read and weep, children:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
> You can uniquely identify most visitors without cookies using a bunch of other exposed attributes.

Yep, that's nasty, but this is much worse still: getting visitor names & email contact info.
Rotate the screen 90 degrees :)
Pretty sure it's impossible to stay awake for 100 hours without some serious drugs. Good luck either way!
>(old, 3.x) Firefox

That should be unique enough... :)
> A scientific idea is "correct" if it can be successfully compared to reality.

But this is similar to saying what is real is what corresponds to reality. Do you see the circularity here?

The philosophers who engage in questioning the "real" are not doing it for the reasons scientists engage in discovering "correct" phenomena. The longing for a deeper meaning and clarity beyond scientific inquiry is a spiritual longing. These philosophers are trying to describe ways in which human beings fit in the world, how we can deal with the groundlessness of our existence, what choices we have in light of the anguish that comes from our mortality.

The problem is that many people view this as a competition against science or "exact" thinking. It is not.

I think this quote from Leo Strauss sums up my point:

"Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm. It is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spite of its highness or nobility, it could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature's grace."
I'm sure between getting a shiny new tablet and putting food on the table, Indians will choose Android. That Rs 21,900 is a lot of money that could be spent on food and clothing.
It dogmatically accepts the method, and no other. That means it's either the correct method in every sphere, which is obviously false, or there are spheres in which it is not correct, in which case science is insufficient.
The internet always takes it a step too far.
from my experience I can tell you, that employers can trade your lack of experience for a lower wage.
Did he talk about in50hrs event in this article? He was talking about the Indian market because he understands it.Is it wrong to promote events on twitter? What is your problem?

Sidenote: Vijay Anand has done so much to Indian entrepreneurs and Indian startup ecosystem.
hey, would love one as well http://scr.im/ambros. Thanks in advance!
This is unfortunately true of many species of philosophers, and in many ways they are responsible for their own growing public irrelevance. Growing, if not fully accomplished!

So, I agree with your post to the extent that it applies to much of the last hundred years of philosophy. We see the results of this disparity in guys like Lawrence Krauss, who says much the same thing.

It's a hard argument to counter, not because it's a good argument, but because culturally and educationally we lack the common philosophical vocabulary to identify its problems, without running aground on local political issues. We are all children of Descartes and we are catechized our whole lives to think in reductionist terms and anticipate reductionist answers to every facet of human experience.

I completely disagree with your hard distinction between Science and Philosophy, but I don't have a quick-and-dirty answer for you. I know why you see this distinction, and there's truth in it, but also, to my mind, deep error. I would suggest you look at the history of philosophy of science, its origins in Bacon and Descartes and a much older philosophical debate that transcends questions of whether "good answers" are given and dives deeper into the nature of answers themselves. Any honest appraisal of this history of ideas I think must identify a larger meta-debate, not between "Science" and "Philosophy" but between two opposing Philosophies, two opposing Sciences, in fact.
I'm actually unemployed and looking for work right now. If you find a company that wants guys like me working for them, let me know! ;-)
I would add RequireJS to the list. Being able to think in terms of modules while developing a large application is extremely helpful, and explicitly defining dependencies is great when it comes time to build/concat the project.

Mocha is another alternative for testing. It's very flexible and with a little bit of work can be run from the shell (using phantomjs).
This is a great example of Bratus et al refer to as a "weird machine" [1], in which an attacker uses crafted input to create a new and unexpected computational environment. That is, by using special input, the attacker manipulates pieces of the target program to act like a CPU that processes "weird commands" (ie more special inputs are used as assembly instructions that run on the weird machine).

Anyway, there is a rising field ("language-theoretic security") that studies this phenomenon. If this Pokemon example interests you, then you should give it a look.

[1]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sergey/langsec/
This is a wonderful response. It illustrates exactly how philosophers want to think of themselves.

However when I compare with my actual interactions with philosophers, I am forced to believe that reality falls far short of the ideal. Whenever I have seen philosophers speculate on a topic that I knew something about, for instance math and science, I found that I could tell the difference between philosophers who learned something about the subject, and people who knew the subject who learned something about philosophy. In general the only useful comments were from the latter. (The most significant exceptions are in logic, where there is no real boundary between the logicians you find in the philosophy department, and the ones in the math department.)

If that is my reaction on subjects I know well, I have to suspect the same is true about other subjects as well.
You may be interested in https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-bloc... , which stops your browser from reporting back to FB until you actually click a "Like" button.
Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline
Amazing Google Maps Stop Motion
Technically, HN already exposes an API over HTTP. It just uses HTML as the exchange format instead of XML or JSON.
I think they implemented the stop'n'swop functionality on the xbox live arcade versions, did they not?
That's quite an interesting read. Now I want to read Discourse and see if that's how I see Descartes' arguments myself. Bleh... so damn much to read.
it was a joke. why so serious?
The only value of the article is to briefly mention the existence of "in vitro meat" and the concept of a scientific approach to flavor and taste. The article also includes some namedrops that I don't think are significant, but is otherwise completely worthless after you read the first sentence of this comment. For actual information on these topics beyond a mentioning of their existence, please visit wikipedia:

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor Catchall for any sensory experience involving food or eating.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste What happens with the taste buds of a human.
Typing this on a 27" 2560×1440 I don't see myself needing much more.

Text remains crisp down to sizes much smaller than what I can comfortably read at a normal viewing distance, so there's little I could do with even more pixel estate.

That is not to say that I wouldn't like a display with even higher resolution, but the returns diminish really rapidly from here.

I'm definitely looking forward more to panels improving on other metrics such as contrast, color reproduction and viewing angles (IPS glow).
This is a really important point. Google owned the default position for me in setting up domain email for people. Their service is great and using it for a business was a pretty easy call. Most of these folks wouldn't have ever even tried google docs without their domain being tied to it. It is win win for google.

Now its all changed. $50 per user isn't a huge amount but it is more then zero. Google has taken the default choice for many people and made us rethink it. It can only work poorly for them.
One thing is they show scores on comments, as HN used to do. I really miss that.
Ask HN: What is the right reading/coding ratio for learning purposes?
I'm pretty much in the start of my career. I still have a lot to learn. But every time I have some free time I ask myself: should I do some progress on my reading (I have 3-4 books on my reading list that I really want to master as soon as possible), or should I do some progress on my side projects, which are really meant for learning purposes?

I'm really having a hard time deciding how to divide my time. How much time should I spend on passive reading (some of these reading are pretty theoretical) and how much time should I spend on actually coding?

I'd love to hear your takes on this...
Enlighten me. What is the process of "rationally testing opinion"? (More opinion is not the right answer.)

Philosophy can make large, beautiful, perfectly logical structures of thought. But they necessarily must begin with an axiom, some foundation on which to build. If the axiom is wrong, the whole structure falls. No matter how beautiful it is. I submit that the problem with Philosophy is that it is only too happy to build on untested axioms.