skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As someone who has taken engineering courses and holds a BS in applied physics and a minor in math, while working as a developer (for physics experiments), I'd have to say that physics, more than any other major, teaches you how to learn. In reality, the main reason a BS in Physics even exists is to teach you how to learn so you're prepared when you get to graduate school to work on new problems people haven't had to face before.

The unfortunate thing is that corporate american tends to highly undervalue the BS in Physics. While I graduated at the worst time possible time (2008/2009), it took me over a year and a half to find a "real" job. No, I didn't have two + years experience in developing with .Net. I did have 4 years of experience in everything from LabView to Verilog, photomultiplier tube calibration and particle detector design to advanced electrodynamics to CADD and machining, and all the calculus and linear algebra necessary to get there.

As someone who was perpetually frustrated by a lack of consideration when applying to jobs, I'd just like to recommend that anyone reading this comment to always consider a candidate with a background in the hard sciences, even if they don't have the relevant experience.
Ross Fubini Brings An Engineer's Mind To Sand Hill Rd
American manufacturing is large and sclerotic. The US numbers are reliant on large capital goods: aircraft, weapons, industrial equipment, etc. These industries are heavily subsidized and uncompetitive. Compared to Germany's network of small manufacturing firms, manufacturing in the US is structurally weak.
From my perspective, tptacek was not trying to reignite the Great Internet Copyright Argument for the millionth time, and instead was making a point about what was politically actionable today.
It seems that Tim Cook excels at designing immensely complex supply chains and manufacturing processes. It's clear this is his absolute passion.

The only thing is that it's begun to shape Apple. I'm much more excited about his moves to bring manufacturing to America than any product apple has launched under his stewardship.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but there seems no question that Apple is now a completely different type of company and it's amazing how much a single person can put their stamp on a global and multibillion dollar company.
Where I come from, we just call it an abstract.
Stories from a high energy laser lab
And on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/14drj4/scientists...
I think our decentralized streams protocol should solve this kind of thing.

Basically RSS with push and access controls. You subscribe to a feed and get pushes / pulls as long as you are paying it. Why isn't there a standard protocol for this on the web?
The "Profit share of the smartphone market" graph really sums up the current state of Apple/iOS vs. Samsung/Android in recent months. Samsung is eating away a big chunk of Apple's _profits_. If they don't address the 2 main issues (imho, people are voting with their money for bigger screens and different/more exciting OS UX), iphone's market share is going to go under 20% soon. Both are tough issues to crack. Are they going to come out with a 4.5 - 5" screen to address that market? How? Double retina? For different OS UX, it always carries risk of alienating current user base. Really curious if and how they address these issues.
Nobody cares who was first. The right thing to do would have been to focus on getting j.u.l right and then be a grown-up about it and ditch log4j.

Apache fucked up and Sun fucked up. And we all lose.
Google+ Communities is just another group product.
Thing is many of us that saw the iPhone knew how full of ridicule Balmer is right when he laughed about it. Nobody expects a CEO to admit that competition will probably destroy them. But actions count more than words and when asked he could have been tactful.

Did you see Eric Schmidt or Larry Page laughing about Apple's devices?

No, instead they were busy with building Android, as they could see the writing on the wall - namely that the future belongs to tightly controlled mobile devices, and they can be left out of the equation, unless they provide an alternative.
I think the underlying point in all of this is just that "smart and gets things done" isn't something someone can be trusted to observe about themselves.

The example he gives about FizzBuzz in the Lambda Calculus is perfect. If you're truly working from first principles, then you ought to understand the difference between a theoretical and an acceptable solution.

I'd say that in the context of software, "smart and gets things done" is at a minimum someone with a solid ability to extrapolate from first principles coupled with the ability to problem solve and think critically about what is is they're actually building. Experience helps tons on that front, but it's no better an indicator of future success than grasping first principles.
I had been thinking about getting a SodaStream for a while now since I drink a fair amount of the Safeway Refreshe brand flavored "fizzy waters". But I didn't realize the machine used a proprietary bottle. I usually buy mine in the 4-packs since it is actually cheaper oz-for-oz than the larger single bottles. But I like to take a few 4-packs to work and drink them throughout the day/week. When I'm running low, I bring in another stock. I don't like the idea of always bringing the empty SodaStream bottle(s) home to refill and take back to work the next day. So I'd probably need a dozen or so of their bottles just for work. And while it may be wasteful, I also have the convenience of taking a bottle where I'm going and then just tossing it when I'm done rather than lugging it around until I get home. And if the SodaStream flavors are garbage then I have less desire to get one.

With the SodaStream, I envisioned being able to take the bottles I do buy (and didn't toss) and reuse them for the SoadStream... always knowing that if I wanted to, I didn't have to keep track of the refilled bottle when I was done. Maybe I'm lazy or selfish for not wanting to keep track of an empty, reusable bottle... so be it. But I like the convenience of the option to toss the bottle when I'm done.

I also wish the article had some numbers on life expectancy of the machine. Its all fine and dandy to accept the reality of needing 4yrs for the machine to pay for itself... until you discover that it failed before then.

Based on my expected use pattern (both refilling AND buying new) I doubt my machine would last long enough to break even.
At 3:57 EST it's working fine for me.
That statement would have been truly outlandish considering non-Apple laptops' were going for 400-600$ fairly routinely by that point.
Thanks, couldn't figure out how to work their site to get that. You really have to go to a printer-friendly version, rather than there being a "View all" link?
You realize capitalism and IP are both based on the government enforcing a form of property rights, right? There's nothing "natural" about either.
> You've decided his innocence already, the rest of us require something more than his word.

What the fuck, man. I haven't decided anything. I don't know enough about the case to even speculate. Go take your preconceived notions elsewhere, and stop criticizing me for things I haven't even said.
The source code for this is on Github: https://github.com/substack/virus-copter
No, I meant the frequency of such posts have increased in the past few months..
Is there an Algol compiler for Linux these days? Brief poking reveals there's an Algol68 out there for Ubuntu.
There is that vision of the Unix with a nice UI.
This is entirely misleading, because it makes it seem like the policies in other countries is questionable with regards to fair use, or perhaps with lesser rights.

In France, for example, there is no such thing as fair use, but that's only because 'fair use' in the US is not defined as what you're allowed to do, however, but as a sort of vague statement about perhaps being able to use things.

In France, it is strictly codified:
You are able to make private showings of copyrighted material
You are allowed to make private copies (with a few exceptions, e.g. software backups allowed, but copying your poster so you can hang it in two different rooms is illegal, as is copying your software to two different computers so two different people can use it)
You can make copies of non-educational works for educational uses (ie. no photocopying textbooks, but you can copy yesterday's newspaper article all you want)
Parody
Citations
Etc.
> Wouldn't you expect people posting Show HN posts to know what happens in the comment threads of all of them?

It happens all the time and posters are well aware of the behavior. Neither of these mean it's desirable to put down everyone who does a "Show HN". If anything, it happens all the time is the reason behind the concern.

> I want to see well reasoned thoughts and critiques of other projects from the community.

> Be supportive of people working hard and ruthlessly honest about their ideas and products.

I am not advocating heaps of praise for anyone who does a "Show HN". Honesty and not being an asshole aren't mutually exclusive.

> Is it time to stop being surprised that the behaviour that this medium incentivises is the behaviour we keep seeing?

I am not too sure if HN incentivises being a jerk to "Show HN" or posts in general. But if it does, it should stop. Just because it happens doesn't make it desirable.
Could be. I have no idea where it came from or why.

I'm very interested in what it means today, and how I choose to incorporate it into my life. That's why I really enjoy learning from people that follow it to a large extent, and those that don't.
Why Not Having Enough Landing Pages is a Critical Mistake
A socially moderate republican could absolutely do well on a pro-Silicon Valley platform. It benefits the GOP to have more Scott Browns in the senate than Elizabeth Warrens.

And holy caricature Batman! You should get out and meet some real-life Republicans. I get that you think they are evil baby-eaters, but they do have many thoughtful people and good ideas that Democrats could learn from.
The part of the plight I empathize with is where the police want to question him, not over the phone, but in a place where they can both question him unfairly and also have the possibility to detain him before trial, for months.
love this article. I agree with most of the points he made, particularly the line - "Most of us live seventy or eight years defending what we’ve been given, because we think it’s who we are."
This isn't impressive if it's in memory. Which it most probably is.
Because I never heard anyone refer to him as Marc Aurel in any of my philosophy classes and could not find any references to "marc aurel" on the internet. The familiarity of the statement made it seem like "marc aurel" was a household name. I also could not find the sentence in any copy of Meditations I found on the internet.

Fyi: you can grab a copy of Meditations from a number of classics sites on the internet:

http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html
I don't know the exact phrasing either. Also not sure if everybody wants to put their content under CC.

I think the government could make this messy enough to even foil the CC plan. For example they could set it up like GEMA for music - there would be an entity distributing the money and collecting it on behalf of the content providers. Besides, is there a standard way yet to announce CC content? That would be necessary to make it work for search engines.
Pros and Cons of Developing for Android vs. iPhone
I don't like the premise that happiness is based on what you have, and what you do with your time. It always seems to be the underlying assumption, and it drives people to be unhappy to always be striving for better conditions for themselves.

What gave me happiness is the idea in Buddhism fostering compassion for all people, including yourself, but not only yourself. It's the one aspect of Buddhism that most people ignore. Instead they concentrate on inner peace by quieting their mind or stopping their thoughts, which again is striving for a change in what they have, (ie. they would gain the ability to quiet their mind)

I don't mean to be heavy handed, and I'm not trying to force my ideas on others. I just haven't seen this idea of compassion for people brought up very often.
Honestly, choosing to be Catholic (as opposed to growing up Catholic) is not that different. You're just picking a set of claims with a weaker factual base than that of global warming.
I think you're broadly right, but:

> aware of Maps & fixing it, albeit slowly

Slow is relative here: this isn't an overnight fix. It's very, very complicated.

> iOS […] is getting tired fast & it's highly visible to the consumer.

Really? What consumers? They're on track to sell 46m iPhone 5 units in this quarter.

When people bellyache about iOS it serves to remind me that the people who debate phone operating systems on the internet are categorically not the target market. If you happen to like it then great. If not, Apple doesn't give a shit: this is a mass market consumer device.

> Siri is still a gimmick

Siri is really, really useful when it works. It needs to work faster, and it needs to work more often (i.e. not garble my input), but I'm highly impressed by it.

> esp when compared to Google's voice offerings

Which are far less sophisticated

> & how fast they've reached par & exceeded it

Unless I'm missing a Google Siri beater, you're talking about Google's voice search in its iOS app. It's much faster than Siri, but it's also much less sophisticated. I asked this very question on Quora recently[1].

> Stil no APIs, no offline capability, slow response times when it's working

Apple is feeling this out. Don't expect APIs until they work out a way to do it really simply.

Offline capacity is a joke, right? We live in a world where we're online on airplanes and even on the subway (in London). Is it in Apple's interests to spend precious engineering resource on a solution to a problems which won't exist in a few years? And I bet a lot of Siri's usage is for online activities anyway. Or put it this way: what's the point in building offline mode for Siri when it's just for setting reminders (can't do geofencing: no signal), launching apps (which can't connect to the net) and writing emails and text messages which won't get sent.

You're totally right on slow response times. It's painfully slow. My guess is that performance is now Apple's top priority with Siri.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Siri-software/Why-is-Siri-so-much-slow...
Seriously do. I spent a few minutes looking for the list of data centres. And when I couldn't find it I left with the assumption that it was going to be a slow, pricey mess.

Nothing is more important than transparency when you are providing core infrastructure.
A friend once told me, "You should try going with the flow once in a while." She was absolutely right.

Yes, many people could improve their situation by not sleepwalking through life. But similarly, we (people on HN and other ambitious folks) can learn to be more content with what life has given us. To reconcile ourselves with randomness. To take some time away from competition and drive and optimization.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to the author, but if you follow this article's advice to the extreme, you'll likely end up extremely unhappy. "Is this spouse really the best I can do? Should I really be living in this city? Would I be happier with different friends?"
There are really two separate questions here which are getting tangled up.

The first question is what crime he was convicted of. The answer to that seems pretty clear: theft with assault or intimidation.

The second question is what he actually did. The answer to that is much less clear.

But the second question doesn't really matter to this specific discussion, although it's obviously highly important in the grand scheme of things. He was sentenced based on the crime he was convicted of, so it was theft with assault or intimidation which got him a life sentence, and characterizing it as "stealing a slice of pizza" is tremendously misleading.

Whether he did something that deserves to be considered that crime is another question, but a completely different discussion. If I get life in prison for a murder I didn't commit, I still got life "for murder", and it would be wrong to characterize it as e.g. harsh sentencing for a lesser crime.
Don't under think it - A postmortem on building a successful iOS app
Redistribution of wealth is necessary to a certain extent, to prevent social inequality from growing. This is a fundamental goal of the German social state as defined by the constitution.

If you don't like state controlled redistribution of wealth you should start a revolution or emigrate.
I believe it.

A friend was a process engineer at a Ford plant.

Every time the line stopped moving (even if for only a few seconds), they calculated it cost a minimum of $10mil.
Unless you need to always reply to all, then it's a handy feature. It's a setting to change the default, if you don't want it the good news is you don't have to do anything.
Shipping times are actually longer now than they were 5 years ago. Right before the financial crisis, shipping companies built up their fleets significantly and built "super ships" with huge capacity only to be met by diminished business just years later. As a result, they've deliberately slowed down their ships to cycle in more of their otherwise-would-be-idle ships.
Did I read that correctly, that you can simply telnet to the copter's IP address and get a (root?) shell just like that?
This is one area where I side with Jobs. No amount of research can compete with smart designers.
"iOS, though, is getting tired fast & it's highly visible to the consumer."

This idea is often expressed on HN but I've never seen a convincing argument that radically changing the UI every year is something consumers want.
Its good to see Apple making an effort to improve their security. As market share for Macs grows the potential value of creating exploits/malware for them does too. Going for someone with such a strong reputation is a good move but she will only be as valuable as Apple lets her.
McAfee suffers heart attacks in Guatemala jail
They've been selling home carbonation machines since 1955 and have been in the carbonation business since 1903, so it's not like they're some new company that's just popped up (although they've changed owners a good half dozen times over the century).
> To overcome the possibility of an external self destruct signal reaching the drone when you hijack it, you'll probably come up with tricks like bathing it in strong spread-spectrum interference or dropping it into a Faraday cage. Either can be detected and trigger the self destruct internally.

That seems counterproductive. If you create a self destruct system that can auto-enable based on conditions, the enemy just needs to create those conditions. They may be deprived of the weapon system, but so are you.
Nitpick: healthcare (along with finance) is the most regulated market in the United States, with regulation picking up dramatically in the 60s. It's no accident that when you force insurance to cover lots of things the prices go up and insurance companies get pickier about who they insure. It's no accident that when you constrain the supply of doctors medical prices go up. It's no accident that medicare price-fixing causes shortages in primary care doctors. It's no accident that when you give a big tax break for employer-provided health care you wind up with insurance-induced indentured servitude.

The government spends 1 out of 2 dollars in the "market" for health care.
"if we assume that Jobs, Ballmer, and Rubin are all lying through their teeth, why would we ever buy their products?"

Because the merits of a product have little or nothing to do with the public statements of their makers.
My wife received a cochlear implant in October, so we are on this journey right now. It has definitely been frustrating, but we have seen progress and we are optimistic about the future. If you are interested you can read about the implant activation process here:

http://hegavememyears.blogspot.com/2012/10/what-i-saw-at-act...
His "counterargument" probably would have been something like, "you call those %$$#^&'s computers!?"
NASA is broken and it’s up to us to fix it
Presenter mode also has a clock though, which I think is important in the beginning. A common mistake is to simply cram too much into your slides. Like trying to introduce a topic, but immediately trying to catch all the nuances too. It will fly over your audience's heads and they won't care.

People underestimate how long it takes to explain things because they never actually practice and time their presentation. When I make slides, I prefer to time each section right after I'm done with it, so I can make sure I keep a consistent pace throughout. It also means you never make slides you're not going to use.

And even while speaking, if you notice you're coming up short, you can strategically skip things rather than being caught by surprise and having to stop mid-slide.
Making the HTML minimal but it can't be done automatically. It takes some HTML knowledge and most important a few thousand lines of code written to make it optimized if not minified. What I want to say is that trough time you learn how to write code in a way that it as optimized as it can be. At least I did. For example I never write table structure hierachically but I always leave the <table> on top and then group together the <tr><td></td></tr> and then each table cell in a new row. This way I still locate the start of a new row so it makes the table structure human readable and a bit optimized. There are a lot of these kind of tricks I use that I learned over time.
I really like that Zune's 3% is bigger than eMusic's 3%. Great find, I honestly skipped it when I was reading through. Maybe the editor did the same.
Sinofsky was President of the Windows Division. He is being replaced by two VP's. This implies a removal of one level of management, placing the CEO closer to the product team.
It seems like if you spent two seconds reading the description in the gist you'd clearly see it wasn't.

2 million messages per second is a pretty respectable number, and fairly comparable to systems like distributed Erlang and Akka.
I do this too:) I've aliased this to the keyword "sendmail" in chrome by adding it as a search engine in preferences, so I can just type "sendmail" or "sendmail email@example.com" in the url bar.

However, an even higher win for me is aliasing search in the same way. I used to find that when I went into my email to look for a particular piece of info I would get so distracted by my inbox that I never ended up completing the task I was originally working on. I've aliased https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#search/<searcht...; to "ms <searchterm>", such that I can type "ms paypal" in my url bar and get all my recent paypal receipts without having to be tempted by my inbox first:)

My only frustration is that gmail is still so damn slow to load. I know they've spent a lot of time trying to make this fast (I spent about 2 years working on reducing latency on Google search), but they're still so far away from where they could be.

I really, really wish gmail loaded the html first, showing my inbox or search or whatever, and then loaded and attached all the javascript later. This could result in search level latencies for the initial load of data for the user to start looking at, even if it took a while longer to be fully interactive.
Thanks! That's a really cool tip! There are so many interesting features that Gmail (and many other Google products) has to offer. My favorites are everything that goes on behind the hood.