skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm a mathematician and an engineer. I have used mathematics to predict weather for the US Navy, to work on nuclear reactors, to win more than 1 million dollars gambling, to do research for a hedge fund, to develop guidance and control systems, to synchronize atomic clocks, and to do machine learning/pattern recognition. Physics and chemistry were also quite useful, but not as useful as the math.

If you are into math, here are the 100 most useful ideas and theorems in math according to me --

http://artent.net/blog/2012/11/27/100-most-useful-theorems-a...
Pre-Globalism
Yeah but comments will add load time and clutter to the page. Also I'll bet if this picks up any steam, the comments will devolve quickly without technically being spam.
In my experience patents are a tremendous driving force for innovation. Universities use patents to be able to get a cut of the revenue stream generated by the inventions they produce. Start-ups in engineering fields with high capital costs depend on patent protection to compete with bigger players that could otherwise steam roll over them with their manufacturing prowess.

The whole wide world of engineering doesn't all look like Web 2.0. Innovation in "Big Engineering" is not by and large someone thinking "gee, wouldn't it be cool if we had a site that did this" and whipping up an RoR app to do it. Rather, it's PhD projects that take years of painstaking research and access to specialized equipment. It's teams of researchers analyzing reams of data and doing hundreds of experiments.

I worked at a very small tech company doing defense research, and we had individual pieces of equipment that cost as much as the YC VC fund gives to YC alums. We blew through double-digit millions of dollars just at the basic research stage, long before bringing a real product to market was on the table.

In this sort of environment, you need some way to keep other people from taking your ideas, after you've done the hard part, and competing with you using your own work. If you can't protect the designs, then all the competition comes down to who can most efficiently outsource manufacturing to China or who has the most efficient supply chain. And that's not exactly good for innovation either.
I would

1) Make the pages editable by trusted individuals but with your validation before any change goes live. Allow the authors to be credited (with links to their blogs, pages etc etc).

2) Why stop at cars? Find a domain "howdoesa???work" and subdir it off that - offer written credit to anybody who wants to add any large-ish content.

3) Put in some clever links to amazon etc so that if someone wants to buy a new car battery you might be able to nail som e affliate fees. Especially if they are on your page, have identified that they need a battery - why go back to the search bar when you have "click here for battery offers". I am suggesting keeping it "neat" though. Please don't start adding horrid looking ads disguised as CTA buttons.

4) Cut your mate into a %age so he's a good posterboy for digitising other content.
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned how badly in need of proofing this content is. I just looked through a handful of sections but the ones I saw were littered with missing words, out-of-place headings, and poorly-cropped illustrations. It seems like great content, and the idea of charging for it has merit, but you're not going to be able to do so without proofing the content; it doesn't seem to me that even a cursory scan-through of all the pages has been done.
what about calling countries by their name? let's say, when you're talking about Germany, you say "Germany" instead of "Europe"?
> If you're going to base all your thing on a totally unrealistic vision of Europe then yeah, your points stand.

That's like saying the US only consists of New York + D.C. + the Midwest + California.

> all the points the original article was making was about Europe as a an economic entity

Then why didn't he write "the EU" instead of "Europe"? But even if he had, many of his statements would still be wrong. For instance much of what he said didn't apply to Germany (and that's a pretty solid player in the EU).
I'm fascinated with and profoundly envious of people who can accrue huge sums of money in such short periods of time.

Given that this was all done within 24 hours, it's unlikely that many sales came from the quality of the book: people won't have had time to read the book, and so word-of-mouth-based sales will be negligible if not nonexistent.

In the first few days of sales, most every transaction is derived from presentation, notoriety, or luck...

I haven't read the book (and I couldn't afford it even if I had a desire to do so), and it may be a fine product. However, Nathan could have easily published a piece of abject trash, full of platitudes and banal tautology, and done perhaps just as well. Quality has no bearing on the initial success of a product, and only comes into play later. It just goes to show how much gravity factors like marketing have on sales.
That's trivial, and obviously not the point of this offshoot thread. While the federal government regulates interstate commerce, each state is free to set up its own tax structure, create different incentives for businesses to open up shop, etc. And each state has its own set of natural resources and hazards.

The question of which US state has the fastest growing economy is equally interesting as the GP's question about European economies.
Not to mention there is a distinct possibility that the UK will itself break up in the next few years.
That is really nice. Congrats!
Earned vacation is a hedge against an inadequate supply of value from the employee. Many states have specific requirements for the payout of vacation, and if you start someone who turns out to be a deadbeat (or someone who leaves within a few weeks for other reasons, like a competing offer came in) with 4 weeks of vacation, you may end up having to pay him an extra 4 weeks of pay for nothing when you fire him, on top of the time you kept him onboard.
>I'd load it up with all the "semantic web" style things I could find. http://schema.org type of stuff.

Why though? I think the manual "semantic web markup" is a failed promise, more than anything.

The idea was flawed from the start for general web use (for one, you cannot trust content providers to add relevant semantic info, either because it's in their interest NOT to do so --e.g SEO spam--, or because they are not competent or lazy). Plus, the tools never materialised.

It's another case of "worse is better".
That's great info, thanks. Disappointing but gratefully received.
The NFL actually has it's own network - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Network They have a couple of specialty programs like "NFL Red Zone" which shows every football game simultaneously, something which regular channels (ABC, NBC, Fox) can't do because of licensing restrictions.
I got solar a while back, and the company seems desperate for customers. They call and want to throw parties for my friends at my house, ask for referrals, etc. I think part of the challenge is that solar here in the US is still a pretty big up-front expense. We need to get the financing figured out better. Maybe the power company should own the panels...
For the Mining of Massive Dataset book. Is the exercise solutions available somewhere?
I agree with what you're saying. Still, my point remains that virtualisation is a poor cousin of native OS.
Your project seems interesting. Until you create a sample application that shows off the good things about your framework, I cant comment much. Perhaps an article from you or someone else involved in the framework would be a good starting point? Perhaps a framework show-off?

If you want to do one even better, how about writing another article Angular vs Shape? :)
Great news.

I look forward to getting one of these and messing around with development for it when they are officially released, but didn't plunk down the massive costs they were asking for the early access dev consoles.

I might have been enticed to pay like 2x the price for the early hardware, but 7x was a bit much for an individual just to evaluate it.

Hope it takes off. Between this and the so-called Steambox I have high hopes for increased openness in mainstream-accessible game consoles.
2012: The Year in Graphs
Even if I never buy an Ouya, I'm rooting for it. The fact that more Android games might start supporting D-Pad's and other traditional game controllers will benefit all Android gamers.
I tend to think that people are not that in love about that devils trio.. they just HAS to deal with it.. javascript is messy after you pass 10 lines, HTML is too verbose, and css is a way to design using text, that you never know what it will produce as output..
Mozilla should try to push different projects not only based in the web, like it was the best invention ever since the ginger bread..

The technologies that made the web are just lagging behind, but the open mind, principles and universe that were the base for the web creation, should be here to stay

its just about adapt this bright way of thinking into new technologies.. not a big deal..

but mozilla look like a scratched vinyl, and thats a pity, cause its one of our only hopes to circumvent the tech titans agenda to lock people down into their platforms..

and this should be fighted back with new, and better technology.. the same old stuff with some glue on it won´t do the magic.
Apart from running benchmarks to get a grasp on the performance characteristics (which I'm sure will leak out in post haste) wouldn't the SDK simply be enough for you to get your framework ported? That release is supposed to be in just a few more days.

Why do you need hardware? (honest question, not being snarky)
The US just has an attitude more consistent with upstarts/bootstrappers. While it'd be great if we could all afford to work only for 10 months of the year and to pay our employees for 2 months+ of time with no productive output, that's not how it works when you're a small business scraping by. Once you get to the F500, of course, things change, but mandating vacation time makes it really difficult for small companies to afford new hires.

Most people do not "overwork immensely".
I tried Backbone and am now looking at Angular... but part of me is starting to think "is this such a good idea?". All the authentication stuff, and validation, and so on has to be done server side anyway, and perhaps replicated in the JS framework. Also, keeping models in sync looks like it might be easy to screw up.
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Cool stuff. In a perfect world, it would be awesome to have the terminal be a pane attached to the Finder window. :)
The Full Story Of How Facebook IPO Buyers Got Screwed
Can somebody with the patience to build this, try running it through https://emailprivacytester.com/ please and share the results here.
The US government does not make money from GPS. It was built by and for the military, with civilian use as an afterthought. Once civilian use took off, though, the government decided to basically give it as a gift to the rest of the world. http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/05/36021

The military retains control (which is why other nations are still working on their own systems), but this really was a remarkable act of generosity by the US government.
It wouldn't let me add accounts with unencrypted transports, so I can't evaluate this program. The 'Continue' button just led back to the account setup dialogue.
Facebook Purges Pro-Gun Accounts
The OUYA controller has a built-in touchpad for pseudo-touch support.
I guess that's true, but it is really important to build a reputation for quality work. Also this was my second book, so I had people buy off of the quality from my previous book.
Definitely. Mid-range and high-end receivers (for things like ecology surveys and continental drift tracking) integrate GLONASS and GPS already.

I don’t have the RF/SP domain knowledge to back this up, but I speculate that multiple low-end receivers for 2–4 of these networks on a single chip might be more useful in practice than a single good receiver for any one network. In other words, a $20 Galileo chip + a $20 GPS chip might give me a faster time-to-fix than a $40 GPS chip. (In terms of units shipped, most GPS goes into phones, where time-to-fix is way more important than centimeter accuracy.)
Watching Your Customers is Brutal
> in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees

Instead, I'd rephrase that as giving a proper response to employees that are being dicks to your business.

Varsavsky might have gotten wrong most of his observations about developing a startup in EU. But one that he nailed was the advice about employees getting paid medical leaves without really needing them just to screw their employers.

As he said, if you're in this position, get a PI to gather evidence against that employee, and by all means, BE A DICK!
Ask HN:How do you understand people?
Can you suggest a long term plan to improve one's understanding of human nature and to socialize:Books,experiences etc
Ask HN: I’m not cut out to be a programmer. What are my alternatives?
I’m not a programmer. As in, I’m pretty certain this is the wrong career for me.

I’m in my early twenties. I'm a coder at a great software company. The company is successful, growing, and treats its staff well. They pay well. I have stock options. No pointy-haired bosses. Thing is, I don’t like it. I’m bored.

At school I was always good at math and science. And I loved computers; I loved building them from components, customising Linuxs, but never really programmed in my spare time. I got into a good school for college, found the programming course options pretty easy, and majored in Computer Science. So the default choice was a programmer, right? Well, one year out of College, I’ve realised; it's not what I want to do.

"If today was the last day of your life, would you want to do what you're about to do today?" -- Steve Jobs

I can’t help but think - is this it? I get up, and go to the same old desk, and write some stupid code. Whatever.

I love technology. But coding just doesn’t exite me. I could never get worked up about the subtle nuances of programming languages. I’m definitely not the sort to learn Haskell or Erlang in my spare time. Hell, or even code at all in my spare time. I just enjoy playing with the latest Apple product, watching TV, and reading Hacker News. What kind of life is that?

Should I quit? I make way more money than any of my non-coder friends, and that would be really hard to give up. I know there must be something more fulfilling out there. I have other, less geeky, hobbies and interests outside of tech, that I’ve let fall by the wayside. Perhaps I could combine the two into some sort of startup? I've also better social skills than the average coder (not bragging, just true, many coders can be quite socially inept), and I wouldn’t want this talent go to waste . Starting a company seems like the obvious answer, except, I’m scared, and I don’t have any good ideas.

So, HN, any suggestions?
SolarCity has some interesting options where they can install their systems for free and rent it out to you, on a per kwh or per month basis.

http://www.solarcity.com/residential/solar-ppa.aspx

http://www.solarcity.com/residential/solar-lease.aspx
Yup, I certainly remember those Peek devices from back in the day! I've also been working on a little something in the email space and so I've kept my eyes peeled at the influx of "email reinvented" apps in the past months.

I don't have strong opinions on all of your statements; it really depends on the person. My core belief, however, is that email is broken on the front-end. Sure it'd be nice if we threw out all the legacy of email protocol, but that won't happen without some titanic effort, so for now we'll fix everything we can on the user side of things.

In addition to the email apps that have popped up on HN, I trawled through Dribbble at one time to see who all is working on what. A lot of it are pretty interface elements on the same old concept, but a few are real, active projects with potential:

http://dribbble.com/ndrw/buckets/92665-Designer-Mail-Apps

Also, AOL Alto is doing lots of things right:

http://designtox.tumblr.com/tagged/aol
It seems like these things would be easy to get around by opening the message, disconnecting from the Internet, snapping a screenshot, and installing the app. Sure, a PITA, but digital is forever.
Brazil blocks port 25
Not at all. As a Coffeescript dev it's actually taking some effort to learn Ember with Coffeescript as all the guides and docs are for JS.
Typical Linus.

Linus was right, though.

And DHH was wrong.

Not a fan of the way Linus handled that, though he sure did set the tone and expectations for everyone else!
This is an interesting use of the barometer/GPS hardware but I guess I'd appreciate a little help on understanding its greater utility?

Atmospheric pressure doesn't change that much. It's pretty much the same where I am as it is 20 miles away at my nearest airport. What is the need I'm not seeing for a sensor net of higher granularity than already exists? Is it for tracking weather related to very intense pressure gradients like tornadoes? I thought we had radar that did a pretty good job of that.

Also isn't the accuracy of the barometer really, really poor when it is in motion? I thought they just used it to get a rough sense of altitude and speed when GPS was too costly/unavailable? Cool work.
Not just because U.S. exports the cheapest beef, the other countries no longer raise their cow.
"I can only imagine that going up as Google starts to recognise this as quality content and not just content farm rubbish."

Uh, no. It will go up as a function of traffic volume, so as your site starts to rank higher organically you'll see more revenue but the amount paid isn't a function of the 'quality' of the web site, its a function of what people bid to be there and what they pay per click.

Note that if it goes up really suddenly your likely as not to have your AdSense account suspended/cancelled, which after a lengthy review process they may re-instate but Google may not (according to web reports) ever replaced the ad-revenue you lost while you were in this process.

That said, it is great you are making this information available again. If such efforts create a modest return then perhaps the archivists job is once again secure.
I'm not sure it's impossible, but it would take a great amount of timing and probably some luck. If you can detect a screenshot and throw up a new view quick enough, that's what the screenshot would be. But, I haven't tested that theory, and the timing is probably way too tight to actually work. It'd be more like how Netflix throws up the red screen as soon as it leaves foreground, or the WiFi list in Settings disappears.
Russia and Kazakhstan (and also Turkey) are transcontinental countries with parts in Europe:

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

The population of Europe is 739 million and going by the number of Russians I meet here in Scotland and on holiday in France and the Med they seem to be joining in pretty well with the European cultural milieu...

I suspect people from outside of Europe don't appreciate how much things have changed in the last 25 years - all for the better as far as I can see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
This is just another example of ignorant westerners demonize China. 1km wrong? are you fucking serious? I use GPS everyday and didn't find any problem. You're just kind of idiots who think anything related to China must be evil, without any reason, and think the Chinese government has nothing better to do but vandalizing anything.
Amazon can (possibly) pull this off due to their scale and their warehouse technology. I think the other retailers that can be successful are those brick and mortar retailers with thousands of physical locations across the country (Walmart, Target, Staples, Kohl's)- imagine a reverse brick and mortar model where the customer orders from the site but it is fulfilled directly out of their local store.

The luxury apparel market is going to be the next wave of retailers who explore this offering and, could be, successful with it. Shoppers who are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars online expect an elevated level of customer service- same day delivery (like Net-a-Porter offers) is the next step in this personalized service.
One of the reasons is, as the article states, that US companies have to recover higher costs to acquire customers.

But it doesn't say why. The reason is because grid power is more expensive in Germany: $0.30/kWh compared to $0.10/kWh on average in the US. Therefore potential customers are easier to convince to use solar in Germany.
>Why don't non-contributing users of a software project have a 'legitimate' opinion?

Because their opinion gets any legitimacy only by what you paid for it, either by money or work.

Some core developers of OSS are accommodating enough to listen to the opinions of random users, but this only happens if said developers are either:

1) really nice guys than enjoy the interaction and/or pushovers.

2) getting something back from it (i.e they play nice because they also sell support or extra stuff and don't want to alienate potential customers)

Other than those 2 cases, non-contributing users can have whatever "grievances" they want, but it means nothing at all.
Then my question is how can function occur in the natural world without intent.

Natural selection explains why that function is kept once it occurs.

Think of it like this: a space of N dimensions, for N properties, with an infinite number of values for each.

Small variations (genetic mutations) of each of these property values, will move the position of the system in this N dimensions space. Initially, most of the parameters are null. But, there's a clear trajectory, or a set of possible trajectories from the initial position to the position where, by a certain combination of parameters, a function occurs.

When there's intent, it's very easy to see the path from A to B. But when there's no intent, and not foreknowledge of the possibility of a particular function (a special position in the N space), finding that particular spot by random variations sound enormously improbable.

Does this low probability have a name or something?
Ask HN: Ideas for open source Python projects/libraries
Let's share ideas!
Just read the whole thread here and on github (https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/61b91c4c55bcbd5a2ec85d...)

Technical:
DHH is wrong, plain and simple. No amount of defending the decision makes it right.

Community Management:
DHH, while not as abrasive as Linus (another thread here linked to a kernel thread), IMO, DHH is (much) worse than Linus. Linus is abrasive and swears and yells. DHH is dismissive and condescending. DHH thinks he has better opinions, more depth of experience, smarter, more insight and generally "gets it" more than everyone around him, including the other maintainers.
From a global economy perspective, once China gets to a certain cost basis places like Vietnam become 'better' places to do your manufacturing. Since the same families that run factories in mainland China often run similar facilities off shore, the growth will start spilling over into the rest of south east Asia in a bigger way.
A console for emulators and old SNES ports. This thing won't have a large enough market.
It's not issue of being held accountable for something they said:

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/cowards-are-blackmailing-youn...

Its an issue of protecting users who are using apps like these believing their privacy is safeguarded.

Whether this problem can be fixed with a technological solution, rather than a more dramatic social change, is doubtful, but since the can of worms has been opened, its worth trying.
Was your first book anywhere near as successful in the first 24 hours as this one?