skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks. In general I find articulating the conceptual stream to be a challenge, especially since it jumps around disjointedly.

Usually it takes a few iterations of a post, to improve the quality or tone, even though from my perspective, the core spirit of message remains unchanged between drafts.

The trick in communication is to be understood on multiple levels, not to simply output claims, irrespective of how accurate they are. Took me two decades to realize that, and still trying to improve. :)

Hence, the feedback is appreciated.
Just to seed the discussion a bit... I wrote a paper on Claude Shannon[1] in college, but I don't have a copy anywhere handy, nor do I recall what sources I used. But he is a fascinating character, and, as the father of Information Theory[2], has had a tremendous effect on pretty much every one of us. Put it this way... his paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication[3] provides the theoretical basis behind pretty much all digital communication. I believe the term "bit" was actually introduced in that paper. So if bits and bytes mean anything to you, you owe a debt to Claude Shannon.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_E._Shannon

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematical_Theory_of_Commun...
I can be confident because Facebook spends more time and money studying user interaction with their advertisements than any other single aspect of their business. They have focus groups, they study eye movement with iris tracking, and they are leading authorities in online marketing. They don't make a change to their online ads without understanding 100% of the variables.

And, for the record, this analysis of Facebook's investment in user study isn't mere conjecture. I've been lucky enough to attend a talk by Facebook employees on their efforts.
I can't do anything to help with diabetes research directly, but my own little side project is predominantly about using charitable giving as a force to drive local community improvements. So what I can do, if not the research itself, is make a $50 donation to the American Diabetes Association on behalf of a favorite city-improvement tasks of interest to me [1].

Sure, it's using charitable giving to draw some attention to something of interest to me, and that may sound base. But what's wrong with a tiny incentive to give to good causes such as this research?

[1] http://btforce.com/348
Wouldn't this scale to multiple links? Bug one, then blow the others up. "Oops, that cruise ship had a C4-infused anchor and it hit your cable, sorry."

I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often, actually.
It's important to realize that safety is not a property of a string but a property of the relationship between a string and a use context. Thus all "solutions" that rely upon marking strings as clean work for only one kind of context. If you want a general solution, one that works for all injection problems, you have to be able to encode the full relationship model into the type system.
Mondo radical! That's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I'd never heard of McLuhan until now (or had forgotten him if I had) but from reading that summary of that book, I now see that he's someone I'd like to know more about.
Not really; I built a thing, I tried fooling some people with it, but the trouble with a system like that is it makes you extremely inflexible. If you make a mistake and get out of sync, you're screwed. And it's really obvious that something is up, because it takes you suspiciously long to make a move even when it's blindingly obvious what to do - because you still have to do the round trip in order to stay in sync.
>>I can't really give much respect to people that don't follow their own advice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
That and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?': Further Adventures of a Curious Character." Some of the best books I've read.
"Passive undersea fiber monitoring is well within the means of more than a few intelligence operations"

What kind of equipment/engineering would be required for that?

Has there been any documented cases of a government doing that in the past?
Asus N56VJ-DH71 15.6-Inch - not an ultralight but not a monster either. Personally I want the fastest cpu I can get even at the expense of battery time. Less than a $1000 with a proper cpu. Just swap in an ssd and go.
This is analogous to saying that customary units aren't better in an absolute sense than metric units, which is obviously true--driving through Jersey, I'm not going to insist that the gas station attendant give me 10 liters of gasoline, because the metric system is "just better." OTOH, it's stupid to encourage people to keep using customary units because "everyone should decide which units are best for themselves."

Getting literal again, if you think static typing is a PITA, you probably haven't used a modern language with type inference. There is really no downside to it anymore.
How to make payments on the internet is huge. It was a big problem. It still is a big problem.

Paypal is disliked but that doesn't mean it wasn't working on a big problem. It doesn't mean Paypal wasn't an important start to the solution. Musk and Theil were dreaming big, bigger than photo apps and social media anyway.

Payments on the internet is such a big problem that 1) Andreessen tried to make it part of the original browser [1] 2) Paypal is huge [2], 3) It is likely that Stripe (where I work) and Braintree (Paymill? WePay?) will thrive and 4) we will likely still call it largely unsolved in five years.

[1] "It was essentially impossible to do," Andreessen replied. "We tried. We talked to credit card companies, banks, we weren't able to do it. Microsoft wasn't able to do it." (http://mashable.com/2012/05/01/marc-andreessen-browser-payme...)
[2] "PayPal revenues represented 39 percent of eBay Inc. revenues in Q4 2012. PayPal revenues for Q4 2012 were $1.54 billion, growing 24 percent year over year." (https://www.paypal-media.com/about)
Here is the bottom line: static typing is getting much closer to the sweet spot by increasingly gaining dynamic typing advantages (e.g. type inference, which means less verbose sources) than dynamically typed languages are going in the other direction.

It's becoming increasingly hard to justify using a dynamically typed language these days.
> Out of curiosity, could you elaborate on how this is implemented practically?

You are required to pay 9% of your pre-tax income into a registered superannuation fund of your choice. These funds invest on you behalf. Upon retirement you receive a lump sum or annuity, depending on your plan.

The government does not take the funds, does not invest the funds and does not make the payments. Payment is not guaranteed.

The Australian Government still has a pension scheme (which is means-tested and so is reduced if you have plenty of superannuation), but it is not dressed up as an investment vehicle.

It's recognised for what it is: welfare paid out of general revenues.
If it is convergent encryption, though, a rights holder can still check if their content is being uploaded and send out takedown notices and then it's Rapidshare all over again. Not saying that it's the users/market Mega crowd is going after.
The more powerful features of C and C++ can be "bad" when misused or abused. Yes, that can happen when in the hands of a beginner.

There are times, however, when an experienced, knowledgeable user does need the power these features provide. Amazing things can be accomplished that couldn't otherwise be done when using a language like Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Perl, Go, Haskell, or Scheme.
"People who are right a lot often change their minds"--Jeff Bezos
It seems this is a corollary of the principle of self examination.

There's certainly some personality trait (e.g. intelligence/experience) that's more fundamental than a propensity for self examination. Not sure what it is...but it's the difference between knowing when to stick to something and knowing when to draw the opposite conclusions from your self-examination.
Oh my god why does every god damn person, including the author, think they are incapable of stuff?

Fucks sakes people, you don't need to learn physics or chemistry or math or whatever. You bunch of perfectionist want to learn the science when ALL you need to do is learn how to apply it.

EVEN if you're technically incapable, think about how you can make someone's life better. How you can help someone feel better about themselves. Go figure out how to solve a human problem if you can't do technical ones.

But, no matter what, do not give me excuses as to what you can't and why you can't. That, sirs and madams, is unacceptable. All of us, within our current skillset, have some knowledge that the world can directly benefit from. Find it, own it, be it.
Very neat!

But slight nit, I think he's wrong about one detail. Specifically this part:

> The reason the governments needed to economize even on the cheapest materials (hence the disgusting military uniforms of the 20th century) is that millions of ordinary people were drafted into the armies, where they perished by millions in the machine-gun crossfire, displaying their gut on the barbed wire. This, of course, is the heritance of the glorious French Revolution with its achievement of citizens at arms: the nation-states engaged into the war of mutual annihilation in the name of the higher goals. The war became total...

The reason war was able to scale so violently was due to the Haber process, which is absolutely amazing in its own right. Says Wiki:

> Fertilizer generated from ammonia produced by the Haber process is estimated to be responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population. It is estimated that half of the protein within human beings is made of nitrogen that was originally fixed by this process; the remainder was produced by nitrogen fixing bacteria and archaea.

Massive ammonia production that made guarding saltpeter reserves less critical. Germany (and others) were then able to create enormous stockpiles of munitions very quickly. Thus war became (more) total.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
ASUS Shows Off Thumb Drive Sized USB Wireless Router
I signed up for the class. In the confirmation email is a pitch they should've used on the class page:

Finally, perhaps one anecdote will give a sense of what you will gain from the course. In 2007 a relatively small Stanford class of 75 students wrote apps for the then-nascent Facebook platform. Within ten weeks, the students had amassed more than sixteen million users and one million dollars in revenue. And that was five years ago, before the worldwide installation of hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets. What will happen today once we have 100,000+ students learning startup engineering in parallel, building apps with mobile platforms as a first class target?

The link it refers to is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/technology/08class.html?pa...
> It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems."

This is some quite "grass is greener" thinking. The world needs all kinds.
Stop Building Dumb Stuff
As someone who left biomedical field and moved into tech, one of the biggest reasons for my move is that I have a distaste towards relying on guilt in order affect things (this probably goes back all the way to my childhood and my parents' use of guilt in order to affect my own decision-making), and that I generally dislike people who rely on it to further their causes.

I will work hard if there is an incentive. I will not work hard because someone is trying to guilt-trip me to.
Django Ignitor Library - Switch from a PHP Framework easily
If you're interested in using python as an MVC, but you can't get out the ease-of-use that PHP MVCs provide as far as automagically routing urls to views, then please check out this library! I made it to be a tool those who want python, without committing 100% right away, knowing that they will later!

This library is intended to make the transition to Django from PHP Frameworks such as code ignitor and the Zend Framework a bit more seamless. Django is one of the popular Python frameworks, but I've found that teaching newcomers how to use it has been slightly confusing, due to Django's very flexible approach for handling URLs to views. Some people simply want Django to take care of the URL abstraction for them, so that it means one less thing to learn before making the switch over.
Accumulating investment capital has a different effect on the economy than taxing and spending.
AssertTrue( ): How to Write an Opening Sentence
The original Chinese actually uses English for the model names in this article, so we have nothing more to go on...
Geography is certainly one of the "fucks", but there are most definitely other factors as well: compensation, culture, quality of coworkers, etc.
Show HN: The Future of The Portfolio Codebits
> What about the millions of children dying of preventable diseases in the third-world?

What about children serving as child soldiers? What about everyone in the world who gets assaulted?

There are a never-ending parade of problems in the world. Any one of them you pick, you pick at the expense of something that someone will think is a lot more important. That's why statements like yours are completely worthless and always will be.

In addition to the fact you're factually incorrect.
> The last problem is with compilation time, which can eat into development time the same way that testing does.

Good point. More modern languages fix some of the flaws found in Java. Among which:

Scala (not really "modern" since it's ten years old, but more recent than Java):

* No boilerplate: check

* Type inference: check

* Compilation times: er... horrendous. C++-template-linking horrendous

My sweet spot these days is Kotlin, which checks on all three points (I use both Scala and Kotlin in IDEA and it's not even close in compilation times).
IIRC, Feynmann received some notoriety as the famous physicist who hung out at topless bars...as this was one way he found subjects for nude portraits
Dear HN,

given that this is a direct reply to another HN post, it might be useful to have a "submit reply post" feature that shows this entry, indented, right below the "Why the f*ck?" entry, just like in your email software or any forum.

It wouldn't increase HN real estate occupation (still two slots out of 30), it would be clear(er) what this is an answer to, although one can use links in the comments. Plus, it would make sense to have comments for the two posts in one page.

I know, easier said than done. Among the questions to be answered: what to do when the first post should get off the first page and the reply shouldn't.
And there's a lot more sugar in a soda than in a piece of fruit. (although fruit juices have a lot of sugar, which is why people suggest that you drink small amounts or water it down.)

A 3" orange has about 14 g of sugar.

12 oz (a 355 ml can) of coca cola has 39 g of sugar.
Check out Glooko.
"Just because he's drunk and in a saloon doesn't mean he's wrong"

Doesn't mean he's right, either. Just means he's an asshole in a saloon who never wanted to do something, but out of his resentment of all those who've made more money than him, he tries to assert some flimsy moral superiority over them because they made money, instead of doing that stuff he somehow always found excuses for not doing.
OK, I see your point. I had a hard time quickly coming up with important works of software engineering.

I guess I kind of stepped over my own argument. The post was about google ads, why is that important? Then I mention reddit.
Google is in the top three for most desirable employment among economists, engineers and lawyers (private sector) in Sweden. Google has less than 100 total employees in Sweden and most engineers in Sweden aren't even software engineers. IKEA is also in the top three. Draw your own conclusions.
You do not understand how the internet work either. I hope you fail.

They can raise price on xx% of their customers who use youtube that much.
Have you thought about this quantitatively? I don't think the "start a company and hire others to do the physical labor" approach is viable in societies where younger people have a low death rate.
Let's get easy access in honor of Aaron's recent actions.
I loathe when people lead with their ages because

1) It mitigates potentially valuable criticism, replacing it with a chorus of "good jobs," etc., when the app (like all apps) is going to have flaws.

2) It seems manipulatory and superfluous.

In the case of the former, it just doesn't make sense to resort to such condescension because of his age. If he is capable of developing and now marketing an app, is is capable of getting honest feedback for said app. This homogenous array of kudos is doing him a disservice.

In the case of the latter, most will say that his age is significant because it is inordinately low. Because of this, he should be lauded for any effort he puts forth. But there is no logical basis for this. 14-year-olds face similar constraints as 18-year-olds, who probably face a similarly-difficult learning curve as 30-year-olds. Just because a number is low does not mean it has meaning. He has not overcome any substancial barriers that anyone else of any other age does not face while learning the trade. Yet, people give his age meaning. If he had not listed his age, he would have probably gotten serious critiques, or not have made it to the front page at all. In development, age is more-or-less arbitrary. Just because he happened to begin learning earlier does not mean he disserves more praise than someone who began in college.

He obviously recognizes this and has used it to his advantage. I can't blame him, but I can be irked by it and by people's response to it.

I've always been of the belief that a product should be evaluated independent of it's creator. The specific position of the individual doesn't change the quality of the product. Knowledge of the creator of a product can only muddy one's opinion of said product. This is why I don't give take into account when developers decry that I ought to "support" them because they are "independent." I don't care about their employment situation. The only thing that is of importance to me is the quality of their app. If it is good and the price seems fair, I will buy it. If it does not meet those criterion, I won't. The same thing holds true for the developer in the OP. If the app is good, it ought to be recognized as such. The issue is that I don't believe that it is, and that its quality has been subjected to artificial inflation because of unrelated fact about the developer.

I'm not saying the app is not good. I just think people need to be more honest and less subject to "age bias."

(For the record, I am of a similar age and always refrain from giving my age. As a result, my work is rarely lauded, likely because my things, much the same as the OP's, aren't that great. I'm just aware of that fact and don't really care about lowering the bar.)
Ask HN: Is this the right way to create a "Ask HN" post?
Do you just put "Ask HN:" before the title ?
Or do you get a "Ask HN:" link after you reach some karma points ?
But they really should be since they can't usually bring any useful service over a "vanilla" internet.

Everything they bring is either crap that degrades your experience and is hard to out out or costs you additional money. Non-exclusive if.
True, it can always be worse. Having a 6.3 A1c with MDI and no CGM or pump is very fortunate. Perhaps you've still got working beta cells. Congrats on those results!
Getting access to devices is definitely a big hurdle, but there are people working in this area already. Maybe you could contribute to framework engineering in collaboration with groups who can get (or reverse engineer, more likely) communication protocols on specific devices. Here are a few links to get started:

http://www.mdpnp.org/

http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2012/medcomm.php (google the speakers and organizers)

http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1525...

OpenIGTLink is working on something similar for surgical navigation (http://openigtlink.org).

(See this comment for some more general suggestions:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089663 )
"The market will be satisfied"--Marc Andreessen

i) It's probably never right to worry about technological stagnation.
ii) Tech solutions to big problems (including diabetes) never look like solutions to big problems at the start.

I worry about startups that complain about regulations. Want to become the hotel industry? Start by renting out air beds.
For now maybe it's just making some hardware that tells you how many hours a day you sleep. We all know that the answers here lie in the data. It's a mistake to try an obvious frontal attack on this problem though.

Maybe it's some hardware made by the guys up at Mountain View that you put in front of your eyes that eliminates the ned for a guide dog because it talks to you.

There are numerous (smart) engineers working on very useful and tractable problems in these spaces. They just look like toys now... that's all.
From the little I've read about him, Raganwald seems like a rather smart guy so I'm fairly certain that he's well aware of the effect that various economic forces have on the decisions that people make in regards to employment/etc...

Having said that, Raganwald is essentially advocating for people to consider using their knowledge and effort on more noble causes than adding features to a website to get more clicks and make more money.
The line reached the restaurant's entrance. It was 12:00pm, people were on lunch break. Orders came in as Confederate batallion ready to strike us down. There I was. In the middle of everything. Knowing how the software that took the orders worked (and how to write it), and working in that restaurant.

Why the fuck?

At that moment, it was one of the choices I had. Being smart does not give you unlimited amount of choices. It only means that you can understand some things better than others. It does not grant super powers. Or even connects you socially. You are just smart.

Why are the smartest minds doing those jobs? Maybe they don't have a choice. In reality, few people (percentage wise VS. general population) are equipped to start, grow, and operate a successful business. Smart people can't just go and get funding and cure Cancer. Shit don't work that way. There is a lot more needed than being smart to do so.

Instead of asking why the fuck, focus on how the fuck can I build something to allow this people to build the cure for Cancer.
It costs a lot less to save a small bank than a big bank, and the risk is spread out over multiple organisations. If we had (for example) small banks that were more specialised, if the housing market falls through, those sorts of investment banks would disappear, but others should stay relatively untouched. That was the whole point of Glass-Steagal : if the investors mess up, at least make sure that we don't have to wipe out Grandma's savings.
Isn't it just that viruses survive longer at lower temperatures? As per wikipedia:

"Flu viruses can remain infectious for about one week at human body temperature, over 30 days at 0 °C (32 °F), and indefinitely at very low temperatures (such as lakes in northeast Siberia)."
Google and the future of search: Amit Singhal and the Knowledge Graph