skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I disagree with the point that lots of people knew how to build Facebook. They knew how to build social networks (as defined back then). No one knew how to build it. Not even Zuckerberg. He knew he was onto something when it started growing. Note that had he not been connected, Facebook would not exist as we know.
‘Polarize People’
Connections do build things. They build trust when you are seeking investment. They build customer bases when you are new to the game. They build cashflow when you manage to sell to your network. Sure, they don't build the product, but more often than not they define, buy, sell, and invest on it. A business does not hinge on your ability to write code, but on your ability to sell it (or find people to sell it for you (connections)).
On behalf of all non-native speakers from all over the World, who are trying their best to catch up with this whirlwind of booms-bust cycles, forced obsolescence, eroding of ways of life, and many other hardships that I cannot remember right away, just to try to make a [better] life [if not for themselves] for their loved ones, I would like to thank people like your wife for helping them in whatever manner possible.
"I decided to risk taking one for the team to determine the Model S real-world range when it's cold outside and you drive the car as you would any other car, electric or not."

He explains this as his reasoning for not recharging his car... Regardless of if it's cold outside, or if the car is powered by electricity, gas, or good intentions, if the car is telling you that you're running dangerously low on fuel, why would you not stop and refuel? I feel like stopping and refueling would be the real-world scenario.
> Loaning out bitcoins you don't have is going to be pretty hard.

> Bitcoins are closer to cash than it may seem at first glance and just like cash you can't really fake having it.

Really? Banks do the same thing with cash. It's called "fractional reserve banking", and unless you want to outlaw it (and have more lobbying power than all of Wall Street) it's not going away just because you've substituted paper money for a digital equivalent.

If you want to keep cash under your mattress, you are free to do so. Bitcoins offer no massive advantage here. If you want to have the bitcoin equivalent (a digital wallet), go for your life. But normal people will want the 1% interest the banks pay, and the security of not having their life savings stolen if some bot cracks their computer.

There's only 3 differences between bitcoins, and paper money - they are easier to send, much easier to steal (since crackers can do it), and don't lose value to inflation (which isn't really a new thing - it's just a return to the "gold standard").

People aren't going to stop using banks any time soon. I don't even see which way bitcoins will shift the balance - a few cipherpunks will build their own vaults, and a few grannies will no longer bury their savings under their tulips.
Dojo Toolkit, amazing build system
Would you have started this if dmor was a man? No? Well then you're probably just being sexist and mean.
>I call baloney on that, as there is no currently normed, well validated IQ test that yields a score of higher than 160.

I know the WAIS caps at 155, but the Stanford-Binet test accomodates 160+, does it not?
I agree with you. I wasn't arguing against gun control laws. Actually, Swiss gun control is very strict, plus it's also not so easy to get ammunition. Most of the guns here are the military rifles people keep after service and the ammunition for those is unavailable - well except if you really really want it. Therefore it's not quite like people have constant access to a gun for those times when they get into the mood for murdering someone. I'm certain that more regulation in the US would help in that regard.

What I'm saying is: I'm skeptical that this alone would bring the aggression levels in the US to European levels (not even speaking about Japan, where it's another order of magnitude below). It would certainly be a good start though and it would be relatively easy to implement. Similar to software development: One should always start optimizing by getting the low hanging fruits.

It's still interesting however, to think about why there is such a cultural difference between the US and Europe, considering our heritage is so close.
> Users will get pushed into native apps.

I don't see why it is a problem, if we are talking about DRM. DRM free distributors will use HTML, embracing the open web. Obsessed with DRM ones will use shady plugins and malware-like non browser applications. I'm fine with that - it also clearly marks this distinction for the user. Pushing off the Web here relates to DRM and distributors who insist on using it, not to the users who you claim have no idea what's going on.
Well, you could analyze how the human brain performs tasks that computers can't seem to do very nicely (either because our algorithms to do those tasks aren't very good, or because of some sort of inherent limitation). Among these tasks are image recognition, natural language processing, speech recognition, etc. Imagine the possibilities: you could get up in the morning, step inside of your autonomous vehicle, ask it to "drive me to work, but stop at a good coffee shop first", and have it drive you to your destination in the middle of a hurricane. Or alternatively, you could datamine the shit out of everything that ever existed.

The last part is probably just wishful thinking. I ended up writing a research paper on this topic last year, and those issues I listed are actually the ones I saw most frequently listed as the possible applications of advances in neural and cognitive sciences.
Remember, my article was about incentive structure. Webkit's evolution so far has NOT been in the context of a monoculture, so pointing to past behavior as evidence for future actions within a monocultural context doesn't hold up. I would guess that at least part of the reason why webkit has been developed so aggressively and well is because they were competing with the other players. I know that much of the energy behind recent spidermonkey development came from v8 kicking our ass in the Firefox 3.6 era.

Look, I am not dissing webkit devs whatsoever. They're smart people doing a great job, and they're getting strong support from their employers because doing a great job really matters. But if we end up in a webkit monoculture, I imagine much of both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation will disappear. You're running a for profit corporation. Should you continue pouring resources into a game you've already won, or should you shift them towards something else that's going to impact your bottom line? That, and only that, is the connection I would make with IE6.

If that's talking shit, then fine I'm talking shit. But I don't think it's unfair to expect webkit's caretakers to behave like rational humans.

As for needing multiple implementations to find problems, I won't challenge the assertion that people are uncovering and resolving ambiguities on discussion forums, without needing multiple implementations. But how many are found this way? Surely you would agree that some problems are found by trying something out, having it not work, testing it in a different browser, and seeing it behave differently? I assert that many, many problems are found this way. I further assert that ambiguities don't really matter to people if all browsers behave the same way - until you need to do something different (eg make something faster or add a new feature), at which time those ambiguities suddenly become critically important. Enumeration order of JS properties comes to mind here. The Web came to depend on creation order despite it not being specced. But what about indexes? What if you have some of both?
My folks are 81 and 82, they have iPhones, Kindles, cameras, camcorders, two computers (one each), lots of free time that they spend touring the world, and not many problems.

Facetime usually doesn't work.
Remember, Musk stated as fact that Broder "drove around in circles" for 0.6 miles trying to run the batteries out. His casual accusation on just that point alone makes it hard to take the rest of his analysis (of his company-provided data) without a grain of salt.

I'm posting these without commentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw

http://twitter.com/TeslaRoadTrip/status/302958514245087233
Yes, efficiency is a monotonic function of speed here (Model S). No crossover point.

http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency

(the graph)
Python Cloud has disappeared?
What I would like to see is a Turbine/electric hybrid. It would answer most of the issues with running a turbine, and be able to burn a very wide range of fuels.
Convert SVG to Raphael in one step
If you have ever used the Raphael library, one of the first things you wanna do is converting a .svg file to a raphael element to manipulate it. Here is how you can do it in a simple step.
A business (Mega) whose profits will be mainly generated by exploiting copyright infringements will be accepting a currency that's mainly used for illegal activities such as buying drugs, money laundering...a perfect match!

Before anyone comments: I`m well aware that both Mega as well as Bitcoin CAN be used for non questionable purposes. Their main usage as of today are some sort of illegal or at least questionable activities.

I`m still surprised how much love Kim Schmitz receives from liberal minded HN fellows - unaware that he is gladly taking your believes as a thin cover-up to conduct at least questionable business.
So you didn't even read the content of his link, but somehow you felt entitled to dismiss it on the basis that... on what basis, exactly? That no information that wasn't pre-approved by a certified, "well-respected" expert is worth considering? Science doesn't work like that. Academia does.
Great stuff! Your blog post mentioned you use Mac Pros---would the QEMU/KVM patches also work on the Mac mini? Any luck getting them upstreamed?
I don't buy into the Musk mythos. I do believe he can afford a large media team to blanket messageboards and sway opinion.
more native way to discover a culture: http://tounat.com be a native of your city and let tourists be traveller
Diesel's do not really get better mileage once you consider that diesel fuel has more energy per gallon. Diesel is a little better, but not dramatically so.

And diesel IS dirty. It's really hard to make one that meets emission standards.

And that is the main reason it's not used more often in the US: It's basically impossible to make it clean enough.
Organizations ranging from Mozilla and the ACM, to the EFF and ACLU, to grassroots activist groups of the left and right didn't share your casual confidence in the reasonableness of 2012 CISPA.

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

Their analysis was that once a determination of a 'cyber threat' was made and shared, private communications and other data that would usually require stronger cause could (and probably would) then be handed over ('shared') on government request. The words "voluntary opt-in" are not reassuring, if it's a service provider opting-in customer data to law-enforcement, disregarding traditional expectations of privacy or even explicitly agreed terms.

When you say 2012 CISPA "remove[d] IP from a list of assets protected by the bill", they could only 'remove' it because the original draft had it in. And, that's the sort of insider-wishlist-item that can be re-added as the bill progresses, or perhaps even interpreted-back-in when the bill contains vague language.

The 2013 language includes in its definition of covered 'cybersecurity crimes': "a violation of any provision of title 18, United States Code, created or amended by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-474)."

That's the same CFAA as used in the recent prosecutions of Swartz and Aurenheimer. It has the open-ended "exceeding authorized access" and "obtains anything of value" language that lets the violation of terms-of-service and unauthorized acquisition of commercially-valued copyrighted material become serious federal crimes.

Advocates of new security powers tend to portray their scope as small and reasonable, before passage, but then manage to find a more expansive interpretation, when it behooves them after passage. Because such bills keep changing and stretching, I tend to trust the EFF and ACLU, who will actually litigate cases under the enacted legal regime, about the bill's likely effects.
Amazing work! I was impressed to see that it is perfectly usable on an iPad
In the context of the recent attempted Trademarking of "Python" in Europe:

http://pyfound.blogspot.ca/2013/02/python-trademark-at-risk-...

Their twitter account (@PythonCloud) has also been deactivated.
I also found http://jsdb.io useful
In a car without regenerative braking, city driving will return worse gas mileage than highway driving. In a car that does have regenerative braking, city driving will often return higher mileage.

The regen braking isn't the sole source of efficiency gain -- aerodynamic drag, gearing and engine optimizing are responsible for the "true" gains -- but regen braking makes it more possible to realize the "true" gains because you're no longer throwing away all of the true gains on braking.
A quote: "As the range indicator sank to 20 remaining miles on the way to work, I exited the freeway, hoping that the lower-speed rural road driving would allow more regenerative braking and would extend the range."

Where is this stupid idea coming from? It's absolutely false -- regenerative braking can only reduce losses caused by braking, it doesn't extend the range of the car compared to driving at a steady speed. Don't expect to gain anything by choosing stop-and-go driving over steady-speed driving -- it doesn't work that way.

According to technical estimates, regenerative braking only recovers 20% of the energy otherwise lost in reducing the car's speed, but gaining that speed back requires ... wait for it -- 100% of the car's kinetic energy from the battery. Regenerative braking is better than turning all the car's kinetic energy into heat, but it has no advantage over maintaining a steady speed.

I wish this myth would go away, preferably by some education in physics.
I was afraid to read yet another depressing shouting match about the Tesla/NYT debacle. Instead I find your comment, which I actually learned something valuable and insightful from.

Thank you for keeping HN great. I am in your debt.
I love underscore. It's basically the first thing I add on any project if I'm not using coffee script. Life is too short for programming everything from the ground up.
He gave precise numbers that were incorrect, often by a significant margin. He claimed these were from his notes.

Rather than an error of memory, I think it's far, far more likely he just made them up to create an illusion of accuracy that he simply did not do the work to record.
That is true for India too. If one does not make top ranks to get into IITs, NITs or any other government subsidized college, they are forced to attend lower tier private institutions (Yeah, in India private colleges are at lower end) which cost at least 5-10x more than IITs.
Walks And Walking - National Trust Spring Walks
What the hell is your definition of torture, if that doesn't fit it?
That backs up Broder completely! Look how inconspicious those chargers are. He said he couldn't find them because they were unlit at night, and this video lends that enormous credibility.

Broder: While Mr. Musk has accused me of doing this to drain the battery, I was in fact driving around the Milford service plaza on Interstate 95, in the dark, trying to find the unlighted and poorly marked Tesla Supercharger.

That someone found the charger faster than him is neither here nor there (it's irrelevant to the review he wrote). His story stands, and Musk's accusations look increasingly like complete libel.
> You could certainly try to trade your Bitcoin-substitutes at par with real Bitcoin

I wouldn't be able to pull it off, but banks do this all the time with cash-substitutes. A small number of people do insist on real cash, but there's a huge amount of credit and debt built on top of a small amount of actual currency.

The banks loan your money out, and charge interest to the borrowers. In return they keep your money safe, and pay you enough interest to encourage you to not switch banks, or demand "real" money.

And governments can go into debt on gold, or US dollars (even if they don't have them, and can't get them in the near future). You can get a complete collapse if the government finds itself bankrupt. In that case, you'll have a bank run, or the IMF will step in, or lenders will take a haircut. It's nothing revolutionary (well, it can start revolutions, but that's not really new).

They can do exactly the same thing with bitcoins.
Since you posted those without commentary it's not clear what I'm supposed to take from that video of someone who was able to find the charger right away.

Again, accusing a journalist of maliciously fabricating anything is a huge deal. It is not something that is taken lightly, and if there's is an inkling of truth to it the folks at the NYT will deal with it and we will know about it.
Your XML Parser Will Destroy Everything You Have Ever Loved
I used ledger for a few months last year, tracking transactions in five or six currencies. I haven't used another system so I can't compare, but ledger seemed to handle things very well. For foreign credit card transactions, you can do things like:

2012-05-22=2012-05-18 * B&H Photo Video
Expenses:Electronics:Camera:Charger USD 37.02 @@ CAD 38.76
Liabilities:Visa

to specify the purchase amount and the amount that appeared on the card. It keeps track of the exchange rate at each such transaction, and can generate a price history from them. I was even able to enter an ATM withdrawal with fees at both ends fairly easily:

2012-03-12 * Withdrawal
Assets:Cash USD 500.00
Expenses:Banking:Fees USD 2.50
Assets:Bank:Chequing CAD -511.19
Expenses:Banking:Fees CAD 2.00
Assets:Bank:Chequing CAD -2.00

The concept of "currency" is pretty open in ledger. I even started using it to track tickets on my transit card for a while, with things like

2012-04-18=2012-04-17 * STM 10 tickets
Assets:Opus Card 10 STM @@ CAD 24.00
Liabilities:Visa

followed by withdrawals from the card when I took trips. (This turned out not to be a very good use of time.) You could track stocks in a similar way.

Hope that helps. You might also want to look up ledger and gnucash, as I think ledger can read gnucash files. You'd be able to test ledger out with "production" data.
Here, let me ruin that fuzzy feeling for you with a filename meme:

ohstopityou.jpg
The linked article mentions how that's already happening in China ("young college graduates in China are four times as likely to be unemployed as young people who attended only elementary school, because factory jobs are more plentiful than office jobs"), and this earlier article goes into more detail: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/business/as-graduates-rise...
Citroen produce the DS5 Hybrid 4[1] which is a diesel-electric hybrid. I presume it's just not available in the US.

[1]http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-dri...
> This may seem strange by western standards, but I'd caution against extrapolating this to mean that the parents don't care for their child.

It shouldn't be strange by Western standards. It was the way it was in the US before WWII or so. It also works very well because it frees up what might otherwise go into retirement savings, and this gets spent on helping the kids get established instead.

I am not in China, but my wife is Chinese-Indonesian and her mother is starting to get closer to retirement, and that system, while it has transformed in urban environments like Jakarta, is still very much alive at least among the Chinese diaspora here.
Since you posted those without commentary it's not clear what I'm supposed to take from that video of someone who was able to find the charger right away.

Well good, I posted them without commentary for that reason specifically. The goal was to allow you to guide your own thinking.
I don't think 'largely factual' is largely factual. The difference between this review and the NYT one is night and day. Omissions, misrepresentation and tone matter - especially in journalism.
Aerodynamics and engine/drive train design.

Aerodynamically, the slower you drive, the more efficient you drive. The exact curve will depend on air pressure, amount of moisture in the air, etc.

For the engine, it is more complicated. You will want to keep its temperature and rpm at ideal levels. rpm and the gearing in the drive train determine what speed(s) that corresponds to (I guess drive train losses will depend a bit on the gearing, too, but that effect should be minimal)

For the two combined, this gets really complicated. Do you drive at the engine-optimal 45 or does the gain due to lower speed offset the loss in engine efficiency at 44? If 44 is more efficient now, will it stay that when it starts to rain? When you enter a different road surface? When your tires heat up and tire pressure increases slightly? When you have a window open?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Spe... shows how convoluted this can get.
"Accelerators need the good companies more than the good companies need the accelerators."
> In a car without regenerative braking, city driving will return worse gas mileage than highway driving. In a car that does have regenerative braking, city driving will often return higher mileage.

The above statement is false. Regenerative braking in the Tesla (which only has regenerative braking on the rear wheels) only recovers about 20% of the energy lost in stopping the car. Accelerating again requires 100% of the car's final kinetic energy to be provided by the battery. Therefore city driving is always less efficient than driving at a steady speed unless you're planning to drive at 90 miles per hour.

All regenerative braking can do is minimize the losses caused by stop-and-go driving, it is never an improvement over driving at a steady speed at the same average speed or, for that matter, most higher speeds.

I wish this myth would go away -- by way of some physics education.

> ... you're no longer throwing away all of the true gains on braking.

No, only 80% of them. Which means you would have to drive very fast to equal the losses of stop-and-go driving.
At least it has very good documentation :D
Just like officers of the company are legally responsible for the financials, they can AND should be help responsible for such actions.
do you know of the online shop called herriott grace?

http://www.herriottgrace.com/ and http://shop.herriottgrace.com/

HG is product based and what you describe sounds more about creating exhibits and environments. However, there might be similar intentions toward craftsmanship and construction. It does take time and work to set up a shop like HG (site is on Big Cartel), but with the right amount of SEO / Social referrals it is possible to find an audience that cares. Good luck!
I Believe In Turtles
Where do you get that CR thinks "that leaving the car unplugged overnight is normal"? The linked-to text says:

> Anyhow, after a seven-hour overnight park (unplugged) and temperatures dropping below freezing, the "rated" range dropped to 65 miles. (Because we're tracking energy poured into the Tesla at our track, I resisted the temptation to top off at home, like a typical owner would.)

That reads to me like CR says that charging at night is the expected normal.
Oops -- I forgot about the non-freeness requirement. So not just any subtree. That makes it trickier. But still not hard, I think.
AOL still makes over $500 million per year on its dial-up service.