skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Depends on your definition of 'name' and your system/formalization of the act of reference and/or semantics.

In this case, 'name' seems to mean 'proper name', and there are systems explaining proper names as symbols used to refer, but not to carry semantic charge (whatever that would entail). For example in my native tongue many town names are named after rivers large and small that do - or - only used to flow next to / past those towns. Yet we don't suddenly change the proper name: the reference still works, but we do not need to cognize the semantic contents (originally associated with the name, if that was the case anyway; if you know where Baroomghtown is, I can use the term to refer to it and my reference will succeed as it were).

That was a mouthful. My (insignificant) point: perhaps they would only need cognitive machinery for referring to (in some simple(?) sense) / distinguishing between themselves. That is: (1) usage of proper names does not (necessarily) imply ability to speak a language (perhaps that's all I meant; talk about nitpicking..); (2) there's quite a lot of research showing that animals form concepts left and right (could dig something up, but googling under those keywords would yield enough). Consider this interesting report:

Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex [a parrot] learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for all of these foods, although he calls an apple a “banerry.”

“Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, so Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said.

(NGM, 2008: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/animal-minds... (a curious article))

So it might be possible to conceive of a schema such that [arbitrary symbols (sequences of syllables, etc.)] + [concepts] => proper names; and those would indeed be what we are used to calling 'proper names', a subset of the category denoted by 'names', not something else.

However, I agree completely with the sentiments re: fears of (over-)anthropomorphizing and projecting our own 'theories of mind' onto other life.
Square has the most traction with "miniscule" businesses, too.
Feel kinda weird about this because I almost never share anything I write, but I wrote a short story that seems to really get at the same things you are describing. Anyway, feel free to read it or not but I figured what the heck:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jJpMEv_YrqR904SrxEI7Gaf0...
Estonia is a former Soviet republic and now a fairly poor European country one does have to ask is there not better things to spend this on?

Support for start ups that create long term jobs and values might be a better use of the carbon credits they sold to Mitsubishi.
You realize the irony of buying a Steam console because you can't get used games for the new Xbox?
Exactly. Moreover, every nation is also denying it. Some reports make fun of China because they deny something that seem obvious, but this is no China specialty.

Just another aspect of anti China sentiment, that's all.
I read this for a bit, and then did a double take on

"The new system uses a DualShock 4 controller with a touchpad, share button, lightbar and headphone jack."

I know the one thing that I have been missing on all consoles to date is a share button! It doesn't go far enough though, it really should have separate share buttons for each of the online services I use!
How old were you when the PS3 came out? When the PS2 came out? Now?
What advantage has the GDDR5 ram from the normal ddr3 in pc? From quick searching gddr5 has more bandwidth and ddr3 has less latency.
Disruptive Companies 2013
If their recent rework of the Playstation Store is any indication, the PS4 is doomed. They are just Microsoft II - on the surface it ticks all the boxes, but the resulting experience sucks balls. As if it were designed, implemented, but never actually used before the release.

When PS3 came out, it was excellent. It was an adult-oriented standalone console that worked well as a media center and it was also really well designed. It was true to the spirit of old Sony electronics - a self-sufficient device with a polished interface that matched its function. Sure it had a hook up to the Internet and PSN, but it was secondary. But then they started "improving" things. First, you got promo ads in the corner of the home screen. Never asked for a permission, no way to turn them off, even by disabling the network connection. So my device was little bit less mine. Then they started pushing "selected apps"- Netflix-Shmetflix and what not. Again, without asking, just because it was good for me, and, again, the device became even less mine. At the same time they increased the font size and replaced that beautiful Navier-Stokes visualization of a loading indicator with some generic spinner clock thingy. Sprinkled some other crap over the UI.

Just now imagine your old Sony cassette deck deciding to show you ads for new Justin Bieber album and offering to share shit on Facebook. That's PS3 now. So it's hardly surprising that I have no hope and zero expectations that PS4 will be anything else but a disappointment.
@Matthew No offence but it's because of people like you, non technical people are hated.And no, i am not an idea man.

There is a damn difference between someone who throws an idea at you and walks away for a couple of months until you finish and someone who has a really a good idea yet he is totally dedicated and working side-by-side with you for the product to work, also willing to learn anything in order to help the company grow.

Why do you complain about the percentage?You want 100% or 120%?Come on!If he is not dedicated at all you don't work with him otherwise don't complain.Not to mention that you want to take the idea and walk away with it!So this is not a shitty idea then.Yet again, you want more and more %.

You need to understand that the execution of the idea is definitely important but if you don't have it, there is nothing to execute, ok?The road is idea>execution>business not execution>idea>business etc.So no (great) idea = no execution, no execution = no business.Either way, you must have an idea to start with.Besides, we don't know the real story.Maybe he asks for 50% so you don't eff him up later on and you showed us you are capable of many things.I wouldn't work with you if you ask me. You're money driven not passion driven.

There is no "Zuckerberg Dilemma".Mark stole the idea and improved it in time.
Ask HN: Competing with eBay and Craigslist?
I want to build a new marketplace which is like a combination of eBay and craigslist.

Here's why:
- Everything on craigslist is anonymous which makes it difficult to trust the person that you're buying from. plus by removing anonymity it makes it easier to fight spam. (and a lot of other issues regarding user experience, etc.) For example, I believe a real time messaging system would really improve the way people use it and make it more like a real marketplace.

- I also think there are some innovation still left in the auctions. it might be a good idea to have a central auction system and build apps based on it for different kinds of categories, so you have different and adapted UI for different categories. Also, it might be possible to make it free for buyers and sellers (without taking any cut from them like eBay) and use some ads that don't clutter the website.

I realize that it's probably impossible to compete with these 2 companies given the network effects and competing with them isn't justified by some extra features.

So I'm wondering if you have any suggestions to give me ? Do you think it's worth doing this project ?

On a side note, let's say you were to build something similar, which kind of technology would you use ? Would you consider Scala/Play or C#/MVC ?

Thanks.
Reddit submission announcing Hacker News (formerly Startup News)
This is my reaction too, but I think this is a good sign. Strong polar responses are better than a mildly positive consensus, as pg describes is the case for "sitcom" business ideas ( http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html )

For further evidence, I just point to Apple products. Similar reaction in their announcement threads, similarly polar responses...fairly good market reaction.
Unless you consider luxury car buyers to be strictly enthusiasts, I don't think that it is only for enthusiasts at this stage. Except for speed of refueling, it's objectively better than comparably priced luxury cars in almost every way. It didn't win the car of the year awards due to its novelty, if you look at the performance testing breakdowns for roundups including BMW's, Audi's, Maserati's, etc, it did exceptionally well by any standard.
You joke, but "Record that awesome thing that just happened" is a button video games have been needing for a long, long time.
> Bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they become separated, a study finds.

...Holy, f^~kin crap! We've been in the presence of other sentients this whole time. Enslaved them. Killed them while gathering food. Holy, f^~kin crap!
Sounds great, but I will not be buying one. Sorry Sony, but after what you did to the PS3 I do not think anyone can trust you or your products.
yeah, that fascinates me too. there are even some actual theorems, like brewer's cap theorem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem] and arrow's voting paradox [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrows_impossibility_theorem], that take the "pick any two" form.
Last year around this time, I had the opportunity to interact with two dolphins in captivity. Being with them, they felt so present and warm, like being around a perceptive old friend. I had never had that experience with an animal before, except fellow humans. It's something I will never forget.
Get 1GB of WriteLaTeX space for free
I doubt this.

Very talented people can easily accomplish all three, especially in tech.

I guess the lucrative and secure part are supposed to be in tension? EG, if something is lucrative, there will be lots of competition that fights and eats away the security? But that same lucrativeness causes security, eg, golden hand cuffs.
FI2012 graduate Whale Path at Founder Showcase
Thought Leaders in Big Data: John Plavan, CEO of EarthRisk (Part 1)
I really don't want any of those networking/social features and I am pretty sure we're doomed to use them. I think I am going to pass on this one.
The future does not look like more buttons for increasingly specific functions.
It's actually a fascinating problem. Naively, it seems you can't sync traffic in both directions of a 2-way street at the same time -- e.g. eastbound and westbound.

Two things I've thought of that would work for both directions:

1) if it's a square grid, you could pick some streets that are optimized westbound, and some eastbound, for example. And then carefully arrange those so the north-south streets also mesh with it.

2) if you can space the lights the right distance apart, you could create a "standing wave" where it is actually optimized both ways. But you'd have to space them farther apart and more regularly than in real cities. For example, you could set lights apart by 1 minute travel time at 30mph, if the signal cycle is 1 minute.

I'm curious what other solutions are to this, and how they do it in a place like LA in practice!
We actually switched from a retail focus to a wholesale focus, so we not longer need a POS. We still use Square as our credit card processor.

I have helped set-up a QS implementation on top of the Revel POS and would not recommend it at all. I've seen the Gopago POS and it's actually probably the best fit for QS.
I had the same thought. It's a bit of a paradox. If he is living a healthy asocial lifestyle, there is little chance he would need to externalize his internal thoughts. So by writing an essay on his healthy asocial lifestyle, he contradicts himself...

-------------

Edit: Seems reply below is right, I misread the article. He actually calls out his lifestyle as specifically "unhealthy".

>...my unhealthy mental state...
I meant it in the most literal sense possible. The density of liquid hydrogen is around 70kg/m^3, but the density of gasoline is around 700kg/m^3. This means the despite all the carbon atoms, there are still more hydrogen atoms in a bucket of gas than in a bucket of liquid hydrogen.

You are correct in that liquid hydrogen has more energy per weight than gas, but gas is ten times denser, so it has around three times more energy per volume, and both are important when it comes to designing a safe fuel container that fits in a car.
I did it, well sort of.

My wife and I own a digital agency (deerdigital.com). We found a pain within the agency, built a product around it, and 6 months later we have a new start-up that has a few hundred paying customers and is growing about 7% week on week (gathercontent.com).

We decided to continue with the service business by giving more responsibility to employees, and having one of them buy in and becoming the CEO. We're no longer involved in the day-to-day ops and meet once or twice a year for high-level strategy planning. Best decision ever.
Q&A with Marc Andreessen on Robert Scoble's Facebook
Key words from their new site.

Kardashian
Starbucks
Kissing girls.

There is really nothing beautiful, new, and fresh about any of that turd sandwich.
Agreed. User-assignable buttons or touchpad gestures however...
mid twenties now
late teens ps3
early teens ps2
The Collapse of Old Media - the Rise of Wi-Fi Broadcasting (2010)
The towing remark was to say that it wasn't exactly borderline for any of the 8, that the reporter was the exception rather than the rule.

Meh, the segments cover every trip I take frequently on the west coast, and the same will be true on the east coast once I-95 is covered.
Canada is handing out citizenship for anybody with a Ph.D right now, so are a lot of other countries. If you don't want to move write books or self publish ebooks, or write articles for industry journals or mailing lists and watch offers come in. This is what a girl I know with a doctorate in anthropology did: write endless articles for some academic publication, she had a job offer in Israel after the first few months because another graduate somewhere was doing research into what she was writing about.
Are you an actual employee or a PR minion?
Poll: HTML5 or Native in 2 years?
Which platform do you think will be more important in the future?
HTML5 will dominate in 2 years
HTML5 will dominate in 5 years
Native Code will still be on top in 2 years
Native Code will still be on top in 5 years
Flash will rise again
I am surprised that so many people are relating PhD's to the money you'll make. I hear (very frequently) that "the amount of time you spend doing your PhD will put you far behind the 4 years of having a job" or "if you want to get rich, go into ...", or "management is where all the money is; you need an MBA for that".

Uh... I'm doing a PhD because I like scientific research and can't stand the thought of being a process engineer. If I'm going to spend 8 hours a day working on something for the rest of my life, it better be something I enjoy! While it is possible to do R&D with a bachelor's degree, your chances of being able to do exactly the kind of research you want goes up significantly with a PhD, plus you've already had the experience of doing it for 4 years.

Also, I'm not sure where this "not much money" concept comes from anyway. I'll start at an engineering salary, right out of grad school. I guess that's not "Hacker News wealthy", but that's plenty more than I need to even live comfortably!
What's their revenue/net?
For such specs it's better to buy a general purpose computer, since it'll be way more useful.
The civil rights movement was important, but there were places in the world at the time where black people could walk into the same restaurant as whites. The end of colonialism was important, if you were Indian. The Vietnam war was important, but then again, World War 2 was important, and so was World War 1, and so was Hannibal crossing the Alps.

With the moon landing, for the first time human beings were able to view our world objectively, in the third person, by having stood on another one. Seeing the moon landings on television changed people's lives. Seeing photos of the earthrise changed people's lives. It was a global event, it was universal. Yes, it was wrapped up in Cold War politics and no it didn't end any wars but ... we stood on another world for the first time.

If that's not a watershed moment in civilization then what was?
Who's more likely to have physical and intellectual freedom:

1) A recent PhD with $40,000 to his name

2) A Google engineer who graduated from undergrad at the same time and has $400,000 to her name
I wonder if there is a wider gap between the smartest and dumbest humans, and the equivalent extremes in other species?

At our best, we accomplish astonishing things that melt brains to consider. However, the worst of us really are little more than what they would call (with derision) "animals", responding to base urges and the like, but dangerous, vindictive and controlling.
You mean where I can type in a search term and have it search within the files and tell me which one has that content?
> They also have what appears to be fratricide were they bludgeon another to death targeting vital organs

Apparently Orcas have developed this Kung-fu like thing, where they can kill a shark by just holding it.

http://worldtourwhilediving.com/2012/01/13/orca-flips-over-g...
Inovadora Camada Protetora Para Betão Criada na Coreia do Sul
I was a lot like you and the main thing I took away from your story is not that you're so different, but that you're _really_ young. I thought almost all the same things you did about books, being smarter than your peers, being an alien (for me it was an alien robot). When I was 12 or so I saw a kid on TV talking about how he intentionally made an inventory of facial expressions and body language and it literally changed my life to know I could do such a thing. You're not as different from other people as you think, but you're just coming out of the age where you think you are (again, I know from experience).

You've made it to the point where you know you have to make a change, which is awesome. I hope you can also get to the point where you can stop being so self-conscious about being different and just live your life. Unclench a little. I'm almost 35 and I'm just now starting to enjoy people in a real way, having done a program of "Fake it til you make it" for years. You're entering real adulthood now and you'll make adult friends, you'll move on and get some perspective on things. Take it from me, it seems like an impossibly long time now but in 5 years you'll look back on this story in a very different way.
Actually, the very bottom of the About page has a link to and logo of Barracuda networks, but yeah - the about page needs a lot of work.
> If I heard a voice

It's more like talking to yourself. (There's a school of thought that language is thought; related is Sapir–Whorf). The limitation of words is a strength; it enables you to pin down ideas precisely, like butterflies for careful examination. But do it too soon, and they slip through the net.

Capturing thought in words implies that thought differs from words; but words are an important tool of thought. Linguistic thought seems a builtin for humans and our intelligence would be less if we did not have words - and not just for communication/collaboration and external storage.

BTW: There was a study of mathematicians done about a century ago IIRC, and it was found that about 70% of them thought visually about mathematics; about 15% verbally/linguistically; and only 5% thought in actual mathematical notation.
How do you do job scheduling?
Maybe I've been brainwashed by statistical NLP people, but I think this summarizes my understanding pretty well.

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

> "Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up"

As far as I know, modern, successful NLP systems don't have much human knowledge baked in and are produced by training on large data sets.
it's funny seeing how traffic drops during weekends :)

Happy Birthday HN!
If this based on pdf.js, because after being initially thrilled by it, we found it to be unusably buggy on all major browsers.
The company would be profitable now if not for the several cases of Ramen needed to pay for the acquisition.
Congrats HN

ps: any way to recover old username with no email on file.
Good for you. You'll be in good company. These folks aren't HN-rich either: fighter pilot, fireman, teacher, social worker...
Skipping the cruft, the question is "Why now?"
...and locked-down so that you cannot run the software you want, and the ability for Sony to remove features whenever they want (and you cannot disable that).
It's not like it would be a new concept to humankind:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_language
Origami.com is close to launch... when you About page said "origami is an...." I at first thought you guys were related.

Especially given what Origami.com is trying to do...
TL;DR: Google's focus on the mass market, social stuff and slick appearance is precisely the wrong path to be going down for a user interface as novel as this.

http://gyrovague.com/2013/01/25/dorky-is-ok-google-glass-doe...
Surface RT in China: Just 30,000 units shipped in Q4 2012
Leaning on the code of other people is something you do very deliberately, and it's a mistake to think that it always saves you time.

If you think you're saving yourself from reinventing wheels by adding Yet Another Gem into your gemfile, then you'll quickly find yourself constrained by the code of other people instead of your own code and mental model.

Your app becomes a mat woven of interdependent Things That Almost Do What You Want and you'll spend more time wrestling with other people's code than the time it would've cost you to write and maintain exactly what you needed in the first place and no more.

It's sort of like that time you thought Devise was going to save you all this trouble but soon realized you merely moved the battlefront from (A) a diff'able domain that you control to (B) Google SERPs, Stack Overflow answers, and a Github wiki page of customization boilerplate and copy-and-paste'able incantations that sorta do what you want.
LOL! It is actually a great idea! If anyone in the world should come up with a system like that it will definitely be an Estonian for sure.
Two notes:

1) They raised $100MM just 9 months ago. That's $300MM raised in
under a year. Money is stupid cheap and this is sorta terrifying.
2) The word "revenue" is not contained within FTW.

Instagram drew an incredible line in the valuation sand as a "comp".
Though Google's a big company, they still have bottom lines to meet. I think the key word in your comment is "mostly", and how much that means to the average Glass user. What you think of as "mostly free" may be preciously expensive to someone else.
That "amazing triangle" idea is just nonsense.

For example, computers have gotten faster, better, AND cheaper over time.

There definitely are women who are sane, smart, and beautiful. Are you kidding me? Just walk around any research university where they're doing graduate-level research and you will see lots of them.

As for the other gender triangle, pg is definitely handsome, sensitive and rich, so there's your disproof.

The "no silver bullet" thing is talking about something totally different. And it's an observation specific to software engineering (or, possibly, other specific domains, considered individually). There is a silver bullet for vaccinating against polio, but not for classroom teaching techniques.