skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a very strange objection.

Some people (or even a lot of people, I don't know) think it helps them read code if different syntactic elements have different visual appearances.

You seem to argue that they "shouldn't" feel that, since it hasn't been "proved".

Sure, you can do a study and somehow try to measure if some dimension of understanding is more easily acquired with or without syntax highlighting, but what would be the point? To then force those who like it, to not use it anymore? Why?

In other words, if you like Cubist art, or hamburgers, or tofu, do you require all of those to be somehow "proven" before you're allowed to like them?
It's OK to be an amateur
A discussion about the importance of amateurs in many professional fields
Social science: Dr Seldon, I presume
I'll weigh in, I had no problem with her thesis. What about it did you have a problem with?

As for her questions, they weren't a blanket judgement, more sometimes this is how far wrong what you say with good intention can go. It's a warning. And I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to back each up with at least one example which is all that's needed to demonstrate we need to be more careful and more aware of our internal company culture.
Old media in general is a slow, sloppy kiss of death.
State schools are relatively cheap, community college is really cheap, and public high school is free. If you can prove a need, you can go to your state's top state school for borderline free (I have a friend who was paid $100/semester to go to umass).

There's no real equivalent to any of those in medicine -- if I have a problem and don't have employer-provided insurance, I'm bankrupt, period.
my post was tongue-in-cheek...

We have elections. Demanding that a petition from 100,000 people override the results of an election is ridiculous. The administration is responding to the petitions with their position -- I think that's about all they have the right to expect.
I hope someone from Goldman Sucks reads this.
Why I switched from Mint.com to Pageonce
I think Token has the longest list of that sort of thing. I'm sure he'll be along shortly to post it ITT. Dig through his comments here if you can't wait. http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tokenadult
A Lockheed employee presented at Google's SolveForX. It's been widely reported.
I think you two are coming two extreme ends of the spectrum. He's coming from the "clueless one-dimensional engineers" end of the scale, and you're coming from the "we are digital gods" end.

The truth lies somewhere down the middle, though I think you're a bit more extreme on your end of the scale than he is.

It's hard to take your views seriously when you describe your kind as "technopriests", and claim that people understanding nothing but computers "understand more about today's world than most people out there". This is a laughable claim.

I'm sorry, I can't get over this. Technopriest? This is the real world, not Snow Crash.

> "Many things are going to disappear and be replaced by 0's and 1's."

Yes, and they are being replaced by 0's and 1's in specific spaces where those doing the replacing must understand non-computer things about the space. Want to automate the entire traffic control system (LA just finished doing this)? Sorry, you have to know a great deal about transportation.

Want to automate food production? Sorry, you must know a great deal about both manufacturing and food. You can know all you want about computers, but unless you know these other topics you're useless. Well, you could be coding to a spec from someone who actually has a broad base of knowledge - a cog in the machine at that point.

The future belongs to people who have a deep understanding of computers and [insert relevant field]. Those who understand just computers have only a future pounding keyboards and not making decisions.

You know what, you're right - there will be "technopriests" in the future - but they will be the ones with a broad base of knowledge on top of technological mastery. They will not be the ones who understand tech and nothing else - those will be the digital equivalent of janitors.

Though they might fancy themselves technopriests while the world passes them by.
(If anyone's curious to take a glance at (a nicely formatted version of) Wittgenstein's Tractatus, a "side-by-side edition" (three columns: original German and two English translations), here's a very nice source for PDFs of various sizes (including latex source): http://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/ (p.s. I'd go so far as to entirely skip Russell's intro, maybe..))
Does the time flow back for you?
We're going to include pure JavaScript examples. I understand the confusion that comes with the fact that most examples are CoffeeScript.

There's nothing that makes this approach impossible to use with JS. The code samples are Coffee, because that's what we write our production apps in.
Singapore's model needs to be studied more closely. A mandatory savings plan for catastraphic insurance plus consumers spending for their own health care. I don't know the details but there is a decent amount of literature:
http://blog.jparsons.net/2009/08/why-singapores-health-care-...
We were struggling with this problem for months.

What would you suggest to bundle into this library?
"What is the big O time of heap sort?" vs "Would you mind writing a function that returns true if any two numbers in the list sum to zero? For example, it would return false for [2,3,5] and true for [-3,5,3]"

Are completely different questions. The first is useless: It tests if someone remembers how a heap sort works, and whether or not they use the term "worst case" in the answer.

The second one is much better. Some could sort the list, (nlogn time, constant memory) then walk through it. They could use a hash table (idealy n time, assuming no collisions, but more memory). You also get to see if their solution handles the 0 case. If they answer it very quickly, you can move on to the three sum problem. If they recognize the question from university or something you can do a different one.

If someone doesn't know the big-O time of iterating through a list of integers once for every integer, then I seriously doubt their dedication to the field of software. This is not some pie in the sky doubt, it is of legitimate concern whether someone knows how to properly approach a problem of this nature with the right data structures, code, and communication.

Good interviewers put the interviewee at complete ease before they bring out the technical questions. From an economics point of view, it is better to hire the person that is in all other ways identical, yet interviews poorly, since they are less likely to want to leave.
Google Chrome v25 broke CSS gradients on OS X
The song of linux. http://song-of-github.herokuapp.com/?username=torvalds
Apparently it's dropped down to 4 years since that comment...
lets talk about drug dealers. The drug market isn't really a free market. THere isn't really easy competition, the means of production is difficult for people to get into. The participants don't really want to do it sometimes, but is forced to.

In fact, if the gov't legalized drugs, and let big pharmaceuticals produce these drugs, i reckon it'd drive the scarcity of the drugs down, leading to their devaluation, and the market would correspondingly collapse (as its no longer seen as the forbidden fruit).
Say you know the coordinates of all the corners of a cube in three dimensions. If you wanted to move that cube to the side and turn it, you could first add some fixed number to all the x coordinates of every point, then do some trig to find the coordinates again after a rotation. Turns out you can produce the same output with fewer steps using matrix math. That is, you can produce a single matrix which is representative of the transform "move right m units and turn d degrees". And you can apply that transform matrix to any set of points you want.

At least, this is what I've gleaned so far as someone that doesn't really understand. I welcome corrections.
Bullies Called Him Porkchop
It seems more like they make a risk-free blog post parroting general HN sentiment every couple of weeks for the karma/publicity. Not that fresh or honest if you ask me, and hardly pragmatic.
Can you parse html with regular expressions?
This is a nice piece of nonsense, but the Haskell part is the best.) Haskell is not meant to be accesible by anyone. yeah, sure.

I have a related story. When I was younger I thought that in order to properly understand Buddhism I must learn Tibetan language and then read "original" books. Later I have discovered that the right books are written in Sanskrit.) Thank goodness I've abandoned the idea.

If you take a modern translation of a Tibetan Buddhist text you will find tons of metaphors, language ornaments, stories upon stories, comments upon comments, and comments about comments about stories. This absolutely is not meant to be accessible by anyone.)) Lots of people are convinced that this is Buddhism.

There are thousands of people who spend their lives arguing why such and such ornamentation in Tibetan iconography has such and such color, why this or that deity must be depicted this or that way, and which arrangement of symbols in what order must represent this or that realm.

All this has absolutely nothing to do with teaching of the Buddha and the best way to learn it is by reading a few (definitely more than one) profound teachers.
Hopefully it'll boost this branch of the French economy.
Let's hope that on the way to reach that goal, the cost of internet stay the same (30€/month, 40$, for unlimited internet, unlimited landline phone calls and TV).
Because it's maybe the best to learn of the French internet those days, its cost : http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_cost_of_connec...
Creator of the first Turing-complete computer, Charles Babbage did a little philosophy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Other_accomplis...

"Babbage was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1832.[35] In 1837, responding to the Bridgewater Treatises, of which there were eight, he published his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation, putting forward the thesis that God had the omnipotence and foresight to create as a divine legislator, making laws (or programs) which then produced species at the appropriate times, rather than continually interfering with ad hoc miracles each time a new species was required. The book is a work of natural theology, and incorporates extracts from correspondence he had been having with John Herschel on the subject."
Is JavaScript's ubiquity a bad thing for Node?
I don't know what the deal is in Germany, but in the UK BT have finally launched a FTTH option, so the numbers will start creeping up.

The name, in case anyone wants to look it up, is "BT Infinity 160Mbps" - it's 160Mbps down, 20Mbps up.

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/fas...
These puzzles and IQ tests are as pervasive as they are irrelevant. Nowadays, you even need to pass one to get some government jobs. Here's the one to pass to get a job in the EU agencies:

https://europa.eu/epso/application/passport/quiz.cfm?lang=EN...
Pipelining in elixir / erlang
Actually, yes...they do. I work in a building with an elevator control system designed by an internal engineer.

More importantly, the elevator control system uses mathematical expertise that is normally used solving variants of the multi-commodity flow problem, used extensively in the Supply Chain.
Just out of curiosity: what if fusion was perfected? what are the consequences? massive economic growth & population? Does the earth become an heat sink?
Banks might call banks lobbying for special treatment a "free market", but that doesn't make it true.
I consider myself a proficient developer, however, in situations where I'm required to solve an obscure puzzle while someone is staring at me, generally makes me uncomfortable...no matter how easy the question. I interviewed for an internship position at Microsoft, where I was required to write some bizarre code on graph paper while the interviewer literally stood over my shoulder. Horribly uncomfortable, I barely made any progress, and was subsequently denied a position (obviously). After the interview, I went home and solved the question in a matter of minutes, wrote the code, optimized, and fully tested it. While I choked during the interview, I saw fellow classmates fly off to Redmond...classmates that I knew weren't better developers than I was, simply because I had worked with many of them on projects several times. That's when I knew this whole puzzle interview stuff was nonsense.
Yea this is where I'm at with it. If I walk into an interview and the first question is what is the difference between an abstract class and an interface my interest in the interview is probably going to decrease exponentially. How about asking me about my design approach to a specific problem, what frameworks have I try when presented with a specific problem and my thoughts on it, or what I'm currently learning.
I get why they do it but at a certain level it's almost a sign of disrespect to be asked to fizzbuzz if you can verify I've been working at reputable companies for the last x yrs. Let's have a more nuanced discussion about technology so that you can confirm that I didn't just cram certification questions over the weekend and I can get a gauge on the type of problems I may have to tackle on the job.
To close the loop with celticninja:

1. For a given desired government outcome there exists some optimal taxation level. (This is a function, f(desired_outcome) = optimal_level, not a constant; I'm not assuming a particular desired outcome here.)

2. Unless you think the desired taxation level is 100%, it is possible to tax more than the optimal.

3. Even given optimal taxation it is still possible to obtain a suboptimal result.

Given the sheer staggering size of US government intake, and particularly the growth of the intake in the past decade with very little apparent growth in government services to show for it (bear in mind the sharp growth began under Bush and predates the financial crisis), it is hardly irrational that some people might think that we are currently experiencing either or both of a tax intake greater than the optimal or results not commensurate with the taxes taken in by the government, in which either case the logical conclusion is to not simply blindly increase taxes, either taking us further from the optimal tax base or feeding an inefficient system yet more money to spend suboptimally.

The per capita spend of the US government in 2013 is going to be ~$12,000 on a per capita debt of ~$55,000[1]. The per capita spend of, say, France, was on an income of 1.55 trillion Euro [2] and a population of 65.5 million, about 2300 Euro per capita, about $3000ish. It's not exactly unfair to wonder what we're getting for that much more money.

[1]: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/US_per_capita_spending.h...

[2]: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/france/government-spending , though you'll have to fiddle with it a bit

[3]: https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&#...
Show HN: Track your focus time and interruptions
It seemed like a pretty safe assumption to make given the nature of the device. Google shipping a web-oriented device with non-square pixels would be very strange of them because of all the potential problems this would entail. Are there any modern portable computers with non-square pixels? For that matter, were pixel aspect ratios other than 1:1 ever prominent on LCD portables?

Last time I had to deal with non-square pixels on x86 was when programming mode 13h graphics for DOS at a 320x200 resolution (which was then stretched to 4:3). The only thing that comes to my mind that you could do now with modern equipment would be to connect your laptop/PC to a bargain bin plasma panel that has a 1024x768 physical resolution and achieves a 16:9 aspect ratio by virtue of non-square pixels [1]. My first encounter with one of those caused me trouble when I wanted to use it with a Linux PC some time ago.

[1] http://hometheater.about.com/cs/television/f/aaplasmafaq5.ht...

Edit: expanded first paragraph.
Newbie programmer here. How hard would it be to add RSS to this? It could be an interesting project to help me learn Python.
Google's Chromebook Pixel: An even worse idea than Windows 8
A fake castle in the woods makes me think the area was used as a Renaissance Festival sometime in the past.
> Isn't that leaving off a bit of context? Ask them if "Hiring someone who plays hoops on to a team that thinks basketball is a stupid waste of time and recently campaigned against tax payer funding of a local venue for an NBA team." is a smart idea.

There is a big difference between someone who plays some basket ball after work with some friends for their weekly exercise as opposed to what ever white male programmers are doing for sport to stay healthy (... nothing?) to pro sport NBA level players. This is a ridiculous argument.

I rock climb for my sport at work. No one else does. We haven't all gotten into huge arguments or ever been massively distracted by it. Some other people play badminton. Soem go to the gym. Some run. Some swim. Honestly, personal sport preference differences haven't destroyed our company opr even impacted it.

In fact I'm getting pretty tired of this defence of the thesis that "diversity is bad" because that's unproven and in fact I submit it's garbage. I'll posit diversity is actually good and makes things stronger.

But at this point with out either of us providing back up we're pretty much arguing for different world views and aren't going to get much further
Exactly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(construction)
Some examples would be great
Annoyingly this wasn't always the case. Since privatization this has been the case. Prior to that you could get a TOPS terminal/feed for a nominal fee and do what you want with it.

Now, it's covering arses and nothing more.
Logic puzzles test how much the candidate prepared for logic puzzles. It implicitly tests how much the candidate "wants the job", but it also has the effect of turning away the stars who have options. As the best continue to have more and more options available to them where the team members understand that this kind of interviewing is counterproductive, companies that continue to use puzzles will end up with candidates that need them, instead of the candidates that they need.
Show HN: We're building a Flightfox competitor on steroids
Of course, you could always take smart people and train them - but seriously, who does that anymore?

The sad truth about this is that I think many companies are afraid an employee will leave shortly after receiving training. They fear that a competitor will entice away the employee without incurring the training cost. Of course, one way to avoid this is to make the work environment desirable enough so that no one wants to leave but that takes effort.
Reminds me of this supposed exchange between William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” –William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" —Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

>>Excellence in the grammar is also irrelevant.

It took me a long time to grasp the fact that there are very many intelligent and skilled people who have dismal grammar and spelling skills. It still troubles my mind when I encounter examples of it.
First thought: Looks great, artwork is fantastic.

Second thought: I don't have kids and maybe I don't have a clue, but I wonder whether kids will understand it, especially the concept of numeric temperatures. What age group are you aiming this at? I could imagine that for kids it would be more valuable to explain the weather ("It's gonna snow", "Warm enough for T-Shirts", "Don't forget your umbrella"...). Or maybe explain the numbers ("temperature is in the high 90s - that means that it's so hot your going to sweat").
HD4000 is far more powerful than a PowerVR SGX554MP4, or whatever mobile chips are out there.

http://cdn.itproportal.com/photos/ibvssb_original.jpg

The HD4000 is also ~20% of a 166mm^2 Ivy Bridge on 22nm. If HD4000 were made on 32nm process, it'd be well over 60mm^2 alone.

The PowerVR SGX554's 8.8mm^2 at 40nm, or approximately 5.6mm^2 at 32nm.

The Intel HD4000 is about 12x larger than PowerVR SGX554. They just aren't in the same class... they're no where close to the same class.

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

BTW: the Clovertrail Atom uses PowerVR Graphics. Intel could have bought any of the PowerVR designs, but they chose a significantly weaker one for some reason.

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

With regards to your edit: The Atom doesn't have an HD4000 at all.
I remember watching Google tech talk by Alex Martelli, where he mentions Wittgenstein as his favorite philosopher. Always wanted to learn more about Wittgenstein since than, but I guess I will have to find something more beginner friendly than Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus :)
Unless there is some major advancement in physics, it is going to remain the fact that fiber in the ground is going to offer massively more capacity than wireless. For the foreseeable future, you're going to want to be able to maximize your total capacity by taking advantage of terrestrial links when you have them.

As for switching to LTE--don't. I tried that here in New York, and it's not what it's cracked up to be. The only service with solid LTE performance is Verizon, and while the speeds are consistently good (5-8 megabits), they are "good" only as far as wireless goes, and it costs you $10/GB. I blow through 10-12 GB a month just barely using the internet, and not even downloading movies, etc. You'll spend several hundred dollars a month getting a decent amount of bandwidth, and for that price you can just get a decent cable connection for home and save the LTE for when you're on the go.
It looks like my HTTPSEverywhere add-on automatically redirects from http to https on Heroku apps.

Funny - the https link works for me.
Hi,

Perhaps you should post the stats, after subtracting out the bot visits, from the stats.

For our daily stats we do that. Also (internally) report the bot visit counts. For example yesterday we had:

Bot name	No. of visits
User-Agent=Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html),	95000*
User-Agent=Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm),	700*

* - the last few digits have been rounded off

Edit: For display