skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My parents were like this too, and my innate thirst for knowledge led me to persistently question people for years until I realized how much many people seem to dislike this.

I love explaining in depth and enjoy the opportunity to explore the boundaries of my knowledge. "Actually, I don't know! Let's find out!" comes out of my mouth often.

But so many people seem to get irritated or annoyed when I (inadvertently) expose their lack of knowledge. I still haven't quite figured out why, but I've been told on more than one occasion to "Stop grilling me!" when I'm simply curious about someone's job or how they see things.
re: the single most stupid thing I've heard in a while - wow, I say stuff way more stupid than that all the time. Really, though - most users don't look at a site and think 'gee, I wish the designer had dome something more original with the login UI'. They want to look at stuff and immediately know how it works. The UI needs to be almost mechanical. If they notice it, it is usually a bad thing, and if using familiar idioms helps achieve familiarity, then good.
Thanks a lot for sharing :)
Populating this by hand seems like an enormous task that will never end. How hard could it be to automatically populate the data from publicly available data sources (e.g. SEC filings)?
unless choice of hypothesis is a hell of a lot more impartial and rigorous and null-results and replications actually get reported on NO science is not value free.
This story sums up my own experience quite nicely as well. While I really enjoyed using Ubuntu/Debian for almost 6 years, when time came for a new laptop, I just didnt want to deal with yet another issue with nvidia cards or any other oddity. Paying the Apple premium price was a bargain when compared to hours spend getting little issues here and there worked out.
it depends, graphics systems have some pretty hard real time constraints for latency. The best gfx coders are required to find unique implementations/approximations for extremely difficult problems. Think about doom and carmack and what you would have to do to reproduce that given a 486.

Stuxnet imho wasn't that ridiculously impressive, though it was impressive, because the evidence is that "somebody" made sure the people writing it had appropriate sources.
This is such a profound statement with respect to our industry, and I think it represents an extreme opportunity:

I believe there is an incredible opportunity around providing lifestyle-support services that are NOT looking to gouge the people they serve.

Look at a service like Exec or even a service like Uber: both are fantastic, but both specifically target consuming all disposable income that they can from their userbase.

I think this is a short-sighted and limited model: there should be a lifestyle service that works on a percentage scale that is not seeking to maximize its immediate revenue from each and every user, but to help them maintain and grow.

If we look at the costs of the luxury and wanna-be-luxury sites, they are all myopic. None of them do anything other than appeal to the most base and traditional of consumerist norms: emotionally entice their target audience to spend their income on the service offered.

A parasite model.

Instead, imagine a company that offers a range of services based both on economy of scale, available resource by hour and user need.

Take the Tesla model: offer a luxury, yet newly innovative product which starts out as a high cost consumer item and work towards a more affordable, more widely available offering.

So you start a subscription service where you buy a block of available service hours. You can spend them on anything you want and switch it up each month.

Build a plan that started with an upfront payment for life evaluation.

* what is your situation?

* what are your goals?

* do you need your physical life organized?

* do you need a stylist?

* do you need an admin?

etc etc etc

You build out a profile of needs for N months - and build an intitial plan of action. From that baseline, you then have an available menu of services that the user can select from as needed. They do not have to use up their subscription hours and can accumulate hours for later/higher cost services later.

The company works to bring on 'task-rabbit' like folks for various tasks etc...

The goal is to allow people to focus on what they do without being gouged for premiums for any and every individual service they may need to maintain.

It's really sad that EVERYONE thinks that every service out there should net 100K+ (I took a cab to the airport and the COST to me as an individual was the equivalent to me paying someone $180K per year to drive me to the airport. (I can explain the economics of this in detail if you like..))
I often upvote stories using the metric "Would I add this to my 'saved stories' if it was a stand alone feature?". Very often the answer is yes even though I disagree with large portions of an article/don't think it's a good fit for HN.

What is a good heuristic for upvoting articles?
I have no opinion one way or another about either Yahoo or Best Buy, but in my experience (when I've seen these sorts of things go down in person at previous companies) once a company starts down the path of emergency policy changes to right the ship, the death spiral is more or less irreversible. The top employees are already either out the door or actively looking for their next gig, and in a couple of months the ranks will be down to primarily people who can't easily find more stable jobs elsewhere.

This is in large part the fault of the corporations themselves who over the past 20 odd years have mostly destroyed the idea of company<->employee long-term loyalty, particularly when it comes to companies larger than a couple of hundred people.
Because of a bad codebase Netscape ended up rewriting their system which took 3 years. In the meantime their browser lost market share:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Note that this is the inverse square root, i.e. 1/sqrt(x) (which can also be written x^(-1/2) ).
The best part is how you keep seeing the "Marissa Mayer is a genius because the remote workers who aren't performing will quit". No, the best ones will quit. The ones who can't get jobs elsewhere immediately will be the ones most likely to stay.
The chrome settings page links to https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an... , which links to http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-sugg... . If I remember correctly, the default configuration of Chrome is to have prediction enabled and Chrome Instant disabled, so the relevant section of the policy is:

"""Whenever you pause while typing in the address bar,
the text you've typed is sent to Google so predictions
can be retrieved. Google logs a random two percent of
these requests in order to help improve the service.
This information is anonymized within 24 hours.
"""
He's not wrong, though I think most people know 25^2
in general schools only teach 1-12.
My mother was/is kinda a math freak (in a good way) and made sure that we knew our squares through 20 plus fun numbers like 25(625) and 45 (2025) among other things (like decimal division).
She'd always decry our meager American education compared to her Soviet one, fun times.
Caesar 3 was an absolutely amazing, amazing discrete simulation game - circa 1997/1998. Another one, as good if not better, was Stronghold - a Castle simulation game. What I loved about both of those games is that you would see the wheat being carefully sewn, then grown, then carefully taken up to the stock pile, people would take wheat from the stock pile and grind it up into flour, flour would then be carefully baked into bread.

All of this was just a crazy assed hyper detailed element of a game in which you were trying to defend your castle from invaders.

Final awesome discrete simulation game (on my iPad) was Settlers. In this case, the tool/market chain was circular. As eventually the ores and coal that you mined would be required for tools that like fishing rods that would catch fish to feed your miners, etc...

Those three games Caesar 3, Settlers, and Stronghold were the three best gaming experience in the last 15 years for me.

Still looking for #4. We'll see if SimCity is there, I'm certainly hoping.
I wonder what the expected warrantee redemption rate is for these things, for all of them that fail. Say you had it for 5 years and it failed. If it was me, I'd just go out and buy another one. Perhaps a different brand, but I probably wouldn't think that far ahead. For something at this price point, does anybody really USE the warrantee?
How about collaboratively use Photoshop through your browser?
Hi Hacker News,

We are putting together a simple service that enable multiple users to collaboratively share a desktop application through their browsers.

The URL below is a Windows desktop with a trial Photoshop installed. If you access and share the URL with another user (or second browser tab), both browser sessions are collaborated.
http://pinemango.com/share.php?r=c437669d

We are interested in knowing:
- Would this service be of interest to you?
- Do you wish to see a certain desktop application you have to be shared/collaborated this way?

By the way, we are looking for co-founders with deep UI/UX design skills :)
> sorely lacking on consoles that I fear will never catch up

This is by design. Console software is made to be exclusive by default, what would be their selling point if the soft would run on anything else ? They have no interest whatsoever to define a unique standard for home consoles.
Agreed, have you seen Bootstrap's new default feel/theme?http://rc.getbootstrap.com

It's also more flat and metro. Anyone know of a release date?
For $10, I would return it for the next ten years. Problem is it costs $1.70 to send via USPS mail, but maybe you could wait until you had a couple to send back.
Ummm, I like my Roku 2 remote and the Roku 1 remote before that.

What about these remotes bothers you?
All this talk about asking mom and dad questions reminded me of the short story "Examination Day"

‘Why, Dad?’

‘Because it does, that’s all.’

http://www.thebostonbachelor.com/2008/examination-day-by-hen...
And games not launching at all, too. That's even worse. That happened several times for the few first Humble Bundles. Nowadays it is usually getting better.
You think so but no :)
Exec and Uber aren't gouging, though.

Exec is actually cheaper for cleaning than something like Merry Maids. Plus the workers get paid way more.

Uber is more expensive than a cab, but it did not come into existence because the founders wanted to gouge people who needed cabs. It happened because cab service in SF is so terrible, an alternative was desperately needed.
For me, it's history sync that brought be back to firefox. If you use HN/reddit/etc. from multiple computers, history sync is really helpful. Last I checked, chrome didn't sync history.
I'm sorry, but are you implying that stock price has anything to do with how well the company is doing? Because it doesn't.
Spice up your noise a bit:

http://archive.org/details/ApplPi
Is the upside down signature in the original?
That's very wavelength-specific, as this graph shows:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/Atm...

Water and water vapor has the same effect on the visual part of the spectrum also, but this doesn't reduce people's enthusiasm for it as a potential communications medium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_radiation
Well if you look at what other people have been saying, one way this can happen is as a condition of the promotion that will get you the high salary you were aiming for.
Noticed the signature at the end, the sign of one of the greatest hackers of our times.

Kudos sir.
Off topic, but am I the only one to find the automatic scrolling very annoying ? Don't move the page on my behalf.
Ha ha, yes, how bad those schools must be. They are wholly dependent upon Germans to answer the tough questions, like what is the square of 25, and what's your best guess for the square root of 21.

One only needs to remember a simple algorithm to compute any square by hand, and realistically a computer is always a better choice. I can't understand why you think memorizing more squares provides a better math education.
Also modifies history as you scroll.
That is a fascinating response. I was wondering how you would reply if someone asked the same question about selling a software.
This page has GOT to stop moving!! GRRRR. Who decided this was a good idea?
The consumer guys at Microsoft are just plain wrong
Telecommuting is here to stay and it will only become more common as old-school managers who don't understand technology retire/die off are replaced by young workers who grew up with technology.
I agree. I bought a Sylvania and while I like it, specially the 75W equiv, it's a bit pricey ($35). I'll be on the lookout for these next time I'm at a home improvement store. Also hope they come out with 75W equivs. Love the crees in torches as well.
"You are recognized by your own skills and good work, and you don‘t have to criticize others for not doing good work. Just worry about your own skills."

Reading from inspiring people like Wozniak makes me wonder how to adopt such advice.

I am wondering about that almost every time I review a pull request. How do you deal with bad code, poor comments or over-engineering when you see it? Of course you can be nice, but then code and product quality would end up affected. How do you balance this thing?? The person being reviewed knows it's not personal, but it too often becomes a battle of egos. I would be really interested to find ways to become a better programmer by being nicer without bending over or compromising on professional integrity. Any suggestions?
The Roku 3 remote uses Wi-Fi Direct instead of bluetooth.
Not just you, YesScript or NoScript solves this problem for me though.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/yesscript/
The 'fun' of maths isn't the same fun as you get from, say, playing another game of some casual computer game where you're simply switching off and doing something relaxing. It's fun in the sense that it's a challenge and provides immense satisfaction when you work out problems with it.

I've noticed that I get a rarely-rivaled sense of satisfaction when I see different bodies of knowledge that I've covered come together. For example, if my physics from school/uni help me solve a problem I'm facing at work, it gives a really good, satisfying feeling of mastery over the topics at hand. Deriving a solution without guidance, simply from your own existing knowledge, is a wonderful feeling.

The problem with this is that unless you embrace that 'inquisitive for inquisitive's sake' attitude, you don't easily justify fully exploring subjects like maths to the point of gaining that capacity. It's the same as programming, just as you touched on. Someone could be a moderate programmer if they learn what they need to spit out basic code to achieve an end goal, but you won't feel the same satisfaction of mastery as if you embrace the art and program things 'just because'.

The good thing is kids seem to be born with this attitude innately - just look at any young child explore the world around them. It's only really through social conditioning that it seems to be beaten out of them, as you say. Through good role models and leadership (e.g.: from teachers, parents) providing adequate material to feed that curiousity, it can be avoided.

It's fantastic that this kid's parents are willing to do what they did, just as your mother was willing to feed your curiousity. Understanding how significant it can be to the development of a child throughout their life is, I think, the key to fully appreciating the role that teachers (formal and informal) have in our society and why they should be valued far more than they often are at present.
Cookoo watch: A wearable extension of your iOS device
Is it just me or does this seem like an incredibly large untapped market?

I think the device will do well. It's damn sleek and the UI seems pretty intuitive/simple. If it can last a student 2 years; I'm sure it pays for itself.
Matrix algebra is one of the nicest courses to have had. Makes so many other maths and statistics subjects more easy to grasp.
I read "two critical plugins keep me stuck" and mis-completed the sentence in my head with "NoScript and GreaseMonkey."
Yes, it's his normal email signature.
That's absolutely false -- there are some obvious flaws with the game, but the complexity of simulation and macro-level focus is not one of them. I beta-tested, aka I actually got to play the game since all the servers are down.
Hah... the light bulbs today are the biggest scam ever.

Light bulbs made 100 years ago are still working today, because the materials used, more precisely, the filament, was made out of a lot more durable materials. However, companies quickly realized that if ligh bulbs lasted so long, no one would buy new light bulbs.

If you have not seen the light bulb conspiracy, please watch it on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPrTk90VZM

Planned obsolescence...

You can buy long lasting light bulbs made with stronger filament, of course they are no LED, but will probably last a century.
> iPhoto is an application. Not the OS.

This is needless (and incorrect) semantics. An OS is just a collection of applications (perhaps the distinction you were trying to make was the kernel or "base OS"). As far as the end user is concerned, when they get a new Mac it comes with iPhoto, which is made by Apple, the same people that make the rest of the OS (unless they get the ONE configuration of the Mac Pro which is the only hardware that doesn't include it). More importantly, when they plug any photo taking device into their freshly opened Mac, iPhoto pops up until they find and explicitly turn off the preference to do that. To and end user (and even by many of the existing technical definitions of OS), iPhoto is part of the OS.
Cree is one of the firms from the Wired feature on LED lightbulbs in the August 2012 issue:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/ff_lightbulbs/all/
I use this, and it works awesomely on the Roku; much better than the 360 with the DNLP(?) support.
Hmm, actually beats a CFL - although not by much, the CFL uses 11 watts, this uses 9.5.

But the CFL costs $1, this costs $13.

It lasts 3 times as long, but still - unless you really need great color accuracy (i.e. CRI), I can't see myself buying this. (I'm comparing to a CFL with the same warm color temperature.)

Edit: CRI of 80! That's worse than the CFL I'm comparing it to!

Why would anyone want to buy this? The small boost in energy efficiency is not worth the $10.
No, because even a highly handicapped person is capable of pieces of higher thought. They have an intact brain, after all. More or less the only way to remove them from the 'human mind' category is if they are completely braindead. In which case, sure it's okay to eat people that are already dead from natural causes.
Even still, that doesn't do anything about the energy savings you get with LED...
I wonder what effect an article like this will have on Bitcoin trading today, as half of HN's readership suddenly think FREE MONEY and go try buying some Bitcoins...
As a corollary to this, perhaps one of the most heartbreaking moments for a kid whose parents welcome their questions and feed them information is when you finally discover they don't actually know everything and that you've exhausted their ability to teach about a certain topic. I remember reaching that point several times and it always upset me, all the way from first playing around with computers and dad not having all the answers, to finally getting to maths beyond what either of my parents were taught towards the end of my high schooling.

It's upsetting, but I guess it's also gratifying if you can step back from the moment and realise that it means you're also becoming just as wise as those who you've always looked up to. That's powerful.
Nonsense.

You can trade long life for energy efficiency. That's all.

After some tweaking and market testing people settled on the current balance.

The old stuff is just not very efficient, that's why it lasts so long - nothing stops you from doing that today, just derate the bulb, use a bulb intended for a higher voltage (or put a dimmer on it).
He's assuming perfect implementation of the highest goals of any strategy I've ever seen, and there's no one entity to carry it out. What can we look at in the past to not consider this insane?
Unbelievable rise in such a short amount of time. This is an amazing event.
Written by a man who has gone "all-in" on Bitcoin.
Apparently quite a bit: BC on mtgox is now at $46 -- up from $35 2 days ago.
Wordnet is more a linguistical ressource, that focusses on word senses. You would not find things like POPULATION OF CITY-X there.
I've been chewing the idea of adding Cassandra to my stack for quite some time as Cassandra seems like inpenetratable moster :-)

Any pointers how to start? Also, do you have any posts on how you added Cassandra to your back-end?
Just checked MtGox, Bitcoin is now trading at $46... it was around $35 this time yesterday.

Things seem to be getting out of hand.
While those are interesting counterexamples, they don't come close to modeling a realistic "age-at-death" distribution. There isn't any such distribution whose median would be significantly skewed by a tiny minority of centenarian outliers. These distributions are basically unimodal with the exception of a some degree of infant mortality, and the average (median or mean) is not located at a thin spot in the distribution (quite the opposite) [1].

[1] http://www.longevitas.co.uk/site/informationmatrix/mortality...
This is a fairly old teaching method. I remember doing it over 30 years ago when I was 6 years old at Montessori. We used a wooden board and pegs though.
Uh, didnt that site have a volume slider at one point? And shouldn't OP's have one in Firefox?

This is getting quite annoying.
I created a playlist with soundtracks from indie games. Initially it was created as background music for playing StarCraft II, but I use it as background music when working instead.

It includes soundtracks from Bastion, Machinarum, Braid, Dustforce, Dustforce, Fittest, and Limbo.

http://open.spotify.com/user/pkhamre/playlist/53KjzBtdxdGmPZ...
I'm just saying. Plus, I still don't understand why people care about light bulbs saving energy. The majority of electricity consumed in a houses and apartments comes from the AC unit, refrigerators, heaters, TVs, and computers.

Implying that this light bulb will save you money would imply that you're terrible at keeping your lights off, and thus you should save money by continuing to exercise bad habits that cost you money.

The way I see it is, the problem with energy consumption in households usually stems from the consumer' habits, and not so much from the equipment used. People are terrible at turning the lights off. Just like my roommates. If I don't turn the lights off, no one else does.
Normal people forward silly jokes, or fake virus warnings, or fake cancer donation calls and stuff like that. Not sure it is that hard. Perhaps you could even monitor popular news sites for trending memes (for example trending YouTube videos).
>The real ultimate feature that's missing here though - the one that no one else has and would make go out and buy 3-4 of these things is the ability to sync audio and video playback across multiple devices throughout my house.

That seems like an incredibly niche feature.