skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The article is about how little study has been done about sleep:

> One of the biggest problems I’ve discovered is that sleep is such an over talked topic. We get the general idea that we know all about it: how much we need of it, how it impacts us and why this or that happens when we sleep. Once I took a step back to really think about where our knowledge about sleep comes from, I realized that nearly all of it is based on hear-say or what my mom told me when I was in elementary school.

I was merely quoting some well-known wisdom (among Chinese) (but not well-followed) from an old book [1] written based on actual clinical experiences. And it also happens to support fakeer's suggestion. If that's not up to some scientific standards, at least it is one step above "hear-say" and "what my mom told me", don't you think?

This is such a complicated subject, and I doubt there has been any concrete study that can conclusively prove anything. For me, the point of the article is to provoke exactly this kind of discussion.

[1] That's what the wikipedia article is about.
Just an aside, but I gotta say: the line "it's hard to tell if madness drove them into the drains or if it found them down there in the dark" gave me goosebumps. That's a beautiful turn of phrase.
My 2¢ is that it's gonna crash like it did a couple years back.
Then would be the best time to buy, since it will probably do this crazy business once again.
Not being fluent in the ins and outs of bitcoin: what is driving this? Is it pure speculation? Are more people trying to get in on the BTC wagon (riding the Cyprus wave)?
I'd like to know how many users are actually 'being entertained' as supposed to scratching a slight addictive itch.
Yet people aren't. Apparently there's still enough belief to warrant this kind of growth.

(..getting ready to eat my own words, real soon..)
Tony Hoare, another Turing award winner, also doesn't have a PhD.
"Some of us bought ours around $.85 and sold when there was no way it could go any higher around $30."

Picking tops and bottoms is a fool's game.
By the time you start seeing comments like this, it's generally too late and it's already built into the price. People have been speculating Zynga would do this for years now.
Standard bubble advice applies here.

1) the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. (Keynes)

2) a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Bank your profits. It turns exponential gains into linear gains, throwing away a huge amount of potential profits. But a small amount of real profit is worth more than a huge amount of potential profit.
I can confirm that I saw a large number of these urls show up in my logs as well.
http://www.browserstack.com/ has been great for me. I hated having to keep a bunch of windows VMs hanging around on my HDD just for IE testing.
I was also a long-time user of AeroFS, but SyncApp from BitTorrent has worked much better for me so I've switched over. I would recommend giving it a try.
True, but that's a separable issue. Immigration has always made America stronger, it's almost redundant to state this given that our country exists as a result of immigration.

My contention is that more "R&D" spend (particularly by government) will not lead to better outcomes in innovation.
> I think the similitude is deceptive.

It's not.

> Since declarative programming is side-effect free, the runtime can perform the operation in the most efficient way it knows.

The point of declarative programming is to declare what you want done. The runtime may turn it into greatness or crap, that's not really relevant.

> In your example, if you replace max() with a function that prints something, you'll see it's executed for each value in 'table', which is extremely inefficient.

It's also not relevant and an implementation detail, with a known max() on a known type the implementation would be free to lift the computation out since this expression doesn't have side-effects. Just as a crappy SQL DB would be free to run the subquery once for each result.

> This happens because Python can't guarantee that max() will return the same each time.

The runtime can know that all types and functions involved are their native side-effect-less versions and is free to optimize them if it wishes, that it does not is irrelevant.

> Unlike in SQL, in Python you're always telling it HOW you want it done.

Nope, sorry, you're wrong.
Enable $! - protip
NASA's quest to make aviation fuel from saltwater plants
I agree with you, and perhaps i used a poor example, i was just saying that there is sometimes an alternative route, i'm not saying that you should take it though, but i think being aware of it would be valuable.
I still don't understand how a nonexistent coin could be worth anything. No really. How does solving an algorithm translate into value?
"a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Bank your profits. "

Are you implying that banks are safer way to store wealth then Bitcoin? #Cyprys ;)
Simplified shapes?

I shouldn't have to say this, but you know it's not the same thing.

UK being a nanny state is not a good thing.

I agree, and it is all too easy to say "BUT WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE KIDS!"

It is the job of the parent to give and take access to things.

But how far do you go with this? Should parents keep their children in a virtual home prison? Basically, where do you draw the line between "Parents, stop your children doing X!" and "Parents, your surveillance is evil!"

It's not easy. One thing we should be able to agree on, though, is that using childrens-book cartoon characters in gambling products does no-one any favours.
They sure are. Just not in Cyprus.
I cannot ----ing believe it. I thought there would be a bump when it hit $100, but not this much. It's just insane, I was calling it a bubble since $30, and it's doubled again and again..

I wonder how low the crash will go? I'm guessing it won't be below $30.
European data watchdogs target Google over privacy
A currency which changes in value by around 40% in a 24 hour period is completely useless for the transactions I mostly deal with. We worry about a few percent change over weeks and insist on hedges.

Imagine saying to someone - I'll put 1000 BTC into your venture when you reach the next milestone in two months. What's that going to be? USD 100,000? USD 50,000? USD 1.50?
Teaching Programming on iOS and EC2.
Indeed, it's surprising. I wonder if it has dedicated circuitry to do the verification, or that it somehow executes a verification program on the processor itself. I suppose it's the second because the first sounds really expensive.
So what? Microsoft increases Office prices, Google fills the page with even more ads, Zynga ads legal gambling.
I used to work as a developer in the gambling industry in the UK so have a bit of experience in this field.

The UK gambling industry has done a really good job of self regulating, they know that if they are too exploitative and do dirty tricks to get more money from customers, the government would step in and regulate them.

We spent a lot of time building features to give customers some control. For example, users could set hard limits to stop themselves playing too much, or they could ban themselves from the site. If users were playing for too long, we'd also ban them from the site temporarily. We also implemented a lot of features which would stop them banning themselves and then rejoining using their spouses account.

It'll be really interesting to see if Zynga plays by the same rules.
particularly if you're hypercritical of your own work, like I am

Heh, I think there are few people out there who think differently :)

For me, I'd love to have a couple of hours every day that I could dedicate to getting my piano playing back to the level I was 15 years ago. C'mon passive income!
Value, be it in gold or silver or USD or EUR or bitcoin or cars or art, is a perceived phenomenon. Something has value because others are willing to trade it for goods and services (or for other forms of value). Gold and silver are trusted stores of value because they have been used in that capacity for centuries (and for a very long time, USD were silver certificates so there was real metal backing the paper)

The underlying value of BTC, IMO, is the anonymity feature (the ability to conduct commerce without a clear centralized record identifying you by name). Once that is compromised, it's not clear what value BTC will have.
It doesn't.

'Value' comes from people's perception. The fact(s) that they can't (until the crypto is broken) be counterfeited or double spent (within reason/time limits), and that there are a limited amount ever, and that transfer is decentralised and unregulated, these things give them value to some people.

The actual hashing work done is useful to provide the above features. IMHO it is not useful in and of itself.

Note that I'm not really an advocate of bitcoins either, but I have taken a bit of time to try and understand them. The limited quantity and decentralisation are not positive features of a currency (again, IMHO)
He shouldn't just accept this. There has to be something to be tried. With his notoriety, the option to try some experimental new treatment should at least be considered.
Google increasing the volume of ads does not exploit peoples addictions (of which a huge chunk of their revenues would derive from)

Zynga releasing a skinned online casino doesn't check any of HN's boxes of values in my opinion.
How much can "Certified Hacker News Professional" get me?
I know "X for Y" descriptions can be useful shorthand, but "Linux of online learning"? Really?

I know many HNers groaned at yesterday's Morozov essay, but we might do well for ourselves if we take some of the buzzwords back a notch or two. It would go a long way towards preserving the meaning and significance of important words. If anything that is "open" can be "the Linux of something," then what is Linux?
H-1B Visa Cap likely to be met by Friday April 5th
Rant on not driving and living downtown
What happened in Cyprus will not happen in the US. It's far easier to just print a ton of money than it is to confiscate or force a bank collapse (and Cyprus didn't have that option because they don't have control over EUR)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-t17wziSnA&t=26s
Digital disruptions to Embed Technology into the Human Body and Emotions?
That's a lot of tulips.
There was a hit song written following KLF's guide: "Edelweiss", by Edelweiss. Truly a one-hit wonder.
I still don't understand how a piece of rock could be worth anything. No really. How do some carbon atoms translate into value?

Value is a transient concept, many things we assume to be inherently valuable are simply based on the assumption everyone else will continue to value them as much (or more) as they do now.
HTML5 canvas image processing
Depends how many people get badly burned by this I would have thought. It could pretty easily drop to almost nothing if confidence is completely bust, as the 'fundamentals' supporting the price of BTC are far from obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_discoveries

Scroll down and look for Circadian rhythm.
How are people still actually using it to _buy_ things?

My problem with this rate of change is that it makes it harder to use it as a means of buying things.

If I see an item for sale for 2.5BTC then it can take me an hour to translate my GBP into BTC. Then I carry out the exchange, and then they have to transfer it back to their currency (if they want to spend it on most things).

If the value has gone up 15% in that time then what price should they be charging me?

Should a shopfront be updating its prices on an hourly basis?

I'm all for BTC being valuable, but it needs to have _some_ stability to be used as a method of value exchange.
This is only sort of true - if you don't want to get a law school degree, you have to apprentice for four(?) years with a lawyer or judge who "sponsors" you to the bar, and you have to pass multiple tests. So you can't just walk up, take the bar, pass, and practice.
Time to stop using the word "hack" for non-hacking activities. It's not cool. Just dumb.
Ask HN: How to build a portfolio?
I am looking build my portfolio for web development, which currently consists of my personal website. I have reached out to a couple of local businesses about working with them probono, but their responses have been "can we see what you've done so far." When I send over only one link they pass me over. How can I work on building my portfolio when people won't let me work for them for free without a portfolio?
"A currency which changes in value by around 40% in a 24 hour period is completely useless for the transactions I mostly deal with"

1. IIRC Silk road uses some average price rather than the spot price

2. Does anyone provide BTC hedging? Seems like a pretty useful and profitable service.
I can see that there are many different opinions about this, but I think this raises an important question to startups that start free and plan to convert into a paid service on how it should be done the right way, without upsetting customers.

IMO, I think it depends on when they made these plans. If this was their path from the beginning and the service was free for a specific reason, I think it should be clearly pointed out on the website that the service is free for only a specific period of time.

If the plan of charging customers was added later on (after customers stared using the service), the solution would be to: definitely don't charge customers without them opting in, even if you send them an email, even if you wait for some days after to start charging. Changing customers to a temporary "trial" phase would be a good idea I think. This way, customers will know that they need to pay when they use the service the next time.
It makes impossible for a developer to charge BT on any service. Tell me how you do it without being overpriced the next day.
I disagree about the first one. I think that is easier to understand, easier to add more options and less prone to errors.
The world's poorest president
Not to rain on the parade, but I just got started with ios and I gave up on getting AFIncrementalStore to work properly. RestKit looks much more solid to me. Can any actual ios developers (e.g. someone with more than 14 days of experience) comment on that?
I don't know if it was predictable. It was a thesis that turned out to be incorrect, but on what basis could it have been discounted until tried?

Wrt to my own team, we would not have done great in w13 .. it turned out that we were not a "team", we didn't work well together and had vastly, irreconcilably, different views. Some people just aren't meant to work together, and I'm glad to have learned this sooner rather than later. I now know what to look for in co-founders, and that's not a meager knowledge.
Heh some of us only sold 80% of the lovely bit coins. Muhahah.
Let's see: By increasing prices Microsoft exploits already hooked business, increasing their costs; Google by adding ads cuts traffic to non-paying sites (ads are on top) and causes consumers to pay more. All these have consequences and display no innovation, just opportunism.

Sure gambling is a tricky moral issue but it's legal. Entire communities and even states depend on it. Why shouldn't Zynga get a cut?
The subsidies are a problem, but help to balance the fact that the government isn't taxing emissions properly
The solution to this problem, of course, would be data protection laws with actual teeth:

Make it a crime to collect, store or distribute personal data without the written, explicit consent of those of whom you collect said data in so far as this data is not absolutely necessary for the expected conduct of business (i.e. billing information when you buy something) and give people the right to a listing of data stored about them and to require the deletion of said data at any time. Then jail the CEO of the next company to violate said law and auction it off to the highest bidder. Boy would people look into only collecting necessary data and respecting their users’ privacy.

As an added bonus, all the crappy business ideas that only work because of targeted advertising would go downhill, too, ridding the net of gossip news, irrelevant apps and whatever else one doesn’t like :)
I wish to god this news had arrived 2 days ago on April 1st :(

Ian (M) Banks is amazing and will be sorely missed.

I can't believe there won't be any more Culture novels.
I have no idea if the UK gambling industry has been an exemplary beacon of self regulation, but even if that is the case it is no guarantee that it will continue to be the case.

You yourself say the only reason that they don't exploit their customers more and 'do dirty tricks' is because of the threat of regulation.

How can we trust entities that make important decisions like these not based on actual care for the end user, but based on the threat of government regulation? (Which might actually be a good thing!)

What you've told me doesn't fill me with any confidence at all. You've described to me what sounds like a delicate and potentially quite volatile situation.
Dell: computing the price
Awesome, i have quite a bit of unity3d experience for game development and now as a freelancer would love to work on some non-gaming related Unity3d Applications.

We currently are in discussions for a project that will visualize a sailing race in 3D with live GPS locations of the actual boats. Viewers could actually see the visualized race in the browser (flash) or on their mobile device of choice!

As a performance hint: I dont think you need to read the Socket every frame (so 60 times per second at 60fps), doing it 5-10 times per second should be more than enough as there will be some latency involved anyway.
You first need to put up your email address in your user page. I could use some help for some websites, but there's no way for me to reach you (see my user page for my email).

If you are still in school, obviously school projects help. Also, making dummy sites isn't a bad idea.

I also recall someone who just took some corporate websites and did a redesign (unpaid, just on his own blog to say what he thinks the design should be) and was ultimately hired by microsoft.
Best books for Rails programmers
It's cool to be contrarian, haven't you heard?
[Job Offer] PhD in Systems Neurobiology for hackers interested in the brain
Dear HNs, my lab at Imperial College London has a vacant position for a PhD student in Systems Neurobiology. I am turning to HN because I am looking for someone with a hacker/maker profile. Background in Biology or Genetics is a plus but not essential.

More info about the position can be found here: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/bbsrcdoctoraltrainingpartnership/phdprojects/ethomicsindrosophila

If you have any query please get in touch privately or in this thread.
Hybrid Memory Cube receives its finished spec, promises up to 320GB per second
>One thing we should be able to agree on, though, is that using childrens-book cartoon characters in gambling products does no-one any favours.

FarmVille was never made for kids or to appeal to kids. Children are not the only ones who like cartoon characters. None of this is marketed to kids. If they marketed on the same channels or sites kids go to then I'd agree with you but as is aesthetics alone is not enough.

Just because it does not appeal to you does not mean it doesn't appeal to other adults. It does not mean it automatically appeals to kids either.

>Should parents keep their children in a virtual home prison?

I'm not about to tell parents what to do, but if I were a parent I would want my kids to be as wordly as possible and to understand the way things work as soon as possible. Understanding that gambling is not a way to make money (unless you own the machines) is a good thing to know. It's not about being a hawk and watching every action, and banning things so there is no chance of anyone being exposed. It's about building up key knowledge, allowing them to make mistakes, and having a positive enough environment where they can safely learn from their mistakes.

Most people who do gamble with slots do it for entertainment only: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1705333...
I thought that having the email field filled in would display it publicly. My mistake, my email address is now visible to the outside world.
Calculate the exchange rate automatically? This is not 1900.
Nobody really knows. The common thought is that as more merchants start accepting BTC, it becomes more viable as a stand-alone currency and therefore more valuable. Facts seem to contradict this theory as 40% overnight growth cannot represent a 40% growth in the BTC economy. Thus either we undervalued BTC all along, or it is against bubble.
I like that Amazon is sharing the benefits of their massive scale with their customers. Though, by keeping their margins slim, they'll make it increasingly harder for smaller vendors to compete.
Speculation.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that (in the world of BTC) the Cyprus situation has triggered anything other than rampant speculation by non-cypriot libertarians who already distrust central banks and now have a boogeyman to point at.
I've seen my grand mother die from gallbladder cancer. Weeks leading to her death she was miserable, she didn't have a minute of rest. Since then I understand why some people choose to end it early instead of prolonging the suffering...
FWIW, I've ordered the first three novels of the Culture series. I didn't know of Iain Banks until today and his terrible news.

I just wish he'll live the most playful last months of his life with his soon-to-be wife. We cannot wish for anything less.
My company wants all devs to get that certification. It's worthless. Most of it is just memorizing some java quarks
If I have subscribed to receive their email I wouldn't mind receiving an Aprils Fools Joke once a year.
My God. I hope people aren't actually thinking this article is anything other than complete horse dung.

I was in charge of a guy who was a CBAP (Cert Business Analysis Professional) at my last job. Incompetent, and paid well under what the article claims you can make. (still more than he deserved)

I love how the SBIP is referred to as "big data" cert....That is so wrong on so many levels.
Nav/sitemap design: a new tool for card sorting analysis
There are PopCap themed slot machines already. Their characters are just as "kid friendly" in the sense that they are simple and stylized, but again PopCap's products are for adults and not kids.
If it drops to $15, I'm going to try to get a physical Casascius coin just for the hell of it:

https://www.casascius.com/
واي ماكس ليبيا
Price your goods in USD and do the conversion at payment time.

Didn't think of that idea did you?
her experiences, maybe? i believe the poster in question is more likely than not to be female
Edit: ah, it seems most people are saying "he" so I suspect prior knowledge of a known poster (though still unclear). My "male assumption" sexist lights were flashing pretty heavily though.
To enable hedging, someone would have to take a forward position in USD/BTC .. and at the moment, the market is in contango ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contango ) which means that the sentiment is that the price will continue to increase for the near term ... ie you'd have to be very brave indeed in order to put a limit on the expected BTC price.