skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>I flippantly argued that if your argument is "it's reasonable to assume science will solve the problem for us", you could apply that to essentially anything.

Well, I don't believe that anything is reasonable, that applies merely to reasonable things.

>I do think that "it's reasonable to assume" is faulty logic when talking about something that is beyond the current reach of science, and should be questioned at every possible opportunity.

Just because it's beyond the reach of technology, doesn't mean it's faulty to talk about it. It's clear that it will be possible in principle to travel to other planets, cure aging etc., but we don't have the technology for that yet.
What does exactly happen when an economy grows from 10 billion quatloos to 11 billion quatloos?

Until you tell me that, we are measuring woomdums in quatloos and while that can be kind of fun.. it not very rewarding.

If you speaking about physical output.. than the only way achieve this is to learn to produce woomdums cheaper.. Then there is no harm in selling them cheaper.

So do I want the money to grow to a degree that it will anihiliate the increase in productivity? Certainly not.
> Empirically

Citation needed.

There are studies out there showing that productivity is proportional to days spent on the problem, not hours. It's likely that for a knowledge worker, sustained schedules with long workdays actually reduce average productivity.

http://www.jamesshore.com/Articles/Business/Software%20Profi...

There may be some exceptional people who can defy this rule, and it's possible they are concentrated in startups, but I'm dubious.
The internet and other technologies have been followed directly by new, repressive laws that make what was legal before illegal, and criminalized what used to be mere misdemeanors.

It has also increased surveillance on all citizens to a point former East European totalitarian regimes could only dream of.

They only freedom we've gained it the freedom to globally bitch about it. Any action we may actually take with the help of the internet is rapidly being criminalized. Those "massive vistas of freedom" are just a matter of inertia.

This "bunker siege mentality" is not an illusion when every week new measures and laws are introduced to take away freedoms we used to have 25 years ago.
I think, that having code in C/C++ is much better than in obscure dialect of JavaScript.
I'd say there's a major flaw here - "the new world of concurrent web backends" - If now was 1995 I might agree with you, but having concurrency in web-app servers is not new. The lack of concurrency in test/demo app situations is totally understandable, in a production environment you'd have to be completely bonkers to think thats ever useful.
I also agree that "having to deal with loadbalancing" is something that most people don't get and shouldn't really have to get, but when the way you do loadbalancing is so fundamentally flawed that its worse than Round Robin DNS, you also clearly don't understand it.

To be fair, I have to say I meet people all the time who don't understand it at all and think $randomcrappything is great at loadbalancing. If "connections go to more than one box!" is your metric, then yes, thats loadbalancing. My metric is "Do you send connections to servers that are responsive and not overloaded, maybe with session affinity" and in general most HW loadbalancer products since 1998 have supported that. So if you're not better than 1998 technology, you may want to reevaluate your solution.
This. Just had our first kid and it has changed my life for the better. I have no choice but to have a planned/organized routine which actually has made me more productive. Heck I even have the time to start swimming !!
Also interesting: http://news.discovery.com/space/dark-matter-found-orbital-ex...
Great work, the integration (as shown in the demo) and UX are really well done. A couple of questions:

1) Why use Python for OpenCV when Ruby has a decent wrapper that can do Hough (https://github.com/ruby-opencv/ruby-opencv)? Or was the Ruby version just too buggy still?

2) Is there a command-line version planned? I guess it'd be most relevant once auto-detection is figured out.
Maybe,but it has also proven effective in putting people who are not child molesters in prison for child porn. They should be helped,not criminalized - it's people who actually harm children who should be put in jail for the rest of their lives. And years ago you could only buy it from others - and that's why this technique of making possession illegal is so effective against drug dealers. If possession of drugs is a crime,then you can always demand to know who is the dealer, from the person doing cocaine or whatever. The problem is,that this doesn't really work against cp - sure, maybe 20 years ago when to get it you had to buy physical pictures from some guys in a back alley it made sense.
But what are you going to get nowadays? Hidden wiki's address? If you go on TOR there's tons of this stuff, and police cannot monitor it effectively,and cannot do anything about it, so it's unlikely that persecuting a person viewing this material is going to get them nearer the producer.
Netflix was originally only available in the US but came to Canada later
Interview with mobile phone inventor Marty Cooper [video]
It's my own estimation based on the evidence I've seen. There's plenty of detail when you look at neural tissue using a microscope: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/braincryopreservation1.htm...
What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know (Part 1)
That's not right. In any configuration the goal is to minimize queue time. What is critical to doing this is having a request queue and a pool of concurrent "workers" (to use the generic queueing theory term) in back of it.

Unicorn uses the operating system's TCP connection queue to queue incoming requests that it is not able to immediately server. While n+1 requests can (and will) get routed to a single dyno, this only results in 1 request being queued. It will be queued until the first of the in-process requests is served, which will take ~ the average response time for the app. Given that the other n requests did not get queued (queue time = 0), the average queue time will equal Sum(queue times) / # requests = Average Response Time / n+1.
People in the advertising industry who think their job is very important:

53.1%
Many companies I've worked with in the past used to look at certificates they eventually migrated to the philosophy of no code sample no application because they had so many 'master's degree' computer science students who couldn't explain what polymorphism is.

Before you buy a pair of shoes u try it out right? You wouldn't blindly just buy it.
Bitcoin could be stable. I think it will have a hard time being stable because of the deflationary pressures, but it could theoretically be a stable currency someday when there's a significant economy of people using Bitcoins.
Complaining to the BBB is slightly less useful than posting an angry comment on a YouTube video.
I look at it from a standpoint of what tangible things I need to accomplish, and what I estimate I'll need in terms of time to do them. In the last 3-6 months especially, I've been constantly -under- my estimates. This correlates with starting to work a shorter week, taking more frequent breaks, etc.

Not scientific by any stretch, rather simply my own observations.

And yes - I'm thinking more in terms of folks working insane amounts of hours, at levels that put them well into the "doing bad work & burnt out" realm.
Also, the browser app on Firefox OS is entirely javascript/html/css. No XUL in sight.
No, no, no. What you should do is work smarter. Instead of blindingly working hard, just work hard on the things that provide results. I work 12 hours a day (at the least), but only on the things that get results. I learned to just let go and re-focus quickly.
An interesting subject. Elon Musk has been saying that it's important to reason from first principles and not by analogy. A lot of reasoning in startup world seems to be by analogy - the epitome being "AirBnB for Cars" type of elevator pitches.
at a minimum:

- keep config variables in a separate file that is in your .gitignore and won't get pushed to github.

- keep config file outside of any web accessible directory in case the file renders in plaintext for some reason.

Regardless of db only accepting local connections - an attacker is one step closer to dumping the db.
Bypassing Jailbreaking Checks in iOS Apps using Runtime Method Swizzling
Man, having this as a context manager (maybe with the help of contextlib) would be great, because context managers are great.
> Even if there are 5 Netflixes competing against each other [producing their own content] I would rather pay 5 x $7.99 a month

You've just described cable. If those subscriptions start to come in packages we're back to square one.
If Project Eternity and the South Park RPG go well, does that mean that Obsidian might get a chance at KOTOR III?
AriaLinter, a simple accessibility linter for HTML documents
http://gawker.com/5993501/seeing-the-bully-finally-meet-his-...
Pardon my ignorance... What is a DSL?
Would u prefer a polished project with lots of activity and commits? I think it can show how the project and its developer has grown.
Ask HN: Online CS degree or programming boot camp?
As a 30 year old career-changer, would you keep your current job and pursue an online CS degree (Oregon State) while learning to code on the side or go to one of the developer boot camps? (Or do neither and just build things for fun)
I really wish the Loom IP was going somewhere besides Disney's vault (pun intended, but unfortunately its not the valuable vault).

That game needed so many sequels. It was fantastic.
If TLS could negotiate certificates instead of supporting one and only one, the backbone of any sane "virtual host" system, then https: wouldn't be a big deal. It'd be the default.

Now you need a separate IP (expensive) or port (annoying) for each virtual host configured with a different SSL cert. This has to stop, but it will not be easy to fix.
This is why I don't have a computer, or phone, or any other electronic gadgets. The prices are falling so quickly that every time I think about getting one, I decide to put it off for a few months so I can get a better one instead.

(And before you ask, I'm posting this using pen and paper with IP-over-carrier-pigeon.)
Their Star Wars games and Lego series were pretty good. I loved some of the old titles as well. I'm sad for all those incredible people who are now looking for work. I've been to that office and a lot of really great people poured their very being into that company. I'm sure they'll all land on their feet though.
Netflix, Amazon, iTunes match, Rdio all took a while to come to Brazil and are doing great. Still waiting for Amazon Instant.
I think (or perhaps predict?) that Bitcoin will require I higher level of sophistication to control, if for no other reason than it is new. Not to mention that the countries we are talking about in these scenarios are probably less sophisticated in these matters to begin with, coupled with the fact that there are no central authorities to deal with when it comes to Bitcoin. Argentina can't just go to the "big Bitcoin banks" and tell them not to accept their citizens' business.

At the end of the day, when a currency becomes worthless people start trading in something else, whether that be USD or cigarettes (like in post-war Germany). The attraction of Bitcoin is that it is basically tailor made for this and additionally is accepted by people outside your country.

Only time will tell of course. My point is simply that it is not just trivially "just another currency" where all the same rules apply. That being said -- it may crash and fail for completely unrelated reasons.
If you are new to something you should work a lot and hard at it. The only way to get better at something is to do more of it, not read about it, not talk about, just do. Just make sure you like what you are doing and that it's worth it and satisfying for you to work at it. I think at the end of the day its a question of wanting to be good or great at something.
Heroku's message: "If you have slow clients you are screwed" Unicorn is designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency.

And no, they don't do any buffering.
I understand your concerns and in facts the system has been designed for 1) UK universities and it generates statistics based on 2) anonymous positioning traces.

Point 1) is important because due to the legislation in UK, students are obliged to scan their ID card at the barcode scanner in class to certify their presence at lesson. Just like employees at the supermarket. I feel that our system frees them to have to do that. The student positions are not visible unless there is an emergency and even in that case realtime viewer does not show any data on whom the student (or lecturer) is. It just shows to the firefighter that there is someone at the second floor in room 3A.

For what concerns point 2) you can think that we used anonymized positions as GPS navigators backend use the device traces to generate data about traffic jams, map corrections and so on. This data is used to improve campus life as it gives an idea how to distribute resources optimally. I remember that I was very frustrated as a student when I never seemed to find room in a computer lab while the classes adjacent where always very busy.
Unfortunately, no I can't. I don't know where the frameworks break in 2013. Been off the web for too long.
You’ll need to convince me that “e^ipi = -1” is actually a “thought" before I’ll buy it as a counter example. This will be an uphill battle.

Can you think about Euler’s identity? Almost certainly. Can you think Euler’s identity? Very unclear.
I agree - there's nothing wrong with picking up code from SO if you trust it and understand it. But that takes experience .

I've come across lots of situations where the accepted answer isn't the best answer.

So I'm talking about knowing vs. cargo-culting.
Spotify comes to mind. Facebook started out even more locally restricted.
As I mentioned, Java was just the first example that came to my mind.

There are embedded systems being coded in Basic, Oberon, Lisp, Scheme and .NET.

Although those systems are usually 32 bit based. 8 and 16 bit systems are too small for those languages.
I have so much respect for the internet archive. To me the internet archive represents an entity that really understands the "Internet" and aligns closely with a lot of the ideals of free speech and information access.

Plus the wayback machine is super cool!
Yes, i understand that subscription services are different to "ownership" type services. But i'm saying that subscription services are the solution to the "ownership problem". you never really own digital content, so rather than demanding laws to pretend we own digital content, let's all just stop pretending. if you want to consume digital content, a subscription service is the solution.
> If I have shillings equal to 5% of GDP, and I put myself into cryosleep for 100 years, there is no reason I should expect my uninvested shillings to still have 5% of GDP. This is a child's view of an economy.

Can your elaborate? Actually it an argument against the idea that hoarding gives some kind rent. It doesn't.

But again, can you elaborate? If own 5% of land and go to a cryosleep for a hundred years, how much of that do you expect to own when you wake up?
How Startups Grow and a Chance to Win $5K for Your Business
Tranchulas Brings Competition for Hackers in Pakistan
Really fascinating website. I agree with arassmussen's feedback. I'd also add that while spending the past five minutes playing around with the website, I'm consistently hitting Describe when I mean Relate. I wonder whether, if you looked at your logs, you'd find a high occurrence of Describe requests followed by Relate requests within 1-2 seconds.
Domain-specific language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language
Is this really a new condition?

Actually, yes. In less than 20 hours (probably) I'm going to release a gigantic blog post (the 2nd-to-last in my Gervais/MacLeod series; I'm finishing that up because I have technical projects I want to start and will probably be starting a new job soon) that gets into the economics of it.

Essentially, convexity pertains to work that's hard and where the maximal possible performance isn't well-defined. Now, Sharpe Ratio (ratio of yield to risk) is an affine exponential that decays as the work gets harder. In other words, it's exponentially favorable for easiness on concave work, but for convex work (no matter how difficult) the yield/risk curve is almost constant.

Old, industrial work: favor concavity because the limiting factor is how much capital you have to put at risk. Though convex work has more yield, it's yield-per-risk is unfavorable.

If work is concave, we can define "perfect completion" (it's a commodity) and machines can be programmed to do it. So they're pushing us out of that. The convex work is all that's left for humans. It won't all be technical; there is convex service work.

Financial risk (not smart people with good ideas) was the limiting factor for old-style industrial processes, but all that concave work is being given over to machines by the convex labor of programming them. With convex work in the technological era, the Sharpe Ratio is constant and irrelevant. Your limiting factor, instead, is the time and attention of the highly talented people capable of doing (usually specialized) convex work.

Check my blog in about 6-18 hours and there'll be more on this topic than you'd ever want to see.
Ask HN: Resources for Studying Multivariable Calculus?
A friend across the United States from here has a daughter who likes mathematics very well and who at high school age has qualified for the United States Junior Mathematical Olympiad. The daughter's mom, like me, majored in foreign languages in college, so I'm sending along her question to this community to ask how a high-school-age student might study (self study?) multivariable calculus. What are some possible online resources for studying multivariable calculus? What are some good books on the subject that might allow self-study of multivariable calculus? How could the daughter verify her knowledge and skill for future college placement or other purposes?
The only language that does not have a runtime is called Assembly.

And even in the case of CISC processors there might be microcode playing the role of a runtime.

Why don't people learn about compiler design nowadays?!
None of the streaming music companies are sustainable in the long term.
I think in the future companies will realize they can retain exceptional talent by implementing a four day work week. As more and more hackers get older and have kids they will be drawn to companies that support an actual work/life balance, as opposed to the status quo of "its startup life of course you work 60 hour weeks."
Why is 37 cents too large for the granularity of a currency?

In 1913 terms, 37 cents of today's money was the equivalent of 2 cents, only double their smallest coinage.

Would you really be upset if any particular transaction was rounded up or down by 18 cents? Yes, if you're buying a single gumball, the price might be a little high today. But you let me know when gumball machines start taking bitcoins. For anything else, a resolution of +-18 cents is perfectly acceptable.... over any reasonable number of transactions, the round ups and round downs will come out to the same value anyway.
Google Maps local business search should be a discovery engine
Good points, but:

>Tesla doesn't have a cool $1B in cash laying around to make 15,000 car loans.

Tesla doesn't need the cash in reserve to make loans to buy Tesla cars; such a "loan" in that case would simply mean "not requiring (immediate) payment". It certainly means forgoing some liquidity, but that's not the same as them having to come up with the purchase price for all their cars; they're paying themselves anyway.
Even if they didn't obfuscate the jar files, it wouldn't be open source.
Well, that's only the "mobile" Unreal 3. The same engine games on iOS and Android are using. It's not really the "same" Unreal 3 we see used in Devil May Cry 4 and other recent PC games based on it. It's probably a scaled down version even of the original Unreal 3, not the "Samaritan" one.

They probably couldn't have done more even if they wanted to, though, since asm.js or not, browsers can see only use the OpenGL ES 2.0-based WebGL API's. That's why I'm hoping the OpenGL ES 3.0-based (or better) WebGL will arrive very soon, although I haven't even heard if the Khronos group is working on it, so it's possibly they haven't even started yet.
In that scenario most of the content you are paying for multiple times. Or you can look at it as the redundant content is free and you're paying $7.99/month for House of Cards.

Wouldn't it be better if prices for the content you want were more reasonable? Like, if you could buy a season of House of Cards for $7. And buy an old movie for $0.25?
The fact that Bitcoin is deflationary isn't a big deal because you don't need to use it as a unit of account in order to use it as a cheap, fast, and reliable way to transfer value globally. You just need easy ways to convert to and from Bitcoin at either end of payments. Systems like ripple.com will automate this process to a large degree.
It's a bit different though. In America the government was taking something you physically owned and you had to give it away under a threat of punishment.

What Cyprus did makes sense if you realize something - and it has completely blown my mind because I was not aware of it too - that once you give money to the bank, it's not yours, you do not own it anymore. If you pay 100 pounds into your account, you are giving the bank a loan for a 100 quid, which the bank obliges to repay on demand - as stated in your contract. So when you go to to the bank to withdraw your 100 pounds, it's the bank repaying its debt to you.
Therefore Cyprus uses the bank's money to repay its debts - not yours. Sure, they do owe money to the account holders now, but it's identical to a company going bankrupt - they might owe you something,but they physically do not have any money to give back.

I am not saying this is a good thing, and I am not supporting it. I am saying that once you realize that money paid into the bank is not yours anymore, it all makes sense.
If botnets are free to operate, then won't they still be used? They're only less efficient than ASICs if you have to pay for electricity, right?
My name is […] and I am an Author Relationship Executive at Packt Publishing
Today I received an email from someone claiming to be an Author Relationship Executive at Packt Publishing. They contacted me asking to author a beginners book on a certain piece of 3D modeling and animation software which I happen to be very familiar with.

Intra nos, I am very familiar with the app and the topic specifics, but the email had a somewhat canned scent to it. I replied with some bit of info about myself, some questions and I am still waiting for reply. However in the meantime I googled a bit and judging by the results it appears that PACKT is hiring an army of contractors tasked with contacting semi-random potential "authors".

Try googling for "I am an Author Relationship Executive at Packt Publishing".

See what I mean? Makes me question the quality of any of their titles but most worryingly the credibility of the publisher. I am familiar with the app, but I can guarantee you that there are much more experienced candidates out there.

Is this common practice? Have any of you been contacted by PACKT in a similar fashion?
Eight tiny island nations band together to protect the world's tuna supply