skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Requesting intellectually honest discussion
Hello,

This topic may offend some, but I would like to an real discussion, because I think it is important:

Why do we deny the possibility that men are simply better coders than women? Why do we, as men -- as coders -- feel the need to bend over backwards to include people who simply are not as good as us?

There are jobs that everyone acknowledges men are better at, such as firefighting. Imagine if we mandated equality in firefighting. Peoples' houses would burn down! Luckily, we're smart enough not to do that.

But coding ability is harder to measure, so no one will admit that men might simply be better at it. However, if men ARE better, imagine the damage of trying to treat everyone equal. Any company behaving that way will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to companies that hire coders based on ability.

Thoughts?
Bitcoinbillionaire supposedly had waaaay more than $12k in Bitcoins. That was just the bitcoins he gave away for nothing. He supposedly had millions worth, if he sold a large chunk of that he could easily crash the price all on his own.
I applaud the attempt, clearly the creator(s) put in a lot of time and effort, but I don't see most of the changes as more intuitive at all. It's also attempting to solve a problem that doesn't really exist, the current notation is not difficult to learn - and anyone who thinks learning to read music is the tough part about learning an instrument is in for a real surprise once they get much past "Mary had a little lamb."
Might I suggest that barlines remain connected vertically on both the grand staff and on instruments in the same family? This is a very easy and intuitive way to make a score readable, especially when it involves large groups of instruments (such as orchestral scores).
Well, what if most houses in an economy were what we called apartments?

Also, in China, the people (gov) owns the land. We are only entitled to a 70 year lease on it. Oddly enough, this is applied to housing (apartments) also. But China also lacks a property tax and so has all the bad speculation behavior and rent-seeking that goes along with that.
In my opinion, the greatest weakness of traditional music notation is that a same melody has to be written in 12 different ways, depending on in which key it is. After you've trained yourself to read in all 12 keys (or 5-6 most common ones), everything works nicely, but that's a lot of repetition.

A notation that would solve this problem, would be great progress.

But this Hummingbird notation does nothing to help with this problem.
I like the idea of working to make music notation better -- it's certainly not flawless -- but I'd strongly discourage music teachers from using this system with any actual music students.

I'd much rather see methods of improving the readability of standard notation, by adding colors, interactivity, or anything along those lines -- but not replacing standard notations (for accidentals, note flags, etc.) without really, really good reason. The further your system departs from standard notation, the less valuable it is automatically, so for a departure even as far as hummingbird (which is still obviously related to standard notation), the value it adds already needs to be huge just to break even....

Think about the choice you're making for your student -- instead of getting started learning standard notation, you're starting them down another path of reading music; the moment they leave your studio or classroom and walk into a music shop (or even another music class), they will be completely lost.

There's a lot of sheet music freely available online -- whoops, not for your students, though.

There are also a ton of apps, interactive sites, online tutorials, software, etc. that can help music students master all aspects of music performance, analysis, and even composition. Well, some students. Not yours.

I know this sounds harsh, but it's a bit like attempts to fix the English language. Everyone knows it -- English is horribly irregular; every rule of thumb for spelling has a million exceptions; there seem to be more irregular verbs than regular ones; there are obsolete tenses only used in some common phrases and nowhere else. But if we fixed the problems -- even if we just regularized spelling and nothing else -- the first generation of students using the new system would be a bubble in a world that used "old" English. If we successfully rode out the change, after a century or so all new documents produced would be in new English... but anyone interested in reading anything before the switch would be at the mercy of automatic translators.

It sounds like a dystopian novel where an autocratic government wants to cut their population off from all knowledge of history.
> If it cost you $X to produce, why would you sell it to me for less than $X? You'd be losing money on the production side.

"Cost of production", in an economic sense, includes opportunity cost - that is, the amount of money I could be making if I did something else with the time instead, which can be more or less taken to mean a reasonable accounting "profit".

Edit: Also, I may sell it to you at a loss because I can't do anything better with it, if the price fell since I produced it.

> The lower bound ought to be at least the cost to the miner that produced the new bitcoin (when they try and sell it or use it in the market).

Yes, if the price of bitcoins falls below the cost of producing them, more won't be produced, but that won't actually prevent the price from falling further.
Academics usually like shiny things, specially free. And Mendeley didn't target the old school ones, they targeted students, post-docs, usually the trend-setters in the academic environment. Professors and Senior Researchers are too busy or don't have time to check these things, and they end up using what other people use in their labs.

And for broke, internet saavy students, free stuff with a promise of a new groundbreaking trend in science was enough to lure them.
I've seen more innovation on Hacker News in an hour than this company seems to have made in 2 years.
I am not really sure what's driving this slowdown - Obviously desktops are being replaced at a much slower rate - they are good for four to five years (easily) for almost everyone nowadays. I wonder if laptops are also seeing longer than their traditional 24-30 month lifespans.

Are tablets/smartphone really impacting desktop sales? I don't see too many people out there who've replaced their laptop/desktop with a tablet, but maybe they are holding off buying a new laptop as quickly, and spending that money on a tablet? Maybe some people are getting by with a smartphone in place of a laptop every two-three years?
Centralized resources have a one-time construction cost and typically don't need too much maintenance unless they try to reflect living standards or moving targets (see: MDN / whatwg), and hosting isn't really expensive these days, not even for video content.

What would make sense to me is that the content is available freely, but if you need help, tutorship is a paid service, and potentially with credit that means something (affordable MOOC accreditation, pls?). That's a model I think would work great in education, not a premium on the content itself, because the focal point is "sale of content = money" not "providing excellent tutorship = money."

You already have the in-person tutorship in the form of teachers. The problem there is that they aren't paid well enough to attract people who really want to teach, and there isn't a surplus of them, either. There's an entire discussion here on education reform. I don't like to put the profitability in education in the content itself (I'm not entirely against it, though, but I'm especially against paywalled content or subscription content, which is why I still refuse to get an ACM subscription even though I could really use it, and instead use arXiv), but rather in the teaching/mentoring role. Then a business can profit but so can people who are passionate about teaching.

I personally hate that the only way to make a good living in this world right now is to go work for some company or startup in some crowded area, or to do something dangerous. In 20-25 years, I'd love to teach, but that means I'd have to finish my Ph.D., then maybe make 60-80k (where I'd like to end up) after a long career, and given I'd probably have kids and maybe grandkids soon to follow, it seems ridiculous that I'd have to accept the cost of grad school + a terrible salary, and that's in a university where ALL the money is. <jackiechan.jpg>
So take voting. Just saying 'the vote' is way too simplistic. Allowing women to vote? Good, not obsolete. Allowing minorities to vote? Good, not obsolete. Electoral college method? Facilitates sinister behaviour, obsolete. Districting rules that allow for relatively easy gerrymandering? Obsolete, and definitively sinister. Promotional materials encouraging people to exercise their rights by voting? Good, not obsolete.

All the best parts of government limit the scope of government .. that says something.

No it doesn't. That's an overly simplistic slogan. Provision of universal healthcare is a clear and topical example.
No, they just became employees of a corporation that use unethical tactics in publishing. You end up guilty by association.
These symbols are fussier than necessary, because they are trying to be cute about both the mapping to the alphabetic scale and slavishly sticking with circles.

What is required is a sequence of length seven (for convenience) that allows sharp/flat prefixes and time length suffixes. Circles are merely one option.

If written by hand, there will be ambiguities between C, Dot, Empty, and Full. I think a graphic design artist had too much fun with this project...
"It's until one-two major governments decides to make it illegal to deal in bit-coins..."

I don't know about other governments, but I doubt the US will ever declare Bitcoin illegal (though I am told to never say never). Supporting my viewpoint, the US Treasury Department, through FinCEN, has recently tacitly approved Bitcoin: http://www.businessinsider.com/is-bitcoin-legal-2013-4

I think the US government would prefer to take the benefits of Bitcoin (startups springing up everywhere, taxable Bitcoin economic activity, etc), rather than banning it because the technology is used by a minority of users for illegal activity.

"For one, because they don't like money systems they can not control"

This is a broken argument. The US does not control the Euro, or Yen, etc, yet they do not make it illegal to trade in Euros/Yens within the borders.
Yeah.

First I used the reddit api, when reddit cut that off I was able to crowdsource a data feed from users through a browser extension.

Then reddit convinced google to have unedditreddit removed from the app store. I switched to a firefox extension now so we will see what happens.
I'm comparing the logic, not the gravity of the situations.

You had pointed out (rightly) that purchasing and holding medallions is legal, and those who bought them did so with the understanding that they would profit. At the same time, they must have observed that the very existence of the medallion system limited the freedom of others. Some might have even genuinely viewed this as altruistic.

All that was true of slaveowners and slaves.
Liquor controls are an example of a genuinely obsolete regulatory regime, as are distillery licenses.

On the other hand, as we can plainly see, late-night permits and ABC licenses in California are a matter of open conflict between residential and commercial parties.
UDOO: Android Linux Arduino in a tiny single-board computer
I disagree with making different clefs the same. Clefs are different for a reason-- they attempt to keep most notes on the staff. Bass and Treble have won out over competing clefs (if you ever want a challenge, trying reading the various versions of C Clefs like alto/tenor) because they keep most notes on the staff most of the time for most instruments. (Violas, Celli, Trombones, and a few others excepted).

There's also the fact that Treble (G) Clef and Bass (F) Clef are a perfect fifth away from Middle C, which reinforces the importance of perfect fifths in the system of major keys, but I suppose that's a small consideration overall.
Of course, but that's nitpicking. The point is that the price is well out of reach of the average Tom.
How John Lusk Hacked His Startups' Newsletter Into A Best Selling Book
"they prevent a tragedy of the commons from creating gridlock and pollution in major cities by limiting the number of cars circling around doing nothing on city streets."

Why would a free market not prevent this? if there are excess taxis, taxi-driving is not profitable. If taxi-driving is profitable and there is still gridlock, that is a different problem. Avoiding gridlock by creating an artificial shortage of transport is not an appropriate solution IMO.
Wait, I have to bring in my own leads AND you take a 15% cut?

Something like GroupTalent.com provides deal flow, handles contracts/billing, and tacks on a 20% fee to the employer/client. Employers have no problem with it. They get great talent. Developers obviously don't care because they still get paid what they want and GroupTalent takes care of a ton of overhead.

I've probably been their happiest customer. They provide a super high quality leads channel. When I look at something like your service, it scares the crap out of me to give away 15%. Sure consulting agencies take an even bigger cut. But that's for freelancers who have no desire to do their own sales/marketing. The best freelancers I know would never go to them.
There isn't any ought to be for the lower bound. (In a successful bitcoin world) There is eventually going to be a clear relationship between the cost of mining and the reward available, but if some miner switches to mining his own variety of digital money, we don't suddenly owe him something for the effort.

If we end up with a very competitive market for using cryptography to clear digital transactions, miners might well face a situation where it is barely worth it to burn electricity.
How do I write triplets? Percussion? Tremolo? Why are all of the "critics" 25 or younger? How do I write parts with multiple voices?
I'm not sure why it matters what the original impetus behind medallions was. Maybe that means we should have a different regulatory regime more suited to ensuring that every resident of a major metro area has access to safe, efficient taxi transport and less suited towards ensuring a living wage for cab drivers. That's fine. But it's not an argument for no regulation at all.

There may be a compelling argument for no regulation. I'm just saying, that's not it.
You guys nailed it - Mitch's joke was indeed what I was thinking of when I wrote the comment.
> But you can remove a small portion of the gold so that the trade is fair.

You wouldn't do that. If you had a good coin and cut a piece to pay for a small amount you'd lose value - you can't immediately the fineness of unminted gold, and your merchant knows it, and you'd end up with a bad coin, the weight of which is not immediately clear. This is why most all cultures evolved to use coins.

There was also a flourishing credit economy, because the smallest coin that a merchant would take was something like the weekly wages of a labourer, and this credit economy was what smoothed out fluctuations in this otherwise deflationary environment.

I guess that's what Bitcoin is missing.
Sorry, I stopped having discussions about whether or not girls have cooties back in the 2nd grade.
I like it. It will no doubt be refined as more people learn. It will be interesting to see how it holds up.

On a side note, I think a majority of the arguments I've read against it aren't very good ones. I see most of them boiling down to, "it's different, I don't want to have to learn a new language". This is what I said when I was learning standard music notation. I can see the issue of its anglo-centricness, but even that is a minor detail. One doesn't need to understand the words "above" or "below" to be able to associate the symbols with the notes.

I don't think a fair critique can come out of a quick glance at the hummingbird website. I'd be more interested to hear what people say after a few months of working with it.
The comparison with eminent domain is interesting. If the government abolished taxi medallions, are they really taking something from those who own them? The medallion is basically the right to operate a taxi. If the government abolished medallions, then they'd still have the right to operate a taxi, it's just that a lot of other people would too. Obviously they lose a major competitive edge, but strictly speaking, the government hasn't taken any property here.

The best comparison I can think of involving real property would be owning a private tract of land in a valuable area that's almost all owned and unused by the government. One day, the government decides to sell its land. The value of your land plummets. It's still valuable due to whatever intrinsic wealth it has, but the new glut of supply makes it much less valuable. Is the government obligated to compensate you for that loss of value when they sell their land? I'd think not.
The Pirate Bay moves to .GL domain name, ahead of Swedish seizure of .se domain.
Q&A with Wolfie Blue,founder of ‘Rainbow Mamas Circus’
Slavery is soon going to need to be added as an additional clause to Godwin's Law.
Cool site, I'll definitely be checking it out!
I am not sure how that would make sense. VWO has Microsoft and Groupon, but I am sure it is a tiny portion of their total traffic. What are you really measuring?

The thing is we are talking about .5%-3% share here, and the top 100 would be statistically meaningless. What you really want is revenue, and I am sure that is private information.

VWO advertises about 2500 customers and Optimizely claims 4000.

Frankly, I'd be more interested in how the Google numbers were calculated. It is now so integrated with Google Analytics it is pretty hard to detect.

If I were a betting man, I'd guess their revenue run rate is around $10M.
Floqq - The spanish Udemy hits LatAm 10k+ members
[Ribbon] flipped out, wrote a huffy blog[1] post about the incident

uh... that blog post doesn't look anything like "flipping out" or "huffy".

[1] http://blog.ribbon.co/an-update-on-in-stream-payments-on-twi...
Bitcoin has been through worse than this at least twice.
If you want to limit congestion, price congestion.

Don't limit taxis, the right to drive people, the right to drive a car ending with a particular license plate number, or the amount of fuel available (all have been tried to reduce traffic) -- just make the roads themselves cost more when there are more cars on them, and make the roads cost less when there aren't.
Already killed by twitter: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/10/well-that-was-fast-twitter-...
Are you brainwashed? Are you incapable of even considering the possibility that women might have a different level of ability in some areas?

Why would evolution NOT give us different mental capacities? What is the evolutionary reason why we would have vastly different bodies, but completely equivalent brains?
http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/mobile/proceeding....
I think a lot of them are the same people.
Well, if we are going to talk about empirical facts here, just how do we figure out who is better at coding than other people? I am a man, but I rather suspect that most women who participate on Hacker News are far better at coding than I am. (I came to the discussions here after reading several Paul Graham essays on education policy issues. I don't consider myself a good coder at all, but I'm responding to this topic because it is, really, a topic related to education policy.)

Until most companies are hiring on the basis of work-sample tests, which research says is a very good idea,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923

it may be that a lot of companies are hiring on the simple basis of irrational rules of thumb, which just might include societal prejudice against disfavored groups. That too is an empirical question, and that question is even harder to get an honest answer for, but we would have to consider that question along with the question of how we figure out who is a good coder to have an intellectually honest discussion here.

What do the other participants here think? What other issues do we need to consider to be intellectually honest while discussing this topic?

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool." Richard Feynman.
> Mysql replication has been around for ages; it seems to blow up spectacularly on occasion.

For us "old school" guys who have been programming for awhile, this is truly eyebrow-raising. Hearing that DB replication "seems to blow up spectacularly on occasion"...there's something wrong with this picture. A tool like DB replication should be at a much higher level of reliability than application code. It also confirms a lot of the grousing I've heard about the engineering hubris of MySQL over the last decade.

Also reminds me of Alan Kay's quip about what makes programming, "not quite a field."
"In the last half decade, two trends conspired to end the taxi medallion regime. First, people are more comfortable with trusting strangers."

This isn't true. When I was growing up, hitch hiking was still very common.

I'd argue that people used to trust strangers to a radically higher degree before the prohibition based crime wave (the one that makes swaths of every city in the US more dangerous than Afghanistan) that began in the 1960s.
Maye this person that left knew something like this would happen. The timing is irrelevant, what is relevant is that the ones thst stay are linked to a publisher that has no morals, no ethics.
That's a strange, old school way of thinking. Why are you trying to legislate technology when you could just make the tech work the way you want?

"Impossible" trumps "illegal" every time.
The current notation works & musicians have been learning & using it for centuries. I'm not a musician, but I've learned to read traditional music notation. It's not that hard. Why fix what isn't broken?
Got it! Well, you can always try China. We are always hiring here; salaries not as good as the states, but engineers are respected a bit more.
Debunking Autism Travel Myths
What about other industries that need the streets? What you're saying is akin to saying "Who cares if the creek is poisoned downstream, I need to dump into it to maximise profits!"
I'd love to see the converse, where the goal is to write code that looks really malicious but is actually a useful and helpful program -- like an apparent rootkit that actually implements a full webserver.
Granted. But that doesn't in any way imply the same level of commitment...
The reason there is a tragedy of the commons is that not _all_ the costs are internal to the driver. Sure, if traffic is slow enough it becomes unprofitable for everyone, but before that point there's a situation where it's profitable to you but you're causing so much costs for other drivers it's a net bad for society.
If you're using statement-based replication on Heroku, it still won't save you. I have no idea if you can or can't do so. Statement-based replication seems to be one of those things where you can shoot yourself in the foot if you don't design with it in mind.
The person who announced the implementation date of a security change should be fired on the spot. This is security 101.