skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, this is a mighty difficult discussion to have in little HN boxes. I guess I can see what Dennett is getting at from your summary, but I've read other philosophers who would just argue instead that qualia are wholly representational. But not even all representationalists agree that qualia are wholly representational.

Some of them, known as "externalists" (last I checked) believe, for instance, that the qualia of redness that you feel when you look at a ripe tomato--that feeling that feels irreducible--is actually the property of redness that the tomato itself has.

That position seems completely nutty to me, but I guess one often becomes a famous philosopher for making nutty but interesting arguments.

The last time I studied philosophy seriously, the typical wording to deny dualism would be to assert that "there is no explanatory gap" or "no 'hard' problem of consciousness".

As for the different senses of qualia, when last I was studying philosophy, the primary sense of "qualia" used was that of phenomenal qualia. Sometimes other senses would be discussed, but I don't recall seeing many clear and compelling arguments being made based on these distinctions. Most of the debate at the time seemed to center around The Knowledge Argument.
But at the dawn of computing it was all women. It was considered womens' work, akin to secretarial duties.
this is like saying "i've invented a standard file format for all types of files. i call it binary. it's made up of zeroes and ones. i've solved interoperability forever".
Related hack:

When you can't make progress and choose between two comparable options, Dan Ariely (behavioral economist) recommends you flip a coin. As you flip it, the impact of a potential decision might prompt you to realize the outcome you truly want.

However, there is a caveat: "The coin trick is indeed only useful for cases where the two options are of the same type (two cameras, two movies, etc). In your example, one option is more tempting in the short term (chocolate cake) while the other is better in the long term (fruit). In such cases we should not trust our gut feelings to drive us to the best decisions."

http://danariely.com/2013/01/05/ask-ariely-on-stretching-tim...
> Your delusions of persecution are staggering.

And they say this community's intolerant!
Dustin, let's meet at The Creamery. I gotta stupid idea to show you :)
Really? Source, please.
The theory is correct, and I applaud the author for willing to be that guy, because if you do this too often you become the person who always has the worst idea.
I don't know, most of those initial reactions make sense to me.

I think it's as simple as others are saying: in a market full of humans, making sense is not a dependency of success. and many of us justify the things that succeed after the fact.

If we're dismissing things for good reasons, I don't think we should try to inhibit our reasoning in order to just be less discriminating. Instead, the magic (or at least seemingly magic to engineers such as myself, when it works) of marketing is to account for and scrutinize based on the irrational.
Chewing gum (as in, a chewy substance you chew for the sake of chewing) was discovered/invented a long time ago, probably before money. It was a naturally-occurring part of the tree. If you mean modern chewing gum, it had to differentiate itself from the previous iteration of chewing gum.
Craigslist's Allegations Of "Copyright" Violations Thrown Out
This article highlights the few times he was wrong. But what about all the lunches where he left thinking 'what a stupid idea' and was right.
The product right now looks pretty crude, but it also looks like a very early stage prototype.

If they had say 5 good engineers on this for a year, I suspect it would look very much more compelling.

To do that, you need funding, hence the ycombinator interview.
In the early 1980s, CompuServe's marketeers thought the CB Simulator was dumb. It brought in most of the money. Here we are in 2013 and there's Twitter.
I do this too, except I call it a "rope bridge". Write the simplest thing possible, even if it doesn't do everything you need, and then start iterating. The rope bridge will quickly become much more solid.

The danger is that you leave the solution at too early a stage, and other things start relying on your flimsy rope bridge. It gets really difficult to go back and do things better.
Sure have :)

Check out this post from last week: http://www.trevormckendrick.com/my-first-year-in-the-app-sto...
Once a precedent has been established, it can be hard to change people's minds, especially if it was fast/easy/convenient the first time around. It really depends on the group.
Is it safe to assume NBC is being punked by this? I've seen this story roaming about the Interwebs and have assumed that it was a hoax.
There's the hidden cost of permanently alienating potential customers, though, which will show up silently in reduced conversion on all subsequent advertising efforts.
Totally agree with this. And it is where we probably dropped the ball.
This was also the idea behind the sequester... somehow good ideas aren't exactly flowing.
http://www.wuphf.com/
Try Google. I read the comment I replied to, thought, "I wonder what California says about the same issue", and had the California statute in under a minute.
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/reading-s...

is a reading group just starting up now if anyone is interested
Interesting and very atmospheric, but I lost interest at about 32 days left. None of my actions seemed to have much effect other than to keep mostly-invisible stats up.
It's great you encouraged her, however I don't think "better odds at getting a good job" is a decent enough reason to hand out to girls. It just doesn't feel...enough.

When she does go on to get a job, does she tell herself "I got this because I was the only girl" or because she has confidence in her abilities to be the best overall candidate? We need to remind girls they have the potential to be the best, not just the best female.

We need to hear what kind of life learning a technical skill will open up to us. Seeing someone else have the passion for their work in tech is the biggest inspiration. This is shown by how the father of the hackathon winner told stories of his latest hack and made his enthusiasm contagious. This is how I was influenced in my childhood.

Focusing on the 'huge opportunity' is akin to saying "Quick! There's a gap, get in now while you're a unicorn, you'll regret it once ratios are more equal & you actually have to be talented to get hired".

Also by getting girls into tech on the sole basis of the advantages of being the 'token female' could develop a dynamic a few years down the line where women feel their worth within a team deminish with every further female hire. This is why I feel talent and enjoyment should be emphasised from the start.

Please emphasise WHY you love what you do, ask where her interests lie. Don't recommend it to every girl. Yes there is a gap but surely we should be saying to girls, gap or no gap - if you feel a sense of connection to creativity & technology & see your future in it, go for it regardless!
As the guys who usual says "that's a swell idea", or "yeah, I'm down for some McNuggets" to really gross food decisions (masochism, I don't know), I personally love it when other folks throw out these "sequestration" choices because it's usually the only way to get everyone to go to McDonalds.
Yes, CFS has a psychological component… In the way that, if X happens the same to you and me, and you don't care, but I do, then my adrenals/thyroid go into overdrive, yours don't; I get sick, you don't. Some people get CFS because of minor stress, some people don't get it until their life is a living hell. That's the psychological aspect of it.

But that doesn't make it a psychological disorder in any way, shape or form. Mind and body are just simply not separate. I have been depressed in my life. I was not depressed before my illness or even during it, except the natural kind of mourning a person goes through when suddenly they can't even stand up.

I'm sure lots of people have concomitant depression, since so many people are depressed, period. But many also do not. (I'm one of them.)
You're blaming the Play Store for something that the app developers decided to do? Just because there's a hole doesn't mean it should be abused, particularly since Path is supposed to be from a "legit" company.
Ask HN: Getting the best out of New York in 6 weeks
Hi all,

I'm just graduating from university (in London, studying CS) and I'll be spending 6 weeks in New York as part of my graduate job training. I haven't been to US before and I want to make sure my free time these 6 weeks is well spent. What do you recommend? I think I might be able to pull-off one or two weekend-long travelling as well. So any ideas of things to do in NY (or another place for a weekend) to maximise my experience gain during these 6 weeks would be nice :-)

Thanks. S.
It's also not officially water proof. That said, we used ours in light rain a few times and nothing bad happened to it. The data was pretty much useless however (although determining that was a large part of the point of the experiment).
It is very much a "straw man" argument -- the straw man being that the first suggestion has to be terrible. I've used this strategy many times, but instead I'll make an actual suggestion, like a more popular burger chain, or a sandwich chain.
Kareem: Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 30
Apologies for trying to make a point. If anything, my analogy seems pretty much on point, as it barely changes the reality around the events here as described:

banging on door <=> text/phone call, which likely causes an audible alert
stranger <=> contact/acquaintance/vendor/client/boss/relative/lover/ex-lover/dentist of a new user
6am <=> 6am
their buddy <=> their contact
the trash <=> a new user's cell phone contacts
has photos to share <=> has photos to share
there never were any photos <=> there never were any photos
unbelievable jackass <=> unbelievable jackass

Seems close enough.

But my real question for you is which is it? Did a developer/Path act unethically, but you believe those actions are justified because people have families they need to care for? Or do you believe that Path/the developers did nothing wrong and I'm just applying my own morals to the situation? One or the other is a legitimate position to take (though I may disagree with your view), but you can't have both.
Whenever I hear someone talk about having a "solution," I want to ask "what is the problem you are solving"?

Too often people cannot describe the problem, or who has the problem. This does not inspire confidence in their solution.
That's a great way to put it.

Yes, positive stress can cause it just as well. I had met the love of my life, traveled to Europe 7 times over a year, gotten married, moved to a foreign country I loved… and founded a new business. Life was pretty good.
Reminds me of 'How my brain kept me from co-founding Youtube' (http://prog21.dadgum.com/39.html)

The idea that people were going to push around 500k images (Flickr) or even more insane, videos was crazy when it first started happening. Remember how long it took to download QuickTime or RealPlayer videos, and how bad the quality was? Now people are streaming HD music videos on our PHONES just to listen to it while they drive to work. They don't even watch the video.
I think my sister actually uses it more like Reddit, as a source of interesting (mostly funny) things to look at.
The ion lattice is in its ground state, it can't release any more energy to get into a lower state, but it moves. They couldn't get a lattice into the ground state until recently due to excess heat from contaminants in the "trap".
Yes, I was being facile for the sake of a one-liner. Sorry about that.

It will be in a certain kind of orbit around the L2 point, not right on top of the L2 point. This means it is not in Earth's shadow, as you note. It's in its own shadow. But if it were in a conventional orbit centered around Earth, it would have thermal issues, observational issues, etc., because pointing to keep the telescope away from the sun would be a big problem.

My friend across the hall uses data from Planck, which is at L2, and I used to use data from SoHO (before its camera was shut down), which is at L1. We used to joke around about how each other's instrument was in a too cold/too hot place.

Here's a nice illustration of Planck's orbit. (Planck was the sister satellite to Herschel.) http://planck.cf.ac.uk/mission/orbit
Option is a monad. All monads are functors. The key characteristic of a functor is that you can map over it. So why does it surprise you to be using map with Option?

The Scala docs (http://www.scala-lang.org/api/current/index.html#scala.Optio...) tell you this in the second paragraph.

To be honest, and I'm being a bit snarky here I know, I think you're just fairly ignorant of basic functional programming techniques. That's not a crime, but don't mouth off about functional programming if you know so little about it.
Nothing so far on Snopes.
I think this is the most important bit because it makes the whole article fall apart (for my use case - code reviews).

Both my UI (Tower) and bitbucket sort by commit date. There is no way to sneak a broken commit into last week; for that I'd have to rebase master on top of the buggy commit.
I've used openvpn for this - it's worked pretty well.

As far as SPOF, you set up multiple servers on the server side with different external ips, handing out different ranges of vpn ip addresses. In the client config, you list multiple servers that the client is allowed to connect to.

So, in my setup, I have 10.1.0.0/24 as the LAN Two vpn servers with different external ips, LAN ips, and a vpn (tun interface) ip with different subnets (10.8.1.0/24 and 10.8.2.0/24). The clients are given the two external ips as servers to connect to and they'll be given an ip address for their tun interface on the respective subnet for the server they connected to.

Here are some configs to take a look at: http://pastebin.com/TL95UfzU

You'll need to go through the bit of the tutorial for creating the server keys and keys for the clients.
From what I gather, they are capturing the velodyne data and turning it into a thinned point cloud of the areas of the USA in which they drive. Within this point cloud they can then do effectively a least-squares fit of the real-time view into the historical view and get another data source for localisation. Of course, there's GPS/IMU fusion too, but this sort of SLAM approach is fairly robust under GPS loss so combining them all in a filter is pretty standard practice. The scale of Google's data dwarfs most research projects, however.
For software engineers, it's extremely likely that whatever company you started working for in Year 1 will be completely different in Year 5. Google wasn't the same company in 1999 that it was in 2004, which wasn't the same company that it was in 2009, which won't be the same company that it will be in 2014. Leadership, culture, technology, teams, products -- these all can change, and you may not be happy with that outcome of that change.

Likewise, unless you're a completely static individual, your own preferences will change. You might not mind a completely chaotic startup environment at age 26, but you might be over it by age 31. So given all that, over a five year period, what's the likelihood that you and and your company will evolve into being as good of a fit in Year 1 as it was in Year 5? Pretty damn unlikely.

Given this paradigm, the two errors most companies make are:

1) Treating this phenomenon as "disloyalty." For a lot of companies, it's not acceptable to say, "the company went one direction, I went another, let's stop dating and just be friends." Good companies understand this happens, treat their former employees like alumni, and a lot of good things can come out of "just being friends" (e.g. that former employee recommending to others they work at the company). Bad companies act butthurt and whine that Generation X/Y are a bunch of ungrateful 'job hoppers.'

2) Having stupid policies for those that continue to be a good fit through Year 5 and beyond. If a former employee ever says of a previous employer, "I liked it there, I just got a way bigger salary increase at my new company" or "I liked it there, but after I was promoted to Senior Engineer, the only real way to advance was through management/business," then that company lost a software engineer over something completely controllable. I see so many companies locking themselves into 2.7% annual cost of living raises for their current employees while they offer 20% more to new hires, and then complain "it's so hard to find good engineers." Well, no shit.

The OP has essentially managed to set parameters with his current employer where he's essentially in control on how his job will evolves, so he can ensure it evolves organically with his preferences, which is probably why he likes working there so much. But in lieu of having every engineer negotiate such a framework with their employers, it'd probably be a lot more effective for those employers to recognize that this "Year 5" phenomenon happens, and adjust accordingly (ie. not holding it against employees who no longer feel like a good fit, and compensating those who continue to be a good fit and produce)
Having implemented similar solutions, it's clear to me that developers did their homework and designed accordingly. I find myself agreeing with almost every decision I could see.
- Go: light, no dependencies. This is key. If you ever deployed something in a non homogeneous environment with 100s/1000s of servers, you'd know the pain.

- Plugin system: Only way to scale the development of the solution

- Lua for plugins: Yes! Language is not important, but not having to stop and restart the application for changes in logic, etc. is essential.

- Routing. Sounds great, can't wait to take a deeper look.

Kudos to devs. Nicely done!
There were a lot of weapons in private hands in Weimar Germany, and that was not the least of the factors that made it chaotic. And once Hitler was in power, it really didn't matter who had a rifle or a pistol stashed in the house--with the police and military willing to take extreme measures, private firepower had no real chance.
Show HN: I got into a venture accelerator and built my first Rails app
Hi, OP here.

Just a bit of background, myself and 2 friends have just gotten into AngelCube (an Australian based venture accelerator) and we're validating an idea we have, that people will purchase goods using bitcoin.

We've decided to pick Raspberry Pi's (as bitcoin has generally a tech audience), and I've created a page to sell them using Rails (a stack that one of our cofounder swears by :) ).

If you have any feedback on design, technology, or anything startup related we'd be keen to hear it

Thanks!

Jerrold
I'm having a hard time positively validating much of the info in the article, but Garry Nolan is indeed a Stanford professor whose name is fairly heavily attached to this Atacama skeleton. I can't find anything online with Dr. Nolan distancing himself from the skeleton or saying he's not involved. His lab page doesn't have anything about it.
The “But You are Free” technique
The problem isn't the networking part.

The problem is running multiple CPU bound processes on a single server. Cloud systems are great for stuff requiring storage. It's super easy to make a 1 Tb disk look like one hundred 10 Gb disks. The way files are used and the way storage systems are designed, it's transparent to the user that their 10 Gb "disk" is really a VM's fake hard drive.

But it's not possible to do the same thing with the CPU when any of the users are running CPU bound computations. Performance would be terrible. It's particularly bad for Matlab/Octave because they can take advantage of multi-core CPUs. For a lot of stuff the problem could be alleviated by giving each user their own CPU core, but with Matlab it would mean their code is running 1/8th the speed they could get if they ran it locally.
Maybe I'm naive, but it seems just so insanely bad that I assumed no product manager or engineer would intentionally cause this behavior.
I was so exicted when I read the title, but sadly the repo is still empty. I was one of those guys who watched numenta from the very beginning years ago.
I just Kudos'd all your articles just because the button is so awesome :)
SecureAuth releases Heuristics based step up authentication
I get the theory behind recommending the worse idea so that people recommend something that isn't nearly as bad but what is so bad about McDonald's? Here in Australia there aren't many fast food establishments opened at 3am besides McDonald's and when you're driving to work or had a night out on the town which is worse: dodgy kebab, slightly warm 3 day old curry or McDonald's?

I tend to use a similar tactic when we're brainstorming internal project ideas especially. I'll come up with something really stupid to break the ice and then others feel better knowing their ideas probably aren't nearly as bad.
I liked it very much! I kept playing even though I had stuff to do.
I have a bunch of domains with them and haven't any any problems so far.
Only that my information is out of date. :) Last I looked they did not have this as an option. Well, they did, but look at the hardcover cost, and that is all I could find for a while.
Bing Ads: Search Marketing You Cannot Ignore
Professors tracking whether students are reading their textbooks
Judge Throws Out Craigslist Copyright Lawsuit, But It Can Still Sue Over Data
I just used Spatialite to create a tool for managing large stacks of images on the pixel level; i.e., each image gets its own database file, each pixel is stored as an XYZ coordinate and an RGB value.

I can use Spatialite's built-in functions to rotate, translate, scale, etc. images; and use SQL to pull out sub-volumes of the stack, edit and composite them.

My biggest stack is almost 2000 images, over 90GB uncompressed data. Working with subvolumes is pretty snappy up to a few hundred megabytes, which is good enough for my purposes. For bigger jobs it should be possible to parallelize some tasks for better performance.

Not entirely on-topic, but the takeaway is I'm thumbs-up for using SQLite to process image data.
Are you planning on releasing a Linux client?

When you say science, git, and LaTeX, Linux is often the next word in the sequence...
The design goals and philosophies are really quite different.
I am glad that these two guys truly believed in their ideas and where not discouraged by your lack buy-in to their vision.

I am often reminded of the 2001 me. When I was new developer building java web applications and full of vigor with no real responsibilities or expenses.

I was dead set on this idea to build a site where people could post links, pictures, text or whatever and it would be voted and categorically managed by the user community.

I shopped the idea and prototype around to people in my limited network and it was unanimous that no one would ever want to invest time into this concept. Discouraged, I scrapped the idea and accepted a position as the first non-partner employee at a consulting start-up that quickly imploded.

Years later reddit moves to the forefront of the internet with striking resemblance to my original plan.

My fault because I did not stick to my guns. The idea that my application could have been half as popular as reddit is unlikely but it taught me a lesson, sometimes you've got to trust your gut, even if the people you trust cannot see your vision.
Open source free, $12 to learn what I had to know
Well, there's no doubt that fathers would react negatively to a son playing with dolls, immersing themselves in fashion, or healthcare.

Is there such a pressure on girls? Do the mothers feel unnerved if their daughters start fiddling with lego?