skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Order has been coming up on HN recently because a number of err... unethical practices are being implemented by engineers who are theoretically "just doing their job". There was a request that engineers refuse to do such jobs on ethical grounds, and this was one of the traditions pointed out as doing exactly that.
It's how I used to feel about viewing 95% of the output of Hollywood as a "wacky" political conservative.

I got over it and learned to judge the work on its merits.
Kleiner's investments were in solar panels and lithium ion battery powered cars that were at best small improvements on old technologie that weren't efficient enough. If someone has a fusion reactor coming online, invest in that instead.
> Its a creeping windows "all in one" design model, which is mostly awful. The opposite of the unix "do one thing really well" model.

I always find it funny that people only pick on Windows, when this is the model followed by any computer system outside the UNIX world.

Maybe lack of experience with computing in the 80-90's?
Don't get sucked into the "grade race". Life's much more about what you learn and less about getting the 4.0. In the end, the grades don't matter to the extent that your parents tell you they do.
Solution or not "Fisker" was a bad investment. Their strategy from the start they was doomed to fail. Relying on outsourced IP in a new technology isnt something I would invest in.
Do be careful when you get to lobsters.
The weird thing about having an HSA is that because I pay essentially 75% of a lot of things out of pocket (as long as I'm below my deductible), it often makes sense for me to negotiate and "pay cash" rather than running through my insurance. And yes, the doctors, pharmacies, etc. drop the prices a lot.

One of the weird things going on right now is that Doxycycline (a common antibiotic) has gone up in price 10-20x in the past couple months. A bottle which used to cost me $12 generic is now...$350! (due to a crazy FDA recertification process for the manufacturers)

My local pharmacist laid in a huge supply at the old price, and when I told him I was on an HSA (and where he saw my insurance deductible of around $250), he sold me the prescription for cash for $30.

Still covered for anything serious (essentially any ER visit, cancer, serious illness, imaging, etc.), but for anything else, I'm highly incented to negotiate like I would for any other product. Best of both worlds.
I like the "optional" hands-on challenges he listed for applicants in the jobs page. It may end up filtering out some talented candidates (not wanting to put in this much effort for one application), but it will certainly call out to the tinkerers and hobbyists who would do those tasks for fun anyway.
I'm curious, is the goal to prove one or few models wrong? I think while it is extremely sexy, his explanation kind of answers the question for him in a cheesy way - "depends on which lens you look at the problem with".

Doing a nematode-version Turing test is one thing. You could even do it as a nematode in a Chinese box. But isn't there a flaw in comparing how a real nematode's brain reacts to light vs. a nemaload function to a specific computed wavelength of light energy? I think I'm not understanding something.
It's possible, though it depends on the wishes of the original authors.

Stockfish Chess [1] is the one GPL v3 licensed app that I know of which has been available for... quite some time, now. I've seen several other Chess apps build on that engine, which go as far back as when I was just starting iOS development.

Now, VLC was the one case where one volunteer for the project invoked the GPL to get Apple to take an iOS port of the app off the store [2]. Based on that situation, it seems that if the original authors of a GPL licensed codebase want to pursue a claim against an app that uses that code, they can, and Apple will take it seriously.

I don't believe that situation has changed.

EDIT: For your own sake, it's probably best if you approach the original author to see if they can make an exemption, in writing, for the DRM situation. IANAL, but that seems like it would be the cleanest way to go about handling GPL licensed code without issue.

[1] - http://stockfishchess.org

[2] - http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/08/vlc-app-removed-from-app-stor...
Quote from the article: “Hackers are the animals that can detect a storm coming or an earthquake,” he said. “They just know, even though they don’t know why, and there are two big things hackers are excited about now and can’t articulate why–Bitcoin and 3D printing.”

But from reading HN it seems that there is a lot more controversy about bitcoin than about 3D printing.
Fisker was a bad investment choice by Kleiner, because they wanter to jump onto the bandwagon of electric car. This is nothing new.
Mr. Burns is falling down on the league tables then, CEO's should be earning at least 500 times the average workers wage http://go.bloomberg.com/multimedia/ceo-pay-ratio/

Clearly he is undercompensated.
For those wanting a hilly work out — check out http://www.walkscore.com/bike/CA/San_Francisco and pick your own combination of hills and availability of bike lanes.
Timebar: use your Mac's menubar into a timer
You should pick a language based on project and customer requirements, not what you like to use.

Since MSSQL is mostly used in Windows shops, nothing more natural than using a language directly supported by Microsoft.
Not the same - e.g. rotating a set of elements causes each individual element to rotate around their individual centers, rather than causing the group to rotate around a central pivot.
>According to NHTSA, the sharpest decline in fatality rate / 100mm VMT preceded 1984, and since 1996 has dropped by something like 6%.

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

1995 fatalities per 100M VMT: 1.73
1996 fatalities per 100M VMT: 1.69
...
2010 fatalities per 100M VMT: 1.11
2011 fatalities per 100M VMT: 1.10

That's a fair bit more than 6%. And that's the rate notwithstanding the increases in the speed limit that have occurred during that time.

>What mainstream automotive advances lead you to believe that cars are so much safer that van Benthem's numbers are wildly off?

Crumple zones, passenger safety cage, airbags, anti-lock brakes. Better handling to avoid accidents. These things existed in 1996 but weren't present on much of the installed base of cars driven in that year. They were even less common in 1987. And that's just the cars. Light trucks and SUVs were deathtraps on wheels through the 1990s.

>the 1990s dominate van Bentham's numbers and correspond to the introduction of OBD-x.

That's what I'm saying. The new emissions controls had only just been introduced and weren't present on the installed base of cars that were driven on the roads in the years the speed limits were changed.

>There are hybrids on the roads, but most people don't drive them, and we won't be outlawing Volvos from 2000 any time soon.

The problem isn't Volvos from 2000, it's Impalas and Broncos from 1990. Which there were a lot more of on the road in 1996 than there are in 2013. And, once again, if your concern is air pollution, you do better to remove polluting vehicles from the road entirely and replace them with vehicles with modern emissions controls than you do by continuing to operate them at scale and then trying to mitigate the environmental damage of that choice by slowing everybody down.
Nicely written SASS! :)

I like the trick of using radiobutton/hover interacting to create the scoring systems, very cool.

One improvement suggestion would be to change the player paddle image to be default when you move out of the court? Then it would feel like you could click on the Alex Walker name and see who this person is. Because atm it does not work.
How to Use DVDFab Mac Blu-ray Player to Play Video on Mac
As a free video player for Mac, DVDFab Mac Blu-ray Player is able to play almost all popular video formats for free. The audiovisual effect is fantastic, and it’s very easy to use as well. Next is a simple tutorial on how to use it to play video on your Mac, just read on if you’d like to.
Pretty interesting, looks like Google Elevation API misses some tunnels though (looking at a route that should go through Broadway tunnel right now). Tunnels are key for getting the Flattest Route™.
Made me smile, when I tried a German RSS Feed. The sentiment-analysis was always negative, as the German word "die" (=the female/plural form) was confused for the concept of dying.

So, this really is non the less a great service. I will try to incorporate this in an experiment I am running. I am using the Readability-API till now, but it is (on German news sites) not that good in extracting the pure text-content.

It nearly always has navigation-, or advertisement-text in it. That does make it difficult to do text-analysis on the content, as I am trying to do.
It was already broken ... on debian. When the random was limited to 0-65535.
Why didn't they get them in Bitcoins?
Some of the very new, very small startups (like ours) have started having Bay Area equivalent offices...but they are hard to find and certainly not "safe" jobs like the MNCs.
Life is the thing that goes by while we try to make a living.
The equation is something like:

( (gross_revenue + interest_on_capital) - cost_of_care ) = profit

In other words, the greater throughput, the greater profit.
I might just not understand this site's mission or goal or whatever, but this just doesn't seem hacking-related to me.
How does it deal with async stuff if I need it in a serial manner? With node I have async. What does meteor have that's similar?
Only after we have explored every other possible solution. This is America, and no socialism is possible; unless you are a homeland security contractor.
Google Doodle celebrates work of graphic designer Saul Bass with video tribute
Very iOS unfriendly - can't pinch zoom
Whose postmortem, the project's or Carmack's? With Haskell, you never know...
Looks interesting - wouldn't it lead to congestion though?
The rest are a bit out of order too... you'd probably want to try Drosophilia before Zebrafish. But yeah, the leap to mouse is pretty huge. You could potentially try to do Xenopus tropicalis (frog) before mouse, but I'm not sure how well that is mapped as a neural model.
At least we have a solution. Anyway node is not good for serving static files. (specially in HTTPS).

So we should let meteor to do what it is best at :)
Downloadify: Download Spotify songs with 50 LOC Chrome extension
U.S. Weighs Wider Wiretap Laws to Cover Online Activity
Ask HN: What are the best tools for performing browser testing of a website?
Looking for the best browser testing tools that help me test whether my website works fine on most of the major desktop and mobile browsers.
As I am trying to learn some basics on automated text-processing and categorization, I am always fond of these experiments/ideas like yours.

The idea of releasing it as demands sounds great. I would love to hear from you, when it is released.
Not a waste of effort, just one more step away from the roots of the web. If someone can't gracefully degrade images, text and links they are a failure of a web developer and have betrayed what the web should stand for.
So, I have enough money but I can't pay for this book. I live somewhere in SE Asia and I don't have any means to pay for the book. I'm not 18 yet and don't have a credit card. None of my parents/relatives have a credit card that can be used internationally or for online purchases. The government is very strict about money laundering and getting a credit card is a real pain, which my parents didn't want to endure. Trust me, I really want want to purchase the book but I can't.

I would really appreciate If the authors could send me a copy of the book at this email: ajob367@gmail.com I'll surely pay you once I have a credit card. :)
This.
I can't believe nobody else pointed out that it's not n-squared.
(but, lots of people pointed out that complexity is really about reasoning not about memorisation - and you have to be good at reasoning in order to be a good programmer).

And this is not an "esoteric question" - you should really have a good grasp on complexity in order to understand the limitations of your system, and when you can use certain algorithms/data structures, and when you can't.

See this write-up: http://www.infoarena.ro/blog/numbers-everyone-should-know - but don't memorize the numbers, that would be pointless - the idea is to get a feel of why complexity is important.
(you'll notice for instance that between O(n!) and O(n^2) there is a 2-3 orders of magnitude difference in the acceptable input data size... so your confusion between factorial and n-squared is actually quite big)
18 Ways to Make WordPress Fast As All Hell
This book is awesome. I'm following through the chapter. This book contains the real life experience.

You can't get it from reading the docs. So this is the best way to get started with Meteor. And price is too high but its worthy.

+1 for the book as a meteor webapp.
Original article [Oct 2012]: http://www.gizmag.com/warp-drive-bubble-nasa-interstellar/24...

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4534359

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4542210
Also seems to not work with javascript disabled, which is unfortunate given it's supposed to be a CSS demo, I imagine this is just a factor of the particular site though.
Folks don't want to turn it on, because it's not needed for most cases and it's the perfect way (after flash and java) to get malware.

I don't know what's happening to web development, but since this app fever developers are fighting for eye candy and LESS accessibility. Sometimes I see a page that fails to work without JS, open the source and see just JS code. Where is the content? Web apps are often times also walled gardens, and completely break the functionality of the browser (based on linking, rendering text & images and using the back button).

Now even simple websites completely disable access to content just to show some silly animation.
Wow. Great UI! The selling point for me is the ability to simply plot points using python code in a browser.
It's difficult to wind your sleep cycle back, but what works for some people is to wind it forward - keep going to bed later and later until you clock around again. Of course, you do need the freedom of time to be able to do this.
While interesting (especially from a funding perspective!), most of these approaches aren't quite as ground-breaking as one might think. Neuroscientists in academia are doing most of these things. For optogenetics, see Deisseroth's work; for in vivo Ca2+ imaging in nematodes, refer to the work of Bargmann as well as the various Witesides collaborations involving microfluidics; pan-neuronal in vivo imaging is currently being pioneered by Engert at Harvard and a couple of Janelia Farm labs.

These are massive efforts, and involve horrendous heaps of diligent busywork. This makes me the boring naysayer, but please don't be distracted by the startup-like appearance and the peculiar financing situation. It's possible but unlikely that the major obstacle here is simply the combination of available techniques!

Honestly, what I'm most curious about are his thoughts on model-driven interrogation of an in vivo system -- biologists, and even computational neuroscientists, are a bit too hesitant when it comes to letting computers find and test hypotheses. In the age of highly advanced genetic techniques (e.g., binary expression systems in Drosophila or zebrafish) and 2-photon imaging, the process of actually evaluating hypotheses has become a bit old-fashioned...
Most contributors here seem to wish for widespread end-to-end encryption, to make wiretaps a thing of the past. I'm a bit surprised at this apparent consensus... What is the estimated number of people who have been significantly wronged by abusive wiretapping, and how does it compare to the number of criminals arrested and crimes averted by wiretapping? I'm asking this in the context of Western democracies. I understand that the situation is different in authoritarian countries.

I have my doubts on the wisdom of this specific plan from the FBI, but security implications seem only a peripheral concern for the majority of people complaining. It rather seems that people don't want to compromise on privacy and I don't get it. Generally speaking, don't we want wiretaps to be possible?
almost identical to my app, Nearest Burrito: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nearest-burrito/id575617196?...
It’s all about being productive
This just promotes shouvelware and sadly it's only for U.S developers.
Which is fine. Let their works die off while others flourish.
Not the person you replied to, but my two cents.

The creator and lead developer, Massimo Di Pierro, is incredibly active and always willing to lend a hand with whatever problem you have. I've seen him around reddit (not sure if he's on HN) and even when he's met with the inevitable haters, he's always been friendly and cordial.

Just like you've said, web2py was originally made to teach people how to build websites, which really shows in its architecture. It forgoes traditional Python conventions ("explicit is better than implicit" being a major one) in order to be more beginner-friendly. Some of the more experienced developers find this annoying, but if you're coming from PHP or a fresh background, it can be much easier to get started. Just take a look at the overview on Wikipedia[0]. It gives a good outline.

This is coming from someone who doesn't even use web2py. I prefer Flask for personal projects and Django for work/group things, but I would whole-heartedly recommend web2py. Run through the book[1] and, if you don't like it, give the Django tutorial[2] a shot. If that doesn't mesh with you, there's Flask[3], Pyramid[4], TurboGears[5], and CherryPy[6]. (The last two I would not recommend for beginners, but they're still good!)

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web2py#Overview

[1]: http://web2py.com/book

[2]: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/intro/tutorial01/

[3]: http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/

[4]: http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/1.4-branch...

[5]: http://turbogears.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

[6]: http://docs.cherrypy.org/stable/index.html
Trending news topics around the world API?
Is there an API which provides the real time trending news topics at this time? I have seen trendingtopics.org but it is mostly popular topics in Wikipedia and doesn't make much sense.
Authors already do exclusive deals with publisher. Such deals do not need to transfer copyright at all, as its all under contract law.

If I make a contract with someone that says I get exclusivity to publish and sell their works, and in return I give them some money, in what way do we need to do copyright assignments?
I tend to agree with you. We don't see much transparency in the industry as a whole.

When a security incident happens, I believe most security professionals would advise to keep details to the minimum necessary. I can imagine how misleading info can cause panic and dire consequences (to both linode and its customers). In Linode's case this could have been mandated by the FBI even, giving Linode no choice.

For me, linode is still one of the more transparent providers out there. I doubt AWS or any other provider would be more forthcoming if something similar happens.

Of course, there's a lot of security improvements to be made. I hope Linode would shake-up and improve and signs are they're doing that.

I'm still curious to hear some brand names that are better in that respect (hence my question about). From what I read there really is no better alternative currently at this price range.
I haven't seen a good analysis of gas (from the ground) to ICE in mpg, vs. electricity from coal (in the ground) with grid losses and batteries, with the capital costs of the vehicles amortized. I'm not sure what the best comparison is -- dollars, kilos of CO2, other emissions, etc.?

Obviously the US grid isn't even 100% coal, and we're presumably moving toward more and more NG and renewables at all times, but it would be interesting to quantify this over time.
Facebook and several other companies and VCs sued by Aaron Greenspan
I assume the partner was Ray Lane?
Copyright is not private property. Its a state granted privilege of exclusivity which prevent everyone except the author to exercise their rights of private property of books, paintings and other works of art or information.
14 numbers every developer should know
http://developer.surfiki.com
In looking into the United States' adoption of this[1], I noticed that there is actually a fledgling organization aimed at computer scientists, 'The Pledge of the Computing Professional'.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer
Build CUBRID PDO Driver on Mac OS X through PECL using CCI Driver
How is "Genome Compiler" an open tool? I hate those guys, it's not even an actual compiler. or open. If they wanted to do something useful, then yeah I would shoot for that package management concept.
Good point, I'd not thought about the JVM based Ruby solutions which can be used. If they'd give more Scala-like performance..

IronPython?
this really is absolutely awesome. will be putting it to good use very soon :)
Bizarre skeleton leaves scientists baffled
The nice thing about making something mandatory is that their is then outrage when people can't afford what they must have. Society can't ignore the problem anymore and must attack it head on.

Can't afford insurance? Well, here is a subsidy, or why not just go on medicaid? Can't afford insurance and make $60K a year; well, maybe individual plans should be more affordable...single payer is looking more desirable. Oh, you make $100K a year and STILL can't afford insurance (let's say no family is involved). Well how the f*ck are you spending your money? Oh, you just don't want to buy it because you are young and invincible? That's not how insurance works.

Yeh for America; they are finally catching up with the rest of the developed world!
Well it's not like it originally comes in encrypted with the public key, it has to be on there for a short amount of time already, why would they keep the unencrypted version around longer than the initial billing?
Hmm - it seems those guys are not what I remembered/thought they were. I think they were somehow tied to the open bio standards project which is what I was thinking of.
even more semantic manifestation
expand our conceptual space

What exactly does all of that mean? REST is just a subprotocol of HTTP. It does add some guarantees about server behavior, but it does not make chunks of JSON any more semantic than if they were served over FTP.

The simplest example of why HTML is semantic (and the underlying benefits) is the very textarea I'm writing this in. I can resize it to accommodate larger messages I'm typing. It does spell-checking. The functionality was developed once and now benefits thousands of people visiting thousands of websites. Moreover, I can rely on it and control it. All of this thanks to semantic difference between textarea and some random div. This wouldn't be possible with some random JSON format or custom JavaScript control.
I thought it was pretty clear. They're the first-to-market ad product, providing its clients with the ability to better ingest, understand, manage and leverage real-time visual content with its arsenal of developer tools and media platforms.
Careful there. A lot of countries have quasi private/public systems with law-enforced mandates. For example, Switzerland.
This is Water (2005)
I know this is probably posted a lot, but I can never hear it enough.
Sci0033:Right Exit at the Right Time
It might be interesting to see this mashed up on top of http://www.opencyclemap.org/?zoom=13&lat=37.75187&lo... which has some good data for a lot of cities.
I'd been thinking about making something like this for a while (I'm in Seattle). Glad that someone with more time and skills than me got it put together.

What's the basic idea behind the optimization algorithm?
Ask HN: What happened to the Netflix Instant queue?