skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are two completely unrelated kinds of flying car.

First is the Jetsons version of the flying car. This is the aviating equivalent of the personal automobile. You get in, you fly it to work from your driveway, land it on the roof of your office building, and walk in.

Second is what this was: a machine that's both a road car and an airplane.

The first one is at least conceptually very neat. If it worked, it could completely eliminate traffic jams, eliminate pedestrian-vehicle accidents, and vastly improve the efficiency of local transport. There's been little attempt to build such a thing. It basically demands VTOL operation, which vastly restricts its range and increases its cost and noise. The Moller Skycar is the only real-world attempt at this one that I can think of, and it didn't get very far.

The second one is completely pointless. The "flying car" as it actually (barely) exists, as in this example, is just a car that is also an airplane. You drive it to an airport, reconfigure it to be an airplane, fly it to another airport, land, reconfigure it to be a car, and drive off.

The problem is that design tradeoffs mean that such a "flying car" is both a bad car and a bad airplane. They have inherently different needs for things like wheels, engines, drivetrains, etc. Putting both into the same machine means it's not going to do either one well.

For every "flying car" out there, you can take the same money and buy a better car, a better airplane, a second better car to keep at your most frequently used destination airport, and have enough money left over to rent cars at other airports for years and years. This is unlikely ever to change.

The Jetsons idea is interesting, but roughly nobody is working on anything at all applicable to it.
Most blogs don't need javascript, and publishers are pissing off their readers by pretending they do.
Sorry to hear that. I had the same experience of someone mentioning it and I looked it up before seeing a warning. That's Reddit for you...
My late father-in-law spoke a language, one of the Austronesian aboriginal languages of Taiwan, in which the word /mama/ indicated "father" rather than "mother." Several languages are like that, and some human languages do not have the word /mama/.

The article cites Roman Jakobson on the issue, and he is the correct person to cite, but the article doesn't digest the findings of linguistics (a subject I have studied) helpfully. There isn't any universal word "mama," and there isn't any universal association of one sound string or a small subset of sound strings with feeding infants.

AFTER EDIT:

Hurrah for the earlier comment here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5694995

which links to a much better article

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where...

and well deserves your upvote.
Sure if you're dealing with 1GB of data it probably isn't worth spinning up a Hadoop cluster to run your analysis. However, if you already have Hadoop up an running for something that genuinely requires it, that 1GB job might make sense there. The data may already be in HDFS, and you already have the infrastructure there to manage and monitor jobs.

The references to Facebook & Yahoo running small jobs on huge clusters may be a little misleading. It may be simply the easiest place for them to deploy those jobs consistently.

But yeah... "Big Data" is a total meaningless buzzard.
How we built a research lab for mobile app testing in just a few hours
Sure there was, thanks to human domestication and husbandry of animals, we've been selecting for tastiness in some species for thousands of years.
Same, but I also noticed that the link in Feedly isn't the same as the link on HN for some reason.
I've found the source of the problem with moving Chromium tabs between windows. It's a bug in Chrome and its WM hints and appears in Ubuntu 12.04 because of Unity-2d: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-2d/+bug/9357....

I posted a work-around as a comment to the bug in Launchpad.
For pages over a critical number of likes it's still better though. Once you hit over 100 or so comments, unthreaded commenting is just too hard on Facebook (especially since you can't easily load all the comments at once and Ctrl-F for what you're looking for).
There are better countries for companies to invest in that have better infrastructure and speaks better english.

You might want to reword that. :)

More seriously, I am optimistic because 1) the older generation will die off and 2) almost 50% of the grad students in any top US university are from India. (This includes programs in AI and Robotics. Count me in that too.)
The fact that so many people are calling things "big data" when the data is not high volume (the most popular definition I've seen is the 5 V's definition--big seems to be a misnomer in this case, as only volume could really be called a measure of "big") lends credence to your statement.
It's not about "people downloading shit for free" and it has never been about that. Nobody downloads things "for free," there are real costs associated with downloading anything on the internet. If these companies wanted a cut of that it would make significantly more sense for them to lobby for more subsidization funded by a tax on general internet or computer use; computers are pervasive enough that this would be pretty profitable for them. This is not the route they chose though, they instead chose to attack people's free speech by redefining the word "property" for their own purposes.

Obviously they chose to do it this way because it grants them significantly more power when an entire branch of law is devoted to the restrictions they can impose by being "copyright holders," rather than them just receiving simple monetary kickbacks. And this is their goal: to gain power over you and I.
It's a sweet machine because you're able to use ssh ... using a special "developer" boot option? Come on people.
Seth Meyers to Host Late Night in place of Fallon
doesn't work with unicode.
I think that big data has made math sexy, and selling applied statistics and operations research to small and medium-sized businesses under the guise of "big data" with the intention of providing applied mathematical tools is what is happening in the market.
Thanks, I think what most people, including adventured, do is to make an assumption about GA and then forge ahead without ever checking it. The link you posted was very illuminating.

Personally, this stresses the importance of measuring events or interactions rather than time on a page. It would be nice to have both but if given the choice, I'd rather have event/interaction data.
I always assumed that it was a loanword though, and that 娘, 母親 were the "original" words for mother.

Curiously, "ma" is always the first syllable that is taught to students of Mandarin (to explain the tones).
Chromebooks are not that much cheaper. They don't give you that much extra battery life. They are extremely limited in functionality and I feel a proper "developer machine" should have more than just ssh.
The Samsung Chromebooks get 6-7hours of battery life.

You aren't getting Retina/Pixel resolution with the cheap Chromebook, but my Series 5 is 1280 x 800, which is the same resolution as the 13" Macbook Pro's (pre-retina) were. This is quite decent considering the average 15.6" cheapo laptop runs 1366 x 768.
Thank you for talking about this.
My elementary school (K to 5th grade) was 8:35am I think, middle school (6th-8th) was 9:05am and high school was 7:55am. Times were mostly stagnated though I think for the bus schedule. Certain AP courses (such as AP Chemistry) started an hour earlier, but that was the only exception. Not sure how they decided who should go to school first though. That has always made me curious.
I definitely think it can handle the volume, but what I don't know about is how large call centers work and what the software needs are. The thing about Asterisk is that it's more a framework than a final implementation - it can handle a lot, but you need to actually build the application you want it to be.
I think that mode-theorists wouldn't consider the shaking icons thing to be a mode, since it's obvious when you're in it. What they call a mode is a program state that the user can easily be in without realizing it and that affects the results of user interactions. Something like that.
crouton runs surprisingly well. I've noticed a few hiccups though - I still can't get my trackpad to work smoothly on my original Series 5.
Those people who still ride horses... They're really holding us back as a civilization.
That's not a problem because it would then be illegal to hack it and it would be solved the way all illegal actions are solved.
There were a number of annoying factual inaccuracies in the article, particular with respect to heroin:

> ..time-killing properties of opium or heroin, but with none of the likelihood of it stopping his heart

Opiates do not stop your heart. The notion that every single usage of opium or heroin is like a game of russian roulette, that might stop your heart, is fantasy. Opiates are actually quite safe, as drugs go. It's not until you take far too much or mix them that you are screwed. And that's true of any opiate, prescription or otherwise.

> Heroin kills, and OxyContin, unless badly mishandled, does not.

Basically not true; injected oxy requires no more 'mishandling' than heroin to kill. Both will happily shut down your respiratory system and kill you if you administer too much. Of course one could argue that the pharma is of a consistent manufacture and dosage, whereas one batch of too-strong street opiates could kill someone used to weaker stuff, but the author of this piece seems far too clueless about the subject to be making such distinctions.

Then we have comparison of marijuana's 'addictiveness' to that of opiates. The difference between psychological dependence and physical dependence is one of kind, not degree.
Opiate withdrawal can't kill you. It feels like you're dying, though.
Litterbugs Beware: Turning Found DNA Into Portraits
I disagree. If your immune system is already run down by low grade infection and you've got a persistent case of diaorreah from poorly sourced drinking water, it's pretty easy for a flu virus to knock you out. No anibiotics means there's no way to keep you from getting pneumonia or other secondary lung infections. The healthier you are to start, the more likely you are to make it. The one exception to this is the paradoxical case where people's immune response goes crazy from battling all the virus particles. This can happen in really healthy young people.

My reference to medical tech is the whole system of diagnostic testing and patient monitoring. It allows for early identification, quarantine, etc... We also know a heck of a lot about proper bio safety procedures in medical centers to lessen the spread of disease through health care workers.

Again, not arguing that a pandemic like 1918 can't happen at all. I'm just saying that we're not showing up completely clueless and unarmed to a gun fight. We're bringing a knife this time :)
It didn't work with 5 paragraphs of lorem ipsum. There was no error from the site to tell me it was too long. It needs some basic validation
This is retarded get another dog
I did write what I meant, that the gift of just a one day pass is much less impressive than the way this post was titled originally. (Hint: it didn't say one day pass)

I then finished off my comment with a sarcastic remark, which you did not understand and proceeded to stew over for multiple days. Lol! /G
The websites you have mentioned are "feel good" services targeted at grieving consumers, but are unlikely to produce viable samples down the road.

Regardless of the advancements in science down the road, a biopsy is required now to produce a sample that can be cryogenically preserved given current technology. Cryogenics is not something you can do at home, at comes with quite the price tag.

Three things to look for to help find a legitimate vendor: 1. Should not offer human/primate sampling, banking, or storage. 2. Should not accept deceased samples except by special case. 3. Should require a veterinary specialist, no do it yourself kits.
Apparently it is not a Western loanword - http://wold.livingsources.org/word/77161647552647739
Another one to drop on (that I made). Marks items as read and supports auto login.

Hacker News Padreader for iPad
http://itunes.apple.com/app/hacker-news-padreader/id42833141...
> The “bigger” your data, the more false positives will turn up in it, when you’re looking for correlations

I think they are talking about the Sharpshooter Fallacy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy
A significant amount of websites filter on the + and will throw an error as an invalid character in the email string. Very annoying.
I use vim macros frequently. It's not that I'm doing something complex, but that I'm doing something repetitive. Having such an easy way to create macros on the fly means that I never have to do repetitive editing. (How important that is depends on the language; in SQL, for example, it's a huge help.)

:norm is a lesser-known trick that also helps quite a bit.
While I agree about Indian food in particular, vegetarians can be pretty boring too. http://fightland.vice.com/blog/ottavia-bourdain-goes-vegan
Injected OxyContin is worse, actually. Being 2/3rds the strength of heroin, but being in pill form, means you're running the gauntlet with talcosis, and causing other terrible and fatal medical conditions due to the nature of what is put in the pills themselves.

Heroin and pure opiates are actually "safe" as far as drugs go. I'm clean, and even when addicted held down good jobs, earning good money, and no-one was the wiser. My vitals are still perfect to this day.

It's the addiction that gets you, unfortunately.
Did they learn nothing from The Athens Affair (http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair)? If not, whose kool aid did the FBI drink to suppose that "We can do better now?" Didn't the FBI learn from the multiple huge failures of software development on The Virtual Case File (http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/who-killed-the-v...)?
Google Takes Minority Interest in Lending Club
I don't how much more clear I need to make my last comment in this thread to point out that the United States problem is that wealthy family students are already HUGELY overrepresented among college students, and an actually DUMB student from a wealthy family is much more likely to be recruited by a college, admitted to a college, and supported through graduation by a college than an actually smart student from a "lower class" (your term) family. Money talks more than smarts when it comes to college admissions in the United States. Many countries consciously set different policies, and I think that is a good idea. (For one thing, among many other possible reasons for supporting such national policies, national policies that favor brains over money in admission to higher education appear to have higher sustained rates of economic growth for the whole country and lower rates of income inequality in the national population.)

From the Business Week article I linked to in my first comment:

"For example, the paper cites data that show 19 percent of freshman with SAT scores under 700 (out of a maximum 2,400) received merit aid, as did 27 percent of freshman with scores between 700 and 999. The term 'merit scholarships,' in other words, is a misnomer, the report says, because schools can distribute the aid however they please."

I do agree with you that if colleges decide the policies, they will presumably decide for the benefit of colleges, rather than for the benefit of society as a whole. What is objectionable about United States practice is federal tax-supported subsidies to colleges that the colleges distort into benefits for wealthier individuals.
Five Woot Execs Check Out
Ask HN: Competition board members allowed to compete?
Hi,

I am currently involved in a coding competition that runs over the course of about 2 months. At the end of the competition there is a showcase and you are judged by a panel to see who wins. This year in the competition there is at least one team that is comprised of two members of the board of directors of the competition (one is a former judge and the other has won for two years in a row, the competition is only in its 3rd year). Am I wrong to say that if you are a board member of the competition that you should not be allowed to be a competitor? To be fair I have pasted a clause below that goes over the conflict of interest part of the rules. I understand that it may not be against the rules, but is it also not in bad taste to have board members compete? If they win fairly, I believe that a negative light would still be cast upon the competition.

What are your thoughts?

(Conflict of Interest Clause in competition.)
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=GkGAmCVd
"FDR was given almost absolute executive and legislative power."

Um, no. This is incorrect. Roosevelt's plans and projects were repeatedly frustrated by opposition in the other branches of government. That doesn't happen in dictatorships.

Much of the New Deal, for example, ended up being struck down by the Supreme Court. Roosevelt tried to prevent that from happening again by "packing" the Court with friendly justices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Reorganization_Bill_o...), but Congress shot that plan down. He desired for years before Pearl Harbor to get the US to join with the Allied powers in opposing German and Japanese expansionism, but the Neutrality Acts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_1930s) made it nearly impossible for him to provide any US support for the Allies at all. Even in 1941, after the fall of France and the Battle of Britain, Congress only agreed to extend the military draft instituted in 1940 by a single vote.

You can argue whether Roosevelt was in the right on any of the policy decisions he made, but you can't argue that he was operating without checks and balances, because he wasn't.
This plant is more interesting and bizarre than any sci-fi writer's imagination, the Wikipedia description is fascinating but also gave me the shivers: "Lloyd devoted several studies to the possibility, often recounted but never previously accounted for under scientific conditions, that Utricularia can consume larger prey such as young tadpoles and mosquito larvae by catching them by the tail, and ingesting them bit by bit."

Think of a mutant variety of this plant with 1m bladders: it can trap a swimmer and ingest them over the course of a few days! I wonder if there's a theoretical limit to how big they can get.
Not a bad assessment of what seems to be going on.
>I never really used a laptop until I got my Chromebook Pixel, because it was so painful to keep it up to date and my configuration sync'd. My Thinkpad X220 has been sitting dead on my windowsill for about a year.

Have you tried Dropbox as a way to keep your config sync'd?
It isn't a lack of taxes, it is that Medicaid (a federally mandated program) is out of control and is absolutely destroying state education budgets.

"Governments’ general support for higher education 25 years ago was nearly 50 percent greater than state spending on Medicaid. That relationship has now flipped: Medicaid spending is about 50 percent greater than support for higher education. If higher education’s share of state budgets had remained constant instead of being crowded out by rising Medicaid costs, it would be getting some $30 billion more than it receives today, or more than $2,000 per student."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19orszag.html?_r=1
SSH does not require a "special developer boot option". You install the SecureShell chrome extension and you're done.
Same for Chrome on my ipad.
Nexus 7 Chrome Beta same issue.
This hardly seems like a conclusive test to me, it's the beginning. Testing performance across various devices and different versions of Android (although based on these current tests probably extremely difficult) ia the only true way to reach a definitive conclusion on HTML5 vs Flash battery drain.

Having said that, based on experience with various Flash-capable devices over the years I've noticed in Chrome especially Flash performance is horrible. I think Flash is severely broken in Chrome as even on my Core i7 laptop which is no slouch, it seems to manage sometimes 50% + CPU usage in Chrome and cause the CPU fan to really start spinning up to cool it down. It's no secret that Flash compared to HTML5 looks like an aging hatchback, but HTML5 video is nowhere near the scale of Flash just yet (in terms of market penetration or feature-set), at least not yet.
Google To Kill Scratchpad Chrome App in Favour of Keep
Have you installed newrelic.com and compared the performance difference between your dev and prod?
Meaningful Permission Denied Page
Ask HN: Who are good web hosting companies in Canada?
I'm looking for cloud hosting specifically with datacentres in Canada but don't know much about the reputation of the available options. Would prefer not to dedicated servers unless they're the only good option.
Plus, I don't know about the US, but in Australia the average consumer is going to have no idea the Nexus 4 even exists. Previous nexus handsets were supported by significant collateral from telcos, the only way you'd know about the N4 would be if you accidentally clicked the 'devices' link in Google Play.

The lack of 4G is also a bit of an issue to the average consumer, I think - it's a clear feature differential between it and high end phones, at a time when 4G is receiving a huge marketing push in Australia.
That is how I always thought of it. Not being able to express one's self without copious amounts of explicit language thrown in just lessens any point the speaker was trying to make 99/100 times. We all have pet peeves that can turn us off of listening or reading a point of view, but for many, uncouth language for the lack of better adjectives/verbs/nouns is one of the most common.

Don't have a problem with cursing used in moderation when used appropriately, but like any ingredient in a recipe, too much is a bad thing.
First, Apple still has a X11 server on MacOSX, so you can just compile and run your X application there.

Otherwise, learn Objective-C and Cocoa, and rewrite the user interface. Works better when the application is well modularised to begin with.
The reason the "big data" pimps can get away with this is that most of the people that should know, (that aren't DB programmers, DBAs, true scientists or engineers in the domain), don't know shit about data and generally too fscking lazy to learn. So they buy into the latest wave of buzz words and hype.
Clarifying the scope of a project or data collection & analysis effort is paramount. You never want to attempt to boil the ocean. The key is to figure out the data the matters most per your company or organization's strategy.
Read The Innovators Solution (or Dilemma). There is more than one way to skin a cat.
#include "page1"

#include "page2"

----

God's temple
What I discovered unfortunately is the PositiveSSL certs often fail on browsers of mobile devices (safari/iphone, chrome/nexus).

I ended up getting an EssentialSSL Cert from namecheap.
What to watch on Netflix
Most companies today are already using scaled up servers to host their medium size warehouses (think Teradata or Exadata). That approach is very expensive (> millions of dollars), only works well with well-defined data, and does not scale well beyond a few TBs.

Hadoop is not just about running large jobs on very large data. Hadoop also makes sense when trying to scale on commodity hardware or running ad hoc queries (which can target a small amount of data) on medium to large data sets.
You could start with macports or homebrew. Those tools allows you to install open source software in OS X.

One example is XQuartz the X11 port for OS X http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/Releases

If you know what are you doing probably this is a good point to start, and if you need other libraries then you should look there too.