skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Midair collisions not near an airport are vanishingly rare. The takeaway from that for me is that concentrating traffic (such as would happen when you take one degree of freedom away) would materially increase the risk.

They're also rare in absolute terms, even including the near-airport ones.
That line is by Alan Perlis [1]. It's great, but not relevant to the question above, which is: all other things being equal, what's the best way to do functional decomposition? If you're moving between 1 and 10 data structures, then "all other things" are so far from being equal as to make for a completely different matter.

[1] http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html
In order for a computer to be able to build your website, it would have to be pretty intelligent. The computer would have to be able to learn on it's own, reason, etc. These aren't stepping stones towards that. A bunch of special purpose algorithms is good, but you have to have a fully general one to do most the work. Once you have that, you could just have it learn the rest on it's own.
It's important to note that it's not "free the weed, man!"

It would be grown by government approved vendors and taxed. Private growing would likely be illegal. Sales by non-government approved vendors would likely be illegal. I'm certain the government would allow allow a single FDA approved variety: you wouldn't see the higher powered varieties or growing techniques. It would more highly regulated than cigarettes or alcohol. I have no clue about the number of how all this would work out, but it could be more expensive than it is now.

If you get caught with a cheaper variety, or more powerful variety, etc, then what? Probably the same thing that happens today. After all, you can get arrested for carrying around prescription drugs that aren't properly labeled; you'd probably see the same thing with government marijuana. Moreover, you can then be charged with tax evasion.
"I don't normally like [style of restaurant] but this one was fantastic!" is usually informative but not as intended.
This makes me wonder, we have seen in polls earlier that most people active on HN are in late 20s or thereabouts. Now, such decisions are very important and many concur but is it possible most people who agree with her are more or less in the same age bracket and similar mindsets. Can anyone tell me honestly, how such decisions play out in the long run? I mean, in about 15-20 years from now, after taking such a decision, would one be extremely satisfied with his/her life or will one look back at this as a young person's decision that gave up on comfortable retirements plans, insurances, mortgages, holidays, life style etc. I am guessing there should be both kinds but which has higher odds?
Not exactly... but this isn't rocket science.

First, the P85 has an ~280 mile range, so you would only need a full recharge every night if you were driving about 100,000 miles a year.

It will recharge on a standard NEMA 40A outlet at ~35 miles/hr using 9.6 kW, or ~70 miles/hr using the optional 16.8 kW high speed charger.

So to go a typical 12,000 miles per year, that takes ~3,300 kWHs, less than a tenth of your analysis. It's about a 25% increase in average household energy consumption, not 350%
I am glad it is of some use :)
I bought a ScanSnap scanner a few years ago. It's a $400 scanner that can scan pretty much any document -- even double-sided ones. It applies OCR to printed text and can create searchable PDFs for you. At first I balked at the price tag, then bit the bullet and purchased the scanner, and now I think it's one of the best purchases that I've ever made. I've been able to recycle thousands of documents thanks to this thing.
Congratulations, this is possibly the most effing boring and self-indulgent thing I've ever read on HN.
In Washington, some prosecutors threw out all pending pot-related cases after I-502 (pot legalization) passed last November. http://blogs.seattletimes.com/politicsnorthwest/2012/11/09/1...

(Note: Seattle is in King county)
Interesting quote. Where is it from?

Do you agree that we need to do more school? Lots of people indicate that much of American school really isn't about learning to think, it's more about passing the class, fitting in, mixed in with a heap of credentialism.
Here's my proble. I have no problem paying taxes and investing in my community. But I'd never want to invest in a city as absurd as San Francisco.

It is interesting to observe how people in the finance industry in New York view taxation. They'll complain about it, but by and large they're pretty supportive of the whole system. Which is important, because they're responsible for some large fraction of the tax base, as well as a lot of corporate investment in the community. I think Wall Street is happy to invest in New York because the city isn't totally dysfunctional. The people who pay the taxes see benefits from public services, whether its the police or the transit infrastructure. It's a place where people making a million dollars a year will ride the bus or subway to work and so feel invested in the public services they pay for.

In San Francisco, the crazies and the hippies are firmly in charge. And as long as that's the case, why would you want to give them your money?
Seriously? Including the Freedom tower in this map is D-I-S-G-R-A-C-E-F-U-L. Shame on the NY Slimes.
I can see where you're coming from. The people who are upvoting it are probably doing so because they can relate to her struggles and her journey. But for you it's a disappointment because you expected insight about Google and this article does not deliver any.
You say that the beggars were aggressive. Does this mean that they asked everyone for change, and even asked you whenever they saw you, or does it mean that they would touch you and/or get in your face and speak violently to you?

If the latter, I'm terribly sorry for your bad experience. I've been living here for nearly three years now and hope that you find some comfort in the knowledge that your experience was a radical outlier. Every hobo, pusher, and prostitute that I've run into gracefully accepts "No, I'm sorry/thank you." for an answer. If the former, I suspect that "persistent but non-violent and/or polite" is a much clearer label for these sorts of folks. When you describe someone as "aggressive", it also carries connotations of "violent".

Also, the city's nested web of ineffectual homeless outreach/support programs is an entirely separate issue. (As is the city's "Make $60->$80k per year? Get a condo for 1/6th to 1/8th market price!" program. [This is their "low income housing ownership" program, BTW, which is entirely separate from their low-income housing rental program. (The rental program actually serves a pretty appropriate segment of the population.)])

EDIT:
It's widely reported that free-of-cost meals are available to anyone who wants them in SF. I've seen documentation that indicates that -as long as one can get moving by 0700- one can roam the city and never be without three squares a day. I know that I live within four blocks of two active food banks that serve the homeless, and within eight of a very large church-run organization that does the same. See also, this guy's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5297419

I've never seen anyone actually starving in the city, and I've walked through almost all parts of it, at all hours of the day and night. Folks get clothed and folks get fed. Folks often don't get psych medications or hospitalization that they need, but that's a whole other story. :/
carrying an illegal handgun while also dealing would of course not be pardoned

Why? If dealing pot shouldn't be a crime, why should being prepared to defend yourself with a handgun while dealing pot be a crime?

I don't understand the "illegal" qualifier. Isn't it always illegal to carry a handgun when dealing pot? Isn't having a handgun while committing a federal crime also a federal crime?

Obviously there are drug dealers who are aggressively violent, but if they haven't been caught for being aggressively violent why should they be punished as if they were? What other aspects of "innocent until proven guilty" should we do away with?

Even violent drug dealers represent a philosophical problem. Practically I don't think I'm willing to support letting them out of prison, but rationally I have some sympathy for some of them. Their involvement in the drug market shouldn't be a crime, and the violence in that profession is almost always due to the fact that it's a black market, with extremely high profit to be made and no legal protection against getting ripped off.

Their aggressive violence is not something to be condoned or accepted in society, but neither are laws that establish black markets that lead to such violence. Drug criminalization advocates claim all sorts of reasons why they're not at fault, from drug dealers being inherently evil due to bad parenting or genetics or whatever, to proximity to the criminal act and free will (no doubt legislators are further removed from the crime than the drug dealer who pulls the trigger). But who's really more at fault? The socially marginalized drug dealer from a relatively poor background who probably had poor schooling, who gets caught up in drug dealing, and who kills someone because his drug organization needs him to? Or a legislator with (supposedly) much more wisdom, who nevertheless votes to create a black market that leads to conditions where violence is commonplace?

I'm not condoning the violence. I simply think the root cause is not the drugs or the guns, or even the drug dealers themselves. Scapegoating gun-carrying drug dealers for the violence is just that... scapegoating. I think it's ultimately unproductive if we want to fix the problem.
Even though people can do it easily, it automates it. You don't have to actually hire a personal assistant to follow you around and do stuff for you when you can just have an AI on your phone.

And then there is doing stuff that isn't easy for humans that requires at least the same level of intelligence. Like engineering things or writing computer programs.
Cookieless cookies
After receiving the third bug report, a Facebook security engineer finally admitted the vulnerability but said that Khalil won’t be paid for reporting it because his actions violated the website’s security terms of service.

This is really a shame. The guy more than deserves the bounty.
> See ... on the advantages of keeping intelligence agencies small.

Excellent resources. For a counterpoint on the specific organization type we're discussing, governments, see libertarianism.

> I agree staging a coup is not the same as running a government. Not sure what you point here is.

You brought up coup as a potential consequence of tightened lines of communication and increased secrecy & concentration of power in a few hands. My point was that even in that hypothetical, in order to transition from coup to government you have to widen the circle again, dilute the power, and we're back to the large-ineffective paradigm again. Short term: maybe maybe consequences; long term: same old story.
You may be right that my understanding of the due process clause is confused. It's been over a decade since I went to law school and I'm getting up in the years, so it wouldn't be completely surprising.

However, I think you miss the point of my response in context of the comment I was responding to. The point of my comment was that our government has taken a very fluid approach to the law to fit its needs versus American citizens/non-citizens. If one feels a certain comfort that the law will protect him/her in the course of some action that seems fully protected by the law today, you might be in for a rude awakening tomorrow.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/obama-assassin...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)
The guy ran as a republican to get elected on Giuliani's coattails, and in his bleeding heart he's a liberal. Typical politician; meddling, petty, crony, crooked, and oh did I mention meddling?
You're moving the goal posts from 'politicians assassinated by the US Government' to 'politicians and officials who have been assassinated.' No one disputes that assassinations and attempted assassinations have taken place. But, sort of throwing up your hands and saying, "Accidents do happen [but] plane crashes can be awfully convenient," doesn't leave me any room to debate this topic with you. You can't have it both ways.
Sorry; I didn't realise that _Generic is a C11 keyword:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C11_(C_standard_revision)

Also, that SO post is about C++, not C.

No, it's about both C++ and C:

Because C++ is based on the C standard (1.1/2, C++03) and
C99 is a normative reference (1.2/1, C++03) these also
apply, from the 1999 C Standard...

See section 7.1.3 of the relevant standard:

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1124.pdf

Also, the divergence has actually been lessened since the C++11 committee worked closely with the C11 committee to bring the standards closer together.

That's part of why Microsoft is picking up a lot of C99 as part of their work for implementing C++11.
The delicious irony is that HE was not only threatening but actually carrying out a social media attack himself.
Did you just discover you aren't your GPA or your job title? Gimme a break.
Most of them weren't breaking the law in a fight to change the world, they were doing it opportunistically (consciously placing their own financial wellbeing above social rules). Hence, their punishment technically does not depend on current social rules regarding any object accessory to their crimes.

It's also politically hard enough to make people approve full MJ legalization, without having to fight the ghost of a wide-scale amnesty that would likely threaten deeper social repercussions.

In practice, a sort of low-scale amnesty for smaller infractions would likely have widespread support, even just to clean up personal records.
Is there actually a drafted proposed law that is available to read at this point? What you are suggesting would be drastically different than Washington or Colorado.
You should get out more, and make some friends.
Ask HN: What is a good book for learning front end design?
Just wrapping up with "Learn Python The Hard Way" and was hoping that there was a similar tome for front end design. Recommendations?
that is fantasic - thanks for the link!
For anyone interested in what happens to all this "stuff" at the other end...

I administer several deceased estates (the process for which is to locate and prove the will (if applicable), gather in and dispose of the assets, distribute the balance).

As most deceased people tend to be in the 70+ age bracket, it is very unlikely that you can even comprehend the volume of "stuff" involved in that undertaking.

Typically, 1% - 5% of the stuff has any commercial value. There might be jewellery, an antique or two. I can usually get $100 for a working fridge. Unfortunately we live in a disposable culture - we are geared to buy new rather than re-use old.

Some small proportion of the rest of the stuff can be donated (ie. charities will accept it). The rest fills up 2-5 rubbish skips (6 cubic metres each) and subsequently landfill.

Look around your house. Experience indicates that on your death I'll recover approximately $900 from selling your stuff.
Of Wizards and Magical Machines (2012)
Apple patents tech that lets government disable iPhone video, camera and wi-fi
Small apartments can be nice:

http://youtu.be/cWnFgpiCrQo

Though I probably wouldn't go quite that far.

---------------

The majority of my 'stuff' by volume, and probably by weight, is books. Even with the advent of ereaders, I still prefer having the thing in my hand. They're interesting things but I find it a lot harder to just flick through reference manuals and the like picking out interesting things in that format.

Next up's probably clothes - it just takes a lot of space to hang stuff properly; if you fold a nice dress into a draw, it can easily get ruined.
I like the way you think, the cut of your jib, etc. That's how I view open source – as a culmination of millennias-worth of incremental changes and improvements.
...or they all need to visit a few other countries like Norway, Finland or Sweden to see how much their own can improve.
There is a difference between settling and never being happy.
Exactly, make a list of companies doing something similar to what you plan on doing try work for them and learn the trade on their dime.
Is creating test accounts even allowed by the Facebook ToS?
Because carrying an illegal/unlicnesed handgun in NYC, with our without also being a drug dealer, is, well, illegal. Maybe that isn't right, but that is the reality of that situation.

If this were Vermont that we were talking about, then the situation would be different.
Direct link to game: http://shambles.notch.net/

I thought it was kind of interesting. It seems procedurally generated. There even appear to be caves! No surprise there coming from Notch.

The big problem I have is, even for a 7dfps, there's not much to do. I'm not a big fan of collecting score pellets.
"At SendHub we’ve let go of about half of the people we’ve hired, most of them within a few weeks of their start date. Looking back at everyone we let go much later, we should’ve terminated them during their probation."

Is it just me or is a company's hiring process fubar if they are firing half their hires within 3 weeks (and more thereafter)? I get the need for early stage startups to not let mediocrity seep in, and having a probationary period is great for that, but I'd argue the company is neglecting their end of the bargain if they are apparently so inept at bringing on the right people.
> a lack of 'generalness.'

General intelligence seems to be just about every technique people can think of, thrown into a giant feedback loop. Unsupervised learning supervising other supervised learning. Classifiers classifying different possible classifications. Modeling by projecting known models. And, it all happens without you. "I" stand on the shoulders of a giant, just slightly above sea level, with all the inner workings hidden below.
Hey!
I'm a 13-year old who is interested in CS and programming in general, so I meet at least one of the given categories. I have been programming for a few years and since then I have tried to teach friends programming. I have not really successed much, save for one person. In that case I gave him my copy of "Head First Python" and showed him how to build a tiny little web app. He was really impressed by this because it shows how there really isn't any difference between what he could do, and what so-called real startups can do.

To me that's the key point. They need to understand that what they can hack around with in Python or whatever language you choose is just the same thing that real progammers do simply varying in scale. With that in mind, I would stay away from direct CS ideas without clear practical relations to things that they can build by themselves.
>... I'll recover approximately $900 from selling your stuff.

A sobering thought. I'm a bit late for my spring-cleaning, now is as a good a time as any.
For the location, it indeed affords you what everyone thinks of as a middle-class lifestyle.

This is a pretty sad indication of how bad urban development policies have gotten.
Any basic hardware like this is quickly commoditised by the China manufacturing machine. So no. It isn't a great bet for a hardware startup.
Sometimes it's a blessing to be in a job that you can't tolerate, or even despise, as opposed to a job that feels prestigious, but still doesn't feel right.

With the former, at least you don't feel the pressure to stay because everyone wants to work there.
The techies like SF's culture more than NYC's. Maybe they actually like a city run eclectically vs. the stod and boring north east style.

I've never noticed anything very disfunctional about SF: the police seem to work out, the public transportation seems to work out, there is a homeless problem but not an entirely huge one, tourists seem to be safe, the city has great parks.

Maybe you just don't like Californian liberals?
It's the same cliche that gets repeated ad-naseum in HN. "Why I left X to build Y". Yes. YOLO. We know. You're pitching your startup. Is it not ok to offer critique? Taking too long to get to the point is a cardinal sin in writing and it's kinda lame to just label it as "haters gonna hate".
I find Yelp reviews to be pretty unreliable, because you giving "5 stars" for a single specific business is not necessarily a predictor of me doing the same. You and I are different people with different tastes.

I've gone to restaurants based on their 5-star Yelp average, and ended up not enjoying my experience. I've gone to places with 2 and 3 star averages ("Yelpers say it sucks, but I'll still take a chance"), and loved them.

I wish Yelp had a prediction/discovery engine for restaurants along the lines of what Netflix has for movies.
I feel you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. Some of my small problems become ludicrously important to me. We all do that from time to time. I don't broadcast these struggles to the world because I know they are ludicrous. I have a modicum of self-awareness. It seems to me she hasn't developed that sensitivity towards others yet. I have no hard feelings towards her. She represents the best and brightest and I wish her well on her journey of self-discovery.

I referenced youth in two senses. First, young people have the luxury of time, and two, this lack of self-awareness is more prevalent in younger people.

I think I see what happened here. Her family and friends are astonished that she left Google so she wants to explain herself. It's unfortunate she broadcast it to the world, because she opened herself up to critique by people who don't get the context.
Good catch on the C/C++ standard relation, I somehow completely missed that when I read the SO answer. Glad to hear that that situation is improving.
Front-end design in what respect? Visual, ui/ux, or HTML/CSS?
Australian scientists discover the secret to hydrating beer
I don't correct it's correct to blame practices like these on the employer's business model. That's like blaming road rage killings on the government for having congested roads.

Sounds to me like it's a kid barely out of college who can't control his emotions and is having a pouty hissy fit. His emotional age obviously is not advanced enough to prepare him for sales.

If you want to blame anything, blame the culture (Web 2.0? SF? VC funded world?) that believes that younger is always better.
Wow, hate to sound insensitive, but there seem to be a lot of "First World Problems" on Medium today. "Do I really need all my possessions?" and "I'm leaving my great job at Google because I'm sad".

Why can't people just enjoy the fact that they're doing better than 90% of the planet, and not always be trying to find something to have an emotional crisis over? As someone who's been unemployed and weeks from insolvency, I'm happy for the job and stuff I have, and appreciate it, because it could be taken away at any moment.