skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think that Epstein is being very charitable with Gladwell's 10,000 figure. Gladwell:

a) Doesn't make the 10,000-hour figure a rule as both Epstein and Repanich would have us believe.

b) Fully concedes that there are myriads of other factors that have an effect on how one reaches "expert status".

I'm also not sure how Epstein can claim that the chess master study is somehow disanalogous with the athlete one. An expert athlete might have some physical advantage over your "average Joe": speed, lean muscle, endurance, height, etc., etc. Similarly, one can say that an expert chess player may have some neurophysiological advantage over the "average Joe": better-formed synaptic pathways, higher attention span, etc., etc. I don't think there's any difference between an expert chess master or an NFL quarterback.

Both might have some genetic advantage; both have trained extensively. The idea behind Gladwell's figure is not that you can practice X for 10,000 hours and then you will instantly be an expert at it, but merely that after 10,000 hours (of deliberate practice plus a number of contingencies) you can expect to be somewhere in the realm of expertness.

There are plenty of other studies that favor this hypothesis; in particular, some very interesting double-blind identical twin studies[1].

Outside of extreme cases (e.g. I am 4'11'' and want to play in the NBA; I have an IQ of 90 and want to be an astronaut), I think Gladwell is right on the money: practice is more important than talent.

[1] http://www.indiana.edu/~jkkteach/P335/shanks_expertise.html
Taxed at what percent? Ludicrous.
Musk is not financially Gates but he's already had a greater impact. PayPal, Telsa, SpaceX, and even that Solar company could easily be more important than creating the most successful PC operating system. The PC boom would have happened without Gates but Musk is pioneering entirely new business categories.
Also note that Smalltalk could be/is supported:

http://etoileos.com/dev/docs/languages/smalltalk/
Plus the 2 hours spent at the airport in security, waiting, and getting baggage at the end.
Unfortunately I walk a very fine line about what is sensitive and what is not. I really couldn't go any deeper than what I posted here.
Ellison suggests Apple in trouble without Steve Jobs
Too late: http://www.seattlepi.com/technology/businessinsider/article/...

> If you don't want to be searched at the train station, you have the freedom to not ride the train.
Wow, thank you!
Someone that I know has recommended Jekyl, but I didn't really get why it was so great. I'll have a second look at it though.
I'll have to really think about what I want to use.
I develop full stack at the moment (well, from configuring servers/backend development all the way to css/js/html) so I'm looking for something that might develop my range of skills. I'll check out barley and get back to you about that (when it isnt 2:30am). Thanks again for the offer!
They certainly can be a mix, and that's what I personally believe. I didn't mean to present them as mutually exclusive ideas.
It's all or nothing, that's correct. Either you install it and accept it's access conditions or don't install it. A popular mod for Android (CyanogenMod) has an extension to the OS that has a toggle button to block any elected app from accessing personally identifiable information, this includes sending the app (say Facebook) an empty address book when asked, and fake details like IMEI, GPS location etc. It should be part of every mobile OS in my opinion. A feature I'm scared to live without.
Also consider this is bus-tier people moving, not even train. You just have small individual units moving along one track. With even passenger rail, you have to have set departure times measured in at least 10 minute blocks, something like this could have a departing train every 5 minutes and you could go through a turnstable the same way you get on a subway.
How does rail address this?
That is creepy. To be fair that 80% metric is something that Facebook has "measured" and told you, and is probably gear to coax people into finishing things that are unfinished. Some smart social engineering.
That's bloody tempting, can I do that through Heroku?
Great post!

I found that switching to the new Gmail folders/tabs layout is helping me stay off email so much.

Essentially, it reduces the times that I'm notified by my phone/laptop for new email by sticking non-essential emails into various folders and essential emails into my primary inbox.

Notifications are only enabled for my primary inbox and it has reduced my email interruptions by 80%.
Apache losing marketshare to IIS
I live off-grid, and have done so for nearly 20 years, and I never needed indoor lighting during daylight hours.

I also dislike the idea of poking holes in my roof, for any reason.

I'm much more intersted in the gravity light which was featured here a few months ago.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting-for-...

Although the initial cost may be prohibitive for the poverty stricken, it may be well within the acceptable price range for many others, and the gravity light has the added bonus of not requiring any fuel, nor does it require punching holes in one's roof.

(I live in an upland rainforest)
Heh - the logical abstraction/refactoring of "Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it"
I'd really appreciate some early feedback on the stuff I'm writing, but you don't have any contact details in your profile - send me an email if you want a preview.
This is clever. Using the trie is smart, but does it account for suffixes or infixes?
I'm assuming you are a man. If that's the case, you need to be aware of the fact that when entering into a conversation about feminism you are an outsider. Your views, while important and worth discussion, should not dominate the conversation.

Feminist discourse is one of the few places where women's thoughts and idea's are allowed to be the dominate ones. As men we have to take a step back, and realize we enjoy that privilege in every other discourse.
Use Diaspora.
> take into account electrification costs (because it does get cloudy)

Did Musk say his Hyperloop wouldn't be tied to the grid?
So what happened to section 5? Is that redacted by the NSA?
In fairness, people might want laws about not being stabbed, while still being okay with not having laws about sharing information online.
Personally, my primary objection is it removes the ability for dedicated application developers like John Papandriopoulos to write marketplace-leading apps like SnappyCam:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6137979

Many developers working in the area of games or video and graphics decoding/encoding need access to native-level instruction sets to get maximum performance.

Nevermind that I have no desire to attempt to debug my emscripten-translated C/C++ application instead of just debugging the original source.

There's an entire ecosystem around supporting native apps in terms of tooling, debugging, libraries, etc. and FireFox
OS seems to ignore all of that.

Personally, I believe FireFox OS will fail in the mainstream market without native application support. I'd love it if they prove me wrong, but ignoring the need for native applications seems like an obvious mistake.

A well-coded native application can make or break its success on having access to the full functionality of the underlying platform.
Does this mean that in most deals the investors involved don't know who else is in the syndicate until after-the-fact, if there are others?
Seems to be working fine for me on EE, a temporary error perhaps?
We don't really need more 'hack a stack' programmers. Somebody needs to write that code in the first place, and that is the hard, but rewarding work. Teach students how to program, how to reason, how to run experiments (yes, a semester in physics lab or EE lab (I did both)), how to code in assembly, and so on, will take them much further. It's not that hard to google and download a bunch of API's, just tedious. If you don't understand why a one choice might be worse than another, you have no chance. If you understand algorithms, math, design, and so on, you will probably make a pretty good choice even if all you are doing in this specific instance is gluing a bunch of code together.
Because there's no possibility that shooting at a train would result in a fireball a thousand yards high, whereas...
I agree, the thought of merely holding money being a taxable event seems weird (speaking as an American). That said, it's a great way to ensure that people don't hoard cash and instead spend it or invest it (in theory, keeping the economy moving).
The title of this article bothers me since the article focuses much more on the bottle and light and rather than how poor and proud Alfredo Moser is. Regardless, pretty cool exposure of life in the slums, I'd bet there are more 'hacks' as a means of survival that are necessary there, but we wouldn't think twice about.

I will say the article is good, just don't like the title.
Lights are used indoors all day long in much of the world. If you don't like poking holes in your roof, then you probably don't like sun windows either.

The gravity light requires manual labor to produce light, has moving parts that are more likely to fail, is more costly, and produces less light.
>I think you can deduce from him speeding through the red light, the lack of brake lights in the 2nd video, the witness who said the car was travelling 100MPH

I don't think we can deduce that. There are gaps. And witnesses are notorious for being wrong. Besides, why should we be deducing anything when there is actual video?

>If the video evidence was so clear that he was travelling 35MPH, I'm sure other people would be supporting this claim

That's an odd position to take. I mean, how many people have to agree before it's "clear"? Instead of asking for other people supporting, shouldn't you be asking others to refute it? It's out there for all to see. So, tell us the timing is off, the distance was wrong, the video was not real-time, or something which would prove his conclusions wrong.

In all of the mystery surrounding this, this particular point is easy. There has to be a physics based reason that his video analysis is wrong.

One thing I would like to know is the possible range of speeds the car was traveling at the point of impact. The most that can be deduced from simple time/distance is that the average was 35 MPH, unless there was frame-by-frame analysis. I don't think that was the case here. So, given what's known about the car's acceleration/braking performance, as well as the distance traveled, what is the maximum speed at impact? I don't think it's too big a delta because the distance is relatively short. Still would be nice to be more precise.
I have an econs background too. I learned to code in my final year of uni and now do some freelancing. You are right that knowing how to program will give you special powers!
The author found the optimal solution when trying to construct these expressions: store them in a trie. Because the generated regular expressions match only the inputs, this solution may find a more compact way to test if the inputs have lots of overlap.

It would be cool if the inputs weren't matched exactly, and frak could figure out a general pattern for your inputs (decimals, capitalized words, etc). That could help newcomers with a starting expression that matches their inputs.
Finally.

I have been extolling the virtues of Obj-C and Apple/NeXT's Cocoa's APIs and its legendary user interface design since I first saw it. When I found out about GNUstep about a year ago, I kept asking myself why nobody else had picked it up.

I realized that the people who liked Obj-C and Cocoa just used OS X. GNUstep was a pointless waste of time for a Cocoa developer, but with OS X quickly seeming like the replacement for Windows on the desktop, I'm glad it's finally picking up steam.

But, as we said prior, the people that care just use OS X. Their target platform is OS X. The Linux users are happy with WINE and GTK+. There's nowhere for the project to go, and I fear that this Kickstarter will be a failed effort.

I'm putting down my cash for this. I want to see it succeed. I know it probably won't.

If it does, well, the rest is history. Maybe it will jumpstart Obj-C x-platform like Mono did for C#.

------

also, for those interested in the NeXT-style look and feel, the Window Maker (GNUstep WM) LiveCDs have had consistent snapshots and are always updated; based on Debian testing: http://wmlive.sourceforge.net/
I'm working on an article like this (but with less success at the end) for my Blu Ray player. Email me if you want a preview!
"The Bitcoin protocol allows two parties to transact without any outside interference"

...other than the entire Bitcoin network, right? When last I checked the design of Bitcoin called for transactions to be checked by other Bitcoin users and then broadcast to the entire network. That is about as far as one can get from a two party transaction.

If you want real two party transactions, you probably want this sort of thing:

http://blog.koehntopp.de/uploads/chaum_fiat_naor_ecash.pdf
Sydney-Melbourne is worth a look as well. It's the 3rd busiest air route in the world.
How would you rescue when pod breaks down mid tube?
If you honestly think women are the privileged class, I urge you to befriend some transgendered women and try to learn about their experiences in transitioning.

Some of my best friend's are trans and it's pretty hard to ignore the privileges I enjoy as a man when I've seen those privileges disappear the second someone becomes female presenting.

And you still really have no idea what feminism is about, I can't think of any feminist ideologies that advance the "women are victims" line of reasoning. Most feminist ideologies seem, to me at least, primarily concerned with empowering women, and painting them as victim's is sort of the opposite of that.
Would you share a bit more about your off-grid setup? (Power, water, sanitation etc...)

Or do you have any pictures you've shared or would like to share publicly?
Interesting, my take on Einstein's POV is that there is a reality (God, Nirvana, etc.) that is independent of reality as we know it, and therefore has nothing to do with anything -- thus Einstein's claim that it is his religious belief, and not something that can be proven scientifically.

The kitchen table argument is quite fascinating. One could argue that nothing exists without oneself to observe it; i.e. when walks away from the kitchen, does the kitchen continue to exist, or has the reality of the living room now come into Mind? i.e. all that exists is what we are currently experiencing and everything else is a delusion.

Or, delusions are endless, as the Zen masters teach.
The Stupidity of the Crowd
I'm sure he'd prefer someone else do it but then again he might have preferred that someone else would have conceived of and designed it -- or something similar. There's a chance, as with the leadership of Tesla, that no one else with the capability (or position/reputation) to execute will be found, and I'd be surprised if he were not heavily involved in seeing it through.
"Those saying BTC has no inherent value (as opposed to gold, for example) are completely overlooking the fact that BTC is the only kind of exchange that can be used for illicit activities in a relatively untraceable manner"

Really? When last I checked the overwhelming majority of criminals were using paper money. This is probably because the overwhelming majority of people in general use paper money and because criminals have to pay rent like anyone else.
What about TideSDK?

http://www.tidesdk.org/
As a follow up, one of the few things we know about "Satoshi Nakamoto" is that his name is not Satoshi Nakamoto. It's a pseudonym, perhaps a nom de guerre, of the creator or creators.

Bitcoin is a really amazing piece of software and algorithm engineering. It is highly unlikely, although not impossible, that it was designed by a single individual. The scale, relatively bullet-proof crypto design (most systems are rigorously peer reviewed and still break), and the massive potential impact on global finance all point to a nation-state as the designer.

PG actually launched a thread with the same conclusion, and it seems eminently plausible to me.
Because the tube isn't a train?
What's wrong with vim on an iPad? Unless you mean you tried it with the screen keyboard. That's just madness. vim works fantastically well with the Apple wireless keyboard and Prompt (Panic ssh app).
All I want is for the limitations to be upfront. And if there are 'overage' charges they shouldn't be priced orders of magnitude over cost.

Someone that uses a lot of bandwidth isn't doing it to be a jerk. And if they inconvenience others the network is frankly set up badly. Normal users will saturate a connection some of the time, and networks need to handle it. And if a network can handle saturation for one hour without problems, it can handle saturation all the time without problems.
"the messages represent value in the same way that paper money does."

I doubt that, since paper money is guaranteed by law to at least be accepted by the government for tax payments. There are no guarantees at all with Bitcoin.
Well making sweeping generalizations about groups of people is usually seen as offensive. Then again, I say that as a person diagnosed with aspergers so my opinion of what is and isn't offensive is obviously suspect ;). I didn't downmod you though and i wouldn't have even if i had the karma. Negative stereotypes regarding aspergers are too prevalent to really blame on individuals at this point.

I agree with you about the world not necessarily being entirely rational. I see rationality as a subjective position from which to perceive reality. Another is the self and its intrinsic interests. This is where I seem to fail in my communication with others. This may be a wildly arrogant assertion but I think most people are insanely self obsessed. From this I can understand why empathy is seen as being absolutely necessary. Frankly, I think most people with autism spectrum disorders actually lack the self obsession that would normally be redirected onto others via empathy. This causes a failure to appropriately acknowledge others and with tragic irony a typical individual will ascribe their behavior to self-obsession. Anyway, you mention the learning acquired from considering others points of view. The thought process I've found most rewarding in this regard is to first build up the person's opinion as much as I can and then to attack any weaknesses. The attack is intended to elicit a defense which I cannot conceive. The ultimate aim being to fully understand their position and its legitimacy. Needless to say, this often becomes unpleasant. Likely stemming from my pathological lack of tact :(. The important thing to note is that there are people (at least one person) who are detail oriented. If you want them to "give and come to terms with each other" then you're going to have to endure some ostensible pettifogging. All that being said, there's some straight up nastiness here on HN and much of it is exactly the condescending appeal to immature sciences that you describe.

Oh also, just a note: it's likely that Socrates had aspergers or something similar.
Is that a jet turbine in the nostril?
I think tesla motors releasing an affordable car would benefit the world a lot more than the hyperloop. But it's nice that he is presenting the idea so the world can do their own analysis and even implement it before he has the chance.
I'm curious, do you find you have had more or less success with your projects because of it? Do you have any projects where users pay money?
They made so much more work for themselves in redacting by scanning at a slight angle...
For example, the "San Francisco" station appears to be located in the East Bay and the "Los Angeles" station is closer to Burbank. This is quite significant from an urban planning perspective as it means that short haul transit or car trips have to be accommodated for a majority of those people who want to use the system. It also adds to the total travel time needed to get from door to door for a greater number of people than does HSR.

I'm not an urban planner but it seems to me that accommodating one station in each city's boondocks might actually be easier than accommodating transit to several stations in the most central areas. San Leandro has a lot more room to build than SF and a lot of people will be coming to the SF HSR station if it's built there (even with a San Jose station).
I'd encourage any economist that has a knack for programming to really put in some time towards the area. I've owned econpy.org for about 3 years now (although I haven't updated it in a long time). I also own economics.io and run econpy.blogspot.com.

It's much easier (relatively speaking) for an economist to pick up some programming than it is for a programmer to pick up some economics. Economists are already familiar with the types of questions that are important to economists, and more importantly, how to frame them. The trouble with economics is that you can't just pick it up overnight as it is a way of thinking more than it is a tool set. Programming on the other hand is something that you can "get working" overnight (economic programmers don't need to be algorithmic theorists -- they just need to be really good at getting/scraping data and organizing it so they can run analyses on it).

Over a year ago, I dropped out of my PhD program in economics because I was not at a school that was going to allow me to do the econ/cs type work I was working on. Leaving my PhD program was one the best things I ever did because it has allowed me to pursue whatever I want to do with the skills I've acquired.

The problem with academic economics is that the data most economists use is so bad and outdated -- such as data from FRED, BLS, and other publicly available sources where everyone and their uncle can download the same CSV dataset that was aggregated by some government employee. The race then is to see who can put together the most elegant econometric model to handle all the issues with the data. The rules of the game change when you create your own dataset and thus have control over while variables to include, the aggregation, the frequency, etc.

Long story short, if you are an economist wanting to do programming, learn to adapt those skills in academia (best way is to find a great advisor -- if there isn't one in your economics department, check the business school as bschool professors are often much more open to highly empirical analyses and care [marginally] less about getting the theory perfect). Or, if you want an easier lifestyle that is much more rewarding, ditch academia for the private sector. You'll find the economists in the private sector to be much more knowledgeable about cutting edge technologies and willing to listen and learn from what you have to say.
The core cities on the DC BAL PHL NYC BOS route total 11.5 million, while LA + SF is only 4.5 million. Thats arguably the more important figure because the relative advsntage of rail diminishes if you have to drive in from the suburbs. Also, four of those five cities have well developed public transit systems centered around the rail station. Metro area total for the five cities is not including any other regions in the path is almost 40m versus about 20m for SF and LA.
I have a hard time imagining writing anything substantial with a screen keyboard, much less programming. And yet you still say writing works well.

Longest thing I've managed to type without going nuts so far is a five line email.