skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"That revelation is important because Jose, an employee of ALSCO a nearby business, and a witness to the accident told KTLA/Loud Labs (Scott Lane) the car was traveling at a high rate of speed and he saw sparks coming from the car and saw it explode BEFORE hitting the tree."

This is pure conspiracy here. Unless it was like two blocks from where the car crashed, I have to take this comment with a grain of salt. Plus, they don't say how far they thought it was before it hit the tree.

I love conspiracies, but I've grown weary to think EVERYTHING has to be one if someone was investigating the government.
Commuter buses stop regularly.
I used to be a waiter on Mackinac Island Michigan. We always hated getting Canadian or European customers as they rarely tipped anything. We also hated getting a table of old ladies for the same reason. There were very few blacks visiting the island so I can't comment about how they tip as a group. The manager of the restaurant definitely used table assignments to reward some waiters and punish other waiters. The waiters had to share a percentage of their tips with the bartenders but otherwise tips were not shared between waiters. Tipping has many drawbacks but I doubt waiters in the US would want it eliminated given how much money they can make when they get a good tipper who drinks a lot of alcohol. That makes up for a lot of bad tippers.
Use your Android device as a Chromecast target
Sounds fun, but everyone solves the same problems (ok, ideally not: "sets of custom-built, rapid fire coding challenges built by each employer. You can use Hackermeter’s pre-provided challenges, or build your own")? How long until copied solutions corrupt the scores? Better check performance on a held-out set before interviewing/hiring.

Let's not get into plagiarism-detection arms race; consider automatic refactorings / pretty printers with variations, and human input to vary variable names.
Doesn't look any more cramped than the back seat of a car.
I kept dragging the elements into the terminal window thinking that was how I construct it.
I can't wait to get frisked by one of Musk's minions!
This article is based on a dubious premise, namely, that public speaking is harder for introverts than for extroverts. Introverts are taxed by smalltalk and the like, but they often have no trouble getting up in front of hundreds of people and performing. Think Michael Jackson: painfully diffident in private, but a monster on stage.
Startup valuations are not accurate. Your comment essentially proves the point: If an investor is going to fund a company at valuation X, they prefer that X is a combination of cash and stock and not purely stock. This implies that a dollar of valued startup is not worth a dollar, which should be an axiom.

A 3 MM dollar company comprised of 2 MM stock and 1 MM cash is more desirable than one with just 3MM in stock.
> mathematical proofs are not based on logic

Mathematical proofs are explicitly logical statements, if they aren't based in logic they aren't proofs by definition. Mathematical intuition is what leads us to ideas but it's only within the framework of formal reasoning that we "know" anything within mathematics. Poincare said it nicely:

"It is by logic we prove, it is by intuition that we invent."
I don't know why, but for some reason when ever this issue comes up, this site likes to go into full on ignorant mode and pretend we don't know what the difference between personal and business class is.

Most people find bandwidth charges by the gigabyte distasteful, hence no payments based on that. Don't run a warez ftp site on your personal connection and you will be fine. Worried you might be hitting their upper limit of usage on what their definition of "personal use" is? Fine then just start out of the gate by paying more for business class. It is really straightforward.
Unless it breaks down. In which case the "toilet" question might become quite pressing, quite quickly.
Orbital welders can be used in pipes on any size (smaller sizes often need special welders). Not sure what the record is but they are commonly used on water pipes that are several meters in diameter. Should work fine for the Hyperloop tube. Seems like all the required technology is proven but I'm sure we will hear more from all the experts in the various fields.
I honestly expected better work. I feel like this is something everyday users on Reddit or HN could have put together in a report. I only gave it a look because Elon Musk's name is on it. That says something sad about me when it comes to the Big Imagination projects :-/
The passenger compartment mockups indicate there won't be enough room to sit upright. I'm sure the seats will make this comfortable for people of average stature who aren't afflicted with claustrophobia, but there will be much less room than tunnels that accommodate e.g. upright humans or subway trains.
As always: Shinkansen to the rescue: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lflfg60nlg0/TpRCuhQq9bI/AAAAAAAAId...
Err, ok I am missing something from my basic economics - I was pretty certain the market cap of a company was its projected lifetime profits.

So if a lemonade stand has 3bn in cash it's done pretty well selling lemonade surely?
Sharing Simulations on Rescale
Sizing Fluid Image Containers with a Little CSS Padding Hack
I was thinking that a well-timed explosive charge on a support pylon would make for a nice mess, but I suppose it's not any easier to secure a conventional railway.
If you really believe this, you should try to translate any contemporary (published) mathematical proof into a real logic, like Coq. It is hard and people earn PhDs doing this because most proofs are so intuition heavy in the first place.
Currently you get up and go to the bathroom at the end of the car.

I've only had time to skim the full PDF, but there's something about experiencing 0.5g of acceleration - unsure if that is a constant or if that is simply right at the very beginning.

If you're going to experience 0.5g of acceleration over a prolonged period, letting passengers get up and move about is going to be a bad idea. It also doesn't look like there's enough roof to get about in that capsule. 0.5g doesn't sound like a lot until you think about it as 50% of your body weight tacked on, in a direction you're not used to having it tacked on. Pretty simple in a seat, much less simple trying to walk.
I stand corrected. In fact it comes down to two paragraphs and doesn't really cover much including, for example, just how long this would take (the cars behind the stalled vehicle would use emergency brakes then proceed at low speed on wheels to the nearest station -- sounds like at least half a day of down time).
> (which is probably the most important one to the employer, BTW)

Possibly, but I don't think that is generally true. I eat at a (pretty damn touristy) place two or three times a month and the owner behind the counter is always overjoyed to see me and throws in extra stuff for free all the time. Now, in that particular case it isn't tip motivate, but he absolutely appreciates the regular reliable business. I think that regular reliable business is most important to many small restaurants, which is why you see so many of them offering punch/stamp cards to regulars. If you frequent small locations, it becomes clear pretty quickly that the business owners really do love regulars.

If preferring repeat customers was actually bad for business, the business owner would be well within their rights to forbid tipping at their business and instead pay their staff the proper minimum wage. I suspect this isn't ever actually the case; either repeat business makes up a significant chunk of your business and is more valuable for its reliability, or your business is so touristy that the occasional regular getting better service has no significant impact. Maybe there is some sort of middle-ground between those two, but I suspect it is elusive.
Indeed. Perhaps an option to include a video and explain an interesting problem? Definitely something we're considering.
Analysts in finance/consulting certainly haven't had to upgrade their skills, but analysts in media/marketing definitely have had to.

Certainly there are people in this space who can't do much beyond spreadsheets, but there are many analyst now who use python/pandas or R to do work.
Pylons above the existing I-5 freeway.
"Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication."[0]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

ISPs should stop overprovisioning if it prevents them from being neutral to my packets.
...which is pretty cramped.
Syntactic validity is not a property of a program, but a property of a piece of text that makes it a program. In any case, the point is that type systems purport to identify some amount of "goodness" in a program. I agree that "The compiler will produce something" is a property, although I doubt it is a property any static type proponent would defend as particularly important.
What happens if a brawl erupts inside a moving bus or taxi?

What happens if a suicide bomber boards a train or bus?

What happens if a suicide bomber rents a car and crashes it into you as you walk along the sidewalk?

Rather than living in perpetual fear, you could try making the world a place where people who can't get food or work aren't trying to blow you up as a last resort?

Americans seem to be the most worried about suicide bombings out of anybody else, yet America has probably seen the least suicide bombings per capita of any country in the world. (yes, exaggeration)
Slightly off-topic but still relevant question, what's the best resource to learn design as a complete noob?

A book to get started on aesthetics/graphics design; or a tools book like Photoshop/InDesign. Or should one try to poke around the Wordpress themes and tweak it?
I love this concept!

My main concern is the air-bearing suspension system. Barring very high flow rates, the fly-height of an air-bearing system is very small. Some systems[1] fly at 5 microns, for instance. That being the case, any sort of particulate or imperfections in the tube will cause the air-bearing to 'land' with a large amount of friction. Perhaps this is alright if you're already going 700mph, but it would reduce the overall coasting efficiency of the system.

The engineer in me sees this as the most important design consideration of the project.

As an aside, I would like to see trade studies done on filling the tube with other gasses whose speed of sound is much higher than air's, allowing the capsules to travel even faster before shocks begin to form.

[1] http://www.newwayairbearings.com/products/flat-rectangular-a...
My guess is that in negotiations the risk of telling them who they are competing against outweighs the benefit of keeping them guessing. I suppose they could think you are bluffing and not really talking to any other VCs at all, but if they believe you actually are meeting with other VCs, I could see the benefit of keeping them in the dark.
Diversification In Online Marketing: Are You Protected?
This YouTube is what it was like to work at Netscape in 1998
So cool, old school.
What are the actual technical reasons, however?
For the lack of space between the tube and the carrier, is wireless electrical transfer out of the question? Or is that not feasible with the amount of electricity being dealt with here?
As someone who gets claustrophobic on planes - I have to fight the panic every time I fly, the dread that fills me at the thought of a service/system malfunction, while halfway between LA and SF, what happens then?

I'm reminded of this water slide at the Gold Coast's Wet and Wild - you end up going upside down - but in order to attain the velocity required to make the loop, you need to be dropped from a particular height, only some people don't make it - so they have a single access point into the tube where people who haven't made it, can get out, but I'm sure it wouldn't be a fun experience, so I opted for not going on that slide, even though my kids were pleading with me to do it. No thanks.

The hyperloop looks amazing, but my heart rate went up reading that document, and it wasn't out of excitement
Might Tony Hsieh champion a group pushing for LA to Vegas? I imagine SF-Vegas might have a roundabout route.
A number of start-ups have either already failed with a very similar business model or failed to go exponential growth. There was a good "Lessons Learned" post by one of them recently here on hacker news that got comments by both hiring managers and hackers. Why the rehash, again? What is this start-up really doing differently?

I personally wouldn't be motivated to use it either to find work or to hire. I think, when hiring, you really need to do a face to face interview. I've found resumes work well enough for pre-screening that it's not a pain point for me. And, it's not like there are so many candidates out there looking for work that it's impractical to do face to face, or at least telephone/skype, interviews with all the good candidates. I learned the lesson that face to face hiring is needed by hiring someone based on a co-worker's recommendation (even though he did badly in an interview, I looked passed it based on the recommendation). It's so costly and painful to make a hiring mistake that there's no way I would deviate from the current model and try a new method or service.
Security rewards at Google: Two Million Dollars Later
What kind of apps you need in your company?
Facebook has agreed to acquire Mobile Technologies
Surprised none of the indignant commenters are opening a food truck in front of every olive garden. The unlimited Soup Salad and Breadsticks could be resold for pure profit!

That's how the real world works, isn't it?
From the conference call: "I'm tempted to at least make a demonstration prototype, but I think I would have to punt it for a little bit of time, it wouldn't be immediate."

Source: http://live.theverge.com/live-hyperloop-announcement-elon-mu...
Same thing that happens if you develop unexpected gastric issues during a 30 minute plane flight, I'd imagine, since you'd spend the whole time strapped in for take-off and then landing.
Conspiracy theories aside, remember what happened to Aaron Swartz. Psychological pressure & abuse is used without a second thought by LEO & government agents. I would like to see a solid reconstruction of the hours preceding Michael Hastings demise, who he was with, and who he talked to.
But in China vast expanses of high speed track are built on pylons. Here is an example of one such track (and some unfortunately placed apartment blocks): http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/pb-1...
Yet still tolerable for a half-hour journey.
How do you get out of there in case of fire? If the doors open like that I don't think it would work while inside the tube wouldn't it?
Right, but the Hyperloop journey as proposed is 35 minutes long. It seems a reasonable trade-off to me.
It's a 30 minute ride.

Try LA to Sydney in coach.
In terms of code complexity, I honestly can't decide whether the difference is objective or subjective. The functional version sure feels complex to me, but yeah, it may just be because that's not what I'm used to.

That said, given my knowledge of how the hardware actually works, the purely-functional approach makes my efficiency sense tingle. A lot.

Of course, whether or not it's a good idea to scratch it is something we've been debating for decades...
Quibble. The demo should allow use of the computer's keyboard and Alt key. Point and click with a graphical keyboard is nuts. It should support overstrike for APL's composite symbols. I did a whole lot of APL programming in the '60s and '70s at IBM and consider it IBM's bastard child. There need not have been Matlab.

I'm appalled by the authors enforcement of 1-origin indexing.
Frankly, what's the problem with selling (let's call it giving for now, that keeps this simpler) bandwidth to a third party? It's just bandwidth, why does the source or content of the packets matter?
Be on a mission that doesn't suck - Aaron Levie
Math can be useful, but it doesn't need to be to be worthwhile. That's the point I was trying to get across. (Based on my screen name you can assume I'm a math fan) And for many programming and sysadmin tasks, the theory of computer science (and math of proofs) isn't necessary.

That said, other than the information systems sequence I took, it is the theory classes that have held well over time. Thinking about "What might make this slow?" is very tough, and the solution is frequently figuring out O(n^2) bottlenecks rather than just a tight hack in the language at hand.
Honestly, if you going to selectively pick lines out of an information source that defend your argument then all hope of intelligent discourse is lost. Let me just say, I don't disagree with the source your quoting just with your selective quotation. Why don't we quote the whole thesis instead of the caveats after the main thesis?

'The rule of law (also known as nomocracy) generally refers to the influence and authority of law within society, especially as a constraint upon behavior, including behavior of government officials.[2] This phrase is also sometimes used in other senses.[3]

In its general sense, the phrase can be traced back to the 16th century, and it was popularized in the 19th century by British jurist A. V. Dicey. The concept was familiar to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, who wrote "Law should govern".[4] Rule of law implies that every citizen is subject to the law. It stands in contrast to the idea that the ruler is above the law, for example by divine right.

Despite wide use by politicians, judges and academics, the rule of law has been described as "an exceedingly elusive notion"[5] giving rise to a "rampant divergence of understandings ... everyone is for it but have contrasting convictions about what it is."[6]

At least two principal conceptions of the rule of law can be identified: a formalist or "thin" definition, and a substantive or "thick" definition. Formalist definitions of the rule of law do not make a judgment about the "justness" of law itself, but define specific procedural attributes that a legal framework must have in order to be in compliance with the rule of law. Substantive conceptions of the rule of law go beyond this and include certain substantive rights that are said to be based on, or derived from, the rule of law.[7]'
> Even the iMac, iconic as it was, wasn't the turnaround point for Apple - iPod was.

Good point. Reminds me of Chrysler under Iaccoca. The K-car stopped the cash bleed and restored the company's reputation, but it was the minivan that made them fabulously profitable.
I'm the one who asked the question. It's already a given that the US government cares more about the rights of its citizens than it does about noncitizens. That's been true for 200+ years.
Does the government give it a fuck?
Not for the first 30 minutes - which in this case is the entire trip.
I wish this company well, and perhaps they'll be successful, but I don't think they've nailed down some ultimate formula for ranking and hiring programmers. This system sounds very easy for low-quality programmers with lots of time on their hands to manipulate - you sign up with a throwaway account with some fake name, get the list of questions, take your time searching for the answers online, and then sign up with your real information and have a carefully prepared way of typing out answers that get you high scores. If this achieves any measure of traction, you can bet that this will happen a lot.

This isn't an easy problem to solve and is something that companies have been struggling with for a long time, so no disrespect intended. But based on my understanding of how this works I don't think it will be very likely to yield great results.
Show HN: Relaunching of the Distil Networks website
www.distilnetworks.com

Distil Networks is a security service that blocks malicious bots attacking your website. We stop automated attacks that are responsible for web scraping, form spam and click fraud.

We just relaunched our website and would love some feedback about the new design and the clarity of the value proposition.
Thanks!
But less claustrophobic than sitting in a car.
You'd think Einstein would have occasionally asked a follow-up question or Tagore might have asked Einstein a question or two.
I wonder what they have in mind for how stations will offload/onload capsules onto the loop. That will be heck of an engineering problem to solve - ultra high safety, pressurized environment, fast turnaround times...

My initial thought was they would have switches on the track like a normal train and capsules would veer off. But I bet they would come to a stop on there own and then get lifted vertically off the train and into a decompression area where they'd cue up.
Heres another live blogging source http://gizmodo.com/our-hyperloop-liveblog-starts-right-here-...
Well it has to beat a standard commuter car (~$45 one way@34mpg) by a significant margin to be useful for consumers.

What about freight?
I'm not claustrophobic, but this image ever so slightly terrified me: http://i.imgur.com/lGD9bUP.png

I have to wonder, would making the capsule the size of a small subway car completely destroy the economics of it?
Most flights I've been on in the last decade, you don't want to leave your seat for anything except a bathroom break. It's not like we're flying on Pan Am Clippers with pianos and seven course meals. Air travel is a glorified cattle car unless you're willing to be financially raped for first class or a chartered jet.
Fair enough. The 10,000 hour rule is not iron clad, more a suggestion. The point I'm trying to get at is it's more about routines that require practice rather than pure physical exertion. As in, "Deliberate practice contributes more to the outcome of playing violin and shooting baskets than it does to a 50 yard dash"
I suppose so, yes. I guess my question to you would be, why are you complaining about the privacy implications of this when your example involves storing sensitive data as plaintext, given the propensity of the average user to use online document storage like Google Drive these days, I doubt you should be too concerned about your hypothetical.
Are you referring to thunk update after lazy evaluation? This is a very special kind of mutation, because after the update, it is guaranteed never to be mutated again. This is quite helpful for generational GC, actually, and underlies the concept of "eager promotion".