skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Levesque saves his most damning criticism for the end of his paper. It’s not just that contemporary A.I. hasn’t solved these kinds of problems yet; it’s that contemporary A.I. has largely forgotten about them. In Levesque’s view, the field of artificial intelligence has fallen into a trap of “serial silver bulletism,” always looking to the next big thing, whether it’s expert systems or Big Data, but never painstakingly analyzing all of the subtle and deep knowledge that ordinary human beings possess.

This is very true. But I think that recent AI experts (as opposed to those doing this work in the 70s) have realized that trying to tackle linguistic analysis is very very (very) hard. The problem with language (or more correctly, discourse) analysis is that even outside the realm of computing, it still hasn't been fully explicated.

A couple of months ago I took a graduate philosophy of language seminar (taught by the brilliant Sam Cumming at UCLA) in which we looked at various theories of discourse. It would be an understatement to say that these theories vary wildly. We have the classical RST (Rhetorical Structure Theory) by Mann and Thompson[0] (renowned linguists at USC & UCSB), Jan Van Kuppevelt's erotetic model[1], Andrew Kehler's Theory of Grammar[2] and a half-dozen or so more that I don't even remember.

So let's forget about computers for a second. We don't even know how humans process discourse. My term paper was about the parallel relation which is a very talked-about topic (almost as much as anaphora; see The New Yorker article) in the academic community; not only are such linguistic phenomena difficult to theoretically model, they are nigh impossible to practically implement (say, in some sort of AI schema).

So I'm not even surprised most AI folks just started doing work on SVM's or ANN's, or Markov Chains, or what-have-you. It seems more practical to do work on stuff that could actually benefit from machine learning, as opposed to trying to solve incredibly difficult (and mostly theoretical) problems like discourse analysis.

The bottom line is that we're still a ways off from having computers like those in Star Trek - computers that understand anaphora, parallelism, ellipses, etc, etc.

[0] http://www.sfu.ca/rst/

[1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/4176301

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Coherence-Reference-Theory-Grammar-And...
Scrolling worked just fine for me. It moved between the pieces of the visualization quite smoothly.
Matias Duarte (Head of Android UX) on direct iOS-to-Android design ports
Do you mind listing things you consider more important than science? As it stands, it seems to me that a lot of things get a relatively higher proportion of our resources are in fact much less important than science (military, to name the most prominent). Edit: And I really don't think that there would be that many things potentially more important then science.
> You can calculate semantic closeness between "town council" and "fear violence". If that is closer than between "demonstrators" and "fear violence" you can make a good guess.

Only for that particular example. It's easy to come up with examples where that heuristic fails:

"The town council denied the protestors a permit because they were in a bad mood."

"The factory failed to produce the car on time because it was undergoing maintenance."
Isn't this what taxes are for?
Appart from the aliasing issue, isn't there also a way to use complex numbers to do the rotation?
Mapshaper - Simplify Cartographic Lines
I've researched lossy GIF too: http://pornel.net/lossygif but even lossy version wasn't better than PNG.

LZW is just a very poor compression. Even best case is taking ridiculous amount of bits (you can only add 1 byte to previously used pattern, so it's sequence of symbols for 1+2+3+5+6+etc. pixels resetting every 4k iterations), so there isn't even room for improvement.

So, GIF is awful. Should be forgotten.
I used to have a really hacky AppleScript to do the same thing in OS X. The crappy part was that launching the whole AppleScript runtime was really slow, but that was the only API I could find with getting that information from the Finder.
This is a very simplistic way of looking at the problem. To say that anaphora, ellipsis, parallelism, and the dozen or so other coherence relations are simply "solved through natural language parsing" is just incorrect (and probably meaningless).
Articles like this one always seem to imply that the techies are all sitting comfortably with a giant money vault like Scrooge McDuck, laughing at everyone else and refusing to share. That just isn't the case. In reality, few of them actually have any real financial security. Most work for startups that are living on borrowed time and may not be here in a year or two. Few of them own any real assets such as real estate, so they end up renting just like everyone else. How many who ride these buses even own cars?

They all know in the back of their minds that the current boom is just as transient as any other, meaning they could be unemployed and forced to leave at any time. It is difficult to build a strong community on such shaky ground.
INCOMING Tidal Wave of Energy
Is a guy misogynist if he complains about an imbalanced sex ratio and the social pathologies that spread from that? I just wish we were less quick to excommunicate people from the politically correct Church of All. Relax people, let a little heresy into your life. You'll age better.
Wow, I didn't intend that at all (and in all three places too, that's quite a failure). Thanks for noticing. Either my fingers are misbehaving or autocorrect needs a bigger dictionary.
Actually, having talked with a number of homeless folks and done outreach with our Church, a significant portion stay for the weather. Seriously, it just doesn't get too hot or too cold when you're living outside here so you're pretty much ok even if you have to just sleep in your clothes one night. I talked to a guy who had walked here from Utah spending time across the northern Nevada and some in Central California.

That said, many of the homeless we dealt with were also dealing with challenges in mental illness, whether it was depression, schizophrenia, or addiction. That was much more instrumental in keeping them homeless than any sort of structured neglect.

If the tech giants endowed a single mental health facility that would serve the homeless population of San Francisco and one in the South Bay it would do more good for more people than any other single act. Suggestions on how we could pull that off are welcome.
This looks awesome. Personally, I would have gone with a Super Saiyan 4 Vegeta for the logo though.
NASA calls off attempts to fix Kepler space telescope
Cross a border, lose your ebooks
I didn't say they were simply solved through natural language parsing. I said they were better solved (and that combining it with other approaches might help).
YouTube.com Rolls Out New Faster Interface for Chrome Users
Why I love InVision
I always thought HN was full of professional people so it ashames me to see a full blown witch hunt going on in this thread. Posting the guy his address, Twitter and so forth? Mirroring his Instagram profile? Really? Has it come to this?
Ah, fair enough. That's a different argument.
"Is this now (perceived as) middle class?"

Umm, yes? It's the upper middle class, or the professional class if you prefer a different way of categorizing members of the middle class.

Now, there are many alternative models of the US class system, some of which would say that a finance job is in the working class - a well-paid worker, but still working class. However, it seems your complaint was based on the salary, not the type of job.

I need a little help to understand your statement. Do you consider a "finance job paying around 80-100k in NY" to be working class? Blue collar? Upper class? Capitalist class? Blue bloods?
Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements
26th Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), Princeton 2013
+1 for those suggestions. And perhaps I would add :

(4) Support for methods other than GET and their data bodies when applicable.
> I honestly don't

> know why this is even on the front page...

> It shouldn't surprise anyone that

Yay! I just completed my HN-comment buzzword-bingo card!!
If you want something more configurable / heavyweight checkout Tsung: http://tsung.erlang-projects.org/

Perhaps could serve as inspiration for future work :)
Minimalistic git aliases
Well, sort of, minimalistic. You read -v on the first two aliases and say whAt :) the point is, these actually give important information, while other aliases such as “st” (for status) eliminate verboseness, especially if you’re familiar with git and use it on projects with multiple origins, branches and contributors.
Awesome, thanks! That's our exact use case :) Any suggestions, please let me know, or send via the feedback tab.
PHP - Partial constructor application
A weekend project. I'm curious about your opinions.
You can also drag any file or folder onto your terminal, which will paste the absolute filepath at your cursor point.
just do your interviews as best you can and go with what you feel is the best candidate, given the situation and given your knowledge.

despite what anyone says this is all you've really got. you run a company now - you don't deal in certainties, you deal in probabilities and need to make hard decisions with very little factual information.
And once a machine has learned to do something "easy" in the same way we do, that is via sensory perception, it will be extremely exciting to see how that knowledge can be forked and evolved via the excellent copyability inherent in computers.
I'd agree with that, with the qualification that $80-100k may actually be a bit low. In the United States overall, the upper quintile of income starts at about $102k [1], so an income between $80 and $100k would place you in the upper-middle class.

However, it's important to keep in mind that the cost of living in San Francisco or New York is much higher than average. Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,795 [2] in San Francisco, that alone is over $33k a year. The SF cost of living index is 161.3 and the Manhattan cost of living index is 223.9. In other words, $100k in Manhattan is equivalent to about $45k in an average place in the US, firmly in the middle quintile. The Living Wage Project suggests it takes at least $100k to be effectively middle class in New York [3].

It's really not a perception thing, it's reality.

1: US Census 2011 Household Income Table HINC-05

2: http://priceonomics.com/the-san-francisco-rent-explosion/

3: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/cities-high-cost-of...
NY Comptroller: Legalise marijuana, tax it and end wrongheaded war on pot
> The biggest knock on him is that he only cares about Manhattan and the rich people that live there. That may be true from an emotional standpoint, but from a practical standpoint what he's done has benefited all layers of the city. The gentrification of Manhattan has generated a ton of revenue which is being plowed into services across the city. Honestly other than being better at feeling people's pain, I don't really see the argument.

There are some problems though...Bloomberg started the policy of having a bed for every homeless person. Just to keep them off the street and out of the public eye. This is being paid for with taxpayer money and for more than $100/night. A lot of residential buildings on the upper west side have kicked out their tenants to convert exclusively to housing the homeless at high daily rates because of the money. This has contributed to a massive hike in rents across the city. Landlords are definitely the "rich" we're talking about here and Bloomberg has absolutely no problem with the practice.
This is a very narrow perspective.

Hacking on open source does increase the education improvement for low income children. Example: Poor kids in Africa now have android phones and have access to open source education materials made possible via open source web technologies.
While true, how does this explain Chicago and Detroit?

I think there are general trends but local policies (and lack of such) contribute to direction.

I think if Koch or Dinkins had been mayors for the times Giuliani and Bloomberg were mayors, crime stats would be noticeably different --less than mid 90s, but higher than today. Of course, that's just speculation.
Meta and Steve Mann want to mediate your reality for $667
This shouldn't be down voted. It's significant that it's not "Mayor Bloomberg". "Title Lastname" is the format that it used to refer to candidates.
I have both a MacBook Air 13" and a Thinkpad 220x.

I like the MacBook Air more only b/c I have more screen real estate. If the Thinkpad had the same resolution, it would win hands down. NOTE: I have the style thinkpad with the traditional IBM thinkpad keyboard. It. Is. Awesome.

Note: I have Ubuntu running on both. 13.10 daily on thinkpad and 12.04 LTS on MBA. Whichever you choose, I would HIGHLY recommend installing Ubuntu on it.
I like the style of it but I'm afraid that using a copyrighted image right in the README invites a completely needless DMCA takedown.
test()

def test():
print "Hello."
What happens to the plot when it's way over 9000 ?
No Stranger to Conspiracy
Nope. Title is exactly the same as it was posted originally (except for "yelp" being capitalized to "Yelp").
Ask HN: Are there any good free web wireframing tools?
Desired features: preferably web based, basic elements, allows export to PDF/PNG, maybe grid support.
The cab drivers are full of shit. He forced them to accept credit cards and GPS in all cars. The drivers complained like crazy, and even went on strike. The result? Revenue increased 14% the following year. Medallion prices are at a record high, and driver revenues are also at a record high.

They literally went on strike to protest a pay increase.
Why wouldn't they want to use it for fuel in nuclear reactors?
Edge.js: Run .NET and Node.js code in-process
Suggestions on how we could pull that off are welcome.

That's the problem, isn't it? Is such a thing even accomplishable?

We're teetering on an edge. We don't know if we are creating a future of clean and shiny and modern technology for everybody or if we're creating a dirty and scarred and run down begging-for-please-schedule-me-doctor services for non-millionares in society. More technological improvements are needed before we can uplift everybody into Comfort and Prosperity, but in the meantime, do we just let those who aren't us suffer?

There are probably half a dozen significant projects with 100x to 1000x personal, life-impacting ROI we could undertake as a society, but there's nobody strong enough to advance our agendas.
I am starring your project as I think it could be very useful for me and many others.
Btw I think you should show Vegeta doing the Big Bang Attack as the project image - it would look cooler:-)
Won't work. Assuming that the right answer is a word in the question, the computer can just brute force the answer in a couple of guesses.
Ask HN: Will this hold me back when looking for investors?
Long story short, I have written a series of fitness books for a traditional publisher. They are a fun amusement for me at night. I'm pretty serious about fitness as a hobby and writing is a good outlet for that as well.

I also had a deal with my wife that when the kids got to a certain age, I could pursue my startup. They are approaching that age. I have been working on the prototype and should be ready to get in front of people in maybe a few months. I'm going to bootstrap as much as possible, though the nature of the venture requires I have a bit more capital than I can outlay myself.

Note: my venture has nothing to do with fitness so the overlap is zero.

My question is 1. would the books be seen as a negative by investors? I currently work in tech and get some pretty weird looks from people who know what I do on the side. I'm wondering if the same thing will happen when I sit down with potential investors. I'm sure it will come up in their due diligence. I'm wondering if I should address it directly or wait for it to come up. Obviously don't want to be written off as "a dumb jock".

Thanks in advance!
That's more than a bit of hyperbole. He had to deal with the issues of an urban area typical for US residents. He didn't deal with the super metroplexes, but that is not the typical problems faced by most. NYC is not a cross section of what makes up the US.
On our best behaviour
My understanding is that weapons-grade plutonium is not easily usable in a conventional reactor; the vast majority of reactors in operation today run on uranium, which is enriched to a much lower percentage than weapons-grade fissile material.

TL;DR different elements, different concentrations of isotopes.
Do I Really Want All This Stuff?
Thank you to share it, what a beast! Very interesting.
The ground effect increasing lift for these planes - is this similar to the cushion of air for the hyperloop?

I'll admit I don't know enough physics to really understand this, but they seem similar at first glance...
"We could build roads that lasted 50+ years if we simply added 10% crushed up superball into the asphalt mix."

I have presumed that Musk's choice of how to present the HyperLoop to the world was motivated by the goal of drumming up popular support for the project in California. In effect, he likely wants the citizens to tell their government, "Go out and buy Elon's product." Governments are accustomed to citizens saying, "X is a problem and something must be done." vs. "We want Problem X solved via Means Y." So, one incentive which kicks in is risk aversion. No elected official wants the failure of something new to be pinned upon him. Also, better ways of doing things often are worse for politicians. How much bribery, favoritism, etc. is encompassed in the process of fixing the same road over and over again every few years? Politicians might dislike the reduction in power and control which would come along with a road which would last 50 years.

Imagine if companies with innovative technologies marketed them directly to citizens. "We sell a road system which will last for 50 years. Tell your local government you want Surface XYZ." Such marketing would be akin to the marketing of prescription drugs to consumers as a indirect way of influencing physician prescribing habits.
Pong clone in JavaScript
How do you qualify "good journalism"? Data visualization is a powerful tool for story telling and the NYT has been at the forefront of this revolution in news. "Good journalism" is telling a story accurately and in a format that people can understand. Your claim that "good journalism has taken a back seat to flashy visualizations" seems to denigrate the work of data scientists such as Mike Bostock who are transforming news in a very meaningful way.

How does data visualization qualify as "link bait" in the derogatory sense of the word?

[1] http://bost.ocks.org/mike/
You're sort of validating the technique: in those examples the meaning of the sentence is absolutely ambiguous. The fact that a google search wouldn't return a conclusive result is expected.
The variable expansions really ought to be quoted, like this:

function unmark {
rm -if "$MARKPATH/$1"
}

Otherwise you are asking for much sadness.
> Revenue increased 14% the following year

Reported revenue increased 14% the following year.
The cities problem isn't revenue, there are plenty of much better managed places that are nicer than San Francisco, without the massive tax base that the city enjoys. The people should be embarrassed at the state of the city. There are pretty clearly major systematic issues.

The city is trying to address a bunch of societal issues, while failing at the basics. There is a reason it's considered the worst run big city in the US [1]. Why should people that are already paying very high taxes pay even more, or address other peoples problems directly? I don't really see how this problem somehow belongs to the tech industry.

1: http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-ci...
Mouse stroke shape recognizer
This would be a plus for me. The fact that you've published books about something you have a passion for shows that a) You can get shit done, and b) You are organised and you can get shit done.
You forgot the bit where the tech giants are sitting on warchests with (tens of) $billions in actual giant money vaults like Scrooge McDuck, laughing at everyone else and refusing to share.
In Zsh, you can set it so that specifying a bare directory goes to the directory as well, for any directory. Just do

setopt autocd
SF is 1/10th the population of NYC in part because of those restrictions, so the comparison is more apt than it seems...
A few links:

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/28/cia-documents-us-drastica...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B

Also a quote from senator senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Raymond Garthoff, a C.I.A. military analyst, from early 2000s "there were consistent overestimates of the threat every year from 1978 to 1985."

Even without this it is possibly just to look at the rhetoric and the push for an accelerated arms race, spending on the Star Wars programs. Just looking back at was found on the other side, its economy, rusting machinery, terrible inefficiency, military machines running on vacuum tubes. Was that threat level warranted? No, there was no equivalent threat on the other side to justify it.
I personally use Django Dynamic Fixture [1]. I've been pretty happy with it. I find the syntax very readable.

[1] https://github.com/paulocheque/django-dynamic-fixture
Before mentioning "due process", the Fifth Amendment states:

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger..."

The exclusion for "cases arising in the land or naval forces" apparently applies to members of the U.S. military, who can be tried under military law (like Bradley Manning was). [1]

Furthermore, the Sixth Amendment says:

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

So I don't understand how the Constitution allows the federal government the right to execute a citizen without judicial process. Any references would be sincerely appreciated.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
Cool stuff, I saw your submission on the mailing list yesterday and there wasn't yet a plotter. You got around with it pretty quickly! This speaks to the quality of Plotinum!
There are many other examples of the New York Times providing interactive data visualizations which do exactly what you're talking about.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/06/us/politics/co...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/pa...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/20/movies/among-t...
I disagree. Fully one third of Americans live in urban areas with populations of two million or more. Only about one fifth of Americans live in an area that qualifies as "rural".

No, NYC is not a cross section of the US, but neither is Arkansas, and of the two, I'd say NYC gets closer to more of the population.
Ruby's Early Days
Its Getting Much To Complicated and Expensive to Do Business or Start Up In the US....So People Will Start Up Offshore...Its That Simple!!
What, 9000!? There's no way that can be right!
Can anyone here provide an explanation for why some code that is supposed to be high quality and trusted is calling isnan(int)?

That seems to be the more pressing issue here, not the (long since done) inclusion of a new feature in C!