skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> the link you provide in "support" actually said we CAN feed our present numbers

The hungry aren't fed by unrealized possibilities. All the numbers do is fluctuate, they don't ever indicate that we're feeding the hungry. It's not at all surprising that the numbers fluctuate, we're talking about reality, not a computer model. But one thing doesn't change -- the shocking number of people who are starving at any given time.

When it comes to hunger, there's no point in arguing that that we can feed the hungry, as you put it. There's only whether we did -- everything else is hand-waving.

> In short, your link does not in any way support your argument.

Of course it does. The number of people who are starving is very high. Some years it's higher, some years lower, but it's never "acceptable" and it always supports the claim I made about it -- we aren't feeding the hungry.

The presence of unused stockpiles of food means nothing -- there are any number of reasons why that situation exists, but the bottom line is that the hungry aren't fed. Do you really think some conscientious aid worker goes home after a hard day's work, satisfied that he had fed the hungry in principle?

> Here's a useful tip: most people are not complete idiots.

Think like a scientist. Use the null hypothesis as your guide. Let yourself be pleasantly surprised by what people know, but never assume that people know what they need to know to have any given conversation or deal with any given problem. The consequences of that mistake vary between foolish and dangerous.

> http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html

Yes, very familiar with this article -- I use it in my anti-psychology campaign. For some reason, many psychologists think it identifies psychology as a science, when it clearly does the opposite.
Weird Life: The Search for Life That Is Very, Very Different from Our Own.

I am cheating with an audiobook though....spend a lot of time in a car=)
A fun rebuttal to her work (I've read Atkas Shrigged twice and find her deeply flawed but still interesting in some ways) is Sewer Gas and Electric by Matt Ruff. It's very fun silly sci fi.
s/call StopIteration/raise StopIteration/g
I love biographies/auto-biographies of people not in technology (directly) who live an interesting life.

"Giant Steps: The Remarkable Story of the Goliath Expedition From Punta Arenas to Russia" by Karl Bushby

Unbelievable what it feels like to just take off...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0751536954

"Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination"

The first third of the book is remarkable in that Walt Disney constantly struggles with failure.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679757473

"Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer" by Lynne Cox

Her story is all about single focus on doing what you want to do.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013L8AQQ

"Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" by Steve Martin

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416553657
Calatrava: A Cross-Platform Mobile Framework that allows to build great UIs
Oh, that's easy - free markets are an ideal that can't actually exist in the real world, in part because perfect information is impossible.
I tell everyone I meet who is into books to read "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski.
I think it'll take Apple a bit to figure out their exact niche. Remember the original release of OSX 10.0? It was a hodge-podge of pinstripes, liquicap buttons and realistic looking icons mixed with some old 4-16 color icons. It was a mess if you're judging by where they were by the time OSX Tiger (10.4) was released. I'm sure the same will happen for iOS.
Just read it... Here is what I came up with.
I start work at 9:00 am, before work I always go to my favorite coffee bar called "Muazam's Coffee" it's 10 minutes walk from my workplace. So I arrive there 8:30 am to have a morning mocha with breakfast while reading the newspaper. One day a man approached me right before the coffee bars entrance and asked me if he could experiment a problem on me, he promised I would get enough cash for a coffee.

Well, why not I thought. He presented me Two Envelopes and said "One contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep the money it contains. You pick at random, but before you open the envelope, you are offered the chance to take the other envelope instead."

Without giving it a single thought, I picked the one on left for me, and began to unfold it. He looked at me and said "don't you want to swap?!", I had just unfolded the envelope and pulled out $20 bucks, "too late for that I guess" I said. I could tell by the look of his face that he was disappointed, he unfolded the other envelope and pulled out $10 bucks. He left me without saying a word.

I went to the coffee bar and spent the money I've just gotten. I took my coffee and breakfast and sat down on one of the outside tables. I saw the Envelop man again, this time he had found another guy. He had two new envelopes and asked the guy the same question. But this guy took out a pen and paper and started doing some math. It was already 8:47, I had to go to work.

Next day, same routine. I go to the Muazam's Coffee bar, and I see Envelope and mathematician guy(let's call him Joe) sitting on one of the tables outside the bar. The guy is still trying to solve the problem. I was kinda impressed how much Joe had put effort into this, he already had four A4 full of notes that seemed like formulas.

This went for weeks, months, years.

Everyday, before work I would see them outside. The Envelope man having two envelopes by his side and Joe trying to solve the problem.

28 years had passed...

I was going to Muazam's Coffee bar as usual when I noticed there was ambulance outside. I went to see who they came for, for my surprise it was Joe. I asked the envelope man, what had happened, he told me Joe had a heart attack.

Joe was admitted in a hospital, he was in bad condition.
The envelope man visited him and said "Joe, I am proud of you. We have spent so much time together and you still don't have the perfect formula to solve this problem. Maybe this problem can't be solved with math..".

Joe looked him in the eye and said "No, I won't give up. I will get this right and get the highest amount of cash". The envelope man said "You can have them both" and he unfolded both of the envelopes. One containing $1 and the other one $2. This is where Joe had another heart attack.
Sure, but the complexity of that single "desktop-oriented language" will be much higher than HTML and CSS...
We read "The Fountainhead," if that's anything. Doesn't mean the rest of what you said is wrong.
Async file IO on Linux is a bit odd, although it is gradually getting better. It only applies to unbuffered IO (I think still). So you have to use a thread to read or write. Windows has a more usable version. There is a Unix standard API but it is just implemented with threads normally anyway.
Squatty Potty, Healthy colon, Happy life.
Like yourself I resisted reading HPMOR for years. Give in to your dark side, the book is both remarkably compelling and extremely self-aware.
I liked Rainbows Edge because in addition to a nifty story, it felt like a blueprint or use case for the near future. Marshall Brane's Manna did something similar, even if you don't consider it fine literature. Charles Bukowski for poetry, which for some reason I can relate to, despite not sharing any experiences with the author ... which kind of worries me.

Various practical books such as Secrets of Power Negotiation by Roger Dawson if that sort of thing will help you.
because, MD and JD debt wouldn't apply to undergrads, unless you think the wave can travel back in time?
"If you're a venture capitalist, and you invest in Pax's startup without a profound, meaningful and years-long demonstration of responsibility from Pax beforehand, you're complicit in extending the tech industry's awful track record of exclusion, and it's unacceptable."

Yes, because what we need more of in our community is blacklisting--even for a good cause, this is inexcusable.
The FDA is considering a black label warning for acetaminophen and recently changed the max "recommendation" down from 4 grams daily to 2.3g (IIRC). It is most definitely a liver toxin with therapeutic index that's not so amazing.

People get prescribed ratios of 100:1 APAP:hydrocodone (750/7.5 for example) - it's idiotic from a health and safety perspective. If you need opiate painkillers such as hydrocodone or oxycodone, the extra APAP is unlikely to be of much benefit, and you can always just take some APAP on the side. The APAP is there purely to "prevent" abuse.

I'm not suggesting the "Government is poisoning people" as a conspiracy, I'm suggesting the same idiotic politics and ideas at play during alcohol prohibition are still alive.
Catch 22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Infinite Jest
Cryptonomicon
> Okay, now I'm definitely confused: Is English not your native language?

Pro tip: a surefire way to end a conversation is to abandon the topic and/or make it personal.

> Are you very young, perhaps in high school?

Right. The statistical probability is high that I was designing spacecraft before you were born.
Or http://droppages.com/ or http://www.site44.com/ or http://www.kissr.com/
Interesting point and nice read. Still the problem is in assumption about underlying distribution of amounts in envelopes (in original case impossible uniform distribution). The reasoning is based on this assumption and leads to nonsense.
What you are saying (I think) is that assuming some other distribution (possible one, instead of impossible one) could still lead to nonsense or doesn't lead anywhere at all.
East of Eden is my favorite book I've read in the last several years. Beautiful end to end and very moral. If you've read it it's totally worth reading Journal of a Novel: a collection of letters Steinbeck wrote to his editor every day as he was writing East of Eden. It's a fascinating window into the mind of a master deliberately creating a masterpiece.

Other favorites: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, In Our Time by Hemingway, The Magus by John Fowles, 100 years of solitude, Moby Dick (perhaps a precursor to all modern fantasy?) Stranger in a Strange Land, and Infinite Jest. I've also loved both of DFW's big essay collections: Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll never Do Again.
Last 3 books: Game of thrones (1, 2, 3)
Currently reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (one of the comprehensive and popular works on the topic)
Not having robots.txt just results in Google defaulting to their reasonable crawl settings. For most sites, a hastily configured robots.txt usually results in problems rather than SEO help.

The indexed pages are also missing most of the 'important' landing pages and other big pages, so most likely some sort of automated spam detection was triggered.

My ISP seems to time out on the domain, sshing and curling from various servers returns the page.
Using DANE in tandem with DNSSEC ensures that such changes wouldn't go unnoticed.
Arbitrarily label the two envelopes A and B. Assume that no envelope is empty. Let «X» denote the amount of money in envelope X.

We are told that either «A» = 2«B» or «B» = 2«A». Because these propositions are exhaustive and mutually exclusive, we know that

P(«A» = 2«B») + P(«B» = 2«A») = 1. (1)

Since we have no knowledge that would make either proposition more plausible than the other, we also have (by symmetry) that

P(«A» = 2«B») = P(«B» = 2«A»). (2)

From (1) and (2) we can solve for the individual probabilities of the propositions:

P(«A» = 2«B») = P(«B» = 2«A») = 1/2. (3)

Therefore, from the initial conditions, we have no reason to prefer either envelope.

Now we are given the information that we have picked one of the envelopes at random (let's say it's A). We are further given the information that A contains $20, that is «A» = $20. How does this new knowledge affect the probabilities?

It has no effect because we can't say anything more about either proposition without also knowing «B» as well, and we don't know it. That is,

P(«A» = 2«B» | «A» = $20) = P(«A» = 2«B»)

and

P(«B» = 2«A» | «A» = $20) = P(«B» = 2«A»).

Therefore, our probability assignments from (3) remain unchanged, and we have no reason to prefer one envelope to the other, let alone swap A for B.
[inotify-tools](https://github.com/rvoicilas/inotify-tools/wiki) is the stuff you want. There's a nice utility called inotifywait in there which will block until there's a change in a file or directory (it does recursive as well).

You can get results from as simple as this bash one-liner:

while(true); do inotifywait --exclude '.*.swp' -e close_write dir; make; done

I wrote that off the top of my head so it may not work straight off, but you get the idea.
As has already been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, most of Neil Stephenson's work is just great. Cryptonomicon is my favorite, but The Baroque Cycle (three books) is very good as well.

If you're into crime/mystery fiction, the recently deceased Elmore Leonard was one of the best. A few of his books have been made into movies (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, The Big Bounce) with mixed results, but I do I highly recommend reading the books, which are numerous.

For a different sort of fiction, James Clavell's Shogun, Taipan, and Noble House are great. In fact, Noble House very well be my favorite book. It's a long (~1400 page) book about business dealings, political intrigue, and more. All set in the context of 1963 Hong Kong.

Those who like a touch of historical fiction could take a look at Conn Uggulden. One of his series, The Conqueror, which is about the rise and fall of the Mongol empire is pretty interesting. The books are a light read, and not particularly complicated, but it's entertaining and has some neat historical bits.
Am I missing something or you're just describing the regular way to make coffee?

The result will be somewhat bitter and acidic, varying according to the beans you use (assuming the brewing procedure is fixed). It's not like bitterness and acidity are generally considered bad attributes for coffee anyway. It's just that people like different degrees of it.
Fortunately, I think we're entering an era where JS can be a nearly transparent target language for translation from the languages of our choice, with things like asm.js and source maps. We're not quite there yet, but it definitely seems like where we're going.
Each to their own, but I wouldn't describe Android as "garbage" now - I actually quite like its current style. I'd also argue that most of these iOS7 apps look like they'd need only minor tweaks to fit in with Android's style, so your claim is at the least a bit unfair.
It is interesting how luxury goods are very amenable to this kind of campaign -- the "conflict diamond" thing from a few years ago seemed a lot more effective than any number of regular anti animal cruelty or sweatshop labor campaigns. Anti-fur and anti foie gras has also been much more effective than anti-meat.
Let's see, we should have:

* A few folks wrongly arguing this is about free speech even though it's not an issue of government limiting speech
* Guys saying this is trying to silence someone, without ever reflecting on whether Pax's actions silenced others
* People blaming me for his getting fired, even though I know his CEO and did not call him about this
* Dudes who will say "all that matters is if he knows the tech" as if being an executive doesn't also require effective communication skills, empathy, and the ability to create a welcoming and supportive workplace.
* A few who will go off and continue the effort to dox me instead of the PUA jerks who keep sending me death threats and attacking me & my family
* A silent majority who find this guy and this kind of behavior reprehensible but somehow don't always feel obligated to speak up.

But I am optimistic; the many good people here can change these parts of startup culture. We can make it welcoming, even to those with strong accents or who those might get pregnant.
For me, mostly Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Phillip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Georges R.R Martin, Tolkien, Raymond E Feist, David Gemell, Robin Hobb, Anne Mc Caffrey, Fritz Leiber, J.V. Jones, Moorcock, Jack Vance, Van Vogt, Robert Charles Wilson, Lucius Shepard, Ray Bradbury, Scott Lynch, Peter V Brett, E.E Knight... just for those coming to my mind right now and internationally known. I also read french writers in the same genre: Roland C Wagner, Claude Ecken, Lionel Davoust, Fabien Clavel, Pierre Pevel, Justine Niogret, Eric Wietzel, Alain Damasio, Ayerdhal, Sylvie Miller, Philippe Ward, Thomas Geha, Laurent Whale, Jeanne A Debats, Anne Fakhouri...
And a lot more. I'm a bookworm so the list's always growing ^^'
No, clearly what we need is more funding of guys who unabashedly say they won't try to hire women. Because that's a great world to live in.
I'd really love for someone else to chime in to get some more balanced feedback (I'm really not railing against you personally, I just don't think I should be condoning this practice in any way) -- but the amount of domains you own is super huge... If you're working on that many ongoing projects actively, you are super human.

Also, gaming the system LESS than the worst offenders doesn't make you a "nice guy". It just makes you a less-mean mean guy.

Based on your stated opinion, there is absolutely no problem with anyone with the resources to grab up any domain they think they might use, sometime in the future. This is not a good (nor efficient) way to use limited resources. It is not absolutely the case that someone else will use it, that is an un-certifiable (at best) or false (at worst) assumption.

It seems like I could do a simple s/domain name/patent/g and get the opinion of every patent troll ever
Kopi 2014
Here's my contribution:

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

Approach 1: Absent new information, we cannot improve our outcomes.

In the montey hall problem there is either obscure new information, or a obscure change in the rules between firs choice and second choice.

Montey hall collapses to an initial choice of the prize behind door A or the prizes behind both door B and C. When the true, collapsed, choice is revealed the common sense reasoning is correct.

In this problem there is no new usable information.

In the two envelopes problem the new information appears relevant but is actually not on it's own any more useful to reasoning about expected value than knowing that there is a red or green piece of paper in either envelope.

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

Approach 2: Keeping the quantities symbolic.

There are two envelops with quantities x and y inside. We are told that 2x = y. After choosing it is revealed that our envelope has quantity z. It is not revealed if z=x or z=y.

Let's consider the universe of possibilities.

Possibility one (50% chance): z = y. Value of switching: -x

Possibility two (50% chance): z = x. Value of switching: +x

Therefore the value or switching is: .5 * -x + .5* +x = +/-0

The red herring here is that knowing value z feels like it is information about values x and y, but it isn't.

The slight of hand is in trying to say that the other envelope is worth either .5z or 2z. This is false because there is an unknown but fixed universal constant variable x. We don't know from the available information if we are in universe z=x or universe z=y.

In short: The two envelopes paradox mistakes an unknown constant for an unknown variable. Knowing that z = 20 doesn't change the universal constants x and y.
Well, yeah :)
The problem is still in assuming something about the distribution without having any good reason to.
In original "paradox" reasoning it was impossible uniform distribution. What you show is that even assuming possible distribution could still lead nowhere.
It still doesn't mean there is any reason to assume it's P($2^i) = 1/(2^i). I may just as well assume it's exactly 100$-200$ and that switching from 100$ gives me guaranteed payoff. It would be as baseless as assuming uniform distribution or the one given by you.

I think the main lesson from this puzzle is that you can't assume stuff without good reason to.
A waste of time. You should be using a strong passphrase so that it doesn't matter if your laptop is stolen.

We all use osx though so if any of us become high-value targets they'll just root our machines remotely with the help of Apple software update and steal our keys from ram or log our keystrokes directly.
Yes! I thought of Afterschool too. One of my favorite films.
I checked again, I was wrong. It runs fine. The way it animated made it feel like it was lagging, but it ran perfectly fine.
I had this for years and it comes back every now and then.

At first it was absolutely terrifying as I "heard" people walking next to my bed, "felt" my mattress being lifted, "seen" things floating around and other (now) pretty cool hallucinations. Now I'm able to get fully conscious during the process and realise what's going on, but I still have a hard time when I feel I'm suffocating :(

Just an advice, the trick is to focus your brain on your breath, don't panic and raise your awareness of everything that surrounds you. It will calm you down although you won't be able to move or call for help.
The problem here is that you are adding together two values for a specific case of x and then adding together the result for all values of x (is that clear? probably not).

It's analogous to another age old problem: what is the value of 1 + (-1) + 1 + (-1) + 1 + (-1) ...

You could argue that (1 + -1) + (1 + -1) ... = 0 + 0 ... = 0.

You could also argue that 1 + (-1 + 1) + (-1 + 1) = 1 + 0 ... = 1.

There are actually way to group the numbers in that series to get any integer answer you want :D

Since we haven't actually defined a distribution over x the problem is not well-defined anyway. But lets pick, say, P(x=2^i) = 1/(2^i) for all i>1.

Then the expected value of A is

E(A) = (1/2 * $2) + (1/4 * $4) + (1/8 * $8) ...
= +infinity.

Similary E(B) = +infinity.

Now for E(B-A)

E(B-A) = (1/2 * $1) + (1/2 * -$1) + (1/4 * $2) + (1/4 * -$2) ...

Like the example above, we can add this up in different ways:

E(B-A) = ((1/2 * $1) + (1/2 * -$1)) + ((1/4 * $2) + (1/4 * -$2)) ...
= $0 + $0 ...
= $0

Or

E(B-A) = (1/2 * $1) + ((1/2 * -$1) + (1/4 * $2)) + ((1/4 * -$2) ...
= $0.5 + $0 + $0 ...
= $0.5

When adding up infinite numbers of things you have to be very careful. I go into more detail in this thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6387344

Cookie please :D
My position that the rich (and their corporations) have more influence on law-making than the poor, and that this can disadvantage the poor? I think it's hilarious you find this controversial; it has been the case throughout human history in all systems of government. Pretending this doesn't happen really doesn't help except in order to encourage complacency on the part of the poor.

I still don't think you understand what being trapped in poverty means. Even taking that entry-level job, assuming you can get it in the first place, often doesn't raise the person much higher. Been trapped in poverty often means you don't have the background, education, opportunity, or even awareness to go after that job in the first place.

Tax lien thing: the article never mentioned what happened to the money from the sale of the house, other than that it was sold by the investor, so I hardly think it was a matter of political blindness on the part of the readers. Furthermore, the man was eveicted from his lifetime home over a $150 dollar bill, and forced to pay $5000 instead, no to mention either lose the house or lose out on selling the house under more favourable conditions to a buyer willing to pay more, depending on what is in fact true. Discussion on that article seems to indicate he did indeed lose the equity, and that this is a problem in Washington D.C. due to how the law is worded there. This example proves my point either way.