skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It isn't that we're 'invasive' in relation to nature, it's that we're 'invasive' by our own definitions of the word.

For what it's worth, the beaver that forces out native species by flooding a habitat is both natural and invasive. Beavers are considered, by humans, to be a fairly invasive species, especially when introduced to areas they are not native to.

It isn't a double-standard that we're applying, it's just a little uncomfortable when the same standard is applied to us.
All the probability math therein, for a problem whose solution is highly intuitive (if you swap, you'd be just as inclined to swap envelopes indefinitely, is all you need to realize), reminds me of this quote:

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein

Shameless plug for a blog I like that has little math, yet uses much intuition to solve five of the biggest outstanding problems of physics: http://finbot.wordpress.com
Visual Intro to Portfolio Theory
That is interesting question. Is it more unethical to torture a species and ensure its survival because it is tasty, or to push a species to extinction to farm on its former habitat? And why?

This is one of those questions that drink a lot of beer and lead to violence among friends late in the evenings. With no good answer.
Too many replies all bashing me for the same opinion to reply to them each so I'll just reply to myself and address them.

I don't think making a PG edit of this video would be any different than the radio edits they make to songs or tv edits they make to movies so the FCC doesn't kill them. Anyone who enjoys the edited version but would still like to check out the original is free to. I would never tell an adult what they can and cannot listen to or watch. Have at it. But I do like to keep a certain level of appropriateness for my kids. If you want to show this to your kids.. have at it. You're free to do as you feel is best for your kids.

There will come a day when the sex talk happens. It will probably come sooner than I would like but I'm not blind to the reality that kids find out about stuff from friends before their parents. But I don't think the sex talk needs to be wrapped into a more general talk about the dangers of the internet and digital communication. There are more things to worry about on the web than cocks. I'd like to address those things with my kids without cocks. There will be plenty of time for us to talk about and look at cocks when it is important to the subject at hand. IMO, it is not that important for this topic.

The creep factor of Chatroulette could still be portrayed without actually showing the cocks. The creator chose to show them. Fine. That was his/her choice to make. That just limits the audience a bit.

I don't think of it so much as "sheltering" but more like waiting for the appropriate time and way to talk about certain subjects.

As mad as everyone got at me for having an opinion (one that I am certain is not unique)... I can only imagine how angry you'd get if I treated your opinions the same way. I feel like some of you want to come to my house and force me to show the video to my kids.
The `limit` module operates system-wide; one must use the `hashlimit` module to differentiate based on IP.
Man, do not worry about naivete. It's actually very difficult to learn the truth about the products we consume. That you are openly expressing your enlightenment is remarkable, and worth celebrating.
Xiaomi: taking a bite out of Apple
52 Domain Names That Could Be Startups
In a world of unlimited bandwidth, I'd prefer to leave my wi-fi open (I won't live in fear of terrorists war-driving on my specific block), but I saw this framed QR code for wi-fi password idea on Pinterest: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/share-your-wifi-password-wit...
Really the only major things that annoy me[1] about using ubuntu LTS as a server are:

- The fact that packages which install server software autostart the server on install, and the mechanism to disable this can vary package to package. I'd rather install-configure-then-start than install-disable-configure-then-start.

- The mechanisms for setting options for packages to be installed are geared towards interactive use. You have to disable it popping up a curses dialog, and I don't think there's an easy way to pre-configure them so you just wind up with defaults if you do.

- The version of upstart in 12.04 is really limited, and the mix of packages using old and new style init can be frustrating at times.

[1] Perspective check: I'm mostly a software developer, but I also admin my own servers for personal projects as well as having it as a peripheral aspect to my job at times.
Musk and Bezos battle over NASA launch pad
Your concerns are not an issue with a distro like Debian where the only upgrades are for backported security fixes (or, when an announced point release comes around, critical bug fixes). I worked for several years at a shop with dozens of Debian servers, and nightly unattended upgrades very rarely caused issues, and never caused anything truly serious.
This isn't intended as a be-all-end-all guide to security, like the NSA aims for. Instead, view it as a quickstart guide for those first five minutes on a new server, or as a starting point for beginners that have no idea where to even look.
Yes that's the problem in the inner city: too much religion. Ridiculous.
Yeoman + WordPress = YeoPress
Setup a WordPress development environment, including the server, in less than 10 minutes.
The Payday at Twitter Many Were Waiting For
I used command + minus to zoom out. That helped a bit.
At work I run close to 30 VM's on Ubuntu. I chose Ubuntu for two reasons. I've been running it on my desktop for years and thus know how it works. And CentOS did not have the newer versions of various packages I needed in its default repos.

For the couple years I've been doing this, I can't think of any downtime that wasn't caused by something other than the OS.

Heck, even my desktop hasn't had OS caused downtime.

I would bet my experience would be the same if I was using CentOS.

Also, there are so many different ways you can automate your server and app deployments, that your choice of OS should really depend on what app you are running. A cutting edge app might need the latest Ubuntu release to get the latest packages. Another app might need the stability of an LTS release. And another might only work with an RPM based OS and specific versions of dependencies that are only found on CentOS.

Anyway, that's my opinion and experience. I am curious if there's statistical/scientific evidence supporting the idea that CentOS/RHEL is more stable than Debian/Ubuntu.
I haven't enabled IPv6 on any of my servers yet, as I can say with 99.9% certainty that my visitors do not know what it is, let alone have it enabled. Additionally, this is intended as a quickstart or beginners guide, and obviously leaves quite a bit out. That being said, it is definitely something you want to consider, and I've added a followup to the post mentioning that.
Hm. Now it's dark outside and just a small light on, and I have to agree, the contrast is readable. And http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-ratio/#%23222-on-%23d9d9d... agrees. It's a bit greyer though than I prefer.
Although most US farms are small farms, they are in decline and also far less productive, so the vast majority (85%) of output comes from large-scale farms.

Furthermore, because the agricultural system and all of the regulations support large-scale farming, small-scale family farms have to work within the system. (eg, http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2009-02-05/more-on-the-s...).

The trend is toward more factory farming, not less, since small scale farms are less profitable, often not covering costs. The difficulty of making small farms sustainable is generally attributed to the regulations, infrastructure, and economic realities increasingly favoring large scale factory farming.

If you doubt any of what I've said here, the USDA and others have plenty of reports available: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-r...
I am afraid that you are "extremely wrong"

He was referring to Mac OS, not OS X, which did have an intel port http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project
Please add an option for the RSS feed's links to point to the HN comments page.
Theoretical resolution of "intuitively obvious" paradoxes such as these are important.

If we cannot find a theoretical resolution, it can indicate a flaw in our theories, and that will likely provide a more accurate set of theories.

The problems around the speed of light gave rise to Einstein's theories of relativity. Another of those flaws ("the set of all sets that are not members of themselves") gave rise to modern set theory and formal logic.

Still a nice quote from Einstein though :-)
Voyager Captures Sounds of Interstellar Space
Can you give some examples or numbers for this? I find it hard to believe that this alone (or at least in large part) lead to such an increase in tuition. Most STEM research is still funded by the federal government (through the NSF, DARPA, NIH and similar agencies). Many research projects don't require venture capital, because they're not really marketable.
I've been playing around with Docker and containers a little recently and I decided to test my skills in creating a container, installing software, and packaging it up for re-use and possibly even try to do it all in a Dockerfile after I do it through just "docker run -i -t ubuntu /bin/bash/".

I followed your guide but I am not able to see the Redis records. I was able to find pixel.log in /var/log/nginx and inside was what I would expect to see in Redis:

1379192937.393,test=2
1379193104.365,test=5
1379193105.308,test=7
1379193106.311,test=28

.....

At this point I went to check the syslog-ng program as I realized I never verified it was running/working. I am getting a "Error parsing source, source plugin system not found in /usr/local/etc/syslog-ng.conf at line 2, column 3:" error and after some googling I found some people suggesting[0] adding '@include "scl.conf"' to the syslog-ng config file. I tried added this and it caused another syntax error. I googled for a while longer to no avail.

I know HN isn't really the forum for tech support but I couldn't find a better place to post it other than over email (My email is in my profile if you prefer that). If you have any pointers please let me know. Thank you for any help you may be able to provide.

[0] http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.syslog-ng/15325
I've been tweaking a post on building a solid LEMP stack, that I hope to publish soon that covers your last three points. While security through obscurity isn't a solution, it does help thwart a large portion of the attacks, although it causes more headache than benefits in some cases (heavily restricted work networks for instance). When it comes to webservers, you don't encounter issues like that, and the less information you provide, the better.
Law, art, literature, research, politics - there are lots of posts that require someone be capable of focused effort and thought. Perhaps it doesn't suit their current knowledge but they could learn new things - it's not like learning's hard if you're reasonably smart and able to sustain an interest.

Whether you think they just turn out nonsense or not they're in a fairly competitive environment and have managed to make a living there.
Where is this mythical place with a 3:1 gender ratio?

http://www.maletofemaleratio.com/wiki/California-CA/San_Fran...
I really only understood the Monty Hall Problem intuitively when I sat down to write a simulation of it to convince someone else that the math (which had already convinced me) was actually correct. Here's Julia code for it:

function monty_hall(switch::Bool; n=3)
winner, guess = rand(1:n), rand(1:n)
reveal = setdiff(1:n,[winner,guess])[rand(1:end)]
if switch
guess = setdiff(1:n,[guess,reveal])[rand(1:end)]
end
return guess == winner
end

This allows you to simulate the switch and don't switch strategies:

julia> mean([ monty_hall(false) for _=1:100000 ])
0.33166

julia> mean([ monty_hall(true) for _=1:100000 ])
0.6676

But more importantly, you can see that in the don't-switch case, the reveal choice is dead code – it has no effect on wether the original guess was right or not. That's the key insight: since the original guess had 1/3 chance of being right before the reveal, it still has a 1/3 change of being right after the reveal. Before the reveal the other two choices also each had a 1/3 chance of being winners, but after the reveal their combined 2/3 chance is concentrated entirely on the door that wasn't revealed, making that the best option.

The code also lets us see what happens with a generalized Monty Hall problem for more doors:

julia> mean([ monty_hall(false, n=4) for _=1:100000 ])
0.24862

julia> mean([ monty_hall(true, n=4) for _=1:100000 ])
0.37462

julia> mean([ monty_hall(false, n=5) for _=1:100000 ])
0.19763

julia> mean([ monty_hall(true, n=5) for _=1:100000 ])
0.2666

Even for higher numbers of doors, it's better to switch.
Revisiting the Black Sunday Hack (2008)
Why do you think that a free market requires perfect information? Do you think the situation is the same for a democracy? Does it also require perfect information?

http://wichitaliberty.org/free-markets/myth-markets-depend-o...
A thermometer, an adjustable burr grinder, and either one of: a high quality drip brewer, a hario, or a french press. I prefer the hario for ease of cleanup, personally, but some people consider non-french press brewed coffee to be heresy.

I think it's cool to try to roast your own once or twice, but roasters cost a ton and cowboy coffee (roasting in an open pot over heat) produces a ton of smoke & chaff. Mostly it made me appreciate the skill involved in roasting :)

The big thing is to mind the temperature of the water (and use good water), making sure you're using freshly ground whole bean coffee, the amount of grinds vs water, and the quality/freshness of the coffee beans. There's a ton of good advice online, I hope you find something that works well for you (and that my humble advice is useful)!
"cut the crap" :)
That took my server down i'm afraid. Good day today. Here's a "cached" version.

To all watchers of the libgdx repository: i’m terribly sorry and hope i didn’t interfer with your work in any way

This is meant as a cautionary tale about using Github’s API on a repository with quite a few watchers (460 in this case).

Earlier this year we migrated our code from Google Code to Github. We didn’t have a good migration plan for the 1200 or so issues back then, so we kept them on Google Code. We now have about 1700 issues on the tracker

Today i finally wanted to tackle the issue tracker migration, using a Python script [1] i found on Github. The script requires one to specify a Github user account that owns the repository the issues will get migrated to. I did a dry run on a fork of the main repo using my Github account, fixed up some issues in the script, and validated things to the best of my abilities. Things looked good.

Then i ran it on the main repository. Luckily i was watching our IRC channel. After about 4 minutes, people started to scream. They each received 789 e-mails from Github. Every single issue i migrated, and every single comment of each issue triggered an e-mail notification to all watchers of the main repository.

This wasn’t apparent to me during the dry runs, as i used my own Github account. The script posts all issues/comments with the user account i supplied, so naturally, i did not get any notification mails.

I stopped the script after 130 issues (4 minutes), and immediately started sending out apologies and a mail to Github support, to which i haven’t received an answer yet. I send roughly 300k mails through their servers in a matter of minutes. If i hadn’t watched IRC, i’d have send out about 4 million mails to 460 people within an hour.

Let me assure you that i’m extremely sorry about this incident. I know that things like this can interrupt daily workflows quite a bit, even if getting rid of those mails is not a Herculean task. I’d be rather upset if a repo maintainer pulled something like this on me. Please accept my deepest apologies.

The lesson for Github API users: think hard about the implications of automating tasks through the Github API if you have more than a few watchers.

The lesson for Github/API designers: consider safe-guarding against such issues in your API, in case other idiots like me pull off something similar in the future.

[1] https://github.com/tgoyne/google-code-issues-migrator
> Yes, I was referring to the time and space complexities of actually calculating the values. If the pure function were the algorithm, then there would be no separating the two. However, since a pure function can be calculated by several algorithms, then we are really just putting off some of the major points, no? (Hell, even in the simple 8 * 2, we are glossing over what really happens.

Again: both imperative and functional algorithms can be implemented in several ways. Both imperative and functional algorithms can solve the same problem, but have different time complexities.

"However, since a pure function can be calculated by several algorithms, then we are really just putting off some of the major points, no?"

What? The semantics of a pure function shouldn't be changed when you actually compute it - there is no "functional algorithm execution algorithm". The actual code that gets evaluated can be pretty different from the actual code you wrote, though - maybe your lazy lists got implemented as for-loops. Maybe you used a list in some way that made it look like you had O(n) space complexity, but it got turned into a loop that didn't store intermediate values so the space complexity is actually O(1). So yes, time complexity can be a little decieving, in some cases, if the compiler is sufficiently smart. However, there is no magic about the actual semantics of a functional algorithm.

> This is all really missing my main assertion, though. What is your function for getting in your car and driving somewhere? Could this be written in such a way that everything was a "pure" function? Probably. My hunch is that it wouldn't really be that readable, though. Now, if we shift the paradigm such that one of the "primitives" is your current location, suddenly the directions are a lot more readable.

Maybe you could. I don't think many care, though, not even functional programmers. The only decently widespread language that I can think of that actually enforces purity is Haskell, and some people even prefer to write imperative code in it over other languages. I don't get this obsession of yours with trying to argue against pure functional programming in the very, very strict sense of the whole program being pure, if that is actually possible. I think there are very few that are upset about having to write imperative code for code that has to do with sequential commands. They might use pure functional programming for the computations that they need, but they'll effectively write imperative programs at the top level.

What they probably do want, though, is to be able to clearly distinguish what parts of their programs are pure and what parts of their programs are potentially effectful.
Prediction: I think developers will find a harder time to differentiate than previous iOS versions, and will feel a bit marginalized as apps evolve around a common style, palette and pattern. However, the user experience will be evolutionary.

Frankly, I feel that this design strategy has a split personality.
That is a very long article based on flawed argument.

Given no other information, assuming someone gave you 2 envelopes and told you one has $40 vs $20, common sense dictates choose 1 randomly and walk away - with no other information it is illogical to reason any other way.

The chance you choose the lower value is 1/2.

Now, if you are allowed to look inside the envelope (which gets introduced further down) then it becomes a different game.

Get $20...well by swapping you may get $10 or $40...you should probably swap.

Get $2000...well by swapping you may get $1000 or $4000...you should probably swap.

I think this works all the way up...someone with a bit more background on game theory may be able to formalise it, but the realisation that swapping forever leads to $0 nullifies this "paradox"
He's already patching nginx to support logging via syslog, so why didn't he just patch nginx to log directly to redis? One less place for things to go wrong.
I don't see the paradox... If you have 2x and swap you lose x. If you have x and swap, you gain x. 0.5(-x) + 0.5(x) = 0, So you should be indifferent to swapping.

A I missing something? Not to say I don't make mistakes, but I have a BS in mathematics so maybe this is only obvious for people with a background in math?

EDIT: No need for dollar values.
> Honestly. I say population is increasing.

No. What you said was that population was increasing without constraint. It's that last bit I was responding to.

The fact that the rate of growth is declining does suggest the presence of one or more constraints, even if the overall growth rate hasn't quite reversed just yet. The primary form of the constraint appears to be that as childhood survival rates and living standards improve, families voluntarily choose to have fewer kids. This is happening all over the world, there's no reason to think it will stop any time soon, and it argues against your implication that "mass death" is the only likely way out.

(For what it's worth, I have taken calculus. And if you're the guy who wrote AppleWriter: Nice job! I liked that program. I used it in high school.)
How do you stay motivated when you're not making any money?
Because most developers have ~0 such knowledge...
How To RECRUIT REPS INTO Your NETWORK MARKETING BUSINESS THROUGH THE INTERNET
this will lead to two tier colleges - one that act as schools and one that act as universities

That already pretty much exists. Strictly speaking I think the dividing line is whether or not you can get a PhD at the school in question; in casual speech, "university" vs. "college" sometimes approximates the distinction.
Certainly. I haven't reserached this issue much, and while certainly other factors come into play, I suspect that Act does have an impact.

I used the word "venture capital" loosely. I do not refer to the traditional sense of VCs on sand hill road, but venture capital in the sense of money that can pay for extremely specialized and expensive research equipment and labor.

In general, the Harvardization ("we must be the best at all areas of research") has infected even second-tier research institutions; for places like Harvard, MIT, etc. the financial gains from patents probably outweighs the outlay. However, for second-tier research institutions, they may be simply caught up in a ratings arms race.

Here is a report that has some interesting facts.

http://www.ed.psu.edu/educ/cshe/working-papers/WP%236

'Over the current era, this has produced a pronounced intensification of research. For
99 research universities, enrollments grew by 15 percent from 1980 to 2000, but real research
expenditures grew by 128 percent (Geiger, 2004, p. 147).'