skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't like posting on SO because it doesn't matter how careful I am to word my questions I always get asked to "show your code". Even when I'm asking about general usage of an API or theory.

Usually I end up posting my code and these people disappear without answering my question.

People seem to be only interested in questions where they can spot missing semi colons and get some easy points.
Scare quotes are what you use when the thing you are discussing is not the word you're using. They are completely appropriate there.

The guy who replied to you is correct, as everyone who paid attention in Econ 101 is aware: there is no reason for the US Federal Government to default, ever. It dictates the literal amount of its monetary units that exist on earth (another thing carefully defined and explained in Econ 101) by extending credit. It extends this credit with no collateral, no limits and no need for leverage. They create money when they want to for any reason, and they don't when they don't want to for any reason. They can, tomorrow, instruct the Fed to create $17T (roughly the national "debt") and credit it to whoever they want. The key difference between a central bank and all other entities: when it extends credit, it does not create a matching liability in the government's accounting. The central bank, or rather something with the power of a central bank, is the only entity in a society that can do this. That's what the "sole power to dictate the supply of money" means.

Any logic developed while thinking about debt carried by people, companies, cities or states, all of whom must add liabilities to their accounting books when they take on debt, does not apply to the entity that controls the central bank for the monetary units in question. Anytime anyone expresses concern about the national "debt" as if it wasn't something Congress could wave away with a pen in 15 minutes, they're being ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst.

It is absolutely critical that you read up on and understand this. It puts the lie to a lot of the national dialogue about austerity, belt-tightening, and service cuts.
A non mandatory app store is the real thing that has pushed Valve and a real consideration here.
> instead of term limits, make it you have to win each election with 5% more of the electorate?

But that would be an exponential increase, an increase without bound that would sweep past 100% as if it was standing still.

If a candidate won a substantial majority in one election, that rule might decrease his chances to be re-elected because the stakes would be raised in the following contest. So being popular would count as a handicap.
I appreciate your perspective, but I have great trouble getting past the feeling that this system is woefully societally inefficient. It seems so wasteful to have a handful of companies, each putting in tens of thousands of hours for products that do essentially the same thing, striving for lock-in and barrier to entry.

Yes, this is better than requiring each hardware company develop their own. But maybe there are other solutions that still result in the tools being available, both to those who can currently afford it and to those who can't? A shorter copyright term seems like one step in that direction. Nationalize one of the firms and open source it, leading to both a lower priced alternative and greater price competition for the remaining?

I guess it's a question of what the goal is. I'd put global accessibility to the developed technology up very high, and presume that dropping the cost and barriers to entry for both the hardware and software firms would help this.
Supposedly the current disaster-response structure was implemented specifically because of shortcomings in the 9/11 disaster response (along with one other major natural disaster, I forget which)
Why should Intel accept a patch that's only ever going to be useful for one distro?

Wouldn't it be better for everyone if the distro would just manage those patches itself?
Knowing that the game exists is 80% of the battle for indie devs.

I check Steam everyday looking for new Linux releases. I can't say the same for checking indie game blogs or wherever else I'm supposed to find the announcements of a Linux version. Even if I did, it's simple mathematics - do I check 30+ websites of various game publishers, news organisations and indie devs, or do I just check Steam?

They have a pretty powerful platform; I think the publicity benefits of being on Steam far outweigh the cut they take as a middleman.
It's a real shame you cannot incorporate tail recursion into an acronym, unless you write it in reverse.
Oh, I doubt that would work either, Ada is a palindrome.
Like the teaser ads leading up to a reality TV show's new season, this confessional "tell all" is probably part of the promotional rollout of O'Reilly's new conference series: http://cultivatecon.com/cultivate2013
Could you tell us the reason you're not considering neither Vim nor Emacs? Genuinely curious.
Well this is a feature if you are looking at SO as a place to get answers. There are far more people looking for answers (by asking OR searching) to the basic simple questions.

So if you leave a good answer on something basic and simple, you have provided utility to far more people than if you are leaving a detailed answer to an obscure question.

This, incidentally, is what's lacking in the IRC channels of open source projects. In an IRC channel, questions that are not hard enough get ignored because they are not interesting to the experts in the channel.

So the IRC channel is good if you are hacking on the core, while SO is good if you are just trying to get something done, and the technology in question is a small part of your entire stack.
That's true but for "Too big to fail" business. This century has begun with this new type of pseudo-public economy where the taxpayers support the financial loses of this kind of business.

Also I don't understand why the state or the union help this city. Having a city with so much citicies living in misery is a failure of the entire country. Detroit is in this situation because the laus of the country let it be.
Using Azure and MVVMLight to sync and secure a Windows Store app
Sounds like the other company is doing the hard work of marketing for you. Be thankful! Now you can focus your time on feature development, and if you come up with something good, they'll buy it or someone else will.
"there is 0% chance that the US will be forced to default on the debt."

That might be relevant if someone on the thread had claimed such a thing.
Combining personal data with ratings for targeted medical information
HealthTap is a community of doctors and clients seeking answers to health questions. Its central service provides immediate access to doctors and their knowledge either by doctors answering client questions in real time, or through a large database of previously answered questions and answers from doctors that are peer reviewed and tagged with recommendations by other doctors. By combining the doctors’ recommendations with data provided by each client on himself or herself, HealthTap provides customized results to queries. In this video, HealthTap CEO Ron Gutman explains unexpected lessons they’ve learned from offering the intelligent search service.
c.f. O'Reilly as "The Meme Hustler" (in the words of Evgeny Morozov): http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler
I think I'm prone to cascading realization more than most. I often watch (or read) things multiple times, each time seeing it in a new way. For me, it's not so much the process of getting a principle intellectually, but a long process of internalization, often of simple ideas, and putting them into practice in my everyday work. The colloquial term for this is 'stupid', I think, but I prefer to think of it in a more positive light. =) It actually makes me think of my favorite T.S. Eliot quote:

'We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.'

I often return to basics and understand them in a new way after some time away, and Rich's talks evoke that phenomenon for me more than most.
Valve hardware news “rolling out” next week, Newell promises Linuxcon
Think about MySpace and Facebook. Often the first to market doesn't dominate a few years out. Figure out the problem you are solving and do it to the best of your ability. "Appropriate" your competitors' best ideas if they fit with your solution and ignore their bells and whistles if they don't. Even if you are not successful, there is no shame in failing well. Chalk it up to education and try again.
Thank you. I appreciate your vote of confidence. :)
This 4×6 index card has all the financial advice you’ll ever need
Avoiding Negative Value (Re: Khosla)
+1, the NSA is one player amongst all the countries, corporations, and ...work colleagues who might be interested in your files. There are more commercial agencies around than we'd like to think, who are given 10 grands to ruin your reputation or make your laptop disclose your next commercial move...
I've done at-home hobbyist development for five years with the neighbors from hell revving exhaust modded beater cars 20-50x/day. I'm drooling at the words "deadly quiet". (And yes I'm leaving here at some point in the next year).
Upgraded Falcon 9 set to launch from Vandenberg this week
There are links to two demos in the readme.md file in the repository.

https://github.com/scripting/concord/blob/master/README.md
Well you definitely succeeded. I love Chapter 4, as it aptly attacks the rampant misconception that rote implementation of a bunch of UX modifications is the epitome of optimization.

And thanks for keeping it not only comprehensive but objective, rather than only emphasizing the portions pertaining to the services you sell. :)
Can't wait for the airbnb listing.
Reading all the advice that is being given in comments around this thread, it would seem the best advice would be: get someone who knows what they're talking about in the local area and get their advice; like the parent poster SAR but that also knows about dangers closer to home.

Maybe you could make a weekend of it for your families or something.
They write some great ads over there at O'Reilly.
This depends heavily on the country. In Denmark a PhD student in any discipline will earn a salary of about €2000/month after taxes. However the positions are somewhat more competitive as a result: professors have fewer PhD students at a time than American professors do, usually only one or two, sometimes three. The downside of that is that it's harder to get into grad school. But the upside is that the situation of lower ratios of PhD students to existing professors makes getting academic jobs after graduation easier, because the number of new PhDs graduating is not hugely out of proportion to the number of academic positions opening up.
Isn't it kinda the kernel's job to allow multiple processes to access shared resources? Imagine if only one process at a time were allowed to access the disk.
Free Syrian Army uses an iPad to fire a homemade mortar [pic]
Man I am so thinking "road trip" here. Although what I really want to do is charter a boat to watch the first stage land itself on the water. If SpaceX can pull this off it is going to be seriously cool.
Seconding the "Starting Strength" recommendation. It's pooh-poohed by some in the greater strength training community, but for somebody without any prior lifting experience, it got me off to a great start.

Some excellent official forums for the book over at http://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/forum.php too.
> I'm always amazed when a company can have such a high share price when it hasn't proven it has a profitable business model.

It's simple probability. You assemble a database of tech companies and their histories -- what happened to them over time, how they were funded, how their stock fared. Then, when you want to evaluate a new company, you compare it to your database, see how other similar companies evolved. You get a statistical sense of the possible outcomes.

Using that data, you invest in companies based on the probability that they will be successful, and the share price is part of the gamble (and it is certainly a gamble). In fact, if you think about it, the fact that the share price is high means other people are doing the same probabilistic calculation and bidding up the price as well.

It's not an accident -- it't a lot of people betting the company will succeed. Obviously by buying the shares, they're also providing the capital that company needs to grow, so it's more than a blind gamble. It's also to some extent a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It matters what you believe in Christianity because it is a religion of faith and belief. If you no longer believe in God, you're not a Christian, you're an impostor. But Jewishness is decided by whether you were born Jewish or converted to Judaism. If either of those is true, you are a Jew, regardless of what you believe. None of the laws are predicated on believing in God (the one I mentioned before from the ten commandments precludes believing in other deities, but apparently permits atheism).

What makes someone a "bad Jew" is failing to practice Judaism. But there's no incentive to conduct a witchhunt over it, so there's no incentive for rhetoric about the importance of belief. I belong to a Conservative synagogue and I have never heard a sermon about the importance of believing in God. It isn't important. Ethical behavior is, and that is the content of our sermons.

It may be difficult to see a point to practicing if you don't believe in God, but, again, I know people who find value in the symbolism and the ritual and the religion's capacity to shape ethical behavior despite not believing in a supernatural being or origin. The entire Reconstructionist movement teaches that Judaism and the Bible were created by mankind. It may be a small movement, but it is real thing, and I know Conservative Jews who are atheists but still get value out of the practice.

I'm sure you will be able to find a marginal rabbi (probably "Orthodox", a self-applied label by a movement younger than the Reform) who will activate your confirmation bias. But I assure you, things are different outside your experience.
http://yclist.com/
They're going to need every last dollar they can get once people start using iTunes Radio.
And littleoutliner is an instance of Concord as well. ;-)
There is a question I've always wanted to ask someone who's convinced that the moon landings were faked.

Where the line is between fake and real? Was it the entire Apollo program or just the six landings? Obviously there has been some space travel by humans at the time. In your view how far did we get before faking the rest? Did we just stop with Gemini and say 'screw it the rest is too hard'?

I can acknowledge that it seems superficially anomalous to have people flying to the moon using slide rules, but it's not like NASA just pointed a finger and decided to go. There were a number of steps along the way where each step makes sense compared to the next one. If Apollo 8-10 were real, then 11 seems entirely plausible.
Where did Google say that IE8 is popular still?
This is a well-written and articulated article. It is as much a teaser ad as picking 3 chapters out of 15 of a consistently good book and making them available for free. I mean that, even if making them available for free is part of the promotional plan, writing them was genuinely done for the content.

Edit: Another way to look at it: Don't you get value out of it by reading it even if you don't attend the conference ?
They say repeatedly on their site and in reviews that they log nothing. Of course you have to trust that they actually do what they say.
Just clarifying. There are many that believe that the US can be forced to default. I didn't mean to imply that you were one of them.
It feels like cognitive dissonance when the maker of Steam, that is full of DRM and, of course, closed source, talks about the successes of open source.

I mean, I have nothing against proprietary source (the difference between open source games quality and proprietary games quality is giant), but Valve made their living on proprietary code and now they are preaching the opposite.
Here's an interesting link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation
>Windows is still the only OS with acceptable bluray support.

That's like say that Windows is still the only OS which supports Minidisk, PS/2 and 5 1/2 flopies.

It hardly matters going forward, and it probably does it more harm than good.
Here's the problem Valve faces - All the major tablet platforms (iOS, Google Play, KindleFire/Android, Win8 RT) have app stores dedicated for that device. Some allow side-loading but that freedom could quickly disappear.

This means a number of things: 1) Valve is late to this game and is fighting entrenched existing app stores that sell tons of games 2) Pricing is an issue as these app stores don't really have high ASPs on games - tablet users are cheapskates compared to PC gamers 3) The form factor is wildly different, making it tough/nearly impossible for Valve (and devs) to port. 4) The freedom to side-load for those platforms allowing it may lose it at any time (see: google play services)

All of these mean that tablets are not exactly fertile ground for Valve/Steam. As far as they're concerned, the PC (and Linux) is where it's at (I still think they could out-do Ouya/PSVita with a steambox, but seems like the idea is either a non-starter or ahead of it's time).
What is the advantage of rendering math as images when Mathjax works reasonably well on all modern browsers.
(1) is (only) your personal viewpoint - i certainly never felt that.

(3) can apply to any interesting job, if you let it.

only (2) is an impartial criticism of research.
If you trust distrowatch's pagehits then yes, it's significantly beating/overtaking ubuntu. http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
Thanks-- this is all very good relevant advice. Hadn't thought about digesting composter at all, but that's a great idea.

I don't mind too much if people respectfully visit the island when we're not there. We told the really awesome neighbor he could visit the island whenever, so maybe he'll guard it a bit. He could certainly see from his dock if another boat was on it.
Why do people still use NetApplications as a source? It's obviously incredibly inaccurate.
"That set in motion a bizarre series of events. Lumen View's lawyer accused O'Connor of committing a "hate crime" by calling the inventor, Eileen Shapiro of Hillcrest Group. ("I didn't know patent trolls were a protected class," quips O'Connor.) Then the lawyer threatened criminal charges (again, for calling an inventor). From there, it got personal."

I'm getting flashbacks to that "The Oatmeal" incident and, in a less extreme way, Jack Thompson. These people sound positively mental. Is there a term for when lawyers meltdown like this?
Ask HN: Who's hiring for Customer Support?
Remember, customer support matters :o)
Thanks! That's definitely the highlight reel!
It's about access to resources that you won't have not being part of a university. This is especially true for physical sciences that require expensive laboratory equipment. However, even for something like CS, having access to good lecturers and courses is very helpful.

Of course, the open courses being put out for CS and Math is certainly is changing the picture for these fields. I think they are great.

The point is, learning in a bubble is not nearly as useful as learning from peers and those more experienced as yourself. It's also the case that few people have the discipline to go through the important but sometimes dreary exercises required to learn these topics. Having structured learning programs helps with this too.
I think this is a really insightful reply, and I tend to agree with you. But it still doesn't help me be any less taken aback when people assert that PhD's should only be obtained when you want to do original research for your career. If you want to warn people, that's fine, but just do it instead of phrasing it as if you know the One True Reason for doing a PhD. I grant that some people might just be trying to be pithy, but I've seen too many people take it too seriously to just give the benefit of the doubt to everyone.

> Now I've done my PhD, people often ask me "Do you think I should do one?" and the unsatisfyingly true answer is "I don't know, I'm not you"

I wholeheartedly agree.
Like the OP says, for people serious about audio and video quality, they will buy Blu-ray (or whatever physical media replaces it) for a long time to come. The bandwidth simply isn't there otherwise.

That said, I agree with you that the future is not with physical media - that's very obviously the case. But the future isn't here yet.

> Linux versions of most games, isn't some far away dream, it's here.

That's absurd. There are no AAA titles available on Linux. Newell's prediction might seem more realistic if Ubisoft, Rockstar, etc. jump on board. Maybe it will happen if a viable Linux-based console came around.
If you modify Concord to use on your site (ie: to provide a service) then you do not need to distribute the modification.

However, if you incorporate Concord into a product you sell, then you either need to provide the source per the provisions of the GPL, or else negotiate a different license from Winer.
I've seen those-- would prefer something with windows, and it would need to be able to withstand some pretty serious weather (maybe those can... haven't researched).

Thinking probably a 30' yurt for the communal building, and smaller geodesic domes for individual dwellings.
> Interfaces with multiple dispatch would basically be Haskell typeclasses.

Typeclasses are completely different from Go interfaces in a way that's totally unrelated to single versus multiple dispatch: in Haskell they're a bound on generic functions that specifies permissible operations, while Go interfaces are existential wrapped values. To give a concrete example of the difference here, you can write a function that takes a List of Eq values and pass a list of integers to it in Haskell, but in Go you cannot pass []int to a function that takes []Equal without recreating the list. On the other hand, in Go you can have a heterogeneous array of Equal interfaces, while in Haskell this is not possible without existential types.

> they're hard to type-inference (Haskell's type system is undecidable in some cases)

This is only when you combine the feature with type inference for functions (which Go doesn't have) and H-M style inference (which Go also doesn't have). Typeclasses would pose no problems for Go's extremely limited inference.

Pitting typeclasses against interfaces makes little sense to me; typeclasses are an enhancement to generics, while interfaces are about runtime polymorphism. Typeclasses have no meaning in a language without generics like Go (although I personally think Go will need generics eventually).
I think a person acting in this way is best classified as a sociopath.
Simple litmus test for disruptive companies