skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> It's not whether we are, it's whether they think we might.

No, what they're thinking is "If we attack America, or allow America to be attacked with nuclear arms we supply, will we end up dead as a result?" And the very obvious answer is "Yes, yes you will. And if you try to disappear with your families, they will probably die too."

American military commanders do not regard leaders of the Revolutionary Guard as social equals with whom they share the bonds of class. They will hunt them and kill them like animals. We know it. They know it. Everybody knows it.

>Well, not without nukes. I'd bet on Russia or China's nukes over the US conventional military any day.

To do what? Protect Iran from retaliation? Thanks to economic integration, neither country could afford to harm America this severely. China especially.

The larger point is that, even without nukes, we are an exceedingly dangerous country to attack. While the American people can and do balk at the prospect of constant aggression coming from the hawks in Washington, they can be counted on to support absolutely devastating levels of violence if attacked directly.

> It means that the US can't just start a war with China or threaten them with nuclear attack because a state of MAD exists.

No, threatening one city is not 'destruction' in the MAD sense. Mutually Assured Destruction is the logical outcome of nuclear conflict in which the only way to avoid retaliation is to wipe the enemy off the map, in a surprise first-strike. The Nuclear Triad was developed as a counter-strategy to ensure that this wasn't possible. Even if a Soviet first-strike did leave every man, woman, and child dead, the Triad (composed of ICBMs, perpetually-airborne fleets of B-52s and several Trident subs) meant we'd still retain the power to respond in kind. The exchange would mark the last act of both nations. In essence, it was a suicide pact that treated the rest of humanity as collateral damage.

That's not even remotely close to what was being promised in the conversation over Taiwan. More to the point, the conversation didn't end there, since China cares about having the US as a market more than it cares about having Taiwan as a provence.
My point is that subject matter has little to do with preparing you for your career.

Edit: with certain things excepted, of course. I wouldn't want a doctor who didn't have the relevant degrees.
Opposition has been almost universal and started before Summers was even floated as the favorite. Here's Matt Yglesias in May:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/27/summers_for_f...

Ezra Klein's piece on gender that prompted the original "word" that Summers was going to be the nominee:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/19/t...

Krugman pro-Yellen case before annoucement:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/the-fed-successi...

Felix Salmon:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/07/24/dont-send-s...

Wall Street:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/wall-street-yellen-...
If anything, you support my point. That you know you must make the job easier for the reader because otherwise they may not get to the actual thing you are writing about, the content, is exactly what I'm talking about.

In an ideal world, your writing would have just as much chance of being read and appreciated if it were presented in all caps or all lowercase, single spaced or double.

I simply think it's unfortunate, if understandable for multiple reasons, that we don't live in that world.
You are generalizing from one specific derivative to all derivatives.
What are your best tips and tricks for a successful Facebook post?
Totally agree. Not to mention that most countries like Zambia have severe structural issues in their government, such as the ones this article outlines.

The easiest thing to do (and the thing most charities do) is give money, but money put into a situation like this just ends up split between the extended family/friends of those in power and/or used for infrastructure that benefits foreign corporations. Beyond money, the answer to the problem becomes really tricky. And if we're going to spend time and resources fixing difficult government infrastructure issues, I would much rather they be those within the US government. It's not like there's a shortage to choose from.
For those of us who work on a laptop all day, who don't want a separate keyboard for it, but could buy a new laptop based on it having a great keyboard:

Any suggestions for a laptop with a great keyboard?

Specifically any non-Apple laptop?
Wired Issue #1: NSA, Nootropics and OOP
> The purpose of school is to is to turn people into intellectually nimble citizens of a democracy.

Nothing has any purpose except that which people use it for. If people want to use education for finding work, but in fact it turns them into nimble citizens but doesn't help with work, it's failing at the purpose people want to use it for.

Also, I think there's a real dearth of evidence that educated people are better citizens than slightly less educated people. I.e., that education causes delta civic-conscientiousness.
I got a job with a philosophy degree by sending out letters to job ads in the newspaper, back in the day when that was the done thing. I got a phone call back from someone who said "I've never met anyone with a philosophy degree - why don't you come on in to chat". So I did, and got a job at a small startup (though that trendy term hadn't been coined just yet).

I got a philosophy degree because I felt it was the only thing I could get a degree in. I'd dropped out of college because I'd failed calculus - twice - and was basically told I'd never graduate without passing calculus, and it seemed hopeless. I got coaxed back much later, and lamented to a friend during lunch about the calculus/degree situation.

"Well," he said, "you could take a logic class, but that's really hard". Umm... Really? There are classes in that? I took it. People dropped out of the class, but I'd aced it. I'd already been programming about 10 years at that point, so the principles of logic were pretty ingrained, though I didn't know all the terms. But I passed, and was encouraged to enter the philosophy program, such as it was. So I did. I did it basically because it was the only time a professor had ever shown an interest in me or my talents. So I had a philosophy degree to show for it.

"What will you do with a philosophy degree?!" was the standard reply of most of my family. "I dunno" was my standard reply. Looking back, it's apparently a standard springboard in to law, but I wasn't aware of that path either. I hated school, and was happy to be done (after a mere 6 years!), but I realized there were no "philosopher wanted" ads in the paper, which was all I knew where to look.

Tying it back to the article a bit, the 'career department' was 100% useless - they didn't even try to help, and two of the people in there said they only had time to help "real" students. Basically, if you were doing engineering, they'd place you at GM/Ford/Chrysler at the time - I'm not sure what else they did there, really.
Because almost all web hosts have php and mysql already installed. They would not necessarily be my first choice for any application, but for a widely disseminated CMS, I still think those are the best choices. I'm open to being shown I'm wrong, though.
Related: this video of Derrida is simply absurd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI
How quickly can you throw together a website for a local business that lacks one? Say that you will set one up for a flat fee is they pay for Domain and hosting. Hundred bucks for a few hours right there.

As for app sales, marketing is incredibly important in ios sales. How are people finding your app?

Finally if you are going to school, reach out to alumni.
We might be converting a 4 bedroom in San Jose if you are I retested.
Sounds like the application of sociolinguistics and pragmatics to programming languages, not an unreasonable thing to explore I guess.
Hardwood Flooring to Standup Desk
The sentence (non-parenthetical) is poorly placed, in that it can't really be understood until actually reading the rest of the section. Something like, "according to Deconstruction, the resolution to this critique of Descartes is actually that the 'foundation' is the limit or difference [or différance, if I understand it correctly, which I probably don't] between self/other."

The parenthetical is complete and utter bullshit, as if somebody said "this is good, but you should jargon it up a bit."
Why is it spammy? The things that I wrote is real and I do not impose any spam or whatever. Perhaps you would like to suggest some improvements?
Only inertial movement. Turning is still absolute. (At least in special relativity.)
>>Interesting. That sounds like urban myth material - a special subway under the subway.

You need to watch Ghostbusters II. :)
Ask HN: How does Mashable load so quickly?
I've been wondering this for a long time. I'm not a programmer or systems admin by any means but it seems like Mashable and similar large sites load in the blink of an eye even though they have a ton of content.

I run a semi-popular Wordpress site and host with WP-Engine which loads pretty fast, but not even close to as fast as those guys.

My question is, what are they doing better and different than someone like myself to speed up load times?
I don't see the comparison.

TFA isn't about a productivity metric, it's about establishing a habit. Everyone from Jerry Seinfeld to Anne Lamott to Pablo Picasso extoll the virtue of making a habit of doing some work--even sometimes crappy or merely symbolic work--every day. ("Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working")

But that said, it's not as if doing something every day is totally uncorrelated to productivity. Sure, it's a proxy metric at most, but doing something is eventually a prerequisite to productivity.

But then again, maybe I'm a "clueless manager" type because I'd also argue that test-coverage isn't totally unrelated to quality. It's also a proxy metric and one that's relatively easy to game, but come on, is there anything in software development you find measurable?
The Thinkpad keyboards are so great that I bought an external one for work computer. The mouse nub (or whatever it's called) is great, too, although I have a nice Logitech mouse for things like photoshop.
> Deconstruction is not a "thing". Neither is "empiricism". They are modes of enquiry.

In current times the term thing applies also to non-physical entities. As such, a mode of enquiry is a thing.

Otherwise, i like the rest of your explanation.
Are you referring to this stuff?:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodie_Allen#Fandom

I'd love to hear more detail.
I stand corrected. The author is a politician and a terrible scientist.
re death penalty age in the USA:

Roper v. Simmons [1] in 2005 raised the minimum age to 18. Before that, Stanford v. Kentucky [2] in 1989 set it at 16.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roper_v._Simmons

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_v._Kentucky
That doesn't fly in an interview.

Actually, it does.

I've been interviewing a lot lately, and I'm totally fine with people trying something, changing their mind, fixing mistakes, etc. When they get stuck, I help them out. All decent interviewers know that being interviewed is stressful and that you need to cut candidates some slack.

Speaking personally, I don't care much about speed. I care about things like how much fluency do you have with your programming language (is writing a for loop something you have to struggle with?), do you know how to use a hash table (you'd be amazed at how many people don't), can you explain what the tradeoffs are when you make design choices and compare them to the alternatives, etc.

Also, since I can, I'm going to complain about my pet peeve: candidates who want to write a solution in C++ or C or java (I let them choose any language they want) but who refuse to use a container library. They'll insist on using arrays, even when the problem pretty clearly requires something like std::vector. And then they'll tie themselves in knots to make static fixed size arrays work. Now, if you can justify why you don't want to use a @#$! container library, that's fine, but usually the justifications are garbage ("it will be too slow...no, I've never measured that"). What really gets me is that a good sw engineer should be able to see that rewriting stl::vector by hand in every application intertwining its code with your application code (vector's client) is a maintenance and performance nightmare.
It absolutely is. If you want to argue it's not as large, that's fine, but it is definitely present.

http://imgur.com/DzrFAZU
Unfortunately not always a realistic option (exhibit A: North America).
I've read them both, though I'm not the target audience and believe they're perfect for the 12-15 year-old crowd. They're dystopias that we can all identify with - given the surveillance state we seem to be constructing and current compared to 1984, etc.
Retailers Fight Exile From Gmail In-Boxes
This is called optimism bias -- when estimating, we forget the things that can go wrong.
It looks to me that the calculator is expressing the following rental situation: you rent from a landlord that includes for example, water and sewage utilities as part of the monthly rental fee. The fair way to account for this rental situation for the equivalent buying scenario is to add the true cost of those utilities to the buying scenario because when you look at buying the equivalent, you will have to pay for those utilities, and thus lengthening the break-even point when compared to renting.
> Leave $1 in the country for every $100 you take out of it

Keep in mind that things don't have an intrinsic price. Copper is worth a lot because it can be used for electrical and electronic machinery. If the Europeans had never even visited Zambia, most of that copper would never have been extracted, and the rest might have been used for pots or daggers (hopefully they would also find tin to make bronze). I'd say that Zambia derives more utility from 0.6% of the revenue of copper sold to the developed world than it would from 100% of the copper used with bronze-age technology.

In other words, it's not a case of taking $100 and leaving $1, but of taking $0.1, turning it into $100, and giving back $1.
Perhaps it's just my ignorance of Africa, but I was recently amazed to learn Zambia had a thriving 1970's rock music scene known as Zamrock. I was even more amazed that it sounded incredible. I can't say it will help you understand Zambia, but "Strange Dream" by Witch is one of the most haunting songs I've ever heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6jOTvDU9Ts

Here's an interview with Emmanuel Jagari Chanda, the leader of Witch, which includes an overview of what else was happening musically in Zambia at the time, as well as some perspective on what's changed since:

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/emmanuel-jagari-...
My favourite book on software estimation is McConnell's Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art.

As usual he takes a vast body of literature and boils it down into a chatty, usable book. The tables and checklists are worth the sticker price on their own.
I read and enjoy Scott Sumner and recommend him to everyone. To suggest that he drove the opposition to Summers is bananas.
Utter crap. Not everybody can be a musician, at least in the genres I listen to, and the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is painfully obvious. I'm not being elitist here- I wish anybody could make what I like (and do it well), then there would be a lot more for me to enjoy. Maybe this is the case in rock music or whatever the author is familiar with, but it isn't in all genres.

And still, the income from selling tracks is miniscule. It is not competition doing it, it is just the ease of getting it for free on the internet.
nice work. how did you know? For anyone wondering the difference, 0>cos on line 8 is now 0<cos.
I agree that the estimation process needs to be tuned to fit the local context. There's no point building a 50-parameter statistical model for building a 3-page website.

But likewise, SWAGs aren't appropriate for megaprojects. A more involved process is called for.
This seems interesting, I would definitely like more information. Although I want to first explore the option of trying to find something closer to San Francisco, or maybe in Oakland, Palo Alto, Menlo.

When would you begin converting? I'm a female by the way, and more of a product/design wantrepreneur type.
"A market economy presupposes a market ruled by supply and demand, free from regulatory interference."

Science does not spent time on fantasy. Science is for things that exist in the observable world.
A heavily refactored version of this code, for those curious how it works:

http://pastebin.com/uUvDGzrb

(note that it will not work like the original and make a pretty globe, because it's dependent on the exact character positioning)
TLDR; Many animals are smarter than we give them credit for. In particular: primates and most mammals, but even insects!

It's easy to fall in to the trap of worshipping the hyper-specificity of the western scientific rationalist tradition. However, just because something doesn't exist as a documented and 'peer-reviewed' (despite the recent revelations on how many scientific publications actually lack any significant integrity) piece of categorized research doesn't mean it isn't there, and in many cases important philosophical perspectives from alternative traditions of inquiry have been impressively validated by modern science.

Nature is pretty amazing, and experience is richer than we can ever render it with our petty scribbles.

(Something along these lines is perhaps what lies at the heart of many of the world's other, arguably more experientially grounded philosophies and religions, particularly various naturalistic traditions disparagingly grouped as 'Animism', Daoism, Islam and many of the philosophies of India - Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, etc.)
I'd also love to see this; or, if it would be easier for you, I'd love to see a longer comment where you explain it in more detail.
I remember Iraq was bombed by Israel to stop Iraq from pursuing a nuclear program, but I didn't know the same thing happened in Syria.

Israel bombed the plant site in Iraq with F-16s that had been in their possession for a very short time.
Competition might still have something to do with it. The superstar bands of the 60s are still actively touring. People continue to listen to popular music from every decade since.

I'm not sure this was the case to the same extent in the past. It's never been this easy to access the music of the past.

On the other hand, it's never been easier to reach fans directly and succeed in a niche, of which there are many more. I'm not speaking from experience on this last point, but I know it's true in publishing.
I've been considering building an Ergodox[0], which has a Kinesis inspired key layout, but does not have the concave key well. In your experience with the Kinesis, would having a flat layout be a significant impediment to the comfort of another matrix key layout?

[0] http://ergodox.org
Good book. Aimed at the young adult audience, I only knew this because when I went to the store to buy a copy it was in the teen section.

I have enjoyed everything by Cory though.
I agree with some of what you're saying but some parts seem to contradict with others.

On the one hand, you say 'Americans have an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology, so their brains reject this reality to the detriment of the places their armies occupy' (an opinion) and on the other hand 'USA decimated and confined the natives into "reservations", then had the blacks as slaves or second rate citizens up until the sixties' (a fact). How do you reconcile these two?

Apart from that, you have the "buy American" movement, and you have this situation where US Americans identify themselves with (often fictitious) ethnic identities: Irish American, Italian American, African American, etc. Why call them "fictitious"? People say Barack Obama is African American!

> Germans are still quite racist with immigrants

Though I have come across cases where Arab immigrants were given nasty stares by old people when they moved to villages, I'd say that Germany is not at all racist with immigrants. I have many colleagues who have Slavic-sounding surnames, whose parents moved to Germany before my colleagues were born. Socially, they're treated as proper Germans. After WW2, Germans were largely disillusioned by nationalism, and now look upon it with disdain. Now, Spaniards and Greeks are moving into Germany by the thousands. Have you come across news reports of any ethnic clashes? It's all fun and games. The Neo-Nazis are a problem, but they are a small minority. When they break the law, they are dealt with properly.

> India, if anything is the perfect counter-example: national ... still ran rampant in each of the new countries between sub-groups.

India has a law and order problem. The constitution was written by a man who probably understood human rights, but this concept has not sunk into the heads of either the masses or the well-educated. There are separatist movements in Kashmir, and the Northeast, and there was one in Punjab. If you think the people in the rest of India have doubts about the integrity of the concept of India, you're dead wrong. Yes, I include SIMI sympathizers too.
This article is totally wrong. It mentions two very important things, but gets the implications of both wrong.

1) Competition is an issue. But competition isn't driving down prices. Despite all the music out there, people continue to gravitate towards the big record label stars. Nobody is competing by producing something people like as much as Rihanna, except cheaper. Instead, the "competition" is by delivering Rihanna for free by infringing copyrights.

2) Marginal costs of production of music are zero. But that does not mean music should be free, any more than it means iPhones should be $200 or whatever. The point about competition shows that music is not fungible. People have rejected indie music. They want Rihanna. Now, when you're talking about a product that is not fungible marginal cost is irrelevant. It doesn't how much each Hermes bag costs to reproduce.
> The gist of why estimates are hard: every new piece of software is a machine that has never been built before.

I am tired of the argument that we unique snowflakes amongst all professions and that consequently we deserve special treatment. We aren't. All professions deal with uncertainty and most of them deal with it deliberately[1]. Throwing your hands in the air because a perfect prediction is impossible is just silly; an estimate is by definition an uncertain statement of an unknown variable.

Estimating software can be difficult because there are many points at which complexity can be multiplied (McConnell's example of the requirement "validate phone numbers" shows a span of minutes to months)[2]. But when you see very wide ranges on an estimate, it's a signal that the problem is poorly understood.

Outside of genuinely novel research, improving estimation accuracy is possible and valuable. And how often do we invent publishable new algorithms for graph traversal?

I have skin in the estimation game, as I am currently developing a tool for performing estimates[3]. I've also been researching the topic of estimations generally.

I'm mostly amazed at how people in my profession try it once, get an inaccurate result, and then decide -- "That's it! It's impossible! I tried it one time and it didn't work!". If you go into a gymnastics club and you can't do a backflip, that doesn't mean backflips are impossible in principle. It means you can't do it. Estimation is a skill too.

[1] See Petroski's To Engineer is Human, I reviewed it here: http://chester.id.au/2013/07/07/review-to-engineer-is-human-...

[2] In Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art.

[3] http://confidest.com/