skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think there's a substantial difference in the extent of the observations. One sometimes gets the impression that a social scientist forms a theory, a culture with X will also have Y. Then they go around inspecting cultures until they find one with X. If it also has Y, boom, theory proved. If it doesn't, you say it's an outlier and move on to the next.

Astronomy and geology, on the hand, have theories that explain a larger set of observable behavior.
Maybe you still have unknowns, like wtf is a quasar, but you can mostly point to any star or planet and have astronomy tell you how it works. If I pick a random human society and provide a brief description of it to a social scientist, my confidence that they will then accurately predict other facets of that society is pretty damn low.
Not impressed. I can guess your personality from one of your tweets.
As someone who does all my data analysis in Python, I'm curious what it is about GGplot that it's absence was a deal breaker for you? It's obviously quite powerful, considering all the excitement this port has generated, but I haven't seen anything explain what it provides over other plotting solutions.
Obamacare computer code riddled with...disastrous architecture
> Any power plant that uses steam turbines is going to have a long ramp-up time to boil a huge quantity of water needed to produce the steam.

This is a matter of tradition and convenience. It is quite possible to use a just-in-time steam generator.

In fact many steam power systems are vapor phase only (non-condensing) to avoid corrosion and droplet impact damage. Steam is used because it is cheap and nontoxic.

Nuclear reactors are easy to turn on and off once a day. Naval reactors do it as a matter of course. There's just no point. If you build a grid scale reactor, you might as well leave it running all the time, at which point you optimize away the rapid start capability.
Yea, there's always Hayward if you want safety...
The land area and population density differences are huge, but they're not really relevant unless they are the physical bottlenecks for housing construction in SF, which I presume they are not. Politics (namely, zoning) seems to be SF's bottleneck.
Good feedback. Ya, we ended up alpha testing our site with both Spanish and Chinese but ended up launching with just Spanish because its easier to try to initially build up a marketplace with only one subject as you point out (to avoid the ghost town feel).

Maybe gearing towards language tutoring at this point makes sense
This is amazing.

FYI, this works out of the box with Mac OS X Lion's system Python and the gfortran compiler from homebrew - that's the only thing I need to install separately (Xcode and brew are required to install that, of course, but most people doing any sort of coding seem to have them anyway).

Also, a tip for those of you wanting to do the same:

I'm running IPython notebook, ggplot and all required packages under my user account without any hassles whatsoever thanks to this:

$ cat ~/.pydistutils.cfg

[install]

install_lib = ~/Library/Python/$py_version_short/site-packages

install_scripts = ~/Library/Python/$py_version_short/bin

install_data = ~/Library/Python/$py_version_short/share

Just set $PATH to include the install_scripts, run pip, and you're all set. Everything just works, without the need to install another Python interpreter or mess about with system components.

(edited for formatting)
I still wonder why people aren't paying more attention to Peer-to-Peer Coin (PPC), which uses a blockchain-growing algorithm that depends on the age of the coins you own rather than than the amount of work you do[1]. It's far better for the planet and far more resilient against an attacker with more resources (like the NSA).

[1] http://www.ppcoin.org/static/ppcoin-paper.pdf
He fixed a similar bug for me on Friday. Send him an issue, he'll fix it fast.
I disagree on item #1 (Taste). A good designer should solve problems, not do something that looks beautiful to you.
Twitter launches Scheduled Tweets for all marketers using Twitter’s Ad Products
A negative externality is the cost borne by parties unrelated to the transaction. In this debate, that party is the environment. I'm confused by your usage of the term.

According to your argument, buying organic food is worse for the environment than buying non-organic food because it costs more. Likewise, buying hydroelectric power would be worse for the environment (have more negative externalities) than buying coal power if it cost more. Do you dispute the logic of this extension of your argument?
Yeah, I noticed this.

Gmail, Google Groups and other applications have been incompatible with IE for the last few months.
Yep - everyone has different goals and reasons for learning spanish so having a one-on-one who can create lessons that are customized to your needs has been a real differentiator so far.
Heh, I have been looking at that for heating already. Would be nice to have a bitcoin electric shower :)
because it works. the site owner knows it's obnoxious, but the numbers justify the annoyance.
Actually, Prince William does not have to uphold royal values - he can (and probably does) choose to do so.

He could also choose not to uphold royal values and choose to have a completely different life (as for example, Edward VIII) - and it is entirely his choice to make.

Being a disobedient rebel is an option - and often harder, as family support is very useful and wanted; However, it is orthogonal to maturity.

I'd define maturity as the ability to know if you'd be happier while fitting in your social ties or 'rebelling', and doing so. I'd define immaturity as rashly accepting any of those options without understanding what you are - blindly obeying elders against your own morals would be immature; and regretted rebellion out of spite is clearly also immature.
7 tools that help protect you against the NSA and Google
I believe this would be perfect for transporting Automated external defibrillators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillato...) to people with heart problems immediately.

These have to be provided very quickly in order to maximize chance of survival. If someone saw a person collapse in a city he could call an Ambulance, and a drone with one of them attached would be sent to the location of the phone via GPS. The people there could then use the machine to attempt to save the persons life. This should be way faster than ambulances, especially in cities, and in the face of saving lives the cost would be negligible.

EDIT: Ah, urgent medical supplies are mentioned in the end of the article. I really hope this works out!
I am seriously arguing with you that $4 of one product can result in more environmental damage than $10 of a completely different product. Not that it does, but merely that it can, depending on exactly how they are produced and what the products are. Your simplistic "$4 cost means <=$4 in environmental damage" is just plain wrong.
How this "goal tree" template helps you stay aligned.
Innotop - a real-time, advanced investigation tool for MySQL
Check out http://www.raywenderlich.com/. One of the very best tutorial sites out there for mobile app development! Appcoda is nice too, although it's only for iOS.
Any thriving city needs a mix of people. If for no other reason, then think out support staff. What about waitresses, cooks, cleaning staff, janitors, bus drivers or any number of low-paying/skill but absolutely needed workers. Where should they live? Why can't they live close to work? And if they need to commute into the city to work, how far out can they get pushed before it's not worth it any more?

Thinking that an entire city could consist of highly paid tech workers is a fantasy.

And what about families? It's next to impossible to afford to have a family in the city. What will those tech workers do when they want to start a family? Do you really want them all moving to the east bay instead of helping to grow the city?
There are two ways to fund mining operations:

1) Tax the holders of coins

2) Tax the users of coins

Bitcoin starts with 1 (mining rewards) and then moves onto 2 (transaction fees) for long-term stability. I think this is dumb if your goal is widespread adoption because it taxes the activity that causes network effects to grow (transactions).

PPC sticks with 1 for the lifetime of the system (through a slow-growing monetary base), strengthening my belief that PPC is a strictly better design than bitcoin.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose... when I came online in the early 90s this was already something people had been doing for a long time.
Interesting New HP Chromebook Promo Video from Google • vlogg.com
Hopely Cyanogenmod devs, if not Google itself, will fix it, now that they are aware. In 2010 it may not be seen as a priority, but since last June it is for everyone.
Afaik, as long as a weak cipher is enabled on both client and server, a MITM attacker can force it to be used. It involves manipulating the handshake to tell both parties the other one doesn't support any better cipher.
I don't discredit you for your hate :)

The problem I have is why on earth is this an important feature set?

> You may, for whatever reason, not want to include PHP as part of your system architecture.

But why? why? why? Why it does it matter if it's called PHP or JavaScript or GabeSpeek (made up). As long it works and it's maintainable, why on earth does this make any rational person's (not saying you specifically) list of features?
"it would be totally worth it knowing that your account can't be randomly frozen, or your funds stolen by whoever is in charge of the fake wars (eg: war on drugs)."

Assuming that your Bitcoin money can be used at all. The government does not need to freeze your Bitcoin wallet, they only need to stop you from selling your Bitcoins for whatever fiat currency is used in your country. Until the government starts accepting Bitcoin payments for things like taxes, court settlements and fees, etc., businesses will need fiat currency, and they will demand fiat currency from their customers. Anyone operating a money-changing business will be targeted by the government; fail to do all that the law requires, and you go to prison.
IIRC, Bitcoin transaction fees aren't a fixed percentage or amount, they are something included as part of the transaction that is essentially a bounty for the miner to verify the transaction, and miners can preferentially decide which transactions to verify first based on the offered fees.

Presumably, as creating new coins stops being a source of reward for mining, the cost you need to offer with a transaction to get it verified will (assuming bitcoin remains in active use) go up.
Where I live in the East Bay crime is lower than SF. It all depends on where you go.
Yup. See also: http://catb.org/jargon/html/N/NSA-line-eater.html
I think it's worth reiterating your last paragraph. If your hash table is exposed to external input, an effective DoS attack can be mounted by turning your hash table into an expensive linked list.

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/Fahrplan/events/4680.en.h...
I totally agree with you on subsdization. Subsidizing a few thousand people so they people can live someplace expensive is insane.

OTOH, this and other manifestations of what feels like a binary income distribution is a tricky thing. Rich neighbourhoods are one thing. Rich schools. Rich cities is a new thing. It creates feedback.
Doesn't NYC have a rent problem as well?

I have lived in Russia, and visited San Francisco once. I have to say, I was more uncomfortable in SF than I ever was in Russia. Personally, I don't see the appeal. Reading this article, it makes me feel the author has on rose colored glasses when it comes to this city.
Hi HN, G. S. McNamara (author) here. Glad to see awareness brought to this issue.

I posted about this on HN originally here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6458433
FPGA-Based Circuit Model Emulation of Quantum Algorithms
How are paper systems evolving? I can't think of anything besides new creative euphemisms for the thrift like quantitative easing.

Central banking is a relatively new practice from the late 1700's. Ben Franklin encouraged the printing of new notes because printing was his business (this was before he had much political sway) and I consider this one of his bad contributions.
I keep getting:

Search failed: "<"

whenever I try to indent into a <script> tag. I also don't see any highlighting on the HTML, it's all grey. I guess installation failed for me. (I used marmalade.)

I was super excited as xhtml has a large set of problems and I've been looking for a replacement. Did anyone else have similar issues?

edit:
html is suppose to be grey (I'm not a fan.) and the indentation failure on a script tag still remains. There's a work around, add a newline after the <script> and then indent.
Very true. I live in Iceland and, while we do publish lots of books, it is not even close to one in ten. It is much closer to 1 in 100 maybe.
It would depend on your supposed adversary.

If you're defending against "random wealthy person wants to subvert the network" then I think you're right. You make it cheaper for them at the same time it's cheaper for you. Your defense is adding more people (or at least more money for legitimate mining), not technology.

On the other hand, if you're defending against e.g. the NSA, then they already have the ability to make their own hardware like this, so you're not helping them any further.
startup ideas: a de-bittering device for people's personalities like mine? or a de-bittering browser add-on for comments?
I buy off from Amazon, the reviews are helpful. "Nordic Naturals" is a good brand to check out.
I suspect you're missing one critical bit: miners get the transaction fees of whatever transactions they include in the block. They're mining blocks of transactions, not coins, approximately once every 10 minutes. Coins are just blocks that the mob of users claims are valuable.

This is true even after the last "coin" has been mined. Coins are incentive to jump-start the economy when there isn't much activity, the end-game is all in mining blocks to get transaction fees, at which point it pretty much self-balances. Miners continue mining as long as it's profitable, and transaction fees maintain a level which keeps it that way (but not too profitable, or there would be more miners competing for them).
Did I just miss it, or did he really lament the lack of new housing in SF without even mentioning rent control?
Update Node to the latest stable version and you should have no more problems.
This comes back to transportation a bit. Living in the outer sunset or outer richmond and commuting to soma or the financial district is either a really long bus ride on packed buses or an N/T/etc fraught with delays getting onto and down market street. It takes me 35 minutes to get from my house in north oakland to work off the embarcadero station. When my wife and I lived in the inner richmond (6th and fulton) it took her 55 minutes to get to her office near 16th and bryant.

I think transit here generally gets a bad rap (my wife and I used the muni basically without issue for 5 years living in the city and loved it), but when considering where to live the commute from (and the colder weather of) the western neighborhoods is a big deal.
You should code as if any attacker has your source. If denial of service attacks are something you need to consider, you need to consider them from someone who has your source.
Except they keep getting more efficient in computing and less efficient in heating.
Brazil announces secure email to counter US spying
You assume the market all has the same taste: While McDonalds has cheap and fast food, sometimes I like a French meal.

My IT support business is "ok" but it thrives because we fill a need that isn't met by other that who are indeed more passionate and smarter than us.
What does new housing have to do with rent control? Housing built after 1979 isn't rent controlled.
Musicians are Like Startups
Google readying 'Mobile Meter' app that offers rewards for tracking mobile usage
certainly doesn't sell personal data.

It just sells access to use the data, not to know what the data is.

Their proposition is: "Give us $50 and you can target 26 year old iPhone users who go to Stanford and have posted about bratwurst in the past six hours."

You're paying to use the data they've collected about their users.

If they didn't sell access to use personal data, we'd be back to flat banner ads with no retargeting or privacy invading doubleclick social strata pinning.
Igor pro is quite popular among my colleagues. It's not free though, but does produce nice-looking figures. It's scriptable, and when you create a graph from GUI it leaves a trace of your actions in its history so you can copy and use it as a function template. I don't like the language myself personally, but there are several research groups completely built around it.
10 Mistakes Small Businesses Still Make Online
It sounds good, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to apply it. I realize this article couldn't contain everything that will be in his book and so I hope that there is more practical advice regarding systems other than "have a system" in the book.

For example, the guy that was always looking for a new job... isn't that just a repeating goal?

On a personal note, I need to lose weight. I've done it before: I lost 74 lbs, but now several years later I've gained back just over 90 lbs. I reached my goal, and lost all motivation for eating healthy, and steadily gained it all back and more.

I'm trying to structure my life around doing healthier things (better food, more exercise). How can I systemize that? Or have I already? I have "goals" of walking X times per week for Y distance. Is that the wrong approach? Should it be "after having walked, walk again as soon as possible but not sooner than 1 day?"

I guess I could use an example of some systems that were not just repeating goals.
A simplified take on why Lars Peter Hansen won the Nobel
This is the first post on my new web design agency's blog. If anyone has any feedback, it would be greatly appreciated!
I'm surprised they didn't have their their government emails. But they should know that if NSA really wants them, suitcases of cash will exchange hands to get the key...
SSD & flash storage: is anyone actually buying it?
And M-x spook, available in Emacs since time immemorial.
I'm no libertarian, but how about market forces? As fewer blue-collar workers can afford to live in or close to SF, the labor pool will shrink and wages will go up.
Here's a link to API scores for SF elementary schools.

http://www.greatschools.org/california/san-francisco/schools...

Test scores don't tell the whole story, and I'll agree that there is some political stupidity, but think it's fair to say that the blanket statement "SF schools have become really horrible (due to SF political stupidity)" is incorrect.

For an urban district, I believe SFUSD has an unusually high number of extremely high performing schools. There are some very bad ones too. You'll see this pattern in the surrounding areas as well. The difference is that owning a house in a high-rent district doesn't get you priority access to that school, they way it does in the burbs. As a result, a lot of people who can afford a 1.4 mil house leave SF if they don't get their top school choice, because in Marin, your high mortgage guarantees you priority access to the good school.

Of course, a lot of people stay in SF precisely because they can get their kid into a 9 or 10 school even though they can't afford the 1.4mil house.
In my experience people are usually far less passionate about making a bunch of money than they think they are (there are those who really are passionate about the abstract idea of making money or are truly passionate about some derived benefit- but they have to work a lot harder to avoid becoming an... unsavory person). We conflate our desire to generate and create value and wealth- which tends to be subjective at a deep level- with generating income.

Scott wrote for the perspective of success = money, appropriate for the publication and to some degree reflective of his personal passions, but I suspect that most HN users are more interested in the act of creation. Money / being rich remains a very, very powerful method of validation and obviously a primary source of "potential creation" and to a lesser degree freedom- but for at least "makers" it is a mistake to confuse it for a fulfilling passion.
Bitmessage isn't blockchain based. Bitmessage, at the moment, is entirely separate from Bitcoin. While in Bitcoin, every full node has a complete transaction history since the network's inception, Bitmessage nodes simply hold every message since 2.5 days ago.
Show HN: ProtectedText.com - The safest site on the web for storing your text
But what if the project did make you super rich? You might find some interest, and could hire someone to do the drudge work. I think that's the key to his argument.

I suspect there's truth to both sides of this argument, and you can find a personal anecdote to believe either one. But unless you've actually hit success and walked away, I don't think you can wholly discount the Adams/banker approach.
You should append tptacek's comment to your post.
Different concern.
How is that danger distributed through Oakland? Baltimore and Philly are both typically in the top 25 of those lists, but from personal experience I can say the actual danger presented to any particular person depends very heavily on which neighborhood in the city you choose (compared to Seattle, where as far as I can tell there are no genuinely dangerous neighborhoods). I have even heard similar claims about Detroit from Detroit natives, though I must admit I am a little skeptical in that case.

I guess my point is that a city having a high crime rate does not necessarily put it off limits; it may just mean that particular neighborhoods are off limits.
Cute, but pointless; I strongly doubt the NSA's recognizers are naïve enough to be confused by random verbiage of this sort.
I personally use Docker
The prevalence of frameworks means attackers probably have your source, or at least enough of it to be interesting.

This specific denial of service attack hit a lot of systems in 2012, and all you needed to know was which framework they were using (or just try all of them, as the attack has incredible leverage)

It's as simple as crafting a query-string that results in an O(n²) hashtable building, and allows you to burn minutes of server CPU with each request.
I don't know of a performance comparison between SipHash and other secure hashes other than [1], which compares it to MD5, "Python's new randomized hash, with a 128-bit key and 64-bit output", and a couple of SHA's. It is significantly slower than DJB2, though.

[1] http://bench.cr.yp.to/results-auth.html
The best hash algorithm for uniqueness and speed uses knowledge of the distribution of the incoming values and exploits whatever patterns are available. It's not one-size-fits-all. If I am being fed arbitrary binary blobs, taking the first 4 bytes might be as unique as any other approach (and will clearly be faster than anything else that actually depends on the data). If I am being fed English test, that is going to perform horribly on uniqueness.

If the source of the data might benefit (DoS attack being a common example) from deliberately causing collisions then there are additional constraints and looking at cryptographic hash functions may be warranted.
PayPal Expands “Real World” Presence Via Integration With Revel Systems
Using physics in interfaces gives naturalistic motions right out of the box, you get nice animation curves for free essentially. Of course if you want flat pages, then this doesn't matter, and I do agree with providing flat versions of useful stuff, but if you want something that has a good feel for any gui animation, then integrating physics makes a lot of sense. Not so that you notice it, but rather so that you don't.