skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great story.

Humans are creatures of habit. But it turns out that using habits and generalizations saves a lot of time and effort. Therefore it is logical to use them - even if their application in a specific situation sometimes leads to illogical decisions. There's different levels of systems.
I agree completely that the service is infringing on the intellectual property of the authors of stories that HN links to. I just don't think that it is likely to get shut down, because, as you said, it is under the radar.
Blather about FPU optimization & threading with SBCL
From the comments on the article:
"UTF-\d+ IS Unicode like a Ford Focus is a car. Not every car is a Ford Focus. Thus UTF-8 IS Unicode, not vice-versa."

I think that's a better explanation than the whole rest of the article/rant. That author is a little too nuts to follow.
Apple’s Army of Whiners
I interpreted it the "wrong" way too. I thought about it like this: Instead of telling me that there is a girl or a boy tell me only that "1 + 1 = 2" and then ask me what the odds of the mothers child are for being a boy. I'll say 50%. I don't care what the state of some other child, I just care what the state of the unknown is. Now, if he had said, "you ask a woman that has a random assortment of children if she has at least 1 girl and she answers 'yes', what are the odds that the other is a boy" THEN I would be fine with the problem.
If the crowd does not vote up the prophet, the prophet shall vote up himself
Yudkowsky wrote a note about the same problem that cleared everything up for me: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ul/my_bayesian_enlightenment/
That's what I thought for a second.

I guess in the financial world being right once makes you a genius, being right twice makes you a prophet.
IT careers aren’t cool enough for Canadian high school students
I am not an elite hacker. But the guy who told me this also impressed me. I used VAX-11 when I was in college 23 years ago. So I was equally amazed at that he keeps one for himself (employee discount from DEC, I guess) and he has a VT 320 to it.

I am just wondering the kid in India who said he wrote an assembler for PDP-11. I want to know did he verify the code? I wrote an x86 code generator in Ada and that is easy to verify with Linux on PC and I can say it worked. But PDP-11 is kind of hard.
RFID legislation in EU
Regardless of what anyone tries to say about what anyone should or shouldn't do, we're always going to use downvotes for disagreement. The up and down arrows are ambiguous, and we'll tend to use "up" to mean "I like this", and "down" to mean "I don't like this". Generally, people tend to like opinions that they agree with, and dislike opinions that they don't agree with.

I think it's better to accept this and live with it. Unpopular ideas will be disapproved of, and disagreed with, and downvoted. That's just how it is. If you prefer to upvote well-put ideas that you don't agree with, then you are free to do that.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=665230
Can someone explain the "subjective contract" think that happened towards the end of this article? Also, assuming they never got paid by the client, I assume they packed up their marbles (and the site they built for the client) and went home.
If it's really safe for you and society then you can buy it over the counter. Do you really think it's a good idea to change this?

Yes. If a drug is not safe for the user, it should come with a warning about the risks involved. Choosing whether or not to accept those risks to get the potential benefits of a drug is up to the individual.

I'm more open to the idea of gatekeepers for drugs that can harm others. Antibiotics are the obvious example. Sure, require a prescription for antibiotics, but first let's get them out of animal feed.
According to the FAQ linked to from the bottom of the page, when you get enough karma. If you search you will find that this question has been asked many times before.
The comment responses to this post are really depressing.

They seem to encourage the original poster to adopt a short-term, sycophantic perspective where she punts her desire to keep the code-base clean and maintainable in exchange for blindly following requirements and putting forward a good image. I know there are a certain class of people who recoil in instinctive disgust at the suggestion, even after being reasoned with and beaten down; I am one of them.

One of the posters even mentions the books that talk about this sort of thing, and then dismisses them as irrelevant to the true goals of management. Most of these books contain the wisdom of people who have seen many projects and products, and have a reasonable idea of what makes one successful from a technical stand-point. The reason they were written is because the authors saw enough projects fail when not following the practices they suggest. It isn't just wishful thinking written by technically minded trolls.

Reading all these comments I am reminded of the first section of a book I read recently which helped me realize I wasn't alone. I believe I have mentioned it on here in a prior post; Uncle Bob's _Clean Code_. One of the most salient points he makes in the first chapter is that the quality of the code-base is the responsibility of the developers, because they are the only ones who have the most concrete sense regarding the cost of bad code. In the long run, it will make everyone look completely incompetent, even if in the short-term things appear to be getting done at a very rapid rate. Eventually, your clients will care, your managers will care, and “I was just following orders” will not be an acceptable excuse because they were looking to you for intelligence and wisdom, not just units of work done without deep analysis.
Unfortunately, with the UI and people's natural tendencies, it's unavoidable that votes be used for quick-and-easy agreement/disagreement.

At the moment yes, but why not:

Agree/Disagree
Good contribution/Poor Contribution.

Instead of just up/down.
Ask HN: Is technology a neccessary and/or sufficient condition for development?
I see that many tech guys promising that the Technology especially IT can help non developed countries to develop faster. Is it true?

I feel countries like US were developed much before digital revolution. Arent Health, Education , Roads more important than IT ?

But then what about the roles IT can play in agriculture, employment etc?

As you can see clearly, I am confused.
" Putting enough in to be worthwhile at an out of state private institution runs the risk of putting in too much to be useful for an in-state public school, etc..."

This is untrue in most state's 529 plans. In NY for example, you can spend the funds on any U.S or overseas eligible postsecondary school.
For what it's worth I agree with you, but that also makes me wonder how it is that scribd can copy an entire copyrighted article without asking permission, and then say that to take it down they require a request that "meets all criteria for validity as a DMCA affidavit."

That seems wrong to me. If it's copyrighted, and they copy it the entire thing without permission, how is that not wrong?

EDIT: I see this has been discussed before many times, but this time I ask - scribd are apparently effectively immune because users upload things to them. They then claim that if it's copyrighted, it's not their fault. HN has uploaded content to them without the author's permission. Does that make HN a copyright violator?
the original claim dismissed an entire field of art by claiming that it boiled down to amount of wealth
I can imagine that, say in the seventies, both camera's and film were a lot more expensive than nowadays(relatively). As practice makes perfect, really getting into photography, wouldn't be an option for all people then, because it would be too expensive a hobby.

It may have been a pretty weird blanket statement, but there may also have been a hidden context that makes it a reasonable statement.
Well, I think most of the confusion comes from the way that Rosenthal ignores a key part of the Monty Fall problem.

In the monty fall problem, you first choose a random door. Assuming a random placement of the car and a random guess, you should have a 1/3 chance of choosing the correct door on your first guess, and therefore a 1/3 chance of winning no matter what else happens.

I believe what's really happening in this example is that the Rosenthal is allowing for a possibility that he doesn't explicitly mention: the chance that the host opens the wrong door, nullifying the game and ruining the show.

Since there is a 1/3 chance that you picked the right door, it's a probability of 2/3 that it is in one of the other two doors. The host accidentally opens one of the two remaining doors. Since the host randomly chooses one of the remaining doors, the chance that he picks the door with the car is 1/3. If he does that, the game is invalidated, so Rosenthal ignores that result.

Therefore, the chance that you picked the correct door is 1/3, and the chance that the remaining door is the correct one is 1/3 (the remaining third is the chance that the host ruined the game). Since those are equal probabilities, you end up with an even chance whether or not you switch.
More details: http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/21/kindlegate-confusion-abo...

The bottom line:

* You are able to redownload your books an unlimited number of times to any specific device.

* Any one time the books can be on a finite number of devices, decided by the publisher for each book. For most books this is 5 or 6 devices.

* If you hit the limit, Amazon can reset it much like iTunes lets you deauthorize all computers when you hit your limit.
The Big Inflationist Scare
"So what's your number?" ... "I don't do cellphones"
Poll: Did you find Numbrosia iPhone app easy to understand?  Was it fun?
Although I probably won't make major changes to Numbrosia, I may consider doing so for the upcoming Numbrosia 2.

I've been very frustrated by user ratings in the iTunes store. There are few reviews so I don't really know what most people didn't like about it.
easy to understand and fun
not easy to understand but fun
easy to understand but not fun
neither easy to understand nor fun
According to my co-workers, its so they can get a sweet ass job and get paid.
It's not so much a DRM issue as it is a bonehead policy and decision-making on the part of Amazon. I own a Kindle and I've never seen any notice anywhere saying I can only download my purchased items a limited number of times. I was led to believe I could re-download items whenever I needed to. The fact that this number varies by book is only more infuriating.

If they want to limit the number of downloads that's fine. I understand if they don't want people using gobs of bandwidth downloading things over and over again. But let us know so we know that it's critical to back these things up! It's a good idea to back up purchases regardless, but it's easy to forget about when you're under the impression your books are safe and accessible at any time from Amazon. This policy of not disclosing (or at the very least not making conspicuous enough) the terms of a purchase needs to change.

[EDIT]

Looks like a false alarm. Just a misinformed customer service agent.
iLocalis looks interesting, but do you trust those guys with all your information? I mean they basically know where you are at any time of the day, they might be able to browse your iPhone data, ...
Thank you for that link! It provides an ending to the story. If you want the short version, jump to the bottom of the page in the link above to where it says "So Here Is The Bottom Line." That sums up Amazon's policy, without going through the customer service drama.

Edit: Oops the parent post magically summed up the article in the time I was writing the above reply :p
Except to his credit, Dent's been pushing this generational theory for around two decades, and while his predictions have been somewhat extreme, they've also fit broad patterns well.

So I wouldn't take it as gospel but it's a perspective that has shown some value.
See also : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=531517
Furball: The Linux Equivalent of DOS's 'debug.com'
Basically, after everyone on Earth buys all available books, the only way to make extra money on books is:

a) to create new books
b) to create new people

Option b) would not work very well for a number of reasons and option a), well, it's too difficult. Therefore go ahead and invent very smart option

c) make everyone repay for the same content over and over
Photosynth aggregates images already known to be of a particular scene and figures out how they fit together. This paper is about taking an image from an unknown place and identifying whether it is of a particular landmark.

Both probably make heavy use of unsupervised clustering techniques on images but are otherwise totally different use cases, if nothing else.
I had it very infrequently, and I have only 3 plugins installed. Haven't experienced it since I have a "click for flash" plugin. I still suspect that it was one of the may sites I kept open that brought down FF. The browser should prevent that, but if a site can bring down FF, it would be more like a bug than a general shortcoming of FF.

It's definitely not reproducable like "open 20 tabs and FF will slow to a crawl".
A brutal robbery/assault locally was solved because the attackers stole an iPhone, which had location services turned on. The police had him within a few days. The other two suspects were identified on his facebook page.
Not all viruses cause mutations, but some do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus
Gruber starts PCalc (updated):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/3642836380/
Pretty standard "Apple fanbois are pathetic" trolling. Here's all you need:

"Apple's products and policies have always been biased toward childish, whiny, and self-centered behavior, and now the company’s stakeholders are mirroring that."

"As the PC proved popular with consumers and businesses, it was actually Microsoft that sought to develop a computer-literate user capable of issuing the commands that make a computer operate, while Apple worked toward the simplified world of icons, metaphors, and clicking. Users didn't know how any of it worked; Steve just made it so."

User friendliness is suddenly a bad thing? Give me a break.
Or to exercise the paranoid fantasy muscles: Google has this info, but can't plausibly use it via active investing. So they leak it to giant hedge funds that can. Said funds cause other associated groups to indirectly reward Google with either (1) overpaying for clicks; (2) click fraud which shifts more of the surplus from CPC advertising to Google from advertisers; (3) GOOG-supporting trades. Everybody wins!
Why is Monty's choice of which empty door being random important? Isn't the fact that he always opens an empty door alone sufficient?

If you select the correct door, switching will yield an empty door.

If you select an empty door, switching will yield a prize.

You have a 2/3 chance of selecting an empty door, thus, 2/3 of the time, switching will grant you the prize.
Thanks for that interesting thread! I do know though that newLISP can do this easily with a simple 'set' call.
We could still discourage voting to show agreement or disagreement, even if sometimes people won't actually pay attention to the guidelines in the hopes of having better discussions.

If you had only one upvote, given the choice, would you give it to a comment that just says "me too" to an idea you agree with, or a well thought out comment arguing with that idea?
OK read it. I'm not a fb heavy user, and I'm not on Twitter, so I missed some of the comments. Here are my thoughts:

1. I think fb should exactly filter interactions by relevancy of friends. And more specifically by relevancy of friends crossed with information categories. I have close friends, distant friends, soccer friends, inventor friends, tech friends, etc. Facebook does some categorization but it's not granular enough and not dynamic enough for me to lever it to make my interactions more valuable.

2. Privacy is my main issue on the cost of commenting and leaving 'likes'. I never do it b/c I only want to tell 5 ppl that I like a pic, and that blast is going to the world. You should try to define what 'privacy' actually means to people and break it down. I bet it's different for different people and you can add value by customizing the privacy product, and again, making it more dynamic.

3. I like the economic model for social interaction. Good first step. If you're actually going to study this you may want to decision-tree map users' interactions with the site and put some costs and values to each decision...

4. From the screen-shot I see how FB could become a social turret if designed well enough. This is very cool. Especially if you can develop a system to quantify and aggregate social interactions...the collective brain...

5. From an 'academic paper' perspective, using terms like 'triple-whammy' signal to me that this is a stream of thought paper, which takes away from the presentation of the model.

Best,
Mike
How do you know which? Experience.

I wish I were learning it was even that easy. Maybe it is, and I'm just thinking about it too hard.

To borrow your analogy of the can of worms module, that it runs well but will become a bomb as soon as someone decides to rewire it fills me with a sense of deep dread. My mind immediately drifts to the scenario where something forces changes on that module, such as the server continuously crashing due to a latent schrodinbug that just surfaced, but in a time-frame where those 47 issues just can't be resolved. I've never been comfortable with the justification that "it works now, so just don't screw with it." It seems to just be begging for Murphy to make a fool of the person justifying a decision thusly.

I used the analogy of technical debt being called in a post a few months ago to describe this situation. Granted, my experience as a developer is still somewhat limited, but I have seen people with years of experience get completely hosed by deciding wrong; sometimes deciding wrong a lot. I've also seen people with just a couple of years of experience pick the way to go with decent accuracy. This makes me wonder if there is an intuition certain people have that experience hones, but that experience alone does not completely replace.
The Psychology of Twitter: Doubly Addictive
3110c No Network Problem | repairmobiles.saaqi
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I do feel a sense of camaraderie. Doing things that are valuable and not receiving value is out of balance. Not being funded to create the next increment of value is seriously wrong (non-optimal for society).

I'm not asking anyone else to fix this for me. It's my responsibility to find my place in this new market in a way that let's me contribute and benefit. I'm glad to know my observations aren't just loony (or at least that I have company).
They almost exclusively are though. I think he was just pointing that out.
I didn't realize this had been submitted before (by nirmal). It was hosted on a different domain in the previous submission which is why this wasn't caught as a dupe.

Anyway, you can see some of the author's comments in this thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542334
I'm a fairly happy Kindle owner, but the DRM is the biggest source of my dissatisfaction. I'd like to share my books with my wife (who has her own Kindle and Amazon account), but the DRM doesn't allow that. I'd like to read my books on my other devices (laptop, etc) but the DRM doesn't allow that. Of course, I knew those limitations when I got the Kindle and the books, but they are still limitations that bug me.

What my Kindle experience, in contrast to the DRM-free MP3's I buy from Amazon.com, etc., is teaching me is that even having the burden of learning the particular policies of a particular DRM scheme might be too much work for me. With my MP3's, I share them with my wife, burn them to CD's for the car, listen to them on all my devices, etc and so forth. I do not put them on file-sharing networks of any kind and never would. The same would be true of books.

So, ultimately, the device limits mentioned in the blog post is not even that big of a deal. Ultimately the problem is in the fact that DRMed ownership is a sort of negotiated ownership, and that by its nature makes it harder work and probably unsatisfying.
In light of this, but also generally, it seems prudent to always strip DRM off your Kindle books and store them locally.
I have a relative diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. I was quite skeptical of the diagnostic process because how can we measure an attention deficit when we don't really know what normal attention is? Can we measure that?
while I do find this interesting, at present, I'm failing to see what this implies. A new data structure that has strengths (and weaknesses) above ocaml's hash tables will allow use to do....what?
This runs pretty much counter to the experience this guy is recounting in the original article.
It's a fools errand to try to prevent people from creating anonymous accounts using something like a throw-away email address. It's just far to easy to do.
A Kindle owner myself, I've run into a few issues with the DRM being a problem, and a few other glitches. Amazon has resolved all of them, however, through firmware updates and changes on their back-end servers.

1) Bought a book which synced to my iPhone, but gave me an issue when reading it on the Kindle. Had to do a hard-reset of the Kindle and it fixed the problem. Happened a few months ago once when I got it. Issue hasn't occurred since then.

2) The auto-bookmark thing, letting you sync across devices, has been a little wonky in the past. Its gotten better as of last month.

Point is, it's still a semi-beta product with a few little hiccups here and there, but Amazon is doing a good job IMHO of improving it and getting everything to the point where it transparently works.
Pretty remarkable lack of street smarts.

Should probably stick to Legos next time.
Devver Promises To Speed Up App Testing For Ruby Frameworks
Disclosure: I'm one of the founders of Devver. We're currently looking for companies with long-running Ruby test suites to try out our beta. We're also hiring http://devver.net/jobs
That's not a great metaphor though, because there are many types of cars, but only one type of Unicode. 'Unicode' is not a generalization for character encodings the way 'car' is a generalization for car models. I think this is exactly the point the article author is trying to make.

A better analogy would be color pixels. Consider a pure-red pixel; there is only one particular shade of red a pixel can have and be pure-red. However, there are multiple ways to represent that color: RGB, HSV, HSL, YUV, CMYK, etc. These are all encodings of the same color. None of them /are/ pure-red, but they all /represent/ pure-red.

Similarly, the 1-4 byte sequences within a UTF-# encoded string aren't Unicode characters themselves; they represent individual Unicode characters. There is only one A in Unicode, but there are multiple ways to encode that A in a stream of bytes.
This is a complete hunch, but I bet in a few years time the DRM on books is going to go away much like the DRM on music has recently with iTunes/Amazon MP3's. Amazon needs a hook to get publishers to trust the device. If it gains mass appeal you'll probably see the DRM fade away.
I am not an expert in this domain. I guess they never formalized the requirement of the site in written document. So it is very hard to determine objectively by 3rd party.
And at the same time. It is hard to put all requirement into text for software developers. But a formalized requirement is protection/insurance between customers and contractors.

I found there are similar problem in UAE that British building contractors has problem in getting paid because the UAE customers always demand updating in the building and never trying to give an objective criteria of the finishing decoration of the building. I guess they suffer the same problem in finish the web site.