skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's not the "toy" part that's signifiant. It's the "tinker" part. Think of a 50's automobile with a carburetor and a distributor. You can take apart and tinker with those. In a 2009 car, the distributor and associated parts are a throwaway lump of plastic with metal tabs coming out.

"Explorable" is perhaps an even better term.

Squeak had the same aims. Skip to 8:20. You'll see kids using the software to explore robotics and do physics of gravitation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg_ToU7m1MI
Doesn't work for me in chrome. Although, I'm running the alpha for linux so that might have something to do with it. Has anybody tried it with chrome on windows?
A little too high of a douchey : cool ratio.
why are the files split in the first place?
Pipelining doesn't work.
I think if I could see any invention in my lifetime, I'd want to see that knowledge-uploader thing from 'The Matrix'. Imagine how much you could learn! Especially before you were too old to use it...
well the suggestion being made is that an infinite series can be terminated - and with a different digit. That's finite right? :)

Irrespective of 1/3 = 0.333 (which can be proven mathematically) terminating an infinite series is impossible.

The same fallacy persists in all his other points. For example when he does the 10x business and points out there are still only 5 9's then his series is clearly finite and not infinite - and therefore no longer 0.9 recurring.

The main issue with people "disbelieving" 0.9 recurring equals 1 is a misunderstanding of what infinity actually is :)

EDIT: in reply to your edit - you've fallen for the misunderstanding of infinite. No one can dispute that 0.3<lots of 3's>3 + 0.0<losts of 0's>1 = 1. But in an infinite series you never get to that 1. The number is 0 (this can be mathematically proven I am told; but it is beyond my ability to do so)
So it's true. It's common knowledge, among people who look into it, that universities are utterly perverse and quite doomed.
Their blog page looks as if they're rolling: http://www.betaspring.com/blog/
Ask HN: Review my app - SimpleStats.net
The site is basically designed to be a simple medium for reviewing your website statistics. I did start an open beta, but have thus far been unsuccessful in getting any kind of suggestions or improvements that are helpful.

http://simplestats.net/
Clickables:

Example account: http://simplestats.net/user/alanedwardes/

Homepage: http://simplestats.net/
"The game designers do not make the rules in a multiplayer game."

Wha? Of course they do. All video games (including MMORPGs) are highly controlled environments and good game designers account for different playing styles.
This looks great. I only wish you had a Java or PocketPC version. Unfortunately I'm bound to my HTC Fuze due to tethering needs (Windows Mobile 6.1 has a ridiculously easy workaround to bypass additional charges), but would really like this app.
What a lousy blog post. It doesn't even come close to telling us what Google's "out of beta" standard is. Just a PR stunt, and a badly executed one at that.
This ad has succeeded to the extent that it's getting pretty popular on Hacker News and (hopefully) it's attracting the types of programmers they're out to hire.

Assuming that they've got their 'ideal hire' right, it's almost a win-win situation for them: if you hate the ad, you probably don't like their culture; if you love it, you'll apply and you might just fit right in with these "ninjas".

It alienates some but at least not the people they're trying to hire. I'm not saying such a culture's going to be great for them, just that posting such an ad will get them exactly who they want, and some mad publicity as well.
It's nice how you released it for a lot of different platforms. Would you mind sharing the % of sales / platform once you have some sales?
Valid points.

I wish that simply making slightly outdated equipment easily available to anyone who wants it, but doesn't have the economic means would gain more traction.

Even if the hardware/software is outdated moving from windows 95 to windows Vista is less of a cognitive leap than going from Sugar to Windows or Linux or something.

I think we sell kids short in terms of how much they can catch onto by playing around. I don't see the point in giving them a dumbed-down OS instead of a 'real' one.
It's design centers around a few specialized apps and the Internet

This is a straw man. Of course mass production and competition were going to drive down the cost of access to the internet. The OLPC is designed to give children access to the internals of computation.

The original design was to center around the idea of being able to take apart and tinker with any part of the source code, and get instant results, but always be able to back any changes out, so there are no negative consequences no matter how much tinkering you do.

It was originally designed to let kids tinker with computers and programming.
It's kinda funny that in the 90's, "web masters" wanted search engine crawlers to ask for permission to crawl their site.

Right now, there's no economic advantage to sharing your data--especially in this case where Amazon is trying to protect its investment in the Kindle and its impending "App Store" for books.

Perhaps when we have a way for published data to benefit the publisher, we won't have stuff like this going on.
It's an unfortunate restriction but it is definitely not a "recent change" as the article suggests. It was in their T&C's at least six months ago, I recall seeing it while prototyping an iPhone app that used the Amazon API for some things.

If you're a developer who's only just noticed this after months of work then that sucks, but don't try to portray it as a malicious act of Amazon against your project.
> start the long division on paper and keep going until you're convinced.

great point! I was trying to come up with a way to explain 1/3 == 0.3 but fell into "thinking to complex". An elegant solution.
Oblong.
They seem to be trying pretty hard to be Y Combinator, which is fine of course, except that it causes silly behavior, like linking to every startup resource on the web except Paul Graham's essays on startups.
I'm new to HN and coming to it straight through YC, it is what I expected - all about startups. Please keep it that way.
It's especially hard because Aunt Harriet's order almost certainly won't actually make it into the open market. Her broker will very likely "internalize" it (trade against it themselves), or sell it to someone else who will (e.g. Citadel will happily buy their flow.. they bought Ameritrade's last I checked).

That very well may be the future of these funds - compete for the customer or pay for order flow like in US Equity Options rather than compete in the open markets. All the orders that can be traded against with any of the typical profitable strategies (most strategies at these places are fairly well known and similar).. won't even make it to the real market. Doing it this way avoids the risks in the open market, notably adverse selection and the need to over-represent your interest in multiple places to increase your execution quality.
I'd argue that brain surgery is even _more_ an example of where the ability to cut, suture, and otherwise tweak the brain is less than 1% of what makes you chose a particular brain surgeon to go messing around inside your noggin. I'm betting that the brand name of the Hospital, the quality of they operating environment, the Insurance Coverage, The Cost - these turn out to be even more important than the actual skill of the brain surgeon.
Serious discussion of hosting your software on their servers started a couple years ago. I don't think anyone's done it yet, but people have at least built the technology out.

Of course, it's really stupid. Nobody that actually wants to own the stock or sell an investment cares about the difference of 50us. The competition at that level is at best inane. At worst, it makes it worse because it discourages people from trading real size and floods the world with all the little nearly meaningless quote updates.
Vector Magic - Convert bitmap to vector
No one's going to think my startup idea is useful after I put out the proto.
Additionally: in the spirit of good natured fun, here's my (clearly non-serious) entry:

''
def findPossibleSolutions(querytext):
for result in GoogleCodeSearch(query=querytext):
yield result

def tryOutPossibleSolution(candidate):
output = None
with SafeSandboxedEvaluatorFactoryFactory(candidate.language).safeSandboxedEvaluator() as evaluator:
output = evaluator.evaluate(candidate.code)
return output

def validatePossibleSolution(candidate, validator):
return validator(tryOutPossibleSolution(candidate))

def giveMeValidSolutionSourceCodes(querytext,validator):
for validSolution in (candidate for candidate in findPossibleSolutions(querytext) if validatePossibleSolution(candidate,validator)):
yield {'source'=validSolution.code,'extension'=validSolution.languageExtension}

if __name__ == "__main__":
helloWorlds = giveMeValidSolutionSourceCodes("hello world", lambda x: x == "hello world")
firstValidSource = helloWorlds()
if firstValidSource:
print "helloworld.%s:\n\n%s" % (firstValidSource["extension"],firstValidSource["source"])
else:
print "helloworld.py:\n\nprint \"hello world\"" # default case
''

Edit: if there's a way to reproduce source code please inform.
isn't this just a favrd clone?
I thought the point of ninjas was often to get things done with maximum efficiency. Thus I believe "echo" is a great solution. Why write what someone has already written for you?

Do they want people who are going to do things in the most impractical and convoluted way possible? If so, I wouldn't recommend betting on them releasing a stable product in the near future.
Will do! I always enjoy "the numbers" type posts so I'd love to share when we gather a bit more data
The most intuitive explanation I've read is that if two numbers are distinct, then you can find a real number inbetween them. No such number exists for 0.999... and 1.
That's a colloquialism, not a typo.
Yeah, the job market went down, so now instead of begging they started act like assholes.
Ooh, good idea ;) Thanks for the tip!
I'm glad the author was excited by fast-paced challenges, but this type of thrill can arise from many situations, and when it's a job, it's not necessarily a good job.

I've worked all weekend to put together a payment system for a high-volume ecommerce site. It was exciting watching the logs for possible problems and seeing money start to roll in during the early hours of Monday morning, and it was pretty satisfying that everything worked after slaving away through the weekend, but I wouldn't say it was a particularly good job at all.

Good article though - it's definitely important to seek out satisfying (and potentially exhilarating) work for oneself. Kind of the opposite of cubicle numbness.
Why are you interested in getting people's opinions on a matter of fact? "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."
Glad you like it! :) It's saved me a bunch of time already and I hope it does for you too
People are still talking about this? I remember being convinced of the right answer ("yes") back in elementary school. If 0.9 repeating is not equal to one, name the number between them.
I used to live in NYC, and I have sent this to all of my NYC friends. Awesome app!

For those of you who thinks this is stupid... trust me, New Yorkers value every second of their commute. And exiting from the wrong end of the exit could mean 5+ more min just to get out of the subway... considering the hundreds of people exiting the subway at the same time.

Great job, great idea, great execution!
To clarify a little the Delicious App does have explicit permission to use the data but only for the desktop version.

I work on a similar product (Beep My Stuff) and to be honest Amazon's data while far from perfect is the only real source.
Again, I don't think this is necessarily that fruitful a discussion, since the whole point of the guy's argument, as I see it, is that you can slightly adjust the meaning of "equality" as it relates to infinite fractions and maintain a completely self-consistent mathematical system.

> You can not have an infinite series of something,
> followed by something else.

Why is that? How about the number 19...91? why are you denying me that number? :)

> If you need convincing, start the long division
> on paper and keep going until you're convinced.

When I do that, I constantly am left with a remainder. If I accept that 1/3=0.3333..., as you're arguing, then the remainder disappears, for unexplained reasons. An alternative argument is that the remainder persists in the form 0.0...1 and then you don't have to "hand wave away" the remainder.

> Recall that introducing one contradictory premise
> into a logical system allows you to prove any statement

I agree with that completely, but I haven't seen the "contradictory premise" yet... all I see (at this point) is some alternative premises that seem fully internally consistent.

> In order to show the two are distinct entities, you
> need to show a situation in which they behave
> differently.

I think that's actually the best argument you've put forward so far. Basically, an argument in favor of choosing the more pragmatic way of handling these situations.
I once worked a summer job at Nintendo in Redmond, screwing together refurbished Super Nintendos. One day, the Big Bosses came down and toured the GameBoy line, and they had a kid do a demo using this new "hand you screws" machine so they could see how much it increased productivity.

He rolled up his sleves, took a deep breath, and screwed cases on something like 16 machines in the span of a minute (normal production is about 4). Only afterwards did the ramifications of what he'd just done start to sink in.

Glad I wasn't on that line. Extra glad I wasn't that guy. Lesson learned.
An assessment and overview of creating flash games
Nice! You should add data for other subway systems too. Here are the exit locations for the TTC: http://www.ttcrider.ca/download.php
I like the no javascript tracking. Im struggling with Quantserve (to track our iphone app usage) - which, although supports the no javascript tracking, doesn't clearly work.

The site looks neat and simple - the graph is quite nice. Congratulations.
When I click the buttons: * Public Statistics * Per-Visitor Drill Down * Track Multiple Sites * Live Website Stats * Track Visitors without JavaScript - the entire site shakes. I'm using Mozilla Firefox if it's any help.
Regarding your first point, people who ride to/from the same stations often already do this; this will give the wanderers a leg up.
lol, if true facebook will be in a lot of trouble.
"When I do that, I constantly am left with a remainder. If I accept that 1/3=0.3333..., as you're arguing, then the remainder disappears, for unexplained reasons."

No, it doesn't. You stopped finitely soon into an infinite process. You apparently didn't take it far enough.

No disrespect intended, but a HN comment is not a place to post a full description of infinity. Hie thee hence to a textbook. And read it like a textbook, not an internet post. You know, where you go over it with a fine-tooth comb looking for opportunities to leap up and call your opponent a Nazi. Yeah, I know that style. Without that, counterarguments are getting mangled on their way into your brain, because you don't actually understand them in Math. That can't be corrected by people batting down various ill-posed English-based objections.

(If it could, I would have seen it happen by now.)
Seeking a Way to Predict Baseball Injuries
> You can not have an infinite series of something, followed by something else.

Actually, in the more general sense, you can. The transfinite ordinal numbers do exactly that. Using w to represent the first infinite ordinal we have w=1+w, but w<w+1. The transfinite ordinal w+1 is modelled as the natural numbers, in order, with an extra element stuck "on the end."

However, your point is valid in the context of the decimal representation of real numbers.
I would have commented there, but comments seem disabled....

<em>"The point here is that we can't allow such a fundamental piece to the future of the Internet rely on plugins."</em>

He doesn't establish this conclusion. Recent Google examples (Gears, O3D) show that it's useful to be able to add features to browsers without requiring a complete browser change. Using common cross-browser functionality seems a benefit.

(I can't tell what "FUD" he sees in my blogpost, either. I spent time reading, but wish he had backed up his claims.)
FooBarWidget: "This makes it illegal for anybody to distribute H.264 decoding software, whether open source or not, until they've paid for the patent license."

Only within the jurisdictions in which the patent is valid and in force (renewal fees paid).
This should be like front page news. This is something many would have not thought possible. It also poses many problems non-materialists that do not subscribe to a weird hand-wavy coincidentalism.
anyone have a source of where i can find free business books and case studies online?
"Fair enough, but where is this line?"

That's the difficult part, indeed. In WW2, the U.S. was attacked. The U.S. did not initiate aggression. Of course, it may be argued that the American foreign policy in the Pacific in the 1930s forced Japan to war.

In WW2 it was quite obvious there was a threat to the U.S., and to the entire world. I don't want to claim that it was "the good war", but the U.S. won it without losing moral authority.

Being the world police is an ungrateful job. If you act, people will accuse you of interventionism. If you don't act, people will accuse you of siding with genocidal thugs. It's tough.

But look at what happened in Somalia in 1993. The trauma of that incident led the Clinton administration to avoid intervening in Rwanda. In the 1990s the Europeans were unable to solve the mess in the Balkans until the U.S. intervened. There are many ways of intervening, some smarter than others.

The intervention in Vietnam was poorly-led. Both sides adopted an insane "war of attrition" doctrine. The U.S. needed to kill the entire population to win that war. It's kind of stupid to kill the people one's supposed to be defending. Some claim that it would have been wiser to invade North Vietnam and engage in a more conventional warfare in which the U.S. military power could be leveraged. I suppose the U.S. government was too afraid that China would intervene if that were the case, as it happened in Korea. Sometimes one needs to choose the lesser of two evils...

Europe owes its stability to 50+ years of American protection. The European anti-Americanism is blasé, ungrateful, and naive. Right after 9/11 the western world was with the U.S. and approved the war in Afghanistan. It all changed when the U.S. decide to invade Iraq unilaterally. The perception of the U.S. as a thug is not entirely unjustified.
(1+0.9999...)/2
ok some key points about infinity ot address here :)

>then the remainder disappears, for unexplained reasons.

Actually no - it doesnt disappear. That's why it works. Dont forget the definition of infinity is "forever". The remainder is always there - and it always reduces further (edit: if you continue completing the sum. As you can see below the sum is already completed for infinite length anyway - your just manually bound checking it at the beginning)

In your counter argument where the 0.0....1 acts as a remainder. The set of 0's before the 1 can only be finite. One reason people fall for this is because they imagine the infinite set growing by adding a 0 on the end each time. Or perhaps pushing on one the front (which is what would have to happen for your requirement). This is *wrong( entirely - the infinite set exists, in entirety for the whole of it's infinity.
0.0...1 is a very interesting number. Normally, one indexes digits by integers (there's a first digit, a second digit,...) But here you have digits seemingly indexed by ordinals. The omega-th digit is 1. I don't think you can make a consistent number system this way. Here's the problem: what is 10*0.00...1? It can't have omega-th digit "10" because 10 isn't a digit. It can't have omega-th digit 1 and omega+1-th digit 0, because that should be the same as 0.00...1, under any logic I can think of. So that number system doesn't work.

The real numbers, by contrast, have the advantage of working (so far as we know.)
The means by which Myers was winning did nothing to establish himself as a skilled player. People were not using his strategy precisely because it required no skill. Myers was not using the area as intended but rather abusing a loophole (that was later closed by the game admins).
That's why it's an interesting post to me, since this guy came up with a clever device (and I think internally self-consistent device) that lets him argue to the contrary.

And to answer your question, a number between 0.9 repeating and one is 0.999...5 (yes this is 9 recurring with a five at the end)

:)
Don't forget the graphic design and HCI parts, and definitely do not underestimate them. I often find that people with a scientific/technical background find it hard to visualise and present data well because of their background - 'I love lots of information and data; therefore, everyone else must love lots of information and data'. Wrong. You can number crunch all day long, but if you can't translate the output into something that people can understand (i.e. turn information into knowledge) then there is no point.

You will also find that a lot of the top data scientists/information visualisers actually come from an artistic background, e.g. http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/ and http://www.vimeo.com/5091290

The original article inspired me to go back to university so that I can become a data scientist. Can't wait.
This is the same sort of misguided thinking that led to the broken notion of valuing "quality time" with kids over "quantity". It is wrong for kids and it is wrong for your significant other. Really wrong.

It is also among the most self-indulgent, pseudo-liberating and painfully selfish hogwash I've read in a while. Maybe I just need to get out more. But for me, the sum of my relationships -- with my spouse, kids, partners, friends, parents and family -- is fundamental to who I am.

I am going to change the world with my work. But it will be because of my relationships. Not in spite of them.
By the time they are in 8th or 9th grade they would have spent a large portion of their early years using crappy software or playing games that may be of high quality but don't teach them much about computers. And old school learning arguments works depending on the field. You can teaching computing without a computer, but only up to a point after which it becomes tedious to all but the most dedicated.
I think Lewis hits the nail on the head about how the media hysteria over the relatively minor (when you look at the dollars compared to the counterparty payouts) AIG bonus issue managed to completely miss the entire point and importance of the fiancial fiasco with AIG.

If we (society, etc.) can't even get the story straight about what really happened, what hope do we have to avoid repeating the same mistakes that lead to this bubble 5/10/25 years down the road from now? We're screwed.
See also the poll at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=692383
Netbooks are getting to that point. They're both in the pircerannge of the OLPC (with a hefty discount for Governments buying in the 100,000 range) and they have mass market appeal behind them which should hopefully push software.

Honestly, I'm surprised the market for netbook specific children's games isn't larger
See also the discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=692338
Seems like it's a neural network trying to decipher the inner workings of another neural network. How amazingly cool is that ?