skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
God-damnit. When I was an intern (I want to say 2009 or 2010), all I got was a Zune at the end of its lifecycle…

It had a nice engraving, but still.
So a good question would be, what other "obvious" thing are we not doing? And why aren't we doing them?
Those four paragraphs don't really add anything. Why not link directly to the video?
A key part of Turing's computability paper hinges on the diagonal argument. It's really well covered in 'The Annotated Turing' by Charles Petzold.

In Cantor's version, we prove that numbers (real numbers?) are not enumerable by creating a new number.

In Turing's paper, he enumerates all valid Turing machines in a similar way, but crucially, we can't know if the new constructed machine is valid or not, so the outcome is different.

It's quite possible I'm botching elements of these, but it was a beautiful read.
Give me a bit of credit for knowing something about taking notes. Having notes immediately searchable and recallable is useful to the user. When I take notes in a meeting with evernote, they are available on my tablet, my smartphone, my laptop, and, when I head back to the office, on my desktop. They are collected in the appropriate notebook, and tagged. Searching for notes over the last few years based on their content is invaluable - and, my writing will never be good enough for handwriting recognition to do the job of understanding what I've written.

For those people with neat handwriting, that the recognition algorithms can pick up - I can understand how writing with a pen might be more cnovenient.
Dropmyemail values your email privacy
New research suggests that low vitamin D levels may be factors in both CVD and cancer, which could explain part of the correlation.

The high rates in the states around Mississippi are because of the high fraction of African Americans, who experience higher (double) rates of CVD compared to whites, a fact not inconsistent with the vitamin D hypothesis.
As much as I am interested in these, I am not going to pay $1500 for a dev. kit that will need to be swapped for a $300-$800 pair next year...
Crowd funding sites should leap on this story; that's the dream..
New hope for light sabers as scientists learn to bind particles together
AngularUI is indeed very much 'off on their own doing what they want', they are not a part of the core team AFAIK. Even inside the AngularUI team, quality, convention and style can be dramatically different across different modules ( cough ng-grid ).
Not sure why you're learning to code, but getting into a positive feedback loop of (have idea, create, tune) is a great thing if you're doing it for more than 'just a job'.

I'd get proficient with linear flow programming, then functions, and build some things before worrying about object oriented programming.

Folks I've worked with have had good luck with perl but there's certainly a strong argument for javascript between web dev and node.js...

Or if you want to go old school fire up BASIC and play with some programs from http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/

Not suggesting you should stay at that level (BASIC, perl, etc) but building the feedback loop of liking the process/having fun can be great to get at the beginning of the learning process.
How Texas Lost the World's Largest Super Collider
I just launched Rate My App[0] yesterday evening on Hacker News, so this is great timing. :)

In the four days between idea and launch, how much time did I spend on the landing page, and would I do it again?

As an experienced engineer, I realized the first thing I had to worry about was the marketing content, so I spent the first day configuring my social accounts and creating and uploading a video.

Short version:

Yesterday, I implemented my own design because I wanted a simple site that had exactly the code I needed. I would do it again, especially since the next time I can re-use the build process I created.

Longer version:

Assuming you're familiar with CSS and HTML, you're better off finding a decent template or web site and re-creating the few parts about it you like yourself. Using a fancy template will be a time sink, both in understanding all the complicated things the author threw in, but also focusing your time on making your site perfect (since you just paid for it) rather than focusing on launching.

And in the two days in-between, I figured out the value I could bring to customers. I also spent a lot of time configuring payments, emails, form submissions, etc.

Establishing some process to collect feedback and getting your name and purpose out there is the main point of launching, so worry about that more than the landing page.

TL;DR: as far as systems, you're better off establishing some kind of a process (hopefully an off-the-shelf system that can function independent of your concerns) that allows you to iterate on your actual product quickly. As far as visuals, though, spending lots of time on making this tiny part of your product perfectly integrated with a particular template can make it emotionally difficult or time-consuming for you to replace or modify as necessary later on.

I'm writing a series of blog posts (@vla on twitter) about this, by the way.

[0] the app: www.ratemyapp.com
Hi, Ben from Khan Academy here -- I'm happy to answer any questions.
I was very relifed to discover later in life that I wasn't alone in disagreeing with Cantor. That, along with a few other proofs and axioms, were a major source of angst for me as a kid in school.

I find Wittgenstein's take on it very interesting.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein-mathematics/

I wish some teacher had told me that other maths are possible if we agree with different rules, even though schools are always going to teach and require the status quo.
Categorized archive of best Ask HN posts (with git repository)
Facebook's marketing biz dissed by Forrester
In a fixed market the fixed price still remains the upper bound for the negotiation. [Until there are more demands outside of the predetermined terms]
I might be missing something—how is this related to crowd funding?
Dems demand refund from ObamaCare website contractors
How to decompile Dalvik (and Java) code
Meet the “grand architect” behind Ireland’s tax avoidance policy for tech firms
Self the system still exists - this isn't just archeology. The website is at http://selflanguage.org and the Git sources at http://github.com/russellallen/self

The VM compiles on recent OS X and x86 Linux and it's pretty fun to play with. There is something about the underlying simplicity of the object model and the immediacy and concreteness of the system which makes programming in it for me unlike other programming languages, even after all this time.

I should do up a new release though - the downloadable binaries are a few years old now.
But if you're not providing an essential (Mazlow) for life, isn't this going to happen anyway?
Buy stock low, sell it high?

It's all gambling. Sometimes you know you can beat the game. Sometimes it's for fun. People shouldn't get depressed when they miss a wacky investment that pays off big. Plenty of people lose their shirts doing that.
Pretty good post.

Writing on pure impulse is good for practice and discipline and short-length things, but it won't help you when you need to write a ton of stuff that has flow and needs to be coherent. It is great for a first 'driver' to get you doing something productive, but you need to combine it with additional 'drivers' along the way (planning, coherency, etc.)

For instance, I could not imagine GRRM being successful with ASOIAF if it was written without discipline and planning.

An interesting contrast is that this author praises unique ideas, but discards its execution as less important (or not important), while most programmers are more concerned with the execution of ideas, since the ideas in that realm are very common (usually).

In both cases though, it's ideal to have both a good idea and good execution. In the case of this post, the execution is in the word choice, word play, and other writing elements I don't remember from school because I was too busy writing drunk and editing drunk.
Thanks Sacha. For idea validation, I'm always curious where people draw the line. You set up a sign-up form on an existing page, yes. But how many signups do you need before you consider it validated and worth pursuing? 10 signups? 100? 1000?
Great idea - I was thinking something like this for NYCers as storage space is at a premium but it's cheaper online so a monthly/remember me type service is a win/win.

Good luck with it.

One small thing - https://www.getresupply.com/privacy is broken.

Cheers
Could it be that most businesses don't know how to harness Facebook properly? Targeting a subset of people on a massive social network requires skill and finesse. The knee-jerk reaction by many big businesses is to go wide with their marketing approach, whereas, these days, marketing to a niche crowd is the recommended approach...

I agree, however, that ads getting lost in a massive data cache is a problem...
Any advice for someone evaluating React/Backbone vs Ember vs Angular?
I like the idea, but I think that the $2.45 price is pretty high. Also it would be great to see some citations for the references you make as your statements currently lack credibility. I wish the best of luck to you, but to be honest I can't imagine anyone spending that much money on an app like this, especially in this day where everyone considers their $.99 purchases as if it is a heavy investment.
I actually haven't verified personally if the keywords are passed along with ads, I was going by the claims made in the article.

If you are concerned about your keyword data being aggregated and stored based upon referrals and associated with IP, I have bad news for you. This data has been being aggregated and cross referenced not only by sites and advertisers but also third party aggregators for more than a decade.
> how many days in a row did you go without getting at least half-an-hour of direct bright sunlight

One of my major life goals is maximizing this number. I'd get a good peeling burn if I let myself sit out in the sun like that.
"Language is the universal whore that I must make into a virgin."
My grandfather interviews holocaust survivors and helps make small books of their stories. I set up a dropbox account for him to share transcripts of the interviews, and now he uses it along with the other volunteers. A half dozen retirees, with minimal computer skills, barely able to read English, all happily using dropbox. That really impressed me.
> Of course in hindsight it sounds like a great investment. But this stuff is highly volatile and not backed by anything. I'm not rushing to convert my bank account to bitcoin yet.

It's backed by math and computational complexity, which is decidedly not "nothing." If, as you say, it is backed by nothing, go ahead and forge some Bitcoins. Except, of course, you cannot forge them. You can only create them via the investment of hardware, electricity, time, and luck.

It's not like gold is actually worth $1,500 an ounce due to its value in making jewelry or in manufacturing. The value of gold is set by the speculative market, just like Bitcoin.

Of course, you're right that it's volatile. But that has nothing to do with its "backing" and everything to do with the fact that 99% of the world has no idea what the hell to make of it yet. That, and the fact that there has never been a decentralized digital currency before, so nobody knows what's going to happen.
The surface especially. This thing honestly sounds like the ultimate college notebook. I, like countless other students, preferred to write my notes by hand. Using a surface pro means that these notes can be digitized and accessible on any device at your convenience.
There could be legal issues with that. Might be fine as an option (either pay up-front, or buy "on credit") -- but it complicates the legal relationship somewhat -- did someone pay you for a service? Are they your customer? What happens when they demand a refund, but have only had 10$ paid out?

I can understand wanting to keep hands off the royalties and sell the service as a separate product.

I agree it might be an attractive option, to some customers. Might not be as attractive an option to the customers you want the most.
I think suicide is prevented by HIV – the two maps seem to be nearly complete opposites.
> Those of us who really need to just "get things done" might be better suited by a mature, well-documented framework, but does one actually exist?

No.

Frameworks are all the same in that they are great at getting you to about 80% of what you need REALLY fast. The next 10% takes some investigation but its doable.

But that last 10%. Its like pulling teeth. You're working for the framework rather than it working for you. In my experience, all of the time gains you realize from using a framework early on are lost (and then some) trying to get it to do that last 10% that you need.

Ultimately I've found that using vanilla Javascript offers everything I need to just "get things done" and complete a project successfully. Sure, I might not be able to get something out the door in a day. But at the end of the project I've delivered clean, maintainable code on time. And anyone who knows Javascript will be able to read it.

Now, lest you think I'm a complete framework hater; they have their place. They're great at prototyping, for example. But never again will I build an entire project on one. I have little interest in being a glorified glue stick, piecing framework code together. How boring.

I should add that I make heavy use of libraries like jQuery and Underscore. They're libraries, not frameworks. Take what you need with them yet still reasonably lightweight. Frameworks are bloated, tightly-coupled, poorly documented monstrosities in my opinion.
How do you define real numbers without uncountable sets though? I'm not sure most people are willing to give up the real numbers just because they are a bit unintuitive.
Wow, that page is ugly.
It could also be something innocent, like a large treatment center or palliative care facility.

That is, unless the data is meticulously groomed to report the patients' county/state of origin.
I think it's good advice, but I also think it is wrong. There are writers who I read for the sheer joy of the skilled way they construct their prose- Salman Rushdie would come to mind as one.

That doesn't mean he doesn't also have worthwhile things to say. But there is undoubtedly a skill to great writing that is only improved by doing more of it.
Right. Let's see how long it takes for the next contractor to build a replacement. Then let's watch the replacement go through the exact same problems.
Yes they are very readable and his thoughts often feel like they were written last week. It's surprisingly timeless.

Schopenhauer was not a big proponent of empty, pointless philosophizing. His stuff is all practical and to the point.
I deleted my comment because I concluded it's obvious and contributes nothing to the conversation.

But since you replied I will say: Yes it is backed by nothing. There is no central bank. It's funny that you draw comparisons to gold's lack of intrinsic value because the whole point of central banking is to move away from storing shiny objects in vaults, and in that regard Bitcoin is a regression. (Replace shiny objects with shiny prime numbers.)
They use a crane to lift a beam across the top of the windows/doors, and then continue printing over that.

http://youtu.be/JdbJP8Gxqog?t=4m50s
The article mentions that exactly, "He bought some for fun, then forgot about it."

Fair play to him for doing so! I guess he must have been in luck when the topic for his thesis lead him to Bitcoin. I bet he's glad he studied!
For a truly outstanding book on the history of the design and manufacture of the space suits, see "Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo" by Nicholas de de Monchaux. It touches on interface as an aspect of the problem, and the industrial process of making and validating a proper space suit.

It turns out that making a space suit is a really hard problem -- and that "obvious" solutions, like hard jointed hard bodies, don't work. One of the keys to getting the suits was the sewing skills of the seamstresses, who sometimes had to stitch to tolerances smaller than the needles they worked with.

I don't remember the book as well as I like, I think another theme was the necessity of going outside NASA's manufacture and documentation protocols because the handmade manufacture process at the center of it all wouldn't fit. For all of NASA's emphasis on planning and documentation and process, the equipment actually on the astronauts was essentially an enormous craft project of hundreds of dedicated people.
Does anyone remember those suction cup speakers that attached to windows and turned them into speakers?

Years ago I wanted to splice a noise canceling headphone into one of these devices and make the windows noise canceling. Would that even be feasible?
"I think data scientist is a sexed-up term for a statistician."

This statement, given by Silver to the annual meeting of the Joint Statistics Meetings (the main cross-organization stats conference), was guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser for that audience.

Unfortunately for them, it's not really true.

The problem is that much of conventional academic statistics consists of proving theorems about model classes. This requires a lot of sophisticated analysis, but has turned rather vacuous. And much conventional applied statistics consists of computing diagnostics based on dubious modeling assumptions. Under pressure in the last 20 or so years from computer science, machine learning, computer vision, Moore's law, and the data avalanche, the discipline has changed, but not fast enough.

As a result, a lot of what should be taught and researched in statistics departments has been co-opted by these other disciplines. And many people with a real problem would rather work with a "machine learning" person than a "statistics" person.

The best summary of this state of affairs is Leo Breiman's essay (http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?ha...). The abstract of this essay is brutal:

"There are two cultures in the use of statistical modeling to reach conclusions from data. One assumes that the data are generated by a given stochastic data model. The other uses algorithmic models and treats the data mechanism as unknown. The statistical community has been committed to the almost exclusive use of data models. This commitment has led to irrelevant theory, questionable conclusions, and has kept statisticians from working on a large range of interesting current problems. Algorithmic modeling, both in theory and practice, has developed rapidly in fields outside statistics. It can be used both on large, complex data sets and as a more accurate and informative alternative to data modeling on smaller data sets. If our goal as a field is to use data to solve problems, then we need to move away from exclusive dependence on data models and adopt a more diverse set of tools."

Breiman was mathematically sophisticated, so it's not that he wasn't able to follow the theory he critiques, it's that he wasn't snowed by detail and could see its lack of relevance to real problems.
I've done quite a bit of signal processing in my day. Audio, image/computer vision, radio comms, etc. This product strikes me as not terribly honest for a few reasons:

Geometry

The mic/speaker assembly are in the middle of the window but the window has substantial size relative to the dimensions of the room and the distance the listener is from the device. What this means is that you have a multipath problem; the original sound can come through the whole window (even the wall!) but the canceling sound can only eminate from the speaker.

If you draw a straight line from the original noise source, through the device and from there it happens to head towards your ears, this can work. If not things will get jumbled up and it might cancel or it might actually reinforce the noise, rather than cancelling it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker#Directivity

Physics

A speaker is a device that works as a derivative of the original signal. That means it needs some amount of "advance notice" of the sound in order to be able to create the proper pressure wave to cancel out said sound. The "advance notice" is usually done by means of some distance between the microphone and the speaker but the device is very thin. Worse, the amount of "advance notice" depends on the frequency of the sound which generally makes it an intractable problem to solve for the transient case.

http://www.customanalogue.com/elsinore/elsinore_19.htm

So what people do is focus on periodic noises like hum, hiss, buzz, rumble, what-have-you. In this case you don't need to make sure that any one peak has it's inverse reproduced perfectly, you only have to ensure that ONE peak is cancelled out by SOME OTHER out of phase peak. If it takes a couple of cycles for the computer to catch on, no big deal that's just a bit of start-up noise. Bose headphones don't IMMEDIATELY make the plane quieter, they just do it so fast that you don't notice the amount of time it takes for the system to warm up. It seems instant even though it's not.

But what this means is that a bunch of the sounds being cancelled out probably wouldn't be cancelled out quite so nicely as a lot of them are transients like the bottles breaking or the construction site or the park.

I'd really love to be wrong about this. There's a joke that goes "An engineer will tell you it's impossible until you show him how to do it. Then he'll say it's obvious." It's entirely possible that this guy has figured something out that the rest of us haven't. But I will remain skeptical until I can actually put my hands on one and benchmark it for myself
So embarrassing when a candidate busted this out on me in an interview - but couldn't quite explain it - so I was convinced he was wrong / out of his mind. Later I looked it up in the CLR and sure enough...
I think more likely this was made by some film students for a school project or something then by physicists with a working prototype.

I always thought the only way of doing this would be to have detached microphones positioned between the speaker and the target noise so the system has enough time to compute the inverse of the incoming waves and send them out with enough space to cancel in the correct phase.
Readability link: http://www.readability.com/read?url=http%3A//joelburget.com/...

It's almost impossible to see the text over the background.
Seems many people are focused on the one post that mentions law suits and using that to justify post deletion. But there are several other quite resonible posts that have been deleted as well.
In general, if the subject includes "science" in the name, it probably isn't actually science. Political, data, social, etc. No chemist needs to say they study "chemical science."
The T440p, T540p, and W540 all have buttonless clickpads too, and the latter two are so huge they have numpads; anything from the W series is Way too heavy anyway. The L and E series are out because I'm looking for a high-end system, and in any case they have buttonless clickpads too.
My understanding is that many of the problems were caused by things forced on the developers.
Are you writing tests for these views? Any lessons learned?
If your sort is lazy enough, the `(sort xs) !! k` approach will work fine. Haskell's default sort isn't lazy enough, but you could certainly make it so.

You don't have to fully sort the list before determining the kth element (again assuming a sufficiently lazy implementation). Once you know the element is in the second half of the list, the sort simply will never sort the first half.
I think the title is a bit misleading, but good points raised and good data to back it up.
Strikingly looks very cool. But don't forget your disclaimer.