skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From the website:

How do we calculate the number of Google+ accounts?

Before November 15, 2012, we use the numbers Google provided publicly. Since then, we began calculating the number on our own. To do this, we first download the Google+ Sitemap. Then, we walk through this file and find all the sub-sitemaps available. For each sub-sitemap we find, we download it and then count the number of Google+ profiles and the number of Google profiles contained within it. Tallying all this gives us two numbers: Google+ users and Google users. We do this once a day.

However, the Google+ sitemap has been known to go down (404) periodically. It was missing completely for almost two months from mid April 2013 until mid June 2013. As such, you may see a sparsity of data points during such time frames.

How do you count the size of the index?

This is a much simpler process. We simply perform a specific Google search across Google+ and a slightly different Google search across Google+. We then take the largest number of results returned from these two searches giving us our Google+ index size.

From the author on G+:

It's also entirely likely that a large percentage of the number I am reporting here are G+ profiles created by users activating new Android devices and never using the account for any activity

https://plus.google.com/112767041460502214504/posts/SjWJLWeZ...
>I think, though, that the lack of high upload bandwidth for almost every Internet consumer makes this less useful today.

How do your files get uploaded at high speed to Dropbox right now?

And after all, upload bandwidth is quite arbitrary - again, its the marketing people in control when the technologists should be, actually.
> Data in a bitmap is not linear with the light-intensity of the colors; it is gamma'd!

That is true for common sRGB images, such as what you would see on the web. But for games which usually have tightly controlled art pipeline it would not be unfeasible to use linear colorspace bitmaps as textures, and in such case you would not need to have gamma-aware scaling.
So, same as the science thread then. Money corrupts science, and suddenly now journalism. And sport. Oh, education too. Oppps, for got health care. And war. Internet? Hmmmmmm

Isnt there a saying about money and corruption? Its been going on a bit of a while now, right?

And will we heed this and make changes? Hell no. Just as per usual small "mavericks" going up against the money, ultimately changing very little in the great scheme of things, while the interests of money roll on.
Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure) advocates 'Hammock Driven Development.' Let your background mind do the hard work for you.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
> I'm not just dismissive of Egalitarinism only because it's unnatural, but also because it goes against the individual's freedom in the end.

Only if you define an individuals freedom as "freedom to deprive others of access to shared natural resources through violence" (I use the term violence since libertarians seems overly fond of referring to government interference as "violence"; except when it comes to enforcing private property). Hence Proudhon's "property is theft".

> With Egalitarianism, you end up with policies where education is strictly controlled by one governmental body

Why? Most egalitarian ideologies want to dismantle the state and introduce some form or other of direct democracy which would preclude strict government control of education or pretty much everything else.

Marx, for example, considered the only political purpose of the state to be the oppression of one class by another, and the goal of socialism to remove the class struggle by enacting policies that would remove the capitalist class, by turning them into workers. And the natural end-point, according to Marx, would be the "withering away of the state", as in a class-less society it would have no political purpose.

Anarchists argue for a more direct approach: Destroy the state outright.

> and where Education goes to the lowest common denominator and becomes basically crap for everyone involved.

Why? The original form of socialism was the idea of a meritocracy where a central goal would be to ensure people were given the opportunity to develop personally and promoted according to skill (read up on Saint Simon).

> You end up with public health services which are subpar, with waiting lines and mediocre equipment

This is contrary to real world experiences, where the universal healthcare systems for the most part are cheaper and better than mostly privatized systems like the US.

> And this has already happened in many countries in Europe where such policies were driven to the core of the governmental actions.

So this is why most European healthcare systems consistently rank better than the US system?

> My point is that libertarian ideals are more respectful of individuals

No, it is respectful of property owners. Libertarianism is what you get when you take anarchism or communism but don't follow the thinking through to its logical extension, but single out private property for special treatment.

Somehow, according to the libertarian, we need government enforcement of one persons "right" to deprive others of access to certain resources, while we don't need governments for pretty much everything else. The hypocrisy of this doesn't seem to phase anyone.
Well, links are always better with context or a title. Same with youtube links - I frequently don't click them when there is no context or any clue about the contents. And in youtube's case, it could be a rick roll.
No, most low earners are receiving more back in benefits of various types than anything they pay into the system.

Thus if you replace these systems with mandatory investments, you are reducing their available cash.
You could add a get parameter defining which resource you want to get (no values meaning just getting the id/href) and you put something like ?expand=user,orders if you want to get them in one query

21 requests is indeed too much to display 10 items I think
1.9.1 is yanked as of now, which means no one can install it accidentally.
It's not technically spam, I suppose.

Flagged, though.
Air France leaves passenger with dead parent stranded in Paris
With the possible exception of some sort of enforcement, I think you may have just described what I always hoped churches(1) would be to their communities. So few seem to care for much more than a bigger parking lot and a taller... whatever the hell they build on the front of those things these days.

(1) Mosques, Synagogues, Temples, etc.
Though they have been very successful, it's a pity that in my experience they have turned into something of a big co in the way they deal with customers and quite sneakily hide important technical limitations from hackers who might want to use them.

After a year or two of happy premium-paying use, I noticed dropbox was using 100% of my CPU. Some googling suggested this was due to having too many files. Ok, fair enough, perhaps there are technical limitations meaning indexing >300k files is tough (very easy to get to that count if you're keeping open source codebases on DB), so I move files out of dropbox and clear its cache. After a week of constant 24/7 100% CPU usage and dropbox failing to update anything, I contact customer support and get sent copy + pasted boilerplate telling me to do what I've already done.

After more than one email to say 'I've done that, what next?' I get told it's due to symlinks in my dropbox folder. I have several in node_modules folders, and have never had a problem with them before, so I find this weird but remove all symlinks from my dropbox folder. No change after several days.

I try deleting files on the web interface - it refuses to do so for a folder with a large number of files in, and tells me to use the desktop interface (great...)

Also throughout this dropbox repeatedly overwrites work files while I'm working on them (thankfully with backups.)

At this point the customer support tells me how to delete my account if I'm not happy and they simply stop replying to my (polite) emails.

Googling around it appears this issue has existed for at least a year and a half, and yet there is very little mention of it (there's a bulletpoint hidden away on their website) nor does the interface warn you about it at any point. How hard would it be to at least add a notification like 'looks like you're adding a lot of files, please don't add too many more or I might stop working'.

I used to hold up dropbox as a great example of a YC company that was technically innovative and something of a hacker's company, but this experience has left me quite massively disappointed.
Most of Europe at least is doing far better than the US on most of these metrics, through socialized systems.
>To quit would have been a bad idea. It looks very bad on a CV. In the UK you are told that you shouldn't criticise a former employer, no matter what.

I don't think anyone should ever let fear of having a gap in their CV keep them in a job which they would otherwise quit. It should be possible to talk about why you left without being critical (saying you didn't "fit in" would be a non-judgemental way of explaining it). If it looks like you're avoiding being critical a good interviewer will understand and as long as you're honest and can talk about it confidently they'll give more weight to your skills than anything else. It's worth rehearsing answering the question so you can appear confident.

I've had to explain gaps in my CV where I've been unemployed for months (including a year out to work on a side project that went nowhere but which ultimately help me get my previous job as I was able to demonstrate my skill and bring in printed code listings to the interview). I've gradually worked my way up to a job where I've very happy with what I'm working on and have the skills and confidence to know I could get a good job quickly if I ever had to move on.

> The finance manager said that I shouldn't be aggressive at work, because I could be put on some sort of "employment blacklist", which would mean that I would never get a job ever again.

That was almost certainly a lie. They might have complained to an agency if you were working for one but they were probably more afraid of you telling someone about all the bad practice there than you were afraid of them. If this was fairly recent and you think it is still going on you might want to consider finding out if there is any regulator body you could make an (anonymous if you prefer) complaint against them.

I hope you find/have found work and employers that suit your ambitions.
I know what a honeypot (fake field that only bots fill out) but what's a timegate trap? Googling didn't bring up anything relevant.

Does it check how long it took the user/bot to fill up the form and dismisses it if it was too fast?
Upvoted, but with a note that you are wrong about deflation being good for land owners. Generally speaking land is a good hedge against inflation.
That would be a pretty good point, except that the real-estate market is currently gunked up with private debt. Eroding private debt with inflation can unlock a whole lot of markets that some asset holders don't want unlocked, because they're using the assets as a store of value (which can be transformed into other people's debt) rather than as a means of production.
"Even though an amplifier and a computer are both made of transistors, they have almost nothing else in common. In the same way, a real brain and a three-row neural network are built with neurons, but have almost nothing else in common." -- Jeff Hawkins (On Intelligence)

One example is that most NNs neglect the time domain.

A balanced approach recognizes the importance of learning from data, but does not _rely_ on big data. A holistic approach entails a close examination of biological learning systems.
It would be a much better argument without the strawman of absolute equality.
Lisp for C++ programmers
On third thought, I partially retract the comment about land. I've been confusing credit-backed conventional real estate markets with cash-backed land investing.
Spotify, Linode, Leaseweb, Office 365.

Spotify being by far the best value for money.
> When trained and educated economists think something is bullshit economics, we should consider it to probably be bullshit.

On the other hand, well-trained and educated economists could perhaps be incentivized to call something bullshit for reasons outside of academia. Like let's say, hmmm, I don't know, for personal gain?
Ah okay - how difficult is it to convince SME's that tech is the future? I envision most of them are quite content with old school telephony / mail, printing off spreadsheets etc?

From what I see you guys are one of the many startups in the region now bring the old school SMB's/SME's kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Sorry for the questions - I'm fascinated by the challenges faced in developing for a market that doesn't have the same accessibility as that in developed / western countries, not to mention the constraints placed by the local bureaucrats etc.
This is probably my favourite talk on the subject : http://www.stormpath.com/blog/designing-rest-json-apis
This is also why you should use pen and paper and not try to keep everything in your head?
Nexus 10 appears on Play Store for 2 minutes then taken down?
I'd spend a bit more time on this. Beginners are quite likely to have windows boxes, and Clojure doesn't work very well on windows. Indeed, telling them to run lein on windows is a recipe for yak-shaving of the first order. (Don't believe me: try switching to windows for a month.)

I'd recommend a virtual box to new Clojure programmers on Windows.
Bloom Filters by example
The Beautiful Agony of Writing
Let's imagine what happens in a world where Austrian Economics is true, but economists are lying to the rest of us for personal gain.

First prediction: the economists will tell us that Austrian economics is wrong, but then use the Austrian theories they secretly know are actually true to invest their own assets.

Anyone got an economist's portfolio to look at?
After reading this, I just glued (removable) a 90 degree led lens to my phone. Nice results so far.

Edit:
Link to such a lens: http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/611389199/Led_Light_Lens_9...

I am happy that I turned my phone into a macro camera for a few cents. :)

Edit2: sorry, I used a 60 degree lens, not a 90 degree one.
I seriously doubt anyone doing calorie tracking without scales achieves less than a 30% error rate.
I'm currently back in school in a non-programmer environment, and I honestly have a hard time bringing this sort of this up to most people I know here because I just know that they won't understand why this is so important and I just don't want to deal with the interpersonal mess :( :(
> Also, it's a great way for an employer to lower your salary by actually increasing it, by doing it at a lower rate than inflation.

This is extremely valuable for an economy. This is just about the only way people will accept a pay cut. Employers need to be able to reduce the amount they pay their employees sometimes.
Some people start startups in the hope of becoming much richer than what they were before. Most of the people for whome that is a major motivator are gambling, as your risk of failure is massive, and chance of that big payoff is ludicrously small.

If you want to become much richer than before, the more rational approach for most people is likely to be to work harder, live frugally, and invest everything they possibly can set aside.

I'm not so sure we'd be worse off without those few people whose only motivation for a startup is that they care so much about the potential payoff that they'd not start a company if they couldn't strike it big.
This is why I haven't been able to bring this up in my new environment (school). I know that people won't get it, and I just have a strong desire to avoid the admonishment :(
Yes, well, Keynesianism is an important piece of the neoclassical synthesis. To be droll: "mainstream theory is mainstream."
> PHP is an advanced template language for HTML.

PHP is a template language for HTML that's prone to CSRF.
I don't see why would the latter be any less RESTful than the former; as long as the "foos" still have their canonical URL, I don't see any constraint being bent or broken by having their representations be sent in another request/response.

In fact, I'd say the latter approach is actually more RESTful, since the former requires the client to build URLs, which breaks if the server changes them.
Setting up Emacs as a Ruby development environment on OS X
And if a last-minute interrogation of Oswald had not delayed his transfer, Ruby would not have been at the jail in time to kill Oswald. These unfortunate coincidences are not, however, consistent with a conspiracy.

That seems consistent with a conspiracy though; ie: Ruby wasn't ready, so delay Oswald.
No problem. Happy to answer :)

Actually its not too difficult to convince SMEs that tech is the future. Most of them are willing to try new things and thanks to the prevalence of smartphones they understand a lot of the terminology.

What is difficult is to convince them that "your" tech is their answer. Though many of them are content with old school gadgets, they will shift once we showcase the advantages of adopting the cloud etc. In most cases, we get into an account by doing a proof of concept so that the businesses get the feel of the system before they buy.
Print it out and attach to a wall.
Who?! Jobs, the saint, this is impossible!
Btrfs snapshots are implemented using COW-shared trees (multiple trees for data and metadata). They can't be implemented with hardlinks, that would be a very leaky abstraction.
No one is trying to "make everyone the same as everyone else". Where did you get that? Even communism doesn't attempt do that (the communist ideal is that every individual should contribute their particular, unique talents to society, and the fruits of their labor will be shared by all).

> libertarian ideals are more respectful of individuals

Libertarianism, at least in its current incarnation in America, is the most hypocritical and abusive of all political ideologies, because it insists that "one governmental body" (as you call republican democracy) exert violence to uphold property rights. So the rich's source of power – their money – would be protected by governmental violence, while the poor cannot exert their own power – their numbers. This is hypocrisy, and is disrespectful to intelligence. What about this, though: remove all regulation and central control, but in order not to deprive the poor of their power while upholding the rich's, why not dismantle the police, too? Let the rich amass their wealth, and let the poor rob them. This is the only intellectually honest libertarianism: it's called anarchy, and personally, I like it. But barring that, if you want the government to protect your wealth, I think it's only fair to let the poor exert their power by forcing you to share some.
The whole problem with Austrian economics is that they reject scientific epistemology entirely by waving a big flag on which is written, "Human Free Will makes everything unpredictable!"

And then they go ahead and make predictions anyway, out of sheer ideology.

If Keynes is epistemologically worthless, fine, but so are von Mises and Hayek. More so, in fact, because they adamantly refuse to employ an empirical method.
As a counterpoint, nearly all human technical advances (flight, propulsion, energy, computation) did not entail examination of biological systems. And ANNs in particular share a host of problems with statistical techniques: black-boxish behavior with lack of human-accessible state introspection and poor tractability.
Here is my personal experience...

It is actually took place, later on when there was an announcement regarding Dropbox raising from Sequoia .

This was the first time I heard of Dropbox.

Those days building a product which did similar to what dropbox were doing, except that mine used any distributed version control it could find on a computer (I had it supporting git, mercurial and bazzar) and push to servers with SSH.

It was all automatic, built with python, and monitored FS for changes. Supported any number of directories, etc.

So I felt I have this great prototype which I considered starting working on this full-time, till that morning when I read the TC article and I realized it simply been done, and by people who now have $6M in their pocket to make it even more awesome.

Given the effort and dreams I built upon my own version, I remembered how I could not use dropbox for quite some time.
As quesera noted below, on a not-so-big modern disk with 500,000 files, the metadata can easily be in the 50-100MB range, which adds up to >1GB for metadata (even when nothing has changed) if you back up every hour.

You should, however, consider bup (https://github.com/bup/bup) - it takes less than a minute to figure out nothing is done, it deduplicates parts of files, (that is, if you have a 20GB virtual machine image, and you've changed one byte in the middle of it, then the next snapshot is going to take ~10KB, not 20GB). The older release don't keep ownership/modification time, but there's a new version pending release soon that does.

It also works well remotely (through ssh), can do an integrity check (bup fsck), redundancy (using par2; important after deduplication). And it has a fuse frontend that makes it all accessible as a file system, as well as an ftp frontend.

bup is teh awesome.
The server is returning 503 so it was useful for me.
4 MB. It's quite mindblowing to think that now a low-end laptop has 1,024 times more RAM.
I find it really helpful to write little notes and diagrams to help visualise the problem and as a basic mnemonic technique. There's not much space in your short term memory so it's better to offload some of the work if you can. I've started reading Your Brain at Work. It explains how your brain operates in laymans terms and offers some workarounds for common problems.
>The whole problem is that inflation is theft. You are basically having your property taken out from under you without realizing it.

Property is theft. If we're going to be ideological, I'm throwing my Marxism into the ring, too!
"CELLSTAGRAM" - Instagram for cellular structures? j/k. This is an amazing hack, I remember when we were in school, we barely had access to a microscope. It was fascinating seeing the world from that perspective and always wished we could experiment with it further. This is a great hack, especially for under-privileged schools and kids in our region of the world (Lebanon, Middle East).
Probably better than me anyway: I usually refresh the reCaptcha image at least 10 times before I get one that 1) I might decypher and 2) won't take 15 letters to input
While I would say that the drop in rigour is worse in Medicine than Physics, it is clearly still present even there.

The way funding works, in particular, means people publish stuff-that-will-get-references with a similar attitude to web start-ups iterating their code, (by which I mean too damn fast and not listening to the peer reviews.)

I'd love to see this change, but I don't know how central agencies can easily/affordably work out which research(ers) to fund and which to cut. As others have said, by definition we don't know what work was useful/valid/critical until many years later.