skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nitpicking certainly but I would say use something like antlr rather than peg.js

antlr "schemas" are extremely close to ebnf's (some exceptions obviously) and the compiler creation club could benefit from that.
Antlr 3 is usable in a variaty of languages (although 4 is a hellavalot simpler and solves a fair bit around left recursive grammers, but non jvm support is non existent still I suspect)
No. This letter is a model of clear communication and reasoned argument. I think 23andme is a great concept and admire what they're doing; I hope they get their ducks in a row so they can develop their offerings more effectively.
Nice links, thanks
It's actually kind of hard to tell -exactly- what the FDA wants without reading the original 510(k) submission. The claims by the FDA directly tie into the original claims by 23andMe as their intended use.

In any case, the FDA right now doesn't just want a change of copy. By "cease marketing", I presume they don't mean advertise it differently, they mean stop offering the product to customers - period.

While the FDA certainly appears to be taking issue with the specific marketing copy, they seem to be more annoyed that 23andMe has basically failed to complete the regulatory submission process - amongst other things failing to provide evidence to the FDA that their product actually works as intended.
Weblatch: automated Webhooks with Cloudant and Zapier
> There are huge information asymmetries involved when it comes to medical drugs...

This is what the FDA should be doing. Correcting information asymmetries. With labeling requirements, unbiased PSAs, drug pamphlets and literature. Not telling people what they can and can't put in their bodies, or what businesses can and can't sell on the open market.

In fact, I'd say most government regulatory functions should be set up this way. Clearly inform and educate your citizens, don't opaquely dictate the behavior of your subjects.
That's a fair point.

I'd be tempted to use the person within the organisation who's done lots of published research even without the diploma. But you make a good point - trials are about persuading the jury.
That's why they don't need to slander you - writing a lukewarm reference does the same job.
If you liked my guide to sharing data, you may also like my guides:

For writing R packages: https://github.com/jtleek/rpackages

For writing scientific reviews: https://github.com/jtleek/reviews

Or on the future of stats: https://github.com/jtleek/futureofstats
This has been on my mind lately as well, for some reason. That, and the point of this story http://sivers.org/horses which is basically that even after the fact, it's really hard to know anything[1].

I don't know if it's just from growing older but I feel a lot more humble when looking at peoples ideas and actions than earlier. I literally feel that I have no clue whether they will succeed or not whereas I used to quickly get quite strong feelings in one direction or the other. In one way, this feels more mature and zen but at the same time, it annoys me a bit. I feel that conviction is the trait of a leader and something I need to possess if I want to convince anybody to engage in my projects. Maybe I'll just practice faking it and hope they didn't read this comment :-)

Edit: [1] One of my favorite examples of this is in Felix Denis' book How To Get Rich where he describes that the problem with Apple is Steve Jobs. This was written 7 years ago when Apple was struggling and it looked like Steve Jobs was driving it into the ground with his stubbornness. (The book is excellent by the way, in spite of the tacky sounding title)
If you look at the FDA's website, it's littered with dozens of communications begging 23andme to submit some documentation about their product so that the FDA can evaluate the medical claims they're making.

See, e.g., this one from June 10, 2010:

[0] http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/ResourcesforYou/...

All the FDA wants in this letter is some kind of understanding that their genetic tests are actually valid and correct, since they are making medical claims regarding their accuracy:

> 23andMe has never submitted information on the analytical or clinical validity of its tests to FDA for clearance or approval. However, your website states that the 23andMe Personal Genome Service™ is intended to tell patients in advance how they will respond to certain medications including warfarin and clopidogrel. It also states that the data generated from the 23andMe Odds Calculator, a feature ofthe 23andMe Personal Genome Service™, includes the contribution of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to disease risk. Consumers may make medical decisions in reliance on this information.

The FDA then establishes its ability to regulate this (remember, it's legally required to do this):

> During a meeting between 23andMe and FDA on July 29, 2009, you described the 23andMe Personal Genome Service™ as consisting of a software program that analyzes genetic test results that are generated by an external laboratory in order to generate a patient specific test report. Thus, the 23andMe Personal Genome Service™ is a diagnostic device and subject to all applicable requirements of the Act.

They then very helpfully point them to all the forms, documents, etc., necessary to satisfy the legal requirements:

> For a device requiring premarket approval, the notification required by section 510(k)of the Act, 21 U.S.C. 360(k), is deemed satisfied when a PMA is pending before the agency. 21 C.F.R. 807.81(b).

There's even a helpful mailing address and fax number:

> Please direct your questions and response to: James L. Woods, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Avenue, W066-5688, Silver Spring, MD 20993

Honestly, this sounds like 23andme has been getting away with something for a while and the FDA is tired of giving them leeway.
Well, the FDA seems to think that 23andMe does market its product as diagnosing something. That’s what this whole letter is about.
What on earth are you talking about? That comparison is from the looney bin.
I got my first PC in 97, that's how long I held out with my Amiga. At the time my Amiga 1200 had 42MB ram and a 68030 accelerator. I had carved a slit on its left side so that I could string an IDE cable out and use a cheap 3.5" HDD (which was sitting in a separate enclosure with its own power source).

When I switched it had already been painfully obvious for years that there would never be an Amiga capable of competing with PC again. It is in a way sad that it played out the way it did and it's easy for me to get nostalgic when I read pieces like this.
I like it, but I noticed it doesn't work on words when you pan the cursor back to a previous word or try and insert a new one in the middle of a sentence.
>Why don't we just agree on (c) and implement it without need for bloodshed?

Because large portions of the not-completely-disenfranchised consider (c) immoral.

Trust me, I agree on (c). I want my post-scarcity society, goddamnit. The diminishing happiness returns point on income is $70k/year USD per household or local standard-of-living equivalent, and I'm sure with further study we could find out exactly the cost of living variables behind that number. For reference, the current GDP/capita of the USA is $48k/year per person, easily enough to get over the diminishing returns point with approximately 1.5 "GDP/capita portions" per household (ie: leaving several more portions for investment, government, and other nonpersonal uses).

Or as I sometimes joke to people, the Economic Singularity, the point where our economy tips over into being definitively able to satisfy each and every citizen's fundamental needs, has long-since happened. There is no remaining moral excuse for poverty or toil.

However, the powerful elite of society now require poverty and toil for the rest of us simply because their moral code is: "He who does not work shall not eat." That is why there will be class warfare: because we have implemented a system which views mass starvation as a moral local maximum.
So the code you are copying-and-pasting from previous projects is your own framework or collection of components, you're just keeping it private.

That's exactly how everyone else develops (but using open-source libraries): use a module system and glue together things from previous successful projects (made by other people). Why your own private framework is better than what is out there is a whole different matter.
What's the logic behind the alcohol part in this? Mine goes red when I change it from 4 drinks a week to 1... surely the latter is healthier? :)

Great design by the way!
>> "I think most people view their service as fun thing"

The problem is that's not how they are marketing it as others have pointed out. They market it as a serious health evaluation tool you can use as a step in preventing future illness.
What about "changing the world" (for the better, presumably) doesn't require financial independence AND a good chunk of luck on top of that?
...again, the FUD that if you go framework-less, you're automatically re-inventing the wheel. Total B.S.
> For large values of cash, yes they can...

No they can't, unless they have taken special measures (e.g. surveillance[1]) which are invariably resource-intensive. If a $100 turns up in a Miami drug dealer's wallet, there's no way of tracing it from the ATM is was issued from in NYC a month earlier. Cash does not leave a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to every wallet it passed through.

Bitcoins, on the other hand, are traceable by default. Users have to make an effort to cover their tracks using a laundering service (vulnerable to compromise) or something like CoinJoin (potentially vulnerable to network analysis).

[1]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1460639069/follow-the-mo...
Hmmm...what do you mean exactly? Multiple ones are on twitter etc. http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-employees-you-should-fo...
Assembly!? Kids these days! I start with a fresh copy of the universe everyday for all my coding needs.
> Skip all the exotic genetic issues and think about personal experiences with something boring, like blood pressure. No legal problem with testing someones blood pressure and giving them numerical results and maybe a medically sane set of typical ranges.

Actually, the device used to take the blood pressure reading, if I understand things right, did have to be approved by the FDA.

The FDA's letter keeps referring to 23andme as a 'device', so it seems like the FDA's authorization/responsibility is specifically to regulate devices rather than services, actually, but they've decided 23andme can be technically classified as a 'device' under the relevant laws/regulations.

If it was instead considered a 'service'... I wonder if there'd instead be a problem with practicing medicine without a license, if it's not MD's who are providing the 'service'!
Thank you for sharing, a great article indeed.

I'm glad it ended up the way it did, Microsoft at the time was betting on openness being a feature, and I think they helped move the computer and software industries they have gone in since, towards greater openness (and thereby professionalism).

People associate Microsoft with closed source, but it is of course relative, they were in their day the vendor who was banking on openness and courting developers harder than the others.
No definition is perfect. I admit that. But I do think, as you say, it's a decent starting point, to reason about how intrusive/assuming (or not) a piece of code is when we build on it.
This mangled nearly every single word that I typed.

[edit] Ah, I see. I have to type unnaturally slowly in order for it to work.
That's not what he meant.

He meant that GP is so dumb that he is forced to use Linux .h in his project (along with all arch dependencies) rather than to take 5 minutes and code it from scratch. And that he is ignorant of licensing matters of GPL'd code or, more likely, he just doesn't give a f_ck about them. That'd be the gist of what ExpiredLink meant.
Its not an effective way to frame an argument. Claiming that it is an appropriate response is basically saying that people who write overly complicated websites are so stupid that they cannot understand a reasonable, adult conversation. This is just plain ridiculous. The majority of people who write bloated websites are probably very smart individuals who just need to learn more about design.
Here's two examples:

I'm testing the effectiveness of a drug. Drugs of this class have a certain likelihood of working, the noise in my data is known, the experimental group did this much better than the control... does the drug really work? So far so trivial, in either Bayesianism or Frequentism. Now, I happen to mention that I tested 10000 variants of this drug and only sent data for the one that seemed to work. The rest aren't interesting after all. Under Frequentism, it's easy to take this into account. Under Bayesianism, it requires complex definitions of observations, and is easy to overlook as there's no space for it in the formula.

I have a collection of unfair dice. Unfortunately, they all look the same and got dumped on the floor. Now someone grabbed one off the floor at random and wants to make bets with me about it. Even experienced Bayesians are likely to mix up their propositions in a case like this. I say that from having read discussions of similar problems. Yes, if you do it right, it comes out correctly, but Frequentism makes sure you've thought about what you're asking in the same way Bayesianism makes sure you've thought about your priors.

Somebody else will have to give a third example.

Bayesianism and Frequentism are based on the same math, and math is math. If you use them correctly, they'll get you the same answer every time. The difference is what they make easy, and what mistakes they protect you against.
as to 'prior art' challenges, those aren't significant in first-to-file jurisdictions such as Europe.

That's not true. First, this is a trademark, not a patent, so first-to-file is irrelevant. Second, prior art is still significant in first-to-file jurisdictions, it just has to be published (i.e., it can't be secret).
A similar thing happened with the Capital of Egypt when the Nile changed course http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi-Ramesses#History
The gist is that even though movements between banks tend to balance fairly well, they don't balance exactly. Therefore, banks can end up with excess reserves or a shortage of reserves, which they are then interested in lending out / borrowing, respectively. Or they might be interested in buying or selling other assets, such as bonds, to bring their excess reserves closer to zero.

When a central bank sets the interest rate, it's talking about the interest rate at which such short term loans happen. It does so by simply participating in the market until the interest rate is where it wants it to be.

These things are addressed fairly well in http://neweconomicperspectives.org/p/modern-monetary-theory-...
> Then I realize that success (in terms of an exit or something similar) can't be the goal: I work on startups because I like building things and I want to change the world.

While the above might be a commendable personal goal, startups are indeed created for their possible exit value. The vision, the tech and the kind of things you end up working on are commanded or at least heavily influenced by these circumstances. In that sense there isn't too much difference from working for an innovative established company (except you don't get a shot at the money pot).
I was at a startup weekend that had 'hipmunk' and it seems to be doing well right now...:) wish I'd jumped on their group rather than the one I was on.
SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 prepares for milestone SES-8 launch
Guess this blog is a prototype too, takes very long too load...
This would work if the affected party is making the call. It would still not ensure that the 3rd party caller will get reimbursed. A lot of domestic violence calls are real, yet the victims may not actually confirm that there were, in-fact, abuse (due to shame, fear, whatever) ... the reporter loses money in this case even when he/she just wants to report the crime.
That's a 404. I guess they had an issue launching it or something?
"Success in [indie] game development is lucky like poker, not lucky like the lottery."

I forget where I read this; it may have been on Twitter, but it could apply to startups and probably many other facets of life.

Edit: Found the source.
https://twitter.com/MattRix/status/401072871323086848
You cannot automate a cold-wallet scheme.

Any automated website or tool will require a "hot wallet" of some kind. The more funds in the hot wallet, the longer the website / BTC Bank can go automatically.

Customers like having funds available to them immediately... among other things.
One thing VMS was not was quirky, DEC went to considerable effort to make everything consistent. If you didn't know a command you could guess it, and it would take the same switches as any other command. Contrast that with Unix whose commands really are quirky...
Thanks for the tale, heartwarming to hear that he is still at Microsoft. In my view some of the best work in our industry has come from lifers (or at least long-timers).
Did you read the post? I said basically that. The difference is, I don't hold my "framework" out as THE general reusable pattern that everyone else should use. It's also extremely disconnected (without the glue code) and really makes no hard assumptions or influences over how you use it.

And, btw, it's not private. Most of my code is on github. I just don't try to force it down others' throats.
I've heard of this before as "Not invented here" syndrome. Frameworks are powerful as they give all developers a common language and methodology for doing repeatable tasks, meaning that when I need to fix a bug in your code, I know how it is architected and where the code should be because you have used a framework I understand.

Not to mention that these frameworks undergo alot more extensive testing than an average developers code will ever go through. By using a framework you benefit from not having to go through the pain of dealing with all the different browser models and quirks that every version introduces or takes away.

For really advanced or incredibly high performance tasks you might be correct but to me that is the 1% of tasks, for everything else a framework should give you all the scaffolding you need allowing you to instead focus on tasks that add real value into the product/service you are working on.
Tesla Elon Musk On Being New Steve Jobs
I am instinctively against over-simplification of this sort of thing because, in my experience, the devil is in the detail and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
No security ever built into Obamacare site
of course they are. But you have to have been working hard all those months/years, so you can capitalise on the luck when it comes.
I had a startup fail a couple of years ago, nothing big but enough to be sort of known to the local market place. After failing to raise enough capital to keep it going, I had to pull the plug, and consequently look for a job my self. This is when I realized that employers who care about the wording "failed" emphasize the same in the work place. I struggled to continue on to final interviews in every case where the employer spent more than a couple of minutes discussing WHY my startup failed, instead of discussing what we did successfully. This became super obvious when I met with people who asked what we did successfully, and really didn't care about that it failed. The hard part is to be lucky enough to meet the people that don't care that my startup failed, and who believes what I did is more important.
Frameworks are different from a set of tools that allow you to accomplish a task.

Picking up bits and pieces from old code isn't a framework. Its a specific tool. Think of Backbone or Ember or Angular as a mechanic shop. Things work a very certain way. The copy and paste code from other sites is a hammer, or wrench. You don't have to use them a certain way, but when you have them, you can use how they are intended.
I actually moved my A1200 to the PC desktop case! My father and I moved motherboard and other components there (motherboard actually didn't quite fit - we needed to saw off a piece of it). Those were the days...
Ask HN : If Silicon Valley Is The Tech Mecca, Y Aren't All of Them Millionaires?
Or Billionaires? Is there any special reason? If everyone knows the secret and steps to get money, why are some startups valued more than others?
any friction in the process compounds the amount of time for "the future" to be here

You're one of those people that rides bicycles without any brakes then, I take it.
The problem I'm trying to solve: normally, when you're in another city it's hard to purchase, write out, buy postage for, and then identify the correct mailbox for a postcard.

It's also just meant to provide a really simple and easy way to send a postcard to someone. Some of the cards are holiday cards and others are greetings from where I'm based here in NYC.

What kind of postcards would you like to see on the site? I purchased the rights for each card so that's why the selection might be construed as a bit limited.

Thanks for your feedback!
I JUST bought the kit yesterday. The FDA is right though. Imagine making extreme decisions (e.g., double masectomy to avoid breast cancer) based upon the information. This is making me consider cancelling my order.
The Chinese have the death penalty for food adulteration with toxic or non-food products[1]. It's funny seeing people complain about heavy handed regulation in comparison.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_offences_in_the_People...
Hi, Thanks.

Working in Finance shouldn't prevent you from working in a startup.

I can recommend trying to scratch your own itch(es) - are there any problems in particular that you run into on a frequent basis, for which existing solutions are poor and you feel could be done in a better way?

Another exercise I could recommend is to ask yourself what would you be doing now, if you were free to work on anything?
- No TV (and no news). Stopped watching years ago, spend more time on productive things.

- No video games. I binge and play again for maybe 1 week a year.

- Spend free time with wife, because that's all she really wants.

- Workout 4-5 days a week. Lift early between 10am and 3pm, whenever I reach a good stopping point. Listen to Mixergy or similar podcast during workout. Do cardio in the evening (between 7pm and 10pm) and sit on the bike for 30 min to 1hr and read.

- Sleep 7-9 hrs/night.

- Never set an alarm.

- No alcohol, tobacco, drugs, coffee, or tea. Ever. Might sound crazy, but it's not hard since I just never started.

- Don't blog or use Twitter.

- Cut hair weekly (short haircut, cut it myself), shave almost daily (whenever I go somewhere). A military habit, but when you look good, you feel good.

- Had a few close calls while deployed (was a Marine for 8 yrs) and learned life is too precious and too short to do anything but my best work and left the Marine Corps as soon as I returned from my last deployment. I started making decisions based on what I'd regret the least, regardless of outcome.
Not all of it is reasonable, at all:

"For instance, if the BRCA-related risk assessment for breast or ovarian cancer reports a false positive, it could lead a patient to undergo prophylactic surgery"

Uh, you don't think the surgeon is going to demand a second BRCA test be done before performing the surgery?
The Silk Road Founder financially linked to Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto
That's incorrect as far as I know, but if you find information that says otherwise, I would be very interested to hear about it.