skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am not sure why you feel it is rational to modify towards larger ambitions - don't you think that is that a reflection of your own values rather than an inherent truth?

I would possibly say that it is rational to modify towards having your own set of goals, but whether those goals are ambitious or not I think depends on what you value in life? As in - I think the "intelligence" part probably allows you to realise that it is possible to have many different types of goal in life and that working towards a set of goals that work for you personally is important, but that those goals can be defined by what you yourself value.

The most intelligent guy I know wants to have a family, work on somewhat interesting problems (in chemistry if it matters) but not work huge amount of hours, so he has set himself up to have a regular consulting gig that he can do from anywhere and still focus on spending time with his family.
Strikingly (W13) Launches Its Super Easy ‘One-Click’ Site Builder
No, air traffic is not 'almost automated', and pilots are not 'just there as a safety backup'. The only part of flying that has been automated is avionics, ie: taking off, flying the aircraft along a pre-set flight path, and landing it. While this may seem this is 'all you need to automate away pilots', it completely ignores these nasty few percent of tail risk where things turn out not to follow the exact preconditions at the time of the flight plan. Like weather, technical problems (in the plane or on the ground), delays, airspace congestion, diversions, whatever. In each and every one of such cases it's still the pilot that has to decide how to handle the situation and either fly the plane itself, or reprogram the autopilot.

People always seem to think planes fly 'autonomously', but they don't. They can fly 'automatic' maybe 90% of the time, but they don't fly themselves.
Bonus question: can you get the example to print anything other than 5? The fact that the example prints 5 is an artifact of having allocated "a" on the stack. However, the compiler does not necessarily have to do that. If the compiler can determine that the pointee of "p" is undefined, you should be able to get it to print the value of whatever was previously in the register allocated for the pointee of "p" (which will probably be RSI on an x86-64 machine since IIRC the "cout" statement gets turned into a two-argument function call, the second of which is passed in RSI).

I'm not sure if any compiler will actually do this, though. They might just see that the address of "a" is taken at some point and refuse to allocate it to a register.
> Do they really think that high-powered intellects have been analyzing this stuff for decades and come up with something that can be rejected by a man-on-the-street as "obviously false"?

Yes, because they're idiots. Idiots can feel in their gut truth and no amount of "facts" or logical reasoning can dissuade them.
Python.

I actually want to use Python in a spreadsheet program but it's more difficult than it should be, DataNitro is not free and Gnumeric's Python support is not enabled in Windows builds. Pyspread doesn't work quite like a regular spreadsheet program.
You've missed the main point of the article. He does spend some time raising practical objections, true. But this is really about Amazon's PR tactics, and how a carefully timed press release about a pie in the sky drone project is raising Amazon's profile in the holiday shopping season and (especially in the UK) pushing negative Amazon stories out of the news.
I think the submission itself is an attempt to sell it for 10k.
Amazon's Futuristic Delivery Method? Prime Air, Delivery by Drone
Python's Pickle format is similar. It interprets opcodes using a stack-based "pickle" machine. (I have started an Haskell implementation of it https://github.com/noteed/python-pickle)
That was not my experience with Scala. Every library we used had its own DSL and that made the code really hard to read. Maybe things are different now, but I'll bet that was a lot of people's first experience with Scala. It's what turned me off to the language, even though I did like using the standard Scala library quite a bit.

Edit: It was two years ago so other than Lift and some SQL DSL I don't recall which libraries we were using. I do recall wishing I hadn't taken that job.
Show HN: Minimalistic Radio app for iPhone
Once again, I will sing praises of C#. Some of the libraries are terrible, and it's Microsoft... but seriously, it fits the perfect happy medium between Java's clumsiness and Scala's everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink syntax.
Doesn't matter what articles say. This stuff isn't happening any time soon (or any time at all may be).

I'm surprised the general population is inclined to believe such bullshit - in fact I'm surprised Amazon themselves are inclined to believe it.

Flying by "drone" is:

- more expensive

- not reliable (at all)

- prone to theft (of the drone, not the package, mind you)

- doesn't work at all in bad weather

- less efficient than current delivery methods

- easy & fun to circumvent (oh crap someone killed the 1300mhz range, our 10 000 drones just fell off the sky, military style, QUICK NEWS STORY)

it goes on and on, forever, literally... if anything I think automated driving cars are easier to get right.
Note that this article is in the Guardian's Comment Is Free section, which is precisely for editorializing and putting forth personal opinions.
Question that nobody asks : why should we care about the gap if it increases productivity?

What bad consequences will it have?

I don't mean that theoretically people will feel bad, but how exactly will this be bad for a random joe to have a slightly smaller share of a much much bigger pie??
>Good, how?

Well, if we assume that the drone is pilotless up to the point when the drone needs to land:

* the drone flies to the GPS point in question and hovers pending instruction

* the drone takes a picture of the ground area and sends it via 4G to a controller

* the controller identifies a landing point and transmits it back to the drone

* the drone uses its obstacle avoidance systems to land, drop the package, and take back off for a return to Amazon's center.

This is just one idea. Perhaps Amazon provides you with a beacon for the drone, or you get a big QR code for the drone to target your house & they don't need pilots at all. Who knows!

Either way, it seems to me that the most interesting thing would be the collision avoidance systems for automated flight. But considering Google can do this with a car on highways, I'd imagine that a slow moving drone that can also operate along the Z axis would be easier.

> Flying military drones is a very complicated matter.

I'm sure it is - but military drones have an incredibly different mission; comparing them to a slow package delivery drone isn't really worthwhile. Hell, according to Wiki the Predator drone's stall speed is 60 mph - Amazon drones sound like they will be much slower, at least at first.
Site unreadable w/o JavaScript. :(
Q: But owls aren’t robots, they’re birds.
A: That’s the end of the questions, thank you.

Ha, nice to companies having a bit of fun. Worth the quick read.

I'd rather have companies release occasional posts like this throughout the year, rather than everyone trying to cram theirs into the 1st April.
HN frontpage? This is at least 5yrs old - that guy
>> My reasoning is that antivirus is a very international industry, and while a government might get its own companies to play along, it would not be able to influence international companies.

this sounds more like an assumption than reasoning. given all we know to date about the operations of the NSA and the CIA (they collaborate closely at times), we should not be so hasty in dismissing such an important topic.

>> Understanding that the companies could certainly lie, this is the response so far: no one has admitted to doing so.

well.. they wouldn't, would they.
Right. Because getting more joy from the "tapestry of life" (to quote Asimov) than from purely concentrating on one's own, means you're not only into eugenics, but you're also a snob about sentience and intelligence. Speak for yourself there, I personally don't see what intelligence or even health has to do with it. I don't think we can tell others what quality of life they have, even people in pain enjoy the few nice moments they have, and want to live.

But if you think this through, then everybody living forever would mean hardly any newborns, unless you propose we all cover everything in concrete 10 miles high until we figured the whole swarming over the galaxy thing out. OR not everybody would be immortal, and it would likely devolve into a two-tiered society straight out of dystopia; take your pick, but don't fucking blame me for you not thinking this through, and don't project the Frankenstein/Mengele possibilities of rushing into immortality headlong on me, either. Just nope.
Offer HN: 20% off GIMP/Imagemagick powered kids books 
Hey HN,

http://www.littleheroes.com makes personalized kids books, so you can get a truly unique printed book (or ebook) for that little kid in your life. We're offering readers of HN 20% off all our books. Just enter HN2013 as the promo code at checkout.

Why is this on HN? Well ...

Since our books are all personalized (text & illustrations) we have a pretty unique setup. Our artists create Photoshop files that have layers for each hair colour/style, eye colour/style, clothing selection etc. We then run this each file through a python script that utilizes GIMP's script-fu language to extract each layer, retaining the alpha channel so we can recompose after.

Once a customer makes their selections, we create the PDF by merging the appropriate layers using imagemagick and then combine all of the PNGs into a PDF using ReportLab. The file is then printed, bound and shipped.

Check out http://www.littleheroes.com and see if there's something you like.
Would wide swings in the price of an individual stock on no material news not suggest that perhaps the market pricing is not perfectly efficient? (And if it doesn't, then I don't think anything could. I mean, that is one of the primary means you would prove it is not efficient, so if you reject that, then there's not much else I could offer you.)
Nice! I've been wanting this feature for a long time:

http://philfreo.com/blog/the-problem-with-pull-requests-code...
I have once modified the Shunting-yard algorithm to parse distfix expressions (https://github.com/noteed/syntactical). Agda is quite famous for offering distfix (or mixfix) operators.
The scientific method is about testing ideas.

Generating ideas another matter.

Innovation often requires ideas that sound 'crazy' (because they don't fit with established ideas).
Not sure the language design can really be considered (totally) independently of the UI design. Spreadsheets are not text editors, and what is good for the goose may poison the gander and render it dead.
FYI that figure is $16 in most parts of the world. Use a comma ($16,000) for international audiences.
Isn't the more telling part the cos. that haven't responded till now? Notably US ones Symantec and McAfee.
I think, by your comment, you are not a scientist. As a scientist, there is absolutely nothing more despicable than intentionally and continuously publishing fraudulent data. This is the highest ethical standard in our field. Falsifying data is like an MD intentionally killing a patient because they couldn't handle the stress/demands of treating them any longer (yes, this is a drastic analogy, but I want you to understand the severity of what this man did). It is exceptionally unfortunately that this is perpetrated by scientists who are established in their fields but when this occurs as a graduate student, when the university is still accountable for the research and when you are still training to become an independent scientist the degree should never be granted and should be revoked.

A PhD is awarded for the contributions made to scientific discovery, whether the data is negative or positive (to the hypothesis). Doctoral training in the US has requirements for ethics training. This student demonstrated either a lack of understanding or a blatant disregard for scientific ethics. He also falsified his data, so he made no real contribution to scientific discovery. He has failed to meet two of the most basic requirements for a doctoral degree.

As someone who recently finished her own PhD, this is utterly disgusting. There is enough incorrect information in scientific literature as is from well conducted, controlled research because of the human error of data analysis and the fact that we simply don't know everything yet. We don't need it to be intentionally polluted by individuals who cannot or will not bear the rigors of research.
Oh, I bow before the philosophical might of a Telegraph article :/

As a female engineer, with lots of female friends that are lawyers, doctors, architects etc, I don't know a single one that appreciates being wolf-whistled in a professional context.

Actually, we don't even appreciate it in a non-professional context. It usually generates a certain unease about physical safety, but at least in a non-professional context you can roll your eyes and attribute it to the fact that you're dealing with a neanderthal.
Refresh - Mountain View, CA - Fulltime - http://www.refresh.io email: jobs@refresh.io

Must be local or willing to relocate (paid)

A tagline of what we do is: Refresh helps connect people at a deeper level by providing realtime insights about them just as you're about to meet them.
The best description however is found by simply installing the app (Iphone only at the moment - we're in the app store, Android soon - see job description below!) and trying it yourself.

We're super proud of the team we've built and we plan to keep the caliber high.
We have exactly one requirement for hiring an engineer - it's someone we'd like to work with. That's a simple statement, but if you dig deeper, there's a lot to it. It says that we think they're smart. And that we could learn from them. And that they could learn from us. And that we get along, and they fit our culture. And they're passionate about our product like we are. And of course - that they also want to work with us.

Our interviews are fun - at least we think so. They're largely modeled after Google interviews (there's a lot of Google interviewing experience in our team). Questions are either real problems we've had to solve (probably recently) or some abstractification of a bigger problem to see how you attack problems in general (with the "getting the right answer" not being the interesting part of the interview).

Specifically - We're looking for:

Backend Developers:
You're a crackshot in your backend language of choice. As I said, we're building a system that does an incredible amount of work all while the user is waiting for it to complete - so needless to say, we're looking for people who care about performance. A lot.

Our backend is a highly concurrent system written in Java using MongoDB. You might know Java or you might not, but either way you're willing to learn. If you don't know it - you can impress us in your language of choice. You understand algorithms matter. You also understand sloppy database access could make that ugly n^2 algorithm look absolutely blazing fast.

You love to code. You love to show off your results now and then to other engineers (as they're probably the only folks around who might get the intricacies of what you're excited about)

We're looking for both Senior and Junior backend engineers. If you're a Senior Engineer - you've worked in server-side code for a few years. You've scaled to thousands or millions of users. You can talk to other Senior engineers with very few words because you both know the special cases, assumptions, and pitfalls cold.

If you're a Junior engineer, you love to code and you're good at it. But most importantly - Be smart. Be passionate. Be excited. (New grads please apply!)

Android and IOS engineers:

You have apps in the store you can show us. You care about the user experience. You have a few years under your belt in either Objective-C or Android-Java.
Was hoping for something I could read rather than watch.
Worldwide Telecommute / REMOTE Automattic is currently hiring for a variety of positions.

We are passionate about making the web a better place and are strong believers in Open Source. We build WordPress.com, contribute to the WordPress Open Source project (http://wordpress.org) and work on a lot of other really cool stuff including Gravatar and Akismet. Join us if you are passionate about making the web a better place.

We have a number of other open opportunities - http://automattic.com/work-with-us/
Buy for the rights and ownership of this app, including source code.
People are missing that this is "30 minutes or less" delivery, which you're only going to do if you're there.
I think the current Excel formula language is perfect for what it does. 99.999% excel users don't really need anything more than sum or sumif.

I work extensively in Excel and we have an in-house programming language that can be run with an eval() type excel function. The code is written directly in the cells and you just have to eval() it to run it. It's brilliant, let's you do all you want without breaking excel in any way. The syntax is a pretty standard C variant with a lot of support for matrices (finance work).
imo the best argument for randomized algorithms is that you may want to show more "underexposed" articles without seeing all of them.

The issue with deterministic algos is that you basically have two options:

- Treat new things as guilty until proven innocent and don't push them to the front until they get votes. This is the current approach here.

- Push new things without "enough" votes to the front. This makes the front page almost all new items, invites spam, and generally defeats the purpose of a sorting algorithm.

The problem here is that you're necessarily combining both the act of "learning" article quality and the act of exploiting it, which necessarily makes at least one of those tasks suboptimal. One advantage of randomized algorithms is that you can add a third option:

- Show just enough underexposed articles to gather evidence (votes) without polluting the front page too much.
EMH says more than you can't beat the market. Booms and busts do show inefficiencies.

A trading strategy generating above-market (risk-adjusted) returns may be a proof of the problems in the EMH but it isn't the only one. Also once declared it may no longer be an effective strategy. It also isn't proof because it is impossible to prove that success over n years proves success over n+1 years.

However how about asking Warren Buffet if the EMH is true, would you accept his track record as proof against the EMH? If not what sort of trading strategy/record would you suggest might constitute the evidence that you are asking for.

Going back to my poker example, do you expect me to win the World Series of Poker to prove that Poker isn't just random luck and chance? Is once enough or do I have to repeat it?
Something on the order of 40 million people are first generation immigrants. Obviously a lot of them are very well educated, but many others come with little formal education and little english. I know there are some literacy requirements for citizenship, but I don't know how much that and education together would cut into the 40 million.

http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/charts/final.fb....

I presume that's some non-trivial part of the "functionally illiterate" in the US. The graph even shows the number rising rapidly which may go some way to explain rising levels of illiteracy in the US.

(And just in case there's any ambiguity, I don't attach any stigma to immigrants coming here being functionally or entirely illiterate. Half of my own ancestors didn't know English when they got here either)
This article, and most of the comments here, are, IMO, missing the point of teaching programming in school. You don't teach kids to code because they're all going to write code for a living. A semester or two of Python in high school is not going to leave most kids capable of building anything worthwhile. A few will be caught by it and learn on their own or continue studying, but that's a tiny minority and not the main benefit.

The reason we should teach programming is to force kids to think like programmers. Even if they hate it. Even if it's only for a couple hours a week for a few months. Programming is problem solving. Think about the mental processes involved: pattern recognition in complex systems, breaking down problems into their smallest parts, stepping through a potential solution one step at a time, managing multiple changing pieces of state at once. Those are your practical skills.

How many arguments could be ended if people knew how and were willing to think through their potential solutions one step at a time and see where each move left them? I'm the first to laugh at "STEM master race" arguments, particularly in education, but just because an engineer-like perspective isn't panacea doesn't mean it isn't a valuable tool that I wish more people had.
I've recently been reading an excellent book, Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Tyack). Among its useful points is that the definition of illiterate has been changing throughout the history of school reform movements --- first it was defined as 'can you self-reportedly read?', then as 'did you finish $grade_after_which_you_are_literate' --- where this grade has gone from 1, to 3, to 5, as reformers need to argue that reform movements are necessary. The last year that it was asked whether you could read, 97% of people reported that they could.

It strikes me as a curious problem that we now think 5th grade is necessary for functional literacy. What's being taught between 1st and 5th grades that's necessary for literacy? How are more people entering the 'illiterate' pool? Cannot we just wait for the illiterate pool to die out?

Or perhaps, as some people do, functional literacy is attempting to measure some sort of societal literacy: fluency in a 'common set of core beliefs' of our society. Tyack argues that this 'common set' has always been a low-rigor concept, never well taught by the school system and never well measured, and as such years of schooling and socialization can be used as a proxy for how familiar you are with society. Unfortunately, this societal literacy is sometimes at odds with true literacy: some schools automatically promote societal contingents of one age group to the next grade, regardless if everyone in that group has competency in the current grade.

Thus, I claim the fourty-five million figure was not measured with a sound bar for literacy, and urge a more nuanced view of literacy that celebrates America's success in making its population ~completely literate.
Why Obama trade negotiators push the interests of Hollywood and drug companies
I usually lowercase usernames before storing them in the DB, which saves a lot of mental effort later on -- specifically, where usernames are used as keys (like "website.com/users/username/"), but I've always chosen to preserve case on passwords as a security measure (being able to tell somebody your password without actually telling them your password is valuable, if only in extremely rare situations). It's odd to me that someone like a bank would choose the other way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6833223

Amazon to deliver by drone? Don't believe the hype (theguardian.com)
97 points by bloat 2 hours ago | flag | 79 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6830566

Amazon Prime Air (amazon.com)
1080 points by wyclif 13 hours ago | flag | 507 comments
The end of classical music
I've been following Cheeaun's work for a few years now. The guy writes plugins for various tools, always hacking away at things. It's quite entertaining to see what he comes up with next.
Device State Detection with CSS Media Queries and JavaScript