skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I just want to quickly talk about the main problem I've noticed people having when having personal conflicts and arguments (especially noticeable on MBTI forums, with the "logical thinkers" going up against the "emotional feelers").

Logic, in the practical, day-to-day sense, isn't something that replaces emotion. Without emotion, we wouldn't be able to make logical decisions (established by studies on people with brain damage that specifically took out their capacity for emotion- they can lay out all the pros and cons of a decision, but they can't actually decide)- because emotions are what allow us to atribute value to things.

So when we say "I did the logical thing and took the job that offered more pay", what goes unsaid is that we emotionally prefer more money to less money, and maybe value that over whatever the other costs much be.

TL;DR:

Logical decision-making is calculative, but it is not free of emotion. Emotions matter.

PS: I know this isn't directly related to the more mathematical, axiomatic sort of logic being discussed... but I just have a lot of feelings.
I'm glad someone else made this reference. The first half of the story reminded me of Chappelle's "I'm sorry officer - I didn't know I couldn't do that" bit
How The Industrial Internet Will Change The Industrial Sector
Totally fair point--I'm looking into Python for similar reasons...what would a business guy know about Java syntax anyway? ;-)
If you only get your investment advice from online commenters you're doing something wrong. Reddit has become particularly bad lately.
Happy Christmas Hacking
Working on anything interesting over the holidays? Please do share links, ideas below! :)
Stangenkunst: Mechanical equivalent of AC power transmision
Why is it better that your perspective is humanized? I would think you make better decisions by reading statistics and trying to improve the numbers, than by reading stories and acting on your emotions.
On the other hand I can see that stories can be useful for highlighting problems in your model so that you can improve the model, but I have a hard time seeing their usefulness apart from that.
"The personality of the United States changes periodically. Sometimes we're generous and inspiring. Other times we're total dicks. It's a complicated country. But no one thing defines the personality of the United States more than our willingness to spend ten trillion dollars - and kill anyone who gets in the way - just to put a bullet in one asshole's skull. That gives me neither pride nor embarrassment; it's just a statement of fact." - Scott Adams: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/our_moon_shot/
I've also had that problem, and I agree that it's not my job to educate the world in the "One True Way(tm)". However, I still find it more effective to be summarising conversations as I go, so that after 20 back-n-forths I can actually see what's going on. To that end, and to avoid the problem you mention, I start all emails with a variant of:

Thank you for your email - please find my replies to
your various points interleaved below, each in context.
Hmm, will Apple be blocking non-certified CPUs and RAM? Cause those princes are kinda high, would be cheaper to get the base config and upgrade it yourself...
Freedom and Self-Realization
I don't know anything about graphics and simulation, but I'm always impressed with these SIGGRAPH demos. Here's the demo trailer for the papers from this year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAFhkdGtHck (3 min)
Google, the best search engine in the world
If we assume 5 minutes per frame then even without optimizations we should be able to render 25 frames per second in around 15 years (assuming Moore's law continues to hold)
Ask HN: What do you think of OpenUDC-like currencies?
I'm not a big fan of bitcoin because of its capped money supply (21 millions BTC) which favors the first users of the currency.

There are other cryptocurrencies like [1] that propose to connect the money supply to the number of users, so that the first emitted currency unit has the same value as the last emitted one.

I'm not familiar enough with cryptography and economics to fully understand the risks and benefits of this kind of currency.

So, are you also concerned with the bitcoin's capped supply? What do you think of the alternatives?

[1] http://project.openudc.org/
It is not very fair to make a general criticism about the weakness of logic based on propositional logic, since that is the weakest of the various families of logic - the other two main kinds of logic being first-order logic (FOL) and term logic.

First-order logic is powerful enough that it has become the yardstick of adequacy for mathematical proofs: a mathematical proof about a mathematical domain is only adequate if (i) the mathematical domain accepts a first-order axiomatization, and (ii) we believe the proof can be rendered as a proof in FOL.

So the broader point is that we have a lot of freedom in choosing axiomatisations. But in fact we do not, at least in mathematics: there is one accepted axiomatisation (up to equivalence of inessential variations) of Peano arithmetic, one of ring theory, one of vector spaces, one of C* algebras, etc.
5 subtle ways you're using MySQL as a queue, and why it'll bite you
It doesn't matter if it should or not, it is. As is most other currencies. See how George Soros made his fortune.
Seems like everybody does this, except companies (which is probably why manufacturers still slap these high prices). It's ECC memory, though, I think it's more expensive than non-ECC (still not that expensive).
I relate to this. I remember when I first had internet access as a kid, I'd go to GameFAQs and websites about SimCity and Red Alert- and I was so blown away at this amazing access I had to hundreds of internet strangers who were interested in the same things I was interested in.

I immediately felt that I had to own a little piece of that, that I had to create a space for myself and be useful to others the way they were useful to me.

Alway great to be reminded of the incredible opportunity we have, that nobody quite had prior to this. A child with an internet connection having access to more information than the US President did 20-30 years ago. That's really something. Thanks for sharing.
Niantic Labs Location Based Game Ingress Leaves Open Beta; Now Open To All
>That way the various OpenBSD efforts can be supported, yet written off as an off-site operations cost by such a company.

Tax reasons it appears. Maybe they don't have non-profit status and so a donation can't be put in as a cost before tax but an electricity bill can.
Is that personal experience or a general research result?

Is the result better than with careful code reviews [of the critical pieces] (both after writing, but also short checks during development over a code listing and coffee)?

Intuitively, everything with coffee involved ought to be better! :-)
Top Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVA) Pros You Should Know About
Bitcoin below $400 and still goes down ...
That's how it works with micro-frameworks, you pay for what you use. Now, it's not necessarily a problem, last time I checked, there was a decent list of functional Flask components. What do you feel is the advantage of having a huge 'contrib' folder, as long as the extensions are maintained? Because the advantage of not having an ORM bundled per default, and easily switching something like the templating language are pretty clear to me.
Yeah, I still wonder if it is a joke inclusion or not. Log4j is probably larger than all other frameworks on that page, and it just handles logging.
looks broken here if i rotate it until it redraws which is a shame...

i do find this interesting coming from a native rendering background. the idea of converting data from one, fairly inefficient format (FORTRAN friendly from the look) to a spectacularly less efficient format still is a bit mind boggling without appreciation for the web stack (JSON is not for run-time in my world - its for 'tools' or 'compile' time).

the rendering is also quite underwhelming on a desktop PC - especially that it cuts out whilst rotating. there is some obvious stuff here that can be cached on inspection of the comments on github...

for instance, since there is a lot of data processing already, how about 'unprojecting' the data to remove the extra interpolation overhead from having to apply a transform and its inverse? Just because they have chosen to project their data onto a sphere doesn't mean you have to follow suit... its probably a useful format for meteorologists or cartographers but its not suited for rendering at all.

of course doing that will have similar results to a low pass filter unless you use a much higher density grid than the source (since you want a regular grid in your result and have irregular data points) - but visually that is very acceptable as a compromise.

the obvious guess suggestion is webgl and a 3d canvas, and dropping any fancy svg or other elements if they need to be visually sycned up with precision and rendering all of it yourself in a single consistent way. in the browser world its often a bad idea to rely on the implementation of anything if you need guarantees of quality - there is a lot of variation and a lot of bugs that have persisted for years on end...

i'd also suggest partitioning the data once its in 3d - a kd-tree or regular octree is quite easy to implement and understand and perfectly suited for this imo
>Is there any reason to keep them besides having a reason to arrest anyone at any time?

A former NYC ADA mentioned that this was a popular way for the cops to arrest people because they felt like it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/nyregion/minor-offense-on-...
Alternative: The iMacros addons for Firefox, Chrome or IE. Not exactly an autofill replacement, more like a macro recorder for web browsers.
Bitcoin Private Key Necromancy
Ask HN: Meet-up start up guys in Paris?
Hello HN,

I will be in Paris for the next two weeks (from Monday 23/12/2013) and it would be awesome if I could meet up with guys working in the start-ups in Paris. my email: kenshiro at kenshiro dot me.

I'm keen to network, have a couple of beers or fine wine, and discuss tech or any other subject really. French is my mother tongue so there should not be any language issues :).
Surviving The Internet on Low Speed DSL [in 2013]
I like your point because it helps me understand why I'm a prick sometimes. It could just be that I'm looking for excuses for my overly pedantic behavior, I'm not sure. It's hard for me to read my emotions :-(
Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab
Chromebase – First All-in-one ChromeOS Device, from LG
Regression testing is inevitable, but with a minimal framework, you'll essentially end up rewriting the controllers, and part of the views. If you switch templating systems, modifying the views can't be helped. And the controllers should only be a glue between your view and the service layer, so it ought to be solely administrative code.
So a breathable frame is more important than the spring mattress?
The fact that you're interested in minute-to-minute changes probably illustrates that this quantity of Bitcoin is too risky an asset for you to hold. Good luck.
Because if you're black you're in a gang and if you're white you're just joshing around.
Mount a Raspberry Pi-Powered Google Calendar On Your Wall.
The guy talks way too fast though. I'm really struggling to understand what words he's saying. It almost feels like it's artificially accelerated.

That being said, the visuals do indeed have a "wow" factor to them.
new WhatDidYouSay.CoreBusinessLogic.PickALanguage.AnyLanguage()
I believe I get your point, but you seem confused about what you mean by "logic". Formally, your example is:

1. I prefer more money than less money

2. Job x is offering more money

3. I prefer job x

There is your syllogism, your "logical thing". However, the emotional part about money is just an axiom: you may call it obvious, but not logical.

... Or maybe you can, if you consider something like:

1. Money is good

2. I prefer more good than less good

3. I prefer more money than less money

However, you will always end up on an axiom: something you say is true, without any logical thinking involved, like "money is good". There is your emotional part.

I hope I understood your point correctly. In this case, my answer is: you can always separate logic from emotions by going into details of the reasoning.
I'm taking notes for this course, if anyone wants to read them: https://gist.github.com/dideler/8018644

I covered lesson 1 tonight.
Thank you captain obvious. I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA that using student loans for unauthorized investments is a violation of the contract. Gee willakers! I better go turn myself in!
there goes your bitcoins
Why Did 60 Minutes Let the Head of the NSA Fool Its Audience?
Does the "send a message" thing work? Other than the obvious disconnect to whatever message is thought to be sent and whether that message is received let alone understood, any apparent examples I've encountered only make me consider possible inherent unfairness or corruption, not anything else.

Either the "system" is responding fairly and accurately to the level of "wrong" or it's just a bunch of power brokers in exercise, not contemplating justice.
I came here for some opinions on where the dive ends.

Will we see the BT under 200$?
Self-hosting video in the modern day is an absolute bloody nightmare. Don't do it unless you have no other choice.

You may, however, want to investigate one of the other video hosting options out there who focus on business use. I've had some conversations with Wistia recently, and whilst they're wildly inappropriate for my use case, in general they seem quite impressive. Other options I'm aware of include Brightcove or hosting your video with a CDN.
No money for the pharma companies to prove that honey, garlic or any other naturally occurring substances that they can't patent are effective medicines.
It's possible that it is like the Macbook Air and even the RAM is soldered on. The thing about the air was that everything was so jampacked, so they were forced to do that. Hopefully not the case with Mac Pro :<
It looks pretty good, but still, I think some of these examples look really foamy, and not like real snow. Not all physical behaviour is yet replicated I think.
I can relate to this. Very well put.
Well it WAS kinda "educational" for him, wasn't it? ;)
5 architecture anti-patterns and solutions for large Rails apps
i think its a bit of a gross over-simplification that this is why... but its a good observation.

two classic engineer arguments i've heard over and over in many contexts:

* academia is not grounded in reality therefore academics are not worth much - solving theoretical problems is not as hard as solving real problems and the tools and skills required are radically different. (or 'your MBA is worthless')

* engineers make products, you need a product to sell products, sales are necessary, but the rest is fairly optional and can be outsourced. sales depend on products not the other way around therefore engineers add more value than anyone else can. (or, i don't need you to the same level that you need me)

both arguments are flawed, but extremely common and have some truth to them. (you can flip them on their head too which is interesting...)
Twitter knows you before you register by their widgets (think about Facebook)
We determine the people you might enjoy following based on your recent visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem (sites that have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets). Specifically, our feature works by suggesting people who are frequently followed by other Twitter users that visit the same websites.
Designer woes - how to name files and where to put them?
George Soros made money from speculation (e.g. shorting the pound out of the ERM), not investment (buy and hold as the OP advocates).
I keep hearing this but I never see any angle to this statement where it could possibly be true.
HoverZoom for Chrome infected with malware
This is a concept that I've discussed frequently with team members. Related: if you abstract away the differences between A and B, you likely lose some of their unique advantages. A and B could be databases, hard drives, etc. It may be worth it, but it's a tradeoff.
Is aspartaam veilig en dus gezond of niet? | Ik eet suikervrij
Actually, his worldview closely matches the world out there, and yours doesn't, so technically his worldview is right.
27 external references and 4 books in the article seems a reasonable start, no...?

("Cite" not "site" btw)
Show HN: This holiday season, Sell better with VisitorEngage
Just personal experience.

Better than some theoretically perfect practice of careful code reviews? I don't know. Better than code reviews as actually implemented everywhere I've worked? Yes. (In particular I find it's really hard to maintain the discipline of carefully going through each other's code when you know that most of the time you won't find anything)
In 08' pension funds got wiped out. They felt so stupid. They decided not to sell, and just considered their loans a write-off. They stayed written off. You should assess the quality of your investment in utility, not years. And in regards to Bitcoin, allow me to quote myself

> Everything goes up in price, until it doesn't.
Wow, this has really got the attention of the Chinese authorities. This only alludes to how incredibly disruptive bitcoin is going to be. Time to go all-in if you haven't already...
Clash of the Titans Inside Microsoft's Battle to Foil the NSA
Coffee is certainly my pair! :)
I use HHVM in prod. I love it, well done :) I'm actually putting together an app dev "template" for composer to be used with HHVM, and a few compo sable libraries. Not a framework, but good libs and best practices.
We just launched our pricing plans and public signup (beta) after being in closed beta for over a month.

VisitorEngage helps you collect feedback, run surveys and push proactive notifications on your website based on visitor's behavior.
~ 30 day low at the moment
Introducing USV: CloudFlare's newest investor
This is one of the key ideas that Gödel, Escher, Bach tries to convey accessibly. I've always thought of it like a popular science book, but for logic. Unless you're already familiar with the ideas, it's a great place to start or even just get a taste. A great read for non-mathematicians.

Viewing logic systems as objects themselves is a very important insight and yet surprisingly counter-intuitive. Logic is logic. It feels like the aether of reasoning--constant and ever-present. But in reality, you can easily design and use different systems with different constraints and philosophies, giving you different results. You can even reason logically about logic, considering a logic system as an object itself! I think this sort of realization is one of the most important steps to understanding that elusive "mathematical mindset" people like to talk about.

For me, learning all about Curry-Howard and how programming relates to logic really opened my eyes. I'm already comfortable with treating programming languages and programs as objects--I do all sorts of metaprogramming and static analysis and so on. Seeing proofs and logic systems in the same light made everything clear. A proof is just a program; a logic just a programming language and so I can treat them in the same ways. I really believe Curry-Howard is one of the most important ideas I've ever learned--it gave me a new perspective on CS, a new perspective on mathematics and a way to naturally link the two. Thinking by analogy is very powerful, and Curry-Howard is ultimately just that, a rigorous analogy.

As an aside, I think we can reasonably codify induction by talking about probabilities. See "Does Algorithmic Probability Solve the Problem of Induction"[1] which is a great paper that breaks Betteridge's law. (Sort of.)

[1]: http://world.std.com/~rjs/isis96.pdf
My rhymes are bottomless...
The pdf linked [1] covers in-depth what the narrator is saying.

[1] https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/production...
No one claimed 100% of every TED talks are about groundbreaking stuff and all of them are things that have happened in that particular year. Not to mention, more specifically TEDx is more about local issues, not necessarily global.
Having all secrets in one place is IMO a good thing, as it's unlikely you will accidently put secrets somewhere else.

During deployment, you will only have to inject one file.
The examples don't support the argument. It's not like writing your application using UDP and expecting some packet loss is going to mean that your application continues to work when someone unplugs the network cable. And the other examples aren't really leaks, just performance disadvantages. I might accept an argument that any sufficiently powerful abstraction imposes a performance penalty, but that's a lot less interesting.

I've seen a single-platform JVM bug. once. The only definite OS failure I've ever seen was bad RAM, and you could write a bootable program that ran without an OS and that wouldn't protect you from bad RAM. I've seen one CPU flaw, and linux abstracted over it seamlessly. I've never seen a failure that was the result of analogue chip behaviour. There are plenty of non-leaky abstractions around.
Lispy Elixir
I like doing it in certain cases. It definitely helps in a while loop when you are working with a stream, iterator, or stack and pulling items off while it isn't empty. Not really sure about the if, it's just kind of convenient sometimes. Guess it all comes down to preference. Too much use and it becomes very unreadable.
Machine Learning #2 - Hill Climbing (Meaning of Life?)
Lets say a nuclear weapon fired kills a 1 million people (Over estimate, a crappy North Korean one probably more like 10,000)

It'd take 500+ to be launched over a kids life time to hit the 10%. And assuming you're not hitting the same spot where you've wiped out most people.

Doubt it.

Flue killing 10% I'd believe
There's plenty of ongoing subsidy for trains in the UK, it's just going in the shareholders' pockets rather than towards lower prices.
These self-serve kiosks have existed forever and they're not really a recent invention. Yet somehow they are still not very ubiquitous. More efficient? Probably. But when has a business made a fast decision just because something was more efficient?

But most likely it is inevitable that fast food will go this route. (Probably not until McDonalds decides to deploy it all across the US), but your statement that at least one "front-end" person is out of a job is not true at all. No one behind the counter is trained only to be a cashier. Pretty much the first thing you do when you work these kinds of jobs is learn how to handle the register because that's the most important thing at a restaurant (getting money from a customer).

So how many people is this kiosk actually replacing? Who is to say that having these self-serve kiosks won't just free them up to do something else like cooking food? If freeing them up allows them to serve more customers to make more money then why would the store fire them? There are a lot of things to consider but it seems short sighted to just assume that nixing this task will somehow eliminate an entire spot in the employee roster.

Anyways. I just realized how big of a tangent this is, since essentially your example of this was to underlie the fact that people working minimum wage should be appreciative because it can all be automated away, which I disagree with. The whole "ladder" and chopping off the bottom "rungs" is a bit bullshit though since it implies that all the burdens will land upon those same workers.
Stop watching the price, make sure your private key is backed up somewhere safe, and forget about BTC for a few months / years.

The worst thing you can do is sell now. BTC is extremely volatile, it might go down to $100, but one day it'll be $1,000 again.