skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not trying to be waspish, but are you suggesting we just be like Feynman? I will say I'm rather dubious we can achieve that with a simple interface change.

There is certainly merit and utility to graphical representation; we all use it via matlab, python+scientific packages, and so on. And, of course, the faster we can change something and see the result the better. It is not always an incremental change, but a pretty fundamental change, to see something change in real time.

Yet, this only really works in tiny cases. I recall Victor demonstrating using scrubbing variables to change how a game reacts. Okay, but the vastest amount of the programming I do (and I do fairly numerical things in the computer vision line) I either don't see the utility, or practicality. I can't variable scrub my way to a better algorithm.

I've seen, for example, graphical demonstrations of things like binary tree algorithms, sorting, and the like. It's momentarily interesting, but I can't claim that it really made any difference in my understanding of the subject. I think this is a case where people vary. I am not terribly visual, and most of Victor's arguments go over like a lead balloon with me. Yet, I cannot deny the excitement of others. I find it far more commodious to work with, for example, linear algebra. Certainly there are times when I am drawing 3D arrows and the like to work out a problem, but by-and-large the symbolic representation serves far better.

There is a reason we use text for communication on HN, and not pictures. It is not because we lack vision or foresight (no pun intended), but because it is the most expressive and flexible way to communicate our ideas. And, of course, sometimes we labor away, trying to communicate in words what would be so easy to illustrate with a single image. Neither is 'best'; we just use the best tool for the job.

None of that is to argue against one of your points - that math is more than symbolic representation. Once you are reduced to applying symbolic rules to an equation you are often quite lost, and that is often not taught in schools. Yet so much of math really cannot be done graphically at all, yet we succeed. A lot of people stall out in math (I think) at after the algebra/calc I,II,III level because beyond that there is often no recourse to graphics and physical representations; graphics can be as much a crutch as a help.

Anyway, visual thinking is certainly a form of thinking that should not be downplayed, but it is not how some to many brains work, nor is it even possible in many forms of important thought (I leave savants to one side, we can not make decisions based on exceptional/unique people).
I think I was probably about 19, I had started my first company at 18, I wrote my first line of code at 12 and started to leverage my knowledge of it with my company about 6 months in but I'm from Louisiana so surrounded by lots of blue collar types and honestly had no idea I could make a living in software much less a good one!

Once the company started to become profitable I started to get excited about all the possibilities and then I realized that my love for spending more time solving hard problems once and then repeating my newfound solution over and over again with minor tweaks or improvements was perfect for having a career in software.

I sold that first company and I've spent very little time as an employee but I've started three companies now and have been fortunate enough to have sold my first company and been a part of two of the best accelerator networks with the other two.
The idea that so many choose it implies they aren't being paid "close to nothing."

Probably they are being "paid" something other than money, and that's what's so attractive to them.
BBC computer server ‘was hacked’
> Even when you do make a change . . .

On top of that, if you use a resource that had only previously been used by your previous fingerprint, your identity can probably be smeared that way too. This is only measuring client-side entropy, but there is also server-side entropy that can be used to make inferences about clients.
I dislike this line of reasoning. If you add up the effects over many people then obviously you get a large number of minutes that were wasted, but those people collectively had many minutes to waste. You cannot claim that those minutes could be added together, and therefore you shouldn't invite comparisons to what you could do with 3 extra years. Brooks argued about the mythical man month in the same way.

It's an annoying, emotional statistic, used in the same way that my cereal box tells me they've saved 30 lorry-loads of cardboard from being produced. In the context of the millions lorry-loads of rubbish generated, it's not important.

I also dislike the 0.05% statistic (which is essentially saying Americans spend 0.05% of their time queueing at the DMV) as it's uselessly emphasized with "a significant amount considering the size of the GDP".

If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little.
David MacKay
http://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml
So ATMs would enter the same class as the Kinder Surprise treat, at least in the US?

:->, of course.

EDIT: Originally tried to raise a smiley to the Nth degree, but HN appears to dislike consecutive asterisks and kept munging them to nothingness.
No, my site has went down. never had this happen before. cant even access my ftp.
from experience (I was a security assessment professional and I have looked at multiple of these ATM machines in the past from a hackers point of view), these machines are almost always windows XP SP3 or the newer once are running windows 7. A number of usb devices are added like the pinpad, keyboard, printer, smartcard reader, cash dispenser, ... Next the entire thing is managed using XFS. (http://www.cen.eu/cen/Sectors/Sectors/ISSS/Activity/Pages/WS...) So even tho it might appear the researcher had a large amount of knowledge, this is not so uncommon.
Startups: ONE thing that you would advise Not TO DO when you start a startup?
I find this interesting because: by hoarding the coconuts (without necessity in this example), the good climber is causing harm or injury to the poor climber. This injury is considered fair and justified. However, if the poor climber causes injury to the first by stealing the coconuts after the fact, this is seen as unfair.
Definitely going to die if you're not a multi millionaire or billionaire. Why would common folk ever receive immortality therapy?

I firmly believe we're just a hologram, an experiment, with only one defined condition in our environment, death. Our overlords have watched us evolve and under the condition of death, and once we solve it, we will have won.
About 1 in 10,000th of earth bound helum is H3 which makes it several orders of magnitude cheaper to extract on earth than on the moon.

PS: For scale the US reserve was over 1 billion kg of helium last I checked which works out to something like 100,000+kg of H3. At 20% effecency it takes ~260kg of H3 to run a 1GW power plant for 1 year. So, we might want to start mining H3 on the moon, but after getting 10+ H3 reactors running for 20+ years which is going to take a long time. However, I suspect where going to ignore designing H3 reactors for similar reasons as we are ignoring thorium basically the fuel is no the expensive part of nuclear reactors.
I've had Glass since July, and I have found that much of its use in my personal experience comes down to how I feel in any given situation.

I do drive with Glass on, but it is generally sleeping, unless I am asking for directions to a new place. As for restaurants and the like, I feel like there generally is no need for me to wear it, as it just brings up uncomfortable feelings in those around me, and it's easier to just leave it in the car.

Where Glass really shines is in the great outdoors. When I'm taking a walk through my history-filled city, or out playing with my kids, this is where I use Glass the most. Not having to take myself out of the situation to pull my phone out to take a photo, or get a quick snippet of info about a nearby point of interest are the killer features for me.
USB port or no, once you have physical access to the internal electronics then the game is over. It seems to me the failure was using materials that could be quickly breached and then patched.

Do you have unique experience to justify up your vitriol?
To play devil's advocate...

If a vast majority of your hires are still done on merit, you can afford a few hundred "connection" hires. I know it doesn't align with the "meritocracy" mantra capitalist institutions like to boast about but even the most committed capitalist must admit it's in JP Morgan's financial best interest to staff some "princelings" to ensure they're competitive for deals. And, as long as you don't put these hires in charge of anything important, these new hires can't do you any harm.

BTW this sort of thing isn't unheard of in the US either -- children of high-ranking politicians get sweet gigs at financial institutions in the US as well. Chelsea Clinton only recently left her Wallstreet gig: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-03/chelsea-clinton-...

And during the 90's Dotcom boom, Startups would sometimes hire family members from some of their VCs, hoping to ensure additional rounds of funding.

This is just business as usual.
The value of the blog is not the engine it's the text. If their text is a blatant rehashing of someone else's content with SEO on top then yes, I would tell them to not put up crap online & try to find something of value to do.

I'm not saying don't try to release MVPs quicky to test the market, I'm saying don't log in to itunes, check out the top 10 games and then make cheap generic rip offs with different skins and optimized titles. The summery of what I'm trying to say is: do something you care about, in one way or another. It would be better for your mental health and probably also more likely to be a viable business. Don't be the ios equivalent of spammers & spyware-laden internet explorer toolbars.

I should say that I've been making a living as an independent developer for almost 3 years now so I'm not just talking out of my ass here.
Easy in the strict sense of job security. That's the only way I meant it.

Not many other professions can just up and leave and without a doubt land a job pretty much anywhere you like.

Hell I can go anywhere in EU and probably land a job, a freedom many don't have.
Big Data Year in Review 2013 – Five Major Steps in the Life of Big Data
With hindsight, it should have been obvious that this will happen, when countries/economies with corruption (relative) gain momentum, everybody else (including US) wants to play along, not to lose business, and corruption begets corruption.
No. Immortality would be even more horrific.

I would definitely like to see the average life span significantly extended, but there should still be a foreseeable death.
Capitalism does not exist "for the benefit of the consumer" no more so than apples exist for the benefit of human consumption.

Free markets need not have capitalism, and vice versa, but capitalism will likely arise in any free market.

If Bob produces X, and he wants to sell X for Y dollars, how is it immoral or bad to allow others to sell X for Y dollars, but no less?

This is like saying it's "price fixing" when an app developer charges the same for his product on the play store and the App Store.

Apple did not collude with HTC; they set the price for their product.
This is how Schools Kill Creativity
Ken Robinson on how schools kill creativity of students
Original Registrant of Bitcoins.com Shares Story Behind Domain Name
This fine is surely smaller than the ill-gotten gains. If the court is ruling that Apple was behaving with nefarious intent, shouldn't there be meaningful punitive damages?
Here is why you're being downvoted: human longevity is an extremely difficult, multifaceted problem. Research doctors are not even trying to slay a dragon but a hydra: combat one way to die of old age and another one pops up.

Lastly, attempting to forecast "chance of immortality in the coming 60-odd years" is asking a question that relies for its answer on extremely controversial ideas. Particularly, attempting to answer requires us to forecast whether the rate of advancement in ageing research is speeding up or slowing down. This is hard, and can be affected by a bunch of different factors: funding breakdown in non-corporate research, Great Stagnation Hypothesis, breakdown in public acceptance of science, economic decline in some places, economic growth in some places, public uptake of anti-aging ideologies, attitudes towards the retirement crisis we're already facing even before anti-aging research comes in. Oh, and then we face the issue of whether we can or are improving our quality of scientific findings through better research training or data science/machine learning techniques. And then we get to the really out-there stuff "immortalists" are often secretly thinking of and can't stop yacking about: the chance that we manage to create Friendly Artificial Intelligence and trigger a Singularity, thus rendering us all immortal utopian transhumans before many of us on this board even hit retirement age.

TL;DR: I have no bloody idea, but I still regard contributing to my Roth IRA as a pretty sensible move.

EDIT: The one trend I'm willing to say I observe is that average life expectancy is a fairly good tracker of social and economic development, even once you've gotten over the infant-mortality hump. If you want to be immortal, you should encourage society to act in ways that result in longer average lifespans and also to fund anti-ageing research in hopes of achieving the fabled "ageing escape horizon" where medical science advances faster than you die.
Understanding Cancelations
You can go on and on, but nothing will ever change the fact that no entity ever forced someone into a mortgage, CDO or investment. Each and every time was a voluntary contract between two parties, likely greed driven by both borrower and lender.
read the title and thought it is a cyber-security article,
I don't agree about "nefarious purposes". I think the shift of data about customers away from businesses and toward google is a telling sign of intentions: more data for google to sell (pre-packaged in some ad-retargeting deal). In this case, I'd consider google's data collection to be monopolistic-style "nefarious purposes" and anti-competitive.

Your other points are bang on.
All of them, even though they sit on top of empires, go deep and try to understand things themselves. They’re very hands-on. And they’re incredibly curious.

Well a great piece of advice for everyone. The more you are curious, the more you will love your job, the better you perform, more fulfilled life you live.
Cranked RSS Reader and Why I Built It
How do the rich cause the poor to be poorly educated? Do they infiltrate the school boards in poor districts and cause them to enact bad policies? I was also completely unaware that the rich went into poor neighborhoods and committed crime. This is terrible!

One possible solution to this is to try and segregate rich from poor as much as possible. That will certainly reduce the harm these rich villains cause. Maybe we need barriers preventing the rich from entering poor neighborhoods (and vice versa, in the interest of fairness). That should reduce crime in poor neighborhoods and improve the schools, right?

I agree with you on the war on drugs.
TL;DR, a jQuery plugin for bloggers
Edit, here is a pastebin link until my site is back online. Sorry about that guys.
http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG
Forget marketing if you cannot provide unparalleled support
Test results:

Safari 6.1, Mac OS X - Listened to "Thunder" track for 10 minutes; no noticeable break.

Firefox 24.0, Mac OS X - Did likewise; result likewise.

I'll have to try it again from home tonight and see whether it behaves better in the absence of the latency problem. Sorry for being so vague; I tend to try to characterize bug reports better than I have this one, but I was in the middle of too many things when I wrote my original comment and didn't take the time I should've.
Yes. This is why using relative measures of class are flawed.
New website for PHP developers
I was going to try it out, but you require me to signup. No teaser page, no FAQ, nothing. I prefer when companies allow me to demo their product without signing up. Be it by allowing me to use the product, a video, or even clear pictures with detailed captions.
For what it's worth, there's a fair number of Windows-based ATMs in the US and around the globe. You can find articles as old as 2003 about exploiting Windows-based ATMs. My favorite was the machine that had a Paint program enabled by an intrepid hacker. Every year without fail the ATMs of the hotels surrounding DEFCON get owned multiple times, sometimes advertising it. ("Dumb" ATMs are often much easier to attack using default passwords, but harder to install malware on)

https://www.informationweek.com/mobile/banks-struggle-to-get...

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/25/windows-based-atm-machine...
Crypto to what degree? Are your medical records safe? Correspondence with other secure on the other side?
Credit card history?
If you drive, your license plate being scanned to track location?
Do you have a cell phone?
Do you send postal mail (envelopes are now scanned).

Et cetera.

Crypto is great, but if the population as a whole doesn't care then it's more an exercise in keeping your journal entries secret (possibly).

We need to foment public anger over this, and have a clear course of action to channel that anger.
Neither party particularly likes funding NASA (save if they have them in their home district). The Dems prefer to expand social spending over government R&D. The Repubs thinks government funded R&D is a deficit-rasiing frill. Thats whty they both were quick to shut down the shuttle program.
Clj-refactor.el - A few Clojure refactorings for Emacs
>In my point of view, you cannot separate "the way you use the tool" with the "tool itself".

Love this. The question then becomes do you change the too, the way you use it, or some of each.

>A tool should not be designed only to "allow" people to do certain things.

You lost me here, because that's the definition of design. There are many hammer designs, some more general purpose like the claw hammer and many others (tack, 2lb) with a more limited intended purpose. Git is designed for very large scale teams, and staging seems to be integral to that. The paper asserts the complexity of staging is unneeded, but in my view doesn't adequately demonstrate that to be true for large teams. The paper goes on to describe an alternate, simpler product which better meets the needs of simpler users using and alternate, incompatible conceptual design. This is fine, but I'd be more impressed if it started by fully demonstrating a concept is not needed for the intended users before removing that concept and then described a pathway from a simpler concept to the fully complex conceptual model.
I would add to your references Hadamard's book[0], where he talks about how ideas form in various mathematicians' heads.

I don't really disagree with you, it's just that Victor seems to be claiming too much for his new interfaces, and selling symbolic manipulation short. Of course all kinds of things need to be happening inside our heads before we start manipulating symbols. But Feynman's papers and books are full of equations and derivations, not just answers. Most of Victor's examples are actually counter-examples, because they are examples of problems where a little algebra would not only be faster and easier but would yield a simple formula that you could use later, the next time the problem comes up.

Take the book design example. What happens the next time you need to fit a similar graph on the page? If you had used algebra you could have written a little calculator in Python in which you could plug in the new numbers and which would return the solution. Victor's way requires you to treat each graph-fitting problem as a special case, even if they're all the same.

[0]http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychology-Invention-Mathematical-...
That is not a bad idea. Might be worth a run or two.
https://github.com/stympy/faker
I went ahead and signed up. Really like the interface. Haven't really tested anything out yet.
you can find datasets online and customize them for your application or needs?

What exactly are you trying to accomplish what kind of data are you looking to reproduce.
Using the Wii U Controller Everywhere
Well, you have to learn what the "zero value" for each and every type is in order to fully understand the language semantics. IMHO, this adds complexity beyond null pointer exceptions.
When you say fake data, what do you mean exactly? What type of data do you need faked?
>Read the post before jumping to your reply button.

Maybe you should do the same.

Krugman isn't looking at Bitcoin as a technology, but as a currency. Just because he doesn't understand "computers and the imnpact thereof", doesn't mean he doesn't understand Bitcoin as money.
"Congress: please return to the moon"
Interviewing a front-end developer
For the record: This is a very good paper. It's extremely easy to read, even for somebody who knows nothing about the background, and the scientific result is absolutely beautiful!
Federal Aviation Administration announces sites for civil drone tests
"... millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." - Susan Ertz
We just have to ask the hot space Nazis for technical assistance.
Wow, thanks. I feel better now, not sure why though:)
Seems a bit 20th century to ask Congress for money to do it, when people like Elon Musk have shown you can do pretty much anything NASA can do privately at a 10th of the cost.
Or put the USB port on the other end.
Yeah, sorry about that. try this link for now: http://pastebin.com/gxJyGKhG
We haven't made any progress in lengthening the maximum human life. We can simply help more people so that they live closer to the maximum, so it's highly doubtful that we're anywhere near extending life beyond the 100-120 limits of our bodies.

Consider, for example, that work on artificial intelligence started in the 1950's. We've made lots of progress in 60 years, but it's definitely not a solved progress, despite the incredible progress.
New Years Traditions and #Superstitions #NYE #NewYears
Thanks! I think it's really testament to how far web technologies have come.
I don't particularly want to die, but knowing it's going to happen makes life a whole lot more interesting. For me, the looming finitude of life keeps my inclination to procrastinate in check - Why do today what can be done tomorrow? Because otherwise the things to do add up faster than the tomorrows on which to do them.
I suppose that makes sense, although unity3d is free, and the source for the game could still be open source, but yeah I think you are right, perhaps not the best choice :)
I get what you are saying and totally agree. However, now I am stuck between choosing between what is good for ME and what is good for OTHERS. What is more important? My life being good or leaving others in a better place when I'm gone? Should I just live for myself until I'm 45, than start giving back?
Education is free in my country. Situation with university degree is slightly different but still you can get degree for free if you really want to. Maybe that's why I take things like that for granted.

It shouldn't be easy to become middle class. Our planet can not sustain that with current technological level. But again "middle class" might mean different things for different people.

As well I'm pretty sure that rich people understand what position they are in if we speak about sustainable assets.